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1911

GEORGE E PENDLETON.

By G. M. D. Bloss,
Of the Cincinnati Enquirer.

CINCINNATI;
MIAMI PRINTING AND PUBLISHING CO.
% 1868. .^

¦m<-M>^t^tw^

LIFE AND SPEECHES

GEORGE H. PENDLETON

BY
a. M. D. BLOSS,
OJ Qie Cincimmti Enquirer.

CINCINNATI:
MIAMI PEIXTINa AXD PUBLISHING COMPANY,
1868.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S68, by the
MIAMI PRINTING AND PUBLISHING COMPANY,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of Ohio.

h

iFE AND Speeches

GEORGE H.PENDLETON.

HIS POSITION.
No man in the country occupies a more conspicuous po
sition than George H. Pendleton. From M,tine in the
East, to Oregon in the West, the great majority of the De
mocracy, by a common impulse, have declared for him for
the first oflice in the gift of the American people. The cir
cumstances attending this preference render it remarkable.
He is witliout power and patronage. He fills no high
public office, nor has he for the last three years been in
any official position whatever. Although a plain citizen,
the attention of the people is directed to him as one who,
by his past career, by his statesmanlike skill and experi
ence, is best fitted to extricate the country from its present
troubles, and conduct it into the paths of future repose
and prosperity.
The Democracy numbers in its ranks many eminent
citizens, renowned in civil and military life, who have ren
dered the greatest service to the country, and who occupy
a high place in the affections of the organization. It is,
therefore, a higher and more unexampled honor, that the
Democracy should turn with such unusual unanimity to Mr.
Pendleton as their standard bearer in the coming contest.
To give a sketch of the life of one who occupies so ele
vated a position, is the object of these pages, as well as

6 UFE AND SPEECHES OF
to vindicate him and his record from the aspersions which
ignorance and prejudice have cast upon them.
HIS ANCESTRY.
He is descended frora good and patriotic ancestry —
ancestry tliat is noted in the past history of the country.
His grandfather, Mr. Nathaniel Pendleton, vvas born in
Virginia, in 1758. He served, as an aid-de-camp to
Gen. Nathaniel Greene, through the War of the Revolu
tion, and enjoyed in a special degree the confidence of
that oiBcer. When the Federal Government was organ
ized, he was appointed, by President Washington, Judge
of the Uidted States District Court for the State of
Georgia. He presided in the first United States Court
ever held in that State. There, in Savannah, in 1793,
Nathaniel Greene Pendleton, the father of the subject of
this sketch, was born. He was so named as a compliment
to the hero, to whose military family his father had been
so long attached.
In 1796 the grandfather of George H. Pendleton re
moved with his family to the city of New York. The
strife of parties about this time, when Gen. Washington
was retiring from the Presidency, became exceedingly
warm and animated. Mr. Nathaniel Pendleton was an
adherent of the Federal party, and a strong personal, as
well as political, friend of Alexander Hamilton, its leader
and exponent.
When Mr. Hamilton became involved, in 1804, in the
diflBculty with Aaron Burr, which terminated in a fatal
duel, he applied to Mr. Pendleton to be his second in that
tragical affair. The latter accepted, and accompanied Mr.
Hamilton on that memorable llth of July, 1804, to Ho
boken Heights. There they met the hostile party. Col.
Burr and his second, Mr. Van Ness. Van Ness and Pen
dleton cast lots for the position. It was won by Pendleton.

GEORGE H. PENDLETON. 7
An account of the duel given by Mr. Parton, Burr's bi
ographer, says : 1.
As Pendleton gave Hamilton the pistol, he asked, " Will you have
the hair-spring set?"
" Not this time,'' was the quiet reply.
Pendleton then explained to both the principals the rules which
had been agreed upon with regard to the firing. After the word
" present," they were to fire as soon aa they pleased. The seconds
then withdrew to the usual distance. "Are you ready ?" said Pendle
ton. Both answered in the affirmative. A moment's pause ensued.
Burr raised his pistol, took aim, and fired. Hamilton sprang for
ward, reeled a little toward the Heights, at which moment he invol
untarily discharged his pistol, and tlien fell forward upon his face
and remained motionless upon the ground. His ball rustled among
the branches seven feet above the head of his antagonist, and four
feet vfide of him. Burr heard it, looked up and saw where it had
sevred a twig. Looking at Hamilton, he beheld him Calling, and
sprang toward him with an expression of pain upon his face. * *
Mr. Pendleton raised his prostrate friend. Dr. Hosack found him
sitting on the grass, supported in the arms of his second, with the
ghastliness of deatli upon his countenance. "This is a mortal
wound. Doctor," he gasped, and tlien sunk away into a swoon. Tha
Doctor stripped up his clothes, and saw at a glance that the ball,
which had entered his right side, must have penetrated a mortal
part. He was taken to the boat and conveyed to his home. * *
t^bon after recovering his sight, he happened to cast his eye upon the
case of pistols, and observing the one that he had in his hand lying
on tlie outside, he said: " 'I'ake care of that pistol; it is undis
charged, and still cocked; it may go off" and do hira harm. Pendle
ton knows that I did tiot intend to fire at him." Mr Hamilton ar
rived home, and lived thirty-one hours after receiving the fatal shot
Thus fell, in the flower of his age, for he was but forty-
four years old, one of the most distinguished characters
this country has produced ; one who left an enduring im
press of his views upon the hearts of a large portion of
the Araerican people. No duel that was ever fought
created such a marked sensation. More than any other,
it led to the formation of a public opinion in the Northern
States, where duels had previously been frequent, against

» LIFE AND SPEECHES OF
thiit mode of settling private controversies and personal
feuds. Ml'. Hamilton's opponent, Aaron Burr, was at the
time of the duel the Vice-President of the United States;
and in the session following, stained as he was with this
homicide — as it would now be regarded — presided over
the deliberations of that highest of all our representative
bodies, the Senate of the United States. Judge Nathaniel
Pendleton died in 1821, near his residence at Hyde Park,
on the Hudson River, in Duchess county. New York.
In 1818, Nathaniel Greene Pendleton removed from New
York to Cincinnati, then but an inconsiderable village. It
was before the era of railroads, and Cincinnati was then
further, practically, from New York, than Denver City now
is. In 1820 he was married to Miss Jane Frances Hunt,
daughter of Jesse Hunt. The latter was one of the earliest
pioneers of the western country, coming to Cincinnati as
early as 1791, when it was protected from Indian incur
sions by the guns of Fort Washington. Mr. Hunt was a
most estimable and leading citizen, and is remembered with
kindly regards by all the early settlers of the Queen City.
He was the compeer and friend of Gen. Harrison, Gen. St.
Clair, Judge Burnett, Nicholas Longworth, and other of
the early and distinguished pioneers of Cincinnati. His
daughter Jane Frances, who subsequently became, as we
have stated, Mrs. Nathaniel Gree^ie Pendleton, was born in
1802, and died while yet young, in 1839. She was pos
sessed of sound judgment, strong will, and unbending pur
pose, and, at the same time, of such sweet temper, and
gentle manners, and considerate delicacy for the feelings
of others, that she was universally beloved. She was a
devout and humble Christian; and of her life it maybe
ti-uly said, even wdien she was in the last stages of fatal
disease, she " went about doing good." She was the
mother of ten children. On the 19th of July, 1825,
George H. Pendleton was born, n Cincinnati.
In 18l!2, Nathaniel G. Pendleton, was the Whig candi-

GEORGE U. PENDLETON. 9
date for Congress in the Hamilton district, against the Hon.
Robert T. Lytle. Mr. Lytle was a man of brilliant tal
ents, and of exceedingly popular manners. He was the
father of Gen. William T. Lytle, who was killed while gal
lantly fighting in the Federal army at the battle of Chic-
amauga, in l3'63. In this contest with Mr. Lytle, Mr. Pen
dleton was defeated.
In 1888 he again ran for Congress, against Dr. Alexan
der Duncan, and was a second time defeated. In 1840
the same candidates were again in the field. That, it will
be remembered, was a Presidential election year, in which
occurred one of the most extraordinary political contests
ever known in our history. The candidates on the Whig
ticket were Gen. William H. Harrison, of Hamilton county,
Ohio, for President, and John Tyler, of Virginia, for Vice-
President. On the Democratic ticket were Martin Van
Buren, then President, and Richard M. Johnson, then
Vice-President. The issue of the election is well known.
Gen. Harrison, or, as he was popularly called, "Old Tip
pecanoe," was literally sung into the Presidential chair by
acclamation, and, under the delusive cry of "Harrison and
reform," the Democracy sustained their first great defeat
since 1824. Unprecedented efforts were made by the Whig
party to carry Hamilton county, it being the residence of
Gen. Harrison. After unparalleled exertions they suc
ceeded, and in October, 1840, Mr. Pendleton was elected
to Congress over Dr. Duncan by 160 majority.-
In May, 1841, he accordingly took his seat in the House
of Representatives at Washington, in an extra session of
Congress, which had been called by President Harrison.
When Congress met, Gen. Harrison was dead. John
Tyler, the Vice-President, was his successor. In the con
troversy which ensued between President Tyler and the
representatives of the party which elected him in Con
gress, under the lead of Henry Clay, Mr. Pendleton ad
hered to the latter. But he had little taste for political

10 LIFE AND SPEECHES OF
life, and at the expiration of one Congressional term he
gladly declined a re-election. He retired to private life,
and from it never emerged, although in 1848 he was a
candidate for Presidential elector upon the Taylor-Fillmore
electoral ticket. He died in 1861, aged 68. He had
been during his long residence in Cincinnati a highly
respected and influential citizen. For a quarter of a
century he had been a recognized political leader of the
Whig party. He was always on the most intimate social
terras with Gen. Harrison, and his regard for him, as much
as anything else, induced hira to forego his personal
preference for private life and make the Congressional
race in 1840.
GEO. H. PENDLETON'S YOUTH— HIS EUROPEAN TOUR.
In 183.^, George H. Pendleton, then eight years of age,
was sent to the Woodward High School, in Cincinnati;
then, as now, an institution of eminence in the West,
and from which have graduated many distinguished men.
Among Mr. Pendleton's boyish classmates, was George E.
Pugh, afterward United States Senator from Ohio.
In 1835 he attended the school taught by 0. M.
Mitchell, afterward Gen. Mitchell, who took a prominent
part in the late war, and died at Charleston from yellow
fever, while in command there. When the- Cincinnati
College was organized, with W. H. McGuffey as President,
and with 'Gen. Mitchell as Professor of Mathematics,
George H. Pendleton became one of its students, and
under its Professors commenced the study of languages
and the higher branches of mathematics. He remained
at this College until 1841. From this period until 1844,
he pursued his classical studies, under the tuition of the
ablest Professors, at his father's residence.
While at these schools he acquired a high reputation as
a scholar, and left them with that promise of future emi
nence which his after career so abundantly verified. In

GEORGE H. PENDLETON. 11
1844, being then nineteen years of age, he went to
Europe. After spending a few weeks in Paris, he made a
tour through Belgium, ascended the Rhine, and passed
through Switzerland into Italy, under whose pleasant skies
and amidst whose delightful scenery he spent the winter —
in Naples, Rome and Florence.
On the opening of Spring, he journeyed to Vienna, via
Bologna, Ferrara and A'^enice. Those were not the days
of railroads in Europe, and this tour to the great Austrian
capitol was performed by " diligence." From Vienna he
went by way of Prague to Berlin. He remained there
several weeks, in the center of that remarkable power
which had been created by the genius of Frederick the
Great. From Berlin he went to Holland, via Hanover ;
from thence, by way of Amsterdam, Hague and Leyden,
he crossed the sea to London, in order to see the English
Parliament, which was then in session. He attended its
debates, and had the pleasure of listening to speeches
from the great British statesmen of that era — Peel,
Graham, Brougham and Russell. He then returned to
Germany,and spent some time at Heidelberg, and was ad
mitted as a student into its celebrated University.
He had now surveyed the beauties of the scenery of
the Rhine. He had witnessed the sublimity of the moun
tains of Switzerland. He had feasted his eyes upon the
treasures of art in painting and sculpture in the world-
renowned galleries of Rome and Florence. He had seen
the wonders of Paris, had wandered through the places
consecrated to immortal historical recollection, which, to
the end of time, will ever be objects of interest to the in
telligent tourist of other lands. He had stood upon the
plains of Waterloo, where the star of Napoleon the First
had sunk beneath the bloody horizon, never again to rise.
He had heard the greatest men of England in high debate in
that celebrated Parliament in which is vested substantially
the power of the British empire. He had stood in Prussia,

12 LIFE AXD SPKECUKS OF
beneath the shadows of Potsdam, where is recalled in
imagination the glories of the immortal Frederick, who,
during his reign, had raised an insignificant principality
into the position of one of the great powers of Europe.
He had been in Vienna, the seat of the Hapsburg, with
whose history is connected the memory of the great
struggle between the rival civilizations and religions of
Europe and Asia. Thus he had already accomplished, for
those days, a most extensive European tour. But there
were objects of interest beyond, which he was determined
to seek, and thus gratify the enthusiastic curiosity of an
intelligent and highly cultivated mind.
He accordingly set out with a party of German students,
with knapsacks on their backs, and made a tour on foot
through southern Germany and Switzerland. He again vis
ited northern Italy, exploring, still on foot, those classic
plains which, thirteen years afterward, became the theater
of the war between France and Austria, renowned for its
catnpaign of Magenta and Solferino. He visited the queen
city of the Adriatic, and spent some time in observing its
peculiar and remarkable beauties, where every step is red
olent with historical associations, which have been forever
embalmed in the immortal muse of Byron. From thence
he went to Trieste, the only seaport of Austria lying upon
the Mediterranean. From thence he sailed to Greece,
stopping for a time on the Ionian Isles. He 'was now on
the borders of the classic world, and at the limit of en
lightened European civilization. At Patras, in Greece, he
took a guide, and, on horseback, traversed the Morean pen
insula, over the sites of Sparta and Messena, Corinth and
Argos, pausing for a moment on the ground, dedicated to
the Elian and Olympic games. He visited Athens, and
sought out all the objects of interest in its vicinity. He
rode over the immortal field of Marathon, where the Greeks
under Miltiades first checked the power of Persia. From
thence northwardly he sought the site of Thebes, Cheronea

GEORGE II. PENDLETON. 13
and a still more immortal battle-field than -Marathon —
that of Thermopylse.
From thence he passed over Mount Parnassus, to the
shrine of the Delphic Oracle. Returning to Athens, he
sailed for Constantinople, along by the plains of ancient
Troy, the scene of the mythical contest in Homer's Iliad.
From Constantinople he sailed to Beyrout, stopping at
Smyrna and Rhodes and Cyprus. From Beyrout he jour
neyed on horseback to Baalbec and Damascus^ and thence
to Jerusalem, taking in the way Nazareth, the birthplace
of the Saviour, and the Mountains of the Blessing and the
Curse. His tour was not yet completed. From these scenes in
the Holy Land, so precious to the recollection of every
reader of Sacred History, he determined to direct his
steps to still another great quarter of the globe. He
therefore set out, by way of Gaza, to cross the desert on
camels to Cairo, in Egypt. This toilsome progress over
burning sands and sterile fields occupied twenty days.
The party numbered twelve persons, stalwart men, and all
heavily armed. This was necessary as a protection against
the " Bedouins," or robbers of the desert, who often at
tack caravans on their passage. It is quite customary
for travelers, in order to journey safely, to buy a pro
tection or guard from some " Bedouin " chief. Mr. Pen
dleton's party did not neglect the precaution. They
paid a liberal gratuity to a leading chieftain. They
naturally looked for an imposing guard of escort. At
length the guard appeared.
" The guard " consisted of a half-naked Arab, with a
long spear, he going as a protector to twelve heavily
armed men. The idea was, however, that his presence
reminded all roving bands that the customary tribute for
safe conduct had been paid ; therefore, there should be no
molestation. The journey being somewhat delayed, the
supply of water was exhausted, and the party suffered not

14 LIFE AND SPEECHES OF
a little before they reached an oasis, blessed with this in
estimable element. He was now indeed in the land of
antiquity — the land of the exodus of the chosen people
of God — the land in which the first germs of ancient
civilization appeared — the land where the inspiration of
letters as a visible expression of human speech had its
origin — the land of the Pyramids, whose towering hights
were erected, at a period long anterior to authentic
history, by kings whose names are not even preserved,
and by means which all the skill and ingenuity of the
present day could not imitate — and could not rebuild
if they were destroyed. After taking a survey of the
ancient relics of Egyptian grandeur, and contrasting them
with the present low civilization which prevails there,
Mr. Pendleton took passage at Alexandria, by sea, back
again to Trieste, the point, it will be remembered, of his
embarkation for the really Eastern world. He returned to
Heidelberg by way of Padua, the Tyrol Pass, Innsbruck,
Munich, and other German towns, and after a short stay,
went again to Paris. He had been now in the three great
divisions of the Eastern Continent — Europe, Asia and
Africa. He had seen the splendid modern civilization of
Europe. He had seen that strange mixture of ancient
Oriental magnificence united with modern squalor and
degradation that is found in Asia — the spectacle of old and
effete peoples existing now, rather iu the shade of grand
past recollection than the actual present, under the light
of the hope of the future. He had se.en even a d.'irker
picture of political and social degradation in Northern
Africa, where nature 'Nvith her frightful sterile deserts
appears to be in full sympathy with the lov^ moral aud
mental development that now afflict the human species in
that quarter of the globe. He had visited both the worlds
of the Classics and of the Scriptures — Greece and Judea 
the homes of ancient civilization, the birthplaces of the
modern religions. With feelings of awe and solemnity he

GEORGE U. PENDLETON. 15
had visited the tomb of the Savior, and had gazed upward
to the peaks of those awful mountains from which, under
the old dispensations,- the fiats of Omnipotence were pro
mulgated. He had gazed with wonder and admiration
upon those stupendous piles, the Pyramids, and had re
flected upon the mighty changes in the world's history
which had occurred since those massive stones were
piled one upon another. Thus he had returned again to
Europe with a mind profited by a study and by an actual
inspection of the relics of the past, as well as by a personal
examination of the glories of the present.
While in Paris, on this occasion, he visited the Palace
of Saint Cloud. He passed the sentinel at the gate, and
had fairly begun to ascend the hill, when he was rudely
assailed by a furious guard, who turned him back pn his
steps, and, with menacing gestures, led him to the outer
gate, asking, as intelligently as his indignation would
allow, whether he did not know that the Count de Paris
was to visit the palace that day. In truth, while he was
speaking, the cavalcade swept by — an armed troop before,
behind, on either side of a six-horse coach, from whose
window a small, pale child, of perhaps six years, sitting
on his nurse's knee, looked with listless indifference. This
was the Count de Paris, grandson of Louis Phillippe,
heir of the throne and representative of the monarchy.
Who could have foreseen that within three years the heir
to such brilliant expectations would have been in exile
from his native land, and a then prisoner in the Fortress
of Ham, Louis Napoleon, would have been at the head of
the French Government ? Such is the instability of human
grandeur and the evanescence of human anticipations.
From Paris, Mr. Pendleton journeyed to England, and
from thence to Scotland and Ireland. He sailed for home
in the suiflmer of 1846, and, after a prosperous voyage,
the shores of his native country greeted his eyes, after an
absence of two years, and after a journey which few Amer-

16 LIFE AND SPEECHES OF
icans of that day had performed. It was a tour of exceed-
inc benefit to one who was destined in future years to be a
prorainent actor in the political history of this country.
Extensive foreign travel enlarges the breadth of vision ; it
inculcates the catholic liberality and tolerance which is not
possessed by those who have never seen other lands. Be
sides, it afforded an opportunity, which was not neglected
by the cultivated and discriminating mind of Mr. Pendle
ton, of observing the differences of forms of government
and institutions, and their effect upon the masses of the
people. In traveling through Europe, Mr. Pendleton had this
advantage over ordinary tourists, viz : he speaks French
and German, and thus was enabled to communicate with
the people in their own vernacular.
HIS MARRIAGE— LAW PARTNERSHIP.
In 1846, soon after his return from Europe, he was
married, in Baltimore, to Miss Alice Key, daughter of
Francis S. Key, whose name will ever be remembered by
every American as the author of our most celebrated and
popular national ode, "The Star Spangled Banner." She
was the niece of Roger B. Taney, then the eminent Chief
Justice of the United States, and is a lady of rare beauty
and accomplishments, as well as fine mental attainments.
In 1847 he was admitted to the bar as a practitioner in all
the courts of Ohio, and soon afterward formed a law part
nership with George E. Pugh, Esq., a gentleman who was
destined to acquire great political eminence in after years.
This partnership lasted until 1862, when it was dissolved,
by the election of Mr. Pugh to the ofiice of Attorney-Gen
eral of the State of Ohio.
HIS POLITICAL CREED.
Up to this period Mr. Pendleton took no active part in
the political field, but he had not been an indifferent spec-

GEORGE H. PENDLETON. 17
tator. His father, as we have stated, was a prominent
Whig, and his grandfather a leading Federalist. His
connections and relatives were Whigs. If he had been
governed by family associations and traditions, by their
sympathies and prejudices, he would have embraced that
political faith. But he was one of those (and they are
not so numerous as to be unworthy of mention) who do
their own thinking, and are governed by no extraneous
considerations. After mature deliberation he arrived at
the conclusion that the Democracy was the party whose
principles were the best calculated to govern the country
in peace and prosperity, and to preserve its republican
institutions unimpaired. His first vote for President,
'with manly independence, was therefore cast for the Dem
ocratic ticket.
NOMINATION AND ELECTION TO THE STATE SENATE.
In 1853, without his solicitation, and witliout any con
sultation with him, a number of his Democratic friends
proposed his name for the office of State Senator. He
was almost unanimously nominated on the Democratic
ticket, which was triumphantly elected, by a sweeping
majority of from eight to ten thousand, in Hamilton
couniy. The result in the State wtfs of the same charac
ter. The Democrats elected their State ticket, including
the Governor (Medill), by a plurality of from fifty to sixty
thousand. Three-fourths of the Legislature were Dem
ocratic. This was the last expiring effort of the Whig
party in the State of Ohio. It had not recovered from
its overwhelming national defeat the year before, under
the banner of General Scott for President, when it carried
but four of the thirty-one States. In 1853 the Whig and
Abolition parties ran separate tickets in Ohio. This gave
the Democracy an easy victory. It is worthy of remark
that the man who was the last Whig candidate for Gov
ernor, Nelson Barrere, of Highland county, has been for

18 LIFE AND SPEECUE3 OP
years (since the negro issue was made) an active Demo
crat, and is now a warm supporter of Mr. Pendleton for
the Presidency.
The Legislature assembled at Columbus in January,
1854. Mr. Frank C. Le Blond, of Mercer county, late
member of Congress, was chosen Speaker of the House
of Representatives. Mr. Pendleton took his seat in the
Senate, his first appearance in any representative body.
This session of the Legislature was a highly important
one. It was the second one chosen under the new State
Constitution, and on it rested, in a great degree, the duty
of adapting all the laws of the State to that instrument.
But one object of national interest was before it — this was
the election of a United States Senator, to succeed the
Hon. Salmon P. Chase.
After a long and animated contest between the friends
of ex-Senator Wm. Allen and George W. Mannypenny, a
compromise was finally effected upon Hon. George E.
Pugh, who from the first had been the choice of the Ham
ilton county delegation, including Mr. Pendleton. During
this session Mr. Pendleton acquired the reputation of being
a hard-working and active business meraber. Being the
youngest meraber of the body, he left to others, with char
acteristic diifidence and modesty, the leadership, and •made
no ambitious efforts to display his abilities. He made no
buncombe speeches. When he spoke, it was on a practi
cal question. It always related to the business in hand.
He rose rapidly in the esteem of his fellow-members, as
well as of his constituents at home.
FIRST NOMINATION FOR CONGRESS— MISSOURI COM
PROMISE.
So highly was he appreciated, that in the suraraer of
1854, while yet a raeraber of the State Senate, his name
was announced by his friends as a candidate for Con
gress in the First District. This district had been rep-

