President and Vice-President shall be elected by a direct vote of the
people.
_Twelfth._ That the question of the reconstruction of the rebellious
States belongs to the people, through their representatives in
Congress, and not to the Executive.
_Thirteenth._ That the confiscation of the lands of the rebels, and
their distribution among the soldiers and actual settlers, is a
measure of justice.
The country was prepared, at the time the Democratic platform was
adopted, to receive its demands relating to the war with some respect,
but the aspect of the contest was speedily changed by Sherman’s capture
of Atlanta and Sheridan’s brilliant victories in the Shenandoah
Valley. General McClellan and his friends appreciated the unfortunate
expression of the convention against the war, that was made very
generally odious among loyal people by the thrilling victories of the
army, and in his letter of acceptance, that he delayed long enough to
give the fullest consideration to the subject, he plainly dissented
from the war plank of the platform. He said: “I could not look in the
face of my gallant comrades of the army and navy who have survived so
many bloody battles and tell them that their labors and the sacrifice
of so many of our slain and wounded brethren had been in vain, that
we had abandoned that Union for which we have so often perilled our
lives;” to which he added: “No peace can be permanent without union.”
While the contest had been fairly doubtful and at times exceedingly
gloomy for Lincoln, the victories of Sherman and Sheridan caused a
sudden tidal wave, that utterly overwhelmed McClellan and left him
the worst defeated candidate of history in any contested election,
receiving only 21 electoral votes to 212 for Lincoln. The following
table gives the popular and electoral vote, with the soldier vote in a
separate table, as cast in the field:
══════════════╤═════════════════════╦═══════════════════
│ POPULAR VOTE. ║ ELECTORAL VOTE.
STATES. ├──────────┬──────────╫────────┬──────────
│ Lincoln. │McClellan.║Lincoln.│McClellan.
──────────────┼──────────┼──────────╫────────┼──────────
Maine │ 72,278 │ 47,736 ║ 7 │ ――
New Hampshire │ 36,595 │ 33,034 ║ 5 │ ――
Vermont │ 42,422 │ 13,325 ║ 5 │ ――
Massachusetts │ 126,742 │ 48,745 ║ 12 │ ――
Rhode Island │ 14,343 │ 8,718 ║ 4 │ ――
Connecticut │ 44,693 │ 42,288 ║ 6 │ ――
New York │ 368,726 │ 361,986 ║ 33 │ ――
New Jersey │ 60,723 │ 68,014 ║ ―― │ 7
Pennsylvania │ 296,389 │ 276,308 ║ 26 │ ――
Delaware │ 8,155 │ 8,767 ║ ―― │ 3
Maryland │ 40,153 │ 32,739 ║ 7 │ ――
Kentucky │ 27,786 │ 64,301 ║ ―― │ 11
West Virginia │ 23,223 │ 10,457 ║ 5 │ ――
Ohio │ 265,154 │ 205,568 ║ 21 │ ――
Indiana │ 150,422 │ 130,233 ║ 13 │ ――
Illinois │ 189,487 │ 158,349 ║ 16 │ ――
Michigan │ 85,352 │ 67,370 ║ 8 │ ――
Iowa │ 87,331 │ 49,260 ║ 8 │ ――
Wisconsin │ 79,564 │ 63,875 ║ 8 │ ――
Minnesota │ 25,060 │ 17,375 ║ 4 │ ――
Kansas │ 14,228 │ 3,871 ║ 3 │ ――
Missouri │ 72,991 │ 31,026 ║ 11 │ ――
Nevada[19] │ 9,826 │ 6,594 ║ 2 │ ――
California │ 62,134 │ 43,841 ║ 5 │ ――
Oregon │ 9,888 │ 8,457 ║ 3 │ ――
├──────────┼──────────╫────────┼──────────
Totals │2,213,665 │1,802,237 ║ 212 │ 21
══════════════╧══════════╧══════════╩════════╧══════════
[19] Nevada chose three electors, one of whom died before election.
═════════════════════╤══════════════════════
│ SOLDIER VOTE.
STATES. ├─────────┬────────────
│ Lincoln.│ McClellan.
