"The Republican party was certainly liberal and just to the rebels lately in arms against the country. We deprived them of no political power, no blood was shed; no confiscation was had; and more generous terms were conceded to them than ever before had been extended to an unsuccessful party in a civil war. Their leaders emphasized that at the burial of our great commander, General Grant. The result of the settlement by the constitutional amendments at the close of the war was to give them increased political power, upon condition that the slaves should be free and should be allowed to vote, and that all political distinction growing out of race, color or previous condition of servitude shall be abolished; and yet to- day, the Republican party is faced by a 'solid south,' in which the negro is deprived, substantially, of all his political rights, by open violence or by frauds as mean as any that have been committed by penitentiary convicts, and as openly and boldly done as any highway robbery. By this system, and by the acquiescence of a few northern states, the men who led in the Civil War have been restored to power, and hope, practically, to reverse all the results of the war.
"This is the spectre that now haunts American politics, and may make it just as vital and necessary to appeal to the northern states to unite again against this evil, not so open and arrogant as slavery, but more dangerous and equally unjust. The question then was the slavery of the black man. Now the question is the equality of the white man, whether a southern man in Mississippi may, by depriving a majority of the legal voters in the state of their right to vote, exercise twice the political power of a white man in the north, where the franchise is free and open and equal to all.
"When we point out these offenses committed in the south, it is said that we are raising the bloody shirt, that we are reviving the issues of the war—that the war is over. I hope the war is over, and that the animosities of the war will pass away, and be dead and buried. Anger and hate and prejudice are not wise counselors in peace or in war. Generosity, forgiveness and charity are great qualities of the human heart, but, like everything else that is good, they may be carried to excess, and may degenerate into faults. They must not lead us to forget the obligations of duty and honor. While we waive the animosities of the war, we must never fail to hold on, with courage and fortitude, to all the results of the war. Our soldiers fought in no holiday contest, not merely to test the manly qualities of the men of the north and the south, not for power or plunder, or wealth or title. They fought to secure to themselves and their posterity the blessings of a strong national government; the preservation of the Union—a Union not of states, but of the people of the United States; not a confederate government, but a national government. The preservation of the Union was the central idea of the war. The Confederate soldier fought for what he was led to think was the right of a state to secede from the Union at its pleasure. The Union soldiers triumphed. The Confederate soldiers were compelled to an unconditional surrender.
"Fellow-citizens, the line drawn between the two parties is now as distinct as it was during the war, but we occupy a different field of battle.
"Then we fought for the preservation of the Union, and, as a means to that end, for the abolition of slavery. Now the Union is saved and slavery is abolished, we fight for the equal political rights of all men, and the faithful observance of the constitutional amendments. We are for the exercise of national authority, for the preservation of rights conferred by the constitution, and upon this broad issue we invite co-operation from the south as well as the north.
"Upon this issue we intend to make our appeal to the honest and honorable people of the southern states. We think they are bound in honor to faithfully observe the conditions of peace granted to them by General Grant and prescribed by the constitutional amendments. If they do this we will have peace, union and fraternity. Without it we will have agitation, contests and complaints. Upon this issue I will go before the people of the south, and, turning my back upon all the animosities of the war, appeal only to their sense of honor and justice."
I contrasted the policy and tendencies of the two parties on the question of protection to American industry, on good money redeemable in coin, on frauds in elections, on our pension laws, and on all the political questions of the day. I stated and approved the policy of the Republican party on the temperance question. I closed with an exhortation to support Governor Foraker and the Republican ticket and to elect a legislature that would place Ohio where she had usually stood, in the fore front of Republican states, for the Union, for liberty and justice to all, without respect of race, nativity and creed.
This speech was denounced by the Democratic press as "bitterly partisan;" and so it was and so intended. The Republican party during its long possession of power had divided into factions, as the Democratic party had in 1860. We had the Blaine, the Conkling and other factions, and many so-called third parties, and the distinctive principles upon which the Republican party was founded were in danger of being forgotten. It was my purpose to arouse the attention to the Republicans in Ohio to the necessity of union and organization, and I believe this speech contributed to that result. It was the text and foundation of nearly all I uttered in the canvass that followed.
Early in September Governor Hoadley, in commencing his campaign in Hamilton, assailed by speech at Mt. Gilead, charging me with waving the bloody shirt, and reviving the animosities of the war. He claimed to be a friend of the negro, but did not deny the facts stated by me. He allowed himself to be turned from local questions, such as temperance, schools, economy, and the government of cities, in all of which the people of Ohio had a deep interest, and as to which the Democratic party had a defined policy, to national questions, and, especially, to reconstruction and the treatment of freedmen in the south. He thanked God for the "solid south." Though an Abolitionist of the Chase school in early life, and, until recently an active Republican, he ignored or denied the suppression of the negro vote, the organized terror and cruelty of the Ku-Klux Klan, and the almost daily outrages published in the papers. On the evening of the 8th of September I made a speech at Lebanon, in which I reviewed his speech at Hamilton in the adjoining county. I said I would wave the bloody shirt as long as it remained bloody. I referred to the copious evidence of outrage and wrong, including many murders of negroes and of white Republicans, published in official reports, and challenged him to deny it. I said that by these crimes the south was made solid, and the men who had waged war against the United States, though they failed in breaking up the Union, then held the political power of the Confederate states, strengthened by counting all the negroes as free men, though practically denying them the right of suffrage. I said this was not only unjust to the colored man but unjust to the white men of the north.
In conclusion I said: