Part 11

It is yet too early to speculate with much confidence on the remote consequences of the war. One of its more immediate results has already been to disabuse the Southern mind of some of its most fatal misconceptions as to Northern character. They thought us a trading people, incapable of lofty sentiment, ready to sacrifice everything for commercial advantage,--a heterogeneous rabble, fit only to be ruled by a superior race. They are not likely to make that mistake again, and must have learned by this time that the best blood is that which has in it most of the iron of purpose and constancy. War, the sternest and dearest of teachers, has already made us a soberer and older people on both sides. It has brought questions of government and policy home to us as never before, and has made us feel that citizenship is a duty to whose level we must rise, and not a privilege to which we are born. The great principles of humanity and politics, which had faded into the distance of abstraction and history, have been for four years the theme of earnest thought and discussion at every fireside and wherever two men met together. They have again become living and operative in the heart and mind of the nation. What was before a mighty population is grown a great country, united in one hope, inspired by one thought, and welded into one power. But have not the same influences produced the same result in the South, and created there also a nation hopelessly alien and hostile? To a certain extent this is true, but not in the unlimited way in which it is stated by enemies in England, or politicians at home, who would gladly put the people out of heart, because they themselves are out of office. With the destruction of slavery, the one object of the war will have been lost by the Rebels, and its one great advantage gained by the government. Slavery is by no means dead as yet, whether socially in its relation of man to man, or morally in its hold on public opinion and its strength as a political superstition. But there is no party at the North, considerable in numbers or influence, which could come into power on the platform of making peace with the Rebels on their own terms. No party can get possession of the government which is not in sympathy with the temper of the people, and the people, forced into war against their will by the unprovoked attack of pro-slavery bigotry, are resolved on pushing it to its legitimate conclusion. War means now, consciously with many, unconsciously with most, but inevitably, abolition. Nothing can save slavery but peace. Let its doom be once accomplished, or its reconstruction (for reconstruction means nothing more) clearly seen to be an impossibility, and the bond between the men at the South who were willing to destroy the Union, and those at the North who only wish to save it, for the sake of slavery, will be broken. The ambitious in both sections will prefer their chances as members of a mighty empire to what would always be secondary places in two rival and hostile nations, powerless to command respect abroad or secure prosperity at home. The masses of the Southern people will not feel too keenly the loss of a kind of property in which they had no share, while it made them underlings, nor will they find it hard to reconcile themselves with a government from which they had no real cause of estrangement. If the war be waged manfully, as becomes a thoughtful people, without insult or childish triumph in success, if we meet opinion with wiser opinion, waste no time in badgering prejudice till it become hostility, and attack slavery as a crime against the nation, and not as individual sin, it will end, we believe, in making us the most powerful and prosperous community the world ever saw. Our example and our ideas will react more powerfully than ever on the Old World, and the consequence of a rebellion, aimed at the natural equality of all men, will be to hasten incalculably the progress of equalization over the whole earth. Above all, Freedom will become the one absorbing interest of the whole people, making us a nation alive from sea to sea with the consciousness of a great purpose and a noble destiny, and uniting us as slavery has hitherto combined and made powerful the most hateful aristocracy known to man.

McCLELLAN OR LINCOLN?

1864

The spectacle of an opposition waiting patiently during several months for its principles to turn up would be amusing in times less critical than these. Nor was this the worst. If there might be persons malicious enough to think that the Democratic party could get along very well without principles, all would admit that a candidate was among the necessaries of life. Now, where not only immediate policy, but the very creed which that policy is to embody, is dependent on circumstances, and on circumstances so shifting and doubtful as those of a campaign, it is hard to find a representative man whose name may, in some possible contingency, mean enough, without, in some other equally possible contingency, meaning too much. The problem was to hunt up somebody who, without being anything in particular, might be anything in general, as occasion demanded. Of course, the professed object of the party was to save their country, but which _was_ their country, and which it would be most profitable to save, whether America or Secessia, was a question that Grant or Sherman might answer one way or the other in a single battle. If only somebody or something would tell them whether they were for war or peace! The oracles were dumb, and all summer long they looked anxiously out, like Sister Anne from her tower, for the hero who should rescue unhappy Columbia from the Republican Bluebeard. Did they see a cloud of dust in the direction of Richmond or Atlanta? Perhaps Grant might be the man, after all, or even Sherman would answer at a pinch. When at last no great man would come along, it was debated whether it might not be better to nominate some one without a record, as it is called, since a nobody was clearly the best exponent of a party that was under the unhappy necessity of being still uncertain whether it had any recognizable soul or not. Meanwhile, the time was getting short and the public impatience peremptory.

