This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
“
[448]
against any government found waging war against a people endeavoring to establish a government of their own choice,” --in other words, to assist the insurgents then in arms against their country.
The method, as we have observed,1 was a general rising of the members of this organization in Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky, in co-operation with a force under Price, who was to invade Missouri.
As we have already observed,2 Price performed his part with the open enemies of the Republic; but the cowardly secret enemies failed to meet their engagements.
The plot, it is said, originated with the Conspirators at Richmond, and was chiefly directed by Jacob.
Thompson, in Canada, assisted by the agents of the Confederacy there, with whom leaders of the Peace Faction were in continual council.3
The first blow — the signal for the uprising — was to be struck at Chicago, during the sittings of the Democratic Convention, when eight thousand Confederate prisoners, confined in Camp Douglas, near that city, were to be liberated and armed by the rebel refugees from Canada there assembled, and five thousand sympathizers with the Conspirators, and members of the treasonable league, resident in Chicago.
Then the Confederate prisoners at Indianapolis were to be released and armed, and the hosts of the Knights of the Golden Circle were to gather at appointed rendezvous, to the number of full one hundred thousand men. This force, springing out of the earth, as it were, in.the rear of Grant and Sherman, would, it was believed, compel the raising of the siege of Richmond and Atlanta, and secure peace on the basis of the independence of the “Confederate States.”
Vallandigham, as we have observed, was to go boldly from exile in Canada to Chicago, to act as circumstances should require.
When the Convention met, he was there.4 The rebel refugees in Canada were there; and a vast concourse of sympathizers with the cause of the Conspirators, and members of the traitorous league, were there, and were harangued from balconies of hotels and other places in the most incendiary and revolutionary language.5
Fortunately for the country, there was a young officer in command at Camp Douglas, possessed of courage, rare sagacity, and a cool brain; and
1 See pages 275, 276.
2 See page 277.
3 See page 445.
4 It will be remembered that the kind President modified the severe sentence of Vallandigham, who was condemned for treasonable practices, with the provision that if he should return from exile without permission, he should suffer the penalty prescribed by the court. (See page 84.) He did so return, at the time we are considering, and was unmolested. The Government was charged with weakness in not arresting and punishing him. It deserved praise for patriotism. The Speaker of the House of Representatives (Schuyler Colfax), in a speech at Peru, Indiana, explained the matter. He said:--“When Mr. Vallandigham returned, it was very natural that the first place he went to, should be a democratic convention. lie thought Mr. Lincoln would arrest him. Mr. Lincoln knew the fact that, at that time, there was a secret organization in the Northwest, the details of which he may not have been familiar with; but he knew the intention was to make Vallandigham's arrest a pretext for lighting the torch of civil war all over the Northwest. Anxious to preserve the peace at your own homes, Mr. Lincoln passed over the return of Vallandigham.”
5 Mr. Greeley, in his American Conflict, II. 667, gives specimens of speeches by two clergymen, belonging to the Peace Faction, at outside meetings in Chicago. One of them, named Chauncey C. Burr, said that Mr. Lin coin “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 their arms, for she was fighting for her honor. Two millions of men had been sent down to the slaughter-pens of the South, and the army of Lincoln could not again be filled, either by enlistments nor conscription.” The other clergyman alluded to, named Henry Clay Dean, exclaimed:--“Such a failure has never been known. Such destruction of human life had never been seen since the destruction of Sennacherib by the breath of the Almighty. And still the monster usurper wants more men for his slaughter-pens. . . . Èver since the usurper, traitor, and tyrant had occupied the Presidential chair, the republican party had shouted ‘War to the knife, and the knife to the hilt!’ Blood has flowed in torrents, and yet the thirst of the old monster was not quenched.”
Scanned printed text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.