Horatio Seymourdid not become a member of the Union League, and his inaugural message of January 7 gave no indication of a change of heart. He spoke of his predecessor as having "shown high capacity" in the performance of his duties; he insisted that "we must emulate the conduct of our fathers, and show obedience to constituted authorities, and respect for legal and constitutional obligations;" he demanded economy and integrity; and he affirmed that "under no circumstances can the division of the Union be conceded. We will put forth every exertion of power; we will use every policy of conciliation; we will hold out every inducement to the people of the South, consistent with honour, to return to their allegiance; we will guarantee them every right, every consideration demanded by the Constitution, and by that fraternal regard which must prevail in a common country; but we can never voluntarily consent to the breaking up of the Union of these States, or the destruction of the Constitution." With his usual severity he opposed arbitrary arrests, deemed martial law destructive of the rights of States, and declared that the abolition of slavery for the purpose of restoring the Union would convert the government into a military despotism.
"It has been assumed," he said, "that this war will end in the ascendency of the views of one or the other of the extremes in our country. Neither will prevail. This is the significance of the late elections. The determination of the great Central and Western States is to defend the rights of the States, the rights of individuals, and to restore our Unionas it was. We must not wear out the lives of our soldiers by a war to carry out vague theories. The policy of subjugation and extermination means not only the destruction of the lives and property of the South, but also the waste of the blood and treasure of the North. There is but one way to save us from demoralisation, discord, and repudiation. No section must be disorganised. All must be made to feel that the mighty efforts we are making to save our Union are stimulated by a purpose to restore peace and prosperity in every section. If it is true that slavery must be abolished by force; that the South must be held in military subjection; that four millions of negroes must be under the management of authorities at Washington at the public expense; then, indeed, we must endure the waste of our armies, further drains upon our population, and still greater burdens of debt. We must convert our government into a military despotism. The mischievous opinion that in this contest the North must subjugate and destroy the South to save our Union has weakened the hopes of our citizens at home, and destroyed confidence in our success abroad."[127]
Although this message failed to recognise the difference between a peaceable South in the Union and a rebellious South attempting to destroy the Union, it is not easy, perhaps, to comprehend how the acknowledged leader of the opposition, holding such views and relying for support upon the peace sentiment of the country, could have said much less. Yet the feeling must possess the student of history that a consummate politician, possessing Seymour's ability and popularity, might easily have divided with Lincoln the honor of crushing the rebellion and thus have become his successor. The President recognized this opportunity, saying to Weed that the "Governor has greater power just now for good than any other man in the country. He can wheel the Democratic party into line, put down rebellion, and preserve the government. Tell him for me that if he will render this service for his country, I shall cheerfully makeway for him as my successor."[128]Seymour's reply, if he made one, is not of record, but Lincoln's message would scarcely appeal to one who disbelieved in the North's ability to subjugate the South. Later in the spring the President, unwilling to give the Governor up, wrote him a characteristic note. "You and I," said he, "are, substantially, strangers, and I write this chiefly that we may become better acquainted. As to maintaining the nation's life and integrity, I assume and believe there cannot be a difference of purpose between you and me. If we should differ as to the means it is important that such difference should be as small as possible; that it should not be enhanced by unjust suspicions on one side or the other. In the performance of my duty the coöperation of your State, as that of others, is needed,—in fact, is indispensable. This alone is a sufficient reason why I should wish to be at a good understanding with you. Please write me at least as long a letter as this, of course saying in it just what you think fit."[129]
It is difficult to fathom the impression made upon Seymour by this letter. The more cultivated Democrats about him entertained the belief that Lincoln, somewhat uncouth and grotesque, was a weak though well-meaning man, and the Governor doubtless held a similar opinion. Moreover, he believed that the President, alarmed by the existence of a conspiracy of prominent Republicans to force him from the White House, sought to establish friendly relations that he might have an anchor to windward.[130]One can imagine the Governor, as the letter lingered in his hand, smiling superciliously and wondering what manner of man this Illinoisan is, who could say to a stranger what a little boy frequently puts in his missive, "Please write me at least as long a letter as this." At all events, he treated the President very cavalierly.[131]On April 14, after delaying three weeks, hewrote a cold and guarded reply, promising to address him again after the Legislature adjourned. "In the meanwhile," he concluded, "I assure you that no political resentments, or no personal objects, will turn me aside from the pathway I have marked out for myself. I intend to show to those charged with the administration of public affairs a due deference and respect, and to yield to them a just and generous support in all measures they may adopt within the scope of their constitutional powers. For the preservation of this Union I am ready to make any sacrifice of interest, passion, or prejudice."[132]
Seymour never wrote the promised letter. His inaugural expressed his honest convictions. He wanted no relations with a President who seemed to prefer the abolition of slavery and the use of arbitrary methods. A few days later, in vetoing a measure authorising soldiers to vote while absent in the army, he again showed his personal antipathy, charging the President with rewarding officers of high rank for improperly interfering in State elections, while subordinate officers were degraded "for the fair exercise of their political rights at their own homes."[133]John Hay did not err in saying "there could be no intimate understanding between two such men."[134]
