Between their traditional system of legal juries and the new
system of military tribunals the Ohio voters made their choice
without hesitation. They rejected Vallandigham and sustained the
Lincoln candidate by a majority of over a hundred thousand. That
same year in New York the anti-Lincoln candidate for Secretary of
State was defeated by twenty-nine thousand votes.
Though these elections in 1863 can hardly be called the
turning-point in the history of the Lincoln Government, yet it
was clear that the tide of popularity which had ebbed so far away
from Lincoln in the autumn of 1862 was again in the flood.
Another phase of his stormy course may be thought of as having
ended. And in accounting for this turn of the tide it must not
be forgotten that between the nomination and the defeat of a
Vallandigham the bloody rebellion in New York had taken place,
Gettysburg had been fought, and Grant had captured Vicksburg.
The autumn of 1863 formed a breathing space for the war party of
the North.
CHAPTER IX. THE CRUCIAL MATTER
It is the custom of historians to measure the relative strength
of North and South chiefly in terms of population. The North
numbered 23,000,000 inhabitants; the South, about 9,000,000, of
which the slave population amounted to 3,500,000.
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