Chapter XII: Appendix (1)

_Speech of_ GENERAL R. B. HAYES, _delivered at Lebanon, Ohio, August 5, 1867._

_Fellow-Citizens:_

President Lincoln began his memorable address at the dedication of
the Gettysburg National Cemetery with these words:

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this
continent a new Nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal."

This was Abraham Lincoln's opinion of what was accomplished and
what was meant by the Declaration of Independence. His idea was
that it gave birth to a Nation, and that it dedicated that Nation
to equal rights.

Now, so far as the performance of duty in the present condition of
our country is concerned, "this is the whole law and the prophets."
The United States are not a confederacy of independent and
sovereign States, bound together by a mere treaty or a compact, but
the people of the United States constitute a Nation, having one
flag, one history, "one country, one constitution, one destiny."
Whoever seeks to divide this Nation into two sections--into a North
and a South, or into four sections, according to the cardinal
points of the compass, or into thirty or forty independent
sovereignties--is opposed to the Nation, and the Nation's friends
should be opposed to him.

Washington, in his Farewell Address, says:

"The unity of government, which constitutes you one people, is also
now dear to you. It is justly so; for it is a main pillar in the
edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquillity
at home, your peace abroad; of your safety, of your prosperity, of
that very liberty which you so highly prize.... The name of
American, which belongs to you in your National capacity, must
always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation
derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of
difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and
political principles. You have, in a common cause, fought and
triumphed together; the independence and liberty you possess are
the work of joint counsels and joint efforts--of common dangers,
sufferings, and successes."

The sentiment of Nationality is the sentiment of the Declaration of
Independence; it is the sentiment of the fathers; it is the
sentiment which carried us through the war of the Revolution, and
through the war of the late Rebellion; and it is a sentiment which
the people of the United States ought forever to cultivate and
cherish.

The great idea to which the Nation, according to Mr. Lincoln, was
dedicated by the fathers is expressed in the Declaration in these
familiar phrases: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that
all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights
governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers
from the consent of the governed."

An intelligent audience will not wish to hear discussion as to the
import of these sentences. Their language is simple, their meaning
plain, and their truth undoubted. The equality declared by the
fathers was not an equality of beauty, of physical strength, or of
intellect, but an equality of rights. Foolish attempts have been
made by those who hate the principles of the fathers to destroy the
great fundamental truth of the Declaration, by limiting the
application of the phrase "all men" to the men of a single race.

But Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration leaves no room to
doubt what he meant by these words. The gravest charge he made
against the King of Great Britain in the original draft of the
Declaration of Independence was the following:

"He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its
most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant
people, who never offended him, capturing and carrying them into
slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their
transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of
infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great
Britain, determined to keep open market where MEN should be bought
and sold."

In this sentence the word "men" is written by Jefferson in capital
letters, showing with what emphasis he wished to declare that the
King of Great Britain was making slaves of a people to whom
belonged the rights of men.

Unfortunately for our country, that King, and others who "waged
cruel war against human nature itself," had already succeeded in
planting in the bosom of American society an element implacably
hostile to human rights, and destined to become the enemy of the
Union, whenever the American people, in their National capacity,
should refuse assent to any measures which the holders of slaves
should deem necessary or even important for the security or
prosperity of their "peculiar institution."

I need not, upon this occasion, repeat what is now familiar
history--how, by the invention of the cotton-gin, and the
consequent enormous increase of the cotton crop, slave labor in the
cotton States, and slave breeding in the Northern slave States,
became so profitable that the slaveholders were able, for many
years, largely to influence, if not control, every department of
the National Government. The slave power became something more than
a phrase--it was a definite, established, appalling fact. The
Missouri controversy, South Carolina nullification, the Texas
controversy, the adoption of the compromise measures of 1850, and
the repeal of the Missouri compromise in 1854, were all occasions
when the country was compelled to see the magnitude, the energy,
the recklessness, and the arrogance of the slave power.

Precisely when the men who wielded that power determined to destroy
the Union it is not now necessary to inquire. Threats of disunion
were made in the first Congress that assembled under the
constitution. Upon various pretexts they were repeated from time to
time, and no one doubts that slavery was at the bottom of them. In
1833 General Jackson wrote to Rev. A. J. Crawford: "Take care of
your nullifiers; you have them among you; let them meet with the
indignant frown of every man who loves his country. The tariff, it
is now known, was a mere pretext ... and disunion and a Southern
Confederacy the real object. The next pretext will be the negro or
slavery question." General Jackson was no doubt right as to the
existence of a settled purpose to break up the Union, and to
establish a Southern Confederacy, as long ago as 1832. But why was
there such a purpose? On what ground did it stand?

