FOUR QUESTIONS FOR THE PEOPLE, AT THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.
.4'i i. l,   6 f  i- t
tfe sg  4t+ADDRE e, 
JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY,
BEFORE THE
PARKER FRATERNITY, AT THE MUSIC HALL,.
OCTOBER  20, 1868.
B OSTON:
TICKNOR  AIN D  F IELDS.
~ 1868. 
4,"  t00.1 (? i    /e
OF 
'i"
i
I 
DDRE SS.
I have been invited to say something to-night
on the great subject which is now agitating the
country.
It is certainly the duty of every good citizen to
examine for himself the questions at issue, when a
conflict like this is shaking half a continent, and is
to be decided between the rising and setting of the
sun, on a day rapidly approaching. And it seems
equally his duty, after having thoroughly satisfied
himself upon the merits of the great debate, to do
what in him lies for the furtherance of that which
he firmly believes the Right.
There have been important elections in this
country during the brief three-quarters of a century
which comprehends the whole of our national life,
-that turbulent, fuill-throbbing, exultant national
life, the like of which the world never knew before,
and which  has something appalling in its very
strength.. For if so brief a span has sufficed to
-
N
tt,
T
~s
H
t
W 
4
place America in the foremost rank of the great
nations of history,-if such is the infancy of the
Reptfblic,-what is she to be in the fulness of her
power, when the centuries which are to a nation
what years are to the individual shall have
brought her to maturity? On us, to whom in our
generation is committed the representation of all
this stupendous vitality during the little hour allotted for the playing of our parts upon this earth, how
deep is the responsibility that in our day at least
the Republic receive no detriment!
Certainly there have been bitterly contested elections in this country before. Party spirit is always
rife, and in such vivid, excitable, disputatious communities as ours are, and I trust always will be, it is
the very soul bof freedom.   To those who reflect
upon the means and ends of popular government,
nothing seems more stupid than in grand generalities to deprecate party spirit. WVhy, government
by parties and through party machinery is the only
possible method by which a free republic can accomplish the purpose of its existence. The old
republics of the Past may be said to have fallen,
not because of party spirit, but because there was
no adequate machinery by which party spirit could
develop itself with facility and regularity. 
Never before did a representative republic on any
considerable scale exist. Popular representation,
the election of men to speak each for a hundred
thousand or more of their fellow-citizens at some
common central point,-familiar as we are with it,
so much so that it seems like one of the elemental
laws-was  entirely  unknown  to the republics,
great and small, of Antiquity or of the Middle
Ages.  That which makes the democratic republic
possible and perfectly convenient on the vast scale
of this country was never imagined before.  The
democratic  force in older republics  evaporated
uselessly or exploded balefully, because no engine
had been invented by which MAan becomes master
of the  superhuman  strength  of  men,-of the
aggregated thought and will of great multitudes.
And a free government may cease to be free, even
although all the forms and appliances tfor energetic
action are present, if the party spirit, the potent
expansive v apor which moves all things, is absent
or insufficient.  The modern kingdonl of Italy has
the  freest  constitutional  form  compatible  with
limited monarchy, a liberal and expanded representative system, but with the bulk of the people there
is a deficiency of the warm popular element, the
party spirits the political steam. I have heard of
5 
6
representative districts where there were fifteen
hundred voters, and where not five thought of
going to the polls during what should have been an
exciting political canvass. Such is the effect upon
a country of centuries of political childhood, of
paternal and sacerdotal despotism.   The task of
the patriot who believes in human progress, in
political and human freedom, is harder in that
country than in ours, but the brave hearts of Italy
know not despair.
And if our republic be true to herself, the future
of the human race is assured by our example. No
sweep of overwhelming armies, no ponderous
treatises on the rights of man, no hymns to liberty,
though set to martial music and resounding with
the full diapason of a million human throats, can
exert so persuasive an influence as does the spectacle
of a great republic, occupying a quarter of the
civilized globe, and governed quietly and sagely by
the People itself.
Well, I believe that there is usually no great
deficiency of party spirit with us, no very great
lack of democratic steam. Our tendency is perhaps to exaggerate the issues and the stakes, but I
doubt whether it be possible to magnify the importance of this presidential election. As citizens of 
a free Commonwealth,  therefore, whose peculiar
privilege it is, alone among great nations, to elect
periodically chief magistrates for those fuimctions
which in most countries are discharged by rulers
appointed over the people according to permanent
and ingenious fictions, it is fit for us on this
occasion to scan very closely the doctrines, the
promises and the characters of the rival parties.
Which of the two is most in harmony with that
great democratic principle which this republic must
obey, if it is not to perish forever?
And I believe that most of us-republicans and
democrats-are honestly desirous of arriving at
that truth, of obeyilng that law. I question no
maln's motives.   No  man  outside  a mad-house
hopes or wishes, since the war, to upset the American Republic. The thing cannot be done; the
Union is indissoluble. So much'at least has been
proved. And it is worth the precious price we
have paid for it, to know that what was once believed by millions in this country, and almost universally outside of it, to be the vainest of delusions,
is now an established axiom. Let the world make
the most of it and  govern  itself  accordingly.
Treason has done its worst, but this government
has not fallen, for it was founded on the rock of
9
7 
8
equal rights. We can read the Declaration of Independence at last, with its solemn and majestic
opening clause, which peals through the world like
a choral strain, proclaiming a new birth to the
nations-" that this truth is self-evident, that all
men are created equal; that they are endowed by
their Creator with inalienable rights; that among
these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,"
-without a blush or a sneer or a feeble sophism,
once the sole response.
There are many topics, interesting and important
to all of us, on which I fully understand and rejoice
at diversity of opinion, but there are great subjects
on which it is difficult to comprehend a radical
difference. I could never place myself on the same
point of view, moral or political, with those who
thought negro slavery other than a misfortune and
a sin.
It has always seemed to me, in the words of our
great magistrate and martyr, that if slavery be not
wrong, nothing is wrong.
It is also very hard for me to understand how any
American can wish to degrade this majestic Union,
this government of the People by the People, this
political scheme of man acting directly upon man,
of Law dealing directly with responsible creatures, 
9
into something called a confederacy; into a league
of corporations; into a system which proved fatal
to the only great republic which has preceded our
own in modern times,-that of the United Netherlands; a system whiclh for a time seemed to strike
the American People, emerging victorious from its
struggle with the British government, with paralysis, out of which our fathers in'89 rescued us by
the glorious national constitution; the system which
Jefferson Davis and his followers had the madness
to think stronger than the American Union, because
the spirit of negro slavery had breathed into it
the breath of immortal life.
Yet this is really the question still at issue.
Some of us thought it settled by the great four
years Agony. But when we thought the subtle
and dangerous theory forever destroyed, behold it
coiling itself, wounded but not killed, and rearing
its threatening and venomous head, prepared for a
final and fatal spring.  Let us deal with it once for
all.  Let the heel of popular condemnation be set
on it, now and forever.  We are a nation.  We are
not a confederacy. This government, which protects and which controls the humblest as well as the
most powerful amongst us, the seat of whose
august empire is at Washington, deals with every
2
- e*.
..,          1. i, 
I 
10
individual of us directly within its carefully limited
sphere. It makes supreme laws which no man dares
defy, and there is nothing but chaos whenever we
attempt to escape from its all-embracing folds.
One would think that we had heard enough by
this time of that sound of woe, now utterly devoid
of meaning, State sovereignty. For one, I recognize no sovereign in this country, no sovereignty.
It is a feudal, Anglo-Norman phrase, not good
English nor good sense as applied to our institutions and habits. We have long since got rid of
the thing, and it would be better to have done with
the word.
Ever since we, the people of the United States,
eighty years ago, laid down the constitution as
the  basis  of  our  political  fabric,  up  to  this
hour, there has been no supreme law other than the
will of the people as expressed according to the
rules therein prescribed.
In this school district, this township, this State,
we, as portion of that people, are free to make
our laws, to govern ourselves, to organize all the
multiform and infinite details which make up the
main substance of our political lives, so far as
district, town or State has the right to interfere
with the business or to trespass on the domain of
-:..   I...  ~
*,..: ~     
11
the individual; but in all that we do we must submit to that universal law which enwraps ius like an
atmosphere and which we call the constitution.
Any ordinance or statute in violation of that law,
whether by the selectmen of a village or by the
highest authorities of the proudest State, is null
and void, so soon as it is pronounced a violation
by the tribunals to which the people have confided
the right and responsibility of a decision; while,
on the contrary, all laws made by the national
legislature in pursuance of the constitution, shall
stand until the same tribunals in cases within
their competence shall decide that they are not
in pursuance of it.  All else is rebellion and
revolution, pure and simple. And this it is to
be governed by the people's law.
All this would seem  a string of school-boy
truisms, but one sometimes thinks in these later
days that every truism has become a paradox.
I am not afraid, I never have been afraid, of
-being deprived of my State rights. But unless
the experience of the last quarter of a century,
followed by the most tremendous rebellion against
constituted popular authority ever waged, is to go
for absolutely nothing, we have all had cause
enough to fear the loss of our national rights. 
