CH. XVIII.] THE FALL ELECTIONS 163 ; individuals is all that a vain man could wish, the stocks have declined and troops come forward more slowly than ever. This, looked soberly in the face, is not very satisfactory. The North responds to the proclamation sufficiently in breath but breath alone kills no rebels."1 Lincoln's despondency is revealed also in his reply to an address by a pious Quaker woman, and in his "Meditation on the Divine Will," in which his belief in a divine Providence mingled with his present disappointment to produce the doubt whether indeed God were on our side.2 The President's policy, his administration of affairs, clouded by defeats in the field, were submitted to the judgment of the people at the ballot-box. In October and November, elections took place in the principal States, with the result that New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin, all of which except New Jersey had cast their electoral votes for Lincoln, declared against the party in power. A new House of Representatives was chosen, the Democrats making conspicuous gains in the States mentioned. The same ratio of gain extended to the other States would have given them the control of the next House, a disaster from which the administration was saved by New England, Michigan, Iowa, California, and the border slave States.* 1 Sept. 28, Complete Works, vol. ii. p. 242; see, also, Life of Seward, vol. iii. p. 135. The President would have been more exact had he said that government stocks were not active and had not advanced. The New York Times reported for the week ending Sept. 27, "a somewhat tame market for U. S. securities which have not responded to the extreme speculation in railway shares and bonds." One factor in the advance of these was the large traffic returns. On the other hand, there was an impression in Wall Street that the Proclamation would have an adverse effect on Governments. 2 Sept. 28, 30, Complete Works, vol. ii. p. 243; Nicolay and Hay, vol. vi. p. 342. 8 New Jersey cast 4 out of her 7 electoral votes for Lincoln. 4 Minnesota with two representatives, Kansas and Oregon each with one, also contributed to this result. Maine voted in September, Iowa in October, Massachusetts and Michigan in November. Some of these States, however, did not elect their Congressmen until the following year, when the conservative reaction had spent itself. The elections came near being what the steadfast Republican journal, the New York Times, declared them to be a "vote of want of confidence" in the President.1 Since the elections followed so closely upon the Proclamation of Emancipation, it is little wonder the Democrats declared that the people protested against Lincoln's surrender to the radicals, which was their construction of the change of policy from a war for the Union to a war for the negro. Many writers have since agreed with them in this interpretation of the result. No one can doubt that it was a contributing force operating with these other influences: the corruption in the War Department before Stanton became Secretary, the suppression of freedom of speech and freedom of the press, arbitrary arrests which had continued to be made by military orders under the authority of the Secretary of War, and the suspension, by the same power, of the writ of habeas corpus. But the dominant cause was the failure of our armies to accomplish decisive results in the field. Had McClellan captured or destroyed Lee's army after Antietam, had Buell cut up Bragg's army at Perryville when the tide of invasion into Kentucky turned, the President would have received at the ballot-box a triumphant approval of his whole policy. While at first the victory at Antietam brought relief and satisfaction, further reflection on the part of the people as well as of those high in office made it evident that merely to stem an invasion into the North was making little progress towards crushing the Confederacy. The defeat of the administration party in these important States, which was occasioned by its former friends staying away from the polls, was a symptom of weariness of the war, a protest against the waste of so much life and money with so little result accomplished. This feeling showed itself in an extreme form in the open dissatisfaction, 1 Nov. 7. 2 Bragg was beaten at Perryville, Oct. 8, and retreated from Kentucky, CH. XVIII.] ARBITRARY ARRESTS 165 which in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin broke out into positive violence, over the draft necessary under the August call for 300,000 militia. The result in Ohio was affected by the arrest of Dr. Edson B. Olds for a speech in which it was alleged that he had used treasonable language and discouraged enlistments. To drag a man of seventy from his house at night without legal warrant, and take him summarily to Fort Lafayette, was a procedure likely to set to thinking voters who were bred to liberty, especially as in this case the victim was an intelligent man of high character, who had served his constituents three terms in the legislature and six years in Congress. A vacancy occurring while Olds suffered in prison, his neighbors and fellow citizens promptly chose him to represent them again in the legislature. The normal Democratic majority in New Jersey was made larger through the feeling aroused by the arrest, the year previous, and incarceration in Fort Lafayette of James W. Wall, a lawyer and writer of culture, who was prosecuted probably on account of his severe criticism of the administration which appeared in the editorial columns of the New York Daily News. The newly elected