─────────────────────┼─────────┼────────────
Maine │ 4,174 │ 741
New Hampshire │ 2,066 │ 690
Vermont │ 243 │ 49
Pennsylvania │ 26,712 │ 12,349
Maryland │ 2,800 │ 321
Kentucky │ 1,194 │ 2,823
Ohio │ 41,146 │ 9,757
Michigan │ 9,402 │ 2,959
Iowa │ 15,178 │ 1,364
Wisconsin │ 11,372 │ 2,458
California │ 2,600 │ 237
├─────────┼────────────
Totals │ 116,887 │ 33,748
═════════════════════╧═════════╧════════════
The army vote of Vermont, Kansas, and Minnesota was not received in
time to be taken into the official count, and part of the vote of
Wisconsin was rejected for informality.
The States of Tennessee and Louisiana also held elections and were
carried for Lincoln, but their votes were not necessary to the election
of the Republican ticket, and although Lincoln earnestly desired that
these States should be recognized and the votes counted, Congress, by
joint resolution, that Lincoln signed with great reluctance, declared
that they should not be recognized, and they were omitted in the final
count by Congress.
Pennsylvania was the only Republican State that faltered in the fall
elections of 1864. There was no State ticket to be chosen, and the
Republicans in charge of the campaign assumed that Lincoln would
carry the State without extraordinary efforts, while the friends of
McClellan, a native of the State, with strong individual and social
relations, made exhaustive efforts to give him the victory.
The October election was practically a stand-off, and Lincoln
telegraphed me on the morning after the election to come to Washington.
He was much distressed at the attitude of our State, and apprehensive
that New York, with Horatio Seymour as Governor, one of the ablest
Democrats of the country, might vote for McClellan, as Tammany was
then in the very zenith of its power. I had been Chairman of the State
Committee when Lincoln was elected in 1860, and General Cameron was
my successor in 1864. He was thoroughly competent for the task, but
evidently did not appreciate the perils which confronted him. Lincoln
asked me to join Cameron and devote the intervening month between the
October and November elections to assure a victory. I answered that I
could not make the suggestion to Cameron, as our political relations
were not especially friendly, to which he replied, asking me whether
I would do it if so requested by Cameron. I of course assented, and
the following day I received a letter from Cameron at my home in
Chambersburg, requesting me to join him, where I found Honorable Wayne
MacVeagh, who had been the Republican chairman the year before and who
was then not more friendly to Cameron than myself. We all united in an
earnest effort to win the State, always acting in entire harmony with
Cameron and his committee.
I had private quarters at the Continental, while Cameron’s quarters
were at the Girard, and, as requested, advised Lincoln each day of
the apparent progress of the battle. My reports were not so assuring
as he desired, for the friends of McClellan, inspired by the partial
victory of October, renewed their energies for the November fight.
Postmaster-General Dennison came to see me on a special mission from
Lincoln about two weeks before the election to learn the situation as
precisely as possible, and I had to tell him that I saw but little hope
of carrying the State on the home vote. The army vote would doubtless
be largely for Lincoln and give him the State, but it would be declared
a “bayonet election,” and with such a result in Pennsylvania, and
New York lost, as was possible, while Lincoln’s election could not
be defeated, as the Southern States did not vote, the moral power of
the new administration to prosecute the war and attain peace would
be greatly impaired. My answer to Lincoln was that I would go to
Washington within a few days if it should appear necessary to take
extreme measures to save the State on the home vote.
As the political conditions did not improve, I telegraphed to Lincoln
that I would meet him at nine o’clock in the evening to discuss the
campaign. I found him nervously anxious about Pennsylvania, although
not doubting his re-election. He knew that New York was trembling in
the balance and might be lost, and his fears were fully warranted,
as he had but little over 6000 majority in a million votes. I told
him that I had not confidence in the State being carried by the home
vote, but that it could be done without interfering with the military
operations of the army, as Grant was then besieging Petersburg and
Sheridan had whipped the Confederates clear out of the valley. I
suggested that he should in some way have Grant furlough five thousand
Pennsylvania soldiers home for twenty days, and that Sheridan should do
the same, as that vote cast at home would insure a home majority. He
hesitated about making the request of Grant for reasons which I could
not understand, and I then suggested that General Meade was a soldier
and a gentleman, and that he could safely send an order to him as
Commander of the Army of the Potomac, and that Meade would obey it and
permit the order to be returned.
