Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/566

528 were for war to preserve the Union. The issue was on the mode of restoration.

The convention was called to order by August Belmont, chairman of the National Democratic convention. Governor Bigler, of Pennsylvania, was made temporary chairman, and Governor Seymour, of New York, was elected permanent president. Among the hundreds of distinguished statesmen who came as delegates were Tilden, Pendleton, Hunt, Guthrie, Stockton, S. S. Cox, Voorhees, Saulsbury, Vallandigham and Allen. The speeches of Governor Bigler and Governor Seymour before the great body surveyed the rise and progress of alienation between the sections, the efforts to keep the peace, the congressional battle for constitutional liberties, and the overthrow of the Constitution in the needless exercise of the war power by the administration. The platform began with a patriotic resolution of unswerving fidelity to the Union, which was followed by another containing the expression &quot;that after four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war,&quot; during which public liberty and private right had been trodden down and the Constitution disregarded in every part, immediate efforts should be made for a cessation of hostilities with a view to a convention of States or other means to restore peace on the basis of the Federal Union of the States. This resolution was drawn with care, but it contained one word on which the party was assailed with a success which proves how easily popular prejudices may be played upon. That word was &quot;failure. &quot; &quot;Four years of failure to restore the Union by war&quot; was a fact upon which it was proposed to try a conference of all the States as a means to restore the Union. But in the campaign which followed the party had to meet the charge that they had dishonored the brave armies of the Union by pronouncing all their valor and their blood &quot;a failure.&quot; Certainly this was not in the letter or the spirit of the platform, and was disavowed by every