'Sir,' said the President, 'the slightest knowledge of arithmetic will prove to any man that the rebel armies cannot be destroyed with Democratic strategy. It would sacrifice all the white men of the North to do it. There are now in the service of the United States near two hundred thousand ablebodied colored men, most of them under arms, defending and acquiring Union territory. The Democratic strategy demands that these forces be disbanded, and that the masters be conciliated by restoring them to slavery. The black men who now assist Union prisoners to escape, they are to be converted into our enemies in the vain hope of gaining the good will of their masters. We shall have to fight two nations instead of one.
'You cannot conciliate the South if you guarantee to them ultimate success; and the experience of the present war proves their success is inevitable if you fling the compulsory labor of millions of black men into their side of the scale. Will you give our enemies such military advantages as insure success, and then depend on coaxing, flattery, and concession to get them back into the Union? Abandon all the posts now garrisoned by black men, take two hundred thousand men from our side and put them in the battle field or corn field against us, and we would be compelled to abandon the war in three weeks.
'We have to hold territory in inclement and sickly places; where are the Democrats to do this? It was a free fight, and the field was open to the war Democrats to put down this rebellion by fighting against both master and slave, long before the present policy was inaugurated.
'There have been men base enough to propose to me to return to slavery the black warriors of Port Hudson and Olustee, and thus win the respect of the masters they fought. Should I do so, I should deserve to be damned in time and eternity. Come what will, I will keep my faith with friend and foe. My enemies pretend I am now carrying on this war for the sole purpose of abolition. So long as I am President, it shall be carried on for the sole purpose of restoring the Union. But no human power can subdue this rebellion without the use of the emancipation policy, and every other policy calculated to weaken the moral and physical forces of the rebellion.
'Freedom has given us two hundred thousand men raised on Southern soil. It will give us more yet. Just so much it has subtracted from the enemy; and instead of alienating the South, there are now evidences of a fraternal feeling growing up between our men and the rank and file of the rebel soldiers. Let my enemies prove to the country that the destruction of slavery is not necessary to a restoration of the Union. I will abide the issue.'
Surely these are words of exceeding good sense. They are full of a feeling of the speaker's responsibility to God and his country; and the man who cares not for his responsibility to God, may well be distrusted by his country. Is he who speaks these words of patriotism a tyrant and usurper? Are not the words convincing proof that President Lincoln is honest and faithful and capable? And if he thus meets those three requirements of Jefferson's comprehensive formula, let us not refuse the language of the platform: 'That we have full confidence in his determination to carry these and all other constitutional measures essential to the salvation of the country into full and complete effect.'
The remaining six resolutions of this platform deserve the general remark, that they declare with no uncertain sound the views of the Baltimore Convention in reference to vital questions of public policy; whereas, the Chicago Convention has not even alluded to those questions. That in this hour of the country's crisis, in this life struggle of the nation with foes both open and secret, there should be 'harmony in the national councils;' that men once clothed in the uniform of United States soldiers become entitled to 'the full protection of the laws of war,' as forming part of the nation's defenders when those who ought to be its defenders have joined in an unholy sedition to destroy its life; that 'foreign immigration,' deserves especial encouragement at a time when the demands of the army leave the places of home labor without adequate means of refilling them; that a Pacific Railroad, uniting the extreme Western portion of the Union with all the other sections, and thus bringing within nearer reach of our California and Oregon countrymen all the advantages and facilities of the Government, while at the same time binding more closely the ties that make us one people with the West equally with the South; and that the nation's faith with all its creditors must be strictly kept, be the cost what it may; all these are duties which the terrible emergency of the hour only makes more imperative and exacting of fulfilment than ever before.
The eleventh and last resolution commits the country anew to the Monroe Doctrine. In view of the great crime that is enacting in Mexico, where a foreign power has assumed to change the Government of that afflicted country at its own arbitrary will, the declaration that we have not abandoned the doctrine is appropriate and necessary. It is a warning that our eyes are not closed to the schemes on foot for the suppression of republican government on this continent. While our present necessity compels us, as of course, to act with great circumspection, yet it would be unbecoming our dignity to quietly ignore the spoliation of Mexico. It is often said that President Lincoln, in his letter accepting the Baltimore nomination, has repudiated this resolution. These are his words:
'While the resolution in regard to the supplanting of republican government upon the Western Continent is fully concurred in, there might be misunderstanding were I not to say that the position of the Government in relation to the action of France in Mexico, as assumed through the State Department, and indorsed by the convention, among the measures and acts of the Executive, will be faithfully maintained so long as the state of facts shall leave that position pertinent and applicable.'
It is not fair to say that this is a repudiation of the resolution, or of the Monroe Doctrine, until it is first shown that the Government 'through the State Department,' has already repudiated the doctrine. The time for the enforcement of that doctrine has not yet come, and this seems to be the position that has been assumed by the Government. It certainly is the position of common sense and patriotism.