1496 lines
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1496 lines
79 KiB
Plaintext
23 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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BROOKLYN SPEECH. 1
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THE CENSUS ENUMERATOR'S OFFICIAL 22
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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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BROOKLYN SPEECH.
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1880.
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LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: Years ago I made up my mind that there
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was no particular argument in slander. I made up my mind that for
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parties, as well as for individuals, honesty in the long-run is the
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best policy. I made up my mind that the people were entitled to
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know a man's honest thoughts, and I propose to-night to tell you
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exactly what I think. And it may be well enough, in the first
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place, for me to say that no party has a mortgage on me. I am the
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sole proprietor of myself. No party, no organization, has any deed
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of trust on what little brains I have, and as long as I can get my
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part of the common air I am going to tell my honest thoughts. One
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man in the right will finally get to be a majority. I am not going
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to say a word to-night that every Democrat here will not know is
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true, and, whatever he may say, I will compel him in his heart to
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give three cheers.
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In the first place, I wish to admit that during the war there
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were hundreds of thousands of patriotic Democrats. I wish to admit
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that if it had not been for the War Democrats of the North, we
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never would have put down the Rebellion. Let us be honest. I
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further admit that had it not been for other than War Democrats
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there never would have been a rebellion to put down. War Democrats!
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Why did we call them War Democrats? Did you ever hear anybody talk
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about a War Republican? We spoke of War Democrats to distinguish
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them from those Democrats who were in favor of peace upon any
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terms.
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I also wish to admit that the Republican party is not
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absolutely perfect. While I believe that it is the best party that
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ever existed. while I believe it has, within its organization, more
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heart, more brain, more patriotism than any other organization that
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ever existed beneath the sun, I still admit that it is not entirely
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perfect. I admit, in its great things, in its splendid efforts to
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preserve this nation, in its grand effort to keep our flag in
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heaven, in its magnificent effort to free four millions of slaves,
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in its great and sublime effort to save the financial honor of this
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Nation, I admit that it has made some mistakes. In its great effort
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to do right it has sometimes by mistake done wrong. And I also wish
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to admit that the great Democratic party, in its effort to get
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office has sometimes by mistake done right. You see that I am
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inclined to be perfectly fair.
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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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BROOKLYN SPEECH.
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I am going with the Republican party because it is going my
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way; but if it ever turns to the right or left, I intend to go
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straight ahead.
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In every government there is. something that ought to be
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||
preserved, in every government there are many things that ought to
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be destroyed. Every good man, every patriot, every lover of the
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human race, wishes to preserve the good and destroy the bad; and
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every one in this audience who wishes to preserve the good will go
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with that section of our common country -- with that party in our
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country that he honestly believes will preserve the good and
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destroy the bad. It takes a great deal of trouble to raise a good
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Republican. It is a vast deal of labor. The Republican party is the
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||
fruit of all ages -- of self-sacrifice and devotion. The Republican
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||
party is born of every good thing that was ever done in this world.
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The Republican party is the result of all martyrdom, of all heroic
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||
blood shed for the right. It is the blossom and fruit of the great
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world's best endeavor. In order to make a Republican you have to
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have schoolhouses. You have to have newspapers and magazines. A
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good Republican is the best fruit of civilization, of all there is
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of intelligence, of art, of music and of song. If you want to make
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Democrats, let them alone. The Democratic party is the settlings of
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this country. Nobody hoes weeds. Nobody takes especial pains to
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||
raise dog-fennel, and yet it grows under the very hoof of travel.
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The seeds are sown by accident and gathered by chance. But if you
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want to raise wheat and corn you must plough the ground. You must
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defend and you must harvest the crop with infinite patience and
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toil. It is precisely that way -- if you want to raise a good
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||
Republican you must work, If you wish to raise a Democrat give him
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||
wholesome neglect. The Democratic party flatters the vices of
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mankind. That party says to the ignorant man, "You know enough." It
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||
says to the vicious man, "You are good enough."
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||
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The Republican party says, "You must be better next year than
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you are this." A Republican takes a man by the collar and says,
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||
"You must do your best, you must climb the infinite hill of human
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progress as long as you live." Now and then one gets tired. He
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||
says, "I have climbed enough and so much better than I expected to
|
||
do that I do not wish to travel any farther. Now and then one gets
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||
tired and lets go all hold, and he rolls down to the very bottom,
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and as he strikes the mud he springs upon his feet transfigured,
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and says: Hurrah for Hancock!"
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There are things in this Government that I wish to preserve,
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||
and there are things that I wish to destroy; and in order to
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convince you that you ought to go the way that I am going, it is
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only fair that I give to you my reasons. This is a Republic founded
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||
upon intelligence and the patriotism of the people, and in every
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||
Republic it is absolutely necessary that there should be free
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||
speech. Free speech is the gem of the human soul. Words are the
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||
bodies of thought, and liberty gives to those words wings, and the
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||
whole intellectual heavens are filled with light. In a Republic
|
||
every individual tongue has a right to the general ear. In a
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||
Republic every man has the right to give his reasons for the course
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||
he pursues to all his fellow-citizens, and when you say that a man
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||
shall not speak, you also say that others shall not hear. When you
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say a man shall not express his honest thought you say his fellow-
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||
citizens shall be deprived of honest thoughts; for of what use is
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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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BROOKLYN SPEECH.
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it to allow the attorney for the defendant to address the jury if
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the jury has been bought? Of what use is it to allow the jury to
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||
bring in a verdict of "not guilty," if the defendant is to be hung
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||
by a mob? I ask you to-night, is not every solitary man here in
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favor of free speech? Is there a solitary Democrat here who dares
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say he is not in favor of free speech? In which part of this
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country are the lips of thought free -- in the South or in the
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North? Which section of our country can you trust the inestimable
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gem of free speech with? Can you trust it to the gentlemen of
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Mississippi or to the gentlemen of Massachusetts? Can you trust it
|
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to Alabama or to New York? Can you trust it to the South or can you
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trust it to the great and splendid North? Honor bright -- honor
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bright, is there any freedom of speech in the South? There never
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was and there is none to-night-and let me tell you why.
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They had the institution of human slavery in the South, which
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could not be defended at the bar of public reason. It was an
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institution that could not be defended in the high forum of human
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||
conscience. No man could stand there and defend the right to rob
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||
the cradle -- none to defend the right to sell the babe from the
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||
breast of the agonized mother -- none to defend the claim that
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||
lashes on a bare back are a legal tender for labor performed. Every
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||
man that lived upon the unpaid labor of another knew in his heart
|
||
that he was a thief. And for that reason he did not wish to discuss
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||
that question. Thereupon the institution of slavery said, "You
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||
shall not speak; you shall not reason," and the lips of free
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||
thought were manacled. You know it. Every one of you. Every
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||
Democrat knows it as well as every Republican. There never was free
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speech in the South.
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And what has been the result? And allow me to admit right
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||
here, because I want to be fair. there are thousands and thousands
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of most excellent people in the South -- thousands of them. There
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are hundreds and hundreds of thousands there who would like to vote
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the Republican ticket. And whenever there is free speech there and
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||
whenever there is a free ballot there, they will vote the
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Republican ticket. I say again, there are hundreds of thousands of
|
||
good people in the South; but the institution of human slavery
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||
prevented free speech, and it is a splendid fact in nature that you
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cannot put chains upon the limbs of others without putting
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||
corresponding manacles upon your own brain. When the South enslaved
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||
the negro, it also enslaved itself, and the result was an
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||
intellectual desert. No book has been produced, with one exception,
|
||
that has added to the knowledge of mankind; no paper, no magazine,
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||
no poet, no philosopher, no philanthropist, was ever raised in that
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||
desert. Now and then some one protested against that infamous
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||
institution, and he came as near being a philosopher as the society
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in which he lived permitted. Why is it that New England, a rock-
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clad land, blossoms like a rose? Why is it that New York is the
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Empire State of the great Union? I will tell you. Because you have
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been permitted to trade in ideas. Because the lips of speech have
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been absolutely free for twenty years. We never had free speech in
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any State in this Union until the Republican party was born. That
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party was rocked in the cradle of intellectual liberty, and that is
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||
the reason I say it is the best party that ever existed in the
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wide, wide world. I want to preserve free speech, and, as an honest
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man, I look about me and I say, "How can I best preserve it?" By
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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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BROOKLYN SPEECH.
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giving it to the South or North; to the Democracy or to the
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Republican party? And I am bound, as an honest man, to say free
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speech is safest with its earliest defenders. Where is there such
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||
a thing as a Republican mob to prevent the expression of an honest
|
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thought? Where? The people of the South are allowed to come to the
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North; they are allowed to express their sentiments upon every
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stump in the great East, the great West, and in the great Middle
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States; they go to Maine, to Vermont, and to all our States, and
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they are allowed to speak, and we give them a respectful hearing,
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||
and the meanest thing we do is to answer their arguments.
