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EXECUTIVE MANSION, September 3, 1864 The national thanks are tendered by the President to Admiral Farragut and Major-General Canby, for the skill and harmony with which the recent operations in Mobile Harbor and against Fort Powell, Fort Gaines, and Fort Morgan were planned and carried into execution. Also to Admiral Farragut and Major-General Granger, under whose immediate command they were conducted, and to the gallant commanders on sea and land, and to the sailors and soldiers engaged in the operations, for their energy and courage, which, under the blessing of Providence, have been crowned with brilliant success, and have won for them the applause and thanks of the nation. ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, September 3, 1964. The national thanks are tendered by the President to Major-General William T. Sherman and the gallant officers and soldiers of his command before Atlanta, for the distinguished ability, courage, and perseverance displayed in the campaign in Georgia, which under Divine power resulted in the capture of the city of Atlanta. The marches, battles, sieges, and other military operations that have signalized this campaign must render it famous in the annals of war, and have entitled those who have participated therein to the applause and thanks of the nation.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, September 3, 1964 Ordered.-First.-That on Monday, the 5th day of September, cominencing at the hour of twelve o'clock noon, there shall be given a salute of one hundred guns at the arsenal and navy-yard at Washington, and on Tuesday, the 6th of September, or on the day after the receipt of this order, at each arsenal and navy-yard in the United States, for the recent brilliant achievements of the fleet and land forces of the United States in the harbor of Mobile, and the reduction of Fort Powell, Fort Gaines, and Fort Morgan. The Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy will issue the necessary directions in their respective departments for the execution of this order.

Second. That on Wednesday, the 7th day of September, commencing at the hour of twelve o'clock noon, there shall be fired a salute of one hundred guns at the arsenal at Washington, and at New York, Bostou. Philadelphia, Baltimore, Pittsburg, Newport, Ky., and at St. Louis, and at New Orleans, Mobile, Pensacola, Hilton Head, and Newbern, the day after the receipt of this order, for the brilliant achievements of the army under command of Major-General Sherman, in the State of Georgia, and the capture of Atlanta. The Secretary of War will give directions for the execution of this order.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE POLITICAL CAMPAIGN OF 1864.

-

THE CON

THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. THE CLEVELAND CONVENTION.
VENTION AT BALTIMORE.-MR. LINCOLN'S RENOMINATION AND ACCEPT-
ANCE. POPULAR FEELING DURING THE SUMMER. — THE ARGUelies
CASE. THE FORGED PROCLAMATION. THE NIAGARA FALLS CONFERENCE.
-THE CHICAGO CONVENTION.-PROGRESS AND RESULT OF THE CAM-
PAIGN. POPULAR JOY AT THE RESULT.

THE American people were approaching another test of their capacity for self-government, in some respects more trying than any they had yet encountered. As the spring of 1864 was passing away, the official term of President Lincoln drew towards its close, and the people were required to choose his successor. At all times and under the most favorable circumstances, the election of a President is attended with a degree of excitement, which some of the wisest theorists have pronounced inconsistent with the permanent harmony and safety of a republican form of government. But that such an election should become necessary in the midst of a civil war, which wrapped the whole country in its flames and aroused such intense and deadly passions in the public heart, was felt to be foremost among the calamities which had menaced the land. The two great rebel armies still held the field. The power of their government was still unbroken. All our attempts to capture their capital had proved abortive. The public debt was steadily and rapidly increasing. Under the resistless pressure of military necessity, the Government, availing itself of the permissions of the Constitution, had suspended the great safeguard of civil freedom, and dealt with individuals whom it deemed dangerous to the public safety with as absolute and relentless severity as the most absolute monarchies of Europe had ever shown. Taxes were increasing; new drafts of men

to fill the ranks of new armies were impending; the Democratic party, from the very beginning hostile to the war and largely imbued with devotion to the principle of State Sovereignty on which the rebellion rested, and with toleration for slavery out of which it grew, was watching eagerly for every means of arousing popular hatred against the Government, that they might secure its transfer to their own hands; and the losses, the agonies, the desolations of the war were beginning, apparently, to make themselves felt injuriously upon the spirit, the endurance, the hopeful resolution of the people throughout the loyal States.

That under these circumstances and amidst these elements of popular discontent and hostile passion, the nation should be compelled to plunge into the whirlpool of a political contest, was felt to be one of the terrible necessities which might involve the nation's ruin. That the nation went through it, with a majestic calmness up to that time unknown, and came out from it stronger, more resolute, and more thoroughly united than ever before, is among the marvels which confound all theory, and demonstrate to the world the capacity of an intelligent people to provide for every conceivable emergency in the conduct of their own affairs.

