May 2, 1864. |
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exercised sleepless vigilance.
Disabled in the field, he had been sent there for lighter duty, as successor to General Orme,
and he was there made the instrument, under God's good providence, in saving his country from a calamity with which it was threatened by one of the most hellish conspiracies recorded in the history of the race.
This young officer became acquainted with the secret of the Conspirators, and took measures accordingly.1 The managers of the League were informed of this, and prudently postponed action to a more propitious season;2 and Price and his ten thousand armed followers in Missouri found no adequate support, as we have observed.3 That young officer was Colonel B. J. Sweet, whose right elbow had been crushed by a bullet, in the battle of Perryville, in Kentucky.
In the Democratic Convention, a committee composed of one delegate from each State represented, was appointed to prepare a “platform of principles.”
James Guthrie, of Kentucky, was chosen its chairman.
Vallandigham was the ruling spirit in the committee.
The platform was soon constructed, in the form of six resolutions, which the Convention adopted.
By these, that body, representing the Opposition party, declared its “fidelity to, the Union under the Constitution;” that the war was a failure, and that “humanity, liberty, and the public welfare” demanded its immediate cessation;4 that the. Government, through its military power, had interfered with elections in four of the late slave-labor States, and was, consequently, guilty of revolutionary action, which should be resisted; that the Government had been guilty of unwarrantable usurpations, which were specified, and. had also been guilty of a shameful disregard of duty respecting the exchange of prisoners, and the release of its suffering captives.
The resolutions closed with an assurance that the Democratic party extended their sympathy to the Union soldiers, and that, “in the event,” they said, “of our attaining power,” those soldiers “shall receive all the care and protection, ”
1 We have observed that the Democratic Convention was to have been held on the 4th of July. In June, the commandant at Camp Douglas observed that a large number of letters, written by the prisoners (which were not sealed until they passed inspection at Headquarters), were only brief notes, written on large paper. Suspecting all was not right, he submitted these letters to the action of heat, when it was found that longer epistles were on the paper, written in invisible or “sympathetic” ink, and in which the friends of the writers were informed that the captives at Camp Douglas expected to keep the 4th of July in a peculiar way. The Convention, as we have seen, was postponed to the 29th of August. The vigilance of the commandant never relaxed, and more than a fortnight before that Convention assembled, he informed his commanding general of the impending danger. He had positive knowledge of the preparations in Canada for striking the blow at Chicago, at the time of the Convention. “We outnumbered you two to one,” said a leader in the conspiracy to a writer in the Atlantic Monthly,
July, 1865. |
2 It was arranged for the blow for the release of the prisoners at Camp Douglas, and the subsequent action dependent thereon, to be given on the night of the Presidential election. At that time a large number of rebel officers were in Chicago. Their plans were all matured, but when they were about to put them into execution, Colonel Sweet interfered by the arrest of about one hundred of these men and Illinois traitors. With them hundreds of fire-arms were seized. Again that young officer had saved his country from great calamity.
3 See page 277.
4 The following is a copy of the resolution:--“Resolved, That this Convention does explicitly declare, as the sense of the American people, that, after four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war, during which, under the pretense of a military necessity, of a war-power higher than the Constitution, the Constitution itself has been disregarded in every part, and public liberty and private right alike trodden down, and the material prosperity of the country essentially impaired. Justice, humanity, liberty, and the public welfare demand that immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities, with a view to an ultimate convention of all the States, or other peaceable means. to the end that, at the earliest practicable moment, peace may be restored on the basis of the Federal Union of the States.”
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