/vr FT T P A I flp ATAT?V. H U i W\L VJ rCAi U JxY* Ul >STORRS , - . r^fT- 1 , v * Ti . " ' . - P Mr. G Mrs. M.J. Stegmaier 703 Bolton Walk, Apt. 104 Goleta, California 93017 EMERY A. STORKS. POLITICAL ORATORY EMERY A. STORRS. FROM LINCOLN TO GARFIELD, BY ISAAC K. ADAMS. "IN OKA TORY THE ESSENTIAL SECRET IS A GIFT OF GOD? CHICAGO, NEW YORK, SAN FRANCISCO: BELFORD, CLARKE & CO 1888. COPYRIGHT ISAAC E. ADAMS. 1888. TABLE OF CONTENTS. I. POLITICAL ORATORY. PAGl. RARITY OF EMINENT EXAMPLES OF POLITICAL ORATORS ou ORA- TORY FRAMEWORK OF MR. STORRS' LIFE UNIQUE CAREER COMPARISON OF FAME OF CHOATE AND SUMNER PERSONAL APPEARANCE AND CHARACTERISTICS REMARKABLE ILLUSTRA- TIONS OF WONDERFUL MEMORY AND EXTEMPORE POWERS NATURE OF WORK 6 II. ILLUSTRATIONS OF WIT AND WISDOM. EVIDENCE OF AN ORATOR'S POWER DEMOCRATIC CHARACTERIZA- TIONS THE MODERNIZED PRODIGAL SON FUN WITH SEYMOUR TILDEN WRITES A.LETTER BRAVES WHO REMAINED AT HOME- CHARACTER OF CHARLES SUMNER VARIOUS TYPES OF ELO- QUENCE U III. EARLY POLITICAL SPEECHES. THE KANSAS TROUBLES '58 DOWNFALL OF THE DEMOCRATIC MIS- RULE FORETOLD FOURTH OF JULY, 1854 OUR NATION'S FUTURE LINCOLN'S EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION JOHNSON'S SOUTHERN POLJCT 37 IV. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1868. ELAINE'S STATE THE SCENE OF MR. STORRS' EARLIEST AND LATEST TRIUMPHS AS A POLITICAL ORATOR ARRAIGNMENT OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY DEFENSE OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL AMEND- MENTS 6t V. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1872. THE DISCONTENTED BAND A SPRINGFIELD, ILL., MASS-MEET- ING GREELEY SAYS "THE WAY TO RESUME is TO RESUME" WHO WAS THE FATHER OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY? A FAMOUS ILLUSTRATION GRANT'S IMMORTALITY ILLIBERAL " LIBERALS "THE WOLF PARTY SOME BIBLICAL ILLUSTRATIONS, 100 '7 ONTENTS Continued. I VI. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1876. PAGB. "LIBERAL " REPUBLICANISM CIVTEL SERVICE REFORM REVISION OF THE TARIFF RESUMPTION OF SPECIE PAYMENT GENERAL GRANT'S RECORD CONTRASTED WITH THAT OF HORACE GHEE- LEYSCRIPTURAL ILLUSTRATIONS , 160 VII. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1880. AN ORATORICAL VICTORY ON THE PACIFIC SLOPE CHARACTER OF GENERAL GRANT WORK OF AN ORATOR RECORD OF A GREAT PARTY ADDRESSES AT BURLINGTON, CLEVELAND AND OTHER CITIES ELOQUENCE AND LOGIC 199 VIII. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1884. REMARKABLE SCENE IN THE NATIONAL CONVENTION CONQUESTS OF ORATORY IN VARIOUS CITIES GREAT SPEECH AT BOSTON COMPARISON OF THE CONTENDING PARTIES DOWNFALL OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AT THE POLLS 230 IX. THE TARIFF ISSUE. AN EVER- EXISTING QUESTION PARALLEL BETWEEN THE ECONOMIC POSITION IN 1870 AND 1888 ADDRESS BY MR. STOURS AT SPRING- FIELD REASONS FOR CHANGE IN UTTERANCES THE OTHER SIDE OFTHE FENCE.. 263 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. POLITICAL OKATOKY. RAEITY OF EMINENT EXAMPLES OF POLITICAL ORATORS OR ORATORY FRAMEWORK OF MR. STORRS' LIFE UNIQUE CAREER COMPARISON OF FAME OF CHOATE AND SUMNER PERSONAL APPEARANCE AND CHARAC- TERISTICS REMARKABLE ILLUSTRATIONS OFWONDERFUL MEMORY AND EXTEMPORE POWERS NATURE OF WORK. FEW examples of political oratory have been em- balmed in literature. Men, too, remembered for oratorical power are easily reckoned, and tower con- spicuously along the shores of time. There was once a' Demosthenes, once a Cicero, once a Burke. The time will come when, looking back upon the centuries of American history, it will be said there was, also, once a Webster and once a Lincoln. Around each of these political suns may swing, here and there in unshrouding space, a glow- ing light; but the lesser luminaries pale and eventually become lost to the mind's sight with the receding years. Moreover, the exceptional oratorical efforts politically of even these preeminent ones in the world's annals, are few in number, and come to active mankind but as memories of droning school elocution. Attempt to recollect the orators of the past, and their efforts, and it must be said with Cicero that the orator is a rarer product of nature than the poet. Demosthenes has been named he was partly the born and partly the (5) 6 POLITICAL ORATORY. made orator, and his speeches are as few as the digits upon the hand ; Burke, whose orations are the greatest in the English language, himself esteemed highly but two of his speeches, and it is true, that, while he began by surprising Parliament as a prodigy, he ended by emptying the house. Mirabeau, ranking in the annals of his country as the most famous, fiery and effective of French orators, is scarcely known. Lord Chesterfield, Lord Chatham, the Foxes who can recall more than the fleeting phrase from their many utterances ? Almost of yesterday were Tyng, Bethune, Chapin, McClintock, Cheever, Starr King, Cuyler, Milburn, Bellows, Thomp- son some of them as eloquent as any men in our his- tory but they are already engulphed in almost total oblivion. Wendell Phillips, silvery as the tinkle of an Alpine bell; Kossuth, the soul of mingled fun and pathos ; Gough, who for a score of years held, upon his reels and staggers and mimicry, weeping and laughing crowds are sure to speedily be but traditions so with Beecher, so with Spurgeon. To change the use of an old figure, it matters not whether the eloquence of the orator, during his day, is like a summer shower, lightning striking, passing on ; or whether like a storm at sea, rising lowly, with hazy sun, with threatening clouds, with awesome thunder it prevails overall in every case, Time obscures its path. Oratory of all kinds is, has been, and will be scarce. Therefore, at any time, and especially upon the eve of a national campaign, no excuse can be needed for presenting to the thinking, reading and speaking public some selec- tions from one who deservedly ranked as one of the greatest political orators of his day a day embracing POLITICAL ORATORY. 7 a period of remarkable internecine war and subsequent equally remarkable prosperity ; and nowhere is extant a volume of equal size containing so splendid examples of perfect argument, bristling with satire,and embellished by all the magnificence of genuine eloquence. * # * The framework of the life of Emery A. Storrs was simple : Born August 12, 1835, he lived fifty years, dying September 12, 1885. Thirty years two at Buffalo, N. Y., and twenty- eight at Chicago as a lawyer he occu- pied the front rank at the American bar. He never held public office. He never received any remunera- tion for his political achievements. He was content to be a great orator. With no pedestal of high office, with no monument of some permanent creation in literature, Mr. Storrs may be ephemeral in American fame. The hand of forgetting Fate may relentlessly thrust him altogether from even the vestibule of that temple within which stand eternally the Lincoln and the Grant of the great rebellion. If Choate and Sumner are surely sinking into oblivion, little more can be hoped for one who, it has been said, possessed the endowments of both th.e tirelessness in preparation, the nervous, magnetic energy in execution, and the fidelity in trying emergencies of the one, and the convincing logic, the impressiveness of style, and the persuasive richness of the other. But, he was an ornament to his day and generation. The pub- lic speaker can well afford to study Emery A. Storrs' orations as models in oratory. In appearance, he was not unusual. Physically, he 8 POLITICAL OftATOfcY. was small, not weighing over one hundred and twenty avoirdupois; owing to inherited weakness, he was wont to stoop slightly, except when en- gaged in public speaking, and then he always stood erect, firm and straight as an Indian. His voice was rich, deep, full as an organ note extraordi- nary in its sweetness, and rounded intoning. There was something singularly fascinating in his style and manner of speaking. His custom was to begin every argument or any oratorical effort in slow, measured tones, sinking at times almost into a whisper, but always clear and clean-cut, so that unto the remotest listener every inflection would come distinct as though thun- dered. Gradually his voice would rise and strengthen, until the words poured forth a fiery flood of irresistible argument, gleaming with sharp invective and brillian wit. His dialect was simple, pure, and direct. He employed judiciously the graces of imagination. He was totally devoid of theatricalism in elocution, gesture, and personal bearing, but would sometimes resort to the most intense dramatic effects, while his wondrous wit, rarely, if ever, surpassed on the rostra or in the forum, could break, at his will, into a terribly biting whirlwind of raillery and jest, before which show men and tinsel appearances were swept into a sea of ridicu- lousness. Yet, this splendid wit of Mr. Storrs this merry and ridiculing laugh, so to speak, of his intellect was not his real temper. He prided himself more upon the thoroughness with which he mastered facts and upon the surpassing skill with which he added them to great truths and broad principles. His mind was stored to overflowing with the POLITICAL OtlATORY. $ treasures of literature, ever ready to be uttered. No one of that vast audience which had gathered upon the shores of Lake Michigan that autumn day to listen to Mr. Storrs speak, can ever forget the marvelous appro- priateness with which, he inter weaved into the panegyric he suddenly pronounced upon the dead Garfield the news of whose death came with the moment to the ora- tor the veriest gems of literature. Take but one short paragraph of that tender, beautiful eulogy, pronounced impromptu, but which in the language of a contempor- ary "moved the multitude to tears and left an impres- sion ineffaceable during life." " Our departed Garfield wisely said that God reigns; and in the presence of that great national calamity and bereavement, the martyrdom of Lincoln, he declared ' God reigns, and the government at Washington still lives/ The life of man is but a few short years. This nation is im- mortal. Its life is indestructible. No bullet was ever cast or ever will be that can reach its heart. No assassin can ever shatter it, and it is for us to take up the thread of this noble life, so untimely and tragically closed, and carry on our shoulders, inspired by his example, the country which he had done so much to honor and to save, forward on the great and lofty mission which he had again and again pointed out for it. He would have it march in the path- way of noble resolve and spotless honor, and so will we. He would have its pathway marked by the skeleton of no broken engagements or violated promises. Nor will we. He would leave behind it no desolated homes, but would have in its career smiling villages, prospering towns, fields of waving grain, golden harvest, contented and prospering homes, and the hum of busy cities greeting it everywhere. So will we. On its banners he would have no stain, no 10 POLITICAL ORATORY. spot or blemish, or any such thing. Nor will we. And the most touching tributes that we can pay to the memory of our dead President and friend will not be the flowers we may cast upon his grave, but they will be a steady striving toward the example of his pure and spotless life. For these, after all, are the patriotic harmonies which the solemn dirges that fill the air over all the continent carry with them. " It is to such music, sad, solemn, but lofty as this, that the funeral processions throughout the continent, and all but a part of that sad procession which to-day follows the remains of our dead President to their last resting place, are marching. "Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. " And there are no harmonies so grand as those which come from high hearts, beating in unison a lofty and patriotic purpose. Thus honoring and thus loving him, we commit our great Chief Magistrate to his final resting- place " His body to that blessed country's earth, And his pure soul unto his Captain, Christ, Under whose colors he had fought so long. " The lesson of his life was: " Be just and fear not, Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's, Thy God's, and truth's, Then, if thou fallest, thou fallest a blessed martyr "Sadly, with our eyes blinded with bitter tears, we gather around that open grave. The flowers which we heap about it are not those of f orgetfulness. As the green grasses shall grow above it at the first quick flush of the opening spring, as the flowers shall bloom over it through all the long summer days, so from that poor shattered and POLITICAL OBATOfcY. 11 Coffined body shall the noble spirit rise, living, immortal, a tender memory and a holy inspiration." Emery A. Storrs had, moreover, a power of extem- pore oratory in no wise dependent upon his remarkable retentiveness of memory. While in St. Louis, as leading counsel for the defense in the famous Babcock trial, he exhibited his readiness in marshalling thoughts and his amazing command of language in a wonderful instance. His great cause had been won ; his client had been honor- ably acquitted ; and there gathered around Mr. Storrs at the Lindell Hotel a congratulating circle, including many eminent members of the St. Louis bar. Some of these were disposed to celebrate the occasion by conviviality, but Mr. Storrs could not be induced to join in their potations, though he sat smiling by, drinking lemonade. One of his legal brethren suggested that he surely never had gone through the fatigues of such a trial without some stronger stimulus than lemonade ; he doubted its power of inspiration, and challenged Mr. Storrs to make an off-hand temperance speech. The challenge was promptly accepted, and a short-hand reporter who was present took notes of what he said, and published the speech from his notes after Mr. Storrs' death. Although modeled on John B. Gough's well-known apostrophe to water which, in its turn, was said to have been origi- nal with Lorenzo Dow the speech which follows is so thoroughly characteristic in ideas and method of expression as to be altogether and most brilliantly Mr. Storrs' own brain-child: "How do you expect to improve upon the beverage furnished by nature ? Here it is Adam's ale about the only gift that has descended undefiled from the garden of 12 POLITICAL Eden! Nature's common carrier not created in the rot- tenness of fermentation, not distilled over guilty fires! Virtues and not vices are its companions. Does it cause drunkenness, disease, death, cruelty to women and chil- dren? Will it place rags on the person, mortgages on the stock, farm, and furniture? Will it consume wages and income in advance and ruin men in business? No! But it floats in white gossamer clouds far up in the quiet sum- mer sky, and hovers in dreamy mist over the merry faces of all our sparkling lakes. It veils the woods and hills of earth's landscapes in a purple haze, where filmy lights and shadows drift hour after hour. It piles itself in tumbled masses of cloud-domes and thunderheads, draws the electric flash from its mysterious hiding-places, and seams and shocks the wide air with vivid lines of fire. It is carried by kind winds, and falls in rustling curtains of liquid drapery over all the thirsty woo'ds and fields, and fixes in God's mystic eastern heavens His beautiful bow of promise, glorified with a radiance that seems reflected out of heaven itself. It gleams in the frost crystals of the mountain tops and the dews of the valleys. It silently creeps up to each leaf in the myriad forests of the world and tints each fruit and flower. It is here in the grass-blades of the meadows, and there where the corn waves its tassels and the wheat is billowing! It gems the depths of the desert with the glad, green oasis, winds itself in oceans round the whole earth, and roars its hoarse, eternal anthems on a hundred thou- sand miles of coast! It claps its hands in the flashing wave- crests of the sea, laughs in the little rapids of the brooks, kisses the dripping, moss-covered, old oaken well-buckets in a countless host of happy homes! See these pieces of cracked ice, full of prismatic colors, clear as diamonds! Listen to their fairy tinkle against the brimming glass, that sweetest music in all the world to one half-fainting POLITICAL ORATOKY. 13 with thirst! And so, in the language of that grand old man, Gough, I ask you, Brothers all, would you exchange that sparkling glass of water for alcohol, the drink of the very Devil himself ? " TV TV This little Avork, although especially planned for a presentation of the fullness of Mr. Storrs' rich and peer- less political argument and for a showing of the mas- si veness and the incisiveness of his logic, may not be unhappily introduced further by one chapter devoted to illustrations of some of his witty and eloquent charac- terizations of persons and parties, as gathered from sc.ne of his forensic victories. The work, hoAvever, as its title implies, treats, through Mr. Storrs' great speeches, of the Kansas troubles of 1858; it covers the agitating ques- tions of the campaigns of 1860, 1868, 1872,1876, 1880 and 1884:. There is, also, an exposition of Mr. Storrs' free- trade sentiments in 1870, when he discussed the high tariff as a Avar measure and claimed that the farmers of the West needed to be protected against protection; together with an exposition of how, in 1882, he became an ardent protectionist. In these later chapters, more particularly, the reader is invited to selections from most impressive arguments, brightened by felicitous wit and all the graces of magnificent oratory. It is the work of Mr. Storrs. The diction, the beauties of expres- sion, above all the keen-edged logic, are suggested as worthy the study of all thinkers. n. ILLUSTKATIONS OF WIT AND WISDOM. EVIDENCE OF AN ORATOR'S POWER DEMOCRATIC CHARAC- TERIZATIONS THE MODERNIZED PRODIGAL SON- FUN WITH SEYMOUR TILDEN WRITES A LETTER BRAVES WHO EEMAINED AT HOME CHARACTER OF CHARLES SUMNER VARIOUS TYPES OF ELOQUENCE. IT will some time be regarded as a remarkable fact that a political orator of the days of the Kebellion, and immediately afterwards, should indulge in such ardent displays of partisanship and personality, and yet hold as did always Mr. Storrs the unanimous and enthusiastic sympathy of his vast audiences. All classes, the high and the low, the rich and the poor, the intel- lectual and the dullard, Democrat and Kepublican, helped fill to overflowing the auditorium or public square when- ever it was announced that Emery A. Storrs was to be the orator of the occasion. There seemed to be a sort of witchery about his name, or a spell of magic about his utterances. The laugh at his lanced personal dia- tribes, the cheer at his party eulogiums, and the storm of vehement applause at his floods of brilliant eloquence, were ever as from one man. To this fact, the thousands living can bear witness for Mr. Storrs was of yester- day. Yet no man, perhaps, ever swayed an audience who was so radical, so extreme in all his portraitures of men and measures. It is true, doubtless, that one chief reason for what will in the days to come be considered 14 POLITICAL ORATORY. 15 somewhat in the light of an anomaly, is due to the times in which Mr. Storrs lived and participated ; for he began his career in the season of war, and he passed away not long after the cannon had ceased its wonder- ful music. The chiefest reason, though, in the case of Mr. Storrs, rested in the fact that he was " the orator born." The sensorium of mortals seems to yield to the natural genius of oratory. It is, as of old, a music which thrills. The vibration of thought, of voice, of action all conquered, and foe and friend roared or maintained silence at his wish. The doubter is referred to those living who have heard Mr. Storrs speak, or, indeed, to the columns of the contemporary press, stud- ded with parenthetic [cheers], [applause]. He did, though, say many severe things of his oppo- nents. His comparison of the record of the Democratic party will not soon be forgotten. " The Democratic party is like a mule : it has neither pride of ancestry nor hope of posterity." " There are millions," he said, " better than the party, and none worse." " The Demo- cratic party cannot be compared to sin, but only because it is sin itself." It will be remembered, too, what he said of Democratic assurances : " We are satisfied that any policy, particularly any Eepublican policy, based upon Democratic promises, is rest- ing upon a foundation so frail and insecure that it must ulti- mately perish. London is proverbially foggy. The fog there, at times, is said to be so dense that it is actually pal- pable to the touch. An honest and enterprising British carpenter, shingling his house on one foggy day, was sur- prised to find, when the day's work was concluded, that he had shingled out about three feet on to the fog. My good, 16 POLITICAL ORATORY. timorous Republican friends, for God's sake don't let us shingle on to the fog. One day of fair weather destroys that unsubstantial foundation, and you might as well attempt to build out on to a fog as to establish any policy from which the country is to derive substantial and contin- uous peace or quiet, upon any assurance of the Democratic party as such/' And none can ever forget his comparison of the Democratic party to the prodigal son. He said : ' ' It takes but a very few days' contact with the Democ- racy to stain the white and spotless garment of Republi- canism. They mistake a great Scriptural story. Mr. Chairman, the air is full of devotion. I feel a good deal like talking Scripture myself. They are misled by the story of the prodigal son. They seem to think that that parable was told as an invitation for young men to go off and be prodigals. It was not told for any such purpose. The prodigal made nothing whatever out of the experiment. He took what money belonged to him and went away fool- ishly, as other young men have done. He fell among the Democrats, and was naturally cleaned out. And when his money was gone, and his clothes gone, and his credit gone, the Democrats of that day had no further use for him. He went into the swine business, Mr. Chairman, as I read it. He went to feed swine, and the swine were discouraged ; and then he went feeding with swine, and they turned him out, and it was hard times with the poor, young independ- ent prodigal. And without clothes enough on him to wad a gun, he started for home. The point comes right here : How much did the prodigal make out of that enterprise ? The dear old father looking down that dusty turnpike expecting the boy back ultimately, and seeing him coming, went out and threw himself around his neck and welcomed POLITICAL ORATORY. 17 him. And what did he give him ? He did not give him back any of the farm ; he did not give him an office no, not the smell of an office. The prodigal had too much good sense to ask for one. All he cared for was to be taken in as a hired servant. And what that father gave him was a new suit of clothes and a ring on his finger, and a veal dinner. A fatted calf. That contribution has always been over-estimated. Everybody was engaged in raising calves. There was no market for calves calves were "long." And the boy who stayed at home did not quite relish this uproar, on account of this sore-eyed prodigal, and he turned to his father with some complaint ; but his father said, " Don't complain, son, you are always with me ; all that I have is thine." Not a cent of money, not a foot of ground, not an office was given to the prodigal ; but the boy who staid at home had it all. Now I do hope that my Independent friends won't wait that they won't tarry. My good friends down there in New York, you can never occupy a mansion that is so spacious and so splen- did. You will never again be so honorably and comfort- ably housed. Come back to the great mansion, the dome of which glistens with stars and is as broad as the very heavens. Come back to the old mansion. It is capable of entertaining the fifty millions of good, earnest, patriotic people of this nation. Come back to it. After all the decayed timbers of human chattelhood have been removed, and we have supplied their places with the everlasting granite of universal freedom, come back to it with its glorious inscriptions written and emblazoned upon its walls, no longer devastated by the fugitive slave law ; no longer befouled and besmirched by the inscriptions of the Dred Scott case. Come back with the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments that glimmer like shining planets from its white and stainless walls." 18 POLITICAL ORATORY. More dignified, but more terrible was his arraign- ment of the same party when replying to an opponent who had alluded to the history of the Democratic part} 7 . " Its history," said he, "is made up of great, ghostly scars inflicted upon the nation, of cemeteries filled with noble men who have fallen victims to its doctrines. Its history can be traced on bloody battle-fields, where citizens of the same nationality have been arrayed against each other because of Democratic heresies. Its history is found in desolated homes and speaks through mourning weeds, orphan children and widowed wives, made so through a causeless, cruel, wicked war. Its history is found also in the gigantic national debt, created to save a nation which its heresies came very near destroying. Every one-legged soldier furnished a bit of history of Democratic doctrine; the black stain of repudiation fastened upon the Southern states remains there to-day as proof of Democratic doctrine, eternally ineffaceable and there is no tradition about it^ for the creditors still live and they know they have been plundered. The mellow light of tradition does not rest upon Democratic political crimes; it is the ghastly light of to-day which discloses their political offenses in all their hideous deformities. "It is difficult to restrain one's self so as to talk com- posedly of this Democratic party when we reflect that it undertook to fasten the blighting, blistering curse of Afri- can chattelhood upon the great, verdant territories of the "West, which the Eepublican party has made free states and saved to be splendid homes for free men. It is diffi- cult to speak quietly and patiently of a party which, being defeated in the execution of such a gigantic crime against the civilization of the age and against common humanity, hurried and forced a great republic into a rebellion the POLITICAL ORATORY. 19 most causeless and the most wicked that history has re- corded. A party which would thus imperil the success of the experiment of self-government inaugurated upon this continent, imperil that great experiment to promote a cause so indescribably wicked as that of African slavery, can hardly look for gingerly treatment or language of courtesy when its career and history are under discussion. But this party, which for twenty-five years has been political crime and lust for power, organized with faults that disprove all protestations of good conduct for the future on its lips, comes to our people and has the audacity I say audacity: it is so when we consider what its past doctrines and tradi- tions have been to employ this language: 'We pledge ourselves anew to the constitutional doctrines and tradi- tions of the Democratic party, as illustrated by the teach- ings and example of a long line of Democratic statesmen and patriots/ The line of Democratic statesmen and patriots here referred to practically begins with Franklin Pierce. It was continued by James Buchanan, and while the line was somewhat interrupted thereafter, Jefferson Davis, Horatio Seymour, Wade Hampton, Senator Hen- dricks, Robert Toombs, Ben Butler, Ben Hill, Governor English have been and are still leaders of the Democratic party north and south, and a part of the long line to which this platform refers. Its long lines of doctrines and tra- ditions began with its attempt to steal the territories from freedom and to dedicate them to slavery, supplemented by an attempt to steal the island of Cuba for the same pur- pose. In 1856 the Democratic party, in national conven- tion assembled, denied the power of the general govern- ment to charter a national bank, pledged itself to resist all attempts in Congress or out of it to agitate the slavery question, and resolved that the party would faithfully abide by and uphold the principles laid down in the cele- 20 POLITICAL OEATOKY. brated secession Kentucky and Virginia resolutions of 1798. It adopted those principles as constituting one of the main foundations of its political creed, and resolved to carry them out; and in 1880 the same party declares: ' We pledge ourselves anew to the constitutional doctrines and traditions of the Democratic party/ ' Campaign listeners of the days of 1868 will recall many of Mr. Storrs' droll hits at Governor Seymour, the candidate for Democratic presidency. It will be remembered how in October of that year, the Governor had visited Chicago and addressed a meeting in the old Court House square, and how Mr. Storrs reviewed him at Library Hall a few days later. "About six years ago," said Mr. Storrs, "I was riding through Greenwood cemetery, and I observed a venerable looking person apparently examining a monument not yet entirely constructed. Being somewhat curious in the matter, I asked the person in charge of the grounds who that old man was that was bossing the tombstone. He told me that it was the owner of the tombstone, and that he was fixing it up for his own accommodation. It appeared to me to be a melancholy kind^ of amusement ; but I was satisfied last Saturday night that that venerable old gentleman was not the only man engaged in the same kind of business. For I saw, standing on the steps of the north door of the Court House, surrounded by his friends, some of whom he had brought with him from the city of New York, a gentleman observing the preparations for his own funeral, and with a melancholy kind of jocularity engaging in them. Horatio Seymour has been here. Horatio Seymour has gone. 'Why should we mourn departed friends?'" The Governor in one of his speeches had said that POLITICAL ORATORY. 21 Grant and Colfax were in full retreat and he had brought them in as captives. "It is," said Mr. Storrs, "a good deal such a capture as was accomplished by the hunter on the plains when h was sent out at night to shoot a buffalo for his friends. He hit the buffalo, and just barely hit him, and maddened him. The old beast started for the hunter, who was on horseback, and went vigorously for him. The dust flew in large quantities, and the hunter made for the camp immediately. They arrived in sight of it, and he, in order to keep up his reputation for courage, took off his hat and valiantly swung it, and hardly able to keep away from the enraged buffalo, shouted, ' Here we come ! You sent me after a buffalo, and I will bring it to you alive I" The same Democratic favorite after having been nominated, declined three or four times before he would stand as a candidate. "And now," said his ridiculer, "that the New York World and other papers think that he had better quit, he seems as resolutely disposed not to quit as he was resolutely disposed not to run. In that particular he is a good deal like Sam Casey's calf. Sam said he had to pull his ears off to get him to suck, and then to pull his tail off to get him to quit." Criticising Mr. Seymour's speech upon the issues of the campaign, Mr. Storrs remarked : " He said not a word about his own platform, and he thereby admits that it is indefensible. He has not said a word against our platform, and thereby he admits that it is unassailable. He stands in the position of the ox just half jumped over the fence, utterly worthless either for aggressive or defensive purposes." But Mr. Storrs could be terribly bitter in his treat- ment of even such political opponents to his party as 22 POLITICAL ORATORY. was Horatio Seymour. His thrilling comparison of the two letters which passed between Seymour arid Lincoln in the Rebellion times the one letter imprudently demanding that the draft should be suspended until the constitutionality of the law should be tested by the courts, and the other promptly replying that the time allowed no delay, that a nation's life was imperiled can never be forgotten by those who listened to the speaker as with trumpet tones, he exclaimed : " As thoroughly as I dislike the record which Horatio Seymour has made, as malignant and as dangerous as I deem it to be, as great as I conceive the punishment for those offenses ought to be, yet I could ask that no severer punishment be visited upon him than that the spirit of those two letters, taking visible shape, should march down the aisles of history together. How, as we stood upon some elevated table land, where we could watch their progress, would, as the distance lengthened out, the spirit of Hora- tio Seymour's letter warp, and dwindle, and halt, and wither, while that of our grand old patriotic President, growing greater and greater as the years receded, swelling into loftier and grander proportions as the mist of preju- dice and passion cleared away from it, disclosing in its out- lines the perfect symmetry of patriotic, high-hearted faith in the great cause for which he died, would challenge the admiration of all the ages, reaching at last the highest summits of historic renown. We would all find that as we gazed upon it we stood in the presence of a great character. Before it we would, with uncovered head, reverently bow. We would hail and salute it. Thus would the muse of his- tory, making up the records of human achievements, address it : ' Stand up, Abraham Lincoln, among the greatest and the noblest, and the best of this world's his- POLITICAL ORATORY. 23 tory.' And, looking about, discovering the halting spirit of Horatio Seymour had, in some mysterious way, cork- screwed itself into that glorious company where it did not belong, it would address him, saying: ' Stand down, Horatio Seymour, among the falterers, and sneaks, and cowards, and doubters, and those who sought to obstruct the march of a great nation, as it was resolutely treading the road which led to the clear atmospheres of freedom.' " The power possessed by Mr. Storrs for holding up to the ridicule of laughing auditors, the unfortunate blunders and utterances of some candidate, was exerted against Mr. Tilden in a way which can never be separ- ated from that really great statesman's career. To the well-informed political student a half-sad laugh must ever, unfortunately perhaps, be linked with the political utterances of " Sammy J." Take, for instance, Mr. Storrs' fun with him, in a Cincinnati speech, over his letter of declination: " "When the Democratic party becomes sentimental, it is time for those whose digestion operates in the ordinary way to become alarmed. Their sentiment is Mr. Tilden ; and at the expense of being somewhat tedious, I wish to read to you quite briefly one of the most tender, one of the most pathetic, and one of the most tearful contributions to political literature his recent letter of declination. Here I intend to be fair, absolutely fair. Last week, in the city of Chicago, I did a great injustice. I intimated in a speech, which it was my good fortune there to deliver, that his intellect was impaired, and that his. sagacity had become enfeebled. I was mistaken ; I am mistaken ; and no better proof of my mistake can be furnished than the fact that within three days after the nomination of Elaine and Logan he sent in his letter of declination. All this 24 POLITICAL ORATORY. demonstrates that Samuel J. Tilden is just as keen, and sharp, and far-sighted as he has ever been. He has taken, Mr. Chairman, to his earthworks and fortifications early. He has seen the storm coming up from the West. And Samuel J. Tilden is in out of the rain. I shall not read all his letter. The life of man is limited to about seventy years, ordinarily, and you cannot expect me to consume all that time in reading a tearful, sobbing epistle from the great railroad wrecker of the continent, who is the spirit of the present Democratic party manifest in the flesh ; and whoever is nominated will be but the reflection of Samuel J. Tilden. Just one sentence, and then I am going to ask who wrote this : " 'Twenty years of continuous maladministration, under the demoralizing influences of intestine war and of bad finance, have infected the whole governmental system of the United States with the cancerous growths of false con- structions and corrupt practices/ "I have a right, every human being in this country, proud of what it is and hopeful of what it is to be, has a right to denounce that as a wicked and malicious slander upon the most glorious period in our history or in the his- tory of the world. I don't take to this kindly. What has been the history of that twenty years ; that this man whom I will not now further attempt to characterize, denounces as ' cancerous maladministration?' In that twenty years this great party, for which this imperial state speaks to-night, in that time it has crowded a thousand years of the most glorious history that this world has ever witnessed. Within that twenty years Abraham Lincoln has b3en elected. Within that twenty years this party of 'maladministration' has lifted four millions of human beings from the night and savagery and barbarism of chat- telhood into the clear, bracing and elevated air of American POLITICAL ORATORY. 25 citizenship. And yet with such an achievement, that ' shines with the light of planets against the sky, a railroad wrecker, embodying the sentiments of his party, speaks of it as a career of ' maladministration/ Within that time this ( intestine war' to which he refers this intestine war which, in 1864, he declared was a failure, was waged a Union has been saved and the greatest achievement ever recorded in history, passed to the credit of the Republican party, represented here to-night. Within that twenty years, in that splendid, that glorious twenty years, the national honor has been saved against the assaults of his own party, who sought to destroy it. In that twenty years the national credit has been maintained, when he and his party would have debauched our honor by the repudiation of our public debt. Within that length of time this admin- istration, which he characterizes as * maladministration/ has taken a newly-made citizen by the hand, has made him a citizen, has given him the right of suffrage, has embodied that right in the constitution, and, by the grace and help of God, means to secure him in its full enjoyment. " That is the ' maladministration ' of which Mr. Samuel J. Tilden speaks. This glorious apostle of our history closes with this tender and touching appeal which I shall have occasion to say to you has made the eyes of Democrats suffuse with tears, choked their utterance, and has almost smothered them with sobs : " < Having given to their welfare whatever of health and strength I possessed, or could borrow from the future, and having reached the term of my capacity for such labors as their welfare now demands, I but submit to the will of God in deeming my public career for ever closed. SAMUEL J. TILDES.' "That letter was written in the mansion made famous by receipts of cipher dispatches, upon the walls of which hung 26 POLITICAL ORATORY. the skeletons of wrecked railroads and other corporations ! Samuel J. Tilden, with his hand on the bung of his barrel, ecorously submits himself to the will of God. " That is very kind of Mr. Tilden. This tender epistle goes all over the country. The distinguished mayor of Chicago reads it and he is a distinguished man ; he is a genuine, straight-forward Democrat. I supposed him to be over and above the sympathetic. But it goes right to the tender heart of Chicago's mayor, and he says: 'As I read it my eyes were dimmed with tears, my utterance was choked, my heart filled with sobs, and a great grief over- came me.' This is the sentiment and the sympathy of the Democratic party. 'Willie, we have missed you/ lam anxious to see that party turned into a purely emotional and sympathetic entertainment. I am anxious to see the club of 'rounders 'in New York; the representatives of the horny-handed and the hard-fisted, who have made night hideous with their yells in many campaigns ; I am anxious to see the belligerent Democrats of our great cities whose ears have been bit off in some joint debate, whose noses have been broken in some election contest, gather unto the shadow of weeping willows, marching to funeral music in a great sympathetic campaign. Why, think of the old party ? Think of its universal crookedness a party that never did a right thing in its whole life ! As I see it to-day weaving and winding out on the tariff question, Mr. Chair- man, I am reminded of the experience of the boy in that good old county Cattaraugus, in the state of New York, where I was born. Our mothers were good, prudent, thrifty women. When our trousers were worn one side they were turned the other way, so that when you watched a tow-headed boy you could not tell whether he was going to school or coming home. It's the same with the Demo- cratic party. Watch this Democratic party with its politi- POLITICAL ORATORY. 27 cal feet cross-eyed, with its right political foot on its left political leg. Take the tariff question, take the question of the support of the public-credit, take the subject of the vindication of the public honor in favor, they say, of preserving and maintaining the national dignity ; and yet voting appropriations^ money to build gunboats, and then refusing to vote an appropriation of money to supply the guns." The foregoing are types of the lighter side of Mr. Storrs' intellect. They occur all through his speeches, but not more frequently than such splendid passages as : "I like sometimes to figure in my imagination our nation taking a physical form and shape. How great, how radiant, how transcendent seems to be the genius of our institutions ! How much grander than on any other occa- sion does she appear when descending from her radiant throne she takes the trembling citizen, white or black, native or foreign born, by the hand, and covering him with her shield leads him safely to the polls, and protects him there until he casts a free and unconstrained ballot. That is justice." Nor do jibes appear in his efforts as frequently as such beautiful sentiments as : " I love to talk to young men, and to this young and giant West. I believe in the dreams that young men dream, and in the visions that young men see, and in the castles that young men build. For where without the dreams of the young men, lighting up the future with human possibilities, would be the deeds of the old men, dignifying the past with heroic achievements. Young men of this district, be brave, be hopeful, be true. Believ- ing always more in the goodness of God than in the dex- terity of the devil, rest assured that in the long run the 28 POLITICAL ORATORY. right side is the strong side, and no expediency can finally succeed which has not justice for its foundation. Let your courage increase as dangers thicken, and as difficulties multiply. Be not disheartened by long delay, nor elated by hopes of too easy success. The providence of God rules this world, and the nations thereof, and, true to Him and to yourselves, our country may yet become the incarnation of all that is wise and just in human government, and the lighted torch which she carries shall bring health and healing to all the nations." Describing the sweep of an on-coming Republican storm of victory at the polls, he exclaimed : " Gentlemen, the first-heard patterings of the coming storm are here. The great droppings are beginning to fall on the far Pacific coast. It gathers volume as it moves west. The roar of the advancing multitudes fills all the sky, and the gleam of their fires on every hill fills the whole heavens with flame. " When the mighty storm, gathering force and volume as it proceeds, strikes those eastern states, then there will be a deluge that will bury in one common watery, dishon- orable grave Democrat and Independent alike." Himself, on account of physical weakness, never in the army, at a grand soldiers' banquet, at which he was called upon for a toast, he pled forcibly for the brave ones who remained at home, and said among other things in fine antithesis : " Not alone to the soldier does the glory of the great triumph belong. Every single citizen who cast even the measure of his influence on the right side is entitled to share in this common glory. History will inscribe, in making up her final and impartial judgments, on parallel lines, the solid heroism and sturdy sense of Grant, and the POLITICAL ORATORY, 29 patient, long-suffering loyalty of Lincoln; the grand strategy of Sherman, and the wise counsels of Seward; the dashing and intrepid valor of Sheridan, and the devoted love of country of Eichard Yates; the fiery energy and splendid generalship of Logan, and the wise statesmanship of Morton; the dauntless courage of fighting Joe Hooker, and the resolute and uncomprising patriotism and sense of justice of Zachariah Chandler. Upon these imperishable records there will be inscribed not only the names of the great leaders in the great cause, but the humblest worker in its behalf will find his name upon its pages. Bright and shining on those resplendent annals shall appear the names of those thousands of noble, heroic and self-sacrificing women who organized and carried forward to triumphant success a colossal sanitary and charitable scheme, the like of which, in nobility of conception and perfectness of exe- cution, the world has never before witnessed, and which carried all around the globe the fame and the name of the women of America. From camp to camp, from battle- field to battle-field, through the long and toilsome march, by day and by night, these sacred charities followed, and the prayers of the devoted and the true were ceaselessly with you. Leagues and leagues separated you from home, but the blessings there invoked upon you hovered over and around you, and sweetened your sleep like angels' visits. While the boy soldier slept by his camp fire at night and dreamed of home, and what his valor would achieve for his country, uttered in his dreams prayers for the loved ones who had made that home so dear to him, the mother dreaming of her son breathed at the same time prayers for his safety and for the triumph of his cause. The prayers and blessings of mother and son, borne heavenward^, met in the bosom of their common God and Father." This classical and Periclean style of oratory of Mr. 30 POLITICAL ORATORY. Storrs, occurring so frequently in his preserved literary remains, is perhaps nowhere better shown than in his eulogy upon Charles Sumner, uttered by him just after that prominent American's death in 1875, during a Decoration address. He said of him : "A deed of patriotic heroism is in its effects eternal. It possesses an indestructible vitality. The heroic deeds of which blind old Homer sung, hav come down to us across the chasm of thousands of years, and to-day inspire the farmer boy upon the hillside and the prairie with high and noble resolve. Great deeds and great men make great nations. The Greece of to-day has the same hills and the same valleys that it had two thousand years ago the same sky bends over it to-day that canopied it then ; but Pericles and Phidias, Plato, Demosthenes, and the great men who made Athens the seat of culture and philosophy, are no more, and Greece the Greece lives no longer. And so our country, young as it is, is the country which our great and patriotic men have made it. Into the current of our national history the heroic deeds of the Union sol- dier have passed. Their names 'history will never will- ingly permit to die/ "We speak a few weak words ; but the great heart's gone to God. They have fought with their swords, won our battles, red, wet-shod ! While we sat at home new laurels for our land they went to win, And with smiles Valhalla lightens as our heroes enter in. They bore our banners fearless to the death as to the fight, They raised our nation peerless to the old heroic height. We weep not for the heroes whom we never more shall see, We weep we were not with them in their ruddy revelry. "But not alone in the rude shock of battle were the great results to which I have referred accomplished. The rebellion was a contest between opposing ideas, and long before they flamed out into war had they been brooded over by the thinker, urged upon the platform, proclaimed POLITICAL ORATORY. 31 through the press, declaimed upon the stump, debated in Congress, discussed and argued in the courts. The great champion of the cause for which the soldier died, lived to see its complete triumph and then he passed away. "From his boyhood, through obloquy and abuse, Charles Sumner stood forth the unflinching, unswerving champion of the rights of man. It would ill become me to attempt to pronounce a eulogy upon Charles Sumner. That work has been so well, so beautifully, so feelingly and truthfully done already in every city in the country that it would be an impertinence in me to undertake the task. But the great leading features of Mr. Sumner's character, intellectual and moral, were of such transcendent merit, that surely it will be well if his example is constantly kept before us, and our public men. A man of the broadest culture, and the largest literary acquirements, he never employed them for the promotion of his own personal ends, nor for any purpose of self-aggrandizement. He never used his vast learning to tickle the ears of the multitude, nor were his literary quotations, numerous and beautiful as they were, ever employed to gild an unworthy purpose. His intellectual fiber was of the most perfect rectitude. He could no more take a position that he did not believe to be right than he could change his nature. He made up his mind that the institution of slavery was a blistering shame to our civilization, that it was a relic of barbarism; and thus believing, he so declared, when to make the declaration brought upon him not only "frowns from, and alienation of, old friends, but personal violence, from the effects of which he never recovered. In the midst of the tempest which surrounded him, he stood unmoved and immovable. " Those perilous times came when, cringing beneath the threat? of the slave power, bent on destroying the 32 POLITICAL ORATORY. Union, the cry of compromise filled the air, and frightened politicians hastened to abandon the professions of a life- time ; hastened to give back to the slave power all that years of manly struggle had wrested from it ; hastened to renounce every principle secured by the election of Abra- ham Lincoln, in order vain hope to appease their Southern brethren, and to persuade them not to leave us. Not so Charles Sumner. Upon the eternal rocks had he planted his feet, and there was he determined that they should remain, and they did remain. How splendidly he stands out to-day as he then stood, now that the mists of passion and prejudice have cleared away and revealed his true position to us. " The war came : it was inevitable. We all remember how reluctantly we accepted the conclusion; how for weeks and dreary months we dallied and toyed with the slave, fearing to touch the question, and even returning the slave to his rebel master, hoping still to appease him and persuade him back. But Charles Sumner knew that there could be no reconciliation until one or the other of the opposing ideas, freedom or slavery, perished. Years before in his college halls, he had chosen under which ban- ner he would be found. His splendid rhetoric, now per- suading and now denouncing ; his powerful logic was day and night, in season and out of season, employed to press upon the government the necessity of making the issue d irect, offering the slave his freedom, and using his services as a Union soldier. The proclamation of Emancipation came. I do not attribute this result solely to Mr. Sumner, nor do I say that Mr. Lincoln did not see its necessity quite as clearly as did Mr. Sumner. Their positions were entirely different. Their responsibilities were different. The merit of this great measure can be attributed to no one man. POLITICAL ORATORY. 33 " But as the war progressed defeat following defeat in swift and sickening succession Charles Sumner was found the earnest advocate of every measure by which our soldiers could be sustained in the field and the great con- test finally pushed through to success. During all these years Charles Sumner never for one moment lost sight of that down-trodden race in whose cause he had, when a boy, enlisted. When the war closed the question faced the country and could not be avoided, ' What shall be done with the negro?' The slave-holder thought in the pacifica- ting policy pursued by Andrew Johnson, that he saw an opportunity to still retain the old power over the slave ; penal codes were adopted by the seceding states, the effect of which would have been to reduce the negro to sub- stantially his old condition. The people were wearied with the slave question, wearied of the war, anxious at once to heal the breaches which it had made, and disposed to be careless as to the means. The danger was imminent. Faithful through the years which have since passed, Charles Sumner stood sentinel, and never rested his labors until the negro was not only a freeman but a citizen. " The last crowning glory of his life, his ' Civil Rights' bill, has just ripened into law, and by it every vestige of the old slave system is wiped away. His 'works did follow him/ and almost his last words were 'take care of my Civil Eights bill.' "And thus his career ended. Where shall we find a nobler, a more patriotic, a more lofty one? But one great feature which distinguishes his career I have not yet noted. The negro having secured the privileges of citizenship, Charles Sumner showed to the world that the warfare which he had waged in his behalf was based upon no mean considerations of personal hatred toward the master. Ac- cordingly the great heart that bled for the slave, when he 34 POLITICAL ORATORY. was in the agony of his bondage, after his release, sorrowed for the master in the trouble which environed' him. The great purpose of his life had been accomplished, and he turned his mind to relieving the oppressed whites of the South. His idea of human rights knew no distinction of color or of creed; and Charles Sumner, he who but ten short years ago, had he then died, would have been execrated by the entire South, to-day finds the old slave-holder and the old slave alike sincere mourners at his grave, both feeling that they have lost a friend whom money could not buy, whom power and threats could not coerce. Over the grave of this great moral and intellectual hero we drop the tear of affection and reverence. It, too, shall we clothe with flowers, for in that grave rests all that is mortal of a states- man as pure in heart, and lofty and patriotic in purpose, as ever brightened the pages of history. " His spirit stands to-day face to face with the soldier of the Union whose cause he so valiantly maintained. The Confederate who once deemed him his bitterest enemy, now knows that he was his friend. Around the grave of such a man, all citizens of a restored Union can meet. In that solemn presence all bitterness is vanished. Adapting to my purpose the language of a great master of Eng- lish literature, I would say to North and South, black and white alike: ' Oh, brothers, enemies no more, let us take a mournful hand together, as we stand over his grave, and call a truce to battle. Hush, strife and quarrel, over the the solemn grave. Sound, trumpets, a mournful march. Fall, dark curtain/ upon a life thus gloriously closed." Such was his estimate of a great patriot, while of patriotism itself he said: " Patriotism knows neither latitude nor longitude. It is not climatic, It thrives on the cold and rugged moun- POLITICAL ORATOEY. 