LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
DAVIS
WILLIAM McKiXLEY.
FAMOUS AMERICAN
STATESMEN & ORATORS
PAST AND PRESENT
WITH
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES
AND
THEIR FAMOUS ORATIONS
IN SIX VOLUMES
VOLUME IV
ALEXANDER K. MCCLURE, LL.D.
EDITOR
Author of" Lincoln and Men of War Times?'' '"''Our Presidents
and How We Make Them," etc.
BYRON ANDREWS
of the "National Tribune" Washington, D. C.
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Author of ''''The Eastern Question" '''"The Life of Logan" "One of
the People" (AfcKinley), "Monroe and His Doctrine" etc.
NEW YORK
F. F. LOVELL PUBLISHING COMPANY
LIBRARY
KNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
COPYRIGHT, 1902,
F. F. LOVELL PUBLISHING CO.
BECKTOLD
PRINTING AND BOOK MFG. CO.
ST. LOUIS. MO.
Buchanan, James, an American statesman, sixteenth
President of the United States, born at Franklin Co., Pa.,
April 23, 1791 ; died at Lancaster, Pa., June i, 1868. Having
taken up the profession of law he began practice at Lancas
ter, Pa., and soon prospered. He was a firm Federalist at
the outset of his career, and entered the State Legislature as
such in 1814. He was again elected the next year, and in
1820 was sent to Congress, remaining in the House of
Representatives five terms. In 1832 he went as minister to
Russia, and on his return entered the National Senate,
becoming Secretary of State under Polk. In 1853 he was
appointed minister to England, and returning in 1856 was
elected President as the Democratic candidate. After the
expiration of his term of office he lived in retirement.
Buchanan was a dignified, polished speaker, with much court
liness of address.
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
Fellow-Citizens :
I APPEAR before you this day to take the solemn
oath " that I will faithfully execute the office of Presi
dent of the United States and will to the best of my
ability preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution
of the United States."
In entering upon this great office I must humbly in
voke the God of our fathers for wisdom and firmness
to execute its high and responsible duties in such a
manner as to restore harmony and ancient friendship
among the people of the several States, and to pre
serve our free institutions throughout many genera
tions. Convinced that I owe my election to the in
herent love for the Constitution and the Union which
14
2 BUCHANAN.
still animates the hearts of the American peole, let me
earnestly ask their powerful support in sustaining all
just measures calculated to perpetuate these, the rich
est political blessings which Heaven has ever bestowed
upon any nation. Having determined not to become
a candidate for re-election, I shall have no motive to
influence my conduct in administering the government,
except the desire ably and faithfully to serve my
country and to live in the grateful memory of my
countrymen.
We have recently passed through a Presidential con
test in which the passions of our fellow-citizens were
excited to the highest degree by questions of deep and
vital importance ; but when the people proclaimed their
will the tempest at once subsided and all was calm.
The voice of the majority, speaking in the manner
prescribed by the Constitution, was heard, and instant
submission followed. Our own country could alone
have exhibited so grand and strking a spectacle of the
capacity of man for self-government.
What a happy conception, then, w r as it for Congress
to apply this simple rule, that the will of the majority
shall govern, to the settlement of the question of
domestic slavery in the Territories! Congress is
neither " to legislate slavery into any Territory or
State, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the
people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate
their domestic institutions in their own way, subject
only to the Constitution of the United States."
As a natural consequence, Congress has also pre
scribed that when the Territory of Kansas shall be ad
mitted as a State it " shall be received into the Union
BUCHANAN. 3
with or without slavery, as their Constitution may
prescribe at the time of their admission."
A difference of opinion has arisen in regard to the
point of time when the people of a Territory shall de
cide this question for themselves.
This is, happily, a matter of but little practical im
portance. Besides, it is a judicial question, which
legitimately belongs to the Supreme Court of the
United States, before whom it is now pending, and
will, it is understood, be speedily and finally settled.
To their decision, in common with all good citizens, I
shall cheerfully submit, whatever this may be, though
it has ever been my individual opinion that under the
Nebraska-Kansas act the appropriate period will be
when the number of actual residents in the Territory
shall justify the formation of a Constitution with a
view to its admisison as a State into the Union. But
be this as it may, it is the imperative and indispensable
duty of the government of the United States to secure
to every resident inhabitant the free and independent
expression of his opinion by his vote. This sacred
right of each individual must be preserved. That be
ing accomplished, nothing can be fairer than to leave
the people of a Territory free from all foreign inter
ference, to decide their own destiny for themselves,
subject only to the Constitution of the United States.
The whole Territorial, question being settled upon
the principle of popular sovereignty a principle as
ancient as free government itself everything of a
practical nature has been decided. No other question
remains for adjustment, because all agree that under
the Constitution slavery in the States is beyond any
4 BUCHANAN.
human power except that of the respective States
themselves wherein it exists. May we not, then, hope
that the long agitation on this subject is approaching
its end, and that the geographical parties to which it
has given birth, so much dreaded by the Father of his
Country, will speedily become extinct? Most happy
will it be for the country when the public mind shall
be diverted from this question to others of more press
ing and practical importance. Throughout the whole
progress of this agitation, which has scarcely known
any intermission for more than twenty years, while it
has been productive of no positive good to any human
being, it has been the prolific source of great evils to
the master, to the slave, and to the whole country. It
has alienated and estranged the people of the sister
States from each other, and has even seriously endan
gered the very existence of the Union. Nor has the
danger yet entirely ceased. Under our system there
is a remedy for all mere political evils in the sound
sense and sober judgment of the people. Time is a
great corrective. Political subjects which but a few
years ago excited and exasperated the public mind
have passed away and are now entirely forgotten. But
this question of domestic slavery is of far graver im
portance than any mere political question, because,
should the agitation continue, it may eventually en
danger the personal safety of a large portion of our
countrymen where the institution exists. In that event
no form of government, however admirable in itself,
and however productive of material benefits, can com
pensate for the loss of peace and domestic security
around the family altar. Let every Union-loving man,
BUCHANAN. 5
therefore, exert his best influence to suppress this agi
tation, which, since the recent legislation of Congress,
is without any legitimate object.
It is an evil omen of the times that men have under
taken to calculate the mere material value of thef
Union. Reasoned estimates have been presented of
the pecuniary profits and local advantages which would
result to the different States and sections from its dis
solution, and of the comparative injuries which such
an event would inflict on other States and sections.
Even descending to this low and narrow view of the
mighty question, all such calculations are at fault. The
bare reference to a single consideration will be con
clusive on this point. We at present enjoy a free trade
throughout our extensive and expanding country such
as the world has never witnessed. This trade is con
ducted on railroads and canals, on noble rivers and
arms of the sea, which bind together the North and
South, the East and West, of our confederacy. Anni
hilate this trade, arrest its free progress by the geo
graphical lines of jealous and hostile States, and you
destroy the prosperity and onward march of the whole
and every part, and involve all in a common ruin. But
such considerations, important as they are in them
selves, sink into insignificance when we reflect upon
the terrific evils which would result from disunion to
every portion of the confederacy to the North not
more than to the South, to the East not more than to
the West. These I shall not attempt to portray, be
cause I feel a humble confidence that the kind Provi
dence which inspired our fathers with wisdom to frame
the most perfect form of government and union ever
O BUCHANAN.
devised by man, will not suffer it to perish until it
shall have been peacefully instrumental, by its example,
in the extension of civil and religious liberty through
out the world.
Next in importance to the maintenance of the Con
stitution and the Union, is the duty of preserving the
government free from the taint or even the suspicion
of corruption. Public virtue is the vital spirit of repub
lics, and history proves that when this has decayed and
the love of money has usurped its place, although the
forms of free government may remain for a season,
the substance has departed forever.
Our present financial condition is without parallel
in history. No nation has ever before been embar
rassed from too large a surplus in its Treasury. This
almost necessarily gives birth to extravagant legisla
tion. It produces wild schemes of expenditure, and
begets a race of speculators and jobbers, whose in
genuity is exerted in contriving and promoting ex
pedients to obtain public money. The purity of official
agents, whether rightfully or wrongfully, is suspected,
and the character of the government suffers in the
estimation of the people. This is in itself a very great
evil.
The natural mode of relief from this embarrassment
is to appropriate the surplus in the Treasury to great
national objects for which a clear warrant can be
found in the Constitution. Among these I might men
tion the extinguishment of the public debt, a reason
able increase of the navy, which is at present inade
quate to the protection of our vast tonnage afloat, now
BUCHANAN. 7
greater than any other nation, as well as the defence
of our extended seacoast.
It is beyond all question the true principle that no
more revenue ought to be collected from the people
than the amount necessary to defray the expense of a
wise, economical, and efficient administration of the
government. To reach this point it was necessary to
resort to a .modification of the tariff, and this has, I
trust, been accomplished in such a manner as to do
as little injury as may have been practicable to our
domestic manufactures, especially those necessary for
the defence of the country. Any discrimination
against a particular branch for the purpose of benefit
ing favored corporations, individuals, or interests,
would have been unjust to the rest of the community
and inconsistent with that spirit of fairness and equal
ity which ought to govern in the adjustment of a
revenue tariff.
But the squandering of the public money sinks into
comparative insignificance as a temptation to corrup
tion when compared with the squandering of the
public lands.
No nation in the tide of time has ever been blessed
with so rich and noble an inheritance as we enjoy
in the public lands. In administering this important
trust, while it may be wise to grant portions of them
for the improvement of the remainder, yet we should
never forget that it is our cardinal policy to reserve
these lands, as much as may be, for actual settlers, and
this at moderate prices. We shall thus not only best
promote the prosperity of the new States and Terri
tories, by furnishing them a hardy and independent
8 BUCHANAN.
race of honest and industrious citizens, but shall secure
homes for our children and our children's children, as
well as for those exiles from foreign shores who may
seek in this country to improve their condition and to
enjoy the blessings of civil and religious liberty. Such
immigrants have done much to promote the growth and
prosperity of the country. They have proved faithful
both in peace and in war. After becoming citizens
they are entitled, under the Constitution and laws, to
be placed on a perfect equality with native-born citi
zens, and in this character they should ever be kindly
recognized.
The Federal Constitution is a grant from the States
to Congress of certain specific powers, and the ques
tion whether this grant should be liberally or strictly
construed has more or less divided political parties
from the beginning. Without entering into the argu
ment, I desire to state at the commencement of my
administration that long experience and observation
have convinced me that a strict construction of the
powers of the government is the only true, as well
as the only safe, theory of the Constitution. When
ever in our past history doubtful powers have been
exercised by Congress, these have never failed to
produce injurious and unhappy consequences. Many
such instances might be adduced if this were the proper
occasion. Neither is it necessary for the public ser
vice to strain the language of the Constitution, be
cause all the great and useful powers required for a
successful administration of the government, both in
peace and in war, have been granted, either in express
terms or by the plainest implication.
BUCHANAN. 9
While deeply convinced of these truths, I yet con
sider it clear that under the war-making power Con
gress may appropriate money toward the construction
of a military road when this is absolutely necessary
for the defence of any State or Territory of the Union
against foreign invasion. Under the Constitution Con
gress has power " to declare war," " to raise and sup
port armies," " to provide and maintain a navy," and
to call forth the militia to " repel invasions." Thus
endowed, in an ample manner, with the war-making
power, the corresponding duty is required that "the
United States shall protect each of them [the States]
against invasion." Now, how is it possible to afford
this protection to California and our Pacific posses
sions, except by means of a military road through the
territories of the United States, over which men and
munitions of war may be speedily transported from
the Atlantic States to meet and to repel the invader?
In the event of war with a naval power much
stronger than our own, we should then have no other
available access to the Pacific coast, because such a
power would instantly close the route across the isth
mus of Central America. It is impossible to conceive
that while the Constitution has expressly required
Congress to defend all the States, it should yet deny
to them, by any fair construction, the only possible
means by which one of these States can be defended.
Besides, the government, ever since its origin, has
been in the constant practice of constructing military
roads. It might also be wise to consider whether the
love for the Union which now animates our fellow-
citizens on the Pacific coast may not be impaired by
JO BUCHANAN.
our neglect or refusal to provide for them, in their
remote and isolated condition, the only means by
which the power of the States on this side of the Rocky
Mountains can reach them in sufficient time to " pro
tect " them " against invasion/' I forbear for the
present from expressing an opinion as to the wisest
and most economical mode in which the government
can lend its aid in accomplishing this great and neces
sary work. I believe that many of the difficulties in
the way, which now appear formidable, will in a great
degree vanish as soon as the nearest and best route
shall have been satisfactorily ascertained.
It may be proper that on this occasion I should make
some brief remarks in regard to our rights and duties
as a member of the great family of nations. In our
intercourse with them there are some plain principles,
approved by our own experience, from which we should
never depart. We ought to cultivate peace, commerce,
and friendship with all nations, and this not merely as
the best means of promoting our own material inter
ests, but in a spirit of Christian benevolence toward
our fellow-men, wherever their lot may be cast. Our
diplomacy should be direct and frank, neither seeking
to obtain more nor accepting less than is due. We
ought to cherish a sacred regard for the independence
of all nations, and never attempt to interfere in the
domestic concerns of any unless this shall be impera
tively required by the great law of self-preservation.
To avoid entangling alliances has been a maxim of our
policy ever since the days of Washington, and its wis
dom no one will attempt to dispute. In short, we
BUCHANAN. II
ought to do justice in a kindly spirit to all nations,
and require justice from them in return.
It is our glory that while other nations have ex
tended their dominions by the sword, we have never
acquired any territory except by fair purchase, or, in
the case of Texas, by the voluntary determination of
a brave, kindred, and independent people to blend
their destinies with our own. Even our acquisitions
from Mexico form no exception. Unwilling to take
advantage of the fortune of war against a sister re
public, we purchased these possessions under the treaty
of peace for a sum which was considered at the time
a fair equivalent. Our past history forbids that we
shall in the future acquire territory unless this be
sanctioned by the laws of justice and honor. Acting
on this principle, no nation will have a right to inter
fere or to complain if, in the progress of events, we
shall still further extend our possessions. Hitherto
in all our acquisitions the people, under the protection
of the American flag, have enjoyed civil and religious
liberty as well as equal and just laws, and have been
contented, prosperous, and happy. Their trade with
the rest of the world has rapidly increased, and thus
every commercial nation has shared largely in their
successful progress.
I shall now proceed to take the oath prescribed by
the Constitution, while humbly invoking the blessing
of Divine Providence on this great people.
March 4, 1857.
12 HAYNE.
Hayne, Robert Y., an American politician, of promi
nence as an orator, born in St. Paul's Parish, Colleton
District, S. C., Nov. 10, 1791 ; died at Asheville, N. C.,
Sept. 24, 1839. He was admitted to the bar in 1812, served
in a Carolina regiment during the second war with England,
and after its close entered the State Legislature, and was
speaker of the House, 1818-22. Hayne became attorney-
general of his State in 1822, and was soon after elected to
the National Senate where he vehemently opposed the pro
tective system, declaring in a notable speech that a tariff
was unconstitutional. He engaged in an impassioned debate
with Daniel Webster in January, 1830, upon constitutional
principles, and excitedly proclaimed the constitutional right
of secession. He was chairman of the South Carolina con
vention which adopted the ordinance of nullification in 1832,
and the same year was elected governor, holding office till
1834. He was mayor of Charleston, 1835-37. Hayne's
oratory was of the most fiery, impassioned character, calcu
lated to produce an overmastering impression upon all but
the coolest spirits.
ON FOOT'S RESOLUTION.*
DELIVERED IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE, JANUARY
21,
MR. PRESIDENT, When I took occasion, two days
ago, to throw out some ideas with respect to the policy
* The following is the resolution of Mr. Foot : " Resolved, that
the Committee on Public Lands be instructed to inquire and report
the quantity of the public lands remaining unsold within each
State and Territory, and whether it be expedient to limit, for a
t See Mr. Webster's answer to this speech.
HAYNE. 13
of the government in relation to the public- lands,
nothing certainly could have been further from my
thoughts than that I should have been compelled again
to throw myself upon the indulgence of the Senate.
Little did I expect to be called upon to meet such an
argument as was yesterday urged by the gentleman
from Massachusetts [Mr. Webster].
Sir, I questioned no man's opinions; I impeached
no man's motives ; I charged no party or State or sec
tion of country with hostility to any other, but ven
tured, as I thought in a becoming spirit, to put forth
my own sentiments in relation to a great national ques
tion of public policy.
Such was my course. The gentleman from Mis
souri [Mr. Benton], it is true, had charged upon the
Eastern States an early and continued hostility toward
the West, and referred to a number of historical facts
and documents in support of that charge. Now, sir,
how have these different arguments been met? The
honorable gentleman from Massachusetts, after de
liberating a whole night upon his course, comes into
this chamber to vindicate New England, and instead
of making up his issue with the gentleman from Mis
souri on the charges which he had preferred, chooses
to consider me as the author of those charges, and,
losing sight entirely of that gentleman, selects me as
certain period, the sales of the public lands to such lands only as
have heretofore been offered for sale, and are now subject to entry
at the minimum price. And, also, whether the office of surveyor-
general, and some of the land offices, may not be abolished with
out detriment to the public interest ; or whether it be expedient to
adopt measures to hasten the sales and extend more rapidly the
surveys of the public lands."
14 HAYNE.
his adversary and pours out all the vials of his mighty
wrath upon my devoted head. Nor is he willing to
stop there.
He goes on to assail the institutions and policy of the
South, and calls in question the principles and conduct
of the State which I have the honor to represent.
When I find a gentleman of mature age and experi
ence, of acknowledged talents and profound sagacity,
pursuing a course like this, declining the contest of
fered from the West, and making war upon the unof
fending South, I must believe, I am bound to believe,
he has some object in view which he has not ventured
to disclose.
Mr. President, why is this ? Has the gentleman dis
covered in former controversies with the gentleman
from Missouri that he is overmatched by that sena
tor? And does he hope for an easy victory over a
more feeble adversary? Has the gentleman's dis
tempered fancy been disturbed by gloomy forebodings
of " new alliances to be formed " at which he hinted?
Has the ghost of the murdered Coalition come back,
like the ghost of Banquo, to " sear the eyeballs of the
gentleman," and will it not "down at his bidding?' 5
Are dark visions of broken hopes, and honors lost for
ever, still floating before his heated imagination? Sir,
if it be his object to thrust me between the gentleman
from Missouri and himself, in order to rescue the East
from the contest it has provoked with the West, he
shall not be gratified. Sir, I will not be dragged into
the defence of my friend from Missouri. The South
shall not be forced into a conflict not its own. The
gentleman from Missouri is able to fight his own bat-
HAYNE. 1 5,
ties. The gallant West needs no aid from the South
to repel any attack which may be made on them from
any quarter. Let the gentleman from Massachusetts
controvert the facts and arguments of the gentleman
from Missouri if he can, and if he win the victory let
him wear the honors; I shall not deprive him of his
laurels.
The gentleman from Massachusetts, in reply to my
remarks, on the injurious operations of our land sys
tem on the prosperity of the West, pronounced an ex
travagant eulogium on the paternal care which the
government had extended toward the West, to which
he attributed all that was great and excellent in the
present condition of the new States.
The language of the gentleman on this topic fell
upon my ears like the almost forgotten tones of the
Tory leaders of the British Parliament at the com
mencement of the American revolution. They, too,
discovered that the colonies had grown great under
the fostering care of the mother country ; and I must
confess, while listening to the gentleman, I thought the
appropriate reply to his argument was to be found in
the remark of a celebrated orator made on that oc
casion : " They have grown great in spite of your
protection."
The gentleman, in commenting on the policy of the
government in relation to the new States, has intro
duced to our notice a certain Nathan Dane, of Massa
chusetts, to whom he attributes the celebrated Ordi
nance of 1787, by which, he tells us, " slavery was for
ever excluded from the new States north of the Ohio."
After eulogizing the wisdom of this provision in terms
1 6 HAYNE.
of the most extravagant praise he breaks forth in ad
miration of the greatness of Nathan Dane and great
indeed he must be if it be true, as stated by the sena
tor from Massachusetts, that " he was greater than So
lon and Lycurgus, Minos, Numa Pompilius, and all the
legislators and philosophers of the world," ancient and
modern.
Sir, to such high authority it is certainly my duty,
in a becoming spirit of humility, to submit. And yet
the gentleman will pardon me when I say that it is a
little unfortunate for the fame of this great legislator
that the gentleman from Missouri should have proved
that he was not the author of the Ordinance of 1787, on
which the senator from Massachusetts has reared so
glorious a monument to his name.
Sir, I doubt not the senator will feel some compas
sion for our ignorance when I tell him that, so little are
we acquainted with the modern great men of New
England, that until he informed us yesterday that we
possessed a Solon and a Lycurgus in the person of
Nathan Dane he was only known to the South as a
member of a celebrated assembly called and know r n
by the name of " the Hartford Convention." In the
proceedings of that assembly, which I hold in my hand
(at page 19), will be found, in a few lines, the history
of Nathan Dane ; and a little farther on there is conclu
sive evidence of that ardent devotion to the interests
of the new States which it seems has given him a
just claim to the title of " Father of the West." By
the second resolution of the Hartford Convention it
is declared " that it is expedient to attempt to make
provision for restraining Congress in the exercise of
HAYNE. I/
an unlimited power to make new States and admitting
them to the Union." So much for Nathan Dane, of
Beverly, Massachusetts.
In commenting upon my views in relation to the
public lands the gentleman insists that, it being one of
the conditions of the grants that these lands should
be applied to " the common benefit of all the States,
they must always remain a fund for revenue;" and
adds, " they must be treated as so much treasure."
Sir, the gentleman could hardly find language strong
enough to convey his disapprobation of the policy which
I had ventured to recommend to the favorable con
sideration of the country. And what, sir, was that
policy, and what is the difference between that gen
tleman and myself on this subject?
I threw out the idea that the public lands ought not
to be reserved forever as " a great fund of revenue ;"
that they ought not to be " treated as a great treasure ;"
but, that the course of our policy should rather be di
rected toward the creation of new States and building
up great and flourishing communities.
Now, sir, will it be believed by those who now hear
me, and who listened to the gentleman's denunciation
of my doctrines yesterday, that a book then lay open
before him nay, that he held it in his hand and read
from it certain passages of his own speech delivered
to the House of Representatives in 1825, in which
speech he himself contended for the very doctrines I
had advocated and almost in the same terms. Here is
the speech of the Hon. Daniel Webster, contained in
the first volume of Gales & Seaton's " Register of De
bates " (p. 251), delivered in the House of Repre-
2-4
1 8 HAYNE.
sentatives on the i8th of January, 1825, in a debate on
the Cumberland Road the very debate from which
the senator read yesterday.
I shall read from the celebrated speech two pas
sages, from which it will appear that both as to the
past and the future policy of the government in re
lation to the public lands the gentleman from Mas
sachusetts maintained in 1825 substantially the same
opinions which I have advanced, but which he now so
strongly reprobates. I said, sir, that the system of
credit sales by which the West had been kept con
stantly in debt to the United States, and by which their
wealth was drained off to be expended elsewhere, had
operated injuriously on their prosperity. On this point
the gentleman from Massachusetts, in January, 1825,
expressed himself thus :
" There could be no doubt if gentlemen looked at the
money received into the treasury from the sale. of the
public lands to the West, and then looked to the whole
amount expended by the government (even including
the whole amount of what was laid out for the army)
the latter must be allowed to be very inconsiderable,
and there must be a constant drain of money from the
West to pay for the public lands. It might indeed be
said that this was no more than the refluence of capi
tal which had previously gone over the mountains. Be
it so. Still its practical effect was to produce incon
venience, if not distress, by absorbing the money
of the people."
I contend that the public lands ought not to be
HAYNE. 19
treated merely as " a fund for revenue," that they
ought not to be hoarded " as a great treasure."
On this point the senator expressed himself thus :
" Government, he believed, had received eighteen
or twenty millions of dollars from the public lands, and
it was with the greatest satisfaction he adverted to the
change which had been introduced in the mode of pay
ing for them ; yet he could never think the national do
main was to be regarded as any great source of reve
nue. The great object of the government in respect
of these lands was not so much the money derived
from their sale as it was the getting them settled.
What he meant to say was, he did not think they ought
to hug that domain as a great treasure which was to
enrich the exchequer."
Now, Mr. President, it will be seen that the very
doctrines which the gentleman so indignantly abandons
were urged by him in 1825 ; and if I had actually bor
rowed my sentiments from those which he then
avowed I could not have followed more closely in his
footsteps. Sir, it is only since the gentleman quoted
this book yesterday that my attention has been turned
to the sentiments he expressed in 1825, and, if I had
remembered them, I might possibly have been de
terred from uttering sentiments here which it might
well be supposed I had borrowed from that gentle
man.
In 1825 the gentleman told the world that the pub
lic lands " ought not to be treated as a treasure." He
now tells us that " they must be treated as so much
treasure."
\
20 HAVNE.
What the deliberate opinion of the gentleman on
this subject may be belongs not to me to determine;
but I do not think he can, with the shadow of justice
or propriety, impugn my sentiments while his own re
corded opinions are identical with my own. When
the gentleman refers to the conditions of the grants
under which the United States have acquired these
lands, and insist that, as they are declared to be " for
the common benefit of all the States," they can only be
treated as so much treasure, I think he has applied a
rule of construction too narrow for the case. If in
the deeds of cession it has been declared that the grants
were intended for " the common benefit of all the
States," it is clear from other provisions that they
were not intended merely as so much property; for it
is expressly declared that the object of the grants is
the erection of new States ; and the United States, in
accepting this trust, bind themselves to facilitate the
foundation of these States to be admitted into the
Union with all the rights and privileges of the original
States.
This, sir, was the great end to which all parties
looked, and it is by the fulfillment of this high trust
that " the common benefit of all the States " is to be
best promoted. Sir, let me tell the gentleman that in
the part of the country in which I live we do not
measure political benefits by the money standard. We
consider as more valuable than gold liberty, princi
ple, and justice. But, sir, if we are bound to act on
the narrow principles contended for by the gentleman,
I am wholly at a loss to conceive how he can reconcile
his principles with his own practice. The lands are,
HAYNE. 21
it seems, to be treated " as so much treasure," and
must be applied to the " common benefit of all the
States."
Now, if this be so, whence does he derive the right
to appropriate them for partial and local objects ? How
can the gentleman consent to vote away immense
bodies of these lands for canals in Indiana and Illi
nois, to the Louisville and Portland canal, to Kenyon
College in Ohio, to schools for the deaf and dumb,
and other objects of a similar description?
If grants of this character can fairly be considered as
made " for the common benefit of all the States," it can
only be because all the States are interested in the wel
fare of each a principle which, carried to the full ex
tent, destroys all distinction between local and na
tional objects, and is certainly broad enough to embrace
the principles for which I have ventured to contend.
Sir, the true difference between us I take to be this :
the gentleman wishes to treat the public lands as a
great treasure, just as so much money in the treasury,
to be applied to all objects, constitutional and unconsti
tutional, to which the public money is constantly ap
plied. I consider it as a sacred trust, which we ought
to fulfil, on the principles for which I have contended.
The senator from Massachusetts has thought proper
to present in strong contrast the friendly feelings of
the East towards the West, with sentiments of an
opposite character displayed by the South in relation
to appropriations for internal improvements. Now, sir,
let it be recollected that the South have made no pro
fessions; I have certainly made none in their behalf
of regard for the West. It has been reserved for the
22 HAYNE.
gentleman from Massachusetts, while he vaunts over
his own personal devotion to Western interests, to
claim for the entire section of country to which he be
longs an ardent friendship for the West as manifested
by their support of the system of internal improvement,
while he casts in our teeth the reproach that the South
has manifested hostility to Western interests in oppos
ing appropriations for such objects. That gentleman
at the same time acknowledged that the South enter
tains constitutional scruples on this subject.
Are we then, sir, to understand that the gentleman
considers it a just subject of reproach that we re
spect our oaths by which we are bound " to preserve,
protect, and defend the constitution of the United
States? " Would the gentleman have us manifest our
love to the West by trampling under foot our consti
tutional scruples? Does he not perceive, if the South
is to be reproached with unkindness to the West in
voting against appropriations which the gentleman ad
mits they could not vote for without doing violence to
their constitutional opinions, that he exposes himself to
the question whether, if he was in our situation, he
could not vote for these appropriations regardless of
his scruples?
No, sir, I will not do the gentleman so great in
justice. He has fallen into this error from not having
duly weighed the force and effect of the reproach
which he was endeavoring to cast upon the South. In
relation to the other point, the friendship manifested
by New England towards the West in their support
of the system of internal improvement, the gentleman
HAYNE. 23
will pardon me for saying that I think he is equally
unfortunate in having introduced that topic.
As that gentleman has forced it upon us, however, I
cannot suffer it to pass unnoticed. When the gentle
man tells us that the appropriations for internal im
provement in the West would in almost every instance
have failed but for New England votes, he has for
gotten to tell us the when, the how, and the where
fore this new-born zeal for the West sprang up in
the bosom of New England.
If we look back only a few years we will find in.
both Houses of Congress a uniform and steady oppo
sition on the part of the members from the eastern
States generally to all appropriations of this character.
At the time I became a member of this House, and for
some time afterward, a decided majority of the New
England senators were opposed to the very measures
which the senator from Massachusetts tells us they
now cordially support. Sir, the journals are before
me, and an examination of them will satisfy every
gentleman of that fact.
It must be well known to every one whose experi
ence dates back as far as 1825 that up to a certain
period New England was generally opposed to appro
priations for internal improvements in the West. The
gentleman from Massachusetts may be himself an ex
ception, but if he went for the system before 1825 it
is certain that his colleagues did not go with him. In
the session of 1824 and 1825, however (a memorable
era in the history of this country), a wonderful change
took place in New England in relation to Western in
terests.
24 HAYNE.
Sir, an extraordinary union of sympathies and of in
terests was then effected which brought the East and
West into close alliance. The book from which I have
before read contains the first public annunciation of that
happy reconciliation of conflicting interests, personal
and political, which brought the East and West to
gether and locked in a fraternal embrace the two grea'
orators of the East and the West.
Sir, it was on the i8th of January, 1825, while the
result of the presidential election in the House of Rep
resentatives was still doubtful, while the whole coun
try was looking with intense anxiety to that legisla
tive hall where the mighty drama was so soon to be
acted, that we saw the leaders of two great parties in
the House and in the nation " taking sweet counsel to
gether," and in a celebrated debate on the Cumber
land Road fighting side by side for Western interests.
It was on that memorable occasion that the senator
from Massachusetts held out the white flag to the
West and uttered those liberal sentiments which he
yesterday so indignantly repudiated. Then it was that
that happy union between the members of the cele
brated coalition was consummated, whose immediate
issue was a president from one quarter of the Union
with the succession (as it was supposed) secured to
another.
The " American System," before a rude, disjointed,
and misshapen mass, now assumed form and consis
tency : then it was that it became the " settled policy
of the government " that this system should be so ad
ministered as to create a reciprocity of interest and a
reciprocal distribution of government favors East and
HAYNE. 25
West (the tariff and internal improvements), while
the South yes, sir, the impracticable South was to
be " out of your protection."
The gentleman may boast as much as he pleases of
the friendship of New England for the West as dis
played in their support of internal improvement; but
when he next introduces that topic I trust that he will
tell us when that friendship commenced, how it was
brought about, and why it was established.
Before I leave this topic I must be permitted to say
that the true character of the policy now pursued by
the gentleman from Massachusetts and his friends in
relation to appropriations of land and money for the
benefit of the West is in my estimation very similar to
that pursued by Jacob of old toward his brother Esau
it robs them of their birthright for a mess of pot
tage.
The gentleman from Massachusetts, in alluding to a
remark of mine that before any disposition could be
made of the public lands the national debt ( for which
they stand pledged) must be first paid, took occasion
to intimate " that the extraordinary fervor which seems
to exist in a certain quarter (meaning the South, sir)
for the payment of the debt arises from a disposition to
weaken the ties which bind the people to the Union."
While the gentleman deals us this blow he pro
fesses an ardent desire to see the debt speedily ex
tinguished. He must excuse me, however, for feeling
some distrust on that subject until I find this disposi
tion manifested by something stronger than profes
sions. I shall look for acts, decided and unequivocal
acts, for the performance of which an opportunity will
26 HAYNE.
very soon (if I am not greatly mistaken) be afforded.
Sir, if I were at liberty to judge of the course which
that gentleman would pursue from the principles which
he has laid down in relation to this matter, I should be
bound to conclude that he will be found acting with
those with whom it is a darling object to prevent the
payment of the public debt. He tells us he is desirous
of paying the debt, " because we are under an obliga
tion to discharge it."
Now, sir, suppose it should happen that the public
creditors with whom we have contracted the obliga
tion should release us from it so far as to declare their
willingness to wait for payment for fifty years to come,
provided only that the interest shall be punctually dis
charged. The gentleman from Massachusetts will
then be released from the obligation which now makes
him desirous of paying the debt; and let me tell the
gentleman the holders of the stock will not only re
lease us from this obligation, but they will implore,
nay, they will even pay us not to pay them.
But, adds the gentleman, so far as the debt may
have an effect in binding the debtors to the country,
and thereby serving as a link to hold the States to
gether, he would be glad that it should exist forever.
Surely, then, sir, on the gentleman's own principles,
he must be opposed to the payment of the debt.
Sir, let me tell that gentleman that the South repudi
ates the idea that a pecuniary dependence on the fed
eral government is one of the legitimate means of
holding the States together. A moneyed interest in
the government is essentially a base interest ; and just
HAYNE. 27
so far as it operates to bind the feelings of those who
are subjected to it to the government, just so far as
it operates in creating sympathies and interests that
would not otherwise exist, is it opposed to all the
principles of free government and at war with virtue
and patriotism.
Sir, the link which binds the public creditors, as such,
to their country, binds them equally to all govern
ments, whether arbitrary or free. In a free govern
ment this principle of abject dependence, if extended
through all the ramifications of society, must be fatal
to liberty.
Already have we made alarming strides in that di
rection. The entire class of manufacturers, the hold
ers of stock, with their hundreds of millions of capital,
are held to the government by the strong link of pe
cuniary interests; millions of people entire sections
of country, interested, or believing themselves to be
so, in the public lands and the public treasure, are
bound to the government by the expectation of pe
cuniary favors.
If this system is carried much farther no man can
fail to see that every generous motive of attachment
to the country will be destroyed, and in its place will
spring up those low, groveling, base, and selfish feel
ings which bind men to the footstool of a despot by
bonds as strong and enduring as those which attach
them to free institutions. Sir, I would lay the foun
dation of this government in the affections of the peo
ple I would teach them to cling to it by dispensing
equal justice, and, above all, by securing the " blessings
of liberty " to " themselves and to their posterity."
28 IIAYNE.
The honorable gentleman from Massachusetts has
gone out of his way to pass a high eulogium on the
State of Ohio. In the most impassioned tones of elo
quence he described her majestic march to greatness.
He told us that, having already left all the other States
far behind, she was now passing by Virginia and Penn
sylvania and about to take her station by the side of
New York. To all this, sir, I was disposed most cor
dially to respond. When, however, the gentleman pro
ceeded to contrast the State of Ohio with Kentucky,
to the disadvantage of the latter, I listened to him
with regret; and when he proceeded further to at
tribute the great, and, as he supposed, acknowledged
superiority of the former in population, wealth, and
general prosperity, to the policy of Nathan Dane, of
Massachusetts, which had secured to the people of
Ohio (by the Ordinance of 1787) a population of
freemen, I will confess that my feelings suffered a re
vulsion which I am now unable to describe in any lan
guage sufficiently respectful toward the gentleman
from Massachusetts. In contrasting the State of Ohio
with Kentucky for the purpose of pointing out the su
periority of the former and of attributing that superior
ity to the existence of slavery in the one State and its
absence in the other, I thought I could discern the very
spirit of the Missouri question intruded into this de
bate for objects best known to the gentleman himself.
Did that gentleman, sir, when he formed the deter
mination to cross the Southern border in order to in
vade the State of South Carolina, deem it prudent or
necessary to enlist under his banners the prejudices of
the world, which, like Swiss troops, may be engaged
HAYNE. 29
in any cause and are prepared to serve under any
leader?
Did he desire to avail himself of those remorseless
allies, the passions of mankind, of which it may be
more truly said than of the savage tribes of the wilder
ness, " that their known rule of warfare is an indis
criminate slaughter of all ages, sexes, and conditions ?"
Or was it supposed, sir, that in a premeditated and
unprovoked attack upon the South it was advisable to
begin by a gentle admonition of our supposed weak
ness in order to prevent us from making that firm and
manly resistance due to our own character and our
dearest interest ? Was the significant hint of the weak
ness of slaveholding States when contrasted with the
superior strength of free States, like the glare of the
weapon half drawn from its scabbard, intended to en
force the lessons of prudence and patriotism which the
gentleman had resolved, out of his abundant gener
osity, gratuitously to bestow upon us?
Mr. President, the impression which has gone
abroad of the weakness of the South as competed with
the slave question exposes us to such constant attacks,
has done us so much injury, and is calculated to pro
duce such infinite mischiefs, that I embrace the occa
sion presented by the remarks of the gentleman from
Massachusetts to declare that we are ready to meet
the question promptly and fearlessly. It is one from
which we are not disposed to shrink in whatever form
or under whatever circumstances it may be pressed
upon us.
We are ready to make up the issue with the gentle
man as to the influence of slavery on individual and
30 HAYNE.
national character, on the prosperity and greatness
either of the United States or of particular States. Sir,
when arraigned before the bar of public opinion on this
charge of slavery we can stand up with conscious recti
tude, plead not guilty, and put ourselves upon God and
our country. Sir, we will not consent to look at slavery
in the abstract. We will not stop to inquire whether
the black' man, as some philosophers have contended,
is of an inferior race, nor whether his color and con
dition are effects of a curse inflicted for the offences
of his ancestors? We deal in no abstractions. We
will not look back to inquire whether our fathers were
guiltless in introducing slaves into this country? If an
inquiry should ever be instituted in these matters, how
ever, it will be found that the profits of the slave-trade
were not confined to the South. Southern ships and
Southern sailors were not the instruments of bringing
slaves to the shores of America, nor did our merchants
reap the profits of that " accursed traffic/'
But, sir, we will pass over all this. If. slavery, as it
now exists in this country, be an evil, we of the pres
ent day found it ready made to our hands. Finding
our lot cast among a people whom God had manifestly
committed to our care we did not sit down to speculate
on abstract questions of theoretical liberty. We met
it as a practical question of obligation and duty. We
resolved to make the best of the situation in which
Providence had placed us, and to fulfill the high trusts
which had devolved upon us as the owners of slaves
in the only way in which such a trust could be ful
filled without spreading misery and ruin throughout
the land.
HAYNE. 31
We found that we had to deal with a people whose
physical, moral, and intellectual habits and character
totally disqualified them from the enjoyment of the
blessings of freedom. We could not send them back
to the shores from whence their fathers had been
taken ; their numbers forbade the thought, even if we
did not know that their condition here is infinitely
preferable to what it possibly could be among the bar
ren sands and savage tribes of Africa ; and it was whol
ly irreconcilable with all our notions of humanity to
tear asunder the tender ties which they had formed
among us to gratify the feelings of a false philan
thropy.
What a commentary on the wisdom, justice, and hu
manity of the Southern slave-owner is presented by
the example of certain benevolent associations and
charitable individuals elsewhere ! Shedding weak tears
over sufferings which had existence only in their own
sickly imaginations, these " friends of humanity " set
themselves systematically to work to seduce the slaves
of the South from their masters. By means of mis
sionaries and political tracts the scheme was in a great
measure successful. Thousands of these deluded vic
tims of fanaticism were seduced into the enjoyment of
freedom in our northern cities.
And what has been the consequence? Go to these
cities now and ask the question. Visit the dark and
narrow lanes and obscure recesses which have been as
signed by common consent as the abodes of those out
casts of the world the free people of color. Sir,
there does not exist on the face of the whole earth a
population so poor, so wretched, so vile, so loathsome,
32 HAYNE.
so utterly destitute of all the comforts, conveniences,
and decencies of life as the unfortunate blacks of Phil
adelphia, New York, and Boston. Liberty has been to
them the greatest of calamities, the heaviest of curses.
Sir, I have had some opportunities of making com
parison between the condition of the free negroes of
the north and the slaves of the south, and the compari
son has left not only an indelible impression of the
superior advantages of the latter, but has gone far to
reconcile me to slavery itself. Never have I felt so
forcibly that touching description, " The foxes have
holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son
of Man hath not where to lay his head," as when I
have seen this unhappy race, naked and houseless, al
most starving in the streets, and abandoned by all the
world. Sir, I have seen, in the neighborhood of one of
the most moral, religious, and refined cities of the
north, a family of free blacks driven to the caves of
the rocks, and there obtaining a precarious subsistence
from charity and plunder.
When the gentleman from Massachusetts adopts
and reiterates the old charge of weakness as resulting
from slavery I must be permitted to call for the proof
of those blighting effects which he ascribes to its in
fluence. I suspect that when the subject is closely ex
amined it will be found that there is not much force
even on the plausible objection of the want of physical
power in slave-holding States. The power of a coun
try is compounded of its population and its wealth, and
in modern times, where, from the very form and struc
ture of society, by far the greater portion of the peo
ple must, even during the continuance of the most deso-
HAYNE. 33
lating wars, be employed in the cultivation of the soil
and other peaceful pursuits, it may be well doubted
whether slave-holding States, by reason of a superior
value of their productions are not able to maintain a
number of troops in the field fully equal to what
could be supported by States with a larger white popu
lation but not possessed of equal resources. . . .
Mr. President, I wish it to be distinctly understood
that all the remarks I have made on this subject are in
tended to be exclusively applied to a party which I
have described as the " Peace Party of New England,"
embracing the political associates of the senator from
Massachusetts a party which controlled the operations
of that State during the embargo and the war, and who
are justly chargeable with all the measures I have
reprobated. Sir, nothing has been further from my
thoughts than to impeach the character or conduct of
the people of New England. For their steady habits
and hardy virtues I trust I entertain a becoming re
spect. I fully subscribe to the truth of the description
given before the Revolution by one whose praise is
the highest eulogy, " that the perseverance of Hol
land, the activity of France, and the dexterous and
firm sagacity of English enterprise have been more
than equalled by this recent people." Hardy, enter
prising, sagacious, industrious, and moral, the people of
New England of the present day are worthy of their
ancestors. Still less, Mr. President, has it been my in
tention to say anything that could be construed into a
want of respect for that party who, trampling on all
narrow, sectional feelings, have been true to their
34 HAYNE.
principles in the worst times, I mean the Democracy
of New England.
Sir, I will declare that, highly as I appreciate the
Democracy of the South, J consider even higher praise
to be due to the Democracy of New England, who
have maintained their principles " through good and
through evil report," who at every period of our na
tional history have stood up manfully for " their coun
try, their whole country, and nothing but their coun
try." In the great political revolution of '98 they
were found united with the Democracy of the South,
marching under the banner of the constitution, led on
by the patriarch of liberty in search of the land of po
litical promise which they lived not only to behold but
to possess and to enjoy.
Again, sir, in the darkest and most gloomy period
of the war, when our country stood single-handed
against " the conqueror of the conquerors of the
world," when all about and around them was dark, and
dreary, disastrous and discouraging, they stood a Spar
tan band in that narrow pass where the honor of their
country was to be defended or to find its grave.
And in the last great struggle, involving, as we be
lieve, the very existence of the principle of popular
sovereignty, where were the Democracy of New Eng
land? Where they always have been found, sir, strug
gling side by side with their brethren of the South and
the West for popular rights, and assisting in that glori
ous triumph by which the man of the people was ele
vated to the highest office in their gift.
Who, then, Mr. President, are the true friends of
HAYNE. 35
the Union ? Those who would confine the federal gov
ernment strictly within the limits prescribed by the con
stitution; who would preserve to the States and the
people all powers not expressly delegated ; who would
make this a federal and not a national union, and who,
administering the government in a spirit of equal jus
tice, would make it a blessing and not a curse. And
who are its enemies ? Those who are in favor of con
solidation, who are constantly stealing power from the
States and adding strength to the federal government.
Who, assuming an unwarrantable jurisdiction over the
States and the people, undertake to regulate the whole
industry and capital of the country. But, sir, of all
descriptions of men, I consider those as the worst ene
mies of the Union who sacrifice the equal rights which
belong to every member of the confederacy to com
binations of interested majorities for personal or politi
cal objects.
But the gentleman apprehends no evil from the de
pendence of the States on the federal government ; he
can see no danger of corruption from the influence of
money or of patronage. Sir, I know that it is supposed
to be a wise saying " that patronage is a source of
weakness," and in support of that maxim it has been
said that " every ten appointments made a hundred
enemies."
But I am rather inclined to think, with the eloquent
and sagacious orator now reposing on his laurels on
the banks of the Roanoke, that " the power of con
ferring favors creates a crowd of dependents ;" he gave
a forcible illustration of the truth of the remark, when
he told us of the effect of holding up the savory mor-
36 HAYNE.
sel to the eager eyes of the hungry hounds gathered
around his door. It mattered not whether the gift was
bestowed on Towser or Sweetlips, " Tray, Blanche, or
Sweetheart;" while held in suspense they were all gov
erned by a nod, and when the morsel was bestowed the
expectation of the favors of to-morrow kept up the
subjection of to-day.
The senator from Massachusetts, in denouncing
what he is pleased to call the Carolina doctrine, has
attempted to throw ridicule upon the idea that a State
has any constitutional remedy, by the exercise of its
sovereign authority, against " a gross, palpable, and
deliberate violation of the constitution." He calls it
" an idle " or " ridiculous notion," or something to
that effect, and added that it would make the Union
" A mere rope of sand."
Now r , sir, as the gentleman has not condescended
to enter into any examination of the question, and
has been satisfied with throwing the weight of his au
thority into the scale, I do not deerrt it necessary to
do more than to throw into the opposite scale the au
thority on which South Carolina relies; and there for
the present I am perfectly willing to leave the con
troversy. The South Carolina doctrine that is to say,
the doctrine contained in an exposition reported by a
a committee of the legislature in December, 1828, and
published by their authority is the good old Republi
can doctrine of '98 the doctrine of the celebrated
" Virginia Resolutions " of that year, and of " Madi
son's Report " of '99.
It will be recollected that the legislature of Vir
ginia, in December, 1898, took into consideration the
HAYNE. 37
Alien and Sedition Laws, then considered by all repub
licans as a gross violation of the constitution of the
United States, and on that day passed, among others,
the following resolution :
" The General Assembly doth explicitly and per
emptorily declare that it views the powers of tne fed
eral government as resulting from the compact to
which the States are parties, as limited by the plain
sense and intention of the instrument constituting that
compact, as no further valid than they are authorized
by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that
in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exer
cise of other powers not granted by the said compact,
the States who are parties thereto have the right and
are in duty bound to interpose for arresting the prog
ress of the evil, and for maintaining within their re
spective limits the authorities, rights, and liberties ap
pertaining to them."
In addition to the above resolution the General As
sembly of Virginia " appealed to the other States in
the confidence that they would concur with that com
monwealth, that the act aforesaid (the Alien and Sedi
tion Laws) are unconstitutional, and that the neces
sary and proper measures would be taken by each for
co-operating with Virginia in maintaining unimpaired
the authorities, rights, and liberties reserved to the
States respectively or to the people."
The legislatures of several of the New England
States, having, contrary to the expectation of the legis
lature of Virginia, expressed their dissent from these
38 1IAYNE.
doctrines; the subject came up again for consideration
during the session of 1799-1800, when it was referred
to a select committee by whom was made that cele
brated report which is familiarly known as " Madison's
Report/' and which deserves to last as long as the con
stitution itself.
In that report, which was subsequently adopted by
the legislature, the whole subject was deliberately re-
examined, and the objection urged against the Vir
ginia doctrines carefully considered. The result was
that the legislature of Virginia reaffirmed all the prin
ciples laid down in the resolutions of 1798, and issued
to the world that admirable report which has stamped
the character of Mr. Madison as the preserver of that
constitution which he had contributed so largely to
create and establish.
I will here quote from Mr. Madison's report one or
two passages which bear more immediately on the
point in controversy:
" The resolution, having taken this view of the fed
eral compact, proceeds to infer ' that in case of a de
liberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other
powers not granted by the said compact, the States who
are parties thereto have the right, and are in duty
bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the
evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits
the authorities, rights, and liberties appertaining to
them/
" It appears to your committee to be a plain princi
ple, founded in common sense, illustrated by common
practice, and essential to the nature of compacts, that,
HAYNE. 39
where resort can be had to no tribunal superior to the
authority of the parties, the parties themselves must
be the rightful judges in the last resort whether the
bargain made has been pursued or violated. The con
stitution of the United States was formed by the sanc
tion of the States, given by each in its sovereign ca
pacity. It adds to the stability and dignity as well as
to the authority of the constitution that it rests upon
this legitimate and solid foundation. The States, then,
being the parties to the constitutional compact, and in
their sovereign capacity, it follows of necessity, that
there can be no tribunal above their authority to de
cide in the last resort whether the compact made by
them be violated; and, consequently, that, as the par
ties to it they must themselves decide in the last re
sort such questions as may be of sufficient magnitude
to require their interposition.
" The resolution has guarded against any misappre
hension of its object by expressly requiring for such
an interposition ' the case of a deliberate, palpable, and
dangerous breach of the constitution by the exercise
of powers not granted by it.' It must be a case, not of
a light and transient nature, but of a nature dangerous
to the great purposes for which the constitution was
established.
