[325] very good histories by Southern authors, giving the facts as to the causes which led to the war, and those as to its conduct by both parties. For these indispensable books, we are indebted almost solely to the influence of the Confederate Camps and kindred organizations which have sprung up all over the South. Passing over the history up to the year 1864, we find the people of the North were then greatly agitated on the question of the propriety of the war, its further prosecution and the manner in which it was being conducted by the administration then in power. The opposition to the war and Lincoln's administration was led by Vallandingham, of Ohio, with such boldness and ability as to cause his arrest and temporary imprisonment. In the Presidential contest of that year, Lincoln and Johnson were the candidates of the Republican, or war party, and McClellan and Pendleton were those of the Democratic, or peace party. The convention which nominated McClellan and Pendleton was one of the most representative bodies that ever assembled in this country. It met in the city of Chicago on the 29th of August, 1864, with Governor Horatio Seymour, of New York, as its chairman. An idea of the temper of the convention may be gathered from an extract from one of the speeches delivered in it by Rev. C. Chauncey Burr, of New Jersey, which is as follows:
‘We had no right to burn their wheat-fields, steal their pianos, spoons or jewelry. Mr. Lincoln had stolen a good many thousand negroes, but for every negro he had thus stolen, he had stolen ten thousand spoons. It had been said that, if the South would lay down their arms, they would be received back into the Union. The South could not honorably lay down her arms, for she was fighting for her honor.’Mr. Horace Greeley says that Governor Seymour, on assuming the chair, made an address showing the bitterest opposition to the war; ‘but his polished sentences seemed tame and moderate by comparison with the fiery utterances volunteered from hotel balconies, street corners, and wherever space could be found for the gathering of an impromptu audience; while the wildest, most intemperate utterances of virtual treason—those which would have caused Lee's army, had it been present, to forget its hunger and rags in an ecstacy of approval—were sure to evoke the longest and loudest plaudits.’
