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JLIBRARY OF CONGRESS. I 
 
 UNITED STATES OP AMERICA.! 
 
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A FEW" 
 
 REPUBLICAN THOUGHTS 
 
 FOR 1880. 
 MR. J. W. FORNEY AT WEST CHESTER, PA. 
 
 SATURDAY EV'NG, NOV. 1, 1879. 
 
 There is a beautiful stanza in an anonymous poem which my 
 gifted friend Forrest used sadly to repeat after he had fallen into 
 the sere and yellow leaf, that I am often reminded of when I visit 
 any of the familiar places in my native State, so dear to me as 
 "West Chester, Reading, and Lancaster. I can almost hear the 
 resounding voice of my dead friend as I recall these exquisite lines : 
 
 " I came, but they liad passed away, 
 The fair in form, the pure in mind, 
 And like a stricken deer I stray 
 
 Where most are strange tho' all are kind." 
 
 And then referring to those who have passed away, he said that 
 
 " They were the loveliest of their race, 
 Whose grassy tombs my sorrows steep. 
 Whose worth my soul delights to trace. 
 Whose very loss 'tis sweet to weep." 
 
 But if hundreds have gone, many of their contemporaries re- 
 main to reap the great harvest which they sowed, and enjoy the 
 
blessings of our rescued liberties. As I stand here to-night, Mr 
 President, the men of other days, in this vicinage,'pass me by in 
 long and almost articulate procession ; and as I see before me, either 
 personally or with the eye of the mind, those they have left behind 
 I am profoundly interested, and, I may add, unspeakably encour- 
 aged. And what strengthens this sentiment is the fact that the 
 same experience is taught in hundreds of other towns, and in almost 
 every liousehold between the two oceans. In some it is a memory 
 full of comfort and consolation ; and this is true of all the 
 North and all the West. In others it is a remorse and a retribu- 
 tion; and this is true of nearly all the South. West Chester is 
 only one panel of a vast continental picture, the study of which 
 gives you an ideal of one mighty whole, just as astronomers peruse 
 the mysterious machinery of the firmament by the observations of 
 a single star. I do not think I could do better than to show some 
 of the incidents of the matchless experience which has revolu- 
 tionized the sentiments and arrested the prejudices of millions of 
 men, and more or less modified the judgments and commanded the 
 respect of the civilized world. Belonging to the ma-ical work of 
 the last quarter of a century this chapter of Republican adminis- 
 tration in the United States may well be classified anioiii. the 
 greatest achievements of modern times. 
 
 Speaking as I am to-night, among the memories of a community 
 which I always visit, almost as a second home, I feel that tha^e words 
 of mme are intended for the greater struggle which begins when 
 the present election ends. We shall vote next Tuesdav, November 
 4th, 1879, but on the very next day we shall commence to prepare 
 for the voting which is to take place exactlv one vear after Do 
 those gentlemen who loudly advise that we shall keep 1880 out of 
 this trial, do they think the people stupid enough to follow such 
 counsel ? They do not keep it themselves. I have the highest re- 
 gard for Mr. Butler, our Republican candidate for State Treasurer 
 and have rea.son to honor him for his honesty and manliness, and 
 for all the gentlemen on the Republican ticket; but the real candi- 
 date now before us is the Republican candidate for President of the 
 United States, to be elected in November of 1880. All that re- 
 mains is to give him a name. VnUkv our Democratic friends, we 
 have no trouble about cither „ur men for high olHce or our mea«- 
 