" But the resolution has done more than guard
against misconstruction by expressly referring to cases
of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous nature. It
specifies the object of the interposition which it con
templates to be solely that of arresting the progress of
the evil of usurpation, and of maintaining the authori-
40 HAYNE.
ties, rights, and liberties appertaining to the States as
parties to the constitution.
" From this view of the resolution it would seem in
conceivable that it can incur any just disapprobation
from those who, laying aside all momentary impres
sions and recollecting the genuine source and object o
the federal constitution, shall candidly and accurately
interpret the meaning of the general assembly. If the
deliberate exercise of dangerous powers, palpably
withheld by the constitution, could not justify the par
ties to it in interposing, even so far as to arrest the
progress of the evil and thereby to preserve the con
stitution itself as well as to provide for the safety of
the parties to it there would be an end to all relief
from usurped power, and a direct subversion of the
rights specified or recognized under all the State con
stitutions, as well as a plain denial of tlie fundamental
principles on which our independence itself was de
clared."
But, sir, our authorities do not stop here. The State
of Kentucky responded to Virginia, and on the loth of
November, 1798, adopted those celebrated resolutions
well known to have been penned by the author of the
Declaration of American Independence. In those reso
lutions the legislature of Kentucky declare
'' That the government created by this compact was
not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of
the powers delegated to itself, since that would have
made its discretion and not the constitution the mea
sure of its powers ; but that, as in all other cases of com
pact among parties having no common judge, each
HAYNE. 41
party has an equal right to judge for itself as well of
infractions as of the mode and measure of redress."
At the ensuing session of the legislature the subject
was re-examined, and on the I4th of November, 1799,
the resolutions of the preceding year were deliberately
reaffirmed, and it was among other things solemnly
declared :
" That if those who administer the general govern
ment be permitted to transgress the limits fixed by that
compact, by a total disregard to the special delegations
of power therein contained, an annihilation of the State
governments and the erection upon their ruins of a
general consolidated government will be the inevitable
consequence. That the principles of construction con
tended for by sundry of the State legislatures, that
the general government is the exclusive judge of the
extent of the powers delegated to it, stop nothing
short of despotism; since the discretion of those who
administer the government, and not the constitution,
would be the measure of their powers. That the sev
eral States who formed that instrument, being sover
eign and independent, have the unquestionable right
to judge of its infraction, and that a nullification, by
those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts done un
der color of that instrument, is the rightful remedy."
Time and experience confirmed Mr. Jefferson's opin
ion on this all-important point. In the year 1821 he
expressed himself in this emphatic manner :
" It is a fatal heresy to suppose that either our State
42 HAYXE.
governments are superior to the federal or the federal
to the State; neither is authorized literally to decide
which belongs to itself or its copartner in government ;
in differences of opinion between their different sets
of public servants the appeal is to neither, but to their
employers peaceably assembled by their representa
tives in convention."
The opinion of Mr. Jefferson on this subject has
been so repeatedly and so solemnly expressed that they
may be said to have been among the most fixed and
settled convictions of his mind.
In the protest prepared by him for the legislature of
Virginia in December, 1825, in respect to the powers
exercised by the federal government in relation to the
tariff and internal improvements, which he declares to
be " usurpations of the powers retained by the States,
mere interpolations into the compact and direct in
fractions of it," he solemnly reasserts all the princi
ples of the Virginia resolutions of '98 protests against
" these acts of the federal branch of the government
as null and void, and declares that, although Virginia
would consider a dissolution of the Union as among
the greatest calamities that could befall them, yet it is
not the greatest. There is one yet greater submis
sion to a government of unlimited powers. It is only
when the hope of this shall become absolutely desper
ate that further forbearance could not be indulged."
In his letter to Mr. Giles, written about the same
time, he says :
" I see, as you do, and with the deepest affliction,
HAYNE. 43
the rapid strides with which the federal branch of our
government is advancing toward the usurpation of all
the rights reserved to the States, and the consolida
tion in itself of all powers, foreign and domestic, and
that too by constructions which leave no limits to their
powers, etc. Under the power to regulate commerce
they assume indefinitely that also over agriculture and
manufactures, etc. Under the authority to establish
post-roads they claim that of cutting down mountains
for the construction of roads and digging canals, etc.
And what is our resource for the preservation of the
constitution? Reason and argument? You might as
well reason and argue with the marble columns en
circling them, etc. Are we then to stand to our arms
with the hot-headed Georgian? No [and I say no, and
South Carolina has said no] , that must be the last re
source. We must have patience and long endurance
with our brethren, etc., and separate from our compan
ions only when the sole alternatives left are a disso
lution of our union with them or submission to a gov
ernment without limitation of powers. Between these
two evils, when we must make a choice, there can be
no hesitation."
Such, sir, are the high and imposing authorities in
support of " the Carolina doctrine," which is, in fact,
the doctrine of the Virginia resolutions of 1798.
Sir, at that day the whole country was divided on
this very question. It formed the line of demarcation
between the federal and republican parties; and the
great political revolution which then took place turned
upon the very question involved in these resolutions.
44 HAYNE.
That question was decided by the people, and by that
decision the constitution was, in the emphatic language
of Mr. Jefferson, " saved at its last gasp."
I should suppose, sir, it would require more self-
respect than any gentleman here would be willing to
assume to treat lightly doctrines derived from such
high resources. Resting on authority like this, I will
ask gentlemen whether South Carolina has not
manifested a high regard for the Union, when, under
a tyranny ten times more grievous than the Alien and
Sedition Laws, she has hitherto gone no further than
to petition, remonstrate, and to solemnly protest
against a series of measures which she believes to be
wholly unconstitutional and utterly destructive of her
interests. Sir, South Carolina has not gone one step
further than Mr. Jefferson himself was disposed to go
in relation to the present subject of our pres
ent complaints; not a step further than the states
men from New England were disposed to go
under similar circumstances ; no further than the sena
tor from Massachusetts himself once considered as
within " the limits of a constitutional opposition." The
doctrine that it is the right of a State to judge of the
violations of the constitution on the part of the federal
government and to protect her citizens from the opera
tions of unconstitutional laws was held by the en
lightened citizens of Boston who assembled in Faneuil
Hall on the 25th of January, 1809. They state in that
celebrated memorial that " they looked only to the
State legislature, who were competent to devise re
lief against the unconstitutional acts of the general
government. That your power (say they) is adequate
HAYNE. 45
'to that object is evident from the organization of the
confederacy."
A distinguished senator from one of the New Eng
land States [Mr. Hillhouse], in a speech delivered here
on a bill for enforcing the embargo declared :
" I feel myself bound in conscience to declare (lest
the blood of those who shall fall in the execution of
this measure shall be on my head) that I consider this
to be an act which directs a mortal blow at the liberties
of my country ; an act containing unconstitutional pro
visions to which the people are not bound to submit,
and to which in. my opinion they will not submit."
And the senator from Massachusetts himself, in a
speech delivered on the same subject in the other
House, said:
" This opposition is constitutional and legal ; it is
also conscientious. It rests on settled and sober con
viction that such policy is destructive to the interests
of the people and dangerous to the being of govern
ment. The experience of every day confirms these
sentiments. Men who act from such motives are not
to be discouraged by trifling obstacles nor awed by any
dangers. They know the limit of constitutional oppo
sition; up to that limit, at their own discretion, they
will walk, and walk fearlessly."
How " the being of the government " was to be en
dangered by " constitutional opposition " to the em
bargo I leave to the gentleman to explain.
Thus it will be seen, Mr. President, that the South
46 IIAVNE.
Carolina doctrine is the republican doctrine of '98 ; that
it was promulgated by the fathers of the faith ; that it
was maintained by Virginia and Kentucky in the v.'orst
of times ; that it constituted the very pivot on which the
political revolution of that day turned; that it em
braces the very principles the triumph of which at that
time saved the constitution at its last gasp, and which
New England statesmen were not unwilling to adopt
when they believed themselves to be the victims of
unconstitutional legislation. Sir, as to the doctrine that
the federal government is the exclusive judge of the
extent as well as the limitations of its powers, it seems
to me to be utterly subversive of the sovereignty and
independence of the States.
It makes but little difference in my estimation
whether Congress or the Supreme Court are invested
with this power. If the federal government in all or
any of its departments is to prescribe the limits of its
own authority, and the States are bound to submit to
the decision and are not allowed to examine and de
cide for themselves when the barriers of the constitu
tion shall be overleaped, this is practically " a govern
ment without limitation of powers."
The States are at once reduced to mere petty cor
porations and the people are entirely at your mercy. I
have but one word more to add. In all the efforts that
have been made by South Carolina to resist the uncon
stitutional laws which Congress has extended over
them, she has kept steadily in view the preservation
of the Union by the only means by which she believes
it can be long preserved a firm, manly, and steady
resistance against usurpation.
HAYNE. 47
The measures of the federal government have, it is
true, prostrated her interests, and will soon involve the
whole South in irretrievable ruin. But even this evil,
great as it is, is not the chief ground of our complaints.
It is the principle involved in the contest, a principle
which, substituting the discretion of Congress for the
limitations of the constitution, brings the States and
the people to the feet of the federal government and
leaves them nothing they can call their own.
Sir, if the measures of the federal government were
less oppressive we should still strive against this usur
pation. The South is acting on a principle she has al
ways held sacred resistance to unauthorized taxation.
These, sir, are the principles which induced the im
mortal Hampden to resist the payment of a tax of
twenty shillings. Would twenty shillings have ruined
his fortune ? No ! but the payment of half twenty shil
lings on the principle on which it was demanded would
have made him a slave.
Sir, if in acting on these high motives, if animated
by that ardent love of liberty which has always been
the most prominent trait in the Southern character,
we should be hurried beyond the bounds of a cold and
calculating prudence, who is there with one noble and
generous sentiment in his bosom that would not be dis
posed, in the language of Burke, to exclaim, " You
must pardon something to the spirit of liberty !"
48 STEVENS.
Stevens, Thaddeus, an American statesman and
orator, born at Peacham, Vt., April 4, 1792 ; died in Wash
ington, D. C., August u, 1868. After graduation from
Dartmouth College he removed to Pennsylvania in 1814,
and was there admitted to the bar. He was for several
terms a member of the State Legislature, and in 1848 was
sent to Congress as a Whig member from Lancaster. While
there he strenuously opposed the compromise measures
proposed by Henry Clay, and especially the Fugitive Slave
Law. From 1853 to 1858 Stevens practised his profession
in Lancaster, but in the latter year was again returned to
Congress as a Representative, and served there uninter
ruptedly until his death. During this period he was foremost
among Republican leaders. He was a vigorous, powerful
debator, with much eloquence at his ready command, and
an opponent not to be lightly encountered. His speech
against Webster and the Northern Compromisers affords a
worthy example of his style. In his own day he was
frequently termed " The Great Commoner. "
AGAINST WEBSTER AND NORTHERN COM
PROMISERS.
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JUNE IO, 1850.
DANTE, by actual observation, makes hell consist of
nine circles, the punishments of each increasing in in
tensity over the preceding. Those doomed to the
first circle are much less afflicted than those in the
ninth, where are tortured Lucifer and Judas Iscariot
and I trust, in the next edition, will be added, the
traitors to liberty. But notwithstanding- this difference
in degree, all, from the first circle to the ninth, in-
STEVENS. 49
elusive, is hell cruel, desolate, abhorred, horrible hell !
If I might venture to make a suggestion, I would ad
vise these reverend perverters of Scripture to devote
their subtlety to what they have probably more inter
est in to ascertaining and demonstrating (perhaps an
accompanying map might be useful) the exact spot
and location where the most comfort might be enjoyed
the coolest corner in the lake that burns with fire and
brimstone !
But not only by honorable gentlemen in this House,
and right honorable gentlemen in the other, but
throughout the country, the friends of liberty are re
proached as " transcendentalists and fanatics." Sir, I
do not understand the terms in such connection. There
can be no fanatics in the cause of genuine liberty.
Fanaticism is excessive zeal. There may be, and have
been, fanatics in false religion ; in the bloody religion
of the heathen. There are fanatics in superstition.
But there can be no fanatics, however warm their zeal,
in true religion, even although* you sell your goods,
and bestow your money on the poor, and go and follow
your Master. There may be, and every hour shows
around me, fanatics in the cause of false liberty that
infamous liberty which justifies human bondage; that
liberty whose cornerstone is slavery. But there can
be no fanaticism, however high the enthusiasm, in
the cause of rational, universal liberty the liberty of
the Declaration of Independence.
This is the same censure which the Egyptian tyrant
cast upon those old abolitionists, Moses and Aaron,
when they " agitated " for freedom, and, in obedience
to the command of God, bade him let the people go.
3-4
50 STEVENS.
But we are told by these pretended advocates of
liberty in both branches of Congress, that those who
preach freedom here and elsewhere are the slave's
worst enemies; that it makes the slaveholder increase
their burdens and tighten their chains ; that more cruel
laws are enacted since this agitation began in 1835.
Sir, I am not satisfied that this is the fact. I will send
to the clerk, and ask him to read a law of Virginia
enacted more than fifty years before this agitation
began. It is to be found in the sixth volume of " Hen-
ing's Statutes at Large of Virginia," published in 1819,
" pursuant to an act of the General Assembly of Vir
ginia, passed on the fifth day of February, 1808."
" Sec. xxiv. And that when any slave shall be no
toriously guilty of going abroad in the night, or run
ning away and laying out, and cannot be reclaimed
from such disorderly courses by common methods of
punishment, it shall be lawful for the county court,
upon complaint and proof thereof to them made by
the owner of such slave, to order and direct such pun
ishment by dismembering, or any other way, not
touching life, as the court shall think fit. And if such
slave shall die by means of such dismembering, no
forfeiture or punishment shall be thereby incurred."
I have had that law read to see if any gentleman
can turn? me to any more cruel laws passed since the
*'' agitation." I did not read it myself, though found
on the pages of Old Virginia's law books, lest it should
make the modest gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Mill-
son], and the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr.
Stanly], and his gray-headed negro, blush!
STEVENS. 51
Mr. Bayly of Virginia That law is repealed, or not
now in force.
Mr. Stevens Then I am glad that the agitation has
produced some amelioration o-f your laws, although I
still find it on your statute book.
But suppose it were true that the masters had be
come more severe; has it not been so with tyrants in
every age? The nearer the oppressed is to freedom,
and the more hopeful, his struggles, the tighter the
master rivets his chains. Moses and Aaron urged the
emancipation of the enslaved Jews. Their master
hardened his heart. Those fanatical abolitionists,,
guided by Heaven, agitated anew. Pharaoh increased
the burden of the slaves. He required the same quan
tity of brick from them without straw, as when the
straw had been found them. They were seen dispersed
and wandering to gather stubble to make out their
task. They failed, and were beaten with stripes.
Moses was their worst enemy, according to these phil
anthropic gentlemen. Did the Lord think so, and
command him to desist, lest he should injure them?
No ; he directed him to agitate again, and demand the
abolition of slavery from the king himself. That great
slaveholder still hardened his heart, and refused. The
Lord visited him with successive plagues lice, frogs,
locusts, thick darkness until, as the agitation grew
higher, and the chains were tighter drawn, he smote
the firstborn of every house in Egypt; nor did the
slaveholder relax the grasp on his victims, until there
was wailing throughout the whole land, over one
dead in every family, from the king that sat on the
throne to the captive in the dungeon. So I fear it
52 STEVENS.
will be in this land of wicked slavery. You have al
ready among you what is equivalent to the lice and the
locusts, that wither up every green thing where the
foot of slavery treads. Beware of the final plague.
And you, in the midst of slavery, who are willing to
do justice to the people, take care that your works tes
tify to the purity of your intentions, even at some
cost. Take care that your door-posts are sprinkled
with the blood of sacrifice, that when the destroying
angel goes forth, as go forth he will, he may pass
you by.
Aside from the principle of Eternal Right, I will
never consent to the admission of another slave State
into the Union (unless bound to do so by some consti
tutional compact, and I know of none such) , on account
of the injustice of slave representation. By the Con
stitution, not only the States now in the Union, but
all that may hereafter be admitted, are entitled to
have their slaves represented in Congress, five slaves
being counted equal to three white freemen. This is
unjust to the free States, unless you allow them a
representation in the compound ratio of persons and
property. There are twenty-five gentlemen on this
floor who are virtually the representatives of slaves
alone, having not one free constituent. This is an
outrage on every representative principle, which sup
poses that representatives have constituents, whose
will they are bound to obey and whose interest they
protect. . . .
I shall not now particularly refer to the features of
the most extraordinary conspiracy against liberty in
the Senate, called the Compromise Bill. If it should
STEVENS. 53
survive its puerperal fever, we shall have another op
portunity of knocking the monster in the head. I pass
over what is familiarly known as the " ten-million
bribe," which was evidently inserted for no other pur
pose than to create public opinion on 'change, and carry
the bill.
But it is proposed to propitiate Virginia by giving
her two hundred million dollars out of the public
treasury, the proceeds of the public lands. If this
sum were to be given for the purpose of purchasing
the freedom of her slaves, large as it is, it should have
my hearty support. It is, I think, at least fifty millions
more than would pay for them all at a fair market
price. But it is designed for no purpose of emancipa
tion. The cool-headed, cool-hearted, philosophic author
had no such " transcendental " object. It is to be spe
cifically appropriated to exile her free people of color,
and transport them from the land of their birth to
the land of the stranger ! Sir, this is a proposition not
" fit to be made."
Mr. Averett of Virginia here asked : Did not New
England sell slaves?
Mr. Stevens Yes, she sold, she imported slaves;
she was very wicked; she has long since repented.
Go ye and do likewise.
It is my purpose nowhere in these remarks to make
personal reproaches ; I entertain no ill-will toward any
human being, nor any brute, that I know of, not even
the skunk across the way, to which I referred. Least
of all would I reproach the South. I honor her cour
age and fidelity. Even in a bad, a wicked cauise, she
54 STEVENS.
shows a united front. All her sons are faithful to the
cause of human bondage, because it is their cause. But
the North the poor, timid, mercenary, drivelling
North has no such united defenders of her cause, al
though it is the cause of human liberty. None of the
bright lights of the nation shine upon her section.
Even her own great men have turned her accusers.
She is the victim of low ambition an ambition which
prefers self to country, personal aggrandizement to
the high cause of human liberty. She is offered up a
sacrifice to propitiate Southern tyranny to conciliate
Southern treason.
We are told that she has not done her duty in re
storing fugitive slaves, and that more stringent laws
must be passed to secure that object. A distinguished
Senator from Kentucky [Mr. Clay] says it is the duty,
not only of officers in the free States, but of all the
people who happen to be present, to give active aid
to the slaveowner to run down, arrest, and restore
the man who is fleeing from slavery. An equally dis
tinguished Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Web
ster] unites with him in denouncing the aggressions
of the North in this particular; and they both declare
their determination to vote for the bill, with its amend
ments, now on file, and which has become a part of
the " Compromise."
It may be well to look a little at the law as it now
stands on the subject, and then at the one which has
enlisted such powerful support. By the Constitution
alone, without any legislation, the slaveholder may go
into a free State, take with him such force as he
pleases, and take his slave and carry him back. If the
STEVENS. 55
fact of his slavery be disputed, either by the alleged
slave or any one for him, the claimant may issue his
writ de homine repligiando, and unless the defendant
give ample bail for his forthcoming on the final issue,
and for the payment of all costs and damages (which
include the value of his services in the meantime),
the plaintiff may take him into his possession, and
retain him until final trial by a court and jury. Is not
this sufficient? It is all the right which he would have
if he claimed property in a horse or other property
which he might allege had strayed over the line. Why
should he have any greater right when he claims prop
erty in man? Is a man of so much less value than a
horse, that he should be deprived of the ordinary pro
tection of the law? Sir, in my judgment, the remedy
ought to be left where the Constitution places it, with
out any legislation. The odious law of 1793 ought to
be repealed.
By that law, the slaveholder may not only seize his
slave and drag him back, but he may command the aid
of all the officers of the United States Court; take his
alleged slave before the judge, and after summary
examination, without trial by jury, may obtain a cer
tificate of property ; which, for the purpose of removal,
is conclusive of his slavery, takes away the writ of
Habeas Corpus, and the right of trial by jury, and
sends the victim to hopeless bondage. If an inhabi
tant of a free State see a wretched fugitive, who he
learns is fleeing from bondage, and gives him a meal
of victuals to keep him from starving, and allows him
to sleep in his outhouse, although his master is not in
pursuit of him, he is liable to the penalty of five him-
56 STEVENS.
dred dollars. A judge in Pennsylvania lately held
that a worthy citizen of Indiana County incurred such
penalty by giving a cup of water and a crust of bread
to a famishing man whom he knew to be fleeing from
bondage. A slave family escaped from Maryland,
went into Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and ob
tained the reluctant consent of a worthy fanner to
sleep in his hayloft. Their owner did not pursue them
for a week afterward. It was held by a State court
that the farmer was liable for the full value of the
slaves, besides the five hundred dollars penalty, and
a jury returned a verdict for two thousand dollars and
costs. Such are some of the provisions of the law
of 1793 now in force, which these great expounders of
constitutional freedom hold to be too mild ! And more
stringent laws are to be passed to punish Northern
men who have hearts ! . . .
The distinguished Senator from Kentucky [Mr.
Clay] wishes further to make it the duty of all bystand
ers to aid in the capture of fugitives; to join the chase
and run down the prey. This is asking more than my
constituents will ever grant. They will strictly abide
by the Constitution. The slaveholder may pursue his
slave among them with his own foreign myrmidons,
unmolested, except by their frowning scorn. But no
law that tyranny can pass will ever induce them to
join the hue and cry after the trembling wretch who
has escaped from unjust bondage. Their fair land,
made by nature and their own honest toil as fertile and
as lovely as the vale of Tempe, shall never become
the hunting-ground on which the bloodhounds of
STEVENS. 57
slavery shall course their prey, and command them
to join the hunt.
Sir, this tribunal would be more odious than the
Star Chamber these officers more hateful than the
Familiars of the Inquisition.
Can the free North stand this ? Can New England
stand it? Can Massachusetts stand it? If she can,
she has but one step further to take in degradation,
and that is to deliver her own sons in chains to South
ern masters! What would the bold Barons of Run-
nymede have said to such defenders of liberty ? What
would the advocates of English freedom, at any time,
have said to those who would strike down the writ
of Habeas Corpus and the right of trial by jury r
those vital principles of Magna Charta and the Bill of
Rights? They would have driven them forth as
enemies in disguise.
Sir, I am aware of the temerity of these remarks.
I know how little effect they will have, coming from
so obscure a quarter, and being opposed by the mighty
influences that create public opinion. I was struck
with the sound sense of the remark made to-day by
the gentleman from Tennessee [Mr. Gentry]. He
said that the " Compromise " Bill was winning favor
with the people, most of whom had never read it,
merely because it is advocated by great names in
whom they are accustomed to confide.
Late events have convinced me that it were better
in republican, representative governments, where the
people are to judge and decide on every measure, if
there were no great, overshadowing names, to give
factitious force to their views, and lead the public
58 STEVENS.
mind captive. If the people were to put faith in no
man's argument, they would examine every question
for themselves, and decide according to their intrinsic
merit. The errors of the small do but little harm;
those of the great are fatal. Had Lucifer been but a
common angel, instead of the Chief of the morning
stars, he had not taken with him to perdition the third
of the heavenly hosts, and spread disunion and discord
in celestial, and sin and misery in earthly, places.
Sir, so long as man is vain and fallible, so long as
great men have like passions with others, and, as in
republics, are surrounded with stronger temptations, it
were better for themselves if their fame acquired no
inordinate height, until the grave had precluded error.
The errors of obscure men die with them, and cast
no shame on their posterity. How different with the
Great!
How much better had it been for Lord Bacon, that
greatest of human intellects, had he never, during his
life, acquired glory, and risen to high honors in the
State, than to be degraded from them by the judgment
of his peers. How much better for him and his, had
he lived and died unknown, than to be branded through
all future time as the
" Wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind."
So now, in this crisis of the fate of liberty, if any of
the renowned men of this nation should betray her
cause, it were better that they had been unknown to
fame. It need not be hoped that the brightness of their
past glory will dazzle the eyes of posterity, or illumine
the pages of impartial history. A few of its rays may
still linger on a fading sky; but they will soon be
STEVENS. 59
whelmed in the blackness of darkness. For, unless
progressive civilization, and the increasing love of
freedom throughout the Christian and civilized world,
are fallacious, the Sun of Liberty, of universal Liberty,
is already above the horizon, and fast coursing to his
meridian splendor, and no advocate of slavery, no
apologist of slavery, can look upon his face and live.
THE ISSUE AGAINST ANDREW JOHNSON.
ON THE FIRST RECONSTRUCTION BILL; DELIVERED IN"
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
JANUARY 3, 1867.
Mr. Speaker:
WHAT are the great questions which now divide
the nation? In the midst of the political Babel which
has been produced by the intermingling of secession
ists, rebels, pardoned traitors, hissing Copperheads, and
apostate Republicans, such a confusion of tongues is
heard that it is difficult to understand either the ques
tions that are asked or the answers that are given.
'Ask what is the " President's policy," and it is difficult
to define it. Ask what is the " policy of Congress,"
and the answer is not always at hand. A few moments
may be profitably spent in seeking the meaning of each
of these terms.
In this country the whole sovereignty rests with the
people, and is exercised through their representatives
in Congress assembled. The legislative power is the
sole guardian of that sovereignty. No other branch
of the government, no other department, no other
60 STEVENS.
officer of the government, possesses one single particle
of the sovereignty of the nation. No government offi
cial, from the President and Chief-Justice down, can
do any one act which is not prescribed and directed by
the legislative power. . . .
Since, then, the President cannot enact, alter, or
modify a single law ; cannot even create a petty office
within his own sphere of operations; if, in short, he
is the mere servant of the people, who issue their com
mands to him through Congress, whence does he de
rive the constitutional power to create new States, to
remodel old ones, to dictate organic laws, to fix the
qualifications of voters, to declare that States are re
publican and entitled to command Congress to admit
their Representatives. To my mind it is either the
most ignorant and shallow mistake of his duties, or the
most brazen and impudent usurpation of power. It
is claimed for him by some as Commander-in-Chief of
the army and navy. How absurd that a mere execu
tive officer should claim creative powers. Though
Commander-in-Chief by the Constitution, he would
'have nothing to command, either by land or water,
until Congress raised both army and navy. Congress
also prescribes the rules and regulations to govern the
army ; even that is not left to the Commander-in-Chief.
Though the President is Commander-in-Chief, Con
gress is his commander; and, God willing, he shall
obey. . . .
There are several good reasons for the passage of
this bill. In the first place, it is just. I ^m now con
fining my argument to negro suffrage in the rebel
States. Have not loyal black quite as good a right to
STEVENS. 6l
choose rulers and make laws as rebel whites? In the
second place, it is a necessity in order to protect the
loyal white men in the seceded States. With them
the blacks would act in a body ; and it is believed then,
in each of said States, except one, the two united
would form a majority, control the States, and pro
tect themselves. Now they are the victims of daily
murder. They must suffer constant persecution, or be
exiled.
Another good reason is that it would insure the as
cendency of the Union party. " Do you avow the
party purpose?" exclaims some horror-stricken dema
gogue. I do. For I believe, on my conscience, that
on the continued ascendency of that party depends the
safety of this great nation. If impartial suffrage is
excluded in the rebel States, then every one of them
is sure to send a solid rebel representation to Congress,
and cast a solid rebel electoral vote. They, with their
kindred Copperheads of the North, would always elect
the President and control Congress. While Slavery
sat upon her defiant throne, and insulted and intimi
dated the trembling North, the South frequently di
vided on questions of policy between Whigs and Dem
ocrats, and gave victory alternately to the sections.
Now, you must divide them between loyalists, without
regard to color, and disloyalists, or you will be the per
petual vassals of the free trade, irritated, revengeful
South. For these, among other reasons, I am for
negro suffrage in every rebel State. If it be just, it
should not be denied; if it be necessary, it should be
adopted; if it be a punishment to traitors, they de
serve it.
62 DALLAS.
Dallas, George M., an American diplomatist and
orator, born in Philadelphia, July 10, 1792 ; died there, Dec.
31, 1864. He studied law with his father, who was Secretary
of the Treasury under Madison, and was for a time private
secretary to Gallatin during his mission to Russia. In 1829
he was Attorney-General for Philadelphia, and of the State,
1833-35. He sat in the United States Senate, 1831-33, and
was minister to Russia, 1837-39. Dallas was Vice-President
during the administration of Polk, and minister to England,
1856-61. Upon his recall in the latter year he retired to
private life. His oratory was polished and well considered
in its cast, his speeches and addresses exhibiting the impress
of the cultured man of affairs.
EULOGY ON ANDREW JACKSON.
DELIVERED AT PHILADELPHIA, JUNE 26, 1845.
FELLOW CITIZENS AND FRIENDS, The sorrows of
a nation on the loss of a great and good man are alike
confirmed and assuaged by recurring to the virtues and
services which endeared him. While funeral solemn
ities such as are now in progress attest the pervading
regrets of communities, and swelling tears betray the
anguish of individual friendship; while the muffled
drum, the shrouded ensign, and the silent march of
mingled processions of citizens and soldiery address
their impressive force to the hearts of all, it is well to
seek solace in remembrances which must brighten for
ever the annals of our country, and which add more to
the list of names whose mere utterance exalts the pride
and strengthens the foundations of patriotism.
At the epoch when, in September, 1774, the dele-
DALLAS. 63;
gates of eleven colonies assembled at our Carpenters'
Hall before the first gun was fired at Lexington in the
cause of western liberty, or Washington was yet hailed
as " General and Commander-in-Chief," there could
be seen in the wilds of the Waxhaw settlement in
South Carolina, on a farm in dangerous proximity to
Indian tribes, and clustering with two elder brothers
around a widowed mother, a boy about eight years of
age in whose veins coursed the same gallant blood
that shortly after gushed from the wounds of Mont
gomery into the trenches of Quebec : that boy, molded
in the spirit of those stern times, clinging with his
whole soul to the American people, ripened into ath
letic manhood, enfeebled by toil, by disease, and by
age is just now dead; and you have invited me to
pronounce over his yet loose grave the tribute of your
affectionate gratitude and veneration; to soothe you
by reminding you of the attributes and exploits of one
who lived through all your heroic history and was him
self an inseparable part of it; who was born on your
soil when in fact it was a mere margin of eastern coast,
and had sunk into it when a continent ; who knew you
when but two millions of scattered, weak, dependent,
and disquieted provincialists, and yet saw you, ere he
ceased to know you, an immense, united, powerful, and
peaceful nation ! It is impossible on the present occa
sion and with short notice to do justice to a task so
protracted, complicate, and ennobling; but there are
incidents and sentiments connected with the character
and career of Andrew Jackson with which his country
men unanimously sympathize, and which his public ob-
64 DALLAS.
sequies seem as appropriately as irresistibly to call into
expression.
The stripling orphan, while mourning over the loss
of kindred, smarting under wounds and imprisonment,
and hourly witnessing some new cruelty committed
upon friends and neighbors, imbibed during the storms
of our revolution a deep, uncompromising, almost fierce
love of country that never lost its sway over his ac
tions. It became to him an impulse as instinctive and
irrepressible as breathing, and cannot but be regarded
by those who trace his eventful existence as the master-
passion of his nature. He passed through the war of
1776, in all but that too youthful for his trials; nor
was there ever a moment in his after-being when this
devotion can be said to have waned or slumbered in
his breast.
Such a trait, so pure, so ardent, so unvarying as
fresh three weeks ago as seventy years before as
prompt and eager amid the frosts of age as when in the
spring of life it first kindled at the voice of Washing
ton invokes, now that the door of his sepulchre is
closed, undissembled and undissenting praise. It is
this quality of moral excellence which forms the basis
of his fame as it was the stimulant to every achieve
ment.
From his fight under Davie with Bryan's regiment
of Tories in 1780, when scarcely thirteen years of age,
down to the close of his remarkable campaign in Flor
ida when fifty- two, and thenceforward through all the
diplomatic conflicts with foreign powers, it shone with
steady intensity.
The peace of 1783 found him the only survivor of
DALLAS. 65
his family; left as it were alone to face the snares of
the world uneducated and still a boy. His small patri
mony melted away before he could check the reckless
and prodigal habits to which he had been trained by
eight years of wild and desperate strife. There was
no one to counsel or to guide him ; no one to inculcate
lessons of prudence ; no one to lead him into the paths
of useful industry and of restored tranquillity but
Jackson wanted no one.
At this, perhaps the most critical period of his life,
the " iron will " subsequently attributed to his treat
ment of others was nobly exercised in governing him
self. Energetically entering upon the study of the
law, the native force of his intellect enabled him,
soon after attaining his majority, not merely to pre
serve his personal independence but to carve his way
to recognized distinction. The sphere of his profes
sional practice, the western district of North Caro
lina, now the State of Tennessee, exacted labors and
teemed with dangers such only as a resolution like this
could encounter and surmount.
Infested with enraged Cherokees and Choctaws, its
wilderness of two hundred miles, crossed and recrossed
by the undaunted public solicitor more than twenty
times, inured him to fatigue, to the sense of life con
stantly in peril, and to attacks and artifices of savage
enemies whom he was destined signally to subdue and
disperse.
It cannot be necessary to pursue these details fur
ther; no doubt it will be recollected that after aiding-
to form a constitution for the State he has made illus
trious General Jackson at the age of thirty became her
56 DALLAS.
first and only representative in Congress, was almost
immediately transferred in November, 1797, to the
Senate of the United States, and, unwilling to prolong
his legislative services, became a judge of the Supreme
Court of Tennessee.
In all these elevated stations, and especially in the
last, his sagacious mind, directed by motives at once
pure and lofty and sustained by a spirit of unconquer
able firmness, has left monuments of practical wisdom
and usefulness in maintaining the rights and amelio
rating the condition of his countrymen which time can
not efface.
When the prolonged aggressions of Great Britain
upon the maritime rights, commerce, and honor of
America, prompted, in 1812, a declaration of hostili
ties, our hero, though watchful of events and keenly
alive to their bearing, had retired from public activity
and was engaged in the calm pursuits of agricultural
life. That signal sounded with welcome in his seclu
sion and summoned him to a deathless renown. It
came to his quick ear like a long-wished-for permit to
avenge the wrongs and re-establish the sullied name of
those for whom he was ever ready to sacrifice without
stint his repose, his fortune, and his blood.
The warcry of his country scarcely vibrated on the
breeze ere he echoed it back as a music with which
every chord of his soul was in unison. In less than a
week, leaving his plough in its yet opening furrow and
his ripe harvest drooping for the sickle, he stood equip
ped and eager, in front of two thousand five hundred
volunteers, awaiting orders from the chief executive.
I must not, I dare not, quit the singleness of my
DALLAS. 67
subject to indulge in reminiscences but partially con
nected with it, however alluring. Yet had the great
and generous champion whom we lament a host of as
sociates, competitors with him in the proud struggle of
which would risk most, suffer most, and achieve most,
in exemplifying the prowess, securing the safety, and
exalting the reputation of their country. That, indeed,
may be considered as in itself an ample eulogium upon
human merit which depicts him , as in the van of a
roll emblazoned by such names as Scott, Harrison,
Brown, Shelby, Johnson, Gaines, Ripley, Hull, De-
catur, Perry, and McDonough.
Most of these have gone to graves over which are
blooming in unfading verdure the laurels our gratitude
planted. None of them can present to posterity a title
to immortal honor more conclusive than that involved
in their having shared with Jackson the glories of 1812,
There are some fields of public service from which
ordinary patriotism not unusually recoils, and of this
kind is military action against the comparatively weak
yet fierce and wily tribes of savages still occupying
parts of their original domain on our continent. Un
regulated by the principles of civilized warfare, In
dian campaigns and conflicts are accompanied by con
stant scenes of revolting and unnecessary cruelty.
Neither age nor sex nor condition is spared ; havoc and
destruction are the only ends at which the tomahawk,
once brandished, can be stayed.
In exact proportion, however, to the horrors of such
a system is the necessity of perfecting those of our
people exposed to it by the most prompt and decisive
resorts. When, in the midst of the great struggle
68 DALLAS.
with a European monarchy, the frontiers of Georgia
and Tennessee were suddenly assailed by ferocious
Creeks, all eyes turned, appealing with confidence for
security, to him who was known to the foe themselves
by the descriptive designations of " Long Arrow " and
" Sharp Knife." No one, indeed, exhibited in higher
perfection the two qualities essential to such a con
test sagacity and courage.
The sagacity of General Jackson was the admiration
of the sophist and the wonder of the savage; it un
ravelled the meshes of both without the slightest seem
ing effort. Piercing through every subtlety or strata
gem it attained the truth with electrical rapidity. It
detected at a glance the toils of an adversary and dis
cerned the mode by which these toils could best be
baffled.
His courage was equally finished and faultless ; quick
but cool ; easily aroused but never boisterous ; concen
trated, enduring and manly. No enemy could intimi
date, no dangers fright him ; no surprise shook his pres
ence of mind as no emergency transcended his self-
control. The red braves of the wilderness confessed
that in these, their highest virtues, General Jackson
equalled the most celebrated of their chiefs. Invoked
to the rescue, he roused from a bed of suffering and
debility among the terrified fugitives, addressing them
with brief but animating exhortation : " Your fron
tier is threatened with invasion by the savage foe. Al
ready are they marching to your borders with their
scalping-knives unsheathed to butcher your women and
children. Time is not to be lost. We must hasten to
the frontier or we shall find it drenched with the blood
DALLAS. 69
of our citizens. The health of your general is restored ;
he will command in person."
It was the progress of this exhibition in regions at
once desolated and unproductive, that this patient and
persevering fortitude overcame obstacles of appalling'
magnitude; and here it was that, with touching kind
ness, when suffering the cravings of famine, he of
fered to divide with one of his own soldiers the hand
ful of acorns he had secretly hoarded ! The three vic
tories of Talledega, Emuckfaw and Enotochopco, pur
chased with incredible fatigue, exposure, and loss of
life, are not only to be valued in reference to the pop
ulation and territory they pacified and redeemed, but
as having disclosed, just in time for the crises of the
main war, the transcendent ability and fitness of him
who was destined to stamp its close with an exploit of
unrivalled heroism and consummate generalship.
Shall I abruptly recall the battle of New Orleans ?
recall, did I say? Is it ever absent from the memory
of an American? Mingled indissolubly with the
thought of country it springs to mind as Thermopylae
or Marathon when Greece is named. He who gave
that battle with all its splendid preliminaries and re
sults to our chronicles of national valor may cease to
be mortal but can never cease to be renowned. He
may have a grave, but, like the Father of his Country,
he can want no monument but posterity.
The judgment of the world has been irreversibly
passed upon that extraordinary achievement of our re
publican soldier. Analyzed in all its plans, its means,
its motives, and its execution; the genius that con
ceived, the patriotism that impelled, the boldness that
JO DALLAS.
never backed, nor paused, nor counted ; the skill which
trebled every resource, the activity that was every
where, the end that accomplished everything. It was
a masterpiece of work which Caesar, William Tell, Na
poleon, and Washington, could unite in applauding.
Even the vanquished, soothed by the magnanimity of
their victor, have since laid the tribute of their ad
miration at his feet. For that battle, in itself and alone,
as now passed into the imperishable records of history
an exhaustless fund of moral property, our descend
ants in distant ages will teach their children, as they
imbibe heroism from illustration and example, to mur
mur their blessings.
I have dwelt, fellow citizens, with perhaps unneces
sary length upon the martial merits of the deceased. I
have done so because these merits are incontestable,
and form, apart from every other consideration, an
overwhelming claim to the veneration and gratitude
we are now displaying. To me personally, as you all
know, it would be alike consistent and natural to go
much farther; but, entertainig a real deference for
the sentiments of others, I should be unable to par
don myself if on an occasion so peculiarly solemn a
single word fell from my lips which did not chime with
the tone of every bosom present. The time has not
come, and among a free, fearless, and frank people
such as you are, it may possibly never come, when the
civic characteristics of Jackson during his chief magis
tracy of eight years can be other than topics of sin
cere differences of opinion.
Springing, however, directly from what I have con
sidered as the great root of his public services is at
DALLAS. 71
least one branch of his executive policy and action
that need not be avoided. If as a Revolutionary lad
he clung to the cause of the colonists; if as a soldier
he knew no shrinking from his flag; as a president of
these States he stood without budging on the rock of
their union. It seemed as if, to him, that was hal
lowed ground, ungenial to the weeds of party, identi
cal indeed with country. Count the cost of this con
federacy, and he was scornfully silent ; speak of disre
garding^ her laws, and his remonstrances were vehe
ment ; move but a hair's breadth to end the compact and
he was in arms. On this vast concern, involving, di
rectly or remotely, all the precious objects of Ameri
can civilization, his zeal was as uncompromising, per
haps as unrefming and undiscriminating, as his con
victions were profound. The extent of our obligation
to him in regard to it cannot well be exaggerated. Pos
sessing in his high office the opportunity, he gave to
his purpose an impetus and an emphasis that will keep
forever ringing in the ears of his successors " The
Union must and shall be preserved !"
Such was the hero we mourn. With a constitution
undermined by privations incident to his military la
bors, and a frame shattered by diseases, he had re
tired to the seclusion of the Hermitage, long and pa
tiently awaiting the only and final relief from suffer
ing. It came to him on the evening of the 8th in
stant, in the centre of his home's affectionate circle,
while his great mind was calm and unclouded and
when his heart was prepared to welcome its dilatory
messenger. Yes ! Yes ! he on whom for half a cen
tury his country gazed as upon a tower of strength;
7 2 DALLAS.
on whom she never called for succor against the deso
lating savage without being answered by a rushing
shout of " Onward to the rescue ! " who anticipated
her invading foes by destroying them ere their foot
prints on her soil were cold he, the iron warrior, the
reproachless patriot, has ceased to be mortal, has
willingly made his single surrender the surrender
the surrender of his soul to its Almighty claimant !
It may almost be said that General Jackson was con
stituted of two natures, so admirably and so distinctly
were his qualities adapted to their respective spheres
of action. I have portrayed hurriedly and crudely his
public character let us for an instant see him, on one
or two points at least, in the other aspect, and perhaps
we may thence catch the secret of his sublime and
beautiful death. The rugged exterior which rough
wars in our early western settlements would naturally
impart was smoothed and polished in him by a spirit of
benevolence deeply seated in his temperament. In so
cial intercourse, though always earnest, rapid, impres
sive, and upright, his friendship was marked by bound
less confidence and generosity; while in domestic life
a winning gentleness seemed to spread from the re
cesses of his heart over the whole man filling the
scenes around him with smiles of serenity and joy.
No husband loved more ardently, more faithfully, more
unchangeably; no parent could surpass the self-sacri
ficing kindness with which he reared and cherished his
adopted children ; no master could be more certain of
reciprocated fondness than he was, when, as expiring,
he breathed the hope of hereafter meeting in the heav
en to which he was hastening the servants of his
DALLAS. 73
household, " as well as black as white.'* The truthful
ness of this picture is attested by all who were admit
ted to the sanctuary of his home, precincts too sacred,
even on an occasion equally sacred, for more than this
brief intrusion.
But there was a crowning characteristic, from ad
verting to which I must not shrink, though in the pres
ence in which I stand. General Jackson was fervently,
unaffectedly, and submissively pious! Wherever he
might be and whatever his absorbing pursuit wading
heavily through the swamps of Florida on the tracks
of Hillishago ; speeding with the swoop of an eagle to
grapple the invader, Pakenham ; careering at the head
of his victorious legions through throngs of admiring
countrymen ; in the halls of the executive mansion ;' or
at his hearth in the Hermitage ; there and then, every
where and always, though not ostensible and never ob
trusive, his faith was with him. But it was most
closely and conspicuously with him as dissolution ap
proached ; it was with him to brighten the rays of his
mind, to cheer the throbs of his heart, to take the
sting from his latest pang, and to give melody to his
last farewell. The dying hour of Jackson bears trium
phant testimony to the Christian's hope.
' Such was the hero ; such was the man we mourn ! "
Come, then, my countrymen! let us, as it were,
gather round the depository of his remains! From
those who knew him as it has been my lot to know
him the frequent tear of cherished and proud remem
brance must fall. To all of us it will be some relief
74 DALLAS.
to join in the simple and sacred sentiment of public
gratitude.
" How sleep the brave who sink to rest,
By all their country's honors blest !
When Spring, with dewy fingers cold,
Returns to seek their hallowed mold,
She there shall dress a sweeter sod
Than fancy's feet have ever trod ;
By fairy forms their dirge is sung
By hands unseen their knell is rung ;
There honor comes, a pilgrim gray,
To bless the turf that wraps their clay ;
And freedom shall awhile repair
To dwell a weeping hermit there ! "
HOUSTON. 75
Houston, Samuel, a noted American soldier and poli
tician, born near Lexington, Va., March 2, 1793 ; died at
Huntsville, Texas, July 25, 1863. His youth was mainly
spent among the Cherokee Indians, and at twenty he entered
the army, serving with Jackson against the Creek Indians.
Later he studied law at Nashville, represented Tennessee in
Congress, 1823-27, and was governor of Tennessee for the
next two years. Subsequently he settled in Texas, and when
it was denied admission to the Mexican republic, Houston
was appointed commander-in-chief of the Texan forces in
the ensuing war between Mexico and Texas. Houston
succeeded in securing the independence of Texas, and was
its President until its annexion to the United States, repre
senting it in the United States Senate for the twelve years
following. He was elected governor of Texas in 1859, hut
resigned from office on account of his strong opposition to
secession. Houston's speech on the Nebraska and Kansas
Bill is a fair example of the character of his Congressional
addresses.
SPEECH OF THE NEBRASKA AND KANSAS
BILL.
DELIVERED IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE, MARCH 3,
1857.
MR. PRESIDENT, I have very little hope that any
appeal which I can make for the Indians will do any
good. The honorable senator from Indiana [Mr. Pet-
tit] says in substance that God Almighty has con
demned them and has made them an inferior race;
that there is no use in doing anything for them. With
great deference to that senator, for whom I have never
? HOUSTON.
cherished any but kindly feelings, I must be permitted
to dissent from his opinions. He says they are not
civilized and they are not homogeneous, and cannot
be so, with the white race. They cannot be civilized !
No! Sir, it is idle to tell me that. We have Indians
on our western borders whose civilization is not in
ferior to our own.
It is within the recollection of gentlemen here that,
more than twenty years ago, President Ross, one of
them, held a correspondence upon the rights of the In
dians to the Cherokee country which they possessed
east of the Mississippi, and maintained himself in the
controversy with great credit and ability; and the tri
umph of Mr. Adams, if it was one, was much less than
he had obtained over the diplomatist of Spain [Mr.
Don Onis] in relation to the occupation of Florida by
General Jackson. The senator from Indiana says that
in ancient times Moses received a command to go and
drive the Canaanites and Moabites out of the land of
Canaan, and that Joshua subsequently made the experi
ment of incorporating one tribe of the heathen with
the Israelites, but it finally had to be killed off. There
fore, the senator concludes, the Cherokees cannot be
civilized. There may have been something statesman
like in the policy, but I do not discover the morality of
it. I will say, however, that there is no analogy be
tween the two cases. The people of Judea who were
killed or exterminated were idolaters, and the object
was to keep the people of Israel free from the taint
of idols and idolatry under the command of Providence,
and therefore the extermination in his dispensation be
came necessary. But the Cherokees never have been
HOUSTON. 77
idolaters, neither have the Creeks, nor the Choctaws,
nor the Chickasaws. They believe in one Great Spirit
in God the white man's God. They believe in his
Son Jesus Christ, and his atonement and propitiation
for the sins of men. They believe in the sanctifying
efficacy of the Holy Ghost. They bow at the Chris
tian's altar and they believe the Sacred Volume.
Sir, you may drive these people away and give their
lands to the white man ; but let it not be done upon the
justification of the Scriptures. They have well-organ
ized societies ; they have villages and towns ; they have
their State-houses and their capitols ; they have females
and men who would grace the drawing-rooms or sa
lons of Washington ; they have a well-organized judi
ciary, a trial by jury, and the writ of habeas corpus.
These are the people for whom I demand justice in
the organization of these Territories. They are men
of education. They have more than one hundred na
tive preachers in those tribes, as I have* heard. They
have their colleges, as I remarked in my former ad
dress to the Senate on this subject. They become as
sociated in friendship with our young men in the vari
ous institutions in the United States ; and they are pre
pared to be incorporated upon equal terms with us.
But even if they were wild Indians, untutored, when
you deprive them of what would give them knowledge
and discourage them from making an effort to become
civilized and social beings, how can you expect them
to be otherwise than savage ?
When you undertake to tame wild horses do you
turn them from you and drive them into the desert,
or do you take care of them and treat them with hu-
78 HOUSTON.
manity ? These Indians are not inferior, intellectually,
to white men. John Ridge was not inferior in point of
genius to John Randolph. His father, in point of na
tive intellect, was not inferior to any man. Look at
their social condition, in the nations to which I have al
luded. Look at the Chickasaws who remain in the
State of Mississippi. Even among white men, with all
their prejudices against the Indians, with their trans
cendent genius and accomplishments, they have been
elected to the legislature. Whenever they have had
an opportunity they have shown that they are not in
ferior to white men, either in sense or sensibility.
