The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 09 (of 12)
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Title: The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 09 (of 12)
Author: Robert Green Ingersoll
Release date: February 9, 2012 [eBook #38809]
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORKS OF ROBERT G. INGERSOLL, VOL. 09 (OF 12) ***
Produced by David Widger
THE WORKS OF ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
"HE LOVES HIS COUNTRY BEST WHO STRIVES TO MAKE IT BEST."
IN TWELVE VOLUMES, VOLUME IX.
POLITICAL
NEW YORK THE DRESDEN PUBLISHING CO., C. P. FARRELL
DRESDEN EDITION
CONTENTS OF VOLUME IX.
AN ADDRESS TO THE COLORED PEOPLE.
(1867.)
Slavery and its Justification by Law and Religion--Its Destructive
Influence upon Nations--Inauguration of the Modern Slave Trade by the
Portuguese Gonzales--Planted upon American Soil--The Abolitionists,
Clarkson, Wilberforce, and Others--The Struggle in England--Pioneers
in San Domingo, Oge and Chevannes--Early Op-posers of Slavery in
America--William Lloyd Garrison--Wendell Phillips, Charles Sumner, John
Brown--The Fugitive Slave Law--The Emancipation Proclamation--Dread of
Education in the South--Advice to the Colored People.
INDIANAPOLIS SPEECH.
(1868.)
Suspension of the Writ of Habeas Corpus--Precedent Established by the
Revolutionary Fathers--Committees of Safety appointed by the
Continental Congress--Arrest of Disaffected Persons in Pennsylvania
and Delaware--Interference with Elections--Resolution of Continental
Congress with respect to Citizens who Opposed the sending of Deputies
to the Convention of New York--Penalty for refusing to take Continental
Money or Pray for the American Cause--Habeas Corpus Suspended during the
Revolution--Interference with Freedom of the Press--Negroes Freed and
allowed to Fight in the Continental Army--Crispus Attacks--An Abolition
Document issued by Andrew Jackson--Majority rule--Slavery and the
Rebellion--Tribute to General Grant.
SPEECH NOMINATING BLAINE.
(1876.)
Note descriptive of the Occasion--Demand of the Republicans of the
United States--Resumption--The Plumed Knight.
CENTENNIAL ORATION.
(1876.)
One Hundred Years ago, our Fathers retired the Gods from Politics--The
Declaration of Independence--Meaning of the Declaration--The Old Idea
of the Source of Political Power--Our Fathers Educated by their
Surroundings--The Puritans--Universal Religious Toleration declared by
the Catholics of Maryland--Roger Williams--Not All of our Fathers in
favor of Independence--Fortunate Difference in Religious Views--Secular
Government--Authority derived from the People--The Declaration and
the Beginning of the War--What they Fought For--Slavery--Results of
a Hundred Years of Freedom--The Declaration Carried out in Letter and
Spirit.
BANGOR SPEECH.
(1876.)
The Hayes Campaign--Reasons for Voting the Republican Ticket--Abolition
of Slavery--Preservation of the Union--Reasons for Not Trusting the
Democratic Party--Record of the Republican Party--Democrats Assisted
the South--Paper Money--Enfranchisement of the Negroes--Samuel J.
Tilden--His Essay on Finance.
COOPER UNION SPEECH, NEW YORK.
(1876.)
All Citizens Stockholders in the United States of America--The
Democratic Party a Hungry Organization--Political Parties
Contrasted--The Fugitive Slave Law a Disgrace to Hell in its Palmiest
Days--Feelings of the Democracy Hurt on the Subject of Religion--Defence
of Slavery in a Resolution of the Presbyterians, South--State of the
Union at the Time the Republican Party was Born--Jacob Thompson--The
National Debt--Protection of Citizens Abroad--Tammany Hall: Its Relation
to the Penitentiary--The Democratic Party of New York City--"What
Hands!"--Free Schools.
INDIANAPOLIS SPEECH.
(1876.)
Address to the Veteran Soldiers of the Rebellion--Objections to
the Democratic Party--The Men who have been Democrats--Why I am a
Republican--Free Labor and Free Thought--A Vision of War--Democratic
Slander of the Greenback--Shall the People who Saved the Country Rule
It?--On Finance--Government Cannot Create Money--The Greenback Dollar
a Mortgage upon the Country--Guarantees that the Debt will be Paid-'The
Thoroughbred and the Mule--The Column of July, Paris--The Misleading
Guide Board, the Dismantled Mill, and the Place where there had been a
Hotel,
CHICAGO SPEECH.
(1876.)
The Plea of "Let Bygones be Bygones"--Passport of the Democratic
Party--Right of the General Government to send Troops into Southern
States for the Protection of Colored People--Abram S. Hewitt's
Congratulatory Letter to the Negroes--The Demand for Inflation of the
Currency--Record of Rutherford B. Hayes--Contrasted with Samuel J.
Tilden--Merits of the Republican Party--Negro and Southern White--The
Superior Man--"No Nation founded upon Injustice can Permanently Stand."
EIGHT TO SEVEN ADDRESS.
(1877.)
On the Electoral Commission--Reminiscences of the Hayes-Tilden Camp--
Constitution of the Electoral College--Characteristics of the Members--
Frauds at the Ballot Box Poisoning the Fountain of Power--Reforms
Suggested--Elections too Frequent--The Professional Office-seeker--A
Letter on Civil Service Reform--Young Men Advised against Government
Clerkships--Too Many Legislators and too Much Legislation--Defect in the
Constitution as to the Mode of Electing a President--Protection of
Citizens by State and General Governments--The Dual Government in South
Carolina--Ex-Rebel Key in the President's Cabinet--Implacables and
Bourbons South and North--"I extend to you each and all the Olive Branch
of Peace."
HARD TIMES AND THE WAY OUT.
(1878.)
Capital and Labor--What is a Capitalist?--The Idle and the Industrious
Artisans--No Conflict between Capital and Labor--A Period of Inflation
and Speculation--Life and Fire Insurance Agents--Business done on
Credit--The Crash, Failure, and Bankruptcy--Fall in the Price of Real
Estate a Form of Resumption--Coming back to Reality--Definitions of
Money Examined--Not Gold and Silver but Intelligent Labor the Measure
of Value--Government cannot by Law Create Wealth--A Bill of Fare not
a Dinner--Fiat Money--American Honor Pledged to the Maintenance of the
Greenbacks--The Cry against Holders of Bonds--Criminals and Vagabonds to
be supported--Duty of Government to Facilitate Enterprise--More Men must
Cultivate the Soil--Government Aid for the Overcoming of Obstacles too
Great for Individual Enterprise--The Palace Builders the Friends of
Labor--Extravagance the best Form of Charity--Useless to Boost a Man
who is not Climbing--The Reasonable Price for Labor--The Vagrant and his
strange and winding Path--What to tell the Working Men.
SUFFRAGE ADDRESS.
(1880.)
The Right to Vote--All Women who desire the Suffrage should have
It--Shall the People of the District of Columbia Manage their Own
Affairs--Their Right to a Representative in Congress and an Electoral
Vote--Anomalous State of Affairs at the Capital of the Republic--Not the
Wealthy and Educated alone should Govern--The Poor as Trustworthy as the
Rich--Strict Registration Laws Needed.
WALL STREET SPEECH.
(1880.)
Obligation of New York to Protect the Best Interests of the
Country--Treason and Forgery of the Democratic Party in its Appeal to
Sword and Pen--The One Republican in the Penitentiary of Maine--The
Doctrine of State Sovereignty--Protection for American Brain and
Muscle--Hancock on the Tariff--A Forgery (the Morey letter) Committed
and upheld--The Character of James A. Garfield.
BROOKLYN SPEECH.
(1880.)
Introduced by Henry Ward Beecher (note)--Some Patriotic
Democrats--Freedom of Speech North and South--An Honest Ballot--
AN ADDRESS TO THE COLORED PEOPLE.
* An address delivered to the colored people at Galesburg,
Illinois, 1867.
FELLOW-CITIZENS--Slavery has in a thousand forms existed in all ages,
and among all people. It is as old as theft and robbery.
Every nation has enslaved its own people, and sold its own flesh and
blood. Most of the white race are in slavery to-day. It has often been
said that any man who ought to be free, will be. The men who say this
should remember that their own ancestors were once cringing, frightened,
helpless slaves.
When they became sufficiently educated to cease enslaving their own
people, they then enslaved the first race they could conquer. If they
differed in religion, they enslaved them. If they differed in color,
that was sufficient. If they differed even in language, it was enough.
If they were captured, they then pretended that having spared their
lives, they had the right to enslave them. This argument was worthless.
If they were captured, then there was no necessity for killing them. If
there was no necessity for killing them, then they had no right to
kill them. If they had no right to kill them, then they had no right to
enslave them under the pretence that they had saved their lives.
Every excuse that the ingenuity of avarice could devise was believed to
be a complete justification, and the great argument of slaveholders in
all countries has been that slavery is a divine institution, and thus
stealing human beings has always been fortified with a "Thus saith the
Lord."
Slavery has been upheld by law and religion in every country. The word
Liberty is not in any creed in the world. Slavery is right according to
the law of man, shouted the judge. It is right according to the law of
God, shouted the priest. Thus sustained by what they were pleased to
call the law of God and man, slaveholders never voluntarily freed the
slaves, with the exception of the Quakers. The institution has in all
ages been clung to with the tenacity of death; clung to until it sapped
and destroyed the foundations of society; clung to until all law became
violence; clung to until virtue was a thing only of history; clung to
until industry folded its arms--until commerce reefed every sail--until
the fields were desolate and the cities silent, except where the poor
free asked for bread, and the slave for mercy; clung to until the slave
forging the sword of civil war from his fetters drenched the land in the
master's blood. Civil war has been the great liberator of the world.
Slavery has destroyed every nation that has gone down to death. It
caused the last vestige of Grecian civilization to disappear forever,
and it caused Rome to fall with a crash that shook the world. After
the disappearance of slavery in its grossest forms in Europe, Gonzales
pointed out to his countrymen, the Portuguese, the immense profits that
they could make by stealing Africans, and thus commenced the modern
slave-trade--that aggregation of all horror--that infinite of all
cruelty, prosecuted only by demons, and defended only by fiends. And
yet the slave-trade has been defended and sustained by every civilized
nation, and by each and all has been baptized "Legitimate commerce," in
the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost:
It was even justified upon the ground that it tended to Christianize the
negro.
It was of the poor hypocrites who had used this argument that Whittier
said,
"They bade the slaveship speed from coast to coast,
Fanned by the wings of the Holy Ghost."
Backed and supported by such Christian and humane arguments slavery was
planted upon our soil in 1620, and from that day to this it has been
the cause of all our woes, of all the bloodshed--of all the
heart-burnings--hatred and horrors of more than two hundred years, and
yet we hated to part with the beloved institution. Like Pharaoh we would
not let the people go. He was afflicted with vermin, with frogs--with
water turned to blood--with several kinds of lice, and yet would not let
the people go. We were afflicted with worse than all these combined--the
Northern Democracy--before we became grand enough to say, "Slavery
shall be eradicated from the soil of the Republic." When we reached this
sublime moral height we were successful. The Rebellion was crushed and
liberty established.
A majority of the civilized world is for freedom--nearly all the
Christian denominations are for liberty. The world has changed--the
people are nobler, better and purer than ever.
Every great movement must be led by heroic and self-sacrificing
pioneers. In England, in Christian England, the soul of the abolition
cause was Thomas Clarkson. To the great cause of human freedom he
devoted his life. He won over the eloquent and glorious Wilberforce,
the great Pitt, the magnificent orator, Burke, and that far-seeing and
humane statesman, Charles James Fox.
In 1788 a resolution was introduced in the House of Commons declaring
that the slave trade ought to be abolished. It was defeated. Learned
lords opposed it. They said that too much capital was invested by
British merchants in the slave-trade. That if it were abolished the
ships would rot at the wharves, and that English commerce would be swept
from the seas. Sanctified Bishops--lords spiritual--thought the scheme
fanatical, and various resolutions to the same effect were defeated.
The struggle lasted twenty years, and yet during all those years in
which England refused to abolish the hellish trade, that nation had the
impudence to send missionaries all over the world to make converts to
a religion that in their opinion, at least, allowed man to steal his
brother man--that allowed one Christian to rob another of his wife, his
child, and of that greatest of all blessings--his liberty. It was not
until the year 1808 that England was grand and just enough to abolish
the slave-trade, and not until 1833 that slavery was abolished in all
her colonies.
The name of Thomas Clarkson should be remembered and honored through all
coming time by every black man, and by every white man who loves liberty
and hates cruelty and injustice.
Clarkson, Wilberforce, Pitt, Fox, Burke, were the Titans that swept the
accursed slaver from that highway--the sea.
In St. Domingo the pioneers were Oge and Chevannes; they headed
a revolt; they were unsuccessful, but they roused the slaves to
resistance. They were captured, tried, condemned and executed. They were
made to ask forgiveness of God, and of the King, for having attempted to
give freedom to their own flesh and blood. They were broken alive on the
wheel, and left to die of hunger and pain. The blood of these martyrs
became the seed of liberty; and afterward in the midnight assault, in
the massacre and pillage, the infuriated slaves shouted their names
as their battle-cry, until Toussaint, the greatest of the blacks, gave
freedom to them all.
In the United States, among the Revolutionary fathers, such men as John
Adams, and his son John Quincy--such men as Franklin and John Jay were
opposed to the institution of slavery. Thomas Jefferson said, speaking
of the slaves, "When the measure of their tears shall be full--when
their groans shall have involved heaven itself in darkness--doubtless a
God of justice will awaken to their distress, and by diffusing light
and liberality among their oppressors, or at length by his exterminating
thunder manifest his attention to the things of this world, and that
they are not left to the guidance of a blind fatality."
Thomas Paine said, "No man can be happy surrounded by those whose
happiness he has destroyed." And a more self-evident proposition was
never uttered.
These and many more Revolutionary heroes were opposed to slavery and
did what they could to prevent the establishment and spread of this most
wicked and terrible of all institutions.
You owe gratitude to those who were for liberty as a principle and not
from mere necessity. You should remember with more than gratitude that
firm, consistent and faithful friend of your downtrodden race, Wm.
Lloyd Garrison. He has devoted his life to your cause. Many years ago in
Boston he commenced the publication of a paper devoted to liberty.
Poor and despised--friendless and almost alone, he persevered in that
grandest and holiest of all possible undertakings. He never stopped, or
stayed, or paused until the chain was broken and the last slave could
lift his toil-worn face to heaven with the light of freedom shining down
upon him, and say, I am a Free Man.
You should not forget that noble philanthropist, Wendell Phillips, and
your most learned and eloquent defender, Charles Sumner.
But the real pioneer in America was old John Brown. Moved not by
prejudice, not by love of his blood, or his color, but by an infinite
love of Liberty, of Right, of Justice, almost single-handed, he attacked
the monster, with thirty million people against him. His head was wrong.
He miscalculated his forces; but his heart was right. He struck the
sublimest blow of the age for freedom. It was said of him that, he
stepped from the gallows to the throne of God. It was said that he
had made the scaffold to Liberty what Christ had made the cross to
Christianity. The sublime Victor Hugo declared that John Brown was
greater than Washington, and that his name would live forever.
I say, that no man can be greater than the man who bravely and
heroically sacrifices his life for the good of others. No man can be
greater than the one who meets death face to face, and yet will not
shrink from what he believes to be his highest duty. If the black people
want a patron saint, let them take the brave old John Brown. And as the
gentleman who preceded me said, at all your meetings, never separate
until you have sung the grand song,
"John Brown's body lies mouldering in the grave,
But his soul goes marching on."
You do not, in my opinion, owe a great debt of gratitude to many of the
white people.
Only a few years ago both parties agreed to carry out the Fugitive
Slave Law. If a woman ninety-nine one-hundredths white had fled from
slavery--had traveled through forests, crossed rivers, and through
countless sufferings had got within one step of Canada--of free
soil--with the light of the North Star shining in her eyes, and her babe
pressed to her withered breast, both parties agreed to clutch her and
hand her back to the dominion of the hound and lash. Both parties, as
parties, were willing to do this when the Rebellion commenced.
The truth is, we had to give you your liberty. There came a time in
the history of the war when, defeated at the ballot box and in the
field--driven to the shattered gates of eternal chaos--we were forced
to make you free; and on the first day of January, 1863, the justice so
long delayed was done, and four millions of people were lifted from
the condition of beasts of burden to the sublime heights of freedom.
Lincoln, the immortal, issued, and the men of the North sustained the
great proclamation.
As in the war there came a time when we were forced to make you free, so
in the history of reconstruction came a time when we were forced to make
you citizens; when we were forced to say that you should vote, and that
you should have and exercise all the rights that we claim for ourselves.
And to-day I am in favor of giving you every right that I claim for
myself.
In reconstructing the Southern States, we could take our choice, either
give the ballot to the negro, or allow the rebels to rule. We preferred
loyal blacks to disloyal whites, because we believed liberty safer in
the hands of its friends than in those of its foes.
We must be for freedom everywhere. Freedom is progress--slavery is
desolation, cruelty and want.
Freedom invents--slavery forgets. The problem of the slave is to do the
least work in the longest space of time. The problem of free men is to
do the greatest amount of work in the shortest space of time. The free
man, working for wife and children, gets his head and his hands in
partnership.
Freedom has invented every useful machine, from the lowest to the
highest, from the simplest to the most complex. Freedom believes in
education--the salvation of slavery is ignorance.
The South always dreaded the alphabet. They looked upon each letter as
an abolitionist, and well they might. With a scent keener than their own
bloodhounds they detected everything that could, directly or indirectly,
interfere with slavery. They knew that when slaves begin to think,
masters begin to tremble. They knew that free thought would destroy
them; that discussion could not be endured; that a free press would
liberate every slave; and so they mobbed free thought, and put an end to
free discussion and abolished a free press, and in fact did all the
mean and infamous things they could, that slavery might live, and that
liberty might perish from among men.
You are now citizens of many of the States, and in time you will be
of all. I am astonished when I think how long it took to abolish the
slave-trade, how long it took to abolish slavery in this country. I am
also astonished to think that a few years ago magnificent steamers went
down the Mississippi freighted with your fathers, mothers, brothers,
and sisters, and maybe some of you, bound like criminals, separated from
wives, from husbands, every human feeling laughed at and outraged, sold
like beasts, carried away from homes to work for another, receiving for
pay only the marks of the lash upon the naked back. I am astonished
at these things. I hate to think that all this was done under the
Constitution of the United States, under the flag of my country, under
the wings of the eagle.
The flag was not then what it is now. It was a mere rag in comparison.
The eagle was a buzzard, and the Constitution sanctioned the greatest
crime of the world.
I wonder that you--the black people--have forgotten all this. I wonder
that you ask a white man to address you on this occasion, when the
history of your connection with the white race is written in your blood
and tears--is still upon your flesh, put there by the branding-iron and
the lash.
