Chapter 19

"Now, young man, afore you hurry up your cakes much further, I've got jest two words to say to ye. Don't cut it too fat, or you'll flummux by the way, an' leave nuthin' but a grease-spot. Don't dawdle round doin' nuthin' but stuffin' yerself to kill. Don't act like a gonus,--don't hanker arter the flesh-pots. Wake up, peel your eyes, an' do suthin' for a dyspeptic world, for sufferin' sinners, for yerself. Allers stick close to Natur' an' hyg'ene. Drop yer nonsense, an' come over an' j'in us, an' we'll make a new man of ye,--jest as good as wheat. You're on the road to ruin now; but we'll take ye, an' build ye up, give ye tall feed, an' warrant ye fust-cut health an' happiness. No cure, no pay. An' look here, keep that 'ere card I gev ye continooally on hand, an' peroose it day an' night. I tell ye it'll be the makin' on ye. An' don't forgit the golden rule:--Don't tech, don't g' nigh the p'is'n upus-tree of gravy; beware o' the dorg called hot biscuits; take keer o' the grease, an' the stomach'll take keer of itself. Ef you're in want o' bran-bread at any time, let me know, an' I'm your man,--Rink by name, an' Rink by natur'. An' ef so be you ever come within ten mile o' where I hang out, jest tie right up on the spot, without the slightest ceremony or delayance, an' take things puffickly free an' easy like. Wal, my hearty, I see ye're on the skedaddle. Take keer o' yerself,--yourn till death, N. Rink."

THE TWENTIETH PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.

The country is now on the eve of an election the importance of which it would be impossible to overrate. Yet a few days, and it will be decided whether the people of the United States shall condemn their own conduct, by cashiering an Administration which they called upon to make war on the rebellious slaveholders of the South, or support that Administration in the strenuous endeavors which it is making to effect the reconstruction of the Republic, and the destruction of Slavery. It is to insult the intelligence and patriotism of the American people to entertain any serious doubt as to the issue of the contest. It can have but one issue, unless the country has lost its senses,--and never has it given better evidence of its sobriety, firmness, and rectitude of purpose than it now daily affords. Were the contest one relating to the conduct of the war, and had the Democratic party assumed a position of unquestionable loyalty, there would be some room for doubting who is to be our next President. It is impossible that a contest of proportions so vast should not have afforded ground for some complaint, on the score of its management. To suppose that the action of Government has been on all occasions exactly what it should have been is to suppose something so utterly out of the nature of things that it presents itself to no mind. Errors are unavoidable even in the ordinary affairs of common life, and their number and their magnitude increase with the importance of the business, and the greatness of the stage on which it is transacted. We have never claimed perfection for the Federal Administration, though we have ever been ready to do justice to the success which it has achieved on many occasions and to the excellence of its intentions on all. Had the Democrats called upon the country to displace the Administration because it had not done all that it should have done, promising to do more themselves against the Rebels than President Lincoln and his associates had effected, the result of the Presidential election might be involved in some doubt; for the people desire to see the Rebellion brought to an end, and the Democratic party has a great name as a ruling political organization, its history, during most of the present century, being virtually the history of the American nation. But, with a want of wisdom that shows how much it has lost in losing that Southern lead which had so much to do with its success in politics, it chose to place itself in opposition to the national sentiment, instead of adopting it, guiding it, and profiting from its existence. The errors of the various parties that have been opposed to it have often been matter for mirth to the Democratic party, as well they may have been; but neither Federalists, nor National Republicans, nor Whigs, nor Know-Nothings, nor Republicans were ever guilty of a blunder so enormous as that which this party itself perpetrated at Chicago, when it virtually announced its readiness to surrender the country into the hands of the men who have so pertinaciously sought its destruction for the last four years. So strange has been its action, that we should be ashamed to have dreamed that any party could be guilty of it. Yet it is a living fact that the Democratic party, in spite of its loud claims to strict nationality of purpose, has so conducted itself as to show that it is willing to complete the work which the slaveholders began, and not only to submit to the terms which the Rebels would dictate, but to tear the Union still further to pieces, if indeed it would leave any two States in a united condition. Thus acting, that party has defeated itself, and reduced the action of the people to a mere, though a mighty, formality. Either this is a plain statement of the case, or this nation is about to give a practical answer to Bishop Butler's famous question, "What if a whole community were to go mad?" For the ratification of the Chicago Platform by the people would be an indorsement of violence and disorder, a direct approval of wilful rebellion, and an announcement that every election held in this country is to be followed by a revolutionary outbreak, until our condition shall have become even worse than that of Mexico, and we shall be ready to welcome the arrival, in the train of some European army, of a cadet of some imperial or royal house, whose "mission" it should be to restore order in the once United States, while anarchy should be kept at a distance by a liberal exhibition of French or German bayonets. What has happened to Mexico would assuredly happen here, if we should allow the country to Mexicanize itself at the bidding of Belmont and Co.

