Greeley vehement assurances that every
direful disaster awaited the Republican party. The cause suffered much
from these relentless diatribes of the "Tribune's" influential manager,
for nothing else could make the administration so unpopular as the
belief that it was backward in any possible exertion to secure an
honorable peace.
If by sound logic the Greeley faction should have voted with the
Democrats,--since in the chief point in issue, the prosecution of the
war, they agreed with the Democracy,--so the war Democrats, being in
accord with the Republicans, upon this same overshadowing issue should,
at the coming election at least, have voted with that party. Many of
them undoubtedly did finally prefer Lincoln, coupled with Andrew
Johnson, to McClellan. But they also had anxieties, newly stirred, and
entirely reasonable in men of their political faith. It was plain to
them that Mr. Lincoln had been finding his way to the distinct position
that the abolition of slavery was an essential condition of peace. Now
this was undeniably a very serious and alterative graft upon the
original doctrine that the war was solely for the restoration of the
Union. The editor of a war-Democratic newspaper in Wisconsin sought
information upon this point. In the course of Mr. Greeley's negotiatory
business Mr. Lincoln had offered to welcome "any proposition which
embraces the restoration of peace, the integrity of the whole Union, and
the abandonment of slavery.
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