the Administration a damaging interference with his military operations, and finally, in consequence probably of his open hostility to the President's emancipation policy, a removal from command. The resolutions upheld the Union and the Constitution, but mainly complained of the usurpations of the Administration, and disapproved of the continuance of the war. They called for an immediate armistice, to be followed by a convention of the states, or other peaceable measures for the restoration of the Union. McClellan, in accepting the nomination, ignored the platform, and declared strongly for the persistent maintenance of the Union. His associate on the

ticket was George H. Pendleton, of Ohio.

The only serious opposition to the renomination of President Lincoln by the Republicans came from a group of captious Radicals, who met in convention and nominated General Fremont. He had after the first years of the war been kept out of active service; by the Administration's jealousy of him as an emancipationist and a popular leader, said his friends; by his own false pride and ambition, said others. His candidacy was soon abandoned. The Republican convention, meeting at Baltimore in June, gave its voice without division for Lincoln; joined with him for the second place Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee, in recognition of the Southern loyalists; fully indorsed the emancipation policy; and declared in favor of the constitutional abolition of slavery, and the prosecution of the war until the rebellion was wholly subdued.

The Republican (August 2) summed up the issue between the parties, thus: Peace, it says, is sure to come soon, but what kind of a peace depends on the presidential election. "Shall this peace be what the nation has fought for, or what the rebels have fought for? This is the grand vital question of the presidential campaign,

by the side of which all others sink into nothingness." When McClellan was nominated, it said of him, Sept. 18:

"With respectable talents, a pure character, and patriotic purposes, he is wanting in that high moral sense that perceives the truest truth, and that high moral courage that does and dares in its behalf. He waits, he hesitates in the presence of great opportunities; he compromises with time and with truth; and he is no fit man to deal with the sharp exigences and the sublime occasions of this hour. He wants and would try to save the country; but he would hinder rather than help the people, who will save it in the long run, despite their own occasional fickleness and faint-heartedness,- because he fails to see and use quickly the moral and material agencies by which it is to be saved, and because he is no match for the men who are bent on its ruin.. The platform is weak in words and wicked in intention. It lacks vigor, sharpness, and high principle. The breaking purpose shines through every sentence. Its words for the Union are hesitating, guarded, shuffling; while its clamor for experiments that would endanger it, its want of condemnation for those who have struck at it, and still hold aloft the bloody flag of disunion and destruction, and its petty arraignment of those who are wielding the power of the government to sustain and secure it, all show that the real sympathy of its authors is with the enemies rather than the defenders of the Union. . . . We are very sure that neither the ticket nor the men who will vote for it all of them - are so mean as their platform seems to us."

In Massachusetts, Governor Andrew was again renominated. The vigor and success of his administration, the great-heartedness of the man, and his popularity as a "war governor," left no room for successful rivalry. The presidential campaign, somewhat doubtful in the early autumn, moved at the close to a clearly foreseen result. Men cast their votes for President Lincoln less under the feeling of a doubtful contest than with a solemn sense that the people were accepting and ratify

ing the prosecution of the war at whatever cost, till union and freedom were won. Only Delaware, Kentucky, and New Jersey gave their electoral votes for McClellan. In a total of four million votes, Lincoln had a majority of 400,000. New York was for him by a narrow margin of 7000; Illinois by 30,000; Ohio by 60,000; and Massachusetts led the column with 127,000 for Lincoln to 40,000 for his opponent. The day after the election, November 9, the Republican said:

"The appeal to the avarice and cowardice of the people was a strong one, and it was vigorously plied by the opposition. The burdens of the war are fearful, and they are severely felt. The people would rejoice with joy unspeakable in the restoration of peace. But they have rejected all solicitations to a premature and dishonorable peace. They have declared that they prefer any sacrifice of ease, property, life, to the sacrifice of the Union and the surrender of the nation to the slave-holding oligarchy. The decision is honor and safety to the country and to all who have contributed to it.

"Let the victors be magnanimous. The great body of the Democratic party have meant well for their country in their votes against the Administration. Copperheads and sympathizers with treason are but a fraction of that party, and the party has lost by its concessions to their influence. The masses of the Democratic party will still stand by the country, fight its battles, and rejoice in its victories. Let their patriotism have generous recognition, and let them still further exhibit and attest it by ready acquiescence in the decision of the majority, and by cordial support of the Administration indorsed so strongly by the people."

The completion of emancipation, by extending it over the whole Union and making it irrevocable, had been inaugurated early in 1864, when the Senate passed the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery. In the House it failed of the necessary two-thirds vote. The Republican National Convention insisted on "the utter and complete extirpation of slavery." (The Republican

declared (November 10) that by the reëlection of Lincoln, and yet more explicitly by the congressional elections, which gave the party more than two-thirds of the House, the destruction of slavery was assured.

"The amendment will be adopted by the next Congress" [it was in fact adopted by the old Congress in its final session], "and the people will ratify it with eagerness and delight the moment they can get a chance. Thus will slavery be legally and constitutionally abolished throughout this Union. This result of Tuesday's effort is even more important in its ultimate consequences than the reëlection of Mr. Lincoln. It is the crowning glory of the peaceful victory of the day. It is a triumph for all time. It settles the vexed question which has brought war, bloodshed, and debt upon the nation, and precludes the possibility of another rebellion in behalf of slavery. The grand triumph is nearly completed. Let us thank God and push on."

The political questions of the time have offered the salient points for quotation and comment in this chapter. But the war itself is the great drama which is seen through the daily pages of the newspaper file from April, 1861, to April, 1865. There it all stands vividly out — the four years' experience which so deeply impressed the lives of all who shared it. There is the first eager and passionate rush against the foe; there are the first defeats, the disappointments, the perplexities, the evergrowing sacrifices; then the deep breath of anticipated triumph when one week saw Gettysburg won at the east and Vicksburg captured at the west; the brightening hope; then the industries of peace recovering and multiplying themselves in the midst of war; the dogged, desperate rally for the last tug of the Wilderness and Petersburg; the equal valor of North and South; the myriads of lives lost and homes desolated; the new manliness wrought by heroic endurance into North. and South alike; the birth of a race into freedom, the restoration of a people to unity.

CHAPTER XXIX.

IN EUROPE.

To the "Republican.”

LONDON, April 28, 1862.

NLY five days have gone since we landed at Liverpool,

ON

yet they seem as many weeks.

It is curious to notice how many of these Englishmen I seem to know as old acquaintances. Punch and Thackeray and Dickens and the Illustrated News have made one-half of them as familiar to my eyes as my home neighbors. We had a faint Lord Dundreary on the ship coming out. The custom-house officers that boarded us in the stream were unmistakable as if they had borne printed labels.. The village butcher, the magistrate, the member of the town council, the hotel waiter, milord Tom Noddy's valet let loose for an afternoon, Betsey the cook, and Mary the chamber-girl, all pass before you in familiar guise. You almost unconsciously nod your head as they go by. As yet I get my waiters and ministers of the established church sadly mixed up. They dress just alike, and so far I have to give the preference for impressiveness of manner and mental alertness to the waiters. Certainly a big man in white canonicals, who mouthed a lot of incoherent stuff at a popular audience in Westminster Abbey last night, would do the world and his Maker better service in bringing bread and cheese and pouring beer in a country inn than in disgusting and befogging people from a pulpit in the matter of the highest import to their happiness. But a shoemaker I saw at Chester was the very St. Crispin

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