CHAPTER XXXIV. THE PRESIDENTIAL CANVASS OF 1864 IN THE NORTH.—ITS RELATIONS TO THE MILITARY CAM- 66 POLICY OF THE BLACK REPUBLICAN PARTY AT THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR.—MR. LIN- - WE have already referred to the great consideration which attached to the Presidential contest in the North which was now to take place; we have stated that it gave a new hope for the South in 1864; and we have POLITICAL PARTIES IN THE NORTH. 557 indicated that the political campaign of this year was, in the minds of the Confederate leaders, scarcely less important than the military. Indeed, the two were indissolubly connected; and the calculation in Richmond was that if military matters could even be held in a negative condition, the Democratic party in the North would have the opportunity of appealing to the popular impatience of the war, and bringing it to a close on terms acceptable to the great mass of the Southern people. For a thorough discussion of this political campaign it will be well to make a rapid review and analysis of parties in the North, even at the risk of some repetition to the reader. Parties in the North were divided by very distinct lines. There were two questions upon which the division took place. One of these referred to the supremacy of the Constitution as opposed to military necessity-real or pretended. The other had reference to the relative powers of the Union and the States. On both these questions the party in power held loose and careless opinions, employing force wherever it would avail for military or partisan advantage. The opposition contended for a strict observance of the provisions of the Constitution and of the rights of the States. This was the general distinction. But widely as the theories of these two parties separated them on questions touching the sanctity and scope of the Constitution, there was still a margin of difference left between the views of the Northern Democratic party and the Southern doctrines upon which the right of Secession was founded. The difference, however, concerned only the last alternative of Secession. According to the Northern view, the Union was inviolable and perpetual, and all grievances must be redressed within the Union by remedies which respected its integrity. According to the Southern view, Secession was a rightful remedy for evils otherwise incurable, sanctioned by the precedent and precepts of the men of 1776. This latter doctrine had so limited a support at the North, however, that it was totally unknown in the controversies of parties. There, all, or nearly all, assumed that the Union was permanent and inviolable-differences of opinion turning upon the powers of the Union; the powers of the Federal Government; the rightfulness of extra-constitutional measures in time of war; and the expediency, and most judicious means of coercion. The party in opposition to Mr. Lincoln's Administration-most properly designated as the Constitutional party-was composed chiefly of Democrats, but largely interspersed with Whigs of the stamp of Wm. B. Reed of Philadelphia, Robert C. Winthrop of Massachusetts, Reverdy Johnson of Maryland, Wm. B. Crittenden, and the like. In partisan parlance they were called "Copperheads," and they were reinforced in the debates, though generally opposed in the votes, by a class of men who had split away from the Democratic party, called "War Democrats." It would be difficult to state in precise terms the political doctrines confessedly held by the Black Republican party. After a patient effort we have desisted from the attempt. The more responsible avowals and professions of its leaders cannot be reconciled with the fanatical utterances of its less conspicuous and more active representatives. Its policy as well as its professions were shaped to suit the hour; and changed with evey varying phase of the war. The party was conservative and apologetic in moments of distrust and apprehension; but always ready to overstep the limitations of the Constitution, and to burst through the restraints of law, in seasons of confidence and success. It was as unfaithful to its own promulgated schedules of faith, and programmes of policy, as to the laws of the land. It alike disregarded its oaths of fidelity to the Constitution and pledges of adherence to specific lines of policy. It would, therefore, be quite useless to quote from its several creeds and platforms, to ascertain its principles as a party; for it would be folly to judge of its character by its professions. In sketching the career of one of the parties of the North, we necessarily present a history of that which constantly opposed it. The immediate subject of our review will, therefore, be the Black Republican party; which had absolute control of the war throughout, and which, in claiming the credit of its results, assumes the responsibility of its transactions. As composed at the time of the election of Mr. Lincoln, this party was not precisely the same as it had been during the first years of its career. It was a party built up, as we have seen, through many years of effort, upon the agitation against slavery. In the beginning it was despised alike for its weakness in numbers and for its fanaticism. It received its ideas from the Anti-Slavery Society of England, and there is no doubt it was fostered during its early career by pecuniary subsidies from that same organization. After a few years, it began to acquire importance in the political contests of the country, as holding a balance of votes capable of turning the scales in several of the Northern States, where the great parties were nearly equipoised. Although it finally absorbed the great mass of the Northern Whig party, it was characterized in terms of severe reprobation by both Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster. The latter said, with prophetic truth: "If these fanatics and Abolitionists get power into their hands, they will override the Constitution, set the Supreme Court at defiance, change and make laws to suit themselves. Finally, they will bankrupt the country, and deluge it with blood.". Mr. Clay, in describing its purposes, said of it, in words well nigh verified already: "The ultras go for abolition and