save this Union,
then the people of the South should be allowed to withdraw themselves
from the Government which cannot give them the protection guaranteed
by its terms." Immediate emancipation, he continued, would not end the
contest. "It would be only the commencement of a lasting, destructive,
terrible domestic conflict. The North would not consent that four
millions of free negroes should live in their midst.... With what
justice do we demand that the South should be subjected to the evils,
the insecurity, and the loss of constitutional rights, involved in
immediate abolition?" Then, dropping into prophecy, the broad,
optimistic statesmanship of the forties passed into eclipse as he
declared that "we are either to be restored to our former position,
with the Constitution unweakened, the powers of the State unimpaired,
and the fireside rights of our citizens duly protected, or our whole
system of government is to fall!"

Seymour, in closing, very clearly outlined his future platform. "We
are willing to support this war as a means of restoring our Union, but
we will not carry it on in a spirit of hatred, malice, or revenge. We
cannot, therefore, make it a war for the abolition of slavery. We will
not permit it to be made a war upon the rights of the States. We shall
see that it does not crush out the liberties of the citizen, or the
reserved powers of the States. We shall hold that man to be as much a
traitor who urges our government to overstep its constitutional
powers, as he who resists the exercise of its rightful authority. We
shall contend that the rights of the States and the General Government
are equally sacred."[811]

[Footnote 811: _Public Record of Horatio Seymour_, pp. 32-43.]

If the campaign contributed to the South a certain degree of comfort,
reviving the hope that it would yet have a divided North to contend
against, the election, giving Dickinson over 100,000 majority,
furnished little encouragement. The People's party also carried both
branches of the Legislature, securing twenty out of thirty-two
senators, and seventy out of the one hundred and twenty-eight
assemblymen. Among the latter, Henry J. Raymond and Thomas G. Alvord,
former speakers, represented the undaunted mettle needed at Albany.

To add to the result so gratifying to the fusionists, George Opdyke
defeated Fernando Wood by a small plurality for mayor of New York.
Wood had long been known as a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He talked
re