Part 90 (1/2)

”To stir up sore and wounded hearts to bitterness requires no skill or power of oratory. To address the minds of men sickened by disaster, wearied by long trial, heated by pa.s.sion, bewildered by uncertainty, heavy with grief, and cunningly to turn them into one vindictive channel, into one blind rush of senseless fury requires no great power of oratory and no great mastery of the truth. It may be the trick of a charlatan!”

He paused and gazed with deliberate and offensive insolence into the faces of the men who had spoken. Their eyes blazed with wrath, and a fierce thrill of excitement swept the crowd.

”For a man to address himself to an a.s.sembly like this, however, goaded to madness by suffering, sorrow, humiliation, perplexity--and now roused by venomous arts to an almost unanimous condemnation of the innocent--I say to address you, turn you in your tracks and force you to go the other way--that would indeed be a feat of transcendent oratorical power.

I am no orator--but I am going to tell you the truth and the truth will make you do that thing!”

Men began to lean forward in their seats now as with impa.s.sioned faith he told the story of the matchless work the great lonely spirit had wrought for his people in the White House during the past pa.s.sion-torn years. His last sentence rang like the clarion peal of a trumpet:

”Desert him now and the election of _George B. McClellan_ on a 'Peace-at-any-Price' platform is a certainty--the Union is dissevered, the Confederacy established, the slaves reshackled, the dead dishonored and the living disgraced!”

His last sentence was an angry shout whose pa.s.sion swept the crowd to its feet. The resolution was pa.s.sed and Lincoln's nomination became a mere formality.

But Senator Winter had only begun to fight. His whole life as an Abolitionist had been spent in opposition to majorities. He had no constructive power and no constructive imagination. His genius was purely destructive, but it was genius. Without a moment's delay he began his plans to force the President to withdraw from his own ticket in the midst of his campaign.

The one ominous sign which the man in the White House saw with dread was the rapid growth through these dark days of a ”Peace-at-any-Price”

sentiment within his own party lines in the heart of the loyal North.

Again Horace Greeley and his great paper voiced this cry of despair.

The mischief he was doing was incalculable because he persisted in teaching the millions who read his paper that peace was at any time possible if Abraham Lincoln would only agree to accept it. As a Southern-born man, the President knew the workings of the mind of Jefferson Davis as clearly as he understood his own. Both these men were born in Kentucky within a few miles of each other on almost the same day. The President knew that Jefferson Davis would never consider any settlement of the war except on the basis of the division of the Union and the recognition of the Confederacy. When Greeley declared that the Confederate Commissioners were in Canada with offers of peace, the President sent Greeley himself immediately to meet them and confer on the basis of a restored Union with compensation for the slaves. The Conference failed and Greeley returned from Canada angrier with the President than ever for making a fool of him.

In utter disregard for the facts he continued to demand that the Government bring the war to an end. The thing which made his attack deadly was that he was rousing the bitterness of hopeless sorrow in thousands of homes whose loved ones had fallen.

Thoughtful men and women had begun to ask themselves new questions:

”Is not the price we are paying too great?”

”Can any cause be worth this ocean of tears, this endless deluge of blood?”

The President must answer this bitter cry with the positive a.s.surance that he would make peace at any moment on terms consistent with the Nation's preservation or both he and his party must perish.

He determined to draw from Mr. Davis a positive declaration of the terms on which the South would accept peace. He dared not do this openly, as it would be a confession to Europe of defeat and would lead to the recognition of the Confederacy.

He accordingly sent Colonel Jaquess, a distinguished Methodist clergyman in the army, and J. R. Gilmore, of the _Tribune_, on a secret mission to Richmond for this purpose. They must go without credentials or authority, as private individuals and risk life and liberty in the undertaking.

Both men promptly accepted the mission and left for Grant's headquarters to ask General Lee for a pa.s.s through his lines.

The Democratic Party was now a militant united force inspired by the Copperhead leaders, who had determined to defeat the President squarely on a peace platform and put General McClellan into the White House.

Behind them in serried lines stood the powerful Secret Orders cl.u.s.tered around the Knights of the Golden Circle.

Positive proofs were finally laid before the President that these Societies had planned an uprising on the night of the election and the establishment of a Western Confederacy.

Edmunds, the President of the Union League, handed him the names of the leaders.

”Now, sir, you can strike!” he urged.

The tall, sorrowful man slowly shook his head.

”You doubt the truth of these statements?” Edmunds asked.