Pine to Potomac

by E. K. Cressey

He was a tall, sturdy man, of Scotch extraction and advanced in years, which, with his history, inspired reverence. His speech was “sharp, sinewy, and defiant.” He had been reared amidst Slavery, but was for the Union. “The nation shall not be destroyed,” he said. “We shall change the Constitution if it suits us to do so. The only enduring, the only imperishable cement of all free institutions, has been the blood of traitors,” he said with thrilling effect; and added regarding Slavery, “Use all power to exterminate and extinguish it.”

“Next to the official platform itself,” said Mr. Blaine, “the speech of Doctor Breckenridge was the most inspiring utterance of the convention.” Every vote in the convention was cast for Mr. Lincoln on the first ballot, except twenty-two from Missouri, which, by instruction, were cast for General Grant.

When congress adjourned, July 4th, the great campaign opened, and into it plunged Mr. Blaine with all the fiery ardor of which his nature was competent, and patriotism prompted, and his personal friendship for Mr. Lincoln could inspire.

Gen. George B. McClellan, who had been the idol of the army for two years and a half, was nominated by the Democrats. Mr. Blaine denominates it “a canvass of extraordinary interest and critical importance.” And such indeed it was, coming as it did right in the midst of the great war, when over a million men were in arms on the continent, and the great summer and fall campaigns were to be fought. It was, indeed, a critical time for heated discussions, the grinding of opposition, the friction of parties, constant irritation, not only at home, throughout every city, village, and hamlet of the North, but throughout the army, in every camp and hospital, on the march, at picket, post, and bivouac,—for the soldiers were to vote.

It was, indeed, a perilous time. No tongue can tell, no mind can even dream, the results that would have followed Mr. Lincoln’s defeat; what reversals of history; what undoing of mighty deeds; what paralysis of moral power in the nation; what defeat of principle; what compromise with wrong; what stagnation, downfall, death. But it was not to be; it could not be. High heaven’s decree was otherwise. Incompetence was not to be rewarded. The great North, when it spoke out for all the world to hear, had no premium to place upon supposed disloyalty. The old ship of state was not to change captains in mid-ocean; he who had brought her by island, and rock, and reef, through storm and tempest, through cyclone and hurricane, safely thus far, was no Jonah, to be cast overboard now. Few people in all the world can know more clearly, feel more deeply, and act more strongly when things thoroughly arouse, than the American people, and none have more to rouse them at times. Indeed, we have the cream of all the nations, and so strike high above the average. We heard of “thinking bayonets” back there, and fife, and drum, and horn that spoke the thoughts and love of men. The triumph was complete.

There were but twenty-one votes in the electoral college, when autumn came, for McClellan, and two hundred and twelve for Mr. Lincoln. The decree of a holy Providence had been recorded with an emphasis as unmistakable as doubtless would have been the case had the Great Emancipator of Israel been subjected to a test-vote in the wilderness.

It is probable that no period of the nation’s history is so bright with victories, both civil and military, as the sixty days succeeding the convention at Chicago, Aug. 29, 1864, which nominated General McClellan for the presidency,—a period in which the labors of Mr. Blaine were indefatigable for the Union cause, and to which he referred with the emphasis of a life-time interest.

The Democrats voted the war a failure, and then placed its leading general up to within less than a year before, upon their platform. And yet, while they were declaring the war a failure, the news came that Fort Morgan was captured, and Sherman took Atlanta the day after they adjourned, and speedily came the successes of Admiral Farragut in Mobile Bay.

A proclamation of thanksgiving was issued by President Lincoln for the great Union victories within two days after they had proposed, practically, to surrender to traitors; and Secretary Seward said in a public speech, “Sherman and Farragut have knocked the planks out of the Chicago platform.”

Meanwhile Grant held Lee in a vise at Petersburgh, and Sheridan, within three weeks of Sherman’s capture of Atlanta, had dashed down the Shenandoah valley and won three brilliant victories in the battles of Winchester, Fisher’s Hill, and Cedar Creek.