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I say to-night that we ought to have the same liberty to
|
||
discuss these questions in the South that Southerners have in the
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||
North. And I say more than that, the Democrats of the North ought
|
||
to compel the Democrats of the South to treat the Republicans of
|
||
the South as well as the Republicans of the North treat them. We
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||
treat the Democrats well in the North; we treat them like gentlemen
|
||
in the North; and yet they go into partnership with the Democracy
|
||
of the South, knowing that the Democracy of the South will not
|
||
treat Republicans in that section with fairness. A Democrat ought
|
||
to be ashamed of that.
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If my friends will not treat other people as well as the
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friends of the other people treat me, I'll swap friends.
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First, then, I am in favor of free speech, and I am going with
|
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that section of my country that believes in free speech; I am going
|
||
with that party that has always upheld that sacred right. When you
|
||
stop free speech, when you say that a thought shall die in the womb
|
||
of the brain, -- why, it would have the same effect upon the
|
||
intellectual world that to stop springs at their sources would have
|
||
upon the physical world. Stop the springs at their sources and they
|
||
cease to gurgle, the streams cease to murmur, and the great rivers
|
||
cease rushing to the embrace of the sea. So you stop thought. Stop
|
||
thought in the brain in which it is born, and theory dies; and the
|
||
great ocean of knowledge to which all should be permitted to
|
||
contribute, and from which all should be allowed to draw, becomes
|
||
a vast desert of ignorance.
|
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||
I have always said, and I say again, that the more liberty
|
||
there is given away, the more you have. I endeavor to be consistent
|
||
in my life and action. I am a believer in intellectual liberty, and
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||
wherever the torch of knowledge burns the whole horizon is filled
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||
with a glorious halo. I am a free man. I would be less than a man
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||
if I did not wish to hand this flame to my child with the flame
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||
increased rather than diminished.
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Whom will we trust to take care of free speech? Let us
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consider and be honest with one another. The gem of the brain is
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||
the innocence of the soul.
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I am not only in favor of free speech, but I am also in favor
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of an absolutely honest ballot. There is only one emperor in this
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country; there is one czar; only one supreme crown and king, and
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||
that is the will, the legally expressed will of the majority. Every
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||
American citizen is a sovereign. The poorest and humblest may wear
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that crown, the beggar holds in his hand that scepter equally with
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the proudest and richest, and so far as his sovereignty is
|
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|
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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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BROOKLYN SPEECH.
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concerned, the poorest American, he who earns but one dollar a day,
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has the same voice in controlling the destiny of the United States
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||
as the millionaire. The man who casts an illegal vote, the man who
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||
refuses to count a legal vote, poisons the fountain of power,
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||
poisons the springs of justice, and is a traitor to the only king
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in this land. The Government is upon the edge of Mexicanization
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through fraudulent voting. The ballot-box is the throne of America;
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the ballot-box is the ark of the covenant. Unless we see to it that
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every man who has a right to vote, votes, and unless we see to it
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||
that every honest vote is counted, the days of this Republic are
|
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numbered.
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||
When you suspect that a Congressman is not elected; when you
|
||
suspect that a judge upon the bench holds his place by fraud, then
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||
the people will hold the law in contempt and will laugh at the
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||
decisions of courts, and then come revolution and chaos.
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||
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||
It is the duty of every good man to see to it that the ballot-
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box is kept absolutely pure. It is the duty of every patriot,
|
||
whether he is a Democrat or Republican -- and I want further to
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||
admit that I believe a large majority of Democrats are honest in
|
||
their opinions, and I know that all Republicans must be honest in
|
||
their opinions. It is the duty, then, of all honest men of both
|
||
parties to see to it that only honest votes are cast and counted.
|
||
Now, honor bright, which section of this Union can you trust the
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ballot-box with?
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Do you wish to trust Louisiana, or do you wish to trust
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||
Alabama that gave, in 1872, thirty-four thousand eight hundred and
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eighty-eight Republican majority and now gives ninety-two thousand
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||
Democratic majority? And of that ninety-two thousand majority,
|
||
every one is a lie! A contemptible, infamous lie! Because if every
|
||
voter had been allowed to vote, there would have been forty
|
||
thousand Republican majority. Honor bright, can you trust it with
|
||
the masked murderers who rode in the darkness of night to the hut
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||
of the freedman and shot him down, notwithstanding the supplication
|
||
of his wife and the tears of his babe? Can you trust it to the men
|
||
who since the close of our war have killed more men, simply because
|
||
those men wished to vote, simply because they wished to exercise a
|
||
right with which they had been clothed by the sublime heroism of
|
||
the North -- who have killed more men than were killed on both
|
||
sides in the Revolutionary war; than were killed on both sides
|
||
during the War of 1812; than were killed on both sides in both
|
||
wars? Can you trust them? Can you trust the gentlemen who invented
|
||
the tissue ballot? Do you wish to put the ballot-box in the keeping
|
||
of the shot-gun, of the White-Liners, of the Ku Klux? Do you wish
|
||
to put the ballot-box in the keeping of men who openly swear that
|
||
they will not be ruled by a majority of American citizens if a
|
||
portion of that majority is made of black men? And I want to tell
|
||
you right here, I like a black man who loves this country better
|
||
than I do a white man who hates it. I think more of a black man who
|
||
fought for our flag than for any white man who endeavored to tear
|
||
it out of heaven
|
||
|
||
I say, can you trust the ballot-box to the Democratic party?
|
||
Read the history of the State of New York. Read the history of this
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||
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||
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||
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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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BROOKLYN SPEECH.
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||
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great and magnificent city -- the Queen of the Atlantic -- read her
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||
history and tell us whether you can implicitly trust Democratic
|
||
returns? Honor bright!
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||
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||
I am not only, then, for free speech, but I am for an honest
|
||
ballot; and in order that you may have no doubt left upon your
|
||
minds as to which party is in favor of an honest vote, I will call
|
||
your attention to this striking fact. Every law that has been
|
||
passed in every State of this Union for twenty long years, the
|
||
object of which was to guard the American ballot-box, has been
|
||
passed by the Republican party, and in every State where the
|
||
Republican party has introduced such a bill for the purpose of
|
||
making it a law; in every State where such a bill has been
|
||
defeated, it has been defeated by the Democratic party. That ought
|
||
to satisfy any reasonable man to satiety.
|
||
|
||
I am not only in favor of free speech and an honest ballot,
|
||
but I am in favor of collecting and disbursing the revenues of the
|
||
United States. I want plenty of money to collect and pay the
|
||
interest on our debt. I want plenty of money to pay our debt and to
|
||
preserve the financial honor of the United States. I want money
|
||
enough to be collected to pay pensions to widows and orphans and to
|
||
wounded soldiers. And the question is, which section in this
|
||
country can you trust to collect and disburse that revenue? Let us
|
||
be honest about it. Which section can yon trust? In the last four
|
||
years we have collected four hundred and sixty-eight million
|
||
dollars of the internal revenue taxes. We have collected
|
||
principally from taxes upon high wines and tobacco, four hundred
|
||
and sixty-eight million dollars, and in those four years we have
|
||
seized, libeled and destroyed in the Southern States three thousand
|
||
eight hundred and seventy-four illicit distilleries. And during the
|
||
same time the Southern people have shot to death twenty-five
|
||
revenue officers and wounded fifty-five others, and the only
|
||
offence that the wounded and dead committed was an honest effort
|
||
to collect the revenues of this country. Recollect it -- don't you
|
||
forget it. And in several Southern States to-day every revenue
|
||
collector or officer connected with the revenue is furnished by the
|
||
Internal Revenue Department with a breech-loading rifle and a pair
|
||
of revolvers, simply for the purpose of collecting the revenue.
|
||
|
||
I don't feel like trusting such people to collect the revenue
|
||
of my Government.
|
||
|
||
During the same four years we have arrested and have indicted
|
||
seven thousand and eighty-four Southern Democrats for endeavoring
|
||
to defraud the revenue of the United States. Recollect -- three
|
||
thousand eight hundred and seventy-four distilleries seized.
|
||
Twenty-five revenue officers killed, fifty-five wounded, and seven
|
||
thousand and eighty-four Democrats arrested. Can we trust them?
|
||
|
||
The State of Alabama in its last Democratic convention passed
|
||
a resolution that no man should be tried in a Federal Court for a
|
||
violation of the revenue laws -- that he should be tried in a State
|
||
Court. Think of it -- he should be tried in a State Court! Let me
|
||
tell you how it will come out if we trust the Southern States to
|
||
collect this revenue. A couple of Methodist ministers had been
|
||
holding a revival for a week, and at the end of the week one said
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
6
|
||
|
||
BROOKLYN SPEECH.
