Of course, Mr. Pendleton was applauded by his audience; and he returned to his place in the House of Representatives at Washington prepared to give expression to his views with the same plainness and boldness which marked the utterances of his colleague, Mr. Vallandigham.
On the 31st of January, 1863, he made an elaborate speech against the enlistment of negroes into the service of the United States, in which he said:
"I should be false to you, my fellow-representatives, if I did not tell you that there is an impression, growing with great rapidity, upon the minds of the people of the Northwest that they have been deliberately deceived into this war—that their patriotism and their love of country have been engaged to call them into the army, under the pretense that the war was to be for the Union and the Constitution, when, in fact, it was to be an armed crusade for the abolition of slavery. I tell you, sir, that unless this impression is speedily arrested it will become universal; it will ripen into conviction, and then it will be beyond your power to get from their broad plains another man, or from their almost exhausted coffers another dollar."
In the same speech he says:
"I said two years ago, on this floor, that armies, money, war can not restore this Union; justice, reason, peace, may. I believed it then; I have believed it at every moment since; I believe it now. No event of the past two years has for a moment shaken my faith. Peace is the first step to Union. Peace is Union. Peace unbroken would have preserved it; peace restored will, I hope, in some time reconstruct it. The only bonds which can hold these States in confederation, the only ties which can make us one people, are the soft and silken cords of affection and interest. These are woven in peace, not war; in conciliation, not coercion; in deeds of kindness and acts of friendly sympathy, not in deeds of violence and blood. The people of the Northwest were carried away by the excitement of April and May. They believed war would restore the Union. They trusted to the assurances of the president and his cabinet, and of Congress, that it should be carried on for that purpose alone. They trusted that it would be carried on under the Constitution. They were patriotic and confiding. They sent their sons, and brothers, and husbands to the army, and poured out their treasures at the feet of the administration. They feel that the war has been perverted from this end; that the Constitution has been disregarded; that abolition and arbitrary power, not Union and constitutional liberty, are the governing ideas of the administration. They are in no temper to be trifled with. They think they have been deceived. There is danger of revolution. They are longing for peace."
Need I pause to inquire who would receive encouragement, or whose spirits would be depressed, on reading these remarkable sentences? Imagine them read by the rebel camp-fires, or at the fire-sides of the rebel people. What hope, what exultation we should behold in the faces of those who heard them! On the other hand, at Union camp-fires, or by the loyal fire-sides of the North, what sorrow, what mortification, what depression such statements would surely carry wherever they were heard and believed!
The course of the peace Democracy of Ohio during the memorable contest of 1863, between Brough and Vallandigham, is too well known to require attention now. Judge Thurman was one of the committee who constructed the platform of the convention which nominated Mr. Vallandigham, and was the ablest member of the State Central Committee which had charge of the canvass in his behalf during his exile.
The key-note to that canvass was given by Mr. Vallandigham himself in a letter written from Canada, July 15, 1863. That letter contained the following:
"If this civil war is to terminate only by the subjugation or submission of the South to force and arms, the infant of to-day will not live to see the end of it. No, in another way only can it be brought to a close. Traveling a thousand miles and more, through nearly half of the Confederate States, and sojourning for a time at widely different points, I met not one man, woman, or child, who was not resolved to perish rather than yield to the pressure of arms, even in the most desperate extremity. And whatever may and must be the varying fortune of the war, in all which I recognize the hand of Providence pointing visibly to the ultimate issue of this great trial of the States and people of America, they are better prepared now every way to make good their inexorable purpose than at any period since the beginning of the struggle. These may be unwelcome truths; but they are addressed only to candid and honest men."
The assumption of the certain success of the rebellion, and that the war for the Union would assuredly fail, was the strong point of these gentlemen in favor of the election of Vallandigham and the defeat of Brough. Fortunately, the patriotic people saw the situation from another standpoint, and under the influence of different feelings and different sympathies.