eneral Grant and
the noble armies now under his command. He and his brave soldiers
are now in the midst of their great trial, and I trust that at
your meeting you will so shape your good words that they may turn
to men and guns, moving to his and their support." The danger to
the Union of taking Grant away from the front moved Lincoln deeply
all through that anxious summer of '64, though he never thought
Grant would leave the front with his work half done. In August an
officious editor told Lincoln that he ought to take a good long
rest. Lincoln, however, was determined to stand by his own post of
duty and find out from Grant, through their common friend, John
Eaton, what Grant's own views of such ideas were. This is Eaton's
account of how Grant took it:

We had been talking very quietly. But Grant's reply came in an
instant and with a violence for which I was not prepared. He brought
his clenched fists down hard on the strap arms of his camp chair.
"They can't do it. They can't compel me to do it." Emphatic gesture
was not a strong point with Grant. "Have you said this to the
President?" "No," said Grant, "I have not thought it worth while
to assure the President of my opinion. I consider it as important
for the cause that he should be elected as that the army should
be successful in the field."

When Eaton brought back his report Lincoln simply said, "I told you
they could not get him to run till he had closed out the rebellion."

On the twenty-third of this same gloomy August, lightened only
by the taking of Mobile, Lincoln asked his Cabinet if they would
endorse a memorandum without reading it. They all immediately signed.
After his reelection in November he read it out: "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 cooeperate 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 added that he would have asked McClellan to throw his whole
influence into getting enough recruits to finish the war before
the fourth of March. "And McClellan," was Seward's comment, "would
have said 'Yes, yes,' and then done nothing."

Lincoln's reelection was helped by Farragut's victory in August,
Sherman's in September, and Sheridan's raid through the Shenandoah
Valley in October. But it was als