Lincoln--and further discussion in the
House, it was thought, might produce such a pressure from the loyal
constituencies both in the Free and Border Slave-States as to compel
success.

But from the very beginning of the year 1864, as if instinctively aware
that their Rebel friends were approaching the crisis of their fate, and
needed now all the help that their allies of the North could give them,
the Anti-War Democrats, in Congress, and out, had been stirring
themselves with unusual activity.

In both Houses of Congress, upon all possible occasions, they
had been striving, as they still strove, with the venom of their
widely-circulated speeches, to poison the loyal Northern and
Border-State mind, in the hope that the renomination of Mr. Lincoln
might be defeated, the chance for Democratic success at the coming
Presidential election be thereby increased, and, if nothing else came
of it, the Union Cause be weakened and the Rebel Cause correspondingly
strengthened.

At the same time, evidently under secret instructions from their
friends, the Conspirators in arms, they endeavored to create
heart-burnings and jealousies and ill-feeling between the Eastern
(especially the New England) States and the Western States, and
unceasingly attacked the Protective-Tariff, Internal Revenue, the
Greenback, the Draft, and every other measure or thing upon which the
life of the Union depended.

Most of these Northern-Democratic agitators, "Stealing the livery of
Heaven to serve the Devil in," endeavored to conceal their treacherous
designs under a veneer of gushing lip-loyalty, but that disguise was
"too thin" to deceive either their contemporaries or those who come
after them. Some of their language too, as well as their blustering
manner, strangely brought back to recollection the old days of Slavery
when the plantation-whip was cracked in the House, and the air was blue
with execration of New England.

Said Voorhees, of Indiana, (January 11, 1864) when the House was
considering a Bill "to increase the Internal Revenue and for other
purposes:"

"I want to know whether the West has any friends upon the floor of this
House? We pay every dollar that is to be levied by this Tax Bill. * *
* The Manufacturing Interest pays not a dollar into the public Treasury
that stays there. And yet airs of patriotism are put on here by men
representing that interest. I visited New England last Summer, * * *
when I heard the swelling hum