NOMINATION TO THE PRESIDENCY.
_Early Suggestions--Letters on Subject--Garfield Letter--Action of
State Convention--Cincinnati Convention--Course of his
Friends--First and Second Day's Events--Speech of
Noyes--Balloting--Nominated on Seventh Ballot--Officially
Notified--Habits--Personal Appearance--Family--Letter of
Acceptance--Character as a Soldier, Magistrate, and Man--Domestic
Surroundings._
No able man can for a long time fill the office of chief magistrate of
one of the three great States of the Union without having his name more
or less mentioned by his friends in connection with the presidency. As
early as October, 1871, the president of the Chamber of Commerce of
Cincinnati, at a large public meeting held in that city just prior to
the fall election, introduced Governor Hayes as the next Republican
candidate for President of the United States.
In 1872 a modest poet was inspired by the surrounding sentiment to sing:
"We bow not down to yonder rising sun,
As did the Parsee worshiper of old,
But bend in homage when its race is run,
And watch it sink in purple-fretted gold.
And thus to thee, oh Hayes! the tried, the true,
On battle-field and in the civic chair,
Our heart's deep gratitude, thy meed and due,
(As closes far too soon thy proud career),
Goes out with benedictions pure and high:
Oh may thy set be brief, and, like the sun,
Rise thou again--thy light to fill the sky,
A brighter course of glory still to run,
Till millions now unborn shall hail thy name
In ages yet to come, with grand acclaim!"
Early in 1875 he was overwhelmed with letters urging upon him the
acceptance of the third nomination for governor. Many of these letters
presented as an inducement in favor of acceptance that if he ran for
governor and succeeded in beating Allen, the prize of the presidency
would be within his reach. To one of these letters from a leading editor
he replied on April 10:
"The personal advantages you suggest rather tend to repel me. The
melancholy thing in our public life is the insane desire to get
higher.... But now I can't take that direction, and I will be ever
so much obliged if you will help drop me out of it as smoothly as
may be."
To a member of the State legislature he wrote:
"Content with the past, I am not in a state of mind about the
future. It is for us to act well in the present. George E. Pugh
used to say there is no political hereafter."
In the canvass of 1875, so much were the hearts of the people set upon
having their great State leader the National leader, that the masses
were invited in announcements for political meetings to come out and
hear "the next President of the United States."
As illustrating the firmness of Governor Hayes in adhering to
convictions, we give below a letter addressed to Hon. James A. Garfield.
It must be remembered that at the time this letter was written the
paper money madness prevailed through Ohio and in Congress to an
alarming extent.
EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT, STATE OF OHIO, }
COLUMBUS, _March 4, 1876._ }
_My Dear General:_
I have your note of 2d. I am kept busy with callers,
correspondence, and the routine details of the office, and have not
therefore tried to keep abreast of the currents of opinion on any
of the issues. My notion is that the true contest is to be between
inflation and a sound currency. The Democrats are again drifting
all to the wrong side. We need not divide on details, on methods,
or time when.
The previous question will again be irredeemable paper as a
permanent policy, or a policy which seeks a return to coin. My
opinion is decidedly against yielding a hair's breadth.
We can't be on the inflation side of the question. We must keep our
face, our front, firmly in the other direction. "No steps
backward," must be something more than unmeaning platform words.
"The drift of sentiment among our friends in Ohio," which you
inquire about, will depend on the conduct of our leading men. It is
for them to see that the right sentiment is steadily upheld. We are
in a condition such that firmness and adherence to principle are of
peculiar value just now. I would "consent" to no backward steps. To
yield or compromise is weakness, and will destroy us. If a better
resumption measure can be substituted for the present one, that may
do. But keep cool. We can better afford to be beaten in Congress
than to back out.
Sincerely,
R. B. HAYES.
Here is high courage and lofty political morality. The letter proclaims
the grand truth that the only inquiry worthy of a statesman is, not what
the tendency of public opinion is, but what ought it to be?
To a delegate to the Cincinnati Convention he wrote, under date of April
6:
"Having done absolutely nothing to make myself the candidate of
Ohio, I feel very little responsibility for future results. When
the State Convention was called it seemed probable that if I
encouraged my friends to organize for the purpose, every district
would elect my decided supporters. But to make such an effort in my
own behalf, to use Payne's phrase on repudiation, 'I abhorred.'"
The Republican State Convention, which met March 29, had passed, by a
unanimous vote, and with boundless enthusiasm, the following resolution:
"The Republican party of Ohio, having full confidence in the
honesty, ability, and patriotism of Rutherford B. Hayes, cordially
presents him to the National Republican Convention, for the
nomination for president of the United States, and our State
delegates to that Convention are instructed and the district
delegates are requested to use their earnest efforts to secure his
nomination."