35 tain tops of our extremest East; it flourishes on the fertile field and abounding prairies of the West; it flowers out and blossoms into splendid fruitage on the plantations of the South. Think of your country and live for your children. It is worthy of it all. Young man, never fall into the error of supposing that interest in these great questions must be beneath you. It cannot. The man who thinks himself above politics is making a double mistake. He is over- estimating himself, and is underestimating all that mag- nificent science which should determine how best the inter- ests of 50,000,000 of people might be promoted. Young men, I honor your ambitions, and I honor all your dreams. I honor every vision that you see in the greatness of our country in the future, and your honorable and distinguished part in it. I am a young man myself and always shall be. I believe in the visions that young men see. I believe in the reality of the castles that they build. I believe in the fruition and performance of these splendid dreams. For all those golden visions, all those glittering dreams, are but the promises of the future. ' For where, where, without the dreams of the young men lighting up all the future and making it radiant and splendid with human possibilities, would be the deeds of the old men glorifying the past with human achievements?" His close to a grand oration upon the struggle be- tween the North and South can well end this chapter of general illustrations. "The inevitable end came, the triumph of right over wrong, of justice over injustice, and the -rebellion fell in utter wreck, with a resounding crash that was heard by all nations. The great cause of the Union, with spotless robes, with shining face and majestic form, came forth to meet and receive the surrender of her adversary. From 36 POLITICAL ORATORY. murky battle-cloud, from stifling slave pen, the dark spirit of secession and slavery emerged; her garments stained with the blood of the slave, her brow in gloom, the lust of power and pride of empire in her eyes. Forth she came, and prostrating herself before the majestic presence in which she stood, surrendered herself, the guilty cause of a wicked rebellion/' III. EARLY POLITICAL SPEECHES. THE KANSAS TROUBLES '58 DOWNFALL OF THE DEMO- CRATIC MISRULE FORETOLD FOURTH OF JULY, 1854 OUR NATION'S FUTURE LINCOLN'S EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION JOHNSON'S SOUTHERN POLICY. T HAVE always been a Republican," said Mr. Storrs I in a speech delivered in Horticultural Hall, Phila- delphia, in the fall of 1880. " The Lord was very good to me, and postponed my birth so late that I never had occasion to vote the Democratic ticket. I voted first for John C. Fremont. I kept straight at it ever since, voting the Republican ticket." Two years after he cast his first vote, Mr. Storrs addressed a mass meeting at Ellicottsville, Cattaraugus county, New York state, October 19, 1858, in behalf of the Republican candidates at the state election. In that speech he reviewed the questions at issue between Repub- licans and Democrats, which finally culminated in open war,and particularly the dispute on the admission of Kan- sas as a state under Buchanan's administration, which at that time was agitating the whole country. His first political address of which there is any record is characterized by the same maturity of thought, the same clear logic, and the same pointed wit that marked the best eiforts of his later life. In those days the Democratic party assumed to oe the sole friends and guardians of the Union, and every 37 38 POLITICAL OfcATORY. attempt to impose restrictions upon the slave-holding power was met by clamorous protestations, that unless the slave-holders were allowed to have their own way, the Union would be broken up. In a few trenchant words Mr. Storrs disposed of these hypocritical preten- tions : " Every Democratic platform has a peculiar, distin- guishing mark, by which it can everywhere be recognized. There are some men whose business is advertised in their countenances. We can always recognize a quack doctor, a Jew peddler, and a Democratic member of assembly at first sight. Our Democratic friends seem to derive great consolation from the reflection that they are conservative; but that is not what ails them. ' A great many good people/ said that brilliant and witty English divine, Sydney Smith, ' think they are pious, when they are only bilious. Many a young gentleman turns down his shirt collar, retires from the world in disgust, reposes himself on the banks of some murmuring stream, and thinks that he is a misanthrope and a poet, when his stomach is only out of order. Many a man thinks he is inspired when he is simply dyspeptic, and many a worthy old gentleman puts his hands loftily under his coat tails, spreads out his feet, stands with his back to the fire, and thinks he is a conservative when he is only a flunkey/ We have a large number of these illus- trious ghosts, long since politically entombed by the peo- ple, whose principle business seems to be that of saving the Union ! Every question of interest to them seems bristling with danger. They have any number of medi- cines and prescriptions for it they sit up with it nights, preserve it by Union-saving committees, and are constantly on the ground with their glue-pots at Mason and Dixon's line to stick the Union together. Whenever any question having the remotest relation to the institution of slavery POLITICAL ORATORY. 3d is broached, these solemn old doctors are clamorous in their cries of danger to the Union; and when, at the ensuing session of Congress, Kansas shall knock at the door of the confederacy and demand admission as a free state, you will see them running for their medicaments, and their cordials, their paregoric and catnip, their laudanum and pennyroyal ; a nigger will be in the question, and the Union in danger! " His conclusion was prophetic : " We are asked where we are coming out. That is not a question for us to answer; it is sufficient for us to go in right, and trust in a good Providence to bring us out right. When a man goes in at the wrong gate, it is asking altogether too much of Providence by some special inter- position to bring him out at the right. 'I will/ said the Mussulman, 'unloose my camel, and commit him to God/ 'First hitch your camel,' said Mahomet, 'and then com- mit him to God/ " The Democratic party seems to have a holy horror of agitation. What other or better way is there for a free people to arrive at correct conclusions on any given sub- ject, than by a full discussion of it? Agitation is as necces- ary in the political as in the moral or physical world. The darkest periods in this world's history are those in which free discussion was prevented. No great reform has ever yet been effected without it, and it sometimes requires the earthquake to upheave to the surface the ores of truth from under the layers of ignorance and falsehood which had covered them. When the atmosphere in our still and sultry summer days is charged with malaria and pestilence, the Almighty sends the thunder-storm, and the rain, and the whirlwind, and in the commotion of the elements which follows, the air is cleansed and purified, and we can breathe again with safety. If necessary, by such means 40 POLITICAL ORATORY. must our present choked and pestilential political atmos- phere be purified; and as a free people, wherever there is a wrong to right, or a great truth to be asserted and advanced, we shall claim and assert the right of the freest discussion. " The days of democratic misrule are numbered. From the waving prairies of Iowa to the coal and iron fields of Pennsylvania, the shouts of victory are sweeping over the land. Indiana and Ohio are swelling in grand chorus the glad song of triumph. They have nobly wheeled into the republican line, and are proudly keeping step to the music of freedom. And New York is unworthy of her high position if she does not drive Lecomptonism from her borders, to the cypress and willow swamps of Carolina. Upon congressional action this winter depends the free- dom of Kansas; and as far as your member of congress is concerned, his past record is clear, consistent and unflinch- ing in opposition to the extension of slavery. Put in nomi- nation by the soundest men in your county, always having been true to the principles we advocate, honest, faithful, capable, he will receive the vote of every good Republican in the district who desires the success of the republican doctrines. A political party is something more than a debating society. If it proposes to accomplish any practi- cal results, it must have organization, and its candidates must be supported. The only question we, as Republicans, are to ask is, is the candidate honest, capable and faith- ful to the principles of the party? This answered in the affirmative, there is but one course for every true Republi- can, and that is to give to those candidates a hearty and vigorous support. A democratic convention is a poor place for a man to get his republicanism indorsed; 'and if I desired to travel on the strength of my republicanism, I should not go to a democratic convention for my creden- POLITICAL ORATORY. 41 tials. The victories of 1856 were but beginnings, in the contest to follow. Soon are we to reap the practical results of those victories. Let every man feel that upon himself personally rests the responsibility. There is yet nerve and muscle enough left in the popular arm to shatter tjie demo- cracy to atoms; and when at last, one after another, those magnificent Western empires shall take positions in the line of states, joining in the march of advancing civiliza- tion, with the song of Freedom on their lips, and its bright star glittering full upon their foreheads, we will join in that grand festival in which the North and the South, the East and the West, shall strike hands in a common brotherhood of interests, whose high purpose it shall be to extend all over this vast continent republican doctrines, and establish upon it, for all time to come, republican institutions/' Six years later, while the ultimate issue of the war was yet undetermined, Mr. Storrs delivered in Chicago a Fourth of July oration, choosing tor his subject "Our National Future." He spoke substantially as follows : "Never since governments existed among men has a mightier question been presented, nor one in which man- kind everywhere, to-day and for all time to come, have a deeper interest. " The purpose of a nation is to train men ; that nation which trains the best men is the best nation ; and that nation which gives to human thought its largest scope and freest range ; which without shackles or hinderances places in every man's hands the implements by which he is to work out his own success ; which makes of each individual the architect of his own fortunes, and which limits the range of human thought and human enterprise, only within the boundaries of absolute right and justice ; that nation trains the best men and is therefore the best nation. 42 POLITICAL ORATORY. "And so, embodied in this question, ' What shall be our national future?' is not merely whether Jefferson Davis shall fail or succeed, whether the boundaries of the United States of America shall by rebellious bayonets be crowded from the gulf to the very gates of our national cap- ital ; but what is of vastly more consequence than these even, whether the experiment of self-government so mag- nificently inaugurated upon this continent shall be a final success, gladdening the hearts of good men everywhere through all the ages to come, or whether disastrous defeat shall overtake its champions, and it be pronounced a fail- ure for evermore. For this sublime experiment failing here does fail for evermore. " Upon the triumph of the national arms depends not only all that we have of material and physical consequence, but disaster to the mighty cause is ruin to all the glorious promises of our ideal future as well. It has been defended as never cause was defended before. With a zeal loftier and holier than that which fired the hearts of the followers of the hermit to rescue from the profanation of infidel presence the tomb of the Lord, have the millions of this great republic lavished blood and treasure to rescue from the profanation of rebel hands the sacred depository of human freedom. We fight then for the nation, and this includes not merely the territory which makes up its phys- ical extent, but the idea which is embodied in it. Our nation is not simply thirty- four states, bat it is all the glory of our past, all the hope and promise of the future. We are the trustees of this continent not for our own interests alone but for mankind everywhere. We have been fighting now for nearly three years to save this nation, not for the value of its cotton, and wheat, and corn, and manufact- ures, but for the value of the hope, the ideas, the aspira- tions, the tendencies which it embodies and of which it is POLITICAL OfcAfOUY. 43 the divinely chosen champion. To-day the nation for whose salvation we are fighting is the embodied spirit of the great departed ones who have contributed to its glory. Our nation is the wise forecast of "Washington ; the sturdy patriotism of Adams ; the earnest philosophic love of equal rights of Jefferson ; the clear and penetrating vision of Hamilton ; the fiery zeal of Clay ; the intellectual grandeur of Webster ; the indomitable honesty of purpose of Jack- son. Every great man or woman who has ever lived in it and contributed to its growth has infused the ideas which have constituted that greatness into the national life, and thus has each one become a part of the nation. " The nation which we now fight to save is all the heroic endurance, lofty fortitude, patient, uncomplaining patri- otism of the revolutionary fathers, the broad and world embracing enterprise, the marvelous activity, the wonder- ful progressiveness of their children, knit indissolubly together by that divine idea of self-government which inspired the fathers through the bloody toils of its creation and which, if faithfully adhered to, will crown with tri- umphant glory the efforts of their children for its ever- lasting perpetuation. " This nation then, is, so to speak, the spirit of repre- sentative government made manifest in the flesh of its people. The grand old puritan poet, John Milton, who although he saw not with earthly vision, did see with the infinitely clearer perception of an earnest, holy and exalted vision, said : ( Better kill a man than a good book. Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image ; but who kills a good bock kills the image of God as it were in the eye/ And so I say better that our darlings should all perish in this mighty struggle than that it be not prose- cuted to success. They are, it is true, God's noblest images ; but who kills this nation, the embodiment of all M POLITICAL ORATORY. these heaven-born aspirations, these grand ideas, kills the image of God as it were in the eye. For this nation is the precious life-blood of all these master spirits embalmed and treasured up on purpose for a life beyond life. We are here in this mighty Northwest from every portion of the country ; from every quarter of the globe. The spirit of our institutions, now imperiled, and which we now fight to save, has drawn us hither. We come from the shadows of the old South Church, baptized as it has been in the waters of a religious faith ; from the fields of Lexington and Concord where the first shot of a farmer soldier was fired, a shot which was heard all around the globe ; from the grand old Empire state, with its long line of noble names and its long list of heroic achievements, with its colossal commerce, the fibers of which intertwine the fate of kingdoms and which stands like the angel of the Apoca- lypse, one foot resting on the sea and the other upon the land, and mistress of both ; from the old Keystone, glori- fied by the greatness of Penn and Franklin, and whose reddened fields at Gettysburg are sanctified by the blood of heroes dying to save the cause, for which Penn and Frank- lin lived and died before them ; from the old world, too, with its noble traditions and with its noble names, are we here as well. All these memories, all these exalted deeds, have we brought hither with us, the idea of free govern- ment crystallizing them all about. These these thus fused together, thus working out their colossal results through us on these fruitful plans are our nation's, and how wor- thily that nation has been defended by her northwestern sons history has already recorded. "I speak to you this night the language of exultant hope: hope for the great nation we love so justly and so much, hope for our country's future ; hope for ourselves and for our children. And even now, wandering in the thin uncertain POLITICAL ORATORY. 45 light which I take to be the promise of a rapidly approach- ing and glorious dawn ; as with eager eyes we watch the moving clouds that yet overspread the sky; as we ask of the watchmen stationed upon the watch-towers and citadels of the Union, ' Watchman, what of the night ? ' the answer comes back to us, strong and clear, and full of assuring hope, 'All is well/ And despite our early disasters and de- feat, despite the long and wearisome and sometimes almost disheartening delay, despite the gloom that has overspread us the cause of the Union, the cause of good government everywhere, upheld by the strong arms of the stalwart sons of the Northwest, thank God, moves gloriously and nobly on. "I have then no doubt as to the result of this mighty contest and who can have ? I have no doubt but that the power of our government will assert itself in triumph. I have no doubt but that this, the most wicked rebellion which has ever blackened the annals of history, will be ground to powder. I have no doubt but that our national integrity will be preserved. I have no doubt but that the union of these states will be restored and that the nation will emerge from the fiery trial through which it has passed brighter and better and stronger than it has ever been before. It would be impossible, however, that a conflict mighty as that from which we are now I trust emerging, should not leave its deep and permanent impress upon our future national character. It will give tone to our politics, our literature, and our feelings as a people for ages to come. A nation saved at such a tremendous expenditure of life and treasure, whose title to the claims of nationality is written all over with the blood of heroes, will think more highly of the privileges which it confers than it ever thought before. Purchased at a price so dear, and rescued from destruction at a cost so fearful, it will be valued accord- 46 POLITICAL ORATORY. ingly, and preserve through all the future the name and privilege of an American citizen. Knowing- how much they have cost, they will be prized and cherished as they have always deserved to be but as they have never been. And so it will come to pass, that for the times to come, the people, who make this nation's greatness and who served it in its trial, will watch its interests with jealous eyes, and guard its honor with an earnest and a lofty zeal. Then it will come to pass that the mere politician shall no more trifle with its glory, trade away its honor, or sacrifice its interests for the advancement of his selfish ends. I am not claiming that scoundrelism in politics will cease altogether at the close of the war. So thoroughly chronic have scoundrelism and base selfishness become with some of those who have hitherto disgraced the name of politics by calling themselves politicians, that I fear the disease is altogether ineradicable in them. What I do mean to say js this : that the people have always appreciated the great- ness of our nation and its value infinitely better than poli- ticians as a class have done ; that had its salvation been entrusted to politicians alone it would have miserably per- ished the first year of the rebellion ; that the loyal hearts and strong arms and earnest will of the people have saved it, and that in the future they will watch the management of our national affairs, and the conduct of our public men, with a vigilance so keen as to be a continuing terror to the demagogue and the mere partisan. Straightforward hon- esty of purpose in the management of public affairs the people of this country have always appreciated and always rewarded. Still more will they do so in the future. I do not mean to say but that swindlers will yet ask for place, nor that scoundrels will not occasionally steal into office. Hereafter, however, this will be the exception. Our publio nien will be inspired by higher motives. The people them- POLITICAL ORATORY. 47 selves will realize more completely than they have ever done before the value of this Union. There will be greater care exercised in framing laws, and they will be more scrupulously obeyed. " Not less marked or decided in character will be the impress which will be left upon our national literature and our habits of thought. The meditations of the philoso- pher, the dreams of the poet the fancies of the roman- cer will all, years and years hence, be colored by it and draw their inspiration from it. Literature, whether it be in the tomes of the philosopher or in the song of the poet, has always, since the world began, drawn its holiest inspiration and its clearest expression from patriotic feeliDgs and impulses. Since the blind old poet sang the contests between Hector and Achilles, down to this very moment, that literature which will live because it is the expression of the human heart wherever it may be is that which clothes one's country with all the beauties which the lover sees in the mistress whom he adores, and which ranks the heroes of the native land among the good and great of the world. This love of country is one of the loftiest virtues which the Almighty has planted in the human heart, and so treason against it has been considered lamong the most damning sins. The history of the world teaches us that every great convulsion like that through which we are now passing has given new life and stimulus to intellectual exer- tion . Such wars as these tear up old formulas by the roots and scatter the fetters which have bound the human mind in special ruts and channels to the winds. The chariot wheels of war break down most mercilessly old barriers ; and the thunder of battles, and the bugle blast, summon from the deepest recesses of the human heart its deepest feelings and emotions, and give to them an intensity and vigor of expression which the summer days of peace may 48 POLITICAL OKATORY. never know. Who when he thinks of this our native land, of its glorious past, so brief yet so marvelously great, with its history thronging with names that have honored human nature and added to the dignity of our common manhood ; of its mighty physical resources ; of its vast territorial extent ; of its sublime present and the promise of its future, but that feels the heart throb with quicker beat ; the blood run with swifter course ; the feeling of inspira- tion changing our every nature almost and lifting us far above the dull level of our ordinary thought ? And when added to that history of the past, and adding new luster to the promise of the future is the record of this mighty rebell- ion crushed ; who can doubt but that the literature of our country, embodying this grand and ennobling experi- ence, will in the years to come grow broader, higher, and weightier, the expression of a nation which has left behind the period of joyous infancy, and attained through fierce tribulation the dignity and gravity of a noble man- hood ? I look for all these results, and many more, to the great crisis which our nation is now passing through ; and I look to its future with confident hope and expectations." President Lincoln's emancipation proclamation having been denounced by the copperhead element at the North as unconstitutional, Mr. Storrs, in September, 1863, made a zealous defense of it in a speech at Sycamore, Illinois. He discussed from a legal standpoint the leading measures of the administration, including the emancipation proclamation, the military arrests of Con- federate sympathizers at the North, the conscription law, and the use of negroes as soldiers. He argued that the constitution having given Congress power to declare war and suppress insurrection, and constituted the President commander-in-chief of the army and navy, POLITICAL ORATORY. 49 the President had the right to use all the means at his command to weaken the enemy and strengthen the government. " Who then is to judge of the necessity? Is it Lincoln or Vallandigham? Upon the President of the United States, as commander-in-chief of the army and navy, de- volves the especial duty to protect and defend the consti- tution of the United States ; as the head of our forces, on him devolves the responsibility of so using them, of fur- nishing them with such means, of so augmenting their strength, of so weakening the hands of the enemy whom they shall be compelled to meet, that they may be success- ful in overcoming all resistance to the enforcement of the laws, and all attempts to overthrow the government. It will require no argument to show that he upon whom the responsibility and duty of accomplishing a particular end is devolved, is also clothed with full power to select such means as to him may seem necessary to the accomplish- ment of that end. Plain, however, as this proposition is, we are not left without authority. The Supreme Court of the United States, as well as many of the most eminent statesmen of our earlier history, have repeatedly declared the rule in substance as I have stated it. The President, then, must have the right to determine whether the liber- ation of the slaves is one of the necessary means for the successful prosecution of the war. This right, established as well by our own judicial decisions as by the law of nations, must also be regarded as a part of the constitution. Hence, in issuing that proclamation, the President did not suspend the constitution, but called into life its powers against those in arms seeking to overthrow it. " But can we not see that the means was necessary and proper? Pollard, writing the southern view of the rebell- ion, in his history of the first year of the war, concludes 50 POLITICAL ORATORY. by way of encouragement to rebels by saying that thus far the war has proved that the system of slavery has been an element of strength to the South, a faithful ally to their armies ; the slave has tilled their fields while his master has fought. It is probable that Mr. Pollard is quite as well advised upon that subject as his Copperhead friends in the North, and understands the subject quite as well as they. If it has, then, been an element of strength to the South, why not weaken or altogether destroy that element of their strength? If the slave has tilled while the master has fought, tilling is as necessary as fighting, and the slave has thereby been made as efficient an enemy to the government as his mas- ter ; and if we have a right to kill the fighting master, we have the same right to appropriate the services of the equally efficient tilling slave. If the slave has hitherto been a faithful ally to the South, the government surely has the right to break, if possible, the alliance, and I think to enter into the same alliance itself. Even a Copperhead will probably not deny that if it is constitutional for the South to form an alliance with the slave for the purpose of destroying the government, it is equally competent for the government to form an alliance with the slave for the pur- pose of saving itself." If, as the Supreme Court decision in the Dred Scctt case affirmed, the negroes were the property of their masters, Mr. Storrs contended that the Federal armies had as good a right to confiscate them as any other species of property. "It must be remembered in this connection that the government has the right to demand the service of all its subjects for its own preservation. The law of self-preser- vation, says Vattel, applies as well to nations as to individ- uals. It is the duty of the government to protect all its citizens in the enjoyment of their rights ; it is equally the POLITICAL ORATORY. 51 duty of the citizen to protect the government when its rights or existence are threatened or imperiled. There can be no doubt but that the government could enforce the service of the indentured apprentice, or of any person bound to service for any period of time. If it have this right and it cannot be disputed that it has the length of serving can make no difference with its exercise. It would have the right to draft into the armies men bound to serv- ice for ten years as well as those bound for five. It could, therefore, annul a contract requiring service for life, as well as for a certain number of years. In other words, it could declare the relation of master and slave at an end as well as the relation of master and apprentice. To deny the conclusion would be to say that the government is at liberty to annul contracts between its own citizens when the safety of the state demands it but cannot thus affect its enemies under a like emergency. "In short, if slaves are to be regarded as property, then the right of the government to take them, and the right of the commander-in-chief to order them to be taken, are undisputed. If not property, then the South has no right to complain. If the slave is not the property of the mas- ter, then the master has no right to his services, and the commander-in-chief must clearly have the right to prevent those services being in any way used either to strengthen the hands of the rebellion or to resist the armies of which the commander-in-chief is the head." On the subject of military arrests, it was claimed by the opponents of Mr. Lincoln's administration that neither the President nor Congress had any constitu- tional right to suspend the writ of habeas corpus unless the public safety required it, and that the courts were the proper judges of such necessity. 52 POLITICAL ORATORY. " It would be absurd/' argued Mr. Storrs, " to insist that the right to suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus should be exercised either by Congress or by the President, but that the time when it should be done should be submitted to the judiciary. Clearly enough, in cloth- ing Congress or the President with the right to suspend the privilege of the writ when its suspension becomes neces- sary for the preservation of the public safety, the right of determining the existence of that necessity must also rest either in Congress or the President. To say that the Supreme Court has a supervisory control over the exercise of this discretion is to deny its existence altogether else- where ; for if, when the President exercises his discretion as to the necessity, the courts may supervise it, then it becomes not the President's discretion, but the discretion of the court ; and the constitution would be made to read thus : * The writ of habeas corpus may be suspended by Congress or the President in cases of rebellion or invasion, whenever the Supreme Court shall deem such suspension necessary for the preservation of the public safety.' " It is alleged, however, that the arrests made by the government have been an unconstitutional interference with the rights of the citizens, and that no such arrests can be made in a community professedly loyal without the process of law. The liberty of speech and the freedom of the press, we are told, have been invaded and trampled upon without justification or necessity. The arrest of Vallandigham has excited more discussion than any other, and upon that a direct issue has been made with the admin- istration. This arrest is denounced on the ground that Vallandigham was not connected either with the army or navy ; that Ohio is a loyal state, and that war does not pre- vail there ; that no military operations were being actively carried on there ; and that consequently martial law could POLITICAL OUATOKY. 53 not be declared, nor could the laws of war be applied to any of its citizens not actively engaged in the military service. But it is not true that the operations of this war are confined to the immediate territory in which battles are fought and armies are moved. There is war as well in Ohio as in Virginia. Wherever there is any of the slightest opposition to the government in the prosecution of the war, or the slightest assistance rendered to the rebellion in its efforts to overthrow the government, there is war. In some portions of the country, loyalty dominates and con- trols society. In others, rebellion controls and dominates. There is no place so dark but that some prayer is offered for the success of our cause ; there is no place so light but that lurking treason may be found. " The agencies invoked by this rebellion to its support are multiform. The means which it uses to accomplish success are various. The rebellion demands not only sol- diers and cannon, and the ordinary implements of war, but sympathy and argument to support its cause at home, to weaken its enemies, and to give it dignity and support abroad. Whoever aids the rebellion in either of these par- ticulars ; whoever, by speech or writing, contributes to the unity of its people, to the weakening of our own, to the undermining of public confidence in our eventful success, to the withholding of troops from the service, to their desertion when once engaged in the service, is as much an enemy to the government and as much at war with it as he who carries arms in his hands. Wherever such a condi- tion of things exists there is insurrection there is war. Whoever engages in such an enterprise is an insurgent. All these are the means which the rebellion calls to its aid ; these are the elements which it enlists in its behalf ; these are the instruments by means of which, as well as by armies, it wages war against the nation. All these help* 54 POLITICAL OKATORY. combine to make up the strength and power of the insur- rection ; and we, therefore, while at war with the insur- rection, are at war with every part of it. Our purpose is to cripple and destroy every element of its strength ; to meet and overcome every means which it uses for the furtherance of its designs. If armies are arrayed against the government, we meet and crush them. If the institu- tion of slavery is used against the national life, we meet and crush it. If seditious speech and seditious writing are used to weaken our own strength and encourage and embolden the adversary, we meet and crush that as well. All these agencies are parts of the insurrection, and we are at war with every part of it. Whatever strengthens rebels weakens us ; whatever encourages and emboldens them dispirits and disheartens us. Wherever any of these means are used against us, there is insurrection ; and wherever there is insurrection there is war. It would be strange indeed if rebels should have greater rights against the government than the government possesses for its own defense. " To me it appears that the right of the military power to arrest and punish the citizen depends not upon the place where the alleged offense is committed, but upon the nature of the offense. If Vallandigham, at Dayton, discourages enlistments, encourages desertions, creates dis- satisfaction and excites discontent in the army, I can see no good reason why he has not made himself as amenable to military trial and punishment as if the same offense had been committed at Vicksburg or Chattanooga. The free- dom of speech and of the press are indeed the highest privileges, but when these are used to overthrow the very government under which they are enjoyed, then they cease to be rights, but are wrongs which assume the largest pro- portions and are fruitful of the most alarming conse- POLITICAL OKATORY. 55 quences. When Vallandigham roams about the country, seeking by every means to excite popular discontent ; to impair and weaken the efficiency of our arms ; to dis- courage enlistments ; to encourage desertions ; to weaken ourselves and to strengthen the rebellion, he is simply turn- ing against the government the very privileges which he derives from the government. I fail to see that Val- landigham possesses any greater rights to stir up sedition among us here than he would have to work to the same end were he in the rebel states. If Vallandigham should, as a citizen of Virginia, endeavor to weaken our strength by speeches and by publications, no one would doubt the right of the government to stop his speaking whenever it could lay its hands upon him. I cannot understand how it is that he has larger privileges in Ohio than in Virginia. I fail to see that seditious speeches or conduct is any the less an offense when perpetrated in Ohio, which is confess- edly loyal, than when perpetrated in South Carolina, which is confessedly disloyal ; and hence I say that in spouting sedition in a loyal community, where converts to such sedition may be made, Vallandigham is as guilty in fact and inflicts greater damage than he would by seditious talk in a disloyal community, where no converts were to be made. The military power being employed for the pre- servation of the nation, and Vallandigham for its destruc- tion, they met as inevitably as the army of Pemberton met that of Grant at Vicksburg, and with like results. If Mr. Vallandigham and his followers do not like the use of mil- itary force against them, they had better not array them- selves against military force ; and whenever they choose to do so, they may be prepared to take the consequences. " An opposition to the government as bitter and malig- nant as that which proceeds from any other source is made on the ground of the employment of negroes as soldiers. 56 POLITICAL ORATORY. I am unable to see why it is not infinitely better that the negro should fight for, rather than against us. There cer- tainly can be no legal objection to it, for, if we have the right to deprive the master of the services of the negro, we clearly have as much right to require the services of the negro in our own behalf as we have to command the services of white men. I am not prepared to admit that the negro is relieved from his responsibilities to aid the government because of his color. I know of no provision in the constitution which declares of what color our armies shall be constituted. There being, then, no legal objection, it becomes a question of policy merely, and to the past history of the nation I appeal for the determination of that question. When I remember that the first blood shed in the revolution was the blood of a negro, Crispus Attucks ; that at Bunker Hill negroes fought side by side with white men, and that among the heroes of that day is Peter Salem, the negro ; that in Massachusetts, negroes, bond and free, were enlisted in the continental armies ; that Connecticut passed laws for that very purpose, giving as the reward of such service, freedom to the slave ; that Ehode Island sent its negro brigade, which fought under the eyes of Washington and Lafayette, and always with credit ; that more negroes were in the service of the country, enlisted from the New England states, than there were white sol- diers from Georgia and South Carolina ; that the legis- latures of Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania and Vir- ginia authorized the enlistment of negroes, bond and free, with the approbation of every general in our armies ; that by direction of Congress Henry Laurens went to Georgia and South Carolina, with all the aid which Washington could render him, to enlist negroes there in the service of the country, a step made necessary because neither Georgia nor South Carolina had contributed their quota of POLITICAL ORATORY. 57 troops ; that of the army of Washington at Monmonth 755 were negroes; that during our last war with Great Britain the services of the negro were again invoked ; that one-fourth of Perry's force at Lake Erie were negroes ; that Jackson enlisted them at New Orleans, promised them thejr freedom for their services, and faithfully kept his promise good ; and when, added to all these teachings of our past history, I remember the services of the slaves at Milliken's Bend, Port Hudson, and Fort Wagner, I prefer to base my judgment as to the expediency and policy of this measure rather upon the records of our history, the teachings of our experience, and the united testimony of the great men and the great events of our national career, than upon the carping criticisms of the mere politicians, or the elegant conservatism of Governor Seymour and ' his friends/ Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Laurens, Greene, Lafayette, Hamilton, Jay, Knox, and Henry, of our revo- lutionary history, Jackson, Perry, Scott, and Van Rens- selaer, in our more modern history, judged it wise to use the negro as a soldier, and acted upon that judgment. Seymour, Vallandigham, Voorhees and Singleton think otherwise. I have no difficulty in making choice as to whom I shall follow. I have already made my choice. I prefer the precedents of our early history, and the teach- ings of the wise and great men who have made that his- tory glorious, to the sophisms of Seymour and his associates. I shall act upon that preference in the future ; and I doubt not that the great mass of the people will also." The course of President Johnson to wards the South- ern states, which resulted in his impeachment, was dis- cussed by Mr. Storrs in an exhaustive speech at Ot- tawa, 111., in September, 1866. The Chicago Tribune reported it in full, and editorially characterized it as 58 POLITICAL ORATORY. " Websterian in logical reasoning, in purity of diction, and in force and clearness of statement." He began by saying : " The political issues involved in the pending elections are but a continuation of those that have been before us for the past five years. During all that period of time the Kepublican party has urged a vigorous prosecution of war against a rebellion in arms. The political issues were those which naturally grew out of the war. They involved ques- tions of policy as to the manner in which it should be con- ducted and the purpose for which it should be waged. The continued and triumphant supremacy of the Republi- can party was evidence of the resolute will of the people to suppress rebellion, to crush out treason, to punish traitors, and so thoroughly preserve our national integrity as to. remove all the causes which had given rise to the war. We were at war with the rebellion in its every part ; at war as well with the ideas to carry out which rebellion was inaugurated as with the armies which were marshaled for the support of those ideas, for the armies of the rebell- ion were but the physical expression of the political prin- ciples to sustain which these armies were organized. Every battle fought by Southern armies, every shot fired by Southern traitors, was in behalf of the right of secession, the political power of slavery, and the Calhoun doctrine of state sovereignity. In contending with Southern armies we contended with these political principles. When their armies were defeated the principles for which those armies fought were defeated also. When their armies surrendered to ours, they surrendered not only the guns with which they fought, but the principles for which they fought. For if, after fighting traitors in the field and vanquishing them, we fail to vanquish also the treason for which they fought, the war has been a failure infinitely more ignomini- POLITICAL ORATORY. 59 ons and disgraceful than it would have been had the Demo- cratic platform of 18G4 been true when it was written. The question now is, as it then was, Is the war a failure? "If after the sacrifice of three hundred thousand lives, and an expenditure of almost countless millions of money in conquering the military power of the rebellion, the only result has been to restore at once subjugated rebels to a place in our national councils, to a voice in national legis- lation without adequate guarantees that the political here- sies which gave life to treason, and inspired its exertion, shall not flame out anew into the horrors of civil war ; then is the war a failure indeed, then treason meets with no punishment, and patriotism has no rewards. For, refine and reason upon it as we may, the question of the hour is, Shall the fruits of Union victories be gathered and secured?" Scouting the idea that this could be done by an un- conditional restoration of yet disloyal states to a share in the national councils, he traced the course of Johnson point by point, showing that each of his executive acts "in behalf of treason and against loyalty" had been in violation of the constitution. "He found these states without governors, and he ap- pointed governors. He found them without a constitu- ency entitled to vote, and he straightway created a constit- uency. He found them without political power, and he clothed them with it, and so it was that the strange specta- cle was presented of rebels again exercising political power. The result of the elections for delegates was snch as might well have been expected. The conventions were as much rebel conventions as those which the fortunes of war had just dissolved. With the advice and under the direction of Andrew Johnson, constitutions were framed and declared to be the law of the land. These constitutions were as 60 POLITICAL ORATORY. much the work of the President, as were the governors themselves the creatures of his authority. " The new Moses seems to be laboring under the im- pression that the exercise of political privileges and the enjoyment of political rights rest solely and altogether upon his decision. He says that the people of the seceded states are all loyal, and that they have organized state gov- ernments, and elected members of congress who are at once entitled to admission. I, for one, desire better evi- dence of a man's loyalty than Andrew Johnson's indorse- ment of it. The President cannot change facts by asser- tions. He cannot make a treasonable people loyal by de- claring that they are loyal, any more than he can swing around the circle, and by hammering at the other end make the great loyal North disloyal by drunken and menda- cious charges that they are traitors. " He argued that Congress alone had the power to determine upon what conditons the rebel states should be re-admitted to the Union, and placed the issue before his audience in his wonted terse and pithy form : "The policy of Andrew Johnson and his supporters is the immediate restoration of southern states to power irre- spective of their present loyalty or disloyalty, without guarantees for the future, and without punishment for the past. The policy of Congress is to restore southern people and states to their original relations with the Union upon their adopting the constitutional amendment agreed upon by Congress. Nothing more, nothing less, is required of the South than this." The negro, he contended, must be protected in all his rights of citizenship, and this ought to be guaran- teed by legislation in every rebel state as a condition of their restoration to the political privileges they had forfeited. POLITICAL ORATORY. 61 " The Republican platform of 1864 declares of slavery, that * justice and the national safety demand its utter and complete extirpation from the soil of the Republic. But it is proposed by the author of that resolution and by the party in whose employ he now is, and whose addresses, manifestoes and declarations he writes, that the main structure of the institution may be destroyed, but that its scaffolding and supports shall still be left to offend the eye and disfigure the landscape. The work of extirpation is not completed until every statute which recognized it, every benefit to the master which grew out of it, every constitutional provision which secured and guarded it, every political power or privilege which resulted from it, is rooted out with slavery itself. For all these were but parts of the system, the limbs, the heart of slavery, and they are all foredoomed to ' extirpation from the soil of the Republic.' This great crime which, like a poisonous plant, grew upon the soil of the Republic, carefully watched and tended by zealous friends, grew with ominous rapidity, until its far-reaching branches, lengthening day by day, threw their shadows all over the land; its roots struck deep and widespreading into earth; from these the parent trunk sent forth its supports, and the odors of its blossom- ings lulled to sleep the patriotic vigilance of a nation, and numbed its conscience. The war waged against this gigantic crime by the Republican party is not ended until the poison- ous thing is utterly and completely extirpated. So long as a root, or limb, or fiber remains, our work is incomplete." He ridiculed Johnson's idea that the rebel states had a right to a voice and vote in proposing amend- ments to the constitution. This claim for the rebel states was put forward on the ground that as these states had no legal right to secede, therefore they had never been out of the Union. 62 POLITICAL OKATORY. ' ( A state cannot secede, in the same sense that a man cannot steal. It cannot legally, although it may in fact secede, and a man cannot legally, but the records of our courts show that many men do in fact steal. And so a state like Virginia is in the Union, in the same sense that the convicted thief is in Illinois. He is in Illinois, but he is also in the penitentiary. While there he has his rights, but they are the rights of a thief and not of a law-abiding citizen; and so Virginia, a rebel state, has its rights, but they are the rights of a rebel state, and not of a loyal one. The thief must serve his time out 'before he can be restored to his proper practical relations* with the people whose laws he has offended, and so must Virginia. The thief so long as he sees no chance for a pardon, or for an escape, ( accepts the situation ' for the most excellent of reasons, he can't help it. Virginia accepts the situation for the same reason. But because the thief gave up the stolen property when the officers of the law by force took it away from him, he does not thereby escape punishment for the crime, although, in the language of Andrew John- son, the larceny was utterly ' null and void/ any more than Virginia does when she surrenders the forts and arms that she has stolen, because she was compelled by force to do so. Nor when the thief is brought to trial is he per- mitted to have a voice or a vote in proposing what his punishment shall be, nor in 'ratifying the same.' Nor will Virginia, while she is on trial at the bar of the country, be permitted to say upon what condition her guilt shall be washed away and what securities shall be demanded for the future. "If, however, when Andrew Johnson was occupying the bench, a thief should be brought to trial before him, he would insist that it was a clear case of taxation without representation; that the criminal was taxed to pay the POLITICAL ORATORY. 63 expenses of the jury while he was not represented upon it, and that therefore twelve thieves should at once sit with the twelve honest men in proposing measures of punish- ment and security, and thus taxation and representation would go hand in hand; there would be harmony and fra- ternal feeling; thirty-six stars on the flag, a copy of the constitution at every railroad crossing, and a magic circle in every family. "Slavery, we are told, is abolished, and the negro is free. But until the seed is so thoroughly destroyed that it may never again grow into life and be re-established, until the negro is not only free, but the enjoyment of that freedom is secured to him against all invasion in the future, slavery is not abolished, nor is the negro free, in the full measure which the nation requires. " Like the fabled monster Briareus, slavery has an hun- dred arms, and like Proteus, may assume almost innumer- able forms. AVith every hand it works mischief, and in every form that it assumes it is dangerous. Every law which deprives the negro of the enjoyment of any of the rights of a citizen, or interferes with him in the enjoyment of any one of those rights, is the handiwork of slavery, is one of the forms which it assumes. "Until the negro is free, not only in the ownership of himself, but free to work for whom he pleases, free to have a voice in the making of his own contracts, free in the enjoyment of the proceeds of his own labor, free to invoke all the agencies of the law for the redress of his wrongs or the defense or enforcement of his rights, free to educate himself and his children, free to think as he pleases and to speak what he thinks, free as you and I are free, and cer- tain that no power shall deprive him of it, the magnificent promise, made in our platform in 1864, that slavery should be extirpated from t{ie gojl o.f the Republic, remains unfulfilled. 