A messenger from the War Office went the next morning to Meade,
bearing the order from Lincoln, brought it back with him, and fully
five thousand Pennsylvania soldiers were furloughed to return home. I
said: “How about Sheridan?” Lincoln’s face brightened and with great
enthusiasm he said:
“Oh, Phil; he’s all right.”
The same order went to Sheridan, of which no record was ever kept, and
Sheridan sent five thousand of his veterans home to vote as they shot,
and Lincoln’s majority on the home vote was 5712, to which the army
vote added 14,363, making a total majority in the State of 20,075.
It is not generally known how earnestly Lincoln labored for compensated
emancipation. He made earnest efforts to save the Border States to
the Union by the assurance of compensation for slaves, and even after
all the slave States south of the Potomac and the Ohio had joined the
Confederacy, he adhered to the policy of compensated emancipation until
the day of his death. In August, 1864, when the political situation
presented a very gloomy aspect, I had a long conference with Lincoln
at the White House, and he then introduced the subject of compensated
emancipation.
In that conversation he gave me the first intimation of his purpose to
try and end the war by paying the South $400,000,000 as compensation
for the freedom of the slaves. He had the proposition written out in
his own handwriting, but he well knew that if such a purpose on his
part were made public, it would make his re-election impossible. He
discussed it freely and very earnestly, however, and said that he
regarded compensated emancipation as the only way to restore fellowship
between the States. He did not doubt the ability of the North to
overthrow the military power of the Confederacy, but what he most
feared was that the people of the South, driven to desperation by the
severe sacrifices they had suffered, and the general desolation of
their country, that gave them no hope of regaining prosperity, would
make their armies disband into guerrilla squads and would be implacable
in their resentments against the Government.
In all of the many expressions I heard Lincoln make use of, toward the
close of the war, he always exhibited an earnest desire to do something
that would impressively teach the Southern people that they were not
to be held as conquered subjects of a despotic power, but were to come
back into the Union and enjoy the blessings of a reunited people.
Lincoln believed that in no way could he so widely and profoundly
impress the Southern people with the desire of the Government to
deal with them in generous justice as by paying them $400,000,000 as
compensation for the loss of their slaves. I can never forget the
earnestness with which he spoke of this proposition at a time when he
did not dare breathe it to the public. He said the war was costing
$4,000,000 a day, and that it would certainly last for more than four
months, thus costing the Government more than the whole amount he would
have gladly given as compensation for the freedom of the slaves, not to
calculate the sacrifice of life and destruction of property. He fretted
because he could not convey to the South what he believed should be
done to close the war and enable them to re-establish their homes and
fruitful fields. He believed in his theory of compensated emancipation
until his death, and he abandoned it only a short time before the
surrender of Lee. He would have suggested it to Vice-President
Stephens, of the Confederacy, at their City Point meeting in the
winter of 1865, had not Stephens advised him at the outset that he was
instructed by Jefferson Davis to entertain no proposition that did not
perpetuate the Confederacy, and after his return he wrote a message to
Congress in favor of it, submitted it to his Cabinet, by which it was
nearly or quite unanimously disapproved, and he endorsed upon it the
disapproval of the Cabinet and laid it away.
Lincoln was the most notable combination of sadness and mirth that I
ever met with in any of our public men. His face in repose, under all
circumstances, was one of the saddest I ever beheld. It would brighten
in conversation, and at times would portray a measure of sorrow that
could not be surpassed. He was from his youth much given to melancholy.
While he was known as fond of sports and brimful of humor, a very large
portion of his life was always given to isolation and solitude, when he
gave free latitude to the melancholy tendencies of his mind.
Strange as it may seem, he was always a hopeful man, never pessimistic,
and always inclined when discussing any question to take the bright
side. He was severely conscientious in his convictions and in his
actions. He had faith in the present and greater faith in the future.
