APPENDIX.

The nomination of Governor Hayes was received with indescribable enthusiasm, with long-continuedcheering, and every other demonstration of joy and delight.

Outside of Ohio the State that contributed most to this far-reaching result was Michigan. From the fact that Mr. Bristow telegraphed to the Kentucky delegation several hours before the crisis was reached to cast their votes for Hayes, that State should share, after Michigan, the honor of achieving the grand result. Indiana, North Carolina, and New York followed close upon Kentucky, if it is possible to compare the value of the aid each State brought.

On motion of the Hon. Wm. P. Frye, of Maine, Rutherford B. Hayes was declared the unanimous choice of the Republican National Convention for President of the United States.

This great convention concluded its labors by nominating the able and incorruptible Wm. A. Wheeler, of New York, for vice-president by acclamation.

On the 17th of June, the day following the nomination, the committee appointed by the convention to notify Governor Hayes of the fact presented themselves in the executive office at Columbus.

Mr. McPherson, the chairman, approaching him, said:

"Governor Hayes: We have been deputed by the National convention of the Republican party, holden at Cincinnati on the 14th of the present month, to inform you officially that you have been unanimously nominated by that convention for the office of President of the United States. The manner in which that action was taken, and the response to it from every portion of the country, attest the strength of the popular confidence in you and the belief that your administration will be wise, courageous, and just. We say, sir, your administration, for we believe that the people will confirm the action of the convention, andthus save the country from the control of the men and the operations of the principles and policy of the Democratic party. We have also been directed to ask your attention to the summary of the Republican doctrine contained in the platform adopted by the convention. In discharging this agreeable duty we find cause of congratulation in the harmonious action of the convention, and in the hearty response given by the people we see the promise of assured success. Ohio, we know, trusts and honors you. Henceforth you belong to the whole country. Under circumstances so auspicious, we trust you will indicate your acceptance of the nomination."

The governor, who had had no intimation as to what the length or character of the address would be, was left in doubt with respect to the response expected from him by the committee. He, however, without embarrassment, but in an intentionally subdued tone of voice, gave this appropriately brief reply:

"Sir: I have only to say in response to your information that I accept the nomination. Perhaps at the present time it would be improper for me to say more than this, although even now I should be glad to give some expression to the profound sense of gratitude I feel for the confidence reposed in me by yourselves and those for whom you act. At a future time I shall take occasion to present my acceptance in writing, with my views upon the platform."

Since his nomination for the presidency, Governor Hayes has changed in no perceptible respect the habits, recreations, or labors of his daily life. He rises early and accomplishes much work before breakfast. He labors in the executive office in the capitol from nine until five, discharging his varied duties as governor, answering or dictating the answers to be given his official, political, and private correspondence, and remaining at all times accessible to visitors ofevery age, sex, color, and condition, who seek to see him. His evenings are passed with his family, or at the social parties of his many friends. He makes his customary trips to his home and farms near Fremont, and, while profitably managing large property interests, finds time to devote to pioneer history, to domestic architecture, to gardening, to general literature, to languages, and other liberal studies and pursuits. He is sobered, but not overpowered or oppressed by the new responsibilities cast upon him. He suffers himself to be—as he ever has been—natural. Moderate, discreet, and wise in all things as he has been in the past and is in the present, he is conspicuously one who grows wiser each day that he lives.

Governor Hayes has reached the age of fifty-four, is five feet nine inches in height, and weighs one hundred and eighty pounds. Perfect health and habits leave him just in the ripe maturity of physical manhood and mind. His shoulders and breast are broad, his frame solid and compact, his limbs muscular and strong. He has a fresh, ruddy complexion, is full of activity and elasticity, and is very fond of the amusements of young people. He has an exceptionally high and full forehead, a prominent nose, and bluish-gray eyes. A heavy sandy mustache and beard, which are silvered a little, conceal his mouth and chin. His light-brown hair is thin and slightly sprinkled with gray.

The Governor is the father of eight children, five of whom are now living. Those still living were born as follows: Birchard Austin, November 4, 1853; Webb Cook, March 20, 1856; RutherfordPlatt, June 24, 1858; Fanny Hayes, September 2, 1867; Scott Russell, February 8, 1871.

The youngest of these children was born in Columbus, the others in Cincinnati. The oldest son graduated at Cornell University, in the class of 1874, and is now at the Harvard Law School. The second son passed three years at Cornell, and is now at home. The third son is at Cornell.

Three weeks from the day that Governor Hayes was nominated for the Presidency, his private secretary, Captain A. E. Lee, put upon the telegraphic wires, at Columbus, the following accurate copy of:

