Fortunately some other Northern States--New England's six, and Iowa,
Kansas, Minnesota, California, and Oregon--held better to their
Republican faith. But it was actually the border slave States which, in
these dark and desperate days, came gallantly to the rescue of the
President's party. If the voters of these States had seen in him a
radical of the stripe of the anti-slavery agitators, it is not
imaginable that they would have helped him as they now did. Thus was his
much maligned "border-state policy" at last handsomely vindicated; and
thanks to it the frightened Republicans saw, with relief, that they
could command a majority of about twenty votes in the House. Mr. Lincoln
had saved the party whose leaders had turned against him.

Beneath the dismal shadow of these autumnal elections the
Thirty-seventh Congress came together for its final session, December 1,
1862. The political situation was peculiar and unfortunate. There was
the greatest possible need for sympathetic coöperation in the Republican
party; but sympathy was absent, and coöperation was imperfect and
reluctant. The majority of the Republican members of Congress
obstinately maintained their alienation from the Republican President;
an enormous popular defection from Republicanism had taken place in its
natural strongholds; and Republican domination had only been saved by
the aid of States in which Republican majorities had been attainable
actually because a large proportion of the population was so disaffected
as either to have enlisted in the Confederate service, or to have
refrained from voting at elections held under Union auspices. Therefore,
whether Mr. Lincoln looked forth upon the political or the military
situation, he beheld only gloomy prospects. But having made fast to what
he believed to be right, he would not, in panic, cast loose from it. In
the face of condemnation he was not seen to modify his course in order
to conciliate any portion of the people; but, on the contrary, in his