But the change was not always a benefit to the style of oratory. It was a period of somewhat formal style; it was not a period when the English language was reaching to its highest sources. You will be surprised to find, for instance, in the books and addresses of that period how little Shakespeare is quoted, how much oftener much inferior poets. In Edmund Burke's orations he quotes Shakespeare very little; and Edmund Burke's orations are interesting especially for this, that they are not probably the original addresses which he gave, are literature rather than oratory, and are now generally supposed to have been written out afterwards.
Like Burke most of the orators of that period have a certain formal style. When all is said and done, the clergy got a certain pithiness from that terrific habit they had of going back every little while and pinning down their thought with a text. One English clergyman of the period compared his text to a horse block on which he ascended when he wished to mount his horse, and then he rode his horse as long as he wished and might or might not come back to that horse block again. Therefore we see in the oratory of that time a certain formality.
Moreover, in the absence of the modern reporter, we really do not know exactly what was said in the greatest speeches of that day. The modern reporter, whose aim is to report everything that is said, and who generally succeeds in putting in a great many fine things which haven't occurred to the orators—the modern reporter was not known, and we have but very few descriptions even of the great orations.
From the author's lectures on oratory, with his permission
It happened to me, when I was in college, to be once on some business at an office on State Street in Boston, then as now the central business street of the place, in a second-story office where there were a number of young men writing busily at their desks. Presently one of the youths, passing by accident across the room, stopped suddenly and said,—
"There is Daniel Webster!"
In an instant every desk in that room was vacated, every pane in every window was filled with a face looking out, and I, hastening up behind them, found it difficult to get a view of the street so densely had they crowded round it. And once looking out, I saw all up and down the street, in every window I could see, just the same mass of eager faces behind the windows. Those faces were all concentrated on a certain figure, a farmer-like, sunburned man who stood, roughly clothed, with his hands behind him, speaking to no one, looking nowhere in particular; waiting, so far as I could see, for nothing, with broad shoulders and heavy muscles, and the head of a hero above. Such a brow, such massive formation, such magnificent black eyes, such straight black eyebrows I had never seen before.
That man, it appeared, was Daniel Webster! I saw people go along the street sidling along past him, looking up at him as if he were the Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World in New York harbor. Nobody knew what he wanted, it never was explained; he may have been merely waiting for some companion to go fishing. But there he was, there he stands in my memory. I don't know what happened afterwards, or how these young men ever got back to their desks—if they ever did.
For me, however, that figure was revealed by one brief duplicate impression, which came in a few months afterwards when I happened to be out in Brookline, a suburb of Boston, where people used to drive then, as they drive now, on summer afternoons for afternoon tea—only, afternoon tea not having been invented, they drove out to their neighbors' houses for fruit or a cup of chocolate.
You have heard Boston perhaps called the "Hub of the universe." A lady, not a Bostonian, once said that if Boston were the hub of the universe, Brookline ought to be called the "Sub-hub." In the "sub-hub" I was sitting in the house of a kinsman who had a beautiful garden; who was the discoverer, in fact, of the Boston nectarine, which all the world came to his house to taste. I heard voices in the drawing-room and went in there. And there I saw again before me the figure of that day on State street, but it was the figure of a man with a beamingly good- natured face, seated in a solid chair brought purposely to accommodate his weight, sitting there with the simple culinary provision of a cup of chocolate in his hand.
It so happened that the great man, the godlike Daniel, as the people used to call him, had expressed the very mortal wish for a little more sugar in his chocolate; and I, if you please, was the fortunate youth who, passing near him, was selected as the Ganymede to bring to him the refreshment desired. I have felt ever since that I, at least, was privileged to put one drop of sweetness into the life of that great man, a life very varied and sometimes needing refreshment. And I have since been given by my classmates to understand—I find they recall it to this day—that upon walking through the college yard for a week or two after that opportunity, I carried my head so much higher than usual as to awaken an amount of derision which undoubtedly, if it had been at West Point, would have led to a boxing match.
That was Daniel Webster, one of the two great lawyers of Boston—I might almost say, of the American bar at that time.
From the author's lectures on oratory, with his permission
The Englishman, as far as I have observed, as a rule gets up with reluctance, and begins with difficulty. Just as you are beginning to feel seriously anxious for him, you gradually discover that he is on the verge of saying some uncommonly good thing. Before you are fully prepared for it he says that good thing, and then to your infinite amazement he sits down!
The American begins with an ease which relieves you of all anxiety. The anxiety begins when he talks a while without making any special point. He makes his point at last, as good perhaps as the Englishman's, possibly better. But then when he has made it, you find that he goes on feeling for some other good point, and he feels and feels so long, that perhaps he sits down at last without having made it.
My ideal of a perfect speech in public would be that it should be conducted by a syndicate or trust, as it were, of the two nations, and that the guaranty should be that an American should be provided to begin every speech and an Englishman provided to end it.
Then, when we go a little farther and consider the act of speech itself, and its relation to the word, we sometimes meet with a doubt that we see expressed occasionally in the daily papers provided for us with twenty pages per diem and thirty-two on Sunday, whether we will need much longer anything but what is called sometimes by clergymen "the printed word"—whether the whole form of communication through oral speech will not diminish or fade away.
It seems to me a truly groundless fear—like wondering whether there will ever be a race with only one arm or one leg, or a race of people who live only by the eye or by the ear. The difference between the written word and the spoken word is the difference between solitude and companionship, between meditation and something so near action that it is at least halfway to action and creates action. It is perfectly supposable to imagine a whole race of authors of whom not one should ever exchange a word with a human being while his greatest work is being produced.
The greatest work of American literature, artistically speaking, Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter," was thus produced. His wife records that during the year that he was writing it, he shut himself up in his study every day. She asked no questions; he volunteered no information. She only knew that something was going on by the knot in his forehead which he carried all that year. At the end of the year he came from his study and read over to her the whole book; a work of genius was added to the world. It was the fruit of solitude.
And sometimes solitude, I regret as an author to say, extends to the perusal of the book, for I have known at least one volume of poems of which not a copy was ever sold; and I know another of which only one copy was sold through my betraying the secret of the author and mentioning the book to a classmate, who bought that one copy.
Therefore, in a general way, we may say that literature speaks in a manner the voice of solitude. As soon as the spoken word comes in, you have companionship. There can be no speech without at least one person present, if it is only the janitor of the church. Dean Swift in reading the Church of England service to his manservant only, adapted the service as follows: "Dearly beloved Roger, the Scripture moveth thee and me in sundry places," etc.; but in that very economy of speech he realized the presence of an audience. It takes a speaker and an audience together to make a speech—I can say to you what I could not first have said to myself. "The sea of upturned faces," as Daniel Webster said, borrowing the phrase, however, from Scott's "Rob Roy"— "the sea of upturned faces makes half the speech." And therefore we may assume that there will always be this form of communication. It has, both for the speaker and for the audience, this one vast advantage.