ures. They are at war not only about their leader next year, but 
 about then- policy. Never was there such a quarrelsome house- 
 hold. They do not even agree in harmonious hatred of the Repub- 
 licans ; while it must be said that they do agree in fighting each 
 other. In Philadelphia the flictions have been quarrelling with 
 such industrious reciprocity as to recall the typical legend of the 
 Kilkenny cats, that tore away, each at the other, till there was 
 nothing left but the tips of their tails. In Ohio they attempted to 
 unite the oil of gold money with the water of paper inflation, and 
 failed ignominiously. In California the Democratic dilettante made 
 a bargain with the horny handed Communists under Kearney, and 
 died among their own former worshippers. In Illinois they are 
 ridiculed and rent in twain by their own leading newspaper, the 
 Chicago Times. In Massachusetts, where they are generally beaten 
 about forty thousand, they are running two Democratic candidates 
 for Governor. In New York, the condition of the .Democracy has 
 become very like that of the Communists in Paris while the Ger- 
 mans were lying at Versailles preparatory to the capture of the great 
 gay metropolis, happily illustrated by a remark of General Burn- 
 side to Prince Bismarck, when the General called on the latter after 
 he had escaped from the blazing Capital : " And how did you leave 
 our friends in Paris, General?" was the first question of the giant 
 German Chancellor. " I left tiiem, Prince, fighting among them- 
 selves like a wild colony of angry monkeys in a menagerie." The 
 figure applies with grim exactitude to New York, and will be crowned 
 with an equally exact result. John Kelley, the lineal successor of 
 William M. Tweed, claimed to be a more honest man, proves the 
 satire of the compliment by rejecting the fair nomination of his 
 own party, after having participated in the convention that made 
 it, and in obedience to such a treason many of the reputable men 
 of the party follow the lead of the despotic Pope of Tammany 
 Hall, and, to gratify him, boldly bankrupt their party, and de- 
 liberately prepare for the overthrow of themselves and their chief. 
 
 I am naturally not a mourner at the opening grave of the Demo- 
 cratic party, although I am glatl to say that I count many cherished 
 friends in that organization ; very many in Philadelphia, in Lan- 
 caster, and in this favored and famous old county — thousands whose 
 patriotism I honor and whose respect I am proud to receive and 
 
reciprocate. But these Democratic divisions are tlie harvest of the 
 bad seeds deliberately sown twenty yeavs ago. From the time that 
 such men as Wilmer Worthington, Abraham R. Mcllvaine, Joseph 
 J. Lewis, John Hickman, Townsend Haynes, George W. Pearce, 
 Addison May, J. B. Evehart, Wayne McVeigh, Washington Town- 
 send, Richard T. Downing, and Edward Darlington, in this great 
 county, and thousands elsewhere, sunk all party ties and rallied 
 against the attempt to establish slavery in Kansas, the Democrats 
 who remained inside their organization have been made the victims 
 of precisely such mistakes and transgressions as have now reached 
 their climax in all the North, and West, and South. In October of 
 1858 the people of Pennsylvania had the first chance to meet and 
 punish the first of these outrages, and in this great district the bat- 
 tle was exceedingly animated. A few figures will show how honest 
 the people are when they are convinced that their public servants are 
 unworthy of trust. In 1856 there were but nine Democrats elected 
 to Congress from this State, all the rest, sixteen, being Whigs ; in 
 1858 there were but three Democrats elected from out of twenty- 
 five, all the remainder being men of the school of Thaddeus Stevens 
 and John Hickman ; and in this district the combined vote of 
 Fremont and Fillmore, in 1856, was 1008 against Buchanan, while 
 in 1858 the combined vote against his Kansas policy was nearly 8000. 
 John M. Read, Republican, was elected Judge of the Supreme Court 
 by over 25,000. New Jersey, New York, Ohio, all New England, 
 and all the West declared, with (^qual emphasis, the same way. 
 
 The South was already solid Democratic in 1858, and the North 
 was rapidly becoming solid Republican. But the reign of Demo- 
 cratic blunders did not end with the terrible rebuke of that year. 
 Cruel proscription followed the verdict of 1858, only to be avenged 
 by more Republican victories; finally to culminate in the rebel- 
 lion of 1861, tlic greatest wrong of all, to be followed, in turn, by 
 the triumpli of the Union, Emancipation, the death of Lincoln, and 
 the forgiveness and restoration of the South. 
 
