but i think i agree with william c. davis, the scholar i quoted a number of times here who suggests that davis was ambivalent about these schemes. he didn't think that they were central, and secondly, that the men involved in these plots, the canadian agents and so on, were oftentimes improvising without direct orders from davis, and were generally quite feckless, and again, delusional, maybe that's putting it slightly too strongly. so, i think that there's -- there's a connection in that there's this long fascination with the possibility of subterfuge and of infiltration. but the confederates don't have the means or the men or the will to really do it. and they find, again and again when they do try to foment discontent in the north, that that the imagined anti-war northern tie that they hope to conjure into being doesn't exist. so, these men are -- these men involved in these schemes are forced to conclude that much of this expectation of northern revulsion against lincoln has been -- has been trumped up. that they've falle

william c. davis put it. but they reflected the hope on the part of confederates in both camps that the campaign season in the north might be attended with violence to quote the confederate bureau war chief that social chaos might break out in the north or perhaps even an armed mutiny on the scale of the new york draft riots of 1863. but hard liners rejected the idea that confederates should openly endorse the northern peace democrats. they feared that such an endorsement would backfire and discredit the democrats in the eyes of the northern electorate. jefferson davis wants mcclellan to win and that wouldn't be good for the mcclellan campaign. indeed, the republican press had a field day when stevens said he thought the democrat platform was a ray of light. this goes back to the coming of the civil war. the argument that the democratic party could not be relied upon to protect southern interests, hard liners invoked this deep-rooted tenant. the lesson of sus session that mercury reminded its readers