GHORGE II. PB>'DLETON. 19
resented thirteen years before by his father, Nathaniel
G. Pendleton. Previous to that, it had been represented
by men of such distinguished character, force and talent,
as Gen. Findlay, Robert T. Lytle, Bellamy Storer, Dr.
Alex. Duncan, and Mr. James J. Faran. For the last
six years its Congressman was the Hon. David T. Disney,
a Democrat, also of eminent talents, who had acquired an
enviable national reputation. He had deservedly the
strongest hold upon the Democracy of Hamilton county.
The nomination was made by a popular vote, without the
instrumentality of a Convention.
After an animated struggle in the primary raeeting, Mr.
Pendleton was nominated over his distinguished competitor,
and it was indeed a high honor thus tw be thought worthy,
at twenty-nine years of age, of filling a place which had
been graced and honored by such men as we have stated,
whom the old First had always sent to the House of
Representatives. But his chances of election from the first
were not brilliant, or even hopeful. A great change for
the worse had come over the political atmosphere of the
country. The so-called " Missouri Compromise " had been
repealed, and had given rise to furious agitation. The
political waves ran mountain high. It was the destiny of
that hapless measure, the Missouri Compromise, to con
vulse the country at its birth, to be a source of discord
and trouble while it was on the statute book, and again to
convulse the country still more violently at its decease.
The same party (opposition to the Democracy) which had
ofiposed its enactment, always opposed it while it existed,
opposed its repeal, and, after it was repealed, opposed its
re-enactment. It was originally intended to settle finally the question
of slavery in the Territories of the United States, by pro
viding by this compromise, that all territory north of 36.30
north latitude should be free territory, and all south of
that line should be slave territory. It was, in fact, a

20 LIFE AND SPEECHES OF
partition of all our territory between the free and slave
States. But this comproraise was afterward repudiated, by the
refusal, when new territory was acquired, to authorize slav
ery below the line, as had been tacitly agreed upon by the
compromise. A new settleraent of the question had to be
made, and in 1850 a new compromise was effected, by
which the question of slavery in the Territories, wherever
located, was to be deterrained by the votes of the people
residing in thera. In 1864 it was deemed expedient to re
peal the old compromise of 1820, as it had becorae, as we
have shown, a dead letter, and was in principle totally in
consistent with the new corapromise of 1850. This was
done in a law introduced by Hon. Stephen A. Douglas, of
Illinois, in the Senate of the United States, entitled an act
to organize the Territories of Nebraska and Kansas. The
act finally passed, after a desperate struggle, and it led, as we
have stated, to furious excitement and partisan agitation.
The Whigs, Abolitionists and anti-Nebraska Democrats all
united against it, forming what was called a "Fusion" party.
KNOW-NOTHINGISM.
About the sarae period the celebrated "Know-Nothing"
organization arose. Enveloped in secrecy, possessing the
charm of novelty, appealing, as it did, to the strong
prejudices against all Catholics and all foreigners, whom
it proposed to disfranchise, swept over the country like
a destructive whirlwind.
Mr. Pendleton, although most thoroughly imbued with
true American ideas, and even prejudices, could not sus
tain a secret political society in a country which -was then
free, and where the most open discussion and organization
of parties was nowise hazardous. He could not sustain
the idea that a religious test should be made, and that
men should be disfranchised because they conscientiously
believed in a certain religious faith. Neither could he

GEORGE H. PENDLETON. 21
agree to disfranchise any man on account of the accident
of his birth. Mr. Pendleton's position on this question
agreed with the Democracy generally. The Know-Noth-
ings, therefore, united with the " Fusion " party, and the re
sult was the most overwhelming defeat the Democracy and
the friends of the Union had ever sustained in the North.
Mr. Pendleton and Mr. Groesbeck, the latter of whom
has since justly acquired national fame by his speech in
behalf of President Johnson, in the impeachment case,
were defeated in the First and Second Districts of Ohio,
by majorities of from three to four thousand each. Their
successful Fusion and Kno'w-Nothing competitors were
T. C. Day, Esq., and John Scott Harrison, a son of
President Harrison.
It was a curious fact, which has since been several
times repeated, that large bodies of foreigners in Ham
ilton county at that election voted against Messrs. Pen
dleton and Groesbeck, and the Democratic ticket, and in
favor of candidates who had pledged themselves by the
most soleran oaths to oppose any foreigner whatever (no
matter how eminent his talents or character) voting or
holding ofiice, as we have stated.
The " Fusion " party elected every member of Congress
from Ohio, and carried the State by eighty thousand ma
jority. In the whole North only about twenty Democrats
were elected to the House of Representatives at Wash
ington. For the first time in our history a Speaker was
elected in the House (N. P. Banks, of Massachusetts,) by
the votes of Northern members alone. This formation
of a Northern geographical sectional party upon the
ground of hostility to a Southern institution, was an
alarming portent, and foreboded trouble in the future.
As Mr. Wendell Phillips then said, with exulting glee, it
was the first " crack in the iceberg ;" it was the first light
he saw in his crusade for the dissolution of the Union.
In the course of five years the " crack " became a fissure,

22 LIFE AND SPEECHES OF
a gigantic scam, from the top to the bottom of the "berg,"
which possibly may never be closed, and certainly never
will be under the auspices of those who created it; and
they are the Radical party of this time.
ELECTION TO CONGRESS— GLOOMY PORTENTS.
But the storm for a while passed over. The Know-
Nothing agitation subsided ; the anti-Nebraska Fusion lost
some of its force, and, in 1856, the Democracy of the North,
united with the South, were enabled to elect Jaraes Bu
chanan and John C. Breckinridge for President and Vice-
President of the United States. In Harailton county, Ohio,
Messrs. Pendleton and Groesbeck -were again nominated
for Congress ; and this tirae they were triumphantly
elected by the Democracy. As they had borne the
standard of the party in the dark hour, it was properly
thought they should bear it when there was hope of victory.
In Deceraber, 1857, Mr. Pendleton took his seat in the
House of Representatives at W^ashington. He was one
of its youngest raerabers. There was a Democratic ma
jority in the House as well as in the Senate. James L. Orr,
of South Carolina, was elected Speaker of the House. It was
an important Congress. Two new States (Oregon and Min
nesota) were adraitted into the Union; for both of which
Mr. Pendleton voted. Upon the question of the admission
uf Kansas, under the "Lecompton Constitution," an unfor
tunate difference of opinion arose between the Adminis
tration of Mi-. Buchanan and the South, on the one side,
and the mass of the Northern Democracy, headed by Mr.
Douglas, on the other. This controversy is now among
the things of the past, and it is unnecessary in this con
nection to speak with any detail concerning it. In its
results it led to such division and bad feeling as to be the
main cause of the split and break up of the Deraocratic
pany at the Charleston Convention in 1860.
Before this Lecompton difficulty, the Democracy were

GEORGE II. PEXDLETON. 23
rapidly gaining ground, and the prospect was they would
soon recover their ascendancy in the North. The Demo-
oratic ticket had been elected in the State of New York,
in 1857, by 20,000 majority, although it had been Repub
lican the year before by 80,000. In Ohio, Salmon P.
Chase, in October, 1857, was barely elected Governor by
1,200 majority, instead of the 16,000 he had at the pre
vious election, the Democracy electing a majority in both
branches of the State Legislature. The Lecompton trouble
checked this glorious change in public opinion, and threw
the .Democracy back again into a terrible minority.
Mr. Pendleton acted in this matter with the friends of
Mr. Douglas, and opposed the admission of Kansas under
the Lecompton Constitution, on the ground of fraud and
illegality in its adoption. But he did so with great tact
and moderation, and after making every effort to harmonize
differences that were so prejudicial to the interest of the
Democracy, which threatened also the existence of the
Union. He was appointed, by Speaker Orr, on the highly
important coramittee of military affairs.
In this Congress, Mr. Pendleton aimed to be an active
working member, and made no general speeches of any
length upon political topics. Indeed, we will here add —
and it is greatly to his credit — that he never spoke in his
life on the exasperating topic of slavery, the discussion of
which, with such intemperate zeal and fury, was so harm
ful to the integrity of the Union.
But while he thus refrained from discussing abstract
and irritating political questions, Mr. Pendleton was keenly
alive to the interest of his constituents, and embraced
every occasion to forward them by appropriate legislation.
Thus, on the 16th of May, 1860, in the next Congress,
he made an able and argumentative speech in favor of the
enlargement and improvement of the Louisville and Port
land Canal, at the Falls of the Ohio. We give here the
eloquent peroration of his remarks :

24 LIFE AND SPEECHES OF
These are the statements of the agricultural products of 1849.
What the products were in 1859, I have no means of knowiDg.
Doubtless they have increased many fold.
The power of numbers are almost exhausted in stating them now
— now when half the land is yet unbroken by the plow ; when half
the rest lies fallow ; wlien our population is sparse, and its energies
are only stimulated to pleasajit exercise by the hope of accumulat
ing wealth. By and by the land will all be cultivated ; every acre
will be called upon to yield its increase; our population will teem
vvitli overflowing numbers; the struggle for life will begin. Then
the productive energies of our people and our soil will be strained
to tlie uttermost, and before the results of those gigantic efforts,
tiit'se amounts, wliicli now seem almost fabulous, will dwarf.into
in.significance. It is this commerce for which we wish to provide. It is for the
interchange of these commodities that we wish to enlarge this canal.
To do it, we ask no money, no tax upon your imports, no diminu
tion of any legitimate revenue, no dollar which could otherwise
¦properly find its way to the National Treasury. This commerce of
to-day ia willing to tax itself — willing to pay for this improvement.
It would have made this improvement long since, but that the Gov
ernment owns the stock, controls the revenue, and hy mere inaction
prevents the work. It only asks the Government to remove the
prohihition, and permit the expenditure of those tolls which the
boatmen and freighters are willing to pay.
Gentlemen need not fear to assist in the development of the
Mississippi Valley. Its returns will be rich and remunerative. The
next census will tell of the power of the North-west. It will dictate
your policy ; it will control your legislation, it will make and
unmake Presidents. Every portion of all its vast power will be
used for the conservation of those guarantees of liberty which are
written in the Constitution, and have been practically tested in the
history of the Union. It will tolerate no sentiment of disunion,
because it will permit no infraction of the Constitution. It will give
place to no spirit of sectional jealousy; because, faithful in the dis
charge of all its obligations, it will exact the same fidelity from
others. In every scheme for its own aggrandizement, it will
jealously respect the rights and interests of every'other portion of
the Confederacy. Scrupulous in the exercise of its power, exact in
the justness of its conduct toward all its sister States, it will chal
lenge their commendation and alTection ; and from the high
vantage ground it will call upon them with authority — it will coerce
them by force of its example — to vie with each other in obedience

GEORGE H. PENDLETON. 25
to the Constitution which our fathers made, and in steady support
of the Union, which is only valuable so long as it breathes the
spirit of that Constitution, I move that the resolution be printed
and laid on the table.
In his .votes, he was always moderate and conservative
on sectional questions, avoiding, in an equal degree, both
Northern and Southern extremes and ultraisnis ; and, had
half the members imitated his example, there would never
have been any secession or war. When Mr. Pendleton did
address the House, he always spoke briefly, and with rare
good sense. His reputation steadily increased, and in 1858
he was again nominated for Congress. A complete "fu
sion" of all the elements antagonistic to the Democracy
was effected in Hamilton county. The Democracy were
much embarrassed by the unfortun.ite Lecompton difficulty,
and suffered greatly by it. The result was that they were
defeated in the county, and lost all the county oflSces. Mr.
Groesbeck was also defeated in the Second District by
seven or eight hundred majority, but Mr. Pendleton was
elected in the First District, after a sharp contest, beating
T. C. Day, his old and successful competitor of 1854, by
over three hundred majority. In the new House, the Re
publicans, as the old "Fusion" Know-Kotliing party was
now termed, had a majority, and elected Governor William
Pennington, of New Jersey, as Speaker — electing him as
they did Mr. Banks, in 1855, by a purely sectional North
ern vote. This was the last Congress before the secession
struggle of 1861, toward which, as to a great vortex, every
thing was now tending with terrible rapidity.
The abolition agitation in the North had grown daily more
violent, and unconstitutional nullification bills were passed
by the Republican Legislatures of the Northern States
against a rendition of fugitive slaves. Kansas was a fiery
furnace, from which vomited forth a torrent of abolition ha
tred toward all the Southern States. John Brown, a Kan
sas desperado, with an armed band of fanatics, went secretly

26 LIFE AND SPEECHES OF
to Virginia for tbe purpose of exciting the negroes to in
surrection against their masters. When Brown was exe
cuted, after having been taken in this business, he was
eulogized by the Republicans as a " martyr," and church
bells were tolled in many places in honor of his meraory
on the day of his execution. The South was naturally
exasperated, and replied with threats of disunion. The
Democracy divided at the Charleston Convention in the
spting of 1860, and entered the field with two candidates,
Mr. Douglas and Mr. Breckinridge. In addition, another
conservative candidate was run, John Bell, of Tennessee,
representing the conservative element of the old Whig
party. I'hus the conservative strength was frittered away,
while the Northern Republican element was all united upon
Abraham Lincoln.
In October, 1860, at this inauspicious time — fatal to
Democrats — Mr. Pendleton was run a fourth time for
Congress, his competitor being Juilge 0. M. Spencer, one
of the strongest, ablest, and most popular men ever known
in Hamilton county. But Mr. Pendleton was again elected
by a large raajority, and he was, undoubtedly, the only
man who could have succeeded against such an opponent.
Mr. Lincoln was elected President in Noveraber following,
and the great tragic page in the history of the Araerican
Republic was preparing for insertion.
CIVIL WAR.
The events that followed are too painfully known to
need recapitulation here. Seven Southern States passed
ordinances of secession between November, 1860, and
March, 1861, when Mr. Lincoln was to enter upon the
duties of his office.
The United States forts and arsenals in the South were
all seized by the seceders, with the exception of Fort
Sumter, at Charleston, and Fort Pickens, at Pensacola.
A Peace Congress, to see if something could not be effected,

GEORGE H. PENDLETON. 27
was held in Washington, in the winter of 1860-61, but was
a total failure. Mr. Crittenden, the veteran and patriotic
Senator from Kentucky, proposed a plan of compromise,
¦which Democrats and Conservatives of the North all
favored. The Southern seceders, through Jefferson Davis,
and Senator Toombs, of Georgia, agreed also to it, in
the Senate of the United States. It was nothing but the
re-enactment of the old Missouri Compromise line, putting
it in the Constitution of the United States, where it could
not be disregarded or repealed. The people were every
where for this amicable adjustment of our sectional
troubles. Had it been submitted to a vote of the people, it
would undoubtedly have been adopted in every State of
the Union, North as well as South. This opinion is not
mere vague conjecture. In April, 1861, the issue was
made at the municipal election in Cincinnati. The De
mocracy and other Union men united on a ticket, headed
it " for the Crittenden Compromise," and it was elected by
the great majority of 4,000, in a city which had given
Lincoln a handsome majority the November previous. As
Cincinnati voted, so would the whole North have done, if
the opportunity had been afforded them. But this was
denied, although every effort was made in Congress by the
Democracy to have the question directly submitted to the
popular vote. Had it been so subraitted, its adoption,
which was certain, would have stopped secession and pre
vented civil war.
But the Republican leaders refused to accept this or any
other compromise. Still they made no preparations to
coerce the South back into the Union, by armed force. Years
before. Senator Wade, of Ohio, then as now a recognized
leader of the Republican party, had expressly inforraed
the South that his party would let them secede from the
Union if they desired, and thought it intrenched upon
their rights. We quote here from his speech, Deceraber
4, 1856, to be found in the Congressional Globe, third

28 LIFE AND SPEECHES OF
session of the Thirty-fourth Congress, page twenty-fifth.
Here it is :
But the Southern gentlemen stand here, and in almost all their
speeches speak of a dissolution of the Union as an element of every
argument, as though it were a peculiar condescension on their part
that they permitted the Union to stand at all. If they do not feel
interested in upholding this Union — if it really trenches on their
rights — if it endangers their institutions to such an extent that they
can not feel secure under it — if their interests are violently assailed
by means of this Union, I am not one of those who expect that
they will long continue under it. I am not one of those who would
ask tliem to continue in such a Union. It would be doing violence
to the platform of the party to wdiich I belong.
We have adopted the old Declaration of Independence as the
basis of our political movements, which declares that any people,
when their Government ceases to protect their rights, when it is so
subverted frora the true purposes of government as to oppress them,
have the right to recur to fundamental principles, and, if need be,
destroy the Government under whicli they live, and to erect on its
ruins another more conducive to their welfare / hold ihat they
have this right. I will not blame a-ny ¦people for exercising it whenever
they think the coyitingenpy has come. J certainly shall be the advocate
of that same doctrine whenever I find that the principles of this Gov-
ertuneni have become so oppressive to the section to whick I belong that
a free people might not io endure it. You will not then find me
backward in being the advocate of disunion ; but that contingency
never having come, I have never 3'et opened my mouth in opposition
to the Union.
You can not forcibly hold men in this Union; for the attempt to
do so, it seems to me, would subvert the first principles of the Gov
ernment under which we live.
The South, it may be supposed, believed Wade — believed
the party in whose name he spoke, and afterward did at
tempt to withdraw from the Union. They little supposed
that Wade and his Radical friends would go back on their
advice, and seek to hang as traitors all those who had fol
lowed it. But we are anticipating the course of the narrative.
After Lincoln's election, the New York Tribune, the
Cincinnati Commercial, the Chicago Tribune, the Columbus

GEORGE H. PENDLETON. 29
Journal, Indianapolis Journal, New Haven (Conn.) Palla
dium — in fact, nearly all the leading Republican papers
in the Union — opposed the coercion of the South by force.
So did leading statesmen like Edward Everett, Daniel S.
Dickinson, Lyman Treraaine, Salmon P. Chase, Lieuten
ant-Governor Stanton, of Ohio, Secretary Stanton, since
of the War Departraent, and other influential Republicans.
Nay, more, the House of Representatives, which, after
the secession of Southern members, contained the majority
of Republican members, laid upon the table and voted
down bills authorizing a large increase in the artiiy and
navy, and otherwise preparing Lincoln's administration
for an armed conflict.
MR. PENDLETON'S WAR EECORD— HIS SPEECHES IL
LUSTRATING IT— REPUBLICAN DUPLICITY.
We come now to a most important period in Mr. Pen
dleton's life — one that has been the most belied and shame
fully misrepresented. He has been charged, far and near,
by unscrupulous opponents, as one who not only was
opposed to the late war, but who, from his place in Con
gress, voted against supplies to carry it on after it had
been coraraenced, and who was willing, after our brave
soldiers had entered the field in confident reliance upon
the pledge of the Government to support thera, to abandon
them to defeat and disgrace. That these charges are vil
lainously false — that they have no shadow of pretext to
support them, we shall now proceed to show by indubitable
evidence. Mr. Pendleton believed the war could have
been avoided. He believed it ought to have been avoided.
He was in favor of the Crittenden Compromise, or any
other fair plan of adjustment by peaceable means. As
became a true patriot, he did all he could to avert war, to
prevent secession and preserve the Government, by equi
table adjustment of our sectional feuds. As an explana
tion of his position, ¦we will here give a brief speech,

30 LIFE AND SPEECHES OF
which he made at a serenade given to Senator Pugh, in
Washington, on the 19th of December, 1860, and reported
in the Washington Star, of the 20th of that month. We
quote :
Feli.ow-Citizens : Nothing is left for me to say, except a repetition
of the patriotic sentiments you have heard to-night. Mr. Crittenden
has just arrived, and I know you will wish to hear him I will,
therefore, detain you but a moment
In the midst of all our troubles and trials, when disunion is
staring us hideously in the face, when the fabric of our Government
is reeling as if it might fall, when our passions and our fears are all
intensely excited, it seems to me that it is the first duty of every
patriot to see to it that the public peace is secured. That will
assuage angry passions; that will give reason opportunity to be
heard; that will evoke the feeling of fraternal affection in our
people, now unfortunately dormant; that will enable us deliberately
to examine the foundations of our Government, and, if it shall be
necessary, to relay them and steady the tottering edifice.
We of the North-west love this Union. We love this Constitu
tion. We have never known another Government. We never
desire to know another. Our hearts are true to it. Our affections
cling around it. Our interests are bound up in it We admire,
gratefully, the wisdom displayed in its construction; the harmony
of its complicated movements; its wonderful adaptation to the
development of all the material interests of the country. But we
bow in reverence before the spirit in which it was conceived^the
spirit of conciliation, the spirit of concession, the spirit of fraternal
affection. We believe that the Union and the Government ought
to be maintained. We intend, if possible, that they shall be main
tained; and we believe it to be possible only by invoking that spirit
now. The centripetal forces of this Union are interest and feeling.
Force can not maintain it. Arms can not hold it together. Annies
can not unite us. The only bonds which can hold these States in
confederation — the only ties whicli can make us one people — are the
soft and silken cords whicli encircle the heart — not the iron chain
which manacles the limbs. These are woven in peace, not war;
in conciliation, not coercion ; in deeds of kindness and acts of
friendly sympathy, and not in violence .ind blood. And, therefore,
to maintain the Union, to uphold the Government — that we may
detain those sister States which are dissatisfied, and recall the one

GEORGE II. PENDLETON. 31
which has left us — we are determined, as far as in us lies, to main
tain peace.
A few days after this excellent speech, Mr. Pendleton
obtained the floor in the House of Representatives, and
was enabled to present his views more at length. It was
on the 18th of January, 1861. The occasion was the
l)resentation of a meraoritil, signed by 10,000 citizens of
Cincinnati, i-n favor of the Crittenden Compromise, which,
as we have stated, Mr. Pendleton warmly supported. In
the course of his speech, in behalf of that compromise,
and against coercion, he eloquently remarked :
Gentlemen tell us that they must maintain the Union. I yield to no
man in devotion to the Union. My constituents — the people of tlie
whole North-west — have for it an unalterable attachment. They
are an inland people; they are chiefly devoted to agriculture; they
are distant from the ocean by thousands of miles ; they are shut
off from coiiinmnication with the nations of the earth; they fear,
from isolation, the loss of prestige and power. They are attached
to the Union by the double tie of interest and affection; their
material prosperity is bound up iu its continuance; their hearts
cling to it with incredible tenacity. They would make" any sacri
fice to maintain it. Sir, if armies could preserve this Union, half a
million of armed men would spring up in a niglit. If money could
preserve it, our teeming soil would leap with joy to yield a golden
harvest. If blood could maintain it, our young men and maidens,
our old men and children, would, with a crimson flood, from their
very hearts, swell every stream that waters our plains. But, sir,
money, armies, blood, will not maintain the Union. Justice,
reason, peace, may. This Union, Mr. Chairman, is a confederation
of States. Tlie Constitution is the bond. In order to attain certain
ends beneficial to all, these States came together in voluntary
association. The}' organized a Central Government, and invested
it ivith certain powers; they themselves agreeing to do certain
things, and to refrain from doing 'certain other things, which were
clearly within the scope of their sovereign power. In order to
maintain this Union, in order to preserve this (Constitution, it is
necessary that every agency of this complicated machinery — the
General Government, the States united, the States severally — should
perform the functions allotted to them by the Constitution.

