determination to carry these and all
other Constitutional Measures essential to the salvation of the Country,
into full and complete effect."

Thus heartily, thoroughly and unreservedly, endorsed in all the great
acts of his Administration--and even more emphatically, if possible, in
his Emancipation policy--by the unanimous vote of his Party, Mr.
Lincoln, although necessarily "chagrined and disappointed" by the
House-vote which had defeated the Thirteenth Amendment, might well feel
undismayed. He always had implicit faith in the People; he felt sure
that they would sustain him; and this done, why could not the votes of a
dozen, out of the seventy Congressional Representatives opposing that
Amendment, be changed? Even failing in this, it must be but a question
of time. He thought he could afford to bide that time.

On the 29th of August, the Democratic National Convention met at
Chicago. Horatio Seymour was its permanent President; that same
Governor of New York whom the 4th of July, 1863, almost at the moment
when Vicksburg and Gettysburg had brought great encouragement to the
Union cause, and when public necessity demanded the enforcement of the
Draft in order to drive the Rebel invader from Northern soil and bring
the Rebellion speedily to an end--had threateningly said to the
Republicans, in the course of a public speech, during the Draft-riots at
New York City: "Remember this, that the bloody, and treasonable, and
revolutionary doctrine of public necessity can be proclaimed by a mob as
well as by a Government. * * * When men accept despotism, they may have
a choice as to who the despot shall be!"

In his speech to this Democratic-Copperhead National Convention,
therefore, it is not surprising that he should, at this time, declare
that "this Administration cannot now save this Union, if it would."
That the body which elected such a presiding officer,--after the bloody
series of glorious Union victories about Atlanta, Ga., then fast leading
up to the fall of that great Rebel stronghold, (which event actually
occurred long before most of these Democratic delegates, on their
return, could even reach their homes)--should adopt a Resolution
declaring that the War was a "failure," was not surprising either.

That Resolution--"the material resolution of the Chicago platform," as
Vallandigham afterward characters it, was written and "carried through
both the Subcommittee and the General Committee" by that Arch-Copp