|
||
|
||
to the other that he thought it time to take up a collection. When
|
||
the hat was returned he found in it pieces of slate-pencils and
|
||
nails and buttons, but not a single solitary cent -- not one -- and
|
||
his brother minister got up and looked at the contribution, and
|
||
said, -- "Let us thank God!" And the owner of the hat said, "What
|
||
for?" And the brother replied, "Because you got your hat back." If
|
||
we trust the South we shan't get our hats back.
|
||
|
||
I am next in favor of honest money. I am in favor of gold and
|
||
silver, and paper with gold and silver behind it. I believe in
|
||
silver, because it is one of the greatest of American products, and
|
||
I am in favor of anything that will add to the value of an American
|
||
product. But I want a silver dollar worth a gold dollar, even if
|
||
you make it or have to make it four feet in diameter. No government
|
||
can afford to be a clipper of coin. A great Republic cannot afford
|
||
to stamp a lie upon silver or gold. Honest money, an honest people,
|
||
an honest Nation. When our money is only worth eighty cents on the
|
||
dollar, we feel twenty per cent. below par. When our money is good
|
||
we feel good. When our money is at par, that is where we are. I am
|
||
a profound believer in the doctrine that for nations as well as
|
||
men, honesty is the best policy, always, everywhere, and forever.
|
||
|
||
What section of this country, what party, will give us honest
|
||
money -- honor bright -- honor bright? I have been told that during
|
||
the war, we had plenty of money. I never saw it. I lived years
|
||
without seeing a dollar. I saw promises for dollars, but not
|
||
dollars. And the greenback, unless you have the gold behind it, is
|
||
no more a dollar than a bill of fare is a dinner. You cannot make
|
||
a paper dollar without taking a dollar's worth of paper. We must
|
||
have paper that represents money. I want it issued by the
|
||
Government, and I want behind every one of these dollars either a
|
||
gold or silver dollar, so that every greenback under the flag can
|
||
lift up its hand and sear, "I know that my redeemer liveth."
|
||
|
||
When we were running into debt, thousands of people mistook
|
||
that for prosperity, and when we began paying they regarded it as
|
||
adversity. Of course we had plenty when we bought on credit. No
|
||
man has ever starved when his credit was good, if there were no
|
||
famine in that country. As long as we buy on credit we shall have
|
||
enough. The trouble commences when the pay-day arrives. And I do
|
||
not wonder that after the war thousands of people said, "Let us
|
||
have another inflation." Which party said, "No, we must pay the
|
||
promise made in war"? Honor bright! The Democratic party had once
|
||
been a hard money party, but it drifted from its metallic moorings
|
||
and floated off in the ocean of inflation, and you know it. They
|
||
said, "Give us more money;" and every man that had bought on credit
|
||
and owed a little something on what he had purchased, when the
|
||
property went down commenced crying, or many of them did, for
|
||
inflation. I understand it.
|
||
|
||
A man, say, bought a piece of land for six thousand dollars;
|
||
paid five thousand dollars on it; gave a mortgage for one thousand
|
||
dollars, and suddenly, in 1873, found that the land would not pay
|
||
the other thousand. The land had resumed, and then he said, looking
|
||
lugubriously at his note and mortgage, "I want another inflation."
|
||
And I never heard a man call for it that did not also say, "If it
|
||
ever comes, and I don't unload, you may shoot me."
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
7
|
||
|
||
BROOKLYN SPEECH.
|
||
|
||
It was very much as it is sometimes in playing poker, and I
|
||
make this comparison knowing that hardly a person here will
|
||
understand it. I have been told that along toward morning the man
|
||
that is ahead suddenly says, "I have got to go home. The fact is,
|
||
my wife is not well." And the fellow who is behind says, "Let us
|
||
have another deal; I have my opinion of the fellow that will jump
|
||
a game." And so it was in the hard times of 1873. They said: "Give
|
||
us another deal; let us get our driftwood back into the center of
|
||
the stream." And they cried out for more money. But the Republican
|
||
party said -- "We do want more money, but not more promises. We
|
||
have got to pay this first, and if we start out again upon that
|
||
wide sea of promise we may never touch the shore."
|
||
|
||
A thousand theories were born of want; a thousand theories
|
||
were born of the fertile brain of trouble; and these, people said,
|
||
"After all, what is money? Why, it is nothing but a measure of
|
||
value, just the same as a half bushel or yardstick." True; and
|
||
consequently it makes no difference whether your half bushel is of
|
||
wood or gold or silver or paper; and it makes no difference whether
|
||
your yardstick is gold or paper. But the trouble about that
|
||
statement is this: A half bushel is not a measure of value; it is
|
||
a measure of quantity, and it measures rubies, diamonds and pearls
|
||
precisely the same as corn and wheat. The yardstick is not a
|
||
measure of value; it is a measure of length, and it measures lace
|
||
worth one hundred dollars a yard precisely as it does cent tape.
|
||
And another reason why it makes no difference to the purchaser
|
||
whether the half bushel is gold or silver, or whether the yardstick
|
||
is gold or paper, you do not buy the yardstick; you do not get the
|
||
half bushel in the trade. And if it were so with money -- if the
|
||
people that had the money at the start of the trade, kept it after
|
||
the consummation of the bargain -- then it would not make any
|
||
difference what you made your money of. But the trouble is the
|
||
money changes hands. And let me say to-night, money is a thing --
|
||
it is a product of nature -- and you can no more make a "fiat"
|
||
dollar than you can make a fiat star. I am in favor of honest
|
||
money. Free speech is the brain of the Republic; an honest ballot
|
||
is the breath of its life, and honest money is the blood that
|
||
courses through its veins.
|
||
|
||
If I am fortunate enough to leave a dollar when I die, I want
|
||
it to be a good one. -- I do not wish to have it turn to ashes in
|
||
the hands of widowhood, or become a Democratic broken promise. in
|
||
the pocket of the orphan; I want it money. I want money that will
|
||
outlive the Democratic party. They told us -- and they were honest
|
||
about it -- they said, "When we have plenty of money, we are
|
||
prosperous." And I said, "When we are prosperous, we have plenty of
|
||
money." When we are prosperous, then we have credit, and credit
|
||
inflates the currency. Whenever a man buys a pound of sugar and
|
||
says, "Charge it," he inflates the currency; whenever he gives his
|
||
note, he inflates the currency; whenever his word takes the place
|
||
of money, he inflates the currency. The consequence is that when we
|
||
are prosperous, credit takes the place of money, and we have what
|
||
we call "plenty."
|
||
|
||
But you cannot increase prosperity simply by using promises to
|
||
pay. Suppose you should come to a river that was about dry, so dry
|
||
that the turtle had to help the catfish over the shoals, and there
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
8
|
||
|
||
BROOKLYN SPEECH.
|
||
|
||
you would see the ferryboat, and the gentleman who kept the ferry,
|
||
up on the sand, high and dry, and the cracks all opening in the
|
||
sun, filled with loose oakum, looking like an average Democratic
|
||
mouth listening to a constitutional argument, and you should say to
|
||
him, "How is business?" And he would say, "Dull." And then you
|
||
would say to him, "Now, what you want is more boat." He would
|
||
probably answer, "If I had a little more water I could get along
|
||
with this one."
|
||
|
||
Suppose I next came to a man running a railroad, complaining
|
||
of hard times. "Why," said he, "I did a million dollars' worth of
|
||
business the first year and used five hundred thousand dollars'
|
||
worth of grease. The second year I did five hundred thousand
|
||
dollars' worth of business and used four hundred thousand dollars'
|
||
worth of grease." "Well," said I, "the reason your road fell off
|
||
was because you did not use enough grease."
|
||
|
||
But I want to be fair, and I wish to-night to return my thanks
|
||
to the Democratic party. You did a great and splendid work. You
|
||
went all over the United States and you said upon every stump that
|
||
a greenback was better than gold. You said, "We have at last found
|
||
the money of the poor man. Gold loves the rich; gold haunts banks
|
||
and safes and vaults; but we have money that will go around
|
||
inquiring for a man that is dead broke. We have finally found money
|
||
that will stay in a pocket with holes in it." But, after all, do
|
||
you know that money is the most social thing in this world? If a
|
||
fellow has one dollar in his pocket, and he meets another with two,
|
||
do you know that dollar is absolutely homesick until it gets where
|
||
the other two are? And yet the Greenbackers told us that they had
|
||
finally invented money that would be the poor man's friend. They
|
||
said, "It is better than gold, better than silver," and they got so
|
||
many men to believe it that when we resumed and said, "Here is your
|
||
gold for your greenback," the fellows who had the greenback said,
|
||
We don't want it. The greenbacks are good enough for us." Do you
|
||
know, if they had wanted it we could not have given it to them? And
|
||
so I return my thanks to the Greenback party. But allow me to say
|
||
in this connection, the days of their usefulness have passed
|
||
forever.
