“I am going to be beaten,” he told an army officer, “and unless some great change takes place badly beaten.” On August 23 he wrote his famous “blind memorandum” and asked cabinet members to endorse it sight unseen: “This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to so co-operate with the President elect, as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such ground that he can not possibly save it afterwards.”