 And now, twenty-one yeai-s since 1858, we are brought to book 
 by new Republican trials and duties, and by new Democratic 
 mistakes and divisions, and, let me prophesy, in the front of the 
 greatest and most conclusive Republican victory since Grant de- 
 feated Lee in April of 1865. Here, in West Chester, — which, as 
 
I have shown, was tlie scene of the beginning- of one of the most 
 complete revolutions in political history, in 1858, — I propose to 
 show that we are now, in November, 1879, on the eve of another 
 still more overwhelming revolution ; and, as I am not talking to 
 one party, but to all reasonable men, I think the causes, as I shall 
 submit them, will go far to hasten and to fasten the result. The 
 record shows that our dear country has been saved from the folly, 
 and saved frequently, by the Republican party, since that party 
 was founded in 1856 ; and it is this fact, abundantly illustrated, 
 and to-day deeply rooted in the popular heart, that accounts for the 
 despair of the Democratic leaders. My object to-night is to suggest 
 some food for thought in the long winter evenings now at hand, 
 and to awaken a fresh sense of gratitude to our country and for 
 those who have served it to the best of their ability. And to make 
 that object clear, I shall print this short address for circulation 
 among the people. Spoken at the close of a very tranquil political 
 struggle, and in advance of a State Republican victory, — easily won 
 because really deserved, — I am not carried away by passion or by 
 party. Most of our political literature is prepared for the political 
 market suddenly, in the heat of party strife, when men have as 
 little capacity to write as to read clearly. My object is to make a 
 little homely pamphlet that may be read without anger by the 
 strongest Democrat in the hours when he has nothing better to do 
 than to think about himself and his country. 
 
 The very best witnesses of the value of Republican measures are 
 to be found in old Democratic history and new Democratic con- 
 cessions. TKe Republican party is a compound of all modern 
 thought chastened by experience. It is not Whig, or Democratic, 
 or Know-Nothing, or foreign, or Protestant, or anti-Mason, but it 
 unites the best of all proved metliods of political science. Its ancient 
 author is Thomas Jefferson, although it was only born out of all 
 these named ingredients in 1856, at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. 
 Above all things it is not sectional, because it really saved the whole 
 Union. It is essentially a national party, a party of strong gov- 
 ernment, and its best authorities are three : Jefferson, who purchased 
 Louisiana in 1804 ; Jackson, who was ready to hang Calhoun in 
 1830, the man who, in the name of States' Rights, had threatened 
 to nullify a law of Congress; and Lincoln, who emancipated four 
 
millions of slaves in violation of the assumed doctrine of the Dem- 
 ocratic party that slavery was protected by the Constitution and 
 could be carried anywhere in defiance of local law. Such, in 
 my opinion, is the foundation of tlie Republican party of the United 
 States as illustrated by these three illustrious men. Jetferson, who 
 found the authority for empire in the law of self-preservation ; 
 Jackson, who found the authority for rebuking secession in the 
 same supreme necessity ; and Lincoln, who found the reason for 
 the emancipation of four millions of slaves in a still higher and 
 holier self-preservation. 
 
 Upon these three great pillars rest the chief Republican re- 
 forms of the last twenty-one years. State sovereignty in the sense 
 that justified the rebellion passed into the grave with rebellion, 
 leaving behind that tremendous franchise, individual freedom 
 and municipal independence, which is the only just doctrine in a 
 community that, for the sake of a supreme national government, 
 surrenders just enough of its own power to secure a faithful and 
 cohesive central guardianship. On these great pillars, Jefferson, 
 Jackson, and Lincoln, not only repose our surest guarantees, but 
 from their example have sprung, like so many binding arches, the 
 incalculable blessings won to our country and to mankind by the 
 Republican party in the last quarter of a century. And among 
 these I class the overthrow of the rebellion, the emancipation of 
 the slaves, the homestead law, the Pacific Railroad, tiie reduction 
 of the national debt, the national bank law, the freedom of Kansiis, 
 the amnesty of the men who took arms against the flag, tiie protec- 
 tive tariff, and the resumption of specie payments. 
 
