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president “found it difficult to put his mind on any of the routine work of his office.” The only respite he found was in telling a humorous story about Tad, whose pet turkey apparently roamed at will among the Pennsylvania soldiers quartered at the White House. When the day had come for the Bucktail soldiers to cast their absentee ballots before their state’s commission, Tad had excitedly rushed into his father’s office so they could watch the voting from the window. Teasing his son, Lincoln had asked if the turkey, too, intended to vote. Tad’s clever reply delighted his father. “No,” he said. “He is not of age.” Brooks noted that Lincoln so “dearly loved the boy” that “for days thereafter he took pride in relating this anecdote illustrative of Tad’s quick-wittedness.”

As the clock struck seven, the president, accompanied by John Hay, walked over to the telegraph office to begin the long vigil. “It is a little singular,” Lincoln remarked to Hay, “that I who am not a vindictive man, should have always been before the people for election in canvasses marked for their bitterness.” The lights of the War Department, bursting with dozens of orderlies and clerks, provided a welcome contrast to the murky night.

The muddy grounds had caused Thomas Eckert to fall on his face, which, “of course,” Hay noted, “reminded the Tycoon” of a story. “For such an awkward fellow,” Lincoln began, “I am pretty sure-footed. It used to take a pretty dextrous man to throw me. I remember, the evening of the day in 1858, that decided the contest for the Senate between Mr. Douglas and myself, was something like this, dark, rainy & gloomy. I had been reading the returns, and had ascertained that we had lost the Legislature and started to go home. The path had been worn hog-backed & was slippering. My foot slipped from under me, knocking the other one out of the way, but I recovered myself & lit square: and I said to myself, ‘It’s a slip and not a fall.’” Even at the time Lincoln had understood that his defeat for the Senate was “a slip and not a fall.” Little could he then have imagined, however, that on another dreary night six years later, he would be waiting to hear if he had been elected to a second presidential term.

The early returns were positive, revealing larger Republican majorities than in the state elections. Lincoln asked to have the good news carried to Mary at the White House. “She is more anxious than I,” he commented. Shortly afterward, Welles and Fox arrived. Fox was thrilled to hear that Winter Davis had been defeated in Maryland. “You have more of that feeling of personal resentment than I,” Lincoln said. “A man has not time to spend half his life in quarrels. If any man ceases to attack me, I never remember the past against him.”

The returns, including those from Pennsylvania, continued to be promising, though New York, with its large number of traditionally Democratic Irish immigrants, remained in doubt. By the hour of midnight, however, when a supper of fried oysters was served, Lincoln’s victory was assured, though his lopsided electoral college win would not be known for several days. In the end, he would win all but three states—New Jersey, Delaware, and Kentucky—giving him 212 electoral votes against McClellan’s 21. The popular vote was closer; the two candidates were separated by about 400,000 votes. Nonetheless, the results were far better than Lincoln had predicted. The Republican/Union Party had gained thirty-seven seats in Congress and placed twelve governors in office. It had also seized control of most of the state legislatures with the power to name the next round of U.S. senators.

It was after 2 a.m. when Lincoln left the telegraph office. The rain had stopped, and along Pennsylvania Avenue, an impromptu crowd had gathered, “singing ‘The Battle Cry of Freedom’ at the tops of their voices.” As he went to sleep that night, Lincoln carried with him the knowledge, as Brooks put it, that “the verdict of the people was likely to be so full, clear, and unmistakable that there could be no dispute,” thereby affording him