He has gained wisdom by experience. Every year has seen our cause more successful; every year has seen abler generals, more skillful leaders, called to the head; every year has seen fewer errors, greater ability, greater energy, in the administration of affairs. The timid McClellan has been superseded by Grant, the do-nothing Buell by Sherman; wherever a man has shown conspicuous merit he has been called forward; political and military rivalries have been as far as possible banished from the field and from the national councils.... While Mr. Lincoln stays in power, this healthy and beneficial state of things will continue.... Throughout the campaign Parke Godwin did much public speaking. During October the _Post_ published a weekly campaign newspaper addressed particularly to laboring men, which had an enormous circulation at one cent a copy; the edition the first week was 50,000. In its local result the election justified the labors of the copperhead press, for McClellan carried New York city by a vote double Lincoln’s--78,746 to 36,673. But the national result showed how totally unrepresentative this anti-war press was of any extensive Northern sentiment. It proved that Bryant had been right in declaring in the _Post_ of March 16, 1863, when Greeley and the _Tribune_ actually said the nation should give up if the campaign then beginning failed: It certainly is remarkable how unable the newspapers of the country, even those of the largest circulation, have been to divert the public mind from a fixed determination to put down the rebellion by every possible means, and to allow no pause in the war until the integrity of the Union is assured. One class of journals has labored to show that the war for the Union is hopeless; the people have never believed them. One class has called for a revolutionary leader; the call has only excited a little astonishment, the people being satisfied to prosecute the war under the legal and constitutional authorities. The last effort at a premature armistice, that made by the venerable Francis P. Blair, culminating in the Hampton Roads conference between Lincoln and Vice-President A. H. Stephens, was treated by the _Evening Post_ like previous efforts. Blair was an old friend, but under the caption, “Fools’ Errands,” Bryant wrote (Jan. 10, 1865) that his gratuitous diplomacy might do much harm. “No, our best peacemakers yet are Grant, Sheridan, Thomas, Sherman, and Farragut, and the black-mouthed bulldogs by which they enforce their pretensions over more than half of what was once an ‘impregnable’ part of rebeldom.” The final peace, the peace made by the black-mouthed bulldogs, was greeted by the _Post_ three months later in fervent terms: GLORY TO THE LORD OF HOSTS