Hon. Allen G. Thurman, 
 
 Before the Democratic State Convention 
 
 OF 
 
 t 
 
 West Virginia, at Grafton, July 16th, 1868. 
 
 -# 
 
 [PnMisM liy tlie Democratic State Execntiye Committee of Ohio,] 
 
 COLUMBUS, OHIO: 
 CRISIS PRINT. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
OJ'Vu-.'z?- r.L 
 
 323,3 
 
 T^s 
 
 SPEECH 
 
 OF 
 
 HON. ALLEN G. THORMAN, 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention—It will be very difficult 
 for me to speak to you at all, for I come here after eight weeks sickness; and, 
 unless you keep perfect silence, it will be impossible for me to be heard. 
 
 I have first to return to your State Executive Committee, and to yourselves, 
 my very sincere acknowledgments for the honor done me by your and their 
 invitation to be here and address you. It is a distinction of which any man, 
 however exalted, might well be proud; and it is, therefore, the more incumb¬ 
 ent on me, a mere private individual, to appreciate and acknowledge it. 
 I do so most gratefully; and should I have the good fortune to say anything 
 to-day that shall be borne in your remembrance hereafter, and serve to do 
 any good to this common and imperiled country of ours, this day will be one 
 forever kindly and happily remembered by me. And now, my friends, without 
 further preface, for I am admonished by every consideration to be brief—by 
 the consideration that the business of your Convention is yet unfinished— 
 by the consideration of your own uncomfortable position in this sweltering 
 atmosphere—by the consideration of the distance many of you have to travel 
 to your homes, and by the further fact that you have to-day heard a speech 
 which would render it perfectly excusable in me were I to say to you, one 
 and all, you have had enough for this day, we may put off to another occa¬ 
 sion hearing any more. 
 
 But since you are disposed to hear me, I will,on a very brief space of time, 
 present to you some facts and some ideas that I wish you to bear in your 
 memories, and to consider, as American citizens, anxious to do your duty to 
 your country, whatever are or have been, your party predilections. And if 
 there are in this audience any gentlemen of the Republican or Radical party, 
 
 53265 
 
4 
 
 I pray tlieir attention as much as that of any Democrat here; for what I have 
 to say, be it of much or little value, as much interests them as me, or any one 
 of you. 
 
 First, then, upon the subject of the public debt and public taxation, of 
 which you have heard this morning in the lucid and comprehensive remarks 
 of my friend, Mr. Pendleton. He spoke of them in a masterly manner, but 
 it would be impossible for him, or any other man, in the limits of a single 
 speech—much less a speech of an hour—to exhaust this great subject. 
 Therefore, I wish to call your attention to a few facts in addition to those 
 presented by him, and a few comparisons and ideas, also, in addition to those 
 he presented. 
 
 First—What is the amount of our public debt ? It was lately stated in 
 the newspapers to be $2,500,000,000; what it is exactly on this day I am 
 unable to say, because the Treasury Department, for some reason or another, 
 is particularly dilatory of late in making its monthly statements. Perhaps 
 it may arise from the fact that the last monthly statement showed an in¬ 
 crease of the public debt of over $9,000,000 in a single month, and that 
 common rumor says that the next monthly statement will show an increase 
 of $20,000,000. Think of that, my friends, if you have not become utterly 
 bewildered by these great sums with which your ears are assailed. Nine mil¬ 
 lions of dollars increase of public debt in one month! A sum sufficient to 
 have carried on the Administration in the days of General Jackson for six 
 entire months; a sum with which he carried on this Government in all its 
 departments for the space ef six months is simply the increase—not of the 
 expenditure of the Government—but the increase of the public debt in the 
 short space of a month. But what is this debt from official documents ? All 
 the figures I shall give you will be from an official document, from the report 
 of the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States to the Congress of the 
 United States, and published by Congress. On November 1, of last year— 
 and if it has been reduced since, it has not been to any great degree so as to 
 relieve the people—the public debt was $2,625,502,848; in round numbers, 
 $2,626,000,000 was the admitted—mark it, the admitted—public debt of the 
 United States. 
 
