The President himself afterward declared his "conviction" that, had the proclamation been issued six months earlier, it would not have been sustained by public opinion; and certainly it is true that contemporaneous political occurrences now failed to corroborate the soundness of those assertions by which the irreconcilable emancipationist critics of Mr. Lincoln had been endeavoring to induce him to adopt their policy earlier. They themselves, as Mr. Wilson admits, "had never constituted more than an inconsiderable fraction" of the whole people at the North. He further says: "At the other extreme, larger numbers received it [the proclamation] with deadly and outspoken opposition; while between these extremes the great body even of Union men doubted, hesitated.... Its immediate practical effect did perhaps more nearly answer the apprehensions of the President than the expectations of those most clamorous for it. It did, as charged, very much 'unite the South and divide the North.'" In the autumn of 1862 there took place the elections for Representatives to the Thirty-eighth Congress. The most ingenious sophist could hardly maintain that strenuous anti-slavery voters, who had been angry with the government for backwardness in the emancipation policy, ought now to manifest their discontent by voting the Democratic ticket. If there should be a Democratic reaction at the polls it could not possibly be construed otherwise than as a reaction against anti-slavery; it would undeniably indicate that Congress and the administration had been too hostile rather than too friendly towards that cause of the strife, that they had outstripped rather than fallen behind popular sympathy. It soon became evident that a formidable reaction of this kind had taken place, that dissatisfaction with the anti-slavery measures and discouragement at the military failures, together, were even imperiling Republican ascendency. Now all knew, though some might not be willing to say, that the loss of Republican ascendency meant, in fact, the speedy settlement of the war by compromise; and the South was undoubtedly in earnest in declaring that there could be no compromise without disunion. Therefore, in those elections of the autumn months in 1862 the whole question of Union or Disunion had to be fought out at the polls in the loyal States, and there was an appalling chance of its going against the Unionist party. "The administration," says Mr. Blaine, "was now subjected to a fight for its life;" and for a while the fortunes of that mortal combat wore a most alarming aspect.