Circumstances suggested the impossibility of a successful contest against the President and the Democratic party united. Even those elections which result, in the exuberant language of the press, in an overwhelming victory on the one side and an overwhelming defeat, on the other, are often found, upon analysis, to be based on very narrow margins in the popular result, the reversal of which requires only the change of a few thousand votes. This was demonstrated in many of the great States, even in the second election of Mr. Lincoln, when to the general apprehension he was almost unanimously sustained. From this fact it was well argued by Republicans in Congress that great danger to the party was involved in the impending dissension. Even the most sanguine feared defeat, and the naturally despondent already counted it as certain. Never before had so stringent a test of principle been applied to the members of both Houses. The situation was indeed peculiar. The great statesman who had been honored as the founder of the Republican party was now closely allied with the Administration. His colleague who had sat next him in the Cabinet of Mr. Lincoln, and who, in the judgment of his partial friends, was the peer of Mr. Seward both in ability and in merit, did not hesitate to show from the exalted seat of the Chief Justice his strong sympathy with the President. The leading commercial men, who had become weary of war, contemplated with positive dread the re-opening of a controversy which might prove as disturbing to the business of the country as the struggle of arms had been, and without the quickening impulses to trade which active war always imparts. The bankers of the great cities, whose capital and whose deposits all rested upon the credit of the country and were invested in its paper, believed that the speedy settlement of all dissension and the harmonious co-operation of all departments of the Government were needed to maintain the financial honor of the nation and to re-instate confidence among the people. Against obstacles so menacing, against resistance so ominous, against an array of power so imposing, it seemed to be an act of boundless temerity to challenge the President to a contest, to array public opinion against him, to denounce him, to deride him, to defy him.