Lightning Man_ The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse - Kenneth Silverman [217]
Morse backed McClellan because the general promised to seek peace on the basis of Union not Abolition, readmitting the Southern states with slavery unchanged. Morse had reservations about electing a military man. But there was Washington, of course, and McClellan’s martial spirit seemed well disciplined, “under the control of a Christian heart, a heart devoted to God, and so restrained within proper bounds.” Besides, military reputation appealed to the masses and would win votes: “I see no reason why we should not have the help of hero worshippers to put one in office whom we respect & honor for his Christian humility & devotion.” What mattered was to get rid of Lincoln, “putting out of power, the present imbecile, & bloodthirsty administration.” To aid McClellan’s campaign, the S.D.P.K. voted to merge its operations with those of the Democratic National Committee. Morse contributed a thousand dollars toward the work of this hybrid organization and was appointed to the executive committee.
He looked ahead to the November elections uneasily. At times he felt certain that Lincoln had committed “political suicide” by insisting the South could purchase peace only by ending slavery: “He is politically dead, and … will certainly be defeated.” Other times he feared that the administration might beat McClellan by a “corrupt and reckless” use of its powers. A “marked man” himself, he heard, Morse believed that his mail was being inspected at the post office; some letters came to him “opened and sealed again in the most slovenly matter.” Having already invaded personal liberties—in some cases suspending habeas corpus—the administration might now try to control the votes of the troops under its command. The possibility of a second Lincoln term again raised for Morse the painful vision of fleeing his homeland for Europe. Better peaceable exile under an established despotism than continued turmoil under a despotism clawing its way into being, “fixing itself on its throne through years of anarchy & bloodshed, on the ruins of our Republic.”
As the election neared, Morse made himself highly visible in McClellan’s New York City campaign. On November 4 he presided over a Democratic rally at a crowded meeting hall on Thirty-fourth Street, introduced as “a gentleman who, by his scientific researches and discoveries, has made his fame and name immortal.” Addressing the party faithful, he warned of administration efforts to trample the Constitution and the liberties of the people. Next evening he escorted McClellan to the balcony of the Fifth Avenue Hotel and presented him to the assemblage in the square below—“a dense mass of heads, as far as the eye could reach in every direction.” A minutes-long shout went up, reminding him of the reception he had witnessed in London fifty years ago of European military leaders who had helped defeat Napoleon at Waterloo. With McClellan he watched the nearly three-hour torchlight parade up the avenue—banners, fireworks, hats tossed in the air. Afterward McClellan took his arm as they tried to maneuver through the crush in the hotel, as three policemen scarcely managed to make a way for them.
The hoopla came to nothing. As was a foregone conclusion, Lincoln lost New York City by a landslide, about 37,000 votes. But he solidly beat McClellan in the popular and electoral vote, and by about four to one in the military vote. Morse felt he had done what he could for the Democratic party. He retreated from politics, although with foreboding. “I retire from the conflict,” he announced, “leaving the responsibility on those who have re-elected an administration from whose acts I augur only a prolongation of our civil war.” He took up his Christian duty to now devote himself to relieving the misery the war continued to create, beginning with the “so called enemy.” He chaired an informal association to collect money for the relief of captured