General Burnside's arrest of Clement L. Vallandigham of Ohio (May, 1863) increased Seymour's aversion to the President. Burnside's act lacked authority of law as well as the excuse of good judgment, and although the President's change of sentence from imprisonment in Fort Warren to banishment to the Southern Confederacy gave the proceeding a humorous turn, the ugly fact remained that a citizen,in the dead of night, with haste, and upon the evidence of disguised and partisan informers, had been rudely deprived of liberty without due process of law. Thoughtful men who reverenced the safeguard known to civil judicial proceedings were appalled. The Republican press of New York thought it indefensible, while the opposition, with unprecedented bitterness, again assailed the Administration. In a moment the whole North was in a turmoil. Everywhere mass meetings, intemperate speeches, and threats of violence inflamed the people. The basest elements in New York City, controlling a public meeting called to condemn the "outrage," indicated how easily a reign of riot and bloodshed might be provoked. To an assembly held in Albany on May 16, at which Erastus Corning presided, Seymour addressed a letter deploring the unfortunate event as a dishonour brought upon the country by an utter disregard of the principles of civil liberty. "It is a fearful thing," he said, "to increase the danger which now overhangs us, by treating the law, the judiciary, and the authorities of States with contempt. If this proceeding is approved by the government and sanctioned by the people, it is not merely a step toward revolution, it is revolution; it will not only lead to military despotism, it establishes military despotism. In this respect it must be accepted, or in this respect it must be rejected. If it is upheld our liberties are overthrown." Then he grew bolder. "The people of this country now wait with the deepest anxiety the decision of the Administration upon these acts. Having given it a generous support in the conduct of the war, we now pause to see what kind of government it is for which we are asked to pour out our blood and our treasure. The action of the Administration will determine, in the minds of more than one-half the people of the loyal States, whether this war is waged to put down rebellion in the South or to destroy free institutions at the North."[135]
At great length Lincoln replied to the resolutions forwarded by Corning. "In my own discretion," wrote thePresident, "I do not know whether I would have ordered the arrest of Mr. Vallandigham.... I was slow to adopt the strong measures which by degrees I have been forced to regard as being within the exceptions of the Constitution and as indispensable to the public safety.... I think the time not unlikely to come when I shall be blamed for having made too few arrests rather than too many.... Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert? This is none the less injurious when effected by getting a father, a brother, or friend into a public meeting and then working upon his feelings till he is persuaded to write the soldier boy that he is fighting in a bad cause for a wicked administration and contemptible government, too weak to arrest and punish him if he shall desert."[136]This argument, undoubtedly the strongest that could be made in justification, found great favour with his party, but the danger Seymour apprehended lay in the precedent. "Wicked men ambitious of power, with hatred of liberty and contempt of law," said Justice Davis of the United States Supreme Court, in deciding a case of similar character, "may fill the place once occupied by Washington and Lincoln, and if this right [of military arrest] is conceded, and the calamities of war again befall us, the dangers to human liberty are frightful to contemplate."[137]
Much as Seymour resented the arrest of Vallandigham, he did not allow the incident to interfere with his official action, and to the Secretary of War's call for aid when General Lee began his midsummer invasion of Pennsylvania, he responded promptly: "I will spare no effort to send you troops at once," and true to his message he forwarded nineteen regiments, armed and equipped for field service, whose arrival brought confidence.[138]But governed by the sinister reason that influenced him earlier in theyear, he refused to acknowledge the President's letter of thanks, preferring to express his opinion of Administration methods unhindered by the exchange of courtesies. This he did in a Fourth of July address, delivered at the Academy of Music in New York City, in which he pleaded, not passionately, not with the acrimony that ordinarily characterised his speeches, but humbly, as if asking a despotic conqueror to return the rights and liberty of which the people had been robbed. "We only ask freedom of speech,—the right to exercise all the franchises conferred by the Constitution upon an American. Can you safely deny us these things?" Mingled also with pathetic appeals were joyless pictures of the ravages of war, and cheerless glimpses into the future of a Republic with its bulwarks of liberty torn away. "We stand to-day," he continued, "amid new made graves; we stand to-day in a land filled with mourning, and our soil is saturated with the blood of the fiercest conflict of which history gives us an account. We can, if we will, avert all these disasters and evoke a blessing. If we will do what? Hold that Constitution, and liberties, and laws are suspended? Will that restore them? Or shall we do as our fathers did under circumstances of like trial, when they battled against the powers of a crown? Did they say that liberty was suspended? Did they say that men might be deprived of the right of trial by jury? Did they say that men might be torn from their homes by midnight intruders?... If you would save your country and your liberties, begin at the hearth-stone; begin in your family circle; declare that their rights shall be held sacred; and having once proclaimed your own rights, claim for your own State that jurisdiction and that government which we, better than all others, can exercise for ourselves, for we best know our own interests."[139]
One week later, on Saturday, July 11, the draft began inthe Ninth Congressional District of New York, a portion of the city settled by labourers, largely of foreign birth. These people, repeating the information gained in neighbourhood discussions, violently denounced the Conscription Act as illegal, claiming that the privilege of buying an exemption on payment of $300 put "the rich man's money against the poor man's blood." City authorities apprehended trouble and State officials were notified of the threatened danger, but only the police held themselves in readiness. The Federal Government, in the absence of a request from the Governor, very properly declined to make an exception in the application of the law in New York on the mere assumption that violence would occur. Besides, all available troops, including most of the militia regiments, had been sent to Pennsylvania, and to withdraw them would weaken the Federal lines about Gettysburg.
The disturbance began at the corner of Forty-sixth Street and Third Avenue, the rioters destroying the building in which the provost-marshal was conducting the draft. By this time the mob, having grown into an army, began to sack and murder. Prejudice against negroes sent the rioters into hotels and restaurants after the waiters, some of whom were beaten to death, while others, hanged on trees and lamp-posts, were burned while dying. The coloured orphan asylum, fortunately after its inmates had escaped, likewise became fuel for the flames. The police were practically powerless. Street cars and omnibuses ceased to run, shopkeepers barred their doors, workmen dropped their tools, teamsters put up their horses, and for three days all business was stopped. In the meantime Federal and State authorities coöperated to restore order. Governor Seymour, having hastened from Long Branch, addressed a throng of men and boys from the steps of the City Hall, calling them "friends," and pleadingwith them to desist. He also issued two proclamations, declaring the city in a state of insurrection, and commanding all people to obey the laws and the legal authorities. Finally, the militia regiments from Pennsylvania began to arrive, and cannon and howitzers raked the streets. These quieting influences, coupled with the publication of an official notice that the draft had been suspended, put an end to the most exciting experience of any Northern community during the war.
