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E 675 Stand by the Republican Colors! 
 
 14745 ■ — 
 
 Copy 3 
 
 SPEECH 
 
 HON. HENEY WILSON, 
 
 OF ]MA.SSA.CHtJSIi:TTS, 
 
 AT GREAT FALLS, NEW HAMPSHIRE, FEBRUARY 24, 1H672. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen : 
 
 During the year on which we have entered 
 the people of the United States will be sum- 
 moned to elect a Chief Magistrate. There 
 are seven million persons in the country 
 entitled to the right of suffrage. They are 
 now ranged into two great political parties. 
 One calls itself the Democratic party ; the 
 other takes the name of the Republican party. 
 Each of those political organizations has a 
 history, a platform of priYiciples, and a pro- 
 gramme of policy. To one or the other of 
 these parties the -people of the United States 
 will commit, for four years, the precious inter- 
 eats of the Republic. It devolves upon the 
 citizens of New Hampshire to give the first 
 vote of the campa'ign upon which we are enter- 
 iQg-^ Whatever mav be' the result, it will be 
 deemed and taken i^tlTugirout the countryas 
 an indication of publfc sentiment, and the 
 victory, to whichever party it may come, will 
 give to that party in the nation more num- 
 bers than it has voters in the State of New 
 Hampshire. 
 
 I come here to-night in behalf of the Repub- 
 lican party of the United States, three and 
 a half million strong, to speak to the Re- 
 publicans of New Hampshire; to ask them to 
 call the battle-roll anew, and to redeem their 
 State, and place her where she has so long 
 been, and where she ought to be aga^n, at the 
 head of the Republican column. I am not 
 here to belittle the Democratic party. I know 
 ithas power, I know ithaselemejits of strength, 
 I know it will fight a great battle this year for 
 the control of the Government. I pity the 
 weakness or despise the fully that underrates 
 the power of the Democratic party. It has 
 va§t elements of strength ; it has wealth, preju- 
 dice, passion, and pride of race. I know it 
 has able men in its ranks, and I have no sym- 
 pathy with that disposition which prompts us 
 always to belittle whatever we oppose. 
 
 I do not come here to apologize for the Re- 
 publican party. I would as soon apologize 
 for the spots on the sun that has bathed the 
 world today in light and beauty. The Repub- 
 lican party needs no apology and no defense. 
 There is no body of men in America to-day 
 who from their past history or present po^iilion 
 
 have a right to arraign it before the nation, 
 before the nations, or before God. 
 
 There was a struggle, beginning in 1832, 
 and continuing until the spring of 1861 — 
 the period of one generation — between these 
 antagonistic forces; but it was a struggle of 
 thought, of voice, of the press, a struggle of 
 votes. Liberty at last triurciphed. Then the 
 slave-masters raised the banners of rebellion, 
 hurled their section into a wicked and 
 brutal, barbarous and bloody civil war. These 
 are historic facts. They will go into the his- 
 tory of our country; and when we who are here 
 to-night, when the men of this generation shall 
 all have passed away, i;^ other days, with 
 clearer lights than those of the present, the 
 human family will recognize these facts, and 
 historians will record them for the study and ad* 
 miration or condemnation of after generations. 
 
 We have had a serious contest, a bloody 
 struggle, in which some of the bravest and 
 noblest have gone down and sleep in soldiers' 
 graves. In this struggle; where stood these 
 two great parties that divide the nation to-d4y? 
 Where stood the Democratic party ? Where 
 stood the Republican party? Here to- night I 
 assert it, and there is not a man on God's 
 earth can contradict it, for the record is against 
 him, that from the year 1832, when William 
 Lloyd Garrison and eleven other faithful and 
 fearless men signed their names to the declar- 
 ation that black men had a right to liberty, 
 and that they would do what they could, sanc- 
 tioned by law, humanity, and religion, to eman- 
 cipate the bondman, and to lift up the poor 
 and lowly in the land, from that day to this 
 hour, every moment of the time, and on every 
 distinct issue, the Democratic party has been 
 on the side of privilege, the side of caste, 
 the side of a brutal, ignorant, degraded bar- 
 barism. Measured by the standards of the 
 philosophers and statesmen of the ages, meas- 
 ured by the law of the living God, there has 
 not been" a moment when it was not clearly, 
 plainly, distinctly, unqualifiedly wrong. Ithas 
 been wrong, and it is wrong now, and I fear it 
 will continue to be wrong. 
 
 The Republican party, made up as it has 
 been of men who came out of other orgau; 
 izations because they were convinced that th» 
 

 party of freedom and humanity was the party 
 of the country, has at all times, in every strug- 
 gle, in peace and in war, been on the side of 
 the country, the side of liberty, the side of 
 justice, the side of humanity, the side of a 
 progressive Christian civilization. There has 
 not been a moment during these forty years, 
 whether Garrison Anti-Slavery men, Liberty- 
 Party men, Free-Soilers, or Republicans, start- 
 ing from only a dozen men and growing up to 
 the three and a, half millions who will vote 
 in November next — I say that there has not 
 been a moment in all those years when the 
 champions of human rights have not occupied 
 a position that the Christian men and women 
 who belong to it or sympathize with it could 
 not take it into their closets, and, on their 
 bended knees, invoke the blessing of God upon 
 it. I do not know that there are not some men 
 so forgetful of the position of the Democratic 
 party that they might ask the blessing upon it 
 of that Being who bids us remember those in 
 bonds. But I cannot imagine how a man who 
 lias spoken for, apologized for, voted for, or 
 fought for slavery, privilege, and caste, the 
 side the Democratic party has taken — I do not 
 see how such a man would dare ask the bless- 
 ing of God upon the violation of the doctrines 
 of the New Testament, that teach us to love 
 our neighbor. 
 
