THE TWO SYSTEMS OF GOVERNMENT PROPOSED FOR THE REBEL STATESI
SPEECH
OF
EDWARD L. PIERCE,
AT THE
T O      W  H O U S SE, M I LJ.r TON X,
OCTOBER 31, 1868.
"T'is is not the liberty which we can hope, that no grievance ever should arise in the commonwealth: that let
no man in this world expect; but when comiplaints are freely heard, deeply considered, and speedily refonmed
then' is the utmost bound of civil liberty obtained that wise men look for."-JOHS MIIILTON.
BOSTO N:
WRIGHT & POTTER, PRINTERS, 79 MILK STREET, (COR. FEDERAL.)
1868.




MILTON, 20th NoVember, 1868.
EDWARD L. PIERCE, Esq., Milton:
Dear Sir,-The undersigned, citizens of Milton, beg to tender you their sincere thanks
for your able and instructive address on the-issues of the presidential campaign, recently
delivered at the Town House; and in accordance with the general desire, request a copy
of the same for publication.
Yours respectfully,
HENRY S. RUSSELL.
J. M. FORBES.
JAMES M. ROBBINS.
JAMES B. THAYER.
JOSEPH M. CHURCHILL.
ROBERT H. BUCK.
MILTON, 21st November, 1868.
GENTLEMEN:-I thank you for the kind terms of your note of the 20th inst., and take
pleasure in complying with your request.
Yours truly,
EDWARD L. PIERCE.
To Messrs. HENRY S. RUSSELL, J. M. FORBES, JAMES M. ROBBINS, JAXIE      B.
THAYEE, JOSEPH M. CHURCHILL, and ROBERT H. BUCK.




S P E E CH.
Fellow citizens, my neighbors andfriends.
Had Abraham Lincoln lived to complete his second official
term, far different would have been the political condition of
the American people from what it is to-day. He commanded
the confidence as well of those who had striven to destroy
the government as of those who had striven to preserve
it. Magnanimous and humane, he would, beyond all other
men, have healed the wounds of civil war. But steadfast as
the granite of your hills, he would have stood faithfully by
the loyal people of the South, of whatever race or past condition.  His influence, his great name, his official power,
would have been employed to rebuild society in all the rebel
territory upon the solid masonry of justice and freedom. The
prodigal sons would have returned, sad and repentant, to the
old family mansion,-the latch-string still out,-and they and
their loyal brethren, forgiving, would have joined in repairing
the rents which the war had made. The two races would have
come into kindly and co-operative relations. The Southern
people, weary with war and politics, would have concentrated
their energies on the reparation of their broken fortunes. They
would have devoted themselves to industrial pursuits, to the
culture of the great staples in larger abundance. Northern
capital would have poured into the South, stimulating enterprise and quickening industry. New lines of railroad, would
have been built, and existing lines pressed on to new districts.
As free society tends to a various development, and not like
slave society to uniformity, agricultural labor would have
thriven as never before, while mechanical, manufacturing and
commercial enterprise would have sprung into vigorous life.
Manufactories would have risen on streams whose waters had




4
never before ministered to the comfort and progress of man.
Ten thousand forges and mills would have been creating untold
wealth where now is the silence of the undisturbed forest. The
wilderness and solitary place would have been glad and the
desert have rejoiced and blossomed as the rose. The wharves
of seaboard cities would have been covered with merchandise,
departing and arriving. As rights of person and property were
respected by public opinion and enforced by law, confidence
would have become established; and with this confidence,
which is to commercial life what the blood is to the body,
would have come ready loans, inflowing capital, and a steady
immigration. This new and assured prosperity at the Souththis recovery of a disabled member —would have brought health
again to the whole Country. The honor of the nation and its
ability to pay its debts, would have been unquestioned. With
a vast production, as yet without a parallel in our history, taxation as well by customs as by internal duties, would have
been no longer burdensome. Increased exports would have
turned the balance of trade in our-favor. The currency would
have appreciated to par with gold, putting mercantile life on a
surer footing, and reducing the cost of the necessaries of life,
to the great relief of laboring and salaried men. With the
national credit thus established at home and abroad, the national bonds would have been funded at a lower rate of interest;
and thus a controversy would have been impossible which has
imperilled our credit, if not our reputation, for national morality.
This industrial regeneration would have modified political
antagonisms. There might have been discussion, even earnest
discussion, but there would have been none of the heated strife
which we now witness. There would have come an era of good
feeling, such as was witnessed at the inauguration of the government; such as followed the last war with Great Britain.
The good President would have been offered a third term, but,
like Washington before him, he would have declined it; and he
would have gone back to the home at Springfield that he loved,
followed by the benedictions of his countrymen. The people, by
a universal instinct, would have turned for his successor to General Grant, who had earned their gratitude and confidence in
the field as Lincoln had earned them in the cabinet. He would




5
have been chosen to that high office, not as the candidate of a
party, but as the candidate of all the people.
But this fair picture was not to be. -The pistol of the assassin changed the course of history. A President succeededthe creature of an accident —whose wicked and perverse policy
fired again the Southern heart, organized afresh the rebel party,
and stimulated it with the hope of gaining by craft what it had
lost in war. The three years and a half which succeeded the
surrender of the rebel armies, have been years of misgovernment, barbarous legislation, disorder, anarchy, persecution of
loyal men, murders of good citizens as frequent as once a day
in a State, or even in a county; massacres like those of Norfolk, Memphis, Mobile and New Orleans; bands of assassins
organized into Ku-Klux clans, and openly recognized as the
allies of the unsubdued rebel party. Every morning's newspaper brings a fresh tale of crime and outrage. To-day, instead
of being a united people, devoted to' the development of our
resources, we are meeting such questions as these: Shall there
be peace or war in ten States of this Union? Shall protection
of person and property, or'violence, rapine and anarchy prevail
there?  Shall the just and liberal governments which have
been established there remain or shall they, as demanded by
Mr. Blair in his Broadhead letter, and implied in the democratic platform, be overturned by the military and unconstitutional order of the President, and all society be remanded into
chaos?
Fellow citizens: The issues of the rebellion are still alive.
The forces of the paroled confederates, reinforced by Northern
allies, have reorganized as murderous clans and desperate revolutionists. It is another-let us hope, the last-battle of the
war. If you have any love for your country, any gratitude to
our patriot soldiers, living or dead, any interest in social order,
as the father of a family or the owner of property, —whatever
may have been your affiliations in the past, and whatever they
may be in the future,-your patriotism, your good name, and
your safety, all adjure you to give your vote on Tuesday next
for the Republican candidates.
Never did soldiers go home from battle-fields with a prouder
consciousness of duty done than did ours when, in the summer
of 1865, they laid aside their muskets and returned to their




