Dickinson wrote: "I make no doubt of Lincoln's triumphant election."1 Whitelaw Reid, in a newspaper despatch from Washington, said that the radicals had returned to their old allegiance, and would fight in the van.2 Governor Andrew, in a private letter, wrote that the plain duty for them as practical men was to give to Lincoln their energetic support.3 The tide having turned, the President helped the movement with the art of the politician. The sixth resolution of the Union National Convention virtually called for the removal of Montgomery Blair from the cabinet. During the gloomy summer, when everything seemed going wrong, when a smaller man would have complied with this demand, Lincoln did nothing, knowing that such an effort would be compared to the drowning man clutching at straws. But when the home sorry that I went, I know. . . . Would n't I like to dine old Farragut, though! By Jove! the sea-service has n't lost its romance, in spite of iron turtles." Letters, vol. i. pp. 340, 341. In August, when Chase was at the White Mountains with his devoted friend Edward L. Pierce, who urged that all must sink private griefs and support the Union nominations, he exclaimed, "Well, anyway, McClellan is a gentleman." Bowles wrote, Sept. 4: "Chase is going around, peddling his griefs in private ears, and sowing dissatisfaction about Lincoln."Merriam, Life of Bowles, vol. i. p. 413. On the change of feeling of Chase, see letter of Sept. 20, N. Y. Sun, June 30, 1889; also, Schuckers, p. 510; letter to John Sherman, Oct. 2, Sherman's Recollections, vol. i. p. 340. 1 N. Y. Sun, June 30, 1889. 2 To the St. Louis Democrat, Sept. 21: "A private letter received here to-day from one of the prominent leaders in the radical movement now abandoned for another convention in Cincinnati, says: 'The conditions under which that call was issued were the general apathy and discontent, and the apparent certainty of Mr. Lincoln's defeat. All this is changed. The outrage on the nation perpetrated at Chicago, the fall of Atlanta, the success of the cause in Vermont and Maine, render that impossible and unreasonable which then seemed our only safety. We must now place ourselves in the van of the fight; we shall not enjoy its honors, but we will do what we may to save the country; it shall not be said of us that we have played in this contest the part of Fitz John Porter at the Second Battle of Bull Run.' This statement, I have reason to know, fairly represents the views of the entire body of earnest Unionists with and for whom he has been acting, from Ben Wade and Winter Davis down. Whoever among our foes counts on disaffection or lukewarmness in our ranks in the coming contest reckons without his host."-N. Y. Sun, June 30, 1889. 8 Ibid. CH. XXIII.] THE REPUBLICAN PARTY UNITED 520 current began to run in his favor, he was willing to make assurance doubly sure by lending himself to a bargain which should win the support of the still disaffected radicals who had placed Frémont in nomination, and of Wade and Davis, the authors of the manifesto and the most bitter of his opponents, who had influence and a considerable following. Frémont was to withdraw from the field, and the President was to request the resignation of Blair. The bargain was faithfully carried out. Frémont's letter of withdrawal to do his "part toward preventing the election of the Democratic candidate" was published in the evening journals of September 22, and the next day the President requested the resignation of Blair.1 To seal such a bargain was not a dignified proceeding on the part of the President of the United States, but it was a politic move. When we take into account the history of the candidacies of third parties, the earnest following of Frémont, and the estimated closeness of the vote in certain important States, the political shrewdness of Lincoln will be apparent. To consolidate the Republican party against its old-time opponent, to secure the energetic service of Wade on the stump, and the silence of Henry Winter Davis by a concession which had in it nothing of dishonor, and involved no injury to the public service, was a course to be adopted, without hesitation, by a master politician. Blair, with generosity and patriotism, made the sacrifice, and began at once to speak publicly and labor earnestly for the re-election of Lincoln. The Union and Republican party, being now united, made an aggressive fight. Their epigrammatic interpretation 1 N. Y. Tribune, evening ed., Sept. 22; N. Y. Times, Sept. 23; Lincoln, Complete Works, vol. ii. p. 579; Life of Z. Chandler, Detroit Post and Tribune, p. 273 et seq.; Julian's Polit. Rec., p. 248; N. Y. Nation, July 4, 1889. The despatches of the President to Blair, Sept. 1 and 3, Complete Works, vol. ii. p. 571, would seem to indicate that he began to prepare for this change in his cabinet directly after the Chicago convention. There is not in Nicolay and Hay any intimation of this bargain, but in the light of the other evidence, pp. 335, 339 et seq., vol. ix., are an indirect confirmation of it. 2 Nicolay and Hay, vol. ix. p. 341; Life of Chandler, p. 277. of the Democratic platform, Resolved that the war is a failure, was put forth on all occasions with the taunt that Farragut, Sherman, Sheridan, and Grant had made this declaration forever and completely false; for Grant, the general of all the armies, shone in the reflected glory of his two lieutenants. Nothing could be more effective with the mass of the people than the contrast of these words of despair, written out carefully by Vallandigham, the most unpopular man of eminence in the country, with the victories on sea and land won by the ability and persistence of the admiral and generals who had been sustained by the hopefulness of the President and the people. In vain did Robert C. Winthrop urge, “If anybody is disposed to cavil with you about your platform, tell him that General