do justice to the success which it has achieved
on many occasions and to the excellence of its intentions on all. Had
the Democrats called upon the country to displace the Administration
because it had not done all that it should have done, promising to do
more themselves against the Rebels than President Lincoln and his
associates had effected, the result of the Presidential election might
be involved in some doubt; for the people desire to see the Rebellion
brought to an end, and the Democratic party has a great name as a ruling
political organization, its history, during most of the present century,
being virtually the history of the American nation. But, with a want of
wisdom that shows how much it has lost in losing that Southern lead
which had so much to do with its success in politics, it chose to place
itself in opposition to the national sentiment, instead of adopting it,
guiding it, and profiting from its existence. The errors of the various
parties that have been opposed to it have often been matter for mirth to
the Democratic party, as well they may have been; but neither
Federalists, nor National Republicans, nor Whigs, nor Know-Nothings, nor
Republicans were ever guilty of a blunder so enormous as that which this
party itself perpetrated at Chicago, when it virtually announced its
readiness to surrender the country into the hands of the men who have so
pertinaciously sought its destruction for the last four years. So
strange has been its action, that we should be ashamed to have dreamed
that any party could be guilty of it. Yet it is a living fact that the
Democratic party, in spite of its loud claims to strict nationality of
purpose, has so conducted itself as to show that it is willing to
complete the work which the slaveholders began, and not only to submit
to the terms which the Rebels would dictate, but to tear the Union still
further to pieces, if indeed it would leave any two States in a united
condition. Thus acting, that party has defeated itself, and reduced the
action of the people to a mere, though a mighty, formality. Either this
is a plain statement of the case, or this nation is about to give a
practical answer to Bishop Butler's famous question, "What if a whole
community were to go mad?" For the ratification of the Chicago Platform
by the people would be an indorsement of violence and disorder, a direct
approval of wilful rebellion, and an announcement that every election
held in this count