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duct of the war, . . . its treachery to justice, freedom, and genuine democratic principles in its plan of reconstruction, whereby the honor and dignity of the nation have been sacrificed to conciliate the still existing and arrogant slave power and to further the ends of an unscrupulous partisan ambition"; they demanded the immediate extinction of slavery throughout the whole United States by congressional action, the absolute equality of all men before the law, and a vigorous execution of the laws confiscating the property of the rebels. This circular was stronger in its epithets than in its signatures; the names of the signers were, as a rule, unknown to fame. signers were, as a rule, unknown to fame. One column was headed by the name of the Rev. George B. Cheever, another by the apparently farcical signature of "Pantaleon Candidus." Perhaps the most important name affixed to this document was that of Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who wrote desiring to sign her name to the call, "taking it for granted," she said, "that you use 'men' in its largest sense." She informed the committee that they had "lifted politics into the sphere of morals and religion, and made it the duty of all true men and women to unite with them in building up the New Nation." She spelled "new nation" with capital letters, and gave occasion for a malicious accusation that her letter was merely an advertisement of a radical Frémont paper of that name which was then leading a precarious existence in New York. Mr. Samuel Bowles inferred from her letter that the convention was to be composed of "the gentler sex of both genders."

Another call was issued by the People's Committee of St. Louis, though signed by individuals from several other States. These gentlemen felt themselves

impelled on their own responsibility to declare to the people that the time had come for all independent men, jealous of their liberties and of the national greatness, to confer together and unite to resist the swelling invasion of an open, shameless, and unrestrained patronage which threatens to engulf under its destructive wave the rights of the people, the liberty and dignity of the nation;

declaring that they did not recognize in the Baltimore convention the essential conditions of a truly national convention: it was to be held, they thought, too near Washington and too far from the center of the country, its mode of convocation giving no guarantee of wise or honest deliberation. This circular was signed by B. Gratz Brown of Missouri and by a number of old-time abolitionists in the East, though its principal signers were from the ranks of the most vehement German radicals of St. Louis. Still another call was drawn up and issued by Lucius Robinson, Controller of the

State of New York. The terms of this address were properly applicable to all the Administration Republicans. It called upon the citizens of the United States who mean to uphold the Union, who believe that the rebellion can be suppressed without infringing the rights of individuals or of States, who regard the extinction of slavery as among the practical effects of the war for the Union, and favor an amendment of the Federal Constitution for the exclusion of slavery, and who demand integrity and economy in the administration of government.

The signers of this call approached the question from an entirely different point of view from that of the radical Germans of St. Louis. In their view Mr. Lincoln, instead of being a craven and a laggard, was going entirely too fast and too far. Their favorite candidate was General Grant. Mr. Wendell Phillips, the stormy petrel of all our political disturbances, found enjoyment even in this teapot tempest. He strongly approved the

beforehand a brief platform for it. convention at Cleveland, and constructed

Subdue the South as rapidly as possible. The moment territory comes under our flag reconstruct States thus: confiscate and divide the lands of rebels; extend the right of suffrage broadly as possible to whites and blacks; let the Federal Constitution prohibit slavery throughout the Union, and forbid the States to make any distinction among their citizens on account of color or race. 1

He also advised the nomination "for the Presidency of a statesman and a patriot "; by which terms he intended to exclude Mr. Lincoln.

The convention might have met, deliberated, and adjourned for all the people of the United States cared about it, had it not been for the violent and enthusiastic admiration it excited in Democratic newspapers and the wide publicity they gave to its proceedings. They described it as a gathering of the utmost dignity and importance; they pretended to discern in it a distinct line of cleavage through the middle of the Republican party. For several days before it assembled they published imaginary dispatches from Cleveland representing the streets and hotels as crowded with a throng of earnest patriots determined on the destruction of the tyrant Lincoln. The papers of Cleveland tell another story. There was no sign of political upheaval in the streets or hotels of that beautiful and thriving city. Up to the very day of the meeting of the convention there was no place provided for it, and when the first stragglers began to arrive they found no preparation made to receive them. All the public halls of any consequence were 1 Phillips to Stallo, April 21.

