The election has exhibited another fact not less valuable to be known—­the fact that we do not approach exhaustion in the most important branch of national resources, that of living men.  While it is melancholy to reflect that the war has filled so many graves and carried mourning to so many hearts, it is some relief to know that, compared with the surviving, the fallen have been so few.  While corps and divisions and brigades and regiments have formed and fought and dwindled and gone out of existence, a great majority of the men who composed them are still living.  The same is true of the naval service.  The election returns prove this.  So many voters could not else be found.  The States regularly holding elections, both now and four years ago, to wit, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin, cast 3,982,011 votes now, against 3,870,222 cast then, showing an aggregate now of 3,982,011.  To this is to be added 33,762 cast now in the new States of Kansas and Nevada, which States did not vote in 1860, thus swelling the aggregate to 4,015,773 and the net increase during the three years and a half of war to 145,551.  A table is appended showing particulars.  To this again should be added the number of all soldiers in the field from Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware, Indiana, Illinois, and California, who by the laws of those States could not vote away from their homes, and which number can not be less than 90,000.  Nor yet is this all.  The number in organized Territories is triple now what it was four years ago—­while thousands, white and black, join us as the national arms press back the insurgent lines.  So much is shown, affirmatively and negatively, by the election.  It is not material to inquire how the increase has been produced or to show that it would have been greater but for the war, which is probably true.  The important fact remains demonstrated that we have more men now than we had when the war began; that we are not exhausted nor in process of exhaustion; that we are gaining strength and may if need be maintain the contest indefinitely. [This sentence recognizes the concern of a guerilla war after the main war finished.]This as to men.  Material resources are now more complete and abundant than ever.

The national resources, then, are unexhausted, and, as we believe, inexhaustible.  The public purpose to re-establish and maintain the national authority is unchanged, and, as we believe, unchangeable.  The manner of continuing the effort remains to choose.  On careful consideration of all the evidence accessible it seems to me that no attempt at negotiation with the insurgent leader could result in any good.  He would accept nothing short of severance of the Union, precisely what we will not and can not give.  His