32 LIFE AND SPEECHES OF
While thus declaring his attachment to the Union, he
made the following noble appeal for peaceful measures,
which, if it had been listened to, would have preserved the
Union and averted war. He said :
Gentlemen, I pray you learn prudence from the Iieroism of your
ancestry, I pray you learn wisdom from your country's history.
Fift,een States of this Union come to you to-day with their com
plaints. Hear them. They tell you they have grievances. Kedress
them. They say they have fears for their safety. Allay those fears.
They say they have apprehensions of wrong. Assuage them. Gen
tlemen, remove every cause of agitation and irritatit»n, however
unfounded you deem it. 'J'liey may have committed acts of pas
sion and wrong. Apprehensive of armed coercion, exasperated by a
sense of domestic insecurity, they may have seized our forts and
arsenals, taken possession of our arms, and in sorae cases have
treated harshly our citizens. These acts are wrong; but forbear
ance, equanimity, are fitting attributes ot power; and moderation in
victory is the test of that wisdom and worth which deserve it. tve-
member that the men who come to you are bone of our hone, and
flesh of our flesh; they are our fellow citizens, and our brethren.
Whether justly or unjustly, their discontents have taken deep, hold
of their hearts. Let me beg of you to grant all their reasonable de
mands. You can do it now without loss of pride, without loss of
self-respect, without loss of power. 1 beg you, in God's name, do it!
Do a patriotic duty ! Give us peace instead of discord ! Maintain
this Government and preserve the unity of our confederated em
pire! My voice today is for conciliation ; my voice is for compro
mise, and it is but the echo of the voice of my conslituents.
If dissolution was inevitable, he preferred it should
be peaceful. And if war was waged, he warned the House
" to prepare to wage it to the last extremity."
Mr. Lincoln carae into ofl5ce on the 4th of March, 1861,
and for a raonth or more he did nothing. The Comrais
sioners from the Southern Confederacy came to Washing
ton to treat with the Government for a dissolution of the
Union. They were unofficially, but kindly, received by Mr.
Seward, Secretary of State. Mr. Lincoln and his Cabinet
resolved on the evacuation of Fort Sumter, and its surrender
to the South, which had been held by President Buchanan.

GEORGE H. PENDLETON. 83
The Cincinnati Gazette thought this would be a wise
measure. We state these facts, aud narrate these incidents,
in order to sliow the unfairness of those partisans in the
Republican party who have pretended to find fault with
Mr. Pendleton for his opposition to coercion in the win
ter of 1861, concealing the fact that their party lead
ers practically, at that time, also repudiated coercion,
while they also repudiated all compromise. It was not
until a meeting of the Northern Republican Governors had
been held that the Republican administration of Lincoln
reconsidered their policy and adopted coercion and war in
its stead. The attack on Fort Sumter, in April, 1861,
set the country in a flame from one end to the other, and
the greatest civil war in raodern history, was begun, and
imraediately assumed fearful proportions.
Mr. Pendleton's course of action, under the views which
he held, was plain, and he held it to the end. The war
had been brought on against his counsel, in a rash and
fatal manner, to attain partisan rather than patriotic ends.
But we were in the midst of the struggle. Our soldiers,
by hundreds of thousands, were in the South, and it would
not do to abandon them and their flag to dishonor and dis
grace. The policy which he intended to pursue was im
mediately disclosed, at the first practical opportunity. An
extra session of Congress was called by Mr. Lincoln for
the 4th of July, 1861. In May of that year, before he
had taken his seat in the new Congress, Mr. Pendleton
was selected by his fellow-citizens in Cincinnati, to pre
sent, in their name, a horse to Col. Bosley, the gallant
commander of the Sixth Ohio Regiment, known as the
Guthrie Grays, embracing the 8.ower .o£^tko -^^rztilr^L the
city. We quote : [From tbe Enquirer, May 18, 18S1,]
A SPLENDID HORSE PEBSENTED TO COLONEL BOSLET, OF THE CINCINNATI
VOLUNTEERS.
On Thursday afternoon last, Messrs. Torrence, Gettier, and Schultz,
a committee appointed by the friends of Col. Bosley to purchase

34 LIFE AND SPEECHES OF
a horse for that gentleman, presented it to him at Camp Harrison,
with the usual ceremonies. The horse vvas a splendid gray, pur
chased of George Creain, Esq., who selected him on the principle
that "blood will tell;" and we doubt not that when occasion re
quires, he will carry Col Bosley into the thickest of the fight.
The Hon. George H. Pendleton made the following presentation
speech :
" Colonel Bosley : I have been commissioned by a number of
your former associates and constant friends to present you this
horse. I am instructed to ask yon to accept it in token of their
kind feeling, their respect, and their confidence; the kind feeling
induced by many courtesies in the paths of private intercourse, theif
respect for a frank and honorable character, their confidence that
the tastes which have led vou to devote so much of time and
energy to the cultivation of military discipline in peace, will not fail
to conduct you to scenes of useful activity in time of war; their
confidence that you, who have been found worthy to command the
Guthrie Grays, you, the chosen leader of the flower of the Buckeye
boys, will find for yourself and them, in every field of battle, a field
of honor also, and will bring from every conflict the laurel which
graces a soldier's brow or decks a soldier's bier.
"Keceive it in the spirit in whicli it is presented On it, lead your
regiment to the contest. Remember y6urseli^ — teach them to re
member that, in this unhappy war, calmness of spirit, moderation
of temper, with determined purpose, are tlie highest virtues of a
citizen soldier; that they should not strike a blow for an empty tri
umph, none to gratify a passion for revenge; that they should have
DO other purpose than to uphold the Constitution, to reinvigorate
the Union, and to maintain the true dignity of the banner of the
Stars and Stripes, against whose unsullied folds our countrymen, in
the hour of their madness, have ventured to raise an unhallowed
hand, "Do this as you love your country! Do it as you wotdd serve
your God ! Do it, and you will achieve an honorable victory, and
restore an honorable peace I Do it, and you will fill the measure
of a good man's ambition, and will return, in more prosperous
times, with your brave companions, to enjoy the reward for which
poets have sung, heroes have (ought, and patriots have been content
to die, in the grateful admiration of their fellow-citizens,"
The above speaks for itself, and requires no comment.
The same sentiments he soon had occasion to more ofS-

GEORGE H. PENDLETON. 35
cially enunciate. At the extra session, in July, when Con
gress was discussing the question of increasing the regu
lar army, and authorizing the President to call out an
unlimited number of volunteers, Mr. Pendleton said:
I desire, sir, to vote all measures asked for to enable the Govern
ment to maintain its honor and dignity, which may be sanctioned
by the Constitution, and by any reasonable view of the necessity of
the case. I will heartily, zealously, gladly, support any honest
efforts to maintain the Union and invigorate tlie ties which bind
these States together. But, sir, I am not willing to vote for more
men or money than the Administration asks, more than it can fairly
use, more than General .Scott — who advises and controls the Admin
istration — tells us he thinks necessary. Neither will I vote for an
increase of the regular army, for this uprising of the people of the
Korth shows that our brave and noble volunteers are ready and able
to do the work now to be dune, better than regulars can. And the
only necessity of increasing the regular army now is to give patron
age and power to the Administration jn the appointment of oflicers.
Neither, sir, will I vote for bills of indemnity to the President;
for bills which are not intended to relieve the country from its diffi
culties, but to cover the acts and doings of the Administration from
fair investigation and honest judgment Nor will I vote for the suspen
sion of those laws for the protection of personal liberty, which, the
President tells us, were passed in too great tenderness of the rights of
citizens. Nor will I close my lips, lest I may speak of usurpations,
or corruptions and abuses, which are said to be rife in this city now,
and lest the Government may be thereby weakened. Sir, let the
Government depend for its' strength upon the integrity of its motives
and its adherence to the Constitution. I will vote for none of these
measures ; but I will do what is fairly necessary to give the Admin
istration power to maintain the Government, and prevent disaster to
its flag."
The policy which he had pursued was thus alluded to by
him in his address at Reading, Hamilton county, October
10, 1862. We give an abstract of the speech as follows
taken from a report in the Cincinnati Enquirer, October
11, 1862. The report says :
The meeting was large and spirited. The best spirit prevailed.
Mr. Pendleton spoke at some length. He was among his old friends

36 LIFE AND SPEECHES OF
and constituents, and he intended to speak to them confidingly
and plainly. He said that he believed the present unhappy condition
of the country might have been and ought to have been, prevented
by a reasonable and fair compromise during the winter of IS60-61 —
that then the tide of madness might have been stayed, and South
Carolina would have trodden alone the dreary paths of Secession.
But when war was commenced by the bombardment of Fort Sumter,
and the threatened attack on the City of Washington, and was accepted
by the Federal Government, he received it as a fact, and was pre
pared to act in view of its existence. He had determined to support
the constituted authorities of the country in all measures necessary
to maintain the Government and enforce obedience to the Constitu
tion. He was in favor of attaining the ends and purposes of the war
in the shortest and speediest way. He was opposed to disunion,
whether the demand came from the South or from European nations;
the greatness and glory of the country depended upon the Union;
it was worth every sacrifice — worth more than peace, desirable aa
peace might be. But while the armies are fighting the battles of the
Union, they ought to be aided by a correspondent civil administra
tion ; by a policy which will divide the South and unite the North ;
whicii would encourage the growth of Union-loving sentiments at
the South, allay all their apprehensions of injustice and wrong at
the hands of those who administer the Government, and restore, if
possible, their love for the Constitution. He had declared this to be
his intention at the very opening of the extra session in 1861 — on the
9th day of July — and he had executed it to the letter. He had voted
for the men and money asked by the Administration. He would
continue to do so. But he had opposed, and would continue to
oppose, every infraction of the Constitution. He believed the Con
stitution was operative in war as well as peace, and he would regard
his oath to support it. This was his duty as a man and au oflicer —
this was his hope as a patriot,
Mr, Pendleton alluded to (he persistent and malignant misrepre
sentations ofhis opinions and position in the Cincinnati papers. He
called attention to the fact that they pointed out no speech, no vote,
no act which was prompted by a desire to harass and embarrass
the Government,
Mr, Pendleton discussed the Tax Law, the emancipation policy of
the Administration, the profuse e.\penditure of the public money.
The laws must be obeyed — the constituted authorities must be obeyed.
A change could be worked out only at the ballot-box; to this they
had a right to appeal, and the opportunity would soon be given
them.

GEORGE H. PENDLETON. 37
These extracts are sufiicient to show Mr. Pendleton's
views ; but we will proceed to give further illustrations.
In October, 1864, when a candidate for Vice-President on
the ticket with Gen. McClellan, he wrote a letter to the
Hon. C. L. Ward, of Philadelphia, as follows :
Cincinnati, October 18, 1864.
Hon. C. L. Ward, Philadelphia — Dear Sir : 1 have received
your letter. In the very beginning of this war, in the first days of
the extra session of 1861, I said, in my place in Congresii, that I
would vote fer all measures necessary to enable the Government to
maintain its honor and dignity, and prevent disaster to its flag. I
have done so, I thought that by the adoption of such measures
the faith of the Government was pledged to the troops in the field,
and must not be forfeited by inadequate supplies. I never gave a
vote which was incompatible with this sentiment.
All appropriations, pure and simple, for the support and efficiency
of the army and navy, Iiad my cordial concurrence. It was only
when they were connected with other and improper appropriations,
when by reason of their popularity they were loaded down with
fraudulent items for the benefit of contractors or speculators, and
every attempt to separate them failed; when they were made a sttilk-
ing-horse for some Abolition scheme, that 1 was constrained re
luctantly to vote against the whole bilh
But I repeat, that I voted against no bill which was confined
simply to the object of supplies for the army and the navy.
I am, very truly, yours,
GEOEGE H. PENDLETON.
He also wrote the following letter to Hon. John B.
Haskins, of New York, about the same time :
Cincinnati, October 17, 1864.
My Dear Sir : I have received your friendly letter. Malignant
misrepresentations and falsehoods are so frequent in our political
struggles that I have rarely undertaken to correct or refute them.
I make no professions of a new faith ; J only repeat my reiterated
professions of an old one, when I say that there is no one who
cherislies greater regard for the Union, who has a higher sense of
its inestimable benefits, who would more earnestly look for its
restoration by all means which will eflfect that end, than myself.
The Union is the guarantee of the peace, the power, the prosperity

38 LIFE AND SPEECHES OF
of this people, and no man would deprecate more heartily, or op
pose more persistently, the establishment of another government
over any portion of the territory now within its limits, I am in
favor of exacting no conditions, insisting on no terms not pre
scribed in the Constitution, and I am opposed to any C(mrse of
policy which will defeat the re-establishment of the Government on
its old foundations or in all its territorial integrity.
I am, very truly, yours,
GEOEGE H. PENDLETON.
Before the election of 1864, Mr. Pendleton visited the
city of New York, aiid received a serenade from the
Democracy of that city. We quote from the New York
World :
Mr, Pendleton was serenaded on Monday night (October 24), at
the New York Hotel, by the McClellan Legion, an association com
posed of former soldiers of the Army of the Potomac An au
dience of several thousand persons having assembled, Mr, Pendleton
was introduced by John Van Buren, when he said:
"I thank you for this manifestation of your kind feelings toward
myself I am the more grateful for it as it conies from men who
have stood m the forefront of danger and periled their lives for their
country, I accept it as an evidence of your confidence in. and of
your sympathy with my devotion to the Union and the Constitution,
* * * * * * *
" T was born in Ohio, I have lived all my life in the North-west I
know the sentiment of the people; I sympathize entirely with if
They are attached by every tie of affection and interest to this Union,
Unlike New York, they have never known another Government,
They never existed as a political community before this Government
was formed, and their hearts cling to the Government with indes
cribable tenacity. Unlike you, they are inland people, chiefly devoted
to agriculture As an integral and controlling poriion of the Union,
they have prestige and power; they fear from disunion isolation
from the world, and the loss of that prestige and power. Their in
terest requires that they should have speedy and easy communication
with the ocean, and this tlrey intend to have, both by the Gulf of
Jlexico and the city of New York — by conciliation and in peace, if
they can, by all the force and power which a teeming population
and a fruitful soil give them, if they must. They believe that the
first step toward maintaining the Union is the election of Gen, Mc
Clellan, They believe that the restoration of the Democratic party

GEOKGB H. PENDLETON. 39
to power will produce Union. They believe the policy of this Ad
ministration toward both the Southern and Northern States is fatal
to the Union, (jen McClellan, in his Harrison Landing letter, said:
' Neither confiscation of property, nor political executions of persons,
nor territorial organization of States, nor forcible abolition of
slavery, should be for one moment thought of In his letter of ac
ceptance, he said:
" 'The Union was originally formed by the exercise of a spirit of
conciliation and compromise. To restore and preserve it, a like
spirit must prevail in the councils of the country, and in the hearts
of the people. The Democratic party is pledged to an unswerving
fidelity to the Union, under the Constitution. It is pledged to 'the
restoration of peace, on the basis of the federal Union of the States.' '
" We believe, nay we know, that if this party shall be restored to
power, if this policy shall prevail, the Union shall be restored.
State after State will return to us, and the echoes of our rejoicing
will come down to us from the vaults of Heaven itself in token that
Deity approves that statesmanship which tempers all its policy with
moderation, and justice, and conciliation.
" When next I meet you, 1 hope we may have already entered on
that work. Again, gentlemen, I thank you for your attention, and
wish you good night,"
MR. PENDLETON'S VOTES AND RESOLUTIONS IN CON
GRESS.
Having thus given Mr. Pendleton's publicly-expressed
views regarding the war, we will now quote, from the
Congressional Globe, a number of his votes, and acts
which illustrate thera.
Mr. Pendleton always manifested a deep interest in the
¦welfare of the volunteers, in his own State particularly,
and the whole army generally. At the extra session, in
July, 1861, he offered this resolution, which was adopted,
placing officers of the volunteers on the same footing as to
pay with officers of regulars :
Resolved, That the Committee on Military Affairs be instructed
to inquire into the expediency of providing, by law, that officers
of the volunteers shall be entitled to receive their pay according to
the same rules and times of payment as officers in the regular
service.

40 LIFE AND SPEECHES OF
On the 18th of July, 1861, he introduced a bill for the
relief of the volunteers of Ohio, which gave rise to much
discussion, and which he ably carried through.
On the 21st of July, 1861, he offered the following :
Resolved, That under the Constitution, the rights, powers and
duties of all the States of the Union are equal; that the Union is
founded on this equality; that in order to maintain the Constitution
and the Union, this equality must be preserved; that every honest
elfort to perpetuate the Union must be raade in accordance with the
Constitution, and with a purpose of maintaining this equality; that
no attempt on the part of the Federal Government to subjugate and
hold them as territories or provinces, or in any position inferior to
that of any other State, or with their domestic interests, or to
abolish or interfere with slavery within their limits, would be an
attempt to destroy this equality, and would, if successful, subvert
the Constitution and the Union.
On the 14th of Deceraber, 1863, Mr. Holman, of Indiana,
offered some resolutions relative to the war, of which this
was one :
Resolved, That all necessary and proper appropriations of money
ought to be proraptly made by this Congress for the support of the
military and naval forces of the Government; and all measures of
legislation necessary to increase and promote the efliciency of the
army and navy, and to maintain the people's credit, ought to be
adopted, and that through a vigorous prosecution of the war, peace,
on the basis of a union of the States and the supremacy of the Con
stitution, may be the most speedily obtained.
Upon a motion to reject this resolution, by laying it
upon the table, Mr. Pendleton voted No.
On the Sth of December, 1862, Mr. Wright offered some
resolutions, from which we copy, as follows :
Resolved, That an honorable peace is desirable, but no peace
while armed opposition menaces the Capitol, and threatens the over
throw of the Union; not that peace wdiich would be established
upon tho dismembered fragments of a mighty and prosperous nation ;
and that man who would entertain peace upon these conditions, is a

GEORGE H. PENDLETON. 41
traitor to his country and unworthy the protection of its laws. That
the war was inaugurated solely for tlie suppression of the rebellion,
and the restoration of the Union as it was; that any and all
attempts to change or divert this line of policy, is a fraud upon the na
tion ; a fraud upon thememory of the gallant men who sacrificed their
lives, and a fraud upon the living soldiers who now stand up as a
wall between their loved country and its wicked invaders.
A motion was made to reject these resolutions, by lay
ing them upon the table. On this question Mr. Pendleton
voted No.
On the 18th of January, 1864, Mr. Dawson, of Penn
sylvania, offered resolutions which, among other things,
declared that the advancing armies of the Government
should carry the Constitution in one hand while they hold
the sword in the other, so that the invaded party may have its
choice between the two. This resolution was laid upon the
table, and thereby rejected. Mr. Pendleton voted against
laying it on the table, and thereby in favor of the resolution.
At the first session of the Thirty-eighth Congress, the
House of Representatives passed the following resolutions :
Resolved, That we hold it to be the duty of Congress to pass all
necessary bills to supply men and money, and the duty of the people
to render every aid in their power to the constituted authorities of
the Government in the crushing out of the rebellion, and in bring
ing the leaders thereof to condign punishment.
Resolved, That our thanks are tenii^red to our soldiers in the
field for their gallantry in defending and upholding the flag of the
Union, and defending the great principles dear to every American
patriot. Among the names recorded in favor of the above reso
lutions, is that of George H. Pendleton.
During the session of 1861-62, there were nineteen appropriation
bills passed by the House of Eepresentatives. Mr. Pendleton voted
against only one of them, and that was for certain civil expenses
of the Governmeut, and in no wise connected with its military ope
rations. — Congressional Globe, Session of 1861-62, p. 3,331.

42 LIFE AND SPEECHES OF
On the 2l6t of January, 1862, the House passed a resolution, de
claring the purpose of Congress to levy aud collect taxes to the
amount of S1.50,0U0,000. Mr. Pendleton voted yes. — Congressional
Globe, p. 372.
The Globe also shows that on the bills reported by the
Military Committee for the Efficient Organization of the
Army, regular or volunteer, Mr. Pendleton generally sus
tained the comraittee.
It is true that Mr. Pendleton voted against some of the
appropriation bills passed during the war, but it was be
cause they contained, in his judgraent, some extravagant
items or legalized corruptions, which, being irapossible to
reject by theraselves, they not being submitted separately,
he was obliged to vote against the whole bill. In so voting,
lie had the corapany, in many instances, of many leading
Republicans. This is an ample refutation of all the charges affecting
his w;ar record, which have been brought against him.
But, as we have seen, while he was for preserving the in
tegrity of the Union, and maintaining the honor of the
flag, he yet widely differed with, and strongly opposed the
unconstitutional usurpations of the Administration, which
were connected with the war, but were by no means
essential to its success. Indeed, they greatly retarded,
and materially jeopardized victory. We will give, in this
connection, an illustration.
Araong the despotical acts of Mr. Lincoln, soon after
the war commenced, was his assumption of power to sus
pend the writ of habeas corpus in all parts of the United
States. This power is placed in the Constitution among
those prerogatives which are conferred upon Congress.
The party which now claims for Congress all power, and
denies to the President the right even to appoint his
cliief clerks, then sustained this tremendous usurpation
by the Executive of powers which are clearly delegated
to Congress. The suspension of the writ everywhere in

GEORGE H. PENDLETON. 43
places remote from the scene of war, where there ¦was no
invasion, no insurrection, which are the only constitu
tional grounds for its suspension, was an atrocious per
version of authority, and an illegal assumption, even if it
had been done by Congress. The prisons were soon
filled with victims who were guilty of no crime and no
offense, and yet were denied all legal remedies to relieve
themselves from partisan persecution and oppression.
Mr. Pendleton embraced an early opportunity to de
nounce this outrageous tyranny, and to expose the high
handed usurpations of the President.
His speech upon this question of the suspension of the
habeas corpus was an able exposition of the Constitution,
and an indignant protest against its violation. It was de
livered in the face of power that was utterly unscrupulous,
and recklessly audacious, and was attended with not a
little personal hazard. In those days, to denounce usur
pation and tyranny, even in the halls of Congress, by the
people's representatives, was to run the risk of imprison
ment in forts Lafayette or Warren. The speech was de
livered on_ the 10th of December, 1861. We can not
forbear from giving here a short extract, in which Mr.
Pendleton eloquently denounced the doctrine of " State
necessity," upon which pretext this usurpation was
sought to be justified. Mr. Pendleton said :
No free people should ever listen to this argument of State
necessity. Its history is marked by the wreck of popular liberty
and free institutions, by the sad tokens of human hopes destroyed
and noble aspirations blighted. As we look back upon its pathway
of desolation, and trace it even to our own times and country, we
may easily imagine that the very spirit of Apericau liberty this day
hovers over us, and tearfully prays that it may not be added to the
list of victims. This argument is always used by the possessors
of power; it is a voice which Lssues always from the throne; and,
if not instantly silenced, it is answered, ere long, in the wail of the
nation, as it surrenders its liberties to arbitrary power. We have
seen its effect in our day — an Imperial throne built upon the ruins

44 LIFE AND SPEECHES OP
of the Eepublic and a Presidency—built upon the ruins of oaths
broken, rights violated, liberties despised, and a nation oppressed, is
but the familiar story with which we close one page of the history
of 'State necessity.'
After giving other illustrations, he closed as follows :
I speak in behalf of the Constitution; in behalf of the liberties
of the nation; of the rights of my constituents; of the rights of
every citizen in the land; and, in behalf of them all, I now say that
this claim of the Executive Department of the right to suspend the
]irivlle;^e of the habeas corpus, to seize and detain the citizen, with
out regard to the provisions and processes of law, is utterly unten
able; and that it becomes this House, every member of it, the
chiisen representatives of the people, as well in virtue of the oath
we have taken to support the Constitution, as of the position which
we hold in the frame-work of the Governraent, solemnly — aye, sol
emnly — before God and our country to protest against it.
Mr. Pendleton also opposed, in an able argument, the
bill authorizing greenbacks as a legal-tender for the liqui
dation of debts. He did so for these reasons — 1. Under
the Constitution, nothing but gold and silver can be made
a legal-tender. 2. It was a violation of contract, inas
much as the law allowed a payraent in depreciated paper
which the debtor had proraised to pay in gold at par. He
scouted the idea of its expediency, and thus pointed out the
way in which the war necessities should be met. He said:
Let gentlemen heed this lesson of wisdom. Let them, if need he,
tax the energies and wealth of the country sufficiently to restore the
credit of the Government. Let them borrow whatever money in
addition may be necessary — borrow it to the full extent that may be
necessary — and let us adhere rigidly, firmly, consistently, persist
ently, and to the end, to the principle of refusing to surrender that
currency which the Constitution has given us, and in the mainten
ance of which this Government has never, as yet, for one moment
wavered. There is no doubt that, if this policy, recommended by
him, had been adopted, the expenses of the war would not
have been one-half as great as they were under the legal-

GEOEGE H. PENDLETON. 45
tender system, and we should not now be burdened with
half our present debt.
But he advocated the passage of the loan bills in such
a shape that the bonds could be taxed by State authority,
that no discrimination should be made between them and
other capital. Read the following :
TAXATION OF BONDS.
When the Loan Bill of June 22, 1862, was before the
House, Mr. Holman, of Indiana, moved to add this proviso
to the law :
Provided, That nothing iij this act shall impair the right of the
States to tax the bonds, uotes and other obligations issued under
this act.
This -just amendment was rejected by 71 to 77 — Mr.
Pendleton voting for it.
The National Bank Act of 1864 being under discussion
April 6, a motion was made to adopt this section :
Resolved, That nothing in this act shall be construed to prevent
a taxation by States of the capital stock of banks organized under
this act, the same as the property of other moneyed corporations,
for State or municipal purposes; but no State shall impose any tax
upon such associations, or their capital, circulation, dividends or
business, at a higher rate of taxation than shall be imposed by such
State upon the same amount of moneyed capital iu the hands of
individual citizens of said State.
This section was adopted — 78 to 56 — Mr. Pendleton
voting in its favor, and for the authorization of taxation
of the National Banks by the States.
Afterward, Mr. Stevens offered a substitute for the whole
bill, which substitute prohibited State taxation of the Na
tional Banks. The amendment was defeated — Mr. Pendle
ton voting against it. Afterward, however, the whole bill,
including the section taxing the National Banks, was laid
on the table, and thus the National Banks escaped State tax
ation upon the bonds which constituted their capital stock.

