The life and public services of Abraham Lincoln ... together with his state papers, including his speeches, addresses, messages, letters, and proclamations, and the closing scenes connected with his life and death. By Henry J. Raymond. To which are added anecdotes and personal reminiscences of President Lincoln, by Frank B. Carpenter.

STATE PAPERS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

591

was favorable to the success of their plans. The assaults upon the Administration had grown more virulent, and seemed to produce more effect. Many of its
friends, who, when Mr. Lincoln was renominated, had
considered the main work of the political campaign over,
had grown gradually doubtful. The uncertainty as to
the course which the Democratic party would pursue
compelled them almost to inaction, at least so far as offensive warfare was concerned, while-they were tlheslselves
exposed to every kind of attack., And when the time for
the Chicago Contention came, its manlagerrs gathered to it
with hih h hopes, lelieving that if they could only unite
u.pon a candidate and a platform whicll should not violently offend either wing of the party, their success was
certain. The peace wing of the party, however, had been
relatively strengthened in the interim. The delays and
losses of the armies, the hope deferred to which the long
and bloody struggles in Virginia and in Georgia had familiarized but not inured the popular heart, tlle rise in
gold, the call for five hundred thousand more men-all
these things had given them strength, and made them more
vehement and more exacting. Their great champion, Mr.
Vallandigham, had surreptitiously returned fiom Canada,
in violation of the sentence which ordered lis banishment
from the lines during the war, and had remained in open
defiance of the Government, whose failure to arrest and
send him back, or otherwise to punish him, was treated
then as an indication of weakness rather than of wisdom.
He and his friends were active everywhere, and did not
hesitate to declare that they must have a peace candidate, or platform, one or both, at all hazards, and
threatened to nominate a candidate of their own, if this
course was not pursued. It cannot be doubted that the
fatal course which was finally adopted by the Convention
was largely due to the efforts of Mr. Vallandigham, and
to the encouragement which his friends received from the
apparent unwillingness of the Government to molest him
on his return.
The Convention met in Chicago on Monday, August 29.