From "Girls and Education," by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Company, authorized publishers of this author's works.
I doubt whether any one has told more effectively what a college may do for a girl's mind than Dr. Thomas Fuller. In his "Church History of Britain" he gives a short chapter to "The Conveniency of She-Colleges." (I once quoted this chapter at Smith College, and was accused of making it up.) "Nunneries also," he observes, "were good She-Schools, wherein the girls and maids of the neighborhood were taught to read and work; and sometimes a little Latin was taught them therein. Yea, give me leave to say, if such feminine foundations had still continued, haply the weaker sex might be heightened to a higher perfection than hitherto hath been attained. That sharpness of their wits, and suddenness of their conceits, which their enemies must allow unto them, might by education be improved into a judicious solidity."
The feminine mind, with its quick intuitions and unsteady logic, may keep the intuitions and gain a firmness which makes it more than transiently stimulating. The emotional mind has its charm, especially if its emotions are favorable to ourselves.
In some things it may be well that emotion is greater than logic; but emotionin logicis sad to contend with, sad even to contemplate—and such is too often the reasoning of the untrained woman. Do not for a moment suppose that I believe such reasoning peculiar to women; but from the best men it has been in great measure trained out.
In a right-minded, sound-hearted girl, college training tends toward control of the nervous system; and control of the nervous system— making it servant and not master—is almost the supreme need of women. Without such control they become helpless; with it they know scarcely a limit to their efficiency. The world does not yet understand that for the finest and highest work it looks and must look to the naturally sensitive, whether women or men. I remember expressing to the late Professor Greenough regret that a certain young teacher was nervous. His answer has been a comfort to me ever since. "I wouldn't give ten cents for any one who isn't." The nervous man or woman is bound to suffer; but the nervous man or woman may rise to heights that the naturally calm can never reach and can seldom see. To whom do you go for counsel? To the calm, no doubt; but never to the phlegmatic-never to the calm who are calm because they know no better (like the man in Ruskin "to whom the primrose is very accurately the primrose because he does not love it"). You go to the calm who have fought for their calmness, who have known what it is to quiver in every nerve, but have put through whatever they have taken in hand.
There are numberless sweet and patient women who never studied beyond the curriculum of the district school, women who help every one near them by their own unselfish loveliness; but the intelligently patient, the women who can put themselves into the places of all sorts of people, who can sympathize not merely with great and manifest griefs, but with every delicate jarring of the human soul—hardest of all, with the ambitions of the dull—these women, who must command a respect intellectual as well as moral, reach their highest efficiency through experience based on college training.
College life, designed as it is to strengthen a girl's intellect and character, should teach her to understand better, and not worse, herself as distinguished from other beings of her own sex or the opposite, should fortify her individuality, her power of resisting, and her determination to resist, the contagion of the unwomanly. Exaggerated study may lessen womanly charm; but there is nothing loud or masculine about it. Nor should we judge mental training or anything else by scattered cases of its abuse. The only characteristics of women that the sensible college girl has lost are feminine frivolity, and that kind of headless inaccuracy in thought and speech which once withheld from the sex—or from a large part of it—the intellectual respect of educated men.
At college, if you have lived rightly, you have found enough learning to make you humble, enough friendship to make your hearts large and warm, enough culture to teach you the refinement of simplicity, enough wisdom to keep you sweet in poverty and temperate in wealth. Here you have learned to see great and small in their true relation, to look at both sides of a question, to respect the point of view of every honest man or woman, and to recognize the point of view that differs most widely from your own. Here you have found the democracy that excludes neither poor nor rich, and the quick sympathy that listens to all and helps by the very listening. Here too, it may be at the end of a long struggle, you have seen—if only in transient glimpses—that after doubt comes reverence, after anxiety peace, after faintness courage, and that out of weakness we are made strong. Suffer these glimpses to become an abiding vision, and you have the supreme joy of life.
From an address to the students of Harvard University, 1885. Published in "The Drama; Addresses by Henry Irving," William Heinemann, London, publisher, 1893
What is the art of acting? I speak of it in its highest sense, as the art to which Roscius, Betterton, and Garrick owed their fame. It is the art of embodying the poet's creations, of giving them flesh and blood, of making the figures which appeal to your mind's eye in the printed drama live before you on the stage. "To fathom the depths of character, to trace its latent motives, to feel its finest quiverings of emotion, to comprehend the thoughts that are hidden under words, and thus possess one's self of the actual mind of the individual man"—such was Macready's definition of the player's art; and to this we may add the testimony of Talma. He describes tragic acting as "the union of grandeur without pomp and nature without triviality." It demands, he says, the endowment of high sensibility and intelligence.
You will readily understand from this that to the actor the well-worn maxim that art is long and life is short has a constant significance. The older we grow the more acutely alive we are to the difficulties of our craft. I cannot give you a better illustration of this fact than a story which is told of Macready. A friend of mine, once a dear friend of his, was with him when he played Hamlet for the last time. The curtain had fallen, and the great actor was sadly thinking that the part he loved so much would never be his again. And as he took off his velvet mantle and laid it aside, he muttered almost unconsciously the words of Horatio, "Good-night, sweet Prince" then turning to his friend, "Ah," said he, "I am just beginning to realise the sweetness, the tenderness, the gentleness of this dear Hamlet!" Believe me, the true artist never lingers fondly upon what he has done. He is ever thinking of what remains undone: ever striving toward an ideal it may never be his fortune to attain.
It is often supposed that great actors trust to the inspiration of the moment. Nothing can be more erroneous. There will, of course, be such moments, when an actor at a white heat illumines some passage with a flash of imagination (and this mental condition, by the way, is impossible to the student sitting in his armchair); but the great actor's surprises are generally well weighed, studied, and balanced. We know that Edmund Kean constantly practiced before a mirror effects which startled his audience by their apparent spontaneity. It is the accumulation of such effects which enables an actor, after many years, to present many great characters with remarkable completeness.
I do not want to overstate the case, or to appeal to anything that is not within common experience, so I can confidently ask you whether a scene in a great play has not been at some time vividly impressed on your minds by the delivery of a single line, or even of one forcible word. Has not this made the passage far more real and human to you than all the thought you have devoted to it? An accomplished critic has said that Shakespeare himself might have been surprised had he heard the "Fool, fool, fool!" of Edmund Kean. And though all actors are not Keans, they have in varying degree this power of making a dramatic character step out of the page, and come nearer to our hearts and our understandings.
After all, the best and most convincing exposition of the whole art of acting is given by Shakespeare himself: "To hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure." Thus the poet recognized the actor's art as a most potent ally in the representation of human life. He believed that to hold the mirror up to nature was one of the worthiest functions in the sphere of labor, and actors are content to point to his definition of their work as the charter of their privileges.
