Page:The knickerbocker (IA knickerbocker00agne).pdf/15

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
1864.]
The Coming Presidential Election.
493

party; and the reply is the mere assertion that it would not be so, and, further more, that it must be a craven people which could thus, by its vote, concede that only one party was fit to govern in this Republic.

Now, it is not very apparent how the aforesaid restoration would prove any craven spirit in the people, or at all demonstrate to the world that only one party is fit to rule, and that, defeated at the ballot, it would be entitled to resort to the bayonet. This is pure sophistry; for, however unjustifiable the secession of the South may have been, it certainly was not simply because the Republican party acceded to power, but because of its antecedents, its declarations, its platforms, its proceedings, doggedly adverse, as they thought, to their interest in the Republic, and subversive of the thither to recognized interpretation of the compacts and the Constitution, and violative of their rights and our duties.

Irritated, wounded, and then probed to the core with rusty, unpolished iron, by the leaders of this party, it were no great wonder if they should feel the sores to be painful, shrink from further contact with surgeons so rough and rude, and prefer a return to loyalty in the Union under the milder and more genial sway of the Democratic party. We certainly all know, for a wiser than we has taught us, that 'charity, love, covereth a multitude of sins.'

We do believe most heartily that there is immeasurably more hope of the healing of the breach under the sway of Democratic administrations, than under the adopted and enforced policy of the present incumbents, adding inflammation to irritation. But that this would grow out of any obsequiousness or any yielding of the right, on the part of the restoration, it is a mere whim, or a passion, or a hypocrisy, to assert.

The key-note of this whole piece of fine, impassioned music is found at the close of the last bar: The Baltimore Convention will meet next month, and will place Mr. Lincoln before the American people as their candidate; and that he 'will be reƫlected, admits of no doubt.'

This may all be so, but it is yet prophecy; and there are, even now, the opening of seals which mutter thunders, and which may descend in lightning-bolts, and peal the bark from this prophetic tree, blast its trunk, wither its foliage, and leave its imaginative creator sitting, himself smitten, at its roots, to look on its utter prostration.

That there are loud and powerful demands for a postponement of the Baltimore Convention, and serious opposition to the renomination of Mr. Lincoln by that Convention, admits now of no doubt, for trumpet-blasts are heralding it every day.

In your patience, therefore, ye hideous Democratic demons! possess ye your souls, calmly awaiting the issues of the hour, remembering, the meanwhile, that God helps them who help themselves, as He honors those who honor Him.

The bald assertions about the noble State of Ohio, that 'it would have been arrayed against the Federal Government almost as decisively as South-Carolina,' in the event of Vallandigham's election, and that, 'had he been defeated by a small majority, his party would have taken arms against the State government, and Ohio would have done nothing for the national cause,' are both monstrous in conception, flagitious in utterance, revolutionary in tendency, and utterly unworthy of any reply.