But it may be said, it is unjust to attribute to the masses of the Democratic party intentions so bad as those of which we have spoken. That party, in past times, has done great things for the land, has always professed the highest patriotism, and its name and fame are most intimately associated with some of the noblest passages in the history of the Republic. All this is very true. We admit, what is indeed self-evident, that the Democratic party has done great things for the country, and that it can look back with just pride over the country's history, until a comparatively recent period; and we do not attribute to the masses composing it any other than the best intentions. It is not of those masses that we have spoken. The sentiment of patriotism is ever strong with the body of the people. The number of men who would wilfully injure their country has never been large in any age. But it is not the less true that parties are but too often the blind tools of leaders, of men whose only interest in their country is to use it for their own purposes, to make all they can out of it, and at its expense. The Democratic party has always been a disciplined party, and nothing is more notorious in its history than its submissiveness to its leaders. This has been the chief cause of its almost unbroken career of success; and it has been its pride and its boast that it has been well-trained, obedient, and consequently successful, while all other parties have been quarrelsome and impatient of discipline, and consequently have risen only to endure through a few years of sickly existence, and then to pass away. The Federalists, the National Republicans, the Antimasons, the Whigs, and the Know-Nothings have each appeared, flourished for a short time, and then passed to the limbo of factions lost to earth. This discipline of the Democracy has not been without its uses, and the country occasionally has profited from it; but now it is to be abused, through application to the service of the Great Anarch at Richmond. The Rebel power, which our fleets and armies are steadily reducing day by day, is to be saved from overthrow, and its agents from the severe and just punishment which should be visited upon them for their great and unprovoked crime,--if they are to be saved therefrom,--through the action of the Democratic party, as it calls itself, and which purposes to go to the assistance of the slaveholders in war, as formerly it went to their assistance in peace, the meekest and most faithful and most useful of their slaves. The Democratic party, as a party, instead of being the sword of the Republic, purposes being the shield of the Rebellion. Such is the intention of its leaders, who control the disciplined masses, if their words have any meaning; and, so far as they have been able to act, their actions correspond strictly with their words. The Chicago Convention, which consisted of the _crème de la crème_ of the Democracy, had not a word to say against either the Rebels or the Rebellion, while it had not words enough, or words not strong enough, to employ in denouncing those whose sole offence consists in their efforts to conquer the Rebels and to put down the Rebellion. With a perversion of history that is quite without a parallel even in the hardy falsehood of American politics, the responsibility for the war was placed to the account of the loyal men of the country, and not to the account of the traitors, who brought it upon the nation by a fierce forcing-process. The speech of Mr. Horatio Seymour, who presided over the Belmont band, is, as it were, a bill of indictment preferred against the American Republic; for Governor Seymour, though not famous for his courage, has boldness sufficient to do that which a far greater man said he would not do,--he has indicted a whole people. It follows from this condemnation of the Federal Government for making war on the Rebels, and this failure to condemn the Rebels for making war on the Federal Government, that the Democrats, should they succeed in electing their candidates, would pursue a course exactly the opposite of that which they denounce. They would withdraw the nation from the contest, and acknowledge the independence of the Southern Confederacy; and then they would make such a treaty with its leading and dominant interest as should place the United States in the condition of dependency with reference to the South. That such would be their course is not only fairly inferrible from the views embodied in the Chicago Platform, and from the speeches made in the Chicago Convention, but it is what Mr. Pendleton, the Democratic candidate for the Vice-Presidency, has said it is our duty to do so, so far as relates to acknowledging the Confederacy. He has deliberately said, that, if we cannot "conciliate" the Rebels, and "persuade" them to come back into the Union, we should allow them to depart in peace. Such is the doctrine of the gentleman who was placed on the Democratic ticket with General McClellan for the avowed purpose of rendering that ticket palatable to the Peace men. No man can vote for General McClellan without by the same act voting for Mr. Pendleton; and we know that Mr. Pendleton has declared himself ready to let the Rebels rend the Union to tatters, and that he has opposed the prosecution of the war. General McClellan is mortal, and, if elected, might die long before his Presidential term should be out, like General Taylor, or immediately after it should begin, like General Harrison. Then Mr. Pendleton would become President, like Mr. Tyler, in 1841, who cheated the Whigs, or like Mr. Fillmore, in 1850, who cheated everybody. Nor is it by any means certain that General McClellan would not, once elected, consider himself the Chicago Platform, as Mr. Buchanan avowed himself to be the Cincinnati Platform. He has written a letter, to be sure, in which he has given it to be understood that he is in favor of continuing the war against the Rebels until they shall be subdued; but so did Mr. Polk, twenty yearn ago, write a letter on the Tariff of 1842 that was even more satisfactory to the Democratic Protectionists of those days than the letter of General McClellan can be to the War Democrats of these days. All of us recollect the famous Democratic blazon of 1844,--"Polk, Dallas, and the Tariff of '42!" It was under that sign that the Democrats conquered in Pennsylvania; and had they not conquered in Pennsylvania, they themselves would have been conquered in the nation. Mr. Polk and Mr. Dallas were the chief instruments used to break down the Tariff of '42, in less than two years after they had been elected to the first and second offices of the nation because they were believed to be its most ardent friends. Mr. Polk, as President, recommended that it should be changed, and employed all the influence of his high station to get the Tariff Bill of 1846 through Congress; and Mr. Dallas, who had been nominated for the Vice-Presidency with the express purpose of "catching" the votes of Protectionists, gave his casting vote in the Senate in favor of the new bill, which meant the repeal of the Tariff of '42. The Democrats are playing the same game now that they played in 1844, with this difference, that the stakes are ten thousand times greater now than they were then, and that their manner of play is far hardier than it was twenty years since. Then, the question, though important, related only to a point of internal policy; now, it relates to the national existence. Then, the Free-Traders did not offensively proclaim their intention to cheat the Protectionists; now, Mr. Fernando Wood and Mr. Vallandigham, and other leaders of the extreme left of the Democratic party, with insulting candor, avow that to cheat the country is the purpose which that party has in view. Mr. Vallandigham, who made the Chicago Platform, explicitly declares that that Platform and General McClellan's letter of acceptance do not agree; at the same time Mr. Wood, who is for peace to the knife, calmly tells us that General McClellan, as President, would do the work of the Democracy,--and we need no Daniel to interpret Mr. Wood's words. We mean no disrespect to General McClellan, on the contrary we treat him with perfect respect, when we say that we do not believe he has a higher sense of honor than Mr. Polk possessed; and as Mr. Polk became a tool in the hands of a faction,--being a Protectionist during the contest of '44, and an Anti-Protectionist after that contest had been decided in his favor,--so is it intended that General McClellan shall become a tool in the hands of another faction. Mr. Polk was employed to effect the destruction of a "black tariff": General McClellan is employed to destroy a nation that is supposed to be given up to "black republicanism." We do not believe that the soldier will be found so successful an instrument as the civilian proved to be.