 I have briefly referred to this history to show 
 where the Democratic party has stood and 
 now stands, and where the Republican party 
 has stood and now stands. The Democratic 
 party, unmindful of its record of forty years, 
 is asking the toiling men of New Hampshire 
 to give it their confidence and their support. 
 I should quite as soon think that the Dem- 
 ocratic party would go to South Carolina, and 
 ask the men whom we Republicans have made 
 free — the men from whose limbs we have smit- 
 ten the fetters, the men into whose souls we 
 have breathed the spirit of manhood, the men 
 whom we lifted up and put upon their feet, 
 made them citizens of the United States, 
 secured to them civil and political rights, and 
 made them our equals and our peers — I should 
 quite as soon have supposed the Democratic 
 party would go to South Carolina and ask the 
 votes of those men, whom we converted from 
 things into human beings, with human rights, 
 as that it would ask the votes of the toiling 
 men who stand on the hills of New Hamp- 
 shire. They will tell us that these men were 
 black men. I have only to say this, that the 
 man who would make a black man a slave 
 -would make a white man a slave, if he had the 
 ipower to do it. 
 
 I see before me men whom I recognize as 
 'toiling men ; men who have to support the 
 wives of their bosoms and the children of 
 their love by manual labor. I call the earnest 
 attention of these men to this terrible struggle 
 through which we have passed, and to what 
 has been achieved for the poor toiling men of 
 this country during the last twelve years. I 
 feel that I have the right to speak for toiling 
 men and to toiling men. I was born here in 
 your county of Strafford. I was born in pov- 
 
 erty ; want sat by my cradle. I know what 
 it is to ask a mother for bread when she has 
 none to give. I left my home at ten years of 
 age and served an apprenticeship of eleven 
 years, receiving a month's schooling each year, 
 and at the end of eleven years of hard work, 
 a yoke of oxen and six sheep, which brought 
 me eighty-four dollars. Eighty-four dollars 
 for eleven years of hard toil! I never spent the 
 amount of one dollar in money, counting every 
 penny, from the time I was born until I was 
 twenty-one years of age. I know what it is 
 to travel weary miles and ask my fello*-men 
 to give me leave to toil. 
 
 1 remember that in October, 1833, I walked 
 into your village from my native town, went 
 throdgh your mills, seeking employment. If 
 anybody had offered me nine dollars a month 
 I should have accepted it gladly. I went to 
 Salmon Falls, I went to Dover, I went to New- 
 market, and tried to get work, without success, 
 and I returned home footsore and weary, but 
 not discouraged. I put my pack on my back 
 and walked to where I now live, in Massachu- 
 setts, and learned a mechanic's trade. I know 
 the hard lot that toiling men have to endure 
 in this world, and every pulsation ot my heart, 
 every conviction of my judgment, every aspi- 
 ration of my soul, puts me on the side of the 
 toiling men of my country — ay, of all coun- ' 
 
 tries. I became an anti-slavery man thirty-six 
 'years ago, because the poor bondman was the 
 lowest, most degraded, and helpless type of 
 manhood. An anti-slavery man from convio- ^ 
 
 tion is by logical necessity not only the inflex- ^^r <f 
 ible foe of the doctrine that capital should own . ,^^ _ j 
 laborers, but the unyield i^i g/riend of the rJgJils 
 of the sons and dSugUte'rs of toil. 
 
 Let "us see what the Republican party has 
 done for the laboring men of this country dur- 
 ing the last twelve years. It struck the fetters 
 from four and a half million laboring men 
 and women ; converted them from things into 
 men and women. In making them free, it 
 struck down that proud, haughty, and domi- 
 neering aristocracy of the South that held the 
 doctrine — and proclaimed it, too — that " capi- 
 tal should own labor;" that the men who toiled 
 for wages were "the mudsills of society;" 
 that the slavery of workingmen produced *'a 
 class of gentlemen, who were the substitutes 
 for an order of nobility." Those were the 
 doctrines proelaimed in our ears for forty years 
 by the Calhouns, the McDuffies, the Ham- 
 monds, the Rhetts, the Ruffins, the Fitzhughs, 
 the Hersch^ll V. Johnsons, and men of that 
 class, who laid down the doctrine boldly every- 
 where that " slavery was the normal condition 
 of laboring men, black and white.'' In §mari- ' 
 cipating these four and a half million black 
 men and women we struck down the power 
 of the owners of M'orkingmeii and working- 
 women in this country forever. They made 
 labor dishonorable in eight hundred thousand 
 square miles of the United States, in the sunny 
 South, as they were wont to call it. Laboring 
 men from abroad would not go there to toil; 
 northern laboring men would not go there to 
 live ; they would not stand by the side of the 
 
fettered bondmen where labor was dishonored. 
 But by the Bteadj, persistent adherence to prin- 
 ciple of the men trained in the faith of opposi- 
 tion to slavery, who now stand in the ranks of 
 the Republican party, all this has been changed, 
 so that to-day the laboring men of New England 
 can stand up in South Carolina by the graves of 
 Calhoun, of McDuflBe, of Pickens, of the leaders 
 of the slave power, who proclaimed free society 
 a failure — that free men and women when they 
 emerged from bondage info freedom were 
 classed in four subdivisions, " the hireling, the 
 beggar, the thief, and the prostitute" — and 
 "look up and be proud in the midst of their 
 toil." We have made labor honorable, even 
 in the rice swamps of the Carolinas and Geor- 
 gia; we have taken the brand of dishonor from 
 the brow of labor throughout the country ; and 
 in doing that grand work we have done more 
 for labor, for the houoranddignity of laboring 
 men, than was ever achieved by all the parties 
 that arose in this country from the time the 
 Pilgrims put their feet upon Plymouth Kock 
 up to the year 1860. [Applause.] 
 
