pon our Government. Let us consign them
both to a common grave. Never will our country see peace unless we
do.... We care not what men are in charge of the Government, it is our
duty as patriots and as Democrats to protect and preserve that
Government, and resist with arms, and, if need be, with our lives, the
men who seek to overthrow it; but this must be no war for the
emancipation of slaves."[792]

[Footnote 792: New York _Tribune_, September 5, 1861.]

The vigor of Kernan as a speaker and presiding officer exaggerated by
contrast the feebleness of Herman J. Redfield, the permanent president
of the convention. Redfield was an old man, a mere reminiscence of the
days of DeWitt Clinton, whose speech, read in a low, weak voice, was
directed mainly to a defence of the sub-treasury plan of 1840 and the
tariff act of 1846.[793] He professed to favour a vigorous prosecution
of the war, but there were no words of reprobation for its authors,
while he expressed the belief that "civil war will never preserve, but
forever destroy the union of States." This was the prophecy of Reuben
H. Walworth, the ex-chancellor, made at the Albany peace convention in
the preceding January, and the applause that greeted the statement
then, as it did at Syracuse, indicated a disposition on the part of
many to favour concessions that would excuse if it did not absolutely
justify secession.

[Footnote 793: "From what lodge in some vast wilderness, from what lone
mountain in the desert, the convention obtained its Rip Van Winkle
president, we are at a loss to conceive. He evidently has never heard
of the Wilmot Proviso struggle of 1848, the compromise contest of
1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, the Lecompton constitution of
1858, nor the presidential election of 1860. It is plain that he has
never even dreamed of the secession ordinances and of the fall of
Sumter."--New York _Tribune_, September 6, 1861.

"The speech of Mr. Redfield is universally laughed at. He has
completely proven that he does not belong to the present century, or,
at least, that he has been asleep for the last twenty years. Barnum
should deposit it among the curiosities of his shop."--New York
_Herald_, September 5, 1861.]

The party platform, however, took little notice of the Redfield speech
and the Redfield cheers. It declared that the right of secession did
not anywhere or at any time exist; that the seizure of United States
property and the sending out of priv