CHAPTER XXXIX.
THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.
EFFORTS TOWARD PEACE—THE FRÉMONT CONVENTION—THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION—NOMINATION OF LINCOLN AND JOHNSON—THE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION—ITS DENUNCIATION OF THE WAR—NOMINATION OF McCLELLAN AND PENDLETON—FRÉMONT WITHDRAWS—CHARACTER OF THE CANVASS—THE HOPE OF THE CONFEDERATES—THE ISSUE AS POPULARLY UNDERSTOOD—ELECTION OF LINCOLN—MARYLAND ABOLISHES SLAVERY—THE HIGHEST ACHIEVEMENT OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.
The length of time that the war had continued, the drain upon the resources of both belligerents, and especially the rapidity and destructiveness of the battles in the summer of 1864, had naturally suggested the question whether there were not some possibility of a satisfactory peace without further fighting. In each section there was a party, or at least there were people, who believed that such a peace was possible; and the loud expression of this opinion led to several efforts at negotiation, as it also shaped the policy of a great political party. In July Col. James F. Jacques, of the Seventy-third Illinois Regiment, accompanied by James R. Gillmore (known in literature by his delineations of Southern life just before the war, under the pen-name of "Edmund Kirke"), went to Richmond under flag of truce, where they were admitted to a long interview with the chief officers of the Confederate Government. They had gone with Mr. Lincoln's informal sanction, but had no definite terms to offer; and if they had, Mr. Davis's remarks show that it would have been in vain. At the close he said: "Say to Mr. Lincoln, from me, that I shall at any time be pleased to receive proposals for peace on the basis of our independence. It will be useless to approach me with any other." In that same month of July, three Southerners of some note created a great sensation by a conference at Niagara Falls, with Horace Greeley, on the subject of peace; but the affair came to nothing.
The first Presidential convention of the year met at Cleveland, O., on the last day of May, in response to a call addressed "to the radical men of the nation." The platform declared, among other things, "that the rebellion must be suppressed by force of arms, and without compromise; that the rebellion has destroyed slavery, and the Federal Constitution should be amended to prohibit its reëstablishment; that the question of the reconstruction of the rebellious States belongs to the people, through their representatives in Congress, and not to the Executive; and that confiscation of the lands of the rebels, and their distribution among the soldiers and actual settlers, is a measure of justice." Gen. John C. Frémont was nominated for the Presidency, and Gen. John Cochrane for the Vice-Presidency. Though this was the least of the conventions, yet in all the points here quoted from its platform, with the exception of the last, it indicated the policy that was ultimately pursued by the nation; and it is a singular fact that the exceptional plank (confiscation) was objected to by both candidates in their letters of acceptance.
The Republican National Convention met in Baltimore on the 7th of June. It dropped the word "Republican" for the time being, and simply called itself a Union Convention, to accommodate the war Democrats, who were now acting with the Republican party. Not only the free States were represented, but some that had been claimed by the Confederacy and had been partially or wholly recovered from it, including Tennessee, Louisiana, and Arkansas. The platform, reported by Henry J. Raymond, one of the ablest of American journalists, was probably written largely, if not entirely, by him. Its most significant passages were these:
"That we approve the determination of the Government of the United States not to compromise with the 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 full allegiance to the Constitution and the laws of the United States.
"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.... 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 of the jurisdiction of the United States.
"That we approve and applaud the practical wisdom, the unselfish patriotism, 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.
"That the National faith, pledged for the redemption of the public debt, must be kept inviolate; that it is the duty of every loyal State to sustain the credit and promote the use of the National currency."
On the first ballot, all the delegations voted for Mr. Lincoln, except that from Missouri, whose vote was given to General Grant. According to the official report of the proceedings, the first ballot for a candidate for Vice-President resulted in two hundred votes for Andrew Johnson, one hundred and eight for Daniel S. Dickinson (a war Democrat), one hundred and fifty for Hannibal Hamlin (who then held the office), and fifty-nine scattering; several delegations changed their votes to Johnson, and he was almost unanimously nominated. But according to the testimony of one who was on the floor as a delegate, the nomination of Mr. Lincoln was immediately followed by an outburst of cheering, yelling, and the wildest excitement, and in the confusion and uproar it was declared that Mr. Johnson had somehow been nominated. He had been a poor white in the South, and a life-long Democrat, but had done some brave things in withstanding secession, and some bitter things in thwarting the slave-holders. Mr. Lincoln had appointed him military governor of Tennessee in March, 1862, and he was still acting in that capacity. Whatever may have been the wisdom of nominating a war Democrat when the war was so near its close, the Republican party found reason in the next four years to repent its choice of Andrew Johnson as bitterly as its predecessor, the Whig party, had repented the choice of John Tyler, a life-long Democrat, in 1840. But the nominating conventions that have sufficiently considered the contingent importance of the Vice-Presidency have been exceedingly few.
