tion of that policy was tempered by every humanity possible in a condition of war. The former slaves were advised to preserve order and even to render obedience, and thousands of rations were distributed to the needy inhabitants of the South, white as well as black. The policy of the Republican party was not a policy of passion, but a policy of principle under the dictates of a rigorous necessity.

Disappointment is not in itself a passion, but it generates the sentiment of hate and the fatal passions of jealousy and envy.

The Democratic party was the subject of a disappointment such as never waited upon any other political party in the republic. Usually parties are defeated upon questions of administration and through a loss of public confidence for the time being. Such losses may be repaired, and sometimes they are repaired without delay; but in 1860 the Democratic party lost not only power and the public confidence, but it lost also a controlling element in politics on which it had relied for more than twenty-five years, and by whose influence it had acquired and retained power in the country. Passion is a dangerous master, and of all human affairs its rule is most perilous in the affairs of government. In all of its great undertakings the Republican party has succeeded, and its measures have inured to the advantage of the country. On the other hand, the prophecies of the Democratic party have been falsified by events, the measures that it has proposed have been condemned by the public judgment, and whenever it has acquired power in the government it has exhibited a melancholy inability for administration.

In August, 1864, the result of the war was not in doubt, and it was apparent that the end was near.

The battle of Gettysburg had been fought, Vicksburg had fallen, the Mississippi river was open from its head waters to the Gulf of Mexico. Maryland, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Missouri were in the quiet control of the Union forces, the sea coast was under an effective blockade, and a portion of every border State and portions of nearly every State resting on the Mississippi river, the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic ocean were in the possession of the armies of the United States. Foreign interference was no longer apprehended. The credit of the Confederate States was destroyed utterly. It was impossible to negotiate loans abroad, and the resources on which taxes had been levied had disappeared. The new recruits for the Confederate armies did not repair the waste caused by sickness, death, and desertion.

In 1861 and 1862 the Union armies had suffered many defeats. In

1863 and 1864 they had gained many victories and they had endured but few disasters.

The army aggregated nearly a million of men, most of whom were veterans, disciplined by hardships, encouraged by a succession of victories, and confident in their own persons and in the courage and skill of their leaders. Indeed, there never was a day after Gen. Grant assumed the command of the Army of the Potomac when the army, the administration, or the world at large, excluding the Democratic party of the North, had any doubt of the result.

It is a marvel of history, and a marvel which history itself cannot explain, that the delegates of the Democratic party should have failed to realize the facts, or, realizing the facts, should have failed to comprehend their value.

By the first resolution it was declared by the members of the Chicago convention that the Democratic party would "adhere with unswerving fidelity to the Union under the Constitution." In this they meant the old Union and the Constitution as it was, with all its obligations in regard to slavery. Adherence to the old Union meant the restoration of the States that had engaged in the Rebellion, and all without terms, conditions, or voluntary pledges. By its pledge of adherence to the old Union under the Constitution the Democratic party repudiated the Proclamation of Emancipation as an exercise of power not warranted by the Constitution, nor justified by the exigencies of war.

The Chicago platform of 1864 was the logical sequence of the position taken by Mr. Buchanan in 1860. If the national government had not a right to use force to prevent the secession of States, then the exercise of the war power by the President and Congress was unconstitutional. Therefore, every act of force designed to suppress the Rebellion and restore the Union was invalid. The proclamation of emancipation was such an act. Consequently, it was a void act.

Upon this interpretation of the leading resolution of the Chicago platform the second resolution becomes intelligible. It was in these words: "Resolved, That this convention does especially declare as the sense of the American people, that after four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war, during which, under the pretense of a military necessity, or war power higher than the Constitution, the Constitution itself has been disregarded in every part, and public liberty and private right alike trodden down and the

material prosperity of the country essentially impaired-justice, humanity, liberty, and the public welfare demand that immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities, with a view of an ultimate convention of the States, or other peaceable means to the end that at the earliest practicable moment peace may be restored on the basis of the Federal Union of the States."