46 LIFE AND SPEECHES OP
Mr. Pendleton has been assailed for inconsistency
because he has since warmly advocated the payment of
the five-twenty bond debt in legal-tenders. In truth, there
is no inconsistency. It does not follow that because he
did not think it right to pay debts contracted in gold with
legal-tenders, that he should now be in favor of paying
debts contracted in legal-tenders, when they were only
worth forty or fifty cents on the dollar, with gold at par.
The same reasons which would reject the first policy would
reject the second. Against his protest, the legal-tender
system was fastened upon the country, and now he is op
posed to abolishing it just at the. tirae when its continu
ance is a matter of necessity, and is demanded by the
highest public considerations. But more of this anon. It
is safer now to go through the stream we have entered
than to turn back ; the path of safety is on the opposite
shore. We have omitted to state that Mr. Pendleton, at
this session of Congress, was appointed upon the Judiciary
Comraittee, by Speaker Grow, which was one of the most
iraportant committees in the House, and was unusually so
at that period. In the fall of 1862, the Congressional
elections again recurred. There was apparently but little
prospect for the re-election of Mr. Pendleton.

THE ELECTIONS OF 1861-62— ME, PENDLETON'S FODETH
ELECTION,
The war excitement — which had been unscrupulously
seized hold of by the Republicans to effect their party
purposes ; the establishment of a reign of terror through
out the land, either by mob violence or by arbitrary action
of the Governraent, not the less illegal ; the kidnapping
and deportation by military power of many citizens to Gov
ernment bastiles ; the suspension of the writ of habeas cor
pus ; the denial of the right of trial by jury; the general
and abusive cry of "copperhead and traitor" — had seri-

GEORGE H. PENDLETON. 47
ously affected the Democratic organization, almost crushed
it, in many of the States.
In the October election of 1861, the Democrats had been
beaten in Ohio by 55,000 majority, Mr. Pendleton's district
also going strongly Republican.
Bat the Democracy determined on making a gallant
fight, and, in the summer of 1862, they again nominated
Mr. Pendleton, for the fifth time, for Congress. In the
other Hamilton county district the Democrats nominated
Alexander Long. In order to make sure of the defeat of
Mr. Pendleton, the Republican Legislature, in the winter
of 1861-62, had "gerrymandered" the State in a new
arrangement of Congressional districts. They had de
tached the Seventh Ward of Cincinnati, which was strongly
Republican, from the western district of Hamilton county,
where, as they supposed, they had a large majority to spare,
and added it to Mr. Pendleton's district, where they thought
they were more in need of it. They nominated, against Mr.
Pendleton, Col. John Groesbeck, brother of Hon. Wra. S.
Groesbeck, and the Colonel of the Thirty-ninth Ohio
Regiment. Every effort that ingenuity could devise was resorted
to in order to defe.at Mr. Pendleton. Money flowed like
water against him ; the Government used all its mighty pow
ers in the same direction. His war record was attacked,
and he was in general misrepresented most scandalously.
But he took the stump, made a vigorous canvass, and was
ably seconded by his colleague, Mr. Long.
The result of the election astounded both parties. Mr.
Pendleton was elected by 1,300 majority, the largest major
ity he had ever received.
Mr. Long was also elected by 120 majority. The Ward
which had been detached from his district gave 300
majority against Mr. Pendleton. It did not defeat the
latter, but was the raeans of electing Mr. Long.
Thus the unscrupulous greed of the Republicans to carry

48 LIFE 'AND SPEECHES OF
the First, had caused them to lose the Second District.
They were like the dog in the fable, who, in crossing a
stream, dropped the meat in his mouth in order to get the
shadow which he saw reflected in the water beneath.
In the State the result was equally astonishing. The
Republicans had fixed up the districts in such a manner
as to carry seventeen, as they thought, out of the nine
teen members of Congress. But they only carried five
merabers, to the Democrats fourteen, and the Democratic
State ticket was chosen by 8,000 majority. This was
quite a change from the Republican majority of 65,000 the
year before. Other State elections went in the same
direction, and the banner of Democracy was victorious in
all the large Northern States. It appeared probable, at the
close of 1862, that the Democracy would have a majority
in the House of Representatives at Washington. Under
this impression, Mr. Pendleton's name was prominently
mentioned in many Democratic ptipers as a candidate for
Speaker. But the spring elections of 1863 were not so
encouraging, and the result was, the Republicans carried
the House by a sraall majority. Mr. Pendleton took his
seat in the new Congress in December, 1863, this being the
comraenceraent of his fourth Congressional terra, upon the
fifth nomination he had received. So many nominations
and elections, is a dggree of public favor which the
Northern Democracy have rarely accorded to any of their
members. In the winter of 1862, an event occurred in the military
department of the South-west which attracted the attention
of the people, as being one of the greatest outrages, and
most high-handed acts of despotism which had ever been
performed in this or any other country. It was a military
order issued by Gen. U. S. Grant, banishing all " Jews" who
were within his army lines from them. The pretense was,
that some Jews had disobeyed the regulations of the Treas
ury Department, and instead of punishing the few who may

GEORGE H. PENDLETON, 49
have been guilty, he involved all who happened to belong
to that religion, whether innocent or not, in one sweeping
proscription. The Order resembled some imperial edict,
issued by a despot of the dark ages, raore than an Order of
an Araerican General. It indicated that Grant was so full
of prejudice and hatred against the "Jews," that he was
ready, on the slightest occasion, to drive them all from the
country. We give here a copy of that famous Order,
which will ever accompany Grant's name to posterity :

NTH Army Corps, ]
3 Tknnessee, i-
i., Dec. 17, 1862. j

Headquarters Thirteenth Army Corps, "
Depautme.m of the '"
Oxford, Miss.,
General Order No, 11.]
The Jews, as a class, violating every regulation of trade established
by the Treasury department, also department orders, are hereby
expelled from the department within twenty four hours from the
receipt of this Order by post commanders;
They will see that all this class of people are furnished with
passes and required' to leave; and any one returning after .such no
tification, will be arrested and held in confinement until an oppor
tunity occurs for sending them out as prisoners, unless furnished
with permits from these headquarters.
No passes will he given this people to visit headquarters for the
purpose "f tuakiug personal applications for trade permits.
By order of Major-General Grant.
JOHN A. EAWLTNS,
Assistant Adjutant-General.
Oflicial: J. Lovell, Captain and Assistant Adjutaut-GeneraL
When the news of this order reached Washington, George
H. Pendleton, then being a member of the House, ofi'ered
the following resolutions:
Whereas, On the 17th day of December, 1862, Major-General
Grant, commanding the Department of the Tennessee, did publish
the foUowingOrder, to-wit: £Here followed the above order, verbatim,]
and in pursuance thereof did cause many residents in said depart
ment to be expelled therefrom within twenty-four hours, without
allegation of special misconduct on their part, and on no other proof
than that they were mem bers of a certain religious denomination ; and,
3

50 LIFE AND speeches OT
Whereas, The. said Order, in its sweeping condemnation of a
whole class of citizens, without discrimination between the guilty and
¦ the innocent, is illegal and unjust, and in its execution is tyrannical
and cruel ; therefore.
Resolved, That the said Order deserves the sternest condemnation
of this House, and of the President, the Commander-in-chief"
But in that partisan House, the resolution was defeated.
EXCLUSION OF NEWSPAPERS FROM THE MAILS.
At an early period in the war, the Administration re
sorted to the extraordinary and unheard of tyranny of
ordering Postmasters to exclude frora circulation and dis
tribution in the United States raails, such newspapers in
the North as were opposed to its war policy. There
were no military operations going on in the North, and the
tyrannical measure did not even have the miserable plea
of military necessity to sustain it. It was an act of pure,
unmixed despotism, which would have .jeopardized the
head of any Cabinet Minister in Great Britain who had
resorted to it.
On March 3, 1863, Mr. Pendleton delivered an excel
lent speech against this oppression. We will here quote
an extract or two from this capital .speech, in wdiich he
most eloquently alluded to the whole doctrine of martial
law superseding the civil, outside of the army lines. He
said :
Martial law ! Its very definition is that it overrides and destroys
the civil law, and substitutes the arbitrary will of the commander.
The war power! It has no being outside of the lines of the army,
and of the railitary and naval service. They are the law of force.
They have no sanction except power. They are the voice of the
bayonet and the cannon, not the echo of the popular a.«seiit. Resist
ance is wrong, only because it is feeble. Opposition is reprehensi
ble, only because it is impotent. They have no place in Ihe consti
tution of a free government. They have no support in the affections of
a free people They areas unnecessary as they are illegal. They have
no room for existence, except where civil institutions are suspended,
where civil righta are denied, where arbitrary power takes the place

GEORGE H. PENDLETON. 51
of legal discretion, where redress is at the will of the same person
who committed the offense — where free government is destroyed,
and the rights, duties, interests of all men are subjected to the will
of one man. Their very life aud being consists in destroying every
vestige of constitutional liberty and popular rights.
What martial law may do, it behooves rae not now to inquire It
may do all that the military commander requires, all that he has
the power to accomplish. It may suppress newspapers ; it may ex
clude them from the mails; it may deny freedom of speech; it may
arrest without warrant ; it may hold without trial; it may punish
without conviction ; it may do all these things if it have the power
to execute them.
Martial law I The war power! Military necessity I As those
terms are used to-day they have no lawful existence among us.
They abrogate and destroy the Constitution. They violate the whole
of it iu letter and spirit, in order that they may compel obedience to a
part. They are the devices of fanaticism — the flimsy pretexts under
which power conceals its aggressions — the specious names under
wliicli cowardice seeks to skulk from observation while it gratifies
its malignant rage. They are the inventions of despotic power, dis
torted from their original purpose by a party distressed and battled by
the humiliations of a war which it had not the virtue to prevent, and
has not the ability to manage; the insufficient cloak with whicii it
seeks to cover, as it were, with the mantle of constitutionality, the
efforts of despairing and impotent wrath. Powers thus usurped will
have but a brief and profitless day. They depend upon (brce, Itia
lawful to resist them by force. It may become wisdom and patriot
ism to resist them by superior force. After much long suffering,
"resistance to tyrants is obedience to God."
The committee ventures the opinion that "the present unhappy
condition of the country has been, and now is being, prolonged by
divisions and dissensions in the Northern States." That is not the
subject of inquiry, nor yet within the line of this argument. But
grant that it is true; who caused the divisions? Who created the
dissensions ? Who have had unlimited power ? Who have wasted
the strength, and wealth, and affections of a whole people, which
were lavished upon tliem without stint? Who have repelled and
dissipated the zeal and ardor which animated a whole people in the
cause intrusted to their care? Who have perverted the war from
the objects and purposes avowed so constantly in the beginning?
WJio have adopted a policy in its prosecution so often and so
indignantly repudiated at the first? Who have made shipwreck of
personal liberty, free speech, free press, trial by jury, a perfect Union,

52 HFE AND SPEECHES OP
domestic tranquillity, the general welfare? When the history of
these sad times shall be truly written, and the impartial judge,
agreeing with the committee that "the unhappy condition of the
country has been prolonged by dissensions in the North,'' shall
make inquiry of the cause, he will find tliat the men who are in
public places to-day had not the virtue to be the faithful servants of
a free people, nor yet the power to be their masters.
THE NEGRO QUESTION IN THE WAR— MR, PENDLE
TON'S ACTION.
We must now look backward for a few months, and ob
serve the relation the question of slavery was sustaining
to the war. Two years before it commenced, the leading
Abolitionists had been for a dissolution of the Union,
and had labored to eifect it, in order to escape any further
connection of a political character with slavery. After
the war commenced, they took no interest in it, except
so far as they thought it would destroy slavery. They
were not for preserving the Union, unless it could be
done by the overthrow of that institution. If that
object could not be accomplished, they were for recog
nizing the Southern Confederacy. It was soon evident
that Mr. Lincoln and his Cabinet had strong abolition
synipathies, and that they would turn the war into a crusade
against slavery. But, for a time, they concealed this pur
pose, and made professions of an intention not to inter
fere with the institution of slavery in the seceded States.
In September, 1862, the thin mask was thrown oif. Mr.
Lincoln, by an edict from Washington that sounded like
the ukase of a Russian Czar, declared slavery abolished
in all the seceded States on the 1st of January, 18(i3.
Thus, by a stroke of the pen, he sought to accomplish that,
the power to do which was not vested by the Constitution,
either in him or in Congress, or in both combined. This
action was iraraediately followed by the reraoval of Gen.
McClellan and Gen. Buel, conservative commanders East
and West, whom it was believed could not be safely trusted

GEORGE II. PENDLETdN. 53
to convert the war from a strife for the Union to negro a
emancipation, in the form in which it was desired by the
Administration. As a military measure, nothing could
have been more inexpedient. It converted thousands of
staunch Union men in the border slave States — such as Ken
tucky, Maryland, Missouri, Delaware — into lui<e-wariu
friends or determined secessionists. It united the South
as one man, and rendered thera desperate. It gave of
fense to a powerful sentiment in the North which was in
favor of a war for the Union, but not a war for the de
struction of slavery. We gained no negro soldiers by it,
since it was a dead-letter everywhere beyond our mili
tary lines. Mr. Pendleton was warmly opposed, to this
negro crusade, in common with every other Democrat,
Conservative, and moderate Republican.
ENLISTMENT OF NEGRO TROOPS.
On the 31st of January, 1863, a bill was introduced to
enlist negro soldiers. Mr. Pendleton opposed it in a few
well-chosen remarks. He said :
Nor is it entirely certain that the exigencies of the country re
quire a resort to measures of this kind, A contrary opinion has
been very gravely expressed. During this session, not longer-ago
than the early part of December, the gentleman from Vermont [Mr,
Morrill] offered a resolution in these words ;
"Resolved, That at no time since the commencement of the exist
ing rebellion have the forces and materials in the hands of the
Executive department of the Government been so ample and abund
ant for the speedy and triumphant termination of the war as at
the present moment."
For this resolution every leading member of the Republican party
voted — in fact every member of that party who was present — and
none more eagerly and with more emphasis than those who now
most zealously press this bill. Have circumstances so greatly
changed? Have those forces and materials been so greatly and so
speedily diminished ; or has the desire to pass this bill made gentle-
men change their opinion ?

51 LIFE AND SPEECHES OP
After showing that it would lead to negro political, if
not social equality, and that was an object with the sup
porters of this measure, he proceeded to say :
Mr, Speaker: When I was interrupted by the gentleman from
Massachusetts, I was asking why it was that reverses had continued
almost without interruption within the limits of this circle around
Washington; why the credit of this Government is so weak; why
its legal-tender notes and its promises-to-pay are so much below
par in the city of New York? Is it because there is not iu the
States remaining steadfast to the Union ability to pay the debt
which lias been incurred? Is it because their gigantic strength
trembles already under this load? Is it because we have not the
resources in our soil and in the hardy virtues of our people to main
tain, even yet, the credit of this Government ? No, sir; it is because
of the profound impression on the public mind, which, here witliin
the limits of the city of Washington, or rather within the limits of
the country around it, extends to the army, that the Adrainistration
participates in the sentiment of the gentleman frora Pennsylvania
[Mr, Stevens], that he will never conseiU to the restoration of the
Union under the Cunstituiion as it is.
Sir, it is this which produces profound discontent throughout the
whole country. It is this which has caused resistance to the draft.
It is this which has prevented volunteers from flocking to your
standards. It is this, sir, which to-day produces that cry for peace
which rises from every section of the country. Sir, I represent
upon this floor a city which is devoted to tlie preservation of thi_s
Union ; a city whose affection's are bound up in the memories of its
past, and in the anticipations of its future; a city whose material
interests would hear their death-knell in the word which speaks a
separation of the slaveholding and non-slaveholding States; a city
bound to the people of the great North-west by every tie of interest
and sympathy and affection ; whose heart throbs with their heart,
and beats responsive to all their hopes and fears; and I should be
false to every duty as its representative here ; false to you, my fellow-
Representatives, if I did not tell you that there is an impression
growing with great rapidity upon the mind of the people of the
North-west that they have- been deliberately deceived into this war:
that their patriotism and their love of country have been engaged
to call them into the army undd!" the pretense that the war was to
be for the Union and the Constitution, when, in fact, it was to be an
armed crusade for the abolition of slavery. I tell you, sir, that

GEORGE H. PENDLETON. 55
unless this impression is speedily arrested it will become universal ;
it will ripen into conviction, and theu it will be beyond your power
to get from their broad plains another man, or from their almost
exhausted coffers another dollar.
I know that gentlemen will say that this is sympathy with seces
sion ; that these sentiments can not be entertained by loyal men.
Gentlemen, hug not to yourselves that delusion until it is too late to
save the Republic — until it is too late to maintain the integrity of
this Union, whicli, with the gentleman from .Massachusetts [Mr.
Thomas], I love with all my heart, and of which I hope to die a
citizen. You may carry your present policy so fa/ that either retreat
or safety will be beyond your power. ******
* * * * The only bonds which can hold these
States in confederation, the only ties which can make us one people,
are the soft and silken cords of affection and interest. These are
woven in peace, not war; in conciliation, not coercion; in deeds of
kindness and acts of friendly sympathy, not in deeds of violence and
blood. The people of the North-west were carried, away by the
excitement of April and May. They believed that war would
restore the Union. They trusted to the assurances of the President
and his Cabinet, and of Congress, that it should be carried on for
that purpose alone. They trusted that it would be carried on under
the Constitution. They were patriotic and confiding. They sent
their sons and brothers and husbands to the army, and poured out
their treasures at the feet of the Administration. They feel that
the war has been perverted from this end; that the Constitution has
been disregarded; that abolition and arbitrary power, not Union
and constitutional liberty, are the governing ideas of the Adminis
tration. They are in no temper to be trifled with. They think they
have been deceived. They are suffering from the death of relatives
and friends. They are longing for peace. Thei-e is danger of revo
lution. There is danger that they may see no extrication from
present difficulties but in separation, I warn you of it now ; I warn
you in time. If you would avoid it you must reverse this whole
policy; you must return instantly and pursue steadfastly tha prin
ciples you professed in the beginning. Vou must add to them a
faithful observance of the Constitution ; a sacred respect for the
personal rights of the citizen; an absolute refusal to usurp power
under any pretense whatsoever. You must manifest your purpose to
maintain in all their integrity the States of the Union. You must
invite back within the bonds of the Federal Union, with every right
untouched, with every social institution unimpaired, e::icept, indeed,
by the mere ravages of war, those States vvhich have left ue. This

56 LIFE AND SPEECHES OF
bill is inconsistent with such a purpose. It will, if passed and car
ried out, render union impossible It may, if your highest hopes
are realized, maintain the integrity of your territory, but the Union
of your States will be gone forever My friend from Ohio [Mr,
Trimble] said that of all things it was most de.sirable we should
have unity in our councils. You can not have unity wliile you
press measures like these. Co-operation with you is treason to the
country. Before you ask for unity, return to your avowed purpose
and policy in carrying on the war.
There is not'the least doubt that, if these views of Mr.
Pendleton had been ado|)ted, the war would have been
shortened, tens of thousands of lives would have been
saved, and that we should have avoided the troubles which
are now upon us, in a ruined South — ruined by negro dom
ination — and a disorganized Government.
THE ELECTION OF 1863 IN OHIO.
It was hoped that the defeats which the Adtninistration
had sustained in the great States of the North would check
these usurpations, and render thera more careful, iu the
future, of intrenching upon the rights of the States and
the people. But such hopes were disappointed. They
became more desperate than before, and the war assumed
a darker hue. In April, 186-3, Gen. Burnside, whose inca
pacity had caused the butchery of a great army at Fred
ericksburg, Virginia, was appointed to the command of the
Department of the Ohio. He immediately issued his cele
brated Order, called "No. 38," which threatened with im
prisonment and death everybody who uttered sentiments in
relation to the war which he chose to regard as disloyal. He
was not long in selecting a victim, and that victim was the
Hon. C. L. Vallandigham. For some temperate strictures he
had made in a public speech at Mount Vernon, Ohio, in
1863, Mr. Vallandigham was kidnapped froin his home in
Dayton. His house was broken in by armed force, and he

GEOKGB H. PENDLETON. 57
was brought to Cincinnati and lodged in a military bastile.
Fearing the intention was to take his life, which would have
been pure and simple murder, Mr. Pendleton, Mr. Wash
ington McLean, and other leading Democrats, interested
themselves to prevent the atrocity, and, finally, it was so
mitigated by President Lincoln as to banish him to the South
during the war. But, by good management, he escaped, and
soon after left the South, by running the blockade, and
proceeded to Canada. A reign of terror was sought to be
produced. The Democratic press was muzzled. The
Cincinnati Enquirer was compelled to submit its articles
to the supervision of Burnside. Many other military ar
rests, as kidnapping was then called, were made. The
tyranny became insupportable. A Democratic State Con
vention was called at Columbus. It was attended by
thousands. Mr. Vallandigham was unanimously nomi
nated for Governor of the State, amid the wildest cheers
and acclamations. Hon. Geo. E. Pugh was nominated for
Lieutenant-Governor. He made a bold, vigorous, eloquent
speech, in which he defied and spit upon " Order No.
38," and urged everybody to do likewise. He entered the
political canvass in all parts of the State, and was ably
assisted by Mr. Pendleton, Judge Thurman, and others.
The result was that " Order No. 38" was a dead-letter in
Ohio thenceforward, and the Democracy asserted their
rights as freemen. Mr. Vallandigham, although an exile,
received more votes than would have sufficed to elect him
Governor at any previous election. Yet he was declared
bea'ten by 101,000 votes. The vote polled for John Brough,
Mr. Vallandigham's opponent, was 25,000 more than Lin
coln received the next year. The soldier vote in the
camps being given under military tyranny, and without
any checks, was a gross and miserable farce.
On the 29th of February, 1864, Mr. Pendleton offered
the following resolution :

58 LIFE AND SPEECHES OF
Resolved, That the military arrest without civil warrant, and trial
by Military Commission, of Clement L, Vallandigham, a citizen of
Ohio, not iu the land or naval forces of the United States, or in the
militia in actual service, by order of General Burnside, and his sub
sequent banishment, by order of the President, executed by military
force, were acts of mere arbitrary power, in palpable violation' of tlie
Constitution aud laws of the United States.
This very proper resolution was rejected.
On the 4th of July of this year (1863), a year rendered
ever meraorable by its violations of all the principles which
make the iraraortal Declaration of 1776 illustrious, the
Deraooracy held a great celebration of the original instru
ment, at the Academy of Music, in the city of New York.
Among the orators of the day were Governor Horatio
Seymour, George H. Pendleton, and others, who, in eloquent
and able addresses, strove to arouse the people to a sense
of their true condition, and to bring them back to the old
status of the Declaration and the Constitution.
ME, PENDLETON'S POSITION IN THE HOUSE,
In the new, or Thirty-eighth Congress, Mr. Pendleton
was selected by Speaker Colfax as a Democratic member
of the Committee of Ways and Means, the great corarait
tee to which was intrusted the raanageraent of the immense
financial affairs of the Governraent. Of this committee,
Mr. Pendleton was a working member, and enjoyed, in a
full degree, the confidence of his political opponents.
They had previously raanifested, in 1861, this confidence
by appointing him as one of the committee of managers
to impeach Judge Humphreys, of Tennessee, for disloy
alty, he having thrown up his position as United States
District Judge in Tennessee, and accepted a similar ap
pointment un<ler the Confederacy. Mr. Pendleton's col
leagues were Messrs. Bingham, of Ohio, and Train, of

