Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 3.

[87] people to stand firmly in opposition to what they called “the usurpations of the Government.” The most conspicuous of these orators were ex-President Franklin Pierce,¹ and Governor Seymour, of New York, the former speaking to a Democratic gathering at Concord, New Hampshire, and the latter to the citizens of New York City, in the Academy of Music.

Mr. Pierce declared that the cause of the war was “the vicious intermeddling of too many of the citizens of the Northern States with the constitutional rights of the Southern States.” He spoke of “military bastiles,” into which American citizens were thrust by the arbitrary exercise of power, and of “the mailed hand of military usurpation in the North, striking down the liberties of the people, and trampling its foot on a desecrated Constitution.” He lauded Vallandigham as “the noble martyr of free speech,” and spoke in affectionate terms of Virginia, whose sons, by thousands, led by a dishonored scion of a once honored family of that commonwealth, were then desolating Pennsylvania with plunder and the tread of war, and drenching its soil with the blood of twenty thousand Union men in attempts to destroy the Republic. He declared “the war as fruitless,” and exhorted his fellow-citizens, if they could not preserve the Union without lighting, to let it go. “You will take care of yourselves,” he exclaimed. “With or without arms, with or without leaders, we will, at least, in the effort to defend our rights as a free people, build up a great mausoleum of hearts, to which men who yearn for liberty will, in after years, with bowed heads and reverently, resort, as Christian pilgrims, to the shrines of the Holy Land.” ² His hearers on that dismal day shouted applause, but the sons of New England showed their scorn for such disloyal advisers and evinced their own patriot. ism in trooping by thousands to the field of strife, to save their country from ruin at the hands of rebels and demagogues.

Mr. Seymour's speech was similar in tenor, but was more cautiously worded. It was able, and, viewed from his stand-point of political observation, appeared patriotic. He opened with words of bitter irony applied to the struggling Government whose hands the Peace Faction were striving to paralyze, saying: “When I accepted the invitation to speak, with others, at this meeting, we were promised the downfall of Vicksburg, the opening of the Mississippi, the probable capture of the Confederate capital, and the exhaustion of the rebellion. By common consent all parties had fixed upon this day

July 4, 1863.

when the results of the campaign should be known, to mark out that line of policy which they felt that our country should pursue. But in the moment of expected victory, there came the midnight cry for help from Pennsylvania, to save its despoiled fields from the invading foe; and, almost within sight of this great commercial metropolis, the ships of your merchants were burned to the water's edge.” At the very hour when this ungenerous taunt was uttered, Vicksburg and its dependencies, and vast spoils, with more than thirty thousand Confederate captives, were in the possession of General Grant;³ and the discomfited