Addresses: by John A. Martin. Delivered in Kansas.

by John Alexander Martin

And why should not a political party, like an individual, proudly point to an honorable record of noble endeavors and great achievements? It is something to belong to a party that can be pointed to without blushing. It is something to have a record that does not have to be explained, denied, or lied about. When a man can say that he belongs to a party which crushed the Rebellion, abolished Slavery, preserved the Union, and made this a great Nation; a party that has dotted the land with school-houses; a party that gave to the people the Homestead Law, and established the best financial system the world ever knew, it is something to be proud of. And when he can add that he belongs to a party which intends to see that the civil rights of every American citizen are protected at home or abroad; that every legal voter shall have a right to cast one free, unintimidated ballot, and to have that ballot honestly counted; that the debt of gratitude the country owes to the soldiers and sailors of the Union shall be honestly remembered and repaid; that the people shall be protected against unjust extortions or discriminations by corporate power; and that laws enacted by the people, for the people, shall be respected and enforced—all this is also something to be proud of.

For twenty-five years I have annually, except during the period of the war and for about two years thereafter, called to order the Republican conventions of Atchison county. During all of that time I have been Chairman of your County Central Committee. To-day, probably for the last time, I discharge this pleasant duty, and I avail myself of the opportunity to return my sincere thanks to the Republicans of this county for their constant confidence and devoted friendship—a confidence and friendship that has never been denied me; that has never wavered or faltered during all the lights and shadows of twenty-five revolving years. Before I was a voter you made me the Chairman of your County Executive Committee, and annually, ever since, except during the years when I was absent in the army, you have reëlected me to this place. The measure of my gratitude to you, fellow-Republicans of Atchison county, cannot be expressed in words. I have tried to express it by ardent devotion to Republican principles, and by the most constant and enthusiastic efforts to promote and secure the triumph of the Republican party.

I want to add, as I think I can with entire truthfulness, that during all of this period I have never attempted to act the part of a political “boss.” I have avoided, rather than sought, authority or power to dictate nominations, or to control the action of conventions. No man can truthfully say that I have ever attempted to thwart a fair expression of Republican sentiment, or to force upon the party an unwelcome or an unworthy candidate, or to prevent the nomination of any man who was clearly the choice of the Republican voters. No man can truthfully say that I have ever provoked or encouraged factional feuds, or stirred up personal strife, in the party ranks. No man can truthfully say that I have ever refused to subordinate my personal interests, or my individual preferences or prejudices, in order to promote or secure Republican success. On the contrary, it has been my constant, earnest endeavor to harmonize, consolidate and strengthen the Republican party; to preserve peace in its ranks; and to make it a united, vigorous, and victorious party. To this end, and for these objects, I have often endured, without complaint, undeserved censure, and have preferred to be misunderstood and even misrepresented rather than to imperil Republican success by quarreling with those who misunderstood me. Time at last sets all things right, and I have always been content to await the just judgment of its final awards.

And now, gentlemen of the convention, invoking upon your deliberations the blessings of harmony and the saving grace of Republican common sense, and appealing to you to remember that your opponents alone rejoice over and are benefited by personal and factional feuds in your ranks, I await your pleasure.

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.

Speech delivered at Washington, Kansas, October 24, 1884.

Ladies and Gentlemen: I must beg the charity alike of your silence and of your patient forbearance. I am not an orator. I make no pretensions as a public speaker. For while I have been talking to my fellow-citizens of Kansas for more than a quarter of a century, it has been through the medium of printed words, and not from the platform or on the stump. Only because I have been nominated by the Republican party of the State for an official position, and am thus, by the customs and usages of partisan politics, expected to attend and address such assemblages as this, do I appear before you. But I know the people of Kansas are as generous as they are intelligent, and hence, although fully conscious of my own deficiencies, I trust implicitly in their kindness, and shall endeavor as best I can to explain to you the reasons why I am a Republican, and why I think every good citizen should give his influence and his vote to secure the triumph to that party.

I am a Republican, first, because I believe the Republican party to be the most intelligent, progressive and beneficent political organization ever known in this or any other country. Its whole existence has been a blessing to the American people. It has enriched our history with a long record of splendid achievements. It preserved the Union. It abolished slavery. It enfranchised a race. It enacted the homestead law; and it has girded the continent with railways. It has given the people a sound currency, and it has protected, elevated and dignified American industries and American labor. It has glorified the history of the age with a long list of imperishable names—the names of Lincoln, and Seward, and Grant, and Sherman, and Sumner, and Garfield, and Blaine, and Logan, and a host of others, which will never fade from the recollections of a grateful people. In twenty-three years it has raised this Nation to the foremost place among the Nations of the earth, and made the American name respected all around the globe. It has elevated, improved and purified the civil service, and systematized all departments of the Government. It has collected the public revenue at a less percentage of cost than ever before, and handled the money of the Government at a far less percentage of loss than ever before. It has generously cared for the disabled soldiers of the Union, and for the widows and orphans of our dead heroes. The true Republican glories in his party’s history. He asks no man to forget a line or word of it.

I am a Republican because I am a Kansan. I came to this State when it was a Territory governed by the Democratic party. I learned something of Democratic methods, policies and principles during those years. I saw a free people denied their dearest political rights. I saw all the power and authority of the National Administration exerted to fasten slavery upon this State, against the will of a large majority of its citizens. I know the history of that period by heart, and there is no record so stained with usurpations, so crowded with wrong, injustice and tyranny, so sullied with crime, as is the record of the years from 1855 to 1861, when the Democratic party controlled the affairs of Kansas. Contrast that period with the Republican administration of the past twenty-three years, and the development, the enterprise, the prosperity, the world-wide fame, that have gone hand in hand with it. I have seen Kansas grow from a half-tilled, forlorn strip along the west bank of the Missouri, into a splendid, imperial State, with nearly a million and a quarter of inhabitants—a State with nearly eighteen million acres occupied as farms, with over four thousand miles of railway, seven thousand school-houses and a thousand churches, and with property aggregating in value nearly five hundred million dollars. All this growth, all this enterprise, all this marvelous prosperity, began with and has continued under Republican rule—clean, healthy, intelligent rule, worthily representing the brain and heart and energy of a Republican constituency.

I am a Republican because I was a Union soldier. I know that there were loyal Democrats, and I shall never fail to do full justice to their patriotism. I have served side by side with them, in camp, and march, and battle, and I honor their courage and their devotion to the flag of the Republic. But I know, also, that while thousands of Democrats proved themselves true patriots during the war, the Democratic party, as a political organization, was persistently and consistently disloyal. At the outbreak of the war, it denied the right of the Government to “coerce a sovereign State,” and from the first flash of the gun at Sumter until the last shot at Bentonville, it never ceased to predict failure for the Union arms, and to strive to make its prophecy a reality. It discouraged enlistments, resisted the draft, and denounced and slandered the patient, suffering, great-souled President, upon whom the sorrows of a stricken Nation hung so heavily. It encouraged foreign countries to interfere in our affairs; it assailed the greenback currency, issued to meet the expenses of the war, as “worthless rags;” and it did all in its power to break down the credit of the Government. And finally, just on the eve of our complete triumph, when Grant was slowly tightening his grasp around the throat of the Rebellion, at Richmond, and Sherman’s invincible army was preparing to enter Atlanta, and the guns of Farragut were thundering victory in Mobile Bay, the Democratic party, assembled in national convention at Chicago, formally resolved that the war was “a failure,” and clamored for a dishonorable peace.