 How much debt was there ? Why, Mr. Thaddeus Stevens, Chairman of 
 the Committee of Ways and Means, declared, in his place on the floor of the 
 House of Representatives, that, taking the unaudited debt and adding to it 
 the audited debt of the country, the debt of the United States was not less 
 than $5,000,000,000. But suppose they pass the sponge of repudiation— 
 these men who are denouncing Mr. Pendleton as a repudiator because he 
 wants them to pay five-twenties in the money promised for them—suppose 
 they pass the sponge of repudiation over all this unaudited debt, and we take 
 the actual debt at the amount stated $2,625,000,000 ; then, my friends, add 
 to that the debts of the States, the debts of the counties, the debts of the 
 
5 
 
 cities, the debts of the townships and towns, to say nothing about the debts 
 of the great corporations of the country, and we, the people of the United 
 States, who recollect when Jackson issued his proclamation, that the Govern¬ 
 ment of the United States owed not a dollar in the world ; we, who remem¬ 
 ber that full well, find that within our short lives we have become the most 
 deeply involved and most heavily taxed people on the globe. [A voice ; 
 “ That’s true.”] No wonder these gentlemen seek to avoid the issue of taxa¬ 
 tion, and have now started the theory that the only question in issue this 
 year is, whether we shall have another civil war or not, to frighten—I will 
 not say old women, I will not be so disrespectful to the ladies—but to fright¬ 
 en men, whose hearts are so timid that an army of women, with broom sticks, 
 could chase them out of the country. [Laughter.] 
 
 Compare our public debt with that of Great Britain, heretofore the most 
 deeply indebted country in the world, and compare our resources with hers, 
 and see how the thing stands. The debt of Great Britain is four thousand 
 million dollars. The admitted debt of the United States, with the State 
 debts, the municipal and those I have alluded to added, make it equal to the 
 debt of Great Britain. But Great Britain has 36,000,000 people within the 
 British Isles alone, and in India and her Colonies 200,000,000 more, while 
 we have but 31,000,000. So that with but 31,000,000 of people, we owe as 
 much money as Great Britain with 236,000,000 of people. 
 
 Again, my friends, look at the rate of taxation. The rate of taxation—I 
 take it from an official document, the report of the Special Commissioner of 
 Revenue, published by Congress, and which contains a comparative table of 
 taxation in this country and Europe—the rate of taxation in Great Britain 
 is ninety cents on one hundred dollars; the rate of taxation by the Federal 
 Government alone, for the fiscal year 1866-7, was 393 cents, more than three 
 dollars more than the taxation in what we used to call “ tax-ridden Great 
 Britain.” “Oh, but,” says some one, “surely, Mr. Thurman, you must be 
 mistaken. I pay no $3 93 in the hundred dollars to the General Govern¬ 
 ment.” 
 
 If you, in your particular case, do not pay it, the whole country, taken 
 
 _ • « 
 
 together, does pay at that rate upon the whole of the personal and real estate 
 in the country, as shown by this official report. “ But,” says another man, 
 “ I have heard another say on the stump, and some of our Radical friends 
 argue, that all this only concerns the rich man; that the poor don’t pay any 
 taxes, and, therefore, this heavy debt and taxation don’t concern them.” 
 Why, my friends, it would be a great deal nearer the truth to say that so far 
 from labor paying no taxes, labor pays them all. [“ That’s true.”] And 
 why is it that labor pays the taxes? It is for this simple reason—I can 
 prove it by Scripture: “ In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread,” 
 
 said God to man. [A voice, “You have proved it.”] 
 
6 
 
 You can not produce one cent of wealth; you can not add the value of 
 one farthing to the wealth of any country, except by labor. [“ That’s true.”] 
 There is no other mode known to men by which the wealth of a country can 
 be increased one dollar except by labor. A man may have the finest inven¬ 
 tive mind the w'orld ever knew, he may conceive the most useful invention 
 the world ever saw, but until labor comes to build the machine that he con¬ 
 ceives, and labor comes to work it, it does not add one dollar to the wealth 
 of the country. Take a man who lives simply upon the interest of his 
 money, and neither directly nor indirectly produces anything. I say this not 
 to produce ill-feeling toward any class of men. Take the case of a rich 
 bondholder who works not, labors not, neither does he spin, yet is as fine as 
 Solomon in all his glory. [Laughter.] 
 
