ancy of a kaleidoscope. The two irreconcilable elements
were the "war party" made up of determined men resolved to see things
through, and the "copperheads"* who for one reason or another united
in a faithful struggle for peace at any price. Around the copperheads
gathered the various and singular groups who helped to make up the ever
fluctuating "peace party." It is an error to assume that this peace
party was animated throughout by fondness for the Confederacy. Though
many of its members were so actuated, the core of the party seems to
have been that strange type of man who sustained political evasion
in the old days, who thought that sweet words can stop bullets, whose
programme in 1863 called for a cessation of hostilities and a general
convention of all the States, and who promised as the speedy result of
a debauch of talk a carnival of bright eyes glistening with the tears
of revived affection. With these strange people in 1863 there combined
a number of different types: the still stranger, still less creditable
visionary, of whom much hereafter; the avowed friends of the principle
of state rights; all those who distrusted the Government because of its
anti-slavery sympathies; Quakers and others with moral scruples against
war; and finally, sincere legalists to whom the Conscription Act
appeared unconstitutional. In the spring of 1863 the issue of
conscription drew the line fairly sharply between the two political
coalitions, though each continued to fluctuate, more or less, to the end
of the war.

* The term arose, it has been said, from the use of the
copper cent with its head of Liberty as a peace button. But
a more plausible explanation associates the peace advocates
with the deadly copperhead snake.

The peace party of 1863 has been denounced hastily rather than carefully
studied. Its precise machinations are not fully known, but the ugly fact
stands forth that a portion of the foreign population of the North was
roused in 1863 to rebellion. The occasion was the beginning of the first
draft under the new law, in July, 1863, and the scene of the rebellion
was the City of New York. The opponents of conscription had already
made inflammatory attacks on the Government. Conspicuous among them was
Horatio Seymour, who had been elected Governor of New York in that wave
of reaction in the autumn of 1862. Several New York papers joined the
crusade. In Congress, the Government had already been thr