General Harrison responded to the sentiment, "Washington, the republican. The guarantee of the Constitution that the State shall have a republican form of government is only executed when the majority in the States are allowed to vote and have their ballots counted."
His speech attracted widespread attention at the time, and is considered one of his greatest. One expression therein—viz.: "I am a dead statesman, but a living and rejuvenated Republican"—went broadcast over the land and became one of the keynotes of the campaign.
Senator Harrison made the first reference of the evening to the name of "Chandler." It was talismanic; instantly a great wave of applause swept over the banquet-hall, and thenceforth the speaker carried his hearers with him.
The Senator spoke as follows:
Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Michigan Club—I feel that I am at some disadvantage here to-night by reason of the fact that I did not approach Detroit from the direction of Washington city. I am a dead statesman ["No! No!">[; but I am a living and rejuvenated Republican. I have the pleasure to-night, for the first time in my life, of addressing an audience of Michigan Republicans. Your invitations in the past have been frequent and urgent, but I have always felt that you knew how to do your own work, that we could trust the stalwart Republicans of this magnificent State to hold this key of the lakes against all comers. I am not here to-night in the expectation that I shall be able to help you by any suggestion, or even to kindle into greater earnestness that zeal and interest in Republican principles which your presence here to-night so well attests. I am here rather to be helped myself, to bathe my soul in this high atmosphere of patriotism and pure Republicanism [applause] by spending a little season in the presence of those who loved and honored and followed the Cromwell of the Republican party, Zachariah Chandler. [Tremendous applause.]
The sentiment which has been assigned me to-night—"Washington, the republican; a free and equal ballot the only guarantee of the Nation's security and perpetuity"—is one that was supported with a boldness of utterance, with a defiance that was unexcelled by any leader, by Zachariah Chandler always and everywhere. [Applause.] As Republicans we are fortunate, as has been suggested, in the fact that there is nothing in the history of our party, nothing in the principles that we advocate, to make it impossible for us to gather and to celebrate the birthday of any American who honored or defended his country. [Cheers.] We could even unite with our Democratic friends in celebrating the birthday of St. Jackson, because we enter into fellowship with him when we read his story of how by proclamation he put down nullification in South Carolina. [Applause.] We could meet with them to celebrate the birthday of Thomas Jefferson; because there is no note in the immortal Declaration or in the Constitution of our country that is out of harmony with Republicanism. [Cheers.] But our Democratic friends are under limitation. They have a short calendar of sense, and they must omit from the history of those whose names are on their calendar the best achievements of their lives. I do not know what the party is preserved for. Its history reminds me of the boulder in the stream of progress, impeding and resisting its onward flow and moving only by the force that it resists.
I want to read a very brief extract from a most notable paper—one that was to-day in the Senate at Washington read from the desk by its presiding officer—the "Farewell Address of Washington;" and while it is true that I cannot quote or find in the writings of Washington anything specifically referring to ballot-box fraud, to tissue ballots, to intimidation, to forged tally-sheets [cheers], for the reason that these things had not come in his day to disturb the administration of the Government, yet in the comprehensiveness of the words he uttered, like the comprehensive declarations of the Holy Book, we may find admonition and guidance, and even with reference to a condition of things that his pure mind could have never contemplated. Washington said: "Liberty is indeed little less than a name where the Government is too feeble to withstand the enterprises of factions, to confine each member of society within the limits prescribed by the law, and to maintain all in the secure and tranquil enjoyment of the rights of persons and property." If I had read that to a Democratic meeting they would have suspected that it was an extract from some Republican speech. [Laughter.] My countrymen, this Government is that which I love to think of as my country; for not acres, or railroads, or farm products, or bulk meats, or Wall Street, or all combined, are the country that I love. It is the institution, the form of government, the frame of civil society, for which that flag stands, and which we love to-day. [Applause.] It is what Mr. Lincoln so tersely, yet so felicitously, described as a government of the people, by the people, and for the people; a government of the people, because they instituted it—the Constitution reads, "We, the people, have ordained;" by the people, because it is in all its departments administered by them; for the people, because it states as its object of supreme attainment the happiness, security and peace of the people that dwell under it. [Applause.]
The bottom principle—sometimes it is called a corner-stone, sometimes the foundation of our structure of government—is the principle of control by the majority. It is more than the corner-stone or foundation. This structure is a monolith, one from foundation to apex, and that monolith stands for and is this principle of government by majorities, legally ascertained by constitutional methods. Everything else about our government is appendage, it is ornamentation. This is the monolithic column that was reared by Washington and his associates. For this the War of the Revolution was fought, for this and its more perfect security the Constitution was formed; for this the War of the Rebellion was fought; and when this principle perishes the structure which Washington and his compatriots reared is dishonored in the dust. The equality of the ballot demands that our apportionments in the States for legislative and congressional purposes shall be so adjusted that there shall be equality in the influence and the power of every elector, so that it shall not be true anywhere that one man counts two or one and a half and some other man counts only one half.
But some one says that is fundamental. All men accept this truth. Not quite. My countrymen, we are confronted by this condition of things in America to-day; a government by the majority, expressed by an equal and a free ballot, is not only threatened, but it has been overturned. Why is it to-day that we have legislation threatening the industries of this country? Why is it that the paralyzing shadow of free trade falls upon the manufactures and upon the homes of our laboring classes? It is because the laboring vote in the Southern States is suppressed. There would be no question about the security of these principles so long established by law, so eloquently set forth by my friend from Connecticut, but for the fact that the workingmen of the South have been deprived of their influence in choosing representatives at Washington.
But some timid soul is alarmed at the suggestion. He says we are endeavoring to rake over the coals of an extinct strife, to see if we may not find some ember in which there is yet sufficient vitality to rekindle the strife. Some man says you are actuated by unfriendly feelings toward the South, you want to fight the war over again, you are flaunting the bloody shirt. My countrymen, those epithets and that talk never have any terrors for me. [Applause.] I do not want to fight the war over again, and I am sure no Northern soldier—and there must be many here of those gallant Michigan regiments, some of which I had the pleasure during the war of seeing in action—not one of these that wishes to renew that strife or fight the war over again. Not one of this great assemblage of Republicans who listen to me to-night wishes ill to the South. If it were left to us here to-night the streams of her prosperity would be full. We would gladly hear of her reviving and stimulated industry. We gladly hear of increasing wealth in those States of the South. We wish them to share in the onward and upward movement of a great people. It is not a question of the war, it is not a question of the States between '61 and '65, at all, that I am talking about to-night. It is what they have been since '65. It is what they did in '84, when a President was to be chosen for this country.