6
kindred and the employments of peace. The military power
of the greatest rebellion recorded in history had been smitten
to the dust. The nation had been rescued from imminent
dismemberment. Its unity, integrity and glory had been maintained. Never before did it rank so high in the family of nations.
Despotic dynasties trembled, and oppressed races and classes
took heart, as its victory was heralded.  Triumphant over
domestic foes, over States within itself banded together for its
overthrow, it had proved itself the strongest just where friends
and enemies alike supposed it to be the weakest. It had won
strength and achieved perpetuity in the very struggle in which
its doom was anticipated.
But all was not yet accomplished. A work, calling for higher wisdom, and even higher virtue, than the levying of troops,
the raising of supplies and the conduct of armies, still remained.
" Yet much remains
To conquer still; peace hath her victories
No less renown'd than war."
The rebellion had, "in its revolutionary progress deprived
the people of all civil government." Such were the terms
used by President Johnson in his proclamations for the appointment of provisional governors for the rebel States, and for once
I can quote him with approval. There were no constitutional
officers of any kind,-no governors, no legislatures, no judiciary, no executive officers, no one to receive a vote or administer an oath,-all had been swept into the vortex of rebellion.
There had succeeded de facto governments, but they were alien
and hostile, the creation of public enemies, and they fell with
the rebellion itself. It was a tabula rasa, just like the slate
when a boy has rubbed out the figures of one sum, and before
he has begun another. There remained so many square miles
of land; so many people upon them; so many State lines, if you
please; but no governments. These had been utterly destroyed
in fact-not of right, to be sure-by the rebellion, and the fall
of the rebellion could not reanimate them. It was necessary
upon this vacant, this deserted field, to re-create civil governments,-governments adapted to the changed condition of
affairs,-governments which would secure the fruits of the war,




and fortify the nation against another rebellion,-governments
which would respect and fulfil the pledges made during the
war to the national creditors, to the freedmen, and to the loyal
white men of the South.
Great as was the work of suppressing the rebellion, the work
of restoring civil governments was no less great. Our European friends during the war often expressed misgivings on this
point. They said: You may, by your superior numbers and
resources, disperse the armed forces of the rebellion, but, after
that, whence are to come the loyal hearts which are to uphold
civil governments at the South?
Who overcomes
By force, hath overcome but half his foe."
If you undertake to govern the Southern States permanently
as conquered provinces, you will fill your national system with
the spirit of absolutism which will destroy your free institutions, as well at the North as at the South.
This was no idle fear. We saw the danger, but we saw also
the methods of guarding against it. We proposed the restoration of civil governments based on the loyal people of the South;
and these we expected to find in the white men who had been
among the faithless faithful found; in repentant rebels who
had been swept into the rebellion by a furious current; in the
colored population, universally loyal; and in emigrants from
the North, and from Europe.
As the result of the war,-of the great upheaval of population, the dissolution of business and local ties, the new spirit of
adventure awakened, the extraordinary interest in cotton culture prevailing in all civilized countries, there was anticipated
an emigration to the Southern States, no parallel of which
has been known since the populous tribes of the North, fifteen
centuries ago, poured themselves on the vineyards of Italy and
Spain. The war-the accounts of battles, sieges, marcheshad instructed our people in the geography of that vast country stretching from the Potomac to the Rio Grande. As our
affections and patriotism for four years travelled and lingered
over it, places heretofore all unknown became as familiar to us
as the hamlets of our birth. Our soldiers, on their marches,
their bivouacs, and by their camp fires, had seen the fatness




of the land, and had already designated upon it their future
homes. Thither thousands of them were likely to go, preferring, after their unsettled life, to set up in business for
themselves, rather than to again enter the service of others in
the places of their former residence. Becoming thus citizens
of the territory which their valor had saved to the Union, they
would be like the garrisons which Rome planted in the countries traversed by her eagles. An increased immigration from
Europe, attracted by the prospect of profitable industry applied
to the great staples of Southern production, was promised.
The tide of advancing population had, in its westward course,
reached the less available, and as yet less accessible territories
beyond the Mississippi, and was likely to turn in a southern
direction.
These different sources-the Unionists of the South, white
and black; our own soldiers, with emigrants from the North
and from Europe-would have furnished ample foundations for
a loyal society. Even the great mass of the rebels, under a
steady hand, would have proved plastic material. Resignation
to the inevitable is a law of human nature; and with that resignation come reflections that, after all, it is a better lot than
the one we would have chosen. A strong and just government
would have made submission a necessity. A healthy reaction
would have succeeded the intense political excitements of preceding years. The pressure of material wants, always controlling in the long run, would have moderated and even extinguished
the animosities of section and race. Violent spirits would have
disappeared, lost in emigration to Mexico, South America and
Cuba, or in retirement from all public activities. The mass of
the people would have become disgusted with the agitators who
had brought on them poverty, bereavement and dishonor, and
would have gathered about new chiefs. Society would have
crystallized around the thoughts, the enterprises, and the associations of freedom. The effects of slavery and the rebellion
might have been traceable for a generation, but stable and
loyal governments, affording reasonable protection to persons
and property, would have been possible in one, two or three
years. The movement of modern life is so rapid, that what
once took a century for its consummation, may now be reached
in a decade. What once required a generation, may now be




9
realized in a year. All these reasonable expectations, fondly
cherished in patriotic hearts, were defeated by the malignant
policy of Andrew Johnson, backed by that portion of the Democratic party which had openly or secretly patronized the
rebellion.
But whose constitutional prerogative was it to determine
when, how, by whom and upon what conditions these new civil
governments should be organized where none existed? Clearly
it was that of the loyal people of the country, who had fought
the battles, paid the bills and undergone the sufferings of the
war. It belonged to them, for they had saved the territory to
the nation —not to the rebels who had strained every nerve to
wrest it away. It belonged to the whole loyal people of the
country as represented in Congress, and through that body expressing their united will and their common wisdom-not to any
one man, certainly not to a magistrate, whose business it is to
execute and not to make the laws. To frame a government is
the highest effort of human wisdom, one that has made the
founders of states illustrious in human annals. The American
people never intrusted it even to Washington, far less would
they intrust it to Johnson. It was the right of the whole
people-and as ours is a representative government they
could act only through Congress-it was their right to say what
was the best time and mode of restoration, and what securities
were essential to prevent another rebellion and to fulfil the
national promises. It was the duty of the President, hostilities
having closed after the adjournment of Congress, to have
preserved, by means of the military forces, peace, order and security, through the rebel territory, awaiting the next session when
that body in its wisdom might have initiated measures of restoration. If there was any apparent necessity for earlier action,
an extra session might have been called. But the President
decided upon a far different course. On May 29th, only sixteen
days after the last collision between the loyal and the rebel
forces-less than seven weeks after his own accession, President
Johnson issued a proclamation appointing a provisional governor
for North Carolina and providing for a constitutional convention
in that State, and shortly after issued others of like tenor for
the organization of governments in the other rebel States, He
undertook at the outset to say who should be enfranchised as
2




10
electors-who should be eligible to office-who should form
the constitutions and what kind of constitutions they should be.
While the conventions were in session he dictated their action
by telegraphic despatches. At first, in a telegram  of Mr.
Seward to Governor Marvin of Florida, of September 12, 1865,
he stated that these proceedings were to be subject to the
revision of Congress. But subsequently, upon the assembling
of that body, he denied its power to alter, revise or supplement
his work, and because it would not admit to seats the mere
creatures of his usurpation, who styled themselves representatives and senators, stigmatized it as a " rump congress," and
"hanging on the verge of the government."  As his power
to do all this was questioned, he became belligerent, insolent,
defiant. This was Cesarism. This was absolutism   of the
most dangerous character. No constitutional monarch in our
day has asserted such imperial prerogatives. For doing less
than this, when you consider the difference of system then and
now prevailing, one king of England lost his head and another
his crown. The people looked on with amazement at the usurpation. But so apprehensive were they at that critical hour of
any conflict between the executive and legislative departments,
so reluctant were they to take issue with a magistrate who, a
few months before, had received their votes, that they were
disposed to submit to the usurpation, provided the governments
thus organized proved to be just and liberal, and in that event
to overlook their illegitimate, unconstitutional and monarchical
origin. The conventions thus called, met during the autumn
of 1865 and framed constitutions.  Legislatures, in pursuance
of their authority, met during that autumn and the following
winter, and formed codes of laws. And what was the result?
The first effect of President Johnson's policy, was to reanimate and reorganize the whole rebel element. He had, without
interposing any proper period of reflection, without any reasonable pause after the bitterness of civil war, admitted the great
mass of the rebels to political power, and had introduced no
new force to balance and counteract them. He removed at
once all their fears of punishment and stimulated afresh their
hopes of domination. Instead of building their fences and
working their crops, they flocked to corner groceries and courthouse squares for the discussion of politics. They saw an




