In the campaign that followed the Democrats flattered the President, very cleverly insisting that the Radicals' devotion to negro suffrage made them his only real opponents. On the other hand, conservative Republicans, maintaining that the convention did not commit itself to an enfranchisement of the negro, insisted that it was a unit in its support of the President's policy, and that the Democrats, acting insincerely, sought to destroy the Union party and secure exclusive control of the Executive. "They propose," said the Times, "to repeat upon him precisely the trick which they practised with such brilliant success upon John Tyler and Millard Fillmore, both of whom were taken up by the Democracy, their policy endorsed, and their supporters denounced. Both were flattered with the promise of a Democratic nomination and both were weak enough to listen and yield to the temptation. Both were used unscrupulously to betray their principles and their friends, and when the time came both were remorselessly thrown, like squeezed oranges, into the gutter. The game they are playing upon President Johnson is precisely the same. They want the offices he has in his gift, and when his friends are scattered and overthrown they will have him at their mercy. Then, the power he gives them will be used for his destruction."[280]
Horatio Seymour made two speeches. With charming candor he admitted that "signal victories have been won by generals who have made the history of our country glorious." But to him the great debt, the untaxed bonds, the inflation of the currency, the increased prices, and the absence of congressmen from the States lately in rebellion, seemed as full of peril as war itself. In his address at Seneca Falls his field of view, confined to war-burdens and rights withheld from "subjugated" States, did not include the vision that thrilled others, who saw the flag floating over every inch of American territory, now forever freed from slavery. "When we were free from debt," he said, "a man could support himself with six hours of daily toil. To-day he must work two hours longer to pay his share of the national debt.... This question of debt means less to give your families.... It reaches every boy and girl, every wife and mother.... It affects the character of our people." Prosperity also troubled him. "We see upon every hand its embarrassing effect. The merchant does not know whether he will be a loser or gainer. We see men who have been ruined without fault, and men who have made great fortunes without industry. Inquire of the person engaged in mechanical operations and he will say that labour has lost its former certain reward." He disapproved the national banking act because the new banks "have converted the debt of the country into currency and inflated prices;" he disputed the correctness of the Treasury debt statement because "it is the experience of all wars that long after their close new claims spring up, which render the expense at least fifty per cent. more than appeared by the figures;" and he condemned the national system of taxation because it "disables us to produce as cheaply at home as we can buy in the markets of the world."[281]
The brief campaign promised to be spiritless and without incident until John Van Buren, in his extended canvass for attorney-general, freely expressed his opinion of Horatio Seymour. Van Buren was not an admirer of that statesman. He had supported him with warmth in 1862, but after the development of the Governor's "passion for peace" he had little sympathy with and less respect for his administration. In the campaign of 1864 he practically ignored him, and the subsequent announcement of his defeat liberated Van Buren's tongue. "Seymour is a damned fool," he said. "He spoiled everything at Chicago, and has been the cause of most of the disasters of the Democratic party."[282] At Troy he declared that "the Democracy were suffering now from the infernal blunder at Chicago last year," and that "if Seymour and Vallandigham had been kicked out of the national convention it would have been a good thing for the party."[283]
This opinion scarcely expressed the sentiment of a majority of Democrats, but those who had preferred John A. Dix as the man of destiny held Seymour and his school of statesmen responsible for the party's deplorable condition. It had emerged from the war defeated in every distinctive principle it had promulgated, and in the absence of an available issue it now sought to atone for the past and to gain the confidence of the people by nominating candidates who were either active in the field or recognised as sincerely devoted to a vigorous prosecution of the war. To aid in this new departure Van Buren threw his old-time fire into the campaign, speaking daily and to the delight of his audiences; but he soon discovered that things were looking serious, and when the Union Republican ticket was elected by majorities ranging from 28,000 to 31,000, with two-thirds of the Assembly and all the senators save one, he recognised that the glory of Lee's surrender and the collapse of the Confederacy did not strengthen the Democratic party, although one of its candidates had led an army corps, and another, with eloquence and irresistible argument, had stirred the hearts of patriotic Americans in the darkest hours of the rebellion.[284]
CHAPTER XI
RAYMOND CHAMPIONS THE PRESIDENT
1866
When Congress convened in December, 1865, President Johnson, in a calm and carefully prepared message, advocated the admission of Southern congressmen whenever their States ratified the Thirteenth Amendment. He also recommended that negro suffrage be left to the States. On the other hand, extreme Radicals, relying upon the report of Carl Schurz, whom the President had sent South on a tour of observation, demanded suffrage and civil rights for the negro, and that congressional representation be based upon actual voters instead of population. Schurz had remained three months in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, and to him "treason, under existing circumstances, does not appear odious in the South. The people are not impressed with any sense of its criminality. And there is yet among the Southern people an utter absence of national feeling.... While accepting the abolition of slavery, they think that some species of serfdom, peonage, or other form of compulsory labour is not slavery, and may be introduced without a violation of their pledge." Schurz, therefore, recommended negro suffrage as "a condition precedent to readmission."[285]