3 KENTUCKY AND PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 655 can majority, it was simply because, | prehend that they must choose bein the absence of any election for tween Emancipation and Disunion. Congress, and in view of the certainty So when, pursuant to the act of Conthat the Republican ascendency gress' providing for the enrollment, would be maintained, no serious ef- as subject to military duty, of all ablefort was made to call out a full vote, bodied male slaves between the ages and personal considerations exerted of 20 and 45, Federal officers comtheir natural influence in so small a menced such enrollment, a fresh, inState when no special or urgent rea- tense excitement pervaded her slaveson is presented for a rigid respect holding districts, which impelled her to party lines. Governor, Thomas E. Bramlette(elected' as a Unionist by an overwhelming majority over Charles A. Wickliffe, the Democratic candidate, but not without great and apparently well-grounded complaint of Military interference at the polls, to the prejudice of the Opposition)-to address' to the people of his State a proclamation, counseling them not to let their "indignation," provoked by this enrollment, impel them to "acts of violence, nor to unlawful resistance." He continued: The Presidential Election in immediate prospect soon fixed that share of public attention which could be diverted from the progress of hostilities wherein every one's hopes and fears were largely involved, and wherein almost every one was, either himself or in the persons of those dear to him, engaged. Among Republicans and those Democrats whom the War had constrained to act with them, there was a very considerable dissent from the policy of renominating Mr. Lincoln; but, as the canvass proceeded, the popular sentiment was found so unequivocally in his favor that no serious or concerted resistance to such rënomination was made: its advocates choosing delegates to the National Convention, with barely a show of resistance, from nearly every loyal State-Missouri, because of the intense Radicalism of her firetried Unionists, being the solitary exception. Kentucky, however, had a creed of her own. Professedly Union, as she had been proved by every test and at each succeeding election, she still remained pro-Slavery; unlike the other Border-States,' which had already been brought distinctly to com "In the Union, under the Constitution, and in accordance with law, assert and urge your rights. It is our duty to obey the law until it is declared, by judicial decision, to be unconstitutional. The citizen, whose property may be taken under it for public use, will be entitled, under the imperative mandate of the Constitution, to a just compensation for his private property so taken for public use. Although the present Congress may not do us justice, yet it is safe to rely upon the justice of the American people; and an appeal to them will not be unheeded or unanswered. Peace restored, and the unity of our Government preserved, will drive to ignominious disgrace those who, in the agony of our conflict, perverted their sacred trusts to the base uses of partisan ends and fanatical purposes." One immediate result of this enrollment and the consequent "indignation" was a call by the Union State Committee of a State Convention, to meet at Louisville, May 25th, and there choose delegates to the Democratic National Convention which was to assemble at Chicago for the nomination of a Presidential ticket-a call which insured the vote of this State in November to the candidates of the Opposition. Gov. Bramlette, accompanied by ex-Senator Dixon and Col. A. G. Hodges, soon visited Washington, expressly to protest against, and (if possible) to obviate, this enrollment of negroes, or at least to render its execution less offensive and annoying to their masters-finding the President disposed to do whatever he could to reconcile the Kentuckians to the bitter prescription. Mr. Lincoln was induced to put the substance of his observations at their interview into the following letter: "EXECUTIVE MANSION, "WASHINGTON, April 4, 1864. "A. G. HODGES, Esq., Frankfort, Ky.: "MY DEAR SIR: You ask me to put in writing the substance of what I verbally said the other day, in your presence, to Gov. Bramlette and Senator Dixon. It was about as follows: "I am naturally anti-Slavery. If Slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think and feel; and yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling. It was in the oath I took that I would to the best of my ability preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. I could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath in using the power. I understood, too, that, in ordinary and civil administration, this oath even forbade me to practically indulge my primary, abstract judgment on the moral question of Slavery. I had publicly declared this many times, and in many ways. And I aver that, to this day, I have done no official act in mere deference to my abstract judgment and feeling on Slavery. I did understand, however, that my oath to preserve the Constitution to the best of my ability imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every indispensable means, that Government-that nation, of which that Was it Constitution was the organic law. possible to lose the nation and yet preserve the Constitution? By general law, life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb is never wisely given to save a limb. I felt must be amputated to save a life; but a life that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful, by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution, through the preservation of the nation. Right or wrong, I assumed this ground, and now avow it. I could not feel that, to the best of my ability, I had even tried to preserve the Constitution, if, to save Slavery, or any minor matter, I should permit the wreck of Government, country, and Constitution, altogether. When, early in the war, Gen. Fremont attempted military emanci think it an indispensable necessity. When, pation, I forbade it, because I did not then a little later, Gen. Cameron, then Secretary of War, suggested the arming of the Blacks, I objected, because I did not yet think it an indispensable necessity. When, still later, Gen. Hunter attempted military emancipation, I again forbade it, because I did not yet think the indispensable necessity had come. When, in March, and May, and July, 1862, I made earnest and successive appeals to the Border States to favor compensated emancipation, I believed the indispensable necessity for