In July the two candidates for the presidency had not been formally named, but when Lowell came to prepare his article for the October number, which would appear on the eve of the election, the contest was at its height, though events were rapidly throwing their votes against the losing party. Lowell makes capital use of this fact in his article “McClellan or Lincoln?” which gains in wit through the evident elation which possesses the writer over the almost certain results. He had written Motley at the end of July: “My own feeling has always been confident, and it is now hopeful. If Mr. Lincoln is re-chosen, I think the war will soon be over.... So far as I can see, the opposition to Mr. Lincoln is both selfish and factious, but it is much in favor of the right side that the Democratic party have literally not so much as a single plank of principle to float on, and the sea runs high. They don’t know what they are in favor of--hardly what they think it safe to be against. And I doubt if they gain much by going into an election on negatives.” By a series of eliminations, he leaves, in his article, the single point of difference between the policy of Lincoln and that which McClellan, according to his own showing, would pursue, namely, the policy of conciliation concerning which McClellan made loud protestations; and then he proceeds to riddle that assumption. The article, however, is interesting chiefly for another summary of Lowell’s judgment of Lincoln:-- “Mr. Lincoln, in our judgment, has shown from the first the considerate wisdom of a practical statesman. If he has been sometimes slow in making up his mind, it has saved him the necessity of being hasty to change it when once made up, and he has waited till the gradual movement of the popular sentiment should help him to his conclusions and sustain him in them. To be moderate and unimpassioned in revolutionary times that kindle natures of a more flimsy texture, may not be a romantic quality, but it is a rare one, and goes with those massive understandings on which a solid structure of achievement may be reared. Mr. Lincoln is a long-headed and long-purposed man, who knows when he is ready,--a secret General McClellan never learned.... We have seen no reason to change our opinion of Mr. Lincoln since his wary scrupulousness won him the applause of one party, or his decided action, when he was at last convinced of its necessity, made him the momentary idol of the other. We will not call him a great man, for over-hasty praise is too apt to sour at last into satire, and greatness may be trusted safely to history and the future; but an honest one we believe him to be, and with no aim save to repair the glory and the greatness of his country.”