THE LETTER OF ACCEPTANCE.Columbus, Ohio,July 8, 1876.Hon. Edward McPherson, Hon. Wm. A. Howard, Hon. Joseph H. Rainey, and others, Committee of the Republican National Convention.Gentlemen: In reply to your official communication of June 17, by which I am informed of my nomination for the office of President of the United States by the Republican National Convention at Cincinnati, I accept the nomination with gratitude, hoping that, under Providence, I shall be able, if elected, to execute the duties of the high office as a trust for the benefit of all the people.I do not deem it necessary to enter upon any extended examination of the declaration of principles made by the convention. The resolutions are in accord with my views, and I heartily concur in the principles they announce. In several of the resolutions, however, questions are considered which are of such importance that I deem it proper to briefly express my convictions in regard to them.The fifth resolution adopted by the convention is of paramount interest. More than forty years ago, a system of making appointments to office grew up, based upon the maxim "To the victors belong the spoils." The old rule, the true rule, that honesty, capacity, and fidelity constitute the only real qualifications foroffice, and that there is no other claim, gave place to the idea that party services were to be chiefly considered. All parties, in practice, have adopted this system. It has been essentially modified since its first introduction. It has not, however, been improved.At first the president, either directly or through the heads of departments, made all the appointments. But gradually the appointing power, in many cases, passed into the control of members of Congress. The offices, in these cases, have become not merely rewards for party services, but rewards for services to party leaders. This system destroys the independence of the separate departments of the government; it tends directly to extravagance and official incapacity; it is a temptation to dishonesty; it hinders and impairs that careful supervision and strict accountability by which alone faithful and efficient public service can be secured; it obstructs the prompt removal and sure punishment of the unworthy. In every way it degrades the civil service and the character of the government. It is felt, I am confident, by a large majority of the members of Congress, to be an intolerable burden, and an unwarrantable hindrance to the proper discharge of their legitimate duties. It ought to be abolished. The reform should be thorough, radical, and complete.We should return to the principles and practice of the founders of the government, supplying by legislation, when needed, that which was formerly established custom. They neither expected nor desired from the public officer any partisan service. They meant that public officers should owe their whole service to the government and to the people. They meant that the officer should be secure in his tenure as long as his personal character remained untarnished, and the performance of his duties satisfactory. If elected, I shall conduct the administration of the government upon these principles; and all constitutional powers vested in the executive will be employed to establish this reform.The declaration of principles by the Cincinnati Convention makes no announcement in favor of a single presidential term. I do not assume to add to that declaration; but, believing that the restoration of the civil service to the system established by Washington and followed by the early presidents can be best accomplished by an executive who is under no temptation to usethe patronage of his office to promote his own re-election, I desire to perform what I regard as a duty, in stating now my inflexible purpose, if elected, not to be a candidate for election to a second term.On the currency question, I have frequently expressed my views in public, and I stand by my record on this subject. I regard all the laws of the United States relating to the payment of the public indebtedness, the legal tender notes included, as constituting a pledge and moral obligation of the Government, which must in good faith be kept. It is my conviction that the feeling of uncertainty inseparable from an irredeemable paper currency, with its fluctuations of values, is one of the great obstacles to a revival of confidence and business, and to a return of prosperity. That uncertainty can be ended in but one way—the resumption of specie payments; but the longer the instability connected with our present money system is permitted to continue, the greater will be the injury inflicted upon our economical interests, and all classes of society.If elected, I shall approve every appropriate measure to accomplish the desired end, and shall oppose any step backward.The resolution with respect to the public school system is one which should receive the hearty support of the American people. Agitation upon this subject is to be apprehended, until, by constitutional amendment, the schools are placed beyond all danger of sectarian control or interference. The Republican party is pledged to secure such an amendment.The resolution of the convention on the subject of the permanent pacification of the country, and the complete protection of all its citizens in the free enjoyment of all their constitutional rights, is timely and of great importance. The condition of the Southern States attracts the attention and commands the sympathy of the people of the whole Union. In their progressive recovery from the effects of the war, their first necessity is an intelligent and honest administration of government, which will protect all classes of citizens in all their political and private rights. What the South most needs is peace, and peace depends upon the supremacy of law. There can be no enduring peace if the constitutional rights of any portion of the people are habitually disregarded. A division of political parties, resting merely upon distinctions of race, or upon sectional lines, is always unfortunate, and may be disastrous. The welfare of the South, alike with that of every other part of the country, depends upon the attractions it can offer to labor, to immigration, and to capital. But laborers will not go, and capital will not be ventured, where the constitution and the laws are set at defiance, and distraction, apprehension, and alarm, take the place of peace-loving and law-abiding social life. All parts of the constitution are sacred, and must be sacredly observed—the parts that are new no less than the parts that are old. The moral and material prosperity of the Southern States can be most effectively advanced by a hearty and generous recognition of the rights of all by all—a recognition without reserve or exception.With such a recognition fully accorded, it will be practicable to promote, by the influence of all legitimate agencies of the general government, the efforts of the people of those States to obtain for themselves the blessings of honest and capable local government.If elected, I shall consider it not only my duty, but it will be my ardent desire, to labor for the attainment of this end.Let me assure my countrymen of the Southern States that if I shall be charged with the duty of organizing an Administration, it will be one which will regard and cherish their truest interests—the interests of the white and of the colored people both, and equally; and which will put forth its best efforts in behalf of a civil policy which will wipe out forever the distinction between North and South in our common country.With a civil service organized upon a system which will secure purity, experience, efficiency, and economy; with a strict regard for the public welfare, solely, in appointments; with the speedy, thorough, and unsparing prosecution and punishment of all public officers who betray official trusts; with a sound currency; with education unsectarian and free to all; with simplicity and frugality in public and private affairs, and with a fraternal spirit of harmony pervading the people of all sections and classes, we may reasonably hope that the second century of our existence as a Nation will, by the blessing of God, be pre-eminent as an era of good feeling, and a period of progress, prosperity, and happiness.Very respectfully,Your fellow-citizen,R. B. Hayes.

THE LETTER OF ACCEPTANCE.

Hon. Edward McPherson, Hon. Wm. A. Howard, Hon. Joseph H. Rainey, and others, Committee of the Republican National Convention.

Gentlemen: In reply to your official communication of June 17, by which I am informed of my nomination for the office of President of the United States by the Republican National Convention at Cincinnati, I accept the nomination with gratitude, hoping that, under Providence, I shall be able, if elected, to execute the duties of the high office as a trust for the benefit of all the people.

I do not deem it necessary to enter upon any extended examination of the declaration of principles made by the convention. The resolutions are in accord with my views, and I heartily concur in the principles they announce. In several of the resolutions, however, questions are considered which are of such importance that I deem it proper to briefly express my convictions in regard to them.

The fifth resolution adopted by the convention is of paramount interest. More than forty years ago, a system of making appointments to office grew up, based upon the maxim "To the victors belong the spoils." The old rule, the true rule, that honesty, capacity, and fidelity constitute the only real qualifications foroffice, and that there is no other claim, gave place to the idea that party services were to be chiefly considered. All parties, in practice, have adopted this system. It has been essentially modified since its first introduction. It has not, however, been improved.

At first the president, either directly or through the heads of departments, made all the appointments. But gradually the appointing power, in many cases, passed into the control of members of Congress. The offices, in these cases, have become not merely rewards for party services, but rewards for services to party leaders. This system destroys the independence of the separate departments of the government; it tends directly to extravagance and official incapacity; it is a temptation to dishonesty; it hinders and impairs that careful supervision and strict accountability by which alone faithful and efficient public service can be secured; it obstructs the prompt removal and sure punishment of the unworthy. In every way it degrades the civil service and the character of the government. It is felt, I am confident, by a large majority of the members of Congress, to be an intolerable burden, and an unwarrantable hindrance to the proper discharge of their legitimate duties. It ought to be abolished. The reform should be thorough, radical, and complete.

We should return to the principles and practice of the founders of the government, supplying by legislation, when needed, that which was formerly established custom. They neither expected nor desired from the public officer any partisan service. They meant that public officers should owe their whole service to the government and to the people. They meant that the officer should be secure in his tenure as long as his personal character remained untarnished, and the performance of his duties satisfactory. If elected, I shall conduct the administration of the government upon these principles; and all constitutional powers vested in the executive will be employed to establish this reform.

The declaration of principles by the Cincinnati Convention makes no announcement in favor of a single presidential term. I do not assume to add to that declaration; but, believing that the restoration of the civil service to the system established by Washington and followed by the early presidents can be best accomplished by an executive who is under no temptation to usethe patronage of his office to promote his own re-election, I desire to perform what I regard as a duty, in stating now my inflexible purpose, if elected, not to be a candidate for election to a second term.

On the currency question, I have frequently expressed my views in public, and I stand by my record on this subject. I regard all the laws of the United States relating to the payment of the public indebtedness, the legal tender notes included, as constituting a pledge and moral obligation of the Government, which must in good faith be kept. It is my conviction that the feeling of uncertainty inseparable from an irredeemable paper currency, with its fluctuations of values, is one of the great obstacles to a revival of confidence and business, and to a return of prosperity. That uncertainty can be ended in but one way—the resumption of specie payments; but the longer the instability connected with our present money system is permitted to continue, the greater will be the injury inflicted upon our economical interests, and all classes of society.

If elected, I shall approve every appropriate measure to accomplish the desired end, and shall oppose any step backward.

The resolution with respect to the public school system is one which should receive the hearty support of the American people. Agitation upon this subject is to be apprehended, until, by constitutional amendment, the schools are placed beyond all danger of sectarian control or interference. The Republican party is pledged to secure such an amendment.

The resolution of the convention on the subject of the permanent pacification of the country, and the complete protection of all its citizens in the free enjoyment of all their constitutional rights, is timely and of great importance. The condition of the Southern States attracts the attention and commands the sympathy of the people of the whole Union. In their progressive recovery from the effects of the war, their first necessity is an intelligent and honest administration of government, which will protect all classes of citizens in all their political and private rights. What the South most needs is peace, and peace depends upon the supremacy of law. There can be no enduring peace if the constitutional rights of any portion of the people are habitually disregarded. A division of political parties, resting merely upon distinctions of race, or upon sectional lines, is always unfortunate, and may be disastrous. The welfare of the South, alike with that of every other part of the country, depends upon the attractions it can offer to labor, to immigration, and to capital. But laborers will not go, and capital will not be ventured, where the constitution and the laws are set at defiance, and distraction, apprehension, and alarm, take the place of peace-loving and law-abiding social life. All parts of the constitution are sacred, and must be sacredly observed—the parts that are new no less than the parts that are old. The moral and material prosperity of the Southern States can be most effectively advanced by a hearty and generous recognition of the rights of all by all—a recognition without reserve or exception.

