He took some consolation in a “card” that appeared in the Boston Transcript, July 22.  It gave a brief account of the adventure of Gilmore and Jaquess, and stated the answer given to them by the President of the Confederacy.  That answer, as restated by the Confederate Secretary of State, was:  “he had no authority to receive proposals for negotiations except by virtue of his office as President of an independent Confederacy and on this basis alone must proposals be made to him."(16)

There was another circumstance that may well have been Lincoln’s consolation in this tangle of cross-purposes.  Only boldness could extricate him from the mesh of his difficulties.  The mesh was destined to grow more and more of a snare; his boldness was to grow with his danger.  He struck the note that was to rule his conduct thereafter, when, on the day he sent the final instructions to Greeley, in defiance of his timid advisers, he issued a proclamation calling for a new draft of half a million men.(17)

XXXII.  THE AUGUST CONSPIRACY

Though the Vindictives kept a stealthy silence during July, they were sharpening their claws and preparing for a tiger spring whenever the psychological moment should arrive.  Those two who had had charge of the Reconstruction Bill prepared a paper, in some ways the most singular paper of the war period, which has established itself in our history as the Wade-Davis Manifesto.  This was to be the deadly shot that should unmask the Vindictive batteries, bring their war upon the President out of the shadows into the open.

Greeley’s fiasco and Greeley’s mortification both played into their hands.  The fiasco contributed to depress still more the despairing North.  By this time, there was general appreciation of the immensity of Grant’s failure, not only at Cold Harbor, but in the subsequent slaughter of the futile assault upon Petersburg.  We have the word of a member of the Committee that the despair over Grant translated itself into blame of the Administration.(1) The Draft Proclamation; the swiftly traveling report that the government had wilfully brought the peace negotiations to a stand-still; the continued cry that the war was hopeless; all these produced, about the first of August, an emotional crisis—­just the sort of occasion for which Lincoln’s enemies were waiting.

Then, too, there was Greeley’s mortification.  The Administration papers made him a target for sarcasm.  The Times set the pace with scornful demands for “No more back door diplomacy."(2) Greeley answered in a rage.  He permitted himself to imply that the President originated the Niagara negotiation and that Greeley “reluctantly” became a party to it.  That “reluctantly” was the truth, in a sense, but how falsely true!  Wade and Davis had him where they wanted him.  On the fifth of August, The Tribune printed their manifesto.  It was an appeal to “the supporters of the Administration