military emancipation and arming the Blacks would come, unless averted by that measure. They declined the proposition; and I was, in my best judgment, driven to the alternative of either surrendering the Union, and, with it, the Constitution, or of laying a strong hand upon the colored element. I chose the latter. In choosing it, I hoped for greater gain than loss; but of this I was not entirely confident. More than a year of trial now shows no loss by it in our foreign relations, none in our home popular sentiment, none in our White military force-no loss by it anyhow, or anywhere. On the contrary, it shows s gain of quite 130,000 soldiers, seamen, and laborers. These are palpable facts, about which, as facts, there can be no caviling. We have the men; and we could not have had them without the measure. "And now let any Union man, who complains of this measure, test himself by writing down in one line, that he is for subduing the Rebellion by force of arms; and in the next, that he is for taking 130,000 men from the Union side, and placing them where they would be but for the measure he condemns. If he can not face his case so stated, it is only because he can not face the truth. "I add a word which was not in the verbal conversation. In telling this tale, I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity. PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S ANTI-SLAVERY GROWTH. 657 I claim not to have controlled events, but | Edward Everett was patiently listenconfess plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years' struggle, the nation's condition is not what either party or any man devised or expected. God alone can claim it. Whither it is tend ing seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North, as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new causes to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God. "Yours, truly, A. LINCOLN." Persuasive and cogent as this letter will now seem, it did not placate the indignation of the Kentuckians, nor change the destination of their delegates from the Chicago to the Baltimore Convention. ed to, while Cabinet Ministers and Governors were regarded with lively curiosity, the central figure on the platform was the tall, plain, unpresuming, ungainly 'rail-splitter' from the prairies; and the only words uttered that the world cares to remember were those of the President, who -being required to say something— thus responded: "Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here; but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nodedicated to the great task remaining before bly advanced. It is rather for us to be here us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which that we here highly resolve that these dead they gave the last full measure of devotion; shall not have died in vain; that this nafreedom; and that government of the peotion, under God, shall have a new birth of ple, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth." The careful reader will note in this letter a decided advance upon Mr. Lincoln's earlier allusions to Slavery in its necessary relations to our strug-proper that we should do this. But, in a gle. By nature, slow, cautious, tentative, and far from sanguine, he had profoundly distrusted the policy of Emancipation; apprehending that its adoption would alienate from the Union cause more strength than it would bring to its support. This distrust yielded tardily to evidence, which (in fact) was slowly furnished; but when at length it appeared that, while very few original, hearty Unionists were repelled by it, the Blacks became day by day a more active and more efficient element of our National strength, his doubts were fully dispelled, and his faith was the firmer and clearer for his past skepticism. Hence, at the great gathering which inaugurated the National Cemetery carved from the battle-field of Gettysburg for the ashes of our brethren who there died that their country might live, though the elaborately polished oration of VOL. II.-42. 8 The first National Convention of 1864 met at Cleveland, May 31st,. pursuant to a call "To the Radical Men of the Nation." About 350 persons were present; very few or none of them in the capacity of dele-gates. Ex-Gov. William F. Johnston, of Pa., was made temporary and Gen. John Cochrane, of N. Y., *Nov. 19, 1863. permanent presiding officer. Gen. | ceptance, repudiated the sweeping John C. Fremont was here nominated policy of confiscation above indifor President, and Gen. John Coch- cated. Gen. Cochrane demurred to rane for Vice-President. The plat- such confiscation, but remitted the form adopted is as follows: question to the wisdom of Congress, "1st. That the Federal Union shall be when it should be called to act on preserved. the subject of Reconstruction. "2d. That the Constitution and laws of the United States must be observed and obeyed. 3d. That the Rebellion must be suppressed by force of arms, and without compromise. "4th. That the rights of free speech, free press, and the habeas corpus, be held inviolate, save in districts where martial law has been proclaimed. "5th. That the Rebellion has destroyed Slavery, and the Federal Constitution should be amended to prohibit its reestablishment, and to secure to all men absolute equality before the law. "6th. That integrity and economy are demanded at all times in the administration of the Government; and that in time of war the want of them is criminal. "7th. That the right of asylum, except for crime and subject to law, is a recognized principle of American liberty; that any violation of it can not be overlooked, and must not go unrebuked. "8th. That the national policy known as the Monroe doctrine' has become a re Ultimately, both candidates withdrew from the contest; convinced that the great mass of the popular vote must be divided between the Union' and the 'Democratic' tickets. The Union' National Convention assembled at Baltimore, Tuesday, June 7. Rev. Robert J. Breckinridge, D. D., of Kentucky, was made temporary and Hon. William Dennison, ex-Governor of Ohio, permanent President. All but the incontestably, persistently Rebel States were found to be represented. Hon. Preston King, of N. Y., from the Committee on Credentials, reported in favor of admitting all the delegates claiming seats, but those from South Carolina and the Conservative' Unionists from Missouri: the delegations from the Territories, from the District of Columbia, and from the States of Virginia, Tennessee, Louisiana, Florida, and Arkansas, not to be entitled to vote. Upon consideration, this report was overruled so far as to