The Democrat National Convention opened in Chicago on August 29, 1864. 150 years ago this month a local Democrat publication found reasons to believe that the Lincoln administration was on the way out.
From a Seneca County, New York newspaper in August 1864:
Weary of the War.
revolutionary
That the People, North and South, are weary of this most unnatural war, is as certain as that day follows the night. The change in public sentiment during the past few weeks is a most hopeful sign of the times. The People desire peace and a restored Union, and this sentiment pervading the masses, will compel, and soon too, an armistice, to be followed, we ardently hope, by an honorable sentiment of our national troubles. The recent letter of the President, fastening a pure abolition plank in the administration platform before peace can be secured, has opened the hitherto sealed eyes of thousands of the people. The failure of Grant’s campaign, and the call for 500,000 additional men has startled the whole land in the falsity of previous promises. The incapacity and perfidy of those who are temporarily at the head of the government, is now comprehended by thousands who have hitherto supported the administration, and these are among the boldest in denouncing the crimes and blunders of the President and his advisers. The zeal of officeholders and of those who depend on government patronage for their bread is of course unabated, and some there are who follow the reigning power no matter wither it tends or who conducts it. But notwithstanding the immense military and civilian power of the administration, there can be no longer a doubt that the vast majority of the people are against it. Neither threats, seductions, personal appeals to a false patriotism can silence the voice of a majority of the people. They desire to see an end to this war, an end to crushing taxation, an end to the high prices of living, and above all an end to an administration as weak as it is wicked, and as despotic as it is bloody and revolutionary.