After the excitement theTribuneasserted that the riot resulted from a widespread treasonable conspiracy,[140]and a letter, addressed to the President, related the alleged confession of a well-known politician, who, overcome with remorse, had revealed to the editors of theTribunethe complicity of Seymour. Lincoln placed no reliance in the story, "for which," says Hay, "there was no foundation in fact;"[141]but Seymour's speech "intimated," says the Lincoln historian, "that the draft justified the riot, and that if the rioters would cease their violence the draft should be stopped."[142]James B. Fry, provost-marshal general, substantially endorsed this view. "While the riot was going on," he says, "Governor Seymour insisted on Colonel Nugent announcing a suspension of the draft. The draft had already been stopped by violence. The announcement was urged by the Governor, no doubt, because he thought it would allay the excitement; but it was, under the circumstances, making a concession to the mob, and endangering the successful enforcement of the law of the land."[143]
Of the four reports of Seymour's speech, published the morning after its delivery, no two are alike.[144]Three, however, concur in his use of the word "friends,"[145]and allagree that he spoke of trying to secure a postponement of the draft that justice might be done. It was a delicate position in which he placed himself, and one that ever after gave him and his supporters much embarrassment and cause for many apologies. Nevertheless, his action in nowise impugned his patriotism. Assuming the riot had its inception in the belief which he himself entertained, that the draft was illegal and unjust, he sought by personal appeal to stay the destruction of life and property, and if anyone in authority at that time had influence with the rioters and their sympathisers it was Horatio Seymour, who probably accomplished less than he hoped to.
Seymour's views in relation to the draft first appeared in August. While the Federal authorities prepared the enrolment in June, the Governor, although his coöperation was sought, "gave no assistance," says Fry. "In fact, so far as the government officers engaged in the enrolment could learn, he gave the subject no attention."[146]On the day the drawing began, however, he became apprehensive of trouble and sent his adjutant to Washington to secure a suspension of the draft, but the records do not reveal the reasons presented by that officer. Certainly no complaint was made as to the correctness of the enrolment or the assignment of quotas.[147]Nevertheless, his delay taught him a lesson, and when the Federal authorities notified him later that the drawing would be resumed in August, he lost no time in beginning the now historic correspondence with the President. His letter of August 3 asked that the suspension of the draft be continued to enable the State officials to correct the enrolment, and to give the United States Supreme Court opportunity to pass upon the constitutionality of the Conscription Act, suggesting the hope that in the meantime New York's quota might be filled by volunteers. "It is believed by at least one-half of the people of the loyal States," he wrote, "that the Conscription Act, which they are called upon to obey, is in itself a violation of the supreme constitutional law.... In the minds of the American people the duty of obedience and the rights to protection are inseparable. If it is, therefore, proposed on the one hand to exact obedience at the point of the bayonet, and, upon the other hand, to shut off, by military power, all approach to our judicial tribunals, we have reason to fear the most ruinous results."[148]
This letter was neither gracious nor candid. While dealing in columns of figures to prove the inaccuracy of the enrolment, it concealed the fact that, although urged to coöperate with the enrolling officers, he had ignored their invitation to verify the enrolment. In menacing tones, too, he intimated "the consequences of a violent, harsh policy, before the constitutionality of the Act is tested." It was evident he had given much thought to the question, but his prolixity betrayed the feeling of an official who, conscious of having erred in doing nothing in anticipation of riot and bloodshed, wished now to make a big showing of duty performed.
Lincoln's reply not only emphasised the difference between the political aptitude of himself and Seymour, but marked him as the more magnanimous and far the greater man. The President raised no issue as to enrolments, wasted no arguments over columns of figures, and referred in nowise to the past. He briefly outlined a method of verification which quickly established,—what might have been shown in June had the Governor given the matter attention,—an excess of 13,000 men enrolled in the Brooklyn and New York districts. Although he would be glad, said Lincoln, to facilitate a decision of the Court and abide by it,[149]he declined longer to delay the draft "because time is too important.... We are contending with an enemy who, as I understand, drives every able-bodied man he can reach into his ranks, very much as a butcher drives bullocks into a slaughter-pen. No time is wasted, no argument is used. This produces an army which will soon turn upon our now victorious soldiers already in the field, if they are not sustained by recruits as they should be."[150]
When the drawing was resumed on August 19, 10,000 infantry and three batteries of artillery, picked troops from the Army of the Potomac, beside a division of the State National Guard, backed the Governor's proclamation counselling submission to the execution of the law. In this presence the draft proceeded peacefully.
Meanwhile, the loyal millions of the North, longing for victory in the field, found their prayers answered. Gettysburg and Vicksburg had pierced the spirit of the South, Cumberland Gap had liberated East Tennessee, Fort Smith and Little Rock supplied a firm footing for the army beyond the Mississippi, and the surrender of Port Hudson permitted Federal gunboats to pass unvexed to the sea. The rift in the war cloud had, indeed, let in a flood of sunlight, and, while it lasted, gave fresh courage and larger faith.
Thevictories of Vicksburg and Gettysburg turned the Republican Union convention, held at Syracuse on September 2, into a meeting of rejoicing. Weed did not attend, but the Conservatives, led by Henry J. Raymond and Edwin D. Morgan, boldly talked of its control. Ward Hunt became temporary chairman. Hunt was a lawyer whom politics did not attract. Since his unsuccessful effort to become a United States senator in 1857 he had turned aside from his profession only when necessary to strengthen the cause of the Union. At such times he shone as the representative of a wise patriotism. He did not belong in the class of attractive platform speakers, nor possess the weaknesses of blind followers of party chieftains. His power rested upon the strength of his character as a well-poised student of affairs. What he believed came forcefully from a mind that formed its own judgments, and whether his words gave discomfort to the little souls that governed caucuses, or to the great journalists that sought to force their own policies, he was in no wise disturbed.
Upon taking the chair Hunt began his remarks in the tone of one who felt more than he desired to express, but as the mention of Gettysburg and Vicksburg revealed the unbounded enthusiasm of the men before him, the optimism that characterised the people's belief in the summer of 1863 quickly took possession of him, and he coupled with the declaration that the rebel armies were nearly destroyed, the opinion that peace was near at hand. For the moment the party seemed solidly united. But when the echoes of longcontinued cheering had subsided the bitterness of faction flashed out with increased intensity. To the Radicals, Raymond's suggestion of Edwin D. Morgan for permanent chairman was as gall and wormwood, and his talk of an entire new ticket most alarming. However, George Opdyke and Horace Greeley, the Radical leaders, chastened by the defeat of Wadsworth and the election of Morgan to the Senate, did not now forget the value of discretion. Hunt's selection as temporary chairman had been a concession, and in the choice of a permanent presiding officer, although absolutely unyielding in their hostility to Morgan, they graciously accepted Abraham Wakeman, an apostle of the conservative school.[151]Their attitude toward Morgan, however, cost Opdyke a place on the State Committee, and for a time threatened to exclude the Radicals from recognition upon the ticket.
