BOOK III. GREAT SPEECHES ON GREAT ISSUES. (continued 12)

At no previous period of our history have opportunity and duty so happily united to direct the people of this country to the triumphs and to the imperfections of our government. We have reached a healthy calm in our political struggles. The nation has a trusted ruler, just chosen by an overwhelming vote. The disappointments of conviction or of ambition have passed away, and all yield cordial obedience and respect to the lawful authority of the country. The long-lingering passions of civil war have, for the last time, embittered our political strife, and must now be consigned to forgetfulness. The nation is assured of peace. The embers of discord may convulse a State until justice shall be enthroned over mad partisanship, but peace and justice are the inexorable purposes of the people, and they will be obeyed. Sectional hatred, long fanned by political necessities, is henceforth effaced from our politics, and the unity of a sincere brotherhood will be the cherished faith of every citizen. We first conquered rebellion, and now have conquered the bitterness and estrangement of its discomfiture.

The Vice-President of the insurgent Confederacy is a Representative in our Congress. One who was first in the field and last in the Senate in support of rebellion has just died while representing the government in a diplomatic position of the highest honor. Another who served the Confederacy in the field and in the forum, has been one of the constitutional advisers of the national administration. One of the most brilliant of Confederate warriors now serves in the United States Senate, and has presided over that body. The first Lieutenant of Lee was long since honored with responsible and lucrative official trust, and many of lesser note, lately our enemies, are discharging important public duties. The war and its issues are settled forever. Those who were arrayed against each other in deadly conflict are now friends. The appeal from the ballot to the sword has been made, and its arbitrament has been irrevocably ratified by the supreme power of the nation. Each has won from the other the respect that is ever awarded to brave men, and the affection that was clouded by the passion that made both rush to achieve an easy triumph, has returned chastened and strengthened by our common sacrifices. Our battle-fields will be memorable as the theatres of the conflicts of the noblest people the world had to offer to the god of carnage, and the monuments to our dead, North and South, will be pointed to by succeeding generations as the proud records of the heroism of the American people.

The overshadowing issues touching the war and its logical results are now no longer in controversy, and in vain will the unworthy invoke patriotism to give them unmerited distinction. No supreme danger can now confront the citizen who desires to correct errors or abuses of our political system. He who despairs of free institutions because evils have been tolerated, would have despaired of every administration the country has ever had, and of every government the world has ever known. If corruption pervades our institutions to an alarming extent, let it not be forgotten that it is the natural order of history repeating itself. It is but the experience of every nation, and our own experience returning to us, to call into vigorous action the regenerating power of a patriotic people. We have a supreme tribunal that is most jealous of its high prerogatives, and that will wield its authority mercilessly when the opportune season arrives. We have just emerged from the most impassioned and convulsive strife of modern history. It called out the highest type of patriotism, and life and treasure were freely given with the holiest devotion to the cause of self-government. With it came those of mean ambition, and of venal purposes, and they could gain power while the unselfish were devoted to the country’s cause. They could not be dethroned because there were grave issues which dare not be sacrificed. Such evils must be borne at times in all governments, rather than destroy the temple to punish the enemies of public virtue. To whatever extent these evils exist, they are not the legitimate creation of our free institutions. They are not the creation of maladministration, nor of any party. They are the monstrous barnacles spawned by unnatural war, which clogged the gallant ship of State in her extremity, and had to be borne into port with her. And now that the battle is ended, and the issues settled, do not distrust the reserved power of our free institutions. It will heal the scars of war and efface the stains of corruption, and present the great Republic to the world surpassing in grandeur, might and excellence, the sublimest conceptions ever cherished of human government.

3194As you come to assume the responsibilities which must be accepted by the educated citizen, you will be profoundly impressed with the multiplied dangers which threaten the government. They will appear not only to be innumerable and likely to defy correction, but they will seem to be of modern creation. It is common to hear intelligent political leaders declaim against the moral and intellectual degeneracy of the times, and especially against the decline in public morality and statesmanship. They would make it appear that the people and the government in past times were models of purity and excellence, while we are unworthy sons of noble sires. Our rulers are pronounced imbecile, or wholly devoted to selfish ends.

Our law-makers are declared to be reeking with corruption or blinded by ambition, and greed and faithlessness are held up to the world as the chief characteristics of our officials. From this painful picture we turn to the history of those who ruled in the earlier and what we call the better days of the Republic, and the contrast sinks us deep in the slough of despair. I am not prepared to say that much of the complaint against the political degeneracy of the times, and the standard of our officials, is not just; but in the face of all that can be charged against the present, I regard it as the very best age this nation has ever known. The despairing accusations made against our public servants are not the peculiar creation of the times in which we live, and the allegation of wide spread demoralization in the body politic, was no more novel in any of the generations of the past than it is now. We say nothing of our rulers that was not said of those whose memory we so sacredly worship. License is one of the chief penalties, indeed the sole defect of liberty, and it has ever asserted its prerogatives with tireless industry. It was as irreverent with Washington as it is with Grant. It racked Jefferson and Jackson, and it pained and scarred Lincoln and Chase, and their compatriots. It criticised the campaigns and the heroes of the revolutionary times, as we criticise the living heroes of our day. It belittled the statesmen of every epoch in our national progress, just as we belittle those who are now the guardians of our free institutions. Perhaps we have more provocation than they had; but if so, they were less charitable, for the tide of ungenerous criticism and distrust has known no cessation. I believe we have had seasons when our political system was more free from blemish than it is now, and that we have had periods when both government and people maintained a higher standard of excellence than we can boast of; but it is equally true that we have, in the past, sounded a depth in the decline of our political administration that the present age can never reach.

You must soon appear in the active struggles for the perpetuity of free government, and some of the sealed chapters of the past are most worthy of your careful study. I would not efface one good inspiration that you have gathered from the lives and deeds of our fathers, whose courage and patriotism have survived their infirmities. Whatever we have from them that is purifying or elevating, is but the truth of history; and when unborn generations shall have succeeded us, no age in all the long century of freedom in the New World, will furnish to them higher standards of heroism and statesmanship than the defamed and unappreciated times in which we live. And when the future statesmen shall turn to history for the most unselfish and enlightened devotion to the Republic, they will pause over the records we have written, and esteem them the brightest in all the annals of man’s best efforts for his race. We can judge of the true standard of our government and people only by a faithful comparison with the true standard of the men and events which have passed away. You find widespread distrust of the success of our political system. It is the favorite theme of every disappointed ambition, and the vanquished of every important struggle are tempted, in the bitterness of defeat, to despair of the government. Would you know whence comes this chronic or spasmodic political despair? If so, you must turn back over the graves of ages, for it is as old as free government. Glance at the better days of which we all have read, and to which modern campaign eloquence is so much indebted. Do not stop with the approved histories of the fathers of the Republic. They tell only of the transcendent wisdom and matchless perfections of those who gave us liberty and ordained government of the people. Go to the inner temple of truth. Seek that which was then hidden from the nation, but which in these days of newspapers and free schools, and steam and lightning, is an open record so that he who runs may read. Gather up the few public journals of a century ago, and the rare personal letters and sacred diaries of the good and wise men whose examples are so earnestly longed for in the degenerate present, and your despair will be softened and your indignation at current events will be tempered, as you learn that our history is steadily repeating itself, and that with all our many faults, we grow better as we progress.