engaged, and the convention at last took shelter in a small room called "Chapin's Hall." Its utmost capacity was five or six hundred persons, and it was much too large for the convention; delegates and spectators together were never numerous enough to fill it. The delegates were for the most part Germans from St. Louis. They held a preliminary meeting the night before the convention opened, and passed vigorous and loyal resolutions of the usual character. To the resolution that the rebellion must be put down, some one moved to amend by adding the words, "with God's assistance," which was voted down with boisterous demonstrations. Non tali auxilio was the sentiment of these materialist Missourians.

The convention met at 10 o'clock in a hall only half filled. Hoping for later arrivals, they delayed organization until nearly noon. The leaders who had been expected to give character and direction to the movement did not appear. It was hoped until the last moment that Mr. Greeley would be present, though he had never given any authority for such an expectation. He said, in answer to an inquiry, that "the only convention he took any interest in was that one Grant was holding before Richmond." Mr. Gratz Brown, the real head of the movement, was also absent. Emil Pretorius and Mr. Cheever, who, from the two extremities of the country, had talked most loudly in favor of the convention, staid away. The only persons present whose names were at all known were General John Cochrane of New York; Colonel Moss, a noisy politician from Missouri; Caspar Butz of Illinois; two or three of the old-school abolitionists; and several (not the weightiest) members of the staff of General Frémont. The delegates from the German Workingmen's Union of Chicago were discredited in advance by the publication of a card from the majority of the association they pretended to represent, declaring their intention to support the nominees of the Baltimore convention. Some one moved, as usual, the appointment of a committee on credentials; but as no one had any valid credentials, it was resolved instead to appoint a committee to enroll the names of the delegates. No action was taken even upon this proposition, because the act of enrollment would have been too fatal a confession of weakness. The committee on organization reported the name of General Cochrane for president of the convention, who made a discreet and moderate speech. He was a man of too much native amiability of character to feel personal bitterness towards any one, and too adroit and experienced a politician to commit himself irrevocably against any contingency. He had, in fact, thrown an anchor to windward by visiting the President

before the convention met and assuring him of his continued friendship. A delegate from Iowa, who seemed to have taken the convention seriously, then offered a resolution that no member of it should hold, or apply for, office under the next Administration—a proposition which was incontinently smothered. While waiting for the report of the committee on the platform, speeches were made by several delegates. Mr. Plumb attacked Mr. Lincoln as a pro-slavery politician. Colonel Moss of Missouri denounced him as the principal obstacle to freedom in America. A debate now arose on the proposition of the committee on rules that in voting for President the vote should be by States according to their representation in Congress. This was in the interest of the Grant delegates and was violently opposed by the Missourians, who formed a large majority of the convention, and had come for no purpose but to nominate Frémont. In the course of this debate the somewhat dreary proceedings were enlivened by a comic incident. A middle-aged man, who gave his name as Carr, addressed the chair, saying that he had come from Illinois as a delegate under the last call and did not want to be favored "a single mite." His ideas not flowing readily, he repeated this declaration three times in a voice continually rising in shrillness with his excitement. Something in his tone stirred the risibles of the convention, and loud laughter saluted the Illinoisan. As soon as he could make himself heard he cried out, "These are solemn times." This statement was greeted with another laugh, and the delegate now shouted at the top of his voice, "I believe there is a God who holds the universe in his hands as you would hold an egg." This comprehensive scheme of theocracy was too much for the Missouri agnostics, and the convention broke out in a tumult of jeers and roars. The rural delegate, amazed at the reception of his confession of faith, and apparently in doubt whether he had not stumbled by accident into a lunatic asylum, paused, and asked the chairman in a tone of great seriousness whether he believed in a God. The wildest merriment now took possession of the assembly, in the midst of which the Illinois theist solemnly marched down the aisle and out of the house, shaking from his feet the dust of that unbelieving convention. As soon as the laughing died away the committee on resolutions reported a set of judicious and, on the whole, undeniable propositions, such as, the Union must and shall be preserved, the constitutional laws of the United States must be obeyed, the rebellion must be suppressed by force of arms and without compromise. The platform did not greatly differ from that of Baltimore, except that it spoke in favor of one

Presidential term, declared that to Congress hope of the people throughout the country

instead of the President belonged the question of reconstruction, and advocated the confiscation of the property of the rebels and its distribution among the soldiers.

