A party which does not dare to advance a single clear and positive principle upon which it proposes to act; a party which gives us nothing but a vague assurance of its fidelity to the Union coupled with the proposition of stopping the war, which alone can lead to the restoration of the Union; giving us a platform which its candidate does not dare to stand upon, and a candidate who quietly submits to the assertions of his supporters that he will be obliged to stand on the platform; a party which was waiting two months for a policy, and then found its policy upset by events two days after it had been declared; a party floundering like a drunken man between a treacherous peace and a faithless war, between disunion that shall not be and a kind of union that can not be; a party which is like a ship without compass and rudder, with a captain who declares that he will not do what he is hired to do [laughter], with a set of officers who swear that he shall do it [continued laughter}, with a crew who were enticed on board by false pretences, and who are kept by the vague impression that there is something good in the kitchen, [repeated laughter and applause]; and that vessel bound for a port which does not exist on the map. [Bursts of laughter and applause.] Is not this picture true in every touch? [“Yes! yes!”]
And why all this wild confusion of ideas and cross purposes? Why all these ridiculous absurdities in its propositions? Simply because that party refuses to stand upon the clear and irrevocable developments of history, and denies the stern reality of accomplished facts; because it repudiates the great and inexorable laws by which human events are governed; because it shuts its eyes against the manifest signs of the times; because, while pretending to save the Union, it protects the Union’s sworn enemy; because it deems it consistent with loyalty to keep alive the mother of treason; in one word, because it insists