|
||
|
||
Now, I am not foolish enough to claim that the Republican
|
||
party resumed. I am not silly enough to say that John Sherman
|
||
resumed. But I will tell you what I do say. I say that every man
|
||
who raised a bushel of corn or a bushel of wheat or a pound of beef
|
||
or pork for sale helped to resume. I say that the gentle rain and
|
||
the loving dew helped to resume. The soil of the United States
|
||
impregnated by the loving sun helped to resume. The men that dug
|
||
the coal and the iron and the silver and the copper and the gold
|
||
helped to resume. And the men upon whose foreheads fell the light
|
||
of furnaces helped to resume. And the sailors who fought with the
|
||
waves of the seas helped to resume.
|
||
|
||
I admit to-night that the Democrats earned their share of the
|
||
money to resume with. All I claim is that the Republican party
|
||
furnished the honesty to pay it over. That is what I claim; and the
|
||
Republican party set the day, and the Republican party worked to
|
||
the promise. That is what I say. And had it not been for the
|
||
Republican party this Nation would have been financially
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
9
|
||
|
||
BROOKLYN SPEECH.
|
||
|
||
dishonored. I am for honest money, and I am for the payment of
|
||
every dollar of our debt, and so is every Democrat now, I take it.
|
||
But what did you say a little while ago? Did you say we could
|
||
resume? No; you swore we could not, and you swore our bonds would
|
||
be worthless as the withered leaves of winter. And now when a
|
||
Democrat goes to England and sees an American four per cent. quoted
|
||
at one hundred and ten he kind of swells up, and says: "That's the
|
||
kind of man I am." In that country he pretends he was a Republican
|
||
in this. And I do not blame him. I do not begrudge him enjoying
|
||
respectability when away from home. The Republican party is
|
||
entitled to the credit for keeping this Nation grandly and
|
||
splendidly honest. I say, the Republican party is entitled to the
|
||
credit of preserving the honor of this Nation.
|
||
|
||
In 1873 came the crash, and all the languages of the world
|
||
cannot describe the agonies suffered by the American people from
|
||
1873 to 1879. A man who thought he was a millionaire came to
|
||
poverty; he found his stocks and bonds ashes in the paralytic hand
|
||
of old age. Men who expected to live all their lives in the
|
||
sunshine of joy found themselves beggars and paupers. The great
|
||
factories were closed, the workmen were demoralized, and the roads
|
||
of the United States were filled with tramps. In the hovel of the
|
||
poor and the palace of the rich came the serpent of temptation and
|
||
whispered in the American ear the terrible word Repudiation." But
|
||
the Republican party said, No; we will pay every dollar. No; we
|
||
have started toward the shining goal of resumption and we never
|
||
will turn back." And the Republican party struggled until it had
|
||
the happiness of seeing upon the broad shining forehead of American
|
||
labor the words "Financial Honor."
|
||
|
||
The Republican party struggled until every paper promise was
|
||
as good as gold. And the moment we got back to gold then we
|
||
commenced to rise again. We could not jump until our feet touched
|
||
something that they could be pressed against. And from that moment
|
||
to this we have been going, going, going higher and higher, more
|
||
prosperous every hour. And now they say, "Let us have a change."
|
||
When I am sick I want a change; when I am poor I want a change; and
|
||
if I were a Democrat I would have a personal change. We are
|
||
prosperous to-day, and must keep so. We are back to gold and
|
||
silver. Let us stay there; and let us stay with the party that
|
||
brought us there.
|
||
|
||
Now, I am not only in favor of free speech and an honest
|
||
ballot-box and an honest collection of the revenue of the United
|
||
States, and an honest money, but I am in favor of the idea, of the
|
||
great and splendid truth, that this is a Nation one and
|
||
indivisible. I deny that we are a confederacy bound together with
|
||
ropes of cloud and chains of mist. This is a Nation, and every man
|
||
in it owes his first allegiance to the grand old flag for which
|
||
more brave blood was shed than for any other flag that waves in the
|
||
sight of heaven. There is another thing; we all want to live in a
|
||
land where the law is supreme. We desire to live beneath a flag
|
||
that will protect every citizen beneath its folds. We desire to be
|
||
citizens of a Government so great and so grand that it will command
|
||
the respect of the civilized world. Most of us are convinced that
|
||
our Government is the best upon this earth. It is the only
|
||
Government where manhood, and manhood alone, is not made simply a
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
10
|
||
|
||
BROOKLYN SPEECH.
|
||
|
||
condition of citizenship, but where manhood, and manhood alone,
|
||
permits its possessor to have his equal share in control of the
|
||
Government. It is the only Government in the world where poverty is
|
||
upon an exact equality with wealth, so far as controlling the
|
||
destiny of the Republic is concerned. It is the only Nation where
|
||
the man clothed in rags stands upon an equality with the one
|
||
wearing purple. It is the only country in the world where,
|
||
politically, the hut is upon an equality with the palace.
|
||
|
||
For that reason every poor man should stand by this
|
||
Government, and every poor man who does not is a traitor to the
|
||
best interests of his children; every poor man who does not is
|
||
willing his children should bear the badge of political
|
||
inferiority; and the only way to make this Government a complete
|
||
and perfect success is for the poorest man to think as much of his
|
||
manhood as the millionaire does of his wealth. A man does not vote
|
||
in this country simply because he is rich; he does not vote in this
|
||
country simply because he has an education; he does not vote simply
|
||
because he has talent or genius; we say that he votes because he is
|
||
a man and that he has his manhood to support; and we admit in this
|
||
country that nothing can be more valuable to any human being than
|
||
his manhood, and for that reason we put poverty on an equality with
|
||
wealth. We say in this country manhood is worth more than gold. We
|
||
say in this country that without Liberty the Nation is not worth
|
||
preserving, Now, I appeal to-day to every poor man; I appeal to-day
|
||
to every laboring man, and I ask him, if there another country on
|
||
this globe where you can have equal rights with others? There is
|
||
another thing; do you want a Government of law or of brute force?
|
||
In which part of this country do you find law supreme? In which
|
||
part of this country can a man find justice in the courts; in the
|
||
North or in the South? Where is crime punished? Where is innocence
|
||
protected, in the North or in the South? Which section of this
|
||
country will you trust?
|
||
|
||
You can tell what a man is by the way he treats persons in his
|
||
power, and the man that will sneak and crawl in the presence of
|
||
greatness, will trample the weak when he gets them in his power.
|
||
What class of people does the State have in its power? Criminals
|
||
and creditors; and you can judge of a State by the way it treats
|
||
its criminals and creditors. Georgia is the best State in the
|
||
South. They have a penitentiary system by which they hire out their
|
||
convict labor. Only two years ago the whole thing was examined by
|
||
a friend of mine, Col. Allston. He had been in the rebel army and
|
||
was my good friend. He used to come to my house day after day to
|
||
see me. He got converted and had the grit to say so. Being a member
|
||
of the Legislature, he had a committee of investigation appointed.
|
||
Now, in order that you may understand the difference, you must know
|
||
that in the Northern penitentiaries the average annual death rate
|
||
is one per cent.; that is, of one thousand convicts, ten will die
|
||
in a year, on the average. That low death rate is because we are
|
||
civilized, because we do not kill; but in the Georgia penitentiary
|
||
it was as high as fifteen, twenty-seven and forty-seven per cent.,
|
||
at a time when there was no typhoid or yellow fever, or epidemic of
|
||
any kind. They died for four months at a rate of ten per cent. per
|
||
month. They crowded the convicts in together, regardless of sex.
|
||
They treated them precisely as wild beasts, and many of them were
|
||
shot down. Persons high in authority, Senators of the United
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
11
|
||
|
||
BROOKLYN SPEECH.
|
||
|
||
States, held interests in those contracts, and Robert Allston
|
||
denounced them. When on a visit he said, "I believe when I get home
|
||
I shall be killed." I told him not to go back to Georgia, but to
|
||
stay in the civilized North; but no, he would go back, and on the
|
||
very day of his arrival he was murdered in cold blood. Do you want
|
||
to trust such men? * * *
|
||
|
||
The Southern people say this is a Confederacy and they are
|
||
honest in it. They fought for it, they believed it. They believe in
|
||
the doctrine of State Sovereignty, and many Democrats of the North
|
||
believe in the same doctrine. No less a man than Horatio Seymour --
|
||
standing it may be at the head of Democratic statesmen -- said, if
|
||
he has been correctly reported, only the other day, that he
|
||
despised the word "Nation." I bless that word. I owe my first
|
||
allegiance to this Nation, and it owes its first protection to me.
|
||
I am talking here to-night, not because I am protected by the flag
|
||
of New York. I would not know that flag if I should see it. I am
|
||
talking here, and have the right to talk here, because the flag of
|
||
my country is above us. I have the same right as though I had been
|
||
born upon this very platform. I am proud of New York because it is
|
||
a part of my country. I am proud of my country because it has such
|
||
a State as New York in it, and I will be prouder of New York on a
|
||
week from next Tuesday than ever before in my life. I despise the
|
||
doctrine of State Sovereignty. I believe in the rights of the
|
||
States, but not in the sovereignty of the States. States are
|
||
political conveniences. Rising above States, as the Alps above
|
||
valleys, are the rights of man. Rising above the rights of the
|
||
Government, even in this Nation, are the sublime rights of the
|
||
people. Governments are good only so long as they protect human
|
||
rights. But the rights of a man never should be sacrificed upon the
|
||
altar of the State, or upon the altar of the Nation.