He had been in early life what is now commonly called an agnostic,
with a strong inclination to atheism, but in his mature years he never
exhibited a trace of it. I have never known any man who had greater
reverence for God than Abraham Lincoln. Throughout his writings,
political and otherwise, will be found multiplied expressions of his
abiding faith in the Great Ruler of nations and individuals.
In a single sentence to be found in Lincoln’s second inaugural address
the country and the world have the most complete portrayal of his
character. When he was inaugurated for a second term as President,
on the 4th of March, 1865, the military power of the Confederacy was
broken, and many in his position would have exhibited the pride of
the victor over the vanquished on such an occasion; but after stating
in the kindest and most temperate language the duty of himself and
of the patriotic people of the country to protect the Union against
dismemberment, he does not utter a word of resentment against the
South. “With malice toward none; with charity for all,” was the brief
and eloquent sentence in which he defined the duty of those who had
then substantially destroyed the power of the Rebellion. That beautiful
expression came from the heart of Abraham Lincoln, and it profoundly
impressed the whole country, then wildly impassioned by the bitterness
of fraternal strife. He knew the resentments which must confront him in
restoring the shattered fragments of the Union, and his supreme desire
was to have the bitterness of the conflict perish when peace came.
No man who has filled the Presidential chair was so vindictively and
malignantly defamed as was Lincoln in the South. The opponents of
the war in the North were guilty of unpardonable assaults upon his
integrity, his ability, and his methods, but the South had no knowledge
of him, as he had filled no important part in national affairs before
his election to the Presidency; and his humble birth in Kentucky, close
by the birthplace of Jefferson Davis, and his exaggerated rudeness of
appearance and manner made the people of the South ready to believe
anything to his discredit. He was proclaimed throughout the Confederacy
as a second Nero; as a bloody and remorseless butcher; as a vulgar
clown who met the sorrows of the nation with ribald jest. Not a single
virtue was conceded to him.
No one could know Lincoln well without seeing some features of his home
life. I have seen him in grave conversation with public men on the most
momentous subjects, when “Tad” Lincoln, his favorite boy, would rush
into the room, bounce on to his father’s lap, throw his arms around his
neck, and play hobby-horse on his foot regardless of all the sacred
affairs of State. There never was a frown from the father, and the
fretting questions of even a great war seemed to perish until “Tad”
had completed his romp. The greatest sorrow of Lincoln’s life shadowed
the altar of his own home, and it was one he had to suffer in silence.
The calamity that befell Mrs. Lincoln after his death was visible to
those who had opportunity to see for themselves at an early period
of his administration. Mrs. Lincoln was mentally unbalanced, but not
sufficiently so to prevent the performance of her social functions, and
her vagaries often led to severe reflections upon the President, at
times even to the extent of charging her with sympathy for the South,
as her brothers were prominent in the Southern army.
I first saw Mrs. Lincoln at Harrisburg on the night that Lincoln made
his midnight journey to Washington, and the greatest difficulty we had
on that occasion was to prevent her from creating a scene that would
have given publicity to the movement. I thought her a fool, and was
so disgusted with her that I never spoke to her afterward, although I
had frequently gone with ladies to her receptions. I wronged her, for
she was then not wholly responsible, and soon after Lincoln’s death
the climax came, leaving her to grope out the remainder of her life in
the starless midnight of insanity. With Lincoln’s many other sorrows,
considering his love of home and family, it may be understood how
keenly he suffered, and how he was clouded by shadows for which the
world could give no relief.
No man ever came in contact with Abraham Lincoln who did not learn to
love, honor, and even reverence him. His ablest political enemies ever
paid the highest tributes, not only to his personal attributes, but to
his masterly ability, and none surpassed Stephen A. Douglas, the ablest
foeman Lincoln ever met, in his appreciation of Lincoln’s qualities.
He had to accept vastly the gravest responsibilities ever put upon
any President of the United States, and I am quite sure that no other
man could have filled Lincoln’s place during the Civil War with equal
safety to the Republic. Had he been vindictive and resentful his fame
would not be without blemish to-day.