"Under which king, bezonian? Speak, or die!"

The party found it alike inconvenient to do the one or the other, and ended by a compromise which might serve to keep them alive till after election, but which was as far from any distinct utterance as if their mouths were already full of that official pudding which they hope for as the reward of their amphibological patriotism. Since it was not safe to be either for peace or war, they resolved to satisfy every reasonable expectation by being at the same time both and neither. If you are warlike, there is General McClellan; if pacific, surely you must be suited with Mr. Pendleton; if neither, the combination of the two makes a _tertium quid_ that is neither one thing nor another. As the politic Frenchman, kissing the foot of St. Peter's statue (recast out of a Jupiter), while he thus did homage to existing prejudices, hoped that the Thunderer would remember him if he ever came into power again, so the Chicago Convention compliments the prevailing warlike sentiment of the country with a soldier, but holds the civilian quietly in reserve for the future contingencies of submission. The nomination is a kind of political _What-is-it?_ and voters are expected, without asking impertinent questions, to pay their money and make their own choice as to the natural history of the animal. Looked at from the Northern side, it is a raven, the bird of carnage, to be sure, but whitewashed and looking as decorously dove-like as it can; from the Southern, it is a dove, blackened over for the nonce, but letting the olive-branch peep from under its wing.

A more delicate matter for a convention, however, even than the selection of candidates, is the framing of a platform for them to stand upon. It was especially delicate for a gathering which represented so many heterogeneous and almost hostile elements. So incongruous an assemblage has not been seen since the host of Peter the Hermit, unanimous in nothing but the hope of plunder and of reconquering the Holy Land of office. There were War Democrats ready to unite in peace resolutions, and Peace Democrats eager to move the unanimous nomination of a war candidate. To make the confusion complete, Mr. Franklin Pierce, the dragooner of Kansas, writes a letter in favor of free elections, and the maligners of New England propose a Connecticut Yankee as their favorite nominee. The Convention was a rag-bag of dissent, made up of bits so various in hue and texture that the managers must have been as much puzzled to arrange them in any kind of harmonious pattern as the thrifty housewife in planning her coverlet out of the parings of twenty years' dressmaking. All the odds and ends of personal discontent, every shred of private grudge, every resentful rag snipped off by official shears, scraps of Rebel gray and leavings of Union blue,--all had been gathered, as if for the tailoring of Joseph's coat; and as a Chatham Street broker first carefully removes all marks of previous ownership from the handkerchiefs which find their way to his counter, so the temporary chairman advised his hearers, by way of a preliminary caution, to surrender their convictions. This, perhaps, was superfluous, for it may be doubted whether anybody present, except Mr. Fernando Wood, ever legally had one, though Captain Rynders must have brought many in his following who richly deserved it. Mr. Belmont, being chosen to represent the Democracy of Mammon, did little more than paraphrase in prose the speech of that fallen financier in another rebellious conclave, as reported by Milton:--

"How in safety best we may Compose our present evils, with regard Of what we are and were, dismissing quite All thoughts of war."