12
I think with an ever-reeulrring shudder of the
not very distant time when we all awoke one spring
morning and found out that we had not a country.
The shout of indecent joy with which haters of
popular liberty  all over the earth hailed  the
announcement that the brief history of the United
States had come to an end, that the bubble democracy had burst, that Ilic Jacet was already
inscribed on the tombstone of the great Republic,
that she was no longer to answer to her name on
the great roll call of nations; all this is still
ringing in our ears.  And then it was that we
pondered quickly and well the value of those holy
words-iNation and Union-without which liberty
is an empty phrase.
Yet after all, suppose  the Union gone; the
United States abolished instead of slavery; still
we had our sacred State rights to faill back upon.
MIassachusetts was "sovereign and independent"
still, and Rhode Island or Delaware, each with
its own  fleets and armies, might defy all the
powers of the world.  Ah! my friends, the good
sense as well as the patriotism of the great
majority in all the free States taught them without an argument that the dearest of State rights
was the right to defend this Union; to fly to 
13
arms, that not a single column of the majestic
peristyle of States should ever be displaced; that
this sacred Commonwealth of refuge to the
oppressed of all nations should never be destroyed.
I can comprehend the word allegiance, although
this also has a feudal, personal twang, not very
grateful to my American ear, but I can comprehend it only in its national application. I can
swear allegiance, sacred fealty to the great Union
of which I have the honor to be a citizen, which
oppresses me never, but which is always ready to
protect me  against a world in arms, but blind
fealty to the behests of a State, to a corporation
which long ago parted voluntarily and wisely
with all the essential attributes of what is called
..
sovereignty in order to help create a higher organism-such allegiance is as incomprehensible. to
me as allegiance to my school district or to the
city ward where I happen to reside.
I find that all the necessary functions of local
self-government, legislative, judicial, administrative, have been carefully reserved and kept out
of the sphere of the general government; and I
know that government to be already so oppressed
with national functions which it must discharge, 
14
as to have small leisure for absorbing into itself
those local powers which are necessary to the
autonomy of the State and the municipality.
Certainly the citizens of no State in this Union
have better right to be proud of their State than
we have to be proud of Massachusetts. Her very
name-that harsh old heathen word, most difficult
of utterance they say to all but American tongues
-has a familiar music to our ears. It is freighted
with the memories of those earnest, God-fearing,
hard-praying, hard-fighting pilgrims, who founded
a theocracy in a savage wilderness, amid dangers
and privations sufficient to appal the stoutest
heart; whose descendants have caused that wilderness to blossom like the rose; and out of whose
theocracy has grown the most temperate and
well-ordered democracy that the world has thus
far beheld.
But I will not yield to a natural enthusiasm,
nor speak a word more of eulogy on our native
State.  Moreover, what we have achieved is nlothing to the boundless possibilities of the future.
If we have succeeded at all it is by setting our
feet in the right path. We have found out the
way to ascend, but we have hardly begun to
scale that ladder which leads ever upwards, like 
15
that beheld in the patriarch's vision, on which
the angels of God were ascending and descending.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, has been done compared to that which our successors may compass
if they follow in the track which has been mniarked
out.
It is only for the sake of pointing the moral of
this address that I have called your attention to
the fact that if State sovereignties, State pride,
State allegiance, State rights are subjects of
anxiety, we of Massachusetts have as much interest in the matter as others. Our affections, our
devotion, our closest sympathies, our warmest and
dearest memories are with the State of our birth
or our choice, but our foremost duty as citizens
is to that great government without which that
which we so proudly call our State could not
exist in safety an hour.   Look round the world
to-day, in any direction, and say whether you
think it desirable for yourselves and your children
to belong to a petty nation and a feeble government. And we may search history in vain to find
any justification for the fear-sincerely entertained,
no doubt, by many from whom I differ-that this
Union will perish or cease to protect its citizens,
because of toQ much consolidation. 
16
The republics of antiquity offer but little analogy
to our system, for they were all developments,
smnall, greater or gigantic, of the municipalityof the City-conquering, it might be, other cities,
provinces, kingdoms, nations, but remaining a city
still. Rome fell because it was an overgrown
city, with eighty millions of subjects, and because
human slavery had eaten out its very heart;
because forty millions of its heterogeneous population were slaves, bought  and sold like other
merchandise; because there was no parliamentary
representation of the vast'multitudes of foreigners
whom her legions had subdued, and which she
kept in abject servitude, until the slaves rose at
last upon the haughty and most wicked city, and
tore her to pieces, and the empire with her. Does
any man suppose, if her slaves had been emancipated, if a system of popular and equal representation of all the citizens of all races and colors
throughout that world-wide domain had existed,
an idea which at least may be conceived of by
way of illustration,-and if her army had ium —
bered fifty thousand men instead of being counted
by millions, that her liberties would have perished,
and she herself ceased to exist, by reason of too
much consolidation? The danger would have
4 
17
been precisely the reverse. The empire, from its
very extent, must have fallen to pieces of its own
weight; and in truth it is only in modern science
-not only in political philosophy but in the application of physical forces-that our security lies
against disintegration.  WVithout steam, electricity,
labor-saving machinery, and, above all, an equal
system of popular representation, such a widely
extended republic would be impossible, and it is
our duty to guard against the tendencies to decentralization and over-localization by perfecting as
far as possible our representative system.
Nor did the vast empire of Charlemagne, when
his sceptre stretched over almost all Europe, fall
from consolidation, but from exactly the opposite
cause:  the cenltrifugal  principle.   That  sceptre
broke in the hands of his imbecile successors,
because in the state of the world then existing
it was impossible to make it felt at a distance, and
because society, perhaps,-lacking the modern
and invaluable invention of popular  representation, beside all the other physical discoveries and
improvements,-had need of disintregration before
civilization could organize itself locally and in
detached groupings.
I can understand the cry against centralization
3 
18
in such a country as France, where the national
territory is less than the area of the single State
of Texas, and where the population, energetic,
inventive, laborious, thrifty, is nearly as numerous
as that of our whole Union; where there is no system of representation, as we understand it,-where
public meetings for political discussion, such as we
are holding now, are a crime; where a military government, supported by twelve hundred thousand
of as courageous, perfectly disciplined and experienced soldiery as ever existed in the world, holds
all the  legislative, executive, judicial, financial,
administrative  functions  of the  nation  in  the
hollow  of its hand, and where  the press and
public speech are under iron control.
But the cry should point to the danger. In the
United  States,-with  universal  suffrage;  with
boundless liberty of the press and of public meetings; with a congress elected every two years, and
a president every four; with a standing armny,
before the rebellion, only equal in number to the
army of Hesse-Cassel,-thirteen thousand of them,
officers, privates, musicians, pioneers and all,-and
not four times that number now; with a dozen
stump-speakers in every school district; with a
newspaper and a militia-general in every village; 
19
with a domain of three millions of square miles tis large as all Europe-capable of supporting the
whole actual population of this globe, if we should
be packed as closely as the Belgians at this
moment, and now sparsely inhabited by less than
forty millions, all wide  awake  to their rights,
whether municipal, State or national, and ready to
stand up for them to the crack of doom; I cannot
feel that our liberties are in much danger fi'om the
National itepublicanl party, and that we are tamely
silllkin  into a consolidated military despotism.
It seems to me-it has always seemed to methat our perils lie in exactly the opposite direction.
There must be fear of disinltegration where the
suirface is so broad, the population relatively so
scanty, and the enginery of repression and colncentration, except in times of impending catastrophe
like those from which we are emerging, so slender.
That  kleen observer and  profound  thinker, De
Tocqueville, whvlose work upon the United States
has been a classic for a generation, was even so
much impressed with our dangers in this regard,
and by the exaggerated theories of State rights,
that he made in reference to the subject one of the
few mistakes to be found in his book, but a very
grave mistake. 
20
So slight was the power of thle general' goverlnment, he thought, and so feeble the sentiment of
nationality, as compared with the strength of the
separate States, and with the local attachments of
their citizens, that in case of a serious' attempt
made by any of the States to break up tlhe Union,
he expressed the opinion, not only that the central
government would have no power to resist such
rebellion, but that it would not even maake a serious
effiort to resist it, and to avert the threatened dissolution.
Ve had known, all along, that slavery was the
most potent of dissolvents in all political organisms.  It could not but act the same part in our
polity, and the great mass of the people, North,
South, East and West hlad for generations loing
been responsible for the evil and for its continuance.
Mana-y years the baleful poison had been working, until througlouLt a great section of the country it had eaten out that respect for nationality
which is the most noble and vital part of any
organized formn of associated humanity, and the
leading characteristic of the present epoch in the
world's history.  And at last the outbreak came.
The  slave  power, the most  distinctly marked
oligarelcy ever  known to mankind, planted  itself 
21
squarely across the track of the great democratic
principle to which this Unlion owes the breath of
life.
