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ADDRESS, JM 
 
 OP THE 
 
 V 
 
 UNION LEAGUE OF PHILADELPHIA, 
 
 TO THE • 
 
 CITIZENS OF PENNSYLVANIA, 
 
 WITH THE 
 
 PREAMBLE AND RESOLUTIONS, 
 
 Adopted in General Meeting, August ^Gth, 1SG8, 
 
 Fellow-citizens :' 
 
 Again you are called to the polls to defend the cause for which, since 
 1860, 3'ou have shown your devotion in so many sacrifices. 
 
 You doubtless thought, when the rebels laid down their arms and 
 acknowledged themselves vanquished, that the struggle was over, and 
 that all for which 3'ou had fought was secured. You may ask yourselves 
 why, three years after a triumph so complete, 3'our exertions are still 
 necessary to settle the questions which were apparently decided forever 
 at Appomattox Court House ; and perhaps you feel dissatisfied that the 
 country has not subsided into the peaceful quiet so earnestly desired by 
 all good citizens. If so, you have erred, and still err, in regarding the 
 rebellion as merelj'' the movement of a few unquiet spirits, who made 
 skilful use of slavery as the means by which to gratify the longings of 
 personal ambition. 
 
 The rebellion was much more than this. It was the struggle between 
 two opposite systems of society. On the one hand were the traditions 
 of feudalism, of caste, of class privileges, the reaction against modern 
 thought and liberty, which for three generations had moulded every 
 institution, and had trained the people to one unvarying course of 
 thought. On the other hand were the expansion of progress, belief in 
 the dignity of labor, faith in the liberty of thought — in fine, the abso- 
 lute right of every man to reason for himself and to carv§ out his own 
 destiny. That systems so antagonistic should, sooner or later, measure 
 their strength in deadly strife was inevitable. 
 
 Human slavery was the most prominent bulwark of the Southern 
 system, and it naturally became the ostensible cause of struggle. 
 Naturally, also, it perished in the war which it had provoked, because 
 it was the most assailable aud least defensible portion of the system. 
 When we marked the downfall of that great iniquity, we shouted that 
 

 our work was done, for we had given too little thought to all that lay 
 behind slavery, that had fostered it, and had been fostered by it Nor 
 had we yet sounded to its utmost depths the baseness of that faction, 
 falsely styling itself Democratic, which, crazed with the lust of office, is 
 ready to sell itself into bondage again to the masters whose rule had 
 wrouglit such ruin to us all. 
 
 No, our work is not y«t done, nor will it be done until Northern ideae 
 shall have been penetrated throughout the South, and society there shall 
 have reconstructed itself on the basis of true Democracy. When 
 Abraham Lincoln said that the United States could not remain half 
 slave and half free, he gave utterance only to a portion of a great truth. 
 Our country must be homogeneous. One section of it cannot' be aristo- 
 cratic, nursing sedulously the exploded notions of class privileges, and 
 persecuting men because they labor for their daily bread, or because 
 they entertain ideas repugnant to the dominant caste ; while the other 
 section honors labor and the laborer, admits of no distinction between 
 citizens, and grants the fullest toleration to every shade of opinion on 
 every subject. One section cannot set up the State as the sovereign 
 object of its allegiance, while the other admits of no rival to the Union 
 in its claims upon the citizen. Yet now that slavery is legally dead, 
 and secession has been nominally renounced, these differences between 
 the North and the South exist as sharply as ever. Until they shall be 
 removed, political strife must continue, as keen and eager as the strife 
 lately hushed on the battle-field. The result must necessarily be that 
 either Northern ideas must conquer the South, as Northern arms have 
 already done, or that Southern ideas must accomplish what Southern 
 arms so miserably failed in attempting. 
 
 Enclosed as we are between two oceans, occupiers forever of the same 
 land, this is the struggle which is set before us. We cannot shirk it. 
 We cannot shun the necessity which is upon us. We may seek in cow 
 ardly mood to shrink back from our appointed work, but we shall 
 merely postpone the inevitable, and prolong the labor and the suffering. 
 It is only by pressing forward, resolutely, but prudently and wisely, 
 to do that which Providence has ordained us to do, that we can escape 
 with the least amount of toil and loss. 
 
