The Democrats tell us that in the olden time the Federal Government had a right to cross a State line to put shackles upon the limbs of men. It had the right to cross a State line to trample upon the rights of human beings, but now it has no right to cross those lines upon an errand of mercy or justice. We are told that now, when the Federal Government wishes to protect a citizen, a State line rises like a Chinese wall, and the sword of Federal power turns to air the moment it touches one of those lines. I deny it and I despise, abhor and execrate the doctrine of State Sovereignty. The Democrats tell us if we wish to be protected by the Federal Government we must leave home. I wish they would try it for about ten days. They say the Federal Government can defend a citizen in England, France, Spain or Germany, but cannot defend a child of the Republic sitting around the family hearth. I deny it. A Government that cannot protect its citizens at home is unfit to be called a Government. I want a Government with an ear so good that it can hear the faintest cry of the oppressed wherever its flag floats. I want a Government with an arm long enough and a sword sharp enough to cut down treason wherever it may raise its serpent head. I want a Government that will protect a freedman, standing by his little log hut, with the same alacrity and with the same efficiency that it would protect Vanderbilt, living in a palace of marble and gold. Humanity is a sacred thing, and manhood is a thing to be preserved. Let us look at it. For instance, here is a war, and the Federal Government says to a man, "We want you," and he says, "No, I don't want to go," and then they put a lot of pieces of paper in a wheel and on one of those pieces is his name, and another man turns the crank, and then they pull it out and there is his name, and they say, "Come," and so he goes. And they stand him in front of the brazen-throated guns; they make him fight for his native land, and when the war is over he goes home and he finds the war has been unpopular in his neighborhood, and they trample on his rights, and he says to the Federal Government, "Protect me." And he says to the Government, "I owe my allegiance to you. You must protect me." What will you say of that Government if it says to him, "You must look to your State for protection"? "Ah, but," he says, "my State is the very power trampling upon me," and, of course, the robber is not going to send for the police, It is the duty of the Government to defend even its drafted men; and if that is the duty of the Government, what shall I say of the volunteer, who for one moment holds his wife in a tremulous and agonized embrace, kisses his children, shoulders his musket, goes to the field and says, "Here I am, ready to die for my native land"? A Nation that will not defend its volunteer defenders is a disgrace to the map of this world. This is a Nation. Free speech is the brain of the Republic; an honest ballot is the breath of its life; honest money is the blood of its veins; and the idea of nationality is its great, beating, throbbing heart. I am for a Nation. And yet the Democrats tell me that it is dangerous to have centralized power. How would you have it? I believe in the localization of power; I believe in having enough of it localized in one place to be effectively used; I believe in a localization of brain. I suppose Democrats would like to have it spread all over your body, and they act as though theirs was.

There is another thing in which I believe: I believe in the protection of American labor. The hand that holds Aladdin's lamp must be the hand of toil. This Nation rests upon the shoulders of its workers, and I want the American laboring man to have enough to wear; I want him to have enough to eat:

I want him to have something for the ordinary misfortunes of life; I want him to have the pleasure of seeing his wife well-dressed; I want him to see a few blue ribbons fluttering about his children; I want him to see the flags of health flying in their beautiful cheeks; I want him to feel that this is his country, and the shield of protection is above his labor.

And I will tell you why I am for protection, too. If we were all farmers we would be stupid. If we were all shoemakers we would be stupid. If we all followed one business, no matter what it was, we would become stupid. Protection to American labor diversifies American industry, and to have it diversified touches and develops every part of the human brain. Protection protects ingenuity; it protects intelligence; and protection raises sense; and by protection we have greater men, better looking women and healthier children. Free trade means that our laborer is upon an equality with the poorest paid labor of this world. And allow me to tell you that for an empty stomach, "Hurrah for Hancock!" is a poor consolation. I do not think much of a Government where the people do not have enough to eat. I am a materialist to that extent; I want something to eat. I have been in countries where the laboring man had meat once a year; sometimes twice—Christmas and Easter. And I have seen women carrying upon their heads a burden that no man in this audience could carry, and at the same time knitting busily with both hands, and those women lived without meat; and when I thought of the American laborer, I said to myself, "After all, my country is the best in the world." And when I came back to the sea and saw the old flag flying, it seemed to me as though the air from pure joy had burst into blossom.