From "The Harvard Graduates Magazine"
Just in the last few years we have had a striking illustration of strong reaction against prevailing educational policies. There has come upon us right here on these grounds and among Harvard's constituents, and widespread over the country as well, a distrust of freedom for students, of freedom for citizens, of freedom for backward races of men. This is one of the striking phenomena of our day, a distrust of freedom.
Now, there is no moment in life when there comes a greater sudden access of freedom than this moment in which you find yourselves. When young men come to an American college, I care not at all which college—to any American college from the parents' home or from school, they experience a tremendous access of freedom. Is it an injury? Is it a danger? Are you afraid of it? Has society a right to be afraid of it? What is freedom for? What does it do for us? Does it hurt us or help us? Do we grow in it, or do we shrink in it? That is quite an important question in the management of Harvard University. It is the important question in modern government. It is pretty clear that when young men or old men are free, they make mistakes, and they go wrong; having freedom to do right or wrong, they often do right and they often do wrong. When you came hither, you found yourselves in possession of a new freedom. You can overeat yourselves, for example; you can overdrink; you can take no care for sleep; you can take no exercise or too much; you can do little work or too much; you can indulge in harmful amusements: in short, you have a great new freedom here. Is it a good thing for you or a bad thing? Clearly you can go astray, for the road is not fenced. You can make mistakes; you can fall into sin. Have you learned to control yourselves? Have you got the will-power in you to regulate your own conduct? Can you be your own taskmaster? You have been in the habit of looking to parents, perhaps, or to teachers, or to the heads of your boarding schools or your day schools for control in all these matters. Have you got it in yourselves to control yourselves? That is the prime question which comes up with regard to every one of you when you come to the University. Have you the sense and the resolution to regulate your own conduct?
It is pretty clear that in other spheres freedom is dangerous. How is it with free political institutions? Do they always yield the best government? Look at the American cities and compare them with the cities of Europe. Clearly, free institutions do not necessarily produce the best government. Are then free institutions wrong or inexpedient? What is freedom for? Why has God made men free, as he has not made the plants and the animals? Is freedom dangerous? Yes! but it is necessary to the growth of human character, and that is what we are all in the world for, and that is what you and your like are in college for. That is what the world was made for, for the occupation of men who in freedom through trial win character. It is choice which makes the dignity of human nature. It is habitual choosing after examination, consideration, reflection, and advice, which makes the man of power. It is through the internal motive power of the will that men imagine, invent, and thrust thoughts out into the obscure beyond, into the future. The will is the prime motive power; and you can only train your wills, in freedom. That is what freedom is for, in school and college, in society, industries, and governments. Fine human character is the ultimate object, and freedom is the indispensable condition of its development.
Now, there are some clear objects for choice here in college, for real choice, for discreet choice. I will mention only two. In the first place, choose those studies—there is a great range of them here—which will, through your interest in them, develop your working power. You know it is only through work that you can achieve anything, either in college or in the world. Choose those studies on which you can work intensely with pleasure, with real satisfaction and happiness. That is the true guide to a wise choice. Choose that intellectual pursuit which will develop within you the power to do enthusiastic work, an internal motive power, not an external compulsion. Then choose an ennobling companionship. You will find out in five minutes that this man stirs you to good, that man to evil. Shun the latter; cling to the former. Choose companionship rightly, choose your whole surroundings so that they shall lift you up and not drag you down. Make these two choices wisely, and be faithful in labor, and you will succeed in college and in after life.
From "Alfred Lord Tennyson, A Memoir by His Son," with the permission of The Macmillan Company, New York and London, publishers.
Before leaving for Aldworth we spent some delightful sunny days in the Farringford gardens. In the afternoons my father sat in his summerhouse and talked to us and his friends.
This spring he had enjoyed seeing the unusually splendid blossom of apple and pear tree, of white lilacs, and of purple aubretia that bordered the walks.
At intervals he strolled to the bottom of the kitchen garden to look at the roses, or at the giant fig tree ("like a breaking wave," as he said) bursting into leaf; or he marked the "branching grace" of the stately line of elms, between the boles of which, from his summerhouse, he caught a glimpse of far meadows beyond. He said that he did not believe in Emerson's pretty lines:—
"Only to children children sing,Only to youth the Spring is Spring."
"For age does feel the joy of spring, though age can only crawl over the bridge while youth skips the brook." His talk was grave and gay together. In the middle of anecdotes he would stop short and say something of what he felt to be the sadness and mystery of life.
What impressed all his friends was his choice of language, the felicity of his turns of expression, his imagery, the terseness of his unadorned English, and his simple directness of manner, which none will ever be able to reproduce, however many notes they may have taken. His dignity and repose of manner, his low musical voice, and the power of his magnetic dark eye kept the attention riveted. His argument was clear and logical and never wandered from the point except by way of illustration, and his illustrations were the most various I have ever heard, and were taken from nature and science, from high and low life, from the rich and from the poor, and his analysis of character was always subtle and powerful.
While he talked of the mysteries of the universe, his face, full of the strong lines of thought, was lighted up; and his words glowed as it were with inspiration.
When conversing with my brother and myself or our college friends, he was, I used to think, almost at his best, for he would quote us the fine passages from ancient or modern literature and show us why they are fine, or he would tell us about the great facts and discoveries in astronomy, geology, botany, chemistry, and the great problems in philosophy, helping us toward a higher conception of the laws which govern the world and of "the law behind the law." He was so sympathetic that the enthusiasm of youth seemed to kindle his own. He spoke out of the fullness of his heart, and explained more eloquently than ever where his own difficulties lay, and what he, as an old man, thought was the true mainspring of human life and action; and
"How much of act at human handsThe sense of human will demandsBy which we dare to live or die."
The truth is that real genius, unless made shallow by prejudice, is seldom frozen by age, and that, until absolute physical decay sets in, the powers of the mind may become stronger and stronger.
On one of these June mornings, Miss L—, who was a stranger to us, but whose brother we had known for some time, called upon us. My father took her over the bridge to the summerhouse looking on the Down. After a little while he said: "Miss L—, my son says I am to read to you," and added, "I will read whatever you like." He read some of "Maud," "The Spinster's Sweet-Arts," and some "Enoch Arden."
His voice, as Miss L— noticed, was melodious and full of change, and quite unimpaired by age. There was a peculiar freshness and passion in his reading of "Maud," giving the impression that he had just written the poem, and that the emotion which created it was fresh in him. This had an extraordinary influence on the listener, who felt that the reader had beenpresentat the scenes he described, and that he still felt their bliss or agony.
