a^ ^ '*bv^ 0* •<'- 4; '^0< 'o , i * A :-. -C c- O B O « ^.^-^ <^ 6 <» 1 «» ^^. *^^//ii- °o A z^^;:, -^^ V .,<' THE CRISIS AND THE MAN. ADDRESS DAVID S. CODDINOTON, THE PRESIDENTIAL OEISIS, DtLlVEUEI) KEKDRE THE UNION WAR DEMOCRACY, AT THE COOPER INSTITUTE, NEW YOliK, NOV. 1 1864. NEW YORK: WM. OLAND BOURNE, No, 12 CENTRE STREET. 18 6 5. Edwaki) O. Jenkins, Printer, 20 Nortli William Street, New York. THE CRISIS AND THE MAN, ADDRE SS DAVID S. CODDINGTON, THE PRESIDENTIAL CRISIS, DELIVERED BEFORE ; THE UNION WAK DEMOCRACY, AT THE COOPER INSTITUTE, NEW YORK, NOV. 1, 18G4 NEW YORK: WM. OLAND BOURNE, No. 12 CENTRE STREET. 1865. ,065- PUBLISIIEE'S NOTE. The brilliant and eloquent sijeech of David S. Coddington, Esq., made at the Convention of the War Democracy, in the City of New York, has been published in part in many of the journals. The great demand from all i)arts of the country for copies of this address, in a form for preservation, has induced the publisher to comply with the request. The speech has been carefully revised by the author expressly for this edition. A full report of the proceedings of the Convention, including also the speeches of R. B. Roosevelt, Esq. ; Hon. Hiram Walbridge ; Hon. James Worrall ; Major-Gen. John A. Dix ; Hon. Edwards Pierrepont ; Major-Gen. Daniel E. Sickles ; and Francis B. Cutting, Esq., is published in The Iron Platform, for December. Edward O. Jenkins, Printer, 20 North William Street, New York, By Transfer NOV 1 3 1922 THE CRISIS AND THE MAN. [Maj. -General Sickles having concluded his speech, after waiting for the subsidence of the tumultuous enthusiasm with which the patriotic and eloquent victim of the war was greeted,] Mr. CoDDiNGTON rosG and addressed the assembly. Fellow-Citizens — I feel the disadvantage of succeeding a hero. I bring witli me no deeds and no wounds to sanctify these verbal contributions to the exigency. We lose our Jiearts with those who lose their limbs for a cause that can- not be lost. In this ghastly crisis of our broken and bereaved America, a patient, suffering, and bewildered people are anxiously asking each other, in wliose ballot is wrapped the honor and safety of the nation, which ticket will admit us to the tlieatre of a restored and renovated commonwealth ? Does the angel of redemption beckon to us from the platform at Chicago or Baltimore ? almost the exact distance between self-destruc- tion and self-government. While the tempest is sweeping away old party obligations and raining down upon us new duties, shall we, as Demo- crats, drop helplessly into the flood, tied to the dead body of an organization whose anti-democratic conduct and anti- American spirit, would only entail upon us ridicule, de- gradation, and suicide ? Had the Democratic Party braced themselves up to the heroic height of the diificulty ; had they grafted the pluck of the ballot on the bravery of the bayonet, by insisting, without an "if" or a "but," upon the inviolability of the national unity ; had they joined issue with the administration upon mere questions of adminis- 4r THE CEISIS AND THE MAN. tration, going before the countiy with different candidates, to vindicate tlie same national principles, asking a verdict of the people upon the propriety or impropriety of test oaths, upon the question of a sounder financial policy for the war, upon a more careful suspension of the habeas corpus, upon the best mode of reconstructing States and ameliorating acts of confiscation, so that the South might not pass from a slaughter-house to an almshouse, so that we might bind up the broken links of our common brotherhood with discrimi- nation as well as determination ; had they planted one foot on the crimes of the South and the other upon the faults of the administration, and said : " Here we stand, this is our platform, we will punish the one and avoid tlie other ;" such an opposition would have been seasonable, healthful, and per- haps successful. Party men and no party men, discontented Kepublicans and contented Democrats, all could have joined heartily, because safely, in so legitimate an antagonism. Dc not the virtues of the war and the vicissitudes of the war admonish us to remember that while both parties are falling and dying upon the same bloody field, struck down by the same dark hand, for the same bright cause, both parties should adjourn their less urgent differences and unite upon the one fearful overshadowing necessity, so that citizen and soldier, partisan and patriot, Kepublican and Democrat, hand in hand, thoughtfully as well as pugnaciously, we may snatch from this gory hurricane of righteous conflict the sweet sugar cane of perpetual peace ? We sympathize, naturally, with Abraham Lincoln. We appreciate the awful magnitude of his trials and