64 POLITICAL ORATORY " If we fall short in either of these things, and while we have relieved the slave from one form of bondage, suffer his old master to reduce him to another, we are false to our high pledges. The slave and all the world may then well say of us "And be these juggling fiends no more believ'd That palter with us in a double sense ; That keep the word of promise to our ear And break it to our hope.' "Slavery is not yet abolished. The negro is not yet free. For, if to-day we adopt the policy of Andrew John- son, to-morrow every rebellious state has it within its power to annul all its previous action, and by such hamper- ing legislation as their ingenuity would readily devise, reduce the negro to a condition of slavery in fact, what- ever it might be in name." If the Southern States desired in good faith to accept the results of the war, he saw no reason why they should not u prove their faith by their works," by putting on record their ratification of the constitutional amend- ments, and taking legislative measures to enforce them. He concluded with a scathing review of Johnson's record, especially denouncing the part he took in con- nection with the massacre of Union men at New Orleans. "He declared that treason was a crime, and should be punished, while hardly a loyal man fills an office in the South, and the punishment of rebels is by taking them into his confidence. He declared that they should be impover- ished, and fills the promise by placing it within the power of unrepentant rebels to persecute Union men and drive them from their midst. He declared that treason was a crime, and should be so treated, and proves the sincerity of his professions, by aiding with his sympathy, and. with his power POLITICAL ORATORY. 65 as commander-in-chief of the army, the traitors and con- victed murderers of New Orleans in the cold-blooded slaugh- ter of faithful and long-tried Union men, while in conven- tion peaceably assembled. He declared that in the work of reconstruction none but loyal men should participate, while in the reorganization of these state governments loyal men have no share, and in the administration of their affairs are premitted to take no part. Elevated to power by the Republican party, he spurns the counsels of its leaders, and defiantly seeks to defeat the measures adopted by the representatives of that party and of the people. Not satisfied with this, be seeks its overthrow by the organiza- tion of a new party in the country, which derives all its strength from rebels at the South and Copperheads at the North, and which he essays to build up by the distribu- tions of official patronage, by removing from office, with- out cause, tried and trusted Union men, and putting in their places pliant tools of his own, or those who have always been bitterly hostile to the party by whom he was elected and to the principles which it has always espoused. He has deserted all his old friends, who were the friends of the Union and the country, for new ones who have always been the enemies of both. "The man guilty of all these crimes is to-day President of the United States. This is his policy. With the blood of the slaughtered Union men of New Orleans upon his hands, he makes the tour of the loyal North, insults its sentiment, defies its representatives, and threatens more violence in the future. "He knows the people but poorly. They are as resolutely resolved to save this Union to-day as they ever have been. That purpose, rest assured, will be achieved, and whoever stands in the way of its accomplishment will be crushed finer than powder," IV. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1868. BLAINE'S STATE THE SCENE OF MR. STORKS' EARLIEST AND LATEST TRIUMPHS AS A POLITICAL ORATOR ARRAIGN- MENT OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY DEFENSE OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS. THE foregoing speeches of Mr. Storrs have been deemed worthy of preservation for their historical interest, as presenting in a lucid and forcible manner the issues which absorbed public attention in this country thirty years ago. It was not until the Presidential campaign of 1868, that Mr. Storrs achieved a national reputation as a political orator. By a singular coinci- dence, the State where he first won the distinction as a stump speaker which continued to grow and brighten to the close of his life, was also the scene of his last oratorical triumphs. The fame he won by his speeches in Maine during the campaign of 1868, brought him prominently before the country, and inspired that demand for his services in other states, through subse- quent campaigns, which never ceased until his death ; and it was in Maine, standing on the edge of Lake Maranacook by the side of James G. Elaine, that he made his crowning effort in the campaign of 1884, the last in which he was destined to take a part. He had gone to Maine in 1868 for a summer vacation, and letters from the West to prominent Republicans there spoke of him in such glowing terms, that he was sought POLITICAL ORATORY. 67 out and invited to speak at Portland along with Hon. George S. Boutwell, of Massachusetts. The Maine and Boston papers were enthusiastic in their praise of his eloquence, and on his return to Chicago he was request- ed to address meetings in this city and other parts of the State. The following speech was delivered at St. Charles, Illinois, in the fall of that year: "In I860 the Democratic party forfeited public confi- dence and was driven from power. In 1864 it demanded that it should receive from the people the confidence it had forfeited four years before, and asked to be restored to power. The nation answered this demand, and with overwhelming majorities declared that it was not entitled to public confidence, and that the reasons which had induced the people to drive it from power in 1860 had been intensified and multiplied. Two years later, in 1866, they again went before the people, their claims were re-examined and, with increased emphasis, rejected. To-day, the same party again appeals to the country and again asks that the interests of the nation be intrusted to its keeping. It is our business to inquire: first, whether the three verdicts given against the Democratic party were righteous verdicts ; and second, if they were, what they have done since then to restore confidence in them. That the verdict rendered against the Democratic party in 1860 was a righteous one, I will not attempt to prove to you here. That party sought to fasten the institution of slavery upon free terri- tories. It sought to protect it there by all the powers of the general government. It appealed to the people for aid in this wicked purpose, and the people righteously refused it. Nor need I spend much time in demonstrating that the verdict of 1864 was warranted by all the facts in the .case. It then declared the war an experiment, and the experiment a failure; demanded that hostilities should 68 POLFTICAL OKATOEY. cease, which would have resulted in the immediate recog- nition of the independence of the southern confederacy by every foreign power. The righteousness of the popular verdict rendered in 1866 was equally clear to us. The rebellion having been crushed by force of arms, the Democratic party insisted that neither rebel state nor rebel citizen had lost anything by his crime; that he should be permitted to dictate the terms of his re-admission to the Union which he had sought to destroy, and should be made the custodian of the interests of a nation which he had wickedly sought to overthrow. "Assuredly, then, the Democratic party cannot suc- cessfully ask us to restore them to power, on the ground that our former judgments against it have been erroneous, nor can it ask us to reverse the decisions delivered by the people in 1860, 1864 and 1866. Their claims for support must rest, not upon the ground that they were innocent of the crimes of which the people convicted them at those great public trials, but that, confessing their guilt, they have atoned for it by public services since rendered, of a character sufficiently important to entitle them to a full and complete pardon from the people against whom they had offended. And hence it is that the demand made by the Democratic party to-day for power cannot be enter- tained, unless it has either an entirely new set of leaders, or different views upon the questions which have divided the country for the past eight years, from those which it has held for the past eight years, or unless all those ques- tions have passed out of political controversy, and have been replaced by entirely new issues. tf That the leaders of the Democratic party are the same they have been for the past eight years, every one knows. Seymour and Vallandigham, Pendleton and Belmont, Henry Clay Dean and Brick Pomeroy were leaders in the POLITICAL ORATORY. 69' Democratic party in 1864 and they are leaders in the same party in 1868. Wade Hampton and Toombs, Fort Pillow Forrest and Beauregard, were leaders in the Democratic party in 1860; their operations North were suspended by four years of war, at the close of which they promptly fill their old positions as leaders in the Democratic party of the nation. "Not only has there been no change of leaders, but there has been no abandonment of the position which the party has held on political issues. They denounce coercion as unconstitutional. We have yet to learn that their opinions have met with any change on that point. They opposed every measure adopted by the administration for the prose- cution of the war. They denounced the first call for troops as unauthorized. They denounced the proclamation of emancipation as unconstitutional. They opposed the means adopted by Congress for raising money, as unconsti- tutional. They claimed that the conscription law was revolutionary, unconstitutional and void, and sought to pre- vent its execution by force. They declared the war a fail- ure. We have yet to learn that they do not hold these opinions still. These were questions which we discussed up to the close of the war. With reference to them, the position of the Democratic party is unchanged, and our verdict must be the same that it has always been. " It is true that they have assumed a somewhat different form, but in substance there has been no change. They are the same to-day as when the rebellion began and closed. In his last message to Congress, James Buchanan, the last Democratic President, declared that the government had no authority to coerce a state. The limit of national authority, he said, was to assist the judges and the marshals, and they having all resigned in the seceding states, there was nobody to assist and consequently nothing 70 POLITICAL ORATORY. could be done. James Buchanan died a Democrat. The Attorney-General, Jeremiah S. Black, wrote a long opinion holding the same doctrine. Horatio Seymour declared that an attempt at coercion was no less revolutionary than secession. This, at the outbreak of the war, was the position of what then remained of the Democratic party as a political organization. But the people believed that the government could coerce a state, and the attempt was made. Three years afterwards, and in 18G4, the Demo- cratic party declared the attempt a failure. In other words they said: ( We told in 1861 you could not coerce a state. You have tried and you have failed. Your failure proves that you cannot coerce those states/ Up to that time certainly the issues were the same. But the surrender of Lee having demonstrated that a rebellious state and its people could be coerced as a matter of fact, because they had been and were coerced, the same question again' arose when the nation proposed to reconstruct and rehabilitate those states. Having defeated the rebellion in arms, over- turned their entire political system, and conquered the people of the rebellious states, we insisted in 1866 that they must recognize the validity of the national debt con- tracted to suppress the rebellion, that the freedmen should be entitled to citizenship, and that slavery, to perpetuate which the rebellion was inaugurated, must be abolished. We insisted in 1866 that upon the recognition of these ideas, and 'their incorporation into the organic law, depended a return to them of the full enjoyment of politi- cal privileges within the Union. Our right to make these demands was denied. The Democratic party claimed that those rebellious states, immediately at the close of the war, occupied a position of entire equality with the loyal states, and that the government had no right to coerce them into a delivery into the hands of the nation of the results and POLITICAL OtlATOIlt. ?i fruits of the victories which the nation had achieved over them. " The people, however, decided, in 1806, that they had the right to dictate terras to a conquered rebellion, and demand that their representatives in Congress should exer- cise that right. Refusing to accept the constitutional amendments proffered by Congress, that body undertook by a series of measures called the reconstruction acts, to enforce substantially those terms upon the South; in other words, to coerce them into yielding up to the nation the fruits of the victories which it had achieved. As a result of these measures, what has been known as the Fourteenth Constitutional Amendment has been adopted. Under these measures eight of the seceding states have been re- admitted, they having paid the price of their admission by the ratification of this amendment to the constitution. This, indeed, looked like coercion. It was as complete a coercion of rebel political ideas and principles as the over- throw of Lee's army, and its forced surrender was a coercion of the military power of the southern states. "True to the old instincts preferring that the old issues should still be kept alive and the old questions still be agitated the Democratic party met in national con- vention at the city of New York, on the 4th day of July, 18G8, and solemnly declared that the reconstruction meas- ures of Congress were usurpations revolutionary, uncon- stitutional and void. If that declaration be true, and such be the opinion of the people, as a matter of course the fourteenth amendment falls with those measures of which it is the offspring. The state governments organized under it also fall, and it will indeed be true that the general government has no power to coerce a state in rebellion against its authority. It may conquer by mere force its armies, but all such measures as it may see fit to adopt to secure the results of its victories will be ' usurpa- tions revolutionary, unconstitutional and void.' Whether this nation has a right to coerce a state in rebellion against its authority into obedience to its authority, and whether to render that coercion effectual it may demand guarantees for future peace, is the distinct question put to the people by the Democratic party in its platform. It is the same question which we have thrice settled at the ballot box within the last eight years. The position of the Demo- cratic party on that question is unchanged. And so I confidently believe the position of the people on that ques- tion is unchanged and unchangeabl " The Democratic platform not only denounces the reconstruction measures in the general language which I have quoted, but it takes direct issue with almost every provision of the fourteenth amendment. It denies to the freedmen one of the highest attributes of citizenship, the right of suffrage, and demands that the exercise of that right shall be regulated by the citizens of rebellious states, who were the nation's enemies against the freedmen, who were the nation's friends. It demands that the national debt created to crush the rebellion shall be paid in an irre- deemable promise, thus destroying its validity declared in the fourteenth amendment, and adding to the crime of repudiation all the calamities of a worthless currency, or the imposition of onerous and unendurable taxation. It demands the taxation of the Government bonds, none of which being held in the rebellious states, would devolve additional burdens upon the loyal people of the country. It demands the immediate restoration of all the states, of course without condition. Such a declaration of principles opens every question which the war settled. It renders our victories valueless ; for if the seceding states are to return to the Union in precisely the same position they POLITIC AT, ORATORY. t3 left it which would be the case were tne reconstruction measures of Congress declared by the voice of the people revolutionary, unconstitutional and void the war is a failure. Five hundred thousand lives have been sacrificed, and three thousand millions of dollars expended in vain. " And yet with such a platform of principles, and with candidates upon it who propose to carry it out by force, we are constantly told that all discussion of the war and its results is the discussion of a dead issue. They entreat us to 'let bygones be bygones,' and to 'let the dead past bury its dead/ With a platform that would upset all that the war has accomplished, we are asked to say nothing about the war. With a platform which thrusts into our very faces every issue that the war settled, and demands that even by violence those issues must be resettled, and in another way, which demands that we shall repudiate every vote we have given for the last eight years, we are asked to forget the past. Wade Hampton, with the smoke of burn- ing loyal homes still clinging to his garments, whose hands are red with the blood of our brothers and our sons, and Forrest, fresh from the atrocities of Fort Pillow, demanded that the states which they carried into and aided in rebel- lion, shall suffer nothing for their great crime, and beseechingly entreat us to let bygones be bygones. If a forcible attempt is made to despoil you of your property and destroy your homes, you can hardly regard such an attempt as a bygone, until it is adequately protected against all future attacks of the same character. But it would be quite in keeping with this Democratic platform for the robber and the incendiary yet hovering around your home, kept at a respectful distance by barricades which you had erected, and watchmen whom you had placed about it for its protection, to denounce those barricades and watchmen as revolutionary, unconstitutional and void, and whenever 74 POLITICAL ORATORY. you referred to the old robberies and burnings, to entreat you to let bygones be bygones. I apprehend that, coming from the old robber and the old incendiary, you would re- gard a proposition to remove your watchmen and barricades as a renewal of % an attempt to despoil your property and burn your home, and as, substantially, the same old ques- tion. Such a barricade, guarding for the future the results of our victories, protecting us against rebellion in the future, is the fourteenth constitutional amendment. It is demand- ed, by those who sought to destroy the nation that that barrier be removed. It is the same old question. I make the same old answer No. " The Democratic party having done nothing to win back your confidence, has the Republican party been guilty of any acts which would justify the withdrawal of public confidence from it? Mr. Pendleton, in his speech at Springfield, arraigns the Republican party before the peo- ple, and proposes that it be tried and convicted on its history. By its history we are quite willing that it should be tried. By that test let it stand or fall. If within the comparatively short period of its existence it has achieved nothing for the cause of humanity and the interests of good government; if under its sway freedom has made no prog- ress, and the nation itself no advancement, it deserves to forfeit public confidence; it deserves removal from power. "In detailing the history of the Republican party, Mr. Pendleton in his speech at Springfield, said : ' The Repub- lican party, on the other hand, is not of long duration. It was founded in 1856, upon the ruins of the old Whig party. But all who were sectional, all who were fanatical, all who hated the constitution, all who hated the Union, all who were dissatisfied, went into the Republican organization, and they carried with them many dissatisfied Democrats. I need not tell you that the infancy of Ihis party was marked POLITICAL OUATOUY. 75 by the bloody troubles in Kansas, and by the invasion of Virginia by John Brown of Ossawatomie. I need not tell you that its advent to power in 18GO was marked by the destruction of the harmony which up to that time had existed among the people; that it was marked by an attempt at dissolution of the ties which bound our states together; that it was marked by the sorrows and miseries of the greatest civil war of which history has given us any record. But these parties the Republican party and Democratic party to-day stand where they stood in the beginning, carrying out to their logical conclusions the principles upon which they were founded.' "IHsnotof decisive consequence in determining the merits of the Republican party from its history to know how its infancy was marked, nor by what events its advent was marked. It is true that its infancy was marked by the bloody troubles in Kansas; but it is equally true that those bloody marks upon the infancy of the Republican party, and upon the history of the nation, were all made by Demo- cratic hands, and all bear the impress of Democratic fingers. The question is not so much what were the marks, but who made the marks? The bloody troubles in Kansas were the outgrovvtli of a wicked attempt of the Democratic party and a Democratic administration to force upon that territory, against the will of its people, by violence and fraud and bloodshed, the blithing curse of slavery. It is equally true that during the infancy of the Republican party, John Brown with thirteen men invaded Virginia. For an attempt to liberate the slave he was tried and hung. That the Republican party was responsible for John Brown's raid Mr. Pendleton dare not assert. The men who hung John Brown were Democrats. The body of the old hero was hardly cold in its grave before his executioners had kindled the flames of civil war, had been guilty of the vilest ij-g POLITICAL ORATORY. treason against the nation, and are now demanding the overthrow of those laws enacted to prevent another rebell- ion. The memory of John Brown's executioners will be handed to infamy. But though ' John Brown's body lies moldering in the grave, his soul goes marching on/ "The advent of the Eepublican party to power was, Mr. Pendleton informs us, marked 'by the destruction of the harmony which up to that time had existed among the people.' It was a curious kind of harmony which existed during the administration of Pierce and Buchanan. ' Order/ it was once said, ' reigns in Warsaw/ The Poles had all been slaughtered. It was the order which despotism brings about, by the destruction of those who chafe under it. It was the quiet of death. The Poles all massacred, order reigned in Warsaw. The voice of freedom having been hushed, and her slightest utterance choked, harmony pre- vailed, for the slave-driver had everything his own way. We are also told that the advent of the Republican party was marked 'by an attempt at dissolution of the ties which bound our states together/ That is true, but the truth of the statement is the everlasting disgrace of the Democratic party. The attempt at dissolution was made by the Democratic party, for no other reason than that Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States. It was an attempt of measureless wickedness and causelessness which Mr. Pendleton did not attempt to prevent, but rather urged on by saying to those actively engaged in it, 'I would mark their departure with tokens of affection; I would bid them adieu so tenderly that their hearts would be touched by the recollection of it/ For the wickedness of this attempt and for the attempt itself, Mr. Pendleton and the Democratic party are alone responsible. They made no effort to prevent the attempt being made; they put forth no exertion to prevent it succeeding. The infamy POLITICAL OKATORY. 77 of this attempt rests alone upon the shoulders of the Demo- cratic party. The humiliations and disasters of its defeat should be borne by them alone, and the glory of its over- throw belongs alone to the great loyal people, who proved themselves as able to meet and overcome the Democratic party in the field, as at the ballot box. Mr. Pendleton also graciously assures the liberty-loving men of this coun- try that their advent to power was ' marked by the sorrows and miseries of the greatest civil war of which history has given us any record.' This is true again, and it is also true that for that war, and all the sorrows and miseries which it entailed, the Democratic party is alone responsible. These sorrows and miseries are indeed marked deeply upon the history of the country, and their guilty authors will not soon be forgotten. The responsibility for that gigantic crime, and the griefs resulting from it, as a part of the bur- dens which the Democratic party must carry down with it through all history, is engraved upon the heart of every mother whose boy died in the great cause; it is witnessed by the tear of every widowed wife whose husband fell from Southern bullets, or perished ultimately in a Southern prison-pen. There is not a desolate home in all the land, nor a deserted fireside, made so by this wicked rebellion, that does not bear eloquent testimony that all those marks of desolating grief were made by Democratic hands. And all the countless graves of the slain heroes of the republic are marks of misery and suffering made by Democratic rebels, not only on the peaceful advent of a great party to power, but upon the pages of our country's and the world's history. All these 'marks' which Mr. Pendleton flourish- ingly parcels, were made by the Democratic party. When the burglar can safely denounce the merchant, because his advent to a prosperous business was marked by a robbery of his substance j when the incendiary can denounce hig 78 POLITICAL ORATORY. victim because his advent to his new home was marked by its conflagration, then let the Democratic party, North and South, denounce the Republicans because their advent to power was marked by the miseries of a war which Demo- crats began by an attempt at dissolution, in which they alone engaged. We gladly accept Mr. Pendleton's challenge, and will test the claims of the Republicans by what the Republican party has achieved. 'It entered the field in 1856, a protest of the best thought, the highest culture and the soundest he.art of the country, against the aggressions of the slave power. On behalf of the dignity of free labor, free speech and free thought, it appealed to the highest motives, and its appeal was nobly answered. " Its first great achievement, resulting from the elec- tion of Abraham Lincoln, was the rescue of our vast west- ern territories from the grasp of slavery, and from its blighting effects upon the interests and dignity of labor, and the dedication of those territories, now prosperous states, to free labor, and to free men. Against this great achievement, up to this time the grandest event in Ameri- can history, the Democratic party rebelled. Having saved the territories to freedom, the Republican party entered on the second stage of its career, and its second achievement, wrought out with more than one-half the Democratic party of the nation in open arms against it, and the other half in covert opposition, was the salvation of this nation", for all peoples and to all ages, as the sacred custodian of the priceless treasure of free government. Its great career was not ended. Having crushed the rebellion, it deter- mined to rid the country of the evil out of which rebellion grew, and the nation of the foulest stain resting upon its fair fame. It entered at once upon the third stage of its career^ and for its third achievement in the interests of POLITICAL ORATOUY. 79 humanity, for the cause of good government and in behalf of the downtrodden and the oppressed, declared that ' neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a pun- ishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.' And yet its work is not finished. It is now closing the fourth period of its history, and preparing finally to consummate its fourth achievement. "The salvation of the nation, wrought out through the perils of the mightiest rebellion which history records, in- volved the building of great fleets, the raising and equip- ping of gigantic armies. For these purposes a great national debt was incurred. And that debt the Republican party proposes to pay. "It entered upon the great contest with four millions of slaves in the rebellious states, who, .during the entire period of the war, were our friends, and hundreds and thousands of whom fought for us. It found those slaves at the close of the war free men. It proposes to make them citizens, and protect them in the full enjoyment of their rights as citizens Having crushed the rebellion, it pro- poses to protect the nation against its recurrence, and to withhold from those who sought the destruction of the national life any share in the control of our national des- tinies until they have furnished us the surest evidences that the national interests can be safely intrusted to their hands. "Thus having carried the nation safely through the perils of the rebellion, it proposes to gather the fruits of all its triumphs, and imbed them in the constitution of the United States, secure for all the future in the fourteenth amendment to the constitution, wherein are secured national honor, the freedom of the slave, and national 80 POLITICAL OKATOKY. security for the future, as a fitting consummation of the great work of the Republican party, for the people and for the world. The same opposition which it has 'encountered at every period of its progress it now encounters. The Democratic party, which opposed it in its efforts to give the territories to freedom, which rebelled when the effort proved a success, which opposed it in its great effort to preserve the national integrity, which opposed it when it gave freedom,' opposes it now, when it seeks to embody all these results in the organic law, and threatens to tear down the sanctuary in which they are enshrined, and denounces the great measure by which these results have all been gathered together as usurpations revolutionary, unconstitutional and void. " These are the great events in the history of the Repub- lican party. Considering the mighty consequence of what it has accomplished, it would seem that it has crowded a thousand years of history into eight short years of time. It found our territories in the clutch of slavery; it broke its hold and dedicated them to freedom. It found the nation beset by spies and encompassed by treason, trem- bling upon the very brink of ruin; it rescued it from dan- ger. It saved the only free government on earth. It found four millions of human beings slaves; it gave them freedom. It has lifted four millions of chattels out of the night and barbarism of slavery into the clear pure air of American citizenship. It has for the first time made American citizenship a living reality has made citizen- ship broader than the mere boundaries of a state; has made it in its privileges coextensive with the whole nation. It has vindicated the national faith, and if the people permit, will secure to all the future domestic prosperity and tran- quility, honor and respect, abroad. It has vindicated the capacity of men for self government, and a united Italy POLITICAL ORATORY. 81 and a united Germany follow closely upon and result from the example of a united nationality iu this great republic. All these mighty results, the most cheering for our hopes of humanity, has the Republican party accomplished in eight short years. Test it by its history. Judge it by what has been done, and when you have found that all the parties of which history gives us any record can produce nothing to compare with these results, you will decide as you have decided, that whatever mistakes of detail it may have committed it is still entitled to the largest measure of our confidence; that we are prepared to say to it, ' Well done, good and faithful servant/ " Besides the general charges which Mr. Pendleton makes against the Republican party, and to which I have already alluded, he makes several specific allegations against it, the most important of which seems to relate to the con- stitutional amendments. Mr. Pendleton professes an almost idolatrous admiration of the constitution, insists that our fathers who made it were wise men, and he said in his speech at Springfield, speaking of the constitution: ' I charge upon you who are Democrats ... do not seek to amend it, do not seek to change it.' We yield nothing to Mr. Pendleton in admiration of the constitu- tion. We appreciate as fully as he does the wisdom of our fathers who made it. But we admire it not alone for its e checks and balances/ of which he has so much to say. We do not regard it as a mere political 'teeter.' We admire it among other reasons because it was made by the people of the United States in order to form a more per- fect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general wel- fare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.' We admire it for the ample shield of pro- tection which it throws about the citizen in time of peace. 82 POLITICAL ORATORY. We admire it for the tremendous armory of power which it furnishes the nation in time of war. We think its framers were wise men, and they exhibited their wisdom by embody- ing in the constitution provisions for its amendment. " This nervous anxiety about amendments to the con- stitution is a new thing with the Democratic party. When, in 1800, Mr. Chittenden, for the purpose of coaxing the South back into the Union which they had determined to destroy, proposed amendments to the constitution dedicat- ing vast tracts of free territory to slavery, and pledging it the protection of the nation, even against the will of the people of those territories, no Democrat opposed such an amendment. They not only did not oppose it, but, Mr. Pend- leton among the number, gave it most hearty and cordial support. Again, when that distinguished Democrat, Mr. Vallandigham, proposed such an amendment of the con- stitution as worked a radical change in the very structure of our government, by having two presidents, one from the North and one from the South, Democratic objectors were silent. Again, when Horatio Seymour proposed a very essential amendment to the constitution, which was nothing less than the substitution of the Montgomery Confederate constitution in the place of our own, Demo- crats did not seem to be particularly alarmed, nor were they entreatingly besought to take the constitution home with them and place it on the family altar next the Bible, where they might watch it in the intervals of their slum- bers, and dream of it when sleep oppressed their eye-lids. "This new-born anxiety in the Democratic mind about amending the constitution springs from the fact that the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments are in the interests of freedom, while the others proposed were additional guarantees for slavery. ' ' Mr, Pendleton in his speech at Portland, delivered on POLITICAL ORATORY. 83 the 23d day of August, emphasizes his attack upon the Republican party, and reiterates it by declaring, as one of the crimes of which the Republican party has been guilty against the South, that ' it has destroyed their labor system ; it has converted three million of industrious negroes into very bad politicians/ The labor system to which Mr. Pen- dleton alludes is the institution of slavery. One of the peculiarities of the system was that it was all work and no pay. Mr. Pendleton complains that this system has been abolished, hopes for its return, and, to bring his hopes to fruition, demands that the Republican shall be driven from power. He might as well attempt to set time back, to roll the tides back upon the sea as they flow upon the land. But the exhibition of such an intense Bourbonism as this may well make us despair of ever having any new issues with the Democratic party. Mr. Pendleton is kind enough to furnish us the reason why he should not give political power to the negro. In his speech at Portland, he said, in speaking of the negro: 'I would not admit him to political power because I believe he is of a different race from ourselves. I am in favor of maintaining this a white man's government.' A discussion of such a topic as the origin of our species, the diversity of races, and whether the Almighty made of one flesh all the nations of the earth, perplexes political controversy. Without going very deeply into that subject, the Republican party contents itself that all human beings are entitled to human rights, and that all the citizens of the republic should stand on a footing of political equality. The questions of intellectual and social equality it leaves to be determined by what each man may do for himself, believing that every man should have the largest liberty in doing for himself in the way of social or intellectual development all that he can do. But it seems that our Democratic friends propose to determine a citi- 84 POLITICAL OIIATOKY. zen's right to vote by physiological, anatomical, ethnolog- ical and purely scientific tests. For this purpose we may expect the endowment of a university, headed by Mr. Pen- dleton, assisted by those able savants, Messrs. Morrissey, Rynders, Dean and Pomeroy, and before whom the negro's right of suffrage shall be subjected to the just, but never- theless stern and relentless, tests of science. Before such an able body of professors, I think I see as students the earnest searchers after truth from the sixth ward in the city of New York, numerously appearing, armed with a copy of Cuvier's 'Animal Kingdom' under one arm, the ' Vestiges of Creation ' under the other, and in their pocket a copy of the Democratic platform. Upon comparing the astragalus of a negro with the astragalus of a white man, it may be found that they differ. From this important fact will be deduced the conclusion that they are of different race, and denial of political rights to the negro would follow as a natural consequence, not from prejudice against the negro, but out of glory to science. What the result might be, if it were found that the same difference in the astraga- lus existed between different white men, I cannot undertake to say ; and the results which might flow from the adoption of the theory of the growth of human beings from oysters up to monkeys and through successive stages of development until creation flowered and blossomed out into the perfect Democrat, are fearful to contemplate. "Ages of slavery are not likely to develop great intel- lectual activity, and, to a certain extent at least, may the negro's want of intelligence be ascribed to the condition of bondage in which he has been kept. A slave no longer, the problem is, how he may be made sufficiently intelli- gent to discharge all the duties and exercise all the privi- leges of a citizen wisely and well. It is very clear that to limit his opportunities for self-improvement would not POLITICAL ORATORY. 85 result in a satisfactory solution of this problem. Mr. Pen- dleton seems to belong to that class of politicians who are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. ' If men are to wait for liberty until they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait forever.' It may be that there are evils resulting from the newly acquired freedom of the slave. But as Macaulay has well said, ' There is only one cure for the evils which newly- acquired freedom produces and that cure is freedom !' When a prisoner leaves his cell he cannot bear the light of day ; he is unable to discriminate colors or recognize faces. But the remedy is not to remand him into his dungeon, but to accustom him to the rays of the sun. The blaze of truth and liberty may at first dazzle and bewilder nations which have become half blind in the house of bondage. But let them gaze on and they will soon be able to bear it. "Mr. Pendleton demands that this shall be a white man's government. Whether he intends to exclude from the privileges of this free government all men who are not white, he does not clearly set forth. If this demand means anything, however, it means that none but white men shall be permitted to be citizens. For if negroes, under any circumstances, are permitted to become citizens, this cer- tainly would not be exclusively a white man's government. The result of this doctrine clearly would be to deprive the freedman of his newly-acquired citizenship, and that such is the purpose of the Democratic party, appears not only from their platform denouncing the legislation by which that citizenship is declared and secured as unconstitutional, revolutionary and void, but from the exposition of that platform by the leading members of the party, Mr. Pen- dleton among the number. " It is insisted, however, that the questions of citizen- 86 POLITICAL ORATORY. ship and suffrage should be left exclusively to the states. Under ordinary circumstances this would be so. But for the nation to have submitted the absolute dominion over our friends in the seceding and conquered states to our enemies in those states, would have been an act of injustice so outrageous and so gross as justly to have called down upon us the reproaches of every nation on the face of the globe. In the process of reconstruction the injustice of submitting to the rebel the decision of the extent of the rights of the f reedman is too obvious to admit of comment. When the Democratic party insists that the people of the rebellious states shall decide who shall be citizens and who shall be voters in those states, they do not mean what they say, for by the people they mean, not the negro, who has achieved his citizenship by his loyalty, but the rebel, who has forfeited his privileges by his treason. And hence in the decision of this question the f reedman, who is especially interested, shall have nothing to say, while the rebel shall have everything to say. If the citizenship of the negro in the rebellious states is to be recognized as a matter of fact, it would seem clear that the enjoyment of the privi- leges of civilization should be secured and guaranteed him. If to protect him in the full and complete enjoyment of those rights the ballot is necessary, I for one would confer it upon him. I would make the gift no idle one. I would have it real and substantial. I believe that in the states covered by the reconstruction measures the ballot is abso- lutely necessary to protect the negro in his newly acquired rights, and, believing that, I would give him the ballot, feeling well assured that he who had sufficient intelligence to throw the weight of his influence in favor of the nation in its struggle for its existence, and sufficient courage and patriotism to peril his life in the nation's defense, would be quite as likely to use the ballot wisely and well as he who POLITICAL ORATORY. 87 waged for four years a rebellious war against the nation. " The denial of the right of Congress to legislate upon these questions proceeds upon the assumption that the seceding states and the people thereof lost nothing by their rebellion. Mr. Pendleton in his speech at Bangor declares, with reference to the seceding states, that their state governments ' were in full vigor and operation before and during and after the war.' With reference to the vigor of those state governments before the war, no question is made. But that they were in full vigor as state govern- ments within the Union during the war we deny. We recognized their vigor as state governments during the war. They vigorously raised troops and vigorously carried on war against the nation. They did these things as state governments outside the Union, and as members of the Southern Confederacy, and it seems somewhat curious that such exhibitions of vigor which we finally succeeded in pulling down should be adduced as reasons why we have no control over them now. Had there been during the war less vigor of this kind there would have been less cause of complaint on our part. Had there been more vigor the nation would have been destroyed. Had there been no vigor, such as was exhibited by the Confederate state governments, there would have been no war. That those state governments had during the war no vigor within the Union which they were seeking to destroy, is a fact which cannot be upset by any amount of plausible theory. If during that time they were as a matter of fact state governments within the Southern Confederacy, they were not within the Union. They could not be within both the Confederacy and the Union at the same time. The task of showing that during the rebellion the South- ern states were not, as a matter of fact, members of the Southern Confederacy may safely be left to Democratic 88 POLITICAL ORATORY. orators and statesmen. If they could have been argued out of the Confederacy and into the Union, that remedy would certainly have been employed during ' the war. If it could have been made efficacious, its cheapness compared with the vast armies which we were, as we supposed, obliged to employ to effect that object would certainly have been a great recommendation in its favor. "Nearly two hundred years ago the British nation was called upon to face very much such a theory as the one now insisted upon by Mr. Pendleton and the Democratic party. King James II. was a model conservative. His character bears many striking resemblances to that of Andrew Johnson. It is said of him by an eminent histo- rian, 'The obstinate and imperious nature of the king gave great advantages to those who advised him to be firm to yield nothing, and to make himself feared. One state maxim had taken possession of his small understanding and was not to be dislodged by reason. His mode of arguing, if it is to be so called, was one not uncommon among dull and stubborn persons who are accustomed to be surrounded by their inferiors. He asserted a proposi- tion ; and as often as wiser people ventured respectfully to show that it was erroneous, he asserted it again in exactly the same words, and conceived that by doing so he at once disposed of all objections/ By various acts of parliament, penalties had been imposed and tests applied against partic- ular individuals, depriving them of office, and James pro- posed to exercise the dispensing power so as substantially to annul those acts of Parliament. This he called ' my policy.' Finding Parliament refractory, he determined to call together a new Parliament, and in doing so employed precisely the same agencies to secure a Parliament favor- able to his purposes, as were resorted to by Andrew John- son in 1866. Returning officers were appointed, directed POLITICAL OTIATORY. 89 to avail themselves of the slightest pretense to declare the king's friends duly elected. Every placeman, from the highest to the lowest, was made to understand that if he wished to retain his office, he must support the throne by his vote and interest. A proclamation appeared in the Gazette, announcing that the king had determined to revive the commissions of peace and of lieutenancy, and to retain in public employment only such gentlemen as should be disposed to support his policy. The commissioners of custom and excise were ordered to attend his Majesty at the treasury. There he demanded from them a promise to support his policy, and directed them to require a similar promise from all their subordinates. One custom house officer notified his submission to the royal will by saying that he had fourteen reasons for obeying his Majesty's commands, a wife and thirteen young children. But with all these precautions, James failed, as Andrew failed. The new Parliament were more stubborn and refractory than the old had been, and finally James fled the country, . took his son with him and went to France. And there the question arose whether the states were out of the Union. At once there arose in Great Britain a party who insisted upon the theory that there could be no vacancy in the throne; that James not being dead, the throne was not vacant, and that, accordingly, writs must run in his name. Acts of Parliament must be still called from the years of his reign, but that the administration must nevertheless be confided to a regent. Macaulay says that ' it seems incred- ible that any man should really have been imposed upon by such nonsense.' And yet it had great weight with the whole Tory party. The difficulty was solved by the British people, very much as the loyal people of the country have answered the Democratic theory. 'We recognize,' said the British people, ' the general correctness 90 POLITICAL OtlATOftY. of the theory, as a legal proposition, that the throne can- not be vacant. But whatever the theory may be, we look at the throne, and see that as a matter of fact no one oc- cupies it. It is vacant/ They accordingly declared the fact as they saw it that the throne was vacant and, being vacant, they proceeded to fill it. And they did fill it in a way which secured constitutional liberty to the British nation down to this day. And so the people of this country recognize the fact that for four years the rebellious states were out of the Union ; that they did establish and sought to perpetuate an independent government ; that their places in the Union were vacant ; that their seats in Congress were vacant. That they had no right thus to rebel we well knew ; that the right to exercise national authority over them was never destroyed we also well knew. That their secession did not impair the rights of the nation over them we perfectly well understood ; but that it did impair their rights within the nation we believe was equally clear. Their argument is based upon their own wrong, and they claim that they lost no political rights by rebellion because they had no right to rebel. "The position of the Confederate states during the war was defined to the entire satisfaction of the loyal peo- ple of the country by Mr. Lincoln in his amnesty procla- mation, December 8, 1863. He there declares that by the rebellion the loyal state governments of several states ' have for a long time been subverted; ' that the national author- ity has been suspended; that we are to reconstruct and re-establish loyal state governments, and that the conces- sions demanded by him were in return for pardon and restoration of forfeited rights. The work of reconstruction has been based upon this theory and upon the facts. As a consequence of the rebellion, the national authority over the rebellious states was superseded, to be assumed when it POLITICAL OUATORY. 91 achieved the power to do so, the state governments of those states were subverted, overthrown to be reestablished when we had the physical power to do so. Remembering in the language of Mr. Lincoln that an 'attempt to guar- antee and protect a revived state government, constructed in whole or in preponderating part from the very element against whose hostility and violence it is to be protected, is simply absurd. There must be a test by which to separate the opposing elements so as to build only from the sound ; the political rights of the people of those states had been forfeited,' to be restored only upon such terms as the nation might see fit to impose. " Such being the condition of the seceded states and people during the war, how was any change effected in their condition by the defeat of their armies? Our rights over them when their armies surrendered were certainly as great as when they kept the field against us. Our power over them was greater. Clearly the Southern Confederacy could achieve no rights which they had not during the war, merely because their armies had been defeated by ours, and they were unable further to prosecute the war. The defeat of a rebellion cannot enlarge its rights. During the war, we had, as against the South, the rights to say the least which any nation would have in waging war, or which we would have had in waging war against any other nation. We had the rights of war because we were at war, and when the war closed, we victorious and the Southern Confeder- acy conquered, we had the rights which the position gave to us, namely, the rights of a conqueror, and they had the rights which their position gave them, namely, the rights of a conquered people. To what extent we should exercise those rights was another question. But to say that at the close of a long war the rights of the conqueror and the con- quered are equal is an absurdity and an impossibility. If 92 POLITICAL ORATORY. it required four years of war, five hundred thousand lives and the expenditure of three thousand millions of money to conquer the seceding states down to a condition of equal- ity with us, they must certainly have been our superiors when the war began. It must be remembered, too, that we conquered not only the armies of the rebellion, but the entire structure of government, state and national, which rebellion organized and to maintain which its armies fought. And when the Confederate flag went down in final defeat at Appomattox courthouse, the Southern Confederacy and every state government organized under it went down with it. The results of these victories are gathered in the four- teenth constitutional amendment. We intend they shall remain there. " It is not strange that the Democratic party, having opposed every measure resorted to by the administration for the prosecution of the war, and denounced the Repub- lican party as guilty of gross usurpation of power in the means which it employed to crush out rebellion, should look with exceeding disfavor upon the 'debt which the nation was compelled to contract in order to furnish for its defense men and munitions of war. The staple charge made against the Republican party by Democratic orators is that it has left a legacy of $2,700,000,000 of debt to the people. It is hardly worth while to discuss the question as to where the responsibility of this great debt properly belongs. If the Democratic party and the South are responsible for the war, then are they responsible for the debt, and that they are so responsible the people of this country have repeatedly decided and still firmly believe. The debt was created in order to crush rebellion, and now that the active leaders and fomentors of that rebellion of the South, with their sympathizers at the North, should charge upon the people whose government they undertook POLITICAL ORATORY. 