With such a recognition fully accorded, it will be practicable to promote, by the influence of all legitimate agencies of the general government, the efforts of the people of those States to obtain for themselves the blessings of honest and capable local government.

If elected, I shall consider it not only my duty, but it will be my ardent desire, to labor for the attainment of this end.

Let me assure my countrymen of the Southern States that if I shall be charged with the duty of organizing an Administration, it will be one which will regard and cherish their truest interests—the interests of the white and of the colored people both, and equally; and which will put forth its best efforts in behalf of a civil policy which will wipe out forever the distinction between North and South in our common country.

With a civil service organized upon a system which will secure purity, experience, efficiency, and economy; with a strict regard for the public welfare, solely, in appointments; with the speedy, thorough, and unsparing prosecution and punishment of all public officers who betray official trusts; with a sound currency; with education unsectarian and free to all; with simplicity and frugality in public and private affairs, and with a fraternal spirit of harmony pervading the people of all sections and classes, we may reasonably hope that the second century of our existence as a Nation will, by the blessing of God, be pre-eminent as an era of good feeling, and a period of progress, prosperity, and happiness.

The non-partisan verdict upon this letter is that it is faultless in style, sound in principle, courageous, broad and elevated in tone, liberal, wise, statesmanlike, and strong. It is, in short, the declaration of faith of an honest man who has a heart in his breast and a head on his shoulders, with purity in that heart and brains in that head.

The conclusions which follow our study of the public career of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, and the study of that interior life, the beauty of which the world will not know until he has passed from it, are briefly these.

In boyhood, in battle, in the civic chair, in the esteem of his State, in every duty and relation of life, he has been first, and now, it would seem, is first in the hearts of his countrymen. As a student, he was foremost; as a lawyer, he was in the front rank; as a soldier, he was the bravest; as a legislator, the most judicious; as a governor, second to none of Ohio's great magistrates.

The most striking characteristic of Hayes as a soldier was his personal intrepidity. Anthony Wayne, Francis Marion, and Ethan Allen were called brave men in the Revolution, and so they were; but we look in vain in their histories for as numerous proofs of unsurpassable daring as the hero of Cloyd Mountain, Cedar Creek, and South Mountain, has given us. Four horses shot under him; four wounds in action; fighting after he fell; a hundred days exposed to death under fire—these are the evidences of as lofty a courage as is yet known among men.

As a regimental, brigade, and division commander, his most striking quality as a leader was his impetuosity. General Crook used to say that Hayes fought infantry as other men fought cavalry. He was always wanting to move forward, to charge, to get at the enemy with cold steel. His favorite step was the double-quick; his choice of distance two paces; and his preferred mode of fighting, the hand-to-hand grapple. This meant business, was decisive, and was soon over.

Another characteristic was his constant care for the comfort of his soldiers. He was much in the hospitals, cheering up the wounded, writing letters for them, and sending last messages from the lips of the dying to wives, mothers, and friends. He shared his blanket, his last crust, his last penny, with the neediest of his men, and abstained from food when they had none.

His house is to-day, and has been since the war, a soldiers' home, where all who served with him are invited to come at all times and partake at his own table with his wife and children. Seldom is this generous hospitality imposed on by the members of his large military family. Once, only, a pseudo-soldier, whom the children called the "Veteran," having served two days and a half in the army, remained just double the term of his military service under the governor's roof. He doubtless found that the rations at this camp were good.

As a civil magistrate, Governor Hayes has developed executive and administrative abilities of the highest order. He has a practical, common-sense, direct way of doing things. He first finds what things ought to be done, and then how. When his own party has been in a minority, he has made friends with a few of the most reasonable men in theopposition, and through them, as instruments, has accomplished his purposes.

He is a discriminating judge of human nature, and is magnetic enough to make legislators follow his lead, as his soldiers followed him.

He has fixed rules of official conduct to which he adheres in all cases. For example, if he has a judge to appoint—and he has appointed many to fill vacancies—his simple inquiry is, Whom do the members of the legal profession want, who live in the judicial district to be provided for? When that fact is accurately ascertained, the appointment follows as a matter of course, even though the lawyer preferred may be his personal enemy. In the interests of learning, higher education, human benevolence, and equal rights, Hayes has accomplished more than any governor Ohio has yet had. We make this statement with the honorable records of old Jeremiah Morrow, Corwin, Chase, Tod, Brough, and Cox spread before us.

In a word, Governor Hayes is square-built, solid and sound, mentally, morally, and physically. His integrity is a proverb; his fidelity to his convictions is recognized by political enemies; his record is of unassailable soundness; and there is absolutely nothing vulnerable in his character. He has a Lincoln-like soundness of judgment, and is as inexorably just as old John Marshall. He is a man absolutely free from eccentricities and affectations; he neither walks nor talks on stilts. His manners have the warmth and grace that sincerity and simplicity give. In bearing, he is animated and thoughtful, manly and refined. His firmness, while it does not amount to obstinacy,marks the clear-cut individuality and decision of his character. He has the guiding faculty and the power of containing himself. He takes a just measure both of himself and of other men. If the country will do this, his future is as secure as his past. If president, he would do the right thing at the right time, in the right way. His election will give us, not a "solid South" or a solid North, but a solid Union!

Since experience has taught us how essential it is that the representative of the women of America in the executive mansion should worthily represent all that is best and most elevated in our social life, a word in regard to the companion of Governor Hayes may not be out of taste. If any public man in our history has been more fortunate and happy in his home surroundings and family relations, we are not aware who he may be. If the voice of the people should decree the transplanting of the ideal home of this family from the capital of Ohio to the capital of the Republic, the pure and elevating influences radiating from such a home would pervade and purify the social life of the National city, if not of the land. A severer simplicity would mark the inner and the outer life of the president's household. Extravagance in dress and living, wastefulness in vain displays and in ambitious entertainments, would find no encouragement from the mistress of the Nation's mansion. The lessons of truth and piety, of purity and virtue, of charity and benevolence, of sincerity and self-forgetfulness, would be taught by example. A whole people could here find in illustration the sacredness of the family and the holiness of home.

A union of rare accomplishments, social and domestic, with beauty of features, manners, and character, may yet be found in a successor of Mrs. Madison.

