THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. 
 
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 APPEAL OF THE NATIONAL UNION COMMITTEE TO THE PEOPLE 
 
 OF THE UNITED STATES . 
 
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 HEADQUARTERS OF TOE NATIONAL UNION COMMITTEE, 
 
 Astor House, New York, Sept. 9, 1864. 
 
 The great Rebellion, which for more than three years has wrapped the nation in the flames of civil war, draws 
 near its crisis. Its armies have been beaten, its territory has been conquered, the forts and posts which it treach¬ 
 erously seized have been occupied and held by the soldiers of the Republic, its foreign allies have been detached 
 from its support, and its hostile arm, paralyzed by exhaustion and discouraged by defeat, is upheld solely by the 
 hope of political victories to be achieved by its allies in the Presidential election of November next. 
 
 If the People in that election sustain the Government, if they reassert its just authority and reaffirm their pur¬ 
 pose to maintain it by war so long as war assails it, the Rebellion will speedily end. If they falter in this determ¬ 
 ination, or leave any room for doubt on this vital point, the rebels will take fresh courage and prolong the con¬ 
 test. Every utterance of their organs and their agents affirms and confirms this position. Every rebel in arms 
 and every rebel in office,—every rebel organ in the rebel States or in foreign lands,—every hater of Democratic 
 Freedom and the Rights of Man, longs and labors for the overthrow of the Administration and the expulsion of 
 Abraham Lincoln from the Presidential chair. 
 
 In the Northern and Western States this hostility has been embodied and organized in the acts and declara¬ 
 tions of the Chicago Convention. That Convention gives a silent approval of the Rebellion itself, and an open con¬ 
 demnation of the war waged for its suppression. Without a word of censure for the conspirators who plotted the 
 Nation’s death, it brands with unsparing denunciation the patriots and heroes who defend its life. While it passes in 
 utter silence the gigantic usurpations of Jefferson Davis and his confederate traitors,—while it overlooks entirely, 
 and thus, by just and necessary inference, approves their abrogation of political rights and personal liberties over 
 all that portion of the United States in which they have been able thus far to sustain their usurped authority, it 
 pours out its wrath, without stint or measure, upon every act by which the Constitutional President of the United 
 States has sought to defend and protect the life and liberties of the nation, whose executive power is placed in his 
 hands. 
 
 That Convention had no words of exultation for our victories; no thanks and honors for the soldiers and 
 sailors who have shed their blood to achieve them. While it denounces our Government for neglect of duty 
 towards our “ fellow-citizens, w'ho are now, and long have been, prisoners of war in a suffering condition,” it has 
 not even a syllable of censure for those rebel authorities who, with more than savage cruelty, and in utter disregard 
 of every dictate of humanity as well as of every usage of civilized warfare, have deliberately and with systematic 
 purpose inflicted upon those prisoners all the tortures of exposure, of neglect and starvation, and have offered pre¬ 
 miums for their murder to the brutal guards to whose grim custody they have been consigned. And, on the very 
 eve of the most glorious victories that have ever crowned our arms ; after three years of bloody, costly and 
 successful war, when three-fourths of the territory originally held by the rebels has passed into our hands ; at the 
 very moment when the rebellion itself is tottering to its fall, and the flag of our country is rapidly advancing to its 
 old supremacy,—the party represented at Chicago demands that “ immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hos¬ 
 tilities ”—a step which would instantly arrest our conquering armies, and snatch from them the glories of a final tri¬ 
 umph ; repeal the blockade, and throw the whole rebel frontier open to the supplies they so sorely need ; secure the 
 recognition of foreign powers, and either accomplish their independence or give them the ability to fight for it four 
 years longer. 
 
 We appeal to the People of the United States—lovers of the Union and friends of Freedom—against the con¬ 
 summation of the foul crime against both which the acts and declarations of the Chicago Convention involve. We 
 invoke them not to sanction these principles and sentiments by electing the candidates put forward to represent 
 them. We implore them, as they love their country, as they seek the renewed integrity of its territory, as they 
 desire the peaceful protection of its flag, and the blessings of its free institutions and its equal laws for themselves 
 and their posterity, not to arrest the blow which is just ready to descend upon the rebellion now tottering to its 
 fall ; not to give the rebels time to renew their strength for fresh conflicts ; not to aid those who would aid them in 
 overthrowing our Government, in destroying our Union, in plunging into a chaos of anarchy the great communities 
 of which the Constitution makes one great and glorious nation, and in thus extinguishing, finally and forever, the 
 hopes of all who have faith in Freedom and the Rights of Man. 
 
 We call upon the People to bear in mind that, by whatever sophistries they may cloak their purposes, the 
 Chicago Convention neither condemns the action of the Richmond rebels, nor proposes to expel them against their 
 will, or by any exercise of force, from the seats of power they have usurped. In all essential respects the 
 action that Convention took accords with the results the rebels seek. Both desire a cessation of hostilities. 
 