Preparations for the nomination of candidates had be gun to be made, as usual, early in the spring of 1864. Some who saw most clearly the necessities of the future, had for some months before expressed themselves strongly in favor of the renomination of President Lincoln. But this step was contested with great warmth and activity by prominent members of the political party by which he had been nominated and elected four years before. Nearly all the original Abolitionists and many of the more decidedly anti-slavery members of the Republican party were dissatisfied, that Mr. Lincoln had not more rapidly and more sweepingly enforced their extreme opinions. Many distinguished public men resented his rejection of their advice, and many more had been alienated by his inability to recognize their claims to office. The most

violent opposition came from those who had been most persistent and most clamorous in their exactions. And as it was unavoidable that, in wielding so terrible and so absolute a power in so terrible a crisis, vast multitudes of active and ambitious men should be disappointed in their expectations of position and personal gain, the renomination of Mr. Lincoln was sure to be contested by a powerful and organized effort.

At the very outset this movement acquired consistency and strength by bringing forward the Hon. S. P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury, a man of great political boldness and experience, and who had prepared the way for such a step by a careful dispensation of the vast patronage of his department, as the rival candidate. But it was instinctively felt that this effort lacked the sympathy and support of the great mass of the people, and it ended in the withdrawal of his name as a candidate by Mr. Chase himself.

The National Committee of the Union Republican party had called their convention, to be held at Baltimore, on the 8th of June. This step had been taken from a conviction of the wisdom of terminating as speedily as possible all controversy concerning candidates in the ranks of Union men; and it was denounced with the greatest vehemence by those who opposed Mr. Lincoln's nomination, and desired more time to infuse their hostility into the public mind. Failing to secure a postponement of the convention, they next sought to overawe and dictate its action by a display of power, and the following call was accordingly issued about the 1st of May, for a convention to be held at Cleveland, Ohio, on the 31st day of that month :

TO THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES.

After having labored ineffectually to defer, as far as was in our power, the critical moment when the attention of the people must inevitably be fixed upon the selection of a candidate for the chief magistracy of the country; after having interrogated our conscience and consulted our duty as citizens, obeying at once the sentiment of a mature conviction and a profound affection for the common country, we feel ourselves impelled,

on our own responsibility, to declare to the people that the time has come for all independent men, jealous of their liberties and of the national greatness, to confer together, and unite to resist the swelling invasion of an open, shameless, and unrestrained patronage, which threatens to ingulf under its destructive wave the rights of the people, the liberty and dignity of the nation.

Deeply impressed with the conviction that, in a time of revolution, when the public attention is turned exclusively to the success of armies, and is consequently less vigilant of the public liberties, the patronage derived from the organization of an army of a million of men, and an administration of affairs which seeks to control the remotest parts of the country in favor of its supreme chief, constitute a danger seriously threatening the stability of republican institutions, we declare that the principle of one term, which has now acquired nearly the force of law by the consecration of time, ought to be inflexibly adhered to in the approaching election.

We further declare, that we do not recognize in the Baltimore Convention the essential conditions of a truly National Convention. Its proximity to the centre of all the interested influences of the administration, its distance from the centre of the country, its mode of convocation, the corrupting practices to which it has been and inevitably will be sub jected, do not permit the people to assemble there with any expecta tion of being able to deliberate at full liberty. Convinced as we are that, in presence of the critical circumstances in which the nation is placed, it is only in the energy and good sense of the people that the general safety can be found; satisfied that the only way to consult it is to indicate a central position, to which every one may go without too much expenditure of means and time, and where the assembled people, far from all administrative influence, may consult freely and deliberate peaceably, with the presence of the greatest possible number of meu, whose known principles guarantee their sincere and enlightened devotion to the rights of the people and to the preservation of the true basis of republican government, -we earnestly invite our fellow-citizens to unite at Cleveland, Ohio, on Tuesday, May 31, current, for consultation and concert of action in respect to the approaching Presidential election.

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Two other calls were issued after this, prominent among the signers of which were some of the Germans of Missouri and some of the old Radical Abolitionists of the East.

The convention thus summoned met at the appointed time, about one hundred and fifty in number. No call had ever been put forward for the election of delegates to it, and no one could tell whether its members represented

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