Though freedom, in such instances, far too often is wrested into the vilest abuse, it was in truth passing strange that an Administration should be so violently assailed by its opponents as despotic and tyrannical, when the very fact that such strictures and comments were passed upon it, without let or hindrance, by word of mouth and on the printed page, afforded a proof that the despotism, if such there were, was either too mild or too weak to enforce even a decent treatment of itself and its acts. It is safe to say, that, within the limits of that section with which we were under any circumstances to establish harmonious and peaceful relations, according to the requirements of the opposition, not one speech in a hundred, not one editorial in a thousand, would have been permitted under precisely similar circumstances. General Fremont withdrew his name shortly after the Chicago nominations, that he might not distract and divide the friends of the Union. In his letter of withdrawal he said: “The policy of the Democratic party signifies either separation, or reëstablishment, with slavery. The Chicago platform is simply separation. General McClellan’s letter of acceptance, is reëstablishment with slavery.... The Republican candidate, on the contrary, is pledged to the reëstablishment of Union without slavery.” Senator Wade and Henry Winter Davis, who had joined in a manifesto to the people, bitterly denunciatory of the President’s course in issuing his reconstruction proclamation, entered manfully into the canvass in behalf of the Baltimore nominees. The ranks of the supporters of the Government closed steadily up, and pressed on to a success, of which they could not, with their faith in manhood and republican principles, suffer themselves to doubt. The Opposition were not entirely in accord. It was a delicate position in which the full-blooded Peace Democrat found himself, obliged as he was to endorse a man whose only claim for the nomination was the reputation which he had made as a prominent General engaged in prosecuting an “unnatural, unholy war.” Nor did it afford much alleviation to his distress to remember that this candidate had been loudly assailed in the Convention as the first mover in the matter of arbitrary arrests, against which a sturdy outcry had long been raised by himself and friends. It was unpleasant, moreover, not to be able to forget that the same candidate had been the first to suggest a draft--or “conscription,” as your true peace man would call it: that measure so full of horrors, against which unconstitutional act such an amount of indignation had been expended.