The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume IX Part 17

The State of Alabama in its last Democratic convention pa.s.sed a resolution that no man should be tried in a Federal Court for a violation of the revenue laws--that he should be tried in a State Court.

Think of it--he should be tried in a State Court! Let me tell you how it will come out if we trust the Southern States to collect this revenue. A couple of Methodist ministers had been holding a revival for a week, and at the end of the week one said to the other that he thought it time to take up a collection. When the hat was returned he found in it pieces of slate-pencils and nails and b.u.t.tons, but not a single solitary cent--not one--and his brother minister got up and looked at the contribution, and said, "Let us thank G.o.d!" And the owner of the hat said, "What for?" And the brother replied, "Because you got your hat back." If we trust the South we shan't get our hats back.

I am next in favor of honest money. I am in favor of gold and silver, and paper with gold and silver behind it. I believe in silver, because it is one of the greatest of American products, and I am in favor of anything that will add to the value of an American product. But I want a silver dollar worth a gold dollar, even if you make it or have to make it four feet in diameter. No government can afford to be a clipper of coin. A great Republic cannot afford to stamp a lie upon silver or gold.

Honest money, an honest people, an honest Nation. When our money is only worth eighty cents on the dollar, we feel twenty per cent, below par.

When our money is good we feel good. When our money is at par, that is where we are. I am a profound believer in the doctrine that for nations as well as men, honesty is the best policy, always, everywhere, and forever.

What section of this country, what party, will give us honest money--honor bright--honor bright? I have been told that during the war, we had plenty of money. I never saw it. I lived years without seeing a dollar. I saw promises for dollars, but not dollars. And the greenback, unless you have the gold behind it, is no more a dollar than a bill of fare is a dinner. You cannot make a paper dollar without taking a dollar's worth of paper. We must have paper that represents money. I want it issued by the Government, and I want behind every one of these dollars either a gold or silver dollar, so that every greenback under the flag can lift up its hand and swear, "I know that my redeemer liveth."

When we were running into debt, thousands of people mistook that for prosperity, and when we began paying they regarded it as adversity. Of course we had plenty when we bought on credit. No man has ever starved when his credit was good, if there were no famine in that country. As long as we buy on credit we shall have enough. The trouble commences when the pay-day arrives. And I do not wonder that after the war thousands of people said, "Let us have another inflation." Which party said, "No, we must pay the promise made in war"? Honor bright! The Democratic party had once been a hard money party, but it drifted from its metallic moorings and floated off in the ocean of inflation, and you know it. They said, "Give us more money;" and every man that had bought on credit and owed a little something on what he had purchased, when the property went down commenced crying, or many of them did, for inflation.

I understand it.

A man, say, bought a piece of land for six thousand dollars; paid five thousand dollars on it; gave a mortgage for one thousand dollars, and suddenly, in 1873, found that the land would not pay the other thousand.

The land had resumed, and then he said, looking lugubriously at his note and mortgage, "I want another inflation." And I never heard a man call for it that did not also say, "If it ever comes, and I don't unload, you may shoot me."

It was very much as it is sometimes in playing poker, and I make this comparison knowing that hardly a person here will understand it. I have been told that along toward morning the man that is ahead suddenly says, "I have got to go home. The fact is, my wife is not well." And the fellow who is behind says, "Let us have another deal; I have my opinion of the fellow that will jump a game." And so it was in the hard times of 1873. They said: "Give us another deal; let us get our driftwood back into the centre of the stream." And they cried out for more money.

But the Republican party said: "We do want more money, but not more promises. We have got to pay this first, and if we start out again upon that wide sea of promise we may never touch the sh.o.r.e." A thousand theories were born of want; a thousand theories were born of the fertile brain of trouble; and these people said, "After all, what is money? Why, it is nothing but a measure of value, just the same as a half bushel or yardstick." True; and consequently it makes no difference whether your half bushel is of wood or gold or silver or paper; and it makes no difference whether your yardstick is gold or paper. But the trouble about that statement is this: A half bushel is not a measure of value; it is a measure of quant.i.ty, and it measures rubies, diamonds and pearls precisely the same as corn and wheat. The yardstick is not a measure of value; it is a measure of length, and it measures lace worth one hundred dollars a yard precisely as it does cent tape. And another reason why it makes no difference to the purchaser whether the half bushel is gold or silver, or whether the yardstick is gold or paper, you do not buy the yardstick; you do not get the half bushel in the trade. And if it were so with money--if the people that had the money at the start of the trade, kept it after the consummation of the bargain--then it would not make any difference what you made your money of. But the trouble is the money changes hands. And let me say to-night, money is a thing--it is a product of nature--and you can no more make a "fiat" dollar than you can make a fiat star. I am in favor of honest money. Free speech is the brain of the Republic; an honest ballot is the breath of its life, and honest money is the blood that courses through its veins.