93 to destroy the responsibility of the debt, is an exhibition of impudence to which history furnishes no parallel. They may feel thankful that they are not compelled alone to bear its burdens. But assume that this debt is to be charged up against the Eepublican party, how then would the account stand? In the national ledger we might find the party charged with twenty-seven hundred millions of dollars loaned to it by the people; but we would find it credited, if the accounts were correctly kept, with a nation saved. In whose favor the balance would be could be quite easily determined; for to this nation the only sanctuary of free government on earth no value can be set. Its value is incalculable. " We propose to pay our national debt in money. Of that debt $356,000,000 are in promises of the government long since past due, and which as yet the government has been unable to pay. This debt is owing to the people, for a loan which at an early stage of the war the government forced the people to make to it. Every holder of a green- back is a government creditor, and has a right to demand payment before the holder of any bond shall be paid, because the greenback is due and the bond is not. It is our policy, and it is wise policy, to pay this past due indebtedness at the earliest possible moment. We all desire a resumption of specie payments as early as possible, and that, it would seem, is the duty which first presses upon us. The stability of business, every interest indeed, demands an early resump- tion of specie payments, or, in other words, the payment of the $356,000,000 of its indebtedness represented by greenbacks. So far as I have been able to learn from read- ing its speeches, the Democratic party also professes to desire that specie payments may be soon resumed. But the general method which it recommends for the treatment of the national debt would not only indefinitely postpone 94 POLITICAL ORATORY. specie payments, but would render it impossible. It is easy to see that if an individual was desirous of extricating himself from his indebtedness" he would first direct his attention to the payment of that which was first due, and attend to the balance of his indebtedness in the order of its maturity. If such a man were owing $5,000 of indebt- edness past due, and which he was still unable to pay, and $25,000 of indebtedness to mature at some future period, and bearing interest, he would not be considered a very wise financier if he were to insist that his paper should all be made due at once in order to save interest. In other words, a man's ability to pay his debts is not advanced by doubling the amount of his present liabilities. In addition to the greenback debt, the government owes $160,000,000 of indebtedness, represented by what are known as the 5-20 bonds, bearing interest at six per cent, and due in about twenty years. This debt the Democratic party proposes shall be paid in greenbacks and that it shall be immediately paid. This would, of course, involve the necessity of the issuance of that amount of greenbacks in addition to the amount already in circulation. If we are yet unable to resume specie payments, it is not very difficult to see that by making our demand debt five times larger than it now is, what is now difficult would become impossible, and we could expect nothing but an eternity of irredeemable and depreciated paper currency. And thus the immediate results of the adoption of the Democratic policy would be to eternally dishonor the payment of the indebtedness owing by the government to the people. The proposition to pay the 5-20 bonds in greenbacks amounts to nothing, unless we understand when payment is to be made in that way. If we await the maturity of these bonds, and green- backs have, in the meantime, so appreciated that they are at par with gold, the question as to whether payment shall POLITICAL ORATORY. 95 be made in gold or greenbacks has not the slightest conse- quence, and any human being accountable to his Maker for the proper use of his time could find no justification in spending any portion of it in the discussion of such a ques- tion. If it is intended, however, that the debts shall be paid in greenbacks now, inflation is a necessity, for the greenbacks can be had in no other way. That such is the intention of the Democratic party, is clearly shown by the reasons which they urge in support of that scheme. They allege that the people are burdened with taxation, and that this taxation results from the necessity of paying the inter- est upon the public debt, and that by the payment of the principal this burden will be removed. If they mean what they say, when they assert that their purpose is at once to relieve the people from the burdens of taxation, then they can mean nothing else than that they intend to accomplish that end by an immediate payment, as they call it, of the national debt in greenbacks. Mr. Pendleton, generally, has the credit of organizing this scheme, and he clearly fixes the time when he proposes that payment shall be made. In his speech at Centralia he said, * I would inflate if we were driven to it, just as much as is necessary to pay these 5-20 bonds in greenbacks. And I say it is the duty of the government, in one way or another, either out of its savings, out of the destruction of the national bank sys- tem, or out of inflation, to pay these bonds just as soon as, under the law, the government can pay them to save the interest/ The government has the right, under the law, to pay one-third of those bonds now, and accordingly Mr. Pendleton means that they shall be paid now. It is only by inflation to the amount of these bonds that they can now be paid, and hence inflation would be a necessity. But Mr. Pendleton suggests two or three methods, one of which is payment out of the government savings. But the 96 POLITICAL ORATORY. Democratic party proposes to raise no more money than is absolutely necessary to pay the ordinary expenses of govern- ment, and under that theory it would have.no savings. These savings, whatever they might be, can be produced only by taxes, and the Democratic party proposes very materially to reduce them. It charges that the present revenues of the government are largely in excess of its needs, and proposes to reduce them. In short, the plan of paying the national debt out of our surplus revenues involves the necessity of increasing taxation. It is the policy of the Republican party to diminish it. " Another scheme suggested by Mr. Pendleton is the payment of the national debt out of the destruction of the national bank system. When we consider the taxes imposed upon the shares of those banks and the federal taxes which they pay, but about $3,000,000 per year would be saved by this operation, and whether that would com- pensate for the panics created by sudden contraction and calling in of loans, which the destruction of those banks would involve, is a question about which there may well be grave doubts. It is not, however, a party issue, and it is enough to say that the payment of $3,000,000 per year of the national debt would be a very slow way of extinguish- ing it, and would hardly be a payment now, which Mr. Pendleton demands. Thus these two schemes are evidently impracticable, and so Mr. Pendleton evidently considers them, for he frankly says that he would inflate if we were driven to it, just as much as is necessary to pay those 5-20 bonds in greenbacks. "We have already seen that his plan involves the prac- tical repudiation of the greenbacks, and accordingly the practical repudiation of the bonds. For the proposition simply amounts to this a pretended payment by the gov- ernment of one debt ; by the creation of another debt, POLITICAL ORATORY. 97 which by the very act of its creation is made worthless. By such an inflation, the government renders its own prom- ises worthless, compels its creditor to take that promise which it has of its own act made valueless, and calls that payment. I need not dwell upon the ingenuity of this proceeding, nor the effect which it must have upon the future credit of the country. I need not repeat here that when those bonds were issued, the government through its agents, represented that they were to be paid in coin, and that when the law authorizing the issuance of those bonds was under discussion, every one who had anything to say upon the subject insisted that the fact that they were to be paid in coin was one of the great reasons recommending them to popular favor ; that the provision requiring the payment of the interest in coin was placed in the law to guard against any possibility of misconstruction which might arise from the fact that interest would mature b'efore the resumption of specie payments, a contingency which no one contemplated with reference to the principal, and, therefore, no such provision was deemed necessary as to it. " Nor need I enlarge upon the calamities which would inevitably follow such a vast inflation. The whole body of our currency would'be rendered comparatively worthless, gold would be drawn from the country by such a vast body of irredeemable currency, and values not only unsettled but substantially destroyed. "This would work not merely a burden upon the interests of labor, but would be the destruction of those interests the paralyzation of trade, the overthrow of com- merce, industry palsied, enterprise deadened, these would be among the first fruits of the inflation policy, and which would grow worse as the years rolled on. " Added to this would be the utter loss of national honor, the complete destruction of national credit. Thus 98 POLITICAL ORATORY. situated, without the ability to borrow a dollar in money, for any purpose, either to enable us to punish our enemies or to defend ourselves against foreign or domestic foes, the Democratic programme of overthrowing the state gov- ernments organized under the reconstruction measures of Congress, which they denounce as revolutionary, uncon- stitutional and void, could be easily and would be readily carried into execution. " The scheme of taking government bonds is equally wicked, equally impracticable, and a part of the same general scheme of running the national credit. "That the state cannot tax those bonds every one knows. That Congress cannot confer the power upon the states to tax them is authoritatively settled. All this Mr. Pendleton has been forced to admit, and yet he thinks that in some way or other, which he does not attempt to point out, some man with a ' clear head and an honest pur- pose ' may be able to devise some scheme by which the law with reference to the taxation of the national securities may be evaded. " To retain from the foreign bondholder a portion of his interest is not taxation. That is repudiation. The Kepublican party proposes such a policy as will result in improving the national credit, thereby enabling it to bor- row money at lower rates than it is obliged to pay. This done, the road out of our difficulties is easy and honorable. Our ability to pay our national debt is settled. Our willingness now alone remains to be decided. That ques- tion decided, as it will be by the election of Grant and Coif ax, in the affirmative, our credit is safe, and the adjust- ment of our national debt easy. " In the presence of such an attack upon the national life and honor, preserved at so vast a cost, who is there that does not say, in the language of our great captain, POLITICAL ORATORY 99 ' Let us have peace/ the peace that comes from good government, the peace that comes from equality of political privileges, the peace that follows a vindication of national honor, and the assertion of the national credit ; the peace which will come when rebellion, in all its shapes, is con- quered and all its heresies extirpated ; the peace which a careful preservation of the fruits of our great victories will insure ; the peace which will come when we are secured against future attacks upon the national life. A peace thus secured is full of glory for the future. Such a peace is solid and enduring, and its green and sunny slopes stretch out in infinite distances before us. For such a peace, all generations of time will thank us. The widowed wife of the soldier will thank us for it ; the bereaved mother whose boy died that he might have such a peace, will thank us for it ; and ringing through the very arches of Heaven, will come the thanks of the spirits of the slain heroes of the republic, that we have secured the peace for which they died." CHAPTER V. IN 1872 the Republican party had not only to con- tend with its recognized Democratic opponents, but with a discontented band within its own ranks, led by Carl Schurz, whose great cry was for civil service reform, but who also disapproved of the reconstruction meas- ures of General Grant's administration as too radical and repressive towards the rebel element of the South. The doings of the " Ku-Klux " had made military inter- ference necessary, and General Grant had not hesitated to put down their lawless organization by military force. Mr. Storrs thoroughly believed that any truckling to the ruffians who drove negroes from the polls, and shot down white men suspected of sympathy with the negro in respect to his civil rights, was mere cowardice, and sure to end in defeating the action of Congress on behalf of that oppressed race. He was, moreover, an ardent admirer of the strong soldier President. He therefore threw himself into the campaign of 1S72 with all his characteristic energy and enthusiasm as an advo- cate of the reelection of President Grant. The disaffected Republicans, arrogating to them- selves the title of " liberal " Republicans, were joined by some who had become Democrats after the impeach- ment of Andrew Johnson, and held a convention at Cincinnati in May, where they nominated Horace Gree- ley for President. The Republican convention of the state of Illinois met at Springfield toward the end of May, and Mr. Storrs, who was there as a delegate, 100 POLITICAL ORATORY. 101 addressed a mass-meeting in the hall of the House of Representatives the night before its session was form- ally opened. The first sentences that he uttered evoked an enthusiasm which was sustained to the end. He began by saying : "It is quite evident from what I see before me here to- night that the Republicans of the state of Illinois have but little thought of abandoning their party colors, or of deserting that glorious political organization which for fifteen years of our past history has represented the purest patriotism, the best thought and the highest impulses of the country. Coming together from every portion of the state to take counsel with each other, we have found, I have been delighted to note, that in our ranks there is no faltering, and that no appeals to merely personal preju- dices, no platforms which have their foundation on mere personal grievances, can swerve the old party of the Union a hair's-breadth from its course. " A year ago the Democratic party, tired and heart-sick at over ten years of continuous defeats, took what they called 'a new departure.' How dismal a failure they made of it I will not distress them nor weary you by re- peating. We have had for several years in our own party many very excellent gentlemen who, wearied with success, and finding that the Democratic ' new departure ' was a failure, have undertaken to get up one of their own, and ask the Republican party to join with them. The experi- ment which the Democracy tried was an entirely safe one, for however it might result, it was impossible that their condition should be any worse than it was. They could lose nothing by failure, and therefore it was entirely safe to try. But we are very differently situated. It is very doubtful whether our condition could be improved by the success of such an experiment, while it is entirely cer- 102 POLITICAL ORATORY. tain that it would be seriously damaged by a failure. As a matter of common prudence, I object to any Republican new departure. We started right at the outset. We have been going right ever since. We have reached the haven of success and victory at the end of each trip. A new departure would probably land us in another port, and whoever leaves our craft, to adopt the Democratic style of navigation, will wind up by becoming one of them, for new departure will land him where theirs landed them: on the bleak and desolate shores of political defeat and disappoint- ment. " I fail see any good reason why I should leave the Republican party. I fail to see why the party itself should be dissolved. If for nothing more than what it has done, we should be loth to desert it, and least of all should we leave it until we can find some organization which will suit us better." He then appealed to the past record of the Republi- can party, and contended that the interests of the coun- try would be safest in their hands. " But complaint is made that it has no new policy to propose; that the country requires, now that the war has ended, a line of policy looking solely to the conditions of peace, and that the Republican party has failed to furnish it. On this basis a new party has been organized, called the Liberal Republicans. Why they are thus called I shall presently undertake to show. We are all invited to abandon the old organization, to throw General Grant overboard; but before accepting such invitation, I desire to know what new line of policy this new party proposes; what measures it favors which are not already adopted by the Republican party." He proceeded to review the issues upon which the Cincinnati party based their platform. In his last raes- POLITICAL ORATOHY. 103 sage, President Grant had recommended the removal of the disabilities imposed by the fourteenth amendment, and Congress had taken action on the subject, so that " general amnesty " was likely soon to be made a dead issue. On the question of civil service reform, about which a great clamor was made at Cincinnati, Mr. Storrs again referred to the message of President Grant, ad- vising a reform of the civil service and announcing that he had appointed a commission to devise rules and regula- tions for the purpose. "Their labors/' said General Grant, " are not yet complete ; but it is believed that they will succeed in devising a plan that can be adopted, to the great relief of the executive, the heads of depart, ments, and members of congress, and which will re- dound to the true interest of the public service. At all events the experiment shall have a fair trial." '' He appointed on that commission Joseph Medill, one of the editors of the Chicago Tribune, when the Chicago Tribune was a republican paper a true and able man ; Geo. W. Curtis; one of the most cultivated and trustworthy men in the country; ex-Senator Cattell, of New Jersey, and a Southern gentleman of equal prominence. His desire to give this civil service reform a fair trial was demonstrated by the character of the men whom he appointed, each and every one of whom was known to be in favor of the experi- ment. Rules were established by those commissioners. The President has acted in hearty accord with them, and Congress has appropriated $25,000 all that was asked by the commissioners for the purpose of carrying their schemes into operation." What more did the new party want ? "Is it revenue reform? They have just nominated 104 fOLltlCAL OfcATOfiY. for president the most bigoted, insane and absurd protec- tionist in the country, and have openly and conspicuously abandoned that question as an issue in national politics by remitting it to the people of the congressional districts. Is it a reduction of the tariff which they desire? We need organize no new party on that basis, for Congress is now reducing the tariff at least fifty millions of dollars. Is it the payment of the national debt? The Republican party is paying it at the rate of one hundred millions of dollars per year. Do they wish it paid more rapidly? They dare not say so. Is it the resumption of specie payments? We are all in favor of that, and only differ in the manner in which specie payments shall be resumed. Greeley says, 'The way to resume is to resume.' Is that the policy of the Liberal party? They have no plan. They dare not name one- Are they for the continuance of the national banks or against them? They have not answered; they dare not answer. Is it for the further reduction of the army and navy? They have not said. Our army is not now a de- cent police force. Our navy is notoriously inadequate to the wants of the government. Do they propose to reduce them still further? They dare not say so, and the people demand an increase rather than a diminution of our naval strength. Is the new party founded upon the ground of opposition to land grants to railroad companies? On this question they occupy the same ground that we do, and Greeley has always been the advocate of these grants. Is it for settling our foreign quarrels by peaceful arbitration? This is precisely what, for the first time in the history of our politics, we are doing. The Alabama claims we pro- pose to settle by arbitration. We shall thus settle them. Before the election has arrived they will be a ' dead issue. ' " The proceedings of the Cincinnati convention were subjected to a scathing criticism. t>OLIfICAL ORA.fORY. 105 " The shame of that convention was in this : they were harmonious on questions of principle on which their differ- ences were irreconcilable, and they were irreconcilable on mere questions of personal preferment which involved no principles whatever. " They were agreed where agreement was shameful. They differed where differences were contemptible. Thus, Greeley and Horace White agreed on the tariff where it was impossible that they should honestly agree. They differed as to candidates, where, if their party has been organized on principle, a disagreement would have been equally shameful. They surrendered principles to which they should have unfalteringly adhered, irrespective of men or personal prejudices. They clung to personal pre- judices, which they should have at once surrendered if their party had been one of principle. Their harmony was dis- graceful, because it was the price of the surrender of prin- ciple. Their differences were contemptible, because they were quarrels merely about men. It is the first instance in the history of our politics, where a new party signalizes its entry into public life by the open and undisguised sale and abandonment of the idea which called it into being. "But this convention met. It fairly organized on Sun- day. If it had carried no other baggage than its principles it would have been the most harmonious convention that the world has ever seen. For on that first day of confer- ence, protectionists avowed their willingness to go for free trade, and revenue reformers avowed their willingness to go for protection all in the interests of reform. When Horace Greeley and David A. Wells met harmoniously on the question of the tariff we might well expect that the lion and the lamb were prepared to lie down together. "The convention declared against the course of Con- gress in its legislation against the South. Yet Horace 106 POLITICAL ORATORY. Greeley always has been, and is to-day, the steady advo- cate of Ku-Klux legislation. The platform and their can- didate are irreconcilable. One nullifies the other, and this convention, while seeking to organize a new party, barters its principles at the outset, claims the support of Kepublicans for the only man in their party who has ever openly advocated the right of secession, and slanders the memory of one dear to the heart of every true Republi- can Abraham Lincoln. " Bitterly opposed to a protective tariff, the Liberal Re- publicans, so self-styled, have selected as their standard- bearer and their leader the most prominent and conspicu- ous opponent of their doctrine in the whole country. Op- posed, or professing to be, with equal bitterness to the legis- lation of Congress with regard to the Ku-Klux, they have nominated the principal leader of the movement in favor of that legislation." Speaking of Ottawa, 111., in the last week of June, from the bench of the circuit court, Mr. Storrs humor- ously alluded to his occupying there for the first time something like a judicial position. lie said : "I have always spoken here as an advocate. I have addressed the great constituency of big-hearted, broad- browed Republicans of La Salle county as an advocate ; as the advocate of a great party, which it is pretty well demon- strated is as strong to-day as it has ever been ; a party whose fires are burning as brightly, whose spirit is just as high, and whose purpose is just as resolute, as when in 1854 it first grappled with the aggressions of the slave power, and when, in I860, it triumphed upon the election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency. It has a future before it, I think, just as proud and noble as the past of its career and history. It is a party which, if there was nothing more to be said about it than what it has done in POLITICAL OUATOR*. 107 the interests of good government and of this people, I should feel very loth to desert ; and least of all can I come to the conclusion that it is worth while for me to abandon the Republican party because I find here and there a few men men with grievances, men 'with a mission,' men who call themselves self-appointed leaders of this great movement. "Mr. Sumner, in a recent speech which he made in the Senate of the United States, declares substantially that he was the father of this great party, that the credit of its paternity belongs to him, and that its cradle was in the city of Boston. I have this to say with regard to our party that is peculiar to it, in the fullest sense of that term, the Republican party never had a leader; it has not got a leader to-day; it will never have a leader. The Republi- can party was made up from the start of independent men, thinking each man for himself ; and the rank and file of the party never followed one single step after the leader- ship of any man, where that man, essaying to be its leader, did not go in the direction which the Republican party desired to go. It has never had a series of platforms writ- ten for it and dictated to it by a convention ; the platforms of the Republican party have always been written in the hearts of the rank and file long before they had been inscribed upon the records of the convention. The rank and file have given law to conventions, and they have never received the law from conventions. Republicans can go to sleep at night perfectly well assured of what their princi- ples will be the next night, although a convention should in the meantime assemble. But how has it been, how is it to-day, with the Democratic party of the country? The Democrat goes to bed to-night in favor of revenue reform ; and he retires to bed to-morrow night in favor of a high protective tariff. He does it because he has found in 108 POLITICAL OUATORY. the meantime a convention has assembled, which tells him what he must believe, and what he must not believe. Mr. Sumner talks about the leaders of this great party. I say this to Mr. Sumner upon that point, that if he has any doubt about it, I would like to have him and any other ambitious man look up and down that great track of light which the pathway of the Republican party makes all across this continent, and he will -see all along the line of its march that its course is strewn with the carcasses of its self-appointed leaders. We have thrown them overboard, one after another, and one after another, regretting, perhaps, the necessity of our doing so, but at the same time, that fact, that we have disposed of a leader, never has for a single instant impeded the progress of that great political organization. I recol- lect, in 1866, when I had the honor of addressing the Republicans of La Salle county in this place, that we had thrown overboard a whole cargo of leaders, a president and cabinet ; and it operated upon the party like a tonic, and we were stronger and clearer-headed for the exercise. I tell Mr. Sumner and as speaking for the rank and file we may all tell him, and all others similarly disposed that the will of that great party is infinitely stronger than all the influence that all its leaders ever exercised. It is a vain thing, and a weak and idle thing for them to attempt to resist it. Mr. Sumner claims its paternity. It was an old doctrine of the heathen that the father should have the right under the law to kill his children ; perhaps it is on this basis that Mr. Sumner claims the fathership of the Republican party. My fellow citizens, no man was the father of the Republican party. No set of men were the fathers of the Republican party. The Republican party, like Topsy, 'bore itself.' It was the result of circum- stances. All the leaders in the country could not have POLITICAL ORATORY. 109 hurried its birth one single instant. All the politicians on the top of God's green earth could not have retarded it one single moment. Slavery had made aggressions on our ter- ritory ; the Democratic party were in favor of it, and the old Whigs did not oppose it ; therefore the people, finding in the existing parties no expressions of their sentiments, organized a party for themselves. You might as well say that when the earth lias been parched and dry for weeks, and we see great black clouds moving up in the west, coming speedier and speedier toward the zenith, suppose that Mr. Charles Sumner should stand off, just as the cloud reaches us, and say, 'I order it to rain;' and afterwards it does rain; and ten years after, when we are felicitating ourselves on the refreshing effects of that shower, Charles Sumner says, ' I was the author of that rain; I was the father of that shower ! I told you, didn't I say, Let it rain, and didn't it rain?' 'Oh, 'we say back to Mr. Sumner, 'the cloud was rising, and your little hand could not stop it; it was charged with moisture; the earth was dry; and God Al- mighty, that made great natural laws, made it rain, and you are altogether an insignificant trifle in his hands.' Mr. Sumner bring on that tremendous storm that in 1854 swept over this whole country like a whirlwind ! Why, he would have been borne on the wings of that wind as easily as ever a feather was floated on the breeze. If he or anybody else had undertaken to stop it, they had better have been in a boat of stone, with sails of lead, and oars of iron, the wrath of God for a gale, and hell the nearest port ! " He the father of the Republican party! He has given his dates, and says the 19th of September, 1854, he chris- tened it, at Boston. He quotes his words, where he used the word ' Republican ' as applying to this great organiza- tion, and claims that that was the first instance where it was used 110 POLITICAL OUATORY. " If any place was the cradle of the Republican party, that place was Ottawa, 111. If any man was the father of the Republican party, that man was E. S. Leland, for sixty days before Charles Sumner made his speech in Boston, Judge E. S. Leland made a speech from these very steps, and introduced a series of resolutions in which he pro- claimed the will of the people of Illinois, and named that great organization the Republican party of America. If the honor is anywhere, that is where it belongs. If we are to have Kistory of this business, let history tell the truth. I do not know whether Judge Leland was ahead of everybody else or not. He was two months ahead of Charles Sumner; and in the meantime the party had grown so strong and so powerful that the uses a-nd purposes of Charles Sumner, even as wet nurse, might with entire safety have been dispensed with. He then answered the " liberal " objections to the administration of affairs by the Republican party, as he had done in his Springfield speech, and proceeded to dispose of Mr. Sumner's objections to General Grant: " Great objections were made to General Grant, but I prefer going to the people to the rank and file and judg- ing General Grant precisely according to the results and what he has achieved. Men come to me with pallid faces and with trembling nerves and say, * Great God, this country is all going to pieces!' Says I, ( What's the matter?' ' Why, Grant has been four weeks at Long Branch! ' Per- haps he has; I am disposed to be candid; he has been there; but, my fellow-citizens, let us treat Grant as we treat everybody else, not better, and no worse. Give him credit for what he has done, and charge him for his defaults. Keepthe books as you please, either in double or single entry, and how will it figure up? Charge him with four weeks at Long Branch, but give him credit for POLITICAL ORATORY. Ill four weeks at Vicksburg. Charge him with three days behind a trotting horse at Central Park, but give him credit for a week at Chattanooga. Charge him with a week at Chicago, but give him credit for a week a Fort Donelson. Charge him with a trip into Pennsylvania, but give him credit for Appomattox. Go and charge it all up; there is enough of patriotic achievement still left to the credit of General Grant to stop the mouths of all the liberal parties that the sun will ever shine upon. " Mr. Sumner, in his essay in the Senate, says that a mili- tary man never has made a successful civilian. He cites his- tory to prove it; and if Charles is great in anything, he is great in his history. He cites the cases of Frederick the Great, the Duke of Marlborough, and the Duke of Welling- ton. His proposition is that a great military chieftanmust of necessity and for that reason be a failure in civil life; and he cites these three cases. In the first place, suppose I admit his instances are in point, his logic is bad. The instances are not sufficiently numerous; you cannot prove a general rule by three instances. I put against him Will- iam the Silent, Oliver Cromwell, and George Washington and Charles Sumner's illustrations are all gone to pieces. My illustrations are as many as his, and prove just as much as his do. But they are not in point. Frederick the Great was the greatest civil leader the Prussian nation ever had ; it is to him their system of education is due. What was the matter with the Duke of Marlborough? A great mili- tary chieftain, it is true; a wonderful success in that capa- city, and a failure as a civilian. Why? Did he fail as a civilian because he was a great military man? No; he failed as a civilian because he could not stop in one party thirty days at a time; because he was more like a 'Liberal Repub- lican* than any man that lived in the British Empire; because in the morning he attended a convention to keep 112 POLITICAL ORATORY. in the reigning dynasty, and the same evening he attended another convention to bring over the pretender. Marl- borough was great as a military man because -he was like Grant; he was a fizzle and a dead failure as a civilian because he was like Schurz; he was a failure as a civilian be- cause nobody could trust him and nobody would trust him. The proposition amounts to this, that a great military man and a brave man is a poor President, and therefore the converse of the proposition must be true that a poor general and a coward must be a good President. There- fore I suppose they have nominated Horace Greeley. If that is so, he fills the whole bill and has all the accom- plishments. "It is insisted that Grant can't make a speech. I think he can; for I think the speeches that are going to be remembered in the history of this world are not the mere words which we utter in halls like this, not the mere essays which we write, but after all they are the deeds which men do. The world, three thousand years ago, had forgotten all that the old Egyptians had ever written about architecture, and all that the old Egyptians had ever said; but there, on those desert plains of Egypt, stand those mighty pyramids, witnesses for all time to come of what the old Egyptains accomplished. We have all forgotten what John Brown said; who remembers what John Brown wrote? Who will ever forget what John Brown did? And while John Brown's body lies moldering in the ground, isn't his soul a-marching on? You may take, if you please, or let Mr. Sumner and Mr. Schurz select for themselves, the greatest speeches that either of them has ever made, write them in letters of living flame right against the whole sky, and put by the side of them the single word ' Appo- mattox/ and behold, how in that magnificent presence the flame of Charles Simmer's speech will pale their inef- POLITICAL ORATORY. 113 fectual fires. The world will never forget what U. S. Grant has done; the world will soon cease to remember what Charles Sumner has said. I would detract nothing o from the merits of that accomplished statesman; I concede his magnificent endowments; I concede his wonderful acquirements; but this great party of ours, which has, as 1 believe, the custody of the interests of good government for all the years to come in its hands, is infinitely better, and holier, and greater, and more valuable, than any man; and much as I revere the name of Charles Sumiier, I would see him sink out of sight into utter forgetfulness, into the deepest oblivion, rather than I would see one single star on the banner of this great party pale its fires. For, think what it has done. In twelve short years of time it has eclipsed a thousand years of the most magnificent history that this world has ever seen. It has taken four millions of chattels, and lifted them from the night and barbarism of slavery into the clear, pure atmosphere of American citizenship. It has taken a chattel and made him a sena- tor. It has taken personal property and made it members of congress. It is the great, progressive party of mankind. I cannot but sometimes sympathize with that conservative spirit that looks lovingly and affectionately back upon the past; but while I sympathize with it I cannot go with it. I know the picture that it has presented of the good old times when the slaveholder ruled is a pretty one; the slaveholder sitting like a patriarch, as they used to tell us, with his broad-brim out on his piazza, and his little chat- tels, male and female, dancing on the green before him. It is a pretty picture; but this is the one which the Repub- lican party draws no longer chattels, male or female; nothing, thank God, on this continent but free men and free women; by the mighty exertions of this great party, the architects of their own fortunes. You see v no longer 114 POLITICAL ORATORY. the negro child, boy and girl, dancing upon the green; you see them at the school-house, at the workshop, at the bench, on the farm, each, thank God, his own master, each carv- ing out his own fortune for the future. There may be less poetry in it, but how much more magnificent it is in the story it tells for our common humanity? How much more magnificent it is in the exalted and lofty patriotism which it typifies! Grant cannot speak; he is no orator, as Brutus was; and he has appointed his relatives to office. I suppose it was necessary for him to appoint somebody's relatives. I do not care who he makes collector of customs, nor who he appoints assessor; it is somebody's relative; and by and by, when the history of this great captain comes to be written, let us think what history will say. I suppose that history will tell us nothing about how he started from Galena to fight at Fort Donelson, about how he took these great western armies swinging around from Cairo to the sea; and how that great, silent soldier saved the nation the priceless treasure of free government for all ages to come. Perhaps the historian will say nothing about that. He will omit Appomattox, he will omit Spotsylvania; he will omit the bloody record of the days in the wilderness in what he has to say; but he will tell you how this man found his old father a postmaster when he was elected, and kept him there; he will tell he was at Long Branch four weeks; he will tell you that somebody complained that he received a gift. Stop and think how mean, how trivial, how utterly and altogether unworthy in the record which history shall make up, when the mists of passion and preju- dice shall have cleared away, will all these things seem to be ! They are just as small, and just as trivial, and just as mean, and just as ungrateful, and just as dirty to-day as they will be a hundred years hence; but in the light of POLITICAL ORATORY. 115 history, how small, will be more clearly apparent, perhaps, than to-day. But when the record of his name comes to be written, when the great journey of that silent soldier is completed, he will march down the aisles of time hand in hand with our great martyred President, Abraham Lincoln; and, standing on the highest summit of earthly eminence and heroic achievement, the whole world will hail and salute him." Mr. Greeley's record was reviewed as follows: * ? Opposed to him is Horace Greeley. Now, we all know Horace Greeley. Wo all know what he has been in politics, and we all know what he is in politics to-day. I have no terms of opprobrium to apply to him ; no denun- ciating epithets to use against him. I appeal hurriedly and briefly to his record, and let his record speak; and his record is all the more damaging, and his unfit ness for the great place for which he is nominated all the more con- spicuous, when I concede, as for the purpose of the argu- ment I will do, that he is honest. "In 1858 he signalized himself in this state by inter- fering in our senatorial election, and attempting to dictate to the Republicans of the state of Illinois that they should throw Abraham Lincoln overboard and return Stephen A. Douglas to the United States senate. In 1860 he made his advent in Chicago as a delegate to the National Con- vention from the state of Oregon. He came there, not for the purpose of fulfilling any great mission, but he came there to gratify a spite which he entertained against William II. Seward, for whom his whole state was unani- mous, and voted 48 times for Edward Bates as President of the United States. We all know how, through those days which preceded the war, how vigorously, bravely and courageously he talked, how he denounced the accursed slave-power; how he urged all young men to war to the 116 POLITICAL OKATORY. knife against it, if need be; but when the final hour of need came, when, having urged it on the stump, in Congress, and at the polls, then, when the supreme moment of trial came, and the question was submitted to the last court to which these questions are ever taken the arbi- trament of war, when our ranks were being filled up, and we looked around for the great leader whose clarion voice had for ten years shouted us on, where did we find him ? Was Horace Greeley there ? We saw him, with tail down and ears pinned back, cutting for the brush, and the first thing that Horace Greeley recommended when the hour of trouble finally reached us was that our ' Southern sisters should be permitted to depart in peace/ I shall not stop here to read extracts; I shall not stop to discuss whether the advice was wise or unwise ; but suppose that we had taken Horace Greeley's advice. Suppose that in 1860 his advice had been followed, and Bates had been nominated for President instead of Abraham Lincoln ; suppose his advice had been taken at the outbreak of the Avar, when the clouds began for the first time to roll threateningly up in the sky; if we had taken Horace Greeley's advice at that moment we would have been to-day a disgraced, broken, shamed and humilated nation. ' I will follow him a little further. There was dif- ferent stuff, thank God, in this people than in Horace Greeley. They resolved that what he had said on the stump, and what they had declared at the polls, should be carried out, and that this nation, which was worth talking for, was worth fighting for. They fought for it, and they saved it. Finding that his advice was not taken, you all remember how he wrote his most intemperate ' On to Richmond' call, and finally, after our arms had been defeated at Bull Run, he penned at the top of an article, * Just This Once,' and begged pardon of the people, whom POLITICAL CKATOKY. 11? he was afraid he had betrayed, and promised never to do so any more. By and by he got courageous again, and before the proper moment had arrived, he insisted in an impudent letter to Abraham Lincoln that the slaves must be all at once emancipated. You remember how Lincoln answered that letter. Down in the mouth again, he insisted that if Lee watered his horses in the river Dela- ware we should cry quits, and give up the contest; sur- render our national integrity, and recognize the inde- pendence of the Southern Confederacy. We didn't do it. Lee did water his horses in the waters of the Delaware, and the silent soldier who makes no speeches answered that piece of southern bravado on the 4th of July, 1863, by send- ing us the intelligence that he had taken the stronghold of Vicksburg, captuied 30,000 rebel prisoners of war, and opened the Mississippi from St. Paul to the Gulf. On that same day, on the blood-stained field of Gettysburg, Lee, who had watered his horses in the river Delaware, was driven back defeated and discomfited, the backbone of the rebellion was broken, and a check put upon its career from which it never recovered. "That is not all. A call was made for troops, and, of course, Greeley flunked again. In 18(54 he inaugurated peace negotiations with whom ? "With Colorado Jewett, probably the champion free-lunch eater of the American continent; a man known all over the country as a chronic dead-beat. He was the negotiator with whom Horace Greeley opened negotiations for the purpose of securing peace; and after letters had passed between him and Jewett, he writes to the President, calling his attention to the fact, and using this expression: 'Mr. President, I venture to remind you that our broken, bleeding, dying, and almost bankrupt country cries for peace.' Lincoln at once upon the reception of that letter, wrote him back that if there 118 POLITICAL ORATORY. was anybody anxious to treat for peace on the basis of a restored Union and the abandonment of slavery, to send him or bring him to him, and he was ready to treat upon that basis. You remember the course which the negotia- tions took. It turned out that the commissioners were not authorized. Finally Greeley wrote a letter to the Presi- dent stating that these men in Canada were not authorized to treat, but they thought they might get somebody who would be, and, accordingly, the President wrote that famous* To Whom it May Concern 'paper, stating precisely the same terms embraced in the first letter he addressed to Greeley. Greeley withheld from the "rebel commissioners that the President had in the first instance made that the only basis on which negotiations could be conducted ; and when Clay and Holcombe made a complaint that the Presi- dent had seduced them into the belief that the negotiations might be made freely and without terms, Greeley joined with them and said the negotiations had been brought to an end because the President had abandoned the basis on which they had been inaugurated. Now, I do not care so much that in the course of these negotiations he recom- mended that $400,000,000 be paid for the slaves ; I do not care so much that he blundered in opening them with Colorado Jewett ; I do not care so much that he misled the rebel commissioners themselves ; but I do care, as it behooves every Illinoisan who holds the good name and memory of Abraham Lincoln dear in his heart, I do care that on that occasion Horace Greeley joined with the rebel commissioners -and placed Abraham Lincoln in a false position before the country. Abraham Lincoln had made no change of base; the first letter he sent announced the only basis on which these negotiations could be conducted; he asked Greeley to show that first letter to the com- missioners in order that there might be no mistake about POLITICAL ORATORY. 119 it, and you remember how we were all dumbfounded when a portion of that correspondence was published, how we saw no escape for the President, and how.it seemed to us and to the whole country that Lincoln had been trifling with these commissioners, had abandoned the position, and had misled and betrayed them; and when, in order to set him- self right before the world, Abraham Lincoln asked Horace Greeley for the privilege of publishing the whole correspondence, merely omitting the phrase, 'our bleeding, bankrupt and flying country/ because he said it might dis- courage and dishearten the people at the North, when he asked that his good name might be vindicated before thirty-seven millions of people, Horace Greeley refused. Horace Greeley joined in the cry against him, and by that refusal placed Lincoln in a false position before this coun- try for two years; and not until the danger had passed, not until the storms of war had rolled away, was the cor- respondence published, and the name and good fame of our martyred President vindicated. "They tell us the war is finished; perhaps it is. I ask every sincere Republican in this house to-night what he believes would be the result, provided we had at the next assembling of Congress a Democratic majority in either or both branches of our national Congress. They need not un- dertake to repeal the fifteenth amendment or the fourteenth, but you and I know that there is such a thing as unfriendly legislation. You know as well as I there is not a man in this house that does not know it that, with a Demo- cratic majority in either branch of our national Congress, you might pile up facts mountains high, showing that the new freeman had been outraged, insulted and abused, and they would not see the facts. The time has not come when it is safe to withdraw from the hands of this great party the power with which, for years, you have entrusted it. It 120 POLITICAL ORATOUY. is a question which we must regulate and decide as we do all other questions; we must determine what men will do in the future by what they have done in the past. " If there should come to the cashier of the bank in this city two applicants for the office of teller, both of them with their platforms precisely alike, embodying the ten commandments, Christ's sermon on the mount, and every- thing that is good in morals and business, still the cashier, I take it, would not decide upon these applications merely on the platforms which these men made; he would inquire into their history; and if he found that one fellow had robbed his employer's till, that his credit was bad and his morals weak, and the other had never been suspected of any offense, he would select the man whose record had been good in the past, notwithstanding the old thief might say he had taken a 'new departure/ and promised never to do so any more. ' I am glad to hear you have taken a new departure; I hope your platform is all right; I think your platform is, but my dear sir, I must let you depart first with somebody else's money than my own. Everybody who asks us for political position, for power, for trust, can see that reputation is not a dead issue. The reputation of any party which solicits power is always in issue, and it will always be in issue. "Now, what issues do they present to us? Simply two. In this liberal platform which they all seem so anxious to put up, they clamor for the one-term principle. I am opposed to it, and so are you. One term is too long for a bad president and two-terms are not more than enough for a good one. We needed no amendment of the constitution to get rid of James. Buchanan and to get rid of Andrew Johnson. We did not need any amendment of the constitution to shut off Martin Van Buren, James K. Polk, and the rest of them; and the fact that we elected POLITICAL ORATOHY 1M Abraham Lincoln because the interests of the nation demanded it is an eternally convincing proof of the futility of such a plea as that the whole of the people shall be tied hand and foot by a clause of that kind in our organic law. I believe thirty-seven millions of people are quite compe- tent to determine whether they want a man for president the second time or not. They have always been able to do it, and all the precedents of our history have justified their conduct whenever they have, as they have done in many instances, quietly thrown him overboard. "But they tell us they are also in favor of local self- government. Now, what does local self-government mean? Why, it is the old exploded theory of state sovereignty, and nothing else under heaven. Read the Democratic speeches that are made at their meetings, indorsing Greeley and favoring his nomination by the convention, and elec- tion. It is the same talk we heard exactly, all through the war, of tyranny and oppression, and the iron heel of the tyrant. My fellow-citizens, go home to-night and ask yourselves, in the presence of your own conscience, and in the presence of God, whether you feel you have been tyran- ized over. Ask yourselves whether this magnificent spec- tacle which is now presented is the result of tyranny that of a great people, led as they have been by the steady hand of this great captain, encountering a mighty volume of debt, and reducing that debt hundreds of millions of dol- lars, and at the same time reducing the burden of their tax- ation in equal proportions. Think, too, how our green- backs are appreciating; think how our bonds are appreciat- ing in the markets of the world; think how our credit has advanced; think how prosperity prevails throughout all our borders; and then, look at the President of the United States, and thank God that he is no genius, that he is simply a plain, honest, capable, faithful man, true to the 122 POLITICAL ORATORY. interests of the great people by whom he was placed in his position. " He declared to you at the outset, ' I shall have no policy opposed to the will of the people/ How did he illustrate it? He thought, early in his administration, that the interests of this country demanded the acquisition of the island of San Domingo. I thought it did not; the most of you thought it did not; I have seen occasion to change my opinion upon that subject; but finding that the will of the people was against it, General Grant sends his manly and noble message to Congress, and says, f I thought that the interests of our trade, our commerce, and our nation de- manded the acquisition of that island; I thought not only for commercial purposes, and in view of future complications with foreign powers, we ought to have it, but in and of itself we ought to have it. I thought so then, and I think so still. I sent my commissioners, among the best men in the country there, and they have reported as I thought. You, my fellow citizens, do not want it; I only want it for you; if you do not want it, do not have it; I have no policy opposed to the will of the people/ " I tell you, in the years that are to come, standing up against all the glittering rhetoric of mere senatorial ora- tors, that simple state paper, magnificent in its self-deny- ing patriotism, will stand out like a great gigantic pyra- mid, challenging the admiration and gratitude of mankind. " Yet, after having done what he has done, and accom- plished what he has accomplished, it is insisted that he must be thrown overboard, and Horace Greeley substituted in his place. It is claimed that he has violated his faith with the people in the injudicious appointments he has made. I am here making no apologies; I am not here as a partisan, either; but I believe that there is, deep down in the popu- lar heart of the people, a sense of fair play and of com- POLITICAL ORATORY. 