And let me implore all the young men here not to join that party. Do not give new blood to that institution. The Democratic party has a yellow passport. On one side it says "dangerous." They imagine they have not changed, and that is because they have not intellectual growth. That party was once the enemy of my country, was once the enemy of our flag, and more than that, it was once the enemy of human liberty, and that party to-night is not willing that the citizens of the Republic should exercise all their rights irrespective of their color. And allow me to say right here that I am opposed to that party.
We have not only to choose between parties, but to choose between candidates. The Democracy have put forward as the bearers of their standard General Hancock and William H. English. The Democrats have at last nominated a Union soldier. They nominated George B. McClellan once, because he failed to whip the South; they nominated Mr. Greeley, when they despised him, and now they have nominated General Hancock. Do they think the South loves him? At Gettysburg they say he fought against them, and that is one great reason why he should be President—that he shot rebels. Do the men that fought at Gettysburg still believe in State Sovereignty? Wade Hampton says, "We must vote as Lee and Jackson fought." They fought for State Sovereignty. Has the South changed? Hancock went to kill them then; they want to vote for him now. Who has changed? [A voice: "Hancock.">[ I think so. They are using him as a figure-head. They have dressed him in the noble blue, with the patriotic coat and Union buttons, and they do not like him any better than they did at Gettysburg. It would be just as consistent for the Republicans to have nominated Wade Hampton. Did General Hancock believe in State Sovereignty when he was at Gettysburg? If he did, he was a murderer, and not a Union soldier—he was killing men he believed to be in the right, and a man cannot fight unless his conscience approves of what his sword does, and if he was honest at that time, he did not believe in State Sovereignty, and it seems to me he would hate to have the men who tried to destroy this Government cheering him. All the glory he ever got was in the service of the Republican party, and if he does not look out he will lose it all in the service of the Democratic party. He had a conversation with General Grant. It was a time when he had been appointed at the head of the Department of the Gulf. In that conversation he stated to General Grant that he was opposed to "nigger domination." Grant said to him, "We must obey the laws of Congress. We are soldiers." And that meant, the military is not above the civil authority. And I tell you to-night, that the army and the navy are the right and left hands of the civil power. Grant said to him: "Three or four million ex-slaves, without property and without education, cannot dominate over thirty or forty millions of white people, with education and property." General Hancock replied to that: "I am opposed to 'nigger domination.'" Allow me to say that I do not believe any man fit for the presidency of the great Republic, who is capable of insulting a down-trodden race. I never meet a negro that I do not feel like asking his forgiveness for the wrongs that my race has inflicted on his. I remember that from the white man he received for two hundred years agony and tears; I remember that my race sold a child from the agonized breast of a mother; I remember that my race trampled with the feet of greed upon all the holy relations of life; and I do not feel like insulting the colored man; I feel rather like asking the forgiveness of his race for the crimes that my race have put upon him. "Nigger domination!" What a fine scabbard that makes for the sword of Gettysburg! It won't do!
What is General Hancock for, besides the presidency? How does he stand upon the great questions affecting American prosperity? He told us the other day that the tariff is a local question. The tariff affects every man and woman, live they in hut, hovel or palace; it affects every man that has a back to be covered or a stomach to be filled, and yet he says it is a local question. So is death. He also told us that he heard that question discussed once, in Pennsylvania. He must have been eavesdropping. And he tells us that his doctrine of the tariff will continue as long as Nature lasts. Then Senator Randolph wrote him a letter. I do not know whether Senator Randolph answered it or not; but that answer was worse than the first interview; and I understand now that another letter is going through a period of incubation at Governor's Island, upon the great subject of the tariff. It won't do!
They say one thing they are sure of, he is opposed to paying Southern pensions and Southern claims. He says that a man that fought against this Government has no right to a pension. Good! I say a man that fought against this Government has no right to office. If a man cannot earn a pension by tearing our flag out of the sky, he cannot earn power. [A Voice—"How about Longstreet?">[ Longstreet has repented of what he did. Longstreet admits that he was wrong. And there was no braver officer in the Southern Confederacy. Every man of the South who will say, "I made a mistake"—I do not want him to say that he knew he was wrong—all I ask him to say is that he now thinks he was wrong; and every man of the South to-day who says he was wrong, and who says from this day forward, henceforth and forever, he is for this being a Nation.
I will take him by the hand. But while he is attempting to do at the ballot-box what he failed to accomplish upon the field of battle, I am against him; while he uses a Northern general to bait a Southern trap, I won't bite. I will forgive men when they deserve to be forgiven; but while they insist that they were right, while they insist that State Sovereignty is the proper doctrine, I am opposed to their climbing into power.