 And that grand and immortal achievement 
 is not all. We have opened that eight hun- 
 dred thousand square miles to free laboring 
 men ; they can go there now, they are going 
 there now. The German, the Englishman, the 
 Irishman, the New England Yankee, the man 
 of the middle States, of the Northwest, can 
 go there now, engage in the mechanic arts, 
 cultivate the soil, and, in all the pursuits of 
 life, no longer feel the degradation that rested 
 a^on workingmen when labor was extorted 
 only by the lash. Let the man who toils for 
 wages, whether in the mill, on the farm, or in 
 the mechanic shop, realize what has been done 
 during these last dozen years to lift from toil 
 the badge of- dishonor, and to open the great 
 South to the free laboring men of the world. 
 Let him remember with grateful heart that he 
 owes it all, under Providence, to the Repub- 
 fican party. 
 
 The Republican party was brought especially 
 into being, and won the victory, when it elected 
 Abraham Lincoln to save the magnificent ter- 
 ritories of the United States to the free labor- 
 ing men of our country, their children, and 
 their children's children, "while grass shall 
 grow and water run." It saved that magnifi- 
 cent territory to freedom. Auction -blocks, 
 bloodhounds, the lash, chains, manacles, can- 
 not go there now. They have sunk down to 
 the place from whence they came — to the 
 bottomless pit, and the lower deep of the 
 bottomless pit. 
 
 The Republican party maintains the policy 
 of the small farms against the great planta- 
 tions. The Democratic party joined with the 
 South on that issue, as it did in everything 
 and on every issue. We passed the home- 
 stead bill, and James Buchanan vetoed it, 
 end the Democratic party supported him in 
 that veto. The object of that bill was to ^ve 
 the vast public domain to landless men, that 
 they might have small farms, rather than that 
 a few men might have great plantations. We 
 were defeated ; but the first year the Repub- 
 
 lican party came into power, in the midst of 
 the struggle for national exiatencf, it passed 
 the homestead bill, and saved the public lands 
 to the free laboring men of this country for- 
 ever and forever. 
 
 IJere to-night I point you to these magnifi- 
 cent achievements; I point you to what has 
 been accomplished in these twelve years for 
 the workingmen, the mechanics, the free 
 laborers, the men who toil for wages; and I 
 say again to you that those achievements sur- 
 pass all th it had been achieved in our coun- 
 try from the earliest settlement of the colonies 
 up to the year 18G1, when Abraham Lincoln 
 was inaugurated Presidentof the United States. 
 What claim, then, has the Democratic party to 
 the vote of a workingman in America? None, 
 none whatever. The workingman who sup- 
 ports the Democratic party, with its history 
 of forty years' hostility to the equal rights of 
 millions of toiling men, is not only illogical 
 and inconsistent, but indiflferf-nt and careless. 
 I can see how the lawyer, the manufacturer, 
 the banker, even the farmer, who stands on 
 his fee-simple acres, may vote the Democratic 
 ticket, but I cannot see how the emancipated 
 black man of the South can do it, or how the 
 laboring white man who works for wages caa 
 do it. 
 
 Persistent efforts are making to convince the 
 laboring men of New Hampshire and to make 
 them believe they have a very hard time of it ; 
 that they have to pay taxes ; are, indeed, almost 
 taxed out of existence. A document i3 circu- 
 lated to prejudice the laboring men against the 
 Administration, on account of the high rates 
 of duties. In my judgment, the wise and sound 
 policy is to tax luxuries highly ; to put the bur- 
 den of taxation upon articles that come in com- 
 petition with our own, and to make a free list 
 as large as possible. We have a great debt to 
 pay. We shall have taxation enougli for many 
 years. That burden, the legacy of the slave 
 Democracy, will refit upon the labor of the 
 nation for years to come. 
 
 It was my privilege last summer to spend a 
 few weeks in England. I hardly heard any- 
 thing else there but complaints of our tariff. 
 If 1 went to a dinner-party, or met Eui^lish- 
 men on ship- board or anywhere, they had 
 much to say about our exorbitant rates of 
 duties. English importers, German import- 
 ers, French importers, all berate our rales of 
 duties. These identical documents that the 
 Democrats are circulating in New Hampshire 
 are not paid for by the Democratic party, but 
 by men who want to take care of foreigu 
 interests rather than our own. [Applause.] 
 
 I asked these men abroad what they wanted. 
 "Why," they said, "we want tu sell more 
 goods in your country." I had no doubt of 
 that. They said, "You are a great agricul- 
 tural country ; you ought to raise agricultural 
 products, and we ought to make the manu- 
 factured articles." "Well." 1 said, "I find 
 that you bought thirty two million dollars' 
 worth of wheat last year, and only eight mil- 
 lions of it in the United States. I find that 
 you bought millions of dollars of coru., and 
 
only a few thoueand dollars of it in the United 
 States." I asked them if they would give up 
 their agriculture if we would give up our man- 
 ufactures, and they said their agriculture was 
 worth a great deal more than their manufac- 
 tures. They came right to the point, for they 
 could tell the truth on the subject in Etig- 
 land ; their friends do not like to tell it here 
 They said, "The price of labor is too high 
 in the United States. You pay too much for 
 labor. It has a bad effect. It causes a great 
 many of our laboring people to go to the 
 United States to seek better wages ; it makes 
 those discontented who remain at home ; they 
 demand higher wages, and we have had to pay 
 higher wages in this country this year than 
 ever before." "Well," I said, "that does 
 not hurt my feelings a great deal. I am very 
 glad they get good wages in the United States ; 
 I rejoice that the toiling men and women over 
 here are getting better wages." 
 