I feel like asking your forgiveness for the wrongs that my race has
inflicted upon yours. If, in the future, the wheel of fortune should
take a turn, and you should in any country have white men in your power,
I pray you not to execute the villainy we have taught you.
One word in conclusion. You have your liberty--use it to benefit your
race. Educate yourselves, educate your children, send teachers to the
South. Let your brethren there be educated. Let them know something of
art and science. Improve yourselves, stand by each other, and above all
be in favor of liberty the world over.
The time is coming when you will be' allowed to be good and useful
citizens of the Great Republic. This is your country as much as it is
mine. You have the same rights here that I have--the same interest
that I have. The avenues of distinction will be open to you and your
children. Great advances have been made. The rebels are now opposed
to slavery--the Democratic party is opposed to slavery, _as they say_.
There is going to be no war of races. Both parties want your votes in
the South, and there will be just enough negroes without principle to
join the rebels to make them think they will get more, and so the rebels
will treat the negroes well. And the Republicans will be sure to treat
them well in order to prevent any more joining the rebels.
The great problem is solved. Liberty has solved it--and there will be no
more slavery. On the old flag, on every fold and on every star will be
liberty for all, equality before the law. The grand people are marching
forward, and they will not pause until the earth is without a chain, and
without a throne.
SPEECH AT INDIANAPOLIS.
* Hon. Robert G. Ingersoll, Attorney-General of Illinois,
spoke at the Rink last night to a large and appreciative
audience among whom were many ladies. The distinguished
speaker was escorted to the Rink by the battalion of the
Fighting Boys in Blue. Col. Ingersoll spoke at a great
disadvantage in having so large a hall to fill, but he has a
splendid voice and so overcame the difficulty. The audience
liberally applauded the numerous passages of eloquence and
humor in Col. Ingersoll's speeeh, and listened with the best
attention to his powerful argument, nor could they have done
otherwise, for the speaker has a national reputation and did
himself full justice last night--The Journal, Indianapolis,
Indiana, September 23, 1868.
GRANT CAMPAIGN
THE Democratic party, so-called, have several charges which they make
against the Republican party. They give us a variety of reasons why the
Republican party should no longer be entrusted with the control of this
country. Among other reasons they say that the Republican party
during the war was guilty of arresting citizens without due process of
law--that we arrested Democrats and put them in jail without indictment,
in Lincoln bastiles, without making an affidavit before a Justice
of the Peace--that on some occasions we suspended the writ of _habeas
corpus_, that we put some Democrats in jail without their being
indicted. I am sorry we did not put more. I admit we arrested some
of them without an affidavit filed before a Justice of the Peace. I
sincerely regret that we did not arrest more. I admit that for a few
hours on one or two occasions we interfered with the freedom of the
press; I sincerely regret that the Government allowed a sheet to exist
that did not talk on the side of this Government.
I admit that we did all these things.
It is only proper and fair that we should answer these charges.
Unless the Republican party can show that they did these things
either according to the strict letter of law, according to the highest
precedent, or from the necessity of the case, then we must admit that
our party did wrong. You know as well as I that every Democratic
orator talks about the fathers, about Washington and Jackson, Madison,
Jefferson, and many others; they tell us about the good old times when
politicians were pure, when you could get justice in the courts, when
Congress was honest, when the political parties differed, and differed
kindly and honestly; and they are shedding crocodile tears day after
day--praying that the good old honest times might return again. They
tell you that the members of this radical party are nothing like the men
of the Revolution. Let us see.
I lay this down as a proposition, that we had a right to do anything to
preserve this Government that our fathers had a right to do to found
it. If they had a right to put Tories in jail, to suspend the writ of
_habeas corpus_, and on some occasions _corpus_, in order to found this
Government, we had a right to put rebels and Democrats in jail and to
suspend the writ of _habeas corpus_ in order to preserve the Government
they thus formed. If they had a right to interfere with the freedom of
the press in order that liberty might be planted upon this soil, we had
a right to do the same thing to prevent the tree from being destroyed.
In a word, we had a right to do anything to preserve this Government
which they had a right to do to found it.
Did our fathers arrest Tories without writs, without indictments--did
they interfere with the personal rights of Tories in the name of
liberty--did they have Washington bastiles, did they have Jefferson
jails--did they have dungeons in the time of the Revolution in which
they put men that dared talk against this country and the liberties of
the colonies? I propose to show that they did--that where we imprisoned
one they imprisoned a hundred--that where we interfered with personal
liberty once they did it a hundred times--that they carried on a war
that _was_ a war--that they knew that when an appeal was made to
force that was the end of law--that they did not attempt to gain their
liberties through a Justice of the Peace or through a Grand Jury; that
they appealed to force and the God of battles, and that any man who
sought their protection and at the same time was against them and their
cause they took by the nape of the neck and put in jail, where he ought
to have been.
The old Continental Congress in 1774 and 1776 had made up their minds
that we ought to have something like liberty in these colonies, and the
first step they took toward securing that end was to provide for the
selection of a committee in every county and township, with a view to
examining and finding out how the people stood touching the liberty of
the colonies, and if they found a man that was not in favor of it, the
people would not have anything to do with him politically, religiously,
or socially. That was the first step they took, and a very sensible step
it was.
What was the next step? They found that these men were so lost to every
principle of honor that they did not hurt them any by disgracing them.
So they passed the following resolution which explains itself:
_Resolved_. That it be recommended to the several provincial assemblies
or conventions or councils, or committees of safety, to arrest and
secure every person in their respective colonies whose going at
large, may, in their opinion, endanger the safety of the colony or the
liberties of America.--Journal of Congress, vol. 1, page 149.
What was the Committee of Safety? Was it a Justice of the Peace? No. Was
it a Grand Jury? No. It was simply a committee of five or seven persons,
more or less, appointed to watch over the town or county and see that
these Tories were attending to their business and not interfering with
the rights of the colonies. Whom were they to thus arrest and secure?
Every man that had committed murder--that had taken up arms against
America, or voted the Democratic or Tory ticket? No. "Every person whose
going at large might in their opinion, endanger the safety of the
colony or the liberties of America." It was not necessary that they
had committed any overt act, but if in the opinion of this council of
safety, it was dangerous to let them run at large they were locked up.
Suppose that we had done that during the last war? You would have had to
build several new jails in this county. What a howl would have gone up
all over this State if we had attempted such a thing as that, and yet we
had a perfect right to do anything to preserve our liberties, which our
fathers had a right to do to obtain them.
What more did they do? In 1777 the same Congress that signed the
immortal Declaration of Independence (and I think they knew as much
about liberty and the rights of men as any Democrat in Marion county)
adopted another resolution:
_Resolved_. That it be recommended to the Executive powers of the
several States, forthwith to apprehend and secure all persons who have
in their general conduct and conversation evinced a disposition inimical
to the cause of America, and that the persons so seized be confined in
such places and treated in such manner as shall be consistent with their
several characters and security of their persons.---Journal of Congress,
vol. 2, p. 246.
If they had talked as the Democrats talked during the late war--if
they had called the soldiers, "Washington hirelings," and if when they
allowed a few negroes to help them fight, had branded the struggle for
liberty as an abolition war, they would be "apprehended and confined
in such places and treated in such manner as was consistent with their
characters and security of their persons," and yet all they did was to
show a disposition inimical to the independence of America. If we had
pursued a policy like that during the late war, nine out of ten of the
members of the Democratic party would have been in jail--there would
not have been jails and prisons enough on the face of the whole earth to
hold them. .
Now, when a Democrat talks to you about Lincoln bastiles, just quote
this to him:
_Whereas_, The States of Pennsylvania and Delaware are threatened with
an immediate invasion from a powerful army, who have already landed at
the head of Chesapeake Bay; and whereas, The principles of sound
policy and self-preservation require that persons who may be reasonably
suspected of aiding or abetting the cause of the enemy may be prevented
from pursuing measures injurious to the general weal,
_Resolved_, That the executive authorities of the States of Pennsylvania
and Delaware be requested to cause all persons within their respective
States, notoriously disaffected, to be apprehended, disarmed and secured
until such time as the respective States think they may be released
without injury to the common cause.---Journal of Congress, vol. 2, p.
240.
That is what they did with them. When there was an invasion threatened
the good State of Indiana, if we had said we will imprison all men who
by their conduct and conversation show that they are inimical to our
cause, we would have been obliged to import jails and corral Democrats
as we did mules in the army. Our fathers knew that the flag was never
intended to protect any man who wanted to assail it.
What more did they do? There was a man by the name of David Franks, who
wrote a letter and wanted to send it to England. In that letter he gave
it as his opinion that the colonies were becoming disheartened and sick
of the war. The heroic and chivalric fathers of the Revolution violated
the mails, took the aforesaid letter and then they took the aforesaid
David Franks by the collar and put him in jail. Then they passed
a resolution in Congress that inasmuch as the said letter showed a
disposition inimical to the liberties of the United States, Major
General Arnold be requested to cause the said David Franks to be
forthwith arrested, put in jail and confined till the further order of
Congress. (Jour. Cong., vol. 3, p. 96 and 97.)
How many Democrats wrote letters during the war declaring that the North
never could conquer the South? How many wrote letters to the soldiers in
the army telling them to shed no more fraternal blood in that suicidal
and unchristian war? It would have taken all the provost marshals in the
United States to arrest the Democrats in Indiana who were guilty of that
offence. And yet they are talking about our fathers being such good men,
while they are cursing us fordoing precisely what they did, only to a
less extent than they did.
We are still on the track of the old Continental Congress. I want you to
understand the spirit that animated those men. They passed a resolution
which is particularly applicable to the Democrats during the war:
With respect to all such unworthy Americans as, regardless of their duty
to their Creator, their country, and their posterity, have taken part
with our oppressors, and, influenced by the hope or possession of
ignominious rewards, strive to recommend themselves to the bounty of
the administration by misrepresenting and traducing the conduct and
principles of the friends of American liberty, and opposing every
measure formed for its preservation and security,
_Resolved_, That it be recommended to the different assemblies,
conventions and committees or councils of safety in the United Colonies,
by the most speedy and effectual measures, to frustrate the mischievous
machinations and restrain the wicked practices of these men. And it is
the opinion of this Congress that they ought to be disarmed and the
more dangerous among them either kept in safe custody or bound with
sufficient sureties for their good behavior.
And in order that the said assemblies, conventions, committees or
councils of safety may be enabled with greater ease and facility to
carry this resolution into execution,
_Resolved_, That they be authorized to call to their aid whatever
Continental troops stationed in or near their respective colonies
that may be conveniently spared from their more immediate duties, and
commanding officers of such troops are hereby directed to afford the
said assemblies, conventions, committees or councils of safety, all such
assistance in executing this resolution as they may require, and which,
consistent with the good of the service, may be supplied--Journal of
Congress, vol. i, p. 22,
Do you hear that, Democrat? The old Continental Congress said to these
committees and councils of safety: "Whenever you want to arrest any
of these scoundrels, call on the Continental troops." And General
Washington, the commander-in-chief of the army, and the officers under
him, were directed to aid in the enforcement of all the measures adopted
with reference to disaffected and dangerous persons. And what had these
persons done? Simply shown by their conversation, and letters directed
to their friends, that they were opposed to the cause of American
liberty. They did not even spare the Governors of States. They were not
appalled by any official position that a Tory might hold. They simply
said, "If you are not in favor of American liberty, we will put you
'where the dogs won't bite you.'" One of these men was Governor Eden of
Maryland. Congress passed a resolution requesting the Council of Safety
of Maryland to seize and secure his person and papers, and send such of
them as related to the American dispute to Congress without delay. At
the same time the person and papers of another man, one Alexander Ross,
were seized in the same manner. Ross was put in jail, and his papers
transmitted to Congress.
There was a fellow by the name of Parke and another by the name of
Morton, who presumed to undertake a journey from Philadelphia to New
York without getting a pass. Congress ordered them to be arrested and
imprisoned until further orders. They did not wait to have an affidavit
filed before a Justice of the Peace. They took them by force and put
them in jail, and that was the end of it. So much for the policy of the
fathers, in regard to arbitrary arrests.
During the war there was a great deal said about our occasionally
interfering with the elections. Let us see how the fathers stood upon
that question.
They held a convention in the State of New York in Revolutionary times,
and there were some gentlemen in Queens County that were playing the
role of Kentucky--they were going to be neutral--they refused to vote to
send deputies to the convention--they stood upon their dignity just as
Kentucky stood upon hers--a small place to stand on, the Lord knows.
What did our fathers do with them? They denounced them as unworthy to be
American citizens and hardly fit to live. Here is a resolution adopted
by the Continental Congress on the 3d of January, 1776:
_Resolved_, That all such persons in Queens County aforesaid as voted
against sending deputies to the present Convention of New York, and
named in a list of delinquents in Queens County, published by the
Convention of New York, be put out of the protection of the United
Colonies, and that all trade and intercourse with them cease; that none
of the inhabitants of that county be permitted to travel or abide in any
part of these United Colonies out of their said colony without a
certificate from the Convention or Committee of Safety of the Colony of
New York, setting forth that such inhabitant is a friend of the American
cause, and not of the number of those who voted against sending deputies
to the said Convention, and that such of the inhabitants as shall be
found out of the said county without such certificate, be apprehended
and imprisoned three months.
_Resolved_, That no attorney or lawyer ought to commence, prosecute or
defend any action at law of any kind, for any of the said inhabitants of
Queens County, who voted against sending deputies to the Convention
as aforesaid, and such attorney or lawyer as shall countenance this
revolution, are enemies to the American cause, and shall be treated
accordingly.
What had they done? Simply voted against sending delegates to the
convention, and yet the fathers not only put them out of the protection
of law, but prohibited any lawyer from appearing in their behalf in a
court. Democrats, don't you wish we had treated you that way during the
war?
What more did they do? They ordered a company of troops from
Connecticut, and two or three companies from New Jersey, to go into the
State of New York, and take away from every person who had voted against
sending deputies to the convention, all his arms, and if anybody refused
to give up his arms, they put him in jail. Don't you wish you had lived
then, my friend Democrat? Don't you wish you had prosecuted the war as
our fathers prosecuted the Revolution?
I now want to show you how far they went in this direction. A man by the
name of Sutton, who lived on Long Island, had been going around giving
his constitutional opinions upon the war. They had him arrested, and
went on to resolve that he should be taken from Philadelphia, pay the
cost of transportation himself, be put in jail there, and while in jail
should board himself. Wouldn't a Democrat have had a hard scramble for
victuals if we had carried out that idea? Just see what outrageous and
terrible things the fathers did. And why did they do it? Because they
saw that in order to establish the liberties of America it was necessary
they should take the Tory by the throat just as it was necessary for us
to take rebels by the throat during the late war.
They had paper money in those days--shin-plasters--and some of the
Democrats of those times had legal doubts about this paper currency. One
of these Democrats, Thomas Harriott, was called before a Committee of
Safety of New York, and there convicted of having refused to receive in
payment the Continental bills. The committee of New York conceiving that
he was a dangerous person, informed the Provincial Congress of the facts
in the case, and inquired whether Congress thought he ought to go at
large. Upon receipt of this information by Congress an order for the
imprisonment of the offender was passed, as follows:
_Resolved_, That the General Committee of the city of New York be
requested and authorized, and are hereby requested and authorized to
direct that Thomas Harriott be committed to close jail in this city,
there to remain until further orders of this Congress.--Amer. Archives,
4th series, vol. 6, P. i, 344.
And yet all that he had done was to refuse to take Continental money.
He had simply given his opinion on the legal tender law, just as the
Democrats of Indiana did in regard to greenbacks, and as a few circuit
judges decided when they declared the Legal Tender Act unconstitutional.
It would have been perfectly proper and right that they, every man of
them, should be, like Thomas Harriott, "committed to close jail, there
to remain until further orders."
Did our forefathers ever interfere with religion? Yes, they did with
a preacher by the name of Daniels, because he would not pray for the
American cause. He thought he could coax the Lord to beat us. They said
to him, "You pray on our side, sir." He would not do it, and so they put
him in jail and gave him work enough to pray himself out, and it took
him some time to do it. They interfered with a _lack_ of religion. They
believed that a Tory or traitor in the pulpit was no better than anybody
else. That is the way I have sometimes felt during the war. I have
thought that I would like to see some of those white cravatted gentlemen
"snaked" right out of the pulpits where they had dared to utter their
treason, and set to playing checkers through a grated window.
It is not possible that our fathers ever interfered with the writ of
_habeas corpus_, is it? Yes sir. Our fathers advocated the doctrine
that the good of the people is the supreme law of the land. They also
advocated the doctrine that in the midst of armies law falls to the
ground; the doctrine that when a country is in war it is to be governed
by the laws of war. They thought that laws were made for the protection
of good citizens, for the punishment of citizens that were bad, when
they were not too bad or too numerous; then they threw the law-book down
while they took the cannon and whipped the badness out of them; that is
the next step, when the stones you throw, and kind words, and grass have
failed. They said, why did we not appeal to law? We did; but it did no
good. A large portion of the people were up in arms in defiance of law,
and there was only one way to put them down, and that was by force of
arms; and whenever an appeal is made to force, that force is governed by
the law of war.
The fathers suspended the writ in the case of a man who had committed
an offence in the State of New York. They sent him to the State of
Connecticut to be confined, just as men were sent from Indiana to Fort
Lafayette. The attorneys came before the convention of New York to hear
the matter inquired into, but the committee of the convention to whom
the matter was referred refused to inquire into the original cause of
commitment--a direct denial of the authority of the writ. The writ of
_habeas corpus_ merely brings the body before the judge that he may
inquire why he is imprisoned. They refused to make any such inquiry.
Their action was endorsed by the convention and the gentleman was sent
to Connecticut and put in jail. They not only did these things in one
instance, but in a thousand. They took men from Maryland and put them in
prison in Pennsylvania, and they took men from Pennsylvania and confined
them in Maryland, Whenever they thought the Tories were so thick at
one point that the rascals might possibly be released, they took them
somewhere else.
They did not interfere with the freedom of the press, did they? Yes,
sir. They found a gentleman who was speaking and writing against the
liberties of the colonies, and they just took his paper away from him,
and gave it to a man who ran it in the interest of the colonies, using
the Tory's type and press. [A voice--That was right.] Right! of course
it was right. What right has a newspaper in Indiana to talk against the
cause for which your son is laying down his life on the field of battle?
What right has any man to make it take thousands of men more to crush a
rebellion? What right has any man protected by the American flag to do
all in his power to put it in the hands of the enemies of his country?
The same right that any man has to be a rascal, a thief and traitor--no
other right under heaven. Our fathers had sense enough to see that, and
they said, "One gentleman in the rear printing against our noble cause,
will cost us hundreds of noble lives at the front." Why have you a right
to take a rebel's horse? Because it helps you and weakens the enemy.
That is by the law of war. That is the principle upon which they seized
the Tory printing press. They had the right to do it. And if I had had
the power in this country, no man should have said a word, or written a
line, or printed anything against the cause for which the heroic men of
the North sacrificed their lives. I would have enriched the soil of this
country with him before he should have done it. A man by the name of
James Rivington undertook to publish a paper against the country. They
would not speak to him; they denounced him, seized his press, and made
him ask forgiveness and promise to print no more such stuff before they
would let him have his sheet again. No person but a rebel ever thought
that was wrong. There is no common sense in going to the field to fight
and leaving a man at home to undo all that you accomplish.