But the honorable senator from Iowa [Mr. Dodge]
characterizes the remarks which I made in reference
to the Indians as arising from a feeling of " sickly sen
timentality." Sir, it is a sickly sentimentality that was
implanted in me when I was young, and it has grown
up with me. The Indian has a sense of justice, truth,
and honor that should find a responsive chord in every
heart. If the Indians on the frontier are barbarous, or
if they are cannibals, and eat each other, who are to
blame for it? They are robbed of the means of sus
tenance; and with hundreds and thousands of them
starving on the frontier, hunger may prompt to suck
acts to prevent their perishing. We shall never be
come cannibals in connection with the Indians ; but we
do worse than that. We rob them, first of their native
dignity and character; we rob them next of what the
government appropriates for them. If we do not do
it in this hall, men are invested with power and au
thority, who, officiating as agents or traders, rob them
of everything which is designed for them. Not less
HOUSTON. 79
than one hundred millions of dollars, I learn from sta
tistics, since the adoption of this government, have
been appropriated by Congress for purposes of justice
and benevolence toward the Indians ; but I am satisfied
that they have never realized fifteen millions benefici-
cially. They are too remote from the seat of govern
ment for their real condition to be understood here;
and if the government intends liberality or justice to
ward them it is often diverted from the intended ob
ject and consumed by speculators.
I am a friend to the Indian upon the principle that I
am a friend to justice. We are not bound to make them
promises; but if a promise be made to an Indian it
ought to be regarded as sacredly as if it were made to
a white man. If we treat them as tribes, recognize
them, send commissioners to form treaties and ex
change ratifications with them, and the treaties are ne
gotiated, accepted, ratified; and exchanged having
met with the approval of the Senate I think they may
be called compacts; and how are these compacts re
garded? Just as we choose to construe them at the
time, without any reference to the wishes of the In
dians or whether we do them kindness or justice in the
operation or not. We are often prompted to their rati
fication by persons interested; and we lend ourselves
unintentionally to an unjust act of oppression upon the
Indians by men who go and get their signatures to a
treaty. The Indian's mark is made ; the employees of
the government certify or witness it; and the Indians
do not understand it for they do not know what is
written. These are some of the circumstances con
nected with the Indians.
SO HOUSTON.
Gentlemen have spoken here of voting millions to
build ships, and placing the army and navy at the dis
position of the President in the event that England act
inconsistently with treaty stipulations. This is done
because, if England violates a treaty with us, our na
tional honor is injured. Now I should like to know if
it becomes us to violate a treaty made with the In
dians when we please, regardless of every principle of
truth and honor ? We should be careful if it were with
a power able to war with us ; and it argues a degree of
infinite meanness and indescribable degradation on our
part to act differently with the Indians, who confide in
our honor and justice, and who call the President their
Great Father and confide in him. Mr. President, it is
in the power of the Congress of the United States to
do some justice to the Indians by giving them a gov
ernment of their own, and encouraging them in their
organization and improvement by inviting their dele
gates to a place on the floor of the Senate and House of
Representatives. If you will not do it, the sin will lie>
at your door, and Providence, in his own way, mys
terious and incomprehensible to us though it is, will
accomplish all his purposes, and may at some day
avenge the wrongs of the Indians upon our nation. As
a people we can save them; and the sooner the great
work is begun, the sooner will humanity have cause
to rejoice in its accomplishment.
Mr. President, I shall say but little more. My ad
dress may have been desultory. It embraces many
subjects which it would be very hard to keep in en
tire order. We have, in the first place, the extensive
territory; then we have the considerations due to the
HOUSTON. 8 1
Indians ; and then we have the proposed repeal of the
Missouri Compromise, which seems to require the most
explanation and to be the main point in the controversy.
The great principle involved in that repeal is non-in
tervention, which, we are told, is to be of no practical
benefit if the Compromise is repealed. It can have no
effect but to keep up agitation. Sir, the friends who
have survived the distinguished men who took prom
inent parts in the drama of the Compromise of 1850
ought to feel gratified that those men are not capable
of participating in the events of to-day, but that they
were permitted, after they had accomplished their la
bors and seen their country in peace, to leave the world,
as Simeon did, with the exclamation : " Lord, now
lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes
have seen thy salvation." They departed in peace, and
they left their country in peace. They felt, as they
were about to be gathered to the tombs of their fathers,
that the country they had loved so well and which had
honored them that country upon whose fame and
name their doings had shed a bright lustre which
shines abroad throughout all Christendom was repos
ing in peace and happiness.
What would their emotions be if they could now be
present and see an effort made, if not so designed, to
undo all their work and to tear asunder the cords that
they had bound around the hearts of their country
men? They have departed. The nation felt the
wound; and we see the memorials of woe still in this
chamber. The proud symbol (the eagle) above your
head remains enshrouded in black, as if it deplored the
misfortune which had fallen upon us, or as a fearful
82 HOUSTON.
omen of future calamities which await our nation in
the event this bill should become a law.
Above it I behold the majestic figure of Washing
ton, whose presence must ever inspire patriotic emo
tions and command the admiration and love of every
American heart. By these associations I adjure you
to regard the contract once made to harmonize and
preserve this Union. Maintain the Missouri Compro
mise ! Stir not up agitation. Give us peace.
This much I was bound to declare, in behalf of my
country, as I believe, and I know in behalf of my con
stituents. In the discharge of my duty I have acted
fearlessly. The events of the future are left in the
hands of a wise Providence ; and, in my opinion, upon
the decision which we make upon this question must
depend union or disunion.
HOAR. 83
Hoar, George F., an eminent American statesman and
orator, born at Concord, Mass., August 20, 1826. He
studied law and entered upon his profession at Worcester,
Mass., and his earliest appearance in politics was as chair
man of the Free Soil party committee in 1849. From this
period he has been a conspicuous member of the Republi
can party. He sat in the Massachusetts legislature in house
and senate successively, from 1852 to 1869, wnen ne was
elected to congress. After serving as representative until
1877 ne became a member of the national senate, where he
still remains. He has often exhibited much independence
of party in his political action, and in his latest years has
been especially prominent in his opposition to national ex
pansion. He is one of the readiest of speakers in debate,
while his more formal speeches and orations are polished
and scholarly in style, and forceful and eloquent in substance
and delivery. His eulogy of President McKinley is the
most notable of his later orations.
ADDRESS AT THE BANQUET OF THE NEW
ENGLAND SOCIETY.
DELIVERED DECEMBER 22, 1898, AT CHARLESTON,
SOUTH CAROLINA.
I NEED not assure this brilliant company how deeply
I am impressed by the significance of this occasion. I
am not vain enough to find in it anything of personal
compliment. I like better to believe that the ties of
common history, of common faith, of common citizen
ship, and inseparable destiny, are drawing our two
sister States together again. If cordial friendship,
84 HOAR.
if warm affection (to use no stronger term), can ever
exist between two communities they should exist be
tween Massachusetts and South Carolina. They were
both of the " Old Thirteen." They were alike in the
circumstances of their origin. Both were settled by
those noble fugitives who brought the torch of lib
erty across the sea, when liberty was without other
refuge on the face of the earth. The English Pil
grims and Puritans founded Massachusetts, to be fol
lowed soon after by the Huguenot exiles who fled
from the tyranny of King Louis XIV., after the re
vocation of the edict of Nantes. Scotch Presbyterian-
ism founded Carolina, to be followed soon after by the
French exiles fleeing from the same oppression.
Everywhere in New England are traces of the foot
steps of this gentle, delightful, and chivalrous race,
All over our six States to-day many an honored grave,
many a stirring tradition bear witness to the kinship
between our early settlers and the settlers of South
Carolina. Faneuil Hall, in Boston, which we love to
call the " Cradle of Liberty," attests the munificence
and bears the name of an illustrious Huguenot.
These French exiles lent their grace and romance
to our history also. Their settlements were like clus
ters of magnolias in some warm valley in our bleak
New England.
We are, all of us, in Massachusetts, reading again
the story of the voyage of the "Mayflower," written
by William Bradford. As you have heard, that pre
cious manuscript has lately been restored to us by the
kindness of His Grace the Lord Bishop of London.
It is in the eyes of the children of the Pilgrims the
HOAR. 8$
most precious manuscript on earth. If there be any
thing to match the pathos of that terrible voyage it
is found in the story of Judith Manigault, the French
Huguenot exile, of her nine months' voyage from
England to South Carolina. Her name, I am told,
has been honored here in every generation since.
If there be a single lesson which the people of this
country have learned from their wonderful and
crowded history it is that the North and South are
indispensable to each other. They are the blades of
mighty shears, worthless apart, but when bound by
an indissoluble union, powerful, irresistible, and ter
rible as the shears of fate ; like the shears of Atropos,
severing every thread and tangled web of evil, cutting
out for humanity its beautiful garments of liberty and
light from the cloth her dread sisters spin and weave.
I always delight to think, as I know the people of
South Carolina delight to think, of these States of
ours, not as mere aggregations of individuals, but as
beautiful personalities, moral beings endowed with
moral characters, capable of faith, of hope, of mem
ory, of pride, of sorrow, and of joy, of courage, of
heroism, of honor, and of shame. Certainly this is
true of them. Their power and glory, their rightful
place in history, depended on these things, and not on
numbers or extent of territory.
It is this that justifies the arrangement of the con
stitution of the United States for equal representation
of States in the upper legislative chamber and explains
its admirable success.
The separate entity and the absolute freedom, ex
cept for the necessary restraints of the constitution
86 HOAR.
of our different States, is the cause alike of the great
ness and the security of the country.
The words Switzerland, France, England, Rome,
Athens, Massachusetts, South Carolina, Virginia,
America, convey to your mind a distinct and indi
vidual meaning and suggest an image of distinct moral
quality and moral being as clearly as do the words
Washington, Wellington, or Napoleon. I believe it
is, and I thank God that I believe it is, something much
higher than the average of the qualities of the men
who make it up. We think of Switzerland as some
thing better than the individual Swiss, and of France
as something better than the individual Frenchman,
and of America as something better than the indi
vidual American. In great and heroic individual ac
tions we often seem to feel that it is the country, of
which the man is but the instrument, that gives ex
pression to its quality in doing the deed.
It was Switzerland who gathered into her breast
at Sempach the sheaf of fatal Austrian spears. It
was the hereditary spirit of New England that gave
the word of command by the voice of Buttrick, at
Concord, and was in the bosom of Parker at Lexing
ton. It was South Carolina whose lightning stroke
smote the invader by the arm of Marion and whose
wisdom guided the framers of the constitution
through the lips of Rutledge and Gadsden and Pinck-
ney.
The citizen on great occasions knows and obeys
the voice of his country as he knows and obeys an in
dividual voice, whether it appeal to a base or ignoble
or to a generous or noble passion. " Sons of France,
HOAR. 87
awake to glory," told the French youth what was the
dominant passion in the bosom of France and it awoke
a corresponding sentiment in his own. Under its
spell he marched through Europe and overthrew her
kingdoms and empires and felt in Egypt that forty
centuries were looking down on him from the Pyra
mids. But at last, one June morning in Trafalgar Bay,
there was another utterance, more quiet in its tone, but
speaking also with a personal and individual voice,
" England expects every man to do his duty/'
At the sight of Nelson's immortal signal duty-lov
ing England and glory-loving France met as they
have met on many an historic battle-field before and
since, and the lover of duty proved the stronger. The
England that expected every man to do his duty was
as real a being to the humblest sailor in Nelson's fleet
as the mother that bore him.
The title of our American States to their equality
under this admirable arrangement depends not on
area or upon numbers but upon character and upon
personality. Fancy a league or a confederacy in
which Athens or Sparta were united with Persia or
Babylon or Nineveh and their political power were to
be reckoned in proportion to their numbers or their
size.
I have sometimes fancied South Carolina and
Massachusetts, those two illustrious and heroic sisters,
instead of sitting apart, one under her palm trees and
the other under her pines, one with the hot gales
from the tropics fanning her brow and the other on
the granite rocks by her ice-bound shores, meeting
together and comparing notes and stories as sisters
88 HOAR.
born of the same mother compare notes and stories
after a long separation. How the old estrangements,
born of ignorance of each other, would have melted
away.
Does it ever occur to you that the greatest single
tribute ever paid to Daniel Webster was paid by Mr.
Calhoun? And the greatest single tribute ever paid
to Mr. Calhoun was paid by Mr. Webster ?
I do not believe that among the compliments or
marks of honor which attended the illustrious career
of Daniel Webster there is one that he would have
valued so much as that which his great friend, his
great rival and antagonist, paid him from his dying
bed.
" Mr. Webster/' said Mr. Calhoun, " has as high
a standard of truth as any statesman whom I have met
in debate. Convince him and he cannot reply; he is
silent; he cannot look truth in the face and oppose it
by argument/'
There was never, I suppose, paid to John C. Cal
houn during his illustrious life any other tribute of
honor he would have valued so highly as that which
was paid him after his death by his friend, his rival,
and antagonist, Daniel Webster.
" Mr. Calhoun," said Mr. Webster, " had the basis,
the indispensable basis, of all high character ; and that
was unspotted integrity unimpeached honor and
character. If he had aspirations they were high and
honorable and noble. There was nothing grovelling or
low or meanly selfish that came near the head or the
heart of Mr. Calhoun. Firm in his purpose, perfectly
patriotic and honest, as I was sure he was, in the prin-
BENJAMIN HARRISON.
HOAR. 89
ciples he espoused and in the measures he defended,
aside from that large regard for that species of dis
tinction that conducted him to eminent stations for
the benefit of the republic, I do not believe he had a
selfish motive or a selfish feeling. However he may
have differed from others of us in his political opinions
or his political principles, those opinions and those prin
ciples will now descend to posterity and under the
sanction of a great name. He has lived long enough,
he has done enough, and he has done it so well, so suc
cessfully, so honorably, as to connect himself for all
time with the records of the country. He is now an
historical character. Those of us who have known
him here will find that he has left upon our minds,
and upon our hearts, a strong and lasting impression of
his person, his character, and his public performances,
which, while we live, will never be obliterated. We
shall hereafter, I am sure, indulge in it as a grate
ful recollection that we have lived in his age, that we
have been his contemporaries, that we have seen him
and known him. We shall delight to speak of him to
those who are rising up to fill our places. And when
the time shall come that we ourselves shall go, one
after another, in succession, to our graves, we shall
carry with us a deep sense of his genius and char
acter, his honor and integrity, his amiable deportment
in private life, and the purity of his exalted patriot
ism."
Just think for a moment what this means. If any
man ever lived who was not merely the representa
tive but the embodiment of the thought, opinion, prin
ciples, character, quality, intellectual and moral, of
90 HOAR.
the people of South Carolina for the forty years from
1810 until his death, it was John C. Calhoun. If
any man ever lived who not merely was the represen
tative, but the embodiment of the thought, opinion,
principles, character, quality, intellectual and moral,
of the people of Massachusetts, it was Daniel Web
ster. Now if, after forty years of rivalry, of conflict,
of antagonism, these two statesmen of ours, most
widely differing in opinions on public questions, who
never met but to exchange a blow, the sparks from
the encounter of whose mighty swords kindled the
fires which spread over the continent, thought thus
of one another, is it not likely that if the States
they represented could have met with the same in
timacy, with the same knowledge and companionship
during all these years, they, too, would have under
stood, and understanding would have loved each
other?
I should like to have had a chance to hearken to
their talk. Why, their gossip would almost make up
the history of liberty ! How they would boast to each
other, as sisters do, of their children, their beautiful
and brave! How many memories they would find in
common! How the warm Scotch-Irish blood would
stir in their veins ! How the Puritan and the Presby
terian blood would quicken their pulses as they re
counted the old struggles for freedom to worship
God! What stories they would have to tell each
other of the day of the terrible knell from the bell
of the old tower of St. Germain de L'Auxerrois,
when the edict of Nantes was revoked and sounded its
alarm to the Huguenot exiles who found refuge,
HOAR. 91
some in South Carolina and some in Massachusetts!
You have heard of James Bowdoin, of Paul Revere,
and Peter Faneuil, and Andrew Sigourney. These
men brought to the darkened and gloomy mind of the
Puritan the sunshine of beautiful France, which South
Carolina did not need. They taught our Puritans the
much needed lesson that there was something other
than the snare of Satan in the song of a bird or
the fragrance of a flower.
The boys and girls of South Carolina and the boys
and girls of Massachusetts went to the same school
in the old days. Their schoolmasters were tyranny
and poverty and exile and starvation. They heard
the wild music of the wolves' howl and the savages'
war-cry. They crossed the Atlantic in midwinter,
when
" Winds blew and waters rolled,
Strength to the brave, and power, and Deity."
They learned in that school little of the grace or the
luxury of life. But they learned how to build States
and how to fight tyrants.
They would have found much, these two sisters, to
talk about of a later time. South Carolina would
have talked of her boy Christopher Gadsden, who
George Bancroft said was like a mountain torrerr*.
dashing on an overshot wheel. And Massachusetts
would try to trump the trick with James Otis, that
flame of fire, who said he seemed to hear the prophetic
song of the Sybil chanting the springtime of the new
empire.
They might dispute a little as to which of these two
92 HOAR.
sons of theirs was the greater. I do not know how
that dispute could be settled unless by Otis's own
opinion. He said that " Massachusetts sounded the
trumpet. But it was owing to South Carolina that
it was assented to. Had it not been for South Caro
lina no Congress would have been appointed. She
was all alive and felt at every pore." So perhaps we
will accept the verdict of the Massachusetts historian,
George Bancroft. He said that " When we count
those who above all others contributed to the great
result of the Union, we are to name the inspired mad
man, James Otis, and the unwavering lover of his
country, Christopher Gadsden."
It is the same, Massachusetts historian, George
Bancroft, who says that " the public men of South
Carolina were ever ruled by their sense of honor,
and felt a stain upon it as a wound."
" Did you ever hear how those wicked boys of
mine threw the tea into the harbor," Massachusetts
would say ; " Oh, yes," South Carolina would answer,
" but not one of mine was willing to touch it. So we
let it all perish in a cellar."
Certainly these two States liked each other pretty
well when Josiah Quincy came down here in 1773
to see Rutledge and Pinckney and Gadsden to con
cert plans for the coming rebellion. King George
never interfered very much with you. But you could
not stand the Boston port bill any more than we could.
There is one thing in which Massachusetts must
yield the palm, and that is the courage to face an
earthquake, that terrible ordeal in the face of which
the bravest manhood goes to pieces, and which your
HOAR. 93
people met a few years ago with a courage and stead
fastness which commanded the admiration of all man
kind.
If this company had gathered on this spot one
hundred and twenty years ago to-night the toast
would have been that which no gathering at Charles
ton in those days failed to drink " The Unanimous
Twenty-six, who would not rescind the Massachusetts
circular."
" The royal governor of South Carolina had in
vited its assembly to treat the letters of the Massa
chusetts ' with the contempt they deserved ; ' a com
mittee, composed of Parsons, Gadsden, Pinckney,
Lloyd, Lynch, Laurens, Rutledge, Eliot, and Dart,
reported them to be ' founded upon undeniable con
stitutional principles ; ' and the house, sitting with its
doors locked, unanimously directed its speaker to sig
nify to that province its entire approbation. The
governor, that same evening, dissolved the assembly
by beat of drums."
Mr. Winthrop compared the death of Calhoun to
the blotting out of the constellation of the Southerm
Cross from the sky.
Mr. Calhoun was educated at Yale College, in
New England, where President Dwight predicted
his future greatness in his boyhood. It is one of the
pleasant traditions of my own family that he was a
constant and favorite guest in the house of my grand
mother, in my mother's childhood, and formed a
friendship w r ith her family which he never forgot.
94 HOAR.
It is delightful also to remember on this occasion that
Mr. Lamar, that most Southern man of Southern
men, whose tribute to Mr. Calhoun in this city is
among the masterpieces of historical literature, paid a
discriminating and most affectionate tribute also to
Charles Sumner at the time of his death.
In this matchless eulogy Mr. Lamar disclaims any
purpose to honor Mr. Sumner because of his high
culture, his eminent scholarship, or varied learning,
but he declares his admiration for him because of
his high moral qualities and his unquenchable love of
liberty. Mr. Lamar adds : " My regret is that I did
not obey the impulse often found upon me to go to
him and offer him my hand and my heart with it."
Mr. Lamar closes this masterpiece of eulogistic
oratory with this significant sentence : " Would that
the spirit of the illustrious dead whom we honor to
day could speak to both parties in tones that would
reach every home throughout this broad territory,
' My countrymen, know one another, and you will
love one another/ '
There is another memorable declaration of Mr.
Lamar, whom I am proud to have counted among my
friends. In his oration at the unveiling of the statue
of Calhoun, at Charleston, he said that the appeal to
arms had " led to the indissolubility of the American
Union and the universality of American freedom."
Now, can we not learn a lesson also from this most
significant fact that this great Southern statesman
and orator was alike the eulogist of Calhoun and the
eulogist of Sumner?
For myself I believe that whatever estrangements
HOAR. 95
may have existed in the past, or may linger among
us now, are born of ignorance and will be dispelled
by knowledge. I believe that of our forty-five States
there are no two who, if they could meet in the famil
iarity of personal intercourse, in the fulness of per
sonal knowledge, would not only cease to entertain
any bitterness, or alienation, or distrust, but each
would utter to the other the words of the Jewish
daughter, in that most exquisite of idylls which has
come down to us almost from the beginning of time :
" Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from
following after thee; for whither thou goest, I will
go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people
shall be my people, and thy God my God.
" Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be
buried ; the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught
but death part me and thee."
Mr. President, I repeat to-night on Southern soil
what I said first in my place in the Senate, and what
I repeated in Faneuil Hall, with the full approbation
of an enthusiastic and crowded audience, represent
ing the culture and the Puritanism of Massachusetts.
The American people have learned to know as
never before the quality of the Southern stock, and
to value its noble contribution to the American char
acter; its courage in war, its attachment to home and
State, its love of rural life, its capacity for great af
fection and generous emotion, its aptness for com
mand; above all, its constancy, that virtue above all
virtues, without which no people can long be either
96 HOAR.
great or free. After all, the fruit of this vine has a
flavor not to be found in other gardens. In the great
and magnificent future which is before our country,
you are to contribute a large share both of strength
and beauty.
The best evidence of our complete reconciliation
is that there is no subject that we need to hurry by
with our ringers on our lips. The time has come when
Americans, north, south, east, and west, may discuss
any question of public interest in a friendly and quiet
spirit, without recrimination and without heat, each
understanding the other, each striving to help the
other, as men who are bearing a common burden and
looking forward with a common hope. I know that
this is the feeling of the people of the North. I
think I know that it is the feeling of the people of
the South. In our part of the country we have to
deal with the great problems of the strife between
labor and capital, and of the government of cities
where vast masses of men born on foreign soil, of
different nationalities and of different races, strangers
to American principles, to American ideas, to Ameri
can history, are gathered together to exercise the
unaccustomed functions of self-government in an al
most unrestricted liberty. You have to deal with a
race problem rendered more difficult still by a still
larger difference in the physical and intellectual qual
ities of the two races whom Providence has brought
together.
I should be false to my own manhood if I failed
to express my profound regret and sorrow for some
occurrences which have taken place recently, both in
HOAR. 97
the North and in the South. I am bound to say that,
considering all the circumstances, the Northern com
munity has been the worse offender.
It is well known (or if it be not well known I am
willing to make it known) that I look with inexpress
ible alarm and dread upon the prospect of adding to
our population millions of persons dwelling in tropical
climes, aliens in race and in religion, either to share
in our self-government, or, what is worse still, to
set an example to mankind of the subjection of one
people to another. We have not yet solved the prob
lem how men of different races can dwell together in
the same land in accordance with our principles of
republican rule and republican liberty. I am not one
of those who despair of the solution of that problem
in justice and in freedom. I do not look upon the
dark side when I think of the future of our beloved
land. I count it the one chief good fortune of my
own life that, as I grow older, I look out on the world
with hope and not despair. We have made wonderful
advances within the lifetime OA the youngest o~ us.
While we hear from time to time of occurrences
much to be deplored and utterly to be condemned, yet,
on the whole, we are advancing quite as rapidly as
could be expected to the time when these races will
live together on American soil in freedom, in honor,
and in peace, every man enjoying his just right wher
ever the American constitution reigns and wherever
the American flag floats when the influence of intel
ligence, of courage, of energy, inspired by a lofty pa
triotism and by a Christian love will have its full
and legitimate effect, not through disorder, or force,
98 HOAR.
or lawlessness, but under the silent and sure law by
which always the superior leads and the inferior fol
lows. The time has already come when throughout
large spaces in our country both races are dwelling
together in peace and harmony. I believe that condi
tion of things to be the rule in the South and not to be
the exception. We have a right to claim that the
country and the South shall be judged by the rule and
not the exception.
But we want you to stand by us in our troubles as
brethren and as countrymen. We shall have to look,
in many perils that are before us in the near future,
to the conservatism and wisdom of the South. And
if the time shall come when you think we can help
you your draft shall be fully honored.
But to-night belongs to the memory of the Pilgrims.
The Pilgrim of Plymouth has a character in history
distinct from any other. He differed from the Puri
tan of Salem or Boston in everything but the formula
in which his religious faith was expressed. He was
gentle, peaceful, tolerant, gracious. There was no
intolerance or hatred or bigotry in his little common
wealth. He hanged no witches, he whipped no
Quakers, he banished no heretic. His little State ex
isted for seventy-two years, when it was blended with
the Puritan Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He
enacted the mildest code of laws on the face of the
earth. There were but eight capital offences in Ply
mouth. Sir James Mackintosh held in his hand a list
of two hundred and twenty-three when he addressed
the House of Commons at the beginning of the pres
ent century. He held no foot of land not fairly ob-
HOAR. 99
tained by honest purchase. He treated the Indian
with justice and good faith, setting an example which
Vattel, the foremost writer on the law of nations, com
mends to mankind. In his earliest days his tolerance
was an example to Roger Williams himself, who has
left on record his gratitude for the generous friend
ship of Winslow. Governor Bradford's courtesy en
tertained the Catholic priest, who was his guest, with
a fish dinner on Friday. John Robinson, the great
leader of the Pilgrims, uttered the world's declara
tion of religious independence when he told his little
flock on the wharf at Delft Haven, as reported by
Winslow :
" We are ere long to part asunder and the Lord
knoweth whether he should live to see our face again.
But, whether the Lord hath appointed it or not, he
charged us before God and his blessed angels to fol
low him no further than he followed Christ; and, if
God should reveal anything to us by any other instru
ment of his, to be as ready to receive it as we were
to receive any truth by his ministry, for he was very
confident the Lord had more truth and light yet to
break out of his Holy Word."
The Pilgrim was a model and an example of a
beautiful, simple, and stately courtesy. John Robin
son, and Bradford, and Brewster, and Carver, and
Winslow differ as much from the dark and haughty
Endicott, or the bigoted Cotton Mather as, in the
English church, Jeremy Taylor, and George Herbert
and Donne, and Vaughn differ from Laud, or Bonner,
or Bancroft.
100 HOAR.
Let us not be misunderstood. I am not myself a
descendant from the Pilgrims. Every drop of my
blood through every line of descent for three cen
turies has come from a Puritan ancestor. I am ready
to do battle for the name and fame of the Massachu
setts Puritan in any field and against any antagonist.
Let others, if they like, trace their lineage to Nor
man pirate or to robber baron. The children of the
Puritan are not ashamed of him. The Puritan, as a
distinct, vital, and predominant power, lived less than
a century in England. He appeared early in the
reign of Elizabeth, who came to the throne in 1558,
and departed at the restoration of Charles II, in 1660.
But in that brief period he was the preserver, aye, the
creator of English freedom. By the confession of the
historians who most dislike him, it is due to him that
there is an English constitution. He created the mod
ern House of Commons. That House, when he took
his seat in it, was the feeble and timid instrument of
despotism. When he left it, it was what it has ever
since been the strongest, freest, most venerable leg
islative body the world has ever seen. When he took
his seat in it, it was little more than the register of
the king's command. When he left it, it was the main
depository of the national dignity and the national
will. King and minister and prelate who stood in his
way he brought to the bar and to the block. In the
brief but crowded century he made the name of
Englishman the highest title of honor upon the earth.
A great historian has said : " The dread of his invin
cible army was on all the inhabitants of the island.
He placed the name of John Milton high on the illus-
HOAR. 101
trious roll of the great poets of the world, and the
name of Oliver Cromwell highest on the roll of Eng
lish sovereigns." The historian might have added
that the dread of this invincible leader was on all the
inhabitants of Europe.
And so, when a son of the Puritans comes to the
South, when he visits the home of the Rutledges and
the Pinckneys and of John C. Calhoun, if there be any
relationship in heroism or among the lovers of consti
tutional liberty, he feels that he can
" Claim kindred there and have the claim allowed."
The Puritan differs from the Pilgrim as the He
brew prophet from St. John. Abraham, ready to
sacrifice Isaac at the command of God; Jeremiah, ut
tering his terrible prophecy of the downfall of Judea ;
Brutus, condemning his son to death ; Brutus, slaying
his friend for the liberty of .Rome ; Aristides, going
into exile, are his spiritual progenitors, as Stonewall
Jackson was of his spiritual kindred. You will find
him wherever men are sacrificing life or the delights
of life on the altar of duty.
But the Pilgrim is of a gentler and a lovelier na
ture. He, too, if duty or honor call, is ready for the
sacrifice. But his weapon is love and not hate. His
spirit is the spirit of John, the Beloved Disciple, the
spirit of grace, mercy, and peace. His memory is as
sweet and fragrant as the perfume of the little flower
which gave its name to the ship which brought him
over.
So, Mr. President, responding to your sentiment, I
give you mine :
102 HOAR.
South Carolina and Massachusetts, the Presbyterian
and the Puritan, the Huguenot and the Pilgrim ; how
ever separated by distance or by difference, they will
at last surely be drawn together by a common love of
liberty and a common faith in God.
LOGAN. 103
Logan, John A., an American soldier and politician,
born in Jackson county, 111., February 9, 1826; died in
Washington, D. C., December 26, 1886. His early educa
tion was scanty, and, entering the army, he served as lieu
tenant during the Mexican war. Taking up later the study
of law, he was admitted to the bar in 1851, and the next
year entered the Illinois legislature. He sat in congress as
representative, 1858-61, and entering the Union army as a
private in the year last named soon distinguished himself for
bravery and rose to the rank of general. He was a promi
nent figure in politics after the close of the Civil war, and in
1884 was the unsuccessful candidate for the vice-presidency
on the ticket with Elaine. Logan was a popular public
speaker, his oratory being fluent and forcible rather than
polished and scholarly in character.
ON THE INDEPENDENCE OF CUBA.
SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTA
TIVES, JUNE 15, 1870.
CUBA, with its broad acres, its beautiful vales, its
rich soil, its countless resources, is expected to pass
into the hands of a few men, to whom it will be a mine
of wealth.
Let me appeal to this House not to allow this scheme
to be carried out. While this brave band of patriots
are wrestling for the dearest right known to man,
the right of self-government, should we hesitate to
make the simple and single declaration which will save
them from being robbed and murdered day after day?
Can we, with all our boasted principles of liberty,
104 LOGAN.
justice, and equality to all men, stand tamely by and
witness these people, within sight of our own shores,
following the example which we have furnished,
hanged, drawn, and quartered, with most atrocious
brutality, without the protection of any flag on God's
earth, and not raise our voice against the inhumanity
so much as to declare that there is a contest a war?
This poor boon is all they ask, and in my judgment it
can be denied to them by none but heartless men.
In what I am saying I have no contest with the Pres
ident. I am his friend as I ever have been. I have no
contest with Mr. Fish or with anybody else. I have
no warfare with those who differ from me ; they have
their opinions, and I am entitled to mine. I look upon
General Grant as a good man, but I think that on this
question he is deceived. I think if he had not been
fishing up in Pennsylvania when this message was
written he would not have signed it so readily as he
did. I do not think it was necessary to go to Pennsyl
vania for more fish. We have all we need here. I
think it is a message not well considered, and I do
not believe he examined it well before signing it. It
does not state the case correctly ; and I am sorry to see
him put upon the record as misstating the law.
I entertain the highest respect for the President
and his administration, and I do not purpose that any
man shall put me in a false position. I do not intend
to allow myself to be placed in antagonism with the
administration, nor do I intend to allow any man or
set of men to howl upon my heels that I do not support
the administration and am therefore to be denounced.
No, sir, I am supporting the administration; I am
LOGAN. IO5
maintaining the former views of the President, and
I think his former views on this question are better
than his later ones. Once we held like opinions on
this question of Cuban belligerency, and I see no rea
son on my part to change those opinions. If he has
changed his I find no fault with him. But I prefer to
stand by his former judgment, formed when he was
cool, when he deliberated for himself, when he had
not men around him to bother and annoy him with
their peculiar and interested notions ; when he thought
for himself and wrote for himself. I believed then as
he believed. I believe now as I believed then, and I
clo not propose to change.
Now, Mr. Speaker, I think the Republicans on this
side of the House owe it to themselves to take tho
side of the oppressed. I wish to say to the Republican
party as the friend of this administration, that the
most friendly act toward this present administration is
to let this message go before the country, so far as
the opinion of the President is concerned. Do not let
us make any war upon it. Let it appear to the coun
try that we differ from the President in this matter
honestly. Let us as Republicans, notwithstanding the
message, declare that we will accord to these people
all the rights of civilized warfare. Let us do this,
and I have no doubt the country will say, " Well done,
good and faithful servants."
If your action be taken in the interest of freedom,
if you shall help the oppressed and act on the side of
liberty and humanity, if in a contest between despot
ism and a people struggling bravely for independence
you give the preference to the latter, if in doing this
106 LOGAN.
you should happen to commit error, and that error
should happen to be on the side of humanity and lib
erty, there is no country in the world which can or
ought to find fault with you. In questions tried before
our juries they are always instructed to give the benefit
of the doubt in favor of the prisoner.
In this case, if there be any doubt, I implore the
House let it be in favor of Cuba. By taking the side
of Cuba against Spain we are true to the instincts of
our organization in sympathizing with a people suf
fering under oppression. It will show that you do
not sympathize with despotism. It will show that
now, as heretofore, the Republican party sympathize
with struggling humanity seeking freedom and inde
pendence.
Your record is clear in the past. We have had too
much sympathy of late years for great monarchies.
Indeed there seems to be too great a disposition in
some quarters to sympathize too much with monarchy
and to sympathize too much with the exercise of
arbitrary power in oppression to justice and liberty.
And why is this? Because these are great govern
ments and controlled by the great ones. These mon
archical governments have mighty fleets floating upon
the high seas. They have ministers residing in our
fnidst. They have pleasant men who can afford to
give splendid entertainments. They are genial men at
the dinner table, and facile in the artful manoeuvres
of diplomacy. They are what was known in the time
of Louis XIV. and the " Fronde," as honnete men.
They have all the appliances for making good their
cause when they wish to crush out people who are
LOGAN. lO/
struggling for independence. They are heard, and
they have official access to our government, which is
denied to all others.
But never let it be said that the Republican party
sympathizes with the oppressors against the oppressed.
I warn you that no statesman and no political party
ever had a long life in this country which did not
love liberty, no matter from where the cry came,
whether from South America, or from Mexico, or
from our own slaves when they were held in bondage.
When the South American States raised the standard
of rebellion against Spain we sympathized with them ;
when Mexico did the same thing, she also had our
sympathy; and gentlemen should not forget that it
was the Republican party that gave freedom and
franchise to four million slaves in our own midst. Let
gentlemen carefully examine the history of this coun
try before they cast these people off and consign them
to the merciless horrors of a Spanish inquisition.
Read and mark well that no party ever succeeded
which refused justice or sympathized with the op
pressor against the oppressed.
If the party which abolished slavery; the party
which, in the spirit of justice, gave citzenship to those
who were freed by it ; the party which has always held
itself to be the great exponent of free principles and
justice to all, of liberty and humanity if that party
shall now turn its back upon its former glorious rec
ord and lend moral support and material aid to Spain
in its cruel crusade against the revolutionists of Cuba
it must inevitably go down under the indignation of
the people who now make up its formidable numbers.
108 LOGAN.
If, however, we shall give the aid which is asked to
encourage and sustain struggling humanity; if we
shall help these Cubans fighting for independence; if
we shall do that which every dictate of justice de
mands of us in the emergency; in a word, if we are
true to the doctrines and principles we have enun
ciated, then the Republican party will live to ride
safely for many years to come through the boisterous
storms of politics, and will override in the future, as
it has done in the past, all such theories as secession
and rebellion in our government, and all that is antag
onistic to the universal liberty of man. It will over
come every obstacle that stands in the way of the
great advance, the great civilization, the great en
lightenment, the great Christianity of this age. And
whenever you fail to allow it to march onward in
the path in which it has started, and undertake to im
pede it in its efforts to press onward, you strike a
blow at your own party, your own interests and safety.
For I tell you that whenever you halt, or shirk the
responsibilities of the hour as Republicans the Demo
crats will overtake you.
The Democrats were once formidable so far as the
questions of the day were concerned. They are far
behind you now ; and I say to you, Republicans, do not
let the Democrats beat you to-day as regards the posi
tion they take in favor of liberty. If you do, the coun
try will perhaps give you reason to learn after awhile
that you have forgotten the trust that was reposed in
you, and have failed to perform the duty with which
it has honored you, but allowed it to slip from your
hands to be discharged by others.
LOGAN. 109
For these things you must answer before the great
forum of the people ; and if they adjudge you recreant
in the support of the principles reposed in you, and
false to the requirements of the present, they will
not find you worthy of confidence in the future.
110 HAWLEY.
Hawley, Joseph H., an American journalist and poli
tician, born at Stewartsville, N. C., October 31, 1826. He
studied law and practised his profession in Hartford, Conn.,
from 1850 to 1857, entering heartily into politics the while
and being notably prominent as an opponent of slavery.
He took up journalism in 1857 and was the editor of the
" Evening Press " at Hartford. He served in the Federal
army throughout the Civil war, retiring in 1865 with the rank
of brevet major-general. He was elected governor of Con
necticut in 1866, serving for one term, and then resumed
journalism. In 1872 he entered congress as representative,
and was twice re-elected, and in 1881 became a United States
senator, which position he still holds. He was president of
the Centennial commission, 1875-76.
ON THE PRESS.
SPEECH AT THE BANQUET OF THE NEW ENGLAND
SOCIETY, DECEMBER 22, 1875.
GENTLEMEN, Our distinguished president paid the
very highest compliment to the press to-night; for,
while he has given at least a fortnight's notice to every
other gentleman, he only told me to-night that I had to
respond to the toast of " The Press." But as I have
attended a good many dinners of the New England
Society, and never knew " The Press " to be called
upon before midnight, I felt entirely safe.
Now, sir, I have spent an evening some six hours
here, enjoying all the festivities and hospitalities
of this occasion to the utmost, and at last I am called
HAWLEY. 1 1 1
upon, at an hour when we are full of jollity and mirth,
to respond to a toast that in reality calls upon me for
my most serious effort.
I assure you that, had I known that I was to speak
upon this subject to-night, I would, contrary to my
usual custom, have been deliberately prepared; for I,
in reality, have a great deal to say upon that matter;
and permit me to add that I have a somewhat peculiar
qualification, for I have been a man within the press,
" a chiel amang ye takin' notes, and prentin' them ; "
and I have been again a man altogether outside of the
press, not writing for months to his own people, and
subject to receive all the jibes and criticisms and at
tacks of the press. " I know how it is myself."
The " Press of the Republic " is a text worthy of
the noblest oration. It has a great, a high, and a holy
duty. It is at once the leader and educator, and, on
the other hand, the representative of the people. I
can only touch on some points that I have in my mind,
upon this occasion. It seems to me that we are pass
ing through a period of peculiar importance regarding
the value and influence of the press of the American
Republic. There are times when I join with them in
the most indignant denunciation, in the warmest ap
peal. There are times when I feel the cutting, cruel,
stinging injustice of the American press.
It is the duty of an editor, sitting, as he does, as a
judge and I mean all that the word implies upon all
that goes on about him in public life it is his duty to
hear both sides, and all sides, as deliberately and
calmly as he may, and to pronounce a judgment that,
so far as he knows, may be the judgment of posterity.
112 HAWLEY.
It is true that he has two duties. We know that it
is his duty to condemn the bad. When it be made
perfectly clear that the bad man is really a bad man,
a corrupter of youth, make him drink the hemlock,
expel him, punish him, crush him.
But there is another duty imposed upon the Ameri
can press, quite as great. If there be a man who loves
the Republic, who would work for it, who would talk
for it, who would fight for it, who would die for it
there are millions of them, thank God ! it is the duty
of the American press to uphold him, and to praise him
when the time comes, in the proper place, on the
proper occasion.
The press is to deal not alone in censure of the
bad, but in praise of the good. I like the phrase,
" The independent press." I am an editor myself. I
love my calling. I think it is growing to be one of the
great professions of the day. I claim as an editor
(and that is my chief pursuit in life), to be a gentle
man also. If I see or know anything to be wrong in
the land, high or low, I will say so. If it be in my
own party, I will take special pains to say so; for I
suppose it to be true of both parties that we have a
very high, a very glorious, a very beautiful, a very lov
able idea of the future American Republic. So I will
condemn, I say, whatever may be wrong. I hold my
self to be an independent journalist.
But, my friends, I hope you will excuse the phrase
I am going to follow it by another at the same
time I do freely avow that I am a partisan ; for I never
knew anything good, from Moses down to John
Brown, that was not carried through by partisanship.
HAWLEY. 115
If you believe in anything, say so; work for it, fight
for it.
There are always two sides in the world. The good
fight is always going on. The bad men are always
working. The devil is always busy. And again, on
the other side you have your high idea of whatever is
beautiful and good and true in the world ; and God is
always working also. The man who stands between
them who says, " This is somewhat good, and that
is somewhat good ; I stand between them "permit
me to say, is a man for whom I have very little respect.
Some men say there is a God ; some men say there
is no God. Some of the independents say that the
truth lies between them. I cannot find it between
them. Every man has a God. If you believe in your
God, he may be another God from mine; but if you
are a man, I want you to fight for him, and I may have
to fight against you, but do you fight for the God that
you believe in.
I do sincerely think (and I wish that this was a con
gregation of my fellow editors of the whole land, for
my heart is in reality full of this thing) I do sin
cerely think that there is something of a danger that
our eloquent, ready, powerful, versatile, indefatig
able, vigorous, omnipresent, omniscient men of the
press may drive out of public life and they will ridi
cule that phrase may drive out of public life, not all,
but a very considerable class of sensitive, high-minded,
honorable, ambitious gentlemen.
Now, I do not say anything about the future for
myself. I have got a " free lance," I have got a news
paper, and I can fight with the rest of them ; but I will
5-4
I 14 HAWLEY.
give you a bit of my experience in public life. I tell
you, my friends of the New English Society, that one
of the sorest things that a man in public life has to
bear is the reckless, unreasonable censure of members
of the press whom individually he respects.
That large-hearted man, whom personally I love,
with whom I could shake hands, with whom I did
shake hands, with whom I sat at the social board time
and again, grossly misinterprets my public actions ; in
timates all manner of dishonorable things, which I
would fight at two paces rather than be guilty of ; and
it would be useless for me to write a public letter to
explain or contradict.
Now, I am only one of hundreds. I can stand still
and wait the result, in the confidence that, if not all,
yet some men believe me to be honorable and true ;
if they do not, God and I know it, and would " fight
it out on that line."
Gentlemen, it is rather 1 my habit to talk in earnest.
Next to the evil of having all public men in this land
corrupt; next to the evil of having all our govern
mental affairs in the hands of men venal and weak and
narrow, debauching public life and carrying it down to
destruction, is the calamity of having all the young
men believe it is so, whether it be so or not.
Teach all the boys to believe that every man who
goes into public life has his price; teach all the boys
1o believe that there is no man who enters public life
anywhere that does not look out for his own, and is
not always scheming to do something for himself or
his friends, and seeking to prolong his power; teach
every young man who has a desire to go into political
HAW LEY. 115
life to think because you have told him so that the
way to succeed is to follow such arts, and by that
kind of "talk you may ruin your country.
Now, gentlemen, as I have said, this is a matter for
an evening oration. I have barely touched some of
the points. I have said the press has a twofold duty
and fortune: it is the leader, the educator, the di
rector of the people. It is, at the same time, the re
flector of the people. I could spend an hour upon the
theme. . . .
I cannot cease, however, without thanking the
president of the St. Patrick's Society, the only gentle
man who has mentioned the word " centennial."
When I was leaving Philadelphia, my wife warned
me not to use that word, knowing to what it might
lead me; and so I shall simply ask you all to come to
Philadelphia next year, and join in the great national
exhibition, where you will have an opportunity of see
ing the progress which this nation has made under the
ideas of liberty, government, industry, and thrift
which were instilled by the Pilgrim Fathers.
Il6 VOORHEES.
Voorhees, Daniel W., an American politician and
orator, born at Liberty, Ohio, September 26, 1827; died in
Washington, D. C, April 10, 1897. After studying law
and being admitted to the bar in 1861, he began to practise
at Covington, Ind., removing to Terre Haute, in the same
state, in 1857. He was United States district attorney,
1858-61, and while serving as such his speech in court in
defence of John Cook, one of the John Brown raiders, gave
him an extended fame as an orator. Voorhees was a Dem
ocratic Representative in Congress, 1861-65, and also 1869-
71. In 1877 he became a United States Senator, and was re-
elected in 1885 and again in 1891. Almost upon his entrance
into the Senate he made there an impassioned speech in
favor of free silver coinage and the acceptance of greenbacks
as full legal tender money, but in 1893 voted for the repeal
of the silver purchase portion of the " Sherman Act." To
his efforts as chairman of the library committee, 1880-97, is
largely due the existence of the present Congressional
Library building. Voorhees was strongly partisan in his
political utterances, and, though undeniably eloquent, was
an impetuous, emotional orator, rather than a convincing
one. In allusion to his stature he was sometimes termed
" The Tall Sycamore of the Wabash." A volume of his
" Speeches " appeared in 1875, and his " Lectures, Addresses
and Speeches," with a brief biography, in 1898.
DEFENCE OF JOHN E. COOK.
DELIVERED AT CHARLESTOWN, VIRGINIA, NOVEMBER
8, 1859.
WHO is John E. Cook?
He has the right himself to be heard before you;
but I will answer for him. Sprung from an ancestry
VOORHEES. II/
of loyal attachment to the American government, he
inherits no blood of tainted impurity. His grand
father an officer of the Revolution, by which your lib
erty, as well as mine was achieved, and his gray-
haired father, who lived to weep over him, a soldier
of the war of 1812, he brings no dishonored lineage
into your presence. If the blood which flows in his
veins has been offered against your peace, the same
blood in the veins of those from whose loins he
sprang has been offered in fierce shock of battle and
foreign invasion in behalf of the people of Virginia
and the Union. Born of a parent stock occupying
the middle walks of life, and possessed of all those
tender and domestic virtues which escape the contam
ination of those vices that dwell on the frozen peaks,
or in the dark and deep caverns of society, he would
not have been here had precept and example been re
membered in the prodigal wanderings of his short and
checkered life.
Poor deluded boy! wayward, misled child! An
evil star presided over thy natal hour and smote it
with gloom. The hour in which thy mother bore
thee and blessed thee as her blue-eyed babe upon her
knee is to her now one of bitterness as she stands near
the bank of the chill river of death and looks back on
a name hitherto as unspotted and as pure as the un
stained snow. May God stand by and sustain her, and
preserve the mothers of Virginia from the waves of
sorrow that now roll over her! . . .
In an evil hour and may it be forever accursed?
John E. Cook met John Brown on the prostituted
plains of Kansas. On that field of fanaticism, three
Il8 VOORHEES.
years ago, this fair and gentle youth was thrown
into contact with the pirate and robber of civil war
fare.
.To others whose sympathies he has enlisted I will
leave the task of transmitting John Brown as a martyr
and hero to posterity. In my eyes he stands the chief
of criminals, the thief of property stolen horses and
slaves from the citizens of Missouri, a falsifier here
in this court, as I shall yet show, and a murderer not
only of your citizens, but of the young men who have
already lost their lives in his bloody foray of your bor
der. This is not pleasant to say, but it is the truth,
and, as such, ought to be and shall be said. You have
seen John Brown, the leader.
Now look on John Cook, the follower. He is in
evidence before you. Never did I plead for a face
that I was more willing to show. If evil is there, I
have not seen it. If murder is there, I am to learn
to mark the lines of the murderer anew. If the as
sassin is in that young face, then commend me to the
look of an assassin. No, gentlemen, it is a face for a
mother to love, and a sister to idolize, and in which
the natural goodness of his heart pleads trumpet-
tongued against the deep damnation that estranged
him from home and its principles.
Let us look at the meeting of these two men.
flace them side by side. Put the young face by the
old face ; the young head by the old head. We have
seen somewhat of the history of the young man.
Look now for a moment at the history of the old man.
He did not go to Kansas as a peaceable settler with
his interests linked to the legitimate growth and
VOORHEES. 119
prosperity of that ill-fated Territory. He went there
in the language of one who has spoken for him since
his confinement here, as the Moses of the slaves' de
liverance. He went there to fulfil a dream, which
had tortured his brain for thirty years, that he was to
be the leader of a second exodus from bondage. He
went there for war and not for peace. He went there
to call around him the wayward and unstable elements
of a society in which the bonds of order, law, and re
ligion were loosened, and the angry demon of discord
was unchained. Storm was his element by his own
showing. He courted the fierce tempest. He sowed
the wind that he might reap the whirlwind. He in
voked the lightning and gloried in its devastation.
Sixty summers and winters had passed over his head,
and planted the seeds of spring and gathered the
harvests of autumn in the fields of his experience. He
was the hero, too, of battles there. If laurels could
be gained in such a fratricidal war as raged in Kan
sas, he had them on his brow.
Ossawatomie was given to him, and added to his
name by the insanity of the crazy crew of the North
as Napoleon conferred the names of battlefields on
his favorite marshals. The action of Black Jack, too,
gave him consideration, circumstance, and condition
with philanthropists of bastard quality, carpet knight
heroes in Boston, and servile followers of fanaticism
throughout the country. His courage is now lauded
to the skies by men who have none of it themselves.