GEORGE H. PENDLETON. 59
Massachusetts. The impeachment lasted but one day, and
ended in the convi.ction of the Judge, and his dismissal
from office.
MR. PENDLETON'S PERSONAL RELATIONS IN CONGRESS.
Although Mr. Pendleton differed warmly with the Ad
ministration and its adherents in Congress — although,
upon all important occasions, he was constrained, by a
sense of duty, to oppose all their leading measures — yet
he is not one of those who make of political hostility a
cause of personal bitterness and unkindness. He is too
liberal and tolerant for that, and makes the proper al
lowance for the infirmities of humanity. Thus, when
Hon. Owen Lovejoy, member of the House from Illinois,
died, in March, 18B4, there was no one who paid a higher
tribute or made' a more discriminating notice of him than
Mr. Pendleton. He was one of the most ultra Radicals
in the House. We here quote Mr. Pendleton's beautiful
remarks :
Me. Speaker: After friends and relatives have strewn with
flowers the new-made and still open grave, it is permitted to
acquaintances, and even to strangers, to approach the narrow tene
ment where lies wrapped in the cold embrace of deatli the human
form, lately all instinct with the impulses of vigorous life. It is a
custora which has grown up in tenderi consideration of our frail
humanity. It enables the living to pay a silent, and, therefore,
honest tribute to the qualities of the departed. It enables the dead,
at the last hour of their stay on earth, even though unconsciously,
to do that which might well consummate the perfect work of a use
ful life; to point the living to that grave to whicii we are all ha.sten-
ing. So now, sir, after these friends have strewn this bier with
roses, made fragrant by their affections, I, comparatively a stranger,
approach this mystery of death to pay my tribute\and to receive my
admonition, I have served with Mr. Lovejoy since he first entered
Congress, I never met him off this floor. I never met him in
social life. I differed radically with all his opinions on piililio
affairs. I can not speak of his personal qualities; I can not follow
him into the circle ofhis friends; I can not follow him into the more
sacred circle of domestic life. Sir, I knew him upon the arena of

60 LIFE AKD SrEEOilES OF
this floor, and here I knew him well. I had seen him in all the
vicissitudes of poUtical life, I had seen hira wli,en his party upon
this floor was in a great minority, and he the leader of the smallest
section of that party. I had seen hiin when parties were so nearly
equally divided that, after two months' stormy struggle, we were un
able to elect a" Speaker; and I saw him afterward, when his party
was largely in the majority, and when he, with a few active friends,
led the van in exploring those pathways which his party was des
tined so soon to tread.
He was a prompt and ready debater; he was an active and vigor
ous thinker; he was a brave and bold apostle of the faith which he
held. What he said, he thought; what he thought, he seemed to
believe in the inmost recesses of his soul; what he believed, he
uttfered, and what he uttered, he was prepared at all times to defend
with all the powers that God had given him. He seemed to be
overcome by the strength of his convictions. He was too intense
to be always fair; he was too ardent to be always just; he was too
thoroughly convinced of his own opinions to be jalways correct.
But it was the very strength of his convictions which made hira
self-reliant and self confident, and it was his entire self-reliance which
made him always logical in his positions, always candid, frank, out
spoken in their expression, and bold, determined, zealous, and con
stant in their defense.
Sir, this is the tribute which I would lay upon this bier. We saw
him in the early portion of this session, apparently with the pros
pect of a long life; soon we heard he was upon a bed of sickness;
then we saw what I think has never been seen before in this House :
an absent raember, sick upon his bed, send his argument on a ques
tion of pending legislation, which, by the consent of the House, was
read from th-e Clerk's desk. A little while more, and we saw him
upon the floor of this House, convalescing, as many hoped, to a
long and vigorous life. And still a little while, and we are called
to follow him to the dark and silent tomb. Sir, let us do it so
tiionghtfuUy, so solemnly, so reverently, that even in this din of
life, in the secret recesses of the heart of each one of us, may be
heard the echoes of the voice of his disembodied spirit, as it comes
to us through the portals of the eternal world: "Be ye also ready;
for in such an hour as ye think not, the Son of Man cometh."
RESOLUTION FOE THE EXPULSION OF MR, LONG— VIN
DICATION OF THE FREEDOM OF DEBATE,
We now corae to one of the most extraordinary scenes
ever enacted in the Araerican Cons^ress. It was no less

GEOKGE II. PENDLETON. 61
than a resolution to expel Mr. Pendleton's colleague from
Hamilton county, Hon. Alexander Long, from his seat in
the House, for the enunciation of sentiments in regard to
the war that were distasteful to the majority in the House.
It was not pretended that he had uttered language that
was personal or indecorous, or that in any way infringed
upon the decorum of debate. Yet immediately after he
had taken his seat, on April 8, 1864, Mr. Speaker Colfax,
now thp Radical candidate for Vice-President, left his seat
in the chair, and offered a resolution for his expulsion,
being ambitious, apparently, of the honor of connecting
his narae with-the overthrow of the freedom of debate. In
order to understand Mr. Pendleton's speech in Mr. Long's
defense, we will give some extracts from Mr. Long's
.jspeech, which drew upon him the censure of Mr. Colfax
and his confederates. Plere they are :
But, Mr. Chairman, how do we stand in tbe eyes of the civilized
world to-day, in waging a war of subjugation and conquest against
the Confederate States, which have seceded from us and set up a
governraent of their own ? Are we not inconsistent with all our for
mer acts ? Have we not been early to admit this proper with regard
to others? There never was a people on the face of the earth that
demanded an independent government, that did not have the sympa
thy of the American people ; and ought we now to shrink from the
doctrine we have been so willing to apply to others? My earliest
recollection is tlie appeal made by Clay and 'Webster in behalf of
Greece, in 1824, when they so eloquently declaimed in that behalf
on this floor, and in the other branch of Congress. Whether itwas
Greece, or the States of South America, or Poland, or Hungary, or
Italy, or Ireland, the fact that a large country, for any cause, de"
manded a distinct and separate government, always received the
warmest sympathy and support of the American people, irrespective
of party.
Even as late as December, 1860, after Mr, Lincoln was elected, and
after the preliminary steps for secession had been taken, the paper
having the largest circulation of any in the Republican party, and
haviuf more influence than any other in tbe formation of Republican
opinion, declared that it could see no reason why, if three millions
of colonists could separate from the British Crown in 1776, that five

62 LIFE AND SPEECHES OF
millions of Southerners could not separate from us in 1861. I liave
been as much puzzled as the distinguished liepubllcan editor, Mr.
Greeley, to find, looliing at it in a revolutionary right, the difl'erence
in position.
Ought we to slirink from the application of a doctrine to ourselves,
¦which we have been so willing to apply to other nations, such as
Austria, Eussia and Spain ; il' we do, what will be the judgment of
impartial history? How much better it would have been for us,
and for the cause of Democracy tliroughout the globe. What a splen
did tribute it would have been to a Republican Government, if we
had parted In peace with our dissatisfied sister States, as Mr. Everett
recommended as late as February, 1861, sustained by sucli leading
Kepublican journals as the Cincinnati Commercial, New York Tri
bune, Indianapolis Journal, Cliicago Tribune, New Haven (Conn.)
Palladium, Columbus Journal, and Sahnon P. Chase, now iSecretary
of the Treasury, and many otliers of that school. What in mon
archical countries had required a long and bloody war, uould have
been accomplished by DeiiiocrHtic principles and a Ri-publican sense.
of justice. What a. splendid proof it would have afforded of tlie
capacity of the people I'or self-government ! What a valuable lesson
it would have conveyed to the whole civilized world! The fact that
we could rise superior to all prejudices and pas.'^ions, and to have
conquered ourselves, would have been the highest triumph that we
had ever achieved,
I regret as much, Mr. Chairman, as any gentleman upon this
floor, that any of our sister States should have desired to cut asun
der the ligaments that bound them to us. None would be more wil
ling than myself to make any reasonable sacrifice to induce them to
return to their partnership with us; butstill recognizing the truth of
the doctrine taught by the Fathers of the Republic, and so fairly ex
pressed by Mr. John Quincy Adams, that our government was, after
ail. In the heart, and that it would be better, severe as would be the
pang of regret, to part in friendship rather than to liold sovereign
States pinned to ns by the bayonet, as Mr. Greeley expressed it in
1861. What advance have we made in the science and principles
of governments, Mr. Chairman, if we can not rise above tlie Austro-
Russian principle of holding subject provinces by the power of force
and coercion ? What becomes of the Declaration of Independence,
and of all our teachings for eighty years ?
After all, Mr. Chairman, it is not the extent of territory which
should be the object of our desires, Better sacrifice over nine-tenths
of the territory than destroy our republican form of government
What our people desired in 1861, and which I honored, though I

GEORGE H. PENDLETON. 63
regarded as mistaken, was the preservation of the Government and
the retention of our jurisdiction over the whole, territory. They
were rightly willing to sacrifice every material consideration for
that purpose. Land is nothing, Mr, Chairman, compared to liberty.
We existed as a Republic when the mouth of the Mississippi was
held by a foreign power, when we had nothing west of that river,
when Florida was held against us; and we could exist again if, by
the chastisement of Heaven, we should be curtailed to our old ter
ritorial dimensions. For fifteen millions of dollars we purchased the
whole of that immense territory, and were it a hundred thousand
times as valuable, its preservation would not be worth our admirable
form of government Pride of territorial ambition is a vulgar and
low ambition of national greatness. Russia, and even China, can
vie with us in that, but who would not rather reside in one of the
cantons of Switzerland, or in Great Britain, than in those countries?
It is not in the extent of territory that we possess, but in the man
ner in which we govern it that renders us respectable. Many gen
tlemen seem rather to look to the quantity than the quality. All
republics have been destroyed by the thirst of territoral aggrandize
ment and the lust of conquest. 'I'he great object of our. Government
should be to develop and cultivate the internal resources of those
friendly to its jurisdiction, rather than to extend it over hostile and
sovereign people. j
The resolution to expel Mr. Long for uttering these
sentiments, being under discussion, April 11, 1864, Mr.
Pendleton addressed the House, and made an eloquent
speech, which we will give entire, as it relates to a subject
of permanent interest. He said :
Mr Speaker: I have purposely refrained till this moment from
taking part in this discussion. I desired to wait until gentlemen
upon this side and upon the other side of the Chamber sliould have
said all they thought proper to say by way of criticism on the speech
of my friend and colleague [Mr. Long], I desired that gentlemen
upon the other side of the Chamber, the gentleman from Maryland
[Mr, Davis], my two colleagues from Ohio [Mr Schenck and Mr.
Spalding], and the gentlemen from Indiana [Mr. Orth and Mr.
Dumont], should have poured out the vials of their wrath upon the
Democratic party. I desired that the vocabulary of invective and
vituperation should be entirely exhausted. I knew it was inevitable,
I desired that the gentleman from Kentucky [Mr, Smith] should

64 LIFE AND SPEECHES OF
have made his speecli, in which, though it was an hour long, he did
not once allude to the question which is pending, I desired that all
the false issues should have been made, tliaftvery attempt to draw
off attention from the only question before us should have been fully
tried, and then I intended to ask the House to come back to the con
sideration of this resolution,
I, sir, shall not follow those gentlemen, I shall reply to none of
their partisan criminations. They do not touch the marrow of this
question. They are unworthy of the dignity of this debate, I shall
not express my opinion as to the soundness or unsoundness of the
vievvs of my colleague, I will be led into no false issues; I will be
diverted in no respect from the question before us. Its solution de
pends in no degree upon the opinion of any gentleman as to the
soundness of the views of my colleague, or as to the wisdom or
propriety of their utterance at this time.
This question rises to a higher dignity. It is important to my
colleague personally; it is important to every meraber of this House
in his personal relations; but it is far more important inasmuch as
it touches the organization of this House, the organization of the
Government itself I shall, therefore, neither participate in partisan
discussion nor retort the partisan allusions which have been made.
I shall confine myself, as nearly as I can, lo the question involved
in the resolution of the Speaker, I shall ¦,endeavor to rise to the
hight of this great subject, and if I shall not be able to do justice
to the argument, I wdl at least do justice to myself and to my own
appreciation of the spirit in which it ought to be discussed. And as
I shall not discuss the soundness of the views of my colleague, so I
desire to say that no person who has spoken had authority to do so
for me, I shall not in this debate assent to nor dissent from those
views, I have attended no caucus called either to indorse or repudi
ate them, I do not know that any such has been held; certainly
none lias been held with my concurrence.
Where are we? In a deliberative assembly whose chief function
is discussion. Why were we brought here ? Primarily that we
might represent the views of our constituents; and next, that by
comparison of opinions, by argument, by persuasion, by addressing
the reason and consciences of each other, we might be brought into
accord and devise a system of legislation which would contribute to
the welfare of the people, and, by consequence, to the perpetuation
and the glory of the Government. What questions are brought
before us? What questions are now pending upon your table?
Conscription, confiscation, taxation, recruiting, the reconstruction of
State governraents, and amendments of the Constitution, and undei^

GEORGE H. PENDLETON. 65
neath them all lies the great question of the further prosecution of
this war. The President of the United States, in his message at the
beginning of this session, told us that he had issued a proclamation
of emancipation, and that so long as he remained in his present
posidon he would neither recall nor modify it. And yet we all know
th.it proclamation is as worthless as the gentleman from Maryland
_[Mr. Davis] declared it to be — aa the paper on which it is written —
unless enforced by the power of our armies. The President told us
that he had issued a proclamation of amnesty, that those who will
take the oath of allegiance and swear obedience lo iiis proclamations
shall liave authority to reorganize the State governments, even
though they be but one-tenth part of the population, and that he will
maintain those State governments by all the power of our arms.
Following immediately upon the message came a call for tliree
hundred thousand men, and afterward a call for two hundred thou
sand more. As a direct consequence, inevitably, we have had con
scription bills, a deficiency bill of more than a hundred million
dollars, and regular appropriation bills for the army for $.iOO,000,-
OOU, for the navy $l.iU,OUO,000, and for miscellaneous purposes
$200,00U,00U more. Taxation is necessary to raise this money, and
we have tax bills. Loans are necessary, and we have loan hills.
Greed of gain must be satisfied, and we have confiscation bills.
Those bills are pending. They are before the House, My colleague
must consider them; he must vote upon them. His duty and his
oath require it. The solution of all these questions, the propriety
and necfjssity of passing these bills, depend upon the single question
whether or not this war shall be furtlier prosecuted, and if so, in
what manner and for what purpose? This lies at their very found
ation. It is the base of the pyramid of legislation which is sought
to be built up.
My colleague [Mr. Long] at the time appropriated for debates, at
the only time wlien by the rules he could do so, rose in this place and
decorously, decently — violating none of the proprieties of debate —
with calmness aud moderation and dignity, with a sincerity which
has not been questioned, appealing to God for the purity of hia
motives, and responsible to his constituents for the wisdom of his
view.s — proceeded to discuss that question, without the consideration
of whicii none of the measures now pending before you can be hon
estly developed or fairly decided.
He said that he believes this war to have been begun unconstitu
tionally, to have been prosecuted in an unwise and improper man
ner. He said that the experience of three years has led his mind to
the conclusion that it can never result in a restoration of the Union,

66 LIFE AND SPEECHES OF
but only in the destruction of our republican system at the North ;
that it ought to cease immediately, even at the expense of recog
nizing the independence of the Confederate States; and he enforced
his views by appeals to your reason, to your judgment, to-tlie high.
est niodvea by which legislators can be governed; he asked you to
weigh his arguments, and if you could honestly agree with him, to
assent to his conclusions. Will any gentleman tell nie that tills is
not legitimate debate? Will any gentleman tell me that these are
not legitimate considerations and pertinent to the matter belbre the
House ?
Mr, Speaker, I do not wish to be misunderstood. The House has
ample power to preserve decorum in debate. It has power to expel
a member who, by reason of crime or personal turpitude, has ren
dered himself unfit to perform the duties or enjoy the immunities of
niemhersliip; but, it is not within the constitutional power of the
House to expel a meraber for the expression of any opinion upon
any political question, when such expression of opinion is pertinent
to the mefisure before it. This doctrine is essential to the character
of this liouse as a deliberative body. If it were not so, we of the
minority would hold our opinions subject to the will of the majority.
We would be compelled, at the risk of being expelled from this
House, to express them in such delicate terms as would not offend
the sensitive organization of your loyalty. Sir, deliberation would
he a farce, discussion would be a sham, the pretense of debate ought
to be done away with, and this house assume its appropriate po
sition as a mere registry of the predetermined purposes and precon
ceived opinions of a raajority of its members.
And yet gentlemen will say, as they have repeatedly said, that
wdiile this freedom of debate ought to be allowed in time of peace,
when the country is in a state of profound repose, it must be cur
tailed when war exists, I take issue with them ori that point The
time of war is the very time when we should consider these ques
tions; then our highest wisdom should be invoked. When great
dangers threaten the Republic, the people, exasperated by the pas
sions which war excites, or alarmed at the impending peril, are
ready to surrender power into the hands of their rulers. They are
embarrassed, anxious, longing for peace, hoping success, fearing dis
aster. They can not bear the uncertainties of their condition ; they
desire more vigor, more efficiency, more rapidity of action, and they
believe they have attained them when they heap power on their
favorites. Then this House should exercise the largest liberty of
di.^cussion; then it should probe to the bottom the policies and mo
tives of parties and of men. Were it not so the condition of war

GEORGE H. PENDLETON. 67
would perpetuate itself^t would be eternal. It would be treason
able in any man to rise in his place and say that he was in favor of
peace upon any other terms than those upon which peace might
have been- originally maintained.
And why should there not be this free discussion ? We have lost
our true appreciation of the character of this body. We forget that
arguments are here addressed to each other We are so in the habit
of magnifying ourselves that we think every speech made in this
Hall will reach the ear of the country. That is a mistake. Debate
is for the members. It is for convincing the judgment and influ
encing the vote of members. The speech made by my colleague
[Mr. Long] was addressed to you. Are you afraid that his argu
ments will convince you? Are you afraid that they will persuade
you to vote with him? Were they so cogent that you fear to trust
yourselves? Are you afraid they will produce au effect upon
the people? Are you afraid to trust the people? Are you ah-aid to
trust the power which is behind you and which after two years will
fill your places on this floor? Why, I repeat, should this speech not
be heard? Gentlemen have said if — and if, and if — some great
harm might be done to the Government But has great harm
ever been done by the freedom of debate in this Hall? Have you
really any fear of results injurious to the country? Or is this only
a pretense under which is vailed your determination to gather in
and consolidate the opinion of the country, and prevent its wander
ing, in the least degree, from the paths in which you intend, if pos
sible, to conduct it?
I have said, Mr, Speaker, that the expression of an opinion in
this House, under the circumstances which I have described
proper in time, pertinent to the subject of discussion, is not the sub
ject of punishment. Over it the House has no power either of ex
pulsion or of censure or of criticism. Tlie history of this body, the
history of all free deliberative assemblies, with almost absolute uni
formity, shows that I am correct If there are exceptions they are
but mile-stones which mark the progress of free debate to its present
perfection. They point a moral — I beg gentlemen not to forget it
now. The gentleman from Maryland [Mr Davis] told us yesterday
that it was not for the expression of an opinion, not even for enter
taining it, that he proposed to exercise the punitive powers of the
House. He told us the existence of that opinion, and the evident
intention of carrying it into effect, by his votes on pending questions,
showed that my colleague was unfit to be a member of the House.
Indeed! is that true? I bad supposed opinions were for constit-

68 LIFE AND SPEECHES OF
uents. I had supposed that constituents were to decide whether
they were wise and sound. I had supposed that the Representative
spoke their voice; that his place upon this floor was their place, his
riglits, their rights, and that the immunities given to him were given
for their benefit and protection, and not for his own. The entertain
ing of an opinion and being willing to express it here!— it is that which
makes ray colleague an unworthy raember of the House, is it? Suppose
his constituents send him back, will you again expel him? Will
you enact again the farce of the British House of Coraraons in the
case of Wilkes, and which, after years of trial, itwas obliged to give
up. Entertaining opinions makes him an unworthy member I Why,
sir, the opinions of one hundred thousand citizens are entitled to
your respect; they are entitled to be represented here whether you
respect them or not; and the man who is chosen to represent
them holds a seat here as your peer. When you expel him, you dis
franchise them. When you expel the Representative, you deprive
the constituents of their voice. And are they to be denied represen
tation here until they elect a man whom you may designate for
them? This question is not to be evaded. We are not to be led
from it by a false issue. We are not to be told this party or that
party is in the wrong, these conclusions or those conclusions are not
to be tolerated, I say this House of Representatives must — 1 speak
the word advisedly — must receive the member whom any constitu
ency elect to represent them.
The gentleman from Maryland [Mr Davis], having announced
his opinion of the course of my colleague, and the reason why he
should be punished, contented himself with citing two examples iu
whicli the House had exercised this power. One was the case of
the gentleman from Maryland [Mr, Harris], upon whom a vote of
censure was passed day liefore yesterday. This resolution was
moved by the gentleman from Illinois [Mr Washburne], who at
the tirae called the previous question. The gentleman from Mary
land [Mr. Davis] is too ranch of a lawyer to think that a case is of
much authority when it is decided without opportunity Ibr argu
ment. The other case, and the only other case to which he alluded,
was that of Mr, Giddings, In 1842 he introduced a resolution in
reference to the mutiny on the Creole, whereupon a gentleman rose
in h s place and moved that he be censured by the House, and he
was censured. Does the gentleman think that was a fair case in
which to exercise this power? Does he approve of the censure?
Does he believe the case was fairly within the jurisdiction of the
House ? If not, he will scarcely cite it as authority for the exercise
of the same power in this case.

