wrongs and evils, some of them merely imaginary, and all the necessary
results of civil war, propose only one thing,--surrender. Disguise it
as you will, flavor it as you will, call it what you will, umble-pie is
umble-pie, and nothing else. The people instinctively so understood it.
They rejected with disgust a plan whose mere proposal took their
pusillanimity for granted, and whose acceptance assured their
self-contempt. At a moment when the Rebels would be checkmated in
another move, we are advised to give them a knight and begin the game
over again. If they are not desperate, what chance of their accepting
offers which they rejected with scorn before the war began? If they are
not desperate, why is their interest more intense in the result of our
next Presidential election than even in the campaign at their very
door? If they were not desperate, would two respectable men like
Messrs. Clay and Holcomb endure the society of George Saunders? General
McClellan himself admitted the righteousness of the war by volunteering
in it, and, the war once begun, the only real question has been whether
the principle of legitimate authority or that of wanton insurrection
against it should prevail,--whether we should have for the future a
government of opinion or of brute force. When the rebellion began, its
leaders had no intention to dissolve the Union, but to reconstruct it,
to make the Montgomery Constitution and Jefferson Davis supreme over
the whole country, and not over a feeble fragment of it. They knew, as
we knew, the weakness of a divided country, and our experience of
foreign governments during the last four years has not been such as to
lessen the apprehension on that score, or to make the consciousness of
it less pungent in either of the contending sections. Even now,
Jefferson Davis is said to be in favor of a confederation between the
Free and the Slave States. But what confederation could give us back
the power and prestige of the old Union? The experience of Germany
surely does not tempt to imitation. And in making overtures for peace,
with whom are we to treat? Talking vaguely about "the South," "the
Confederate States," or "the Southern people," does not help the
matter; for the cat under all this meal is always the _government_
at Richmond, men with everything to expect from independence, with much
to hope from reconstruction, and sure of nothing but ruin from reunion.
And these men, who were arrogant as equals and partners, are to be
moderate in dictating terms as conquerors! If the people understood
less clearly the vital principle which is at hazard in this contest, if
they were not fully persuaded that Slavery and State Eights are merely
the counters, and that free institutions are the real stake, they might
be deluded with the hope of compromise. But there are things that are
not subjects of compromise. The honor, the conscience, the very soul of
a nation, cannot be compromised without ceasing to exist. When you
propose to yield a part of them, there is already nothing left to
yield.
And yet this is all that the party calling itself Democratic, after
months of deliberation, after four years in which to study the popular
mind, have to offer in the way of policy. It is neither more nor less
than to confess that they have no real faith in popular
self-government, for it is to assume that the people have neither
common nor moral sense. General McClellan is to be put in command of
the national citadel, on condition that he immediately offers to
capitulate. To accept the nomination on these terms was to lose, not
only his election, but his self-respect. Accordingly, no sooner was the
damaging effect of the platform evident than it was rumored that he
would consent to the candidacy, but reject the conditions on which
alone it was offered. The singular uniform, half Union-blue and half
Confederate--gray, in which it was proposed by the managers at Chicago
to array the Democratic party, while it might be no novelty to some
camp-followers of the New York delegation familiar with the rules of
certain of our public institutions, could hardly be agreeable to one
who had worn the livery of his country with distinction. It was the
scene of Petruchio and the tailor over again:--
_Gen. McC._ "Why, what, i' th' Devil's name, tailor, call'st
thou this?"
_Committee._ "You bid me make it orderly and well,
According to the fashion and the time."
_Gen. McC._ "Marry, I did; but, if you be remembered,
_I did not bid you mar it to the time._"
Between the nomination and acceptance came the taking of Atlanta,
marring the coat to the time with a vengeance, and suggesting the
necessity of turning it,--a sudden cure which should rank among the
first in future testimonials to the efficacy of Sherman's lozenges. Had
General McClellan thrust the resolutions away from him with an honest
scorn, we should have nothing to say save in commendation. But to
accept them with his own interpretation, to put upon them a meaning
utterly averse from their plain intention, and from that understanding
of them which the journals of his own faction clearly indicated by
their exultation or their silence, according as they favored
Confederacy or Union, is to prepare a deception for one of the parties
to the bargain. In such cases, which is commonly cheated, the
candidate, or the people who vote for him? If the solemn and deliberate
language of resolutions is to be interpreted by contraries, what rule
of hermeneutics shall we apply to the letter of a candidate? If the
Convention meant precisely what they did not say, have we any assurance
that the aspirant has not said precisely what he did not mean? Two
negatives may constitute an affirmative, but surely the affirmation of
two contradictory propositions by parties to the same bargain assures
nothing but misunderstanding.