Do you point to the unfaltering courage and countless sacrifices of those who gave us freedom, so deeply crimsoned with their blood? I join you in naming them with reverence, but I must point to their sons, for whom we have not yet ceased to mourn, 3195who equalled them in every manly and patriotic attribute. When wealth and luxury were about us to tempt our people to indifference and ease, the world has no records of heroism which dim the lustre of the achievements we have witnessed in the preservation of the liberty our fathers bequeathed to us. Have corruption and perfidy stained the triumphs of which we boast? So did corruption and perfidy stain the revolutionary “times that tried men’s souls.” Do we question the laurels with which our successful captains have been crowned by a grateful country? So did our forefathers question the just distinction of him who was first in war and first in peace, and he had not a lieutenant who escaped distrust, nor a council of war that was free from unworthy jealousies and strife. Do politicians and even statesmen teach the early destruction of our free institutions? It is the old, old story; “the babbling echo mocks itself.” It distracted the cabinets of Washington and the elder Adams. It was the tireless assailant of Jefferson and Madison. It made the Jackson administration tempestuous. It gave us foreign war under Polk. It was a teeming fountain of discord under Taylor, Pierce and Buchanan. It gave us deadly fraternal conflict under Lincoln. Its dying throes convulsed the nation under Johnson. The promise of peace, soberly accepted from Grant, was the crown of an unbroken column of triumphs over the distrust of every age, that was attacking free government. Do we complain of violent and profligate legislation? Hamilton, the favorite statesman of Washington, was the author of laws, enacted in time of peace, which could not have been enforced in our day even under the necessities and passions of war. And when the judgment of the nation repealed them, he sought to overthrow the popular verdict, because he believed that the government was overthrown. Almost before order began after the political chaos of the revolution, the intensest struggles were made, and the most violent enactments urged, for mere partisan control. Jefferson, the chief apostle of government of the people, did not always cherish supreme faith in his own work. He trembled at the tendencies to monarchy, and feared because of “the dupery of which our countrymen have shown themselves susceptible.” He rescued the infant Republic from the centralization that was the lingering dregs of despotism, and unconsciously sowed the seeds which ripened into States’ rights and nullification under Jackson, and into rebellion under Lincoln. But for the desperate conflict of opposing convictions as to the corner-stone of the new structure, Jefferson would have been more wise and conservative. He was faithful to popular government in the broadest acceptation of the theory. He summed it up in his memorable utterance to his neighbors when he returned from France. He said:—“The will of the majority, the natural law of every society, is the only sure guardian of the rights of man. Perhaps even this may sometimes err, but its errors are honest solitary and short-lived.” Politically speaking, with the patriots and statesmen of the “better days” of the Republic, their confidence in, or distrust of, the government, depended much upon whether Hamilton or Jefferson ruled. Dream of them as we may, they were but men, with the same ambition, the same love of power, the same infirmities, which we regard as the peculiar besetting sins of our times. If you would refresh your store of distrust of all political greatness, study Jefferson through Burr and Hamilton, or Washington and Hamilton through Jefferson, or Jackson through Clay and the second Adams, or Clay and Adams through Jackson and Randolph, and you will think better of the enlightened and liberal age in which you live.

No error is so common among free people as the tendency to depreciate the present and all its agencies and achievements.

We all turn with boundless pride to the Senate of Clay, Webster and Calhoun. In the period of their great conflicts, it was the ablest legislative tribunal the world has ever furnished. Rome and Greece in the zenith of their greatness, never gathered such a galaxy of statesmen. But not until they had passed away did the nation learn to judge them justly. Like the towering oaks when the tempest sweeps over the forest, the storm of faction was fiercest among their crowns, and their struggles of mere ambition, and their infirmities, which have been kindly forgotten, often made the thoughtless or the unfaithful despair of our free institutions. Not one of them escaped detraction or popular reprobation. Not one was exempt from the grave accusation of shaping the destruction of our nationality, and yet not one meditated deliberate wrong to the country on which all reflected so much honor. Calhoun despaired of the Union, because of the irrepressible antagonism of sectional interests, but he cherished the sincerest faith in free institutions. But when the dispassionate historian of the future is brought to the task of recording the most memorable triumphs of our political system, he will pass over the great Senate of the last generation, and picture in their just proportions the grander achievements of the heroes and statesmen who have been created in our own time. If we could draw aside the veil that conceals the future from us, and see how our children will judge the trials 3196and triumphs of the last decade, we would be shamed at our distrust of ourselves and of the instruments we have employed to discharge the noblest duties. Our agents came up from among us. We knew them before they were great, and remembered well their common inheritance of human defects.—They are not greater than were men who had lived before them, but the nation has had none in all the past who could have written their names higher on the scroll of fame. We knew Lincoln as the uncouth Western campaigner and advocate; as a man of jest, untutored in the graces, and unschooled in statesmanship. We know him in the heat and strife of the political contests which made him our President, and our passions and prejudices survived his achievements. If his friends, we were brought face to face with his imperfections, and perhaps complained that he was unequal to impossibilities. If his enemies, we antagonized his policy and magnified his errors. We saw him wrestle with the greed of the place-man, with the ambitious warrior and with the disappointed statesman. We received his great act of Emancipation as a part of the mere political policy of his rule, and judged it by the light of prejudiced partisan convictions.

But how will those of the future judge him? When the hatreds which attached to his public acts have passed into forgetfulness; when his infirmities shall have been buried in oblivion, and when all his master monuments shall stand out in bold relief, made stainless by the generous offices of time, his name will be linked with devotion wherever liberty has a worshipper. And it will be measurably so of those who were his faithful co-laborers. It will be forgotten that they were at times weak, discordant, irresolute men when they had to confront problems the solution of which had no precedents in the world’s history. It will not be conspicuous in the future records of those great events, that the most learned and experienced member of his cabinet would have accepted peace by any supportable compromise, and that one of the most trusted of his constitutional advisers would have assented to peaceable dismemberment to escape internecine war. Few will ever know that our eminent Minister of War was one of those who was least hopeful of the preservation of the unity of the States, when armed secession made its first trial of strength with the administration. It will not be recorded how the surrender of Sumter was gravely discussed to postpone the presence of actual hostilities, and how the midsummer madness of rebellion made weakness and discord give way to might and harmony, by the first gun that sent its unprovoked messenger of death against the flag and defenders of the Union. It will not be remembered that faction ran riot in the highest places, and that the struggle for the throne embittered cabinet councils and estranged eminent statesmen, even when the artillery of the enemy thundered within sound of the Capital.

It will not be declared how great captains toyed with armies and decimated them upon the deadly altar of ambition, and how blighted hopes of preferment made jangled strife and fruitless campaigns. Nor will the insidious treason that wounded the cause of free government in the home of its friends, blot the future pages of our history in the just proportions in which the living felt and knew it. It will be told that in the hour of greatest peril, the administration was criticised, and the constitution and laws expounded, with supreme ability and boldness, while the meaner struggles of the cowardly and faithless will be effaced with the passions of the times that created them. And it is best that these defects of greatness should slumber with mortality. Not only the heroes and rulers, but the philanthropists as well, of all nations and ages, have had no exemption from the frailties which are colossal when in actual view. That we have been no better than we have seen ourselves, does not prove that we are a degenerate people. On the contrary, it teaches how much of good and great achievement may be hoped for with all the imperfections we see about us. In our unexampled struggle, when faction, and corruption, and faithlessness had done their worst, a regenerated nationality, saved to perfected justice, liberty and law, was the rich fruits of the patriotic efforts of the people and their trusted but fallible leaders. There is the ineffaceable record we have written for history, and it will be pointed to as the sublimest tribute the world has given to the theory of self-government. The many grievous errors and bitter jealousies of the conflict which weakened and endangered the cause; the venality that grew in hideous strength, while higher and holier cares gave it safety; the incompetency that grasped place on the tidal waves of devotion to country, and the widespread political evils which still linger as sorrowful legacies among us, will in the fulness of time be healed and forgotten, and only the grand consummation will be memorable. This generous judgment of the virtue and intelligence of the people, that corrects the varying efforts and successes of political prostitution; that pardons the defects of those who are faithful in purpose, and without which the greatest deeds would go down to posterity scarred and deformed, is the glass through which all must read of the noblest triumphs of men.

Our Republic stands alone in the whole 3197records of civil government. In its theory, in its complete organization, and in its administration, it is wholly exceptional. We talk thoughtlessly of the overthrow of the old Republics, and the weak or disappointed turn to history for the evidence of our destruction. It is true that Republics which have been mighty among the powers of the earth have crumbled into hopeless decay, and that the shifting sands of time have left desolate places where once were omnipotence and grandeur. Rome made her almost boundless conquests under the banner of the Republic, and a sister Republic was her rival in greatness and splendor. They are traced obscurely on the pages of history as governments of the people. Rome became mistress of the world. Her triumphal arches of costliest art recorded her many victories. Her temples of surpassing elegance, her colossal and exquisite statues of her chieftains, her imposing columns dedicated to her invincible soldiery, and her apparently rapid progress toward a beneficent civilization, give the story of the devotion and heroism of her citizens. But Rome never was a free representative government. What is called her Republic was but a series of surging plebeian and patrician revolutions, of Tribunes, Consuls and Dictators, with seasons of marvelous prowess under the desperate lead of as marvelous ambition. The tranquillity, the safety, and the inspiration of a government of liberty and law, are not to be found in all the thousand years of Roman greatness. The lust of empire was the ruling passion in the ancient Republics. Hannibal reflected the supreme sentiment of Carthage when he bowed at the altar and swore eternal hostility to Rome; and Cato, the Censor, as faithfully spoke for Rome when he declared to an approving Senate—“Carthago delenda!” Such was the mission of what history hands down to us as the great free governments of the ancients. Despotism was the forerunner of corruption, and the proudest eras they knew were but hastening them to inevitable destruction.