 Take him sitting in his comfortable arm-chair, doing nothing but receiving 
 the taxes drawn from the pockets of the people; out of them being supported 
 in his wants, his necessities and his luxuries. That man does not add to the 
 wealth of the country as much as the poverty-stricken little boy in the hills 
 of Virginia who follows his father’s plow and drops the grain in the furrow T s. 
 For that grain of corn the little boy drops will become a lusty stalk of corn, 
 bearing its golden ears, and adds just that much to the wealth of the coun¬ 
 try. But the man who does nothing in the world but draw interest from 
 others, who, to support himself, neither directly nor indirectly labors, or pro¬ 
 duces by labor—that man adds nothing to the wealth of the country. And, 
 as you can not produce wealth except by labor, and you can not pay taxes 
 without wealth, it is just for that reason that, in the long run, it is labor that 
 provides the means to pay the taxes. [“ That’s so.”] 
 
 But that is not all, my friends. Labor is not only necessary to create this 
 wealth, but labor contributes taxes in other modes, as I will show you. I 
 suppose there is no Copperhead in this town who would not like to owm six 
 shirts; I will assume that, though there may be some who have not that 
 many. [Laughter. A voice—“I have only one.”] And if this Radical 
 Government continues much longer you will not have even that. [Immense 
 laughter.] I will give you an illustration that I gave many times last year, 
 and challenged criticism, but I never got any one to deny its accuracy, for 
 no one could do it. Well, if there is any ambitious young Copperhead here, 
 let him step over to the merchant and ask him, “ What will you charge me 
 for eighteen yards of muslin, with which to make me six shirts ?” The mer¬ 
 chant will probably say, “ Four dollars ”—it may be a little lower now. The 
 young Copperhead says: “ My dear Mr. Merchant, how is this ? Eight years 
 ago I bought just eighteen yards to make six shirts, and you only charged 
 me two dollars; how is it you now charge me four dollars ?” If the mer¬ 
 chant understands the matter and is an honest man, he explains to him the 
 truth in this wise: “ Why, my dear customer, it is true that eight years ago 
 I sold you eighteen yards of muslin for two dollars, and that now I ask you 
 
7 
 
 twice that sum for the same amount of goods ; but you must recollect that 
 Uncle Sam has come along and taxed raw cotton three cents a pound, and 
 the producer of that cotton, when he pays that tax, puts it on the price of the 
 cotton, or he would lose money by it.” The manufacturer buys the cotton 
 from the producer, and in the price pays back to the producer the three 
 cents tax he had paid. Then comes Uncle Sam to the manufacturer, and 
 says, “ My dear Mr. Shoddy, [laughter] I did you a great many good turns 
 during the war; I bought your shoes up in Massachusetts, and I paid you 
 the full price, though they did not last above a forty-eight hours’ march ; I 
 bought your stuff for uniforms, and the first time the boys stooped down to 
 drink they hadn’t whole pantaloons on any longer. Now, I have done you, 
 Mr. Manufacturer, a great many good turns, and I want you to do me a good 
 turn. I am hard up, and therefore I have laid a tax upon every yard of 
 shirting you may make out of that cotton you bought. And Mr. Manufac¬ 
 turer pays the tax. Next comes the merchant, and he finds, in the price he 
 pays, the tax that was paid by the man who raised the cotton, and the man 
 who manufactured it. Then comes Uncle Sam to the merchant, and says: 
 *1 know you are truly loyal [applause and laughter], but if you are not 
 truly loyal, that is so much the more reason for grinding you down ; so, loyal 
 or not loyal, you must pay me a tax on all you sell.” The merchant has no 
 help; he pays the tax, and he claps that on the price; and so when the 
 young Copperhead comes and gives four dollars for his shirts, he has three 
 separate taxes to pay in that price of four dollars. So in the end, the man 
 who puts the shirt on his back is the man who pays the taxes. And so with 
 everything you wear. There is scarcely one thing you have on, from the 
 crown of your head to the soles of your feet, upon which you have not paid to 
 the United States from three to four taxes. 
 
 It will not do, therefore, for these people to say that the laboring men pay 
 no taxes. Until they cease to wear clothes, until they cease to eat and drink, 
 until they cease to die and be buried in Christian burial, they will pay tax 
 under this Radical rule, if continued, on all they eat, on all they drink, on 
 all they wear, on the medicine they take in sickness, and on the coffin in 
 which they are buried after death. [Cries of “ That’s so,” and cheers.] 
 