The resolutions were adopted with but four dissenting votes; their
meaning was obvious, and the whole country understood it to be peace on
any conditions that would be condescended to at Richmond. If a nation
were only a contrivance to protect men in gathering gear, if territory
meant only so many acres for the raising of crops, if power were of
worth only as a police to prevent or punish crimes against person and
property, then peace for the mere sake of peace were the one desirable
thing for a people whose only history would be written in its
cash-book. But if a nation be a living unity, leaning on the past by
tradition, and reaching toward the future by continued aspiration and
achievement,--if territory be of value for the raising of men formed to
high aims and inspired to noble deeds by that common impulse which,
springing from a national ideal, gradually takes authentic shape in a
national character,--if power be but a gross and earthy bulk till it be
ensouled with thought and purpose, and of worth only as the guardian
and promoter of truth and justice among men,--then there are
misfortunes worse than war and blessings greater than peace. At this
moment, not the Democratic party only, but the whole country, longs for
peace, and the difference is merely as to the price that shall be paid
for it. Shall we pay in degradation, and sue for a cessation of
hostilities which would make chaos the rule and order the exception,
which would not be peace, but toleration, not the repose of manly
security, but the helpless quiet of political death? Or shall we pay,
in a little more present suffering, self-sacrifice, and earnestness of
purpose, for a peace that shall be as lasting as honorable, won as it
will be by the victory of right over wrong, and resting on the promise
of God and the hope of man? We believe the country has already made up
its mind as to the answer, and will prove that a democracy may have as
clear a conception of its interests and duties, as fixed a purpose in
defending the one and fulfilling the other, a will as united and
prompt, as have hitherto been supposed to characterize forms of
government where the interests were more personal and the power less
diffused.
Fortunately, though some of General McClellan's indiscreet friends
would make the coming election to turn upon his personal quarrel with
the administration, the question at issue between the two parties which
seek to shape the policy of the country is one which manifestly
transcends all lesser considerations, and must be discussed in the
higher atmosphere of principle, by appeals to the reason, and not the
passions, of the people. However incongruous with each other in opinion
the candidates of the Democratic party may be, in point of
respectability they are unexceptionable. It is true, as one of the
candidates represents war and the other peace, and "when two men ride
on one horse, one must ride behind," that it is of some consequence to
know which is to be in the saddle and which on the croup; but we will
take it for granted that General McClellan will have no more delicacy
about the opinions of Mr. Pendleton than he has shown for those of the
Convention. Still, we should remember that the General may be imprudent
enough to die, as General Harrison and General Taylor did before him,
and that Providence may again make "of our pleasant vices whips to
scourge us." We shall say nothing of the sectional aspect of the
nomination, for we do not believe that what we deemed a pitiful
electioneering clamor, when raised against our own candidates four
years ago, becomes reasonable argument in opposing those of our
adversaries now. The point of interest, then, is simply this: What can
General McClellan accomplish for the country which Mr. Lincoln has
failed to accomplish? In what respect would their policies differ? And,
supposing them to differ, which would be most consistent with the honor
and permanent well-being of the nation?
General McClellan, in his letter of acceptance,[5] assumes that, in
nominating him, "the record of his public life was kept in view" by the
Convention. This will enable us to define with some certainty the
points on which his policy would be likely to differ from that of Mr.
Lincoln. He agrees with him that the war was a matter of necessity, not
of choice. He agrees with him in assuming a right to emancipate slaves
as a matter of military expediency, differing only as to the method and
extent of its application,--a mere question of judgment. He agrees
with, him as to the propriety of drafting men for the public service,
having, indeed, been the first to recommend a draft of men whom he was
to command himself. He agrees with him that it is not only lawful, but
politic, to make arrests without the ordinary forms of law where the
public safety requires it, and himself both advised and accomplished
the seizure of an entire Legislature. So far there is no essential
difference, and beyond this we find very little, except that Mr.