But we turn from the momentary elevation of the banker, to follow the arduous labors of the Committee on Resolutions.[4] The single end to be served by the platform they were to construct was that of a bridge over which their candidate might make his way into the White House. But it must be so built as to satisfy the somewhat exacting theory of construction held by the Rebel emissaries at Niagara, while at the same time no apprehensions as to its soundness must be awakened in the loyal voters of the party. The war plank would offend the one, the State Rights plank excite the suspicion of the other. The poor fellow in Æsop, with his two wives, one pulling out the black hairs and the other the white, was not in a more desperate situation than the Committee,--MacHeath, between his two doxies, not more embarrassed. The result of their labors was, accordingly, as narrow as the pathway of the faithful into the Mahometan paradise,--so slender, indeed, that Blondin should have been selected as the only candidate who could hope to keep his balance on it, with the torrent of events rushing ever swifter and louder below. It might sustain the somewhat light Unionism of Mr. Pendleton, but would General McClellan dare to trust its fragile footing, with his Report and his West Point oration, with his record, in short, under his arm? Without these documents General McClellan is a nobody; with them, before he can step on a peace platform, he must eat an amount of leek that would have turned the stomach of Ancient Pistol himself. It remained to be seen whether he was more in favor of being President than of his own honor and that of the country.

[4] The _Platform of the Chicago Convention_ was published in the public journals 30th August.

The Resolutions of the Chicago Convention, though they denounce various wrongs and evils, some of them merely imaginary, and all the necessary results of civil war, propose only one thing,--surrender. Disguise it as you will, flavor it as you will, call it what you will, umble-pie is umble-pie, and nothing else. The people instinctively so understood it. They rejected with disgust a plan whose mere proposal took their pusillanimity for granted, and whose acceptance assured their self-contempt. At a moment when the Rebels would be checkmated in another move, we are advised to give them a knight and begin the game over again. If they are not desperate, what chance of their accepting offers which they rejected with scorn before the war began? If they are not desperate, why is their interest more intense in the result of our next Presidential election than even in the campaign at their very door? If they were not desperate, would two respectable men like Messrs. Clay and Holcomb endure the society of George Saunders? General McClellan himself admitted the righteousness of the war by volunteering in it, and, the war once begun, the only real question has been whether the principle of legitimate authority or that of wanton insurrection against it should prevail,--whether we should have for the future a government of opinion or of brute force. When the rebellion began, its leaders had no intention to dissolve the Union, but to reconstruct it, to make the Montgomery Constitution and Jefferson Davis supreme over the whole country, and not over a feeble fragment of it. They knew, as we knew, the weakness of a divided country, and our experience of foreign governments during the last four years has not been such as to lessen the apprehension on that score, or to make the consciousness of it less pungent in either of the contending sections. Even now, Jefferson Davis is said to be in favor of a confederation between the Free and the Slave States. But what confederation could give us back the power and prestige of the old Union? The experience of Germany surely does not tempt to imitation. And in making overtures for peace, with whom are we to treat? Talking vaguely about "the South," "the Confederate States," or "the Southern people," does not help the matter; for the cat under all this meal is always the _government_ at Richmond, men with everything to expect from independence, with much to hope from reconstruction, and sure of nothing but ruin from reunion. And these men, who were arrogant as equals and partners, are to be moderate in dictating terms as conquerors! If the people understood less clearly the vital principle which is at hazard in this contest, if they were not fully persuaded that Slavery and State Eights are merely the counters, and that free institutions are the real stake, they might be deluded with the hope of compromise. But there are things that are not subjects of compromise. The honor, the conscience, the very soul of a nation, cannot be compromised without ceasing to exist. When you propose to yield a part of them, there is already nothing left to yield.

And yet this is all that the party calling itself Democratic, after months of deliberation, after four years in which to study the popular mind, have to offer in the way of policy. It is neither more nor less than to confess that they have no real faith in popular self-government, for it is to assume that the people have neither common nor moral sense. General McClellan is to be put in command of the national citadel, on condition that he immediately offers to capitulate. To accept the nomination on these terms was to lose, not only his election, but his self-respect. Accordingly, no sooner was the damaging effect of the platform evident than it was rumored that he would consent to the candidacy, but reject the conditions on which alone it was offered. The singular uniform, half Union-blue and half Confederate--gray, in which it was proposed by the managers at Chicago to array the Democratic party, while it might be no novelty to some camp-followers of the New York delegation familiar with the rules of certain of our public institutions, could hardly be agreeable to one who had worn the livery of his country with distinction. It was the scene of Petruchio and the tailor over again:--

_Gen. McC._ "Why, what, i' th' Devil's name, tailor, call'st thou this?"