If I am fortunate enough to leave a dollar when I die, I want it to be a good one. I do not wish to have it turn to ashes in the hands of widowhood, or become a Democratic broken promise in the pocket of the orphan; I want it money. I want money that will outlive the Democratic party. They told us--and they were honest about it--they said, "When we have plenty of money, we are prosperous." And I said, "When we are prosperous, we have plenty of money." When we are prosperous, then we have credit, and credit inflates the currency. Whenever a man buys a pound of sugar and says, "Charge it," he inflates the currency; whenever he gives his note, he inflates the currency; whenever his word takes the place of money, he inflates the currency. The consequence is that when we are prosperous, credit takes the place of money, and we have what we call "plenty."

But you cannot increase prosperity simply by using promises to pay.

Suppose you should come to a river that was about dry, so dry that the turtle had to help the catfish over the shoals, and there you would see the ferryboat, and the gentleman who kept the ferry, up on the sand, high and dry, and the cracks all opening in the sun, filled with loose oak.u.m, looking like an average Democratic mouth listening to a const.i.tutional argument, and you should say to him, "How is business?"

And he would say, "Dull." And then you would say to him, "Now, what you want is more boat." He would probably answer, "If I had a little more water I could get along with this one."

Suppose I next came to a man running a railroad, complaining of hard times. "Why," said he, "I did a million dollars' worth of business the first year and used five hundred thousand dollars' worth of grease. The second year I did five hundred thousand dollars' worth of business and used four hundred thousand dollars' worth of grease." "Well," said I, "the reason your road fell off was because you did not use enough grease."

But I want to be fair, and I wish to-night to return my thanks to the Democratic party. You did a great and splendid work. You went all over the United States and you said upon every stump that a greenback was better than gold. You said, "We have at last found the money of the poor man. Gold loves the rich; gold haunts banks and safes and vaults; but we have money that will go around inquiring for a man that is dead broke.

We have finally found money that will stay in a pocket with holes in it." But, after all, do you know that money is the most social thing in this world? If a fellow has one dollar in his pocket, and he meets another with two, do you know that dollar is absolutely homesick until it gets where the other two are? And yet the Greenbackers told us that they had finally invented money that would be the poor mans friend. They said, "It is better than gold, better than silver," and they got so many men to believe it that when we resumed and said, "Here is your gold for your greenback," the fellows who had the greenback said, "We don't want it. The greenbacks are good enough for us." Do you know, if they had wanted it we could not have given it to them? And so I return my thanks to the Greenback party. But allow me to say in this connection, the days of their usefulness have pa.s.sed forever.

Now, I am not foolish enough to claim that the Republican party resumed.

I am not silly enough to say that John Sherman resumed. But I will tell you what I do say. I say that every man who raised a bushel of corn or a bushel of wheat or a pound of beef or pork for sale helped to resume. I say that the gentle rain and the loving dew helped to resume. The soil of the United States impregnated by the loving sun helped to resume. The men that dug the coal and the iron and the silver and the copper and the gold helped to resume. And the men upon whose foreheads fell the light of furnaces helped to resume. And the sailors who fought with the waves of the seas helped to resume.

