Among our Californian passengers, we had many strong party men, and political conversation never flagged throughout the voyage. In every discussion it became more and more clear that the Democratic is the Constitutional, the Republican the Utilitarian party—rightly called “Radical,” from its habit of going to the root of things, to see whether they are good or bad. Such, however, is the misfortune of America in the possession of a written Constitution, such the reverence paid to that document on account of the character of the men who penned it, that even the extremest Radicals dare not admit in public that they aim at essential change, and the party loses, in consequence, a portion of the strength that attaches to out-spoken honesty.

The President's party at their convention—known as the “Wigwam”—which met while I was in Philadelphia, maintained that the war had but restored the “Union as it was,” with State rights unimpaired. The Republicans say that they gave their blood, as they are ready again to shed it—for the “Union as it was not;” for one nation, and not for thirty-six, or forty-five. The Wigwam declared that the Washington Government had no constitutional right to deny representation in Congress to any State.