Thus, with divisions within the ranks of the Union-Republican party, with the country long ing for peace, with many factors and elements arousing and uniting the opposition, there was danger that the Union-Republican party would be defeated by the party calling itself the "Con servative-Union Party.* This party had nom inated Gen. George B. McClellan, one of Lin coln's deposed generals, on a peace platform, demanding peace after "four years of failure to restore the Union by wan)) Their policy was to restore the Union by stopping the war, by armistice, negotiation, convention,—by some diplomatic agreement to which both parties might agree, and that fighting should cease until an arrangement could'be adjusted. They would substitute negotiation for subjugation. Pre sumably, in the mind of this party, if negotia tion failed disunion was preferable to a con tinuance of the war. Their great political error was in their failure to perceive that it was for ever too late, on account of the state of public sentiment both North and South, to secure a restoration of the old Union under the old Constitution. While there was any hope left to them in the field the South would never consent to a restoration of the Union; and when their military defeat, after Atlanta, Nashville and Sherman's march to the sea, became a foregone conclusion, then the tertns of settlement and reunion were to be determined only by the national will. But it was in the face of the sit uation before these military victories in the lat ter part of '63 and the early part of '64, with the cry for peace seemingly almost irresistible, that Andrew, Sumner and other radical anti slavery men felt that the most important thing to do was to rescue Lincoln from the peace in fluences that seemed to surround him; from those who were tempting or pushing him to an unworthy or disgraceful offer of compromise with the leaders of the rebellion. These radical spirits wished to prevent Lincoln from offering the South peace merely, on the basis of a re stored Union without emancipation.
There were other political phases of the war on which the opposition joined issue with the administration. The conduct of foreign affairs was made the subject of severe animadversion. In the settlement of the Trent affair it was charged that Seward had been subservient to Great Britain and had sacrificed the national honor. In his tolerance of the French interven tion in Mexico he had sacrificed the traditional policy of the Monroe Doctrine (q.v.). In do mestic affairs the financial and revenue policy of the government were brought into adverse review; while the creation and the admission of West Virginia were denounced as an unconsti tutional act of spoliation and dismemberment of the "Old Dominion.* In the long session of 1861-62 Congress passed a number of measures which, even In this brief review, should not go unmentioned. It authorized the President to take possession of the railroad and the telegraph when the public safety required it; passed a Homestead Act ; established a Department of Agriculture; passed the act to donate public lands to States and Territories for the purpose of founding agricultural colleges; authorized the construc tion of a railroad to the Pacific Ocean, aiding the road in land and government bonds; and, finally, created the comprehensive scheme of internal taxation. The. famous Revenue Act of 1 July 1862 developed the excise tax in a man ner unheard of in this country before. Writers have frequently applied to this system of in ternal revenue Sydney Smith's humorous ac count of British taxation in 1820: "Taxes upon every article which enters into the mouth, or covers the back, or is placed under the foot; taxes upon everything which it is pleasant to see, hear, feel, taste or smell; taxes upon warmth, light and locomotion; taxes on every thing on earth and the waters under the earth.*
Every visible commodity or transaction was taxed. Licenses were required of all distillers and brewers, manufacturers, wholesale and retail dealers, of men in all kinds of business,— proprietors of theatres, of jugglers and circuses, of lawyers, physicians, surgeons and dentists. The act imposed 20 cents per gallon on spirits, $1 per gallon on malt liquors, a heavy tax on , tobacco and cigars, carriages, yachts, billiard tables and plate; on slaughtered hogs, cattle and sheep; on passports, legacies and receipts from railroads, steamboats and toll-bridges; on divi dends from banks and trust companies; and 3 per cent was assessed on incomes less than $10,000 and 5 per cent on incomes over $10,000, with an exemption of $600. Stamp duties on all kinds of paper were imposed. The income tax was regarded as a form of excise, not a direct tax. (See INCOME TAx). This Revenue Act and Legal Tender Acti under which $450,000, 000 of legal tender notes, commonly called greenbacks, were issued, were the most impor tant pieces of fiscal legislation during the war. See LEGAL TENDER.
After the military successes of the Union arms in the fall of 1864 and after the re-election of Lincoln all hope of an independent Confed eracy passed away. It was then only a question of endurance, of °fighting to the last The peace conferences had come to naught and the demands for an armistice were no longer a menace to the complete.triumph of the national arms. (See HAMPTON ROADS CONFERENCE). Al ready, in 1864, the 13th Amendment and the various plans of reconstruction had begun to receive the attention of Congress, and it is to these subjects, after the fall of 1864, that the student of the political history of the war should give his attention.
Bibliography.— Blaine, J. G.,
Years in
(Norwich 1884-93) ; Bur gess, J. W.,
Civil War and the Constitution) (New York 1901) ; Davis, J.,