temptations, his dangers and his duties. We thank God that a Scotch cap saved the American Cap of Liberty from sudden and sacrilegi- ous spoliation. We know how eagerly a jealous opposition have been watching him to make capital out of the blunders and losses of this war, in order to obtain that power which their own blunders lost. An executive without experience, without the larger range of statesmanship to grasp so comprehensive a calamity, is suddenly called upon to thrust out his village hands to catch a falling empire. I defy any man, even Napoleon himself, to pass instantane- ously from an Illinois lawyer to a Washington Commander- THE CRISIS AND THE MAN". O in-Cliief without committing grave errors. Has his policy prolonged the war ? Which prolongs war most, the McClel- lan theory that returns to the eneni}'' the live ammunition of a working negro, or the Lincoln programme that keeps the African and hurls back only the avenging sweep of musket and mortar? Did he la}' his hand on the military elements ? Just in time for Presidential common sense to save Chickahominy strategy from losing Washington. Who doubts now that if McDowell had reported for duty on the Peninsula, Stonewall Jackson would not have thought it his duty to file up Pennsylvania avenue? Has the President sanctioned arbitrary arrests ? So did Washington and Jack- son ; so must all rulers who would save a State in danger. Where one innocent person has suffered, a hundred guilty ones have escaped. Does he favor acts of confiscation ? The South have confiscated every Northern thing, from a pin to a principle. Has he uttered the fearful word " Emancipation ?" It was a trumpet in the storm calling all hands on deck to save the ship. When the storm subsides the pen will shape into consistent proportions the security and humanity of the republic. There must always be a despotism in the Constitu- tion to meet the dangers of the Constitution. If the beautiful charter cannot defend itself, it is merely a passing remark, instead of a reliable instrument. Accustomed only to the practice of its peaceful provisions, we foi'get that it is not merely a temple in which to worship and administer, but an arsenal to load and fire. The war power of the Constitution — the right to suspend habeas corpus, to raise and support armies — is an awful recognition of the necessity for despotism in danger ; not a wanton and reckless employment of force, but an effective and peremptory use of power to meet sudden and perilous emergencies. I do not say that Mr. Lincoln has always wielded tliis power judiciously. Yet, if there is but one person in the crowd who will save my life from an assassin, I will not sta}- his arm to criticise his character. If we cannot endorse his errors we may at least adjourn their accountability. We look around in vain -at this election for any one else to strike such blows for the Union as Abraham Lincoln. The extremest war feeling is in power at tlie South, and the extremest war feeling must be in power at the North, 6 THE CRISIS AND THE MAN. or there is no equality in the energy that wiekis our respective resources. Moderation and compromise are strength in peace ; they are weakness in war. The South mean every means of destruction ; and if we mean less we will gain less than we are fighting for. Mr, Lincoln is a long man, but he is the shortest cut to the enemy. If we mean war we must vote for him. We opposed Abraham Lincoln in 1800, because he was only the available candidate of what seemed then a still more un- available party ; but the flood of insurrection in 1864 has swept him u})on the Ararat of the argument, and the Chicago party have made his election the only test of true citizenship. You cannot inflict upon the Southern crime so severe a Pre- sidential punishment as the re-election of Abraham Lincoln. Whatever that guilty community have suff'ered, of desolation or slaughter, of weeping homes or broken hearts, have fallen upon them in streams of national retribution, poured from the chartered hand of Abraham Lincoln. AYhen you re-elect him you re-elect a restless chastening rod — you re-elect the unbroken and uncompromising march of the sovereign supre- macy. Few men could have carried this Government through such a conjuncture without committing errors enough to have insured the success of any opposition, candidly and patriotically marshalled. Unfortunately for us, unwisely for them, the Democratic leaders have so shaped the canvass that w^e dare not change our rulers for fear of changing our institu- tions. Vitiated by long habits of political intrigue, they judged the popular intelligence from their own degenerate stand- point. Because the people asked for reform, they thought they would bear revolution ; because some