Our fathers did not like these Tories, and when the war was over they
confiscated their estates--took their land and gave it over to good
Union men.
How did they do it? Did they issue summons, and have a trial? No, sir.
They did it by wholesale--they did it by resolution, and the estates of
hundreds of men were taken from them without their having a day in court
or any notice or trial whatever. They said to the Tories: "You cast
your fortunes with the other side, let them pay you. The flag you fought
against protects the land you owned and it will prevent you from having
it." Nor is that all. They ran thousands of them out of the country away
up into Nova Scotia, and the old blue-nosed Tories are there yet.
In his letter to Governor Cooke of Rhode Island, Washington enumerates
an act of that colony, declaring that "none should speak, write, or act
against the proceedings of Congress or their Acts of Assembly, under
penalty of being disarmed and disqualified from holding any office,
and being further punished by imprisonment," as one that met his
approbation, and which should exist in other colonies. There is the
doctrine for you Democrats. So I could go on by the hour or by the
day. I could show you how they made domiciliary visits, interfered
with travel, imprisoned without any sort of writ or affidavit--in other
words, did whatever they thought was necessary to whip the enemy and
establish their independence.
What next do they charge against us? That we freed negroes. So we did.
That we allowed those negroes to fight in the army. Yes, we did,
That we allowed them to vote. We did that too. That we have made them
citizens. Yes, we have, and what are you Democrats going to do about it?
Now, what did our fathers do? Did they free any of the negroes? Yes,
sir. Did they allow any of them to fight in the army? Yes, sir. Did they
permit any of them to vote? Yes, sir. Did they make them citizens? Yes,
sir. Let us see whether they did or not.
Before we had the present Constitution we had what were called Articles
of Confederation. The fourth of those articles provided that every
free inhabitant of the colony should be a citizen. It did not make any
difference whether he was white or black; and negroes voted by the side
of Washington and Jefferson. Just here the question arises, if negroes
were good enough in 1787 and 1790 to vote by the side of such men,
whether rebels and their sympathizers are good enough now to vote
alongside of the negro.
Did they let any of these negroes fight? In 1750, when Massachusetts had
slaves, there appeared in the Boston Gazette the following notice:
"Ran away from his master, Wm. Brown, of Framingham, on the 30th
September last, a mulatto fellow, about 27 years of age, named Crispus,
about 6 feet high, short curly hair, had on a light colored bear-skin
coat, brown jacket, new buckskin breeches, blue yarn stockings and check
woolen shirt," etc.
This "mulatto fellow" did not come back, and so they advertised the next
week and the week following, but still the toes of the blue yarn socks
pointed the other way. That was in 1750. 1760 came and 1770, and the
people of this continent began to talk about having their liberties. And
while wise and thoughtful men were talking about it, making petitions
for popular rights and laying them at the foot of the throne, the King's
troops were in Boston. One day they marched down King street, on their
way to arrest some citizen. The soldiery were attacked by a mob, and at
its head was a "mulatto fellow" who shouted "here they are," and it was
observed that this "mulatto fellow" was about six feet high--that his
knees were nearer together than common, and that he was about 47 years
of age. The soldiers fired upon the mob and he fell, shot through
with five balls--the first man that led a charge against British
aggression--the first martyr whose blood was shed for American liberty
upon this soil. They took up that poor corpse, and as it lay in Faneuil
Hall it did more honor to the place than did Daniel Webster defending
the Fugitive Slave Law.
They allowed him to fight. Would our fathers have been brutal enough,
if he had not been killed, to put him back into slavery? No! They would
have said that a man who fights for liberty should enjoy it. If a man
fights for that flag it shall protect him. Perish forever from the
heavens the flag that will not defend its defenders, be they white or
black.
Thus our fathers felt. They raised negro troops by the company and the
regiment, and gave his liberty to every man that fought for liberty. Not
only that, but they allowed them to vote. They voted in the Carolinas,
in Tennessee, in New York, in all the New England States. Our fathers
had too much decency to act upon the Democratic doctrine.
In the war of 1812, negroes fought at Lake Erie and at New Orleans, and
then the fathers, as in the Revolution, were too magnanimous to turn
them back into slavery. You need not get mad, my Democratic friends,
because you hate Ben. Butler. Let me read you an abolition document.
You will all say it is right; you cannot say anything else when you hear
it. Butler, you know, was down in New Orleans, and he made some of those
rebels dance a tune that they did not know, and he made them keep pretty
good time too:
_To the Free Colored Inhabitants of Louisiana:_
Through a mistaken policy you have heretofore been deprived of a
participation in the glorious struggle for national rights in which our
country is engaged. This shall no longer exist. As sons of freedom
you are now called upon to defend our most inestimable blessing. As
Americans, your country looks with confidence to her adopted children
for a valorous support as a faithful return for the advantages enjoyed
under her mild and equitable government. As fathers, husbands and
brothers you are summoned to rally around the standard of the eagle--to
defend all which is dear in existence. Your country, although calling
for your exertions, does not wish you to engage in her cause without
amply remunerating you for the services rendered. Your intelligent minds
can not be led away by false representations. Your love of honor would
cause you to despise a man who should attempt to deceive you. In the
sincerity of a soldier and the language of truth I address you. To every
noble-hearted, generous free man of color volunteering to serve during
the present contest and no longer, there will be paid the same bounty in
money and lands now received by the white soldiers of the United
States, viz: $124 in money and one hundred and sixty acres of land. The
noncommissioned officers and privates will also be entitled to the
same monthly pay and daily rations and clothing furnished any American
soldier.
On enrolling yourselves in companies, the Major General commanding will
select officers for your government from your white fellow-citizens.
Your non-commissioned officers will be appointed from among yourselves.
Due regard will be paid to their feelings as freemen and soldiers.
You will not by being associated with white men in the same corps,
be exposed to improper companions or unjust sarcasm. As a distinct
battalion or regiment pursuing the path of glory, you will undivided
receive the applause and gratitude of your countrymen.
To assure you of the sincerity of my intentions and my anxiety to engage
your valuable services to our country, I have communicated my wishes
to the Governor of Louisiana, who is fully informed as to the manner of
enrollment, and give you every necessary information on the subject of
this address.
This is a terrible document to a Democrat. Let us look back over it a
little. "Through a mistaken policy." We had not sense enough to let the
negroes fight during the first part of the war. "As sons of freedom" we
had got sense by this time. "Americans." Oh! shocking! Think of calling
negroes Americans. "Your country!" Is that not enough to make a Democrat
sick? "As fathers, husbands, brothers." Negro brothers. That is too
bad. "Your intelligent minds." Now, just think of a negro having an
intelligent mind. "Are not to be led away by false representations."
Then precious few of them will vote the Democratic ticket. "Your sense
of honor will lead you to despise the man who should attempt to deceive
you." Then how they will hate the Democratic party. Then he goes on to
say that the same bounty, money and land that the white soldiers receive
will be paid to these negroes. Not only that, but they are to have the
same pay, clothing and rations. Only think of a negro having as much
land, as much to eat and as many clothes to wear as a white man. Is
not this a vile abolition document? And yet there is not a Democrat in
Indiana that dare open his mouth against it, full of negro equality as
it is. Now, let us see when and by whom this proclamation was issued.
You will find that it is dated, "Headquarters 7th Military District,
Mobile, September 21st, 1814," and signed "Andrew Jackson, Major General
Commanding."
Oh, you Jackson Democrats. You gentlemen that are descended from
Washington and Jackson--great heavens, what a descent! Do you think.
Jackson was a Democrat? He generally passed for a good Democrat; yet
he issued that abominable abolition proclamation and put negroes on an
equality with white men. That is not the worst of it, either; for after
he got these negroes into the army he made a speech to them, and what
did he say in that speech? Here it is in full:
_To the Men of Color:_
Soldiers--From the shores of Mobile I called you to arms. I invited
you to share in the perils and to divide the glory with your white
countrymen. I expected much from you, for I was not uninformed of those
qualities which must render you so formidable to an invading foe. I knew
that you could endure hunger, thirst, and all the hardships of war. I
knew that you loved the land of your nativity, and that like ourselves
you had to defend all that is most dear to man. But you surpass
my hopes. I have found in you united to these qualities that noble
enthusiasm which impels to great deeds. Soldiers, the President of the
United States shall be informed of your conduct on the present occasion
and the voice of the representatives of the American nation shall
applaud your valor as your General now praises your ardor. The enemy
is near. His sails cover the lakes. But the brave are united, and if he
finds' us contending among ourselves, it will be only for the prize of
valor, its noblest reward.
There is negro equality for you. There is the first man since the heroes
of the Revolution died that issued a proclamation and put negroes on an
equality with white men, and he was as good a Democrat as ever lived in
Indiana. I could go on and show where they voted, and who allowed them
to vote, but I have said enough on that question, and also upon the
question of their fighting in the army, and of their being citizens, and
have established, I think conclusively, this:
_First_. That our fathers, in order to found this Government, arrested
men without warrant, indictment or affidavit by the hundred and by the
thousand; that we, in order to preserve the Government that they thus
founded, arrested a few people without warrant.
_Second_. That our fathers, for the purpose of founding the Government,
suspended the writ of _habeas corpus_; that we, for the purpose of
preserving the same Government, did the same thing.
_Third_. That they, for the purpose of inaugurating this Government,
interfered with the liberty of the press; that we, on one or two
occasions, for the purpose of preserving the Government, interfered with
the liberty of the press.
_Fourth_. That our fathers allowed negroes to fight in order that they
might secure the liberties of America; that we, in order to preserve
those liberties, allow negroes to fight.
_Fifth_. That our fathers, out of gratitude to the negroes in the
Revolutionary war, allowed them to vote; that we have done the same.
That they made them citizens, and we have followed their example.
As far as I have gone, I have shown that the fathers of the Revolution
and the War of 1812 set us the example for everything we have done.
Now, Mr. Democrat, if you want to curse us, curse them too. Either quit
yawping about the fathers, or quit yawping about us.
Now, then, was there any necessity, during this war, to follow the
example of our fathers? The question was put to us in 1861: "Shall
the majority rule?" and also the balance of that question: "Shall the
minority submit?" The minority said they would not. Upon the right of
the majority to rule rests the entire structure of our Government. Had
we, in 1861, given up that principle, the foundations of our Government
would have been totally destroyed. In fact there would have been no
Government, even in the North. It is no use to say the majority shall
rule if the minority consents. Therefore, if, when a man has been
duly elected President, anybody undertakes to prevent him from being
President, it is your duty to protect him and enforce submission to the
will of the majority. In 1861 we had presented to us the alternative,
either to let the great principle that lies at the foundation of our
Government go by the board, or to appeal to arms, and to the God of
battles, and fight it through.
The Southern people said they were going out of the Union; we implored
them to stay, by the common memories of the Revolution, by an apparent
common destiny; by the love of man, but they refused to listen to
us--rushed past us, and appealed to the arbitrament of the sword; and
now I, for one, say by the decision of the sword let them abide.
Now, I want to show how mean the American people were in 1861. The vile
and abominable institution of slavery had so corrupted us that we did
not know right from wrong. It crept into the pulpit until the sermon
became the echo of the bloodhound's bark. It crept upon the bench,
and the judge could not tell whether the corn belonged to the man that
raised it, or to the fellow that did not, but he rather thought it
belonged to the latter. We had lost our sense of justice. Even the
people of Indiana were so far gone as to agree to carry out the Fugitive
Slave Law. Was it not low-lived and contemptible? We agreed that if we
found a woman ninety-nine one hundredths white, who, inspired by the
love of liberty, had run away from her masters, and had got within
one step of free soil, we would clutch her and bring her back to the
dominion of the Democrat, the bloodhound and the lash. We were just mean
enough to do it. We used to read that some hundreds of years ago a lot
of soldiers would march into a man's house, take him out, tie him to a
stake driven into the earth, pile fagots around him, and let the
thirsty flames consume him, and all because they differed from him about
religion. We said it was horrible; it made our blood run cold to think
of it; yet at the same time many a magnificent steamboat floated down
the Mississippi with wives and husbands, fragments of families torn
asunder, doomed to a life of toil, requited only by lashes upon the
naked back, and branding irons upon the quivering flesh, and we thought
little of it. When we set out to put down the Rebellion the Democratic
party started up all at once and said, "You are not going to interfere
with slavery, are you?" Now, it is remarkable that whenever we were
going to do a good thing, we had to let on that we were going to do a
mean one. If we had said at the outset, "We will break the shackles from
four millions of slaves" we never would have succeeded. We had to come
at it by degrees. The Democrats scented it out. They had a scent keener
than a bloodhound when anything was going to be done to affect slavery.
"Put down rebellion," they said, "but don't hurt slavery." We said, "We
will not; we will restore the Union as it was and the Constitution as it
is." We were in good faith about it. We had no better sense then than
to think that it was worth fighting for, to preserve the cause of
quarrel--the bone of contention--so as to have war all the time. Every
blow we struck for slavery was a blow against us. The Rebellion was
simply slavery with a mask on. We never whipped anybody but once so long
as we stood upon that doctrine; that was at Donelson; and the victory
there was not owing to the policy, but to the splendid genius of the
next President of the United States. After a while it got into our
heads that slavery was the cause of the trouble, and we began to edge up
slowly toward slavery. When Mr. Lincoln said he would destroy slavery
if absolutely necessary for the suppression of the Rebellion, people
thought that was the most radical thing that ever was uttered. But the
time came when it was necessary to free the slaves, and to put muskets
into their hands. The Democratic party opposed us with all their might
until the draft came, and they wanted negroes for substitutes; and I
never heard a Democrat object to arming the negroes after that.
[The speaker from this point presented the history of the
Republican policy of reconstruction, and touched lightly on
the subject of the national debt. He glanced at the
finances, reviewing in the most scathing manner the history
and character of Seymour, paid a most eloquent tribute to
the character and public services of General Grant, and
closed with the following words: ]
The hero of the Rebellion, who accomplished at Shiloh what Napoleon
endeavored at Waterloo; who captured Vicksburg by a series of victories
unsurpassed, taking the keystone from the rebel arch; who achieved at
Missionary Ridge a success as grand as it was unexpected to the country;
who, having been summoned from the death-bed of rebellion in the West,
marched like an athlete from the Potomac to the James, the grandest
march in the history of the world. This was all done without the least
flourish upon his part. No talk about destiny--without faith in a
star--with the simple remark that he would "fight it out on that line,"
without a boast, modest to bashfulness, yet brave to audacity, simple as
duty, firm as war, direct as truth--this hero, with so much common
sense that he is the most uncommon man of his time, will be, in spite of
Executive snares and Cabinet entanglements, of competent false witnesses
of the Democratic party, the next President of the United States. He
will be trusted with the Government his genius saved.
SPEECH AT CINCINNATI.*
* The nomination of Blaine was the passionately dramatic
scene of the day. Robert G. Ingersoll had been fixed upon to
present Blaine's name to the Convention, and, as the result
proved, a more effective champion could not have been
selected in the whole party conclave.
As the clerk, running down the list, reached Maine, an
extraordinary event happened. The applause and cheers which
had heretofore broken out in desultory patches of the
galleries and platform, broke in a simultaneous, thunderous
outburst from every part of the house.
Ingersoll moved out from the obscure corner and advanced to
the central stage. As he walked forward the thundering
cheers, sustained and swelling, never ceased. As he reached
the platform they took on an increased volume of sound, and
for ten minutes the surging fury of acclamation, the wild
waving of fans, hats, and handkerchiefs transformed the
scene from one of deliberation to that of a bedlam of
rapturous delirium. Ingersoll waited with unimpaired
serenity, until he should get a chance to be heard. * * *
And then began an appeal, impassioned, artful, brilliant,
and persuasive. * * *
Possessed of a fine figure, a face of winning, cordial
frankness, Ingersoll had half won his audience before he
spoke a word. It is the attestation of every man that heard
him, that so brilliant a master stroke was never uttered
before a political Convention. Its effect was indescribable.
The coolest-headed in the hall were stirred to the wildest
expression. The adversaries of Blaine, as well as his
friends, listened with unswerving, absorbed attention.
Curtis sat spell-bound, his eyes and mouth wide open, his
figure moving in unison to the tremendous periods that fell
in a measured, exquisitely graduated flow from the
Illinoisan's smiling lips. The matchless method and manner
of the man can never be imagined from the report in type. To
realize the prodigious force, the inexpressible power, the
irrestrainable fervor of the audience requires actual sight.
Words can do but meagre justice to the wizard power of this
extraordinary man. He swayed and moved and impelled and
restrained and worked in all ways with the mass before him
as if he possessed some key to the innermost mechanism that
moves the human heart, and when he finished, his fine, frank
face as calm as when he began, the overwrought thousands
sank back in an exhaustion of unspeakable wonder and
delight.--Chicago Times, June 16, 1876.
SPEECH NOMINATING BLAINE.
June 75, 1876.
MASSACHUSETTS may be satisfied with the loyalty of Benjamin H. Bristow;
so am I; but if any man nominated by this convention can not 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 statesman;
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 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 the 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; in 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.
CENTENNIAL ORATION.
* Delivered on the one hundredth Anniversary of the
Declaration of Independence, at Peoria, Ill., July 4, 1876.
July 4, 1876.
THE Declaration of Independence is the grandest, the bravest, and
the profoundest political document that was ever signed by the
representatives of a people. It is the embodiment of physical and moral
courage and of political wisdom.
I say of physical courage, because it was a declaration of war against
the most powerful nation then on the globe; a declaration of war by
thirteen weak, unorganized colonies; a declaration of war by a few
people, without military stores, without wealth, without strength,
against the most powerful kingdom on the earth; a declaration of war
made when the British navy, at that day the mistress of every sea, was
hovering along the coast of America, looking after defenceless towns and
villages to ravage and destroy. It was made when thousands of English
soldiers were upon our soil, and when the principal cities of America
were in the substantial possession of the enemy. And so, I say, all
things considered, it was the bravest political document ever signed by
man. And if it was physically brave, the moral courage of the document
is almost infinitely beyond the physical. They had the courage not only,
but they had the almost infinite wisdom, to declare that all men are
created equal.
Such things had occasionally been said by some political enthusiast in
the olden time, but, for the first time in the history of the world,
the representatives of a nation, the representatives of a real, living,
breathing, hoping people, declared that all men are created equal. With
one blow, with one stroke of the pen, they struck down all the cruel,
heartless barriers that aristocracy, that priestcraft, that kingcraft
had raised between man and man. They struck down with one immortal blow
that infamous spirit of caste that makes a god almost a beast, and a
beast almost a god. With one word, with one blow, they wiped away and
utterly destroyed, all that had been done by centuries of war--centuries
of hypocrisy--centuries of injustice.
One hundred years ago our fathers retired the gods from politics.