This virtue, I admit, he has linked, however, with a
thousand crimes. An iron will, with which to accom
plish evil under the skilful guise of good, I also admit
120 VOORHEES.
to be in his possession rendering his influence over
the young all the more despotic and dangerous.
Imagine, if you please, the bark on which this young
man at the bar, and all his hopes were freighted, laid
alongside of the old weather-beaten and murderous
man-of-war whose character I have placed before you.
The one was stern and bent upon a fatal voyage.
Grim-visaged war, civil commotion, pillage and death,
disunion and universal desolation thronged through
the mind of John Brown. To him law was nothing,
the Union was nothing, the peace and welfare of the
country were nothing, the lives of the citizens of Vir
ginia were nothing.
Though a red sea of blood rolled before him, yet
he lifted up his hand and cried Forward. Shall he
now shrink from his prominence, and attempt to
shrivel back to the grade of his recruits and subal
terns? Shall he deny his bad pre-eminence, and say
that he did not incite the revolt which has involved
his followers .in ruin? Shall he stand before this
court and before the country, and deny that he was
the master-spirit, and gathered together the young
men who followed him to the death in this mad ex
pedition?
No! his own hand signs himself "Commander-in-
chief," and shows the proper distinction which should
be made between himself and the men who, in an evil
moment, obeyed his orders. Now turn to the contrast
again and behold the prisoner. Young and new to
the rough ways of life, his unsandalled foot, tender
and unused to the journey before him, a waif on the
ocean, at the mercy of the current which might assail
VOORHEES. 121
him, and unfortunately endowed with that fearful
gift which causes one to walk as in a dream through
all the vicissitudes of a lifetime ; severed and wander
ing from the sustaining and protecting ties of kin
dred, he gave, without knowing his destination or pur
pose, a pledge of military obedience to John Brown,
" Commander-in-chief." . . .
John Brown was the despotic leader and John E.
Cook was an ill-fated follower of an enterprise whose
horror he now realizes and deplores. I defy the man,
here or elsewhere, who has ever known John E. Cook,
who has ever looked once fully into his face, and
learned anything of his history, to lay his hand on his
heart and say that he believes him guilty of the origin
or the results of the outbreak at Harper's Ferry.
Here, then, are the two characters whom you are
thinking to punish alike. Can it be that a jury of
Christian men will find no discrimination should be
made between them? Are the tempter and the
tempted the same in your eyes? Is the beguiled
youth to die the same as the old offender who has
pondered his crimes for thirty years? Are there no
grades in your estimation of guilt ? Is each one, with
out respect to age or circumstances, to be beaten with
the same number of stripes?
Such is not the law, human or divine. We are all
to be rewarded according to our works, whether in
punishment for evil, or blessings for good that we
have done. You are here to do justice, and if justice
requires the same fate to befall Cook that befalls
Brown, I know nothing of her rules, and do not care
to learn. They are as widely asunder, in all that con-
122 VOORHEES.
stitutes guilt, as the poles of the earth, and should be
dealt with accordingly. It is in your power to do so,
and by the principles by which you yourselves are will
ing to be judged hereafter, I implore you to do it !
Come with me, however, gentlemen, and let us ap
proach the spot where the tragedy of the I7th of
October occurred, and analyze the conduct of the
prisoner there. It is not true that he came as a citi
zen to your State and gained a home in your midst
to betray you. He was ordered to take his position
at Harper's Ferry in advance of his party for the sole
purpose of ascertaining whether Colonel Forbes, of
New York, had divulged the plan. This order came
from John Brown, the " Commander-in-chief," and
was doubtless a matter of as much interest to others
of prominent station as to himself.
Cook simply obeyed no more. There is not a
particle of evidence that he tampered with your slaves
during his temporary residence. On the contrary, it
is admitted on all hands that he did not. His position
there is well defined. Nor was he from under the
cold, stern eye of his leader. From the top of the
mountain his chief looked down upon him, and held
him as within a charmed circle. Would Cook have
lived a day had he tried to break the meshes which
environed him?
Happy the hour in which he had made the attempt
even had he perished, but in fixing the measure of his
guilt, the circumstances by which he was surrounded
must all be weighed. At every step we see him as
the instrument in the hands of other men, and not as
originating or advising anything. . . .
VOORHEES. 123
But it has been said that Cook left the scene at
Harper's Ferry at an early hour to avoid the danger
of the occasion, and thus broke faith with his comrades
in wrong. Even this is wholly untrue. Again we find
the faithful, obedient subaltern carrying out the or
ders of his chief, and when he had crossed the river
and fulfilled the commands of Brown, he did what
Brown's own son would not do by returning and
exposing himself to the fire of the soldiers and citi
zens for the relief of Brown and his party. We see
much, alas! too much, to condemn in his conduct, but
nothing to despise ; we look in vain for an act that be
longs to a base or malignant nature. Let the hand
of chastisement fall gently on the errors of such as
him, and reserve your heavy blows for such as com
mit crime from motives of depravity.
Up to this point I have followed the prisoner, and
traced his immediate connection with this sad affair.
You have everything before you. You have heard his
own account of his strange and infatuated wanderings
tip and down the earth with John Brown and his co
adjutors; how like a fiction it all seems, and yet how
lamentably true; how unreal to minds like ours; how
like the fever dream of a mind warped and disordered
to the borders of insanity does the part which the
prisoner has played seem to every practical judgment f
Is there nothing in it all that affords you the dearest
privilege which man has on earth the privilege of
being merciful? Why, the very thief on the cross, for
a single moment's repentance over his crimes, re
ceived absolute forgiveness, and was rewarded with
paradise.
124 VOORHEES. >
But, gentlemen, in estimating the magnitude of this
young man's guilt, there is one fact which is proven in
his behalf by the current history of the day which you
cannot fail to consider. Shall John E. Cook perish,
and the real criminals who for twenty years have
taught the principles on which he acted, hear no voice
from this spot? Shall no mark be placed on them?
Shall this occasion pass away, and the prime felons
who attacked your soil and murdered your citizens at
Harper's Ferry escape? The indictment before us
says that the prisoner was " seduced by the false and
malignant counsels of other traitorous persons."
Never was a sentence written more just and true.
4i False and malignant counsels " have been dropping
for years, as deadly and blighting as the poison of
the Bohun upas tree, from the tongues of evil and
traitorous persons in that section of the Union to
which the prisoner belongs. They have seduced not
only his mind, but many others, honest and misguided
like him, to regard the crime at Harper's Ferry as
no crime, your rights as unmitigated wrongs, and
the constitution of the country as a league with hell
and a covenant with death. On the skirts of the lead
ers of abolition fanaticism in the North is every drop
of blood shed in the conflict at Harper's Ferry; on
their souls rests the crime of murder for every life
there lost; and all the waters of the ocean could not
wash the stains of slaughter from their treacherous
and guilty hands.
A noted Boston abolitionist [Wendell Phillips], a
few days ago, at Brooklyn, New York, in the presence
of thousands, speaking of this tragic occurrence, says :
VOORHEES. , 125
" It is the natural result of anti-slavery teaching. For
one, I accept it. I expected it." I, too, accept it in
the same light, and so will the country. Those who
taught, and not those who believed and acted, are the
men of crime in the sight of God. And to guard other
young men, so far as in my power, from the fatal
snare which has been tightened around the hopes and
destiny of John E. Cook, and to show who are fully
responsible for his conduct, I intend to link with this
trial the names of wiser and older men than he ; and,
if he is to be punished and consigned to a wretched
doom, they shall stand beside him in the public stocks ;
they shall be pilloried forever in public shame as " the
evil and traitorous persons who seduced him to his
ruin by their false and malignant counsels."
The chief of these men, the leader of a great party,
a senator of long standing, has announced to the
country that there is a higher law than the consti
tution, which guarantees to each man the full exer
cise of his own inclination. The prisoner before you
has simply acted on the law of Wm. H. Seward, and
not the law of his fathers. He has followed the Ma
homet of an incendiary faith.
Come forth, ye sages of abolitionism, who now
cower and skulk under hasty denials of your complic
ity with the bloody result of your wicked and unholy
doctrines, and take your places on the witness stand.
Tell the world why this thing has happened. Tell
this jury why they are trying John E. Cook for his
life. You advised his conduct and taught him that he
was doing right. You taught him a higher law and
then pointed out to him the field of action. Let facts
126 VOORHEES.
be submitted. Mr. Seward, in speaking of slavery,
says : " It can and must be abolished, and you and I
must do it."
What worse did the prisoner attempt? Again, he
said, upon this same subject, " Circumstances deter
mine possibilities ; " and doubtless the circumstance
with which John Brown had connected his plans made
them possible in his estimation, for it is in evidence
before the country, unimpeached and uncontradicted,
that the great senator of New York had the whole mat
ter submitted to him, and only whispered back, in re
sponse, that he had better not have been told. He has
boldly announced an irrepressible conflict between
the free and slave States of this Union.
These seditious phrases, " higher law " and " ir
repressible conflict," warrant and invite the construc
tion which the prisoner and his young deluded com
panions placed upon them. Yet they are either in
chains, with the frightful gibbet in full view, or sleep
in dishonored graves, while the apostle and master
spirit of insurrection is loaded with honors, and fares
sumptuously every day. Such is poor, short-handed
justice in this world.
An old man, and for long years a member of the
national Congress from Ohio, next shall testify here
before you that he taught the prisoner the terrible
error which now involves his life. Servile insurrec
tion have forever been on the tongue and lips of
Joshua R. Giddings. He says " that when the contest
shall come, when the thunder shall roll and the light
ning flash, and when the slaves shall rise in the
South, in imitation of the horrid scenes of the West
VOORHEES. 127
Indies, when the Southern man shall turn pale and
tremble, when your dwellings shall smoke with the
torch of the incendiary, and dismay sit on each coun
tenance, he will hail it as the approaching dawn of that
political and moral millennium which he is well as
sured will come upon the world. "
The atrocity of these sentiments chills the blood
of honest patriots, and no part of the prisoner's con
duct equals their bloody import. Shall the old leader
escape and the young follower die ? Shall the teacher,
whose doctrines told the prisoner that what he did was
right, go unscathed of the lightning which he has
unchained? If so, Justice has fled from her temples
on earth, and awaits us only on high to measure out
what is right between man and man.
The men who have misled this boy to his ruin shall
here receive my maledictions. They shrink back from
him now in the hour of his calamity. They lift up
their hands and say, Avaunt! to the bloody spectre
which their infernal orgies have summoned up. You
hear them all over the land ejaculating through false,
pale, coward lips, " Thou canst not say I did it," when
their hands are reeking with all the blood that has
been shed and which yet awaits the extreme penalty
of the law. False, fleeting, perjured traitors, false
to friends as well as country, and perjured before the
constitution of the Republic ministers who profess
to be of God who told this boy here to carry a Sharpe's
rifle to Kansas instead of his mother's Bible shall
this jury, this court, and this country forget their guilt
and their infamy because a victim to their precepts is
yielding up his life before you?
128 VOORHEES.
May God forget me if I here, in the presence of this
pale face, forget to denounce with the withering,
blighting, blasting power of majestic truth, the tall and
stately criminals of the Northern States of this Union.
The visionary mind of the prisoner heard from a
member of congress from Massachusetts that a new
constitution, a new Bible, and a new God were to be
inaugurated and to possess the country. They were
to be new, because they were to be anti-slavery, for
the old constitution, and the old Bible, and the God of
our fathers, the ancient Lord God of Israel, the same
yesterday, to-day, and forever, were not on the side
of abolitionism.
Is there no mitigation for his doom in the fact that
he took his life in his hand, and aimed at that which a
coward taught him, but dared not himself attempt?
Base, pusillanimous demagogues have led the prisoner
to the bar, but while he suffers if suffer he must
they, too, shall have their recreant limbs broken on the
wheel.
I will not leave the soil of Virginia, I will not let
this awful occasion pass into history, without giving a
voice and an utterance to its true purport and meaning,
without heaping upon its authors the load of exe
cration which they are to bear henceforth and forever.
Day after day and year after year has the baleful
simoon of revolution, anarchy, discord, hostility to the
South and her institutions, swept over that section of
the country in which the lot of the prisoner has been
cast. That he has been poisoned by its breath should
not cut him off from human sympathy; rather should
it render every heart clement toward him.
VOORHEES. 129
He never sought place or station, but sought merely
to develop those doctrines which evil and traitorous
persons have caused him to believe were true. Min
isters, editors, and politicians Beecher, Parker, Sew-
ard, Giddings, Sumner, Hale, and a host of lesser
lights of each class who in this court-room, who in
this vast country, who in the wide world who shall
read this trial believes them not guilty as charged in
the indictment in all the counts to a deeper and far
more fearful extent than John E. Cook. Midnight
gloom is not more somber in contrast with the blazing
light of the meridian sun than is the guilt of such men
in comparison with that which overwhelms the pris
oner. They put in motion the maelstrom which has
engulfed him. They started the torrent which has
borne him over the precipice. They called forth from
the caverns the tempest which wrecked him on a
sunken reef.
Before God, and in the light of eternal truth, the
disaster at Harper's Ferry is their act, and not his.
May the ghost of each victim to their doctrine of dis
union and abomination sit heavy on their guilty souls !
May the fate of the prisoner, whatever it may be, dis
turb their slumbers and paralyze their arms when they
are again raised against the peace of the country and
the lives of its citizens !
I know by the gleam of each eye into which I look
in this jury-box, that if these men could change places
with young Cook, you would gladly say to him, " Go,
erring and repentant youth, our vengeance shall fall
on those who paid their money, urged on the attack,
and guided the blow/' Let me appeal to you, gentle-
130 VOORHEES.
men of the jury, in the name of eternal truth and
everlasting right, is nothing to be forgiven to youth,
to inexperience, to a gentle, kind heart, to a wayward
and peculiar though not vicious character, strangely
apt to be led by present influences ?
I have shown you what those influences, generally
and specially, have been over the mind of the prisoner.
I have shown you the malign influence of his direct
leader. I have shown you, also, the " false and malig
nant counsels " in behalf of this sad enterprise, ema
nating from those in place, power, and position. It
might have been your prodigal son borne away and
seduced by such counsels, as well as my young client.
Do with him as you would have your own child dealt
by under like circumstances. He has been stolen
from the principles of his ancestors and betrayed from
the teachings of his kindred. If he was your own
handsome child, repentant and confessing his wrong
to his country, what would you wish a jury of stran
gers to do? That do yourselves.
By that rule guide your verdict; and the poor boon
of mercy will not be cut off from him. He thought the
country was about to be convulsed ; that the slave was
pining for an opportunity to rise against his master;
that two thirds of the laboring population of the coun
try, north and south, would flock to the standard of
revolt; that a single day would bring ten, fifty yea, a
hundred thousand men to arms in behalf of the in
surrection of the slaves. This is in evidence.
Who are responsible for such terribly false views?
and what kind of a visionary and dreaming mind is
that which has so fatally entertained them? That the
VOORHEES. 131
prisoner's mind is pliant to the impressions, whether
for good or for evil, by which it is surrounded, let his
first interview in his prison with Governor Willard,
in the presence of your senator, Colonel Mason, bear
witness. His error was placed before him. His wrong"
to his family and his country was drawn by a patriotic,
and, at the same time, an affectionate hand. His nat
ural being at once asserted its sway. The influence
of good, and not of evil, once more controlled him as
in the days of his childhood ; and now here before you
he has the merit at least of a loyal citizen, making all
the atonement in his power for the wrong which he
has committed. That he has told strictly the truth in
his statement is proven by every word of evidence in
this cause.
Gentlemen, you have this case. I surrender into
your hands the issues of life and death. As long as
you live, a more important case than this you will
never be called to try. Consider it, therefore, well in
all its bearings. I have tried to show you those facts
which go to palliate the conduct of the prisoner.
Shall I go home and say that in justice you remem
bered not mercy to him ? Leave the door of clemency
open; do not shut it by a wholesale conviction. Re
member that life is an awful and a sacred thing; re
member that death is terrible terrible at any time,
and in any form.
" Come to the bridal chamber, Death !
Come when the mother feels
For the first time, her first-born's breath ;
Come when the blessed seals
That close the pestilence are broke,
And crowded cities wail its stroke ;
132 VOORHEES.
Come in consumption's ghastly form,
The earthquake's shock, the ocean's storm ;
Come when the heart beats high and warm
With banquet song, and dance, and wine,
And thou art terrible. The groan,
The knell, the pall, the bier,
And all we know, or dream, or fear
Of agony, are thine."
But when to the frightful mien of the grim monster,
when to the chill visage of the spirit of the glass and
scythe, is added the hated, dreaded spectre of the
gibbet, we turn shuddering from the accumulated
horror. God spare this boy, and those who love him,
from such a scene of woe.
I part from you now, and most likely forever. When
we next meet when I next look upon your faces and
you on mine it will be in that land and before that
Tribunal where the only plea that will save you or me
from a worse fate than awaits the prisoner, will be
mercy. Charity is the paramount virtue; all else is
as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. Charity suf-
fereth long, and is kind. Forbid it not to come into
your deliberation; and, when your last hour comes,
the memory that you allowed it to plead for your
erring brother, John E. Cook, will brighten your pass
age over the dark river, and rise by your side as an
interceding angel in that day when your trial as well
as his shall be determined by a just but merciful God.
I thank the court and you, gentlemen, for your pa
tient kindness, and I am done.
BAYARD. 133
Bayard, Thomas F., an eminent American statesman,
diplomat and orator, born in Wilmington, Del., October 29,
1828 ; died at Deadham, Mass., September 28, 1898. He
came of a family which for three generations had been rep
resented in the United States Senate, and after studying law
with his father was admitted to the bar in 1851 and began
practice in his native city. He succeeded his father in the
National Senate in 1869, serving there continuously till 1885.
Bayard was Secretary of State during President Cleveland's
first administration, and from 1893 to 1897 was ambassador
to England, being the first minister to Great Britain to bear
that title. He was a polished, eloquent speaker, with a
graceful, persuasive delivery, and was especially happy as
the orator at occasional semi-public functions. He was
popular in England, and his integrity of character won for
him the high respect of all parties at home. No collection
of his speeches has been made as yet.
ON THE UNITED STATES ARMY.
[From an address on "Unwritten Law," delivered before the
Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard University, June 28, 1877.]
THE army of the United States, like the militia of
the several States, is the creation of their respective
legislation ; like the " princes and lords " of Gold
smith's verse,
" A breath can make them, as a breath hath made."
" He has kept among us, in times of peace, stand
ing armies, without the consent of the legislature,"
was one of the facts justifying revolution, " submitted
to a candid world," by the founders of this govern
ment. So long as human nature remains unchanged,
134 BAYARD.
the final argument of force cannot be disregarded;
but, outside and beyond the will of the people ex
pressed by law, an American army cannot exist; it
is but their instrument for their own service. It is
wholly dependent upon them; and they are never de
pendent upon it, and never will be while civil liberty
exists in substance among us.
When called into existence, the army represents the
military spirit of the whole nation, and is supported
by the enthusiasm and pride of all. It is composed
of American valor, skill, and energy, and is dedicated
to the glory of our common country, whose history
contains no brighter pages than those which record the
naval and military achievements of her sons; but
neither army nor navy stands now, nor ever did, nor
ever will, toward the American people in the relation
of policem: n to a turbulent crowd. And those who
would wish to see it placed in such an attitude, and em
ployed in such work, are short-sighted indeed, and
little regard the true dignity of the American soldier,
or the real security of the American citizen.
The army of the United States 13 born of the martial
spirit of a brave people, and is the product of national
courage. This hall is hallowed as a memorial of the
valor and devotion of those gallant youths who made
themselves part of the army, at a time when they felt
their country needed their service, and who freely
offered up their lives upon the altar of patriotism.
"O, those who live are heroes now, and martyrs those who
sleep."
Their surviving companions have returned to the
BAYARD. 135
paths of civil life, and the community is gladdened by
their presence and strengthened by their example.
If, to-morrow, the individuals who compose the army
of the United States should return to the occupations
of civil life, they would be quietly engulfed in the
great wave of humanity which rolls around them, and
the true forces of the government would move on in
their proper orbits as quietly and securely as before
the event.
Louis XIV. of France, " Le grand Monarque,"
of whom it was truly said, " his highest praise was
that he supported the stage-trick of royalty with ef
fect," caused his cannon to be cast with the words,
" Ultima ratio re gum; " and his apothegm has so far
advanced that in our day cannon seem, not the last,
but the first and only, argument of royal government
in Europe.
In the maze of strife, armed diplomacy, and ex
hausting warfare, in which all Europe now seems
about to be involved, how just the picture drawn by
Montesquieu nearly a century and a half ago!
" A new distemper has spread itself in Europe, in
fecting our princes, and inducing them to keep up an
exorbitant number of troops. It has its redoublings,
and of necessity becomes contagious; for as soon as
one prince augments his forces the rest, of course,
do the same, so that nothing is gained thereby but pub
lic ruin. Each monarch keeps as many armies on foot
as if his people were in danger of being exterminated,
and they give the name of peace to this effort against
all."
136 BAYARD.
But a few weeks ago at Berlin, during a debate in
the Imperial Parliament in relation to an increased
grant of new captaincies of their army, a remarkable
speech was made by General Von Moltke, the vener
able master of the science of warfare. The telegram
says:
" He insisted on the necessity of the grant. He
said he wished for long peace, but the times did not
permit such hope. On the contrary, the time was not
far distant when every government would be com
pelled to strain all its strength for securing its exist
ence. The reason for this was the regrettable distrust
of governments toward each other. France had made
great strides in her defences. Uncommonly large
masses of troops were at present between Paris and
the German frontier. Everything France did for her
army received the undivided approval of her people.
She was decidedly in advance of Germany in having
her cadres for war ready in times of peace. Germany
could not avoid a measure destined to compensate for
Will it not be well for Americans to comprehend
fully the importance of the confession contained in
this speech?
To-day the consolidated Empire of Germany is
confessedly the best organized and equipped military
power on the globe.
To reach this end every nerve has been strained,
every resource of that people freely applied. The
idea of military excellence, like the rod of Aaron, has
BAYARD. 137
swallowed up all others; all others have bent to its
service, until upon the shoulder of every man within
her borders capable of bearing arms, the hand of the
drill-sergeant has been laid, and from centre to cir
cumference of the empire centralized military power
reigns supreme.
Whatever of unqualified success a victory of arms
can yield, surely it was achieved by Germany in her
last memorable campaign against France. And his
tory nowhere else exhibits in such completeness and
precision the mathematical demonstration of success
ful scientific warfare.
With a rapidity and fulness scarcely credible, the
student of history saw the " whirligig of time bring
in his revenges," whilst the disciples of military art
witnessed demonstrations of the problems of war exe
cuted upon a scale and with a steady and intelligible
certainty that approached the marvellous.
Never was a military campaign more completely
and at all points successful, even to the conquest and
dismemberment of the hostile territory as a safeguard
for the future, and the exaction of enormous tribute
by way of pecuniary reimbursements from the van
quished. Let us note well the fruit of it all, and learn,
so far as we may by the costly experience of others,
what are the consequences of such a system and policy.
Does it secure peace, prosperity, and tranquil happi
ness? Let the victor answer.
It is Von Moltke, one of the chief architects of the
system, himself who confesses, even whilst the gar
lands of his great triumph are yet unfaded on his brow,
that he " longs for peace, but the times do not per-
138 BAYARD.
mit such hope. That every government is soon to be
compelled to strain all its strength for securing its
existence."
To the worshippers of military power and the be
lievers in armed force as the chief instrumentality of
human government I commend Von Moltke's speech.
If perfected military rule brings a people to such a
pass, may Heaven preserve our country from it.
Well may we exclaim with the sightless apostle
of English liberty,
" What can war, but endless war still breed."
Even victory must have a future and the only vic
tories which can have permanence, and the fruits of
which grow more secure with time, are those of jus
tice and reason; those of mere force are almost cer
tain to contain self-generated seeds for their own
subsequent reversal.
The safety and strength of our American govern
ment consists in the self-reliant and self-controlling
spirit of its people.
It was their courage, their intelligence, their virtues,
that enabled our forefathers to build it up; and the
same qualities and our sense of its value will inspire
their descendants with love and courage to defend it.
" Full flashing on our dormant souls the firm conviction comes
That what our fathers did for theirs we would for our homes."
In 1789, no sooner was the original constitution of
our government adopted than the several States and
their people hastened unanimously to declare in a
second article of amendment that,
BAYARD. 139
" A well-regulated militia being necessary to the
security of a free state, the right of the people to keep
and bear arms shall not be infringed."
And by article third,
" No soldier shall, in time of peace, be quartered
in any house without the consent of the owner; nor
in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by
law."
The right of the people to bear arms was thus sedu
lously guarded, and the necessary security of a free
state was declared to be a " well-regulated militia."
By the first article of the original constitution, power
was given to Congress to raise and support armies,
but coupled with the express condition that no appro
priation of money to that purpose should be made for
a longer period than two years. When delegating
power to Congress to call forth the militia to execute
the laws of the Union, and suppress insurrection and
invasion, the power was expressly reserved to the
States, respectively, to appoint their own officers, and
to train the militia according to the discipline pre
scribed by Congress.
Thus it will be seen that in the martial spirit of a
free people, and in their right to bear arms, the found
ers of our government reposed their trust, and ex
perience has proved how wisely.
The army of the United States is our honorable
instrument of self-defence, and its organization, its
numbers, its employment, are to be regulated wholly
140 BAYARD.
by law. The military is at all times to be subordinate
to the civil authority, and dependent upon law for its
powers, and the prescription of its duties.
The existence or non-existence of an army makes
no change in the character or methods of our govern
ment. It would be difficult to imagine a more un
warranted, and, to our American ear, more offensive
statement than that " without the army the American
people would be a mob."
The army and navy of the United States will be
maintained in such strength as convenience, or the
necessity of the government, shall dictate; and they
will be held in the respect and honor due to valiant
and faithful public servants, but there must be no con
fusion in the public mind as to the nature and proper
theatre of their duties, and their true relation to their
fellow citizens.
If erroneous ideas on this subject are beginning to
take shape and find expression among us, let them be
quietly but effectually discouraged.
Military force is always to be regarded with jealousy
by a people who would be free.
It is only by military force that usurped power can
have its pretensions enforced.
All history tells us that those who aspire to extra
ordinary power and dominion seldom trouble them
selves about anything other than armies to enforce
their pretensions, always decided by the possession of
the longest sword.
And here, almost in the shadow of Bunker HilL
what words so befitting this grave topic, and the words
of what man so proper to be recalled and heeded, as
BAYARD. 141
those of the patriot Webster, uttered four-and-thirty
years ago, upon the completion of the monument there
erected to the valor of the citizen-soldiers of
America ?
" Quite too frequent resort is made to military
force; and quite too much of the substance of the
people is consumed in maintaining armies, not for de
fence against foreign aggression, but for enforcing
obedience to domestic authority. Standing armies are
the oppressive instruments for governing the people
in the ranks of hereditary and arbitiary monarchs.
" A military republic, a government founded on
mock elections, and supported only by the sword, is
a movement, indeed, but a retrograde and disastrous
movement, from the regular and old-fashioned mon
archical systems.
" If men would enjoy the blessings of the repub
lican government, they must govern themselves by
reason, by mutual counsel and consultation, by a sense
and feeling of general interest, and by an acquiescence
of the minority in the will of the majority properly
expressed; and above all the military must be kept,
according to our bill of rights, in strict subordination
to the civil authority.
" Wherever this lesson is not both learned and
practised, there can be no political freedom. Absurd
and preposterous is it, a scoff and satire on free forms
of constitutional liberty, for frames of government to
be prescribed by military leaders, and the right of
suffrage to be exercised at the point of the sword."
142 BAYARD.
The grandeur and glory of our Republic must have
its base in the interests and affections of our whole
people ; they must not be oppressed by its weight, but
must see in it the work of their own hands, which
they can recognize and uphold with an honest pride,
and which every emotion that influences men will in
duce them to maintain and defend.
They must feel in their hearts " the ever-growing
and eternal debt which is due to generous government
from protected freedom."
Silently and almost imperceptibly the generations
succeed each other, and at the close of every third
lustrum it is startling to mark what a new body of
men have come into the rank of leadership in our
public affairs.
How few of those who to-day guide and influence
public measures did so fifteen years ago.
While it may not be in the power of leading men to
control the decision of issues, it is in a great degree
within their ability to create issues, by pressing for
ward subjects for public consideration; and herein lies
much of the power of the demagogue, that pest of
popular government, who, seeking only his own ad
vancement, adroitly presents topics to the public cal
culated only to arouse their passions and prejudices,
to the neglect of matters really vital.
Despite the almost perfect religious liberty in this
country, the passions of sectarianism and the preju
dices inseparable from such a subject are always to be
discovered floating on the surface of society, ready to
be seized upon by the shallow and unscrupulous.
The embers of such differences among mankind are
BAYARD. 143
never cold, and the breath of the demagogue can al
ways fan them into flame, until the placid warmth of
religion, instead of gently thawing the ice around
human hearts, and imparting a glow of comfort to the
homes of a happy community, becomes a raging con
flagration in which the peace and good will of society
are consumed.
In a country so vast in its area, and differing so
widely in all the aspects of life and occupation of its
inhabitants, antagonism of interest, rivalry in business,
and misunderstandings are frequently and inevitably
to be expected; and the constant exercise of concili
ation and harmony is called for to accommodate differ
ences and soothe exasperation.
It is in the power of unscrupulous self-seekers to
raise such issues as shall involve, not the real interest
and welfare of their countrymen, but their passions
only, which are easily kindled, and can leave nothing
but the ashes of disappointment and bitterness as the
residuum.
The war between the good and evil influences in
human society will never cease, and the champions of
the former can never afford to lean idly on their
swords, or slumber in their tents.
All around us we see successful men, vigorous and
able, but unscrupulous and base, who have engraved
success alone upon their banners, and as a conse
quence do not hesitate to trail them in the dust of low
action, and stain them with disrepute, in pursuit of
their object.
They keep within the pale of the written law, hav
ing its words on their lips, but none of its spirit in their
144 BAYARD.
hearts. Audacity and a self-trumpeting assurance are
their characteristics. They reach a bad eminence, and
contrive to maintain it, by all manner of self-adver
tisement ; utterly immodest and indelicate, but success
ful in keeping themselves in the public eye. To them,
politics is a mere game, in which stratagem and
finesse are the means, and self-interest and personal
advancement the end. Great aid is given to such
characters by the public press, whose columns too
often laud their tricky, shifty action, or at least give it
the publicity it desires, without accompanying it with
the condemnation it deserves.
How shall such influences be overcome? How
shall we purge places of public station of men whose
open boast is that they may be proven to be knaves,
but cannot be called " fools?"
Nothing can effect this but the unwritten law, which
shall create a tone on national honesty, truthfulness
and honor, to which the people will respond, and which
will compel at least an outward imitation of the virtues
upon which it is founded.
The armor of the Roman soldier covered only the
front of his body. The cuirass shielded. his breast,
but his back was left unprotected. Each man felt him
self to be the representative of the valor and good
fame of his legion and his country.
The unwritten law of honor forbade him to turn
his back upon danger, and thus became his impene
trable shield.
Such is the spirit and such are the laws that con
stitute the true safeguards of a nation against dangers
from within and without.
SCHURZ. 145
Schurz, Carl, an American statesman and orator of
eminence, born at Liblar, near Cologne, Prussia, March
2, 1829. While a student at Bonn university he became
implicated in the insurrectionary proceedings of 1849, an< ^
was consequently obliged to flee the country. He came to
America in 1852, and after three years in Philadelphia set
tled in Wisconsin, and in 1856 became known as a political
orator in German. Two years later he delivered his first
speech in English, which was widely circulated, and he was
presently conspicuous as a lyceum lecturer. He took a keen
interest in American politics, and delivered many campaign
speeches in the presidential contest of 1860. He was min
ister to Spain for some months in 1861, and then entering
the Union army he distinguished himself as a military com
mander, attaining the rank of general. Removing to St.
Louis, he sat in Congress as Senator from Missouri, 1869-75,
and there was conspicuous as an opponent of several ad
ministration measures. Schurz was Secretary of the Interior
in the cabinet of President Hayes, and edited the " Evening
Post" at New York, 1881-84. He succeeded Curtis as
president of the Civil Service League, and for a score of
years has been conspicuous in his opposition to conventional,
partisan politics. He is a polished, eloquent orator, among
the latest of whose speeches is a forcible arraignment of The
Policy of Imperialism.
THE POLICY OF IMPERIALISM.
ADDRESS AT THE ANTI-IMPERIALISTIC CONFERENCE
IN CHICAGO, OCTOBER I/, 1899.
MORE than eight months ago I had the honor of ad
dressing the citizens of Chicago on the subject of
American imperialism, meaning the policy of annex
ing to this Republic distant countries and alien popu-
6-4
146 SCHURZ.
lations that will not fit into our democratic system of
government. I discussed at that time mainly the
baneful effect the pursuit of an imperialistic policy
would produce upon our political institutions.
After long silence, during which I have carefully
reviewed my own opinions as well as those of others
in the light of the best information I could obtain, I
shall now approach the same subject from another
point of view.
We all know that the popular mind is much dis
turbed by the Philippine war, and that, however
highly we admire the bravery of our soldiers, nobody
professes to be proud of the war itself. There are
few Americans who do not frankly admit their regret
that this war should ever have happened.
In April, 1898, we went to war with Spain for the
avowed purpose of liberating the people of Cuba, who
had long been struggling for freedom and independ
ence. Our object in that war was clearly and emphati
cally proclaimed by a solemn resolution of Congress
repudiating all intention of annexation on our part
and declaring that the Cuban people " are, and of right
ought to be, free and independent." This solemn
declaration was made to do justice to the spirit of the
American people, who were indeed willing to wage a
war of liberation, but would not have consented to a
war of conquest. It was also to propitiate the opinion
of mankind for our action. President McKinley also
declared with equal solemnity that annexation by
force could not be thought of, because, according to our
code of morals, it would be " criminal aggression."
Can it justly be pretended that these declarations
SCHURZ. 147
referred only to the island of Cuba ? What would the
American people, what would the world have said, if
Congress had resolved that the Cuban people were
indeed rightfully entitled to freedom and independ
ence, but that as to the people of other Spanish colonies
we recognized no such right; and if President Mc-
Kinley had declared that the forcible annexation of
Cuba would be criminal, but that the forcible anex-
ation of other Spanish colonies would be a righteous
act? A general outburst of protest from our own
people, and of derision and contempt from the whole
world, would have been the answer. No; there can
be no cavil. That war was proclaimed to all mankind
to be a war of liberation, and not of conquest, and
even now our very imperialists are still boasting that
the war was prompted by the most unselfish and gen
erous purposes, and that those insult us who do not
believe it.
In the course of that war Commodore Dewey, by
a brilliant feat of arms, destroyed the Spanish fleet
in the harbor of Manila. This did not change the
heralded character of the war certainly not in
Dewey's own opinion. The Filipinos, constituting the
strongest and foremost tribe of the population of the
archipelago, had long been fighting for freedom and
independence, just as the Cubans had. The great
mass of the other islanders sympathized with them.
They fought for the same cause as the Cubans, and
they fought against the same enemy the same enemy
against whom we were waging our war of humanity
and liberation. Thev had the same title to freedom
and independence which we recognized as " of right "
148 SCHURZ.
in the Cubans nay, more, for, as Admiral Dewey
telegraphed to our government, " They are far supe
rior in their intelligence, and more capable of self-
government than the natives of Cuba." The Admiral
adds : " I am familiar with both races, and further
intercourse with them' has confirmed me in this
opinion."
Indeed, the mendacious stories spread by our im
perialists which represent those people as barbarians,
their doings as mere " savagery," and their chiefs as
no better than " cut-throats," have been refuted by
such a mass of authoritative testimony, coming in part
from men who are themselves imperialists, that their
authors should hide their heads in shame ; for surely it
is not the part of really brave men to calumniate their
victims before sacrificing them. We need not praise
the Filipinos as in every way the equals of the " em
battled farmers " of Lexington and Concord, and
Aguinaldo as the peer of Washington ; but there is an
overwhelming abundance of testimony, some of it
unwilling, that the Filipinos are fully the equals, and
even the superiors, of the Cubans and the Mexicans.
As to Aguinaldo, Admiral Dewey is credited with
saying that he is controlled by men abler than himself.
The same could be said of more than one of our Presi
dents. Moreover, it would prove that those are
greatly mistaken who predict that the Filipino upris
ing would collapse were Aguinaldo captured or killed.
The old slander that Aguinaldo had sold out the revo
lutionary movement for a bribe of $400,000 has been
so thoroughly exploded by the best authority that it
required uncommon audacity to repeat it.
SCHURZ. 149
Now let us see what has happened. Two months
before the beginning of our Spanish war our consul
at Manila reported to the State Department : " Con
ditions here and in Cuba are practically alike. War
exists, battles are almost of daily occurrence. The
crown forces (Spanish) have not been able to dis
lodge a rebel army within ten miles of Manila. A
republic is organized here as in Cuba." When two
months later our war of liberation and humanity be
gan, Commodore Dewey was at Hongkong with his
ships. He received orders to attack and destroy the
Spanish fleet in those waters. It was then that our
consul-general at Singapore informed our State De
partment that he had conferred with General Agui-
naldo, then at Singapore, as to the co-operation of
the Philippine insurgents, and that he had telegraphed
to Commodore Dewey that Aguinaldo was willing to
come to Hongkong to arrange with Dewey for "gen
eral co-operation, if desired ; " whereupon Dewey
promptly answered : " Tell Aguinaldo come soon as
possible." The meeting was had. Dewey sailed to
Manila to destroy the Spanish fleet, and Aguinaldo
was taken to the seat of war on a vessel of the United
States. His forces received a supply of arms through
Commodore Dewey, and did faithfully and effectively
co-operate with our forces against the Spaniards, so
effectively, indeed, that soon afterward by their
efforts the Spaniards had lost the whole country ex
cept a few garrisons in which they were practically
blockaded.
Now, what were the relations between the Philip
pine insurgents and this Republic? There is some
ISO SCHURZ.
dispute as to certain agreements, including a promise
of Philippine independence, said to have been made
between Aguinaldo and our consul-general at Singa
pore, before Aguinaldo proceeded to co-operate with
Dewey. But I lay no stress upon this point. I will
let only the record of facts speak. Of these facts the
first, of highest importance, is that Aguinaldo was
" desired " that is, invited by officers of the United
States to co-operate with our forces. The second is
that the Filipino junta in Hongkong immediately
after these conferences appealed to their countrymen
to receive the American fleet about to sail for Manila
as friends, by a proclamation which had these words :
" Compatriots, divine Providence is about to place
independence within our reach. The Americans, not
from any mercenary motives, but for the sake of
humanity, have considered it opportune to extend
their protecting mantle to our beloved country.
Where you see the American flag flying assemble in
mass. They are our redeemers."
With this faith his followers gave Aguinaldo a rap
turous greeting upon his arrival at Cavite, where he
proclaimed his government and organized his army
tinder Dewey's eyes.
The arrival of our land forces did not at first change
these relations. Brig.-Gen. Thomas M. Anderson,
commanding, wrote to Aguinaldo, July 4, as follows :
" General, I have the honor to inform you that the
United States of America, whose land forces I have
the honor to command in this vicinity, being at war
SCHURZ. 151
with the kingdom of Spain, has entire sympathy and
most friendly sentiments for the native people of the
Philippine Islands. For these reasons I desire to
have the most amicable relations with you, and to have
you and your people co-operate with us in military
operations against the Spanish forces," etc. Agui-
naldo responded cordially, and an extended corres
pondence followed, special services being asked for
by the party of the first part, being rendered by the
second, and duly acknowledged by the first. All this
went on pleasantly until the capture of Manila, in
which Aguinaldo effectively co-operated by fighting*
the Spaniards outside, taking many prisoners from
them, and hemming them in. The services they rend
ered by taking thousands of Spanish prisoners, by har
assing the Spaniards in the trenches, and by completely
blockading Manila on the land side, were amply tes
tified to by our own officers. Aguinaldo was also
active on the sea. He had ships, which our command
ers permitted to pass in and out of Manila Bay, under
the flag of the Philippine republic, on their expeditions
against other provinces.
Now, whether there was or not any formal compact
of alliance signed and sealed, no candid man who has
studied the official documents will deny that in point
of fact the Filipinos, having been desired and invited
to do so, were, before the capture of Manila, acting,
and were practically recognized as our allies, and that
as such they did effective service, which we accepted
and profited by. This is an indisputable fact, proved
by the record.
It is an equally indisputable fact that during that
152 SCHUKZ.
period the Filipino government constantly and pub
licly, so that nobody could plead ignorance of it or
misunderstand it, informed the world that their object
was the achievement of national independence, and
that they believed the Americans had come in good
faith to help them accomplish that end, as in the case
of Cuba. It was weeks after various proclamations
and other public utterances of Aguinaldo to that effect
that the correspondence between him and General
Anderson, which I have quoted, took place, and that
the useful services of the Filipinos as our practical
allies were accepted. It is, further, an indisputable
fact that during this period our government did not
inform the Filipinos that their fond expectations as
to our recognition of their independence were mis
taken.
Our secretary of state did, indeed, on June 16 write
to Mr. Pratt, our consul-general at Singapore, that
our government knew the Philippine insurgents, not
indeed as patriots struggling for liberty, and who,
like the Cubans, " are and of right ought to be free
and independent," but merely as " discontented and
rebellious subjects of Spain/' who, if we occupied
their country in consequence of the war, would have
to yield us due " obedience." And other officers of
our government were instructed not to make any
promises to the Filipinos as to the future. But the
Filipinos themselves were not so informed. They
were left to believe that, while fighting in co-operation
with the American forces, they were fighting for
their own independence. They could not imagine
that the government of the great American Repub-
SCHURZ. 153
lie, while boasting of having gone to war with Spain
under the banner of liberation and humanity in behalf
of Cuba, was capable of secretly plotting to turn that
war into one for the conquest and subjugation of the
Philippines.
Thus the Filipinos went faithfully and bravely on
doing for us the service of allies, of brothers-in-arms,
far from dreaming that the same troops with whom
they had been asked to co-operate would soon be em
ployed by the great apostle of liberation and humanity
to slaughter them for no other reason than that they,
the Filipinos, continued to stand up for their own
freedom and independence.
But just that was to happen. As soon as Manila
was taken and we had no further use for our Filipino
allies, they were ordered to fall back and back from
the city and its suburbs. Our military commanders
treated the Filipinos' country as if it were our own.
When Aguinaldo sent one of his aides-de-camp to
General Merritt with a request for an interview, Gen
eral Merritt was " too busy." When our peace nego
tiations with Spain began, and representatives of the
Filipinos asked for audience to solicit consideration
of the rights and wishes of their people, the doors
were slammed in their faces, in Washington as well as
in Paris.
And behind those doors the scheme was hatched to
deprive the Philippine Islanders of independence from
foreign rule and to make them the subjects of another
foreign ruler, and that foreign ruler their late ally,
this great Republic which had grandly proclaimed to
154 SCHURZ.
the world that its war against Spain was not a war
of conquest, but a war of liberation and humanity.
Behind those doors which were tightly closed to
the people of the Philippines a treaty was made
with Spain, by the direction of President Mc-
Kinley, which provided for the cession of the Philip
pine Islands by Spain to the United States for a con
sideration of $20,000,000. It has been said that this
sum was not purchase money, but a compensation for
improvements made by Spain, or a solatium to
sweeten the pill of cession, or what not; but stripped
of all cloudy verbiage, it was really purchase money,
the sale being made by Spain under duress. Thus
Spain sold, and the United States bought, what was
called the sovereignty of Spain over the Philippine
Islands and their people.
Now look at the circumstances under which that
" cession " was made. Spain had lost the possession
of the country, except a few isolated and helpless little
garrisons, most of which were effectively blockaded
by the Filipinos. The American forces occupied Cavite
and the harbor and city of Manila, and nothing more.
The bulk of the country was occupied and possessed
by the people thereof, over whom Spain had, in point
of fact, ceased to exercise any sovereignty, the Span
ish power having been driven out or destroyed by the
Filipino insurrection, while the United States had not
acquired, beyond Cavite and Manila, any authority
of whatever name by military occupation, nor by
recognition on the part, of the people. Aguinaldo's
army surrounded Manila on the land side, and his
government claimed organized control over fifteen
SCHURZ. 155
provinces. That government was established at Mal-
olos, not far from Manila ; and a very respectable gov
ernment it was. According to Mr. Barrett, our late
minister in Siam, himself an ardent imperialist, who
had seen it, it had a well-organized executive, di
vided into several departments, ably conducted, and
a popular assembly, a congress, which would favorably
compare with the Parliament of Japan an infinitely
better government than the insurrectionary govern
ment of Cuba ever was.
It is said that Aguinaldo's government was in oper
ation among only a part of the people of the islands.
This is true. But it is also certain that it was recog
nized and supported by an immeasurably larger part
of the people than Spanish sovereignty, which had
practically ceased to exist, and than American rule,
w r hich was confined to a harbor and a city and which
was carried on by the exercise of military force under
what was substantially martial law over a people that
constituted about one twentieth of the whole popula
tion of the islands. Thus, having brought but a very
small fraction of the country and its people under our
military control, we bought by that treaty the sover
eignty over the whole from a power w r hich had prac
tically lost that sovereignty and therefore did no
longer possess it; and we contemptuously disdained
to consult the existing native government, which
actually did control a large part of the country and the
people, and which had been our ally in the war with
Spain. The sovereignty we thus acquired may well
be defined as Abraham Lincoln once defined the
" popular sovereignty " of Senator Douglas's doctrine
156 SCHURZ.
as being like a soup made by borling the shadow of
the breastbone of a pigeon that had been starved to
death.
No wonder that treaty found opposition in the Sen
ate. Virulent abuse was heaped upon the " statesman
who would oppose the ratification of a peace treaty/'
A peace treaty? This was no peace treaty at all.
It was a treaty with half a dozen bloody wars in its
belly. It was, in the first place, an open and brutal
declaration of war against our allies, the Filipinos,
who struggled for freedom and independence from
foreign rule. Every man not totally blind could see
that. For such a treaty the true friends of peace
could, of course, not vote.
But more. Even before that treaty had been as
sented to by the Senate that is, even before that
ghastly shadow of our Philippine sovereignty had ob
tained any legal sanction President McKinley as
sumed of his own motion the sovereignty of the Phil
ippine Islands by his famous " benevolent-assimila
tion " order of December 21, 1898, through which
our military commander at Manila was directed forth
with to extend the military government of the United
States over the whole archipelago, and by which the
Filipinos were notified that if they refused to submit,
they would be compelled by force of arms. Having
bravely fought for their freedom and independence
from one foreign rule, they did refuse to submit to
another foreign rule, and then the slaughter of our
late allies began the slaughter by American arms of
a once friendly and confiding people. And this
slaughter has been going on ever since.
SCHURZ. 157
This is a grim story. Two years ago the prediction
of such a possibility would have been regarded as a
hideous nightmare, as the offspring of a diseased im
agination. But to-day it is a true tale a plain recital
of facts taken from the official records. These things
have actually been done in these last two years by and
under the administration of William McKinley. This
is our Philippine war as it stands. Is it a wonder that
the American people should be troubled in their con
sciences? . . .
I am not here as a partisan, but as an American
citizen anxious for the future of the Republic. And I
cannot too earnestly admonish the American people,
if they value the fundamental principles of their
government and their own security and that of their
children, for a moment to throw aside all partisan
bias and soberly to consider what kind of a precedent
they would set if they consented to, and by consenting
approved, the President's management of the Phil
ippine business merely " because we are in it."
We cannot expect all our future Presidents to be
models in public virtue and wisdom, as George Wash
ington was. Imagine now in the presidential office a
man well-meaning, but, it may be, short-sighted and
pliable, and under the influence of so-called " friends "
who are greedy and reckless speculators, and who
would not scruple to push him into warlike compli
cations in order to get great opportunities for profit;
or a man of that inordinate ambition which intoxi
cates the mind and befogs the conscience; or a man
of extreme partisan spirit, who honestly believes the
victory of his party to be necessary for the salvation
I $8 SCHURZ.
of the universe, and may think that a foreign broil
would serve the chances of his party ; or a maft of an
uncontrollable combativeness of temperament which
might run away with his sense of responsibility and
that we shall have such men in the presidential chair
is by no means unlikely with our loose way of select
ing candidates for the presidency.
Imagine, then, a future President belonging to
either of these classes to have before him the prece
dent of Mr. McKinley's management of the Philip
pine business, sanctioned by the approval or only the
acquiescence of the people, and to feel himself per
mitted nay, even encouraged to say to himself
that, as this precedent shows, he may plunge the
country into warlike conflicts of his own motion, with
out asking leave of Congress, with only some legal
technicalities to cover his usurpation, or even without
such, and that he may, by a machinery of deception
called a war censorship, keep the people in the dark
about what is going on; and that, into however bad a
mess he may have got the country, he may count upon
the people, as soon as a drop of blood has been shed,
to uphold the usurpation and to cry down everybody
who opposes it as a " traitor/' and all this because
"we are in it!" Can you conceive a more baneful
precedent, a more prolific source of danger to the
peace and security of the country ? Can any sane man
deny that it will be all the more prolific of evil if in this
way we drift into a foreign policy full of temptation
for dangerous adventures?
I say, therefore, that if we have the future of the
Republic at heart we must not only not uphold the ad-
SCHURZ. 159
ministration in its course because " we are in it," but
just because we are in it, have been got into it in such
a way, the American people should stamp the adminis
tration's proceedings with a verdict of disapproval so
clear and emphatic and " get out of it " in such a
fashion that this will be a solemn warning to future
Presidents instead of a seductive precedent.