A doctor of divinity and a doctor of laws, the president of the Ohio Wesleyan University, bears this weighty testimony, in a public address, to the correctness of what we have hereinbefore recorded:

"It is in no spirit of partisanship, nor with the slightest reference to merely political ends, but simply in illustration of our subject that we add, already there are hopeful signs of reformation in our National life. It is a sign of progress that the suspicion of sullied purity is beginning to be fatal to a public man. It is an omen of good when in a large and representative convention, with the names of many distinguished men before it, one is borne above them all on the tide of popular enthusiasm and with ringing peals of applause is presented to the American people, without effort of his own, as a candidate for the highest office in the Nation, not only because of his eminent ability, but largely because of the transparent purity of his character and his high, manly, moral worth."It is doubtless a cause of honest pride to the citizens of this town, irrespective of political creeds and preferences, that the man thus highly distinguished is a native of your classic city. By reason of its youth this university can not claim him as a son, but it regards with maternal pride his not less worthy companion, who, after graduation at one of the best female colleges in the State, indicated her rare good sense by passing through much of the college curriculum of our university here."If, by the decree of the people and the providence of God, this worthy pair, honored graduates of Ohio's higher schools of learning, shall be lifted to the highest position and power and influence in the Nation, we have reason to believe that they will illustrate the salutary influence of that cultured goodness of which we have spoken, and that the National capital and the entire National domain will enjoy a purer atmosphere."

"It is doubtless a cause of honest pride to the citizens of this town, irrespective of political creeds and preferences, that the man thus highly distinguished is a native of your classic city. By reason of its youth this university can not claim him as a son, but it regards with maternal pride his not less worthy companion, who, after graduation at one of the best female colleges in the State, indicated her rare good sense by passing through much of the college curriculum of our university here.

"If, by the decree of the people and the providence of God, this worthy pair, honored graduates of Ohio's higher schools of learning, shall be lifted to the highest position and power and influence in the Nation, we have reason to believe that they will illustrate the salutary influence of that cultured goodness of which we have spoken, and that the National capital and the entire National domain will enjoy a purer atmosphere."

Top

Speech ofGeneral R. B. Hayes,delivered atLebanon,Ohio,August 5, 1867.

Fellow-Citizens:

President Lincoln began his memorable address at the dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery with these words:

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new Nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."

This was Abraham Lincoln's opinion of what was accomplished and what was meant by the Declaration of Independence. His idea was that it gave birth to a Nation, and that it dedicated that Nation to equal rights.

Now, so far as the performance of duty in the present condition of our country is concerned, "this is the whole law and the prophets." The United States are not a confederacy of independent and sovereign States, bound together by a mere treaty or a compact, but the people of the United States constitute a Nation, having one flag, one history, "one country, one constitution, one destiny." Whoever seeks to divide this Nation into two sections—into a North and a South, or into four sections, according to the cardinal points of the compass, or into thirty or forty independent sovereignties—is opposed to the Nation, and the Nation's friends should be opposed to him.

Washington, in his Farewell Address, says:

"The unity of government, which constitutes you one people, is also now dear to you. It is justly so; for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquillity at home, your peace abroad; of your safety, of your prosperity, of that very liberty which you so highly prize.... The name of American, which belongs to you in your Nationalcapacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have, in a common cause, fought and triumphed together; the independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint counsels and joint efforts—of common dangers, sufferings, and successes."

The sentiment of Nationality is the sentiment of the Declaration of Independence; it is the sentiment of the fathers; it is the sentiment which carried us through the war of the Revolution, and through the war of the late Rebellion; and it is a sentiment which the people of the United States ought forever to cultivate and cherish.

The great idea to which the Nation, according to Mr. Lincoln, was dedicated by the fathers is expressed in the Declaration in these familiar phrases: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

An intelligent audience will not wish to hear discussion as to the import of these sentences. Their language is simple, their meaning plain, and their truth undoubted. The equality declared by the fathers was not an equality of beauty, of physical strength, or of intellect, but an equality of rights. Foolish attempts have been made by those who hate the principles of the fathers to destroy the great fundamental truth of the Declaration, by limiting the application of the phrase "all men" to the men of a single race.

But Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration leaves no room to doubt what he meant by these words. The gravest charge he made against the King of Great Britain in the original draft of the Declaration of Independence was the following:

"He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people, who never offended him, capturing and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare,the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain, determined to keep open market where MEN should be bought and sold."

In this sentence the word "men" is written by Jefferson in capital letters, showing with what emphasis he wished to declare that the King of Great Britain was making slaves of a people to whom belonged the rights of men.

Unfortunately for our country, that King, and others who "waged cruel war against human nature itself," had already succeeded in planting in the bosom of American society an element implacably hostile to human rights, and destined to become the enemy of the Union, whenever the American people, in their National capacity, should refuse assent to any measures which the holders of slaves should deem necessary or even important for the security or prosperity of their "peculiar institution."

I need not, upon this occasion, repeat what is now familiar history—how, by the invention of the cotton-gin, and the consequent enormous increase of the cotton crop, slave labor in the cotton States, and slave breeding in the Northern slave States, became so profitable that the slaveholders were able, for many years, largely to influence, if not control, every department of the National Government. The slave power became something more than a phrase—it was a definite, established, appalling fact. The Missouri controversy, South Carolina nullification, the Texas controversy, the adoption of the compromise measures of 1850, and the repeal of the Missouri compromise in 1854, were all occasions when the country was compelled to see the magnitude, the energy, the recklessness, and the arrogance of the slave power.

Precisely when the men who wielded that power determined to destroy the Union it is not now necessary to inquire. Threats of disunion were made in the first Congress that assembled under the constitution. Upon various pretexts they were repeated from time to time, and no one doubts that slavery was at the bottom of them. In 1833 General Jackson wrote to Rev. A. J. Crawford: "Take care of your nullifiers; you have them among you; let them meet with the indignant frown of every man who loves his country. The tariff, it is now known, was a mere pretext ... and disunion and a Southern Confederacy the real object. The next pretext will be the negro orslavery question." General Jackson was no doubt right as to the existence of a settled purpose to break up the Union, and to establish a Southern Confederacy, as long ago as 1832. But why was there such a purpose? On what ground did it stand?

Great political parties, whether sectional or otherwise, do not come by accident, nor are they the invention of political intrigue. A faction born of a clique may have some strength at one or two elections, but the wisest political wire-workers can not, by merely "taking thought," create a strong and permanent party. The result of the Philadelphia Convention last summer probably taught this truth to the authors of that movement. Great political movements always have some adequate cause.

Now, on what did the conspirators who plotted the destruction of the Union and the establishment of a Southern Confederacy rely? In the first place, they taught a false construction of the National constitution, which was miscalled State rights, the essential part of which was that "any State of the Union might secede from the Union whenever it liked." This doctrine was the instrument employed to destroy the unity of the Nation. The fact which gave strength and energy to those who employed this instrument was that in the southern half of the Union, society, business, property, religion, and law were all based on the proposition that over four millions of our countrymen, capable of civilization and religion, were, because of their race and color, "so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." The practice, founded upon this denial of the Declaration of Independence, protected by law and sanctioned by usage, was our great National transgression, and was the cause of our great National calamity.

In a country where discussion was free, sooner or later, parties were sure to be formed on the issues presented by the slaveholders. The supporters of the Union and of human rights would band together against the supporters of disunion and slavery. For many years after the struggle really began, the issues were not clearly defined, and neither party was able to occupy its true and final position, or to rally to its standard all who were in fact its friends. Old parties encumbered the ground. Men were slow to give up old associations and leave the discussion of obsolete, immaterial, or ephemeral issues.

At last the crisis came. In 1860, Mr. Lincoln, who was unfriendly to slavery and faithful to the Union, was elected president. The party of disunion and slavery were prepared for this event. Their action was prompt, decisive, and defiant. They proceeded to organize southern conventions, and formally to withdraw from the Union, and undertook to establish a new government and a new Nation on the soil of the United States.

