Item Description: Editorial, The Daily Journal (Wilmington, N. C.), 17 June 1864.
Transcription:
By hook or by crook, Abraham Lincoln is bound to be re-elected President of the Northern States.—That, like his nomination at Baltimore, is a foregone conclusion. He is far from being a great man, but whatever else may be thought about him, he has shown himself to be a “smart” man in his own way. He has out-jockeyed all his competitors so far, and will do so a again, we think, although the experiment be is trying is a dangerous one; but the danger lies away in the distance, beyond Mr. Lincoln’s ken and beyond his care.
At the Convention that re-nominated him, undoubted Southern States were fictitiously represented, and, in the electoral college that will choose the President, we should not wonder if the vote of North Carolina, South Carolina, Arkansas, Louisiana and other Southern States should be counted for Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson. One man out of ten is authorized, according to the Lincoln programme, to cast the vote for any of the “rebel” States. Who knows but that there may be a sufficient number of runaway negroes, Buffaloes and white Yankee soldiers in North Carolina, to muster up ten thousand votes in November next? Or, if there is not, who will say that there, will not be Lincoln agents sufficiently accommodating to return them as having voted, and, of course, voted for the present incumbent? That thing will be easily arranged. So much, we think is certain.
The New York Herald undertook to predict that Lincoln could not be nominated, and that Grant would be. The result shows how far the Herald was mistaken. The same paper takes upon itself to say that Lincoln will not be elected. In this prediction it is almost as certain to be mistaken as it was in its prediction about the nomination. Lincoln plays with loaded dice, and unless his election is prevented by force it will certainly be accomplished by fraud.
The great State of New York may feel insulted by having its vote offset by electoral delegations presuming to represent North or South Carolina, Alabama or Arkansas, Louisiana or Texas or Florida. New York may fully understand the fraud, but it will be unable to right itself without having a resort to open force, and we doubt if it will have that resort. For the time, at least, Lincoln will probably be master of the situation. He will carry his point. Away in the future will loom up dangers and difficulties. The seeds of distraction and suspicion will be planted, and they will be certain to bear bitter fruit. But that will be in the future, beyond the ken or the care of men like Mr. Lincoln, who are merely “smart” and not wise—who arc politicians but not statesmen,—who are fanatics and not patriots.
Why Hamblin was thrown overboard we can hardly tell. Hamblin was as black a Republican as anybody. There has been nothing white about him, not even his complexion, since it is shrewdly questioned whether he is a full-blooded white man himself. But he has been thrown over board to make room for Andrew Johnson, perhaps because Johnson hails from one of those Southern States from which a bogus delegation is expected to cast a counterfeit vote for Lincoln.
Item Citation: Editorial, The Daily Journal (Wilmington, N.C.), 17 June 1864, page 2, column 1. Call number C071 W74j, North Carolina Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
