671 P62 1879 MAIN SPEECH SPEECH HON. EDWARDS PIERREPONT, DELIVERED BEPOBK The Eepublican Mass Meeting, at the Hall of Cooper Institute, NEW YORK, October 15th, 1879. L. W. LAWRENCE , 89 Liberty Street. LOAN STACK HON. EDWARDS PIERREPONT. Fellow Citizens : I propose, to night, to take a brief survey of the situation, to see what are the perils of the hoar, by what stealthy steps they have approached, and how they may be averted. The causes which lead to convulsions in Nations, however slow in development, are more uniform than is generally supposed. The Presidential contest opens with this canvass ; and when the vote of New York is counted on the 4th of November, we can pretty surely know whether a Republican or a Confederate will be the next President of the United States. Momentous issues hang on this result, perhaps the issues of peace or war ! To judge wisely of the future we must know the past ; and with our intense and busy people the past is soon forgotten. Read the future in the record of the past. Remember, that the love of power, of riches, of dominion ; human passions, and human nature are enduring forces, upon which we can depend. What has been, may be again. Thomas Hart Benton was born in a Slave State , He was for thirty years a Senator of the United States from another Slave State ; he, like all the able men of the Democratic party in the days of its purity, was earnest in favor of hard money. He was called " Old Bullion." In the winter of 1857-8, I met in the City of Washington, the Hon. Benjamin F. Butler, an eminent citizen of New York, once a member of President Yan Buren s Cabinet, a true patriot and a charming man. He proposed to take me to see his friend Benton, then an old man, that I might listen to his forecast of our 97 political future. I met the venerable Senator by appointment the next morning. He immediately launched into politics. As I wrote to a class-mate and friend on the same day the substance of his conversation, I am able to reproduce it. " The South, sir," said he, u means to break up the Union : it has been the plan of their leading men for years. For a long time I was in their confidence, and I know their purpose : they do not confide in me now ; they know, sir, that I denounce their treason. No mat ter what you of the North concede, the more you yield the more they will exact ; they are determined to have a separate government in which laborers shall be slaves, where an oligarchy may rule and a middle class form an army. They know that the increasing population of the free States will so outnumber them before long that their rule over the Union must cease. They will dissolve the Union, sir, and you will live to see it. 1 shall not. Nothing will satisfy them which the free States can do. Concessions will make no difference." Mr. Benton died in the following April. His prophecies, though true, like those of Cassandra, were disbelieved at the time. On the 18th of May, 1860, Mr. Lincoln was nominated for President by the Republican Party. The South saw their opportunity. They broke up their Democratic Convention at Charleston, divided the Party into factions, had two candidates in the field, and thus, purposely aided in the election of Lincoln, whose success, by Northern votes alone, they desired, in order to make the South solid for Secession. They thought that Lincoln was ignorant and vulgar, without prestige or power ; and that his election by the North would unite the South in the formation of a new government^ " whose corner stone," as their Yice-President said in a public speech, was " The stone of slavery 1" For fifty years before the war the slaveholders had ruled the Union. Neither their wealth nor their intelligence, nor their numbers entitled them to this rule. In Congress, their strongest arguments were the pistol, the Bowie knife and the bludgeon, aided by frequent threats that they would dissolve the Union. They knew that the North hated duelling, violence and blood : they thought that no out rage would provoke the North to tight. But their wiser men saw that there was a deep religious sentiment at the North hos tile to slavery : they called this " Fanaticism" They saw that it was increasing, that it was earnest, and that scoffs and persecutions only multiplied its votaries. They saw also, that Northern thrift, intelligence and skill were increasing the riches and the population of the Free States, and that the day was near, when the ideas engendered by freedom and education would uproot their accursed system of human bondage. They saw that the oligarchy was doomed, and that their barbarous in stitution itself must fall, unless they could establish the doc trine of the supremecy of the States, that slavery was the nor mal condition of all in whom, there was negro blood, and that it should be extended over newly acquired territory upon which no slave had ever trod ! So soon as Southern leaders perceived that the Northern con science would revolt at such monstrous propositions, they set about the destruction of the Union, and planned the formation of a