123 mon decent treatment, that will vindicate, and protect and defend him; that same great nation that has rallied around our martyred President as with cords of steel, will rally around their living captain as with flames and circlets of fire, and protect, and justify, and care for, and defend him. I ask you now to remember, whenever there has been, in the history of the politics of this country, charges so malignant and so base, and epithets so vituperative as have been employed against Ulysses S. Grant, you would stop and ask yourselves, ' What has this man done? ' Has he broken open a bank? Has he stricken down his neighbor in the dead hour of the night? Has he robbed anybody? Of what offense is he guilty? "What crime has he committed? ' Run through the whole catalogue of crimes, and still the denunciations that have been poured upon him have been all too severe; and we answer and say : ' He has done nothing except to save this nation/ We will save it again, and save it, my fellow citizens, through him. The con- test upon which we are just entering will be one of the most animaied which has ever occurred in the political history of this country; the same old party stands up as strong, powerful and bold as it ever did; its banner is lifted just as high; it keeps step to-day, as it always has kept step, to the glorious music of the nation; it knows no faltering, it knows no shrinking of the spirit, no trembling of the nerve ; and as we come into line, now at the open- ing of this campaign, here together in this great and mag- nificent county of La Salle, let the old fires burn, all up and down the land, and let the word go all up and down the line, let the old spirit rise up in every heart, and let the old order be given from the beginning to the end of the continent, 'Forward ! ' and victory is assuredly ours." Mr. Storrs spoke the following week at Freeport, going over the same ground as at Ottawa, and in pretty 124 POLITICAL ORATORY. much the same form. He commenced by referring to a Eepublican meeting he had addressed there in 1861, and another in 1864-, when Abraham Lincoln was a candidate for a second term. He then gave a running history of the Eepublican party from its organization, showing that the party had religiously performed every promise which it had ever made, and kept its faith with the people. He went on to say : "The platform of the so-called 'Liberals' calls for nothing which the people demand and which the Ee- publican party is not abundantly able to carry out. The Liberals demand the payment of the national debt; but the Eepublican party is paying it at the rate of one hun- dred millions of dollars per year. They demand the re- duction of taxation, but the Eepublican party has already reduced taxation over one hundred millions of dollars. They demand the resumption of specie payments, but the policy of the Eepublican party has so far strengthened the national credit, that we are hastening toward specie re- sumption as rapidly as the business interests of the nation will justify. They demand the equality of all our citizens be- fore the law, but to the Eepublican party alone is the na- tion and the world indebted for the fact that political in- equalities have ceased to exist in this country. They de- mand a reform of the civil service, but fail to tell us what reform they wish, or how it shall be effected. Mr. Trum- bull proposed that postmasters be elected by the people; but they have already scouted the idea as utterly impracti- cable. The present administration is the first and only one which has ever undertaken, in good faith, to effect practical reforms in our civil service. At the outset the Liberals were loud in their demand for a reform in the revenues; that they have skulkingly abandoned, and have surrendered their free-trade theories to the most absurd POLITICAL ORATORY. 125 protectionists on the continent. They demand a restora- tion of order at the South; but the encouragement of the Ku-Klux is a poor way to restore order. The Republican party has restored order by compelling the Ku-Klux to behave themselves; and so long as they can be kept quiet order will prevail in the South, her industries be de- veloped, and her prosperity be assured. But the Liberals also demand the one- term principle, and clamor for the right of what they call ' local self-government/ Do they establish the one-term principle by electing Greeley, or do they purpose to remit that to the people of each con- gressional district? Will they secure the one-term princi- ple by an amendment to the constitution or by an act of Congress or by Horace Greeley's promise that he won't run again? The people are quite competent to determine whether they want a President for more than four years. When they don't want him for a second time they have a very plain way of giving him notice of the fact. We didn't have to amend the constitution to beat Andrew Johnson; nor did we have to amend the constitution to dispose of James Buchanan. They wanted Abraham Lincoln a second time. Greeley and Trumbull and Chase and several other very high-toned gentlemen thought that one term was enough; but as is usual in such cases the people were quite competent to determine that question for themselves, and had their own way. We propose to let them have their own way about these matters in the future. We think that one term would be too much for Horace Greeley, and two terms is all we ask for Grant. "As to this point of local self-government, it is a mere sugar-coated method o f . administering the old ' State Rights ' dose. Great clamor is made over what is called ' centralization/ and one would think that there was a great deal in it. The Liberals don't tell us what they mean by 126 POLITICAL ORATOEY. it. We are familiar with the talk, however. We became familiar with it during the war. That eminent ' Liberal/ Beriah Magoffin, of Kentucky, denounced the first call for troops as ' centralization. ' Those distinguished ' Liber- als/ Fernando Wood and Henry Clay Dean, denounced the Emancipation Proclamation and the conscription laws as 1 centralization.' The fact is, centralization was the death of secession. As between the two, I am in favor of enough centralization to crush out treason at home, to assert our dignity and to punish our enemies abroad. The Repub- lican party has, for the first time in the history of the country, made American citizenship a fact. For the first time in the history of this country, it is possible for a man to start from the Penobscot and read the Declaration of Independence in every town and county in every state to the Eio Grande, and none to molest or make him afraid. All this clamor about l centralization ' is meaningless, unless it be shown that the general government has in some way or other transcended its powers and invaded the reserved rights of the states. Talk is cheap. But until the Lib- erals point us to some legislation, or to some act for which the Eepublican party is responsible, of the character I have indicated, we need bother ourselves very little about 'cen- tralization/ The Republican party believes that this gov- ernment is a union of the people, and not a compact of states. It believes that these states are not like a lot of marbles in a bag which touch but do not adhere, but though * distinct like the billows, are one like the sea.' For half a century or more we argued this question on the stump, in Congress, and in the courts. We won in all of those places. Not satisfied with the decision, the same men who now howl about ( centralization/ submitted the question to that tribunal of last resort, from which no appeal can be taken, the arbitrament of war. They were again beaten. POLITICAL ORATORY. 127 It cost us three thousand millions of money, five hundred thousand lives, and over four years of war to win on that trial. I am opposed to a re-trial. Enough of money and enough of lives have already been wasted on the settlement of that question; and no such thin disguise as 'local self- government ' will ever seduce us into the re-opening of that subject. "A great deal of sentiment is expressed by these ' Lib- eral ' gentlemen over what they call the distresses of the South, and much noisy vituperation visited upon the car- pet-bagger. If under the new condition of things at the South bud men are elected to office, it is probably because the voters have made injudicious selections. The govern- ment can't help that, unless it gets up a new lot of voters, or prevents those from voting who now have that right. The negro votes because the fifteenth constitutional amend- ment tells him that he may; if he don't vote intelligently, it is because those ' Liberals' who denounce centralization at the South, have kept him for generations in ignorance. Intelligent voting, like intelligent workmanship, comes by practice, and unless the Liberals favor the repeal of the fif- teenth amendment, they should quietly accept all the con- sequences that result from it. We think the temporary evils of unenlightened voting are much less serious than the permanent damage which would result from making the negro a citizen and then withholding from him the only weapon by which his rights of citizenship could be pro- tected." At Dixon, a few weeks later, Mr. Storrs went over the same ground in a stirring address. After compar- ing the Republican and " Liberal " platforms, he replied to the objection raised by the latter party to what they called the " centralization " of the National Govern- ment. 128 POLITICAL ORATORY. " Now, as to self-government, what do they mean by that? They generalize by calling it centralization. What do they mean by that? If it is something very bad, I am opposed to it. If it is something very good, I am in favor of it. If it is part way between the two, I do not care much about it. I wish they would tell me, when they use these words of fearful import and thundering sound, what they mean. If they mean that they are opposed to the general government transcending its powers and inter- fering with the vested rights of the state so am I so are all. But while I am in favor of the rights of the states, lam, at the same time, in favor of the rights of the nation. We have spent $3,000,000,000 of money, sacrificed hun- dreds of thousands of lives, and had four years of war, in order to save this nation from destruction. I am, there- fore, in favor of a centralized government, so strong that there shall be some meaning in the words, ' American citi- zen/ I am in favor of its being so strong that in the re- motest corners of the globe, whenever the meanest Ameri- can citizens are molested, trampled upon, or oppressed, that this great government will put out its strong arm to defend the citizen and punish the oppressor. And not only that, but that it will do the same with all its citizens at home. I am in favor of a government which, when the organic law has declared that negroes shall be voters that they shall be clothed with that right, and that Congress shall, by appropriate legislation, protect and defend them I am in favor of a central power strong enough to see to it that the rights so conferred shall be protected and the negro justified in its exercise; and whenever that right is assailed, as it was by the Ku-Klux, I hold that it is the duty of Congress to see that it is defended. But they say that we must have peace, order, good- will, amnesty, and the shaking of hands across the bloody chasm. I am in POLITICAL ORATORY. 129 favor of quiet. I am in favor of peace. I desire to see order reign through all the borders of this country, and over the whole earth; but if you would restore order, you must suppress disorder; if you would have peace, you must punish the men who are violating the peace. " Who made the disorder at the South ? Did the negro make it? No. Did the carpet-bagger make it? No. His- tory has written it. Men masked, with blackened faces, by murder, robbery, pillage and outrage of every kind, in- flicted upon these new-made citizens, made a very bedlam of that country. Would you restore it by putting the Ku-Klux in power? No! put him down and make him behave himself. When that legislation was passed and the government clothed with these powers, order came. Why? Although their dispositions had not been changed, although the Ku-Klux were the same in heart as they had been before, yet because they knew there was a silent soldier in the presidential cha'ir, and that the time had come when there must be no nonsense, therefore they behaved themselves. It is because this administration has done that that it is vilified, abused, and traduced in the way it is. I have desired to see the time come when you and I and all of us could travel wherever we pleased, could say what we desired to say, or think what we desired to think, and that there should be no one to molest us or make us afraid. That time is coming, but, gentlemen, that time will not come until, in the prosecution of Ms busi- ness, every man can do it without reference to the place of his nativity." He reiterated his former argument as to the differ- ence between platforms and practice, and illustrated the political situation ^vith an apologue which his audi- ence appreciated and heartily enjoyed : " This is also well illustrated by the fable of the wolves 1)0 POLITICAL ORATORY. and the farmer. A farmer had been for years engaged in the sheep-raising business. When he started, 'be bought a magnificent shepherd dog to watch his flock, and he put it in office. There was a party of wolves in his immediate neighborhood, and as the time rolled on there never was any cordiality of feeling between the wolves and that dog. The wolf party gradually got smaller and smaller, because the dog would make raids on it, and by and by they dwindled doVn to a very small number. There were, how- ever, a good many curs in the neighborhood, and they de- termined they would join this wolf party, and call A GREAT LIBERAL MOVEMENT. They held a convention and resolved that peace and amnesty should be restored between them- selves, and they concluded that there was nothing what- ever in their way but that dog, and if they could get him out of the way, they would shake hands across this bloody chasm. They passed a series of resolutions in which they declared that the losses that had been caused by the former depredations were atrocious, but that they were dead issues. They said they had renounced all the habits of their previous lives, and that they would, for the future, -be the safest defenders of these flocks. The boss wolf went to the farmer, * Now/ he says, ' all the trouble is attrib- utable to this dog. To begin with, he is a dog you don't want around your premises at all. He is unfit for this purpose. Another thing, he cannot bark; there is not a stub-tailed cur in the country but what can out-bark him. Another thing/ he says, 'five of that dog's pups are in position here holding office. He is guilty of nepotism in its very worse shape.' Gentlemen, that was a pretty 'rough case on the dog. " The farmer says, ' These things may be so; I know that dog cannot bark much; but/ says he, 'he bites like the very devil, as you know, 1 did u^t want him for a, POLITICAL ORATORY. 131 i house-aog, so that, as to his merits or demerits on that point, I have nothing to say. As to these pups, the clear truth about that is that they take after their father, and I have never lost a sheep out of my flocks; my flocks have prospered. I do not know about your logic; you may confuse me as to that, but the good straight way for me is to judge the future by the past, and I do not think that I shall be guilty of the atrocious nonsense and fearful ingrati- tude of removing that glorious old shepherd dog that has grown up with these flocks and with me, and has never been anything except entirely and forever faithful. '" Contrasting the records of Grant and Greeley in the days of the nation's perils, he concluded as follows : "Let us be generous; let us be just; let us give the credit where the credit is due. Let it never be said of us, in the years that are to come, that the great nation that has been saved by the quiet an|j. silent soldier, turned their backs upon him because he was slandered by the very men whom he had defeated in the field of battle. " I believe that the great people of this country love Grant as much as they ever did trust him as implicitly as they ever did. During the years this faithful man has held the helm of state in his hand, how magnificently the old ship of state has passed through the storms we know, because we have been passengers aboard of h,er. Let us not leave the ship. Let us not desert Grant the old captain; one more trip, and the thing will be done; order will be restored, our finances prosperous, and we will come up to those grand sunny slopes that spread themselves out in the great distance on the other side; and on this great conti- nent, if we are true to ourselves, we will erect the most mag- nificent structure the world has ever known sacred to the cause of human liberty its dome as broad as the arching skies, its base as extended as the continent on which it is 132 POLITICAL ORATORY. i built. Here, in its mansions, there will always be space, for all time, for the true and loyal and good men from all corners of the earth to meet and celebrate the triumph of free government among men." In the meantime, the Democrats had met at Balti- more, and, in the hope of returning to power by the coali- tion method, had not only adopted the platform of the Cincinnati convention, but had swallowed their candi- dates as well. The tactics of the Baltimore convention were doomed to failure, and the accession of strength they hoped to gain from the renegade Republicans was more than offset by the opposition of stiff-necked Demo, crats who refused to* accept Greeley and Brown as their leaders. The irreconcilable Bourbons called a conven- tion of their own, which met at Louisville, Ky., in Sep- tember, and nominated Charles O' Conor, of New York, and George W. Julian, of*Indiana. Both these gentle- men declined, and their supporters nevertheless kept on voting for them, and thus nullified the "Liberal "Re- publican vote. The nominees of the Philadelphia con- vention, Grant and Wilson, were elected. The action of the Baltimore convention gave Mr. Storrs a splendid opportunity for the exercise of his powers of invective and sarcasm, of which he was prompt to avail himself. His next campaign speech was delivered at Jacksonville, 111., on the 12th of August. To a large mass meeting there he delivered a powerful address, reviewing the political situation. The points to which he directed attention were always the same, but he had now a fresh argument to bring to bear in regard to the position of the Cincinnati party. They were now embraced in the ranks of those who had fought to destroy the Union ; and Mr, Storrs brought POLITICAL ORATOfcY. 133 the fact prominently forward, and prefigured the fate of the renegades when the enemv had no further use V for them. He said : "The campaign upon which we are just entering is, in many respects, the most important, and in all respects the most extraordinary, when we consider the manner in which it has thus far been conducted, that the country has ever seen. " A great political organization, which, in the short period of eighteen years' existence, has accomplished more for the interest of freedom and good government than any party the world has heretofore known, having after suc- cessive triumphs over its old and persistent enemy so far demoralized it that it is rendered powerless for mischief in the future, is now, and for that reason, urged to volun- tarily surrender to the enemy which it has, since 18GO, never met but to defeat. " It has finally been demonstrated that our old, long- tinfe adversary cannot defeat us. It is equally clear that there exists in this country no power sufficiently strong to overcome the Republican party itself, and we are now met with the curious proposition that, because the Democratic party is not able to beat us, we should, for the purposes of reconciliation, turn in and defeat ourselves. ' ' - " The man wha commits suicide for the accommoda- tion of his business rival possesses a much more conciliatory spirit than the majority of mankind can truthfully lay claim to. " Had Grant, after thoroughly penning Lee up at Ap- pomattox, received an invitation from Lee to surrender, for the purpose of bringing about an harmonious state of feeling between the two armies, no serious fault probably would have been found with Grant had he declined the invitation and insisted, as he did insist, that the van- 134 POLITICAL ORATORY. quished army should do the surrendering, and if harmony was what they were after they must be content to secure it in that way. " No ma.n would be more delighted to see the most brotherly ancj loving state of feeling established between the Republican and Democratic parties than myself, but, they having been thoroughly defeated, it is, I think, no more than fair for us to insist that, if there is any surren- dering to be done, they should do it. Had tliey been left to pursue their own course that is precisely what they would have done; but it so happened that, just on the eve of stack- ing their arms and settling upon the terms of capitulation, a squad of disappointed captains and brigadiers from our own ranks joined them, and, thus encouraged, the brigadiers insist that the rank and file whom they have deserted shall follow them into the camp of the enemy, and trail their colors before the foe whose surrender they could easily have compelled, It is not strange that the enemy thus re- cruited should immediately resume their arms, tear* up their articles of capitulation, and be loud in their demands for shaking hands across the bloody chasm. The wonder is not that the army that is whipped should rejoice at the avenue of escape that is thus opened to them, but that the rank and file who, after weary marches and bloody battles, stand just upon the threshold of final a.nd decisive victory, should suddenly lose all spirit and surrender to an adver- sary no longer disposed nor able to encounter them. . . . " There is no distinctive Liberal party. It was swal- lowed at Baltimore. Jonah did not swallow the whale, but the whale swallowed Jonah; and the whale did not consult Jonah as to the time, or place, or manner of swal- lowing him, nor of vomiting him forth. Do you suppose that this Democratic whale will consult the convenience of John M. Palmer and Lyman Trumbull as to the proper POLITICAL OKATOfcY. 135 time of casting them out of its stomach, where they are now quietly housed ? " Reminding his hearers that in 1871 Mr. Trumbull and General Palmer supported a* resolution in the Republican State Convention of Illinois endorsing " the eminently wise, patriotic, honest, and economical administration of General Grant," he asked: " How are we privates, who are compelled to browse around in the valleys of political thought, to know what to do, when our great instructors, who have been upon the mountain tops and occasionally sent a solid boulder of wisdom crashing and tearing down the mountain sides for us to hammer away at, cut such extraordinary capers? Hardly knowing what to do last September, we reverently listened for instructions, and on the 20th day thereof, from the loftiest peaks, we heard Trumbull and Palmer shout- ing to us ' We refer with pride and admiration to the wise, patriotic, honest and economical administration of General Grant, and we confidently recommend it to the attention of the whole country.' In our feeble way we caught up the law as it was thus delivered to us, and sup- posed chat we were singing the right song, and in the right key as we responded. ' We refer with pride and admira- tion to the eminently wise, patriotic, honest, and economi- cal administration of General Grant/ Judge of our sur- prise, when, on the 1st day of May, suddenly from those lofty summits, and with hardly a word of warning, we heard Trumbull and Palmer in full chorus shout forth, ' The administration now in power has rendered itself guilty of wanton disregard of the laws of the land, and of usurping powers not granted by the Constitution.' We are all expected to join in the responses. The music is differ- ent, the words are different. They must be sung to a dif- ferent key. Something is the matter with the leaders of 136 POLITICAL ORATORY. our choir. Our voices are not trained to this new style of music. It is pitched too low for us. We cannot suddenly leave the ' Star-spangled Banner" for ' Dixie/ The words don't suit us. The result is that the congregation feel that this duet won't do for them, and they sing their good old pieces, in the good old words, to the good, familiar old music, and in the good old way. " The result is the congregation is just as large and musical as ever. But our choir must seek employment from some other denomination." After discussing the civil service reform question as he had done at Springfield, he next addressed himself to Greeley's famous plan for the resumption of specie payments : "The Liberal Republicans are quite as vague and uncertain with reference to the resumption of specie pay- ment as they are in regard to reforming the civil service. They say: * A speedy return to specie payment is demanded alike by the highest considerations of commercial morality and honest government.' Precisely. But what do they mean by speedy? Do they mean within a month, or within a year, or within five years? "Do they mean that we ought to resume specie pay- ments as soon as, under the natural growth of the country, we can conveniently do so, 'or that resumption should be forced by legislation? Are they in favor of the national banks, or are they opposed to them? We are all agreed that specie payment ought to be resumed, but Jiow, is the question. The sage of Chappaqua, who is never at a loss for a plan, has solved the whole question and relieved us from all. difficulty. With $400,000,000 of greenbacks in circulation and less than $100,000,000 of coin in the treas- ury, he says that ' the way to resume is to resume.' Cer- tainly nothing is easier. Resume at once. Commence POLITICAL ORATORY. 13? paying out coin one hundred cents on the dollar until it is all gone and then having about $300,000,000 left that we have not coin to meet we will find that the way to stop is to stop. But where is the money to come from to resume with? Judge Trumbull says our reserve is already too large, but it falls very far short of being large enough to justify us in resuming. How shall we get the balance? By taxation? There is no other way to get it, and we think our taxes are already quite large enough. "We must either have more coin or less currency. Shall we contract? Let the business interests of the country answer that question. The fact is, we will never resume specie payments through the immediate action of any legislation whatever. No more serious injury could be inflicted upon trade and business interests than an attempt to regulate and direct them by legislation. Experiments of that kind always result disastrously. But what might we expect should Horace Greeley be elected President? Filled with the conceit that the way to resume is to resume, he would in furtherance of his ideas recommend to Con- gress legislation to hurry and force resumption. I am assured, however, that Congress would pay no heed to his advice. 'They probably would not, but the effect of such a message upon business would be instantaneously felt at home and abroad. Every national bank would at once contract its loans, and a sudden contraction of loans means general pecuniary distress, panics and widespread disaster." On the amnesty question, he cited the generous and noble words of the President's last message to Congress, and then said : "If the gentlemen who are not embraced within the terms of the present amnesty bill desire pardon, why do they not then ask for it? It can be had for the asking. I do not think that it would be subjecting Jefferson Davis 138 POLITICAL ORATORY. or Raphael. Semmes to any very cruel humiliation to insist that they should show the genuineness of their repentance by being compelled to ask for pardon. I submit that ques- tion to you. "We are entreated to forgive and forget. We are willing to forgive; but there are many things which they ought never to forget. The father will never forget the son who died in the great cause. The widow will never forget the husband who perished that the nation might live. The orphans will never forget the father who wil! 7 ingly met death that they might enjoy the priceless treas- ures of free government. We cannot forget the heroic dead of this great rebellion, nor can we forget the cause for which they fought and died. We may forget, but the world will never forget, those glorious events in our and the world's history, when a great nation, through four years of war periled blood and treasure for a principle and that idea the capacity of man for self-government. " Loud demands are made for the restoration of order and for the return of peace at the South. We are all in favor of that, but we differ widely from the Liberals as to the manner in which order shall be restored and peace secured. We would restore order by suppressing disorder. We would secure peace by punishing those who disturb it. " When a mob is raging in the streets it is possible that order might be restored by surrendering to the mob; but a better "way by far is to disperse the mob and punish its ringleaders. For the disorders which have prevailed at the South the negro is not responsible, nor is the carpet-bag- ger. The Ku-Klux alone are guilty of all the disorders which have occurred there. What shall we do to restore order? Surrender to the Ku-Klux, or force them to be- have themselves? The administration has adopted the latter course. It has interfered, and by legislation pro- POLITICAL ORATORY. 139 vided for the protection of the negro in the enjoyment of his newly-acquired right, provided for the employment of sufficient force to put down and punish all those who would by force interfere with it, provided for the trial of those guilty of violating that article in the courts when a fair trial could be had. And this is the Ku-Klux Bill. " Of course, we must expect, in the event of Mr. Greeley's election, that all this legislation will be at once repealed. Where, then, will the freed men be left? Oh, we are told by the Democracy, we are in favor of the amend- ment. But the amendment is self-enforcing. The Con- stitution provides for a Judicial Department, consisting of one Supreme Court and such inferior courts as the Con- gress may from time to time ordain and establish. The inferior courts are created by an act of Congress. Suppose that you repeal the legislation, what becomes of your courts? " You have not touched the Constitution you are ear- nestly in favor of that, but still opposed to all legislative action which gives it effect. So was the fifteenth amend- ment. The right to vote is conferred, and Congress is authorized to enforce it by appropriate legislation. The Democracy is in favor of the amendment, but opposed to all laws which may be necessary to make it operative. Repeal this legislation, and what becomes of the negro? He is at once handed over to the tender mercies of the Ku-Klux, driven from the polls, and no power can be found to prevent it." The earnestness and impressiveness of this argument were never surpassed in any subsequent speech made by Mr. Storrs during this campaign. It duly impressed, not only all his hearers at Jacksonville, but all who afterwards read the report in the Chicago papers ; and no doubt had a good effect in keeping in the ranks many waverers. 140 POLITICAL OIIATORY. At Indianapolis, on the 28th of August, Mr. Storrs delivered an address which the Journal of that city characterized as " one of the best efforts ' of the cam- paign." The night was stormy r and the driving rain on the roof of the wigwam created an uproar that interfered considerably with the pleasure of those who desired to catch every word, but the opposition of the elements only served to pack the auditors more closely in the vicinity of the stage. Mr. Storrs began by pay- ing his respects to Mr. Hendricks, as follows: "The most extraordinary feature of the present cam- paign is the industrious effort made by our adversaries to rule out all history and all past experience as guides for the future. "Mr. Hendricks insists that we must keep our eyes fixed steadily on the future, and that under no circum- stances must we seek to gather any instruction from the past. We must forget all that we ever knew, and unlearn all that we ever learned. If we were situated precisely as Mr. Heudricks is, we might think with him. If, upon looking back upon the past history of our party, we found what he finds when he reviews the record of the Democ- racy a record stained all over with political crimes and offences of the most serious and damning character, we would undoubtedly feel as he feels great anxiety to bury it out of sight and to detach himself from it. " That man never lived who, after spending at least half of his lifetime in the violation of the law and in the com- mission of crime, did not, when he desired the confidence of his fellows, resent with great zeal any allusion to* his past career, and seek to bury them out of sight as dead issues. But, dead as such issues are, it is wonderful how they stick to a man, and how they will continually rise up POLITICAL ORATORY. 141 in judgment against him. The course usually pursued by such unfortunates is a new departure in its largest sense. They cut their hair, change their clothes, leave their coun- try, adopt another name, and travel under an assortment of aliases. All these things the Democratic party is now doing. The trouble is that the disguise which they have assumed is too thin. We all see through it. "We see under this gauzy covering of reform the old State- sovereignty, repudiation, negro-hating Democrat. They claim that they are really and in fact converted. "We suspect the genuineness of the conversion. It is too sudden. The conversion of Saul of Tarsus is hardly in point, for although Saul, like modern Democracy, went forth breathing threatenings and slaughter, on his trip to Damascus he saw a light I am convinced entirely different from the one which the Democracy beheld at Baltimore. The light which Saul saw was from heaven. That which the Democracy beheld was from Cincinnati. By it they were enabled to see the treasury department and all the other departments of the government, a spectacle which had not gladdened their eyes for years. Saul didn't ask the disciples to join him, but he joined them. Saul did not propose that the famous liberal Christian, Jtidas, should join him and the high priest for a great reform movement. Saul not only changed his views, but he changed his name, and henceforth was no longer known as Saul of Tarsus, but as Paul the Apostle. " Our party has always been a great political mission- ary organization. We have to-day within our ranks thou- sands and hundreds of thousands of converted Democrats. We expect to have hundreds of thousands more. With us they feel that glorious freedom which the truth alone can give, that 'joy which passeth all understanding/* Mr. Storrs was quite in a biblical vein, and hi 142 POLITICAL ORATORY. speech throughout was pointed with scriptural illustra- tions. " The overthrow of the rebellion liberated four mil- lions of negroes, but it liberated even a larger number of Democrats. The colored man had sense enough to seize his liberty. But many Democrats seem to be afraid to take out their manumission papers. Don't be alarmed, my Demo- cratic friends. Freedom won't hurt you. ' Avail yourself of it, and the longer you enjoy it the better you will like it. "We think it most ungenerous that, after having lib- erated the Democrat from the thralldom which bound him for years, after having saved for him the country which his party sought to destroy, after having freely forgiven the manifold sins of omission and commission of which he has been guilty, he should seek to deprive the negro of even the slightest benefits of his newly-acquired freedom, and should exact from him the full measure of the little debt he owes even unto the uttermost farthing. " It is an old story, but in point here that of the king who took an accojmt of his servants, one of whom owed him ten thousand talents; having nothing with which to discharge this heavy debt, the servant begged for patience .and promised to pay all. Moved with compassion, the king pardoned him and forgave the debt. " How much like a modern Democrat that old servant behaved. Going into the streets, rejoicing in his freedom, he meets a fellow-servant who owed him an hundred pence, and he laid hands on him and took him by the throat say- ing, ' Pay me that thou owest ! ' This fellow-servant begged for mercy, promised to pay all, but the big debtor cast his fellow-servant into prison until he should pay the debt; and then, we are told, his lord was wroth, and delivered this unjust servant over to the tormentors until he should pay all that was due. POLITICAL ORATORY. 143 "Let these Democrats take heed from this story. Nothing torments the average Democrat like an exclusion from ofiice. He must deal fairly with his fellow-servants, or the torments of disappointed hopes which he has suf- fered the last twelve years he will be compelled to endure forever. "I am constrained to believe that the Democratic party is not yet converted. But if it really is, why should it not be quite willing to give a proof similar to those furnished by Saul of Tarsus? First, let it cease breathing threaten- ings and slaughter against Republicans and the Republi- can party, and show that they were in fact good Republi- cans by joining our party, preaching our doctrine and voting our ticket. Second, like Saul of Tarsus, let them mark the period of their conversion by changing their name. Their willingness to ' shake hands across the bloody chasm' with some of our Judases won't answer the purpose." He repudiated the idea that the renegades who had gone over to the Democracy ever were, in any sense, " leaders " of the Republican party. Then he showed the incongruity of the Democratic platform and candidates, and contrasted both with the plain, honest, consistent declarations and performances of the Republican party and President Grant : " Horace Greeley is the most intensely high-tariff man in the country, and always has been. Brown is a free- trader from principle, and never has been anything else. Greeley is in favor of Ku-Klux legislation. Brown is thoroughly and bitterly opposed to it. Greeley is a tem- perance man, to the extreme of total abstinence; he eschews all meats, and is a Graham-bread man on principle. Brown is a man who, according to his own confession, occasionally relapses into total abstinence, who favors soft- 144 POLITICAL ORATORY. shell crab and butters his water-melon. Now, my Demo- cratic friend, which of these two worthies are you going for? You cannot go for them both, for they' are as diverse and opposite as the poles. Then, the candidates do not agree with their platform, either taken together or sepa- rately. They do not agree with their platform any better than they agree with each other. Sumner says he will go for Greeley because the Democracy has been converted. Semmes says he will go for Greeley because Greeley has been converted. Sumner says he is going for Greeley because Greeley favors the negro race, while Semmes says he is going for him because he advocates the right of seces- sion/ Trumbull goes for Greeley because Brown is in favor of free trade, and the protectionist goes for Greeley because Greeley is in favor of protection. Now this party designs to swindle somebody, and if God should see fit to visit Horace Greeley upon us, somebody is as certain to be swindled as that two and two make four. It is either the Republican who votes for Greeley on the strength of his Republicanism, or it is the Democrat who votes for him on the strength of his Democracy; whichever way you take it, one way or the other, you must have it; there can be no middle ground." He showed that the new doctrine of local self-gov- ernment was nothing else than the old doctrine of state-sovereignty and the right of secession in disguise : " We fought through five years of war to put down that accursed political heresy, and, now that we have suc- ceeded, we mean that it shall stay down, and we intend to trample out the last vestige of its existence. That is Republican doctrine. " But you tell us we have been cruel in not extending amnesty to our Southern brethren. "Well, they all have the right to vote, and the disabilities existing against them POLITICAL ORATORY. 145 are simply such as are created by the fourteenth constitu- tional amendment. Now, my Liberal Republican friend, if you are opposed to the existence of those disabilities, you arc opposed to the fourteenth amendment, by which they were created, and if you are opposed to that amend- ment, let me ask you to stand out like a man and say so. If you want to reargue that question, if you want to open up either the fourteenth or fifteenth amendments, we are prepared to reargue both of them. But what is the truth about these disabilities? What do they amount to? Just this: about one hundred and forty Southern gentlemen are deprived of the glorious privilege of holding office. Now, there are thousands of Democrats at the North who have been ever since 18GO laboring under political disabili- ties of exactly that character. Since that time how many a Democrat has been prevented from holding office? The disability was created in a different way, to be sure; it was imposed upon them by the voice of the people in that case, and in this it Avas imposed by the constitution. " But would it not be fair and decent, to say the least, that these Southern gentlemen, Davis and Toombs and Wigfall and Semines, should ask for pardon before they get it? The great God of infinite wisdom, while his capac- ity for pardoning is infinite, never pardons the sinner until he prays for pardon. You know it is said, ' Knock, and it shall be opened unto you/ 'Ask, and ye shall receive.' And whenever, on bended knee, with a broken spirit and a con- trite heart, with his hand upon his mouth and his mouth in the dust, the sinner humbly confesses his sin and begs for pardon, then, and not until then, does he get it. Arc we asking too much when we ask that Davis and Semmes and Toombs shall ask to have these disabilities removed? If you think it is unkind to make that requirement, take a pardon with you and go down South, and, on bended }46 POLITICAL ORATORY. knee, supplicate Jeff. Davis graciously to be pleased to accept a pardon from your hand. You may do it if you w ish the Republican party never will." In September Mr. Storrs was stumping the state of Pennsylvania, and on the 17th delivered a stirring address at Eeading, in the Library Hall. At the out- set he urged the Republicans to do their utmost to elect the Pennsylvania state ticket. He said: ''The interest felt by Republicans throughout the en- tire country in the result of the October election in this state arises not so much from any knowledge of the indi- vidual character of the candidates as from the controlling effect which this election will or may have upon the general result throughout the whole country. We feel that the Republicans of Pennsylvania have no right to defeat the Republican party in the nation, nor even to imperil its success upon any merely personal considerations. We do not believe that they will do so. In the times past the Republicans of the old Keystone have, with a patriotism and unselfishness which has secured for them the gratitude of the whole country, cheerfully set aside all personal con- siderations, and regarded, not their individual wishes and feelings merely, but the best interests of the nation. This much no more, and no less will be expected from them in the pending state election. It is not for me to say what, in this state, would be the effect upon the presiden- tial ticket of the defeat of General Hartranft. But this I do know : that in every other state in the Union such a result would be most dispiriting and disheartening ; it might be disastrous. Pennsylvania holds the key to the position, and the Republican party will hold you to the strictest accountability. Your state election can in no proper sense be said to be local. Where the key of the position falls, the position itself falls with it. A man may POLITICAL ORATORY. 14? have a disease of the heart. In one sense it would be local. But when the heart stops beating the man stops breathing, and the whole man dies. We would hardly think of attempting to comfort his mourning family by assuring them that the disease was merely a local one. "To the Republicans of Pennsylvania may the defence of your nominees be safely entrusted. It is quite clear that they are entirely competent to perform that work. I invite your attention, therefore, to the broader questions involved in our national politics. The most extraordinary feature of the present canvass is the attempt made by our adversaries to rule out as an element of human calculation for the future all past history and experience. Men cer- tainly never do that in their dealings with each other. In judging whether a man's future course will be straightfor- ward and upright, we are apt to give him the benefit of the fact, if it exists, that his past course has always been such, and however valiantly a party whose history is a record of crimes might disclaim against any allusion to the fact as a discussion of dead issues, we would certainly, in deciding its future course, be greatly influenced by those dead issues. Our opponents ask us to believe, and to act upon that belief, that a political party whose course has always been honest, faithful and patriotic will for the next par- ticular four years reverse its history, and pursue a dishon- est, unfaithful and unpatriotic policy, and that a party which for the last twenty years has never been on the right side of any question will for the next four years be on the right side of all questions." Mr. Storrs then rapidly sketched the history of the Republican party, claiming that for what it had actually achieved it was entitled to the gratitude of good men everywhere; that it had done nothing and omitted to do nothing which would justify the people in with- 148 POLITICAL ORATORY. drawing from it their confidence, and that the mission of such a party would never be ended so long as there remained one forward step to be taken in the pathway of human progress. He reviewed the record of the Democratic party, its opposition to the constitutional amendments, and its proposal to repudiate the national debt, and pointed out the inconsistencies of the coalition on the questions of revenue reform and civil service reform. The veto power was vested in the President by the express letter of the constitution ; yet Horace Greeley had agreed to abdicate this function in respect to the tariff at the bidding of the Cincinnati reformers. " Thus we are to secure a purer administration and a more faithful execution of the laws, by a deliberate agree- ment to neglect the performance of a constitutional duty, by the surrender of a constitutional right, by basely desert- ing all convictions of public interests, by a clear violation of an official oath. A political convention which will be permitted to demand of its candidate the surrender of a portion of his official powers as the price of his nomination and election may, with equal propriety, demand the sur- render of them all, and thus practically abolish the office of President altogether. " The price which Horace Greeley has agreed to pay for his nomination and election, is one which no conven- tion at any previous period in our history has had the im- pudence to demand from its candidate. The price which Esau received for his birthright was a liberal one in com- parison, for Esau received the mess of pottage Jacob had to give. To no such depths has a Presidential candidate ever sunk before, and it is to be hoped that on this ' bad eminence* Horace will stand alone the solitary instance of a public man bartering the convictions of a lifetime, POLITICAL Or.AlOHY. 149 for the empty honor of a Presidential nomination selling his birthright for the mere promise of a mess of pottage. " Moreover, this new party returns clearly to the old and exploded heresy of state sovereignty Its platform declares that ' local self-government, with impartial suf- frage, will guard the rights of all citizens more securely than any centralized power.' The consequence of the doc- trine of state sovereignty was the right of secession and the denial of any right of coercion in the Federal govern- ment. It is clear that if local self-government attempts to secede, nothing but the ' centralized power ' of the Union can prevent it. But this centralized power is re- pudiated, and under any and all circumstances local self- government must have its way. This is l reforming ' us back to the dismal years immediately preceding the war. The question which we supposed we had settled, at the ex- pense of 500,000 lives and $3,000,000,000 of money and four years of war, is again presented to us. Our views upon it are the same that they have ever been, and we hope by this blow to crush it out forever." Mr. Storrs then proceeded to the discussion of Mr. Greeley's record, showing that he was not to-day, and had never been, on the great fundamental question in our politics the right of secession a Republican, that he denied the right to coerce, that as commander- in-chief, if true to his principles, an attempt to secede must inevitably succeed ; that his course throughout the war was factional, variable and damaging to the Union cause, and finally demonstrated that in the Peace Con- ference at Niagara Falls, he willfully and deliberately placed Abraham Lincoln in a false position before the country and refused to relieve him from it, thus placing himself beyond the pale of Republicanism, Republican sympathy and Republican support. YI. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1876. " LIBERAL " REPUBLICANISM CIVIL SERVICE REFORM REVISION OF THE TARIFF RESUMPTION OF SPECIE PAYMENT GENERAL GRANT'S RECORD CONTRASTED WITH THAT OF HORACE GfiEELEY SCRIPTURAL ILLUS- TRATIONS. IN taking the field in 1870 on behalf of the nominees of the Republican convention, which met at Cincin- nati, and with such names as Conkling, Morton and Elaine before them, chose R. B. Hayes as the standard- bearer of the party, Mr. Storrs was eloquent as usual in eulogy of the party record, and vigorous in his denunci- ation of the Democracy, but, for the first and last time in his career as a Republican advocate, there was a noticeable falling off in his enthusiasm for the candidate. He would, in common with a majority of the party, have preferred a known leader at the head of the ticket ; a man who was stalwart in his convictions, and who could give effect to the demand of the party as expressed in the platform of 1876, for the vigorous and continuous exercise of the powers of the Federal government until all classes were secure in their civil and political rights. How Mr. Hayes would carry out this programme was entirely a matter of conjecture, as he was almost with- out a record when he unexpectedly rose into the most prominent place before the nation. A ratification meeting was. held in Chicago shortly after the adjournment of the convention, and Mr. Storrs 150 POLITICAL ORATORY. 151 addressed the ^Republicans there assembled. He said : " As I look about on this platform and in the body of this hall, I see many of the most conclusive evidences of the wisdom of the Republican convention which has recently been held at Cincinnati in the nomination of Hayes and Wheeler. I see many of my good old Liberal friends returned to the Republican fold. I welcome them back. I am sorry that they ever left I am glad that they have returned. My friends were foolish, but, after having learned that the adventure of the prodigal son always results in a husk dividend, it is to be hoped that in future we will stand together as we do to-night, and as we will in the can- vass, upon the threshold of which we are just standing. We will come to the conclusion that the Republican party is strong and virtuous enough to effect its own reforms, and that one of the poorest methods on earth to reform the Republican party is by voting the Democratic ticket. " I ratify the nomination of Hayes and Wheeler, of course, because they are both good men, because they are both fit men, because they are both men unassailed and unassailable, and for another reason because they are the Republican nominees. I would not vote for Hayes or Wheeler, or any other man running on a Democratic ticket. I have that confidence that sublime and perfect confi- dence that, in a tight place and in a delicate position, the Democratic party will do the wrong thing as a party that no nomination that they could possibly make could combine in itself virtue enough in the candidates to overcome the inherent cussedness of that great aggregation of men. I am for the Republican nominees because the Republican party is as good as the nominees; because, taken as a great mass, it represents the loyal sentiment and the patriotism and the honest desire for reform in this country. I believe that the Republican party, as a party organization, with 152 POLITICAL ORATORY. all its mistakes, with all its errors, and with all its short- comings, has within itself to clean the Augean stable, to elevate our civil service, and to march all the time, if not a little ahead, fully abreast of a wise and honest public sentiment. When the Eepublican party ceases to be a party of movement, and forward movement, it will cease to be the Republican party. It was a party organized, not for a day, but for all time. It takes things as it finds them, but it never leaves them as it finds them. It found 4,000,- 000 of chattels it has made 4,000,000 of voters in their place. It found a great nation, the hope of civil liberty all over the globe, struggling in the arms of a gigantic rebellion, and it carried it safely through its flaming perils, and has guaranteed to our republic the eternity of success and glory. It found a depreciated and almost exploded currency and a crippled national credit. Steadily and persistently it began eight years ago to denounce the fraud- ulent conception that our national debt should be paid in greenbacks; it has never swerved a moment from the course it then took; it has pursued it unceasingly ever since, and it will never abandon the question until the word of the United States finds its redemption in coin, in the currency of the world. " It is impossible that all the reforms which the people demand shall be wrought out by the election of Hayes and Wheeler, or by that of anybody else. Their election is simply the expression of the public will that there shall be a reform. An honest man, standing at the head of the gov- ernment, and backed up by a constituency which has a lack of moral sympathy with him, is as helpless as a baby. I approve and ratify these nominations, because they repre- sent the average sense and the best matured judgment of the whole people of the whole country. " It has been my habit, in looking at political questions, POLITICAL OfcAfORY. 