He thoroughly enjoyed reading his "The Spinster's Sweet-Arts," and when he was reading "Enoch Arden" he told Miss L— to listen to the sound of the sea in the line,
"The league-long roller thundering on the reef,"
and to mark Miriam Lane's chatter in
"He ceased; and Miriam LaneMade such a voluble answer promising all."
From "Notes on Speech-Making," with the permission of Longmans, Green and Company, New York and London, publishers.
We are told that the five-minute speeches with which Judge Hoar year after year delighted the Harvard chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa contained but one original idea, clearly stated, and but one fresh story, well told. This is indeed a model to be admired of all men; yet how few of us will take the trouble of copying it!
The speaker who rambles and ambles along, saying nothing, and his fellow, the speaker who links jest to jest, saying little more, are both of them unabashed in the presence of an audience. They are devoid of all shyness. They are well aware that they have "the gift of the gab"; they rejoice in its possession; they lie in wait for occasions to display it. They have helped to give foreigners the impression that every American is an oratorical revolver, ready with a few remarks whenever any chairman may choose to pull the trigger. And yet there are Americans not a few to whom the making of an after-dinner speech is a most painful ordeal. When the public dinner was given to Charles Dickens in New York, on his first visit to America, Washington Irving was obviously the predestined presiding officer. Curtis tells us that Irving went about muttering: "I shall certainly break down; I know I shall break down." When the dinner was eaten, and Irving arose to propose the health of Dickens, he began pleasantly and smoothly in two or three sentences; then hesitated, stammered, smiled, and stopped; tried in vain to begin again; then gracefully gave it up, announced the toast, "Charles Dickens, the guest of the nation," and sank into his chair amid immense applause, whispering to his neighbor, "There! I told you I should break down, and I've done it."
When Thackeray came, later, Irving "consented to preside at a dinner, if speeches were absolutely forbidden; the condition was faithfully observed" (so Curtis records), "but it was the most extraordinary instance of American self-command on record." Thackeray himself had no fondness for after-dinner speaking, nor any great skill in the art. He used to complain humorously that he never could remember all the good things he had thought of in the cab; and in "Philip" he went so far as to express a hope that "a day will soon arrive (but I own, mind you, that I do not carve well) when we shall have the speeches done by a skilled waiter at a side table, as we now have the carving."
Hawthorne was as uncomfortable on his feet as were Thackeray and Irving; but his resolute will steeled him for the trial. When he dined with the Mayor of Liverpool, he was called upon for the toast of the United States. "Being at bay, and with no alternative, I got upon my legs and made a response," he wrote in his notebook, appending this comment: "Anybody may make an after-dinner speech who will be content to talk onward without saying anything. My speech was not more than two or three inches long; … but, being once started, I felt no embarassment, and went through it as coolly as if I were going to be hanged."
He also notes that his little speech was quite successful, "considering that I did not know a soul there, except the Mayor himself, and that I am wholly unpracticed in all sorts of oratory, and that I had nothing to say." To each of these three considerations of Hawthorne's it would be instructive to add a comment, for he spoke under a triple disadvantage. A speech cannot really be successful when the speaker has nothing to say. It is rarely successful unless he knows the tastes and the temper of those he is addressing. It can be successful only casually unless he has had some practice in the simpler sort of oratory.
From "Hunting the Grizzly" with the permission of G. P. Putnam's Sons,New York and London, publishers.
For half a mile I walked quickly and silently over the pine needles, across a succession of slight ridges separated by narrow, shallow valleys. The forest here was composed of lodge-pole pines, which on the ridges grew close together, with tall slender trunks, while in the valleys the growth was more open. Though the sun was behind the mountains, there was yet plenty of light by which to shoot, but it faded rapidly.
At last, as I was thinking of turning toward camp, I stole up to the crest of one of the ridges, and looked over into the valley some sixty yards off. Immediately I caught the loom of some large, dark object; and another glance showed me a big grizzly walking slowly off with his head down. He was quartering to me, and I fired into his flank, the bullet, as I afterward found, ranging forward and piercing one lung. At the shot he uttered a loud, moaning grunt and plunged forward at a heavy gallop, while I raced obliquely down the hill to cut him off. After going a few hundred feet, he reached a laurel thicket, some thirty yards broad, and two or three times as long, which he did not leave. I ran up to the edge and there halted, not liking to venture into the mass of twisted, close-growing stems and glossy foliage. Moreover, as I halted, I heard him utter a peculiar, savage kind of whine from the heart of the brush. Accordingly, I began to skirt the edge, standing on tiptoe and gazing earnestly to see if I could not catch a glimpse of his hide. When I was at the narrowest part of the thicket, he suddenly left it directly opposite, and then wheeled and stood broadside to me on the hillside, a little above. He turned his head stiffly toward me; scarlet strings of froth hung from his lips; his eyes burned like embers in the gloom.
I held true, aiming at the shoulder, and my bullet shattered the point or lower end of his heart, taking out a big nick. Instantly the great bear turned with a harsh roar of fury and challenge, blowing the bloody foam from his mouth, so that I saw the gleam of his white fangs; and then he charged straight at me, crashing and bounding through the laurel bushes, so that it was hard to aim. I waited till he came to a fallen tree, raking him as he topped it with a ball, which entered his chest and went through the cavity of his body, but he neither swerved nor flinched, and at the moment I did not know that I had struck him. He came steadily on, and in another second was almost upon me. I fired for his forehead, but my bullet went low, entering his open mouth, smashing his lower jaw and going into the neck. I leaped to one side almost as I pulled the trigger; and through the hanging smoke the first thing I saw was his paw as he made a vicious side blow at me. The rush of his charge carried him past. As he struck he lurched forward, leaving a pool of bright blood where his muzzle hit the ground; but he recovered himself and made two or three jumps onward, while I hurriedly jammed a couple of cartridges into the magazine, my rifle holding only four, all of which I had fired. Then he tried to pull up, but as he did so his muscles seemed suddenly to give way, his head dropped, and he rolled over and over like a shot rabbit. Each of my first three bullets had inflicted a mortal wound.
It was already twilight, and I merely opened the carcass, and then trotted back to camp. Next morning I returned and with much labor took off the skin. The fur was very fine, the animal being in excellent trim, and unusually bright colored. Unfortunately, in packing it out I lost the skull, and had to supply its place with one of plaster. The beauty of the trophy, and the memory of the circumstances under which I produced it, make me value it perhaps more highly than any other in my house.
A famous orator once imagined the nations of the world uniting to erect a column to Jurisprudence in some stately capital. Each country was to bring the name of its great jurist to be inscribed on the side of the column, with a sentence stating what he and his country through him had done toward establishing the reign of law and justice for the benefit of mankind.