Confederate Government. No concessions, no Union-saving conventions, no sermons from whey-faced preachers of the North, " Clothing their naked villany with old odd ends, stol n forth of Holy Writ " could satisfy the South ; they made war ; and on the 12th of April, 1861, they commenced the bombardment of Ft. Sumpter ! You know the rest ! W e pass over the horrors of that war ; four years of carnage, and of bloody death ! Five thousand mil lion of treasure was wasted. Five hundred thousand American citizens were hastened to their graves ! Who broke up this peaceful, happy, benign government and draped the land in mourning ? Not the North, surely. Well ; Lee surrendered at Appomattox in April, 1865 ; the rebel armies were dispersed; Jefferson Davis was a fugitive, and then a prisoner about to be tried for his life, and President Lincoln was murdered. The nation had had enough of war, and all re-echoed the phrase, " Let us have peace" The South was vanquished, prostrate, and exhausted ; ready to accept any terms which the victorious North might impose. Suppose that some prophetic Benton, had then said to the North, " On the 4th of March 1879, these whom you now call " prostrate rebels" will dominate both houses of Congress in your Capitol at Washington ; The Eleven Confederate States will have on that day, in the Senate and House, ninety three Representatives ! Of these, eighty five will be of those who were soldiers in the rebel armies, and three more who held high office in the rebel States. On that day, twenty Rebels will sit in your Senate, who fought to destroy the Union ; with three more who held high office in the Confederacy : In the House, Sixty-Five Confederate Soldiers will proudly take their places to legislate for their conquerors, and block the wheels of government by withholding supplies, unless at their bidding, the wholesome laws are repealed which loyal men passed to pre serve the purity of Elections ! Would you not have laughed to scorn, such a prophet? Would you not have read to him the XIV amendment to the Constitution, showing how impossible was the fulfillment of such prophecy? Would you not also have shown the madness of the prediction by reading the XV amendment in these words : AMENDMENT XV. 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State, on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude. 2. The Congress shall have power to " enforce this article by appropriate legislation. 5 And if lie had answered you, that terror, torture, the shot-gun and the halter would drive every loyal voter from the polls, in the entire Confederacy, and that the disabilities imposed by the third division of the XIV amandment would all be removed, would you not have thought such prophecies the ravings of a lunatic ? ! And yet the number of Confederates which I have named, rule both houses of Congress to-day ; and of the two hundred thousand colored soldiers who, in the crisis of our fate, and at the Presidents call, bravely fought to save the Nation, none dare vote in all the Confederacy ! The Yice President of the Rebels is in the House, Wade Hampton is in the Senate, and Jeff. Davis is likely to be there soon ! Both legislative branches of the government are ruled by the Confederates, and they boast that next year they will have the Executive also. This is no idle boast. It seems idle, to those who contemplate only the superior intelligence, wealth, and the vastly preponderating numbers of the North, and who do not understand how a President is elected. I dare say that some of you fancy that you have voted directly for a particular man to be President of the United States. You have done nothing of the kind. You have only voted for Electors to choose a President for you. The framers of our Constitution did not think that the people could be trusted to express their direct will, and they contrived that the people might select a few men called " Electors" to choose a President for them. The system is most vicious. Under it Presidents have been, and will be chosen in opposition to the direct vote of the people. Let me show you how it works. You vote once in four years for Presidential Electors. Each State has just as many Electors as it has Senators and Representatives together. Each State prescribes its own mode of choosing its Electors. In this State you vote for thirty-five Presidential Electors, and every other State chooses Electors in the same proportion. These electors meet in what is called " Electoral College/ and choose the President. They may choose a man whom not a voter ever thought of, and he would be the President. In the practice of later years the electors have chosen the one whom their party nominated in convention, but that is not necessary, and in an emergency it may not be done. But a covert and grosser fraud upon the people grows out of the system in another way. Take the State of New York, which is called a " doubtful 8 State ; fj and Wisconsin, Maine, Massachusetts and Vermont which are considered Republican States. A fair estimate of the vote for next year is, 1,100,000 