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THE PRESIDENTIAL BATTLE OF 1872. 
 
 GRANT AND HIS DEFAMERS; DEEDS AGAINST WORDS. 
 
 SPEECH OF 
 
 HON. ROSCOE CONKLING, 
 
 At Cooper Institute, New York, 
 TUESDAY, JULY 23, 1872. 
 
 "i\^ might nor greatness in mortality 
 Can censure ^ scape; hack-ivounding calurnny 
 The whitest virtue strikes; ivhat king so strong, 
 Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue ?^^ 
 
 — Measure for Measure. 
 
 For twenty years, it has been my privilege to address my neigh- 
 bors upon political issues, and too much ardor, has, perhaps, been 
 among my faults. Yet no canvass has ever stirred me so deeply as 
 this. No election has ever appealed so strongly to my sense of fair 
 play, no canvass within my memory has ever been so full of foul 
 play, injustice and malice, none has ever more thoroughly tested 
 the common sense and generosity of the American people. 
 
 INJUSTICE HEAPED OX THE PRESIDENT. 
 
 Eleven years' service in Congress, has made me a close observer of 
 four Presidents, and of many public men; and if among them all, 
 there is one, living or dead, who never knowingly failed in his duty, 
 that one is Ulysses Sidney Grant. There was forecast in giving 
 him the name of Sidney, for his greatest and gentlest quality, is his 
 magnanimity. If there has been a high official, ever ready to admit 
 and correct an error, if there has been one who did wisely, firmly 
 and well, the things given him in charge, that one is the soldier in 
 war, and the quiet patriot in peace, who has been named again by 
 every township in forty-six States and Territories for the great 
 trust he now holds. Yet this man, honest, brave, and modest, and 
 proved by his transcendent deeds to be endowed with genius, com- 
 mon sense and moral qualities, adequate to the greatest aiVairs ; this 
 man who saved his country, who snatched our nationality and our 
 cause from despair, and bore them on his shield through the flame 
 of battle, in which, but for him, they would have perished; this 
 man, under whose administration our country has flourished as n© 
 one dared predict ; this man, to whom a nation s gratitude and bene- 
 
diction are due, is made the mark for ribald jibes, and odious ground- 
 less slanders. Why is all this? Simply because he stands in the 
 way of the greed and ambition of politicians and schemers. Many 
 honest men join in the cry, or hear it without indignation ; they are 
 deceived by the cloud of calumny which darkens the sky, but the 
 inventors, are men distempered with griefs, or eke the sordid, and 
 the vile, who follow politics, as the shark follows the ship. A war 
 of mud and missiles has been waged for months. The President, 
 his family, and all nearly associated with him, have been bespat- 
 tered, and truth and decency have been driven far away. Every 
 thief' and cormorant, and drone, who has been put out ; every 
 baffled mouser for place or plunder; ever}^ man with a grievance or 
 a grudge ; all who have something to make by a change, seem to 
 wag an unbridled tongue, or to drive a foul pen. 
 
 The President can not enter the lists of controversy and defend 
 himself; the proprieties of his station forbid it; his chief competi- 
 tor, managing behind the curtain a newspaper from which he pre- 
 tends to have retired, is free to defend and puff himself, and feels 
 free to fill his paper with base and scurrilous falsehood, in the hope 
 of blackening a name which is one of the treasures of the nation, 
 and which will be the pride of posterity. All this pollution, will, 
 in the end, disgrace only its authors; it will not disgrace Grant or 
 the nation, because the nation will spurn and resent it. The dis- 
 gusting personalities emptied upon General Jackson, secured his 
 re-election ; an offended people struck back, and they will strike 
 back again. 
 
 WHERE THE OPPOSITIOiN^ HAS BLUNDERED. 
 
 The American people may misjudge a political question, they 
 may be deceived, but with the truth before them, they will never 
 be unjust, and never untrue upon a question of right and wrong. 
 Ingratitude, has been charged upon Republics, and just there is the 
 point, where the angry enemies of the President have blundered. 
 Had the cool veterans of the Democracy, formed or selected the 
 issues to be presented, they would have been wise enough to so frame 
 them, that the people could decide in their favor, without fixing a 
 stigma upon General Grant, and without blasting his name, or doing 
 him wrong. But the Democratic statesmen, the leaders in a hundred 
 fights, have been mere lookers-on ; leadership has been assumed by 
 Republican renegades and "outs;" men so eaten up with envy, or 
 so maddened with the loss or refusal of place and patronage, that 
 nothing would satisfy them short of a rancorous, revengeful, per- 
 sonal raid. When a man turns Turk he spits on the Cross, and 
 when wide-throated Ultra-Republicans clandestinely trade with the 
 enemy, and then turn open traitors to their party, they become the 
 meanest and fiercest of opponents, just as a Yankee slave overseer 
 from New England, was alwaj^s more brutal than those born in the 
 South. When men whose vanity was hurt, and others gnawed by 
 ambition and cupidity, went out to ruin the party which they could 
 not rule, madness drove them on. They had no polar star, except 
 hatred of Grant and his supporters. These lusty patriots who mod- 
 estly assumed the name of "Reformers," would not have an ordin- 
 ary Presidential canvass for the fair discussion of political questions ; 
 such a proceeding would have been too tame and insipid for them. 
 
 61505 
 
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 Their stomachs craved stronger more game-Oavored meat- hard 
 names must be called ; vengence must be satisfied ; the President 
 must be politically court-martialed, or dragged before a National 
 assize to be tried as a malefactor. 
 
 In the Senate, the Democrats proper, kept silent or talked about 
 business; I give them credit for wasting but little time; but half 
 the last session, eight months in length, was worn out and wasted 
 by slanderous electioneering harangues aimed at the Administration 
 and Its friends, by men badly in need of being reformed themselves 
 Ihese self-righteous and noisy oracles, pitched the key in which the 
 Anti-(jrant chorus was to be sung, and hence comes the absence of 
 political questions, and the presence of personal and scandalous is- 
 sues _ The public journals, and newspaper correspondence from 
 Washington, controlled by these "Liberals "—liberal in nothing 
 so much as in defaming honest men, and praising and heliMiicr them- 
 selves— took hue from the heart-burnings, distempers, and ambitions 
 which set them on. " Any thing to beat Grant," was the motto, and 
 It gratihed their heat and spite to as.sail the President personally and 
 to heap malignant charges upon him : thus his character, his 'intetr- 
 rity, his standing as a man, have been put in issue, and the people 
 are compelled to pass upon his guilt or innocence. The ca.se has 
 been so put, that the question is not merely whether Grant shall be 
 President, but whether Grant shall be pronounced by the nation a 
 fool, a knave, an imposter, an enemy of his country. Had issue 
 been taken upon public measures, nad public questions been raised 
 whether new questiors or those which have divided parties hereto- 
 fore, a popular verdict would have been a verdict only between par- 
 ties, and policies and principles. Such a verdict, would have rested 
 upon public grounds, personal and disparaging to no one. 
 
 If the political views the President represents, are not those of a 
 majority there is no injustice, and no reflection upon any one, in so 
 saying and so voting. But when he is arraigned for ignorance d s- 
 honesty and vice, and for nothing else, the case is different. 
 
 PLATFOR:\t JIADE UP OF SLAXDEUS OF DISAPPOINTED MEN. 
 
 What is the arraignment ? What political position held by the 
 Eepublican party or its candidates, does the "any thing to beat 
 Grant " coalition deny? Will anyone tell me? Read the mani- 
 festo put forth at Cincinnati, which Mr. Greeley did over in im- 
 proved words as he thought in his letter of acceptance. Read the 
 address lately published by A[r. Greeley and his committee, solicitino- 
 the votes of the people of this State. These papers, in so far s^ 
 they refer to the Administration, are a gross personal libel upon the 
 President, and they are nothing more. 
 
 Hear the words of the self-constituted crowd at Cincinnati that 
 
 motley group made up of a few respectable men who Imve since re- 
 pudiated it, and of the most piebald, disreputable collection to be 
 scraped from the gutters and sewers of politics. These ])oliticaI 
 lazzaroni, pretending to represent States, laid down the platform on 
 which Mr. Greeley thinks he is running. See how it reads: 
 
 The President of the United States has openly used the powers anj opportunities ot Ws high offlpp 
 for the promotion of personal ends. * umce 
 
 He has kept notoriously corrupt and unworthy men In places of power and responslbllltr to fhr. 
 detriment of the public interest. i ""=■""•1/, lo me 
 
 He has used the public sarvico of the srovernm-nt a? a machinery of corrantion and personal Infln 
 ence, and has interfered, with tyrannical arrogance, in the political aflairs of States and manlclpamies 
 
He has lewarded with influential and lucrative offices men who have acquired his favor by valua- 
 ble presents, thus stimulating the demoralization of our political life by his conspicuous example. 
 
 He has shov u himself deplorably unequal to the tasks imposed upon him by the necessities of the 
 country, and culpably careless of the responsibilities of his high office. 
 
 Mr. Greeley's personal backers and trainers recently delighted 
 the public with an address, embroidered with the rhetoric and signa- 
 ture of Mr. John Cochrane. This paper, gorgeous in composition, 
 speaks of the Cincinnati /asco as " one of the most stately and bril- 
 liant parliaments ever assembled in this country." These rainbow- 
 dyed words show on what sky-scraping pinions the " Liberal " eagle 
 soars. See how this gloomy and peculiar monarch of the clouds, 
 swoops down on the poor pigmy and truant of Appomatox. Ob- 
 serve the awful obscurity, grand even in parenthesis, with which 
 he "goes for" his prey as another reformer "went for that heathen 
 Chinee": 
 
 The history of the Administration is a shadowy record of discreditable (sometimes disgraceful) 
 acts— many of them blunders ; others, crimes. 
 
 He has repeatedly shown himself on the one hand ignorant of the laws, and on th"-. other defiant 
 of them. 
 
 He has accepted gifts from flatterers, for which he has rendered dishonorable equivalents by be- 
 stowing public emoluments on the obsequious givers. 
 
 These are but three, of the seventeen personal crimes, of which 
 the bright particular Cochrane appears as the avenging angel. Do 
 such despicable assertions and imputations raise any political or 
 party issue ? 
 
 NOTHING TANGIBLE ABOUT TARIFF, AMNESTY, OR CIVIL SERVICE REFORM. 
 
 The tariff resolution, at Cincinnati, is a mere juggle — a shallow 
 evasion, by which no one of common intelligence has a right to 
 be cheated. 
 
 The resolutions about Congress and " centralism," if they mean 
 any thing, refer to the exercise of powers by Congress, every one of 
 which Mr. Greeley approved and demanded, in his usual violent and 
 unmeasured language. 
 
 The amnesty resolution is spent, because a general amnesty bill 
 was passed weeks ago. Every rebel votes, and every rebel may- 
 hold office now, except Jefferson Davis, and less than two hundred 
 others who still spurn forgiveness. There is nothing left of the 
 amnesty question, unless some one wants t® mount a dead horse 
 in behalf of Jefferson Davis and his handful of cronies, who say 
 that their perjury needs no forgiveness, and seeks none, and that 
 they have no use just now in that way for those they keep to sign 
 their bail bonds, and do their other chores. 
 
 Where then is the political issue, the people are to pass upon? It 
 can not be "Civil Service Eeform," unless dishonesty is imputed to 
 the President. He is for Civil Sarvice Eeform, he recommended it, 
 and inaugurated it, and the Philadelphia Convention specially de- 
 clared for it. There can be no issue of that kind, except by pretending 
 that Grant is a hypocrite, and that Greeley is not ; and neither of 
 these things would be easy to prove. Mr. Greeley has plainly and 
 repeatedly avowed in public and in private, that his political action 
 hinges on patronage and spoils: without stopping to prove this now, 
 I will recur to it hereafter. 
 
 The coalition presents nothing of substance, on which parties or 
 individuals are divided in principle, but only assaults upon the 
 President. This is nothing more or less than a challenge of com- 
 parison between the candidates. 
 
 The issue is narrowed to a single inquiry. Which is personally 
 
the safest, fittest man, for the Presidency? That is the question, and 
 the whole of it. 
 
 DEMOCRACY GIVES UP. WHAT IS ASKED OF DEMOCRATS. 
 
 Some things, however, are said and done effectually, by the plat- 
 form and nomination of our opponents. They blot out and renounce 
 the time honored creed of the Democratic party. That creed is laid 
 aside, and its vital points I'epudiatcd. 
 
 _ It is fairly admitted that Democratic doctrines, and Democratic can- 
 didates, can not stand before the judgment of the country. 
 
 The Democracy confesses its defeat upon the great issues of the 
 century, and confesses its error also. Equality of race; emancipa- 
 tion of slaves; the ballot for the blacks; a protective tariff; exemp- 
 tion of government bonds from taxation; paying bonds in coin ; 
 upon these and other things, the Democracy at last confesses itself 
 not only beaten, but wrong, and the licpublican party victorious and 
 right. Stopping here, the homage paid to the Republican party 
 would be great indeed, but we find greater tribute and homage still. 
 
 Not only are the old grounds of difference given up, but no new 
 ones can be found. What measure or doctrine of the Republican 
 party, again I ask, have our opponents ventured to attack? 
 
 The_ Republican patty has been in power for years, responsible for 
 all legislation in the greatest era of the nation, "and now its life-long 
 rival and adversary, at last throws up the sponge, not daring to join 
 issue upon one political question. 
 
 Even the Ku Klux and election bills, are not matters in differ- 
 ence, for Mr. Greeley supported them both, with all his virulent 
 vocabulary. My own part in preparing and pressing the election 
 law. was. I remember, the occasion of my being praised in the Tri- 
 bune. This puzzled me at the time, and suggested that I must 
 have been doing something wrong, because the Tribune marked me 
 for destruction after its editor was not elected to the Senate. Mr. 
 Greeley must have been elated indeed over the congressional elec- 
 tion law, when his exuberance became so great that he could write 
 a kind, or even a just or true word of me. 
 
 The only instances of alleged "centralism"' being measures to 
 which Mr. Greeley stands fully committed, the candidate and the 
 platform xogether leave not a shred of anything Democratic. As 
 if to abjure the last vestige of Democracy and wipe out its very 
 memory, these vaulting managers have selected as their figure-head, 
 a professed Ultra-Republican, formerly an Ultra-Whig, and they ask 
 honest Democrats to vote for him, against a man born and bred a 
 Democrat, who never acted with the Republican party till after the 
 war had raised new issues, on which Democrats divided. Democrats 
 are asked to vote for that Republican, wdio "Out Herod-ed Herod" 
 always, in politics and abuse, and who did more than any other 
 man in the North to encourage secession and bring on the war. A 
 Republican, coming from the Whig party with such a record, now 
 asks the votes of Democrats. 
 
 The anti- Grant managers are daring, if they are not silly. They 
 attempt to crowd down the throats of Democrats who fought the 
 Maine Law, the man who drowned all other voices in his outcries 
 for penal statutes and Sunday laws, to stop by force the drinking 
 even of la^er beer. 
 
If a Democrat was running, or if Democratic principles were in 
 the field, Democrats might be expected to vote the ticket ; but when 
 the choice is between Republicans, and no democratic principle is afc 
 stake, Democrats will be apt to pick and choose for themselves 
 which Republican they will vote for, if they vote at all. 
 
 WHY SHOULD DEMOCRATS VOTE FOR GREELEY? 
 
 Upon what ground will patriotic Democrats prefer Greeley to 
 Grant? They must prefer Greeley, because they disapprove Grant 
 personally, or else because they disapprove some political doctrine 
 he represents. 
 
 Are Democrats for repudiating the debt ? Are they for agitating, 
 or annulling the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendments of 
 the Constitution ? Would they re-establish slavery ? Would they 
 pay the rebel war debt, or pensions to rebel soldiers, or rebel war 
 claims ? Would they inflate the currency again, and flood the 
 country with paper money ? Are Democrats against reducing taxes 
 and expenses ? Are Democrats opposed to peace with all nations, 
 and stable government at home ? These questions are not asked to 
 impugn the position of any man, but for the opposite reason. 
 
 President Grant being tried and true in all these things, why should 
 any Union man, or Conservative, or business man, or ])atriot, vote 
 against him, even if his competitor was a safe and fit man for Pres- 
 ident? Plainly there can be no reason, unless Grant is unworthy of 
 confidence, or respect, and deserves to be found guilty of the crimes 
 and vices alleged against him. To judge this question, we must ex- 
 amine his history and lay bare his life. " The tree is known by 
 its fruit :" the carpenter by his chips : the man by his deeds. 
 
 grant's education and boyhood. 
 
 Grant can not be illiterate, or, as a Greeley orator told an audience 
 the other day, " ignorant of what school boys know." 
 
 He was educated at West Point, and whoever graduates in that 
 exacting school, must have an education, such as few Americans 
 receive. Mental culture is not all we find in Grant at West 
 Point. His letters, written then, stamp him with a character, enough 
 by itself to refute the worn and soiled tavern scandal which now 
 offends the nostrils of the nation. Here is a letter to his mother, 
 June -ith, 1839. He was then seventeen. " As the twig is bent the 
 tree is inclined." Let us see what kind of a boy the man grew out of. 
 
 U. S. West Point, Military Academy, 
 June 4, ia9. 
 
 My Deae Mother,— I liave occasionally been called to be separated from you; but never did 1 
 feel the lull force and effect of this separation as I do now. I seem alone in the world without my 
 mother. There have been so many ways in which yon have advised me, when, in the quiet ('f home, I 
 have been pursuing my studios, that you can not tell how much I miss you. 'When I was busy with 
 father in the tannery and on the farm, wc were both more or less surrounded by others, who took up 
 our attention, and occupied our time. But I was to often alone with you, and you spoke to me so fre- 
 quently in private, that the solitude of my situation here at the academy, among my silent books and 
 in my lonely room, is all the more striking ; it reminds me all the more forcibly of home, and most of 
 all, my dear mother, of von. But, in the midst of all this, your kind instructions and admonition are 
 ever present with me. 1 trust they may never be absent from me, as long as I live. How often I 
 think of them ! and how well do they strengthen me in every good word and work '. 
 
 My dear mother, should 1 progress well with my studies at "West Point, and become a soldier for 
 my country, lam looking forward with hope to have you spared to share with mc in any advance- 
 ment 1 may make. I see now, in looking over the records here, how much American soldiers of the 
 right stamp are indebted to good American mothers! When they go to the Held, what prayers go with 
 them! what tender testimony of maternal aUectlon and counsel are in their knapsacks! 1 amstiuck, 
 in looking over the history of the noble struggle of our fathers for national indcpenoence, at the evi- 
 dence of the good influence exerted upon ihtm by the women of the Kevolution. Ah ! my beloved 
 friend, how can the present generation ever repay the debt it owes tl.e patriots of the past lor the 
 sacrifices they have so freely and richly made for us ? AVc may well ask, "Would our country be what 
 it is now, if it had not been for the greatness of our patnotic ancestors? Let me hear from you by 
 letter as often as convenient, and send me such books as you think will help mc. They can be for- 
 warded through the courtesy of our member of Congress. 
 
 Faithfully and inost lovingly your son Ulysses. 
 
To his father, he writes from AYest Point: 
 
 I find much here that makes me Jove my dear native land more than ever. I am happy in the fact 
 that this stronghold of nature is safely in the hands of the United States. Do you Ijnow, father, that 
 it is called the Gibraltar of America? <*♦*»«. 
 
 As I return from my walk, refreshed by the exercise, inspired bv the grand and varied scenery, and 
 better prepared for mv studies, I pass by the cemetery of the aoademv, where some of our cherished 
 dead repose. Here is (he monument erected by our grateful country to the brave hero, Kosciusko, 
 who fell on ttic field of battle, on American soil, fighting for the liberties of mankind. You remember, 
 father, the line that is recorded of him : 
 
 " And Freedom shrieked as Kosciusko fell." 
 
 I am rendered serious by the impressions that crowd upon me here at West Point. My thoughts 
 are frequently occupied with the hatred I am made to feel toward traitors to my country, as I look 
 around me on the memorials that remain of the black- hearted treason of Arnold. I am full of a con- 
 viction of scorn and contempt, which my young and inexperienced pen is un-ible to write in tliis letter, 
 toward the conduct of any man, who, at any time, could strike at the liberties of such a nation as ours. 
 If ever men should be found in our Union base enough to make tlie attempt to do this ; if, like 
 Arnold, they should secretly seek to sell our national inheritance for the nie?s of pottnge of wealth or 
 power, or section— West Point sternly reminds me what you, my father, would have your son do. As I 
 stand here in this national fort, a student of arms under our country's flag, I know "full well how you 
 would have me act in such an emergency. I trust mv future conduct, in such an hour, would prove 
 worthy the patriotic instructions you have given. Yours obediently, Ulysses Sidney Grant. 
 
 Had the boy who wrote these letters, a good and gentle nature? 
 Was he well grounded, or afloat? When did he lose tlie moral 
 sense which there speaks out? 
 
 From West Point he went to act a subordinate part in the Mexi- 
 can war. He acted it bravely, modestly, and well. The Mexican 
 war being over, his pay in the regular army would have gone on, 
 and he might have lived in peace and idleness at the public cost ; 
 but, unwilling to be a drone, he became a tanner. 
 
 THE "TAN^iTER OF GALEN"A." WHAT HE TAXXED. 
 
 Mr. Sumner withers him, by reminding us that, "He tanned hides 
 at Galena for a few hundred dollars a year." He did not masquerade 
 as a wood-chopper — he did not figure in pictorials as a farmer — he 
 did not go round telling " what he knew about " any thing that he 
 didn't understand himself; he minded his own business, and let 
 other people's business alone ; but he worked with his hands as a 
 hewer of wood, which he sold in the market, and wrought out a liv- 
 ing for his family and himself 
 
 From the breaking out of the Eebellion, his career is a "thrice 
 told tale " — the world knows it by heart. When the fla.^ sank at 
 Sumpter, he did not wait to be called. Without commis.sion, com- 
 mand, uniform, or shoulder straps, he started for the field, and 
 grasping the stars and stripes, he carried them through a blaze of 
 victories such as no mortal, before him, had won. 
 
 While Senators who now hawk at him, were lolling f )r a fourth 
 term on cushions, and eviscerating encyclopedias, books of quota- 
 tions, and classical dictionaries, the tanner of Galena swept rebellion 
 from the valley of the Mississippi, and the Father of Waters went un- 
 vexed to the sea. 
 
 Lincoln and Stanton, who reposed unmeasured confidence in him, 
 called him at once fi'om the victorious fields of the West, to the de- 
 partment of the Potomac, that Golgotha, where army after army, 
 the very flower of the nation, had melted awa}^ He came to the 
 wilderness of A'irginia, when that traitorous Commonwealth had be- 
 come the rendezvous of the allied armies of rebellion, and when the 
 rebel chiefs were boasting that in the fastnesses of the Blue Ridge 
 they could defy the world in arms. He marched from Washington, 
 and he measured no backward step, until he had set his foot upon the 
 shattered fragments of the greatest military powei-, an invading 
 army ever overthrew. He solved the pi'oblem which had baffled 
 all others, and preserved a nationality, after the world thought it 
 had gone down. 
 
