They say it is not wise to count chickens before they're hatched--we still have our chance! STEVENS You have no chance! You have _already_ been weighed and found wanting! In the Congressional election, what happened?--your majorities were wiped out. Maine cut you down from nineteen thousand to four! The Democrats swept Ohio. Indiana deserted us. In Pennsylvania even, we lost by four thousand. New York elected Horatio Seymour against us. New Jersey turned you down. Wisconsin was a tie. In your own state of Illinois, the Democrats won by seventeen thousand----! LINCOLN Even so, Stevens--the ballots in _this_ election have not yet been counted! My faith in the ultimate good sense of the people is unshaken. You can fool some of the people all the time. You can fool all of the people sometimes. But you can't fool all the people all the time! STEVENS That's why we ask you to get off the ticket! You are to-day the most unpopular man who ever sat in the Presidential chair. For the first time in our history the effigy of a living President--your effigy--has been publicly burned in the streets of American towns and cities, amid the curses and jeers of the men who elected you! Your administration is a failure--your conduct of the war a series of blunders---- LINCOLN [_Brusquely._] For example---- STEVENS [_Furiously._] For one thing--you have never yet chosen a successful General. The South has not changed Commanders since Jeff Davis appointed Robert E. Lee. In thirty days of the last campaign in a series of massacres, Lee has killed and wounded sixty-two thousand of our men--more than he himself commanded--and Grant has only reached the point where McClellan stood in 1862. He could have marched there by McClellan's old line without the loss of a man. Washington is piled with the wounded, the dying and the dead. Your mail is choked with letters demanding the removal of this butcher as our Commander, and you refuse--why? LINCOLN [_Smiling calmly._] Well, now that you've _really_ let off steam, I think you'll feel better, Stevens----! STEVENS I demand, sir, an answer to my question--why have you not removed Grant? LINCOLN [_Quickly._] Because I can't spare him! He is the one General we have developed who knows how to fight--his business is not to reach any particular spot where McClellan stood. McClellan was generally _standing_ somewhere--he was a great engineer--of the stationary type---- Grant is a fighter. His business is to find and destroy Lee's army--and his sledge hammer blows are winning this war! STEVENS