 I saw everywhere I went, especially on the 
 continent, women engaged in the roughest 
 and hardest work. Women have to bear heavy 
 burdens there. I saw women doing all kinds 
 of hard work. You have heard a great deal 
 said by our women's rights people — of whom 
 Icount myself one — abouttheright of women to 
 work. They have that right in the Old World to 
 their hearts' content. [Laughterand applause.] 
 
 I am glad that workingmen are complaining. 
 I am glad the workingmen in Europe are get- 
 ting discontented and want better wages and 
 are getting higher wages and fewer hours. I 
 thank my God that a man in the United States 
 to-day cao earn from three to four dollars in 
 ten hours' work, easier than he could forty 
 years ago earn one dollar, toiling from twelve 
 to fifteen hours. The first month 1 worked 
 after I was twenty-one years of age I went into 
 the woods, drove team, cut mill-logs, wood, 
 ros| in the morning before daylight and worked 
 hard until after dark at night, and I received for 
 it the magnificent sum of six dollars. Each 
 of those dollars looked as large to me as the 
 moon looked to-night. [Laughter.] 
 
 On the farm on which I served an appren- 
 ticeship I have seen the best men who ever 
 put scythe in grass working for from fifty cents 
 to four shillings a day in the longest days of 
 summer. Yesterday I visited that farm. I 
 asked the men who were there what they paid 
 men in haying-time last summer, and they 
 said from two dollars to two and a half a day. 
 This was paid on the same ground where men 
 worked forty years ago for from fifty cents to 
 four shillings, and took their pay in farm pro- 
 ducts, not money. I have seen some of the 
 brightest women go into the farm-houses and 
 work for from fifty cents to four shillings a 
 week, milking the cows, making butter and 
 cheese, washing, spinning, and weaving — doing 
 all kinds of hard work. I was told yesterday 
 that many young women were earning in the 
 shops a dollar a day, and that those who 
 worked in houses were getting from two dol- 
 lars and a half a week to three dollars and a 
 half. 
 
 In 1882, in the great debate in the Senate on 
 
 the tariff, it was eaid by those who advocated 
 protective duties that they had raised the 
 price of labor in the United States so that it 
 averaged fifty cents a day. How is it now? 
 This winter is the most prosperous winter the 
 United States has seen in its history'. Every- 
 body is at work. There is very little suffering 
 anywhere. Why this change? Why this im- 
 provement? It is because we have smitten 
 down the slave system, broken down the slave 
 power, lifted up, dignified, and honored labor, 
 and tried to protectand diversify our own indus- 
 tries. To-day the laboring men and women of 
 our country are earning from three to four times 
 as much in a day as they could earn forty years 
 ago, and a days' work is shorter now than it was 
 then. After I had learned a mechanical trade 
 in the place where I now live 1 worked fourteen 
 and fifteen hours a day, month after month, 
 to earn forty dollars a month. There are 
 hundreds of men there now who In ten hours 
 can earn a hundred dollars more easily than 
 I could earn forty in fifteen hours. I am great- 
 ful to God that this Is so. I do not care any- 
 thing about a few men or corporations piling 
 up a great amount of money. The wealth of 
 the Astors, the Stewarts, and the Vander- 
 bilts has no allurements for me. I believe 
 God made this world to grow good men and 
 women, and not to pile up money. That is 
 my belief, and I want to see the men and 
 women who bear the burdens and do the work 
 have a full share of all they earn, and that an 
 honest days' work shall always have a fair 
 days' pay. [Loud applause.] 
 
 Why is it that the Democrats of New Hamp- 
 shire are circulating free-trade documents, 
 pictorials and cartoons over this State? Why 
 should they strive to deceive poor laboring 
 men, when they were never so prosperous as 
 now under the system that tends to diversify 
 our industries, increase our production, add 
 to our own wealth, and take care of our own 
 country? My heart goes out to the working- 
 men of England and Ireland, of Germany 
 and France, aye and of Asia and Africa, too. 
 A man Is a man, no matter where he was born 
 or what blood courses in his veins. I believe 
 that God made him and Christ died for him, 
 and that he is destined to an Immortal inherit- 
 ance. I believe, too, In that comprehensive 
 policy that watches over the poor and lowly 
 and takes care of the interests of all the world ; 
 but, after all, I am for the Republic of the 
 United States, one and Indivisible, and the 
 people of the United States, before any other 
 country or any other people. [Applause.] 
 
 I am for taking care of our own interests, 
 and not allowing the importing houses of Eng- 
 lishmen or Frenchmen or Germans to control 
 the financial or business affairs of the people 
 of the United States, nor to direct the policy 
 of the United States. I think we are old 
 enough and large enough to take care of our* 
 selfes. [Applause.] 
 
 One would suppose, to hear our Democratic 
 friends talk, that we never had any corruption 
 before ; that they had always been pure, be- 
 cause they never punished a thief. [Applause 
 
aod laughter.] I propose right here to lay 
 down this proposition : that the reason why 
 this Administration ia so assailed is not that 
 it has been more corrupt, or as corrupt as 
 its modern predecessors, but that it is doing 
 much to expose thieving and to punish men 
 who steal. The Democratic party— I mean the 
 modern Democratic parly — came into power 
 in 1829, under General Jackson. 
 
