s always
willing to trust the people upon a question of right and wrong. He never
was afraid to stake his chance upon the faith that what was
intrinsically right would prove in the long run to be politically safe.
While he was a shrewd politician in matters of detail, he had the wisdom
always in a great question to get upon that side where the inherent
morality lay. Yet, unfortunately, it takes time--time which cannot
always be afforded--for right to destroy prejudice; the slow-grinding
mill of God grinds sometimes so slowly that man cannot help fearing that
for once the stint will not be worked out; and in this autumn of 1862
there was one of these crises of painful anxiety among patriots at the
North.

Maine held her election early in September, and upon the vote for
governor a Republican majority, which usually ranged from 10,000 to
19,000, was this year cut down to a little over 4000; also, for the
first time in ten years, a Democrat secured a seat in the national House
of Representatives. Then came the "October States." In that dreary month
Ohio elected 14 Democrats and 5 Republicans; the Democrats casting, in
the total, about 7000 more votes than the Republicans. Indiana sent 8
Democrats, 3 Republicans. In Pennsylvania the congressional delegation
was divided, but the Democrats polled the larger vote by about 4000;
whereas Mr. Lincoln had had a majority in the State of 60,000! In New
York the famous Democratic leader, Horatio Seymour, was elected governor
by a majority of nearly 10,000. Illinois, the President's own State,
showed a Democratic majority of 17,000, and her congressional delegation
stood 11 Democrats to 3 Republicans. New Jersey turned from
Republicanism to Democracy. Michigan reduced a Republican majority from
20,000 to 6000. Wisconsin divided its delegation evenly.[40] When the
returns were all in, the Democrats, who had had only 44 votes in the
House in the Thirty-seventh Congress, found that in its successor they
would have 75. Even if the non-voting absentees in the army[41] had been
all Republicans, which they certainly were not, such a reaction would
have been appalling.

Fortunately some other Northern States--New England's six, and Iowa,
Kansas, Minnesota, California, and Oregon--held better to their
Republican faith. But it was actually the border slave States which, in
these dark and desperate days, came gallantly to the rescue of the
President's party. If the voters of these States had s