up in the Senate, at seeing their work thus brought to nothing, could not be restrained; and together they signed and published in the New York “Tribune” of August 5 the most vigorous attack ever directed against the President from his own party; insinuating that only the lowest motives dictated his action, since by refusing to sign the bill he held the electoral votes of the rebel States at his personal dictation; calling his approval of the bill of Congress as a very proper plan for any State choosing to adopt it, a “studied outrage”; and admonishing the people to “consider the remedy of these usurpations, and, having found it,” to “fearlessly execute it.”

Congress had already repealed the fugitive-slave law, and to the voters at large, who joyfully accepted the emancipation proclamation, it mattered very little whether the “institution” came to its inevitable end, in the fragments of territory where it yet remained, by virtue of congressional act or executive decree.  This tempest over the method of reconstruction had, therefore, little bearing on the presidential campaign, and appealed more to individual critics of the President than to the mass of the people.

Mr. Chase entered in his diary:  “The President pocketed the great bill....  He did not venture to veto, and so put it in his pocket.  It was a condemnation of his amnesty proclamation and of his general policy of reconstruction, rejecting the idea of possible reconstruction with slavery, which neither the President nor his chief advisers have, in my opinion, abandoned.”  Mr. Chase was no longer one of the chief advisers.  After his withdrawal from his hopeless contest for the presidency, his sentiments toward Mr. Lincoln took on a tinge of bitterness which increased until their friendly association in the public service became no longer possible; and on June 30 he sent the President his resignation, which was accepted.  There is reason to believe that he did not expect such a prompt severing of their official relations, since more than once, in the months of friction which preceded this culmination, he had used a threat to resign as means to carry some point in controversy.

Mr. Lincoln, on accepting his resignation, sent the name of David Tod of Ohio to the Senate as his successor; but, receiving a telegram from Mr. Tod declining on the plea of ill health, substituted that of William Pitt Fessenden, chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, whose nomination was instantly confirmed and commanded general approval.

Horace Greeley, editor of the powerful New York “Tribune,” had become one of those patriots whose discouragement and discontent led them, during the summer of 1864, to give ready hospitality to any suggestions to end the war.  In July he wrote to the President, forwarding the letter of one “Wm. Cornell Jewett of Colorado,” which announced the arrival in Canada of two ambassadors from Jefferson Davis with full powers to negotiate