State sovereignty, from a harmless and bombastic phrase, seemed to become for a time a most
formidable fact; for it was under the form of State
sovereignty that the oligarchical,  anti-republican
principle of slavery disguised itself for the struggle so long impending.  The attempt to destroy
the mild and beneficent Union in order to extend
and perpetuate human slavery, was by one of the
most terrible mockeries ever conceived of, declared
to be anl uprisillng for liberty  against tyranny.
History has never known such profound irony as
this. The spirit of liberty was never so strangely
travestied before as when it was made to inspire
and to consecrate that confederacy, built according
to those awful words which will forever remain
historical, upon the corner-stone which the builders
rejected, the corner-stone of negro slavery.
The effort to destroy the Union was serious
enough, Heaven knows.   Never did human beings,
in the holiest cause, display more brilliant courage,
enlergy, endurance, patience, fanatical self-sacrifice
than the rebels in their mad struggle against the
inexorable Law.  Had their cause been good, had 
22
the rebellion been just, it would have been impossible to subdue them. But the Union represented
the cause of democracy, of nationality, of equal
rights to all malnkind, the sacred reign of Law.
The nobleness of the cause inspired the Union
soldiers, and the American people, who all became
soldiers, with a valor and a devotion, an inventive
genlius,  a reckless and  amazing  generosity  of
treasure and  of blood, never surpassed in tihe
history of mankind.
The world has found out at last whether this is a
nation or not; whether.the central government can
protect itself or not against a serious effort to
destroy it; whether -the American People will acquiesce or not in their political dissolution; whether
the great Republic will lie down to die like a lamb,
as soon as the knife is flourished at its throat.
Perhaps it needed this spasm, this sudden apparitionl of political death, to reveal to the People the
depth of their national sentiment, the strength of
their attachment to the  Unioln,
No effort more serious than the great rebellion
is likely to be made again to destroy the central
government; yet the very qualities which our late
misguided enemies, soon to become our fellowcitizens~ have manifested in the cause of slavery, 
23
give us the right to hope for a prouder and more
prosperous future than has ever been granted to
any political community. The growth of great
empires, whether republics or monarchies, is slow.
Years  are much  to the individual mortal, but
Man is the master of time.  If not in our generation, assuredly at no very distant epoch, the race
which has been foremost to destroy this Unionl
will be eager to defend it, should it ever be unjustly
assailed. So long as it is true to its natal principle
and to the law of its being-that all men are created free and equal, and endowed by their Creator
with inalienable rights-so long will this Union
protect itself. It is almost omnipotent in the cause
of Right. A cause of Wrong would "sit upon its
arm and malke it powerless." It cannot oppress,
so long as the general diffusion of education and
intelligence among the people insures a constant
and jealous scrutiny of all its proceedings.
Nor do I deprecate the cry of danger from consolidation-although I have no sympathy with itfirom absorption of power by this or that branch of
the general government. " Eternal vigilance," said
Jefferson, is the price of liberty." Let us continue to natch carefully the course of the general
government.  WVe have all of us eyes and voices 
24
and votes, and if the administration becomes really
tyrannical in its tendencies, let us choose a better
one.
And now let us look at the pretensions and principles of the two parties and their candidates, in
favor of one or the other of which our votes are
to be cast so soon. What are the issues of this
presidential election?
We are called on to decide  I.  Whether the will of the American People,
constitutionally expressed, is the law of the land?
II. Whether, in the United States, all men are
endowed with equal rights?
III. Whether it is just and reasonable to pay
our debts, or to repudiate them?
IV.  Whether economy and constitutional purity of administration will, on the whole, be best
secured by the election of Mr. Seymour or of
General Grant?
I. and II. Now we know that there stand on the
statute book certain acts, familiarly called the reconstruction laws. For anything in my knowledge,
they are as binding laws, in as full force over the
good people of the country, from the president
down to the humblest day-laborer, as any other
laws on the statute book, whether passed at the 
25
beginning of last year or at the end of last
century.
We are all of us more or less familiar with
the genesis of those statutes, and know that they
have been the cause of fierce dispute between the
executive and legislative branches of the general
government, and that they were enacted by
extraordinary majorities of both houses over the
president's veto.
But at any rate they are the law of the land by
the will of a majority of the American people. I
know no way of learning that will, or of discovering whether there has been a change in that will,
except through the votes of this congress or its
successor. Meantime they have been passed according to constitutional forms, and have not yet
been repealed.
But we are informed, on the high authority of a
convention chosen by a very large portion. of the
voters of this country, that these laws are unconstitutional, revolutionary and void, and that they
proceed from a flagrant usurpation of  a power
which can find no warrant in the constitution.
We can all read the constitution. We can all
read the statute book, and I for one have done my
4 
26
best to understand why those laws are in violation
of the constitution.
Most certainly the constitution prescribes that
members of the national house of representatives
shall be elected in the several States by those qualified to vote for members of the most numerous
branch of the State legislature. But the denouncers of the reconstruction laws, the stern defenders
of the constitution, seem to have forgotten one
little fact-a mere trifle which has naturally slipped
their memory —namely, that there has been a warthat the States, now so cruelly oppressed, as it is
charged, were four years long inll armed rebellion,
which it has cost half a million of lives and
exactly four thousand millions of dollars to subdue, and that it is the special attribute of the
national legislature, now that the rebellion has
desisted from organized hostilities, to lay down
the terms of peace.
Because that legislature, in its discretion,
wishes to take what it believes to be necessary
security for the future, in order that all this bloody
and expensive work be not renewed at some coinvenient opportunity, it is said to be guilty of unparalleled oppression, of having established mili 
tary despotism together wvithl a curious kind of
institution called negro supremacy.
Now if the national legislature had no right to
prescribe the conditions onl whiche the States lately
in rebellion should be permitted to resume those
practical relations with the Union which they had
so scornfully broken off, as they intended foreverwhence was the power derived by which the suppression of the rebellion has been carried on to its
conclusion?
It was said, authoritatively if not wisely, at the
outbreak of the rebellion, that the right of coercion
by the central government did not exist, and that
nothing was more strictly according to law than for
a sovereign and independent State to secede from
this Union, according to pleasure.   It is now
claimed that it has the right to come back again at
its pleasure.
Well, the people of the United States fouind in
the constitution all that was necessary to give a
practical refutation of the doctrine of secession;
and democrats and republicans, individually and
collectively,  by  speech,  by  vote, and  on the
battle-field, stood shoulder to shoulder, proving
in the most decided way by which men can prove
their convictions-by  dying for them-that they
27
6 
28
believed this Union to be a government; that it
had derived from its fundamental law laid down in
1789 by the people-the only legitimate source of
government-all the powers necessary for its existence and to protect itself when assailed.  When
this nation was born, when it expanded, by force of
that constitution, from the chrysalis of a confederacy into an organized commonwealth-a nation
among the nlationlls-it stepped at once into the full
fruition of all the necessary functions of a nation.
The right and the means were found in the colnstitution to raise great armies, to levy enormous sums,
to suspend the action of the laws when deemed
necessary by those to whom authority was freely
delegated, to set up military governments in rebel
territory as fast as occupied, to make laws for the
whole country through a body in which there were
many permanently vacant seats.
We know that by the act of those who hated the
Union and the constitution, and were doing their
best to make both go down in blood, we had all
been placed in an abnormal condition.  To suppose
that in such extraordinary times the regular action
of government could go on as in time of profound
peace, was a doctrine believed in by few  who
were not at heart with the rebellion. This extra 
29
ordinary machinery —much of it very hateful, no
doubt-was necessary for the nlational existence.
The  constitution  secures  to  the PRepublic  the
rights of war and peace and all the incidents thereof.  The laws of nature and of nations underlie all
written codes and constitutions, and are the common  property of mailkind.   That great  law of
civilization-tlhe safety of tlhe people is thle supreme
law-salus  pop)uli sut2renct  lecx —a maxim  most
salutary, most liable to abuse, yet never less abused
than in its application during this rebellion-belolngs to our body of laws as much as if it had
been formally enacted and bound up in the statute
book. It is part of our constitution, and of every
constitution, and can be no more taken from us
than a living manr's heart can be taken from his
body.
If the legislation in regard  to the securities
taken fromn thle seceding States previous to the resumption of their ancieait relations with the Union,
be unconstitutional and usurpatory, I cannot understand how we are to justify most of the proceedings by which the rebellion was  put down aid
without which the Unlion must have succumbed.
It was not necessary to go outside the constitution
to repress insurrection, nor is it necessary to go
I.  
30
outside it to find the right to take proper guarantees against its renewal.
Until a force sufficient to overthrow the government has been exerted, the righlt and the power of
the nation to exist remain, and it is itself sole
judge of the means to make that right valid. The
legal continuity of the ancient relations between
the seceding  States  and  the Union  has been
broken by their revolt.  As  they have  not triumphed in the struggle, it is not for them, but
for the nation, speaking (through a majority of its
legislature, to prescribe the terms of renewal.
