The Confederate soldiers, indignant at
this second betrayal, had to make their escape from the country.
It must not be supposed that this Democratic national convention
was made up altogether of Secessionists. The peace party was
still, as in the previous year, a strange complex, a mixture of
all sorts and conditions. Its cohesion was not so much due to
its love of peace as to its dislike of Lincoln and its hatred of
his party. Vallandigham was a member of the committee on
resolutions. The permanent chairman was Governor Seymour of New
York. The Convention was called to order by August Belmont, a
foreigner by birth, the American representative of the
Rothschilds. He was the head and front of that body of Northern
capital which had so long financed the South and which had always
opposed the war. In opening the Convention he said: "Four years
of misrule by a sectional, fanatical, and corrupt party have
brought our country to the verge of ruin." In the platform
Lincoln was accused of a list of crimes which it had become the
habit of the peace party to charge against him. His
administration was described as "four years of failure," and
McClellan was nominated for President.
The Republican managers called a convention at Baltimore in June,
1864, with a view to organizing a composite Union Party in which
the War Democrats were to participate.
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