for New York, and for Wisconsin, Maine, Massachusetts and Yermont together, 800,000. New York has the same electoral vote and counts exactly the same in electoral college as the four States last named. Now, if New York goes Democratic by 1,000 majority, she leaves 549,000 votes of the State unrepresented in choosing a Presi dent ; and if in the four Republican States mentioned, the Dem ocratic vote should be only 4,000, then you would have one million three hundred and forty-five (1,345,000) thousand Repub lican votes exactly balanced in a Presidential election by 551,000 Democratic votes ! But let us go South and see how elections go there. South Carolina has the same electoral vote as Maine ; her citizens are largely Republican. In the late contest Gen. Hayes received 91,786 votes and carried the State. Last fall the vote for Governor Wade Hampton was counted, one hundred and nineteen thousand five hundred and forty-five (119,545)! And how many Republican votes were cast ? Not one ! ! In Alabama Gen. Hayes received for President 66,230 votes ; but at the election for Governor last fall not a Republican vote was reported ! In Mississippi Gen. Hayes received 52,605 votes. Bat in one year after, Governor Stone was counted in by 96,382 votes ! The Republican vote had disappeared, and under the head of " scat tering * was returned 1,168 ! And yet, in Electoral College, meeting to choose a President, Mississippi exactly equals New Hampshire and Nebraska combined. Louisiana, in the year of Gen. Hayes election, had a regis tered colored vote of 115,268, and a registered white vote of but 88,179. Mr. Hayes received a vote of 77,154; and yet Louis iana has but a single white Republican in Congress and not a colored member. What means this sudden disappearance of 317,346 Republican votes from these four States ! We are told that the Southern climate is unhealthy for Republican voters, and that they have all died out ! Before the war five slaves added three votes to the white- man s count: Now, five negroes add five votes to the white- man s count in the election of President. Emancipation in creased the Southern Electoral vote by 35, but the whiteman allows no negro to vote a Republican ticket ; the white electors cast the entire electoral vote ivhich is not diminished by the ex clusion of the colored voters. Remember that if two States have each 400,000 voters, and each is entitled to 14 electors ; the electors chosen in one State by two hundred thousand and one votes, will have the same voice in choosing a President as the 14 Electors in the other State chosen by 400,000 voters. You see that the South have gained 35 electoral votes by Emancipation, and that under our unequal system, if the South drive every freedman from the polls, the South will have precisely the same Electoral vote as tho every colored man voted the Confederate ticket. Hence you see, why, by violence, by terror, and by atrocities unnum bered the freedmen are disfranchised. Turn to the Census of 1870 ; make any reasonable calculation for the changes since, and you shall see, that the population of New York is just about the same as the white population of the eleven Confederate States, and that her wealth is just about three times the wealth of all these eleven States together. Against the 35 electoral votes of the State of JSTew York, with her intelligence and her wealth so many times larger, and with a population nearly equal to the white population, (which alone casts the Electoral vote) of these States, how many Electoral votes do you think these same States cast ? NINETY-FIVE (95) ! FELLOW CITIZENS ; how do you like the working of this electoral system, since the slaves are freed and our Southern brethren have come back into the Union ? You perceive there is some danger. By large majority the popular will may express itself in favor of your candidate, and yet, the Electoral vote may give the Presidency to another ; and 10 this mockery, we call, "free election by all the votes of a free people" How then can we escape the danger ? Not by sentimental emotion, not by throwing up our hands and exclaiming what tremendous majorities Massachusetts or Vermont, Pennsylvania or Iowa will give. In a Presidential contest it matters not whether their majorities are five or five hundred thousand ; it is all the same. Our only way is to secure the electors ; and to do that we must face the situation. The South is solid ; made so by fraud and violence. She has 138 electoral votes. It requires only 47 from all the North to give the Government to the Confederates ! New York has 35, and Indiana has 15 ; both given for the South, transfers the power, with three votes to spare. Morton is dead ; and Indiana is fairly claimed by the South ; that leaves New York alone for the great battle ; and here the last battle against the enemies of the Union will be fought. Next year we take the census ; after that, there will be a readjustment of the electoral vote. The increased population of the North will then settle the future : the South know this, and hence their