were willing to accept an improvement on Abraham Lincoln, they imagined it a good time to administer a platform dissolved in tins weak decoction of Yallandigham, Jeft'. Davis, and Benedict Arnold. The American people are a people of sentiment. They are gazing down into the profoundest depths of this question. As surely as the springs of the earth are gushing pure and sweet beneath the blood of battle, just so sure, under all the horrors of war, do we behold the refreshing streams of future order, stability, and peace. Tiie American people are also a business j^eople. Tiiey liave estimated the profits and losses of this THE CRISIS AND THE MAN. 7 war ; they have dropped in one scale the tears, the graves, the debts, the taxes, the crippled limbs, the ruined homes, the demoralized habits, and the depreciated constitutions, and in the other scale they have placed the unity, the progress, and the prosperity of America ; and they know how such profits outweigh all its losses. They see rising from the crimson mist a firmer, securer nationality, no longer at the mercy of the sophist or the conspirator, just as restricted, but more re- spected of all States and nations. They see, too, the States — always inviolate within their just sphere — no longer, with an arrogant intrusiveness, aspiring to unsettle the grander guard- ianship of the nation. If Abraham Lincoln is tlie tyrant and imbecile they call him, the Democratic Party had a great card in their hands, and the people will hold them respon- sible for trifling with the crisis and throwing away the game. If the President is weak, better a weak man with a strong cause than an indifferent man with no cause at all. Professing to be horrified at the usurpations of the administration, the Chicago party have left the people no alternative but to hold on to Mr. Lincoln, or give up the country. What kind of a country is it which elects the Chicago ticket? A majority of the people will then have decided that the principle of obedience to the will of the majority can no longer be main- tained; that it failed by peace in 1860; that it has failed by war in 1864. Elect that ticket, and you elect a laugh at our own arrogance, imbecility and cowardice ; you elect an acknowledgment that eiglit millions of people, armed with an impracticable sophistry are too much for twenty millions backed by the eternal truths of republican faith and national sovereignty. Oh ! but McClellan's letter is sound on the war. When was the Democratic machine ever stopped by a letter? Franklin Pierce's inaugural declared that the slavery question should never be revived during his administration, and in one year the land was wild with the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. James Buchanan made a similar declaration, and the blast from Kansas almost blew out the light of the republic. " Union," writes McClellan, " is the one condition of peace," ah ! but what Union ? The Union that appeases Southern hostilities by surrendering to Southern dogmas 8 THE CRISIS AND THE MAN. about States doing as they like, or the Union that insists firmly on a firmer adlierence to national obligations. He dare not tell us which Union he means, and we dare not trust him without knowing. Besides, a scratch of the pen does not prove a man. A campaign letter is not a candidate's character. If you want to know McClellan, you must find out his liabits of thought and feeling. Wlio are his friends? "What are his associations and surroundings? They make the man, not electioneering words. The very virtues of the individual would be the vices of the administration. The men who made McClellan are heart and soul with the Soutli. If he is grateful, he will be true to them, and so, false to the country. Elect the Chicago ticket, and the Democratic Party will tell you that the people have decided in favor of negotiation. You know, and I know — and all the world knows — that success in negotiation depends on success in war. The South will say to your commissioners, "We went to war for our independence — you went to war to prevent it. You have been throwing shot and shell upon us for three years and a half without our crying enough. If your war is a failure ours is a success, and we demand the fruits of it — the acknowledgment of our independence." What other guaranties could you give them ? They have liad every thing but this acknowledgment ? The Republican Congress of 1861 unanimously guaranteed slavery in the States, and refused to disturb it in organizing new Territories. If the South wanted more at the commencement of the war, in God's name, what will they demand when you have pro- nounced that war a failure? McClellan could give them no more than Lincoln oflfered them tlirouo;h the first eighteen months of the conflict. He gave them back their negroes ; he guaranteed them every ridit under the Constitution, and what was the answer? More armies to invade us, more pirates to burn our helpless mer- chantmen, more importunities for foreign aid to co-operate against us, and if tiiese fail, the last ditch more welcome than the temple of Washington. General McClellan in repeating Mr. Lincoln's past is only walking through the canvass in that gentleman's old boots. If elected, backing his car on the worn-out rails of 18G1 and 18G2, to end where the colonies THE CRISIS AND THE MAN". 