American politics (non-partisan) from the beginning to date

by Thomas V. Cooper; Hector T. Fenton

Presenting President Harrison for Re-nomination at the Minneapolis Convention, June 9, 1892.

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention.—It is the peculiarity of Republican National Conventions that each one of them has a distinct and interesting history. We are here to meet conditions and solve problems which make this gathering not only no exception to the rule but substantially a new departure. That there should be strong convictions and their earnest expression as to preferences and politics is characteristic of the right of individual judgment which is the fundamental principle of Republicanism. There have been occasions when the result was so sure that the delegates could freely indulge in the charming privilege of favoritism and of friendship. But the situation which now confronts us demands the exercise of dispassionate judgment and our best thought and experience. We cannot venture on uncertain ground or encounter obstacles placed in the pathway of success by ourselves. The Democratic party is now divided, but the hope of the possession of power once more will make it in the final battle more aggressive, determined and unscrupulous than ever. It starts with fifteen States secure without an effort by processes which are a travesty upon popular government, and, if continued long enough, will paralyze institutions founded upon popular suffrage. It has to win four more States in a fair fight, States which, in the vocabulary of politics, are denominated doubtful. The Republican party must appeal to the conscience and the judgment of the individual voter in every State in the Union. This is in accordance with the principles upon which it was founded and the objects for which it contends. It has accepted this issue before and fought it out with an extraordinary continuance of success. The conditions of Republican victory from 1860 to 1880 were created by Abraham Lincoln and U. S. Grant. They were that the saved republic should be run by its saviours, the emancipation of slaves, the reconstruction of the States, the reception of those who had fought to destroy the republic back into the fold, without the penalties or punishments, and to an equal share with those who had fought and saved the nation, in the solemn obligation and inestimable privilege of American citizenship. They were the embodiment into the Constitution of the principles for which 2,000,000 of men had fought and 500,000 had died. They were the restoration of public credit, the resumption of specie payments and the prosperous condition of solvent business for twenty-five years. They were names with which to conjure and events fresh in the public mind which were eloquent with popular enthusiasm. It needed little else than a recital of the glorious story of its heroes and a statement of the achievements of the Republican party to retain the confidence of the people. But from the desire for a change, which is characteristic of free governments, there came a reversal, there came a check to the progress of the Republican party and four years of Democratic administration. Those four years largely relegated to the realm of history past issues and brought us face to face with what Democracy, its professions and its practices mean to-day. The great names which have adorned the roll of the Republican statesman and soldiers are potent and popular. The great measures of the Republican party are still the best part of the history of the country. The unequalled and unexampled story of Republicanism in its progress and its achievements stands unique in the record of parties in governments which are free. But we live in practical times, facing practical issues which affect the business, the wages, the labor and the prosperity of to-day.

“It will be won or lost upon the policy, foreign and domestic, the industrial measures and the administrative acts of the administration of Benjamin Harrison. Whoever receives the nomination of this convention will run upon the judgment of the people as to whether they have been more prosperous and more happy, whether the country has been in a better condition at home and stood more honorable abroad under these last four years of Harrison and Republican administration than during the preceding four years of Cleveland and Democratic government. Not since Thomas Jefferson has any administration been called upon to face and solve so many or such difficult problems as those which have been exigent in our conditions. No administration since the organization of the government has ever met difficulties better or more to the satisfaction of the American people. Chile has been taught that, no matter how small the antagonist, no community can with safety insult the flag or murder American sailors. Germany and England have learned in Samoa that the United States has become one of the powers of the world, and no matter how mighty the adversary, at every sacrifice American honor will be maintained. The Bering Sea question, which was the insurmountable obstacle in the diplomacy of Cleveland and of Bayard, has been settled upon a basis which sustains the American people until arbitration shall have determined our right. The dollar of the country has been placed and kept on the standard of commercial nations, and a convention has been agreed upon with foreign governments, which, by making bi-metallism the policy of all nations, may successfully solve all our financial problems. The tariff, tinkered with and trifled with to the serious disturbance of trade and disaster to business since the days of Washington, has been courageously embodied into a code which has preserved the principle of the protection of American industries. To it has been added a beneficent policy, supplemented by beneficial treaties and wise diplomacy, which has opened to our farmers and manufacturers the markets of other countries. The navy has been builded upon lines which will protect American citizens and American interests and the American flag all over the world. The public debt has been reduced. The maturing bonds have been paid off. The public credit has been maintained. The burdens of taxation have been lightened. Two hundred millions of currency have been added to the people’s money without disturbances of the exchanges.

