The professed object of the meeting was to form a party devoted to the support of "the Constitution as it is and the Union as it was." Its practical effect was to give the Confederates and foreign powers a broad hint that the North was no longer a unit. The coincidence of the meeting with the Federal reverses before Richmond made its professed object all the more ridiculous. The babbling and bawling of the speakers about "the rights of the South," and "the infamous Abolitionists who disgraced Congress," were but faint echoes of the Confederate cannon which had just ceased to carry death into the Union ranks. Both the speeches and the cannon spoke hostility to the National Cause. The number of the dead, wounded, "missing," and demoralized members of the great Army of the Potomac exceeded, on that Tuesday evening, any army which the United States had ever, before the present war, arrayed on any battle-field. Jefferson Davis, on that evening, was safer at Richmond than Abraham Lincoln was at Washington. A well-grounded apprehension, not only for the "Union," but for the safety of loyal States, was felt on that evening all over the North and West. It was, in fact, the darkest hour in the whole annals of the Republic. Even the authorities at Washington feared that the Army of the Potomac was destroyed. This was exactly the time for the Honorable Mr. Wickliffe and the Honorable Mr. Brooks, for the Honorable W. A. Duer and the Honorable Fernando Wood, to delight the citizens of New York with their peculiar eloquence. This was the appropriate occasion to stand up for the persecuted and down-trodden South! This was the grand opportunity to assert the noble principle, that, by the Constitution, every traitor had the right to be tried by a jury of traitors! This was the time to dishonor all the New England dead! This was the time to denounce the living worthies of New England! Hang Jeff. Davis? Oh, yes! We all know that he is secure behind his triumphant slayers of the real defenders of the Constitution and the Union. Neither hangman nor Major-General can get near _him_. But Charles Sumner is in our power. We can hang him easily. He has not two or four hundred thousand men at his back. He travels alone and unattended. Do we want a constitutional principle for combining the two men in one act of treason? Here is a calm jurist,--here, gentlemen of the party of the Constitution and the Laws, is the Honorable W. A. Duer. What does he say? Simply this: "Hang Jeff. Davis and Charles Sumner." Davis we cannot hang, but Sumner we can. Let us take one-half of his advice; circumstances prevent us from availing ourselves of the whole. There is, to be sure, no possibility of hanging Charles Sumner under any law known to us, the especial champions of the laws. But what then? Don't you see the Honorable W. A. Duer appeals, in this especial case, to "the higher law" of the mob? Don't you see that he desires to shield Jeff. Davis by