e they had ever espoused, touching
the questions of slavery and the war; and yet they were now in the
fiercest antagonism with the men who had been politically associated
with them ever since the organization of the party, and who had
trusted and honored them through all the struggles of the past.
They were branded as "Apostates" from their anti-slavery faith;
but slavery had perished forever, and every man of them would have
been found fighting it as before, if it had been practicable to
call it back to life; while many of their assailants had distinguished
themselves by mobbing Abolitionism in the day of its weakness.
How could men apostatize from a cause which they had served with
unflinching fidelity until it was completely triumphant? And how
was it possible to fall from political grace by withdrawing from
the fellowship of the knaves and traders that formed the body-guard
of the President, and were using the Republican party as the
instrument of wholesale schemes of jobbery and pelf? To charge
the Liberal Republicans with apostasy because they had the moral
courage to disown and denounce these men was to invent a definition
of the term which would have made all the great apostates of history
"honorable men."

They were called "Rebels"; but the war had been over seven years
and a half, and if the clock of our politics could have been set
back and the bloody conflict re-instated, every Liberal would have
been shouting, as before, for its vigorous prosecution. No man
doubted this who was capable of taking care of himself without the
help of a guardian.

It was charged that "they changed sides" in politics; but the sides
themselves had been changed by events, and the substitution of new
issues for the old, and nobody could deny this who was not besotted
by party devil-worship or the density of his political ignorance.

They were called "sore-heads" and "disappointed place-hunters;"
but the Liberal leaders, in rebelling against their party in the
noon-day of its power, and when honors were within their grasp,
were obliged to "put away ambition" and taste political death, and
thus courageously illustrate the truth that "the duties of life
are more than life." The charge was as glaringly stupid as it was
flagrantly false.

But the novelty of this canvass was equally manifest in the political
fellowships it necessitated. While facing the savage warfare of
their former friends Liberal Republicans were suddenly b