 Let us look at another thing. What is the amount of money drawn by 
 our General Government alone out of the pockets of the people? Now here 
 again I speak by the official record for the last fiscal year, 1866-7, the official 
 reports of which have been published, the receipts were, in round numbers, 
 $622,799,000 paid into the Treasury of the United States. If you take from 
 that amount the sum received as premium on the sales of gold, it will 
 leave the amount drawn from the pockets of the people, by taxation, at over 
 $579,000,000, in round numbers $580,000,000. Now, my friends, just look 
 at that; $580,000,000 drawn from the pockets of the people of the United 
 States by the Federal Government alone in one single year; while in Great 
 
8 
 
 Britain, the value of whose property, real and personal within the British 
 Islands alone is estimated to be two and a half times that of the property of 
 the United States, the amount drawn from the people by that Government 
 was only $354,000,000. There are drawn from the pockets of the American 
 people over $200,000,000 a year more than are drawn from the pockets of 
 the British people; although the value of the property in the United States, 
 according to the census of 1860, was only $14,000,000,000, and the value of 
 property in the British Isles was $36,000,000,000. 
 
 There has been a great attempt to show—made by the people who are in¬ 
 terested to make it appear that a national debt is a national blessing—(I 
 never knew any man so understand his own debts)—that to pay the debt in 
 gold is just as easy as to whistle Yankee Doodle; there has been an attempt to 
 show that the census-takers did not understand their business, and that the 
 property of this country is worth a great deal more than fourteen thousand 
 million dollars. The census takers in 1860 understood their business just as 
 well as those writing in the interest of the bondholders understand their busi¬ 
 ness. I think that the aggregate value of the property of this country, so far 
 from having increased since 1860, is not as much to-day, at a gold valuation, 
 as in that year. In the first place, in that fourteen thousand millions of prop¬ 
 erty in 1860, the negroes were put down at two thousand million; [a voice, 
 “ That’s gone/'] and lands that can now be bought at from five to ten dollars 
 an acre because they have been laid waste by war and this radical policy, 
 then could not be bought for less than fifty, seventy-five or one hundred dol¬ 
 lars an acre. 
 
 Have you any idea of the impoverishment of the South ? Let me mention 
 one thing, which speaks without any mistake at all. It is this fact: We have 
 the most inquisitorial, searching and vexatious tax system under the Federal 
 Government that any people ever saw. It follows a man wherever he goes; 
 it inquires about every thing he has. If his wife has made a pound of but¬ 
 ter, it demands that that shall be put down as income. If the old grand¬ 
 mother plucks a goose, and sells the feathers to the merchant, to get the 
 luxury of a little tea, not only the poor old goose, but the feathers must be 
 taxed. These inquisitorial men have ransacked this country, from one end 
 to the other, to find every particle of property they could possibly tax. And 
 how much have they found in the Southern States ? 
 
 They have found so little property there that the State of Ohio pays more 
 than five millions of taxes to the Federal Government beyond the entire 
 amount of taxes paid in the Southern States. The county of Hamilton, Mr. 
 Pendleton’s own county, paid $1,100,000 more taxes the last fiscal year, into 
 the Treasury of the United States, than eight of the Southern States. Now, 
 great God, what a picture does that present of the impoverishment of these 
 Southern States, It tells more than any thing else can do. There are these 
 harpies of Uncle Sam ransacking that country everywhere for something to 
 
9 
 
 tax, and they can find in all these ten States less than in Ohio alone. 
 [“Give us the Union.”] Yes, my friends,give us a Democratic policy; that 
 will not only restore a union of territory, but a union of the hearts of the 
 people. Those Southern people are men of our own race. Ssay to them:— 
 
 You fought for what you thought was a right cause; but we did not. We 
 conquered you in battle, for we had the strength, and you submitted like 
 honorable men in good faith; henceforth, then, and forever let us be good 
 friends. [Loud applause.] Henceforth and ever, you shall have the security 
 of the Constitution of the United States; the security of law; the security of 
 the justice and majesty of the Government. You shall have this protection. 
 Say that to this people, and they will have heart to go to work; and that 
 land now desert and poverty-stricken as it is, will soon blossom as once it 
 did, and richness and prosperity be seen from one end of it to the other. 
 [“Glory to heaven!” Great laughter and cheers.] 
 