9 began, amid the confusion and anarchy of aboriginal con- flicts. John Yan Buren, in a speecli at Hudson, told the people that Mr. Lincoln with his emancipation policy, had per- A'erted the objects of the war. More than a year ago, on Madison Square, he declared slavery deserved its doom. Before the war that prophetic politician informed the North if secession took place it would be only a holiday task for us to go South and reannex them without slaver3\ Where are we to place a ticket with such somersault supporters? Here is one of the original fonnders of the later anti-slavery party going about the countiy denouncing his own offspring. Are not eighteen months long enough to play with war, fritter away our strength and jeopardise our existence? Depend upon it, a people who could fire on a President struck with the para- lysis of judicial and congressional restrictions, drop two houses of Congress, throw away a supreme judicial bench, turn their backs upon a popular vote ready to sweep them agaiu into power — a people who have emptied their hands of all these blessings that thej^ might tear up the foundations of American prosperity and float their ruins in the heart's blood of the North — such a people are not to be brought back by an ar- mistice, but on a stretcher. Never but once have the citizens of the North voted di- rectly upon the slavery question, and then they gave an over- whelming majority for Southern rights. In the contest of 1852, the Fugitive Slave law and the Compromise of 1850, were almost the only questions before the people ; yet every Northern State, but two, voted solid for the South. That was the real test of Northern feeling for Southern slavery under the Constitution. In 185G the large vote of Fremont was neither for the woolly horse nor for the woolly head, but the recoil of a business people, from the breach of contract in the repeal of the Compromise of 1820. The election of Mr. Lin- coln was a judicial verdict against the corruption of politicians and the wiles of conspirators under the Buchanan administra- tion. The anti-slavery vote was not the increase of anti-slavery feeling; but the people driven into the anti-slavery party, as the only organized means of breaking down depraved statemansliip, corrupted by the slave power. France has 10 THE CRISIS AND THE MAN. been called a inonarchj, modified by songs; Enssia a des- potism, tempered with assassination ; and is not the Ameri- can repul)lic a democracy, checked, not Chicagoed, by watch- ful minorities? The great distinction between despotism and democracy is, that in the first, the minority is dominant and stationary ; in the last it is patient, subordinate and fluctn- ating. The minority of to-day, fresh from communion with the people, may be tlie majority of to-morrow, administering their sym})athies in the government ; and the majority, re- lieved of the elevation and importance of official life, go back to renew and strengthen their affections with the people. Thus the system harmonizes, power rotates, and the republic is safe. Great benefits are sometimes in the minority, and great evils often in the majority, but with a little patience they inevitably change places. No man in this Union ever advocated a policy or a party that was not at sometime or another in power. And no man or party has a right to rebel against a principle whose alternating possibilities may en- sure their return to power. First it is Biddle's bank, then Benton's hard currencj"^, Mas- sachusetts' tariff" and South Carolina's free trade, anti-liquor, anti-rent and Know-Nothing, Wilmot proviso, and Dred Scott decision, each by turn swearing in their hobby ; and last to come — and yet to last always — Emancipation — poor, wild-ej'ed, closet-ridden fanaticism. Constitutionally, pertinaciously de- spised abolitionism ! Alternately the fanatic's dream and the politician's grave, the statesman's crime and the nation's goal. Humanity driven into a corner, reduced to a seventy years' whisper, started to its feet by the cannon of Davis, and floated by the blood of both North and South into the fireside posses- sion of every slaveholder or hater in this serf-banished land. i.i