last mad struggle to seize the Government at the next election. Without New York the Confederates have no chance of vic tory : without New York the Republicans have no better chance. Elect your ticket this fall and the Presidential contest will be easy. The prestige of success, and the possession of the govern ment of this great State steadies the wavering and assures the rest. A BETTER TICKET was never presented for your votes. I have but time to speak of him who is nominated for Governor. I dare say that some of you may have preferred another. It is always so. But no fair-minded man will say that Mr. Cornell will not make an excellent Governor ; and when we go to war, we ask who can lead us to victory, not whom do we like best ? No man has a more honorable record than Mr. Cornell. He has been long before the public. He has been a member of the Assembly and one year he was the Speaker. He served as one of the Commissioners for the erection of the Capitol at II Albany. He was Surveyor of the Port of New York, daring a period of four years, and Naval Officer for a year and a half. He has discharged the duties of all these great trusts with eminent good judgment, ability and success, and upon his fidel ity, honor or integrity there is not a stain. He is the son of a sire who earned a fortune, of which he largely gave to endow a great Institution of Learning to benefit the people. He will be an honor to the name he bears, and to the State of which he will be Governor. Let us explore the consequences of neglecting to carry the State this Autumn. If we do not carry it this year, it is pretty certain that we cannot carry it next ; arid if the enemy carry it, we can sat ely predict some things that will happen. If our 35 Electoral votes are given to the Southern candidate, by every reasonable calculation, the executive government of the Nation will be transferred to the rule of the Confederates. Swiftly following the transfer of power, you will find, that distrust about the financial question returns, that Northern capital timidly retires, that labor ceases to be in demand, that new enterprises are abandoned, and that the bright confidence and auspicious dawn of prosperity, but lately begun, will grow dark with gloomy apprehension. A demand will be made that the freed slaves shall be paid for, that Southern damage-claims shall be settled, that the Emancipation Proclamation, the new amendments to the Con stitution and the Ke-construction Acts shall be declared void ; that the Union and Confederate soldiers shall be alike pen sioned ; and that each State shall be declared sovereign, with full power to create Banks of issue without let or hindrance from the Federal government ! Do you doubt this \ of course many of you do. You would not believe that the sacred pledge of freedom, called " the Missouri Compromise, 5 could be shamelessly violated until the infamous deed was done. You would not believe that the South meant war until Ft. Sumpter fell. Now, the South boldly tell you what they are going to do ; and again you will not believe them. They do not propose to secede and leave you in possession of the Army, the Navy, the 12 Treasury, the Federal Courts, the Capital, the Archives, and all the machinery of an established government, in full and friendly recognition by all the powers of the earth ! They propose to leave you no such advantage: They propose to take your government into their own hands. They have grown wiser. If they can once get control of the Government they will rule with relentless hand, and make you pay back, with interest , all that they lost by the war. How are you to help it ? Do you point to the constitutional amendments? They proclaim them " void." It is well known that each man has kept a list of the number and value of his slaves. With President and Congress in their interest, they can pass a law for the payment of their claims. The Secretary of the Treasury pays it in obedience to law (I do not mean Secretary Sherman). What could you do about it? Bring it before the Supreme Court ? But where would the money go meanwhile ? And who would enforce the mandate of the Court, if you get one? Armed governments never trouble themselves about mandates of a Court, if they don t like the mandate. A pair of Confederate soldiers would take care of the Court if it stood in the way. But perhaps you say that you would resist such wrong by force. Would you ? We should find ourselves at a disadvantage in such a-contest with the organized power of this great government, and many a pillaged city would smoke, and many a brave soldier bite the dust before we could gain the vic tory. The South has commendable traits ; it rattles before it strikes. It has told you from the beginning that it repudiated the Eman cipation Proclamation ; that the new amendments to the consti tution and the Re-construction Acts were " null and void," and that they meatit to elect a President who would * trample them into dust" When the Constitutional Amendment abolishing slavery, came before the House of Representatives in 