_Committee._ "You bid me make it orderly and well, According to the fashion and the time."

_Gen. McC._ "Marry, I did; but, if you be remembered, _I did not bid you mar it to the time._"

Between the nomination and acceptance came the taking of Atlanta, marring the coat to the time with a vengeance, and suggesting the necessity of turning it,--a sudden cure which should rank among the first in future testimonials to the efficacy of Sherman's lozenges. Had General McClellan thrust the resolutions away from him with an honest scorn, we should have nothing to say save in commendation. But to accept them with his own interpretation, to put upon them a meaning utterly averse from their plain intention, and from that understanding of them which the journals of his own faction clearly indicated by their exultation or their silence, according as they favored Confederacy or Union, is to prepare a deception for one of the parties to the bargain. In such cases, which is commonly cheated, the candidate, or the people who vote for him? If the solemn and deliberate language of resolutions is to be interpreted by contraries, what rule of hermeneutics shall we apply to the letter of a candidate? If the Convention meant precisely what they did not say, have we any assurance that the aspirant has not said precisely what he did not mean? Two negatives may constitute an affirmative, but surely the affirmation of two contradictory propositions by parties to the same bargain assures nothing but misunderstanding.

The resolutions were adopted with but four dissenting votes; their meaning was obvious, and the whole country understood it to be peace on any conditions that would be condescended to at Richmond. If a nation were only a contrivance to protect men in gathering gear, if territory meant only so many acres for the raising of crops, if power were of worth only as a police to prevent or punish crimes against person and property, then peace for the mere sake of peace were the one desirable thing for a people whose only history would be written in its cash-book. But if a nation be a living unity, leaning on the past by tradition, and reaching toward the future by continued aspiration and achievement,--if territory be of value for the raising of men formed to high aims and inspired to noble deeds by that common impulse which, springing from a national ideal, gradually takes authentic shape in a national character,--if power be but a gross and earthy bulk till it be ensouled with thought and purpose, and of worth only as the guardian and promoter of truth and justice among men,--then there are misfortunes worse than war and blessings greater than peace. At this moment, not the Democratic party only, but the whole country, longs for peace, and the difference is merely as to the price that shall be paid for it. Shall we pay in degradation, and sue for a cessation of hostilities which would make chaos the rule and order the exception, which would not be peace, but toleration, not the repose of manly security, but the helpless quiet of political death? Or shall we pay, in a little more present suffering, self-sacrifice, and earnestness of purpose, for a peace that shall be as lasting as honorable, won as it will be by the victory of right over wrong, and resting on the promise of God and the hope of man? We believe the country has already made up its mind as to the answer, and will prove that a democracy may have as clear a conception of its interests and duties, as fixed a purpose in defending the one and fulfilling the other, a will as united and prompt, as have hitherto been supposed to characterize forms of government where the interests were more personal and the power less diffused.

Fortunately, though some of General McClellan's indiscreet friends would make the coming election to turn upon his personal quarrel with the administration, the question at issue between the two parties which seek to shape the policy of the country is one which manifestly transcends all lesser considerations, and must be discussed in the higher atmosphere of principle, by appeals to the reason, and not the passions, of the people. However incongruous with each other in opinion the candidates of the Democratic party may be, in point of respectability they are unexceptionable. It is true, as one of the candidates represents war and the other peace, and "when two men ride on one horse, one must ride behind," that it is of some consequence to know which is to be in the saddle and which on the croup; but we will take it for granted that General McClellan will have no more delicacy about the opinions of Mr. Pendleton than he has shown for those of the Convention. Still, we should remember that the General may be imprudent enough to die, as General Harrison and General Taylor did before him, and that Providence may again make "of our pleasant vices whips to scourge us." We shall say nothing of the sectional aspect of the nomination, for we do not believe that what we deemed a pitiful electioneering clamor, when raised against our own candidates four years ago, becomes reasonable argument in opposing those of our adversaries now. The point of interest, then, is simply this: What can General McClellan accomplish for the country which Mr. Lincoln has failed to accomplish? In what respect would their policies differ? And, supposing them to differ, which would be most consistent with the honor and permanent well-being of the nation?