“Mr. Chairman, it is now time to inquire as to the fitness of this Democratic party to take control of our great nation and its vast and important interests for the next four years. I put the question to the gentleman from Mississippi [Mr. Lamar], what has the Democratic party done to merit that great trust? He tried to show in what respects it would not be dangerous. I ask him to show in what it would be safe. I affirm, and I believe I do not misrepresent the great Democratic party, that in the last sixteen years they have not advanced one great national idea that is not to-day exploded and as dead as Julius Cæsar. And if any Democrat here will rise and name a great national doctrine his party has advanced, within that time, that is now alive and believed in, I will yield to hear him. [A pause.] In default of an answer, I will attempt to prove my negative.
“What were the great central doctrines of the Democratic party in the presidential struggle of 1860? The followers of Breckinridge said slavery had a right to go wherever the Constitution goes. Do you believe that to-day? Is there a man on this continent that holds that doctrine to-day? Not one. That doctrine is dead and buried. The other wing of the Democracy held that slavery might be established in the territories if the people wanted it. Does any body hold that doctrine to-day? Dead, absolutely dead!
“Come down to 1864. Your party, under the lead of Tilden and Vallandigham, declared the experiment of war to save the Union was a failure. Do you believe that doctrine to-day? That doctrine was shot to death by the guns of Farragut at Mobile, and driven, in a tempest of fire, from the valley of the Shenandoah by Sheridan less than a month after its birth at Chicago.
“Come down to 1868. You declared the Constitutional Amendments revolutionary and void. Does any man on this floor say so to-day? If so, let him rise and declare it.
“Do you believe in the doctrine of the Broadhead letter of 1868, that the so-called Constitutional Amendments should be disregarded? No; the gentleman from Mississippi accepts the results of the war! The Democratic doctrine of 1868 is dead!
“I walk across that Democratic camping-ground as in a graveyard. Under my feet resound the hollow echoes of the dead. There lies slavery, a black marble column at the head of its grave, on which I read: Died in the flames of the Civil War; loved in its life; lamented in its death; followed to its bier by its only mourner, the Democratic party, but dead! And here is a double grave: Sacred to the memory of Squatter Sovereignty. Died in the campaign of 1860. On the reverse side: Sacred to the memory of the Dred Scott-Breckinridge doctrine. Both died at the hands of Abraham Lincoln! And here a monument of brimstone: Sacred to the memory of the Rebellion; the war against it is a failure; Tilden et Vallandigham fecerunt, A. D. 1864. Dead on the field of battle; shot to death by the million guns of the Republic. The doctrine of Secession; of State Sovereignty. Dead. Expired in the flames of civil war, amidst the blazing rafters of the Confederacy, except that the modern Æneas, fleeing out of the flames of that ruin, bears on his back another Anchises of State Sovereignty, and brings it here in the person of the honorable gentleman from the Appomattox district of Virginia [Mr. Tucker]. [Laughter.] All else is dead.
“Now, gentlemen, are you sad, are you sorry for these deaths? Are you not glad that Secession is dead? that slavery is dead? that Squatter Sovereignty is dead? that the doctrine of the failure of the war is dead? Then you are glad that you were out-voted in 1860, in 1864, in 1868, and in 1872. If you have tears to shed over these losses, shed them in the graveyard, but not in this House of living men. I know that many a Southern man rejoices that these issues are dead. The gentleman from Mississippi has clothed his joy with eloquence.
“Now, gentlemen, if you yourselves are glad that you have suffered defeat during the last sixteen years, will you not be equally glad when you suffer defeat next November? [Laughter.] But pardon that remark; I regret it; I would use no bravado.
“Now, gentlemen, come with me for a moment into the camp of the Republican party and review its career. Our central doctrine in 1860 was that slavery should never extend itself over another foot of American soil. Is that doctrine dead? It is folded away like a victorious banner; its truth is alive for evermore on this continent. In 1864 we declared that we would put down the Rebellion and Secession. And that doctrine lives, and will live when the second Centennial has arrived! Freedom, national, universal, and perpetual—our great Constitutional Amendments, are they alive or dead? Alive, thank the God that shields both liberty and Union. And our national credit, saved from the assaults of Pendleton; saved from the assaults of those who struck it later, rising higher and higher at home and abroad; and only now in doubt lest its chief, its only enemy, the Democracy, should triumph in November.
“Mr. Chairman, ought the Republican party to surrender its truncheon of command to the Democracy? The gentleman from Mississippi says, if this were England, the ministry would go out in twenty-four hours with such a state of things as we have here. Ah, yes! that is an ordinary case of change of administration. But if this were England, what would she have done at the end of the war? England made one such mistake as the gentleman asks this country to make, when she threw away the achievements of the grandest man that ever trod her highway of power. Oliver Cromwell had overturned the throne of despotic power, and had lifted his country to a place of masterful greatness among the nations of the earth; and when, after his death, his great scepter was transferred to a weak though not unlineal hand, his country, in a moment of reactionary blindness, brought back the Stuarts. England did not recover from that folly until, in 1689, the Prince of Orange drove from her island the last of that weak and wicked line. Did she afterward repeat the blunder?