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Harper's Weekly 02/27/1864
THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY.
When Mr. Douglas appeared at the last in-
auguration ball as the next friend of Mrs. Lin-
coln, he took symbolically the position which
his party ought to have assumed, if it hoped to
retain any hold upon the American people. He
said in effect, “I am for the Union and the
Government unconditionally.” He died, and
left no successor. No leader of even tolerable
capacity has taken his place; and the party of
which he was easily the head has dwindled and
dwindled until it has now virtually disappeared.
There are, in Congress and elsewhere, many faith-
ful men who cling to the names Democrat and
Democratic; but the disloyal men there and
elsewhere assume the same name, and it is a
question which will finally secure it.
Had Mr. Douglas lived he would have been
the dictator of his party. His futile pretense of
squatter sovereignty as a solution of our troubles
was but the transparent confession that the old
platform of his party, the protection of slavery,
was untenable. He saw that the only hope of
his party for the future was in the extreme anti-
slavery ground. How to get it there was a tre-
mendous, an impossible task at that time. He
was frantic. He tried to ride two horses, each
running furiously in opposite directions. His
fall was inevitable; and, like Webster, he fell
and died. Yet could he have survived, the war
would have shown him the way to future power,
and he would have dared to take it. He would
have done from policy what Mr. Sumner in the
Senate, and Mr. Arnold in the House, have
done from principle, and have called for an
amendment to the Constitution abolishing slav-
ery.
The true men of his party are coming to that
position. They see that henceforth emancipa-
tion is as much a fixed fact in this country as
independence was after the Revolution. They
know that hereafter such gentlemen as Sena-
tor Saulsbury of Delaware, Bishop Hopkins of
Vermont, Mr. Thomas H. Seymour of Con-
necticut, and Mr. Vallandigham of Ohio, are
as impossible leaders of any great popular party
as Aaron Burr was after the failure of his con-
spiracy. For such persons as these comprehend
neither men nor principles, neither policy nor
history. They are the dry froth left upon the
sides of a vessel from which the foaming wine
has been poured away.
The terrible logic of events has brought all
loyal citizens to the same platform. The at-
tempt to perpetuate old names and lines has
resulted in the distinct division of the late Dem-
ocratic party into two wings, one of which prac-
tically sustains the rebellion, and the other the
Union. Whoever studies carefully the votes in
Congress will observe that such representatives
as Mallory, Cox, Chanler, and the Woods,
work steadily against the Union and the Na-
tional Government; while such as Odell and
Griswold, with their friends, support the Gov-
ernment, while they try to maintain an appear-
ance of party unity with the first-named, under
the pretense, as we said last week, of a “Con-
stitutional opposition.”
Why do these gentlemen pursue this course?
Why do they not see that their true policy is the
public repudiation of all such fellowship? They
know that the self-imposed mission of Mr. Fer-
nando Wood is the destruction of the party with
which he professes to act; and the method he
takes is the proposition of measures which he
knows will disgust the country. So long as he
is permitted to use the party name, so long the
party name shares the odium of his measures
and of the support of his faction. Upon his
ground the restoration of the party is impossi-
ble. In his hands the infamy of the Democratic
name is sure. The only hope of its honorable
salvation is in the cordial co-operation of those
who value it with the predominant sentiment of
the country in the hearty, open support of the
emancipation policy and of the President who
has adopted it. The President is the representa-
tive of all in the country who believe that the
question is simply Slavery or No-slavery; the
destruction of the Government or its salvation.
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