11
opportunity to gain by craft what they had lost in war-and they
would have lost their nature if they had not seized it. They
became self-conscious, aggressive, intolerant. Where there was
quiet, submission and acquiescence in May, there was disorder,
resistance and defiance in November. Where in May they were
resigned to any fate which should be meted out to them as
a vanquished party, such as the civil and political equality of
the freedmen, and even their own exclusion from political
power, esteeming themselves fortunate if permitted to retain
their estates and to live in the country, they began in November
to threaten another rebellion unless the old masters were
allowed unlimited power under apprentice, vagrant and labor
laws, to reduce the freedmen to a degraded subordination.
Forced to accept the abolition of slavery as a legal statement,
they sought to preserve slavery as a social fact. They undertook i'th systematic violence to drive from the South law-abiding citizens of the North-many of them patriot soldiers, scarred
with honorable wounds received in the service of the country,
who went there in the exercise of their inalienable right to
live where they please. With the ferocity of wild beasts, they
hunted down the Union men who had resisted the pressure of
treason, and hailed the old flag waving at the head of our
advancing armies.
The Johnson governments excluded colored men from
suffrage, thus taxing them, but denying them representation.
They excluded them from the jury panel, thus denying them a
trial by their peers. They admitted the colored witness to testify only in a limited class of cases, a discrimination which had
the effect of making him a discredited and impeached witness
even when he was admitted.   They made no provision for
the education of the colored people, save in Florida, thus
endeavoring to keep a whole race in ignorance. They undertook upon system by means of apprentice and vagrant laws to
revive slavery. Under the apprentice laws, as administered,
any planter could obtain the unwilling labor of his former
slaves, who were still minors. These laws allowed the judge of
probate to bind out children whose parents were unable or
refused to support them, giving the preference to the old master;
and the courts required no proper proof of such inability and
refusal.




12
The Johnson governments constructed an elaborate system
for preventing the colored people from being masters of their
time, and for keeping them constantly under the will and jurisdiction of the planters. They made it a criminal offence, an
act of vagrancy, punishable with fine and imprisonment for a
freedman to leave his employer before the expiration of a term
of service prescribed in a written contract. Such was the legislation of Alabama, Florida and Mississippi. It was made a
criminal offence in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi
and Texas for any person to entice away such laborer, or after
he had left his employer to employ, harbor, feed or clothe
him. What should we think of a law here, which should
send a farm-laborer, failing to carry out his contract, to serve
his employer, a year to the house of correction-and which
should send there also the farmer who employed him after such
breach of contract? Furthermore, under the same Act, every
civil officer was required and every person authorized by main
force and without legal process to take back such a deserting
laborer to his employer, and was to receive for the service five
dollars, and ten cents a mile for travel.
In Mississippi, a freedman was declared a vagrant for " exercising the function of a minister of the gospel without a license
from some regularly organized church." This was intended to
shut the mouths of negro preachers who were'disposed to
instruct their brethren in the rights and duties of freemen.
Another Act of the same State, declared freedmen "' found
unlawfully assembling themselves together, either in the day or
night time," to be vagrants, —thus aiming particularly at Republican meetings and loyal leagues. The same Act declared
"white persons usually associating themselves with freedmen,
free negroes or mulattoes to be vagrants,"-thus aiming at the
teachers of freedmen who taught their children by day and could
not obtain board with white families. An Act of Louisiana
made it a criminal offence " to enter upon a plantation without
the permission of the owner or agent," —thus aiming at Republican canvassers, teachers of freedmen, and designing to keep
plantation negroes in utter ignorance of their rights. In Florida, it was made a criminal offence for a negro to "intrude
himself into any religious or other public assembly of white
persons, or into any railroad car or other public vehicle set apart




13
for the exclusive accommodation of white people," upon conviction of which he should be "sentenced to stand in the pillory
for one hour, or be whipped not exceeding thirty-nine stripes, or
both at the discretion of the jury."  What think you of that
provision, you who for curiosity or information are accustomed
to frequent public meetings?
In furtherance of the same purpose to reduce the freedmen
to a degraded subordination by attaching them to the soil and
keeping them under the constant will of employers, the planters
enacted a law in Mississippi, forbidding a negro from doing
"irregular and job work" without a license from the municipal
authorities; and another in South Carolina, forbidding him
from practising " the art, trade or business of an artisan, mechanic or shopkeeper, or any other trade, employment or business, (besides that of husbandry or that of a servant under a
contract for service or labor,) on his own account or for his
own benefit, or in partnership with a white person," without a
license to expire in a year, from the district court. What free
society tolerates such functions, in judges, mayors and selectmen? Is a man a freeman, unless he can follow any honest,
useful calling that he chooses without let or hindrance?
In Louisiana, the freedman, as a laborer was finable for
" disobedience to reasonable orders," "leaving home without
permission," "impudence" and the like, as if the employer
were still a slaveholder and the laborer still a slave.
In Fldrida, it was a criminal offence, punishable with pillory
and stripes, for a negro to own, use or keep in his possession
"any bowie-knife, dirk, sword, fire-arms or ammunition of any
kind," without a license from the judge of probate; and a
similar Act was passed in Mississippi and South Carolina. The
object of these Acts was to make the whole race utterly defenceless, and to put them by day and by night at the mercy of ruffians and assassins acting independently or organized as clans.
Does not the Constitution of the United States affirm " the right
of the people to keep and bear arms?"  And have you not the
right to keep a pistol under your pillow for the protection of
yourself and family? And Has not every other man, white and
black, that same right? Does anybody deny that right except
Johnson lawgivers and Seymour partisans?




14
Punishments odious, unusual and excessive, degrading alike
to society and to the victims, which have been disowned in
civilized States, such as chain-gangs, stocks, whipping-posts,
pillories, sale at public outcry to the highest bidder, were prescribed for the freedmen. These you will find in the legislation
of Alabama, Florida and Mississippi.
It was reserved for the State of Mississippi to devise the
most ingenious methods for outlawing and crushing the
colored population. One Act of the legislature allowed the
colored man to complain of a white man for an offence
committed upon him. Great privilege that! But lest the colored man, destitute, disfranchised, landless, friendless, homeless,
should thereby take advantage of white men, who were rich,
skilled in organization, and making all the laws, another Act
was passed a few days later, that if upon the trial of such complaint sufficient proof were made to the court or jury that it
had been made falsely and maliciously, the court should in
that very trial impose on such freedman, free negro or mulatto, a fine not exceeding fifty dollars, and imprisonment not
exceeding twenty days; and for failure to pay the fine and
costs, the sheriff was directed to hire him out at public outcry!
Look upon this barbarous provision! I know well enough that
just codes provide for the punishment of malicious prosecutions,
provisions however rarely invoked in the administration of criminal law. But this is inflicted only in independent proceedings,
where the malice is the direct and only issue of the whole case,
and where the defendant is shielded by the beneficent presumptions of the criminal law. Never is it and never should it
be inflicted on the trial of the prosecution which is claimed
to have been malicious.  Imagine an instance under this
Mississippi Act. A negro enters a county court room to complain of his employer for putting out his eye or maiming him
for life. Perhaps he was one of that heroic band who assaulted
Port Hudson; perhaps he was by the side of Colonel Shaw as
he charged upon Fort Wagner; perhaps he was one of the thirty
thousand colored soldiers who made. a third or fourth of Grant's
army before Richmond in the last winter of the war; or, it
may have been he who aided your son to escape from Andersonville, and saved him from starvation and recapture.
Whether he be one of these or not, he is at least one whose