1864. Mr. Pendleton in his place said : But neither three-fourths of the 13 States, nor all the States, save one, can abolish slavery in that dissenting State, because it lies within the domain reserved to each State for itself, and upon it the other States cannot enter." More than three years after the war, Gen. Wade Hampton, now a Senator of the United States, in the National Convention of his party held in New York, inserted in the platform this : " And we declare that the Re-construction Acts are revolution ary, unconstitutional and void," which was unanimously adopted. At the same Convention, Gen. Blair was nominated for Yice- President, he having but a short time before published his dec laration of principles, in which he said, " We must have a Presi dent who will execute the will of the people, by trampling into dust the usurpations of Congress known as the Reconstruc tion Acts. And Col. Herndon, complimenting Blair in a speech at Mobile, exclaimed, " Who but a brave, true, generous heart could utter such a sentiment as this?" And Senator Pugh, in a public speech, said, " I would not give a three-cent postage stamp for their Fourteenth Amendment. It is no part of the Constitution, and it never will be. It is a base fraud. All the leading men of the South, from Blair to Blackburn, and their Northern allies, have uttered similar sentiments. But the sagacious and philosophic statesman, Alex. H. Stephens, the ex- Vice-President of the Confederacy, in a speech before the Georgia Legislature, after the war had failed, proposed a plan to got possession of the government, which the South have persistently followed. He said, " We are not without an en couraging example on this line, in the history ot the mother country. * * * The truest friends of liberty in England, once in 1612, abandoned the forum of reason, and appealed, as we did, to the sword as the surest means of advancing their cause. * * * But they retraced their steps. * * * The House of Lords and the House of Commons were henceforth the theaters of their operations. * * * The result was, that in less than thirty years all their ancient rights and privileges, which had been lost in the civil wars, with new securities, were re-established. The South have accordingly transferred " the theater of their operations" from their lost battle-fields to the Senate and the 14 House, hoping in this way to "re-establish all their ancient rights and privileges, with new securities" And we must con cede, that so far, their success has been encouraging. The audacity of the Confederates may well excite our won der ! Civilized people have supposed that intelligence, the pay ment of honest debts, the possession of property, and numbers of population, with the raising of taxes to support the govern ment, gave such people the right to govern. The states so clamorous for power have repudiated their debts, they pay but little tax, they have but little property, their numbers are comparatively few, and the masses of their people are very ignorant. The Confederacy was formed of eleven states. In several of these States there are more colored people than whites. The entire white population is scarce five million and a half, and terror now keeps the colored men from the polls. Since the war, and from 1866 to 1878, there has been raised from internal revenue to support the government and pay its obligations, $2,- 055,397,846.18 ! Of this sum the eleven Confederate States have paid only $201,906,096.15 ! The single State of Ohio alone paid $13,104,524.39 more than all the Confederete States combined ; and New York alone has paid very nearly twice as much as all the Confederate States together. From official reports it appears that of the taxes to support this government about 89 per ct. are paid at the North, and but 11 per ct. by the entire South; and that of imports 96 per cent, come to Northern Ports ; and that of our vast internal commerce only 8 per ct. is in the South. President Hayes received in the Eleven Confederate States 785,000 Republican votes. He was not suspected of being over harsh towards that rebellious people. On the contrary, his great desire for brotherhood and peace led him to many acts of gen erous conciliation which elicited sharp criticism from his party. Before two years of his gentle administration were passed, those who voted lor him in the South, were by intimidation or violence driven from the polls. Mr. Hayes has learned what every Northern President and every Northern Statesman, who went before him learned, that no conciliation, no soft words, no generous deeds will ever pacify the South. Mr. Hayes has evidently had enough of the experiment ; his robust, patriotic speech at Youngstown shows that he understands the situation, and that the same good sense which prompted his admirable vetoes will wisely guide him through his administration. There are many able, patriotic Statesmen of the Democratic Party in the North, any one of whom would make an admirable President ; if elected by Northern votes but such an one, has no chance of nomination by the