What more did they do? They then declared that each man has a right to
live. And what does that mean? It means that he has the right to make
his living. It means that he has the right to breathe the air, to work
the land, that he stands the equal of every other human being beneath
the shining stars; entitled to the product of his labor--the labor of
his hand and of his brain.
What more? That every man has the right to pursue his own happiness in
his own way. Grander words than these have never been spoken by man.
And what more did these men say? They laid down the doctrine that
governments were instituted among men for the purpose of preserving the
rights of the people. The old idea was that people existed solely for
the benefit of the state--that is to say, for kings and nobles.
The old idea was that the people were the wards of king and priest--that
their bodies belonged to one and their souls to the other.
And what more? That the people are the source of political power. That
was not only a revelation, but it was a revolution. It changed the ideas
of people with regard to the source of political power. For the first
time it made human beings men. What was the old idea? The old idea was
that no political power came from, or in any manner belonged to, the
people. The old idea was that the political power came from the clouds;
that the political power came in some miraculous way from heaven; that
it came down to kings, and queens, and robbers. That was the old idea.
The nobles lived upon the labor of the people; the people had no rights;
the nobles stole what they had and divided with the kings, and the kings
pretended to divide what they stole with God Almighty. The source, then,
of political power was from above. The people were responsible to the
nobles, the nobles to the king, and the people had no political rights
whatever, no more than the wild beasts of the forest. The kings were
responsible to God; not to the people. The kings were responsible to the
clouds; not to the toiling millions they robbed and plundered.
And our forefathers, in this Declaration of Independence, reversed this
thing, and said: No; the people, they are the source of political power,
and their rulers, these presidents, these kings are but the agents and
servants of the great sublime people. For the first time, really, in the
history of the world, the king was made to get off the throne and the
people were royally seated thereon. The people became the sovereigns,
and the old sovereigns became the servants and the agents of the people.
It is hard for you and me now to even imagine the immense results of
that change. It is hard for you and for me, at this day, to understand
how thoroughly it had been ingrained in the brain of almost every man,
that the king had some wonderful right over him; that in some strange
way the king owned him; that in some miraculous manner he belonged, body
and soul, to somebody who rode on a horse--to somebody with epaulettes
on his shoulders and a tinsel crown upon his brainless head.
Our forefathers had been educated in that idea, and when they first
landed on American shores they believed it. They thought they belonged
to somebody, and that they must be loyal to some thief who could trace
his pedigree back to antiquity's most successful robber.
It took a long time for them to get that idea out of their heads and
hearts. They were three thousand miles away from the despotisms of
the old world, and every wave of the sea was an assistant to them. The
distance helped to disenchant their minds of that infamous belief, and
every mile between them and the pomp and glory of monarchy helped to put
republican ideas and thoughts into their minds. Besides that, when
they came to this country, when the savage was in the forest and three
thousand miles of waves on the other side, menaced by barbarians on
the one hand and famine on the other, they learned that a man who had
courage, a man who had thought, was as good as any other man in the
world, and they built up, as it were, in spite of themselves, little
republics. And the man that had the most nerve and heart was the best
man, whether he had any noble blood in his veins or not.
It has been a favorite idea with me that our forefathers were educated
by Nature, that they grew grand as the continent upon which they landed;
that the great rivers--the wide plains--the splendid lakes--the lonely
forests--the sublime mountains--that all these things stole into and
became a part of their being, and they grew great as the country in
which they lived. They began to hate the narrow, contracted views of
Europe. They were educated by their surroundings, and every little
colony had to be to a certain extent a republic. The kings of the old
world endeavored to parcel out this land to their favorites. But there
were too many Indians. There was too much courage required for them to
take and keep it, and so men had to come here who were dissatisfied with
the old country--who were dissatisfied with England, dissatisfied with
France, with Germany, with Ireland and Holland. The kings' favorites
stayed at home. Men came here for liberty, and on account of certain
principles they entertained and held dearer than life. And they were
willing to work, willing to fell the forests, to fight the savages,
willing to go through all the hardships, perils and dangers of a new
country, of a new land; and the consequence was that our country was
settled by brave and adventurous spirits, by men who had opinions of
their own and were willing to live in the wild forests for the sake of
expressing those opinions, even if they expressed them only to trees,
rocks, and savage men. The best blood of the old world came to the new.
When they first came over they did not have a great deal of political
philosophy, nor the best ideas of liberty. We might as well tell the
truth. When the Puritans first came, they were narrow. They did not
understand what liberty meant--what religious liberty, what political
liberty, was; but they found out in a few years. There was one feeling
among them that rises to their eternal honor like a white shaft to the
clouds--they were in favor of universal education. Wherever they went
they built schoolhouses, introduced books and ideas of literature. They
believed that every man should know how to read and how to write, and
should find out all that his capacity allowed him to comprehend. That is
the glory of the Puritan fathers.
They forgot in a little while what they had suffered, and they forgot
to apply the principle of universal liberty--of toleration. Some of
the colonies did not forget it, and I want to give credit where credit
should be given. The Catholics of Maryland were the first people on the
new continent to declare universal religious toleration. Let this be
remembered to their eternal honor. Let it be remembered to the disgrace
of the Protestant government of England, that it caused this grand law
to be repealed. And to the honor and credit of the Catholics of Maryland
let it be remembered that the moment they got back into power they
re-enacted the old law. The Baptists of Rhode Island also, led by Roger
Williams, were in favor of universal religious liberty.
No American should fail to honor Roger Williams. He was the first grand
advocate of the liberty of the soul. He was in favor of the eternal
divorce of church and state. So far as I know, he was the only man at
that time in this country who was in favor of real religious liberty.
While the Catholics of Maryland declared in favor of religious
_toleration_, they had no idea of religious liberty. They would not
allow anyone to call in question the doctrine of the Trinity, or the
inspiration of the Scriptures. They stood ready with branding-iron and
gallows to burn and choke out of man the idea that he had a right to
think and to express his thoughts.
So many religions met in our country--so many theories and dogmas came
in contact--so many follies, mistakes, and stupidities became acquainted
with each other, that religion began to fall somewhat into disrepute.
Besides this, the question of a new nation began to take precedence of
all others.
The people were too much interested in this world to quarrel about the
next. The preacher was lost in the patriot. The Bible was read to find
passages against kings.
Everybody was discussing the rights of man. Farmers and mechanics
suddenly became statesmen, and in every shop and cabin nearly every
question was asked and answered.
During these years of political excitement the interest in religion
abated to that degree that a common purpose animated men of all sects
and creeds.
At last our fathers became tired of being colonists--tired of writing
and reading and signing petitions, and presenting them on their bended
knees to an idiot king. They began to have an aspiration to form a new
nation, to be citizens of a new republic instead of subjects of an
old monarchy. They had the idea--the Puritans, the Catholics, the
Episcopalians, the Baptists, the Quakers, and a few Freethinkers, all
had the idea--that they would like to form a new nation.
Now, do not understand that all of our fathers were in favor of
independence. Do not understand that they were all like Jefferson; that
they were all like Adams or Lee; that they were all like Thomas Paine
or John Hancock. There were thousands and thousands of them who were
opposed to American independence. There were thousands and thousands who
said: "When you say men are created equal, it is a lie; when you say the
political power resides in the great body of the people, it is false."
Thousands and thousands of them said: "We prefer Great Britain." But
the men who were in favor of independence, the men who knew that a new
nation must be born, went on full of hope and courage, and nothing could
daunt or stop or stay the heroic, fearless few.
They met in Philadelphia; and the resolution was moved by Lee of
Virginia, that the colonies ought to be independent states, and ought to
dissolve their political connection with Great Britain.
They made up their minds that a new nation must be formed. All nations
had been, so to speak, the wards of some church. The religious idea as
to the source of power had been at the foundation of all governments,
and had been the bane and curse of man.
Happily for us, there was no church strong enough to dictate to the
rest. Fortunately for us, the colonists not only, but the colonies
differed widely in their religious views. There were the Puritans who
hated the Episcopalians, and Episcopalians who hated the Catholics,
and the Catholics who hated both, while the Quakers held them all in
contempt. There they were, of every sort, and color and kind, and how
was it that they came together? They had a common aspiration. They
wanted to form a new nation. More than that, most of them cordially
hated Great Britain; and they pledged each other to forget these
religious prejudices, for a time at least, and agreed that there should
be only one religion until they got through, and that was the religion
of patriotism. They solemnly agreed that the new nation should not
belong to any particular church, but that it should secure the rights of
all.
Our fathers founded the first secular government that was ever founded
in this world. Recollect that. The first secular government; the first
government that said every church has exactly the same rights and no
more; every religion has the same rights, and no more. In other words,
our fathers were the first men who had the sense, had the genius, to
know that no church should be allowed to have a sword; that it should be
allowed only to exert its moral influence.
You might as well have a government united by force with Art, or with
Poetry, or with Oratory, as with Religion. Religion should have the
influence upon mankind that its goodness, that its morality, its
justice, its charity, its reason, and its argument give it, and no more.
Religion should have the effect upon mankind that it necessarily has,
and no more. The religion that has to be supported by law is without
value, not only, but a fraud and curse. The religious argument that has
to be supported by a musket, is hardly worth making. A prayer that must
have a cannon behind it, better never be uttered. Forgiveness ought not
to go in partnership with shot and shell. Love need not carry knives and
revolvers.
So our fathers said: "We will form a secular government, and under the
flag with which we are going to enrich the air, we will allow every man
to worship God as he thinks best." They said: "Religion is an individual
thing between each man and his creator, and he can worship as he pleases
and as he desires." And why did they do this? The history of the world
warned them that the liberty of man was not safe in the clutch and grasp
of any church. They had read of and seen the thumbscrews, the racks, and
the dungeons of the Inquisition. They knew all about the hypocrisy of
the olden time. They knew that the church had stood side by side with
the throne; that the high priests were hypocrites, and that the kings
were robbers. They also knew that if they gave power to any church, it
would corrupt the best church in the world. And so they said that power
must not reside in a church, or in a sect, but power must be wherever
humanity is--in the great body of the people. And the officers and
servants of the people must be responsible to them. And so I say again,
as I said in the commencement, this is the wisest, the pro-foundest, the
bravest political document that ever was written and signed by man.
They turned, as I tell you, everything squarely about. They derived
all their authority from the people. They did away forever with the
theological idea of government.
And what more did they say? They said that whenever the rulers abused
this authority, this power, incapable of destruction, returned to the
people. How did they come to say this? I will tell you. They were pushed
into it. How? They felt that they were oppressed; and whenever a man
feels that he is the subject of injustice, his perception of right and
wrong is wonderfully quickened.
Nobody was ever in prison wrongfully who did not believe in the writ
of _habeas corpus_. Nobody ever suffered wrongfully without instantly
having ideas of justice.
And they began to inquire what rights the king of Great Britain had.
They began to search for the charter of his authority. They began to
investigate and dig down to the bed-rock upon which society must be
founded, and when they got down there, forced there, too, by their
oppressors, forced against their own prejudices and education, they
found at' the bottom of things, not lords, not nobles, not pulpits, not
thrones, but humanity and the rights of men.
And so they said, We are men; we are men. They found out they were men.
And the next thing they said, was, "We will be free men; we are weary of
being colonists; we are tired of being subjects; we are men; and these
colonies ought to be states; and these states ought to be a nation; and
that nation ought to drive the last British soldier into the sea." And
so they signed that brave Declaration of Independence.
I thank every one of them from the bottom of my heart for signing
that sublime declaration. I thank them for their courage--for their
patriotism--for their wisdom--for the splendid confidence in themselves
and in the human race. I thank them for what they were, and for what
we are--for what they did, and for what we have received--for what they
suffered, and for what we enjoy.
What would we have been if we had remained colonists and subjects? What
would we have been to-day? Nobodies--ready to get down on our knees and
crawl in the very dust at the sight of somebody that was supposed to
have in him some drop of blood that flowed in the veins of that mailed
marauder--that royal robber, William the Conqueror.
They signed that Declaration of Independence, although they knew that it
would produce a long, terrible, and bloody war. They looked forward and
saw poverty, deprivation, gloom, and death. But they also saw, on the
wrecked clouds of war, the beautiful bow of freedom.
These grand men were enthusiasts; and the world has been raised only
by enthusiasts. In every country there have been a few who have given
a national aspiration to the people. The enthusiasts of 1776 were the
builders and framers of this great and splendid Government; and they
were the men who saw, although others did not, the golden fringe of
the mantle of glory that will finally cover this world. They knew, they
felt, they believed that they would give a new constellation to
the political heavens--that they would make the Americans a grand
people--grand as the continent upon which they lived.
The war commenced. There was little money, and less credit. The new
nation had but few friends. To a great extent each soldier of freedom
had to clothe and feed himself. He was poor and pure, brave and good,
and so he went to the fields of death to fight for the rights of man.
What did the soldier leave when he went?
He left his wife and children.
Did he leave them in a beautiful home, surrounded by civilization, in
the repose of law, in the security of a great and powerful republic?
No. He left his wife and children on the edge, on the fringe of the
boundless forest, in which crouched and crept the red savage, who was at
that time the ally of the still more savage Briton. He left his wife to
defend herself, and he left the prattling babes to be defended by their
mother and by nature. The mother made the living; she planted the corn
and the potatoes, and hoed them in the sun, raised the children, and,
in the darkness of night, told them about their brave father and the
"sacred cause." She told them that in a little while the war would be
over and father would come back covered with honor and glory.
Think of the women, of the sweet children who listened for the footsteps
of the dead--who waited through the sad and desolate years for the dear
ones who never came.
The soldiers of 1776 did not march away with music and banners. They
went in silence, looked at and gazed after by eyes filled with tears.
They went to meet, not an equal, but a superior--to fight five times
their number--to make a desperate stand to stop the advance of the
enemy, and then, when their ammunition gave out, seek the protection of
rocks, of rivers, and of hills.
Let me say here: The greatest test of courage on the earth is to bear
defeat without losing heart. That army is the bravest that can be
whipped the greatest number of times and fight again.
Over the entire territory, so to speak, then settled by our forefathers,
they were driven again and again. Now and then they would meet the
English with something like equal numbers, and then the eagle of victory
would proudly perch upon the stripes and stars. And so they went on as
best they could, hoping and fighting until they came to the dark and
somber gloom of Valley Forge.
There were very few hearts then beneath that flag that did not begin to
think that the struggle was useless; that all the blood and treasure had
been shed and spent in vain. But there were some men gifted with
that wonderful prophecy that fulfills itself, and with that wonderful
magnetic power that makes heroes of everybody they come in contact with.
And so our fathers went through the gloom of that terrible time, and
still fought on. Brave men wrote grand words, cheering the despondent;
brave men did brave deeds, the rich man gave his wealth, the poor man
gave his life, until at last, by the victory of Yorktown, the old banner
won its place in the air, and became glorious forever.
Seven long years of war--fighting for what? For the principle that
all men are created equal--a truth that nobody ever disputed except a
scoundrel; nobody, nobody in the entire history of this world. No man
ever denied that truth who was not a rascal, and at heart a thief;
never, never, and never will. What else were they fighting for? Simply
that in America every man should have a right to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. Nobody ever denied that except a villain; never,
never. It has been denied by kings--they were thieves. It has been
denied by statesmen--they were liars. It has been denied by priests, by
clergymen, by cardinals, by bishops, and by popes--they were hypocrites.
What else were they fighting for? For the idea that all political power
is vested in the great body of the people. The great body of the people
make all the money; do all the work. They plow the land, cut down the
forests; they produce everything that is produced. Then who shall say
what shall be done with what is produced except the producer?
Is it the non-producing thief, sitting on a throne, surrounded by
vermin?
Those were the things they were fighting for; and that is all they
were fighting for. They fought to build up a new, a great nation; to
establish an asylum for the oppressed of the world everywhere. They knew
the history of this world. They knew the history of human slavery.
The history of civilization is the history of the slow and painful
enfranchisement of the human race. In the olden times the family was a
monarchy, the father being the monarch. The mother and children were the
veriest slaves. The will of the father was the supreme law. He had the
power of life and death. It took thousands of years to civilize this
father, thousands of years to make the condition of wife and mother and
child even tolerable. A few families constituted a tribe; the tribe
had a chief; the chief was a tyrant; a few tribes formed a nation; the
nation was governed by a king, who was also a tyrant. A strong nation
robbed, plundered, and took captive the weaker ones. This was the
commencement of human slavery.
It is not possible for the human imagination to conceive of the horrors
of slavery. It has left no possible crime uncommitted, no possible
cruelty unperpetrated. It has been practiced and defended by all nations
in some form. It has been upheld by all religions. It has been defended
by nearly every pulpit. From the profits derived from the slave trade
churches have been built, cathedrals reared and priests paid. Slavery
has been blessed by bishop, by cardinal, and by pope. It has received
the sanction of statesmen, of kings, and of queens. It has been defended
by the throne, the pulpit and the bench. Monarchs have shared in
the profits. Clergymen have taken their part of the spoils, reciting
passages of Scripture in its defence at the same time, and judges have
taken their portion in the name of equity and law.
Only a few years ago our ancestors were slaves. Only a few years ago
they passed with and belonged to the soil, like the coal under it and
rocks on it.
Only a few years ago they were treated like beasts of burden, worse far
than we treat our animals at the present day. Only a few years ago it
was a crime in England for a man to have a Bible in his house, a crime
for which men were hanged, and their bodies afterward burned. Only a few
years ago fathers could and did sell their children. Only a few
years ago our ancestors were not allowed to speak or write their
thoughts--that being a crime. Only a few years ago to be honest, at
least in the expression of your ideas, was a felony. To do right was a
capital offence; and in those days chains and whips were the incentives
to labor, and the preventives of thought. Honesty was a vagrant,
justice a fugitive, and liberty in chains. Only a few years ago men were
denounced because they doubted the inspiration of the Bible--because
they denied miracles, and laughed at the wonders recounted by the
ancient Jews.
Only a few years ago a man had to believe in the total depravity of the
human heart in order to be respectable. Only a few years ago, people
who thought God too good to punish in eternal flames an unbaptized child
were considered infamous.
As soon as our ancestors began to get free they began to enslave others.
With an inconsistency that defies explanation, they practiced upon
others the same outrages that had been perpetrated upon them. As soon
as white slavery began to be abolished, black slavery commenced. In this
infamous traffic nearly every nation of Europe embarked. Fortunes were
quickly realized; the avarice and cupidity of Europe were excited; all
ideas of justice were discarded; pity fled from the human breast; a
few good, brave men recited the horrors of the trade; avarice was deaf;
religion refused to hear; the trade went on; the governments of Europe
upheld it in the name of commerce--in the name of civilization and
religion.
Our fathers knew the history of caste. They knew that in the despotisms
of the Old World it was a disgrace to be useful. They knew that a
mechanic was esteemed as hardly the equal of a hound, and far below
a blooded horse. They knew that a nobleman held a son of labor in
contempt--that he had no rights the royal loafers were bound to respect.
The world has changed.