What, then, to accomplish this end is to be done?
Of course we, as we are here, can only advise. But
by calling forth expressions of the popular will by
various means of public demonstration and, if need be,
at the polls, we can make that advice so strong that
those in power will hardly disregard it. We have
often been taunted with having no positive policy to
propose. But such a policy has more than once been
proposed and I can only repeat it.
In the first place, let it be well understood that those
are egregiously mistaken who think that if by a strong
military effort the Philippine war be stopped every
thing will be right and no more question about it.
No; the American trouble of conscience will not be
appeased, and the question will be as big and virulent
as ever, unless the close of the war be promptly fol
lowed by an assurance to the islanders of their free
dom and independence, which assurance, if given now,
would surely end the war without more fighting.
We propose, therefore, that it be given now. Let
the Philippine islanders at the same time be told that
the American people will be glad to see them establish
an independent government, and to aid them in that
task as far as may be necessary, and even, if required,
lend our good offices to bring it about ; and that mean-
l6o SCHURZ.
while we shall deem it our duty to protect them
against interference from other foreign powers in
other words, that with regard to them we mean hon
estly to live up to the righteous principles with the
profession of which we commended to the world our
Spanish war.
And then let us have in the Philippines, to carry
out this program, not a small politician, nor a meddle^,
some martinet, but a statesman of large mind and
genuine sympathy, who will not merely deal in sanc
timonious cant and oily promises with a string to
them, but who will prove by his acts that he and we
are honest; who will keep in mind that their govern
ment is not merely to suit us, but to suit them; that
it should not be measured by standards which we our
selves have not been able to reach, but be a govern
ment of their own, adapted to their own conditions and
notions whether it be a true republic, like ours, or a
dictatorship like that of Porfirio Diaz, in Mexico, or
an oligarchy like the one maintained by us in Hawaii,
or even something like the boss rule we are tolerating
in New York and Pennsylvania.
Those who talk so much about " fitting a people for
self-government " often forget that no people were
ever made " fit " for self-government by being kept
in the leading strings of a foreign power. You learn
to walk by doing your own crawling and stumbling.
Self-government is learned only by exercising it upon
one's own responsibility. Of course there will be mis
takes and troubles and disorders. We have had and
now have these, too at the beginning our persecution
of the Tories, our flounderings before the constitution
SCHURZ. l6l
was formed, our Shay's rebellion, our whisky war,
and various failures and disturbances, among them a
civil war that cost us a loss of life and treasure hor
rible to think of, and the murder of two Presidents.
But who will say that on account of these things some
foreign power should have kept the American people
in leading strings to teach them to govern themselves ?
If the Philippine islanders do as well as the Mexicans,
who have worked their way, since we let them alone
after our war of 1847; through many disorders, to an
orderly government, who will have a right to find
fault with the result? Those who seek to impose
upon them an unreasonable standard of excellence in
self-government do not seriously wish to let them
govern themselves at all. You may take it as a gen
eral rule that he who wants to reign over others is
solemnly convinced that they are quite unable to gov
ern themselves.
Now, what objection is there to the policy dictated
by our fundamental principles and our good faith? I
hear the angry cry : " What ? Surrender to Agui-
naldo ? Will not the world ridicule and despise us for
such a confession of our incompetency to deal with so
feeble a foe ? What will become of our prestige ? "
No, we shall not surrender to Aguinaldo. In giving
up a criminal aggression we shall surrender only to
our own consciences, to our own sense of right and
justice, to our own understanding of our own true in
terests, and to the vital principles of our own Republic.
Nobody will laugh at us whose good opinion we have
reason to cherish. There will of course be an outcry
of disappointment in England. But from whom will
162 SCHURZ.
it come? From such men as James Bryce or John
Morley or any one of those true friends of this Repub
lic who understand and admire and wish to perpetuate
and spread the fundamental principles of its vitality?
No, not from them.
But the outcry will come from those in England
who long to see us entangled in complications apt to
make this American Republic dependent upon British
aid and thus subservient to British interests. They,
indeed, will be quite angry. But the less we mind
their displeasure as well as their flattery the better
for the safety as well as the honor of our country.
The true friends of this Republic in England, and,
indeed, all over the world, who are now grieving to
see us go astray, will rejoice and their hearts will be
uplifted with new confidence in our honesty, in our
wisdom, and in the virtue of democratic institutions
when they behold the American people throwing aside
all the puerilities of false pride and returning to the
path of their true duty. . . .
Who are the true patriots in America to-day those
who drag our Republic, once so proud of its high prin
ciples and ideals, through the mire of broken pledges,
vulgar ambitions and vanities and criminal aggres
sions ; those who do violence to their own moral sense
by insisting that, like the Dreyfus iniquity, a criminal
course once begun must be persisted in, or those who,
fearless of the demagogue clamor, strive to make the
flag of the Republic once more what it was once
the flag of justice, liberty, and true civilization and
to lift up the American people among the nations of
SCHURZ. 163
the earth to the proud position of the people that have
a conscience and obey it.
The country has these days highly and deservedly
honored Admiral Dewey as a national hero. Who are
his true friends those who would desecrate Dewey's
splendid achievement at Manila by making it the
starting point of criminal aggression, and thus the
opening of a most disgraceful and inevitably disas
trous chapter of American history, to be remembered
with sorrow, or those who strive so to shape the re
sults of that brilliant feat of arms that it may stand
in history not as a part of a treacherous conquest, but
as a true victory of American good faith in an honest
war of liberation and humanity to be proud of for
all time, as Dewey himself no doubt meant it to be.
I know the imperialists will say that I have been
pleading here for Aguinaldo and his Filipinos against
our Republic. No, not for the Filipinos merely,
although, as one of those who have grown gray in
the struggle for free and honest government, I would
never be ashamed to plead for the cause of freedom
and independence, even when its banner is carried
by dusky and feeble Jiands. But I am pleading for
more. I am pleading for the cause of American honor
and self-respect, American interests, American democ
racy; aye, for the cause of the American people
against an administration of our public affairs which
has wantonly plunged this country into an iniquitous
war ; which has disgraced the Republic by a scandalous
breach of faith to a people struggling for their free
dom whom we had used as allies; which has been
systematically seeking to deceive and mislead the
164 SCHURZ.
public mind by the manufacture of false news ; which
has struck at the very foundation of our constitutional
government by an Executive usurpation of the war
power; which makes sport of the great principles and
high ideals that have been and should ever remain
the guiding star of our course, and which, unless
stopped in time, will transform this government of the
people, for the people, and by the people into an im
perial government cynically calling itself republican
a government in which the noisy worship of arrogant
might will dro\vn the voice of right; which will im
pose upon the people a burdensome and demoralizing
militarism, and which \vill be driven into a policy of
wild and rapacious adventure by the unscrupulous
greed of the exploiter a policy always fatal to
democracy.
I plead the cause of the American people against
all this, and I here declare my profound conviction
that if this administration of our affairs were sub
mitted for judgment to a popular vote on a clear issue
it would be condemned by an overwhelming ma
jority.
I confidently trust that the American people will
prove themselves too clear-headed not to appreciate
the vital difference between the expansion of the
Republic and its free institutions over contiguous
territory and kindred populations, which we all gladly
welcome if accomplished peaceably or honorably, and
imperialism which reaches out for distant lands to be
ruled as subject provinces; too intelligent not to per
ceive that our very first step on the road of imperial
ism has been a betrayal of the fundamental principles
SCHURZ. 165
of democracy, followed by disaster and disgrace; too
enlightened not to understand that a monarchy may do
such things and still remain a strong monarchy, while
a democracy cannot do them and still remain a democ
racy; too wise not to detect the false pride, or the
dangerous ambitions, or the selfish schemes which so
often hide themselves under that deceptive cry of
mock patriotism : " Our country, right or wrong ! "
They will not fail to recognize that our dignity, our
free institutions, and the peace and welfare of this
and coming generations of Americans will be secure
only as we cling to the watchword of true patriotism :
" Our country when right to be kept right ; when
wrong to be put right/'
l66 CONKLING.
Conkling, Roscoe, a noted American politician, born
in Albany, N. Y., October 30, 1829; died in New York
City April 18, 1888. He took up the study of law, and
being admitted to the bar in 1850, settled in Utica, N. Y.,
where his abilities as a lawyer soon brought him into prom
inence. He was mayor of Utica in 1858, and the next year
entered Congress as Representative, remaining till 1862. He
returned in 1864 and became a United States Senator in
1867. He was a Republican of strong partisan sympathies
and exercised an imperious control over many of his party.
Taking offense at some of President Garfield's New York
official appointments, Conkling withdrew from the Senate,
and, declining all inducements to return to public life, con
tinued unreconciled with his party for the rest of his life.
He was an able, brilliant speaker, but vain and self-willed.
His address on nominating Grant for a third term is among
his most characteristic speeches.
SPEECH NOMINATING GRANT.*
DELIVERED JUNE 5, l88o.
IN obedience to instructions I should never dare to
disregard expressing, also, my own firm convictions
I rise to propose a nomination with which the coun
try and the Republican party can grandly win. The
election before us is to be the Austerlitz of American
politics. It will decide, for many years, whether the
country shall be Republican or Cossack. The su
preme need of the hour is not a candidate who can
carry Michigan. All Republican candidates can do
* Used by permission of A. R. Conkling.
CONKLING. 167
that. The need is not of a candidate who is popular
in the Territories, because they have no vote. The
need is of a candidate who can carry doubtful States.
Not the doubtful States of the North alone, but doubt
ful States of the South, which we have heard, if I
understand it aright, ought to take little or no part
here, because the South has nothing to give, but
everything to receive.
No, gentlemen, the need that presses upon the
conscience of this convention is of a candidate who
can carry doubtful States both North and South. And
believing that he, more surely than any other man,
can carry New York against any opponent, and can
carry not only the North, but several States of the
South, New York is for Ulysses S. Grant. Never
defeated in peace or in war, his name is the most
illustrious borne by living man.
His services attest his greatness, and the country
nay, the world knows them by heart. His fame was
earned not alone in things written and said, but by the
arduous greatness of things done. And perils and
emergencies will search in vain in the future, as they
have searched in vain in the past, for any other on
whom the nation leans with such confidence and trust.
Never having had a policy to enforce against the will
of the people, he never betrayed a cause or a friend,
and the people will never desert nor betray him.
Standing on the highest eminence of human distinc
tion, modest, firm, simple, and self-poised, having filled
all lands with his renown, he has seen not only the
high-born and the titled, but the poor and the lowly
in the uttermost ends of the earth rise and uncover
l68 CONKLING.
before him. He has studied the needs and the defects
of many systems of government, and he has returned
a better American than ever, with a wealth of knowl
edge and experience added to the hard common sense
which shone so conspicuously in all the fierce light
that beat upon him during sixteen years, the most try
ing, the most portentous, the most perilous in the
nation's history.
Vilified and reviled, ruthlessly aspersed by un
numbered presses, not in other lands, but in his own y
assaults upon him have seasoned and strengthened his
hold on the public heart. Calumny's ammunition has
all been exploded; the powder has all been burned
once; its force is spent; and the name of Grant will
glitter a bright and imperishable star in the diadem
of the Republic when those who have tried to tarnish
that name have moldered in forgotten graves, and
when their memories and their epitaphs have vanished
utterly.
Never elated by success, never depressed by ad
versity, he has ever, in peace as in war, shown the
genius of common sense. The terms he prescribed
for Lee's surrender foreshadowed the wisest prophe
cies and principles of true reconstruction. Victor in
the greatest war of modern times, he quickly signalized
his aversion to war and his love of peace by an arbitra
tion of internal disputes, which stands as the wisest,
the most majestic example of its kind in the world's
diplomacy. When inflation, at the height of its popu
larity and frenzy, had swept both Houses of Congress,
it was the veto of Grant which, single and alone, over
threw expansion and cleared the way for specie re-
CONKLING. 169
sumption. To him, immeasurably more than to any
other man, is due the fact that every paper dollar is
at last as good as gold.
With him as our leader we shall have no defensive
campaign. No! We shall have nothing to explain
away. We shall have no apologies to make. The
shafts and the arrows have all been aimed at him, and
they lie broken and harmless at his feet.
Life, liberty and property will find a safeguard in
him. When he said of the colored men in Florida,
" Wherever I am, they may come also " when he so
said, he meant that, had he the power, the poor dwell
ers in the cabins of the South should no longer be
driven in terror from the homes of their childhood and
the graves of their murdered dead. When he refused
to see Dennis Kearney in California, he meant that
communism, lawlessness, and disorder, although it
might stalk high-headed and dictate law to a whole
city, would always find a foe in him. He meant that,
popular or unpopular, he would hew to the line of
right, let the chips fly where they may.
His integrity, his common sense, his courage, his
unequalled experience, are the qualities offered to his
country. The only argument, the only one that the
wit of man or the stress of politics has devised is one
which would dumfounder Solomon, because he thought
there was nothing new under the sun. Having tried
Grant twice and found him faithful, we are told that
we must not, even after an interval of years, trust him
again.
My countrymen! my countrymen! what stultifica
tion does not such a fallacy involve! The American
1 70 CONKLING.
people exclude Jefferson Davis from public trust!
Why? why? Because he was the arch-traitor and
would-be destroyer; and now the same people are
asked to ostracise Grant and not to trust him. Why?
why? I repeat: because he was the arch-preserver of
his country, and because, not only in war, but twice
as civil magistrate, he gave his highest, noblest efforts
to the republic. Is this an electioneering juggle, or is
it hypocrisy's masquerade?
There is no field of human activity, responsibility,
or reason in which rational beings object to an agent
because he has been weighed in the balance and not
found wanting. There is, I say, no department of
human reason in which sane men reject an agent be
cause he has had experience, making him exception
ally competent and fit.
From the man who shoes your horse to the lawyer
who tries your cause, the officer who manages your
railway or your mill, the doctor into whose hands you
give your life, or the minister who seeks to save your
soul, what man do you reject because by his works you
have known him and found him faithful and fit?
What makes the presidential office an exception to all
things else in the common sense to be applied to select
ing its incumbent? Who dares who dares to put
fetters on that free choice and judgment which is the
birthright of the American people? Can it be said that
Grant has used official power and place to perpetuate
his term?
He has no place, and official power has not been used
for him. Without patronage and without emissaries,
without committees, without bureaus, without tele-
CONKLING. I/I
graph wires running from his house to this conven
tion, or running from his house anywhere else, this
man is the candidate whose friends have never threat
ened to bolt unless this convention did as they said.
He is a Republican who never wavers. He and his
friends stand by the creed and the candidates of the
Republican party. They hold the rightful rule of the
majority as the very essence of their faith, and they
mean to uphold that faith against not only the common
enemy, but against the charlatans, jayhawkers, tramps
and guerillas the men who deploy between the lines,
and forage now on one side and then on the other.
This convention is master of a supreme opportunity.
It can name the next President. It can make sure of
his election. It can make sure not only of his election,
but of his certain and peaceful inauguration. More
than all, it can break that power which dominates and
mildews the South. It can overthrow an organization
whose very existence is a standing protest against
progress.
The purpose of the Democratic party is spoils. Its
very hope of existence is a Solid South. Its success is
a menace to order and prosperity. I say this conven
tion can overthrow that power. It can dissolve and
emancipate a Solid South. It can speed the nation in
a career of grandeur eclipsing all past achievements.
Gentlemen, we have only to listen above the din
and look beyond the dust of an hour to behold the
Republican party advancing with its ensigns resplend
ent with illustrious achievements, marching to certain
and lasting victory with its greatest marshal at its head.
ELAINE.
Blaine, James G., a celebrated American politician and
orator, born at West Brownsville, Pa., January 31, 1830 ; died
in Washington, D. C M January 27, 1893. He taught school
for several years at the opening of his career, and although
he studied law he never sought admission to the bar. In
1853 he settled in Augusta, Maine, and there engaged in
journalism, entering the State Legislature in 1858, and re
maining there four years. From 1862 to 1876 he was a Rep
resentative in Congress, serving as Speaker for six years, and,
then entered the National Senate, to which he was re-elected
for a second term. He was Secretary of State, 1881-82, and
Secretary of State for a second time during President Harri
son's administration, 1889-93. He was twice a candidate
for nomination to the presidency, and was the actual candi
date of the Republican party for that office in 1884, being
defeated after a contest of great bitterness. Blaine was an
able, brilliant politician, and was much admired as an orator,
His oration on Garfield is one of his finest efforts.
ON THE REMONETIZATION OF SILVER.
UNITED STATES SENATE, FEBRUARY 7, 1878.
The discussion on the question of remonetizing sil
ver, Mr. President, has been prolonged, able, and ex
haustive. I may not expect to add much to its value,
but I promise not to add much to its length. I shall
endeavor to consider facts rather than theories, to state
conclusions rather than arguments:
First. I believe gold and silver coin to be the money
of the Constitution indeed, the money of the Ameri
can people anterior to the Constitution, which that
great organic law recognized as quite independent of
ELAINE. 1/3
its own existence. No power was conferred on Con
gress to declare that either metal should not be money.
Congress has therefore, in my judgment, no power to
demonetize silver any more than to demonetize gold;
no power to demonetize either any more than to de
monetize both. In this statement I am but repeating
the weighty dictum of the first of constitutional law
yers. " I am certainly of opinion/' said Mr. Webster,
" that gold and silver, at rates fixed by Congress, con
stitute the legal standard of value in this country,
and that neither Congress nor any State has authority
to establish any other standard or to displace this
standard." Few persons can be found, I apprehend,
who will maintain that Congress possesses the power
to demonetize both gold and silver, or that Congress
could be justified in prohibiting the coinage of both;
and yet in logic and legal construction it would be diffi
cult to show where and why the power of Congress
over silver is greater than over gold greater over
either than over the two. If, therefore, silver has been
demonetized, I am in favor of remonetizing it. If its
coinage has been prohibited, I am in favor of ordering
it to be resumed. If it has been restricted, I am in
favor of having it enlarged.
Second. What power, then, has Congress over gold
and silver? It has the exclusive power to coin them;
the exclusive power to regulate their value ; very great,
very wise, very necessary powers, for the discreet
exercise of which a critical occasion has now arisen.
However men may differ about causes and processes,
all will admit that within a few years a great disturb
ance has taken place in the relative values of gold and
1/4 ELAINE.
silver, and that silver is worth less or gold is worth
more in the money markets of the world in 1878 than
in 1873, when the further coinage of silver dollars
was prohibited in this country. To remonetize it now
as though the facts and circumstances of that day were
surrounding us, is to wilfully and blindly deceive our
selves. If our demonetization were the only cause for
the decline in the value of silver, then remonetization
would be its proper and effectual cure. But other
causes, quite beyond our control, have been far more
potentially operative than the simple fact of Congress
prohibiting its further coinage; and as legislators we
are bound to take cognizance of these causes. The de
monetization of silver in the great German Empire
and the consequent partial, or wellnigh complete,
suspension of coinage in the governments of the Latin
Union, have been the leading dominant causes for the
rapid decline in the value of silver. I do not think
the over-supply of silver has had, in comparison with
these other causes, an appreciable influence in the de
cline of its value, because its over-supply with respect
to gold in these later years has not been nearly so great
as was the over-supply of gold with respect to silver
for many years after the mines of California and
Australia were opened; and the over-supply of gold
from those rich sources did not effect the relative po
sitions and uses of the two metals in any European
country.
I believe then if Germany were to remonetize silver
and the kingdoms and states of the Latin Union were
to reopen their mints, silver would at once resume
its former relation with gold. The European coun-
ELAINE. 175
tries when driven to remonetization, as I believe they
will be, must of necessity adopt their old ratio of fifteen
and a half of silver to one of gold, and we shall then
be compelled to adopt the same ratio instead of our
former sixteen to one. For if we fail to do this we
shall, as before, lose our silver, which like all things
else seeks the highest market; and if fifteen and a half
pounds of silver will buy as much gold in Europe as
sixteen pounds will buy in America, the silver, of
course, will go to Europe. But our line of policy in a
joint movement with other nations to remonetize is
very simple and very direct. The difficult problem is
what we shall do when we aim to re-establish silver
without the co-operation of European powers, and
really as an advance movement to coerce them there
into the same policy. Evidently the first dictate of
prudence is to coin such a dollar as will not only do
justice among our citizens at home, but will prove a
protection an absolute barricade against the gold
monometallists of Europe, who, whenever the oppor
tunity offers, will quickly draw from us the one hun
dred and sixty millions of gold coin still in our midst.
And if we coin a silver dollar of full legal tender,
obviously below the current value of the gold dollar,
we are opening wide our doors and inviting Europe
to take our gold. And with our gold flowing out from
us we are forced to the single silver standard and our
relations with the leading commercial countries of the
world are at once embarrassed and crippled.
Third. The question before Congress then sharply
defined in the pending House bill is, whether it is
now safe and expedient to offer free coinage to the
176 ELAINE.
silver dollar of 41 2\ grains, with the mints of the
Latin Union closed and Germany not permitting sil
ver to be coined as money. At current rates of silver
the free coinage of a dollar containing 412^ grains,
worth in gold about ninety-two cents, gives an ille
gitimate profit to the owner of the bullion, enabling
him to take ninety-two cents' worth of it to the mint
and get it stamped as coin and force his neighbor to
take it for a full dollar. This is an undue and unfair
advantage which the government has no right to give
to the owner of silver bullion, and which defrauds the
man who is forced to take the dollar. And it assured
ly follows that if we give free coinage to this dollar
of inferior value and put it in circulation, we do so at
the expense of our better coinage in gold; and unless
we expect the uniform and invariable experience of
other nations to be in some mysterious way suspended
for our peculiar benefit, we inevitably lose our gold
coin. It will flow out from us with the certainty and
resistless force of the tides. Gold has indeed remained
with us in considerable amount during the circulation
of the inferior currency of the legal tender; but that
was because there were two great uses reserved by law
for gold: the collection of customs and the payment
of interest on the public debt. But if the inferior silver
coin is also to be used for these two reserved purposes,
then gold has no tie to bind it to us. What gain, there
fore, would we make for the circulating medium, if
on opening the gate for silver to flow in, we open a still
wider gate for gold to flow out? If I were to venture
upon a dictum on the silver question, I would declare
that until Europe remonetizes we cannot afford to coin
ELAINE.
a dollar as low as 412^/2 grains. After Europe remone-
tizes on the old standard, we cannot afford to coin a
dollar above 400 grains. If we coin too low a dollar
before general remonetization our gold will flow out
from us. If we coin too high a dollar after general
remonetization our silver will leave us. It is only an
equated value both before and after general remonetiz
ation that will preserve both gold and silver to us. ...
Fifth. The responsibility of re-establishing silver in
its ancient and honorable place as money in Europe
and America, devolves really on the Congress of the
United States. If we act here with prudence, wisdom,
and firmness, we shall not only successfully remonetize
silver and bring it into general use as money in our
own country, but the influence of our example will be
potential among all European nations, with the pos
sible exception of England. Indeed, our annual in-
debtment to Europe is so great that if we have the
right to pay it in silver we necessarily coerce those
nations by the strongest of all forces, self-interest, to
aid us in upholding the value of silver as money. But
if we attempt the remonetization on a basis which is
obviously and notoriously below the fair standard of
value as it now exists, we incur all the evil consequences
of failure at home and the positive certainty of suc
cessful opposition abroad. We are and shall be the
greatest producers of silver in the world, and we have
a larger stake in its complete monetization than any
other country. The difference to the United States
between the general acceptance of silver as money in
the commercial world and its destruction as money,
will possibly equal within the next half century the
74
ELAINE.
entire bonded debt of the nation. But to gain this
advantage we must make it actual money the ac
cepted equal of gold in the markets of the world. Re-
monetization here followed by general remonetization
in Europe will secure to the United States the most
stable basis for its currency that we have ever enjoyed,
and will effectually aid in solving all the problems by
which our financial situation is surrounded.
Sixth. On the much-vexed and long-mooted ques
tion of a bimetallic or monometallic standard my own
views are sufficiently indicated in the remarks I have
made. I believe the struggle now going on in this
country and in other countries for a single gold stand
ard would, if successful, produce widespread disaster
in the end throughout the commercial world. The
destruction of silver as money and establishing gold
as the sole unit of value must have a ruinous effect on
all forms of property except those investments which
yield a fixed return in money. These would be enor
mously enhanced in value, and would gain a dispropor
tionate and unfair advantage over every other species
of property. If, as the most reliable statistics affirm,
there are nearly seven thousand millions of coin or
bullion in the world, not very unequally divided be
tween gold and silver, it is impossible to strike silver
out of existence as money without results which will
prove distressing to millions and utterly disastrous to
tens of thousands. Alexander Hamilton, in his able
and invaluable report in 1791 on the establishment of
a mint, declared that " to annul the use of either gold
or silver as money is to abridge the quantity of circu
lating medium, and is liable to all the objections which
ELAINE. 179
arise from a comparison of the benefits of a full circu
lation with the evils of a scanty circulation." I take
no risk in saying that the benefits of a full circulation
and the evils of a scanty circulation are both immeas
urably greater to-day than they were when Mr. Ham
ilton uttered these weighty words, always provided
that the circulation is one of actual money, and not of
depreciated promises to pay.
In the report from which I have already quoted, Mr.
Hamilton argues at length in favor of a double stand
ard, and all the subsequent experience of wellnigh
ninety years has brought out no clearer statement of
the whole case nor developed a more complete com
prehension of this subtle and difficult subject. " On
the whole," says Mr. Hamilton, " it seems most ad
visable not to attach the unit exclusively to either of
the metals, because this cannot be done effectually
without destroying the office and character of one of
them as money and reducing it to the situation of mere
merchandise." And then Mr. Hamilton wisely con
cludes that this reduction of either of the metals to
mere merchandise (I again quote his exact words)
" would probably be a greater evil than occasional vari
ations in the unit from the fluctuations in the relative
value of the metals, especially if care be taken to regu
late the proportion between them with an eye to their
average commercial value." I do not think that this
country, holding so vast a proportion of the world's
supply of silver in its mountains and its mines, can
afford to reduce the metal to the " situation of mere
merchandise." If silver ceases to be used as money in
Europe and America, the great mines of the Pacific
ISO ELAINE.
Slope will be closed and dead. Alining enterprises of
the gigantic scale existing in this country cannot be
carried on to provide backs for looking-glasses and to
manufacture cream-pitchers and sugar-bowls. A vast
source of wealth to this entire country is destroyed
the moment silver is permanently disused as money.
It is for us to check that tendency and bring the conti
nent of Europe back to the full recognition of the value
of the metal as a medium of exchange.
Seventh. The question of beginning anew the coin
age of silver dollars has aroused much discussion as to
its effect on the public credit; and the Senator from
Ohio (Mr. Matthews) placed this phase of the subject
in the very forefront of the debate insisting, prema
turely and illogically, I think, on a sort of judicial con
struction in advance, by concurrent resolution, of a cer
tain law in case that law should happen to be passed by
Congress. My own view on this question can be stated
very briefly. I believe the public creditor can afford to
be paid in any silver dollar that the United States can
afford to coin and circulate. We have forty thou
sand millions of property in this country, and a wise
self-interest will not permit us to overturn its relations
by seeking for an inferior dollar \vherewith to settle
the dues and demands of any creditor. The question
might be different from a merely selfish standpoint if,
on paying the dollar to the public creditor, it would
disappear after performing that function. But the
trouble is that the inferior dollar you pay the public
creditor remains in circulation, to the exclusion of the
better dollar. That which you pay at home will stay
there; that which you send abroad will come back.
ELAINE. l8l
The interest of the public creditor is indissolubly
bound up with the interest of the whole people. What
ever affects him affects us all; and the evil that we
might inflict upon him by paying an inferior dollar
would recoil upon us with a vengeance as manifold as
the aggregate wealth of the Republic transcends the
comparatively small limits of our bonded debt. And
remember that our aggregate wealth is always in
creasing, and our bonded debt steadily growing less?
If paid in a good silver dollar, the bondholder has
nothing to complain of. If paid in an inferior silver
dollar he has the same grievance that will be uttered
still more plaintively by the holder of the legal-tender
note and of the national-bank bill, by the pensioner,
by the day laborer, and by the countless host of the
poor, whom we have with us always, and on whom
the most distressing effect of inferior money will be
ultimately precipitated.
But I must say, Mr. President, that the specific de
mand for the payment of our bonds in gold coin and
in nothing else comes with an ill-grace from certain
quarters. European criticism is levelled against us
and hard names are hurled at us across the ocean, for
simply daring to state that the letter of our law de
clares the bonds to be payable in standard coin of
July 14, 1870; expressly and explicitly declared so,
and declared so in the interest of the public creditor,
and the declaration inserted in the very body of the
eight hundred million of bonds that have been issued
since that date. Beyond all doubt the silver dollar was
included in the standard coins of that public act. Pay
ment at that time would have been as acceptable and
182 ELAINE.
as undisputed in silver as in gold dollars, for both
were equally valuable in the European as well as in
the American market. Seven-eighths of all our bonds,
owned out of the country, are held in Germany and in
Holland, and Germany has demonetized silver and
Holland has been forced thereby to suspend its coin
age, since the subjects of both powers purchased our
securities. The German Empire, the very year after
we made our specific declaration for paying our bonds
in coin, passed a law destroying o far as lay in their
power the value of silver as money. I do not say that
it was specially aimed at this country, but it was passed
regardless of its effect upon us, and was followed, ac
cording to public and undenied statement, by a large
investment on the part of the German Government in
our bonds, with a view, it was understood, of holding
them as a coin reserve for drawing gold from us to
aid in establishing their gold standard at home. Thus,
by one move the German Government destroyed, so
far as lay in its power, the then existing value of sil
ver as money, enhanced consequently the value of gold,
and then got into position to draw gold from us at
the moment of their need, which would also be the
moment of our own sorest distress. I do not say that
the German Government in these successive steps did
a single thing which it had not a perfect right to do,
but I do say that the subjects of that empire have no
right to complain of our government for the initial
step which has impaired the value of one of our stand
ard coins. And the German Government, by joining
with us in the remonetization of silver, can place that
standard coin in its old position and make it as easy
ELAINE. 183
for this government to pay and as profitable for their
subjects to receive the one metal as the other. ;.>'.
The effect of paying the labor of this country in
silver coin of full value, as compared with the irre
deemable paper or as compared even with silver of
inferior value, will make itself felt in a single gener
ation to the extent of tens of millions, perhaps hun
dreds of millions, in the aggregate savings which
represent consolidated capital. It is the instinct of man
from the savage to the scholar developed in child
hood and remaining with age to value the metals
which in all tongues are called precious. Excessive
paper money leads to extravagance, to waste, and to
want, as we painfully witness on all sides to-day. And
in the midst of the proof of its demoralizing and
destructive effect, we hear it proclaimed in the
Halls of Congress that " the people demand cheap
money." I deny it. I declare such a phrase to
be a total misapprehension, a total misinterpre
tation of the popular wish. The people do not
demand cheap money. They demand an abund
ance of good money, which is an entirely differ
ent thing. They do not want a single gold standard
that will exclude silver and benefit those already rich.
They do not want an inferior silver standard that will
drive out gold and not help those already poor. They
want both metals, in ,full value, in equal honor, in
whatever abundance the bountiful earth will yield them
to the searching eye of science and to the hard hand
of labor.
The two metals have existed side by side in har
monious, honorable companionship as money, ever
1 84 ELAINE.
since intelligent trade was known among men. It is
wellnigh forty centuries since " Abraham weighed to
Ephron the silver which he had named in the audience
of the sons of Heth four hundred shekels of silver
current money with the merchant." Since that time
nations have risen and fallen, races have disappeared,
dialects and languages have been forgotten, arts have
been lost, treasures have perished, continents have
been discovered, islands have been sunk in the sea,
and through all these ages, and through all these
changes, silver and gold have reigned supreme, as the
representatives of value, as the media of exchange.
The dethronement of each has been attempted in turn,
and sometimes the dethronement of both; but always
in vain. And we are here to-day, deliberating anew
over the problem which comes down to us from Abra
ham's time : the weight of the silver that shall be " cur
rent money with the merchant."
GARFIELD. 185
Garfield, James A., an American statesman, twentieth
President of the United States, born in Orange township,
Ohio, November 19, 1831 ; died at Elberon, N. J., Septem
ber 19, 1 88 1. Obtaining an education with difficulty, he
studied law and in 1861 was admitted to the bar. He served
with distinction during a part of the Civil war, becoming a
general in the Federal army, and in 1863 entered Congress
as a representative from Ohio. In 1880 he became a mem
ber of the United States Senate, and in the autumn of that
year was the successful candidate for the Presidency of the
Republican party. He was assassinated by a disappointed
office-seeker in July, 1881, and after a long illness died from
his wounds in the following September. He was an elo
quent, though not a brilliant speaker, and in congressional
debates was always able. His speeches and addresses are
included in his works edited by B. A. Hinsdale, 1883.
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
DELIVERED MARCH 4, 1 88 1.
FELLOW CITIZENS, We stand to-day upon an emi
nence which overlooks a hundred years of national
life a century crowded with perils, but crowned with
the triumphs of liberty and love. Before continuing 1
our onward march, let us pause on this height for a
moment, to strengthen our faith and renew our hope,
by a glance at the pathway along which our people
have travelled. It is now three days more than one
hundred years since the adoption of the first written
constitution of the United States, the articles of con
federation and of perpetual union. The new Republic
1 86 GARFIELD.
was then beset with danger on every hand. It had not
conquered a place in the family of nations. The de
cisive battle of the war for independence, whose cen
tennial anniversary will soon be gratefully celebrated
at Yorktown, had not yet been fought. The colonists
were struggling, not only against the armies of Great
Britain, but against the settled opinions of mankind,
for the world did not believe that the supreme author
ity of government could be safely intrusted to the
guardianship of the people themselves. We cannot
over-estimate the fervent love of liberty, the intelligent
courage, and saving common sense, with which our
fathers made the great experiment of self-government.
When they found, after a short time, that the confeder
acy of States was too weak to meet the necessities of a
vigorous and expanding Republic, they boldly set it
aside, and, in its stead, established a national Union,
founded directly upon the will of the people, and en
dowed it with future powers of self-preservation, and
with ample authority for the accomplishments of its
great objects. Under this constitution the boundaries
of freedom have been enlarged, the foundations of
order and peace have been strengthened, and the
growth, in all the better elements of national life, has
vindicated the wisdom of the founders, and given new
hope to their descendants. Under this constitution our
people long ago made themselves safe against danger
from without, and secured for their marines and flag
an equality of rights on all the seas. Under the con
stitution twenty-five States have been added to the
Union, with constitutions and laws, framed and en
forced by their own citizens, to secure the manifold
GARFIELD. l8/
blessings of local and self-government The juris
diction of this constitution now covers an area fifty
times greater than that of the original thirteen States,
and a population twenty times greater than thatof 1870.
The supreme trial of the constitution came at last,
under the tremendous pressure of civil war. We, our
selves, are witnesses that the Union emerged from the
blood and fire of that conflict purified and made
stronger for all the beneficent purposes of good gov
ernment, and now, at the close of this first century
of growth, with inspirations of its history in their
hearts, our people have lately reviewed the condition
of the nation, passed judgment upon the conduct and
opinions of the political parties and have registered
their will concerning the future administration- of
government. To interpret and execute that will, in
accordance with the constitution, is the paramount
duty of the Executive.
Even from this brief review, it is manifest that the
nation is resolutely facing to the front, resolved to em
ploy its best energies in developing the great possibil
ities of the future. Sacredly preserving whatever has
been gained to liberty and good government during the
century, our people are determined to leave behind
them all those bitter controversies concerning things
which have been irrevocably settled, and the further
discussion of which can only stir up strife and delay
the onward march. The supremacy of the nation and
its laws should be no longer a subject of debate. That
discussion, which for half a century threatened the
existence of the Union, was closed at last in the high
court of war, by a decree from which there is no ap-
188 GARFIELD.
peal, that the constitution and laws made in pursuance
thereof shall continue to be the supreme law of the
land, binding alike upon the States and upon the
people. This decree does not disturb the autonomy
of the States, nor interfere with any of their necessary
rules of local self-government, but it does fix and estab
lish the permanent supremacy of the Union. The will
of the nation, speaking with the voice of battle, and
through the amended constitution, has fulfilled the
great promise of 1776, by proclaiming, " Liberty
throughout the land to all the inhabitants thereof."
The elevation of the negro race from slavery to the
full rights of citizenship is the most important politi
cal change we have known since the adoption of the
constitution of 1787. No thoughtful man can fail to
appreciate its beneficent effect upon our institutions
and people. It has freed us from the perpetual danger
of war and dissolution. It has added immensely to
the moral and industrial forces of our people. It has
liberated the master as well as the slave from the re
lation which wronged and enfeebled both. It has sur
rendered to their own guardianship the manhood of
more than 5,000,000 people, and has opened to each
one of them a career of freedom and usefulness ; it has
given new inspiration to the power of self-help in both
races, by making labor more honorable to one, and
more necessary to the other. The influence of this
force will grow greater and bear richer fruit with
coming years. No doubt the great change has caused
serious disturbance to our southern community. This
is to be deplored, though it was unavoidable ; but those
who resisted the change should remember that, under
GARFIELD. 189
our institutions, there was no middle ground for the
negro race between slavery and equal citizenship.
There can be no permanent disfranchised peasantry in
the United States. Freedom can never yield its ful
ness of blessings as long as law, or its administration,
places the smallest obstacle in the pathway of any virtu
ous citizen. The emancipated race has already made
remarkable progress. With unquestioning devotion to
the Union, with a patience and gentleness not born of
fear, they have " followed the light as God gave them
to see the light." They are rapidly laying the material
foundations for self-support, widening the circle of in
telligence, and beginning to enjoy the blessings that
gather around the homes of the industrious poor.
They deserve the generous encouragement of all good
men. So far as my authority can lawfully extend, they
shall enjoy the full and equal protection of the con
stitution and laws.
The free enjoyment of equal suffrage is still in ques
tion, and a frank statement of the issue may aid its
solution. It is alleged that in many communities negro
citizens are practically denied the freedom of the bal
lot. In so far as the truth of this allegation is ad- 1
mitted, it is answered that in many places honest local
government is impossible, if the mass of uneducated
negroes are allowed to vote. These are grave allega
tions. So far as the latter is true, it is the only palli
ation that can be offered for opposing the freedom of
the ballot. A bad local government is certainly a great
evil which ought to be prevented, but to violate the
freedom and sanctity of suffrage is more than an evil ;
it is a crime, which, if persisted in, will destroy the
GARFIELD.
government itself. Suicide is not a remedy. If in
other lands it be high treason to compass the death of
the king, it should be counted no less a crime here to
strangle our sovereign power and stifle its voice. It
has been said that unsettled questions have no pity for
the repose of nations; it should be said, with the ut
most emphasis, that this question of suffrage will never
give repose or safety to the States or to the nation until
each, within its own jurisdiction, makes and keeps the
ballot free and pure by the strong sanctions of law.
But the danger which arises from ignorance in the
voter cannot be denied. It covers a field far wider than
that of negro suffrage, and the present condition of
that race. It is a danger that lurks and hides in the
courses and fountains of power in every State. We
have no standard by which to measure the disaster that
may be brought upon us by ignorance and vice in
citizens when joined to corruption and fraud in
suffrage. The voters of the Union, who make and
unmake constitutions, and upon whose will hangs the
destiny of our governments, can transmit their supreme
authority to no successor, save the coming generation
of voters, who are sole heirs of our sovereign powers.
If that generation comes to its inheritance blinded by
ignorance and corrupted by vice, the fall of the Re
public will be certain and remediless. The census has
already sounded the alarm in appalling figures, which
mark how dangerously high the tide of illiteracy has
risen among our voters and their children. To the
South the question is of supreme importance, but the
responsibility for the existence of slavery did not rest
on the South alone. The nation itself is responsible
GARFIELD. 19!
for the extension of suffrage, and is under special obli
gations to aid in removing the illiteracy which it has
added to the voting population of the North and South
alike. There is but one remedy. All the constitutional
power of the nation and of the States and all the volun
teer forces of the people should be summoned to meet
this danger by the saving influence of universal edu
cation.
It is a high privilege and sacred duty of those now
living to educate their successors, and fit them by in
telligence and virtue for the inheritance which awaits
them in this beneficent work. Sections and races
should be forgotten, and partisanship should be un
known. Let our people find a new meaning in the
divine oracle which declares that " a little child shall
lead them." For our little children will soon control
the destinies of the Republic.
My countrymen, we do not now differ in our judg
ment concerning the controversies of past generations,
and fifty years hence our children will not be divided
in their opinions concerning our controversies. They
will surely bless their fathers and their fathers' God
that the Union was preserved, that slavery was over
thrown, and that both races were made equal before
the law. We may hasten or we may retard, but we
cannot prevent the final reconciliation. Is it not pos
sible for us now to make a truce with time, by antici
pating and accepting its inevitable verdicts? Enter
prises of the highest importance to our moral and ma
terial well-being invite us, and offer ample scope for
the employment of our best powers. Let all our people,
leaving behind them the battle-fields of dead issues,
192 GARFIELD.
move forward, and, in the strength of liberty and a re
stored Union, win the grander victories of peace.
The prosperity which now prevails is without paral
lel in our history. Fruitful seasons have done much
to secure it, but they have not done all.
The preservation of the public credit, and the re
sumption of specie payments, so successfully attained
by the administration of my predecessors, has enabled
our people to secure the blessings which the seasons
brought. By the experience of commercial nations
in all ages, it has been found that gold and silver afford
the only safe foundation for a monetary system. Con
fusion has recently been created by variations in the
relative value of the two metals, but I confidently be
lieve that arrangements can be made between the lead
ing commercial nations which will secure the general
use of both metals. Congress should provide that com
pulsory coinage of silver now required by law may
not disturb our monetary system by driving either
metal out of circulation. If possible, such adjustment
should be made that the purchasing power of every
coined dollar will be exactly equal to its debt-paying
power in the markets of the world. The chief duty
of the national government, in connection with the
currency of the country, is to coin and declare its value.
Grave doubts have been entertained whether Congress
is authorized, by the constitution, to make any form
of paper money legal tender. The present issue of
United States notes has been sustained by the necessi
ties of war, but such paper should depend for its value
and currency upon its convenience in use and its
prompt redemption in coin at the will of a holder,
GARFIELD. 193
and not upon its compulsory circulation. These notes
are not money, but promises to pay money. If holders
demand it, the promise should be kept.
The refunding of the national debt, at a lower rate
of interest, should be accomplished without compelling
the withdrawal of the national bank notes, and thus
disturbing the business of the country. I venture to
refer to the position I have occupied on financial ques
tions, during my long service in Congress, and to say
that time and experience have strengthened the
opinions I have so often expressed on these subjects.
The finances of the government shall suffer no detri
ment which it may be possible for my administration
to prevent.
The interests of agriculture deserve more attention
from the government than they have yet received. The
farms of the United States afford homes and employ
ment for more than one-half the people, and furnish
much the largest part of all our exports. As the gov
ernment lights our coasts for the protection of mar
iners and for the benefit of commerce, so it should give
to the tillers of the soil the lights of practical science
and experience.
Our manufactures are rapidly making us industri
ally independent, and are opening to capital and labor
new and profitable fields of employment. This steady
and healthy growth should still be maintained.
Our facilities for transportation should be promoted
by the continued improvement of our harbors and
great interior water-ways, and by the increase of our
tonnage on the ocean. The development of the world's
commerce has led to an urgent demand for shortening
194 GARFIELD.
the great sea-voyage around Cape Horn, by construct
ing ship canals or railways across the isthmus which
unites the two continents. Various plans to this end
have been suggested, but none of them have been suf
ficiently matured to warrant the United States ex
tending pecuniary aid. The subject is one which will
immediately engage the attention of the government
with a view to thorough protection to American in
terests. We will urge no narrow policy, nor seek
peculiar or exclusive privileges in any commercial
route; but, in the language of my predecessors, I be
lieve it is to be " the right and duty of the United
States to assert and maintain such supervision and au
thority over any inter-oceanic canal across the isthmus
that connects North and South America as will protect
our national interests."
The constitution guarantees absolute religious free
dom. Congress is also prohibited from making any
law respecting the establishment of religion or pro
hibiting the free exercise thereof. The Territories of
the United States are subject to the direct legislative
authority of Congress, and hence the general govern
ment is responsible for any violation of the consti
tution in any of them. It is, therefore, a reproach to
the government that in the most populous of the
Territories the constitutional guarantee is not enjoyed
by the people, and the authority of Congress is set at
naught. The Mormon church not only offends the
moral sense of mankind by sanctioning polygamy, but
prevents the administration of justice through the
ordinary instrumentalities of law. In my judgment
it is the duty of Congress, while respecting to the
JAMES A. GARFIELD.
GARFIELD.
utmost the conscientious convictions and religious
scruples of every citizen, to prohibit, within its juris
diction, all criminal practices, especially of that class
which destroy family relations and endanger social
order ; nor can any ecclesiastical organization be safely
permitted to usurp in the smallest degree the functions
and po.wers of the national government.
The civil service can never be placed on a satisfac
tory basis until it is regulated by law. For the good
of the service itself, for the protection .of those who
are intrusted with the appointing power, against the
waste of time and the obstruction to public business
caused by inordinate pressure for place, and for the
protection of incumbents against intrigue and wrong,
I shall, at the proper time, ask Congress to fix the
tenure of minor offices of the several executive depart
ments, and prescribe the grounds upon which removals
shall be made during the terms for which the incum
bents have been appointed.
Finally, acting always within the authority and limi
tations of the constitution, invading neither the rights
of States nor the reserved rights of the people, it will
be the purpose of my administration to maintain au
thority, and in all places within its jurisdiction to en
force obedience to all the laws of the Union; in the
interest of the people, to demand a rigid economy in
all the expenditures of the government, and to require
honest and faithful services of all the executive offi
cers, remembering that offices were created not for the
benefit of incumbents or their supporters but for the
service of the government.
And, now, fellow citizens, I am about to assume the
196 GARFIELD.
great trust which you have committed to my hands.
I appeal to you for that earnest and thoughtful support
which makes this government in fact as it is in law
a government of the people. I shall greatly rely upon
the wisdom and patriotism of Congress, and of those
who may share with me the responsibilities and duties
of the administration; and, above all, upon our efforts
to promote the welfare of this great people and their
government I reverently invoke the support and bless
ing of Almighty God.
DONNELLY. 197
Donnelly, Ignatius, an American politician and prose
writer, born in Philadelphia, November 3, 1831; died Jan
uary i, 1901. He studied law, was admitted to the bar in
1852, removed to Minnesota in 1856, and established him
self in practice there. Engaging in politics, he was elected
lieutenant-governor in 1859, and was re-elected in 1861. As
representative from Minnesota he sat in the 38th, 39th and
4oth Congresses, and was a member of the lower house of
the State Legislature, 1886-87, and again in 1897. He was
also state senator, 1874-78, and again in 1890. In 1900 he
was the candidate of the People's Party for vice-president.
He was the author of two fanciful archaeological works, and
in " The Great Cryptogram " ardently championed the theory
of the Baconian authorship of Shakespeare.
RECONSTRUCTION.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JANUARY 1 8,
1866.
[The House having under consideration House bill No. 543, to
provide for restoring to the States lately in insurrection their full
political rights, Mr. Donnelly said :]
MR. SPEAKER, I desire to express myself in favor
of the main purposes of the bill now under considera
tion. [To provide for restoring to the States lately
in insurrection their full political rights.]
Through the clouds of a great war and the con
fusion of a vast mass of uncertain legislation we are
at length reaching something tangible ; we have passed
the " Serbonian bog," and are approaching good dry
land.
This is the logical conclusion of the war. The war
198 DONNELLY.
was simply the expression of the determination of the
nation to subordinate the almost unanimous will of
the white people of the rebellious States to the unity
and prosperity of the whole country. Having gone
thus far we cannot pause. We must still subordinate
their wishes to our welfare.
This bill proposes to commence at the very founda
tion and build upward.
We have the assurance of President Johnson that
" the rebellion has in its revolutionary progress de
prived the rebellious States of all civil government,"
and that their State institutions have been " prostrated
and paid out upon the ground."
In such a state of anarchy and disorganization the
very foundations of society are laid bare; and we
reach, as it were, the primary rocks, the everlasting
granite of justice and right which underlies all human
government.
In the language of the great Edmund Burke:
" When men break up the original compact or
agreement which gives its corporate form and capacity
to a State they are no longer a people; they have no
longer a corporate existence; they have no longer a
legal coactive force to bind within nor a claim to be
recognized abroad. They are a number of vague,
loose individuals, and nothing more; with them all
is to begin again. Alas ! they little know how many a
weary step is to be taken before they can form them
selves into a mass which has a true political person
ality." *
* Burke's Works, vol. iii, p, 82.
DONNELLY. 199
I shall not stop to consider the objection made to
the second section of the bill by the gentleman from
Wisconsin [Mr. Paine]. With the purpose and in
tent of his remarks I thoroughly concur. I conclude,
however, that the object of the gentleman from Penn
sylvania [Mr. Stevens], in providing for such a par
tial and temporary recognition of the rebel govern
ments, was to protect society from the evils of a total
abrogation of all law and order. But it seems to me
that whatever binding force those governments can
have, founded as they are upon revolution and by the
hands of revolutionary agents, is to be derived solely
from such recognition as Congress may give them.
It may be possible in this and other particulars to per
fect the bill. I desire to speak rather to its general
scope and purpose.