authorize-by a vote of 310 to 151-the delegates "11th. That the Constitution should be from Tennessee to vote; those from so amended that the President and Vice-Louisiana and Arkansas were likePresident shall be elected by a direct vote of the people. cognized principle; and that the establishment of an anti-republican Government on this continent by any foreign power can not be tolerated. "9th. That the gratitude and support of the nation are due to the faithful soldiers and the earnest leaders of the Union army and navy for their heroic achievements and deathless valor in defense of our imperiled country and of civil liberty. "10th. That the one-term policy for the Presidency, adopted by the people, is strengthened by the force of the existing crisis, and should be maintained by constitutional amendment. "12th. That the question of the reconstruction of the rebellious States belongs to the people, through their representatives in Congress, and not to the Executive. "13th. That the confiscation of the lands of the rebels, and their distribution among the soldiers and actual settlers, is a measure of justice." wise authorized to vote, by 307 to 167. The delegates from Nebraska, Colorado, and Nevada, were then allowed also to vote; but not those from Virginia, Florida, and the remaining territories. Mr. Henry J. Raymond, of N. Y., 'Gen. Fremont, in his letter of ac- reported the platform, which was BALTIMORE NATIONAL PLATFORM OF 1864. 659 unanimously adopted. It is as fol- the practical wisdom, the unselfish patriot lows: "Resolved, That it is the highest duty of every American citizen to maintain against all their enemies the integrity of the Union and the paramount authority of the Constitution and the laws of the United States; and that, laying aside all differences and political opinions, we pledge ourselves as Union men, animated by a common sentiment, and aiming at a common object, to do everything in our power to aid the Government in quelling by force of arms the Rebellion now raging against its authority, and in bringing to the punishment, due to their crimes, the Rebels and traitors arrayed against it. "Resolved, That we approve the determination of the Government of the United States not to compromise with Rebels, nor to offer them any terms of peace except such as may be based upon an unconditional surrender of their hostility and a return to their just allegiance to the Constitution and the laws of the United States; and that we call upon the Government to maintain this position, and to prosecute the war with the utmost possible vigor to the complete suppression of the Rebellion, in full reliance upon the self-sacrificing patriotism, the heroic valor, and the undying devotion of the American people to their country and its free institutions. "Resolved, That, as Slavery was the cause and now constitutes the strength of this Rebellion, and as it must be always and everywhere hostile to the principles of republican government, justice and the national safety demand its utter and complete extirpation from the soil of the Republic; and that we uphold and maintain the acts and proclamations by which the Government, in its own defense, has aimed a death-blow at this gigantic evil. We are in favor, furthermore, of such an amendment to the Constitution, to be made by the people in conformity with its provisions, as shall terminate and forever prohibit the existence of Slavery within the limits or the jurisdiction of the United States. "Resolved, That the thanks of the American people are due to the soldiers and sailors of the Army and the Navy who have periled their lives in defense of their country, and in vindication of the honor of the flag; that the nation owes to them some permanent recognition of their patriotism and their valor, and ample and permanent provision for those of their survivors who have received disabling and honorable wounds in the service of the country; and that the memories of those who have fallen in its defense shall be held in grateful and everlasting remembrance. "Resolved, That we approve and applaud ism and unswerving fidelity to the Constitution and the principles of American Liberty, with which Abraham Lincoln has discharged, under circumstances of unparalleled difficulty, the great duties and responsibilities of the Presidential office; that we approve and indorse, as demanded by the emergency and essential to the preservation of the nation, and as within the Constitution, the measures and acts which he has adopted to defend the nation against its open and secret foes; that we approve especially the Proclamation of Emancipation, and the employment as Union soldiers of men heretofore held in slavery; and that we have full confidence in his determination to carry out these and all other constitutional measures essential to the salvation of the country into full and complete effect. 66 Resolved, That we deem it essential to the general welfare that harmony should prevail in the National councils; and we regard as worthy of public confidence and official trust, those only who cordially indorse the principles proclaimed in these resolutions, and which should characterize the administration of the Government. "Resolved, That the Government owes to all men employed in its armies, without regard to distinction of color, the full protection of the laws of war; and that any violation of these laws or of the usages of civilized nations in the time of war by the Rebels now in arms should be made the subject of full and prompt redress. "Resolved, That the foreign immigration which in the past has added so much to the wealth and development of resources and increase of power to this nation, the asylum of the oppressed of all nations, should be fostered and encouraged by a liberal and just policy. "Resolved, That we are in favor of a speedy construction of the railroad to the Pacific coast. "Resolved, That the National faith, pledged for the redemption of the public debt, must be kept inviolate; and that for this purpose we recommend economy and rigid responsibility in the public expenditures, and a vigorous and just system of taxation; that it is the duty of every loyal State to sustain the credit and promote the use of the National Currency. "Resolved, That we approve the position taken by the Government, that the people of the United States can never regard with indifference the attempt of any European power to overthrow by force or to supplant by fraud the institutions of any republican government on the Western Continent, and that they will view with extreme jealousy, as menacing to the peace and independence |