The other day there came shoemakers, potters, workers in wood and iron,
from Europe, and they were received in the city of New York as though
they had been princes. They had been sent by the great republic of
France to examine into the arts and manufactures of the great republic
of America. They looked a thousand times better to me than the Edward
Alberts and Albert Edwards--the royal vermin, that live on the body
politic. And I would think much more of our Government if it would fete
and feast them, instead of wining and dining the imbeciles of a royal
line.
Our fathers devoted their lives and fortunes to the grand work of
founding a government for the protection of the rights of man. The
theological idea as to the source of political power had poisoned the
web and woof of every government in the world, and our fathers banished
it from this continent forever.
What we want to-day is what our fathers wrote down. They did not attain
to their ideal; we approach it nearer, but have not reached it yet. We
want, not only the independence of a State, not only the independence of
a nation, but something far more glorious--the absolute independence of
the individual. That is what we want. I want it so that I, one of the
children of Nature, can stand on an equality with the rest; that I can
say this is my air, my sunshine, my earth, and I have a right to live,
and hope, and aspire, and labor, and enjoy the fruit of that labor, as
much as any individual or any nation on the face of the globe.
We want every American to make to-day, on this hundredth anniversary, a
declaration of individual independence. Let each man enjoy his liberty
to the utmost--enjoy all he can; but be sure it is not at the expense
of another. The French Convention gave the best definition of liberty
I have ever read: "The liberty of one citizen ceases only where the
liberty of another citizen commences." I know of no better definition. I
ask you to-day to make a declaration of individual independence. And
if you are independent be just. Allow everybody else to make his
declaration of individual independence. Allow your wife, allow your
husband, allow your children to make theirs. Let everybody be absolutely
free and independent, knowing only the sacred obligations of honesty and
affection. Let us be independent of party, independent of everybody and
everything except our own consciences and our own brains. Do not belong
to any clique. Have the clear title-deeds in fee simple to yourselves,
without any mortgage on the premises to anybody in the world.
It is a grand thing to be the owner of yourself. It is a grand thing to
protect the rights of others. It is a sublime thing to be free and just.
Only a few days ago I stood in Independence Hall--in that little room
where was signed the immortal paper. A little room, like any other;
and it did not seem possible that from that room went forth ideas,
like cherubim and seraphim, spreading their wings over a continent, and
touching, as with holy fire, the hearts of men.
In a few moments I was in the park, where are gathered the
accomplishments of a century. Our fathers never dreamed of the things I
saw. There were hundreds of locomotives, with their nerves of steel and
breath of flame--every kind of machine, with whirling wheels and curious
cogs and cranks, and the myriad thoughts of men that have been wrought
in iron, brass and steel. And going out from one little building were
wires in the air, stretching to every civilized nation, and they could
send a shining messenger in a moment to any part of the world, and it
would go sweeping under the waves of the sea with thoughts and words
within its glowing heart. I saw all that had been achieved by this
nation, and I wished that the signers of the Declaration--the soldiers
of the Revolution--could see what a century of freedom has produced.
I wished they could see the fields we cultivate--the rivers we
navigate--the railroads running over the Alleghanies, far into what was
then the unknown forest--on over the broad prairies--on over the vast
plains--away over the mountains of the West, to the Golden Gate of the
Pacific. All this is the result of a hundred years of freedom.
Are you not more than glad that in 1776 was announced the sublime
principle that political power resides with the people? That our fathers
then made up their minds nevermore to be colonists and subjects, but
that they would be free and independent citizens of America?
I will not name any of the grand men who fought for liberty. All should
be named, or none. I feel that the unknown soldier who was shot down
without even his name being remembered--who was included only in a
report of "a hundred killed," or "a hundred missing," nobody knowing
even the number that attached to his august corpse--is entitled to as
deep and heartfelt thanks as the titled leader who fell at the head of
the host.
Standing here amid the sacred memories of the first, on the golden
threshold of the second, I ask, Will the second century be as grand
as the first? I believe it will, because we are growing more and more
humane. I believe there is more human kindness, more real, sweet human
sympathy, a greater desire to help one another, in the United States,
than in all the world besides.
We must progress. We are just at the commencement of invention. The
steam engine--the telegraph--these are but the toys with which science
has been amused. Wait; there will be grander things, there will be wider
and higher culture--a grander standard of character, of literature and
art.
We have now half as many millions of people as we have years, and many
of us will live until a hundred millions stand beneath the flag. We are
getting more real solid sense. The schoolhouse is the finest building in
the village. We are writing and reading more books; we are painting
and buying more pictures; we are struggling more and more to get at
the philosophy of life, of things--trying more and more to answer
the questions of the eternal Sphinx. We are looking in every
direction--investigating; in short, we are thinking and working. Besides
all this, I believe the people are nearer honest than ever before. A few
years ago we were willing to live upon the labor of four million slaves.
Was that honest? At last, we have a national conscience. At last, we
have carried out the Declaration of Independence. Our fathers wrote
it--we have accomplished it. The black man was a slave--we made him a
citizen. We found four million human beings in manacles, and now the
hands of a race are held up in the free air without a chain.
I have had the supreme pleasure of seeing a man--once a slave--sitting
in the seat of his former master in the Congress of the United States.
I have had that pleasure, and when I saw it my eyes were filled
with tears. I felt that we had carried, out the Declaration of
Independence--that we had given reality to it, and breathed the breath
of life into its every word. I felt that our flag would float over and
protect the colored man and his little children, standing straight in
the sun, just the same as though he were white and worth a million.
I would protect him more, because the rich white man could protect
himself.
All who stand beneath our banner are free. Ours is the only flag that
has in reality written upon it: Liberty, Fraternity, Equality--the three
grandest words in all the languages of men.
Liberty: Give to every man the fruit of his own labor--the labor of his
hands and of his brain.
Fraternity: Every man in the right is my brother.
Equality: The rights of all are equal: Justice, poised and balanced in
eternal calm, will shake from the golden scales in which are weighed the
acts of men, the very dust of prejudice and caste: No race, no color, no
previous condition, can change the rights of men.
The Declaration of Independence has at last been carried out in letter
and in spirit.
The second century will be grander than the first.
Fifty millions of people are celebrating this day. To-day, the black man
looks upon his child and says: The avenues to distinction are open to
you--upon your brow may fall the civic wreath--this day belongs to you.
We are celebrating the courage and wisdom of our fathers, and the glad
shout of a free people the anthem of a grand nation, commencing at the
Atlantic, is following the sun to the Pacific, across a continent of
happy homes.
We are a great people. Three millions have increased to fifty--thirteen
States to thirty-eight. We have better homes, better clothes, better
food and more of it, and more of the conveniences of life, than any
other people upon the globe.
The farmers of our country live better than did the kings and princes
two hundred years ago--and they have twice as much sense and heart.
Liberty and labor have given us all. I want every person here to believe
in the dignity of labor--to know that the respectable man is the useful
man--the man who produces or helps others to produce something of value,
whether thought of the brain or work of the hand.
I want you to go away with an eternal hatred in your breast of
injustice, of aristocracy, of caste, of the idea that one man has more
rights than another because he has better clothes, more land, more
money, because he owns a railroad, or is famous and in high position.
Remember that all men have equal rights. Remember that the man who acts
best his part--who loves his friends the best--is most willing to
help others--truest to the discharge of obligation--who has the best
heart--the most feeling--the deepest sympathies--and who freely gives
to others the rights that he claims for himself is the best man. I am
willing to swear to this.
What has made this country? I say again, liberty and labor. What would
we be without labor? I want every farmer when plowing the rustling corn
of June--while mowing in the perfumed fields--to feel that he is
adding to the wealth and glory of the United States. I want every
mechanic--every man of toil, to know and feel that he is keeping the
cars running, the telegraph wires in the air; that he is making the
statues and painting the pictures; that he is writing and printing the
books; that he is helping to fill the world with honor, with happiness,
with love and law.
Our country is founded upon the dignity of labor--upon the equality
of man. Ours is the first real Republic in the history of the world.
Beneath our flag the people are free. We have retired the gods from
politics. We have found that man is the only source of political
power, and that the governed should govern. We have disfranchised the
aristocrats of the air and have given one country to mankind.
BANGOR SPEECH.
* Yesterday was a glorious day for the Republicans of
Bangor. The weather was delightful and all the imposing
exercises of the day were conducted with a gratifying and
even inspiring success.
The noon train from Waterville brought Gov. Connor, Col.
Ingersoll and Senator Blaine.
At 3 p. m. the speakers arrived at the grounds and were
received with applause as they ascended the platform, where
a number of the most prominent citizens of Bangor and
vicinity were assembled. At this time the platform was
surrounded by a dense mass of people, numbering thousands.
The meeting was called to order by C. A. Boutelle, in behalf
of the Republican State Committee. As Col. Ingersoll was
introduced by Gov. Connor he was welcomed by tumultuous
cheers, which he gracefully acknowledged.
As we said before, no report could do justice to such a
masterly effort as that of the great Western Orator, and we
have not attempted to convey any adequate impression of an
address which is conceded on all hands to be the most
remarkable for originality, power and eloquence ever heard
in this section.
Such a speech by such a man--if there is another--must be
heard; the magnetism of the speaker must be felt; the
indescribable influence must be experienced, in order to
appreciate his wonderful power. The vast audience was
alternately swayed from enthusiasm for the grand principles
advocated, to indignation at the crimes of Democracy, as the
record of that party was scorched with his invective; from
laughter at the ludicrous presentment of Democratic
inconsistencies, to tears brought forth by the pathos and
eloquence of his appeals for justice and humanity. During
portions of his address there was moisture in the eyes of
every person in the audience, and from opening to close he
held the assemblage by a spell more potent than that of any
man we have ever heard speak. It was one of the grandest,
most cogent and thrilling appeals in behalf of the great
principles of liberty, loyalty and justice to all men, ever
delivered, and we wish it might have been heard by every
citizen of our beloved Republic. The Colonel was repeatedly
urged by the audience to go on, and he spoke for about two
hours with undiminished fervor. His hearers would gladly
have given him audience for two hours longer, but with a
splendid tribute to Mr. Blaine as the strongest tie between
New England and the West, he took his seat amid the ringing
cheers and plaudits of the assemblage.--The Whig and
Courier, Bangor, Maine, August 25,1876.
HAYES CAMPAIGN
1876.
I HAVE the honor to belong to the Republican party; the grandest, the
sublimest party in the history of the world. This grand party is not
only in favor of the liberty of the body, but also the liberty of the
soul. This sublime party gives to all the labor of their hands and of
their brains. This party allows every person to think for himself and
to express his thoughts. The Republican party forges no chains for the
mind, no fetters for the souls of men. It declares that the intellectual
domain shall be forever free. In the free air there is room for every
wing. The Republican party endeavors to remove all obstructions on the
highway of progress. In this sublime undertaking it asks the assistance
of all. Its platform is Continental. Upon it there is room for
the Methodist, the Baptist, the Catholic, the Universalist, the
Presbyterian, and the Freethinker. There is room for all who are in
favor of the preservation of the sacred rights of men.
I am going to give you a few reasons for voting the Republican ticket.
The Republican party depends upon reason, upon argument, upon education,
upon intelligence and upon patriotism. The Republican party makes no
appeal to ignorance and prejudice. It wishes to destroy both.
It is the party of humanity, the party that hates caste, that honors
labor, that rewards toil, that believes in justice. It appeals to all
that is elevated and noble in man, to the higher instincts, to the
nobler aspirations. It has accomplished grand things.
The horizon of the past is filled with the glory of Republican
achievement. The monuments of its wisdom, its power and patriotism crowd
all the fields of conflict. Upon the Constitution this party wrote
equal rights for all; upon every statute book, humanity; upon the flag,
liberty. The Republican party of the United States is the conscience of
the nineteenth century. It is the justice of this age, the embodiment
of social progress and honor. It has no knee for the past. Its face is
toward the future. It is the party of advancement, of the dawn, of the
sunrise.
The Republican party commenced its grand career by saying that the
institution of human slavery had cursed enough American soil; that the
territories should not be damned with that most infamous thing; that
this country was sacred to freedom; that slavery had gone far enough.
Upon that issue the great campaign of 1860 was fought and won. The
Republican party was born of wisdom and conscience.
The people of the South claimed that slavery should be protected; that
the doors of the territories should be thrown open to them and to their
institutions. They not only claimed this, but they also insisted that
the Constitution of the United States protected slave property, the same
as other property everywhere. The South was defeated, and then appealed
to arms. In a moment all their energies were directed toward the
destruction of this Government. They commenced the war--they fired upon
the flag that had protected them for nearly a century.
The North was compelled to decide instantly between the destruction of
the nation and civil war.
The division between the friends and enemies of the Union at once took
place. The Government began to defend itself. To carry on the war money
was necessary. The Government borrowed, and finally issued its notes and
bonds. The Democratic party in the North sympathized with the Rebellion.
Everything was done to hinder, embarrass, obstruct and delay. They
endeavored to make a rebel breastwork of the Constitution; to create
a fire in the rear. They denounced the Government; resisted the draft;
shot United States officers; declared the war a failure and an outrage;
rejoiced over our defeats, and wept and cursed at our victories.
To crush the Rebellion in the South and keep in subjection the
Democratic party at the North, thousands of millions of money were
expended--the nation burdened with a fearful debt, and the best blood of
the country poured out upon the fields of battle.
In order to destroy the Rebellion it became necessary to destroy
slavery. As a matter of fact, slavery was the Rebellion. As soon as
this truth forced itself upon the Government--thrust as it were into
the brain of the North upon the point of a rebel bayonet--the Republican
party resolved to destroy forever the last vestige of that savage and
cruel institution; an institution that made white men devils and black
men beasts.
The Republican party put down the Rebellion; saved the nation; destroyed
slavery; made the slave a citizen; put the ballot in the hands of the
black man; forgave the assassins of the Government; restored nearly
every rebel to citizenship, and proclaimed peace to, and for each and
all.
For sixteen years the country has been in the hands of that great party.
For sixteen years that grand party, in spite of rebels in arms--in spite
of the Democratic party of the North, has preserved the territorial
integrity, and the financial honor of the country. It has endeavored to
enforce the laws; it has tried to protect loyal men at the South; it has
labored to bring murderers and assassins to justice, and it is working
now to preserve the priceless fruits of its great victory.
The present question is, whom shall we trust? To whom shall we give the
reins of power? What party will best preserve the rights of the people?
What party is most deserving of our confidence? There is but one way
to determine the character of a party, and that is, by ascertaining its
history.
Could we have safely trusted the Democratic party in 1860? No. And why
not? Because it was a believer in the right of secession--a believer
in the sacredness of human slavery. The Democratic party then solemnly
declared--speaking through its most honored and trusted leaders--that
each State had the right to secede. This made the Constitution a _nudum
pactum_, a contract without a consideration, a Democratic promise, a
wall of mist, and left every State free to destroy at will the fabric of
American Government--the fabric reared by our fathers through years of
toil and blood.
Could we have safely trusted that party in 1864, when, in convention
assembled, it declared the war a failure, and wished to give up the
contest at a moment when universal victory was within the grasp of the
Republic? Had the people put that party in power then, there would have
been a Southern Confederacy to-day, and upon the limbs of four million
people the chains of slavery would still have clanked. Is there one man
present who, to-day, regrets that the Vallandigham Democracy of 1864 was
spurned and beaten by the American people? Is there one man present who,
to-day, regrets the utter defeat of that mixture of slavery, malice and
meanness, called the Democratic party, in 1864?
Could we have safely trusted that party in 1868?
At that time the Democracy of the South was trying to humble and
frighten the colored people or exterminate them. These inoffensive
colored people were shot down without provocation, without mercy. The
white Democrats were as relentless as fiends. They killed simply to
kill. They murdered these helpless people, thinking that they were in
some blind way getting their revenge upon the people of the North. No
tongue can exaggerate the cruelties practiced upon the helpless freedmen
of the South. These white Democrats had been reared amid and by slavery.
Slavery knows no such thing as justice, no such thing as mercy. Slavery
does not dream of governing by reason, by argument or persuasion.
Slavery depends upon force, upon the bowie-knife, the revolver, the
whip, the chain and the bloodhound. The white Democrats of the South had
been reared amid slavery; they cared nothing for reason; they knew of
but one thing to be used when there was a difference of opinion or a
conflict of interest, and that was brute force. It never occurred to
them to educate, to inform, and to reason. It was easier to shoot than
to reason; it was quicker to stab than to argue; cheaper to kill than
to educate. A grave costs less than a schoolhouse; bullets were cheaper
than books; and one knife could stab more than forty schools could
convert.
They could not bear to see the negro free--to see the former slave
trampling on his old chains, holding a ballot in his hand. They could
not endure the sight of a negro in office. It was gall and wormwood
to think of a slave occupying a seat in Congress; to think of a negro
giving his ideas about the political questions of the day. And so these
white Democrats made up their minds that by a reign of terrorism they
would drive the negro from the polls, drive him from all official
positions, and put him back in reality in the old condition. To
accomplish this they commenced a system of murder, of assassination,
of robbery, theft, and plunder, never before equaled in extent and
atrocity. All this was in its height when in 1868 the Democracy asked
the control of this Government.
Is there a man here who in his heart regrets that the Democrats failed
in 1868? Do you wish that the masked murderers who rode in the darkness
of night to the hut of the freedman and shot him down like a wild beast,
regardless of the prayers and tears of wife and children, were now
holding positions of honor and trust in this Government? Are you sorry
that these assassins were defeated in 1868?
In 1872 the Democratic party, bent upon victory, greedy for office, with
itching palms and empty pockets, threw away all principle--if Democratic
doctrines can be called principles--and nominated a life-long enemy
of their party for President. No one doubted or doubts the loyalty
and integrity of Horace Greeley. But all knew that if elected he would
belong to the party electing him; that he would have to use Democrats as
his agents, and all knew, or at least feared, that the agents would own
and use the principal. All believed that in the malicious clutch of
the Democratic party Horace Greeley would be not a President, but a
prisoner--not a ruler, but a victim. Against that grand man I have
nothing to say. I simply congratulate him upon his escape from being
used as a false key by the Democratic party.
During all these years the Democratic party prophesied the destruction
of the Government, the destruction of the Constitution, and the
banishment of liberty from American soil.
In 1864 that party declared that after four years of failure to restore
the Union by the experiment of war, there should be a cessation of
hostilities. They then declared "that the Constitution had been violated
in every part, and that public liberty and private rights had been
trodden down."
And yet the Constitution remained and still remains; public liberty
still exists, and private rights are still respected.
In 1868, growing more desperate, and being still filled with the spirit
of prophecy, this same party in its platform said: "Under the repeated
assaults of the Republican party, the pillars of the Government are
rocking on their base, and should it succeed in November next, and
inaugurate its President, we will meet as a subjected and conquered
people, amid the ruins of liberty and the scattered fragments of the
Constitution."
The Republican party did succeed in November, 1868, and did inaugurate
its President, and we did not meet as a subjected and conquered
people amid the ruins of liberty and the scattered fragments of
the Constitution. We met as a victorious people, amid the proudest
achievements of liberty, protected by a Constitution spotless and
stainless--pure as the Alpine snow thrice sifted by the northern blast.