The refusal of men to accept nominations greatly embarrassed Conservatives in harvesting their victory. Thomas W. Olcott of Albany was nominated for comptroller in place of Lucius Robinson. Of all the distinguished men who had filled that office none exhibited a more inflexible firmness than Robinson in holding the public purse strings. He was honest by nature and by practice. Neither threats nor ingenious devices disturbed him, but with a fidelity as remarkable as it was rare he pushed aside the emissaries of extravagance and corruption as readily as a plow turns under the sod. After two years of such methods, however, the representatives of a wide-open treasury noisily demanded a change. But Olcott, a financier of wide repute, wisely declined to be used for such a purpose, and Robinson was accepted.
Daniel S. Dickinson, after the inconsequential treatment accorded him in the recent contest for United States senator, suddenly discovered that domestic reasons disabled him from serving longer as attorney-general. Then James T. Brady declined, although tendered the nomination without adissenting voice. This reduced the convention, in its search for a conspicuous War Democrat, to the choice of John Cochrane, the well-known orator who had left the army in the preceding February. In choosing a Secretary of State the embarrassment continued. Greeley encouraged the candidacy of Chauncey M. Depew, but concluded, at the last moment, that Peter A. Porter, the colonel of a regiment and a son of the gallant general of the war of 1812, must head the ticket.[152]Porter, however, refused to exchange a military for a civil office, and Depew was substituted.
Depew, then a young man of twenty-nine, gave promise of his subsequent brilliant career. He lived a neighbour to Horace Greeley, whom he greatly admired, and to whom he tactfully spoke the honeyed words, always so agreeable to theTribune'seditor.[153]Perhaps no one in the State possessed a more pleasing personality. He made other people as happy as he was himself. To this charm of manner were added a singularly attractive presence, a pleasing voice, and the oratorical gifts that won him recognition even before he left Yale College. From the first he exhibited a marked capacity for public life. He had an unfailing readiness, a wide knowledge of affairs, a keen sense of the ridiculous, and a flow of clear and easy language which never failed to give full and precise expression to all that was in his mind. He rarely provoked enmities, preferring light banter to severe invective or unsparing ridicule. Among his associates he was the prince of raconteurs. In conventions few men were heard with keener interest, and every Republican recognised the fact that a new force had come into the councils of the party. There never was a time when people regarded him as "a coming man," for he took a leading place at once. In 1861, three years after his admission to the bar, the Peekskill voters sent him to the Assembly, and the next year his colleagues selected him for speaker, an honour which he generously relinquished that his party might elect a United States senator. Now, within the same year, he found a place at the head of the ticket, which he led during the campaign with marked ability.[154]
The platform endorsed the Administration, praised the soldiers, opposed a peace that changed the Constitution except in the form prescribed by it, deplored the creation of a spirit of partisan hostility against the Government, and promised that New York would do its full share in maintaining the Union; but it skilfully avoided mentioning the conscription act and the emancipation proclamation, which Seymour charged had changed the war for the Union into a war for abolition. When a delegate, resenting the omission, moved a resolution commending emancipation, Raymond reminded him that he was in a Union, not a Republican convention, and that many loyal men doubted the propriety of such an endorsement. This position proved too conservative for the ordinary up-State delegate, and a motion to table theresolution quickly failed. Thereupon Charles A. Folger of Geneva moved to amend by adding the words, "and as a war measure is thoroughly legal and justifiable." Probably no man in the convention, by reason of his learning and solidity of character, had greater influence. In 1854 he left the Democratic party with Ward Hunt, whom he resembled as a lawyer, and whom he was to follow to the Court of Appeals and like him attain the highest eminence. Just then he was forty-five years old, a State senator of gentle bearing and stout heart, who dared to express his positive convictions, and whose suggested amendment, offered with the firmness of a man conscious of being in the right, encountered slight opposition.
The President's letter, addressed to the Union convention of New York, gave the Radicals great comfort. With direct and forceful language Lincoln took the people into his confidence. There are but three ways, he said, to stop the war; first, by suppressing rebellion, which he was trying to do; second, by giving up the Union, which he was trying to prevent; and third, by some imaginable compromise, which was impossible if it embraced the maintenance of the Union. The strength of the rebellion is in its army, which dominates all the country and all the people within its range. Any offer of terms made by men within that range, in opposition to that army, is simply nothing for the present, because such men have no power whatever to enforce their side of a compromise if one were made with them. Suppose refugees from the South and peace men from the North hold a convention of the States, how can their action keep Lee out of Pennsylvania? To be effective a compromise must come from those in control of the rebel army, or from the people after our army has suppressed that army. As no suggestion of peace has yet come from that source, all thought of peace for the present was out of the question. If any proposition shall hereafter come, it shall not be rejected and kept a secret from you.
To be plain, he continued, you are dissatisfied about thenegro. You opposed compensated emancipation and you dislike proclaimed emancipation. If slaves are property, is there any question that by the law of war such property, both of enemies and friends, may be taken when needed? And is it not needed when its taking helps us and hurts our enemy? But you say the proclamation is unconstitutional. If it is not valid, it needs no retraction. If it is valid, it cannot be retracted any more than the dead can be brought to life. You profess to think its retraction would help the Union. Why betterafterthe retraction thanbeforethe issue? Those in revolt had one hundred days to consider it, and the war, since its issuance, has progressed as favourably for us as before. Some of the commanders who have won our most important victories believe the emancipation policy the heaviest blow yet dealt to the rebels, and that in one instance, at least, victory came with the aid of black soldiers. You say you will not fight to free negroes. Whenever you are urged, after resistance to the Union is conquered, to continue to fight, it will be time enough to refuse. Do you not think, in the struggle for the Union, that the withdrawal of negro help from the enemy weakens his resistance to you? That what negroes can do as soldiers leaves so much less for white soldiers to do? But why should negroes do anything for us, if we will do nothing for them? and if they, on the promise of freedom, stake their lives to save the Union, shall the promise not be kept?
