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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 9
+(of 12), by Robert G. Ingersoll
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 9 (of 12)
+       Dresden Edition--Political
+
+Author: Robert G. Ingersoll
+
+Release Date: February 9, 2012 [EBook #38809]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORKS OF INGERSOLL ***
+
+
+
+
+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 covered this
+nation with wealth, with glory and with liberty. This is the first free
+Government in the world. The Republican party is the first party that
+was not founded on some compromise with the devil. It is the first party
+of pure, square, honest principle; the first one. And we have the first
+free country that ever existed.
+
+And right here I want to thank every soldier that fought to make it
+free, every one living and dead. I thank you again and again and again.
+You made the first free Government in the world, and we must not forget
+the dead heroes. If they were here they would vote the Republican
+ticket, every one of them. I tell you we must not forget them.
+
+* The past rises before me like a dream. Again we are in the great
+struggle for national life. We hear the sounds of preparation--the
+music of boisterous drums--the silver voices of heroic bugles. We see
+thousands of assemblages, and hear the appeals of orators. We see
+the pale cheeks of women, and the flushed faces of men; and in those
+assemblages we see all the dead whose dust we have covered with flowers.
+We lose sight of them no more. We are with them when they enlist in the
+great army of freedom. We see them part with those they love. Some are
+walking for the last time in quiet, woody places, with the maidens they
+adore. We hear the whisperings and the sweet vows of eternal love as
+they lingeringly part forever. Others are bending over cradles, kissing
+babes that are asleep. Some are receiving the blessings of old men. Some
+are parting with mothers who hold them and press them to their
+hearts again and again, and say nothing. Kisses and tears, tears and
+kisses--divine mingling of agony and love! And some are talking with
+wives, and endeavoring with brave words, spoken in the old tones, to
+drive from their hearts the awful fear. We see them part. We see the
+wife standing in the door with the babe in her arms--standing in the
+sunlight sobbing. At the turn of the road a hand waves--she answers by
+holding high in her loving arms the child. He is gone, and forever.
+
+We see them all as they march proudly away under the flaunting flags,
+keeping time to the grand, wild music of war--marching down the streets
+of the great cities--through the towns and across the prairies--down to
+the fields of glory, to do and to die for the eternal right.
+
+We go with them, one and all. We are by their side on all the gory
+fields--in all the hospitals of pain--on all the weary marches. We stand
+guard with them in the wild storm and under the quiet stars. We are with
+them in ravines running with blood--in the furrows of old fields. We are
+with them between contending hosts, unable to move, wild with thirst,
+the life ebbing slowly away among the withered leaves. We see them
+pierced by balls and torn with shells, in the trenches, by forts, and
+in the whirlwind of the charge, where men become iron, with nerves of
+steel.
+
+We are with them in the prisons of hatred and famine; but human speech
+can never tell what they endured.
+
+We are at home when the news comes that they are dead. We see the maiden
+in the shadow of her first sorrow. We see the silvered head of the old
+man bowed with the last grief.
+
+The past rises before us, and we see four millions of human beings
+governed by the lash--we see them bound hand and foot--we hear the
+strokes of cruel whips--we see the hounds tracking women through
+tangled swamps. We see babes sold from the breasts of mothers. Cruelty
+unspeakable! Outrage infinite!
+
+Four million bodies in chains--four million souls in fetters. All the
+sacred relations of wife, mother, father and child trampled beneath
+the brutal feet of might. And all this was done under our own beautiful
+banner of the free.
+
+The past rises before us. We hear the roar and shriek of the bursting
+shell. The broken fetters fall. These heroes died. We look. Instead of
+slaves we see men and women and children. The wand of progress touches
+the auction-block, the slave-pen, the whipping-post, and we see homes
+and firesides and schoolhouses and books, and where all was want and
+crime and cruelty and fear, we see the faces of the free.
+
+These heroes are dead. They died for liberty--they died for us. They
+are at rest. They sleep in the land they made free, under the flag
+they rendered stainless, under the solemn pines, the sad hemlocks,
+the tearful willows, and the embracing vines. They, sleep beneath the
+shadows of the clouds, careless alike of sunshine or of storm, each in
+the windowless Palace of Rest. Earth may run red with other wars--they
+are at peace. In the midst of battle, in the roar of conflict, they
+found the serenity of death. I have one sentiment for soldiers living
+and dead: cheers for the living; tears for the dead.
+
+     * This poetic flight of oratory has since become universally
+     known as "A. Vision of War."
+
+Now, my friends, I have given you a few reasons why I am a Republican. I
+have given you a few reasons why I am not a Democrat. Let me say another
+thing. The Democratic party opposed every forward movement of the
+army of the Republic, every one. Do not be fooled. Imagine the meanest
+resolution that you can think of--that is the resolution the Democratic
+party passed. Imagine the meanest thing you can think of--that is what
+they did; and I want you to recollect that the Democratic party did
+these devilish things when the fate of this nation was trembling in the
+balance of war. I want you to recollect another thing; when they tell
+you about hard times, that the Democratic party made the hard times;
+that every dollar we owe to-day was made by the Southern and Northern
+Democracy.
+
+When we commenced to put down the Rebellion we had to borrow money, and
+the Democratic party went into the markets of the world and impaired the
+credit of the United States. They slandered, they lied, they maligned
+the credit of the United States, and to such an extent did they do this,
+that at one time during the war paper was only worth about thirty-four
+cents on the dollar. Gold went up to $2.90. What did that mean? It meant
+that greenbacks were worth thirty-four cents on the dollar. What became
+of the other sixty-six cents? They were lied out of the greenback,
+they were slandered out of the greenback, they were maligned out of the
+greenback, they were calumniated out of the greenback, by the Democratic
+party of the North. Two-thirds of the debt, two-thirds of the burden
+now upon the shoulders of American industry, were placed there by the
+slanders of the Democratic party of the North, and the other third by
+the Democratic party of the South. And when you pay your taxes keep an
+account and charge two-thirds to the Northern Democracy and one-third to
+the Southern Democracy, and whenever you have to earn the money to pay
+the taxes, when you have to blister your hands to earn that money, pull
+off the blisters, and under each one, as the foundation, you will find a
+Democratic lie.
+
+Recollect that the Democratic party did all the things of which I have
+told you, when the fate of our nation was submitted to the arbitrament
+of the sword. Recollect that the Democratic party did these things when
+your brothers, your fathers, and your chivalric sons were fighting,
+bleeding, suffering, and dying upon the battle-fields of the South; when
+shot and shell were crashing through their sacred flesh. Recollect that
+this Democratic party was false to the Union when your husbands, your
+fathers, and your brothers, and your chivalric sons were lying in the
+hospitals of pain, dreaming broken dreams of home, and seeing fever
+pictures of the ones they loved; recollect that the Democratic party was
+false to the nation when your husbands, your fathers, and your brothers
+were lying alone upon the field of battle at night, the life-blood
+slowly oozing from the mangled and pallid lips of death; recollect that
+the Democratic party was false to your country when your husbands, your
+brothers, your fathers, and your sons were lying in the prison pens of
+the South, with no covering but the clouds, with no bed but the frozen
+earth, with no food except such as worms had re-p fused to eat, and with
+no friends except Insanity and Death. Recollect it, and spurn that party
+forever.
+
+I have sometimes wished that there were words of pure hatred out of
+which I might construct sentences like snakes; out of which I might
+construct sentences that had fanged mouths, and that had forked tongues;
+out of which I might construct sentences that would writhe and hiss;
+and then I could give my opinion of the Northern allies of the Southern
+rebels during the great struggle for the preservation of the country.
+
+There are three questions now submitted to the American people. The
+first is, Shall the people that saved this country rule it? Shall the
+men who saved the old flag hold it? Shall the men who saved the ship
+of State sail it, or shall the rebels walk her quarter-deck, give the
+orders and sink it? That is the question. Shall a solid South, a united
+South, united by assassination and murder, a South solidified by the
+shot-gun; shall a united South, with the aid of a divided North, shall
+they control this great and splendid country? We are right back where we
+were in 1861. This is simply a prolongation of the war. This is the war
+of the idea, the other was the war of the musket. The other was the war
+of cannon, this is the war of thought; and we have to beat them in
+this war of thought, recollect that. The question is, Shall the men who
+endeavored to destroy this country rule it? Shall the men that said,
+This is not a Nation, have charge of the Nation?
+
+The next question is, Shall we pay our debts? We had to borrow some
+money to pay for shot and shell to shoot Democrats with. We found that
+we could get along with a few less Democrats, but not with any less
+country, and so we borrowed the money, and the question now is, will we
+pay it? And which party is the more apt to pay it, the Republican party
+that made the debt--the party that swore it was constitutional, or the
+party that said it was unconstitutional?
+
+Every time a Democrat sees a greenback, it says to him, "I vanquished
+you." Every time a Republican sees a greenback, it says, "You and I put
+down the Rebellion and saved the country."
+
+Now, my friends, you have heard a great deal about finance. Nearly
+everybody that talks about it gets as dry--as dry as if they had been in
+the final home of the Democratic party for forty years.
+
+I will now give you my ideas about finance. In the first place
+the Government does not support the people, the people support the
+Government.
+
+The Government is a perpetual pauper. It passes round the hat, and
+solicits contributions; but then you must remember that the Government
+has a musket behind the hat. The Government produces nothing. It does
+not plow the land, it does not sow corn, it does not grow trees. The
+Government is a perpetual consumer. We support the Government. Now, the
+idea that the Government can make money for you and me to live on--why,
+it is the same as though my hired man should issue certificates of my
+indebtedness to him for me to live on.
+
+Some people tell me that the Government can impress its sovereignty on
+a piece of paper, and that is money. Well, if it is, what's the use of
+wasting it making one dollar bills? It takes no more ink and no more
+paper--why not make one thousand dollar bills? Why not make a hundred
+million dollar bills and all be billionaires?
+
+If the Government can make money, what on earth does it collect taxes
+from you and me for? Why does it not make what money it wants, take
+the taxes out, and give the balance to us? Mr. Greenbacker, suppose the
+Government issued a billion dollars to-morrow, how would you get any
+of it? [A voice, "Steal it."] I was not speaking to the Democrats. You
+would not get any of it unless you had something to exchange for it. The
+Government would not go around and give you your aver-: age. You have to
+have some corn, or wheat, or pork to give for it.
+
+How do you get your money? By work. Where from? You have to dig it out
+of the ground. That is where it comes from. Men have always had a kind
+of hope that something could be made out of nothing. The old alchemists
+sought, with dim eyes, for something that could change the baser metals
+to gold. With tottering steps, they searched for the spring of Eternal
+Youth. Holding in trembling hands retort and crucible, they dreamed of
+the Elixir of Life. The baser metals are not gold. No human ear has ever
+heard the silver gurgle of the spring of Immortal Youth. The wrinkles
+upon the brow of Age are still waiting for the Elixir of Life.
+
+Inspired by the same idea, mechanics have endeavored, by curious
+combinations of levers and inclined planes, of wheels and cranks and
+shifting weights, to produce perpetual motion; but the wheels and levers
+wait for force. And, in the financial world, there are thousands now
+trying to find some way for promises to take the place of performance;
+for some way to make the word dollar as good as the dollar itself; for
+some way to make the promise to pay a dollar take the dollar's place.
+This financial alchemy, this pecuniary perpetual motion, this fountain
+of eternal wealth, are the same old failures with new names. Something
+cannot be made out of nothing. Nothing is a poor capital to, carry on
+business with, and makes a very unsatisfactory balance at your bankers.
+
+Let me tell you another thing. The Democrats seem to think that you can
+fail to keep a promise so long that it is as good as though you had kept
+it. They say you can stamp the sovereignty of the Government upon paper.
+
+I saw not long ago a piece of gold bearing the stamp of the Roman
+Empire. That Empire is dust, and over it has been thrown the mantle of
+oblivion, but that piece of gold is as good as though Julius Caesar were
+still riding at the head of the Roman Legions.
+
+Was it his sovereignty that made it valuable? Suppose he had put it upon
+a piece of paper--it would have been of no more value than a Democratic
+promise.
+
+Another thing, my friends: this debt will be paid; you need not worry
+about that. The Democrats ought to pay it. They lost the suit, and they
+ought to pay the costs. But we in our patriotism are willing to pay our
+share.
+
+Every man that has a bond, every man that has a greenback dollar has
+a mortgage upon the best continent of land on earth. Every one has a
+mortgage on the honor of the Republican party, and it is on record.
+Every spear of grass; every bearded head of golden wheat that grows upon
+this continent is a guarantee that the debt will be paid; every field of
+bannered corn in the great, glorious West is a guarantee that the debt
+will be paid; every particle of coal laid away by that old miser the
+sun, millions-of years ago, is a guarantee that every dollar will be
+paid; all the iron ore, all the gold and silver under the snow-capped
+Sierra Nevadas, waiting for the miners pick to give back the flash of
+the sun, every ounce is a guarantee that this debt will be paid; and all
+the cattle on the prairies, pastures and plains which adorn our broad
+land are guarantees that this debt will be paid; every pine standing
+in the sombre forests of the North, waiting for the woodman's axe, is a
+guarantee that this debt will be paid; every locomotive with its muscles
+of iron and breath of flame, and all the boys and girls bending over
+their books at school, every dimpled babe in the cradle, every honest
+man, every noble woman, and every man that votes the Republican ticket
+is a guarantee that the debt will be paid--these, all these, each and
+all, are the guarantees that every promise of the United States will be
+sacredly fulfilled.
+
+What is the next question? The next question is, will we protect the
+Union men in the South? I tell you the white Union men have suffered
+enough. It is a crime in the Southern States to be a Republican. It is
+a crime in every Southern State to love this country, to believe in the
+sacred rights of men.
+
+The colored people have suffered enough. For more than two hundred years
+they have suffered the fabled torments of the damned; for more than two
+hundred years they worked and toiled without reward, bending, in the
+burning sun, their bleeding backs; for more than two hundred years,
+babes were torn from the breasts of mothers, wives from husbands, and
+every human tie broken by the cruel hand of greed; for more than two
+hundred years they were pursued by hounds, beaten with clubs, burned
+with fire, bound with chains; two hundred years of toil, of agony, of
+tears; two hundred years of hope deferred; two hundred years of
+gloom and shadow and darkness and blackness; two hundred years of
+supplication, of entreaty; two hundred years of infinite outrage,
+without a moment of revenge.
+
+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.
+
+There was not during the whole Rebellion a single negro that was not our
+friend. We are willing to be reconciled to our Southern brethren when
+they will treat our friends as men. When they will be just to the
+friends of this country; when they are in favor of allowing every
+American citizen to have his rights--then we are their friends. We are
+willing to trust them with the Nation when they are the friends of the
+Nation. We are willing to trust them with liberty when they believe in
+liberty. We are willing to trust them with the black man when they cease
+riding in the darkness of night, (those masked wretches,) to the hut of
+the freedman, and notwithstanding the prayers and supplications of his
+family, shoot him down; when they cease to consider the massacre of
+Hamburg as a Democratic triumph, then, I say, we will be their friends,
+and not before.
+
+Now, my friends, thousands of the Southern people and thousands of the
+Northern Democrats are afraid that the negroes are going to pass them in
+the race of life. And, Mr. Democrat, he will do it unless you attend
+to your business. The simple fact that you are white cannot save you
+always. You have to be industrious, honest, to cultivate a sense of
+justice. If you do not the colored race will pass you, as sure as you
+live. I am for giving every man a chance. Anybody that can pass me is
+welcome.
+
+I believe, my friends, that the intellectual domain of the future, as
+the land used to be in the State of Illinois, is open to pre-emption.
+The fellow that gets a fact first, that is his; that gets an idea
+first, that is his. Every round in the ladder of fame, from the one that
+touches the ground to the last one that leans against the shining summit
+of human ambition, belongs to the foot that gets upon it first.
+
+Mr. Democrat, (I point down because they are nearly all on the first
+round of the ladder) if you can not climb, stand one side and let the
+deserving negro pass.
+
+I must tell you one thing. I have told it so much, and you have all
+heard it fifty times, but I am going to tell it again because I like it.
+Suppose there was a great horse race here to-day, free to every horse
+in the world, and to all the mules, and all the scrubs* and all the
+donkeys.
+
+At the tap of the drum they come to the line, and the judges say "it is
+a go." Let me ask you, what does the blooded horse, rushing ahead, with
+nostrils distended, drinking in the breath of his own swiftness, with
+his mane flying like a banner of victory, with his veins standing out
+all over him, as if a network of life had been cast upon him--with his
+thin neck, his high withers, his tremulous flanks--what does he care how
+many mules and donkeys run on that track? But the Democratic scrub,
+with his chuckle-head and lop-ears, with his tail full of cockle-burrs,
+jumping high and short, and digging in the ground when he feels the
+breath of the coming mule on his cockle-burr tail, he is the chap that
+jumps the track and says, "I am down on mule equality."
+
+I stood, a little while ago, in the city of Paris, where stood the
+Bastile, where now stands the Column of July, surmounted by a figure of
+liberty. In its right hand is a broken chain, in its left hand a
+banner; upon its glorious forehead the glittering and shining star of
+progress--and as I looked upon it I said: "Such is the Republican party
+of my country."
+
+The other day going along the road I came to a place where the road had
+been changed, but the guide-board did not know it. It had stood there
+for twenty years pointing deliberately and solemnly in the direction of
+a desolate field; nobody ever went that way, but the guide-board thought
+the next man would. Thousands passed, but nobody heeded the hand on the
+guide-post, and through sunshine and storm it pointed diligently into
+the old field and swore to it the road went that way; and I said to
+myself: "Such is the Democratic party of the United States."
+
+The other day I came to a river where there had been a mill; a part
+of it was there still. An old sign said: "Cash for wheat." The old
+water-wheel was broken; it had been warped by the sun, cracked and split
+by many winds and storms. There had not been a grain of wheat ground
+there for twenty years.
+
+The door was gone, nobody had built a new dam, the mill was not worth a
+dam; and I said to myself: "Such is the Democratic party."
+
+I saw a little while ago a place on the road where there had once been
+an hotel. But the hotel and barn had burned down and there was nothing
+standing but two desolate chimneys, up the flues of which the fires of
+hospitality had not roared for thirty years. The fence was gone, and the
+post-holes even were obliterated, but in the road there was an old sign
+upon which were these words: "Entertainment for man and beast." The old
+sign swung and creaked in the winter wind, the snow fell upon it, the
+sleet clung to it, and in the summer the birds sang and twittered and
+made love upon it. Nobody ever stopped there, but the sign swore to it,
+the sign certified to it! "Entertainment for man and beast," and I said
+to myself: "Such is the Democratic party of the United States," and
+I further said, "one chimney ought to be called Tilden and the other
+Hendricks."
+
+Now, my friends, I want you to vote the Republican ticket. I want you
+to swear you will not vote for a man who opposed putting down the
+Rebellion. I want you to swear that you will not vote for a man opposed
+to the Proclamation of Emancipation. I want you to swear that you will
+not vote for a man opposed to the utter abolition of slavery.
+
+I want you to swear that you will not vote for a man who called the
+soldiers in the field, Lincoln hirelings. I want you to swear that you
+will not vote for a man who denounced Lincoln as a tyrant. I want you
+to swear that you will not vote for any enemy of human progress. Go and
+talk to every Democrat that you can see; get him by the coatcollar,
+talk to him, and hold him like Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, with your
+glittering eye; hold him, tell him all the mean things his party ever
+did; tell him kindly; tell him in a Christian spirit, as I do, but tell
+him. Recollect, there never was a more important election than the
+one you are going to hold in Indiana. I tell you we must stand by the
+country. It is a glorious country. It permits you and me to be free.
+It is the only country in the world where labor is respected. Let us
+support it. It is the only country in the world where the useful man is
+the only aristocrat. The man that works for a dollar a day, goes home
+at night to his little ones, takes his little boy on his knee, and he
+thinks that boy can achieve anything that the sons of the wealthy man
+can achieve. The free schools are open to him; he may be the richest,
+the greatest, and the grandest, and that thought sweetens every drop
+of sweat that rolls down the honest face of toil. Vote to save that
+country.
+
+My friends, this country is getting better every day. Samuel J. Tilden
+says we are a nation of thieves and rascals. If that is so he ought to
+be the President. But I denounce him as a calumniator of my country;
+a maligner of this nation. It is not so. This country is covered with
+asylums for the aged, the helpless, the insane, the orphans and wounded
+soldiers. Thieves and rascals do not build such things. In the cities
+of the Atlantic coast this summer, they built floating hospitals, great
+ships, and took the little children from the sub-cellars and narrow,
+dirty streets of New York City, where the Democratic party is the
+strongest--took these poor waifs and put them in these great hospitals
+out at sea, and let the breezes of ocean kiss the roses of health back
+to their pallid cheeks. Rascals and thieves do not so. When Chicago
+burned, railroads were blocked with the charity of the American people.
+Thieves and rascals do not so.
+
+I am a Republican. The world is getting better. Husbands are treating
+their wives better than they used to; wives are treating their husbands
+better. Children are better treated than they used to be; the old whips
+and clubs are out of the schools, and they are governing children by
+love and by sense. The world is getting better; it is getting better in
+Maine, in Vermont. It is getting better in every State of the North, and
+I tell you we are going to elect Hayes and Wheeler and the world will
+then be better still. I have a dream that this world is growing better
+and better every day and every year; that there is more charity, more
+justice, more love every day. I have a dream that prisons will not
+always curse the land; that the shadow of the gallows will not always
+fall upon the earth; that the withered hand of want will not always
+be stretched out for charity; that finally wisdom will sit in the
+legislatures, justice in the courts, charity will occupy all the
+pulpits, and that finally the world will be governed by justice and
+charity, and by the splendid light of liberty. That is my dream, and
+if it does not come true, it shall not be my fault. I am going to do my
+level best to give others the same chance I ask for myself. Free thought
+will give us truth; Free labor will give us wealth.
+
+
+
+
+CHICAGO SPEECH.
+
+     * Col. Robert G. Ingersoll spoke last night at the
+     Exposition Building to the largest audience ever drawn by
+     one man In Chicago. From 6.30 o'clock the sidewalks fronting
+     along the building were jammed. At every entrance there were
+     hundreds, and half-an-hour later thousands were clamoring
+     for admittance. So great was the pressure the doors were
+     finally closed, and the entrances at either end cautiously
+     opened to admit the select who knew enough to apply In those
+     directions. Occasionally a rush was made for the main door,
+     and as the crowd came up against the huge barricade they
+     were swept back only for another effort. Wabash Avenue,
+     Monroe, Adams, Jackson, and Van Buren Streets were jammed
+     with ladies and gentlemen who swept into Michigan Avenue and
+     swelled the sea that surged around the building.
+
+     At 7.30 the doors were flung open and the people rushed in.
+     Seating accommodations supposed to be adequate to all
+     demands, had been provided, but in an Instant they were
+     filled, the aisles were jammed and around the sides of the
+     building poured a steady stream of humanity, Intent only
+     upon some coign of vantage, some place, where they could see
+     and where they could hear. Prom the fountain, beyond which
+     the building lay in shadow to the northern end, was a
+     swaying, surging mass of people.
+
+     Such another attendance of ladies has never been known at a
+     political meeting in Chicago. They came by the hundreds, and
+     the speaker looked down from his perch upon thousands of
+     fair upturned faces, stamped with the most intense interest
+     in his remarks.
+
+     The galleries were packed. The frame of the huge elevator
+     creaked, groaned, and swayed with the crowd roosting upon
+     it. The trusses bore their living weight. The gallery
+     railings bent and cracked. The roof was crowded, and the sky
+     lights teemed with heads. Here and there an adventurous
+     youth crept out on the girders and braces. Towards the
+     northern end of the building, on the west side, is a smaller
+     gallery, dark, and not particularly strong-looking. It was
+     fairly packed--packed like a sardine-box--with men and boys.
+     Up in the organ-loft around the sides of the organ,
+     everywhere that a human being could sit, stand or hang, was
+     pre-empted and filled.
+
+     It was a magnificent, outpouring, at east 50,000 In number,
+     a compliment alike to the principle it represented, and the
+     orator.--Chicago Tribune., October 21st, 1876.
+
+
+HAYES CAMPAIGN.
+
+1876.
+
+LADIES and Gentlemen:--Democrats and Republicans have a common interest
+in the United States. We have a common interest in the preservation of
+good order. We have a common interest in the preservation of a common
+country. And I appeal to all, Democrats and Republicans, to endeavor
+to make a conscientious choice; to endeavor to select as President and
+Vice-President of the United States the men and the parties, which, in
+your judgment, will best preserve this nation, and preserve all that is
+dear to us either as Republicans or Democrats.
+
+The Democratic party comes before you and asks that you will give this
+Government into its hands; and you have a right to investigate as to the
+reputation and character of the Democratic organization. The Democratic
+party says, "Let bygones be bygones." I never knew a man who did a
+decent action that wanted it forgotten. I never knew a man who did some
+great and shining act of self-sacrifice and heroic devotion who did
+not wish that act remembered. Not only so, but he expected his loving
+children would chisel the remembrance of it upon the marble that marked
+his last resting place. But whenever a man does an infamous thing;
+whenever a man commits some crime; whenever a man does that which
+mantles the cheeks of his children with shame; he is the man that says,
+"Let bygones be bygones." The Democratic party admits that it has a
+record, but it says that any man that will look into it, any man that
+will tell it, is not a gentleman. I do not know whether, according to
+the Democratic standard, I am a gentleman or not; but I do say that in a
+certain sense I am one of the historians of the Democratic party.
+
+I do not know that it is true that a man cannot give this record and be
+a gentleman, but I admit that a gentleman hates to read this record;
+a gentleman hates to give this record to the world; but I do it, not
+because I like to do it, but because I believe the best interests
+of this country demand that there shall be a history given of the
+Democratic party.
+
+In the first place, I claim that the Democratic party embraces within
+its filthy arms the worst elements in American society. I claim that
+every enemy that this Government has had for twenty years has been and
+is a Democrat; every man in the Dominion of Canada that hates the great
+Republic, would like to see Tilden and Hendricks successful. Every
+titled thief in Great Britain would like to see Tilden and Hendricks the
+next President and Vice-President of the United States.
+
+I say more; every State that seceded from this Union was a Democratic
+State. Every man who hated to see bloodhounds cease to be the
+instrumentalities of a free government--every one was a Democrat. In
+short, every enemy that this Government has had for twenty years, every
+enemy that liberty and progress has had in the United States for twenty
+years, every hater of our flag, every despiser of our Nation, every man
+who has been a disgrace to the great Republic for twenty years, has been
+a Democrat. I do not say that they are all that way; but nearly all who
+are that way are Democrats.
+
+The Democratic party is a political tramp with a yellow passport. This
+political tramp begs food and he carries in his pocket old dirty scraps
+of paper as a kind of certificate of character. On one of these papers
+he will show you the ordinance of 1789; on another one of those papers
+he will have a part of the Fugitive Slave Law; on another one some
+of the black laws that used to disgrace Illinois; on another Governor
+Tilden's Letter to Kent; on another a certificate signed by Lyman
+Trumbull that the Republican party is not fit to associate with--that
+certificate will be endorsed by Governor John M. Palmer and my friend
+Judge Doolittle. He will also have in his pocket an old wood-cut,
+somewhat torn, representing Abraham Lincoln falling upon the neck of
+S. Corning Judd, and thanking him for saving the Union as
+Commander-in-Chief of the Sons of Liberty. This political tramp will
+also have a letter dated Boston, Mass., saying: "I hereby certify that
+for fifty years I have regarded the bearer as a thief and robber, but
+I now look upon him as a reformer. Signed, Charles Francis Adams."
+Following this tramp will be a bloodhound; and when he asks for food,
+the bloodhound will crouch for employment on his haunches, and the drool
+of anticipation will run from his loose and hanging lips. Study the
+expression of that dog.
+
+Translate it into English and it means "Oh! I want to bite a nigger!"
+And when the dog has that expression he bears a striking likeness to his
+master. The question is, Shall that tramp and that dog gain possession
+of the White House?
+
+The Democratic party learns nothing; the Democratic party forgets
+nothing. The Democratic party does not know that the world has advanced
+a solitary inch since 1860. Time is a Democratic dumb watch. It has not
+given a tick for sixteen years. The Democratic party does not know that
+we, upon the great glittering highway of progress, have passed a single
+mile-stone for twenty years. The Democratic party is incapable of
+learning. The Democratic party is incapable of anything but prejudice
+and hatred. Every man that is a Democrat is a Democrat because he hates
+something; every man that is a Republican is a Republican because he
+loves something.
+
+The Democratic party is incapable of advancement; the only stock that
+it has in trade to-day is the old infamous doctrine of Democratic State
+Rights. There never was a more infamous doctrine advanced on this
+earth, than the Democratic idea of State Rights. What is it? It has its
+foundation in the idea that this is not a Nation; it has its foundation
+in the idea that this is simply a confederacy, that this great
+Government is simply a bargain, that this great splendid people have
+simply made a trade, that the people of any one of the States are
+sovereign to the extent that they have the right to trample upon the
+rights of their fellow-citizens, and that the General Government cannot
+interfere. The great Democratic heart is fired to-day, the Democratic
+bosom is bloated with indignation because of an order made by General
+Grant sending troops into the Southern States to defend the rights of
+American citizens! Who objects to a soldier going? Nobody except a man
+who wants to carry an election by fraud, by violence, by intimidation,
+by assassination, and by murder.
+
+The Democratic party is willing to-day that Tilden and Hendricks should
+be elected by violence; they are willing to-day to go into partnership
+with assassination and murder; they are willing to-day that every man in
+the Southern States, who is a friend of this Union, and who fought for
+our flag--that the rights of every one of these men should be trampled
+in the dust, provided that Tilden and Hendricks be elected President
+and Vice-President of this country. They tell us that a State line is
+sacred; that you never can cross it unless you want to do a mean thing;
+that if you want to catch a fugitive slave you have the right to cross
+it; but if you wish to defend the rights of men, then it is a sacred
+line, and you cannot cross it. Such is the infamous doctrine of the
+Democratic party. Who, I say, will be injured by sending soldiers into
+the Southern States? No one in the world except the man who wants to
+prevent an honest citizen from casting a legal vote for the Government
+of his choice. For my part, I think more of the colored Union men of the
+South than I do of the white disunion men of the South. For my part, I
+think more of a black friend than I do of a white enemy. For my part, I
+think more of a friend black outside, and white in, than I do of a man
+who is white outside and black inside. For my part, I think more of
+black justice, of black charity, and of black patriotism, than I do of
+white cruelty, than I do of white treachery and treason. As a matter
+of fact, all that is done in the South to-day, of use, is done by the
+colored man. The colored man raises everything that is raised in the
+South, except hell. And I say here to-night that I think one hundred
+times more of the good, honest, industrious black man of the South than
+I do of all the white men together that do not love this Government, and
+I think more of the black man of the South than I do of the white man of
+the North who sympathizes with the white wretch that wishes to trample
+upon the rights of that black man.
+
+I believe that this is a Government, first, not only of power, but that
+it is the right of this Government to march all the soldiers in the
+United States into any sovereign State of this Union to defend the
+rights of every American citizen in that State. If it is the duty of the
+Government to defend you in time of war, when you were compelled to go
+into the army, how much more is it the duty of the Government to defend
+in time of peace the man who, in time of war, voluntarily and gladly
+rushed to the rescue and defence of his country; and yet the Democratic
+doctrine is that you are to answer the call of the Nation, but the
+Nation will be deaf to your cry, unless the Governor of your State makes
+request of your Government. Suppose the Governors and every man trample
+upon your rights, is the Nation then to let you be trampled upon? Will
+the Nation hear only the cry of the oppressor, or will it heed the cry
+of the oppressed? I believe we should have a Government that can hear
+the faintest wail, the faintest cry for justice from the lips of the
+humblest citizen beneath the flag. But the Democratic doctrine is that
+this Government can protect its citizens only when they are away from
+home. This may account for so many Democrats going to Canada during the
+war. I believe that the Government must protect you, not only abroad but
+must protect you at home; and that is the greatest question before the
+American people to-day.
+
+I had thought that human impudence had reached its limit ages and ages
+ago. I had believed that some time in the history of the world impudence
+had reached its height, and so believed until I read the congratulatory
+address of Abram S. Hewitt, Chairman of the National Executive
+Democratic Committee, wherein he congratulates the negroes of the South
+on what he calls a Democratic victory in the State of Indiana. If human
+impudence can go beyond this, all I have to say is, it never has. What
+does he say to the Southern people, to the colored people? He says to
+them in substance: "The reason the white people trample upon you is
+because the white people are weak. Give the white people more strength,
+put the white people in authority, and, although they murder you now
+when they are weak, when they are strong they will let you alone. Yes;
+the only trouble with our Southern white brethren is that they are in
+the minority, and they kill you now, and the only way to save your lives
+is to put your enemy in the majority." That is the doctrine of Abram S.
+Hewitt, and he congratulates the colored people of the South upon the
+Democratic victory in Indiana. There is going to be a great crop of
+hawks next season--let us congratulate the doves. That is it. The
+burglars have whipped the police--let us congratulate the bank. That
+is it. The wolves have killed off almost all the shepherds--let us
+congratulate the sheep.
+
+In my judgment, the black people have suffered enough. They have
+been slaves for two hundred years, and more than all, they have been
+compelled to keep the company of the men that owned them. Think of that!
+Think of being compelled to keep the society of the man who is stealing
+from you! Think of being compelled to live with the man that sold your
+wife! Think of being compelled to live with the man that stole your
+child from the cradle before your very eyes! Think of being compelled
+to live with the thief of your life, and spend your days with the white
+robber, and be under his control! The black people have suffered enough.
+For two hundred years they were owned and bought and sold and branded
+like cattle. For two hundred years every human tie was rent and torn
+asunder by the bloody, brutal hands of avarice and might. They have
+suffered enough. During the war the black people were our friends not
+only, but whenever they were entrusted with the family, with the wives
+and children of their masters, they were true to them. They stayed at
+home and protected the wife and child of the master while he went into
+the field and fought for the right to sell the wife and the right to
+whip and steal the child of the very black man that was protecting him.
+The black people, I say, have suffered enough, and for that reason I am
+in favor of the Government protecting them in every Southern State, if
+it takes another war to do it. We can never compromise with the South
+at the expense of our friends. We never can be friends with the men that
+starved and shot our brothers. We can never be friends with the men
+that waged the most cruel war in the world; not for liberty, but for
+the right to deprive other men of their liberty. We never can be their
+friends until they are the friends of our friends, until they treat the
+black man justly; until they treat the white Union man respectfully;
+until Republicanism ceases to be a crime; until to vote the Republican
+ticket ceases to make you a political and social outcast. We want no
+friendship with the enemies of our country. The next question is, who
+shall have possession of this country--the men that saved it,--or the
+men that sought to destroy it? The Southern people lit the fires of
+civil war. They who set the conflagration must be satisfied with the
+ashes left. The men that saved this country must rule it. The men
+that saved the flag must carry it. This Government is not far from
+destruction when it crowns with its highest honor in time of peace, the
+man that was false to it in time of war. This Nation is not far from
+the precipice of annihilation and destruction when it gives its highest
+honor to a man false, false to the country when everything we held
+dear trembled in the balance of war, when everything was left to the
+arbitrament of the sword.
+
+The next question prominently before the people--though I think the
+great question is, whether citizens shall be protected at home--the
+next question I say, is the financial question. With that there is no
+trouble. We had to borrow money, and we have to pay it. That is all
+there is of that, and we are going to pay it just as soon as we make
+the money to pay it with, and we are going to make the money out of
+prosperity.
+
+We have to dig it out of the earth. You cannot make a dollar by law. You
+cannot redeem a cent by statute. You cannot pay one solitary farthing by
+all the resolutions, by all the speeches ever made beneath the sun.
+
+If the greenback doctrine is right, that evidence of national
+indebtedness is wealth, if that is their idea, why not go another step
+and make every individual note a legal tender? Why not pass a law that
+every man shall take every other man's note? Then I swear we would have
+money in plenty. No, my friends, a promise to pay a dollar is not a
+dollar, no matter if that promise is made by the greatest and most
+powerful nation on the globe. A promise is not a performance. An
+agreement is not an accomplishment and there never will come a time when
+a promise to pay a dollar is as good as the dollar, unless everybody
+knows that you have the dollar and will pay it whenever they ask for it.
+We want no more inflation. We want simply to pay our debts as fast as
+the prosperity of the country allows it and no faster. Every speculator
+that was caught with property on his hands upon which he owed more
+than the property was worth, wanted the game to go on a little longer.
+Whoever heard of a man playing poker that wanted to quit when he was
+a loser? He wants to have a fresh deal. He wants another hand, and he
+don't want any man that is ahead to jump the game. It is so with the
+speculators in this country. They bought land, they bought houses, they
+bought goods, and when the crisis and crash came, they were caught with
+the property on their hands, and they want another inflation, they
+want another tide to rise that will again sweep this driftwood into the
+middle of the great financial stream. That is all. Every lot in this
+city that was worth five thousand and that is now worth two thousand--do
+you know what is the matter with that lot? It has been redeeming. It has
+been resuming. That is what is the matter with that lot. Every man that
+owned property that has now fallen fifty per cent., that property has
+been resuming; and if you could have another inflation to-morrow, the
+day that the bubble burst would find thousands of speculators who paid
+as much for property as property was worth, and they would ask for
+another tide of affairs in men. They would ask for another inflation.
+What for? To let them out and put somebody else in.
+
+We want no more inflation. We want the simple honest payment of the
+debt, and to pay out of the prosperity of this country. But, says the
+greenback man, "We never had as good times as when we had plenty of
+greenbacks."
+
+Suppose a farmer would buy a farm for ten thousand dollars and give
+his note. He would buy carriages, horses, wagons and agricultural
+implements, and give his note. He would send Mary, Jane and Lucy to
+school. He would buy them pianos, and send them to college, and would
+give his note, and the next year he would again give his note for the
+interest, and the next year again his note, and finally they would come
+to him and say, "We must settle up; we have taken your notes as long as
+we can; we want money." "Why," he would say to the gentleman, "I never
+had as good a time in my life as while I have been giving those notes.
+I never had a farm until the man gave it to me for my note. My children
+have been clothed as well as anybody's. We have had carriages; we have
+had fine horses; and our house has been filled with music, and laughter,
+and dancing; and why not keep on taking those notes?" So it is with the
+greenback man; he says, "When we were running in debt we had a jolly
+time--let us keep it up." But, my friends, there must come a time when
+inflation would reach that point when all the Goverment notes in the
+world would not buy a pin; when all the Government notes in the world
+would not be worth as much as the last year's Democratic platform. I
+have no fear that these debts will not be paid. I have no fear that
+every solitary greenback dollar will not be redeemed; but, my friends,
+we shall have some trouble doing it. Why? Because the debt is a great
+deal larger than it should have been. In the first place, there should
+have been po debt. If it had not been for the Southern Democracy there
+would have been no war. If it had not been for the Northern Democracy
+the war would not have lasted one year.
+
+There was a man tried in court for having murdered his father and
+mother. He was found guilty, and the judge asked him, "What have you to
+say that sentence of death shall not be pronounced on you?" "Nothing in
+the world Judge," said he, "only I hope your Honor will take pity on me
+and remember that I am a poor orphan."
+
+I have no doubt that this debt will be paid. We have the honor to pay
+it, and we do not pay it on account of the avarice or greed of the
+bondholder. An honest man does not pay money to a creditor simply
+because the creditor wants it. The honest man pays at the command of his
+honor and not at the demand of the creditor.
+
+The United States will pay its debts, not because the creditor demands,
+but because we owe it.
+
+The United States will liquidate every debt at the command of its honor,
+and every cent will be paid. War is destruction, war is loss, and all
+the property destroyed, and the time that is lost, put together, amount
+to what we call a national debt. When in peace we shall have made as
+much net profit as there was wealth lost in the war, then we shall be a
+solvent people. The greenback will be redeemed, we expect to redeem
+it on the first day of January, 1879. We may fail; we will fail if the
+prosperity of the country fails; but we intend to try to do it, and if
+we fail, we will fail as a soldier fails to take a fort, high upon the
+rampart, with the flag of resumption in our hands. We will not say that
+we cannot pay the debt because there is a date fixed when the debt is to
+be paid. I have had to borrow money myself; I have had to give my note,
+and I recollect distinctly that every man I ever did give my note to
+insisted that somewhere in that note there should be some vague hint
+as to the cycle, as to the geological period, as to the time, as to
+the century and date when I expected to pay those little notes. I never
+understood that having a time fixed would prevent my being industrious;
+that it would interfere with my honesty; or with my activity, or with my
+desire to discharge that debt. And if any man in this great country owed
+you one thousand dollars, due you the first day of next January, and he
+should come to you and say: "I want to pay you that debt, but you must
+take that date out of that note." "Why?" you would say. "Why," he would
+reply in the language of Tilden, "I have to make wise preparation."
+"Well," you would say, "why don't you do it?" "Oh," he says, "I cannot
+do it while you have that date in that note." "Another thing," he says,
+"I have to get me a central reservoir of coin." And do you know I have
+always thought I would like to see the Democratic party around a central
+reservoir of coin.
+
+Suppose this debtor would also tell you, "I want the date out of that
+note, because I have to come at it by a very slow and gradual process."
+"Well," you would say, "I do not care how slow or how gradual you are,
+provided that you get around by the time the note is due."
+
+What would you think of a man that wanted the date out of the note? You
+would think he was a mixture of rascal and Democrat. That is what you
+would think.
+
+Now, my friends, the Democratic party (if you may call it a party)
+brings forward as its candidate Samuel J. Tilden, of New York. I am
+opposed to him, first, because he is an old bachelor. In a country like
+ours, depending for its prosperity and glory upon an increase of the
+population, to elect an old bachelor is a suicidal policy. Any man that
+will live in this country for sixty years, surrounded by beautiful women
+with rosy lips and dimpled cheeks, in every dimple lurking a Cupid, with
+pearly teeth and sparkling eyes--any man that will push them all aside
+and be satisfied with the embraces of the Democratic party, does not
+even know the value of time. I am opposed to Samuel J. Tilden, because
+he is a Democrat; because he belongs to the Democratic party of the city
+of New York; the worst party ever organized in any civilized country.
+
+No man should be President of this Nation who denies that it is a
+Nation. Samuel J. Tilden denounced the war as an outrage. No man should
+be President of this country that denounced a war waged in its defence
+as an outrage. To elect such a man would be an outrage.
+
+Samuel J. Tilden said that the flag stands for a contract; that it
+stands for a confederation; that it stands for a bargain. But the great,
+splendid Republican party says, "No! That flag stands for a great,
+hoping, aspiring, sublime Nation, not for a confederacy."
+
+I am opposed, I say, to the election of Samuel J. Tilden for another
+reason. If he is elected he will be controlled by his party, and his
+party will be controlled by the Southern stockholders in that party.
+They own nineteen-twentieths of the stock, and they will dictate the
+policy of the Democratic Corporation.
+
+No Northern Democrat has the manliness to stand up before a Southern
+Democrat. Every Democrat, nearly, has a face of dough, and the Southern
+Democrat will swap his ears, change his nose, cut his mouth the other
+way of the leather, so that his own mother would not know him, in
+fifteen minutes. If Samuel J. Tilden is elected President of the
+United States, he will be controlled by the Democratic party, and the
+Democratic party will be controlled by the Southern Democracy--that is
+to say, the late rebels; that is to say, the men that tried to destroy
+the Government; that is to say, the men who are sorry they did not
+destroy the Government; that is to say, the enemies of every friend of
+this Union; that is to say, the murderers and the assassins of Union men
+living in the Southern country.
+
+Let me say another thing. If Mr. Tilden does not act in accordance with
+the Southern Democratic command, the Southern Democracy will not allow
+a single life to stand between them and the absolute control of this
+country. Hendricks will then be their man. I say that it would be an
+outrage to give this country into the control of men who endeavored to
+destroy it, to give this country into the control of the Southern rebels
+and haters of Union men.
+
+And on the other hand, the Republican party has put forward Rutherford
+B. Hayes. He is an honest man. The Democrats will say, "That is
+nothing." Well, let them try it. Rutherford B. Hayes has a good
+character.
+
+Rutherford B. Hayes, when this war commenced, did not say with Tilden,
+"It is an outrage." He did not say with Tilden, "I never will contribute
+to the prosecution of this war." But he did say this, "I would go into
+this war if I knew I would be killed in the course of it, rather than
+to live through it and take no part in it." During the war Rutherford
+B. Hayes received many wounds in his flesh, but not one scratch upon his
+honor. Samuel J. Tilden received many wounds upon his honor, but not
+one scratch on his flesh. Rutherford B. Hayes is a firm man; not an
+obstinate man, but a firm man; and I draw this distinction: A firm man
+will do what he believes to be right, because he wants to do right. He
+will stand firm because he believes it to be right; but an obstinate
+man wants his own way, whether it is right or whether it is wrong.
+Rutherford B. Hayes is firm in the right, and obstinate only when he
+knows he is in the right. If you want to vote for a man who fought for
+you, vote for Rutherford B. Hayes. If you want to vote for a man
+that carried our flag through the storm of shot and shell, vote for
+Rutherford B. Hayes. If you believe patriotism to be a virtue, vote for
+Rutherford B. Hayes. If you believe this country wants heroes, vote for
+Rutherford B. Hayes. If you want a man who turned against his country in
+time of war, vote for Samuel J. Tilden. If you believe the war waged for
+the salvation of our Nation was an outrage, vote for Samuel J. Tilden.
+If you believe it is better to stay at home and curse the brave men in
+the field, fighting for the sacred rights of man, vote for Samuel J.
+Tilden. If you want to pay a premium upon treason, if you want to pay a
+premium upon hypocrisy, if you want to pay a premium upon chicanery,
+if you want to pay a premium upon sympathizing with the enemies of your
+country, vote for Samuel J. Tilden.
+
+If you believe that patriotism is right, if you believe the brave
+defender of liberty is better than the assassin of freedom, vote for
+Rutherford B. Hayes.
+
+I am proud that I belong to the Republican party. It is the only party
+that has not begged pardon for doing right. It is the only party that
+has said: "There shall be no distinction on account of race, on account
+of color, on account of previous condition." It is the only party that
+ever had a platform broad enough for all humanity to stand upon.
+
+It is the first decent party that ever lived. The Republican party made
+the first free government that was ever made. The Republican party made
+the first decent constitution that any nation ever had. The Republican
+party gave to the sky the first pure flag that was ever kissed by the
+waves of air. The Republican party is the first party that ever said:
+"Every man is entitled to liberty," not because he is white, not because
+he is black, not because he is rich, not because he is poor, but because
+he is a man.
+
+The Republican party is the first party that knew enough to know that
+humanity is more than skin deep. It is the first party that said,
+"Government should be for all, as the light, as the air, is for all."
+
+And it is the first party that had the sense to say, "What air is to the
+lungs, what light is to the eyes, what love is to the heart, liberty is
+to the soul of man." The Republican party is the first party that ever
+was in favor of absolute free labor, the first party in favor of giving
+to every man, without distinction of race or color, the fruits of the
+labor of his hands. The Republican party said, "Free labor will give us
+wealth, free thought will give us truth." The Republican party is the
+first party that said to every man, "Think for yourself, and express
+that thought." I am a free man. I belong to the Republican party. This
+is a free country. I will think my thought. I will speak my thought or
+die. I say the Republican party is for free labor.
+
+Free labor has invented all the machines that ever added to the power,
+added to the wealth, added to the leisure, added to the civilization of
+mankind. Every convenience, everything of use, everything of beauty in
+the world, we owe to free labor and to free thought. Free labor, free
+thought!
+
+Science took the thunderbolt from the gods, and in the electric spark,
+freedom, with thought, with intelligence and with love, sweeps under all
+the waves of the sea; science, free thought, took a tear from the cheek
+of unpaid labor, converted it into steam, and created the giant that
+turns, with tireless arms, the countless wheels of toil.
+
+The Republican party, I say, believes in free labor. Every solitary
+thing, every solitary improvement made in the United States has been
+made by the Republican party. Every reform accomplished was inaugurated,
+and was accomplished by the great, grand, glorious Republican party.
+
+The Republican party does not say: "Let bygones be bygones." The
+Republican party is proud of the past and confident of the future. The
+Republican party brings its record before you and implores you to read
+every page, every paragraph, every line and every shining word. On the
+first page you will find it written: "Slavery has cursed American soil
+long enough;" on the same page you will find it written: "Slavery
+shall go no farther." On the same page you will find it written: "The
+bloodhounds shall not drip their gore upon another inch of American
+soil." On the second page you will find it written: "This is a Nation,
+not a Confederacy; every State belongs to every citizen, and no State
+has a right to take territory belonging to any citizens in the United
+States and set up a separate Government." On the third page you will
+find the grandest declaration ever made in this country: "Slavery shall
+be extirpated from the American soil." On the next page: "The Rebellion
+shall be put down." On the next page: "The Rebellion has been put down."
+On the next page: "Slavery has been extirpated from the American soil."
+On the next page: "The freedmen shall not be vagrants; they shall be
+citizens." On the next page: "They are citizens." On the next page: "The
+ballot shall be put in their hands;" and now we will write on the next
+page: "Every citizen that has a ballot in his hand, by the gods! shall
+have a right to cast that ballot." That in short, that in brief, is the
+history of the Republican party. The Republican party says, and it means
+what it says: "This shall be a free country forever; every man in it
+twenty-one years of age shall have the right to vote for the Government
+of his choice, and if any man endeavors to interfere with that right,
+the Government of the United States will see to it that the right of
+every American citizen is protected at the polls."
+
+Now, my friends, there is one thing that troubles the average Democrat,
+and that is the idea that somehow, in some way, the negro will get to be
+the better man. It is the trouble in the South to-day. And I say to my
+Southern friends (and I admit that there are a great many good men in
+the South, but the bad men are in an overwhelming majority; the great
+mass of the population is vicious, violent, virulent and malignant; the
+great mass of the population is cruel, revengeful, idle, hateful,) and
+I tell that population: "If you do not go to work, the negro, by his
+patient industry, will pass you." In the long run, the nation that is
+honest, the people who are industrious, will pass the people who are
+dishonest, and the people who are idle, no matter how grand an ancestry
+they may have had, and so I say, Mr. Northern Democrat, look out!
