The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes

by J. Q. Howard

In Ohio the leaders of the Peace Democracy intend to carry on one more campaign on the old and rotten platform of prejudice against colored people. They seek in this way to divert attention from the record they made during the war of the rebellion. But the great facts of our recent history are against them. The principles of the fathers, reason, religion, and the spirit of the age are against them.

The plain and monstrous inconsistency and injustice of excluding one-seventh of our population from all participation in a government founded on the consent of the governed in this land of free discussion is simply impossible. No such absurdity and wrong can be permanent. Impartial suffrage will carry the day. No low prejudice will long be able to induce American citizens to deny to a weak people their best means of self-protection for the unmanly reason that they are weak. Chief Justice Chase expressed the true sentiment when he said "the American Nation can not afford to do the smallest injustice to the humblest and feeblest of her children."

Much has been said of the antagonism which exists between the different races of men. But difference of religion, difference of nationality, difference of language, and difference of rank and privileges are quite as fruitful causes of antagonism and war as difference of race. The bitter strifes between Christians and Jews, between Catholics and Protestants, between Englishmen and Irishmen, between aristocracy and the masses are only too familiar. What causes increase and aggravate these antagonisms, and what are the measures which diminish and prevent them, ought to be equally familiar. Under the partial and unjust laws of the Nations of the Old World men of one nationality were allowed to oppress those of another; men of one faith had rights which were denied to men of a different faith; men of one rank or caste enjoyed special privileges which were not granted to men of another. Under these systems peace was impossible and strife perpetual. But under just and equal laws in the United States, Jews, Protestants, and Catholics, Englishmen and Irishmen, the former aristocrat and the masses of the people, dwell and mingle harmoniously together. The uniform lesson of history is that unjust and partial laws increase and create antagonism, while justice and equality are the sure foundation of prosperity and peace.

Impartial suffrage secures also popular education. Nothing has given the careful observer of events in the South more gratification than the progress which is there going on in the establishment of schools. The colored people, who as slaves were debarred from education, regard the right to learn as one of the highest privileges of freemen. The ballot gives them the power to secure that privilege. All parties and all public men in the South agree that, if colored men vote, ample provision must be made in the reorganization of every State for free schools. The ignorance of the masses, whites as well as blacks, is one of the most discouraging features of Southern society. If Congressional reconstruction succeeds, there will be free schools for all. The colored people will see that their children attend them. We need indulge in no fears that the white people will be left behind. Impartial suffrage, then, means popular intelligence; it means progress; it means loyalty; it means harmony between the North and the South, and between the whites and the colored people.

The Union party believes that the general welfare requires that measures should be adopted which will work great changes in the South. Our adversaries are accustomed to talk of the rebellion as an affair which began when the rebels attacked Fort Sumter in 1861, and which ended when Lee surrendered to Grant in 1865. It is true that the attempt by force of arms to destroy the United States began and ended during the administration of Mr. Lincoln. But the causes, the principles, and the motives which produced the rebellion are of an older date than the generation which suffered from the fruit they bore, and their influence and power are likely to last long after that generation passes away. Ever since armed rebellion failed, a large party in the South have struggled to make participation in the rebellion honorable and loyalty to the Union dishonorable. The lost cause with them is the honored cause. In society, in business, and in politics, devotion to treason is the test of merit, the passport to preferment. They wish to return to the old state of things—an oligarchy of race and the sovereignty of States.

To defeat this purpose, to secure the rights of man, and to perpetuate the National Union, are the objects of the Congressional plan of reconstruction. That plan has the hearty support of the great generals (so far as their opinions are known)—of Grant, of Thomas, of Sheridan, of Howard—who led the armies of the Union which conquered the rebellion. The statesmen most trusted by Mr. Lincoln and by the loyal people of the country during the war also support it. The Supreme Court of the United States, upon formal application and after solemn argument, refuse to interfere with its execution. The loyal press of the country, which did so much in the time of need to uphold the patriot cause, without exception, are in favor of the plan.

In the South, as we have seen, the lessons of the war and the events occurring since the war have made converts of thousands of the bravest and of the ablest of those who opposed the National cause. General Longstreet, a soldier second to no living corps commander of the rebel army, calls it "a peace offering," and advises the South in good faith to organize under it. Unrepentant rebels and unconverted Peace Democrats oppose it, just as they opposed the measures which destroyed slavery and saved the nation.

Opposition to whatever the Nation approves seems to be the policy of the representative men of the Peace Democracy. Defeat and failure comprise their whole political history. In laboring to overthrow reconstruction they are probably destined to further defeat and further failure. I know not how it may be in other States, but if I am not greatly mistaken as to the mind of the loyal people of Ohio, they mean to trust power in the hands of no man who, during the awful struggle for the Nation's life, proved unfaithful to the cause of liberty and of Union. They will continue to exclude from the administration of the government those who prominently opposed the war, until every question arising out of the rebellion relating to the integrity of the Nation and to human rights shall have been firmly settled on the basis of impartial justice.

They mean that the State of Ohio, in this great progress, "whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men, to lift artificial weights from all shoulders, to clear the paths of laudable pursuits for all, to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life," shall tread no step backward.

Penetrated and sustained by a conviction that in this contest the Union party of Ohio is doing battle for the right, I enter upon my part of the labors of the canvass with undoubting confidence that the goodness of the cause will supply the weakness of its advocates, and command in the result that triumphant success which I believe it deserves.