Upon the general principle that the government
may suppress insurrection, it may prevent the
danger of its reappearance, after its military power
has been broken in the field; the re-establishment
of something much resembling slavery by means
of vagrant laws and the denial to freedmen of
civil rights, and the repudiation of the national
debt by the assistance of those by whose rebellion
it has been created.
Not to do this would be puerile lenity, dereliction
of duty to the generations yet unborn, as well as a
criminal injustice towards the freedmen, for which
we should deserve signal punishment. To listen, on
the other hand, to an ig'noble desire of vengeance 
31
upon those who have fought so bravely in defence
of a cause so bad, would be a disgrace to the
American name.
We shall be all Americans again at some future
day, and the citizens of the lately rebellious States
will, in the next generation perhaps, be inspired by
the same haughty but legitimate pride of nationality which now swells the breasts of those who
dwell in the free and loyal States, and the same
energy which has done its best to destroy may help
to preserve the life of the Republic. I for one
would not relinquish the glorious hope of a free,
united and fraternal population over the whole
surface of these United States, for the most golden
visions of any separate empire.
But even if the reconstruction laws are constitutional, are they expedient?
AWe are told that the seceding States are treated
with cruelty; that in time of profound peace they
are subjected to military despotism and negro supremacy.  The party now in power is arraigned for
its career of unparalleled oppression and tyranny
during and since the rebellion.
Unparalleled tyranny! Will you search the records of all the civil wars ever waged upon this
planet and find me one solitary, remote parallel to 
32
thle extraordinary lenity manifested by  the conquerors in this civil war?
Will you go back to republican Rome  and tell
me of the career of alternately donm inating parties
in her civil wars?  WVill you read of the wholesale massacres of Marius, when his party was
uppermost, the'blood-dripping edicts of the triumpliant Sylla, in his turn doominig the men of
the vanquished party to death-soldiers, citizens,
and  all-faster than  he  could  remelmber  thleir
names, killing them by hundreds and thousands
fiirst and recording judgment against them afterwards, as fast as he could recall them, or get them
recalled  to  his  memory?  WVill  yout  renember
how  thle triumvirs, dividing the world's empire,
met together over a table, and in one evening
sentenced twenty-three hundred  Romanl citizeins
to death, and on the following days  murdered
ten times the number?  Think of the head of the
mangled Cicero, exposed  in  the Forum, which
had so often rung to his impassioned oratory, with
his amputated hands placed in hideous mockery of
rhetorical gesture beneath, and with Fuivia's needle
thrust through that tongue which even now' after
nineteen centuries still enthrals the civilized world
with its eloquence! 
33
Turn to the civil and religious wars which
desolated France for nearly the whole of the six teenth century, and count the thousand and ten
thousand cold-blooded massacres, executions, coln fiscations, proscriptions, which reduced the country
to a wilderness, and the population to pauperism,
fiom generation to generation.
Look at the blood-stained soil of the Nether lands during their civil wars and rebellions, with
the hangings, beheadings,  drownings, burnings
alive and buryings alive by whole townfuls-often
eight hundred and a thousand daily victims authentically recorded-to the deliberate sentence to death
of the whole population of the country by the
dominant party;  to the confiscation not of an
estate, here and there, of the rebels, but of whole
provinces at a swoop.
Recall that hideous civil war which converted
Germany-then the most civilized region of Europe-into a Pandemonium for thirty miserable
years; when deeds of fiendish oppression and cruelty such as the human mind can scarcely conceive
of except in delirium, were of almost daily occurrence, as one party or the other gained the ascendancy.
Remelmber the wars of the Roses in England,
5 
34
annihilating races, decimating counties over and
over again with their massacres, their proscriptions
and executions, their attainders of the blood, incriminating and  impoverishing  generations  yet
unborn.  Think of Jeffries' bloody assize!  Pause
upon the Thames beneath the Traitor's Gate, and
listen to the groans still sounding through the
black past from the " Tower of Julius, England's
lasting shame."   Think  of the grinning skulls
once decorating Temple Bar in Fleet Street and
the Tolbooth in Edinburgh. Listen to the eternal
sighs from the famous bridge in the full throng of
what was once the most powerful Republic in the
world.  Or if you think these days too distant, and
imagine the world grown too merciful to offer a
parallel to republican tyranny and oppression here,
cast a glance at the deeds of revolutionary France,
and shudder at hideous images of massacre and
murder in every imaginable shape, of confiscation
and desolation to more than conceivable extent.
Recall the oppression which marked the career
of the British India Company in the East; the
tyranny and extortion by which vast populations
were goaded almost daily into rebellion against
their foreign conquerors, and the frightful proscription and robberies when those rebellions were sup 
35
pressed; think of whole kingdoms of great extent,
ancient civilization, enormous wealth, literally put
up at public auction and knocked down for a song
to a few needy adventurers,-a proscription so
gigantic and so universal that, in the words of
England's greatest orator, it stands forever "as a
monument to astonish the imagination and con found the reason of mankind."
Sup fill of horrors like these with which the
history of civil war in every age and land is
crammed, and then turn to this country, still heaving
with the convulsions of war, disbanding its million
soldiers as soon as the rebel sword was sheathed;
look in vain for a single execution, for confiscations
or attainders; behold the very head and front of
the rebellion, Jefferson Davis himself, generously
released upon bail bond, and now the guest of nobles in England; look at the generalissimo of the
rebel armies peacefully engaged in the instruction
of youth in the academic shades of Virginia, and
hailed by a Union general and ambassador as " a
representative man in reverence and regard for the
Union, the constitution and the welfare of the
country."
I, for one, am prouder as an American, of the
instantaneous disbanding of our victorious' hosts 
36
when their work was done, than I was of their
assembling with such unexampled patriotism when
the Union was assailed.  \,Iore than all is it gratifying to every patriot heart that there has been no
imitation here of that foul vengeance upon the vanquished which has stained the conclusion of every
civil war, except our own, with the indelible marks
of useless bloodshed.  The word universal amnesty
is trembling on every lip throughout the country,
and must soon be spoken; but prudence, honor,
justice  require  that with that beneficent word
should be coupled impartial suffrage and irrevocable guarantees of equal ri,ghts.
This is not the time to examine the question of
suffrage from an a 1priori point of view. The
right to cast a vote should entail upon its possessor
the corresponding  duty of understanding the subject voted upon, and an educational suffrage for
a whole population, whatever its colors, would
perhaps be the most reasonable condition.  But I
doubt whether in present circumstances any better
way of protecting the freedman in his civil rights
can be found than by giving him the vote. The
end justifies the means.  To refuse the franchise
to a man, not because hlie is ignlorant, but because 
37
he is black, seems to me as preposterous as to deny
it to him because he is not six feet high.
As to what is called nlegro supremacy, I confess
this to be a subject beyond my comprehension. I
suspect that the consummate politicians of the
seceding States will find even  less difficulty in
manipulating the negro vote of the South than
they did for thirty years or more in controlling the
majority of white voters in the North.  Negro
supremacy may be a good phrase to conjure with
in these regions, but I doubt whether the white
citizens of the slave States are much appalled by
the sound.
WVe are told that " the Southern people are not
hostile to the negroes and would not oppress them
if they had the power to do so; that they have
grown up among the whites who have been accustomed to look upon them with kindness." So
much the better.  Now that kindness to the negro
is to be manifested in some better ways than by
holding him in perpetual slavery, by selling his
wife and children before his eyes, by tracking his
fugitive steps with bloodhounds, by refusing his
testimonly in courts of justice, by depriving him of
every right of a human creature; it is perfectly
possible that better relations between employer and 
38
laborer may ere long be established.  But I doubt
whether any one seriously expects that the negro
will obtain political or intellectual supremacy in
any part of this continent; or that the Caucasian
race anywhere needs discriminating legislation in
its favor to prevent it from lapsing into subjection
to the African. If we can protect these unfortunates, who have ever trusted us, and whose hopes
of deliverance have ever pointed to the north star,
against the possibility of falling into some kind of
bondage and disability again; if we can give the
means of self-protection by putting the ballot in
their hand, it is as much as we can expect at
present.
But beyond that unequivocal expression of the
democratic dogma in regard to the reconstruction
laws, we learn on highest authority the practical
purpose of that party, should they succeed at the
election. This purpose, so far as I can understand
the English language, seems to be a renewal of
the war.
The democratic candidate for the vice-presidency
is a distinguished leader in the Union armies.  His
name is indelibly associated with some of the most
illustrious campaigns, hardest fought battles, triuLmphant marches of the war.  Throughout the 
39
picturesque and brilliant manceuvres and desperate
~assaults of the memorable siege of Vicksburg, on
the world-famous march of Sherman to the sea,
the name of General Blair is conspicuous and
historical.  No man in this country, whose government he has helped maintain against armed rebellioln, would pluck a single leaf from his laurels.
But he is a candidate for -the second office, and
may if elected succeed to the first.