legislature sent him to the United States Senate to fill an unexpired term. The arrests made in 1862, under the authority of Stanton, amounted to a considerable number, and were futile for good; attended as they frequently were by the insolence of subordinate officers, they were pregnant with mischief in that they increased the majorities against the administration. Frequently they were suggested by local animosity or mistaken zeal, and the Secretary of War in putting these motives in the shape of formal orders displayed short-sighted judgment as well as the capriciousness of power. It must be reckoned as one of the results of the elections that he issued, November 22, an order which, after no more than a formal delay, effectuated the discharge from military custody of practically all of the political prisoners. Allusion must be made to an explanation, then current to some extent among Republicans, which ascribed their defeat to the fact that the Republicans were fighting the Confederates in the field while the Democrats stayed at home to vote.1 It was not alleged as necessarily true that the Republican volunteers exceeded greatly the Democratic, but that the natural tendency of the soldiers was to vote as they fought and to sustain the administration in its conduct of the war. A comparison, however, of the returns of 1862 with those of 1860 and 1863 will make it plain that this had little to do with the result.2 Senator Grimes thought that the anti-slavery declaration of the President enabled the Republicans to win in Iowa. "We took the bull by the horns and made the proclamation an issue," he wrote to Chase. "I traversed the State for four weeks, speaking every day, and the more radical I was the more acceptable I was. The fact is, we carried the State by bringing up the radical element to the polls. The politicians are a vast distance behind the people in sentiment." 3 Sumner, in making the canvass of Massachusetts, planted himself squarely on the President's edict of freedom, which he maintained to be a military necessity. A legislature was chosen which sent him back to the Senate by a vote of nearly five to one, and Andrew, the most outspoken of all the war governors in his anti-slavery views, was re-elected.1 1 In 1862 only a few of the States authorized their soldiers to vote in camp. 2 An example of the high character of candidates for political office is seen in Ohio, where the Union men nominated Backus, one of the counsel for the Oberlin-Wellington rescuers (see vol. ii. p. 363), for supreme judge (no governor being chosen this year, the candidate for this office stood at the head of the ticket), while the Democrats drew forth from a grateful retirement Rufus P. Ranney (ibid., p. 380), and nominated and elected him against his will. Either of these men would have adorned the highest judicial bench of the country; either would make a heavy pecuniary sacri. fice in becoming a member of the Supreme Court of his own State. Life of Grimes, Salter, p. 218. 4 In his reply, May 19, to the Secretary of War on a demand for troops, Andrew had intimated that it would be difficult to furnish them on account of the manner in which the war was prosecuted, but let the President sustain General Hunter in his order freeing the slaves, and let the blacks be employed as soldiers, and "the roads will swarm, if need be, with multitudes CH. XVIII.] THE DEMOCRATIC PLATFORM 167 This result was remarkable in that the opposition contained elements of a high character, the moving force coming from the Bell-Everett supporters of 1860, and from conservative Republicans who took the name of the People's party, called for a vigorous prosecution of the war, and nominated for governor Charles Devens, a gallant general in active service. The Democratic conventions of the great States which voted against the administration had been held before the issue of the proclamation, but the policy of emancipation was in the air and they denounced it in advance. A favorite catchword of the time, "the Constitution as it is and the Union as it was," incorporated into many platforms of the Democrats, expressed exactly the principle for which they demanded the support of the country. By the Constitution as it is, they meant that there ought to be no more violation of it in time of war than in time of peace, and that it ought not to be stretched to cover an arbitrary use of power. By the Union as it was they signified that after the suppression of the rebellion the States should be as they had been before, slavery should remain unimpaired, and the country should adhere to the policy solemnly declared by Congress in its resolution of July, 1861.1 In most of the States the Republicans took the name of Union men. In New York and Illinois their conventions were held late enough to allow their cordial approval to be given to the proclamation. In New York this approval was emphasized by the nomination for governor of General Wadsworth, a radical on the slavery question and one of the military advisers of the President. The Democrats had named for governor Horatio Seymour, a gentleman of public experi whom New England would pour out to obey your call."-Schouler, Mass. in the Civil War, p. 333. "Who was it that demanded, before troops should be sent to defend the flag of the government, that that government should form a policy that pleased him?" asked Horatio Seymour, Oct. 22. "Who was it but the extreme radical Governor of the State of Massachusetts ?" The intimation of Andrew was severely condemned by a resolution of the Democratic convention of Ohio. 1 See vol. iii. p. 464. |