had and was not warped by power, these personal wishes might well have been merged in concern for the cause in hand.  There is everything to indicate that they were completely so in his case.  A President cannot wisely do much directly to promote his own re-election, but he appears to have done singularly little.  At the beginning of 1864, when the end of the war seemed near, and the election of a Republican probable, he may well have thought that he would be the Republican candidate, but he had faced the possible choice of Chase very placidly, and of Grant he said, “If he takes Richmond let him have the Presidency.”  It was another matter when the war again seemed likely to drag on and a Democratic President might come in before the end of it.  An editor who visited the over-burdened President in August told him that he needed some weeks of rest and seclusion.  But he said, “I cannot fly from my thoughts.  I do not think it is personal vanity or ambition, though I am not free from those infirmities, but I cannot but feel that the weal or woe of the nation will be decided in November.  There is no proposal offered by any wing of the Democratic party but that must result in the permanent destruction of the Union.”  He would have been well content to make place for Grant if Grant had finished his work.  But that work was delayed, and then Lincoln became greatly troubled by the movement to force Grant, the general whom he had at last found, into politics with his work undone; for all would have been lost if McClellan had come in with the war still progressing badly.  Lincoln had been invited in June to a gathering in honour of Grant, got up with the thinly disguised object of putting the general forward as his rival.  He wrote, with true diplomacy:  “It is impossible for me to attend.  I approve nevertheless of whatever may tend to strengthen and sustain General Grant and the noble armies now under his command.  He and his brave soldiers are now in the midst of their great trial, and I trust that at your meeting you will so shape your good words that they may turn to men and guns, moving to his and their support.”  In August he told his mind plainly to Grant’s friend Eaton.  He never dreamed for a moment that Grant would willingly go off into politics with the military situation still insecure, and he believed that no possible pressure could force Grant to do so; but on this latter question he wished to make himself sure; with a view to future military measures he really needed to be sure of it.  Eaton saw Grant, and in the course of conversation very tactfully brought to Grant’s notice the designs of his would-be friends.  “We had,” writes Eaton, “been talking very quietly, but Grant’s reply came in an instant and with a violence for which I was not prepared.  He brought his clenched fists down hard on the strap arms of his camp chair, ’They can’t do it.  They can’t compel me to do it.’  Emphatic gesture was not a strong point with Grant.  ‘Have you