THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
were in the army, away from home. Arbitrary arrests, the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and similar stretches of power had disquieted and even irritated many good men. But—more than this—our frequent defeats in the field and the apparent fruitlessness of some of our victories, like that of Antietam, had a disheartening effect upon the people. Our many failures were largely ascribed to a lack of energy in the administration. The consequence was, that at the November elections in 1862, the Democrats achieved some startling successes, winning the States of New York and New Jersey, and a good many congressional districts in various other important States, and boastfully predicting that the next time they would obtain the control of the National House of Representatives. Many of the sincerest friends of the country's cause and of those in power became alarmed at the situation, and impulsively held the administration responsible for it. And not a few of them, to ease their minds, could think of nothing better to do than to “write to Mr. Lincoln.” Listening to everybody that had the slightest claim to be heard, and kindly replying to what he was told through interviews or letters or other methods of public utterance, Mr. Lincoln had, so to speak, kept himself in constant correspondence with the people, and to “write to Mr. Lincoln” was therefore not considered by anybody an extraordinary undertaking. From this popular impression Mr. Lincoln had at times—at this time, for instance—seriously to suffer.
In Nicolay and Hay's biography of Lincoln (Vol. VII., p. 363), the situation is thus described: “In the autumn of 1862 Mr. Lincoln was exposed to the bitterest assaults and criticisms from every faction in the country. His conservative supporters reproached him with having yielded to the wishes of the radicals; the radicals denounced him for being hampered, if not
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