Trust begot trust; and some months later Grant showed war statesmanship of the same magnificent kind. McClellan had become the Democratic candidate for President, to the well-founded alarm of all who put the Union first. In June, when Grant and Lee were at grips round Richmond, Lincoln was invited to a public meeting got up in honor of Grant with only a flimsy disguise of the ominous fact that Grant, and not Lincoln, might be the Union choice. Lincoln sagaciously wrote back: "It is impossible for me to attend. I approve nevertheless of whatever may tend to strengthen and sustain General Grant and the noble armies now under his command. He and his brave soldiers are now in the midst of their great trial, and I trust that at your meeting you will so shape your good words that they may turn to men and guns, moving to his and their support." The danger to the Union of taking Grant away from the front moved Lincoln deeply all through that anxious summer of '64, though he never thought Grant would leave the front with his work half done. In August an officious editor told Lincoln that he ought to take a good long rest. Lincoln, however, was determined to stand by his own post of duty and find out from Grant, through their common friend, John Eaton, what Grant's own views of such ideas were. This is Eaton's account of how Grant took it: We had been talking very quietly. But Grant's reply came in an instant and with a violence for which I was not prepared. He brought his clenched fists down hard on the strap arms of his camp chair. "They can't do it. They can't compel me to do it." Emphatic gesture was not a strong point with Grant. "Have you said this to the President?" "No," said Grant, "I have not thought it worth while to assure the President of my opinion. I consider it as important for the cause that he should be elected as that the army should be successful in the field." When Eaton brought back his report Lincoln simply said, "I told you they could not get him to run till he had closed out the rebellion." On the twenty-third of this same gloomy August, lightened only by the taking of Mobile, Lincoln asked his Cabinet if they would endorse a memorandum without reading it. They all immediately signed. After his reëlection in November he read it out: "This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be reëlected. Then it will be my duty to so coöperate with the President-elect as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration, as he will have secured his election on such ground that he cannot possibly save it afterwards." He added that he would have asked McClellan to throw his whole influence into getting enough recruits to finish the war before the fourth of March. "And McClellan," was Seward's comment, "would have said 'Yes, yes,' and then done nothing."