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By Root 6887 0

”; no other condition would be acceptable. The discussion unfolded much as Lincoln had expected, with Clay admitting that he had no authority to negotiate a peace and Greeley and Hay returning empty-handed. But the Confederates had pried out of Lincoln a statement about slavery and its fundamental place in the war that could only make him more unpopular with the great mass of voters in the West, who still thought they were fighting for the Union rather than abolition.

The “To Whom It May Concern” letter was indeed the last straw for some Lincoln supporters. The treasurer of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, George Templeton Strong, thought “his letter … may cost him his election. By declaring that abandonment of slavery is a fundamental article in any negotiation for peace and settlement, he has given the disaffected and discontented a weapon.”15 Charles Francis Adams, Jr., was shocked by the palpable sense of defeat among the cabinet when he visited Washington at the end of August. (He was on furlough, recovering from an attack of jaundice caused by malaria.) He had transferred from Meade’s staff to an all-black regiment, the 5th Massachusetts (Colored) Cavalry, and was waiting to take up his commission as lieutenant colonel in September. His own convictions about the aim of the war and the necessity of seeing it through remained strong despite his recent experiences in Virginia; but a meeting with Seward left him deeply concerned. “His tone was very different from that of last spring,” Charles Francis Jr. wrote to his father on August 20, “when he seemed to me so buoyant and confident of the future.… I was pained to feel how discouraged he was. He too gave me the impression which all here do, of ‘going it wild’ and not seeing where this thing is going to come out.”16

Contrary to Charles Francis Jr.’s fears, Seward was one of the few politicians not scheming to replace Lincoln or flirting with ideas for a negotiated peace. But “the Tide is setting strongly against us,” warned the editor of The New York Times, Henry Raymond, on August 22. As chairman of the Republican National Committee, Raymond had substantial influence. He saw no hope for Lincoln, barring a sudden military success, unless the administration declared its willingness to consider reunion with slavery intact.17 Even Edwin Stanton, whose longevity at the War Department owed much to his loyalty to Lincoln, decided that it might be worth finding out from the Confederate commissioners what sort of terms the South would be willing to discuss. On August 19, 1864, Judge Jeremiah Black, a moderate Democrat and old friend of Stanton’s, visited Commissioner Thompson in Toronto. Three days after the meeting, Thompson wrote to Mason and Slidell in France that Stanton had sent Black to him because he had lost all confidence in the Republicans’ reelection. “Judge Black has come to me to learn the state of feeling in the Confederate States, and to know whether I was able to say if negotiations for peace could be opened without the ultimatum of final separation.”18 Stanton never did learn the answer, because on August 22 the New York Herald exposed the meeting, which frightened him into repudiating any connection with the visit. Facing treachery in his cabinet, abandoned by the Republican National Committee, and excoriated in the press, Lincoln believed that his chances of reelection were slim. Yet “I honestly believe that I can better serve the nation in its need and peril than any new man could possibly do,” he told Thaddeus Kane, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.19 The following day, the twenty-third, Lincoln put his cabinet to the test: he asked them to demonstrate their loyalty by signing their names at the bottom of a covered document. They did not know it, but each man was committing himself to the war until the last day of the Lincoln presidency, assuming the Democrats won the White House in November:

This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected [read the memorandum], then it will