+
+The superior man is the man that loves his fellow-man; the superior man
+is the useful man; the superior man is the kind man, the man who lifts
+up his down-trodden brothers; and the greater the load of human sorrow
+and human want you can get in your arms, the easier you can climb
+the great hill of fame. The superior man is the man who loves his
+fellow-man. And let me say right here, the good men, the superior
+men, the grand men are brothers the world over, no matter what their
+complexion may be; centuries may separate them, yet they are hand in
+hand; and all the good, and all the grand, and all the superior men,
+shoulder to shoulder, heart to heart, are fighting the great battle for
+the progress of mankind.
+
+I pity the man, I execrate and hate the man who has only to boast that
+he is white. Whenever I am reduced to that necessity, I believe shame
+will make me red instead of white. I believe another thing. If I cannot
+hoe my row, I will not steal corn from the fellow that hoes his row. If
+I belong to the superior race, I will be so superior that I can make my
+living without stealing from the inferior. I am perfectly willing that
+any Democrat in the world that can, shall pass me. I have never seen one
+yet, except when I looked over my shoulder. But if they can pass I shall
+be delighted.
+
+Whenever we stand in the presence of genius, we take off our hats.
+Whenever we stand in the presence of the great, we do involuntary homage
+in spite of ourselves. Any one who can go by is welcome, any one in the
+world; but until somebody does go by, of the Democratic persuasion,
+I shall not trouble myself about the fact that may be, in some future
+time, they may get by. The Democrats are afraid of being passed, because
+they are being passed.
+
+No man ever was, no man ever will be, the superior of the man whom he
+robs. No man ever was, no man ever will be, the superior of the man he
+steals from. I had rather be a slave than a slave-master. I had rather
+be stolen from than be a thief. I had rather be the wronged than the
+wrong-doer. And allow me to say again to impress it forever upon every
+man that hears me, you will always be the inferior of the man you wrong.
+Every race is inferior to the race it tramples upon and robs. There
+never was a man that could trample upon human rights and be superior
+to the man upon whom he trampled. And let me say another thing: No
+government can stand upon the crushed rights of one single human being;
+and any compromise that we make with the South, if we make it at the
+expense of our friends, will carry in its own bosom the seeds of its
+own death and destruction, and cannot stand. A government founded upon
+anything except liberty and justice cannot and ought not to stand. All
+the wrecks on either side of the stream of time, all the wrecks of the
+great cities and nations that have passed away--all are a warning that
+no nation founded upon injustice can stand. From sand-enshrouded Egypt,
+from the marble wilderness of Athens, from every fallen, crumbling stone
+of the once mighty Rome, comes as it were a wail, comes as it were the
+cry, "No nation founded upon injustice can permanently stand." We must
+found this Nation anew. We must fight our fight. We must cling to our
+old party until there is freedom of speech in every part of the United
+States. We must cling to the old party until I can speak in every State
+of the South as every Southerner can speak in every State of the North.
+We must vote the grand old Republican ticket until there is the same
+liberty in every Southern State that there is in every Northern, Eastern
+and Western State. We must stand by the party until every Southern man
+will admit that this country belongs to every citizen of the United
+States as much as to the man that is born in that country. One more
+thing. I do not want any man that ever fought for this country to vote
+the Democratic ticket. You will swap your respectability for disgrace.
+There are thousands of you--great, grand, splendid men--that have fought
+grandly for this Union, and now I beseech of you, I beg of you, do not
+give respectability to the enemies and haters of your country. Do not
+do it. Do not vote with the Democratic party, of the North. Sometimes
+I think a rebel sympathizer in the North worse than a rebel, and I will
+tell you why. The rebel was carried into the rebellion by public opinion
+at home,--his father, his mother, his sweetheart, his brother, and
+everybody he knew; and there was a kind of wind, a kind of tornado, a
+kind of whirlwind that took him into the army. He went on the rebel side
+with his State. The Northern Democrat went against his own State; went
+against his own Government; and went against public opinion at home. The
+Northern Democrat rowed up stream against wind and tide. The Southern
+rebel went with the current; the Northern rebel rowed against the
+current from pure, simple cussedness.
+
+And I beg every man that ever fought for the Union, every man that ever
+bared his breast to a storm of shot and shell, that the old flag might
+float over every inch of American soil redeemed from the clutch of
+treason; I beg him, I implore him, do not go with the Democratic party.
+And to every young man within the sound of my voice I say, do not tie
+your bright and shining prospects to that old corpse of Democracy. You
+will get tired of dragging it around. Do not cast your first vote
+with the enemies of your country. Do not cast your first vote with the
+Democratic party that was glad when the Union army was defeated. Do not
+cast your vote with that party whose cheeks flushed with the roses of
+joy when the old flag was trailed in disaster upon the field of battle.
+Remember, my friends, that that party did every mean thing it could,
+every dishonest and treasonable thing it could. Recollect that that
+party did all it could to divide this Nation, and destroy this country.
+
+For myself I have no fear; Hayes and Wheeler will be the next President
+and Vice-President of the United States of America. Let me beg of
+you--let me implore you--let me beseech you, every man, to come out on
+election day. Every man, do your duty; every man do his duty with regard
+to the State ticket of the great and glorious State of Illinois.
+
+This year we need Republicans; this year we need men that will vote for
+the party; and I tell you that a Republican this year, no matter what
+you have against him, no matter whether you like him or do not like him,
+is better for the country, no matter how much you hate him, he is better
+for the country than any Democrat Nature can make, or ever has made.
+
+We must, in this supreme election, we must at this supreme moment, vote
+only for the men who are in favor of keeping this Government in
+the power, in the custody, in the control of the great, the sublime
+Republican party.
+
+Ladies and gentlemen, if I were insensible to the honor you have done me
+by this magnificent meeting--the most magnificent I ever saw on earth--a
+meeting such as only the marvelous City of Pluck could produce; if I
+were insensible of the honor, I would be made of stone. I shall remember
+it with delight; I shall remember it with thankfulness all the days of
+my life. And I ask in return of every Republican here to remember all
+the days of his life, every sacrifice made by this nation for liberty;
+every sacrifice made by every private soldier, every sacrifice made by
+every patriotic man and patriotic woman.
+
+I do not ask you to remember in revenge, but I ask you never, never to
+forget. As the world swings through the constellations year after year,
+I want the memory, I want the patriotic memory of this country to sit
+by the grave of every Union soldier, and, while her eyes are filled with
+tears, to crown him again and again with the crown of everlasting
+honor. I thank you, I thank you, ladies and gentlemen, a thousand times.
+Good-night.
+
+     Note:--There was no full report made of this speech, the
+     above are simply extracts.
+
+
+
+
+EIGHT TO SEVEN ADDRESS.
+
+(On the Electoral Commission.)
+
+     * The reputation of Col. Robert G. Ingersoll had taken
+     possession of the Boston mind to such an extent that his
+     expected address was spoken of as "The Lecture." People
+     talked about going to it, as If on that night all other
+     places were to be closed, and the whole population of the
+     City turned into Tremont Temple. Long before the appointed
+     hour a rare audience, for even lecture loving Boston, had
+     assembled. Col. Ingersoll stepped upon the platform preceded
+     by Governor Rice, and followed by William Lloyd Garrison,
+     James T. Fields and others. After the presentation of two
+     large and exquisite bouquets Governor Rice introduced
+     Colonel Ingersoll, and the audience, the most acute and
+     determined looking I ever saw In Boston, poured out their
+     welcome! It seemed as if all the cheers that had been
+     suppressed between the first of November and the decision of
+     the Electoral Commission, found vent at that moment and the
+     vigorous clapping was renewed and prolonged until it became
+     an unmistakable salute to the recent brilliant campaigning
+     of the great Western orator. It is hardly possible to speak
+     in too high terms of the lecture which, under the title of
+     "8 to 7," contained a witty, philosophical and intensely
+     patriotic review of the political contest preceding and
+     following the recent election, with wise and timely
+     suggestions for preventing similar perils in the future.--
+     Boston, October 22nd,1877.
+
+
+1877.
+
+I HAVE sometimes wondered whether our country was to be forever governed
+by parties full of hatred, full of malice, full of slander. I have
+sometimes wondered whether or not in the future there would not be
+discovered such a science as the science of government. I do not know
+what you think, but what little I do know, and what little experience
+has been mine, is, I must admit, against it. We have passed through the
+most remarkable campaign of our history--a campaign remarkable in every
+respect.
+
+It was bitter, passionate, relentless and desperate, and I admit, for
+one, that I added to its bitterness and relentlessness. I told, and
+frankly told, my real, honest opinion of the Democratic party of the
+North. I told, and cheerfully told, my opinion of the Democratic party
+of the South. And I have nothing to take back. But, to show you that my
+heart is not altogether wicked; I am willing to forgive and do forgive
+with all my heart, every person and every party that I ever said
+anything against. I believe that the campaign of 1876 was the
+turning-point, the midnight in the history of the American Republic.
+
+I believe, and firmly believe, that if the Democratic party had swept
+into power, it would have been the end of progress, and the end of what
+I consider human liberty, beneath our flag. I felt so, and I went into
+the campaign simply because the rights of American citizens in at least
+sixteen States of the Union were trampled under foot. I did what little
+I could. I am glad I did it. We had, as I say, a wonderful campaign, and
+each party said and did about all that could be said and done. Everybody
+attended to politics. Business was suspended. Everything was given
+over to processions and torches, and flags and transparencies; and
+resolutions and conventions and speeches and songs. Old arguments were
+revamped. Old stories were pressed into service. The old story of
+the Rebellion was told again and again. The memories of the war were
+revived. The North was arrayed against the South as though upon the
+field of battle. Party cries were heard on every hand. Each party leaped
+like a tiger upon the reputation of the other, and tore with tooth and
+claw, with might and main, to the very end of the campaign.
+
+I felt that it was necessary to arouse the North. I felt that it was
+necessary to tell again the story of the Rebellion, from Bull Run to
+Appomattox. I felt that it was necessary to describe what the Southern
+people were doing with Union men, and with colored men; and I felt it
+necessary so to describe it that the people of the North could hear the
+whips, and could hear the drops of blood as they fell upon the withered
+leaves. I did all I could to arouse the people of the North. I did all I
+could to prevent the Democratic party from getting into power. The first
+morning after the election, the Democracy had a banquet of joy, but
+all through the feast they saw sitting at the head of the table the
+dim outline of the skeleton of defeat. And, when the tide turned,
+Republicans rejoiced with a face ready at any moment to express the
+profoundest grief. Then came despatches and rumors, and estimated
+majorities, and vague talk about Returning Boards, and intimidating
+voters, and stuffed ballot boxes, and fraudulent returns, and bribed
+clerks, and injunctions, and contempts of courts, and telegrams in
+cipher, and outrages, and octoroon balls in which reverend Senators
+were whirled in love's voluptuous waltz. Everybody discussed the
+qualifications of Electors and the value of Governors' certificates, and
+how to get behind returns, and how to buy an Elector, and who had the
+right to count; and persons expecting offices of trust, honor and profit
+began to threaten war and extermination, calls were made for a hundred
+thousand men, and there were no end of meetings, and resolutions and
+denunciations, and the downfall of the country was prophesied; and yet,
+notwithstanding all this, the name of the person who really was elected
+remained unknown. The last scene of this strange, eventful history, so
+far as the election by the people was concerned, was Cronin. I see him
+now as he leaves the land "where rolls the Oregon and hears no sound
+save his own dashings." Cronin, the last surviving veteran of the grand
+army of "honesty and reform." Cronin, a quorum of one. Cronin, who
+elected the two others by a plurality of his own vote.
+
+I see him now, armed with Hoadley's opinion and Grover's certificate,
+trudging wearily and drearily over the wide and wasted saleratus deserts
+of the West, with a little card marked "S. J. T. i5 G. P."
+
+Then came the great question of who shall count the electoral vote. The
+Vice-President being a Republican, it was generally contended, at least
+by me, that he had a right to count that vote. My doctrine was, if the
+Vice-President would count the vote right, he had the right to count it.
+
+The Vice-President not being a Democrat, the members of that party
+claimed that the House could prevent the Vice-President from counting
+it, and this was simply because the House was not Republican. Nearly all
+decided according to their politics. The Constitution is a little blind
+on this point, and where anything is blind I always see it my way.
+It was about this time that some of the Democrats began to talk about
+bringing one hundred thousand unarmed men to Washington to superintend
+the count. Others, however, got up a scheme to create, a court in the
+United States where politics should have no earthly influence. Nothing
+could be easier, they thought, after we had gone through such a hot and
+exciting campaign, than to pick out men who have no prejudices whatever
+on the subject. Finally a bill was passed creating a tribunal to count
+the vote, if any, and hear testimony, if any, and declare what man had
+been elected President, if any. This tribunal consisted of fifteen men,
+ten being chosen on account of their politics--five from the Senate
+and five from the House,--and they chose four judges from purely
+geographical considerations. I was there, and I know exactly how it was.
+Those four men were picked with a map of the United States in front of
+the pickers. The Democrats chose Justice Field, not because he was a
+Democrat, but because he lived on the Pacific slope. They chose Justice
+Clifford, not because he was a Democrat, but because he lived on the
+Eastern slope; that was fair. Thereupon the Republicans chose Justice
+Strong, not because he was a Republican, but because he lived on the
+Eastern slope. You can see the point. The Republicans chose Justice
+Miller, not because he was a Republican, but because he represented the
+great West. They then allowed these four to select a fifth man.
+
+Well, it was impossible to select the fifth man from geographical
+considerations, you can see that yourselves. There was nothing left to
+choose between, you know, as far as geography was concerned. They then
+agreed that they would not take a Justice from any State in which the
+candidate for President lived. They left out Justice Hunt, from New
+York, and Justice Swayne, from Ohio. They knew of course that that would
+not influence them, but they did that simply--well, they did not want
+them there; that was all, and it would be unhandy to pick one man out of
+four. So they left Swayne and Hunt out. And then they would pick one
+man as between Justice Bradley and Justice Davis. Just at that time the
+people of the State of Illinois happened to be out of a Senator, and
+Judge Davis was there and expressed a willingness to go to the Senate.
+And the people of the State of Illinois elected him, and therefore
+there was nobody to choose from except Justice Bradley, and he was a
+Republican.
+
+Now, you know this runs in families. His record was good--by marriage.
+He married a daughter of Chief Justice Hornblower, of New Jersey. Now,
+Hornblower was what you might call a partisan. Do you know they went to
+him--it was in the old times, and he was a kind of Whig,--they went to
+him with a petition, in the State of New Jersey, a petition addressed to
+the Legislature for the abolition of capital punishment, and Hornblower
+said, "I'll be damned if I sign it while there is a Democrat in the
+State of New Jersey."
+
+As a matter of fact, however, I believe that Justice Bradley and all the
+other Justices, and all other persons on that tribunal decided as they
+honestly thought was right.
+
+Judge Davis is as broad mentally as he is physically; he has an
+immensity of common sense, and as much judgment as any one man ever
+needs to use, and, in my judgment, he would have come to the same
+conclusion as Judge Bradley, precisely. These men were appointed--it
+was a Democratic scheme, and I am glad they got it up--and during that
+entire investigation, so much were the members of that party controlled
+by old associations and habits, and by partisan feeling that there was
+not a solitary one of the seven Democrats that ever once voted on the
+Republican side. And, as a necessity, the Republicans had to stand
+together. And so, notwithstanding the seven Democrats voted constantly
+together, the eight Republicans kept having a majority of one, until the
+last disputed State was given against the great party of "honesty and
+reform." And, finally, when they found they were defeated, they made
+up their minds to prevent the counting of the vote. They made up their
+minds to wear out the session and prevent the election of a President.
+Just at that point, for a wonder, (nothing ever astonished me more), the
+members from the South said: "We do not want any more war; we have had
+war enough and we say that a President shall be peacefully elected, and
+that he shall be peacefully inaugurated!" As soon as I heard that I felt
+under a little obligation to the Democracy of the South, and when they
+stood in the gap and prevented the Democracy of the North from plunging
+this Government into the hell of civil war, I felt like taking them by
+the hand and saying, "We have beaten the enemy once, let us keep on. Let
+us join hands." I felt like saying to the Democracy of the South, "You
+never will have a day's prosperity in the South until you join the
+great, free, progressive party of the North--never!" And they never
+will.
+
+Now, I say, I felt as though I were under a certain obligation to these
+people. They prevented this thing, and they made it possible for the
+Vice-President to declare Rutherford B. Hayes President of the United
+States. Now, right here, I want you to observe that this shows the real
+defects in our system of government. In the first place, our Government
+is being governed by fraud. If the very fountain of power is poisoned by
+fraud, then the whole Government is impure. We must find out some way
+to prevent fraudulent voting in the United States or our Government is
+a failure. Great cities were the mothers of election frauds. They
+inaugurated violence and intimidation. They produced the repeaters
+and the false boxes. They invented fan-tail tickets and pasters, and
+gradually these delightful and patriotic arts and practices have spread
+over almost the entire country.
+
+Unless something is done to preserve the purity of the ballot-box our
+form of government must cease. The fountain of power is poisoned.
+The sovereignty of the people is stolen and destroyed. The Government
+becomes organized fraud, and all respect will soon be lost for the
+laws and decisions of the courts. The legislators are elected in many
+instances by fraud. The judges are in many instances chosen by fraud.
+Every department of the Government becomes tainted and corrupt. It is
+no longer a Republic, unless something can be devised to ascertain with
+certainty the really honest will of the sovereign people.
+
+For the accomplishment of this object the good and patriotic men of all
+parties should most heartily unite. To cast an illegal vote should
+be considered by all as a crime. We must if possible get rid of the
+mob--the vagrants, the vagabonds who have no home and who take no
+interest in the cities where they vote. We must get rid of the rich
+mob too; and by the rich mob I mean the men who buy up these vagabonds.
+Various States have passed laws for the registration of voters; but they
+all leave wide open all the doors of fraud. Men are allowed to vote if
+they have been for one year in the State, and thirty or sixty days in
+the ward or precinct; and when they have failed to have their names
+registered before the day of election, they can avoid the effect of
+this neglect by making a few affidavits, certified to by reputable
+householders. Of course all necessary affidavits are made, with hundreds
+and thousands to spare. My idea is that the period of registration, in
+the first place, is too short, and, in the second place, no way
+should be given by which they can vote unless they have been properly
+registered, affidavit or no affidavit. Every man, when he goes into a
+ward or precinct, should be registered. It should be his duty to see
+that he is registered. Officers should be kept for that purpose, and he
+should never be allowed to cast a vote until he has been registered
+at least one year. Sixty days, say, or thirty days--sixty would be
+better--sixty days before the election the registry lists should be
+corrected, and every citizen should have the right to enter a complaint
+or objection as against any name found upon that list. Thirty days,
+or twenty days before the election, that list should be published
+and should be exposed in several public places in each ward and each
+precinct, and upon the day of election no man should be allowed to
+vote whose name was not upon the registry list. Our wards and precincts
+should be made smaller, so that people can vote without violence,
+without wasting an entire day, so that the honest business man that
+wishes to cast his ballot for the Government of his choice can walk
+to the polls like a gentleman and deposit his vote and go about his
+affairs. Allow me to say that unless some such plan is adopted in
+the United States, there never will be another fair election in this
+country. During the last campaign all the arts and artifices of the
+city, all the arts and artifices of the lowest wards were spread over
+this entire country, and unless something is done to preserve the purity
+of the ballot-box, and guard the sovereign will of the people, we will
+cease to be a Republican Government.
+
+Another thing--and I cannot say it too often--fraud at the ballot-box
+undermines all respect in the minds of the people for the Government.
+When they are satisfied that the election is a fraud they despise the
+officers elected. When they are satisfied it is a fraud, they despise
+the law made by the legislators. When they are satisfied it is a fraud,
+they hold in utter contempt the decisions of our highest and most august
+tribunals.
+
+Another trouble in this country is that our terms of office are too
+short. Our elections are too frequent. They interfere with the business
+of our country. When elections are so frequent, men make a business
+of politics. If they fail to get one office they immediately run for
+another, and they keep running until the people elect them for the
+simple purpose of getting rid of the annoyance. Lengthen the terms,
+purify the ballot, and the present scramble for office will become
+contests for principles. A man who cannot get a living--unless he
+has been disabled in the service of his country or from some other
+cause--without holding office, is not fit for an office.
+
+A professional office-seeker is one of the meanest, and lowest, and
+basest of human beings--a little higher than the lower animals and a
+little lower than man. He has no earthly or heavenly independence; not a
+particle; not a particle. A successful office-seeker is like the center
+of the earth; he weighs nothing himself, and draws all things towards
+the office he wants. He has not even a temper. You cannot insult him.
+Shut the door in his face, and, so far as he is concerned, it is left
+wide open, and you are standing on the threshold with a smile, extending
+the hand of welcome. He crawls and cringes and flatters and lies and
+swaggers and brags and tells of the influence he has in the ward he
+lives in. We cannot too often repeat that splendid saying, "The office
+should seek the man, not man the office." If you will lengthen the
+term of office it will be so long between meals that he will have to do
+something else or starve. Adopt the system of registration, as I have
+suggested; have small and convenient election districts, so that, as I
+said before, the honest, law-abiding, and peaceable citizen can attend
+the polls; so that he will not be compelled to risk his life to deposit
+his ballot that will be stolen or thrown out, or forced to keep the
+company of ballots caused by fraudulent violence. Lengthen the term of
+office, drive the professional hunter and seeker of office from the
+field, and you will go far toward strengthening and vivifying and
+preserving the fabric of the Constitution. That is the kind of civil
+service reform I am in favor of, and as I am on that subject, I will say
+a word about it. There is but one vital question--but one question of
+real importance--in fact I might say in the whole world, and that is
+the great question of Civil Service Reform. There may be some others
+indirectly affecting the human race, and in which some people take a
+languid kind of interest, but the only question worth discussing and
+comprehending in all its phases is the one I have mentioned. This great
+question is in its infancy still. The doctrine as yet has been applied
+only to politics.*
+
+     * Colonel Ingersoll then read the following letter, of which
+     he was the author.
+
+
+My Dear Sir:--In the olden times, during the purer days of the Republic,
+the motto was, "To the victors belong the spoils." The great object of
+civil service reform is to reverse this motto. Our people are thoroughly
+disgusted with machine politics, and demand politics without any
+machine.
+
+In every precinct and ward there are persons going about lauding one
+party and crying down the other. They make it their business to attend
+to the affairs of the Nation. They call conventions, pass resolutions;
+they put notices in papers of the times and places of meetings; they
+select candidates for office, and then insist upon having them elected;
+they distribute papers and political documents; they crowd the mails
+with newspapers, platforms, resolutions, facts and figures, and with
+everything calculated to help their party and hurt the other. In short,
+they are the disturbers of the public peace.
+
+They keep the community in a perpetual excitement. In the last campaign,
+wherever they were was turmoil. They fired cannon, carried flags,
+torches and transparencies; they subsidized brass bands, and shouted and
+hurrahed as though the world had gone insane. They were induced to do
+these things by the hope of success and office. Take away this hope and
+there will be peace once more. This thing is unendurable. The staid,
+the quiet and respectable people, the moderate and conservative men who
+always have an idea of joining the other side just to show their candor,
+are heartily tired of the entire performance. These gentlemen demand
+a rest. They are not adventurers; they have incomes; they belong to
+families; they have monograms and liveries. They have succeeded, and
+they want quiet. Growth makes a noise; development, as they call it,
+is nothing but disturbance. We want stability, we want political
+petrifaction, and we therefore demand that these meetings shall be
+dismissed, that these processions shall halt, that these flags shall be
+furled. But these things never will be stopped until we stop paying men
+with office for making these disturbances. You know that it has been
+the habit for men elected to bestow political favors upon the men
+who elected them. This is a crying shame. It is a kind of bribery and
+corruption. Men should not work with the expectation of reward and
+success. The frightful consequences of rewarding one's friends cannot be
+contemplated by a true patriot without a shudder. Exactly the opposite
+course is demanded by the great principle of civil service reform. There
+is no patriotism in working for place, for power and success. The true
+lover of his country is stimulated to action by the hope of defeat,
+and the prospect of office for his opponent. To such an extent has the
+pernicious system of rewarding friends for political services gone in
+this country, that until very lately it was difficult for a member of
+the defeated party to obtain a respectable office.
+
+The result of all this is, that the country is divided, that these
+divisions are kept alive by these speakers, writers and convention
+callers. The great mission of civil service reform is not to do
+away with parties, but with conflicting opinion, by taking from all
+politicians the hope of reward. There is no other hope for peace. What
+do the people know about the wants of the nation? There are in every
+community a few quiet and respectable men, who know all about the wants
+of the people--gentlemen who have retired from business, who take no
+part in discussion and who are therefore free from prejudice. Let these
+men attend to our politics. They will not call conventions, except
+in the parlors of hotels. They will not put out our eyes with flaring
+torches. They will not deafen us with speeches. They will carry on a
+campaign without producing opposition. They will have elections but no
+contests. All the offices will be given to the defeated party. This of
+itself will insure tranquillity at the polls. No one will be deprived of
+the privilege of casting a ballot. When campaigns are conducted in this
+manner a gentleman can engage in politics with a feeling that he is
+protected by the great principle of civil service reform. But just so
+long as men persist in rewarding their friends, as they call them, just
+so long will our country be cursed with political parties. Nothing can
+be better calculated to preserve the peace than the great principle of
+rewarding those who have confidence enough in our institutions to keep
+silent while peace will sit with folded wings upon the moss-covered
+political stump of a ruder age. I am satisfied that to civil service
+reform the Republican party is indebted for the last great victory. Upon
+this question the enthusiasm of the people was simply unbounded. In
+the harvest field, the shop, the counting-room, in the church, in the
+saloon, in, the palace and in the hut, nothing was heard and nothing
+discussed except the great principle of civil service reform.
+
+Among the most touching incidents of the campaign was to see a few
+old soldiers, sacred with scars, sit down, and while battles and
+hair-breadth escapes, and prisons of want, were utterly forgotten,
+discuss with tremulous lips and tearful eyes the great question of civil
+service reform.
+
+During the great political contest I addressed several quite large
+and intelligent audiences, and no one who did not has or can have the
+slightest idea of the hold that civil service reform had upon the
+very souls of our people. Upon all other subjects the indifference was
+marked. I dwelt upon the glittering achievements of my party, but they
+were indifferent. I pictured outrages perpetrated upon our citizens, but
+they did not care. All this went idly by, but when I touched upon
+civil service reform, old men, gray-haired and strong, broke down
+utterly--tears fell like rain. The faces of women grew ashen with the
+intensity of anguish, and even little children sobbed as though their
+hearts would break. To one who has witnessed these affecting scenes,
+civil service reform is almost a sacred thing. Even the speeches
+delivered upon this subject in German affected to tears thousands of
+persons wholly unacquainted with that language. In some instances those
+who did not understand a word were affected even more than those who
+did. Surely there must be something in the subject itself, apart from
+the words used to explain it, that can under such circumstances lead
+captive the hearts of men. During the entire campaign the cry of civil
+service reform was heard from one end of our land to the other. The
+sailor nailed those words to the mast. The miner repeated them between
+the strokes of the pick. Mothers explained them to their children.
+Emigrants painted them upon their wagons. They were mingled with the
+reaper's song and the shout of the pioneer. Adopt this great principle
+and we can have quiet and lady-like campaigns, a few articles in monthly
+magazines, a leader or two in the "Nation," in the pictorial papers
+wood-cuts of the residences of the respective candidates and now and
+then a letter from an old Whig would constitute all the aggressive
+agencies of the contest. I am satisfied that this great principle
+secured us our victories in Florida and Louisiana, and its effect on
+the High Joint Commission was greater than is generally supposed. It was
+this that finally decided the action of the returning boards.
+
+Cronin is the only man upon whom this great principle was an utter
+failure. Let it be understood that friends are not to be rewarded.
+Let it be settled that political services are a barrier to political
+preferment, and my word for it, machine politics will never be heard of
+again.
+
+Yours truly,----
+
+
+I do not believe in carrying civil service reform to the extent that
+you will not allow an officer to resign. I do not believe that that
+principle should be insisted upon to that degree that there would only
+be two ways left to get out of office--death or suicide. I believe,
+other things being equal, any party having any office within its gift
+will give that office to the man that really believes in the principles
+of that party, and who has worked to give those principles ultimate
+victory. That is human nature. The man that plows, the man that sows,
+and the man that cultivates, ought to be the man that reaps. But we have
+in this country a multitude of little places, a multitude of clerkships
+in Washington; and the question is whether on the incoming of a new
+administration, these men shall all be turned out. In the first place,
+they are on starvation salaries, just barely enough to keep soul and
+body together, and respectability on the outside; and if there is a
+young man in this audience, I beg of him:
+
+Never accept a clerkship from this Government. Do not live on a little
+salary; do not let your mind be narrowed; do not sell all the splendid
+possibilities of the future; do not learn to cringe and fawn and crawl.
+
+I would rather have forty acres of land, with a log cabin on it and the
+woman I love in the cabin--with a little grassy winding path leading
+down to the spring where the water gurgles from the lips of earth
+whispering day and night to the white pebbles a perpetual poem--with
+holly-hocks growing at the corner of the house, and morning-glories
+blooming over the low latched door--with lattice work over the window
+so that the sunlight would fall checkered on the dimpled babe in
+the cradle, and birds--like songs with wings hovering in the summer
+air--than be the clerk of any government on earth.
+
+Now, I say, let us lengthen the term of office--I do not care much how
+long--send a man to Congress at least for five years. And it would be a
+great blessing if there were not half as many of them sent.
+
+We have too many legislators and too much legislation; too little about
+important matters, and too much about unimportant matters. Lengthen the
+term of office so that the man can turn his attention to something else
+when he gets in besides looking after his re-election. There is another
+defect we must remedy in our Constitution, in my judgment, and that is
+as to the mode of electing a President. I believe it of the greatest
+importance that the Executive should be entirely independent of the
+legislative and judicial departments of the country. I do not believe
+that Congress should have the right to create a vacancy which it can
+fill. I do not believe that the Senate of the United States, or the
+lower house of Congress, by a simple objection, should have the right to
+deprive any State of its electoral vote. Our Constitution now provides
+that the electors chosen in each State shall meet in their respective
+States upon a certain day and there cast their votes for President and
+Vice-President of the United States. They shall properly certify to the
+votes which are cast, and shall transmit lists of them, together with
+the proper certificates, to the Vice-President of the United States.
+And it is then declared that upon a certain day in the presence of both
+houses of Congress, the Vice-President shall open the certificates and
+the votes shall then be counted. It does not exactly say who shall count
+these votes. It does not in so many words say the Vice-President shall
+do it, or may do it, or that both houses of Congress shall do it, or may
+do it, or that either house can prevent a count of the votes. It leaves
+us in the dark, and, to a certain degree, in blindness. I believe there
+is a way, and a very easy way, out of the entire trouble, and it is
+this: I do not care whether the electors first meet in their respective
+States or not, but I want the Constitution so amended that the electors
+of all the States shall meet on a certain day in the city of Washington,
+and count the votes themselves; to allow that body to be the judge of
+who are electors, to allow it to choose a chairman, and to allow
+the person so chosen to declare who is the President, and who is the
+Vice-President of the United States. The Executive is then entirely
+free and independent of the legislative department of Government. The
+Executive is then entirely free from the judicial department, and I tell
+you, it is a public calamity to have the ermine of the Supreme Court
+of the United States touched or stained by a political suspicion. In
+my judgment, this country can never stand such a strain again as it has
+now.
+
+Now, my friends, all these questions are upon us and they have to be
+settled. We cannot go on as we have been going. We cannot afford to live
+as we have lived--one section running against the other. We cannot go
+along that way. It must be settled, either peaceably or there must again
+be a resort to the boisterous sword of civil war.
+
+The people of the South must stop trampling on the rights of the colored
+men. It must not be a crime in any State of this Union to be a lover of
+this country. I have seen it stated in several papers lately that it is
+the duty of each State to protect its own citizens. Well, I know that.
+Suppose that the State does not do it; what then I say? Well, then, say
+these people, the Governor of the State has the right to call on the
+General Government for assistance. But suppose the Governor will not
+call for assistance, what then? Then, they tell us, the Legislature can
+do so by a joint resolution. But suppose the Legislature will not do it,
+what then? Then, say these people, it is a defect in the Constitution.
+In my judgment, that is the absurdest kind of secession. If the State of
+Illinois must protect me, if I have no right to call for the protection
+of the General Government, all I have to say is that my allegiance must
+belong to the Government that protects me. If Illinois protects me, and
+the General Government has not the power, then my first allegiance is
+due to Illinois; and should Illinois unsheathe the sword of civil war,
+I must stand by my State, if that doctrine is true. I say, my first
+allegiance is due to the General Government, and not to the State of
+Illinois, and if the State of Illinois goes out of the Union, I swear to
+you that I will not. What does the General Government propose to give
+me in exchange for my allegiance? The General Government has a right to
+take my property. The General Government has a right to take my body
+in its necessary defence. What does that Government propose to give in
+exchange for that right? Protection, or else our Government is a fraud.
+Who has a right to call for the protection of the United States? I say,
+the citizen who needs it. Can our Government obtain information only
+through the official sources? Must our Government wait until the
+Government asks the proofs, while the State tramples upon the rights of
+the citizens? Must it wait until the Legislature calls for assistance
+to help it stop robbing and plundering citizens of the United States? Is
+that the doctrine and the idea of the Northern Democratic party? It is
+not mine. A Government that will not protect its citizens is a
+disgrace to humanity. A Government that waits until a Governor calls--a
+Government that cannot hear the cry of the meanest citizen under its
+flag when his rights are being trampled upon, even by citizens of a
+Southern State--has no right to exist.
+
+It is the duty of the American citizen to see to it that every State
+has a Government, not only republican in form, but it is the duty of the
+United States to see to it that life, liberty and property are protected
+in each State. If they are not protected, it is the duty of the United
+States to protect them, if it takes all her military force both upon
+land and upon the sea. The people whose Government cannot always hear
+the faintest wail of the meanest man beneath its flag have no right to
+call themselves a nation. The flag that will not protect its protectors
+and defend its defenders is a rag that is not worth the air in which it
+waves.
+
+How are we going to do it? Do it by kindness if you can; by conciliation
+if you can, but the Government is bound to try every way until it
+succeeds. Now, Rutherford B. Hayes was elected President. The Democracy
+will say, of course, that he never was elected, but that does not make
+any difference. He is President to-day, and all these things are about
+him to be settled.
+
+What shall we do? What can we do? There are two Governors in South
+Carolina and two Legislatures and not one cent of taxes has been
+collected by either. A dual government would seem to be the most
+economical in the world. Now, the question for us to decide, the
+question to be decided by this administration is, how are we to
+ascertain which is the legal Government of the State, and what
+department of the Government has a right to ascertain that fact? Must it
+be left to Congress? Has the Senate alone the right to determine it?
+Can it be left in any way to the Supreme Court, or shall the Executive
+decide it himself? I do not say that the Executive has the power to
+decide that question for himself. I do not say he has not, but I do not
+say he has. The question, so far as Louisiana and South Carolina are
+concerned--that question is now in the Senate of the United States.
+Governor Kellogg is asking for admission as a Senator from the State
+of Louisiana, and the question is to be decided by the Senate first,
+whether he is entitled to his seat, and that question of course, rests
+upon the one fact--was the Legislature that elected him the legal
+Legislature of the State of Louisiana? It seems to me that when that
+question is pending in the Senate of the United States the President has
+not the right, or at least it would be improper for him to decide it on
+his own motion, and say this or that Government is the real and legal
+Government of the State of Louisiana. But some mode must be adopted,
+some way must be discovered to settle this question, and to settle it
+peacefully. We are an enlightened people. Force is the last thing that
+civilized men should resort to. As long as courts can be created, as
+long as courts of arbitration can be selected, as long as we can reason
+and think, and urge all the considerations of humanity upon each other,
+there should be no appeal to arms in the United States upon any question
+whatever. What should the President do? He could only spare twenty-five
+hundred men from the Indian war--that is the same army that has so
+long been trampling on the rights of the South, the same army that
+the Democratic Congress wished to reduce, and that army of twenty-five
+hundred men is all he has to spare to protect American citizens in the
+Southern States. Is there any sentiment in the North that would uphold
+the Executive in calling for volunteers? Is there any sentiment here
+that would respond to a call for twenty, fifty, or a hundred thousand
+men? Is there any Congress to pass the necessary act to pay them if
+there was?
+
+And so the President of the United States appreciated the situation, and
+the people of the South came to him and said, "We have had war enough,
+we have had trouble enough, our country languishes, we have no trade,
+our pockets are empty, something must be done for us, we are utterly and
+perfectly disgusted with the leadership of the Democratic party of the
+North. Now, will you let us be your friends?" And he had the sense to
+say, "Yes." The President took the right hand of the North, and put it
+into the right hand of the South and said "Let us be friends. We parted
+at the cannon's mouth; we were divided by the edge of the glittering
+sword; we must become acquainted again. We are equals. We are all
+fellow-citizens. In a Government of the people, by the people and for
+the people, there shall not be an outcast class, whether white or
+black. To this feast, every child of the Republic shall be invited and
+welcomed." It was a grand thing grandly done. If the President succeeds
+in his policy, it will be an immense compliment to his brain. If he
+fails, it will be an equal compliment to his heart. He has opened the
+door; he has advanced; he has extended his hand, he has broken the
+silence of hatred with the words of welcome. Actuated by this broad and
+catholic spirit he has selected his constitutional advisors, and
+allow me to say right here, the President has the right to select his
+constitutional advisors to suit himself, and the idea of men endeavoring
+to force themselves or others into the Cabinet of the President,
+against, as it were, his will, why I would as soon think of circulating
+a petition to compel some woman to marry me.
+
+He has gathered around him the men he considers the wisest and the best,
+and I say, let us give them a fair chance. I say, let us be honest with
+the President of the United States and his Cabinet, and give his policy
+a fair and honest chance. In order to show his good faith with the
+South he chose as a member of his Cabinet an ex-rebel from Tennessee.
+I confess, when I heard of it I did not like it. It did not seem to
+be exactly what I had been making all this fuss about. But I thought I
+would be honest about it, and I went and called on Mr. Key, and really
+he begins already to look a good deal like a Republican. A real honest
+looking man. And then I said to myself that he had not done much more
+harm than as though he had been a Democrat at the North during those
+four years, and had cursed and swore instead of fought about it. And so
+I told him "I am glad you are appointed."
+
+And I am. Give him a chance, and so far as the whole Cabinet is
+concerned--I have not the time to go over them one by one now, it is
+perfectly satisfactory to me. The President made up his mind that to
+appoint that man would be to say to the South: "I do not look upon you
+as pariahs in this Government. I look upon you as fellow-citizens; I
+want you to wipe forever the color line, or the Union line, from the
+records of this Government on account of what has been done heretofore."
+What are you now? is the only question that should be asked. It was
+a strange thing for the President to appoint that man. It was an
+experiment. It is an experiment. It has not yet been decided, but I
+believe it will simply be a proof of the President's wisdom. I can stand
+that experiment taken in connection with the appointment of Frederick
+Douglass as Marshal of the District of Columbia. I was glad to see
+that man's appointment. He is a good, patient, stern man. He has been
+fighting for the liberty of his race, and at the same time for our
+liberty. This man has done something for the freedom of my race as well
+as his own. This is no time for war. War settles nothing except the mere
+question of strength. That is all war ever did settle. You cannot shoot
+ideas into a man with a musket, or with cannon into one of those old
+Bourbon Democrats of the North. You cannot let prejudices out of a man
+with a sword.
+
+This is the time for reason, for discussion, for compromise. This is the
+time to repair, to rebuild, to preserve. War destroys. Peace creates.
+War is decay and death. Peace is growth and life,--sunlight and air. War
+kills men. Peace maintains them. Artillery does not reason; it asserts.
+A bayonet has point enough, but no logic. When the sword is drawn,
+reason remains in the scabbard. It is not enough to win upon the field
+of battle, you must be victor within the realm of thought. There must be
+peace between the North and South some time; not a conquered peace, but
+a peace that conquers. The question is, can you and I forget the past?
+Can we forget everything except the heroic sacrifices of the men who
+saved this Government? Can we say to the South, "Let us be brothers"?
+Can we? I am willing to do it because, in the first place, it is right,
+and in the second place, it will pay if it can be carried out. We have
+fought and hated long enough. Our country is prostrate. Labor is in
+rags. Energy has empty hands. Industry has empty pockets. The wheels of
+the factory are still. In the safe of prudence money lies idle, locked
+by the key of fear. Confidence is what we need--confidence in each
+other; confidence in our institutions; confidence in our form of
+government; in the great future; confidence in law, confidence in
+liberty, confidence in progress, and in the grand destiny of the Great
+Republic. Now, do not imagine that I think this policy will please
+every body. Of course there are men South and North who can never be
+conciliated. They are the Implacables in the South--the Bourbons in the
+North.
+
+Nothing will ever satisfy them. The Implacables want to own negroes
+and whip them; the Bourbons never will be satisfied until they can help
+catch one. The Implacables with violent hands drive emigration from
+their shores. They are poisoning the springs and sources of prosperity.
+They dine on hatred and sup on regret. They mourn over the lost cause
+and partake of the communion of revenge. They strike down the liberties
+of their fellow-citizens and refuse to enjoy their own. They remember
+nothing but wrongs, and they forget nothing but benefits. Their bosoms
+are filled with the serpents of hate. No one can compromise with them.
+Nothing can change them. They must be left to the softening influence
+of time and death. The Bourbons are the allies of the Implacables. A
+Bourbon in the majority is an Implacable in the minority. An Implacable
+in the minority is a Bourbon. We do not appeal to, but from these men.
+But there are in the South thousands of men who have accepted in good
+faith the results of the war; men who love and wish to preserve this
+nation, men tired of strife--men longing for a real Union based upon
+mutual respect and confidence. These men are willing that the colored
+man shall be free--willing that he shall vote, and vote for the
+Government of his choice--willing that his children shall be
+educated--willing that he shall have all the rights of an American
+citizen. These men are tired of the Implacables and disgusted with the
+Bourbons. These men wish to unite with the patriotic men of the North in
+the great work of reestablishing a government of law. For my part, call
+me of what party you please, I am willing to join hands with these men,
+without regard to race, color or previous condition.
+
+With a knowledge of our wants--with a clear perception of our
+difficulties, Rutherford B. Hayes became President.
+
+Nations have been saved by the grandeur of one man. Above all things a
+President should be a patriot. Party at best is only a means--the good
+of the country, the happiness of the people, the only end.
+
+Now, I appeal to you Democrats here--not a great many, I suppose--do
+not oppose this policy because you think it is going to increase the
+Republican strength. If it strengthens the Government, no matter whether
+it is Republican or Democratic, it is for the common good.
+
+And you Republicans, you who have had all these feelings of patriotism
+and glory, I ask you to wait and let this experiment be tried. Do not
+prophesy failure for it and then work to fulfill the prophecy. Give the
+President a chance. I tell you to-night that he is as good a Republican
+as there is in the United States; and I tell you that if this policy is
+not responded to by the South, Rutherford B. Hayes will change it,
+just as soon and as often as is necessary to accomplish the end. The
+President has offered the Southern people the olive branch of peace,
+and so far as I am concerned, I implore both the Southern people and
+the Northern people to accept it. I extend to you each and all the olive
+branch of peace. Fellow-citizens of the South, I beseech you to take it.
+By the memory of those who died for naught; by the charred remains of
+your remembered homes; by the ashes of your statesman dead; for the sake
+of your sons and your daughters and their fair children yet to be,
+I implore you to take it with loving and with loyal hands. It will
+cultivate your wasted fields. It will rebuild your towns and cities. It
+will fill your coffers with gold. It will educate your children. It
+will swell the sails of your commerce. It will cause the roses of joy
+to clamber and climb over the broken cannon of war. It will flood the
+cabins of the freedman with light, and clothe the weak in more than coat
+of mail, and wrap the poor and lowly in "measureless content." Take it.
+The North will forgive if the South will forget. Take it! The negro
+will wipe from the tablet of memory the strokes and scars of two hundred
+years, and blur with happy tears the record of his wrongs. Take it! It
+will unite our nation. It will make us brothers once again. Take it! And
+justice will sit in your courts under the outspread wings of Peace. Take
+it! And the brain and lips of the future will be free. Take it! It will
+bud and blossom in your hands and fill your land with fragrance and with
+joy.
+
+
+
+
+HARD TIMES AND THE WAY OUT.
+
+     * Boston, October 20, 1878.
+
+LADIES and Gentlemen:--The lovers of the human race, the
+philanthropists, the dreamers of grand dreams, all predicted and all
+believed that when man should have the right to govern himself, when
+every human being should be equal before the law, pauperism, crime, and
+want would exist only in the history of the past. They accounted
+for misery in their time by the rapacity of kings and the cruelty of
+priests. Here, in the United States, man at last is free. Here, man
+makes the laws, and all have an equal voice. The rich cannot oppress the
+poor, because the poor are in a majority. The laboring men, those who
+in some way work for their living, can elect every Congressman and every
+judge; they can make and interpret the laws, and if labor is oppressed
+in the United States by capital, labor has simply itself to blame.
+The cry is now raised that capital in some mysterious way oppresses
+industry; that the capitalist is the enemy of the man who labors. What
+is a capitalist? Every man who has good health; every man with good
+sense; every one who has had his dinner, and has enough left for supper,
+is, to that extent, a capitalist. Every man with a good character, who
+has the credit to borrow a dollar or to buy a meal, is a capitalist; and
+nine out of ten of the great capitalists in the United States are simply
+successful workingmen. There is no conflict, and can be no conflict, in
+the United States between capital and labor; and the men who endeavor
+to excite the envy of the unfortunate and the malice of the poor are the
+enemies of law and order.
+
+As a rule, wealth is the result of industry, economy, attention
+to business; and as a rule, poverty is the result of idleness,
+extravagance, and inattention to business, though to these rules there
+are thousands of exceptions. The man who has wasted his time, who has
+thrown away his opportunities, is apt to envy the man who has not. For
+instance, there are six shoemakers working in one shop. One of them
+attends to his business. You can hear the music of his hammer late and
+early. He is in love with some girl on the next street. He has made up
+his mind to be a man; to succeed; to make somebody else happy; to have
+a home; and while he is working, in his imagination he can see his own
+fireside, with the firelight falling upon the faces of wife and child.
+The other five gentlemen work as little as they can, spend Sunday in
+dissipation, have the headache Monday, and, as a result, never advance.
+The industrious one, the one in love, gains the confidence of his
+employer, and in a little while he cuts out work for the others. The
+first thing you know he has a shop of his own, the next a store; because
+the man of reputation, the man of character, the man of known integrity,
+can buy all he wishes in the United States upon a credit. The next thing
+you know he is married, and he has built him a house, and he is happy,
+and his dream has been realized. After awhile the same five shoemakers,
+having pursued the old course, stand on the corner some Sunday when he
+rides by. He has a carriage, his wife sits by his side, her face covered
+with smiles, and they have two children, their eyes beaming with joy,
+and the blue ribbons are fluttering in the wind. And thereupon, these
+five shoemakers adjourn to some neighboring saloon and pass a resolution
+that there is an irrepressible conflict between capital and labor.
+
+There is, in fact, no such conflict, and the laboring men of the United
+States have the power to protect themselves. In the ballot-box the
+vote of Lazarus is on an equality with the vote of Dives; the vote of
+a wandering pauper counts the same as that of a millionaire. In a land
+where the poor, where the laboring men have the right and have the power
+to make the laws, and do, in fact, make the laws, certainly there should
+be no complaint. In our country the people hold the power, and if any
+corporation in any State is devouring the substance of the people,
+every State has retained the power of eminent domain, under which it
+can confiscate the property and franchise of any corporation by
+simply paying to that corporation what such property is worth. And yet
+thousands of people are talking as though the rich combined for the
+express purpose of destroying the poor, are talking as though there
+existed a widespread conspiracy against industry, against honest toil;
+and thousands and thousands of speeches have been made and numberless
+articles have been written to fill the breasts of the unfortunate with
+hatred.
+
+We have passed through a period of wonderful and unprecedented
+inflation. For years we enjoyed the luxury of going into debt, the
+felicity of living upon credit. We have in the United States about
+eighty thousand miles of railway, more than enough to make a treble
+track around the globe. Most of these miles were built in a period of
+twenty-five years, and at a cost of at least five thousand millions
+of dollars. Think of the ore that had to be dug, of the iron that was
+melted; think of the thousands employed in cutting bridge timber and
+ties, and giving to the wintry air the music of the axe; think of the
+thousands and thousands employed in making cars, in making locomotives,
+those horses of progress with nerves of steel and breath of flame; think
+of the thousands and thousands of workers in brass and steel and iron;
+think of the numberless industries that thrived in the construction
+of eighty thousand miles of railway, of the streams bridged, of the
+mountains tunneled, of the plains crossed; and think of the towns and
+cities that sprang up, as if by magic, along these highways of iron.
+
+During the same time we had a war in which we expended thousands of
+millions of dollars, not to create, not to construct, but to destroy.
+All this money was spent in the work of demolition, and every shot and
+every shell and every musket and every cannon was used to destroy. All
+the time of every soldier was lost. An amount of property inconceivable
+was destroyed, and some of the best and bravest were sacrificed. During
+these years the productive power of the North was strained to the
+utmost; every wheel was in motion; there was employment for every kind
+and description of labor, and for every mechanic. There was a constantly
+rising market--speculation was rife, and it seemed almost impossible
+to lose. As a consequence, the men who had been toiling upon the farm
+became tired. It was too slow a way to get rich. They heard of their
+neighbor, of their brother, who had gone to the city and had suddenly
+become a millionaire. They became tired with the slow methods of
+agriculture. The young men of intelligence, of vim, of nerve became
+disgusted with the farms. On every hand fortunes were being made. A
+wave of wealth swept over the United States; huts became houses; houses
+became palaces with carpeted floors and pictured walls; tatters became
+garments; rags became robes; and for the first time in the history of
+the world, the poor tasted of the luxuries of wealth. We wondered how
+our fathers could have endured their poor and barren lives.
+
+Every business was pressed to the snow line. Old life insurance
+associations had been successful; new ones sprang up on every hand.
+The agents filled every town. These agents were given a portion of the
+premium. You could hardly go out of your house without being told of the
+uncertainty of life and the certainty of death. You were shown pictures
+of life insurance agents emptying vast bags of gold at the feet of a
+disconsolate widow. You saw in imagination your own fatherless children
+wiping away the tears of grief and smiling with joy.