Negotiation means nothing now unless it means indepen- dence out of the Union, or insubordination in the Union. It means a foreign power built upon the ruins of our domestic hearth-stones or the whole republic, with the vital element of all republicanism gone — obedience to the will of the majority ; Union, with the principle of unity dissolved ; and when that dies, wlio will calm the jarring States? What will give us dignity and consideration abroad ? Where, then, is the great republic ? AVhat, then, do you mean by an American THE CRISIS AND THE MAN. 11 citizen ? Because one party favored the African, must all parties give up this beautiful Anglo-Saxon x\merica ? Be- cause the Constitution reserved to the States powers not necessary to the General Government, shall those powers which are necessar}', and which it did delegate to the General Govern- ment, be at the mercy of the sophistry or the iniquity of any State which imagines somebody at some time intends to injure them ? What do we mean by State sovereignt}' and State pride ? The States are spontaneous communities, born of the accidents of migration and settlement. The Union is the deliberate act of the best wisdom of all the States. Tiie national power is so much of State rights surrendered to ])rotectthe rest. And the States that strike at the nation strike at the rights of the States that make the nation. A citizen is born in South Carolina, raises cotton in Alabama, and dies in California. His cradle is rocked under one jurisdiction, his pocket filled or emptied by another, and his coffin lowered in a third ; but he is always in the Union — that most continuous, overshadowing and comprehensive home, into which reach his loftiest pride of empire, his deepest dreams of progress, his most varied and interlacing pursuits of business, ambition, or pleasure. Which State did Jeff. Davis risk his neck for ? Kentucky bore him, he studied treason all his life in Mississippi, commenced to practice it in Alabama, graduated a classic, full grown cul- prit in Virginia, and is fast advancing into those states of despondency and despair which are resuming their sove- reignty over him. How came the Democratic Party to father so distracting and decimating a heresy ? I confess I see nothing so attractive in the present position of that party to stand by it when Demo- cracy itself is perishing in their hands. Let us distinguish between the Democratic community and the Democratic organization. The Democratic community are sincere, patri- otic, and credulous. If they vote wrong, they mean right ; if they follow knaves and demagogues, they believe them cham- pions of the principles they love and cherish. How well the Democratic organization know how to play on these patriotic chords. By vigorous cries of " traitor," " turncoat," " go with your party," " he is a Black Republican," " stand by the Be- 12 THE CRISIS AND THE MAjST. niocrac_y" — these arc tlie magic ])hrases upon which they pre- sume to whip into line all wlio M'ould rebel against fraud, treachery, imbecility, and disunion. We know where to find the peace party. They are o])en and honest. Strong advocates of weak governments, they hanker for ruins as Englishmen do for tainted clieese. Muddled with Calhoun metaphysics about State sovereignty, in the winter of our fortunes, they go South for their politics, as invalids go for their health. The larger and adroiter wing have uo theories and no ]irincii)les but for ])ower. They talk war for "Northern votes, that they may make peace for Southern votes. Lusting for Southern su|)])oi-t, thej' would legalize Southern treason and rob the North of the i-iorht to a stable (govern- ment, by turning this Tnion into the hall-door of a tenement house, where States may go in and out and track their dirt as they please, M'liile we intend that it shall be a hermetically sealed jar to preserve the fruits of our fathers from so destruc- tive an atmos})here. I charge the Democratic leaders with actino- in this crisis without dignity, consistency, common sense, or courage. With increasing through envy and disappointment the very evils they themselves helped to produce. I charge them with going to the Charleston Convention in 1860, and with their numerical minority as voters, and their numerical majority as delegates, attempting to force on that Convention a candi- date who, by his part in disturbing the Missouri Compromise, could not succeed at the Xorth, and because of his vote on the Lecom})ton bill would fail at the South. Refusing all compromise at that time, Avhen concession might have saved the l^arty and the country, and then denouncing the Republi- cans because they would not conciliate and compromise with violence and treason, when such concessions would have been