How stood he theu ? The ijatiou leaned and reposed upon him, 
 •and blessed him. Both hemispheres gaze.d at him, as the prodigy 
 and wonder of the age. 
 
 The Democrats sought his consent to nominate him for the Presi- 
 dency without platform or pledge, but he declined. His integrity 
 taught him, that when a party chooses a candidate from the ©ther 
 side, somebody is to be cheated ; and by Grant's consent, no one 
 ever was or ever will be cheated. 
 
 But the Democratic managers adored him, and saw him only re- 
 splendent with greatness and with virtues. He was not unfit for 
 President then, he was the fittest of all his countrymen. He did 
 not become unfit, until three years' experience had ripened and en- 
 larged his knowledge. He did not become unfit while the patronage 
 held out, and while unclean fingers were allowed to fumble it. 
 
 In his recent modest letter of acceptance he says, "Experience 
 ;may guide in avoiding mistakes inevitable with novices in all pro- 
 fessions and in all occupations." 
 
 WHAT THE NEW TOEK WORLD SAID. 
 
 He was a "novice" when the New York TT'-r^ then as now, the 
 ablest opposition paper, said on the 11th of April, 1865 : 
 
 Gen. Grant's history should teach us to discriminate better than r.-e Americans are apt to do be - 
 tween glitter and solid work. Our proiieness to run after demagogue-! and spouters may find a whole- 
 some corrective in the study of such a character as his. The qualities by which great things are ac- 
 complished are here seen to have no necessary connection with shcv.y and superficial accomplish- 
 
 Ulysses Grant the tanner, Ulysses Grant the unsuccessful applicant lor the post of City Surveyor ot 
 bt. Louis, Ulysses Grant, the driver into that city of his two-horse team with a load of wood to sell, 
 had Within him every manly quality which will cause the name of Lieut. -Gen. Grant to live forever in 
 history. His career is a lesson in practical democracy ; it is a quiet satire on the dandyism, the puppy- 
 ism, and the shallow atlectation of our fasliionable exquisites as well as upon the swagger of our plau- 
 sible, glib-tongued demagogues. 
 
 Applv to General Grant what test you will ; measure him by the magnitude of the obstacles he has 
 surrounded, by the value of the positions he has gained, by the fame of the antagonist over whom he 
 has triumphed, by tlie achievements of his most illustrious co-workers, by the sureness with which he 
 directs his indomitable energy io the vital point which is the key of a vast field of operations, or by 
 that supreme test of consummate ability, the absolute completeness of his results, and he vindi- 
 cates his claim to stand next after Napoleon and Wellington, among the great soldiers of this covmtry, 
 if not on a level with the latter. 
 
 WHAT HORACE GREELEY SAID. 
 
 He was not quite a novice when Horace Greeley said these things : 
 
 Grant and his policy deserve the very highest credit. 
 
 The People of the United states know Gen. Grant— have known all about him since Donelson and 
 Vicksburg ; they do not know his slanderers, and do not care to know them. 
 
 While asserting the right of every Republican to his untrammeled choice of a candidate for next 
 President until a nomination is made, I venture to suggest that Gen. Grant will be far better qualified 
 for that nomentous trust in 18?-J than he was in 1868. 
 
 We are led by him who first taught our armies to conquer in the West, and subsequently in the East 
 also. Kichmond would not come to us until we sent Grant after it, and then it had to come. He has 
 never yet been defeated, and never will be. He will be as great and successful on the field of politics 
 as on that of arms. 
 
 Yes; Gen. Grart has failed to gratifysome eager aspirations, and has thereby incurred some Intense 
 hatreds. These do not and will not fail ; and his Administration will prove at least equally vital. We 
 shall hear lamentation after lamentation over his failures from those whose wish is father to the 
 thought ; but the American people let them pass unheeded. Their strong arm bore him triumphantly 
 through the war and into tlie White House, and they still uphold and sustain him ; and they never 
 failed and never will. 
 
 He was not altogether a novice, when in September, 1871, Mr. 
 Greeley wrote and sent to the Repablican State Convention for 
 adoption, these resolutions : 
 
 II. In this alarming crisis in city and State afl'airs, the Republican party refers all good citizens to 
 its record, as their warrant for giving it their fullest confidence and support in the campaign, now 
 formally opening, of the honest men against the thieves. 
 
 It abolished slavery, 
 
 It led in the suppression of the rebellion. 
 It preserved and enlarged the Union. 
 
 It promptly reduced the enormous forces thus required to a peace footing. 
 It has reduced the debt over two hundred and fifty millions of dollars in the last three years. 
 It has simultaneously reduced pubUc taxation over two hundred and fifty miHions ef dollars per 
 annum. 
 
 It has preserved peace on the border. 
 
 It has won a friendly adjustment of the threatening troubles with Great Britain. 
 
 III. For itn conspicuous share in this btneflcient record lee indorse the Xiational EepuhHcau 
 Administration. 
 
 These resolutions were written only a little while ago, and all 
 the slanders to this da}^ invented against the President, had long 
 been current then. 
 
9 
 
 " GIFT-TAKING." 
 
 But let ns go back a moment, to Grant, before he seriously' 
 thouijht of being President, and when he was only the idol of the 
 Hation. Returning from the field, covered with glory, but poor in 
 money, the affluent, whose fortunes he had saved, met him with 
 munificent offerings. In this, tliey followed the customs of ancient 
 and modern times. 
 
 The austere republics of antiquity, enriched and ennobled their 
 heroes returning from victory. England, with an unwritten consti- 
 tution, and an omnipotent parliament, which a lawyer once said 
 "could do anything but to make a man a woman," has enriched her 
 Generals both by acts of Parliament, and by voluntary subscriptions. 
 
 In the United States, the Constitution does not permit Congress to 
 act in such matters: here they rest wholly in the voluntary action 
 of individuals, and that public presentations to heroes, involved 
 turpitude in givers or recipients, has been first found out by the 
 spurious reformers and libelers now clamoring for notice. 
 
 "Wellington received from his Government, and his neighbors, more 
 than three million dollars. British citizens of Calcutta made him 
 presents, the officers of the army gave him ten thousand dollars, 
 the House of Commons voted him a million dollars, and a mansion 
 and estate were purchased for him by subscription, at a cost of one 
 million three hundred thousand dollars. Besides this, he was three 
 times ennobled, twice by England, and once by Spain. 
 
 Oliver Cromwell, for deeds done in civil war, received thirty-two 
 thousand five hundred dollars a year, in gifts. ]\Iarlboroagh, was 
 given a stately palace and a splendid fortune. Nelson and his fam- 
 ily, were ennobled, and received seventy thousand dollars. Jewels 
 and money were given to Fairfax, for services in civil war. 
 
 The generals and admirals of England and France have gener- 
 ally been recipients of great pecuniary benefits. In England and 
 elsewhere, the custom of presents to public men has gone beyond 
 the army and the navy. Richard Cobden, a civilian, in token of 
 political service only, was given by subscription three hundred and 
 fifty thousand dollars. John Bright has just received costly gifts. 
 
 America, younger and poorer, with few wars to breed heroes, has 
 been less lavish than older nations ; but Americans have not been 
 stingy. General McClellan, perhaps, begins the list of largely re- 
 warded generals ; his active service ended before the war was over. 
 and his Democratic admirers prior to nominating him for the Presi- 
 dency, presented him a costly house, and a large purse, amounting 
 in all to a hundred thousand dollars. 
 
 To Sherman, Sheridan, Farragut, and Grant, large sums were 
 given. To Stanton's family, and to Rawlins', were given more than 
 a hundred thousand each. Were these things dishonorable ? Was 
 it wrong for General Grant to accept such gifts ? The charge is an 
 insult to the nation who witnessed and applauded the proceeding ; it 
 is an imputation upon those who gave, as much as upon him who re- 
 ceived. It can not have been dishonorable or improper for him to 
 accept a gift, without being dishonorable and improper to offer it 
 
 How must the cant and snivel we hear, seem to the people of Ger- 
 many just now. Bismarck, though Chancellor and Prime Minister, 
 has just received as a gift, in token of his services in the recent war. 
 
10 
 
 a magnificent landed estate, worth more than was given to all our 
 generals ; and Bismarck, in like token, has been made a Prince. 
 General Yon Moltke, for his services in the German-Franco war, has 
 been given $300,000 ; and Germany has set apart, from the French 
 indemnity fund, four million dollars, to be distributed in gifts to her 
 heroes. Do you believe any German, or any man with a German 
 heart in his bosom, will ever be mean enough to throw these gifts in 
 the face of those who earned and accepted them ? If there is a 
 man mean enough to do it, he will be safer in the Greeley menage- 
 rie, than he would be in any hiding place in Germany. 
 
 Yet gift-taking, forsooth, is paraded by political Pharisees. One 
 thing is noticeable ; the men who screech about gift-taking, are those 
 who never gave a cent, and who were never openly offered a cent — 
 certainly not for any honorable service rendered to their country. 
 The charge that Grant accepted any gift after he became President^ 
 or after he was nominated, is wholly false. He has accepted nothing 
 of value since his first nomination — not even a carriage and horses — 
 although Lincoln, and Buchanan, and Pierce, and Taylor, and other 
 Presidents, did accept carriages and horses after their election. 
 
 " GIFT-BEARING GREEKS." 
 
 But it is said that men who subscribed to gifts have been appointed 
 to office, and the insinuation is that they were appointed because 
 they subscribed to gifts. 
 
 The fiict that hundreds who gave, have never been appointed to 
 anything, would of itself seem to disprove the charge that official 
 patronage has been used to repay gifts. Only three, or at most four 
 contributors to the funds raised for General Grant, have ever been 
 offered appointments, and it would seem far fetched to explain the 
 selection of three, for a reason applying to more than three hundred 
 who were never selected at all. But the facts answer the charge. 
 
 MR. A. T. STEWART, AND MR. BORIE. 
 
 Mr. A. T. Stewart subscribed to the Grant fund, so did every leading 
 man in the City of New York who then supported the wai- and the 
 Republican party. No man on Manhattan Island who would have 
 been thought of for the Cabinet, refused to subscribe. A man of 
 wealth and prominence belonging to the Union party at that time, 
 who had refused to share in an offering to a Union General, would 
 have been as mean and as marked, as a member of a church who 
 should refuse to pay his part to the minister. The call was general, 
 and for the wealthy who had supported the war, to give, w^as matter 
 of course. When General Grant became President, had he named 
 for his Cabinet E. D. Morgan, George Opdyke, Jackson S. Schultz, 
 William E. Dodge, Henry Clews, or any other leading merchant or 
 banker who supported him, it would have turned out that he too was 
 a "gift-bearing Greek." 
 
 The same tiling is true of Mr. Borie of Philadelphia, the late Sec- 
 retary of the Navy ; the only difference being, that Mr. Stewart was 
 willing to accept office, and Mr. Borie utterly refused and declined 
 it, consenting at last, under protest, to serve only for a short time. 
 These cabinet ministers were selected for two reasons : First, their 
 supposed fitness, and, second, because they were not "politicians." 
 Mr. Stewart's success, and mastership of the details of a vast 
 
11 
 
 and varied business, convinced the President that he might render 
 great service as Secretary of the Treasury. 
 
 Mr, Borie, a retired merchant and importer, and shipper, and 
 ship owner, was believed to have large experience and knowledge 
 applicable to the Navy Department. 
 
 These facts, by themselves, might not have caused these two se- 
 lections, because other men might have been found qualified, and at 
 the same time known in political affairs. 
 
 THE ]Sr. Y. TKIBUNE AT THE BOTTOJr OF IT. 
 
 The New York Tribune^ and the newspapers which followed it, or 
 chimed in with it, had more to do than all else, with bringing about 
 the nomination of Mr. Stewart and Mr, Borie, and of others unknown 
 in public affairs. 
 
 The Trihune had vociferated against " politicians," it had conjured 
 the President to avoid " politicians," and had proclaimed again and 
 again, that the country had a right to expect of General Grant that 
 " politicians " would not be put in high places, but that new men 
 would be brought in. Listening to this hollow bluster, echoed in 
 many public journals, the President was misled, as to the popular 
 judgment. 
 
 His own wisdom taught him, that if 3'ou want a lawyer you 
 should select a man who has proved himself a law3'er ; that if you 
 want a doctor, you had better take one who has been tried, and so 
 if you want an agent to manage public afliiirs, you had better take a 
 man experienced in such affairs. But Mr. Greeley insisted that a 
 cabinet should be chosen upon the principle on which he is trying 
 to be President, viz., passing over all the men whom you know ta 
 be fit, and taking a man at a venture with no reason to believe him 
 to be fit. Indeed, Mr, Greeley once told the President, that in his 
 opinion, offices should never be given to those who could take care of 
 themselves, but should be kept for those who couldn't make a living 
 in any other way. Much has been said about President Grants 
 choice of his cabinet, but those who know its inside history, know 
 that the very men, who are now hounding the President, warml}'- 
 approved of the persons named, especially of Mr, Stewart. 
 
 THE LAW AND THE TRUTH IN MR. STEWART's CASE. 
 
 The provisions of law, making Mr. Stewart ineligible, were as 
 much out of the minds of others, as of the President. 
 
 Mr, Stewart was unanimously confirmed by the Senate, as were 
 the other cabinet nominations now said to be so bad ; and yet there 
 sat Sumner and Tipton, and Schurz and Trumbull, and the other 
 new-light oracles, and appointed, (because the President without the 
 Senate could not appoint,) A, T, Stewart and the rest. Several 
 old statutes forbid importers to hold such places, and upon the 
 President's attention being called to this, he submitted to the Senate 
 a suggestion that the law be so changed as to allow Mr, Stewart to 
 act as Secretary of the Treasury, When he reflected on the subject, 
 however, the President did what no small man could have done. 
 He saw the error : he did not say the Senate was as much to blame 
 as he was, or as ignorant as he was, or that the Senate, having con- 
 firmed Mr. Stewart, must re-consider its action, or share the responsi- 
 bility of getting out of the predicament; but he took the whole 
 blame himself He said, " this is my mistake, I will correct it." He 
 
12 
 
 immediately withdrew his message recommending the law's repeal, 
 and then he did the disagreeable dnty of apprising Mr. Stewart that 
 his proffered deed of trust, pronounced sufficient by certain Senators, 
 now ranting " reformers," would not do, and that nothing would do, 
 except to resign, and let another take the place. The President's 
 manliness in meeting every thing, and shirking nothing, on this occa- 
 sion, raised him greatly in the estimation of all just beholders. He 
 offended Mr. Stewart, and impaired his friendship, and yet the bald 
 pretense is now made, that he used official power to recompense a gift. 
 
 MR, MOSES H. GRINNELL. 
 
 Mr. Moses H. Grinnell was a subscriber to the Grant fund. He was 
 appointed collector of New York, greatly to the satisfaction of Mr. 
 Greeley, and the motley crew which follows him. Did you ever 
 hear that Grinnell's subscription was any objection to his appoint- 
 ment ? When Mr. Grinnell resigned the collectorship, he became 
 a Tribune martyr. He then asked the President for the naval office, 
 and the President yielded to his request. Did you ever hear this 
 objected to because Grinnell was a "gift-bearing Greek?" When 
 Members of Congress and Senators from other States, Massachusetts 
 for one, urged the President to appoint Mr. Laflin naval officer, Mr. 
 Grinnell was displaced, and then the very men who now prate about 
 -appointing those who made presents, denounced the President for 
 ingratitude to Grinnell, on the ground that Grinnell had subscribed 
 money for the President. As Nasby would say, "sich is life." 
 
 No man who knows President Grant, unless he be knave or fool, 
 for a moment believes that the President ever dreamed of prostitu- 
 ting his office to pay a debt of his own, or to bribe, or reward, or 
 repay the givers of money to him. 
 
 THE president's RICHES. 
 
 The " liberal " idea of decency and manly war, forces me to speak 
 of another thing, which will grate upon your ears. The political 
 scavengers pretend that the President has grown rich as President, 
 by illicit gain, and they parade his property by millions. We have 
 fallen on sorry times, when the Chief Magistrate of the country, with 
 a fame so great and pure, must give account of his private property 
 in answer to electioneering falsehoods. The President would dis- 
 dain to do it; I have no authority to do it; I do not assume to do 
 it on his behalf; but on behalf of the party and the cause he repre- 
 sents, I venture to state the facts. 
 
 At Galena, where he "tanned hides," he owned a house, and dur- 
 ing the war he invested the savings from his pay in some lots in 
 'Chicago, and in some shares of street railway stock. 
 
 Mrs. Grant inherited her share in her father's farm in Missouri, 
 and they bought out the other heirs with a portion of the hundred 
 thousand dollars, presented by citizens of New York. This one 
 hundred thousand dollars also paid for a house in Washington, 
 which was subsequently sold to General Sherman, and a cottage and 
 grounds were bought at Long Branch, after the Washington house 
 was sold. The people of Philadelphia presented a house which 
 rents for about two thousand dollars a year. This completes the 
 property of the President with one exception. 
 
 Some years ago he purchased ten thousand dollars, in nominal 
 value, of the stock of the Seneca Stone Company; to this day it 
 
13 
 
 has paid nothing, partly because the President has interfered tO' 
 prevent Seneca stone being adopted as building material for the 
 Government. One of the pLans submitted for the New State Depart- 
 ment, required the use of Seneca stone, and because of his being a 
 stockholder, the President refused to allow the plan to be even 
 considered. The other stockholders complained of this, saying they 
 were punished, because the President owned stock ; the President 
 replied, expressing his regret, and saying, that he would sell his 
 stock or give it away, except for imputations cast upon him by politi- 
 cal opponents because of his ownership, but he deemed it unsuitable 
 even to seem to defer to such calumny by parting with his stock. 
 
 Here then is the sum total of the President's possessions ; and 
 they embrace no cigars smuggled in the dispatch bag, no costly 
 works of art or rare wines bestowed by foreigners, no testimonials 
 sent from other lands, in gratitude for efforts to tarnish the fair 
 fame of his country. Every dollar he owns, came from sources 
 open as the day, and every month of his Presidency has made him 
 poorer than the month before; and yet the country, and Coiagress, 
 are disgraced by inuendoes and poisonous hints that vast wealth 
 has been amassed in the Presidential office. 
 
 GRAHT NO MONEY MA.KER, AND NO OFFICE SEEKEE. 
 
 Had wealth gained in office, been Grant's aim, he would never 
 have been President. As Generiil of the Army, he stood the fore- 
 most man of all the earth. His pay was for life, and was nearly, if 
 not quite, as great annually, as the Presidential salary. In money 
 value, and money making opportunity, as well as in ease and free- 
 dom, his position then was unmeasurably better than the Presidency 
 for four years or eight. We. know the Presidency sought him, 
 not he the Presidency ; but had avarice been his thought, he would 
 have refused the Presidency, and kept the life-place of General. 
 
 The Presidential salary, has not lured him now. We hear of his 
 " pretentions," and of his " insisting upon being a candidate ;" yet first 
 and last, he never made himself a candfdate, and never to my knowl- 
 edge, has he expressed a wish to be re-elected. So far from it, that 
 for more than a year his friends were uneasy with solicitude lest h© 
 should withhold absolutely the use of his name. 
 
 In place of dividing or hazarding the Republican party by seek- 
 ing a re-nomination, he never consented to stand a second time, until 
 he was assured on every hand, that the party demanded him, as the 
 only man who could not be beaten : and my firm conviction is, that 
 had no aspersion been cast upon him, he would personally gladly be 
 mustered out. 
 
 More than a year ago, expressing to me privately his earnest wish 
 to leave public toil, he said, that at West Point he counted the days, 
 tke hours, and even the minutes to elapse, before he should be grad- 
 uated, and that, with a like eagerness he counted the time that 
 would complete h*s Presidential service; and often, before vindictive 
 injustice had roused him to resistance, those who knew him best, 
 and among them the ablest and purest members of the Senate, contin- 
 ually expressed solicitude lest he should refuse to run again, and leave 
 the party distracted by rivalries, and with no candidate so strong. 
 
 But when the shower of mud, and the beating of gongs, and the 
 foul-mouthed uproar, burst upon him, all felt that we were safe. 
 
14 
 
 ■Grant never scares well at all, and is never driven when courage 
 can make a stand : and the two debts the Republican party owes to 
 the deserters who have attempted to betray it, are, first, that they 
 have cleansed and reformed the party by leaving it, and second, 
 that they have insured it a candidate, who in the words of Horace 
 Greeley, " never has been defeated, and never will be." 
 
 The assaults made upon him, at once swelled the tide in his favor, 
 and the determination to re-nominate him, soon became obvious, even 
 to those who hated most to see it. 
 
 Then came the next effort to throw dust in the people's eyes. 
 The New York Tribune, and other journals, which for a year had 
 been doing the worse than menial offices of the Democratic party, 
 raised a yell that "the office-holders were going to renominate 
 Grant." This bald tale had its run until the Philadelphia Conven- 
 tion met. It then turned out that among seven hundred and fifty 
 delegates, there were not thirty office-holders, a thing unexampled in 
 American politics. No National Convention of the party in power 
 ever met before, in which men holding official station were not 
 largely present. Perhaps no single precinct in the whole country, 
 so effectually gave the lie to tlie pretense that the office-holders con- 
 trolled the people, as the 7th Ward of the city of Boston, the ward 
 in which Mr. Sumner lives. There, under his own vine and fig tree, 
 where he carefully superintended the selection of "office-holders," 
 the primary meeting brought out unusual numbers ; the Republicans 
 turned out en masse and voted unanimously for Grant. Mr. Sumner, 
 in his opposition, could not command a vote. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA CONVENTIOX. HEI^RY WILSOX. 
 
 The roll call in the National Convention was answered by a 
 chorus of States, and with a unanimity and spirit, which made 
 .the convention the most remarkable ever held, and the indorsement 
 the most flattering and pronounced ever given to a candidate. 
 The announced wish of Mr. Colfax to withdraw from public life, 
 left the convention without unity of sentiment as to the second place 
 on the ticket ; and the choice fell upon the man whom Mr. Wade 
 has well described, "as the incarnation of American citizenship." 
 
 Born a child of poverty and toil, the Natick Cobbler during a 
 lono- life of purit}^ and public service, had won a place in the respect 
 and good will of his countrymen, which made it fit that the second 
 office in the Republic should be held by Henry Wilson. Without 
 the contrast between his colleague and himself, the prize might not 
 have fallen to him. But the inexcusable conduct of Mr. Sumner, 
 led the convention to prefer Mr. Wilson for Yice-President, for his own 
 great merit, and also because his nomination would record a national 
 judgment against the pretension that the party belongs to any man, 
 or is subject to the whim or dictation of any knot of men, however 
 petted in the past. Mr. Wilson has been a Senator many years, a 
 Senator during General Grant's whole military and civil service. He 
 has at all times upheld Republican measures, and therefore is an- 
 swerable, as he wishes to be, for the acts of the party and the policy 
 of the Administration. The objections to either candidate, apply 
 to both, and can be argued together. 
 
