Lincoln is already beaten.... We must have another ticket to
save us from utter overthrow. If we had such a ticket as could
be made by naming Grant, Butler, or Sherman for President and
Farragut for Vice, we could make a fight yet."
At about this same time the chairman of the Republican national
committee, who was a Lincoln man, wrote to the President that the
situation was desperate. Lincoln himself is known to have made a
private memorandum containing the words, "It seems extremely
probable that this Administration will not be reelected." On the
1st of September, 1864, with three presidential candidates in the
field, Northern politics were bewildering, and the country was
shrouded in the deepest gloom. The Wilderness campaign, after
slaughter unparalleled, had not in the popular mind achieved
results. Sherman, in Georgia, though his losses were not as
terrible as Grant's, had not yet done anything to lighten the
gloom. Not even Farragut's victory in Mobile Bay, in August,
far-reaching as it proved to be, reassured the North. A bitter
cry for peace went up even from lovers of the Union whose hearts
had failed.
Meanwhile, the brilliant strategist in Georgia was pressing his
drive for political as well as for military effect.
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