and autumn. While these operations were in prog-
ress, Gen. Philip H. Sheridan had made one of
the most brilliant cavalry raids in the war, threat-
ening Richmond and defeating the Confederate
cavalry under Gen. J. E. B. Stuart, and killing
that famous leader. While Grant lay before Rich-
mond, Gen. Lee, hoping to induce him to attack
his works, despatched a force under Gen. Early to
threaten Washington ; but Grant sent two corps
of his army northward, and Early — after a sharp
skirmish under the fortifications of Washington,
where Mr. Lincoln was personally present — was
driven back through the Shenandoah valley, and
on two occasions, in September and October, was
signally defeated by Gen. Sheridan.
Gen. William T. Sherman, who had been left in command of the western district formerly com- manded by Grant, moved southward at the same time that Grant crossed the Rapidan. Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, one of the ablest of the Confederate generals, retired gradually before him, defending himself at every halt with the greatest skill and address; but his movements not proving satis- factory to the Richmond government, he was re- moved., and Gen. John B. Hood appointed in his place. After a summer of hard fighting, Sherman, on 1 Sept., captured Atlanta, one of the chief manufacturing and railroad centres of the south, and later in the autumn organized and executed a magnificent march to the seaboard, which proved that the military power of the Confederacy had been concentrated at a few points on the frontier, and that the interior was little more than an empty shell. He reached the sea-coast early in December, investing Savannah on the 10th, and capturing the city on the 21st. He then marched northward with the intention of assisting Gen. Grant in the closing scenes of the war. The army under Gen. George H. Thomas, who had been left in Tennessee to hold Hood in check while this movement was going on. after severely handling the Confederates in the preliminary battle of Franklin, 30 Nov., inflicted upon Hood a crushing and final defeat in the bat- tle of Nashville, 16 Dec, routing and driving him from the state.
During the summer, while Grant was engaged in the desperate and indecisive series of battles that marked his southward progress in Virginia, and Sherman had not yet set out upon his march to the sea, one of the "most ardent political canvasses the country had ever seen was in progress at the north. Mr. Lincoln, on 8 June, had been unani- mously renominated for the presidency by the Re- publican convention at Baltimore. The Demo- cratic leaders had postponed their convention to a date unusually late, in the hope that some advan- tage might be' reaped from the events of the sum- mer. The convention came together on 29 Aug. in Chicago. Mr. Vallandigham, who had returned from his banishment, and whom the government had sagaciously declined to rearrest, led the ex- treme peace party in the convention. Prominent politicians of New York were present in the in- terest of Gen. McClellan. Both sections of the con- vention gained their point. Gen. McClellan was nominated for the presidency, and Mr. Vallandig- ham succeeded in imposing upon his party a plat- form declaring that the war had been a failure, and demanding a cessation of hostilities. The capture of Atlanta on the day the convention ad- journed seemed to the Unionists a providential answer to the opposition. Republicans, who had been somewhat disheartened by the slow progress of military events and by the open and energetic agitation that the peace party had continued through the summer at the north, now took heart again, and the canvass proceeded with the greatest spirit to the close. Sheridan's victory over Early in the Shenandoah valley gave an added impulse to the general enthusiasm, and in the October elec- tions it was shown that the name of Mr. Lincoln was more popular, and his influence more powerful, than any one had anticipated. In the election that took place on 8 Nov.. 1864, he received 2,216,000 votes, and Gen. McClellan 1,800,000. The difference in the electoral vote was still greater, Mr. Lincoln being supported by 212 of the presidential electors, while only 21 voted for McClellan.
President Lincoln's second inaugural address, delivered on 4 March, 1865, will forever remain not only one of the most remarkable of all his public utterances, but will also hold a high rank among the greatest state papers that history has preserved. As he neared the end of his career, and saw plainly outlined before him the dimensions of the vast moral and material success that the nation was about to achieve, his thoughts, always predisposed to an earnest and serious view of life, assumed a fervor and exaltation like that of the ancient seers and prophets. The speech that he delivered to the vast concourse at the eastern front of the capitol is the briefest of all the presidential addresses in our annals : but it has not its equal in lofty elo- quence and austere morality. The usual historical view of the situation, the ordinary presentment of the intentions of the government, seemed matters too trivial to engage the concern of a mind stand- ing, as Lincoln's apparently did at this moment, face to face with the most tremendous problems of fate and moral responsibility. In the briefest words he announced what had been the cause of the war, and how the government had hoped to bring it to an earlier close. With passionless can- dor he admitted that neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration it had attained. " Each looked for an easier triumph and a result less fundamental and astounding " ; and, passing into a strain of rhapsody, which no lesser mind and character could ev- er dare to imitate, he said : " Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange
that " any men
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should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wring- ing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces. But let us judge not, that we be not judged. The pravers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes. ' Woe unto the world lie- cause of offences ! for it must needs be that offences come ; but woe to that man by whom the offence eometh.' If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offences, which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through H is appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both north and south this ter- rible war, as the woe due to those by whom the of- fence came, shall we discern therein anv departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him! Fondly do
