, and ready
wit, his genial presence and cheerful voice imparted life and spirit
to the numerous social circles in which he was ever a welcome guest."
_Weed's Reminiscences_, T.W. Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2,
p. 483.]

CHAPTER VIII

SEYMOUR'S PRESIDENTIAL FEVER

1864

"I shall not attempt to retract or modify the Emancipation
Proclamation," said the President at the opening of Congress in
December, 1863; "nor shall I return to slavery any person who is free
by the terms of that proclamation, or by any of the acts of Congress."
But in submitting a plan for the restoration of the Confederate States
he offered amnesty, with rights of property except as to slaves, to
all persons[968] who agreed to obey the Constitution, the laws, and
the Executive proclamations, and proposed that whenever such persons
numbered one-tenth of the qualified voters of a State they "shall be
recognized as the true government of such State."[969] A week later
the Thirteenth Amendment, forever abolishing slavery, was introduced
into Congress. Thus the purpose of the radical Republicans became
plain.

[Footnote 968: Except certain ones specifically exempted.]

[Footnote 969: Lincoln, _Complete Works_, Vol. 2, p. 443.]

In January, 1864, Governor Seymour, then the acknowledged head of his
party, made his message to the Legislature a manifesto to the
Democrats of the country. With measured rhetoric he traced the
usurpations of the President and the acknowledged policy that was in
future to guide the Administration. He courageously admitted that a
majority of the people and both branches of Congress sustained the
policy of the President, but such a policy, he declared, subordinating
the laws, the courts, and the people themselves to military power,
destroyed the rights of States and abrogated cherished principles of
government. The past, however, with its enormous debt, its
depreciated currency, its suspension of the writ of _habeas corpus_,
and its abolition of free speech and a free press, did not mean such
irretrievable ruin as the national bankruptcy which now threatened to
overwhelm the nation. "The problem with which we have to grapple is,"
he said, "how can we bring this war to a conclusion before such
disasters overwhelm us." Two antagonistic theories, he continued, are
now before us--one, consecrating the energies of war and the policy of
government to the restoration of the Union as it was and the
Constitution as