 Why, my friends, will you please to recollect that it is not six months since 
 the cry of confiscation was yet heard in the halls of Congress, and we know 
 that the man who uttered that cry the longest is the most persistent man on 
 the face of this Republic. [Cries of “Butler.”] Mr. Thaddeus Stevens. 
 Now, we know that confiscation has hung over the people of the South. The 
 idea of taking their lands and dividing them up, and giving them to the ne¬ 
 groes in forty-acre lots, has ever been present before them. Now, I appeal 
 to you—for I see before me thousands of men whom I take to be farmers— 
 I appeal to you, with what heart could you work your lands ; with what 
 heart could you lay out your money in improving them; with what heart 
 could you build fences, houses and barns, if you thought that the very next 
 Congress that sits might take away your lands and give them to the negroes ? 
 This has just been the condition of the South. It is my solemn belief that 
 if, when the Southern armies surrendered, the Government of the United 
 States had acted toward the Southern people with that magnanimity and 
 w r ise statesmanship that ought to have prevailed; if it had said to them, 
 “We fought this battle as we resolved in Congress to do, not to persecute 
 you, not to destroy you, not to interfere with the rights of States or individ¬ 
 uals, but simply to maintain our Constitution and the integrity of the Re¬ 
 public, and now that you have laid down your arms, now that you have ac¬ 
 knowledged your cause to be lost, we will show you that we are as true as our 
 words—that we are once more brothers; and w T e will see that the rights and 
 dignity of no single State shall be impaired. Go to your homes, beat your 
 swords into plow-shares, and instead of tearing the bosoms of brothers with 
 the weapons of war, and breaking up mind and body which God has given 
 you, go to your lands, and do as he has told you, “Out of this earth you 
 shall draw your bread ”—had that been said to the people of the South, I 
 tell you, my friends, that we would have been more firmly united this day 
 than before the war broke out. [Cries of “ That’s so,” and loud cheers.] I 
 
10 
 
 say it to you upon mature reflection, for the war has corrected many errors 
 that prevailed; for instance, there were too many Southern people who, be¬ 
 ing a very chivalrous people themselves, thought the Northerners would not 
 fight. The war has corrected that. While many Northerners thought that 
 the Southerners were a set of mere sportsmen and braggarts, and that they 
 would not fight. Well, those people got their ideas corrected, too. [Great 
 laughter.] Men of sense on both sides knew that both sides would fight. 
 Men of sense knew that those in whom ran the blood of those heroes w r ho 
 achieved the independence of 1776, never failed to fight when it was for 
 their interests or their honor. But there were people who had these mis¬ 
 taken notions, and the war corrected them, and made the people of each 
 section respect those of the other more than they had theretofore done ; and 
 it might have made us a band of brothers, from the St. Lawrence to the 
 Gulf, had the right policy been pursued. [Cheers.] That was the feeling 
 of the people and the feeling of the armies on both sides, until the Radical 
 politicians set to work to inflame the hearts of their party and pervert their 
 judgment, and pervert their very souls so as to make them do wrong. Then 
 commenced that series of Congressional measures. Then was that fourteenth 
 amendment of the Constitution proposed, when it was known full well there 
 was not a Southern man who w T as fit to hold up his face in God’s sunlight 
 and look his neighbor in the face who could consent to vote for it; a thing 
 that required every man to write his own dishonor and the dishonor of every 
 man in whom he had trusted or confided; to write their own dishonor in the 
 Constitution of their country; an amendment that required every father to 
 write that his son, who fell in battle in support of the lost cause, was a man 
 who deserved to be disfranchised in the land that gave him birth; and yet 
 we asked the father to assent to that in the Constitution of his country. 
 They knew it could never be adopted ; they never intended it should be 
 adopted. They proposed it that it might be rejected, and that they might 
 prevent the restoration of the Union, and have a pretext for keeping the 
 States out of the exercise of their rights. It was a mere trick, an artifice ; 
 but it served its purpose. It w T as rejected; and the refusal of the Southern 
 people to write their ow r n dishonor in the fundamental law of the land was 
 made the apology and the excuse for those restrictive acts which have fol¬ 
 lowed ; the whole sum and substance of which is to put the heel of the negro 
 upon the neck of the w T hite man. And why should they wash to put the 
 heel of the negro on the neck of the white man ? For the good of the ne¬ 
 gro? They are foolish to think so, or they are the most willfully deceived 
 men in the world. It is not the negro that these Radical politicians love. 
 They put an end to what is called slavery in order to institute political slav¬ 
 ery, in which they shall own six or seven hundred thousand voters with black 
 skins. They would no more allow the negro to vote if they thought he 
 would vote with the Southern white men than they would think of permit- 
 
