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1691 lines
90 KiB
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26 page printout
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Reproducible Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship.
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Contents of this file page
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INDIANAPOLIS SPEECH. 1
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EIGHT TO SEVEN ADDRESS 13
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**** ****
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This file, its printout, or copies of either
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are to be copied and given away, but NOT sold.
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Bank of Wisdom, Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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The Works of ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
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**** ****
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INDIANAPOLIS SPEECH.
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1876.
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Delivered to the Veteran Soldiers of the Rebellion.
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LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, FELLOW CITIZENS AND CITIZEN SOLDIERS: --
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I am opposed to the Democratic party, and I will tell you why.
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Every State that seceded from the United States was a Democratic
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State. Every ordinance of secession that was drawn was drawn by a
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Democrat. Every man that endeavored to tear the old flag from the
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heaven that it enriches was a Democrat. Every man that tried to
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destroy this nation was a Democrat. Every enemy this great republic
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has had for twenty years has been a Democrat. Every man that shot
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Union soldiers was a Democrat. Every man that denied to the Union
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prisoners even the worm-eaten crust of famine, and when some poor,
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emaciated Union patriot, driven to insanity by famine, saw in an
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insane dream the face of his mother, and she beckoned him and he
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followed, hoping to press her lips once again against his fevered
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face, and when he stepped one step beyond the dead line the wretch
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that put the bullet through his loving throbbing heart was and is
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a Democrat.
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Every man that loved slavery better than liberty was a
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Democrat. The man that assassinated Abraham Lincoln was a Democrat.
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Every man that sympathized with the assassin -- every man glad that
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the noblest President ever elected was assassinated, was a
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Democrat. Every man that wanted the privilege of whipping another
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man to make him work for him for nothing and pay him with lashes on
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his naked back, was a Democrat. Every man that raised bloodhounds
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to pursue human beings was a Democrat. Every man that clutched from
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shrieking, shuddering, crouching mothers, babes from their breasts,
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and sold them into slavery, was a Democrat. Every man that impaired
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the credit of the United States, every man that swore we would
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never pay the bonds, every man that swore we would never redeem the
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greenbacks, every malinger of his country's credit, every
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calumniator of his country's honor, was a Democrat. Every man that
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resisted the draft, every man that hid in the bushes and shot at
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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1
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INDIANAPOLIS SPEECH.
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Union men simply because they were endeavoring to enforce the laws
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of their country, was a Democrat. Every man that wept over the
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corpse of slavery was a Democrat. Every man that cursed Abraham
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Lincoln because he issued the Proclamation of Emancipation -- the
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grandest paper since the Declaration of Independence -- every one
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of them was a Democrat. Every man that denounced the soldiers that
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bared their breasts to the storms of shot and shell for the honor
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of America and for the sacred rights of man, was a Democrat. Every
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man that wanted an uprising in the North, that wanted to release
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the rebel prisoners that they might burn down the homes of Union
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soldiers above the heads of their wives and children, while the
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brave husbands, the heroic fathers, were front in the front
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fighting for the honor of the old flag, every one of them was a
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Democrat. I am not yet through yet. Every man that believed this
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glorious nation of ours is a confederacy, every man that believed
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the old banner carried by our fathers over the fields of the
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Revolution; the old flag carried by our fathers over the fields of
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1812; the glorious old banner carried by our brothers over the
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plains of Mexico; the sacred banner carried by our brothers over
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the cruel fields of the South, simply stood for a contract, simply
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stood for an agreement, was a Democrat. Every man who believed that
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any State could go out of the Union at its pleasure, every man that
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believed the grand fabric of the American Government could be made
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to crumble instantly into dust at the touch of treason, was a
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Democrat. Every man that helped to burn orphan asylums in New York,
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was a Democrat; every man that tried to fire the city of New York,
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although he knew that thousands would perish, and knew that the
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great serpent of flame leaping from buildings would clutch children
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from their mothers' arms -- every wretch that did it was a
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Democrat. Recollect it! Every man that tried to spread smallpox and
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yellow fever in the North, as the instrumentalities of civilized
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war, was a Democrat. Soldiers, every scar you have on your heroic
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bodies was given you be a Democrat. Every scar, every arm that is
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lacking, every limb that is gone, is a souvenir of a Democrat. I
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want you to recollect it. Every man that was the enemy of human
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liberty in this country was a Democrat. Every man that wanted the
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fruit of all the heroism of all the ages to turn to ashes upon the
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lips -- every one was a Democrat.