You must not forget the condition of the Government when it came into
the hands of the Republican party. Its treasury was empty, its means
squandered, its navy dispersed, its army unreliable, the offices filled
with rebels and rebel spies; the Democratic party of the North rubbing
its hands in a kind of hellish glee and shouting, "I told you so."
When the Republican party came into power in 1861, it found the Southern
States in arms; it came into power when human beings were chained hand
to hand and driven like cattle to market; when white men were engaged
in the ennobling business of raising dogs to pursue and catch men and
women; when the bay of the bloodhound was considered as the music of the
Union. It came into power when, from thousands of pulpits, slavery was
declared to be a divine institution. It took the reins of Government
when education was an offence, when mercy, humanity and justice were
political crimes.
The Republican party came into power when the Constitution of the United
States upheld the crime of crimes, a Constitution that gave the lie
direct to the Declaration of Independence, and, as I said before, when
the Southern States were in arms.
To the fulfillment of its great destiny it gave all its energies. To the
almost superhuman task, it gave its every thought and power. For four
long and terrible years, with vast armies in the field against it; beset
by false friends; in constant peril; betrayed again and again; stabbed
by the Democratic party, in the name of the Constitution; reviled and
slandered beyond conception; attacked in every conceivable manner--the
Republican party never faltered for an instant. Its courage increased
with the difficulties to be overcome. Hopeful in defeat, confident
in disaster, merciful in victory; sustained by high aims and noble
aspirations, it marched forward, through storms of shot and shell--on to
the last fortification of treason and rebellion--forward to the shining
goal of victory, lasting and universal.
During these savage and glorious years, the Democratic party of the
North, as a party, assisted the South. Democrats formed secret societies
to burn cities--to release rebel prisoners. They shot down officers who
were enforcing the draft; they declared the war unconstitutional;
they left nothing undone to injure the credit of the Government; they
persuaded soldiers to desert; they went into partnership with rebels
for the purpose of spreading contagious diseases through the North. They
were the friends and allies of persons who regarded yellow fever and
smallpox as weapons of civilized warfare. In spite of all this, the
Republicans succeeded.
The Democrats declared slavery to be a divine institution; The
Republican party abolished it. The Constitution of the United States was
changed from a sword that stabbed the rights of four million people to a
shield for every human being beneath our flag.
The Democrats of New York burned orphan asylums and inaugurated a reign
of terror in order to co-operate with the raid of John Morgan. Remember,
my friends, that all this was done when the fate of our country trembled
in the balance of war; that all this was done when the great heart of
the North was filled with agony and courage; when the question was,
"Shall Liberty or Slavery triumph?"
No words have ever passed the human lips strong enough to curse the
Northern allies of the South.
The United States wanted money. It wanted money to buy muskets and
cannon and shot and shell, it wanted money to pay soldiers, to buy
horses, wagons, ambulances, clothing and food. Like an individual, it
had to borrow this money; and, like an honest individual, it must pay
this money. Clothed with sovereignty, it had, or at least exercised, the
power to make its notes a legal tender. This quality of being a legal
tender was the only respect in which these notes differ from those
signed by an individual. As a matter of fact, every note issued was
a forced loan from the people, a forced loan from the soldiers in the
field--in short, a forced loan from every person that took a single
dollar. Upon every one of these notes is printed a promise. The belief
that this promise will be made good gives every particle of value to
each note that it has. Although each note, by law, is a legal tender,
yet if the Government declared that it never would redeem these
notes, the people would not take them if revolution could hurl such a
Government from power. So that the belief that these notes will finally
be paid, added to the fact that in the meantime they are a legal tender,
gives them all the value they have. And, although all are substantially
satisfied that they will be paid, none know at what time. This
uncertainty as to the time, as to when, affects the value of these
notes.
They must be paid, unless a promise can be delayed so long as to amount
to a fulfillment. They must be paid. The question is, "How?" The answer
is, "By the industry and prosperity of the people." They cannot be paid
by law. Law made them; labor must pay them; and they must be paid out
of the profits of the people. We must pay the debt with eggs, not with
goose. In a terrible war we spent thousands of millions; all the bullets
thrown; all the powder burned; all the property destroyed, of every
sort, kind, and character; all the time of the people engaged--all these
things were a dead loss. The debt represents the loss. Paying the debt
is simply repairing the loss. When we, as a people, shall have made
a net amount, equal to the amount thrown, as it were, away in war,
or somewhere near that amount, we will resume specie payment; we will
redeem our promises. We promised on paper, we shall pay in gold and
silver. We asked the people to hold this paper until we got the money,
and they are holding the paper and we are getting the money.
As soon as the slaves were free, the Republican party said, "They must
be citizens, not vagrants." The Democratic party opposed this just, this
generous measure. The freedmen were made citizens. The Republican party
then said, "These citizens must vote; they must have the ballot, to keep
what the bullet has won." The Democratic party said "No." The negroes
received the ballot. The Republican party then said, "These voters must
be educated, so that the ballot shall be the weapon of intelligence, not
of ignorance." The Democratic party objected. But schools were founded,
and books were put in the hands of the colored people, instead of whips
upon their backs. We said to the Southern people, "The colored men are
citizens; their rights must be respected; they are voters, they must
be allowed to vote; they were and are our friends, and we are their
protectors."
All this was accomplished by the Republican party.
It changed the organic law of the land, so that it is now a proper
foundation for a free government; it struck the cruel shackles from four
million human beings; it put down the most gigantic rebellion in the
history of the world; it expunged from the statute books of every
State, and of the Nation, all the cruel and savage laws that Slavery
had enacted; it took whips from the backs, and chains from the limbs, of
men; it dispensed with bloodhounds as the instruments of civilization;
it banished to the memory of barbarism the slave-pen, the auction block,
and the whipping-post; it purified a Nation; it elevated the human race.
All this was opposed by the Democratic party; opposed with a bitterness,
compared to which ordinary malice is sweet. I say the Democratic party,
because I consider those who fought against the Government, in the
fields of the South, and those who opposed in the North, as
Democrats--one and all. The Democratic party has been, during all these
years, the enemy of civilization, the hater of liberty, the despiser of
justice.
When I say the Democratic party sympathized with the Rebellion, I mean
a majority of that party. I know there are in the Democratic party,
soldiers who fought for the Union. I do not know why they are there, but
I have nothing to say against them. I will never utter a word against
any man who bared his breast to a storm of shot and shell, for the
preservation of the Republic. When I use the term Democratic party, I do
not mean those soldiers.
There are others in the Democratic party who are there just because
their fathers were Democrats. They do not mean any particular harm.
Others are there because they could not amount to anything in the
Republican party. A man only fit for a corporal in the Republican ranks,
will make a leader in the Democratic party. By the Democratic party,
I mean that party that sided with the South--that believed in
secession--that loved slavery--that hated liberty--that denounced
Lincoln as a tyrant--that burned orphan asylums--that gloried in our
disasters--that denounced every effort to save the nation--they are the
gentlemen I mean, and they constitute a large majority of the Democratic
party.
The Democrats hate the negro to-day, with a hatred begotten of a
well-grounded fear that the colored people are rapidly becoming their
superiors in industry, intellect and character.
The colored people have suffered enough. They were and are our friends.
They are the friends of this country, and cost what it may they must
be protected. The white loyal man must be protected. They have been
ostracized, slandered, mobbed, and murdered. Their very blood cries from
the ground.
These two things--payment of the debt and protection of loyal citizens,
are the things to be done. Which party can be trusted?
Which will be the more apt to pay the debt?
Which will be the more apt to protect the colored and white loyalist at
the South?
Who is Samuel J. Tilden?
Samuel J. Tilden is an attorney. He never gave birth to an elevated,
noble sentiment in his life. He is a kind of legal spider, watching in
a web of technicalities for victims. He is a compound of cunning and
heartlessness--of beak and claw and fang. He is one of the few men who
can grab a railroad and hide the deep cuts, tunnels and culverts in a
single night. He is a corporation wrecker. He is a demurrer filed by the
Confederate congress. He waits on the shores of bankruptcy to clutch the
drowning by the throat. He was never married. The Democratic party
has satisfied the longings of his heart. He has looked upon love as
weakness. He has courted men because women cannot vote. He has contented
himself by adopting a rag-baby, that really belongs to Mr. Hendricks,
and his principal business at present is explaining how he came to adopt
this child.
Samuel J. Tilden has been for years without number a New York Democrat.
New York has been, and still is, the worst governed city in the world.
Political influence is bought and sold like stocks and bonds. Nearly
every contract is larceny in disguise--nearly every appointment is a
reward for crime, and every election is a fraud. Among such men Samuel
J. Tilden has lived; with such men he has acted; by such men he has been
educated; such men have been his scholars, and such men are his friends.
These men resisted the draft, but Samuel J. Tilden remained their
friend. They burned orphan asylums, but Tilden's friendship never
cooled. They inaugurated riot and murder, but Tilden wavered not. They
stole a hundred millions, and when no more was left to steal--when the
people could not even pay the interest on the amount stolen--then these
Democrats, clapping their hands over their bursting pockets, began
shouting for reform. Mr. Tilden has been a reformer for years,
especially of railroads. The vital issue with him has been the issue
of bogus stock. Although a life-long Democrat, he has been an
amalgamationist--of corporations. While amassing millions, he has
occasionally turned his attention to national affairs. He left his
private affairs (and his reputation depends upon these affairs being
kept private) long enough to assist the Democracy to declare the war for
the restoration of the Union a failure; long enough to denounce Lincoln
as a tyrant and usurper. He was generally too busy to denounce the
political murders and assassinations in the South--too busy to say a
word in favor of justice and liberty; but he found time to declare the
war for the preservation of the country an outrage. He managed to spare
time enough to revile the Proclamation of Emancipation--time enough to
shed a few tears over the corpse of slavery; time enough to oppose
the enfranchisement of the colored man; time enough to raise his voice
against the injustice of putting a loyal negro on a political level with
a pardoned rebel; time enough to oppose every forward movement of the
nation.
No man should ever be elected President of this country who raised his
hand to dismember and destroy it. No man should be elected President who
sympathized with those who were endeavoring to destroy it. No man should
be elected President of this great nation who, when it was in deadly
peril, did not endeavor to save it by act and word. No man should
be elected President who does not believe that every negro should be
free--that the colored people should be allowed to vote. No man
should be placed at the head of the nation--in command of the army
and navy--who does not believe that the Constitution, with all its
amendments, should be sacredly enforced. No man should be elected
President of this nation who believes in the Democratic doctrine of
"States Rights;" who believes that this Government is only a federation
of States. No man should be elected President of our great country
who aided and abetted her enemies in war--who advised or countenanced
resistance to a draft in time of war, who by slander impaired her
credit, sneered at her heroes, and laughed at her martyrs. Samuel J.
Tilden is the possessor of nearly every disqualification mentioned.
Mr. Tilden is the author of an essay on finance, commonly called a
letter of acceptance, in which his ideas upon the great subject are
given in the plainest and most direct manner imaginable. All through
this letter or essay there runs a vein of honest bluntness really
refreshing. As a specimen of bluntness and clearness, take the following
extracts:
How shall the Government make these notes at all times as good as
specie? It has to provide in reference to the mass which would be kept
in use by the wants of business a central reservoir of coin, adequate
to the adjustment of the temporary fluctuations of the international
balance, and as a guaranty against transient drains, artificially
created by panic or by speculation. It has also to provide for the
payment in coin of such fractional currency as may be presented
for redemption, and such inconsiderable portion of legal tenders as
individuals may from time to time desire to convert for special use, or
in order to lay by in coin their little store of money. To make the
coin now in the treasury available for the objects of this reserve, to
gradually strengthen and enlarge that reserve, and to provide for such
other exceptional demands for coin as may arise, does not seem to me a
work of difficulty. If wisely planned and discreetly pursued, it ought
not to cost any sacrifice to the business of the country. It should
tend, on the contrary, to the revival of hope and confidence.
In other words, the way to pay the debt is to get the money, and the
way to get the money is to provide a central reservoir of coin to adjust
fluctuations. As to the resumption he gives us this:
The proper time for the resumption is the time when wise preparation
shall have ripened into perfect ability to accomplish the object with
a certainty and ease that will inspire confidence and encourage the
reviving of business.
The earliest time in which such a result can be brought about is best.
Even when preparations shall have been matured, the exact date would
have to be chosen with reference to the then existing state of trade and
credit operations in our own country, and the course of foreign commerce
and condition of exchanges with other nations. The specific measure and
actual date are matters of details, having reference to ever-changing
conditions. They belong to the domain of practical, administrative
statesmanship. The captain of a steamer, about starting from New York to
Liverpool, does not assemble a council over his ocean craft, and fix
an angle by which to lash the rudder for the whole voyage. A human
intelligence must be at the helm to discern the shifting forces of water
and winds. A human mind must be at the helm to feel the elements day by
day, and guide to a mastery over them. Such preparations are everything.
Without them a legislative command fixing a day--an official promise
fixing a day, are shams. They are worse. They are a snare and a delusion
to all who trust them. They destroy all confidence among thoughtful men
whose judgment will at last sway public opinion. An attempt to act on
such a command, or such a promise without preparation, would end in a
new suspension. It would be a fresh calamity, prolific of confusion,
distrust, and distress.
That is to say, Congress has not sufficient intelligence to fix the
date of resumption. They cannot fix the proper time. But a Democratic
convention has human intelligence enough to know that the first day of
January, 1879, is not the proper date. That convention knew what the
state of trade and credit in our country and the course of foreign
commerce and the condition of exchanges with other nations would be on
the first day of January, 1879. Of course they did, or else they
never would have had the impudence to declare that resumption would be
impossible at that date.
The next extract is more luminous still:
The Government of the United States, in my opinion, can advance to a
resumption of specie payments on its legal tender notes by gradual and
safe processes tending to relieve the present business distress. If
charged by the people with the administration of the executive office, I
should deem it a duty so to exercise the powers with which it has or may
be invested by Congress, as the best and soonest to conduct the country
to that beneficent result.
Why did not this great statesman tell us of some "gradual and safe
process"? He promises, if elected, to so administer the Government that
it will soon reach a beneficent result. How is this to be done? What is
his plan? Will he rely on "a human intelligence at the helm," or on "the
central reservoir," or on some "gradual and safe process"?
I defy any man to read this letter and tell me what Mr. Tilden really
proposes to do. There is nothing definite said. He uses such general
terms, such vague and misty expressions, such unmeaning platitudes, that
the real idea, if he had one, is lost in fog and mist.
Suppose I should, in the most solemn and impressive manner, tell
you that the fluctuations caused in the vital stability of shifting
financial operations, not to say speculations of the wildest character,
cannot be rendered instantly accountable to a true financial theory
based upon the great law that the superfluous is not a necessity, except
in vague thoughts of persons unacquainted with the exigencies of the
hour, and cannot, in the absence of a central reservoir of coin with
a human intelligence at the head, hasten by any system of convertible
bonds the expectation of public distrust, no matter how wisely planned
and discreetly pursued, failure is assured whatever the real result may
be.
Must we wage this war for the right forever? Is there no time when the
soldiers of progress can rest? Will the bugles of the great army of
civilization never sound even a halt? It does seem as though there
can be no stop, no rest. It is in the world of mind as in the physical
world. Every plant of value has to be cultivated. The land must be
plowed, the seeds must be planted and watered. It must be guarded every
moment. Its enemies crawl in the earth and fly in the air. The sun
scorches it, the rain drowns it, the dew rusts it. He who wins it must
fight. But the weeds they grow in spite of all. Nobody plows for them
except accident. The winds sow the seeds, chance covers them, and they
flourish and multiply. The sun cannot burn them--they laugh at rain and
frost--they care not for birds and beasts. In spite of all they grow. It
is the same in politics. A true Republican must continue to grow, must
work, must think, must advance. The Republican party is the party of
progress, of ideas, of work. To make a Republican you must have schools,
books, papers. To make a Democrat, take all these away. Republicans are
the useful; Democrats the noxious--corn and wheat against the dog fennel
and Canada thistles.
Republicans of Maine, do not forget that each of you has two votes in
this election--one in Maine and one in Indiana.
Remember that we are relying on you. There is no stronger tie between
the prairies of Illinois and the pines of Maine--between the Western
States and New England, than James G. Blaine.
We are relying on Maine for from twelve to fifteen thousand on the
12th of September, and Indiana will answer with from fifteen to twenty
thousand, and hearing these two votes the Nation in November will
declare for Hayes and Wheeler.*
* This being a newspaper report, and never revised by the
author, is of necessity incomplete, but the publisher feels
that it should not be lost
COOPER UNION SPEECH, NEW YORK.
*Col. Robert G. Ingersoll of Illinois last night, at Cooper
Union, spoke on the political issues of the day, at unusual
length, to the largest and most enthusiastic audience which,
during the last ten years, any single speaker has attracted.
His address was in his happiest epigrammatic style, and was
interrupted every few moments either by the most uproarious
laughter or enthusiastic cheering. It is no exaggeration to
say that the meeting was the largest Cooper Institute has
seen since the war. Not merely the main hall was filled, but
the wide corridor in Third Avenue, the entrance hall in
Eighth Street, and every Committee-room to which his voice
could reach, though the speaker was unseen, were crowded--in
fact, literally packed. Half an hour before the hour named
for the organization of the meeting, admission to the body
of the hall was almost impossible; and selected officers,
and the speaker of the evening himself had to beg their way
to the platform. The latter was as painfully crowded with
invited guests as the body of the hall; and ingress was
impossible after the speaker began, and egress was almost as
difficult owing to the pressure in the committee-room
through which the platform is approached.
Not only in numbers alone, but in the prominence of the
persons present, was the meeting impressive. Besides the
usual large quota of active politicians always seen at such
meetings, there were seen numbers of leading merchants,
financiers, and lawyers of New York, prominent officials not
only of the City but the State and National Government.
The speech was nearly two hours In length, but as the
interruptions were frequent, indeed almost continuous, it
seemed very short, and when Mr. Ingersoll concluded his fire
of epigrams, there were loud calls and appeals to him to go
on. There were suggestions by some of the managers, of other
speakers who might follow him, but the presiding officer
wisely decided to submit no other speaker to the too severe
test of speaking on the same occasion with Mr. Ingersoll.
Chauncey M. Depew, on leaving the hall, remarked that it was
the greatest speech he ever heard, and numbers of old
campaigners were equally enthusiastic. At its conclusion,
the reception which Mr. Ingersoll held on the platform
lasted over half-an-hour, and when finally Commissioner
Wheeler piloted him through the crowd to his coach, three or
four hundred of the audience followed and gave him lusty
cheers as he drove off.--New York Tribune, September
11,1876.
HAYES CAMPAIGN.
1876.
I AM just on my way home from the grand old State of Maine, and there
has followed me a telegraphic dispatch which I will read to you. If it
were not good, you may swear I would not read it: "Every Congressional
district, every county in Maine, Republican by a large majority. The
victory is overwhelming, and the majority will exceed 15,000." That
dispatch is signed by that knight-errant of political chivalry, James G.
