“Strengthened by its victory on the frontier, the young party, under the leadership of that great man, who on this spot, twenty years ago, was made its leader, entered the national capital and assumed the high duties of the Government. The light which shone from its banner dispelled the darkness in which slavery had enshrouded the Capitol and melted the shackles of every slave, and consumed, in the fire of liberty, every slave-pen within the shadow of the Capitol. Our national industries, by an impoverishing policy, were themselves prostrated, and the streams of revenue flowed in such feeble currents that the treasury itself was well nigh empty. The money of the people was the wretched notes of 2,000 uncontrolled and irresponsible state bank corporations, which were filling the country with a circulation that poisoned rather than sustained the life of business.
“The Republican party changed all this. It abolished the babel of confusion and gave the country a currency as national as its flag, based upon the sacred faith of the people. It threw its protecting arm around our great industries, and they stood erect as with new life. It filled with the spirit of true nationality all the great functions of the Government. It confronted a rebellion of unexampled magnitude, with a slavery behind it, and, under God, fought the final battle of liberty until victory was won. Then, after the storms of battle, were heard the sweet, calm words of peace uttered by the conquering nation, and saying to the conquered foe that lay prostrate at its feet, ‘This is our only revenge, that you join us in lifting to the serene firmament of the Constitution, to shine like stars forever and forever, the immortal principles of truth and justice, that all men, white or black, shall be free and stand equal before the law.’ Then came the questions of reconstruction, the public debt, and the public faith.
“In the settlement of these questions the Republican party has completed its twenty-five years of glorious existence, and it has sent us here to prepare it for another lustrum of duty and of victory. How shall we do this great work? We can not do it, my friends, by assailing our Republican brethren. God forbid that I should say one word to cast a shadow upon any name on the roll of our heroes. This coming fight is our Thermopylæ. We are standing upon a narrow isthmus. If our Spartan hosts are united we can withstand all the Persians that the Xerxes of Democracy can bring against us.
“Let us hold our ground this one year, for the stars in their courses fight for us in the future. The census to be taken this year will bring reinforcements and continued power. But, in order to win this victory now, we want the vote of every Republican, of every Grant Republican in America, of every Blaine man and every anti-Blaine man. The vote of every follower of every candidate is needed to make our success certain; therefore I say, gentlemen and brethren, we are here to calmly counsel together, and inquire what we shall do. [A voice: ‘Nominate Garfield.’—Great applause.]
“We want a man whose life and opinions embody all the achievements of which I have spoken. We want a man who, standing on a mountain height, sees all the achievements of our past history, and carries in his heart the memory of all its glorious deeds, and who, looking forward, prepares to meet the labor and the dangers to come. We want one who will act in no spirit of unkindness toward those we lately met in battle. The Republican party offers to our brethren of the South the olive branch of peace, and wishes them to return to brotherhood, on this supreme condition, that it shall be admitted, forever and for evermore, that, in the war for the Union, we were right and they were wrong. On that supreme condition we meet them as brethren, and no other. We ask them to share with us the blessings and honors of this great Republic.
“Now, gentlemen, not to weary you, I am about to present a name for your consideration—the name of a man who was the comrade, and associate, and friend of nearly all those noble dead whose faces look down upon us from these walls to-night; a man who began his career of public service twenty-five years ago, whose first duty was courageously done in the days of peril on the plains of Kansas, when the first red drops of that bloody shower began to fall which finally swelled into the deluge of war. He bravely stood by young Kansas then, and, returning to his duty in the national legislature, through all subsequent time his pathway has been marked by labors performed in every department of legislation.
“You ask for his monuments. I point you to twenty-five years of the national statutes. Not one great beneficent statute has been placed on our statute books without his intelligent and powerful aid. He aided these men to formulate the laws that raised our great armies and carried us through the war. His hand was seen in the workmanship of those statutes that restored and brought back the unity and married calm of the States. His hand was in all that great legislation that created the war currency, and in a greater work that redeemed the promises of the Government, and made the currency equal to gold. And when, at last, called from the halls of legislation into a high executive office, he displayed that experience, intelligence, firmness, and poise of character which has carried us through a stormy period of three years. With one-half the public press crying ‘Crucify him!’ and a hostile Congress seeking to prevent success—in all this he remained unmoved until victory crowned him.
“The great fiscal affairs of the nation and the great business interests of the country he has guarded and preserved, while executing the law of resumption and effecting its object without a jar, and against the false prophecies of one-half of the press and all the Democracy of this continent. He has shown himself able to meet with calmness the great emergencies of the Government for twenty-five years. He has trodden the perilous heights of public duty, and against all the shafts of malice has borne his breast unharmed. He has stood in the blaze of ‘that fierce light that beats against the throne,’ but its fiercest ray has found no flaw in his armor, no stain on his shield.
“I do not present him as a better Republican, or as a better man than thousands of others we honor, but I present him for your deliberate consideration. I nominate John Sherman, of Ohio.”
The addresses of Conkling and Garfield are given here, that the reader may contrast these two great leaders at their best. Garfield’s speech made a profound impression, not only on the Convention, but on the country,—and strengthened the already powerful sentiment in favor of making himself the nominee.