But there was still defection on the Union side, and among many "plain people" too; for Horace Greeley, the best-known Union editor, lost his nerve and ran away. And Greeley was not the only Union journalist who helped, sometimes unwittingly, to pervert public opinion. The "writing up" of McClellan for what he was not, though rather hysterical, was at least well meant. But the reporters who "wrote down" General Cox, because he would not make them members of his staff in West Virginia, disgraced their profession. The lies about Sherman's "insanity" and Grant's "intoxication" were shamelessly excused on the plea that they made "good stories." Sherman's insanity, as we have seen already, existed only in the disordered imagination of blabbing old Simon Cameron. Grant, at the time these stories were published, was strictly temperate. Amid all the hindrances--and encouragements, for the Union press generally did noble service in the Union cause--of an uncensored press, and all the complexities of public opinion, Lincoln kept his head and heart set firmly on the one supreme objective of the Union. He foresaw from the first that if all the States came through the war United, then all the reforms for which the war was fought would follow; but that if any particular reform was itself made the supreme objective, then it, and with it all the other reforms, would fail, because only part of the Union strength would be involved, whereas the whole was needed. Moreover, he clearly foresaw the absolute nature of a great civil war. Foreign wars may well, and often do, end in some sort of compromise, especially when the home life of the opponents can go on as before. But a great civil war cannot end in compromise because it radically changes the home life of one side or the other. Davis stood for "Independence or extermination"; Lincoln simply for the Union, which, in his clear prevision, meant all that the body politic could need for a new and better life. He accepted the word "enemy" as descriptive of a passing phase. He would not accept such phraseology as Meade's, "driving the invader from our soil." "Will our generals," he complained, "never get that idea out of their heads? The whole country is our soil."