as they awaited election returns on November 8. That night, they gathered around a campfire and listened as Grant read aloud a succession of telegrams updating the results. With his puckish humor, Grant again played the prankster and kept telling officers that each new dispatch showed McClellan in the lead. Only after midnight—by which time many dejected officers had drifted off to bed—did he admit delightedly that it had all been a hoax and Lincoln had been ahead the whole time.