What was to me the most beautiful tribute I have ever heard paid to
him came from the lips of Jefferson Davis, when I visited him at his
home in Mississippi some ten years after the war. He never tired of
discussing the character and the actions of Lincoln, and asked me many
questions about his personal qualities. After he had heard all that
could be given in the brief time that I had, he said with a degree of
mingled earnestness and pathos that few could have equalled:
“Next to the destruction of the Confederacy, the death of Abraham
Lincoln was the darkest day the South has ever known.”
THE GRANT-SEYMOUR CONTEST
1868
To the casual reader of our political history, the election and
re-election of Grant to the Presidency immediately after the close of
the war would seem to be a result at once logical and inevitable; but
there are few of the present day who have any knowledge of the many
obstacles which confronted Grant in his transfer from the highest
military to the highest civil duties of the nation.
It is noted that Grant, the Great Captain of the Age, was elected
and re-elected by large majorities; that General Hayes, another
soldier of national fame, succeeded him; that General Garfield, a
soldier-statesman, succeeded Hayes, defeating Hancock, the most
brilliant Democratic soldier of the war, by only a few thousands on
the popular vote; that Blaine, the first civilian candidate of the
party, was the first Republican to suffer defeat after the political
revolution of 1860; that General Harrison, another honored soldier,
was successful as the Republican candidate in 1888, and that Major
McKinley, now Chief Magistrate of the Republic, carried his musket as
a private in the flame of battle, and came out of the war an officer
promoted for gallantry. With such a line of military Presidents, the
natural assumption of the student of our political history would be
that General Grant’s election came about because none could question
its fitness.
There were very serious obstacles to Grant’s nomination for the
Presidency by the Republicans in 1868. First, he was not a Republican
and never had been. He had never voted a Republican ticket, and he
never cast a Republican ballot until after he had been eight years a
Republican President. His last vote before he re-entered the army was
cast for a radical pro-slavery Democrat, and he did not even sympathize
with Stephen A. Douglas in 1860, although he lived in Illinois,
the home of the great Democratic leader of that day. Second, he was
resolutely averse to being a candidate for the Presidency. He was
General of the Army, with freedom to retire without diminution of pay;
he had no political training, and felt himself unfitted for a political
career. He was honest and apparently fixed in his purpose not to become
a candidate. These objections at first appeared to be insuperable
obstacles to Grant’s nomination, but he was human, and had he declined
the Presidency when it was apparently within his reach, he would have
stood as the only man in the history of the Republic who had refused
its crown.
[Illustration: U. S. GRANT]
The Democrats were in a hopeless condition, and they at once began
a systematic movement to make him their candidate. This alarmed the
Republicans, and they made equally earnest and methodical efforts to
make him their leader. It is doubtful upon which side General Grant
would have fallen had it not been for the early estrangement between
President Johnson and himself. Johnson made repeated attempts to
overslaugh him either directly or indirectly. He ordered Grant to
Mexico to get him out of the country, but Grant refused to go, and he
afterward made an earnest effort to supersede Grant by calling General
Thomas to the command of the army, but Thomas stubbornly refused to
consider the call. As the Republicans were then in bitter warfare
against Johnson, Grant logically found sympathy in Republican circles,
and finally, with visible reluctance, he agreed to become the candidate
of the Republicans. Had he been nominated by the Democrats he would
have been elected, but his administration would have greatly conserved
and liberalized the Democratic teachings of that day. His final assent
to become the Republican candidate for President was obtained by the
late Colonel Forney.
The assassination of Lincoln and the succession of Vice-President
Johnson to the Presidency repeated the political history of Tyler and
Fillmore in a radical change of the policy of the Government. Johnson
started under a cloud in his career as Vice-President. On the day of
his inauguration he appeared in the Senate visibly intoxicated, and
delivered a maudlin harangue so disgraceful that a correct report was
never permitted to be given to the public. The report of that address
as severely modified by the omission of the most offensive expressions
was highly discreditable. He was immediately hurried away to the
country residence of the elder Francis P. Blair, and there remained
most of the time until more than a month later, when Lincoln was
assassinated. He never attempted to resume his place in the Senate as
presiding officer, although he was frequently in Washington and was
there on the night of the assassination.