An ounce of fact is supposed to be worth a ton of theory; and the facts of the last four or five years admit of our believing the worst that can be suspected of the purposes of the Democratic party. It is not uncharitable to say that the leaders and managers of that party contemplate, in the event of their triumph in November, the surrender of the country to the slaveholding oligarchy; in the event of their defeat by a small majority, the extension of the civil war over the North. Four years ago we could not be made to believe that Secession was a possible thing. We admitted that there were Secessionists at the South, but we could not be made to believe in the possibility of Secession. Even "South Carolina couldn't be kicked out of the Union," it was commonly said in the North. There were but few disunionists at the South, almost everybody said, and almost everybody believed what was said concerning the state of Southern opinion. In a few weeks we saw, not South Carolina kicked out of the Union, but South Carolina kicking the Union away from her. In a few months we saw eleven States take themselves out of the Union, form themselves into a Confederacy, and raise great armies to fight against the Union. Yet it is certain that in the month of November, 1860, there were not twenty thousand resolute disunionists in all the Slaveholding States, leaving South Carolina and Mississippi aside,--and not above fifty thousand in all the South, including Mississippi and South Carolina. How, then, came it to pass that nearly the whole of the population of the South became Rebels in so short a time? Because they were under the dominion of their leading men, who took them from the right road, and conducted them into the slough of rebellion. Because they were encouraged so to act by the Northern Democracy as made rebellion inevitable. The Northern Democratic press and Northern Democratic orators held such language respecting "Southern rights" as induced even loyal Southrons to suppose that Slavery was to be openly recognized by the Constitution, and spread over the nation. The President of the United States, a Northern Democrat, gravely declared that there existed no right in the Government to coerce a seceding State, which was all that the most determined Secessionist could ask. Instead of doing anything to strengthen the position of the federal Government, the President did all that he could to assist the Secessionists, and left the country naked to their attacks; and he parted on the best of terms with those Rebels who left his Cabinet, where they had long been busy in organizing resistance to Federal authority. The leaders of the Northern Democracy, far from exhibiting a loyal spirit, urged the slaveholders to make demands which were at war with the Constitution and the laws, and which could not have been complied with, unless it had been meant to admit that there was no binding force in existing institutions, the validity of which had not once been called in question for seventy-two years. The real Secessionists of the South, Rhett and Yancey and their followers, availed themselves of the existing state of affairs, and precipitated rebellion,--a step which they never would have taken, had they not been assured that no resistance would be made to their action so long as Mr. Buchanan should remain in the Presidency, and that he would be supported by the leaders of the Northern Democracy, who would take their followers with them along the road that led to the Union's dissolution. South Carolina, rabid as she was, did not rebel until the last Democratic President of the United States had publicly assured her that he would do nothing to prevent her from reducing the Calhoun theory to practice; and had she not rebelled, not another State would have left the Union. The opportunity that she could not get under President Jackson she obtained under President Buchanan,--and she did not hesitate to make the most of that opportunity, all indeed that could be made of it, well knowing that it could not be expected again to occur.