Hancock says that he will not pay these claims; he agrees to veto a bill that his party may pass; he agrees in advance that he will defeat a party that he expects will elect him; he, in effect, says to the people, "You can not trust that party, but you can trust me." He says, "Look at them; I admit they are a hungry lot; I admit that they haven't had a bite in twenty years; I admit that an ordinary famine is satiety compared to the hunger they feel. But between that vast appetite known as the Democratic party, and the public treasury, I will throw the shield of my veto." No man has a right to say in advance what he will veto, any more than a judge has a right to say in advance how he will decide a case. The veto power is a distinction with which the Constitution has clothed the Executive, and no President has a right to say that he will veto until he has heard both sides of the question. But he agrees in advance.
I would rather trust a party than a man. Death may veto Hancock, and Death has not been a successful politician in the United States. Tyler, Fillmore, Andy Johnson—I do not wish Death to elect any more Presidents; and if he does, and if Hancock is elected, William H. English becomes President of the United States. No, no, no! All I need to say about him is simply to pronounce his name; that is all. You do not want him. Whether the many stories that have been told about him are true or not I do not know, and I will not give currency to a solitary word against the reputation of an American citizen unless I know it to be true. What I have against him is what he has done in public life. When Charles Sumner, that great and splendid publicist—Charles Sumner, the philanthropist, one who spoke to the conscience of his time and to the history of the future—when he stood up in the United States Senate and made a great and glorious plea for human liberty, there crept into the Senate a villain and struck him down as though he had been a wild beast. That man was a member of Congress, and when a resolution was introduced in the House, to expel that man, William H. English voted "No." All the stories in the world could not add to the infamy of that public act. That is enough for me, and whatever his private life may be, let it be that of an angel, never, never, never would I vote for a man that would defend the assassin of free speech. General Hancock, they tell me, is a statesman; that what little time he has had to spare from war he has given to the tariff, and what little time he could spare from the tariff he has given to the Constitution of his country; showing under what circumstances a Major-General can put at defiance the Congress of the United States. It won't do!
But while I am upon that subject it may be well for me to state that he never will be President of the United States. Now, I say that a man who in time of peace prefers peace, and prefers the avocations of peace; a man who in the time of peace would rather look at the corn in the air of June, rather listen to the hum of bees, rather sit by his door with his wife and children; the man who in time of peace loves peace, and yet when the blast of war blows in his ears, shoulders a musket and goes to the field of war to defend his country, and when the war is over goes home and again pursues the avocations of peace—that man is just as good, to say the least of it, as a man who in a time of profound peace makes up his mind that he would like to make his living killing other folks. To say the least of it, he is as good.
The Republicans have named as their standard bearers James A. Garfield and Chester A. Arthur. James A. Garfield was a volunteer soldier, and he took away from the field of Chickamauga as much glory as any one man could carry. He is not only a soldier—7-he is a statesman. He has studied and discussed all the great questions that affect the prosperity and well-being of the American people. His opinions are well known, and I say to you tonight that there is not in this Nation, there is not in this Republic a man with greater brain and greater heart than James A. Garfield. I know him and I like him. I know him as well as any other public man, and I like him. The Democratic party say that he is not honest. I have been reading some Democratic papers to-day, and you would say that every one of their editors had a private sewer of his own into which has been emptied for a hundred years the slops of hell. They tell me that James A. Garfield is not honest. Are you a Democrat? Your party tried to steal nearly half of this country. Your party stole the armament of a nation. Your party was willing to live upon the unpaid labor of four millions of people. You have no right to the floor for the purpose of making a motion of honesty. James A. Garfield has been at the head of the most important committees of Congress; he is a member of the most important one of the whole House. He has no peer in the Congress of the United States. And you know it. He is the leader of the House. With one wave of his hand he can take millions from the pocket of one industry and put it into the pocket of another; with a motion of his hand he could have made himself a man of wealth, but he is to-night a poor man. I know him and I like him. He is as genial as May and he is as generous as Autumn. And the men for whom he has done unnumbered favors, the men whom he had pity enough not to destroy with an argument, the men who, with his great generosity, he has allowed, intellectually, to live, are now throwing filth at the reputation of that great and splendid man.
Several ladies and gentlemen were passing a muddy place around which were gathered ragged and wretched urchins. And these little wretches began to throw mud at them; and one gentleman said, "If you don't stop I will throw it back at you." And a little fellow said, "You can't do it without dirtying your hands, and it doesn't hurt us anyway."