The Democratic National Convention, called to meet in Chicago, did not convene till nearly three months after the Republican, August 29. In the meantime, the hard fighting around Richmond, and on Sherman's road to Atlanta, the fruits of which were not yet evident, the appearance of Confederate forces at the gates of Washington, and the delay of Sheridan's movements in the Shenandoah Valley, had produced a more gloomy feeling than had been experienced before since the war began; and this feeling, as was to be expected, operated in favor of whatever opposed the National administration. The suffering and the discontented are always prone to cry out for a change, without defining what sort of change they want, or considering what any change is likely to bring. Seizing upon this advantage, the Democratic convention made a very clear and bold issue with the Republican. It was presided over by Horatio Seymour, then governor of New York, while Clement L. Vallandigham was a member of the committee on resolutions, and is supposed to have written the most significant of them. The platform presented these propositions:
"That this Convention does explicitly 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 pretence of military necessity of a 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 to an ultimate convention of all 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.
"That the aim and object of the Democratic party is to preserve the Federal Union and the rights of the States unimpaired."
On the first ballot, Gen. George B. McClellan was nominated for President, receiving two hundred and two and a half votes, against twenty-three and a half for Thomas H. Seymour, of Connecticut. George H. Pendleton, of Ohio, an ultra-peace man, was nominated for Vice-President. General McClellan, in his letter of acceptance, virtually set aside a portion of the platform, and said: "The reëstablishment of the Union, in all its integrity, is and must continue to be the indispensable condition in any settlement.... No peace can be permanent without Union."
The declaration that the war had been a failure received a crushing comment the day after the convention adjourned; for on that day Sherman's army marched into Atlanta. And this success was followed by others—notably Sheridan's brilliant movements in the valley—all of which, when heralded in the Republican journals, were accompanied by the quotation from the Democratic platform declaring the war a failure. General Frémont withdrew from the contest in September, saying in his published letter:
"The policy of the Democratic party signifies either separation or reëstablishment with slavery. The Chicago platform is simply separation; General McClellan's letter of acceptance is reëstablishment with slavery. The Republican candidate is, on the contrary, pledged to the reëstablishment of the Union without slavery; and, however hesitating his policy may be, the pressure of his party will, we may hope, force him to it. Between these issues, I think no man of the Liberal party can remain in doubt; and I believe I am consistent with my antecedents and my principles in withdrawing—not to aid in the triumph of Mr. Lincoln, but to do my part toward preventing the election of the Democratic candidate."
The canvass was exceedingly bitter, especially in the abuse heaped upon Mr. Lincoln. The undignified and disgraceful epithets that were applied to him by journals of high standing were not such as would make any American proud of his country. This course had its culmination in the publication of certain ghastly pictures of returned prisoners, to show what Lincoln—the usurper, despot, and tyrant, as they freely called him—was doing by not disregarding "nigger soldiers" and continuing the exchange of whites. They constantly repeated the assertion with which they had greeted the Emancipation Proclamation, that the war had been wickedly changed from one for the preservation of the Union into one for the abolition of slavery. On the other hand, the Republican press freely accused the Democratic party of desiring the success of secession—which was not true. Aside from all patriotic considerations, that party had the strongest reasons for wishing to perpetuate the Union, because without the Southern vote it was in a minority. There were many members of that party, however, who, while they by no means desired the destruction of the Union, believed it was inevitable, and thought the sooner the necessity was acknowledged the better.
One of the most effective arguments of the canvass was furnished in a condensed form by one of Mr. Lincoln's famous little stories, and in that form was repeated thousands of times. Answering the address of a delegation of the Union League, a day or two after his nomination, he said: "I have not permitted myself to conclude that I am the best man in the country; but I am reminded in this connection of the story of an old Dutch farmer, who once remarked to a companion that 'it was not best to swap horses when crossing streams.'" There was singing in the canvass, too, and some of the songs rendered by glee-clubs every evening before large political meetings were very effective. One of the most notable had been written in response to the President's call for three hundred thousand volunteers, and bore the refrain,
"We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more!"
Much of the popular parlor music of the time consisted of songs relating to the great struggle, prominent among which were "Tenting on the Old Camp-Ground" and "When this Cruel War is over." At the South, as at the North, there had been an outburst of lyric enthusiasm at the beginning of the war, which found expression in "My Maryland," the "Bonnie Blue Flag," and "Dixie;" but the spirit that inspires such poems seems to have died out there after the war had been in progress two or three years, when its terrible privations were increasing every day.