 The Administration is on trial. Charges are made against it, and 
 the Republican ticket deserves defeat, unless these charges, as far as 
 
15 
 
 they are worthy of notice, can be fully met. If such charges were 
 ever canvassed before in a Presidential election, they were used as 
 make-weights to go with other and very different things. Never 
 before, wore such charges alone, the theme of popular consideration. 
 
 GEOEGE WASHIXGTOX, AND OTHERS, ALSO SLANDERED. 
 
 Never before, did a political party plant itself upon personalities 
 and scandal, and upon nothing else. George Washington v;as vis- 
 ited with loathsome abuse by his political opponents. During the 
 pendency of Jay's treaty, to which Washington was earnestly de- 
 voted, Chief Justice Marshall informs us that Washington's 
 
 Military and political character ivas attacked with equal violence, and It was averred that he 
 was totally restitute of merit either as a soldier or a statesiuan. The caUimuies with which lie was 
 assailed were not confined to his political conduct ; even his qualities as a man, were tlie suhjects of 
 detraction. That he had violated ttie Constitution in negotiating a treaty without tlie |>revious advice 
 of the Senate, and in embracing in that treaty subjects belonging exclusively to the Legislature, was 
 openly maintained, for which an impeachment was publicy suggested ; and that he haddra>vn from the 
 Treasury for his private use more tlian the salary annexed to his office, was asserted without a blush. 
 This last allegation was said to be supported by extracts from the Treasury accounts whicli liad been 
 laid before the Legislature, and was maintained with tne most unblushing effrontery. Tliougli the 
 Secretarv of the Treasury denied that the appropriation made by the Legislature, had been exceeded, 
 the atrocious charge was still confldentlv reported, and the few who could triumph in anv snot which 
 might tarnish the lustre of Washington's fame, felicitated themselves in the prospector obtaining a 
 victory over the reputation of a patriot, to whose single influence they ascribed the failure of their 
 political plsLns— Marshall's Life of Washington, Vol. L page 267. 
 
 Do you discover any likeness here? Is there in the revolting 
 uglin'jss of these attempts to blacken Washington's name, anything 
 to remind you of what is going on around us now? Jackson was 
 brutally defamed, and even charged in a public print with the 
 paternity of colored bastards. The convention which nominated 
 Polk, hiing out from the balcony a full length daub of Henry Clay, 
 bespattered with blood, holding a pistol in one hand and a pack of 
 cards in the other. 
 
 These were revolting brutalities indeed, but there is one marked 
 difference between the scandals hurled at Washington, Jackson, 
 Buchanan, Lincoln, and others, and those now flung at Grant. 
 
 The public measures, the political policy, of these other Presidents, 
 was in each case opposed and criticised, and the sting of personal 
 calumny was used as a spur to the main contest. Now personal 
 abuse is the Alpha and Omega on one side. John Quincy Adams, 
 was besm'eared with rancorous aspersion on account of his appoint- 
 ments to ofSce, as his flither had been for appointing relatives to 
 office, but issue at the same time was always made upon grave polit- 
 ical questions. 
 
 What political policy of Grant or his administration, does the 
 opposition assail ? What part of the present policy do they propose 
 to reverse or alter ? What part dare they avow or admit they mean 
 to change? Lay your finger on it if you can. Ilard words you can 
 find, vague, cloudy, sweeping denunciations; but take up,_ one _ by 
 one, the important positions and measures of the Administration, 
 and except the San Domingo treaty, if that be an exception, where 
 is the specific thing upon which issue is made ? 
 
 Let me state the case in another form. Suppose all the slurs and 
 flings and vile gossip against Grant, are true — suppose you admit 
 the^whole of them— what do they signif^y ? Suppose he has ap- 
 pointed a dozen relatives to office ; suppose he has failed to appre- 
 ciate the claims of certain politicians; suppose presents had been 
 given him after he was President ; suppose the idea of making A. 
 T. Stewart Secretary of the Treasury, was as foolish as every re- 
 former says it was now ; suppose there was no express law author- 
 
16 
 
 izing two young military friends to write in his office and carry his 
 messages. Put it all together, and what of it? 
 
 If you want a man to pilot a ship, or lead an army, or try a cause, 
 or build a house, or set a broken arm, or run a locomotive, what do 
 you care, so long as he does his work well, whether he is too fond of 
 his relatives, or doesn't like certain politicians, or has subjected himself 
 to envious sneers by having presents given to him ? All these things 
 are aside from the purpose. " They are tithing, mint, annise and 
 cummin." Has he made a good President ? That is the question. 
 
 SAN DOJnNGO. 
 
 Let us examine the evidence, and first of all let us take up the 
 charges and evidence against him. The San Domingo treaty, unlike 
 going to Long Branch, or smoking a cigar, or riding in a palace car, 
 was a matter of public business, and is therefore a topic not despi- 
 cable or unworthy. His guilt and his innocence in this respect, can 
 all be briefly stated. 
 
 The Monroe doctrine, is one of the traditions of the country, and 
 of both political parties. The Monroe doctrine means opposition to 
 acquisitions on this continent, by European powers. AVhen President 
 Grant came in, no such question was pending, but such a question 
 soon arose. An agent from the Dominican Republic presented him- 
 self to the President, saying that the people of Dominica, few in 
 numbers, but rich in one of the most fertile isles of any sea, lying 
 close to our shores, waited to come under the American flag; and, 
 that failing to do so, they would look to a European alliance. The 
 President made no reply, and afterward a second envoy appeared 
 repeating these statements, with glowing accounts of the fertility 
 and resources of the Island of San Domingo. 
 
 General McClellan, Admiral Porter, Commissioner Hogan, and 
 others, had previously examined and reported upon the island, and 
 had strongly stated its advantages as a coaling station, a naval 
 station, a military key to the Gulf of Mexico, and as an area pro- 
 lific in coffee, sugar cane, rice, dye stuffs, mahogany, and other val- 
 uable woods, and in other products of the tropics, beside iron, cop- 
 per, gold and salt. 
 
 With this information before him, the President could not turn a 
 deaf ear, and a closed eye, to so grave a matter. He caused two or 
 three discreet persons to go, unexpected and unobserved, to San 
 Domingo, learn all they could, and make report. This being done, 
 the President was convinced that the matter should be entertained, 
 put in the form of a treaty, and submitted to the judgment of the 
 Senate and the country. 
 
 THE PRESIDENT CALLS ON MR. SUMNER. A QUESTION OP VERACITY. 
 
 A treaty was proposed and reduced to writing, and the Presi- 
 dent, with none of the " pretension" which Mr. Sumner imagines, 
 paid Mr. Sumner the deference of going to his house, in place of 
 sending for him, to confer with him as Chairman of the Committea 
 of Foreign Relations, and to ascertain whether he favored the treaty 
 and would support it. The interview ta)ok place in the presence of 
 two witnesses, General Babcock and Colonel John W. Forney. 
 
 These two witnesses, in addition to the President, affirm that Mr. 
 Sumner distinctly declared himself in favor of the treaty, and stated 
 that he should support it. Col. Forney testifies as follows : 
 
17 
 
 I was present ut Mr. Sumner's residence when President. Grunt called and explained tlie IJoiiiiul- 
 ean treaty to the Senator, and alttion;,'li 1 c.-m not recall tlie exact words of the latter, / lunliri-tood him 
 to say thai he luould most Kheerfnllii ^I'piiorl th,- ircul//. At the President's request, 1 reniaijied to liear 
 nis explanation, and am free to add, tha' -ixi-h is imj ileep rerjnrtlfor Mr. Siimncr, >/ii(t his- imlorseinent 
 of the treaty went very far to stimulate me in giving it my oicn support. I have already said this much 
 toMr. Sumner, ieho,howeiJer, claims that other intormation since obtained ?iasshirpe<i hix present ac- 
 '»<'«• ■ (Signed. J i. W. Forney. 
 
 This statement is true, or it is wilfully false ; because although 
 Forney might have misunderstood Mr. Sumner at the time, he can 
 not be mistaken in the fact that Mr. Sumner afterwards admitted 
 that he had changed his mind. General Babcock certifies in writ- 
 ing that after the interview with the President, he and Mr. S«imner 
 read and examined the treaty carefully together ; anf?l that, at the 
 close of the interview, Mr. Sumner said, " That he could not think of 
 doing otherivise than siq^porting the Administration in the matter :" and 
 further, " that there ivas no objection to the instrument as a whole." 
 
 Yet Mr. Sumner, having meanwhile taken offense because his 
 views and wishes in other matters were not deferred to, became in- 
 censed at the President and Mr. Fish, denounced them, and among 
 other things the San Domingo treatj', and raising an issue of verac- 
 ity with three witnesses, denied that he ever intimated that he would 
 give the treaty his support. 
 
 His version of the interview with the President, is, that the Presi- 
 dent came to his house and was proceeding to unfold the San 
 Domingo matter, when he (Sumner) broke in with the subject of an 
 appointment in which he was interested ; and that when ihe Presi- 
 dent returned to the treat3-, he (Mr. Sumner) evaded the point alto- 
 gether by a' studied ambiguity. Here are Mr. Sumner's words 
 delivered to the Senate : 
 
 He (the President) proceeded with an explanation which I very soon interrupted, saving, by the 
 way, Mr. President, it is very hard to turn out Gov. Ashley ; I have just received a letter ironi the 
 Governor, and I hope I shall not take too great a liberty, Mr. President, if I read it. Itind it excellent 
 and eloquent, and written with a feeling which Interests me much. I commenced the letter and rend 
 two pages or more, when I thought the President was uneasy, and I felt that 1 was taking too great a 
 liberty with him in my own house, but I was irresistably impelled by loyalty to an absent friencl, while 
 I was glad of this opportunity of diverting attention from the treaty. As conversation about Gover- 
 nor Ashley subsided, the President returned to the treaty, leaving on my mind no very strong idea of 
 what they proposed, and nothing with regard to the character of tlie negotiations. My reply was pre- 
 
 y else. The language is fixed absolutely in my memory : 
 
 \ Mr. President, 1 said, ' I am an Administration man, and whatever you do will always find in me 
 Vie most careful and candid consideration' « « « « » My language, I repeat, 
 
 was precise, well considered, and chosen in advance:' I am an Administration man, and whatever you 
 do, will always find in me the most careful and candid consideration. 
 
 Mr. Sumner did not deny, that the President acted upon the be- 
 lief that he approved the treaty, nor did he deny that he left the 
 President so to act, without ever informing him that he had changed 
 his mind, or been misunderstood. Yet Mr. Sumner in the Senate 
 assailed the President personally and bitterly ; and in a published 
 interview in Chicago with Maj. Chamberlain, a man of character and 
 veracity, who had been a Union officer, and was then connected with 
 the press, Mr. Sumner charged the President with venality and job- 
 bery in the San Domingo treaty. 
 
 In consequence of these, and other like occurrences, it was j^ro- 
 posed to send three commissioners to San Domingo, at no cost be- 
 yond their expenses, to investigate and clear up the whole matter, 
 and to ascertain whether, as Mr. Sumner had charged, lots in San 
 Domingo had been staked off and marked with the names of the 
 President and others. 
 
 This inquiry seemed fair to most of those who opposed and to 
 those who favored the treaty, but Mr. Sumner resisted the inquiry 
 inch by inch, and after a majority of the Foreign Relations C9m- 
 mittee had joined him in denouncing it, he insisted that it should be 
 referred to that Committee. 
 
IS 
 
 The same familiar parliamentaiy maxim about putting a •' child 
 to nurse with those who care not for it," upon which he rung the 
 changes so often in the French Arms atfair, was quoted to him in 
 vain. When the sale of arms was to be inquired mto, Mr. Sumner 
 slandeied tiie Senate for appointing a Committee all in favor of in- 
 vestigating, because tlie CL.mmittee was not biased in favor of con- 
 victing somebody, but the San Domingo inquiry he insisted should 
 go to a committee, of which a majority' had declared in advance 
 against any inquiry at all. 
 
 At the end of a protracted and stubborn contest, Congress author- 
 ized a commission to be sent; not however, till Mr. Sumner had 
 denounced the President for not taking it upon himself, of his own 
 authority, to send a commission without asking permission of Con- 
 gress. Now we hear from Mr. Sumner, not that the President shrinks 
 from his prerogatives, but that he arrogantl}^ oversteps them. 
 
 Mr. Wade, Dr. Howe of Boston, and President Andrew D. White, 
 were selected as Commissioners; they visited San Domingo and 
 made a report which few of the American people have read, bat 
 which will be read when the din and passion of to-day are forgotten. 
 The report explode-; u:terly, eveiy calumnious pretense, and presents 
 a statement which leaves no room to doubt the duty of the President 
 to consider as he did the acquisition of San Domingo, and to urge it 
 upon the attention of the Senate and the country. 
 
 HOW THE PRESIDENT SHAMED HIS ACCUSEKS. 
 
 In transmitting this report to Congress, the President did his last 
 act in the matter. With the report he sent a message, to which a min- 
 ister from one of the first powers of the earth, told me he called the 
 attention of his Government, as one of the mo-t remarkable state pa- 
 pers rf which he had knowledge. In that message stand these words : 
 
 The mere rejection by the Senate of a treaty negotiated by the President, only indicate8 a differ- 
 ence of opinion between i wo co-ordiuate departmenis of the trovernment, without touciiing thi ciiar- 
 acter or wounding the ncide of either. But when such rejectiou takes place simuitanejusly w.th 
 charges, openly mide, of^ corruption on tlie part of tue Fresideat, or those employed oy him, tiie ca e 
 is ditfereut. In such case, the honor of the nation dema.ids investigation. This has been accomplisQed 
 by the report of the comiuirsio :ers herewith transmitted, aud whiou fully viadicates tae ijuruy of tne 
 motives aad action of those who r prescn.ed the United States iu the negotiation. And noiv iny tasls 
 is finished, and with it euds all persoaul solic tude upon tne subject. 
 
 My uuty being clone, yours tiegins; and 1 gladly hand over the whole matter ti thejudg ■•eat of the 
 Amcricnn people, and of their i;epresentative> in congress assembled. The lacts wi 1 njw be spread 
 before the i ountry and a decision rendered by that tribunal wuose convic ijus soselioin e,'r, and 
 against wuose w 111 have tio policy to enforce. My opi jiou remains uneh luged ; indeed it is cjflrme* 
 by the report, th it the interests of our country and Saj Domingo ali^e, invit js t le an lexal on of that 
 Republic. I i view of tiie ditfereuc • of oi)iniou upon this subject, I sugi;e=t that no action be takea at 
 the present session beyond tue printing and t:eneral d sseminati n of the report. • before t le next ses- 
 sion of congress the people will have c >nsidered the subject and formed an intclligeat ooiaian con- 
 cerning it, to which opinion, deliberately made up, it will b^ the duty of every department of the gov- 
 ernment to give heed, anu no one will m ^re cheer. ulh' conform to it than mysell. 
 
 This was the utterance last year of the man who, we are told, 
 is swollen with "pretension" and "ungovernable personality." 
 
 Among the glaring absurdities heaped upon the San Domingo mat- 
 ter, is the allegation that war was made upon the Kepublic of Hayti. 
 The foundation for this is that a vessel or two cruised in that part 
 of the ocean during the negotiations. Not a gun was fired, nor a 
 pocket pistol, nor a percussion cap, and the only war-like demonstra- 
 tion ever heard of, was, that a sea captain sent up a sky-rocket from 
 the deck of his vessel. The purpose of this sk3'-rocket, or where 
 the stick came down, has never been. asceitained. 
 
 This, in brief, is the story of the San Doming® afiair. I do not 
 refer to it to champion the treaty, or argue its merits ; that is another 
 matter. My purpose is to show you that the part acted by the 
 President, was the part of an honest, modest man, walking in the 
 path of the Constitution and of his predecessors. 
 
19 
 
 Previous Administrations had eagerly sought a foot-hold in the 
 West Indies. A naval station and a harbor there, have long been 
 deemed an urgent necessity. Andrew Johnson and Gov. Seward 
 made a treaty agreeing to pay Denmark seven millions and a half in 
 gold, for the Island of St. Thomas. The principle production of St. 
 Thomas, is earthquakes, and the Senate refused to buy earthquakes 
 at the price agreed upon ; but it is not known that Mr. Sumner or 
 any body else denounced the making of the treatv. 
 
 Andrew Johnson and Gov. Seward made a treaty with Russia, 
 agreeing to pay seven millions and a quarter, for Alaska, in g®Id. 
 Nobody was ever sent to examine Alaska. When the treaty was 
 made, we had never looked upon a man who had set foot upon it; 
 ■we had heard of its ice-bergs and floods, and it seemed a white ele- 
 phant, but the Senate agreed to the treatj^ The Chairman of For- 
 eign Relations changed his mind on that treaty also. He started 
 against it, but touched by the master hand of the sage of Auburn, he 
 suddenly turned and made a glowing speech in its behalf; the speech, 
 bound in turkey morocco, was sent to the crowned heads of Europe, 
 and its author sits in a picture, with the Russian Minister, and the 
 Secretary of State, consigned to immortality by the pencil of Leutze. 
 
 Franklin Pierce, with the whole Democracy at his back, attempted 
 to force Spain to cede Cuba to us. Pierre Soule was sent out as 
 minister to Spain, and on his way stopped in the city of New York. 
 There he was serenaded by the order of the Lone Star, a band of 
 avowed Cuban Filibusters, and addressing the crowd in the street, 
 he declared that Cuba should be "torn from the Old Spanish Wolf" 
 
 In the face of this outrage and affront to a friendly power. Presi- 
 dent Pierce suffered Soule to sail for Spain ; he proceeded to Aix-la- 
 Chapelle, and there Soule, James Buchanan, John Y. Mason, and 
 Auguste Belmont, all American Ministers to foreign countries, sat 
 down and signed the Ostend Manifesto. This paper, caught up and 
 indorsed by the whole Democratic party, argued the imperative 
 necessity for self-defense, of a foot-hold in the West Indies, and, 
 upon the plea of necessity, stated without a blush, the Rob-Roy 
 doctrine that might makes right, and avowed that if Spain would 
 not sell Cuba, it should be taken by force. 
 
 After all these things, the same men who justified them, denounce 
 as monstrous the idea of paying one million and a half for a terri- 
 tory next our own shores, with one of the finest hari)ors in the 
 world, with an area as large as Connecticut, Vermont and Massachu- 
 setts, with a soil and climate better than Cuba, and with only a 
 handful of people. We pay Cuba $58,000,000 a year for products 
 of slave labor. We buy nearly all the slave-raised coffee or Brazil ; 
 and here is an island, on which would grow all that Cuba and Brazil 
 send here ; and a President is denounced as knave and fool for sub- 
 mitting to the people its purchase for one and a half million dollars. 
 
 The scheme ma}'" be unwise; upon that questicm I wait for fur- 
 ther light and better judgment ; but the public sense will never run 
 so mad as to crucify a public servant for submitting it to the wisdom 
 •of the people. 
 
 "P.EilOVAL" OF MK. SU3IXER. 
 
 It may not be amiss, here, to allude to the etfort to rouse indigna- 
 tion over the so-called "removal"' of Mr. Sumner from the Commit- 
 
20 
 
 tee of Foreign lielations. Mr. Sumner was never " removed" at all. 
 All Senate committees die at the end of each session. All Senate 
 committees are created anew at the beginning of each session. Mr, 
 Sumner had been selected repeatedly for the Chairmanship of the 
 committee referred to, and the question was always, looking over the 
 whole Senate, who would be the most useful, and, all things consid- 
 ered, the best man for the place. At the time in question, and for rea- 
 sons easil}^ stated, the Senate thought it would not be wise to select 
 Mr. Sumner again for that committee, and he was selected for an- 
 other. This was not done because Mr. Sumner opposed San Do- 
 mingo, nor because he changed sides upon that question, nor be- 
 cause the President, or the Secretary of State wanted, or did not 
 want, Mr. Sumner on this committee or on that. The reasons were 
 wholly different, they were reasons of the Senate alone, and reasons 
 which have governed the formation of parliamentary committees 
 everywhere since such committees were known. The Committee 
 on Foreign Affairs, in either House of Congress, ought not only, 
 like other committees, to represent the majority of the body, but 
 for peculiar reasons, it must be composed of men who can and will 
 copsult freel}^ with the President, the Secretary of State, and their 
 assistants. This is especially true of the chairman, he being the 
 organ of the committee. 
 
 Mr. Sumner not only wielded his position as chairman, in opposi- 
 tion to the majority of the Senate upon several important questions, 
 and boasted in the Senate that the committee could not be changed, 
 but his conduct and language in public and in private had rendered 
 it impossible for him to hold communication with those whom it 
 was indispensable to confer with freely, and impossible for them to 
 confer with him. 
 
 Men can not do business conveniently with those whom they de- 
 nounce and insult continually, nor with those toward whom they 
 assume offensive superiority ; and the time came with Mr. Sumner 
 as Chairman, when the Senate was left in ignorance, and business 
 delayed for weeks, for lack of information from the State Depart- 
 ment, merely because Mr. Sumner did not hold communication with 
 it. The simple, indeed, the only cure for all this, was to select an- 
 other Chairman. This was done, and nothing more ; and it turned out 
 that treaties, six or seven in number, having long lain buried in the 
 Committee, after the change of Chairman, were at once brought up 
 and ratified. 
 
 Yet this action of the Senate, in managing and expediting its own 
 business, has been made a grave matter lor public consideration, 
 and thrust at the President, who had no more to do with it, than 
 the Senate has to do with deciding how many vegetables the Presi- 
 dent has on his table. 
 
 I leave this matter, after asking one question. Is there one man 
 on this continent, except Mr. Sumner, who could with propriety 
 have clung to a position after his associates who conferred it were 
 unwilling he should retain it; is there one other man who would 
 have supposed that his being on this committee or on that, would 
 ■'jar the harmony of the universe?" 
 
 " NEPOTISM." 
 
 Let me go on with the charges against the President. Few of 
 them figure more largely, than appointing relatives to office. Mr. 
 
21 
 
 Sumner has staggered the nation, by the weight of the dictionaries, 
 encyclopedias, and other big books,' which he has dumped upon us, 
 to show what " nepotism " is. Tie Unds it charged that Popes had 
 Nephews, and lavished upon tliem the moneys of the church ; and 
 he thinks that where a public oihce is to be filled, and a good man 
 is appointed at the same pay any other man would receive, a case 
 has occurred like that of the Popes, provided the man who makes the 
 appointment, and the man who gets it, are related to each other. 
 This, if not a useful, is a wonderful discovery. 
 
 From the morning of time, common sense has distinguished be- 
 tween creating a useless and lucrative sinecure and bestowing it on 
 a relative, and selecting a relative to do a service required to be 
 done. When Hannibal and Frederick the Great and Napoleon and 
 Emperor William put a brother or a son at the head of an army 
 with rank and titles. Or even placed him on a throne, the world 
 never thought it was like a sinecure for a Papal nephew. 
 
