And this, the "People's Sovereignty," Before a despot humbled! . . . . Well have they cashed old Lincoln's drafts, Hurrah for the Conscription! . . . . Is not this war--this MURDER--for The negro, _nolens volens?_ So, carrying out their ideas to the same sort of logical conclusion, the New York mob of '63 not only burnt every recruiting office they found undefended but burnt the negro orphan asylum and killed all the negroes they could lay their hands on. Public opinion did veer round a little with the rising tide of victory in the winter of '63 and '64. But, incredible as it may seem to those who think the home front must always reflect the fighting front, the nadir of public opinion in the North was reached in the summer of '64, when every expert knew that the resources of the South were nearing exhaustion and that the forces of the North could certainly wear out Lee's dwindling army even if they could not beat it. The trumpet gave no uncertain sound from Lincoln's lips. "In this purpose to save the country and its liberties no class of people seem so nearly unanimous as the soldiers in the field and the sailors afloat. Do they not have the hardest of it? Who should quail while they do not?" But the mere excellence of a vast fighting front means a certain loss of the nobler qualities in the home front, from which so many of the staunchest are withdrawn. And then war-weariness breeds doubts, doubts breed fears, and fears breed the spirit of surrender. There seemed to be more Copperheads in the conglomerate opposition than Unionists ready to withstand them. The sinister figure of Vallandigham loomed large in Ohio, where he openly denounced the war in such disloyal terms that the military authorities arrested him. An opposition committee, backed by the snakes in the grass of the secret societies, at once wrote to Lincoln demanding release. Lincoln thereupon offered release if the committee would sign a declaration that, since rebellion existed, and since the armed forces of the United States were the constitutional means of suppressing rebellion, each member of the committee would support the war till rebellion was put down. The committee refused to sign. More people then began to see the self-contradictions of the opposition, and most of those "plain people" to whom Lincoln consciously appealed were touched to the heart by his pathetic question: "Must I shoot the simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of the wily agitator who induces him to desert?"