The failure of which the convention spoke was not the failure of the war in a military sense; nor was it a failure upon the ground that its prosecution had not tended to the reëstablishment of the government and the exercise of jurisdiction over all of the original territory of the United States; but it was a failure in the sense that its prosecution and its successes, in the ratio of its successes, had rendered the restoration of the Union as it was and under the old Constitution less and less probable.

The demand for a cessation of hostilities was the logical sequence of the declaration made by Mr. Buchanan in his message of December, 1860: "The fact is, that our Union rests upon public opinion, and can never be cemented by the blood of its citizens shed in civil If it can not live in the affections of the people it must one day perish. Congress possesses many means of preserving it by conciliation; but the sword was not placed in its hand to preserve it by force."

war.

The Convention did not demand an armistice, which implies that the war may be resumed, but a cessation of hostilities, which implies a final and complete abandonment of force as a means of attaining the desired result.

This view of the meaning attached to that language by the Convention itself is confirmed by the object to be attained, as it is set forth, in these words: With a view to an ultimate convention of the States, or other peaceable means, to the end that at the earliest practicable moment peace may be restored on the basis of the Federal Union of

the States."

The propositions involved in the resolutions of the Chicago Convention were these:

(1.) The war to end by the voluntary withdrawal of the armies and navies of the United States from the theatre of operations, and never again to be resumed.

(2.) The Union to be restored by a Convention of States or by other peaceable means, and in case of failure to be abandoned, and upon the ground that the nation had no constitutional right to preserve its existence by force.

(3.) That inasmuch as the nation had no right to use force to prevent the secession of States from the Union, the war, with all its consequences and incidents, was unconstitutional, including the Proclamation of Emancipation.

If the Convention had spoken for the American people, as it presumed and assumed to speak, the soldiers of the Republic might have received sympathy, but not gratitude nor pensions; the freedmen, wherever found, would have been returned to their former masters; the Proclamation of Emancipation would have been treated as void; and the debt of the North would have been repudiated, or it would have been massed with the debt of the South and with it made a charge upon the labor and capital of the country. Indeed, if the war on the part of the North was unjustifiable, then there could be no good reason for making its debt a charge upon the country and requiring the States of the South to contribute to its payment. For the same reasons we of the North would have been bound to pay the debt of the South.

Upon these issues, not fully expressed, and not always understood, the Democratic party appealed to the country.

In a total vote of more than four million Mr. Lincoln's majority exceeded four hundred thousand. Of the electoral votes Gen. McClellan received twenty-one-seven in New Jersey, three in Delaware, and eleven in Kentucky.

Mr. Lincoln received two hundred and twelve electoral votes, given by twenty-two States.

And so ended the most important political contest, not of this Republic only, but of modern times.

In November, 1864, the South was exhausted utterly. The people had lost confidence in the leaders, the armies were wasting away, the treasury was empty, and masters and slaves were alike assured that the end was near. The hope that the Democratic party might succeed was the only hope remaining.

Not more fortunate for the North than for the South was the failure of that hope.

With success would have come an effort to reestablish the institution of slavery. Fugitives would have been gathered by the military arm from every quarter of the Union, and slave-catching would have become a national vocation. When the public patience had been exhausted and the public conscience had been again aroused, resist

ance would have been made, border wars would have been provoked, and the contest for supremacy would have been renewed.

When Congress passed the act of July 17, 1862, entitled "An Act to suppress Insurrection, to punish Treason and Rebellion, to seize and confiscate the Property of Rebels, and for other purposes," the restoration of the Union upon a pro-slavery basis became an impossibility.

The Confederates were struggling to found a Republic upon Slavery; the Democrats of the North were struggling to reconstruct the Republic upon Slavery. The Republican party, wiser than all, reconstructed the government upon the basis of universal freedom, of the equality of men in the States, and of the equality of States in the Union.