+
+These agents insured everybody and everything. They would have insured a
+hospital or consumption in its last hemorrhage.
+
+Fire insurance was managed in precisely the same way. The agents
+received a part of the premium, and they insured anything and
+everything, no matter what its danger might be. They would have insured
+powder in perdition, or icebergs under the torrid zone with the same
+alacrity. And then there were accident companies, and you could not
+go to the station to buy your ticket without being shown a picture of
+disaster. You would see there four horses running away with a stage, and
+old ladies and children being thrown out; you would see a steamer being
+blown up on the Mississippi, legs one way and arms the other, heads
+one side and hats the other; locomotives going through bridges, good
+Samaritans carrying off the wounded on stretchers.
+
+The merchants, too, were not satisfied to do business in the old way. It
+was too slow; they could not wait for customers. They filled the country
+with drummers, and these drummers convinced all the country merchants
+that they needed about twice as many goods as they could possibly sell,
+and they took their notes on sixty and ninety days, and renewed them
+whenever desired, provided the parties renewing the notes would take
+more goods. And these country merchants pressed the goods upon their
+customers in the same manner. Everybody was selling, everybody was
+buying, and nearly all was done upon a credit. No one believed the day
+of settlement ever would or ever could come. Towns must continue to
+grow, and in the imagination of speculators there were hundreds of
+cities numbering their millions of inhabitants. Land, miles and miles
+from the city, was laid out in blocks and squares and parks; land that
+will not be occupied for residences probably for hundreds of years to
+come, and these lots were sold, not by the acre, not by the square
+mile, but by so much per foot. They were sold on credit, with a partial
+payment down and the balance secured by a mortgage.
+
+These values, of course, existed simply in the imagination; and a deed
+of trust upon a cloud or a mortgage upon a last year's fog would have
+been just as valuable. Everybody advertised, and those who were not
+selling goods and real estate were in the medicine line, and every rock
+beneath our flag was covered with advice to the unfortunate; and I have
+often thought that if some sincere Christian had made a pilgrimage
+to Sinai and climbed its venerable crags, and in a moment of devotion
+dropped upon his knees and raised his eyes toward heaven, the first
+thing that would have met his astonished gaze would in all probability
+have been:
+
+     "St. 1860 X Plantation Bitters."
+
+Suddenly there came a crash. Jay Cooke failed, and I have heard
+thousands of men account for the subsequent hard times from the fact
+that Cooke did fail. As well might you account for the smallpox by
+saying that the first pustule was the cause of the disease. The failure
+of Jay Cooke & Co. was simply a symptom of a disease universal.
+
+No language can describe the agonies that have been endured since 1873.
+No language can tell the sufferings of the men that have wandered over
+the dreary and desolate desert of bankruptcy. Thousands and thousands
+supposed that they had enough, enough for their declining years,
+enough for wife and children, and suddenly found themselves paupers and
+vagrants.
+
+During all these years the bankruptcy law was in force, and whoever
+failed to keep his promise had simply to take the benefit of this law.
+As a consequence, there could be no real, solid foundation for business.
+Property commenced to decline; that is to say, it commenced to resume;
+that is to say, it began to be rated at its real instead of at its
+speculative value.
+
+Land is worth what it will produce, and no more. It may have speculative
+value, and, if the prophecy is fulfilled, the man who buys it may become
+rich, and if the prophecy is not fulfilled, then the land is simply
+worth what it will produce. Lots worth from five to ten thousand dollars
+apiece suddenly vanished into farms worth twenty-five dollars per acre.
+These lots resumed. The farms that before that time had been considered
+worth one hundred dollars per acre, and are now worth twenty or thirty,
+have simply resumed. Magnificent residences supposed to be worth one
+hundred thousand dollars, that can now be purchased for twenty-five
+thousand, they have simply resumed. The property in the United States
+has not fallen in value, but its real value has been ascertained. The
+land will produce as much as it ever would, and is as valuable to-day
+as it ever was; and every improvement, every invention that adds to the
+productiveness of the soil or to the facilities for getting that product
+to market, adds to the wealth of the nation.
+
+As a matter of fact, the property kept pace with what we were pleased to
+call our money. As the money depreciated, property appreciated; as the
+money appreciated, property depreciated. The moment property began to
+fall speculation ceased. There is but little speculation upon a falling
+market. The stocks and bonds, based simply upon ideas, became worthless,
+the collaterals became dust and ashes.
+
+At the close of the war, when the Government ceased to be such a vast
+purchaser and consumer, many of the factories had to stop. When the
+crash came the men stopped digging ore; they stopped felling the forest;
+the fires died out in the furnaces; the men who had stood in the glare
+of the forge were in the gloom of want. There was no employment for
+them. The employer could not sell his product; business stood still,
+and then came what we call the hard times. Our wealth was a delusion and
+illusion, and we simply came back to reality. Too many men were doing
+nothing, too many men were traders, brokers, speculators. There were not
+enough producers of the things needed; there were too many producers of
+the things no one wished. There needed to be a re-distribution of men.
+
+Many remedies have been proposed, and chief among these is the remedy
+of fiat money. Probably no subject in the world is less generally
+understood than that of money. So many false definitions have been
+given, so many strange, conflicting theories have been advanced, that
+it is not at all surprising that men have come to imagine that money
+is something that can be created by law. The definitions given by the
+hard-money men themselves have been used as arguments by those who
+believe in the power of Congress to create wealth. We are told that gold
+is an instrumentality or a device to facilitate exchanges. We are told
+that gold is a measure of value. Let us examine these definitions.
+
+"_Gold is an instrumentality or device to facilitate exchanges._"
+
+That sounds well, but I do not believe it. Gold and silver
+are commodities. They are the products of labor. They are not
+instrumentalities; they are not devices to facilitate exchanges; they
+are the things exchanged for something else; and other things are
+exchanged for them. The only device about it to facilitate exchanges is
+the coining of these metals. Whenever the Government or any government
+certifies that in a certain piece of gold or silver there are a certain
+number of grains of a certain fineness, then he who gives it knows that
+he is not giving too much, and he who receives, that he is receiving
+enough, so that I will change the definition to this:
+
+The _coining_ of the precious metals is a device to facilitate
+exchanges.
+
+The precious metals themselves are property; they are merchandise; they
+are commodities, and whenever one commodity is exchanged for another it
+is barter, and gold is the last refinement of barter.
+
+The second definition is:
+
+"_Gold is the measure of value_."
+
+We are told by those who believe in fiat money that gold is a measure of
+value just the same as a half bushel or a yardstick.
+
+I deny that gold is a measure of value. The yardstick is not a measure
+of value; it is simply a measure of quantity. It measures cloth worth
+fifty dollars a yard precisely as it does calico worth four cents. It
+is, therefore, not a measure of value, but of quantities. The same with
+the half bushel. The half bushel measures wheat precisely the same,
+whether that wheat is worth three dollars or one dollar. It simply
+measures quantity; not quality, or value. The yardstick, the half
+bushel, and the coining of money are all devices to facilitate
+exchanges. The yardstick assures the man who sells that he has not sold
+too much; it assures the man who buys that he has received enough; and
+in that way it facilitates exchanges. The coining of money facilitates
+exchange, for the reason that were it not coined, each man who did any
+business would have to carry a pair of scales and be a chemist.
+
+It matters not whether the yardstick or half bushel are of gold, silver,
+or wood, for the reason that the yardstick and half bushel are not the
+things bought. We buy not them, but the things they measure.
+
+If gold and silver are not the measure of value, what is? I
+answer--intelligent labor. Gold gets its value from labor. Of course, I
+cannot account for the fact that mankind have a certain fancy for gold
+or for diamonds, neither can I account for the fact that we like certain
+things better than others to eat. These are simply facts in nature, and
+they are facts, whether they can be explained or not. The dollar in gold
+represents, on the average, the labor that it took to dig and mint it,
+together with all the time of the men who looked for it without finding
+it. That dollar in gold, on the average, will buy the product of the
+same amount of labor in any other direction.
+
+Nothing ever has been money, from the most barbarous to the most
+civilized times, unless it was a product of nature, and a something to
+which the people among whom it passed as money attached a certain value,
+a value not dependent upon law, not dependent upon "fiat" in any degree.
+
+Nothing has ever been considered money that man could produce.
+
+A bank bill is not money, neither is a check nor a draft. These are all
+devices simply to facilitate business, but in or of themselves they have
+no value.
+
+We are told, however, that the Government can create money. This I deny.
+The Government produces nothing; it raises no wheat, no corn; it digs no
+gold, no silver. It is not a producer, it is a consumer.
+
+The Government cannot by law create wealth. And right here I wish to
+ask one question, and I would like to have it answered some time. If
+the Government can make money, if it can create money, if by putting
+its sovereignty upon a piece of paper it can create absolute money, why
+should the Government collect taxes? We have in every district
+assessors and collectors; we have at every port customhouses, and we are
+collecting taxes day and night for the support of this Government. Now,
+if the Government can make money itself, why should it collect taxes
+from the poor? Here is a man cultivating a farm--he is working among the
+stones and roots, and digging day and night; why should the Government
+go to that man and make him pay twenty or thirty or forty dollars taxes
+when the Government, according to the theory of these gentlemen, could
+make a thousand-dollar fiat bill quicker than that man could wink? Why
+impose upon industry in that manner? Why should the sun borrow a candle?
+
+And if the Government can create money, how much should it create, and
+if it should create it who will get it? Money has a great liking for
+money. A single dollar in the pocket of a poor man is lonesome; it never
+is satisfied until it has found its companions. Money gravitates towards
+money, and issue as much as you may, as much as you will, the time will
+come when that money will be in the hands of the industrious, in the
+hands of the economical, in the hands of the shrewd, in the hands of the
+cunning; in other words, in the hands of the successful.
+
+The other day I had a conversation with one of the principal gentlemen
+upon that side, and I told him, "Whenever you can successfully palm off
+on a man a bill of fare for a dinner, I shall believe in your doctrine;
+and when I can satisfy the pangs of hunger by reading a cook-book, I
+shall join your party." Only that is money which stands for labor. Only
+that is money which will buy, on the average, in all other directions
+the result of the same labor expended in its production. As a matter
+of fact, there is money enough in the country to transact the business.
+Never before in the history of our Government was money so cheap; that
+is to say, was interest so low; never. There is plenty of money, and we
+could borrow all we wished had we the collaterals. We could borrow
+all we wish if there was some business in which we could embark that
+promised a sure and reasonable return. If we should come to a man who
+kept a ferry, and find his boat on a sandbar and the river dry, what
+would he think of us should we tell him he had not enough boat? He would
+probably reply that he had plenty of boat, but not enough water. We have
+plenty of money, but not enough business. The reason we have not enough
+business is, we have not enough confidence, and the reason we have not
+confidence is because the market is slowly falling, and the reason it is
+slowly falling is that things have not yet quite resumed; that we have
+not quite touched the absolute bedrock of valuation. Another reason is
+because those that left the cultivation of the soil have not yet all
+returned, and they are living, some upon their wits, some upon their
+relatives, some upon charity, and some upon crime.
+
+The next question is: Suppose the Government should issue a thousand
+millions of fiat money, how would it regulate the value thereof? Every
+creditor could be forced to take it, but nobody else. If a man was in
+debt one dollar for a bushel of wheat, he could compel the creditor to
+take the fiat money; but if he wished to buy the wheat, then the owner
+could say, "I will take one dollar in gold or fifty dollars in fiat
+money, or I will not sell it for fiat money at any price." What will
+Congress do then? In order to make this fiat money good it will have to
+fix the price of every conceivable commodity; the price of painting
+a picture, of trying a lawsuit, of chiseling a statue, the price of a
+day's work; in short, the price of every conceivable thing. This even
+will not be sufficient. It will be necessary, then, to provide by
+law that the prices fixed shall be received, and that no man shall be
+allowed to give more for anything than the price fixed by Congress.
+Now, I do not believe that any Congress has sufficient wisdom to tell
+beforehand what will be the relative value of all the products of labor.
+
+When the volume of currency is inflated it is at the expense of the
+creditor class; when it is contracted it is contracted at the expense
+of the debtor class. In other words, inflation means going into debt;
+contraction means the payment of the debt.
+
+A gold dollar is a dollar's worth of gold.
+
+A real paper dollar is a dollar's worth of paper.
+
+Another remedy has been suggested by the same persons who advocate fiat
+money. With a consistency perfectly charming, they say it would have
+been much better had we allowed the Treasury notes to fade out. Why
+allow fiat money to fade out when a simple act of Congress can make it
+as good as gold? When greenbacks fade out the loss falls upon the chance
+holder, upon the poor, the industrious, and the unfortunate. The rich,
+the cunning, the well-informed manage to get rid of what they happen to
+hold. When, however, the bills are redeemed, they are paid by the
+wealth and property of the whole country. To allow them to fade out
+is universal robbery; to pay them is universal justice. The greenback
+should not be allowed to fade away in the pocket of the soldier or in
+the hands of his widow and children. It is said that; the Continental
+money faded away. It was and is a disgrace to our forefathers. When the
+greenback fades away there will fade with it honor from the American
+heart, brain from the American head, and our flag from the air of
+heaven.
+
+A great cry has been raised against the holders of bonds. They have been
+denounced by every epithet that malignity can coin. During the war our
+bonds were offered for sale and they brought all that they then appeared
+to be worth. They had to be sold or the Rebellion would have been a
+success. To the bond we are indebted as much as to the greenback. The
+fact is, however, we are indebted to neither; we are indebted to the
+soldiers. But every man who took a greenback at less than gold committed
+the same crime, and no other, as he who bought the bonds at less than
+par in gold. These bonds have changed hands thousands of times. They
+have been paid for in gold again and again. They have been bought at
+prices far above par; they have been laid away by loving husbands
+for wives, by toiling fathers for children; and the man who seeks to
+repudiate them now, or to pay them in fiat rags, is unspeakably cruel
+and dishonest. If the Government has made a bad bargain it must live up
+to it. If it has made a foolish promise the only way is to fulfill it.
+
+A dishonest government can exist only among dishonest people.
+
+When our money is below par we feel below par.
+
+We cannot bring prosperity by cheapening money; we cannot increase
+our wealth by adding to the volume of a depreciated currency. If the
+prosperity of a country depends upon the volume of its currency, and if
+anything is money that people can be made to think is money, then the
+successful counterfeiter is a public benefactor. The counterfeiter
+increases the volume of currency; he stimulates business, and the money
+issued by him will not be hoarded and taken from the channels of trade.
+
+During the war, during the inflation--that is to say, during the years
+that we were going into debt--fortunes were made so easily that people
+left the farms, crowded to the towns and cities. Thousands became
+speculators, traders, and merchants; thousands embarked in every
+possible and conceivable scheme. They produced nothing; they simply
+preyed upon labor and dealt with imaginary values. These men must
+go back; they must become producers, and every producer is a paying
+consumer. Thousands and thousands of them are unable to go back. To a
+man who begs of you a breakfast you cannot say, "Why don't you get
+a farm?" You might as well say, "Why don't you start a line of
+steamships?" To him both are impossibilities. They must be helped.
+
+We should all remember that society must support all of its members, all
+of its robbers, thieves, and paupers. Every vagabond and vagrant has
+to be fed and clothed, and society must support in some way all of its
+members. It can support them in jails, in asylums, in hospitals, in
+penitentiaries; but it is a very costly way. We have to employ judges
+to try them, juries to sit upon their cases, sheriffs, marshals, and
+constables to arrest them, policemen to watch them, and it may be,
+at last, a standing army to put them down. It would be far cheaper,
+probably, to support them all at some first-class hotel. We must either
+support them or help them support themselves. They let us go upon the
+one hand simply to take us by the other, and we can take care of them as
+paupers and criminals, or, by wise statesmanship, help them to be honest
+and useful men. Of all the criminals transported by England to Australia
+and Tasmania, the records show that a very large per cent.--something
+over ninety--became useful and decent people. In Australia they found
+homes; hope again spread its wings in their breasts. They had different
+ambitions; they were removed from vile and vicious associations. They
+had new surroundings; and, as a rule, man does not morally improve
+without a corresponding improvement in his physical condition.
+One biscuit, with plenty of butter, is worth all the tracts ever
+distributed.
+
+Thousands must be taken from the crowded streets and stifling dens, away
+from the influences of filth and want, to the fields and forests of the
+West and South. They must be helped to help themselves.
+
+While the Government cannot create gold and silver, while it cannot
+by its fiat make money, it can furnish facilities for the creation
+of wealth. It can aid in the distribution of products, and in the
+distribution of men; it can aid in the opening of new territories;
+it can aid great and vast enterprises that cannot be accomplished by
+individual effort. The Government should see to it that every facility
+is offered to honorable adventure, enterprise and industry. Our ships
+ought to be upon every sea; our flag ought to be flying in every port.
+Our rivers and harbors ought to be improved. The usefulness of the
+Mississippi should be increased, its banks strengthened, and its channel
+deepened. At no distant day it will bear the commerce of a hundred
+millions of people. That grand river is the great guaranty of
+territorial integrity; it is the protest of nature against disunion, and
+from its source to the sea it will forever flow beneath one flag.
+
+The Northern Pacific Railway should be pushed to completion. In this
+way labor would be immediately given to many thousands of men. Along
+the line of that thoroughfare would spring up towns and cities; new
+communities with new surroundings; and where now is the wilderness there
+would be thousands and thousands of happy homes.
+
+The Texas Pacific should also be completed. A vast agricultural and
+mineral region would be opened to the enterprise and adventure of the
+American people. Probably Arizona holds within the miserly clutches of
+her rocks greater wealth than any other State or territory of the world.
+The construction of that road would put life and activity into a hundred
+industries. It would give employment to many thousands of people, and
+homes at last to many millions. It would cause the building of thousands
+of miles of branches to open, not only new territory, but to connect
+with roads already built. It would double the products of gold and
+silver, open new fields to trade, create new industries, and make it
+possible for us to supply eight millions of people in the Republic of
+Mexico with our products. The construction of this great highway will
+enable the Government to dispense with from ten to fifteen regiments of
+infantry and cavalry now stationed along the border. People enough will
+settle along this line to protect themselves. It will permanently settle
+the Indian question, saving the people millions each year. It will
+effectually destroy the present monopoly, and in this way greatly
+increase production and consumption. It will double our trade with
+China and Japan, and with the Pacific States as well. It will settle
+the Southern question by filling the Southern States with immigrants,
+diversifying the industries of that section, changing and rebuilding the
+commercial and social fabric; it will do away with the conservatism of
+regret and the prejudice born of isolation. It will transmute to wealth
+the unemployed muscle of the country. It will rescue California from
+the control of a single corporation, from the government of an oligarchy
+united, watchful, despotic, and vindictive. It will liberate the
+farmers, the merchants, and even the politicians of the Pacific coast.
+Besides, it must not be forgotten so to frame the laws and charters that
+Congress shall forever have the control of fares and freights. In this
+way the public will be perfectly protected and the Government perfectly
+secured.
+
+Look at the map, and you will see the immense advantages its
+construction will give to the entire country, not only to the South, but
+to the East and West as well. It is one hundred and fifty miles nearer
+from Chicago to San Diego than to San Francisco. You will see that the
+whole of Texas, a State containing two hundred and ten thousand square
+miles; a State four times as large as Illinois, five times as large
+as New York, capable of supporting a population of twenty millions of
+people, is put in direct and immediate communication with the whole
+country. Territory to the extent of nearly a million square miles
+will be given to agriculture, trade, commerce, and mining, by the
+construction of this line.
+
+Let this road be built, and we shall feel again the enthusiasm born
+of enterprise. In the vast stagnation there will be at last a current.
+Something besides waiting is necessary to secure, or to even hasten, the
+return of prosperity. Secure the completion of this line and extend the
+time for building the Northern Pacific, and confidence and employment
+will return together.
+
+More men must cultivate the soil. In the older States lands are too
+high. It requires too much capital to commence. There are so many
+failures in business; so many merchants, traders, and manufacturers have
+been wrecked and stranded upon the barren shores of bankruptcy, that
+the people are beginning to prefer the small but certain profits of
+agriculture to the false and splendid promises of speculation. We must
+open new territories; we must give the mechanics now out of employment
+an opportunity to cultivate the soil--not as day-laborers but as owners;
+not as tenants, but as farmers. Something must be done to develop the
+resources of this country. With the best lands of the world; with a
+population intellectual, energetic, and ingenious far beyond the average
+of mankind; with the richest mines of the globe; with plenty of capital;
+with a surplus of labor; with thousands of arms folded in enforced
+idleness; with billions of gold asking to be dug; with millions of acres
+waiting for the plow, thousands upon thousands are in absolute want.
+
+New avenues must be opened. All our territory must be given to
+immigration. Greater facilities must be offered. Obstacles that cannot
+be overcome by individual enterprise must be conquered by the Government
+for the good of all. Every man out of employment is impoverishing the
+country. Labor transmutes muscle into wealth. Idleness is a rust that
+devours even gold. For five years we have been wasting the labor of
+millions--wasting it for lack of something to do. Prosperity has been
+changed to want and discontent. On every hand the poor are asking for
+work. That is a wretched government where the honest and industrious
+beg, unsuccessfully, for the right to toil; where those who are willing,
+anxious, and able to work, cannot get bread. If everything is to be left
+to the blind and heartless working of the laws of supply and demand, why
+have governments? If the nation leaves the poor to starve, and the weak
+and unfortunate to perish, it is hard to see for what purpose the nation
+should be preserved. If our statesmen are not wise enough to foster
+great enterprises, and to adopt a policy that will give us prosperity,
+it may be that the laboring classes, driven to frenzy by hunger, the
+bitterness of which will be increased by seeing others in the midst of
+plenty, will seek a remedy in destruction.
+
+The transcontinental commerce of this country should not be in the
+clutch and grasp of one corporation. All sections of the Union should,
+as far as possible, be benefited. Cheap rates will come, and can be
+maintained only by competition. We should cultivate commercial relations
+with China and Japan. Six hundred millions of people are slowly awaking
+from a lethargy of six thousand years. In a little while they will have
+the wants of civilized men, and America will furnish a large proportion
+of the articles demanded by these people. In a few years there will be
+as many ships upon the Pacific as upon the Atlantic. In a few years our
+trade with China will be far greater than with Europe. In a few years
+we will sustain the same relation to the far East that Europe once
+sustained to us. America for centuries to come will supply six hundred
+millions of people with the luxuries of life. A country that expects to
+control the trade of other countries must develop its own resources to
+the utmost. We have pursued a small, a mean, and a penurious course.
+Demagogues have ridden into office and power upon the cry of economy,
+by opposing every measure looking to the improvement of the country, by
+endeavoring to see how cheaply nothing could be done. A government, like
+an individual, should live up to its privileges; it should husband its
+resources, simply that it may use them. A nation that expects to control
+the commerce of half a world must have its money equal with gold and
+silver. It must have the money of the world.
+
+Whenever the laboring men are out of employment they begin to hate the
+rich. They feel that the dwellers in palaces, the riders in carriages,
+the wearers of broadcloth, silk, and velvet have in some way been
+robbing them. As a matter of fact, the palace builders are the friends
+of labor. The best form of charity is extravagance. When you give a man
+money, when you toss him a dollar, although you get nothing, the man
+loses his manhood. To help others help themselves is the only real
+charity. There is no use in boosting a man who is not climbing. Whenever
+I see a splendid home, a palace, a magnificent block, I think of the
+thousands who were fed--of the women and children clothed, of the
+firesides made happy.
+
+A rich man living up to his privileges, having the best house, the
+best furniture, the best horses, the finest grounds, the most beautiful
+flowers, the best clothes, the best food, the best pictures, and all the
+books that he can afford, is a perpetual blessing.
+
+The prodigality of the rich is the providence of the poor.
+
+The extravagance of wealth makes it possible for the poor to save.
+
+The rich man who lives according to his means, who is extravagant in the
+best and highest sense, is not the enemy of labor. The miser, who lives
+in a hovel, wears rags, and hoards his gold, is a perpetual curse. He is
+like one who dams a river at its source.
+
+The moment hard times come the cry of economy is raised. The press, the
+platform, and the pulpit unite in recommending economy to the rich. In
+consequence of this cry, the man of wealth discharges servants, sells
+horses, allows his carriage to become a hen-roost, and after taking
+employment and food from as many as he can, congratulates himself that
+he has done his part toward restoring prosperity to the country.
+
+In that country where the poor are extravagant and the rich economical
+will be found pauperism and crime; but where the poor are economical and
+the rich are extravagant, that country is filled with prosperity.
+
+The man who wants others to work to such an extent that their lives are
+burdens, is utterly heartless. The toil of the world should continually
+decrease. Of what use are your inventions if no burdens are lifted from
+industry--if no additional comforts find their way to the home of labor;
+why should labor fill the world with wealth and live in want?
+
+Every labor-saving machine should help the whole world. Every one should
+tend to shorten the hours of labor.
+
+Reasonable labor is a source of joy. To work for wife and child, to toil
+for those you love, is happiness; provided you can make them happy. But
+to work like a slave, to see your wife and children in rags, to sit at
+a table where food is coarse and scarce, to rise at four in the morning,
+to work all day and throw your tired bones upon a miserable bed at
+night, to live without leisure, without rest, without making those you
+love comfortable and happy--this is not living--it is dying--a slow,
+lingering crucifixion.
+
+The hours of labor should be shortened. With the vast and wonderful
+improvements of the nineteenth century there should be not only the
+necessaries of life for those who toil, but comforts and luxuries as
+well.
+
+What is a reasonable price for labor? I answer: Such a price as will
+enable the man to live; to have the comforts of life; to lay by a little
+something for his declining years, so that he can have his own home, his
+own fireside; so that he can preserve the feelings of a man.
+
+Every man ought to be willing to pay for what he gets. He ought to
+desire to give full value received. The man who wants two dollars' worth
+of work for one is not an honest man.
+
+I sympathize with every honest effort made by the children of labor
+to improve their condition. That is a poorly governed country in which
+those who do the most have the least. There is something wrong when men
+are obliged to beg for leave to toil. We are not yet a civilized people;
+when we are, pauperism and crime will vanish from our land.
+
+There is one thing, however, of which I am glad and proud, and that is,
+that society is not, in our country, petrified; that the poor are not
+always poor.
+
+The children of the poor of this generation may, and probably will, be
+the rich of the next. The sons of the rich of this generation may be the
+poor of the next; so that after all, the rich fear and the poor hope.
+
+I sympathize with the wanderers, with the vagrants out of employment;
+with the sad and weary men who are seeking for work. When I see one of
+these men, poor and friendless--no matter how bad he is--I think that
+somebody loved him once; that he was once held in the arms of a mother;
+that he slept beneath her loving eyes, and wakened in the light of her
+smile. I see him in the cradle, listening to lullabies sung soft and
+low, and his little face is dimpled as though touched by the rosy
+fingers of Joy.
+
+And then I think of the strange and winding paths, the weary roads he
+has traveled from that mother's arms to vagrancy and want.
+
+There should be labor and food for all. We invent; we take advantage of
+the forces of nature; we enslave the winds and waves; we put shackles
+upon the unseen powers and chain the energy that wheels the world. These
+slaves should release from bondage all the children of men.
+
+By invention, by labor--that is to say, by working and thinking--we
+shall compel prosperity to dwell with us.
+
+Do not imagine that wealth can be created by law; do not for a moment
+believe that paper can be changed to gold by the fiat of Congress.
+
+Do not preach the heresy that you can keep a promise by making another
+in its place that is never to be kept. Do not teach the poor that the
+rich have conspired to trample them into the dust.
+
+Tell the workingmen that they are in the majority; that they can make
+and execute the laws.
+
+Tell them that since 1873 the employers have suffered about as much as
+the employed.
+
+Tell them that the people who have the power to make the laws should
+never resort to violence. Tell them never to envy the successful. Tell
+the rich to be extravagant and the poor to be economical.
+
+Tell every man to use his best efforts to get him a home. Without a
+home, without some one to love, life and country are meaningless words.
+Upon the face of the patriot must have fallen the firelight of home.
+
+Tell the people that they must have honest money, so that when a man has
+a little laid by for wife and child, it will comfort him even in death;
+so that he will feel that he leaves something for bread, something that,
+in some faint degree, will take his place; that he has left the coined
+toil of his hands to work for the loved when he is dust.
+
+Tell your representatives in Congress to improve our rivers and harbors;
+to release our transcontinental commerce from the grasp of monopoly;
+to open all our territories, and to build up our trade with the whole
+world.
+
+Tell them not to issue a dollar of fiat paper, but to redeem every
+promise the nation has made.
+
+If fiat money is ever issued it will be worthless, for the folly that
+would issue has not the honor to pay when the experiment fails.
+
+Tell them to put their trust in work. Debts can be created by law, but
+they must be paid by labor.
+
+Tell them that "fiat money" is madness and repudiation is death.
+
+
+
+
+SUFFRAGE ADDRESS.
+
+     * This address was delivered at a Suffrage Meeting in
+     Washington, D. C., January 24,1880
+
+
+1880.
+
+LADIES and Gentlemen: I believe the people to be the only rightful
+source of political power, and that any community, no matter where, in
+which any citizen is not allowed to have his voice in the making of
+the laws he must obey, that community is a tyranny. It is a matter of
+astonishment to me that a meeting like this is necessary in the Capital
+of the United States. If the citizens of the District of Columbia are
+not permitted to vote, if they are not allowed to govern themselves,
+and if there is no sound reason why they are not allowed to govern
+themselves, then the American idea of government is a failure. I do not
+believe that only the rich should vote, or that only the whites should
+vote, or that only the blacks should vote. I do not believe that
+right depends upon wealth, upon education, or upon color. It depends
+absolutely upon humanity. I have the right to vote because I am a man,
+because I am an American citizen, and that right I should and am willing
+to share equally with every human being. There has been a great deal
+said in this country of late in regard to giving the right of suffrage
+to women. So far as I am concerned I am willing that every woman in the
+nation who desires that privilege and honor shall vote. If any woman
+wants to vote I am too much of a gentleman to say she shall not. She
+gets her right, if she has it, from precisely the same source that I get
+mine, and there are many questions upon which I would deem it desirable
+that women should vote, especially upon the question of peace or war.
+If a woman has a child to be offered upon the altar of that Moloch, a
+husband liable to be drafted, and who loves a heart that can be entered
+by the iron arrow of death, she surely has as much right to vote for
+peace as some thrice-besotted sot who reels to the ballot-box and
+deposits a vote for war. I believe, and always have, that there is
+only one objection to a woman voting, and that is, the men are not
+sufficiently civilized for her to associate with them, and for several
+years I have been doing what little I can to civilize them. The only
+question before this meeting, as I understand it, is, Shall the people
+of this District manage their own affairs--whether they shall vote their
+own taxes and select their own officers who are to execute the laws they
+make? and for one, I say there is no human being with ingenuity enough
+to frame an argument against this question. It is all very well to say
+that Congress will do this, but Congress has a great deal to do
+besides. There is enough before that body coming from all the States and
+Territories of the Union, and the numberless questions arising in the
+conduct of the General Government. I am opposed to a government where
+the few govern the many. I am opposed to a government that depends upon
+suppers, and upon flattery; upon crooking the hinges of the knee; upon
+favors, upon subterfuges. We want to be manly men in this District. We
+must direct and control our own affairs, and if we are not capable of
+doing it, there is no part of the Union where they are capable. It is
+said there is a vast amount of ignorance here. That is true; but that
+is also true of every section of the United States. There is too much
+ignorance and there will continue to be until the people become great
+enough, generous enough, and splendid enough to see that no child shall
+grow up in their midst without a good, common-school education. The
+people of this District are capable of managing their educational
+affairs if they are allowed to do so. The fact is, a man now living in
+the District lives under a perpetual flag of truce. He is nobody. He
+counts for nothing. He is not noticed except as a suppliant. Nothing as
+a citizen. That day should pass away. It will be a perpetual education
+for this people to govern themselves, and until they do they cannot
+be manly men. They say, though, that there is a vast rabble here. Very
+well. Make your election laws so as to exclude the vast rabble. Let it
+be understood that no man shall vote who has not lived here at least one
+year.
+
+Let your registration laws prohibit any man from voting unless he has
+been registered at least six months. We do not want to be governed by
+people who have no abode here--who are political Bedouins of the desert.
+We want to be governed by people who live with us--who live somewhere
+among us, and whom somebody knows, and if a law is properly framed there
+will be no trouble about self-government in the District of Columbia.
+Let the experiment be tried here of a perfect, complete and honest
+registration; let every man, no matter who he is or where he comes from,
+vote only by strict compliance with a good registry law. We can have a
+fair election, and wherever there is a fair election there will be
+good government. Our Government depends for its stability upon honest
+elections. The great principle underlying our system of government is
+that the people have the virtue and the patriotism to govern themselves.
+That is the foundation stone, the corner and the base of our edifice,
+and upon it our Government is on trial to-day. And until a man is
+considered infamous who casts an illegal vote, our Government will not
+be safe. Whoever casts an illegal vote knowingly is a traitor to the
+principle upon which our Government is founded. And whoever deprives a
+citizen of his right to vote is also a traitor to our Government. When
+these things are understood; when the finger of public scorn shall be
+pointed at every man who votes illegally, or unlawfully prevents an
+honest vote, then you will have a splendid Government. It is humiliating
+for one hundred and seventy-five thousand people to depend simply upon
+the right of petition. The few will disregard the petition of the many.
+
+I have not one word to say against the officers of the District. Not a
+word. But let them do as well as they can; that is no justification. It
+is no justification of a monarchy that the king is a good man; it is no
+justification of a tyranny that the despot does justice. There may come
+another who will do injustice; and a free people like ours should not be
+satisfied to be governed by strangers. They would better have bad men
+of their own choosing than to have good men forced upon them. You
+have property here, and you have a right to protect it, and a right to
+improve it. You have life and liberty and the right to protect it. You
+have a right to say what money shall be assessed and collected and paid
+for that protection. You have laws and you have a right to have them
+executed by officers of your own selection, and by nobody else. In my
+judgment, all that is necessary to have these things done is to have the
+subject properly laid before Congress, and let that body thoroughly
+and perfectly understand the situation. There is no member there,
+who rightly understanding our wishes, will dare continue this
+disfranchisement of the people. We have the same right to vote that
+their constituents have, precisely--no more and no less.
+
+This District ought to have one representative in Congress, a
+representative with a right to speak--not a tongueless dummy. The idea
+of electing a delegate who has simply the privilege of standing around!
+We ought to have a representative who has not only the right to
+talk, but who will talk. This District has the right to a vote in the
+committees of Congress, and not simply the privilege of receiving a
+little advice. And more than that, this District ought to have at least
+one electoral vote in a selection of a President of the United States.
+A smaller population than yours is represented not only in Congress, but
+in the Electoral College. If it is necessary to amend the Constitution
+to secure these rights let us try and have it amended; and when
+that question is put to the people of the whole country they will be
+precisely as willing that the people of the District of Columbia shall
+have an equal voice as that they themselves should have a voice.
+
+Let us stop at no half-way ground, but claim, and keep claiming all
+our rights until somebody says we shall have them. And let me tell you
+another thing: Once have the right of self-government recognized here,
+have a delegate in Congress, and an electoral vote for President,
+and thousands will be willing to come here and become citizens of
+the District. As it is, the moment a man settles here his American
+citizenship falls from him like dead leaves from a tree. From that
+moment he is nobody. Every American citizen wants a little political
+power--wants to cast his vote for the rulers of the nation. He wants to
+have something to say about the laws he has to obey, and they are not
+willing to come here and disfranchise themselves. The moment it is known
+that a man is from the District he has no influence, and no one cares
+what his political opinions may be. Now, let us have it so that we can
+vote and be on an equality with the rest of the voters of the United
+States. This Government was founded upon the idea that the only
+source of power is the people. Let us show at the Capital that we have
+confidence in that principle; that every man should have a vote and
+voice in the South, in the North, everywhere, no matter how low his
+condition, no matter that he was a slave, no matter what his color is,
+or whether he can read or write, he is clothed with the right to
+name those who make the laws he is to obey. While the lowest and most
+degraded in every State in this Union have that right, the best and most
+intelligent in the District have not that right. It will not do. There
+is no sense in it--there is no justice in it--nothing American in it.
+If this were the case in some of the capitals of Europe we would not be
+surprised; but here in the United States, where we have so much to say
+about the right of self-government, that two hundred thousand people
+should not have the right to say who shall make, and who shall execute
+the laws is at least an anomaly and a contradiction of our theory of
+government, and for one, I propose to do what little I can to correct
+it. It has been said that you had once here the right of self-government.
+If I understand it, the right you had was to elect somebody to some
+office, and all the other officers were appointed. You had no control
+over your Legislature; you had very little control over your other
+officers, and the people of the District were held responsible for what
+was actually done by the appointing power. We want no appointing power.
+If it is necessary to have a police magistrate, I say the people are
+competent to elect that magistrate; and if he is not a good man they
+are qualified to select another in his place. You ought to elect your
+judges. I do not want the office of the Judiciary so far from the people
+that it may feel entirely independent. I want every officer in this
+District held-accountable to the people, and, unless he discharges his
+duties faithfully, the people will put him out, and select another in
+his stead.
+
+I want it understood that no American citizen can be forced to pay
+a dollar in a State or in the district where he lives who is not
+represented, and where he has not the right to vote. It is all tyranny,
+and all infamous. The people of the United States wonder to-day that you
+have submitted to this outrage as long as you have.
+
+Neither do I believe that only the rich should have the right to vote;
+that only they should govern; or that only the educated should govern.
+I have noticed among educated men many who did not know enough to
+govern themselves. I have known many wealthy men who did not believe
+in liberty, in giving the people the same rights they claimed for
+themselves. I believe in that government where the ballot of Lazarus
+counts as much as the vote of Dives. Let the rich, let the educated,
+govern the people by moral suasion and by example and by kindness, and
+not by brute force. And in a community like this, where the avenues to
+distinction are open alike to all, there will be many more reasons for
+acting like men. When you can hold any position, when every citizen can
+have conferred upon him honor and responsibility, there is some stimulus
+to be a man. But in a community where but the few are clothed with power
+by appointment, no incentive exists among the people. If the avenues to
+distinction and honor are open to all, such a government is beneficial
+on every hand, and the poorest man in the community may say to himself,
+"If I pursue the right course the very highest place is open to me." And
+the poorest man, with his little tow-headed boy on his knee, can say,
+"John, all the avenues are open to you; although I am poor, you may be
+rich, and while I am obscure, you may become distinguished."
+
+That idea sweetens every hour of toil and renders holy every drop of
+sweat that rolls down the face of labor. I hate tyranny in every form.
+I despise it, and I execrate a tyrant wherever he may be, and in every
+country where the people are struggling for the right of self-government
+I sympathize with them in their struggle. Wherever the sword of
+rebellion is drawn in favor of human rights I am a rebel. I sympathize
+with all the people in Europe who are endeavoring to push kings from
+thrones and struggling for the right to govern themselves. America ought
+to send greeting to every part of the world where such a struggle is
+pending, and we of the District of Columbia ought to be able to join
+in the greeting, but we never shall be until we have the right of
+self-government ourselves. No man who is a good citizen can have any
+objection to self-government here. No man can be opposed to it who
+believes that our people have enough wisdom, enough virtue, enough
+patriotism to govern themselves. The man who doubts the right of the
+people to govern themselves casts a little doubt upon the question,
+simply because he is not man enough himself to believe in liberty. I
+would trust the poor of this country with our liberties as soon as I
+would the rich. I will trust the huts and hovels, just as soon as I will
+the mansions and palaces. I will trust those who work by the day in the
+street as soon as I will the bankers of the United States. I will trust
+the ignorant--even the ignorant. Why? Because they want education, and
+no people in this country are so anxious to have their children educated
+as those who are not educated themselves. I will trust the ignorant with
+the liberties of this country quicker than I would some of the educated
+who doubt the principles upon which our Government is founded. But
+let the intelligent do what they can to instruct the ignorant. Let the
+wealthy do what they can to give the blessings of liberty to the poor,
+and then this Government will remain forever. The time is passing away
+when any man of genius can be respected who will not use that genius
+in elevating his fellow-man. The time is passing away when men, however
+wealthy, can be respected unless they use their millions for the
+elevation of mankind. The time is coming when no man will be called an
+honest man who is not willing to give to every other man, be he white or
+black, every right that he asks for himself.
+
+For my part, I am willing to live under a government where all govern,
+and am not willing to live under any other. I am willing to live where
+I am on an equality with other men, where they have precisely my rights,
+and no more; and I despise any government that is not based upon this
+principle of human equality. Now, let us go just for that one
+thing, that we have the same right as any other people in the
+United States--that is, to govern this District ourselves. Let us be
+represented in the lawmaking power, and let us advocate a change in the
+fundamental law so that the people of this District shall be entitled
+to one vote as to who shall be President of the United States. And when
+that is done and our people are clothed with the panoply of citizenship,
+you will find this District growing not to two hundred thousand, but
+in a little while one million of people will live here. Now, for one, I
+have not the slightest feeling against members of Congress for what
+has been done. I believe when this matter is laid before them fully and
+properly you will find few men in that august body who will vote against
+the proposition. They have had trouble enough. They do not understand
+our affairs. They never did, never will, never can. No one who does not
+live here will. The public interests are so many and so conflicting, and
+touch the sides of so many, that the people must attend to this matter
+themselves. They know when they want a market, a judge, or a collector
+of taxes, and nobody else does and nobody else has a right to.
+
+And instead of going up to Congress and standing around some
+committee-room with a long petition in your hands, begging somebody to
+wait just one moment, it will be far better that you should go to the
+polls and elect your representative, who can attend to your interests in
+Congress. But above all things, I want to warn you, charge you, beseech
+you, that in any legislation upon this subject you must secure a
+registration law that will prevent the casting of an illegal vote.
+Do this before it is known whether the District is Republican or
+Democratic. I do not care. No matter how much of a Republican I am,
+absolutely, I would rather be governed by Democrats who live here than
+by Republicans who do not. And now, while it is not known whether this
+is a Democratic or Republican community, let us get up a registration
+that no one can violate; because the moment you have an election, and
+it is ascertained to be either Democratic or Republican, the victorious
+party may be opposed to any registration or any legislation that will
+put in jeopardy their power. I have lived long enough to be satisfied
+that any State in this Union, no matter whether Democratic or
+Republican, will be safe as long as the people have the right to vote,
+and to see that the ballots will be counted. This country is now upon
+trial. In nearly every State in this Union there is liable to happen
+just the same thing that only the other day happened in Maine.
+
+In every State there can be two legislatures, one in the State-house and
+the other on the fence. Let us in this District so guard the right
+to vote and the counting of the ballots, that we shall know after the
+election who has been elected and know with certainty the men who have
+been elected by the legal voters of the District.
+
+It becomes us all, whether Republicans or Democrats, to unite in
+securing such a law. Let us act together, Democrats and Republicans,
+black and white, rich and poor, educated and ignorant--let us all unite
+upon the principle that we have the right to govern ourselves. Then
+it will make no difference whether the District of Columbia shall be
+Democratic or Republican, provided it is the will of a legal majority of
+her people.
+
+Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you.
+
+
+
+
+WALL STREET SPEECH.
+
+     * A political demonstration was made in Wall Street
+     yesterday afternoon that stands without a rival among the
+     many out-door meetings in that place, which for years have
+     been memorable features of Presidential campaigns.
+
+     Bankers and brokers, members of the Produce Exchange, and
+     dry goods merchants assembled at their respective rendezvous
+     and marched in Imposing processions to the open space in
+     front of the Sub-Treasury building, from the steps of which
+     Col. Ingersoll delivered an address. Written words are
+     entirely inadequate to describe this demonstration of Wall
+     Street business men. It never was equaled in point of
+     numbers, respectability or enthusiasm, even during the
+     excitement caused by the outbreak of the Rebellion.
+     Throughout the day the business houses, banking offices and
+     public buildings down town were gay with flags and bunting.
+     Business was practically suspended all day, and the
+     principal topic of conversation on the Exchanges and m
+     offices and stores was the coming meeting. Long before the
+     hour set, well-dressed people began to gather near the Sub-
+     Treasury Building and by two o'clock Wall Street, from Broad
+     and Nassau half way down to William, was passable only with
+     difficulty. While the crowd was fast gathering on every
+     hand, Graiulla's band, stationed upon the corner buttress
+     near the Sub-Treasury, struck up a patriotic air, and in a
+     few minutes the throngs had swelled to such proportions that
+     the police had all they could do to maintain a thoroughfare.
+     A few minutes more ana the distant strains of another band
+     attracted all eyes toward Broadway, where the head of the
+     procession was seen turning into Wall Street. Ten abreast
+     and every man a gentleman, they marched by. At this time
+     Wall street from half way to William Street to half way to
+     Broadway, Nassau Street half way to Pine, and Broad Street
+     as far as the eye could reach, were densely packed with
+     people from side to side. Everything else, except the
+     telegraph-poles and the tops of the lamp-posts, was hidden
+     from view. Every window, roof, stoop, and projecting point
+     was covered. The Produce Exchange men finding Broad Street
+     impassable made a detour to the east and marched up Wall
+     Street, filling that thoroughfare to William. It was a
+     tremendous crowd In point of numbers, and its composition
+     was entirely of gentlemen--men with refined, intelligent
+     faces--bankers, brokers, merchants of all kinds--real
+     business men. Thousands of millions of dollars were
+     represented in It. On the left of the Sub-Treasury steps a
+     platform had been erected, with a sounding board covering
+     the rear and top. A national flag floated from its roof, and
+     its railing was draped with other flags. After the arrival
+     of the several organizations the banners they bore were hung
+     at the sides by way of further ornamentation. Mr. Jackson S.
+     Schultz then introduced Col. Ingersoll, the speaker of the
+     day. The cheering was terrific for several minutes. Raising
+     his hand for silence, Col. Ingersoll then delivered his
+     address.--New York Times, October 29th, 1880.
+
+
+N.Y. CITY.
+
+(Garfield Campaign.)
+
+1880.
+
+FELLOW-CITIZENS of the Great City of New York: This is the grandest
+audience I ever saw. This audience certifies that General James A.
+Garfield is to be the next President of the United States. This audience
+certifies that a Republican is to be the next mayor of the city of
+New York. This audience certifies that the business men of New York
+understand their interests, and that the business men of New York are
+not going to let this country be controlled by the rebel South and the
+rebel North. In 1860 the Democratic party appealed to force; now it
+appeals to fraud. In 1860 the Democratic party appealed to the sword;
+now it appeals to the pen. It was treason then, it is forgery now. The
+Democratic party cannot be trusted with the property or with the honor
+of the people of the United States.
+
+The city of New York owes a great debt to the country. Every man that
+has cleared a farm has helped to build New York; every man that helped
+to build a railway helped to build up the palaces of this city. Where
+I am now speaking are the termini of all the railways in the United
+States. They all come here. New York has been built up by the labor of
+the country, and New York owes it to the country to protect the best
+interests of the country.
+
+The farmers of Illinois depend upon the merchants, the brokers and the
+bankers, upon the gentlemen of New York, to beat the rabble of New York.
+You owe to yourselves; you owe to the great Re public; and this city
+that does the business of a hemisphere--this city that will in ten years
+be the financial centre of this world--owes it to itself, to be true to
+the great principles that have allowed it to exist and flourish.
+
+The Republicans of New York ought to say that this shall forever be a
+free country. The Republicans of New York ought to say that free speech
+shall forever be held sacred in the United States. The Republicans of
+New York ought to see that the party that defended the Nation shall
+still remain in power. The Republicans of New York should see that
+the flag is safely held by the hands that defended it in war. The
+Republicans of New York know that the prosperity of the country depends
+upon good government, and they also know that good government
+means protection to the people--rich and poor, black and white. The
+Republicans of New York know that a black friend is better than a white
+enemy. They know that a negro while fighting for the Government, is
+better than any white man who will fight against it.
+
+The Republicans of New York know that the colored party in the South
+which allows every man to vote as he pleases, is better than any white
+man who is opposed to allowing a negro to cast his honest vote. A black
+man in favor of liberty is better than a white man in favor of slavery.
+The Republicans of New York must be true to their friends. This
+Government means to protect all its citizens, at home and abroad, or it
+becomes a byword in the mouths of the nations of the world.
+
+Now, what do we want to do? We are going to have an election next
+Tuesday, and every Republican knows why he is going to vote the
+Republican ticket; while every Democrat votes his without knowing why.
+A Republican is a Republican because he loves something; a Democrat is a
+Democrat because he hates something. A Republican believes in progress;
+a Democrat in retrogression. A Democrat is a "has been." He is a "used
+to be." The Republican party lives on hope; the Democratic on memory.
+The Democrat keeps his back to the sun and imagines himself a great man
+because he casts a great shadow. Now, there are certain things we want
+to preserve--that the business men of New York want to preserve--and,
+in the first place, we want an honest ballot. And where the Democratic
+party has power there never has been an honest ballot. You take the
+worst ward in this city, and there is where you will find the greatest
+Democratic majority. You know it, and so do I.
+
+There is not a university in the North, East or West that has not in it
+a Republican majority. There is not a penitentiary in the United States
+that has not in it a Democratic majority--and they know it. Two
+years ago, about two hundred and eighty-three convicts were in
+the penitentiary of Maine. Out of that whole number there was one
+Republican, and only one. [A voice--"Who was the man?"] Well, I do
+not know, but he broke out. He said that he did not mind being in the
+penitentiary, but the company was a little more than he could stand.
+
+You cannot rely upon that party for an honest ballot. Every law that
+has been passed in this country in the last twenty years, to throw
+a safeguard around the ballot-box, has been passed by the Republican
+party. Every law that has been defeated has been defeated by the
+Democratic party. And you know it. Unless we have an honest ballot the
+days of the Republic are numbered; and the only way to get an honest
+ballot is to beat the Democratic party forever. And that is what we are
+going to do. That party can never carry its record; that party is loaded
+down with the infamies of twenty years; yes, that party is loaded down
+with the infamies of fifty years. It will never elect a President in
+this world. I give notice to the Democratic party to-day that it will
+have to change its name before the people of the United States will
+change the administration. You will have to change your natures; you
+will have to change your personnel, and you will have to get enough
+Republicans to join you and tell you how to run a campaign. If you want
+an honest ballot--and every honest man does--then you will vote to keep
+the Republican party in power. What else do you want? You want honest
+money, and I say to the merchants and to the bankers and to the brokers,
+the only party that will give you honest money is the party that resumed
+specie payments. The only party that will give you honest money is the
+party that said a greenback is a broken promise until it is redeemed
+with gold. You can only trust the party that has been honest in
+disaster. From 1863 to 1879--sixteen long years--the Republican party
+was the party of honor and principle, and the Republican party saved the
+honor of the United States. And you know it.
