in the first half of 1863 comprised a more extreme opposition prevailing in the West and led by Clement Vallandigham, a Congressman from Ohio, and a milder opposition led by Horatio Seymour, who from the end of 1862 to the end of 1864, when he failed of re-election, was Governor of New York State. The extreme section were often called "Copperheads," after a venomous snake of that name. Strictly, perhaps, this political term should be limited to the few who went so far as to desire the victory of the South; more loosely it was applied to a far larger number who went no further than to say that the war should be stopped. This demand, it must be observed, was based upon the change of policy shown in the Proclamation of Emancipation. "The war for the Union," said Vallandigham in Congress in January, 1863, "is in your hands a most bloody and costly failure. War for the Union was abandoned; war for the negro openly begun. With what success? Let the dead at Fredericksburg answer.-Ought this war to continue? I answer no-not a day, not an hour. What then? Shall we separate? Again I answer, no, no, no.-Stop fighting. Make an armistice. Accept at once friendly foreign mediation." And further: "The secret but real purpose of the war was to abolish slavery in the States, and with it the change of our present democratical form of government into an imperial despotism." This was in no sense treason; it was merely humbug. The alleged design to establish despotism, chiefly revealed at that moment by the liberation of slaves, had of course no existence. Equally false, as will be seen later, was the whole suggestion that any peace could have been had with the South except on the terms of separation. Vallandigham, a demagogue of real vigour, had perhaps so much honesty as is compatible with self-deception; at any rate, upon his subsequent visit to the South his intercourse with Southern leaders was conducted on the footing that the Union should be restored. But his character inspired no respect. Burnside, now commanding the troops in Ohio, held that violent denunciation of the Government in a THE APPROACH OF VICTORY 383 19 tone that tended to demoralise the troops was treason, lurking here, but it must not be supposed that this sentence came from a pleader's ingenuity. It was the expression of a man really agonised by his weekly task of confirming sentences on deserters from the army. Governor Seymour was a more presentable antagonist than Vallandigham. He did not propose to stop the war. On the contrary, his case was that the war could only be effectively carried on by a law-abiding Government, which would unite the people by maintaining the Constitution, not, as the Radicals argued, by the flagitious policy of freeing the slaves. It should be added that he was really concerned at the corruption which was becom ing rife, for which war contracts gave some scope, and which, with a critic's obliviousness to the limitations of human force, he thought the most heavily-burdened Administration of its time could easily have put down. With a little imagination it is easy to understand the difficult position of the orthodox Democrats, who two years before had voted against restricting the extension of slavery, and were now asked for the sake of the Union to support a Government which was actually abolishing slavery by martial law. Also the attitude of the thoroughly selfrighteous partisan is perfectly usual. Many of Governor Seymour's utterances were fair enough, and much of his conduct was patriotic enough. His main proceedings can be briefly summarised. His election as Governor in the end of 1862 was regarded as an important event, the appearance of a new leader holding an office of the greatest influence. Lincoln, assuming, as he had a right to do, the full willingness of Seymour to co-operate in prosecuting the war, did the simplest and best thing. He wrote and invited Seymour after his inauguration in March, 1863, to a personal conference with himself as to the ways in which, with their divergent views, they could best co-operate. The Governor waited three weeks before he acknowledged this letter. He then wrote and promised a full reply later. He never sent this reply. He protested energetically and firmly against the arrest of Vallandigham. In July, 1863, the Conscription Act began to be put in force in New York city; then occurred whole matter of his complaints in conference with Stanton. Like a prudent man, he again refused to face personal conference. It seems that Governor Seymour, who was a great person in his day, was very decidedly, in the common acceptance of the term, a gentleman. This has been counted unto him for righteousness. It should rather be treated as an aggravation of his very unmeritable conduct. Thus, since the Proclamation of Emancipation the North had again become possessed of what is sometimes considered a necessity of good government, an organised Opposition ready and anxious to take the place of the existing Administration. It can well be understood that honourable men entered into this combination, but it is difficult to conceive on what common principle they could hold together which would not have been disastrous in its working. The more extreme leaders, who were likely to prove the driving force among them, were not unfitly satirised in a novel of the time called the "Man Without a Country." Their chance of success in fact depended upon the ill-fortune of their country in the war and on the irritation against the Government, which could be aroused by that cause alone and not by such abuses as they fairly criticised. In the latter part of 1863 the war was going well. A great meeting of "Union men was summoned in August in Illinois. Lincoln was tempted to go and speak to them, but he contented himself with a letter. Phrases in it might suggest the stump orator, more than in fact his actual stump speeches usually did. In it, however, he made plain in the simplest language the total fallacy of such talk of peace as had lately become common; the Confederacy meant the Confederate army and the men who controlled it; as a fact no suggestion of peace or compromise came from them; if it ever came, the people should know it. In equally simple terms he sought to justify, even to supporters of the Union who did not share his "wish that all men could be free," his policy in regard to emancipation. In any case, freedom had for the sake of the Union been prom 19 |