I admit to-night that the Democrats earned their share of the money to resume with. All I claim is that the Republican party furnished the honesty to pay it over. That is what I claim; and the Republican party set the day, and the Republican party worked to the promise. That is what I say. And had it not been for the Republican party this Nation would have been financially dishonored. I am for honest money, and I am for the payment of every dollar of our debt, and so is every Democrat now, I take it. But what did you say a little while ago? Did you say we could resume? No; you swore we could not, and you swore our bonds would be worthless as the withered leaves of winter. And now when a Democrat goes to England and sees an American four per cent, quoted at one hundred and ten he kind of swells up, and says: "That's the kind of man I am." In that country he pretends he was a Republican in this. And I do not blame him. I do not begrudge him enjoying respectability when away from home. The Republican party is ent.i.tled to the credit for keeping this Nation grandly and splendidly honest. I say, the Republican party is ent.i.tled to the credit of preserving the honor of this Nation.

In 1873 came the crash, and all the languages of the world cannot describe the agonies suffered by the American people from 1873 to 1879.

A man who thought he was a millionaire came to poverty; he found his stocks and bonds ashes in the paralytic hand of old age. Men who expected to live all their lives in the sunshine of joy found themselves beggars and paupers. The great factories were closed, the workmen were demoralized, and the roads of the United States were filled with tramps.

In the hovel of the poor and the palace of the rich came the serpent of temptation and whispered in the American ear the terrible word "Repudiation." But the Republican party said, "No; we will pay every dollar. No; we have started toward the shining goal of resumption and we never will turn back." And the Republican party struggled until it had the happiness of seeing upon the broad shining forehead of American labor the words "Financial Honor."

The Republican party struggled until every paper promise was as good as gold. And the moment we got back to gold then we commenced to rise again. We could not jump until our feet touched something that they could be pressed against. And from that moment to this we have been going, going, going higher and higher, more prosperous every hour. And now they say, "Let us have a change." When I am sick I want a change; when I am poor I want a change; and if I were a Democrat I would have a personal change. We are prosperous to-day, and must keep so. We are back to gold and silver. Let us stay there; and let us stay with the party that brought us there.

Now, I am not only in favor of free speech and an honest ballot-box and an honest collection of the revenue of the United States, and an honest money, but I am in favor of the idea, of the great and splendid truth, that this is a Nation one and indivisible. I deny that we are a confederacy bound together with ropes of cloud and chains of mist. This is a Nation, and every man in it owes his first allegiance to the grand old flag for which more brave blood was shed than for any other flag that waves in the sight of heaven. There is another thing; we all want to live in a land where the law is supreme. We desire to live beneath a flag that will protect every citizen beneath its folds. We desire to be citizens of a Government so great and so grand that it will command the respect of the civilized world. Most of us are convinced that our Government is the best upon this earth. It is the only Government where manhood, and manhood alone, is not made simply a condition of citizenship, but where manhood, and manhood alone, permits its possessor to have his equal share in control of the Government. It is the only Government in the world where poverty is upon an exact equality with wealth, so far as controlling the destiny of the Republic is concerned.

It is the only Nation where the man clothed in rags stands upon an equality with the one wearing purple. It is the only country in the world where, politically, the hut is upon an equality with the palace.

For that reason every poor man should stand by this Government, and every poor man who does not is a traitor to the best interests of his children; every poor man who does not is willing his children should bear the badge of political inferiority; and the only way to make this Government a complete and perfect success is for the poorest man to think as much of his manhood as the millionaire does of his wealth. A man does not vote in this country simply because he is rich; he does not vote in this country simply because he has an education; he does not vote simply because he has talent or genius; we say that he votes because he is a man, and that he has his manhood to support; and we admit in this country that nothing can be more valuable to any human being than his manhood, and for that reason we put poverty on an equality with wealth. We say in this country manhood is worth more than gold. We say in this country that without Liberty the Nation is not worth preserving. Now, I appeal to-day to every poor man; I appeal to-day to every laboring man, and I ask him, is there another country on this globe where you can have equal rights with others? There is another thing; do you want a Government of law or of brute force? In which part of this country do you find law supreme? In which part of this country can a man find justice in the courts; in the North or in the South?

Where is crime punished? Where is innocence protected, in the North or in the South? Which section of this country will you trust?

You can tell what a man is by the way he treats persons in his power, and the man that will sneak and crawl in the presence of greatness, will trample the weak when he gets them in his power. What cla.s.s of people does the State have in its power? Criminals and creditors; and you can judge of a State by the way it treats its criminals and creditors.

