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to say they originated with his especial friends and adherents. With perfect knowledge of them he has frequently, if not constantly, made speeches in Congress and before popular assemblies; and if it can be shown that, with these things staring him in the face, he has ever uttered a word of rebuke or counsel against them, it will be a fact greatly in his favor with me, and one of which, as yet, I am totally ignorant. When it is known that the whole burden of his speeches has been to stir up men against the prosecution of the war, and that in the midst of resistance to it, he has not been known in any instance to counsel against such resistance, it is next to impossible to repel the inference that he has counseled directly in favor of it.

With all this before their eyes, the convention you represent have nominated Mr. Vallandigham for governor of Ohio, and both they and you have declared the purpose to sustain the National Union by all constitutional means, but, of course, they and you, in common, reserve to yourselves to decide what are constitutional means, and, unlike the Albany meeting, you omit to state or intimate that, in your opinion, an army is a constitutional means of saving the Union against a rebellion, or even to intimate that you are conscious of an existing rebellion being in progress with the avowed object of destroying that very Union. At the same time, your nominee for governor, in whose behalf you appeal, is known to you, and to the world, to declare against the use of an army to suppress the rebellion. Your own attitude, therefore, encourages desertion, resistance to the draft, and the like, because it teaches those who incline to desert and to escape the draft to believe it is your purpose to protect them, and the hope that you will become strong enough to do so.

After a personal intercourse with you, gentlemen of the committee, I can not say I think you desire this effect to follow your attitude; but I assure you that both friends and enemies of the Union look upon it in this light. It is a substantial hope, and by consequence, a real strength to the enemy. If it is a false hope, and one which you would willingly dispel, I will make the way exceedingly easy. I send you duplicates of this letter, in order that you, or a majority of you, may, if you choose, indorse your names upon one of them, and return it thus indorsed to me, with the understanding that those signing are thereby committed to the following propositions, and to nothing else:

1. That there is now a rebellion in the United States, the object and tendency of which is to destroy the National Union; and that, in your opinion, an army and navy are constitutional means for suppressing that rebellion.

2. That no one of you will do any thing which, in his own judgment, will tend to hinder the increase, or favor the decrease, or lessen the efficiency of the Army and Navy, while engaged in the effort to suppress that rebellion; and

3. That each of you will in his sphere, do all he can to have the officers, soldiers, and seamen of the Army and Navy, while engaged in the effort to suppress the rebellion, paid, fed, clad, and otherwise well provided and supported.

And with the further understanding that upon receiving the letter and names thus indorsed, I will cause them to be published, which publication shall be, within itself, a revocation of the order in relation to Mr. Vallandigham.

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It will not escape observation that I consent to the release of Mr. Vallandigham upon terms not embracing any pledge from him or from others as to what he will or will not do. I do this because he is not present to speak for himself, or to authorize others to speak for him; and hence I shall expect that on returning he would not put himself practically in antagonism with the position of his friends. But I do it chiefly because I thereby prevail on other influential gentlemen of Ohio to so define their position as to be of immense valuc to the army-thus more than compensating for the consequences of any mistake in allowing Mr. Vallandigham to return, so that, on the whole, the public safety will not have suffered by it. Still, in regard to Mr. Vallandigham and all others, I must hereafter, as heretofore, do so much as the public service may seem to require.

I have the honor to be, respectfully, yours, etc.,
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

The gentlemen addressed, many of whom were members elect of the Thirty-eighth Congress, were quite indisposed to comply with the easy terms proposed by the President as a condition for the release of their chosen leader. They allowed him still to pine in exile, over the border, and apparently hoped to turn his "cruel wrongs" to political account. In this, however, they were greatly miscalculating the intelligence and loyalty of the people, who saw nothing to admire in such a political character. The verdict of Ohio, in the following October, repudiating Vallandigham by more than one hundred thousand majority, was sufficient to show the popular judgment on this question. Why, then, renew the issue in the

Presidential canvass of 1864? This infatuation only aided their gravitation toward defeat.

Vallandigham had suddenly appeared at a district convention held in Butler county, Ohio, on the 15th of June, 1864. After more than a year's absence, he defiantly released himself, and probably counted upon promised resistance by organized force, on his anticipated re-arrest, as the act which was to fire the secretly-prepared train of revolution in the North-west. He was chosen a delegate to the Chicago convention, and "instructed to favor the nomination of no man who is either directly or indirectly committed to the further prosecution of this war." The resolutions of this local convention, in the same spirit, declared "that the history of the past three years has already demonstrated the utter hopelessness, as well as the gigantic wrong, of a further continuance of the present conflict." Had Sanders himself appeared on the scene, the budget of resolutions could not have been more acceptable to Jefferson Davis. But any serious danger from Vallandigham's influence was no longer to be dreaded. He had already suffered a year's exile. He had been repudiated by the people of his own State. No notice was taken of his escape at Washington. Henceforth he had entire freedom of locomotion, and liberty of speech.