|
||
|
||
Let me tell you a few objections that I have to State
|
||
Sovereignty. That doctrine has never been appealed to for any good.
|
||
The first time it was appealed to was when our Constitution was
|
||
made. And the object then was to keep the slave-trade open until
|
||
the year 1808. The object then was to make the sea the highway of
|
||
piracy -- the object then was to allow American citizens to go into
|
||
the business of selling men and women and children, and feed their
|
||
cargo to the sharks of the sea, and the sharks of the sea were as
|
||
merciful as they. That was the first time that the appeal to the
|
||
doctrine of State Sovereignty was made, and the next time was for
|
||
the purpose of keeping alive the interstate slave-trade, so that a
|
||
gentleman in Virginia could sell the slave, who had nursed him, and
|
||
rob the cradles of their babes. Think of it! It was made so they
|
||
could rob the cradle in the name of law. Think of it! Think of it!
|
||
And the next time they appealed to the doctrine of State
|
||
Sovereignty was in favor of the Fugitive Slave Law -- a law that
|
||
made a bloodhound of every Northern man; that made charity a crime;
|
||
a law that made love a state-prison offence; that branded the
|
||
forehead of charity as if it were a felon. Think of it!
|
||
|
||
It is a part of my honor to hate such principles. I have no
|
||
respect for any man who is so mean, cruel and wicked, as to allow
|
||
himself to be transformed into a bloodhound to bay upon the tracks
|
||
of innocent human prey. I will follow my logic, no matter where it
|
||
goes, after it has consulted with my heart. If you ever come to a
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
12
|
||
|
||
BROOKLYN SPEECH.
|
||
|
||
conclusion without calling the heart in, you will come to a bad
|
||
conclusion.
|
||
|
||
A good man is pretty apt to be right; a perfectly honest man
|
||
is like the surface of the stainless mirror, that gives back by
|
||
simply looking at him, the image of the one who looks.
|
||
|
||
The next time they appealed to the doctrine of State
|
||
Sovereignty was to increase the area of human slavery, so that the
|
||
bloodhound, with clots of blood dropping from his loose and hanging
|
||
jaws, might traverse the billowy plains of Kansas. Think of it!
|
||
|
||
The Democratic party then said the Federal Government had a
|
||
right to cross the State line. And the next time they appealed to
|
||
that infamous doctrine was in defence of secession and treason; a
|
||
doctrine that cost us six thousand millions of dollars; a doctrine
|
||
that cost four hundred thousand lives; a doctrine that filled our
|
||
country with widows, our homes with orphans. And I tell you, the
|
||
doctrine of State Sovereignty is the viper in the bosom of this
|
||
Republic, and if we do not kill that viper it will kill us.
|
||
|
||
The Democrats tell us that in the olden time the Federal
|
||
Government had a right to cross a State line to put shackles upon
|
||
the limbs of men. It had the right to cross a State line to trample
|
||
upon the rights of human beings, but now it has no right to cross
|
||
those lines upon an errand of mercy or justice. We are told that
|
||
now, when the Federal Government wishes to protect a citizen, a
|
||
State line rises like a Chinese wall, and the sword of Federal
|
||
power turns to air the moment it touches one of those lines. I deny
|
||
it and I despise, abhor and execrate the doctrine of State
|
||
Sovereignty. The Democrats tell us if we wish to be protected by
|
||
the Federal Government we must leave home. I wish they would try it
|
||
for about ten days. They say the Federal Government can defend a
|
||
citizen in England, France, Spain or Germany, but cannot defend a
|
||
child of the Republic sitting around the family hearth. I deny it.
|
||
A Government that cannot protect its citizens at home is unfit to
|
||
be called a Government. I want a Government with an ear so good
|
||
that it can hear the faintest cry of the oppressed wherever its
|
||
flag floats. I want a Government with an arm long enough and a
|
||
sword sharp enough to cut down treason wherever it may raise its
|
||
serpent head I want a Government that will protect a freedman,
|
||
standing by his little log hut, with the same alacrity and with the
|
||
same efficiency that it would protect Vanderbilt, living in a
|
||
palace of marble and gold. Humanity is a sacred thing, and manhood
|
||
is a thing to be preserved. Let us look at it. For instance, here
|
||
is a war, and the Federal Government says to a man, "We want you,"
|
||
and he says, "No, I don't want to go," and then they put a lot of
|
||
pieces of paper in a wheel and on one of those pieces is his name,
|
||
and another man turns the crank, and then they pull it out and
|
||
there is his name, and they say, "Come," and so he goes. And they
|
||
stand him in front of the brazen-throated guns; they make him fight
|
||
for his native land, and when the war is over he goes home and he
|
||
finds the war has been unpopular in his neighborhood, and they
|
||
trample on his rights, and he says to the Federal Government,
|
||
"Protect me." And he says to the Government, "I owe my allegiance
|
||
to you. You must protect me." What will you say of that Government
|
||
if it says to him, "You must look to your State for protection"?
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
13
|
||
|
||
BROOKLYN SPEECH.
|
||
|
||
Ah, but," he says, "my State is the very power trampling upon me,"
|
||
and, of course, the robber is not going to send for the police. It
|
||
is the duty of the Government to defend even its drafted men; and
|
||
it that is the duty of the Government, what shall I say of the
|
||
volunteer, who for one moment holds his wife in a tremulous and
|
||
agonized embrace, kisses his children, shoulders his musket, goes
|
||
to the field and says, "Here I am, ready to die for my native
|
||
land"? A Nation that will not defend its volunteer defenders is a
|
||
disgrace to the map of this world. This is a Nation. Free speech is
|
||
the brain of the Republic; an honest ballot is the breath of its
|
||
life; honest money is the blood of its veins; and the idea of
|
||
nationality is its great, beating, throbbing heart. I am for a
|
||
Nation. And yet the Democrats tell me that it is dangerous to have
|
||
centralized power. How would you have it? I believe in the
|
||
localization of power; I believe in having enough of it localized
|
||
in one place to be effectively used; I believe in a local-nation of
|
||
brain. I suppose Democrats would like to have it spread all over
|
||
your body, and they act as though theirs was.
|
||
|
||
There is another thing in which I believe: I believe in the
|
||
protection of American labor. The hand that holds Aladdin's lamp
|
||
must be the hand of toil. This Nation rests upon the shoulders of
|
||
its workers, and I want the American laboring, man to have enough
|
||
to wear; I want him to have enough to eat: I want him to have
|
||
something for the ordinary misfortunes of life; I want him to have
|
||
the pleasure of seeing his wife well-dressed; I want him to see a
|
||
few blue ribbons fluttering about his children; I want him to see
|
||
the flags of health flying in their beautiful cheeks; I want him to
|
||
feel that this is his country, and the shield of protection is
|
||
above his labor.
|
||
|
||
And I will tell you why I am for protection, too. If we were
|
||
all farmers we would be stupid. If we were all shoemakers we would
|
||
be stupid. If we all followed one business, no matter what it was,
|
||
we would become stupid. Protection to American labor diversifies
|
||
American industry, and to have it diversified touches and develops
|
||
every part of the human brain. Protection protects ingenuity; it
|
||
protects intelligence; and protection raises sense; and by
|
||
protection we have greater men, better looking women and healthier
|
||
children. Free trade means that our laborer is upon an equality
|
||
with the poorest paid labor of this world. And allow me to tell you
|
||
that for an empty stomach, "Hurrah for Hancock!" is a poor
|
||
consolation. I do not think much of a Government where the people
|
||
do not have enough to eat. I am a materialist to that extent; I
|
||
want something to eat. I have been in countries where the laboring
|
||
man had meat once a year; sometimes twice -- Christmas and Easter,
|
||
And I have seen women carrying upon their heads a burden that no
|
||
man in this audience could carry, and at the same time knitting
|
||
busily with both hands, and those women lived without meat; and
|
||
when I thought of the American laborer, I said to myself, "After
|
||
all, my country is the best in the world." And when I came back to
|
||
the sea and saw the old flag flying, it seemed to me as though the
|
||
air from pure joy had burst into blossom.
|
||
|
||
Labor has more to eat and more to wear in the United States
|
||
than in any other land of this earth. I want America to produce
|
||
everything that Americans need. I want it so that if the whole
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
14
|
||
|
||
BROOKLYN SPEECH.
|
||
|
||
world should declare war against us, if we were surrounded by walls
|
||
of cannon and bayonets and swords, we could supply all our material
|
||
wants in and of ourselves. I want to live to see the American woman
|
||
dressed in American silk; the American man in everything, from hat
|
||
to boots, produced in America by the cunning hand of American toil.