The signs look better, he concluded. Peace does not appear so distant as it did. When it comes, it will prove that no appeal lies from the ballot to the bullet, and that those who take it are sure to lose their case and pay the costs. "And then there will be some black men who can remember that, with silent tongue, and clenched teeth, and steady eye, and well poised bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this great consummation; while I fear there will be some white ones unable to forget that with malignant heart and deceitful speech they have striven to hinder it."[155]
The influence of this letter, increased by the dignity and power of the President's office, proved a sharp thorn to the Democrats. Recent military successes had made it appear for the time, at least, that rebellion was about to collapse, and the Democratic State Union convention, which convened at Albany on September 9, shifted its policy from a protest against war measures to an appeal for conciliation. In other words, it was against subjugation, which would not leave "the Union as it was, and the Constitution as it is." In its effort to emphasise this plea it refused to recognise or affiliate with the Constitutional Union party, controlled by James Brooks and other extreme peace advocates,[156]and although its platform still condemned emancipation, conscription, and arbitrary arrests, the pivotal declaration, based on "manifestations of a returning allegiance on the part of North Carolina and other seceded States," favoured a wise statesmanship "which shall encourage the Union sentiment of the South and unite more thoroughly the people of the North." Amasa J. Parker, chairman of the convention, who still talked of a "yawning gulf of ruin," admitted that such a policy brought a gleam of hope to the country, and Governor Seymour, at the end of a dreary speech explanatory of his part in the draft-riot,[157]expresseda willingness to "bury violations of law and the rights of States and individuals if such a magnanimous course shall be pursued."[158]Lincoln's letter, however, unexpectedly spoiled such an appeal, compelling the convention to "regret" that the President contemplates no measure for the restoration of the Union, "but looking to an indefinite protraction of the war for abolition purposes points to no future save national bankruptcy and the subversion of our institutions."[159]
The Republicans, backed by success in the field, started with an advantage which the cheering news from Maine strengthened. It soon become manifest, too, that the Gibraltar of Democracy resented the destructive work of mobs and rioters. Criticism of Seymour also became drastic. "He hobnobbed with the copperhead party in Connecticut," said theHerald, "and lost that election; he endorsed Vallandigham, and did nothing during the riot but talk. He has let every opportunity pass and rejected all offers that would prove him the man for the place. The sooner he is dropped as incompetent, the better it will be for the ticket."[160]TheTribuneimputed nepotism. "His brother," it said, "gets $200 per month as agent, a nephew $150 as an officer, and two nephews and a cousin $1,000 a year each as clerks in the executive departments."[161]But Martin I. Townsend, at a great mass meeting in New York City, presented the crushing indictment against him. Although the clock had tolled the midnight hour, the large audience remained tohear Townsend for the same reason, suggested Edwin D. Morgan, the chairman, that the disciples sat up all night whenever the great apostle was with them. Townsend was then fifty-three years old. For more than a decade his rare ability as a speaker had kept him a favorite, and for a quarter of a century longer he was destined to delight the people. On this occasion, however, his arraignment left a deeper and more lasting impression than his words ordinarily did. "Seymour," he said, "undertook to increase enlistments by refusing the soldier his political franchise. On the supposition that Meade would be defeated, he delivered a Fourth of July address that indicted the free people of the North and placed him in the front rank of men whom rebels delight to honour. If there was a traitor in New York City on that day he was in the company of Horatio Seymour. Finally, he pronounced as 'friends' the men, who, stirred to action by his incendiary words, applied the torch and the bludgeon in the draft riot of July 13, 14, and 15."[162]
In the four speeches delivered in the campaign, Seymour was never cleverer or more defiant.[163]He exhibited great skill in criticising the Administration, charging that disasters had brought bankruptcy, that ill-advised acts of subordinates had sapped the liberties of the people, and that base motives inspired the policy of the Government. He denounced the Radicals as craven Americans, devoid of patriotic feeling, who were trying to make the humiliation and degradation of their country a stepping-stone to continued power. "They say we must fight until slavery is extinguished. We are to upturn the foundations of our Constitution. At this very moment, when the fate of the nation and of individuals trembles in the balance, these madmen ask us to plunge into a bottomless pit of controversy upon indefinite purposes. Does not every man know that wemust have a united North to triumph? Can we get a united North upon a theory that the Constitution can be set aside at the will of one man, because, forsooth, he judges it to be a military necessity? I never yet heard that Abraham Lincoln was a military necessity.... The Vice-President says, 'There are men in your midst who want the Union as it was and the Constitution as it is,' and he adds, sneeringly, 'They can't have it.' We will tell him there are many such men, and we say to him we will have it. There has never been a sentiment in the North or South put forth more treasonable, cowardly, and base than this." Referring to the President's call, on October 17, for 300,000 volunteers, to be followed by a draft if not promptly filled, he exclaimed: "Again, 600,000 men are called for—600,000 homes to be entered. The young man will be compelled to give up the cornerstone of his fortune, which he has laid away with toil and care, to begin the race of life. The old man will pay that which he has saved, as the support of his declining years, to rescue his son. In God's name, let these operations be fair if they must be cruel." In conclusion he professed undying loyalty. "We love that flag [pointing to the Stars and Stripes] with the whole love of our life, and every star that glitters on its blue field is sacred. And we will preserve the Constitution, we will preserve the Union, we will preserve our flag with every star upon it, and we will see to it that there is a State for every star."[164]
In their extremity Dean Richmond and Peter Cagger, taking advantage of the President's call for more troops, issued a circular on the eve of election, alleging that the State would receive no credit for drafted men commuted; that towns which had furnished their quotas would be subject to a new conscription; and that men having commuted were liable to be immediately drafted again.[165]This was the prototype of Burchard's "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion"in 1884, and might have become no less disastrous had not the Provost-marshal General quickly contradicted it. As a parting shot, Seward, speaking at Auburn on the night before election, declared that if the ballot box could be passed through the camps of the Confederate soldiers, every man would vote for the administration of our government by Horatio Seymour and against the administration of Abraham Lincoln.[166]
The October elections foreshadowed the result in November. Although the Democrats had derived great advantage in 1862 because of their bold stand for civil liberty and freedom of speech, a year later such arguments proved of little avail. Gettysburg and Vicksburg had turned the tide, and Seymour and the draft riot carried it to the flood. Depew's majority, mounting higher and higher as the returns came slowly from the interior, turned the Governor's surprise into shame. In his career of a quarter of a century Seymour had learned to accept disappointment as well as success, but his failure in 1863 to forecast the trend of changing public sentiment cost him the opportunity of ever again leading his party to victory.[167]