 One man, Samuel Swartwont, in General 
 Jackson's day, when the Government raised 
 only about thirty million dollars a year, stole 
 a million dollars in the New York custom- 
 hoase — nearly as much money as has been 
 stolen under this Administration in three years, 
 in collecting and paying out nearly twenty-one 
 hundred million dollars. The percentage of 
 loss under the Administration has been less 
 than under any Administration since General 
 Jackson was inaugurated President of the 
 United States. There is not a shadow of doubt 
 of it. I assert here and now, that there has 
 been a less percentage of loss under General 
 Grant's administration than under that of 
 any other Administration since the days of 
 John Quincy Adams. John Tyler, a son of 
 President Tyler, in a letter recently pub- 
 lished, states that there were, in Van Bu- 
 ren's administration, ninety-eight receivers 
 of the public money, ninety-six of whom be- 
 came defjiulters. Ninety-six out of ninety- 
 eight! [Laughter.] Is there any man here 
 to-night who knows that any one of those men 
 •was ever sent to the penitentiary? 
 
 I believe a Republican thief is a worse man 
 than a Democratic thief. [Laughter.] He has 
 not had so many bad examples. [Laughter and 
 applause.] A Republican thief is the wicked- 
 est and meanest thief in all the land. He joins 
 a great party that was brought into being to 
 give freedom to the slave, maintain the unity 
 of the country, and preserve the life of the 
 nation. In the ranks of that party is a large 
 mass of the intelligence of the country, of the 
 praying men and women of the country. A 
 man who joins that political organization, be- 
 trays his trust, and steals the money of the Gov- 
 ernment, is a base creature, and the peniten- 
 tiary is the only place where he should dwell. 
 
 The difference between Republicans and 
 Democrats on this question is this: the Re- 
 publicans try to discover and punish their 
 thieves ; the Democrats never punish theirs. 
 You cannot tell me to-night of a man who 
 stole from the national Government under a 
 Democratic administration who was sent to 
 the penitentiary. Under this Administration 
 several thieves have been sent ihere. Most 
 of their stealing was under the late adminis- 
 tration, for there has been little stealing under 
 this. Under Andrew Johnson's administration 
 mean men got office. He went back on his 
 party, on his record, upright Democrats paid 
 tittle attention to him, honest Republicans 
 kept away from the White House, and mean 
 men of both parties sought the benefits of his 
 patronage. About forty collectors of internal 
 revenue under his administration became de- 
 faulters for about a million and three quarters. 
 
 Under the three years of General Grant's ad- 
 ministration four collectors became defaulters, 
 and for amounts less than two hundred thou- 
 sand dollars. 
 
 During the war we paid through the paymas- 
 ter's department of the Army more than a 
 thousand million dollars. That money was 
 paid somtimes when troops were on the march, 
 sometimes when they were under fire, and we 
 lost less than a quarter of a million dollars. 
 Never in the history of the human family 
 was there any hisrher evidence of integrity. 
 In the war of 1812, in paying out the little 
 money we paid during that war, we lost about 
 two million dollars. Since General Spinner 
 entered upon his office as Treasurer of the 
 United States, $55,000,000,000 have passed 
 through his office, counted by from three to 
 four hundred men and women. We have lost 
 between fifty and sixty thousand dollars in 
 these eleven years, while $55,000,000,000 have 
 gone through the office. VVe punished one 
 man, fined him, and he is now trying to get 
 back $5,000, for he says we made him pay 
 $5,000 more than he stole. [Laughter.] We 
 have sent to prison three trusted clerks, men 
 of capacity and ability, whom everybody trusted 
 and respected. That is the way we have 
 served our thieves. We have sent two men 
 who stole under Andrew Johnson's Adminis- 
 tration, and were prosecuted under this Ad- 
 ministration in Baltimore, to the penitentiary. 
 
 We had a paymaster in the Army ; he was 
 not a Republican ; his father was not a Re- 
 publican but an old Whig, and Assistant Sec- 
 retary pf the Treasury under Thomas Corwin. 
 This young man was a college graduate, in- 
 herited $100,000, was a member of a Christian 
 church, had a noble wife and three beautiful 
 children, lived within his income, got a pas- 
 sion for stock gambling, losthis $100,000, and 
 then took $400,000 of the money of the Gov- 
 ernment. He was arrested when he might have 
 run away. He was sent to the penitentiary 
 at Albany for ten years. About the same 
 time the discovery was made of the boldest 
 and most gigantic robbery of the people ever 
 perpetrated in ancient or modern times. Bill 
 Tweed — "Boss Tweed" — a man who, a few 
 years ago, went through bankruptcy, and who 
 is said to have boasted, within a year, that he 
 had $18,000,000, and, with him, the tribe of 
 Tammany Hall, have been discovered and ex- 
 posed. Some of these thieves have gone to 
 Europe, some of them are enjoying the pleas- 
 ures of the healthful breezes and snow-drifts 
 of Canada, some of them are in one part of 
 the country and some in another. While we 
 were trying Major Hodge, and sending him to 
 the penitentiary at Albany for ten years, with 
 the approval of the eptire Republican party 
 of the country, Bill Tweed, the greatest thief 
 in all the history of the human family, the boss 
 thief of the world, [loud laughter and ap- 
 plause,] was sent to Albany, not to the peni- 
 tentiary, but the State- House as a State sena- 
 tor, by twelve thousand Democratic majority. 
 [Applause.] 
 