+
+During that time the Democratic party did what it could to destroy our
+credit at home and abroad.
+
+We are not only in favor of free speech, and an honest ballot and honest
+money, but we are for law and order. What part of this country believes
+in free speech--the South or the North? The South would never give free
+speech to the country; there was no free speech in the city of New York
+until the Republican party came into power. The Democratic party has
+not intelligence enough to know that free speech is the germ of this
+Republic. The Democratic party cares little for free speech because it
+has no argument to make--no reasons to offer. Its entire argument is
+summed up and ended in three words--"Hurrah for Hancock!" The Republican
+party believes in free speech because it has something to say; because
+it believes in argument; because it believes in moral suasion; because
+it believes in education. Any man that does not believe in free speech
+is a barbarian. Any State that does not support it is not a civilized
+State.
+
+I have a right to express my opinion, in common with every other human
+being, and I am willing to give to every other human being the right
+that I claim for myself. Republicanism means justice in politics.
+Republicanism means progress in civilization. Republicanism means that
+every man shall be an educated patriot and a gentleman. I want to say to
+you to-day that it is an honor to belong to the Republican party. It
+is an honor to have belonged to it for twenty years; it is an honor to
+belong to the party that elected Abraham Lincoln President. And let
+me say to you that Lincoln was the greatest, the best, the purest, the
+kindest man that has ever sat in the presidential chair. It is an honor
+to belong to the Republican party that gave four millions of men the
+rights of freemen; it is an honor to belong to the party that broke the
+shackles from four millions of men, women and children. It is an honor
+to belong to the party that declared that bloodhounds were not the
+missionaries of civilization. It is an honor to belong to the party that
+said it was a crime to steal a babe from its mother's breast. It is an
+honor to belong to the party that swore that this is a Nation forever,
+one and indivisible. It is an honor to belong to the party that elected
+U. S. Grant President of the United States. It is an honor to belong to
+the party that issued thousands and thousands of millions of dollars
+in promises--that issued promises until they became as thick as the
+withered leaves of winter; an honor to belong to the party that issued
+them to put down a rebellion; an honor to belong to the party that put
+it down; an honor to belong to the party that had the moral courage
+and honesty to make every one of the promises made in war, as good
+as shining, glittering gold in peace. And I tell you that if there is
+another life, and if there is a day of judgment, all you need say upon
+that solemn occasion is, "I was in life and in my death a good square
+Republican."
+
+I hate the doctrine of State Sovereignty because it fostered State
+pride; because it fostered the idea that it is more to be a citizen of a
+State than a citizen of this glorious country. I love the whole country.
+I like New York because it is a part of the country, and I like the
+country because it has New York in it. I am not standing here to-day
+because the flag of New York floats over my head, but because that flag
+for which more heroic blood has been shed than for any other flag that
+is kissed by the air of heaven, waves forever over my head. That is the
+reason I am here.
+
+The doctrine of State Sovereignty was appealed to in defence of the
+slave-trade; the next time in defence of the slave trade as between the
+States; the next time in defence of the Fugitive Slave Law; and if
+there is a Democrat in favor of the Fugitive Slave Law he should be
+ashamed--if not of himself--of the ignorance of the time in which he
+lived.
+
+That Fugitive Slave Law was a compromise so that we might be friends of
+the South. They said in 1850-52: "If you catch the slave we will be your
+friend;" and they tell us now: "If you let us trample upon the rights of
+the black man in the South, we will be your friend." I do not want their
+friendship upon such terms. I am a friend of my friend, and an enemy
+of my enemy. That is my doctrine. We might as well be honest about
+it. Under that doctrine of State Rights, such men as I see before
+me--bankers, brokers, merchants, gentlemen--were expected to turn
+themselves into hounds and chase a poor fugitive that had been lured by
+the love of liberty and guided by the glittering North Star.
+
+The Democratic party wanted you to keep your trade with the South, no
+matter to what depths of degradation you had to sink, and the Democratic
+party to-day says if you want to sell your goods to the Southern people,
+you must throw your honor and manhood into the streets. The patronage of
+the splendid North is enough to support the city of New York.
+
+There is another thing: Why is this city filled with palaces, covered
+with wealth? Because American labor has been protected. I am in favor
+of protection to American labor, everywhere. I am in favor of protecting
+American brain and muscle; I am in favor of giving scope to American
+ingenuity and American skill. We want a market at home, and the only
+way to have it is to have mechanics at home; and the only way to have
+mechanics is to have protection; and the only way to have protection is
+to vote the Republican ticket. You, business men of New York, know that
+General Garfield understands the best interests not only of New York,
+but of the entire country. And you want to stand by the men who will
+stand by you. What does a simple soldier know about the wants of the
+city of New York? What does he know about the wants of this great and
+splendid country? If he does not know more about it than he knows about
+the tariff he does not know much. I do not like to hit the dead. My
+hatred stops with the grave, and I tell you we are going to bury the
+Democratic party next Tuesday. The pulse is feeble now, and if that
+party proposes to take advantage of the last hour, it is time it should
+go into the repenting business. Nothing pleases me better than to see
+the condition of that party to-day. What do the Democrats know on the
+subject of the tariff? They are frightened; they are rattled.
+
+They swear their plank and platform meant nothing. They say in effect:
+"When we put that in we lied; and now having made that confession we
+hope you will have perfect confidence in us from this out." Hancock says
+that the object of the party is to get the tariff out of politics. That
+is the reason, I suppose, why they put that plank in the platform. I
+presume he regards the tariff as a little local issue, but I tell you
+to-day that the great question of protecting American labor never will
+be taken out of politics. As long as men work, as long as the laboring
+man has a wife and family to support, just so long will he vote for the
+man that will protect his wages.
+
+And you can no more take it out of politics than you can take the
+question of Government out of politics. I do not want any question
+taken out of politics. I want the people to settle these questions for
+themselves, and the people of this country are capable of doing it. If
+you do not believe it, read the returns from Ohio and Indiana. There
+are other persons who would take the question of office out of politics.
+Well, when we get the tariff and office both out of politics, then, I
+presume, we will see two parties on the same side. It will not do.
+
+David A. Wells has come to the rescue of the Democratic party on the
+tariff, and shed a few pathetic tears over scrap iron. But it will not
+do. You cannot run this country on scraps.
+
+We believe in the tariff because it gives skilled labor good pay.
+We believe in the tariff because it allows the laboring man to have
+something to eat. We believe in the tariff because it keeps the hands
+of the producer close to the mouth of the devourer. We believe in the
+tariff because it developed American brain; because it builds up our
+towns and cities; because it makes Americans self-supporting; because it
+makes us an independent Nation. And we believe in the tariff because the
+Democratic party does not.
+
+That plank in the Democratic party was intended for a dagger to
+assassinate the prosperity of the North. The Northern people have become
+aroused and that is the plank that is broken in the Democratic platform;
+and that plank was wide enough when it broke to let even Hancock
+through.
+
+Gentlemen, they are gone. They are gone--honor bright. Look at the
+desperate means that have been resorted to by the Democratic party,
+driven to the madness of desperation. Not satisfied with having worn the
+tongue of slander to the very tonsils, not satisfied with attacking the
+private reputation of a splendid man, not satisfied with that, they
+have appealed to a crime; a deliberate and infamous forgery has been
+committed. That forgery has been upheld by some of the leaders of
+the Democratic party; that forgery has been defended by men calling
+themselves respectable. Leaders of the Democratic party have stood by
+and said that they were acquainted with the handwriting of James A.
+Garfield; and that the handwriting in the forged letter was his, when
+they knew that it was absolutely unlike his. They knew it, and no man
+has certified that that was the writing of James A. Garfield who did not
+know that in his throat of throats he told a falsehood.
+
+Every honest man in the city of New York ought to leave such a party
+if he belongs to it. Every honest man ought to refuse to belong to the
+party that did such an infamous crime.
+
+Senator Barnum, chairman of the Democratic Committee, has lost control.
+He is gone, and I will tell you what he puts me in mind of. There was an
+old fellow used to come into town every Saturday and get drunk. He had a
+little yoke of oxen, and the boys out of pity used to throw him into the
+wagon and start the oxen for home. Just before he got home they had
+to go down a long hill, and the oxen, when they got to the brow of it,
+commenced to run. Now and then the wagon struck a stone and gave the old
+fellow an awful jolt, and that would wake him up. After he had looked
+up and had one glance at the cattle he would fall helplessly back to
+the bottom, and always say, "Gee a little, if anything." And that is the
+only order Barnum has been able to give for the last two weeks--"Gee a
+little, if anything." I tell you now that forgery makes doubly sure the
+election of James A. Garfield. The people of the North believe in honest
+dealing; the people of the North believe in free speech and an honest
+ballot. The people of the North believe that this is a Nation; the
+people of the North hate treason; the people of the North hate forgery;
+the people of the North hate slander. The people of the North have made
+up their minds to give to General Garfield a vindication of which any
+American may be forever proud.
+
+James A. Garfield is to-day a poor man, and you know that there is not
+money enough in this magnificent street to buy the honor and manhood of
+James A. Garfield. Money cannot make such a man, and I will swear to you
+that money cannot buy him. James A. Garfield to-day wears the glorious
+robe of honest poverty. He is a poor man; I like to say it here in Wall
+Street; I like to say it surrounded by the millions of America; I like
+to say it in the midst of banks and bonds and stocks; I love to say it
+where gold is piled--that although a poor man, he is rich in honor; in
+integrity he is wealthy, and in brain he is a millionaire. I know him,
+and I like him. So do you all, gentlemen. Garfield was a poor boy, he
+is a certificate of the splendid form of our Government. Most of these
+magnificent buildings have been built by poor boys; most of the success
+of New York began almost in poverty. You know it. The kings of this
+street were once poor, and they may be poor again; and if they are fools
+enough to vote for Hancock they ought to be. Garfield is a certificate
+of the splendor of our Government, that says to every poor boy, "All the
+avenues of honor are open to you." I know him, and I like him. He is a
+scholar; he is a statesman; he is a soldier; he is a patriot; and above
+all, he is a magnificent man; and if every man in New York knew him as
+well as I do, Garfield would not lose a hundred votes in this city.
+
+Compare him with Hancock, and then compare General Arthur with William
+H. English. If there ever was a pure Republican in this world, General
+Arthur is one.
+
+You know in Wall Street, there are some men always prophesying disaster,
+there are some men always selling "short." That is what the Democratic
+party is doing to-day. You know as well as I do that if the Democratic
+party succeeds, every kind of property in the United States will
+depreciate. You know it. There is not a man on the street, who if he
+knew Hancock was to be elected would not sell the stocks and bonds of
+every railroad in the United States "short." I dare any broker here to
+deny it. There is not a man in Wall or Broad Street, or in New York,
+but what knows the election of Hancock will depreciate every share
+of railroad stock, every railroad bond, every Government bond, in the
+United States of America. And if you know that, I say it is a crime to
+vote for Hancock and English.
+
+I belong to the party that is prosperous when the country is prosperous.
+I belong to the party that believes in good crops; that is glad when a
+fellow finds a gold mine; that rejoices when there are forty bushels of
+wheat to the acre; that laughs when every railroad declares dividends,
+that claps both its hands when every investment pays; when the rain
+falls for the farmer, when the dew lies lovingly on the grass. I belong
+to the party that is happy when the people are happy; when the laboring
+man gets three dollars a day; when he has roast beef on his table; when
+he has a carpet on the floor; when he has a picture of Garfield on the
+wall. I belong to the party that is happy when everybody smiles, when
+we have plenty of money, good horses, good carriages; when our wives
+are happy and our children feel glad. I belong to the party whose banner
+floats side by side with the great flag of the country; that does not
+grow fat on defeat.
+
+The Democratic party is a party of famine; it is a good friend of an
+early frost, it believes in the Colorado beetle and the weevil. When the
+crops are bad the Democratic mouth opens from ear to ear with smiles of
+joy; it is in partnership with bad luck; a friend of empty pockets; rags
+help it. I am on the other side. The Democratic party is the party of
+darkness. I believe in the party of sunshine; and in the party that even
+in darkness believes that the stars are shining and waiting for us.
+
+Now, gentlemen, I have endeavored to give you a few reasons for voting
+the Republican ticket; and I have given enough to satisfy any reasonable
+man. And you know it. Do not go with the Democratic party, young man.
+You have a character to make.
+
+You cannot make it, as the Democratic party does, by passing a
+resolution.
+
+If your father voted the Democratic ticket, that is disgrace enough for
+one family. Tell the old man you can stand it no longer. Tell the old
+gentleman that you have made up your mind to stand with the party of
+human progress; and if he asks you why you cannot vote the Democratic
+ticket you tell him: "Every man that tried to destroy the Government,
+every man that shot at the holy flag in heaven, every man that starved
+our soldiers, every keeper of Libby, Andersonville and Salisbury, every
+man that wanted to burn the negro, every one that wanted to scatter
+yellow fever in the North, every man that opposed human liberty, that
+regarded the auction-block as an altar and the howling of the bloodhound
+as the music of the Union, every man who wept over the corpse of
+slavery, that thought lashes on the naked back were a legal tender for
+labor performed, every one willing to rob a mother of her child--every
+solitary one was a Democrat."
+
+Tell him you cannot stand that party. Tell him you have to go with the
+Republican party, and if he asks you why, tell him it destroyed slavery,
+it preserved the Union, it paid the national debt; it made our credit as
+good as that of any nation on the earth.
+
+Tell him it makes every dollar in a four per cent, bond worth a
+dollar and ten cents; that it satisfies the demands of the highest
+civilization. Tell the old man that the Republican party preserved the
+honor of the Nation; that it believes in education; that it looks upon
+the schoolhouse as a cathedral. Tell him that the Republican party
+believes in absolute intellectual liberty; in absolute religious
+freedom; in human rights, and that human rights rise above States.
+Tell him that the Republican party believes in humanity, justice, human
+equality, and that the Republican party believes this is a Nation and
+will be forever and ever; that an honest ballot is the breath of the
+Republic's life; that honest money is the blood of the Republic;
+and that nationality is the great throbbing beat of the heart of the
+Republic. Tell him that. And tell him that you are going to stand by
+the flag that the patriots of the North carried upon the battle-field of
+death. Tell him you are going to be true to the martyred dead; that you
+are going to vote exactly as Lincoln would have voted were he living.
+Tell him that if every traitor dead were living now, there would issue
+from his lips of dust, "Hurrah for Hancock!" that could every patriot
+rise, he would cry for Garfield and liberty; for union and for human
+progress everywhere. Tell him that the South seeks to secure by the
+ballot what it lost by the bayonet; to whip by the ballot those who
+fought it in the field. But we saved the country; and we have the heart
+and brains to take care of it. I will tell you what we are going to do.
+We are going to treat them in the South just as well as we treat the
+people in the North. Victors cannot afford to have malice. The North is
+too magnanimous to have hatred. We will treat the South precisely as we
+treat the North. There are thousands of good people there. Let us give
+them money to improve their rivers and harbors; I want to see the sails
+of their commerce filled with the breezes of prosperity; their fences
+rebuilt; their houses painted. I want to see their towns prosperous; I
+want to see schoolhouses in every town; I want to see books in the hands
+of every child, and papers and magazines in every house; I want to see
+all the rays of light, of civilization of the nineteenth century, enter
+every home of the South; and in a little while you will see that country
+full of good Republicans. We can afford to be kind; we cannot afford to
+be unkind.
+
+I will shake hands cordially with every believer in human liberty; I
+will shake hands with every believer in Nationality; I will shake hands
+with every man who is the friend of the human race. That is my doctrine.
+I believe in the great Republic; in this magnificent country of ours.
+I believe in the great people of the United States. I believe in the
+muscle and brain of America, in the prairies and forests. I believe in
+New York. I believe in the brains of your city. I believe that you
+know enough to vote the Republican ticket. I believe that you are grand
+enough to stand by the country that has stood by you. But whatever
+you do, I never shall cease to thank you for the great honor you have
+conferred upon me this day.
+
+     Note.--This being a newspaper report it is necessarily
+     incomplete.
+
+
+
+
+BROOKLYN SPEECH.
+
+     * The Rev. Henry Ward Beecher and Colonel Robert G.
+     Ingersoll spoke from the same platform last night, and the
+     great preacher introduced the great orator and free-thinker
+     to the grandest political audience that was ever assembled
+     in Brooklyn. The reverend gentleman presided over the
+     Republican mass meeting held in the Academy of Music. When
+     he introduced Ingersoll he did it with a warmth and
+     earnestness of compliment that brought the six thousand
+     lookers-on to their feet to applaud. When the expounder of
+     the Gospel of Christ took the famous atheist by the hand,
+     and shook it fervently, saying that while he respected and
+     honored him for the honesty of his convictions and his
+     splendid labors for patriotism and the country, the
+     enthusiasm knew no bounds, and the great building trembled
+     and vibrated with the storm of applause. With such a scene
+     to harmonize the multitude at the outstart it is not strange
+     that the meeting continued to the end such a one as has no
+     parallel even in these days of feverish political excitement
+     and turmoil. The orator spoke in his best vein and his
+     audience was responsive to the wonderful magical spell of
+     his eloquence. And when his last glowing utterance had lost
+     its echo in the wild storm of applause that rewarded him at
+     the close, Mr. Beecher again stepped forward and, as if to
+     emphasize the earnestness of his previous compliments,
+     proposed a vote of thanks to the distinguished speaker. The
+     vote was a roar of affirmation, whose voice was not stronger
+     when Mr. Ingersoll in turn called upon the audience to give
+     three cheers for the great preacher. They were given, and
+     repeated three times over. Men waved their ats and
+     umbrellas, ladies, of whom there were many hundreds present,
+     waved their handkerchiefs, and men, strangers to each other,
+     shook hands with the fervency of brotherhood. It was indeed
+     a strange scene, and the principal actors in it seemed not
+     less than the most wildly excited man there to appreciate
+     its peculiar import and significance. Standing at the front
+     of the stage, underneath a canopy of nags, at either side
+     great baskets of flowers, they clasped each other's hands,
+     and stood thus for several minutes, while the excited
+     thousands cheered themselves hoarse and applauded wildly.
+
+     As Mr. Beecher began to speak, however, the applause that
+     broke out was deafening.
+
+     In substance Mr. Beecher spoke as follows:--"I am not
+     accustomed to preside at meetings like this; only the
+     exigency of the times could induce me to do It. I am not
+     here either to make a speech, but more especially to
+     introduce the eminent orator of the evening. * * * I stand
+     not as a minister, but as a man among men, pleading the
+     cause of fellowship and equal rights. We are not here as
+     mechanics, as artists, merchants, or professional men, but
+     as fellow-citizens. The gentleman who will speak to-night is
+     in no Conventicle or Church. He is to speak to a great body
+     of citizens, and I take the liberty of saying that I respect
+     him as the man that for a full score and more of years has
+     worked for the right in the great, broad field of humanity,
+     and for the cause of human rights. I consider it an honor to
+     extend to him, as I do now, the warm, earnest, right hand of
+     fellowship." (As Mr. Beecher said this he turned to Mr.
+     Ingersoll and extended his hand. The palms of the two men
+     met with a clasp that was heard all over the house, and was
+     the signal for tumultuous cheering and applause, which
+     continued for several minutes.)
+
+     "I now introduce to you," continued Mr. Beecher, leading Mr.
+     Ingersoll forward, "a man who--and I say it not
+     flatteringly--is the most brilliant speaker of the English
+     tongue of all men on this globe. But as under the brilliancy
+     of the blaze or light we find the living coals of fire,
+     under the lambent flow of his wit and magnificent antithesis
+     we find the glorious flame of genius and honest thought.
+     Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Ingersoll."--New York Herald,
+     October 81st, 1880.
+
+
+(Garfield Campaign.)
+
+1880.
+
+LADIES and Gentlemen: Years ago I made up my mind that there was no
+particular argument in slander. I made up my mind that for parties, as
+well as for individuals, honesty in the long-run is the best policy.
+I made up my mind that the people were entitled to know a man's honest
+thoughts, and I propose to-night to tell you exactly what I think. And
+it may be well enough, in the first place, for me to say that no party
+has a mortgage on me. I am the sole proprietor of myself. No party, no
+organization, has any deed of trust on what little brains I have, and as
+long as I can get my part of the common air I am going to tell my honest
+thoughts. One man in the right will finally get to be a majority. I am
+not going to say a word to-night that every Democrat here will not know
+is true, and, whatever he may say, I will compel him in his heart to
+give three cheers.
+
+In the first place, I wish to admit that during the war there were
+hundreds of thousands of patriotic Democrats. I wish to admit that if it
+had not been for the War Democrats of the North, we never would have put
+down the Rebellion. Let us be honest. I further admit that had it
+not been for other than War Democrats there never would have been a
+rebellion to put down. War Democrats!
+
+Why did we call them War Democrats? Did you ever hear anybody talk about
+a War Republican? We spoke of War Democrats to distinguish them from
+those Democrats who were in favor of peace upon any terms.
+
+I also wish to admit that the Republican party is not absolutely
+perfect. While I believe that it is the best party that ever existed,
+while I believe it has, within its organization, more heart, more brain,
+more patriotism than any other organization that ever existed beneath
+the sun, I still admit that it is not entirely perfect. I admit, in its
+great things, in its splendid efforts to preserve this nation, in its
+grand effort to keep our flag in heaven, in its magnificent effort to
+free four millions of slaves, in its great and sublime effort to save
+the financial honor of this Nation, I admit that it has made some
+mistakes. In its great effort to do right it has sometimes by mistake
+done wrong. And I also wish to admit that the great Democratic party,
+in its effort to get office has sometimes by mistake done right. You see
+that I am inclined to be perfectly fair.
+
+I am going with the Republican party because it is going my way; but if
+it ever turns to the right or left, I intend to go straight ahead.
+
+In every government there is something that ought to be preserved, in
+every government there are many things that ought to be destroyed.
+Every good man, every patriot, every lover of the human race, wishes to
+preserve the good and destroy the bad; and every one in this audience
+who wishes to preserve the good will go with that section of our common
+country--with that party in our country that he honestly believes will
+preserve the good and destroy the bad. It takes a great deal of trouble
+to raise a good Republican. It is a vast deal of labor. The Republican
+party is the fruit of all ages--of self-sacrifice and devotion. The
+Republican party is born of every good thing that was ever done in
+this world. The Republican party is the result of all martyrdom, of
+all heroic blood shed for the right. It is the blossom and fruit of the
+great world's best endeavor. In order to make a Republican you have to
+have schoolhouses. You have to have newspapers and magazines. A good
+Republican is the best fruit of civilization, of all there is of
+intelligence, of art, of music and of song. If you want to make
+Democrats, let them alone. The Democratic party is the settlings of
+this country. Nobody hoes weeds. Nobody takes especial pains to raise
+dog-fennel, and yet it grows under the very hoof of travel, The seeds
+are sown by accident and gathered by chance. But if you want to raise
+wheat and corn you must plough the ground. You must defend and you must
+harvest the crop with infinite patience and toil. It is precisely that
+way--if you want to raise a good Republican you must work. If you wish
+to raise a Democrat give him wholesome neglect. The Democratic party
+flatters the vices of mankind. That party says to the ignorant man, "You
+know enough." It says to the vicious man, "You are good enough."
+
+The Republican party says, "You must be better next year than you are
+this." A Republican takes a man by the collar and says, "You must do
+your best, you must climb the infinite hill of human progress as long as
+you live." Now and then one gets tired. He says, "I have climbed enough
+and so much better than I expected to do that I do not wish to travel
+any farther." Now and then one gets tired and lets go all hold, and he
+rolls down to the very bottom, and as he strikes the mud he springs upon
+his feet transfigured, and says: "Hurrah for Hancock!"
+
+There are things in this Government that I wish to preserve, and there
+are things that I wish to destroy; and in order to convince you that you
+ought to go the way that I am going: it is only fair that I give to
+you my reasons. This is a Republic founded upon intelligence and
+the patriotism of the people, and in every Republic it is absolutely
+necessary that there should be free speech. Free speech is the gem of
+the human soul. Words are the bodies of thought, and liberty gives to
+those words wings, and the whole intellectual heavens are filled with
+light. In a Republic every individual tongue has a right to the general
+ear. In a Republic every man has the right to give his reasons for the
+course he pursues to all his fellow-citizens, and when you say that a
+man shall not speak, you also say that others shall not hear. When
+you say a man shall not express his honest thought you say his
+fellow-citizens shall be deprived of honest thoughts; for of what use
+is it to allow the attorney for the defendant to address the jury if the
+jury has been bought? Of what use is it to allow the jury to bring in a
+verdict of "not guilty," if the defendant is to be hung by a mob? I ask
+you to-night, is not every solitary man here in favor of free speech? Is
+there a solitary Democrat here who dares say he is not in favor of free
+speech? In which part of this country are the lips of thought free--in
+the South or in the North? Which section of our country can you trust
+the inestimable gem of free speech with? Can you trust it to the
+gentlemen of Mississippi or to the gentlemen of Massachusetts? Can you
+trust it to Alabama or to New York? Can you trust it to the South or
+can you trust it to the great and splendid North? Honor bright--honor
+bright, is there any freedom of speech in the South? There never was and
+there is none to-night--and let me tell you why.
+
+They had the institution of human slavery in the South, which could
+not be defended at the bar of public reason. It was an institution that
+could not be defended in the high forum of human conscience. No man
+could stand there and defend the right to rob the cradle--none to defend
+the right to sell the babe from the breast of the agonized mother--none
+to defend the claim that lashes on a bare back are a legal tender for
+labor performed. Every man that lived upon the unpaid labor of another
+knew in his heart that he was a thief. And for that reason he did not
+wish to discuss that question. Thereupon the institution of slavery
+said, "You shall not speak; you shall not reason," and the lips of free
+thought were manacled. You know it. Every one of you. Every Democrat
+knows it as well as every Republican. There never was free speech in the
+South.
+
+And what has been the result? And allow me to admit right here, because
+I want to be fair, there are thousands and thousands of most excellent
+people in the South--thousands of them. There are hundreds and hundreds
+of thousands there who would like to vote the Republican ticket. And
+whenever there is free speech there and whenever there is a free ballot
+there, they will vote the Republican ticket. I say again, there are
+hundreds of thousands of good people in the South; but the institution
+of human slavery prevented free speech, and it is a splendid fact in
+nature that you cannot put chains upon the limbs of others without
+putting corresponding manacles upon your own brain. When the South
+enslaved the negro, it also enslaved itself, and the result was an
+intellectual desert. No book has been produced, with one exception, that
+has added to the knowledge of mankind; no paper, no magazine, no poet,
+no philosopher, no philanthropist, was ever raised in that desert. Now
+and then some one protested against that infamous institution, and
+he came as near being a philosopher as the society in which he lived
+permitted. Why is it that New England, a rock-clad land, blossoms like a
+rose? Why is it that New York is the Empire State of the great Union?
+I will tell you. Because you have been permitted to trade in ideas.
+Because the lips of speech have been absolutely free for twenty years.
+
+We never had free speech in any State in this Union until the Republican
+party was born. That party was rocked in the cradle of intellectual
+liberty, and that is the reason I say it is the best party that ever
+existed in the wide, wide world. I want to preserve free speech, and, as
+an honest man, I look about me and I say, "How can I best preserve
+it?" By giving it to the South or North; to the Democracy or to the
+Republican party? And I am bound, as an honest man, to say free speech
+is safest with its earliest defenders. Where is there such a thing as
+a Republican mob to prevent the expression of an honest thought? Where?
+The people of the South are allowed to come to the North; they are
+allowed to express their sentiments upon every stump in the great East,
+the great West, and in the great Middle States; they go to Maine, to
+Vermont, and to all our States, and they are allowed to speak, and we
+give them a respectful hearing, and the meanest thing we do is to answer
+their arguments.
+
+I say to-night that we ought to have the same liberty to discuss these
+questions in the South that Southerners have in the North. And I say
+more than that, the Democrats of the North ought to compel the Democrats
+of the South to treat the Republicans of the South as well as the
+Republicans of the North treat them. We treat the Democrats well in the
+North; we treat them like gentlemen in the North; and yet they go into
+partnership with the Democracy of the South, knowing that the Democracy
+of the South will not treat Republicans in that section with fairness. A
+Democrat ought to be ashamed of that.
+
+If my friends will not treat other people as well as the friends of the
+other people treat me, I'll swap friends.
+
+First, then, I am in favor of free speech, and I am going with that
+section of my country that believes in free speech; I am going with
+that party that has always upheld that sacred right. When you stop
+free speech, when you say that a thought shall die in the womb of the
+brain,--why, it would have the same effect upon the intellectual world
+that to stop springs at their sources would have upon the physical
+world. Stop the springs at their sources and they cease to gurgle,
+the streams cease to murmur, and the great rivers cease rushing to the
+embrace of the sea. So you stop thought. Stop thought in the brain in
+which it is born, and theory dies; and the great ocean of knowledge to
+which all should be permitted to contribute, and from which all should
+be allowed to draw, becomes a vast desert of ignorance.
+
+I have always said, and I say again, that the more liberty there is
+given away, the more you have. I endeavor to be consistent in my life
+and action. I am a believer in intellectual liberty, and wherever the
+torch of knowledge burns the whole horizon is filled with a glorious
+halo. I am a free man. I would be less than a man if I did not wish
+to hand this flame to my child with the flame increased rather than
+diminished.
+
+Whom will we trust to take care of free speech? Let us consider and be
+honest with one another. The gem of the brain is the innocence of the
+soul.
+
+I am not only in favor of free speech, but I am also in favor of an
+absolutely honest ballot. There is only one emperor in this country;
+there is one czar; only one supreme crown and king, and that is the
+will, the legally expressed will of the majority. Every American citizen
+is a sovereign. The poorest and humblest may wear that crown, the beggar
+holds in his hand that sceptre equally with the proudest and richest,
+and so far as his sovereignty is concerned, the poorest American, he
+who earns but one dollar a day, has the same voice in controlling the
+destiny of the United States as the millionaire. The man who casts an
+illegal vote, the man who refuses to count a legal vote, poisons the
+fountain of power, poisons the springs of justice, and is a traitor
+to the only king in this land. The Government is upon the edge of
+Mexicanization through fraudulent voting. The ballot-box is the throne
+of America; the ballot-box is the ark of the covenant. Unless we see to
+it that every man who has a right to vote, votes, and unless we see
+to it that every honest vote is counted, the days of this Republic are
+numbered.
+
+When you suspect that a Congressman is not elected; when you suspect
+that a judge upon the bench holds his place by fraud, then the people
+will hold the law in contempt and will laugh at the decisions of courts,
+and then come revolution and chaos.
+
+It is the duty of every good man to see to it that the ballot-box is
+kept absolutely pure. It is the duty of every patriot, whether he is
+a Democrat or Republican--and I want further to admit that I believe
+a large majority of Democrats are honest in their opinions, and I know
+that all Republicans _must_ be honest in their opinions. It is the duty,
+then, of all honest men of both parties to see to it that only honest
+votes are cast and counted. Now, honor bright, which section of this
+Union can you trust the ballot-box with?
+
+Do you wish to trust Louisiana, or do you wish to trust Alabama that
+gave, in 1872, thirty-four thousand eight hundred and eighty-eight
+Republican majority and now gives ninety-two thousand Democratic
+majority? And of that ninety-two thousand majority, every one is a lie!
+A contemptible, infamous lie! Because if every voter had been allowed
+to vote, there would have been forty thousand Republican majority.
+Honor bright, can you trust it with the masked murderers who rode in
+the darkness of night to the hut of the freedman and shot him down,
+notwithstanding the supplication of his wife and the tears of his babe?
+Can you trust it to the men who since the close of our war have killed
+more men, simply because those men wished to vote, simply because they
+wished to exercise a right with which they had been clothed by the
+sublime heroism of the North--who have killed more men than were killed
+on both sides in the Revolutionary war; than were killed on both sides
+during the War of 1812; than were killed on both sides in both wars?
+Can you trust them? Can you trust the gentlemen who invented the
+tissue ballot? Do you wish to put the ballot-box in the keeping of the
+shot-gun, of the White-Liners, of the Ku Klux? Do you wish to put the
+ballot-box in the keeping of men who openly swear that they will not be
+ruled by a majority of American citizens if a portion of that majority
+is made of black men? And I want to tell you right here, I like a black
+man who loves this country better than I do a white man who hates it. I
+think more of a black man who fought for our flag than for any white man
+who endeavored to tear it out of heaven!
+
+I say, can you trust the ballot-box to the Democratic party? Read the
+history of the State of New York. Read the history of this great and
+magnificent city--the Queen of the Atlantic--read her history and tell
+us whether you can implicitly trust Democratic returns? Honor bright!
+
+I am not only, then, for free speech, but I am for an honest ballot;
+and in order that you may have no doubt left upon your minds as to which
+party is in favor of an honest vote, I will call your attention to this
+striking fact. Every law that has been passed in every State of this
+Union for twenty long years, the object of which was to guard the
+American ballot-box, has been passed by the Republican party, and in
+every State where the Republican party has introduced such a bill for
+the purpose of making it a law; in every State where such a bill has
+been defeated, it has been defeated by the Democratic party. That ought
+to satisfy any reasonable man to satiety.
+
+I am not only in favor of free speech and an honest ballot, but I am in
+favor of collecting and disbursing the revenues of the United States. I
+want plenty of money to collect and pay the interest on our debt. I want
+plenty of money to pay our debt and to preserve the financial honor of
+the United States. I want money enough to be collected to pay pensions
+to widows and orphans and to wounded soldiers. And the question is,
+which section in this country can you trust to collect and disburse that
+revenue? Let us be honest about it. Which section can you trust? In the
+last four years we have collected four hundred and sixty-eight million
+dollars of the internal revenue taxes. We have collected principally
+from taxes upon high wines and tobacco, four hundred and sixty-eight
+million dollars, and in those four years we have seized, libeled and
+destroyed in the Southern States three thousand eight hundred and
+seventy-four illicit distilleries. And during the same time the Southern
+people have shot to death twenty-five revenue officers and wounded
+fifty-five others, and the only offence that the wounded and dead
+committed was an honest effort to collect the revenues of this country.
+Recollect it--don't you forget it. And in several Southern States
+to-day every revenue collector or officer connected with the revenue is
+furnished by the Internal Revenue Department with a breech-loading
+rifle and a pair of revolvers, simply for the purpose of collecting the
+revenue.
+
+I don't feel like trusting such people to collect the revenue of my
+Government.
+
+During the same four years we have arrested and have indicted seven
+thousand and eighty-four Southern Democrats for endeavoring to defraud
+the revenue of the United States. Recollect--three thousand eight
+hundred and seventy-four distilleries seized. Twenty-five revenue
+officers killed, fifty-five wounded, and seven thousand and eighty-four
+Democrats arrested. Can we trust them?
+
+The State of Alabama in its last Democratic convention passed a
+resolution that no man should be tried in a Federal Court for a
+violation of the revenue laws--that he should be tried in a State Court.
+Think of it--he should be tried in a State Court! Let me tell you how it
+will come out if we trust the Southern States to collect this revenue. A
+couple of Methodist ministers had been holding a revival for a week, and
+at the end of the week one said to the other that he thought it time to
+take up a collection. When the hat was returned he found in it pieces of
+slate-pencils and nails and buttons, but not a single solitary cent--not
+one--and his brother minister got up and looked at the contribution, and
+said, "Let us thank God!" And the owner of the hat said, "What for?" And
+the brother replied, "Because you got your hat back." If we trust the
+South we shan't get our hats back.
+
+I am next in favor of honest money. I am in favor of gold and silver,
+and paper with gold and silver behind it. I believe in silver, because
+it is one of the greatest of American products, and I am in favor of
+anything that will add to the value of an American product. But I want
+a silver dollar worth a gold dollar, even if you make it or have to make
+it four feet in diameter. No government can afford to be a clipper of
+coin. A great Republic cannot afford to stamp a lie upon silver or gold.
+Honest money, an honest people, an honest Nation. When our money is only
+worth eighty cents on the dollar, we feel twenty per cent, below par.
+When our money is good we feel good. When our money is at par, that is
+where we are. I am a profound believer in the doctrine that for nations
+as well as men, honesty is the best policy, always, everywhere, and
+forever.
+
+What section of this country, what party, will give us honest
+money--honor bright--honor bright? I have been told that during the war,
+we had plenty of money. I never saw it. I lived years without seeing a
+dollar. I saw promises for dollars, but not dollars. And the greenback,
+unless you have the gold behind it, is no more a dollar than a bill
+of fare is a dinner. You cannot make a paper dollar without taking a
+dollar's worth of paper. We must have paper that represents money. I
+want it issued by the Government, and I want behind every one of these
+dollars either a gold or silver dollar, so that every greenback under
+the flag can lift up its hand and swear, "I know that my redeemer
+liveth."
+
+When we were running into debt, thousands of people mistook that for
+prosperity, and when we began paying they regarded it as adversity. Of
+course we had plenty when we bought on credit. No man has ever starved
+when his credit was good, if there were no famine in that country. As
+long as we buy on credit we shall have enough. The trouble commences
+when the pay-day arrives. And I do not wonder that after the war
+thousands of people said, "Let us have another inflation." Which party
+said, "No, we must pay the promise made in war"? Honor bright! The
+Democratic party had once been a hard money party, but it drifted from
+its metallic moorings and floated off in the ocean of inflation, and you
+know it. They said, "Give us more money;" and every man that had bought
+on credit and owed a little something on what he had purchased, when the
+property went down commenced crying, or many of them did, for inflation.
+I understand it.
+
+A man, say, bought a piece of land for six thousand dollars; paid five
+thousand dollars on it; gave a mortgage for one thousand dollars, and
+suddenly, in 1873, found that the land would not pay the other thousand.
+The land had resumed, and then he said, looking lugubriously at his note
+and mortgage, "I want another inflation." And I never heard a man call
+for it that did not also say, "If it ever comes, and I don't unload, you
+may shoot me."
+
+It was very much as it is sometimes in playing poker, and I make this
+comparison knowing that hardly a person here will understand it. I have
+been told that along toward morning the man that is ahead suddenly
+says, "I have got to go home. The fact is, my wife is not well." And the
+fellow who is behind says, "Let us have another deal; I have my opinion
+of the fellow that will jump a game." And so it was in the hard times
+of 1873. They said: "Give us another deal; let us get our driftwood back
+into the centre of the stream." And they cried out for more money.
+But the Republican party said: "We do want more money, but not more
+promises. We have got to pay this first, and if we start out again
+upon that wide sea of promise we may never touch the shore." A thousand
+theories were born of want; a thousand theories were born of the fertile
+brain of trouble; and these people said, "After all, what is money? Why,
+it is nothing but a measure of value, just the same as a half bushel or
+yardstick." True; and consequently it makes no difference whether your
+half bushel is of wood or gold or silver or paper; and it makes no
+difference whether your yardstick is gold or paper. But the trouble
+about that statement is this: A half bushel is not a measure of value;
+it is a measure of quantity, and it measures rubies, diamonds and pearls
+precisely the same as corn and wheat. The yardstick is not a measure of
+value; it is a measure of length, and it measures lace worth one hundred
+dollars a yard precisely as it does cent tape. And another reason why it
+makes no difference to the purchaser whether the half bushel is gold or
+silver, or whether the yardstick is gold or paper, you do not buy the
+yardstick; you do not get the half bushel in the trade. And if it were
+so with money--if the people that had the money at the start of the
+trade, kept it after the consummation of the bargain--then it would not
+make any difference what you made your money of. But the trouble is the
+money changes hands. And let me say to-night, money is a thing--it is a
+product of nature--and you can no more make a "fiat" dollar than you
+can make a fiat star. I am in favor of honest money. Free speech is the
+brain of the Republic; an honest ballot is the breath of its life, and
+honest money is the blood that courses through its veins.
+
+If I am fortunate enough to leave a dollar when I die, I want it to be
+a good one. I do not wish to have it turn to ashes in the hands of
+widowhood, or become a Democratic broken promise in the pocket of the
+orphan; I want it money. I want money that will outlive the Democratic
+party. They told us--and they were honest about it--they said, "When
+we have plenty of money, we are prosperous." And I said, "When we are
+prosperous, we have plenty of money." When we are prosperous, then we
+have credit, and credit inflates the currency. Whenever a man buys a
+pound of sugar and says, "Charge it," he inflates the currency; whenever
+he gives his note, he inflates the currency; whenever his word takes the
+place of money, he inflates the currency. The consequence is that when
+we are prosperous, credit takes the place of money, and we have what we
+call "plenty."
+
+But you cannot increase prosperity simply by using promises to pay.
+Suppose you should come to a river that was about dry, so dry that the
+turtle had to help the catfish over the shoals, and there you would see
+the ferryboat, and the gentleman who kept the ferry, up on the sand,
+high and dry, and the cracks all opening in the sun, filled with
+loose oakum, looking like an average Democratic mouth listening to a
+constitutional argument, and you should say to him, "How is business?"
+And he would say, "Dull." And then you would say to him, "Now, what you
+want is more boat." He would probably answer, "If I had a little more
+water I could get along with this one."
+
+Suppose I next came to a man running a railroad, complaining of hard
+times. "Why," said he, "I did a million dollars' worth of business the
+first year and used five hundred thousand dollars' worth of grease. The
+second year I did five hundred thousand dollars' worth of business and
+used four hundred thousand dollars' worth of grease." "Well," said
+I, "the reason your road fell off was because you did not use enough
+grease."
+
+But I want to be fair, and I wish to-night to return my thanks to the
+Democratic party. You did a great and splendid work. You went all over
+the United States and you said upon every stump that a greenback was
+better than gold. You said, "We have at last found the money of the poor
+man. Gold loves the rich; gold haunts banks and safes and vaults; but we
+have money that will go around inquiring for a man that is dead broke.
+We have finally found money that will stay in a pocket with holes in
+it." But, after all, do you know that money is the most social thing
+in this world? If a fellow has one dollar in his pocket, and he meets
+another with two, do you know that dollar is absolutely homesick until
+it gets where the other two are? And yet the Greenbackers told us that
+they had finally invented money that would be the poor mans friend. They
+said, "It is better than gold, better than silver," and they got so many
+men to believe it that when we resumed and said, "Here is your gold for
+your greenback," the fellows who had the greenback said, "We don't want
+it. The greenbacks are good enough for us." Do you know, if they had
+wanted it we could not have given it to them? And so I return my thanks
+to the Greenback party. But allow me to say in this connection, the days
+of their usefulness have passed forever.
+
+Now, I am not foolish enough to claim that the Republican party resumed.
+I am not silly enough to say that John Sherman resumed. But I will tell
+you what I do say. I say that every man who raised a bushel of corn or a
+bushel of wheat or a pound of beef or pork for sale helped to resume. I
+say that the gentle rain and the loving dew helped to resume. The soil
+of the United States impregnated by the loving sun helped to resume. The
+men that dug the coal and the iron and the silver and the copper and the
+gold helped to resume. And the men upon whose foreheads fell the light
+of furnaces helped to resume. And the sailors who fought with the waves
+of the seas helped to resume.
+
+I admit to-night that the Democrats earned their share of the money
+to resume with. All I claim is that the Republican party furnished the
+honesty to pay it over. That is what I claim; and the Republican party
+set the day, and the Republican party worked to the promise. That is
+what I say. And had it not been for the Republican party this Nation
+would have been financially dishonored. I am for honest money, and I am
+for the payment of every dollar of our debt, and so is every Democrat
+now, I take it. But what did you say a little while ago? Did you say we
+could resume? No; you swore we could not, and you swore our bonds would
+be worthless as the withered leaves of winter. And now when a Democrat
+goes to England and sees an American four per cent, quoted at one
+hundred and ten he kind of swells up, and says: "That's the kind of man
+I am." In that country he pretends he was a Republican in this. And I do
+not blame him. I do not begrudge him enjoying respectability when away
+from home. The Republican party is entitled to the credit for keeping
+this Nation grandly and splendidly honest. I say, the Republican party
+is entitled to the credit of preserving the honor of this Nation.
+
+In 1873 came the crash, and all the languages of the world cannot
+describe the agonies suffered by the American people from 1873 to 1879.
+A man who thought he was a millionaire came to poverty; he found
+his stocks and bonds ashes in the paralytic hand of old age. Men who
+expected to live all their lives in the sunshine of joy found themselves
+beggars and paupers. The great factories were closed, the workmen were
+demoralized, and the roads of the United States were filled with tramps.
+In the hovel of the poor and the palace of the rich came the serpent
+of temptation and whispered in the American ear the terrible word
+"Repudiation." But the Republican party said, "No; we will pay every
+dollar. No; we have started toward the shining goal of resumption and we
+never will turn back." And the Republican party struggled until it had
+the happiness of seeing upon the broad shining forehead of American
+labor the words "Financial Honor."
+
+The Republican party struggled until every paper promise was as good
+as gold. And the moment we got back to gold then we commenced to rise
+again. We could not jump until our feet touched something that they
+could be pressed against. And from that moment to this we have been
+going, going, going higher and higher, more prosperous every hour. And
+now they say, "Let us have a change." When I am sick I want a change;
+when I am poor I want a change; and if I were a Democrat I would have a
+personal change. We are prosperous to-day, and must keep so. We are back
+to gold and silver. Let us stay there; and let us stay with the party
+that brought us there.
+
+Now, I am not only in favor of free speech and an honest ballot-box and
+an honest collection of the revenue of the United States, and an honest
+money, but I am in favor of the idea, of the great and splendid
+truth, that this is a Nation one and indivisible. I deny that we are a
+confederacy bound together with ropes of cloud and chains of mist. This
+is a Nation, and every man in it owes his first allegiance to the grand
+old flag for which more brave blood was shed than for any other flag
+that waves in the sight of heaven. There is another thing; we all want
+to live in a land where the law is supreme. We desire to live beneath a
+flag that will protect every citizen beneath its folds. We desire to be
+citizens of a Government so great and so grand that it will command
+the respect of the civilized world. Most of us are convinced that our
+Government is the best upon this earth. It is the only Government
+where manhood, and manhood alone, is not made simply a condition of
+citizenship, but where manhood, and manhood alone, permits its possessor
+to have his equal share in control of the Government. It is the only
+Government in the world where poverty is upon an exact equality with
+wealth, so far as controlling the destiny of the Republic is concerned.
+It is the only Nation where the man clothed in rags stands upon an
+equality with the one wearing purple. It is the only country in the
+world where, politically, the hut is upon an equality with the palace.
+
+For that reason every poor man should stand by this Government, and
+every poor man who does not is a traitor to the best interests of his
+children; every poor man who does not is willing his children should
+bear the badge of political inferiority; and the only way to make this
+Government a complete and perfect success is for the poorest man to
+think as much of his manhood as the millionaire does of his wealth. A
+man does not vote in this country simply because he is rich; he does
+not vote in this country simply because he has an education; he does
+not vote simply because he has talent or genius; we say that he votes
+because he is a man, and that he has his manhood to support; and we
+admit in this country that nothing can be more valuable to any human
+being than his manhood, and for that reason we put poverty on an
+equality with wealth. We say in this country manhood is worth more than
+gold. We say in this country that without Liberty the Nation is not
+worth preserving. Now, I appeal to-day to every poor man; I appeal
+to-day to every laboring man, and I ask him, is there another country on
+this globe where you can have equal rights with others? There is another
+thing; do you want a Government of law or of brute force? In which part
+of this country do you find law supreme? In which part of this country
+can a man find justice in the courts; in the North or in the South?
+Where is crime punished? Where is innocence protected, in the North or
+in the South? Which section of this country will you trust?
+
+You can tell what a man is by the way he treats persons in his power,
+and the man that will sneak and crawl in the presence of greatness, will
+trample the weak when he gets them in his power. What class of people
+does the State have in its power? Criminals and creditors; and you
+can judge of a State by the way it treats its criminals and creditors.
+Georgia is the best State in the South. They have a penitentiary system
+by which they hire out their convict labor. Only two years ago the whole
+thing was examined by a friend of mine, Col. Allston. He had been in the
+rebel army and was my good friend. He used to come to my house day after
+day to see me. He got converted and had the grit to say so. Being
+a member of the Legislature, he had a committee of investigation
+appointed. Now, in order that you may understand the difference, you
+must know that in the Northern penitentiaries the average annual death
+rate is one per cent.; that is, of one thousand convicts, ten will
+die in a year, on the average. That low death rate is because we are
+civilized, because we do not kill; but in the Georgia penitentiary it
+was as high as fifteen, twenty-seven and forty-seven per cent., at a
+time when there was no typhoid or yellow fever, or epidemic of any kind.
+They died for four months at a rate of ten per cent, per month. They
+crowded the convicts in together, regardless of sex. They treated them
+precisely as wild beasts, and many of them were shot down. Persons high
+in authority, Senators of the United States, held interests in those
+contracts, and Robert Allston denounced them. When on a visit he said,
+"I believe when I get home I shall be killed." I told him not to go
+back to Georgia, but to stay in the civilized North; but no, he would go
+back, and on the very day of his arrival he was murdered in cold blood.
+Do you want to trust such men? * * *
+
+The Southern people say this is a Confederacy and they are honest in it.
+They fought for it, they believed it. They believe in the doctrine of
+State Sovereignty, and many Democrats of the North believe in the same
+doctrine. No less a man than Horatio Seymour--standing it may be at the
+head of Democratic statesmen--said, if he has been correctly reported,
+only the other day, that he despised the word "Nation." I bless that
+word. I owe my first allegiance to this Nation, and it owes its first
+protection to me. I am talking here to-night, not because I am protected
+by the flag of New York. I would not know that flag if I should see it.
+I am talking here, and have the right to talk here, because the flag of
+my country is above us. I have the same right as though I had been born
+upon this very platform. I am proud of New York because it is a part of
+my country. I am proud of my country because it has such a State as
+New York in it, and I will be prouder of New York on a week from next
+Tuesday than ever before in my life. I despise the doctrine of State
+Sovereignty. I believe in the rights of the States, but not in the
+sovereignty of the States. States are political conveniences. Rising
+above States, as the Alps above valleys, are the rights of man. Rising
+above the rights of the Government, even in this Nation, are the sublime
+rights of the people. Governments are good only so long as they protect
+human rights. But the rights of a man never should be sacrificed upon
+the altar of the State, or upon the altar of the Nation.