And how does this eminent citizen expound to
us the duties of the next president? He tells us
that his foremost duty will be to mutilate the
statute book, to defy the law of the land, to
tramnple into the dust the reconstruction laws. As
the senate in any event must remain republican,
and therefore opposed to the repeal of these laws,
that repeal must be effected, in spite of the senate,
by executive authority. The army is to be " compelled" to undo its usurpations.  The senate is to be
compelled," by the co-operation of the president,
to submit once more to the obligations of the constitution.  The president, being sworn to maintain
the constitution, wVill, it is declared, fail of his duty
if he allows that constitution to perish under a
series of congressional enactments which are in
palpable violation of its fundamental principles. 
40
And has it really come to this?  These United
States of America, after suppressing a gigantic
rebellion against the law, are not a government of
laws after all, but a government  of force.  The
army is to be "compelled," the senate is to be
"compelled," and the acts of Congress are to be
"trampled into the dust." By whom? By the
democratic president, should we be so unfortunate
as to elect him.  The president is sworn to maintaiin the constitution, but he is also sworn faithfully to execute the office of president, foremost
among the functions of which are to take care that
the laws be faithfully executed.  Those laws, I
suppose, are as binding uponl him as upon you and
me, and I can find it nowhere written in the constitution that the president is to annul the laws, if in
his wisdom he thinks them not made in pursuance
of the constitution; that he is to be both executive
and judge, and that every law is to be enforced or
trampled upon according to his discretion.
And how if the senate will not be compelled?
How  if the army will not be compelled?  Can
compulsion mean anything but force, sure to be
met by a much greater force?  Is that anything
but civil war again, and a bloodier one than
before? 
41
-cte victis!-woe to the vanquished!-that most
vulgar of sentiments, has no place in American
bosoms; but the immense good nature manifested
by the people since the rebellion surrendered, is not
to be mistaken for a stupid indifference to the
security of the Union and the law.
Until the citizens of New  England, or. New
Yolrk, or Pennsylvania, white, black or yellow, are
entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizens in Alabama, or Texas, or any other State,
North or South, the constitution of the United
States is a pompous falsehood. The people intend
it to be a reality.
We are told every day that we are unjust to the
seceding States.because we exact guarantees, when
they have given all guarantees that could be reasonably expected. They have abolished slavery;
they have repealed the ordinances of secession.
What would we have more?  Abolished slavery!
repealed the ordinances of secession!  Why, the
first gunl fired against  Fort Sumter  abolished
slavery, the proclamation of Lincoln registered
the abolition, and the surrender of the rebel armies
confirmed it.  To  submit  to the  abolition of
slavery now is like submitting to the precession 
42
of the equinoxes, or solemnly adhering to the law
of gravitation.
As for annulling the ordinances of secession, we
thought them already pronounced null by a tribunal
lwhich is even higher than the supreme court-by
that dread arbitrament to which kings and colmmonwealths must make their last appeal. A formal repeal of these statutes, since the war annulled
them, seems superfluous enough.
III. There is another great question to be
decided in this election:
Shall the United States pay or repudiate their
debts?
I confess myself, at the outset, almost hopelessly
embarrassed in approaching this question.
It is an awful thing that this should be a question at all.  I should doubt whether any honest
man, who has ever really reflected on its dread
portent, could palter one moment with the vile
thing, Repudiation. For the thing is ever there,
however we may shirk the phrase.
There are axioms, one would think, in morals as
ill mathematics. It is geometrically certain, for
example, that a straight line is the shortest between
two points, although a lolng demonstration may be
attempted in favor of a crooked one.  And just so 
43
certainly is the straight line not only the shortest,
but the only one between debt and payment, if we
would avoid the crooked path of national bankrutptcy and national dishonor.
Now we are instructed from the democratic platform of July 7, that "the credit of the government and the currency must be made good."  A
wholesome sentiment; which there are few to
dispute!
And by way of arriving at this blessed result,
we are advised that "where the obligations of the
government do not expressly state upon their face,
or the law under which they were issued does not
provide that they shall be paid in coin, they ought
in right and justice to be paid in the lawful money
of the United States."
This sentiment, according to the associated press
report, was received with "thunders of applause."
As a further means of making good the credit of
the government, we are informed that government
bonds and other public securities must be taxed.
This dogma, too, as we are informed, was received
with " renewed  cheering, and  cries of'read it
again!'
Now we are all agreed, it seems, that tihe national
credit is to be made good. It certainly stands in 
great need of repair, as I shall presently show.
But there is a remarkable difference among American citizens as to the true method of re-establishing that credit.  Some of us believe in paying our
debts whenll due, as a good way of accomplishing
that end.  Others believe inll giving an indefinite
promise to pay instead of payment.
What is a five-twenty bond?  It is a promise by
the United States to pay the holder one thousand
or five hundred dollars, as the case may be, withinl
twenty years from date; and a stipulation that the
holder shall he obliged to accept payment, if governmenlt choose, at the end of five years.
VWhat is a dollar?   -ow  when we are in doubt
as to the meanilng of an Eniglishl word the best way
is to look it out in the English Lexicon.  Let us
turn to that excellent workl, Worcester's Dictionary.  A dollar I find to be " a silver coin,-that of
the United States being equal to 100 cents, or four
shillings and twopence sterling."  Sterling shillings meanl genuine shillings.
The meaning of the word silver is pretty well
understood from ancient traditions, although we are
seldom indulged nowadays with an ocular demonstrationl of its form or color in the way of currency.  It is also well known that by statute of the
44 
45
United States, gold as well as silver is a standard
of value, and there are even dim remembrances of
gold dollars lingering in the minds of ancient men
in these regions. We shall have no right to complain, then, if government insists on our accepting
payment in gold, five years after date, but must
submit with the best grace we can.
A  dollar means, therefore, ill English and other
civilized languages, " a coin."
What is a A coin?"  ILet us again dip in the
pure well of Worcester Unabridlged.  A  coin we
shall find to be " a piece of metal bearing a legal
stamp and made current as money." It is " metallic or hard money, as gold or silver."
Now  if language be not invented to conceal
thought, the United States government, when jt
sold these bonds, promised to pay the holder, in
five or twenty years, one thousand or five hundred
pieces of stamped metal, gold or silver, each of
them being equal to four genuine shillings and
twopenlce.  I beg pardon for being tedious, but it
is hard to prove an axiom.   Instead of these
pieces of metal it now  appears from  the New
York platform that governlment has thle rli,ht to
force uponl the holder, withlin five years from date 
46
of its obligation, a new promise to pay such coins
at an indefinite period, without interest.
And this is payment in full! Really, it is difficult to speak seriously or respectfully of such
financiering; for what right has any man or any
body of men to place this great United States
government, which we all honor and obey, upon
the same level with the immortal Mr. Micawber?
The amount of -my obligation," said that great
financier, on a memorable  occasion,  was  ~-23
4s. 9.d.; of the second, ~18 6s. 2d.  These sums
united make a total, if my calculation is correct,
amounting to ~41 10s. 11-(d.
To leave  my friend  Mr.  T.  Traddles (the
holder of the note,) without acquitting myself of
this pecuniary obligation, would weigh upon my
mind to an insupportable extent.  I have therefore prepared for my friend Mr. Traddles, and I
now hold in my hand a document which accomplishles the desired object. I beg to hand to my
firiend Mr. Traddles my I O U for ~41 10s. 11-d.,
and I am happy to recover my moral dignity and to
know that I can once more walk erect before my
fellow-men."
"I am persuaded," continues the biographer of
that remarkable man,    not only that this was 
47
quite the same to Mr. AIicawber as paying the
money, but that Traddles himself hardly knew
the difference until he had time to think about it."
To behold a great, prosperous, powerful government like the American Union evading its
obligations, and exchanging one promise to pay
for another promise to pay, and expecting thus
to recover its moral dignity, and to walk erect
among other governments; to hear the national
creditor bemoaning himself as the melancholy
Hamlet,-" like the chameleon, promise crammed,
promise crammed,-you cannot stuff capons so,"
-is not refreshing to those of us who believe in
democracy.
But the party to which we are opposed maintain that if the word coin is not nominated in
the bond or in the law issuing the bonds, they
shall be paid in the lawful money of the United
States. I leave to the supreme court the responsibility of deciding whether congress had the
right to make anything but gold and silver a
legal tender for any debts.  I am  not a constitutional lawyer or judge; but this I do know, that
the only justification of that proceeding, in the
forum of conscience, was necessity, and that government has lo moral right whatever, and never 
48
could have, to pay its own debts in its own failed
paper.
It is one thing to palter with the right, because
of necessity; quite another thing for convenience,
for our personal commodity.   Necessity is a fury
who knows no law, but to violate law at the
instance of "that smooth-faced gentleman, tickling Commodity," is not the way to make the
national credit good.
At the outbreak of the war, the country was
flooded with the failed paper of more than a thousand banks, and it was held impossible to carry
on the war on a specie basis.' Whether that were
so or not, whether the national credit was really
better by reason of a currency which described
our bonds as at par or above it, in our own markets, at times when they were notoriously selling
in Amsterdam, Fralnkfort, all the world over, at
thirty-five or forty, is not for us now to discuss.