 These two cases illustrate exactly the differ- 
 
6 
 
 ence between the two parties : the one denounc- 
 ing thieves and arresting and punishing them 
 when it can, the other never punishing them. 
 I am told by leading Democrats, some of them 
 members of the committee of seventy, men 
 who have done all they could to expose and 
 break these Tammany thieves down, that they 
 do not believe one of these thieves will ever 
 go to the penitentiary. They stole the Erie 
 railroad ; they stole the State of New York 
 from General Grant in 1868 ; they have stolen 
 their millions from the city ; they have stolen 
 judges and stolen juries, and they get elected 
 to the Legislature; they do not get sent to the 
 State prison. And the men who denied this 
 stealing, who denied that they stole the State 
 of New York when they knew that they did it, 
 who denied the stealing of these Tammany 
 Hall men, until it was finally brought out and 
 established so clearly that nobody could longer 
 deny it, these very men are accusing the Admin- 
 istration of stealing. 1 have heard before of 
 Satan'g rebuking sin, but I never saw anything 
 80 brazen as this. [Loud applause.] 
 
 There has been collected, under General 
 Grant's administration, in three years, nearly 
 twelve hundred million dollars — nearly four 
 hundred millions a year; there has been paid 
 out nearly a thousand million dollars ; making 
 about twenty-one hundred million dollars. We 
 have lost, out of this immense sum, in all the 
 departments of the Government, a million and 
 a quarter — less than a fifteenth part of one per 
 cent.! 
 
 We have paid out, during these three years, 
 ninety million dollars, in pensions, and we have 
 had five deftilcations, all of them soldiers, and 
 four of them shed their blood for the country. 
 But the Government has not lost a dollar, for 
 the agents made good their accounts, or their 
 bondsmen did it for them. 
 
 Everybody knows that the Indians have 
 been cheated and wronged for years, and that 
 many of our Indian wars have grown out of 
 our violations of treaty obligations, our bad 
 conduct, and the stealing from the appropria- 
 tions for the Indians. General Grant, know- 
 ing the Indians and their wrongs, two years 
 before he came into the Presidency tried to de- 
 vise a plan by which the Indians should receive 
 what the Government appropriated for them. 
 When- he came into power he invited the 
 Christian denominations of the country to se- 
 lect some good men whom he could send out 
 to see that the Indians were not cheated, and 
 they selected men like George H. Stuart; like 
 Friend Lang, in Maine ; like Friend Hoag, of 
 Iowa ; like \Villiam E. Dodge, of New York ; 
 and like Edward S. Tobey, of Massachusetts, 
 some of the noblest, best, and purest men who 
 tread the earth. These noble men have worked 
 these three years to save these poor Indians 
 from being wronged. The Indian policy of 
 General Grant, were there nothing else, is 
 enough to immortalize any Administration that 
 ever existed in the country, from the founda- 
 tion of the country. [Applause.] It has more 
 of justice in it, more of humanity, more of the 
 spirit of the divine Master, than can be found 
 
 in any other deed of the Government, except 
 the emancipation of the slaves. It stands by 
 the side of that grand act among the great 
 achievements of the nation. It will be acknowl- 
 edged hereafter, it will go into history, and 
 men will applaud it, when many of the men 
 who are assailing the present Administration 
 sleep in forgotten graves. 
 
 This Administration came into power with 
 the pledge to maintain the faith and honor of 
 the country, then weakly or wickedly assailed. 
 During these last thirty-five months there has 
 been paid $287,000,000, saving nearly eighteen 
 million dollars a year in interest. This money 
 has been mostly saved, on the one hand, by 
 an honest collection of the revenues, for we 
 collected the first fifteen months of General 
 Grant's administration $67,000,000 more than 
 was collected under the same laws in the last 
 fifteen months of Johnson's administration; 
 and on the other hand, by a reduction of the 
 expenses of the Government. From these 
 two sources we have paid this $287,000,000. 
 Throughout the financial world it is a matter 
 of wonder and amazement that the financial 
 policy of the United States should be so suc- 
 cessful. We elected General Grant pledged 
 to maintain the faith of the nation, to make 
 our debt sacred, and what is the result? Why, 
 the $700,000,000 of currency is worth to-day 
 $140,000,000 (twenty per cent.) more than it 
 was three years ago. The laboring man who 
 has earned two dollars to-day has received 
 forty cents, in real gold value, more than he 
 would have received three years ago this day. 
 There has been added twenty per cent, to evoij 
 dollar the laboring men of this country have 
 earned this day these many mopths ; and it has 
 been added because of the signal fidelity and 
 ability with which that pledge has been kept 
 to maintain the faith of the nation, honestly 
 collect the revenues, reduce expenses, and 
 extinguish the national debt as fast as we 
 could. 
 
 We have a class of men who are always look- 
 ing behind them. They have never been satis- 
 fied. They have taken their position on the 
 great issues of the last forty years and been 
 wrong every time. They linger behind their 
 age. All their predictions have failed. They 
 are the instruments of defeats and failures. 
 "Still these men continue to believe that all the 
 statesmanship of the country is gone. They 
 once looked up at the slave-masters of the 
 South, who were their masters, too, when they 
 stood on the hea^s of their negroes. They 
 looked pretty tall then. A great convulsion 
 came, and it shook them from their high posi- 
 tion, and they look quite as small now as other 
 people. But our Democratic friends do not 
 see it; the old illusion still haunts them. To 
 hear these men talk you would suppose Gen- 
 eral Grant was vastly inferior to such great, 
 magnificent statesman as Polk, Pierce, and 
 Buchanan. Who is General Grant — this man 
 so denounced? When the war opened he was 
 earning a few hundred dollars a year tanning 
 leather in Galena. He oBFered his services to 
 the nation, and they were not accepted. He 
 
went down to Springfield and served there for 
 some weeks, helping to enroll and organize 
 the regiments they were raising in Illinois. 
 Finally, they gave him a regiment. He had 
 not money enough to buy a sword with which 
 to fight the battles of his country, nor a horse 
 to ride. You did not know anything about 
 him; the nation knew nothing about him; 
 few had heard of him. He had served in the 
 Mexican war when a young man, fresh from 
 West Point, and won two brevets for gallant 
 conduct, but nobody knew anything of this 
 humble man. He took his regiment and 
 marched away. He never asked anything of 
 the Government; he never disobeyed an 
 order; he never made any complaint. He 
 went straight forward and did his duty, a quiet, 
 silent, modest man. 
 