Prior to 1860 the party calling itself Democratic had gathered under one name and one organization almost the whole of the secessionists of the South and a large body of the people of the North, many of whom had no sympathy either with secession or slavery. In 1860 the secessionists were so arrogant in their demands that the great body of the Democratic party in the North refused to yield to them, and supported Mr. Douglass in opposition both to Mr. Lincoln, and to the disunion and slavery candidate, Mr. Breckenridge. But it was well known that many leading Democrats who supported Mr. Douglass leaned strongly toward the southern Calhoun democracy, and that their sympathies were with slave-holding or at least with slaveholders.

The evidence of this is abundantly furnished in their recorded opinions. The most distinguished and perhaps the most influential Democrat now actively engaged in politics in Ohio, who presided over and addressed the last Democratic State Convention held at Columbus, Mr. Pendleton, delivered a speech in the House of Representatives on the 18th of January, 1861.

You will recollect how far the slaveholders had progressed in their great rebellion at that date. Mr. Pendleton himself says:

"To-day, sir, four States of this Union have, so far as their power extends, seceded from it. Four States, as far as they are able, have annulled the grants of power made to the Federal Government; they have resumed the powers delegated by the Constitution; they have canceled, so far as they could, every limitation upon the full exercise of all their sovereign rights. They do not claim our protection; they ask no benefit from our laws; they seek none of the advantages of the confederation. On the other hand, they renounce their allegiance; they repudiate our authority over them, and they assert that they have assumed—some of them that they have resumed—their position among the family of sovereignties, among the nations of the earth.... To-day, even while I am speaking, Georgia is voting upon this very question. And unless the signs of the timesvery much deceive us, within three weeks other States will be added to the number."

Mr. Pendleton might also have said that prior to that date, forts, arsenals, dock-yards, mints, and other places and property belonging to the United States, had been seized by organized and armed bodies of rebels; the collection of debts due in the South to Northern creditors had been stopped; South Carolina had declared that any attempt to reinforce Fort Sumter by the United States would be regarded by that State as an act of hostility against her and equivalent to a declaration of war; the Star of the West, an unarmed vessel, with the American flag floating at her mast-head, carrying provisions to the famishing garrison of Fort Sumter, had been fired on and driven from Charleston harbor; in short, at that date the rebels were engaged in actual war against the Nation, and the only reason why blood had not been shed was that the National government had failed in its duty to defend the Nation's property, and to maintain the sacredness of the National flag.

At that crisis Mr. Pendleton delivered and sent forth a speech bearing this significant motto: "But, sir, armies, money, blood, can not maintain this Union—justice, reason, peace, may." The speech was according to its motto. Accustomed as he is to speak cautiously, and in a scholarly and moderate way, we can not be mistaken as to his drift. On the authority of the National government he says:

"Now, sir, what force of arms can compel a State to do that which she has agreed to do? What force of arms can compel a State to refrain from doing that which her State government, supported by the sentiment of her people, is determined to persist in doing.... Sir, the whole scheme of coercion is impracticable. It is contrary to the genius and spirit of the Constitution."

These extracts sufficiently and fairly show Mr. Pendleton's notion of the duty and authority of the Nation in that great crisis. He held the States rights doctrines of Calhoun and Breckenridge, and not the National principles of Washington and Jackson.

As to the treatment of rebels already in arms, and as to the "demands" of the slave power, consider this advice which he gave to Congress and the people:

"If these Southern States can not be conciliated; if you, gentlemen, can not find it in your hearts to grant their demands; if they must leave the family mansion, I would signalize their departure by tokens of love; I would bid them farewell so tenderly that they would be forever touched by the recollection of it; and if in the vicissitudes of their separate existence they should desire to come together with us again in one common government, there should be no pride to be humiliated, there should be no wound inflicted by my hand to be healed. They should come and be welcome to the places they now occupy."

Thus we see there were those who, with honeyed phrases and soft words, would have looked smilingly on, while the great Republic—the pride of her children, the hope of the ages—built by the fathers at such an expense of suffering, of treasure, and of blood, was stricken by traitors' hands from the roll of living Nations, and while an armed oligarchy should establish in its stead a nation founded on a denial of human rights, and under whose sway south of the Potomac more than half of the territory of the old Thirteen Colonies—soil once fertilized by the best blood of the Revolution—should, for generations to come, continue to be tilled by the unrequited toil of slaves.

The best known, the boldest, and perhaps the ablest leader of the peace Democracy in the North is Mr. Vallandigham. He was chairman of the committee on resolutions in the last Democratic State Convention in Ohio, and reported the present State platform of his party. He, probably, still enjoys in a greater degree than any other public man the affection and confidence of the positive men of the Ohio Democracy, who, from beginning to end, opposed the war. On the 20th of February, 1861, he delivered a speech in the House of Representatives in support of certain amendments which he proposed to the Constitution of the United States. In an appendix to that speech, he published an extract from a card in the CincinnatiEnquirerof November 10, 1860, from which I quote:

"And now let me add that I did say, ... in a public speech at the Cooper Institute, on the 2d of November, 1860, that if any one or more of the States of this Union should at any time secede, for reasons of the sufficiency and justice of which, before God and the great tribunal of history, they alone may judge, much as I should deplore it, I never would, as a representative in Congress of the United States, vote one dollar of money whereby one drop of American blood should be shed in a civil war.... And I now deliberately repeat and reaffirm it, resolved, though I stand alone, though all others yield and fall away, to make it good to the last moment of my public life." Here was another strong man of large influence solemnly pledged to allow the Union to be broken up and destroyed, in case the rebel conspirators chose that alternative, rather than forgo their demands in favor of oppression and against human rights.

On the 23d of January, 1861, the Democratic party held a State Convention at Columbus. Remember, at that date the air was thick with threats of war from the South. The rebels were organizing and drilling; arms robbed from the National arsenals were in their hands; and the question upon all minds was whether the Republic should perish without having a single blow struck in her defense, or whether the people of the loyal North should rise as one man, prepared to wage war until treason and, if need be, slavery went down together. On this question, that convention was bound to speak. Silence was impossible. There were present war Democrats and peace Democrats, followers of Jackson, and followers of Calhoun. There was a determined and gallant struggle on the part of the war Democrats, but the superior numbers, or more probably the superior tactics and strategy, of the peace men triumphed.

The present candidate of the Democratic party for Governor of Ohio, Judge Thurman, a gentleman of character and ability, a distinguished lawyer and judge and a politician of long experience, succeeded in passing through the convention this resolution:

"Resolved, That the two hundred thousand Democrats of Ohio send to the people of the United States, both North and South, greeting; and when the people of the North shall have fulfilled their duties to the constitution and to the South, then, and not until then, will it be proper for them to take into consideration the question of the right and propriety of coercion."

In support of this famous resolution, Judge Thurman addressed the convention, and, among other things, is reported to have said:

"A man is deficient in understanding who thinks the cause of disunion is that the South apprehended any overt act of oppression in Lincoln's administration. It is the spirit of the late presidential contest that alarms the South.... It would try the ethics of any man to deny that some of the Southern States have no cause for revolution.... Then you must be sure you are able to coerce before you begin the work. The South are a brave people. The Southern States can not be held by force. The blacks won't fight for the invaders.... The Hungarians had less cause of complaint against Austria than the South had against the North."

