Massachusetts stood by Abraham Lincoln. [Applause.] Massachusetts gave her mighty support to the rail splitter from Illinois when he announced as his cardinal doctrines the right of the people to rule, and their good sense which would so guide them as to bring nearer the day when social and industrial justice should prevail in this Republic of ours. [Applause.]
THE REAL KIND OF FIGHT.
And I ask Massachusetts to support us in this campaign, not because it is easy, but because it is hard. [Applause.] I appeal to you because this is the only kind of a fight worth going into, the kind of fight where the victory is worth winning and where the struggle is difficult.
Here in Massachusetts, as elsewhere, we have against us the enormous preponderance of the forces that win victory in ordinary political contests. [A voice: “They won’t do it this time.”]
We have against us 95 per cent of the old regular political leaders. We have against us 95 per cent of the great corporations, which either legitimately fear that we would not tolerate their benefiting by privilege or else which are merely panic-struck and fail to realize that we will do absolute justice—just as much justice to the big man as the little man, but no more. [Cheers.]
SILK STOCKINGS AGAINST HIM.
Friends, we have against us also, I am sorry to say, 95 per cent of the respectable, amiable, silk-stocking vote. [Laughter.]
And it is amusing to see how exactly the conditions now parallel the conditions 55 years ago, when Abraham Lincoln was making his fight for the Union and for freedom.
After his defeat by Douglas in 1858, in November of that year, he wrote a letter to a friend, dating the letter at Springfield, Ill. It’s a letter I should like to have framed at this moment in every house in the Back Bay. [Laughter.] He said:
In the late contest we had with us a considerable proportion of the plain Democracy, but we lost almost all the old silk stocking, exclusive Whigery. I do not mean that we lost all the Whigs, but only those of the nice, exclusive, silk-stocking type. [Laughter.]