The imperial purple soon followed in Rome, as a debauched people were prepared to accept in form what they had long accepted with the mockery of freedom. Rulers and subjects, noble and ignoble, church and state, made common cause to precipitate her decay. At last the columns of the barbarian clouded her valleys. The rude hosts of Attila, the “Scourge of God,” swarmed upon her, and their battle-axes smote the demoralized warriors of the tottering empire. The Goth and the Vandal jostled each other from the degraded sceptre they had conquered, and Rome was left widowed in her ruins. And Carthage!—she too had reared a great government by spoliation, and called it a Republic. It was the creation of ambition and conquest. Her great chieftain swept over the Pyrenees and the Alps with his victorious legions, and even made the gates of the Eternal City tremble before the impetuous advance of the Carthaginians. But Carthage never was free until the cormorant and the bittern possessed it, and the God of nations had “stretched out upon it the line of confusion and the stones of emptiness.” Conqueror and conquered are blotted from the list of the nations of the earth. We read of the Grecian Republic; but it was a libel upon free government. Her so-called free institutions consisted of a loose, discordant confederation of independent States, where despotism ruled in the name of liberty. Sparta has made romance pale before the achievements of her sons, but her triumphs were not of peace, nor were they for free government. Athens abolished royalty more than a thousand years before the Christian era, and made Athenian history most thrilling and instructive, but her citizens were strangers to freedom. The most sanguinary wars with sister States, domestic convulsions almost without cessation, and the grinding oppression of caste, were the chief offerings of the government to its subjects. Solon restored her laws to some measure of justice, only to be cast aside for the usurper. Greece yet has a name among the nations of the world, but her sceptre for which the mightiest once warred to enslave her people under the banner of the Republic, has long since been unfelt in shaping the destiny of mankind. Thus did Rome and Carthage and Greece fade from the zenith of distinction and power, before constitutional government of the people had been born among men. To-day there is not an established sister Republic that equals our single Commonwealth in population. Spain, France and Mexico have in turn worshiped Emperors, Kings, Dictators and popular Presidents. Yesterday they were reckoned Republics. What they have been made to-day, or what they will be made to-morrow, is uncertain and unimportant. They are not now, and never have been, Republics save in name, and never can be free governments until their people are transformed into law-creating and law-abiding communities. With them monarchy is a refuge from the license they miscall liberty, and despotism is peace. Switzerland is called a Republic. She points to her acknowledged independence four hundred years ago, but not until the middle of the present century did the Republic of the Alps find tranquillity in a constitutional government that inaugurated the liberty of law. Away on a rugged mountain-top in Italy, is the only Republic that has maintained popular government among 3198the States of Europe. For more than fourteen hundred years a handful of isolated people, the followers of a Dalmatian hermit priest, have given the world an example of unsullied freedom. Through all the mutations, and revolutions, and relinings of the maps of Europe, the little territory of San Marino has been sacredly respected. Her less than ten thousand people have prospered without interruption; and civil commotions and foreign disputes or conflicts have been unknown among them. She has had no wealth to tempt the spoiler; no commerce or teeming valleys to invite conquest; no wars to breed dictators; no surplus revenues to corrupt her officials; and in patient and frugal industry her citizens have enjoyed the national felicity of having no history. They have had no trials and no triumphs, and have made civilization better only by the banner of peace they have worshipped through all the convulsions and bloody strife of many centuries.

The world has but one Republic that has illustrated constitutional freedom in all its beneficence, power and grandeur, and that is our own priceless inheritance. As a government, our Republic has alone been capable of, and faithful to, representative free institutions, with equal rights, equal justice, and equal laws for every condition of our fellows. All the nations of the past furnish no history that can logically repeat itself in our advancement or decline. Created through the severest trials and sacrifices; maintained through foreign and civil war with unexampled devotion; faithful to law as the offspring and safety of liberty; progressive in all that ennobles our peaceful industry, and cherishing enlightened and liberal Christian civilization as the trust and pride of our citizens, for our government of the people, none but itself can be its parallel.

In what are called free governments of antiquity, we search in vain for constitutional freedom, or that liberty that subordinates passion and license to law. The refuge from the constant perils of an unrestrained Democracy was always found in despotism, and when absolutism became intolerable, the tide of passion would surge back to Democracy. The people, in mass councils, would rule Consuls, Presidents and Generals, but it was fruitful only of chaos and revolution. The victorious chieftain and the illustrious philosopher would be honored with thanksgivings to the gods for their achievements, and their banishment or death would next be demanded by the same supreme tribunal. Grand temples and columns and triumphal arches would be erected to commemorate the victories of the dominant power, and the returning waves of revolution would decree the actors and their monuments to destruction. Ambitious demagogues prostituted such mockeries of government to the basest purposes. The Olympic games of Greece became the mere instruments of unscrupulous leaders to lure the people, in the name of freedom, to oppression and degradation, and the wealth of Rome was lavishly employed to corrupt the source of popular power, and spread demoralization throughout the Republic. The debauched citizens and soldiers were inflamed by cunning and corrupt devices, against the purest and most eminent of the sincere defenders of liberty; and the vengeance of the infuriated mob, usurping the supreme power of the State, would doom to exile or to death, honest Romans who struggled for Roman freedom. Cato, the younger, Tribune of the people, and faithful to his country, took his own life to escape the reprobation of a polluted sovereignty. Cicero was Consul of the people, made so by his triumph over Cæsar. But the same people who worshipped him and to whose honor and prosperity he was devoted, banished him in disgrace, confiscated his wealth and devastated his home. Again he was recalled through a triumphal ovation, and again proscribed by the triumvirs and murdered by the soldiers of Antony. The Grecian Republic banished “Aristides the just,” and Demosthenes, the first orator of the world, who withstood the temptations of Macedonian wealth, was fined, exiled and his death decreed. He saved his country the shame of his murder by suicide. Miltiades won the plaudits of Greece for his victories, only to die in prison of wounds received in fighting her battles. Themistocles, orator, statesman and chieftain, was banished and died in exile. Pericles, once master of Athens, and who gave the world the highest attainments in Grecian arts, was deposed from military and civil authority by the people he had honored. Socrates, immortal teacher of Grecian philosophy, soldier and senator, and one of the most shining examples of public virtue, was ostracised and condemned and drank the fatal hemlock. The Republic of Carthage gave the ancients their greatest general, and as chief magistrate, he was as wise in statesmanship as he was skillful in war; but in a strange land Hannibal closed his eyes to his country’s woes by taking his own life. Nor need we confine our research to Pagan antiquity alone, for such stains upon what is called popular government. During the present century France has enthroned and banished the Bourbons, and worshiped and execrated the Bonapartes; and Spain and Mexico, and scores of States of lesser note, have welcomed and spurned the same rulers, and created and overthrew the same dynasties.

