“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, on the contrary, is pledged to the reëstablishment of Union without slavery.”
Senator Wade and Henry Winter Davis, who had joined in a manifesto to the people, bitterly denunciatory of the President’s course in issuing his reconstruction proclamation, entered manfully into the canvass in behalf of the Baltimore nominees. The ranks of the supporters of the Government closed steadily up, and pressed on to a success, of which they could not, with their faith in manhood and republican principles, suffer themselves to doubt.
The Opposition were not entirely in accord. It was a delicate position in which the full-blooded Peace Democrat found himself, obliged as he was to endorse a man whose only claim for the nomination was the reputation which he had made as a prominent General engaged in prosecuting an “unnatural, unholy war.” Nor did it afford much alleviation to his distress to remember that this candidate had been loudly assailed in the Convention as the first mover in the matter of arbitrary arrests, against which a sturdy outcry had long been raised by himself and friends. It was unpleasant, moreover, not to be able to forget that the same candidate had been the first to suggest a draft—or “conscription,” as your true peace man would call it: that measure so full of horrors, against which unconstitutional act such an amount of indignation had been expended.
Nor was the situation of the War Democrat, if he were indeed honestly and sincerely such, much better. He could not shut his eyes to the fact, that his candidate’s military record, whatever else it might have established, did not evince very remarkable vigor and celerity in his movements, as compared with other Generals then and since prominently before the public. Even had he blundered energetically, in that there would have been some consolation. The thought, not unpleasant to the Pendletonian, of the possibility of the General’s death during his term of office, stirred up certain other thoughts which he would rather have avoided.
However, it must be said, that, taken as a whole, the Opposition came up to the work more vigorously than might have been supposed, and carried on their campaign in as blustering and defiant a style as if victory were sure to perch upon their banners. There was the usual amount of cheap enthusiasm, valiant betting, and an unusual amount, many thought, of cheating—at least, the results of investigations at Baltimore and Washington, conducted by a military tribunal, to a casual observer appeared to squint in that direction.
Richmond papers were, for a marvel, quite unanimous in the desire that Mr. Lincoln should not be reëlected. The rebel Vice-President declared that the Chicago movement was “the only ray of light which had come from the North during the war.” European sympathizers with the rebellion, likewise, were opposed to Mr. Lincoln’s reëlection, and their organs on the Continent and in the provinces did their best to abuse him shockingly.
The State elections in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana, occurring in October, created much consternation in the opposition ranks—that in the latter State particularly, which had been set down positively as upon their side, but insisted, upon that occasion, in common with the first two in pronouncing unequivocally in favor of the Administration candidates.
The result could no longer be doubtful. Yet the most of the supporters of McClellan kept up their talk, whatever their thoughts may have been.
No opportunity for talk, even, was afforded when the results of the election of November 8th became known. Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson—whom an opposition journal, with rarest refinement and graceful courtesy, concentrating all its malignity into the intensest sentence possible, had characterized as “a rail-splitting buffoon and a boorish tailor, both from the backwoods, both growing up in uncouth ignorance”—these men of the people carried every loyal State, except Kentucky, New Jersey, and Delaware, the vote of soldiers in service having been almost universally given to them.
Of the four million, thirty-four thousand, seven hundred and eighty-nine votes cast, Mr. Lincoln received, according to official returns, two million, two hundred and twenty-three thousand, and thirty-five; a majority on the aggregate popular vote, of four hundred and eleven thousand, two hundred and eighty-one.