Inhis Auburn speech Seward had declared for Lincoln's renomination.[168]Proof of the intimate personal relations existing between the President and his Secretary came into national notice in 1862 when a committee of nine Radical senators, charging to Seward's conservatism the failure of a vigorous and successful prosecution of the war, formally demanded his dismissal from the Cabinet. On learning of their action the Secretary had immediately resigned. "Do you still think Seward ought to be excused?" asked Lincoln at the end of a long and stormy interview. Four answered "Yes," three declined to vote, and Harris of New York said "No."[169]The result of this conference led Secretary Chase, the chief of the Radicals, to tender his resignation also. But the President, "after most anxious consideration," requested each to resume the duties of his department. Speaking of the matter afterward to Senator Harris, Lincoln declared with his usual mirth-provoking illustration: "If I had yielded to that storm and dismissed Seward, the thing would all have slumped one way. Now I can ride; I have got a pumpkin in each end of my bag."[170]
Other causes than loyalty contributed to the President's regard for Seward. In their daily companionship the lattertook a genial, philosophical view of the national struggle, not shared by all his Cabinet associates, while Lincoln dissipated the gloom with quaint illustrations of Western life.[171]At one of these familiar fireside talks the President expressed the hope that Seward might be his successor, adding that the friends so grievously disappointed at Chicago would thus find all made right at last. To this Seward, in his clear-headed and kind-hearted way, replied: "No, that is all past and ended. The logic of events requires you to be your own successor. You were elected in 1860, but the Southern States refused to submit. They thought the decision made at the polls could be reversed in the field. They are still in arms, and their hope now is that you and your party will be voted down at the next election. When that election is held and they find the people reaffirming their decision to have you President, I think the rebellion will collapse."[172]
Unlike Seward, Thurlow Weed wabbled in his loyalty to the President. Chafing under the retention of Hiram C. Barney as collector of customs, Weed thought Lincoln too tolerant of Radicals whose opposition was ill concealed. "They will all be against him in '64," he wrote David Davis, then an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. "Why does he persist in giving them weapons with which they may defeat his renomination?"[173]Barney had become a burden to Lincoln, who really desired to be rid of him. Many complaints of irregularity disclosed corrupt practices which warranted a change for the public good. Besides, said the President, "the establishment was being run almost exclusively in the interest of the Radicals. I felt great delicacy in doing anything that might be offensive to my friend. And yet something had to be done. I told Seward he must find him a diplomatic position. Just then Chase became aware of my little conspiracy. He was very angry and told me the day Barney left the customhouse, with or without his own consent, he would withdraw from the Treasury. So I backed down."[174]
Lincoln's tolerance did not please Weed, whose infrequent calls at the White House had not escaped notice. "I have been brought to fear recently," the President wrote with characteristic tenderness, "that somehow, by commission or omission, I have caused you some degree of pain. I have never entertained an unkind feeling or a disparaging thought towards you; and if I have said or done anything which has been construed into such unkindness or disparagement it has been misconstrued. I am sure if we could meet we would not part with any unpleasant impression on either side."[175]Such a letter from such a man stirred the heart of the iron-willed boss, who hastened to Washington. He had much to say. Among other things he unfolded a plan for peace. It proposed full amnesty to all persons engaged in the war and an armistice for ninety days, during which time such citizens of the Confederate States as embrace the offered pardon "shall, as a State or States, or as citizens thereof, be restored in all respects to the rights, privileges, and prerogatives which they enjoyed before their secession from the Union." If, however, such offer is rejected, the authority of the United States denied, and the war against the Union continued, the President should partition all territory, whether farms, villages, or cities, among the officers and soldiers conquering the same.[176]
In presenting this plan Weed argued that if the offer was rejected it would secure "a united North in favour of war to the knife." Besides, the armistice, occurring when the season interrupts active army movements, would cause little delay and give ample time for widespread circulation of the proclamation. Respecting the division of lands among soldiers, he said it would stop desertion, avoid the payment of bounties, and quickly fill the army with enterprising yeomen who would want homes after the termination of hostilities. It had long been practised in maritime wars by all civilized nations, he said, and being a part of international law it could not in reason be objected to, especially as the sufferers would have rejected most liberal offers of peace and prosperity. Weed frankly admitted that Seward did not like the scheme, and that Senator Wilson of Massachusetts eyed it askance; but Stanton approved it, he said, and Dean Richmond authorised him to say that if fairly carried out the North would be a unit in support of the war and the rebellion would be crushed within six months after the expiration of the armistice.[177]
In conversation Weed was the most persuasive of men. To a quiet, gentle, deferential manner, he added a giant's grasp of the subject, presenting its strong points and marshalling with extraordinary skill all the details. Nevertheless, the proposition now laid before the President, leaving slavery as it was, could not be accepted. "The emancipation proclamation could not be retracted," he had said in his famous letter to the New York convention, "any more than the dead could be brought to life." However, Lincoln did not let the famous editor depart empty-handed. Barney should be removed, and Weed, satisfied with such a scalp, returned home to enter the campaign for the President's renomination.[178]
Something seemed to be wrong in New York. Other States through conventions and legislatures had early favored the President's renomination, while the Empire State moved slowly. Party machinery worked well. The Union Central Committee, holding a special meeting on January 4, 1864 at the residence of Edwin D. Morgan, recommended Lincoln's nomination. "It is going to be difficult to restrain the boys," said Morgan in a letter to the President, "and there is not much use in trying to do so."[179]On February 23 the Republican State Committee also endorsed him, and several Union League clubs spoke earnestly of his"prudence, sagacity, comprehension, and perseverance." But the absence of an early State convention, the tardy selection of delegates to Baltimore, and the failure of the Legislature to act, did not reveal the enthusiasm evinced in other Commonwealths. Following the rule adopted elsewhere, resolutions favourable to the President's renomination were duly presented to the Assembly, where they remained unacted upon. Suddenly on January 25 a circular, signed by Simeon Draper and issued by the Conference Committee of the Union Lincoln Association of New York, proposed that all citizens of every town and county who favoured Lincoln's nomination meet in some appropriate place on February 22 and make public expression to that fact. Among the twenty-five names attached appeared those of Moses Taylor and Moses H. Grinnell. This was a new system of tactics. But the legislative resolutions did not advance because of it.