GEORGE n. PENDLETON. 69
-The gentleman will pardon me if I say that he diminished very
much the force of his argument, when in conclusion lie told ua that
this was such a case that, with law or against law, under the Consti
tution or against the Constitution, he would expel my colleague. If
that be the position on which the resolution is placed, if that be the
ground upon which it is offered, if gentlemen abandon all pretense
that it is according to law, that it is according to the Constitution,
we will meet them on that ground also. For the present we prefer
to beUeve the House sits under the Constitution ; that it is organized
by the Constitution ; that it exercises functions which the Constitu
tion prescribes, and that its powers are limited by the Constitution.
My colleague from the Third district [Mr. Schenck] places his
support of this resolution upon another ground. He says that the
Constitution of the United States provides that for sentiments
uttered in this House no member shall be called in question in any
other place. Ay, it does; and then, as I would draw the conclusion,
the expression of an opinion in this House upon a subject of legis
lation is a fortiori, protected by the greatest sanctions. A member
shall not be called in question for a libel uttered upon this floor, nor
for any offense against private rights. He ia not to be intimidated
by fear of the law, whether invoked in the criminal or civil courts
of the country ; and, a fortiori, he is not to be called in question
here by the House itself for the free expression of opinion in fair
debate. You may punish a man for disorderly conduct in the presence of
the House. The Constitution expressly says so. There is the limit
to your power. You must bring the offense fairly within that
definition. The construction of those words is not to be too narrow.
Usage has given to them a very large scope; necessity, perhaps, has
compelled it; precedenthas confirmed it. Yet, after all, the offense,
unless it be a crime, must be brought fairly within the meaning of
those words. I take it upon myself to say that by no stretch of
the imagination can the decorous, candid, honest expression of
opinion upon a matter of legi.slation pending before the House be
construed into disorderly conduct.
Mr. Boutwell. If the gentleman will permit me to interrupt
hira, I desire to ask a single question forthe purpose of ascertaining
whether we understood him correctly. Did he say that the powei
under the Constitution to expel a member was limited to the cause
of disorderly conduct?
Mr. Pendleton. Yes sir; I said it was so limited. I said that
every case in which tlie power of censure or expulsion could be in
voked and exercised by the House for acts done in its presence, must

70 LIFE AND SPEECHES OF
bo brought by sorae latitude of construction, wliether more or less
broad, within a fair interpretation of the words " disorderly con
duct." Now, sir, just here I am reminded that two gentlemen from
Indiana and one gentleman from Maryland, undertook, yesterday,
to ask us what rights of free debate were enjoyed in the Congress at
Richmond, That, sir, is entirely immaterial to me, I do not
know. 1 do not propose to cite them as authority for any purpose,
I do not propose to limit or measure our rights of free debate by
any rule which they may adopt. It is nothing to me what their
rules allow or their practice tolerates. They may be as tyrannical
as the gentleman from Maryland or the gentleman from Indiana
would have us suppose them to be. They may be as tyrannical as
either of those gentlemen would make this House, Do you mean
to follow their example? Do you mean to make this House conform
in its rules of order and debate to the practice of the Congress in
Richmond ?
I said a moment ago that the uniform practice of deliberative
bodies sustained the position which I assumed, and that if there
were exceptions they were so distinct, so well known, that they
served only to mark the progress of legislative bodies toward the
perfection of free deliberation.
How was it when John Quincy Adams presented a petition in this
House for the dissolution of the Union ? I beg gentlemen to un
derstand that I do not introduce this example or others for the
purpose of comparing the views of my colleague with the views
which were then expressed, I adduce it merely as a striking illus
tration. That proposition went to the very foundation of the Gov
ernment It struck at the very root of the whole governmental
system. Tet not in deference to the opinions either of Mr, Adams
or the petitioners, but in deference to the right of freedom of .
debate, the House refused to censure him.
Mr, Washbukne, of Illinois, I do not know whether I under
stood the gentleman, I understood him to state that under the
Constitution, in his judgment, this House had no power to expel a
member except for disorderly conduct.
Mr. Pendleton. I will tell the gentleraan exactly what I said,
1 said that to give this House jurisdiction to expel a member for
acts done in its presence, the offense must, by a greater or less lati
tude of construction, be fairly brought within the meaning of the
expression "disorderly conduct"
Mr. Washbukne, of Illinois, I believe that in the last Congress
two gentlemen were expelled from this House, If I am not mis-

GEORGE H. PENDLETON. 71
taken, the gentleman from Ohio voted for their expulsion. Was
that for " di.-orderly conduct" in the House?
Mr. PiiNDLEi'ON. Who were they?
Mr Washburne, of Illinois. Mr Burnett and Mr. Reed.
Mr. Pendleton. I voted for their expulsion because they left
their places here and went into the armies of the Coulederates. Do
you not call that disorderly conduct?
Mr. Washburne, of Illinois, That ia the gentleman's definition
of disorderly conduct, and I accept it
Mr Garfield, I dislike to interrupt tbe gentleman, but I wish
to ask the gentleman a question, not to interfere with the course of
his argument, but to draw him out upon this subject Suppose I,
in a decorous manner, should rise in my place and introduce a reso
lution again.it the approaching campaign and plana of Grant about
to be adopted on the Potomac; suppose I, having knowled.L::e of
those plans, in support of my argument should tell what his plans
•vere in this House, should expose them, should state the nuraber
'f men; that one column was going in this direction and another
¦^ that; suppose I, by my speech, made in the most becoming man-
ler, aa far as style is concerned, should tell the entire plans and
operations of the campaign just about to commence, that would
not be discourteous or indecorous; yet I ask the gentleman if that
would be an offense for which I could be censureii or exp.lled ?
Mr, Pendleton. I will answer my colleague. If these facts and
details and plans were matter of public notoriety, it would be per
fectly right to, use them, and it would not be within the power of
the House to expel him for their use; if he went to the War De
partment and obtained the knowledge of the facts in confidence
from those charged wiih their execution, if he obtained tliem sur
reptitiously, if he obtained them as a member of Congress under
the seal of confidence whicii exists between otficers of the same
Government, and coming here, having a right to ask this House to
close its doors to receive a communication of that kind, he should
not do that, but eliould make his speech the means of couiinuni
eating information to the enemies of the country, it would be dis
orderly conduct in the highest possible degree.
I was about to say that Mr Adama, in 1842, presented a petition
for a dissolution of the Union. It was sent here from Haverhill,
Massachusetts Mr Adama presented it, and asked its reference to
a select committee, and immediately Mr Gilmer, of Virginia, and
eubaequently, Mr Marshall, of Kentucky, moved a resolution of
censure. I recollect the scene. I remember where the old man
stood iu yonder Hall. I recollect he rose in his place all trembling

72 LIFE AND SPEECHES OE
with excitement, and in one of those historic speeches which will
live as long as the history of the English language shall remain,
vindicated the right of the people to petition for a redress of their
grievances, and the right of Representatives to present their
petitions on this floor. And he argued the question against all
comers; the lists were kept open day by day, until, ashamed of the
efforts they had made to repress this freedom of debate in the
American Congress, the majority, who had at first persistently
refused, at last laid the resolution on the table.
Gentlemen will say to me this proposition to dissolve the Union
was made in time of peace, Thomas Corwin, in 1847, attacked the
Administration upon the policy, the conduct, the origin, and the
justness of the Mexican war. The majority did not agree with iiim;
they abhorred his views; but in deference to this great right of free
debate in a representative body they permitted it to pass uncensnred.
Again, sir, my venerable colleague on the Coinmittee of Ways
and Means [Mr. Stevens, from Pennsylvania,] said, from his place in
this House, on the 9th of December, 1862, upon the question of the
admission of West \'irginia:
"Now, these rebellious States being a power by the acknowledg
ment of European nations and of our own nation, subject and enti
tled to belligerent rights, have become subject to all the rules of
war, I hold the Constitution has .no longer the least effect upon
them, * * * * Hence, I hold that none of the
States now in rebellion are entitled to the protection of the Consti
tution, and I am grieved when I hear those high in authority some
times talking of the constitutional difficulties of enforcing measures
against this belligerent power, and the next moment disregarding
every vestige and semblance of the Constitution by acts which alone
are arbi trary, * * . * -i * *
"This talk of restoring the 'Union as it was under the Constitu
tion as it is,' is one of the absurdities I have heard till I have become
sick of it. This Union can never be restored as it was. There are
many things which render such an event impossible. This Union
shall never, with my consent, be restored under the Constitution as
it is, with slavery protected by it." — Congressional Globe, vol. 47
part 1, p 50.
That was the language of the gentleman from Pennsylvania. I
do not cite his language to criticise it I will institute no compari
son between his views and these of my colleague The gentieman
knows that I entertain for him the kindest personal feeling, and
that I would say nothing offensive to his feelings. Did the House
agree with him ? Did any one ever venture to offer a resolution to

GEORGE H. PENDLETON. 25
to the Constitution which our fathers made, and in steady support
of the Union, which is only valuable so long as it breathes the
spirit of that Constitution. I move that the resolution be printed
and laid on the table.
In his votes, he was always moderate and conservative
on sectional questions, avoiding, in an equal degree, both
Northern and Southern extremes and ultraisms ; and, had
half the members imitated his example, there would never
have been any secession or war. When Mr. Pendleton did
address the House, he always spoke briefly, and with rare
good sense. His reputation steadily increased, and in 1858
he was again nominated for Congress. A complete "fu
sion" of all the elements antagonistic to the Democracy
was eifected in Hamilton county. The Democracy were
much embarrassed by the unfortunate Lecompton difficulty,
and suffered greatly by it. The result was that they were
defeated in the county; and lost all the county ofiices. Mr.
Groesbeck was also defeated in the Second District by
seven or eight hundred majority, but Mr. Pendleton was
elected in the First District, after a shtirp contest, beating
T. 0. Day, his old and successful competitor of 1854, by
over three hundred majority. In the new House, the Re
publicans, as the old "Fusion" Know-Kotiiing party was
now termed, had a majority, and elected Governor William
Pennington, of New Jersey, as Speaker — electing him as
they did Mr. Banks, in 1855, by a purely sectional North
ern vote. This was the last Congress before the secession
struggle of 1861, toward which, as to a great vortex, every
thing was now tending with terrible rapitlity.
The abolition agitation in the North had grown daily more
violent, and unconstitutional nullification bills were passed
by the Republican Legislatures of the Northern States
against a rendition of fugitive slaves. Kansas was a fiery
fuinace, frora whieh vomited forth a torrent of abolition ha
tred toward all tbe Southern States. John Brown, a Kan
sas desperado, with an armed band of fauatics, weut secretly
2

26 LIFE AND SPEECHES OP
to Virginia for the purpose of exciting the negroes to in
surrection against their masters. When Brown was exe
cuted, after having been taken in this business, he was
eulogized by the Republicans as a "martyr,'' and church
bells were tolled in many places in honor of his memory
on the day of his execution. The South was naturally
exasperated, and replied with threats of disunion. The
Democracy divided at the Charleston Convention in the
spring of I860, and entered the field with two candidates,
Mr. Douglas and Mr. Breckinridge. In addition, another
conservative' candidate was run, John Bell, of Tennessee,
representing the conservative element of the old Whig
party. Thus the conservative strength was frittered away,
while the Northern Republican element was all united upon
Abraham Lincoln.
In October, 1860, at this inauspicious time — fatal to
Democrats — Mr. Pendleton was run a fourth time for
Congress, his competitor being Judge 0. M. Spencer, one
of the strongest, ablest, and most popular men ever known
in Harailton county. But Mr. Pendleton was again elected
by a large raajority, and he was, undoubtedly, the only
man who could have succeeded against such an opponent.
Mr. Lincoln was elected President in Noveraber following,
and the great tragic page in the history of the American
Republic was preparing for insertion.
CIVIL WAK.
The events that followed are too painfully known to
need recapitulation here. Seven Southern States passed
ordinances of secession between November, 1860, and
March, 1861, when Mr. Lincoln was to enter upon the
duties ofhis oflSce.
The United States forts and arsenals in the South were
all seized by the seceders, with the exception of Fort
Sumter, at Charleston, and Fort Pickens, at Pensacola.
A Peace Congress, to see if something could not be effected,

GEORGE H. PENDLETON. 27
was held in Washington, in the winter of 1860-61, but was
a total failure. Mr. Crittenden, the veteran and patriotic
Senator from Kentucky, proposed a plan of compromise,
which Democrats and Conservatives of the North all
favored. The Southern seceders, through Jefi"erson Davis,
and Senator Toombs, of Georgia, agreed also to it, in
the Senate of the United States. It was nothing but the
re-enactment of the old Missouri Compromise line, putting
it in the Constitution of the United States, where it could
not be disregarded or repealed. The people were every
where for this amicable adjustment • of our sectional
troubles. Had it been submitted to a vote of the people, it
would undoubtedly have been adopted in every State of
the Union, North as well as South. This opinion is not
, mere vague conjecture. In April, 1861, the issue was
made at the municipal election in Cincinnati. The De
mocracy and other Union men united on a ticket, headed
it " for the Crittenden Compromise," and it was elected by
the great majority of 4,000, in a city which had given
Lincoln a handsome majority the November previous. As
Cincinnati voted, so would the whole North have done, if
the opportunity had been afforded them. But this was
.denied, although every effort was made in Congress by the
Democracy to have the question directly submitted to the
popular vote. Had it been so submitted, its adoption,
which was certain, would have stopped secession and pre
vented civil war.
But the Republican leaders refused to accept this or any
other compromise. Still they made no preparations to
coerce the South back into the Union, by armed force. Years
before, Senator Wade, of Ohio, then as now a recognized
leader of the Republican party, had expressly informed
the South that his party would let them secede from the
Union if they desired, and thought it intrenched upon
their rights. We quote here from his speech, December
4, 1856, to be found in the Congressional Globe, third

28 LIFE AND SPEECHES OP
session of the Thirty -fourth Congress, page twenty-fifth.
Here it is :
But the Southern gentlemen stand here, and in almost all their
speeches speak of a dissolution of the Onion as an element of every
argument, as though it were a peculiar condescension on their part
that they permitted the Union to stand at all. If they do not feel
interested in upholding this Union — if it really trenches on their
rights — if it endangers their institutions to such an extent that they
can not feel secure under it — if their interests are violently assailed
by means of this Union, I am not one of those who expect that
they will long continue under it, I am not one of those who would
ask them to continue in such a Union, It would be doing violence
to the platform of the party to wliioh I belong.
We have adopted the old Declaration of Independence as the
basis of our political movements, whicii declares that any people,
when their Government ceases to protect their rights, when it is so
subverted from the true purposes of government as to oppress them,
have the right to recur to fundamental principles, and, if need be,
destroy the Government under which they live, and to erect on its
ruins another more conducive to their welfare, / hold ihat they
have this right. I will not blame any people for exercising ii ivhenever
they think the contingency has come. J certainly shall be ihe advocate
of that same doctrine whenever I find that the principles of this Gov
ernment have become so oppressive io the section io which I belong ihat
a free people might not io endure it. You will not then find me
backward in being the advocate of disunion ; but that contingency
never having come, I have never yet opened my mouth in opposition
to the Union,
You can not forcibly hold men in this Union; for the attempt to
do so, it seems to me, would subvert the first principles of the Gov
ernment under whieh we live.
The South, it may be supposed, believed Wade — believed
the party in whose name he spoke, and afterward did at
tempt to withdraw from the Union. They little supposed
that Wade and his Radical friends would go back on their
advice, and seek to hang as traitors all those who had fol
lowed it. But we are anticipating the course of the narrative.
After Lincoln's election, the New York Tribune, the
Cincinnati Commercial, the Chicago Tribune, the Columbus

GEORGE H. PENDLETON. 29
Journal, Indianapolis Journal, New Haven (Conn.) Palla
dium — in fact, nearly all the leading Kepublican papers
in the Union — opposed the coercion of the South by force.
So did leading statesmen like Edward Everett, Daniel S.
Dickinson, Lyman Tremaine, Salmon P. Chase, Lieuten
ant-Governor Stanton, of Ohio, Secretary Stanton, since
of the War Department, and other influential Republicans.
Nay, more, the House of Representatives, which, after
the secession of Southern members, contained the majority
of Republican members, laid upon the table and voted
down bills authorizing a large increase in the army and
navy, and otherwise preparing Lincoln's administration
for an armed conflict.
ME. PENDLETOX'S WAR RECORD— HIS SPEECHES IL-
LUSTRATl^'G IT— REPUBLICAN DUPLICITY.
We come now to a most important period in Mr. Pen
dleton's life — one that has been the most belied and shame
fully misrepresented. He has been charged, far and near,
by unscrupulous opponents, as one who not only was
opposed to the late war, but who, from his place in Con
gress, voted against supplies to carry it on after it had
been commenced, and who was willing, after our brave
soldiers had entered the field in confident reliance upon
the pledge of the Government to support them, to abandon
them to defeat and disgrace. That these charges are vil
lainously false — that they have no shadow of pretext to
support them, we shall now proceed to show by indubitable
evidence. Mr. Pendleton believed the war could have
been avoided. He believed it ought to have been avoided.
He was in favor of the Crittenden Compromise, or any
other fair plan of adjustment by peaceable means. As
became a true patriot, he did all he could to avert war, to
prevent secession and preserve the Government, by equi
table adjustment of our sectional feuds. As an explana
tion of his position, we will here give a bijief speech.

30 LIFE AND SPEECHES OP
which he made at a serenade given to Senator Pugh, in
Washington, on the 19th of Deceraber, 1860, and reported
in the Washington Star, of the 20th of that month. We
quote :
Keli.ow-Citizens : Nothing is left for me to say, except a repetition
of the patriotic sentiments you have heard to-night. Mr, Crittenden
has just arrived, and I know you will wish to hear him, I will,
therefore, detain you but a moment.
In the midst of all our troubles and trials, when disunion is
staring us hideously in the face, when the fabric of our Government
is reeling as if it might fall, when our passions and our fears are all
intensely excited, it seems to rae that it is the first duty of every
patriot to see to it that the public peace is secured. That will
assuage angry passions; that "will give reason opportunity to be
heard; that will evoke the feeling of fraternal affection in our
people, now unfortunately dormant; that will enable us deliberately
to examine the foundations of our Government, and, if it shall he
necessary, to relay them and steady the tottering edifice.
We of the North-west love this Union. We love this Constitu
tion. We have never known another Government. We never
desire to know another. Our hearts are true to it. Our afi'ections
cling around it. Our interests are bound up in it. We admire,
gratefully, the wisdom displayed in its construction; the harmony
of its complicated movements; its wonderful adaptation to the
development of all the material interests of the country. But we
bow in reverence before the spirit in which it was conceived — the
spirit of conciliation, the spirit of concession, the spirit of fraternal
affection. We believe that the Union and the Government ought
to be maintained. We intend, if possible, that they shall be main
tained; and we believe it to be possible only by invoking that spirit
now. The centripetal forces of this Union are interesst and feeling.
Force can not maintain it. Arms can not hold it together. Armies
can not unite us. The only bonds whicii can hold these States in
confederation — the only ties which can make us one people — are the
soft and silken cords which encircle the heart — not the iron chain
which manacles the limbs. These are woven in peace, not war;
in conciliation, not coercion; in deeds of kindness and acts of
friendly sympathy, and not in violence and blood. And, therefore,
to maintain the Union, to uphold the Government — that we may
detain those sister States which are dissatisfied, and recall the one

GEORGE II. PENDLETON. 31
which has left us — we are determined, as far as in us lies, to main
tain peace.
A few days after this excellent speech, Mr. Pendleton
obtained the floor in the House of Representatives, and
was enabled to present his views more at length. It was
on the 18th of January, 1861. The occasion was the
jireseiitation of a memorial, signed by 10,000 citizens of
Cincinnati, in favor of the Crittenden Compromise, which,
as we have stated, Mr. Pendleton warmly supported. In
the course of his speech, in behalf of that compromise,
and against coercion, he eloquently remarked :
Gentiemen tell us that they must maintain the Union. I yield to no
man in devotion to the Union. My constituents — the people of the
whole North-west — have for it an unalterable attachment. They
are an inland people; they are chiefiy devoted to agriculture; they
are distant from the ocean by thousands of miles ; they are shut
off from communication with the nations of the earth; they fear,
from isolation, the loss of prestige and power. They are attached
to the Union by the double tie of interest and affection ; their
material prosperity is bound up iu its continuance; their hearts
cling to it with incredible tenacity. They would make any sacri
fice to maintain it. Sir, if armies could preserve this Union, half a
million of armed men would spring up in a night If money could
preserve it, our teeming soil would leap with joy to yield a golden
harvest. If blood could maintain it,, our young men and maidens,
our old men and children, would, with a crimson flood, from their
very heart.s, swell every stream that waters our plains. But, sir,
money, armies, blood, will not maintain the Union. Justice,
reason, peace, maj'. This Union, Mr. Chairman, is a confederation
of States. The Constitution is the bond. In order to attain certain
ends beneficial to all, these States came together in voluntary
association. They organized a Central Government, and invested
it with certain powers; they themselves agreeing to do certain
things, and to refrain from doing certain other things, which were
clearly within the scope of their sovereign power. In order to
maintain this Union, in order to preserve this Constitution, it is
necessary that every agency of this complicated machinery — the
General Government, the States united, the States severally — should
perform the functions allotted to them by the Constitution.

32 LIFE AND SPEECHES OE
While thus declaring bis attachment to tbe Union, he
made the following noble appeal for peaceful measures,
which, if it had beeu listened to, would have preserved the
Union and averted war. He said :
Gentlemen, I pray you learn prudence from the heroism of your
ancestry. I pray you learn wisdom from your country's history.
Fifteen States of this Union come to you to-day with their com
plaints. Hear them. They tell yon they have grievances. Redress
them. They say they have fears for their sal'ety. Allay those fears.
They say they have apprehensions of wrong. Assuage them. Gen
tlemen, remove every cause of agitation and irritation, however
unfounded you deem it. They may have committed acts of pas
sion and wrong. Apprehensive of armed coercion, exasperated by a
sense of domestic insecurity, they may have seized our forts and
arsenals, taken possession of our arms, and in some cases have
treated harshly our citizens. These acts are wrong; but foi betir-
ance, equanimity, are fitting attributes o( power; and moderation in
victory is the test of that wisdom and worth which deserve it. he-
member that the men who come to you are bone of uur bone, and
flesh of our flesh; they are our fellow-citizens, and our brethren.
Whether justly or unjustiy, their discontents have taken deep hold
of their hearts. Let me beg of you to grant all their reasonable de
mands. You can do it now without loss of pride, without loss o4'
selfrespect, without loss of power, 1 beg you, in (rod's name, do it!
Do a patriotic duty! Give us peace instead of discord! Maintain
this Government and preserve the unity of our confederated em
pire ! My voice to-day is for conciliation ; my voice is for compro
mise, and it is but the echo of the voice of my constituents.
If dissolution was inevitable, he preferred it should
be peaceful. And if war was waged, he warned the House
"to prepare to wage it to the last extremity."
Mr. Lincoln came into office on the 4th of March, 1861,
and for a month or more he did nothing. The Commis
sioners from the Southern Confederacy came to Washing
ton to treat with the Governraent for a dissolution of the
Union. They were unofficially, but kindly, received by Mr.
Seward, Secretary of State. Mr. Lincoln and his Cabinet
resolved on the evacuation of Fort Sumter, and its surrender
to the South, which had been held by President Buchanan.