+
+Let me tell you a few objections that I have to State Sovereignty. That
+doctrine has never been appealed to for any good. The first time it was
+appealed to was when our Constitution was made. And the object then was
+to keep the slave-trade open until the year 1808. The object then was
+to make the sea the highway of piracy--the object then was to allow
+American citizens to go into the business of selling men and women and
+children, and feed their cargo to the sharks of the sea, and the sharks
+of the sea were as merciful as they. That was the first time that the
+appeal to the doctrine of State Sovereignty was made, and the next time
+was for the purpose of keeping alive the interstate slave-trade, so that
+a gentleman in Virginia could sell the slave who had nursed him, and rob
+the cradles of their babes. Think of it! It was made so they could rob
+the cradle in the name of law. Think of it! Think of it! And the next
+time they appealed to the doctrine of State Sovereignty was in favor of
+the Fugitive Slave Law--a law that made a bloodhound of every Northern
+man; that made charity a crime; a law that made love a state-prison
+offence; that branded the forehead of charity as if it were a felon.
+Think of it!
+
+It is a part of my honor to hate such principles. I have no respect
+for any man who is so mean, cruel and wicked, as to allow himself to be
+transformed into a bloodhound to bay upon the tracks of innocent human
+prey. I will follow my logic, no matter where it goes, after it has
+consulted with my heart. If you ever come to a conclusion without
+calling the heart in, you will come to a bad conclusion.
+
+A good man is pretty apt to be right; a perfectly honest man is like the
+surface of the stainless mirror, that gives back by simply looking at
+him, the image of the one who looks.
+
+The next time they appealed to the doctrine of State Sovereignty was to
+increase the area of human slavery, so that the bloodhound, with clots
+of blood dropping from his loose and hanging jaws, might traverse the
+billowy plains of Kansas. Think of it!
+
+The Democratic party then said the Federal Government had a right to
+cross the State line. And the next time they appealed to that infamous
+doctrine was in defence of secession and treason; a doctrine that cost
+us six thousand millions of dollars; a doctrine that cost four hundred
+thousand lives; a doctrine that filled our country with widows, our
+homes with orphans. And I tell you, the doctrine of State Sovereignty
+is the viper in the bosom of this Republic, and if we do not kill that
+viper it will kill us.
+
+The Democrats tell us that in the olden time the Federal Government had
+a right to cross a State line to put shackles upon the limbs of men. It
+had the right to cross a State line to trample upon the rights of human
+beings, but now it has no right to cross those lines upon an errand
+of mercy or justice. We are told that now, when the Federal Government
+wishes to protect a citizen, a State line rises like a Chinese wall,
+and the sword of Federal power turns to air the moment it touches one of
+those lines. I deny it and I despise, abhor and execrate the doctrine of
+State Sovereignty. The Democrats tell us if we wish to be protected by
+the Federal Government we must leave home. I wish they would try it for
+about ten days. They say the Federal Government can defend a citizen
+in England, France, Spain or Germany, but cannot defend a child of the
+Republic sitting around the family hearth. I deny it. A Government that
+cannot protect its citizens at home is unfit to be called a Government.
+I want a Government with an ear so good that it can hear the faintest
+cry of the oppressed wherever its flag floats. I want a Government with
+an arm long enough and a sword sharp enough to cut down treason wherever
+it may raise its serpent head. I want a Government that will protect
+a freedman, standing by his little log hut, with the same alacrity and
+with the same efficiency that it would protect Vanderbilt, living in a
+palace of marble and gold. Humanity is a sacred thing, and manhood is a
+thing to be preserved. Let us look at it. For instance, here is a war,
+and the Federal Government says to a man, "We want you," and he says,
+"No, I don't want to go," and then they put a lot of pieces of paper in
+a wheel and on one of those pieces is his name, and another man turns
+the crank, and then they pull it out and there is his name, and
+they say, "Come," and so he goes. And they stand him in front of the
+brazen-throated guns; they make him fight for his native land, and when
+the war is over he goes home and he finds the war has been unpopular
+in his neighborhood, and they trample on his rights, and he says to the
+Federal Government, "Protect me." And he says to the Government, "I owe
+my allegiance to you. You must protect me." What will you say of
+that Government if it says to him, "You must look to your State for
+protection"? "Ah, but," he says, "my State is the very power trampling
+upon me," and, of course, the robber is not going to send for the
+police, It is the duty of the Government to defend even its drafted
+men; and if that is the duty of the Government, what shall I say of the
+volunteer, who for one moment holds his wife in a tremulous and agonized
+embrace, kisses his children, shoulders his musket, goes to the field
+and says, "Here I am, ready to die for my native land"? A Nation that
+will not defend its volunteer defenders is a disgrace to the map of this
+world. This is a Nation. Free speech is the brain of the Republic; an
+honest ballot is the breath of its life; honest money is the blood of
+its veins; and the idea of nationality is its great, beating, throbbing
+heart. I am for a Nation. And yet the Democrats tell me that it is
+dangerous to have centralized power. How would you have it? I believe in
+the localization of power; I believe in having enough of it localized in
+one place to be effectively used; I believe in a localization of brain.
+I suppose Democrats would like to have it spread all over your body, and
+they act as though theirs was.
+
+There is another thing in which I believe: I believe in the protection
+of American labor. The hand that holds Aladdin's lamp must be the hand
+of toil. This Nation rests upon the shoulders of its workers, and I want
+the American laboring man to have enough to wear; I want him to have
+enough to eat:
+
+I want him to have something for the ordinary misfortunes of life; I
+want him to have the pleasure of seeing his wife well-dressed; I want
+him to see a few blue ribbons fluttering about his children; I want him
+to see the flags of health flying in their beautiful cheeks; I want him
+to feel that this is his country, and the shield of protection is above
+his labor.
+
+And I will tell you why I am for protection, too. If we were all farmers
+we would be stupid. If we were all shoemakers we would be stupid. If
+we all followed one business, no matter what it was, we would become
+stupid. Protection to American labor diversifies American industry,
+and to have it diversified touches and develops every part of the human
+brain. Protection protects ingenuity; it protects intelligence; and
+protection raises sense; and by protection we have greater men, better
+looking women and healthier children. Free trade means that our laborer
+is upon an equality with the poorest paid labor of this world. And allow
+me to tell you that for an empty stomach, "Hurrah for Hancock!" is a
+poor consolation. I do not think much of a Government where the people
+do not have enough to eat. I am a materialist to that extent; I want
+something to eat. I have been in countries where the laboring man had
+meat once a year; sometimes twice--Christmas and Easter. And I have seen
+women carrying upon their heads a burden that no man in this audience
+could carry, and at the same time knitting busily with both hands,
+and those women lived without meat; and when I thought of the American
+laborer, I said to myself, "After all, my country is the best in the
+world." And when I came back to the sea and saw the old flag flying, it
+seemed to me as though the air from pure joy had burst into blossom.
+
+Labor has more to eat and more to wear in the United States than in
+any other land of this earth. I want America to produce everything that
+Americans need. I want it so that if the whole world should declare war
+against us, if we were surrounded by walls of cannon and bayonets and
+swords, we could supply all our material wants in and of ourselves. I
+want to live to see the American woman dressed in American silk; the
+American man in everything, from hat to boots, produced in America by
+the cunning hand of American toil. I want to see the workingman have
+a good house, painted white, grass in the front yard, carpets on the
+floor, pictures on the wall. I want to see him a man, feeling that he is
+a king by the divine right of living in the Republic. And every man here
+is just a little bit a king, you know. Every man here is a part of the
+sovereign power. Every man wears a little of purple; every man has a
+little of crown and a little of sceptre; and every man that will sell
+his vote for money or be ruled by prejudice is unfit to be an American
+citizen.
+
+I believe in American labor, and I will tell you why. The other day a
+man told me that we had produced in the United States of America one
+million tons of steel rails. How much are they worth? Sixty dollars a
+ton. In other words, the million tons are worth sixty million dollars.
+How much is a ton of iron worth in the ground? Twenty-five cents.
+American labor takes twenty-five cents worth of iron in the ground and
+adds to it fifty-nine dollars and seventy-five cents. One million tons
+of rails, and the raw material not worth twenty-four thousand dollars!
+We build a ship in the United States worth five hundred thousand
+dollars, and the value of the ore in the earth, of the trees in the
+great forest, of all that enters into the composition of that ship
+bringing five hundred thousand dollars in gold is only twenty thousand
+dollars; four hundred and eighty thousand dollars by American labor,
+American muscle, coined into gold; American brains made a legal tender
+the world round.
+
+I propose to stand by the Nation. I want the furnaces kept hot. I want
+the sky to be filled with the smoke of American industry, and upon that
+cloud of smoke will rest forever the bow of perpetual promise. That is
+what I am for. Where did this doctrine of a tariff for revenue only come
+from? From the South. The South would like to stab the prosperity of the
+North. They would rather trade with Old England than with New England.
+They would rather trade with the people who were willing to help them in
+war than with those who conquered the Rebellion. They knew what gave us
+our strength in war. They knew that all the brooks and creeks and rivers
+of New England were putting down the Rebellion. They knew that every
+wheel that turned, every spindle that revolved, was a soldier in the
+army of human progress. It won't do! They were so lured by the greed of
+office that they were willing to trade upon the misfortunes of a Nation.
+It won't do! I do not wish to belong to a party that succeeds only when
+my country fails. I do not wish to belong to a party whose banner went
+up with the banner of rebellion. I do not wish to belong to a party that
+was in partnership with defeat and disaster. I do not. And there is not
+a Democrat here who does not know that a failure of the crops this year
+would have helped his party. You know that an early frost would have
+been a godsend to them. You know that the potato-bug could have done
+them more good than all their speakers.
+
+I wish to belong to that party which is prosperous when the country is
+prosperous. I belong to that party which is not poor when the golden
+billows are running over the seas of wheat. I belong to that party which
+is prosperous when there are oceans of corn, and when the cattle are
+upon the thousand hills. I belong to that party which is prosperous when
+the furnaces are aflame, and when you dig coal and iron and silver; when
+everybody has enough to eat; when everybody is happy; when the children
+are all going to school, and when joy covers my Nation as with a
+garment. That party which is prosperous then, is my party.
+
+Now, then, I have been telling you what I am for. I am for free speech,
+and so ought you to be. I am for an honest ballot, and if you are not
+you ought to be. I am for the collection of the revenue. I am for honest
+money. I am for the idea that this is a Nation forever. I believe in
+protecting American labor. I want the shield of my country above every
+anvil, above every furnace, above every cunning head and above every
+deft hand of American labor.
+
+Now, then, which section of this country will be the more apt to carry
+these ideas into execution? Which party will be the more apt to achieve
+these grand and splendid things? Honor bright? Now we have not only
+to choose between sections of the country; we have to choose between
+parties. Here is the Democratic party, and I admit there are thousands
+of good Democrats who went to the war, and some of those that stayed at
+home were good men; and I want to ask you, and I want you to tell me
+in reply what that party did during the war when the War Democrats were
+away from home. What did they do? That is the question. I say to you,
+that every man who tried to tear our flag out of heaven was a Democrat.
+The men who wrote the ordinances of secession, who fired upon Fort
+Sumter; the men who starved our soldiers, who fed them with the crumbs
+that the worms had devoured before, they were Democrats. The keepers
+of Libby, the keepers of Andersonville, were Democrats--Libby and
+Andersonville, the two mighty wings that will bear the memory of the
+Confederacy to eternal infamy! The men who wished to scatter yellow
+fever in the North and who tried to fire the great cities of the
+North--they were all Democrats. He who said that the greenback would
+never be paid and he who slandered sixty cents out of every dollar of
+the Nation's promises were Democrats. Who were joyful when your brothers
+and your sons and your fathers lay dead on a field of battle that the
+country had lost? They were Democrats. The men who wept when the old
+banner floated in triumph above the ramparts of rebellion--they were
+Democrats. You know it. The men who wept when slavery was destroyed, who
+believed slavery to be a divine institution, who regarded bloodhounds as
+apostles and missionaries, and who wept at the funeral of that infernal
+institution--they were Democrats. Bad company--bad company!
+
+And let me implore all the young men here not to join that party. Do not
+give new blood to that institution. The Democratic party has a yellow
+passport. On one side it says "dangerous." They imagine they have not
+changed, and that is because they have not intellectual growth. That
+party was once the enemy of my country, was once the enemy of our flag,
+and more than that, it was once the enemy of human liberty, and that
+party to-night is not willing that the citizens of the Republic should
+exercise all their rights irrespective of their color. And allow me to
+say right here that I am opposed to that party.
+
+We have not only to choose between parties, but to choose between
+candidates. The Democracy have put forward as the bearers of their
+standard General Hancock and William H. English. The Democrats have at
+last nominated a Union soldier. They nominated George B. McClellan once,
+because he failed to whip the South; they nominated Mr. Greeley, when
+they despised him, and now they have nominated General Hancock. Do they
+think the South loves him? At Gettysburg they say he fought against
+them, and that is one great reason why he should be President--that he
+shot rebels. Do the men that fought at Gettysburg still believe in
+State Sovereignty? Wade Hampton says, "We must vote as Lee and Jackson
+fought." They fought for State Sovereignty. Has the South changed?
+Hancock went to kill them then; they want to vote for him now. Who
+has changed? [A voice: "Hancock."] I think so. They are using him as a
+figure-head. They have dressed him in the noble blue, with the patriotic
+coat and Union buttons, and they do not like him any better than they
+did at Gettysburg. It would be just as consistent for the Republicans
+to have nominated Wade Hampton. Did General Hancock believe in State
+Sovereignty when he was at Gettysburg? If he did, he was a murderer, and
+not a Union soldier--he was killing men he believed to be in the right,
+and a man cannot fight unless his conscience approves of what his sword
+does, and if he was honest at that time, he did not believe in State
+Sovereignty, and it seems to me he would hate to have the men who tried
+to destroy this Government cheering him. All the glory he ever got was
+in the service of the Republican party, and if he does not look out
+he will lose it all in the service of the Democratic party. He had
+a conversation with General Grant. It was a time when he had
+been appointed at the head of the Department of the Gulf. In that
+conversation he stated to General Grant that he was opposed to "nigger
+domination." Grant said to him, "We must obey the laws of Congress.
+We are soldiers." And that meant, the military is not above the civil
+authority. And I tell you to-night, that the army and the navy are the
+right and left hands of the civil power. Grant said to him: "Three or
+four million ex-slaves, without property and without education, cannot
+dominate over thirty or forty millions of white people, with education
+and property." General Hancock replied to that: "I am opposed to 'nigger
+domination.'" Allow me to say that I do not believe any man fit for
+the presidency of the great Republic, who is capable of insulting a
+down-trodden race. I never meet a negro that I do not feel like asking
+his forgiveness for the wrongs that my race has inflicted on his. I
+remember that from the white man he received for two hundred years agony
+and tears; I remember that my race sold a child from the agonized breast
+of a mother; I remember that my race trampled with the feet of greed
+upon all the holy relations of life; and I do not feel like insulting
+the colored man; I feel rather like asking the forgiveness of his race
+for the crimes that my race have put upon him. "Nigger domination!" What
+a fine scabbard that makes for the sword of Gettysburg! It won't do!
+
+What is General Hancock for, besides the presidency? How does he stand
+upon the great questions affecting American prosperity? He told us the
+other day that the tariff is a local question. The tariff affects every
+man and woman, live they in hut, hovel or palace; it affects every man
+that has a back to be covered or a stomach to be filled, and yet he says
+it is a local question. So is death. He also told us that he heard
+that question discussed once, in Pennsylvania. He must have been
+eavesdropping. And he tells us that his doctrine of the tariff will
+continue as long as Nature lasts. Then Senator Randolph wrote him a
+letter. I do not know whether Senator Randolph answered it or not; but
+that answer was worse than the first interview; and I understand
+now that another letter is going through a period of incubation at
+Governor's Island, upon the great subject of the tariff. It won't do!
+
+They say one thing they are sure of, he is opposed to paying Southern
+pensions and Southern claims. He says that a man that fought against
+this Government has no right to a pension. Good! I say a man that fought
+against this Government has no right to office. If a man cannot earn
+a pension by tearing our flag out of the sky, he cannot earn power. [A
+Voice--"How about Longstreet?"] Longstreet has repented of what he did.
+Longstreet admits that he was wrong. And there was no braver officer in
+the Southern Confederacy. Every man of the South who will say, "I made a
+mistake"--I do not want him to say that he knew he was wrong--all I
+ask him to say is that he now thinks he was wrong; and every man of the
+South to-day who says he was wrong, and who says from this day forward,
+henceforth and forever, he is for this being a Nation.
+
+I will take him by the hand. But while he is attempting to do at the
+ballot-box what he failed to accomplish upon the field of battle, I am
+against him; while he uses a Northern general to bait a Southern trap,
+I won't bite. I will forgive men when they deserve to be forgiven; but
+while they insist that they were right, while they insist that State
+Sovereignty is the proper doctrine, I am opposed to their climbing into
+power.
+
+Hancock says that he will not pay these claims; he agrees to veto a
+bill that his party may pass; he agrees in advance that he will defeat
+a party that he expects will elect him; he, in effect, says to the
+people, "You can not trust that party, but you can trust me." He says,
+"Look at them; I admit they are a hungry lot; I admit that they haven't
+had a bite in twenty years; I admit that an ordinary famine is satiety
+compared to the hunger they feel. But between that vast appetite known
+as the Democratic party, and the public treasury, I will throw the
+shield of my veto." No man has a right to say in advance what he will
+veto, any more than a judge has a right to say in advance how he
+will decide a case. The veto power is a distinction with which the
+Constitution has clothed the Executive, and no President has a right to
+say that he will veto until he has heard both sides of the question. But
+he agrees in advance.
+
+I would rather trust a party than a man. Death may veto Hancock, and
+Death has not been a successful politician in the United States.
+Tyler, Fillmore, Andy Johnson--I do not wish Death to elect any more
+Presidents; and if he does, and if Hancock is elected, William H.
+English becomes President of the United States. No, no, no! All I need
+to say about him is simply to pronounce his name; that is all. You do
+not want him. Whether the many stories that have been told about him are
+true or not I do not know, and I will not give currency to a solitary
+word against the reputation of an American citizen unless I know it to
+be true. What I have against him is what he has done in public life.
+When Charles Sumner, that great and splendid publicist--Charles Sumner,
+the philanthropist, one who spoke to the conscience of his time and to
+the history of the future--when he stood up in the United States Senate
+and made a great and glorious plea for human liberty, there crept into
+the Senate a villain and struck him down as though he had been a wild
+beast. That man was a member of Congress, and when a resolution was
+introduced in the House, to expel that man, William H. English voted
+"No." All the stories in the world could not add to the infamy of that
+public act. That is enough for me, and whatever his private life may be,
+let it be that of an angel, never, never, never would I vote for a man
+that would defend the assassin of free speech. General Hancock, they
+tell me, is a statesman; that what little time he has had to spare from
+war he has given to the tariff, and what little time he could spare
+from the tariff he has given to the Constitution of his country;
+showing under what circumstances a Major-General can put at defiance the
+Congress of the United States. It won't do!
+
+But while I am upon that subject it may be well for me to state that he
+never will be President of the United States. Now, I say that a man who
+in time of peace prefers peace, and prefers the avocations of peace; a
+man who in the time of peace would rather look at the corn in the air of
+June, rather listen to the hum of bees, rather sit by his door with his
+wife and children; the man who in time of peace loves peace, and yet
+when the blast of war blows in his ears, shoulders a musket and goes to
+the field of war to defend his country, and when the war is over goes
+home and again pursues the avocations of peace--that man is just as
+good, to say the least of it, as a man who in a time of profound peace
+makes up his mind that he would like to make his living killing other
+folks. To say the least of it, he is as good.
+
+The Republicans have named as their standard bearers James A. Garfield
+and Chester A. Arthur. James A. Garfield was a volunteer soldier, and
+he took away from the field of Chickamauga as much glory as any one
+man could carry. He is not only a soldier--7-he is a statesman. He has
+studied and discussed all the great questions that affect the prosperity
+and well-being of the American people. His opinions are well known, and
+I say to you tonight that there is not in this Nation, there is not in
+this Republic a man with greater brain and greater heart than James A.
+Garfield. I know him and I like him. I know him as well as any other
+public man, and I like him. The Democratic party say that he is not
+honest. I have been reading some Democratic papers to-day, and you would
+say that every one of their editors had a private sewer of his own into
+which has been emptied for a hundred years the slops of hell. They tell
+me that James A. Garfield is not honest. Are you a Democrat? Your
+party tried to steal nearly half of this country. Your party stole the
+armament of a nation. Your party was willing to live upon the unpaid
+labor of four millions of people. You have no right to the floor for the
+purpose of making a motion of honesty. James A. Garfield has been at the
+head of the most important committees of Congress; he is a member of the
+most important one of the whole House. He has no peer in the Congress of
+the United States. And you know it. He is the leader of the House.
+With one wave of his hand he can take millions from the pocket of one
+industry and put it into the pocket of another; with a motion of his
+hand he could have made himself a man of wealth, but he is to-night a
+poor man. I know him and I like him. He is as genial as May and he is as
+generous as Autumn. And the men for whom he has done unnumbered favors,
+the men whom he had pity enough not to destroy with an argument, the men
+who, with his great generosity, he has allowed, intellectually, to live,
+are now throwing filth at the reputation of that great and splendid man.
+
+Several ladies and gentlemen were passing a muddy place around which
+were gathered ragged and wretched urchins. And these little wretches
+began to throw mud at them; and one gentleman said, "If you don't stop
+I will throw it back at you." And a little fellow said, "You can't do it
+without dirtying your hands, and it doesn't hurt us anyway."
+
+I never was more profoundly happy than on the night of that 12th day
+of October when I found that between an honest and a kingly man and his
+maligners, two great States had thrown their shining shields. When Ohio
+said, "Garfield is my greatest son, and there never has been raised in
+the cabins of Ohio a grander man"--and when Indiana held up her hands
+and said, "Allow me to indorse that verdict," I was profoundly happy,
+because that said to me, "Garfield will carry every Northern State;"
+that said to me, "The Solid South will be confronted by a great and
+splendid North."
+
+I know Garfield--I like him. Some people have said, "How is it that you
+support Garfield, when he was a minister?" "How is it that you support
+Garfield when he is a Christian?" I will tell you. There are two
+reasons. The first is I am not a bigot; and secondly, James A. Garfield
+is not a bigot. He believes in giving to every other human being every
+right he claims for himself. He believes in freedom of speech and
+freedom of thought; untrammeled conscience and upright manhood. He
+believes in an absolute divorce between church and state. He believes
+that every religion should rest upon its morality, upon its reason,
+upon its persuasion, upon its goodness, upon its charity, and that love
+should never appeal to the sword of civil power. He disagrees with me in
+many things; but in the one thing, that the air is free for all, we do
+agree. I want to do equal and exact justice everywhere.
+
+I want the world of thought to be without a chain, without a wall, and I
+wish to say to you, [turning toward Mr. Beecher and directly addressing
+him] that I thank you for what you have said to-night, and to
+congratulate the people of this city and country that you have
+intellectual horizon enough, intellectual sky enough to take the hand
+of a man, howsoever much he may disagree in some things with you, on the
+grand platform and broad principle of citizenship. James A. Garfield,
+believing with me as he does, disagreeing with me as he does, is
+perfectly satisfactory to me. I know him, and I like him.
+
+Men are to-day blackening his reputation, who are not fit to blacken
+his shoes. He is a man of brain. Since his nomination he must have made
+forty or fifty speeches, and every one has been full of manhood and
+genius. He has not said a word that has not strengthened him with the
+American people. He is the first candidate who has been free to express
+himself and who has never made a mistake. I will tell you why he does
+not make a mistake; because he spoke from the inside out. Because he was
+guided by the glittering Northern Star of principle. Lie after lie has
+been told about him. Slander after slander has been hatched and put in
+the air, with its little short wings, to fly its day, and the last lie
+is a forgery.
+
+I saw to-day the fac-simile of a letter that they pretend he wrote upon
+the Chinese question. I know his writing; I know his signature; I am
+well acquainted with his writing. I know handwriting, and I tell you
+to-night, that letter and that signature are forgeries. A forgery
+for the benefit of the Pacific States; a forgery for the purpose of
+convincing the American workingman that Garfield is without heart. I
+tell you, my fellow-citizens, that cannot take from him a vote. But Ohio
+pierced their centre and Indiana rolled up both flanks and the rebel
+line cannot re-form with a forgery for a standard. They are gone!
+
+Now, some people say to me, "How long are you going to preach the
+doctrine of hate?" I never did preach it. In many States of this Union
+it is a crime to be a Republican. I am going to preach my doctrine until
+every American citizen is permitted to express his opinion and vote
+as he may desire in every State of this Union. I am going to preach my
+doctrine until this is a civilized country. That is all.
+
+I will treat the gentlemen of the South precisely as we do the gentlemen
+of the North. I want to treat every section of the country precisely as
+we do ours-. I want to improve their rivers and their harbors; I want
+to fill their land with commerce; I want them to prosper; I want them to
+build schoolhouses; I want them to open the lands to immigration to all
+people who desire to settle upon their soil. I want to be friends with
+them; I want to let the past be buried forever; I want to let bygones
+be bygones, but only upon the basis that we are now in favor of absolute
+liberty and eternal justice. I am not willing to bury nationality or
+free speech in the grave for the purpose of being friends. Let us
+stand by our colors; let the old Republican party that has made this a
+Nation--the old Republican party that has saved the financial honor of
+this country--let that party stand by its colors.
+
+Let that party say, "Free speech forever!" Let that party say, "An
+honest ballot forever!" Let that party say, "Honest money forever! the
+Nation and the flag forever!" And let that party stand by the great men
+carrying her banner, James A. Garfield and Chester A. Arthur. I
+would rather trust a party than a man. If General Garfield dies, the
+Republican party lives; if General Garfield dies, General Arthur will
+take his place--a brave, honest, and intelligent gentleman, upon whom
+every Republican can rely. And if he dies, the Republican party lives,
+and as long as the Republican party does not die, the great Republic
+will live. As long as the Republican party lives, this will be the
+asylum of the world. Let me tell you, Mr. Irishman, this is the only
+country on the earth where Irishmen have had enough to eat. Let me tell
+you, Mr. German, that you have more liberty here than you had in the
+Fatherland. Let me tell you, all men, that this is the land of humanity.
+
+Oh! I love the old Republic, bounded by the seas, walled by the wide
+air, domed by heaven's blue, and lit with the eternal stars. I love the
+Republic; I love it because I love liberty. Liberty is my religion, and
+at its altar I worship, and will worship.
+
+
+
+
+ADDRESS TO THE 86TH ILLINOIS REGIMENT.
+
+     * This is only a fragment of a speech made by Col. Ingersoll
+     at Peoria, 111., in 1866, to the 86th Illinois Regiment, at
+     their anniversary meeting.
+
+
+PEORIA, ILLS.
+
+1865.
+
+THE history of the past four years seems to me like a terrible dream.
+It seems almost impossible that the events that have now passed into
+history ever happened. That hundreds of thousands of men, born and
+reared under one flag, with the same history, the same future, and, in
+truth, the same interests, should have met upon the terrible field of
+death, and for four long years should have fought with a bitterness and
+determination never excelled; that they should have filled our land with
+orphans and widows, and made our country hollow with graves, is
+indeed wonderful; but that the people of the South should have thus
+fought--thus attempted to destroy and overthrow the Government founded
+by the heroes of the Revolution--merely for the sake of perpetuating the
+infamous institution of slavery, is wonderful almost beyond belief.
+
+Strange that people should be found in this, the nineteenth century, to
+fight against freedom and to die for slavery! It is most wonderful that
+the terrible war ceased as suddenly as it did, and that the soldiers of
+the Republic, the moment that the angel of peace spread her white wings
+over our country, dropped from their hands the instruments of war
+and eagerly went back to the plough, the shop and the office, and are
+to-day, with the same determination that characterized them in battle,
+engaged in effacing every vestige of the desolation and destruction of
+war. But the progress we have made as a people is if possible still more
+astonishing. We pretended to be the lovers of freedom, yet we defended
+slavery. We quoted the Declaration of Independence and voted for the
+compromise of 1850.
+
+From servility and slavishness we have marched to heroism. We were
+tyrants. We are liberators. We were slave-catchers. We are now the
+chivalrous breakers of chains.
+
+From slavery, over a bloody and terrible path, we have marched to
+freedom. Hirelings of oppression, we have become the champions of
+justice--the defenders of the right--the pillar upon which rests the
+hope of the world. To whom are we indebted for this wonderful change?
+Most of all to you, the soldiers of the great Republic. We thank you
+that the hands of time were not turned back a thousand years--that the
+Dark Ages did not again come upon the world--that Prometheus was
+not again chained--that the river of progress was not stopped or
+stayed--that the dear blood shed during all the past was not rendered
+vain--that the sublime faith of all the grand and good did not become
+a bitter dream, but a reality more glorious than ever entered into the
+imagination of the rapt heroes of the past. Soldiers of the Eighty-sixth
+Illinois, we thank you, and through you all the defenders of the
+Republic, living and dead. We thank you that the deluge of blood has
+subsided, that the ark of our national safety is at rest, that the dove
+has returned with the olive branch of peace, and that the dark clouds of
+war are in the far distance, covered with the beautiful bow.
+
+In the name of humanity, in the name of progress, in the name of
+freedom, in the name of America, in the name of the oppressed of the
+whole world, we thank you again and again. We thank you, that in the
+darkest hour you never despaired of the Republic, that you were not
+dismayed, that through disaster and defeat, through cruelty and famine,
+through the serried ranks of the enemy, in spite of false friends, you
+marched resolutely, unflinchingly and bravely forward. Forward through
+shot and shell! Forward through fire and sword! Forward past the corpses
+of your brave comrades, buried in shallow graves by the hurried hands
+of heroes! Forward past the scattered bones of starved captives! Forward
+through the glittering bayonet lines, and past the brazen throats of the
+guns! Forward through the din and roar and smoke and hell of war! Onward
+through blood and fire to the shining, glittering mount of perfect and
+complete victory, and from the top your august hands unfurled to the
+winds the old banner of the stars, and it waves in triumph now, and
+shall forever, from the St. Lawrence to the Rio Grande, and from the
+Atlantic to the Pacific!
+
+We thank you that our waving fields of golden wheat and rustling corn
+are not trodden down beneath the bloody feet of invasion--that our homes
+are not ashes--that our hearthstones are not desolate--that our towns
+and cities still stand, that our temples and institutions of learning
+are secure, that prosperity covers us as with a mantle, and, more than
+all, we thank you that the Republic still lives; that law and order
+reign supreme; that the Constitution is still sacred; that a republican
+government has ceased to be only an experiment, and has become a
+certainty for all time; that we have by your heroism established the
+sublime and shining truth that a government by the people, for the
+people, can and will stand until governments cease among men; that you
+have given the lie to the impudent and infamous prophecy of tyranny, and
+that you have firmly established the Republic upon the great ideas of
+National Unity and Human Liberty.
+
+We thank you for our commerce on the high seas, upon our lakes and
+beautiful rivers, for the credit of our nation, for the value of our
+money, and for the grand position that we now occupy among the nations
+of the earth. We thank you for every State redeemed, for every star
+brought back to glitter again upon the old flag, and we thank you
+for the grand future that you have opened for us and for our children
+through all the ages yet to come; and, not only for us and our children,
+but for mankind.
+
+Thanks to your efforts our country is still an asylum for the oppressed
+of the Old World; the arms of our charity are still open, we still
+beckon them across the sea, and they come in multitudes,'leaving home,
+the graves of their sires, and the dear memories of the heart, and with
+their wives and little ones come to this, the only free land upon which
+the sun shines--and with their countless hands of labor add to the
+wealth, the permanence and the glory of our country. And let them come
+from the land of Luther, of Hampden and Emmett. Whoever is for freedom
+and the sacred rights of man is a true American, and as such, we welcome
+them all. We thank you to-day in the name of four millions of people,
+whose shackles you have so nobly and generously broken, and who, from
+the condition of beasts of burden, have by your efforts become men. We
+thank you in the name of this poor and hitherto despised and insulted
+race, and say that their emancipation was, and is, the crowning glory
+of this most terrible war. Peace without liberty could have been only a
+bloody delusion and a snare. Freedom is peace; Slavery is war.
+
+We must act justly and honorably with these emancipated men, knowing
+that the eyes of the civilized world are upon us. We must do what is
+best for both races. We must not be controlled merely by party.
+
+If the Government is founded upon principle, it will stand against the
+shock of revolution and foreign war as long as liberty is sacred, the
+rights of man respected, and honor dwells in the hearts of men.
+
+We thank you for the lesson that has been taught the Old World by your
+patriotism and valor; believing that when the people shall have learned
+that sublime and divine lesson, thrones will become kingless, kings
+crownless, royalty an epitaph, the purple of power the shroud of death,
+the chains of tyranny will fall from the bodies of men, the shackles
+of superstition from the souls of the people, the spirit of persecution
+will fly from the earth, and the banner of Universal Freedom, with the
+words "Civil and Religious Liberty for the World" written upon every
+fold, blazing from every star, will float over every land and sea under
+the whole heavens.
+
+We thank you for the glorious past, for the still more glorious future,
+and will continue to thank you while our hearts are warm with life. We
+will gather around you in the hour of your death and soothe your last
+moments with our gratitude. We will follow you tearfully to the narrow
+house of the dead, and over your sacred remains erect the whitest and
+purest marble. The hands of love will adorn your last abode, and the
+chisel will record that beneath rests the sacred dust of the Heroic
+Saviors of the Great Republic. Such ground will be holy, and future
+generations will draw inspiration from your tombs, courage from your
+heroic examples, patience and fortitude from your sufferings, and
+strength eternal from your success.
+
+I cannot stop without speaking of the heroic dead. It seems to me as
+though their spirits ought to hover over you to-day--that they might
+join with us in giving thanks for the great victory,--that their faces
+might grow radiant to think that their blood was not shed in vain,--that
+the living are worthy to reap the benefits of their sacrifices, their
+sufferings and death, and it almost seems as if their sightless eyes are
+suffused with tears. Then we think of the dear mothers waiting for their
+sons, of the devoted wives waiting for their husbands, of the orphans
+asking for fathers whose returning footsteps they can never hear; that
+while they can say "my country," they cannot say "my son," "my husband,"
+or "my father."
+
+My heart goes out to all the slain, to those heroic corpses sleeping far
+away from home and kindred in unknown and lonely graves, to those poor
+pieces of dear, bleeding earth that won for me the blessings I enjoy
+to-day.
+
+Shall I recount their sufferings? They were starved day by day with
+a systematic and calculating cruelty never equaled by the most savage
+tribes. They were confined in dens as though they had been beasts, and
+then they slowly faded and wasted from life. Some were released from
+their sufferings by blessed insanity, until their parched and fevered
+lips, their hollow and glittering eyes, were forever closed by the angel
+of death. And thus they died, with the voices of loved ones in their
+ears; the faces of the dear absent hovering over them; around them their
+dying comrades, and the fiendish slaves of slavery.
+
+And what shall I say more of the regiment before me? It is enough that
+you were a part of the great army that accomplished so much for America
+and mankind.
+
+It is but just, however, to say that you were at the bloody field of
+Perryville, that you stood with Thomas at Chickamauga and kept at bay
+the rebel host, that you marched to the relief of Knoxville through
+bitter cold, hunger and privations, and had the honor of relieving that
+heroic garrison.
+
+It is but just to say that you were with Sherman in his wonderful march
+through the heart of the Confederacy; that you were in the terrible
+charge at Kenesaw Mountain, and held your ground for days within a few
+steps of the rebel fortifications; that you were at Atlanta and took
+part in the terrible conflict before that city and marched victoriously
+through her streets; that you were at Savannah; that you had the honor
+of being present when Johnson surrendered, and his ragged rebel horde
+laid down their arms; that from there you marched to Washington and
+beneath the shadow of the glorious dome of our Capitol, that lifts from
+the earth as though jealous of the stars, received the grandest national
+ovation recorded in the annals of the world.
+
+
+
+
+DECORATION DAY ORATION.
+
+
+     * At the Memorial Celebration of the Grand Army of the
+     Republic last evening the Academy of Music was filled to
+     overflowing, within a few minutes after the opening of the
+     doors.
+
+     Gen. Hancock was the first arrival of importance. The
+     Governor's Island band accepted this as a signal for the
+     overture. The Academy was tastefully decorated. The three
+     balconies were covered, the first with blue cloth, the
+     second with white and national bunting, studded with the
+     insignia of the original thirteen States, and the family
+     circle with red. Over the centre of the stage the national
+     flag and device hung suspended, and was held In its place by
+     flying streamers extending to the boxes. The latter were
+     draped with flags, relieved by antique armor and weapons--
+     shields, casques and battle axes and crossed swords and
+     pikes.
+
+     At 8.05 the curtain slowly rose, and discovered to the view
+     of the audience, a second audience reaching back to the
+     farthest depths of the scenes. These were the fortunate
+     holders of stage tickets, and comprised a great number of
+     distinguished men.
+
+     Among them were noticed Gen. Horace Porter, Gen. Lloyd
+     Aspinwall, Gen. Daniel Butterfield, Gen. D. D. Wylie, Gen.
+     Charles Roome, Gen. W. Palmer, Gen. John Cochrane, Gen. H.
+     G. Tremaine, the Hon. Edward Pierrepont, Dep't. Commander
+     James M. Fraser, the Hon. Carl Schurz, August Belmont, Henry
+     Clews, Dr. Lewis A. Sayre, Charles Scribner, Jesse Seligman,
+     William Dowa, Henry Bergh and George William Curtis. Gen.
+     Bamum came upon the stage followed by President Arthur,
+     Gen's. Grant and Hancock, Secretaries Folger and Brewster,
+     ex-Senator Roscoe Conkling, Mayor Grace and the Rev. J. P.
+     Newman. Gen. Hancock's brilliant uniform made him a very
+     conspicuous figure, and he served as a foil to the plain
+     evening dress of Gen. Grant, who was separated from him by
+     the portly form of the President.
+
+     Gen. James McQuade, the President of the day, rose and
+     uncovering a flag which draped a sort of patriotic altar in
+     front of him, announced that It was the genuine flag upon
+     which was written the famous order, "If any man pull down
+     the American flag, shoot him on the spot.' * This was the
+     signal for round after round of applause, while Gen. McQuade
+     waved this precious relic of the past. The time had now come
+     for the introduction of the orator of the evening, Col.
+     Robert G. Ingersoll. Col. Ingersoll stepped across the stage
+     to the reading desk, and was received with an ovation of
+     cheering and waving of handkerchiefs.
+
+     After the enthusiasm had somewhat abated, a gentleman in one
+     of the boxes shouted: "Three-cheers for Ingersoll."
+     These were given with a will, the excitement quieted down
+     and the orator spoke as follows '.--The New York Times. May
+     31st, 1883.
+
+
+New York City.
+
+
+1882.
+
+THIS day is sacred to our heroes dead. Upon their tombs we have lovingly
+laid the wealth of Spring.
+
+This is a day for memory and tears. A mighty Nation bends above its
+honored graves, and pays to noble dust the tribute of its love.
+
+Gratitude is the fairest flower that sheds its perfume in the heart.
+
+To-day we tell the history of our country's life--recount the lofty
+deeds of vanished years--the toil and suffering, the defeats and
+victories of heroic men,--of men who made our Nation great and free.
+
+We see the first ships whose prows were gilded by the western sun. We
+feel the thrill of discovery when the New World was found. We see the
+oppressed, the serf, the peasant and the slave, men whose flesh had
+known the chill of chains--the adventurous, the proud, the brave,
+sailing an unknown sea, seeking homes in unknown lands. We see the
+settlements, the little clearings, the blockhouse and the fort, the rude
+and lonely huts. Brave men, true women, builders of homes, fellers of
+forests, founders of States.
+
+Separated from the Old World,--away from the heartless distinctions
+of caste,--away from sceptres and titles and crowns, they governed
+themselves. They defended their homes; they earned their bread. Each
+citizen had a voice, and the little villages became republics. Slowly
+the savage was driven back. The days and nights were filled with fear,
+and the slow years with massacre and war, and cabins' earthen floors
+were wet with blood of mothers and their babes.
+
+But the savages of the New World were kinder than the kings and nobles
+of the Old; and so the human tide kept coming, and the places of the
+dead were filled. Amid common dangers and common hopes, the prejudiced
+and feuds of Europe faded slowly from their hearts. From every land,
+of every speech, driven by want and lured by hope, exiles and emigrants
+sought the mysterious Continent of the West.
+
+Year after year the colonists fought and toiled and suffered and
+increased. They began to talk about liberty--to reason of the rights of
+man. They * t asked no help from distant kings, and they began to doubt
+the use of paying tribute to the useless. They lost respect for dukes
+and lords, and held in high esteem all honest men. There was the dawn
+of a new day. They began to dream of independence. They found that
+they could make and execute the laws. They had tried the experiment of
+self-government. They had succeeded. The Old World wished to dominate
+the New. In the care and keeping of the colonists was the destiny of
+this Continent--of half the world.
+
+On this day the story of the great struggle between colonists and kings
+should be told. We should tell our children of the contest--first
+for justice, then for freedom. We should tell them the history of
+the Declaration of Independence--the chart and compass of all human
+rights:--All men are equal, and have the right to life, to liberty and
+joy.
+
+This Declaration uncrowned kings, and wrested from the hands of titled
+tyranny the sceptre of usurped and arbitrary power. It superseded royal
+grants, and repealed the cruel statutes of a thousand years. It gave the
+peasant a career; it knighted all the sons of toil; it opened all the
+paths to fame, and put the star of hope above the cradle of the poor
+man's babe.
+
+England was then the mightiest of nations--mistress of every sea--and
+yet our fathers, poor and few, defied her power.
+
+To-day we remember the defeats, the victories, the disasters, the weary
+marches, the poverty, the hunger, the sufferings, the agonies, and above
+all, the glories of the Revolution. We remember all--from Lexington to
+Valley Forge, and from that midnight of despair to Yorktown's cloudless
+day. We remember the soldiers and thinkers--the heroes of the sword and
+pen. They had the brain and heart, the wisdom and courage to utter
+and defend these words: "Governments derive their just powers from the
+consent of the governed." In defence of this sublime and self-evident
+truth the war was waged and won.
+
+To-day we remember all the heroes, all the generous and chivalric men
+who came from other lands to make ours free. Of the many thousands who
+shared the gloom and glory of the seven sacred years, not one remains.
+The last has mingled with the earth, and nearly all are sleeping now
+in unmarked graves, and some beneath the leaning, crumbling stones from
+which their names have been effaced by Time's irreverent and relentless
+hands. But the Nation they founded remains. The United States are still
+free and independent. The "government derives its just power from
+the consent of the governed," and fifty millions of free people remember
+with gratitude the heroes of the Revolution.
+
+Let us be truthful; let us be kind. When peace came, when the
+independence of a new Nation was acknowledged, the great truth for
+which our fathers fought was half denied, and the Constitution was
+inconsistent with the Declaration. The war was waged for liberty, and
+yet the victors forged new fetters for their fellow-men. The chains our
+fathers broke were put by them upon the limbs of others. "Freedom for
+All" was the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, through seven
+years of want and war. In peace the cloud was forgotten and the pillar
+blazed unseen.
+
+Let us be truthful; all our fathers were not true to themselves. In
+war they had been generous, noble and self-sacrificing; with peace came
+selfishness and greed. They were not great enough to appreciate the
+grandeur of the principles for which they fought. They ceased to regard
+the great truths as having universal application. "Liberty for
+All" included only themselves. They qualified the Declaration. They
+interpolated the word "white." They obliterated the word "All."
+
+Let us be kind. We will remember the age in which they lived. We will
+compare them with the citizens of other nations. They made merchandise
+of men. They legalized a crime. They sowed the seeds of war. But they
+founded this Nation.
+
+Let us gratefully remember.
+
+Let us gratefully forget.
+
+To-day we remember the heroes of the second war with England, in which
+our fathers fought for the freedom of the seas--for the rights of the
+American sailor. We remember with pride the splendid victories of Erie
+and Champlain and the wondrous achievements upon the sea--achievements
+that covered our navy with a glory that neither the victories nor
+defeats of the future can dim. We remember the heroic services and
+sufferings of those who fought the merciless savage of the frontier.
+We see the midnight massacre, and hear the war-cries of the allies of
+England. We see the flames climb around the happy homes, and in the
+charred and blackened ruins the mutilated bodies of wives and children.
+Peace came at last, crowned with the victory of New Orleans--a victory
+that "did redeem all sorrows" and all defeats.
+
+The Revolution gave our fathers a free land--the War of 1812 a free sea.
+
+To-day we remember the gallant men who bore our flag in triumph from the
+Rio Grande to the heights of Chapultepec.
+
+Leaving out of question the justice of our cause--the necessity for
+war--we are yet compelled to applaud the marvelous courage of our
+troops. A handful of men, brave, impetuous, determined, irresistible,
+conquered a nation. Our history has no record of more daring deeds.
+
+Again peace came, and the Nation hoped and thought that strife was at
+an end. We had grown too powerful to be attacked. Our resources were
+boundless, and the future seemed secure. The hardy pioneers moved to the
+great West. Beneath their ringing strokes the forests disappeared, and
+on the prairies waved the billowed seas of wheat and corn. The great
+plains were crossed, the mountains were conquered, and the foot of
+victorious adventure pressed the shore of the Pacific. In the great
+North all the streams went singing to the sea, turning wheels and
+spindles, and casting shuttles back and forth. Inventions were springing
+like magic from a thousand brains. From Labor's holy altars rose and
+leaped the smoke and flame, and from the countless forges ran the chant
+of rhythmic stroke.
+
+But in the South, the negro toiled unpaid, and mothers wept while babes
+were sold, and at the auction-block husbands and wives speechlessly
+looked the last good-bye. Fugitives, lighted by the Northern Star,
+sought liberty on English soil, and were, by Northern men, thrust back
+to whip and chain. The great statesmen, the successful politicians,
+announced that law had compromised with crime, that justice had been
+bribed, and that time had barred appeal. A race was left without a
+right, without a hope. The future had no dawn, no star--nothing but
+ignorance and fear, nothing but work and want. This, was the conclusion
+of the statesmen, the philosophy of the politicians--of constitutional
+expounders:--this was decided by courts and ratified by the Nation.
+
+We had been successful in three wars. We had wrested thirteen colonies
+from Great Britain. We had conquered our place upon the high seas. We
+had added more than two millions of square miles to the national domain.
+We had increased in population from three to thirty-one millions. We
+were in the midst of plenty. We were rich and free. Ours appeared to
+be the most prosperous of Nations. But it was only appearance. The
+statesmen and the politicians were deceived. Real victories can be won
+only for the Right. The triumph of Justice is the only Peace. Such is
+the nature of things. He who enslaves another cannot be free. He who
+attacks the right, assaults himself. The mistake our fathers made had
+not been corrected. The foundations of the Republic were insecure. The
+great dome of the temple was clad in the light of prosperity, but
+the corner-stones were crumbling. Four millions of human beings were
+enslaved. Party cries had been mistaken for principles--partisanship
+for patriotism--success for justice.
+
+But Pity pointed to the scarred and bleeding backs of slaves; Mercy
+heard the sobs of mothers reft of babes, and Justice held aloft the
+scales, in which one drop of blood shed by a master's lash, outweighed a
+Nation's gold. There were a few men, a few women, who had the courage to
+attack this monstrous crime. They found it entrenched in constitutions,
+statutes, and decisions--barricaded and bastioned by every department
+and by every party. Politicians were its servants, statesmen its
+attorneys, judges its menials, presidents its puppets, and upon its
+cruel altar had been sacrificed our country's honor. It was the crime of
+the Nation--of the whole country--North and South responsible alike.
+
+To-day we reverently thank the abolitionists. Earth has no grander
+men--no nobler women. They were the real philanthropists, the true
+patriots. When the will defies fear, when the heart applauds the
+brain, when duty throws the gauntlet down to fate, when honor scorns to
+compromise with death,--this is heroism. The abolitionists were heroes.
+He loves his country best who strives to make it best. The bravest men
+are those who have the greatest fear of doing wrong. Mere politicians
+wish the country to do something for them. True patriots desire to do
+something for their country. Courage without conscience is a wild beast.
+Patriotism without principle is the prejudice of birth, the animal
+attachment to place. These men, these women, had courage and conscience,
+patriotism and principle, heart and brain.
+
+The South relied upon the bond,--upon a barbarous clause that stained,
+disfigured and defiled the Federal pact, and made the monstrous claim
+that slavery was the Nation's ward. The spot of shame grew red in
+Northern cheeks, and Northern men declared that slavery had poisoned,
+cursed and blighted soul and soil enough, and that the Territories must
+be free. The radicals of the South cried: "No Union without Slavery!"
+The radicals of the North replied: "No Union without Liberty!" The
+Northern radicals were right. Upon the great issue of free homes for
+free men, a President was elected by the free States. The South appealed
+to the sword, and raised the standard of revolt. For the first time in
+history the oppressors rebelled.
+
+But let us to-day be great enough to forget individuals,--great enough
+to know that slavery was treason, that slavery was rebellion, that
+slavery fired upon our flag and sought to wreck and strand the mighty
+ship that bears the hope and fortune of this world. The first shot
+liberated the North. Constitution, statutes and decisions, compromises,
+platforms, and resolutions made, passed, and ratified in the interest of
+slavery became mere legal lies, base and baseless. Parchment and paper
+could no longer stop or stay the onward march of man. The North was
+free. Millions instantly resolved that the Nation should not die--that
+Freedom should not perish, and that Slavery should not live.
+
+Millions of our brothers, our sons, our fathers, our husbands, answered
+to the Nation's call.
+
+The great armies have desolated the earth. The greatest soldiers have
+been ambition's dupes. They waged war for the sake of place and pillage,
+pomp and power,--for the ignorant applause of vulgar millions,--for the
+flattery of parasites, and the adulation of sycophants and slaves.
+
+Let us proudly remember that in our time the greatest, the grandest, the
+noblest army of the world fought, not to enslave, but to free; not to
+destroy, but to save; not for conquest, but for conscience; not only for
+us, but for every land and every race.
+
+With courage, with enthusiasm, with a devotion' never excelled, with an
+exaltation and purity of purpose never equaled, this grand army fought
+the battles of the Republic. For the preservation of this Nation, for
+the destruction of slavery, these soldiers, these sailors, on land and
+sea, disheartened by no defeat, discouraged by no obstacle, appalled by
+no danger, neither paused nor swerved until a stainless flag, without
+a rival, floated over all our wide domain, and until every human being
+beneath its folds was absolutely free.
