e government during four months in face of its near
transmission to a successor all whose views and purposes would be
diametrically opposite to his own, and desiring beforehand clearly to
mark out his duty in this stress, Mr. Lincoln one day wrote these
words:--

"This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that
this administration will not be reelected. Then it will be my duty to so
cooperate with the President-elect as to save the Union between the
election and the inauguration, as he will have secured his election on
such ground that he cannot possibly save it afterwards."

He then closed the paper so that it could not be read, and requested
each member of the cabinet to sign his name on the reverse side.

In the end, honesty was vindicated as the best policy, and courage as
the soundest judgment. The preliminary elections in Vermont and Maine in
September, the important elections in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana in
October, showed that a Republican wave was sweeping across the North. It
swept on and gathered overwhelming volume in the brief succeeding
interval before November 8. On that momentous day, the voting in the
States showed 2,213,665 Republican votes, to which were added 116,887
votes of soldiers in the field, electing 212 presidential electors;
1,802,237 Democratic votes, to which were added 33,748 votes of soldiers
in the field, electing 21 presidential electors. Mr. Lincoln's plurality
was therefore 494,567; and it would have been swelled to over half a
million had not the votes of the soldiers of Vermont, Kansas, and
Minnesota arrived too late to be counted, and had not those of Wisconsin
been rejected for an informality. Thus were the dreary predictions of
the midsummer so handsomely confuted that men refused to believe that
they had ever been deceived by them.

On the evening of election day Mr. Lincoln went to the War Department,
and there stayed until two o'clock at night, noting the returns as they
came assuring his triumph and steadily swelling its magnitude. Amid the
good news his feelings took on no personal complexion. A crowd of
serenaders, meeting him on his return to the White House, demanded a
speech. He told them that he believed that the day's work would be the
lasting advantage, if not the very salvation, of the country, and that
he was grateful for the people's confidence; but, he said, "if I know my
heart, my gratitude is free from any taint of personal triu