153 when I was in doubt as to the best course to pursue, to see what the Democratic party desired, and then select the opposite. I am perfectly certain that we have followed the wisest course, because the nomination of Hayes and Wheeler has unlimbered their every gun, and demoralized the crowd. They must seek for a great unknown, but there is one thing that is known, and that is the rebel record of the party which the great unknown must head. The past of their career weighs down upon them like a mountain load, and no man, snatched from any obscurity however great, can carry that record forward safely, and triumph in the face of the united Republicanism of the nation which we see to-day. " I observe that they say that our candidates are color- less. Good. It is probably because their garments are absolutely white. There is no genius for plunder, no audacity for rings. We belong to that party which to-day has an infinitely profounder belief in the goodness of God than it ever had in the dexterity of the devil. Our party platform is so clear that everybody understands it. Reform in administration ; not work to be accomplished by a spurt; one election does not achieve it. The army capture an outpost, but the citadel of corruption for which our party is not responsible of that corruption which began and gathered strength a quarter of a century ago will never surrender without the most unwearied, patient, and per- sistent exertion. Every man every private in the ranks can contribute his mite in that direction. A reform of our civil service ; how, and exactly by what method, we will tell by one experiment after another, if experiment be necessary, until the result be achieved. An honest cur- rency, the redemption of our promises to pay in coin by the fulfilment of the national engagements, these are the principles upon which the Republican party stands to-day, 154 POLITICAL ORATORY. absolutely unchallengeable, and they commend themselves to the good judgment and the loftier patriotism of the whole people." On the 14th of July, he addressed a large and en- thusiastic meeting at Aurora, 111., and criticised very keenly and minutely the sophistical platform which the Democrats had adopted at the St. Louis Convention, and which Mr. Storrs characterized as " the cheekiest platform ever witnessed in political history or litera- ture." The concluding part of his speech was devoted to a telling review of Mr. Tilden's record : " It has been my pleasure, for every political canvass of any national importance since 1861, to address the Repub- licans of this growing and very beautiful city, and I, by no means, feel that I am among strangers, for as I look about I see those whom I saw on the first occasion I ever visited Aurora, who have stood with me during those long and terrible years of the war. I see those who never faltered when dangers of the most serious character threatened us. I see those to-night who, after the war had closed, were as resolute that the fruits of our victory should be gathered and garnered as they were that those effects should be, in the first instance, achieved. I see those who have always been Republicans ever since there has been a Republican party, and who always will be Republicans as long as there is a Democratic party. When I am asked, as I sometimes am, how long the Republican party will live, I say it will live at least one election after the final and eternal death of the Democracy, for so long as the Democratic party keeps above ground and exhibits any signs of vitality so long is the existence of the Republican party a military necessity. It will not this Democratic party always en- dure, for we are a great evangelizing and missionary POLITICAL ORATORY. 155 agency. "We began the good work of converting that party in 18GO, and we have been pursuing that purpose steadily and persistently and unwaveringly ever since. Thousands and hundreds of thousands of those original Democrats have been converted to Republicanism and are now safely within the ample folds of the Republican party. "They complain of us that we are waving the 'bloody shirt/ that we will not let by-gones be by-gones, and that we are continually singing the same old song, and making the same old speeches. It is unfortunate that it is so, but the misfortune arises from the fact that it is necessary it should be so. When one of my dear, deluded Democratic friends says, ' For God's sake, why don't you stop talking these same old things?' I say, 'For God's sake, why don't you stop being that same old party?' We must talk about the antecedents and the history of the Demo- cratic party, because the party of to-day is the same party, identical in material, identical in its membership, identical in its spirit, identical in its traditions, identical in all its purposes the same old party that declared that the great chart of American liberties was a glittering generality, that scoffed at patriotic feeling as a delusion and a sham, that asserted the right of secession, that involved this nation in rebellion the most stupendous in its purposes that the world ever witnessed, that obstructed the fair and patriotic reconstruction of these states, that attempted the repudiation of the national debt and the destruction of the national credit. It is the same old party that has been guilty of all these crimes and offenses, and the men who now make up that organization, and give it tone, and character, and life, are the individual men who have been guilty of all those political offenses which ought to hare consigned them to eternal political oblivion. In the nature of things the Democratic party must expect to face its terrific record. 15C POLITICAL ORATORY. It comes Once every four years before the people of this country and demands their recognition and confidence. The Democratic party comes before the people of this country to-day and asks that it shall have the management of our national debt, the control of the national finances, and be intrusted with what it calls the reform of both. It makes loud and lofty promises of its performances in the future. .But as wise men, as absolutely unimpassioned men, if such a thing were possible in the presence of ques- tions so great in their magnitude- as wise men, I say, we must take you, not by the assurance you make to day, but by your performances in the long past which stretches behind you. If we had such a record as theirs wouldn't we be anx- ious to bury it ? If they had such a record as ours wouldn't they be anxious to exploit it ? If behind us were blighted faith, violated honor, ruined homes, ruined credit, wars, rebellions, treasons if that was the record that this Republican party had made, we would deafen our ears and call upon the mountains to fall upon and bury us rather than hear it denounced or commented upon. But the Republican party glories to talk of its record it is a glori- ous record to talk about and the Democratic party hides its head when it is mentioned, because it is a record in the presence of which every patriotic head ought to be bowed. The party has not changed ; its character has not changed ; its membership has not changed. It is a ques- tion beyond and infinitely above the mere personal charac- teristics of the men placed in nomination. "You are here to-night to ratify the nomination of Hayes and Wheeler. * Their nomination was wise. It is a nomination which combined all the elements of the Repub- lican party. It brought the Liberals back home. It brought the Independents back home. If there are any POLITICAL OKATORY. 157 Liberals or Independents here to-night who wandered off with Greeley in 1872, I say to them, * We open wide the door ; we bid you welcome, only don't do so any more.' You are all back, safely housed in that glorious old Repub- lican temple, the walls of which are decked with the most heroic achievements of the past century, with a record that is as enduring as time, and history will never willingly let die that splendid temple whose dome is lifted even among the very stars, and whose foundations are as secure as the eternal rocks ; you are back again within it, and see that no inscription ever goes upon those walls, that nothing is emblazoned thereon, except such as can shine along with the deeds that already adorn it. " We are to-day a united, a powerful, and I feel it in the air a victorious party. It is the same old organi- zation, with the same old patriotic fire and nerve that carried this great nationality through the Rebellion and saved it. It is the same party that faced the results of its own logic as courageously as the young David of old faced the great Goliath. It knew in its early days and it knows to-day neither 'variableness nor shadow of turning.' It found the negro a slave; it made him free. Making him a free man, it made him a citizen. Making him a citizen, it clothed him with all the rights and privi- leges of citizenship, even unto the power of voting. True still to its trust, what it said in 1868 it said again in 1872. No talk about negro equality or competition could frighten it; and to-day we have, through the agency of the Republi- can party, a nationality not a mere aggregation of states, but a nationality, the United States of America, powerful enough and always willing to protect the poorest and meanest of its subjects even in the remotest quarter of the globe when his liberty is assailed. The old party said, ' The men whom we have made free men, citizens, voters, 158 POLITICAL OEATORY. we will protect, if the states in which they live will not protect them. If the states in which they live will not protect them this General Government, which' we call the United States of America,, will protect them/ And that promise the Republican party of the United States, with the help of God, proposes to keep. Down to to-day we have come. The great debt, which hung like an incubus upon us, is gradually melting away taxation reduced, coming back by slow degrees, but sure, nevertheless, to the good old times when the basis of our currency was specie. We may look with the most perfect and absolute confidence that, at no very distant period of time, with the debt placed beyond all doubt, the integrity of the nation thor- oughly vindicated, its faith absolutely approved, our cur- rency recognized all over the globe, good times come again, spindles turning as they were before, mills in full blast, business prospering, no bondman on the soil of the Repub- lic at no very distant day, all these splendid results we may look upon as the natural outcome of the policy of the Republican party/' The Democrats, in their St. Louis platform, had de- nounced the financial policy of the administration. Mr. Storrs' answer was complete and crushing : "In 1866, again in 1868, going into a national canvass, they demanded the payment of the government bonds in greenbacks, which would not only have utterly destroyed the national credit, but would have of necessity so inflated the national currency that the resumption of specie would have been eternally and everlastingly postponed. And yet this party, with the smell of repudiation on its garments, with the recent history of the Indiana and Ohio campaigns fresh in the minds of the people, with their miserable record behind them of a steady, persistent, willful op- position to and interference with every scheme which POLITICAL ORATOKY. 159 looked to the reestablishment of the national credit and the payment of the national debt they denounce the Repub- lican party for imbecility or immorality, because it has taken no step in that direction ! Let us see what the facts are. What was gold in 18G5? What is gold to-day? Have we made no advance toward resumption during the last eleven years? This truthful platform says we have not. Gold was in the neighborhood of 150 in 1865; it is 112 or thereabouts to-day. Is not that along step forward? Is it not an immense stride in advance that this growing nation has taken? How is the debt? In the eleven years of which this lying platform speaks this Republican party, which is denounced for its imbecility and immorality, has paid the enormous sum of $456,000,000 of the national debt. lias it taken no step in the way of decrease of the expenditures? Our appropriations have been reduced from 1874 to 1875 over $27,000,000. Our expenditures in 1866 were $520,000,- 000, and in 1873 they were $290,000,000. Gold reduced from 200 to 112; $456,000,000 of the national debt paid; hun- dreds of millions of taxation removed from the shoulders of the people; our bonds largely appreciated in every money-mart in the world; and yet 'we, the Democratic delegates/ in national convention assembled, solemnly de- nounce and arraign the Republican party for taking no steps towards making the promise of the legal-tender notes good ! " Figures sometimes become very eloquent, and in this connection they are eloquent. Let me read a little more of figures. Our tariffs have been so that the people hardly feel the burden; every expense of the government has been so removed that the burden is but lightly felt to-day. Our internal taxes that would have been paid in the several years, had the laws remained unchanged, under Grant's ad- ministration, calculated on the basis of the taxes collected 160 POLITICAL ORATORY. in 1868, would have been in 1869, $63,919,416; in 1870, $58,295,182; in 1871, $92,726,132; in 1872, $110,810,083; in 1873, $123,533,307, etc. In 1877 there would have been collected on that basis $129,700,000. This shows a saving, an absolute decrease of the taxation, on an average of $104,- 696,190 per year during the last eight years'. And yet the Republican party, which has accomplished those magnifi- cent results, is denounced by the ' Democratic delegates,' as guilty of imbecility and immorality ! But that is not all. ' We, the Democratic delegates, ' also say that ' reform is necessary in the scale of public expense. Our Federal taxation has swollen from $60,000,000 gold, in 1860, to $450,000,000 currency, in 1870.' I ask you whose fault is it that the expenses of this government have ' swollen from $60,000,000 gold, in 1860, to $450,000,000 currency, in 1870? It is the war that has imposed those terrible burdens upon us, and while you are sweating and groaning over them Ben Hill comes up from Georgia, and Henry Clay Dean from Iowa, and denounce the mild men of Kane county because, in putting down their rebellion, they were com- pelled to incur additional millions of expense. I say it is the cheekiest platform ever witnessed in political history or literature. Why, I would suppose that whenever the occasion occurred you could not drive a Democrat into the mention of the tremendous burdens under which the peo- ple are laboring, for right back of us looms up the memory of this great rebellion ! Right back, fresh in our minds, is the memory of the war which compelled us to raise the expenditures of the country. It is none of their business how much that war cost. Treated as they deserved to have been treated, as any other nationality would have treated them, this $157,000,000, which the people of this country have been compelled to "pay since that time as a yearly burden for putting down and crushing the rebellion, POLITICAL ORATORY. 161 would have been shouldered by the Democratic party and paid by them, even to the confiscation of everything they possessed. "I suppose that in the interests of conciliation we must submit to it without murmuring; but it does seem hard that the recently reconstructed Confederates assembled at St. Louis, and doing business under the name, style, and firm of ' We, the Delegates of the Democratic Party/ should denounce us because, as they say, we expended more money in putting down their rebellion and whipping them back into the Union than was absolutely necessary. " We next come to the question of defalcations. The history upon this point is very short. One would think, from the clamor that is made, that corruption was in every branch of the public service, that there was not an official anywhere who was not guilty either of stealing public funds or of taking corrupt money. This is a great deal bigger nation than it was fifty years ago. We collect and expend to-day millions of money where we handled and expended only thousands half a century ago. I am one of those sanguine men who believe that this world is all the time getting better. I believe that even the Democratic party is slowly improving. It is a great deal better world, officially considered, than it was in the days of Old Hick- ory ; it has improved since the days of Martin Van Buren ; it is an immense improvement over Polk ; it is a great way ahead of James Buchanan's time. The fact of the matter is just this : There is not a first-class merchant in the city of Aurora who does not lose by little petty defalcations on the actual amount of his business a much larger sum of money than does the United States on the enormous ex- penditures it has been compelled to make under Grant's administration. ' Now I will read from an authentic report the history of all those proceedings : ' The losses on every 102 POLITICAL OKATORY. $1,000 of disbursements were, in the administration of Jackson, $10.55; VanBuren, $21.15; Harrison, $10.37; Polk, $8.34; Taylor and Fillmore, $7.64; Pierce, $5.86; Buchanan, nearly $6.98; Lincoln, $1.41; Johnson, 48 cents; Grant, the first four years, 40 cents, the second four years, 26 cents/ That is the veritable record, and it is an immensely satisfactory one. It is a record, however, that you would not dream of amid the clamor and clatter made about thievery in every branch of the public service. "We are asked if we approve of Grant, and if we indorse him. I do not suddenly change my opinion of men. I have yet this to say : that when the memory of ' We, the Democratic delegates/ shall have perished in oblivion and forgetfulness, when the generations to come will have forgotten that such men ever lived, the real, solid, patriotic achievements of U. S. Grant will, growing brighter and brighter as the years wear away, make a record for him that shall be absolutely imperishable. In all this terrible storm of obloquy and no man has ever ssffered more in the frightful flood of calumny which has been poured upon us silent and patient and steady, has he sat, conscious that the hearts of the people beat with and for him, and conscious in his own heart that he never breathed a breath that was not a patriotic one, and never entertained a pur- pose, so far as this great nation was concerned , that was not patriotic as well. "They speak of some 'false issues': 'The false issue by which they seek to light anew the dying embers of sec- tional hate. . . . All these abuses, wrongs, and crhnes, the product of sixteen years' ascendancy of the Republican party/ My Republican friends, will you stop to think of that ? ' All these abuses, wrongs, and crimes, the product of sixteen years' ascendancy of the Republican party!' That carries us away back to 1860; carries us back to when POLITICAL ORATORY. 163 many of us were boys ; carries us back when the great party was new and fresh and young ; carries us back to the time when, with the watchword ' Liberty ' on our ban- ners, we won our first great victory ; carries us back to the time of Lincoln ; carries us back to those years of trouble through which we passed ; and the Democratic party speak of that ascendancy the ascendancy of Lincoln, his first and second term, the first term of Grant, the whole history of reconstruction speak of that as a history of ' abuses, wrongs, and crimes/ which 'we, the Democratic delegates/ purpose and intend to reform ! And yet they say, ' Let the dead past bury its dead forget these old issues/ At the same time there comes trooping up from the South, from every Confederate cross-roads, the bearer of a Con- federate heart, filled full of Confederate hopes, believing that the Lost Cause is finally won, flaunting in the face of this great nation, just out of its terrible perils, the denun- ciation of sixteen years of wrong, outrage and crime of this Republican party ! If this Democratic party, insult- ing the grandest history of the nation in that charge, in- sulting the memory of the heroic dead and the heroic living as it does, could take some visible shape, would not the strong Republican army of Kane County, with the old nerve and vigor and its old heart back of it, feel like grinding it into powder ? We can bear taxation ; our treasures may be sunk into the seas, but this glorious record, which challenges the admiration of all the world, and which is the work of a great loyal people, shall not be spit upon and defiled. You cannot smite it directly, but, carrying this infamous charge in your hearts, keeping it warm on your lips, when the day of November comes, go up to the polls and say to them, ' You, the Democratic delegates, that sought the destruction of this great nation, we repel your slander and now bury you for eternity/ 164 POLITICAL ORATORY. " Now what are the ' false issues ' ? Let us see. A word or two about sectional hate : What is the danger from sec- tional hate from what source does that danger spring? You have seen some exhibitions of it in the past and during the present session of Congress, when the old fires of rebellion have been rekindled, when the old illustrators of planta- tion manners again appear on the floor of the House, and when unrepentant rebellion flaunts its horrid front in the face of the people and denounces the nation and the party that crushed that rebellion to atoms Hill, Lamar, all the prominent leaders of secession, back again into the councils of the nation they sought to destroy? And in the presence of such magnanimity as that we have this sympathetic blubber about 'bloody shirt,' etc. Do you suppose that there would have been one prominent improvement, national in its character, made had this Democratic party, which to-day prates of reform, succeeded since 1860 ? Contem- plate such a result as their success, if you can without shud- dering. Think of the success of the Democratic party in 1864 ! Down from its high pedestal our nation would have come. Home would have come our conquering legions, with their banners trailing in the dust and in the mire of defeat ! The dishonor and disruption of the nationality that would have been the sure result had the promises of Democratic reform been listened to by the people and had their solicitation for public confidence met with any response in 1864. Then, again, 1868. Con- template, if you can, their success then. Every measure for the reconstruction of the nation which they sought to destroy would have been rendered utterly fruitless, our gigantic debt would have been rendered still more gigantic, our credit would have been gone, and we would have been to-day a disgraced and discredited nationality in the eyes of the whole world. In 1872, think of the calamities that POLITICAL ORATORY. 165 would have followed a Democratic triumph, when one of their own candidates pronounced the reconstructive meas- ures 'revolutionary, unconstitutional and void.' What has occurred to make the evil of a Democratic success less to-day? What has occurred to make the necessity of a Republican triumph less imperative now, than it has been every hour since 1860? The time has not come when this ideal sentiment of hand-shaking shall take the place of that recognition of principles which the great emergencies of the occasion demand. And what has the Republican platform said that calls from the Democrats these re- proaches? This is all : ' We sincerely deprecate all sec- tional feeling and tendencies. We, therefore, note with deep solicitude that the Democratic party counts, as its chief hope of its success, upon the electoral vote of a united South.' It is its only hope. The success of the Demo- cratic party means a united South, secured at the expense of the colored vote. It makes an appeal for that southern vote directly, as in the days of old, to sectional prejudices and sectional hate. It means that every newly-made citi- zen shall be deprived of the privileges which he is entitled to under the constitution. I shall not appeal to any sec- tional feeling, but to the broad, catholic spirit of nation- ality. TKe Republican party demands the suffrage of every citizen, North and South, East and West, black and white, every citizen, of whatsoever race he may originally have been, who desires the largest, truest, broadest measure of national prosperity for the land we love so justly and so well. "Now, about this platform: They have lost none of their old differences. They are the same old issues. It is the bitter, intense spirit of state rights working against a distinct and united nationality that has been waging war for the long years that are passed. We stand upon the threshold of a new century. We will inaugurate it well, 166 POLITICAL OUAfORY. I am sure, and say that this nation, one and indivisible, shall be perpetual. "Upon this platform they have placed in nomination Mr. Samuel J. Tilden, of the city of New York, as their exemplar and illustrator of reform. What has he done? Who is Samuel J. Tilden? One of the most expert rail- road lawyers on the continent. That is not a first-class recommendation. A man thoroughly imbued with the cor- poration spirit, so completely that, like the client he rep- resents, he has no soul. It has ordinarily been the case that physicians are prosperous in proportion as they have cured their patients. He is a great railroad doctor the great corporation physician; but all precedent in his case is abolished, the patients have died and the physician has prospered. Wherever and whenever Samuel J. Tilden has been called to stand by the bedside of a sick railroad there was a funeral in the near future. He is the father of watered stock. He is the great absorber and absorbent. He is theauthor of farm mortgage bonds, and I don't need to explain to you what those instruments mean. There never yet came into the door of his office a heal thy corpor- ation which did not hobble out from the other door on crutches and in bandages. All along, up and down this great West, are the wrecks of disappointed hopes and blasted expectations that stockholders and corporations have had, when they have passed through the gentle but death-dealing treatment of Tilden. "I might bring myself to such a frame of mind as to vote for a Confederate. I can understand how a man liv- ing in the South might have voted for the South ; but not until my heart has ceased to beat, not until my whole being is changed, will I ever, on any ticket, nor under any cir- cumstances, cast my suffrage for a man living in the North, who in 1864, denounced the war as an experiment, POLITICAL ORATORY. iG? as a failure, and abjectly and meanly sued for peace ! I follow him still further, back to the state of New York worse than that, back to the city of New York back to the embrace of Hoffman and Tweed back to the associa- tions he seemed to love so well. Chairman of the central committee, he approved and aided in the most stupendous frauds upon the rights of franchise ever committed by any party, a great fraud, which wrested the state of New York from the Republicans to whom it belonged, and polled in four wards over 20,000 fraduflent votes. This was done under the direction of the modern reformer, the friend of peace in 1864, Samuel J. Tilden ! I go still further. The gigantic robberies of that great ring had finally excited the alarm of the whole nation. During the time when millions and millions were being shamelessly plundered from the people of New York, the chairman of the state central committee,the recipient of Tweed's bounty, was curiously and marvelously silent. But the Republican press, Republican speakers, the Republican party,denounced and denounced again and again those gigantic frauds. A great newspaper brought them to light ; exposure came; the lightnings of public wrath visited the head of Tweed and his gang. When escape from detection was no longer possible, then, from behind the loopholes of his safe retreat, from behind his barricade of law books and railroad bonds, Tilden comes forth as a patriotic reformer, and demands the punishment of Boss Tweed ! The Republican carriage was all ready, and he jumped in and rode ! Is he entitled to the credit ? As I said the other night, the whole his- tory is in a nutshell. Tweed was tried by a Republican judge, before a Republican jury, prosecuted by a Republi- can attorney-general, convicted in Republican style, sent to a Democratic jail, in charge of a Democratic jailer, and ran away in true Democratic fashion. 168 POLITICAL ORATORY. " Mr. Tilden claims in the little Pecksniffian speech he made at Albany, that he has had great experience in ad- ministrative reform, and there must be a reform in the civil service. Well, how, Mr. Tilden, how? We want a reform, not in salaries, we want a reform in the men ; and, having a reform in the men, we want reform in the methods of their selection and appointment. I put this question squarely and fairly to you: 'Do you think that, with that embodied corporation at the head of our nation, and with the woods full of the Confederates and Democrats flying to the capital for an office, there would be any im- provement? What, in the name of God, would be the per- sonnel of the civil service that would be picked out of that measley crowd? And it is out of that crowd that Tilden would have to select. They have tried the operation in their Confederate congress; and see what an exhibition they made of themselves! Why, Washington was absolutely alive with men who were looking for offices, because they supposed, there being a Confederate House of Kepresenta- tives, the Lost Cause was won. Think of a Democratic triumph all along the line, and what the results must be ! We have seen this Democratic crowd in 1864. The Satur- day before the great national convention which nominated McClellan met, this city was full of them. I made a speech over there in the park, on the same stand with Dick Oglesby and John Farnsworth. I started to go home to Chicago Sunday morning, and what a sight there was! Every fellow dressed in gray; breezes, in comparison with which the odors from Bridgeport were sweet as those from a bank of flowers, came from every car. Train after train, the engines all doubled up, and not a seat to be had on the cars. They were the Democratic delegates on their way to the convention. After I arrived in Chicago, a good old Democrat said to me: 'I was very much surprised POLITICAL ORATORY. 169 a little while ago. I saw a great mass of men going down Wabash Avenue, and I thought it was a procession of rebel prisoners on there for exchange, but I'll be damned if it wasn't the Democratic delegation from Missouri.' "In the presence of that same savory crowd Samuel J. Tilden appeared in 1864. Some fellows had an ear bitten off in a joint debate; men with their noses broken in an election contest; fellows with short hair. Those men came on with banners with doves upon them, engaged in the olive branch business, and all swearing for peace. At the head of this crowd in 1804, was Samuel J. Tilden. The crowd has not changed, and the leader of the Democ- racy has not changed one single bit since that time. I think there can be nothing more suicidal than to intrust into the hands of these men, who sought the destruction of our national life, the direction of our national interests. I believe in this nation. I know what it is, it is the sacred custodian of the priceless treasure of free govern" ment for all peoples and all nationalties. I hope to see it endure forever. I cherish in my very heart of hearts the memory of the great heroes who have lived and died, the great leaders of our great party. I hope to carry in my heart as the most sacred thing which it bears an intense, indulging, never-ending love of this great nation, em- balmed, sanctified, and glorified as it has been by the blood of so many hundreds and thousands of noble men; and I believe in my very soul that this nation can be saved, and that, with all its faults and shortcomings, this Republican party, whose cause I to-night advocate, is the real custo- dian of our national honor and integrity. All hail, then, the great cause! We stand upon the threshold of this great contest. Let the old fires be everywhere relighted; let the old spirit be again rekindled, and let the word come up from the old leaders, as in the olden time, ' Attention! forward !'" 170 POLITICAL ORATORY. At Detroit, the Kepublicans opened the campaign by tbe dedication of a large central wigwam on the 24th cf August. In compliance with an invitation from the State Central Committee, Mr. Storrs was present, and addressed one of the largest and liveliest indoor meetings ever witnessed in the State of Michigan. Re- ferring to the platform adopted by the Democrats at St. Louis, he said : " Here are the Democratic delegates from all parts of the country representing the Lost Cause, denouncing a period of crimes and abuses which the Democratic party propose to right. These sixteen years embraced four years of war, four years of the administration of Lincoln and eight years of the administration of General Grant. Sancti- fied by the blood of a quarter of a million of brave men, these years are denounced by such men as Ben Hill, Lamar and others. If there is a particle of the old spirit in De- troit I know that you will consider this an insult. Tilden's letter of acceptance and the St. Louis platform are full of accusations of the Republican party and are much alike in this respect; they are shocked at its thefts and immorality, and promise peace and good times. If the government was turned over to the Democratic party it would be in- deed the time when the lion and the lamb shall lie down together, with the very small difference that the lamb would be on the inside. I do not propose to defend the Republican party. Wherever stealing has been done, it has been done by individuals, irrespective of the principles of the Republican party, and those individuals are the ones to blame. The Democratic party is a robber as an organi- zation, and I say to you that the stealing and corrup- tion in the Republican party are too small to be noticed when compared with a party that Avould eteal arms, steal states, and that finally attempted to steal the whole nation. POLITICAL OIlATOR-i. . 1?1 Precisely how the Democratic party propose to carry out the reforms about which they talk so much they do not tell us. " The Democrats propose to reform the civil service, but how ? Tilden says by selecting a higher grade of men ; but from where ? Where will you find them ? The offices must be filled by either Democrats or Republicans. If you want loyal men, men of refinement, men of culture, the Republican party is full of them. At Washington this winter we have seen the kind of men that the Democrats propose to reform the civil service with, the emissaries of the Lost Cause. Culture ! Men who can't tell whether the Saviour of mankind was crucified at Calvary or shot at Bunker Hill. Why the roads through the country are full of tramps, Democratic office-seekers, hoofing it from Wash- ington. Another instance : What a great moral city is the City of New York! How piously the Democrats there can stuff a ballot box, and count this man or that man out. How very quietly they go about doing good so quietly that no one ever hears of it. "Who is the Democratic candidate? Samuel J. Til- den. Some people say that they shall yote for him because they are tired of machine politics. Why, gentlemen, Sam- uel J. Tilden is the perfection of a machine. He is a reaper and mower combined, a self-sharpener, and has never been anything else. They tell us that Mr. Tilden is a patriotic man, but how very quietly he went about saving the Union, his left hand on the Chicago convention, and his right hand didn't know anything about it. Here was a war where millions of men met on the field of battle, where hundreds of thousands of lives were lost, where an immense amount of treasure was expended; and I ask you, was there a man about whose position there could be a particle of doubt ? Why, every schoolboy in the land was able to 172 POLITICAL ORATORY. define his position in regard to the war, but, skulking behind his law books and railroad bonds, Samuel J. Tilden was not heard from. We all have the right to say to him, you were no obscure country lawyer, why could you not at once say, ' God speed to the good cause. God speed to the noble soldiers/ " They say he is a reformer, and that he unearthed the frauds of Tweed. Tilden and Tweed were personal friends for many years, and long after all Tweed's villainies had been exposed by the Republican press, Tilden met him in convention and took him up as a political equal and friend. After the Republican party and the Republican press had exposed Tweed, Tilden came to the front and rolled into office as Governor of New York on the tide that swamped Tweed. Now, Tweed was tried before a Republican judge, by a Republican prosecuting attorney, and convicted by a Republican jury, but he escaped from a Democratic sheriff. It is truly wonderful to mark the progress of reform. Con- fined in a small room not much larger than this, poorly furnished with marble-top table and tapestried through- out, eating but five or six meals per day, and seeing only fifty or sixty visitors each day, Tweed pined for a sight of his wife ; he never loved her so much in his life before. The jailor took him in a carriage to his humble dwelling, in that pauper street, Fifth Avenue, and he went in at the front door. From that moment to the present time the places that knew him know him no more forever. " Tilden is reform governor of New York ; he has broken the canal ring. Eighty thousand dollars has been expended, three men indicted, one of whom was convicted and is now imprisoned out of doors on bail. This is the great ring-smasher. Now I suppose you all know that if there is anything that will make a man love his fellow-men all through and through, it is to consolidate railroads. POLITICAL ORATORY. 173 That is where Samuel J. Tilden has proved himself a suc- cess. He is the great railroad physician, and whenever he has stood at the bedside of a railroad there has been a railroad funeral in that immediate neighborhood very soon thereafter. Generally, you know, a physician's success depends upon his ability to save his patients, and it seems strange that when railroads have died on his hands Tilden has achieved great success. He is the author of watered stock and the finisher of blighted railroad stock. There is hardly a farmer in this broad land but that has a little piece of paper stowed away somewhere that he occasionally takes out, and, as he looks at it and mourns its worthless- ness, he can trace it to the great reform candidate, Samuel J. Tilden." On his return home, Mr. Storrs accepted an invita- tion to address the Republicans of Freeport, and ful- filled his engagement on the 15th of September. Thfc announcement that he was to speak, and the meeting of the Congressional Convention in the afternoon, had filled the town with people, and the large hall which had been secured for the meeting could not hold the crowds, Republican and Democrat, who thronged to hear him. He said : " I by no means feel in addressing the magnificent audi- ence here to-night assembled that I am among strangers, or that I am speaking to strangers. 1 have known Free- port, its people, its surroundings, it patriotic spirits, its loyal impluses, for the last sixteen years. I am somewhat renewing to-night an acquaintance commenced sixteen years ago, and I am renewing that acquaintance on an oc- casion very much like that under which we met when the acquaintance began. It is curious to me, and, perhaps, may be so to you, to see how long a time it takes to wipe 174 POLITICAL ORATORY. out old political issues, and to substitute in their place en- tirely new ones. We have all waited, watched, and hoped for the day to come when bygones should be really by- gones, when the past with all its dreadful memories could be erased, when all the troubles which we had overcome would be behind us as a bad dream; when, with new issues, new parties, new organizations, this great nation, starting afresh upon its career, might say to itself that, whatever else may happen, the past is safe, and to the future alone are we called to look. That time, every heart that beats before me to-night tells me, has not yet arrived. Bygones are not bygones. The past is not alto- gether past. The past is not quite secure. We do not stand to-day a nation with that past absolutely safe, with the broad future before us absolutely untrammeled by any history which lies behind us. We confront to-day and it is one of the wonders of this century the same great political organization, consisting of the same membership, inspired by the same feelings, devoted to the same pur- poses, holding precisely the same ideas, that that party held sixteen years ago, when it organized treason and sought the destruction of the national existence that we met and defeated in 1860. We had hoped and you all had hoped that, long before the centennial year had arrived, this Democratic party, from which the cause of human free- dom and of good government everywhere had suffered so much, would have utterly passed out of existence and would have vexed us no more. You had hoped that all those old political ideas on which that party was based, and to maintain and enforce which it organized a gigantic rebellion, would have been buried in oblivion and abso- lutely be regarded among the things of the past. But, you are doomed to disappointment. In the year of grace 1876 this same organization, whose record is a record of broken POLITICAL ORATORY. 175 promises and violated pledges, this same political organi- zation, which has .carried within itself all the most dan- gerous political heresies that have threatened the destruc- tion of our national life, is proud, asserting, dominant, demanding that the custody of the affairs of the nation whose destruction it sought shall be by a loyal people turned over to its keeping. And the solemn question which you are to answer to-night, is this: Shall those who would have murdered this nation, the grandest on the face of the earth, within eleven short years after their attempt had failed, shall they be called back into power, and intrusted with the life and integrity of that nation whose destruc- tion they sought? This is the question which is constantly recurring. I am told that these are bygones, and that we are making the same old speeches that we made in the years that are past. This question of loyalty, of devotion to the national existence, is as old as virtue, and the vices of the Democratic party are as old as sin. As well might you ask a preacher to hush his voice and let the pulpit go untenanted because preachers before him have denounced sin, as to ask Republicans to hush their voices and close their meetings as long as a Democrat lives above ground. "I am in favor of conciliation thoroughly and alto- gether in favor of conciliation. The simple question in my mind is who shall be conciliated ? I turn to the old Republicans on this platform ; I turn to the old Republi- cans in the'body of the hall ; I ask them if they remem- ber the days when we started out in our procession, twenty- two years ago ; I ask them if they remember how small a procession it was ; that we went afoot ; that the going was bad ; that our feet were sore ; that the winds blew through every hole in our garments ; that the skies were inclement, and that there were conservative gentlemen standing on the side-walks heaving mud at the procession as it passed ? 176 POLITICAL ORATORY. I ask them if they remember the days when the old proces- sion grew, when it came up a great party, when it crystal- lized about itself all the holiest objects, the loftiest impulses, the best purposes of the country, and called itself the Bepublican party ? I ask them if they remember when that great procession swelled in volume so that it embraced the whole continent, when it met a rebellion in arms, when it throttled the life out of it, when it saved the great nation ? I ask them if they remember when these loyal people buried their loval sons in every valley and on every hill-side in the land ? I ask them if they remember the thousands and millions of dollars and the countless thousands of lives sacrificed that this nation might live ? I ask them, finally, if they remember, when peace came, and when, to protect the national credit, another war, quite as great in its pro- portions as the first, to vindicate and maintain the national credit has been fought and won against the same adver- saries ; and I ask them to-day if, when the victory is finally achieved, we may not be permitted to sit down by the hearth-stones which we have saved, and ask that the robbers and plunderers of the national honor shall concil- iate us ? "I speak of the Democratic party. It comes to you to- day asking that the confidence which you withdrew from it twenty years ago nearly shall be again restored to it. What has it done ? Twenty years ago this same Democratic party made human sympathy a curse, and made charity an indictable offense. Twenty years ago this same Democratic party, which to-day demands the suffrages of the people, organized itself into a party which said the sunshine of freedom shall be local, and the black shadow of slavery shall be national. This same party organized secession in the war, and, having failed in meeting reason by the bullet and argument by the bludgeon, took its political principles. POLITICAL ORATOKY. 177 to the last field to which those questions are ever referred. It carried them into battle ; its banners went down in defeat ; its hopes were crushed ; its arms were defeated. If, when Lee's armies surrendered at Appomattox, they did not surrender the damnable heresies out of which the war grew, the war was a failure as base and shameless as Til- den declared it in 1804. I supposed, we all supposed, that when their armies were annihilated their political ideas were annihilated as well. Has there been any conversion ? Point me to a single Democrat south of Mason and Dixon's line, big or little, who to-day will tell you that he entertains on the question of state sovereignty an opinion in the slightest degree different from that which he held when the war began. Point me to a single leading Democrat North, prominent in politics, who was a Democrat when the w.ar began, who to-day will tell you that he believes on the question of state 'sovereignty one iota differently from what he did sixteen years ago. Is it possible, then, that a party made up of the same members, each individual mem- ber holding the same belief that he held twenty years ago, that the party has changed when there has been no change in the opinions of its individual members ? "In 18G1, Samuel J. Tilden, with James Buchanan, declared as his opinion that, although a state had no right to secede, the general government had no right to coerce it into the Union. Has Tilden changed ? Is there a Democrat in the whole length and breadth of the land that has changed ? Not one. If no individual member has changed, how, then, has the party changed ? If they have changed, if they have revolutionized that belief, if they are now honestly of the opinion that this nation is one and indivisible ; that the right of secession does not exist ; that there is inherent in the general government the power 178 POLITICAL ORATORY. to crush out the attempt whenever it is made ; if, to follow this out, there is a single Democrat who has to-day reached those conclusions, there is but one way in which the gen- uineness of his change of conviction can be demonstrated, and that is by leaving the Democratic party and joining the ranks of Republicanism. AVhen the heathen ceases to worship his idol of block or stone as the real God when he believes in the divinity of the Saviour and in the truths of the Old and New Testament he doesn't stay among the heathen, but joins the Christian church. And if these Democrats are converted, I have this advice to give them : Get out from among your heathen associations, stop wor- shiping your images of brick and of stone, change your soiled and battered clothing of Democracy, wash yourselves clean, put on a new shirt, come into the ranks of Republi- canism, don its garments, and thus prove the genuineness of the change of heart which you claim to have experienced. " This Republican party of ours comes to you to-day with substantially the same membership. It is the same party, with its unbroken record of glory that made four millions of chattels freemen and citizens. It found the old structure of state filled with the rotten and decayed timbers of African servitude. It removed them all amid the thunders of war, and replaced them with the ever- lasting granite of freedom. This same Republican party that crowded into four short years of war the most colossal and resplendent results ever recorded in history, confronted at its close a vast debt, and honestly, manfully, faithfully, it has pledged the credit of the whole nation that it shall be paid, and reduced it more than $400,000,- 000 of money. "It has lifted millions of dollars of tax from the shoulders of the people. It has decreased by millions of dollars the national expenditures. It has increased by mil- POLITICAL ORATORY. 179 lions of money the national revenues; and this brings its history down to to-day. " But while I am discussing questions of this character, some Democrats tell me, ' Why, those are old issues/ ' The freedom of the slave/ they say, l is secure beyond all ques- tions. His citizenship, as you have said, is imbedded in the constitution/ His right to vote, they tell us, is secure. And when they make that line of argument they seem to think that the whole discussion is closed. Right here, let us pause and think. Let me suggest to you that there is hardly a clause in our Federal constitution which is self-enforcing. We have a provision that there shall be Federal courts, and I think I see a conservative Democrat one of the old-time Democrats who respects the consti- tution beyond all measure stand with his toes turned out and his back to the fire, and with his hand under his coat- tail, saying. ' I am in favor of the constitution I am in favor of that clause which provides for Federal courts, but I am not in favor of this congressional legislation by which the court is created.* "We have these constitutional amendments by which citizenship and freedom are both conferred upon the negro, but they are not self -enforcing. Each one of these amend- ments provides that they shall be enforced by appro- priate legislation. Now, what is that appropriate legisla- tion, and what is its precise value? Let me tell you, if you will strike out all congressional legislation upon the sub- ject and leave the amendments standing alone, they are as idle for all useful purposes 'as a painted ship upon a painted ocean/ The Republican party is a practical party. It imbedded those great rights in the constitution. It took them down to the solid rock upon which the nation lives, and it said. ' We will make these no idle gifts. These shall be no treacherous benefactions. We mean precisely 180 POLITICAL ORATORY. what we say/ We gave freedom to the slave. It were base not to protect him in its enjoyment. We gave citi- zenship to the negro. It were base not to protect him in the enjoyment of all its privileges. We gave him the right to vote. It were outrageous if it were an idle gift. AVe protect him in the full and complete enjoyment of the right, and therefore congress has by legislation provided that, whenever any privileges thus conferred shall be inter- fered with, this great central power which we call the general government may intervene, and may protect the negro in the enjoyment of every privilege which the con- stitutional amendment confers upon him. It says this: ' We give you by the constitution the right to citizenship and to vote, and more by legislation. This is no ideal gift. If, when you go to deposit your ballot, that right is interfered with, if the state in which you live cannot or will not protect you, this great government will protect you. If you are interfered with by force, we will protect you by force. If armed men threaten you in the enjoyment of any of those privileges, armed men shall march to your support, and assert your full and complete enjoyment of them/ This is what the Democratic party calls centraliza- tion. " It is a centralization of which I am enthusiastically in favor. I would give nothing for that government so utterly powerless and helpless that it could not, even at the cost of war, at the extremes of the globe, protect the mean- est and poorest of its citizens when insulted and outraged. I would spit upon that government which would not at home protect, even at the cost of war, the meanest and poorest of its citizens in the enjoyment of every privilege which the constitution conferred upon him. And the man to-day who is in favor of the constitutional amendments, and is opposed to that legislation by which they shall be I rOLITICAL OKATORY. 