Government having, by the acknowledgment of the
President, ceased to exist, law being swept aside, and
chaos having come again in those rebellious States,
by what principle shall the law-making power of the
nation the Congress govern itself? Shall it bend
its energies to renew old injustice? Shall it receive to
its fraternal embrace only that portion of the popula
tion which circumstance or accident or century-old
oppression may have brought to the surface? Shall
it having broken up the armies and crushed the
hopes of the rebels pander to their bigotries and
cringe to their prejudices? Shall it hesitate to do it
right out of deference to the sentiments of those who
but a short time since were mowed down at the mouth
of its cannon?
It is to my mind most clear that slavery having ceased
200 DONNELLY.
to exist the slaves became citizens ; being citizens they
are a part of the people ; and being a part of the people
no organization deserves a moment's consideration at
our hands which attempts to ignore them. If they
were white people whom it was thus sought to dis
franchise and outlaw not a man in the nation would
dare to say nay to this proposition; every impulse of
our hearts would rise up in indignant, remonstrance
against their oppressors. But it has pleased Almighty
God, who takes counsel of no man, not even of the
founders of the rebellion, to paint them of a different
complexion, and that variation in the pigmentum mu-
cum is to rise up as a perpetual barrier in our pathway
toward equal justice and equal rights.
For one, with the help of God, I propose to do what
I know to be right in the face of all prejudices and
all obstructions; and so long as I have a seat in this
body I shall never vote to reconstruct any rebellious
State on any such basis of cruelty and injustice as that
proposed by the Opposition here.
Take the case of South Carolina. She has 300,000
whites and 400,000 blacks; and we are asked to hand
over the 400,000 blacks to the unrestrained custody
and control of the 300,000 whites. We are to know
no one but the whites; to communicate with no one
but the whites; this floor is to recognize no one but
white representatives of the whites. The whites are
to make the laws, execute the laws, interpret the laws,
and write the history of their own deeds; but below
them, under them, there is to be a vast population a
majority of the whole people seething and writhing
DONNELLY. 2OI
in a condition of suffering, darkness, and wretchedness
unparalleled in the world.
And this is to be an American State ! This is to be
a component part of the great, humane, Christian Re
public of the world. This is to be the protection the
mighty Republic is to deal out to its poor black friends
who were faithful to it in its hour of trial ; this is the
punishment it is to inflict upon its perfidious enemies.
No, sir, no sophistry, no special pleading, can lead
the American people to this result. Through us or
over us it will reconstruct those States on a basis of
impartial and eternal justice. Such a mongrel, patch
work, bastard reconstruction as some gentlemen pro
pose, even if put into shape, would not hold together
a twelvemonth. Four million human beings consigned
to the uncontrolled brutality of 7,000,000 of human
beings! The very thought is monstrous. The in
stinct of justice which God has implanted in every soul
revolts at it. The voice of lamentation would swell
tip from that wretched land and fill the ears of man
kind. Leaders and avengers would spring up on
every hilltop of the north. The intellect, the morality,
the soul of the age would fight in behalf of the op
pressed, and the structure of so-called reconstruction
would go down in blood.
Does any man think that it is in the American
people, who rose at the cry of the slave under the lash
of his master, to abide in quiet the carnival of arson,
rapine, and murder now raging over the south? Sir,
a government which would perpetuate such a state of
things would be a monstrous barbarism; the legis
lative body which would seek to weave such things
202 DONNELLY.
into the warp and woof of the national life would de
serve the vengeance of Almighty God.
A senator from Pennsylvania [Mr. Cowan] the
other day in the United States Senate said :
"I have no doubt but there are large numbers of
the American people who are exceedingly anxious to
compel negro suffrage through the southern States.
But has any one of them ever made an argument to
show that the southern States would be better gov
erned ; that there would be more peace and more quiet
in consequence of it? I have never heard those argu
ments if they have been made, and I do not know how
anybody could make them."
I will give the honorable senator an argument most
potent and convincing as to the kind of " peace and
quiet " which now reign in the south without negro
suffrage and which will reign there so long as negro
suffrage is denied. General Ord has just made a re
port upon the conditiori of things in Arkansas. He
sums up matters as follows:
" Outrages, assaults, and murders committed on the
persons of freed men and women are being continually
reported from all sections of the State, and a decided
want of disposition to. punish offenders apparently
exists with the local civil officers and in the minds of
the people. There have been reported fifty-two mur
ders of freed persons by white men in this State in
the past three or four months, and no reports have
been received that the murderers have been imprisoned
DONNELLY. 203
or punished. In some parts of the State, particularly
in the southwest and southeast, freedmens' lives are
threatened if they report their wrongs to the agent of
the bureau, and in many instances the parties making
reports are missed and never heard of afterward. " It
is believed that the number of murders reported is not
half the number committed during the time men
tioned."
Or if this is not sufficient, I would answer the dis
tinguished senator still further by quoting from the
report of the officers of the Freedmen' s Bureau as to
the state of affairs in Tennessee as a further testimony
to the condition of southern society without impartial
suffrage :
" Captain Kendrick reports in substance that having
proceeded to Union City, he conversed with many of
the citizens, who told him that but few freedmen were
left about there, as they were driving them away as
rapidly as possible. There seems to be a fixed deter
mination that the freedmen shall not reside there, and
the citizens force them to fly by ravishing the females,
shooting, beating, whipping, and cheating them. The
superintendent of the bureau there, while investigat
ing a case of assault upon a negro, was compelled to
desist by threats upon his life. The magistrate of the
town states that he is powerless to administer justice,
owing to the feeling in the community.
" Captain Kendrick mentions the case of a freed-
woman named Emeline, living in Union City, who,
during the absence of her husband, was brutally vio-
204 DONNELLY.
lated by a party of whites. She appealed to the justice
of the peace, who informed her that nothing could be
done for her on account of the feeling in the town.
The next day two men, named Goodlow and Avons,
of Union City, took her into a field and whipped her.
A freedman named Callum was whipped by a man
named Stanley for saying that he had fought in the
Union army. A Mr. Roscol, county trustee, has been
persistently persecuted by a gang of desperadoes be
cause he was prominent in defending the Union, and
has been shot at several times while sitting in his house.
About a dozen bullet holes may be seen in his door.
At Troy the freedmen are getting on prosperously and
have no complaints to make. The feeling of hostility
toward northern men at this place, the captain reports,
is more bitter even than at Union City. Loyal citi
zens are waylaid and shot and the ruffians escape pun
ishment.
" A man named Hancock was called out of church,
where he had just experienced religion, by a Dr. Mar
shall, who told him two persons outside wished to see
him. When he had gone a short distance two men
named Carruthers attacked and severely beat him with
clubs because Hancock wore a federal uniform coat.
Several other cases of outrage of an aggravated char
acter and even murder are reported by Captain Ken-
drick, and those who are thus maltreated dare not
utter a word of complaint through fear of the desper
adoes. He recommends that a detachment of troops be
permanently stationed in this county, and says that
matters' will grow worse instead of better until it is
done."
DONNELLY. 2O5
I find in the morning papers the following letter,
which explains itself:
HEADQUARTERS, DEPARTMENT OF THE SOUTH,
CHARLESTOWN, S. C, Jan. 10, 1867.
GENERAL, According to an article in the Charles
ton " Daily News " of this morning, it appears that
the jail at Kingstree, South Carolina, has been de
stroyed by fire, and twenty-two colored prisoners
smothered or burned to death, while the only white
prisoner was permitted to escape. The article states
that the jailer, who had the keys, refused to open the
doors without the authority of the sheriff, and the
sheriff refused to act without the orders of the lieu
tenant commanding the troops at Kingstree. This
statement presents a degree of barbarity that would
appear incredible except in a community where no
value is placed upon the lives of colored citizens. The
general commanding directs that you cause an imme
diate and thorough investigation of this affair; that in
the meantime you arrest the sheriff and jailer, and if
the facts prove to be as stated, that you hold them in
military confinement under the charge of murder until
the civil authorities shall be ready and willing to try
them.
Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
J. W. CLOUS,
Brev. Capt. and First Lieut. Sixth Infantry,
A.A.A.G.
Brev. Maj. Gen. H. K. SCOTT,
Com. Mil. Com., S. C.
206 DONNELLY.
I might fill pages with similar testimony, but it is
not required.
It is too evident that when you strip a man of all
means of self-defence, either through the courts or the
laws, deprive him of education and leave him to the
mercy of his fellow men, he must suffer all the pangs
which our unworthy human nature is capable of in
flicting. Who is there believes that man can safely
intrust himself solely and alone to the mercy of his
fellow man? Let such a one step forward and select
his master! Let him in the wide circle of the world
choose out that man pure, just, and humane upon
whose vast, all-embracing charity he can throw the
burden of his life. Alas! there is no such man.
Life is a perpetual struggle even under the most
favorable circumstances; an unending fight of man
against man,
" For some slight plank whose weight will bear but one."
And occasionally how monstrous and horrible are the
giant selfishnesses which start up under our feet like
ghouls and affrights !
History is the record of the gradual amelioration
of deep-rooted, ancient injustice. What a hard, long,
bloody, terrible fight it has been! But for the fact
that our national organization rests upon a basis of
new colonizations we would not possess the large meas
ure of liberty we now enjoy; we would be as are the
old lands of the world, still weighed down by the .bur
dens of feudality and barbarism. But being peopled
by the overflowings of the poor laboring people of
DONNELLY. 2O/
Europe, who left the errors and prejudices of the Old
World in mid-ocean, we have started upon our career
of national greatness on the grand basis of the perfect
political equality of all men.
We cannot fail to recognize the all- fashioning hand
of God as clearly in this sublime declaration as in the
geologic eras, the configuration of the continents, or
the creation of man himself. What a world of growth
has already budded and flowered and borne fruit from
this seed! What an incalculable world of growth is
to arise from it in the future!
Now, then, comes the question to each of us, by
what rule shall we reconstruct these prostrated and
well nigh desolated States? Shall it be by the august
rule of the Declaration of Independence; or shall we
bend OUK energies to perpetuate injustice, cruelty, and
oppression; and make of this fair government a mon
strosity, with golden words of promise upon its ban
ners, a fair seeming upon its surface, but a hideous
and inhuman despotism within it; the Christianity and
civilization of the nineteenth century crystallized into
a nation with Dahomey and Timbuctoo in its bowels!
A living lie, a rotten pretense, a mockery, and a sham,
with death in its heart.
There are but two forms of government in the
world; injustice, armed and powerful and taking to it
self the shape of king or aristocracy; and, on the
other hand, absolute human justice, resting upon the
broad and enduring basis of equal rights to all. Give
this and give intelligence and education to understand
it and you have a structure which will stand while the
world stands. Anything else than this is mere repres-
2O8 DONNELLY.
sion, the piling of rocks into the mouth of the volcano,
which sooner or later will fling them to the skies.
What is this equality of rights? Is it the prescrib
ing of a limit to human selfishness? It is the hospital
measure which gives so many feet of breathing space
to each man in the struggle for life. I must not in
trude upon my neighbor's limit nor he upon mine. It
is universal selfishness regulated by a sentiment of
universal justice; fair play recognized as a common
necessity. Break down this barrier and the great waves
sweep in and all is anarchy. Hear Motley's descrip
tion of society in the ancient time, ere this principle
arose " to curb the great and raise the lowly : "
" The sword is the only symbol of the law, the cross
is a weapon of offence, the bishop a consecrated pirate,
and every petty baron a burglar; while the people al
ternately the prey of duke, prelate, and seignior, shorn
and butchered like sheep, esteem it happiness to sell
themselves into slavery or to huddle beneath the castle
walls of some little potentate for the sake of his wolfish
protection." *
Sir, all history teaches us that man would be safer
in the claws of wild beasts than in the uncontrollable
custody of his fellow men. And can any man doubt
'that he who lives in a community and has no share in
the making of the laws which govern him is in the
uncontrolled custody of those who make the laws?
The courts simply interpret the laws, and what will it
avail a man to appeal to the courts if the laws under
every interpretation are against him?
* Rise of the Dutch Republic, p. 14.
DONNELLY. 2OO,
Set a man down in the midst of a community, place
the mark of Cain upon his brow, declare him an out
law, take from him every protection, and you at once
invite everything base, sordid, and abominable in hu
man nature to rise up and assail him. Is there any
man within the sound of my voice who thinks so
highly of our common humanity that he would dare
trust himself in such a position for a day or for an
hour?
But if to this you superadd the fact that the poor
wretch so stripped of all protection was but the other
day a bondman, and was forcibly wrested from the
hands of his master, and that to the common sordid-
ness of our nature must be added the inflamed feel
ings growing out of a long civil war and the wrath
and bitterness begotten of disappointed cupidity, you
have a condition of things at which the very soul
shudders.
But this is not all; you must go a step farther and
remember that the poor wretch who thus stands help
less, chained, and naked in the midst of his mortal
foes was our true, loyal, and faithful friend in the
day of our darkness and calamity ; and that those who
now flock around him like vultures gathering to the
carnage were but the other day our deadly enemies
and sought our destruction and degradation by bloody
and terrible means.
Sir, I say to you that if, in the face of every prompt
ing of self-interest and self-protection, and humanity
and gratitude, and Christianity and statesmanship, we
abandon these poor wretches to their fate the wrath
of an offended God cannot fail to fall upon the nation.
8-4
2IO DONNELLY.
There never was in the history of the world an in
stance wherein right and wrong met so squarely face
to face and looked each other so squarely in the eyes
as in this matter. Never did truth array herself in
such shir-ing and glorious habiliments; never did the
dark face of error look so hideous and forbidding
as in this hour. And yet in the minds of some we find
hesitation and doubt.
I cannot but recur to a famous parallel in history.
On the 22d of January, 1689, the English Parlia
ment assembled to decide upon the most momentous
question ever submitted to that body. The king,
James II, had fled the realm ; the great seal of royalty
had been thrown into the Thames; William had land
ed; the nation was revolutionized.
The great debate commenced. On the one side
was the party of human liberty striving to cast down
forever a dynasty strangely devoted to tyranny and
absolutism; striving to make plainer the doctrine that
the king reigned by virtue of the consent of his sub
jects. On the other hand were arrayed all the evil
forces of the time and all the restraints of conserva
tism.
In precisely the same temper in which it is now
argued that a State can do no wrong and that under
no circumstances can it cease to be a State, it was
then argued that, although the king had fled the land
and was at the court of France, nevertheless the mag
istrate was still present, that the throne, by the maxim
of English law, could not be vacant for a moment ; and
that any government organized to act during the
king's absence must act in the king's name.
DONNELLY. 211
It was most plain that the liberty, the prosperity of
England could only be secured by the deposition of
James; and yet those who sought by direct measures
to reach that end were encountered at every step by
a mass of technical objections. The musty precedents
of the law, a thousand years old, were raked up; and
texts of the Holy Book were called into the defence
of royalty as liberally as we have seen them in our
own day paraded in defence of slavery. St. Paul's in
junction to the Romans to obey the civil power played
as important a part in those debates as the texts of
Ham and Onesimus have played upon the floor of
this House.
Either the liberty of England must have perished,
encumbered in this mass of precedents and technicali
ties, or the common sense of England must reach its
own safety over the whole mass of rubbish. The com
mon sense of England triumphed. James having fled,
he was declared to have abdicated the throne, and the
throne being vacant, Parliament asserted the right to
fill it.
Now, in like manner at this day the resolute com
mon sense of the American people must find its way
out of the entanglements that surround it and go
straight forward to its own safety.
The purpose of government is the happiness of the
people, therefore of the whole people. A government
cannot be half a republic and half a despotism a re
public just and equable to one class of its citizens, a
despotism cruel and destructive to another class; it
must become either all despotism or all republic.
If you make it all republic the future is plain. All
212 DONNELLY.
evils will correct themselves. Temporary disorders
will subside, the path will lie wide open before every
man and every step and every hour will take him far
ther away from error and darkness. Give the right
to vote and you give the right to aid in making the
laws ; the laws being made by all will be for the benefit
of all; the improvement and advancement of each
member of the community will be the improvement
and advancement of the whole community.
Dealing with men, with all the attributes of men,
with the souls, hearts, and minds of men, it is con
temptible to attempt to turn justice aside by appeals
to the color of the skin. At what precise point of the
mingling of complexions shall these statesmen drive
the stake and say, Thus far is man and beyond is
brute; here human rights begin and there they ter
minate! What chemist shall analyze the mixture of
man and beast and tell us what fraction of an immortal
soul is possessed by such a one? Or how many mulat-
toes go as component parts to make up one soul in
heaven ?
Sir, such a doctrine is too monstrous for consider
ation! The earth is God's and all the children of God
have an equal right upon its surface ; and human legis
lation which would seek to subvert this truth merely
legislates injustice into law; and he who believes that
injustice conserves the peace, order, or welfare of so
ciety has read history to little purpose.
Let us then go straight forward to our duty, taking
heed of nothing but the right. In this wise shall we
build a work in accord with the will of him who is
daily fashioning the world to a higher destiny ; a work
DONNELLY. 213
. resting at no point upon wrong or injustice, but every
where reposing upon truth and justice; a work which
all mankind will be interested in preserving in every
age, since it will insure the increasing glory and well-
being of mankind through all ages.
214 CHOATE.
Choate, Joseph H., an eminent American lawyer and
orator, born at Salem, Mass., January 24, 1832. He re
moved to New York city in 1856, having been admitted to
the bar in 1855, and quickly attained to eminence in his
profession. In the political campaign of 1856 he made
numerous addresses in support of the Free Soil candidate,
and has since been conspicuous as a Republican. While
president of the American Bar Association he made in 1898
a noteworthy address before it in behalf of trial by jury.
Until 1898 he had rilled no political office, but at the close
of that year he was appointed ambassador to England, in
which capacity he has been very popular, his public addresses
having been much admired by the English people. Choate's
oration upon Rufus Choate is an excellent instance of his
oratorical ability. He is a polished speaker, exceptionally
happy in his occasional speeches, which are enlivened by the
play of a delicate humor.
ORATION ON RUFUS CHOATE.
DELIVERED AT THE UNVEILING OF THE STATUE OF
RUFUS CHOATE IN THE COURT HOUSE OF
BOSTON, OCTOBER 15, 1898.
MANY a noted orator, many a great lawyer, has
been lost in oblivion in forty years after the grave
closed over him, but I venture to believe that the bar
of Suffolk, aye, the whole bar of America, and the
people of Massachusetts, have kept the memory of no
other man alive and green so long, so vividly and so
lovingly as that of Rufus Choate. Many of his char
acteristic utterances have become proverbial and the
flashes of his wit, the play of his fancy, and the gor-
CHOATE. 2 1 5
geous pictures of his imagination are the constant
themes of reminiscence wherever American lawyers
assemble for social converse. What Mr. Dana so well
said over his bier is still true to-day : " When as law
yers we meet together in tedious hours and seek to en
tertain ourselves, we find we do better with anecdotes
of Mr. Choate than on our own original resources."
The admirable biography of Professor Brown and his
arguments, so far as they have been preserved, are
text-books in the profession and so the influence of
his genius, character, and conduct is still potent and
far-reaching in the land.
You will not expect me, upon such an occasion, to
enter upon any narrative of his illustrious career, so
familiar to you all, or to undertake any analysis of
those remarkable powers which made it possible. All
that has been done already by many appreciative ad
mirers and has become a part of American literature.
I can only attempt, in a most imperfect manner, to
present a few of the leading traits of that marvellous
personality which we hope that this striking statue will
help to transmit to the students, lawyers and citizens
who, in the coming years, shall throng these portals.
How it was that such an exotic nature, so ardent
and tropical in all its manifestations, so truly southern
and Italian in its impulses, and at the same time so
robust and sturdy in its strength, could have been pro
duced upon the bleak and barren soil of our northern
cape and nurtured under the chilling blasts of its east
winds is a mystery insoluble. Truly " this is the Lord's
doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes."
In one of his speeches in the Senate he draws the
2l6 CHOATE.
distinction between "the cool and slow New England
men and the mercurial children of the sun who sat
down side by side in the presence of Washington to
form our more perfect union."
If ever there was a mercurial child of the sun, it
was himself most happily described. I am one of those
who believe that the stuff that a man is made of has
more to do with his career than any education or envir
onment. The greatness that is achieved, or is thrust
upon some men, dwindles before that of him who is
born great. His horoscope was propitious. The stars
in their courses fought for him. The birthmark of
genius, distinct and ineffaceable, was on his brow.
He came of a long line of pious and devout ancestors,
whose living was as plain as their thinking was high.
It was from father and mother that he derived the
flame of intellect, the glow of spirit, and the beauty of
temperament that were so unique.
And his nurture to manhood was worthy of the
child. It was "the nurture and admonition of the
Lord/' From that rough pine cradle, which is still
preserved in the room where he was born, to his pre
mature grave at the age of fifty-nine, it was one long
course of training and discipline of mind and charac
ter, without pause or rest. It began with that well-
thumbed and dog's-eared Bible from Hog Island, its
leaves actually worn away by the pious hands that had
turned them, read daily in the family from January to
December, in at 'Genesis and out at Revelations every
two years; and when a new child was born in the
household the only celebration, the only festivity, was
to turn back to the first chapter and read once more
CHOATE. 217
how "in the beginning God created the heaven and
the earth" and all that in them is.
This book, so early absorbed and never forgotten,
saturated his mind and spirit more than any other,
more than all other books combined. It was at his
tongue's end, at his ringers' ends always close at
hand until those last languid hours at Halifax, when it
solaced his dying meditations. You can heardly find
speech, argument or lecture of his, from first to last,
that is not sprinkled and studded with biblical ideas
and pictures and biblical words and phrases. To him
the book of Job was a sublime poem. He knew the
Psalms by heart and dearly loved the prophets, and
above all Isaiah, upon whose gorgeous imagery he
made copious drafts. He pondered every word, read
with most subtle keenness, and applied with happiest
effect. One day, coming into the Crawford House,
cold and shivering and you remember how he could
shiver he caught sight of the blaze in the great fire
place and was instantly warm before the rays could
reach him, exclaiming " Do you remember that verse
in Isaiah, 'Aha ! I am warm. I have seen the fire ?' '
and so his daily conversation was marked.
And upon this solid rock of the Scriptures he built
a magnificent structure of knowledge and acquire
ment, to which few men in America have ever attained.
History, philosophy, poetry, fiction, all came as grist
to his mental mill. But with him time was too pre
cious to read any trash; he could winnow the wheat
from the chaff at sight, almost by touch. He sought
knowledge, ideas, for their own sake and for the lan
guage in which they were conveyed.
2l8 CHOATE.
I have heard a most learned jurist gloat over the pur
chase of the last sensational novel, and have seen a
most distinguished bishop greedily devouring the sto
ries of Gaboriau one after another, but Mr. Choate
seemed to need no such counter-irritant or blister to
draw the pain from his hurt mind. Business, com
pany, family, sickness nothing could rob him of his
one hour each day in the company of illustrious writ
ers of all ages. How his whole course of thought was
tinged and embellished with the reflected light of the
great Greek orators, historians and poets ; how Roman
history, fresh in the mind as the events of yesterday,
supplied him with illustrations and supports for his
own glowing thoughts and arguments, all of you who
have either heard him or read him know.
But it was to the great domain of English literature
that he daily turned for fireside companions and really
kindred spirits. As he said in a letter to Sumner, with
whom his literary fraternity was at one time very
close : " Mind that Burke is the fourth Englishman,
Shakespeare, Bacon, Milton, Burke;" and then in one
of those dashing outbursts of playful extravagance
which were so characteristic of him, fearing that Sum
ner in his proposed review might fail to do full justice
to the great ideal of both, he adds: "Out of Burke
might be cut 50 Mackintoshes 175 Macaulays, 40 Jeff
reys, and 250 Sir Robert Peels, and leave him greater
than Pitt and Fox together."
In the constant company of these great thinkers and
writers he revelled and made their thoughts his own;
and his insatiable memory seemed to store up all things
committed to it, as the books not in daily use are stacked
CHOATE. 219
away in your public library, so that at that moment,
with notice or without, he could lay his hand straight
way upon them. What was once imbedded in the
gray matter of his brain did not lie buried there, as
with most of us, but grew and flourished and bore
fruit. What he once read he seemed never to for
get.
This love of study became a ruling passion in his
earliest youth. To it he sacrificed all that the youth of
our day even the best of them consider indispens
able, and especially the culture and training of the
body ; and when we recall his pale face, worn and lined
as it was in his later years, one of his most pathetic
utterances is found in a letter to his son at school : "I
hope that you are well and studious and among the
best scholars. If this is so, I am willing you should
play every day till the blood is ready to burst from
your cheeks. Love the studies that will make you wise,
useful, and happy when there shall be no blood at all
to be seen in your cheeks or lips."
He never rested from his delightful labors and
that is the pity of it he took no vacations. Except
for one short trip to Europe, when warned of a possible
breakdown in 1850, an occasional day at Essex, a three
days' journey to the White Mountains, was all that
he allowed himself. Returning from such an outing
in the summer of 1854, on which it was my great priv
ilege to accompany him, he said, " That is my entire
holiday for this year."
So that when he told Judge Warren so playfully that
' The lawyer's vacation is the space between the ques
tion put to a witness and his answer," it was of him-
22O CHOATE.
self almost literally true. Would that he had realized
his constant dream of an ideal cottage in the old wal
nut grove in Essex, where he might spend whole sum
mers with his books, his children, and his thoughts.
His splendid and blazing intellect, fed and enriched
by constant study of the best thoughts of the great
minds of the race; his all-persuasive eloquence, his
teeming and radiant imagination, whirling his hearers
along with it and sometimes overpowering himself, his
brilliant and sportive fancy, lighting up the most arid
subjects with the glow of sunrise, his prodigious and
never- failing memory, and his playful wit, always
bursting forth with irresistible impulse, have been the
subject of scores of essays and criticisms, all strug
gling with the vain effort to describe and crystallize
the fascinating and magical charm of his speech and
his influence.
And now, in conclusion, let me speak of his patri
otism. I have always believed that Mr. Webster, more
than any other man, was entitled to the credit of that
grand and universal outburst of devotion with which
the whole north sprang to arms in defence of the con
stitution and the Union many years after his death,
when the first shot at Fort Sumter, like a fire-bell in
the night, roused them from their slumber and con
vinced them that the great citadel of their liberties
was in actual danger.
Differ as we may and must as to his final course
in his declining years, the one great fact can never
be blotted out, that the great work of his grand and
ncble life was the defence of the constitution so that
he came to be known of all men as its one defender
CHOATE. 221
that for thirty years he preached to the listening nation
the crusade of nationality and fired New England and
the whole north with its spirit. He inspired them to
believe that to uphold and preserve the Union against
every foe was the first duty of the citizen; that if the
Union was saved, all was saved; that if that was lost,
all was lost. He molded better even than he knew. It
was his great brain that designed, his flaming heart
that forged, his sublime eloquence that welded the
sword which was at last, when he was dust, to con
summate his life's work and make liberty and union
one and inseparable forever.
And so, in large measure, it was with Mr. Choate.
His glowing heart went out to his country with the
passionate ardor of a lover. He believed that the first
duty of the lawyer, orator, scholar was to her. His
best thoughts, his noblest words were always for her.
Seven of the best years of his life, in the Senate and
House of Representatives, at the greatest personal sac
rifice he gave absolutely to her service.
On every important question that arose he made,
with infinite study and research, one of the great
speeches of the debate. He commanded the affection
ate regard of his fellows and of the watchful and lis
tening nation. He was a profound and constant student
of her history and revelled in tracing her growth and
progress from Plymouth Rock and Salem Harbor un
til she filled the continent from sea to sea. He loved
to trace the advance of the Puritan spirit, with which
he was himself deeply imbued, from Winthrop and
Endicott, and Carver and Standish, through all the
heroic periods and events of colonial and revolutionary
222 CHOATE.
and national life, until in his own last years it domin
ated and guided all of free America.
He knew full well and displayed in his many splen
did speeches and addresses that one unerring purpose
of freedom and of union ran through her whole his
tory; that there was no accident in it all; that all the
generations, from the "Mayflower" down, marched to
one measure and followed one flag : that all the strug
gles, all the self-sacrifice, all the prayers and the tears,
all the fear of God, all the soul-trials, all the yearnings
for national life, of more than two centuries, had con
tributed to make the country that he served and loved.
He, too, preached, in season and out of season, the
gospel of Nationality.
He was the faithful disciple of Webster while that
great master lived, and after his death he bore aloft the
same standard and maintained the same cause. Mr.
Everett spoke nothing more than the truth when he
said in Faneuil Hall, while all the bells were tolling,
at the moment when the vessel bringing home the dead
body of his life-long friend cast anchor in Boston har
bor: "If ever there was a truly disinterested patriot,
Rufus Choate was that man. In his political career
there was no share of selfishness. Had he been will
ing to purchase advancement at the price often paid
for it, there was never a moment from the time he first
made himself felt and known that he could not have
commanded anything that any party had to bestow.
But he desired none of the rewards or honors of suc
cess."
He foresaw clearly that the division of the country
into geographical parties must end in civil war. What
CHOATE. 223
he could not see was, that there was no other way
that only by cutting out slavery by the sword could
America secure liberty and union too; but to the last
drop of his blood and the last fibre of his being he
prayed and pleaded for the life of the nation, according
to his light. Neither of these great patriots lived to
see the fearful spectacle which they had so eloquently
deprecated.
But when at last the dread day came, and our young
heroes marched forth to bleed and die for their coun
try their own sons among the foremost they car
ried in their hearts the lessons which both had taught ;
and all Massachusetts, all New England, from the be
ginning, marched behind them, "carrying the flag and
keeping step to the music of the Union," as he had
bade them; and so, I say, let us award to them both
their due share of the glory.
Thus to-day we consign this noble statue to the
keeping of posterity, to remind them of "the patriot,
jurist, orator, scholar, citizen, and friend," whom we
are proud to have known and loved.
224 HARRISON.
Harrison, Benjamin, a distinguished American politi
cian, twenty-second President of the United States, born at
North Bend, Ohio, August 20, 1833; died in Indianapolis,
Ind.. February , 1901. He was a grandson of President
William Henry Harrison, and after completing his college
education in 1862, practised law in Indianapolis until the
opening of the Civil War. He served in the Federal army,
1862-65, and rose to the rank of brigadier-general. He sat
in the United States Senate, 188187, and in 1888 was the
successful candidate of the Republican Party for the Presi
dency. He was renominated in 1892, but was defeated.
Upon his retirement from the White House he resumed his
legal practice, in which he displayed signal ability, and he
was one of the members of the Peace Conference at The
Hague. In his latest years he became distinguished as an
orator, his public addresses being as strong in substance as
they were eloquent in delivery. A volume issued shortly
before his death, entitled " Views of an Ex-President," con
tains several of his latest public utterances.
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
DELIVERED MARCH 4, 1889.
Fellow Citizens:
THERE is no constitutional or legal requirement that
the President shall take the oath of office in the pres
ence of the people, but there is so manifest an appro
priateness in the public induction to office of the Chief
Executive officer of the nation that from the beginning
of the government the people, to whose service the of
ficial oath consecrates the officer, have been called to
witness the solemn ceremonial. The oath taken in the
HARRISON. 225
presence of the people becomes a mutual covenant.
The officer covenants to serve the whole body of the
people by a faithful execution of the laws, so that they
may be the unfailing defence and security of those who
respect and observe them, and that neither wealth, sta
tion, nor the power of combinations shall be able to
evade their just penalties or to wrest them from a bene
ficent public purpose to serve the ends of cruelty or
selfishness.
My promise is spoken; yours unspoken, but not the
less real and solemn. The people of every State have
here their representatives. Surely I do not misinter
pret the spirit of the occasion when I assume that the
whole body of the people covenant with me and with
each other to-day to support and defend the Constitu
tion and the Union of the States, to yield willing obe
dience to all the laws and each to every other citizen
his equal civil and political rights. Entering thus sol
emnly into covenant with each other, we may rever
ently invoke and confidently expect the favor and help
of Almighty God that he will give to me wisdom,
strength, and fidelity, and to our people a spirit of fra
ternity and a love of righteousness and peace.
This occasion derives peculiar interest from the fact
that the Presidential term, which begins this day, is
the twenty-sixth under our Constitution. The first in
auguration of President Washington took place in
New York, where Congress was then sitting, on the
thirtieth day of April, 1789, having been deferred by
reason of delays attending the organization of Con
gress and the canvass of the electoral vote. Our people
have already worthily observed the centennials of the
226 HARRISON.
Declaration of Independence, of the battle of York-
town, and of the adoption of the Constitution, and will
shortly celebrate in New York the institution of the
second great department of our constitutional scheme
of government. When the centennial of the institu
tion of the judicial department, by the organization of
the Supreme Court, shall have been suitably observed,
as I trust it will be, our nation will have fully entered
its second century.
I will not attempt to note the marvellous and, in
great part, happy contrasts between our country as it
steps over the threshold into its second century of or
ganized existence under the Constitution and that
weak but wisely ordered young nation that looked un
dauntedly down the first century, when all its years
stretched out before it.
Our people will not fail at this time to recall the in
cidents which accompanied the institution of govern
ment under the Constitution, or to find inspiration and
guidance in the teachings and example of Washington
and his great associates, and hope and courage in the
contrast which thirty-eight populous and prosperous
States offer to the thirteen States, weak in everything
except courage and the love of liberty, that then
fringed our Atlantic seaboard.
The Territory of Dakota has now a population
greater than any of the original States (except Vir
ginia), and greater than the aggregate of five of the
smaller States in 1 790. The centre of population when
our national .capital was located was east of Balti
more, and it was argued by many well-informed per
sons that it would move eastward rather than west-
HARRISON. 227
ward; yet in 1880 it was found -to be near Cincinnati,
and the new census about to be taken will show an
other stride to the westward. That which was the
body has come to be only the rich fringe of the nation's
robe. But our growth has not been limited to terri
tory, population, and aggregate wealth, marvellous as
it has been in each of those directions. The masses
of our people are better fed, clothed, and housed than
their fathers were. The facilities for popular educa
tion have been vastly enlarged and more generally
diffused.
The virtues of courage and patriotism have given
recent proof of their continued presence and increasing
power in the hearts and over the lives of our people.
The influences of religion have been multiplied and
strengthened. The sweet offices of charity have great
ly increased. The virtue of temperance is held in high
er estimation. We have not attained an ideal condi
tion. Not all of our people are happy and prosperous;
not all of them are virtuous and law-abiding. But on
the whole, the opportunities offered to the individual
to secure the comforts of life are better than are found
elsewhere, and largely better than they were here one
hundred years ago.
The surrender of a large measure of sovereignty to
the general government, effected by the adoption of the
Constitution, was not accomplished until the sugges
tions of reason were strongly reinforced by the more
imperative voice of experience. The divergent interests
of peace speedily demanded a "more perfect Union."
The merchant, the ship-master, and the manufacturer
discovered and disclosed to our statesmen and to the
228 HARRISON.
people that commercial emancipation must be added to
the political freedom which had been so bravely won.
The commercial policy of the mother country had not
relaxed any of its hard and oppressive features. To
hold in check the development of our commercial ma
rine, to prevent or retard the establishment and growth
of manufactures in the States, and so 1p secure the
American market for their shops and the carrying
trade for their ships, was the policy of European
statesmen, and was pursued with the most selfish
vigor.
Petitions poured in upon Congress urging the im
position of discriminating duties that should encour
age the production of needed things at home. The pa
triotism of the people, which no longer found a field
of exercise in war, was energetically directed to the
duty of equipping the young Republic for the defence
of its independence by making its people self-depend
ent. Societies for the promotion of home manufac
tures and for encouraging the use of domestics in the
dress of the people were organized in many of the
States. The revival at the end of the century of the
same patriotic interest in the preservation and develop
ment of domestic industries and the defence of our
working people against injurious foreign competition
is an incident worthy of attention. It is not a depar
ture but a return that we have witnessed. The pro
tective policy had then its opponents. The argument
was made, as now, that its benefits inured to particular
classes or sections.
If the question became in any sense or at any time
sectional, it was only because slavery existed in some
HARRISON. 229
of the States. But for this there was no reason why
the cotton-producing States should not have led or
walked abreast with the New England States in the
production of cotton fabrics. There was this reason
only why the States that divide with Pennsylvania the
mineral treasures of the great southeastern and central
mountain ranges should have been so tardy in bringing
to the smelting furnace and to the mill the coal and
iron from their near opposing hillsides. Mill fires
were lighted at the funeral pile of slavery. The Eman
cipation Proclamation was heard in the depths of the
earth as well as in the sky; men were made free, and
material things became our better servants.
The sectional element has happily been eliminated
from the tariff discussion. We have no longer States
that are necessarily only planting States. None is ex
cluded from achieving that diversification of pursuits
among the people which brings wealth and content
ment. The cotton plantation will not be less valuable
when the product is spun in the country town by oper
atives whose necessities call for diversified crops and
create a home demand for garden and agricultural
products. Every new mine, furnace and factory is an
extension of the productive capacity of the State, more
real and valuable than added territory.
Shall the prejudices and paralysis of slavery con
tinue to hang upon the skirts of progress ? How long
will those who rejoice that slavery no longer exists
cherish or tolerate the incapacities it put upon their
communities? I look hopefully to the continuance of
our protective system and to the consequent develop
ment of manufacturing and mining enterprises in the
230 HARRISON.
States hitherto wholly given to agriculture as a potent
influence in the perfect unification of our people. The
men who have invested their capital in these enter
prises, the farmers who have felt the benefit of their
neighborhood, and the men who work in shop or field,
will not fail to find and to defend a community of in
terest.
Is it not quite possible that the farmers and the pro
moters of the great mining and manufacturing enter
prises which have recently been established in the
South may yet find that the free ballot of the working-
man, without distinction of race, is needed for their
defence as well as for his own? I do not doubt that
if those men in the South who now accept the tariff
views of Clay and the constitutional expositions of
Webster would courageously avow and defend their
real convictions, they would not find it difficult, by
friendly instruction and co-operation, to make the
black man their efficient and safe ally, not only in es
tablishing correct principles in our national administra
tion, but in preserving for their local communities the
benefits of social order and economical and honest gov
ernment. At least until the good offices of kindness
and education have been fairly tried, the contrary con
clusion cannot be plausibly urged.
I have altogether rejected the suggestion of a special
Executive policy for any section of our country. It is
the duty of the Executive to administer and enforce
in the methods and by the instrumentalities pointed
out and provided by the Constitution all the laws en
acted by Congress. These laws are general, and their
administration should be uniform and equal. As a
HARRISON. 231
citizen may not elect what laws he will obey, neither
may the Executive elect which he will enforce. The
duty to obey and to execute embraces the Constitution
in its entirety and the whole code of laws enacted un
der it. The evil example of permitting individuals,
corporations, or communities to nullify the laws be
cause they cross some selfish or local interest or prej
udice is full of danger, not only to the nation at large,
but much more to those who use this pernicious expe
dient to escape their just obligations or to obtain an
unjust advantage over others. They will presently
themselves be compelled to appeal to the law foil
protection, and those who would use the law as a de
fence must not deny that use of it to others.
If our great corporations would more scrupulously
observe their legal limitations and duties, they would
have less cause to complain of the unlawful limitations
of their rights or of violent interference with their
operations. The community that by concert, open or
secret, among its citizens, denies to a portion of its
members their plain rights under the law, has severed
the only safe bond of social order and prosperity. The
evil works from a bad centre both ways. It demoral
izes those who practice it, and destroys the faith of
those who suffer by it in the efficiency of the law as a
safe protector. The man in whose breast that faith
has been darkened is naturally the subject of danger
ous and uncanny suggestions. Those who use unlaw
ful methods, if moved by no higher motive than the
selfishness that prompted them, may well stop and in
quire what is to be the end of this.
An unlawful expedient cannot become a permanent
232 HARRISON.
condition of government. If the educated and influ
ential classes in a community either practice or con
nive at the systematic violation of laws that seem to
them to cross their convenience, what can they expect
when the lesson that convenience or a supposed class
interest is a sufficient cause for lawlessness has been
well learned by the ignorant classes? A community
where law is the rule of conduct and where courts, not
mobs, execute its penalties, is the only attractive field
for business investments and honest labor.
Our naturalization laws should be so amended as
to make the inquiry into the character and good dis
position of persons applying for citizenship more care
ful and 9 searching. Our existing la\vs have been in
their administration an unimpressive and often an un
intelligible form. We accept the man as a citizen with
out any knowledge of his fitness, and he assumes the
duties of citizenship without any knowledge as to what
they are. The privileges of American citizenship are
so great and its duties so grave that we may well in
sist upon a good knowledge of every person applying
for citizenship and a good knowledge by him of our
institutions. We should not cease to be hospitable to
immigration, but we should cease to be careless as to
the character of it. There are men of all races, even
the best, whose coming is necessarily a burden upon
our public revenues or a threat to social order. These
should be identified and excluded.
We have happily maintained a policy of avoiding
all interference with European affairs. We have been
only interested spectators of their contentions in dip
lomacy and in war, ready to use our friendly offices to
HARRISON. 233
promote peace, but never obtruding our advice and
never attempting unfairly to coin the distresses of
other powers into commercial advantage to ourselves.
We have a just right to expect that our European pol
icy will be the American policy of European courts.
It is so manifestly incompatible with those precau
tions for our peace and safety, which all the great
powers habitually observe and enforce in matters af
fecting them, that a shorter waterway between our
eastern and western seaboards should be dominated
by any European government, that we may confidently
expect that such a purpose will not be entertained by
any friendly power.
We shall in the future, as in the past, use every
endeavor to maintain and enlarge our friendly rela
tions with all the great powers, but they will not ex
pect us to look kindly upon any project that would
leave us subject to the dangers of a hostile observation
or environment. We have not sought to dominate or
to absorb any of our weaker neighbors, but rather to
aid and encourage them to establish free and stable
governments resting upon the consent of their own
people. We have a clear right to expect, therefore,
that no European government will seek to establish
colonial dependencies upon the territory of these inde
pendent American States. That which a sense of jus
tice restrains us from seeking, they may be reasonably
expected willingly to forego.
It must be assumed, however, that our interests are
so exclusively American that our entire inattention to
any events that may transpire elsewhere can be taken
for granted. Our citizens, domiciled for purposes of
234 HARRISON.
trade in all countries and in many of the islands of
the sea, demand and will have our adequate care in
their personal and commercial rights. The necessi
ties of our navy require convenient coaling stations
and dock and harbor privileges. These and other trad
ing privileges we will feel free to pbtain only by means
that do not in any degree partake of coercion, however
feeble the government from which we ask such con
cessions. But having fairly obtained them by meth
ods and for purposes entirely consistent with the most
friendly disposition toward all other powers, our con
sent will be necessary to any modification or impair
ment of the concession.
We shall neither fail to respect the flag of any
friendly nation, or the just rights of its citizens, nor
to exact the like treatment for our own. Calmness,
justice, and consideration should characterize our dip
lomacy. The offices of an intelligent diplomacy or of
friendly arbitration in proper cases should be adequate
to the peaceful adjustment of all international difficul
ties. By such methods we will make our contribution
to the world's peace, which no nation values more
highly, and avoid the opprobrium which must fall
upon the nation that ruthlessly breaks it.
The duty devolved by law upon the President to
nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of
the Senate to appoint, all public officers whose appoint
ment is not otherwise provided for in the Constitution
or by act of Congress, has become very burdensome,
and its wise and efficient discharge full of difficulty.
The civil list is so large that a personal knowledge of
any large number of the applicants is impossible. The
HARRISON. 235
President must rely upon the representation of others,
and these are often made inconsiderately and without
any just sense of responsibility. I have a right, I
think, to insist that those who volunteer or are invited
to give advice as to appointments shall exercise con
sideration and fidelity. A high sense of duty and an
ambition to improve the service should characterize all
public officers.
There are many ways in which the convenience and
comfort of those who have business with our public
offices may be promoted by a thoughtful and obliging
officer, and I shall expect those whom I may appoint
to justify their selection by a conspicuous efficiency in
the discharge of their duties. Honorable party service
will certainly not be esteemed by me a disqualification
for public office, but it will in no case be allowed to
serve as a shield of official negligence, incompetency,
or delinquency. It is entirely creditable to seek public
office by proper methods and with proper motives, and
all applicants will be treated with consideration; but I
shall need, and the heads of departments will need,
time for enquiry and deliberation. Persistent importun
ity will not, therefore, be the best support of an appli
cation for office. Heads of departments, bureaus, and
all other public officers having any duty connected
therewith, will be expected to enforce the Civil Service
law fully and without evasion. Beyond this obvious
duty I hope to do something more to advance the re
form of the civil service. The ideal, or even my own
ideal, I shall probably not attain. Retrospect will be
a safer basis of judgment than promises. We shall
not, however, I am sure, be able to put our civil
236 HARRISON.
service upon a non-partisan basis until we have secured
an incumbency that fair-minded men of the opposition
will approve for impartiality and integrity. As the
number of such in the civil list is increased, removals
from office will diminish.
While a Treasury surplus is not the greatest evil,
it is a serious evil. Our revenue should be ample
to meet the ordinary annual demands upon our Treas
ury, with a sufficient margin for those extraordinary
but scarcely less imperative, demands which arise now
and then. Expenditure should always be made with
economy, and only upon public necessity. Wasteful
ness, profligacy, or favoritism in public expenditure is
criminal. But there is nothing in the condition of our
country or of our people to suggest that anything
presently necessary to the public prosperity, security,
or honor, should be unduly postponed.
It will be the duty of Congress wisely to forecast
and estimate these extraordinary demands, and, having
added them to our ordinary expenditures, to so adjust
our revenue laws that no considerable annual surplus
will remain. We will fortunately be able to apply to
the redemption of the public debt any small and unfore
seen excess of revenue. This is better than to reduce
our income below our necessary expenditures, with
the resulting choice between another change of our
revenue laws and an increase of the public debt. It
is quite possible, I am sure, to effect the necessary re
duction in our revenues without breaking down our
protective tariff or seriously injuring any domestic in
dustry.
The construction of a sufficient number of modern
HARRISON. 237
warships and of their necessary armament should pro
gress as rapidly as is consistent with care and perfec
tion in plans and workmanship. The spirit, courage,
and skill of our naval officers and seamen have many
times in our history given to weak ships and inefficient
guns a rating greatly beyond that of the naval list.
That they will again do so upon occasion, I do not
doubt ; but they ought not, by premeditation or neglect,
to be left to the risks and exigencies of an unequal
combat. We should encourage the establishment of
American steamship lines. The exchanges of com
merce demand stated, reliable, and rapid means of
communication; and until these are provided, the de
velopment of our trade with the States lying south
of us is impossible.
Our pension laws should give more adequate and
discriminating relief to the Union soldiers and sailors
and to their widows and orphans. Such occasions as
this should remind us that we owe everything to their
valor and sacrifice.
It is a subject of congratulation that there is a near
prospect of the admission into the Union of the Da-
kotas and Montana and Washington Territories. This
act of justice has been unreasonably delayed in the case
of some of them. The people who have settled these
Territories are intelligent, enterprising, and patriotic,
and the accession of these new States will add strength
to the nation. It is due to the settlers in the Territories
who have availed themselves of the invitations of our
land laws to make homes upon the public domain that
their titles should be speedily adjusted and their honest
entries confirmed by patent.
238 HARRISON.
It is very gratifying to observe the general interest
now being manifested in the reform of our election
laws. Those who have been for years calling attention
to the pressing necessity of throwing about the ballot-
box and about the elector further safeguards, in order
that our elections might not only be free and pure,
but might clearly appear to be so, will welcome the
accession of any who did not so soon discover the need
of reform. The National Congress has not as yet
taken control of elections in that case over which the
Constitution gives it jurisdiction, but has accepted
and adopted the election laws of the several States,
provided penalties for their violation and a method of
supervision. Only the inefficiency of the State laws or
an unfair partisan administration of them could sug
gest a departure from this policy.
It was clear, however, in the contemplation of the
framers of the Constitution, that such an exigency
might arise, and provision was wisely made for it.
The freedom of the ballot is a condition of our national
life, and no power vested in Congress or in the Execu
tive to secure or perpetuate it should remain unused
upon occasion. The people of all the congressional
districts have an equal interest that the election
in each shall truly express the views and wishes
of a majority of the qualified electors residing with
in it. The results of such elections are not local, and
the insistence of electors residing in other districts
that they shall be pure and free does not savor at all
of impertinence.
If in any of the States the public security is thought
to be threatened by ignorance among the electors, the
HARRISON. 239
obvious remedy is education. The sympathy and help
of our people will not be withheld from any commun
ity struggling with special embarrassments or difficul
ties connected with the suffrage, if the remedies pro
posed proceed upon lawful lines and are promoted by
just and honorable methods. How shall those who
practice election frauds recover that respect for the
sanctity of the ballot which is the first condition and
obligation of good citizenship? The man who has
come to regard the ballot-box as a juggler's hat has
renounced his allegiance.
Let us exalt patriotism and moderate our party con
tentions. Let those who would die for the flag on the
field of battle give a better proof of their patriotism
and a higher glory to their country by promoting fra
ternity and justice. A party success that is achieved
by unfair methods or by practices that partake of revo
lution is hurtful and evanescent, even from a party
standpoint. We should hold our differing opinions in
mutual respect, and, having submitted them to the ar
bitrament of the ballot, should accept an adverse judg
ment with the same respect that we would have de
manded of our opponents if the decision had been in
our favor.
No other people have a government more worthy
of their respect and love, or a land so magnificent in
extent, so pleasant to look upon, and so full of gener
ous suggestion to enterprise and labor. God has placed
upon our head a diadem, and has laid at our feet power
and wealth beyond definition or calculation. But we
must not forget that we take these gifts upon the con
dition that justice and mercy shall hold the reins of
240 HARRISON.
power, and that the upward avenues of hope shall be
free to all the people.