11 
 
 ting him to enter their family circle, to make him the husband of their 
 daughters or the wives of their sons. Not the least bit of it in the world. 
 It is because they want the negro to vote—not as the negro may please, not 
 as the negro’s instinct may teach him, or interest dictate—but they want him 
 to vote as Loyal Leagues, inaugurated and kept up by Freedmen’s Bureaus, 
 kept up by carpet-bag adventurers, may dictate. It is because they want 
 him as a voting-machine of that kind to keep them in power and enable 
 them to rule us of the North, and perpetuate this taxation, perpetuate this 
 debt, and perpetuate this overthrow of the labor of the country. It is for 
 this purpose that they want the negro to vote. It is no love of the negro. 
 [Cries of “ That is so.”] 
 
 I would here call your attention to a remark of one of the ablest of their 
 Senators, who, a few days since, in Congress, said that we are on the eve oi 
 another rebellion. If we do not submit to all the unconstitutional acts that 
 Congress may see fit to pass, and if the people are disposed to elect a Presi¬ 
 dent who is opposed to these unconstitutional acts, then, although we may 
 do nothing in the way of taking up arms, they will take up arms in order 
 to sustain their unconstitutional acts. That’s what it comes to, when plainly 
 stated. [“ If they do, we’ll whip ’em.” Laughter and cheers.] 
 
 Now, considering the Radicals never had more than about one-third of 
 the people of the United States, I think if they extend the area of the fight¬ 
 ing ground they may possibly get the worst of it. [Laughter and cheers.] 
 But I am for peace; I don’t want any war; and I believe we are going to 
 succeed without it; and I think those gentlemen who are so full of fight 
 will have to submit, and submit peaceably; and, speaking figuratively, I 
 think they may soon desire to know upon what terms we will permit them 
 to surrender. [Loud laughter and cheers.] That will be a matter for you 
 ito consider, whether you will require an unconditional surrender, or whether 
 you will allow them to march out of office with all the honors of war. 
 [Laughter.] 
 
 I think, and I say it after the maturest reflection—and I shall be very 
 happy to find I am mistaken, if it be that I am in the wrong—I do not be¬ 
 lieve it possible that this Radical policy can prevail without sooner or later 
 producing a war of races in the South, and the extermination of the negro. 
 It is my firm belief that these Radicals are the worst enemies the negroes 
 ever had. [“ That’s so.”] It is not in human nature that the white race, 
 and we belong to the most persistent race the world has ever seen—a race 
 that, since it left the shores of the Caspian Sea, fourteen centuries ago, has 
 never met an obstacle that it did not overcome—it is truly impossible, I say, 
 to believe that this race of white men can submit to see itself ruled by a 
 race that has been the most degraded of all it has pleased Providence to put 
 upon this earth. [Cries of “ Never.”] Why, good God, just think of it! 
 Here are these States represented in Congress, in Gubernatorial chairs, in 
 
12 
 
 tlieir Legislatures, by negroes, or by men who could not get offices in the 
 North, and so run South to get them. 
 
 Now is not that too bad? Suppose it were proposed to rule you in West 
 Virginia and us in Ohio by a set of Southern carpet-baggers, with an impor¬ 
 tation of Ku-Klux and niggers, and turn Governor Boreman and the officers 
 of West Virginia out, and put in a parcel of big negroes and another parcel 
 of carpet-baggers, don’t you think that they would find that it was another 
 ox that was gored ? How would they like that kind of medicine ? [Cries 
 of “ Not very well,” and laughter.] And yet this is the way the people are 
 being treated in the South. 
 
 But do they expect peace ? Have they ever read England’s history? Has 
 not England been engaged in trying to hold people by force, instead of 
 binding them by affection ? England has been at this work ever since the 
 reign of Henry VII. She has spent millions upon millions of treasure, and 
 oceans, I was going to say, of blood, to get and keep Ireland down under her 
 heel, and what has been the result? Now, after centuries and centuries of 
 military despotism, it is shown there, as it has been in the United States (for 
 carpet-bag rule has been tried there as w r ell as here), that after all that, Pat, 
 even from the shores of America, when he raises the cry of Fenian, causes 
 the Engish monarch to tremble on her throne. [Cheers.] Can not they see 
 it in Poland, where every generation of young men that grows up brings 
 about another revolution, or an attempt to shake off the chains of despotism.? 
 Can not they see it in the example of Austria and Plungary? Can not they 
 see it wherever it has been tried, from the earliest dawn of history down to 
 this very time, that the idea of holding a great people together by mere 
 force, against their affections, against their sympathies, and, more than all, 
 against their honor, that this is a thing that God in his providence intends 
 shall not exist permanently upon this earth ? [“ That’s so,” and cheers.] 
 