Great political parties, whether sectional or otherwise, do not
come by accident, nor are they the invention of political intrigue.
A faction born of a clique may have some strength at one or two
elections, but the wisest political wire-workers can not, by merely
"taking thought," create a strong and permanent party. The result
of the Philadelphia Convention last summer probably taught this
truth to the authors of that movement. Great political movements
always have some adequate cause.

Now, on what did the conspirators who plotted the destruction of
the Union and the establishment of a Southern Confederacy rely? In
the first place, they taught a false construction of the National
constitution, which was miscalled State rights, the essential part
of which was that "any State of the Union might secede from the
Union whenever it liked." This doctrine was the instrument employed
to destroy the unity of the Nation. The fact which gave strength
and energy to those who employed this instrument was that in the
southern half of the Union, society, business, property, religion,
and law were all based on the proposition that over four millions
of our countrymen, capable of civilization and religion, were,
because of their race and color, "so far inferior that they had no
rights which the white man was bound to respect." The practice,
founded upon this denial of the Declaration of Independence,
protected by law and sanctioned by usage, was our great National
transgression, and was the cause of our great National calamity.

In a country where discussion was free, sooner or later, parties
were sure to be formed on the issues presented by the slaveholders.
The supporters of the Union and of human rights would band together
against the supporters of disunion and slavery. For many years
after the struggle really began, the issues were not clearly
defined, and neither party was able to occupy its true and final
position, or to rally to its standard all who were in fact its
friends. Old parties encumbered the ground. Men were slow to give
up old associations and leave the discussion of obsolete,
immaterial, or ephemeral issues.

At last the crisis came. In 1860, Mr. Lincoln, who was unfriendly
to slavery and faithful to the Union, was elected president. The
party of disunion and slavery were prepared for this event. Their
action was prompt, decisive, and defiant. They proceeded to
organize southern conventions, and formally to withdraw from the
Union, and undertook to establish a new government and a new Nation
on the soil of the United States.

Prior to 1860 the party calling itself Democratic had gathered
under one name and one organization almost the whole of the
secessionists of the South and a large body of the people of the
North, many of whom had no sympathy either with secession or
slavery. In 1860 the secessionists were so arrogant in their
demands that the great body of the Democratic party in the North
refused to yield to them, and supported Mr. Douglass in opposition
both to Mr. Lincoln, and to the disunion and slavery candidate, Mr.
Breckenridge. But it was well known that many leading Democrats who
supported Mr. Douglass leaned strongly toward the southern Calhoun
democracy, and that their sympathies were with slave-holding or at
least with slaveholders.

The evidence of this is abundantly furnished in their recorded
opinions. The most distinguished and perhaps the most influential
Democrat now actively engaged in politics in Ohio, who presided
over and addressed the last Democratic State Convention held at
Columbus, Mr. Pendleton, delivered a speech in the House of
Representatives on the 18th of January, 1861.

You will recollect how far the slaveholders had progressed in their
great rebellion at that date. Mr. Pendleton himself says:

"To-day, sir, four States of this Union have, so far as their power
extends, seceded from it. Four States, as far as they are able,
have annulled the grants of power made to the Federal Government;
they have resumed the powers delegated by the Constitution; they
have canceled, so far as they could, every limitation upon the full
exercise of all their sovereign rights. They do not claim our
protection; they ask no benefit from our laws; they seek none of
the advantages of the confederation. On the other hand, they
renounce their allegiance; they repudiate our authority over them,
and they assert that they have assumed--some of them that they have
resumed--their position among the family of sovereignties, among
the nations of the earth.... To-day, even while I am speaking,
Georgia is voting upon this very question. And unless the signs of
the times very much deceive us, within three weeks other States
will be added to the number."

Mr. Pendleton might also have said that prior to that date, forts,
arsenals, dock-yards, mints, and other places and property
belonging to the United States, had been seized by organized and
armed bodies of rebels; the collection of debts due in the South to
Northern creditors had been stopped; South Carolina had declared
that any attempt to reinforce Fort Sumter by the United States
would be regarded by that State as an act of hostility against her
and equivalent to a declaration of war; the Star of the West, an
unarmed vessel, with the American flag floating at her mast-head,
carrying provisions to the famishing garrison of Fort Sumter, had
been fired on and driven from Charleston harbor; in short, at that
date the rebels were engaged in actual war against the Nation, and
the only reason why blood had not been shed was that the National
government had failed in its duty to defend the Nation's property,
and to maintain the sacredness of the National flag.