I do not mistrust the future. Dangers have been in
frequent ambush along our path, but we have uncov
ered and vanquished them all. Passion has swept
some of our communities, but only to give us a new
demonstration that the great body of our people are
stable, patriotic, and law-abiding. No political party
can long pursue advantage at the expense of public
honor or by rude and indecent methods, without pro
test and fatal disaffection in its own body. The peace
ful agencies of commerce are more fully revealing the
necessary unity of all our communities, and the in
creasing intercourse of our people is promoting mutual
respect. We shall find unalloyed pleasure in the reve
lation which our next census will make of the swift de
velopment of the great resources of some of the States.
Each State will bring its generous contribution to the
great aggregate of the nation's increase. And when
the harvests from the fields, the cattle from the hills,
and the ores of the earth shall have been weighed,
counted, and valued, we will turn from them all to
crown with the highest honor the State that has most
promoted education, virtue, justice and patriotism
among its people.
INGALLS. 241
Ingalls, John J., an American politician and orator,
born at Middleton, Mass., December 29, 1833 ; died at Las
Vegas, N. M., August 16, 1900. He studied 4aw upon leav
ing college, and after admittance to the bar in 1857 removed to
Atchison, Kan., the following year. In 1862 he entered the
Kansas Senate, and was the unsuccessful candidate for the
Lieutenant-Governorship the same year, as also in 1864.
After editing the " Atchison Champion " for a few years, he
entered the United States Senate in 1873, retaining his seat
there until he retired from political life in 1891. His latest
years were devoted to lecturing and journalism. Ingalls
was a ready and eloquent debator, but his political ideals
were not high, and he did not possess the entire confidence
of his listeners. His style was glittering rather than
polished.
ON THE POLITICAL SITUATION.
SPEECH IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, JAN
UARY 14, 1891.
MR. PRESIDENT, Two portentous perils threaten
the safety if they do not endanger the existence of
the republic.
The first of these is ignorant, debased, degraded,
spurious, and sophisticated suffrage; suffrage contam
inated by the feculent sewage of decaying nations;
suffrage intimidated and suppressed in the South ; suf
frage impure and corrupt, apathetic and indifferent,
in the great cities of the North, so that it is doubtful
whether there has been for half a century a presidential
election in this country that expressed the deliberate
9-4
242 INGALLS.
and intelligent judgment of the whole body of the
American people.
In a newspaper interview a few months ago, in
which I commented upon these conditions and allud
ed to the efforts of the bacilli doctors of politics, the
bacteriologists of our system, who endeavor to cure
the ills under which we suffer by their hypodermic in
jections of the lymph of independent non-partisanship
and the Brown-Sequard elixir of civil-service reform,
I said that "the purification of politics" by such meth
ods as these was an "iridescent dream." Remember
ing the cipher dispatches of 1877 and the attempted
purchase of the electoral votes of many southern States
in that campaign, the forgery of the Morey letter in
1880, by which Garfield lost the votes of three States
in the North, and the characterization and portraiture
of Blaine and Cleveland and Harrison by their poli
tical adversaries, I added that " the Golden Rule and
the Decalogue had no place in American political cam
paigns."
It seems superfluous to explain, Mr. President, that
in those utterances I was not inculcating a doctrine, but
describing a condition. My statement was a statement
of facts as I understood them, and not the announce
ment of an article of faith. But many reverend and
eminent divines, many disinterested editors, many in
genuous orators, perverted those utterances into the
personal advocacy of impurity in politics.
I do not complain, Mr. President. It was, as the
world goes, legitimate political warfare; but it was an
illustration of the truth that there ought to be puri
fication in our politics, and that the Golden Ru/e and
INGALLS. 243
the Decalogue ought to have a place in political cam
paigns. " Do unto others as ye would that others
should do unto you" is the supreme injunction, obli
gatory upon all. " If thine enemy smite thee upon one
cheek turn to him the other " is a sublime and lofty
precept. But I take this occasion to observe that until
it is more generally regarded than it has been or ap
pears likely to be in the immediate future, if my polit
ical enemy smites me upon one cheek, instead of turn
ing to him the other I shall smite him under the butt
end of his left ear if I can. If this be political immor
ality, I am to be included among the unregenerated.
The election bill that was under consideration a few
days ago is intended to deal with one part of the great
evil to which I have alluded, but it is an imperfect, a
partial, and an incomplete remedy. Violence is bad;
but fraud is no better; and it is more dangerous be
cause it is more insidious.
Burke said in one of those immortal orations that
emptied the House of Commons, but which will be
read with admiration so long as the English tongue
shall endure, that when the laws of Great Britain were
not strong enough to protect the humblest Hindoo
upon the shores of the Ganges the nobleman was not
safe in his castle upon the banks of the Thames. Sir,
that lofty sentence is pregnant with admonition for us t
There can be no repose, there can be no stable and per
manent peace in this country under this government
until it is just as safe for the black Republican to vote
in Mississippi as it is for the white Democrat to vote
in Kansas.
The other evil, Mr. President, the second to whicti
244 INGALLS.
I adverted as threatening the safety if it does not en
danger the existence of the republic, is the tyranny of
combined, concentrated, centralized, and incorporated
capital. And the people are considering this great
problem now. The conscience of the nation is shocked
at the injustice of modern society. The moral senti
ment of mankind has been aroused at the unequal dis
tribution of wealth, at the unequal diffusion of the bur
dens, the benefits, and the privileges of society.
At the beginning of our second century the Ameri
can people have become profoundly conscious that the
ballot is not the panacea for all the evils that afflict
humanity; that it has not abolished poverty nor pre
vented injustice. They have discovered that political
equality does not result in social fraternity ; that under
a democracy the concentration of greater political pow
er in fewer hands, the accumulation and aggregation
of greater amounts of wealth in individuals, are more
possible than under a monarchy, and that there is a
tyranny which is more fatal than the tyranny of kings.
George Washington, the first President of the Re
public, at the close of his life in 1799 had the largest
private fortune in the United States of America.
Much of this came by inheritance, but the Father of his
Country, in addition to his other virtues, shining and
illustrious, was a very prudent, sagacious, thrifty, and
forehanded man. He knew a good thing when he saw
it a great way off. He had a keen eye for the main
chance. As a surveyor in his youth he obtained
knowledge that enabled him to make exceedingly valu
able locations upon the public domain. The establish
ment of the national capital in the immediate vicinity
INGALLS. 245
of his patrimonial possessions did not diminish their
value. He was a just debtor, but he was an exact if
not an exacting creditor. And so it came to pass that
when he died he was, to use the expressive phraseology
of the day, the richest man in the country.
At this time, ninety years afterward, it is not with
out interest to know that the entire aggregate and sum
of his earthly possessions, his estate, real, personal, and
mixed, Mount Vernon and his lands along the Kan-
awha and the Ohio, slaves, securities, all of his belong
ings, reached the sum total of between $800,000 and
$900,000. This was less than a century ago, and it is
within bounds to say that at this time there are many
scores of men, of estates, and of corporations in this
country whose annual income exceed, and there has
been one man whose monthly revenue since that period
exceeded, the entire accumulations of the wealthiest
citizen of the United States at the end of the last
century.
At that period the social condition of the United
States was one of practical equality. The statistics of
the census of 1800 are incomplete and fragmentary,
but the population of the Union was about 5,300,000,
and the estimated wealth of the country was between
$3,000,000,000 and $4,000,000,000. There was not a
millionaire, and there was not a tramp nor a pauper,
so far as we know, in the country, except such as had
been made so by infirmity, or disease, or inevitable
calamity. A multitude of small farmers contentedly
tilled the soil. Upon the coast a race of fishermen and
sailors, owning the craft that they sailed, wrested their
substance from the stormy seas. Labor was the rule
246 INGALLS.
and luxury the exception. The great mass of the peo
ple lived upon the products of the farms that they cul
tivated. They spun and wove and manufactured their
clothing from flax and from wool. Commerce and
handicrafts afforded honorable competence. The pray
er of Agur was apparently realized. There was nei
ther poverty nor riches. Wealth was uniformly dif
fused, and none were condemned to hopeless penury
and dependence. Less than four per cent, of the en
tire population lived in towns, and there were but four
cities whose population exceeded 10,000 persons.
Westward to the Pacific lay the fertile solitudes of
an unexplored continent, its resources undeveloped and
unsuspected. The dreams of Utopia seemed about to
be fulfilled the wide, the universal diffusion of civil,
political, and personal rights among the great body of
the people, accompanied by efficient and vigorous guar
anties for the safety of life, the protection of property,
and the preservation of liberty.
Since that time, Mr. President, the growth in wealth
and numbers in this country has had no precedent in
the building of nations. The genius of the people,
stimulated to prodigious activity by freedom, by indi
vidualism, by universal education, has subjugated the
desert and abolished the frontier. The laboring capa
city of every inhabitant of this planet has been dupli
cated by machinery. In Massachusetts alone we are told
that its engines are equivalent to the labor of one hun
dred million men. We now perform one-third of the
world's mining, one-quarter of its manufacturing, one-
fifth of its farming, and we possess one-sixth part of
its entire accumulated wealth.
INGALLS. 247
The Anglo-Saxon, Mr. President, is not by nature
or instinct an anarchist, a socialist, a nihilist, or a
communist. He does not desire the repudiation of
debts, public or private, and he does not favor the
forcible redistribution of property. He came to this
continent, as he has gone everywhere else on the face
of the earth, with a purpose. The 40,000 English
colonists who came to this country between 1620 and
1650 formed the most significant, the most formidable
migration that has ever occurred upon this globe since
time began. They brought with them social and po
litical ideas, novel in their application, of inconceivable
energy and power, the home, the family, the State, in
dividualism, the right of personal effort, freedom of
conscience, an indomitable love of liberty and justice,
a genius for self-government, an unrivalled capacity
for conquest, but preferring charters to the sword,
and they have been inexorable and relentless in the ac
complishment of their designs. They were fatigued
with caste and privilege and prerogative. They were
tired of monarchs, and so, upon the bleak and inhospit
able shores of New England they decreed the sov
ereignty of the people, and there they builded " a
church without a bishop, and a state without a king."
The result of that experiment, Mr. President, has
been ostensibly successful. Under the operation of
those great forces, after two hundred and seventy
years, this country exhibits a peaceful triumph over
many subdued nationalities, through a government
automatic in its functions and sustained by no power
but the invisible majesty of law. With swift and con
stant communication by lines of steam transportation
248 INGALLS.
by land and lake and sea, with telegraphs extending
their nervous reticulations from State to State, the re
motest members of this gigantic republic are animated
by a vitality as vigorous as that which throbs at its
mighty heart, and it is through the quickened intelli
gence that has been communicated by those ideas that
these conditions, which have been fatal to other na
tions, have become the pillars of our strength and the
bulwarks of our safety.
Mr. President, if time and space signified now
what they did when independence was declared, the
United States could not exist under one government.
It would not be possible to secure unity of purpose or
identity of interest between communities separated by
such barriers and obstacles as Maine and California.
But time and distance are relative terms, and, under
the operations of these forces, this continent has
dwindled to a span. It is not as far from Boston to San
Francisco to-day as it was from Boston to Baltimore
in 1791 ; and as the world has shrunk, life has expand
ed. For all the purposes for which existence is valu
able in this world for comfort, for convenience, for
opportunity, for intelligence, for power of locomotion,
and superiority to the accidents and the fatalities of na
ture the fewest in years among us, Mr. President,
has lived longer and has lived more worthily than Me
thuselah in all his stagnant centuries.
When the Atlantic cable was completed, it was not
merely that a wire, finer by comparison than the gossa
mer of morning, had sunk to its path along the peaks
and the plateaus of the deep, but the earth instantane
ously grew smaller by the breadth of the Atlantic.
INGALLS. 249
A new volume in the history of the world was opened.
The to-morrow of Europe flashed upon the yesterday
of America. Time, up to the period when this experi
ment commenced on this continent, yielded its treas
ures grudgingly and with reluctance. The centuries
crept from improvement to improvement with tardy
and sluggish steps, as if nature were unwilling to
acknowledge the mastery of man. The great inven
tions of glass, of gunpowder, of printing, and the ma
riner's compass consumed a thousand years, but as
the great experiment upon this continent has proceed
ed, the ancient law of progress has been disregarded,
and the mind is bewildered by the stupendous results
of its marvellous achievements.
The application of steam to locomotion on land and
sea, the cotton-gin, electric illumination and telegra
phy, the cylinder printing press, the sewing machine,
the photographic art, tubular and suspension bridges,
the telephone, the spectroscope, and the myriad forms
of new applications of science to health and domestic
comfort, to the arts of peace and war, have alone ren
dered democracy possible. The steam-engine emanci
pated millions' from the slavery of daily toil and left
them at liberty to pursue a higher range of effort ; labor
has become more remunerative, and the flood of wealth
has raised the poor to comfort and the middle classes
to affluence. With prosperity has attended leisure,
books, travel; the masses have been provided with
schools, and the range of mental inquiry has become
wider and more daring. The sewing-machine does
the work of a hundred hands, and gives rest and hope
to weary lives. Farming, as my distinguished friend
250 INGALLS.
from New York (Mr. Evarts) once said, has become
a "sedentary occupation." The reaper no longer
swings his sickle in midsummer fields through the yel
lowish grain, followed by those who gather the wheat
and the tares, but he rides in a vehicle, protected from
the meridian sun, accomplishing in comfort in a single
hour the former labors of a day.
By these and other emancipating devices of society
the laborer and the artisan acquire the means of study
and recreation. They provide their children with bet
ter opportunities than they possessed. Emerging from
the obscure degradation to which they have been con
signed by monarchies, they have assumed the leader
ship in politics and society. The governed have be
come the governors; the subjects have become the
kings. They have formed States; they have invented
political systems; they have made laws; they have es
tablished literatures; and it is not true, Mr. President,
in one sense, that during this extraordinary period the
rich have grown richer and the poor have grown poor
er. There has never been a time, since the angel stood
with the flaming sword before the gates of Eden, when
the dollar of invested capital paid as low a return in
interest as it does to-day; nor has there been an hour
when the dollar that is earned by the laboring man
would buy so much of everything that is essential for
the welfare of himself and his family as it will to-day.
Mr. President, monopolies and corporations, how
ever strong they may be, cannot permanently enslave
such a people. They have given too many convincing
proofs of their capacity for self-government. They
"have made too many incredible sacrifices for this great
INGALLS. 251
system, which has been builded and established here,
to allow it to be overthrown. They will submit to
no dictation.
We have become, Mr. President, the wealthiest na
tion upon the face of this earth, and the greater part
of these enormous accumulations has been piled up
during the past fifty years. From 1860 to 1880, not
withstanding the losses incurred by the most destruc
tive war of modern times, the emancipation of four
billions of slave property, the expenses of feeding the
best fed, of clothing the best clothed, and of sheltering
the best-sheltered people in the world, notwithstanding
all the losses by fire and flood during that period of
twenty years, the wealth of the country increased at
the rate of $250,000 for every hour. Every time that
the clock ticked above the portal of this Chamber the
aggregated, accumulated permanent wealth of this
country increased more than $70.
Sir, it rivals, it exceeds the fictions of the "Arabian
Nights." There is nothing in the story of the lamp of
Aladdin that surpasses it. It is without parallel or pre
cedent ; and the national ledger now shows a balance to
our credit, after all that has been wasted and squandered
and expended and lost and thrown away, of between
$60,000,000,000 and $70,000,000,000. I believe my
self that, upon a fair cash market valuation, the aggre
gate wealth of this country to-day is not less than
$100,000,000,000. This is enough, Mr. President, to
make every man and every woman and every child be
neath the flag comfortable ; to keep the wolf away from
the door. It is enough to give to every family a compet
ence, and yet we are told that there are thousands of
252 INGALLS.
people who never have enough to eat in any one day
in the year. We are told by the statisticians of the De
partment of Labor of the United States that, notwith
standing this stupendous aggregation, there are a mil
lion American citizens, able-bodied and willing to
work, who tramp the streets of our cities and the
country highways and byways, in search of labor with
which to buy their daily bread, in vain.
Mr. President, is it any wonder that this condition
of things can exist without exciting profound appre
hension? I heard, or saw rather, for I did not hear it
I saw in the morning papers that, in his speech yes
terday, the senator from Ohio (Mr. Sherman) devot
ed a considerable part of his remarks to the defense of
millionaires; that he declared that they were the froth
upon the beer of our political system.
( Mr. Sherman : I said speculators. )
Speculators. They are very nearly the same, for the
millionaires of this country, Mr. President, are not the
producers and the laborers. They are arrayed like
Solomon in all his glory, but "they toil not, neither do
they spin" yes, they do spin. This class, Mr. Presi
dent, I am glad to say, is not confined to this country
alone. These gigantic accumulations have not been
the result of industry and economy. There would be
no protest against them if they were. There is an an
ecdote floating around the papers, speaking about
beer, that some gentleman said to the keeper of a sa
loon that he would give him a recipe for selling more
beer, and when he inquired what it was, he said, "Sell
less froth." If the millionaires and speculators of this
country are the froth upon the beer of our system, the
INGALLS. 253
time has come when we should sell more beer by sell
ing less froth.
The people are beginning to inquire whether, under
"a government of the people by the people for the peo
ple," under a system in which the bounty of nature is
supplemented by the labor of all, any citizen can show
a moral, yes, or a legal, title to $200,000,000. Some
have the temerity to ask whether or not any man can
show a clear title to $100,000,000. There have been
men rash enough to doubt whether, under a system so
constituted and established, by speculation or other
wise, any citizen can show a fair title to $10,000,000
when the distribution of wealth per capita would be
less than $1,000. If I were put upon my voir dire
I should hesitate before admitting that, in the sense
of giving just compensation and equivalent, any man
in this country or any other country ever absolutely
earned a million dollars. I do not believe he ever did.
What is the condition to-day, Mr. President, by the
statistics? I said that at the beginning of this century
there was a condition of practical social equality;
wealth was uniformly diffused among the great mass
of the people. I repeat that the people are not anarch
ists; they are not socialists; they are not communists;
but they have suddenly awaked to the conception of
the fact that the bulk of the property of the country is
passing into the hands of what the senator from Ohio,
by a euphemism, calls the "speculators" of the world,
not of America alone. They infest the financial and
social system of every country upon the face of the
earth. They are the men of no politics neither Dem-
254 INGALLS.
ocrat nor Republican. They are the men of all nation
alities and of no nationality; with no politics but plun
der, and with no principle but the spoliation of the
human race.
A table has been compiled for the purpose of show
ing how wealth in this country is distributed, and it is
full of the most startling admonition. It has appeared
in the magazines; it has been commented upon in this
Chamber ; it has been the theme of editorial discussion.
It appears from this compendium that there are in the
United States two hundred persons who have an ag
gregate of more than $20,000,000 each ; and there has
been one man the Midas of the century at whose
touch everything seemed to turn to gold, who acquired
within less than the lifetime of a single individual, out
of the aggregate of the national wealth that was earned
by the labor of all applied to the common bounty of
nature, an aggregate that exceeded the assessed valu
ation of four of the smallest States in this Union.
( Mr. Hoar : And more than the whole country had
when the constitution was formed.)
Yes, and, as the senator from Massachusetts well
observes, and I thank him for the suggestion, much
more, many times more than the entire wealth of the
country when it was established and founded. Four
hundred persons possess $10,000,000 each, 1,000 per
sons $5,000,000 each, 2,000 persons $2,500,000 each,
6,000 persons $1,000,000 each, and 15,000 persons
$500,000 each, making a total of 31,100 people who
possess $36,250,000,000.
Mr. President, it is the most appalling statement that
ever fell upon moral ears. It is, so far as the results
INGALLS. 255
of democracy as a social and political experiment are
concerned, the most terrible commentary that ever was
recorded in the book of time; and Nero fiddles while
Rome burns. It is thrown off with a laugh and a sneer
as the "froth upon the beer" of our political and social
system. As I said, the assessed valuation recorded in
the great national ledger standing to our credit is about
$65,000,000,000.
Our population is 62,500,000, and by some means,
some device, some machination, some incantation, hon
est or otherwise, some process that cannot be defined,
less than a two-thousandth part of our population have
obtained possession, and have kept out of the penitenti
ary in spite of the means they have adopted to acquire
it, of more than one-half of the entire accumulated
wealth of the country.
That is not the worst, Mr. President. It has been
chiefly acquired by men who have contributed little to
the material welfare of the country, and by processes
that I do not care in appropriate terms to describe; by
the wrecking of the fortunes of innocent men, women,
and children ; by jugglery, by book-keeping, by finan
ciering, by what the senator from Ohio calls "specula
tion," and this process is going on with frightful and
constantly accelerating rapidity.
The entire industry of this country is passing under
the control of organized and confederated capital.
More than fifty of the necessaries of life to-day, with
out which the cabin of the farmer and the miner cannot
be lighted, or his children fed or clothed, have passed
absolutely under the control of syndicates and trusts
and corporations composed of speculators, and, by
256 INGALLS.
means of these combinations and confederations, com
petition is destroyed ; small dealings are rendered im
possible; competence can no longer be acquired, for
it is superfluous and unnecessary to say that if, under
a system where the accumulations distributed per cap
ita would be less than a thousand dollars, 31,000 ob
tained possession of more than half of the accumulated
wealth of the country, it is impossible that others
should have a competence or an independence.
So it happens, Mr. President, that our society is be
coming rapidly stratified almost hopelessly stratified
into the condition of superfluously rich and help
lessly poor. We are accustomed to speak of this as the
land of the free and the home of the brave. It will
soon be the home of the rich and the land of the slave.
We point to Great Britain and we denounce aris
tocracy and privileged and titled classes and landed
estates. We thought, when we had abolished primo
geniture and entail, that we had forever forbidden and
prevented these enormous and dangerous accumula
tions; but, sir, we had forgotten that capital could
combine; we were unaware of the yet undeveloped ca
pacity of corporations; and so, as I say, it happens
upon the threshold and in the vestibule of our second
century, with all its magnificent record behind us, with
this tremendous achievement in the way of wealth,
population, invention, opportunity for happiness, we
are in a condition compared with which the accumu
lated fortunes of Great Britain are puerile and insignifi
cant.
It is no wonder, Mr. President, that the laboring,
industrial, and agricultural classes, who have been
INGALLS.
made intelligent under the impulse of universal edu
cation, have at last awakened to this tremendous con
dition and are inquiring whether or not this experi
ment has been successful. And, sir, the speculators
must beware. They have forgotten that the condi
tions, political and social, here are not a reproduction
of the conditions under which these circumstances exist
in other lands. Here is no dynasty; here is no priv
ilege or caste or prerogative ; here are no standing ar
mies ; here are no hereditary bondsmen, but every atom
in our political system is quick, instinct, and endowed
with life and power.
His ballot at the box is the equivalent of the ballot of
the richest speculator. Thomas Jefferson, the great
apostle of modern democracy, taught the lesson to his
followers and they have profited well by his instruc
tion that under a popular democratic representative
government wealth, culture, intelligence were ultimate
ly no match for numbers.
The numbers in this country, Mr. President, have
learned at last the power of combination, and the spec
ulators should not forget that, while the people of this
country are generous and just, they are jealous also,
and that, when discontent changes to resentment, and
resentment passes into exasperation, one volume of a
nation's history is closed and another will be opened.
The speculators, Mr. President! The cotton pro
duct of this country, I believe, is about 6,000,000 bales.
(Mr. Butler: Seven million bales.)
Seven million bales, I am told. The transactions of
the New York Cotton Exchange are 40,000,000 bales,
representing transactions speculative, profitable, re-
258 INGALLS.
munerative, by which some of these great accumula
tions have been piled up, an inconceivable burden upon
the energies and industries of the country.
The production of coal oil, I believe, in this country
has averaged something like 20,000,000 barrels a year.
The transactions of the New York Petroleum Ex
change year by year average 2,000,000,000 barrels, fic
titious, simulated, the instruments of the gambler and
the speculator, by means of which, through an impost
upon the toil and labor and industry of every laborer
engaged in the production of petroleum, additional dif
ficulties are imposed.
It is reported that the coal alone that is mined in
Pennsylvania, indispensable to the comfort of millions
of men, amounts in its annual product to about $40,-
000,000 of which one-third is profit over and above the
cost of production and a fair return for the capital in
vested.
That is "speculation," Mr. President, and every dol
lar over and above the cost of production, with a fair
return upon the capital invested, every dollar of that
fifteen or sixteen millions is filched, robbed, violently
plundered out of the earnings of the laborers and oper
atives and farmers who are compelled to buy it; and
yet it goes by the euphemistic name of "speculation,"
and is declared to be legitimate ; it is eulogized and de
fended as one of those practices that is entitled to re
spect and approbation.
Nor is this all, Mr. President. The hostility be
tween the employers and the employed in this country
is becoming vindictive and permanently malevolent.
Labor and capital are in two hostile camps to-day.
INGALLS. 259
Lockouts and strikes and labor difficulties have become
practically the normal condition of our system, and it
is estimated that during the year that has just closed,
in consequence of these disorders, in consequence of
this hostility and this warfare, the actual loss in labor,
in wages, in the destruction of perishable commodities
by the interruption of railway traffic, has not been less
than $300,000,000.
Mr. President, this is a serious problem. It may
well engage the attention of the representatives of the
States and of the American people. I have no sympa
thy with that school of political economists which
teaches that there is an irreconcilable conflict between
labor and capital, and which demands indiscriminate,
hostile, and repressive legislation against men because
they are rich, and corporations because they are strong.
Labor and capital should not be antagonists, but allies
rather. They should not be opponents and enemies,
but colleagues and auxiliaries whose co-operating riv
alry is essential to national prosperity. But I cannot
forbear to affirm that a political system under which
such despotic power can be wrested from the people
and vested in a few is a democracy only in name.
A financial system under which more than half of
the enormous wealth of the country, derived from the
bounty of nature and the labor of all, is owned by a
little more than thirty thousand people, while one mil
lion American citizens able and willing to toil are home
less tramps, starving for bread, requires readjustment.
A social system which offers to tender, virtuous and
dependent women the alternative between prostitution
260 INGALLS.
and suicide as an escape from beggary is organized
crime for which some day unrelenting justice will de
mand atonement and expiation.
Mr. President, the man who loves his country and
the man who studies her history will search in vain for
any natural cause for this appalling condition. The
earth has not forgotten to yield her increase. There
has been no general failure of harvests. We have had
benignant skies and the early and the latter rain. Nei
ther famine nor pestilence has decimated our popula
tion or wasted its energies. Immigration is flowing in
from every land, and we are in the lusty prime of na
tional youth and strength, with unexampled resources
and every stimulus to their development ; but, sir, the
great body of the American people are engaged to-day
in studying these problems that I have suggested in this
morning hour. They are disheartened with misfor
tunes. They are weary with unrequited toil. They
are tired of the exactions of the speculators. They de
sire peace and rest. They are turning their attention
to the great industrial questions which underlie their
material prosperity. They are indifferent to party.
They care nothing for Republicanism nor for Democ
racy as such. They are ready to say, "A plague on
both your houses," and they are ready also, Mr. Presi
dent, to hail and to welcome any organization, any
measure, any leader that promises them relief from the
profitless strife of politicians and this turbulent and
distracting agitation which has already culminated in
violence and may end in blood.
Such, sir, is the verdict which I read in the elec
tions from which we have just emerged, a verdict that
INGALLS. 26r
was unexpected by the leaders of both parties, and
which surprised alike the victors and the vanquished.
It was a spontaneous, unpremeditated protest of the
people against existing conditions. It was a revolt
of the national conscience against injustice, a move
ment that is full of pathos and also full of danger, be
cause such movements sometimes make victims of
those who are guiltless. It was not a Republican de
feat. It was not a Democratic victory. It was a great
upheaval and uprising, independent of and superior
to both. It was a crisis that may become a catastrophe,
filled with terrible admonition, but not without encour
agement to those who understand and are ready to co
operate with it. It was a peaceful revolution, an at
tempt to resume rights that seemed to have been in
fringed.
It is many years, Mr. President, since I predicted
this inevitable result. In a speech delivered in this
Chamber on the I5th of February, 1878, from the seat
that is now adorned by my honorable friend from
Texas who sits before me [Mr. Reagan] I said:
" We can not disguise the truth that we are on the
verge of an impending revolution. The old issues are
dead. The people are arraying themselves upon one
side or the other of a portentous contest. On one side
is capital, formidably intrenched in privilege, arrogant
from continued triumph, conservative, tenacious of
old theories, demanding new concessions, enriched by
domestic levy and foreign commerce, and struggling
to adjust all values to its own standard. On the other
is labor, asking for employment, striving to develop
262 INGALLS.
domestic industries, battling with the forces of nature,
and subduing the wilderness; labor, starving and sul
len in cities, resolutely determined to overthrow a
system under which the rich are growing richer and
the poor are growing poorer ; a system which gives to
a Vanderbilt the possession of wealth beyond the
dreams of avarice and condemns the poor to a poverty
which has no refuge from starvation but the prison or
the grave.
" Our demands for relief, for justice, have been met
with indifference or disdain.
" The laborers of the country asking for employ
ment are treated like impudent mendicants begging for
bread."
Mr. President, it may be cause, it may be coinci
dence, it may be effect, it may be post hoc or it may be
propter hoc, but it is historically true that this great
blight that has fallen upon our industries, this paraly
sis that has overtaken our financial system, coincided
in point of time with the diminution of the circulating
medium of the country. The public debt was declared
to be payable in coin, and then the money power of
silver was destroyed. The value of property dimin
ished in proportion, wages fell, and the value of every
thing was depreciated except debts and gold. The
mortgage, the bond, the coupon, and the tax have re
tained immortal youth and vigor. They have not
depreciated. The debt remains, but the capacity to
pay has been destroyed. The accumulation of years
disappears under the hammer of the sheriff, and the
debtor is homeless, while the creditor obtains the se-
INGALLS. 263
curity for his debt for a fraction of what it was actu
ally worth when the debt was contracted.
There is, Mr. President, a deep-seated conviction
among the people, which I fully share, that the de
monetization of silver in 1873 was one element of a
great conspiracy to deliver the fiscal system of this
country over to those by whom it has, in my opinion,
finally been captured. I see no proof of the assertion
that the Demonetization Act of 1873 was fraudulently
or corruptly procured, but from the statements that
have been made it is impossible to avoid the conviction
that it was part of a deliberate plan and conspiracy
formed by those who have been called speculators to
still further increase the value of the standard by
which their accumulations were to be measured. The
attention of the people was not called to the subject.
It is one of the anomalies and phenomena of legis
lation.
That bill was pending in its various stages for four
years in both Houses of Congress. It passed both
bodies by decided majorities. It was read and re-read
and reprinted thirteen times, as appears by the records.
It was commented upon in newspapers; it was the
subject of discussion in financial bodies all over the
country; and yet we have the concurrent testimony of
every senator and every member of the House of Rep
resentatives who was present during the time that the
legislation was pending and proceeding that he knew
nothing whatever about the demonetization of silver
and the destruction of the coinage of the silver dollar.
The senator from Nevada [Mr. Stewart], who knows
so many things, felt called upon to make a speech of
264 IXGALLS.
an hour's duration to show that he knew nothing what
ever about it. I have heard other members declaim
and with one consent make excuse that they knew
nothing about, it.
As I say, it is one of the phenomena and anomalies of
legislation, and I have no other explanation to make
than this : I believe that both Houses of Congress and
the President of the United States must have been hyp
notized. So great was the power of capital, so pro
found was the impulse, so persistent was the determina
tion, that the promoters of this scheme succeeded, by
the operation of mind power and will force, in captur
ing and bewildering the intelligence of men of all
parties, of members of both Houses of Congress, and
the members of the Cabinet, and the President of the
United States.
And yet, Mr. President, it cannot be doubted that
the statements that these gentlemen make are true.
There is no doubt of the sincerity or the candor of
those who have testified upon this matter; and it is
incredible (I am glad it occurred before I was a mem
ber of this body) that a change in our financial system,
that deprived one of the money metals of its debt-pay
ing power, that changed the whole financial system of
the country, and, to a certain extent, the entire fiscal
methods of the world, could have been engineered
through the Senate and the House of Representatives
and the Cabinet of the President, and secured Execu
tive approval without a single human being knowing
anything whatever about it. In an age of miracles,
Mr. President, wonders never cease.
It is true, that this marvel was accomplished when
INGALLS. 265
the subject was not one of public discussion. It was
done at a time when, although the public mind was
intensely interested in financial subjects, and methods
of relief from existing conditions were assiduously
sought, the suggestion had never proceeded from any
quarter that this could be accomplished by the demone
tization of silver, or ceasing to coin the silver dollar.
It was improvidently done, but it would not be more
surprising, it would not be more of a strain upon hu
man credulity, if fifteen years from now we were to be
informed that no one was aware that in the bill that
is now pending the proposition was made for the free
coinage of silver.
Mr. President, there is not a State west of the Alle-
ghany Mountains and south of the Potomac and Ohio
rivers that is not in favor of the free coinage of silver.
There is not a State in which, if that proposition were
to be submitted to a popular vote, it would not be
adopted by an overwhelming majority. I do not mean
by that inclusion to say that in those States east of the
Alleghanies and north of the Ohio and Potomac rivers
there is any hostility or indisposition to receive the
benefits that would result from the remonetization of
silver. On the contrary, in the great commonwealths
that lie to the northeast upon the Atlantic seaboard,
New York, Pennsylvania, and the manufacturing and
commercial States, I am inclined to believe, from the
tone of the press, from the declarations of many as
semblies, that if the proposition were to be submitted
there it would also receive a majority of the votes.
If the proposition were to be submitted to the votes
of the people of this country at large whether the silver
266 INGALLS.
dollar should be recoined and silver remonetized, not
withstanding the prophecies, the predictions, the anim
adversions of those who are opposed to it, I have not
the slightest doubt that the great majority of the
people, irrespective of party, would be in favor of it,
and would so record themselves. They have declared
in favor of it for the past fifteen years, and they have
been juggled with, they have been thwarted, they have
been paltered with and dealt with in a double sense.
The word of promise that was made to their ear in the
platforms of political parties has been broken to their
hope. There was a majority in this body at the last
session of Congress in favor of the free coinage of
silver. The compromise that was made was not what
the people expected, nor what they had a right to de
mand. They felt they had been trifled with, and that
is one cause of the exasperation expressed in the ver
dict of November 4th.
I feel impelled to make one further observation.
Warnings and admonitions have been plenty in this
debate. We have been admonished of the danger that
would follow; we have been notified of what would
occur if the free coinage of silver were supported by a
majority of this body, or if it were to be adopted as a
part of our financial system. I am not a prophet, nor
the son of a prophet, but I say to those who are now
arraying themselves against the deliberately expressed
judgment of the American people, a judgment that
they know has been declared and recorded, I say to
the members of this body, I say, so far as I may do
so with propriety, to the members of the co-ordinate
branch of Congress, and I say, if without impro-
INGALLS. 267
priety I may do so, to the Executive of the nation, that
there will come a time when the people will be trifled
with no longer on this subject.
Once, twice, thrice by Executive intervention,
Democratic and Republican, by parliamentary proceed
ings that I need not characterize, by various methods
of legislative jugglery, the deliberate purpose of the
American people, irrespective of party, has been
thwarted, it has been defied, it has been contumeliously
trodden under foot; and I repeat to those who have
been the instruments and the implements, no matter
what the impulse or the motive or the intention may
have been, at some time the people will elect a House
of Representatives, they will elect a Senate of the
United States, they will elect a President of the United
States, who will carry out their pledges and execute
the popular will.
Mr. President, by the readjustment of the political
forces of the nation under the eleventh census, the
seat of power has at last been transferred from the
circumference of this country to its center. It has
been transformed from the seaboard to that great in-
tramontane region between the Alleghanies and the
Sierras, extending from the British possessions to the
Gulf of Mexico, a region whose growth is one of the
wonders and marvels of modern civilization. It seems
as if the column of migration had paused in its west
ward march to build upon those tranquil plains and in
those fertile valleys a fabric of society that should be
the wonder and admiration of the world; rich in
every element of present prosperity, but richer in every
prophecy of future greatness and renown.
?68 INGALLS.
When I went west, Mr. President, as a carpet
bagger, in 1858, St. Louis was an outpost of civiliza
tion, Jefferson City was the farthest point reached
by a railroad, and in all that great wilderness, extend
ing from the sparse settlements along the Missouri to
the summits of the Sierra Nevada, and from the Yel
lowstone to the canons of the Rio Grande, a vast soli
tude from which I have myself, since that time, voted
to admit seven States into the American Union, there
was neither harvest nor husbandry, neither habitation
nor home, save the hut of the hunter and the wigwam
of the savage. Mr. President, we have now within
those limits, extending southward from the British
possessions and embracing the States of the Missis
sippi Valley, the Gulf, and the southeastern Atlantic,
a vast productive region, the granary of the world, a
majority of the members of this body, of the House
of Representatives, and of the Electoral College.
We talk with admiration of Egypt. For many cen
turies the ruins of its cities, its art, its religions, have
been the marvel of mankind. The Pyramids have sur
vived the memory of their builders, and the Sphinx
still questions, with solemn gaze, the vague mystery
of the desert.
The great fabric of Egyptian civilization, with its
wealth and power, the riches of its art, its creeds and
faiths and philosophies, was reared, from the labors of
a few million slaves under the lash of despots, upon a
narrow margin 450 miles long and 10 miles wide, com
prising in all, with the delta of the Nile, no more than
10,000 square miles of fertile land.
Who, sir, can foretell the future of that region to
IIS GALLS. 269
which I have adverted, with its 20,000 miles of navi
gable water-courses, with its hundreds of thousands
of square miles of soil excelling in fecundity all that of
the Nile, when the labor of centuries of freemen under
the impulse of our institutions shall have brought
forth their perfect results?
Mr. President, it is to that region, with that popula
tion and with such a future, that the political power of
this country has at last been transferred, and they are
now unanimously demanding the free coinage of sil
ver. It is for that reason that I shall cordially support
the amendment proposed by the senator from Nevada.
In doing so I not only follow the dictates of my own
judgment, but I carry out the wishes of a great ma
jority of my constituents irrespective of party or of
political affiliation. I have been for the free coinage
of silver from the outset, and I am free to say that
after having observed the operations of the act of 1878
I am more than ever convinced of the wisdom of that
legislation and the futility of the accusations by which
it was assailed.
The people of the country that I represent have lost
their reverence for gold. They have no longer any
superstition about coin. Notwithstanding the decla
rations of the monometallists, notwithstanding the as
saults that have been made by those who are in favor
of still further increasing the value of the standard by
which their possessions are measured, they know that
money is neither wealth, nor capital, nor value, and
that it is merely the creation of the law by which all
these are estimated and measured.
We speak, sir, about the volume of money, and
2/O IXGALLS.
about its relation to the wealth and capital of the coun
try. Let me ask you, sir, for a moment, what would
occur if the circulating medium were to be destroyed?
Suppose that the gold and silver were to be withdrawn
suddenly from circulation and melted up into bars and
ingots and buried in the earth from which they were
taken. Suppose that all the paper money, silver certifi
cates, gold certificates, national-bank notes, treasury
notes, were stacked in one mass at the end of the treas
ury building and the torch applied to them, and they
were to be destroyed by fire, and their ashes scattered,
like the ashes of Wickliffe, upon the Potomac, to be
spread abroad, wide as its waters be.
What would be the effect? Would not this country
be worth exactly as much as it is to-day? Would
there not be just as many acres of land, as many
houses, as many farms, as many days of labor, as much
improved and unimproved merchandise, and as much
property as there is to-day? The result would be
that commerce would languish, the sails of the ships
would be furled in the harbors, the great trains would
cease to run to and fro on their errands, trade would be
reduced to barter, and, the people finding their ener
gies languishing, civilization itself would droop, and
we should be reduced to the condition of the nomadic
wanderers upon the primeval plains.
Suppose, on the other hand, that instead of being
destroyed, all the money in this country were to be put
in the possession of a single man gold, and paper,
and silver and he were to be moored in mid-Atlantic
upon a raft with his great hoard, or to be stationed in
the middle of Sahara's desert without food to nourish,
INGALLS. 271
or shelter to cover, or the means of transportation to
get away. Who would be the richest man, the pos
sessor of the gigantic treasure or the humblest settler
upon the plains of the west, with a dugout to shelter
him, and with corn meal and water enough for his
daily bread?
Doubtless, Mr. President, you search the Scriptures
daily, and are therefore familiar with the story of those
depraved politicians of Judea who sought to entangle
the Master in his talk, by asking him if it were lawful
to pay tribute to Caesar or not. He perceiving the pur
pose that they had in view, said unto them, " Show me
the tribute money ; " and they brought him a penny.
He said, " Whose is this image and superscription ? "
and they replied, " Caesar's ; " and he said, " Render
unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God
the things that are God's."
I hold, Mr. President, between my thumb and finger,
a silver denarius, or " penny," of that ancient time
perhaps the identical coin that was brought by the
hypocritical Herodian bearing the image and super
scription of Caesar. It has been money for more than
twenty centuries. It was money when Jesus walked
the waves and in the tragic hour at Gethsemane. Im
perial Caesar is " dead and turned to clay." He has
yielded to a mightier conqueror, and his eagles, his
ensigns, and his trophies are indistinguishable dust.
His triumphs and his victories are a schoolboy's tale.
Rome herself is but a memory. Her marble porticoes
and temples and palaces are in ruins. The sluggish
monk and the lazy Roman lazzaroni haunt the Senate
House and the Coliseum, and the derisive owl wakes
2/2 ING ALLS.
the echoes of the voiceless Forum. But this little con
temporary disk of silver is money still, because it
bears the image and superscripture of Caesar. And,
sir, it will continue to be money for twenty centuries
more, should it resist so long the corroding canker and
the gnawing tooth of time. But if one of these pages
should take this coin to the railway track, as boys
sometimes do, and allow the train to pass over it, in
one single instant its function would be destroyed.
It would contain as many grains of silver as before,
but it would be money no longer, because the image
and superscription of Caesar had disappeared.
Mr. President, money is the creation of law, and
the American people have learned that lesson, and
they are indifferent to the assaults, they are indifferent
to the arguments, they are indifferent to the as
persions which are cast upon them for demand
ing that the law of the United States shall place the
image and superscription of Caesar upon silver enough
and gold enough and paper enough to enable them to
transact without embarrassment, without hindrance,
without delay, and without impoverishment their daily
business affairs, and that shall give them a measure of
values that will not make their earnings and their be
longings the sport and the prey of speculators.
Mr. President, this contest can have but one issue.
The experiment that has begun will not fail. It is use
less to deny that many irregularities have been toler
ated here; that many crimes have been committed in
the sacred name of liberty ; that our public affairs have
been scandalous episodes to which every patriotic heart
reverts with distress; that there have been envy and
INGALLS. 273
jealousy in high places; that there have been treacher
ous and lying platforms; that there have been shallow
compromises and degrading concessions to popular
errors; but, amid all these disturbances, amid all these
contests, amid all these inexplicable aberrations, the
path of the nation has been steadily onward.
At the beginning of our second century we have
entered upon a new social and political movement
whose results cannot be predicted, but which are cer
tain to be infinitely momentous. That the progress
will be upward I have no doubt. Through the long
and desolate tract of history, through the seemingly
aimless struggles, the random gropings of humanity,
the turbulent chaos of wrong, injustice, crime, doubt,
want, and wretchedness, the dungeon and the block,
the inquisition and the stake, the trepidations of the
oppressed, the bloody exultations and triumphs of ty
rants,
The unlifted ax, the agonizing wheel,
Luke's iron crown and Damien's bed of steel,
the tendency has been toward the light. Out of every
conflict some man or sect or nation has emerged with
higher privileges, greater opportunities, purer religion
and greater capacity for happiness and out of the con
flict in which we are now engaged, I am confident
there will arise liberty, justice, equality; the conti
nental unity of the American republic, the social fra
ternity and the indubitable independence of the Amer
ican people.
104
2/4 ELIOT.
Eliot, Charles W., a distinguished American scholar,
born in Boston, Mass., March 20, 1834. He was professor
of mathematics and chemistry at Harvard University, 1858-
63, and professor of chemistry at the Massachusetts Insti
tute of Technology, 1865-69. In 1869 ^ e became presi
dent of Harvard University, which position he still holds.
He has been a frequent speaker at educational and civic
functions, and has written much upon educational and other
important topics of the time. He is an impressive, scholarly
orator, whose grasp of the subject at hand is always ade
quate and sure. Many of his addresses have been pub
lished. His speech at the New England banquet represents
him fairly as a public speaker.
INAUGURAL ADDRESS AS PRESIDENT OF
HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
DELIVERED OCTOBER 1 9, 1869. i
MR. PRESIDENT, I hear in your voice the voice
of the Alumni, welcoming me to high honors and ar
duous labors, and charging me to be faithful to the
duties of this consecrated office. I take up this weighty
charge with a deep sense of insufficiency, but yet with
youthful hope and a good courage. High examples
will lighten the way. Deep prayers of devoted
living and sainted dead will further every right
effort, every good intention. The University is strong
in the ardor and self-sacrifice of its teachers, in the
vigor and wisdom of the Corporation and Overseers,
and in the public spirit of the community. Above all,
I devote myself to this sacred work in the firm faith
ELIOT. 275
that the God of the fathers will be also with the chil
dren.
The endless controversies whether language, phil
osophy, mathematics, or science supply the best mental
training, whether general education should be chiefly
literary or chiefly scientific, have no practical lesson
for us to-day. This University recognizes no real
antagonism between literature and science, and con
sents to no such narrow alternatives as mathematics
or classics, science or metaphysics. We would have
them all, and at their best. To observe keenly, to rea
son soundly, and to imagine vividly are operations as
essential as that of clear and forcible expression; and
to develop one of these faculties it is not necessary to
repress and dwarf the others.
A university is not closely concerned with the ap
plications of knowledge until its' general education
branches into professional. Poetry and philosophy
and science do indeed conspire to promote the material
welfare of mankind; but science no more than poetry
finds its best warrant in its utility. Truth and right
are above utility in all realms of thought and action.
It were a bitter mockery to suggest that any subject
whatever should be taught less than it now is in Amer
ican colleges. The only conceivable aim of a college
government in our day is to broaden, deepen, and in
vigorate American teaching in all branches of learn
ing. It will be generations before the best of Amer
ican institutions of education w r ill get growth enough
to bear pruning. The descendants of the Pilgrim
Fathers are still very thankful for the parched corn of
learning.
276 ELIOT.
Recent discussions have added pitifully little to the
world's stock of wisdom about the staple of education.
,Who blows to-day such a ringing trumpet-call to the
study of language as Luther blew? Hardly a signi
ficant word has been added in two centuries to Mil
ton's description of the unprofitable way to study
languages. Would any young American learn how to
profit by travel, that foolish beginning but excellent
sequel to education, he can find no apter advice than
Bacon's.
The practice of England and America is literally
centuries behind the precept of the best thinkers upon
education. A striking illustration may be found in the
prevailing neglect of the systematic study of the Eng
lish language. How lamentably true to-day are these
words of Locke: "If any one among us have a facil
ity or purity more than ordinary in his mother tongue,
it is owing to chance, or his genius, or anything rather
than to his education or any care of his teacher."
The best result of the discussion which has raged so
long about the relative educational value of the main
branches of learning is the conviction that there is
room for them all in a sound scheme, provided that
right methods of teaching be employed. It is not
because of the limitation of their faculties that boys
of eighteen come to college, having mastered nothing
but a few score pages of Latin and Greek and the bare
elements of mathematics.
Not nature, but an unintelligent system of instruc
tion from the primary school through the college, is
responsible for the fact that many college graduates
have so inadequate a conception of what is meant by
ELIOT. 2/7
scientific observation, reasoning, and proof. It is pos
sible for the young to get actual experience of all the
principal methods of thought. There is a method of
thought in language, and a method in mathematics,
and another of natural and physical science, and an
other of faith. With wise direction even a child would
drink at all these springs.
The actual problem to be solved is not what to
teach, but how to teach. The revolutions accomplished
in other fields of labor have a lesson for teachers.
New England could not cut her hay with scythes, nor
the West her wheat with sickles. When millions are
to be fed where formerly there were but scores, the
single fish-line must be replaced by seines and trawls,
the human shoulders by steam elevators, and the wood
en-axled ox-cart on a corduroy road by the smooth-
running freight train.
In education there is a great hungry multitude to
be fed. The great well at Orvieto, up whose spiral
paths files of donkeys painfully brought the sweet
water in kegs, was an admirable construction in its
day; but now we tap Fresh Pond in our chambers.
The Orvieto well might remind some persons of edu
cational methods not yet extinct. With good meth
ods we may confidently hope to give young men of
twenty or twenty-five an accurate general knowledge
of all the main subjects of human interest, besides a
minute and thorough knowledge of the one subject
which each may select as his principal occupation in
life. To think this impossible is to despair of man
kind; for unless a general acquaintance with many
2/8 ELIOT.
branches of knowledge good as far as it goes be at
tainable by great numbers of men, there can be no such
thing as an intelligent public opinion; and in the mod
ern world the intelligence of public opinion is the
one condition of social progress.
What has been said of needed reformation in
methods of teaching the subjects which have already
been nominally admitted to the American curriculum
applies not only to the university, but to the prepara
tory schools of every grade down to the primary. The
American college is obliged to supplement the Ameri
can school. Whatever elementary instruction the
schools fail to give, the college' must supply. The
improvement of the schools has of late years permitted
the college to advance the grade of its teaching and
adapt the methods of its later years to men instead
of boys.