A month later a letter addressed by several New Yorkers to the National Republican Executive Committee requested the postponement of the Baltimore convention.[180]"The country is not now in a position to enter into a presidential contest," it said. "All parties friendly to the Government should be united in support of a single candidate. Such unanimity cannot at present be obtained. Upon the result of measures adopted to finish the war during the present spring and summer will depend the wish of the people to continue their present leaders, or to exchange them for others. Besides, whatever will tend to lessen the duration of an acrimonious Presidential campaign will be an advantage to the country."[181]If the sentiment of this letter was not new, the number and character of its signers produced a profound sensation. William Cullen Bryant headed the list, and of the twenty-three names, seventeen were leading State senators, among them Charles J. Folger and James M. Cook. "This list," said theTribune, "contains the names of two-thirds of the Unionists chosen to our present State Senate, the absence of others preventing their signing. We understand that but two senators declined to affix their name."[182]Greeley did not sign this letter, but in an earlier communication to theIndependenthe had urged a postponement of the convention.[183]Moreover, he had indicated in theTribunethat Chase, Fremont, Butler, or Grant would make as good a President as Lincoln, while the nomination of either would preserve "the salutary one-term principle."[184]
It is not easy to determine the cause or the full extent of the dissatisfaction with Lincoln among New York Republicans. Seward's influence and Weed's relations seriously weakened him. After the election of 1862 Radicals openly charged them with Wadsworth's defeat. For the same reason the feeling against Edwin D. Morgan had become intensely bitter. Seeing a newspaper paragraph that these men had been in consultation with the President about his message, Senator Chandler of Michigan, the prince of Radicals, wrote a vehement letter to Lincoln, telling him of a "patriotic organisation in all the free and border States, containing to-day over one million of voters, every man of whom is your friend upon radical measures of your administration; but there is not a Seward or a Weed man among them all. These men are a millstone about your neck. You drop them and they are politically ended forever.... Conservatives and traitors are buried together. For God's sake don't exhume their remains in your message. They will smell worse than Lazarus did after he had been buried three days."[185]
Although Weed had left the President with the promise of aiding him, he could accomplish nothing. The Legislature refused to act, demands for the postponement of the national convention continued to appear, and men everywhere resented conservative leadership. This was especially true of Greeley and theTribune, Bryant and theEvening Post, and Beecher and theIndependent, not to mention other Radicals and radical papers throughout the State, whose opposition represented a formidable combination. Except for this discontent the Cleveland convention would scarcely have been summoned into existence. Of the three calls issued for its assembling two had their birth in New York, one headed by George B. Cheever, the eminent divine, who had recently toured England in behalf of the Union,—the other by Lucius Robinson, State comptroller, and John Cochrane, attorney-general. Cheever's call denounced "the imbecile and vacillating policy of the present Administration in the conduct of the war,"[186]while Robinson and Cochrane emphasised the need of a President who "can suppress rebellion without infringing the rights of individual or State."[187]
That Weed no longer possessed the wand of a Warwick was clearly demonstrated at the Republican State convention, held at Syracuse on May 26, to select delegates to Baltimore. Each faction, led in person by Greeley and Weed, professed to favour the President's renomination, but the fierce and bitter contest over the admission of delegates from New York City widened the breach. The Weed machine, following the custom of previous years, selected an equal number of delegates from each ward. The Radicals, who denounced this system as an arbitrary expression of bossism, chose a delegation representing each ward in proportion to the number of its Republican voters. The delegation accepted would control the convention, and although the Radicals consented to the admission of both on equal terms, the Weed forces, confident of their strength, refused the compromise. This set the Radicals to work, and at the morning session, amidst the wildest confusion and disorder, they elected Lyman Tremaine temporary chairman by a majorityof six over Chauncey M. Depew, the young secretary of state, whose popularity had given the Conservatives an abnormal strength.
In his speech the Chairman commented upon the death of James S. Wadsworth, killed in the battle of the Wilderness on May 6, from whose obsequies, held at Geneseo on the 21st, many delegates had just returned. Tremaine believed that the soldier's blood would "lie heavy on the souls of those pretended supporters of the government in its hour of trial, whose cowardice and treachery contributed to his defeat for governor."[188]In such a spirit he eulogised Wadsworth's character and patriotism, declaring that if justice had been done him by the Conservatives, he would now, instead of sleeping in his grave, be governor of New York. Although spoken gently and with emotions of sadness, these intolerably aggressive sentences, loudly applauded by the Radicals, stirred the Weed delegates into whispered threats.[189]But Tremaine did not rely upon words alone. He packed the committee on contested seats, whose report, admitting both city delegations on equal terms, was accepted by the enormous majority of 192 to 98, revealing the fact that the great body of up-State Republicans distrusted Thurlow Weed, whose proposition for peace did not include the abolition of slavery. Other reasons, however, accounted for the large majority. Tremaine, no longer trusting to the leadership of Greeley,[190]marshalled the Radical forces with a skill learned in the school of Seymour and Dean Richmond, and when his drilled cohorts went into action the tumultuousand belligerent character of the scene resembled the uproar familiar to one who had trained with Tammany and fought with Mozart Hall. In concluding its work the convention endorsed the President and selected sixty-six delegates, headed by Raymond, Dickinson, Tremaine, and Preston King as delegates-at-large.