Georgia is the best State in the South. They have a penitentiary system by which they hire out their convict labor. Only two years ago the whole thing was examined by a friend of mine, Col. Allston. He had been in the rebel army and was my good friend. He used to come to my house day after day to see me. He got converted and had the grit to say so. Being a member of the Legislature, he had a committee of investigation appointed. Now, in order that you may understand the difference, you must know that in the Northern penitentiaries the average annual death rate is one per cent.; that is, of one thousand convicts, ten will die in a year, on the average. That low death rate is because we are civilized, because we do not kill; but in the Georgia penitentiary it was as high as fifteen, twenty-seven and forty-seven per cent., at a time when there was no typhoid or yellow fever, or epidemic of any kind.

They died for four months at a rate of ten per cent, per month. They crowded the convicts in together, regardless of s.e.x. They treated them precisely as wild beasts, and many of them were shot down. Persons high in authority, Senators of the United States, held interests in those contracts, and Robert Allston denounced them. When on a visit he said, "I believe when I get home I shall be killed." I told him not to go back to Georgia, but to stay in the civilized North; but no, he would go back, and on the very day of his arrival he was murdered in cold blood.

Do you want to trust such men? * * *

The Southern people say this is a Confederacy and they are honest in it.

They fought for it, they believed it. They believe in the doctrine of State Sovereignty, and many Democrats of the North believe in the same doctrine. No less a man than Horatio Seymour--standing it may be at the head of Democratic statesmen--said, if he has been correctly reported, only the other day, that he despised the word "Nation." I bless that word. I owe my first allegiance to this Nation, and it owes its first protection to me. I am talking here to-night, not because I am protected by the flag of New York. I would not know that flag if I should see it.

I am talking here, and have the right to talk here, because the flag of my country is above us. I have the same right as though I had been born upon this very platform. I am proud of New York because it is a part of my country. I am proud of my country because it has such a State as New York in it, and I will be prouder of New York on a week from next Tuesday than ever before in my life. I despise the doctrine of State Sovereignty. I believe in the rights of the States, but not in the sovereignty of the States. States are political conveniences. Rising above States, as the Alps above valleys, are the rights of man. Rising above the rights of the Government, even in this Nation, are the sublime rights of the people. Governments are good only so long as they protect human rights. But the rights of a man never should be sacrificed upon the altar of the State, or upon the altar of the Nation.

Let me tell you a few objections that I have to State Sovereignty. That doctrine has never been appealed to for any good. The first time it was appealed to was when our Const.i.tution was made. And the object then was to keep the slave-trade open until the year 1808. The object then was to make the sea the highway of piracy--the object then was to allow American citizens to go into the business of selling men and women and children, and feed their cargo to the sharks of the sea, and the sharks of the sea were as merciful as they. That was the first time that the appeal to the doctrine of State Sovereignty was made, and the next time was for the purpose of keeping alive the interstate slave-trade, so that a gentleman in Virginia could sell the slave who had nursed him, and rob the cradles of their babes. Think of it! It was made so they could rob the cradle in the name of law. Think of it! Think of it! And the next time they appealed to the doctrine of State Sovereignty was in favor of the Fugitive Slave Law--a law that made a bloodhound of every Northern man; that made charity a crime; a law that made love a state-prison offence; that branded the forehead of charity as if it were a felon.

Think of it!

It is a part of my honor to hate such principles. I have no respect for any man who is so mean, cruel and wicked, as to allow himself to be transformed into a bloodhound to bay upon the tracks of innocent human prey. I will follow my logic, no matter where it goes, after it has consulted with my heart. If you ever come to a conclusion without calling the heart in, you will come to a bad conclusion.

A good man is pretty apt to be right; a perfectly honest man is like the surface of the stainless mirror, that gives back by simply looking at him, the image of the one who looks.

The next time they appealed to the doctrine of State Sovereignty was to increase the area of human slavery, so that the bloodhound, with clots of blood dropping from his loose and hanging jaws, might traverse the billowy plains of Kansas. Think of it!

The Democratic party then said the Federal Government had a right to cross the State line. And the next time they appealed to that infamous doctrine was in defence of secession and treason; a doctrine that cost us six thousand millions of dollars; a doctrine that cost four hundred thousand lives; a doctrine that filled our country with widows, our homes with orphans. And I tell you, the doctrine of State Sovereignty is the viper in the bosom of this Republic, and if we do not kill that viper it will kill us.