At that crisis Mr. Pendleton delivered and sent forth a speech
bearing this significant motto: "But, sir, armies, money, blood,
can not maintain this Union--justice, reason, peace, may." The
speech was according to its motto. Accustomed as he is to speak
cautiously, and in a scholarly and moderate way, we can not be
mistaken as to his drift. On the authority of the National
government he says:

"Now, sir, what force of arms can compel a State to do that which
she has agreed to do? What force of arms can compel a State to
refrain from doing that which her State government, supported by
the sentiment of her people, is determined to persist in doing....
Sir, the whole scheme of coercion is impracticable. It is contrary
to the genius and spirit of the Constitution."

These extracts sufficiently and fairly show Mr. Pendleton's notion
of the duty and authority of the Nation in that great crisis. He
held the States rights doctrines of Calhoun and Breckenridge, and
not the National principles of Washington and Jackson.

As to the treatment of rebels already in arms, and as to the
"demands" of the slave power, consider this advice which he gave to
Congress and the people:

"If these Southern States can not be conciliated; if you,
gentlemen, can not find it in your hearts to grant their demands;
if they must leave the family mansion, I would signalize their
departure by tokens of love; I would bid them farewell so tenderly
that they would be forever touched by the recollection of it; and
if in the vicissitudes of their separate existence they should
desire to come together with us again in one common government,
there should be no pride to be humiliated, there should be no wound
inflicted by my hand to be healed. They should come and be welcome
to the places they now occupy."

Thus we see there were those who, with honeyed phrases and soft
words, would have looked smilingly on, while the great
Republic--the pride of her children, the hope of the ages--built by
the fathers at such an expense of suffering, of treasure, and of
blood, was stricken by traitors' hands from the roll of living
Nations, and while an armed oligarchy should establish in its stead
a nation founded on a denial of human rights, and under whose sway
south of the Potomac more than half of the territory of the old
Thirteen Colonies--soil once fertilized by the best blood of the
Revolution--should, for generations to come, continue to be tilled
by the unrequited toil of slaves.

The best known, the boldest, and perhaps the ablest leader of the
peace Democracy in the North is Mr. Vallandigham. He was chairman
of the committee on resolutions in the last Democratic State
Convention in Ohio, and reported the present State platform of his
party. He, probably, still enjoys in a greater degree than any
other public man the affection and confidence of the positive men
of the Ohio Democracy, who, from beginning to end, opposed the war.
On the 20th of February, 1861, he delivered a speech in the House
of Representatives in support of certain amendments which he
proposed to the Constitution of the United States. In an appendix
to that speech, he published an extract from a card in the
Cincinnati _Enquirer_ of November 10, 1860, from which I quote:

"And now let me add that I did say, ... in a public speech at the
Cooper Institute, on the 2d of November, 1860, that if any one or
more of the States of this Union should at any time secede, for
reasons of the sufficiency and justice of which, before God and the
great tribunal of history, they alone may judge, much as I should
deplore it, I never would, as a representative in Congress of the
United States, vote one dollar of money whereby one drop of
American blood should be shed in a civil war.... And I now
deliberately repeat and reaffirm it, resolved, though I stand
alone, though all others yield and fall away, to make it good to
the last moment of my public life." Here was another strong man of
large influence solemnly pledged to allow the Union to be broken up
and destroyed, in case the rebel conspirators chose that
alternative, rather than forgo their demands in favor of oppression
and against human rights.

On the 23d of January, 1861, the Democratic party held a State
Convention at Columbus. Remember, at that date the air was thick
with threats of war from the South. The rebels were organizing and
drilling; arms robbed from the National arsenals were in their
hands; and the question upon all minds was whether the Republic
should perish without having a single blow struck in her defense,
or whether the people of the loyal North should rise as one man,
prepared to wage war until treason and, if need be, slavery went
down together. On this question, that convention was bound to
speak. Silence was impossible. There were present war Democrats and
peace Democrats, followers of Jackson, and followers of Calhoun.
There was a determined and gallant struggle on the part of the war
Democrats, but the superior numbers, or more probably the superior
tactics and strategy, of the peace men triumphed.

The present candidate of the Democratic party for Governor of Ohio,
Judge Thurman, a gentleman of character and ability, a
distinguished lawyer and judge and a politician of long experience,
succeeded in passing through the convention this resolution:

"_Resolved_, That the two hundred thousand Democrats of Ohio send
to the people of the United States, both North and South, greeting;
and when the people of the North shall have fulfilled their duties
to the constitution and to the South, then, and not until then,
will it be proper for them to take into consideration the question
of the right and propriety of coercion."