A more potent influence from Canada was that of the Rebel funds dispensed at the will of Jacob Thompson. Three days before the Chicago convention, he had procured $250,000 in "greenback" notes, obviously for use in the loyal States. Evidence was given, on the trial of the Indiana conspirators, going to show that money for arming their secret Order was obtained from the same source. Later in the season, as the Opposition cause became more desperate, the Rebel funds under the control of Thompson, as purser, were employed in furthering schemes too fiendish for belief, were they not definitely and clearly proved. The seizure of steamboats on Lake Erie; the release of prisoners at Johnson's Island, Camp Chase, and elsewhere; attacks upon border towns, to be attended with conflagrations, pillage and murder; and robberies of banks, plunderings of villages, and massacres of non-belligerents, were

among the gentler plans of these men in Canada, whose mission was, a little earlier, so gratuitously assumed by innocent philanthropists to be one of peace and brotherly kindness. Compared with the dark-hued purposes afterward developed, even these malicious projects-which could have no possible effect in aid of the Rebel cause, and which were devised in bitter hatred and rage at the prospect of Mr. Lincoln's reëlection-fade into venial dimness of shade.

The active canvass was to be short, and the first election after the "Democratic" nominations and platform were announced that occurring in the State of Vermont, where there was little room to improve on previous elections, and every effort was made by the Opposition to insure an Administration loss-was regarded with anxious interest, as indicating the direction of the popular current. The result gratified the friends of the Administration, and disheartened its enemies, there being a decided increase of the Union majority of the previous year, and the vote being more than two to one for the Administration ticket. Maine soon followed, with a large majority on the same side. It was no longer doubtful that the Republican Union party was united and true in the support of Lincoln and Johnson. On the second Tuesday in October, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana were to hold their State elections. The results would be conclusive as to the Presidential election. In Ohio and Indiana the Administration majorities were unprecedentedly large-54,751 in the former, and 20,883 in the latter and in Pennsylvania, where there was no general ticket, the Union aggregate majority for members of Congress, though small, was decisive. These elections settled the political character of the next Congress. In the previous House of Representatives, Ohio had but five Administration members, to fourteen Opposition. At this election, seventeen Administration Representatives were chosen, and two Opposition. In Indiana, where a Democratic Legislature had refused to the soldiers in the field the right of voting, eight Administration Representatives were returned, and three Opposition, against four Administration and seven Opposition members in the previous House. In Pennsylvania, sixteen Admin.

istration members and eight Opposition were clected, against fourteen Administration and ten Opposition in the previous Congress. In the three States, the Administration had a majority of twenty-eight members in the new Congress-the Opposition a majority of eight members in the last-making a net gain of thirty-six.

The State elections disclosed very clearly, what the Opposition had hitherto earnestly disputed, that our gallant soldiers in the field were so firmly attached to Abraham Lincoln, and regarded him as so fully the representative of the cause on behalf of which they were breasting the bayonets and bullets of the Rebels in the field, that no devotion to a military commander-least of all to one who had only led his army to defeat or to indecisive victory-could seduce them into the support of a party whose success was earnestly desired by the enemy they were fighting. With a unanimity which the exceptions only rendered more emphatic, they supported the admin. istration tickets, while winning victories that doubly helped the Union cause-in their front and in the rear.

No one more deeply and sincerely felt the unbounded obligations of the country to the men of the Army and Navy, or was more ready on all occasions to recognize their services than did President Lincoln. In a note to the Postmaster General, early in the summer, he expressed his wish that a preference should be given, in his appointments, so far as practicable, to the men who had thus proved their devotion to the Republic. There was no topic to which he recurred more naturally, or on which he spoke with more emotion, on public occasions, than the heroic sacrifices made by our soldiers and seamen. He was tenderly conscious of the kind sentiments manifested by them, in so many ways, toward himself personally. To have been reëlected without their hearty support, or in spite of their votes for another, would have poorly compensated the loss, to his heart, of their sympathy and preference.

An important service was rendered, during the season, by a portion of the militia force of several Western States, who were called out for a term of one hundred days, mainly during the interval between the expiration of the time of a large num

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