But this much is certain, that if we add millions
to that currency now, for the sake of paying our
bonds with it; if we compel the creditor to take
his payment in paper, which, in such case, will
soon be worth less than twenty cents on the
dollar, we shlall perpetrate a gigantic illjustice on
those wvio trusted to our honor, and shall be met 
49
with a peal of derisive laughter  at home  or
abroad, should we ever wish to negotiate another
loan on such terms as upright governments command. If this be the way to make our credit
good-to force payment in depreciated paper
twelve or fifteen years before the debt is due,-I
should like to know what course can make it bad.
It was expressly stated that the interest on
the bonds should be paid in gold, and the inference is therefore made that the principal is to be
paid in paper. This is the most amazing logic
ever employed by reasonable beings. Practically
we know, that as greenbacks had become  legal
tender, it was thought well to make assurance
double sure that government would pay interest
in coinl; although, as before observed, it could
pay nothing else-except by express stipulationwithout trampling on the dictionary. As the bonds
were not due for twenty years from date, and as
nobody imagined that we should be wallowing in
anll inconvertible paper currency for a quarter of
a century, it was thought superfluous to say that
the principal would fare as well as the interest.
At this moment, the paper promise to pay a
dollar is worth seventy cents. During the darkest period of the war it was worth about thirty'7 
50
five cents; or, in the preposterous jargon of
the  exchange,  gold  was  worth  two  hundred
and eighty per cent. Gold was worth then
exactly what it is at this moment; but United
States promises to pay were worth just half what
they are to-day. So much of improvement there
has been since the war was over; since the iron
claw of Necessity was removed from our throats;
so much of revived confidence exists that tihe
United States government  will not make  itself
bankrupt because it thilnks it convenient.   But
should this threatened madness really afflict our
people, we shall see the paper dollar descend
again with fearful rapidity, till it soon ceases to
circulate at all, and the poor dupe who trusted
to our honor, and who bought our bonds when
we needed money sorely, will be left with a piece
of paper inll his hand, whether nominally for five
hundred dollars or five thousand, of just as much
value as a witheredleaf. -Ve should thus return
to specie payments by a short cut enough; for
there would then be no other currency possible,
but the cut would be through the very heart of
the national prosperity and the national honor.
I believe that there are many honest people
really imposed upon by the mock logic of the 
51
repudiators, who are in earnest when they join
in the thunders of applause which greet the senti ment that the bonds  are justly to be  paid in
paper when the word coin does not appear upon
their face.  But surely they know, or are bound
to know, that every secretary or high official of
the treasury; every dispenser, by authority, of
the bonds; every congressman, or committee-man
having authority to speak for government, has
uniformly, on all occasions, officially and privately,
declared that when these bonds were paid at all,
they would, as a matter of course, be paid in
specie or its equivalent. If the government now
turns round and thrusts irredeemable paper in
the creditor's face instead of specie, tell me, if
you can, by what mild expression the transaction
can be described. We know how we deal with
individuals who obtain money on false pretences.
I feel the most profound respect for the American people; I have entire faith in their public
virtue-the only possible foundation of republican
governments;-and I know that they will not be
guilty of this fraud.
I pass over as quite irrelevant the pretext for reputidiationl now and then advanced, that the holders
of these bonds sometimes obtained them at low 
52
prices; that they took advantage of the distress of
government, and are now clamorous for a payment
from which they will derive large profit.  Bonds of
our government, or of any government or corporation, are worth exactly what they will bring in
the markets of the world. If they are depressed,
itis from doubt of ability or good faith; if they are
high, it is because of general confidence in both.
And the best judge of the conditions makes the
best bargains. But I am not aware that a government, any more than an individual, has the right to
inquire at what price a bona fide holder obtained its
paper.  The honest man looks at his obligations,
not into the private account-book of his creditor.
Nor is it easy to allude seriously to that other
appeal sometimes addressed to the lower instincts
of mankind by those who show their respect for the
American People by insulting them.  The phantom
of a bloated, bonld-holding aristocracy, which is
grinding the bones and drinking the blood of the
hard-working people is evoked. Now if the bondholders be ever so bloated and ever so aristocratic,
it is difficult to see how the American People is to
honor itself by plundering or defrauding them.
This may be a good argument to address to burglars,.but the American People will never defraud 
53
the bondholder of his own simply because he is
bloated.
As a matter of fact we know that hundreds of
millions of these bonds are held by trust companies, banks, savings institutions, corporations of
various kinds, the stockholders and depositors in
which are legion, and especially as regards the
savings banks throughout the land, belong to the
hardest working and humbler classes of the community.   Clerks, mechanics, sempstresses, daylaborers, domestic servants, char-women, washerwomen, factory girls-these make up a large proportion of these oppressive, bloated bondholders,
who are feeding fat on our misery, and who are
solemnly warned that there is to be but one
currency for them and for something or other
which is facetiously called the people.
In Massachusetts alone there are 348,593 depositors in the savings banks-more than a quarter'of the whole  population- and  one-half of
those deposits is in national securities.  But you
will not pardon me if I longer dwell on so sordid
an argument.
One would think it equally superfluous to deny
the moral right of that form of repudiation which
consists of taxation by government of its own 
bonds. A government is bound by the same moral
law which controls the individual.  Unfortunately,
sometimes, a government, which is the aggregate
strength of all the individuals, possesses a power
denied to the individual. If John Stokes or Richard Roe borrow money of me at six per cent. and
then deducts five per cent. or twenty per cent., of
that interest, because he finds it convenient to take
that little sum out of my pocket, I shall turn him
over to the courts, who will have something to say
concerning the violation of contracts. But if governlment takes off a tenth or a fifth of what it promised to pay me, I have no redress but to get rid
of its bonds at the best price I can get; for assuredly, if government has the right to take off ten
per cent. it has the right to take off one hundred
per cent., and I may one day whistle for either
interest or principal. To say that because government imposes a general tax  upon  property or
income, levied proportionately upon all the citizens,
it has the right to deduct a portion or the whole of
a sum which it has bound itself annually to pay,
seems to be an almost hopeless confusion of ideas
against which human reason must struggle in vain.
I do not believe that the American People mean
to adopt any form of repudiation. I use the word
54 
55
Repudiation purposely, and as often as I can. If
we are to have the thing let us get familiar with the
phrase. Repudiation means refusal to pay-whether
a part or the whole of our just debts-and it means
nothing else in its pecuniary application.
An individual cannot repudiate if he lives under
a government of law. But a nation may take a
vile advantage of its strength. There is but one
excuse for the individual repudiator-inability, insolvency-and then he must give up his all to his
creditors. And there is that excuse only for
national repudiation. Is the great American Republic prepared to go into bankruptcy and to divide
its little all honestly among its creditors? Nay
more; are we ready to precipitate the catastrophe
by declaring our insolvency twelve or fifteen years
before it is necessary?
WVhy, there exists no nation in the world so
capable of paying its debts as this nation. The
American Union is the richest commonwealth in
the world-a proposition easy of proof, into the,
details of which it is not necessary on this occasion
to enter. It is the richest community that ever
existed, and it is as absurd for us to pretend inability to pay as it would be for the richest man in town 
56
to repudiate his monthly milk bill or grocery book
because of inability.
How much do we owe? $2,500,000,000. How
many of us are there? I suppose something less
than 40,000,000.  We owe on an average perhaps
G63 a head, at this moment. When the debt is due,
say twelve or fifteen years hence, there will be at
least 60,000,000 of us-say about $40 apiece to
pay, supposilg the debt not to have disappeared
altogether, by that time, which it may easily
be made to do. Nine dollars a year a head, and
we are paying that now, would extinguish the
whole debt, interest and principal, before fifteen
years are gone.  If the foul word repudiation had
never been breathed, our difficulties would be over
already, and the capitalists of the world would be
glad to take our securities at as low a rate as the
most favored nations enjoy.
This is the richest country in the world.  The
accumulated capital of the British empire may be
one-third Iarger, although it is probable that the
results of the United States census of 1870 will
make surprising revelations; but the annual product of the United States is now far greater than
that of the British empire, while the untouched
0 
57
resources of this nation are of almost fabulous
extent.
It will be much within limits to assume a
yearly product, at this moment, of;4,000,000,000,
gold. But that which makes our financial strength
not only encouraging, but astounding, is the tremendous ratio at which our wealth and population increase.  Arithmetic, statistics become poetical when they deal with the American future, The
head swims when the possibilities of this fortunate
land are contemplated. If I dwell for a moment
upon the enormous  power  and  wealth  of this
country, it is not for the ignoble purpose of pandering to individual or national glorification, but in
order that we all may take shame if we admit
for an instant our inability to pay our honest
debts.