|
||
I want to see the workingman have a good house, painted white,
|
||
grass in the front yard, carpets on the floor, pictures on the
|
||
wall. I want to see him a man, feeling that he is a king by the
|
||
divine right of living in the Republic. And every man here is just
|
||
a little bit a king, you know. Every man here is a part of the
|
||
sovereign power. Every man wears a little of purple; every man has
|
||
a little of crown and a little of scepter; and every man that will
|
||
sell his vote for money or be ruled by prejudice is unfit to be an
|
||
American citizen.
|
||
|
||
I believe in American labor, and I will tell you why. The
|
||
other day a man told me that we had produced in the United States
|
||
of America one million tons of steel rails. How much are they
|
||
worth? Sixty dollars a ton. In other words, the million tons are
|
||
worth sixty million dollars. How much is a ton of iron worth in the
|
||
ground? Twenty-five cents. American labor takes twenty-five cents
|
||
worth of iron in the ground and adds to it fifty-nine dollars and
|
||
seventy-five cents. One million tons of rails, and the raw material
|
||
not worth twenty-four thousand dollars! We build a ship in the
|
||
United States worth five hundred thousand dollars, and the value of
|
||
the ore in the earth, of the trees in the great forest, of all that
|
||
enters into the composition of that ship bringing five hundred
|
||
thousand dollars in gold is only twenty thousand dollars; four
|
||
hundred and eighty thousand dollars by American labor, American
|
||
muscle, coined into gold; American brains made a legal tender the
|
||
world round.
|
||
|
||
I propose to stand by the Nation. I want the furnaces kept
|
||
hot. I want the sky to be filled with the smoke of American
|
||
industry, and upon that cloud of smoke will rest forever the bow of
|
||
perpetual promise. That is what I am for. Where did this doctrine
|
||
of a tariff for revenue only come from? From the South. The South
|
||
would like to stab the prosperity of the North. They would rather
|
||
trade with Old England than with New England. They would rather
|
||
trade with the people who were willing to help them in war than
|
||
with those who conquered the Rebellion. They knew what gave us our
|
||
strength in war. They knew that all the brooks and creeks and
|
||
rivers of New England were putting down the Rebellion. They knew
|
||
that every wheel that turned, every spindle that revolved, was a
|
||
soldier in the army of human progress. It won't do! They were so
|
||
lured by the greed of office that they were willing to trade upon
|
||
the misfortunes of a Nation. It won't do! I do not wish to belong
|
||
to a party that succeeds only when my country fails. I do not wish
|
||
to belong to a party whose banner went up with the banner of
|
||
rebellion. I do not wish to belong to a party that was in
|
||
partnership with defeat and -- disaster. I do not. And there is not
|
||
a Democrat here who does not know that a failure of the crops this
|
||
year would have helped his party. You know that an early frost
|
||
would have been a godsend to them. You know that the potato-bug
|
||
could have done them more good than all their speakers.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
15
|
||
|
||
BROOKLYN SPEECH.
|
||
|
||
I wish to belong to that party which is prosperous when the
|
||
country is prosperous. I belong to that party which is not poor
|
||
when the golden billows are running over the seas of wheat. I
|
||
belong to that party which is prosperous when there are oceans of
|
||
corn, and when the cattle are upon the thousand hills. I belong to
|
||
that party which is prosperous when the furnaces are aflame, and
|
||
when you dig coal and iron and silver; when everybody has enough to
|
||
eat; when everybody is happy; when the children are all going to
|
||
school, and when joy covers my Nation as with a garment. That party
|
||
which is prosperous then, is my party.
|
||
|
||
Now, then, I have been telling you what I am for. I am for
|
||
free speech, and so ought you to be. I am for an honest ballot, and
|
||
if you are not you ought to be. I am for the collection of the
|
||
revenue. I am for honest money. I am for the idea that this is a
|
||
Nation forever. I believe in protecting American labor. I want the
|
||
shield of my country above every anvil, above every furnace, above
|
||
every cunning head and above every deft hand of American labor.
|
||
|
||
Now, then, which section of this country will be the more apt
|
||
to carry these ideas into execution? Which party will be the more
|
||
apt to achieve these grand and splendid things? Honor bright? Now
|
||
we have not only to choose between sections of the country; we have
|
||
to choose between parties. Here is the Democratic party, and I
|
||
admit there are thousands of good Democrats who went to the war,
|
||
and some of those that stayed at home were good men; and I want to
|
||
ask you, and I want you to tell me in reply what that party did
|
||
during the war when the War Democrats were away from home. What did
|
||
they do? That is the question. I say to you, that every man who
|
||
tried to tear our flag out of heaven was a Democrat. The men who
|
||
wrote the ordinances of secession, who fired upon Fort Sumter; the
|
||
men who starved our soldiers, who fed them with the crumbs that the
|
||
worms had devoured before, they were Democrats. The keepers of
|
||
Libby, the keepers of Andersonville, were Democrats -- Libby and
|
||
Andersonville, the two mighty wings that will bear the memory of
|
||
the Confederacy to eternal infamy! The men who wished to scatter
|
||
yellow fever in the North and who tried to fire the great cities of
|
||
the North -- they were all Democrats. He who said that the
|
||
greenback would never be paid and he who slandered sixty cents out
|
||
of every dollar of the Nation's promises were Democrats. Who were
|
||
joyful when your brothers and your sons and your fathers lay dead
|
||
on a field of battle that the country had lost? They were
|
||
Democrats. The men who wept when the old banner floated in triumph
|
||
above the ramparts of rebellion -- they were Democrats. You know
|
||
it. The men who wept when slavery was destroyed, who believed
|
||
slavery to be a divine institution, who regarded bloodhounds as
|
||
apostles and missionaries, and who wept at the funeral of that
|
||
infernal institution -- they were Democrats. Bad company -- bad
|
||
company!
|
||
|
||
And let me implore all the young men here not to join that
|
||
party. Do not give new blood to that institution. The Democratic
|
||
party has a yellow passport. On one side it says "dangerous." They
|
||
imagine they have not changed, and that is because they have not
|
||
intellectual growth. That party was once the enemy of my country,
|
||
was once the enemy of our flag, and more than that, it was once the
|
||
enemy of human liberty, and that party to-night is not willing that
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
16
|
||
|
||
BROOKLYN SPEECH.
|
||
|
||
the citizens of the Republic should exercise all their rights
|
||
irrespective of their color And allow me to say right here that I
|
||
am opposed to that party.
|
||
|
||
We have not only to choose between parties, but to choose
|
||
between candidates. The Democracy have put forward as the bearers
|
||
of their standard General Hancock and William H. English. The
|
||
Democrats have at last nominated a Union soldier. They nominated
|
||
George B. McClellan once, because he failed to whip the South; they
|
||
nominated Mr. Greeley, when they despised him, and now they have
|
||
nominated General Hancock. Do they think the South loves him? At
|
||
Gettysburg they say he fought against them, and that is one great
|
||
reason why he should be President -- that he shot rebels. Do the
|
||
men that fought at Gettysburg still believe in State Sovereignty?
|
||
Wade Hampton says, "We must vote as Lee and Jackson fought." They
|
||
fought for State Sovereignty. Has the South changed? Hancock went
|
||
to kill them then; they want to vote for him now. Who has changed?
|
||
[A voice: "Hancock."] I think so. They are using him as a figure-
|
||
head. They have dressed him in the noble blue, with the patriotic
|
||
coat and Union buttons, and they do not like him any better than
|
||
they did at Gettysburg. It would be just as consistent for the
|
||
Republicans to have nominated Wade Hampton. Did General Hancock
|
||
believe in State Sovereignty when he was at Gettysburg? If he did,
|
||
he was a murderer, and not a Union soldier -- he was killing men he
|
||
believed to be in the right, and a man cannot fight unless his
|
||
conscience approves of what his sword does, and if he was honest at
|
||
that time, he did not believe in State Sovereignty, and it seems to
|
||
me he would hate to have the men who tried to destroy this
|
||
Government cheering him. All the glory he ever got was in the
|
||
service of the Republican party, and if he does not look out he
|
||
will lose it all in the service of the Democratic party. He had a
|
||
conversation with General Grant. It was a time when he had been
|
||
appointed at the head of the Department of the Gulf. In that
|
||
conversation he stated to General Grant that he was opposed to
|
||
"nigger domination." Grant said to him, "We must obey the laws of
|
||
Congress. We are soldiers." And that meant, the military is not
|
||
above the civil authority. And I tell you to-night, that the army
|
||
and the navy are the right and left hands of the civil power. Grant
|
||
said to him: "Three or four million ex-slaves, without property and
|
||
without education, cannot dominate over thirty or forty millions of
|
||
white people, with education and property." General Hancock replied
|
||
to that: "I am opposed to nigger domination."' Allow me to say that
|
||
I do not believe any man fit for the presidency of the great
|
||
Republic, who is capable of insulting a down-trodden race. I never
|
||
meet a negro that I do not feel like asking his forgiveness for the
|
||
wrongs that my race has inflicted on his. I remember that from the
|
||
white man he received for two hundred years agony and tears; I
|
||
remember that my race sold a child from the agonized breast of a
|
||
mother; I remember that my race trampled with the feet of greed
|
||
upon all the holy relations of life; and I do not feel like
|
||
insulting the colored man; I feel rather like asking the
|
||
forgiveness of his race for the crimes that my race have put upon
|
||
him. "Nigger domination!" What a fine scabbard that makes for the
|
||
sword of Gettysburg! It won't do!
