to win victories. The
Southern army under Lee was still defending Richmond as strongly as
ever.

There was no evading the issue at the polls. The Proclamation had
committed the President to the bold, far-reaching radical and aggressive
policy of the utter destruction of Slavery. The people were asked to
choose between Slavery on the one hand and nationality on the other. The
two together they could not again have.

The President had staked his life on his faith that the people could be
trusted on a square issue of right and wrong.

This time he had underestimated the force of blind passions which the
hell of war had raised.

Maine voted first and cut down her majority for the administration from
nineteen thousand to a bare four thousand. The fact was ominous.

Ohio spoke next and Van Alen's ticket against the administration swept
the State, returning fourteen Democrats and only five Republicans to
Congress.

Indiana, the State in which the President's mother slept, spoke in
thunder tones against him, sending eight Democrats and three
Republicans. Even the rockribbed Republican stronghold of Pennsylvania
was carried by the opposition by a majority of four thousand, reversing
Lincoln's former majority of sixty thousand.

In New York the brilliant Democratic leader, Horatio Seymour, was
elected Governor on a platform hostile to the administration by more
than ten thousand majority. New Jersey turned against him, Michigan
reduced his majority from twenty to six thousand. Wisconsin evenly
divided its delegates to Congress.

Illinois, the President's own State, gave the most crushing blow of all.
His big majority there was completely reversed and the Democrats carried
the State by over seventeen thousand and the Congressional delegates
stood eleven to three against him.

And then his Border State Policy, against which the leaders of his party
had raged in vain was vindicated in the most startling way. True to his
steadfast purpose to hold these States in the Union at all hazards, he
had not included them in his Emancipation Proclamation.

One of the reasons for which they had refused his offer of United States
bonds in payment for their slaves was they did not believe them worth
the paper they were written on. A war costing two million dollars a day
was sure to bankrupt the Nation before the end could be seen.

And yet because he had treated them with patience and fairness, with
justice and with generosity, the