[30] This anecdote is related by a prominent Michigan officer: I accompanied Senator Chandler once to the War Department to secure the re-instatement of a paymaster who, it had been clearly ascertained, had been unjustly dismissed. The papers were in the possession of the proper bureau, and action had been promised, but was delayed. A great body of eager applicants were gathered about the Secretary's door, which was guarded by two sentries with crossed bayonets. He pushed rapidly through the mass of people to the entrance of the private office, where the sentinel said, "The Secretary is very busy, Mr. Senator." "I know he is," was Mr. Chandler's response, and laying a hand on each bayonet he pushed them up over our heads, opened the door, and we were in Mr. Stanton's presence. Once there, he commenced a vigorous denunciation of the tardiness of the Department, upbraided the Secretary because no action had yet been taken in the case according to promise, and astonished me by the earnestness of his criticisms. Mr. Stanton heard him pleasantly, said when he stopped, "Are you all through, Chandler?" and then gave the order we needed. CHAPTER XV. THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1864. The Republican reverses of the fall of 1862 were not repeated in 1863. Gettysburg and Vicksburg, the anti-draft riots in New York, and the formal acceptance of Vallandigham as a trusted party leader by the Democracy stimulated and strengthened the Union spirit of the North, and the State elections of that year were emphatic endorsements of the party of freedom and of its policy. The political verdicts of the spring of 1864 were equally gratifying to the friends of liberty and the advocates of a vigorous prosecution of the war, and, with the accession of General Grant to the command of the Union armies and his "advance all along the line," it became evident that nothing but discord among the Republicans could deprive them of a sweeping victory in the presidential election. The masses of that party were unequivocally in favor of Mr. Lincoln's renomination; the common people saw one of themselves in the White House and fully met his firm trust in them with an answering confidence. But among men of influence within the Republican ranks there was an exceedingly earnest opposition to his second candidacy. Some of this sprang from rival aspirations; more of it from disappointed office-seeking and from personal pique; but there was outside and above such considerations a strong feeling, entirely disinterested in origin and honorable in character, and held by thousands of sincere men, that the President was unduly conservative in policy and that a man of more aggressive temperament ought to be elected in his stead. There were also not a few experienced politicians who regarded the personal opposition to Mr. Lincoln as sufficiently formidable to jeopard party success, and who were inclined to think that the selection of some candidate who was not identified with the