The Democratic state convention that met in Hartford, Connecticut, on February 18, 1863, nominated Thomas H. Seymour for governor. It adopted a platform denouncing “the ‘monstrous fallacy’ that the Union can be restored by the armed hand” and calling for a negotiated peace. Lieutenant Samuel W. Fiske of the 14th Connecticut Infantry responded in one of his regular letters to the Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican, written under the pen name Dunn Browne. Several Connecticut regiments, including Fiske’s, subsequently adopted statements opposing Seymour’s candidacy and the Hartford platform. The resolutions of the 14th Connecticut, possibly drafted by Fiske, called for “the earnest, thorough and rapid prosecution of the war” and declared that the regiment’s sacrifices had been made “in the cause of republican government, of democracy against aristocracy, of freedom against slavery.” In the election held on April 6, Governor William A. Buckingham, the Republican incumbent running on a Union ticket, defeated Seymour with 51.6 percent of the vote.
Camp near Falmouth, Va.
February 25
Oh Republican! Give me a Hartford Times or some other appropriate receptacle, for I am about to vomit. I am sick, nauseated, poisoned; have taken something that, most emphatically, doesn’t agree with me; have swallowed the vile and traitorous resolutions of the recent Democratic convention at Hartford, and have read in connection some of the speeches on the same occasion, filled with ribaldry and profanity just about in keeping with the whole spirit of the meeting. And I am ashamed and confounded, disgusted and grieved, to see what proportions treason has attained even in dear old New England. I knew that such things were talked in the darker sections of our western Egypt. I wouldn’t have been surprised to read of proceedings a little like those at Hartford as having taken place in some very ignorant district in southern Indiana. But in Connecticut, faugh! I can’t begin to express my feelings, and yet I am obliged to confess that I am one of her citizens. If the dear old state doesn’t spew out of her mouth this ill-savoring Tom Seymour Democracy at the coming April election, we of the army will march North instead of South to get at the heart of the rebellion.
Talk about demoralization of the army! Well, we have fallen pretty low. We haven’t the same strain of lofty patriotism in our talk as when we first came out. We have been knocked round and starved and frozen till we have some of us forgotten the distinction between a good government and its sometimes corrupt agents, and in our personal indignation we lost sight, for the moment, of our correct principles. We have said many things that were not complimentary to our lawful civil and military leaders; yes, we have said many things that we shall be ashamed of, if we ever get home; but I do still fully believe and hope that if any man should talk such foul stuff as that of this modern Hartford convention in any of our camps, we should have principle and decency enough left to roll him in one of our Virginia gutters and drum him out of camp. Thank God we are not so demoralized yet as to suffer downright, earnest treason to be talked in our presence.
But enough of such a disgusting subject. Let us roll some more pleasantly flavored morsel under our tongue to get that taste out of our mouth. Spring is coming, our time of hope, of fresh life and vigor, our time of accustomed triumph. The winter is almost over. Let us hope that the “winter of our discontent,” of our discouragement, reverses and distress, shall pass away with it, and that when the mud dries up, and the grass grows green, we may also “dry up” our murmuring, and our laurels grow green. I look for a great series of spring victories like those of last year—of grand, crushing, final victories—victories that shall shut off all question of foreign intervention, make such a performance as this Hartford convention a thing for even Connecticut Seymour Democrats to be ashamed of, and take away every shadow of hope from their fellow traitors at the South. I say I am looking for such victories. I shall continue to look for them very attentively and anxiously. Oh how happy we shall all be if we only find them. Yours, as ever,
DUNN BROWNE
February 25, 1863