Copperheads have a great deal to say about the cruelties of war. It is a cruel war–preeminently cruel–cruel in its inception, as being against a government which only touched subjects to bless them; cruel in its savage ferocity with which it is waged on the part of the rebels; cruel in that it has brought desolation and grief to the hearthstone of almost every household in the land. But all these horrors should not affright us, or make us hesitate one moment in our duty.
Indianapolis Daily Journal, October 20th, 1864.
Col. Harrison’s furlough came in the form of special duty. Gov. Morton ordered him back to Indiana to campaign for the Republican ticket. Democrats opposed the conduct of the Lincoln administration, and sought peace at the “earliest practicable moment.” The old party doctrine of state sovereignty Harrison denounced as “dangerous heresy, and a deadly poison to national life.” His praise for Lincoln was absolute: “the progress of Mr. Lincoln has been but the progress of the people.” The Emancipation Proclamation: “did but reflect the will of the people which clearly demanded a change of policy.”
He also had specific praise for those whom that Proclamation benefited most:
…Black men, in a hundred ways, did the work which would have otherwise fallen upon our brave soldiers.
…
Not a negro has escaped and made his way into our camps but has brought more aid to our cause than the entire brood of whining, carping Copperheads who object, in the interest of treason, to the employment of the black men.
The Republicans carried the election in Indiana: Lincoln, Morton, and Harrison.
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