15
freedom the proclamation of President Lincoln pledged the
government to "recognize and maintain."  The injured man
looks about him in that court room, but sees no friendly face;
no lawyer who cares to breast the wrath of the only class who
have money to pay fees. He looks at the judge, and he sees
in him a confederate colonel, or worse yet, a confederate editor,
too cowardly to fight against his country, and just mean enough
to slander her at a safe distance. He looks at the jury, but
they are not his peers, all of another race, all leagued to keep
him in subjection; the very men who have made the inhuman
laws I have referred to. The trial proceeds. The colored man
tells his story in broken speech but with truthful lips. The
white man denies all, and of course his word is taken. The
jury and the judge mean that negroes shall be taught a lesson
for complaining of men of their class. They acquit the defendant, and then, as a part of the same verdict and judgment,
sentence to fine and imprisonment the negro complainant for a
malicious prosecution.  My God! The judgment hall of
Pilate with a Roman soldiery for executioners, lights up with
justice by the side of this Mississippi tribunal!
The ruling classes to whom President Johnson had confided
political power, undertook to prevent the colored people from
ever becoming proprietors of the soil, in order to make their
subjection permanent and complete. Their condition, even if
favored by the laws, was hard at the best. They came out of
slavery without property, without an inch of real estate, without personal chattels or a dollar in their pockets. They were
liable on any day to expulsion from their cabins. They could
not draw water from a well or a spring if the planter refused
permission. The greatest mistake made by Congress was in
not securing to them a fair opportunity to become the owners
of small parcels of real estate. This should have been done,
not perhaps by confiscation of the planters' estates and the
donation thereof to the freedmen, but in the exercise of the
right of eminent domain and of the rights of war, enforcing
conveyances upon the payment of an assessed valuation. The
planters determined that this should always be so; that the
colored people should have no chance to become independent
of employers; and that they should have no incentive to save
their earnings. They therefore everywhere made combinations




16
not to sell them land. Not content with this, they denied them
in Mississippi, by express provision of law, "the right to
acquire and dispose of real property;" and still further, they
provided that no freedman, free negro or mulatto, should ever
" rent or lease any lands or tenements except in incorporated
towns or cities, in which places the corporate authorities shall
control the same."  I challenge you to find a parallel to this
legislative enormity in any other country in modern times
Let us look at the import of this provision more closely.
The desire for land-to have one spot on earth where a man
may stand, and whence no human being may of right drive him
-is one of the healthiest and most conservative instincts of our
nature. The people who have it are no longer nomadic. They
have taken a great step in progressive civilization. Nor can
free institutions last in a country unless a large proportion of
the population are proprietors of the soil they live upon. If
there is any axiom in political philosophy, this is one. I do
not affect classical learning when I say-what every student of
history will join with me in maintaining-that the fatal hour of
Roman Liberty. came when the Gracchi, the greatest and best of
her reformers, failed to secure for the landless peasantry of
Italy some portion of the public domain. " Great plantations
destroyed Italy," said the most sententious of historians,
Tacitus. Compare, if you will, the agricultural population of
Holland, where the farmers own the lands they till, with that
of Ireland, where they do not. There is thrift and intelligence
in the one. There is waste and degeneracy in the other. So
important, so vital to the common weal, has this principle
become, that in England, a country where vested interests are
accorded a peculiar sacredness, John Stuart Mill proposes an
interference with titles for the purpose of obtaining for the
Irish tenantry an interest, if only a tenant's interest at a fixed
rent, in the soil they cultivate. Fellow-citizens, he is not-a
statesman, he is hardly a civilized man, who does not recognize
this primary, this most beneficent instinct of human nature.
How a man loves his home-the hearthstone consecrated by
family affection-the tree he has planted, whose fruit he plucks,
and under whose shadow he rests-the vines he has trained —
the brook whose flowing waters delight his eye and whose music
soothes his weariness-howsoever mean and lowly that home may




17
be, he loves it, for it is his own. The noblest burst of British
eloquence was that of Lord Chatham, when he said: "The
poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of
the Crown. It may be frail; its roof may shake; the winds
of heaven may blow through every cranny; the storm may
enter; the rain may enter; but the king of England cannot
enter!  All his force dares not cross the threshold of the
ruined tenement! " Alas! fellow-citizens, for the country that
has not and never hopes to have a population of small landed
proprietors clinging to its soil and sharing in its government! Alas for the country that, once having them, has
parted with them forever, their farms swallowed up in great
plantations and themselves reduced to beggary or driven to
better governed and more favored lands! As well attempt to
raise the columns of St. Peter's on a pyramid of sand, as to
build free institutions on great aristocratic estates. Now these
barbarians of the South-they deserve no milder term-conspired by means of laws and combinations to uproot one of the
finest instincts of human nature, and to keep a whole race
forever landless and homeless. Tell me if these. Johnson lawgivers have proved themselves fit architects of government.
I have given you fair examples of the legislation of the Johnson governments. The same spirit of injustice —the same
determination to degrade and oppress-was everywhere manifest, in combinations against selling land to the freedmen;
in combinations to keep their wages down to the lowest standard; in dismissals from employment on frivolous pretexts, just
before the harvest, so as to deprive them of all share in the
crop; in the unblushing partiality of juries and the lower courts;
in the burning of their school-houses and churches; in the mobbing and expulsion of their teachers; in daily assaults and murders which went unpunished and unprosecuted; all culminating
in such massacres as those of Norfolk, Memphis, New Orleans
and Mobile.
With such barbarous legislation and such prevailing injusticej
a neglect of Congress to interpose would have been abdication of a high trust. Nevertheless, it proceeded with great
caution; too great, history will probably says It passed over
the President's veto, the Civil Rights Act of April 9, 1866w
which affirmed the equal civil rights of the freedmen, and pre3




18
scribed punishments upon all persons who should undertake
under color of law to deprive them of rights or inflict on them
different punishments, pains or penalties on account of their
color, race or former condition. This Act did something to
protect the freedmen in some localities; but as a general
remedy it proved ineffective. Two months later, Congress
submitted to the States, partly with a view of securing equal
rights and partly with a view of testing the loyalty of the Johnson governments, the constitutional amendment, now known as
the fourteenth. It was liberal and considerate in terms. It
declared the citizenslip of all persons born or naturalized in the
United States, and forbade any State to abridge the privileges or
immunities of the citizens of the United States. Surely none
can object to that constitutional truism. It reduced Congressional representation in the same proportion as any State reduced
its body of electors by disfranchisement. That applied to all
the States, and was certainly fair. It affirmed the validity of
the national debt. What honest citizen can object to that? It
forbade the payment by the United States or by any State of the
rebel debt? Is any one of you specially anxious to pay a share
of that debt?  If you are, you can buy a rebel bond. It
incapacitated for public trust certain officers who, having
taken an oath to support the Constitution of the United States,
afterwards violated that oath and engaged in rebellion? Is
there anything harsh in that? It did not deprive them of
life, liberty, property, civil rights, suffrage even, but only of
office. Was ever treason so kindly treated? It excluded from
office a far less number than were excluded by Mr. Johnson's
amnesty Proclamation, issued contemporaneously with his
appointment of provisional governors.  And furthermore, it
even empowered Congress to remove this disability by a twothirds vote, thus making it temporary only, to remain no
longer than the exigency. How was this overture of peace and
reconciliation met?  In the winter of 1866-7, it was rejected
contemptuously, rejected unanimously, generally not a single
member of either house in the Johnson legislatures voting for
it.
Congress at last, pressed by the loyal people, entered on a
thorough policy in March, 1867. By one Act it divided the
rebel States into military districts and required the President




