brilliant as to seem almost theatrical.  Thus from the South, from the West, and from the East came simultaneously the fierce contradiction of this insulting Copperhead notion, that the North had failed in the war.  The political blunder of the party was now much more patent than was any alleged military failure on the part of its opponents.  In fact the Northerners were beholding the sudden turning over of a great page in the book of the national history, and upon the newly exposed side of it, amid the telegrams announcing triumphs of arms, they read in great plain letters the reelection of Mr. Lincoln.  Before long most persons conceded this.  He himself had said, a few months earlier, that the probabilities indicated that the presidential campaign would be a struggle between a Union candidate and a Disunion candidate.  McClellan had sought to give to it a complexion safer for his party and more honorable for himself, but the platform and events combined to defeat his wise purpose.  In addition to these difficulties the South also burdened him with an untimely and compromising friendship.  The Charleston “Courier,” with reckless frankness, declared that the armies of the Confederacy and the peace-men at the North were working together for the procurement of peace; and said:  “Our success in battle insures the success of McClellan.  Our failure will inevitably lead to his defeat.”  No words could have been more imprudent; the loud proclamation of such an alliance was the madness of self-destruction.  In the face of such talk the Northerners could not but believe that the issue was truly made up between war and Union on the one side, peace and disunion on the other.  If between the two, when distinctly formulated, there could under any circumstances have been doubt, the successes by sea and land turned the scale for the Republicans.

* * * * *

During the spring and summer many prominent Republicans strenuously urged Mr. Lincoln to remove the postmaster-general, Montgomery Blair, from the cabinet.  The political purpose was to placate the Radicals, whose unnatural hostility within the party greatly disturbed the President’s friends.  Many followers of Fremont might be conciliated by the elimination of the bitter and triumphant opponent of their beloved chieftain; and besides this leader, the portentous list of those with whom the postmaster was on ill terms included many magnates,—­Chase, Seward, Stanton, Halleck, and abundance of politicians.  Henry Wilson wrote to the President:  “Blair every one hates.  Tens of thousands of men will be lost to you, or will give a reluctant vote, on account of the Blairs.”  Even the Republican National Convention had covertly assailed him; for a plank in the platform, declaring it “essential to the general welfare that harmony should prevail in the national councils,” was known to mean that he should no longer remain in the cabinet.  Yet to force him out was most distasteful to the President,