 The burden of this task which lies before us has been immeasurabh* 
 increased by the selfish stolidity and short-sighted recklessness of the 
 Democratic party. Even as in' 1860-61 they invited their slaveholding 
 allies into ruinous rebellion, so now, in the hope of' a temporary restora- 
 tion to power, they are sedulously urging those same allies to resist 
 afresh the inevitable course of events. Forgetful of the fearful record of 
 the past, wilfully disregarding the irresistible developments of the future, 
 they seek only to pander to popular passion in the present, and rest 
 their hopes of success solely on their skill to work upon the meanest 
 motives and prejudices of their dupes. 
 
r We would not judge them harslily, for they nve our fellow-countrymen. 
 
 c* That the masses of the party are. honestly wishing to do their duty we 
 c^dare not doubt, but they have surrendered themselves to leaders who 
 
 - make sport of their honor, and sell them for the vilest price that ever 
 
 6 freemen were bargained for. Who is there so hardened thnt his cheek 
 did not tingle with shame when he learned that General Forrest of Ten- 
 nessee, Forrest the negro-trader, Forrest the guerilla, Forrest the butcher 
 of Fort Pillow, was a Democratic delegate to a National Convention as- 
 sembled to frame a platform and to select candidates for whom men of 
 the North are expected to vote ? Yet abject as is this degradation, they 
 succeeded in reacliing a furtlier de))th, for this same Forrest was able to 
 boast publicly on his return that four-fifths of the Northern Democrats 
 whom he had met apologized to him for having opposed the South in 
 her rebellion. When the Democratic party thus intrusts itself wholly 
 to men who abjure their manhood, is it to be wondered at if they adopt 
 a set of principles dictated to them by Wade Hampton, and present for 
 vour suffrages men who are pledged to undo as far as possible all that 
 ihe war has accomplished, even at the cost of another war? Or can we 
 be surprised that the South, finding such facile allies, should eaji^erly re- 
 vert to its old ideas, and should strive to make those ideas permanently 
 triumphant as the guiding principles of the Republic ? 
 
 In this we do not blame the South, for Southei'u men have been edu- 
 cated in the beliefs to which they cling, and they, at least, are honest in 
 their faith. That they are struggling for an obsolete theory of society is 
 their misfortune, and while duty to the country and to millions yet un- 
 born compels us to combat that theory as destructive to the well-bcintr 
 of us all, yet for the men who conscientiously uphold it we would per- 
 sonally entertain none b»t the kindest and most charitable feelings. It 
 was the first act of the Government, after the surrender of Lee and John- 
 son, to feed the starving masses of the Southern people, and that much 
 maligned institution, the Freedmen's Bureau, has consistently dispensed 
 its bounty without regard to the loyalty of the recipients. We have 
 always rejoiced in these facts, and it is our pride to think that in all the 
 movements to relieve the wants of the South, without distinction of race, 
 color, or poMtical opinion, since the close of the war, the members of 
 this League and of the party which it represents have ever been fore- 
 most with active sympathy and substantial aid. Yet, while we would 
 gladly assuage the calamities which they have brought upon themselves, 
 we cannot but resist them to the death in their mad attempt to bring 
 back a forgotten past. 
 
 Whether they are to succeed in this will be determined at the Novem- 
 ber election, in asserting this we are not theorizing, for the proof lies 
 within reach of every man who can note and weigh the events that are 
 passijig before his e3'es. As in wine there is truth, so in the excitement 
 and enthusiasm of the South at the surrender of the Democracy in iSew 
 
York, the restraint of the last three years was swept away, aiifl the glad- 
 ness of anticipated triurapii seemed ty render caution and reticence no 
 longer necessary. When Governor Wise, at the R,icliniond ratification 
 meeting, assured his hearers that secession was as much aUve as ever, he 
 only crudely declared what Wade Hampton, the dictator of the Democratic 
 platform, expressed more covertly at the Charleston meeting, in pledging 
 his sword once more to his native State, and swearing that at her call he 
 would hasten to her rescue from the uttermost bounds of the earth. 
 Fresh from the meeting of the " National " Democracy, and planning a 
 political campaign for the whole nation, he yet had no thought for the 
 nation. His allegiance was confined to the petty borders of the sovereign 
 State of South Carolina. No, secession is not yet dead, and the Mem- 
 phis Ajypi^'al only gives form to the secret vows of the Southern Demo- 
 crats when it bluntly declares that the South will ^'^et be independent. 
 
