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Lecompton Constitution, from free soil to the forcing of slavery upon free soil, protesting at every stopping-place, by all that is good and great, that you would not go a single step further. (Laughter and great applause.) And you will have us believe that you are not going to do this or that! Did you know what you were going to do when you went into the Chicago Convention? How many of you are there who would not have sworn upon their sacred honor that they would never vote for a resolution like that which was passed—and did they not do it? I tell you in the face of your protestations and those of your candidate, you permit yourselves once to be infatuated with the idea that you can coax and buy the rebels back into the Union by concession, and whatever they may ask of you, you will do it, for it is only the first step that costs—and surely, Jefferson Davis will not spare you, for his foot is too familiar with the necks of his old Northern friends. (Great applause.) The old silly cry, “Do not irritate the South! do not irritate it by the blockade! do not irritate it by the armed negroes!” (laughter,) will again have its old sway; your desires and delusive hopes will give birth to the most obsequious schemes, and soon you will be in a state of mind of which it will be difficult to say where folly ends and where treason begins.
Still, I will give you the full benefit of your protestations. I might describe the ruinous effect the temporary withdrawal of our armies, or even the temporary withdrawal of our armies, or even the temporary raising of the blockade, would have upon the future chances of the war; how hundreds of French and English vessels would fly into Savannah and Wilmington with arms and ammunition and clothing and railroad iron and machinery, and other things handy to have; how those ships would fly out again loaded with cotton; how, upon the value of that cotton, the Confederate loan would find new buyers and their wretched finances would look up; how the whole fighting capacity of the South would receive a new and tremendous impulse. I might describe all that, but I will forbear.
There are two measures which, in case of their accession to power, the Chicago party would most certainly execute. Victims to that most ridiculous of all mental diseases, the negrophobia, they would dismiss our two hundred thousand negro soldiers; and yielding to that most pernicious of all passions, demagoguism, they would give up the idea of a conscription. Will they not? I dare any one of their public men, I dare their candidate, I dare the most bellicose of their partisans—I dare them to say that they will not do so. And the consequences? With one hand they will deplete and weaken the army, and with the other they will throw away the means of filling it up and strengthening it. Take two hundred thousand negro soldiers from the garrisons and posts they are guarding, take two hundred thousand white soldiers from Atlanta and Petersburgh to fill the places left vacant by the negroes, and I call upon any military authority in this country to say: Will it; or will it not, be impossible for our two great armies, under Grant and Sherman, to hold the field?
“Retreat! retreat!” would be the cry; and it is, perhaps, with a view to this contingency that the Chicago Convention has selected its distinguished candidate. (Long-continued applause.) Do not speak of rapidly filling the vacuum with new recruits; for you give up the conscription, and I apprehend your friends in Indiana and Illinois and Ohio, your Sons of Liberty and American Knights, will be rather slow to rush to the field with their imported revolvers. (Laughter.) Far from being able to strengthen our army, you will rather weaken, dishearten, and demoralize what remains of it. The soldiers witnessing with disgust these senseless and ruinous proceedings, suspicion and distrust would creep into the ranks, and the brave boys would lose half of their strength by losing their confidence and faith.
And then, indeed, the “cessation of hostilities” would acquire a new aspect. Unable to keep the field, far from being able to offer an armistice, you might find yourselves obliged to approach the rebel chief hat in hand to beg for one; and surely, if he should have the contemptuous magnanimity to grant it, he would hardly spare your feelings with his conditions. Is that the cessation of hostilities you desire? It is certainly the cessation of hostilities the rebels desire. This kind of armistice will at least have one advantage: it will save you the trouble of discussing what conditions you will or will not propose. The rebels will take that trouble off your hands. (Laughter and applause.) But, seriously and soberly speaking, I deem the opposition of the Woods and Vallandighams to the Chicago nominee a most rash and ill-advised movement; for, if they let him only act upon the general idiosyncrasies, the common prejudices and impulses of the party, he will as certainly and safely ruin the prospects of the war as they themselves might have done with their ingeniously devised cessation of hostilities, which offers to the rebels that which they desire, together with the privilege of refusing that which we desire. The one is a military way of doing it, the other a civil one; the one is “strategy,” the other diplomacy; and I candidly think the difference is not worth quarreling about. At all events, it would be well for the peace men to set a good example by keeping peace among themselves. (Laughter and applause.)
But I will follow the advocates of the Chicago peace platform into the farthest recesses of their argument, which we find, not in their resolutions, but in their papers.
They tell us, that while the rebel government is for war, the Southern people are for peace; and that we therefore must appeal from the rebel government to the Southern people. Certainly a good idea. But how carry it out? The number of peace men in the South is undoubtedly large. They may fairly be divided into two classes: first, Secessionists on principle, who are for peace only because they are tired of the war; and second, Union men on principle, who are for peace on the basis of reünion. These two classes undoubtedly comprise a large number of people, but probably not strong enough to control the rebel government; for if they are strong