dominant South. They will take no man from the North unpledged to do their bidding : And if to their 138 Electoral votes, they add 47 or 50 gleaned from the North, and thus elect their President, may they not with reason demand that the thing created shall be subject to its Creator ? I am glad that Mr. Hayes adopted the policy of conciliation towards the South. I think it was greatly wise. It was a necessity ; considering the state of the public mind. Had it not been done, the Northern sentimentality would never have been satisfied. Had the plan succeeded, it would have been well ; having failed utterly, it proves that endless conciliation is not the remedy for Southern troubles. It proves what had been proved before, that Northern magnanimity, Northern sentiment, and Northern character are wholly unappreciated by the South. They stand upon a lower plain. They breathe an atmosphere of demi-bar- barism ; they cannot understand the larger humanity and the more enlightened conscience of the North. Slavery blunts the moral sense and brutalizes the passions. It stamps its curse too deep to be wiped out in a single generation. Before Rebellion it met every concession with new and more arrogant demands. It met unanswerable arguments in Congress with threats and violence and challenge to mortal combat. A Northern Senator was stricken down and nearly murdered in the Senate House for words spoken in debate ! Then they made war. Having had their fill of that, they were met by a magnanimity un paralleled in the annals of time ; since the war not a rebel estate has i6 been confiscated ; not a rebel has been punished. Not a Confede rate in all the Confederate States is now deprived of the rights of suffrage, and Jefferson Davis is as free to vote as President Hayes. None but Union men are deprived of this sacred privilege in all the Confederacy ! When late, DEATH spread his dusky wing over a portion of the South, and there was scarce a house in which there was not one dead, the North hastened to their relief with a liber ality unknown. True charity asks no gratitude. But even charity demands that her innocent friends shall not be treated with outrage. They seem to regard every act of concession or kindness from the North as born of cowardice or as a just tribute to their per sonal superiority. It were better for all, that we administer temperate justice instead of maudlin generosity. We have a clear forecast of what the enemy will do, by look ing at what they have done. So soon as was possible, the new Congress forced an extra session, and organized their committees through which all busi ness is done. In the Senate, the Democratic party count forty-two ; only twelve of these are from the North. The Confederates have the Chairmanship of seventeen of the most important commit tees of the Senate ; and in constituting all the committees they have so contrived that every committee is controlled by the Confederates. In each case the majority of the Committee is Democratic ; and in every case a majority of that majority is Confederate. All important measures are determined in caucus, and the Confederates are a majority in every caucus. Yirginia has the Committee on Pensions ; Georgia the Com mittee on Commerce ; little Delaware, so little, that she has but one lone Representative, takes the important Committee on Fi nance. And what do yon think the great commercial State of New York, with a population more than 35 times larger than Delaware, and witli wealth five hundred times greater, gets in the Senate Committee ? The Committee on PATENTS. Gentlemen of the South ; you over-play this little game ; you show an unfair adroitness for which we were not prepared. You have so contrived every committee as to give the control to the Confederates and the legislation in Congress is all shaped by the committees. We concede that you are solid, and that we of the North are slow to wake up. But do you mean to wake us again to to the drum call f The South have always had some pretended grievance, with which to reproach the North. In 1824 it was because trade was pretty free and the North grew rich on commerce. Under the lead of Clay they forced a high protective tariff, against the protest of Webster. The North diverted much of its capi tal and prospered on manufactures. Then the South clam ored for "free trade" and threatened nullification. In 1850 they made vague charges of " Aggressions" by the North ; and when Mr. Webster demanded of Senator Berrien, and other Southern statesmen, to know what these "aggressions" were they proved to be : " that the growing religious senti ment of the North disapproved of the right of one man to sell another s children into slavery /" The resistance of the North to the destruction of the Union was another grievance. And after the war they were aggrieved at the re-construction of the rebel States. Re-construction was a difficult problem witli which our statesmen had to deal, and the North differed widely as to the best mode. I never believed that " universal amnesty, and universal suffrage was the specific