The Democrats sneer at this kind of talk as “waving the bloody shirt.” But this insulting sneer only illustrates the character of that party. The “bloody shirt” that is thus derided is the old gray army shirt that covered the breasts of patriot soldiers, and was torn and stained by bullets aimed at the life of the Republic. That old gray army shirt went over the Rebel works at Donelson, through the cedars at Stone River, into the tangled forest at Chicamauga, and up the blazing heights of Mission Ridge. That old gray army shirt was torn and stained at Corinth and Antietam, and sanctified at Prairie Grove, Gettysburg, and Atlanta. That old gray army shirt is as full of glory, and as beautiful, in every true patriot’s eyes, as are the stars and stripes of our splendid flag, because it typifies the loyalty, the heroism, and the sacrifices of the glorious men who wore it, and with whose patriotic blood it was reddened. This is “the bloody shirt” that is made, in every campaign, the stale joke of every Democratic orator and the cheap catch-word of every Democratic journal.
I am a Republican because I am opposed to a “change” merely for the sake of change. This restless, senseless clamor is the very essence of stupidity. A demand for a change should have back of it some substantial reasons. There are absolutely none in the present condition of the National Government. The country is substantially prosperous. Labor is in demand, and commands good prices; capital is busy and secure. The party in power has justified the confidence of the people. Money is as plenty now as it has ever been, and it has a steady value. The man who has a dollar in his pocket knows that speculators and gold-gamblers cannot, by some juggle, take five cents or ten cents from its value, in twenty-four hours, as they could a few years ago. The public burdens have been largely reduced. Our exports far exceed our imports, and our balance-sheet with the world shows an immense sum in our favor. The boom of business is heard in the land. The preachers of calamity are out of date. Commerce, industry, enterprise, capital, labor, all feel the impulse of substantial prosperity running through every artery of public and private activities. These are the evidences, on every hand, of the wisdom of Republican administration. And what are we offered as an inducement for “a change”? Absolutely nothing save the cheap protestations of cheap and hungry Democratic orators and newspapers that, should their party be returned to power, it does not intend, as it threatened a few years ago, to destroy the public credit, cripple manufacturing industries, debase the currency, and destroy our banking system. Only this, and nothing more.
I am a Republican because I am in favor of protecting American industries and American labor. The population of the United States is increasing at the rate of a million a year; the wealth of our country is augmenting at the rate of two hundred millions annually; its coal area is more than six times as great as that of all Europe; its iron mines are capable of supporting a prodigious manufacturing population; its railways aggregate nearly a hundred thousand miles; its agricultural and mineral resources are incalculable; and it can produce, within its own territorial limits, almost everything produced in any other country of the habitable globe. Such a country as this, with such vast and varied productions and resources, must legislate, not for the world, but for itself. During the twenty-four years of Republican rule it has had an unexampled growth. Its population has increased over sixty per cent.; its agricultural exports over six hundred per cent.; and its foreign trade from seven hundred millions to nearly twelve hundred millions of dollars annually. Under Republican administration opportunities for employment have enormously multiplied, and consumers and producers have constantly been brought nearer to one another, through the vast increase of manufacturing industries. At the same time nearly every manufactured article is cheaper, to-day, in the United States than it was thirty years ago, when ninety per cent. of our manufactured goods were made abroad, instead of only ten per cent., as now. The Republican policy of protection to home industries is making this a self-sustaining, self-relying country. It is giving muscle an equal chance with money. It is developing and enlarging all the sources of National prosperity. It has made all the people happier, healthier, and more contented than they ever were before, or could be under any other policy. Millions of men, who win their bread by the labor of their hands or brain, know this, and they are swelling the ranks of the great party that has always been the advocate and protector of American labor. The black banners of industry that float in the morning air from countless factories all over the land; the clangor of a hundred thousand trailing trains; the whirling clatter of a million wheels and spindles—these are the sign-manuals which the Republican policy of protection has written, in indelible letters, on the face of the busy land.
And now, having given you the reasons for “the faith that is in me”—having told you why I am a Republican, and why, in my judgment, every good citizen ought to be a Republican—I want to add a few words of personal import. I am the candidate of this great party for the highest executive office in the gift of the people of Kansas. I was nominated by the unanimous vote of the largest delegate convention ever held in the State; by a Convention representing every county, city and township in the State; by a Convention whose proceedings were distinguished for fairness, decorum, intelligence, and sobriety; by a Convention whose delegates were chosen with almost unprecedented unanimity, and who fairly, I think I have good reason for saying, voiced the preference of a vast majority of the Republicans of Kansas. I was nominated by this great Convention, not only with entire unanimity, but without pledges or promises from me, and without trades, combinations, or any manner of political trickery. I was nominated on a platform which any honest, self-respecting, law-respecting, law-obeying Republican can indorse, and ought to indorse. Yet I am told that there are men, claiming to be Republicans, who say they are going to vote against me, and vote for my opponent, because they don’t like the platform.
