The crowning irony in the new situation of the Jacobins was the revelation that they had played unwittingly into the hands of the Democrats.  Their short-sighted astuteness in tying up emancipation with the war powers was matched by an equal astuteness equally short-sighted.  The organization of the Little Men, when it refused to endorse Lincoln’s all-parties program, had found itself in the absurd position of a party without an issue.  It contained, to be sure, a large proportion of the Northerners who were opposed to emancipation.  But how could it make an issue upon emancipation, as long as the President, the object of its antagonism, also refused to support emancipation?  The sole argument in the Cabinet against Lincoln’s new policy was that it would give the Democrats an issue.  Shrewd Montgomery Blair prophesied that on this issue they could carry the autumn elections for Congress.  Lincoln had replied that he would take the risk.  He presented them with the issue.  They promptly accepted it But they did not stop there.  They aimed to take over the whole of the position that had been vacated by the collapse of the Vindictive Coalition.  By an adroit bit of political legerdemain they would steal their enemies’ thunder, reunite the emancipation issue with the issue of the war powers, reverse the significance of the conjunction, and, armed with this double club, they would advance from a new and unexpected angle and win the leadership of the country by overthrowing the dictator.  And this, they came very near doing.  On their double issue they rallied enough support to increase their number in Congress by thirty-three.  Had not the moment been so tragic, nothing could have been more amusing than the helpless wrath of the Jacobins caught in their own trap, compelled to gnaw their tongues in silence, while the Democrats, paraphrasing their own arguments, hurled defiant at Lincoln.

Men of intellectual courage might have broken their party ranks, daringly applied Lincoln’s own maxim “stand with any one who stands right,” and momentarily joined the Democrats in their battle against the two proclamations.  But in American politics, with a few glorious exceptions, courage of this sort has never been the order of the day.  The Jacobins kept their party line; bowed their heads to the storm; and bided their time.  In the Senate, an indiscreet resolution commending the Emancipation Proclamation was ordered to be printed, and laid on the table.(2) In the House, party exigencies were more exacting.  Despite the Democratic successes, the Republicans still had a majority.  When the Democrats made the repudiation of the President a party issue, arguing on those very grounds that had aroused the eloquence of Stevens and the rest—­why, what’s the Constitution between friends!  Or between political enemies?  The Democrats forced all the Republicans into one boat by introducing a resolution “That the policy of emancipation as indicated in that Proclamation is an assumption of powers dangerous to the rights of citizens and to the perpetuity of a free people.”  The resolution was rejected.  Among those who voted no was Stevens.(3) Indeed, the star of the Jacobins was far down on the horizon.