Men of Our Times; Or, Leading Patriots of the Day: Being narratives of the lives and deeds of statesmen, generals, and orators. Including biographical sketches and anecdotes of Lincoln, Grant, Garrison, Sumner, Chase, Wilson, Greeley, Farragut, Andrew, Colfax, Stanton, Douglass, Buckingham, Sherman, Sheridan, Howard, Phillips and Beecher.Stowe, Harriet Beecher
History
Men of Our Times; Or, Leading Patriots of the Day: Being narratives of the lives and deeds of statesmen, generals, and orators. Including biographical sketches and anecdotes of Lincoln, Grant, Garrison, Sumner, Chase, Wilson, Greeley, Farragut, Andrew, Colfax, Stanton, Douglass, Buckingham, Sherman, Sheridan, Howard, Phillips and Beecher.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
United States -- Biography; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Biography
It was a matter of course that Mr. Colfax should go with all his heart
into the great struggle of 1860. He felt and understood with unusual
earnestness and clearness the importance of the principles involved,
and the hazards of the political campaign. Into a paragraph or two
written some time before the Chicago nomination, he condensed a whole
code of political wisdom, and can now be seen to have pointed out
Abraham Lincoln as the best candidate, by describing the political
availability and ethical soundness of the position Mr. Lincoln then
occupied. He wrote:
"We differ somewhat from those ardent cotemporaries who demand the
nomination of their favorite representative man, whether popular
or unpopular, and who insist that this must be done, even if we are
defeated. We do agree with them in declaring that we shall go for no
man who does not prefer free labor and its extension, to slave labor
and its extension,--who though mindful of the impartiality which should
characterize the Executive of the whole Union, will not fail to rebuke
all new plots for making the government the propagandist of slavery,
and compel promptly and efficiently the suppression of that horrible
slave-trade which the whole civilized world has banned as infamous,
piratical and accursed. But in a Republican National Convention, if
any man could be found, North, South, East or West, whose integrity,
whose life, and whose avowals rendered him unquestionably safe on
these questions, and yet who could yet poll one, two or three hundred
thousand votes more than any one else, we believe it would be both
wisdom and duty, patriotism and policy, to nominate him by acclamation
and thus render the contest an assured success from its very opening.
We hope to see 1866 realize the famed motto of Augustine--"In
essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity."
That is very broad and sound sense. It was in exact accordance with
this doctrine and with these intimations as to who was the right man,
that Mr. Lincoln was nominated, according to the desire of Mr. Colfax's
heart; and in the coming campaign in his own very important state of
Indiana, he did most valuable service in assuring the victory.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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