I have sometimes fancied that we might erect here in the capital of the country a column to American Liberty which alone might rival in height the beautiful and simple shaft which we have erected to the fame of the Father of the Country. I can fancy each generation bringing its inscription, which should recite its own contribution to the great structure of which the column should be but the symbol.
The generation of the Puritan and the Pilgrim and the Huguenot claims the place of honor at the base. "I brought the torch of freedom across the sea. I cleared the forest. I subdued the savage and the wild beast. I laid in Christian liberty and law the foundations of empire."
The next generation says: "What my fathers founded I builded. I left the seashore to penetrate the wilderness. I planted schools and colleges and churches."
Then comes the generation of the great colonial day: "I stood by the side of England on many a hard-fought field. I helped humble the power of France."
Then comes the generation of the revolutionary time: "I encountered the power of England. I declared and won the independence of my country. I placed that declaration on the eternal principles of justice and righteousness which all mankind have read, and on which all mankind will one day stand. I affirmed the dignity of human nature and the right of the people to govern themselves."
The next generation says: "I encountered England again. I vindicated the right of an American ship to sail the seas the wide world over without molestation. I made the American sailor as safe at the ends of the earth as my fathers had made the American farmer safe in his home."
Then comes the next generation: "I did the mighty deeds which in your younger years you saw and which your fathers told. I saved the Union. I freed the slave. I made of every slave a freeman, and of every freeman a citizen, and of every citizen a voter."
Then comes another who did the great work in peace, in which so many of you had an honorable share: "I kept the faith. I paid the debt. I brought in conciliation and peace instead of war. I built up our vast domestic commerce. I made my country the richest, freest, strongest, happiest people on the face of the earth."
And now what have we to say? What have we to say? Are we to have a place in that honorable company? Must we engrave on that column: "We repealed the Declaration of Independence. We changed the Munroe Doctrine from a doctrine of eternal righteousness and justice, resting on the consent of the governed, to a doctrine of brutal selfishness, looking only to our own advantage. We crushed the only republic in Asia. We made war on the only Christian people in the East. We converted a war of glory into a war of shame. We vulgarized the American flag. We introduced perfidy into the practice of war. We inflicted torture on unarmed men to extort confession. We put children to death. We established reconcentrado camps. We devastated provinces. We baffled the aspirations of a people for liberty"?
No, Mr. President. Never! Never! Other and better counsels will yet prevail. The hours are long in the life of a great people. The irrevocable step is not yet taken.
Let us at least have this to say: "We, too, have kept the faith of the fathers. We took Cuba by the hand. We delivered her from her age-long bondage. We welcomed her to the family of nations. We set mankind an example never beheld before of moderation in victory. We led hesitating and halting Europe to the deliverance of their beleaguered ambassadors in China. We marched through a hostile country—a country cruel and barbarous—without anger or revenge. We returned benefit for injury, and pity for cruelty. We made the name of America beloved in the East as in the West. We kept faith with the Philippine people. We kept faith with our own history. We kept our national honor unsullied. The flag which we received without a rent we handed down without a stain."
I do not know why in the year 1899 this Republic has unexpectedly had placed before it mighty problems which it must face and meet. They have come and are here, and they could not be kept away. We have fought a war with Spain.
The Philippines, like Cuba and Porto Rico, were intrusted to our hands by the war, and to that great trust, under the Providence of God and in the name of human progress and civilization, we are committed. It is a trust we have not sought; it is a trust from which we will not flinch. The American people will hold up the hands of their servants at home to whom they commit its execution, while Dewey and Otis and the brave men whom they command will have the support of the country in upholding our flag where it now floats, the symbol and assurance of liberty and justice.
There is universal agreement that the Philippines shall not be turned back to Spain. No true American consents to that. Even if unwilling to accept them ourselves, it would have been a weak evasion of manly duty to require Spain to transfer them to some other power or powers, and thus shirk our own responsibility. Even if we had had, as we did not have, the power to compel such a transfer, it could not have been made without the most serious international complications. Such a course could not be thought of. And yet had we refused to accept the cession of them, we should have had no power over them even for their own good.
We could not discharge the responsibilities upon us until these islands became ours, either by conquest or treaty. There was but one alternative, and that was either Spain or the United States in the Philippines. The other suggestions—first, that they should be tossed into the arena of contention for the strife of nations; or, second, be left to the anarchy and chaos of no protectorate at all—were too shameful to be considered.
The treaty gave them to the United States. Could we have required less and done our duty? Could we, after freeing the Filipinos from the domination of Spain, have left them without government and without power to protect life or property or to perform the international obligations essential to an independent state? Could we have left them in a state of anarchy and justified ourselves in our own consciences or before the tribunal of mankind? Could we have done that in the sight of God or man?
No imperial designs lurk in the American mind. They are alien to American sentiment, thought, and purpose. Our priceless principles undergo no change under a tropical sun. They go with the flag. They are wrought in every one of its sacred folds, and are indistinguishable as its shining stars.
"Why read ye not the changeless truth,The free can conquer but to save?"
If we can benefit these remote peoples, who will object? If in the years of the future they are established in government under law and liberty, who will regret our perils and sacrifices? Who will not rejoice in our heroism and humanity? Always perils, and always after them safety; always darkness and clouds, but always shining through them the light and the sunshine; always cost and sacrifice, but always after them the fruition of liberty, education, and civilization.
I have no light or knowledge not common to my countrymen. I do not prophesy. The present is all-absorbing to me, but I cannot bound my vision by the blood-stained trenches around Manila, where every red drop, whether from the veins of an American soldier or a misguided Filipino, is anguish to my heart; but by the broad range of future years, when that group of islands, under the impulse of the year just past, shall have become the gems and glories of those tropical seas; a land of plenty and of increasing possibilities; a people redeemed from savage indolence and habits, devoted to the arts of peace, in touch with the commerce and trade of all nations, enjoying the blessings of freedom, of civil and religious liberty, of education and of homes, and whose children and children's children shall for ages hence bless the American Republic because it emancipated and redeemed their fatherland and set them in the pathway of the world's best civilization.
Whether the universal sentiment in favor of protection as applied to every country is sound or not, I do not stop to discuss. Whether it is best for the United States of America alone concerns me now, and the first thing I have to say is, that after thirty years of protection, undisturbed by any menace of free trade, up to the very year now last past, this country was the greatest and most flourishing nation on the face of this earth. Moreover, with the shadow of this unjustifiable bill resting cold upon it, with mills closed, with hundreds of thousands of men unemployed, industry at a standstill, and prospects before it more gloomy than ever marked its history—except once—this country is still the greatest and the richest that the sun shines on, or ever did shine on.