We shall not stop to trace the growth of the Hayes sentiment in other
States. When the Sixth Republican National Convention assembled in
Cincinnati, on June 14, 1876, the situation was this: Hayes was the
first choice of every one for the second place on the ticket, and every
one's second choice for the first. He and his friends had in no way
antagonized other candidates, and had been guilty of no uncharitableness
of judgment toward them. In the convention, he was modestly presented as
the one candidate who could harmonize all interests, and unite all party
elements. His friends argued that he combined merit and availability to
a higher degree than any one whose name was before the convention.
The spirit of the convention was good, and there seemed a willing
response to this portion of the opening prayer:
"By Thy grace, give to them a spirit of concord, that harmony may
prevail in their counsels; a spirit of wisdom that may discern and
use the right means to promote the end for which they are convened;
a spirit of patriotism, that the prosperity of the Nation may
overshadow all personal or sectional desires; a spirit of courage,
that they may be faithful to the deepest convictions of duty."
Ex-Governor Morgan, of New York, Chairman of the National Executive
Committee, in his opening address, pertinently said:
"Resumption accomplished, then, in all human probability, will
follow ten or fifteen years of prosperity, equal to that of any
former period, perhaps greater than the country has yet seen. If
you will, in addition, put a plank in your platform, declaring for
such an amendment of the constitution as will extend the
presidential office to six years, and make the incumbent ineligible
for re-election, you will deserve the gratitude of the American
people."
The Hon. Theodore M. Pomeroy, Temporary Chairman, forcibly declared:
"No, gentlemen, the late war was not a mere prize-fight for
National supremacy. It was the outgrowth of the conflict of
irreconcilable moral, social, and political forces. Democracy had
its lot with the moral, social, and political forces of the cause
which was lost; the Republican party with those which triumphed and
survived. The preservation of the results of that victory devolves
upon us here and now. Democracy has no traditions of the past, no
impulses of the present, no aspirations for the future, fitting it
for this task. The reaction of 1874 has already spent itself in a
vain effort to realize the situation. It has simply demonstrated
that no change in the machinery of the government can be had
outside of the Republican party, without drawing with it a
practical nullification of the great work of reconstruction,
financial chaos, and administrative revolution. The present House
of Representatives has succeeded in nothing except the development
of its own incapacity."
The additional speeches delivered on the first day (which was devoted to
organization) were by Senator Logan, General Joseph R. Hawley,
Ex-Governor Noyes, Rev. Henry Highland Garnett, Ex-Governor Wm. A.
Howard, of Michigan, and Fred. Douglass.
Mr. Douglass was vociferously applauded, when he said:
"The thing, however, in which I feel the deepest interest, and the
thing in which I believe this country feels the deepest interest,
is that the principles involved in the contest which carried your
sons and brothers to the battle-field, which draped our Northern
churches with the weeds of mourning, and filled our towns and our
cities with mere stumps of men--armless, legless, maimed, and
mutilated--the thing for which you poured out your blood and piled
a debt for after-coming generations higher than a mountain of gold,
to weigh down the necks of your children and your children's
children--I say those principles, those principles involved in that
tremendous contest, are to be dearer to the American people in the
great political struggle now upon them than any other principles we
have."
The most significant event of the first day's proceedings was the
reading from the platform, by George William Curtis, of the outspoken
address of the Republican Reform Club of the city of New York.
The Hon. Edward McPherson, of Pennsylvania, was chosen permanent
chairman. The important events of the second day's proceedings were the
adoption of the platform and the putting presidential candidates in
nomination. The candidate the convention subsequently selected was
placed in nomination by Ex-Governor Noyes, of Ohio, through the
following eminently appropriate speech:
GENTLEMEN:--On behalf of the forty-four delegates from Ohio,
representing the entire Republican party of Ohio, I have the honor
to present to this convention the name of a gentleman well known
and favorably known throughout the country; one held in high
respect, and much beloved, by the people of Ohio; a man who, during
the dark and stormy days of the rebellion, when those who are
invincible in peace and invisible in battle were uttering brave
words to cheer their neighbors on, himself, in the fore-front of
battle, followed his leaders and his flag until the authority of
our government was established from the lakes to the Gulf, and from
the river round to the sea. A man who has had the rare good fortune
since the war was over to be twice elected to Congress from the
district where he resided, and subsequently the rarer fortune of
beating successively for the highest office in the gift of the
people of Ohio, Allen G. Thurman, George H. Pendleton, and William
Allen. He is a gentleman who has somehow fallen into the habit of
defeating Democratic aspirants for the Presidency, and we in Ohio
all have a notion that from long experience he will be able to do
it again. In presenting the name of Governor Hayes, permit me to
say we wage no war upon the distinguished gentlemen whose names
have been mentioned here to-day. They have rendered great service
to their country, which entitles them to our respect and to our
gratitude. I have no word to utter against them. I only wish to say
that General Hayes is the peer of these gentlemen in integrity, in
character, in ability. They appear as equals in all the great
qualities which fit men for the highest positions which the
American people can give them. Governor Hayes is honest; he is
brave; he is unpretending; he is wise, sagacious, a scholar, and a
gentleman. Enjoying an independent fortune, the simplicity of his
private life, his modesty of bearing, is a standing rebuke to the
extravagance--the reckless extravagance--which leads to corruption
in public and in private places.