amalgamation, and their object is to unite in marriage the laboring white man and the black woman, and to reduce the white laboring man to the despised and degraded condition of the black man." The proclaimed purpose of the war of the Black Republican party upon the Constitution, and of the organization which they proposed of the Union, was the abolition of slavery, and the securing of equal rights before the law to the African race. It is difficult to conceive how a party should meditate and plan a revolution of the Government and a radical revisal of the Constitution for such a purpose, without desiring to elevate the negro to a platform of social as well as political equality with the white man. Nor is proof wanting of the truth of Mr. Clay's grave imputation in this regard. The organs of the party have not been very reticent or secretive on this subject. From a vast multitude of similar utterances we quote a few. The New York Tribune often iterates the assertion that "if a white man pleases to marry a black woman, the mere fact that she is black gives no one a right to prevent or set aside such a marriage." The New York Independent is fond of a theory, that the German, Irish, negro, and other races have come to America, not for the purpose, each, of propagating its distinct species, "but each to join itself to each, till all together shall be built up into the monumental nation of the earth; ""the negro of the South growing paler with every generation, till at last he completely hides his face under the snow." Enamoured with the character of Toussaint L'Ouverture, it says to those who cherish the prejudice of colour and caste, that "they must cease to call unclean those whom God has cleansed, that they must acknowledge genius whatever be the colour of the skin that enwraps it; and that they must prepare themselves to welcome to the leadership of our armies and our senate, as Southern substitutes for Jeff Davis and his drunken Comus-like crew, that have so long bewitched and despoiled us, black Toussaints, who, by their superiour talents and principles, shall receive the grateful homage of an appreciative and admiring nation." Gen. Banks said, when in the House of Representatives, that "in regard to whether the white or black race was superiour, he proposed to wait till time should develop whether the white race should absorb the black, or the black the white." Wendell Phillips, the ablest and the boldest of them all, said, in 1863: "Remember this, the youngest of you, that on the 4th day of July, 1863, you heard a man say, that in the light of all history, in virtue of every page he ever read, he was an amalgamationist to the utmost extent. I have no hope for the future, as this country has no past, but in that sublime mingling of races, which is God's own method of civilizing and elevating the world. God, by the events of His providence, is crushing out the hatred of race that has crippled this country until to-day." Theodore Tilton also said, that, "the history of the world's civilization is written in one word—which many are afraid to speak, and many more afraid to hear-and that is, amalgamation." These citations are abundant to show the animus and purposes of the men in the front rank of the Republican party, who have always brought their colleagues, when necessary, up to their own standard and position. It is not pretended, however, to deny that there were milder phases of opinion in the Republican party. There were those who aimed only at the abolition of slavery; on the idea expressed years before by Mr. Seward, and reiterated by Mr. Lincoln, that an irrepressible conflict existed in the Union between slave society and free society, which could only be allayed by making the Union all slave or all free. There were very few, if any, who were not determined to use the war as an instrument of abolition, and to prosecute it, not merely for restoring the authority of the Union, but also for securing the extinction of slavery in the South. No such purpose was responsibly avowed in the beginning; but it was fully developed by the summer of 1864, when it became, as we shall see, very soon a leading issue between the Lincoln and M'Clellan parties. Such were the antecedents, character, and composition of the party which had succeeded in the Presidential election of 1860. The shock which the announcement of the result gave to the country was very great; but it was not greater than that which was felt by the successful party itself Composed of extreme fanatical elements, and brought for the first time face to face with the serious and grave responsibilities of office, under that Union to which so many of them had avowed a bitter hostility, and under that Constitution to which they were obliged to swear support, and which they designed to subvert, they at once began to realize the serious difficulty of their position. That which most added to their embarrassment, however, was the fact that they had carried the election by only a plurality vote. They had received no support in one half of the Union; and in the other half, they had triumphed by only a majority of suffrages. They could not command a majority in either House of Congress; and they felt that if the election could be held over again, the classes which were esteemed to embrace the intelligence, worth, and patriotism of the country, would rally together, make common cause against them, and defeat their accession to power. Thus circumstanced, it was the interest of the Republican party, as a party, that the secession movement should go on, and that the threatened dissolution of the Union should be consummated. We have already seen signs of their policy secretly to exasperate the feelings and confirm the purposes of the South; and, with professions of conservatism and devotion to the Union, to secure to themselves in administering the Government the support of the classes who had opposed them at the North. We might make here a large accumulation of proofs of the fact that the Black Republican party, on its accession to power, wanted dissolution and wanted war; but we are not aware that it is now denied. It is a historical truth. It is a historical conviction, confirmed alike by the action, |