Blaine.
I suppose we are all stockholders in the great corporation known as the
United States of America, and as such stockholders we have a right to
vote the way we think will best subserve our own interests. Each one has
certain stock in this Government, whether he is rich, or whether he is
poor, and the poor man has the same interest in the United States of
America that the richest man in it has. It is our duty, conscientiously
and honestly, to hear the argument upon both sides of the political
question, and then go and vote conscientiously for the side that we
believe will best preserve our interest in the United States of America.
Two great parties are before you now asking your support--the Democratic
party and the Republican party. One wishes to be kept in power, the
other wishes to have a chance once more at the Treasury of the United
States. The Democratic party is probably the hungriest organization that
ever wandered over the desert of political disaster in the history of
the world. There never was, in all probability, a political stomach
so thoroughly empty, or an appetite so outrageously keen as the one
possessed by the Democratic party. The Democratic party has been howling
like a pack of wolves looking in with hungry and staring eyes at the
windows of the National Capitol, and scratching at the doors of the
White House. They have been engaged in these elegant pursuits for
sixteen long, weary years. Occasionally they have retired to some
convenient eminence and lugubriously howled about the Constitution.
The Democratic party comes and asks for your vote, not on account of
anything it has done, not on account of anything it has accomplished,
but on account of what it promises to do; the Democratic party can make
just as good a promise as any other party in the world, and it will
come farther from fulfilling it than any other party on this globe. The
Republican party having held this Government for sixteen years, proposes
to hold it for four years more. The Republican party comes to you with
its record open, and asks every man, woman and child in this broad
country to read its every word. And I say to you, that there is not a
line, a paragraph, or a page of that record that is not only an honor
to the Republican party, but to the human race. On every page of that
record is written some great and glorious action, done either for the
liberty of man, or the preservation of our common country. We ask every
body to read its every word. The Democratic party comes before you with
its record closed, recording every blot and blur, and stain and treason,
and slander and malignity, and asks you not to read a single word, but
to be kind enough to take its infamous promises for the future.
Now, my friends, I propose to tell you, to-night, something that has
been done by the Democratic party, and then allow you to judge for
yourselves. Now, if a man came to you, you owning a steamboat on the
Hudson River, and he wished to hire out to you as an engineer, and you
inquired about him, and found he had blown up and destroyed and wrecked
every steamboat he had ever been engineer on, and you should tell him:
"I can't hire you; you blew up such an engine, you wrecked such a ship,"
he would say to you, "My Lord! Mister, you must let bygones be bygones."
If a man came to your bank, or came to a solitary individual here to
borrow a hundred dollars, and you went and inquired about him and found
he never paid a note in his life, found he was a dead-beat, and you say
to him, "I cannot loan you money." "Why?" "Because, I have ascertained
you never pay your debts." "Ah, yes," he says, "you are no gentleman
going prying into a man's record," I tell you, my good friends, a good
character rests upon a record, and not upon a prospectus, a good record
rests upon a deed accomplished, and not upon a promise, a good character
rests upon something really done, and not upon a good resolution, and
you cannot make a good character in a day. If you could, Tilden would
have one to-morrow night.
I propose now to tell you, my friends, a little of the history of the
Republican party, also a little of the history of the Democratic party.
And first, the Republican party. The United States of America is a free
country, it is the only free country upon this earth; it is the only
republic that was ever established among men. We have read, we have
heard, of the republics of Greece, of Egypt, of Venice; we have heard of
the free cities of Europe. There never was a republic of Venice; there
never was a republic of Rome; there never was a republic of Athens;
there never was a free city in Europe; there never was a government not
cursed with caste; there never was a government not cursed with slavery;
there never was a country not cursed with almost every infamy, until the
Republican party of the United States made this a free country. It is
the first party in the world that contended that the respectable man was
the useful man; it is the first party in the world that said, without
regard to previous conditions, without regard to race, every human being
is entitled to life, to liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and it is
the only party in the world that has endeavored to carry those sublime
principles into actual effect. Every other party has been allied to
some piece of rascality; every other party has been patched up with some
thieving, larcenous, leprous compromise. The Republican party keeps
its forehead in the grand dawn of perpetual advancement; the Republican
party is the party of reason; it is the party of argument; it is
the party of education; it believes in free schools, it believes in
scientific schools; it believes that the schools are for the public and
all the public; it believes that science never should be interfered with
by any sectarian influence whatever.
The Republican party is in favor of science; the Republican party, as
I said before, is the party of reason; it argues; it does not mob; it
reasons; it does not murder; it persuades you, not with the shot gun,
not with tar and feathers, but with good sound reason, and argument.
In order for you to ascertain what the Republican party has done for us,
let us refresh ourselves a little; we all know it, but it is well enough
to hear it now and then. Let us then refresh our recollection a little,
in order to understand what the grand and great Republican party has
accomplished in the land.
We will consider, in the first place, the condition of the country when
the Republican party was born. When this Republican party was born there
was upon the statute books of the United States of America a law known
as the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, by which every man in the State of
New York was made by law a bloodhound, and could be set and hissed upon
a negro, who was simply attempting to obtain his birthright of freedom,
just as you would set a dog upon a wolf. That was the Fugitive Slave Law
of 1850. Around the neck of every man it put a collar as on a dog, but
it had not the decency to put the man's name on the collar. I said in
the State of Maine, and several other States, and expect to say it again
although I hurt the religious sentiment of the Democratic party, and
shocked the piety of that organization by saying it, but I did say then,
and now say, that the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850 would have disgraced
hell in its palmiest days.
I tell you, my friends, you do not know how easy it is to shock the
religious sentiments of the Democratic party; there is a deep and pure
vein of piety running through that organization; it has been for years
spiritually inclined; there is probably no organization in the world
that really will stand by any thing of a spiritual character, at least
until it is gone, as that Democratic party will. Everywhere I have been
I have crushed their religious hopes. You have no idea how sorry I am
that I hurt their feelings so upon the subject of religion. Why, I did
not suppose that they cared anything about Christianity, but I have been
deceived. I now find that they do, and I have done what no other man in
the United States ever did--I have made the Democratic party come to the
defence of Christianity. I have made the Democratic party use what
time they could spare between drinks in quoting Scripture. But
notwithstanding the fact that I have shocked the religious sentiment
of that party, I do not want them to defend Christianity any more; they
will bring it into universal contempt if they do. Yes, yes, they will
make the words honesty and reform a stench in the nostrils of honest
men. They made the words of the Constitution stand almost for treason,
during the entire war, and every decent word that passes the ignorant,
leprous, malignant lips of the Democratic party, becomes dishonored from
that day forth.
At the same time, in 1850, when the Fugitive Slave Law was passed, in
nearly all of the Western States, there was a law by which the virtues
of pity and hospitality became indictable offences. There was a law by
which the virtue of charity became a crime, and the man who performed
a kindness could be indicted, imprisoned, and fined. It was the law of
Illinois--of my own State--that if one gave a drop of cold water, or a
crust of bread, to a fugitive from slavery, he could be indicted, fined
and imprisoned, under the infamous slave law of 1850, under the infamous
black laws of the Western States.
At the time the Republican party was born, (and I have told this many
times) if a woman ninety-nine one-hundredths white had escaped from
slavery, carrying her child on her bosom, having gone through morass and
brush and thorns and thickets, had crossed creeks and rivers, and had
finally got within one step of freedom, with the light of the North
star shining in her tear-filled eyes--with her child upon her withered
breast--it would have been an indictable offence to have given her a
drop of water or a crust of bread; not only that, but under the slave
law of 1850, it was the duty of every Northern citizen claiming to be a
free man, to clutch that woman and hand her back to the dominion of her
master and to the Democratic lash. The Democrats are sorry that those
laws have been repealed. The Republican party with the mailed hand
of war tore from the statute books of the United States, and from the
statute books of each State, every one of those infamous, hellish laws,
and trampled them beneath her glorious feet.
Such laws are infamous beyond expression; one would suppose they had
been passed by a Legislature, the lower house of which were hyenas, the
upper house snakes, and the executive a cannibal king. The institution
of slavery had polluted, had corrupted the church, not only in the
South, but a large proportion of the church in the North; so that
ministers stood up in their pulpits here in New York and defended the
very infamy that I have mentioned. Not only that, but the Presbyterians,
South, in 1863, met in General Synod, and passed two resolutions.
The first resolution read, "Resolved, that slavery is a divine
institution" (and as the boy said, "so is hell").
_Second_, "Resolved, that God raised up the Presbyterian Church, South,
to protect and perpetuate that institution."
Well, all I have to say is that, if God did this, he never chose a more
infamous instrument to carry out a more diabolical object. What more had
slavery done? At that time it had corrupted the very courts, so that in
nearly every State in this Union if a Democrat had gone to the hut of
a poor negro, and had shot down his wife and children before his very
eyes, had strangled the little dimpled babe in the cradle, there was no
court before which this negro could come to give testimony. He was not
allowed to go before a magistrate and indict the murderer; he was not
allowed to go before a grand jury and swear an indictment against the
wretch. Justice was not only blind, but deaf; and that was the idea
of justice in the South, when the Republican party was born. When the
Republican party was born the bay of the bloodhound was the music of the
Union; when this party was born the dome of our Capitol at Washington
cast its shadow upon slave-pens in which crouched and shuddered women
from whose breasts their babes had been torn by wretches who are now
crying for honesty and reform. When the Republican party was born,
a bloodhound was considered as one of the instrumentalities of
republicanism. When the Republican party was born, the church had made
the cross of Christ a whipping-post. When the Republican party was
born, courts of the United States had not the slightest idea of justice,
provided a black man was on the other side. When this party came into
existence, if a negro had a plot of ground and planted corn in it, and
the rain had fallen upon it, and the dew had lain lovingly upon it, and
the arrows of light shot from the exhaustless quiver of the sun, had
quickened the blade, and the leaves waved in the perfumed air of June,
and it finally ripened into the full ear in the golden air of autumn,
the courts of the United States did not know to whom the corn belonged,
and if a Democrat had driven the negro off and shucked the corn, and
that case had been left to the Supreme Court of many of the States in
this Union, they would have read all the authorities, they would have
heard all the arguments, they would have heard all the speeches, then
pushed their spectacles back on their bald and brainless heads and
decided, all things considered, the Democrat was entitled to that
corn. We pretended at that time to be a free country; it was a lie. We
pretended at that time to do justice in our courts; it was a lie, and
above all our pretence and hypocrisy rose the curse of slavery, like
Chimborazo above the clouds.
Now, my friends, what is there about this great Republican party? It is
the party of intellectual freedom. It is one thing to bind the hands of
men; it is one thing to steal the results of physical labor of men, but
it is a greater crime to forge fetters for the souls of men. I am a free
man; I will do my own thinking or die; I give a mortgage on my soul to
nobody; I give a deed of trust on my soul to nobody; no matter whether I
think well or I think ill; whatever thought I have shall be my thought,
and shall be a free thought, and I am going to give cheerfully, gladly,
the same right to thus think to every other human being.
I despise any man who does not own himself. I despise any man who does
not possess his own spirit. I would rather die a beggar, covered with
rags, with my soul erect, fearless and free, than to live a king in a
palace of gold, clothed with the purple of power, with my soul slimy
with hypocrisy, crawling in the dust of fear. I will do my own thinking,
and when I get it thought, I will say it. These are the splendid things,
my friends, about the Republican party; intellectual and physical
liberty for all.
Now, my friends, I have told you a little about the Republican party.
Now, I will tell you a little more about the Republican party. When that
party came into power it elected Abraham Lincoln President of the United
States. I live in the State that holds within its tender embrace the
sacred ashes of Abraham Lincoln, the best, the purest man that was
ever President of the United States. I except none. When he was elected
President of the United States, the Democratic party said: "We will not
stand it;" the Democratic party South said: "We will not bear it;" and
the Democratic party North said: "You ought not to bear it."
James Buchanan was then President. James Buchanan read the Constitution
of the United States, or a part of it, and read several platforms made
by the Democratic party, and gave it as his deliberate opinion that a
State had a right to go out of the Union. He gave it as his deliberate
opinion that this was a Confederacy and not a Nation, and when he said
that, there was another little, dried up, old bachelor sitting over in
the amen corner of the political meeting and he squeaked out: "That is
my opinion too," and the name of that man was Samuel J. Tilden.
The Democratic party then and now says that the Union is simply a
Confederacy; but I want this country to be a Nation. I want to live in
a great and splendid country. A great nation makes a great people. Your
surroundings have something to do with it. Great plains, magnificent
rivers, great ranges of mountains, a country washed by two oceans--all
these things make us great and grand as the continent on which we live.
The war commenced, and the moment the war commenced the whole country
was divided into two parties. No matter what they had been
before, whether Democrats, Freesoilers, Republicans, old Whigs, or
Abolitionists--the whole country divided into two parties--the friends
and enemies of the country--patriots and traitors, and they so continued
until the Rebellion was put down. I cheerfully admit that thousands
of Democrats went into the army, and that thousands of Democrats were
patriotic men. I cheerfully admit that thousands of them thought more of
their country than they did of the Democratic party, and they came with
us to fight for the country, and I honor every one of them from the
bottom of my heart, and nineteen out of twenty of them have voted the
Republican ticket from that day to this. Some of them came back and went
to the Democratic party again and are still in that party; I have not
a word to say against them, only this: They are swapping off
respectability for disgrace. They give to the Democratic party all the
respectability it has, and the Democratic party gives to them all the
disgrace they have.
Democratic soldier, come out of the Democratic party. There was a man in
my State got mad at the railroad and would not ship his hogs on it, so
he drove them to Chicago, and it took him so long to get them there that
the price had fallen; when he came back, they laughed at him, and said
to him, "You didn't make much, did you, driving your hogs to Chicago?"
"No," he said, "I didn't make anything except the company of the hogs on
the way." Soldier of the Republic, I say, with the Democratic party all
you can make is the company of the hogs on the way down. Come out, come
out and leave them alone in their putridity--in their rottenness. Leave
them alone. Do not try to put a new patch on an old garment. Leave them
alone. I tell you the Democratic party must be left alone; it must be
left to enjoy the primal curse, "On thy belly shalt thou crawl and dust
shalt thou eat all the days of thy life," O Democratic party.
Now, my friends, I need not tell you how we put down the Rebellion. You
all know. I need not describe to you the battles you fought. I need not
tell you of the men who sacrificed their lives. I need not tell you of
the old men who are still waiting for footsteps that never will return.
I need not tell you of the women who are waiting for the return of their
loved ones. I need not tell you of all these things. You know we put
down the Rebellion; we fought until the old flag triumphed over every
inch of American soil redeemed from the clutch of treason.
Now, my friends, what was the Democratic party doing when the Republican
party was doing these splendid things? When, the Republican party said
this was a nation; when the Republican party said we shall be free;
when the Republican party said slavery shall be extirpated from American
soil; when the Republican party said the negro shall be a citizen, and
the citizen shall have the ballot, and the citizen shall have the right
to cast that ballot for the government of his choice peaceably--what was
the Democratic party doing?
I will tell you a few things that the Democratic party has done within
the last sixteen years. In the first place, they were not willing that
this country should be saved unless slavery could be saved with it.
There never was a Democrat, North or South--and by Democrat I mean the
fellows who stuck to the party all during the war, the ones that stuck
to the party after it was a disgrace; the ones that stuck to the party
from simple, pure cussedness--there never was one who did not think
more of the institution of slavery than he did of the Government of the
United States; not one that I ever saw or read of. And so they said to
us for all those years: "If you can save the Union with slavery, and
without any help from us, we are willing you should do it; but we do not
propose that this shall be an abolition war." So the Democratic
party from the first said, "An effort to preserve this Union is
unconstitutional," and they made a breastwork of the Constitution for
rebels to get behind and shoot down loyal men, so that the first charge
I lay at the feet of the Democratic party, the first charge I make in
the indictment, is that they thought more of slavery than of liberty and
of this Union, and in my judgment they are in the same condition this
moment. The next thing they did was to discourage enlistments in the
North. They did all in their power to prevent any man's going into the
army to assist in putting down the Rebellion. And that grand reformer
and statesman, Samuel J. Tilden, gave it as his opinion that the South
could sue, and that every soldier who put his foot on sacred Southern
soil would be a trespasser, and could be sued before a Justice of the
Peace. The Democratic party met in their conventions in every State
North, and denounced the war as an abolition war, and Abraham Lincoln
as a tyrant. What more did they do? They went into partnership with
the rebels. They said to the rebels just as plainly as though they had
spoken it: "Hold on, hold out, hold hard, fight hard, until we get the
political possession of the North, and then you can go in peace."
What more? A man by the name of Jacob Thompson--a nice man and a good
Democrat, who thinks that of all the men to reform the Government Samuel
J. Tilden is the best man--Jacob Thompson had the misfortune to be
a very vigorous Democrat, and I will show you what I mean by that. A
Democrat during the war who had a musket--you understand, a musket--he
was a rebel, and during the war a rebel that did not have a musket was
a Democrat. I call Mr. Thompson a vigorous Democrat, because he had a
musket. Jacob Thompson was the rebel agent in Canada, and when he went
there he took between six and seven hundred thousand dollars for the
purpose of co-operating with the Northern Democracy. He got himself
acquainted with and in connection with the Democratic party in Ohio, in
Indiana, and in Illinois. The vigorous Democrats, the real Democrats,
in these States had organized themselves under the heads of "Sons of
Liberty," "Knights of the Golden Circle," "Order of the Star," and
various other beautiful names, and their object was to release rebel
prisoners from Camp Chase, Camp Douglass in Chicago, and from one camp
in Indianapolis and another camp at Rock Island. Their object was to
raise a fire in the rear, as they called it--in other words, to burn
down the homes of Union soldiers while they were in the front fighting
for the honor of their country. That was their object, and they put
themselves in connection with Jacob Thompson. They were to have an
uprising on the 16th of August, 1864. It was thought best to hold a few
public meetings for the purpose of arousing the public mind. They held
the first meeting in the city of Peoria, where I live. That was August
3rd, 1864. Here they came from every part of the State, and were
addressed by the principal Democratic politicians in Illinois.
To that meeting Fernando Wood addressed a letter, in which he said that
although absent in body he should be present in spirit. George Pendleton
of Ohio, George Pugh of the same State, Seymour of Connecticut, and
various other Democratic gentlemen, sent acknowledgments and expressions
of regret to this Democratic meeting that met at this time for the
purpose of organizing an uprising among the Democratic party. I saw that
meeting, and heard some of their speeches. They denounced the war as an
abolition nigger war. They denounced Abraham Lincoln as a tyrant. They
carried transparencies that said, "Is there money enough in the land to
pay this nigger debt? Arouse, brothers, and hurl the tyrant Lincoln from
the throne." And the men that promulgated that very thing are running
for the most important political offices in the country, on the ground
of honesty and reform. And Jacob Thompson says that he furnished the
money to pay the expenses of that Democratic meeting. They were all paid
by rebel gold, by Jacob Thompson. He has on file the voucher from these
Democratic gentlemen in favor of Tilden and Hendricks. The next meetings
were held in Springfield, Illinois, and Indianapolis, Indiana, the
expenses of which were paid in the same way. They shipped to one town
these weapons of our destruction in boxes labeled Sunday school books!
