The elections have in fact been a defeat for the Washington
government.” The old leaders of the Democratic Party have
skilfully exploited the dissatisfaction over the financial clumsiness
and military ineptitude, and there is no doubt that the State of New
York, officially in the hands of the Seymours, Woods and
Bennetts, can become the centre of dangerous intrigues. At the
same time, the practical importance of this reaction should not be
exaggerated. The existing Republican House of Representatives
continues, and its recently elected successors will not replace it
until December 1863. For the time being, therefore, the elections
are nothing more than a demonstration, so far as the Congress in
Washington is concerned. No gubernatorial elections have been
held except in New York. The Republican Party thus retains the
leadership in the individual states. The electoral victories of the
Republicans in Massachusetts, Iowa, Illinois and Michigan more or
less balance the losses in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and
Indiana.

A closer analysis of the “Democratic” gains leads to an entirely
different result than the one trumpeted by the English papers.
New York City, strongly corrupted by Irish rabble, actively
engaged in the slave trade until recently, the seat of the American
money market and full of holders of mortgages on Southern
plantations, has always been decidedly “Democratic”, just as
Liverpool is still Tory. The rural districts of New York State voted
Republican this time, as they have since 1856, but not with the
same fiery enthusiasm as in 1860. Moreover, a large part of their
men entitled to vote is in the field. Reckoning the urban and rural

19*

districts together, the Democratic majority in New York State
comes to only 8,000-10,000 votes.

In Pennsylvania, which has long wavered, first between Whigs ***
and Democrats, and later between Democrats and Republicans, the
Democratic majority was only 3,500 votes. In Indiana it is still
smaller, and in Ohio, where it numbers 8,000, the Democratic
leaders known to sympathise with the South, such as the notorious
Vallandigham, have lost their seats in Congress. The Irishman sees
the Negro as a dangerous competitor. The efficient farmers in
Indiana and Ohio hate the Negro almost as much as the
slaveholder. He is a symbol, for them, of slavery and the
humiliation of the working class, and the Democratic press
threatens them daily with a flooding of their territories by
“niggers”.* In addition, the dissatisfaction with the miserable way
the war in Virginia is being waged was strongest in those states
which had provided the largest contingents of volunteers.

All this, however, is by no means the main thing. At the time
Lincoln was elected (1860) there was no civil war, nor was the
question of Negro emancipation on the order of the day. The
Republican Party, then quite independent of the Abolitionist
Party, aimed its 1860 electoral campaign solely at protesting
against the extension of slavery into the Territories, but, at the
same time, it proclaimed non-interference with the institution in
the states where it already existed legally.” If Lincoln had had
Emancipation of the Slaves as his motto at that time, there can be no
doubt that he would have been defeated. Any such slogan was
vigorously rejected.

Matters were quite different in the latest election. The
Republicans made common cause with the Abolitionists. They
came out emphatically for immediate emancipation, whether for
its own sake or as a means of ending the rebellion. If this
circumstance is taken into account, the majority in favour of the
government in Michigan, Illinois, Massachusetts, Iowa and Dela-
ware, and the very significant minority vote it obtained in the states
of New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania, are equally surprising.
Before the war such a result would have been impossible, even in
Massachusetts. All that is needed now is energy, on the part of the
government and of the Congress that meets next month, for the
Abolitionists, now identical with the Republicans, to have the
upper hand everywhere, both morally and numerically. Louis

The Election Results in the Northern States 265

Bonaparte’s hankering to intervene*” strengthens the Abolition-

ists’ case “from abroad”. The only danger lies in the retention of
such generals as McClellan, who are, apart from their incompe-
tence, avowed pro-slavery men.’ ?