But the proclamation, as law, either is valid or is not valid. If it is not valid, it needs no retraction. If it is valid, it cannot be retracted any more than the dead can be brought to life. Some of you profess to think its retraction would operate favorably for the Union. Why better after the retraction than before the issue? There was more than a year and a half of trial to suppress the rebellion before the proclamation issued; the last one hundred days of which passed under an explicit notice that it was coming, unless averted by those in revolt returning to their allegiance. The war has certainly progressed as favorably for us since the issue of the proclamation as before. I know, as fully as one can know the opinions of others, that some of the commanders of our armies in the field, who have given us our most important successes, believe the emancipation policy and the use of the colored troops constitute the heaviest blow yet dealt to the rebellion, and that at least one of these important successes could not have been achieved when it was but for the aid of black soldiers. Among the commanders holding these views are some who have never had any affinity with what is called Abolitionism, or with Republican party politics, but who hold them purely as military opinions. I submit these opinions as being entitled to some weight against the objections often urged that emancipation and arming the blacks are unwise as military measures, and were not adopted as such in good faith.

Some of them
Fight you,

You say you will not fight to free negroes. seem willing to fight for you; but no matter. then, exclusively, to save the Union. I issued the proclamation on purpose to aid you in saving the Union. Whenever you shall have conquered all resistance to the Union, if I shall urge you to continue fighting, it will be an apt time then for you to declare you will not fight to free negroes.

I thought that in your struggle for the Union, to whatever extent the negroes should cease helping the enemy, to that extent it weakened the enemy in his resistance to you. you think differently? I thought that whatever negroes can

Do

be got to do as soldiers, leaves just so much less for white soldiers to do in saving the Union. Does it appear otherwise to you? But negroes, like other people, act upon motives. Why should they do anything for us if we will do nothing for them? If they stake their lives for us, they must be prompted by the strongest motive, even the promise of freedom. And the promise being made must be kept.

The signs look better. [The next seven sentences are cited. on page 318.] . . . While those who have cleared the great river may well be proud, even that is not all. It is hard to say that anything has been more bravely and well done than at Antietam, Murfreesboro' [Stone's River], Gettysburg, and on many fields of lesser note. Nor must Uncle Sam's web feet be forgotten. At all the watery margins they have been present. Not only on the deep sea, the broad bay, and the rapid river, but also up the narrow muddy bayou, and wherever the ground was a little damp, they have been and made their tracks. Thanks to all: for the great republicfor the principle it lives by and keeps alive for man's vast future-thanks to all.

Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will come soon, and come to stay; and so come as to be worth the keeping in all future time. [The next sentence and part of the second are cited on page 333.] . . .

Still, let us not be over-sanguine of a speedy final triumph. Let us be quite sober. Let us diligently apply the means, never doubting that a just God, in his own good time, will give us the rightful result."1

In going to the people nothing aids a party more than an honest and positive declaration of public policy. Such an one, coming from the President, upheld by arguments the inherent force of which was increased by the dignity and power of his office, had an immeasurable influence in rallying to his support the thinking and patriotic voters of the North; and it is safe to say that had the result of the elections been

1 Lincoln, Complete Works, vol. ii. p. 396.

really in doubt after Gettysburg and Vicksburg, the tide would have been turned by the timely and unanswerable logic of this letter. The feeling in the hearts of many hundred thousands was expressed by the New York Tribune: “Again we say, God bless Abraham Lincoln! The promise must be kept."1

The most important election was that in Ohio, for the reason that by the enthusiastic and almost unanimous nomination of Vallandigham for governor by the Democrats the issue had practically come to be Vallandigham or Lincoln. "The canvass in Ohio," wrote John Sherman, "is substantially between the Government and the Rebellion, and is assuming all the bitterness of such a strife."2 For three months the business of the people seemed to be the political contest. The Democrats held large and enthusiastic meetings all over the State, the estimates of their size running in many cases to twenty, thirty, and forty thousand, and able speakers who engaged earnestly in the work received a close attention from these large audiences. Angry vehemence characterized the meetings of both parties, and the face-to-face discussions day by day of the partisans of both sides. Extreme Democrats contended with ultra Republicans, and quarrels were frequent which ruptured the friendships of years. Vallandigham was called a traitor and a convict; Lincoln, on the other hand, was termed a usurper, a tyrant, and a despot, and given the title of King Abraham.