solvent for this difficult question. I did not believe that the African race, just passing from generations of slavery, could legislate wisely. But South ern leaders would not come forward to aid in re-construction, resume their loyalty, and honestly try to help an indulgent gov ernment to restore the impoverished States to harmonious pros perity. They stood aloof ; and in sullen conceit refused to as sist. Had they returned to a sincere allegiance they would have had every possible aid from the over-generous North. They have only themselves to blame. They are not pros perous, they are not happy ; they do not march abreast with the advancing civilization of the age. They mire in a dismal 18 swamp and refuse to be lifted out. They neglect education and the teachings of Christian humanities ; and they trample down justice, and thus banish their most useful population. They must face about or they are doomed. Their present grievance is that the North will still remember some of the atrocities of the war. In derision, they call this " The Bloody Shirt," with small piping voice the dou^hfaced, knock-kneed idiots of the North, cry feebly, a Bloody Shirt. ? But while massacres like that of the Chislome family, mur ders like that of Dixon and of Bryce, horrors like those on the Southern Mississippi, recently made public by the Memorial of Judge Dillon, the Mayor of St. Louis, Senator Henderson and others; atrocities which have lately driven thousands from their homes, to brave cold and hunger, nakedness and death, rather than remain in that abode of cruelty continue, you will not bury in oblivion the memories of the past through fear of mockery from your foes. When William, the great Conqueror, the Bastard son of the Duke of Normandy by Arietta, the handsome daughter of a tanner, (whom, from a window of his Castle, the Duke first saw washing clothes in the brook,) held his army before the revolted town of Alencon, the besieged hung raw hides along the walls of the town with the jeering cry, " WORK FOR THE TANNER." The young hero remembered his mother with love ; He was not ashamed of a hide for his banner, and the revilers of his mother perished bef :>re his fiery onset as stubble before the flames ? WOE, BE THE DAY! when for battle-banner, the "Bloody Shroud shall be nnfurled, and earnest men tread onward to the fray ! The bloody corpse of Lucretia drove the last Tarquin from Rome, and the " crimsoned garment^ now mocked at by fools, may yet rouse a people more wildly than did the beat upon the human skin, which formed the head of Ziska s drum. The son of a tanner has just landed on onr shores ; I hope that he will not be called to do the kind of work which the Norman Tanner did. But if he is so called, he will do it, thoroughly. I have seen him where Sovereign, and Princes, Ambassadors and Nobles rose up to do him reverence, calm, self-poised, , unruffled as a sphinx. 19 He is wiser than when he went away ; of broader intelligence ; loftier in tone ; more exalted in his moral nature. But he will retire to his home in Galena, the same single-minded, unpre tending, brave and honest man ; a fitting product of our noble institutions. Pardon me for detaining you so long. But a word more and I have done. I have spoken of the future as it unrolls to the eye of the mind ; of the present and of the past, as truthful history will record them. I have not spoken with the least feeling of personal hostility towards any individual in all the Confederacy. I, like all the North, would gladly treat them with generosity, if they would manifest any sign of loyalty, justice or duty. But I abhor their preposterous assumption, their cruelty to the freedmen and to all who differ with them in opinion ; and I will resist to the utter most their audacious and insatiate desire to gain by violence and fraud the control of this government, which Northern valor preserved, and which Southern treason aimed to destroy. We endured four years of terrible war. We have passed through five years of heavy depression and much suffering, consequent upon that war. By patience, by self-denial, by persistent effort, against foes, even of our own household, we have restored the credit and financial stability of our country. Confidence has returned, labor is in demand, wages are advanc ing. The tide of emigration a;ain sets in. We have sold within a year $500,000,000 of our products abroad, and every week brings heavy shipments of gold to our ports. The most auspi cious dawn of a prosperous future opens before us ! Shall it be turned to sudden night ? I call upon the people of this great State to come up once more to the battle for freedom and human rights. Carry the State this fall, and the strife is nearly over. Then the prosperity which has so happily begun may continue, and we may fairly count upon long years of peace, and brotherhood with our recent foes, and see the South, "sit ting, clothed, and in her sight mind," devoutly thanking God that he did not " leave her to eat of the fruit of her own ways, and to be filled with her own devices ! " ro 242