CHAPTER XXXI. MEETING OF XXXVIIITH CONGRESS. WAR LEGISLATION. Demo Army organized and disciplined. Determination of the loyal masses. cratic sympathy with the Rebellion. — Fierce demands for peace. - Hendricks and Vallandigham. - Action of Ohio Democrats. - Fourth of July speeches of Pierce and Seymour. - Democratic condemnation of Lincoln and his emancipation policy. "Journal of Commerce."- Northern reaction. - Enrolment Act. New York riots. "Tribune." - Northern fears. - Republican leaders firm. President's message. - Abrogation of slave-trade. Retrospection. - Proclamation of Emancipation. Effects immediate and remote.. Results on the whole encouraging. - Colored soldiers. - State action on slavery. Oath of allegiance. — Mr. Sumner's motion. Saulsbury's amendment. — Republican criticisms and diverse opinions. Constitutionality ques tioned. -- - Bayard, Collamer, Johnson. - Resignation and speech of Bayard. Montana. Bill and amendments. - Sumner and Johnson. - Debate. Dred Scott decision. - Hale, Trumbull, Wade. - Amendment lost. Confiscation Act.— Amendment. — Debate. — Orth, Cox, Kernan. - President's opinion. Sharp speeches of Davis and Stevens. THE XXXVIIIth Congress assembled for its first session. on the 7th of December, 1863. The war still raged, making its fearful drafts upon the manhood and resources of the loyal States, and putting to the severest test their patriotism and courage, their persistence and their right to live. The troops at the front had lost the rawness of fresh recruits and were becoming veterans. Instead of what had been called, too truthfully if somewhat ungraciously, considering the noble impulse that led them thither, the "mob," that fled panicstricken from the disasters of Bull Run, they had become, through the discipline and drill of the camp, and the hardships and hazards of the march and the battle-field, compacted into an immense and well-appointed army, of which the people at home were proud, in which they had confidence, and for which they were both willing and anxious to make the most thought ful and generous provisions. And well they might, for that army was a part of themselves, bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh, representatives of their families, and linked to them by the tenderest ties of affection, as well as by the strong ties of a common patriotism. While the loyal majorities of those States were making it more and more evident that they were accepting the situation, they were also more fully comprehending what that situation implied and required. While their purpose to fight the war to the bitter end became more inflexible and heroic, they had gained a clearer insight into the grim meaning of that purpose. The history of the twelvemonth preceding had done much to produce that combined result. The lights and shadows, the alternations of hope and fear, of courage and dismay, during those pregnant months could hardly fail of this. While the fall of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, and the splendid victory at Gettysburg, greatly inspired their confidence and quickened their hopes, the bloody repulses at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville chastened expectation and taught them to fear at least that the path to final success might yet be a long and bloody one. And such fears could not but be strengthened by the unwelcome but manifest fact that there was an increasing number at the North who, if not traitors, sympathized too much with treason; who, if they did not desire disunion, did not lend that aid to the efforts for its defeat which were demanded. Peace at any price became a common cry, mingled with discordant notes, at least to patriotic ears, and with harsh censures of the President and his policy. "I am ready to compromise at any time," said Mr. Hendricks of Indiana at a mass meeting about this time. "I am ready to say to the people of the South, Come in again and we will secure to you your constitutional rights, and, if you desire them, additional guaranties.' If there is any man who desires to continue fighting and spending the people's money and lives, I do not sympathize with him." Though there were War Democrats, as they were termed, and many who had hitherto acted with the Democratic party were serving the nation with signal fidelity and zeal in Congress and in the army, the influence of that organization, through its presses, leaders, and conventions, was hostile rather than friendly to the Union cause. Indeed, so free and fierce were their denunciations of Mr. Lincoln and his policy, that few were surprised in the following year at the pronunciamento of its presidential convention, that the war had proved a "failure," with the "demand that immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities." Illustrations only too numerous abound. Clement L. Vallandigham of Ohio had made himself so obnoxious by his treasonable utterances that he was convicted by court-martial and sentenced to close confinement in Fort Warren until the close of the war; a sentence, however, remitted or modified by President Lincoln into a direction that he be sent within the Rebel lines. The Ohio State Democratic convention the next month not only condemned by resolution and speech this action of the Federal government, but nominated, by acclamation, the distinguished convict as their gubernatorial candidate. In those dark days-perhaps the darkest of the war-immediately preceding the battle of Gettysburg, were these treasonable demonstrations of the