August 15, 1864
New York City politicians are increasingly convinced that President Lincoln cannot be reelected. Even New York Republican chief Thurlow Weed confers with Democrats about a possible alternative. Longtime Lincoln friend Leonard Swett is shocked by their panick, writing his wife: “The fearful things in relation to the country have induced me to stay a week here.”
New York Senator Ira Harris writes President Lincoln: “I enclose Mr Weeds2 last as it appeared in the ” Journal” of Saturday– You will see that we have not much to expect from him– His object seems to be to induce the Chicago Convention to nominate a man who would prosecute the war upon the principles of the Crittenden resolution–3 Such a candidate would rejoice in his ” voice and vote”– But thank God, Mr Weed’s ‘voice and vote’ have not the power they once had in New York– I think, other things being propitious, we can succeed without them.”
President Lincoln writes National Republican Chairman Henry J. Raymond: “I have proposed to Mr Greeley that the Niagara correspondence be published, suppressing only the parts of his letter over which the red-pencil is drawn in the copy which herewith send. He declines giving his consent to the publication of his letters unless these parts be published with the rest. I have concluded that it is better for me to submit, for the time, to the consequences of the false position in which I consider he has placed me, than to subject the country to the consequences of publishing these discouraging and injurious parts. I send you this, and the accompanying copy, not for publication, but merely to explain to you, and that you may preserve them until their proper time shall come.
President Lincoln writes a recommendation for an unknown man: “I am always for the man who wishes to work; and I shall be glad for this man to get suitable employment at Calvary Depot, or elsewhere.”
President Lincoln writes General William T. Sherman in Georgia: “If the government should purchase, on it’s own account, cotton Northward of you and on the line of your communications, would it be an inconvenience to you, or detriment to the Military service, for it to come to the North on the Railroad?
Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War 
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