I have translated the enclosed article from the Byzantes, a Greek paper
published in this capital, which has a large circulation both here and
among the Greek population throughout the empire.
It may be gratifying to the President to know how perfectly his character
and actions are appreciated at this distant point by a foreign people,
(for the editor but represents the sentiments common to all Greeks,) and
how important his re-election is regarded by the friends of liberty in
the east.
Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State.
The American presidential election.
[From the Byzantés, the leading
Greek paper at Constantinople, of the 4th December,
1864.]
The news from New York announces the re-election of Mr. Lincoln,
President of the United States. All the States, with the exception
of three, cast their suffrage for this bold and energetic leader of
the republic, who, long since, thoroughly cognizant of the ultimate
aims of the southern secessionists, has inflexibly persevered in his
efforts to preserve the Union at all hazards.
The event may be regarded as the beginning of the end. The war will
be brought to an end, the Union will be saved, and foreign
machinations will be foiled. Through the election of the peace
candidate for the presidency foreign influence hoped to secure the
success of the secession movement and the establishment of another
power between the new empire of Mexico and the great democratic
republic. If Mr. Lincoln had been defeated, the great undertaking
which has been so long prosecuted, and at such immense sacrifices of
blood and treasure, would have been frustrated, and before long the
republic, through foreign intrigue, would have been dismembered, and
the secession of the south recognized as a fixed fact, There would,
no doubt, have been found in every State of the Union men lost to
all patriotic instincts and animated exclusively by selfish ambition
and monarchical sympathies, who would have played the same part in
their respective States which the secessionists are now performing
in regard to the Union. In confirmation of the truth of our remarks,
we refer to the tone of the greater part of the French press. There
is no mistaking it. The independence of the south is a question of
life or death for the new dynasty in Mexico.
The secession movement is powerfully sustained from abroad by secret
aid. The piratical cruisers of the disunionists find an asylum under
the guns of Cherbourg, in France, and of Brazilian ships-of-war in
the harbors of that country. Look at the affair of the Alabama and
the Florida; look at the frenzied zeal of the French journalists for
the election of anybody but Lincoln, and the false reports
constantly published by them of reputed successes of the south, and
their clamor for the cessation of the war and the intervention of
European states, and it will be seen that we are not far from the
truth, Lincoln has shown himself a man of superior intelligence; a
consummate patriot, combining prudence with energy, and fertile, in
an extraordinary degree, in expedients necessary for the successful
prosecution of the great contest which he has in charge.
If America is indebted to Washington for one thing, it will ere long
be made manifest that to Lincoln she owes all. Washington founded
the Union; Lincoln will preserve it. It is undoubtedly a much more
difficult task to preserve than to establish. Lincoln, as President
of the United States, has become the providential savior of human
liberty. His indomitable perseverance has stimulated the wonderful
activity of the northern armies, given new life to [Page 278] the persistent energy of Grant and of
the other generals of the north. Under his administration the
American war approaches its end, and the south is sinking under
exhaustion from the incessant attacks to which it is subject, the
devastation of its chief cities, and the systematic siege of its
capital. Lincoln has accomplished the programme of the Unionists. At
first this programme embraced only the abolition of negro slavery at
every cost; subsequently Lincoln added to it the maintenance of the
Union at all hazards. Through the first the United States has shown
itself consistent with the political principles to which it owes its
origin; through the second, Lincoln has completely baffled the
insidious schemes of the monarchists.
The enemies of the administration of Lincoln have denounced it in
every way as factious, selfish, reckless, and improvident, and as
leading the Union to ruin. One of the chief organs of the
monarchical faction, the editor of the Courrier des Etats Unis,
immediately after the election of Lincoln, left the State and
transferred the seat of publication of his paper to Mexico.
Despairing of sowing seeds of dissension in the republic, he has
offered his services to the new empire. The enemies of Mr. Lincoln
and the Union have endeavored to weaken the force of his re-election
by asserting that it has been accomplished by illegal means. The
result has, however, signally demonstrated that it is altogether
owing to the unshaken confidence of the American people in the
character and actions of the President. The enemies of the Union
have not only sought to secure its dissolution by foreign
intervention, but also in the protection which, openly and in
defiance of law, they have afforded to the piratical vessels of the
confederates, to involve the Union in war with foreign states, and
to render Americans the instruments of America’s ruin. The world has
seen with what consummate skill Lincoln has navigated the ship of
state through these perils by which it has been surrounded. Our
readers recollect the manner in which Drouyn de Lhuys received the
American minister, Mr. Dayton, on entering his office to express to
him the views of Mr. Lincoln with respect to the new Mexican
monarchy: “You proclaim war against us, then.”
They who befriend the new Mexican empire, and who lavish their
treasure for schemes of annexation and conquest in Cochin China,
Africa, and America, to support the political system with which
their interests are involved, are enemies of Lincoln. It is natural
that the monarchical reactionists should denounce the republicans as
demagogues, charlatans, sans culottes,
revolutionists, &c, &c. They are called demagogues because
they tell the people what their enemies do not wish them to know;
charlatans, because they are frank and unreserved in their dealings
with them; revolutionists, because they have the power to move the
popular mind in the hour of danger. It is no wonder, indeed, that
Lincoln is calumniated by these traducers of the friends of liberty.
Despite this storm of calumny, and of the efforts of the enemies of
the great American republic, the helm of state has been again
committed by the suffrage of the people to the hands of this man of
firm and inflexible purpose, and of indomitable perseverance. The
war will soon terminate through the subjugation or the pacification
of the. south. The Jefferson Davis and Lee monarchical instruments
cannot withstand the iron will of twenty millions of people, and the
southern States will return within their proper orbit. And if
Juarez, respecting the interests of the great democracy, may now be
silent, he will again be heard when peace is made in the United
States. The recent Union victories have given serious apprehension
to the patrons of the new Mexican empire; they see in them the signs
of approaching ruin to the cause of Jefferson Davis; and when that
shall take place they know the road to Mexico will be opened.
The re-election of Mr. Lincoln to the presidency of the United States
must be regarded as an event of signal historical import to the
cause of liberty, and as a vindication of the superior intelligence
of the American people. If ever there was a day in American history
which required the practical exercise of legal liberty, it was the
day of the recent election for the President of the United States.
There can never be in the annals of the United States a more
memorable day than that of the 8th of November, 1864. If the
confederates make a great show of effort, and if Hood has entered
Tennessee with 30,000 men, Sherman, according to the telegraph,
having destroyed Atlanta, has abandoned it. Grant is erecting his
winter tents in front of Richmond, and an extraordinary activity
pervades all the armies of the north. The coming spring will, in all
probability, finish a war which, on account of many difficulties,
could not have been previously brought to an end.
