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

by J. Q. Howard

"I give all of them this bold and unequivocal defiance, that there is no one act of my life, or one sentence ever uttered by me that I am not prepared to have investigated by the American people; and I wish them to stand up to the same rule, that I may see what is in their past record, and see how it tallies with what they say to the American people at the present time."

He proceeds to do this. He proceeds to examine the record of various gentlemen connected with the Union party. Now, I am not in the habit of giving challenges or accepting challenges, but I desire, for a few minutes, to ask the attention of this audience to the record of my friend, Judge Thurman. He under-takes to justify the course he took as a leader of the peace party of Ohio, by telling us what Mr. Lincoln said in 1848. Now, what is it that Mr. Lincoln said? He made a speech during the Mexican war as to the title which Texas had to certain lands in dispute between the State of Texas and Mexico, or rather between the United States and Mexico. He laid down the doctrine that a revolutionary government is entitled to own just as much of the property of the former government as it has succeeded in conquering; and he says, in the course of that speech, that it is the right of every people to revolutionize; that the right of revolution, in short, belongs to every people; that it was the right exercised by our forefathers in 1776. Now, that is all true—that is all correct; but how does my friend Judge Thurman find any justification for the rebellion in that? What is the right of revolution? It is the right to resist a government under which you live, if that government is guilty of intolerable oppression or injustice, but not otherwise. And that is the doctrine of Abraham Lincoln. Now, in order to make that a precedent for the rebellion, Judge Thurman is bound to take the position that, in the case of the rebel States, there had been acts of intolerable oppression and injustice done to that part of the country which went into rebellion. I know that the rebels, for the most part, did not put the rebellion upon that ground; but Judge Thurman now does it for them. He makes it out—or must make it out to sustain himself—that it was a case of revolution, growing out of the exercise of that right which our fathers exercised in 1776. Now, if Judge Thurman can show that there was justification for the rebellion, he has made out his case. If that rebellion was not justified by such circumstances—if there was no such intolerable injustice and oppression—he has failed in his precedent. He goes further, and says that Mr. Wade, Chief Justice Chase, Secretary Stanton, and General Butler all held sentiments before the war the same as the sentiments which he held then, and holds now, on the subject of the rights of the States. Suppose they did—suppose they belonged to the same party before the war—is that any defense of his conduct during the war? They saw fit, after the war had broken out, to rally to the side of their country, notwithstanding any notions or theories they might have held with regard to the rights of the States.

I do not stop now to discuss the correctness of Judge Thurman's opinions as to the course of these men prior to the war. It is enough for me to say that the question I make—the question which the people of Ohio make—is, What was your conduct after it was found that there was a conspiracy to break up the Union, after war was upon us, and armies were raised—what was your conduct then? That is the question before the people. And I ask of an intelligent audience, what was the duty of a good citizen after that war for the destruction of the government and the Union had begun? Need I ask any old Jackson Democrat what is his duty when the Union is at stake? In 1806, Aaron Burr proposed this matter to Andrew Jackson, of making a new confederacy in the Southwest. Jackson said:

"I hate the Dons, and I would like to see Mexico dismembered; but before I would see one State of this Union severed from the rest, I would die in the last ditch."

That was Jackson's Democracy. Douglass said:

"This is no time for delay. The existence of a conspiracy is now known; armies are raised to accomplish it. There can be but two sides to the question. A man must be either for the United States or against the United States. There can be no neutrals in this war—only patriots and traitors."

There is the Douglass doctrine. But I need not go back to Jackson and Douglass. I have the opinions of the very gentlemen who now lead the peace party on this subject. Let me read you a resolution, introduced and passed through a Democratic convention, in 1848, by Clement L. Vallandigham:

"Resolved, That whatever opinions might have been entertained of the origin, necessity or justice, by the Tories of the revolutionary war, by the Federalists of the late war with England, or by the Whigs and Abolitionists of the present war with Mexico, the fact of their country being engaged in such a war ought to have been sufficient for them and to have precluded debate on that subject till a successful termination of the war, and that in the meantime the patriot could have experienced no difficulty in recognizing his place on the side of his country, and could never have been induced to yield either physical or moral aid to the enemy."

I will quote also from Judge Thurman himself. In a speech lecturing one of his colleagues, who thought the Mexican war was unnecessary, he says:

"It is a strange way to support one's country, right or wrong, to declare after war has begun, when it exists both in law and in fact, that the war is aggressive, unholy, unrighteous, and damnable on the part of the government of that country, and on that government rests its responsibility and its wrongfulness. It is a strange way to support one's country right or wrong in a war, to tax one's imagination to the utmost to depict the disastrous consequences of the contest; to dwell on what it has already cost and what it will cost in future; to depict her troops prostrated by disease and dying with pestilence; in a word, to destroy, as far as possible, the moral force of the government in the struggle, and hold it up to its own people and the world as the aggressor that merits their condemnation. It was for this that I arraigned my colleague, and that I intend to arraign him. It was because his remarks, as far as they could have any influence, were evidently calculated to depress the spirits of his own countrymen, to lessen the moral force of his own government, and to inspire with confidence and hope the enemies of his country."