In support of this famous resolution, Judge Thurman addressed the
convention, and, among other things, is reported to have said:

"A man is deficient in understanding who thinks the cause of
disunion is that the South apprehended any overt act of oppression
in Lincoln's administration. It is the spirit of the late
presidential contest that alarms the South.... It would try the
ethics of any man to deny that some of the Southern States have no
cause for revolution.... Then you must be sure you are able to
coerce before you begin the work. The South are a brave people. The
Southern States can not be held by force. The blacks won't fight
for the invaders.... The Hungarians had less cause of complaint
against Austria than the South had against the North."

When we reflect on what the rebels had done and what they were
doing when this resolution was passed, it seems incredible that
sane men, having a spark of patriotism, could for one moment have
tolerated its sentiments. The rebels had already deprived the
United States of its jurisdiction and property in about one-fourth
of its inhabited territory, and were rapidly extending their
insurrection so as to include within the rebel lines all of the
slave States. The lives and property of Union citizens in the
insurgent States were at the mercy of traitors, and the National
flag was everywhere torn down, and shameful indignities and
outrages heaped upon all who honored it.

This resolution speaks of fulfilling the duties of the people of
the North to the South. The first and highest duty of the people of
the North to themselves, to the South, to their country, and to
God, was to crush the rebellion. All speeches and resolutions
against either the right or the propriety of coercion merely gave
encouragement, "moral aid and comfort," more important than powder
and ball, to the enemies of the Nation.

Do I state too strongly the mischievous, the fatal tendency of
these proceedings? The resolution adopted by the peace Democracy of
Ohio is addressed in terms "to the people of all the States, North
and South," and in fact was sent, I am informed, to the governors
of all the States.

In the South, Union men were laboring by every means in their power
to prevent secession. Their most cogent argument was that the
National government would defend itself by war against rebellion.
To this, the rebel reply was, "There will be no war. Secession will
be peaceable. The peace party of the North will prevent coercion.
If there is fighting, it will be as Ex-President Pierce writes to
Jefferson Davis, 'The fighting will not be along Mason and Dixon's
line merely. It will be within our own borders, in our own
streets.'"

For the evidence of the correctness of this opinion, the rebels
could point confidently to such speeches and resolutions as those
we are now considering. Governor Orr, of South Carolina, in a
recent speech at the Charleston Board of Trade banquet, is reported
to have said:

"I know there is an apprehension widespread in the North and West
that, after the reconstruction of the Southern States, we shall
fall into the arms of our old allies and associates, the old
Democratic party. I say to you, gentlemen, however, that I would
give no such pledges. We have accounts to settle with that party,
gentlemen, before I, at least, will consent to affiliate with it.
Many of you will remember that, when the war first commenced, great
hopes and expectations were held out by our friends in the North
and West that there would be no war, and that if it commenced, it
would be North of Mason and Dixon's line, and not in the South."

Without pausing to inquire how much strength accrued to the
rebellion in its earlier stages by the encouragement it received
from sympathizers in the North, let us pass on to the spring and
summer of 1861, after the bombardment and surrender of Fort Sumter,
and when the armies of the Union and of the rebellion were facing
each other upon a line of operations extending from the Potomac to
the Rio Grande. The most superficial observer could not fail to
discover these facts.

In the South, where slavery was strongest, the rebellion was
strongest. Where there were few slaveholders, there were few
rebels. South Carolina and Mississippi, having the largest number
of slaves in proportion to population, were almost unanimous for
rebellion. Western Virginia, Eastern Kentucky, East Tennessee, had
few slaves, and love of the Union and hatred of secession in those
mountain regions was nearly universal.

The counterpart of this was found everywhere in the North. In
counties and districts where the majority of the people had been
accustomed to defend or excuse the practice of slave-holding and
the aggressions of the slaveholders, there was much sympathy with
the rebellion and strong opposition to the war. Men who abused and
hated negroes did not usually hate rebels. On the other hand,
anti-slavery counties and districts were quite sure to be Union to
the core.

In Ohio, as in other free States, the Democratic party could not be
led off in a body after the peace Democracy. Brough, Tod, Matthews,
Dorsey, Steedman, and a host of Democrats of the Jackson school,
nobly kept the faith. Lytle, McCook, Webster, and gallant spirits
like them, from every county and neighborhood of our State, sealed
their devotion to the Union and to true Democracy with their life's
blood.

They believed, with Douglass, in the last letter he ever wrote,
that "it was not a party question, nor a question involving
partisan policy; it was a question of government or no government,
country or no country, and hence it became the imperative duty of
every Union man, every friend of constitutional liberty, to rally
to the support of our common country, its government and flag, as
the only means of checking the progress of revolution, and of
preserving the Union of the States."

