of 1864 was then upon us, and indeed it was
most momentous. The issue was to determine the life of this Union. Mr.
Lincoln was renominated, and General George B. McClellan was nominated
to run against him. And quite fittingly, Horatio Seymour, who was to
have been leader of secession in the North (according to my
information), who had lent his whole influence towards obstruction, was
made chairman of the convention that nominated McClellan.

A resolution of the convention read:

"Resolved, that this Convention does explicitly declare, as
the sense of the American people, that after four years of
failure to restore the Union by experiment of War * * * the
public welfare demands that immediate efforts be made for a
cessation of hostilities."

In the convention Mr. Wickliffe, of Kentucky, said:

"The delegates from the West were of the opinion that
circumstances may occur between noon of to-day and the 4th of
March next (inauguration day) which will make it proper for
the Democracy of the Country to meet in Convention again."

What could he have referred to? Solve the riddle if you can. Ponder on a
"Northwestern Confederacy"; the Sons of Liberty, and the seizure of
their arms; and also on Lincoln's assassination, only a few days after
March 4th, 1865.

All of this leads me to what I am about to tell about that election,
wherein the same influences that failed with bullets to disrupt the
Union were now trying to accomplish the same purpose with ballots.

I will not charge McClellan with disloyalty, yet I can not help asking
why did he lend his name to the disloyal movement? There were disloyal
Northerners, but not one of them voted for Lincoln.

I do not claim that all who voted for McClellan were disloyal, but that
all the disloyal, including all blockade-runners and bounty jumpers,
voted for him.

On the 21st of April, 1864, a law was enacted in New York State called
"an act to enable the qualified electors of this State, absent therefrom
in the military service of the United States, in the Army or navy
thereof, to vote."

This law provided for a power of attorney appointing a proxy who would
present his (the soldier's) sealed envelope, addressed to the election
inspectors in his home or residence district. The ballot was to be in a
sealed envelope, and to be opened only by the inspectors; this envelope
was to be enclosed in another, outer envelope addressed to his