Year: 1864




From the Milwaukee Daily Life, May 2l.
Position OF Wisconsin Radicals.


We see but little practical difference
between McC cClellan, the democratic favorite,
and Seward, Blair and Bates, the ruling
spirits Of Lincoln's cabinet and we could
vote for them in no contingency. We're
little Mac at the helm, we do not see where
in he would greatly differ from, the Presi-
dents chief advisers. And his course to-
ward France and Mexico certainly could be
more shameful than has Stewards. To vote
for Lincoln is to vote for those men and
to continue the compromise policy of which
they are the exponcnts. We may feel it
our duty to support Lincoln, but we hope
to be spared such an alternative. AND the
saddest aspect Of our public affairs is, that
after the terrible experience of this war,
the people do not rise en- mdsse and dem and,
as the successor of Lincoln, man of ener.
gy, of sasacity of strong moral convictions,
who is competent to lead the people, who
can inspire them with his own enthusiasm
and lift them up to the sublime heights Of
the present crisis. - We
may conquer at Richmond or on every bat.
tie field, but if the compromise spirit oi
Seward and Blair and Lincoln are to pre-.
vail and supplement our victories, the re.
bells will be pardoned, the men who helped
fight our battles be disfranchised, serfdom
be substituted for slavery, landed aristo.
cracy may take the place, and exercise the
authority Of the slave planters, the govern.
ment continue to be as it has been for
thirty years, a modified despotism, capital
lists will rule the working classes with a
rod of iron, and slavery be re-establshed
in fact, though abolished in name, through.
out the south. Why will not the people
elect for president man who compartments
the situation, who has had the sagacity
early to perceive the vital issues Of the
struggle, to discern at the outset the weak
point of the rebellion, and the means to
conquer it, without wading through two
years of carnage and blood till every house.
hold is in mourning, to learn what was pa.
tent to all the world except the president
and his mole-eyed cabinent? The presi-
dent is mere string of expediencies and
policies. He has no moral convictions and
has expressed none during all this war,
except in the cant phrases of fast and
thanksgiving proclamations. The only
moral sentiment in his emancipation pro-
clamaton was squeezed into it-as printers
justify line-by Chase, and he took es.
pecial peins in the body of it, to disclaim
all moral considerations, apologizing for
the act on the ground that he was compelled
to this deed Of justice by the necessity of
selfpreservation.


Not word has the President uttered
during these three years Of terrible strife,
adapted to lift up the nation to a full com.
prehension of the character of the struggle,
and inspire it with heroic purpose to fight
the battle out for Liberty and free Gov
the world. While all true men and the
listening angels have been longing and
waiting in vain for some electric word from
him to stir the heart of this nation to its
profoundest depths, he has fed their hunger.
ing and thirssng souls only with a good
story and a pleasant joke. He has not
himself understood, he does not to. day un-
delstand, the nature and magnitude of this
rebellion, the character and animus Of the
rebels, nor the proper method of dealing
with them. With this full conviction,
strengthened by careful review of the
history Of the past three years, we look
with fOrebodings upon the prospect of Lin.
coins denomination. We fear it will lead
to divisions in the Union party. and to the
defeat Of the nominee. 1t is shame and a
disgrace to this administration, that no af
ter-repeDtance can wipe out, that its course
has been such toward the anti.slavery men
OF the border slave states as to ALLEVIATE
them from it and to dissatisfy its own
warmest friends throughout the Union
We fear Lincoln's election would be pub.
lie calamity, second only to the election of
copperhead. We have no interests but
those of our country. We wish to See the
rebellion crushed, freedom triumphant,
peace restored, and the equal rights of all
men before the law acknowledged, and We
do not think Lincoln is the man to accomp-
lish this work. If done under his admin.
istration it would have to be done in spite
of him and much of it against his opposi-
ton. He will side with the Blairs and the
Schoiclds, aud suppress the Frcmonts and
Phelpses and Hunters, oppose free suffrage,
pardon rebels, leave Union men in the bor-
der states to the tender mercies of perjured
secessionists, inaugurate and accomplish
the re construction of the rebel states on
the anti-republican basis Of permitting q
minority Of one-tenth Of the people to
govern the whole. If he does not accomp-
lish all this or try to do it, he will not carry
out his own policy.