To this class of men, and to all others, I want to say a few words. All State officers are required to make solemn oath that they will support the Constitution of the State, and the Constitution specifically sets forth that the Governor “shall see that the laws are faithfully executed.” The Republican party, in its platform, simply affirms this plain Constitutional duty. The people of the State, in their sovereign capacity, and without distinction of party, have adopted a Constitutional provision known as the prohibitory amendment. It was voted for by nearly one hundred thousand citizens; it received a majority of nearly eight thousand of the votes cast on the question; and it received the support of nearly nine thousand more voters than cast their ballots for the present Governor, whose election has never been challenged. The Supreme Court of the State has affirmed the validity of this amendment, and of all the forms by which it was adopted. Yet it is asserted that because the Republican party recognizes, in its platform, these unchallenged, unquestionable facts, and demands that State officers shall faithfully and honestly discharge the duties imposed upon them by the Constitution and by their oath of office, I am to be opposed by men calling themselves Republicans.
If this be true, I shall make no complaint. I want to be fairly, explicitly understood. If I am elected Governor, when, in the presence of Almighty God and the sovereign people of Kansas, I raise my hand to take the oath of office, I shall not do so with falsehood on my lips and perjury in my heart. I will not equivocate. I will do my duty, under the Constitution and laws I have sworn to see faithfully executed. I make no apology to any person under the shining stars for holding this faith. I am grateful—sincerely grateful—to the Republicans of Kansas for the distinguished honor they have conferred upon me. I appreciate their confidence, their esteem, their friendship, and I shall try, earnestly try, to deserve it. But I should feel that I had dishonored the great party to secure whose triumph I have devoted all the years of my manhood; that I had brought deserved reproach upon myself, and the wife and little children who bear my name, if, having been honored by an election as the Chief Executive of this splendid, prosperous, intelligent Commonwealth, I should, by any act, or word, or deed, prove false to my oath of office, or to the duties I voluntarily assumed.
I did not vote for the prohibitory amendment. But I accept, as a law-respecting citizen, the decision of the majority on this question. Ours is a people’s government, a Republican government, in which the majority rule and ought to rule. And he is neither a good Republican nor a true American who refuses to subordinate his own opinions, his own preferences or prejudices, to the decision of the majority. This is the very foundation-stone on which the whole fabric of our government rests. Destroy it, remove it, and lawlessness, anarchy, civil war, are the natural and inevitable consequences. I believe in the right of the people to rule. I am for peace, for order, for liberty regulated by law, and for the conservators of all of them—popular education, intelligence, sobriety, and a Constitutional government which the chosen officers of the people administer in accordance with the expressed will of the people, for the people, and to promote the people’s interests.
If there is a Republican, here or anywhere in the State—a Republican who glories in his party’s glorious record, as I do; who is proud of the splendid achievements with which it has illuminated the brightest pages of the world’s progress, as I am; who believes it is the party of intelligence, of social order, of law, as I do—if there is a man here who is, or ever has been, a Republican of this order, and who is going to vote against this great, intelligent, beneficent, law-respecting party, in the present contest in Kansas, because it sustains the Constitution of the State, and demands that sworn officers shall faithfully and honestly execute the laws of the State, I should like to see him. If there is such a man here, I should like to see him stand up and be counted.
Such a man—if there is one—is not, and never was, a true Republican. He may have voted the Republican ticket now and then, and called himself a Republican; but he has never had, he has not now, the real grace of true Republicanism in his heart. More than this, he is not even a true American. The genuine American respects the decisions of majorities, and bows in humble submission to the majesty of law. He loves the flag of his country, not because it is red, white, and blue, but because it is the symbol of the people’s government, of social order, of the Constitution and laws of the land. When the soldier saw it, among the tangled underbrush at Chicamauga, or moving up the embattled heights of Mission Ridge, or half enshrouded in the sulphurous smoke at Gettysburg, or planted amid the dead and dying on the ramparts of Vicksburg, it was not a piece of striped cloth he saw, but his country’s body and blood—her education, her progress, her moral, social, commercial, and political systems, her Constitution and her laws—and this was why he was ready to follow the flag, and fight for it, and die for it if need be, that all it symbolized might be preserved, a priceless heritage for all the generations of men.
Alike as a citizen or as a public officer I shall at all times maintain and uphold these ideas of private and public duty, because the whole fabric of our American system of government rests upon them.