 On the contrary, in public and in private business, nothing has 
 seemed more natural than for those intrusted with affairs, to employ 
 and associate with themselves, persons in whom they most confided, 
 whether relatives or iiot. In all such cases, if the person be fit, lit- 
 tle harm can be done ; but if he is unfit, a great wrong is done, 
 whether he be a relative or not. If the appointment of relatives be 
 a crime, a great many men, including the busiest and most blattant 
 "liberals," must be great criminals. Andrew Johnson, his Cabinet 
 and Chief Officers, must have been huge offenders, for reasons 
 which no one thought of at the time, though every one knew of them. 
 
 President Johnson's son, was his Chief Private Secretary. Gov- 
 ernor Seward's son, was Assistant Secretary of State. Edwin M. 
 Stanton's son, was a clerk in the War Department. Giddeon Wells 
 son, was Chief Clerk of the Nav}' Department ; and when Giddeon 
 Wells employed a relative at a great remuneration to buy ships, 
 the scandal was not that he paid just sums to a relative, but that 
 he paid such sums at all. Eeverdy Johnson, Minister to Eng- 
 land, made his son Assistant Secretary of Legation. John A. Dix, 
 Minister to France, did the same thing with his son. All this was 
 under Andrew Johnson ; but when a drag net of criticism and im- 
 peachment was cast over him, these things were not caught up. 
 
 " LIBERAL " RELATIVES. 
 
 The rueful "reformers" themselves, will not bear examination on 
 this point. Mr. Schurz pressed his brother-in-law upon the Presi- 
 dent, and obtained for him a lucrative office, and when Mr. Trumbull 
 caused his removal upon statements impeaching his fitness, a\Ir. Schurz 
 raged against the President for removing his brother-in-law. Mr. 
 Trumbull seems to have procured appointments for his brother-in-law, 
 his sons, and his nephews, and he broke, it is said, with the President, 
 because he refused to appoint Mr. Trumbulfs son to an office. That 
 shrill and frisky " reformer," Mr. Tipton, althouo-h not colossal him- 
 self would need a hay scales to be weighed along with all his rela- 
 tives he has helped to get office. Three brothers-in-law, a nephew, 
 and a son, in office, with other things for other relatives, did not sat- 
 isfy his "liberal" inclinations, but he vigorously plied the Presi- 
 dent, and the Secretary of State to give a valuable consulship to 
 another son, and after they declined, he frequently avowed, once 
 
'2'2 
 
 pipingly to the President himself, that the refusal was the cause of 
 his opposition. 
 
 Mr. Fenton saw no objection to giving to his adopted son his in- 
 fluence for an office, nor to obtaining it from Tammany Hall, and 
 keeping it through all the exposures of Tweed and the rest, 
 although no service was attached to it equivalent to the pay. 
 
 Mr. Sumner, with a brother-in-law in office under Andrew Johnson, 
 was inflamed by his removal, and did not hesitate to make known 
 his displeasure. 
 
 Even Mr. Greeley did not scruple to countenance his brother-in- 
 law in obtaining the most lucrative collectorship of internal revenue 
 in the United States. Nor has he hesitated to urge appointments, 
 clearly unfit, on the ground of the intimate terms between himself 
 and those he urged. 
 
 DEMOCRATIC RELATIYES. GOV. HOFEMAX, 
 
 Old line Democrats are as weak as the new and buzzing convertSr 
 in regard to relatives. Kentucky is the best examp)leof a Democratic 
 State Government, pure and simple. She has a Democratic Gov- 
 ernor, Treasurer, Adjutant General, Attorney General, Clerk of the 
 Court of Appeals, Auditor, and keeper of the Penitentiary, and of 
 these there is not one free from appointing relatives to office, and 
 the same thing is true in numerous instances of members of the Ken- 
 tucky Legislature. 
 
 The city of New York with its unmitigated Democratic govern- 
 ment, is prolific beyond measure, in. similar things. The Governor 
 of New York, having turned "reformer," must be considered high 
 authority, "When Gov. Hoftman was Mayor, his fiither-in-law, Henry 
 Starkweather, was appointed, ]^Iay 1st, 1867, Collector of "Assess- 
 ments." In form, the appointment was made by Street Commissioner 
 McLean, but McLean was appointed by Hoftman. Tweed succeeded 
 McLean, but Starkweather was continued by Tweed, and never re- 
 linquished his place till the spring of 1872. Up to July, 1871, be- 
 ing four years and two months. Starkweather received in this office, 
 $560,824.59, as appeared on the books of the office, February 27, 
 1872. This great sum was received under the influence of Hoffman 
 by his father-in-law, and Hoftman's wife is his father-in-law's only 
 child — this makes the arrangement a closer and snusger thing than 
 
 . ^ . CO o 
 
 can be lound even in Sumner's history of the Popes. 
 
 How far such a sum could fitly be taken by Starkweather, appears 
 from a report made on the 4th of March, 1872, to the board of Assis- 
 tant Aldermen, by its committee of finance; the report is signed by 
 Charles P. Hartt and Charles C. Pinckne}^, and relates to the collec- 
 tor of assessments and his fees. I read from the report these words : 
 
 Your committee tnd that the entire duties of the bureau .<»re perfonued bv the collector of assess- 
 •ments and tour or five employes, that these employes receive compensation out of the fees of the 
 office to the extent of about $11,(00 per annum, and that the remainder of saidfeos is divided between 
 the collector and such deputy collectors as are from time to time appointed; Wfse deputy collectors 
 hower}er,pei-form no icork and render no Ui^i^tance ickateter to the collector in the duties of the bureau. 
 
 Again the report says : 
 
 If the collector can xcith credit to himself, manage the affairs of his bureau by the annual etrpend- 
 iture for clerk hire of §11,OJO, it must be 'erident that there can exist no neressili/ ichatecer for its 
 maintenance under its present management, at an annual cost of more than §130,000.00. Its ojice ac- 
 commodation, books, stationery, safes, furniture, etc., etc., are all borne by the city. 
 
 Among the worthy and needy provided for by ^tr. Starkweather^ 
 was Wm. AL Tweed, who received for nothing $101,978.17. 
 
 Did you ever hear this reeking and festering job talked about by 
 the men or the papers now shrieking about "nepotism?" WhHe 
 
23 
 
 Gov. Hoffman was Mayor, his Chief Clerk was his brother-in-law, 
 who at the same time was also clerk of the street cleaning commission 
 of which Hoffman was chairman, thus holding two offices under his 
 brother-in-law; and at the same time another relative of the Gov- 
 ernor's held office at his hands. 
 
 RELATIVES OP THE PRESIDENT. 
 
 But if Gen. Grant has done wrong, the crime of others can not 
 help him. Let us look into his case. You might sujDpose from the 
 noise, that he had used a relative as a peg for every hole in the 
 country, and that he had put round pegs in square holes, and square 
 pegs in round holes, everywhere. It has been said that he has ap- 
 pointed fifty relatives, forty relatives, thirty relatives, and Mr. Sum- 
 ner estimates thirteen relatives, to office. None of these statements 
 are true. Since President Grant came in, but nine persons in all, 
 connected in the remotest deerree with him or with his wife, have 
 held political office under the United States. 
 
 I have a list of them, and do not speak without information. 
 Nine is the total number in political office. This does not include a 
 son of the President sent as a pupil to West Point, long before his 
 father became President: nor does it include his brother-in-law, 
 Dent, who has long held a commission in the army by the same 
 tenure under which Sherman and Sheridan, and every other officer 
 of the army holds his place, and which the President has no more 
 power to give or take away, than the man in the moon. 
 
 Of tlie nine relatives or connections in office, two were appointed 
 by Andrew Johnson, viz. : the President's father, postmaster at 
 Covington, Kentucky ; and his brother-in-law, the Rev. Mr. Cramer, 
 Consul, at Leipsic. Mr. Cramer was transferred from Leipsic to 
 Denmark bv President Grant, on the recommendation of Bishop 
 Simpson, Bishop Jayne, and many other well known pers6ns, 
 friends of Mr. Cramer. Being the brother-in-law of the President, 
 he of course became a mark for "liberal " abuse, and was charged 
 with drinking beer, and being refused membership of a social club. 
 
 But now comes the Cincinnati Methodist Conference, about as 
 respectable a body as has met in Cincinnati lately, and certifies, 
 after fall investigation, the utter falsity of the charges. Their re- 
 port is fortified by letters from Copenhagen, and by statements of 
 the official journal and other newspapers there, indignantly repelling 
 the aspersions cast at Mr. Cramer, and pronouncing him a blameless 
 officer and man. 
 
 Deducting Jesse R.' Grant and M. J. Cramer, appointed by John- 
 son, seven instances of relatives in political office remain, and of 
 those but two were in truth and in fact appointed by the President, 
 as I will show you. 
 
 Orlando H. Ross, a cousin of the President, holds a clerkship un- 
 der the third auditor of the Treasury. He was a soldier in the war, 
 and Gen. Logan, as he stated in the Senate, procured his appointment 
 at the Treasury Department without the knowledge of the Presi- 
 dent, who. in fact, never heard of it. until he read it in a newspaper. 
 This leaves six. and of these, four hold local offices, viz. : George W. 
 Dent, Appraiser at San Francisco: James F. Casey. Collector at New 
 Orleans ; one a brother, and the other a brother-in-law of ^^rs. Grant 
 Peter Casev. Postmaster, at Ticksburgh, Mississippi, a brother of a 
 
24 
 
 brother-in-law of Mrs. Grant; and George B. Johnson, Assessor of 
 the Third District of Ohio, who married a third cousin of the Presi- 
 dent. These men hold local- offices, and were selected and put for- 
 ward, as has been universal in both political parties for fift}'' years, 
 by the local Eepresentatives. 
 
 When the member of Congress from a district certifies the char- 
 acter of an applicant for a postoftice, or any other office local in his 
 district, and recommends his selection, the practice of the Govern- 
 ment has alwa3^s been to rely and act upon such representations ; 
 holding the member of Congress responsible to the Government and 
 to his constituents, if he obtains unfit appointments. 
 
 It was in this way that the four persons just named were selected ; 
 the President having no part in the* matter, if he believed the appli- 
 cants fit and worth}^, except to consult the wishes of the people, 
 made known through their representatives, or else to overrule their 
 wishes, upon the ground that it might be better for himself not to 
 run the risk of having the matter some time or other flung in his face. 
 
 Two appointments remain, and upon these the President did un- 
 doubtedly exercise his own choice, and his own judgment. 
 
 The first is Alexander Sharp, a connection of Mrs. Grant, wh® 
 was appointed Marshall of the District of Columbia. This officer is 
 virtually a member of the President's household; — he receives com- 
 pany with the family, introduces visitors, and generally helps along. 
 For these reasons, some relative or near friend of the President's 
 family, has always been found for this position. 
 
 The remaining relative is Silas Hudson, jMinister to Guatemala. 
 He is cousin to the President. Iowa, the Strite in which he lives, 
 had the mission to Guatemala before President Grant came in; Fitz 
 Henry Warren held it ; and on his retirement Iowa claiiiied it still, 
 and presented Mr. Hudson, who is described as an able and accom- 
 plished man. The President might have refused to appoint him, 
 without giving just offense to the Eepublicans of Iowa, because he 
 might have taken a man from some other State, but he did appoint him, 
 and thus he furnished the needy ''liberals" with one awful example. 
 
 APPOINTMENTS TO OFFICE. NEW YORK APPOINTMENTS. 
 
 But the President's selections for office, generally, have, we are 
 told, been partizan, personal, and ill-judged. I believe the reverse 
 of all this is true. He has appointed more Judges than any of his 
 predecessors were called upon to select, and his selections are such 
 as to vindicate him from the charge of making personal preference, 
 or gratification of himself, the criterion. When he came to select 
 our member of the Geneva Board, he named Mr. Adams, whom he 
 had never seen, and who was neither his partisan or his friend. As 
 Counsel before that high tribunal, he selected Mr. Evarts, who 
 was not his partisan, and Mr. Curtis, and Mr. Gushing, who were 
 political opponents. What Democratic President ever did the 
 like? Other cases might be cited to show how unselfish and con- 
 scientious he has been. 
 
 In the State of ]f ew York there was no complaint about appoint- 
 ments as long as particular men were permitted to dictate them. The 
 hungry ■•' Reformers " of to-day, fattened and exulted then. It was in 
 their estimation, high merit, and statesmanship, for Senators and 
 others to crouch and prowl day and night around the sources of power. 
 No one overreached this thriving business ; it overreached itself. 
 
'•Patronage" in tln^ State of New York, has been a prolific theme 
 of misrepresentation. The public has been l:ept constantly advised 
 of a "quarrel between our Senators,'' yet there has been no such 
 ^'quarrel.'" The fact is of a iliiTerent kind. It is impossible to an- 
 swer the clamor on this subject without alluding to personal matters, 
 which have not heretofore seemed .to me entitled to a public hearing ; 
 but now friends insist that a statement should be made, and I reluc- 
 tanth" compl}'. 
 
 Between Gov. Morgan and myself, while we served together in 
 the Senate, and between both, and our colleagues in the House. 
 there was always the best accord. For some reason, discordant ac- 
 tion dates from the advent of Gov. Morgan's successor. 
 
 For some time before the inauguration of President Grant, as weR 
 as afterward, one Senator from New York visited the President as- 
 siduously, and claimed to be his special champion : the other Senator 
 did neither of these things. One Senator conspicuously busied him- 
 self in the effort to repeal '' The Tenure of Office Act,"" which the 
 President was said to wish to have repealed ; the other Senator op- 
 posed the repeal throughout. One Senator appeared as the confi- 
 dential representative of Mr. Stewart, in regard to his entering upon 
 the office of Secretary of the Treasury : the other Senator opposed 
 the whole project of repealing or evading the law, and so told the 
 President. 
 
 These, and other incidents, paved the way for the impression that 
 one of these Senators was not to be regarded as a friend of the Ad- 
 ministration. The opportunity thus offered, was seized with avidity, 
 and alleged acts of opposition were paraded, harped upon and dis- 
 torted, till the distrust of the President and members of his cabinet 
 was aroused. No attempt to counteract this proceeding was made, 
 but the matter was left for time to set right. Meanwhile the sup- 
 posed friends of the unpliant Senator were pursued with groundless 
 allegations carried to the appointing power; and for a year, men 
 who then claimed to be " the exponents of radical Republicanism in 
 New York,"" chuckled over the well worn witticism, '' one of our 
 Senators is a figure 9 with the tail off'" 
 
 During this long and somewhat annoying manccuvre, no one ever 
 made war because" of it, in the party or out of the party — no one 
 ever raised a note of discord. 
 
 The favored Senator, for weeks after President Grant came in, was 
 attended in Washington by a numerous band of friends, better 
 known at Albany than at Washington, who assumed to speak for 
 the Republican party of the State. They were all worshippers and 
 defenders of the Administration. They infested the White House, 
 and the departments, and assisted in "distributing the patronage." 
 
 Under these auspices men were expelled from office in Congres- 
 sional districts, having no Republican Representative to protect 
 them, for the reason, always denied to the President, that they were 
 the friends of Gov. Morgan, or of the other Senator, or not the 
 friends of Gov. Fen ton. 
 
 Men believed to be objectionable to leading Republicans, were put 
 in place, and these proceedings were cited to prove that to be " re- 
 cognized," Republicans must be of a particular stripe. 
 
 Anions those thus selected, were several persons whose untitness 
 
'26 
 
 soon ended in disgrace. One instance of misconduct, after anotlier, 
 came to the ears of the President, till alarmed at such occurrences, 
 he began to suspect the discernment or the sincerity of those to 
 whom he had listened. The result was that the President grew 
 more wary. It soon became known that he had increased the num- 
 ber of those with whom he consulted, and had ceased to make ap- 
 pointments upon the ipse dixit of any individual. 
 
 The first symptom of an inclination to emancipate himself from 
 the dictation which had beset him, caused alarm and olYence. 
 
 The President was expostulated with, and hints were given him 
 of formidable defections to come, in the State of New York. It is 
 even said that a Senator addressed him a letter alluding to his own 
 aspirations for the Presidency in 1872, and offering to withdraw and 
 give the State of New York to him, provided agreeable understand- 
 ings could be had in regard to " the patronage." 
 
 ATTEMPTS TO CARRY STATE CONVENTIONS. 
 
 To impress and coerce the appointing power, a herculean ctfort 
 was made in 1870 to carry the State Convention. 
 
 Tammany Hall, with all its pedal attachments and whippers-in, 
 came into the field. Money was lavished, and the State was 
 tramped from end to end, to carry delegates who would " show 
 Grant where the power is." The Convention met at Saratoga. The 
 Senator, who had headed the hunt, and early procured himself to 
 be made a delegate, was to preside in the Convention, and resolu- 
 tions were to l3e adopted, and a State Central Committee made, 
 which would " bring Grant to his milk." 
 
 The patriotism and good sense of the Convention, frowned down 
 these schemes, and George William Curtis, a friend of the Adminis- 
 tration, was chosen temporary Chairman. This secured the organi- 
 zation, and in the hope of allaying all irritation, Mr. Van Wyck, 
 who had been supported by the Anti-Administration element, was 
 made permanent president by acclamation ; and the Senator, who had 
 made the issue, was placed by Mr. Curtis upon leading committees. 
 To the surprise of some, the Senator did not serve on these com- 
 mittees, but held himself aloof 
 
 Many " office holders " attended this Convention, and more than 
 half aided the Anti- Administration cause. Mr. Greeley was a can- 
 didate for Governor, and was pertinaciously supported by all those 
 connected with the New York Custom House ; he failed from a 
 want of confidence in him, so general among delegates, that election- 
 eering and persuasion could not prevail against it, and even those 
 who voted for him, declared in many instances, that they did so as a 
 harmless compliment, knowing that he could not be nominated. 
 
 The last duty of the Convention, was to form a State Central 
 Committee : this was done by the delegation from each Congressional 
 district agreeing upon one niember. The roll of districts being 
 called, all, with one exception, presented a name ; but when the dis- 
 trict of Senator Fenton was called, it turned out that divisions be- 
 tween his colleagues and himself had prevented an agreement ; and 
 in consequence of this, the membership Of the State Committee, 
 from that district, stood vacant during the Campaign. Faithful Re- 
 publicans throughout the State labored hard in the canvass which 
 ensued. The hinge and hope of the canvass, was the City of New 
 
^v 
 
 27 
 
 York. Congress bad enacted an election law, under which it was 
 believed that the fraudulent majorities counted by Tammany- 
 agents would be largely cut down. Our friends in the, city, prom- 
 ised us in the country, that 20,000 reduction would surely take 
 place ; this, with a full vote in the rural districts, would give us the 
 State. A gain in the city, was therefore the pivot of the Canvass, 
 because Republicans in districts sure to elect their local tickets, 
 would not exhaust themselves in piling up additional majorities for 
 the State ticket, if the majorities were to be swamped by false 
 counts in the City of New York. 
 
 Gov. Fenton and his special friends were lukewarm throughout 
 the canvass, the Governor absenting himself from the State much 
 of the time; late in October he returned from the Western 
 States, and visited the City of New York, where he was gazet- 
 ted in the newspapers as prospecting the result. Up to this time, 
 he had been silent, but on the 31st of October he spoke. This was 
 five days before the election, and the Governor had just returned 
 from the city, where, if at all, the canvass was to be saved ; he, 
 therefore, was the man, and then was the time, to tell the Republi- 
 cans of the State, whether it was or was not worth while to get out 
 every vote. His speech was sent at once throughout the Republican 
 presg of the State, appearing always in the same words. As printed 
 in the New York Tribune, it contained this remarkable statement: 
 "Troubles came upon us unfortunately in other districts, and now in 
 the City of New York our jmrty are in confusion and discouragement 
 (jrowing out of some unfortunate Federal appointments.''' Had this 
 "been true, it is hard to see how any Republican could have felt 
 called upon to cast such a wet blanket over the party on the eve of 
 an important election. That it was not true, is proved by the fact 
 that when election day came, not only twenty thousand, but twenty- 
 six thousand, was struck from the Democratic mojority in the City 
 of New York. 
 
 Had the Governor, instead of being devoted to the Republican 
 party, and religiously anxious for its success, been in collusion with 
 Tammany Hall, what could he have done, so useful to the Democ- 
 racy, as the thing he did? 
 
 The result was all that a Democrat could desire, or a Republican 
 deplore. We lost the State, and 45,000 Republicans west of the 
 Hudson river who voted at the gubernatorial election last before, 
 did not vote at all ; and this in a season so tine that the corn was all 
 husked, the potatoes all dug, the buckwheat all gathered, and the 
 roads as good on election day, as they were in June. Hoffman's 
 counted majority was only 38,090 in the State, and the 45,000 Re- 
 publicans d'iscourao-ed to "stay at home, would have elected Wood- 
 ford by 12.000. 
 
 The succeeding year, (1871,) brought the same attempt to carry 
 the State Convention against the National Administration. Again, 
 Tammany men and money, volumes of rri6i/?2e slanders, and tire- 
 less eftbrt, contested the primaries in vain. The Convention over- 
 looked the irregular and factional course of Mr. Greeley and his 
 Tammany allies, in calling local conventions to forestall and 
 defy the' decision of the State Convention upon the re-organiza- 
 tion of the party in the city, and admitted both sets of delegates, 
 
28 
 
 the only condition being that thereafter the party should be one. 
 Here was the rub ; the men who have since thrown off the mask 
 and revealed themselves as deserters, were determined then to divide 
 and destroy the party. They meant then to wrest the State from 
 President Grant, and to pave the way for a contesting delegation to 
 the National Convention, if they could not by some artifice seize 
 the delegation itself. 
 
 The good sense of the Convention frustrated the scheme, and then 
 came the sorry theatrical of a secession from the Convention, led by 
 factionists who have been in turn the friends of all'parties, and the 
 betrayers of all. 
 
 "patronage,"' and removals. 
 
 The course of Mr. Greeley, and its reference to patronage and 
 spoils, is visible in a letter he wrote to Mr. Cornell after he made up 
 his mind to defeat, if possible, the weeding out of Tammany men from 
 the Eepublican organization. Here is his letter, putting his action 
 squarely on the ground of dissatisfaction with the " appointing iwwery 
 
 New York, April 9, 1871. 
 Dear Sib:— It gives me no pleasure to advise you, and the Committee of which you are the head, 
 that I am obliged to decline the part assigned me by the State Committee in the proposed re-organiza- 
 tion of the Republican party of our city. Had a little forbearance, and conciliation been evinced by the 
 appointing power at Washington, I think this might have been different. Tours, Horace Greeley. 
 
 The sapping and mining begun in 1870, and secretly continued 
 ever since, has culminated in the bolt no longer covered up, which has 
 recently occured : its strength was in its secrecy and in its denied 
 existence ; its weakness is in its being known of all men. 
 
 It has been said that the President removed friends of Mr. Fen- 
 ton ; if this were true, when made an explanation of the betrayal 
 or desertion of the party, it sinks those who resort to it to the lowest 
 depth of sordid hypocrisy. But it is not true. One friend of Mr. 
 Fenton was removed to gratify Mr. Moses H. Grinnell, and in no 
 other instance to my knowledge, was a friend of Mr. Fenton's dis- 
 placed, except for cause ; while to this day the great body of those 
 he recommended to office, remain in office still. To illustrate this, 
 since President Grant came in, not six postmasters in the entire State 
 have been appointed at my instance ; more than two hundred have 
 been appointed at Senator Fenton's instance, and not one has been 
 disturbed unless for official delinquency. 
 
