July 28, 1864
President Lincoln writes John W. Forney, editor of the Philadelphia Press, and Morton McMichael, editor of Philadelphia North American, to meet him in Washington on the Weekend regarding political problems in Philadelphia. President Lincoln also writes General Ulysses S. Grant: “Will meet you at Fort-Monroe at 8. P.M. on Saturday the 30th. unless you shall notify me that it will be inconvenient to you.”
Historian David Long wrote: “Throughout that spring and summer, the administration had been apprised of the existence of massive secret societies formed to rebel against the government and provide aid to the Confederate cause. These reports were the results of efforts by a governor, several military officers, and one very enterprising spy, all of whom had been attacked as incredible by numerous twentieth-century historians. Colonel John P. Sanderson, provost marshal general for the Department of the Missouri and staff officer to the department commander Major General William Rosecrans, revealed in June that there was a secret society working for the defeat of the government. He claimed that Clement Vallandigham was the leader of the Northern wing of the organization and that membership numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Sanderson was the protégé of Rosecrans, who had fallen from grace because of his dismal performance at Chickamauga. Rosecrans, having failed in June to convince Lincoln that the situation called for harsh measures, in late July turned the results over to the press. On July 28, the Missouri Democrat published Sanderson’s expose, titled ‘Conspiracy to Establish a Northwestern Confederacy,’ which was reprinted along with indignant editorials in republican newspapers across the country. The Chicago Tribune, the Cincinnati Gazette, and the Illionois State Journal made the report an overnight sensation.
Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War 
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