beyond praise. It was received with great applause in the convention,
was adopted with unanimity, and created a profound influence upon the
public opinion of the North. It was the deliberate, well-conceived
and clearly stated opinion of thoughtful and responsible men, was
never disproved, was practically unanswered, and its serious
accusations were in effect admitted by the South. The one objective
point proclaimed in the address, repeated in the resolutions, echoed
and re-echoed by every speaker, both in the Northern and Southern
Conventions, was the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. It was
evidently the unalterable determination of the Republicans to make
that the leading feature of the campaign, to enforce it in every party
convention, to urge it through the press, to present it on the stump,
to proclaim it through every authorized exponent of public opinion.
They were determined that the Democratic party of the North should not
be allowed to ignore it or in any way to evade it. It was to be the
Shibboleth of the Republican canvass, and the rank and file in every
loyal State were engaged in its presentation and its exposition.

The friends of the Administration, feeling the disadvantage under
which they labored by an apparent combination of all the earnest
supporters of the war for the Union against them, sought to create a
re-action in their favor by calling a soldiers' convention to meet at
Cleveland, on the 17th of September. A considerable number of
respectable officers responded to the summons; but relatively the
demonstration was weak, ineffective and in the end hurtful to the
Administration. The venerable General Wool of the regular army, the
oldest major-general in the United States at the time, was made
president of the convention and his selection was significant of the
proceedings. He had been all his life a solider and nothing but a
soldier. He was a major of infantry in the war of 1812 and had been
in continuous service thereafter. He denounced the Abolitionists after
the manner that had been the custom in the regular army prior to the
war. He thought the convention had been called to protest against
another war which he was sure the Abolitionists were determined to
force on the county. "Another civil war is foreshadowed," said he,
"unless the freedmen are placed on an equality with their previous
masters. If this cannot be accomplished, radical partisans, with a
raging thirst for bloo