Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 2.djvu/169

 I could not. The North was mad and blind; it would not let us govern ourselves, and so the war came and now it must go on until the last man of this generation falls in his tracks, and his children seize his musket and fight our battles, unless you acknowledge our right to self government. We are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for Independence, and that or extermination we will have. Say to Mr. Lincoln for me, that I shall at any time be pleased to receive proposals for peace on the basis of our independence. It will be useless to approach me with any other.”

Mr. Vallandigham, when banished to the Confederacy the year before for treasonable utterances, had assured Mr. Ould that, “if you can hold out this year, the peace party of the North will sweep the Lincoln dynasty out of political existence.”

With a knowledge of all these facts, the Chicago Convention had deliberately resolved in favor of an immediate cessation of hostilities, that peace negotiations might be entered into. Under these circumstances there could be no misunderstanding as to the vital issues involved in the Presidential campaign of 1864. Never before had the fate of the Nation been so clearly at stake in a political campaign. All parties to the war recognized the supreme importance of the approaching election. If McClellan should be elected, it meant an end of the war upon the best terms that could be made with the Southern Confederacy, which had been so clearly stated by its President that there could be no misunderstanding. However much the Democratic party in the North might have desired the restoration of the old Union, due notice had been given by the President of the Confederacy that such a proposition would not even be considered. Peace, then, could only be secured by an abject surrender of all that the Union army had, for more than three years, been fighting to maintain. All of the superb patriotism of the people, the sublime loyalty and heroic deeds of the Union soldiers, the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of lives and hundreds of millions of dollars, would have been in vain. Or, failing to bring about peace, could the country afford to trust a vigorous