of crying aloud for immediate peace, which he continued to do throughout the presidential campaign, always unreasonably, sometimes disingenuously, but without rest, and with injurious effect.  The vivid picture which he loved to draw of “our bleeding, bankrupt, and almost dying country,” longing for peace and shuddering at the “prospect of new rivers of human blood,” scared many an honest and anxious patriot.

In July and August Mr. Greeley was misled into lending himself to the schemes of some Southerners at Niagara Falls, who threw out intimations that they were emissaries from the Confederacy and authorized to treat for peace.  He believed these men, and urged that negotiations should be prosecuted with them.  By the publicity which he gave to the matter he caused much embarrassment to Mr. Lincoln, who saw at once that the whole business was certainly absurd and probably treacherous.  The real purpose of these envoys, he afterwards said, was undoubtedly “to assist in selecting and arranging a candidate and a platform for the Chicago Convention.”  Yet clearly as he understood this false and hollow scheme, he could not altogether ignore Greeley’s demands for attention to it without giving too much color to those statements which the editor was assiduously scattering abroad, to the effect that the administration did not desire peace, and would not take it when proffered.  So there were reasons why this sham offer must be treated as if it were an honest one, vexatious as the necessity appeared to the President.  Perhaps he was cheered by the faith which he had in the wisdom of proverbs, for now, very fortunately, he permitted himself to be guided by a familiar one; and he decided to give to his annoyer liberal rope.  Accordingly he authorized Mr. Greeley himself to visit in person these emissaries, to confer with them, and even to bring them to Washington in case they should prove really to have from Jefferson Davis any written proposition “for peace, embracing the restoration of the Union and abandonment of slavery.”  It was an exceedingly shrewd move, and it seriously discomposed Mr. Greeley, who had not counted upon being so frankly met, and whose disquietude was amusingly evident as he reluctantly fluttered forth to Niagara upon his mission of peace, less wise than a serpent and unfortunately much less harmless than a dove.

There is no room here to follow all the intricacies of the ensuing “negotiations.”  The result was an utter fiasco, fully justifying the President’s opinion of the fatuity of the whole business.  The so-called Southern envoys had no credentials at all; they appeared to be mere adventurers, and members of that Southern colony in Canada which became even more infamous by what it desired to do than mischievous by what it actually did during the war.  If they had any distinct purpose on this occasion, it was to injure the Republican party by discrediting its candidate in precisely the way in which Mr. Greeley