worse than ignored in the selection of him?  And what was their influence worth, when all who could be reached by it knew well their extreme hostility and distrust towards Mr. Lincoln?  Stevens grudgingly admitted that Lincoln would not be quite so bad a choice as McClellan, yet let no chance go by to assail the opinions, measures, and policy of the Republican President.  In this he was imitated by others, and their reluctant adhesion in the mere matter of voting the party ticket was much more than offset by this vehemence in condemning the man in whose behalf they felt it necessary to go to the polls.  In a word the situation was, that the common soldiers of the party were to go into the fight under officers who did not expect, and scarcely desired, to win.  Victory is rare under such circumstances.

The opposition of the Democratic party was open and legitimate; the unfriendliness of the Republican politicians was more unfortunate than unfair, because it was the mistake of sincere and earnest men.  But in the way of Mr. Lincoln’s success there stood still other opponents whose antagonism was mischievous, insidious, and unfair both in principle and in detail.  Chief in this band appeared Horace Greeley, with a following and an influence fluctuating and difficult to estimate, but considerable.  His present political creed was a strange jumble of Democratic and Republican doctrines.  No Democrat abused the administration or cried for “peace on almost any terms” louder than he did; yet he still declaimed against slavery, and proposed to buy from the South all its slaves for four hundred millions of dollars.  Unfortunately those of his notions which were of importance in the pending campaign were the Democratic ones.  If he had come out openly as a free lance, which was his true character, he would have less seriously injured the President’s cause.  This, however, he would not do, but preferred to fight against the Republicans in their own camp and wearing their own uniform, and in this guise to devote all his capacity to embarrassing the man who was the chosen president and the candidate of that party.  Multitudes in the country had been wont to accept the editorials of the “Tribune” as sound political gospels, and the present disaffected attitude of the variable man who inspired those vehement writings was a national disaster.  He created and led the party of peace Republicans.  Peace Democracy was a legitimate political doctrine; but peace Republicanism was an illogical monstrosity.  It lay, with the mortal threat of a cancer, in the political body of the party.  It was especially unfortunate just at this juncture that clear thinking was not among Mr. Greeley’s gifts.  In single-minded pursuit of his purpose to destroy Mr. Lincoln by any possible means, he had at first encouraged the movement for Fremont, though it was based on views directly contrary to his own.  But soon losing interest in that, he thereafter gave himself wholly to the business