Lincoln was in a position where he was called on to act with a view to
the public welfare, and General McClellan in one where he could express
abstract opinions, without the responsibility of trial, to be used
hereafter for partisan purposes as a part of his "record." For example,
just after his failure to coerce the State of Virginia, he took
occasion to instruct his superiors in their duty, and, among other
things, stated his opinion that the war "should not be a war looking to
the subjugation of the people of any State," but "should be against
armed forces and political organizations." The whole question of the
right to "coerce a sovereign State" appears to have arisen from a
confusion of the relations of a State to its own internal policy and to
the general government. But a State is certainly a "political
organization," and, if we understand General McClellan rightly, he
would coerce a State, but not the people of it,--a distinction which we
hope he appreciates better than its victims would be likely to do. We
find here also no diversity in principle between the two men, only that
Mr. Lincoln has been compelled to do, while General McClellan has had
the easier task of telling us what he would do. After the Peninsular
campaign, we cannot but think that even the latter would have been
inclined to say, with the wisest man that ever spoke in our tongue, "If
to do were as easy as to know what 'twere good to do, chapels had been
churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces."
[5] This letter was published in the public journals 9 September.
The single question of policy on which General McClellan differs from
Mr. Lincoln, stripped of the conventional phrases in which he drapes
it, is Slavery. He can mean nothing else when he talks of "conciliation
and compromise," of receiving back any State that may choose to return
"with a full guaranty of all its constitutional rights." If it be true
that a rose by any other name will smell as sweet, it is equally true
that there is a certain species of toadstool that would be none the
less disgusting under whatever _alias_. Compromise and conciliation
are both excellent things in their own way, and in the fitting time and
place, but right cannot be compromised without surrendering it, and to
attempt conciliation by showing the white feather ends, not in
reconcilement, but subjection. The combined ignorance of the Seven
Sleepers of Ephesus as to what had been going on while they were in
their cavern would hardly equal that of General McClellan alone as to
the political history of the country. In the few months between Mr.
Lincoln's election and the attack on Fort Sumter we tried conciliation
in every form, carrying it almost to the verge of ignominy. The
Southern leaders would have none of it. They saw in it only a
confession of weakness, and were but the more arrogant in their demand
of all or nothing. Compromise we tried for three quarters of a century,
and it brought us to where we are, for it was only a fine name for
cowardice, and invited aggression. And now that the patient is dying of
this drench of lukewarm water, Doctor Sangrado McClellan gravely
prescribes another gallon. If that fail to finish him, why, give him a
gallon more.
We wish it were as easy to restore General McClellan's army to what it
was before the Peninsular campaign as he seems to think it is to put
the country back where it was at the beginning of the war. The war, it
is true, was undertaken to assert the sovereignty of the Constitution,
but the true cause of quarrel was, not that the South denied the
supremacy of that instrument, but that they claimed the sole right to
interpret it, and to interpret it in a sense hostile to the true ideal
of the country, and the clear interests of the people. But
circumstances have changed, and what was at first a struggle to
maintain the outward form of our government has become a contest to
preserve the life and assert the supreme will of the nation. Even in
April, 1861, underneath that desire for legal sanction common to our
race, which expressed itself in loyalty to the Constitution, there was
an instinctive feeling that the very germinating principle of our
nationality was at stake, and that unity of territory was but another
name for unity of idea; nay, was impossible without it, and undesirable
if it were possible. It was not against the Constitution that the
Rebels declared war, but against free institutions; and if they are
beaten, they must submit to the triumph of those institutions. Their
only chance of constitutional victory was at the polls. They rejected
it, though it was in their grasp, and now it is for us, and not them,
to dictate terms. After all the priceless blood they have shed, General
McClellan would say to them, "Come back and rule us." Mr. Lincoln says,
"Come back as equals, with every avenue of power open to you that is
open to us; but the advantage which the slaveholding interest wrung
from the weakness of the fathers your own madness has forfeited to the
sons."