Remember now, delegates to the convention, that a responsible duty
rests upon you. You can be governed by no wild impulse. You can run
no fearful risks in this campaign. You must, if you would succeed,
nominate a candidate here who will not only carry the old, strong
Republican States, but who will carry Indiana, Ohio, and New York,
as well as other doubtful States. We care not who the man shall be,
other than our own candidate. Whoever you nominate, men of the
convention, shall receive our heartiest and most earnest efforts
for their success. But we beg to submit that in Governor Hayes you
have those qualities which are calculated best to compromise all
difficulties, and to soften all antagonisms. He has no personal
enemies: His private life is so pure that no man has ever dared to
assail it. His public acts throughout all these years have been
above suspicion even. I ask you, then, if, in the lack of these
antagonisms, and with all of these good qualities, living in a
State which holds its election in October, the result of which will
be decisive, it may be, of the presidential campaign--it is not
worth while to see to it that a candidate is nominated against whom
nothing can be said, and who is sure to succeed in the campaign?
In conclusion, permit me to say that, if the wisdom of this
convention shall decide at last that Governor Hayes' nomination is
safest, and is best, that decision will meet with such responsive
enthusiasm here in Ohio as will insure Republican success at home,
and which will be so far-reaching and wide-spreading as to make
success almost certain from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
The nomination was seconded by Benjamin F. Wade, of Ohio, Colonel J. W.
Davis, of West Virginia, Hon. A. St. Gem, and Hon. J. P. Jones, of
Missouri.
The third and last day of the sitting of the Convention was employed in
balloting and in making the nominations.
At twenty minutes to 11 the balloting for president began:
FIRST
BALLOT.
Bl: Blaine
Mo: Morton
Co: Conkling
Br: Bristow
Hy: Hayes
Hr: Hartranft
Wh: Wheeler
Je: Jewell
-----------------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----
STATES. | Bl | Mo | Co | Br | Hy | Hr | Wh | Je
-----------------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----
Alabama | 10 | | | 7 | 2 | | | 1
Arkansas | | 12 | | | | | |
California | 9 | | 1 | 2 | | | |
Connecticut | | | | 2 | | | | 10
Delaware | 6 | | | | | | |
Florida | 1 | 4 | 8 | | | | |
Georgia | 5 | 6 | 8 | 3 | | | |
Illinois | 38 | | | 3 | 1 | | |
Indiana | | 30 | | | | | |
Iowa | 22 | | | | | | |
Kansas | 10 | | | | | | |
Kentucky | | | | 24 | | | |
Louisiana | 2 | 14 | | | | | |
Maine | 14 | | | | | | |
Maryland | 16 | | | | | | |
Massachusetts | 6 | | | 17 | | | 3 |
Michigan | 8 | | 1 | 9 | 4 | | |
Minnesota | 10 | | | | | | |
Mississippi | | 12 | | 3 | | | |
Missouri | 14 | 12 | 1 | 2 | 1 | | |
Nebraska | 6 | | | | | | |
Nevada | | | 2 | 3 | 1 | | |
New Hampshire | 7 | | | 3 | | | |
New Jersey | 13 | | | | 5 | | |
New York | | | 69 | 1 | | | |
North Carolina | 9 | 2 | 7 | 1 | | | |
Ohio | | | | | 44 | | |
Oregon | 6 | | | | | | |
Pennsylvania | | | | | | 58 | |
Rhode Island | 2 | | | 6 | | | |
South Carolina | | 13 | | 1 | | | |
Texas | 2 | 5 | 3 | 6 | | | |
Tennessee | 4 | 10 | | 10 | | | |
Vermont | 1 | | | 8 | 1 | | |
Virginia | 16 | 3 | 3 | | | | |
West Virginia | 8 | | | | 2 | | |
Wisconsin | 20 | | | | | | |
Arizona | 2 | | | | | | |
Colorado | 6 | | | | | | |
Dakota | 2 | | | | | | |
Idaho | 2 | | | | | | |
Montana | 2 | | | | | | |
New Mexico | 2 | | | | | | |
Utah | 2 | | | | | | |
District of Columbia | | 2 | | | | | |
Washington | 2 | | | | | | |
Wyoming | 1 | | | 1 | | | |
-----------------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----
Totals |285 |125 | 99 |113 | 61 | 58 | 3 | 11
-----------------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----
The second ballot resulted as follows: Blaine, 296; Morton, 120;
Bristow, 114; Conkling, 93; Hayes, 64; Hartranft, 63: Wheeler, 3;
Washburne, 1.