GEORGE II. PENDLETON. 88
The Cincinnati Gazette thought this w^ould be a wise
measure. We state these facts, and narrate these incidents,
in order to show the unfairness of those partisans in the
Republican party who have pretended to find fault with
Mr. Pendleton for his opposition to coercion in the win
ter of 1861, concealing the fact that their party lead
ers practically, at that time, also repudiated coercion,
while they also repudiated all compromise. It was not
until a meeting of the Northern Republican Governors had
been held that the Republican administration of Lincoln
reconsidered their policy and adopted coercion and war ip
its stead. The attack on Fort Sumter, in April, 1861,
set the country in a flame from one end to the other, and
the greatest civil war in modern history, was begun, and
immediately assumed fearful proportions.
Mr. Pendleton's course of action, under the views which
he held, was plain, and he held it to the end. The war
had been brought on against his counsel, in a rash and
fatal manner, to attain partisan rather than patriotic ends.
But we were in the midst of the struggle. Our soldiers,
by hundreds of thousands, were in the South, and it would
not do to abandon them and their flag to dishonor and dis
grace. Tlie policy which he intended to pursue was im
mediately disclosed, at the first practicttl opportunity. An
extra session of Congress was called by Mr. Lincoln for
the 4th of July, 1861. In May of that year, before he
had taken his seat in the new Congress, Mr. Pendleton
was selected by his fellow-citizens in Cincinnati, to pre
sent, in their narae, a horse to Col. Bosley, the gallant
commander of the Sixth Ohio Regiment, known as the
Guthrie Grays, embracing the flower of the youth of the
city. We quote : [From tbe Enquirer, May 18, 1861.]
A SPLENDID HOESB PEBSENTED TO COLONEL BOSLEY, OF THE CINCINNATI
VOLUNTEBES.
On Thursday afternoon last, Messrs. Torrence, Gettier, and Schultz,
a committee appointed by the friends of Col. Bosley to purchase

34 LIKE AND SPEECHES OF
a horse for that gentleman, presented it to him at Camp Harrison,
with the usual ceremonies. The horse was a splendid gray, pur
chased of George CreMin, Esq., who selected hiin on the principle
that " blood will tell;" and we doubt noL that when occasion re
quires, lie will carry Col Bosley into the thickest of tlie fight.
The Hon. George H. Pendleton made the following presentation
speech :
"Colonel Boslky: I have been commissioned by a number of
your former associates and constant friends to present you this
horse. I am instructed to ask yon to accept it in token of their
kind feeling, their respect, and their confidence; the kind feeling
induced by many courtesies in the paths of private intercourse, their
respect for a frank and honorable cliaracter, their confidence that
the tastes whicii have led }0u to devote so much of time and
energy to the cultivation of military discipline in peace, will not fail
to conduct you to scenes of useful activity in time of war; their
confidence that you, who have been found worthy to command the
Guthrie Grays, you, the cliosen leader of the flower of the Buckeye
boys, will find for yourself and them, in every field of battle, a field
of honor also, and will bring from every conflict the laurel which
graces a soldier's brow or decks a soldier's bier.
"Keceive it in the spirit in which it is presented. On it, lead your
regiment to the contest. Kemember yourseli^ — teach them to re
member that, in this unhappy war, calmnetis of spirit, moderation
of temper, with determined purpose, are the highest virtues of a
citizen soldier; that they should not strike a blow for an empty tri
umph, none to gratify a passion Ior revenge; that they should have
no other purpose than to uphold tlie Con.stitution, to reinvigorate
the Union, and to maintain the true dignity of the banner of the
Stars and Stripes, against whose unsullied folds our countrymen, in
tlie liour of their madness, have ventured to raise an unhallowed
hand. "Do this as you love your country! Do it as you would serve
your God! Do it, and you will achieve an honorable victory, and
restore an honorable peace L Do it, and you will fill the measure
of a good man's ambition, and will return, in more prosperous
times, with your brave companions, to enjoy the reward for which
poets have sung, lieroes have fought, and patriot.-^ liave been content
to die, in the grateful admiration of their fellow-citizens."
The above speaks for itself, and requires no comment.
The same sentiments he soon had occasion to more offi-

QKORGE H. PENDLETON. 35
cially enunciate. At the extra session, in July, when Con
gress was discussing the question of increasing the regu
lar army, and autiiorizing the President to call out an
unlimited number of volunteers, Mr. Pendleton said:
I desire, sir, to vote all measures asked for to enable the Goveru-
ment to maintain its honor and dignity, which may be sanctioned
by the Constitution, and by any reasonable view of the necessity of
the case. I will heartily, zealously, gladly, support auy honest
efforts to maintain the Union and invigorate the ties which bind
these States together. But, sir, I am not willing to vote for more
men or money than the Administration asks, more than it can fairly
use, more than General Scott — who advises and controls the Admin
istration — tells us he thinks neces.3ary. Neither will I vote for an
increase of the regular army, for this uprising of the people of the
Korth shows that our brave and noble volunteers are ready and able
to do the work now to be done, better than regulars can. And the
only necessity of increasing the regular army now is to give patron
age and power to the Administration in the appointment of officers.
Neither, sir, will I vote for bills of indemnity to the President;
for bills which are' not intended to relieve the country from its diffi
culties, but to cover the acts and doings of the Administration from
fair investigation antj honest judgment. Nor will I vote for the suspen
sion of those laws for the protection of personal liberty, which, the
President tells us, were passed in too great tenderness of tlie rights of
citizens. Nor will I close my lips, lest I may speak of usurpations,
or corruptions and abuses, which are said to be rife in this city now,
and lest the Government may be thereby weakened. Sir, let the
Government depend for its strength upon the integrity of its motives
and its adherence to the Constitution. I will vote for none of these
measures ; but I will do what is fairly necessary to give the Admin
istration power to maintain the Government, and prevent disaster to
its flag.''
The policy which he had pursued was thus alluded to by
him in his address at Reading, Hamilton county, October
10, 1862. We give an abstract of the speech as follows
taken from a report in the Cincinnati Enquirer, October
11,1862. The report says :
.The meeting was large and spirited. The best spirit prevailed.
Mr. Pendleton spoke at some length. He was among his old friends

36 LIFE AND SPEECHES OF
and constituents, and he intended to speak to them confidingly
and plainly. He said that he believed thepreeentunhappy condition
of the country might have been and ought to have been, prevented
by a reasonable and fair compromise during the winter of 1860-61 —
that then the tide of madness might have been stayed, and South
Carolina would have trodden alone the dreary paths of Secession.
But when war was commenced by the bombardment of Fort Sumter,
and the threatened attack on the City of Washington, and was accepted
by the Federal Government, he received it as a fact, and was pre
pared to act in view of its existence. He had determined to support
the constituted authorities of the country in all measures necessary
to maintain the Government and enforce obedience to the Constitu
tion. He was in favor of attaining the ends and purposes of the war
in the .shortest and speediest way. He was opposed to disunion,
whether the demand came from the South or from European nations;
the greatness and glory of the country depended upon the Union;
it was worth every sacrifice — worth more than peace, desirable as
peace might be. But while the armies are fighting the battles of the
Union, they ought to be aided by a correspondent civil administra
tion ; by a policy which will divide the South and unite the North ;
which would encourage the growth of Union-loving sentiments at
the k^outh, allay all their apprehensions of injustice and wrong at
the hands of those who administer the Government, and restore, if
possible, their love for the Constitution. He had declared this to be
his intention at the very opening of the extra session in 1861 — on the
9th day of July — and he had executed it to the letter. He had voted
for the men and money asked by the Administration. He would
continue to do so. But he had opposed, and would continue to
oppose, every infraction of the Constitution. He believed the Con
stitution was operative in war as well as peace, and lie would regard
his oath to support it. This was his duty as a man and an officer^
this was his hope as a patriot.
Mr. Pendleton alluded to the persistent and malignant misrepre
sentations of his opinions and position in the Cincinnati papers. He
called attention to the fact that they pointed out uo speech, no vote,
no act whioh was prompted by a desire to harass and embarrass
the Government.
Mr. Pendleton discussed the Tax Law, the emancipation policy of
the Administration, the profuse expenditure of the public money.
The laws must be obeyed — the constituted authorities must be obeyed.
A change could be worked out only at the ballot-box ; to this they
had a right to appeal, and the opportunity would soon be givpa
them.

GEORGE H. PENDLETON. 37
These extracts are sufiicient to show Mr. Pendleton's
views ; but we will proceed to give further illustrations.
Ill October, 1864, when a candidate for Vice-President on
the ticket with Gen. McClellan, he wrote a letter to the
Hon. C. L. Ward, of Philadelphia, as follows :
Cincinnati, October 18, 1864.
Hon. C-. L. Wakd, Philadelphia — Dear Sir : I have received
your letter. In the very beginning of this war, in the first days of
the extra session of 1861, I said, in my place in CongresH, that I
would vote for all measures necessary to enable the Government to
maintain its honor and dignity, and prevent disaster to its flag. I
have done so. I thought that by the adoption of such measures
the faith of the Government was pledged to the troops in the field,
and must not be forfeited by inadequate supplies. I never gave a
vote which was incompatible with this sentiment.
AU appropriations', pure and simple, for the support and efficiency
of the army and navy, had my cordial concurrence. It was only
when they were connected with other and improper appropriations,
when by reason of their popularity they were loaded down with
fraudulent items for the benefit of contractors or speculators, and
every attempt to separate them failed; when they were made a stalk
ing-horse for some Abolition scheme, that I was constrained re
luctantly to vote against the whole biU.
But I repeat, that I voted against no hill which was conflned
simply to the object of supplies for the army and the navy.
I am, very truly, yours,
GEORGE H. PENDLETON.
He also wrote the following letter to Hon. John B.
Haskins, of New York, about the same time :
Cincinnati, October 17, 1864.
My Dear SiK : I have received your friendly letter. Malignant
misrepresentations and falsehoods are so frequent in our political
struggles that I have rarely undertaken to correct or refute them.
I make no professions of a new faith ; I only repeat my reiterated
professions of an old one, when I say that there is no one who
cherishes greater regard for the Union, who has a higher sense of
its inestimable beneflts, who would more earnestly look for its
restoration by all means which will effect that end, than myself.
The Union is the guarantee of the peace, the power, the prosperity

38 LIFE AND SPEECHES OF
of this people, and no man would deprecate more heartily, or op
pose more persistently, the establishment of another government
over any portion of the territory now within its limits. I am in
favor of exacting no conditions, insisting on no terms not pre
scribed in the Constitution, and I am opposed to any course of
policy which will defeat the re-estabhshment of the Government on
its old foundations or in all its territorial integrity.
I am, very truly, yours,
GEOEGE H. PENDLETON.
Before the election of 1864, Mr. Pendleton visited the
city of New York, and received a serenade from the
Democracy of that city. We quote from the New York
World :
Mr. Pendleton was serenaded on Monday night (October 24), at
the New York Hotel, by the McClellan Legion, an association com
posed of former soldiers of the Army of the Potomac. An au
dience of several thousand persons having assembled, Mr. Pendleton
was introduced by John Van Buren, when he said:
" I thank you for this manifestation of your kind feelings toward
myself I am the more grateful for it as it comes from men who
have stood in the forefront of danger and periled their lives for their
country. I accept it as an evidence of your confidence in. and of
your sympathy with my devotion to the Union and the Constitution.
* * * * * * *
" 1 was born in Ohio. I have lived all my life in the North-west, I
know the sentiment of the people; 1 sympathize entirely with it.
They are attached by every tie of affection and interest to this Union.
Unlike New York, they have never known another Government.
They never existed as a political community before this Government
was formed, and their hearts cling to the Government with indes
cribable tenacity. Unlike you, they are inland people, chiefly devoted
to agriculture As an integral and controlling poriion of tlie LTnion,
they have prestige and power; they fear from disunion isolation
from the world, and the loss of that prestige and power. Their in
terest requires that they should have speedy and easy communication
with the ocean, and this they intend to have, both by the Gulf of
Mexico and the city of New York — by conciliation and in peace, if
tliey ran, by all the force and power which a teeming population
and a fruitful soil give them, if they must. They believe that the
first step toward maintaining the Union is the election of Gen. Mc
Clellan. They believe that the restoration of the Democratic party

GEORaE H. PENDLETON. 39
to power will produce Union. They believe the policy of this Ad
ministration toward both the Southern and Northern States is fatal
to the Union. Gen McClellan, in his Harrison Landing letter, said:
'Neither confiscatio.n of property, nor political executions of persons,
nor territorial organization of States, nor forcible abolition of
slavery, should be for one moment thought of In his letter of ac
ceptance, he said:
"'The Union was originally formed by the exercise of a spirit of
conciliation and compromise. To restore and preserve it, a like
spirit must prevail in the councils of the country, and in the hearts
of the people. The Democratic party is pledged to an unswerving
fidelity to the Union, under the Constitution. It is pledged to 'the
restoration of peace, on the basis of the federal Union of the States.' '
"We believe, nay we know, that if this party shall be restored to
power, if this policy shall prevail, the Union shall be restored.
State after State will return to us, and the echoes of our rejoicing
will come down to us fi^om the vaults of Heaven itself in token that
Deity approves that statesmanship which tempers all its policy with
moderation, and justice, and conciliation.
" When next I meet you, 1 hope we may have already entered on
that work. Again, gentlemen, I thank you for your attention, and
wish you good night."
MR. PENDLETON'S VOTES AND RESOLUTIONS IN CON
GRESS.
Having thus given Mr. Pendleton's publicly-expressed
views regarding the war, we will now quote, from the
Congressional Globe, a number of his votes, and acts
which illustrate them.
Mr. Pendleton always manifested a deep interest in the
welfare of the volunteers, in his own State particularly,
and the whole army generally. At the extra session, in
July, 1861, he offered this resolution, which was adopted,
placing officers of the volunteers on the same footing as to
pay with officers of regulars :
Resolved, That the Committee on Military Affairs he instructed
to inquire into the expediency of providing, by law, that officers
of the volunteers shall be entitled to receive their pay according to
the same rules and times of payment as officers in the regular
service.

40 LIFE AND SPEECHES OF
On the 18th of July, 1861, he introduced a hill for the
relief of the volunteers of Ohio, which gave rise to much
discussion, and which he ably carried through.
On the 21st of July, 1861, he oif ered the following :
Resolved, That under the Constitution, ihe rights, powers and
duties of all the States of the Union are equal; that the Union is
founded on this equality; that in order to maintain the Constitution
and the Union, this equality must be preserved; that every honest
effort to perpetuate the Union must be made in accordance with the
Constitution, and with a purpose of maintaining this equality; that
no attempt on the part of the Federal Government to subjugate and
hold them as territories or provinces, or in any position inferior to
that of any other State, or with their domestic interests, or to
abolish or interfere with slavery within their limits, would be an
attempt to destroy this equality, and would, if successful, subvert
the Constitution and the Union.
On the 14th of December, 1863, Mr. Holman, of Indiana,
offered some resolutions relative to the war, of which this
was one :
Resolved, That all necessary and proper appropriations of money
ought to be promptly made by this Congress for the support of the
military and naval forces of the Government; and all measures of
legislation necessary to increase and promote the efficiency of the
army and navy, and to maintain the people's credit, ought to be
adopted, and that through a vigorous prosecution of the war, peace,
on the basis of a union of the States and the supremacy of the Con
stitution, may be the most speedily obtained.
Upon a motion to reject this resolution, by laying it
upon the table, Mr. Pendleton voted No.
On the 8th of December, 1862, Mr. Wright offered some
resolutions, from which we copy, as follows :
Resolved, That an honorable peace is desirable, but no peace
while armed opposition menaces the Capitol, and threatens the over
throw of the Union ; not that peace which would be established
upon the dismembered fragments of a mighty and prosperous nation ;
and that man who would entertain peace upon these conditions, is a

GEORGE H. PENDLETON. 41
traitor to his country and unworthy the protection of its laws. That
the war was inaugurated solely for the suppression of the rebellion,
and the restoration of the Union as it was; that any and all
attempts to change or divert this line of policy, is a fraud upon the na
tion ; a fraud upon thememory of the gallant men who sacrificed their
lives, and a fraud upon the living soldiers who now stand up as a
wall between their loved country and its wicked invaders.
A motion was made to reject these resolutions, by lay
ing them upon the table. On this question Mr. Pendleton
voted No.
On the 18th of January, 1864, Mr. Dawson, of Penn
sylvania, offered resolutions which, among other things,
declared that the advancing armies of the Government
should carry the Constitution in one hand while they hold
the sword in the other, so that the invaded party may have its
choice between the two. This resolution was laid upon the
table, and thereby rejected. Mr. Pendleton voted against
laying it on the table, and thereby in favor of the resolution.
At the first session of the Thirty- eighth Congress, the
House of Representatives passed the following resolutions :
Resolved, That we hold it to be the duty of Congress to pass all
necessary bills to supply men and money, and the duty of the people
to render every aid in their power to the constituted authorities of
the Government in the crushing out of the rebellion, and in bring
ing the leaders thereof to condign punishment.
Resolved, That our thanks are tendered to our soldiers in the
fleld for their gallantry in defending and upholding the flag of the
Union, and defending the great principles dear to every American
patriot. Among the names recorded in favor of the above reso
lutions, is that of George H. Pendleton.
During the session of 1861-62, there were nineteen appropriation
hills passed by the House of Representatives, Mr Pendleton voted
against only one of them, and that was for certain civil expenses
of the Governmeut, and in no wise connected with its military ope
rations.— Con^resOTonai Globe, Session of 1861-62, ». 3,331.

42 LIFE AND SPEECHES OF
On the 21st of January, 1862, the House passed a resolution, de
claring the purpose of, Congress to levy and collect taxes to the
amount of $150,000,000. Mr. Pendleton voted yes. — Congressional
Globe, p. 372.
The Globe also shows that on the bills reported by the
Military Committee for the Efficient Organization of the
Army, regular or volunteer, Mr. Pendleton generally sus
tained the coramittee.
It is true that Mr. Pendleton voted against some of the
appropriation bills passed during the war, but it was be
cause they contained, in his judgment, some extravagant
items or legalized corruptions, which, being impossible to
reject by themselves, they not being submitted separately,
he was obliged to vote against the whole bill. In so voting,
he had the company, in many instances, of many leading
Republicans. This is an ample refutation of all the charges affecting
his war record, which have been brought against him.
But, as we have seen, while he was for preserving the in
tegrity of the Union, and maintaining the honor of the
flag, he yet widely fljifered with, and strongly opposed the
unconstitutional usurpations of the Administration, which
were connected with the war, but were by no means
essential to its success. Indeed, they greatly retarded,
and materially jeopardized victory. We will give, in this
connection, an illustration.
Among the despotical acts of Mr. Lincoln, soon after
the war commenced, was his assumption of power to sus
pend the writ of habeas corpus in all parts of the United
States. This power is placed in the Constitution among
those prerogatives which are conferred upon Congress.
Tiie party which now claims for Congress all power, and
denies to the President the right even to appoint his
chief clerks, then sustained this tremendous usurpation
by the E.xeoutive of powers which are clearly delegated
to Congress. The suspension of the writ everywhere in

GEORGE H. PENDLETON, 43
places remote from the scene of war, where there was no
invasion, no insurrection, which are the only constitu
tional grounds for its suspension, was an atrocious per
version of authority, and an illegal assumption, even if it
had been done by Congress. The prisons were soon
filled with victims who were guilty of no crime and no
offense, and yet were denied all legal remedies to relieve
themselves from partisan persecution and oppression.
Mr. Pendleton embraced an early opportunity to de
nounce this outrageous tyranny, and to expose the high
handed usurpations of the President.
His speech upon this question of the suspension of the
habeas corpus was an able exposition of the Constitution,
and an indignant protest against its violation. It was de
livered in the face of power that was utterly unscrupulous,
and recklessly audacious, and was attended with not a
little personal hazard. In those days, to denounce usur
pation and tyranny, even in the halls of Congress, by the
people's representatives, was to run the risk of imprison
ment in forts Lafayette or Warren. The speech was de
livered on the 10th of December, 1861. We can not
forbear from giving here a short extract, in which Mr.
Pendleton eloquently denounced the doctrine of " State
necessity," upon which pretext this usurpation was
sought to be justified. Mr. Pendleton said:
No free people should ever listen to this argument of State
necessity. Its history is marked by the wreck of popular liberty
and free institutions, by the sad tokens of human hopes destroyed
and noble aspirations blighted. As we look back upon its pathway
of desolation, and trace it even to our own times and country, we
may easily imagine that the very spirit of American liberty this day
hovers over us, aud tearfully prays that it may not be added to the
list of victims. This argument is always used by the possessors
of power; it is a voice which issues always from the throne; and,
if not instantly silenced, it is answered, ere long, in the wail of the
nation, as it surrenders its liberties to arbitrary power. We have
seen its effect in our day— an Imperial throne built upon the ruins

44 LIFE AND SPEECHES OF
of the Republic and a Presidency — built upon the ruins of oatha
broken, rights violated, liberties despised, and-a nation oppressed, is
but the familiar story with which we close one page of the history
of 'State necessity.'
After giving other illustrations, he closed as follows :
I speak in behalf of the Constitution ; in behalf of the liberties
of the nation; of the rights of my constituents; of the rights of
every citizen in the land; and, in behalf of tkem all, I now say that
this claim of the Executive Department of the right to suspend the
privilejie of the habeas corpus, to seize and detain the citizen, with
out regard to the provisions and processes of law, is utterly unten
able; and that it becomes this House, every member of it, the
chiisen representatives of the people, as well in virtue of the oath
we have taken to support the Constitution, as of the position which
we hold in the frame-work of the Government, solemnly — aye, sol-
em nly^before God and our country to protest against it.
Mr. Pendleton also opposed, in an able argument, the
bill authorizing greenbacks as a legal-tender for the liqui
dation of debts. He did so for these reasons — 1. Under
the Constitution, nothing but gold and silver can be made
a legal-tender. 2. It was a violation of contract, inas
much as the law allowed a payment in depreciated paper
which the debtor had promised to pay in gold at par. He
scouted the idea of its expediency, and thus pointed out the
way in which the war necessities should be met. He said :
Let gentleroen heed this lesson of wisdom. Let them, if need be,
tax the energies and wealth of the country sufficiently to restore the
credit of the Government, Let them borrow whatever money in
addition may be necessary — borrow it to the full extent that may be
necessary — and let us adhere rigidly, firmly, consistently, persist
ently, and to the end, to the principle of refusing to surrender that
currency which the Constitution has given us, and in the mainten
ance of which this Government has never, as yet, for one moment
wavered. There is no doubt that, if this policy, recommended by
him, had been adopted, the expenses of the war would not
have been one-half as great as they were under the legal-

GEOEGE H. PENDLETON. 45
tender system, and we should not now be burdened with
half our present debt.
But he advocated the passage of the loan bills in such
a shape that the bonds could be taxed by State authority,
that no discrimination should be made between them and
other capital. Read the following :
TAXATION OF BONDS.
When the Loan Bill of June 22, 1862, was before the
House, Mr. Holman, of Indiana, moved to add this proviso
to the law :
Provided, That nothing in this act shall impair the right of the
States to tax the bonds, uotes and other obligations issued under
this act.
This just amendment was rejected by 71 to 77 — Mr.
Pendleton voting for it.
The National Bank Act of 1864 being under discussion
April 6, a motion was made to adopt this section :
Resolved, That nothing in this act shall be construed to prevent
a taxation by States of the capital stock of banks organized under
this act, the same as the property of other moneyed corporations,
for State or municipal purposes; but no State shall impose any tax
upon such associations, or their capital, circulation, dividends or
business, at a higher rate of taxation than shall be imposed by such
State upon the same amount of moneyed capital in the hands of
individual citizens of said State.
This section was adopted — 78 to 56 — Mr. Pendleton
voting in its favor, and for the authorization of taxation
of the National Banks by the States.
Afterward, Mr. Stevens offered a substitute for the whole
bill, which substitute prohibited State taxation of the Na
tional Banks. The amendment was defeated — Mr. Pendle
ton voting against it. Afterward, however, the whole bill,
including tlje section taxing the National Banks, was laid
on the table, and thus the National Banks escaped State tax
ation upon the bonds which constituted their capital stock.

46 LIFE AND SPEECHES OF
Mr. Pendleton has been assailed for inconsistency
because he has since warmly advocated the payment of
the five-twenty bond debt in legal-tenders. In truth, there
is no inconsistency. It does not follow that because he
did not think it right to pay debts contracted in gold with
legal-tenders,' that he should now be in favor of paying
debts contracted in legal-tenders, when they were only
worth forty or fifty cents on the dollar, with gold at par.
The same reasons which would reject the first policy would
reject the second. Against his protest, the legal-tender
system was fastened upon the country, and now he is op
posed to abolishing it just at the time when its continu
ance is a matter of necessity, and is demanded by the
highest public considerations. But more of this anon. It
is safer now to go through the stream we have entered
than to turn back ; the path of safety is on the opposite
shore. We have omitted to state that Mr. Pendleton, at
this session of Congress, was appointed upon the Judiciary
Committee, by Speaker Grow, which was one of the most
important committees in the House, and was unusually so
at that period. In the fall of 1862, the Congressional
elections again recurred. There was apparently but little
prospect for the re-election of Mr. Pendleton.