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I am a Republican. I will tell you why: This is the only free
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Government in the world. The Republican party made it so. The
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Republican party took the chains from four millions of people. The
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Republican party, with the wand of progress, touched the auction-
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block and it became a school house, The Republican party put down
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the Rebellion, saved the nation, kept the old banner afloat in the
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air, and declared that slavery of every kind should be extirpated
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from the face of this continent. What more?
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I am a Republican because it is the only free party that ever
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existed. It is a party that has a platform as broad as humanity, a
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platform as broad as the human race, a party that says you shall
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have all the fruit of the labor of your hands, a party that says
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you may think for yourself, a party that says, no chains for the
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hands, no fetters for the soul.
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I am a Republican because the Republican party says this
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country is a Nation, and not a confederacy. I am here in Indiana to
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speak, and I have as good a right to speak here as though I had
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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2
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INDIANAPOLIS SPEECH.
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been born on this stand -- not because the State flag of Indiana
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waves over me -- I would not know it if I should see it. You have
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the same right to speak in Illinois, not because the State flag of
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Illinois waves over you, but because that banner, rendered sacred
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by the blood od all heroes, waves over me. I am in favor of this
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being a Nation. Think of a man gratifying his entire ambition in
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the State of Rhode Island. We want this to be a Nation, and you
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cannot have a great, grand, splendid people without a great, grand,
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splendid country. The great plains the sublime mountains, the great
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rushing, roaring rivers, shores lashed by two oceans, and the grand
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anthem of Niagara, mingle and enter, into the character of every
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American citizen, and make him or tend to make him a great and
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grand character. I am for the Republican party because it says the
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Government has as much right, as much power, to protect its
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citizens at home as abroad. The Republican party does not say that
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you have to go away from home to get the protection of the
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Government. The Democratic party says the Government cannot march
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its troops into the South to protect the rights of the citizens. It
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is a lie. The Government claims the right, and it is conceded that
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the Government has the right, to go to your house, while you are
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sitting by your fireside with your wife and children about you and
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the old lady knitting, and the cat playing with the yarn, and
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everybody happy and serene -- the Government claims the right to go
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to your fireside and take you by force and put you into the army;
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take you down to the valley of the shadow of hell, by the ruddy,
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roaring guns, and make you fight for your flag. Now, that being so,
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when the war is over and your country is victorious, and you go
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back to your home, and a lot of Democrats want to trample upon your
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rights, I want to know if the Government that took you from your
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fireside and made you fight for it, I want to know if it is not
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bound to fight for you. The flag that will not protect its
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protectors is a dirty rag that contaminates the air in which it
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waves. The government that will not defend its defenders is a
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disgrace to the nations of the world. I am a Republican because the
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Republican party says, "We will protect the rights of American
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citizens at home, and if necessary we will march an army into any
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State to protect the rights of the humblest American citizen in
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that State." I am a Republican because that party allows me to be
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free -- allows me to do my own thinking in my own way. I am a
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Republican because it is a party grand enough and splendid enough
|
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and sublime enough to invite every human being in favor of liberty
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and progress to fight shoulder to shoulder for the advancement of
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mankind. It invites the Methodist, it invites the Catholic, it
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invites the Presbyterian and every kind of sectarian; it invites
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the Freethinker; it invites the infidel, provided he is in favor of
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giving to every other human being every chance and every right that
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he claims for himself. I am a Republican, I tell you. There is room
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in the Republican air for every wing; there is room on the
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Republican sea for every sail. Republicanism says to every man:
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"Let your soul be like an eagle; fly out in the great dome of
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thought, and question the stars for yourself." But the Democratic
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party says; "Be blind owls, sit on the dry limb of a dead tree, and
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hoot only when that party says hoot."
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In the Republican party there are no followers. We are all
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leaders. There is not a party chain. There is not a party lash. Any
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man that does not love this country, any man that does not love
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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3
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INDIANAPOLIS SPEECH.
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liberty, any man that is not in favor of human progress, that is
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not in favor of giving to others all he claims for himself; we do
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not ask him to vote the Republican ticket. You can vote it if you
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please, and if there is any Democrat within hearing who expects to
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die before another election, we are willing that he should vote one
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Republican ticket, simply as a consolation upon his death-bed. What
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more? I am a Republican because that party believes in free labor.
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It believes that free labor will give us wealth. It believes in
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free thought, because it believes that free thought will give us
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truth. You do not know what a grand party you belong to. I never
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want any holier or grander title of nobility than that I belong to
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the Republican party, and have fought for the liberty of man. The
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Republican party, I say, believes in free labor. The Republican
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party also believes in slavery. What kind of slavery? In enslaving
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the forces of nature.