That same rebel agent, Jacob Thompson, hired a Democrat by the name
of Churchill to burn the city of Cincinnati, Ohio, and Thompson coolly
remarked: "I don't think he has had much luck, as I have only heard of a
_few_ fires."
In Indianapolis a man named Dodds was arrested--a sound Democrat--so
sound that the Government had to take him by the nape of the neck and
put him in Fort Lafayette. The convention of Democrats then met in the
city of Chicago, and declared the war a failure. There never was a more
infamous lie on this earth than when the Democratic convention declared
in 1864 that the war was a failure. It was but a few days afterward that
the roar of Grants cannon announced that a lie. Rise from your graves,
Union soldiers, one and all, that fell in support of your country--rise
from your graves, and lift your skeleton hands on high, and swear that
when the Democratic party resolved that the war for the preservation
of your country was a failure, that the Democratic party was a vast
aggregated liar. Well, we grew magnanimous, and let Dodds out of Fort
Lafayette; and where do you suppose Dodds is now? He is in Wisconsin.
What do you suppose Dodds is doing? Making speeches. Whom for? Tilden
and Hendricks--"Honesty and reform!" This same Jacob Thompson, Democrat,
hired men to burn New York, and they did set fire in some twenty places,
and they used Greek fire, as he said in his letter, and ingenuously
adds: "I shall never hereafter advise the use of Greek fire." They
knew that in the smoke and ruins would be found the charred remains of
mothers and children, and that the flames leaping like serpents would
take the child from the mothers arms, and they were ready to do it to
preserve the infamous institution of slavery; and the Democratic party
has never objected to it from that day to this. They burned steamboats,
and many men with them, and the hounds that did it are skulking in the
woods of Missouri. While these things were going on, Democrats in the
highest positions said: "Not one cent to prosecute the war."
The next question we have to consider is about paying the debt. This
is the first question. The second question is the protection of the
citizen, whether he is white or black. We owe a large debt. Two-thirds
of that debt was incurred in consequence of the action and the meanness
of the Democrats. There are some people who think that you can defer
the payment of a promise so long that the postponement of the debt will
serve in lieu of its liquidation--that you pay your debts by putting off
your creditors.
The people have to support the Government; the Government cannot support
the people. The Government has no money but what it received from the
people. It had therefore to borrow money to carry on the war. Every
greenback that it issued was a forced loan. My notes are not a legal
tender, though if I had the power I might possibly make them so. We
borrowed money and we have to pay the debt. That debt represents the
expenses of war. The horses and the gunpowder and the rifles and the
artillery are represented in that debt--it represents all the munitions
of war. Until we pay that debt we can never be a solvent nation. Until
our net profits amount to as much as we lost during the war we can never
be a solvent people. If a man cannot understand that, there is no use in
talking to him on the subject. The alchemists in olden times who fancied
that they could make gold out of nothing were not more absurd than the
American advocates of soft money. They resemble the early explorers of
our continent who lost years in searching for the fountain of eternal
youth, but the ear of age never caught the gurgle of that spring. We
all have heard of men who spent years of labor in endeavoring to produce
perpetual motion. They produced machines of the most ingenious character
with cogs and wheels, and pulleys without number, but these ingenious
machines had one fault, they would not go. You will never find a way to
make money out of nothing. It is as great nonsense as the fountain of
perpetual youth. You cannot do it.
Gold is the best material which labor has yet found as a measure of
value. That measure of value must be as valuable as the object it
measures.
The value of gold arises from the amount of labor expended in producing
it. A gold dollar will buy as much labor as produced that dollar.
[Here the speaker opened a telegram from Maine, which he
read to the audience amid a perfect tempest of applause. It
contained the following words:] "We have triumphed by an
immense majority, something we have not achieved since
1868." [The speaker resumed.] And this despatch is signed by
the man who clutched the throats of the Democrats and held
them until they grew black in the face, James G. Blaine. ***
Now, gentlemen, to pass from the financial part of this, and I will say
one word before I do it. The Republican party intends to pay its debts
in coin on the 1st of January, 1879. Paper money means probably the
payment of the Confederate debt; a metallic currency, the discharge of
honest obligations. We have touched hard-pan prices in this country, and
we want to do a hard-pan business with hard money.
We now come to the protection of our citizens. A government that cannot
protect its citizens, at home and abroad, ought to be swept from the map
of the world. The Democrats tell you that they will protect any citizen
if he is only away from home, but if he is in Louisiana or any other
State in the Union, the Government is powerless to protect him. I say
a government has a right to protect every citizen at home as well as
abroad, and the Government has the right to take its soldiers across
the State line, to take its soldiers into any State, for the purpose of
protecting even one man. That is my doctrine with regard to the power of
the Government. But here comes a Democrat to-day and tells me, (and
it is the old doctrine of secession in disguise), that the State of
Louisiana must protect its own citizens, and that if it does not, the
General Government has nothing to do unless the Governor of that State
asks assistance, no matter whether anarchy prevails or not. That is
infamous. The United States has the right to draft you and me into the
army and compel us to serve there, if its powers are being usurped. It
is the duty of this Government to see to it that every citizen has
all his rights in every State in this Union, and to protect him in the
enjoyment of those rights, peaceably if it can, forcibly if it must.
Democrats tell us that they treat the colored man very well. I have
frequently read stories relating how two white men were passing along
the road when suddenly they were set upon by ten or twelve negroes, who
sought their lives; but in the fight which ensued, the ten or twelve
negroes were killed, and not a white man hurt. I tell you it is
infamous, and the Democratic press of the North laughs at it, and Mr.
Samuel J. Tilden does not care. He knows that many of the Southern
States are to be carried by assassination and murder, and he knows that
if he is elected it will be by assassination and murder. It is infamous
beyond the expression of language. Now, I ask you which party will be
the most likely to preserve the liberty of the negro--the party who
fought for slavery, or the men who gave them freedom? These are the
two great questions--the payment of the debt, and the protection of our
citizens. My friends, we have to pay the debt, as I told you, but it is
of greater importance to make sacred American citizenship.
Now, these two parties have a couple of candidates. The Democratic
party has put forward Mr. Samuel J. Tilden. Mr. Tilden is a Democrat who
belongs to the Democratic party of the city of New York; the worst party
ever organized in any civilized country. I wish you could see it. The
pugilists, the prizefighters, the plug-uglies, the fellows that run with
the "masheen;" nearly every nose is mashed, about half the ears have
been chawed off; and of whatever complexion they are, their eyes are
nearly always black. They have fists like tea-kettles and heads like
bullets. I wish you could see them. I have been in New York every few
weeks for fifteen years; and whenever I am here I see the old banner of
Tammany Hall, "Tammany Hall and Reform;" "John Morrissey and Reform;"
"John Kelley and Reform;" "William M. Tweed and Reform;" and the
other day I saw the same old flag; "Samuel J. Tilden and Reform."
The Democratic party of the city of New York never had but two
objects--grand and petit larceny. Tammany Hall bears the same relation
to the penitentiary that the Sunday school does to the church.
I have heard that the Democratic party got control of the city when it
did not owe a dollar, and have stolen and stolen until it owes a hundred
and sixty millions, and I understand that every election they have had
was a fraud, every one. I understand that they stole everything they
could lay their hands on; and what hands! Grasped and grasped and
clutched, until they stole all it was possible for the people to pay,
and now they are all yelling for "Honesty and Reform."
I understand that Samuel J. Tilden was a pupil in that school, and that
now he is the head teacher. I understand that when the war commenced
he said he would never aid in the prosecution of that old outrage. I
understand that he said in 1860 and in 1861 that the Southern States
could snap the tie of confederation as a nation would break a treaty,
and that they could repel coercion as a nation would repel invasion. I
understand that during the entire war he was opposed to its prosecution,
and that he was opposed to the Proclamation of Emancipation, and
demanded that the document be taken back. I understand that he regretted
to see the chains fall from the limbs of the colored man. I understand
that he regretted when the Constitution of the United States was
elevated and purified, pure as the driven snow. I understand that he
regretted when the stain was wiped from our flag and we stood before the
world the only pure Republic that ever existed. This is enough for me
to say about him, and since the news from Maine you need not waste your
time in talking about him.
[A voice: "How about free schools?"]
I want every schoolhouse to be a temple of science in which shall be
taught the laws of nature, in which the children shall be taught actual
facts, and I do not want that schoolhouse touched, or that institution
of science touched, by any superstition whatever. Leave religion with
the church, with the family, and more than all, leave religion with each
individual heart and man.
Let every man be his own bishop, let every man be his own pope, let
every man do his own thinking, let every man have a brain of his own.
Let every man have a heart and conscience of his own.
We are growing better, and truer, and grander. And let me say, Mr.
Democrat, we are keeping the country for your children. We are keeping
education for your children. We are keeping the old flag floating for
your children; and let me say, as a prediction, there is only air enough
on this continent to float that one flag.
Note.--This address was not revised by the author for
publication.
INDIANAPOLIS SPEECH.
* Col. Ingersoll was introduced by Gen'l Noyes, who said: "I
have now the exquisite pleasure of introducing to you that
dashing cavalry officer, that thunderbolt of war, that
silver tongued orator, Col. Robert G. Ingersoll of Illinois."
The Journal, Indianapolis, Indiana. September 2lst, 1876.
HAYES CAMPAIGN.
1876
Delivered to the Veteran Soldiers of the Rebellion.
LADIES and Gentlemen, Fellow Citizens and Citizen Soldiers:--I am
opposed to the Democratic party, and I will tell you why. Every State
that seceded from the United States was a Democratic State. Every
ordinance of secession that was drawn was drawn by a Democrat. Every man
that endeavored to tear the old flag from the heaven that it enriches
was a Democrat. Every man that tried to destroy this nation was a
Democrat. Every enemy this great Republic has had for twenty years has
been a Democrat. Every man that shot Union soldiers was a Democrat.
Every man that denied to the Union prisoners even the worm-eaten crust
of famine, and when some poor, emaciated Union patriot, driven to
insanity by famine, saw in an insane dream the face of his mother, and
she beckoned him and he followed, hoping to press her lips once again
against his fevered face, and when he stepped one step beyond the dead
line the wretch that put the bullet through his loving, throbbing heart
was and is a Democrat.
Every man that loved slavery better than liberty was a Democrat. The
man that assassinated Abraham Lincoln was a Democrat. Every man that
sympathized with the assassin--every man glad that the noblest President
ever elected was assassinated, was a Democrat. Every man that wanted the
privilege of whipping another man to make him work for him for nothing
and pay him with lashes on his naked back, was a Democrat. Every man
that raised bloodhounds to pursue human beings was a Democrat. Every man
that clutched from shrieking, shuddering, crouching mothers, babes from
their breasts, and sold them into slavery, was a Democrat. Every man
that impaired the credit of the United States, every man that swore we
would never pay the bonds, every man that swore we would never
redeem the greenbacks, every maligner of his country's credit, every
calumniator of his country's honor, was a Democrat. Every man that
resisted the draft, every man that hid in the bushes and shot at Union
men simply because they were endeavoring to enforce the laws of their
country, was a Democrat. Every man that wept over the corpse of slavery
was a Democrat. Every man that cursed Abraham Lincoln because he
issued the Proclamation of Emancipation--the grandest paper since the
Declaration of Independence--every one of them was a Democrat. Every man
that denounced the soldiers that bared their breasts to the storms of
shot and shell for the honor of America and for the sacred rights of
man; was a Democrat. Every man that wanted an uprising in the North,
that wanted to release the rebel prisoners that they might burn down
the homes of Union soldiers above the heads of their wives and children,
while the brave husbands, the heroic fathers, were in the front fighting
for the honor of the old flag, every one of them was a Democrat. I am
not through yet. Every man that believed this glorious nation of ours
is a confederacy, every man that believed the old banner carried by our
fathers over the fields of the Revolution; the old flag carried by our
fathers over the fields of 1812; the glorious old banner carried by our
brothers over the plains of Mexico; the sacred banner carried by
our brothers over the cruel fields of the South, simply stood for a
contract, simply stood for an agreement, was a Democrat. Every man who
believed that any State could go out of the Union at its pleasure, every
man that believed the grand fabric of the American Government could
be made to crumble instantly into dust at the touch of treason, was a
Democrat. Every man that helped to burn orphan asylums in New York, was
a Democrat; every man that tried to fire the city of New York, although
he knew that thousands would perish, and knew that the great serpent of
flame leaping from buildings would clutch children from their mothers'
arms--every wretch that did it was a Democrat. Recollect it! Every man
that tried to spread smallpox and yellow fever in the North, as the
instrumentalities of civilized war, was a Democrat. Soldiers, every scar
you have on your heroic bodies was given you by a Democrat. Every scar,
every arm that is lacking, every limb that is gone, is a souvenir of a
Democrat. I want you to recollect it. Every man that was the enemy of
human liberty in this country was a Democrat. Every man that wanted
the fruit of all the heroism of all the ages to turn to ashes upon the
lips--every one was a Democrat.
I am a Republican. I will tell you why: This is the only free Government
in the world. The Republican party made it so. The Republican party took
the chains from four millions of people. The Republican party, with the
wand of progress, touched the auction-block and it became a schoolhouse.
The Republican party put down the Rebellion, saved the nation, kept the
old banner afloat in the air, and declared that slavery of every kind
should be extirpated from the face of this continent. What more? I am a
Republican because it is the only free party that ever existed. It is a
party that has a platform as broad as humanity, a platform as broad as
the human race, a party that says you shall have all the fruit of the
labor of your hands, a party that says you may think for yourself, a
party that says, no chains for the hands, no fetters for the soul.*
* At this point the rain began to descend, and it looked as
if a heavy shower was impending. Several umbrellas were put
up. Gov. Noyes--"God bless you! What is rain to soldiers"
Voice--"Go ahead; we don't mind the rain." It was proposed
to adjourn the meeting to Masonic Hall, but the motion was
voted down by an overwhelming majority, and Mr. Ingersoll
proceeded.
I am a Republican because the Republican party says this country is a
Nation, and not a confederacy. I am here in Indiana to speak, and I
have as good a right to speak here as though I had been born on this
stand--not because the State flag of Indiana waves over me--I would
not know it if I should see it. You have the same right to speak in
Illinois, not because the State flag of Illinois waves over you, but
because that banner, rendered sacred by the blood of all the heroes,
waves over you and me. I am in favor of this being a Nation. Think of a
man gratifying his entire ambition in the State of Rhode Island. We want
this to be a Nation, and you cannot have a great, grand, splendid people
without a great, grand, splendid country. The great plains, the sublime
mountains, the great rushing, roaring rivers, shores lashed by two
oceans, and the grand anthem of Niagara, mingle and enter, into the
character of every American citizen, and make him or tend to make him a
great and grand character. I am for the Republican party because it says
the Government has as much right, as much power, to protect its citizens
at home as abroad. The Republican party does not say that you have to go
away from home to get the protection of the Government. The Democratic
party says the Government cannot march its troops into the South to
protect the rights of the citizens. It is a lie. The Government claims
the right, and it is conceded that the Government has the right, to go
to your house, while you are sitting by your fireside with your wife and
children about you, and the old lady knitting, and the cat playing with
the yarn, and everybody happy and serene--the Government claims the
right to go to your fireside and take you by force and put you into the
army; take you down to the valley of the shadow of hell, put you by the
ruddy, roaring guns, and make you fight for your flag. Now, that being
so, when the war is over and your country is victorious, and you go back
to your home, and a lot of Democrats want to trample upon your rights, I
want to know if the Government that took you from your fireside and made
you fight for it, I want to know if it is not bound to fight for you.
The flag that will not protect its protectors is a dirty rag that
contaminates the air in which it waves. The government that will not
defend its defenders is a disgrace to the nations of the world. I am
a Republican because the Republican party says, "We will protect the
rights of American citizens at home, and if necessary we will march
an army into any State to protect the rights of the humblest American
citizen in that State." I am a Republican because that party allows
me to be free--allows me to do my own thinking in my own way. I am a
Republican because it is a party grand enough and splendid enough and
sublime enough to invite every human being in favor of liberty and
progress to fight shoulder to shoulder for the advancement of mankind.
It invites the Methodist, it invites the Catholic, it invites the
Presbyterian and every kind of sectarian; it invites the Freethinker;
it invites the infidel, provided he is in favor of giving to every other
human being every chance and every right that he claims for himself.
I am a Republican, I tell you. There is room in the Republican air
for every wing; there is room on the Republican sea for every sail.
Republicanism says to every man: "Let your soul be like an eagle; fly
out in the great dome of thought, and question the stars for yourself."
But the Democratic party says; "Be blind owls, sit on the dry limb of a
dead tree, and hoot only when that party says hoot."
In the Republican party there are no followers. We are all leaders.
There is not a party chain. There is not a party lash. Any man that does
not love this country, any man that does not love liberty, any man that
is not in favor of human progress, that is not in favor of giving
to others all he claims for himself; we do not ask him to vote the
Republican ticket. You can vote it if you please, and if there is any
Democrat within hearing who expects to die before another election,
we are willing that he should vote one Republican ticket, simply as a
consolation upon his death-bed. What more? I am a Republican because
that party believes in free labor. It believes that free labor will give
us wealth. It believes in free thought, because it believes that free
thought will give us truth. You do not know what a grand party you
belong to. I never want any holier or grander title of nobility than
that I belong to the Republican party, and have fought for the liberty
of man. The Republican party, I say, believes in free labor. The
Republican party also believes in slavery. What kind of slavery? In
enslaving the forces of nature.
We believe that free labor, that free thought, have enslaved the
forces of nature, and made them work for man. We make old attraction of
gravitation work for us; we make the lightning do our errands; we make
steam hammer and fashion what we need. The forces of nature are the
slaves of the Republican party. They have no backs to be whipped,
they have no hearts to be torn--no hearts to be broken; they cannot be
separated from their wives; they cannot be dragged from the bosoms of
their husbands; they work night and day and they never tire. You cannot
whip them, you cannot starve them, and a Democrat even can be trusted
with one of them. I tell you I am a Republican. I believe, as I told
you, that free labor will give us these slaves. Free labor will produce
all these things, and everything you have to-day has been produced by
free labor, nothing by slave labor.
Slavery never invented but one machine, and that was a threshing machine
in the shape of a whip. Free labor has invented all the machines. We
want to come down to the philosophy of these things. The problem of free
labor, when a man works for the wife he loves, when he works for the
little children he adores--the problem is to do the most work in the
shortest space of time. The problem of slavery is to do the least work
in the longest space of time. That is the difference. Free labor, love,
affection--they have invented everything of use in this world. I am a
Republican.
I tell you, my friends, this world is getting better every day, and the
Democratic party is getting smaller every day. See the advancement we
have made in a few years, see what we have done. We have co
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