Speech of Governor Hayes, on his re-nomination, delivered June 23, 1869.
Twice since the organization of existing political parties the people of Ohio have trusted the law-making power of the State in the hands of the Democratic party. They first tried the experiment twelve years ago, and such were the results that ten years elapsed before they ventured upon a repetition of it. Two years ago, in a time of reaction, which was general throughout the country, the Democratic party, by a minority of the popular vote, having large advantages in the apportionment, obtained complete control of the legislature in both of its branches. They came into power, proclaiming that the past ought to be forgotten; that old issues and divisions should be laid aside; that new ideas and new measures required attention; and they were particularly emphatic and earnest in declaring that the enormous burdens of debt and taxation under which the people were struggling made retrenchment and economy the supreme duty of the hour.
These were their promises, and the manner in which they were kept is now before the people for their judgment. Disregarding the well-known and solemnly-expressed will of Ohio, they began the business of their first session by passing fruitless resolutions to rescind the ratification of the 14th amendment to the constitution of the United States.
They placed on the statute book visible admixture bills, to deprive citizens of the right of suffrage—a constitutional right long enjoyed and perfectly well settled by repeated decisions of the highest court having jurisdiction of the question.
They repealed the law allowing, after the usual residence, the disabled veterans of the Union army to vote in the township in which the National Soldiers' Home is situated; and enacted a law designed to deprive of the right of suffrage a large number of young men engaged in acquiring an education at "any school, seminary, academy, college, university, or other institution of learning." To prevent citizens who were deprived of their constitutional rights by these acts from obtaining prompt relief in the Supreme Court, they passed a law prohibiting that court from taking up causes on its docket according to its own judgment of what was demanded by public justice, in any case "except where the person seeking relief had been convicted of murder in the first degree, or of a crime the punishment of which was confinement in the penitentiary."
I believe it is the general judgment of the people of Ohio that the passage of these measures, unconstitutional as some of them are, and unjust as they all are, was mainly due to the fact that the classes of citizens disfranchised by them do not commonly vote with the Democratic party. The Republican party condemns all such legislation, and demands its repeal.
On the important subject of suffrage, General Grant, in his inaugural message, expresses the convictions of the Republican party. He says: "The question of suffrage is one which is likely to agitate the public so long as a portion of the citizens of the Nation are excluded from its privileges in any State. It seems to me very desirable that this question should be settled now, and I entertain the hope and express the desire that it may be by the ratification of the fifteenth amendment to the constitution."
During the canvass which resulted in the election of the late Democratic legislature the Republicans were charged with having used $800,000, raised for the relief of soldiers' families, to pay the State debt, and this charge was insisted upon, notwithstanding a majority of the Democratic members had supported the measure. The idea was everywhere held out that if the Democratic party were successful this money would be restored to the relief fund and expended for the benefit of the soldiers. The failure to redeem this pledge is aggravated by the fact that the legislature, by a strictly party vote in the Senate, refused to provide for the support of soldiers' destitute orphans at homes to be established without expense to the State by the voluntary contributions of patriotic and charitable people.
But of all the pledges upon which the Democratic party obtained power in the last legislature, the most important, and those in regard to which the just expectations of the people have been most signally disappointed, are their pledges in relation to financial affairs—to expenditure, to debt, and to taxation. Upon this subject the people are compelled to feel a very deep interest. The flush times of the war have been followed by a financial reaction, and for the last three or four years the country has been on the verge of a financial crisis. The burdens of taxation bear heavily upon labor and upon capital. The Democratic party, profuse alike of accusations against their adversaries, and of promises of retrenchment and reform, were clothed with power to deal with the heaviest part of these burdens, viz: with the expenditures, debts, assessments, and taxes which are authorized by State legislation. The results of their two years of power are now before the people. They are contained in the 65th and 66th volumes of the Laws of Ohio. Let any Republican diligently study these volumes, and he will fully comprehend the meaning of Job when he said, "Oh, that mine adversary had written a book." No intelligent man can read carefully these volumes, and note the number and character of the laws increasing the expenses and liabilities of the State and authorizing additional debts and additional taxation for city and village, for county and township purposes, without having the conviction forced upon him that the gentlemen who enacted these laws hold to the opinion that the way to increase wealth is to increase taxation, and that public debts are public blessings.