“stickler for that obsolete thing”

President Lincoln has no intention of keeping his oath

Richmond citizens were probably happy to hear that an ” Old Line Whig” opposed Abraham Lincoln’s re-election in the 1864 campaign.

From the Richmond Daily Dispatch October 10, 1864:

M’Clellan meeting at Rochester.

A great meeting had been held at Rochester, New York, of the supporters of McClellan. Speeches were made by Washington Hunt, Francis Kernan, and others. Mr. Hunt is well known as an Old Line Whig–very orderly and conservative — as having opposed Know-Nothingism and being a considerable stickler for that obsolete thing known as the “Constitution of the United States.” Mr. Hunt charged that Lincoln had violated his own pledges, in which he promised not to interfere with the rights of the States, by issuing his emancipation proclamation, which took away from the States the most precious attribute of their sovereignty — the right to control their own concerns. The speaker, appearing to regard the people about him as of the sort he knew in other days, talked much of Lincoln’s usurpations and violated State sovereignties. We apprehend his is like the voice of one crying in the wilderness. We quote the following from his speech:

Now, one of the grounds on which I oppose Mr. Lincoln is, that he has usurped power and attempted to perform functions that are prohibited by the Constitution. I charge him here to- day with violating the Constitution which he had sworn to support. How, then, can any of you, if you believe this, ask him again to swear that oath when you know that he has deliberately violated it? Will you mock high heaven by enabling him once more to take the oath, when you know that he has no intention of keeping it? I might refer you to other parts of the Constitution. There were provisions placed in that Constitution for the protection of every American citizen in his rights of person and property. It provides that no man shall be deprived of liberty or property without due process of law — that every man shall have trial by jury; it secures the habeas corpus, which is the protection to guard the citizen against the exercise of arbitrary power, and to obtain which, cost our ancestors hundreds of years of struggle.–Those principles of our Constitution which secure to the people of the States the right to control their own concerns have been most wantonly infringed upon. Here, where people of all parties have been obeying the laws, you have seen one instance after another till they have become so numerous — the individuals seized by arbitrary process, without means of redress, have been taken to prison, confined in bastiles for month after month, and year after year, without even the formality of trial, and without even an accusation. And after being confined, in some instances, for a year they were, without any excuse, finally discharged. The tyranny of Austria is not worse. We can only be saved by the efforts which we make to regain what we have so nearly lost.

After the breakup of the Whig party Washington Hunt refused to join the Republicans and was a member of the Constitutional Union party during the 1860 presidential election. “In his last years, Hunt moved increasingly closer to the Democrats, endorsing his two-time opponent, Horatio Seymour for the New York gubernatorial race in 1862 and supporting George McClellan for the presidency at the 1864 Democratic National Convention. On June 13, 1864, Hunt was at Niagara Falls to confer with confederate Commissioner Jacob Thompson.”

Rochester, N.Y. between 1850 and 1860