The echo of the Syracuse contest reached the Cleveland convention, which assembled on May 31. Of all the distinguished New Yorkers whose names had advertised and given character to this movement John Cochrane alone attended. Indeed, the picturesque speech of Cochrane, as chairman, and the vehement letter of Lucius Robinson, advocating the nomination of Grant, constituted the only attractive feature of the proceedings. Cochrane and Robinson wanted a party in which they could feel at home. To Cochrane the Republican party was "a medley of trading, scurvy politicians, which never represented War Democrats,"[191]while Robinson thought the country "had survived, through three years of war, many bad mistakes of a weak Executive and Cabinet, simply because the popular mind had been intensely fixed upon the single purpose of suppressing rebellion."[192]Both resented the Administration's infringement of individual rights. "Whoever attacks them," said Cochrane, "wounds the vital parts of the Republic. Not even the plea of necessity allows any one to trample upon them."[193]The Cleveland convention, however, did not help these statesmen any more than the nomination of John C. Fremont and John Cochrane, "the two Johns from New York" as they were called, injured the President.[194]When Lincoln heard that instead of the many thousands expected only three or four hundred attended, he opened his Bible and read: "And every one that was in distress, and every one that was indebt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him; and he became a captain over them; and there were with him about four hundred."[195]
Lucius Robinson's suggestion that Grant be nominated for President represented the thought of many New Yorkers prominent in political circles. "All eyes and hopes now centre on Grant," wrote Thurlow Weed on April 17. "If he wins in Virginia it will brighten the horizon and make him President."[196]TheHeraldsounded the praises of the Lieutenant-General in nearly every issue. TheTribuneandTimeswere equally flattering. Even theWorldadmitted that a skilful general handled the army.[197]Other papers throughout the State expressed similar confidence in his victorious leadership, and with the hope of changing the sentiment from Lincoln to Grant a great mass meeting, called ostensibly to express the country's gratitude to the latter, was held in New York City two days before the meeting of the National Republican convention. Neither at this time, however, nor at any other did the movement receive the slightest encouragement from the hero of Vicksburg, or shake the loyalty of the delegates who assembled at Baltimore on June 7.
Henry J. Raymond, evidencing the same wise spirit of compromise exhibited at Syracuse in 1863, reported the platform. It declared the maintenance of the Union and the suppression of rebellion by force of arms to be the highest duty of every citizen; it approved the determination of the government to enter into no compromise with rebels; favoured the abolition of slavery by constitutional amendment; applauded the wisdom, patriotism, and fidelity of the President; thanked the soldiers, and claimed the full protectionof the laws of war for coloured troops; encouraged immigration and the early construction of a railroad to the Pacific coast; pledged the national faith to keep inviolate the redemption of the public debt; and opposed the establishment, by foreign military forces, of monarchical governments in the near vicinity of the United States.[198]On the second day every State voted for Lincoln for President.[199]
The contest for Vice-President renewed the fight of the New York factions. An impression had early taken root in the country that a War Democrat should be selected, and the Radicals of New York, under the leadership of Lyman Tremaine, quickly designated Daniel S. Dickinson as the man. Dickinson's acceptability in New England and New Jersey strengthened his candidacy, while its approval by three or four border and western States seriously weakened Hamlin. Nevertheless, the New York Conservatives vigorously opposed him. Their antagonism did not at first concentrate upon any one candidate. Weed talked of Hamlin and later of Joseph Holt of Kentucky; Raymond thought Andrew Johnson of Tennessee the stronger; and Preston King, to the great surprise of the Radicals, agreed with him. This brought from George William Curtis the sarcastic remark that a Vice-President from the Empire State would prevent its having a Cabinet officer. Tremaine declared that a change in the Cabinet would not be a serious calamity to the country, and Preston King, who attributed his displacement from the United States Senate to the Seward influence, did not object to the Secretary's removal. Thus Raymond's influence gave the doughty War Governor 32 of New York's 66 votes to 28 for Dickinson and 6 for Hamlin. This materially aided Johnson's nomination on the first ballot.[200]
Raymond's power and influence may be said to have climaxed in 1864 at the Baltimore convention. He became chairman of the New York delegation, chairman of the committee on resolutions, chairman of the National Executive Committee, and the principal debater upon the floor, manifesting a tact in the performance of his manifold duties that surprised as much as it charmed. But the reason for his ardent support of Johnson will probably never be certainly known. McClure declared that he acted in accord with the wishes of Lincoln, who discreetly favoured and earnestly desired Johnson's nomination. This view was approved by George Jones, the proprietor of theTimesand Raymond's most intimate friend.[201]On the other hand, Nicolay declared that "it was with minds absolutely untrammelled by even any knowledge of the President's wishes that the convention went about its work of selecting his associate on the ticket."[202]In his long and bitter controversy with Nicolay, however, McClure furnished testimony indicating that Lincoln whispered his choice and that Raymond understood it.[203]
While Raymond antagonised the radical supporters of Dickinson, patronage questions were again threatening trouble for the President. Serious friction had followed the appointment of a General Appraiser at New York, and when John J. Cisco, the assistant United States treasurer, tendered his resignation to take effect June 30 (1864), the President desired to appoint one unobjectionable to Senator Morgan; but Secretary Chase, regardless of the preferences of others, insisted upon Maunsell B. Field, then an assistant secretary of the treasury. Morgan vigorously protested, regarding him incompetent to fill such a place. Besides, the designation of Field, who had no political backing in New York, would, he said, offend the conservative wing of the party, which had been entirely ignored in the past.As a compromise the Senator begged the President to select Richard M. Blatchford, Dudley S. Gregory, or Thomas Hillhouse, whom he regarded as three of the most eminent citizens of New York.