For the matchless progress of enlightened 3199rule during the last century, the world is indebted to England and America. Parent and child, though separated by violence and estranged in their sympathies even to the latest days, have been coworkers in the great cause of perfecting and strengthening liberal government. Each has been too prone to hope and labor for the decline or subordination of the other, but they both have thereby “builded wiser than they knew.” Their ceaseless rivalry for the approving judgment of civilization and for the development of the noblest attributes of a generous and enduring authority, have made them vastly better and wiser than either would have been without the other. We have inherited her supreme sanctity for law, and thus bounded our liberties by conservative restraints upon popular passions, until the sober judgment of the people can correct them. She has, however unwillingly, yielded to the inspiration of our enlarged freedom and advanced with hesitating steps toward the amelioration of her less favored classes. She maintains the form and splendor of royalty, but no monarch, no ministry, no House of Lords, can now defy the Commoners of the English people. The breath of disapproval coming from the popular branch of the government, dissolves a cabinet or compels an appeal to the country. A justly beloved Queen, unvexed by the cares of State, is the symbol of the majesty of English law, and there monarchy practically ends. We have reared a nobler structure, more delicate in its framework, more exquisite in its harmony, and more imposing in its progress. Its beneficence would be its weakness with any other people than our own. Solon summed up the history of many peoples, when, in answer to the question whether he had given the Athenians the best of laws, he said: “The best they were capable of receiving!” Even England with her marked distinctions of rank, and widely divided and unsympathetic classes, could not entrust her administration to popular control, without inviting convulsive discord and probable disintegration. Here we confide the enactment and execution of our laws to the immediate representatives of the people; but executives, and judicial tribunals, and conservative legislative branches, are firmly established, to receive the occasional surges of popular error, as the rock-ribbed shore makes harmless the waves of the tempest. We have no antagonism of rank or caste; no patent of nobility save that of merit, and the Republic has no distinction that may not be won by the humblest of her citizens. Our illustrious patriots, statesmen, and chieftains are cherished as household gods. They have not in turn been applauded and condemned, unless they have betrayed public trust. They are the creation of our people under our exceptional system, that educates all and advances those who are most eminent and faithful; and they are, from generation to generation, the enduring monuments of the Republic. We need no triumphal arches, or towering columns, or magnificent temples to record our achievements. Every patriotic memory bears in perpetual freshness the inscriptions of our noblest deeds, and every devoted heart quickens its pulsations at the contemplation of the power and safety of government of the people. In every trial, in peace and in war, we have created our warriors, our pacificators and our great teachers of the country’s sublime duties and necessities. It is not always our most polished scholars, or our ripest statesmen who have the true inspiration of the loyal leader. Ten years ago one of the most illustrious scholars and orators of our age, was called to dedicate the memorable battle-field of Gettysburg, as the resting place of our martyred dead. In studied grandeur he told the story of the heroism of the soldiers of the Republic, and in chaste and eloquent passages he plead the cause of the imperiled and bleeding Union. The renowned orator has passed away, and his oration is forgotten. There was present on that occasion, the chosen ruler and leader of the people. He was untutored in eloquence, and a stranger to the art of playing upon the hopes or grief of the nation. He was the sincere, the unfaltering guardian of the unity of the States, and his utterance, brief and unstudied, inspired and strengthened every patriotic impulse, and made a great people renew their great work with the holiest devotion. As he turned from the dead to the living, he gave the text of liberty for all time, when he declared: “It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us,—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to the cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Neither birth, nor circumstance, nor power, can command the devotion of our people. Our revolutions in enlightened sentiment, have been the creation of all the varied agencies of our free government, and the judgments of the nation have passed into history as marvels of justice. We have wreathed our military and civil heroes with the greenest laurels. In the strife of ambition, some have felt keenly what they deemed the ingratitude of the Republic; but in their disappointment, they could not understand that the highest 3200homage of a free people is not measured by place or titled honors. Clay was none the less beloved, and Webster none the less revered, because their chief ambition was not realized. Scott was not less the “Great Captain of the Age,” because he was smitten in his efforts to attain the highest civil distinction. But a few months ago two men of humblest opportunities and opposite characteristics, were before us as rival candidates for our first office. One had been a great teacher, who through patient years of honest and earnest effort, had made his impress upon the civilization of every clime. He was the defender of the oppressed, and the unswerving advocate of equal rights for all mankind. Gradually his labors ripened, but the fruits were to be gathered through the flame of battle, and he was unskilled in the sword. Another had to come with his brave reapers into the valley of death. He was unknown to fame, and the nation trusted others who wore its stars. But he transformed despair into hope, and defeat into victory. He rose through tribulation and malice, by his invincible courage and matchless command, until the fruition of his rival’s teachings had been realized in their own, and their country’s grandest achievement. In the race for civil trust, partisan detraction swept mercilessly over both, and two men who had written the proudest records of their age, in their respective spheres of public duty, were assailed as incompetent and unworthy. Both taught peace. One dared more for hastened reconciliation, forgiveness and brotherhood. The other triumphed, and vindicated his rival and himself by calling the insurgent to share the honors of the Republic. Soon after the strife was ended, they met at the gates of the “City of the Silent,” and the victor, as chief of the nation, paid the nation’s sincere homage to its untitled, but most beloved and lamented citizen. Had the victor been the vanquished, the lustre of his crown would have been undimmed in the judgment of our people or of history. Our rulers are but our agents, chosen in obedience to the convictions which govern the policy of the selection, and mere political success is no enduring constituent of greatness. The public servant, and the private citizen, will alike be honored or condemned, as they are faithful or unfaithful to their responsible duties.

When we search for the agencies of the great epochs in our national progress, we look not to the accidents of place. Unlike all other governments, ours is guided supremely by intelligent and educated public convictions, and those who are clothed with authority, are but the exponents of the popular will. Herein is the source of safety and advancement of our free institutions. On every hand, in the ranks of people, are the tireless teachers of our destiny. Away in the forefront of every struggle, are to be found the masters who brave passion and prejudice and interest, in the perfection of our nationality.

Our free press reaching into almost every hamlet of the land; our colleges now reared in every section; our schools with open doors to all; our churches teaching every faith, with the protection of the law; our citizens endowed with the sacred right of freedom of speech and action; our railroads spanning the continent, climbing our mountains, and stretching into our valleys; our telegraphs making every community the centre of the world’s daily records—these are the agencies which are omnipotent in the expression of our national purposes and duties. Thus directed and maintained, our free government has braved foreign and domestic war, and been purified and strengthened in the crucible of conflict. It has grown from a few feeble States east of the Ohio wilderness, to a vast continent of commonwealths, and forty millions of population. It has made freedom as universal as its authority within its vast possessions. The laws of inequality and caste are blotted from its statutes. It reaches the golden slopes of the Pacific with its beneficence, and makes beauty and plenty in the valleys of the mountains on the sunset side of the Father of Waters. From the cool lakes of the north, to the sunny gulfs of the South, and from the eastern seas to the waters that wash the lands of the Pagan, a homogeneous people obey one constitution, and are devoted to one country. Nor have its agencies and influences been limited to our own boundaries. The whole accessible world has felt its power, and paid tribute to its excellence. Europe has been convulsed from centre to circumference by the resistless throbbings of oppressed peoples for the liberty they cannot know and could not maintain. The proud Briton has imitated his wayward but resolute child, and now rules his own throne. France has sung the Marseillaise, her anthem of freedom, and waded through blood in ill-directed struggles for her disenthralment. The scattered tribes of the Fatherland now worship at the altar of German unity, with a liberalized Empire. The sad song of the serf is no longer heard from the children of the Czar. Italy, dismembered and tempest tossed through centuries, again ordains her laws in the Eternal City, under a monarch of her choice. The throne of Ferdinand and Isabella has now no kingly ruler, and the inspiration of freedom has unsettled the title of despotism to the Spanish sceptre. The trained lightning flashes the lessons of our civilization to the home of the Pyramids; the land of the Heathen has our teachers in its desolate places, and the God of Day sets not 3201upon the boundless triumphs of our government of the people.

Robert G. Ingersoll, of Illinois,

In the National Republican Convention at Cincinnati, June, 1876, in nominating James G. Blaine for the Presidency.

“Massachusetts may be satisfied with the loyalty of Benjamin H. Bristow; so am I; but if any man nominated by this convention cannot carry the State of Massachusetts, I am not satisfied with the loyalty of that State. If the nominee of this convention cannot carry the grand old Commonwealth of Massachusetts by seventy-five thousand majority, I would advise them to sell out Faneuil Hall as a Democratic headquarters. I would advise them to take from Bunker Hill that old monument of glory.

“The Republicans of the United States demand as their leader in the great contest of 1876 a man of intelligence, a man of integrity, a man of well-known and approved political opinions. They demand a reformer after as well as before the election. They demand a politician in the highest, broadest and best sense—a man of superb moral courage. They demand a man acquainted with public affairs, with the wants of the people; with not only the requirements of the hour, but with the demands of the future. They demand a man broad enough to comprehend the relations of this government to the other nations of the earth. They demand a man well versed in the powers, duties, and prerogatives of each and every department of this Government. They demand a man who will sacredly preserve the financial honor of the United States; one who knows enough to know that the national debt must be paid through the prosperity of this people; one who knows enough to know that all the financial theories in the world cannot redeem a single dollar; one who knows enough to know that all the money must be made, not by law, but by labor; one who knows enough to know that the people of the United States have the industry to make the money and the honor to pay it over just as fast as they make it.

“The Republicans of the United States demand a man who knows that prosperity and resumption, when they come must come together; that when they come, they will come hand in hand through the golden harvest fields; hand in hand by the whirling spindles and the turning wheels; hand in hand past the open furnace doors; hand in hand by the flaming forges; hand in hand by the chimneys filled with eager fire—greeted and grasped by the countless sons of toil.

“This money has to be dug out of the earth. You cannot make it by passing resolutions in a political convention.

“The Republicans of the United States want a man who knows that this Government should protect every citizen, at home and abroad; who knows that any government that will not defend its defenders, and protect its protectors, is a disgrace to the map of the world. They demand a man who believes in the eternal separation and divorcement of Church and School. They demand a man whose political reputation is spotless as a star; but they do not demand that their candidate shall have a certificate of moral character signed by a Confederate Congress. The man who has, in full, heaped and rounded measure, all these splendid qualifications, is the present grand and gallant leader of the Republican party—James G. Blaine.

“Our country, crowned with the vast and marvelous achievements of its first century, asks for a man worthy of the past and prophetic of her future; asks for a man who has the audacity of genius; asks for a man who is the grandest combination of heart, conscience and brain beneath her flag. Such a man is James G. Blaine.

“For the Republican host, led by this intrepid man, there can be no defeat.

