The radicals who were opposed to Lincoln held a convention in the city of Cleveland on the 31st of May, 1864, and nominated General John C. Frémont for President and General John Cochrane for Vice-President. Among the leaders in this movement were B. Gratz Brown, of Missouri, Wendell Phillips, of Massachusetts, and Rev. George B. Cheever, of New York. They had the sympathy of Ben Wade, of Ohio, and Henry Winter Davis, of Maryland, and they reckoned upon the support of many radical Germans of the fiery type, perhaps sufficiently numerous to turn the votes of some important Western States. On the 21st of September, Frémont withdrew as a candidate and on the 23d the President asked for the resignation of Montgomery Blair as Postmaster-General, which the latter immediately gave. The simultaneous retirement of Frémont and Blair, who were known to be enemies to each other, led to a suspicion that there was some connection between the two events. The account given by Nicolay and Hay conveys no hint of this, but is confused and self-contradictory. Evidence is available to indicate that Frémont made his retirement conditional upon the removal of Blair from the Cabinet, and that Lincoln, although reluctant to lose Blair from his official family, deemed it a necessity to get the third ticket out of the presidential contest, for public reasons.[69] In the Senatorial contest of 1867 the false accusation was made that Trumbull had refused to make speeches in favor of Lincoln's reëlection; whereas he was the leading speaker at the great Union Mass Meeting at Springfield on the 5th of October, 1864, which was addressed by Doolittle, Yates, and Logan also. His correspondence shows that he spoke at several other places during that month. But speech-making did not gain the victory in the election of 1864. That fight was won by General Sherman at Atlanta, aided by General Sheridan in the Valley of Virginia, and by Admiral Farragut at Mobile. FOOTNOTES: [67] Riddle's _Recollections of War-Time_, p. 267. [68] Nicolay & Hay, ix, 251. [69] A letter dated August 9, 1910, in my possession, from Mr. Gist Blair, son of Montgomery Blair, says: "I have always understood that my father retired from Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet in order to secure the withdrawal of Frémont as a candidate against Mr. Lincoln. There are letters which I cannot now put my hand on, which indicate that Mr. Lincoln continued to consult my father practically the same as if he were a member of the Cabinet, up to the time of Mr. Lincoln's death." CHAPTER XIV THE THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION Donn Piatt, meeting William H. Seward on the street on the morning immediately after the issuing of the preliminary proclamation of emancipation, complimented him for his share in the act, whereupon the following colloquy ensued: "Yes," said Seward, "we have let off a puff of wind over an accomplished fact." "What do you mean, Mr. Seward?"