 If secession is thus still rampant, the other old heresies are not less 
 vigorous. The spirit of feudal o[)pression and class privilege, the con- 
 tempt for honest labor and tlie determination to keep it in subjection, 
 which Ibrmerly manifested themselves in slaveholding, were, when slavery 
 was abolished, promptly reasserted in the black codes enacted through- 
 out the South by Mr. Johnson's reconstructed legislatures. Now that 
 these also have been swept away, the same sjjirit reveals itself in the 
 schemes to control the negro vote and to render him the instrument of 
 his o\n\ disfranchisement. Public speakers openly advise combined 
 action to throw out of employment every man who does not vote the 
 Democratic ticket, and associations are springing up everywhere pledged 
 to carry out this policy in an organized manner It is characteristic of 
 the party that men styling themselves Democrats should manifest such 
 utter contempt for the lirst element of republican democracy 
 
 Nor is the old intolerance, which placed a padlock on the lips of every 
 man who did not think with the majority, one whit abated. Free thought 
 and free speech— the vital breath of our institutions— are as obnoxious 
 to the Southern mind to-day as when peaceful citizens were tarred and 
 feathered for disbelieving in the Divine appointment of chattel bondage. 
 All who frankly accept the results of the war, all men, whether Northern 
 or Southern, who honestly believe that the South can be readjusted to 
 the necessities of the new era, are denounced as unfit for human com- 
 panionship ; they are to he placed under the ban, and exposed to in- 
 genious persecution, until driven away in despair from a community 
 which is obstinately determined to learn nothing and to forgot nothing. 
 
 Still more portentous is the undiminished vigor of the old spirit of 
 lawlessness — the spirit which taught that it was noble and chivalric to 
 defy the law, and which ever sympathized with and protected the law- 
 breaker. The peculiar boast of modern Anglo-Saxon civilization is the 
 innate reverence for the sanctity of Law which enables vast communities 
 to live with perfect safety to person and property, and without subjec- 
 
tion to the bayonet. Tt is this trainina; which ranges every citizen in^ 
 stinctively against the law-breaker, and thus relieves us from the ruinous 
 expense and demoralization of huge standing armies, and in this training 
 the South is unfortunately more deficient than ever. Witness the hun- 
 dred murders a month now occurring unpunished in Louisiana ; witness 
 the nine hundred and thirty-nine homicides which have been perpetrated 
 in Texas since the rebellion was suppressed, and for which but one mur- 
 derer has been hanged ; witness the burning of negro schools and the 
 lynching of negro teachers; witness the outrages of Ku Klux Klans, 
 combining every element of grotesque ferocity. No one understood the 
 power of this spirit better than General Blair, when, foreseeing that the 
 South would control the Democratic Convention, he bid for its suppoi't 
 by pledging himself to trample upon the laws of Congress, to coerce the 
 Senate into submission, and to disperse by Ibrce the reconstructed gov- 
 ernments of the Southern States. The artful bait was eagerly swallowed, 
 and simultaneously every organ of Southern opinion appeals to force to 
 carry the election, or to upset the election in case of defeat. Every 
 disfranchised rebel is to vote, and if these illegal votes are refused, the 
 bayonet is Invoked to compel their reception. Virginia is to vote, and 
 Texas, and Mississippi, States not yet organized or recognized, and 
 Congress is to be overawed itito counting their ballots in the Electoral 
 College ; while, if these hopeful schemes fail in winning success for their 
 revolutionary candidates, civil war is freely threatened as a last resort. 
 
