“The extraordinary calmness and good order with which the millions of voters met and mingled at the polls, give strong assurance of this. Not only those who supported the ‘Union Ticket,’ so called, but a great majority of the opposing party also, may be fairly claimed to entertain and to be actuated by the same purpose. It is an unanswerable argument to this effect that no candidate to any office whatever, high or low, has ventured to seek votes on the avowal that he was for giving up the Union. “There has been much impugning of motives, and heated controversy as to the proper means and best mode of advancing the Union cause, but in the distinct issue of Union or no Union, the politicians have shown their distinctive knowledge that there is no diversity among the people. In affording the people a fair opportunity of showing one to another and to the world this firmness and unanimity of purpose, the election has been of vast value to the National cause. “The election has exhibited another fact not less valuable to be known in the fact that we do not approach exhaustion in the most important branch of the national resources, that of living men. While it is melancholy to reflect that the war has filled so many graves, and carried mourning to so many hearts, it is some relief to know that, compared with the surviving, the fallen have been so few. While corps, and divisions, and brigades, and regiments have formed, and fought and dwindled, and gone out of existence, a great majority of the men who composed them are still living. The same is true of the naval service. The election returns prove this. So many votes could not else be found. The States regularly holding elections, both now and four years ago, to wit California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin, cast 3,982,011 votes now against 3,870,222 then, to which are to be added 33,762 cast now in the new States of Kansas and Nevada, which States did not vote in 1860; thus swelling the aggregate to 4,075,773, and the net increase during the three years and a half of war to 145,751. “To this, again, should be added the number of all soldiers in the field from Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware, Indiana, Illinois, and California, who, by the laws of those States, could not vote away from their homes, and which number cannot be less than ninety thousand. Nor yet is this all. The number in organized territories is triple now what it was four years ago, while thousands, white and black, join us as the National army forces back the insurgent lines. So much is shown, affirmatively and negatively, by the election.