Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

[557] indicated that the political campaign of this year was, in the minds of the Confederate leaders, scarcely less important than the military. Indeed, the two were indissolubly connected; and the calculation in Richmond was that if military matters could even be held in a negative condition, the Democratic party in the North would have the opportunity of appealing to the popular impatience of the war, and bringing it to a close on terms acceptable to the great mass of the Southern people.

For a thorough discussion of this political campaign it will be well to make a rapid review and analysis of parties in the North, even at the risk of some repetition to the reader.

Parties in the North were divided by very distinct lines. There were two questions upon which the division took place. One of these referred to the supremacy of the Constitution as opposed to military necessity-real or pretended. The other had reference to the relative powers of the Union and the States. On both these questions the party in power held loose and careless opinions, employing force wherever it would avail for military or partisan advantage. The opposition contended for a strict observance of the provisions of the Constitution and of the rights of the States. This was the general distinction.

But widely as the theories of these two parties separated them on questions touching the sanctity and scope of the Constitution, there was still a margin of difference left between the views of the Northern Democratic party and the Southern doctrines upon which the right of Secession was founded. The difference, however, concerned only the last alternative of Secession. According to the Northern view, the Union was inviolable and perpetual, and all grievances must be redressed within the Union by remedies which respected its integrity. According to the Southern view, Secession was a rightful remedy for evils otherwise incurable, sanctioned by the precedent and precepts of the men of 1776.

This latter doctrine had so limited a support at the North, however, that it was totally unknown in the controversies of parties. There, all, or nearly all, assumed that the Union was permanent and inviolable-differences of opinion turning upon the powers of the Union; the powers of the Federal Government; the rightfulness of extra-constitutional measures in time of war; and the expediency, and most judicious means of coercion.

The party in opposition to Mr. Lincoln's Administration-most properly designated as the Constitutional party — was composed chiefly of Democrats, but largely interspersed with Whigs of the stamp of Wm. B. Reed of Philadelphia, Robert C. Winthrop of Massachusetts, Reverdy Johnson of Maryland, Wm. B. Crittenden, and the like. In partisan parlance they were called “Copperheads,” and they were reinforced in the debates, though generally opposed in the votes, by a class of men who had split away from the Democratic party, called “War Democrats.”