FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82  
83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   >>   >|  
o detect personal prejudice, for or against any one; and his account is so clear and convincing that it must be accepted, whether one likes his conclusions or not. [30] _Own Story_, 466. [31] Pope retained for a few days command of the army in camp outside the defenses. [32] McClure says: "I saw Lincoln many times during the campaign of 1864, when McClellan was his competitor for the presidency. I never heard him speak of McClellan in any other than terms of the highest personal respect and kindness." _Lincoln and Men of War-Times_, 207. CHAPTER IV THE AUTUMN ELECTIONS OF 1862, AND THE PROCLAMATION OF EMANCIPATION The chapter which has been written on "Emancipation and Politics" shows that while loyalty to the Union operated as a bond to hold together the people of the North, slavery entered as a wedge to force them asunder. It was not long before the wedge proved a more powerful force than the bond, for the wedge was driven home by human nature; and it was inevitable that the men of conservative temperament and the men of progressive temperament should erelong be easily restored to their instinctive antagonism. Of those who had been stigmatized as "Northern men with Southern principles," many soon found their Southern proclivities reviving. These men, christened "Copperheads," became more odious to loyal Northerners than were the avowed Secessionists. In return for their venomous nickname and the contempt and hatred with which they were treated, they themselves grew steadily more rancorous, more extreme in their feelings. They denounced and opposed every measure of the government, harangued vehemently against the war and against all that was done to prosecute it, reviled with scurrilous and passionate abuse every prominent Republican, filled the air with disheartening forecasts of defeat, ruin, and woe, and triumphed whenever the miserable prophecies seemed in the way of fulfillment. General Grant truly described them as auxiliaries to the Confederate army, and said that the North would have been much better off with a hundred thousand of these men in the Southern ranks, and the rest of their kind at home thoroughly subdued, as the Unionists were at the South, than was the case as the struggle was actually conducted. In time the administration found itself forced, though reluctantly, to arrest and imprison many of the ringleaders in this Northern disaffection. Yet all the while the Copperheads res
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82  
83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
Southern
 

McClellan

 

Lincoln

 
Northern
 

personal

 

Copperheads

 

temperament

 

denounced

 

harangued

 

prosecute


vehemently

 
measure
 

government

 
opposed
 
nickname
 

Northerners

 

avowed

 

Secessionists

 

odious

 

proclivities


reviving

 

christened

 

return

 

venomous

 

steadily

 
rancorous
 

extreme

 

treated

 

reviled

 

contempt


hatred

 

feelings

 
triumphed
 

subdued

 

Unionists

 

struggle

 

hundred

 

thousand

 

conducted

 

ringleaders


imprison
 
disaffection
 

arrest

 

reluctantly

 

administration

 
forced
 

defeat

 
forecasts
 
disheartening
 

passionate