+
+The great victory for human rights--the greatest of all the years--had
+been won; won by the Union men of the North, by the Union men of the
+South, and by those who had been slaves. Liberty was national, Slavery
+was dead.
+
+The flag for which the heroes fought, for which they died, is the symbol
+of all we are, of all we hope to be.
+
+It is the emblem of equal rights.
+
+It means free hands, free lips, self-government and the sovereignty of
+the individual.
+
+It means that this continent has been dedicated to freedom.
+
+It means universal education,--light for every mind, knowledge for every
+child.
+
+It means that the schoolhouse is the fortress of Liberty.
+
+It means that "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of
+the governed;" that each man is accountable to and for the Government;
+that responsibility goes hand in hand with liberty.
+
+It means that it is the duty of every citizen to bear his share of the
+public burden,--to take part in the affairs of his town, his county, his
+State and his country.
+
+It means that the ballot-box is the Ark of the Covenant; that the source
+of authority must not be poisoned.
+
+It means the perpetual right of peaceful revolution. It means that every
+citizen of the Republic--native or naturalized--must be protected; at
+home, in every State,--abroad, in every land, on every sea.
+
+It means that all distinctions based on birth or blood, have perished
+from our laws; that our Government shall stand between labor and
+capital, between the weak and the strong, between the individual and the
+corporation, between want and wealth, and give the guarantee of simple
+justice to each and all.
+
+It means that there shall be a legal remedy for every wrong.
+
+It means national hospitality,--that we must welcome to our shores the
+exiles of the world, and that we may not drive them back. Some may
+be deformed by labor, dwarfed by hunger, broken in spirit, victims of
+tyranny and caste,--in whose sad faces may be read the touching record
+of a weary life; and yet their children, born of liberty and love, will
+be symmetrical and fair, intelligent and free.
+
+That flag is the emblem of a supreme will--of a Nation's power. Beneath
+its folds the weakest must be protected and the strongest must obey. It
+shields and canopies alike the loftiest mansion and the rudest hut.
+That flag was given to the air in the Revolution's darkest days. It
+represents the sufferings of the past, the glories yet to be; and like
+the bow of heaven, it is the child of storm and sun.
+
+This day is sacred to the great heroic host who kept this flag above
+our heads,--sacred to the living and the dead--sacred to the scarred and
+maimed,--sacred to the wives who gave their husbands, to the mothers who
+gave their sons.
+
+Here in this peaceful land of ours,--here where the sun shines, where
+flowers grow, where children play, millions of armed men battled for the
+right and breasted on a thousand fields the iron storms of war.
+
+These brave, these incomparable men, founded the first Republic. They
+fulfilled the prophecies; they brought to pass the dreams; they realized
+the hopes, that all the great and good and wise and just have made and
+had since man was man.
+
+But what of those who fell? There is no language to express the debt we
+owe, the love we bear, to all the dead who died for us. Words are but
+barren sounds. We can but stand beside their graves and in the hush and
+silence feel what speech has never told.
+
+They fought, they died; and for the first time since man has kept a
+record of events, the heavens bent above and domed a land without a
+serf, a servant or a slave.
+
+
+
+
+DECORATION DAY ADDRESS.
+
+     * Empty sleeves worn by veterans with scanty locks and
+     grizzled mustaches graced the Metropolitan Opera House last
+     night. On the breasts of their faded uniforms glittered the
+     badges of the legions in which they had fought and suffered,
+     and beside them sat the wives and daughters, whose hearts
+     had ached at home while they served their country at the
+     front.
+
+     Every seat in the great Opera House was filled, and hundreds
+     stood, glad to And any place where they could see and hear.
+     And the gathering and the proceedings were worthy of the
+     occasion.
+
+     Mr. Depew upon taking the chair said that he had the chief
+     treat of the evening to present to the audience, and that
+     was Robert G. Ingersoll, the greatest living orator, and one
+     of the great controversialists of the age.
+
+     Then came the orator of the occasion Col. Ingersoll, whose
+     speech is printed herewith.
+
+     Enthusiastic cheers greeted all his points, and his audience
+     simply went wild at the end. It was a grand oration, and it
+     was listened to by enthusiastic and appreciative hearers,
+     upon whom not a single word was lost, and in whose hearts
+     every word awoke a responsive echo.
+
+     Nor did the enthusiasm which Col. Ingersoll created end
+     until the very last, when the whole assemblage arose and
+     sang "America" in a way which will never be forgotten by any
+     one present. It was a great ending of a great evening.--The
+     New York Times, May 31st, 1888.
+
+
+New York City.
+
+1888.
+
+THIS is a sacred day--a day for gratitude and love.
+
+To-day we commemorate more than independence, more than the birth of
+a nation, more than the fruits of the Revolution, more than physical
+progress, more than the accumulation of wealth, more than national
+prestige and power.
+
+We commemorate the great and blessed victory over ourselves--the triumph
+of civilization, the reformation of a people, the establishment of a
+government consecrated to the preservation of liberty and the equal
+rights of man.
+
+Nations can win success, can be rich and powerful, can cover the earth
+with their armies, the seas with their fleets, and yet be selfish, small
+and mean. Physical progress means opportunity for doing good. It means
+responsibility. Wealth is the end of the despicable, victory the purpose
+of brutality.
+
+But there is something nobler than all these--something that rises above
+wealth and power--something above lands and palaces--something above
+raiment and gold--it is the love of right, the cultivation of the moral
+nature, the desire to do justice, the inextinguishable love of human
+liberty.
+
+Nothing can be nobler than a nation governed by conscience, nothing more
+infamous than power without pity, wealth without honor and without the
+sense of justice.
+
+Only by the soldiers of the right can the laurel be won or worn.
+
+On this day we honor the heroes who fought to make our Nation just and
+free--who broke the shackles of the slave, who freed the masters of the
+South and their allies of the North. We honor chivalric men who made
+America the hope and beacon of the human race--the foremost Nation of
+the world.
+
+These heroes established the first republic, and demonstrated that
+a government in which the legally expressed will of the people is
+sovereign and supreme is the safest, strongest, securest, noblest and
+the best.
+
+They demonstrated the human right of the people, and of all the people,
+to make and execute the laws--that authority does not come from the
+clouds, or from ancestry, or from the crowned and titled, or from
+constitutions and compacts, laws and customs--not from the admissions of
+the great, or the concessions of the powerful and victorious--not from
+graves, or consecrated dust--not from treaties made between successful
+robbers--not from the decisions of corrupt and menial courts--not from
+the dead, but from the living--not from the past but from the present,
+from the people of to-day--from the brain, from the heart and from the
+conscience of those who live and love and labor.
+
+The history of this world for the most part is the history of conflict
+and war, of invasion, of conquest, of victorious wrong, of the many
+enslaved by the few.
+
+Millions have fought for kings, for the destruction and enslavement of
+their fellow-men. Millions have battled for empire, and great armies
+have been inspired by the hope of pillage; but for the first time in the
+history of this world millions of men battled for the right, fought to
+free not themselves, but others, not for prejudice, but for principle,
+not for conquest, but for conscience.
+
+The men whom we honor were the liberators of a Nation, of a whole
+country, North and South--of two races. They freed the body and the
+brain, gave liberty to master and to slave. They opened all the highways
+of thought, and gave to fifty millions of people the inestimable legacy
+of free speech.
+
+They established the free exchange of thought. They gave to the air a
+flag without a stain, and they gave to their country a Constitution
+that honest men can reverently obey. They destroyed the hateful, the
+egotistic and provincial--they established a Nation, a national spirit,
+a national pride and a patriotism as broad as the great Republic.
+
+They did away with that ignorant and cruel prejudice that human rights
+depend on race or color, and that the superior race has the right
+to oppress the inferior. They established the sublime truth that the
+superior are the just, the kind, the generous, and merciful--that the
+really superior are the protectors, the defenders, and the saviors of
+the oppressed, of the fallen, the unfortunate, the weak and helpless.
+They established that greatest of all truths that nothing is nobler than
+to labor and suffer for others.
+
+If we wish to know the extent of our debt to these heroes, these
+soldiers of the right, we must know what we were and what we are. A few
+years ago we talked about liberty, about the freedom of the world, and
+while so talking we enslaved our fellow-men. We were the stealers
+of babes and the whippers of women. We were in partnership with
+bloodhounds. We lived on unpaid labor. We held manhood in contempt.
+Honest toil was disgraceful--sympathy was a crime--pity was
+unconstitutional--humanity contrary to law, and charity was treason. Men
+were imprisoned for pointing out in heaven's dome the Northern Star--for
+giving food to the hungry, water to the parched lips of thirst, shelter
+to the hunted, succor to the oppressed. In those days criminals and
+courts, pirates and pulpits were in partnership--liberty was only a
+word standing for the equal rights of robbers.
+
+For many years we insisted that our fathers had founded a free
+Government, that they were the lovers of liberty, believers in equal
+rights. We were mistaken. The colonists did not believe in the freedom
+of to-day. Their laws were filled with intolerance, with slavery and
+the infamous spirit of caste. They persecuted and enslaved. Most of them
+were narrow, ignorant and cruel. For the most part, their laws were more
+brutal than those of the nations from which they came. They branded the
+forehead of intelligence, bored with hot irons the tongue of truth. They
+persecuted the good and enslaved the helpless. They were believers in
+pillories and whipping-posts for honest, thoughtful men.
+
+When their independence was secured they adopted a Constitution that
+legalized slavery, and they passed laws making it the duty of free men
+to prevent others from becoming free. They followed the example of kings
+and nobles. They knew that monarchs had been interested in the slave
+trade, and that the first English commander of a slave-ship divided his
+profits with a queen.
+
+They forgot all the splendid things they had said--the great principles
+they had so proudly and eloquently announced. The sublime truths faded
+from their hearts. The spirit of trade, the greed for office, took
+possession of their souls. The lessons of history were forgotten. The
+voices coming from all the wrecks of kingdoms, empires and republics on
+the shores of the great river were unheeded and unheard.
+
+If the foundation is not justice, the dome cannot be high enough, or
+splendid enough, to save the temple.
+
+But above everything in the minds of our fathers was the desire for
+union--to create a Nation, to become a Power.
+
+Our fathers compromised.
+
+A compromise is a bargain in which each party defrauds the other, and
+himself.
+
+The compromise our fathers made was the coffin of honor and the cradle
+of war.
+
+A brazen falsehood and a timid truth are the parents of compromise.
+
+But some--the greatest and the best--believed in liberty for all. They
+repeated the splendid sayings of the Roman: "By the law of nature all
+men are free;"--of the French King: "Men are born free and equal;"--of
+the sublime Zeno: "All men are by nature equal, and virtue alone
+establishes a difference between them."
+
+In the year preceding the Declaration of Independence, a society for the
+abolition of slavery was formed in Pennsylvania and its first President
+was one of the wisest and greatest of men--Benjamin Franklin. A society
+of the same character was established in New York in 1785; its first
+President was John Jay--the second, Alexander Hamilton.
+
+But in a few years these great men were forgotten. Parties rivaled each
+other in the defence of wrong. Politicians cared only for place and
+power. In the clamor of the heartless, the voice of the generous was
+lost. Slavery became supreme. It dominated legislatures, courts and
+parties; it rewarded the faithless and little; it degraded the honest
+and great.
+
+And yet, through all these hateful years, thousands and thousands of
+noble men and women denounced the degradation and the crime. Most of
+their names are unknown. They have given a glory to obscurity. They have
+filled oblivion with honor.
+
+In the presence of death it has been the custom to speak of the
+worthlessness, and the vanity, of life. I prefer to speak of its value,
+of its importance, of its nobility and glory.
+
+Life is not merely a floating shadow, a momentary spark, a dream that
+vanishes. Nothing can be grander than a life filled with great and noble
+thoughts--with brave and honest deeds. Such a life sheds light, and the
+seeds of truth sown by great and loyal men bear fruit through all the
+years to be. To have lived and labored and died for the right--nothing
+can be sublimer.
+
+History is but the merest outline of the exceptional--of a few great
+crimes, calamities, wars, mistakes and dramatic virtues. A few mountain
+peaks are touched, while all the valleys of human life, where countless
+victories are won, where labor wrought with love--are left in the
+eternal shadow.
+
+But these peaks are not the foundation of nations. The forgotten words,
+the unrecorded deeds, the unknown sacrifices, the heroism, the industry,
+the patience, the love and labor of the nameless good and great have for
+the most part founded, guided and defended States. The world has
+been civilized by the unregarded poor, by the untitled nobles, by the
+uncrowned kings who sleep in unknown graves mingled with the common
+dust.
+
+They have thought and wrought, have borne the burdens of the world. The
+pain and labor have been theirs--the glory has been given to the few.
+
+The conflict came. The South unsheathed the sword. Then rose the
+embattled North, and these men who sleep to-night beneath the flowers of
+half the world, gave all for us.
+
+They gave us a Nation--a republic without a slave--a republic that is
+sovereign, and to whose will every citizen and every State must bow.
+They gave us a Constitution for all--one that can be read without shame
+and defended without dishonor. They freed the brain, the lips and hands
+of men.
+
+All that could be done by force was done. All that could be accomplished
+by the adoption of constitutions was done. The rest is left to
+education--the innumerable influences of civilization--to the
+development of the intellect, to the cultivation of the heart and the
+imagination.
+
+The past is now a hideous dream.
+
+The present is filled with pride, with gratitude, and hope.
+
+Liberty is the condition of real progress. The free man works for wife
+and child--the slave toils from fear. Liberty gives leisure and leisure
+refines, beautifies and ennobles. Slavery gives idleness and idleness
+degrades, deforms and brutalizes.
+
+Liberty and slavery--the right and wrong--the joy and grief--the day and
+night--the glory and the gloom of all the years.
+
+Liberty is the word that all the good have spoken.
+
+It is the hope of every loving heart--the spark and flame in every noble
+breast--the gem in every splendid soul--the many-colored dream in every
+honest brain.
+
+This word has filled the dungeon with its holy light,--has put the halo
+round the martyr's head,--has raised the convict far above the king,
+and clad even the scaffold with a glory that dimmed and darkened every
+throne.
+
+To the wise man, to the wise nation, the mistakes of the past are the
+torches of the present. The war is over. The institution that caused it
+has perished. The prejudices that fanned the flames are only ashes now.
+We are one people. We will stand or fall together. At last, with clear
+eyes we see that the triumph of right was a triumph for all. Together we
+reap the fruits of the great victory. We are all conquerors. Around the
+graves of the heroes--North and South, white and colored--together
+we stand and with uncovered heads reverently thank the saviors of our
+native land.
+
+We are now far enough away from the conflict--from its hatreds, its
+passions, its follies and its glories, to fairly and philosophically
+examine the causes and in some measure at least to appreciate the
+results.
+
+States and nations, like individuals, do as they must. Back of
+revolution, of rebellion, of slavery and freedom, are the efficient
+causes. Knowing this, we occupy that serene height from which it is
+possible to calmly pronounce a judgment upon the past.
+
+We know now that the seeds of our war were sown hundreds and thousands
+of years ago--sown by the vicious and the just, by prince and peasant,
+by king and slave, by all the virtues and by all the vices, by all the
+victories and all the defeats, by all the labor and the love, the loss
+and gain, by all the evil and the good, and by all the heroes of the
+world.
+
+Of the great conflict we remember only its glory and its lessons. We
+remember only the heroes who made the Republic the first of nations, and
+who laid the foundation for the freedom of mankind.
+
+This will be known as the century of freedom. Slowly the hosts of
+darkness have been driven back.
+
+In 1808 England and the United States united for the suppression of the
+slave-trade. The Netherlands joined in this holy work in 1818. France
+lent her aid in 1819 and Spain in 1820. In the same year the United
+States declared the traffic to be piracy, and in 1825 the same law was
+enacted by Great Britain. In 1826 Brazil agreed to suppress the traffic
+in human flesh. In 1833 England abolished slavery in the West Indies,
+and in 1843 in her East Indian possessions, giving liberty to more than
+twelve millions of slaves. In 1846 Sweden abolished slavery, and in
+1848 it was abolished in the colonies of Denmark and France. In 1861
+Alexander II., Czar of all the Russias, emancipated the serfs, and on
+the first day of January, 1863, the shackles fell from millions of
+the citizens of this Republic. This was accomplished by the heroes
+we remember to-day--this, in accordance with the Proclamation of
+Emancipation signed by Lincoln,--greatest of our mighty dead--Lincoln
+the gentle and the just--and whose name will be known and honored to
+"the last syllable of recorded time." And this year, 1888, has been made
+blessed and memorable forever--in the vast empire of Brazil there stands
+no slave.
+
+Let us hope that when the next century looks from the sacred portals of
+the East, its light will only fall upon the faces of the free.
+
+     * By request, Col. Ingersoll closed this address with his
+     "Vision of War,"  to which he added "A Vision of the
+     Future." This accounts for its repetition in this volume.
+
+The past rises before me like a dream. Again we are in the great
+struggle for national life. We hear the sounds of preparation--the
+music of boisterous drums--the silver voices of heroic bugles. We see
+thousands of assemblages, and hear the appeals of orators. We see
+the pale cheeks of women, and the flushed faces of men; and in those
+assemblages we see all the dead whose dust we have covered with flowers.
+We lose sight of them no more. We are with them when they enlist in the
+great army of freedom. We see them part with those they love. Some are
+walking for the last time in quiet, woody places, with the maidens they
+adore. We hear the whisperings and the sweet vows of eternal love as
+they lingeringly part forever. Others are bending over cradles, kissing
+babes that are asleep. Some are receiving the blessings of old men. Some
+are parting with mothers who hold them and press them to their
+hearts again and again, and say nothing. Kisses and tears, tears and
+kisses--divine mingling of agony and love! And some are talking with
+wives, and endeavoring with brave words, spoken in the old tones, to
+drive from their hearts the awful fear. We see them part. We see the
+wife standing in the door with the babe in her arms--standing in the
+sunlight sobbing. At the turn of the road a hand waves--she answers by
+holding high in her loving arms the child. He is gone, and forever.
+
+We see them all as they march proudly away under the flaunting flags,
+keeping time to the grand, wild music of war--marching-down the streets
+of the great cities--through the towns and across the prairies--down to
+the fields of glory, to do and to die for the eternal right.
+
+We go with them, one and all. We are by their side on all the gory
+fields--in all the hospitals of pain--on all the weary marches. We stand
+guard with them in the wild storm and under the quiet stars. We are with
+them in ravines running with blood--in the furrows of old fields. We are
+with them between contending hosts, unable to move, wild with thirst,
+the life ebbing slowly away among the withered leaves. We see them
+pierced by balls and torn with shells, in the trenches, by forts, and
+in the whirlwind of the charge, where men become iron, with nerves of
+steel.
+
+We are with them in the prisons of hatred and famine; but human speech
+can never tell what they endured.
+
+We are at home when the news comes that they are dead. We see the maiden
+in the shadow of her first sorrow. We see the silvered head of the old
+man bowed with the last grief.
+
+The past rises before us, and we see four millions of human beings
+governed by the lash--we see them bound hand and foot--we hear the
+strokes of cruel whips--we see the hounds tracking women through
+tangled swamps. We see babes sold from the breasts of mothers. Cruelty
+unspeakable! Outrage infinite!
+
+Four million bodies in chains--four million souls in fetters. All the
+sacred relations of wife, mother, father and child trampled beneath
+the brutal feet of might. And all this was done under our own beautiful
+banner of the free.
+
+The past rises before us. We hear the roar and shriek of the bursting
+shell. The broken fetters fall. These heroes died. We look. Instead of
+slaves we see men and women and children. The wand of progress touches
+the auction block, the slave pen, the whipping post, and we see homes
+and firesides and school-houses and books, and where all was want and
+crime and cruelty and fear, we see the faces of the free.
+
+These heroes are dead. They died for liberty--they died for us. They
+are at rest. They sleep in the land they made free, under the flag
+they rendered stainless, under the solemn pines, the sad hemlocks, the
+tearful willows, and the embracing vines.
+
+They sleep beneath the shadows of the clouds, careless alike of sunshine
+or of storm, each in the windowless Palace of Rest. Earth may run red
+with other wars--they are at peace. In the midst of battle, in the roar
+of conflict, they found the serenity of death. I have one sentiment for
+soldiers living and dead: Cheers for the living; tears for the dead.
+
+A vision of the future rises:
+
+I see our country filled with happy homes, with firesides of
+content,--the foremost land of all the earth.
+
+I see a world where thrones have crumbled and where kings are dust. The
+aristocracy of idleness has perished from the earth.
+
+I see a world without a slave. Man at last is free. Nature's forces have
+by Science been enslaved. Lightning and light, wind and wave, frost
+and flame, and all the secret, subtle powers of earth and air are the
+tireless toilers for the human race.
+
+I see a world at peace, adorned with every form of art, with music's
+myriad voices thrilled, while lips are rich with words of love and
+truth; a world in which no exile sighs, no prisoner mourns; a world on
+which the gibbet's shadow does not fall; a world where labor reaps its
+full reward, where work and worth go hand in hand, where the poor girl
+trying to win bread with the needle--the needle that has been called
+"the asp for the breast of the poor,"--is not driven to the desperate
+choice of crime or death, of suicide or shame.
+
+I see a world without the beggar's outstretched palm, the miser's
+heartless, stony stare, the piteous wail of want, the livid lips of
+lies, the cruel eyes of scorn.
+
+I see a race without disease of flesh or brain,--shapely and fair,--the
+married harmony of form and function,--and, as I look, life lengthens,
+joy deepens, love canopies the earth; and over all, in the great dome,
+shines the eternal star of human hope.
+
+
+
+
+RATIFICATION SPEECH.
+
+
+     * Delivered at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, June
+     29,1688.
+
+Harrison and Morton.
+
+1888.
+
+FELLOW-CITIZENS, Ladies and Gentlemen--The speaker who is perfectly
+candid, who tells his honest thought, not only honors himself, but
+compliments his audience. It is only to the candid that man can afford
+to absolutely open his heart. Most people, whenever a man is nominated
+for the presidency, claim that they were for him from the very start--as
+a rule, claim that they discovered him. They are so anxious to be with
+the procession, so afraid of being left, that they insist that they got
+exactly the man they wanted.
+
+I will be frank enough with you to say that the convention did not
+nominate my choice. I was for the nomination of General Gresham,
+believing that, all things considered, he was the best and most
+available man--a just judge, a soldier, a statesman. But there is
+something in the American blood that bows to the will of the majority.
+There is that splendid fealty and loyalty to the great principle upon
+which our Government rests; so that when the convention reached its
+conclusion, every Republican was for the nominee. There were good men
+from which to select this ticket. I made my selection, and did the best
+I could to induce the convention to make the same. Some people think,
+or say they think, that I made a mistake in telling the name of the man
+whom I was for. But I always know whom I am for, I always know what I am
+for, and I know the reasons why I am for the thing or for the man.
+
+And it never once occurred to me that we could get a man nominated, or
+elected, and keep his name a secret. When I am for a man I like to stand
+by him, even while others leave, no matter if at last I stand alone. I
+believe in doing things above board, in the light, in the wide air.
+No snake ever yet had a skin brilliant enough, no snake ever crawled
+through the grass secretly enough, silently or cunningly enough, to
+excite my admiration. My admiration is for the eagle, the monarch of the
+empyrean, who, poised on outstretched pinions, challenges the gaze of
+all the world. Take your position in the sunlight; tell your neighbors
+and your friends what you are for, and give your reasons for your
+position; and if that is a mistake, I expect to live making only
+mistakes. I do not like the secret way, but the plain, open way; and I
+was for one man, not because I had anything against the others, who were
+all noble, splendid men, worthy to be Presidents of the United States.
+
+Now, then, leaving that subject, two parties again confront each other.
+With parties as with persons goes what we call character. They have
+built up in the nation in which they live reputation, and the reputation
+of a party should be taken into consideration as well as the reputation
+of a man. What is this party? What has it done? What has it endeavored
+to do? What are the ideas in its brain? What are the hopes, the emotions
+and the loves in its heart? Does it wish to make the world grander and
+better and freer? Has it a high ideal? Does it believe in sunrise, or
+does it keep its back to the sacred east of eternal progress? These
+are the questions that every American should ask. Every man should
+take pride in this great Nation--America, with a star of glory in her
+forehead!--and every man should say, "I hope when I lie down in death I
+shall leave a greater and grander country than when I was born."
+
+This is the country of humanity. This is the Government of the poor.
+This is where man has an even chance with his fellow-man. In this
+country the poorest man holds in his hand at the day of election the
+same unit, the same amount, of political power as the owner of a hundred
+millions. That is the glory of the United States.
+
+A few days ago our party met in convention. Now, let us see who we are.
+Let us see what the Republican party is. Let us see what is the spirit
+that animates this great and splendid organization.
+
+And I want you to think one moment, just one moment: What was this
+country when the first Republican President was elected? Under the
+law then, every Northern man was a bloodhound, pledged to catch human
+beings, who, led by the light of the Northern Star, were escaping
+to free soil. Remember that. And remember, too, that when our first
+President was elected we found a treasury empty, the United States
+without credit, the great Republic unable to borrow money from day to
+day to pay its current expenses. Remember that. Think of the glory and
+grandeur of the Republican party that took the country with an empty
+exchequer, and then think of what the Democratic party says to-day of
+the pain and anguish it has suffered administering the Government with a
+surplus!
+
+We must remember what the Republican party has done--what it has
+accomplished for nationality, for liberty, for education and for the
+civilization of our race. We must remember its courage in war, its
+honesty in peace. Civil war tests to a certain degree the strength, the
+stability and the patriotism of a country. After the war comes a greater
+strain. It is a great thing to die for a cause, but it is a greater
+thing to live for it. We must remember that the Republican party not
+only put down a rebellion, not only created a debt of thousands and
+thousands of millions, but that it had the industry and the intelligence
+to pay that debt, and to give to the United States the best financial
+standing of any nation.
+
+When this great party came together in Chicago what was the first thing
+the convention did? What was the first idea in its mind? It was to honor
+the memory of the greatest and grandest men the Republic has produced.
+The first name that trembled upon the lips of the convention was that of
+Abraham Lincoln--Abraham Lincoln, one of the greatest and grandest men
+who ever lived, and, in my judgment, the greatest man that ever sat
+in the presidential chair. And why the greatest? Because the kindest,
+because he had more mercy and love in his heart than were in the heart
+of any other President. And so the convention paid its tribute to the
+great soldier, to the man who led, in company with others, the great
+army of freedom to victory, until the old flag floated over every inch
+of American soil and every foot of that territory was dedicated to the
+eternal freedom of mankind.
+
+And what next did this convention do? The next thing was to send
+fraternal greetings to the Americans of Brazil. Why? Because Brazil
+had freed every slave, and because that act left the New World, this
+hemisphere, without a slave--left two continents dedicated to the
+freedom of man--so that with that act of Brazil the New World,
+discovered only a few years ago, takes the lead in the great march of
+human progress and liberty. That is the second thing the convention did.
+Only a little while ago the minister to this country from Brazil, acting
+under instructions from his government, notified the President of the
+United States that this sublime act had been accomplished--notified
+him that from the bodies of millions of men the chains of slavery had
+fallen--an act great enough to make the dull sky of half the world glow
+as though another morning had risen upon another day.
+
+And what did our President say? Was he filled with enthusiasm? Did his
+heart beat quicker? Did the blood rush to his cheek? He simply said,
+as it is reported, "that he hoped time would justify the wisdom of the
+measure." It is precisely the same as though a man should quit a life of
+crime, as though some gentleman in the burglar business should finally
+announce to his friends: "I have made up my mind never to break into
+another house," and the friend should reply: "I hope that time will
+justify the propriety of that resolution."
+
+That was the first thing, with regard to the condition of the world,
+that came into the mind of the Republican convention. And why was that?
+Because the Republican party has fought for liberty from the day of its
+birth to the present moment.
+
+And what was the next? The next resolution passed by the convention was,
+"that we earnestly hope, we shall soon congratulate our fellow-citizens
+of Irish birth upon the peaceful recovery of home rule in Ireland."
+
+Wherever a human being wears a chain, there you will find the sympathy
+of the Republican party. Wherever one languishes in a dungeon for having
+raised the standard of revolt in favor of human freedom, there you will
+find the sympathy of the Republican party. I believe in liberty for
+Ireland, not because it is Ireland, but because they are human beings,
+and I am for liberty, not as a prejudice, but as a principle.
+
+The man rightfully in jail who wants to get out is a believer in liberty
+as a prejudice; but when a man out of jail sees a man wrongfully in jail
+and is willing to risk his life to give liberty to the man who ought to
+have it, that is being in favor of liberty as a principle. So I am in
+favor of liberty everywhere, all over the world, and wherever one man
+tries to govern another simply because he has been born a lord or a duke
+or a king, or wherever one governs another simply by brute force, I say
+that that is oppression, and it is the business of Americans to do all
+they can to give liberty to the oppressed everywhere.
+
+Ireland should govern herself. Those who till the soil should own the
+soil, or have an opportunity at least of becoming the owners. A few
+landlords should not live in extravagance and luxury while those
+who toil live on the leavings, on parings, on crumbs and crusts. The
+treatment of Ireland by England has been one continuous crime. There is
+no meaner page in history.
+
+What is the next thing in this platform? And if there is anything in it
+that anybody can object to, we will find it out to-night. The next thing
+is the supremacy of the Nation.-Why, even the Democrats now believe in
+that, and in their own platform are willing to commence that word with
+a capital N. They tell us that they are in favor of an indissoluble
+Union--just as I presume they always have been. But they now believe in
+a Union. So does the Republican party. What else? The Republican party
+believes, not in State Sovereignty, but in the preservation of all the
+rights reserved to the States by the Constitution.
+
+Let me show you the difference: For instance, you make a contract with
+your neighbor who lives next door--equal partners--and at the bottom of
+the contract you put the following addition: "If there is any dispute
+as to the meaning of this contract, my neighbor shall settle it, and any
+settlement he shall make shall be final." Is there any use of talking
+about being equal partners any longer? Any use of your talking about
+being a sovereign partner? So, the Constitution of the United States
+says: "If any question arises between any State and the Federal
+Government it shall be decided by a Federal Court." That is the end of
+what they call State Sovereignty.
+
+Think of a sovereign State that can make no treaty, that cannot levy
+war, that cannot coin money. But we believe in maintaining the rights
+of the States absolutely in their integrity, because we believe in local
+self-government. We deny, however, that a State has any right to deprive
+a citizen of his vote. We deny that the State has any right to violate
+the Federal law, and we go further and we say that it is the duty of the
+General Government to see to it that every citizen in every State shall
+have the right to exercise all of his privileges as a citizen of the
+United States--"the right of every lawful citizen," says our platform,
+"native or foreign, white or black, to cast a free ballot."
+
+Let me say one word about that.
+
+The ballot is the king, the emperor, the ruler of America; it is the
+only rightful sovereign of the Republic; and whoever refuses to count
+an honest vote, or whoever casts a dishonest vote, is a traitor to the
+great principle upon which our Government is founded. The man poisons,
+or endeavors to poison, the springs of authority, the fountains of
+justice, of rightful dominion and power; and until every citizen can
+cast his vote everywhere in this land and have that vote counted, we are
+not a republican people, we are not a civilized nation. The Republican
+party will not have finished its mission until this country is
+civilized. That is its business. It was born of a protest against
+barbarism.
+
+The Republican party was the organized conscience of the United States.
+It had the courage to stand by what it believed to be right. There is
+something better even than success in this world; or in other words,
+there is only one kind of success, and that is to be for the right. Then
+whatever happens, you have succeeded.
+
+Now, comes the next question. The Republican party not only wants to
+protect every citizen in his liberty, in his right to vote, but it wants
+to have that vote counted. And what else?
+
+The next thing in this platform is protection for American labor.
+
+I am going to tell you in a very brief way why I am in favor of
+protection. First, I want this Republic substantially independent of
+the rest of the world. You must remember that while people are
+civilized--some of them--so that when they have a quarrel they leave it
+to the courts to decide, nations still occupy the position of savages
+toward each other. There is no national court to decide a question,
+consequently the question is decided by the nations themselves, and you
+know what selfishness and greed and power and the ideas of false glory
+will do and have done. So that this Nation is not safe one moment from
+war. I want the Republic so that it can live although at war with all
+the world.
+
+We have every kind of climate that is worth having. Our country embraces
+the marriage of the pine and palm; we have all there is of worth; it
+is the finest soil in the world and the most ingenious people that ever
+contrived to make the forces of nature do their work. I want this Nation
+substantially independent, so that if every port were blockaded we would
+be covered with prosperity as with a mantle. Then, too, the Nation that
+cannot take care of itself in war is always at a disadvantage in peace.
+That is one reason. Let me give you the next.
+
+The next reason is that whoever raises raw material and sells it will be
+eternally poor. There is no State in this Union where the farmer raises
+wheat and sells it, that the farmer is not poor. Why? He only makes one
+profit, and, as a rule, that is a loss. The farmer that raises corn does
+better, because he can sell, not corn, but pork and beef and horses. In
+other words, he can make the second or third profit, and those farmers
+get rich. There is a vast difference between the labor necessary to
+raise raw material and the labor necessary to make the fabrics used
+by civilized men. Remember that; and if you are confined simply to raw
+material your labor will be unskilled; unskilled labor will be cheap,
+the raw material will be cheap, and the result is that your country will
+grow poorer and poorer, while the country that buys your raw material,
+makes it into fabrics and sells it back to you, will grow intelligent
+and rich. I want you to remember this, because it lies at the foundation
+of this whole subject. Most people who talk on this point bring forward
+column after column of figures, and a man to understand it would have to
+be a walking table of logarithms. I do not care to discuss it that
+way. I want to get at the foundation principles, so that you can give a
+reason, as well as myself, why you are in favor of protection.
+
+Let us take another step. We will take a locomotive--a wonderful
+thing--that horse of progress, with its flesh of iron and steel and
+breath of flame--a wonderful thing. Let us see how it is made. Did you
+ever think of the deft and cunning hands, of the wonderfully accurate
+brains, that can make a thing like that? Did you ever think about it?
+How much do you suppose the raw material lying in the earth was worth
+that was changed into that locomotive? A locomotive that is worth, we
+will say, twelve thousand dollars; how much was the raw material worth
+lying in the earth, deposited there millions of years ago? Not as much
+as one dollar. Let us, just for the sake of argument, say five dollars.
+What, then, has labor added to the twelve thousand dollar locomotive?
+Eleven thousand nine hundred and ninety-five dollars. Now, why? Because,
+just to the extent that thought is mingled with labor, wages increase;
+just to the extent you mix mind with muscle, you give value to labor;
+just to the extent that the labor is skilled, deft, apt, just to that
+extent or in that proportion, is the product valuable. Think about it.
+Raw material! There is a piece of canvas five feet one way, three the
+other. Raw material would be to get a man to whitewash it; that is raw
+material. Let a man of genius paint a picture upon it; let him put in
+that picture the emotions of his heart, the landscapes that have made
+poetry in his brain, the recollection of the ones he loves, the prattle
+of children, a mother's tear, the sunshine of her smile, and all the
+sweet and sacred memories of his life, and it is worth five thousand
+dollars--ten thousand dollars.
+
+Noise is raw material, but the great opera of "Tristan and Isolde" is
+the result of skilled labor. There is the same difference between simple
+brute strength and skilled labor that there is between noise and the
+symphonies of Beethoven. I want you to get this in your minds.
+
+Now, then, whoever sells raw material gives away the great profit. You
+raise cotton and sell it; and just as long as the South does it and does
+nothing more the South will be poor, the South will be ignorant, and it
+will be solidly Democratic.
+
+Now, do not imagine that I am saying anything against the Democratic
+party. I believe the Democratic party is doing the best it can under the
+circumstances. You know my philosophy makes me very charitable. You find
+out all about a man, all about his ancestors, and you can account for
+his vote always. Why? Because there are causes and effects in nature.
+There are sometimes antecedents and subsequents that have no relation
+to each other, but at the same time, all through the web and woof of
+events, you find these causes and effects, and if you only look far
+enough, you will know why a man does as he does.
+
+I have nothing to say against the Democratic party. I want to talk
+against ideas, not against people. I do not care anything about their
+candidates, whether they are good, bad or indifferent. What, gentlemen,
+are your ideas? What do you propose to do? What is your policy? That
+is what I want to know, and I am willing to meet them upon the field of
+intellectual combat. They are in possession; they are in the rifle pits
+of office; we are in the open field, but we will plant our standard, the
+flag that we love, without a stain, and under that banner, upon which
+so many dying men have looked in the last hour when they thought of
+home and country--under that flag we will carry the Democratic
+fortifications.
+
+Another thing; we want to get at this business so that we will
+understand what we are doing. I do not believe in protecting American
+industry for the sake of the capitalist, or for the sake of any class,
+but for the sake of the whole Nation. And if I did not believe that it
+was for the best interests of the whole Nation I should be opposed to
+it.
+
+Let us take this next step. Everybody, of course, cannot be a farmer.
+Everybody cannot be a mechanic. All the people in the world cannot go at
+one business. We must have a diversity of industry. I say, the greater
+that diversity, the greater the development of brain in the country. We
+then have what you might call a mental exchange; men are then pursuing
+every possible direction in which the mind can go, and the brain is
+being developed upon all sides; whereas, if you all simply cultivated
+the soil, you would finally become stupid. If you all did only one
+business you would become ignorant; but by pursuing all possible
+avocations that call for taste, genius, calculation, discovery,
+ingenuity, invention--by having all these industries open to the
+American people, we will be able to raise great men and great women; and
+I am for protection, because it will enable us to raise greater men and
+greater women. Not only because it will make more money in less time,
+but because I would rather have greater folks and less money.
+
+One man of genius makes a continent sublime. Take all the men of wealth
+from Scotland--who would know it? Wipe their names from the pages of
+history, and who would miss them? Nobody. Blot out one name, Robert
+Burns, and how dim and dark would be the star of Scotland. The great
+thing is to raise great folks. That is what we want to do, and we want
+to diversify all the industries and protect them all. How much? Simply
+enough to prevent the foreign article from destroying the domestic. But
+they say, then the manufacturers will form a trust and put the prices
+up. If we depend upon the foreign manufacturers will they not form
+trusts? We can depend on competition. What do the Democrats want to do?
+They want to do away with the tariff, so as to do away with the surplus.
+They want to put down the tariff to do away with the surplus. If you put
+down the tariff a small per cent, so that the foreign article comes to
+America, instead of decreasing, you will increase the surplus. Where you
+get a dollar now, you will get five then. If you want to stop getting
+anything from imports, you want to put the tariff higher, my friend.
+
+Let every Democrat understand this, and let him also understand that I
+feel and know that he has the same interest in this great country that I
+have, and let me be frank enough and candid enough and honest enough
+to say that I believe the Democratic party advocates the policy it does
+because it believes it will be the best for the country. But we differ
+upon a question of policy, and the only way to argue it is to keep cool.
+If a man simply shouts for his side, or gets mad, he is a long way from
+any intellectual improvement.
+
+If I am wrong in this, I want to be set right. If it is not to the
+interest of America that the shuttle shall keep flying, that wheels
+shall keep turning, that cloth shall be woven, that the forges shall
+flame and that the smoke shall rise from the numberless chimneys--if
+that is not to the interest of America, I want to know it. But I believe
+that upon the great cloud of smoke rising from the chimneys of the
+manufactories of this country, every man who will think can see the bow
+of national promise.
+
+"Oh, but," they say, "you put the prices so high." Let me give you two
+or three facts: Only a few years ago I know that we paid one hundred and
+twenty-five dollars a ton for Bessemer steel. At that time the tariff
+was twenty-eight dollars a ton, I believe. I am not much on figures. I
+generally let them add it up, and I pay it and go on about my business.
+With the tariff at twenty-eight dollars a ton, that being a sufficient
+protection against Great Britain, the ingenuity of America went to work.
+Capital had the courage to try the experiment, and the result was that,
+instead of buying thousands and thousands and thousands and tens of
+thousands and hundreds of thousands and millions of tons of steel from
+Great Britain, we made it here in our own country, and it went down as
+low as thirty dollars a ton. Under this "rascally protection" it went
+down to one-fourth of what free trade England was selling it to us for.
+
+And so I might go on all night with a thousand other articles; all I
+want to show you is that we want these industries here, and we want
+them protected just as long as they need protection. We want to rock the
+cradle just as long as there is a child in it. When the child gets to
+be seven or eight feet high, and wears number twelve boots, we will say:
+"Now you will have to shift for yourself." What we want is not simply
+for the capitalist, not simply for the workingmen, but for the whole
+country.
+
+If there is any object worthy the attention of this or any other
+government, it is the condition of the workingmen. What do they do? They
+do all that is done. They are the Atlases upon whose mighty shoulders
+rests the fabric of American civilization. The men of leisure are simply
+the vines that run round this great sturdy oak of labor. If there is
+anything noble enough, and splendid enough to claim the attention of a
+nation, it is this question, and I hope the time will come when labor
+will receive far more than it does to-day. I want you all to think of
+it--how little, after all, the laboring man, even in America, receives.
+
+[A voice: "Under protection."]
+
+Yes, sir, even under protection. Take away that protection, and he is
+instantly on a level with the European serf. And let me ask that good,
+honest gentleman one question. If the laborer is better off in other
+countries, why does not the American laborer emigrate to Europe?
+
+There is no place in the wide world where, in my judgment, labor reaps
+its true reward. There never has been. But I hope the time will come
+when the American laborer will not only make a living for himself, for
+his wife and children, but lay aside something to keep the roof above
+his head when the winter of age may come. My sympathies are all with
+them, and I would rather see thousands of... '' palaces of millionaires
+unroofed than to see desolation in the cabins of the poor. I know that
+this world has been made beautiful by those who have labored and those
+who have suffered. I know that we owe to them the conveniences of life,
+and I have more conveniences, I live a more luxurious life, than any
+monarch ever lived one hundred years ago. I have more conveniences than
+any emperor could have purchased with the revenue of his empire one
+hundred years ago. It is worth something to live in this age of the
+world.
+
+And what has made us such a great and splendid and progressive and
+sensible people?
+
+[A voice: "Free thought."]
+
+Free thought, of course. Back of every invention is free thought. Why
+does a man invent? Slavery never invents; freedom invents. A slave
+working for his master tries to do the least work in the longest space
+of time, but a free man, working for wife and children, tries to do the
+most work in the shortest possible time. He is in love with what he is
+doing, consequently his head and his hands go in partnership; muscle and
+brain unite, and the result is that the head invents something to help
+the hands, and out of the brain leaps an invention that makes a slave
+of the forces of nature--those forces that have no backs to be whipped,
+those forces that shed no tears, those forces that are destined to work
+forever for the happiness of the human race.
+
+Consequently I am for the protection of American labor, American genius,
+American thought. I do not want to put our workingmen on a level with
+the citizens of despotisms. Why do not the Democrats and others want the
+Chinese to come here? Are they in favor of being protected? Why is it
+that the Democrats and others object to penitentiary labor? I will tell
+you. They say that a man in the penitentiary can produce cheaper. He has
+no family to support, he has no children to look after; and they say, it
+is hardly fair to make the father of a family and an honest man compete
+with a criminal within the walls of a penitentiary. So they ask to be
+protected.
+
+What is the difference whether a man is in the penitentiary, or whether
+he is in the despotism of some European state? "Ah, but," they say, "you
+let the laborer of Europe come here himself." Yes, and I am in favor of
+it always. Why? This world belongs to the human race. And when they come
+here, in a little while they have our wants, and if they do not their
+children do, and you will find the second generation of Irishmen or
+Germans or of any other nationality just as patriotic as the tenth
+generation from the first immigrant. I want them to come. Then they get
+our habits.
+
+Who wants free trade? Only those who want us for their customers, who
+would like to sell us everything that we use--England, Germany, all
+those countries. And why? Because one American will buy more than one
+thousand, yes, five thousand Asiatics. America consumes more to-day
+than China and India, more than ten billion would of semi-civilized and
+barbarous peoples. What do they buy--what does England sell? A little
+powder, a little whiskey, cheap calico, some blankets--a few things of
+that kind. What does the American purchase? Everything that civilized
+man uses or that civilized man can want.
+
+England wants this market. Give her free trade, and she will become the
+most powerful, the richest nation that ever had her territories marked
+upon the map of the world. And what do we become? Nobodies. Poor.
+Invention will be lost, our minds will grow clumsy, the wondrous,
+deft hand of the mechanic paralyzed--a great raw material producing
+country--ignorant, poor, barbaric. I want the cotton that is raised in
+this country to be spun here, to be woven into cloth. I want everything
+that we use to be made by Americans. We can make the cloth, we can raise
+the food to feed and to clothe this Nation, and the Nation is now only
+in its infancy.
+
+Somehow people do not understand this. They really think we are getting
+filled up. Look at the map of this country. See the valley of the
+Mississippi. Put your hand on it. Trace the rivers coming from the Rocky
+Mountains and the Alleghanies, and sweeping down to the Gulf, and know
+that in the valley of the Mississippi, with its wondrous tributaries,
+there can live and there can be civilized and educated five hundred
+millions of human beings.
+
+Let us have some sense. I want to show you how far this goes beyond the
+intellectual horizon of some people who hold office. For instance: We
+have a tariff on lead, and by virtue of that tariff on lead nearly every
+silver mine is worked in this country. Take the tariff from lead and
+there would remain in the clutch of the rocks, of the quartz misers,
+for all time, millions and millions of silver; but when that is put with
+lead, and lead runs with silver, they can make enough on lead and silver
+to pay for the mining, and the result is that millions and millions are
+added every year to the wealth of the United States.
+
+Let me tell you another thing: There is not a State in the Union but
+has something it wants protected. And Louisiana--a Democratic State,
+and will be just as long as Democrats count the votes--Louisiana has the
+impudence to talk about free trade and yet it wants its sugar protected.
+Kentucky says free trade, except hemp; and if anything needs protection
+it is hemp. Missouri says hemp and lead. Colorado, lead and wool; and so
+you can make the tour of the States and every one is for free trade with
+an exception--that exception being to the advantage of that State, and
+when you put the exceptions together you have protected the industries
+of all the States.
+
+Now, if the Democratic party is in favor of anything, it is in favor of
+free trade. If President Clevelands message means anything it means free
+trade. And why? Because it says to every man that gets protection: If
+you will look about you, you will find that you pay for something
+else that is protected more than you receive in benefits for what is
+protected of yours; consequently the logic of that is free trade. They
+believe in it I have no doubt. When the whole world is civilized, when
+men are everywhere free, when they all have something like the same
+tastes and ambitions, when they love their families and their children,
+when they want the same kind of food and roofs above them--if that day
+shall ever come--the world can afford to have its trade free, but do not
+put the labor of America on a par with the labor of the Old World.
+
+Now, about taxes--internal revenue. That was resorted to in time of war.
+The Democratic party made it necessary. We had to tax everything to beat
+back the Democratic hosts, North and South. Now, understand me. I know
+that thousands and hundreds of thousands of individual Democrats were
+for this country, and were as pure patriots as ever marched beneath the
+flag. I know that--hundreds of thousands of them. I am speaking of the
+party organization that staid at home and passed resolutions that every
+time the Union forces won a victory the Constitution had been violated.
+I understand that. Those taxes were put on in time of war, because it
+was necessary. Direct taxation is always odious. A government dislikes,
+to be represented among all the people by a tax gatherer, by an official
+who visits homes carrying consternation and grief wherever he goes.
+Everybody, from the most ancient times of which I have ever read, until
+the present moment, dislikes a tax gatherer. I have never yet seen in
+any cemetery a monument with this inscription: "Sacred to the memory of
+the man who loved to pay his taxes." It is far better if we can collect
+the needed revenue of this Government indirectly. But, they say, you
+must not take the taxes off tobacco; you must not take the taxes off
+alcohol or spirits or whiskey. Why? Because it is immoral to take off
+the taxes. Do you believe that there was, on the average, any more
+drunkenness in this country before the tax was put on than there is now?
+I do not. I believe there is as much liquor drank to-day, per capita,
+as there ever was in the United States. I will not blame the Democratic
+party. I do not care what they drink. What they think is what I have to
+do with. I will be plain with them, because I know lots of fellows
+in the Democratic party, and that is the only bad thing about
+them--splendid fellows. And I know a good many Republicans, and I am
+willing to take my oath that that is the only good thing about them. So,
+let us all be fair.
+
+I want the taxes taken from tobacco and whiskey; and why? Because it is
+a war measure that should not be carried on in peace; and in the second
+place, I do not want that system inaugurated in this country, unless
+there is an absolute necessity for it, and the moment the necessity is
+gone, stop it.
+
+The moral side of this question? Only a couple of years ago, I think
+it was, the Prohibitionists said that they wanted this tax taken from
+alcohol. Why? Because as long as the Government licensed, as long as the
+Government taxed and received sixty millions of dollars in revenue, just
+so long the Government would make this business respectable, just so
+long the Government would be in partnership with this liquor crime. That
+is what they said then. Now we say take the tax off, and they say it is
+immoral. Now, I have a little philosophy about this. I may be entirely
+wrong, but I am going to give it to you. You never can make great men
+and great women, by keeping them out of the way of temptation. You have
+to educate them to withstand temptation. It is all nonsense to tie a
+man's hands behind him and then praise him for not picking pockets. I
+believe that temperance walks hand in hand with liberty. Just as life
+becomes valuable, people take care of it. Just as life is great, and
+splendid and noble, as long as the future is a kind of gallery filled
+with the ideal, just so long will we take care of ourselves and avoid
+dissipation of every kind. Do you know, I believe, as much as I believe
+that I am living, that if the Mississippi itself were pure whiskey and
+its banks loaf sugar, and all the flats covered with mint, and all
+the bushes grew teaspoons and tumblers, there would not be any more
+drunkenness than there is now!
+
+As long as you say to your neighbor "you must not" there is something in
+that neighbor that says, "Well I will determine that for myself, and you
+just say that again and I will take a drink if it kills me." There is no
+moral question involved in it, except this: Let the burden of government
+rest as lightly as possible upon the shoulders of the people, and let it
+cause as little irritation as possible. Give liberty to the people. I
+am willing that the women who wear silks, satins and diamonds; that the
+gentlemen who smoke Havana cigars and drink champagne and Chateau Yquem;
+I am perfectly willing that they shall pay my taxes and support this
+Government, and I am willing that the man who does not do that, but is
+willing to take the domestic article, should go tax free.