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We believe that free labor, that free thought, have enslaved
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the forces of nature, and made them work for man. We make the old
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attraction of gravitation work for us; we make the lightning do our
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errands we make steam hammer and fashion what we need. The forces
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of nature are the slaves of the Republican party. They have no
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backs to be whipped, they have no hearts to be torn -- no hearts to
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be broken; they cannot be separated from their wives; they cannot
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be dragged from the bosoms husbands; they work night and day and
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never tire. You cannot whip them, you cannot starve them, and a
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Democrat even can be trusted with one of them. I tell you I am a
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Republican. I believe, as I told you, that free labor will give us
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these slaves. Free labor will produce all these things, and
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everything you have to-day has been produced by free labor, nothing
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by slave labor.
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Slavery never invented but one machine, and that was a
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threshing machine in the shape of a whip. Free labor has invented
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all the machines. We want to come down to the philosophy of things.
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things. The problem of free labor, when a man works for the wife he
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loves, when he works for the little children he adores -- the
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problem is to do the most work in the shortest space of time. The
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problem of slavery is to do the least work in the longest space of
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time. That is the difference. Free labor, love, affection -- they
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have invented everything of use in this world. I am a Republican.
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I tell you, my friends, this world is getting better every
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day, and the Democratic party is getting smaller every day. See the
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advancement we have made in a few years, see what we have done. We
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have covered this nation with wealth, with glory and with liberty.
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This is the first free Government in the world. The Republican
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party is the first party that was not founded on some compromise
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with the devil. It is the first party of pure, square, honest
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principle; the first one. And we have the first free country that
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ever existed.
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And right here I want to thank every soldier
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that fought to make it free, every one living and dead. I thank you
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again in and again. You made the first free Government in the
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world, and we must not forget the dead heroes. If they were here
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they would vote the Republican ticket, every one of them. I tell
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you we must not forget them.
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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4
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INDIANAPOLIS SPEECH.
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NOTE: (The following part of this speech was to become known as
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"A Vision of War" and became the most famous of all written
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Memorials to the Civil War.)
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The past rises before me like a dream. Again we are in the
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great struggle for national life. We hear the sounds of preparation
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-- the music of boisterous drums -- the silver voices of heroic
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bugles. We see thousands of assemblages, and hear the appeals of
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orators. We see the pale cheek, of women and the flushed faces of
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men; and in those assemblages we see all the dead whose dust we
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have covered with flowers. We lose sight of them no more. We are
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with them when they enlist in the great army of freedom. We see
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them part with those they love. Some are walking for the last time
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in quiet, woody places, with the maidens they adore. We hear the
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whisperings and the sweet vows of eternal love as they lingeringly
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part forever. Others are bending over cradles, kissing babes that
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are asleep. Some are receiving the blessings of old men. Some are
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parting with mothers who hold them and press them to their hearts
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again and again, and say nothing. Kisses and tears, tears and
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kisses -- divine mingling of agony and love! And some are talking
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with wives, and endeavoring with brave words, spoken in the old
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tones, to drive from their hearts the awful fear. We see them part.
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We see the wife standing in the door with the babe in her arms --
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standing in the sunlight sobbing. At the turn of the road a hand
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waves -- she answers by holding high in her loving arms the child.
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He is gone, and forever.
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We see them all as they march proudly away under the flaunting
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flags, keeping time to the grand, wild music of war -- marching
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down the streets of the great cities -- through the towns and
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across the prairies -- down to the fields of glory, to do and to
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die for the eternal right.
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We go with them, one and all. We are by their side on all the
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gory fields -- in all the hospitals of pain -- on all the weary
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marches. We stand guard with them in the wild storm and under the
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quiet stars. We are with them in ravines running with blood -- in
|
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the furrows of old fields. We are with them between contending
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hosts, unable to move, wild with thirst, the life ebbing slowly
|
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away among the withered leaves. We see them pierced by balls and
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torn with shells. in the trenches, by forts, and in the whirlwind
|
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of the where men become iron with nerves of steel.
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We are with them in the prisons of hatred and famine; but
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human speech can never tell what they endured.
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We are at home when the news comes that they are dead. We see
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the maiden in the shadow of her first sorrow. We see the silvered
|
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head of the old man bowed with the last grief.
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The past rises before us, and we see four millions of human
|
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beings governed by the lash -- we see them bound hand and foot --
|
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we hear the strokes of cruel whips -- we see the hounds tracking
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women through tangled swamps. We see babes sold from the breasts of
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mothers. Cruelty unspeakable! Out-rage infinite!