The Democrats tell us that in the olden time the Federal Government had a right to cross a State line to put shackles upon the limbs of men. It had the right to cross a State line to trample upon the rights of human beings, but now it has no right to cross those lines upon an errand of mercy or justice. We are told that now, when the Federal Government wishes to protect a citizen, a State line rises like a Chinese wall, and the sword of Federal power turns to air the moment it touches one of those lines. I deny it and I despise, abhor and execrate the doctrine of State Sovereignty. The Democrats tell us if we wish to be protected by the Federal Government we must leave home. I wish they would try it for about ten days. They say the Federal Government can defend a citizen in England, France, Spain or Germany, but cannot defend a child of the Republic sitting around the family hearth. I deny it. A Government that cannot protect its citizens at home is unfit to be called a Government.

I want a Government with an ear so good that it can hear the faintest cry of the oppressed wherever its flag floats. I want a Government with an arm long enough and a sword sharp enough to cut down treason wherever it may raise its serpent head. I want a Government that will protect a freedman, standing by his little log hut, with the same alacrity and with the same efficiency that it would protect Vanderbilt, living in a palace of marble and gold. Humanity is a sacred thing, and manhood is a thing to be preserved. Let us look at it. For instance, here is a war, and the Federal Government says to a man, "We want you," and he says, "No, I don't want to go," and then they put a lot of pieces of paper in a wheel and on one of those pieces is his name, and another man turns the crank, and then they pull it out and there is his name, and they say, "Come," and so he goes. And they stand him in front of the brazen-throated guns; they make him fight for his native land, and when the war is over he goes home and he finds the war has been unpopular in his neighborhood, and they trample on his rights, and he says to the Federal Government, "Protect me." And he says to the Government, "I owe my allegiance to you. You must protect me." What will you say of that Government if it says to him, "You must look to your State for protection"? "Ah, but," he says, "my State is the very power trampling upon me," and, of course, the robber is not going to send for the police, It is the duty of the Government to defend even its drafted men; and if that is the duty of the Government, what shall I say of the volunteer, who for one moment holds his wife in a tremulous and agonized embrace, kisses his children, shoulders his musket, goes to the field and says, "Here I am, ready to die for my native land"? A Nation that will not defend its volunteer defenders is a disgrace to the map of this world. This is a Nation. Free speech is the brain of the Republic; an honest ballot is the breath of its life; honest money is the blood of its veins; and the idea of nationality is its great, beating, throbbing heart. I am for a Nation. And yet the Democrats tell me that it is dangerous to have centralized power. How would you have it? I believe in the localization of power; I believe in having enough of it localized in one place to be effectively used; I believe in a localization of brain.

I suppose Democrats would like to have it spread all over your body, and they act as though theirs was.

There is another thing in which I believe: I believe in the protection of American labor. The hand that holds Aladdin's lamp must be the hand of toil. This Nation rests upon the shoulders of its workers, and I want the American laboring man to have enough to wear; I want him to have enough to eat:

I want him to have something for the ordinary misfortunes of life; I want him to have the pleasure of seeing his wife well-dressed; I want him to see a few blue ribbons fluttering about his children; I want him to see the flags of health flying in their beautiful cheeks; I want him to feel that this is his country, and the shield of protection is above his labor.

And I will tell you why I am for protection, too. If we were all farmers we would be stupid. If we were all shoemakers we would be stupid. If we all followed one business, no matter what it was, we would become stupid. Protection to American labor diversifies American industry, and to have it diversified touches and develops every part of the human brain. Protection protects ingenuity; it protects intelligence; and protection raises sense; and by protection we have greater men, better looking women and healthier children. Free trade means that our laborer is upon an equality with the poorest paid labor of this world. And allow me to tell you that for an empty stomach, "Hurrah for Hanc.o.c.k!" is a poor consolation. I do not think much of a Government where the people do not have enough to eat. I am a materialist to that extent; I want something to eat. I have been in countries where the laboring man had meat once a year; sometimes twice--Christmas and Easter. And I have seen women carrying upon their heads a burden that no man in this audience could carry, and at the same time knitting busily with both hands, and those women lived without meat; and when I thought of the American laborer, I said to myself, "After all, my country is the best in the world." And when I came back to the sea and saw the old flag flying, it seemed to me as though the air from pure joy had burst into blossom.