 COLECTOR MURPHY, 
 
 Mr. Murphy was appointed collector of New York, but not to grat- 
 ify me or at ray solicitation. He has been held up as a scoundrel, yet 
 the records conclusively prove that he increased the collection of rev- 
 enue, and diminished the percentage of cost. No act of dishonesty, 
 has to my knowledge, ever been proved against him, I moved and 
 insisted upon, the investigation which was lately made of the Cus- 
 tom House — the inquiry was conducted by some of the best and 
 ablest members of the Senate, and the report acquits Mr. Murphy 
 of every charge impairing his integrity. I do not allude to the mat- 
 ter however, to go into Mr, Murphy's merits ; I did not suggest his 
 appointment, and during his collectorship, I never asked or recom- 
 mended an appointment at his hands, not one. It was vainly 
 hoped that there would be less carping, if no favor to ine was asked 
 for; and none was ever asked or received. My object is to show 
 you the wickedness of the charge that the President appointed Mr, 
 
29 
 
 Murphy, contrary to the judgment of tlie best men in the party, and 
 for some unusual or improper reason. 
 
 Mr. Murphy was an experienced, successful business man, at leis- 
 ure, and vigorous enough to endure the great strain and labor of the 
 place ; if the President was wrong in selecting him, let me show you 
 who else were wrong. 
 
 Here are some of those, who, in writing, recommended his nom- 
 ination or confirmation. Their signatures are in my possession. 
 
 Edwin D. Morgan, 
 George Opdyke, 
 Henry Clews, 
 John A. Griswold, 
 Chas. J. Folger, 
 Edwards Pierrepont, 
 Isaac H. Bailey, 
 Thos. C. Acton, 
 Chas. W. Griswold, 
 Thos. Hillhouse, 
 S. H. Wales, 
 Win. A. Darling, 
 D. D. T. Marshall, 
 Wm. Laimbeer, 
 Brooks Bros., 
 
 A. S. Dodd, 
 
 B. S. Luddington, 
 Jno. C. Churchill, it. c.,John Bryan, 
 Orange P'erriss, " 
 Hamilton Ward, " 
 Giles W.Hotchkiss," 
 David S. Bennett, " 
 AVm. A. Whitbeck, 
 Edward Haisrht, 
 
 Spofford Bros. & Co., (Jeo. Bliss, Jr., Cornelius Bortle, 
 
 John Hoey, Van Sehaich & Co., .John .M. Welch, 
 
 Isaac Dayton, F. T. James & Co., Ucnry Tridlcr, 
 
 George D. Morgan, A. D. Williams &; Co., H. V' Esselstyne, 
 Thomas B.Van Buren, Maxwell & Co., H. B. Rockfeller, 
 
 John n. Hall, Harney & Searles, P. E. Van Alstyne, 
 
 0. W. Joslyn, Daniel W. Adams, J. W. C. llogebooni, 
 
 R.W.Marlow.Jr.,iS:Co.,Hallgarten & Bro., Mathew Hale, 
 M. Mitchell, Drake Bros., E. M. Madden, 
 
 K. H. Arkenl)urgh, Edward Brandon, C. Esselstyne, 
 
 F. Chandler, Closson & Hays, Geo. Dawson, 
 
 R. W. Bleecker, N. P. Stanton, Thos. Parsons, 
 
 Hooper C. Van Vorst, Boyd, Falls & Vincent, Silas F. Smith, 
 Jas. Struthers, Plume &VanEmburgh, N'. Lapham, 
 
 Republican (ieneraj 
 Committee of Kings 
 Co., N. Y., and resi- 
 dents of Brookl)Ti, 
 N. Y., one hundred 
 and ten in number. 
 W. Leavanwortb, 
 and others, resi- 
 dents of Syracuse. 
 
 Carolan 0. B. Bryant, Taylor Brothers 
 Thos. J. Owen & Co., John W. Brown, 
 J. de Rivera, B. M. Nevas, 
 
 Cornelius Esselstyne, 
 Joseph Brockan, John R. Currie, 
 
 E. B. Wesley, Hedden, Winchester (c 
 
 Sixty-seven Members Co., E. 
 
 of the Republican Glendinning, Davis & 
 
 General Committee Amory, 
 
 of New York, 
 
 Besides these, many others recommended ^Ir, Murphy's appoint- 
 ment : this list includes only those who addressed me. It does not 
 include any of the recommendations made to the ]'resident or to the 
 Secretary of the Treasur}^ 
 
 You will, I trust, pardon the time given to these facts ; if it were 
 right to detain you, many others might be stated, showing the injus- 
 tice and falsehood which have been piled upon the President, and 
 upon me, in this regard. The whole pretense, that the friends of 
 Gov. Fenton were ever ostracised because they were his friends, is 
 the veriest sham that could be palmed off upon the public ; and yet 
 the argument of spoils is used without a blush, to extenuate the acts 
 of those who, for two years, have been plotting tkc destruction of 
 the party. 
 
 This clap-trap about improper appointments is the same in substance 
 as that heard in tke time of Jackson, and of John Quinc}^ Adams, 
 and there is less cause for it relatively now, than there was then. 
 
 MR. SUMXER AND MR. GREELEY HATE " PRETEXSIOX." 
 
 It is as untruthful, as the pretense that the "President is a quarrel- 
 er," that he insisted upon a renomination, or that he is a pretention.^ 
 man. The President is charged with "pretension" by Mr. Sumner, 
 in a speech written and printed beforehand, in which Mr. Sumner 
 speaks of himself, and praises himself, one hundred and fifty-six 
 times, and flatters himself thoroughly and copiously, twenty times. 
 But Sumner is nothing to Greeley. Greeley thinks Grant " preten- 
 tious' too, and Greeley at the Boston Jubilee, in explaining his own 
 fitness for the Presidency, modestly spoke of himself twenty times 
 
30 
 
 in ten minutes— this is twice a minute. Had Sumner used the per- 
 sonal pronoun at the same rate, no printing-office would have had 
 big I's enough to set up the speech. 
 
 THE " MILITARY RING." 
 
 But we may not stop here in counting the President's crimes; — he 
 has, we are told, a "militarv ring" at the White House, and turns 
 the'White House into a "military barracks." When he moved into 
 the White House, he heard soldiers patroling in the hall, and when 
 he asked them what it meant, they said they were President Johnson's 
 body guard, — he told them he wanted no guard, and sent them to 
 their quarters. The next day he gave orders removing all troops from 
 Washington, and not a military company has ever been there since. 
 
 The "military ring" consists of three young men who write for 
 the President without a farthing of expense to the Treasury. The 
 President is authorized by law to employ and pay Secretaries. The 
 gentlemen who assist him were on his Staff in the war, and are now 
 on the Staff of General Sherman ; their commissions are their own; 
 the President cannot take them a,way ; and now, in time of peace, 
 General Sherman does not require their services. One of them is 
 detailed to oversee the public parks, and the other two assist the 
 President, which they do from love of the man, and without a cent 
 ■of pay beyond what they would draw if they sat at Gen. Sherman's 
 head quarters, doing not'liing. This is the whole of it ; exactly like 
 the case of Col. Bliss and his father-in-law President Taylor, or the 
 case of Donaldson and Jackson, or the case of Andrew Johnson and 
 the three or four army officers who assisted him. It saves several thou- 
 sand dollars a year, does the public business, and nobody is harmed. 
 
 " SEA-SIDE LOITERINGS." 
 
 The catalogue of the President's atrocities would be incomplete 
 without one other thing. During ten or twelve weeks of heat and 
 fever and ague at AVashington, his family go to a cottage at the sea 
 -side, and he goes and comes from there to the capital. 
 
 It is eight hours from the White House to the cottage, with tw» 
 mails a day, and a telegraph every instant. Nothing can occur, 
 ^however suddenly, demanding his attention, without his being with- 
 in immediate call ; yet this is the occasion of constant hullabaloo. 
 Gov. Hoffman leaves his State and resides at Newport, Rhode Isl- 
 and for the summer. Mr. James Brooks, though member of Con- 
 ,gress, goes to Cliina and Ja[)Mn, not returning even when Congress 
 meets. General Jackson used to spend weeks at the Rip Raps in 
 Hampton Roads, where no intelligence could reach him from Wash- 
 ington in days, and then only by special messenger, and whence he 
 could not return for days, if sent for. No telegraph, railroad, daily 
 mail, or even steamboat, plied there then. President Adams, sepa- 
 rated from Massachusetts by a stage coach ride of many days, used to 
 spend weeks at his home. Washington passed much time at Mt 
 Vernon, and even that was farther removed in communicating with 
 the Capital then, than Long Branch is now. 
 
 Rulers, in all countries, have felt at liberty to tarry a distance 
 from their official residence, during a portion of the year; but no 
 examples, experience, or common sense, stand in the way of the 
 crucitiers of Grant. 
 
31 
 
 The public, however, will be satisfied with one fact, viz. : that no 
 instance has yet been discovered or pretended, in which anything, 
 howevei- small, was neglected or left undone, because the President 
 was absent. This one fact answers a hurricane of abuse. 
 
 I have discussed, perhaps at inexcusable length, the paltry and 
 personal slanders dragged into the campaign ; and yet, nothing has 
 been said of the blameless, simple, daily life of the President, nor 
 of his innocence of a quarrelsome disposition. 
 
 He quarreled with Lee, and every other rebel while rebellion 
 lasted. He settled that quarrel, and has never quarreled since, un- 
 less it be quarreling not to obey intollerable dictation, and simply 
 to let alone men who oppose and denounce him. 
 
 If there be any charge against the President, which has escaped 
 me I will speak of it, if any one will bring it to mind. If there be 
 none, let us rise from gossip to history; from scandal to business. 
 
 Let us turn from the man to the magistrate, and scan his official 
 record and stewardship. 
 
 WHA.T THE ADMINISTRATION HAS DONE. FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 
 
 What has the Administration done in three years? First, it has 
 maintained our rights with every foreign power, and kept the peace 
 with all the world. Gov. Seward said to me last year after he had 
 girdled the earth with his travels, " How remarkable is our success 
 in foreign affairs ; but two years ago Kussia was our only friend in 
 Christendom, and now America has not an enemy in the world." 
 He proceeded to say, that this good result came from the temperate 
 and just course of our Government. Mr. Sumner has lately told us 
 that we are in "a muddle with every body." Can any of you tell 
 with whom we are in a " muddle ? " Can any of you name a sea, a 
 continent, or an island, where our flag is not respected ? Can any 
 of you name a commercial center in which our securities are not 
 sought? Can any of you nanie a power which denies a right to 
 one'American citizen? Spain's release of D-r. Houard, whose Amer- 
 ican citizenship is ver}^ doubtful, leaves no controversy, no contested 
 matter, with any power on earth, save England. 
 
 With England, preceding administrations failed to settle several 
 large and dangerous questions. This administration has composed 
 them all in one treaty, applauded by the country and the world as 
 one of the best products of statesmanship and civilization. Recently 
 a difference arose as to the construction, of the treaty, and England 
 was unwilling and afraid to submit the question to the tribunal to 
 which it plainly belonged. The British government took the ground 
 that they had "agreed to a treaty which did not contain what they 
 intended ; that their meaning was not set down in language so plaia 
 that they were willing to trust-it to the arbitration at Geneva; and 
 they insisted that we should withdraw part of our claims. This was 
 a strange position, and involved a humiliating admission ; it was 
 sayino- virtually that their agents had not been able to cope with ours. 
 Indeed this was said without disguise and with taunts in the British 
 Parliament. There is nothing here surely to wound American pride. 
 
 England, with a Parliament eight hundred years old, renowned 
 for centuries in exploits of diplomacy, sent five of her trained men 
 to baro-ain with an infant nation scarce out of its swaddling clothes; 
 an ao-reement was made, written and signed, and afterwards England 
 
82 
 
 discovered that it did not read as she says she thought it did, and so 
 she threw up the sponge, and cried out that she had been out-fought 
 and out-witted, in her' own held of law and diplomacy. Noblemen 
 and University men, were England's Commissioners— they sealed 
 the treaty with signet rings bearing ancient coats of arms,_ but the 
 wossips said that one of our untitled and self educated Commissioners 
 had nothing to seal with except a button — this seems the story over 
 ao-ain of the poor boy with a pin-hook and twine, who caught more 
 iish than the rich boy with the rod, the reel, the line of silk, and the 
 best of fish-hooks. ■ 
 
 England's refusal to go to trial, unless we would agree not to 
 prove or argue part of our case, was met on our side by the state- 
 ment that we insisted upon having the law settled for the future, in 
 regard to indirect damages so called. 
 
 Our government insisted, that hereafter England should never 
 demand any damages from us, except such as she admitted to be 
 within the law of nations now. Upon this ground, the President 
 declined to withdraw any of our claims, saying, however, that indi- 
 rect losses would not be pressed, provided by agreement between the 
 parties, or by a decision of the court, we could be guaranteed for the 
 future agaiiDst similar liabilities. Negotiations ensued, resulting in 
 a supplemental article or clause of the treaty, and before this was 
 finally accepted, the tribunal at Geneva did, what we all the while 
 maintained its right to do, and made a decision good for the future 
 as well as the present, and good for us as well as for England, deny- 
 ing the right of one nation to recover certain kinds of damage from 
 another. By this rule, we will settle with England as often as she is 
 a belligerent and we a neutral ; and if she is content, we should be. 
 "We are to be the neutral hereafter ; we shall have no more rebellions, 
 no foreign power will be impatient to get up a war with us ; but 
 England, differently situated, with her elbows hitting the elbows of 
 other nations, may not be so fortunate ; and when her commerce and 
 her cause suffers from American citizens, or from cruisers or priva- 
 teers built in America, we will measure to her the rule of damages 
 she asks for now. Whether England keeps or breaks the treaty, it 
 will remain the greatest event of diplomacy in our history. Had 
 Hamilton Eish rendered no other public service in his life, his abil- 
 ity, devotion, and success, in this great matter, would inscribe his 
 name high up on the roll of illustrious names. The only error pre- 
 tended in the management of the Alabama claims, has been the 
 maintenance of views, of which the noisiest advocate, always, has 
 been Mr. Sumner ; but even he, has not succeeded in producing a 
 "muddle" with any foreign power, not even with the aid of his 
 friend Schurz, by his romances and vagaries, touching the sale, by 
 American merchants, of arms to France. 
 
 FIISrANCES, DEBT, TAXES, RETRENCHMENT. 
 
 The public debt has been paid as no one dared expect or hope. 
 
 The present Administration found a national debt of $3,700,000,000 00 
 
 Durina; Andrew Johnson's Administration, the whole reduc- 
 
 tiSn of this debt Avas $13,655,668 00 
 
 The aimual interest account was 128,503,102 34 
 
 The annaul expense account averaged 179,371,680 00 
 
 Making an annual draft upon the Treasury of 307,773,782 24 
 
 This annual draft was met by internal taxes and customs duties. 
 
 Under Andrew Johnson annual taxes averaged as follows: 
 
33 
 
 Internal taxes $102,194,491 29 
 
 Customs duties 193,691,009 70 
 
 The country was flooded witli paper money, and trade deranged with inflated 
 prices. Currency ranged from thirty-five to .^^eventy-one cents on the dollar. Our 
 opponents scouted our ability to reduce the debt ; they said that no such debt ever 
 had been paid or ever would be. 
 
 The National Democratic Convention of '08, declared against its payment in 
 coin, and in favor of subjecting it to taxation. 
 
 Such was the condition of things, confronting us, in March '09. 
 
 Up to July 1, '72 there has been paid of principal of the debt . $333,976,910 39 ', 
 
 This is a payment every month of 8,349,422 00 ' 
 
 l£ is a payment already of 13,21-100 per cent, of the whole debt, ;.and at the 
 same rate of payment not a dollar would remain in 21 years. 
 Saving of annual interest in coin $20,000,000. 
 
 About $300,000,000 has been refunded at 44 and 5 per cent, savingyJinTannual 
 interest $3,000,000, and up to the maturity of the new bonds $20,000,000, and 
 paving the way to refunding $1,000,000,000 more at still lower interest. 
 The premium on ^old has been reduced from 40 per cent, to 12 per cent. 
 Great reduction of taxes preceded, and followed. General Grant's inauguration. 
 Since he came in, and prior to the last Session of Congress, 
 
 annual internal taxes were reduced $55,212,000 1[00 
 
 Tariff annually reduced, 29.526,409;;09 
 
 Total $84,738,409 09 
 
 Despite these reductions the increase of revenue accounted 
 for under General Grant over the same period preced- 
 ing, is $84,994,049 74 
 
 At the last Session of Congress, taxes were further re- 
 duced (annually) , 53,000,000 00 
 
 This cuts off pretty much aU iuternal taxes, except on whiskey, beer, tobacco, 
 and Banks, and a portion of the stamp tax ; the income tax dies this year. Tea 
 and coffee, for the first time in our memory, are wholly free. The people have 
 paid heretofore, $18,000,000 annually on tea and coffee. 
 
 At the same time, with this work of reduction, pensions to soldiers have been 
 largely increased, and large appropriations made to improve rivers and harbors. 
 At their wits' end, how to meet these facts, our enemies have started a new idea. 
 
 WHAT HAS THE ADMIN^ISTRATIOIS^ TO DO WITH PAYING THE DEBT? 
 
 From Washington down, every Administration has been tried by its financial 
 results. But now we hear that the authorites deserve no credit for paying the 
 debt, that the people have paid it. Of course the people have paid it, but who has 
 honestly collected and accounted for the money '? Who has reduced the expenses ? 
 Who has upheld the public credit ? Who has cheapened the interest? Who ha& 
 Avisely applied the money ? Who has made the greenbacks in your pocket, that 
 used "to be worth only half its face, almost as good as gold ? The people paid 
 taxes under Andrew Johnson, twice as great as they pay now. Why was not 
 twice as much of the debt paid then ? Why was only $13,000,000 of the debt paid 
 then with extravagant taxation ? Under Andrew Johnson, the whiskey ring, the 
 contractors, and other " liberals," preyed upon the revenue so, that it is calculated 
 one quarter of the whole was lost. Under the present Administration after taxes 
 were lessened $84,000,000 a year, collections increased $84,000,000. Did the people 
 do that ? 
 
 If one of your agents made a given amount of money go twice as far as an agent 
 before him had done, would it be you, or the agent, to be credited or blamed? 
 
 But look a little further. The expenses every where have been reduced, and so 
 reduced, that they are less per capita this year, than they were under Washington, 
 and less than they were under any Administration since, with only four excep- 
 tions, and in case of these four, the advantage is only apparant, and but a few 
 cents. Compare the year 1860, under Buchanan, with -last year, 1871. 
 
 Ill 1860, the population being 31,443,321, the expenses were $1.95 for each person. 
 
 1871, population 38,555,983, expenses $1.76 for each person. There is one great 
 difference between these two years not shown by the figures. 
 
 In 1860, the whole amount expended for public buildings, 
 improvements of rivers and harbors, and other public 
 
 works throughout the country, was only $2,913,371 48 
 
 In 1871, such public improvements were made and paid for, to 
 
 the amount of 10,733,759 05 
 
 If allowance be made for these lasting improvements, greater during the last 
 two years than before, the actual cost per head of governing the coimtry under 
 Grant, is as small as it ever was since the foundation of the Governme»t. 
 3 
 
O 4 • 
 
 o4 
 
 In 1858, the War Department cost $25,0ri),131 63 
 
 In 1859, it cost 23.154,720 53 
 
 In 1860, under Floyd, the accounts of the Department were not closed, but went 
 over in part to Lincoln's Administration. 
 
 In 1871, the War Department cost $23,376,981 28 
 
 Taking the whole running expenses of the Government, for 
 the executive, legislative, and judicial departments, in- 
 cluding the army and'uaw, and foreign ministers, con 
 
 suls, and agents, the cost in 1860 was $61,403,408 64 
 
 The same account in 1871 was 68,684,613 92 
 
 With new States and Territories, with seven millions more 
 population, with new courts, and the internal revenue 
 establishment, the whole excess of cost in 1871, over 
 
 1860, was 7,383,305 38 
 
 Here is an increase of 13 per cent, of cost, with an increase of 25 per cent, of 
 population, saying nothing of increased demands. 
 
 The " refoniiers " bad not looked up these figures when Mr. Trumbull stated at 
 Cooper Institute, that the expenses of the Government, aside from interest and 
 pensions, ought to be not more than 33 per cent, greater now than before the war, 
 it turns out that the increase is only about one-third as much as he thinks it 
 should be. 
 
 CIVIL SERVICE REFORM. 
 
 During the present year, large additional reductions are to come ; 
 internal revenue districts are to be reduced to eighty in all ; super- 
 visors of revenue to ten in all ; deputies and assistants will vanish 
 with the taxes they heretofore collected, and ouI_y a skeleton of the rev- 
 enue establishment will be left. Four million and a half will be saved 
 this year in the cost of conducting the Internal Revenue Bureau. 
 
 The Freedmen's Bureau, established by Lincoln and Stanton, and 
 Sherman and Howard, and vetoed by Andrew Johnson, which has 
 cost much money, and done much good, is this year to be finally 
 wound up. 
 
 These things, added to the pruning which the army and navy, and 
 Indian and revenue service have undergone, make this the best ad- 
 ministration in civil service reform, the country ever had. In civil 
 service reform, Grant is the pioneer President. No one before him 
 inaugurated or proposed it. Andrew Johnson, a deserter from his 
 party, had by using appointments as bribes and threats, made pat- 
 ronage a mere corruption fund. Who found fault then? The whole 
 Democratic party justified and applauded it. Where were our vir- 
 tuous and edifying reformers then, Trumbull and the rest ? The 
 tenure of ofiice act only required the assent of the Senate to remo- 
 vals, but the Democrats made war even upon that, holding that the 
 President should be left absolute and unfettered. When Grant 
 came in, he helped to perfect the present tenure of office law, so as 
 to put a check upon himself. In three messages, the President has 
 urged civil service reform, and has given it his whole influence. Un- 
 der a mere permission not requiring anything of him, he appointed 
 a Board to prepare rules and regulations governing appointments, 
 and establishing competitive examinations ; and these rules he has 
 diligently put in force ; and yet he is railed at by men, who quar- 
 reled with him, merely because they could not control more patron- 
 age. Could any President have done more? 
 
 He might have appointed his enemies, and turned out his friends. 
 Nothing else would have silenced the pack now barking at his heels. 
 
 DEFAULTERS DETECTED AND PUNISHED. 
 
 Kemorseless rigor has ferreted out and punished delinquents and 
 defaulters. Most of them have not been men appointed by Grant, 
 
35 
 
 but those whose crimes began under past administrations ; some of 
 them have been men, recommended by "reformers," now mouthing 
 about bad appointments ; but wherever found, they have been 
 caught, if possible, and when caught, nothing has protected them. 
 
