Having been informed that there had been a good deal of greenback talk in that neighborhood, I was not surprised. But I thought it a good opportunity to administer a drastic lesson to my chicken-hearted party friends. "Gentlemen," I said, "I have been invited here to preach Republican doctrines to your people. The Democratic platform advocates the very policy which you say is favored by your people. The Republican platform emphatically condemns that policy. I think it is barefaced, dishonest, rascally repudiation. If your people favor this, they stand in eminent need of a good, vigorous talking to. But if you, the committee managing this meeting, do not want me to speak my mind on this subject, I shall not speak at all. I shall leave instantly, and you may do with the meeting as you like."
It was as if a bombshell had dropped among my committee-men. They were in great consternation and cried out accordingly. I had been announced as the principal speaker. A large number of people had come to hear me. If I left, there would be a great disappointment which would hurt the party. But I did not mean it—did I?
I assured them that I was in dead earnest. I would stay and speak only on condition that I should feel at perfect liberty to express my convictions straightforwardly and impressively. They looked at one another as if in great doubt what to do, and then, after a whispered consultation, told me that, of course, if I insisted, they must let me have my way; but they begged me to "draw it mild." I replied that I could not promise to "draw it mild," but that I believed they were mistaken in thinking that their people, if properly told the truth, would favor the rascally policy of repudiation. They shook their heads and sighed, and "hoped there would be no row."
The meeting was very large, mostly plain country people, men and women. The committee-men sat on the platform on both sides of me, with anxious faces, evidently doubtful of what would happen. I had put the audience in sympathetic temper when in the due order of my speech I reached the bond question. Then I did not "draw it mild." I described the circumstances under which the bonds were sold by our government and bought by our creditors: the rebellion at the height of its strength; our armies in the field suffering defeat after defeat; our regular revenues sadly insufficient to cover the expenses of the war; our credit at a low ebb; a gloomy cloud of uncertainty hanging over our future. These were the circumstances under which our government called upon our own citizens and upon the world abroad for loans of money. The people whom we then called bond-holders lent their money upon our promise that the money should be paid back in coin. They did so at a great risk, for if we had failed in the war, they might have lost all or much of what they had lent us. Largely owing to the help they gave us in our extremity, we succeeded. And now are we to turn round and denounce them as speculators and bloodsuckers, and say that we will not give them in the day of success and prosperity what we promised them in the day of our need and distress? Would not that be downright knavery and a crime before God and men?
When I had advanced thus far, cries of "shame! shame!" came from the audience. Then I began to denounce the vile politicians who advocated such a disgraceful course, first the Democrats who had made such an ignominious proposition a part of their platform, and then the Republicans who, believing that such a movement might develop some popular strength, had cowardly bent their knees to it. By this time my hearers were thoroughly warmed up, and when I opened my whole vocabulary of strong language, in all parts of the crowd arose such cries as "You are right!" "Bully for you!" "Give it to them!" "Hit them again!" and other ebullitions of the unsophisticated mind; and when I added that I had been told the whole population of this region were in favor of that crime of repudiating the honest debts of the republic, and that I had in their name repelled the charge as a dastardly slander, my hearers broke out in a storm of applause and cheers lasting long enough to give me time to look round at my committee-men, who returned my gaze with a smile of pitiable embarrassment on their faces.
The Moral Cowardice of Politicians a National Danger
When my speech was over, I asked them what they now thought of the repudiation sentiment in their neighborhood. Ah, they had "never been so astonished in their lives." One of them attempted to compliment me upon my "success in so quickly turning the minds of those people." But I would not let them have that consoling conception of the facts, and answered that I had not turned the minds of those people at all; that their feelings and impulses were originally honest; that I had only called forth a manifestation of that original honesty; and that if the local political leaders had believed in the original honesty of the people and courageously stood up for truth and right instead of permitting themselves to be frightened by a rascally agitation and of pusillanimously pandering to it, they would have had the same experience.
In fact, the same experience has repeated itself in the course of my political activity again and again until a late period. I have had an active part in a great many political campaigns and probably addressed as many popular meetings as any man now living; and I have always found that whenever any public question under public discussion had in it any moral element, an appeal to the moral sense of the people proved uniformly the most powerful argument. I do not, of course, mean to say that there were not at all times many persons accessible to selfish motives and liable to yield to the seduction of the opportunity for unrighteous gain, and that such evil influences were not at times hard to overcome. But with the majority of the people, notably the "plain people"—using the term in the sense in which Abraham Lincoln was wont to use it—I found the question "is this morally right?" to have ultimately more weight than the question "will this be profitable?"
