At this moment the Democratic party was carrying on its campaign for the Presidency upon a platform which declared the war a failure, and asserted that an armistice should be sought at the first practicable opportunity. It is true that McClellan, the party’s candidate, had repudiated these planks. But when he did so, Fernando Wood had wanted at once to repudiate McClellan, saying that the platform was sound, and that the Democrats should call their Chicago Convention together again to seek a man who would stand upon it. The _Daily News_, edited by his brother Benjamin Wood, similarly upheld the platform. So did the _World_, which went to shocking lengths in attacking Lincoln; not content with calling his Administration ignorant and incompetent, it cast imputations upon his personal honesty, while in a phrase that became temporarily famous it remarked that the White House was “full of infamy.” According to the _World_, the war could and should be stopped instantly. The South was ready to reënter the Union if only Lincoln would cancel his outrageous emancipation proclamation. “Are unknown thousands of wives yet to become widows, and unknown tens of thousands of children to become orphans, that Mr. Lincoln’s positive violations of solemn pledges may be assumed by the people as their own?” Manton Marble argued throughout the campaign for an armistice, a convention of all the States, and an effort to conclude peace upon the basis of union and slavery. Emancipation, he asserted, meant “industrial disorganization, social chaos, negro equality, and the nameless horrors of a civil war.” In this election the _Evening Post_ maintained a straight course. Early in the year Bryant had inclined to doubt, as did Beecher, Greeley, Thaddeus Stevens, George W. Julian, and a majority of Congress, whether Lincoln’s renomination would be wise. This was a reflection in part of his impatient “radicalism,” in part of his attachment to Chase; and on March 25, 1864, he made one of many prominent Union men who wrote the Republican Executive Committee suggesting a postponement of the Convention until September. But no hint of this doubt entered the columns of the _Evening Post_. It never spoke of any other possible nomination than Lincoln’s. Indeed, every one soon saw that the choice was inevitable, and Bryant cast whatever hesitation he felt, which was not much, behind him. “It was done in obedience to the public voice,” he wrote Bigelow June 15, “a powerful _vis a tergo_ pushed on the politicians whether willing or unwilling. I do not, for my part, doubt of his reëlection.” By this time the _Evening Post_ was ready to admit that the President had made fewer errors and seen more clearly than it had supposed. It wrote (Sept. 20):