During this same troubled period a few of the Republican malcontents went so far as to fancy that they could put upon Mr. Lincoln a pressure which would induce him to withdraw from the ticket.  They never learned the extreme absurdity of their design, for they never got enough encouragement to induce them to push it beyond the stage of preliminary discussion.

All these movements had some support from newspapers in different parts of the country.  Many editors had the like grievance against Mr. Lincoln which so many politicians had.  For they had told him what to do, and too often he had not done it.  Horace Greeley, it is needless to say, was conspicuous in his unlimited condemnation of the President.

The first indications of the revolt of the politicians and the radicals against Mr. Lincoln were signals for instant counteracting activity among the various bodies which more closely felt the popular impulse.  State conventions, caucuses, of all sizes and kinds, and gatherings of the Republican members of state legislatures, overstepped their regular functions to declare for the renomination of Mr. Lincoln.  Clubs and societies did the same.  Simon Cameron, transmitting to the President a circular of this purport, signed by every Unionist member of the Pennsylvania legislature, said:  “Providence has decreed your reelection;” and if it is true that the vox populi is also the vox Dei, this statement of the political affiliations of Providence was entirely correct.  Undoubtedly the number of the President’s adherents was swelled by some persons who would have been among the disaffected had they not been influenced by the reflection that a change of administration in the present condition of things must be disastrous.  This feeling was expressed in many metaphors, but in none other so famous as that uttered by Mr. Lincoln himself:  that it was not wise to swap horses while crossing the stream.  The process was especially dangerous in a country where the change would involve a practical interregum of one third of a year.  The nation had learned this lesson, and had paid dearly enough for the schooling, too, in the four months of its waiting to get rid of Buchanan, after it had discredited him and all his ways.  In the present crisis it was easy to believe that to leave Mr. Lincoln to carry on for four months an administration condemned by the people, would inflict a mortal injury to the Union cause.  Nevertheless, though many persons not wholly satisfied with him supported him for this reason, the great majority undeniably felt implicit faith and intense loyalty towards him.  He was the people’s candidate, and they would not have any other candidate; this present state of popular feeling, which soon became plain as the sun in heaven, settled the matter.