Maine held her election early in September, and upon the vote for governor a Republican majority, which usually ranged from 10,000 to 19,000, was this year cut down to a little over 4000; also, for the first time in ten years, a Democrat secured a seat in the national House of Representatives. Then came the "October States." In that dreary month Ohio elected 14 Democrats and 5 Republicans; the Democrats casting, in the total, about 7000 more votes than the Republicans. Indiana sent 8 Democrats, 3 Republicans. In Pennsylvania the congressional delegation was divided, but the Democrats polled the larger vote by about 4000; whereas Mr. Lincoln had had a majority in the State of 60,000! In New York the famous Democratic leader, Horatio Seymour, was elected governor by a majority of nearly 10,000. Illinois, the President's own State, showed a Democratic majority of 17,000, and her congressional delegation stood 11 Democrats to 3 Republicans. New Jersey turned from Republicanism to Democracy. Michigan reduced a Republican majority from 20,000 to 6000. Wisconsin divided its delegation evenly.[40] When the returns were all in, the Democrats, who had had only 44 votes in the House in the Thirty-seventh Congress, found that in its successor they would have 75. Even if the non-voting absentees in the army[41] had been all Republicans, which they certainly were not, such a reaction would have been appalling.
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 message he returned to his plan which had hitherto been so coldly received, and again strenuously recommended appropriations for gradual, compensated emancipation and colonization. The scheme had three especial attractions for him: 1. It would be operative in those loyal States and parts of States in which military emancipation would not take effect. 2. In its practical result it would do away with slavery by the year 1900, whereas military emancipation would now free a great number of individuals, but would leave slavery, as an institution, untouched and liable to be revived and reinvigorated later on. 3. It would make emancipation come as a voluntary process, leaving a minimum of resentment remaining in the minds of slaveholders, instead of being a violent war measure never to be remembered without rebellious anger. This last point was what chiefly moved him. He intensely desired to have emancipation effected in such a way that good feeling between the two sections might be a not distant condition; the humanity of his temperament, his passion for reasonable dealing, his appreciation of the mischief of sectional enmity in a republic, all conspired to establish him unchangeably in favor of "compensated emancipation."