They believed the words of Douglass' last speech: "This is no time
for a detail of causes. The conspiracy is now known. Armies have
been raised, war is levied to accomplish it. There are only two
sides to the question. Every man must be for the United States or
against it. There can be no neutrals in this war--only patriots and
traitors."

As the war progressed, the great political parties of the country
underwent important changes, both of organization and policy. In
the North, the Republican party, the great body of the American or
Union party of 1860, and the war Democracy formed the Union party.
The Democracy of the South, for the most part, became rebels, and
in the North those who did not unite with the Union party generally
passed under the control and leadership of the peace Democracy.

At the beginning of the war, the creed of the Union party consisted
of one idea--it labored for one object--the restoration of the
Union. Slavery, the rights of man, the principles of the
Declaration of Independence, were for the time lost sight of in the
struggle for the Nation's life. As late as August, 1862, President
Lincoln wrote to Mr. Greeley: "My paramount object is to save the
Union, and not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could
save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I
could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I
could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also
do that."

Slowly, gradually, after repeated disasters and disappointments,
the eyes of the Union leaders were opened to the fact that slavery
and rebellion were convertible terms; that the Confederacy,
according to its Vice-President, Alexander H. Stephens, was founded
upon "exactly the opposite idea" from that of Jefferson and the
fathers. "Its foundations," said he, "are laid, its corner-stone
rests upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white
man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his
natural and normal condition." Mr. Lincoln and the Union party,
struggling faithfully onward, finally reached the solid ground that
the American government was founded on the broad principles of
right, justice, and humanity, and that, for this Nation, "Union and
liberty" were indeed "one and inseparable."

The leaders of the peace Democracy were for a time overwhelmed by
the popular uprising which followed the attack on Fort Sumter, and
were not able during the year 1861 or the early part of 1862 to
mark out definitely the course to be pursued. But, like the Union
party, they gradually approached the position they were ultimately
to occupy.

Their success in the autumn elections of 1862 encouraged them to
enter upon the pathway in which they have plodded along
consistently if not prosperously ever since. Opposition to the war
measures of Mr. Lincoln's administration, and in particular to
every measure tending to the enfranchisement and elevation of the
African race, became their settled policy. By this policy they were
placed in harmony with their former associates, the rebels of the
South. The rebels were fighting to destroy the Union. The peace
party were opposing the only measures which could save it. The
rebels were fighting for slavery. The peace party were laboring in
their way to keep alive and inflame the prejudice against race and
color, on which slavery was based.

The abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, the repeal of
the fugitive slave law, Mr. Lincoln's proclamation of emancipation,
in a word, every step of the Union party toward enfranchisement of
the colored people, the peace Democracy opposed. Every war measure,
every means adopted to strengthen the cause of the Union and weaken
the rebellion, met with the the same opposition. Whatever Mr.
Lincoln or Congress did to get money, to get men, or to obtain the
moral support of the country and the world--tax laws, tariff laws,
greenbacks, government bonds, army bills, drafts, blockades,
proclamations--met the indiscriminate and bitter assaults of these
men. The enlistment of colored soldiers, a measure by which between
one and two hundred thousand able-bodied men were transferred from
the service of the rebels in corn-fields to the Union service in
battle-fields--how Mr. Lincoln and the Union party were vilified
for that wise and necessary measure! But worse, infinitely worse,
than mere opposition to war measures, were their efforts to impair
the confidence of the people, to diminish the moral power of the
government, to give hope and earnestness to the enemies of the
Union, by showing that the administration was to blame for the war,
that it was unnecessary, unjust, and that it had been perverted
from its original object, and that it could not but fail.

I need not go beyond the record of leaders of the Ohio Democracy of
to-day for proof what I am saying. Mr. Pendleton, usually so
gentlemanly and prudent in speech, lost his balance after the
victories of the peace Democracy in 1862. At the Democratic jubilee
in Butler county over the elections, Mr. Pendleton is reported as
saying:

"I came up to see if there were any Butternuts in Butler county. I
came to see if there were any Copperheads in Butler county, as my
friends of the Cincinnati _Gazette_ and _Commercial_ are fond of
terming the Democracy of the country. I came up to tell you that
there are a good many of that stripe of animals in old Hamilton. I
have traveled about the country lately, and I assure you there is a
large crop of Butternuts everywhere: not only that, but the quality
and character of the nut is quite as good as the quantity."

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.

In the elections of 1863, the peace Democracy of Ohio and other
States sustained defeats which have no parallel in our political
history. But, notwithstanding their reverses, the year 1864, the
year of the presidential election, found the Ohio leaders possibly
sadder, but certainly not wiser nor more patriotic than before.