19
to assign to each an officer of superior rank and clothed him
with extraordinary powers for the protection of persons and
property. By another Act it prescribed the registration as
voters in each State of the people, irrespective of color or
race, who were not excluded from office by the fourteenth
constitutional amendment. Such electors, if voting for a constitutional convention, were to choose delegates; and the
convention was to frame a constitution which upon its ratification was to be submitted to Congress, and if found to be
expressive of the popular will in such State and proper in its
provisions, the State was to be admitted under it to representation in Congress. Contrast in one item alone the care of
Congress with the slip-shod haste of Mr. Johnson. The constitutions framed under the President were not submitted for ratification to a popular vote, but became such upon the adjournment of the conventions which framed them. The governments
organized under Congress were all submitted to a popular vote.
Under these Acts of Congress, constitutions were formed by the
people of the late rebel States. Unlike those of the Johnson
governments, they make no discrimination on account of race,
color or former condition of servitude, but prohibit such discrimination and secure equal rights for all. They make the most
liberal provision for popular education, as broad as any in the
statutes of Massachusetts or New York. Never in the history
of that section of country have the laws been so expressive of
humanity and civilization.
Now, you are called upon, fellow-citizens, to decide between
the Johnson governments with their cruel, barbarous and unequal legislation and the governments organized under the
auspices of Congress, with their liberal, just and humane provisions. Not only this; you are asked not merely to choose
between them, but to say whether you will destroy the good
governments and restore the bad governments in their place.
More than this even, you are summoned by Mr. Blair, the
democratic candidate for the vice-presidency, to allow him and
his associates, by military usurpation and violence, to overturn
just governments and to set up unjust governments in their
place. Was there ever a more one-sided issue? The Republicans are the true conservatives, and they say, Let the just
governments now established abide.




20
But I am told that this whole business of reconstruction, as
treated by the Republicans, is made to concern only the
negroes, and that they are not our brothers, nor are we their
keepers. This is not so. We plead for good government,
and that concerns all men for all time. It is not merely a
question of sentiment or of abstract justice. It is a question
which comes home to the pockets of every one of you. There
is not a man here with a shirt on his back, or who expects to
sleep between two sheets to-night; there is not a woman here
who goes shopping on Saturdays for nine small children; there
is not a father of a family who has to fit out his daughter for
marriage; there is not one of these who is not pecuniarily
interested in its just solution. There is not a bale of cotton,
there is hardly a case of tobacco, there is not a barrel of rice
or of turpentine, which is not the product of the labor of the
freedmen. Go to a plantation in Georgia in early spring, and
you will see these freedmen preparing the cotton land for the
season; later you will see them-men, women and childrenplanting it; then hoeing it during the summer; then picking
it in autumn; then ginning, baling and carting it to a railroad
depot or to a landing place on a river, whence it is to be transported to New York, Boston or Liverpool; all the labor is that
of the freedmen. There is the white man's capital invested in
the product, and there is sometimes, not always, his superintendence. That cotton, after its manufacture, is to be worn by you
and your family; and as good and equal laws prevail at the
South, you are to pay more or less for it. What I have said of
cotton is true also of rice and turpentine; and it is, though
less so, true of tobacco, which is, however, largely planted in the
free States. Through, then, these great staples, the freedmen
are present in your daily comforts; they supply your manufactures and your commerce; they regulate your balanceswith
foreign nations; they determine the value of your currency;
they make and they vary the figures on your ledgers; sheen or
unseen by you, they are present in your homes, your banks,
your warehouses, your workshops, and in all the avenues of
your life. Take the single product of cotton. The crop of
1867 was two millions and six hundred thousand bales, worthl
two hundred and fifty millions of dollars. One-third of it was
consumed at home, two-thirds of it exported. Now, if the




21
Forrests and Wade Hamptons are to have their way with this
people; if they are to be the victims of violence, Ku-Klux
clans, and massacres, this great production is to be exterminated. These freedmen have once tasted of freedom and suffrage, and before they will go back to slavery in name or in
fact, they will resist, as they ought to resist, to the bitter end.
It will be San Domingo again, as when Napoleon undertook to
reduce the emancipated slaves back to bondage. You will
have the horrors and ravages of civil and servile war combined.
Where then will be the product to feed your mills, to supply
your spindles, to provide work for your factory operatives, men
and women, native and foreign-born? Recall the wail of distress which came from Lancashire in 1861, and ask yourselves
if you wish to hear it from Lowell, and Lawrence, and Fall
River?
But this is notf all. You are to have, by this policy of
injustice, one-half ofall your exports obliterated. The total
exports for the year ending June 30, 1867, were $440,838,834.
The great item was cotton, which amounted to $202,911,410.
Another item was tobacco, amounting to $22,671,126. Another
was turpentine, amounting to $1,066,986. Let these branches
of industry, conducted mainly by freedmen, be destroyed, and
how are you to meet the balance of trade against you? Your
currency will depreciate; gold will rise to two hundred; your
bonds will fall in the market; your capacity to borrow will
be diminished; and your credit everywhere suffer. On the
other hand, give peace, security and justice to all races and
classes; let your flag be the symbol of protection to,all men,
the meanest as well as the highest, and your cotton crop will
be doubled; your tobacco, turpentine and rice interests will
thrive; your mills will be alive with the hum of industry;
your currency will appreciate to par; your credit, as well as
your honor, will be unquestioned in the markets of the world;
and your national debt can be funded at lower rates of interest.
Behold the choice! On the one side, just government, with
commercial prosperity in its train. On the other, oppression
and violence, with commercial disaster and ruin. Which will
you have? The Sibyl offers you the precious boon at the mere
price of a ballot. Refuse her, and when she comes again, she
will demand more than you can pay.




22
Sometimes, in individual life, seeing the prosperity of the
wicked, we almost distrust Providence. But this is never
so with nations, whose life is measured by centuries. Spain
lived on the plunder of Mexico and the Indies; and where has
she been for two hundred years? She now shows the first sign
of life in the expulsion of a dissolute and tyrant queen, and in
movements for a constitutional government and the abolition
of slavery. We lived on the sufferings and unrequited toil of
a race for two centuries, and even inventoried their bodies as
national wealth. But the furies of Retribution were gathering,
and at last they came in civil war, with mourning homes, wasted
industry, and a grievous debt.
This injustice and violence at the South, this oppressive
legislation and persecution, are to be felt in another serious
way at the North as well as at the South. They will force a
redistribution of the laboring population of the South, precipitating it upon us. The great mass of the Southern freedmen, driven from homes and accustomed avocations, will
come here in hordes, to compete with our laborers in various employments.   It will be another hegira. Under the
operation of natural laws and the sway of just government,
the distribution of a laboring population is accomplished
quietly and without any derangement of industrial relations.
The law of demand and supply regulates the emigration of
human beings, just as it regulates the exportation of products.
The surplus flows off from communities and countries where it
is too abundant, to communities and countries in which there
is a deficiency. In this way, the tide of emigration runs from
Europe to America, and from the Eastern States of this Union,
to the valley of the Mississippi and the States and Territories
upon the Pacific. But there is another kind of emigration
forced by persecution and oppression. That strips and impoverishes the country which it leaves, and though it sometimes helps,
it often crowds the country whither it goes. How often has
religious persecution desolated districts of one country and built
up cities in another. Geneva in the time of Calvin doubled
her population with Marian and Huguenot exiles. Among
the-early settlers of South Carolina and New York were large
bodies of Protestants who had been driven from France. They
were perpetuated in many honored names, and among them




