l the States, or other
peaceable means, to the end that at the earliest practicable moment
peace may be restored on the basis of the Federal Union of the
States."

This resolution does not seem to require explanation or comment.
But as General McClellan's letter accepting the nomination for
president did not square well with this part of the party platform,
Mr. Vallandigham, in a speech at Sidney, Ohio, September 24, 1864,
explained it at some length. In that speech, he said:

"I am speaking now of the fact that this convention pronounced this
war a failure, and giving you the reasons why it is a failure....
What has been gained by this campaign? More lives have been lost,
more hard fighting has been done, more courage has been exhibited
by the Federal as well as the Southern soldiers than in any former
campaign, and what has been accomplished? General Grant is nearer
to Richmond, occupying a territory of perhaps eleven miles, which
was not in the possession of the United States when the campaign
began, from City Point to the suburbs of Petersburg. To secure that
he gave up all the country from Manassas down to Richmond and a
large part of the valley.... How about the Southern campaign?
General Sherman, through the courage of the best disciplined, best
organized, and most powerful army that has been seen since the
campaigns of the first Napoleon, has taken Atlanta--a town somewhat
larger than Sidney. It has cost him sixty thousand men and four or
five months of the most terrible campaign ever waged on this
continent or any other, or any other part of the globe. He occupies
from two to five miles on each side of a railroad of one hundred
and thirty-eight miles in length. He has penetrated that far into
Georgia. What has been surrendered to obtain that? All of Texas,
nearly all of Louisiana, nearly all of Arkansas, Mississippi,
Alabama, and a part of Tennessee, which were in possession of the
Federals on the first of May. Kentucky has been opened to continual
incursions of the Confederate armies. All this has been surrendered
in order to gain this barren strip of country on the line of the
railroad. The war, then, has been properly pronounced a failure in
a military point of view. The convention meant that it has failed
to restore the Union, an