|
||
|
||
What is General Hancock for, besides the presidency? How does
|
||
he stand upon the great questions affecting American prosperity? He
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
17
|
||
|
||
BROOKLYN SPEECH.
|
||
|
||
told us the other day that the tariff is a local question. The
|
||
tariff affects every man and woman, live they in hut, hovel or
|
||
palace; it affects every man that has a back to be covered or a
|
||
stomach to be filled, and yet he says it is a local question. So is
|
||
death. He also told us that he heard that question discussed once,
|
||
in Pennsylvania. He must have been eavesdropping. And he tells us
|
||
that his doctrine of the tariff will continue as long as Nature
|
||
lasts. Then Senator Randolph wrote him a letter. I do not know
|
||
whether Senator Randolph answered it or not; but that answer was
|
||
worse than the first interview; and I understand now that another
|
||
letter is going through a period of incubation at Governor's
|
||
Island, upon the great subject of the tariff. It won't do!
|
||
|
||
They say one thing they are sure of, he is opposed to paying
|
||
Southern pensions and Southern claims. He says that a man that
|
||
fought against this Government has no right to a pension. Good! I
|
||
say a man that fought against this Government has no right to
|
||
office. If a man cannot earn a pension by tearing our flat, out of
|
||
the sky, he cannot earn power. [A Voice -- "How about Longstreet?"]
|
||
Longstreet has repented of what he did. Longstreet admits that he
|
||
was wrong. And there was no braver officer in the Southern
|
||
Confederacy. Every man of the South who will say, "I made a
|
||
mistake" -- I do not want him to say that he knew he was wrong --
|
||
all I ask him to say is that he now thinks he was wrong; and every
|
||
man of the South to-day who says he was wrong, and who says from
|
||
this day forward, henceforth and forever, he is for this being a
|
||
Nation, I will take him by the hand. But while he is attempting to
|
||
do at the ballot-box what he failed to accomplish upon the field of
|
||
battle, I am against him -- while he uses a Northern general to
|
||
bait a Southern trap, I won't bite. I will forgive men when they
|
||
deserve to be forgiven; but while they insist that they were right,
|
||
while they insist that State Sovereignty is the proper doctrine, I
|
||
am opposed to their climbing into power.
|
||
|
||
Hancock says that he will not pay these claims he agrees to
|
||
veto a bill that his party may pass; he agrees in advance that he
|
||
will defeat a party that he expects will elect him; he, in effect,
|
||
says to the people, "You can not trust that party, but you can
|
||
trust me." He says, "Look at them; I admit they are a hungry lot;
|
||
I admit that they haven't had a bite in twenty years; I admit that
|
||
an ordinary famine is satiety compared to the hunger they feel. But
|
||
between that vast appetite known as the Democratic party, and the
|
||
public treasury, I will throw the shield of my veto." No man has a
|
||
right to say in advance what he will veto, any more than a judge
|
||
has a right to say in advance how he will decide a case. The veto
|
||
power is a distinction with which the Constitution has clothed the
|
||
Executive, and no President has a right to say that he will veto
|
||
until he has heard both sides of the question. But he agrees in
|
||
advance.
|
||
|
||
I would rather trust a party than a man. Death may veto
|
||
Hancock, and Death has not been a successful politician in the
|
||
United States. Tyler, Fillmore, Andy Johnson -- I do not wish Death
|
||
to elect any more Presidents; and if he does, and if Hancock is
|
||
elected, William H. English becomes President of the United States.
|
||
No, no, no! All I need to say about him is simply to pronounce his
|
||
name; that is all. You do not want him. Whether the many stories
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
18
|
||
|
||
BROOKLYN SPEECH.
|
||
|
||
that have been told about him are true or not I do not know, and I
|
||
will not give currency to a solitary word against the reputation of
|
||
an American citizen unless I know it to be true. What I have
|
||
against him is what he has done in public life. When Charles
|
||
Sumner, that great and splendid publicist -- Charles Sumner, the
|
||
philanthropist, one who spoke to the conscience of his time and to
|
||
the history of the future -- when he stood up in the United States
|
||
Senate and made a great and glorious plea for human liberty, there
|
||
crept into the Senate a villain and struck him down as though he
|
||
had been a wild beast. That man was a member of Congress, and when
|
||
a resolution was introduced in the House, to expel that man,
|
||
William H. English voted, "No." All the stories in the world could
|
||
not add to the infamy of that public act. That is enough for me,
|
||
and whatever his private life may be, let it be that of an angel,
|
||
never, never, never would I vote for a man that would defend the
|
||
assassin of free speech. General Hancock, they tell me, is a
|
||
statesman; that what little time he has had to spare from war he
|
||
has given to the tariff, and what little time he could spare from
|
||
the tariff he has given to the Constitution of his country; showing
|
||
under what circumstances a Major-General can put at defiance the
|
||
Congress of the United States. It won't do!
|
||
|
||
But while I am upon that subject it may be well for me to
|
||
state that he never will be President of the United States. Now, I
|
||
say that a man who in time of peace prefers peace, and prefers the
|
||
avocations of peace; a man who in the time of peace would rather
|
||
look at the corn in the air of June, rather listen to the hum of
|
||
bees, rather sit by his door with his wife and children; the man
|
||
who in time of peace loves peace, and yet when the blast of war
|
||
blows in his ears, shoulders a musket and goes to the field of war
|
||
to defend his country, and when the war is over goes home and again
|
||
pursues the avocations of peace -- that man is just as good, to say
|
||
the least of it, as a man who in a time of profound peace makes up
|
||
his mind that he would like to make his living killing other folks.
|
||
To say the least of it, he is as good.
|
||
|
||
The Republicans have named as their standard bearers James A.
|
||
Garfield and Chester A. Arthur. James A. Garfield was a volunteer
|
||
soldier, and he took away from the field of Chickamauga as much
|
||
glory as any one man could carry. He is not only a soldier -- he is
|
||
a statesman. He has studied and discussed all the great questions
|
||
that affect the prosperity and well-being of the American people.
|
||
His opinions are well known, and I say to you to-night that there
|
||
is not in this Nation, there is not in this Republic a man with
|
||
greater brain and greater heart than James A. Garfield. I know him
|
||
and I like him. I know him as well as any other public man, and I
|
||
like him. The Democratic party say that he is not honest. I have
|
||
been reading some Democratic papers to-day, and you would say that
|
||
every one of their editors had a private sewer of his own into
|
||
which has been emptied for a hundred years the slops of hell. They
|
||
tell me that James A. Garfield is not honest. Are you a Democrat?
|
||
Your party tried to steal nearly half of this country. Your party
|
||
stole the armament of a nation. Your party was willing to live upon
|
||
the unpaid labor of four millions of people. You have no right to
|
||
the floor for the purpose of making a motion of honesty. James A.
|
||
Garfield has been at the head of the most important committees of
|
||
Congress; he is a member of the most important one of the whole
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
19
|
||
|
||
BROOKLYN SPEECH.
|
||
|
||
House. He has no peer in the Congress of the United States. And you
|
||
know it. He is the leader of the House. With one wave of his hand
|
||
he can take millions from the pocket of one industry and put it
|
||
into the pocket of another; with a motion of his hand he could have
|
||
made himself a man of wealth, but he is to-night a poor man. I know
|
||
him and I like him. He is as genial as May and he is as generous as
|
||
Autumn. And the men for whom he has done unnumbered favors, the men
|
||
whom he had pity enough not to destroy with an argument, the men
|
||
who, with his great generosity, he has allowed, intellectually, to
|
||
live, are now throwing filth at the reputation of that great and
|
||
splendid man.
|
||
|
||
Several ladies and gentlemen were passing a muddy place around
|
||
which were gathered ragged and wretched urchins. And these little
|
||
wretches began to throw mud at them; and one gentleman said, "If
|
||
you don't stop I will throw it back at you." And a little fellow
|
||
said, "You can't do it without dirtying your hands, and it doesn't
|
||
hurt us anyway."
