Their plan was
successful. The second place on the Union ticket was accepted by
a War Democrat, Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee. Lincoln was
renominated, though not without opposition, and he was so keenly
aware that he was not the unanimous choice of the Union Party
that he permitted the fact to appear in a public utterance soon
afterward. "I do not allow myself," he said, in addressing a
delegation of the National Union League, "to suppose that either
the Convention or the League have concluded to decide that I am
either the greatest or the best man in America, but rather they
have concluded it is not best to swap horses while crossing the
river, and have further concluded that I am not so poor a horse
that they might not make a botch of it in trying to swap."
But the Union Party was so far from being a unit that during the
summer factional quarrels developed within its ranks. All the
elements that were unfriendly to Lincoln took heart from a
dispute betweenthe President and Congress with regard to
reconstruction in Louisiana, over a large part of which Federal
troops had established a civil government on the President's
authority. As an incident in the history of reconstruction, this
whole matter has its place in another volume.
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