 Now, to not one of these measures, except amnesty, did the Demo- 
 cratic party contribute anything but opposition ; jirompt, unpaus- 
 ing, uncjualified, and bigoted opposition. These statutes or measures 
 have not only enriched, strengthened, and saved our own country, 
 but have attracted the admiration of other nations. They have modi- 
 fied the legislation of mankind; they have affected the habits and 
 changed ti)e productions of nations; have altered the course of trade; 
 have made millions of foreigners dependent upon our productions; 
 have, in one word, given the American i>eople the command of 
 the future of the world's career. There they stand to-day, the 
 proudest monument of republican progress in the whole record of 
 
modem civilization. Will you, my friends, studying this marvel- 
 lous catalogue, as you enjoy the fruifc? of each successive measure, 
 ftnd one instance in which the Democratic party has favored these 
 unparalleled benefactions? Ytju might search till Gabriel's trum- 
 pet sounded the Resurrection without success. 
 
 And strange to say, that as the masses of the people see and 
 enjoy these benefactions, and vote their sense of them in the elec- 
 tions, the Democratic leaders refuse to admit that they are the proud 
 stewardship of the Republicans. What a difference l^etween the 
 Democratic leaders and the Democratic people! And this differ- 
 ence shows, after all, the selfishness of these leaders and the hon- 
 esty of the people. The one not only refuses to admit that the 
 magnificent results of the last quarter of a century's development 
 belong to Republican statesmanship alone, but at the same time 
 dare not say that they would disturb these results if they ever ob- 
 tain command of the administration of the General Government. 
 How glorious the conduct of the people on the other hand ! They 
 say these great acts of victory, peace, liberty, equality, forgiveness, 
 prosperity, economy, protection, and development are the direct 
 consequences of Republican bravery, statesmanship, invention, and 
 skill, and as such vote to keep the Republican party in power. 
 
 Such is the contrast between Democratic leadership and popular 
 judgment in the United States. But this contrast produces some- 
 thing more than Democratic defeats. It creates and crystallizes 
 a pervading national gratitude. Every new proof of Republican 
 wisdom and foresight makes a new title to popular thanksgiving. 
 The joy over the triumph of our arms in time of war becomes a 
 rapture as the causes of these triumphs are revived. As the har- 
 vest of succeeding Republican legislation increases in value, men 
 count over their own happiness and remember the authors of it. 
 It has been said that republics are ungrateful, but time proves that 
 the maxim is as false as the other — that republics are accidental and 
 temporary. In the case of our own country, we might forget our 
 benefactors if God Almighty would allow us. We might fall into 
 the common insensibility to fiivors received and benefits enjoyed, 
 because the favors were too many and the benefits too familiar, if 
 other nations would permit it. God Almighty has sent to us the 
 men who led our Israel out of her captivity, and masses of millions 
 
in other lands saw the mighty struggle, and wlien our Joshua came 
 to them, they taught us, under God's eye and care, how to appre- 
 ciate him. General Grant left Philadelphia for Liverpool, in thi 
 steamship Indiana, on the 17th of May, 1877, and on the 22d of 
 September, 1879, the great steamer Tokio landed him at San 
 Francisco, an interval of two years and four months among foreign 
 nations, the welcome guest of republics, monarchies, and despotisms, 
 the wonder of all the varieties of the human race who had heard 
 or read of his romantic career, and who greeted him, not with 
 the honors extended to a royal personage, but as if this plain 
 citizen had been sent on some celestial mission from the 
 regions of the blest. What is the secret of this phenomenal event? 
 Can you not answer me, men of AVest Chester ? On that tropical 
 morning, May 17th, 1877, as General Grant took me by the hand 
 to say " good-by," 1 pr()[)hesied : " You go forth to honors you 
 cannot now realize, and, whether you desire it or not, you will be- 
 co.ne the irresistible apostle of republican ideas to all the world." 
 And when we met in Paris, in September of 1878, 1 reminded him 
 of the words, and he remembered them. Himself entirely unique, 
 — if to be unpretending, simple, and invincible in war, is to be 
 unique, — he had an entirely unicpie experience as he sailed around 
 the world. He builded better than he knew ^vdien he fought down 
 slavery and fought up liberty. The whole world had become 
 weary of blood and hungry for freedom. His war was for the 
 peace of mankind, and mankind wished to take him to their 
 hearts. The kings, reading in the eyes of the people the sig- 
 nificant menace of the iuturc, anticipated the people in kingly 
 tributes to the silent republican soldier. He spoke little, but his 
 [)resence was the sonorous prologue of the swelling act of a 
 sweeping revolution. lie Avoic no trapi)ings of state, displayed 
 no ancestral esculclicoii, tr:i\rll(d with no train of menials or 
 glittering stalf, but wlH'revcr he showed liinisi'lf, the halo ol' 
 his renown, and the awful j)uissanc(' oC his country, t«^)uchcil 
 all hearts, and made tor liiin a home, an Jionor, and a glory. We 
 thought we knew him and loved him before he went forth; but 
 when we saw the iiiyiiads of the Old World i)Ouring out to meet 
 and greet him, wi' liegan to realize that even our gratitude, deep 
 and sincere as it was. was not as profound as the unsellish admira- 
 