At the National Convention at Chicago, in August, Mr. Pendleton was
nominated for vice-president, Judge Thurman was a delegate of the
State of Ohio at large, and Mr. Vallandigham as a district
delegate, and as a member of the committee on platform, was the
author of the following resolution adopted by the convention:

"_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 the experiment of war, during which, under
pretense of military necessity, or war power higher than the
constitution, the constitution has been disregarded in every part,
and public liberty and private rights have been alike trodden down,
and the material prosperity of the country essentially impaired,
justice, humanity, liberty, and the public welfare demand that
immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities, with a
view to an ultimate convention of all the States, or other
peaceable means, to the end that at the earliest practicable moment
peace may be restored on the basis of the Federal Union of the
States."

This resolution does not seem to require explanation or comment.
But as General McClellan's letter accepting the nomination for
president did not square well with this part of the party platform,
Mr. Vallandigham, in a speech at Sidney, Ohio, September 24, 1864,
explained it at some length. In that speech, he said:

"I am speaking now of the fact that this convention pronounced this
war a failure, and giving you the reasons why it is a failure....
What has been gained by this campaign? More lives have been lost,
more hard fighting has been done, more courage has been exhibited
by the Federal as well as the Southern soldiers than in any former
campaign, and what has been accomplished? General Grant is nearer
to Richmond, occupying a territory of perhaps eleven miles, which
was not in the possession of the United States when the campaign
began, from City Point to the suburbs of Petersburg. To secure that
he gave up all the country from Manassas down to Richmond and a
large part of the valley.... How about the Southern campaign?
General Sherman, through the courage of the best disciplined, best
organized, and most powerful army that has been seen since the
campaigns of the first Napoleon, has taken Atlanta--a town somewhat
larger than Sidney. It has cost him sixty thousand men and four or
five months of the most terrible campaign ever waged on this
continent or any other, or any other part of the globe. He occupies
from two to five miles on each side of a railroad of one hundred
and thirty-eight miles in length. He has penetrated that far into
Georgia. What has been surrendered to obtain that? All of Texas,
nearly all of Louisiana, nearly all of Arkansas, Mississippi,
Alabama, and a part of Tennessee, which were in possession of the
Federals on the first of May. Kentucky has been opened to continual
incursions of the Confederate armies. All this has been surrendered
in order to gain this barren strip of country on the line of the
railroad. The war, then, has been properly pronounced a failure in
a military point of view. The convention meant that it has failed
to restore the Union, and there is not a Republican in the land who
does not know it."

In the Sidney speech, Mr. Vallandigham says, also:

"What will you have now? Four years more of war? What guaranties of
success have you? Do you want two million more of men to go forth
to this war as the Crusaders went to the sepulcher at Jerusalem?
The beginning of this administration found us with very little
debt, comparatively no taxation, and peace and happiness among the
States; and now look at the scene! Four more years of war, do you
tell me, when the first four, with every advantage, has failed?
Now, too, that the hearts of one-half of the people are turned away
from war, and intent upon the arts of peace? What will be the
consequence? Four thousand millions more of debt, five hundred
millions more of taxation, more conscriptions, more calls for five
hundred thousand men, more sacrifices for the next four years. All
this is what Abraham Lincoln demands of you in order that the South
may be compelled not to return to the Union, but to abandon
slavery."

All this logic, this eloquence, this taxing the imagination to
portray the horrors of war, failed to deceive the people; Lincoln
was re-elected; the war went on, and a few short months witnessed
the end of the armed rebellion, and the triumph of liberty and of
Union.

Now came the work of reconstruction. The leaders of the Peace
Democracy, who had failed in every measure, in every plan, in every
opinion, and in every prediction relating to the war, were promptly
on hand, and with unblushing cheek were prepared to take exclusive
charge of the whole business of reorganization and reconstruction.
They had a plan all prepared--a plan easily understood, easily
executed, and which they averred would be satisfactory to all
parties. Their plan was in perfect harmony with the conduct and
history of its authors and friends during the war. They had been in
very close sympathy with the men engaged in the rebellion, while
their sympathy for loyal white people at the South was not strong,
and they were bitterly hostile to loyal colored people both North
and South. Their plan was consistent with all this.

According to it, the rebels were to be treated in the same manner
as if they had remained loyal. All laws, State and National, all
orders and regulations of the military, naval, and other
departments of the government, creating disabilities on account of
participation in the rebellion, were to be repealed, revoked, or
abolished. The rebellious States were to be represented in Congress
by the rebels without hindrance from any test oath. All
appointments in the army, in the navy, and in the civil service,
were to be made from men who were rebels, on the same terms as from
men who were loyal. The people and governments in the rebellious
States were to be subjected to no other interference or control
from the military or other departments of the general government
than exists in the States which remained loyal. Loyal white men and
loyal colored men were to be protected alone in those States by
State laws, executed by State authorities, as if they were in the
loyal States.