 Hodge, a paymaster, and a democrat in politics, embezzled for 
 years under Andrew Johnson, but was never detected till after Gri'ant 
 came in ; then he was hurried to a penitentiary. Norton, money 
 order superintendent in the New York post-office, began his depre- 
 dations under Andrew Johnson, and took more than $30,000, but 
 was never found out till last year ; then he was arrested, and it turned 
 out that Horace Greeley was one of the postmaster's bondsmen. A 
 prosecution is in progress, and if Mr. Greeley shouldn't happen to be 
 elected, he will be obliged t© pay up — the amount is now $115,428.71 
 and interest. It is upon such facts as these, that " reformers " and 
 other Democrats, make hue, and cry about defalcations under Presi- 
 dent Grant. Will any of you name the Democratic official thief, 
 who was ever punished by Democrats ? 
 
 The City of New York has swarmed with plunderers, from the 
 Big "Boss" to the littlest wiggler of Tammany Hall; they are 
 all Democrats, and their guilt of stealing tens of millions has been 
 notorious for more than a year. Governor, judges, district-attorney, 
 sheriff, police, all are Democrats, but not a thief has been punished, 
 nor a stolen dollar recovered back. All these thieves are for Greeley ; 
 they all shout for Greeley and "reform," and all curse Grant. 
 
 The Homestead policy has been extended so as to give a hundred 
 and sixty acres of land to every soldier and sailor who served for 
 ninety days, and was honorably discharged. 
 
 American ship building has received the first real encouragement 
 for years. By the recent tariff act, all materials for ship building 
 will, by means of drawback, come in duty free, and thus American 
 ship yards will be enabled to compete, as to materials, with the ship 
 yards of the world. 
 
 "centralism," HOW CONGRESS HAS CENTRALIZED. 
 
 American citizens, high and low, rich and poor, black and white, 
 whether in Spain, on the high seas, or in the South, have been pro- 
 tected. But this is called "centralism." Every civilized govern- 
 ment may protect its citizens in the uttermost ends of the earth, but 
 when the United States interposes to check murders, and burnings, 
 and barbarities at which humanity shudders, perpetrated by thou- 
 sands, and overawing all local authority, it is suddenly discovered 
 that we are in danger of "centralism." This discovery is made by 
 Mr. Greeley, and the very men who cried the loudest for the Ku 
 Klux law. Here are Greeley's words spoken June 12, 1871, after 
 he came back from the South : 
 
 I hold our Government bound by its duty of protectin? our citizens in their fundamental rights to 
 pass and enforce laws for the extirpation of the execrable Ku Klux conspiracy ; and if it lias not the 
 power to do it, then I sav our Government is no Government, but a sliam. / t/iere/ore on every proper 
 oc^aaion advocated and' itixti fled the Ku Klux act. I hold it eHneriallij deMrablejor the South ; and if 
 it does not prove strong enough to effect its purpose, I hope it icill be made stronger and stronger. 
 
 The law, here spoken of, is the law exactly as it exists to day, in- 
 cluding the habeas corpus suspension, which has now expired by its 
 own limitation. No other act of " centralism " has beea enacted of 
 late, unless it is an amendment of the election law, vehemently de- 
 manded and approved by Mr. Greeley. Hear what he said about 
 it only a few months ago : 
 
36 
 
 It is ursred by the Democratic organs that the law is to be enforced in State and municipal elec- 
 tions ThS is done to make it more obnoxious, if that be possible, to their party. But, unfortunately, 
 this is an error. The law applies on ly to Presidential and Congressional elections, though we heabtily 
 
 WISH IT COTILD BE MADE TO APPLY TO ALL OTHERS. 
 
 The " centralism " of this law, consists in allowing the courts, 
 upon the application of ten citizens, to appoint two persons, one from 
 each political party, to watch the polls, at which members of Con- 
 gress and Presidential electors are to be chosen. These watchers 
 have no power to arrest any one or to do any thing, except to look 
 on as witnesses and see whether fraud takes place — and this without 
 a farthing of compensation or expense. Do you think any honest 
 voter will be offended by this ? Will any honest man object to so 
 harmless a safeguard against fraudulent voting and fraudulent count- 
 ing? Since the Tammany exposures, no man doubts that the voice 
 of the ballot-box has been stifled for years by election frauds, and 
 here is a law which can do no harm, and under which the democrats 
 themselves said, we had the only approach to a fair election in New 
 York, that had happened for years. 
 
 KEAL DANGERS ARE STATE RIGHTS AND REBEL CLAIMS. 
 
 No, my friends, the cry of " centralism " is a mere fetch. The 
 real danger is the other way. De-centralization, which means State 
 Eights in the old pestilent secession sense, is the real danger. You 
 need to stand guard against the doctrine of paramount State sover- 
 eignty which ushered in rebellion, and which, if it gain head, will 
 usher in the payment of the rebel debt, the payment of rebel pen- 
 sions, the payment of losses from the ravages of the war, and a 
 brood of dire heresies. 
 
 This is no chimera. Democrats and " reformers " struek hands, at 
 the last session, in admitting rebels to the Court of Claims, to re- 
 cover for their cotton captured in the war ; and every Democrat, 
 with most of the new converts in the Senate, voted to pay from the 
 Treasury rebel claimants, for carrying the mail in the Southern 
 States after they went into Rebellion: an act which Republicans 
 prevented, after a weary contest. 
 
 "Centralism "is a mere goblin. Whenever Congress transcends 
 the Constitution, the court will so decide, and the people will apply 
 the corrective. But watch you, and pray to be delivered from that 
 dogma of State independence, which once drenched the land in 
 blood, and covered it with taxes and with mourning. All the 
 "Centralism'' we have now, is a strong and stable government un- 
 der which the nation prospers, with safety to property, labor, liberty, 
 and life. Woe to the day, and woe to the hour, when the people 
 change it off, for, they know not what. 
 
 A contented mind is great riches; and to let well enough alone, 
 is the sum of wisdom. 
 
 CANT ABOUT INVESTIGATIONS. 
 
 With some minds the greater the humbug, the greater the sensa- 
 tion. The country is filled with factional outcry : and one of the 
 catch-words is " investigations." " Reformers " in the Senate wasted 
 weeks and months in attempting to mislead the public in this re- 
 spect. It was brazenly pretended that men like Buckingham of 
 Connecticut, and Hamlin of Maine, and Frelinghuysen of New 
 Jersey, and Howe of Wisconsin, and Anthony of Rhode Island, 
 and other of the best and purest Statesmen of the nation, attempted 
 
37 
 
 to cloak fraud and stifle inquiry. The New York Irihune and other 
 unprincipled newspapers, published pretended speeches which were 
 never made, put into the mouths of administration Senators, as 
 uttered in caucus, by myself among others, declaring that the Ad- 
 ministration should not be investigated. Nothing could be more 
 false. No friend of the Administration ever objected to the most 
 searching and sweeping investigation, but always the contrary. The 
 only men who thwarted or delayed investigation, were our oppo- 
 nents. They did, as I will show you. 
 
 On the first day of the session I offered a resolution instructing 
 the Military Committee to investigate the case of Hodge, and see 
 whether anybody else was at fault, and what could be done to close 
 the door for the future. Mr. Trumbull insisted that there should be 
 one and the same committee to investigate everything. Ue moved 
 such an amendment, and in such form, as to make Carl Schurz 
 chairman; the plan of the "liberals" being to make Mr. Schurz 
 charioteer of a mud machine to befoul the party during this canvass 
 in the name of tlie Senate. 
 
 We urged that one committee could not investigate everything, 
 and that to make the work thorough, it must be parceled out to dif- 
 ferent committees. This was met with a storm of electioneering 
 flings and insinuations, which consumed days. Finally, to bring the 
 matter to an end, we acquiesced in having a single committee, to 
 which all investigations should go. Every man of sense must see 
 that if the object was full and speedy inquiry, this was not the way, 
 and so the event proved. 
 
 When the committee was raised, I moved an investigation of the 
 New York Custom House ; Mr. Trumbull passionately objected, 
 and threw the resolution over by a point of order. As soon as a 
 majority could do so, it was taken up and passed ; the Hodge reso- 
 lution followed, and other resolutions, and what was the result ? 
 The committee, thus overloaded, was able to complete on]y the Cus- 
 tom House inquiry, and this snowed under everything else. The 
 Hodge matter, and other things, wait ; and when the Presidential elec- 
 tion is over, an,d there is nothing to be made by clap-trap and 
 buncombe, we shall be permitted probably to refer them to apropri- 
 ate commitees. When the French arms resolution was offered by 
 Mr. Sumner, the Republican Senators offered to vote the investiga- 
 tion instantly ; but Mr. Sumner objected, and asked its postponement. 
 When he moved it again, all other business was at once laid aside, 
 and again the majority offered to vote for the inquiry. But Mr, 
 Sumner insisted upon speech making, and he and Schurz went at it, 
 attempting to prove in advance all the dismal rigmarole of a false 
 and foolish preamble. 
 
 Of course, their speeches could not go unanswered to tlxe country, lest silence 
 should seem to give consent ; and so days and weeks were wasted, when in five 
 minutes the pretended object could have been accomplished. The pretended 
 object was not the real object, as everybody knew; the aim was political effect, 
 and for this the "reformers" would besmirch the Government, even though the 
 crusade disgraced us, or involved us with foreign powers. 
 
 The result, as you know, was ruinous to those who began it. The French arms 
 investigation is a fair sample of the rest. We had, in all, in the two Houses, four- 
 teen committees set on the Administration. Sucu a thing was never heard of be- 
 fore. No administration was ever so put under a microscope, or pried into with 
 malicious eyes. What did it all amount to? Directly and indirectly, these inveati- 
 gatiens probably cost, in time, money, and neglect of legislation, millions of 
 
38 
 
 dollars; — and who is benefited? Nobody, but tbe Administration they were in- 
 tending to destroy. The President, and those for whom he is responsible, have 
 come out like pure gold tried by tbe fire, brighter than before — the country pays 
 the bills, and the " reformers" curse in their sleeves at their ill-luck. 
 
 KU KLUX DOINGS. 
 
 The only investigation of value, related to the condition of the South. The 
 Committee on Southern Outrages made a report full of frightful lessons. In ten 
 States, an organization exists, known as tbe " Ku Klux Klan," or "Invisible 
 Empire of the South." It is a resurrection of tbe remains of the rebel army. 
 Gen. Forrest of For' Pillow, was its cbief head, or "grand cyclops." It is a 
 secret, oath bound band. Its object is to kill and drive out " radicals " and 
 " carpet-baggers," and to intimidate the blacks from voting against the Democratic 
 party. Speaking to those wbo have not read tbe evidence, the existence, the 
 nature and the deeds of these assassins, are so incredible, that I dare not ask you to 
 accept them on my word. Let me state a few things contained in the report, and 
 proved by much testimony. 
 
 Gen. Forrest admits his belief that the order is 500,000 strong. In the two 
 Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida, one hundred counties have 
 been kept under a reign of terror. One of the obligations of membership, is to 
 commit perjury as a witness or a juror. Many leading wealthy men are among 
 the actors, and until Congress interfered, the State authorities were powerless, or 
 unvTilling to enforce the laws ; barbarous atrocities occurred nightly, but no one 
 was punished or even arrested. Whites and blacks were murdered and robbed, 
 their houses bucned, and nameless deeds done by disguised bands. 
 
 In fourteen counties of North Carolina, eighteen murders were done and three 
 hundred and fifteen whippings occurred. In nine counties in South Carolina, 
 forty murders and over two thousand other outrages. In twenty -nine counties of 
 Georgia seventy-two murders, and one hundred and twenty-six whippings. In 
 twenty-six counties ot Alabama two hundred and fifteen murders, and one hundred 
 and sixteen other outrages. In twenty counties of Mississippi twenty-three mur- 
 ders, and seventy-six other outrages, and in a single county of Florida, one 
 hundred and fifty -three murders. In these ninety-nine counties, four hundred and 
 twenty-six murders were done, and twenty-nine hundred and nine other acts of 
 violence. 
 
 The object in all this, as extorted from many witnesses, was " to put down 
 radical rule and negro suffrage." Thus scourged, the people o f the South piteously 
 appealed to Congress for protection. A committee was sent to the Southern States 
 to learn the facts, and a law was passed authorizing the United States Courts to 
 act in the matter. The same law authorized the suspension, for a limited space, 
 of the habeas corpus, in case it should be necessary. Under this act of Congress, 
 at the January term of Court in South Carolina, five hundred and one men were 
 indicted by tke grand jury for these crimes of violence. In the northern district 
 of Mississippi, four hundred and ninety were indicted, and in the southern district 
 of Mississippi, one hundred and fifty-two. In North Carolina, nine hundred 
 and eighty-one men were indicted. 
 
 In South Carolina five of these culprits were immediately tried and convicted, 
 and fifty-three of them pleaded guilty. At the next term others were tried, and 
 many more pleaded guilty. In the other States the courts are at work meeting 
 out justice. These are the offenders in whose behalf Wade Hampton and others 
 raised money, and employed counsel. 
 
 Reverdy Johnson add Henry Stanbery were the counsel, and I read a passage 
 from Mr. Johnson's argument to the jury : 
 
 But Mr. Attorney-General lias remarked and would have you suppose that my friend and myself 
 are here to defend, to justify, or topaliate the outrages that may have been perpretrated in your State 
 by this Association of Ku Klux. He makes a great mistake as to both of us. I have listened with un- 
 mixed horror to some of the testimony which has been brought before ^jou . The outrages proved are 
 shocking to humanity; they admit of neither excuse or justiflcation ; they violate every obligation 
 lohich law ani nature impose upon man; they show that the parties engaged were brutes, insensible to 
 the obligation of humanity and religion. 
 
 The action of Congress and the President, has put an end to much of this bloody 
 business; but ^topping murder, is called "centralism," and we are being stoned 
 for that. 
 
 SOUTHERN STATE GOVERNMENTS. A^fNESTY. 
 
 The South has been for years a fertile field for electioneering sensations. The 
 State governments in some of the Southern States have been weak and bad, and 
 the " liberals " want to try us for that. What have we to do with it ? Why they 
 say we imposed political disabilities on the rebels. Who imposed political disa- 
 bilities on rebels'? We are told the people pay the debt, but we never hear 
 that the people imposed the disabilities : yet they did. The Fourteenth Amend- 
 ment of the Constitution ratified by the Legislatures of three-quarters of the 
 
89 
 
 States, is tbe disability under which rebels liave been. Tliat amendment does not 
 touch the right to vote, but leaves every rebel a voter. It touches only the right 
 to hold office. It provides that the men who took an oath to support the Consti- 
 tution, and then fought against it, thus adding perjury to treason, shall not hold 
 oflace ; and it further provides, that Congress by a two-thirds vote may relieve 
 them. It is foolish to pretend, all being allowed to vote, that the majority could 
 not rule; it is absurd to pretend that the few rebels, who were perjured as well 
 as traitorous, were the only fit men to elect State officers and Legislators. It fol- 
 lows, that tlie Fourteenth Amendment is not the cause of bad men being elected 
 to office, in the Southern States. The truth is, as was abundantly proved before 
 the Ku Klux Committee, that capable, educated men eligible to office, refused to 
 accept it, and refused to vote, and persuaded the rebels generally not to vote, all 
 for the purpose of frustrating reconstruction in the South, and making it odious. 
 
 Amnesty or want of amnesty had nothing to do with jobs iu Southern Legis- 
 latures, any more than iu our own. No man has ever asked to be relieved, who 
 has not been relieved promptly ; indeed, history has no instance of such forbear- 
 ance and mercy as has been granted to tbe ring-leaders of rebellion. 
 
 Not one was ever visited with the least penalty, except being barred from office, 
 for committing perjury as well as treason ; and "bills for relief began at once, and 
 all who asked, soon received forgiveness. Whether a general act, naming no one, 
 but covering rebels in a body, was a compliance with the Fourteenth Amendment, 
 may well be doubted ; be this as it may, the President recommended, and Congress 
 on the 21st of last Mar adopted, such an act. It would have ]>assed weeks earlier, . 
 but that " liberals," who pretended to be for a '' civil-rights bill " by itself, voted 
 avowedly to make it as obnoxious as possible, and then when it became part of 
 the amnesty bill, some of them voted against; it, and others dodged, — and this 
 when two votes would have carried it. And now, when not more than one or two 
 hundred men in the whole South are left ineligible to office, and these, men who 
 still defy and spurn the Constitution, we are gravely told that '■ amnesty," is a. 
 great issue before the American people. 
 
 Amnesty, as an issue, is as dead as the politicians who prate about it. It is 
 about as vital as Mr. Sumner's published reason for supporting Mr. Greeley, 
 namely, that Greeley was born the same year that he was himself. 
 
 "Peace, good will toward men," have been for three years national watchwords. 
 Even the old Indian scares have failed to bring on Indian wars, which were 
 always contractor's wars. For tlie first time in our history, an Indian peace policy 
 has triumphed, massacres have been prevented, the whites and the Indians alike 
 have been spared, and millions saved to the nation. 
 
 WHY CHANGE? WHO ASKS IT? 
 
 Such is the Administration, and sitch the stable prosperity, and the wholesome 
 condition of things, at home and abroad, which we are asked to trade off for we 
 know not what. To suppose it will.be done, would be to brand f»ee government 
 as a failure, and to insuR; the sense of the American people. 
 
 What is the change offered us '? Does anybody know ? ^V'hen did the necessity 
 for any change, ari?e ? 
 
 Certainly not, when in September, 1870, Mr. Greeley called the reform move- 
 ment •• a conspiracy to destroy the Republican party : " not in September '71 when 
 Mr. Greeley drew resolutions fully endorsing the present administration : not on 
 the 5th of January '71 when in a speech Mr. Greeley said, " I venture to suggest 
 that General Grant ■will bo far better qualified for that momentous trust in 1872, 
 than he was in 18G8: " not when in February 71 Mr. Greeley said, that a defeat of 
 the Republican party in the nation would be a " disgrace and humiliation ; " not, 
 only a year ago, when Mr. Greeley said : 
 
 "When a Republican Convention fairly chosen .iftcr free consultation, and the fr.nnV interchange of 
 opinion, shall have nominated Kepublican candidates for President and Vic '-Presidcr.t, we shaU ex- 
 pect to urge all Republicans to give them a hearty etl'ecti ve support, whether they be or be not of those 
 whose original preference has been gratified. 
 
 Not on the 25th of April, 1872, when Mr. Greeley placed his hostility to Presi- 
 dent Grant, squarely and solely, on the ground of certain appointments in the city 
 of New York. 
 
 Who were the discoverers of the need of a change ? Who called the " Cincinnati 
 Convention?" Did the business men of the country call it? Did the public 
 spirited, the unselfish, and the patriotic call it ? Everyone knows that it was the 
 work of the political " outs." A few respectable men were drawn in, but the great 
 body of the movers were, as Greeley used to say of the Democrats, " the very 
 scum " of politics. 
 
 Nearly every man whose name appeared, was either a disappointed office seeker, 
 a man with a grievance, or a man of bad character. Such a " reform " move- 
 ment will never be seen again, unless the disreputable women of the land should 
 strike and start a " liberal " movement, to reform the virtuous women of the land. 
 
40 
 
 There is an e5ronrery borderino: the sublime, iu professional corruptiouists, the 
 worst and most notorious, starting up to berate honest people. From such etixon- 
 tery came a convention, which, from beginnia.is' to end, was managed to cheat and 
 defraud the respectable men who were drawn into it, and the public generally. 
 That the nomination was bartered and bellowed through, we are assured by the 
 best who were present, and now the Democratic party has died by its own hand, 
 and gone for eternal punishment to Horace Greeley. 
 
 MK. GREELEY, A>T5 HIS "CLAIMS." 
 An examination of the fitness of Mr. Greeley and his claims to public confi 
 dence, is the duty of every citizen. That he ha's shown great talent as an editor 
 and writer, all admit : but* nearly all else claimed for him now, I deny. The very 
 talents he has shown unfit him for the Presidencv. 
 
 It is said that a great debt is due and unpaid by the Republican party to Mr. 
 Greeley. The accotmt stands very differently, as most persons understand it. 
 
 Does' not Mr. Greeley owe much to the Republican party? That party gave 
 him wealth, fame, and' influence. His talent and industry were his own ; but 
 the Tribune was sustained as a party organ, and was made a mine of wealth by 
 the Republican party. \yho does not know that the Republicans, whether private 
 citizens, or postmasters, or other " olfice holders." or country editors, or commit- 
 tee men, have made common cause for years for the Tribune, 'b.z.xe organized clubs, 
 pushed and begged for .subscriptions, and made the Tribune what it was? 
 
 Who does not know that this year, tens of thousands of Republicans paid their 
 money in advance for the Tribune, while yet its claws v.ere half concealed, hold- 
 ing itself out as a Republican paper, and that the moiey thus obtained by false 
 •pretense, is kept to sustain the paper in its present gross and knavish course ? ^^ ho 
 does not know that the position given Mr. Greeley by the Republican party, 
 did more than all else to make the sale of his book, culled the " American Con- 
 flict," which is said to have paid him more than a hunc>('l thousand dollars. He 
 sent canvassers to solicit subscribers for this book, — iiiJ who subscribed, who 
 paid him a fortune for it? Was it the Democrats or the no party men, or was 
 it those to whom he now says " he owes nothing" ? 
 
 It is true that Mr. Greeley has seldom been intrusted with office, though he haa 
 long sought olfice from the' Whig and Republican parties. This, however, is sim- 
 ply from want of confidence in his practical judgment and consistency. 
 
 Prior to 1854, Mr. Greeley's extreme craving f^r olfice, was not understood, and 
 his letter to Gov. Seward, Xov. 11, 1854, dissolving the '• political firm of Seward, 
 "S> eed and Greeley," because otfice had not been given him, amazed the public. _ 
 
 In this letter, after referring to some of the offices he wanted from the Whig 
 party, and upbraiding Gov. Seward for not appoining him to some office in 1837, 
 he says : 
 
 Now came the great scramble of the swell mob of coon minstrels and cider-suckers at Washing- 
 ton,— Inot being counted in. Several regiments of them went on from this city; but no one of the 
 whole crowd— though I sav it who should not— had done so much toward Gen. Harrison's nomination 
 and election as vours respectfullj-, I asked nothing, expected nothing j but you. Got. Setcard, ought 
 to hare O'lkeiitfiat I be Postmaster of yeir York. * * * ^ *,* ,^ ., 
 
 Let me speak of the late canvass, I was once sent to Congress for nmety days, merely to enable 
 
 Jim Brooks to secure a seat therein for four years, * * * / , ^,*, ^ .i. v- *u 
 
 But this last Spring, after the Nebraska question had created a new state of things at the Jiorth. 
 
 one or two personal fnends, of no political consideration, suggested mv name as a candidate tor Crov- 
 
 ernor, and I did not discourage them. * * * * _ ,*.,._* j, 
 
 I am sure Weed did not mean to humiliate me, but he did it. The upshot of his discourse (very 
 cautiously stated) was this : If I were a candidate for Governor, I shonld beat not myself only, but 
 vou. Perhaps that was true. But, as I had in no manner solicited his or your support, I thought this 
 inight have been said to mv friends, rather than tome. I suspect it is true that I could not have been 
 elected Governor as a Whig. But had he Hud you been favorable, there icould have been a party in 
 the State, ere this, which could and would have elected me to any post, without injurmg myself or en- 
 dangering vour re-election, . . .,,__.. T m J 
 It was in vain that I urged that I had in no manner asked a nomination. At length, I was nettled 
 bv his language— well intended, but rery cutting, as addressed by him to me- to say, in substance, 
 "Veil, then, make Paterson Governor, and try my name for Lieutenant, To lose this place is a matter 
 of no importance, and we can see whether I am really so odious." 
 
