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CHAPTER XI.

MILITARY RULE OVER ELECTIONS.

THE memorial presented in this chapter was sent, with the subjoined letter, to an eminent citizen of New York, for the reason therein given. Why he did not procure its publication in a New York paper has not been explained, and cannot be conjectured. Its publication there in April, 1864, was obtained through a Democratic Senator.

"DEAR SIR :

"For more than a month I have been intending to write you concerning matters of grave import to our country. The recent suppression of free ballot in Kentucky has ended my hesitancy. That you may understand the nature and extent of that suppression I send you a copy of my memorial to the President on that subject. It was written and intended as a private communication, to be sent by mail. Various reasons have changed that purpose. It is now sent to you, with permission, if you deem it proper, to turn it over to the New York press, where it can still be published without danger to the paper making the publication. The danger to myself personally is wittingly incurred. The times allow no flinching from patriotic duty.

"What I have been wishing to urge upon your consideration is, that our national liberty is in a crisis of imminent danger, demanding the instant and active effort of every patriot to ward off that danger. If further proof had been needed it is furnished by the suppression of free ballot in Kentucky. I know not how it may be with you, but thinking men with us, unaffected by patronage or party bias, generally believe that the dominant party have no intention of permitting the Federal power to be taken from them by the ballot-box, if fraud, money, and military violence can prevent it. Hence the urging forward of the ob

noxious conscription when we have already more armed men than we have any need for in suppressing the rebellion; the urging on of the raising of the standing army of three hundred thousand negroes, forty thousand of whom, we are semi-officially informed, have already been organized; the threats of abolition officers to return after peace and regulate the politics of the North by 'crushing the heads' of Democrats under the iron heels of their soldiers; the unscrupulous character of the leaders of the dominant party, showing by acts, and even avowing in words, a total disregard of all constitutional obligations; and hence, also, the suppression of free ballot in Kentucky.

"The apparent apathetic acquiscence under the martial law and abolition Presidential proclamations of last September sank me deep into the 'vale of despond.' Such was my despondency that, if unencumbered by a large family, I would have sought a freeman's asylum in Switzerland for the small remnant of my life. But then came those glorious October and November elections, showing the still true loyalty of the masses, and proving how unwise and unpatriotic I had been in despairing of the Republic. They pointed the way to a resuscitation of the Constitution and the reconstruction of constitutional liberty. My heart again glowed with hopeful, fervid zeal for the liberties of the nation. Popular condemnation at the next Presidential election of all tyrannical usurpation and abuse of power was to inaugurate a new and enduring reign for constitutional liberty. Such was the fond patriotic hope. We have no other. Without that, the days of constitutional liberty are numbered. Without it, our whole future is gloomed over with the portending shadow of anarchical despotism.

"For more than six years I have been vainly endeavoring to arouse our political men from the exclusive consideration of their ephemeral party contests and make them heed the coming national perils. Notwithstanding such mortifying want of success, at the bidding of the people despair is cast behind, and the effort is now being renewed, in thus calling your attention to the threatened danger, and invoking, by every incitement of patriotism, your active aid toward whatever you may deem necessary for securing to the people a free Presidential election, unawed by military power.

"To that end permit me most respectfully to suggest that you immediately urge forward with unflagging zeal the arming, organizing, and disciplining the militia of your State; your example will incite the authorities of other large States to do the same. Therein, and therein alone, lies our only hope of safety. If by a corrupt squandering of national treasure, aided by the intimidation of Federal bayonets, the Destructives can so manipulate the next Presidential election as to retain their power, we had as well prepare the funeral obsequies of American liberty-a funeral that will even bury all hope of resurrection. By the theory of our Government the people are themselves the conservators, the sole trustworthy guardians of their liberty. To enable them to prove so they must be armed and disciplined. To accomplish that not an hour is to be lost. Every patriot must push forward the needful work with unflagging zeal, as if each man was working for very life. In the mean time shall down-trodden Kentucky look in vain for sympathy from her sisters of the North? Will they utter no words of popular denunciation against the tyrannical suppression of her right to free ballot-that cherished right, so indispensable to all, without which there can be no liberty, no free Republic?

"LOUISVILLE, August 10, 1863."

"Very respectfully,

"S. S. NICHOLAS.