degrading and useless. I charge the Democratic leaders and presses with j)retending to advocate the war, stamping the " Union at all hazards" on their banners, and then nominat- ing peace candidates who, after being smuggled through the ballot-boxes with the war-ciy, seat themselves down in Con- gress to vote the soldiers in rags and the countrv in ruins. I charge them with trying to wean the peoi)le from a just war, by artfully exaggerating its faults, underrating our resources. THE CRISIS AND THE MAN, 13 sneering at our victories, and sending their governors and ex-governors winning around the country to twaddle about the miseries and expenses of this conflict, as if all wars were not miserable and expensive, until bj hearty co-operation, shoulder to shoulder, heart to heart, we bring them to a healtiiy conclusion. 1 charge this Jacobin junta with striving to drown the sound of their own blows upon the country in the cries of " liberty in danger," shrieking against arbitrary arrest, with the whole pack loose upon the land ; with attempt- ing to bring the military and civil power into collision, with denouncing taxation and high prices, as if high prices did not bring high w^ages, while the inexhaustible resources of mines and lands, and tarifl:' and trade would sink twice the debt to a mere bagatelle in a few years. I charge this beautiful crowd with essaying to degrade the Government and excite the prejudices of labor and races, by calling this a war for the neffro, when thev know that the white man's republic depends for its life upon the red blood that is spilled for it now. In vain do we look for any leading idea, any profound national sentiment or principle underlying this selfish opposition wrangle for power. ISTo foreign policy, save to snarl at the policy which keeps us from foreign war. ISTo domestic censure for those who would for ever uproot our domestic rights and interests. No theory of treatment in dealing with the deluded despoilers of our national inheritance, unless we give up all, to those who would break up all, that keeps us all,— a People — a Country — a Power. Nothing but an appeal to the lowest passions for the possession of tlie highest oflices. " Vote our ticket because we are opposed to the war. Rich man, war is expensive, it snatches away your wealth. Poor man, war is impoverishing, it takes away your work. Brave man, war is degrading, there is no glory in certain defeat." Such is the paralyzing programme a spirited and sagacious community are called upon to seat in the chair of George Washington. Where is that inspired, courageous old Democratic Party which Jefferson founded, Jackson immortalized and James Buchanan buried? Some years ago there could be seen stranded on the shores of Long Island Sound the shattered remnants of a once noble steamer. Its guards were down, 14 THE CRISIS AND THE MAN. its rudder gone, its machinery broken and useless. Half blackened and consumed by storm and conflag-ration, its name still glared out in full capitals ; the bell which had so often rang the ])ublic to harbor and home still sounded mean- inglessly with every shifting gale. Just so stands the Demo- cratic Party. The same sound still calls to us ; but it is the toll above the wreck. The same grand old name still waves upon the campaign banners, waylaying us for our suffrages; but the vessel we trusted to carry us through every sea — once so powerful and popular — now drifts before the storm, a shrunken, helpless and snarling minority. Why is it that every east wind diizzles upon us a Democratic defeat ? Why is it that every northern blast whirls down upon ns a Ilepubli- can majority? Why is it that the West, to which we are told to look for clear skies and fair weather — the West is black with the popular refusal to restore this so-called Democracy ? Alas ! Uninterrupted prosperity has weaned patriotism and wisdom from politics. Little men have been permitted to triiie with great principles, and death or disgust swept all the Democratic giants from the helm. The Democratic Party came into life to give life to free institutions. Many heroes of the Revolution who fought for independence had no faith in popular government. After the formation of the Constitu- tion this distrust exhibited itself in the support of aristocratic privileges and monopolies. The Democratic Party was organ- ized to protect the constitution from the misconstruction of oligarchs, and the people from all oppressive and illiberal tend- encies, and not to play into the hands of despots and traitors. It began the world with the fears of Washington, the hatred of Hamilton, and the adoration of Jeiferson and Madison. With its infant hands it strangled the Colossus of the Pevolution, John Adams, and threw his party