When we reflect on what the rebels had done and what they were doing when this resolution was passed, it seems incredible that sane men, having a spark of patriotism, could for one moment have tolerated its sentiments. The rebels had already deprived the United States of its jurisdiction and property in about one-fourth of its inhabited territory, and were rapidly extending their insurrection so as to include within the rebel lines all of the slave States. The lives and property of Union citizens in the insurgent States were at the mercy of traitors, and the National flag was everywhere torn down, and shameful indignities and outrages heaped upon all who honored it.

This resolution speaks of fulfilling the duties of the people of the North to the South. The first and highest duty of the people of the North to themselves, to the South, to their country, and to God, was to crush the rebellion. All speeches and resolutions against either the right or the propriety of coercion merely gave encouragement, "moral aid and comfort," more important than powder and ball, to the enemies of the Nation.

Do I state too strongly the mischievous, the fatal tendency of these proceedings? The resolution adopted by the peace Democracy of Ohio is addressed in terms "to the people of all the States, North and South," and in fact was sent, I am informed, to the governors of all the States.

In the South, Union men were laboring by every means in their power to prevent secession. Their most cogent argument was that the National government would defend itself by war against rebellion. To this, the rebel reply was, "There will be no war. Secession will be peaceable. The peace party of the North will prevent coercion. If there is fighting, it will be as Ex-President Pierce writes to Jefferson Davis, 'The fighting willnot be along Mason and Dixon's line merely. It will be within our own borders, in our own streets.'"

For the evidence of the correctness of this opinion, the rebels could point confidently to such speeches and resolutions as those we are now considering. Governor Orr, of South Carolina, in a recent speech at the Charleston Board of Trade banquet, is reported to have said:

"I know there is an apprehension widespread in the North and West that, after the reconstruction of the Southern States, we shall fall into the arms of our old allies and associates, the old Democratic party. I say to you, gentlemen, however, that I would give no such pledges. We have accounts to settle with that party, gentlemen, before I, at least, will consent to affiliate with it. Many of you will remember that, when the war first commenced, great hopes and expectations were held out by our friends in the North and West that there would be no war, and that if it commenced, it would be North of Mason and Dixon's line, and not in the South."

Without pausing to inquire how much strength accrued to the rebellion in its earlier stages by the encouragement it received from sympathizers in the North, let us pass on to the spring and summer of 1861, after the bombardment and surrender of Fort Sumter, and when the armies of the Union and of the rebellion were facing each other upon a line of operations extending from the Potomac to the Rio Grande. The most superficial observer could not fail to discover these facts.

In the South, where slavery was strongest, the rebellion was strongest. Where there were few slaveholders, there were few rebels. South Carolina and Mississippi, having the largest number of slaves in proportion to population, were almost unanimous for rebellion. Western Virginia, Eastern Kentucky, East Tennessee, had few slaves, and love of the Union and hatred of secession in those mountain regions was nearly universal.

The counterpart of this was found everywhere in the North. In counties and districts where the majority of the people had been accustomed to defend or excuse the practice of slave-holding and the aggressions of the slaveholders, there was much sympathy with the rebellion and strong opposition to the war. Men who abused and hated negroes did not usually hate rebels.On the other hand, anti-slavery counties and districts were quite sure to be Union to the core.

In Ohio, as in other free States, the Democratic party could not be led off in a body after the peace Democracy. Brough, Tod, Matthews, Dorsey, Steedman, and a host of Democrats of the Jackson school, nobly kept the faith. Lytle, McCook, Webster, and gallant spirits like them, from every county and neighborhood of our State, sealed their devotion to the Union and to true Democracy with their life's blood.

They believed, with Douglass, in the last letter he ever wrote, that "it was not a party question, nor a question involving partisan policy; it was a question of government or no government, country or no country, and hence it became the imperative duty of every Union man, every friend of constitutional liberty, to rally to the support of our common country, its government and flag, as the only means of checking the progress of revolution, and of preserving the Union of the States."

They believed the words of Douglass' last speech: "This is no time for a detail of causes. The conspiracy is now known. Armies have been raised, war is levied to accomplish it. There are only two sides to the question. Every man must be for the United States or against it. There can be no neutrals in this war—only patriots and traitors."

As the war progressed, the great political parties of the country underwent important changes, both of organization and policy. In the North, the Republican party, the great body of the American or Union party of 1860, and the war Democracy formed the Union party. The Democracy of the South, for the most part, became rebels, and in the North those who did not unite with the Union party generally passed under the control and leadership of the peace Democracy.

At the beginning of the war, the creed of the Union party consisted of one idea—it labored for one object—the restoration of the Union. Slavery, the rights of man, the principles of the Declaration of Independence, were for the time lost sight of in the struggle for the Nation's life. As late as August, 1862, President Lincoln wrote to Mr. Greeley: "My paramount object is to save the Union, and not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it;and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that."

Slowly, gradually, after repeated disasters and disappointments, the eyes of the Union leaders were opened to the fact that slavery and rebellion were convertible terms; that the Confederacy, according to its Vice-President, Alexander H. Stephens, was founded upon "exactly the opposite idea" from that of Jefferson and the fathers. "Its foundations," said he, "are laid, its corner-stone rests upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition." Mr. Lincoln and the Union party, struggling faithfully onward, finally reached the solid ground that the American government was founded on the broad principles of right, justice, and humanity, and that, for this Nation, "Union and liberty" were indeed "one and inseparable."

The leaders of the peace Democracy were for a time overwhelmed by the popular uprising which followed the attack on Fort Sumter, and were not able during the year 1861 or the early part of 1862 to mark out definitely the course to be pursued. But, like the Union party, they gradually approached the position they were ultimately to occupy.

Their success in the autumn elections of 1862 encouraged them to enter upon the pathway in which they have plodded along consistently if not prosperously ever since. Opposition to the war measures of Mr. Lincoln's administration, and in particular to every measure tending to the enfranchisement and elevation of the African race, became their settled policy. By this policy they were placed in harmony with their former associates, the rebels of the South. The rebels were fighting to destroy the Union. The peace party were opposing the only measures which could save it. The rebels were fighting for slavery. The peace party were laboring in their way to keep alive and inflame the prejudice against race and color, on which slavery was based.

The abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, the repeal of the fugitive slave law, Mr. Lincoln's proclamation of emancipation, in a word, every step of the Union party toward enfranchisement of the colored people, the peace Democracy opposed. Every war measure, every means adopted to strengthen the cause of the Union and weaken the rebellion, met with thethe same opposition. Whatever Mr. Lincoln or Congress did to get money, to get men, or to obtain the moral support of the country and the world—tax laws, tariff laws, greenbacks, government bonds, army bills, drafts, blockades, proclamations—met the indiscriminate and bitter assaults of these men. The enlistment of colored soldiers, a measure by which between one and two hundred thousand able-bodied men were transferred from the service of the rebels in corn-fields to the Union service in battle-fields—how Mr. Lincoln and the Union party were vilified for that wise and necessary measure! But worse, infinitely worse, than mere opposition to war measures, were their efforts to impair the confidence of the people, to diminish the moral power of the government, to give hope and earnestness to the enemies of the Union, by showing that the administration was to blame for the war, that it was unnecessary, unjust, and that it had been perverted from its original object, and that it could not but fail.

I need not go beyond the record of leaders of the Ohio Democracy of to-day for proof what I am saying. Mr. Pendleton, usually so gentlemanly and prudent in speech, lost his balance after the victories of the peace Democracy in 1862. At the Democratic jubilee in Butler county over the elections, Mr. Pendleton is reported as saying:

"I came up to see if there were any Butternuts in Butler county. I came to see if there were any Copperheads in Butler county, as my friends of the CincinnatiGazetteandCommercialare fond of terming the Democracy of the country. I came up to tell you that there are a good many of that stripe of animals in old Hamilton. I have traveled about the country lately, and I assure you there is a large crop of Butternuts everywhere: not only that, but the quality and character of the nut is quite as good as the quantity."

