The United States will pay its debts, not because the creditor demands, but because we owe it.
The United States will liquidate every debt at the command of its honor, and every cent will be paid. War is destruction, war is loss, and all the property destroyed, and the time that is lost, put together, amount to what we call a national debt. When in peace we shall have made as much net profit as there was wealth lost in the war, then we shall be a solvent people. The greenback will be redeemed, we expect to redeem it on the first day of January, 1879. We may fail; we will fail if the prosperity of the country fails; but we intend to try to do it, and if we fail, we will fail as a soldier fails to take a fort, high upon the rampart, with the flag of resumption in our hands. We will not say that we cannot pay the debt because there is a date fixed when the debt is to be paid. I have had to borrow money myself; I have had to give my note, and I recollect distinctly that every man I ever did give my note to insisted that somewhere in that note there should be some vague hint as to the cycle, as to the geological period, as to the time, as to the century and date when I expected to pay those little notes. I never understood that having a time fixed would prevent my being industrious; that it would interfere with my honesty; or with my activity, or with my desire to discharge that debt. And if any man in this great country owed you one thousand dollars, due you the first day of next January, and he should come to you and say: "I want to pay you that debt, but you must take that date out of that note." "Why?" you would say. "Why," he would reply in the language of Tilden, "I have to make wise preparation." "Well," you would say, "why don't you do it?" "Oh," he says, "I cannot do it while you have that date in that note." "Another thing," he says, "I have to get me a central reservoir of coin." And do you know I have always thought I would like to see the Democratic party around a central reservoir of coin.
Suppose this debtor would also tell you, "I want the date out of that note, because I have to come at it by a very slow and gradual process." "Well," you would say, "I do not care how slow or how gradual you are, provided that you get around by the time the note is due."
What would you think of a man that wanted the date out of the note? You would think he was a mixture of rascal and Democrat. That is what you would think.
Now, my friends, the Democratic party (if you may call it a party) brings forward as its candidate Samuel J. Tilden, of New York. I am opposed to him, first, because he is an old bachelor. In a country like ours, depending for its prosperity and glory upon an increase of the population, to elect an old bachelor is a suicidal policy. Any man that will live in this country for sixty years, surrounded by beautiful women with rosy lips and dimpled cheeks, in every dimple lurking a Cupid, with pearly teeth and sparkling eyes—any man that will push them all aside and be satisfied with the embraces of the Democratic party, does not even know the value of time. I am opposed to Samuel J. Tilden, because he is a Democrat; because he belongs to the Democratic party of the city of New York; the worst party ever organized in any civilized country.
No man should be President of this Nation who denies that it is a Nation. Samuel J. Tilden denounced the war as an outrage. No man should be President of this country that denounced a war waged in its defence as an outrage. To elect such a man would be an outrage.
Samuel J. Tilden said that the flag stands for a contract; that it stands for a confederation; that it stands for a bargain. But the great, splendid Republican party says, "No! That flag stands for a great, hoping, aspiring, sublime Nation, not for a confederacy."
I am opposed, I say, to the election of Samuel J. Tilden for another reason. If he is elected he will be controlled by his party, and his party will be controlled by the Southern stockholders in that party. They own nineteen-twentieths of the stock, and they will dictate the policy of the Democratic Corporation.
No Northern Democrat has the manliness to stand up before a Southern Democrat. Every Democrat, nearly, has a face of dough, and the Southern Democrat will swap his ears, change his nose, cut his mouth the other way of the leather, so that his own mother would not know him, in fifteen minutes. If Samuel J. Tilden is elected President of the United States, he will be controlled by the Democratic party, and the Democratic party will be controlled by the Southern Democracy—that is to say, the late rebels; that is to say, the men that tried to destroy the Government; that is to say, the men who are sorry they did not destroy the Government; that is to say, the enemies of every friend of this Union; that is to say, the murderers and the assassins of Union men living in the Southern country.
Let me say another thing. If Mr. Tilden does not act in accordance with the Southern Democratic command, the Southern Democracy will not allow a single life to stand between them and the absolute control of this country. Hendricks will then be their man. I say that it would be an outrage to give this country into the control of men who endeavored to destroy it, to give this country into the control of the Southern rebels and haters of Union men.