On the most moderate calculation, our population
doubles  every twenty-three years.   Our wealth
doubles at least every ten years. In the decade
immediately preceding the civil war, the ascertained value of private property in the country
increased more than 128 per cent.; doubling,
therefore, in less than eight years. At a moderate
estimate, the population, fourteen years hence, will
be 60,000,000, and the valuation of property, after
8 
58
making allowance for the cost and consequences
of the war throughout the whole country, will
be $$0,000,000,000.  The debt, even if not reduced a dollar before that time, will then amount
to about four per cent. of the accumulated capital
of the nation. What individual in this country
wishes to-day to repudiate his personal debts,
maturing twelve and fifteen years hence, because
they are likely to amount to a twenty-fifth part
of his assets?
Why,  the  State of Massachusetts  created in
the year 1866, the first year after the war, five
hundred and seventeen millions of dollars, according to the interesting and admirable address of
His Excellency Governor Bullock. During the
preceding ten years the increase of production
was seventy-two per cent., although the yearly
increase of population was but three per cent.,
much below the national average. Were the
whole country as industrious, the annual product
would at this moment be $16,000,000,000, instead
of $4,000,000,000, according to the moderate basis
which we  have taken.
And there is no good reason why the whole
country should not be as productive as our State.
Heaven knows that we are not burdened with
t 
59
natural advantages of soil and climate.  The surplus of our population is annually poured, and our
capital is annually poured into the West and
North-West.    Can  you  even  faintly imagine
at some future day, when it shall be safe for
Northern men and Northern capital to emigrate to
the South and South-West, how vast will be the
wealth created in those semi-tropical regions by
that magic caduceus, that golden three-leaved
wand of free labor, equal rights and peace, which
has caused the great:North-West to prosper as no
community of men ever prospered before?
When  the blight and the traditions and the
superstitions of slavery have passed away, is it to
be supposed that the fairest and  most  prolific
regions of the world, the great South-West, extensive as European empires, will lie fallow as at
present, with less than one per cent. of their surface under cultivation?  If there is a cotton crop
at this moment of three million bales-thlree-fifths
of the old maximum-will you venture to predict
its amount. fifteen years hence, if it should be fairly
open to free labor, and the circulation of capital
and of ideas?
To tallk of the inability of the United States to
pay their debts in coin, is an insult to human 
60
reason. Industry, honesty, and, above all, peacepeace which the great soldier, to whom more than
to any one man we owe our victory, so earnestly
invokes-will make the debt disappear, almost before we have time to fund it; and in these circumstances the capitalists of the world will have to get
up early, if they wish our bonds at four and onehalf per cent.
We borrow now at about seven and one-half per
cent.  In the dark days of the war we paid about
seventeen per cent.  Those were the times when
Confederate stock sold for par in Europe,  and
United States securities for thirty-five. There has
been at least some progress since then.
When the war was over aid our whole outstanding liabilities had been figured up, the total
of the debt, oiln 1st' August, was found to be
($3,287,733,329,) a little less than three thousand
three hundred million dollars.
On the Ist August 1868, it was $2,485,000,000.
During three years, therefore, we had reduced the
debt just one-quarter, say eight hundred millions.
It is almost superfluous to say that I am at this
moment following the masterly and luminous address of Mr. Atkinsonl of Brookline, for I trust
that this invaluable document is in the hands of 
61
every man of either party who wishes to know the
state of the national finances.
It is. impossible to array statistics in a more convincing shape, and I, for one, believe his facts and
his inferences to be quite beyond dispute. Those
who have studied his statements, as well as the
speeches of Sumner, Boutwell,  Fessenden  and
other eminent republican authorities on this vital
question, may defend the republican policy in
financial matters against all assailants.
In round numbers, ~1,650,000,000 currency have
been contributed by the people between April 1,
1865, and June 30, 18S68, to the support of
government.   Of  that enormous  amount-more
than $507,000,000 a year-by far the greater part
has been spent for the civil war and the interest on
the debt which the rebellion caused us to create,
over and above our vast yearly contributions during
that war.
In those three and a quarter years, our ordinary
expenses over and above war debt and war interest
paid, as Mlr. Atkinson has proved, were less than
$92,000,000 of currency, say $65,000,000 in gold,
each year.
I doubt whether the history of nations has anything like this to show; a reduction, in a little more 
62
than three years, of one-quarter of a great debt
and a diminution of the annual expenses of a vast
republic like ours to so small a sum.* Add the
interest of the debt at six per cent., say;120,000,000, and you have less than $200,000,000, gold, as
our yearly budget. The annual expenses of Great
Britain, with its debt funded at three per cent., are
;350,000,000; those of France are, at the very
least, $400,000,000.
Each power is spending at this moment about
twice as much as we spend, while the principal of
the French debt is quite as large as ours and that
of the English 60 per cent. larger.  Yet the English three per cents. are at 94, the French three per
cents. at 69-}, while our six per cents. are hardly 75.
Is not this the very essence of unreason? Compare for example the respective position of those
two great countries, the French Empire and the
American Union.  I shall say not a word of the
comparative value of their institutions or their
schemes of national life.
Look only at financial facts.
* By the official statement of the current year, we learn " that it is absolutely certain that the expenditures," including interest on the debt and
whatever may be disbursed for war debt and war interest " will be muchI
less than $303,000,000; " which sum in gold is about $212,000,000. 
63
France has a somewhat less numerous population than that of this Union-say thirty-eight
millions.
The latest and  most trustworthy statisticians
compute the yearly product of the empire at twenty
milliards of francs-say $4,000,000,000, or exactly
whlat was the estimate of our production a few
years ago. The sum total of her debt is just equal
to ours. Her yearly budget is more than double
our own.
How are these four hundred annual millions of
dollars spent?
Thanks to the superior credit enjoyed by the
Empire over that of the Union, the interest of her
debt is but $68,000,000, gold.   This leaves her
$333,000,000.
And how does she spend these $333,000,000?
The army and navy take each year in time of
peace-the iron-clad peace, which is all Europe
ever knows-about $140,000,000.
The estimates for the current year of the United
States government for army and navy together
are $57,000,000 in currency; equal to $40,000,000
in gold, or $10O0,000,000 less than those of France.
Let me not fatigue your patience with more
details. We perceive that France with a less 
64
numerous population than our own, and the same
amount of debt and annual production, spends
in time of peace twice as much as we do; that
her army and navy expenses are three and a halt
times as large as our own; that she has at this
moment, ready to respond to the first cannonshot in Europe, one million two hundred thousand soldiers, equal to any the world ever
knew, one-fifth more than the whole number we
disbanded as soon as the armed rebellion was
overthrown.
Remember too that her production seems almost
to have reached its limit; that her population is
nearly stationary, having scarcely doubled in 170
years; that her expenses have  been  annually
increasing with dizzy speed;  that her debt is
rapidly augmenting, having doubled in the last
fifteen years; and then remember that our population doubles in little more than twenty years,
our annual production every dozen years, our
accumulated capital every eight years, while our
debt has been decreased twenty-five per cent. in
three and a quarter years-' and then behold
France borrowing money with perfect ease at 41per cent. while we are talking of repudiation,
bond taxing and national bankruptcy! 
65
Why, it was but yesterday that we all saw
the imperial minister of finance put a three per
cent. loan on the market, which was so greedily
taken at 691, that he had offers of money about
equal to the whole  of our national  debt at its
maximum, although he asked for less than one
hundred  million  dollars.   There  were  781,292
persons, who subscribed for more than six hundred and sixty million francs of annual "rentes,"
representing a capital of fifteen thousand millions,
and thirty-four times as much as M. AIagne
asked for. Within one week, six hundred million francs in coin were deposited as guarantee.
Well may that warlike nation-flom their point
of view, which is not ours-be proud of their mighty
armaments and their apparently unlimited credit.
Well may we hang our heads at the humiliation of
our national credit. Is it even conceivable, if the
prudent and masterly financial policy which the
republican party has been pursuing be persisted in,
and which is not yet fully appreciated at home, and
entirely unknown elsewhere, that we are to see our
six per cents. hawked about at seventy-five, while
other great empires, not more wealthy, vastly more
expensive and much less progressive, place their
funds at 31 and 4- interest?
9 
66
The American people had confidence enough inll
themselves during the war.  Republican and war
democrat together bore arms cheerfully against the
common foe, and went into the death struggle as if
it were a festival. Whence comes this abject fear,
or this affectation of fear, this despair of our
destiny, when the national future was never so
radiant as now? Let us resolve to return to specie
payments, which can be done as well next year as
next century; let us get rid of this irredeemable
paper currency, which converts us all, whether we
like it or not, into a nest of gamblers; let us, in
the words of the Chicago platform, spurn all forms
of repudiation, " partial or total, open or covert, as
a national crime;" let us refuse to follow that
financial ignisfatuus which, by way of showing us
some other way to clear ourselves of debt except
by paying it when due, is sure to lead us into the
Slough of Despond; let us remember that to us
is confided in trust, for those who are to come after
us, that most precious of national possessions, the
national honor; let us cease to go about moping
and mumping of national ruin when the road to
national prosperity lies straight before us; let us
elect that man president who says, "Let us have
peace," and who means to execute the laws of the 
land, not to trample them in the dust, and we shall
soon see the spectres which have haunted us going
back to the limbo of departed spirits.