THE ELECTIONS OF 1861-'62— MR. PENDLETON'S FOURTH
ELECTION^.
The war excitement — which had been unscrupulously
seized hold of by the Republicans to effect their party
purposes ; the establishment of a reign of terror through
out the land, either by mob violence or by arbitrary action
of the Government, not the less illegal ; the kidnapping
and deportation by military power of many citizens to Gov
ernment bastiles ; the suspension of the writ of habeas cor
pus ; the denial of the right of trial by jury; the general
and abusive cry of "copperhead and traitor" — had seri-

GEORGE H. PENDLETON. 47
ously affected the Democratic organization, almost crushed
it, in many of the States.
In the October election of 1861, the Democrats had been
beaten in Ohio by 55,000 majority, Mr. Pendleton's district
also going strongly Republican.
But the Democracy determined on making a gallant
fight, and, in the summer of 1862, they again nominated
Mr. Pendleton, for the fifth time, for Congress. In the
other Hamilton county district the Democrats nominated
Alexander Long. In order to make sure of the defeat of
Mr. Pendleton, the Republican Legislature, in the winter
of 1861-62, had "gerrymandered" the State in a new
arrangement of Congressional districts. They had de
tached the Seventh Ward of Cincinnati, which was strongly
Republican, from the western district of Hamilton county,
where, as they supposed, they had a large majority to spare,
and added it to Mr. Pendleton's district, where they thought
they were more in need of it. They nominated, against Mr.
Pendleton, Col. John Groesbeck, brother of Hon. Wm. S.
Groesbeck, and the Colonel of the Thirty-ninth Ohio
Regiment. Every effort that ingenuity could devise was resorted
to in order to defeat Mr. Pendleton. Money flowed like
water against him ; the Government used all its mighty pow
ers in the same direction. His war record was attacked,
and he was in general misrepresented most scandalously.
But he took the stump, made a vigorous canvass, and was
ably seconded by his" colleague, Mr. Long.
The result of the election astounded both parties. Mr.
Pendleton was elected by 1,300 majority, thelaxgest major
ity he had ever received.
Mr. Long was also elected by 120 majority. The Ward
which had been detached from his district gave 300
majority against Mr. Pendleton. It did not defeat the
latter, but was the raeans of electing Mr. Long.
Thus the unscrupulous greed of the Republicans to carry

48 LIFE AND SPEECHES OF
*
the First, had caused them to lose the Second District.
They were like the dog in the fable, who, in crossing a
stream, dropped the meat in his mouth in order to get the
shadow which he saw reflected in the water beneath.
In the State the result was equally astonishing. The
Republicans had fixed up the districts in such a manner
as to carry seventeen, as they thought, out of the nine
teen members of Congress. But they only carried five
members, to the Democrats fourteen, and the Democratic
State ticket was chosen by 8,000 majority. This was
quite a change frora the Republican majority of 55,000 the
year before. Other State elections went in the sarae
direction, and the banner of Democracy was victorious in
all the large Northern States. It appeared probable, at the
close of 1862, that the Deraocracy would have a raajority
in the House of Representatives at Washington. Under
this impression, Mr. Pendleton's name was prominently
mentioned in many Democratic papers as a candidate for
Speaker. But the spring elections of 1863 were not so
encouraging, and the result was, the Republicans carried
the House by a small majority. Mr. Pendleton took his
seat in the new Congress in December, 1863, this being the
commencement of his fourth Congressional term, upon the
fifth nomination he had received. So many nominations
and elections, is a degree of public favor which the
Northern Democracy have rarely accorded to any of their
members. In the winter of 1862, an event occurred in the military
department of the South-west which attracted the attention
of the people, as being one of the greatest outrages, and
most high-handed acts of despotism Which had ever been
performed in this or any other country. It was a military
order issued by Gen. U. S. Grant, banishing ALL " Jews" who
were within his army lines from thera. The pretense was,
that some Jews had disobeyed the regulations of the Treas
ury Department, and instead of punishing the few who may

GEORGE H. PENDLETON. 97
the negro, and, hence, was an object of their bitter assault.
The friends of white supremacy everywhere rallied to his
defense. A national convention was called, and was'held
at Philadelphia, to devise means to perfect a union be
tween the Democracy and the other enemies of negro
supremacy. The Democracy of Ohio selected Mr. Pendle
ton as one of its delegates at large, but he was unable to
attend. In July, however, he visited Pennsylvania, and at
the request of the Democracy of the renowned county of
Berks, delivered an address at Reading. The report of it,
taken from the New York World, of July 20, 1866, will
be found in the Appendix.
This was an active year for Mr. Pendleton. He spoke in
Pennsylvania, in Indiana, and in Kentucky. He spent sev
eral weeks in the canvass in Ohid, commencing with a speecli
at the State Convention which nominated General Morgan
for Governor. In addition, he received an invitation from
Kenyon College, at Gambier, Ohio, to deliver an address
at its annual commencement. Although oppressed with
political invitations and burdened with professional cares,
he accepted the invitation, and delivered a most brilliant
and eloquent oration — an oration worthy of his fine clas
sical attainments and refined literary taste. It was an
effort that will favorably compare with the very best pro
ductions of American oratory. We give it in an Appendix
elsewhere. We can not, however, resist the temptation here to
quote some extracts from this splendid production. They
show that Mr. Pendleton is not merely a political man,
like many of our statesmen, but that he has a literary and
historical cultivation thatwould well qualify him for emi
nence in literature and science. We quote Mr. Pendleton
on this occasion :
Nor may we take license for relaxation from these studies by the
assured conviction of the progress of man in knowledge and power.
5

98 LIFE AND SPEECHES OF
There is inspiration in the thought of his perpetual progression.
It is cause of just pride to lead, or even to labor, in moral, or mental,
or political reforms. It flatters the vanity to believe that we of this
generation have advanced far beyond those who have preceded us in
the march to the grave. We are prone to congratulate ourselves on
our superiority over our fathers, and to dream of other and more ex
tensive conquests in the worlds of matter and of mind. Each new
step in knowledge seems to prepare us for a higher ascent, and to
open before us fresh, untrodden fields. The two great elements of
time and space have been almost annihilated; and the lightning has
been robbed of its terrors as the fearful messenger of the storm, and
obeys with docile spirit the behests of daring and audacious man.
Flushed with our conquest over these mighty forces, we are tempted
to ask, where is the limit to material progress this side of eternity ?
Can it ever be reached while this terrestrial globe shall roll through
the realms of space ? Shall man forever advance toward the acme
of moral and intellectual power, yet never reach the goal 7 And if
not, to what degree of perfection will human progress attain before
it shall be seized with stationary inertness ?
But, checking these proud thoughts, comes the suggestion that
man's capacity is finite, and bounded, therefore, by narrower limits;
that his finite nature can not comprehend the elements of infinity by
which our being is surrounded, and that they will, therefore, remain
sealed books forever, as they seem always to have been.
It is worthy of inquiry whether, in fact, man is making progress ;
whether the world of knowledge is not a circle in which man is for
ever traveling, but making no real advance. There are those who
are. ready to maintain that, on the whole, we have little if any su
periority over the ancients, and that our claims thereto are founded
in ignorance and conceit. They tell us that the poets, the philoso
phers, the orators, the historians, and the lawgivers of Greece and
Rome, to say nothing of nations anterior to them, have not been ex
celled by the greatest efforts of modern genius; and that most of the
sublime philosophy and heaven-inspired truth of the Author of our
religion ia to be found in the pages of Plato and Confucius and Soc
rates, Whether these assertions are strictly true or not, it is beyond all
question that the ancients displayed a degree of intellectual and
moral wisdom far in advance of that exhibited ten centuries later,
which will he the wonder and the admiration of all ages to which
their works may be handed down. And it would certainly be grati
fying to know that we have improved upon the felicitous diction and
consummate expression of thought of Cicero and Demosthenes; that

GEORGE H. PENDLETON. 99
our poetry is more thickly strewn with the flowers of imagination,
or the beauties of rhetoric, than the numbers of Homer; that our
historians can take no lessons in condensation and perspicuity from
Tacitus aud Plutarch ; and that our painters and sculptors and
architects have no need to copy the forms of beauty and of strength
from the works of ages long since passed.
Of the full amount of knowledge possessed by the ancient world, it
is our destiny, doubtless, never to be fully informed. The remains
of the pyramids and of the obelisks of Egypt, the ruins of cities
whose very names are lost, the catacombs of other countries, attest
a degree of cultivated skill and of mechanical ingenuity which
modern science has scarcely attained. Associated with these are
arts which may well be called lost, as they are buried under an ob
livion on which the dust of thirty centuries has already fallen.
And if it be asserted that modera civilization is superior iu that it
contains elements of preservation, may it not well be asked, who can
tell what the future has in store for us ? The proud school-men of
Egypt little dreamed, in the day of their power, that the time would
ever come when their learning, their history, and their very names
would perish from the memory of man. But the destroying flood of.
hunian passions has swept over them, and left scarce a trace behind.
When modern civilization shall have stood as long, it will be tima
enough to draw comparisons on the score of permanence. The
essayist and scholar, a leader of thought and learning of one of the
most cultivated people of our age, has allowed his imagination to
picture the possible contingency, in the far-off future, of a traveler
from the barbarous regions of New Zealand, now almost beyond
even the boundaries of geographical knowledge, standing on the
broken arch of London Bridge, and sketching the ruins of St. Paul.
In August, 1866, Mr. Pendleton was nominated for
Congress by the Democracy of his old district, who in
sisted that he should again make the race for Con
gressional honors. At the last election the district had
been against us by near 2,000 majority. Undismayed by
this tremendous odds, Mr. Pendleton took the field and
made a vigorous canvass. He succeeded in reducing the
majority of 2,000 to about 900. The general result in
the State was unfavorable to the Democracy, who only
elected three members of Congress out of nineteen, the

100 LLFK AND SPEECHES OP
majority against them in the State being about 40,000 on
the State ticket. Among the finest speeches, of an argu
mentative character, which he made in this canvass, was
that at Flemingsburgh, Kentucky, and that at Edinburg,
Indiana. The reader will find them in the Appendix, and
they are well worth a careful perusal.
THE CAMPAIGN OF 1867— MB, PENDLETON AND THE
GREENBACK ISSUE.
Buried, apparently, under the enormous majority of
40,000 given against them in October, 1866, the De
mocracy met at Columbus, on the time-honored Sth of
January, determined, if possible, to redeem the State.
Mr. Pendleton was President of the Convention, and
delivered an eloquent speech. They nominated Jijdge
Allen G. Thurman, one of their strongest and most popu
lar men, for Governor. The campaign may be said to have
been opened on the 25th of April, by an eloquent political
oration delivered by Mr. Pendleton, at Urbana. It at
tracted universal attention, and was everywhere admired
for its political truths and eloquent diction. It was prob
ably re-published in five hundred Democratic journals. Mr.
Pendleton's exertions in this canvass were even greater
than those of the year before. He spent no less than six
weeks in Ohio alone. In addition, he also made ex
cursions to far-distant Minnesota and to Wisconsin, at the
request of his political friends. In the St. Paul speech,
delivered on the llth of July, he first enunciated that
most popular doctrine, that the 5-20 bonded debt should
be paid in greenbacks. No political speeches ever re
ceived a wider circulation than those delivered by Mr.
Pendleton at St. Paul, Minnesota; Lima, Ohio; and Mil
waukee, Wisconsin. They were copied by the Democratic
journals in every State in the Union, withoutan exception,
and had millions of readers. The Milwaukee speech was
a powerful presentation of his views on the currency and

GEORGE H. PENDLETON. 101
bond question. We invite to this speech particular at
tention, for it is an exhausting discussion of the subject,
and nothing more need be said to commend it to the
American people. The discussion of this question and of
the negro suffrage issue, presented by the Kepublican
Legislature of Ohio, in the. shape of an amendment to the
State Constitution to strike the word wJdte out of it,
politically revolutionized the State. The vote was many
thousands more than had ever been cast, even at any Presi
dential election. It run up to 485,000. The Democratic
vote was 30,000 larger than ever before, while the Re
publican vote fell off nearly 10,000 from the preceding
year. The Democrats carried both branches of the State
Legislature, and thus had the power to elect a United
States Senator, which power they exercised by choosing
their gallant candidate for Governor, the Hon. Allen
G. Thurman. Negro suffrage was voted down by 50,000
majority. It is true, the Republicans elected their Gov
ernor — Gen. Hayes — by 2,500 plurality, the poor re
mains of their towering majority of 40,000 the year
before. Practically, Ohio was gone from them.
As an illustration of the prodigious popularity of the
" greenback " issue, with which Mr. Pendleton's name is
associated, we will here allude more particularly to the
extraordinary result in Hamilton county. General Hayes'
nomination for Governor had left a vacancy in the Second
Congressional district of Hamilton county, Ohio — he then
being the member. It had been strongly Republican.
That party nominated Puchard Smith, Esq., one of the
editors of that able and well-known Republican journal,
the " Cincinnati Gazette," as Hayes' successor. He had
the support of that other most influential and strong Repub
lican journal, the "Cincinnati Commercial," which, in
deed, with unexpected magnanimity, first suggested hia
nomination. Mr. Smith was for paying the five-twenty
boiids in gold. Gen. Cary announced himself as an inde-

102 LIFE AND SPEECHES OF
pendent candidate against Mr. Smith. He was for paying
the five-twenty bonds in greenbacks, and made that the
principal issue in the campaign. The Democracy run no
candidate, but supported Gen. Cary. The result was, he
was elected by 1,000 majority, although Gen. Hayes had,
two years before, 3,000 majority in that district, and
even carried it by 1,800 majority in his contest for Gov
ernor. This shows how the people of Ohio stand on the
question of greenbacks for bonds, and how they would be
likely to vote for Mr. Pendleton as its exponent.
MR. PENDLETON AND THE PRESIDENCY.
In the summer of 1867, the Kenton (Ohio) Democrat
run up the flag of Mr. Pendleton for the next Presidency.
An immediate response was made by the country press
of Ohio and other Western States. After the result
of the election, the movement became almost universal
throughout all the North and South-west. It became
evident that the greenback would be a great question in
the Presidential canvass, and that Mr. Pendleton was its
most appropriate representative, and that with him as a,
Presidential leader, the Democracy would repeat on the
National arena the brilliant triumph they had won in the
State canvass of Ohio. The Ohio State Convention to
appoint delegates to the National Convention, was held at
Columbus on the Sth of January, 186S. It was a laro-e
body, embracing nearly 600 delegates. What transpired
soon after the organization, is thus graphically narrated by
an eye-witness of the scene, the Columbus correspondent
of the Cincinnati Enquirer. We quote :
THE NOMINATION OF MR. PENDLETON FOR PRESI
DENT—EXTRAORDINARY SCENE.
I have just witnessed a scene which will long be remembered in
the political history of Ohio, and which is destined to have a tre
mendous influence upon the future politics of the country. So in-

GEORGE H. PENDLETON. 103
tense, so universal was the feeling in favor of the Hon. George H.
Pendleton as the next Democratic candidate for the Presidency of
the United States, that the great representation of the Ohio De
mocracy, in State Convention, broke through all the usual customs
and precedents in order to give it expression.
Immediately after the appointment of the ordinary committees re
lating to the business of the Convention, a resolution was moved
that all resolutions be referred to the Committee on Eesolutions
without debate. At this juncture Gen. George W. McCook, of
Jefferson, arose and stated that other conventions were in session,
and that, if the matter was delayed, Ohio raight not have the honor
of first presenting her favorite son for the Presidency, the Hon.
George H. Pendleton. He therefore moved an amendment that all
forms and preliminaries be dispensed with, and that, without wait
ing for any report from the Committee on Eesolutions, the De
mocracy of Ohio do now nominate Mr. Pendleton, and send greet
ing to other State conventions which are now in session.
The amendment was vociferously seconded from all quarters of
the house, with loud and deafening cries for the question. The
amendment was then reduced to writing by Theodore Cook, of
Hamilton county, and offered by Judge Tarbill, of Brown. It was
put by the temporary President, Judge Jewett, and adopted by a
deafening aye, that fairly made the old building echo. Amid the
greatest enthusiasm, a committee of two was nominated and elected
to wait upon Mr. Pendleton and request his attendance at the con
vention. The Chair selected Gen. George W. McCook and Judge
Tarbill as such committee.
In a few moments they returned in company with Mr. Pendleton.
As soon as his manly form was descried approaching the stage,
there ensued wild enthusiasm and immense plaudits of gratification.
They increased to a perfect storm when he appeared on the stage,
the whole convention rising and giving three cheers. He was then
introduced by the Hon. Hugh J. Jewett, in some beautiful and ap
propriate impromptu remarks, to which Mr, Pendleton made a brief
but most feeling and eloquent response. The whole scene was one
that will never be erased from the memory of those who witnessed
it. The spectators participated warmly in the whole proceedings,
and vied with the convention in demonstrations of enthusiasm.
This is, beyond all doubt, the greatest compliment that was ever
paid by any convention to an Ohio Democrat, and it indicates the
wonderful bold which Mr. Pendleton has acquired upon the affec
tions of the Democracy of his native State. Never since the days
of General Jackson were the Democracy of Ohio so united for a

104 LIFE AND SPEECHES OF
Presidential candidate. It will acquire the greatest significance
abroad, when it is known that the friends of both the candidates for
United States Senator — Judge Thurman and Hon. C. L, Vallandig
ham — united in it, and it was hard to say which of them manifested
the greatest satisfaction at the result. All former divisions iu
the party were ignored. Those heretofore classed as " War Demo
crats" and those. stigmatized as "Peace men," vied with each other
in doing honor to Ohio's noble son.
The convention is a complete success. Old veterans admit that it
is by far the best they ever attended. It is characterized hy that re
markable peculiarity which always indicates success — that undoubt-
ing confidence which secures it.
" Resolved, That the Hon. George H. Pendleton is the unanimous
choice of the Democracy of Ohio for next President of the United
States, "Resolved, That the delegates to the National Convention are
hereby instructed to cast the vote of Ohio as a unit, and to use all
honorable means to secure the nomination of Mr. Pendleton for
President. " Resolved, That the greeting of Ohio to her sister States in the
West and North-west, to-day in State Convention assembled, the
President of this Convention be directed to forward by telegraph
copies of these resolutions to the conventions now in session at
Indianapolis, Indiana; Wheeling, West Virginia; and Nebraska
City, Nebraska."
We here append the speech of Mr. Pendleton, with the
preliminary remarks of the President, Mr. Jewett, who
remarked that it was with pleasure which words could not
express that he introduced to the convention the first
choice of an independent and patriotic people as the
Democratic standard-bearer in the next Presidential con
test, Hon. George II. Pendleton.
Mr. Pendleton said :
Mr, President and Gentlemen op the Convention; Language
fails me to express the emotions of my heart at this moment. I
thank you for the high honor you have done me, I thank you for
the approval of my convictions, my character and my conduct; but,
gentlemen, I thank you still more because this compliment comes
from the tried, the true, and the triumphant Democracy of my own
iiaiive State — a Democracy which, by its patii,'nt and devoted

GEOKGE H. PENDLETON. 105
courage, its heroic effort, and its unswerving fidelity to sound prin
ciple, has achieved within the last year an unparalleled success,
and, in the short space of five years, has brought us up from a mi
nority of a hundred thousand to a majority in the State.
The issues that were presented last year were well worthy of the
struggle. They were to sustain the supremacy of our white race,
and prevent the Africanization of the States of the Union, and the
protection of our own State of Ohio from hybridization. They were
to raise from the shoulders of a suffering and over-taxed and op
pressed people the burdens about to be put on them, aud to lead
them into a new career of prosperity, and these same issues are to be
settled in the coming contest, not only in our own State, but in the
whole country. And if the people of Ohio will do their duty as
they have in the past, whoever shall be selected as the standard-
bearer of the Democracy will have the pleasure and honor of
placing them in victory and power in tbe seats of national power.
When the resolution was read in iKe Indiana Conven
tion, at Indianapolis, the Wheeling Convention, in West
Virginia, the Nebraska Convention, at Nebraska City, it
was received with the same enthusiastic demonstrations
as in Ohio, and Pendleton delegations were appointed to
the National Convention.
The Indiana resolution of preference we here copy :
Resolved, That we congratulate the Democracy of our sister. State
of Ohio on the gallant political campaign closed on the Sth day of
October, 1867 — a campaign marked by the highest order of devo
tion, ability, and effort; and that prominent and close in association
in the minds of our fellow-citizens of Indiana stands the name of
the Hon, George H, Pendleton. Identified with the vital measures
upon which our party enters the canvass for 1868, together with
his ability as a statesman and his high personal qualities — all these
entitle him to the commendation of this Convention, as a true and
consistent Democrat, and one who has our entire confidence and
preference. On the 22d of February, the Democratic State Conven
tion was held at Frankfort, Kentucky, and it unanimously,
and without a dissenting voice, adopted the following :
Resolved. That this Convention, in obedience to the voice of the

106 LIFE 'ANn SPEECHES OF
people of Kentucky, hereby presents the name of Hon, George H.
Pendleton, of Ohio, as their choice for President of the United
States, and our delegates to the National Convention are hereby in
structed to use all honorable means to secure his nomination, and
to vote as a unit therefor. Reposing, however, the highest confidence
in their wisdom and discretion, and believing that the success of
the Democratic party is essential to the preservation of constitu
tional liberty, we hereby pledge, on behalf of the Democracy of
Kentucky, an earnest and cordial support to the nominee of the
Convention. On the 26th of February, the Democracy of Iowa met
at Des Moines, and unanimously adopted the following :
Resolved, That the Democracy of Iowa respond to the voice of
their brethren of the North-west, as enunciated at Columbus, Ohio;
Indianapolis, Ind.; Nebraska City, Nebraska; Wheeling, West Va.;
Madison, Wis,, and Frankfort, Ky.; and they unite in expressing
their preference for Hon, George H. Pendleton, of Ohio, as our first
choice for the office of President of the United States. That in
him we recognize eminent ability to fill the office, and to obtain it
as a candidate before the people, and that the delegates appointed hy
this Convention are hereby called upon to use all honorable means
to secure his nomination by the National Democratic Convention.
The Illinois Democracy met at Springfield, on the 15th
of April, and adopted the following :
Resolved, That, in the opinion of the Democracy of Illinois, we
find in the political life and character of Hon. George H. Pendleton,
of Ohio, the assurance of his entire accord with the principles we
have here declared; and recognizing in him the possession of every
quality fitting for that position, we do declare him to be the choice
of the Democracy of this State for President of the United States,
and do instruct members from this State to the National Convention
to vote as a unit, and to use all honorable means in their power to
secure his nomination by that body for that position.
Other States, including Oregon and Maine, have chosen
Pendleton delegations. Within a week of each other,
instructions were passed for him in States as remote from
each other as Maine and Oregon. He is everywhere the
people's candidate, and it is their wish that he should be
nominated by the New York Convention.

GEORGE H. PENDLETON. 107

HIS STYLE OF OEATOEY.
We were about to make some reflections upon the
remarkable series of orations which Mr. Pendleton has
delivered, but we find the subject so well done by the
Southern Home Journal, a literary paper published at Bal
timore, that we here copy what it says, and we know that
it will be indorsed by every judge of a correct and beau
tiful elocution. The Journal says :
It is remarkable that Mr. Pendleton has none of that coarseness
or excess usually attributed to the Western politician. His appear
ance is singularly cultivated; his dress decorous and becoming.
He suggests recollections of the old-school gentleman, and in his
style he has the merit of reviving the graces of literature in politics.
He calls to mind the better days of the Eepublic, when the poli
tician was also the gentlemau and the scholar. We name him con
fldently as the best living model in America of a pure and lofty
literary style iu party politics, in abstinences from personalities and
low fancies, in dignity, in well-knit and justly adorned language.
He has no equal among the public speakers of his day.
Even if he writes on the "resolutions of 1798 and 1799," we
are attracted by the charm of his style, and fancy we are ob
taining new information of a subject which other instructors have
made trite and threadbare. It is a style in which are most ingen
iously distributed all the elements; in which the argument is well
braced with illustration ; in which the logic is neither too dense nor
too desultory, and in which ornament is so judiciously used as to
draw without dividing attention. That Mr. Pendleton is one of the
first political scholars of the country, no candid person will dis
pute; and that he is so without prejudice to the familiarity of his
intercourse with the people, is the effect not only of his amiable
person, but of the happy literary style by which he obtains admis
sion to the minds and hearts of even the most ignorant of the popu
lace. HIS PEESONAL CHAEACTBE.
There are none who have run the political gauntlet so
long in such troublesome times and made as few personal

108 LIFE AND SPEECHES OF GEOEGE H. PENDLETON.
enemies as Mr. Pendleton. Indeed, we do not know that
he has any in the world. He is indebted for this to a cor
rect and well-balanced mind, to an amiable disposition, to
a pleasant suavity of manner, and to a tolerant liberality
and respect for the opinions of others. He has the inborn
sense, and the outward graces, of a gentleman. Always
controlling himself, he is well fitted to control others. In
his fine personal appearance and address, as well as by
his great talents and elegant attainments, he would, if
elected, carry to the Presidential Chair those qualities
which used to distinguish its occupants in the times of
Jefi'erson and Madison.

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