General McClellan tells us that if the war had been conducted "in
accordance with those principles which he took occasion to declare when
in active service, reconciliation would have been easy." We suppose he
refers to his despatch of July 7th, 1862, when, having just
demonstrated his incapacity in the profession for which he had been
educated, he kindly offered to take the civil policy of the country
under his direction, expecting, perhaps, to be more successful in a
task for which he was fitted neither by training nor experience. It is
true he had already been spoken of as a possible candidate for the
Presidency, and that despatch was probably written to be referred to
afterwards as part of the "record" to which he alludes in his recent
letter. Indeed, he could have had no other conceivable object in so
impertinent a proceeding, for, up to that time, the war had been
conducted on the very principles he recommended; nay, was so conducted
for six months longer, till it was demonstrated that reconciliation was
not to be had on those terms, and that victory was incompatible with
them. Mr. Lincoln was forced into what General McClellan calls a
radical policy by the necessity of the case. The Rebels themselves
insisted on convincing him that his choice was between that and
failure. They boasted that slavery was their bulwark and arsenal; that,
while every Northern soldier withdrew so much from the productive
industry of the Union, every fighting-man at the South could be brought
into the field, so long as the negroes were left to do the work that
was to feed and clothe him. Were these negroes property? The laws of
war justified us in appropriating them to our own use. Were they
population? The laws of war equally justified us in appealing to them
for aid in a cause which was their own more than it was ours. It was so
much the worse for the South that its property was of a kind that could
be converted from chattels into men, and from men into soldiers, by the
scratch of a pen. The dragon's teeth were not of our sowing, but, so
far from our being under any obligation not to take into our service
the army that sprang from them, it would have been the extreme of
weakness and folly not to do it. If there be no provision in the
Constitution for emancipating the negroes, neither is there any for
taking Richmond; and we give General McClellan too much credit for
intelligence and patriotism to suppose that if, when he asked for a
hundred thousand more men at Harrison's Bar, he had been told that he
could have black ones, he would have refused them.
But supposing the very improbable chance of General McClellan's
election to the Presidency, how would he set about his policy of
conciliation? Would he disarm the colored troops? In favor of
prosecuting the war, as he declares himself to be, this would only
necessitate the draft of just so many white ones in their stead. Would
he recall the proclamation of freedom? This would only be to incite a
servile insurrection. The people have already suffered too much by
General McClellan's genius for retreat, to follow him in another even
more disastrous. But it is idle to suppose that the Rebels are to be
appeased by any exhibition of weakness. Like other men, they would take
fresh courage from it. Force is the only argument to which they are in
a condition to listen, and, like other men, they will yield to it at
last, if it prove irresistible. We cannot think that General McClellan
would wish to go down to posterity as the President who tried to
restore the Union by the reenslaving of men who had fought in its
defence, and had failed in the attempt. We doubt if he had any very
clear conception of what he meant by conciliation and compromise,
except as a gloss to make the unconditional surrender doctrine of the
Chicago Convention a little less odious. If he meant more, if he hoped
to gain political strength by an appeal to the old pro-slavery
prejudices of the country, he merely shows the same unfortunate
unconsciousness of the passage of time, and the changes it brings with
it, that kept him in the trenches at Yorktown till his own defeat
became inevitable. Perhaps he believes that the Rebels would accept
from him what they rejected with contempt when offered by Mr.
Lincoln,--that they would do in compliment to him what they refused to
do from the interest of self-preservation. If they did, it would simply
prove that they were in a condition to submit to terms, and not to
dictate them. If they listened to his advances, their cause must be so
hopeless that it would be a betrayal of his trust to make them. If they
were obstinate, he would be left with the same war on his hands which
has forced Mr. Lincoln into all his measures, and which would not be
less exacting on himself. As a peace candidate he might solicit votes
with some show of reason, but on a war platform we see no good reason
for displacing Mr. Lincoln in his favor except on personal grounds; and
we fear that our campaigns would hardly be conducted with vigor under a
President whom the people should have invested with the office by way
of poultice for his bruised sensibilities as a defeated commander. Once
in the Presidential chair, with a country behind him insisting on a
re-establishment of the Union, and a rebellion before him deaf to all
offers from a government that faltered in its purposes, we do not see
what form of conciliation he would hit upon by which to persuade a
refractory "political organization," except that practised by Hood's
butcher when he was advised to try it on a drove of sheep.