 If you are to hold the Southern people—and I trust, in God, that no one 
 who is now living, or w r ho will live for a thousand years to come, will see us 
 dissevered—but if you will hold the people of this country together, as we 
 want to hold them together, you can only do it by treating each other w T ith 
 mutual respect, with mutual confidence, and with a regard for the mutual 
 interest of them all. In other words, you can only do it by acting as you 
 would be acted by. “ But,” says some pious gentleman, “ if you are in favor 
 of so treating white men, why not treat the negro as well ? Are we not all 
 of one blood?” And yet this man does not understand the meaning of the 
 text he quotes. “ Is not our colored brother a man and a brother ?” he asks, 
 and, at the same time, holds his nose as he walks by the negro. [Laughter.] 
 “ Has he not an everlasting soul ?” says another man, who shows that he has 
 no soul himself by cheating the negro the first chance he gets. 
 
 In answer to all this argument, I say when I refuse to give the negro the 
 right to vote I do him no more injustice—nay, I don’t do him a tithe of the 
 
13 
 
 injustice you all do when you deprive your intelligent and patriotic mothers 
 and sisters of the right of casting a vote; when I say I am not willing to put 
 the negro politically above my wifb and sister and daughter [applause and 
 cries of “Never, never!”], I think I have answered it enough when I have 
 said that. But, further than that, I answer it by the history of this world, 
 which has but one side to this question, and what is that ? History has been 
 written for more than four thousand years, and in all that time there is not 
 one single recorded instance of a civilized negro government. [“ There never 
 will be.”] The negro race is perhaps as old as our race, and yet, in all that 
 time, with the same advantages that the white race has had, with the same 
 advantages that the yellow races of Asia have had, the negro race has never, 
 in a single instance, organized and maintained a civilized government. [A 
 voice, “ And never will.”] 
 
 But that is not all. There has never been an attempt made of a govern¬ 
 ment of mixed races, like the negroes and whites; the attempt never has 
 been made anywhere that it has not proved a most signal failure. It does 
 not require that they should be as opposite as white and black. Look at 
 Hayti. The negroes got free there, and what was the first thing they did after 
 they became free ? Some were negroes and some were mulattoes, and the 
 first thing they did, these negroes and mulattoes began to quarrel, and the 
 negroes, being in the majority, drove the mulattoes to the other end of the 
 island. There they are to-day, and what kind of a government have they ? 
 You can not open a newspaper that contains the arrival of a ship from 
 Hayti that does not give you an account of some war or bloodshed going 
 on in that island. They have played Republic and they have played Em¬ 
 pire, with the Emperor Soulouque and the Duke of some grand name or 
 other, and Her Highness of some other grand name. They have played all 
 that; and they have strutted in gold epaulettes, and have worn more gold 
 lace than any set of people on the face of this earth ever did. They have 
 tried all kinds of government, but General This kicks out General That 
 the end of a month or two, and they are just now in the midst of a revolu¬ 
 tion in which the Generals on either side are trying how many negroes they 
 can mutually kill. [Applause.] 
 
 But, gentlemen, that is not all. It is not all that the negroes have never 
 originated or maintained a civilized government; that they have never suc¬ 
 cessfully mixed with other people, and been admitted to an equality of po¬ 
 litical rights; there is something still more striking. Of all things in this 
 world, perhaps, that fortifies religion and a belief in the existence of the soul, 
 that makes us think we are not all of earth, and that, when we are buried 
 once more in the bosom of mother earth, we do not merely lie down and rot 
 like the brutes—that which, more than all other things except divine revela¬ 
 tion itself, teaches us immortality, is that wonderful intellect of the human 
 race, and its works that seem like, not the works of men, but of the gods 
 