181 enforced, is a coward and a sneak, and fittingly belongs to the Democratic party. " I will pursue this subject still further. Let me illus- trate a little. I think I am familar with this Democratic party. I have read its history. It has been burned into me and into you. During the war all through the North, you found magnificent Democrats who were in favor of a vigorous prosecution of the war. Certainly they were. They were in favor of a vigorous prosecution of the war, but were opposed to drafting a single man. They were in favor of the suppression of the rebellion, but were op- posed to buying a gun. They were in favor of the sup- pression of treason, but opposed to invading what they call a sovereign state; opposed to secession, and opposed to putting it down; opposed to a dissolution of the Union, and opposed to preventing anybody dissolving it. "One more question on this point. You have seen one-half of a Confederate congress. They cannot disturb the amendments. But place the whole of the affairs of this nation in the hands of the Democratic party, and where do you suppose, within thirty days after attaining power where do you suppose every single syllable of legis- lation will be left that was intended to enforce the provis- ions of those amendments? Away back in 1863, in the Democratic, patriotic, honestly-governed City of New York, there was inaugurated a little one-horse Democratic rebellion. The draft law had been enforced. Seymour, Tilden, all good Democrats, had assured the rank and file that all that legislation was revolutionary, unconstitutional, and void. If there ever was a man that loved the constitu- tion and talked about it all the time, that carried it about with -him, and slept with it under his pillow, it is one of the meek and lowly followers of John Morrissey and Isaiah Rynders. If there ever was a class of men up in science 182 POLITICAL OHATORY. who denied privileges to the negroes on the ground that they were not men, and that their astragali differed from that of a white man, it was the learned savans whose noses have been broken and whose ears have been bitten off in those discussions in the City of New York. At that time these good, zealous Democrats really believed in the bottom of their patriotic souls that the constitution had been vio- lated by the draft law, and organized a mob and brought on a great riot, in the midst of which Horatio Seymour wrote a letter to President Abraham Lincoln. He said to him practically: ' We are all in favor of the prosecution of the war. We all devoutly pray that the Union may be saved. We pray every night when we retire to our couches that the Union may be restored. But this draft law opposes and violates, as we think, some of the fundamental provis- ions of the constitution. The temper of the loyal people of this state/ he said, ' is greatly aroused,' and therefore he proposed to Abraham Lincoln that the draft be suspended, and that a lawsuit be commenced in some court in the city of New York and carried through to the supreme court of the United States, which, in the course of two or three years, might be terminated, and by which it might be ascer- tained whether the draft was all right or not. Mr. Lin- coln wrote back to him: ' My Dear Sir: I cannot see how your proposition will work. The difficulty is our Con- federate friends south of Mason and Dixon's line won't wait for your lawsuit. They go right along and fill up their armies.' And he says, ' My dear Seymour, go on with your lawsuit one or two, or as many of them as you please. I will go along with my draft, and we will run them in parallel lines,' and, as it turned out, the other Democratic rebellion south of Mason and Dixon's line was crushed into powder long before Horatio Seymour's suits would have been reached upon the docket. It is the same POLITICAL ORATORY. 183 party precisely that acted thus when such dangers as those were threatening us which now asks that the affairs of this nation shall be turned over to its keeping. It is the same party, reeking all through with its political crimes, that insists upon it that from the hands of this great loyal or- ganization that saved the nation, it shall be taken, and passed over into the keeping of that disloyal mob who sought its destruction. I do not believe that the time has yet arrived when this loyal people has so far forgotten the history of the past twenty years that they are prepared to accede to this request. " It occurs to me that here is a proper place to be scriptural. I have watched, as I have told you, this Demo- cratic party curiously watched its promises. It is a party absolutely without performance, and depends alto- gether upon promise. If there is a banker in this town, or a citizen who is not a banker, that has loaned some fel- low $100 which the fellow has never paid, he may forgive the debt let that be a bygone; bat I don't believe he will make another loan. How may I know that this Demo- cratic party is to keep its promises? By judging from what it has done? Oh, no. They say, ' We will save the nation/ We saved it. We have saved you that trouble. They say, ' We will protect it.' Why, you sought to destroy it. They say, 'We will maintain the national credit.' Why, you sought to ruin it. They say, ' We will make green- backs equal to gold.' We say, ' You sought to destroy them altogether.' They say, * We will lift up the national credit to where it belongs, and pay the national debt.' We say, ' It was eight years ago that you sought to repudiate it.' "These are the promises it is making to-day. These are the performances of the past. How are you going to judge from promises? Suppose there comes into your place of business a young man magnificently adorned with a plat- 184 POLITICAL ORAT.ORY. form. He shines and glistens all over with it. He has brought, perhaps, the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, the Saints' Rest, and Taylor's Holy Living, all rolled into one, and he says, ' I would like to be treas- urer of your insurance company,' and you produce to him a record from the police court simply showing that he has been indicted and convicted twice of larceny what on earth becomes of his platform? And when this Democratic party comes to you with its platform, ' We, the delegates of the Democratic party in National convention assembled, in the city of St. Louis, insist upon it that the country de- mands immediate reform,' you say, ' All right; but in case anybody should doubt you, I propose to take a hand in. Try it on yourselves first.' I saw an announcement some days ago of a meeting of a ' Tilden Reform Club,' I asked them which they intended to reform, Tilden or the club. Now, then, as to the Scripture. A noted ex-Senator is on the stump again,and he is always scriptural. A good man, but his heart is running over with this milky kind of good- ness that would arrest a thief, capture the spoons from him, and then give him your hat and overcoat, that there should be no misunderstanding nor unkind feeling in the future. He says that we should treat our brethren of the South with the same Christian spirit that the father in the para- ble treated the prodigal son. I have read the parable of the prodigal son. I am willing to accept that test ; and I, for one, will be willing to treat the Southern prodigal precisely as the old man in the story treated his prodigal. The prodigal of the parable was a pretty good sort of boy, as the world went. He came to man's estate. He left home when he had a perfect right to leave. Nobody questioned it. No soul doubted it. His portion was paid over to him. He didn't take a single dollar that did not belong to him. If I have read history aright, that was not precisely the POLITICAL oKAfOIiY. 185 course which the Southern prodigal pursued. The old Scripture prodigal was a boy standing just upon the thres- hold of life, foolish as hundreds and thousands of boys have been since, with his pocket full of rocks. lie went out to see the world, fell among the Democrats, and nat- urally enough was cleaned out. He did not seek the destruction of the old homestead when he left it. He went away with no ill-will. He did not attempt to plunder either the old man or the brother he left behind him. But he found that playing prodigal didn't pay. When his money was gone, and his credit was gone, and his Demo- cratic friends had no further use for him, he wf nt to feed- ing swine, and then went to feeding with swine. He got about as low down as he could, and, sore, sick, disheart- ened, covered with blisters and scars, the poor, foolish boy, loaded down with his unhappy experience, but with his heart still in the right place, got up from among the hogs where he was groveling and says, 'I will go back to my father, ' and back he went. And, as he was tottering on the way, the old man was looking out the gate watching down the long and dusty highway for the poor boy to return, as he knew he would ; and he saw him coming hob- bling along, ragged, and wretched, and miserable ; but he was his boy still, and he went out and threw his arms around him and bade him welcome and gave him a suit of clothes and a ring and a veal dinner, and that was all. Now that is all that boy got. I want you to observe he didn't come back headed by a band-wagon and a banner with ' Tilden and Reform* on it. What did he ask for ? He did not come back after the fashion of these large- headed gentlemen from the South, saying, 'I will run this farm.' No sir. He came back saying, ' Father I haven't a cent ; take me as a hired servant' ; and, so far as I have been able to discover, if there are any preachers 186 POLITICAL ORATORY. here they will correct me, he did kitchen work forever after. And yet the loyal stay-at-home boy was not quite satisfied with that arrangement. He looked at that calf when about immolating him in congratulation for the return of the boy, and he said to the old man : e Father, I never went off to be a prodigal. I never spent my money and substance in riotous living, and you never killed any fatted calf for me/ And, the loyal, patriotic father turned around to him and said : ' Son, thou art always with me. All that I have is thine. Not a dollar in money, not a foot of land, not an office, not a smell of an office, goes to this returning prodigal.' But this loyal, patriotic North- ern ex-Senator says that we should let the Southern prodi- gals take this government this farm and run it for all time in the future. Now suppose we do offer the South- ern prodigals this nation. Suppose they do come back kindly. They say they accept the situation. It is remark- able ; is it not a little extraordinary, after the surrender at Appomattox, that they accept the situation ? Isn't it a little extraordinary that the rebel army accepted the situ- ation at Vicksburg ? Isn't it quite strange and startling, and doesn't it make the world come out in violent gushing kindness, to think that Bragg's army accepted the situa- tion at Chattanooga ? Isn't it curious that the Confeder- ate army accepted the situation at Five Forks ? Isn't it strange that Floyd and the rest or them accepted the situ- ation at Donelson ? Ah, of course they did. There was nothing else under God's heavens that they could do. They did accept the situation, and that is all there is about it, not only when their armies were beaten in the field, when the last ditch was reached, when their banners were trailing in the mud and mire of everlasting and eternal defeat, with their arms stricken from their hands, with their cause hopelessly lost. This was done after the nation had been POLITICAL ORATORY. IS? filled with mourning, and the Northern people burdened with a debt of three thousand millions of dollars ; after the little hero to-day at the head of the government had Rebellion by the throat and choked the life out of it. Then the courteous rebels accepted the situation. " It is this same party which to-day demands the cus- tody of the national finances, and at the head of their ticket they have a great financial reformer, and stump- ing in various sections of the country are Democratic orators, eager and earnest, introducing their arguments to the people in order to convince them that a sound cur- rency, a restored credit, must be the necessary result of a Democratic administration. Somewhere in the State of Indiana is a distinguished senator denouncing the Republi- can party in that it fixed a day for the resumption of specie payments. He says if that policy is carried out there will be such a contraction of the greenback that it will be quadrupled in its value, and that, therefore, every debt which every citizen owes will be practically quadrupled in amount. Isn't it a terrible calamity to think of ? Let us stop and consider it. Has it ever occurred to you whether it is very probable that any time within our prospects of living a greenback will be worth very much more than gold ? Suppose some enterprising citizen of Jo Daviess County concludes he will start a dairy. He gets his cows and his machinery for running the business. lie issues his milk tickets, and he finds by and by, so many tickets has he issued, that he has a great many more tickets than milk. What is he going to do ? Can he contract his tickets so as to resume ? Suppose he began contracting that he calls in his tickets the time will never come when the milk ticket will be worth more than the milk. What is the policy of the Republican party ? If you cannot contract your tickets, if you cannot call them in inflate your 13$ rOTLlTICAL ORATORY. dairy; get more cows; get no more tickets, but for God's sake get more cows. What is the policy of the Democratic party? It is to inflate your tickets, and to -inflate your milk at the same time. Instead of having a tendency toward honest resumption of your tickets, instead of enlarging your dairy, they have immediate recourse to the pump. When it is inflated by that process, have they got any more milk ? I am asked by Democratic orators, ' Do you pretend to claim that Congress cannot make money ; that the inscription which it puts upon a piece of paper doesn't confer upon it actual value? Do you/ they say, ' deny" the power of Congress to do that ? ' Yes. I have the utmost reverence for the power of Congress, but there are many things that Congress cannot do. Congress can- not make a horse. Congress cannot make two hundred acres out of one. Congress cannot make actual value by saying that it is actual value. Take a $20 gold piece, fresh from the mint, with the inscription clear and bright upon it. Obliterate every letter and every figure; leave it an absolutely smooth surface; twist it into any shape you please; make around ball of it, and it is then worth $20. Take a $20 greenback. Obliterate the inscription from it; make it a blank piece of paper; roll it up in a wad, and it isn't worth a Democratic curse. It is absolutely good for nothing. There is no inherent value in it; and the only worth it possesses is the belief of the holder of the paper in two things: first, in the ability of the nation to make the promise good; and, second, in the willingness of the nation to make the promise good. You cannot enforce a liability against a nation by an attachment proceeding. It is to a certain extent idle to say that every blade of grass and grain of wheat is pledged to the payment of the greenback and of the bonds. So long as the Republican party is in power that is true; but with the Democratic party in POLITICAL ORATORY. 189 power it is false. The credit of either the greenback or the bond depends upon the integrity of the party in power, and the just management of the national affairs. Place to-day i.f the Almighty in His wrath should see fit to do it this Democratic party at the head and in custody of our national interests, with its long black record of repu- diation behind it, and where, so far as the national credit is concerned, would the national credit be? Let there come up from the South, from every Confederate crossroads, a bearer of a Confederate heart full of the belief that the Lost Cause is won; let the Government be made up in that way, and where would our national credit be? Do you gather grapes from thorns, and figs from thistles? Is this Demo- cratic party, characterized to-day by being a solid South, is that party, which for years and years has waged relent- less war against the national life, to be trusted with its old doctrine still fresh upon its lips, and its old bitterness still lingering in its heart? It is to be intrusted with the care and protection of the national credit? Let the wires carry the intelligence abroad that the old Rebel Democratic party has triumphed, that it has charge of the national debt, that it has charge of the national credit, knowing that that party has always sought and desired the ruin of both, where would our national credit be? Where would be the pledge of your blades of grass, your gold and your silver in your mines, your coal in your coal-field, your grain on your prairies where would the pledge of them be with the Democratic party in power? "There is nothing in this world more sensitive than national credit to the slightest outside interference. Place in charge of it a party punctured all through with the name of repudiation, and this national credit which we all hold so dearly to our heart would perish in a night. I am told that we cannot interfere with the national debt. 190 POLITICAL ORATORY. I may overstate it. I am assured, however, that in the last session of this Confederate Congress more than 1,000 bills for private claims from the South were presented, and smuggled in by that most astute Northern Democratic gentleman having charge of those affairs in committee. Imagine the condition of those claims if they should triumph! Cords and cords, scores and scores, of claims of that character would come into Congress, and millions, countless millious, of additional indebtedness be saddled upon the people, which would render the time of resump- tion of specie-payments not only an indefinite postpone- ment, but an everlasting impossibility. " But they assure us they desire to reform the civil service. How? Have you ever heard a Democrat say how? Have you ever read a Democratic speech that told you how? Has there ever stood up in Washington, in the Senate or in the House, a single Democratic legislator, and made one single recommendation of a practical character looking to the reform of the civil service? Wade through their long- winded platform, if you please. Balance each dreary plati- tude with the utmost care; search it all with the keenest analysis and criticism, and then tell me if you can. Can you see a practical remedy suggested by the Democratic party for the reform of the civil service? My good friends, without reference to platforms, without reference to letters of acceptance, let us take this business as it is. We all know that, as long as this form of government continues, the nation must be managed by parties. I believe in politi- cal organization. I believe that men are so constituted that upon great political questions they do not think alike; and I think two pretty evenly-balanced parties, eager and zealous, are the most healthy indications that you can find in any free government. I believe, moreover, and you be- lieve it, that the party in power will fill the government POLITICAL ORATORY. 191 offices to a great extent with men holding the same politi- cal belief that the party entertains. This is a necessity. You will never reach that beatific condition of government when it will be otherwise. Suppose that the only issue were hard or soft money; a large majority of the people vote that they will have hard-money, and they elect a Presi- dent upon that basis, what would you say to him if, con- tinuing upon that basis, representing that idea, he placed at the head of the treasury, as its secretary, a man who believed in inflation? I have this to say: If I were a hard- money secretary of the treasury, and believed in it as thoroughly as I believe in it to-day, I would see to it that my first assistant, my second assistant, my third assistant, my chief clerk, and my subordinates, if I could command it, should be hard-money men too. I should see to it that they talked, when they talked anything, hard-money; that they talked hard-money out of the office; that they would be hard money all the way through. When I desired to advance hard-money ideas I wouldn't go to the soft-money men to help me. Suppose you undertake to reform the civil service. Let me say to you here that out of one or two of these great aggregations which we call the Demo- cratic and the Republican parties must these offices be filled either by Republicans or by Democrats. From which aggregation will you fill them? If you desire men who can write, where will you find the most men who can read and who can write? In the Republican party or in the ranks of the Democracy? If you want to find the great mass of the intelligent, honest, patriotic thought of the country, where will you go? The question is answered by your own hearts the instant it is asked. You know that within the boundaries of this Republican party of the nation, within its great temple, on the walls of which are inscribed the grandest records either of ancient or modern history, 192 POLITICAL ORATORY. that in that temple are to-day assembled, and have been gathered for a quarter of a century past, the wisest, and purest, and best, and the most patriotic men on the con- tinent. " I ask you one other question. From either one of these two aggregations must your choice be made. Imagine such a thing as a Democratic success. I do not care how well-intentioned Mr. Tilden may be; I do not care how resolute he may be; that man doesn't live sufficiently strong to encounter a solid party against him. There would come floating down upon him like the resistless waves of old ocean a tide that would sweep that little bachelor clean up into the clouds if he didn't obey; that would demand for these Confederate Democrats, who have for sixteen years been dieting on east wind, a reward for their services. Think of the city of Washington. Think of the congregations that would be there assembled. Think of the thousands, and tens of thousands of the help- less, hopeless, hatless, shirtless, and lost Confederates there appealing for an office and in search of a reform of civil service. Is that your remedy? Straws show which way the wind blows. We vainly thought that the old Union cause had triumphed. We saw the old flag floating above our heads, and supposed that the cause which it repre- sented had triumphed. We thought we had triumphed, but in an idle hour, in an evil hour, our outposts were un- guarded and the rebel host rushed in, and when they came in they threw their pickets out. The old skirmishers of the Union army, the old Boys in Blue, who had watched the doors and attended to the messages of Congress, have sur- rendered surrendered to the foe who but eleven years ago surrendered to them. In went again the old conquered Confederate soldier. Out went the victorious soldier of the Union. Soldier after soldier who had fought that the POLITICAL ORATORY. 193 Union might live was driven from his place. Soldier after soldier, with the old plantation threat on his lips, who had fought that the Union might be destroyed, was put back in his place of triumph. Doesn't it seem as if Samuel J. Til- den, in 18C4, spoke the words of prophesy when he said the war was a failure? " Point me to a city under Democratic rule where the treasury has not been robbed. Point me to a city under Democratic government where the revenues have not been plundered. Point me to a little patch of land, I do not care how small it is, that has been under Democratic manage- ment for years, and I will show you withered fields and blasted political crops. Point me to any place where their policy has had its full swing, and I will show you poor schools, bootless men, shoeless children and ruined wives. "They tell us that we have forced upon the nation an ignorant vote, that the black man is ignorant. But the black man knows he is ignorant. He has learned that much. We erect school-houses; the rebels tear them down. We send teachers; they slaughter them. And yet, with the blood of the innocent citizen upon their hands, and with the smoke of burning asylums and school-houses on their garments, they turn around to this great loyal North, and spit upon their history for the last twenty years, and ask that they may be permitted to take charge of our national affairs. More than all that. Not only have they embodied assassination in their creed, but they have, by a reign of terror which is a disgrace to modern civiliza- tion and would be a discredit to a Turk, driven every white man from their midst. Farmers of Stephensou county, business men of this thriving city, send your son with his youthful hopes and bounding ambition to the South. Let him take that free tongue with him, the free thought and free speech which he has enjoyed here, and go there. He 194 POLITICAL ORATORY. goes there in pursuit of an honest living in an honest way. How is he met? Broad-hatted Democratic lawyers demand of him, not what he can do, but what does he think. And, if his views on some political question do not agree with those of the worthless men who were born there, he is de- nounced as a carpetbagger and shot in the night. I spit upon this cry of carpetbagger. I believe in the carpet- bag principle. I believe that there is no state in the Union, no foot of soil in all its broad domain, upon which I am not to be permitted to tread, a free man; and Avhere I am not to be permitted to utter what I think. And the man who would deny me that privilege is a sneak, and if it comes into the politics of the nation, the war is not yet ended. I say, throw down every barrier, remove every obstruction, open every avenue of enterprise. Let us have it, for God's sake, if we have to fight for it; let us have the largest, broadest freedom of thought and opinion of which any government is capable. Who are you, what are you, who talk about carpetbaggers? Were you born here? Hundreds of thousands of you are from old fatherland, where patriotic feeling is an instinct with the people thousands from the old Empire State. From all the hills and valleys of New England and New York you have come here, young men, poor men, filled, however, with that un- conquerable spirit which is characteristic of a carpetbagger; and you have reared here the most magnificent empire that the world has ever seen. I say, go on with the carpetbag spirit. Send it all over the South. Make its fields blossom. Make every swift-running stream active with the wheels of swift-running machinery; develop its mines; increase its resources; develop everything of a material character; educate its people; and then we will have what we will never have otherwise, a united, homogeneous nation-, ality. POLITICAL ORATORY. 195 "The Democracy have nominated Samuel J. Tilden on a platform which reads well enough, but who is he? I de- sire to say no unkind thing of Mr. Tilden, but the unkind- est things that I could say of him would be truthful things. Suppose that I should say that he was born with a Demo- cratic platform in one hand and a railroad charter in the other; that, at the early age of twelve years, he was incor- porated; that he has had no soul since; that he was con- solidated with the Democratic party and run in connection with Bill Tweed as a great railroad wrecker and great rail- road physician, under whose ministrations there have been more corporation funerals and at whose door have been seen larger processions of corporation hearses than all the corporations that have ever flourished in all the times before. I ask this simple question of him: Mr. Tilden, where were you during the war? What were you doing during the war? It is an important question for us to ask. I ask the loyal men to-day, whose hearts and all whose sym- pathies and feelings were with and are with the great cause, where was he? Now and then we have a stray affida- vit from some inconspicuous individual that Samuel J. Tilden quietly, modestly, unobtrusively, was, away down at the bottom of his little corporation heart, a genuine, all-wool, yard-wide, patriotic man. I have never found it out. I do not believe in patriotism that is so stealthy; I do not believe in loyalty that is so shy; I do not believe in an emergency as great as that was that made so good a man hide the whole of patriotism under so small a bushel." Returning to Chicago, Mr. Storrs again addressed an enthusiastic mass-meeting in that city. Being one of many speakers on this occasion, his remarks were brief. He said : " The Republican party had a great mission during the war, It fyas had a great mission since the war. Its mis.- 196 POLITICAL ORATORY. sion since the war has been to convert the Democratic party. And how splendidly it has succeeded is evidenced in the fact that in their last platform of principles they unhesitatingly declare that they are opposed to stealing. Within twenty-five years we expect to get them to ratify the whole Decalogue. Think of it ! The Democratic party opposed to larceny ! And in favor of reform ! A party not satisfied with stealing trivial things, but that runs off with a whole state. A party that undertook to force the nation to steal the government opposed to lar- ceny ! God save the mark ! I desire to enlarge the prop- osition of the next governor of this state. He insists that the only question before us is, f Who are the best men for president and vice-president of the United States ? It is a broader question, a more serious question. The question is, Which of the two parties is the safest to be intrusted with the management of our national affairs ? If you took the Blessed Saviour and put him at the head of the Democratic party, elected him its president, with its feeling, its his- tory, its traditions, its spirit, he would be absolutely help- less for the accomplishment of reform. I am opposed to the Democratic party because it has a consistent, unvary- ing record, injurious to the best interests of the people, and destructive, if carried out, of our national existence. I am opposed to the Democratic party because it sought the destruction of our cause, and I don't believe it wise to intrust the affairs of a great empire to the members of a political organization within ten years after they sought to annihilate it. The logic is short, it is clear, it is plain, it is unmisunderstandable. I am prepared to accept with certain qualifications their protestations of repentance, but the repentance has not been long enough. "I want them to be engaged in good works as long as they have been engaged in bad works, and if. we wait for POLITICAL the expiration of that period of probation, we will be dead, and our children afterwards, before the Democratic party succeeds to power. The Democratic party is in favor of purifying the civil service of the government. How do they propose to do it ? Have they told you? They are in favor of an honest currency. What currency do they pro- pose to give you ? Have they told you ? They say they are in favor of the resumption of specie payments. How are they to resume ? Have they told you ? Their plat- form is full of denunciations from the beginning to the end, and the curious feature of the platform of 1876 is that it denounces every Democratic measure since 18GO. They insist upon it that the Republican party which they arraign has impeded that desired result. What financial policy has the Democratic party had since 18GO ? None whatever, except in 18G8 they did invent a platform and put forth a principle insisting upon it that the national debt should be paid in greenbacks, a policy that would have resulted in the repudiation of the national debt and the destruction and swamping of every national interest. " No single living Democrat occupying a prominent pol-itical position since 1800 has proposed a scheme for the reform of the Civil Service. They have had the power this winter jn one branch of the National Government. How have they reformed the service ? No measure has been introduced for that purpose. They have had control over the appointments, and such a raft of Confederates, believing that the Lost Cause was finally won, was never before seen as gathered in that City of Washington to catch the crumbs that might fall from the Speaker's table. Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart, sutlers, commissaries, privates, and officers in the Confederate service from the beginning to the end, knowing that their victory had finally been achieved, rushed to Washington by countless hundreds and 198 POLITICAL ORATORY. made night hideous by their howls for place, demanding the reward of their services. " They ask us, ' Will you shake the bloody shirt ? ' Who is responsible for the blood on the shirt ? Whose blood is it ? I would not as a Republican, and, as I think, as a patriotic citizen, needlessly engender the bitterness which the war brought about, but if I am to choose, and my thousands of fellow-citizens who surround me to-night, if you are to choose if the choice is to be laid between the boy who shed his blood that your nationality might be pre- served, and the man who shed his that it might be destroyed, no gushing talk about shaking hands over the gaping chasm will make you hesitate long about the decision. You can call it the bloody shirt or not, as you please. First, last, and all the while, as long as I have the capacity to distinguish the difference of men when public benefac- tions are to be bestowed, I am, thank God, in favor of giv- ing them to him who fought that the nation might live, rather than to him who fought that the nation might be destroyed." VII. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1880. AN ORATORICAL VICTORY ON THE PACIFIC SLOPE CHAR- ACTER OF GENERAL GRANT WORK OF AN ORATOR RECORD OF A GREAT PARTY ADDRESSES AT BDRLING- TON, CLEVELAND AND OTHER CITIES ELOQUENCE AND LOGIC. ( ( T E AVING that wonderful city of mine, enthroned !_-/ on the edges of the great inland sea, coming away across 2,000 miles of plain and mountain to this gem on the Pacific coast, this jewel which rests upon the edge of that wonderful ocean, I find they are both patriotic cities, both born of patriotism. Will you allow me to carry back to my fellow-citizens' when I return home the message from San Francisco to Chicago that this wonderful city is true to her birth which made her a free state, and is true to that great party which made us a nation. I come from the Atlantic to the Pacific and one flag covers us ; wherever I am I am a citizen of the United States ; and when I think of all these splendid achievements and of our party, we did it, we did it, and the poorest of us, however little we may have of other worldly possessions, these splendid achievements are our patrimony, and with these we are rich indeed. This great party, the pride of humanity every- where, confronts to-day the Democratic party, a party that asks that the past be buried, and I do not wonder at it ; a party that insists that no previous record shall be exam- ined I am not surprised at it ; a party that wishes to look to the future only I am not astonished at it, for if the record of the party to which I belong and you belong 199 200 POLITICAL OtlATOftY. were leprous with guilt as theirs is, and were stained all over with crime as theirs is; if the political history of our party were as theirs is, not merely criminal but crime itself, I would ask, as they ask, that the past be forgotten. Are these dead issues ? They claim so ; I think not. The great effort of the Democratic party of to-day is to unload its history, to run away from its reputation and its charac- ter. It is a hard thing to do. They discover that charac- ter is always in issue. No man asks for employment without he puts his character in issue. You don't employ men on their platforms or on their promises. The banker would not employ the pilfering clerk of last month, even if his platform of next month embodied the Ten Command- ments and Christ's Sermon on the Mount. " You perhaps by this time have discovered that I am not in favor of a change, except in the better and qualified sense. I am in favor of all changes that look to improve- ment. I would be in favor of a change from hell to purg- atory, but not from earth to purgatory. " These words were the beginning of a speeeh, deliv- ered by Mr. Storrs in the Grand Opera House, San Francisco, on the 15th of September, 1880, which called from the Chronicle the following day the statement that " It is risking nothing to say that the great audience which crammed the Grand Opera House last night from pit to gallery, to hear the famous orator from Illinois, Hon. Emery A. Storrs, has not been surpassed in San Francisco in point of numbers, intelligence and enthusiasm. Long before half-past 7 o'clock, half an hour before the time announced for the opening of the meeting, hun- dreds reluctantly turned from the doors, unable to squeeze their way into the immense -edifice. There were ladies willing to brave the discomforts of standing if they could POLITICAL ORACR. SOJ but get within the theater, men so anxious to hear Mr. Storrs that they stood in the aisles and passage ways packed liked sardines in boxes, able to hear the fine voice of the speaker but unable to catch a glimpse of him, The enthu- siasm, as might be expected, was unparalleled. Every telling point made by the speaker and his speech fairly bristled with them was applauded to the echo/' But this political harangue one of a short series on the Pacific slope was not the first of the labors of Mr. Storrs during the great campaign of 1880. He had inaugurated the fight in a splendid address at a mass meeting, at Chicago, of those favoring the nomi- nation of Gen. Grant for a third term, held immediately prior to the nominating convention. The address, set- ting forth the attitude of a great commander, the colossal egotism of "the independent scratcher," and the "third term" issue, was a field for common quotation by the after-campaign speeches of that fall. Mr. Storrs said: ' ' I can say without the slightest degree of extrava- gance that it has never been the fortune of any man to face, on a political occasion, an audience more splendid in enthusiasm, grander in its tone and quality, than the vast assemblage gathered here to-night. It is an audience called together on no common occasion and assembled for no ordinary purpose. It is an audience of the leading men and women of the chiefest city of the great Northwest. It is an audience gathered together here in an emergency to protect the fair escutcheon of the great state of Illinois from an impending stab of dishonor, and, God knows, it will protect it. It is an audience gathered to celebrate the praises of no common man, an audience met from all over this State, merely to testify what all the world has testified, 202 POLITICAL ORATORY. that we have in our midst the chief est citizen of the world. And the broad-browed men of Chicago that have, within the period of nine years, lifted it from ashes and made it the proudest city of the world, seated like a queen enthroned by the shore of her great lake, have no apologies to offer because they are here to night demanding the nomination of U. S. Grant. The city of Chicago, Mr. Chairman, never begged a favor ; it never won a fight that it didn't win in front, and it never yet trembled in the presence of an adversary. The city of Chicago is a great Eepublican city; it is the imperial city of the carpetbagger who has carved out in this Western world, within the period of twenty-five years, an empire the most splendid that the sun in all his course shines upon, an empire of the light of which the 'independent scratched never dreamed. " Who is this man that has called this vast audience together, utterly untitled, who holds no office, who wields no patronage, who manages no bureau ? He is a great majestic prince, enthroned in the hearts of 48,000,000 of people. He reigns there by their suffrages ; and this side the Plutonian region of Democracy, this side the purga- torial region of the half-way house of independentism, there is no man to molest or make him afraid. I speak to-night not alone of this hero. I cannot speak for this great citizen without speaking of the Eepublican party. From boyhood up to manhood I have been and am a member of that party, stalwart at the outset and stalwart now, per- pendicular as a ramrod, believing in its faith in the inner- most recesses of my soul, never doubting that from its birtli down to this hour its supremacy has been absolutely essen- tial to the well-being of this country. I talk, then, of that grand old party ; I talk of its grand leader, as grand as the party and as great. I can say, that when I look back on our history I can discern a great party which has for a POLITICAL OfcATOBY. 203 quarter of a century preserved its identity ; a party often depressed, never extinguished ; a party which, though often tainted with the faults of the age, has always been in advance of the age ; a party which, though guilty of some errors, has the glory of having established our liber- ties on a firm foundation ; and of that party I am proud to be a member. It was that party which, at the very thres- hold of its career, confronted the shameful doctrine that freedom was sectional and slavery was national, rescued the Territories from the grasp of slavery, and dedicated them forever after to freedom to free men, free thought, and free speech. It is that party which, in vindication of its ideas of freedom, elected Lincoln president of the United States ; which found treason in every department of the Government ; which found its fleet scattered over every sea ; its arsenals plundered, its forts in the hands of trai- tors, its little army shivered to fragments ; which found every branch of the public service paralyzed, the national flag dishonored even when flying over its own forts ; which found hostile armies arrayed against it ; which, compelled to appeal to the patriotism of the people for national sal- vation, made the appeal ; which met an armed rebellion vast in extent and malignant in spirit ; which saved this nation to be the custodian of free government among men. It is that party which, true to the great cause which it represented, made the promise of freedom to the slave and kept that promise good. It is that party which, when the war for national preservation closed in victory, declared that forever after slavery should be extirpated from the soil of the republic ; which declared that all persons born beneath the flag, or naturalized here, should be citizens ; which guaranteed to all citizens equality of civil and polit- ical privileges ; which placed beyond the possibility of repudiation our national debt, and made firm and secure 204 POLITICAL ORATOilY. the national credit. It is that party which has restored our currency, and made every paper dollar in the pockets of the laboring man worth one hundred cents; It is that party which compelled the British Government to pay to our own people millions of money, for damages inflicted upon our commerce by rebel cruisers fitted out in their ports. It is that party which by wise legislation has sought the execution of all our constitutional guarantees to the citizen, the purity of the ballot-box, and the protection of the polls against violence, terrorism, and fraud. It is that party which has ranked among its leaders the purest patriotism, the staunchest courage, the wisest thought, the best culture, and the loftiest statesmanship of the nation, and among its rank and file 'that solid citizenship which demands just and honest government, and will be satisfied with nothing less. I look with pride on all that the Republican party has done for the cause of human free- dom. I see it now hard pressed, struggling with difficulties, but still fighting the good fight. At its head I see men who have inherited the spirit and the virtues, as well as the blood, of the old champions and martyrs of freedom. I see pre- siding here to-night the only living son and descendant of Abraham Lincoln, whose name and whose memory are enshrined in every patriotic heart. I see here to-night the son of that great patriotic statesman, Stephen A. Douglas, who, when treason raised its hands, cast party to the winds, stood like a rock for thellnion, and died with patriotic words upon his lips. I look at the call in obedience to which this magnificent audience is assembled, and see at its head a name which we all delight to honor ; one steadfast and ever reliable as a legislator, wise in counsel, prompt in action, earnest in opinion, dauntless in courage, incorrupt- ible in integrity ; who for nearly twenty years maintained the honor of our state in the councils of the nation, always POLITICAL OKATOfiY. 205 speaking for freedom ; who for eight years dignified and honored the American name and character abroad, and who, as Minister to France, during the terrible siege of Paris, when every other foreign representative had fled, remained faithful at his post, gathering in safety under his country's flag the citizens of every land who sought the protection of its sheltering folds Elihu B. Washburne. To the same call I see the name of the peerless soldier, the ever-faithful Republican, the true man, the firm friend, the stalwart senator, the smiter of treason John A. Logan. The last words of the great Michigan senator, Chandler, patriotic and eloquent words, uttered the lan- guage of this call, and declared, with Lincoln and Douglas and Logan and "Washburne, that he, too, believed that the success of the' Republican party would be best promoted by the nomination and election of Ulysses S. Grant as Presi- dent of the United States. The millions of oppressed, bullied and terrorized Republicans of the South, white and black, speak the same sentiment . To this party to these men I propose to attach myself ; and, while one shred of the old banner is left flying, by that banner will I at least be found. "I confess that I am not independent of these consid- erations. I have not scaled, and shall not attempt to scale, those dizzy heights from which I could look down upon them. I am content to remain in the valleys, where I find such company as I have named, rather than to seek those drearier and colder, if loftier, mountain peaks to which that select few aspire who profess to see in the nomination and election of General Grant as President of the United States dangers which the wisdom of the country is not able to perceive. Who am I, to threaten .that wisdom, patriot- ism, experience, and intelligence, that unless it surrenders its opinion for mine I will refuse obedience to orders, and 206 POLITICAL ORATORY. bolt the ticket ? This colossal egotism is called ' indepen- dence/ This man who parades it is known as the 'inde- pendent scratcher/ independent of the party to which he belongs, save when the minority to which he is attached can rule ; whose ticket he votes, whose principles he con- descendingly espouses, and whose candidates he patroniz- ingly supports at spasmodic intervals, the recurrence of which it is given to no one to foretell. I do not include among the 'independent scratchers' those true Republi- cans who honestly prefer the nomination by the forth- coming National Republican Convention of some other candidate than General Grant. Those true and earnest Republicans who prefer either Mr. Washburne, or Mr. Sherman, or Mr. Elaine, or Mr. Edmunds will surely find the claims of their favorites fairly considered by that convention, and will as surely support its nominee as I am sure to support him, not haltingly, and unwill- ingly, but with whole soul and in dead earnest. The friends of General Grant do not bolt, and they neither boast nor .threaten ; but they do better they succeed. The ' independent scratcher ' is either that ambitious young man very proud of knowing what older and wiser men have found it convenient to forget, or that ambitious man of any age who, itching for notoriety, must find some one more distinguished and- greater than himself to scratch. "In 1864 the 'independent scratcher' in the state of Illinois engaged in a scheme to force the withdrawal of Abraham Lincoln, and attempted to carry through our state convention at Springfield a resolution condemning Lincoln and his administration. The outraged patriotism and good sense of the people, the dangers of insurrection in our very midst, frightened the ' independent scratcher' back into the ranks which he attempted to desert. "In 1872 the 'independent scratchers/ wretchedly in POLITICAL OKATOKY. 207 * the minority, organized a free-trade and revenue reform party at Cincinnati, but at its head the most rabid and ultra protectionist and the bitterest hater of the Demo- cratic party on earth, and in a body melted into the Democratic fold. The combination was terribly beaten. Many of them returned to us in 1876, and we were well riigh defeated ; and but for the fact that there was then at the head of the government a man with whom no one could either trifle or trade, surrounded by a cabinet in- spired by his own courage and patriotism, the nation would have been involved in another rebellion. From this colili- tion thousands of honest, earnest but deceived Eepublicans have withdrawn themselves. They have by years of faith- ful service expiated their offense. They are with us now. They are here to-night, and after having once tasted the bitter fruits of bolting experience, they are comfortably back in the old mansion, feeling ' themselves again/ and determined to never wander more. "General Grant is to-day, and has been for the past three years, a private citizen, out of office, with no patron- age at his disposal, resting his claims purely upon his strength with the people as a man. It is idle to talk of the precedents of our history, for our history furnishes no precedent. There is no instance in our history where a president, after holding the office for two successive terms, retires to the ranks of private citizenship, and is afterward called upon to again fill the position. Washington retired after serving two terms. Jefferson did also, and declined a successive nomination for a third term after it became clear that it was impossible for him to secure it. Madison held the office two terms, and no renomination was ten- dered him. Jackson held the office two terms, and no renomination was tendered him. Grant held the office two terms, retiree} at the close of his second term. After an 208 POLITICAL ORATORY. interval of four years, a nomination is again tendered him, for which our history furnishes no precedent whatever. Why should the people of this country, after having had four years' opportunity to calmly and justly judge the man, be deprived by a sentimental objection of this character of his services through another trying period in our history? Who has made such a law ? With a wider experience and a riper judgment than he ever before possessed, with an emergency upon us through which we know he could safely carry us, who is there to say the majority of this people shall not again elevate the private citizen of their choice into the highest place ? The people of this country have never found any difficulty in ridding themselves of a president whom they did not like at the end of his first term. They found no difficulty in retiring both the Adamses, VanBuren, Polk, Pierce, Buchanan and John- son, after they had served one term. The people have never yet made a mistake in electing an incumbent to the second term. They have made several mistakes in electing a man to the first term. Quick to discover such a mistake, however, they never repeat it. The people of this country are better judges of the fitness of their public servants than any little band of philosophers who have vexed us with their theories. Conceding that there is no constitu- tional objection to the election of General Grant, it is still urged that it is unduly honoring one man at the expense of all the others. I am in favor of General Grant's nomina- tion, not to honor him, but to benefit the country. This great office is to be filled, not for the accommodation of the individual, but to promote the public interests. It is not, as some people seem to conceive, an office to be passed around among certain invited guests like refreshments at a picnic, but a great office, to be filled for the public good. (< While the friends of General Grant sincerely believe. POLITICAL OUATOKY. 209 that there is before us such an emergency as can best be filled by him while they sincerely believe that his elec- tion will do more to insure quiet and a finally just solution of our political troubles than that of any other Republi- can while they believe that he possesses the confidence of the people North and South in a larger measure than any other man in the nation they do not believe, and they are very far from saying, that he is the only man whom the Republican party can elect. But it nevertheless is true that the most serious problem in our politics to-day and for the future grows out of the constant menace of a solid South. Who can divide that solid South, and thus solve the problem ? I do say that General Grant is the only man in all this country who can solve the problem of the solid South by dividing the South, so that it shall not be solid. I do say that he is the only man in all this country whom the Republican party can nominate for whom the negro will risk his life and property to vote. I do say that he can carry three and probably five Southern states, and can divide the vote in all the others, and that no other Republican can carry one. If Grant is nominated, the negro will vote, and will vote for him. If he is not nom- inated, the negro will not vote at all. If Grant is nominated, the terrorized and outraged Southern white Republican will vote, and vote for him. If he is not nom- inated, he will not vote at all. "The country demands for its leader a man wnose very name stands for peace, whose very presence is a restraint upon the law-breaker. Grant means peace. He smote secession hip and thigh in open warfare ; it fears him now as it feared him then ; it respects him now as it respected him then. I am doing no injustice to any living man when I say that for all such emergencies General Grant fills the requirements of the occasion in a larger measure than 210 POLITICAL ORATORY. any other living man. It is idle to claim that all our dangers are past, because during the present session of con- gress the Democratic party has suspended for the time being the prosecution of its revolutionary schemes. The very fact that Grant is the probable candidate of the Republican party, and that the complete development of their schemes would render his nomination a certainty, has awed them into silence, and they stand, even in his prospective pres- ence, tongue-tied and dumb before the world. " This great character stands forth to-day, bright and shining, the admiration of the world. Palsied be the hand which would strike it, and blistered the tongue which would defame it! It is not merely because he is so well worthy of this great honor, but because we sincerely believe that, more than any other man, can he serve his country and promote its best interests in that position. From first to last he has never known defeat. His record from Belmont to Appomattox is one unbroken chain of victories which honored his country and secured for himself the admiration of his foes. He never left a duty unperformed. He never made a promise which he did not keep. He never turned his back upon a friend. There is more wisdom in his silence than in the speech of most men. There is not a boast in all his long and splendid career. Bitterly and malignantly as he has been assailed, no word of slander ever escaped his lips. Prudent and cautious in coun- sel, he never fails to act when a conclusion has been reached, and is as prompt in action as ho is prudent in prep- aration. In his first inaugural he met the clamor for an inflated currency by a demand for the payment of our national debt in coin, and by his veto struck a blow at all schemes for a depreciated currency from which they never recovered. He inaugurated and carried through a plan of peaceful arbitration by which grave international disputes POLITICAL ORATORY. 