and his policy into the grave of the eighteenth century. Has it not advocated and adminis- tered every war since the revolution? Did it not banish the Indian and silence the nuUificr? Did it not chastise England, threaten France, and conquer Mexico? and must it go down under the red waves of a still more righteous conflict ? The old Democratic Party has added more territory to the Union than the peace of 1783. It purchased Louisiana, negotiated Florida, annexed Texas, and dropped all the gold of California THE CRISIS AND THE MAN. 15 into our pockets ; and shall such a counterfeit pinchbeck suc- cessor leave it hardly a State on which to lay its dying head? I stand by the Baltimore ticket, because there I find my country, and nowhere else in this election do I know where to look for it. It plays no tricks with the crisis. It is bold, open, manly and national. On that platform sits the courage of the Xorth, the spirit of the age, the genius of war and the safety of America. It calls guilt by its right name, and proposes to deal with it in the right way. It holds no parley with those who ask no quarter and mean no Union ; whom if you face you must fight, and if you treat with, you must yield. The Baltimore re- solutions represent the highest point to which courage and soul have raised endangered citizenship. The Chicago resolutions proclaim the most diminutive proportions to which political demoralization has shrunk American character. I see there only an English libel copied from the London Times^ and pronounced by a few shaking American politicians as their standard of political duty. They call the war a failure, then nominate a failure to prove it, then get that failure to write the platform a failure, and now it only wants one more fail- ure on the 8th of November to finish the concern. In- deed, has all this tramp, and shot and blood availed noth- ing? Speak, howling Jeft'., with' your fiilling spirits and your disbanding armies. Speak, ye thousand miles of sea-coast, with but one port to welcome the sneaking smuggler to your traitorous breast. Speak, Sherman, with your firm foot upon their guilty hearthstones, where you but stamp it and insur- rection, starved and ragged, flies wailing before you. Speak, pinching penury, useless energy. Speak, worthless currency, hopeless heresy, heartbroken community. Your falling tears, your running slaves, your dying brothers. Northern traitors stunned, foreign intervention dead, do you tell me Abra- ham Lincoln's gripe has no vigor in it? You have tried him in war, you have tried him in diplomacy, you have wrestled with him at the foot of everj'- throne in Europe. You have confronted him for thousands of miles along river, marsh and forest, where he has tracked you with the Indian's scent to save you from the Indian's destiny. You have sum- moned to your aid swamp fever, ambush, tomahawk and torpedo. You promised the world that you would strap 16 THE CRISIS AND THE MAN. the North to your pole, driving the continent in double har- ness, and where are you now ? A nameless, penniless, shiv- ering outlaw ! shrinking from the charter signed " George "Washington," and dying by inches with the powder and ball of Abraham Lincoln. Is this a failure, oh, successful Yallandigham, with that hundred thousand adverse majority gazing down upon your sinking platform ? We who have gone back to the barbarism of blows to secure the civil- ization of votes — we who love the contention of thought better than the contention of arms — who prefer always to con- quer rather by convention than collision, we who have had no heart in mowing down any portion of the soul and strength of this nation, if that soul and that strength could be captured by a principle instead of an army — shall we not to-day, pro- fiting by the lessons of this war and this election, hold up that which best keeps us up ? The soldier from his farthest front of danger is watching us from our highest stand of civil duty. Can we drop the national fortunes into the slippery hands stretched forth to grasp them ? Would we not half- mast the flag on every battle-field, for the fruits of victory vanished, for the dead too uselessly slain, for the living too hopelessly dethroned, divided, debt-ridden and degraded? No ! we will treat our party as a loved mistress who has jilted us ; as a favorite gun that will not fire ; as a match too damp with Southern tears to light. We will huddle under this Lincoln shed until Democracy finds a better roof to shelter us from the tempest; until better times and better men shall give us back our party, purified by defeat, and our country, relieved of the sophist and the traitor, walks forth once more among the nations of the earth, a redeemed, invincible and united commonwealth. 54 V 7