w within our lines. From
that abode of loyalty, the mountain region of East Tennessee, we
could pierce to the very heart of the Southern Confederacy. We were
now in possession of the interior lines, giving us an immense
advantage, and we were in a condition to march southeast to Atlanta
and northeast to Richmond; yet with this changed state of affairs,
where is my friend Judge Thurman? Advising the people? What is he
advising them to do? He says Allen G. Thurman was a private
citizen. Not so. He held no official position, I know, under the
government. Fortunately for the people of this country, they were
not giving official positions in Ohio to men of his opinions and
sentiments at that time. [A voice, "They won't now, either."] But
he was made delegate at large from the State of Ohio to the
convention to meet at Chicago to nominate a president and form a
platform on which that nominee should stand. Mr. Vallandigham was a
district delegate and one of the committee to form a platform, and
he drew the most important resolution. The principal plank of that
platform is of his construction. You are perfectly familiar with
it. It merely told the people that the war had been for four years
a failure, and advised them to prepare to negotiate with this
Confederate nation on our Southern borders. Well, when this advice
was given to the Nation, we were still in the midst of the war, and
were prosecuting it with every prospect of success. What had been
accomplished in 1863 enabled us, with great advantages, to press
upon the rebellion. I remember well when I first read that
resolution declaring the war a four years' failure. It came to the
army in which I was serving on the same day that the news came to
us that Sherman had captured Atlanta. We heard of both together.
The war a four years' failure, said the Chicago convention. I well
remember how that evening our pickets shouted the good news to the
pickets of the enemy. What good news? News that a convention
representing nearly one-half of the people of the North had
concluded that the war was a failure? No such news was shouted from
our-picket line. The good news that they shouted was that Sherman
had captured Atlanta.

This, my friends, is a part of that record which we are invited to
examine by my fri