“Unexampled prosperity has crowned wise laws and their wise administration. The main question which divides us is to whom does the credit of all this belong? Orators may stand upon this platform more able and more eloquent than I who will paint in more brilliant colors, but they cannot put in more earnest thought the affection and admiration of Republicans for our distinguished Secretary of State. I yield to no Republican, no matter from what State he hails, in admiration and respect for John Sherman, for Governor McKinley, for Thomas B. Reed, for Iowa’s great Senator, for the favorites of Illinois and Wisconsin, but when I am told that the credit for the brilliant diplomacy of this administration belongs exclusively to the Secretary of State, for the administration of its finances to the Secretary of the Treasury, for the construction of its ships to the Secretary of the Navy, for the introduction of American pork in Europe to the Secretary of Agriculture, for the settlement, so far as it is settled, of the currency question, to Senator John Sherman, for the formulation of the tariff laws to Governor McKinley, for the removal of the restrictions placed by foreign nations upon the introduction of American pork to our ministers at Paris and Berlin, I am tempted to seriously inquire who, during the last four years, has been President of the United States anyhow? Cæsar, when he wrote those commentaries, which were the history of the conquests of Europe under his leadership, modestly took the position of Eneas when he said: ‘They are the narrative of events, the whole of which I saw and the part of which I was.’ General Thomas, as the rock of Chickamauga, occupies a place in our history with Leonidas among the Greeks, except that he succeeded where Leonidas failed. The fight of Joe Hooker above the clouds was the poetry of battle. The resistless rush of Sheridan and his steed down the valley of the Shenandoah is the epic of our civil war. The march of Sherman from Atlanta to the sea is the supreme triumph of gallantry and strategy. It detracts nothing from the splendor or the merits of the deeds of his lieutenants to say that having selected them with marvellous sagacity and discretion Grant still remained the supreme commander of the national army. All the proposed acts of any administration before they are formulated are passed upon in Cabinet council, and the measures and suggestions of the ablest Secretaries would have failed with a lesser President, but for the great good of the country and the benefit of the Republican party they have succeeded because of the suggestive mind, the indomitable courage, the intelligent appreciation of situation and the grand magnanimity of Benjamin Harrison. It is an undisputed fact that during the few months when both the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Treasury were ill the President personally assumed the duties of the State Department and of the Treasury Department, and both with equal success. The Secretary of State in accepting his portfolio under President Garfield wrote: ‘Your administration must be made brilliant, successful and strong in the confidence and pride of the people, not at all diverting its energies for re-election, and yet compelling that result by the logic of events and by the imperious necessities of the situation.’ Garfield fell before the bullet of the assassin and Mr. Blaine retired to private life. General Harrison invited him to take up that unfinished diplomatic career where its threads had been so tragically broken. He entered the Cabinet. He resumed his work and has won a higher place in our history. The prophecy he made for Garfield has been superbly fulfilled by Harrison. In the language of Mr. Blaine: ‘The President has compelled a re-election by the logic of events and the imperious necessities of the situation.’

“The man who is nominated here to-day to win must carry a certain well-known number of the doubtful States. Patrick Henry, in the convention which started rolling the ball of the independence of the Colonies from Great Britain, said: ‘I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past.’ New York was carried in 1880 by General Garfield, and in every important election since then we have done our best. We have put forward our ablest, our most popular, our most brilliant leaders for Governor and State officers to suffer constant defeat. The only light which illumines with the sun of hope the dark record of those twelve years is the fact that in 1888 the State of New York was triumphantly carried by President Harrison. He carried it then as a gallant soldier, a wise Senator, statesman, who inspired confidence by his public utterances in daily speech from the commencement of the canvass to its close. He still has all these claims, and in addition an administration beyond criticism and rich with elements of popularity with which to carry New York. Ancestry helps in the old world and handicaps in the new. There is but one distinguished example of a son first overcoming the limitations imposed by the pre-eminent fame of his father, and then rising above it, and that was when the younger Pitt became greater than Chatham. With an ancestor a signer of the Declaration of Independence and another who saved the Northwest from savagery and gave it to civilization and empire, who was also President of the United States, a poor and unknown lawyer of Indiana has risen by his unaided efforts to such distinction as lawyer, orator, soldier, statesman and President, that he reflects more credit on his ancestors than they have devolved upon him and presents in American history the parallel of the younger Pitt. By the grand record of a wise administration, by the strength in frequent contact of the people, in wonderfully versatile and felicitous speech, by the claims of a pure life in public and in the simplicity of a typical American home, I nominate Benjamin Harrison.”

Speech of Hon. Leon Abbett.

Presenting Grover Cleveland for Nomination at the Chicago Convention, June 22, 1892.

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Convention.—In presenting the name to this Convention, I speak for the united Democracy of the State of New Jersey, whose loyalty to Democratic principles, faithful services to the party, and whose contributions to its success entitle it to the respectful consideration of the Democracy of the United States. Its electoral vote has always been cast in support of Democratic principles and Democratic candidates.

In voicing the unanimous wish of the delegation from New Jersey, I present as their candidate for the suffrages of this Convention the name of a distinguished Democratic statesman, born upon its soil, for whom in the two great Presidential contests the State of New Jersey has given its electoral vote.

The supreme consideration in the mind of the Democracy of New Jersey is the success of the Democratic party and its principles. We have been in the past, and will be in the future, ready to sacrifice personal preferences in deference to the clear expression of the will of the Democracy of the Union. It is because of that that this name will awaken throughout our State the enthusiasm of the Democracy and insure success. It is because he represents the great Democratic principles and policy upon which this entire convention is a unit; it is because we believe that with him as a candidate the Democrats of the Union will sweep the country and establish its principles throughout the length and breadth of the land, that we offer to the Convention as a nominee the choice of New Jersey, Grover Cleveland.