 We have no fears that this antiquated system of lawlessness, of op- 
 pression, of aristocracy, and of secession, can win an ultimate and per- 
 manent victory, for the spirit of the age is against it, and sooner or later 
 it must go down and be buried with the kindred relics of now forgotten 
 wrong and error Neither can we promise you that the success of the 
 Republican party at the coming elections will at once elevate the South 
 from darkness into light. We onl}^ know that, as sure as there is a God 
 in heaven, progress and enlightenment and freedom must triumph in 
 the end It rests with you to say whether this triumph shall be speedy 
 and peaceful, or whether the struggle shall be prolonged and arduous, 
 leading to convulsions .as fierce as those from which we have just 
 emerged. The alliance between the Democracy and reaction is so 
 thorough and cordial that the nomination of Seymour and Blair is every- 
 where hailed at the South as the justification of the rebellion, and the 
 bitterest rebels openly declare that in striving for the success of their 
 candidates they are but continuing the battle for the lost cause — that 
 they are fighting now for what they fought for from 1861 to 1865. 
 Should they by any possibility of force or fraud carry the day, think 
 what a dreary vista of anarchy and strife we shall have to traverse ere 
 we can restore the country to even the measure of peace which we now 
 enjoy 1 Exhausted as we are, and needing years of quiet industry to 
 make good the losses and the ravages of war, four years of Democratic 
 
6 
 
 misrule, under the guidance of Wade Hampton and Blair, would d4 
 more for our prostration than was effected by the four years of thu 
 rebellion. 
 
 Nor can we flatter ourselves that the cautious selfishness of an intrigu- 
 ing politician like Seymour would arrest the madness of those to whom 
 he would owe his election. They would be his masters, for in times like 
 those which would be upon us, negative natures must succumb to posi- 
 tive ones. We should see our destinies intrusted to such men as Wade 
 Hampton in the War Department, and Raphael Semmes at the head of 
 our Navy. Should Seymour falter in the work, he would be made to feel 
 that his safety depended upon his obedience, and if this were not 
 sufficient, the men who are already invoking the dagger of Brutus and 
 the shade of Wilkes Booth would not scruple to remove him that they 
 might obtain the services of the reckless and unprincipled Blair. 
 
 Whichever waj'- we turn, fellow-citizens, we therefore see that our only 
 hope of safety lies in electing Grant by such a majorit}' as may show to 
 Democrats and rebels that the American people intend to persevere in 
 the path which they have entered ; that neither threats nor blandish- 
 ments will turn them from their duty, and that they are irrevocably de- 
 termined that tlie causes which led to the rebellion shall be forever 
 removed from the nation. 
 
 These are the main issues awaiting your decision, but scarcely second 
 to them in tlieir influence on the well-being of the people are the questions 
 connected with our national finances. Simple as the solution of these 
 questions may be to common-sense honesty, it is in the power of dema- 
 gogues so to complicate them, by tampering with tlie national credit, as to 
 inflict incalculable injury on all the industrial and fiuaucial interests ol 
 the country It is not on the bondholder that the chief loss would bo 
 inflicted, for the Government credit is so inextricably intertwined in every 
 transaction of daily life that every man is a creditor of the Government 
 The poorest citizen, who has nothing but his labor to sell, can receive in 
 exchange for his labor nothing but tokens of Government credit, and his 
 all is dependent upon its maintenance. Moreover, the ruin of that credit 
 would necessarily thus bring about a paralysis ruinous alike to the farmer 
 and the mechanic, the merchant and the workingman ; and, while all would 
 sufler, that sufi'ering would fall with peculiar hardship upon the industriouM 
 poor whose daily labor is their only provision against want and starvation . 
 
 Had it not been for the assaults already made upon the national credit, 
 the problem would already be near its solution, for all that is required is 
 a rigid adherence to plighted faith. Let the world once believe that our 
 promises to pay will be honored without reservation or equivocation,' 
 and those promises will speedily become equivalent to gold in the 
 markets of the world ; and when once that point is reached, the 
 questions which now rack the brains of political financiers disappear of 
 themselves. Fortunately the utterances of the Chicago platform on this 
 
point are so clear and unmistakable that the indorsement of that plat- 
 form by the people will at once smooth our path towards resumption of 
 specie payments and the lightening of the public burdens ; while the 
 dubious and threatening phrases of the Deraoci'atic profession of faith 
 would render its triumph the source of the most disastrous complications. 
 Strange that the hard-money Democracy of Jackson and Benton and 
 Van Buren, should now be conspiring to inflict upon us the unimagin- 
 able miseries of countless billions of hopelessly irredeemable paper I 
 
 Such, fellow-citizens, are the mighty issues which you are now called 
 upon to decide. As your votes are cast, so will be the future of our 
 country With Grant you may enjoy peace, prosperity and progress ; 
 with Seymour you can scarce hope to escape anarchy, desolation and 
 long years of bitterest strife. 
 