The real strength of the Democratic canvass lay in their emphatic declarations that their cause was that of civil lib

1 Sept. 3.

2 Aug. 29, Sherman Letters, p. 214.

3 For example: Bellefontaine, 15,000, Circleville, 40,000, Kenton, 25,000, Upper Sandusky, 40,000 to 50,000, Chillicothe, 35,000, Hamilton, 30,000, Springfield, 30,000 to 40,000, Wooster, 30,000 to 40,000, New Lexington, 20,000 to 30,000, Ottawa, 15,000, Piqua, 20,000 to 25,000, Mt. Vernon, 40,000 to 50,000.-Columbus (Ohio) Crisis, Aug. 5, 12, Sept. 16, 30. Of course these numbers are exaggerated.

Among the speakers were A. G. Thurman, George E. Pugh, George H. Pendleton, D. W. Voorhees, S. S. Cox, William Allen, George W. Morgan.

erty; that their candidate stood for freedom of speech and for freedom of the press; that his arrest, trial, and banishment were unjust, and that his enforced exile spoke loudly for redress: these cries dwarfed all other issues. The feeling inspiring the Democrats of Ohio, it was asserted, is the spirit of '76; it is the courage which actuated the barons on the meadow of Runnymede. A story about Seward, made up apparently out of whole cloth, became an effective illustration of the argument. "My lord," he was reported to have said to Lord Lyons, "I can touch a bell on my right hand and order the arrest of a citizen of Ohio; I can touch a bell again and order the imprisonment of a citizen of New York; and no power on earth except that of the President can release them. Can the Queen of England do so much?" That this story, by dint of iteration and, in spite of denials, by reiteration with circumstantial details, came to be thoroughly believed, is not strange; for while Seward probably made no such remark, he and Stanton had caused many arrests with no more formality than a telegraphic despatch.1

The Union party nominated for governor John Brough, a war Democrat, an industrious and persuasive stump-speaker, who prosecuted his canvass with zeal, receiving from his party effective assistance.2 Their mass-meetings were many

1 I have searched the printed correspondence of Lord Lyons with his government, and find no authority whatever for the story. One account (Cincinnati Enquirer, cited by Columbus Crisis, June 10) ran that the conversation took place Nov. 16, 1861, and was in the diplomatic correspondence printed in the N. Y. Times, March 1, 1862. But it is not there. Thinking that it may have come from some indiscreet remark of Seward which got into the newspapers, I have had a search made in the journals of Nov. and Dec., 1861, but found no trace of it. Nor did I run across it in 1862. In 1863 it became a stock illustration for Democratic argument. But a misrepresentation dies hard. On the frontispiece of Marshall's American Bastile (1870) this remark is quoted as the explanation of a startling, though truthful enough, pictorial illustration. On p. xiii it is referred to as undisputed historical truth. As such it is quoted by S. S. Cox, Three Decades, p. 275.

2 Among the speakers were Senators Sherman and Wade, Senator Zach. Chandler of Michigan, Geo. W. Julian, A. G. Riddle, John A. Bingham, Judge Luther Day (a War Democrat).

and enthusiastic, but fell short probably in numbers of those which gathered out of warm sympathy with the cause of Vallandigham. The Union speakers maintained that the only issue was whether the government should be supported in its conduct of the war, and argued adroitly that a vote for Vallandigham was equivalent to one for Jefferson Davis, and that his election would be as hurtful to the country as would a terrible defeat of the soldiers in the field. They were listened to gladly by earnest men and women throughout the State, and awakened a high spirit of patriotism. The most interesting assemblies were those of the farmers, who giving, as they termed it, a day to the country, brought their wives, daughters, and sons to the mass-meeting in order that all might understand the issue submitted to the people. At a meeting at Jefferson, Ashtabula County, a district of high political intelligence, Julian, the last of the speakers, was called for a short while before sunset, and after speaking forty-five minutes proposed to stop, as the people had stood for four hours in a cold and drizzling rain; but he received from them in answer the emphatic shout, "Go on." "Go ahead," said a farmer. "We'll hear you; it's past milking-time, anyhow." "It seemed to me," writes Julian, "that I had never met such listeners. I was afterwards informed that the test of effective speaking on the Reserve is the ability to hold an audience from their milking when the time for it comes."2

In spite of the earnest and enthusiastic assemblies of those devoted to the President and the government, the Vallandigham meetings were such impressive outpourings of the people that on the eve of the election considerable doubt existed whether Brough would have a majority of the home vote. The result amazed both Union men and Democrats, and was a testimony of the silent, unobtrusive voters who are sure to come out when the sentiment of the people is really

1 "Not only the people of the loyal but those of the disloyal States and of England feel that the fate of the Union rests upon the result of the election in Ohio on the second Tuesday in October.” - N. Y. Tribune, Oct. 3. 2 Political Recollections, p. 236.