The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Complete Contents / Dresden Edition—Twelve Volumes

by Robert Green Ingersoll

*Col. Robert G. Ingersoll of Illinois last night, at Cooper
Union, spoke on the political issues of the day, at unusual
length, to the largest and most enthusiastic audience which,
during the last ten years, any single speaker has attracted.
His address was in his happiest epigrammatic style, and was
interrupted every few moments either by the most uproarious
laughter or enthusiastic cheering. It is no exaggeration to
say that the meeting was the largest Cooper Institute has
seen since the war. Not merely the main hall was filled, but
the wide corridor in Third Avenue, the entrance hall in
Eighth Street, and every Committee-room to which his voice
could reach, though the speaker was unseen, were crowded—in
fact, literally packed. Half an hour before the hour named
for the organization of the meeting, admission to the body
of the hall was almost impossible; and selected officers,
and the speaker of the evening himself had to beg their way
to the platform. The latter was as painfully crowded with
invited guests as the body of the hall; and ingress was
impossible after the speaker began, and egress was almost as
difficult owing to the pressure in the committee-room
through which the platform is approached.
Not only in numbers alone, but in the prominence of the
persons present, was the meeting impressive. Besides the
usual large quota of active politicians always seen at such
meetings, there were seen numbers of leading merchants,
financiers, and lawyers of New York, prominent officials not
only of the City but the State and National Government.
The speech was nearly two hours In length, but as the
interruptions were frequent, indeed almost continuous, it
seemed very short, and when Mr. Ingersoll concluded his fire
of epigrams, there were loud calls and appeals to him to go
on. There were suggestions by some of the managers, of other
speakers who might follow him, but the presiding officer
wisely decided to submit no other speaker to the too severe
test of speaking on the same occasion with Mr. Ingersoll.
Chauncey M. Depew, on leaving the hall, remarked that it was
the greatest speech he ever heard, and numbers of old
campaigners were equally enthusiastic. At its conclusion,
the reception which Mr. Ingersoll held on the platform
lasted over half-an-hour, and when finally Commissioner
Wheeler piloted him through the crowd to his coach, three or
four hundred of the audience followed and gave him lusty
cheers as he drove off.—New York Tribune, September
11,1876.

HAYES CAMPAIGN. 1876.

I AM just on my way home from the grand old State of Maine, and there has followed me a telegraphic dispatch which I will read to you. If it were not good, you may swear I would not read it: "Every Congressional district, every county in Maine, Republican by a large majority. The victory is overwhelming, and the majority will exceed 15,000." That dispatch is signed by that knight-errant of political chivalry, James G. Blaine.

I suppose we are all stockholders in the great corporation known as the United States of America, and as such stockholders we have a right to vote the way we think will best subserve our own interests. Each one has certain stock in this Government, whether he is rich, or whether he is poor, and the poor man has the same interest in the United States of America that the richest man in it has. It is our duty, conscientiously and honestly, to hear the argument upon both sides of the political question, and then go and vote conscientiously for the side that we believe will best preserve our interest in the United States of America. Two great parties are before you now asking your support—the Democratic party and the Republican party. One wishes to be kept in power, the other wishes to have a chance once more at the Treasury of the United States. The Democratic party is probably the hungriest organization that ever wandered over the desert of political disaster in the history of the world. There never was, in all probability, a political stomach so thoroughly empty, or an appetite so outrageously keen as the one possessed by the Democratic party. The Democratic party has been howling like a pack of wolves looking in with hungry and staring eyes at the windows of the National Capitol, and scratching at the doors of the White House. They have been engaged in these elegant pursuits for sixteen long, weary years. Occasionally they have retired to some convenient eminence and lugubriously howled about the Constitution. The Democratic party comes and asks for your vote, not on account of anything it has done, not on account of anything it has accomplished, but on account of what it promises to do; the Democratic party can make just as good a promise as any other party in the world, and it will come farther from fulfilling it than any other party on this globe. The Republican party having held this Government for sixteen years, proposes to hold it for four years more. The Republican party comes to you with its record open, and asks every man, woman and child in this broad country to read its every word. And I say to you, that there is not a line, a paragraph, or a page of that record that is not only an honor to the Republican party, but to the human race. On every page of that record is written some great and glorious action, done either for the liberty of man, or the preservation of our common country. We ask every body to read its every word. The Democratic party comes before you with its record closed, recording every blot and blur, and stain and treason, and slander and malignity, and asks you not to read a single word, but to be kind enough to take its infamous promises for the future.