 Having quoted from the early letters of President Grant, it seems but fair that 
 I should'read from an early effusion of Mr. Greeley's also, and beside, I want you 
 to see how the keenest men in the VThig party regarded Mr. Greeley's aspirations 
 and qualifications. Job once expressed a wish that his "adversary had written a 
 book ;"— had Mr. Greeley been the adversary then, a letter would have satisfied 
 Job just as well. 
 
 While he belonged to the Republican party, Mr. Greeley was a candidate for 
 Governor several times, for Senator, for Representative, and for other offices ; 
 always being defeated in the nomination or election, except when once chosen for 
 a ninety days' term in Congress, when made presidential elector in '64, and when 
 he ran "for the Constitutional Convention under a law insuring his election, Avith- 
 out regard to the number of votes. 
 
 WHAT ME. GKEELEY DID WHEN IX OFFICE. 
 The Republican party has been blamed for not gratifying Mr. Greeley's am- 
 bition for office, but the mass of the party, thougli appreciating his eccentric 
 
41 
 
 genius, has believed him erratic, and not possessed of the practical wisdom, mod- 
 eration, or business capacity, to make a useful or safe official. As often as he has 
 been tried in public station, lie has failed. His brief career in Congress was a sad 
 fiasco ; — he more than once excused his course by saving that he voted without 
 understanding the question, and had voted as he did not mean to. (Congressional 
 Globe, 1848-97vol. 20, pp. 2G9, 336.) He involved himself in questions of veracity, 
 which compelled him to retreat from his statements ; and on one occasion was 
 confronted on the floor by members:, w]io flatly testified to the untruthfulness of 
 what he said. {Globe, as above.) L;!>!s, published ia his paper, subjected him to 
 indignities, and even to worse embarrassments. 
 
 His course in the Constitutional Convention, was a series of peevish attempts to 
 assume every thing, and do every thinn", and resulted in his impatiently and pre- 
 maturely quitting his post, after pourii:g upon members a volley of oaths. Even 
 the task of acting as chairman of a local committee, last year, brought him into 
 dilemmas and apparent breaches of his word, which a man of common discretion 
 would have avoided. 
 
 His atfiliations with men, have shown him a poor judge of human nature, and 
 the ease with whicli the designing impose upon him, has always excited the sym- 
 pathy of his friends. The worst men have stuck to him. and used him, with no 
 more power on his part to shake them off" than a ship has to shake o9' its barnacles. 
 His management of every business, except editing a newspaper, has shown him 
 wanting in business capacity ; and as an editor, he has always lacked a balance 
 wheel, to keep him from absurd inconsistencies. 
 
 His investments of money with the shiftless and the dishonest; his embarking 
 in ventures with Tweed, and lending his name to men unworthy of trust, can be 
 excused only on the ground of want of sound judgment. His Fourierism, and 
 Agrarianism, attest a mind given to vagaries like this : on one occasion he insisted 
 that there could be no property in land, because property was the product of hu- 
 man labor, and that land, like air, belonged to God Alnaghty, and could not be 
 owned by man. 
 
 Building a bam, where a barn could not stand, and was washed away, planting 
 turnips wliere turnips could not grow, trying to substitute cabbages for tobacco, and 
 then assuming to teach farmers in all the varying climates and soils of the conti- 
 nent, what to raise, and how to plow, and when to hoe, can only pass as the gro- 
 tesque and harmless antics of a man of oddities, flattered by many, and most of all 
 by himself. " A jack of all trades is master of none," and " what he knows about 
 farming would show Mr. Greeley a universal genius, if it were not for what he 
 could learn from those he assumes to teach. 
 
 The over-weaning confidence with which he holds his opinions, and the rude 
 vehemence with which he utters them, make the suddenness with which he 
 changes them, the plainest proof of insinceritv or unsoundness ; while the epithets 
 and libels with which he pursues those he hates or envies, shows a strangely un- 
 christian and unbridled nature. 
 
 Mr. Greeley's own traits of character as seen by his party associates, have made 
 it better for him and for the public that he should not hold office, and when 
 Andrew Johnson nominated him, after he bailed Jefferson Davis, as Minister to Aus- 
 tria, rumor is greatly at fault if Senators who now support him, even all those 
 who then belonged to the Republican party, could be induced to vote for his con- 
 firmation. 
 
 Truthful history, -will never record that when Horace Greeley deserted the Re- 
 publican party for a presidential nomination, lie owed the party nothing ; or that 
 the party owed him a great and unpaid debt ; or that the party was wrong in not 
 selecting such a man for high public trusts. The verdict will be rather that he 
 spoke like a scheming ingrate, when on the 12th of June, 1871, he said to a street 
 audience, " I am perfectly willing to pass receipts with the Republican party, and 
 say that our accounts are now settled and closed." 
 
 MR. Greeley's PwEcord. — did he help secession '? 
 
 Mr. Greeley's deeds are all to be found in words. His record has not been 
 written for him by false and hostile hands ; he has -vvritteu it himself. How far it 
 is the record of niau fit to be trusted, in peace and possibly war, with the atfairs 
 of this great nation, will appear sufficiently without going back of the rebellion. 
 
 In 1860 Mr. Lincoln was elected, and before he was inaugurated, seven States 
 seceded from the Union. They did not secede believing that the twenty-one mill- 
 ions of the North would deny their right, and desolate their land by war. Com- 
 mon sense proves that they relied upon a divided sentiment in the Northern States. 
 
 They thought the Democratic party, in part at least, would maintain their right ; 
 and they thought also with good reason, that the Republican party could not be 
 brought to coelce them, or make war upon them. This expectation of sympathy 
 in the North while the Gulf States were hesitating, turned the scales ia favor of 
 
42 
 
 secession ; and uo man in all the land did, or could do so much as Horace Greeley, 
 to create tlie expectation up«n which secession took place. The New York Tri- 
 hune was at that time tlie leading Republican organ, and beyond and above all 
 other papers, it spoke for the Republican party. Its editor, claimed the credit of 
 having just overthrown Gov. Seward, at Cliicago, and this, for the time being, 
 completed its supremacy in the Republican party. Holding this position of un- 
 challenged authority, hear what it said to men not yet daring to plunge into the 
 Red Sea of Revolution. 
 
 The election returns in 1860, had not come in, when the Tribune began to incite 
 secession. On the 9th of Nov. 1860, Horace Greeley published this editorial : 
 
 And now, If the Cotton States consider the value ot tlie Union debatable, we maintain their perfect 
 riglit to discuss it. Nay, we liold with Jefferson to the inalienable right of communities to alter or 
 abolish forms of government that have become oppressive or injurious; and, if the Cotton States 
 
 SHALL DECIDE THAT TIIKY CAN DO EETTEK OUT OP THE UNION THAN IN IT, WE INSIST ON LBTTIN& 
 THEM GO IN PEACE. THE RIGHT TO SECEDE MAY BE A REVOLUTIONARY ONE, BUT IT EXISTS NEVER- 
 THELESS ; AND TVE DO NOT SEE HOW ONE PARTY CAN HAVE A RIGHT TO DO WHAT ANOTHER PAKTT 
 
 HAS A RIGHT TO PREVENT. We must evcr resist the asserted riglit of any State to remain in the 
 Union, and nullify or defy the laws thereof; to withdraw from the Union is quitr anothek 
 MATTER. And, whenever a considerable section of our Union shall deliberately resolve to go out, we 
 
 shall resist all coercive MEASURES DESIGNED TO KEEP IT IN. We HOPE NEVER TO LIVE IN A 
 KEPUBLIC whereof I'NE SECTION IS PINNED TO THE RESIDUE BY BAYONETS. 
 
 On the 17th of December, 1860, just before South Carolina secpded. South Caro- 
 lina being the first State to go, Mr. Greeley published the following editorial: 
 
 We have repeatedly asljcd thos3 who dissent from our views of this matter to tell us frankly 
 whether they do or do not assent to Mr. .Jefferson's statement in the Declaration of Independence that 
 Governments '• derive thair .U'ft powers from the. consent ofthf (/overned ; and that whenever any form 
 of government becomes destructive of these <in<\s'it is the right of the, people to niter or aholish it, and 
 to institute a new Government," ifcc.. &c. We do heartily accept this doctrine, believing it intrinsic- 
 ally sound, beneficent, and one that, universally accepted, is calculated to prevent the shedding of 
 seas Of human blood. And if it .justified tiib secession fkoii the British Empire of three 
 
 MILLIONS of colonists IN 1T?6, WE DO NOT SEE WHY IT WOULD NOT JUSTIFY THE SECESSION OF 
 
 FIVE MILLIONS OF SOUTHRONS FROM THE FEDERAL UNION IN 1861. If wc are mistaken ou this polnt, 
 why does not some one attempt to show wherein and why? For our own part, while we deny the 
 right of slaveholders to hold slaves against the will of the latter, we can not see now twenty 
 
 MILLIONS OF PEOPLE CAN RIGHTFULLY HOLD TEN, OK EVEN FIVE, IN A DETESTED UNION WITH THEM 
 BY MILITARY FORCE. ********* 
 
 AVE COULD NOT STAND UP FOR COERCION. FOR SUBJUGATION, FOB WE DO NOT THINE IT WOULD 
 
 BE JUST. We hold the right of seU-governnient sicred, even when evoked in behalf of those who 
 denv it to others. So much for the question of principle. « « » * < 
 
 We fully realize that the dilemma of the incoming Administration will be a critical one. It mii.'^t 
 endeavor to uphold and enforce the laws, a^ well against rebellious slaveholders as fugitive slaves. 
 The new President must fulfill the obligations assumed in his inauguration oath, no matter liow shame- 
 fully his predecessor mav have defied them. We fear that Southern madness may precipitate a bloody 
 collision that all must deplore. But if ever "seven or.eight States" send agents to Wash- 
 ington TO SAY, " We want t^) go out of the Union," we shall feel constrmned by devo- 
 tion to human liberty to sat. Let them go I And we do not st-e how we could take the other 
 side without: coming in direct conflict with those rights of man which we hold paramount to all politi- 
 cal arrangements, however convenient and advantageous. 
 
 On the 24th of December, 1860, Mr. Greeley published the following editorial : 
 
 Most certainly we believe that governments are made for peonies, not peoples for governments— 
 that the latter " derive their jn-^t pov/er from the consent of the governed ; " and whenever a portion 
 of tais Union, large enoujh to form au independent, self-subsisting nation, shall see fit to say, authen- 
 tically, toth3 residue, "We want to getaway from you," wf, shall say— and we trust self-re- 
 spect, if NOT REGARD FOR THE PRINCtPLE OF SELF-GOVERNMENT, WILL CONSTRAIN THE RESIDUE OP 
 
 the AMERICAN PEOPLE TO SAY— "G)!" We ucver yet had so poor an opinion of ourselves or onr 
 neighbors as to wish to hold others iia a hated connection with us. 
 
 Two months later, February 23d, 1861, five days after the inauguration of Jeff. 
 
 Davis, as President, Mr. Greeley published the following editorial : 
 
 We hive repeatodly said, and we once more insist, that the great principle embodied by Jeffer- 
 son In the Declaration of American Independence, that governments derive their just powers from 
 the consent of the governed, is sound and. just ; and that if the slave States, the cotton States, 
 or the Gulf States only, choose to form an independent nation they have a clear moral 
 RIGHT to do so. We have Said, and still maintain, that, provided the cotton States have fully and defi- 
 nitively made up their minds to go bv themselves, there is no need of fighting about it : for they 
 have onlv to exercise reasonable patience, and they will be let off in peace and good will. Whenever 
 it shall be clear that the great, body of Southern people have become conclasivelii nliennled Jrom the 
 Union, and anxious to escape from it, we will do our be-.t to forward their views." 
 
 Are not these manifestoes sickening, when we remember the furious cries of 
 war by which they were followed? Can any man doubt the great part they 
 played in fomenting secession and stimulating rebellion ? . When Alexander H. 
 Stephens, in the Georgia Convention which passed the ordinance of secession, at- 
 tempted to stem the secession tide, Robert Toombs put hiin down, and carried the 
 Convention, by reading these Trihvnc articles. Union men wdio resisted secession, 
 were silenced throughout the South by these, and similar quotations, from Mr. 
 Greeley ; the Tribune became the hand book to " fire the S nithern heart." 
 
 FRANK BLAIr's TESTIMONY AGAINST ISIR. GREELEY. 
 I do not ask Democrats to take my word for this; let me call their last candi- 
 date for vice-president to the stand* and make him testify. Here is what Gen. 
 Frank P. Blair said in the Senate, February 17, 1871, when 'explaining how seces- 
 sion gained the u]iper hand in the South : 
 
 -'We all know the instance of a very distinguished man. Alexander H. Stephens. We all know that 
 as ameniDcr of the G;!orgia Convention he contended with eloquence and ability in favor of the Gov- 
 ernment of the United States ; and I have been informed that the only reply which was made to that 
 eloqnent .ippeal of his to support the Government was the reading bv Mr. Toombs of a paragraph froni 
 the New York Tribune, in which it was declared th.at if the Southern people chose to secede they had 
 as much right to sr^parate themselves from the Northern States as our ancestors had in HiC to separate 
 themselves from the mother country. • 
 
48 
 
 That paragraph did appear in the r*-/&««<'. and every Senator here will bear it in his recollection. 
 1 remember to have seen it, and I remember the discouragement which fell npon us at Missouri and 
 throughout the other Southern States where Union men were attempting to band themselves toKcther 
 and to maintain the Government when It was announced by that paper, a leading paper In the Repub- 
 lican party at that time, that the secessionists had as much right to separate themselves from the 
 ^Northern "states as had our ancestors in 1776 to abandon tlie mother country. ' * ! ., 
 
 I remark upon the ease of Mr. Stephens, who was a zealous friend of the Union, who spoke in the 
 Georgia Convention ably and eloquently against the secession of his State, and he was responded to in 
 that Convention simply by the reading of a paragraph from tlie Se^r York- T^-ibiine. >rliir/i iras an much 
 as to say that thei/ had'nothing to apprehend from the yorthif thtt/ derided t/o out of the Vniou, because 
 here teas one of the leaders oft he Republican party of the yo'rth ahnoi/nriny to them ihnf if th< y diylred 
 to go out they could do so, and had as much right to do so as our forefathers hail to separate thtmselces 
 fro7n the mother country. ' . . x.. 
 
 Mr. HOWAKD. May I ask the Senator from Missouri whether, in his opinion, the paragraph in the 
 A'ew York Tribune to \vhich he refers was a Justification, in whole or in part, for the treason of Mr. 
 Stephens? .»,,,, 
 
 Mr. I5LAIR. I will reply that I do not consider that anything justifies treason, and I do not think 
 the conduct of the secessionists of the &o\\\\x,justified that traitorous expression of opinion on thepart 
 of the Tribune, for I regard it as traitorous. I say, sir, that it did as much to discourage the effort.? 
 of the Union men in the South as anything that occurred at that period, it was simply a declaration 
 which those accepted, I suppose, and were glad to accept, who wished to rid themselves of the Union, 
 that they might go out in peace, that thcv would not be pursued, that war would not follow their step ; 
 and this did a great deal to prevent resis'tancc on the part of the Union men at the South at the time 
 to the establishment of the de facto government to which they were saXiiectcd.— Congressional Globe, 
 Part 2, 3d Session 41st Congress ; pp. 1S44, 1245. 
 
 These statements made by Gen. Blair, created some sensation. The Tribune 
 tried to break their force, and on the 20th of February, 1871, Gen. Blair returned 
 to the charge prepared with proof. Here is ■what he said : 
 
 When speaking on this subject the other day, I gave from memory certain deductions of the New 
 York Tribune, then as now the most inHuential organ of public cpinion in the Republican party. In 
 this country, and spoke of the unhappy iniluence of this paper at that time, in giving encouragement 
 to the secessionists and in discouraging the efiorts of the Union men in the South. • « • 
 
 I now quote the extracts from that paper to which I referred, and tlie Senate and the country can 
 judge whether my statement or that of the Senator is the correct one. On the 'Jth of November, ISOO, 
 the >rew York Tribune said: 
 
 [ Here he read some of the articles aire ady quoted, and resumed : ] 
 Mr. Stephens, of Georgia, and manv others who have since been disfranchised, breasted the storm 
 with heroic courage. Regardless of popularity, and thinking only of the peace and liappiness of the 
 country, they struggled against secession and warned the people of the disaster they would encounter. 
 On the other hand, 5Ir. Greeley assured them these dangers were all imaginary, and insisted that 
 "thev should go in peace." that thev had a clear "moral right to go." ♦ * * * 
 
 Words were never uttered more fatal than tliese to the peace of the country. Mr. Stephens was 
 defeated in his etiort to prevent secession in .Georgia by a few votes only, and notliing Is more certain 
 than that these were obtained bv Mr. Greeley's declaration that secession was rlghtftil and would be 
 peaceable. I have been informe'd th.at these declarations were read In the Georgia Convention a.s a 
 full reply to the warnings of Mr. Stepliens. The refusal of Georgia would undoubtedly have arrested 
 the movement. Who, then, is more directly responsible than Mr. Greeley, and those who acted with 
 l\im at the Xorth, for the blood which has drenched this land ; and who is more directly responsible 
 than Mr. Greeley for the vindictive spirit wliich animates the dominant party in the proscription 
 which has pursued and is still pursuing the whole people of the South ? ,.,,.. 
 
 Nor was Mr. Greeley's reiterated advice the result of an honest error. No man understood better 
 than he did the use that would be made of his declarations, and how eflectivc they would be in pro- 
 moting disunion. . ^ » ,. , .ill 
 The editor of the Tribuw co-operated with the secession movement, not because he sympathized 
 with the object:' ot its authors, but because he and those for whom he spoke preferred parting with 
 the South to partnership and equality under the Constitution.— Con5r/-e«»to«a; G/obf, same volume ; 
 pp. 1426, 1427 
 
 Who ever reads Mr. Greeley's utterances, now in question, will see that he 
 assumed to give ad^ice in a supreme public emergency ; that at Ihe critical and vital 
 point, which must decide between union and disunion, between peace and war, Mr. 
 Greeley threw his whole weight and inthience on the fatal side. He upheld the 
 full right of secession; he denied the whole right of coercion; he insisted that 
 slaves fleeing from masters in arms against the" Government, must be captured 
 and returned ; and he protested against the continuance of the Union, after force 
 was needed to preserve it. 
 
 MR. GPvEEI.EY OEGAXIZES VICTORY. 
 
 Advancing to the next step in Mr. Greeley's career, we find him 
 
 on the war ].-)ath. 
 • Mr Lincoln had called for troops, and youths untrained and untaught in war, 
 and unseasoned to hardships, flocked to Washington. Gen. Scott, then the oldest 
 and foremost soldier of the Republic, was in command. He liad around mm all 
 the men whom the nation had educated as soldiers, except those who forsook the 
 flag, and in the judgment of them all, time was needed to drill men and horses, 
 before venturincV an onward movement ujion an intrenched and fortified foe. Mr. 
 Greeley an editor, who never had seen a battle, or studied a campaign, or learned 
 anythino- of war, assumed the oflice of dictator. With his great engine the 
 Tribune, he fanned the flame of popular impatience, and overbore the authority 
 and the judgment of military men, bv a hurricane of clamor for an instant movement. 
 " On to Richmond !" daily clanged out with great shocks of sound from the 
 Tribune, and drove the armv headlong, to Bull Run. v i ♦ 
 
 Men who had not learned to limber or unlimber guns, and horses unbroken to 
 manoeuvre artillery, were driven pell mell upon the masked battery of the rebels 
 James S. W^adsworth had gathered up manv of those green horses, on the spur of 
 the occasion, and paid for them himself. Wadswoith went with them to the fat^d 
 field, and there bareheaded, Avith his white locks streaming in the wind, tried by 
 
44 
 
 heroic dariiig to supply the waut of drill. But pariotism, and bravery, and dash, 
 would not avail ; the attack was premature ; " some one had blundered " — a med- 
 dler had blundered, and had wrecked an army. 
 
 " On to Richmond," was the incarnation of conceit and folly, as it was the slogan 
 of headlong war ; and yet, it was the shout of the same man who, a few short 
 weeks before, by the cry of secession, and of anti-coercion, had lured and bated 
 milllions with mad hopes and promises. 
 
 Let me read you the motto flung out by the Tibune July 1st, 2d, 3d, and 4th, 
 1861 ; the order for Bull Run : 
 
 "The Nation's Wak-Ckt ! Forward to Eichmond .' Foricard to Richmond ! The Eebel Congress 
 must not be allowed to meet there on the 20th of July .' By that date the place must be held by 
 
 THE KaTIONAL ABMT." 
 
 On the first of July, three days before Bull Run, Mr. Greeley cast upon Gen. 
 Scott the imputation of treason to his flag, in these words : 
 
 Dirt you pretend to know more about military matters than Gen. Scott?" asked a few knaves, 
 whom a great many simpletons know no better than to echo. ^ ^^ , . . ^ rr^„^^ ,•= „« 
 
 " No, sir ! we know very little of the art of war, and Gen. Scott knows a great deal. There is no 
 question on this point, and "never has been." ,,^^ ^^.^^,x>,- t^ r^„, c^^if 
 
 The real question— which the above is asked only to shuffle out of sight— is this : Does Gen. bcott 
 (or whoever it may be) contemplate the same ends, and is he animated by like impulses andpurposea, 
 with the great body of the royal, liberty-loving People of this country f Does he stand up square on the 
 line of 54 deg. 40 rain., or is he squinting toward 36 deg. 30 min.? Does he want the rebels routed, or 
 would he prefer to have them conciliated? When you imswer these questions, yOu touch the mar- 
 row of the problem, which all the gas about Uen. Scott's military knowledge and our want ol it is 
 Intended to dodge. 
 
 ATTEMPTS TO SHIFT BLAME TO OTHERS. 
 
 When tidings came of the defeat and carnage at Bull Run, Mr. Greeley sank 
 under the weight of his fearful responsibility. The first symptom of recovering 
 his self-possession was a frothy etrort to lay the blame at the door of others. On 
 the 23d of July, nineteen days after the battle he said- 
 
 We have lought and been beaten. God forgive our rulers that this is so; but it is true, ana can 
 not be disguised. The Cabinet, recently expressing in rhetoric better adapted to a love-letter, a tear 
 of being cfi-owned in its own honey, is now nearly drowned in gore ; while our honor on the hign seas 
 has only been saved by one daring and desperate negro, and he belonging to the merchant marine. 
 The "sacred soil" of Virginia is crimson and wet with the blood of thousands of Northern men, 
 needlessly shed The great and universal question pervading the public mind is : " Shall this condi- 
 
 ""A^decimated and indignant people will demand the immediate retirement of the present Cabinet 
 from the high places of power, which, for one reason or another, they have shown themselves inconi- 
 netenttoflll. Give us for the President capable advisers, who comprehend the requirements ot tne 
 crisis, and are equnl to them ; and, for the Army, leaders worthy of the rank and file and our banner 
 now drooping, will soon float once more in triumph over the whole laud. With the right man to 
 lead, our people will show themselves unconquerable. 
 