The platform was adopted after brief debate, and a letter from Mr. Wendell Phillips was read to the convention, full of the vehement unreason which distinguished all the attempts of this matchless orator to apply his mind to the practical affairs of life. He predicted the direst results from four more years of Lincoln's administration.

Unless the South is recognized [which he apparently thought not improbable under Lincoln's nerveless policy], the war will continue; the taxation needed to sustain our immense debt, doubled by that time, will grind the laboring man of the North down to the level of the pauper labor of Europe; and we shall have a government accustomed to despotic power for eight years- a fearful peril to democratic institutions.

He denounced Mr. Lincoln's plan of reconstruction, and drew this comical parallel between him and Frémont:

The Administration, therefore, I regard as a civil and military failure, and its avowed policy ruinous to the North in every point of view. Mr. Lincoln may wish the end peace and freedom, but he is wholly unwilling to use the means which can secure that end. If Mr. Lincoln is reëlected I do not expect to see the Union reconstructed in my day, unless on terms more disastrous to liberty than even disunion would be. If I turn to General Frémont, I see a man whose first act was to use the freedom of the negro as his weapon; I see one whose thorough loyalty to democratic institutions, without regard to race, whose earnest and decisive character, whose clear-sighted statesmanship and rare military ability, justify my confidence that in his hands all will be done to save the state that foresight, skill, decision, and statesmanship can do.

rested upon General Grant as a candidate. Although Mr. Colvin supplemented the reading of this letter by promising a majority of one hundred thousand for Grant in the State of New York, the Missourians cheered only the louder for Frémont; and when a last effort was made by Mr. Demers of Albany to nominate Grant, he was promptly denounced as a Lincoln hireling. Colonel Moss, in the uniform of a general of the Missouri militia, arose and put a stop to the profitless discussion by moving in a stentorian voice the nomination of General Frémont by acclamation, which was at once done; and the assembly completed its work by placing John Cochrane on the ticket as its candidate for Vice-President. No one present seemed to have any recollection of the provision of the Constitution which forbids both of these officers being taken from the same State.

The convention met again in the evening and listened to dispirited and discouraging speeches of ratification. The committee appointed in the afternoon to give a name to the new party brought in that of the "Radical Democracy," and in this style it was formally christened. An executive committee was appointed, of men destitute of executive capacity, and the convention adjourned.

Its work met with no response from the country. On the day of its meeting the German press of Cleveland expressed its profound disappointment at the smallness and insignificance of the gathering, and with a few unimportant exceptions the newspapers of the country greeted the work of the convention with an unbroken chorus of ridicule. Its absurdities and inconsistencies were indeed too glaring for serious consideration. Its movers had denounced the Baltimore convention as being

With characteristic reliance on his own free- held too early for an expression of the deliberate dom from prejudice, he continued:

This is an hour of such peril to the Republic that I think men should surrender all party and personal partiality, and support any man able and willing to save the state.

This was, in fact, the attitude of mind of the vast majority of the people of the country; but all it meant in Mr. Phillips's case was that he was willing to vote for either Frémont or Butler to defeat Lincoln.

A feeble attempt was now made by the delegates from New York, who called themselves "War Democrats," to induce the convention to nominate General Grant. Mr. Colvin read a letter from Mr. Lucius Robinson of New York afterwards governor of that State-attacking the errors and blunders "of the weak Executive and Cabinet," and claiming that the

judgment of the people, and now they had made their own nominations a week earlier; they had claimed that Baltimore was not sufficiently central in situation, and they had held

their convention on the northern frontier of the country; they had claimed that the Baltimore delegates were not properly elected, and they had assumed to make nominations by delegates not elected at all; they had denounced the Baltimore convention as a close corporation and invited the people to assemble in mass, and when they came together they were so few they never dared to count themselves; they had pretended to desire a stronger candidate than Mr. Lincoln, and had selected the most conspicuous failure of the war; they clamored loudly against corruption in office, and one of the leading personages in the convention was a member of Frémont's staff who had been

dismissed the service for dishonesty in Government contracts.

