is largely for the purpose of
its effect on the November election.

Henry J. Raymond, Chairman of the Republican National Executive
Committee, at a meeting of the committee in New York, apprehensive
of McClellan's nomination and possible election as President, August
22, 1864, indited a panicky letter to Mr. Lincoln, expressing great
fear of the latter's defeat at the polls, giving some unfavorable
predictions as to the result of the election by E. B. Washburne,
Governor Morton, Simon Cameron, and others, deploring the failure
of the army to gain victories, and assigning as a cause for reaction
in public sentiment:

"The impression is in some minds, the fear and suspicion in others,
that we are not to have peace in any event under this Administration
until slavery is abandoned."

Continuing:

"In some way or other the suspicion is widely diffused that we can
have peace with Union if we would. It is idle to reason with this
belief--still more idle to denounce it. It can only be expelled
by some authoritative act, at once bold enough to fix attention
and distinct enough to defy incredulity and challenge respect."

Raymond was bold enough to ask that a commission be appointed to
offer "peace to Davis, as the head of the rebel armies, on the sole
condition of acknowledging the supremacy of the Constitution--all
other questions to be settled in a convention of the people of all
the States." He stated that if the proffer were accepted the people
would put the execution of the details in loyal hands; if rejected
"it would plant seeds of disaffection in the South and dispel all
delusions about peace that prevail in the North." He demanded the
proposal should be made at once, as Mr. Lincon's "spontaneous act."
Mr. Raymond seemed to express the concurrent views of his Republican
associates.( 8) Three days later he and his committee reached
Washington to personally urge prompt action on the President. In
the light of recent attempts at Niagara and Richmond the Raymond
proposition was inadmissible, yet Mr. Lincoln resolved, if the step
must be taken, to again make the proposer the instrument to
demonstrate its folly. The President wrote a letter of instructions,
which he felt he might have to give to Mr. Raymond, authorizing
him to proceed to Richmond, and propose to "Honorable Jefferson
Davis that upon the restoration of the Union and the national
authority, the war shall cease at once, all remaining questions to
be