Administration cannot save the Union, _we can_! Mr.
Lincoln values many things above the Union; we put it first of all. He
thinks a proclamation worth more than peace; we think the blood of our
people more precious than the edicts of the President. There are no
hindrances in our pathway to Union and to peace. We demand no
conditions for the restoration of our Union; we are shackled with no
hates, no prejudices, no passions. We wish for fraternal relationships
with the people of the South. We demand for them what we demand for
ourselves--the full recognition of the rights of States. We mean that
every star on our Nation's banner shall shine with an equal
lustre."[996] As the speaker concluded, the audience, with deafening
applause, testified its approval of these sentiments. Yet one wonders
that he could end without saying a word, at least, in condemnation of
the Secessionists, whose appeal from the ballot to the bullet had
inaugurated "the bloody pages of the history of the past three years."

[Footnote 995: "Governor Seymour was an elegant and accomplished
gentleman with a high-bred manner which never unbent, and he was
always faultlessly dressed. He looked the ideal of an aristocrat, and
yet he was and continued to be until his death the idol of the
Democracy."--_Speeches of Chauncey M. Depew_, November, 1896, to
April, 1902, p. 105.]

[Footnote 996: Horatio Seymour's _Public Record_, pp. 230-232.]

The platform, adopted without debate, reaffirmed devotion to the
Union, expressed sympathy with soldiers and prisoners of war,
denounced interference in military elections, and stigmatised alleged
illegal and arbitrary acts of the government. The second resolution,
prepared by Vallandigham, declared that "this convention does
explicitly resolve as the sense of the American people, that after
four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war,
justice, humanity, liberty, and the public welfare demand that
immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities, with a view
to an ultimate convention of the States, or other peaceable means, to
the end that the earliest practicable moment peace may be restored on
the basis of the Federal Union of the States."[997]

[Footnote 997: Edward McPherson, _History of the Rebellion_, p. 419;
Appleton's _Cyclopaedia_, 1864, p. 793.]

It is difficult to excuse Tilden's silence when this fatal resolution
was adopted. In the final haste to report the platform, the de