Labor has more to eat and more to wear in the United States than in any other land of this earth. I want America to produce everything that Americans need. I want it so that if the whole world should declare war against us, if we were surrounded by walls of cannon and bayonets and swords, we could supply all our material wants in and of ourselves. I want to live to see the American woman dressed in American silk; the American man in everything, from hat to boots, produced in America by the cunning hand of American toil. I want to see the workingman have a good house, painted white, gra.s.s in the front yard, carpets on the floor, pictures on the wall. I want to see him a man, feeling that he is a king by the divine right of living in the Republic. And every man here is just a little bit a king, you know. Every man here is a part of the sovereign power. Every man wears a little of purple; every man has a little of crown and a little of sceptre; and every man that will sell his vote for money or be ruled by prejudice is unfit to be an American citizen.

I believe in American labor, and I will tell you why. The other day a man told me that we had produced in the United States of America one million tons of steel rails. How much are they worth? Sixty dollars a ton. In other words, the million tons are worth sixty million dollars.

How much is a ton of iron worth in the ground? Twenty-five cents.

American labor takes twenty-five cents worth of iron in the ground and adds to it fifty-nine dollars and seventy-five cents. One million tons of rails, and the raw material not worth twenty-four thousand dollars!

We build a ship in the United States worth five hundred thousand dollars, and the value of the ore in the earth, of the trees in the great forest, of all that enters into the composition of that ship bringing five hundred thousand dollars in gold is only twenty thousand dollars; four hundred and eighty thousand dollars by American labor, American muscle, coined into gold; American brains made a legal tender the world round.

I propose to stand by the Nation. I want the furnaces kept hot. I want the sky to be filled with the smoke of American industry, and upon that cloud of smoke will rest forever the bow of perpetual promise. That is what I am for. Where did this doctrine of a tariff for revenue only come from? From the South. The South would like to stab the prosperity of the North. They would rather trade with Old England than with New England.

They would rather trade with the people who were willing to help them in war than with those who conquered the Rebellion. They knew what gave us our strength in war. They knew that all the brooks and creeks and rivers of New England were putting down the Rebellion. They knew that every wheel that turned, every spindle that revolved, was a soldier in the army of human progress. It won't do! They were so lured by the greed of office that they were willing to trade upon the misfortunes of a Nation.

It won't do! I do not wish to belong to a party that succeeds only when my country fails. I do not wish to belong to a party whose banner went up with the banner of rebellion. I do not wish to belong to a party that was in partnership with defeat and disaster. I do not. And there is not a Democrat here who does not know that a failure of the crops this year would have helped his party. You know that an early frost would have been a G.o.dsend to them. You know that the potato-bug could have done them more good than all their speakers.

I wish to belong to that party which is prosperous when the country is prosperous. I belong to that party which is not poor when the golden billows are running over the seas of wheat. I belong to that party which is prosperous when there are oceans of corn, and when the cattle are upon the thousand hills. I belong to that party which is prosperous when the furnaces are aflame, and when you dig coal and iron and silver; when everybody has enough to eat; when everybody is happy; when the children are all going to school, and when joy covers my Nation as with a garment. That party which is prosperous then, is my party.

Now, then, I have been telling you what I am for. I am for free speech, and so ought you to be. I am for an honest ballot, and if you are not you ought to be. I am for the collection of the revenue. I am for honest money. I am for the idea that this is a Nation forever. I believe in protecting American labor. I want the shield of my country above every anvil, above every furnace, above every cunning head and above every deft hand of American labor.

Now, then, which section of this country will be the more apt to carry these ideas into execution? Which party will be the more apt to achieve these grand and splendid things? Honor bright? Now we have not only to choose between sections of the country; we have to choose between parties. Here is the Democratic party, and I admit there are thousands of good Democrats who went to the war, and some of those that stayed at home were good men; and I want to ask you, and I want you to tell me in reply what that party did during the war when the War Democrats were away from home. What did they do? That is the question. I say to you, that every man who tried to tear our flag out of heaven was a Democrat.

