s ability, patriotism, and integrity,
declared the war debt sacred, thanked the soldiers and sailors,
commended the President's policy of reconstruction, and expressed the
hope that when the States lately in rebellion are restored to the
exercise of their constitutional rights, "it will be done in the faith
and on the basis that they will be exercised in the spirit of equal
and impartial justice, and with a view to the elevation and
perpetuation of the full rights of citizenship of all their people,
inasmuch as these are principles which constitute the basis of our
republican institutions."[1038] Greeley pronounced this language "timid
and windy."[1039]

[Footnote 1038: New York _Herald_, September 21, 1865.]

[Footnote 1039: New York _Tribune_, September 21, 1865.]

In the campaign that followed the Democrats flattered the President,
very cleverly insisting that the Radicals' devotion to negro suffrage
made them his only real opponents. On the other hand, conservative
Republicans, maintaining that the convention did not commit itself to
an enfranchisement of the negro, insisted that it was a unit in its
support of the President's policy, and that the Democrats, acting
insincerely, sought to destroy the Union party and secure exclusive
control of the Executive. "They propose," said the _Times_, "to repeat
upon him precisely the trick which they practised with such brilliant
success upon John Tyler and Millard Fillmore, both of whom were taken
up by the Democracy, their policy endorsed, and their supporters
denounced. Both were flattered with the promise of a Democratic
nomination and both were weak enough to listen and yield to the
temptation. Both were used unscrupulously to betray their principles
and their friends, and when the time came both were remorselessly
thrown, like squeezed oranges, into the gutter. The game they are
playing upon President Johnson is precisely the same. They want the
offices he has in his gift, and when his friends are scattered and
overthrown they will have him at their mercy. Then, the power he gives
them will be used for his destruction."[1040]

[Footnote 1040: New York _Times_, October 17, 1865.]

Horatio Seymour made two speeches. With charming candor he admitted
that "signal victories have been won by generals who have made the
history of our country glorious." But to him the great debt, the
untaxed bonds, the inflation of the currency, the increased prices,
and the absence of co