CHAPTER LII.

ON TRIAL.

The Campaign of Calumny-The Reconstruction Proclamation - Traps which Captured Nothing-Skirmishing Diplomacy-The Blunders of the Opposition-A Union General in Bad Company.

THE National Convention of the Democratic party had been called to meet at Chicago on the 27th of August. There remained, therefore, after Mr. Lincoln's second nomination, more than two full months during which his enemies might plot and plan and search for the weak spots in his armor and devise weapons wherewith to stab him. They had in this a great apparent advantage, with the concurrent privilege of misrepresenting whatever he or his might do, or fail to do, in the mean time. Their party press could describe every battle as more or less of a defeat and keep its columns open to the virulent expression of every possible form of criticism, discontent, or personal enmity. The Administration was on trial before the country as a tyranny and a failure, and all the witnesses against it were to be called, mostly swearing if not sworn, and they and their able advocates were to have a free, full, unhindered hearing. That which could pass unharmed through such an ordeal must have in it a great preponderance of such pure gold as need not to fear the fire.

The Opposition was not left altogether to the blundering devices of the second-rate demagogues and new ambitions which nominally controlled its present operations. The brains of the old pro-slavery Democracy had ever been supplied by the South, for the greater part, and the best inspiration and help of its campaign of 1864 came still from Richmond.

The very directness and simplicity with which the great political question of the day was propounded had in it something appalling to many men. All idea of change for the sake of change, so attractive to the restless and the weary, was shut out. The result was to be something as yet unknown, or else four years more of Abraham Lincoln. No man was greatly in doubt as to what the latter alternative included. He had made his purposes clearly understood, and his first public act after his nomination was taken unselfishly, without the slightest reference to its effect upon his personal popularity. Congress passed, in July and just before its adjournment, an Act embodying an elaborate plan of reconstruction for the seceded States, recovered and to be recovered. It provided a system of bonds and fetters for the Executive as well as for the regained areas, and the President refused his approval. It was necessary for him to explain his position to the country, and he did so, on the 8th of July, in a proclamation. In this he embodied the Act, as one of several admissible plans of reconstruction, but refused to commit himself, in advance, to that or any other specific mode of procedure, or to set aside the State governments already organized in Arkansas and Louisiana. His action called forth very bitter assaults from men who had been the active promoters of the Act, in the Senate and House of Representatives; but the acquiescence of the general public in the views of Mr. Lincoln was so plainly manifested that no great harm was done. The unkindly personal nature of some criticisms made by former friends galled him a little, but he was absorbed in watching movements of his politcal enemies which were of a much more perilous and threatening character.

It was manifest to the Richmond managers of the Democratic party that there was little hope of successfully opposing a renewal of power to the Lincoln Administration otherwise than by creating a division among its adherents. For this purpose, therefore, they plotted well and wisely. The trap they

laid was one into which an unwary man might easily have stumbled. That the Northern people were weary of the war was very obvious. That they would hail with delight any prospect of peace was a matter of course. If, therefore, Mr. Lincoln could be forced or beguiled into presenting an appearance of standing in the way of a restoration of peace, the Democratic Convention at Chicago would be provided with a war-cry and the Opposition could go before the country with new hope of winning the fall elections.

The country did not contain a purer patriot, with wider influence, nor the Republican party an abler advocate than Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune. He was therefore selected as the gateway through which the insidious attack could best be made. On the 5th of July a letter was sent to Mr. Greeley from a wandering diplomatist named Jewett, at Niagara Falls, setting forth that two commissioners of the Confederate Government were in Canada, with full powers to negotiate a peace. He asked a conference with Mr. Greeley or a safe-conduct for the Richmond men to come to New York. Very properly, Mr. Greeley sent the letter to the President, with a statement of his own views of the matter and of the perils threatening the party and the Administration. He said, among other things: "A widespread conviction that the government and its supporters are not anxious for peace, and do not improve proffered opportunities to achieve it, is doing great harm now, and is morally certain, unless removed, to do far greater in the approaching election."

He thus described, with a fair degree of accuracy, the sort of mine which the Democratic managers were digging. Mr. Lincoln replied, on the 9th of July:

"If you can find any person, anywhere, professing to have any proposition of Jefferson Davis, in writing, embracing the restoration of the Union and abandonment of slavery, whatever else it embraces, say to him that he may come to me with you."

Mr. Greeley was again induced to write, on the 13th, that

two persons, duly commissioned and empowered to negotiate for peace, were waiting near Niagara Falls for a conference with the President or his proper representative; or they and another would come to Washington for such a conference if a safe-conduct were afforded. Their names were given, and were such as to make the affair assume a semblance of plausibility.

Other correspondence followed; a safe-conduct was freely offered to any "commissioners" duly empowered as stated in the President's first reply; Major John Hay, one of the President's private secretaries, was sent to New York and to Niagara Falls with full power in the premises; but the "commissioners" were compelled to acknowledge that they were not accredited by the Confederate Government. They were a very attractive political trap and they were not anything more. A very precise statement of the President's position was carried to Niagara Falls by Major Hay and was afterwards printed and read by the nation. It was addressed to many millions of people, when it was written, quite as much as to any pair or trio of rebel negotiators for party capital. It read:

"Any proposition which embraces the restoration of peace, the integrity of the whole Union, and the abandonment of slavery, and which comes by and with an authority that can control the armies now at war against the United States, will be received and considered by the Executive Government of the United States, and will be met on liberal terms on substantial and collateral points; and the bearer or bearers thereof shall have safe-conduct both ways."

The commissioners were of course indignant, and said so; and a slight misunderstanding arose between the President and Mr. Greeley as to the details of the correspondence and its

management.

Nevertheless the worst of the intended mischief was prevented, the subtle plot was made a failure, and all that could be said and done, before or after election-day, could not convince any large number of sound-minded voters that the beginning of an offer of actual peace had been made or intended. That is, of peace on any such terms as those set forth by Mr. Lincoln. The country, as a whole, had finally decided, in its heart of hearts, that it was not willing to have any other kind of peace, live or die.

The Opposition made only fairly good profit by its two months of preparation, and learned no wisdom at all. When its National Convention came together at Chicago, it made Governor Seymour, of New York, its presiding officer, and Vallandigham, of Ohio, the chairman of its committee on resolutions. The latter crept back from his grotesque banishment in the Confederate lines just about in time to frame the platform of grievances upon which Mr. Lincoln was to be assailed.

The platform recited duly all known complaints against the Administration, and demanded a cessation of hostilities. It was a foregone necessity that even such an absurd agglomer ation of discontent should appeal in some way to loyal sentiment, and some loyalty was therefore put in. A further attempt was made in the nomination of General McClellan as the Democratic candidate for President. George H. Pendleton, of Ohio, was named for Vice-President. It is only bare justice to General McClellan to record that it soon appeared that he felt very strangely about that platform and about his remarkable associates and indorsers. He had had his difficulties with Mr. Lincoln, indeed, and he had views of his own as to the management of the war, but he had never done anything to entitle or condemn him to rank with the kind of men who had been foremost in giving him that nomination. The speedy reports of his personal and honorable discontent sent quite a large number of sensible voters over to Mr. Lincoln's support. The Democratic Convention closed its session with a covert