all be maintained; and this
was not so in 'the Union as it was.'

Thus it is that the Baltimore platform, after pledging the people to
maintain 'the paramount authority of the Constitution and laws of the
United States,' and approving the 'determination of the Government not
to compromise' this authority, but holding out the same Constitution and
laws as our only and the sufficient 'terms of peace' to all who will
accept them, proceeds to take notice of what none but the wilfully blind
fail to perceive, the changed aspect of the slavery question. It is
impossible to hold the same position to-day in regard to this vexed
question as in the days before the war. As an element of the politics of
this country its aspect is wholly changed, and there is no sort of
consistency in upholding our opinions of four years ago in reference to
it. We do well to remember that consistency is not obstinacy. It is not
an absolute, but a relative thing, and takes note of all the new
elements which are ever entering into public affairs. The criterion of
one's political consistency in our country is unfaltering devotion to
the Union. If the measures he advocates look always to its paramount
authority, his record is truly and honorably inconsistent. On the other
hand, he who forgets the end of his labors in the ardor of seeking to
save the means, is chargeable with the grossest inconsistency. What,
therefore, consists with the perpetuity and strength of the Union? is
the question which the American patriot proposes to himself.

It is in reference to this question that the Baltimore Platform
challenges comparison with the one adopted at Chicago. For guided by the
experience of the past four years (the culmination of fifty years'
experience), and noting without fear the facts which that experience has
revealed as in the clear light of midday, it declares that slavery is
inconsistent with the existence of the Union. Does anybody deny it? Men
tell us that the Union and slavery have heretofore, for more than half a
century, existed together, and why may they not continue to exist in
harmonious conjunction for the next half century? We are asked,
moreover, with sarcastic disdain, if our wisdom is superior to that of
the fathers. Our wisdom is not, indeed, superior to that of the fathers
of the republic, but it would be far beneath it, and we should be
unworthy sons of such fathers, if we undertook to carry out, in 1864,
the policies and measures of