There were to be no amendments to the constitution, not even an
amendment abolishing slavery. In short, the great rebellion was to
be ignored or forgotten, or, in the words of one of their orators,
"to be generously forgiven." The war, whose burdens, cost, and
carnage they had been so fond of exaggerating, suddenly sank into
what the Rev. Petroleum V. Nasby calls "the late unpleasantness,"
for which nobody but the abolitionists were to blame. Under this
plan the States could soon re-establish slavery where it had been
disturbed by the war. Jefferson Davis, Toombs, Slidell, and Mason
could be re-elected to their old places in the Senate of the United
States; Lee could be re-appointed in the army, and Semmes and Maury
could be restored to the navy. Of course this plan of the Peace
Democracy was acceptable to the rebels of the South.

But the loyal people, who under the name of the Union party fought
successfully through the war of the rebellion, objected to this
plan as wrong in principle, wrong in its details, and fatally wrong
as an example for the future. It treats treason as no crime and
loyalty as no virtue; it contains no guarantees, irreversible or
otherwise, against another rebellion by the same parties and on the
same grounds. It restores to political honor and power in the
government of the Nation men who have spent the best part of their
lives in plotting the overthrow of that government, and who for
more than four years levied public war against the United States;
it allows Union men in the South, who have risked all--and many of
whom have lost all but life in upholding the Union cause--to be
excluded from every office, State and National, and in many
instances to be banished from the States they so faithfully
laboured to save; it abandons the four millions of colored people
to such treatment as the ruffian class of the South, educated in
the barbarism of slavery and the atrocities of the rebellion, may
choose to give them; it leaves the obligations of the Nation to her
creditors and to the maimed soldiers and to the widows and orphans
of the war, to be fulfilled by men who hate the cause in which
those obligations were incurred; it claims to be a plan which
restores the Union without requiring conditions; but, in conceding
to the conquered rebels the repeal of laws important to the
Nation's welfare, it grants conditions which they demand, while it
denies to the loyal victors conditions which they deem of priceless
value.

In the meantime, President Johnson having declared that "the
rebellion, in its revolutionary progress, had deprived the people
of the rebel States of all civil government," proceeded by military
power to set up provisional State governments in those States, and
to require them to declare void all ordinances of secession, to
repudiate the rebel debt, and to adopt the thirteenth amendment of
the constitution, proposed by the Union party, abolishing slavery
throughout the United States. The Peace Democracy opposed all
conditions, and, instinctively unsound upon human rights, opposed
the amendment abolishing slavery. The elections of 1865 settled
that question against them, and deprived them of New Jersey, the
last free State which adhered to their fallen fortunes.

At the session of Congress of 1865-66, the president, finding that
his co-called State governments in the rebel States--created by
military power alone and without the sanction of the legislative
power of the government--had accepted his conditions; insisted that
those States were fully restored to their former proper relations
with the general government, and that they were again entitled to
representation in the same manner with the loyal States. This plan
accorded with the wishes of all unrepentant rebels, and as a matter
of course received the support of their allies of the Peace
Democracy.

The Union party, at the sacrifice of all of the power and patronage
of the administration they had elected, firmly opposed and finally
defeated this project. They required, before the complete
restoration of the rebel States, that the fourteenth amendment of
the constitution should be adopted, which was framed to secure
civil rights to the colored people, equal representation between
the free States and the former slave States, the disqualification
for office of leading rebels, the payment of the loyal obligations
to creditors, to maimed soldiers, and to widows and orphans, and
the repudiation of the rebel debt, and of claims to payment for
slaves. On the adoption of this amendment turned the elections of
1866. After the amplest debates before the people the Union party
carried the country in favor of the amendment, electing more than
three-fourths of the members of the House of Representatives. They
also secured the adoption of the amendment in twenty-one out of the
twenty-four States now represented, which have acted upon it by an
average vote in the State legislature of more than four to one.

In striking contrast with this was the action of the rebel States.
Tennessee alone ratified the amendment. The other ten promptly and
defiantly rejected it by an average majority in their State
legislatures of more than fifty to one. When, therefore, the
Thirty-ninth Congress met in the session of 1866-67 they found the
work of reconstruction in those ten States still unaccomplished.

Now, in what condition were those ten rebel States? In the first
place all political power in those States was in the hands of
rebels, and for the most part of leading and unrepentant rebels.
Their governors, their members of legislature, their judges, their
county and city officers, and their members of Congress, with rare
exceptions, were rebels. Such was their political condition.

