[From a Speech, January 14, 1880.]
I say, moreover, that the flowers that bloom over the garden-wall of party politics are the sweetest and most fragrant that bloom in the gardens of this world, and where we can fairly pluck them and enjoy their fragrance, it is manly and delightful to do so.
[Letter of Acceptance, July 10, 1880.]
Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither justice nor freedom can be permanently maintained. Its interests are intrusted to the States, and to the voluntary action of the people. Whatever help the Nation can justly afford should be generously given to aid the States in supporting common schools; but it would be unjust to our people, and dangerous to our institutions, to apply any portion of the revenues of the Nation or of the States to the support of sectarian schools. The separation of the Church and the State in everything relating to taxation should be absolute.
Our country cannot be independent unless its people, with their abundant natural resources, possess the requisite skill at any time to clothe, arm, and equip themselves for war, and in time of peace to produce all the necessary implements of labor. It was the manifest intention of the founders of the Government to provide for the common defence, not by standing armies alone, but by raising among the people a greater army of artisans, whose intelligence and skill should powerfully contribute to the safety and glory of the nation.
Over this vast horizon of interests, North and South, above all party prejudices and personal wrong-doing, above our battle hosts and our victorious cause, above all that we hoped for and won, or you hoped for and lost, is the grand onward movement of the Republic to perpetuate its glory, to save Liberty alive, to preserve exact and equal justice to all, to protect and foster all these priceless principles until they shall have crystallized into the form of enduring law and become inwrought into the life and habits of our People.
I look forward with joy and hope to the day when our brave people, one in heart, one in their aspirations for freedom and peace, shall see that the darkness through which we have travelled was but a part of that stern but beneficent discipline by which the great Disposer of events has been leading us on to a higher and nobler national life.