“This is a grand year—a year filled with the recollections of the Revolution; filled with proud and tender memories of the past; with the sacred legends of liberty; a year in which the sons of freedom will drink from the fountains of enthusiasm; a year in which the people call for a man who has preserved in Congress what our soldiers won upon the field; a year in which they call for the man who has torn from the throat of treason the tongue of slander; for the man who has snatched the mask of Democracy from the hideous face of rebellion; for the man who, like an intellectual athlete, has stood in the arena of debate and challenged all comers, and who is still a total stranger to defeat.

“Like an armed warrior, like a plumed knight, James G. Blaine marched down the halls of the American Congress, and threw his shining lance full and fair against the brazen foreheads of the defamers of his country and the maligners of his honor.

“For the Republican party to desert this gallant leader now, is as though an army should desert their general upon the field of battle.

“James G. Blaine is now and has been for years the bearer of the sacred standard of the Republican party. I call it sacred, because no human being can stand beneath its folds without becoming and without remaining free.

“Gentlemen of the convention, in the name of the great Republic, the only Republic that ever existed upon this earth; 3202in the name of all her defenders and of all her supporters; in the name of all her soldiers living; in the name of all her soldiers dead upon the field of battle, and in the name of those who perished in the skeleton clutch of famine at Andersonville and Libby, whose sufferings he so vividly remembers, Illinois—Illinois nominates for the next President of this country, that prince of parliamentarians—that leader of leaders—James G. Blaine.”

Roscoe Conkling, of New York,

In the National Republican Convention at Chicago, June, 1880, nominating Ulysses S. Grant for the Presidency.

“And when asked what State he hails from,

Our sole reply shall be,

He hails from Appomattox

And the famous Apple tree.”

Obeying instructions I should never dare to disregard, I rise in behalf of the State of New York to propose a nomination with which the country and the Republican party can grandly win. The election before us will be the Austerlitz of American politics. It will decide whether for years to come the country will be ‘Republican or Cossack.’ The need of the hour is a candidate who can carry doubtful States, North and South; and believing that he more surely than any other can carry New York against any opponent, and carry not only the North, but several States of the South, New York is for Ulysses S. Grant. He alone of living Republicans has carried New York as a Presidential candidate. Once he carried it even according to a Democratic count, and twice he carried it by the people’s vote, and he is stronger now. The Republican party with its standard in his hand, is stronger now than in 1868 or 1872. Never defeated in war or in peace, his name is the most illustrious borne by any living man; his services attest his greatness, and the country knows them by heart. His fame was born not alone of things written and said, but of the arduous greatness of things done, and dangers and emergencies will search in vain in the future, as they have searched in vain in the past, for any other on whom the nation leans with such confidence and trust. Standing on the highest eminence of human distinction, and having filled all lands with his renown, modest, firm, simple and self-poised, he has seen not only the titled but the poor and the lowly in the utmost ends of the world rise and uncover before him. He has studied the needs and defects of many systems of government, and he comes back a better American than ever, with a wealth of knowledge and experience added to the hard common sense which so conspicuously distinguished him in all the fierce light that beat upon him throughout the most eventful, trying and perilous sixteen years of the nation’s history.

“Never having had ‘a policy to enforce against the will of the people,’ he never betrayed a cause or a friend, and the people will never betray or desert him. Vilified and reviled, truthlessly aspersed by numberless presses, not in other lands, but in his own, the assaults upon him have strengthened and seasoned his hold upon the public heart. The ammunition of calumny has all been exploded; the powder has all been burned once, its force is spent, and General Grant’s name will glitter as a bright and imperishable star in the diadem of the Republic when those who have tried to tarnish it will have mouldered in forgotten graves and their memories and epitaphs have vanished utterly.

“Never elated by success, never depressed by adversity, he has ever in peace, as in war, shown the very genius of common sense. The terms he prescribed for Lee’s surrender foreshadowed the wisest principles and prophecies of true reconstruction.

“Victor in the greatest of modern wars, he quickly signalized his aversion to war and his love of peace by an arbitration of international disputes which stands as the wisest and most majestic example of its kind in the world’s diplomacy. When inflation, at the height of its popularity and frenzy, had swept both houses of Congress, it was the veto of Grant which, single and alone, overthrew expansion and cleared the way for specie resumption. To him, immeasurably more than to any other man, is due the fact that every paper dollar is as good as gold. With him as our leader we shall have no defensive campaign, no apologies or explanations to make. The shafts and arrows have all been aimed at him and lie broken and harmless at his feet. Life, liberty and property will find safeguard in him. When he said of the black man in Florida, ‘Wherever I am they may come also,’ he meant that, had he the power to help it, the poor dwellers in the cabins of the South should not be driven in terror from the homes of their childhood and the graves of their murdered dead. When he refused to receive Denis Kearney he meant that lawlessness and communism, although it should dictate laws to a whole city, would everywhere meet a foe in him, and, popular or unpopular, he will hew to the line of right, let the chips fly where they may.

“His integrity, his common sense, his courage and his unequaled experience are the qualities offered to his country. The only argument against accepting them would amaze Solomon. He thought there could be nothing new under the sun. Having tried Grant twice and found him faithful, 3203we are told we must not, even after an interval of years, trust him again. What stultification does not such a fallacy involve! The American people exclude Jefferson Davis from public trust. Why? Because he was the arch traitor and would be a destroyer. And now the same people are asked to ostracize Grant and not trust him. Why? Because he was the arch preserver of his country; because, not only in war, but afterward, twice as a civic magistrate, he gave his highest, noblest efforts to the Republic. Is such absurdity an electioneering jugglery or hypocrisy’s masquerade?

“There is no field of human activity, responsibility or reason in which rational beings object to Grant because he has been weighed in the balance and not found wanting, and because he has had unequaled experience, making him exceptionally competent and fit. From the man who shoes your horse to the lawyer who pleads your case, the officers who manage your railway, the doctor into whose hands you give your life, or the minister who seeks to save your souls, what now do you reject because you have tried him and by his works have known him? What makes the Presidential office an exception to all things else in the common sense to be applied to selecting its incumbent? Who dares to put fetters on the free choice and judgment which is the birthright of the American people? Can it be said that Grant has used official power to perpetuate his plan? He has no place. No official power has been used for him. Without patronage or power, without telegraph wires running from his house to the convention, without electioneering contrivances, without effort on his part, his name is on his country’s lips, and he is struck at by the whole Democratic party because his nomination will be the death-blow to Democratic success. He is struck at by others who find offense and disqualification in the very service he has rendered and in the very experience he has gained. Show me a better man. Name one and I am answered. But do not point, as a disqualification, to the very facts which make this man fit beyond all others. Let not experience disqualify or excellence impeach him. There is no third term in the case, and the pretense will die with the political dog-days which engendered it. Nobody is really worried about a third term except those hopelessly longing for a first term and the dupes they have made. Without bureaus, committees, officials or emissaries to manufacture sentiment in his favor, without intrigue or effort on his part, Grant is the candidate whose supporters have never threatened to bolt. As they say, he is a Republican who never wavers. He and his friends stood by the creed and the candidates of the Republican party, holding the right of a majority as the very essence of their faith, and meaning to uphold that faith against the common enemy and the charlatans and guerrillas who from time to time deploy between the lines and forage on one side or the other.

“The Democratic party is a standing protest against progress. Its purposes are spoils. Its hope and very existence is a solid South. Its success is a menace to prosperity and order.

“This convention is master of a supreme opportunity, can name the next President of the United States and make sure of his election and his peaceful inauguration. It can break the power which dominates and mildews the South. It can speed the nation in a career of grandeur eclipsing all past achievements. We have only to listen above the din and look beyond the dust of an hour to behold the Republican party advancing to victory, with its greatest marshal at its head.”

James A. Garfield, of Ohio,

In the National Republican Convention at Chicago, June, 1880, nominating John Sherman for the Presidency.

“I have witnessed the extraordinary scenes of this convention with deep solicitude. No emotion touches my heart more quickly than a sentiment in honor of a great and noble character. But as I sat on these seats and witnessed these demonstrations, it seemed to me you were a human ocean in a tempest. I have seen the sea lashed into a fury and tossed into a spray, and its grandeur moves the soul of the dullest man. But I remember that it is not the billows, but the calm level of the sea from which all heights and depths are measured. When the storm has passed and the hour of calm settles on the ocean, when sunlight bathes its smooth surface, then the astronomer and surveyor takes the level from which he measures all terrestrial heights and depths. Gentlemen of the convention, your present temper may not mark the healthful pulse of our people. When our enthusiasm has passed, when the emotions of this hour have subsided, we shall find the calm level of public opinion below the storm from which the thoughts of a mighty people are to be measured, and by which their final action will be determined. Not here, in this brilliant circle where fifteen thousand men and women are assembled, is the destiny of the Republic to be decreed; not here, where I see the enthusiastic faces of seven hundred and fifty-six delegates waiting to cast their votes into the urn and determine the choice of their party; but by four million Republican firesides, where the thoughtful fathers, with wives and children 3204about them, with the calm thoughts inspired by love of home and love of country, with the history of the past, the hopes of the future, and the knowledge of the great men who have adorned and blessed our nation in days gone by—there God prepares the verdict that shall determine the wisdom of our work to-night. Not in Chicago in the heat of June, but in the sober quiet that comes between now and the melancholy days of November, in the silence of deliberate judgment will this great question be settled. Let us aid them to-night.