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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5
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INDIANAPOLIS SPEECH.
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Four million bodies in chains -- four million souls in
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fetters. All the sacred relations of wife, mother, father and child
|
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trampled beneath the brutal feet of might. And all this was done
|
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under our own beautiful banner of the free.
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The past rises before us. We hear the roar and shriek of the
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bursting shell. The broken fetters fall. These heroes died. We
|
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look. Instead of slaves we see men and women and children. The wand
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||
of progress touches the auction-block, the slave-pen, the whipping-
|
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post, an we see homes and firesides and schoolhouses and books, and
|
||
where all was want and crime and cruelty and fear, we see the faces
|
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of the free.
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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.
|
||
|
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NOTE: (end of '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 laid 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
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
6
|
||
|
||
INDIANAPOLIS SPEECH.
|
||
|
||
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, 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
|
||
refused 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 served 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 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?
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
7
|
||
|
||
INDIANAPOLIS SPEECH.
|
||
|
||
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 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.
|
||
|
||
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 paper -- why not make one thousand dollar bills? Why not make a
|
||
hundred million dollar bills I be 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 average. You have to have some
|
||
corn, or wheat, or pork to give for it.
|
||
|
||
How do you get your money? By work from 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
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
8
|
||
|
||
INDIANAPOLIS SPEECH.
|
||
|
||
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 beard 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
|
||
somber 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 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 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 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,
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
9
|
||
|
||
INDIANAPOLIS SPEECH.
|
||
|
||
wives from husbands, and every human tie broken by the cruel hand
|
||
of greed; for more than two hundred years 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
|
||
preemption. 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 to 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
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
10
|
||
|
||
INDIANAPOLIS SPEECH.
|
||
|
||
his won swiftness, with his mane flying like a banner of victory,
|
||
with his veins standing out all over him, as if a network of life
|
||
bad 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 Bastille, 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 waterwheel 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 creeked
|
||
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.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
11
|
||
|
||
INDIANAPOLIS SPEECH.
|
||
|
||
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 coat collar, 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 malinger 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 burn
|
||
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.
|
||
**** ****
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
12
|
||
|
||
EIGHT TO SEVEN ADDRESS
|
||
|
||
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,
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
13
|
||
|
||
EIGHT TO SEVEN ADDRESS
|
||
|
||
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 deserts of the West, with a little card
|
||
marked "S.J.T. 15 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.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
14
|
||
|
||
EIGHT TO SEVEN ADDRESS
|
||
|
||
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
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
15
|
||
|
||
EIGHT TO SEVEN ADDRESS
|
||
|
||
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 an 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
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
16
|
||
|
||
EIGHT TO SEVEN ADDRESS
|
||
|
||
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
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
17
|
||
|
||
EIGHT TO SEVEN ADDRESS
|
||
|
||
toward strengthening and vivifying and preserving the fabric of the
|
||
Constitution. That is the kind of civil service reform l 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 here reads a letter he has written:]
|
||
|
||
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
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
18
|
||
|
||
EIGHT TO SEVEN ADDRESS
|
||
|
||
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
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
19
|
||
|
||
EIGHT TO SEVEN ADDRESS
|
||
|
||
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
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
20
|
||
|
||
EIGHT TO SEVEN ADDRESS
|
||
|
||
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.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
21
|
||
|
||
EIGHT TO SEVEN ADDRESS
|
||
|
||
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 absurdist 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.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
22
|
||
|
||
EIGHT TO SEVEN ADDRESS
|
||
|
||
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
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
23
|
||
|
||
EIGHT TO SEVEN ADDRESS
|
||
|
||
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
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
24
|
||
|
||
EIGHT TO SEVEN ADDRESS
|
||
|
||
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
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
25
|
||
|
||
EIGHT TO SEVEN ADDRESS
|
||
|
||
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.
|
||
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship.
|
||
|
||
The Bank of Wisdom is a collection of the most thoughtful,
|
||
scholarly and factual books. These computer books are reprints of
|
||
suppressed books and will cover American and world history; the
|
||
Biographies and writings of famous persons, and especially of our
|
||
nations Founding Fathers. They will include philosophy and
|
||
religion. all these subjects, and more, will be made available to
|
||
the public in electronic form, easily copied and distributed, so
|
||
that America can again become what its Founders intended --
|
||
|
||
The Free Market-Place of Ideas.
|
||
|
||
The Bank of Wisdom is always looking for more of these old,
|
||
hidden, suppressed and forgotten books that contain needed facts
|
||
and information for today. If you have such books please contact
|
||
us, we need to give them back to America.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
26
|
||
|