With these facts before them, the American people should be prepared for further rebellious action on the part of that faction whose creed it is that rebellion is right when directed against the ascendency of their political opponents. They have done their utmost to assist the Rebels all through the war, and the great riots in New York last year were the legitimate consequences of their doctrine, if not of their labors. We know that organizations hostile to the Union have been formed in the West, and that there was to have been a rising there, had any striking successes been achieved by the Confederate forces during the last six months. Nothing but the vigor and the victories of Grant and Sherman and Farragut saved the North from becoming the scene of civil war in 1864. Nothing but the vigor and union of the people in their political capacity can keep civil war from the North hereafter. The followers of the Seymours and other ultra Democrats of the North are not more loyal than were nine-tenths of the Southern people in 1860. Few of them now think of becoming rebels, but they would as readily rebel as did the Southern men who have filled the armies of Lee and Beauregard, and who have poured out their blood so lavishly to destroy that nation which owes its existence to the labors of Southern men, to the exertions of Washington, Jefferson, Henry, and others, natives of the very States that have done most in the cause of destruction. The sentiment of nationality is no stronger among Northern Democrats than it was among Southern Democrats; and as the latter were converted into traitors at the bidding of a few leading politicians whose plans were favored by circumstances, so would the former become traitors at the first signal to any move that _their_ leaders should make. As to the two classes of leaders, the Southern men are far superior in every manly quality to those Northern men who are doing their work. It is possible that the men of the South really did believe that their property was in danger, and it is beyond dispute that they were alarmed about their political power; but the men of the North who sympathize with them, and who are prepared to aid them at the first opportunity that shall offer to strike an effective blow, well knew that the victorious Republicans had neither the will nor the power to injure Southern property or to weaken the protection it enjoyed under the Constitution. Their hostility to the Union is purely gratuitous, or springs from motives of the most sordid character.

There is but one way to meet the danger that threatens us,--a danger that really is greater than that with which we were threatened in 1860, and which we have the advantage of seeing, whereas we could see nothing in that year. We must strengthen the Government, make it literally irresistible, by clothing it with the whole of that power which proceeds from an emphatic and unmistakable expression of the popular will. Give Mr. Lincoln, in the approaching election, the strength that comes from a united people, and we shall have peace maintained throughout the North, and peace restored to the South. Reëlect him by a small majority, and there will be civil war in the North, and a revival of warlike spirit in the South. Elect General McClellan, and we shall have to choose between constant warfare, as a consequence of having approved of Secession by approving of the Chicago Platform,--which is Secession formally democratized,--and despotism, the only thing that would save us from anarchy. Anarchy is the one thing that men will not, because they cannot, long endure. Order is indeed now and forever Heaven's first law, and order society must and will have. Order is just as compatible with constitutional government as it is with despotic government; but to have it in connection with freedom, in other words, with the existence of a constitutional polity, the people must do their whole duty. They must rise above the prejudices of party and of faction, and see nothing but their country and liberty. They must show that they are worthy of freedom, or they cannot long have it. Now is the time to prove that the American people know the difference between liberty and license, by their support of the party of order and constitutional government, and by administering a thorough rebuke to those licentious men who are seeking to overwhelm the country and its Constitution in a common ruin.