211 were settled and made our flag and our country respected throughout the world. As modest as he was great, he never set his individual judgment against the clearly ex- pressed public will, but, renouncing his desire, he declared that he had no policy opposed to the will of the people. Leaving his high office, he has made the circuit of the globe, and has been received under every flag with such honors as no man ever received before. Unaffected by them, he never for one moment lost that wonderful pose which has carried him through so many great events. Re- turning home, thus honored and thus laureled, the brave, the honest, the patriotic, the modest soldier, statesman, and citizen, places all these honors in the hands of his countrymen. " There is no elevation so high that he is dizzied by it. There is no place so low and humble which he may fill that he does not uncomplainingly and faithfully perform all its duties. ' Draw him strictly so That all who view the place may know He needs no trappings of fictitious fame.' "This is our true knight, 'without fear, without re- proach/ and without a plume. Here, in his own state here in the chief city of that state, have the thousands who are assembled here to night met, not to place fresh laurels upon his brow, not to add an additional honor to his long roll of honors, by uttering the voice of his own state in his behalf in National convention, but to save the state from such a dishonor as any halting upon our part would surely reflect upon it. "He has enemies here, as had Lincoln and Douglas before him. They can and they will be silenced. Joining hands with the other states, Illinois shall stand in the line and shall utter her voice for her honored citizen. Assail- 212 POLITICAL ORATOKY. ing no competitor, the rank and file, the Old Guard, de- clare that they are for Grant, because again and again they have marched under his banners, but never to defeat, and every battlefield over which his flag ever floated was a field of victory. The work of our great leader is- not fin- ished, and will not be until he has led the hosts of freemen to that future, when there shall be within all the bounda- ries of the Eepublic not one foot of ground over which the flag floats and upon which a citizen stands who may not speak, and think, and vote as he pleases. Prostrate to-day are millions of our fellow-citizens, our equals before the law, but shorn of that equality. Under the banners of of our chosen leader shall they be lifted up? " When justice reigns throughout all our borders, and every citizen, white and black, stands equal before the law, when North and South, and East and West, there shall be found no privileged class, then, 'let us have peace;' that Peace which shall come to us with her silken banners floating in every breeze, with Justice and Mercy bearing her train. Justice to all, friend and foe. Such a peace leaves no traces of bitterness behind it, and smiling fields and the roar of thriving cities, and the hum of busy machinery, and happy homes, and a prosperous and pros- pering people mark its pathway, and, better than all and grander than all else, there shall be in all its march neither shackled wrists nor fettered tongues." The entire campaign, succeeding the exciting nom- ination of James A. Garfield, in the face of " the 306 " Grant adherents, was a succession of orations to the orator Storrs. The simple reading of his political ad- dresses and political addresses are usually reckoned most interesting from the occasion create enthusiasm ; but the influence they wielded when delivered can only be imagined from their reception at the time. There POLITICAL ORATORY. 213 Was a bitter fight over seats in the Illinois State con- vention, on the 19th of May, preceding the national assemblage, and Mr. Storrs was the champion of one delegation. The Illinois State Register, a Democratic paper, said of the debate : " The speech of Emery A. Storrs was an extraordinary effort. It was surpassingly brilliant, burnished, as it was, by the genius of the orator and of the poet. Mr. Storrs exhibited his gifts to the best advantage. He bore down upon the rioters, the bribe-givers and bribe-takers of Chi- cago with all the blazonry of his unequaled powers of de- nunciation, of ridicule, of sarcasm, of humor, leaping the difficult places in his pathway by a glowing appeal for Grant, an apotheosis of Republican stalwartism, a shining tribute to the flag, and crowned his cause with a trumpet- tongued cry for harmony, for conciliation, for peace, that won his audience, and supplied an ample apology for the claim which he so fervently espoused. He wanted only thirty-six of the ninety-two delegates wanted them in the name of justice, in the name of popular rights, and above all, in the name of the great leader who had done more for his country than any other living man, and whose splendid form towered into the very sunshine of eternal fame. The orator closed his speech with a peroration, the classic finish of which, though capping a faulty argument, was worthy of Sheridan in the British Parliament, or of Sergeant S. Prentiss, when, pleading for his contested seat as a representative, he electrified the American Congress forty years ago. The victory was complete. The orator had swept triumphantly the chords of human passion, and the vote then promptly taken gave Grant all that had been claimed for him in Cook county. This episode in Illinois politics sets a notable precedent in party organization, and illustrates the highest ingenuity of party leadership." 214 POLITICAL ORATORY. John A. Logan called it " the magnificent speech ". The argument was carried from the State . to the Na- tional convention, and, as Mr. Storrs battled for the seating of the Grant delegates in that memorable as- semblage of June, 1880, the scene became one of intense excitement. A hurricane of applause from the stal- warts in the gallaries interrupted Mr. Storrs as he drew his masterly argument to a conclusion. The Elaine men answered with cries and yells. The Grant men cheered again and even louder, and then occurred a chaos of uproar such as has never before or since been known in a National convention. Flags were stripped from in front of the gallaries and waved madly. Dele- gates rushed excitedly through the hall, interchanging jubilations, some loudly singing patriotic songs. For nearly an hour Babel prevailed, and the chairman's gavel was powerless to restore order, while Mr. Storrs, standing upon the platform, looked quietly around him and smiled, until, in a sudden lull, he concluded his speech with the words: " Gentlemen, give the grand old State that never knew a draft, and never filled up a regiment with paper soldiers give the grand old State, the home of Lincoln and Doug- las and Grant, a fair chance. Put no indignity on the honor of her sons. Then, if you can nominate the worthy son of Ohio, John Sherman, do it fairly ; and when the hysterical gentlemen who are afraid that he is not popular enough to carry Illinois are inquiring their way to the polls, the grand old guard, whose representative I am, will have planted the banner of victory on the citadels of the enemy. By all means, let us be free and absolutely untrammeled ; put no just cause for complaint on us ; have no hesitancy in a candidate who exhibits scars, provided they are lion- POLITICAL ORATORY. 215 orable scars, won in honorable welfare. Select no man without a record ; pull no skulker from under the ammuni- tion wagon, because he shows not upon him the signs of battle ; take the old tried hero, let us take him if we can get him ; and then I believe, with the old guard behind him, who have never kept step in this world to any music but the music of the Union, and with the friends of Blaine, and the friends of Sherman, and the friends of all good men, a victory will be achieved, the like of which has never been recorded in the annals of our national politics. Citizens of one country, members of one party, let us remember that, while we accept no indignities from our enemies, we hope and trust and pray our friends will put none upon us. Here in the midnight, with the storm with- out, and these assembled Republicans within, we are first to be just, first to be fair, and victory is ours as sure as the morning comes." Such was the scene evoked in " a convention of statesmen " by Mr. Storrs' oratory, and it is probably unexampled in our nation's history. His argument at Burlington, Iowa, July 16, 1880, was a type of his clos- est reasoning; and was regarded by the Republican Central Committee as so convincing that it was made a campaign document. Its style is shown by an excerpt from his discussion of the various planks of the Demo- cratic platform, entered into after a telling review and comparison of the records of the two rival parties : " Their fourth plank announces this doctrine : ' Home- rule, honest money consisting of gold and silver and paper convertible into coin on demand, and the strict mainte- nance of the public faith, state and national, and a tariff for revenue only/ "What does the democratic party mean by 'home- 21G POLITICAL ORATORY. rule'? The evidences which they have furnished us of home rule in these states from which the one hundred and thirty-eight electoral votes are to be derived are not encouraging. From the practical evidences they have given us, home-rule means with them the right to fetter opinions, to stifle speech, to terrorize the voter and bully the courts at home. It means the White-Liner and the Ku-Klux at home ; it means the argument of the shot-gun; it means the persuasion of Chisholm and Dixon and hun- dreds of others by the gentle methods of assassination ; it means the enlightment of the negro and the white Repub- lican voter, by midnight raids, by burning homes and indiscriminate slaughters. This is the practice of the home-rulers in the south, and this is the practice which this platform ratifies and endorses and the right which it demands. Nothing, however, more impudent in politics can be found than the declaration of this plank in the platform for honest money. Let us compare the practice of the Democratic party in the past with its present profes- sions. " The Democratic platform in 1868 called for the pay- ment of the public debt in greenbacks, which, had it been adopted, would have resulted in such an inflation of our currency as to have rendered the resumption of specie pay- ments an absolute impossibility, which would have been the dishonor of not only the public debt, but of the green- back itself. They aimed a fatal blow at the national credit, for they demanded ' equal taxation of every species of property according to its real value, including government bonds and other public securities.' Had this policy been adopted, my fellow citizens, do you suppose that it would have been within the range of possibility for us to have reduced the interest upon our public debt ? Would not the national honor have been so shaken that resumption POLITICAL OfcATOR*. 217 would have been aii impossibility, and honest money some- thing in a distance so far removed that we could never expect to live to reach it ? In 1869 the public credit bill, which pledged the nation to the payment of its debt in coin, was opposed in Congress by the almost solid vote of the Democratic party. Clamoring to-day for honest money, they opposed the resumption bill which makes the greenback and national banknote honest money. Their platform in 1876, written by a shrewd capitalist who had an eye to the vote of the state of New York, and supposed that he would have the South at all events, for the purpose of catching the capitalist vote, declared for honest money and denounced the Republican party for hindering resump- tion, the entire Democracy having previously opposed the scheme of resumption, but in January, 18,6, but a few months after this convention met, the bill to repeal the resumption act received 112 votes in the House of Repre- sentatives, all Democratic but one. In June, 1876, as a rider to the civil appropriation bill, an amendment repeal- ing the resumption act received solid Democratic support. Does this look like honest money ? The party was not converted by its platform, for the party understood the purpose of the platform. A bill to repeal the fixing of the time for resumption August 5th, 1876, received in the House 176 votes, all Democratic except three, more than a year after the declaration of the platform of 1876. In October, 1877, Mr. E wing reported from the committee on banking and currency a bill to repeal the resumption act. This is the practice of the party as against its profession. It was the practice of the party not only in our national Congress, but throughout the states. In this honest state of Iowa the platform of the Democratic party for 1877 deelared: * We demand the immediate repeal of the specie resumption act.' In 1878, still unconverted, the Democ- 218 POLITICAL ORATORY. racy of the state of Iowa in its platform declares: 'We favor the immediate repeal of the resumption act/ This is the sentiment of the party. Its constitutional doctrines and traditions, and its votes, wherever its votes would tell, have been from the beginning down even to to-day against honest money, for which in its platform to-day it lying and hypocritically declares. " Their fifth plank declares : ' The subordination of the military to the civil power, and a thorough and genuine reform of the civil service/ " This simply means that the military power shall not be used to protect the citizen, nor to put down armed and organized resistance to the enforcement of the laws. It means that the moonshiner shall go unpunished; it means that wherever an independent Democrat determines that he will not pay the revenues which the government imposes upon the business which he is pursuing, that no military power shall be employed to compel such payment; it means that acts of Congress may be resisted in their execution by organized bodies of armed men; that no military power may intervene to enforce these acts of Congress, nor to put down such armed and organized resistance to their enforce- ment. It means that an act of Congress providing for an honest ballot, and for a peaceable poll, shall be rendered nugatory by the surrounding of polls by armed and organized bands of ruffians, and that the military powers of the nation shall not be invoked to protect the citizens in the enjoyment of their privileges, the enjoyment of which the constitutional amendment solemnly guarantees them. "It is well that the Democratic party was exceedingly brief in its demand for a thorough and genuine reform of the civil service. It states no plan it states no ev.il that it seeks to remedy. If it is patriotic men men POLITICAL ORATORY. 219 thoroughly devoted to the nation and to its preservation, thoroughly devoted to the support of the great guarantees furnished by the constitutional amendments that we desire shall we find them in the Democratic party ? Does it possess more of the intelligence of this country than the Republican party ? "This party has organized in itself the bulk of the ignorance, the violence, and the crime of the country. If culture and superior education are desired in our office- holders is there even a Democrat who will claim that better facilities are furnished for procuring these requisites from the Democratic than from the Republican party ? Will yon, with the experience of the organization of the House of Representatives before you, contemplate what kind of a reform that will be which will result from the election of Hancock ? Not only would the triumph of the Demo- cratic party fail to promote any genuine reform of the civil service, but it would render such reform utterly impossible. No one expects the civil service to be reformed through any such curious and extraordinary channels. " By their sixth plank the Democracy declare ' the right of a free ballot is a right preservative of all rights, and must and shall be maintained in every part of the United States/ " From reading this platform one would almost come to the conclusion that the Democratic party had decided in its platform to state great truths which it had always opposed, and to assert great rights which it had always denied. The election laws of Congress, so called, were passed to secure a free and honest ballot, and to prevent fraud and violence at the polls. At the time they were passed the Democratic party solidly opposed them, and demounced them as unconstitutional, and has since that time, even by revolutionary schemes, steadily sought their 220 POLITICAL ORAlORY. repeal. The courts have sustained their constitutionality of those laws, and yet their repeal is as steadily sought. " The whole current of Democratic history gives the lie to this protestation in faVor of a free and honest ballot. " They have never advocated a registry law, the purpose and fair operation of which where they have been in power would be to secure a free or honest ballot No law for the registration of the voter and for the protection of the purity of the polls has ever been passed that has not encountered the opposition of the Democratic party, and when it has been in power such laws have uniformly fallen under their administration. " The fraudulent vote of the city of New York for years and years is a steady commentary upon the falsity of this protestation. In 1868, as was subsequently demonstrated upon the trial of Tweed and the examination of his affairs, over twenty thousand votes were cast, or at least a fraudu- lent vote of twenty thousand in but very few wards of that city. In several precincts there were more votes counted double the number of votes counted than the entire population. This was under a Democratic admin- istration. They opposed every registry scheme by which these gross and outrageous frauds might be pre- vented. "But is there a free ballot in the South? Does any man of ordinary honesty and ordinary intelligence claim such a thing? Let us take a few examples. In 1872 the Republican vote of Alabama was 90,272, the vote of 1878 was nothing; and yet the Democratic vote was not increased to a larger extent than the increase in population would justify. Is that a free ballot? "In 1872 the Republican vote in Arkansas was 41,373; in 1878 it was 115. The Democratic vote in the meantime had not increased, but this Republican vote had been ter- POLITICAL ORATORY. 221 rorized, bulldozed and driven from the polls, and by threats, fraud and violence the expression of public opinion by the ballot was absolutely and utterly stifled; and yet the party guilty of this most stupendous crime sneakinglyand hypo- critically, in its platform, protests that the right of free ballot is a right preservative of all rights, and must, they say, be maintained in all parts of the United States. "In 1872 the Republican vote of Mississippi was 82,175; in 1878 it had dwindled down to 1,168. This tremendous change cannot be accounted for by conversions. It is sim- ply a dropping off of the vote, not an accession of Demo- cratic strength, but a denial of the right of suffrage. Is this a free ballot? "In their tenth plank the Democracy say: * We con- gratulate the country upon the honesty and thrift of a Democratic Congress, which has reduced the public expend- itures forty millions a year, and upon the continuation of prosperity at home and national honor abroad.' "The first commentary upon that is that it is false; but this glaringly false pretense of economy will bear exam- ination. How has this economy been exhibited? Is it economy? In the reduction of the army and in cutting down the pay of onr officers. The spectacle of a crowd of rebel brigadiers in Congress, sitting in judgment on the pay of Sheridan and Sherman and Union soldiers and offi- cers, is one which the loyal men of this country do not contemplate with any great degree of pleasure or satisfac- tion; but we have been compelled to witness it. Our army cut down and so crippled that it is absolutely inefficient to protect our frontiers, or indeed to protect us against mobs in our large cities throughout the entire country is that economy? I regard it as the most wasteful extrava- gance. " It refuses to make appropriations for the payments of 222 POLITICAL ORATORY. judgments procured in the court of claims against the United States, and proclaims this as economy. It refuses to make appropriations for the payment of the expense of our courts, and has left the federal courts throughout the whole country so crippled that there has been no money to pay jury service, and in numberless instances the marshals have been compelled from their private funds to pay the expenses of the administration of justice in the federal courts. This is not economy: this is a shameful neglect or duty; a shameful denial of justice to the citizen; a shame- ful and a wasteful extravagance. "It refuses to make appropriations to finish uncom- pleted public buildings, thereby vastly increasing the expense when completion must ultimately be made. It has cut down the service in the department of the interior and other departments to such an extent that the patent office and pension bureau have been almost practically closed. It has refused to make sufficient appropriations for the revenue cutter service, to the prejudice of the cus- toms revenue, and has lost tens of thousands of dollars from revenue where it has derived one from its niggardly appropriation for that service. It has refused to make adequate appropriations for the signal service; it has prac- tically refused appropriations for the repair and protection of the navy yards, stations, armories and arsenals, suffering these great properties to go to wasteful and ruinous decay. It has refused to make adequate appropriations for the increased expenses devolved upon the mint and assay offices, rendered necessary by recent legislation, thus tending to defeat the object of legislation. It has refused to make adequate appropriations for the survey of the public lands; it has made grossly inadequate appropria- tions for lighthouses, beacons and fog stations, thus imper- iling the safety of our merchant marine. And, finally POLITICAL ORATORY. 223 by one great effort, to cut off the supply of lemonade to the members of the house of representatives; but, as his- tory tells us, the supply was sought for by individual mem- bers from the senate department. "At the close of this remarkable plank which I have just read to you, the country is congratulated by the Democratic party upon the continuation of prosperity at home and national honor abroad. But how in the light of history has this prosperity at home been secured, and this honor abroad been maintained? But for the large reduc- tion of public expenditures, resulting from resumption of specie payments and strengthening of the public credit, and reduction of the rate of interest on the public debt, the thoroughness, efficiency and honesty with which all our custom duties and internal revenues have been col- lected and paid over, the country is indebted to a Kepub- lican administration." Of his 4th of October speech at Toledo, Petroleum Y. Nasby telegraphed : " Storrs' meeting the largest ever held here. Speech a most brilliant one. Intense enthusiasm. " Said the Toledo Blade, in an editorial comment upon the occasion : " The orator of the evening was worthy of his magnifi- cent audience. Mr. Emery A. Storrs has no superior in the art of reaching the popular heart, of presenting great truths in a way that will at once charm and convince his hearers. He is a magician in the use of the English lan- guage to convey grand thoughts and pregnant facts. No wavering man in that vast assemblage left the hall uncon- vinced that the salvation of the country lay in Republican, success." General Garfield telegraphed from Mentor : " Our people, are crazy over you.' r 224 POLITICAL ORATORY. The Cleveland Herald in a report said : " Nothing but a full report can do justice to Mr. Storrs' speech. His speech was the best of the campaign. " Regarding him as "golden-mouthed," the Cleve- land Leader referred to him as " the Chrysostom of Chicago." The Boston Herald said of a speech Mr. Storrs made at Newburyport, Mass., Oct. 7 : " It was the ablest, cleanest cut and most impressive campaign speech that has been heard in Newburyport for years, many old residents saying they have heard nothing like it here since the days Avhen Robert Rantoul was in his glory." The Gazette of Boston said of a speech in that city : " The speech of Mr. Emery A. Storrs, of Chicago, was the most brilliant piece of campaign oratory that has been heard for years in Boston ardent, aggressive, and slash- ing into the Democratic lines with a vigor that reminds one of a dashing cavalry charge on the field of battle. In compliance with General Arthur's invitation, he addressed a mass meeting at the Cooper Union, in the city of New York, on the 20th of October. The New York Times said that his speech on that occasion 'gave the Republicans of New York a taste of a style of oratory to which they are not very much accustomed, and which has many other attrac- tions than that of novelty. It was direct, pungent, witty, and forcible. Mr. Storrs kept the attention of his im- mense audience from the first to the last, and was fre- quently and heartily applauded. If any Democrat imagines that the laughter which he so frequently elicited was produced by tickling mere partisan prejudices, he will be undeceived if he undertakes to candidly explain away tb.ejK)ints of Mr. Sfcorrs' witticisms.'" POLITICAL ORATORY. 225 The very variety of styles in his great speeches pre- vented any evidence of existence of wearisoraeness in any audience which ever listened to him. Take, for illustration of this quality of Mr. Storrs' oratory, an- other selection from that same Burlington speech, the argumentative portion of which has already been quoted from. Take an instance of his colloquial style, enlivened by his fun : "We have seen nothing in the past performances or present professions of the Democratic party that leads us to conclude that it is any different in spirit than it ever was. It was the same party in 1860. It fiad a solid South then, and it has one now. It relies then on New York, Indiana, and New Jersey to help it out. It relied on them now, and for the same purpose. The conditions were pre- cisely the same. In 1863 all the draft rioters were Demo- crats, and all of them who now survive are Democrats. Bob Toombs, Jeff Davis, Ben Hill and Chalmers were its leaders in 1860, as they are its leaders now. In 1860 it had Hendricks, Bayard, Seymour, English of Indiana, Thurman, Dan Voorhees, and Ben Butler and the same men are leading it to-day. There has been no change in the rank and file. Some of them have died from natural causes. Some have been overtaken with delirium tremens. The cavities have been filled up by immigration and by births in precisely the same quarters where large Democratic majorities are found. In 1860 the solid North was too strong for the solid South, and it will be in 1880. There has been no change in doctrine. It declared the negroes chattels in 1860, and bulldozes them in 1880, though in the North it cries out to them to vote its ticket." And in the same speech read his sensible digression upon the colored question : 226 POLITICAL ORATORY. "It is but due to the colored people of the whole country to say that they have given the lie, by their subse- quent conduct, to the gloomy foreboding and predictions of the Democratic party, and that they have agreeably dis- appointed the highest expectations which were formed on their behalf by their friends throughout the country and the world. It is but proper justice to say that South and North the negro has turned out to be, when he was free, an entirely self-sustaining institution. It has turned out to be entirely true that the best method in the world of teaching any class the benefits of liberty was freedom itself, and that no better method could possibly be em- ployed to secure the acquisition of seeing to one confined in darkness than a free, speedy, and immediate translation into the light. " While these general remarks are entirely true of the colored people throughout the country, and while these results are exceedingly gratifying, it would be strange if there had not been here and there mistakes among them which I believe they will correct, and to which their atten- tion ought to be every now and then directed by them- selves. In the first place I want you to understand that no man has any right to an office because he is a colored man. Not a bit of it. And it is absurd, and wild, and crazy to make a demand to the country, or of a party, or of a convention, that a man should be nominated and elected to a particular office because he happens to be black. There is no more propriety in insisting that a man shall be nominated to an office because he is black than there is in insisting that he shall not have the office be- cause he is black. Not a bit. And I just hope you will remember this: you are entitled to office, if you are entitled to it at all, not because you have any claims upon your party, your country, your state, or your city POLITICAL OBATOHY. 22? you haven't; nobody has; not because you are black nor merely because you are a Republican, but because, being black, and a Republican, you are, in addition to all that, a first-rate citizen, an honest and upright man, and capable of intelligently performing the functions of the office for which you are nominated. "I want to see the colored people compact in their Re- publicanism and know no other color. I want to sec them Republicans, not merely because they are free, but because intelligently considering the merits of the two great par- ties which divide this country as men and as citizens, they shall reach the conclusion that the best interests of the country demand the continued supremacy of the Republi- can party. I have always hated all sorts of class legisla- tion, all sorts of caste, and I want to see, politically, the most complete and perfect fusion of all colors, races and conditions into one great, loyal, splendid mass of Ameri- can citizenship. And I don't want to distinguish one citi- zen from another because he is black or white, German, Irish, or native-born; but if any distinctions are to be drawn I prefer to draw them on the line which every citi- zen makes for himself and by his own achievement. You colored men must remember that you are watched very narrowly. You are frequently and unjustly criticized. You have exhibited a great deal of fidelity. Knowing that you are observed very closely, it behooves you to watch yourselves and each other very closely, and to see to it that whenever you find a colored man false to the history of his country and of the party which made him free, be- cause of official or pecuniary considerations, while no per- sonal malice as matter of course is to be inflicted upon him, yet at the same time you must remember that ex- hibitions of that character are exceedingly damaging to you all/' 228 POLITICAL ORATORY. Or take again his sudden transition from the humor- ous to that beautiful, which almost touches sublimity of thought, as exhibited in his Cleveland speech during this 1880 campaign. He had been referring to the Democratic predictions in 1868, when it was stated that the pillars of the government were rocking on their base. Said he : " Have you seen any trouble with the pillars of the government? The trouble was not with the pillars of the government: they did not rock; the trouble was with the gentlemen who were looking at the pillars of the govern- ment. They were like the gentleman who had been attending a lecture on astronomy. Going home loaded with a great deal of Democratic logic, with a step weary and uncertain, with the earth revolving a great many times upon its axis, he affectionately clasped a lamp post and said, 'Old Galileo was right about it: the world does move/ And should it, the Eepublican party, succeed in November next and inaugurate the president, we will meet as a subdued and conquered people amid the ruins of liberty and the scattered fragmewts of the constitution. I have been from the tempest-tossed waters of the Atlantic to the peaceful seas of the Pacific, over the mountains, along great rivers, across magnificent plain and prairie, through deserts, down into caves, and I have not seen a single ruin of liberty nor discovered a solitary fragment of the con- stitution. We do not meet as a subdued and conquered people. General Grant was our nominee for president, and he was elected. He being the candidate, there was a strong probability that he would be inaugurated if elected. " Forthwith we banded this great continent with ribs of iron and steel. Forthwith this Republican party car- ried the gold ore across those seas back to the lands of old POLITICAL ORATORY. 229 Egypt, and back to the shadow of the Pyramids, back to old Damascus, and bought all the history and tradition, spices and gums, incense and myrrh, and landed them in this fruitful West, where we received them with one hand and distributed them all over the habitable globe with the other. This great Republican party interfered with no pillars of the government. It found in that edifice the decaying timbers of human chattlehood. Bless God! it removed them, and replaced them with the everlasting granite of universal freedom. It broadened out that splendid edifice, its base covered the whole continent, each ocean washed its base. It reared that splendid dome, decked with stars, clean above the clouds, where, thank God! it shines and shines to-day, bathed in the glorious sunshine of everlasting fame. It has taken out the old, foul records of the olden time, the old pestilential heresies, states rights, secession, the thumb screw, the faggot, the chain, the whip, all these; the manacled slave, the pad- lock for the lips, the throttled thought, all these; the deep damning and almost ineffaceable shame of national dis- honor, all these it has effaced from its walls, and written there, shining and resplendent, living forever, the grandest record of achievements that the history of the world has ever inscribed." VIII. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1884. REMARKABLE SCENE IN THE NATIONAL CONVENTION CONQUESTS OF OKATORY IN VARIOUS CITIES GREAT SPEECH AT BOSTON COMPARISON OF THE CONTENDING PARTIES DOWNFALL OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AT THE POLLS. FRIDAY night, June 6, 1SS4-, the great auditorium at Chicago, in which the Republican National Conven- tion had been held, was overflowing with a restless crowd, assembled in the expectation of hearing some of the orators in attendance speak in ratification of the nom- inations of Elaine and Logan. The convention , however, quietly devoted itself to finishing the uncompleted rou- tine business. Late in the evening certain speakers arose and attempted to make addresses, but the now disap- pointed audience hissed them severally to their seats. A motion to adjourn had been carried, and a movement was started for the doors, when a loud call was made for Robert G. Ingersoll. lie was not present; and then there arose a cry for " Storrs ! Storrs ! " Said the Tribune, the following Sunday, " lie was fairly carried to the platform, and, without any other inspiration than the excitement of the moment, made an address which will rival any of Ingersoll's brilliant efforts. It was full of sarcasm and humor, and as sparkling as a glass of champagne. His characterization of Elaine was admirably concise and to the point, and his arraign- ment of the Democracy was the most scathing and POLITICAL ORATOR*. 231 severe and all the more severe because it was studded with humor and satire that that party has ever been called upon to face." An allusion he made to the Democratic party has often since been quoted : "I have seen," said he, "in one of their platforms that they propose to enter on business with no capital except the purity of their principles. Was there ever such a bankrupt concern with such a capital? They say that is all they have to offer for the suffrages of the people. My God! my friends. A man that will work on these terms will work for nothing and board himself. Won't you think of that dear, delightful old daisy, if she could take physical form, which we call the Democratic party, entering into business upon the purity of her principles? She has kept a house of political ill-fame for more than twenty years. She has entertained every dishonest polit- ical notion and every disreputable political tramp on the continent during that period of time. I think I see her marching up to the ingenuous American citizen, with her shawl twisted around her shoulders, with brass jewelry in her ears, out at the toes, with a drunken leer of silly invi- tation in her eye, with a maiden coyness, professing to do business on the purity of her principles. I would not for the world say anything disrespectful of the Democratic party. There are certain things about it that attract me; but I regard it a little as I do a waterspout, which I like to look at from a distance, but dislike to get too near to; and when I see one of its processions and we will see many of them during this campaign I feel about them as our old friend Strode, in this state, did when he described an experience of his own in the Black Hawk war. He said: ' By the dim light of the setting sun, on a distant eminence, I saw a hostile band. They were gentlemen without hats; 232 rOLItiCAL ORATORY. I did not know who they were, but I knew d d well they were no friends of mine/ ' Proceeding, he described the triumphant march of that party to which the years of his manhood had been devoted in a way which produced the wildest cheering, heated as were his hearers by convention scenes and moved by the magnetic power of the orator. " The night is closing down upon us, the old diabolism of the Democratic party is not yet gone. Another conven- tion will be held here next month. Tilden will probably be nominated. It is possible that he is already dead, but, with a slyness and secretiveness of the author of the cipher dispatches, he might be dead two years and never let any- body know it. We will run substances against shadows. We will run living, breathing men, with bone and flesh, and muscle and appetite, against ghostly reflections such as he. They tell us that he may carry New York. New York is a great, practical, splendid business state. It was my great good fortune to be born there. It is the old Empire state. It stands like the angel of the Apoca- lypse, with one foot resting upon the sea and the other upon the land, the mistress of both. It has the spirit of Elaine and Logan in its bosom. The old Republicanism of that state which challenged the diabolism of Democracy thirty years ago has still within its heart the old undying and imperishable faith. It will carry this banner, you may rest assured, forward through the storms and fires of the conflict upon which we are about to enter to triumph and to victory. There may be those who will hesitate and falter by the roadside. There may be those who will weary in this magnificent march. The campaign is now upon us. We have no time for liniments or poultices. We cannot stop to heal the infirm. The lame men must fal.' behind, the cripples be relegated to the rear. The great, POLITICAL OtlATORY. 233 healthy, splendid marching of the Republican millions taking up this banner will place it, you may be sure, upon the topmost eminence of magnificent victory. Yes, music is in all the air. I feel its old pulsings in my very veins to-night. I know what this feels like, and I know what the awakened excitement and enthusiasm of a great and mighty party indicate. I hear the old songs of the old days. I see the old flag with every star glistening like a planet, filling all the skies. I see the old procession formed. I care not where my place in that procession may be whether it be up in the front, under the light of the blessed old banner, or down near the re?r I listen to the order ' Forward/ and I march, as you will march, with your faces toward the flag." The scene which succeeded some of his bursts of eloquence, said the Times, the following Sunday, " was a demonstration of the powers of a bright and adroit orator over a vast and turbulent multitude such as is rarely witnessed." The campaign of 1884, thus unexpectedly begun, Mr. Storrs found impossible to push aside until the months which intervened between that date and the day of election were passed. James G. Blaine wrote : " The boys in Maine are crazy after you. You must come." Jewell urged : " There is no use dodging California, for they clamor after you." From every part of the country came letters and telegrams begging for a speech. Devotion to party, love of public speaking, did the rest. Throwing aside his own interests, sacrificing, perhaps, more than any other man in the country, he responded to every call 234 POLITICAL ORATORY. in his power. The week following the convention, he opened the campaign in Ohio by a speech in the Music Hall of Cincinnati, amid stirring scenes which followed his voice all over the land. The Enquirer^ an organ bitterly opposed to Elaine, wrote of this meeting: "The audience, hundreds of whom were ladies, seemed to have gone daft. People stood up all over the house waving arms and flags, until from the stage the scene presented the appearance of a vast field of grain violently swayed by cross currents of wind. It was useless to attempt to check the tumult/' "Mr. Storrs," said the same paper, "dapper and wiry, arrayed in a faultlessly fitting dress suit, stepped to the front, where, with easy self-possession, he waited for a cessation of the applause before he spoke. A master of oratory, his voice, full, deep, and round, rolled out in perfect utterance, filling every corner of the hall. It was oratory without effort. Every word, clearly cut and distinct, was delivered with that rare quality an agreeable sound." In this speech at Cincinnati, speaking of our foreign policy, he said upon the subject of our navy what every true citizen must applaud : "What kind of a foreign policy do the wants, the emer- gencies and necessities of the nation imperatively exact ? We are not respected abroad. I say we should be. We are not respected at home. I say this should not be. I want no war ; I wanti only the summer days of prosperous peace. I know of but one way to secure it, and that is promptly and at once to place ourselves in such a position that all assault can be so readily resented that none will ever be made. Without a navy the sport of every foreign power, with an inadequate coast defense the sport of every foreign power, we invite assault. We stand, a great, big, sturdy nation, with our hands helplessly by our sides, POLITICAL ORATORY. 235 utterly unable, not only to protect our interests elsewhere in the world, but utterly unable to defend ourselves at home. "The condition is one of shame, indignity and outrage upon ourselves that every spirited American will see is at once corrected. I want something more than this. Now I am speaking merely for myself : I am binding nobody. The time has come when the old notion of our insularity and freedom from attacks by foreign powers must cease. We are to-day six days from Europe ; nearer, much nearer, than Cincinnati was to New York fifty years ago. We have trade with every port ; we have our products in every civilized land beneath the sun. Our commercial interests are extant everywhere ; our citizens are all over the globe. There is not a gun-boat over which the flag of the great nation floats adequate to protect an insulted American in the meanest seaport of the smallest nation of the earth. We are interested in what is going on all over the earth. Our trade must be protected and cared for wherever it extends. That nation is unfit to be called a nation which will not defend the imperiled rights of its citizens at home and abroad whenever they are assailed. I give to my coun- try allegiance ; I recognize its laws ; I obey loyally and willingly in all cases when obedience is required. I pay that for protection, and when my government fails to give it to me, it is my right to take their constitution in my kind and say : ' You blundering, bullying, bragging, non-performing fraud of a government, protect me as yon have agreed to do or quit business." Brackets and parentheses do not, ordinarily, dignify composition; but perhaps nothing since his mar- velous voice and action are stilled in death can so adequately convey an idea of the effect of the rare powers of expression and mimicry which Mr. Storrs 23G POLITICAL OttATOHY, possessed, as to append exactly as reported in the Her- ald of Boston a " stump oration," which he delivered in Tremont Temple, that city, September 7, 1884. The speech could not be surpassed for campaign eloquence and wit. After telling of the great and sympathetic audience, the newspaper report ran : "Mr. President, Fellow-Citizens, Ladies and Gentlemen: " At this hour of the night it would be presumptuous for me to make anything like a full and elaborate discussion of the principles involved in the pending presidential cam- paign. It seems to me, since I have read the papers of this morning, that the necessity for very much discussion is past, and that political oratory has resolved itself, after all, pretty much into a howl of wild delight on one side, and wailing lamentations on the other, with an occasional bleak, dismal whistle coming from the brush or from some obscure place, intended, no doubt, to keep up the courage of the whistler. I am not unmindful, fellow-citizens, whom I am addressing. [Applause.] I know I am in Boston, in the state of Massachusetts, in the New England states. I am a resident of the state of Illinois. I am a citizen of the United States. [Applause.] I am, with you, joint proprietor of Bunker Hill [applause], made so by the fourteenth and fifteenth constitutional amendments. [Cheers and applause.] I have a common interest in Paul Revere [cheers], and in that remarkable cargo of tea, the unshipping of which led to such splendid results a good many years ago. I am from what in New York has been characterized the 'rowdy West' [renewed applaure] what one, at least, of New England's famous clergymen has denominated as the ' riff raff of the West/ [Cheers and laughter.] May I say to you, because I know it will be soothing [laughter], that this characterization, Mr. Chair- man, has not greatly disturbed us in the West. [Applause.] POLITICAL ORATORY. 237 It has not broken our rest; not disturbed our slumbers [cheers], nor interfered with the quiet and usual transac- tions of our business. [Renewed applause.] Now, as Senator Hawley will tell you, we don't lack spirit on a proper occasion. We have an abundance of it. [Cheers.] "Our state was the only state in the Union, Mr. Chair- man, that filled its quota without a draft. [Renewed cheers and applause.] We sent over about 18,000 more to Missouri, a strong Democratic state, which will cast its electoral vote for Cleveland. We give 40,000 Republican majority. [Tremendous applause and cheers.] AVe have not been made angry by this characterization. May I tell yon why? [A voice, 'Yes, tell us.'] We are the sons and daughters of New England. [Cheers and applause.] We have left these old fields and farms, and the blessed old firesides in New York and New England, many of us, with nothing save the lessons of splendid thrift and frugality which we have learned in these old New England homes. A thousand miles or more separate us from those old fire- sides. Our heartstrings may have been stretched; they have not been broken. [Cheers and applause.] And we have built in the valley of the Mississippi the most colossal, the most splendid empire of free men, free thought, free speech, as splendid a government as the sun, in all his course, has ever shone upon. [Renewed applause.] It does not make much difference what preacher calls us the riff raff. The sons and daughters of New England propose to turn over the settlement of the whole question to their fathers and mothers in New England. They will settle that question. [Cheers.] Well, fellow-citizens, there is no man living in the West that is not gratified to speak in Boston. [Applause.] And, if any man living in the West pretends to say he does not like to speak here in Bos^ ton, he is guilty of willful and deliberate hyperbole, 238 P011TICAL ORATORY. [Laughter.] We are citizens of a common country, united in our interests. We are becoming in the West great man- ufacturers. We are proud of this country, as you are proud of it.. [Cheers.] We give Republican majorities, as you give Republican majorities, and for the same reason. " We believe that the glory and the honor of the Ameri- can name are bound up in the success of this Republican party. [Cheers.] I started with that great party when I was a boy. The first ballot I ever cast was for John C. Fremont, many, many years ago. [Cheers.] Hook back upon that time and that standard-bearer, and it looks all bright and radiant, shining with the glory of the birth of a new party a party which contains within its ranks the best thought and the loftiest sentiment and the most exalted conscience of our people. [Loud applause.] I have been with that party as an humble follower, a private in its ranks, never giving orders myself, but always, as near as I could be, under the folds of that starry, blessed, old banner [cheers] taking directions from our magnificent leaders, Lincoln [cheers], and Grant, and Hayes, and Gar- field [cheers], and Arthur, and Elaine. [Loud applause.] And, fellow-citizens, it makes very little difference to me where in that splendid procession of the millions of the inhabitants of this country I may be placed, whether I am up near the standard-bearer under the stars, or down near the foot of the procession. I march to the old music, Mr. Chairman, and it is the music of the Union. My heart beats my own time. [Applause.] I am certain of one thing that I shall always, so long as I live, march with my face toward the flag. [Tremendous applause and cheers.] I am not an independent in politics. [Cheers.] I recognize no purgatorial politics [cheers and laughter], no halting, half-way station between heaven and hell. [Laughter and cheers.] To me it is the heaven of good POLITICAL ORATORY. 239 Republican government, or it is the hell of that diabolical, old, infernal party [prolonged laughter and cheers] that has never in all its long, consistent, bad, criminal career, done a right thing except at the wrong time. [Laughter.] " I wish to say of the Democratic party nothing unkind [cheers], nothing ungentlemanly. [Laughter and ap- plause.] Of the independents it is my purpose to speak in terms of the utmost tenderness. [Laughter.] They have left us. Why should we mourn departed friends? [Laughter.] When I read the announcement a few days ago, Mr. Chairman, that they had gone [laughter], I heard the news with a great deal of solid comfort [laughter and cheers] a great deal of resignation. But when I read along a little further, and found that their absence was to be only temporary, that they intended some day to return, I confess who should not confess it? that my mind was filled with the direst apprehension. [Cheers and laughter.] Our party has made some mistakes. If you will allow me to make a suggestion, it has grown too rapidly at the top. [Cheers and applause.] I for one am prepared to exchange the political aisthetes for the horny-handed, hard-fisted workingman. [Applause.] My feelings have been lacer- ated, my heart has been wrung many times by the departure of the aesthetes. [Laughter.] They have played too many farewell engagements. [Cheers.] I recognize the first rule of private hospitality in their treatment I < welcome the coming and speed the parting guest.' [Tremendous ap- plause and laughter.] We have heard in the West some- thing about the better element of our party. [Cheers.] In our plain way because we have been building up states, cities and empires we have not had time to think much about the matter. "We have always thought, however, that the better element was the bigger [cheers], and that the wisdom of 240 POLITICAL ORATORY. tins great party of ours was in the majority. Now don't you think so? [A voice, * Yes/ and applause.] Every time I have read an announcement in the West (we take the Atlantic Monthly there and have gospel privileges), [laughter and cheers] I have read that these gentlemen are exceedingly solicitous as concerning the question of the purity of our youth. [Laughter]. May I be permitted to suggest, Senator [turning to General Hawley], and I wish you would tell them so in Connecticut, the farmers of Illinois, of the great West, those strong, splendid broad- browed, great, -big-hearted men, those men who buried the nasty doctrine of fiat money under a majority of 40,000, those men are quite capable themselves of taking care of the morals of their sons. [Cheers.] At least they don't propose to turn the custody of those morals over to an as- sorted lot of gentlemen, one-half of whom deny the'exist- ence of a God and the other half of whom believe that mankind, themselves included, developed from an ape. Now, just what does it mean to be an independent in politics? If the word has a practical significance at all, it means the refusal to acknowledge allegiance to either of the great political parties of the country; is not that so? [A voice, 'Yes/ and cheers.] These gentlemen are {sim- ply independent of the Republican party, to which they formerly belonged spasmodically, occasionally belonged. [Laughter.] They have attached themselves to the Demo- cratic party. They are not independent of that, are they, when they acknowledge allegiance to it? How absurd it is! [Applause.] If a refusal to vote the Republican ticket, to indorse Republican doctrines, to support Republican candi- dates, is an evidence of independence, then the Democrat is a great deal more independent, because he in that regard has been at it a great deal longer. [Cheers and applause.] ii mil inn mil in AA 000868309 6 ' . - : -