“But now, gentlemen of the convention, what do we want? Bear with me a moment. Hear me for this cause, and for a moment be silent, that you may hear. Twenty-five years ago this Republic was wearing a triple chain of bondage. Long familiarity with traffic in the bodies and souls of men had paralyzed the conscience of a majority of our people. The baleful doctrine of State Sovereignty had shocked and weakened the noblest and most beneficent powers of the National Government, and the grasping power of slavery was seizing the virgin territory of the West and dragging them into the den of eternal bondage. At that crisis the Republican party was born. It drew its first inspiration from that fire of liberty which God has lighted in every man’s heart, and which all the powers of ignorance and tyranny can never wholly extinguish. The Republican party came to deliver and save the Republic. It entered the arena when the beleaguered and assailed territories were struggling for freedom, and drew around them the sacred circle of liberty which the demon of slavery has never dared to cross. It made them free forever. Strengthened by its victory on the frontier, the young party, under the leadership of that great man who, on this spot, twenty years ago, was made its leader, entered the national capital and assumed the high duties of the Government. The light which shone from its banner dispelled the darkness in which slavery had enshrouded the capital, and melted the shackles of every slave, and consumed, in the fire of liberty, every slave-pen within the shadow of the Capitol. Our national industries, by an impoverishing policy, were themselves prostrated, and the streams of revenue flowed in such feeble currents that the Treasury itself was well nigh empty. The money of the people was the wretched notes of two thousand uncontrolled and irresponsible State banking corporations, which was filling the country with a circulation that poisoned rather than sustained the life of business. The Republican party changed all this. It abolished the babel of confusion, and gave the country a currency as national as its flag, based upon the sacred faith of the people. It threw its protecting arm around our great industries, and they stood erect as with new life. It filled with the spirit of true nationality all the great functions of the Government. It confronted a rebellion of unexampled magnitude, with slavery behind it, and, under God, fought the final battle of liberty until victory was won. Then, after the storms of battle, were heard the sweet, calm words of peace uttered by the conquering nation, and saying to the conquered foe that lay prostrate at its feet: ‘This is our only revenge, that you join us in lifting to the serene firmament of the Constitution, to shine like stars for ever and ever, the immortal principles of truth and justice, that all men, white or black, shall be free and stand equal before the law.’

“Then came the question of reconstruction, the public debt, and the public faith. In the settlement of the questions the Republican party has completed its twenty-five years of glorious existence, and it has sent us here to prepare it for another lustrum of duty and of victory. How shall we do this great work? We cannot do it, my friends, by assailing our Republican brethren. God forbid that I should say one word to cast a shadow upon any name on the roll of our heroes. This coming fight is our Thermopylæ. We are standing upon a narrow isthmus. If our Spartan hosts are united, we can withstand all the Persians that the Xerxes of Democracy can bring against us. Let us hold our ground this one year, for the stars in their courses fight for us in the future. The census taken this year will bring reinforcements and continued power. But in order to win this victory now, we want the vote of every Republican, of every Grant Republican and every anti-Grant Republican in America, of every Blaine man and every anti-Blaine man. The vote of every follower of every candidate is needed to make our success certain; therefore I say, gentlemen and brethren, we are here to take calm counsel together, and inquire what we shall do. We want a man whose life and opinions embody all the achievements of which I have spoken. We want a man who, standing on a mountain height, sees all the achievements of our past history, and carries in his heart the memory of all its glorious deeds, and who, looking forward, prepares to meet the labor and the dangers to come. We want one who will act in no spirit of unkindness toward those we lately met in battle. The Republican party offers to our brethren of the South the olive branch of peace, and wishes them to return to brotherhood, on this supreme condition, that it shall be admitted forever and forevermore, that, in the war for the Union, we were right and they were wrong. On that supreme condition we 3205meet them as brethren, and on no other. We ask them to share with us the blessings and honors of this great Republic.

“Now, gentlemen, not to weary you, I am about to present a name for your consideration—the name of a man who was the comrade and associate and friend of nearly all those noble dead whose faces look down upon us from these walls to-night; a man who began his career of public service twenty-five years ago, whose first duty was courageously done in the days of peril on the plains of Kansas, when the first red drops of that bloody shower began to fall which finally swelled into the deluge of war. He bravely stood by young Kansas then, and, returning to his duty in the National Legislature, through all subsequent time, his pathway has been marked by labors performed in every department of legislation. You ask for his monuments. I point you to twenty-five years of national statutes. Not one great beneficent statute has been placed in our statute books without his intelligent and powerful aid. He aided these men to formulate the laws that raised our great armies and carried us through the war. His hand was seen in the workmanship of those statutes that restored and brought back the unity and married calm of the States. His hand was in all that great legislation that created the war currency, and in a still greater work that redeemed the promises of the Government, and made the currency equal to gold. And when at last called from the halls of legislation into a high executive office he displayed that experience, intelligence, firmness and poise of character which has carried us through a stormy period of three years. With one-half the public press crying ‘crucify him,’ and a hostile Congress seeking to prevent success, in all this he remained unmoved until victory crowned him. The great fiscal affairs of the nation, and the great business interests of the country, he has guarded and preserved, while executing the law of resumption and effecting its object without a jar and against the false prophecies of one-half of the press and all the Democracy of this continent. He has shown himself able to meet with calmness the great emergencies of the Government for twenty-five years. He has trodden the perilous heights of public duty, and against all the shafts of malice has borne his breast unharmed. He has stood in the blaze of ‘that fierce light that beats against the throne,’ but its fiercest ray has found no flaw in his armor, no stain on his shield. I do not present him as a better Republican or as a better man than thousands of others we honor, but I present him for your deliberate consideration. I nominate John Sherman, of Ohio.”

Daniel Dougherty, of Pennsylvania,

In the Democratic National Convention at Cincinnati, June 1880, nominating Winfield Scott Hancock for the Presidency.

“I propose to present to the thoughtful consideration of the convention the name of one who, on the field of battle, was styled ‘The Superb,’ yet won the still nobler renown as a military governor whose first act when in command of Louisiana and Texas was to salute the Constitution by proclaiming that the military rule shall ever be subservient to the civil power. The plighted word of a soldier was proved by the acts of a statesman. I nominate one whose name will suppress all factions, will be alike acceptable to the North and to the South—a name that will thrill the Republic, a name, if nominated, of a man that will crush the last embers of sectional strife, and whose name will be hailed as the dawning of the day of perpetual brotherhood. With him we can fling away our shields and wage an aggressive war. We can appeal to the supreme tribunal of the American people against the corruption of the Republican party and their untold violations of constitutional liberty. With him as our chieftain the bloody banner of the Republicans will fall from their palsied grasp. Oh, my countrymen, in this supreme moment the destinies of the Republic are at stake, and the liberties of the people are imperiled. The people hang breathless on your deliberation. Take heed! Make no mis-step! I nominate one who can carry every Southern State, and who can carry Pennsylvania, Indiana, Connecticut, New Jersey and New York—the soldier-statesman, with a record as stainless as his sword—Winfield Scott Hancock, of Pennsylvania. If elected, he will take his seat.”

George Gray, of Delaware,

In the Democratic National Convention at Cincinnati, June, 1880, nominating Thomas F. Bayard for the Presidency.