According to the usual story that is told, England had been engaged with a long and vain struggle with the demon of protection, and had been year after year sinking farther into the depths until at a moment when she was in her distress and saddest plight her manufacturing system broke down, "protection, having destroyed home trade by reducing," as Mr. Atkinson says, "the entire population to beggary, destitution, and want." Mr. Cobden and his friends providentially appeared, and after a hard struggle established a principle for all time and for all the world, and straightway England enjoyed the sum of human happiness. Hence all good nations should do as England has done and be happy ever after.
Suppose England, instead of being a little island in the sea, had been the half of a great continent full of raw material, capable of an internal commerce which would rival the commerce of all the rest of the world.
Suppose every year new millions were flocking to her shores, and every one of those new millions in a few years, as soon as they tasted the delights of a broader life, would become as great a consumer as any one of her own people.
Suppose that these millions, and the 70,000,000 already gathered under the folds of her flag, were every year demanding and receiving a higher wage and therefore broadening her market as fast as her machinery could furnish production. Suppose she had produced cheap food beyond all her wants, and that her laborers spent so much money that whether wheat was sixty cents a bushel or twice that sum hardly entered the thoughts of one of them, except when some Democratic tariff bill was paralyzing his business.
Suppose that she was not only but a cannon shot from France, but that every country in Europe had been brought as near to her as Baltimore is to Washington—for that is what cheap ocean freights mean between us and European producers. Suppose all those countries had her machinery, her skilled workmen, her industrial system, and labor forty per cent cheaper. Suppose under that state of facts, with all her manufacturers proclaiming against it, frantic in their disapproval, England had been called upon by Cobden to make the plunge into free trade, would she have done it? Not if Cobden had been backed by the angelic host. History gives England credit for great sense.
I assume that the cause of protection has no more able advocate than the gentleman from Maine. I assume that the argument for protection can be put in no more alluring form than that to which we have listened to- day. So assuming, I shall ask you calmly and dispassionately to examine with me that argument, to see upon what it is based, and then I shall invoke the unprejudiced judgment of this House as to whether the cause attempted to be sustained by the gentleman from Maine has been sustained, or can be before any tribunal where the voice of reason is heard or the sense of justice is felt.
The gentleman from Maine, with a facility that is unequaled, when he encounters an argument which he is unable to answer passes it by with some bright and witty saying and thereby invites and receives the applause of those who believe as he does. But the gentleman does not attempt, the gentleman has not to-day attempted, to reply to the real arguments that are made in favor of freer trade and greater liberty of commerce.
The gentleman points to the progress of the United States, he points to the rate of wages in the United States, he points to the aggregated wealth of the United States, and claims all this is due to protection. But he does not explain how we owe these blessings to protection. He says, we have protection in the United States, wages are high in the United States; therefore protection makes high wages.
When we ask the gentleman from Maine to give us a reason why a high protective tariff increases the rate of wages he points to the glory, the prosperity, and the honor of our country. We on this side unite with him in every sentiment, in every purpose, in every effort that has for its object the advancement of the general welfare of the people of the United States, but we differ from him as to the method of promoting their welfare. The gentleman belongs to that school who believe that scarcity is a blessing, and that abundance should be prohibited by law. We belong to that school who believe that scarcity is a calamity to be avoided, and that abundance should be, if possible, encouraged by law.
The gentleman belongs to that class who believe that by a system of taxation we can make the country rich. He believes that it is possible by tax laws to advance the prosperity of all the industries and all the people in the United States.
Either, Mr. Speaker, that statement is an absurdity upon its face, or it implies that in some way we have the power to make some persons not resident of the United States pay the taxes that we impose. I insist that you do not increase the taxable wealth of the United States when you tax a gentleman in Illinois and give the benefit of that tax to a gentleman in Maine. Such a course prevents the natural and honest distribution of wealth, but it does not create or augment it.
Delivered in the United States Senate, January, 1830
The gentleman has made a great flourish about his fidelity to Massachusetts. I shall make no profession of zeal for the interests and honor of South Carolina; of that my constituents shall judge. If there be one State in the Union, Mr. President (and I say it not in a boastful spirit), that may challenge comparison with any other for a uniform, zealous, ardent, and uncalculating devotion to the Union, that State is South Carolina. Sir, from the very commencement of the Revolution up to this hour there is no sacrifice, however great, she has not cheerfully made, no service she has ever hesitated to perform. She has adhered to you in your prosperity; but in your adversity she has clung to you with more than filial affection. No matter what was the condition of her domestic affairs, though deprived of her resources, divided by parties, or surrounded with difficulties, the call of the country has been to her as the voice of God. Domestic discord ceased at the sound; every man became at once reconciled to his brethren, and the sons of Carolina were all seen crowding together to the temple, bringing their gifts to the altar of their common country.
What, sir, was the conduct of the South during the Revolution? Sir, I honor New England for her conduct in that glorious struggle. But great as is the praise which belongs to her, I think at least equal honor is due to the South. They espoused the quarrel of their brethren with a generous zeal, which did not suffer them to stop to calculate their interest in the dispute. Favorites of the mother country, possessed of neither ships nor seamen to create a commercial rivalship, they might have found in their situation a guaranty that their trade would be forever fostered and protected by Great Britain. But, trampling on all considerations either of interest or of safety, they rushed into the conflict, and, fighting for principle, periled all in the sacred cause of freedom. Never were there exhibited in the history of the world higher examples of noble daring, dreadful suffering, and heroic endurance than by the Whigs of Carolina during the Revolution. The whole State, from the mountains to the sea, was overrun by an overwhelming force of the enemy. The fruits of industry perished on the spot where they were produced, or were consumed by the foe. The "plains of Carolina" drank up the most precious blood of her citizens. Black and smoking ruins marked the places where had been the habitations of her children. Driven from their homes into the gloomy and almost impenetrable swamps, even there the spirit of liberty survived, and South Carolina (sustained by the example of her Sumters and her Marions) proved by her conduct that, though her soil might be overrun, the spirit of her people was invincible.
The eulogium pronounced by the honorable gentleman on the character of the State of South Carolina for her Revolutionary and other merits meets my hearty concurrence. I shall not acknowledge that the honorable member goes before me in regard for whatever of distinguished talent, or distinguished character, South Carolina has produced. I claim part of the honor, I partake in the pride, of her great names. I claim them for countrymen, one and all,—the Laurenses, the Rutledges, the Pinckneys, the Sumters, the Marions, Americans all, whose fame is no more to be hemmed in by State lines than their talents and patriotism were capable of being circumscribed within the same narrow limits. In their day and generation they served and honored the country, and the whole country; and their renown is of the treasures of the whole country. Him whose honored name the gentleman himself bears,—does he esteem me less capable of gratitude for his patriotism, or sympathy for his sufferings, than if his eyes had first opened upon the light of Massachusetts instead of South Carolina? Sir, does he suppose it in his power to exhibit a Carolina name so bright as to produce envy in my bosom? No, sir, increased gratification and delight, rather. I thank God that, if I am gifted with little of the spirit which is able to raise mortals to the skies, I have yet none, as I trust, of that other spirit which would drag angels down. When I shall be found, sir, in my place here in the Senate or elsewhere, to sneer at public merit because it happens to spring up beyond the little limits of my own State or neighborhood; when I refuse, for any such cause, or for any cause, the homage due to American talent, to elevated patriotism, to sincere devotion to liberty and the country; or, if I see an uncommon endowment of Heaven, if I see extraordinary capacity and virtue in any son of the South, and if, moved by local prejudice or gangrened by State jealousy, I get up here to abate the tithe of a hair from his just character and just fame,—may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!