+
+Temperance walks hand in hand with liberty. You recollect that little
+old story about a couple of men who were having a discussion on
+this prohibition question, and the man on the other side said to the
+Prohibitionist: "How would you like to live in a community where
+every body attended to his own business, where every body went to bed
+regularly at night, got up regularly in the morning; where every man,
+woman and child was usefully employed during the day; no backbiting,
+no drinking of whiskey, no cigars, and where they all attended divine
+services on Sunday, and where no profane language was used?" "Why," said
+he, "such a place would be a paradise, or heaven; but there is no such
+place." "Oh," said the other man, "every well regulated penitentiary is
+that way." So much for the moral side of the question.
+
+Another point that the Republican party calls the attention of the
+country to is the use that has been made of the public land. Oh, say the
+Democratic party, see what States, what empires have been given away
+by the Republican party--and see what the Republican party did with it.
+Road after road built to the great Pacific. Our country unified--the two
+oceans, for all practical purposes, washing one shore. That is what
+it did, and what else? It has given homes to millions of people in a
+civilized land, where they can get all the conveniences of civilization.
+And what else? Fifty million acres have been taken back by the
+Government. How was this done? It was by virtue of the provisions put in
+the original grants by the Republican party.
+
+There is another thing to which the Republican party has called the
+attention of the country, and that is the admission of new States where
+there are people enough to form a State. Now, with a solid South, with
+the assistance of a few Democrats from the North, comes a State, North
+Dakota, with plenty of population, a magnificent State, filled with
+intelligence and prosperity. It knocks at the door for admission, and
+what is the question asked by this administration? Not "Have you the
+land, have you the wealth, have you the men and women?" but "Are you
+Democratic or Republican?" And being intelligent people, they answer:
+"We are Republicans." And the solid South, assisted by the Democrats
+of the North, says to that people: "The door is shut; we will not have
+you." Why? "Because you would add two to the Republican majority in
+the Senate." Is that the spirit in which a nation like this should be
+governed? When a State asks for admission, no matter what the politics
+of its people may be, I say, admit that State; put a star on the flag
+that will glitter for her.
+
+The next thing the Republican party says is, gold and silver shall both
+be money. You cannot make every thing payable in gold--that would
+be unfair to the poor man. You shall not make every thing payable in
+silver--that would be unfair to the capitalist; but it shall be payable
+in gold and silver. And why ought we to be in favor of silver? Because
+we are the greatest silver producing nation in the world; and the value
+of a thing, other things being equal, depends on its uses, and being
+used as money adds to the value of silver. And why should we depreciate
+one of our own products by saying that we will not take it as money? I
+believe in bimetalism, gold and silver, and you cannot have too much
+of either or both. No nation ever died of a surplus, and in all the
+national cemeteries of the earth you will find no monument erected to a
+nation that died from having too much silver. Give me all the silver I
+want and I am happy.
+
+The Republican party has always been sound on finance. It always knew
+you could not pay a promise with a promise. The Republican party always
+had sense enough to know that money could not be created by word
+of mouth, that you could not make it by a statute, or by passing
+resolutions in a convention. It always knew that you had to dig it out
+of the ground by good, honest work. The Republican party always knew
+that money is a commodity, exchangeable for all other commodities, but a
+commodity just as much as wheat or corn, and you can no more make money
+by law than you can make wheat or corn by law. You can by law, make a
+promise that will to a certain extent take the place of money until the
+promise is paid. It seems to me that any man who can even understand the
+meaning of the word democratic can understand that theory of money.
+
+Another thing right in this platform. Free schools for the education of
+all the children in the land. The Republican party believes in looking
+out for the children. It knows that the a, b, c's are the breastworks of
+human liberty. They know that every schoolhouse is an arsenal, a fort,
+where missiles are made to hurl against the ignorance and prejudice of
+mankind; so they are for the free school.
+
+And what else? They are for reducing the postage one-half. Why? Simply
+for the diffusion of intelligence. What effect will that have? It will
+make us more and more one people. The oftener we communicate with each
+other the more homogeneous we become. The more we study the same books
+and read the same papers the more we swap ideas, the more we become true
+Americans, with the same spirit in favor of liberty, progress and the
+happiness of the human race.
+
+What next? The Republican party says, let us build ships for
+America--for American sailors. Let our fleets cover the seas, and let
+our men-of-war protect the commerce of the Republic--not that we can
+wrong some weak nation, but so that we can keep the world from doing
+wrong to us. This is all. I have infinite contempt for civilized people
+who have guns carrying balls weighing several hundred pounds, who go and
+fight poor, naked savages that can only throw boomerangs and stones.
+
+I hold such a nation in infinite contempt.
+
+What else is in this platform? You have no idea of the number of things
+in it till you look them over. It wants to cultivate friendly feelings
+with all the governments in North, Central and South America, so that
+the great continents can be one--instigated, moved, pervaded, inspired
+by the same great thoughts. In other words, we want to civilize this
+continent and the continent of South America. And what else? This great
+platform is in favor of paying--not giving, but paying--pensions to
+every man who suffered in the great war. What would we have said at the
+time? What, if the North could have spoken, would it have said to the
+heroes of Gettysburg on the third day? "Stand firm! We will empty the
+treasures of the Nation at your feet." They had the courage and the
+heroism to keep the hosts of rebellion back without that promise, and is
+there an American to-day that can find it in his heart to begrudge
+one solitary dollar that has found its way into the pocket of a maimed
+soldier, or into the hands of his widow or his orphan?
+
+What would we have offered to the sailors under Farragut on condition
+that they would pass Forts St. Phillip and Jackson? What would we have
+offered to the soldiers under Grant in the Wilderness? What to the
+followers of Sherman and Sheridan? Do you know, I can hardly conceive of
+a spirit contemptible enough--and I am not now alluding to the President
+of the United States--I can hardly conceive of a spirit contemptible
+enough to really desire to keep a maimed soldier from the bounty of this
+Nation. It would be a disgrace and a dishonor if we allowed them to
+die in poorhouses, to drop by life's highway and to see their children
+mourning over their poor bodies, glorious with scars, maimed into
+immortality. I may do a great many bad things before I die, but I give
+you my word that so long as I live I will never vote for any President
+that vetoed a pension bill unless upon its face it was clear that the
+man was not a wounded soldier.
+
+What next in this platform? For the protection of American homes. I am
+a believer in the home. I have said, and I say again--the hearthstone is
+the foundation of the great temple; the fireside is the altar where the
+true American worships. I believe that the home, the family, is the unit
+of good government, and I want to see the aegis of the great Republic
+over millions of happy homes.
+
+That is all there is in this world worth living for. Honor, place, fame,
+glory, riches--they are ashes, smoke, dust, disappointment, unless there
+is somebody in the world you love, somebody who loves you; unless there
+is some place that you can call home, some place where you can feel the
+arms of children around your neck, some place that is made absolutely
+sacred by the love of others.
+
+So I am for this platform. I am for the election of Harrison and Morton,
+and although I did nothing toward having that ticket nominated, because,
+I tell you, I was for Gresham, yet I will do as much toward electing the
+candidates, within my power, as any man who did vote on the winning
+side.
+
+We have a good ticket, a noble, gallant soldier at the head; that is
+enough for me. He is in favor of liberty and progress. And you have
+for Vice-President a man that you all know better than I do, but a good,
+square, intelligent, generous man. That is enough for me. And these
+men are standing on the best platform that was ever adopted by the
+Republican party--a platform that stands for education, liberty, the
+free ballot, American industry; for the American policy that has made us
+the richest and greatest Nation of the globe.
+
+
+
+
+REUNION ADDRESS.
+
+     * The Elmwood Reunion, participated in by six regiments,
+     came to a glorious close last evening. There were thousands
+     of people present. The city was gayly decorated with flags
+     and hunting, while pictures and busts of Col. Ingersoll were
+     in every show window. From early in the morning until noon,
+     delegations kept coming in, A special train arrived from
+     Peoria at 10.50 o'clock, bearing a large delegation of old
+     soldiers together with Col. Ingersoll and his daughter Maud.
+     He was met by the reception committee, and marched up the
+     street escorted by an army of veterans. When he arrived on
+     the west side of the public square, the lines were opened,
+     and he marched between, in review of his old friends and
+     comrades. The parade started as soon as it could be formed,
+     after the arrival of the special train.
+
+     Col. Ingersoll was greeted by a salute of thirteen guns from
+     Peoria's historic cannon, as he was escorted to the grand
+     stand by Spencer's band and the Peoria Veterans.
+
+     The reviewing stand was on the west side of the park. Here
+     the parade was seen by Col. Ingersoll and the other
+     distinguished guests, among whom were Congressmen Graff and
+     Prince, Mayor Day, Judges N. E. Worthington and I. C.
+     Pinkney, and the Hon. Clark E. Carr, who also made a speech
+     saying that the people cannot estimate the majesty of the
+     eloquence of Col. Robert G. Ingersoll, keeping alive the
+     flame of patriotism from 1860 to the present time. .
+
+     The parade was an imposing one, there were fully two
+     thousand five hundred old veterans in line who passed In
+     review before Col. Ingersoll, each one doffing his hat as he
+     marched by. The most pleasing feature of the exercises of
+     the day was the representation of the Living Flag by one
+     hundred and fifty little girls of Elmwood, at ten o' clock
+     under the direction of Col. Lem. H. Wiley, of Peoria. The
+     flag was presented on a large Inclined amphitheatre at the
+     left of the grand stand, and was the finest thing ever
+     witnessed lu this part of the country.
+
+     Following the presentation of the Living Flag, Chairman
+     Brown called the Reunion to order, and Col. Lem. H. Wiley,
+     National Bugler gave the assembly call.
+
+     Following the assembly call a male chorus rendered a song,
+     "Ring O Bells." The song was composed for the occasion by
+     Mr. E. R. Brown and was as follows:
+
+          "Welcome now that leader fearless,
+          Free of thought and grand of brain,
+          King of hearts and speaker peerless,
+          Hail our Ingersoll again." ***
+
+     Then Chairman, E. R. Brown, took charge of the meeting and
+     introduced Col. Ingersoll as the greatest of living orators,
+     referring to the time that the Colonel declared, a quarter
+     of a century ago, in Rouse's Hall, Peoria, that from that
+     time forth there would be one free man in Illinois, and
+     expressing Indebtedness to him for what had been done since
+     for the freedom and happiness of mankind, by his mighty
+     brain, his great spirit and his gentle heart.
+
+     He then spoke of Col. Ingersoll's residence in Peoria
+     county, paying an eloquent tribute to him, and concluded by
+     leading the distinguished gentleman to the front of the
+     stand. The appearance of Col. Ingersoll was a signal for a
+     mighty shout, which was heartily joined in by everybody
+     present, even the little girls composing the living flag,
+     cheering and waving their banners.
+
+     It was fully ten minutes before the cheering had subsided,
+     and when Col. Ingersoll commenced to speak it was renewed
+     and he was forced to wait for several minutes more. When
+     quiet was restored, he opened his address, and for an hour
+     and a half he held the vast audience spell-bound with his
+     eloquence and wit.
+
+     After Col. Ingersoll's speech the veterans crowded around
+     the stand to meet and grasp the hand of their comrade, and
+     the boys of the Eleventh Illinois Cavalry, his old regiment,
+     were especially profuse in their congratulations and thanks
+     for the splendid address he had delivered. His speeeh was
+     off-hand, only occasional reference being made to his short
+     notes. The Colonel then left the Park amid the yells of
+     delight of the old soldiers, every man of whom endeavored to
+     grasp his hand.
+
+     In the afternoon the veterans assembled in Liberty Hall by
+     themselves, the room being filled. Col. Ingersoll appeared
+     and was greeted with such cheers as he had not received
+     during the entire day. He then said good-bye to his old
+     comrades.--Chicago Inter-ocean and Peoria papers, Sept. 6th,
+     1896.
+
+
+Elmwood, Ills.
+
+1895.
+
+LADIES and Gentlemen, Fellow-citizens, Old Friends and Comrades:
+
+It gives me the greatest pleasure to meet again those with whom I became
+acquainted in the morning of my life. It is now afternoon. The sun of
+life is slowly sinking in the west, and, as the evening comes, nothing
+can be more delightful than to see again the faces that I knew in youth.
+
+When first I knew you the hair was brown; it is now white. The lines
+were not quite so deep, and the eyes were not quite so dim. Mingled with
+this pleasure is sadness,--sadness for those who have passed away--for
+the dead.
+
+And yet I am not sure that we ought to mourn for the dead. I do not know
+which is better--life or death. It may be that death is the greatest
+gift that ever came from nature's open hands. We do not know.
+
+There is one thing of which I am certain, and that is, that if we could
+live forever here, we would care nothing for each other. The fact
+that we must die, the fact that the feast must end, brings our souls
+together, and treads the weeds from out the paths between our hearts.
+
+And so it may be, after all, that love is a little flower that grows
+on the crumbling edge of the grave. So it may be, that were it not
+for death there would be no love, and without love all life would be a
+curse.
+
+I say it gives me great pleasure to meet you once again; great pleasure
+to congratulate you on your good fortune--the good fortune of being a
+citizen of the first and grandest republic ever established upon the
+face of the earth.
+
+That is a royal fortune. To be an heir of all the great and brave men
+of this land, of all the good, loving and patient women; to be in
+possession of the blessings that they have given, should make every
+healthy citizen of the United States feel like a millionaire.
+
+This, to-day, is the most prosperous country on the globe; and it is
+something to be a citizen of this country.
+
+It is well, too, whenever we meet, to draw attention to what has been
+done by our ancestors. It is well to think of them and to thank them for
+all their work, for all their courage, for all their toil.
+
+Three hundred years ago our country was a vast wilderness, inhabited by
+a few savages. Three hundred years ago--how short a time; hardly a tick
+of the great clock of eternity--three hundred years; not a second in the
+life even of this planet--three hundred years ago, a wilderness; three
+hundred years ago, inhabited by a few savages; three hundred years ago
+a few men in the Old World, dissatisfied, brave and adventurous, trusted
+their lives to the sea and came to this land.
+
+In 1776 there were only three millions of people all told. These men
+settled on the shores of the sea. These men, by experience, learned to
+govern themselves. These men, by experience, found that a man should
+be respected in the proportion that he was useful. They found, by
+experience, that titles were of no importance; that the real thing was
+the man, and that the real things in the man were heart and brain. They
+found, by experience, how to govern themselves, because there was nobody
+else here when they came. The gentlemen who had been in the habit of
+governing their fellow-men staid at home, and the men who had been in
+the habit of being governed came here, and, consequently, they had to
+govern themselves.
+
+And finally, educated by experience, by the rivers and forests, by the
+grandeur and splendor of nature, they began to think that this continent
+should not belong to any other; that it was great enough to count one,
+and that they had the intelligence and manhood to lay the foundations of
+a nation.
+
+It would be impossible to pay too great and splendid a tribute to the
+great and magnificent souls of that day. They saw the future. They saw
+this country as it is now, and they endeavored to lay the foundation
+deep; they endeavored to reach the bed-rock of human rights, the
+bed-rock of justice. And thereupon they declared that all men were born
+equal; that all the children of nature had at birth the same rights, and
+that all men had the right to pursue the only good,--happiness.
+
+And what did they say? They said that men should govern men; that the
+power to govern should come from the consent of the governed, not
+from the clouds, not from some winged phantom of the air, not from the
+aristocracy of ether. They said that this power should come from
+men; that the men living in this world should govern it, and that the
+gentlemen who were dead should keep still.
+
+They took another step, and said that church and state should forever be
+divorced. That is no harm to real religion. It never was, because real
+religion means the doing of justice; real religion means the giving to
+others every right you claim for yourself; real religion consists in
+duties of man to man, in feeding the hungry, in clothing the naked, in
+defending the innocent, and in saying what you believe to be true.
+
+Our fathers had enough sense to say that, and a man to do that in 1776
+had to be a pretty big fellow. It is not so much to say it now, because
+they set the example; and, upon these principles of which I have spoken,
+they fought the war of the Revolution.
+
+At no time, probably, were the majority of our forefathers in favor
+of independence, but enough of them were on the right side, and they
+finally won a victory. And after the victory, those that had not been
+even in favor of independence became, under the majority rule, more
+powerful than the heroes of the Revolution.
+
+Then it was that our fathers made a mistake. We have got to praise them
+for what they did that was good, and we will mention what they did that
+was wrong.
+
+They forgot the principles for which they fought. They forgot the
+sacredness of human liberty, and, in the name of freedom, they made a
+mistake and put chains on the limbs of others.
+
+That was their error; that was the poison that entered the American
+blood; that was the corrupting influence that demoralized presidents
+and priests; that was the influence that corrupted the United States of
+America.
+
+That mistake, of course, had to be paid for, as all mistakes in nature
+have to be paid for. And not only do you pay for your mistake itself,
+but you pay at least ten per cent, compound interest. Whenever you do
+wrong, and nobody finds it out, do not imagine you have gotten over it;
+you have not. Nature knows it.
+
+The consequences of every bad act are the invisible police that no
+prayers can soften, and no gold can bribe.
+
+Recollect that. Recollect, that for every bad act, there will be laid
+upon your shoulder the arresting hand of the consequences; and it is
+precisely the same with a nation as it is with an individual. You have
+got to pay for all of your mistakes, and you have got to pay to the
+uttermost farthing. That is the only forgiveness known in nature. Nature
+never settles unless she can give a receipt in full.
+
+I know a great many men differ with me, and have all sorts of bankruptcy
+systems, but Nature is not built that way.
+
+Finally, slavery took possession of the Government. Every man who wanted
+an office had to be willing to step between a fugitive slave and his
+liberty.
+
+Slavery corrupted the courts, and made judges decide that the child born
+in the State of Pennsylvania, whose mother had been a slave, could not
+be free.
+
+That was as infamous a decision as was ever rendered, and yet the
+people, in the name of the law, did this thing, and the Supreme Court of
+the United States did not know right from wrong.
+
+These dignified gentlemen thought that labor could be paid by lashes on
+the back--which was a kind of legal tender--and finally an effort was
+made to subject the new territory--the Nation--to the institution of
+slavery.
+
+Then we had a war with Mexico, in which we got a good deal of glory and
+one million square miles of land, but little honor. I will admit that we
+got but little honor out of that war. That territory they wanted to give
+to the slaveholder.
+
+In 1803 we purchased from Napoleon the Great, one million square miles
+of land, and then, in 1821, we bought Florida from Spain. So that, when
+the war came, we had about three million square miles of new land. The
+object was to subject all this territory to slavery.
+
+The idea was to go on and sell the babes from their mothers until time
+should be no more. The idea was to go on with the branding-iron and the
+whip. The idea was to make it a crime to teach men, human beings,
+to read and write; to make every Northern man believe that he was a
+bulldog, a bloodhound to track down men and women, who, with the light
+of the North Star in their eyes, were seeking the free soil of Great
+Britain.
+
+Yes, in these times we had lots of mean folks. Let us remember that.
+
+And all at once, under the forms of law, under the forms of our
+Government, the greatest man under the flag was elected President. That
+man was Abraham Lincoln. And then it was that those gentlemen of the
+South said: "We will not be governed by the majority; we will be a law
+unto ourselves."
+
+And let me tell you here to-day--I am somewhat older than I used to be;
+I have a little philosophy now that I had not at the nine o'clock in the
+morning portion of my life--and I do not blame anybody. I do not blame
+the South; I do not blame the Confederate soldier.
+
+She--the South--was the fruit of conditions. She was born to
+circumstances stronger than herself; and do you know, according to my
+philosophy, (which is not quite orthodox), every man and woman in the
+whole world are what conditions have made them.
+
+So let us have some sense. The South said, "We will not submit; this is
+not a nation, but a partnership of States." I am willing to go so far as
+to admit that the South expressed the original idea of the Government.
+
+But now the question was, to whom did the newly acquired property
+belong? New States had been carved out of that territory; the soil of
+these States had been purchased with the money of the Republic, and had
+the South the right to take these States out of the Republic? That was
+the question.
+
+The great West had another interest, and that was that no enemy, no
+other nation, should control the mouth of the Mississippi. I regard
+the Mississippi River as Nature's protest against secession. The old
+Mississippi River says, and swears to it, that this country shall be
+one, now and forever.
+
+What was to be done? The South said, "We will never remain," and the
+North said, "You shall not go." It was a little slow about saying it,
+it is true. Some of the best Republicans in the North said, "Let it go."
+But the second, sober thought of the great North said, "No, this is our
+country and we are going to keep it on the map of the world."
+
+And some who had been Democrats wheeled into line, and hundreds and
+thousands said, "This is our country," and finally, when the Government
+called for volunteers, hundreds and thousands came forward to offer
+their services. Nothing more sublime was ever seen in the history of
+this world.
+
+I congratulate you to-day that you live in a country that furnished the
+greatest army that ever fought for human liberty in any country round
+the world. I want you to know that. I want you to know that the North,
+East and West furnished the greatest army that ever fought for human
+liberty. I want you to know that Gen. Grant commanded more men, men
+fighting for the right, not for conquest, than any other general who
+ever marshaled the hosts of war.
+
+Let us remember that, and let us be proud of it. The millions who poured
+from the North for the defence of the flag--the story of their heroism
+has been told to you again and again. I have told it myself many times.
+It is known to every intelligent man and woman in the world. Everybody
+knows how much we suffered. Everybody knows how we poured out money like
+water; how we spent it like leaves of the forest. Everybody knows how
+the brave blood was shed. Everybody knows the story of the great, the
+heroic struggle, and everybody knows that at last victory came to our
+side, and how the last sword of the Rebellion was handed to Gen. Grant.
+There is no need to tell that story again.
+
+But the question now, as we look back, is, was this country worth
+saving? Was the blood shed in vain? Were the lives given for naught?
+That is the question.
+
+This country, according to my idea, is the one success of the world. Men
+here have more to eat, more to wear, better houses, and, on the average,
+a better education than those of any other nation now living, or any
+that has passed away.
+
+Was the country worth saving?
+
+See what we have done in this country since 1860. We were not much of a
+people then, to be honor bright about it. We were carrying, in the great
+race of national life, the weight of slavery, and it poisoned us; it
+paralyzed our best energies; it took from our politics the best minds;
+it kept from the bench the greatest brains.
+
+But what have we done since 1860, since we really became a free people,
+since we came to our senses, since we have been willing to allow a man
+to express his honest thoughts on every subject?
+
+Do you know how much good we did? The war brought men together from
+every part of the country and gave them an opportunity to compare their
+foolishness. It gave them an opportunity to throw away their prejudices,
+to find that a man who differed with them on every subject might be the
+very best of fellows. That is what the war did. We have been broadening
+ever since.
+
+I sometimes have thought it did men good to make the trip to California
+in 1849. As they went over the plains they dropped their prejudices on
+the way. I think they did, and that's what killed the grass.
+
+But to come back to my question, what have we done since 1860?
+
+From 1860 to 1880, in spite of the waste of war, in spite of all the
+property destroyed by flame, in spite of all the waste, our profits were
+one billion three hundred and seventy-four million dollars. Think of it!
+From 1860 to 1880! That is a vast sum.
+
+From 1880 to 1890 our profits were two billion one hundred and
+thirty-nine million dollars.
+
+Men may talk against wealth as much as they please; they may talk about
+money being the root of all evil, but there is little real happiness in
+this world without some of it. It is very handy when staying at home
+and it is almost indispensable when you travel abroad. Money is a good
+thing. It makes others happy; it makes those happy whom you love, and
+if a man can get a little together, when the night of death drops the
+curtain upon him, he is satisfied that he has left a little to keep the
+wolf from the door of those who, in life, were dear to him. Yes, money
+is a good thing, especially since special providence has gone out of
+business.
+
+I can see to-day something beyond the wildest dream of any patriot who
+lived fifty years ago. The United States to-day is the richest nation
+on the face of the earth. The old nations of the world, Egypt, India,
+Greece, Rome, every one of them, when compared with this great Republic,
+must be regarded as paupers.
+
+How much do you suppose this Nation is worth to-day? I am talking about
+land and cattle, products, manufactured articles and railways. Over
+seventy thousand million dollars. Just think of it.
+
+Take a thousand dollars and then take nine hundred and ninety-nine
+thousand; so you will have one thousand piles of one thousand each. That
+makes only a million, and yet the United States today is worth seventy
+thousand millions. This is thirty-five percent, more than Great Britain
+is worth.
+
+We are a great Nation. We have got the land. This land was being made
+for many millions of years. Its soil was being made by the great lakes
+and rivers, and being brought down from the mountains for countless
+ages.
+
+This continent was standing like a vast pan of milk, with the cream
+rising for millions of years, and we were the chaps that got there when
+the skimming commenced.
+
+We are rich, and we ought to be rich. It is our own fault if we are not.
+In every department of human endeavor, along every path and highway,
+the progress of the Republic has been marvelous, beyond the power of
+language to express.
+
+Let me show you: In 1860 the horse-power of all the engines, the
+locomotives and the steamboats that traversed the lakes and rivers--the
+entire power--was three million five hundred thousand. In 1890 the
+horse-power of engines and locomotives and steamboats was over seventeen
+million.
+
+Think of that and what it means! Think of the forces at work for the
+benefit of the United States, the machines doing the work of thousands
+and millions of men!
+
+And remember that every engine that puffs is puffing for you; every road
+that runs is running for you. I want you to know that the average man
+and woman in the United States to-day has more of the conveniences of
+life than kings and queens had one hundred years ago.
+
+Yes, we are getting along.
+
+In 1860 we used one billion eight hundred million dollars' worth
+of products, of things manufactured and grown, and we sent to other
+countries two hundred and fifty million dollars' worth.
+
+In 1893 we used three billion eighty-nine million dollars' worth, and
+we sent to other countries six hundred and fifty-four million dollars'
+worth.
+
+You see, these vast sums are almost inconceivable. There is not a
+man to-day with brains large enough to understand these figures; to
+understand how many cars this money put upon the tracks, how much coal
+was devoured by the locomotives, how many men plowed and worked in the
+fields, how many sails were given to the wind, how many ships crossed
+the sea.
+
+I tell you, there is no man able to think of the ships that were built,
+the cars that were made, the mines that were opened, the trees that were
+felled--no man has imagination enough to grasp the meaning of it all. No
+man has any conception of the sea till he crosses it. I knew nothing of
+how broad this country is until I went over it in a slow train.
+
+Since 1860 the productive power of the United States has more than
+trebled.
+
+I like to talk about these things, because they mean good houses,
+carpets on the floors, pictures on the walls, some books on the shelves.
+They mean children going to school with their stomachs full of good
+food, prosperous men and proud mothers.
+
+All my life I have taken a much deeper interest in what men produce than
+in what nature does. I would rather see the prairies, with the oats and
+the wheat and the waving corn, and the schoolhouse, and hear the thrush
+sing amid the happy homes of prosperous men and women--I would rather
+see these things than any range of mountains in the world. Take it as
+you will, a mountain is of no great value.
+
+In 1860 our land was worth four billion five hundred million dollars; in
+1890 it was worth fourteen billion dollars.
+
+In 1860 all the railroads in the United States were worth four hundred
+million dollars, now they are worth a little less than ten thousand
+million dollars.
+
+I want you to understand what these figures mean.
+
+For thirty years we spent, on an average, one million dollars a day in
+building railroads.--I want you to think what that means. All that money
+had to be dug out of the ground. It had to be made by raising something
+or manufacturing something. We did not get it by writing essays on
+finance, or discussing the silver question. It had to be made with the
+ax, the plow, the reaper, the mower; in every form of industry; all to
+produce these splendid results.
+
+We have railroads enough now to make seven tracks around the great
+globe, and enough left for side tracks. That is what we have done here,
+in what the European nations are pleased to call "the new world."
+
+I am telling you these things because you may not know them, and I did
+not know them myself until a few days ago. I am anxious to give away
+information, for it is only by giving it away that you can keep it. When
+you have told it, you remember it. It is with information as it is
+with liberty, the only way to be dead sure of it is to give it to other
+people.
+
+In 1860 the houses in the United States, the cabins on the frontier, the
+buildings in the cities, were worth six thousand million dollars. Now
+they are worth over twenty-two thousand million dollars. To talk about
+figures like these is enough to make a man dizzy.
+
+In 1860 our animals of all kinds, including the Illinois deer--commonly
+called swine--the oxen and horses, and all others, were worth about one
+thousand million dollars; now they are worth about four thousand million
+dollars.
+
+Are we not getting rich? Our national debt today is nothing. It is like
+a man who owes a cent and has a dollar.
+
+Since 1860 we have been industrious. We have created two million five
+hundred thousand new farms. Since 1860 we have done a good deal of
+plowing; there have been a good many tired legs. I have been that way
+myself. Since 1860 we have put in cultivation two hundred million acres
+of land. Illinois, the best State in the Union, has thirty-five million
+acres of land, and yet, since 1860, we have put in cultivation enough
+land to make six States of the size of Illinois. That will give you some
+idea of the quantity of work we have done. I will admit I have not done
+much of it myself, but I am proud of it.
+
+In 1860 we had four million five hundred and sixty-five thousand farmers
+in this country, whose land and implements were worth over sixteen
+thousand million dollars. The farmers of this country, on an average,
+are worth five thousand dollars, and the peasants of the Old World, who
+cultivate the soil, are not worth, on an average, ten dollars beyond the
+wants of the moment. The farmers of our country produce, on an average,
+about one million four hundred thousand dollars' worth of stuff a day.
+
+What else? Have we in other directions kept pace with our physical
+development? Have we developed the mind? Have we endeavored to develop
+the brain? Have we endeavored to civilize the heart? I think we have.
+
+We spend more for schools per head than any nation in the world. And the
+common school is the breath of life.
+
+Great Britain spends one dollar and thirty cents per head on the common
+schools; France spends eighty cents; Austria, thirty cents; Germany,
+fifty cents; Italy, twenty-five cents, and the United States over two
+dollars and fifty cents.
+
+I tell you the schoolhouse is the fortress of liberty. Every schoolhouse
+is an arsenal, filled with weapons and ammunition to destroy the
+monsters of ignorance and fear.
+
+As I have said ten thousand times, the school-house is my cathedral. The
+teacher is my preacher.
+
+Eighty-seven per cent, of all the people of the United States, over ten
+years of age, can read and write. There is no parallel for this in the
+history of the wide world.
+
+Over forty-two millions of educated citizens, to whom are opened all the
+treasures of literature!
+
+Forty-two millions of people, able to read and write! I say, there is
+no parallel for this. The nations of antiquity were very ignorant when
+compared with this great Republic of ours. There is no other nation in
+the world that can show a record like ours. We ought to be proud of
+it. We ought to build more schools, and build them better. Our teachers
+ought to be paid more, and everything ought to be taught in the public
+school that is worth knowing.
+
+I believe that the children of the Republic, no matter whether their
+fathers are rich or poor, ought to be allowed to drink at the fountain
+of education, and it does not cost more to teach everything in the free
+schools than it does teaching reading and writing and ciphering.
+
+Have we kept up in other ways? The post office tells a wonderful story.
+In Switzerland, going through the post office in each year, are letters,
+etc., in the proportion of seventy-four to each inhabitant. In England
+the number is sixty; in Germany, fifty-three; in France, thirty-nine; in
+Austria, twenty-four; in Italy, sixteen, and in the United States, our
+own home, one hundred and ten. Think of it. In Italy only twenty-five
+cents paid per head for the support of the public schools and only
+sixteen letters. And this is the place where God's agent lives. I would
+rather have one good schoolmaster than two such agents.
+
+There is another thing. A great deal has been said, from time to time,
+about the workingman. I have as much sympathy with the workingman as
+anybody on the earth--who does not work. There has always been a desire
+in this world to let somebody else do the work, nearly everybody having
+the modesty to stand back whenever there is anything to be done. In
+savage countries they make the women do the work, so that the weak
+people have always the bulk of the burdens. In civilized communities
+the poor are the ones, of course, that work, and probably they are never
+fully paid. It is pretty hard for a manufacturer to tell how much he
+can pay until he sells the stuff which he manufactures. Every man who
+manufactures is not rich. I know plenty of poor corporations; I know
+tramp railroads that have not a dollar. And you will find some of them
+as anarchistic as you will find their men. What a man can pay, depends
+upon how much he can get for what he has produced. What the farmer can
+pay his help depends upon the price he receives for his stock, his corn
+and his wheat.
+
+But wages in this country are getting better day by day. We are getting
+a little nearer to being civilized day by day, and when I want to make
+up my mind on a subject I try to get a broad view of it, and not decide
+it on one case.
+
+In 1860 the average wages of the workingman were, per year, two hundred
+and eighty-nine dollars. In 1890 the average was four hundred and
+eighty-five. Thus the average has almost doubled in thirty years. The
+necessaries of life are far cheaper than they were in 1860. Now, to my
+mind, that is a hopeful sign. And when I am asked how can the dispute
+between employer and employee be settled, I answer, it will be settled
+when both parties become civilized.
+
+It takes a long time to educate a man up to the point where he does not
+want something for nothing. Yet, when a man is civilized, he does not.
+
+He wants for a thing just what it is worth; he wants to give labor its
+legitimate reward, and when he has something to sell he never wants more
+than it is worth. I do not claim to be civilized myself; but all these
+questions between capital and labor will be settled by civilization.
+
+We are to-day accumulating wealth at the rate of more than seven million
+dollars a day. Is not this perfectly splendid?
+
+And in the midst of prosperity let us never forget the men who helped
+to save our country, the men whose heroism gave us the prosperity we now
+enjoy.
+
+We have one-seventh of the good land of this world. You see there is a
+great deal of poor land in the world. I know the first time I went to
+California, I went to the Sink of the Humboldt, and what a forsaken look
+it had. There was nothing there but mines of brimstone. On the train,
+going over, there was a fellow who got into a dispute with a minister
+about the first chapter of Genesis. And when they got along to the Sink
+of the Humboldt the fellow says to the minister:
+
+"Do you tell me that God made the world in six days, and then rested on
+the seventh?"
+
+He said, "I do."
+
+"Well," said the fellow, "don't you think he could have put in another
+day here to devilish good advantage?"
+
+But, as I have said, we have got about one-seventh of the good land of
+the world. I often hear people say that we have too many folks here;
+that we ought to stop immigration; that we have no more room. The people
+who say this know nothing of their country. They are ignorant of their
+native land. I tell you that the valley of the Mississippi and the
+valleys of its tributaries can support a population of five hundred
+millions of men, women, and children. Don't talk of our being
+overpopulated; we have only just started.
+
+Here, in this land of ours, five hundred million men and women and
+children can be supported and educated without trouble. We can afford to
+double two or three times more. But what have we got to do? We have got
+to educate them when they come. That is to say, we have got to educate
+their children, and in a few generations we will have them splendid
+American citizens, proud of the Republic.
+
+We have no more patriotic men under the flag than the men who came from
+other lands, the hundreds and thousands of those who fought to preserve
+this country. And I think just as much of them as I would if they had
+been born on American soil. What matters it where a man was born? It is
+what is inside of him you have to look at--what kind of a heart he has,
+and what kind of a head. I do not care where he was born; I simply ask,
+Is he a man? Is he willing to give to others what he claims for himself?
+That is the supreme test.
+
+Now, I have got a hobby. I do not suppose any of you have heard of it.
+I think the greatest thing for a country is for all of its citizens to
+have a home. I think it is around the fireside of home that the virtues
+grow, including patriotism. We want homes.
+
+Until a few years ago it was the custom to put men in prison for debt.
+The authorities threw a man into jail when he owed something which he
+could not pay, and by throwing him into jail they deprived him of an
+opportunity to earn what would pay it. After a little time they got
+sense enough to know that they could not collect a debt in this way,
+and that it was better to give him his freedom and allow him to earn
+something, if he could. Therefore, imprisonment for debt was done away
+with.
+
+At another time, when a man owed anything, if he was a carpenter, a
+blacksmith or a shoemaker, and not able to pay it, they took his tools,
+on a writ of sale and execution, and thus incapacitated him so that he
+could do nothing. Finally they got sense enough to abolish that law,
+to leave the mechanic his tools and the farmer his plows, horses and
+wagons, and after this, debts were paid better than ever they were
+before.
+
+Then we thought of protecting the home-builder, and we said: "We will
+have a homestead exemption. We will put a roof over wife and child,
+which shall be exempt from execution and sale," and so we preserved
+hundreds of thousands and millions of homes, while debts were paid just
+as well as ever they were paid before.
+
+Now, I want to take a step further. I want, the rich people of this
+country to support it. I want the people who are well off to pay the
+taxes. I want the law to exempt a homestead of a certain value, say from
+two thousand dollars to two thousand five hundred, and to exempt it, not
+only from sale on judgment and execution, but to exempt it from taxes of
+all sorts and kinds. I want to keep the roof over the heads of children
+when the man himself is gone. I want that homestead to belong not only
+to the man, but to wife and children. I would like to live to see a roof
+over the heads of all the families of the Republic. I tell you, it does
+a man good to have a home. You are in partnership with nature when you
+plant a hill of corn. When you set out a tree you have a new interest in
+this world. When you own a little tract of land you feel as if you and
+the earth were partners. All these things dignify human nature.
+
+Bad as I am, I have another hobby. There are thousands and thousands of
+criminals in our country. I told you a little while ago I did not blame
+the South, because of the conditions which prevailed in the South. The
+people of the South did as they must. I am the same about the criminal.
+He does as he must.
+
+If you want to stop crime you must treat it properly. The conditions of
+society must not be such as to produce criminals.
+
+When a man steals and is sent to the penitentiary he ought to be sent
+there to be reformed and not to be brutalized; to be made a better man,
+not to be robbed.
+
+I am in favor, when you put a man in the penitentiary, of making him
+work, and I am in favor of paying him what his work is worth, so that
+in five years, when he leaves the prison cell, he will have from two
+hundred dollars to three hundred dollars as a breastwork between him and
+temptation, and something for a foundation upon which to build a nobler
+life.
+
+Now he is turned out and before long he is driven back. Nobody will
+employ him, nobody will take him, and, the night following the day of
+his release he is without a roof over his head and goes back to his old
+ways. I would allow him to change his name, to go to another State with
+a few hundred dollars in his pocket and begin the world again.
+
+We must recollect that it is the misfortune of a man to become a
+criminal.
+
+I have hobbies and plenty of them.
+
+I want to see five hundred millions of people living here in peace. If
+we want them to live in peace, we must develop the brain, civilize the
+heart, and above all things, must not forget education. Nothing should
+be taught in the school that somebody does not know.
+
+When I look about me to-day, when I think of the advance of my country,
+then I think of the work that has been done.
+
+Think of the millions who crossed the mysterious sea, of the thousands
+and thousands of ships with their brave prows towards the West.
+
+Think of the little settlements on the shores of the ocean, on the banks
+of rivers, on the edges of forests.
+
+Think of the countless conflicts with savages--of the midnight
+attacks--of the cabin floors wet with the blood of dead fathers, mothers
+and babes.
+
+Think of the winters of want, of the days of toil, of the nights of
+fear, of the hunger and hope.
+
+Think of the courage, the sufferings and hardships.
+
+Think of the homesickness, the disease and death.
+
+Think of the labor; of the millions and millions of trees that were
+felled, while the aisles of the great forests were filled with the
+echoes of the ax; of the many millions of miles of furrows turned by the
+plow; of the millions of miles of fences built; of the countless logs
+changed to lumber by the saw--of the millions of huts, cabins and
+houses.
+
+Think of the work. Listen, and you will hear the hum of wheels, the
+wheels with which our mothers spun the flax and wool. Listen, and you
+will hear the looms and flying shuttles with which they wove the cloth.
+
+Think of the thousands still pressing toward the West, of the roads they
+made, of the bridges they built; of the homes, where the sunlight fell,
+where the bees hummed, the birds sang and the children laughed; of the
+little towns with mill and shop, with inn and schoolhouse; of the old
+stages, of the crack of the whips and the drivers' horns; of the canals
+they dug.
+
+Think of the many thousands still pressing toward the West, passing over
+the Alleghanies to the shores of the Ohio and the great lakes--still
+onward to the Mississippi--the Missouri.
+
+See the endless processions of covered wagons drawn by horses, by
+oxen,--men and boys and girls on foot, mothers and babes inside. See the
+glimmering camp fires at night; see the thousands up with the sun and
+away, leaving the perfume of coffee on the morning air, and sometimes
+leaving the new-made grave of wife or child. Listen, and you will hear
+the cry of "Gold!" and you will see many thousands crossing the great
+plains, climbing the mountains and pressing on to the Pacific.
+
+Think of the toil, the courage it has taken to possess this land!
+
+Think of the ore that was dug, the furnaces that lit the nights with
+flame; of the factories and mills by the rushing streams.
+
+Think of the inventions that went hand in hand with the work; of the
+flails that were changed to threshers; of the sickles that became
+cradles, and the cradles that were changed to reapers and headers--of
+the wooden plows that became iron and steel; of the spinning wheel that
+became the jennie, and the old looms transformed to machines that almost
+think--of the steamboats that traversed the rivers, making the towns
+that were far apart neighbors and friends; of the stages that became
+cars, of the horses changed to locomotives with breath of flame, and the
+roads of dust and mud to highways of steel, of the rivers spanned and
+the mountains tunneled.
+
+Think of the inventions, the improvements that changed the hut to the
+cabin, the cabin to the house, the house to the palace, the earthen
+floors and bare walls to carpets and pictures--that changed famine to
+feast--toil to happy labor and poverty to wealth.
+
+Think of the cost.
+
+Think of the separation of families--of boys and girls leaving the old
+home--taking with them the blessings and kisses of fathers and mothers.
+Think of the homesickness, of the tears shed by the mothers left by the
+daughters gone. Think of the millions of brave men deformed by labor now
+sleeping in their honored graves.
+
+Think of all that has been wrought, endured and accomplished for our
+good, and let us remember with gratitude, with love and tears the brave
+men, the patient loving women who subdued this land for us.
+
+Then think of the heroes who served this country; who gave us this
+glorious present and hope of a still more glorious future; think of the
+men who really made us free, who secured the blessings of liberty, not
+only to us, but to billions yet unborn.
+
+This country will be covered with happy homes and free men and free
+women.
+
+To-day we remember the heroic dead, those whose blood reddens the paths
+and highways of honor; those who died upon the field, in the charge,
+in prison-pens, or in famine's clutch; those who gave their lives that
+liberty should not perish from the earth. And to-day we remember the
+great leaders who have passed to the realm of silence, to the land of
+shadow. Thomas, the rock of Chickamauga, self-poised, firm, brave,
+faithful; Sherman, the reckless, the daring, the prudent and the
+victorious; Sheridan, a soldier fit to have stood by Julius Caesar and
+to have uttered the words of command; and Grant, the silent, the
+invincible, the unconquered; and rising above them all, Lincoln, the
+wise, the patient, the merciful, the grandest figure in the Western
+world. We remember them all today and hundreds of thousands who are
+not mentioned, but who are equally worthy, hundreds of thousands of
+privates, deserving of equal honor with the plumed leaders of the host.
+
+And what shall I say to you, survivors of the death-filled days? To you,
+my comrades, to you whom I have known in the great days, in the time
+when the heart beat fast and the blood flowed strong; in the days of
+high hope--what shall I say? All I can say is that my heart goes out to
+you, one and all. To you who bared your bosoms to the storms of war; to
+you who left loved ones to die, if need be, for the sacred cause. May
+you live long in the land you helped to save; may the winter of your
+age be as green as spring, as full of blossoms as summer, as generous as
+autumn, and may you, surrounded by plenty, with your wives at your sides
+and your grandchildren on your knees, live long. And when at last the
+fires of life burn low; when you enter the deepening dusk of the last
+of many, many happy days; when your brave hearts beat weak and slow,
+may the memory of your splendid deeds; deeds that freed your fellow-men;
+deeds that kept your country on the map of the world; deeds that kept
+the flag of the Republic in the air--may the memory of these deeds fill
+your souls with peace and perfect joy. Let it console you to know that
+you are not to be forgotten. Centuries hence your story will be told in
+art and song, and upon your honored graves flowers will be lovingly laid
+by millions' of men and women now unborn.
+
+Again expressing the joy that I feel in having met you, and again saying
+farewell to one and all, and wishing you all the blessings of life, I
+bid you goodbye.*
+
+     * At the last reunion of the Eleventh Illinois Cavalry, the
+     Colonel's old regiment, and the soldiers of Peoria county,
+     which Mr. Ingersoll attended, a little incident happened
+     which let us into the inner circle of his life. The meeting
+     was held at Elmwood. While the soldier were passing in
+     review the citizens and young people filled all the seats in
+     the park and crowded around the speaker's stand, so as to
+     occupy all available space. When the soldiers had finished
+     their parade and returned to the park, they found it
+     impossible to get near the speaker. Of course we were all
+     disappointed, but were forced to stand on the outskirts of
+     the vast throng.
+
+     As soon as he ceased speaking, Mr. Ingersoll said to a
+     soldier that he would like to meet his comrades in the hall
+     at a certain hour in the afternoon. The word spread quickly,
+     and at the appointed hour the hall was crowded with
+     soldiers. The guard stationed at tue door was ordered to let
+     none but soldiers pass into the hall. Some of the comrades,
+     however, brought their wives. The guards, true to their
+     orders, refused to let the ladies pass. Just as Mr.
+     Ingersoll was ready to speak, word came to him that some of
+     the comrades' wives were outside and wanted permission to
+     pass the guard. The hall was full, but Mr. Ingersoll
+     requested all comrades whose wives were within reach to go
+     and get them. When his order had been complied with even
+     standing room was at a premium. When Mr. Ingersoll arose to
+     speak to that great assemblage of white-haired veterans and
+     their aged companions his voice was unusually tender, and the
+     wave of emotion that passed through the hall cannot be told
+     in words. Tears and cheers blended as Mr. Ingersoll arose
+     and began his speech with the statement that all present
+     were nearing the setting sun of life, and in all probability
+     that was the last opportunity many of them would have of
+     taking each other by the hand.
+
+     In this half-hour impromptu speech the great-hearted man,
+     Robert G. Ingersoll, was seen at his best. It was not a
+     clash of opinions over party or creed, but it was a meeting
+     of hearts and communion together In the holy of holies of
+     human life. The address was a series of word-pictures that
+     still hang on the walls of memory. The speaker, in his most
+     sympathetic mood, drew a picture of the service of the G. A.
+     R., of the women of the republic, and then paid a beautiful
+     tribute to home and invoked the kindest and greatest
+     influence to guard his comrades and their companions during
+     the remainder of life's journey.
+
+     We got very close to the man that day, where we could see
+     the heart of Mr. Ingersoll. I have often wished that a
+     reporter could have been present to preserve the address.
+     Imagine four beautiful word-paintings entitled, "The Service
+     of the G. A. R.," "The Influence of Noble Womanhood," "The
+     Sacredness of Home," and "The Pilgrimage of Life." Imagine
+     these word-paintings as drawn by Mr. Ingersoll under the
+     most favorable circumstances, and you have an idea of that
+     address. Mr. Ingersoll the Agnostic is a very different man
+     from Mr. Ingersoll the man and patriot. I cannot share the
+     doubts of this Agnostic. I cannot help admiring the man and
+     patriot.--The Rev. Frank McAlpine, Peoria Star, August 1,
+     1895.
+
+
+
+
+THE CHICAGO AND NEW YORK GOLD SPEECH.
+
+     * "This world will see but one Ingersoll."
+
+     Such was the terse, laconic, yet potent utterance that came
+     spontaneously from a celebrated statesman whose head is now
+     pillowed in the dust of death, as he stood in the lobby of
+     the old Burnet House in Cincinnati after the famous
+     Republican Convention in that city in 1876, at which Colonel
+     Robert G. Ingersoll made that powerful speech nominating
+     Blaine for the Presidency, one which is read and reread to-
+     day, and will be read in the future, as an example of the
+     highest art of the platform.
+
+     That same sentiment in thought, emotion or vocal expression
+     emanated from upward of twenty thousand citizens last night
+     who heard the eloquent and magic Ingersoll in the great
+     tent stretched near the corner of Sacramento avenue and Lake
+     street as he expounded the living gospel of true
+     Republicanism.
+
+     The old warhorse, silvered by long years of faithful service
+     to his country, aroused the same all-pervading enthusiasm as
+     he did in the campaigns of Grant and Hayes and Garfield.
+
+     He has lost not one whit, not one iota of his striking
+     physical presence, his profound reasoning, his convincing
+     logic, his rollicking wit, grandiloquence--in fine, all the
+     graces of the orator of old, reenforced by increased
+     patriotism and the ardor of the call to battle for his
+     country, are still his in the fullest measure.
+
+     Ingersoll in his powerful speech at Cincinnati, spoke in
+     behalf of a friend; last night he plead for his country. In
+     1876 he eulogized a man; last night, twenty years afterward,
+     he upheld the principles of democratic government. Such was
+     the difference in his theme; the logic, the eloquence of his
+     utterances was the more profound In the same ratio.
+
+     He came to the ground floor of human existence and talked as
+     man to man. His patriotism, be it religion, sentiment, or
+     that lofty spirit inseparable from man's soul, is his life.
+     Last night he sought to inspire those who heard him with the
+     same loyalty, and he succeeded.
+
+     Those passionate outbursts of eloquence, the wit that fairly
+     scintillated, the logic as Inexorable as heaven's decrees,
+     his rich rhetoric and immutable facts driven straight to his
+     hearers with the strength of bullets, aroused applause that
+     came as spontaneous as sunlight.
+
+     Now eliciting laughter, now silence, now cheers, the great
+     orator, with the singular charm of presence, manner and
+     voice, swayed his immense audience at his own volition.
+     Packed with potency was every sentence, each word a living
+     thing, and with them he flayed financial heresy, laid bare
+     the dire results of free trade, and exposed the dangers of
+     Populism.
+
+     It was an immense audience that greeted him. The huge tent
+     was packed from center-pole to circumference, and thousands
+     went away because they could not gain entrance. The houses
+     in the vicinity were beautifully illuminated decorated.
+
+     The Chairman, Wm. P. McCabe, in a brief but forcible speech,
+     presented Colonel Ingersoll to the vast audience. As the old
+     veteran of rebellion days arose from his seat, one
+     prolonged, tremendous cheer broke forth from the twenty
+     thousand throats. And it was fully fifteen minutes before
+     the great orator could begin to deliver his address.