The whole proceeding, though it excited some indignation among the friends of Mr. Lincoln, was regarded by the President himself only with amusement. On the morning after the convention a friend, giving him an account of it, said that, instead of the many thousands who had been expected, there were present at no time more than four hundred men. The President, struck by the number mentioned, reached for the Bible which commonly lay on his desk, and after a moment's search, read these words:

And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him; and he became a captain over them: and there were with him about four hundred men.1

It was only among the Democratic papers that the Cleveland convention met with any support or applause. They gave it solemn and unmeasured eulogies for its independence, its patriotism, its sagacity, and even its numbers. The Copperhead papers in New York urged the radicals not to give up their attitude of uncompromising hostility to Lincoln, and predicted a formidable schism in the Republican party as a consequence of their action. But the motive of this support was so evident that it deceived nobody; and it was compared by a sarcastic observer to the conduct of the Spanish urchins accompanying a condemned Jew to an auto-da-fé, and shouting, in the fear that he might recant and rob them of their holiday, "Stand fast, Moses." The ticket of the two New Yorkers met with a gust of ridicule which would have destroyed more robust chances than theirs. "The New York Major-General John C. and the New York Brigadier-General John C." formed a matched ticket fated to laughter. But if no one else took them seriously, the two generals at least saw in the circumstances no occasion for smiling. General Frémont promptly accepted his nomination. He said:

This is not an ordinary election. It is a contest for the right even to have candidates, and not merely, as usual, for the choice among them.... The ordinary rights secured under the Constitution and the laws of the country have been violated, and extraordinary powers have been usurped by the Executive. It is directly before the people now to say whether or not the principles established by the

Revolution are worth maintaining.... To-day we have in the country the abuses of a military dictation without its unity of action and vigor of execution-an Administration marked at home by disregard of constitutional rights, by its violation of

1 This, it will be remembered, was several years in advance of the famous reference to the Cave of Adullam in the British Parliament.

personal liberty and the liberty of the press, and, as a crowning shame, by its abandonment of the right of asylum.

The feebleness and want of principle of the Administration, its incapacity and selfishness, were roundly denounced by General Frémont, but he repudiated the cry of the Cleveland convention for confiscating the property of rebels. In conclusion he said:

If the convention at Baltimore will nominate any man whose past life justifies a well-grounded confidence in his fidelity to our cardinal principles, there is no reason why there should be any division among the really patriotic men of the country. To any such I shall be most happy to give a cordial and active support. . . . But if Mr. Lincoln should be nominated as I believe it would be fatal to the country to indorse a policy and renew a power which has cost us the lives of thousands of men, and needlessly put the country on the road to bankruptcy-there will remain no other alternative but to organize against him every element of conscientious opposition with the view to prevent the misfortune of his reëlection.

informed the committee that he had resigned He therefore accepted the nomination, and his commission in the army. General Cochrane accepted in briefer and more judicious language, holding the same views as his chief on the subject of confiscation. Later in the summer some of the partisans of Frémont, seeing that there was positively no response in the country to his candidacy, wrote to him suggesting that the candidates nominated at Clevethe field entirely free for a united effort for “a land and Baltimore should withdraw, and leave new convention which should represent the patriotism of all parties." They asked him he would do so.3 Although the contingency General Frémont with unbroken dignity refused referred to was more than sufficiently remote, to accede to this proposition.

