On which the keen remark was made, by one of the parties to the controversy which caused this exposure, that the Democrats of Maryland in 1864, “under the guise of exercising their rights as citizens of the United States, were actually secretly obeying the instruction of the armed enemies of the Federal Government."

President Lincoln's letter of acceptance "heartily approved" the resolutions of the Convention.

General McClellan's letter of acceptance interpreted the Democratic platform. He said, "The Union is the one condition of peace; we ask no more."

This clearly excluded the idea of any change of Constitution as antecedent to, or concurrent with, return to the Union. It was, besides, set forth that the Convention which was to be held should guarantee for the future the constitutional rights of every State. This could mean only that the Union" was to be restored as it was, including protection. to slavery by all branches of the government. On these lines the McClellan campaign was made. The Prof. Morse committee in New York gave its strength to proving the divinity of slavery and the necessity of saving it, and circulated in large numbers Bishop Hopkins's celebrated " Bible View of Slavery."

While the Democratic Campaign Committee, also in New York, in their publications arraigned Abraham Lincoln for sixteen distinct offenses, "from treason to thimblerigging,” including specifically perjury, bribery, forgery, and the like.*

They denounced him as exercising power with the recklessness of Bomba, and as “surrounded by more dangerous men than haunted the ante-rooms of the imbecile Louis XIII." They compared him with Louis Napoleon. It was charged that Napoleon "shed some blood to get power, violated some oaths, broke some pledges." But they charged that Napoleon broke not half so many as Abraham Lincoln. Napoleon was chided for "shedding rills of blood." Lincoln was denounced for "pouring rivers of blood." That nothing possible to be said to Lincoln's disparagement should remain unsaid by the repre

*For all this, and more, see Campaign Documents Nos. 1 and 13.

sentatives of the Democratic party, the despotism of Jefferson Davis was described as "an educated, intelligent, and respectable despotism;" that of Abraham Lincoln, as "a vulgar and debasing despotism." McClellan and Lincoln were compared"Hyperion to a Satyr." Thus they raved till the morning of the election.

The country was not deceived by these tactics. It was not in favor of restoring slavery to its position of mischief-maker; and it had faith that the Government was now on the path to victory and enduring peace. It re-elected President Lincoln by giving him 212 of the 233 votes composing the Electoral College. McClellan carried the three States of Delaware, Kentucky, and New Jersey. Lincoln had a popular majority of over 400,000.

The result produced consternation in the Confederate Capitol. The authorities there saw in it not merely the triumph of the Union arms, but the doom of slavery itself. From July, 1863, they had expected the former; up to November, 1864, they relied on the Northern Democracy to save them from the latter. But this "Spartan band," whose existence was gratefully recognized on the floor of the Secession Convention of South Carolina in December, 1860, proved in 1864 as unable to defeat President Lincoln's re-election, and to save slavery, as it proved unable or unwilling in 1861 to redeem its pledges of the previous year to prevent the marching of troops over Northern soil for the "coercion" of seceding States. As a "Spartan band" it had proved itself lacking in virility, not malignity.

THE ANTI-SLAVERY AMENDMENT.

The Republicans came to Washington after the election of 1864 flushed with their great victory; and on the 31st of January, 1865, the Anti-slavery Amendment, which had failed in June, 1864, by a vote of 95 to 66, was passed through the House of Representatives by a vote of 119 to 56, being 7 votes more than the required two thirds. On this vote, the three "war Democrats" of the previous vote were re-enforced by 13 other Democrats who acquiesced in the popular verdict. They with

103 Republicans made up the affirmative. The 56 negatives were "irreconcilable" Democrats. The six absentees were all of the Democratic party, presumably willing to have the Amendment submitted.

In the debate, the opposition resisted the measure on the triple grounds of the unfitness of the time, the impropriety of the thing, and the want of power in "three fourths of the States" to make such an amendment. Mr. Pendleton, the VicePresidential candidate on the ticket with General McClellan, elaborated these points as well in the debate of June, 1864, as of January, 1865. He, holding the extreme State-rights view, regarded our government as a "compact of confederation," and the "Federal Government" as "the agent of the States." He affirmed the doctrines laid down in the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions of 1798; denied the power of "three fourths of the States, or all the States save one, to abolish slavery in that dissenting State "-and he found this exclusion of power, not in the clause of the Constitution defining the right of amendment, for it confessedly is not there, but in a duty we owed not to subvert the form and spirit and theory of the government! This argument, for a strict constructionist, was rather broad, for it required that the ingenuity of 1865 should supply the thing forgotten by the framers in 1789. Their exclusion of certain amendments was plainly a permission of all others on which the necessary two thirds of Congress and three fourths of the legislatures could agree.

Public sentiment had come slowly to the point of adopting this amendment.

In the earlier years of the war suggestions in this direction met no general response-rather roused opposition. The people yet hoped for peace without abolition. But events. clarified vision. As sacrifices continued, perception of right grew clearer. As anxieties increased, the public more will. ingly considered remedies which promised permanent relief. And, finally, as the enormity of the crime of the secession movement dawned upon and found lodgment in the mind of the Union-loving people of the country, and as the struggle was, finally, plainly seen to be between two irreconcilable