+
+     In his introductory speech Mr. McCabe said:
+
+     "Friends and Fellow-Citizens: I have no set speech to make
+     to-night. My duty Is to introduce to you one whose big heart
+     and big brain is filled with love and patriotic care for the
+     things that concern the country he fought for and loved so
+     well. I now have the honor of introducing to you Hon. Robert
+     G. Ingersoll."--The Intrr-Ocean, Chicago, 111., October 9th,
+     1895.
+
+
+1896.
+
+LADIES and Gentlemen: This is our country.
+
+The legally expressed will of the majority is the supreme law of the
+land. We are responsible for what our Government does. We cannot excuse
+ourselves because of the act of some king, or the opinions of nobles. We
+are the kings. We are the nobles. We are the aristocracy of America, and
+when our Government does right we are honored, and when our Government
+does wrong the brand of shame is on the American brow.
+
+Again we are on the field of battle, where thought contends with
+thought, the field of battle where facts are bullets and arguments are
+swords.
+
+To-day there is in the United States a vast congress consisting of the
+people, and in that congress every man has a voice, and it is the duty
+of every man to inquire into all questions presented, to the end that he
+may vote as a man and as a patriot should.
+
+No American should be dominated by prejudice. No man standing under our
+flag should follow after the fife and drum of a party. He should say to
+himself: "I am a free man, and I will discharge the obligations of an
+American citizen with all the intelligence I possess."
+
+I love this country because the people are free; and if they are not
+free it is their own fault.
+
+To-night I am not going to appeal to your prejudices, if you have any.
+I am going to talk to the sense that you have. I am going to address
+myself to your brain and to your heart. I want nothing of you except
+that you will preserve the institutions of the Republic; that you will
+maintain her honor unstained. That is all I ask.
+
+I admit that all the parties who disagree with me are honest. Large
+masses of mankind are always honest, the leader not always, but the mass
+of people do what they believe to be right. Consequently there is no
+argument in abuse, nothing calculated to convince in calumny. To be
+kind, to be candid, is far nobler, far better, and far more American. We
+live in a Democracy, and we admit that every other human being has the
+same right to think, the same right to express his thought, the same
+right to vote that we have, and I want every one who hears me to vote
+in exact accord with his sense, to cast his vote in accordance with
+his conscience. I want every one to do the best he can for the great
+Republic, and no matter how he votes, if he is honest, I shall find no
+fault.
+
+But the great thing is to understand what you are going to do; the great
+thing is to use the little sense that we have. In most of us the capital
+is small, and it ought to be turned often. We ought to pay attention, we
+ought to listen to what is said and then think, think for ourselves.
+
+Several questions have been presented to the American people for their
+solution, and I propose to speak a little about those questions, and I
+do not want you to pretend to agree with me. I want no applause unless
+you honestly believe I am right.
+
+Three great questions are presented: First, as to money; second, as
+to the tariff, and third, whether this Government has the right of
+self-defence. Whether this is a Government of law, or whether there
+shall be an appeal from the Supreme Court to a mob. These are the three
+questions to be answered next Tuesday by the American people.
+
+First, let us take up this money question. Thousands and thousands of
+speeches have been made on the subject. Pamphlets thick as the leaves
+of autumn have been scattered from one end of the Republic to the other,
+all about money, as if it were an exceedingly metaphysical question, as
+though there were something magical about it.
+
+What is money? Money is a product of nature. Money is a part of nature.
+Money is something that man cannot create. All the legislatures and
+congresses of the world cannot by any possibility create one dollar, any
+more than they could suspend the attraction of gravitation or hurl a
+new constellation into the concave sky. Money is not made. It has to be
+found. It is dug from the crevices of rocks, washed from the sands of
+streams, from the gravel of ancient valleys; but it is not made. It
+cannot be created. Money is something that does not have to be redeemed.
+Money is the redeemer. And yet we have a man running for the presidency
+on three platforms with two Vice-Presidents, who says that money is the
+creature of law. It may be that law sometimes is the creature of money,
+but money was never the creature of law.
+
+A nation can no more create money by law than it can create corn and
+wheat and barley by law, and the promise to pay money is no nearer money
+than a warehouse receipt is grain, or a bill of fare is a dinner. If you
+can make money by law, why should any nation be poor?
+
+The supply of law is practically unlimited. Suppose one hundred people
+should settle on an island, form a government, elect a legislature. They
+would have the power to make law, and if law can make money, if money
+is the creature of law, why should not these one hundred people on the
+island be as wealthy as Great Britain? What is to hinder? And yet we are
+told that money is the creature of law. In the financial world that
+is as absurd as perpetual motion in mechanics; it is as absurd as the
+fountain of eternal youth, the philosopher's stone, or the transmutation
+of metals.
+
+What is a dollar? People imagine that a piece of paper with pictures on
+it, with signatures, is money. The greenback is not money--never was;
+never will be. It is a promise to pay money; not money. The note of the
+nation is no nearer money than the note of an individual. A bank note is
+not money. It is a promise to pay money; that is all.
+
+Well, what is a dollar? In the civilized world it is twenty-three grains
+and twenty-two one hundredths of pure gold. That is a dollar. Well,
+cannot we make dollars out of silver? Yes, I admit it, but in order to
+make a silver dollar you have got to put a dollars worth of silver in
+the silver dollar, and you have to put as much silver in it as you can
+buy for twenty-three grains and twenty-two one-hundredths' of a grain
+of pure gold. It takes a dollar's worth of silver to make a dollar.
+It takes a dollar's worth of paper to make a paper dollar. It takes a
+dollar's worth of iron to make an iron dollar; and there is no way of
+making a dollar without the value.
+
+And let me tell you another thing. You do not add to the value of gold
+by coining it any more than you add to the value of wheat by measuring
+it; any more than you add to the value of coal by weighing it. Why do
+you coin gold? Because every man cannot take a chemist's outfit with
+him. He cannot carry a crucible and retort, scales and acids, and so
+the Government coins it, simply to certify how much gold there is in the
+piece.
+
+Ah, but, says this same gentleman, what gives our money--our silver--its
+value? It is because it is a legal tender, he says. Nonsense; nonsense.
+Gold was not given value by being made a legal tender, but being
+valuable it was made a legal tender. And gold gets no value to-day from
+being a legal tender. I not only say that, but I will prove it; and I
+will not only prove it, but I will demonstrate it. Take a twenty dollar
+gold piece, hammer it out of shape, mar the Goddess of Liberty, pound
+out the United States of America and batter the eagle, and after you get
+it pounded how much is it worth?
+
+It is worth exactly twenty dollars. Is it a legal tender? No. Has its
+value been changed? No. Take a silver dollar. It is a legal tender; now
+pound it into a cube, and how much is it worth? A little less than fifty
+cents. What gives it the value of a dollar? The fact that it is a legal
+tender? No; but the promise of the Government to keep it on an equality
+with gold. I will not only say this, but I will demonstrate it. I do not
+ask you to take my word; just use the sense you have.
+
+The Mexican silver dollar has a little more silver in it than one of our
+dollars, and the Mexican silver dollar is a legal tender in Mexico. If
+there is any magic about legal tender it ought to work as well in Mexico
+as in the United States. I take an American silver dollar and I go
+to Mexico. I buy a dinner for a dollar and I give to the Mexican the
+American dollar and he gives me a Mexican dollar in change. Yet both of
+the dollars are legal tender. Why is it that the Mexican dollar is worth
+only fifty cents? Because the Mexican Government has not agreed to keep
+it equal with gold; that is all, that is all.
+
+We want the money of the civilized world, and I will tell you now that
+in the procession of nations every silver nation lags behind--every one.
+There is not a silver nation on the globe where decent wages are paid
+for human labor--not one. The American laborer gets ten times as much
+here in gold as a laborer gets in China in silver, twenty times as much
+as a laborer does in India, four times as much as a laborer gets in
+Russia; and yet we are told that the man who will "follow England" with
+the gold standard lacks patriotism and manhood. What then shall we
+say of the man that follows China, that follows India in the silver
+standard?
+
+Does that require patriotism?
+
+It certainly requires self-denial.
+
+And yet these gentlemen say that our money is too good. They might as
+well say the air is too pure; they might as well say the soil is too
+rich. How can money be too good? Mr. Bryan says that it is so good,
+people hoard it; and let me tell him they always will. Mr. Bryan wants
+money so poor that everybody will be anxious to spend it. He wants money
+so poor that the rich will not have it. Then he thinks the poor can get
+it. We are willing to toil for good money. Good money means the comforts
+and luxuries of life. Real money is always good. Paper promises and
+silver substitutes may be poor; words and pictures may be cheap and may
+fade to worthlessness--but gold shines on.
+
+In Chicago, many years ago, there was an old colored man at the Grand
+Pacific. I met him one morning, and he looked very sad, and I said to
+him, "Uncle, what is the matter?" "Well," he said, "my wife ran away
+last night. Pretty good looking woman; a good deal younger than I am;
+but she has run off." And he says: "Colonel, I want to give you my idea
+about marriage. If a man wants to marry a woman and have a good time,
+and be satisfied and secure in his mind, he wants to marry some woman
+that no other man on God's earth would have."
+
+That is the kind of money these gentlemen want in the United States.
+Cheap money. Do you know that the words cheap money are a contradiction
+in terms? Cheap money is always discounted when people find out that it
+is cheap. We want good money, and I do not care how much we get. But we
+want good money. Men are willing to toil for good money; willing to
+work in the mines; willing to work in the heat and glare of the furnace;
+willing to go to the top of the mast on the wild sea; willing to work
+in tenements; women are willing to sew with their eyes filled with tears
+for the sake of good money. And if anything is to be paid in good money,
+labor is that thing. If any man is entitled to pure gold, it is the man
+who labors. Let the big fellows take cheap money. Let the men living
+next the soil be paid in gold. But I want the money of this country as
+good as that of any other country.
+
+When our money is below par we feel below par. I want our money, no
+matter how it is payable, to have the gold behind it. That is the money
+I want in the United States.
+
+I want to teach the people of the world that a Democracy is honest. I
+want to teach the people of the world that America is not only capable
+of self-government, but that it has the self-denial, the courage, the
+honor, to pay its debts to the last farthing.
+
+Mr. Bryan tells the farmers who are in debt that they want cheap money.
+What for? To pay their debts. And he thinks that is a compliment to the
+tillers of the soil. The statement is an insult to the farmers, and the
+farmers of Maine and Vermont have answered him.
+
+And if the farmers of those States with their soil can be honest, I
+think a farmer in Illinois has no excuse for being a rascal. I regard
+the farmers as honest men, and when the sun shines and the rains fall
+and the frosts wait, they will pay their debts. They are good men, and I
+want to tell you to-night that all the stories that have been told about
+farmers being Populists are not true.
+
+You will find the Populists in the towns, in the great cities, in
+the villages. All the failures, no matter for what reason, are on the
+Populist's side. They want to get rich by law. They are tired of work.
+
+And yet Mr. Bryan says vote for cheap money so that you can pay your
+debts in fifty cent dollars. Will an honest man do it?
+
+Suppose a man has borrowed a thousand bushels of wheat of his neighbor,
+of sixty pounds to the bushel, and then Congress should pass a law
+making thirty pounds of wheat a bushel. Would that farmer pay his debt
+with five hundred bushels and consider himself an honest man?
+
+Mr. Bryan says, "Vote for cheap money to pay your debts," and thereupon
+the creditor says, "What is to become of me?" Mr. Bryan says, "We will
+make it one dollar and twenty-nine cents an ounce, and make it of the
+ratio of sixteen to one, make it as good as gold." And thereupon the
+poor debtor says, "How is that going to help me?" And in nearly all the
+speeches that this man has made he has taken the two positions, first,
+that we want cheap money to pay debts, and second, that the money would
+be just as good as gold for creditors.
+
+Now, the question is: Can Congress make fifty cents' worth of silver
+worth one dollar? That is the question, and if Congress can, then I
+oppose the scheme on account of its extravagance. What is the use of
+wasting all that silver? Think about it. If Congress can make fifty
+cents' worth of silver worth a dollar by law, why can it not make one
+cent's worth of silver worth a dollar by law. Let us save the silver and
+use it for forks and spoons. The supply even of silver is limited--the
+supply of law is inexhaustible. Do not waste silver, use more law. You
+cannot fix values by law any more than you can make cooler summers by
+shortening thermometers.
+
+There is another trouble. If Congress, by the free coinage of silver,
+can double its value, why should we allow an Englishman with a million
+dollars' worth of silver bullion at the market price, to bring it to
+America, have it coined free of charge, and make it exactly double the
+value? Why should we put a million dollars in his pocket? That is too
+generous. Why not buy the silver from him in the open market and let the
+Government make the million dollars? Nothing is more absurd; nothing is
+more idiotic. I admit that Mr. Bryan is honest. I admit it. If he were
+not honest his intellectual pride would not allow him to make these
+statements.
+
+Well, another thing says our friend, "Gold has been cornered"; and
+thousands of people believe it.
+
+You have no idea of the credulity of some folks. I say that it has not
+been cornered, and I will not only prove it, I will demonstrate it.
+Whenever the Stock Exchange or some of the members have a corner on
+stocks, that stock goes up, and if it does not, that corner bursts.
+Whenever gentlemen in Chicago get up a corner on wheat in the Produce
+Exchange, wheat goes up or the corner bursts. And yet they tell me there
+has been a corner in gold for all these years, yet since 1873 to the
+present time the rate of interest has steadily gone down.
+
+If there had been a corner the rate of interest would have steadily
+advanced. There is a demonstration. But let me ask, for my own
+information, if they corner gold what will prevent their cornering
+silver? Or are you going to have it so poor that it will not be worth
+cornering?
+
+Then they say another thing, and that is that the demonetization of
+silver is responsible for all the hardships we have endured, for all the
+bankruptcy, for all the panics. That is not true, and I will not only
+prove it, but I will demonstrate it. The poison of demonetization
+entered the American veins, as they tell us, in 1873, and has been busy
+in its hellish work from that time to this; and yet, nineteen years
+after we were vaccinated, 1892, was the most prosperous year ever known
+by this Republic. All the wheels turning, all the furnaces aflame,
+work at good wages, everybody prosperous. How, Mr. Bryanite, how do you
+account for that? Just be honest a minute and think about it.
+
+Then there is another thing. In 1816 Great Britain demonetized silver,
+and that wretched old government has had nothing but gold from that day
+to this as a standard. And to show you the frightful results of that
+demonetization, that government does not own now above one-third of
+the globe, and all the winds are busy floating her flags. There is a
+demonstration.
+
+Mr. Bryan tells us that free coinage will bring silver 16 to 1. What is
+the use of stopping there? Why not make it 1 to 1? Why not make it equal
+with gold and be done with it? And why should it stop at exactly one
+dollar and twenty-nine cents? I do not know. I am not well acquainted
+with all the facts that enter into the question of value, but why should
+it stop at exactly one dollar and twenty-nine cents? I do not know. And
+I guess if he were cross-examined along toward the close of the trial he
+would admit that he did not know.
+
+And yet this statesman calls this silver the money of our fathers. Well,
+let us see. Our fathers did some good things. In 1792 they made gold and
+silver the standards, and at a ratio of 15 to 1. But where you have two
+metals and endeavor to make a double standard it is very hard to keep
+them even. They vary, and, as old Dogberry says, "An two men ride of a
+horse, one must ride behind." They made the ratio 15 to 1, and who did
+it? Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. Jefferson, the greatest
+man, with one exception, that ever sat in the presidential chair. With
+one exception. [A voice: "Who was that?"] Abraham Lincoln. Alexander
+Hamilton, with more executive ability than any other man that ever
+stood under the flag. And how did they fix the ratio? They found the
+commercial value in the market; that is how they did it. And they went
+on and issued American dollars 15 to 1; and in 1806, when Jefferson was
+President, the coinage was stopped. Why? There was too much silver in
+the dollars, and people instead of passing them around put them aside
+and sold them to the silversmiths.
+
+Then in 1834 the ratios changed; not quite sixteen to one. That was
+based again on the commercial value, and instead of sixteen to one they
+went into the thousands in decimals. It was not quite sixteen to one.
+They wanted to fix it absolutely on the commercial value. Then a few
+more dollars were coined; and our fathers coined of these sacred dollars
+up to 1873, eight millions, and seven millions had been melted.
+
+In 1853 the gold standard was in fact adopted, and, as I have told you,
+from 1792 to 1873 only eight millions of silver had been coined.
+
+What have the "enemies of silver" done since that time? Under the act
+of 1878 we have coined over four hundred and thirty millions of these
+blessed dollars. We bought four million ounces of silver in the open
+market every month, and in spite of the vast purchases silver continued
+to go down. We are coining about two millions a month now, and silver is
+still going down. Even the expectation of the election of Bryan cannot
+add the tenth of one per cent, to the value of silver bullion. It is
+going down day by day.
+
+But what I want to say to-night is, if you want silver money, measure it
+by the gold standard.
+
+I wish every one here would read the speech of Senator Sherman,
+delivered at Columbus a little while ago, in which he gives the history
+of American coinage, and every man who will read it will find
+that silver was not demonetized in 1873. You will find that it was
+demonetized in 1853, and if he will read back he will find that the
+apostles of silver now were in favor of the gold standard in 1873.
+Senator Jones of Nevada in 1873 voted for the law of 1873. He said from
+his seat in the Senate, that God had made gold the standard. He said
+that gold was the mother of civilization. Whether he has heard from God
+since or not I do not know. But now he is on the other side. Senator
+Stewart of Nevada was there at the time; he voted for the act of 1873,
+and said that gold was the only standard. He has changed his mind. So
+they have said of me that I used to talk another way, and they have
+published little portions of speeches, without publishing all that was
+said. I want to tell you to-night that I have never changed on the money
+question.
+
+On many subjects I have changed. I am very glad to feel that I have
+grown a little in the last forty or fifty years. And a man should allow
+himself to grow, to bud and blossom and bear new fruit, and not be
+satisfied with the rotten apples under the tree.
+
+But on the money question I have not changed. Sixteen years ago in this
+city at Cooper Union, in 1880, in discussing this precise question, I
+said that I wanted gold and silver and paper; that I wanted the paper
+issued by the General Government, and back of every paper dollar I
+wanted a gold dollar or a silver dollar worth a dollar in gold. I said
+then, "I want that silver dollar worth a dollar in gold if you have
+to make it four feet in diameter." I said then, "I want our paper so
+perfectly secure that when the savage in Central Africa looks upon a
+Government bill of the United States his eyes will gleam as though he
+looked at shining gold." I said then, "I want every paper dollar of the
+Union to be able to hold up its hand and swear, 'I know that my Redeemer
+liveth.'" I said then, "The Republic cannot afford to debase money;
+cannot afford to be a clipper of coin; an honest nation, honest
+money; for nations as well as individuals, honesty is the best policy
+everywhere and forever." I have not changed on that subject. As I told
+a gentleman the other day, "I am more for silver than you are because I
+want twice as much of it in a dollar as you do."
+
+Ah, but they say, "free coinage would bring prosperity." I do not
+believe it, and I will tell you why. Elect Bryan, come to the silver
+standard, and what would happen? We have in the United States about six
+hundred million dollars in gold. Every dollar would instantly go out
+of circulation. Why? No man will use the best money when he can use
+cheaper. Remember that. No carpenter will use mahogany when his contract
+allows pine. Gold will go out of circulation, and what next would
+happen? All the greenbacks would fall to fifty cents on the dollar. The
+only reason they are worth a dollar now is because the Government has
+agreed to pay them in gold. When you come to a silver basis they fall to
+fifty cents. What next? All the national bank notes would be cut square
+in two. Why? Because they are secured by United States bonds, and when
+we come to a silver basis, United States bonds would be paid in silver,
+fifty cents on the dollar. And what else would happen? What else? These
+sacred silver dollars would instantly become fifty cent pieces, because
+they would no longer be redeemable in gold; because the Government would
+no longer be under obligation to keep them on a parity with gold. And
+how much currency and specie would that leave for us in the United
+States? In value three hundred and fifty million dollars. That is five
+dollars per capita. We have twenty dollars per capita now, and yet
+they want to go to five dollars for the purpose of producing prosperous
+times!
+
+What else would happen? Every human being living on an income would lose
+just one-half. Every soldiers' pension would be cut in two. Every human
+being who has a credit in the savings bank would lose just one-half.
+All the life insurance companies would pay just one-half. All the fire
+insurance companies would pay just one-half, and leave you the ashes for
+the balance. That is what they call prosperity.
+
+And what else? The Republic would be dishonored. The believers in
+monarchy--in the divine right of kings--the aristocracies of the Old
+World--would say, "Democracy is a failure, freedom is a fraud, and
+liberty is a liar;" and we would be compelled to admit the truth. No;
+we want good, honest money. We want money that will be good when we are
+dead. We want money that will keep the wolf from the door, no matter
+what Congress does. We want money that no law can create; that is what
+we want. There was a time when Rome was mistress of the world, and there
+was a time when the arch of the empire fell, and the empire was buried
+in the dust of oblivion; and before those days the Roman people coined
+gold, and one of those coins is as good to-night as when Julius Caesar
+rode at the head of his legions. That is the money we want. We want
+money that is honest.
+
+But Mr. Bryan hates the bondholders. Who are the bondholders? Let us be
+honest; let us have some sense. When this Government was in the flame
+of civil war it was compelled to sell bonds, and everybody who bought a
+bond bought it because he believed the great Republic would triumph at
+last. Every man who bought a bond was our friend, and every bond that
+he purchased added to the chances of our success. They were our friends,
+and I respect them all. Most of them are dead, and the bonds they bought
+have been sold and resold maybe hundreds of times, and the men who have
+them now paid a hundred and twenty in gold, and why should they not be
+paid in gold? Can any human being think of any reason? And yet Mr. Bryan
+says that the debt is so great that it cannot be paid in gold. How much
+is the Republic worth? Let me tell you? This Republic to-day--its
+lands in cultivation, its houses, railways, canals, and money--is worth
+seventy thousand million dollars. And what do we owe? One billion five
+hundred million dollars, and what is the condition of the country? It is
+the condition of a man who has seventy dollars and owes one dollar and
+a half. This is the richest country on the globe. Have we any excuse for
+being thieves? Have we any excuse for failing to pay the debt? No, sir;
+no, sir. Mr. Bryan hates the bondholders of the railways. Why? I do not
+know. What did those wretches do? They furnished the money to build the
+one hundred and eighty thousand miles of railway in the United States;
+that is what they did.
+
+They paid the money that threw up the road-bed, that shoveled the
+gravel; they paid the men that turned the ore into steel and put it in
+form for use; they paid the men that cut down the trees and made the
+ties, that manufactured the locomotives and the cars. That is what they
+did. No wonder that a presidential failure hates them.
+
+So this man hates bankers. Now, what is a banker? Here is a little town
+of five thousand people, and some of them have a little money. They do
+not want to keep it in the house because some Bryan man might find it; I
+mean if it were silver. So one citizen buys a safe and rents a room
+and tells all the people, "You deposit the overplus with me to hold it
+subject to your order upon your orders signed as checks;" and so they
+do, and in a little while he finds that he has on hand continually about
+one hundred thousand dollars more than is called for, and thereupon he
+loans it to the fellow who started the livery stable and to the chap
+that opened the grocery and to the fellow with the store, and he makes
+this idle money work for the good and prosperity of that town. And that
+is all he does. And these bankers now, if Mr. Bryan becomes President,
+can pay the depositors in fifty cent dollars; and yet they are such
+rascally wretches that they say, "We prefer to pay back gold." You can
+see how mean they are.
+
+Mr. Bryan hates the rich. Would he like to be rich? He hates the
+bondholders. Would he like to have a million? He hates the successful
+man. Does he want to be a failure? If he does, let him wait until
+the third day of November. We want honest money because we are honest
+people; and there never was any real prosperity for a nation or an
+individual without honesty, without integrity, and it is our duty to
+preserve the reputation of the great Republic.
+
+Better be an honest bankrupt than a rich thief. Poverty can hold in its
+hand the jewel, honor--a jewel that outshines all other gems. A thousand
+times better be poor and noble than rich and fraudulent.
+
+Then there is another question--the question of the tariff. I admit that
+there are a great many arguments in favor of free trade, but I assert
+that all the facts are the other way. I want American people as far as
+possible to manufacture everything that Americans use.
+
+The more industries we have the more we will develop the American brain,
+and the best crop you can raise in every country is a crop of good men
+and good women--of intelligent people. And another thing, I want to keep
+this market for ourselves. A nation that sells raw material will grow
+ignorant and poor; a nation that manufactures will grow intelligent and
+rich. It only takes muscle to dig ore. It takes mind to manufacture
+a locomotive, and only that labor is profitable that is mixed with
+thought. Muscle must be in partnership with brain. I am in favor of
+keeping this market for ourselves, and yet some people say: "Give us the
+market of the world." Well, why don't you take it? There is no export
+duty on anything. You can get things out of this country cheaper than
+from any other country in the world. Iron is as cheap here in the
+ground, so are coal and stone, as any place on earth. The timber is as
+cheap in the forest. Why don't you make things and sell them in Central
+Africa, in China and Japan? Why don't you do it? I will tell you why.
+It is because labor is too high; that is all. Almost the entire value is
+labor. You make a ton of steel rails worth twenty-five dollars; the ore
+in the ground is worth only a few cents, the coal in the earth only a
+few cents, the lime in the cliff only a few cents--altogether not
+one dollar and fifty cents; but the ton is worth twenty-five dollars;
+twenty-three dollars and fifty cents labor! That is the trouble. The
+steamship is worth five hundred thousand dollars, but the raw material
+is not worth ten thousand dollars. The rest is labor. Why is labor
+higher here than in Europe? Protection. And why do these gentlemen ask
+for the trade of the world? Why do they ask for free trade? Because
+they want cheaper labor. That is all; cheaper labor. The markets of
+the world! We want our own markets. I would rather have the market
+of Illinois than all of China with her four hundred millions. I would
+rather have the market of one good county in New York than all of
+Mexico. What do they want in Mexico? A little red calico, a few
+sombreros and some spurs. They make their own liquor and they live on
+red pepper and beans. What do you want of their markets? We want to keep
+our own. In other words, we want to pursue the policy that has given us
+prosperity in the past. We tried a little bit of free trade in 1892 when
+we were all prosperous. I said then: "If Grover Cleveland is elected it
+will cost the people five hundred million dollars." I am no prophet, nor
+the son of a prophet, nor a profitable son, but I placed the figure too
+low. His election has cost a thousand million dollars. There is an old
+song, "You Put the Wrong Man off at Buffalo;" we took the wrong man on
+at Buffalo. We tried just a little of it, not much. We tried the
+Wilson bill--a bill, according to Mr. Cleveland, born of perfidy and
+dishonor--a bill that he was not quite foolish enough to sign and
+not brave enough to veto. We tried it and we are tired of it, and if
+experience is a teacher the American people know a little more than they
+did. We want to do our own work, and we want to mingle our thought with
+our labor. We are the most inventive of all the peoples. We sustain the
+same relation to invention that the ancient Greeks did to sculpture. We
+want to develop the brain; we want to cultivate the imagination, and we
+want to cover our land with happy homes. A thing is worth sometimes the
+thought that is in it, sometimes the genius. Here is a man buys a little
+piece of linen for twenty-five cents, he buys a few paints for fifteen
+cents, and a few brushes, and he paints a picture; just a little one; a
+picture, maybe, of a cottage with a dear old woman, white hair,
+serene forehead and satisfied eyes; at the corner a few hollyhocks in
+bloom--may be a tree in blossom, and as you listen you seem to hear the
+songs of birds--the hum of bees, and your childhood all comes back to
+you as you look. You feel the dewy grass beneath your bare feet once
+again, and you go back in your mind until the dear old woman on the
+porch is once more young and fair. There is a soul there. Genius has
+done its work. And the little picture is worth five, ten, may be fifty
+thousand dollars. All the result of labor and genius.
+
+And another thing we want is to produce great men and great women here
+in our own country; then again we want business. Talk about charity,
+talk about the few dollars that fall unconsciously from the hand of
+wealth, talk about your poorhouses and your sewing societies and your
+poor little efforts in the missionary line in the worst part of your
+town! Ah, there is no charity like business. Business gives work to
+labor's countless hands; business wipes the tears from the eyes of
+widows and orphans; business dimples with joy the cheek of sorrow;
+business puts a roof above the heads of the homeless; business covers
+the land with happy homes.
+
+We do not want any populistic philanthropy. We want no fiat philosophy.
+We want no silver swindles. We want business. Wind and wave are our
+servants; let them work. Steam and electricity are our slaves; let them
+toil. Let all the wheels whirl; let all the shuttles fly. Fill the air
+with the echoes of hammer and saw. Fill the furnace with flame; the
+moulds with liquid iron. Let them glow.
+
+Build homes and palaces of trade. Plow the fields, reap the waving
+grain. Create all things that man can use. Business will feed the
+hungry, clothe the naked, educate the ignorant, enrich the world with
+art--fill the air with song. Give us Protection and Prosperity. Do not
+cheat us with free trade dreams. Do not deceive us with debased coin.
+Give us good money--the life blood of business--and let it flow through
+the veins and arteries of commerce.
+
+And let me tell you to-night the smoke arising from the factories' great
+plants forms the only cloud on which has ever been seen the glittering
+bow of American promise. We want work, and I tell you to-night that my
+sympathies are with the men who work, with the women who weep. I
+know that labor is the Atlas on whose shoulders rests the great
+superstructure of civilization and the great dome of science adorned
+with all there is of art. Labor is the great oak, labor is the great
+column, and labor, with its deft and cunning hands, has created the
+countless things of art and beauty. I want to see labor paid. I want to
+see capital civilized until it will be willing to give labor its share,
+and I want labor intelligent enough to settle all these questions in the
+high court of reason. And let me tell the workingman to-night: You will
+never help your self by destroying your employer. You have work to sell.
+Somebody has to buy it, if it is bought, and somebody has to buy it that
+has the money. Who is going to manufacture something that will not sell.
+Nobody is going into the manufacturing business through philanthropy,
+and unless your employer makes a profit, the mill will be shut down and
+you will be out of work. The interest of the employer and the employed
+should be one. Whenever the employers of the continent are successful,
+then the workingman is better paid, and you know it. I have some hope in
+the future for the workingman. I know what it is to work. I do not think
+my natural disposition runs in that direction, but I know what it is
+to work, and I have worked with all my might at one dollar and a half a
+week. I did the work of a man for fifty cents a day, and I was not sorry
+for it. In the horizon of my future burned and gleamed the perpetual
+star of hope. I said to myself: I live in a free country, and I have
+a chance; I live in a free country, and I have as much liberty as any
+other man beneath the flag, and I have enjoyed it.
+
+Something has been done for labor. Only a few years ago a man worked
+fifteen or sixteen hours a day, but the hours have been reduced to at
+least ten and are on the way to still further reduction. And while the
+hours have been decreased the wages have as certainly been increased. In
+forty years--in less--the wages of American workingmen have doubled. A
+little while ago you received an average of two hundred and eighty-five
+dollars a year; now you receive an average of more than four hundred and
+ninety dollars; there is the difference. So it seems to me that the star
+of hope is still in the sky for every workingman. Then there is another
+thing: every workingman in this country can take his little boy on his
+knee and say, "John, all the avenues to distinction, wealth, and glory
+are open to you. There is the free school; take your chances with the
+rest." And it seems to me that that thought ought to sweeten every drop
+of sweat that trickles down the honest brow of toil.
+
+So let us have protection! How much? Enough, so that our income at least
+will equal our outgo. That is a good way to keep house. I am tired of
+depression and deficit. I do not like to see a President pawning bonds
+to raise money to pay his own salary. I do not like to see the great
+Republic at the mercy of anybody, so let us stand by protection.
+
+There is another trouble. The gentleman now running for the
+presidency--a tireless talker--oh, if he had a brain equal to his vocal
+chords, what a man! And yet when I read his speeches it seems to me
+as though he stood on his head and thought with his feet. This man is
+endeavoring to excite class against class, to excite the poor against
+the rich. Let me tell you something. We have no classes in the United
+States. There are no permanent classes here. The millionaire may be a
+mendicant, the mendicant may be a millionaire. The man now working for
+the millionaire may employ that millionaire's sons to work for him.
+There is a chance for us all. Sometimes a numskull is born in the
+mansion, and a genius rises from the gutter. Old Mother Nature has a
+queer way of taking care of her children. You cannot tell. You cannot
+tell. Here we have a free open field of competition, and if a man passes
+me in the race I say: "Good luck. Get ahead of me if you can, you are
+welcome."
+
+And why should I hate the rich? Why should I make my heart a den of
+writhing, hissing snakes of envy? Get rich. I do not care. I am glad I
+live in a country where somebody can get rich. It is a spur in the flank
+of ambition. Let them get rich. I have known good men that were
+quite rich, and I have known some mean men who were in straitened
+circumstances. So I have known as good men as ever breathed the air, who
+were poor. We must respect the man; what is inside, not what is outside.
+
+That is why I like this country. That is why I do not want it
+dishonored. I want no class feeling. The citizens of America should be
+friends. Where capital is just and labor intelligent, happiness dwells.
+Fortunate that country where the rich are extravagant and the poor
+economical. Miserable that country where the rich are economical and the
+poor are extravagant. A rich spendthrift is a blessing. A rich miser is
+a curse. Extravagance is a splendid form of charity. Let the rich spend,
+let them build, let them give work to their fellow-men, and I will find
+no fault with their wealth, provided they obtained it honestly.
+
+There was an old fellow by the name of Socrates. He happened to be
+civilized, living in a barbarous time, and he was tried for his life.
+And in his speech in which he defended himself is a paragraph that ought
+to remain in the memory of the human race forever.
+
+He said to those judges, "During my life I have not sought ambition,
+wealth. I have not sought to adorn my body, but I have endeavored to
+adorn my soul with the jewels of patience and justice, and above all,
+with the love of liberty." Such a man rises above all wealth.
+
+Why should we envy the rich? Why envy a man who has no earthly needs?
+Why envy a man that carries a hundred canes? Why envy a man who has that
+which he cannot use? I know a great many rich men and I have read about
+a great many others, and I do not envy them. They are no happier than
+I am. You see, after all, few rich men own their property. The property
+owns them. It gets them up early in the morning. It will not let them
+sleep; it makes them suspect their friends. Sometimes they think their
+children would like to attend a first-class funeral. Why should we
+envy the rich? They have fear; we have hope. They are on the top of the
+ladder; we are close to the ground. They are afraid of falling, and we
+hope to rise.
+
+Why should we envy the rich? They never drank any colder water than I
+have. They never ate any lighter biscuits or any better corn bread. They
+never drank any better Illinois wine, or felt better after drinking it,
+than I have; than you have. They never saw any more glorious sunsets
+with the great palaces of amethyst and gold, and they never saw the
+heavens thicker with constellations; they never read better poetry. They
+know no more about the ecstasies of love than we do. They never got any
+more pleasure out of courting than I did. Why should we envy the rich?
+I know as much about the ecstasies of love of wife and child and friends
+as they. They never had any better weather in June than I have, or you
+have. They can buy splendid pictures. I can look at them. And who owns
+a great picture or a great statue? The man who bought it? Possibly, and
+possibly not. The man who really owns it, is the man who understands
+it, that appreciates it, the man into whose heart its beauty and genius
+come, the man who is ennobled and refined and glorified by it.
+
+They have never heard any better music than I have.
+
+When the great notes, winged like eagles, soar to the great dome of
+sound, I have felt just as good as though I had a hundred million
+dollars.
+
+Do not try to divide this country into classes. The rich man that
+endeavors to help his fellow-man deserves the honor and respect of the
+great Republic. I have nothing against the man that got rich in the
+free and open field of competition. Where they combine to rob their
+fellow-men, then I want the laws enforced. That is all. Let them play
+fair and they are welcome to all they get.
+
+And why should we hate the successful? Why? We cannot all be first. The
+race is a vast procession; a great many hundred millions are back of the
+center, and in front there is only one human being; that is all. Shall
+we wait for the other fellows to catch up? Shall the procession stop?
+I say, help the fallen, assist the weak, help the poor, bind up the
+wounds, but do not stop the procession.
+
+Why should we envy the successful? Why should we hate them? And why
+should we array class against class? It is all wrong. For instance, here
+is a young man, and he is industrious. He is in love with a girl around
+the corner. She is in his brain all day--in his heart all night, and
+while he is working he is thinking. He gets a little ahead, they get
+married. He is an honest man, he gets credit, and the first thing you
+know he has a good business of his own and he gets rich; educates his
+children, and his old age is filled with content and love. Good! His
+companions bask in the sunshine of idleness. They have wasted their
+time, wasted their wages in dissipation, and when the winter of life
+comes, when the snow falls on the barren fields of the wasted days, then
+shivering with cold, pinched with hunger, they curse the man who has
+succeeded. Thereupon they all vote for Bryan.
+
+Then there is another question, and that is whether the Government has
+a right to protect itself? And that is whether the employees of railways
+shall have a right to stop the trains, a right to prevent interstate
+commerce, a right to burn bridges and shoot engineers? Has the United
+States the right to protect commerce between the States? I say, yes.
+
+It is the duty of the President to lay the mailed hand of the Republic
+upon the mob. We want no mobs in this country. This is a Government of
+the people and by the people, a Government of law, and these laws
+should be interpreted by the courts in judicial calm. We have a supreme
+tribunal. Undoubtedly it has made some bad decisions, but it has made
+a vast number of good ones. The judges do the best they can. Of course
+they are not like Mr. Bryan, infallible. But they are doing the best
+they can, and when they make a decision that is wrong it will be
+attacked by reason, it will be attacked by argument, and in time it will
+be reversed, but I do not believe in attacking it with a torch or by a
+mob. I hate the mob spirit. Civilized men obey the law. Civilized men
+believe in order. Civilized men believe that a man that makes property
+by industry and economy has the right to keep it. Civilized men believe
+that that man has the right to use it as he desires, and they will judge
+of his character by the manner in which he uses it. If he endeavors to
+assist his fellow-man he will have the respect and admiration of his
+fellow-men. But we want a Government of law. We do not want labor
+questions settled by violence and blood.
+
+I want to civilize the capitalist so that he will be willing to give
+what labor is worth. I want to educate the workingman so that he will be
+willing to receive what labor is worth. I want to civilize them both to
+that degree that they can settle all their disputes in the high court of
+reason.
+
+But when you tell me that they can stop the commerce of the Nation, then
+you preach the gospel of the bludgeon, the gospel of torch and bomb. I
+do not believe in that religion. I believe in a religion of kindness,
+reason and law. The law is the supreme will of the supreme people, and
+we must obey it or we go back to savagery and black night. I stand
+by the courts. I stand by the President who endeavors to preserve the
+peace. I am against mobs; I am against lynchings, and I believe it is
+the duty of the Federal Government to protect all of its citizens at
+home and abroad; and I want a Government powerful enough to say to the
+Governor of any State where they are murdering American citizens without
+process of law--I want the Federal Government to say to the Governor of
+that State: "Stop; stop shedding the blood of American citizens. And if
+you cannot stop it, we can." I believe in a Government that will protect
+the lowest, the poorest and weakest as promptly as the mightiest and
+strongest. That is my Government. This old doctrine of State Sovereignty
+perished in the flame of civil war, and I tell you to-night that that
+infamous lie was surrendered to Grant with Lee's sword at Appomattox.
+
+I believe in a strong Government, not in a Government that can make
+money, but in a strong Government.
+
+Oh, I forgot to ask the question, "If the Government can make money why
+should it collect taxes?"
+
+Let us be honest. Here is a poor man with a little yoke of cattle,
+cultivating forty acres of stony ground, working like a slave in the
+heat of summer, in the cold blasts of winter, and the Government makes
+him pay ten dollars taxes, when, according to these gentlemen, it could
+issue a one hundred thousand dollar bill in a second. Issue the bill and
+give the fellow with the cattle a rest. Is it possible for the mind to
+conceive anything more absurd than that the Government can create money?
+
+Now, the next question is, or the next thing is, you have to choose
+between men. Shall Mr. Bryan be the next President or shall McKinley
+occupy that chair? Who is Mr. Bryan? He is not a tried man. If he had
+the capacity to reason, if he had logic, if he could spread the wings of
+imagination, if there were in his heart the divine flower called pity,
+he might be an orator, but lacking all these, he is as he is.
+
+When Major McKinley was fighting under the flag, Bryan was in his
+mother's arms, and judging from his speeches he ought to be there still.
+What is he? He is a Populist. He voted for General Weaver.
+
+Only a little while ago he denied being a Democrat. His mind is filled
+with vagaries. A fiat money man. His brain is an insane asylum without a
+keeper.
+
+Imagine that man President. Whom would he call about him? Upon whom
+would he rely? Probably for Secretary of State he would choose Ignatius
+Donnelly of Minnesota; for Secretary of the Interior, Henry George; for
+Secretary of War, Tillman with his pitchforks; for Postmaster-General,
+Peffer of Kansas. Once somebody said: "If you believe in fiat money,
+why don't you believe in fiat hay, and you can make enough hay out of
+Peffer's whiskers to feed all the cattle in the country." For Secretary
+of the Treasury, Coin Harvey. For Secretary of the Navy, Coxey, and then
+he could keep off the grass. And then would come the millennium. The
+great cryptogram and the Bacon cipher; the single tax, State saloons,
+fiat money, free silver, destruction of banks and credit, bondholders
+and creditors mobbed, courts closed, debts repudiated and the rest of
+the folks made rich by law.
+
+And suppose Bryan should die, and then think, think of Thomas Watson
+sitting in the chair of Abraham Lincoln. That is enough to give a
+patriot political nightmare.
+
+If McKinley dies there is an honest capable man to take his place. A man
+who believes in business, in prosperity. A man who knows what money is.
+A man who would never permit the laying of a land warrant on a cloud. A
+man of good sense, a man of level head. A man that loves his country, a
+man that will protect its honor.
+
+And is McKinley a tried man? Honest, candid, level-headed, putting on
+no airs, saying not what he thinks somebody else thinks, but what he
+thinks, and saying it in his own honest, forcible way. He has made
+hundreds of speeches during this campaign, not to people whom he ran
+after, but to people who came to see him. Not from the tail end of cars,
+but from the doorstep of his home, and every speech has been calculated
+to make votes. Every speech has increased the respect of the American
+people for him, every one. He has never slopped over. Four years ago
+I read a speech made by him at Cleveland, on the tariff. I tell you
+to-night that he is the best posted man on the tariff under the flag.
+I tell you that he knows the road to prosperity. I read that speech. It
+had foundation, proportion, dome, and he handled his facts as skillfully
+as Caesar marshaled his hosts on the fields of war, and ever since
+I read it I have had profound respect for the intelligence and
+statesmanship of William McKinley.
+
+He will call about him the best, the wisest, and the most patriotic
+men, and his cabinet will respect the highest and loftiest interests and
+aspirations of the American people.
+
+Then you have to make another choice. You have to choose between
+parties, between the new Democratic and the old Republican. And I want
+to tell you the new Democratic is worse than the old, and that is a
+good deal for me to say. In 1861 hundreds and hundreds of thousands of
+Democrats thought more of country than of party. Hundreds and hundreds
+of thousands shouldered their muskets, rushed to the rescue of the
+Republic, and sustained the administration of Abraham Lincoln. With
+their help the Rebellion was crushed, and now hundreds and hundreds of
+thousands of Democrats will hold country above party and will join
+with the Republicans in saving the honor, the reputation, of the United
+States; and I want to say to all the National Democrats who feel that
+they cannot vote for Bryan, I want to say to you, vote for McKinley.
+This is no war for blank cartridges. Your gun makes as much noise, but
+it does not do as much execution.
+
+If you vote for Palmer it is not to elect him, it is simply to defeat
+Bryan, and the sure way to defeat Bryan is to vote for McKinley. You
+have to choose between parties. The new Democratic party, with its
+allies, the Populists and Socialists and Free Silverites, represents the
+follies, the mistakes, and the absurdities of a thousand years. They are
+in favor of everything that cannot be done. Whatever is, is wrong. They
+think creditors are swindlers, and debtors who refuse to pay their debts
+are honest men. Good money is bad and poor money is good. A promise is
+better than a performance. They desire to abolish facts, punish success,
+and reward failure. They are worse than the old. And yet I want to be
+honest. I am like the old Dutchman who made a speech in Arkansas. He
+said: "Ladies and Gentlemen, I must tell you the truth. There are
+good and bad in all parties except the Democratic party, and in the
+Democratic party there are bad and worse." The new Democratic party, a
+party that believes in repudiation, a party that would put the stain of
+dishonesty on every American brow and that would make this Government
+subject to the mob.
+
+You have to make your choice. I have made mine. I go with the party that
+is traveling my way.
+
+I do not pretend to belong to anything or that anything belongs to me.
+When a party goes my way I go with that party and I stick to it as long
+as it is traveling my road. And let me tell you something. The
+history of the Republican party is the glory of the United States. The
+Republican party has the enthusiasm of youth and the wisdom of old age.
+The Republican party has the genius of administration. The Republican
+party knows the wants of the people. The Republican party kept this
+country on the map of the world and kept our flag in the air. The
+Republican party made our country free, and that one fact fills all the
+heavens with light. The Republican party is the pioneer of progress; the
+grandest organization that has ever existed among men. The Republican
+party is the conscience of the nineteenth century. I am proud to belong
+to it. Vote the Republican ticket and you will be happy here, and if
+there is another life you will be happy there.
+
+I had an old friend down in Woodford County, Charley Mulidore. He won
+a coffin on Lincoln's election. He took it home and every birthday he
+called in his friends. They had a little game of "sixty-six" on the
+coffin lid. When the game was over they opened the coffin and took out
+the things to eat and drink and had a festival, and the minister in
+the little town, hearing of it, was scandalized, and he went to Charley
+Mulidore and he said: "Mr. Mulidore, how can you make light of such
+awful things?" "What things?" "Why," he said, "Mr. Mulidore, what did
+you do with that coffin? In a little while you die, and then you come
+to the day of judgment." "Well, Mr. Preacher, when I come to that day of
+judgment they will say, 'What is your name?' I will tell them, 'Charley
+Mulidore.' And they will say, 'Mr. Mulidore, are you a Christian?' 'No,
+sir, I was a Republican, and the coffin I got out of this morning I won
+on Abraham Lincoln's election.' And then they will say, 'Walk in, Mr.
+Mulidore, walk in, walk in; here is your halo and there is your harp.'"
+
+If you want to live in good company vote the Republican ticket. Vote
+for Black for Governor of the State of New York--a man in favor of
+protection and honest money; a man that believes in the preservation of
+the honor of the Nation. Vote for members of Congress that are true to
+the great principles of the Republican party. Vote for every Republican
+candidate from the lowest to the highest. This is a year when we mean
+business. Vote, as I tell you, the Republican ticket if you want good
+company.
+
+If you want to do some good to your fellow-men, if you want to say when
+you die--when the curtain falls--when the music of the orchestra grows
+dim--when the lights fade; if you want to live so at that time you can
+say "the world is better because I lived," vote the Republican ticket
+in 1896. Vote with the party of Lincoln--greatest of our mighty dead;
+Lincoln the Merciful. Vote with the party of Grant, the greatest soldier
+of his century; a man worthy to have been matched against Caesar for the
+mastery of the world; as great a general as ever planted on the field
+of war the torn and tattered flag of victory. Vote with the party of
+Sherman and Sheridan and Thomas. But the time would fail me to repeat
+even the names of the philosophers, the philanthropists, the thinkers,
+the orators, the statesmen, and the soldiers who made the Republican
+party glorious forever.
+
+We love our country; dear to us for its reputation throughout the world.
+We love our country for her credit in all the marts of the world. We
+love our country, because under her flag we are free. It is our duty
+to hand down the American institutions to our children unstained,
+unimpaired. It is our duty to preserve them for ourselves, for our
+children, and for their fair children yet to be.
+
+This is the last speech that I shall make in this campaign, and to-night
+there comes upon me the spirit of prophecy. On November 4th you will
+find that by the largest majorities in our history, William McKinley has
+been elected President of the United States.*
+
+     * The final rally of the McKinley League for the present
+     campaign, was held last night in Carnegie Music Hall, ana
+     the orator chosen to present the doctrines of the
+     Republican party was Robert G. Ingersoll. The meeting will
+     remain notable for the high character of the audience. The
+     great hall was filled to its utmost capacity. It was crowded
+     from the rear of the stage to the last row of seats in the
+     deep gallery.
+
+     The boxes were occupied by brilliantly attired women, and
+     hundreds of other women vied with the sterner sex In the
+     applause that greeted the numerous telling points of the
+     speaker. The audience was a very fashionable and exclusive
+     one, for admission was only to be had by ticket, and tickets
+     were hard to get.
+
+     On the stage a great company of men and women were gathered,
+     and over them waved rich masses of color, the American
+     colors, of course, predominating in the display Flags hung
+     from all the gallery rails, and the whole scheme of
+     decoration was consistent and beautiful. At 8.80 o'clock Mr.
+     John E. Milholland appeared upon the stage followed by Col.
+     Ingersoll.
+
+     Without any delay Mr. Milholland was presented as the
+     chairman of the meeting. He spoke briefly of the purpose of
+     the party and then said; "There is no Intelligent audience
+     under the flag or in any civilized country to whom it would
+     be necessary for me to introduce Robert G. Ingersoll." And
+     the cheers with which the audience greeted the orator proved
+     the truth of his words.
+
+     Col. Ingersoll rose impressively and advanced to the front
+     of the stage, from which the speaker's desk had been removed
+     in order to allow him full opportunity to indulge in his
+     habit of walking to and fro as he talked. He was greeted
+     with tremendous applause; the men cheered him and the women
+     waved their handkerchiefs and fans for several minutes.
+
+     He was able to secure instant command of his audience, and
+     while the applause was wildest, he waved his hand, and the
+     gesture was followed by a silence that was oppressive. Still
+     the speaker waited. He did not intend to waste any of his
+     ammunition. Then, convinced that every eye was centred upon
+     him, he spoke, declaring "This is our country." The assembly
+     was his from that instant. He followed it up with a summary
+     of the issues of the campaign. They were "money, the tariff,
+     and whether this Government has the right of self-defence."
+     As he said later on in his address, the Colonel has changed
+     in a good many things, but he has not changed his politics,
+     and he has not altered one whit in his masterful command of
+     forceful sayings.--New York Tribune, October 80th, 1896.
+
+
+     Note:--This was Col. Ingersoll's last political address.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol.
+9 (of 12), by Robert G. Ingersoll
+
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