"He seized upon the foremost wether,
And hugged and lugged and tugged him neck and crop,
Just _nolens volens_ through the open shop
(If tails came off he did not care a feather);
Then, walking to the door and smiling grim,
He rubbed his forehead and his sleeve together,--
There! I've _con_ciliated him!'"
It is idle, however, to think of allaying angry feeling or appeasing
resentment while the war lasts, and idler to hope for any permanent
settlement, except in the complete subjugation of the rebellion. There
are persons who profess to be so much shocked at the _word_ subjugation
as to be willing that we should have immediate experience of the
_thing_, by receiving back the Rebels on their own conditions. Mr.
Lincoln has already proclaimed an amnesty wide enough to satisfy the
demands of the most exacting humanity, and they must reckon on a
singular stupidity in their hearers who impute ferocious designs to a
man who cannot nerve his mind to the shooting of a deserter or the
hanging of a spy. Mr. Lincoln, in our judgment, has shown from the
first the considerate wisdom of a practical statesman. If he has been
sometimes slow in making up his mind, it has saved him the necessity of
being hasty to change it when once made up, and he has waited till the
gradual movement of the popular sentiment should help him to his
conclusions and sustain him in them. To be moderate and unimpassioned
in revolutionary times that kindle natures of more flimsy texture to a
blaze may not be a romantic quality, but it is a rare one, and goes
with those massive understandings on which a solid structure of
achievement may be reared. Mr. Lincoln is a long-headed and
long-purposed man, who knows when he is ready,--a secret General
McClellan never learned. That he should be accused of playing Cromwell
by the Opposition, and reproached with not being Cromwellian enough by
the more ardent of his own supporters, is proof enough that his action
has been of that firm but deliberate temper best suited to troublous
times and to constitutional precedents. One of these accusations is the
unworthy fetch of a party at a loss for argument, and the other springs
from that exaggerated notion of the power of some exceptional
characters upon events which Carlyle has made fashionable, but which
was never even approximately true except in times when there was no
such thing as public opinion, and of which there is no record personal
enough to assure us what we are to believe. A more sincere man than
Cromwell never lived, yet they know little of his history who do not
know that his policy was forced to trim between Independents and
Presbyterians, and that he so far healed the wounds of civil war as to
make England dreaded without satisfying either. We have seen no reason
to change our opinion of Mr. Lincoln since his wary scrupulousness won
him the applause of one party, or his decided action, when he was at
last convinced of its necessity, made him the momentary idol of the
other. We will not call him a great man, for over-hasty praise is too
apt to sour at last into satire, and greatness may be trusted safely to
history and the future; but an honest one we believe him to be, and
with no aim save to repair the glory and greatness of his country.
But fortunately it is no trial of the personal merits of opposing
candidates on which the next election is to pronounce a verdict. The
men set up by the two parties represent principles utterly
antagonistic, and so far-reaching in their consequences that all
personal considerations and contemporary squabbles become as
contemptible in appearance as they always are in reality. However
General McClellan may equivocate and strive to hide himself in a cloud
of ink, the man who represents the party that deliberately and
unanimously adopted the Chicago Platform is the practical embodiment of
the principles contained in it. By ignoring the platform, he seems, it
is true, to nominate himself; but this, though it may be good evidence
of his own presumption, affords no tittle of proof that he could have
been successful at Chicago without some distinct previous pledges of
what his policy would be. If no such pledges were given, then the
Convention nominated him with a clear persuasion that he was the sort
of timber out of which tools are made. If they were not given, does not
the acceptance of the nomination under false pretences imply a certain
sacrifice of personal honor? And will the honor of the country be safe
in the hands of a man who is careless of his own? General McClellan's
election will be understood by the South and by the whole country as an
acknowledgment of the right of secession,--an acknowledgment which will
resolve the United States into an association for insurance against any
risk of national strength and greatness by land or sea. Mr. Lincoln, on
the other hand, is the exponent of principles vital to our peace,
dignity, and renown,--of all that can save America from becoming
Mexico, and insure popular freedom for centuries to come.