“I am instructed by the Delaware delegation to make in their behalf a nomination for the Presidency of the United States. Small in territory and population, Delaware is proud of her history and of her position in the sisterhood of States. Always devoted to the principles of that great party which maintains the equality and rights of the States, as well as of the individual citizen, she is here to-day in grand council to do all that in her lies for the advancement of our common cause. Who will best lead the Democratic hosts in the impending struggle for the restoration of honest government and the constitutional rights of the States and of their people, is the important question that we must decide. Delaware is not blinded by her affections when she presents to this convention, as a 3206candidate for this great trust, the name of her gallant son, Thomas Francis Bayard. He is no carpet knight rashly put forth to flash a maiden sword in this great contest. He is a veteran covered with the scars of many hard-fought battles, when the principles of constitutional liberty have been at stake in an arena where the giants of radicalism were his foes, and his bruised arms, not ‘hung up,’ but still burnished brightly, are monuments of his prowess. Thomas F. Bayard is a statesman who will need no introduction to the American people. His name and his record are known wherever our flag floats—aye, wherever the English tongue is spoken. His is no sectional fame. With sympathies as broad as the continent, a private character as spotless as the snow from heaven, a judgment as clear as the sunlight, an intellect keen and bright as a flashing sabre, a courage that none dare question, honest in thought and deed, the people all know him by heart, and, as I said before, they need not be told who and what he is. But you, gentlemen of the convention, who must keep in view the success so important to be achieved in November, pray consider the elements of his strength. Who more than he will as a candidate appeal to the best traditions of our party and our country? In whom more than he will the business interests of the country, now re-awakening to new life and hope, confide for that economy and repose which shall send capital and labor forth like twin brothers hand in hand to the great work of building up the country’s prosperity and advancing its civilization? Who better than he will represent the heart and intellect of our great party, or give expression to its noblest inspirations? Who will draw so largely upon the honest and reflecting independent voters as he, whose very name is a synonym for honest and fearless opposition to corruption every where and in every form, and who has dared to follow in what he thought the path of duty with a chivalrous devotion that never counted personal gains or losses? Who has contributed more than Thomas Francis Bayard to the commanding strength that the Democratic party possesses to-day? Blot out him and his influence, and who would not feel and mourn his loss? Pardon Delaware if she says too much; she speaks in no disparagement of the distinguished Democrats whose names sparkle like stars in the political firmament. She honors them all. But she knows her son, and her heart will speak. Nominate him and success is assured. His very name will be a platform. It will fire every Democratic heart with a new zeal and put a sword in the hand of every honest man with which to drive from place and power the reckless men who have for four years held both against the expressed will of the American people. Don’t tell us that you admire and love him, but that he is unavailable. Tell the country that the sneer of our Republican enemies is a lie, and that such a man as Thomas F. Bayard is not too good a man to receive the nomination of the Democratic party. Take the whole people into your confidence, and tell them that an honest and patriotic party is to be led by as honest and pure a man as God ever made; that a brave party is to be led by a brave man whose courage will never falter, be the danger or emergency what it may. Tell them that our party has the courage of its convictions, and that statesmanship, ability and honesty are to be realized once more in the government of these United States, and the nomination of Thomas F. Bayard will fall like a benediction on the land, and will be the presage of a victory that will sweep like a whirlwind from the lakes to the Gulf and from ocean to ocean.”

Frye Nominating Blaine.

In the Chicago Convention, 1880.

“I once saw a storm at sea in the nighttime; an old ship battling for its life with the fury of the tempest; darkness everywhere; the winds raging and howling; the huge waves beating on the sides of the ship, and making her shiver from stem to stern. The lightning was flashing, the thunders rolling; there was danger everywhere. I saw at the helm, a bold, courageous, immovable, commanding man. In the tempest, calm; in the commotion, quiet; in the danger, hopeful. I saw him take that old ship and bring her into her harbor, into still waters, into safety. That man was a hero. [Applause.] I saw the good old ship of State, the State of Maine, within the last year, fighting her way through the same waves, against the dangers. She was freighted with all that is precious in the principles of our republic; with the rights of the American citizenship, with all that is guaranteed to the American citizen by our Constitution. The eyes of the whole nation were on her, and intense anxiety filled every American heart lest the grand old ship, the “State of Maine,” might go down beneath the waves forever, carrying her precious freight with her. But there was a man at the helm, calm, deliberate, commanding, sagacious; he made even the foolish man wise; courageous, he inspired the timid with courage; hopeful, he gave heart to the dismayed, and he brought that good old ship safely into harbor, into safety; and she floats to-day greater, purer, stronger for her baptism of danger. That man too, was heroic, and his name was James G. Blaine. [Loud cheers.]

3207“Maine sent us to this magnificent Convention with a memory of her own salvation from impending peril fresh upon her. To you representatives of 50,000,000 of the American people, who have met here to counsel how the Republic can be saved, she says, “Representatives of the people, take the man, the true man, the staunch man, for your leader, who has just saved me, and he will bring you to safety and certain victory.””

Senator Hill’s Denunciation of Senator Mahone.

In Extra Session of the Senate, March 14, 1881.

Very well; the records of the country must settle that with the Senator. The Senator will say who was elected as a republican from any of the States to which I allude. I say what the whole world knows, that there are thirty-eight men on this floor elected as democrats, declaring themselves to be democrats, who supported Hancock, and who have supported the democratic ticket in every election that has occurred, and who were elected, moreover, by democratic Legislatures, elected by Legislatures which were largely democratic; and the Senator from New York will not deny it. One other Senator who was elected, not as a democrat, but as an independent, has announced his purpose to vote with us on this question. That makes thirty-nine, unless some man of the thirty-eight who was elected by a democratic Legislature proves false to his trust. Now, the Senator from New York does not say that somebody has been bought. No; I have not said that. He does not say somebody has been taken and carried away. No; I have not said that. But the Senator has said, and here is his language, and I hope he will not find it necessary to correct it:

It may be said, very likely I shall be found to say despite some criticism that I may make upon so saying in advance, that notwithstanding the words “during the present session,” day after to-morrow or the day after that, if the majority then present in the Chamber changes, that majority may overthrow all this proceeding, obliterate it, and set up an organization of the Senate in conformity with and not in contradiction of the edict of the election.

The presidential election he was referring to—

If an apology is needed for the objection which I feel to that, it will be found I think in the circumstance that a majority, a constitutional majority of the Senate, is against that resolution, is against the formation of committees democratic in inspiration and persuasion, to which are to go for this session all executive matters.

The Senator has announced to-day that the majority on this side of the Chamber was only temporary. He has announced over and over that it was to be a temporary majority. I meet him on the fact. I say there are thirty-eight members sitting in this Hall to-day who were elected by democratic Legislatures, and as democrats, and one distinguished Senator who was not elected as a democrat, but by democratic votes, the distinguished Senator from Illinois, [Mr. Davis,] has announced his purpose to vote with these thirty-eight democrats. Where, then, have I misrepresented? If that be true, and if those who were elected as democrats are not faithless to the constituency that elected them, you will not have the majority when the Senate is full.

Again, so far from charging the Senator from New York with being a personal party to this arrangement, I acquitted him boldly and fearlessly, for I undertake to say what I stated before, and I repeat it, to his credit, he is no party to an arrangement by which any man chosen by a democratic Legislature and as a democrat is not going to vote for the party that sent him here. Sir, I know too well what frowns would gather with lightning fierceness upon the brow of the Senator from New York if I were to intimate or any other man were to intimate that he, elected as a republican, because he happened to have a controlling vote was going to vote with the democrats on the organization. What would be insulting to him he cannot, he will not respect in another.

Now, sir, I say the Senator has been unjust in the conclusion which he has drawn, because it necessarily makes somebody who was chosen as a democrat ally himself with the republicans, not on great questions of policy, but on a question of organization, on a question of mere political organization. I assume that that has not been done. No man can charge that I have come forward and assumed that his fidelity was in question. I have assumed that the Senator from New York was wrong in his statement. Why? Because if any gentleman who was chosen to this body as a democrat has concluded not to vote with the democrats on the organization, he has not given us notice, and I take it for granted that when a gentleman changes his opinions, as every Senator has a right to change his opinions, his first duty is to give notice of that change to those with whom he has been associated. He has not given that notice; no democrat of the thirty-eight has given that notice to this side of the House. I therefore assume that no such change has occurred.

But there is another obligation. While I concede the right of any gentleman to change his opinions and change his party 3208affiliations, yet I say that when he has arrived at the conclusion that duty requires him to make that change he must give notice to the constituency that sent him here. I have heard of no such notice. If the people of any of these democratic States, who through democratic Legislatures have sent thirty-eight democrats to this body and one more by democratic votes, have received notice of a change of party opinion or a change of party affiliations by any of those they sent here, I have not heard of it; the evidence of it has not been produced.

Sir, I concede the right of every man to change his opinions; I concede the right of every man to change his party affiliations; I concede the right of any man who was elected to the high place of a seat in this Senate as a democrat to change and become a republican; but I deny in the presence of this Senate, I deny in the hearing of this people, that any man has a right to accept a commission from one party and execute the trust confided to him in the interest of another party. Demoralized as this country has become, though every wind bears to us charges of fraud and bargain and corruption; though the highest positions in the land, we fear, have been degraded by being occupied by persons who procured them otherwise than by the popular will, yet I deny that the people of either party in this country have yet given any man a right to be faithless to a trust. They have given no man a right to accept a commission as a democrat and hold that commission and act with the republicans. Manhood, bravery, courage, fidelity, morality, respect for the opinions of mankind requires that whenever a man has arrived at the conclusion that he cannot carry out the trust which was confided to him, he should return the commission and tell his constituents, “I have changed my mind and therefore return you the commission you gave me.” Sir, I do not believe that a single one of the thirty-eight gentlemen who were elected as democrats and whose names are before me here, will hold in his pocket a commission conferred by democrats, conferred on him as a democrat, and without giving notice to his constituency, without giving notice to his associates, will execute that commission in the interest of the adversary party and go and communicate his conclusion, first of all, and only, to the members of the adversary party.