|
||
|
||
I never was more profoundly happy than on the night of that
|
||
12th day of October when I found that between an honest and a
|
||
kingly man and his malingers, two great States had thrown their
|
||
shining shields. When Ohio said, "Garfield is my greatest son, and
|
||
there never has been raised in the cabins of Ohio a grander man" --
|
||
and when Indiana held up her hands and said, "Allow me to indorse
|
||
that verdict" I was profoundly happy, because that said to me,
|
||
"Garfield will carry every Northern State;" that said to me, "The
|
||
Solid South will be confronted by a great and splendid North."
|
||
|
||
I know Garfield -- I like him. Some people have said, "How is
|
||
it that you support Garfield, when he was a minister?"! How is it
|
||
that you support Garfield when he is a Christian?" I will tell you.
|
||
There are two reasons. The first is I am not a bigot; and secondly,
|
||
James A. Garfield is not a bigot. He believes in giving to every
|
||
other human being every right he claims for himself. He believes in
|
||
freedom of speech and freedom of thought; untrammeled conscience
|
||
and upright manhood. He believes in an absolute divorce between
|
||
church and state. He believes that every religion should rest upon
|
||
its morality, upon its reason, upon its persuasion, upon its
|
||
goodness, upon its charity, and that love should never appeal to
|
||
the sword of civil power. He disagrees with me in many things; but
|
||
in the one thing, that the air is free for all, we do agree. I want
|
||
to do equal and exact justice everywhere.
|
||
|
||
I want the world of thought to be without a chain, without a
|
||
wall, and I wish to say to you, [turning toward Mr. Beecher and
|
||
directly addressing him] that I thank you for what you have said
|
||
to-night, and to congratulate the people of this city and country
|
||
that you have intellectual horizon enough, intellectual sky enough
|
||
to take the hand of a man, howsoever much he may disagree in some
|
||
things with you, on the grand platform and broad principle of
|
||
citizenship. James A. Garfield, believing with me as he does,
|
||
disagreeing with me as he does, is perfectly satisfactory to me. I
|
||
know him, and I like him.
|
||
|
||
Men are to-day blackening his reputation, who are not fit to
|
||
blacken his shoes. He is a man of brain. Since his nomination he
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
20
|
||
|
||
BROOKLYN SPEECH.
|
||
|
||
must have made forty or fifty speeches, and every one has been full
|
||
of manhood and genius. He has not said a word that has not
|
||
strengthened him with the American people. He is the first
|
||
candidate who has been free to express himself and who has never
|
||
made a mistake. I will tell you why he does not make a mistake;
|
||
because he spoke from the inside out. Because he was guided by the
|
||
glittering Northern Star of principle. Lie after lie has been told
|
||
about him. Slander after slander has been hatched and put in the
|
||
air, with its little short wings, to fly its day, and the last lie
|
||
is a forgery.
|
||
|
||
I saw to-day the fac-simile of a letter that they pretend he
|
||
wrote upon the Chinese question. I know his writing; I know his
|
||
signature; I am well acquainted with his writing. I know
|
||
handwriting, and I tell you to-night, that letter and that
|
||
signature are forgeries. A forgery for the benefit of the Pacific
|
||
States; a forgery for the purpose of convincing the American
|
||
workingman that Garfield is without heart. I tell you, my fellow-
|
||
citizens, that cannot take from him a vote. But Ohio pierced their
|
||
center and Indiana rolled up both flanks and the rebel line cannot
|
||
re-form with a forgery for a standard. They are gone!
|
||
|
||
Now, some people say to me, "How long are you going to preach
|
||
the doctrine of hate?" I never did preach it. In many States of
|
||
this Union it is a crime to be a Republican. I am going to preach
|
||
my doctrine until every American citizen is permitted to express
|
||
his opinion and vote as he may desire in every State of this Union.
|
||
I am going to preach my doctrine until this is a civilized country.
|
||
That is all. I will treat the gentlemen of the South precisely as
|
||
we do the gentlemen of the North. I want to treat every section of
|
||
the country precisely as we do ours. I want to improve their rivers
|
||
and their harbors; I want to fill their land with commerce; I want
|
||
them to prosper; I want them to build schoolhouses; I want them to
|
||
open the lands to immigration to all people who desire to settle
|
||
upon their soil. I want to be friends with them; I want to let the
|
||
past be buried forever; I want to let bygones be bygones, but only
|
||
upon the basis that we are now in favor of absolute liberty and
|
||
eternal justice. I am not willing to bury nationality or free
|
||
speech in the grave for the purpose of being friends. Let us stand
|
||
by our colors; let the old Republican party that has made this a
|
||
Nation -- the old Republican party that has saved the financial
|
||
honor of this country -- let that party stand by its colors.
|
||
|
||
Let that party say, "Free speech forever!" Let that party say,
|
||
"An honest ballot forever!" Let that party say, "Honest money
|
||
forever! the Nation and the flag forever! "And let that party stand
|
||
by the great men carrying her banner, James A. Garfield and Chester
|
||
A. Arthur. I would rather trust a party than a man. If General
|
||
Garfield dies, the Republican party lives; if General Garfield
|
||
dies, General Arthur will take his place -- a brave, honest, and
|
||
intelligent gentleman, upon whom every Republican can rely. And if
|
||
he dies, the Republican party lives, and as long as the Republican
|
||
party does not die, the great Republic will live. As long as the
|
||
Republican party lives, this will be the asylum of the world. Let
|
||
me tell you, Mr. Irishman, this is the only country on the earth
|
||
where Irishmen have had enough to eat. Let me tell you, Mr. German,
|
||
that you have more liberty here than you had in the Fatherland. Let
|
||
me tell you, all men, that this is the land of humanity.
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
21
|
||
|
||
BROOKLYN SPEECH.
|
||
|
||
Oh! I love the old Republic, bounded by the seas, walled by
|
||
the wide air, domed by heaven's blue, and lit with the eternal
|
||
stars. I love the Republic; I love it because I love liberty,
|
||
Liberty is my religion, and at its altar I worship, and will
|
||
worship.
|
||
|
||
|
||
END
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
THE CENSUS ENUMERATOR'S OFFICIAL
|
||
|
||
CATECHISM.
|
||
|
||
I SUPPOSE the Government has a right to ask all of these
|
||
questions, and any more it pleases, but undoubtedly the citizen
|
||
would have the right to refuse to answer them. Originally the
|
||
census was taken simply for the purpose of ascertaining the number
|
||
of people -- first, as a basis of representation; second, as a
|
||
basis of capitation tax; third, as a basis to arrive at the number
|
||
of troops that might be called from each State; and it may be for
|
||
some other purposes, but I imagine that all are embraced in the
|
||
foregoing.
|
||
|
||
The Government has no right to invade the privacy of the
|
||
citizen; no right to inquire into his financial condition, as
|
||
thereby his credit might be injured; no right to pry into his
|
||
affairs, into his diseases, or his deformities; and, while the
|
||
Government may have the right to ask these questions, I think it
|
||
was foolish to instruct the enumerators to ask them, and that the
|
||
citizens have a perfect right to refuse to answer them. Personally,
|
||
I have no objection to answering any of these questions, for the
|
||
reason that nothing is the matter with me that money will not cure.
|
||
|
||
I know that it is thought advisable by many to find out the
|
||
amount of mortgages in the United States, the rate of interest that
|
||
is being paid, the general indebtedness of individuals, counties,
|
||
cities and States, and I see no impropriety in finding this out in
|
||
any reasonable way. But I think it improper to insist on the debtor
|
||
exposing his financial condition. My opinion is that Mr. Porter
|
||
only wants what is perfectly reasonable, and if left to himself,
|
||
would ask only those questions that all people would willingly
|
||
answer.
|
||
|
||
I presume we can depend on medical statistics -- on the
|
||
reports of hospitals, etc., in regard to diseases and deformities,
|
||
without interfering with the patients. As to the financial standing
|
||
of people, there are already enough of spies in this country
|
||
attending to that business. I don't think there is any danger of
|
||
the courts compelling a man to answer these questions. Suppose a
|
||
man refuses to tell whether he has a chronic disease or not, and he
|
||
is brought up before a United States Court for contempt. In my
|
||
opinion the judge would decide that the man could not be compelled
|
||
to answer. It is bad enough to have a chronic disease without
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
22
|
||
|
||
THE CENSUS ENUMERATOR'S OFFICIAL
|
||
|
||
publishing it to the world. All intelligent people, of course, will
|
||
be desirous of giving all useful information of a character that
|
||
cannot be used to their injury, but can be used for the benefit of
|
||
society at large.
|
||
|
||
If, however, the courts shall decide that the enumerators have
|
||
the right to ask these questions, and that everybody must answer
|
||
them, I doubt if the census will be finished for many years, There
|
||
are hundreds and thousands of people who delight in telling all
|
||
about their diseases, when they were attacked, what they have
|
||
taken, how many doctors have given them up to die, etc., and if the
|
||
enumerators will stop to listen, the census of 1890 will not be
|
||
published until the next century. --
|
||
|
||
The World, Now York, June 1890.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Reproducible 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
|
||
23
|
||
|