Both denounce, with unsparing bitterness, the Government of the United States, and both alike seek its overthrow. 
 Botli demand that the attempt to conquer armed rebellion by force of arms shall be abandoned. And both demand 
 that, when the Government of the United States shall have passed into the hands of men opposed to an armed 
 defense of the Government against rebellion, the war shall end by peaceful conference of these allied powers. 
 What more than this could the rebels ask or need for the consummation of all their plans'? We call upon the 
 People to bear in mind that, if they elect the candidates of the Chicago Convention, they arrest the Government 
 in the execution of its plans and purposes on the very eve of their fulfillment, and one-third of a year before any 
 new administration can take its place. That interval will be one of hope and confidence for the rebels, and of ex¬ 
 ultation for their allies in the loyal States. In the Western States armed preparations have already been made 
 by the disciples and advocates of secession to follow the example of South and sever the West from the Federal 
 Union. The success of the Chicago programme in November will be the signal for carrying these designs into 
 execution; and the fourth of March will dawn upon a new Western confederacy, aiming at independence, defying 
 the power of the national arms, and co-operating with the slave power of the Southern S tates in blotting from ex¬ 
 istence the free Republic of the Western world. 
 
 We call upon the People to crush all these schemes, and to brand their authors and allies with their lasting 
 reprobation. We call upon them to support the Government, to quell the rebellion, to defend and preserve the 
 Union. We call upon them to stand by the President, who, under circumstances of unparalleled difficulty, has 
 wielded the power of the nation with unfaltering courage and fidelity, with integrity which even calumny has not 
 dared to impeach, and with wisdom and prudence, upon which success is even now stamping the surest and the 
 final seal. His election will proclaim to the world the unaltered and unalterable determination of the American 
 People to crush the rebellion and save the Union. It will strike down forever the false hopes and expectations of 
 the rebel government, and proclaim to the people of the rebel States that their only hope of peace lies in abandon¬ 
 ing their hostility to the government and resuming their allegiance to the Constitution and laws of the United 
 States. 
 
 We call upon the Union Committees and the Union Leagues, and upon all loyal associations in every State, 
 County and Town, to perfect their organizations ; to infuse fresh vigor and activity into their operations; to canvass 
 carefully and promptly their respective districts; to circulate Documents and Newspapers containing just and 
 forcible expositions of the merits of our cause; to combat by assemblages of the people in public meetings, by 
 public speeches, by conversation, by letters and personal appeals, and in all just and proper modes, the deceptive 
 and perilous sophistries of the agents and political allies of the rebellion. Let them be on their guard against 
 the arts of corruption and of intrigue which will be brought, with unscrupulous desperation, to bear upon them. 
 The rebel Government, and those Foreign Powers most deeply interested in our destruction, could well afford to 
 expend millions in overthrowing this administration and placing in power the nominees and representatives of the 
 Chicago Convention. 
 
 The skies are bright and full of promise. The lion-hearted citizen-soldiers of the Republic march with steady 
 step and unfaltering purpose to a speedy and glorious victory. The heart of the people beats true to the Union. 
 Every triumph of the Union arms over the rebel troops arouses afresh the courage and confidence of Union men, and 
 chills the heart and decimates the ranks of the submission secessionists represented at Chicago. A Union victory 
 in November will end the long and laborious strife. It will paralyze the arm of the Rebellion. It will disperse its 
 armies, destroy the hope by which the despotism at Richmond now holds its subjects in bondage, release the people 
 of the Southern States from their enforced disloyalty, and give them again the blessings of self-government within 
 the Union and under the protecting Constitution and Flag of the United States. It will enable our own govern¬ 
 ment to exchange the weapons of war for the counsels of peace, to relax the stern control over public action and 
 public speech which a state of war renders unavoidable, to restore our financial system, to dissolve all military 
 courts, and hand over again to the civil tribunals of justice the punishment of crime and the preservation of public 
 order, and to restore to their firesides and their homes, clothed with honors and to be held in everlasting remem¬ 
 brance, that great army of our citizen-soldiers who have bared their breasts against armed rebellion, and won the im¬ 
 perishable renown of saving the glorious Union for which their fathers and their brothers died. 
 
 Signed by the Committee, 
 
 IIENRY J. RAYMOND, Chairman, 
 
 SAMUEL F. HERSEY.Maine. S. II. BOYD 
 
 JOHN B. CLARKE.New Hampshire. G. B. SENTER 
 
 ABRAHAM B. GARDNER.. .Vermont. 
 
 WILLIAM CLAFLIN.Massachusetts. 
 
 THOMAS G. TURNER.Rhode Island. 
 
 N. D. SPERRY.Connecticut. 
 
 MARCUS L. WARD.New Jersey. 
 
 S. A. PURVIANCE.Pennsylvania. 
 
 NATHANIEL B. SM1TIIEKS.Delaware. 
 
 II. W. HOFFMAN.Maryland. 
 
 New York. 
 
 .... Missouri. 
 
 .. . .Ohio. 
 
 J. D. DEFREES. Indiana. 
 
 BURTON C. COOK.Illinois. 
 
 MARSH G1DDINGS.Michigan. 
 
 S. JUDD.Wisconsin. 
 
 I). B. STUBBS.Iowa. 
 
 A. W. CAMPBELL.West Virginia. 
 
 JAMES II. LANE.Kansas. 
 
 J. J. COOMBS.Dist. of Columbia