Labor has more to eat and more to wear in the United States than in any other land of this earth. I want America to produce everything that Americans need. I want it so that if the whole world should declare war against us, if we were surrounded by walls of cannon and bayonets and swords, we could supply all our material wants in and of ourselves. I want to live to see the American woman dressed in American silk; the American man in everything, from hat to boots, produced in America by the cunning hand of American toil. I want to see the workingman have a good house, painted white, grass in the front yard, carpets on the floor, pictures on the wall. I want to see him a man, feeling that he is a king by the divine right of living in the Republic. And every man here is just a little bit a king, you know. Every man here is a part of the sovereign power. Every man wears a little of purple; every man has a little of crown and a little of sceptre; and every man that will sell his vote for money or be ruled by prejudice is unfit to be an American citizen.

I believe in American labor, and I will tell you why. The other day a man told me that we had produced in the United States of America one million tons of steel rails. How much are they worth? Sixty dollars a ton. In other words, the million tons are worth sixty million dollars. How much is a ton of iron worth in the ground? Twenty-five cents. American labor takes twenty-five cents worth of iron in the ground and adds to it fifty-nine dollars and seventy-five cents. One million tons of rails, and the raw material not worth twenty-four thousand dollars! We build a ship in the United States worth five hundred thousand dollars, and the value of the ore in the earth, of the trees in the great forest, of all that enters into the composition of that ship bringing five hundred thousand dollars in gold is only twenty thousand dollars; four hundred and eighty thousand dollars by American labor, American muscle, coined into gold; American brains made a legal tender the world round.

I propose to stand by the Nation. I want the furnaces kept hot. I want the sky to be filled with the smoke of American industry, and upon that cloud of smoke will rest forever the bow of perpetual promise. That is what I am for. Where did this doctrine of a tariff for revenue only come from? From the South. The South would like to stab the prosperity of the North. They would rather trade with Old England than with New England. They would rather trade with the people who were willing to help them in war than with those who conquered the Rebellion. They knew what gave us our strength in war. They knew that all the brooks and creeks and rivers of New England were putting down the Rebellion. They knew that every wheel that turned, every spindle that revolved, was a soldier in the army of human progress. It won't do! They were so lured by the greed of office that they were willing to trade upon the misfortunes of a Nation. It won't do! I do not wish to belong to a party that succeeds only when my country fails. I do not wish to belong to a party whose banner went up with the banner of rebellion. I do not wish to belong to a party that was in partnership with defeat and disaster. I do not. And there is not a Democrat here who does not know that a failure of the crops this year would have helped his party. You know that an early frost would have been a godsend to them. You know that the potato-bug could have done them more good than all their speakers.

I wish to belong to that party which is prosperous when the country is prosperous. I belong to that party which is not poor when the golden billows are running over the seas of wheat. I belong to that party which is prosperous when there are oceans of corn, and when the cattle are upon the thousand hills. I belong to that party which is prosperous when the furnaces are aflame, and when you dig coal and iron and silver; when everybody has enough to eat; when everybody is happy; when the children are all going to school, and when joy covers my Nation as with a garment. That party which is prosperous then, is my party.

Now, then, I have been telling you what I am for. I am for free speech, and so ought you to be. I am for an honest ballot, and if you are not you ought to be. I am for the collection of the revenue. I am for honest money. I am for the idea that this is a Nation forever. I believe in protecting American labor. I want the shield of my country above every anvil, above every furnace, above every cunning head and above every deft hand of American labor.

Now, then, which section of this country will be the more apt to carry these ideas into execution? Which party will be the more apt to achieve these grand and splendid things? Honor bright? Now we have not only to choose between sections of the country; we have to choose between parties. Here is the Democratic party, and I admit there are thousands of good Democrats who went to the war, and some of those that stayed at home were good men; and I want to ask you, and I want you to tell me in reply what that party did during the war when the War Democrats were away from home. What did they do? That is the question. I say to you, that every man who tried to tear our flag out of heaven was a Democrat. The men who wrote the ordinances of secession, who fired upon Fort Sumter; the men who starved our soldiers, who fed them with the crumbs that the worms had devoured before, they were Democrats. The keepers of Libby, the keepers of Andersonville, were Democrats—Libby and Andersonville, the two mighty wings that will bear the memory of the Confederacy to eternal infamy! The men who wished to scatter yellow fever in the North and who tried to fire the great cities of the North—they were all Democrats. He who said that the greenback would never be paid and he who slandered sixty cents out of every dollar of the Nation's promises were Democrats. Who were joyful when your brothers and your sons and your fathers lay dead on a field of battle that the country had lost? They were Democrats. The men who wept when the old banner floated in triumph above the ramparts of rebellion—they were Democrats. You know it. The men who wept when slavery was destroyed, who believed slavery to be a divine institution, who regarded bloodhounds as apostles and missionaries, and who wept at the funeral of that infernal institution—they were Democrats. Bad company—bad company!