Harpers Weekly, June 16, 1860
The Democratic nomination will be made at Baltimore on the 18th instant, and the Presidential campaign of 1860 will then be fairly opened. Two of the parties have already engaged in the contest, and the third will not be far behind. It is our province to survey the field with an impartial eye, and we venture to offer a bit of advice to the combatants which, in the heat of the battle, they will probably entirely forget, but which is nevertheless well worthy attention.
When the young lawyer began his argument with the creation of the world, the Judge interrupted him to say, ” Sir, the Court may be presumed to know something.” Bear in mind, therefore, gentlemen, that the people—the tribunal to which you all appeal—may be supposed to know something of their own affairs. The great questions are grave and momentous, doubtless, but they are so mainly because the people understand them as well as the orators. They will not believe, for instance, that any slight shock will shiver the Union because they know that it is always better to bear the ills we have than to fly to those we nothing about. It is only when ills are perceived to be beyond redress that there is any hope of the success of an appeal to violence. And so long as the dominant race in any country are generally prosperous—so long as their own interests and rights are not felt by them to be invaded— so long they will maintain the statu quo. The secret of the enthusiastic success of Garibaldi in Sicily is the conviction of the great mass of the people that he comes to deliver them from an intolerable condition. On the other hand, the cause of the ludicrous failure of the Chartist effort in England is the equally strong conviction of the mass of Englishmen that their troubles are remediable by some process less doubtful in its operation than open revolution.
There never was a people who better understood what may be called “political gag” than the American. They go to great mass meetings during the pleasant summer months of a campaign, as they go to theatres and other places of amusement during the winter, to be entertained. The man who can tell the funniest stories in the funniest way is the favorite orator. Banners, torches, music, rallying cries, symbols of every kind increase the good-humored excitement. But the thinking, which really determines the voting, is not done in a mass meeting. The speaking which persuades is not a volley of rich jokes or fine rhetoric. The President is really elected not during the technical “campaign,” but during the administration of his predecessor. If that administration seem to the people favorable to their interests, his policy is confirmed by the selection of a successor who will pursue the same course. If the majority disapprove of that policy, it is changed by their will, despite the best jokes and the most extravagant rhetoric. Let the orators but remember this; let them bear in mind that the people understand their own interests, and they may spare their threats, denunciations, prophecies, and “gag,” and confine themselves to a reasonable statement of their case on whatever side it may be. Then they may justly congratulate themselves that they have really helped the cause in which they believe, by appealing not to the passions or prejudices but to the common sense of the people.