Sir, let me recur to pleasing recollections; let me indulge in refreshing remembrance of the past; let me remind you that, in early times, no States cherished greater harmony, both of principle and feeling, than Massachusetts and South Carolina. Would to God that harmony might again return! Shoulder to shoulder they went through the Revolution; hand in hand they stood round the administration of Washington, and felt his own great arm lean on them for support. Unkind feeling, if it exist, alienation and distrust, are the growth, unnatural to such soils, of false principles since sown. They are weeds, the seeds of which that same great arm never scattered.
Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts; she needs none. There she is. Behold her, and judge for yourselves. There is her history; the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill; and there they will remain forever. The bones of her sons, falling in the great struggle for independence, now lie mingled with the soil of every State from New England to Georgia; and there they will lie forever. And, sir, where American liberty raised its first voice, and where its youth was nurtured and sustained, there it still lives in the strength of its manhood and full of its original spirit. If discord and party strife shall succeed in separating it from that Union by which alone its existence is made sure,—it will stand in the end by the side of that cradle in which its infancy was rocked, and it will fall at last, if fall it must, amidst the proudest monuments of its own glory and on the very spot of its origin.
Our platform is before the country. Perhaps it is lacking in novelty. There is certainly nothing sensational about it. Its principles have been tested by eight years of splendid success and have received the approval of the country. It is in line with all our platforms of the past, except where prophecy and promise in those days have become history in these. We stand by the ancient ways which have proved good. We come before the country in a position which cannot be successfully attacked in front, or flank, or rear. What we have done, what we are doing, and what we intend to do—on all three we confidently challenge the verdict of the American people. The record of fifty years will show whether as a party we are fit to govern; the state of our domestic and foreign affairs will show whether as a party we have fallen off; and both together will show whether we can be trusted for a while longer.
I want to say a word to the young men whose political life is beginning. Any one entering business would be glad of the chance to become one of an established firm with years of success behind it, with a wide connection, with unblemished character, with credit founded on a rock. How infinitely brighter the future when the present is so sure, the past so glorious! Everything great done by this country in the last fifty years has been done under the auspices of the Republican Party. Is not this consciousness a great asset to have in your mind and memory? As a mere item of personal comfort is it not worth having? Lincoln and Grant, Hayes and Garfield, Harrison and McKinley—names secure in the heaven of fame—they all are gone, leaving small estates in worldly goods, but what vast possessions in principles, memories, sacred associations! It is a start in life to share that wealth. Who now boasts that he opposed Lincoln? who brags of his voting against Grant? though both acts may have been from the best of motives. In our form of government there must be two parties, and tradition, circumstances, temperament, will always create a sufficient opposition. But what young man would not rather belong to the party that does things, instead of one that opposes them; to the party that looks up, rather than down; to the party of the dawn, rather than of the sunset? For fifty years the Republican Party has believed in the country and labored for it in hope and joy; it has reverenced the flag and followed it; it has carried it under strange skies and planted it on far- receding horizons. It has seen the nation grow greater every year and more respected; by just dealing, by intelligent labor, by a genius for enterprise, it has seen the country extend its intercourse and its influence to regions unknown to our fathers. Yet it has never abated one jot or tittle of the ancient law imposed on us by our God-fearing ancestors. We have fought a good fight, but also we have kept the faith. The Constitution of our fathers has been the light to our feet; our path is, and will ever remain, that of ordered progress, of liberty under the law. The country has vastly increased, but the great-brained statesmen who preceded us provided for infinite growth. The discoveries of science have made miraculous additions to our knowledge. But we are not daunted by progress; we are not afraid of the light. The fabric our fathers builded on such sure foundations will stand all shocks of fate or fortune. There will always be a proud pleasure in looking back on the history they made; but, guided by their example, the coming generation has the right to anticipate work not less important, days equally memorable to mankind. We who are passing off the stage bid you, as the children of Israel encamping by the sea were bidden, to Go Forward; we whose hands can no longer hold the flaming torch pass it on to you that its clear light may show the truth to the ages that are to come.
In obedience to instructions I should never dare to disregard— expressing, also, my own firm convictions—I rise to propose a nomination with which the country and the Republican party can grandly win. The election before us is to be the Austerlitz of American politics. It will decide, for many years, whether the country shall be Republican or Cossack. The supreme need of the hour is not a candidate who can carry Michigan. All Republican candidates can do that. The need is not of a candidate who is popular in the Territories, because they have no vote. The need is of a candidate who can carry doubtful States. Not the doubtful States of the North alone, but doubtful States of the South, which we have heard, if I understand it aright, ought to take little or no part here, because the South has nothing to give, but everything to receive. No, gentlemen, the need that presses upon the conscience of this Convention is of a candidate who can carry doubtful States both North and South. And believing that he, more surely than any other man, can carry New York against any opponent, and can carry not only the North, but several States of the South, New York is for Ulysses S. Grant. Never defeated in peace or in war, his name is the most illustrious borne by living man.
His services attest his greatness, and the country—nay, the world— knows them by heart. His fame was earned not alone in things written and said, but by the arduous greatness of things done. And perils and emergencies will search in vain in the future, as they have searched in vain in the past, for any other on whom the nation leans with such confidence and trust. Never having had a policy to enforce against the will of the people, he never betrayed a cause or a friend, and the people will never desert nor betray him. Standing on the highest eminence of human distinction, modest, firm, simple, and self-poised, having filled all lands with his renown, he has seen not only the highborn and the titled, but the poor and the lowly, in the uttermost ends of the earth, rise and uncover before him. He has studied the needs and the defects of many systems of government, and he has returned a better American than ever.
His integrity, his common-sense, his courage, his unequaled experience, are the qualities offered to his country. The only argument, the only one that the wit of man or the stress of politics has devised is one that would have dumbfounded Solomon, because he thought there was nothing new under the sun. Having tried Grant twice and found him faithful, we are told that we must not, even after an interval of years, trust him again. My countrymen! my countrymen! what stultification does not such a fallacy involve! Is this an electioneering juggle, or is it hypocrisy's masquerade? There is no field of human activity, responsibility, or reason, in which rational beings object to an agent because he has been weighed in the balance and not found wanting. There is, I say, no department of human reason in which sane men reject an agent because he has had experience making him exceptionally competent and fit.