 About the first thing we heard of him was 
 that he took about twenty-five thousand men 
 up the Tennessee river, moved on the enemy's 
 works, attacked an army of twenty thousand 
 rebels, and captured fifteen thousand of them. 
 You next heard of him coming on the field of 
 Shiloh when it was nearly lost, and when 
 asked if he had prepared for a retreat he said 
 that one boat would take all that would retreat. 
 He defeated the rebel army that had been 
 nearly victorious. Then he went down the 
 Mississippi river, passed Vicksburg, made a 
 movement into the country, attacked the rebel 
 armies, captured Vicksburg; and then you find 
 him at Chattanooga to restore a lost battle. 
 You have heard of the magnificent victory he 
 won on Mission ridge and Lookout mountain. 
 
 He was then brought to Washington, and 
 tS?rk~ command of the armies of the country, 
 led the army of the Potomac through the 
 Wilderness, fighting every day in the month 
 of May, 1864. He placed his army before 
 Richmond, and when the hour came, moved 
 upon the doomed city, and received the sur- 
 render of the rebel army at Appomattox. 
 Nineteen battles behind him, and all victo- 
 ries! He did not march his army to make a 
 parade through the rebel capital, but started 
 off alone, with his carpet-bag in his hand, for 
 Washington, to stop the raising of troops and 
 the manufacture of munitions, to make prep- 
 arations to disband the army and save expense, 
 and to save what he regarded, and what we all 
 regarded as a very important thing, a general 
 bankruptcy in the country. 
 
 We Republicans turned to this man when 
 Andrew Johnson failed us, and asked him to 
 be President. He did not seek the Presi- 
 dency ; he felt and said that his place at the 
 head of the Army was the post for him. We 
 iade htiYl President, &nd it was his strength 
 and commanding influence that carried the 
 fourteenth amendment. That same potent in- 
 fluence carried the fifteenth amendment, and 
 gave the black men the right to vote in all 
 the States. When a wail of distress came 
 up from the South, when poor black men 
 prayed for protection from the murderous 
 blowB of the midnight assassins of the Ku Klux 
 diens, Congress hesitated, faltered, divided. 
 Then it was that he came forth with the brief 
 
 -^„^He 
 
 tofrk" 
 
 message that rallied our scattered ranks like 
 a battle order. Clothed with authority he 
 has striven to protect the weak against the 
 cruellies of the strong. Manv hmwlrcd mem- 
 beta of the Ku Klux Klan have been arrosted, 
 several have been convicted, or have confessed 
 their guilt, and thirty of those chivalric assas- 
 sins are in the penitentiaries. The men who 
 stood by the cau.se of anti-slavery and the pro- 
 tection of the black man have found in Gen- 
 eral Grant a man who has stood bravely, 
 steadily, and consi.stently on the side of free- 
 dom and the equal rights of all men. 
 
 General Grant has now been President three 
 years. He has committed some errors, made 
 some mistakes in his appointments. But his 
 foreign and domestic policy, the leading meas- 
 ures of his Administration, have been and are 
 in the interests of the country. The masses 
 of the people, who have no personal griev- 
 ances, who only want good government, see 
 it, feel it, realize it. With all its faults, they 
 believe we have the most reformatory, pro- 
 gressive, and best Administration the country 
 has seen for forty years; and they are right in 
 their convictions. But he is followed by oblo- 
 quy and reproach. Again he is passing through 
 the "wilderness;" it is darkened, not with the 
 smoke of battle, but the storms of insinuatioD 
 and accusation, detraction and denunciation. 
 But he will not call retreat. The spirit that 
 uttered, when the flame of battle opposed his 
 march to the rebel capital, the inspiring words, 
 " I will fight it out on this line if it takes all 
 summer," is yet unbroken, and exultant foes 
 may yet find that another Appomattox lies 
 before him. [Applause.] 
 
 In all the struggles of the last sixteen years 
 New Hampshire has been on the side of the 
 country and of liberty. Forgetting that 
 "victory clings to unity," you Republicans 
 of New Hampshire allowed your banners last 
 year to trail in the dust. You have tasted the 
 wholesome discipline of defeat. Now you 
 have the power to rise again. Forgetting 
 personal interests and petty difierenrees, and 
 standing shoulder to shoulder, you can redeem 
 your State, and thrill the heartsof your friends 
 throughout the land. To you. Republicans 
 of my native State, I appeal, for unity and 
 victory. I ask you, who maintained the right 
 of petition when it was cloven down under the 
 lead of Charles G. Atherton ; you who stood 
 by John P. Hale when smitten by Democracy 
 for fidelity to liberty; you who sternly opposed 
 the wicked compromises of 1850; you who 
 resisted the repeal of the Missouri compromise 
 when sustained by Franklin Pierce; you who 
 were true to Kansas when its skies were 
 illumined by the midnight fires of burning 
 cabins, and its virgin soil reddened with blood; 
 you who helped make Abraham Lincoln 
 President ; you who followed the old flag of 
 the Republic over many battle-fields; you who 
 sustained by voice and vote that grand series 
 of measures by which slavery was annihilated 
 and the slave power broken forever ; you who 
 helped extirpate caste, enfranchise the black 
 man, and give equality to all conditions of 
 
8 
 
 men ; I implore you, one and all, to sustain 
 now that sacred cause for which you have 
 toiled and prayed, voted and fought. Stand 
 by the RepiihUcan party ; stand by, I pray 
 you, that great political orgaiiization until it 
 accomplishes the task assigned it by the needs 
 of the country and the providence of God. 
 Make safe the beneficent deeds of the past, 
 and secure in their full fruition the fruits of 
 the seeds planted in faith and nurtured by 
 devotion and valor. 
 