Sir, who is it that has changed? Whom of these thirty-eight does the Senator rely upon to vote with the republicans? That one has not notified us; he has not notified his constituency. Therefore I say it is not true, and I cannot sit here quietly and allow a gentleman on the other side of the Chamber, however distinguished, to get up here and assume and asseverate over and over that somebody elected as a democrat is faithless to his trust, and not repel it. No, gentlemen, you are deceived; you will be disappointed. I vindicate the character of American citizenship, I vindicate the honor of human nature when I say you will be disappointed, and no man elected as a democrat is going to help you organize the committees of this Senate. I do not say so because I know. No, I have no personal information, but I will stand here and affirm that no man who has been deemed by any constituency in this country to be worthy of a place in this body will be guilty of that treachery. And how is the Senator’s majority to come? How many are there? He has not told us. The papers said this morning that there were two or three, and they named my good friend from Tennessee, [Mr. Harris.] When I saw that I knew the whole thing was absurd. The idea that anybody in this world would ever believe that my friend from Tennessee could possibly be guilty of such a thing, and my colleague [Mr. Brown] also was named—gentlemen who were born and reared in the school of fidelity to their party. How many? Have you one? If you have but one that was elected as a democrat and who has concluded to go with the republicans, then you have only half, you have 38 to 38, and I suppose you count upon the vote of the Vice-President. Has that been arranged? Sir, I will not blame you if you vote for voting according to the sentiment that elected you, for voting according to the professions of your principles which you avowed when you were elected. I deny myself the right of the Vice-President to take part in the constitution and organization of this Senate; but I shall not make the question. If you have got one, the vote will be 38 to 38. Who is the one? Who is ambitious to do what no man in the history of this country has ever done, to be the first man to stand up in this high presence, after this country has reached fifty million people, and proclaim from this proud eminence that he disgraces the commission he holds. [Applause in the galleries.]

The Vice-President rapped to order.

Mr. Hill, of Georgia. Who is it? Who can he be? Do you receive him with affection? Do you receive him with respect? Is such a man worthy of your association? Such a man is not worthy to be a democrat. Is he worthy to be a republican? If my friend from Illinois, my friend from Kansas, or my friend from New York, were to come to me holding a republican commission in his pocket, sent here by a republican Legislature, and whisper to me “I will vote with the democrats on organization,” I would tell him that if he so 3209came he would be expelled with ignominy from the ranks of the party.

And why do you beg us to wait? If all who were elected as democrats are to remain democrats, what good will waiting do you? You will still be in a minority of two, the same minority you are in this morning.

Mr. President, I affirm that no man elected and sent here by a democratic Legislature as a democrat, whatever may have been local issues, whatever may have been the divisions of factions, and above all no man who professed to be a democrat when he was elected and who procured his election by professing to be a democrat, in the name of democracy and republicanism as well, in the name of American nature, I charge that no such man will prove false to his trust; and therefore why wait? Why delay the business of the country? Why should the nominations lie on the table unacted on? Why should we spend days and days here with the parties on the other side filibustering for time to get delay, to get a few days? Why should we do that when upon the assumption that the Senate is not to blush at an exhibition of treachery the result will be the same one week, two weeks, six months, two years from now that it is now?

Sir, I know that there is a great deal in this question. The American people have had much to humiliate them; all peoples have much to humiliate them. I know that the patronage of this Government has become very great. I know that the distinguished gentleman who presides at the other end of the Avenue holds in his hand millions and hundreds of millions of patronage. To our shame be it said it has been whispered a hundred times all through the country by the presses of both parties until it has become absolutely familiar to American ears that the patronage of the Federal Government has been used to buy votes and control elections to keep one party in power. It is a question that confronts every honest statesman whether something shall not be done to lessen that patronage. I respond to the sentiment of the President in his inaugural when I say there ought to be a rule in even the civil service by which this patronage shall be placed where it cannot be used for such purposes. If it is not done, I do not know what humiliations are in store for us all.

But, Mr. President, here are facts that no man can escape. Gentlemen of the republican party of this Senate, you cannot organize the Senate unless you can get the vote of some man who was elected as a democrat. You cannot escape that. Have you gotten it? If so, how? If you have, nobody knows it but yourselves. How? There is no effect without a cause; there is no change without a purpose; there is no bargain without a consideration. What is the cause? If there has been a change, why a change? How does it happen that you know the change and we do not? What induced the change? I deny that there has been a change. I maintain that all the distinguished gentlemen who make up the thirty-eight democrats on this side of the Chamber are firm, firm to the principles that sent them here, firm to the professions that sent them here, and firm to the constituencies that sent them here. They were elected as democrats. Now on the question of organization, which is nothing in the world but a pure political question and a party question at that, they will act with the democratic party, and you, gentlemen, will be deceived if you calculate otherwise. Therefore, there is no necessity for you to enter into all this filibustering and producing this delay for the purpose of getting the organization.

Mr. President, as I said before, the Senate should be a place where there should be no masquerading; men should deal frankly with each other. If I were to charge any gentleman on the republican side of the Chamber who was elected as a republican, who professed to be a republican when he was elected, with having made arrangements with the democrats to vote with them, I should insult him and he would resent it as an insult, and gentlemen excuse me for repelling the charge which if made against you, you would repel as an insult. I repel as an insult the charge made against any democrat that he would be false to his colors and is intending to vote with you on the organization.

Mr. Harris. Mr. President, I rise only to say that I regret that the honorable Senator from Georgia should have deemed it proper to dignify the miserable newspaper twaddle in respect to my political position——

Mr. Hill, of Georgia. I will say to my friend I did not intend——

Mr. Harris. I am quite sure the Senator did not intend anything unkind to me; yet, by mentioning the matter here, he gives a dignity to it that it never could have had otherwise, and one that it is not worthy of, especially in view of the fact, as I very well know, that there is not a democrat or a republican in America, who knows me, who has ever doubted, or doubts to-day, what my political position is. It is unworthy of further notice, and I will notice it no more.

Mr. Mahone. Mr. President, I do not propose to detain you and the Senate more than a few minutes. The distinguished Senator from Georgia has manifestly engaged in an effort to disclose my position on this floor.

Mr. Hill, of Georgia. I do not know 3210what your position is. How could I disclose it?

Mr. Mahone. Sir, the Senator might be a little more direct as he might well have been in the course of his remarks in asking my position; and that I will give him.

Now, Mr. President, the Senator has assumed not only to be the custodian here of the democratic party of this nation, but he has dared to assert his right to speak for a constituency that I have the privilege, the proud and honorable privilege on this floor, of representing [applause in the galleries] without his assent, without the assent of such democracy as that he speaks for. [Applause in the galleries.] I owe them, sir, I owe you [addressing Mr. Hill] and those for whom you undertake to speak nothing in this Chamber. [Applause in the galleries.] I came here, sir, as a Virginian to represent my people, not to represent that democracy for which you stand. [Applause in the galleries.] I come with as proud a claim to represent that people as you to represent the people of Georgia, won on fields where I have vied with Georgians whom I commanded and others in the cause of my people and of their section in the late unhappy contest; but thank God for the peace and the good of the country that contest is over, and as one of those who engaged in it, and who has neither here nor elsewhere any apology to make for the part taken, I am here by my humble efforts to bring peace to this whole country, peace and good will between the sections, not here as a partisan, not here to represent that Bourbonism which has done so much injury to my section of the country. [Applause in the galleries.]

Now, sir, the gentleman undertakes to say what constitutes a democrat. A democrat! I hold, sir, that to-day I am a better democrat than he, infinitely better—he who stands nominally committed to a full vote, a free ballot, and an honest count. I should like to know how he stands for these things where tissue ballots are fashionable. [Laughter, and applause in the galleries.]

Now, sir, I serve notice on you that I intend to be here the custodian of my own democracy. I do not intend to be run by your caucus. I am in every sense a free man here. I trust I am able to protect my own rights and to defend those of the people whom I represent, and certainly to take care of my own. I do not intend that any Senator on this floor shall undertake to criticise my conduct by innuendoes, a method not becoming this body or a straightforward legitimate line of pursuit in argument.