790 



UNITED STATES. 



was to suspend the active discussions which 

 usually take place after each party has made 

 its nominations. The excitement of a Presi- 

 dential election was thus confined to the brief 

 period between Sept. 1st and Nov. 8th, the day 

 of the election. 



On June 15th and 16th Mr. Lincoln visited 

 the Sanitary Fair held in Baltimore and Phila- 

 delphia, and made brief speeches at each. 



The following letter from Mr. Francis P. 

 Blair, of "Washington, the same gentleman who 

 prepared the way for the negotiations at For- 

 tress Monroe at a later period (see PUBLIC 

 DOCUMENTS), was written in October, but de- 

 scribes events which took place in July pre- 

 ceding : 



SILVER SPRINGS, Oct. 5th, 1864. 

 To the Editors of the National Intelligencer : 



DEAR SIRS : You give in your paper from " a New 

 York journal" what purports to be an account of 

 what passed in conversation between Gen. McClellan 

 and myself when I visited New York about the 20th 

 of July last. It is egregiously erroneous in many 

 important points. As you evidently attribute some 

 consequence to what is termed my " mission," you 

 will not, I trust, hesitate to publish a simple and 

 truthful statement of its object and execution. 



I went to New York to heal the divisions in the 

 Union party, by presenting my views to the leading 

 men there who had in their hands the means of giv- 

 ing direction to the various large sections of that 

 party. I concur in the opinion recently expressed 

 by Gen. Grant, that union in the North would quick- 

 ly quell the rebellion and restore peace and union to 

 the whole country. 



To contribute my mite to effect what I know to be 

 the wish of every patriot, I repaired to New York to 

 make an effort at conciliation. I went to the leading 

 men and leading organs of public opinion there to 

 ascertain in what way harmony would be best at- 

 tained. I believed that united opposition to the 

 rebellion could be concentrated on no other can- 

 didate for the Presidency than on the man against 

 whom the enemy had declared war, because the 

 nation had made him its chief magistrate, and for 

 whom the delegates of the great party, electing in 

 the first instance, had again given its preference by 

 renomination. I went on this errand without con- 

 sulting the President without giving him, directly 

 or indirectly, the slightest intimation of my object, 

 and of course without his authority. I apprised no 

 one but my son. 



When I reached New York, I first saw the editors 

 of the " Evening Post." This press had evidenced 

 dissatisfaction with the Administration. Its con- 

 ductors had felt that they had good ground of dis- 

 content. I explained to Mr. /Bryant the attitude of 

 the President, as. I understood it, in reference to the 

 matters that aggrieved him, both as regarded vital 

 measures for the safety of the republic and of minor 

 concerns of a personal character. I found Mr. Bry- 

 ant the honestpatriot which the whole of his life had 

 shown him. He considered Mr. Lincoln, with all his 

 abatements, the only man on whom we could rely for 

 the maintenance of the cause in which we had em- 

 barked for the union of its strength and the resto- 

 ration of the National Government. 



I next saw Mr. Bennett, of the "Herald." I had 

 a long, agreeable, enlightened conversation with him. 

 I expressed my views with earnestness and frank- 

 ness, as he did those he entertained not forget- 

 ting old scores of differences ; and as I left his office 

 he gave me in pretty emphatic raucle Scotch accent 

 his last words for the President : " Tell him to restore 

 McClellan to the army, and he will carry the election 

 by default." 



I called on Mr. Greeley. My interview with Inn 

 satisfied me that his best efforts would not be want, 

 ing to secure the peace of the country through the 

 reelection of the President. 



Through Mr. Barlow, the intimate personal and 

 political friend of Gen. McClellan (who was not in 

 the city), I let the General know that I would be 

 gratified by an opportunity of conversing with him. 

 He came to town and visited me in my lodging at 

 the Astor House. I had an hour's conversation with 

 him, which I prefaced by telling him the motives 

 which had brought me to New York, as I have stated 

 them above, and by stating distinctly to him that I 

 did not come from Mr. Lincoln ; had no authority, 

 or even consent, from him to make representations 

 or overtures of any sort to him ; that he had not been 

 apprised of my visit or purpose, which was in part 

 to advise with him (the General) as one whom he 

 knew to be his friend with regard to the public inter- 

 ests and his own. 



I told him that I had little doubt he would be the 

 nominee of the Chicago Convention ; and that if he 

 accepted he would be defeated, and if defeated, his 

 fate would be that of all previously defeated candi- 

 dates who had played for the Presidency Clay, Cal- 

 houn, Webster, and the rest ; that although aspira- 

 tion to the chief place in the republic was an hon- 

 orable ambition, there was an instinct in the public 

 mind which always excluded from general confidence 

 any who sought it with the least suspicion of selfish- 

 ness at the expense of great national considerations ; 

 and, if the public once pronounced its ban by voting 

 him down as having sought the place, without duly 

 weighing its great exigency, especially in such a rev- 

 olutionary crisis as the present, he could never rise 

 again. 



I urged that he ought to consider that at this mo- 

 ment a schism of the Union party of the North, on 

 the issue of the Presidency, was looked to every- 

 where, at home and abroad, as the only way possible 

 through which the rebellion could accomplish its ob- 

 ject the dissolution of the Union ; that I believed 

 that he, the General, was the only man who had a 

 position that enabled any party in the North to rally 

 on, to command a force that could make a breach in 

 the patriotic Union party, so as to defeat or in any 

 essential degree enfeeble it, to give success or even 

 the hope to the enemies of our Government, foreign 

 or domestic ; and on this ground I appealed to him 

 to withhold his name from the so-called peace men 

 who were soon to assemble at Chicago. I expressed 

 the opinion that it was his duty to his country, and 

 therefore his own true policy as it regarded his fame 

 and aspirations to public honor, to address a note to 

 Mr. Lincoln asking command in the army declaring 

 at the same time that he did not seek it with a view 

 to recommend himself to a Presidential nomination ; 

 that I thought, and hoped he too thought, that no 

 man, especially in revolutionary times, ought to lead 

 an army in the field and aim through the strength of 

 that position at once to grasp the civil power of the 

 Government ; that no man had ever marched from the 

 battle-field to the civil power with an army which he 

 had disciplined and led in person that did not find 

 himself able and willing to use that army to secure 

 that position. I urged, therefore, that if he^wished 

 to exert the high military attainments which hia 

 friends, and I among the rest, believed belonged to 

 him, for the benefit of his country in its life and 

 death struggle, that he should abandon the idea of 

 being a candidate for the Presidency if he entertained 

 it, and return, to service in the field. I said if the 

 President refused he would then be responsible for 

 the consequence. If he assented, the result would 

 be that he would confound his enemies, who had, aa 

 I believed, urged on the War Committee and im- 

 pressed it on the public mind that the delays of the 

 great army he had commanded in achieving decisive 

 results were the consequence of an ambition to 

 clutch the Presidency by lingering out the war and 



