a great mass
meeting in New York City, presented the crushing indictment against
him. Although the clock had tolled the midnight hour, the large
audience remained to hear Townsend for the same reason, suggested
Edwin D. Morgan, the chairman, that the disciples sat up all night
whenever the great apostle was with them. Townsend was then
fifty-three years old. For more than a decade his rare ability as a
speaker had kept him a favorite, and for a quarter of a century longer
he was destined to delight the people. On this occasion, however, his
arraignment left a deeper and more lasting impression than his words
ordinarily did. "Seymour," he said, "undertook to increase enlistments
by refusing the soldier his political franchise. On the supposition
that Meade would be defeated, he delivered a Fourth of July address
that indicted the free people of the North and placed him in the front
rank of men whom rebels delight to honour. If there was a traitor in
New York City on that day he was in the company of Horatio Seymour.
Finally, he pronounced as 'friends' the men, who, stirred to action by
his incendiary words, applied the torch and the bludgeon in the draft
riot of July 13, 14, and 15."[922]

[Footnote 920: _Ibid._, September 26.]

[Footnote 921: New York _Tribune_, October 9.]

[Footnote 922: New York _Tribune_, October 1, 1863.]

In the four speeches delivered in the campaign, Seymour was never
cleverer or more defiant.[923] He exhibited great skill in criticising
the Administration, charging that disasters had brought bankruptcy,
that ill-advised acts of subordinates had sapped the liberties of the
people, and that base motives inspired the policy of the Government.
He denounced the Radicals as craven Americans, devoid of patriotic
feeling, who were trying to make the humiliation and degradation of
their country a stepping-stone to continued power. "They say we must
fight until slavery is extinguished. We are to upturn the foundations
of our Constitution. At this very moment, when the fate of the nation
and of individuals trembles in the balance, these madmen ask us to
plunge into a bottomless pit of controversy upon indefinite purposes.
Does not every man know that we must have a united North to triumph?
Can we get a united North upon a theory that the Constitution can be
set aside at the will of one man, because, forsooth, he judges it to
be a military necessity? I never yet heard that Abraham Lincoln was a
milita