Their next move was
to honor him with the office of Supreme Commander of the Sons of
Liberty, and now Vallandigham resolved to win the martyr's crown
in very fact. In June, 1864, he prepared for the dramatic effect
by carefully advertising his intention and came home. But to his
great disappointment Lincoln ignored him, and the dramatic
martyrdom which he had planned did not come off.
There still existed the possibility of a great uprising, and to
that end arrangements were made with Southern agents in Canada.
Confederate soldiers, picked men, made their way in disguise to
Chicago. There the worshipers of Arcturus were to join them in a
mighty multitude; the Confederate prisoners at Camp Douglas in
Chicago were to be liberated; around that core of veterans, the
hosts of the Pleiades were to rally. All this was to coincide
with the assembling at Chicago of the Democratic national
convention, in which Vallandigham was to appear. The organizers
of the conspiracy dreamed that the two events might coalesce;
that the convention might be stampeded by their uprising; that a
great part, if not the whole, of the convention would endorse the
establishment of a Northwestern Confederacy.
Alas for him who builds on the frame of mind that delights in
cheap rhetoric while Rome is afire! At the moment of hazard, the
Sons of Liberty showed the white feather, were full of specious
words, would not act.
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