 PEEAMBLE A'ND EESOLUTIOI^S. 
 
 Whereas, The policy proclaimed by the so-called Democratic party, 
 in its platform and in the utterances of its candidates and repre- 
 sentative leaders, is such as justly to create the profoundest alarm as to 
 the future of our country ; and 
 
 Whereas, In the perils to which are thus exposed all the great 
 principles which this League was founded to support, it is proper that 
 we should express our sense of the issues which are to be decided at the 
 coming elections, and that we should use all honorable means to avert 
 the dangers inseparable from a Democratic victory at the polls ; therefore, 
 
 Resolved — 
 
 I. That we see with the deepest sorrow the peace, won through the 
 sacrifices of four years of war, imperilled by the action of reckless dema- 
 gogues who are industriously laboring to rekindle the embers of rebel- 
 lion. 
 
 II. That as the Democratic party now seeks to reopen the questions 
 which were settled by the war a^nd by the legislation consequent thereon, 
 the endless strife with which they threaten us can only be avoided by 
 the emphatic condemnation at the ballot-box of the lawless and revolu- 
 tionary programme, for which they have the eilrontery to ask the fa\or 
 of the people. 
 
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 013 786 547 6 
 
 III. That in Anew of the open alliance now acknowledged between the 
 
 Denocracy and the Rebellion, it is the first duty of every citizen to spare 
 
 no exertion to defeat that faction, which souglit in 1864 to force 
 
 upon us a treasonable peace, and which now endeavors to destroy our 
 
 glorious peace by threatening a treasonable war, consistent in nothing 
 
 but' the insane desire to foster and protect treason and rebellion. 
 
 lY. That we confidently^ look to the gallant men, who 'stood by the flag 
 during long years of desperate war, for efficient aid in our efforts to defeat 
 a platform dictated by the rebels whom they had conquered, and to pre- 
 vent the success of candidates who pledge themselves to undo, in the 
 cabinet, all that has been accomplished in the field. 
 
 Y. That we echo the words of our great leader, " Let us have peace," 
 as the expression of the end and aim of our political action, and that in 
 no waj'^ can the blessings of a durable pacification be attained except by 
 the triumphant election of him who was first in war, and whom we are 
 resolved to make first in peace. 
 
 YI. That the financial policy developed in the Chicago platform 
 meets our warmest approbation ; that we denounce, with it, as a national 
 crime, all the forms of repudiation, open or disguised, suggested bj' the 
 Democratic Convention ; that we believe " the best policy to dinnnish 
 our burden of debt is to improve our credit," so that a specie cu/re-ucy 
 ma}^ be insensibly restored by the appreciation of the national securities ; 
 and that the demagogues who are insidiously assailing the credit of the 
 Govei-nment are the greatest enemies of the people whom they are seek 
 iug to cajole. 
 
 YJl. That the thanks of our citizens are due to our Eepres^-ntatives 
 in Congress who have so gallantly resisted the encroachmei»^s of the 
 Executive, and have, in the face of apparently insuperable iibstacles, 
 wrought out a practicable plan of reconstruction, based upon the immu- 
 table principles of the rights of man. 
 
 YIII. Tiiat in the unexceptionable tickets, National, State, and Munici- 
 pal, presented for the suffrages of the Republican party, we see an assured 
 guarantee of our triumphant success, provided we do not throw away our 
 ad'.antages through supineness and over-confidence. 
 
 IX. That we would especially warn our friends to be vigilant and 
 detcnuined to prevent a repetition of the enormous and bare-faced frauds 
 by wliich the Democratic party last year gained an apparent victory iu 
 our city and State. 
 
 X. That a committee of fifty members of the League be appointed by 
 the Chairman of this meeting, to give effect to the views expressed in the 
 second of the above resolutions, and that the said committee have power 
 to fill vacancies and to add to its number. 
 
 Kinff & Saird, Printers, 607 Sansotn Street, PliUaaelphia. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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