This improvement of the college reacts upon the
schools to their advantage; and this action and reac
tion will be continuous. A university is not built
in the air, but on social and literary foundations which
preceding generations have bequeathed, If the whole
structure needs rebuilding, it must be rebuilt from the
foundation. Hence sudden reconstruction is impos
sible in our high places of education. Such induce
ments as the College can offer for enriching and en
larging the course of study pursued in preparatory
schools, the Faculty has recently decided to give. The
requirements in Latin and Greek grammar are to be set
at a thorough knowledge of forms and general princi
ples; the lists of classical authors accepted as equiva
lents for the regular standards are to be enlarged; an
ELIOT. 279
accquaintance with physical geography is to be re
quired ; the study of elementary mechanics is to be rec
ommended; and prizes are to be offered for reading
aloud and for the critical analysis of passages from
English authors. At the same time the university will
take to heart the counsel which it gives to others.
In every department of learning the university
would search out by trial and reflection the best meth
ods of instruction. The university believes in the
thorough study of language. It contends for all lan
guages, Oriental, Greek, Latin, Romance, German,
and especially for the mother tongue; seeing in them
all one institution, one history, one means of discipline,
one department of learning. In teaching languages it
is for this American generation to invent, or to accept
from abroad, better tools than the old; to devise, or
to transplant from Europe, prompter and more com
prehensive methods than the prevailing; and to com
mand more intelligent labor, in order to gather rapid
ly and surely the best fruit of that culture and have
time for other harvests. '
The University recognizes the natural and physi
cal sciences as indispensable branches of education, and
has long acted upon this opinion; but it would have
science taught in a rational way, objects and instru
ments in hand, not from books merely, not through
the memory chiefly, but by the seeing eye and the in
forming fingers. Some of the scientific scoffers at
gerund-grinding and nonsense verses might well look
at home; the prevailing methods of teaching science,
the world over, are, on the whole, less intelligent than
the methods of teaching language.
28O ELIOT.
The University would have scientific studies in
school and college and professional school develop and
discipline those powers of the mind by which science
has been created and is* daily nourished, the powers
of observation, the inductive faculty, the sober imagin
ation, the sincere and proportionate judgment. A stu
dent in the elements gets no such training by studying
even a good text-book, though he really master it,
nor yet by sitting at the feet of the most admirable
lecturer.
If there be any subject which seems fixed and set
tled in its educational aspects, it is the mathematics;
yet there is no department of the University which has
been, during the last fifteen years, in such a state of
vigorous experiment upon methods and appliances
of teaching as the mathematical department. It would
be well if the primary schools had as much faith in the
possibility of improving their way of teaching multi
plication.
The important place which history, and mental,
moral, and political philosophy, should hold in any
broad scheme of education- is recognized of all; but
none know so well how crude are the prevailing meth
ods of teaching these subjects as those who teach them
best. They cannot be taught from books alone; but
must be vivified and illustrated by teachers of active,
comprehensive, and judicial mind. To learn by rote
a list of dates is not to study history.
Mr. Emerson says that history is biography. In a
'deep sense this is true. Certainly the best way to im
part the facts of history to the young is through the
quick interest they take in the lives of the men and
THEODORK ROOSEVELT.
ELIOT. 28l
women who fill great historical scenes or epitomize
epochs. From the centres so established their inter
est may be spread over great areas. For the young es
pecially it is better to enter with intense sympathy into
the great moments of history than to stretch a thin
attention through its weary centuries.
Philosophical subjects should never be taught with
authority. They are not established sciences; they
are full of disputed matters, and open questions, and
bottomless speculations. It is not the function of the
teacher to settle philosophical and political controver
sies for the pupil, or even to recommend to him any
one set of opinions as better than another. Exposi
tion, not imposition, of opinions is the professor's part.
The student should be made acquainted with all sides
of these controversies, with the salient points of each
system; he should be shown what is still in force of
institutions or philosophies mainly outgrown, and what
is new in those now in vogue. The very word "educa
tion" is a standing protest against dogmatic teaching.
The notion that education consists in the authorita
tive inculcation of what the teacher deems true may
be logical and appropriate in a convent, or a semin
ary for priests, but it is intolerable in universities and
public schools, from primary to professional. The
worthy fruit of academic culture is an open mind,
trained to careful thinking, instructed in the methods
of philosophic investigation, acquainted in a general
way with the accumulated thought of past generations,
and penetrated with humility. It is thus that the Uni-
yersity in our day serves Christ and the Church.
The increasing weight, range, and thoroughness of
282 ELIOT.
the examination for admission to college may strike
some observers with dismay. The increase of real re
quisitions is hardly perceptible from year to year; but
on looking back ten or twenty years the changes
are marked and all in one direction. The dignity and
importance of this examination has been steadily ris
ing^ and this rise measures the improvement of the
preparatory schools.
When the gradual improvement of American
schools has lifted them to a level with the German
gymnasia we may expect to see the American col
lege bearing a nearer resemblance to the German Fac
ulties of Philosophy than it now does. The actual ad
mission examination may best be compared with the
first examination of the University of France. This
examination, which comes at the end of a French
boy's school life, is for the degree of Bachelor of Arts
or of Sciences. The degree is given to young men
who come fresh from school and have never been un
der university teachers: a large part of the recipients
never enter the university. The young men who come
to our examination for admission to college are older
than the average of French Bachelors of Arts. The
examination tests not only the capacity of the candi
dates, but also the quality of their school instruction;
it is a great event in their lives, though not, as in
France, marked by any degree. The examination is
conducted by college professors and tutors who have
never had any relations whatever with those exam
ined. It would be a great gain if all subsequent col
lege examinations could be as impartially conducted
ELIOT. 283
by competent examiners brought from without the
college and paid for their services.
When the teacher examines his class, there is no
effective examination of the teacher. If the ex
aminations for the scientific, theological, medical, and
dental degrees were conducted by independent boards
of examiners appointed by professional bodies of dig
nity and influence, the significance of these degrees
would be greatly enhanced. The same might be said
of the degree of Bachelor of Laws were it not that this
degree is at present earned by attendance alone, and
not by attendance and examination. The American
practice of allowing the teaching body to examine for
degrees has been partly dictated by the scarcity of men
outside the Faculties who are at once thoroughly ac
quainted with the subjects of examination and suffi
ciently versed in teaching to know what may fairly be
expected both of students and instructors.
This difficulty could now be overcome. The chief
reason, however, for the existence of this practice is
that the Faculties were the only bodies that could con
fer degrees intelligently when degrees were obtained
by passing through a prescribed course of study with
out serious checks, and completing a certain term of
residence without disgrace. The change in the manner
of earning the university degrees ought, by right, to
have brought into being an examining body distinct
from the teaching body. So far as the college proper
is concerned, the Board of Overseers have, during the
past year, taken a step which tends in this direction.
The rigorous examination for admission has one
good effect throughout the college course ; it prevents a
284 ELIOT.
waste of instruction upon incompetent persons. A 1
school with a low standard for admission and a high
standard of graduation, like West Point, is obliged to
dismiss a large proportion of its students by the way.
Hence much individual distress, and a great waste of
resources, both public and private. But, on the other
hand, it must not be supposed that every student who
enters Harvard College necessarily graduates. Strict
annual examinations are to be passed. More than a
fourth of those who enter the college fail to take their
degrees.
Only a few years ago all students who graduated
at this college passed through one uniform curriculum.
Every man studied the same subjects in the same pro
portions, without regard to his natural bent or pref
erence. The individual student had no choice either
of subjects or teachers. This system is still the pre
vailing system among American colleges and finds
vigorous defenders. It has the merit of simplicity. So
had the school methods of our grandfathers, one
primer, one catechism, one rod for all children. On the
whole, a single common course of studies, tolerably
well selected to meet the average needs, seems to most
Americans a very proper and natural thing, even for
grown men.
As a people we do not apply to mental activities the
principle of division of labor; and we have but a halt
ing faith in special training for high professional em
ployments. The vulgar conceit that a Yankee can
turn his hand to anything we insensibly carry into high
places, where it is preposterous and criminal. We are
accustomed to seeing men leap from farm or shop to
ELIOT. 285
court-room or pulpit, and we half believe that common
men can safely use the seven-league boots of genius.
What amount of knowledge and experience do we
habitually demand of our lawgivers? What special
training do we ordinarily think necessary for our dip
lomatists? In great emergencies, indeed, the nation
has known where to turn. Only after years of the
bitterest experience did we come to believe the pro
fessional training of a soldier to be of value in war.
This lack of faith in thr prophecy of a natural bent,
and in the value of a discipline concentrated upon a
single object, amounts to a national danger.
In education the individual traits of different minds
have not been sufficiently attended to. Through all
the period of boyhood the school studies should be
representative ; all the main fields of knowledge should
be entered upon. But the young man of nineteen or
twenty ought to know what he likes best and is most
fit for. If his previous training has been sufficiently
wide, he will know by that time whether he is most apt
at language, or philosophy, or natural science, or
mathematics. If he feels no loves he will at least have
his hates. At that age the teacher may wisely abandon
hates. At that age the teacher may wisely abandon
the school-dame's practice of giving a copy of nothing
but zeros to the child who alleges that he cannot make
that figure.
When the revelation of his own peculiar taste and
capacity comes to a young man, let him reverently give
it welcome, thank God, and take courage. Thereafter
he knows his way to happy, enthusiastic work, and,
God willing, to usefulness and success. The civili-
285 ELIOT.
zation of a people may be inferred from the variety of
its tools. There are thousands of years between the
stone hatchet and the machine-shop. As tools multi
ply, each is more ingeniously adapted to its own
exclusive purpose. So with the men that make the
State. For the individual, concentration, and the
highest development of his own peculiar faculty, is
the only prudence. But for the State it is variety not
uniformity, of intellectual product, which is needful.
These principles are the justification of the system
of elective studies which has been gradually developed
in this college during the past twenty years. At pres
ent the Freshman year is the only one in which there
is a fixed course prescribed for all. In the other three
years more than half the time allotted to study is filled
with subjects chosen by each student from lists which
comprise six studies in the Sophomore year, nine in
the Junior year, and eleven in the Senior year. The
range of elective studies is large, though there are
some striking deficiencies. The liberty of choice of
subject is wide, but yet has very rigid limits. There
is a certain framework which must be filled ; and about
half the material of the filling is prescribed. The choice
offered to the student does not lie between liberal stud
ies and the professional or utilitarian studies. All the
studies which are open to him are liberal and discip
linary, not narrow or special. Under this system the
College does not demand, it is true, one invariable set
of studies of every candidate for the first degree in
Arts; but its requisitions for this degree are never
theless high and inflexible, being nothing less than
four years devoted to liberal culture.
ELIOT. 287
It has been alleged that the elective system must
weaken the bond which unites members of the same
class. This is true ; but, in view of another much more
efficient cause of the diminution of class intimacy, the
point is not very significant. The increased size of the
college classes inevitably works a great change in this
respect. One hundred' and fifty young men cannot
be so intimate with each other as fifty used to be. This
increase is progressive. Taken in connection with the
rising average age of the students, it would compel
the adoption of methods of instruction different from
the old, if there were no better motive for such change.
The elective system fosters scholarship, because it
gives free play to natural preferences and inborn apti
tudes, makes possible enthusiasm for a chosen work,
relieves the professor and the ardent disciple of the
presence of a body of students who are compelled to an
unwelcome task, and enlarges instruction by substitut
ing many and various lessons given to small, lively
classes, for a few lessons many times repeated to dif
ferent sections of a numerous class. The College
therefore proposes to persevere in its efforts to estab
lish, improve, and extend the elective system. Its
administrative difficulties, which seem formidable at
first, banish before a brief experience.
There has been much discussion about the compara
tive merits of lectures and recitations. Both are useful :
lectures, for inspiration, guidance, and the compre
hensive methodizing which only one who has a view
of the whole field can rightly contrive ; recitations, for
securing and testifying a thorough mastery, on the
part of the pupil, of the treatise or author in hand, for
388 ELIOT.
conversational comment and amplification, for emula
tion and competition. Recitations alone readily de
generate into dusty repetitions, and lectures alone are
too often a useless expenditure of force. The lecturer
pumps laboriously into sieves. The water may be
wholesome, but it runs through. A mind must work
to grow.
Just as far, however, as the student can be relied
on to master and appreciate his author without the aid
of frequent questioning and repetitions, so far is it
possible to dispense with recitations. Accordingly in
the later college years there is a decided tendency to
diminish the number of recitations, the faithfulness
of the student being tested by periodical examinations.
This tendency is in a right direction if prudently con
trolled.
The discussion about lectures and recitations has
brought out some strong opinions about text-books and
their use. Impatience with text-books and manuals is
very natural in both teachers and taught. These books
are indeed, for the most part, very imperfect, and
stand in constant need of correction by the well-in
formed teacher. Stereotyping, in its present undevel
oped condition, is in part to blame for their most ex
asperating defects. To make the metal plates keep
,pace with the progress of learning is costly. The
manifest deficiencies of text-books must not, however,
drive us into a too-sweeping condemnation of their use.
It is a rare teacher who is superior to all manuals in
his subject. Scientific manuals are, as a rule, much
worse than those upon language, literature, or philoso
phy; yet ':he main improvement in medical education
ELIOT. 289
in this country during the last twenty years has been
the addition of systematic recitations from text books
to the lectures which were formerly the principal means
of theoretical instruction. The training of a medical
student, inadequate as it is, offers the best example we
have of the methods and fruits of an education mainly
scientific. The transformation which the average stu
dent of a good medical school undergoes in three years
is strong testimony to the efficiency of the training he
receives.
There are certain common misapprehensions about
colleges in general, and this college in particular, to
which I wish to devote a few moments' attention.
And, first, in spite of the familiar picture of the moral
dangers which environ the student, there is no place
so safe as a good college during the critical passage
from boyhood to manhood.
The security of the college commonwealth is large
ly due to its exuberant activity. Its public opinion,
though easily led astray, is still high in the main. Its
scholarly tastes and habits, its eager friendships and
quick hatreds, its keen debates, its frank discussions
of character and of deep political and religious ques
tions, all are safeguards against sloth, vulgarity, and
depravity. Its society and not less its solitudes are
full of teaching. Shams, conceit, and fictitious distinc
tions get no mercy. There is nothing but ridicule for
bombast and sentimentality. Repression of genuine
sentiment and emotion is indeed, in this college, car
ried too far. Reserve is more respectable than any
undiscerning communicativeness.
But neither Yankee shamefacedness nor English
290 ELIOT.
stolidity is admirable. This point especially touches
you, young men, who are still undergraduates. When
you feel a true admiration for a teacher, a glow of en
thusiasm for work, a thrill of pleasure at some excel
lent saying, give it expression. Do not be ashamed of
these emotions. Cherish the natural sentiment of per
sonal devotion to the teacher who calls out your bet
ter powers. It is a great delight to serve an intellectual
master. We Americans are but too apt to lose this
happiness. German and French students get it. If
ever, in after years, you come to smile at the youthful
reverence you paid, believe me, it will be with tears
in your eyes.
Many excellent persons see great offence in any sys
tem of college rank ; but why should we expect more of
young men than we do of their elders? How many
men and women perform their daily tasks from the
highest motives alone, for the glory of God and the
relief of man's estate? Most people work for bare
bread, a few for cake. The college rank-list reinforces
higher motives. In the campaign for character no aux
iliaries are to be refused. Next to despising the
enemy, it is dangerous to reject allies. To devise a
suitable method of estimating the fidelity and attain
ments of college students is, however, a problem which
has long been under 'discussion and has not yet re
ceived a satisfactory solution. The worst of rank as a
stimulus is the self-reference it implies in the aspirants.
The less a young man thinks about the cultivation of
his mind, about his own mental progress, about him
self, in short, the better.
The petty discipline of colleges attracts altogether
ELIOT. 291
too much attention both from friends and foes. It is
to be remembered that the rules concerning decorum,
however necessary to maintain the high standard of
manners and conduct which characterizes this college,
are nevertheless justly described as petty. What is tech
nically called a quiet term cannot be accepted as the
acme of university success. This success is not to" be
measured by the frequency or rarity of college punish
ments. The criteria of success or failure in a high
place of learning are not the boyish escapades of an in
significant minority, nor the exceptional cases of ruin
ous vice. Each year must be judged by the added op
portunities of instruction, by the prevailing enthusiasm
in learning, and by the gathered wealth of culture and
character. The best way to put boyishness to shame
is to foster scholarship and manliness. The manners
of a community cannot be improved by main force any
more than its morals. The statutes of the University
need some amendment and reduction in the chapters
on crimes and misdemeanors. But let us render to our
fathers the justice we shall need from our sons.
What is too minute or precise for our use was doubt
less wise and proper in its day. It was to inculcate a
reverent bearing and due consideration for things
sacred that the regulations prescribed a black dress on
Sunday. Black is not the only decorous wear in these
days ; but we must not seem, in ceasing from this par
ticular mode of good manners, to think less of the
gentle breeding of which only the outward signs, and
not the substance, have been changed.
Harvard College has always attracted and still at
tracts students in all conditions of life. From the city
ELIOT.
trader or professional man who may be careless how
much his son spends at Cambridge, to the farmer or
mechanic who finds it a hard sacrifice to give his boy
his time early enough to enable him to prepare for
college, all sorts and conditions of men have wished
and still wish to send their sons hither. There are al
ways scores of young men in this university who earn
or borrow every dollar they spend here. Every year
many young men enter this coljege without any re
sources whatever. If they prove themselves men of
capacity and character they never go away for lack of
money. More than twenty thousand dollars a year is
now devoted to aiding students of narrow means to
compass their education, beside all the remitted fees
and the numerous private benefactions. These latter
are unfailing. Taken in connection with the proceeds
of the funds applicable to the aid of poor students, they
enable the Corporation to say that no good student
need ever stay away from Cambridge or leave college
simply because he is poor.
There is one uniform condition, however, on which
help is given, the recipient must be of promising abil
ity and the best character. The community does not
owe superior education to all children, but only to
the elite, to those who, having the capacity, prove
by hard work that they have also the necessary perse
verance and endurance. The process of preparing to
enter college under the difficulties which poverty en
tails is just such a test of worthiness as is needed.
At this moment there is no college in the country more
eligible for a poor student than Harvard on the mere
ground of economy. The scholar, hip funds are
ELIOT. 293
mainly the fruit of the last fifteen years. The future
will take care of itself; for it is to be expected that
the men who in this generation have had the benefit
of these funds, and who succeed in after-life, will pay
many-fold to their successors in need the debt which
they owe, not to the college, but to benefactors whom
they cannot even thank save in heaven.
No wonder that scholarships are founded. What
greater privilege than this of giving young men of
promise the coveted means of intellectual growth and
freedom? The angels of heaven might envy mortals
so fine a luxury. The happiness which the winning
of a scholarship gives is not the recipient's alone; it
flashes back to the home whence he came and gladdens
anxious hearts there. The good which it does is not
his alone, but descends, multiplying at every step,
through generations. Thanks to the beneficent mys
teries of hereditary transmission, no capital earns such
interest as personal culture. The poorest and the rich
est students are equally welcome here, provided that
with their poverty or their wealth they bring capacity,
ambition, and purity.
The poverty of scholars is of inestimable worth
in this money-getting nation. It maintains the true
standards of virtue and honor. The poor friars, not
the bishops, saved the 'Church. The poor scholars and
preachers of duty defend the modern community
against its own material prosperity. Luxury and
learning are ill bed-fellows. Nevertheless, this college
owes much of its distinctive character to those who,
bringing hither from refined homes good breeding,
gentle tastes, and a manly delicacy, add to them open-
294 ELIOT.
ness and activity of mind, intellectual interests, and a
sense of public duty. It is as high a privilege for a
rich man's son as for a poor man's to resort to these
academic halls and so to take his proper place among
cultivated and intellectual men. To lose altogether the
presence of those who in early life have enjoyed the
domestic and social advantages of wealth would be
as great a blow to the College as to lose the sons of the
poor. The interests of the college and the country are
identical in this regard. The country suffers when the
rich are ignorant and unrefined. Inherited wealth is
an unmitigated curse when divorced from cul
ture.
Harvard College is sometimes reproached with be
ing aristocratic. If by "aristocracy" be meant a stupid
and pretentious caste, founded on wealth and birth and
an affectation of European manners, no charge could
be more preposterous : the College is intensely Ameri
can in affection and intensely democratic in temper.
But there is an aristocracy to which the sons of Har
vard have belonged, and let us hope will ever aspire
to belong, the aristocracy which excels in manly
sports, carries off the honors and prizes of the learned
professions, and bears itself with distinction in all
fields of intellectual labor and combat; the aristocracy
which in peace stands firmest for the public honor and
renown, and in war rides first into the murderous
thickets.
The attitude of the University in the prevailing dis
cussions touching the education and fit employments
of women demands brief explanation. America is the
natural arena for these debates; for here the female
ELIOT. 295
sex has a better past and a better present than else
where. Americans, as a rule, hate disabilities of all
sorts, whether religious, political or social. Equality
between the sexes, without privilege or oppression on
either side, is the happy custom of American homes.
While this great discussion is going on, it is the duty of
the University to maintain a cautious and expectant
policy. The Corporation will not receive women as
students into the College proper, nor into any school
whose discipline requires residence near the school.
The difficulties involved in a common residence of
hundreds of young men and women of immature char
acter and marriageable age are very grave. The ne
cessary police regulations are exceedingly burden
some.
The Corporation are not influenced to this decision,
however, by any crude notions about the innate capa
cities of women. The world knows next to nothing
about the natural mental capacities of the female sex.
Only after generations of civil freedom and social
equality will it be possible to obtain the data necessary
for an adequate discussion of woman's natural tenden
cies, tastes, and capabilities.
Again, the Corporation do not find it necessary to
entertain a confident opinion upon the fitness or un-
fitness of women for professional pursuits. It is not
the business of the University to decide this mooted
point. In this country the University does not under
take to protect the community against incompetent
lawyers, ministers, or doctors. The community must
protect itself by refusing to employ such. Practical,
not theoretical, considerations determine ttie policy of
296 ELIOT.
the University. Upon a matter concerning which prej
udices are deep, and opinion inflammable, and ex
perience scanty, only one course is prudent or justifi
able when such great interests are at stake, that of
cautious and well-considered experiment.
The practical problem is to devise a safe, promising,
and instructive experiment. Such an experiment the
Corporation have meant to try in opening the newly es
tablished University Courses of Instruction to com
petent women. In these courses the University of
fers to young women who have been to good schools,
as many years as they wish of liberal culture in studies
which have no direct professional value, to be sure,
but which enrich and enlarge both intellect and char
acter. The University hopes thus to contribute to the
intellectual emancipation of women. It hopes to pre
pare some women better than they would otherwise
have been prepared for the profession of teaching, the
one learned profession to which women have already
acquired a clear title. It hopes that the proffer of this
higher instruction will have some reflex influence upon
schools for girls, to discourage superficiality and to
promote substantial education.
The governing bodies of the University are the
Faculties, the Board of Overseers, and the Corpora
tion. The University as a place of study and instruc
tion is, at any moment, what the Faculties make it.
The professors, lecturers, and tutors of the Univer
sity are the living sources of learning and enthusiasm.
They personally represent the possibilities of instruc
tion. They are united in several distinct bodies, the
academic and professional Faculties, each of which
ELIOT. 297
practically determines its own processes and rules.
The discussion of methods of instruction is the princi
pal business of these bodies.
As a fact, progress comes mainly from the Faculties.
This has been conspicuously the case with the Acad
emic and Medical Faculties during the last fifteen or
twenty years. The undergraduates used to have a no
tion that the time of the Academic Faculty was mainly
devoted to petty discipline. Nothing could be far
ther from the truth. The Academic Faculty is the
most active, vigilant, and devoted body connected with
the University. It, indeed, is constantly obliged to
discuss minute details which might appear trivial to
an inexperienced observer.
But in education technical details tell. Whether
German be studied by the Juniors once a week as an
extra study, or twice a week as an elective, seems,
perhaps, an unimportant matter; but, twenty years
hence, it makes all the difference between a generation
of Alumni who know German and a generation who do
not. The Faculty renews its youth, through the fre
quent appointments of tutors and assistant professors,
better and oftener than any other organization within
the University.
Two kinds of men make good teachers, young
men, and men who never grow old. The incessant dis
cussions of the Academic Faculty have borne much
fruit; witness the transformation of the University
since the beginning of President Walker's administra
tion. And it never tires. New men take up the old
'debates, and one year's progress is not less than an
other's. The divisions within the Faculty are never
298 ELIOT.
between the old and the young officers. There are al
ways old radicals and young conservatives.
The Medical Faculty affords another illustration of
the same principle, that for real university progress
we must look principally to the teaching bodies. The
Medical School to-day is almost three times as strong
as it was fifteen years ago. Its teaching power is
greatly increased, and its methods have been much im
proved. This gain is the work of the Faculty of the
School.
If, then, the Faculties be so important, it is a vital
question how the quality of these bodies can be main
tained and improved. It is very hard to find competent
professors for the University. Very few Americans
of eminent ability are attracted to this profession. The
pay has been too low, and there has been no gradual
rise out of drudgery, such as may reasonably be ex
pected in other learned callings. The law of supply
and demand, or the commercial principle that the qual
ity as well as the price of goods is best regulated by
the natural contest between producers and consumers,
never has worked well in the province of high educa
tion. And in spite of the high standing of some of its
advocates it is well-nigh certain that the so-called law
never can work well in such a field.
The reason is that the demand for instructors of the
highest class on the part of parents and trustees is
an ignorant demand, and the supply of highly educated
teachers is so limited that the consumer has not suffi
cient opportunities of informing himself concerning
the real qualities of the article he seeks. Originally a
bad judge, he remains a bad judge, because the supply
ELIOT. 299
is not sufficiently abundant and various to instruct him.
Moreover a need is not necessarily a demand. Every
body knows that the supposed law affords a very im
perfect protection against short weight, adulteration,
and sham, even in the case of those commodities which
are most abundant in the market and most familiar
to buyers. The most intelligent community is defence
less enough in buying clothes and groceries. When it
comes to hiring learning and inspiration and personal
weight, the law of supply and demand breaks down al
together. A university cannot be managed like a rail
road or a cotton-mill.
There are, however, two practicable improvements
in the position of college professors which will be of
very good effect. Their regular stipend must and will
be increased, and the repetitions which now harass
them must be diminished in number. It is a strong
point of the elective system that by reducing the size
of classes or divisions and increasing the variety of
subjects it makes the professors' labors more agreeable.
Experience teaches that the strongest and most de
voted professors will contribute something to the patri
mony of knowledge, or if they invent little themselves,
they will do something toward defending, interpreting,
or diffusing the contributions of others. Nevertheless,
the prime business of American professors in this gen
eration must be regular and assiduous class teaching.
With the exception of the endowments of the Observa
tory, the University does not hold a single fund pri
marily intended to secure to men of learning the leisure
and means to prosecute original researches.
The organization and functions of the Board of
300 ELIOT.
Overseers deserve the serious attention of all men
who are interested in the American method of provid
ing the community with high education through the
agency of private corporations. Since 1866 the Over
seers have been elected by the Alumni. Five men are
chosen each year to serve six years. The body has
therefore a large and very intelligent constituency and
is rapidly renewed. The ingenious method of nomin
ating to the electors twice as many candidates as there
are places to be filled in any year is worthy of care
ful study as a device of possible application in politics.
The real function of the Board of Overseers is to stim
ulate and watch the President and Fellows. Without
the Overseers the President and Fellows would be a
board of private trustees, self -perpetuated and self-con
trolled.
Provided as it is with two governing boards, the
University enjoys that principal safeguard of all
American governments, the natural antagonism be
tween two bodies of different constitution, powers, and
privileges. While having with the Corporation a com
mon interest of the deepest kind in the welfare of the
University and the advancement of learning, the Over
seers should always hold toward the Corporation an
attitude of suspicious vigilance. They ought always
to be pushing and prying. It would be hard to over
state the importance of the public supervision exercised
by the Board of Overseers. Experience proves that
our main hope for the permanence and ever-widening*
usefulness of the University must rest upon this
'double-headed organization.
The English practice of setting up a single body of
ELIOT. 301
private trustees to carry on a school or charity ac
cording to the personal instructions of some founder or
founders has certainly proved a lamentably bad one;
and when we count by generations the institutions thus
established have proved short-lived. The same causes
which have brought about the decline of English en
dowed schools would threaten the life of this Uni
versity were it not for the existence of the Board of
Overseers. These schools were generally managed by
close corporations, self-elected, self-controlled, without
motive for activity, and destitute of external stimulus
and aid. Such bodies are too irresponsible for human
nature. At the time of life at which men generally
come to such places of trust, rest is sweet, and the easi
est way is apt to seem the best way; and the responsi
bility of inaction, though really heavier, seems lighter
than the responsibility of action.
These corporations were often hampered by found
ers' wills and statutory provisions which could not be
executed and yet stood in the way of organic improve
ments. There was no systematic provision for thor
ough inspections and public reports thereupon. We
cannot flatter ourselves that under like circumstances
we should always be secure against like dangers. Pro
voked by crying abuses, some of the best friends of
education in England have gone the length of main
taining that all these school endowments ought to be
destroyed and the future creation of such trusts ren
dered impossible. French law practically prohibits the
creation of such trusts by private persons.
Incident to the Overseers' power of inspecting the
University and publicly reporting upon its condition
302 ELIOT.
is the important function of suggesting and urging im
provements. The inertia of a massive university is
formidable. A good past is positively dangerous if
it make us content with the present and so unprepared
for the future. The present constitution of our Board
of Overseers has already stimulated the Alumni of
several other New England colleges to demand a sim
ilar control over the property-holding Board of Trus
tees which has heretofore been the single source of all
authority.
We come now to the heart of the University, the
Corporation. This board holds the funds, makes ap
pointments, fixes salaries, and has, by right, the initia
tive in all changes of the organic law of the University.
Such an executive board must be small to be efficient.
It must always contain men of sound judgment in fi
nance; and literature and the learned professions
should be adequately represented in it. The Corpora
tion should also be but slowly renewed ; for it is of the
utmost consequence to the University that the Gov
ernment should have a steady aim, and a prevailing
spirit which is independent of individuals and trans
missible from generation to generation.
And what should this spirit be?
First, it should be a catholic spirit. A university
must be indigenous ; it must be rich ; but, above all, it
must be free. The winnowing breeze of freedom must
blow through all its chambers. It takes a hurricane to
blow wheat away. An atmosphere of intellectual free
dom is the native air of literature and science. This
University aspires to serve the nation by training men
to intellectual honesty and independence of mind. The
ELIOT. 303
Corporation demands of all its teachers that they be
grave, reverent, and high-minded; but it leaves them,
like their pupils, free. A university is built, not by a
sect, but by a nation.
Secondly, the actuating spirit of the Corporation
must be a spirit of fidelity, fidelity to the many and
various trusts reposed in them by the hundreds of per
sons who out of their penury or their abundance have
given money to the President and Fellows of Har
vard College in the beautiful hope of doing some per
petual good upon this earth. The Corporation has con
stantly done its utmost to make this hope a living fact.
One hundred and ninety-nine years ago William Pen-
noyer gave the rents of certain estates in the county of
Norfolk, England, that "two fellows and two scholars
for ever should be educated, brought up, and main
tained" in this College. The income from this bequest
has never failed ; and to-day one. of the four Pennoyer
scholarships is held by a .lineal descendant of William
Pennoyer's brother Robert. So a lineal descendant of
Governor Danforth takes this year the income of the
property which Danforth bequeathed to the College in
1699.
The Corporation have been as faithful in the greater
things as in the less. They have been greatly blessed
in one respect: in the whole life of the Corporation
seven generations of men nothing has ever been lost
by malfeasance of officers or servants. A reputation for
scrupulous fidelity to all trusts is the most precious pos
session of the Corporation. That safe, the College
might lose everything else and yet survive: that lost
beyond repair, and the days of the College would be
304 ELIOT.
numbered. Testators look first to the trustworthiness
and permanence of the body which is to dispense their
benefactions.
The Corporation thankfully receive all gifts which
may advance learning; but they believe that the in
terests of the University may be most effectually pro
moted by not restricting too narrowly the use to which
a gift may be applied. Whenever the giver desires it,
the Corporation will agree to keep any fund separately
invested under the name of the giver, and to apply the
whole proceeds of such investment to any object the
giver may designate. By such special investment,
however, the insurance which results from the absorp
tion of a specific gift in the general funds is lost. A
fund invested by itself may be impaired or lost by
a single error of judgment in investing. The chance of
such loss is small in any one generation, but appreciable
in centuries. Such general designations as salaries,
books, dormitories, public buildings, scholarships
'(graduate or undergraduate), scientific collections,
and expenses of experimental laboratories, are of per
manent significance and effect ; while experience proves
that too specific and minute directions concerning the
application of funds must often fail of fulfilment sim
ply in consequence of the changing needs and habits
of successive generations.
Again, the Corporation should always be filled with
the spirit of enterprise. An institution like this Col
lege is getting decrepit when it sits down contentedly
on its mortgages. On its invested funds the Corpora
tion should be always seeking how safely to make a
quarter of a per cent. more. A quarter of one per cent.
ELIOT. 30$
means a new professorship. It should be always push
ing after more professorships, better professors, more
land and buildings, and better apparatus. It should be
eager, sleepless, and untiring, never wasting a moment
in counting laurels won, ever prompt to welcome and
apply the liberality of the community, and liking no
prospect so well as that of difficulties to be overcome
and labors to be done in the cause of learning and pub
lic virtue.
You recognize, gentlemen, the picture which I have
drawn in thus delineating the true spirit of the Cor
poration of this College. I have described the noble
quintessence of the New England character, that
character which has made us a free and enlightened
people, that character which, please God, shall yet do
a great work in the world for the lifting up of human
ity.
Apart from the responsibility which rests upon the
Corporation, its actual labors are far heavier than the
community imagines. The business of the University
has greatly increased in volume and complexity during
the past twenty years, and the drafts made upon the
time and thought of every member of the Corporation
are heavy indeed. The high honors of the function
are in these days most generously earned.
The President of the University is primarily an ex
ecutive officer ; but, being a member of both governing
boards and of all the Faculties, he has also the influence
in their debates to which his more or less perfect in
timacy with the University and greater or less personal
weight may happen to entitle him. An administrative
officer who undertakes to do everything himself will
114
306 ELIOT.
do but little and that little ill. The President's first
duty is that of supervision. He should know what
each officer's and servant's work is, and how it is done.
But the days are past in which the President could be
be called on to decide everything from the purchase of
a door-mat to the appointment of a professor. The
principle of divided and subordinate responsibilities
whcih rules in government bureaus, in manufactories,
and all great companies, which makes a modern army
a possibility, must be applied in the University.
The President should be able to discern the practical
essence of complicated and long-drawn discussions.
He must often pick out that promising part of theory
which ought to be tested by experiment, and must de
cide how many of things desirable are also attainable
and what one of many projects is ripest for execution.
He must watch and look before, watch, to seize op
portunities to get money, to secure eminent teachers
and scholars, and to influence public opinion toward
the advancement of learning; and look before, to an
ticipate the due effect on the University of the fluctua
tions of public opinion on educational problems; of
the progress of the institutions which feed the Univer
sity; of the changing condition of the professions
which the University supplies ; of the rise of new pro
fessions; of the gradual alteration of social and relig
ious habits in the community. The University must
accommodate itself promptly to significant changes in
the character of the people for whom it exists. The
institutions of higher education in any nation are al
ways a faithful mirror in which are sharply reflected
the national history and character. In this mobile na-
ELIOT. 307
tion the action and reaction between the University
and society at large are more sensitive and rapid 1
than in stiffer communities. The President, therefore,
must not need to see a house built before he can com
prehend the plan of it. He can profit by a wide inter
course with all sorts of men, and by every real discus
sion on education, legislation, and sociology.
The most important function of the President is that
of advising the Corporation concerning appointments,
particularly about appointments of young men who
have not had time and opportunity to approve them
selves to the public. It is in discharging this duty that
the President holds the future of the University in
his hands. He cannot do it well unless he have in
sight, unless he be able to recognize, at times beneath
some crusts, the real gentleman and the natural teach
er. This is the one oppressive responsibility of the
President: all other cares are light beside it. To see
every day the evil fruit of a bad appointment must be
the cruelest of official torments. Fortunately the good
effect of a judicious appointment is also inestimable;
and here, as everywhere, good is more penetrating
and diffusive than evil.
It is imperative that the statutes which define the
President's duties should be recast, and the customs of
the College be somewhat modified, in order that lesser
duties may not crowd out the greater. But, however
important the functions of the President, it must not
be forgotten that he is emphatically a constitutional
executive. It is his character and his judgment which
are of importance, not his opinions. He is the execu
tive officer of deliberative bodies in which decisions
308 ELIOT.
are reached after discussion by a majority vote. These
decisions bind him. He cannot force his own opin
ions upon anybody. A university is the last place
in the world for a dictator. Learning is always repub
lican. It has idols, but not masters.
What can the community do for the University?
It can love, honor, and cherish it. Love it and honor
it. The University is upheld by this public affection
and respect. In the loyalty of her children she finds
strength and courage. The Corporation, the Over
seers, and the several Faculties need to feel that the
leaders of public opinion, and especially the sons of
the College, are at their back, always ready to give
them a generous and intelligent support. Therefore
we welcome the Chief Magistrate of the Common
wealth, the senators, judges, and other dignitaries of
the State, who by their presence at this ancient cere
monial bear witness to the pride which Massachusetts
feels in her eldest University. Therefore we rejoice
in the presence of this throng of the Alumni, testifying
their devotion to the College which, though all
changes, is still their home. Cherish it. This Univer
sity, though rich among American colleges, is very
poor in comparison with the great universities of Eu
rope. The wants of the American community have
far outgrown the capacity of the University to supply
them. We must try to satisfy the cravings of the
select few as well as the needs of the average many.
We cannot afford to neglect the Fine Arts. We need
groves and meadows as well as barracks, and soon
there will be no chance to get them in this expanding
city. But, above all, we need professorships, books,
ELIOT. 309
and apparatus, that teaching and scholarship may
abound.
And what will the University do for the commun
ity? First, it will make a rich return of learning,
poetry, and piety. Secondly, it will foster the sense
of public duty, that great virtue which makes repub
lics possible. The founding of Harvard College was
an heroic act of public spirit. For more than a century
the breath of life was kept in it by the public spirit
of the Province and of its private benefactors. In the
last fifty years the public spirit of the friends of the
College has quadrupled its endowments. And how
have the young men nurtured here in successive gen
erations repaid the founders for their pious care?
Have they honored freedom and loved their country?
For answer we appeal to the records of the national
service; to the lists of the senate, the cabinet, and the
diplomatic service, and to the rolls of the army and
navy.
Honored men, here present, illustrate before the
world the public quality of the graduates of this Col
lege. Theirs is no mercenary service. Other fields
of labor attract them more and would reward them
better; but they are filled with the noble ambition to
deserve well of the republic. There have been doubts,
in times yet recent, whether culture were not selfish;
where men of refined tastes and manners could really
love Liberty and be ready to endure hardness for her
sake; whether, in short, gentlemen would in this cen
tury prove as loyal to noble ideas as in other times
they had been to kings. In yonder old playground,
fit spot whereon to commemorate the manliness which
3IO ELIOT.
there was nurtured, shall soon rise a noble monument
which for generations will give convincing answer to
such shallow doubts ; for over its gates will be written,
"In memory of the sons of Harvard who died for their
country." The future of the University will not be
unworthy of its past.
DEPEW. 311
Depew, Chauncey M., an American lawyer, well
known as an after-dinner orator, born at Peekskill, N. Y.,
April 23, 1834. He studied law, and was admitted to the
bar in 1858. His interest in politics resulted in his entrance
into the lower house of the State Legislature in 1861, and
during 1863 he was the Secretary of State of New York. la
1869 he became attorney for the New York Central railway
and from 1885 to 1898 was president of the entire Vander-
bilt railway system. For many years he has declined all
political appointments, and his many public addresses have
been delivered on civic occasions. He is a ready, fluent
speaker, whose addresses are often enlivened by humorous
touches. His witty after-dinner speeches have been espe
cially admired.
SPEECH AT THE DINNER TO CELEBRATE
THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH
OF GENERAL GRANT.
DELIVERED AT DELMONICO% APRIL 2/, 1 888.
I DO not propose, as has been announced, to deliver
a formal oration upon General Grant, but, as one of the
many gentlemen who are to speak here to-night, to ex
press the judgment of a busy man of affairs upon his
character and career. We are not yet far enough from
this striking personality to read accurately the verdict
of posterity, and we are so near that we still feel the
force of the mighty passions in the midst of which he
moved and lived.
The hundred years of our national existence are
crowded with an unusual number of men eminent in
arms and in statesmanship ; but of all the illustrious list
312 DEPEW.
one only has his birthday a legal holiday George
Washington.
Of the heroes and patriots who filled the niches in
our temple of fame for the first century, the birthdays
of only two of them are of such significance that they
receive wide celebrations Lincoln and Grant.
When the historian of the future calmly and impar
tially writes the story of this momentous period, these
two names will be inseparably linked together. The
President supplemented the General, and the General
the President, and without them the great battle of
human rights and American unity might have been
lost.
Reticent as to his plans, secretive as to his move
ments, repelling inquiry, and disdaining criticism,
General Grant invited the deepest hostility from the
country at large. Three years of war, which had car
ried grief to every household, and in which the fail
ures had been greater than the successes, had made the
people dispirited, impatient, and irritable. The con
ditions were such that the demand for the removal of
Grant many times would have been irresistible, and the
call for recruits to fill his depleted ranks unanswered,
except for the peculiar hold the President had upon
the country.
Lincoln was not an accidental or experimental Presi
dent. As a member of Congress he became familiar
with the details of government, and in the debate
with Douglas had demonstrated a familiarity with
the questions before the people, and a genius for their
solution, unequaled among his contemporaries.
No one of the statesman of the time who might
DEPEW. 313
possibly have been President could have held the coun
try up to the high-water mark of the continuous strug
gle of hope against defeat, of fighting not only against
a solid enemy, but an almost equal division in his own
camps. His humble origin, his homely ways, his quaint
humor, his constant touch and sympathy with the
people, inspired the confidence which enabled him to
command and wield all the forces of the Republic. He
alone could stand between the demand for Grant's re
moval, the criticism upon his plans, the fierce outcries
against his losses, and satisfy the country of the infalli
bility of his own trust in the ultimate success of the
command.
On the other hand, the aspiration of Lincoln for the
defeat of the rebellion and the reunion of the States
could not have been realized except for Grant. Until
he appeared upon the scene the war had been a bloody
and magnificent failure. ,The cumulative and concen
trated passions of the Confederacy had fused the whole
people into an army of aggression and defence. The
North, without passion or vindictiveness, fought with
gloved hands, at the expense of thousands of lives and
fatal blows to prestige and credit. The lesson was
learned that a good brigadier, an able general of divis
ion, a successful corps commander, might be paralyzed
under the burden of supreme responsibility. Victories
were fruitless, defeats disastrous, delays demoralizing,
until the spirit of war entered the camp in the person
of Ulysses S. Grant. Without sentiment or passion,
he believed that every reverse could be retrieved and
victory should be followed with the annihilation of
the enemy's forces. "My terms are unconditional sur-
314 DEPEW.
render; I move immediately upon your works," was
the legend of Donelson which proclaimed the new
method of warfare. He hurled his legions against the
ramparts of Vicksburg, sacrificing thousands of lives
which might have been saved by delay, but saved the
loss of tens of thousands by malarial fever and camp
diseases, and possibly at the expense of defeat. He be
lieved that the river of blood shed to-day, and followed
by immediate results, was infinitely more merciful to
friend and foe than the slower disasters of war which
make the hecatombs of the dead.
From the surrender of Vicksburg rose the sun of na
tional unity to ascend to the zenith at Appomattox, and
never to set. Where all others had failed in the cap
ture of Richmond, he succeeded by processes which
aroused the protest and horror of the country and the
criticism of posterity but it triumphed. For thirty
nights in succession he gave to the battle-torn and deci
mated army the famous order, "By the left flank, for
ward " ; and for thirty days hurled them upon the ever-
succeeding breastworks and ramparts of the enemy.
But it was with the same inexorable and indomitable
idea that, with practically inexhaustible resources be
hind him, the rebellion could be hammered to death.
As Grant fought without vindictiveness or feeling of
revenge, in the supreme moment of victory the sol
dier disappeared and the patriot and statesman took his
place. He knew that the exultation of the hour would
turn to ashes in the future unless the surrendered
rebel soldier became a loyal citizen. He knew that
the Republic could not hold vassal provinces by the
power of the bayonet and live. He returned arms,
DEPEW. 315
gave food, transportation, horses, stock, and said,
"Cultivate your farms and patriotism.'' And they did.
Whatever others may have done, the Confederate sol
dier has never violated the letter or the spirit of that
parole.
All other conquerors have felt that the triumphal
entry into the enemy's capital should be the crowning'
event of the war. The Army of the Potomac had
been seeking to capture Richmond for four years, and
when the hour arrived for the victorious procession
Grant halted it, that no memory of humiliation should
stand in the way of the rebel capital becoming once
more the capital of a loyal State.
The curse of power is flattery ; the almost inevitable
concomitant of greatness, jealousy; and yet no man
ever lived who so rejoiced in the triumph of others as
General Grant.
This imperturbable man hailed the victories of his
generals with \vild delight. Sheridan, riding down the
Valley, reversing the tide of battle, falling with re
sistless blows upon the enemy until they surrendered,
drew from his admiring commander the exulting re
mark to the country : " Behold one of the greatest
generals of this or any other age." His companion
and steadfast friend through all his campaigns, the
only man who rivaled him in genius and the affections
of his countrymen, the most accomplished soldier and,
superb tactician, who broke the source of supply and
struck the deadliest blow, in the march from Atlanta
to the sea, received at every step of his career the most
generous recognition of his services and abilities. He
knew and was glad that the march of Xenophon and
DEPEW.
the Ten Thousand Greeks, which had been the inspi
ration of armies for over two thousand years, would
be replaced, for the next two thousand, by the resistless
tramp of Sherman and his army.
Grant was always famous among his soldiers for the
rare quality of courage in the presence of danger.
But the country is indebted to him for a higher faculty,
which met and averted a peril of the gravest char
acter.
One of the most extraordinary and singular men
who ever rilled a great place was Andrew Johnson.
He was a human paradox of conflicting qualities, great
and small, generous and mean, bigoted and broad,
patriotic and partisan. He loved his country with a
passionate devotion, but would have destroyed it to
rebuild it upon his own model. Born a " poor white,"
hating with the intensity of wounded pride the bet
ter and dominant class, in a delirium of revenge and
vindictiveness he shouted, " Treason is odious and
must be punished," and by drumhead court-martial or
summary process at law would have executed every
one of the Confederate generals and left behind a ven
detta to disturb the peace of uncounted gener
ations.
Between their execution and this madman appears
the calm and conquering force of General Grant, with
the declaration : " My parole is the honor of the na
tion." When, swinging to the other extreme, and in
the exercise of doubtful power, the President would
have reversed the results of the war by reorganizing
a government upon the lines which he thought best,
he was again met by this same determined purpose,
DEPEW. 317
exclaiming : " My bayonets will again be the salvation,
of the nation."
General Grant will live in history as the greatest
soldier of his time, but it will never be claimed for him
that he was the best of Presidents. No man, however
remarkable his endowments, could fill that position
with supreme ability unless trained and educated for
the task. He said to a well-known publicist in the last
days of his second term : " You have criticised se
verely my administration in your newspaper; in some
cases you were right, in others wrong. I ask this
of you, in fairness and justice, that in summing up the
results of my presidency you will only say that General
Grant, having had no preparation for civil office, per
formed its duties conscientiously and according to the
best of his ability."
The times of Reconstruction presented problems
which required the highest qualities of statesmanship
and business. In the unfamiliarity with the business
of a great commercial nation General Grant did not,
however, differ much from most of the men who have
been successful or defeated candidates for the presi
dency of the United States. It is a notable fact that
though we are the only purely industrial nation in the
world, we have never selected our rulers from among
the great business men of the country. And the con
ditions and prejudices of success present insuperable
obstacles to such a choice.
Yet Grant's administration will live in history for
two acts of supreme importance. When the delirium
of fiat money would have involved the nation in bank
ruptcy, his great name and fame alone served to win
318 DEPEW.
the victory for honest money and to save the credit
and prosperity of the Republic. He, the first soldier
of his time, gave the seal of his great authority to the
settlement of international disputes by arbitration.
The quality of his greatness was never so conspicu
ous as in the election of General Garfield. He carried
with him around the world the power and majesty
of the American nation he had been the companion
of kings and counsellor of cabinets. His triumphal
march had belted the globe, and through the Golden
Gate of the Pacific he entered once more his own
land, expecting to receive the nomination of his party
for a third term for the presidency. In the disappoint
ment of defeat and the passions it involved, the elec
tion of the nominee of that Convention depended en
tirely upon him. Had he remained in his tent, Gar-
field would never have been President of the United
States ; but, gathering all the chieftains, and command
ing them, when they would sulk or retire, to accom
pany him to the front, his appearance in the canvass
won the victory.
He was at West Point only to be a poor scholar and
to graduate with little promise and less expectancy
from his instructors. In the barter and trade of his
Western home he was invariably cheated. As a
subaltern officer in the Mexican War, which he de
tested, he simply did his duty and made no impress
upon his companions or superiors. As a wood-seller
he was beaten by all the wood-choppers of Missouri.
As a merchant he could not compete with his rivals.
As a clerk he was a listless dreamer, and yet the mo
ment supreme command devolved upon him the dross
DEPEW. 319
'disappeared, dullness and indifference gave way to a
clarified intellect which grasped the situation with the
power of inspiration. The larger the field, the greater
the peril, the more mighty the results dependent upon
the issue, the more superbly he rose to all the require