The hopeful augury of this letter, based on the fall elections of 1862, was entirely dispelled by those of 1863. The writer immediately relapsed back to his old belief, the only creed of common sense, that an unscrupulous party, controlling the patronage of a billion of money and the services of near a million armed men, cannot be beaten at an election so long as it adhere together, the only chance for extrication from their thraldom depending upon splits and division among themselves. To this effect he wrote, in the winter of 1864, to leaders of the Democracy in Congress predicting just such a result of the election as actually occurred, if the Democracy kept up a party opposition and started a party candidate of its own for the Presidency, whereas if they would at once commence disavowing all purpose of further party opposition, have no convention, or if any, then only to declare it inex

pedient to nominate a candidate, the desired split in the dominant party would necessarily and inevitably follow. The soundness of this surmise was amply verified by the irrepressible manifestations of desire to split in favor of Chase and Fremont. Whatever nomination the seceders made under those circumstances would have been mainly induced with a view to the Democratic support, which, if obtained, would have insured the election of their nominee. When so elected he would have been compelled to lean upon conservative support for political strength to carry on the Government, which would have compelled a willing or simulated conversion of himself to conservatism, with an overhauling, denunciation, and redress of the bad acts of President Lincoln's administration. This probably would have led to the resuscitation and continued life of the Constitution; whereas the reelection of Lincoln having given a seeming popular ratification to those bad acts, the Constitution, with the liberty it guarded, are irretrievably gone. As has been said, after the Constitution has been so mauled to pieces with popular assent, you had as well attempt to restore an addled egg. The whole science of chemistry cannot restore the one, neither can political science restore the other. Instead of our former constitutional liberty, the nation will, in the long future, have no government but that of an unrestrained, irresponsible party majority. The celebrated Chatham, in comparing "the arbitrary power of a king with the arbitrary power of a House of Commons," said: "Tyranny is detestable in every shape, but in none is it so formidable as where it is assumed and exercised by such a number of tyrants." It was in the same speech he said: "Power without right is the most odious and detestable object that can be offered to the human imagination." These utterances of the great Chatham are in the genuine spirit of that memorable declaration of the distinguished Lord Halifax, one of the founders of English liberty, made near a century before: "Life would not be worth having in a country where liberty and property were at the mercy of despotic power." Yet sad to say, such, to all appearance, is our inevitable doom if nothing can be devised better than that with which we have been experimenting, only to prove a disastrous failure. There is no hope unless the nation can be rescued from the thraldom of party majorities.

To the Honorable Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America.

This memorial of your fellow-citizen, Samuel Smith Nicholas, of Louisville, Kentucky, showeth:

That foul wrong and dishonor has recently been inflicted by some of your subordinates upon his and your native State.

It may be proper, by way of self-introduction, to premise that for more than thirty years he has abstained from all affiliation with political parties; consequently has seldom voted during that time, and did not vote at the late election, pursuant to a resolve announced weeks before; that for more than that time he has advocated something like the Henry Clay plan of gradual prospective emancipation; that he claims to be, as he has always been, imbued with that heart-devoted love for Constitution and Union once so universal among Kentuckians; that though the maltreatment received by Kentucky from both sections has absolved her from any supposable obligation of special partiality for either, yet, in case of disunion, his advice will be for her to remain with the North; that for more than six years he has been publicly predicting this rebellion, as the result of the mutually aiding machinations of secessionists and abolitionists; that he has done as much as any other man to disprove, to decry, and denounce the pretended right of secession, and predicting all the calamities that have overtaken the South in the attempted assertion of that right; and that at an early day since the commencement of the war, foreseeing the present destroyed condition of the Constitution, he urged the necessity, and has continued, in a series of publications, to urge the great necessity of vigorous remonstrance against Congressional and Executive usurpations, and for arousing the nation to a proper sense of the near danger to its liberty.

To enable you to judge the significance of the military orders about to be quoted, it is also proper to premise that for more than a year military officers in Kentucky have freely indulged in the "pressing" of horses, slaves, and other property, giving the owners such certificates, or no certificate, as they thought proper.

Kentucky has never been proclaimed as in rebellion, nor could it have been truthfully done as to any part of the State. She has suffered much from rebel invasions and raids, from which

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