What was their condition with respect to the preservation of order,
the suppression of crime, and the redress of private grievances?
After the suppression of the rebellion the next plain duty of the
National government was to see that the lives, liberty, and
property of all classes of citizens were secure, and especially to
see that the loyal white and colored citizens who resided or might
sojourn in those States did not suffer injustice, oppression, or
outrage because of their loyalty. Loyal men, without distinction of
race or color, were clearly entitled to the full measure of
protection usually found in civilized countries, if in the nature
of things it was possible for the Nation to furnish it.

Inquiring as to the condition of things in the South, I waive the
uniform current of information derived from the press and other
unofficial sources from all parts of the South, and rely
exclusively on the official reports of army officers like Grant,
Thomas, Sheridan, and Howard--officers of clear heads, of strong
sense, and of spotless integrity, whose business it is to know the
facts, and who all united in warning the Nation that Union men,
either white or colored, were not safe in the South.

General Grant says that the class at the South who "will
acknowledge no law but force" is sufficiently formidable to justify
the military occupation of that territory.

General Sheridan, in an official report, says the "trial of a white
man for the murder of a freedman in Texas would be a farce; and, in
making this statement, I make it because truth compels me, and for
no other reason.... Over the killing of many freedmen nothing is
done." General Sheridan cites cases in which our National soldiers
wearing the uniform of the Republic have been deliberately shot
"without provocation" by citizens, and the grand jury refused to
find a bill against the murderers. Even in Virginia, General
Schofield was compelled to resort to a military tribunal because "a
gentleman" who shot a negro dead in cold blood "was instantly
acquitted by one of the civil courts."

General Ord reports in Arkansas fifty-two murders of freed persons
by white men in the past three or four months, _and no reports have
been received that the murderers have been imprisoned or
punished_.... "The number of murders reported is not half the
number committed."

General Sickles says that in South Carolina, "in certain counties,
such as Newberry, Edgecombe, and Laurens, so much countenance was
given to outrages on freedmen by the indifference of the civil
authorities and by the population, who made themselves accomplices
in the crimes, that other measures became necessary."

In Mississippi, General Thomas calls attention to the legislation
in regard to colored people. "It is oppressive, unjust, and
unconstitutional." The laws as to buying real estate, bearing arms,
making contracts, and the like, are of such a character "that the
constitutional gift of freedom is not much more than a name."

General Sheridan, speaking of Louisiana, says: "Homicides are
frequent in some localities. Sometimes they are investigated by a
coroner's jury, which justifies the act and releases the
perpetrator; in other cases, ... the parties are held to bail in a
nominal sum; but the trial of a white man for the killing of a
freedman can, in the existing state of society in this State, be
nothing more or less than a farce."

General Thomas, in February last, in relation to the display of the
rebel flag in Rome, Georgia, said: "The sole cause of this and
similar offenses lies in the fact that certain citizens of Rome,
and a portion of the people of the States lately in rebellion, do
not and have not accepted the situation, and that is that the late
civil war was a rebellion, and history will so record it....
Everywhere in the States lately in rebellion treason is respectable
and loyalty odious. This the people of the United States who ended
the rebellion and saved the country will not permit; and all
attempts to maintain this unnatural order of things will be met by
decided disapproval."

Upon these official reports, showing not merely that atrocious
crimes were everywhere committed against loyal people, but that
the civil authorities did not even attempt to prevent them by the
punishment of the perpetrators, it became the plain duty of
Congress to adopt measures "to enforce peace and good order in the
rebel States, until loyal and Republican State governments could be
legally established." How well this duty was performed will appear
from a brief examination of the reconstruction acts which were
passed by Congress in March last, and by the auspicious results
which followed their adoption and execution.

By these acts, the ten rebel States were divided into five military
districts, subject to the military authority of the United States;
and it was made the duty of the president to assign military
officers, not below the rank of brigadier-general, to command each
of said districts, and to detail a sufficient military force to
enable such officers to perform their duties. The duties of
military commanders were defined as follows, in the 3d section of
the act:

"Sec. 3. _And be it further enacted_, That it shall be the duty of
each officer assigned as aforesaid, to protect all persons in their
rights of person and property, to suppress insurrection, disorder,
and violence, and to punish, or cause to be punished, all
disturbers of the public peace and criminals; and to this end he
may allow local civil tribunals to take jurisdiction of and to try
offenders; or when, in his judgment, it may be necessary for the
trial of offenders, he shall have power to organize military
commissions or tribunals for that purpose; and all interference,
under color of State authority, with the exercise of military
authority under this act shall be null and void."