those of Laurens and Jay. But take a single period. The
revocation of the edict of Nantes, by Louis XIV., which terminated the toleration of the Huguenots, drove from France a
quarter of a million of her most industrious, most intelligent
and most skilful population. They escaped, spite of edicts
and guards, to Switzerland, Holland, England and America.
They entered the armies of the continent, and aided in the victory
of William of Orange at the battle of the Boyne. Never did a
country pay more dearly and more speedily for injustice perpetrated on the weak. Many branches of manufacture were
well nigh destroyed in France. *They were translated to the
countries which offered a refuge to the thrifty and ingenious
exiles. Manufactories were closed by the hundred, villages
depopulated, large towns half deserted, and the tillage of
wide tracts of territory abandoned. The Dutch cloth makers
of Abbeville emigrated in a body, leaving none to carry on
the manufacture. At Tours, of forty thousand silk artisans,
only four thousand remained, and of eight hundred mills
only seventy were kept alive. Of four hundred tanneries
in Lorraine, only fifty-eight were found in 1698. The population of Nantes was reduced from eighty thousand to onehalf that number. Of twelve thousand silk artisans in Lyons,
nine thousand fled. The industry of these flourishing centres
of craft and trade was so completely prostrated, that they did
not recover for a century, if they have completely recovered at
this day.
What was done in France under Louis XIV., would be done
in the United States under Horatio Seymour. The freedmen
would fly to the Northern States for protection, and take their
place by the side of our laboring population, native and foreignborn. Remember, too, that they are not merely field hands,
producers of cotton, tobacco, turpentine and rice. On every
large plantation of the South there is a carpenter, often a
blacksmith, and they are colored men. Wherever, too, there is
a steam-engine to crush sugar-cane or gin cotton, there you will
find a black engineer. And the same is true of other mechanical operations. These people are also pilots and sailors on the
sea, as well as skilful workmen on the land. Take a single
State for illustration. One-third of the colored men of North
Carolina are mechanics. There are in that State five black




24
mechanics to one white mechanic, one hundred thousand black
mechanics to twenty thousand white mechanics. They are
blacksmiths, gunsmiths, wheelwrights, millwrights, machinists,
carpenters, cabinet-makers, plasterers, painters, ship-builders,
stone masons, bricklayers, pilots and engineers. You could
supply almost any manufactory in Massachusetts from such
material.
But you say these freedmen will not dare to come to the
North. They had a warning in the riots of July, 1863. Ah!
you mistake. The world has moved in five years. Horatio
Seymour will not be Governor of New York in July, 1869, as he
was in July, 1863. The Governor, whoever le may be, will not
go down from Albany to address a mob as " myfriends." That
has ceased to be respectable. It has cost too many speeches to
explain those unfortunate words. The city of New York has
paid two or three millions of dollars, quite money enough, by
way of damages for such violence. The householders of the
city and the insurance capitalists will protest against the relighting of the torches of desperate men. Incendiarism, beginning
at the Bowery, might sweep to the Fifth Avenue and to Madison
Square. The Anglo-Saxon love of order, the American love
of fair play, the human instinct for justice and security will
prevent the repetition of these horrors, never to be named without a shudder. No; these freedmen, exiles from oppression,
driven from the South by rebel clans and democratic partisans,
will be welcomed in the free States with the same sacred hospitality which awaited the Huguenots wherever they fled. Let
them come here, if moved by natural laws, but let them not be
driven hither by violence to the impoverishment of the South
and the disturbance of our industrial system.
Every just sentiment as well as self-interest forbids us to
forget the colored population of the South) or to withhold from
them protection. There were 178,975 colored soldiers who
enlisted for the suppression of the rebellion; of these, 128,156
were in service at one time. The last year of the war they
formed about one-ninth of our army. Thirty thousand of
them were with Grant before Richmond, holding the nearest
point to that city —Fort Harrison. In the presence of yoursclfi
Mr. President, (Colonel Henry S. Russell,) who have coma
manded colored troops, I need only mention Port Hudson)




25
Fort Wagner, the advance upon Richmond in 1864, the mine
at Petersburg, and the campaign against Mobile. Their services in war are already familiar.
Take their services in another department. One hundred
thousand of them at least, were, at one time, connected with
our army as laborers. In each of his annual reports, Quartermaster-General Meigs, by no means a sentimentalist, bore
testimony to the great value of their services. In his report
for 1864 he said, "The negro is not an embarrassment, but
a great aid in the conduct of the war."  Summing up, in
1865, the work of his department during the war, he paid a
tribute to their effective aid, and said: " Colored men continued to the close of the war to be employed and connected with
the trains of the quartermaster's department, as laborers at
depots, as pioneers with the marching columns. In all these
positions they have done good service, and materially contributed to that final victory which confirmed their freedom
and saved our place among the nations."  Could there be more
unimpeachable testimony?
The freedmen were the faithful and intelligent guides of our
army during the war. Not to take time in enumerating special
instances of this service rendered by them, I give you the
testimony of one who has not been a swift witness for the
negro in these latter days. Said Mr. Seward, in a despatch to
Mr. Adams, of May 28, 1862, "Everywhere the American
general receives his most useful and reliable information from
the negro, who hails his coming as a harbinger of freedom."
Such is the record of our diplomacy.
The negroes were everywhere the friends of our soldiers
escaping from Southern prisons. No soldier flying from Andersonville, Salisbury or Libby Prison, ever found his way to our
lines, who was not chiefly indebted to them for the means of
escape. At much risk, they provided for him food, clothing,
boats, hiding-places, and guided him on his way. It was
never necessary to approach them with caution, or to inquire in
advance who of them might be trusted. The soldier told them
his story, and he was safe. Indeed, they seemed to know him
and his needs by instinct as he came in sight. The black face
was as much the sign and symbol of loyalty as the American
flag itself. History records no more touching instances of




26
fidelity than theirs to our escaping soldiers. Mr. Julius Henri
Browne, who escaped from Salisbury, has published his account
of the obligation of himself and his companions to them.
In February, 1864, some thirty or forty officers escaped from
Libby Prison and reached our lines in safety. They authorized
a published statement of the aid received by them from the
negroes, who gave them their only food, guided them on
their course, and directed them how to avoid the rebel pickets.
Lieutenant Estabrook, of Dorchester, in a most interesting
narrative called " Adrift in Dixie," has related his escape from
the rebel guard near the southern line of Virginia, his descent
of the Dan River, and his safe arrival at our lines before
Petersburg. All the way he received constant and cordial aid
from the negroes.  But why repeat instances?  No Union
soldier ever escaped from a rebel prison who did not pay a
tribute to their fidelity.
There was something sullime in the devotion of the colored
population of the South to the Union during the war. Even
while the nation protested that it was a war for the Union only,
and was not to affect their condition, these lowly people, led by
a profound instinct, at dead of night, while the master slept,
left their homes of bondage; bearing their children and scanty
packs of food and clothing; creeping along the margins
of creeks and rivers, beneath the shadow of overhanging
branches, in rude dug-outs which their own hands had made;
threading forests, pathless except to those for whom the hope
of freedom is an unfailing compass; chased by bloodhounds
and relentless patrols; approaching rebel pickets at imminent
peril of life and capture, till at last, weary, footsore and famished, they cast themselves at the feet of our advanced sentries.
They knew,.whatever the laws or proclamations or diplomatic
assurances might be, God had made them and us allies in the
contest. They were wiser in their generation than cabinet or
congress. Again, in human history, the truth was hid from
the wise and prudent, and revealed unto babes. If we turn
our backs upon such a people, we shall receive, as we ought to
receive, the execrations of mankind.
It is claimed that this is a white man's government, and that
therefore the governments established under the auspices of
Congress and securing suffrage to all, irrespective of color.