This Convention is master of a supreme opportunity. It can name the next President. It can make sure of his election. It can make sure not only of his election, but of his certain and peaceful inauguration.
Gentlemen, we have only to listen above the din and look beyond the dust of an hour to behold the Republican party advancing with its ensigns resplendent with illustrious achievements, marching to certain and lasting victory with its greatest Marshal at its head.
From a speech delivered in New York, 1880. Depew's "Library ofOratory," E. J. Bowen and Company, New York, publishers.
We are citizens of a republic. We govern ourselves. Here no pomp of eager array in chambers of royalty awaits the birth of boy or girl to wield an hereditary scepter. We know no scepter save a majority's constitutional will. To wield that scepter in equal share is the duty and the right, nay, the birthright, of every citizen. The supreme, the final, the only peaceful arbiter here, is the ballot box; and in that urn should be gathered and from it should be sacredly recorded the conscience, the judgment, the intelligence of all. The right of free self-government has been in all ages the bright dream of oppressed humanity,—the sighed-for privilege to which thrones, dynasties, and power have so long blocked the way. In the fullness of freedom the Republic of America is alone in the earth; alone in its grandeur; alone in its blessings; alone in its promises and possibilities, and therefore alone in the devotion due from its citizens.
The time has come when law, duty, and interest require the nation to determine for at least four years its policy in many things. Two parties exist; parties should always exist in a government of majorities, and to support and strengthen the party which most nearly holds his views is among the most laudable, meritorious acts of an American citizen; and this whether he be in official or in private station. Two parties contend for the management of national affairs. The question is, Which of the two is it safer and wiser to trust? It is not a question of candidates. A candidate, if he be an honest, genuine man, will not seek and accept a party nomination to the presidency, vice presidency, or Congress, and after he is elected become a law unto himself. The higher obligations among men are not set down in writing and signed or sealed; they reside in honor and good faith. The fidelity of a nominee belongs to this exalted class, and therefore the candidate of a party is but the exponent of a party. The object of political discussion and action is to settle principles, policies, and issues. It is a paltry incident of an election affecting fifty million people that it decides for an occasion the aspirations of individual men. The Democratic party is the Democratic candidate, and I am against the ticket and all its works.
A triumphant nationality—a regenerated constitution—a free Republic— an unbroken country—untarnished credit—solvent finances—unparalleled prosperity—all these are ours despite the policy and the efforts of the Democratic party. Along with the amazing improvement in national finances, we have amazing individual thrift on every side. In every walk of life new activity is felt. Labor, agriculture, manufactures, commerce, enterprises, and investments, all are flourishing, content and hopeful. But in the midst of this harmony and encouragement comes a harsh discord crying, "Give us a change—anything for a change." This is not a bearing year for "a change." Every other crop is good, but not the crop of "change"—that crop is good only when the rest are bad. The country does not need nor wish the change proposed, and to the pressing invitation of our Democratic friends a good-natured but firm "No, I thank you," will be the response at the polls.
Upon its record and its candidates the Republican party asks the country's approval, and stands ready to avow its purposes for the future. It proposes to rebuild our commercial marine. It proposes to foster labor, industry, and enterprise. It proposes to stand for education, humanity, and progress. It proposes to administer the government honestly, to preserve amity with all the world, observing our own obligations with others and seeing that others observe theirs with us, to protect every citizen in his rights and equality before the law, to uphold the public credit and the sanctity of engagements; and by doing these things the Republican party proposes to assure to industry, humanity, and civilization in America the amplest welcome and the safest home.
From a speech nominating a candidate for President of the United States at the Republican National Convention, 1880
I have witnessed the extraordinary scenes of this Convention with deep solicitude. Nothing touches my heart more quickly than a tribute of honor to a great and noble character; but as I sat in my seat and witnessed this demonstration, this assemblage seemed to me a human ocean in tempest. I have seen the sea lashed into fury and tossed into spray, and its grandeur moves the soul of the dullest man; but I remember that it is not the billows, but the calm level of the sea, from which all heights and depths are measured. When the storm has passed and the hour of calm settles on the ocean, when the sunlight bathes its peaceful surface, then the astronomer and surveyor take the level from which they measure all terrestrial heights and depths.
Gentlemen of the Convention, your present temper may not mark the healthful pulse of our people. Not here, in this brilliant circle, where fifteen thousand men and women are gathered, is the destiny of the Republic to be decreed for the next four years. Not here, where I see the enthusiastic faces of seven hundred and fifty-six delegates, waiting to cast their lots into the urn and determine the choice of the Republic, but by four millions of Republican firesides, where the thoughtful voters, with wives and children about them, with the calm thoughts inspired by love of home and country, with the history of the past, the hopes of the future, and reverence for the great men who have adorned and blessed our nation in days gone by, burning in their hearts,—there God prepares the verdict which will determine the wisdom of our work to-night. Not in Chicago, in the heat of June, but at the ballot boxes of the Republic, in the quiet of November, after the silence of deliberate judgment, will this question be settled.
Now, gentlemen, I am about to present a name for your consideration,— the name of one who was the comrade, associate, and friend of nearly all the noble dead, whose faces look down upon us from these walls to- night; a man who began his career of public service twenty-five years ago.
You ask for his monument. I point you to twenty-five years of national statutes. Not one great, beneficent law has been placed on our statute books without his intelligent and powerful aid. He aided in formulating the laws to raise the great armies and navies which carried us through the war. His hand was seen in the workmanship of those statutes that restored and brought back "the unity and married calm of States." His hand was in all that great legislation that created the war currency, and in all the still greater work that redeemed the promises of the government and made the currency equal to gold.
When at last he passed from the halls of legislation into a high executive office, he displayed that experience, intelligence, firmness, and poise of character, which have carried us through a stormy period of three years, with one half the public press crying "Crucify him!" and a hostile Congress seeking to prevent success. In all this he remained unmoved until victory crowned him. The great fiscal affairs of the nation, and the vast business interests of the country, he guarded and preserved while executing the law of resumption, and effected its object without a jar and against the false prophecies of one half of the press and of all the Democratic party.
He has shown himself able to meet with calmness the great emergencies of the government. For twenty-five years he has trodden the perilous heights of public duty, and against all the shafts of malice has borne his breast unharmed. He has stood in the blaze of "that fierce light that beats against the throne"; but its fiercest ray has found no flaw in his armor, no stain upon his shield. I do not present him as a better Republican or a better man than thousands of others that we honor; but I present him for your deliberate and favorable consideration. I nominate JOHN SHERMAN, OF OHIO.