My Memories of Eighty Years [11]
Seymour's resentment was raised to fever heat when General Burnside, in May, 1863, arrested Clement L. Vallandigham. The enemies of the war and peace at any price people, and those who were discouraged, called mass meetings all over the country to protest this arrest as an outrage. A mass meeting was called in Albany on the 16th of May. Erastus Corning, one of the most eminent Democrats in the State, presided.
I was in Albany at the time and learned this incident. One of Governor Seymour's intimate friends, his adviser and confidant in personal business affairs was Charles Cook, who had been comptroller of the State and a State senator. Cook was an active Republican, a very shrewd and able man. He called on the governor and tried to persuade him not to write a letter to the Vallandigham meeting, but if he felt he must say something, attend the meeting and make a speech. Cook said: "Governor, the country is going to sustain ultimately the arrest of Vallandigham. It will be proved that he is a traitor to the government and a very dangerous man to be at large. Whatever is said at the meeting will seriously injure the political future of the authors. If you write a letter it will be on record, so I beg you, if you must participate, attend the meeting and make a speech. A letter cannot be denied; it can always be claimed that a speech has been misreported."
The Governor wrote the letter, one of the most violent of his utterances, and it was used against him with fatal effect when he ran for governor, and also when a candidate for president.
On July 11th the draft began in New York City. It had been denounced as unconstitutional by every shade of opposition to Mr. Lincoln's administration and to the prosecution of the war. The attempt to enforce it led to one of the most serious riots in the history of the city, and the rage of the rioters was against the officers of the law, the headquarters of the draft authorities, and principally against the negroes. Every negro who was caught was hung or burned, and the negro orphan asylum was destroyed by fire. The governor did his best to stop the rioting. He issued a proclamation declaring the city in a state of insurrection, and commanded obedience to the law and the authorities.
In this incident again the governor permitted his opposition to the war to lead him into political indiscretion. He made a speech from the steps of the City Hall to the rioters. He began by addressing them as "My friends." The governor's object was to quiet the mob and send them to their homes. So instead of saying "fellow citizens" he used the fatal words "my friends." No two words were ever used against a public man with such fatal effect. Every newspaper opposed to the governor and every orator would describe the horrors, murders, and destruction of property by the mob and then say: "These are the people whom Governor Seymour in his speech from the steps of the City Hall addressed as 'my friends.'"
The Vallandigham letter and this single utterance did more harm to Governor Seymour's future ambitions than all his many eloquent speeches against Lincoln's administration and the conduct of the war.
The political situation, which had been so desperate for the national administration, changed rapidly for the better with the victory at Gettysburg, which forced General Lee out of Pennsylvania and back into Virginia, and also by General Grant's wonderful series of victories at Vicksburg and other places which liberated the Mississippi River.
Under these favorable conditions the Republicans entered upon the canvass in the fall of 1863 to reverse, if possible, the Democratic victory the year before. The Republican State ticket was:
Secretary of State ..... Chauncey M. Depew. Comptroller ..... Lucius Robinson. Canal Commissioner ..... Benjamin F. Bruce. Treasurer ..... George W. Schuyler. State Engineer ..... William B. Taylor. Prison Inspector ..... James K. Bates. Judge of the Court of Appeals ..... Henry S. Selden. Attorney-General ..... John Cochran.
The canvass was