 Listen not to the seductive voices which pro- 
 claim that the work of the Republican party 
 of the United States has been achieved. The 
 reforms of the past are not only to be assured, 
 but other reforms of magnitude are pressing 
 for accomplishment. At any rate, it has a 
 great, if not its greatest, work yet to do. That 
 work is to humanize, convict, and convert the 
 Democratic party of the United States. [Ap- 
 plause.] Men cannot be wrong all the time 
 for forty years and be convicted of their folly 
 in an hoHir. Until that political organization 
 has been convicted of its wickedness, repents 
 of its sins, and brings forth the fruits of re- 
 pentance, the Government of the United S.^ttes 
 cannot be safe in its control. Its history and 
 the elements of which it is composed alike 
 forbid that it should be aga'.n intrusted with 
 power. The Democratic party has at least 
 one million of voters in its ranks who 
 fought against their country with ballot and 
 bullet ; men who are only sorry that they 
 fought against their native land because they 
 failed. You must breathe into their souls the 
 spirit of patriotism and the spirit of liberty, 
 justice, humauiiy, and Christian civilization. 
 
 There are a million and a half of voters we 
 call "copperheads." I will not call them 
 "copperheads;" I will call them what they 
 love so much to be called, "conservatives." 
 [Laughter.] These men always sneered at 
 the cause of liberty, always took the side of 
 the old slave masters, stood up for privi- 
 lege and caste, and rejoiced, or if they did 
 not rejoice did not manifest sorrow, when our 
 armies were defeated. To convert these men 
 is a great work. I think it will take us a dozen 
 years, at least. If in that time we can change 
 the hearts of the old rebels of the South and 
 these conservatives here in tbe North, and get 
 them to accept the vital and animating princi- 
 ples of Christian civilization, and go for the 
 elevation and protection of the poor and the 
 lowly, the black men of the South and the 
 poor white men of the whole country — if we 
 can do this giand work in twelve years, the 
 world will say we have achieved quite as much 
 as we did when we put down the rebellion, 
 made four and a half million men free and 
 gave them cidzenship and equal rights. The 
 war Democrats, the men who by voice, or vote, 
 or bullet, stood by their country in time of war, 
 will be utterly helpless if the Democratic party 
 comes into power. The old rebel leaders will 
 be the head, the conservatives will be the body. 
 
 LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 
 
 013 789 593 6 
 
 and these loyal war Democrats will be only the 
 tail of the Administration. [Applause.] 
 
 In the past sixteen years we Republicans have 
 taken from the Democratic parly more than a 
 million of its best men — taken the cream right 
 ofFofit. [Applause.] We want the war Demo- 
 crats, some of these conservative Democrats, 
 and some of the rebel Democrats, too. They are 
 our mistaken, erring countrymen. We want 
 their influences and all they have to give on 
 the side of Republican ideas, principles, and 
 policies; on the side of education and devel- 
 opment, and the inspiring influences that ele- 
 vate and lift up the masses of our countrymen. 
 Never till the masses of the Democratic party 
 accept the vital ideas of patriotism, of equal- 
 ity for all and protection to all, will it be safe 
 to intrust the mighty interests of the nation to 
 that political organization. Its "new depart- 
 ure" is a delusion ; its "passive policy" is a 
 snare. Neither the one nor the other will be 
 adopted, because it is right. Ifeither be adopted 
 at all, it will be in the hope to win power, to 
 defeat the full fruition of the great work 
 achieved by the Republican party. The ac- 
 ceptance of the "new departure" and the 
 " passive policy " may be an advance for the 
 torpid conservatism of the Democracy, but the 
 adoption of either by the nation will be a low- 
 ering down, a reaction, an ignominious retreat. 
 
 Republicans of New Hampshire, of New 
 England, of the Republic, cling then with 
 deathless tenacity to your grand organization, 
 that now embodies three and a half million 
 men in its ranks. Stand by the Republican 
 colors. They symbolize patriotism and liber^v 
 justice and humanity, development ano'pi'o- 
 gress. Trust yourselves; correct your own 
 errors ; move right onward, abreast of the 
 advancing currents of a progressive republic- 
 anism. Look to your history ; do not blur 
 nor blot that immortal record. Let it be an 
 inspiration, a perennial source of faith and 
 hope, in sunshine and in storm. In the years 
 to come, when the passions and prejudices of 
 these days of conflict shall have sunk to rest 
 with us in the bright hereafter, the record of 
 the last twelve years will be a brilliant chapter 
 in the history of human progress. The world 
 will note it, and mankind will read it with 
 beaming eye and throbbing heart. 
 
 The Republicans of the United States should 
 never forget that they lived that history and 
 made that history. They should ever remem- 
 ber that America, as they have made it, is no 
 longer dominated by a slave power, nor guided 
 by the councils of slave masters. It is mov- 
 ing on a higher plane and working out a 
 nobler destiny for humanity than any of the 
 foremost nations of the globe. The continued 
 triumph of the Republican party assures the 
 triumph of equality before tne law, and pro- 
 tection under the law. Let, then, the Repub- 
 licans of New Hampshire, now as in the past, 
 lead the Republican columns to a glorious 
 victory. [Loud applause.]