27
ought not'stand. Whence came this dogma? In vain will you
seek for it in the writings- of Jefferson, the great apostle of
democracy.  He taught the equal rights of all, and man's
capacity for self-government. Not one of the fathers asserted
it. The Declaration of Independence affirmed that all men,
-not all white men, but all men,-are created equal. The
Constitution in its preamble declares, "we the people,' not
"we the white people." It says, we the people, "ordain and
establish this Constitution," not this white man's Constitution.
We do it in order to " provide for the common defence," and''promote the general welfare," not in order to provide for the
defence and promote the welfare of any one set or race of men.
This doctrine of a white man's government is a modern dispensation. The Dred Scott decision is its creed. Chief Justice
Taney is its high priest. You will find its altars in the corner
groceries of Kentucky, where the Nasbys, the Bascoms and
the Pograms congregate, and where, amid the fumes of Bourbon whiskey, they assume to be the vindicators of the white
race. The men that preach it were but too glad a few years
ago to find negro substitutes to take their place in a draft.
No, fellow citizens. This is not a white man's government,
or a black man's government, or a native born citizen's, or a
foreign born citizen's, government. It is a government of the
people, by the people, andfor the people. Our fathers, as they
framed it, looking down through future time, saw men of all
nationalities, exiles from all quarters of the globe, gathering
from age to age under its protecting aegis, and they in their
comprehensive humanity ordained that no one of all these, no,
not the meanest, the poorest or the blackest, should ever be
excluded from the sublime benefaction.
Think not, my friends, that you lower the value of any
franchise by admitting others to share it.  It is only the
lowest order of possessions which must be exclusively appropriated by one. The highest and the best are for all; the air we
breathe; the rain that falleth on the just and the unjust; the
sunlight which bathes in glory the evening sky; love which
setteth the solitary in families; the hope of immortality which
shines for all. Do you wish to be alone immortal and live on
forever in sublime isolation? Is your wife less precious -to you
because another has one whom he too loves, honors and cher



ishes? Is your child less dear to you because some two years
since the angel of Life, passing by, dropped a like benediction.
at my hearthstone? Aye, and when on Tuesday next you cast
your freeman's ballot in this hall, are you to prize it the less,
and feel your citizenship dishonored because a thousand miles
away some Louisiana freedman is to be better protected and
have a better chance in life by having a right on that day to
cast his first ballot for a President? Shame on you if you do!
The governments organized under the auspices of Congress
are stigmatized as " carpet-bag " governments. This is a new
term, and what does it mean? The facts which gave rise to it
are these. Congress authorized the actual bonafide citizens of
the rebel States, with certain exceptions for disloyalty, to form
constitutions, just as the actual bonafide citizens of Massachusetts have formed its constitution. Among those actual bona
fide citizens were a small proportion of persons who after the
war emigrated to those States from the North, cast in their
fortunes with them, carried capital to them, engaged there in
merchandise and the culture of cotton and other products,
and thus became as much citizens of those States as if born
upon the soil, and just as much citizens thereof as you and I are
citizens of Massachusetts. Therefore, they were entitled to the
rights of citizenship in those States. The Constitution says,
"The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges
and immunities of citizens in the several States."  These citizens, derisively called " carpet-baggers," were in large proportion veteran soldiers of our army; and who had a better right
to settle in that territory than they who had saved it to the
Union? Now it so happened, and quite naturally too, that the
enfranchised colored people had more confidence in these emigrants from the North than in the old planters who had held
them and their fathers in bondage, and preferred them in some
cases as legislators and magistrates. A number of them were
elected in this way to office; by no means a too large proportion. What was there new or strange in all this? Have
not qualified electors a right to vote for whom they please, and
have not successful candidates for office, duly qualified, a right
to accept? But look a little farther. What are we but a nation
of emigrants, new settlers, squatters; "carpet-baggers," if you
please? What is our government of eighty years' existence by




29
the side of the ancient and august dynasties of Europe?  As
the tide of population flows westward, the old thirteen are lost
in the growing family of commonwealths. In the great city of
Chicago, with its two hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants,
few of the residents over twenty years of age were born within
its limits. People do not ask there "who was your father,"
but "where were you raised."  The citizens of Massachusetts
are welcomed wheresoever they go in the new States and territories of the North-West. If any one of you gentlemen shall, a
fortnight hence, carpet-bag in hand, arrive in some town of
Nevada or Colorado with the intention to make your domicil
there, you will be welcomed to the firesides of those who have
gone before you; everybody will offer to sell you real estate;
and in a week you will be chosen a member of the school committee. Such is the free course of American life.
Now the demand of the Southern rebels is, that the old slave
masters should have the exclusive right to occupy and to govern
that vast section of country which stretches from the Potomac
to the Rio Grande, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific; and
that no man from the North, holding other opinions than theirs,
shall ever become a citizen thereof, shall ever go there to live,
shall ever do business there, or shall ever vote or hold office there.
And if they do go there, they are to be stigmatized as " carpetbaggers" and "scallawags," and be driven thence with threats
of assassination. What say you to this impudent pretension?
We have one country, have we not? divided, indeed, into
several States, but still one country, with one constitution, one
citizenship, one flag, one destiny. We have a right to go where
we please in that country; to carry on any lawful business that
suits us; to raise Indian corn and potatoes in Massachusetts or
cotton in Carolina; to think as we please; to cast what ballot
we choose, and to hold any office to which our fellow citizens
may elect us. If we have not these first of all rights, if we
have not in four years of blood established them beyond all dispute, if veteran soldiers, scarred and maimed for life in saving
that territory to the Union, have not won them for themselves,
the sooner we have another war to vindicate them the better.
The Republican party is in favor of paying the national debt
according to its spirit as well as its letter. The Seymour party
propdse to pay it by issuing greenbacks and flooding the coun-.




try with an irredeemable, inconvertible paper currency whichwill inflate the price of the necessaries of life; everything which
a poor man or one of moderate means, eats, drinks or wears.
But who are the national creditors  If they were Shylocks,
they should nevertheless be paid what is nominated in the
bond. But as a rule they are our friends, not our enemies;
those who have confidence in our government and not those who
have desired its ruin. The Rothschilds lent the governments
of Europe four hundred millions of dollars in ten years, but we
asked no loans of them. Our government appealed to the
patriotism of the people, who responded with money as they had
already responded with men. All classes according to their
means subscribed. In time the national bonds passed into the
hands of the less wealthy. The rich are more apt to invest in
warehouses, merchandise, railroad stocks, factories, ships and
real estate. The national bond is an easy investment for a man
who has little opportunity or capacity for speculation. Its value
can always be definitely determined. It requires no examination of title. It always finds a ready sale. The mechanics of
the country have largely invested in the national bonds. So also
have the savings banks. Of eighty millions of savings bank
capital in this Commonwealth, twenty-five millions are invested
in the national bonds. The laboring man and the laboring
woman, the journeyman shoemaker and the carpenter, the cook
and the seamstress, every depositor in -these banks, is interested
directly in the preservation of the national faith.
But I fear not the issue of this financial discussion. Every
day's debate has driven the repudiators from point to point till
now they cry" quarter," explaining that they do not favor the
issuing of more greenbacks, though four hundred millions of
greenbacks cannot pay off fifteen hundred millions of five-twenties; and they protest that they do not propose the payment
of the principal of the bonds till the greenback dollar and
the gold dollar are of like value. Why then vex the country
with a premature agitation which has brought only discredit?
Sorry am I that the Republican party is not quite the unit it
should be upon this question. But the masses are right, the
organization is right, the: declaration of principles is right, the
grand current is right. The Chicago Convention denounced
all forms of repudiation as a crime:and demanded the payment