party most marked and pronounced, if not avowedly in favor of the Rebels, against any effective policy of suppressing the Rebellion. In the month of June Lee had crossed into Maryland in pursuance of his long meditated and threatened purpose of transferring the war to Northern soil. On the 28th General Meade, on assuming command of the army of the Potomac, issued a proclamation in which he assured it that "the country looks to this army to relieve it from the devastation and disgrace of a hostile invasion." And yet in that hour of extremest peril and of national depression when every well-informed and thoughtful Northern man opened his morning paper with trembling hands lest he should read of the realization of these fears, and of the march of Lee's victorious legions across the green fields of Pennsylvania or through the streets of Philadelphia — exPresident Pierce was delivering a Fourth of July address in the capital of New Hampshire, which, if not treasonable, could not have failed to lend aid and comfort to the enemy. After VOL. III. 27 saying that "the cause of our calamities is the vicious intermeddling of too many of the citizens of the Northern States with the constitutional rights of the Southern States "; after describing with all the force of his most impassioned rhetoric the war"in several of the States of the Union,"—" war on a scale of a million of men in arms, war horrid as that of barbaric ages"; after reminding his hearers that "even here, in the loyal States, the mailed hand of military usurpation strikes down the liberties of the people, and its foot tramples on the desecrated Constitution," he avowed his belief that all these sorrows brought with them no "compensation whether of national pride or of victorious arms." Federal victories were of no account because they were only the victories of "men from the land of Warren, Stark, and Stockton baring their breasts to the steel of the men from the land of Washington, Marion, and Sumter "; because, "if this war is to continue to be waged, one or the other must go to the wall,- must be consigned to humiliating subjugation." He spoke of this "fearful, fruitless, and fatal civil war, . . . . fruitless, for it is clear that, prosecuted upon the basis of the proclamations of September 22 and September 24, 1862,-prosecuted, as I must understand those proclamations, to say nothing of the kindred brood which has followed, upon the theory of emancipation, devastation, subjugation, it cannot fail in everything except the harvest of woe which it is ripening for what was once the peerless Republic." On the same day Governor Seymour addressed the citizens of New York in the Academy of Music. He, too, depicted the horrors of the war in progress, and enlarged upon the national calamities and perils that were afflicting and impending over them. If his rhetoric was more subdued, his purpose was equally plain, and that was to condemn Republicans for bringing on the war, and for the manner in which they were prosecuting it, and to assure his hearers that there could be no peace until that policy was abandoned. He, too, complained of a violated Constitution, and of the infringement of personal rights they were subjected to. "We stand to-day," he said, "amid new-made graves, in a land filled with mourning; upon a soil saturated with the blood of the fiercest conflict of which history gives us an account. We can, if we will, avert all these calamities and evoke a blessing. . . . . If you would save your country and your liberties, begin right; begin at the hearthstones which are ever meant to be the foundations of American institutions; begin in your family circle; declare that your privileges shall be held sacred; and, having once proclaimed your own rights, take care that you do not invade those of your neighbor." Such was the Democratic diagnosis of the disease, and such was its prescription for a cure; such was its bitter arraignment of the Republicans and their policy, and such the policy its leaders would inaugurate as their own. As both cause and effect of this growing sentiment of disloyalty and of the increasing numbers of those who were more or less open and defiant in their opposition to the government, was the oft-repeated charge that the conflict had been diverted from its original and legitimate purpose, a war for the Union, into a war against slavery. The New York "Journal of Commerce," in an article which appeared near the time of the "draft riots" of that city, after intimating that the war had been thus diverted, added: "Some men may say, 'Now that the war has commenced, it must not be stopped till slaveholding is abolished.' Such men are neither more nor less than murderers. The name seems severe; it is, nevertheless, correct." Saying it would have been criminal to commence a war for any such purpose, it asked: "How can it be any less criminal to prolong a war, commenced for the assertion of governmental power, into a war for the suppression of slavery, which, it is agreed, would have been unjustifiable and sinful if begun for that purpose?" And such was the tone of the Democratic press generally, insidiously insinuating and ascribing sentiments and purposes to the administration which the President at least had not only disclaimed, but which it was known he did not entertain. Ignoring the fact entirely that Mr. Lincoln was openly committed to the policy of gradual and compensated emancipation, coupled with colonization, and that he never adopted that of the Proclamation until forced to |