Of course, Mr. Pendleton was applauded by his audience; and he returned to his place in the House of Representatives at Washington prepared to give expression to his views with the same plainness and boldness which marked the utterances of his colleague, Mr. Vallandigham.

On the 31st of January, 1863, he made an elaborate speech against the enlistment of negroes into the service of the United States, in which he said:

"I should be false to you, my fellow-representatives, if I did not tell you that there is an impression, growing with great rapidity, upon the minds of the people of the Northwest that they have been deliberately deceived into this war—that their patriotism and their love of country have been engaged to call them into the army, under the pretense that the war was to be for the Union and the Constitution, when, in fact, it was to be an armed crusade for the abolition of slavery. I tell you, sir, that unless this impression is speedily arrested it will become universal; it will ripen into conviction, and then it will be beyond your power to get from their broad plains another man, or from their almost exhausted coffers another dollar."

In the same speech he says:

"I said two years ago, on this floor, that armies, money, war can not restore this Union; justice, reason, peace, may. I believed it then; I have believed it at every moment since; I believe it now. No event of the past two years has for a moment shaken my faith. Peace is the first step to Union. Peace is Union. Peace unbroken would have preserved it; peace restored will, I hope, in some time reconstruct it. The only bonds which can hold these States in confederation, the only ties which can make us one people, are the soft and silken cords of affection and interest. These are woven in peace, not war; in conciliation, not coercion; in deeds of kindness and acts of friendly sympathy, not in deeds of violence and blood. The people of the Northwest were carried away by the excitement of April and May. They believed war would restore the Union. They trusted to the assurances of the president and his cabinet, and of Congress, that it should be carried on for that purpose alone. They trusted that it would be carried on under the Constitution. They were patriotic and confiding. They sent their sons, and brothers, and husbands to the army, and poured out their treasures at the feet of the administration. They feel that the war has been perverted from this end; that the Constitution has been disregarded; that abolition and arbitrary power, not Union and constitutional liberty, are the governing ideas of the administration. They are in no temper to be trifled with. They think they have been deceived. There is danger of revolution. They are longing for peace."

Need I pause to inquire who would receive encouragement, orwhose spirits would be depressed, on reading these remarkable sentences? Imagine them read by the rebel camp-fires, or at the fire-sides of the rebel people. What hope, what exultation we should behold in the faces of those who heard them! On the other hand, at Union camp-fires, or by the loyal fire-sides of the North, what sorrow, what mortification, what depression such statements would surely carry wherever they were heard and believed!

The course of the peace Democracy of Ohio during the memorable contest of 1863, between Brough and Vallandigham, is too well known to require attention now. Judge Thurman was one of the committee who constructed the platform of the convention which nominated Mr. Vallandigham, and was the ablest member of the State Central Committee which had charge of the canvass in his behalf during his exile.

The key-note to that canvass was given by Mr. Vallandigham himself in a letter written from Canada, July 15, 1863. That letter contained the following:

"If this civil war is to terminate only by the subjugation or submission of the South to force and arms, the infant of to-day will not live to see the end of it. No, in another way only can it be brought to a close. Traveling a thousand miles and more, through nearly half of the Confederate States, and sojourning for a time at widely different points, I met not one man, woman, or child, who was not resolved to perish rather than yield to the pressure of arms, even in the most desperate extremity. And whatever may and must be the varying fortune of the war, in all which I recognize the hand of Providence pointing visibly to the ultimate issue of this great trial of the States and people of America, they are better prepared now every way to make good their inexorable purpose than at any period since the beginning of the struggle. These may be unwelcome truths; but they are addressed only to candid and honest men."

The assumption of the certain success of the rebellion, and that the war for the Union would assuredly fail, was the strong point of these gentlemen in favor of the election of Vallandigham and the defeat of Brough. Fortunately, the patriotic people saw the situation from another standpoint, and under the influence of different feelings and different sympathies.

In the elections of 1863, the peace Democracy of Ohio andother States sustained defeats which have no parallel in our political history. But, notwithstanding their reverses, the year 1864, the year of the presidential election, found the Ohio leaders possibly sadder, but certainly not wiser nor more patriotic than before.

At the National Convention at Chicago, in August, Mr. Pendleton was nominated for vice-president, Judge Thurman was a delegate of the State of Ohio at large, and Mr. Vallandigham as a district delegate, and as a member of the committee on platform, was the author of the following resolution adopted by the convention:

"Resolved, That this convention does explicitly declare, as the sense of the American people, that, after four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war, during which, under pretense of military necessity, or war power higher than the constitution, the constitution has been disregarded in every part, and public liberty and private rights have been alike trodden down, and the material prosperity of the country essentially impaired, justice, humanity, liberty, and the public welfare demand that immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities, with a view to an ultimate convention of all the States, or other peaceable means, to the end that at the earliest practicable moment peace may be restored on the basis of the Federal Union of the States."

This resolution does not seem to require explanation or comment. But as General McClellan's letter accepting the nomination for president did not square well with this part of the party platform, Mr. Vallandigham, in a speech at Sidney, Ohio, September 24, 1864, explained it at some length. In that speech, he said:

"I am speaking now of the fact that this convention pronounced this war a failure, and giving you the reasons why it is a failure.... What has been gained by this campaign? More lives have been lost, more hard fighting has been done, more courage has been exhibited by the Federal as well as the Southern soldiers than in any former campaign, and what has been accomplished? General Grant is nearer to Richmond, occupying a territory of perhaps eleven miles, which was not in the possession of the United States when the campaign began, from City Point to the suburbs of Petersburg. To secure thathe gave up all the country from Manassas down to Richmond and a large part of the valley.... How about the Southern campaign? General Sherman, through the courage of the best disciplined, best organized, and most powerful army that has been seen since the campaigns of the first Napoleon, has taken Atlanta—a town somewhat larger than Sidney. It has cost him sixty thousand men and four or five months of the most terrible campaign ever waged on this continent or any other, or any other part of the globe. He occupies from two to five miles on each side of a railroad of one hundred and thirty-eight miles in length. He has penetrated that far into Georgia. What has been surrendered to obtain that? All of Texas, nearly all of Louisiana, nearly all of Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, and a part of Tennessee, which were in possession of the Federals on the first of May. Kentucky has been opened to continual incursions of the Confederate armies. All this has been surrendered in order to gain this barren strip of country on the line of the railroad. The war, then, has been properly pronounced a failure in a military point of view. The convention meant that it has failed to restore the Union, and there is not a Republican in the land who does not know it."

In the Sidney speech, Mr. Vallandigham says, also:

"What will you have now? Four years more of war? What guaranties of success have you? Do you want two million more of men to go forth to this war as the Crusaders went to the sepulcher at Jerusalem? The beginning of this administration found us with very little debt, comparatively no taxation, and peace and happiness among the States; and now look at the scene! Four more years of war, do you tell me, when the first four, with every advantage, has failed? Now, too, that the hearts of one-half of the people are turned away from war, and intent upon the arts of peace? What will be the consequence? Four thousand millions more of debt, five hundred millions more of taxation, more conscriptions, more calls for five hundred thousand men, more sacrifices for the next four years. All this is what Abraham Lincoln demands of you in order that the South may be compelled not to return to the Union, but to abandon slavery."