 Caught and impaled in this attempt to roll his own guilt upon the shoulders of 
 others, here is his next explanation. Observe how, on the 27th of July, he coddles 
 up to Gen. Scott, whom he had tried to dishonor less than four weeks before. 
 
 We have confessed our own terrible mistake in the premises, and are trying to a-nend it. General 
 Scott hHS been equallv ingenuous and candid. "It was a miscalculation of forces, he says ol tne 
 recent disaster. That is the real truth. None of us had any idea of the immense numbers and tre- 
 mendous enginery of war that the rebels had silently collected around their position at Manassas 
 Junction. Whoever ordered or planned the attack on that position was utterly unaware of their 
 strength. • 
 
 See again, how, eighteen months later, he sought in another way to lay the 
 ghost of Bull Run : 
 
 I did urge that the great Union army, rotting in idleness and debauchery about Washington, 
 should advance upon the Rebellion It was called out to pat down. It ought to have done so a month 
 earlier than it did-not a part of it, but the whole, and it might have been triumphantly in Richmond, 
 and the Kebellion half suppressed before the day of Bull Kun. How needless, how wanton, was that 
 disaster— liow disgraceful to those who might and should haye prevented it, history will estaDUsn. 
 — Tribune, February 2, 187-2. 
 
 This is not all of this lamentable records ; it contains yet other pitiable things, 
 but these will do. i t • i 
 
 It was in the agony of a later hour, tortured by dire meddling again, that Lincoln 
 is said to have exclaimed " what will quiet Horace Greeley, he gives me more dis- 
 tress, and does the Country more harm than Jefferson Davis." 
 
 How Mr. Greeley's interference tortured Mr. Lincoln, may be gathered from a 
 letter written by Mr. Lincoln, Aug. 22, 1862. Here it is. 
 
 "Hon. Horace Geeelet— Dear sir :— I have lust read yours of the 19th Inst., addressed to myself 
 through the Jfeto York Tribune. If there be in it any statements or assumptions of tact which I may 
 know to be erroneous, I do not now and here controvert theju. If there be any inferences whicui 
 maybelieve tobefalselvdrawn, Xdonot now and here argue against them. If there be perceptiDie 
 in it an impatle7it and dictatorial toMf, I waive it In deference to an old friend whose heart 1 have 
 always supposed to be right. As to the policy I ' seem to be pursuing,' as you say, I have not meant 
 to leave any one in doubt." » * « 
 
 NIAGARA PALLS " PEACE NEGOTIATIOI!fS !" 
 Mr. Greeley early in Mr. Lincoln's administration, became his enemy.^ Tliis 
 Mr. Lincoln knew, and was ever on his guard. This is noticeable in the Niagara 
 Fails peace affair. Mr. Greeley had been for secession when secession might have 
 been avoided, he had been for battle when the time had not come, he had been 
 in turn for war and peace, when each was impossible, anrl early in 1864, when the 
 rebellion was about to coUajDse, and when every thing depended upon keeping the 
 
45 
 
 North erect with united and undaunted front, Mr. (ireeley fell into a ewoou i>i 
 despondency, and blamed our authorities for not trying to make peace. 
 
 From the beginning of the war, Canada hud been" the refuge of tiie Hpies. detec- 
 tives, and hangers on of the rebellion. On the 3th of July, 18G4, one W. Cornell 
 ■Jewett, a.n irresponsible and half insane adventurer, wrote Mr. (irt-elev a letter, 
 saying that George N. Sanders, wanted him to come to Niagara Falls, and hold a 
 private interview with those authorized to make peace. Mr. Ureeley the dav after 
 he received the letter, wrote to Mr. Lincoln. His letter shows him full of tlie sub- 
 ject, and completely persuaded that he had received a great and genuine revelation. 
 He enclosed ready made his " plan of adjustment." He was going to wind up the 
 whole rebellion, by paying $400,000,000 to the slave States " loyal anil seces-sion alike" 
 for slaves, and by several other things, closing his plan with these words, " It may 
 save us from a Northern insurrection." In his letter he' said, " a widespread con- 
 viction that the government and its prominent supportersare not anxious for peace 
 and do not improve proft'ered opportunities to aclucve it, is doing great harm now, 
 and is morally certain, unless removed, to do far greater in the adproaching elec-' 
 tions." He also put in his letter exaggerated statements of the extreniitv to which 
 the country had come, and appealed to Mr. Lincoln to enter into the negcniation. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln saw through the whole thing at a glance ; he saw'that .Nfr. (Jreelcy 
 had been gulled, and he saw that he must iuimor him or rouse his ire. Accord- 
 ingly he wrote to him as follows : " If you find any person any where, professing 
 to have any proposition of Jefferson Davis in irriting for peace, embracing the 
 restoration of the Union and thr abandonment of sfaen-i/, whatever else it 
 embraces, say to him he may come to me with you, etc." Mr. (.Jreeley replied, 
 caviling with the President's letter, saying that they would not show their creden- 
 tials, &c., and using these words, " Green as I may be, I am not quite so verdant 
 as to imagine any thing of the sort." 
 
 Receiving no answer from the President, three days afterwards, July 13th, he 
 wrote, " I have now information on which Iran rely, that two persons dulv com- 
 missioned, and empowered to negotiate for peace, are at this moment not fa'rfrom 
 Niagara Falls, etc. In this letter he appeals to Mr. Lincoln " to act in the prom- 
 ises, and to act so promptlj' that a good influence may even yet bo exerted in the 
 North Carolina election next month." 
 
 Mr. Lincoln replied, " lam disappointed that you have not already reached here 
 with those commissioners. If they would consent to come on being shown my 
 letter to you of the 9th inst., show that and this to them, and if they will come on 
 the terms stated in the former, bring them. I not only intend a sincere effort for 
 peace, but I intend that you shall be a personal witness that it is made." 
 
 Mr. Greeley applied for " safe conduct " for four persons, and this being granted, 
 he set sail on his mission, never suspecting he was the victim of a fraud, and not 
 seeing Mr. Lincoln regarding it. 
 
 HOW MK. LINCOLN WAS FALSELY PLACED. 
 
 Reaching Niagara, he instantly put himself into communication with Sanders, 
 Thompson & Co., who at once informed him that they had no authority whatever 
 to make peace, or to talk about it, but they were pleased that the United States 
 had at last come forward proposing terms ; and they graciously offered Mr. (Jreeley, 
 if the President would protect them, to go through the Uniteil States, down to 
 Richmond, and see what the rebels would do about it. Mr. (Jreeley. in place of 
 denouncing the cheat, and repelling the impertinence, and clearing the President's 
 skirts by showing the two letters which he had been instructed to show, went into 
 a correspondence with these brazen imposters. Learning what was going on, Mr. 
 Lincoln dispatched a confidential messenger, i)ost-haste, with a document dated 
 July 18th, 1864, signed by himself, and addressed " To Whom it niay Concern." 
 This document stated that authorized propositions of peace would be fairly met, 
 provided " the integrity of the v.'hole Union nnd tlu; abandonment of slavery " was 
 embraced. The messenger, by order of the President, hasten.'d to Niagara Falls, 
 and taking Mr. Greeley with him, crossed the river, and delivered the paper in his 
 presence to the rebel tricksters. 
 
 It contained exactly what the President directed Mr. Greeley to show them in 
 the first instance, yet it was the first notice given them of the President's require- 
 ments. 
 
 Taking adva)itage of this concealment by Mr. Greeley, Thompson & Co., pre- 
 tended to be taken by surprise, and wrote Mr. Greeley a long letter full of insolent 
 and electioneering denunciation of Mr. Lincoln and the government. They stated 
 that Mr. Greeley made the first advance to them, which they say " was accepted 
 by us as the evidence of an unexpected but most gratifying change in the policy 
 of the President! " They further say, that they had believed " that this concilia- 
 tory manifestation on the part of the President of the United States, would be met 
 by them (Jeff. Davis & Co.) in a temper of equal magnanimity !" TTiey then denounce 
 
4G 
 
 the President for changing- his mind, and not doing what Mr. Greeley hai been led 
 
 to expect. . , 1 IT .-I 
 
 tAOn receipt of this letter, in place of setting the President right, by telling them 
 that from the beginning he had held throughout but one and the same position, 
 Mr. Greeley left the President to rest under the imputation of bad faith. 
 
 Before taking his departure, Mr. Greeley sent word to theEebel "Commissioners" 
 "that he regr'ets the sad termination of the iniatory steps taken for peace, 
 in consequence of the cltange made by the President, etc." No change had in truth 
 Been made by the President, and first and last there was no room to charge bad 
 faith, or a change of mind, excepting the false position in which Mr. Greeley had 
 placed the President, by disobeying his instructions, and failing to exhibit his 
 shrewd and guarded letter. 
 
 Wlien Mr. Lincoln came to know what had been done, feeling indignant at the 
 way his confidence had been abused, he wrote to Mr. Greeley for permission to 
 publish the correspondence, omitting only such parts as carried an exaggerated 
 idea of our military and political condition : this request Mr. Greeley refused, 
 unless all parts of the letters were published. Upon this conduct of Mr. Greeley, Mr. 
 Lincoln commented in these words: "I have concluded that it is better for me to 
 submit for the time to the consequences of the false position in which I consider he 
 (Greeley) has placed me, than to subject the country to the consequences of pub- 
 lishing these discouraging and injurious parts." 
 
 After Mr. Lincoln's death, these facts and letters all came out. Mr. Lincoln had 
 delivered them in confidence to Mr. Raymond, who, in his life of Lincoln, exposes 
 Mr. Greeley with a severity from which I abstain. 
 
 But seve'ral things are undeniable. First, Mr. Greeley was gulled by a shallow 
 swindle. Second, he not only bit at the bait, put pressed the matter upon Lincoln, 
 in a manner showing his intention to carp at him, unless he yielded to his views. 
 Third, Lincoln punctured the fraud at a glance, and yet Greeley did not see it. 
 Fourth, Greeley bungled the whole affair at Niagara, or else purposely violated 
 the repeated instructions of the President. Fifth, he tamely submitted to the 
 most unblushing efFrontery and imposition from the rebels. Sixth, he expressedly 
 admitted and stated that Lincoln had been fickle or untrutliful, when he knew he 
 had not; and finally, when Lincoln sought to vindicate himself by making the 
 truth public, Greeley stifled the truth by threatening if it was told, to publish 
 matters having no bearing on the case, but which would deeply Avound the public 
 
 interest. « ,r ^ t j. i u 
 
 Who cau wonder that Mr. Stanton proposed the arrest of Mr. Greeley lor hold- 
 ing unauthorized and injurious intercourse with the enemy? 
 
 MR. GREELEY AS FIJfAXCIER. 
 War and diplomacy were not enough for Mr. Greeley, and he soon turned finan- 
 cier, and assumed to dictate the financial policy. He first opposed the legal tender 
 ■ act, but unexpectedly came out in its favor, and continued to advocate paper money, 
 until the channels of trade were glutted with it, and gold went up to 2.80. To 
 guard against injustice to Mr. Greeley at this point, let me read you his own words, 
 on the iOth of February, 1862. 
 
 "We sbiver on the brink of a bottomlesa abyss of Shinplaster circnlation. Congress must provide 
 lands tor the vigorous and im:neiUate prosecution of the war for the Union, and it seems to havebeen 
 settled that it shall take the short and easy method of making Treasury Notes a legal tender. We ut- 
 terly dissent from this conclusion, etc." 
 
 After he had changed his mind, and as late as February 19, 1864, he would 
 charge sympathy with the rebellion upon a man wlio opposed greenbacks or 
 advocated specie payment. Here is an editorial of February 19, 1864, in which 
 Mr. Greeley says : 
 "When therefore we hear that «/(« Governinvit ought to have maintained, or ought 7ioic to resume. 
 ■ specie p't'jmeati, we know thai the speaker imaiis that it ought to give up the contest and let the rebels 
 triumph. 
 
 With the vast issue of " Legal Tender" notes, business of course expanded, and 
 merchandise and property were bought at double and treble their old prices, to be 
 paid for in paper. In this condition of things, Mr. Greeley violently demanded 
 the resumption of specie payments. Practical men saw, as the event has proved, 
 the wisdom of a gradual approach to a specie basis ; it was as certain then as it is 
 now, that to compel payment in gold, of debts contracted in paper worth less than 
 half as much as gold, would be to strew our land with wreck and ruin. Moreover, 
 it would have been impossible without a miracle, for Government, banks, or peo- 
 ple, to pay specie when Mr. Greeley demanded it. Men of sense everywhere cried 
 out against such an attempt, and demanded to know how we could suddenly resume. 
 Mr. Greeley was ready with answers. The chief answer was : " The way to resume, 
 is to resume !" On the 12th of January, '66, he said that more "six per cent, untaxed 
 bonds" sbould have been put out, and, in that way "every obstacle on the part of tJie 
 Treasury to an instant resumption, should have been overcome." 
 
47 
 
 Ou the 5tli of June, 1887, lie came out with this stagp^ering iirogranime I com- 
 mend it to Free Trader?, property owners, anti-income tax men, and all men blest 
 with no better sense than common sense. 
 
 We hell'- ■ h) titxlng so ai to pni/ the debt in ten i/eam. To do this, the National revenue should be 
 about !?50;ij) n.iiyo per annum, or tlib •=anio as in 18CC. Had it been kept there, we mi),'ht hiive celebrated 
 our coil iti' ' ceitenary on the 4th of .July, lS7'j, '■ompleteli/ out of debt. And we hold that this iiiicht 
 have bean d ma, by taxing with steady purpose to dlmlntih the niimher of tdlerx, or ii.'<ele.isli/ employed 
 persont, and i:i rea-e the proportion of productive workers, without prt'Judii-o to the national growth 
 or pr"s|)erify. Here, for examule, are a {;oo(l inanv thousands of our peopb- who have ineomi's of 
 $10,030 u)) to' ^l.iWO.tX'O per annum. tSiippoye these were tn pan ten per cent, income tax : irhat of it? 
 They will !;vi; less sumntuously. or board less bounteously for a lew years— that Is all. They will still 
 enjoy every comfort, and will be growing' richer, if they choose. 
 
 Of late, Mr. Greeley has ontrun everybody in denouncing^ the income tax ; but 
 
 hear .what he used to say. Here are hi.s views, June 10, 18(58 : 
 
 One of «Ae/'a(;'««< and most productivo sources of British revenue is the Income tax assessed on 
 all lacome^ in the United Kioffdom above *?5'.». per annum. Our correnpon'lln(/ tax exempts incomes 
 from taxation to the amount of $69J, but exacts t>iree per cent, on all above that amount, and Ave per 
 cent, on all excess over $10,0(X) per annum. In other words : "here U a tax which does not at all affect 
 the laboring clans, but which reaches near!// ecery one above them." 
 
 Compare this with what he said Dec. 10th, 1869 : 
 
 We do not believe there is a tax levied by the Government so onerous upon so large a class nf peo- 
 ple at the income tax. It is not equal— its exactions are unjust ; and it discriminates against persons 
 of limited means. 
 
 Again, June 26, 1860, he thus delivered himself : 
 
 The Income tax is oMfl 0/" the irorst erer leried, inquisitorial, unequal, and ojreri7ig a premium for 
 perjury. We trust its days are nearly numbered— that it will be the very next of our heavy war bur- 
 dens remov.ed. 
 
 These are a few of the ,fjenis of Mr. Greeley's financial theories, and those who 
 did not accept them were visited with epithets and reproach. 
 
 I ask business men to look back now, and think what would have happened had 
 Horace Greeley been President then. 
 
 With this one passage before you, would you as business men trust Mr. Greeley 
 to run a cider mill and financier for it? 
 
 In case of war, how all would lean on him as Commander-in-Chief of the Army 
 and Navy. In case of a financial crisis how steady he would be. 
 
 Ill case of riot in New York, or outbreak in the South, how his name would 
 strike terror into babes and men. 
 
 In case of storm, next to going to sea in a wash tub, what would be so safe as the 
 administration of such a man ? 
 
 He who changes his mind often, upon the greatest matters, should be tolerant 
 of differences of opinion. 
 
 HOW MR. GREELEY TREATS THOSE WHO DIFFER FROM HIM. 
 See how Mr. Greeley deals with those who differ with him. Here are specimens 
 of his editorials, interesting to Democrats: 
 
 All do know that there are several hundred thousand mulattocs in this country ; and we presume 
 that no one has anv serious doubt that the fathers of at least nine-tenths of them are white democrats, 
 and we are told that those democrats, if they will have yellow children, might better than otherwise 
 treat the mothers respectively as wives after the laudable pattern of that eminent democrat, Vice- 
 President Kichard M. Johnson— Dec. 10, 1S67. 
 
 Every one who chooses to live by pugrllism, or gambling, or harlotry, with nearly every keeper of 
 a tippling-house, is politically a democrat.— .Jan. 7, 1868. 
 
 Point wherever you plense to an election district which yon will pronounce morally rotten, slven 
 up in great part to dabauchcry and vice, whose voters subsist mainly by keeping policy-officers, 
 gambling houses, grogshops, and darker dens of infamy, and that district will be found at nearly or 
 quite nearly every election giving a maioritv for that whlcli styles itself the "democratic" party. 
 Take all the haunts of debauchery in the laud, and you will and nine-tenths of their m.aster spirits 
 active partisans of that sume democracy. What Is the Instinct, the sympathetic chord, which attaches 
 them so uniformly to this partv ? WMU Vou consider ? 
 
 We thereupon ask our contemporarv to state frankly whether the pngillsts, blacklegs, thieves, 
 burglars, keepers of dens of prostitution, &e., &•.. were not almost unanimously demi>crats. 
 
 A purely selflsh Interest attaches the lewd, rufllanly, criminal and dangerous classes to the demo- 
 cratic party. 
 
 This would amount to six in a bed, exclusive of any other vermin, for every democratic couch In 
 the State of New York, including those at Sing Sing and Auburn. 
 
 When the rebellious Traitors are overwhelaicd in the Held, and scattered like leaves before an 
 angry wind, it must not be to return to peaceful and contented homes; theij must find poverty at their 
 firesides, and privati07i in the anxious eyes of nwthe}-s and the rags of children .' 
 
 MR. GREELEY AS A POLITICIAX. 
 
 Eccentricity and fickleness are Mr. Greeley's traits ; as a politician he has 
 bolted and advised bolting ; he has opposed the nomination or election of everj- 
 President who has been chosen, for thirty years ; he has quarreled with every ad- 
 ministration ; he has assailed the character of those he differed with, wantonly 
 and savagely; he has imputed corruption to others, merely for not voting or think 
 ing as he did ; he sought by intrigue the defeat of Mr. Lincoln after he was nom- 
 inated the second time, and as late as September 2d, 1864, wrote secret letters, 
 which have since come to light, to concoct measures to prevent Lincoln's election ; 
 he strove to poison President Grant against capable and honest republicans, and 
 advised him to exclude from his councils men trained in public affairs ; he has 
 recommended unfit men for office, and insisted on their appointment ; after indors- 
 ing and applauding every thing involving principle, or relating to the public inter- 
 
est (loue by the aclmiuistratiou, lie lias stiuck at the President on account ot 
 " ijatronage"" and bolted the party, after manceuvreing more than a year to get its 
 nomination. 
 
 On the 4th of May, 1871, he wrote William Larmore, who had inquired whether 
 he would be a candidate for President before the Eepublican Convention this year, 
 " I fully propose also never to decline any duty or responsibility which my politi- 
 cal friends see lit to devolve upon me," and having thus put himself in the field, 
 he started for the South to make speeches, in one of Avhich he asserted over again 
 the right of secession, and in another hoped for the time when his countrymen 
 would feel pride in Lee and Stonewall Jackson. 
 
 He apologized for Tammany robbers, enjoying from them at the same time an 
 immense advertising patronage, and blocking the wheels of reform after the Tam- 
 many frauds were known to the whole nation ; he colluded with men known to 
 be in the interest of Tammany Hall, and whom he had previously so branded 
 himself, to prevent the Republican party being purged of Tammany influence ; 
 for two years before his open desertion he- sought to divide and destroy the Re- 
 publican party of New York, and traduced many upright men, because of their 
 resistance to the domination of corruptionists ; and finally in signing the call for 
 the Cincinnati Convention, which adopted the Free Trade Missouri Platform, he 
 turned his back on the only political priuciole or idea prominent for the last ten 
 years, of wdiich he had not before been on both sides. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 Yet in the blind staggers of faction, the American people are challenged to 
 scan and decide upon this record. 
 
 Such a coalition, and such a nomination, mean chaos and disorder. You see 
 this already in North Carolina, where the American flag is showered with stale 
 eggs, and where the mob refuses to allow honored citizens born there, to speak ; 
 and you will see it at every step, until the curtain falls in ISlovember. 
 
 " Liberal Republican " movements have been tried in other States, and until 
 the results were felt, they succeeded. They tried in Virginia nominating a Repub- 
 lican for Govemor, on a bargain with the Democrats ; many Republicans were 
 entrapped, and Virginia is cursed with a rule w^hicli the best Democrats are 
 ashamed of. 
 
 They tried in West Virginia a fusion between '•' outs " and Democrats, and' now 
 West Virginia holds debate in her Constitutional Convention, on the question 
 of nullifying the Constitution of the United States, and depriving the blacks of 
 the right to vote. They tried in Tennessee a movement, of bolters and Democrats, 
 and the result is the destruction of common schools, in which a hundred and 
 ninety thousand children were cultured. 
 
 They tried the experiment in Missouri, and the fruit it bore, is a Democratic 
 State Government, and Frank Blair in the Senate. 
 
 In all these cases, one side or the other was cheated, and the public interest 
 was harmed, and now it is proposed to attempt the same thing on a national scale. 
 
 No wonder that leading Democratic journals, and a large body of Democrats 
 refuse to be parties to such chicanery, and no wonder that it draws to itself as no 
 other movement ever did, the very worst elements. North andSouth. 
 
 The issue stands before you. On the one side is safe, tried and stablegovern- 
 ment ; peace with all nations, and prosperity at home, with business thriving, and 
 debt and taxes melting aw^ay. 
 
 On the other side is a hybrid conglomoration made up of the crotchets, distem 
 pers, and personal aims, of restless and disappointed men. What ills might come 
 of cominitting to them the affairs of the nation, no judgment can fathom, ne 
 ■prophecy can foretell. 
 
 The result is very safe, because it rests with the same generation which was 
 given by Providence to see through the darknes of the rebellion, and that genera- 
 tion can not be blinded now. 
 
 IROBEBTS, BOOK iLND JOB FBINTEB, 60 GENESEE ST., UTICA, N. T.]