Now, my friends, I propose to tell you, to-night, something that has been done by the Democratic party, and then allow you to judge for yourselves. Now, if a man came to you, you owning a steamboat on the Hudson River, and he wished to hire out to you as an engineer, and you inquired about him, and found he had blown up and destroyed and wrecked every steamboat he had ever been engineer on, and you should tell him: "I can't hire you; you blew up such an engine, you wrecked such a ship," he would say to you, "My Lord! Mister, you must let bygones be bygones." If a man came to your bank, or came to a solitary individual here to borrow a hundred dollars, and you went and inquired about him and found he never paid a note in his life, found he was a dead-beat, and you say to him, "I cannot loan you money." "Why?" "Because, I have ascertained you never pay your debts." "Ah, yes," he says, "you are no gentleman going prying into a man's record," I tell you, my good friends, a good character rests upon a record, and not upon a prospectus, a good record rests upon a deed accomplished, and not upon a promise, a good character rests upon something really done, and not upon a good resolution, and you cannot make a good character in a day. If you could, Tilden would have one to-morrow night.

I propose now to tell you, my friends, a little of the history of the Republican party, also a little of the history of the Democratic party.

And first, the Republican party. The United States of America is a free country, it is the only free country upon this earth; it is the only republic that was ever established among men. We have read, we have heard, of the republics of Greece, of Egypt, of Venice; we have heard of the free cities of Europe. There never was a republic of Venice; there never was a republic of Rome; there never was a republic of Athens; there never was a free city in Europe; there never was a government not cursed with caste; there never was a government not cursed with slavery; there never was a country not cursed with almost every infamy, until the Republican party of the United States made this a free country. It is the first party in the world that contended that the respectable man was the useful man; it is the first party in the world that said, without regard to previous conditions, without regard to race, every human being is entitled to life, to liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and it is the only party in the world that has endeavored to carry those sublime principles into actual effect. Every other party has been allied to some piece of rascality; every other party has been patched up with some thieving, larcenous, leprous compromise. The Republican party keeps its forehead in the grand dawn of perpetual advancement; the Republican party is the party of reason; it is the party of argument; it is the party of education; it believes in free schools, it believes in scientific schools; it believes that the schools are for the public and all the public; it believes that science never should be interfered with by any sectarian influence whatever.

The Republican party is in favor of science; the Republican party, as I said before, is the party of reason; it argues; it does not mob; it reasons; it does not murder; it persuades you, not with the shot gun, not with tar and feathers, but with good sound reason, and argument.

In order for you to ascertain what the Republican party has done for us, let us refresh ourselves a little; we all know it, but it is well enough to hear it now and then. Let us then refresh our recollection a little, in order to understand what the grand and great Republican party has accomplished in the land.

We will consider, in the first place, the condition of the country when the Republican party was born. When this Republican party was born there was upon the statute books of the United States of America a law known as the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, by which every man in the State of New York was made by law a bloodhound, and could be set and hissed upon a negro, who was simply attempting to obtain his birthright of freedom, just as you would set a dog upon a wolf. That was the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Around the neck of every man it put a collar as on a dog, but it had not the decency to put the man's name on the collar. I said in the State of Maine, and several other States, and expect to say it again although I hurt the religious sentiment of the Democratic party, and shocked the piety of that organization by saying it, but I did say then, and now say, that the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850 would have disgraced hell in its palmiest days.