14 
 
 themselves. Go into one of those great mills at Wheeling, at Pittsburg, at 
 Lowell or Philadelphia, and see their wonderful machinery ; see the precision 
 with which it acts, the certainty with which its ends are attained, the iron 
 fingers doing the work of ten thousand human beings, all working with the 
 harmony almost of the solar system itself. See your mighty steamboats on 
 the river; your vessels that plow the ocean; your iron railways that convey 
 you over the country with the speed of the eagle’s wing; your electric wire 
 that spans the globe—w r hen you see all this, and see that it comes out of the 
 brain of man, he must be a cold reasoner who says that man is nothing but 
 a clod of the earth. But of all the inventions that have proved useful in 
 this world, that have either beautified or adorned, and rendered it habitable 
 or profitable to man, no single invention ever came out of the negro brain. 
 
 Now, is it not wonderful? Here are the yellow races. Half of the arts 
 were discovered by the Chinese. The loom was an Eastern invention. Gun¬ 
 powder is said to have been invented by the Chinese. It is claimed that they 
 discovered the mariner’s compass before we did. The art of printing, in a 
 rude form, was first discovered there. They had astronomical tables and 
 made calculations when all Europe was a wilderness. This was the yellow 
 race. What has our race done ? What have been its inventions to amelio¬ 
 rate the condition of the earth, to make it fruitful, beautiful and glorious? 
 What it has done to elevate man, to improve his mind and his morals, and 
 to increase his happiness, it is not necessary for me to stand here and recount. 
 We know of what our own race is capable; and we know this striking fact, 
 that no great invention ever came from a negro’s brain. What further proof 
 do you want that the negro is not a proper person to intrust with the govern¬ 
 ment of this country? 
 
 But the Radicals intend that the bayonet shall make you trust them. 
 [Cries of “ Never, never.”] I say that these men can not be blind to these 
 facts—they are not blind. Even their fourteenth amendment to the Consti¬ 
 tution that I spoke of did not require that negroes should be allowed to vote, 
 but left each State to exclude them from voting. It was only a year or two 
 ago that they had the audacity to say that the negro should be allowed to 
 vote. Now they claim the right to give them compulsory suffrage in the 
 Southern States; let that be done, and how long will it be before they have 
 compulsory suffrage at the North? If you give them votes down there, 
 don’t they help to govern you ? Do they not help to elect Presidents and 
 Vice-Presidents? Do they not send members to Congress to override those 
 you send; and what nonsense it is to say that this matter does not concern us 
 here in West Virginia or in Ohio, whether the negro in Georgia or Alabama 
 has a right to vote. His vote there kills my vote. He sends a member t« 
 Congress whose vote kills the vote of my member of Congress. He sends 
 two carpet-baggers there who vote down the great State of Pennsylvania or 
 New York. It is a question which interests you. Our objection to negro- 
 
15 
 
 voting is not an objection founded merely on prejudice. We are against the 
 disfranchisement of white men, because we believe that all such legislation is 
 wrong and improper; but we are not in favor of giving a vote to the negro, 
 because we believe that he is not fit to enjoy that right. 
 
 A few words more, my friends, and I have done. I was sitting in the New 
 York Convention, the other day, and looking round the walls of Tammany, 
 and seeing on them those beautiful escutcheons that bore the arms of the 
 different States, I amused myself with reading the mottoes of the different 
 States, and presently I came to that of West Virginia—“ Montani semper 
 liberi,” as translated, “ Mountaineers are always free,” and I asked myself, 
 “ Good heavens! who was it that put that motto at the head of that coat-of- 
 arms, with thousands upon thousands, all born upon the soil of this State, 
 loving their country as they do their lives, disfranchised?” And when I 
 looked at it again it seemed to be the work of some demon, who was uttering 
 it in irony and scorn; and I thought of your disfranchising Constitution and 
 of your disfranchising registry laws, and as I thought of these things it 
 seemed to me that if I were a Radical member of your ^Legislature the first 
 thing I would do, for honesty’s sake, would be to expunge that motto from 
 the arms of the State. [Great applause.] 
 
 But, my friends of West Virginia, do your duty. Do it well and earnestly 
 this year. Let the Democratic party go into power—as, by the grace of 
 God, I hope and believe it will [shouts of “ Amen ! amen!”]—and when you 
 get the power in this old State—or new State—of West Virginia, then you 
 may hold up your coat-of-arms and proudly read, “ Montani semper liberi /” 
 [Great cheers.]