31
of the public debt in the uttermost good faith, as well according
to its spirit as its letter. Vain will be every ingenious or eccentric effort to resist or avoid the force of these plain, honest
words. There they stand, and there they will continue to
stand as the orthodox Republican faith.  Uncle Sam has
hitherto been an honest tradesman. He will never consider his
creditors paid when he has divided among them fifty cents on a
dollar. He ran up heavy store bills in bringing his truant,
rebellious sons to terms. He was obliged to take his loyal sons
from profitable callings and use them in maintaining family
discipline. It was necessary to pay and pension them for their
service. Hard pressed on all sides, he was forced to suspend
the payment of money for his current liabilities, and to issue
promises to pay.  He means to meet those promises with
money, and not with other promises of no more value than
the first. If he is ever in trouble again, he means to carry
to the market an unimpeached and unimpeachable credit.
God bless the old fellow! Before he would yield to the
suggestion of any unworthy child to pay anything else than
the real dollar he has promised, the only dollar which the
nations recognize as money, before he would have that shameful
word Repudiation branded on his forehead, he would go to the
scaffold as bravely as did John Brown.
It is charged that the Republicans are endeavoring to perpetuate in peace the passions of war. Far firom it. Reconciliation, forgiveness, pardon, are the sacred terms of our religion
as well as the dictates of a wise public policy. We have not
attempted to " draw up an indictment against a whole people,"
or to " apply the ordinary ideas of criminal justice to this great
public contest."  We challenge a comparison with the wars
against rebellions; and we claim that the suppression of none
has cost the vanquished insurgents so little in disabilities, penalties and confiscations. You can almost count on your fingers
the estates of which the forfeiture has been claimed. They are
less than those which our fathers inflicted on the British loyalists,
who, unlike our rebels, remained faithful to the governments
under which they were born. There are titles in Milton and
Dorchester held under those confiscations. We hold no traitor
in prison. We have hung none.    Only one man was ever
huig for treason in this country; and while John Brown's soul




32
goes marching on, we do not wish to give Jefferson Davis the
benefit of a comparison with him which even a common fate
might suggest. We have nominated for President the most
magnanimous of generals, who has been sometimes censured for
his too liberal paroles. We have restored even to political power
the great mass of the rebels, only excluding for present security
a class of leading men, who had been doubly false, false not
merely to the common allegiance due from all citizens, but to the
solemn oath they had taken in assuming public trusts. Even
these, we are ready to receive back into fellowship as soon as they
bring forth fruits meet for repentance, and the public safety
admits. We ask nothing for vengeance, punishment, retaliation. But peace, security and protection for the loyal men of
the South, white or black, and the fulfilment of our national
pledges we will have, cost what it may.
To my foreign born fellow citizens-some of whom - see here
this evening-I have a word to say. The mass of you have
been heretofore aggregated in the Democratic party. But will
you tell me why it is that the great body of you have emigrated
to the free States, where Republicans have controlled, and why
it is that you have avoided the slave States, where Democrats
have controlled? You come to New England and to the Middle States, and you push on to the North-West. But you have
shunned the Southern or slave country as a pestilential region.
By. the census of 1860, there were 4,136,175 persons of foreign
birth in the United States. Of these, 3,582,999 were resident
in the free States, and the balance in the slave States; eightynine per cent. to eleven; eight to one. The State of New York
alone had a foreign born population almost twice as large as
that of all the slave States together. Of every nine men emigrating from a parish in Ireland to this country, eight went to
the free States, and only one to the slave States, and he probably
lost his way. Why is this? The answer is easy. Most of you
are laboring men, and you want to live in a community where
labor is honored and protected. It is honored and protected in
Massachusetts, Where the Republican policy has prevailed. It
has not been honored and protected in Mississippi, where the
Democratic policy has prevailed. And again: Republican States
like Massachusetts provide free public schools for all, in which
knowledge is taught, without money and without price, and in




33
which your children may rise to become Emmetts and Sheridans. The Republicans have signalized the first year of their
administration in the South by constitutional and legislative
provisions for universal education where none had existed during all the years of Democratic rule. Now will you be false to
your true friends, and clasp hands with your real enemies?
It is the marvel of our history that you have been heretofore
so much consolidated in the Democratic party, whose policy is
so adverse to your best interests. But a new spirit is making
its way among you. One of the most eloquent voices that ever
pleaded for American freedom, for universal freedom, was that
of Daniel O'Connell, the great Irish agitator; and young Irishmen now, sharing his tongue of flame, are summoning you to
our ranks. Would you secure freedom and justice for Ireland,
your first step should be to aid in establishing freedom and
justice in America. Remember, too, that when the rights of
the meanest and the humblest anywhere are invaded with impunity, the rights of all-yours and mine-are made less secure.
Do we, my friends, appreciate the inestimable value of the
votes we give, especially of those votes when they are to establish governments for this generation and for posterity? They
are to send influences along the lines of future time, and their
end no man can see. Take a single illustration from our history. Upon the admission of Ohio into the Union in 1803, there
remained a vast territory now comprising the States of Indiana,
Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin, on whose soil still rested the
perpetual prohibition of slavery incorporated in the ordinance
of 1787, which Jefferson had drawn. The settlers of this territory, for the purpose of obtaining relief from the scarcity of
labor, petitioned Congress for a suspension of this ordinance,
and several times renewed their appeal, without remonstrance
except once, and they were supported in their petition by
Governor Harrison, afterwards president of the United States.
Congress, approving a report of John Randolph, as chairman of
the committee to whom the subject was referred, refused the
prayer of the petition, and again and again refused, although
three subsequent committees recommended a compliance. Congress remained firm during the five years that the measure was
pressed, and thus saved to liberty that vast territory. Had it
weakly yielded, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin would
5




34
have become as Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama and Louisiana;
and that great Northern hive, whence issued multitudes of soldiers to defend the government, would have sent forth multitudes to destroy it. To-day we legislate, not for ourselves alone,
but for all coming generations. As we sow, they shall reap. As
we vote rightly or wrongly, they are to enjoy or suffer. Why,
when that child, sleeping in his cradle to-night, tenderly
watched by a mother's eyes, shall be absorbed by the activities
of middle life, as we now are, he will be the citizen of a
country teeming with a hundred millions of people-a country
washed by the two oceans and clasped with iron bands, receiving the long-sought wealth of the East, and, if we do our duty,
a country dedicated to Liberty, and fulfilling at last the noblest
aspirations of the human race. What a responsibility, what a
trust, what a duty is ours!
But I must not detain you longer. The Ship of State —pardon the well-worn figure —is now safe.   Awhile ago she
seemed in some danger from a black craft which, during the
war, sailed betimes with French or English colors, and has of
late had the names of Seymour and Blair flying at her masthead, and even these she was about to change the other day for
others of better repute; but whatever the colors, it is the same
old rebel craft still,
"Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark."
As she came up alongside, our Ship, with well-aimed shot
from three favorite guns-the Pennsylvania, the Ohio and the
Indiana-dismantled and split her in twain, just as the Kearsarge sent the Alabama to the bottom of the sea. Our good
Ship is over the bar. She has passed the shoals. The rocks
are far behind. She rides in deep waters, bound for the haven
of Union and Peace. She is well manned for the voyage.
The admiral walks the deck as hopefully and serenely as when
he waited for victory before Vicksburg or Richmond. She is
freighted with the dearest interests. She bears the hopes of
the Human Family. The heavens light up as never before to
guide her on her path of glory. Oppressed races and classes
take heart and are glad at her coming. Spirits immortal, who
ascended from battle-field and prison pen, send down from the
skies their benedictions upon her. All is well! All is well!