The great fraud attempted in the Presidential election of 1864, wherein the misplacing of a single letter led to its detection, and may be said to have saved our nation from disruption—Involving Governor Seymour and Adjutant General Andrews—Arrest of Ferry, Donohue and Newcomb, one of the most successful kidnappings on record.
The Presidential election of 1864 was then upon us, and indeed it was most momentous. The issue was to determine the life of this Union. Mr. Lincoln was renominated, and General George B. McClellan was nominated to run against him. And quite fittingly, Horatio Seymour, who was to have been leader of secession in the North (according to my information), who had lent his whole influence towards obstruction, was made chairman of the convention that nominated McClellan.
A resolution of the convention read:
"Resolved, that this Convention does explicitly declare, as the sense of the American people, that after four years of failure to restore the Union by experiment of War * * * the public welfare demands that immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities."
In the convention Mr. Wickliffe, of Kentucky, said:
"The delegates from the West were of the opinion that circumstances may occur between noon of to-day and the 4th of March next (inauguration day) which will make it proper for the Democracy of the Country to meet in Convention again."
What could he have referred to? Solve the riddle if you can. Ponder on a "Northwestern Confederacy"; the Sons of Liberty, and the seizure of their arms; and also on Lincoln's assassination, only a few days after March 4th, 1865.
All of this leads me to what I am about to tell about that election, wherein the same influences that failed with bullets to disrupt the Union were now trying to accomplish the same purpose with ballots.
I will not charge McClellan with disloyalty, yet I can not help asking why did he lend his name to the disloyal movement? There were disloyal Northerners, but not one of them voted for Lincoln.
I do not claim that all who voted for McClellan were disloyal, but that all the disloyal, including all blockade-runners and bounty jumpers, voted for him.