All this logic, this eloquence, this taxing the imagination to portray the horrors of war, failed to deceive the people; Lincolnwas re-elected; the war went on, and a few short months witnessed the end of the armed rebellion, and the triumph of liberty and of Union.

Now came the work of reconstruction. The leaders of the Peace Democracy, who had failed in every measure, in every plan, in every opinion, and in every prediction relating to the war, were promptly on hand, and with unblushing cheek were prepared to take exclusive charge of the whole business of reorganization and reconstruction. They had a plan all prepared—a plan easily understood, easily executed, and which they averred would be satisfactory to all parties. Their plan was in perfect harmony with the conduct and history of its authors and friends during the war. They had been in very close sympathy with the men engaged in the rebellion, while their sympathy for loyal white people at the South was not strong, and they were bitterly hostile to loyal colored people both North and South. Their plan was consistent with all this.

According to it, the rebels were to be treated in the same manner as if they had remained loyal. All laws, State and National, all orders and regulations of the military, naval, and other departments of the government, creating disabilities on account of participation in the rebellion, were to be repealed, revoked, or abolished. The rebellious States were to be represented in Congress by the rebels without hindrance from any test oath. All appointments in the army, in the navy, and in the civil service, were to be made from men who were rebels, on the same terms as from men who were loyal. The people and governments in the rebellious States were to be subjected to no other interference or control from the military or other departments of the general government than exists in the States which remained loyal. Loyal white men and loyal colored men were to be protected alone in those States by State laws, executed by State authorities, as if they were in the loyal States.

There were to be no amendments to the constitution, not even an amendment abolishing slavery. In short, the great rebellion was to be ignored or forgotten, or, in the words of one of their orators, "to be generously forgiven." The war, whose burdens, cost, and carnage they had been so fond of exaggerating, suddenly sank into what the Rev. Petroleum V. Nasby calls "the late unpleasantness," for which nobody but the abolitionistswere to blame. Under this plan the States could soon re-establish slavery where it had been disturbed by the war. Jefferson Davis, Toombs, Slidell, and Mason could be re-elected to their old places in the Senate of the United States; Lee could be re-appointed in the army, and Semmes and Maury could be restored to the navy. Of course this plan of the Peace Democracy was acceptable to the rebels of the South.

But the loyal people, who under the name of the Union party fought successfully through the war of the rebellion, objected to this plan as wrong in principle, wrong in its details, and fatally wrong as an example for the future. It treats treason as no crime and loyalty as no virtue; it contains no guarantees, irreversible or otherwise, against another rebellion by the same parties and on the same grounds. It restores to political honor and power in the government of the Nation men who have spent the best part of their lives in plotting the overthrow of that government, and who for more than four years levied public war against the United States; it allows Union men in the South, who have risked all—and many of whom have lost all but life in upholding the Union cause—to be excluded from every office, State and National, and in many instances to be banished from the States they so faithfully laboured to save; it abandons the four millions of colored people to such treatment as the ruffian class of the South, educated in the barbarism of slavery and the atrocities of the rebellion, may choose to give them; it leaves the obligations of the Nation to her creditors and to the maimed soldiers and to the widows and orphans of the war, to be fulfilled by men who hate the cause in which those obligations were incurred; it claims to be a plan which restores the Union without requiring conditions; but, in conceding to the conquered rebels the repeal of laws important to the Nation's welfare, it grants conditions which they demand, while it denies to the loyal victors conditions which they deem of priceless value.

In the meantime, President Johnson having declared that "the rebellion, in its revolutionary progress, had deprived the people of the rebel States of all civil government," proceeded by military power to set up provisional State governments in those States, and to require them to declare void all ordinances of secession, to repudiate the rebel debt, and to adopt the thirteenth amendment of the constitution, proposed by the Union party,abolishing slavery throughout the United States. The Peace Democracy opposed all conditions, and, instinctively unsound upon human rights, opposed the amendment abolishing slavery. The elections of 1865 settled that question against them, and deprived them of New Jersey, the last free State which adhered to their fallen fortunes.

At the session of Congress of 1865-66, the president, finding that his co-called State governments in the rebel States—created by military power alone and without the sanction of the legislative power of the government—had accepted his conditions; insisted that those States were fully restored to their former proper relations with the general government, and that they were again entitled to representation in the same manner with the loyal States. This plan accorded with the wishes of all unrepentant rebels, and as a matter of course received the support of their allies of the Peace Democracy.

The Union party, at the sacrifice of all of the power and patronage of the administration they had elected, firmly opposed and finally defeated this project. They required, before the complete restoration of the rebel States, that the fourteenth amendment of the constitution should be adopted, which was framed to secure civil rights to the colored people, equal representation between the free States and the former slave States, the disqualification for office of leading rebels, the payment of the loyal obligations to creditors, to maimed soldiers, and to widows and orphans, and the repudiation of the rebel debt, and of claims to payment for slaves. On the adoption of this amendment turned the elections of 1866. After the amplest debates before the people the Union party carried the country in favor of the amendment, electing more than three-fourths of the members of the House of Representatives. They also secured the adoption of the amendment in twenty-one out of the twenty-four States now represented, which have acted upon it by an average vote in the State legislature of more than four to one.

In striking contrast with this was the action of the rebel States. Tennessee alone ratified the amendment. The other ten promptly and defiantly rejected it by an average majority in their State legislatures of more than fifty to one. When, therefore, the Thirty-ninth Congress met in the session of 1866-67they found the work of reconstruction in those ten States still unaccomplished.

Now, in what condition were those ten rebel States? In the first place all political power in those States was in the hands of rebels, and for the most part of leading and unrepentant rebels. Their governors, their members of legislature, their judges, their county and city officers, and their members of Congress, with rare exceptions, were rebels. Such was their political condition.

What was their condition with respect to the preservation of order, the suppression of crime, and the redress of private grievances? After the suppression of the rebellion the next plain duty of the National government was to see that the lives, liberty, and property of all classes of citizens were secure, and especially to see that the loyal white and colored citizens who resided or might sojourn in those States did not suffer injustice, oppression, or outrage because of their loyalty. Loyal men, without distinction of race or color, were clearly entitled to the full measure of protection usually found in civilized countries, if in the nature of things it was possible for the Nation to furnish it.

Inquiring as to the condition of things in the South, I waive the uniform current of information derived from the press and other unofficial sources from all parts of the South, and rely exclusively on the official reports of army officers like Grant, Thomas, Sheridan, and Howard—officers of clear heads, of strong sense, and of spotless integrity, whose business it is to know the facts, and who all united in warning the Nation that Union men, either white or colored, were not safe in the South.

General Grant says that the class at the South who "will acknowledge no law but force" is sufficiently formidable to justify the military occupation of that territory.

General Sheridan, in an official report, says the "trial of a white man for the murder of a freedman in Texas would be a farce; and, in making this statement, I make it because truth compels me, and for no other reason.... Over the killing of many freedmen nothing is done." General Sheridan cites cases in which our National soldiers wearing the uniform of the Republic have been deliberately shot "without provocation" by citizens, and the grand jury refused to find a bill against themurderers. Even in Virginia, General Schofield was compelled to resort to a military tribunal because "a gentleman" who shot a negro dead in cold blood "was instantly acquitted by one of the civil courts."

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