McClellan has made his own platform, and that it is broad enough and comprehensive enough for every patriot in the land to stand upon." His supporters for the presi dency, Winthrop continued, are not "scared from their position by any paper pellets of the brain, wise or otherwise, which ever came from the midnight sessions of a resolution committee in the hurly-burly of a National Convention."1 But the record could not be blotted out. The salient resolution of the Democratic platform, or the epitome of it uttered every day by every Union newspaper and stump-speaker in all the villages, towns, and cities, was a damning argument which could not be overthrown. By way of parrying it, the Democrats glorified the generalship of McClellan, and made much of the alleged ill treatment of him by Lincoln, Stanton, and Halleck, when he was in command of the Army of the Potomac. During July and August, when military re 1 Speech in New York City, Sept. 17, Addresses and Speeches, vol. ii. p. 598. Winthrop wrote in a private letter, Sept. 1: "It really seems to me as if the best hope of restoring the Union was in a change of administration, and I feel irresistibly compelled to support McClellan.” — Memoir by Robert C. Winthrop, Jr., p. 234. Again he wrote, Sept. 10: "I admit that the Chicago platform does not suit my fancy . . . but, on the whole, I do not see my way clear to prefer Lincoln and Johnson to McClellan and Pendleton. McClellan's letter of acceptance is admirable, and I can say Amen to it."-Ibid., p. 235. CH. XXIII.] CAMPAIGN SLANDERS OF LINCOLN 531 verses1 were the food of reflection, there was a point to these arguments; but the glory of Antietam paled when compared with the Atlanta campaign and the victories of Sheridan in the Shenandoah. The desperate character of the canvass for McClellan led the New York World, the ablest and most influential Democratic journal of the country, into an unworthy line of argument. Not content with the general charges of the “ignorance, incompetency, and corruption of Mr. Lincoln's administration," it cast imputations upon the personal honesty of the President. It asked these questions: "Mr. Lincoln, has he or has he not an interest in the profits of public contracts?" "Is Mr. Lincoln honest?" and gave these answers: "That Lincoln has succumbed to the . . opportunities and temptations of his present place is capable of the easiest proof," and "This claim of honesty will not bear examination." Again it made this assertion, "Honest Old Abe' has few honest men to defend his honesty." If anything in history be true, not only was there no just ground at this time for the slightest suspicions of the personal integrity of Lincoln, but it is, furthermore, certain that no more honest man than he ever lived. 3 From such campaign slanders it is agreeable to turn to the speeches of Horatio Seymour and Robert C. Winthrop, who advocated the election of a gentleman of honor in manner and words befitting their own high characters. At the end of the campaign, Winthrop quoted the injunction of an English orator and statesman, that "we should so be patriots as not to forget that we are gentlemen;" and while there may have been a tinge of sarcasm in this allusion, he him 1 I have given no account of the unfortunate Red River expedition of April and May. See Mahan's Farragut, pp. 245, 253; Nicolay and Hay, vol. viii. p. 289 et seq. If Grant had achieved signal success in Virginia, the effect of it would have been obscured, but, as matters were in the summer, the memory of it reappears continually. 2 The nomination of McClellan being a foregone conclusion. 8 N. Y. World, Sept. 22, 23, Oct. 1. Speech in Boston, Nov. 2, Addresses and Speeches, vol. ii. p. 637. แ A very self did not depart from the rule by a hair. Paying tribute to the strongest sentiment in the country at that time, love for the Union, both Seymour and Winthrop tried to impress it upon their hearers that the restoration of the Union would be more surely and quickly accomplished under the Democrats than by a continuance of the administration of Lincoln; and both gave their adherence to the party cry, "The Constitution as it is, and the Union as it was." "Good Heavens!" exclaimed Winthrop, "what else are we fighting for?" Both urged with force that Lincoln's "To Whom it may Concern" letter, in insisting upon the abandonment of slavery made an unnecessary and insuperable condition to the re-establishment of the Union, and both expressed their sincere belief that the Republican policy of emancipation and subjugation was an effectual hindrance to the pacification of the South. It is perhaps unnecessary to say that the historian whose faith is in the anti-slavery cause can have no sympathy with the main line of Seymour's and Winthrop's arguments, but he will be recreant to his duty should he leave the impression that he approves the doctrine that in the stress of the nation criticism of the faults of the administration should be silent. Believing, as he must, from the political literature of the day and the sequence of events, that the good of the country and the good of mankind demanded the re-election of Lincoln, and that Seymour and Winthrop had chosen the wrong part, he may rejoice that on collateral points they spoke words of warning and of wisdom on which lovers of our country will do well to ponder. Seymour mentioned "the frauds and failures that in an unusual degree have marked the conduct of affairs during the last three and a half years. I do not mean to say," he continued, "that the administration is to be condemned because, under circumstances so unusual as those which have existed during this war, bad men have taken insolent tone prevails here towards all who cannot find it in their conscience to support Lincoln." - Memoir, p. 257; see, also, Addresses and Speeches, vol. ii. p. 600. 1 Sept. 17, Addresses and Speeches, vol. ii. p. 594. |