Page:Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892).djvu/446

438 colored troops by Gen. Hunter, the "Contraband" letter of Gen. B. F. Butler, the soldierly qualities surprisingly displayed by colored soldiers in the terrific battles of Port Hudson, Vicksburg, Morris Island and elsewhere and the Emancipation proclamation by Abraham Lincoln, had given slavery many and deadly wounds, yet it was in fact only wounded and crippled, not disabled and killed. With this condition of national affairs came the summer of 1864, and with it the revived Democratic party with the story in its mouth that the war was a failure, and with it Gen. George B. McClellan, the greatest failure of the war, as its candidate for the presidency. It is needless to say that the success of such a party, on such a platform, with such a candidate, at such a time, would have been a fatal calamity. All that had been done toward suppressing the rebellion and abolishing slavery would have proved of no avail, and the final settlement between the two sections of the Republic touching slavery and the right of secession would have been left to tear and rend the country again at no distant future.

It was said that this Democratic party, which under Mr. Buchanan had betrayed the government into the hands of secession and treason, was the only party which could restore the country to peace and union. No doubt it would have "patched up" a peace, but it would have been a peace more to be dreaded than war. So at least I felt and worked. When we were thus asked to exchange Abraham Lincoln for George B. McClellan—a successful Union President for an unsuccessful Union general—a party earnestly endeavoring to save the Union, torn and rent by a gigantic rebellion, I thought with Mr. Lincoln that it was not wise to "swap horses while crossing a stream." Regarding, as I did, the continuance of the war to the complete suppression of the rebellion and the retention in office of President Lincoln as essential to the total