Sherman's capture of Atlanta and his rout of the Southern army in Georgia came in time-just-to
insure Lincoln's reelection. During the terrible midsummer of 1864 there had been talk, by
Peace Democrats,' of doing a deal with Davis and getting control of both armies, thus ending both the rebellion and Republican rule. Many prominent Republicans thought the war was lost and wanted to impose Grant as a kind of president-dictator. He wrote to a friend saying he wantedto stick to the job I have'-and the friend showed it to Lincoln. Lincoln observed: My son, you will never know how gratifying that is to me. No man knows, when that presidential grub starts to gnaw at him, just how deep it will get until he has tried it. And I didn't know but what there was one gnawing at Grant.' The general put an end to intrigue by stating:I consider it
as important to the cause that [Lincoln] should be reelected as that the army should be successful
in the field.’
Sherman's successes in September, and his continued progress through Georgia, swung
opinion strongly back in Lincoln's favor. The increasing desperation of the South, expressed in
terrorism, bank-raids, and murder in Northern cities, inflamed the Northern masses and were
strong vote-winners for the Republicans. The resentful McClellan fared disastrously for the
Democrats. Lincoln carried all but three of the participating states and 212 electoral votes out of
233, a resounding vote of confidence by the people. He entered his second term of office in a
forthright but still somber mood, in which the religious overtones in his voice had grown
stronger. They echo through his short Second Inaugural, a meditation on the mysterious way in
which both sides in the struggle invoked their God, and God withheld his ultimate decision in
favor of either:
Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the
other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in
wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be
not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered
fully. The Almighty has His own purposes: Woe unto the world because of offenses! for it needs be that offenses come, but woe unto that man by whom the offenses cometh!'... Fondly do we hope-fervently do we pray-that this mighty scourge of war may pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two- hundred-and-fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid with another drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be saidthe judgements of the Lord are true and
righteous altogether'.
So Lincoln asked the nation to continue the struggle to the end, `With malice to none, with
charity to all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right.'
The Second Inaugural began the myth of Lincoln in the hearts of Americans. Those who
actually glimpsed him were fascinated by his extraordinary appearance, so unlike the ideal
American in its massive lack of beauty, so incarnate of the nation's spirit in some mysterious
way. Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote (1862):
The whole physiognomy is as coarse a one as you would meet anywhere in the length and
breadth of the state; but withal, it is redeemed, illuminated, softened and brightened by a
kindly though serious look out of his eyes, and an expression of homely sagacity, that
seemed weighted with rich results of village experience. A great deal of native sense, no
bookish cultivation, no refinement; honest at heart, and thoroughly so, and yet in some
sort, sly-at least endowed with a sort of tact and wisdom that are akin to craft, and would