whether in case Mr. Lincoln would withdraw

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In respect to Mr. Lincoln [he said] I continue to hold exactly the sentiments contained in my letter of acceptance. I consider that his administration has been politically, militarily, and financially a failure, and that its necessary continuance is a cause of regret for the country. There never was a greater unanimity in a country than was exhibited here at the fall of Sumter, and the South was powerless in the face of it; but Mr. Lincoln completely paralyzed this generous feeling. He destroyed the strength of the position and divided the North when he declared to the South that slavery should be protected. He has built up for the South a strength which otherwise they could have never attained, and this has given them an advocate on the Chicago platform. With a final denunciation of the leading men whose reticence had "established for Mr. Lincoln a character among the people which leaves now no choice," General Frémont at last subsided into silence. General Cochrane on the same day withdrew his name from the Cleveland ticket, which had already passed into swift oblivion. His letter had none of the asperity which characterized that of his chief. He genially attacked the Chicago resolutions, and, while regretting the omissions of the Baltimore platform, he approved it in substance.

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We stand within view [he said] of a rebellion suppressed, within hail of a country reunited and saved. War lifts the curtain and discloses the prospect. War has given to us Atlanta, and war offers to us Richmond. Peace and division, or war and the Union. Other alternative there is none. Two incidents which occurred in the spring of 1864 caused unusual excitement among both wings of the opposition to Mr. Lincoln. The one was the delivery of Arguelles to the Spanish authorities; the other was the seizure of two New York newspapers for publishing a forged proclamation. It was altogether natural that the pro-slavery Democrats and peace men should have objected to these acts, as one of the injured parties was a slave trader, and the others opponents of the war; but it was not the least of the absurdities of the Cleveland protestants that they also, in their anxiety to find a weapon against the President, at the very moment that they were assailing him for not overriding all law and precedent in obedience to their demand, still belabored him for these instances of energetic action in the very direction in which they demanded that he should proceed.

The case of Arguelles was a perfectly clear one; and if the surrender of a criminal is ever justified as an exercise of international comity in the absence of treaty stipulations, no objections could reasonably be made in this instance. He was a colonel in the Spanish army and lieutenant-governor of the district of Colon in Cuba. He had captured a cargo of African slaves in his official capacity, and had received

much credit for his efficiency and a considerable sum of money as his share of the prize. He went to New York immediately afterwards and purchased a Spanish newspaper which was published there; but after his departure from Cuba it was ascertained that in beginning so expensive a business in New York he did not rely exclusively upon the money he had received from the Government, but that in concert with a curate of Colon he had sold one hundred and forty-one of the recaptured Africans, had put the money in his own pocket, and had officially reported them as having died of smallpox. The Cuban Government laid these facts before the State Department at Washington, and represented that the return of this miscreant to Cuba was necessary to secure the liberation of the unfortunate victims of his cruelty and greed. It was impossible to bring the matter before the courts, as no extradition treaty existed at that period between Spain and the United States, and the American authorities could not by any legal procedure take cognizance of the crime. The President and Mr. Seward at once assumed the responsibility of acting in the only way indicated by the laws of common humanity and international courtesy. Arguelles was arrested in New York by the United States marshal, put in charge of a Spanish officer commissioned for the purpose, and by him taken to Havana. The action of the Government was furiously attacked by all the pro-slavery organs. A resolution was introduced by Mr. Johnson in the Senate demanding an explanation of the circumstances.1 Mr. Seward answered,2 basing the action of the Government upon the stipulations of the ninth article of the treaty of 1842 with Great Britain, by which the two countries agreed to use all the measures in their power to close the market for slaves throughout the world, and added:

ing the expediency of exercising comity towards a Although there is a conflict of authorities concernforeign government by surrendering, at its request, one of its own subjects charged with the commission of crime within its territory, and although it may be conceded that there is no obligation to make such a surrender upon a demand therefor, unless it nation is never bound to furnish asylum to dangeris acknowledged by treaty or by statute law, yet a ous criminals who are offenders against the human race; and it is believed that if in any case the comity could with propriety be practiced, the one which is understood to have called forth the resolution furnished a just occasion for its exercise.

The Captain-General of Cuba, on the arrival of Arguelles, sent his thanks to Mr. Seward 3

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