tiou of strangers. And thus we were taught afresh our duty and 
 our obligation to the man who had done more for our country than 
 any other citizen since the day of the Westmoreland farmer, the 
 revolutionary leader, and first President, George Washington. 
 No, men of West Chester ! republics are not ungrateful, and the 
 Republic is not an accident nor a frenzy. 
 
 I met General Grant in Europe in 1878 and witnessed his recep- 
 tion by some of the crowned heads and by the Republicans of 
 France; and you need not be told howl enjoyed the wondering 
 worship of these diversified foreigners. I was like a spectator in a 
 theatre, hearing the praises of a great author who was also my 
 friend; and although I never saw^, as John Russell Young did, 
 two hundred thousand beardless, almond-eyed Chinese, looking at 
 Grant with stupefied silence, I saw quite as significant a sight when 
 royal persons deemed it no loss of prestige to treat him as an equal. 
 How would these titled rulers and ancient governments have treated 
 such a general ? How they did treat Napoleon, Marlborough, 
 Wellington, Nelson, and Yon Moltke, let history relate. No 
 matter how obscure their origin or how low their original estate, 
 successful service in battle ennobled them through the centuries ; 
 and as this truth pressed itself on the European brain in the per- 
 son of the plain, untitled American soldier who had left the emol- 
 ument of place and the honors of the Presidency after saving the 
 greatest nation in the world, you can see what a fertile text it was 
 to prince and peasant, and how deeply it sunk into and grew in 
 the minds and hearts of the American people across the ocean. 
 
 Believe me, when I say I am not making an appeal for Grant . 
 as the next President. That would be mere supererogation. If 
 he wants it he can take it. These manifestations abroad, re- 
 echoed by new welcomes at home, mean more than political 
 fidelity. They are the language of all the races of men, full 
 of the hope of a long rule of liberty. Sinister philoso- 
 phy defines them to be a declaration for a Cresarian dynasty; 
 but let us remember how this same philosophy predicted that 
 slavery would be perpetual because it was divine; that emancipa- 
 tion would be brief because it was not constitutional ; that our 
 national debt would be national death ; and that financial embar- 
 rassment would leave us without character or credit. I am of those 
 
10 
 
 who believe that four years more of the Presidency would not add 
 one cubit to the stature of General Grant ; but I believe if he is 
 needed he will come to the fore, and that he will take up the lines 
 where he left them in March, 1876, not as the Republican candi- 
 date only, but as the choice of the whole American people. 
 
Vol. 1.— No. 44. 
 Single Copies, 
 
 SEPTEMBER 13, 1879. 
 
 $5 A Year, in Advance. 
 10 Cents. 
 
 JOHN V\r. FORNEY, 
 
 EDITOR AND PBOFRlETOIt, 
 
 S. ^W, Cor. SEVENTH and CHESTNUT, 
 
 PHIL.ADEI.PHIA, PA. 
 
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