The men who wrote the ordinances of secession, who fired upon Fort Sumter; the men who starved our soldiers, who fed them with the crumbs that the worms had devoured before, they were Democrats. The keepers of Libby, the keepers of Andersonville, were Democrats--Libby and Andersonville, the two mighty wings that will bear the memory of the Confederacy to eternal infamy! The men who wished to scatter yellow fever in the North and who tried to fire the great cities of the North--they were all Democrats. He who said that the greenback would never be paid and he who slandered sixty cents out of every dollar of the Nation's promises were Democrats. Who were joyful when your brothers and your sons and your fathers lay dead on a field of battle that the country had lost? They were Democrats. The men who wept when the old banner floated in triumph above the ramparts of rebellion--they were Democrats. You know it. The men who wept when slavery was destroyed, who believed slavery to be a divine inst.i.tution, who regarded bloodhounds as apostles and missionaries, and who wept at the funeral of that infernal inst.i.tution--they were Democrats. Bad company--bad company!

And let me implore all the young men here not to join that party. Do not give new blood to that inst.i.tution. The Democratic party has a yellow pa.s.sport. On one side it says "dangerous." They imagine they have not changed, and that is because they have not intellectual growth. That party was once the enemy of my country, was once the enemy of our flag, and more than that, it was once the enemy of human liberty, and that party to-night is not willing that the citizens of the Republic should exercise all their rights irrespective of their color. And allow me to say right here that I am opposed to that party.

We have not only to choose between parties, but to choose between candidates. The Democracy have put forward as the bearers of their standard General Hanc.o.c.k and William H. English. The Democrats have at last nominated a Union soldier. They nominated George B. McClellan once, because he failed to whip the South; they nominated Mr. Greeley, when they despised him, and now they have nominated General Hanc.o.c.k. Do they think the South loves him? At Gettysburg they say he fought against them, and that is one great reason why he should be President--that he shot rebels. Do the men that fought at Gettysburg still believe in State Sovereignty? Wade Hampton says, "We must vote as Lee and Jackson fought." They fought for State Sovereignty. Has the South changed?

Hanc.o.c.k went to kill them then; they want to vote for him now. Who has changed? [A voice: "Hanc.o.c.k."] I think so. They are using him as a figure-head. They have dressed him in the n.o.ble blue, with the patriotic coat and Union b.u.t.tons, and they do not like him any better than they did at Gettysburg. It would be just as consistent for the Republicans to have nominated Wade Hampton. Did General Hanc.o.c.k believe in State Sovereignty when he was at Gettysburg? If he did, he was a murderer, and not a Union soldier--he was killing men he believed to be in the right, and a man cannot fight unless his conscience approves of what his sword does, and if he was honest at that time, he did not believe in State Sovereignty, and it seems to me he would hate to have the men who tried to destroy this Government cheering him. All the glory he ever got was in the service of the Republican party, and if he does not look out he will lose it all in the service of the Democratic party. He had a conversation with General Grant. It was a time when he had been appointed at the head of the Department of the Gulf. In that conversation he stated to General Grant that he was opposed to "n.i.g.g.e.r domination." Grant said to him, "We must obey the laws of Congress.

We are soldiers." And that meant, the military is not above the civil authority. And I tell you to-night, that the army and the navy are the right and left hands of the civil power. Grant said to him: "Three or four million ex-slaves, without property and without education, cannot dominate over thirty or forty millions of white people, with education and property." General Hanc.o.c.k replied to that: "I am opposed to 'n.i.g.g.e.r domination.'" Allow me to say that I do not believe any man fit for the presidency of the great Republic, who is capable of insulting a down-trodden race. I never meet a negro that I do not feel like asking his forgiveness for the wrongs that my race has inflicted on his. I remember that from the white man he received for two hundred years agony and tears; I remember that my race sold a child from the agonized breast of a mother; I remember that my race trampled with the feet of greed upon all the holy relations of life; and I do not feel like insulting the colored man; I feel rather like asking the forgiveness of his race for the crimes that my race have put upon him. "n.i.g.g.e.r domination!" What a fine scabbard that makes for the sword of Gettysburg! It won't do!