I will not, gentlemen of the convention, trespass further on your time. You have duties to discharge, and you desire to give them your attention. I trust your deliberations will be pleasant and harmonious. I thank you, sincerely and gratefully, for the distinguished honor of your confidence, and wish you to express to those you represent my deep appreciation of, and thankfulness for, their constant and unfailing support. May peace, happiness and prosperity abide in your homes and theirs, and may that order, security and contentment which a law-respecting, sober and intelligent people can justly expect to enjoy, be the common heritage of all the people of this great commonwealth.
REPUBLICANISM IN KANSAS.
Speech delivered at Topeka, September 15, 1886.
Mr. Chairman, and Ladies and Gentlemen: The campaign in Kansas this year is what is called an “off-year” contest. The intense enthusiasm, the fierce excitement, the great processions, with flags and banners and music and resounding hurrahs; the marvelous interest, dwarfing and absorbing all other concerns, and even paralyzing for months the every-day business pursuits and industries of the people—all these will be wanting in the campaign of 1886. And yet the interests involved in the election that will be held in November next are as momentous, and the issues depending on its result are quite as important to the State, as were the interests and issues depending upon the result at the ballot-box in 1884. The one officer who was to be elected then, and is not to be chosen now, was the President. We are to choose, in November next, as we did two years ago, a full board of State officers, seven Congressmen, a State Legislature, a Judge of the Supreme Court, and nearly half of our county officers. We are to elect men who will make our laws, National and State, as well as men who will execute our State laws. And as good local government really concerns each individual citizen far more than do the acts of the President, because it touches each and every citizen more directly, it has always seemed to me that the people, if they have a proper regard for their own interests, ought to regard the “off-year” elections with quite as deep interest, if not more anxious solicitude, than they do the choice of a President.
DEMOCRACY IN KANSAS.
I appear before you as the candidate of a great party, honored by its confidence and proud to bear its standard, to ask you in its name for your support. I have been a citizen of this State for nearly thirty years. I came here, a boy of 18, when Kansas was a poor, weak, distracted Territory, rent and torn by civil war, invaded by hordes of ruffians and marauders, and suffering under all the evils of the worst government that ever harassed and oppressed a free people. For more than two years this intolerable lawlessness had prevailed—for nearly three years longer it continued; and the party that confronts us to-day, and is asking your support, is the same party that, from 1854 to 1861, held Kansas by the throat, and by fraud, and murder, and arson, and turbulence, and every crime that ever disgraced humanity, endeavored to fasten upon it the curse of Human Slavery.
Beaten in its attempt to enslave Kansas, the Democratic party plunged the whole country into civil war, and for four long and bloody years the Nation struggled on to universal freedom and national unity; and this young State, that had been fighting for five years to get into the Union, now had to fight for four years more to preserve the Union. Republicanism and Kansas were wedded together in this long and terrible struggle. When Jefferson Davis marched out of the Senate, William H. Seward moved to take up the Kansas bill, and as the coat-tails of the Rebel chief disappeared through one door, young Kansas, smiling and triumphant, marched in at the other.
REPUBLICAN CONTROL IN KANSAS.
For twenty-four years the Republican party controlled the government of the Republic, and from that day to this the Republican party has moulded, directed, and controlled the affairs and destiny of Kansas. Has the trust reposed in the Republican party by the people of this State been misplaced or betrayed? Has it administered the government wisely and humanely? Has it justified, by its conduct, the reasonable expectations of an intelligent people? Has it enacted wise laws? Has it honestly collected and disbursed the public revenues? Has it maintained peace? Has it made liberal provisions for the education of our youth? Has it fostered institutions for the care and maintenance of the unfortunate? Has it remembered that the only liberty that is valuable, is liberty founded on just laws, and connected with public order? Has it allied humanity with justice? Has its rule promoted enterprise, fostered agriculture, encouraged industry, and nourished commerce? Has it endeavored to further morality, to promote sobriety, to suppress vice, to punish crime, to abolish drunkenness, and to curb and scourge lawlessness? Has it, in brief, in the discharge of its public trusts, made this State a great, prosperous, intelligent, law-respecting commonwealth, in which every citizen enjoys the largest possible liberty consistent with social order and a due regard for the rights of his fellow-men? If these questions can be answered in the affirmative, the Republican party has a just right to expect that the people of Kansas will continue to give it their confidence and support.
What, then, are the facts? Kansas celebrated only a few months ago, the first quarter-century of her existence as a State. During all that period, as I have said, the Republican party has controlled its destinies and administered its government. The accidental break in the Governorship four years ago does not modify this assertion, for the Legislature was, during that period, Republican by an overwhelming majority; all the other State officers were Republicans, and the local governments of the State were, as a rule, of similar faith. The Republicans, therefore, controlled public affairs just as certainly and as firmly, during the years 1882 and 1883, as they did before and have since.