The Political Situation

[From the Richmond Examiner (opp. Organ) Aug. 15.]

Whatever may turn out to be the meaning of fact, the fact itself begins to shine out clear that Abraham Lincoln is lost; that he will never be president again—not even President of the Yankee remnant of States, to say nothing of the whole six and thirty—or, how many are there, counting “Colorado” and “Idaho,” and other Yahoo commonwealths lately invented?  The obscene ape of Illinois is about to be deposed from the Washington purple, and the White House will echo to his little jokes no more.  It is in no spirit of exultation we contemplate this coming event, for Abraham has been a good Emperor for us; but has served our turn; his policy has settled, established, and made irrevocable the separation of the old Union into nations essentially foreign, and we may be almost sorry to part with him.  He was, in the eyes of all mankind, and unanswerable argument for our secession, for he stood there a living justification, seven feet high, of the steadfast resolution of these States to hold no more political union with a race capable not only of producing such a being, but of making it a ruler and king.

Certainly his elevation to that position astonished the world, but it amazed nobody so much as the creature himself; he knew he was neither rich nor rare, and wondered how the devil he got there, or, as he expressed it himself the other day, to a Canadian editor, “It seems to be strange that I, a boy born, as it were, in the woods, should have drifted into the apex of this great event.”  Why strange?  One may be drifted into any apex if he only embarks upon a chain of circumstances; and those who sneer at Abraham’s figures are desired to observe that Noah’s ark did actually drift to an apex; and it contained, with every other beast of his kind, a pair of baboons.  If they drifted to an apex, so may he.  However that may be, he is certainly now about to come down, and even to be dragged or kicked down.  The prognostications of last spring were infallable, that the “rebellion” must be crushed this year—at least very signal and decided successes must be gained over it, or else the war would no longer be carried on under Lincoln’s government; let what might come of the war and the Union, he would get no more armies to fling into the red pit of Virginia for slaughter.

Now to put aside for the present the total loss of what Yankees fondly believe to be their conquests in the trans-Mississippi; pretermitting also the dead lock to which Sherman’s army has been brought, with all Kentucky, Tennessee and half of Georgia lying between him and his own country, and looking only to this most colossal invasion of Virginia with three large armies all bound for Richmond—the thing is over.  Grant’s army is rapidly going away from our front at Petersburg, and returning to Washington or elsewhere.  Of course Grant will not put up a notice on the shore of the Appomattox that he hereby abandons his enterprise; either will Stanton officially notify that the armies of “the Union” are found wholly unable to advance one yard out of the protection of their ships, and therefore they discontinue the campaign with a loss of one hundred fifty thousand killed, wounded and missing.  This would be unreasonable to expect, nevertheless the enterprise is abandoned.  Richmond is no more to hear the roar of Yankee siege guns under that potentate’s reign.

One cannot but arrive at this conclusion from several indications—from the greatly increasing excitement at the North touching the Chicago Convention, which is to nominate a Democratic President; from the daring violence with which some newspapers counsel resistance in arms against the draft of half a million of men, and from the singular movement of some of Lincoln’s own Black Republican supporters in the Washington Congress.  They waited for the moment when their sovereign’s fortunes were declining from their “apex” to give them a treacherous shove down the hill.  Two of his most vehement and efficient allies, Wade, of Ohio, and Winter Davis, of Maryland, gave him this blow under the fifth rib.  They present, in their official capacity, what almost amounts to a legal impeachment, save in matter of form, against their fond and too indulgent master, now tottering to his fall; charge him with arrogance, usurpation, knavery, in withholding his assent to a bill touching the status of these Confederate States—a matter which though of small importance to us, is of the deepest moment, it seems in that country; inasmuch as he has a plan of his own for readmitting States to the Union on the application of one-tenth of their population; and this would, they say, give him the control of the presidential election.  So they inform him that an election carried by this artifice must be resisted, and that he is inaugurating a civil war for the Presidency.

If Grant had only taken Richmond, would they have dared to set their names to such a document as this?  All the world suddenly, within one week, in short, since the blow up of the campaign at Petersburg, seems to feel instinctively that Abraham’s gave is played; and the New York Herald at once calls for a new National convention at Buffalo to nominate some other men instead of the baboon of Illinois and the tailor of Tennessee, and finds out that “the very winds have been whispering it for weeks”—that is for two weeks, since the Petersburg blow up.  Abe! The Emperor, is a fallen tree; no bird of the air will ever again leather its nest under his branches; a dying gorilla against whom the smallest cur can lift up its leg.

Taking it as certain, then, that the enemy’s present sovereign is as good as gone, next comes the most interesting consideration of who is to be his successor.  It is not very plain in the interest of whom, or what, Wade and Davis have so suddenly found out the enormities of Lincoln; nor whether they mean to aid the Fremont party of impossible ultra-radicals, or lay the pipes for themselves, Wade and Davis; but the most interesting matter to us is the keen and active agitation in the two branches of the Democratic party.  The peace Democrats openly avow that they will labor in the Chicago Convention of this month to get a “platform” of instant and absolute peace. We learn that the War Democrats are beginning, through some of their influential papers, to give their assent to an armistice, as one of the “planks” of the Chicago Convention—an armistice to allow negotiations for reconstruction.  In other words, these war Democrats propose that, leaving the military lines of each party where they now are, the Confederate states should be invited to send delegates to meet the Yankee States in Convention.

Let there be not only an armistice, but a formal renunciation of all right and pretense to coerce these states; and of course  an entire withdrawal of all land and sea forces which occupy any portion of our soil, or blockade any of our ports; and then the Northern States will be in a position to propose to us reconstruction of the Union, or a convention of States for the purpose of negotiating that.  It may safely be promised that such proposals would then be at least considered; at present, one cannot say what would be the result of that consideration; but, it short, let our Northern brethren try us.  With such change in the existing relations, no doubt there may come also a great change over men’s minds?  The hideous apparition of the blood-bolstered Lincoln will be laid; the bayonet will be no longer point at our throats, our dead will have been buried out of our sight, and it is vain as humorous Abraham says, to grieve over spilt milk—for so the facetious man calls blood.  We do not answer for a favorable result of this policy, but the Chicago Democrats will find it worthwhile to try it, seeing that is the only chance they have.

SOURCE: The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Brooklyn, New York, Tuesday, August 16, 1864