Who is that man?
My friends, there have been times in our history
when it was necessary for men to ask each other,
who is Mr. So-and-so, just nominated by this or
that party as a candidate for the presidency of the
United States?  But has it ever occurred to any
child throughout the land, above the age of six
years, to ask, this summer, Who is General Grant?
There are but few among the sons of men whose
history is identical with the history of their country.
But the record of this republic during the most
eventful years of its existence, is the record of the
candidate whom we hope to see elected.
But suppose the question had been asked ten
years ago. Haply some swain firom the far West
might have told us of a retired captain of infantry,
some thirty-six years of age, who had served
through the Mexican war, after graduating at West
Point, Ed subsequently retired to a farm near St.
Louis, but who, just before the outbreak of the rebellion, had gone into the leather business at Galena-a plain man in his manner, who was sometimes seen driving an ox-team, but never "a balky
67 
68
one," into the streets of St. Louis, but who never
told his neighbors that he had been in every battle
of the Mexican war, save Buena Vista, and that he
had been promoted twice on the field for gallantry.
These things being matters of course in our brave
little army, the leather dealer saw small cause for
taking airs thereupon, and if he nourished aly ambition, as he seems to have let out in a moment of
weakness, he had visions of a sidewalk, to be built
from his own modest mansion to the railway station
at Galena.
Suppose the question asked a century hence.
Will there be many persons so ignorant of history
as to falter in their reply.
It is doubtful whether he has even yet been thoroughly appreciated.  When the living man becomes
suddenly before our eyes an historic persinage, it
is difficult, perhaps, to judge him as carefully as we
may the heroes of the past.  I am no hero-worshipper, and it has always seemed to me that the
true hero of this most important epoch in our
history is the American People. Whatever was
greatest and best throughout the war, was done
by the people.  And it is exactly because General Grant is a singular embodiment of many of
the most. prominent characteristics and best vir 
69
tues of that people, that he seems the fittest man
to be chosen our chief magistrate.
I believe that from the time our generalissimo
received the surrender of the rebel armies up to the
period when he became the candidate of a distinct
party organization, it was rare enough to find any
disposition to detract from his fame.  For one, I
confess that the sentiment I find most necessary to
guard against when contemplating his wondrous
career, and the strange simplicity and repose of
his character, is a tendency to over-enthusiasm.
Through the misty atmosphere which belongs to
the past, conspicuous personages are apt to dilate
into more than mortal proportions, while we are,
not unreasonably, inclined to scan very closely the
defects and the pretensions of contemporary greatness. In truth, the very simplicity of General
Grant's character makes the great things which he
did seem simple too. There can be no surer test
of power than the ease with which it accomplishes
Herculean tasks; yet the spectator, deceived by
symmetry itself, often mistakes the colossal for the
common-place.
We  all seem afraid of uttering that one word
in regard to this shy, tranquil, unobtrusive man,
which really characterizes him-the word genius.
9* 
t0
The very modesty of the man himself seems to
rebuke all tendency to exaggeration. Yet, after
all, this is exactly what General Sherman says
in his famous and beautiful letter, while avoiding
the phrase: " My only point of doubt was in
your knowledge of grand strategy and of books
of science and history; but I confess your common  sense seems to have  supplied  all these."
And what is that common sense which supplies
strategy, science, history, b-lt genius?
In the little affair of Belmont, where he first
showed his incapacity to accept defeat; at Donelson, where he converted impending rout into victory, by ordering the famous charge of Smith;
on the dark and bloody April afternoon, when
he told Sherman at Pittsburg Landing how Donelson was won, and organized out of apparent panic
and ruin that magnificent triumph of the following morning; from Vicksburg to Chattanooga,
from the  Wilderness to Richmond, he pursued
the rebellion to its doom-never a footstep backward-untiring, unimpassioned, tranquil, relentless
as destiny.
I have no pretension to be a judge of military
affairs, but to my humble apprehension, the campaigns of General Grant, especially those of
-1 
Vicksburg,  of Chattanooga  and of Richmond,
will-the more closely they are studied-the more
decidedly reveal a capacity of the highest order
in the man  who  conducted  them.   That  they
prove perfect firmness, tenacity and self-devotion,
is beyond dispute.  To be a great soldier necessarily implies many of the highest intellectual
faculties.  No man can be a great soldier without
being a thinker, and this is the very reason why
successful soldiers are apt to be dangerous in a
republic:
"They think too much, such men are dangerous."
Not because he is a great soldier-deep as
the delbt of gratitude is which the nation owes
him-but because during the whole of his career
he has manifested those civic virtues which inspire
confidenlce, do we wish him for our chief magistrate.   Cheerfulness  and  prophetic hope  when
danger and disaster were thickest; self-command
in the hour of immense success; patience and
self-forgetfulness under unmerited obloquy-these
qualities are as striking in him as his utter indifference to a fame which might well dazzle and
lead astray the  strongest  intellect.   He  seems
utterly withQut ambition, and this is the reason
.
* * *
71 
72
why he is one of the few successful soldiers of
history whom it will seem safe for the people to
have trusted.  From the hour when he war surprised to find in the newspapers that he had
been appointed brigadier-general of volunteers,
down to the moment when a higher grade than
ever known in our armies was created for him, he
never felt the least anxiety for promotion.  But
self-control under unmerited and preposterous disgrace, however temporary, seems to prove more than
any of his deeds, the greatness of his character.
Remember that immediately after the famous
victory of Fort Donelson, in which he had presented 15,000 prisoners, 17,600 small arms and
65 cannon to the United States, he was most
unjustly and causelessly threatened with arrest
and deprived of his command, and that he did
his best, while claiming justice from his commanding officer before he would withdraw his resignation, to further that expedition, in the command
of which he had been superseded. "No one,"
he said to the veteran Smith,    can feel more
pleasure than myself at your richly deserved
promotion. Anything you may require, send
back transports for, and if within my power, you
shall have it." 
And  at Milliken's Bend, when preparing that
last magnificent  movement  against Vicksburg,
through which he saw his final triumph assured;
when the country, weary of delays and aghast
at his boldness, was clamoring for his removal;
when our enemies all over the world were shouting, As well pluck the stars from the sky as
attempt the capture of Vicksburg;  when even
his friends turned from him; but when one plain
man,  who  sat in the White House, said,  " I
rather like the man: I think we'll try him a little
longer," how could a soldier prove greater claims
upon the confidence of the country than he did
at that moment of almost universal despondency?
Seeing already in his mind's eye what no other
eye could see, that quickly coming procession of
victories, that twenty days' campaign, the passage
of the great river, the five battles in which, throwing himself between Johnson and Pemberton, he
destroyed one army, and drove the other into the
citadel soon to surrender to him thirty-two thousanld strong; even when at that moment of anticipated triumph he heard the loud cry for his removal, he was incapable of any thought save for
the good of the country.
There are v.ery few persons in this Union, I.sup
10
73 
74
pose, who have not read the letter, written precisely at that moment, which he charges his father
to destroy, or at least to show to no one; and I do
not envy the man who is not touched by its simple
grandeur.
" Were it not for the natural desire of proving
myself equal to anything expected of me, I would
gladly accept a less responsible position. * * * I
will do my part towards putting down the rebellion
in the shortest possible time, without expecting
or desiring any other recognition than a quiet
approval of my course."
As long as the republic breeds such citizens, her
destiny is safe. Such soldiers are not dangerous.
Certainly, he did his part towards putting down
the rebellion, but the approval of his course has
been a little less quiet than he desired.
But I forbear. His career is a history in itself,
and has already engaged the labor of brilliant and
able writers: some of them the partners of his toil
and of his fame;* but I have thought it not amiss
to call your attention to those manifestations of his
~ It would be impossible, except in an extended bibliographical notice,
to indicate the many valuable and important works already published
on the life and services of General Grant.
Without.disparagement to other admirable works familiar to the public,
the "M ilitary History of General Grant by General Adam Badeau," may
*.o. i
i 
75
qualities as a citizen which entitle him to the post
of our chief magistrate.
With such a man for the first office, and with
our kindly, high-minded, experienced, patriotic and
sagacious Speaker of the IHouse, Schuyler Colfax,
whose very name is so suggestive of revolutionary
memories,-a man, who, placed four years long on
a pedestal where defects as well as virtues are
closely scanned, has never made an enemy or lost
a friend,-with such a genuine Republican for the
vice-presidency, it is impossible to admit a doubt
of our success.
We  have only to remember the device of the
clan of Grant, to which-whether belonging to it
or not-he has himself been ever faithful:' Stand
fast and stand sure. Craig Ellachie."
be mentioned, in the first volume of which-the only one thus far published-the author has displayed great powers of description, generalization, portraiture of character and many other high qualities as an
historian. His book, while conscientious in details derived from original
sources, is as interesting as a romance. 
i
i.
i
0
i
i
'i
"i