rthern press. In the bitterness of his
mortification Greeley then went from one extreme to the other and joined
the Vindictives.

Less than three weeks after the conference at Niagara, the "Wade-Davis
Manifesto" appeared. It was communicated to the country through the
columns of Greeley's paper on the 5th of August. Greeley, who so short
a time before was for peace at any price, went the whole length of
reaction by proclaiming that "Mr. Lincoln is already beaten.... We must
have another ticket to save us from utter overthrow. If we had such
a ticket as could be made by naming Grant, Butler, or Sherman for
President and Farragut for Vice, we could make a fight yet."

At about this same time the chairman of the Republican national
committee, who was a Lincoln man, wrote to the President that the
situation was desperate. Lincoln himself is known to have made a private
memorandum containing the words, "It seems extremely probable that this
Administration will not be reelected." On the 1st of September, 1864,
with three presidential candidates in the field, Northern politics were
bewildering, and the country was shrouded in the deepest gloom. The
Wilderness campaign, after slaughter unparalleled, had not in the
popular mind achieved results. Sherman, in Georgia, though his losses
were not as terrible as Grant's, had not yet done anything to lighten
the gloom. Not even Farragut's victory in Mobile Bay, in August,
far-reaching as it proved to be, reassured the North. A bitter cry for
peace went up even from lovers of the Union whose hearts had failed.

Meanwhile, the brilliant strategist in Georgia was pressing his drive
for political as well as for military effect. To rouse those Unionists
who had lost heart was part of his purpose when he hurled his columns
against Atlanta, from which Hood was driven in one of the most
disastrous of Confederate defeats. On the 3rd of September Lincoln
issued a proclamation appointing a day of thanksgiving for these great
victories of Sherman and Farragut.

On that day, it would seem, the tide turned in Northern politics. Some
historians are content with Atlanta as the explanation of all that
followed; but there are three separate events of importance that now
occurred as incidents in the complicated situation. In the first place,
three weeks later the radical opposition had collapsed; the plan for a
new convention was abandoned; the Vindictive leaders came out in support
of Lincoln. Almo