The Confederates were now looking eagerly for the result of the Presidential election as a possible solution of the great question in their favor. John B. Jones, who was a clerk in the Confederate War Department, recorded in his published diary that Mr. Vallandigham, when banished to the South, had assured the officers of the Government at Richmond that "if we [the Confederates] can only hold out this year, the peace party of the North would sweep the Lincoln dynasty out of political existence." This was now their strongest hope; and it was common talk across the lines, between the pickets, that in the event of McClellan's election the Confederates expected a speedy cessation of hostilities and ultimately their independence. And such is the unaccountable elasticity of the human mind, in dealing with facts and principles, that a large number of the bravest and most devoted soldiers in the National service, knowing this, were preparing to cast their ballots in a way to give the utmost assistance and encouragement to the very enemy into the muzzles of whose guns they were looking.
Whether General Frémont's arraignment of the Administration as "politically, militarily, and financially a failure" was just or unjust, whether it was true or not that the triumph of General McClellan and his party would result in a final disruption of the country, before the canvass was over the land had settled down to the belief that the only way to secure the continuance of the war to a successful termination was to reëlect Mr. Lincoln, while a vote for General McClellan meant something else—nobody knew exactly what. The solemnity of the occasion appeared to be universally appreciated, and though a heavy vote was polled the election was the quietest that had ever been held. The citizens were dealing with a question that, in most of its aspects at least, they by this time thoroughly understood. When they sprang to arms in 1861, they did not know what war was; but now they had had three years of constant schooling to its burdens and its horrors. They had seen regiment after regiment march away to the music of drum and fife, with a thousand men in the ranks, and come back at the end of two years' service with perhaps two hundred bronzed veterans to be mustered out. They had read in their newspapers, after every great battle, the long lists of killed and wounded, which the telegraph was quick to report. Every city had its fair for the relief of the widows and orphans, every hamlet its two or three crippled soldiers hobbling about in their faded blue overcoats, almost every house its incurable sorrow. They had seen the wheel turning in the provost-marshal's office, in places where volunteering was not sufficiently rapid, and knew that their own names might be the next to be drawn for service at the front. They knew how many graves there were at Gettysburg, how many at Shiloh, how many at Stone River; they knew what was to be seen in the hospitals of every Northern city, and something of the unspeakable horrors of captivity. They saw the price of gold go beyond two hundred, while the Government was spending between two and three millions of dollars a day, piling up a national debt in undreamed-of proportions, for which they were already heavily taxed, and which must some day be paid in solid coin.
Seeing and understanding all this, and having the privilege of a secret and unquestioned ballot, they quietly walked up to the polls and voted for a vigorous prosecution of the war, reëlecting Mr. Lincoln by a popular majority of more than four hundred thousand, and giving him the votes of all the States excepting Delaware, New Jersey, and Kentucky—two hundred and twelve against twenty-one. The vote of the soldiers in the field, so far as it could be counted separately (for in some States it was sent home sealed, and mingled with the other ballots in the boxes), showed about one hundred and nineteen thousand for Lincoln, and about thirty-four thousand for McClellan. The soldiers confined in some of the Confederate prisons held an election at the suggestion of their keepers, who were exceedingly curious to see how the prisoners would vote. Sergeant Robert H. Kellogg tells us that in the stockade at Florence, S. C., where he was confined, two empty bags were hung up, and the prisoners were furnished with black and white beans and marched past in single file, each depositing a black bean for Lincoln, or a white one for McClellan. The result was in the proportion of two and a half for Lincoln to one for McClellan. In the prison at Millen, Ga., Sergeant W. Goodyear tells us, the vote was three thousand and fourteen for Lincoln, and one thousand and fifty for McClellan. In Congress, the number of Republican members was increased from one hundred and six to one hundred and forty-three, and the number of Democratic members reduced from seventy-seven to forty-one.
Meanwhile, in October, Maryland had adopted a new constitution, in which slavery was prohibited. In answer to serenades after the election, Mr. Lincoln made some of his best impromptu speeches, saying in one: "While I am duly sensible to the high compliment of a reëlection, and duly grateful, as I trust, to Almighty God for having directed my countrymen to a right conclusion, as I think, for their good, it adds nothing to my satisfaction that any other man may be disappointed by the result. May I ask those who have not differed with me to join with me in this same spirit toward those who have?"
If there is any one act of the American people that above all others, in the sober pages of history, reflects credit upon them for correct judgment, determined purpose, courage in present difficulties, and care for future interests, that act, it seems to me, was the reëlection of President Lincoln.