Third ballot: Blaine, 293; Bristow, 121; Morton, 113; Conkling, 90;
Hartranft, 08; Hayes, 67; Wheeler, 2; Washburne, 1.
Fourth ballot: Blaine, 292; Bristow, 126; Morton, 108; Conkling, 84;
Hartranft, 71; Hayes, 68; Washburne, 3; Wheeler, 2.
Fifth ballot: Whole number of votes cast, 755. Necessary to a choice,
378. Not voting, 1. Blaine, 286; Morton, 95; Bristow, 114; Conkling, 82;
Hayes, 104; Hartranft, 69; Wheeler (Mass.), 2; Washburne, (Ga. 1, 111.
1, Minn. 1), 3.
On this ballot Hayes passed from the fifth to the third place, through
the aid of 22 votes cast for him by Michigan, and 12 by North Carolina.
This was the first distinct foreshadowing of the result.
On the sixth ballot Hayes was second, the vote standing: Blaine, 308;
Hayes, 113; Bristow, 111; Morton, 85; Conkling, 81; Hartranft, 50;
Washburne, 5; Wheeler, 2.
The decisive ballot stood:
SEVENTH BALLOT.
STATES. Hayes Blaine Bristow
Alabama 17 3
Arkansas 1 11
California 3 16
Connecticut 3 2 7
Delaware 6
Florida 8
Georgia 7 14 1
Illinois 3 35 5
Indiana 25 5
Iowa 22
Kansas 10
Kentucky 24
Louisiana 2 14
Maine 14
Maryland 16
Massachusetts 21 5
Michigan 22
Minnesota 1 9
Mississippi 16
Missouri 10 20
Nebraska 6
Nevada 6
New Hampshire 3 7
New Jersey 6 12
New York 61 9
North Carolina 20
Ohio 44
Oregon 6
Pennsylvania 28 30
Rhode Island 6 2
South Carolina 7 7
Texas 15 1
Tennessee 18 6
Vermont 10
Virginia 8 14
West Virginia 4 6
Wisconsin 4 16
Arizona 2
Colorado 6
Dakota 2
Idaho 2
Montana 2
New Mexico 2
Utah 2
District of Columbia 2
Washington 2
Wyoming 2
Totals 381 351 21
The nomination of Governor Hayes was received with indescribable
enthusiasm, with long-continued cheering, and every other demonstration
of joy and delight.
Outside of Ohio the State that contributed most to this far-reaching
result was Michigan. From the fact that Mr. Bristow telegraphed to the
Kentucky delegation several hours before the crisis was reached to cast
their votes for Hayes, that State should share, after Michigan, the
honor of achieving the grand result. Indiana, North Carolina, and New
York followed close upon Kentucky, if it is possible to compare the
value of the aid each State brought.
On motion of the Hon. Wm. P. Frye, of Maine, Rutherford B. Hayes was
declared the unanimous choice of the Republican National Convention for
President of the United States.
This great convention concluded its labors by nominating the able and
incorruptible Wm. A. Wheeler, of New York, for vice-president by
acclamation.
On the 17th of June, the day following the nomination, the committee
appointed by the convention to notify Governor Hayes of the fact
presented themselves in the executive office at Columbus.
Mr. McPherson, the chairman, approaching him, said:
"GOVERNOR HAYES: We have been deputed by the National convention of
the Republican party, holden at Cincinnati on the 14th of the
present month, to inform you officially that you have been
unanimously nominated by that convention for the office of
President of the United States. The manner in which that action was
taken, and the response to it from every portion of the country,
attest the strength of the popular confidence in you and the belief
that your administration will be wise, courageous, and just. We
say, sir, your administration, for we believe that the people will
confirm the action of the convention, and thus save the country
from the control of the men and the operations of the principles
and policy of the Democratic party. We have also been directed to
ask your attention to the summary of the Republican doctrine
contained in the platform adopted by the convention. In discharging
this agreeable duty we find cause of congratulation in the
harmonious action of the convention, and in the hearty response
given by the people we see the promise of assured success. Ohio, we
know, trusts and honors you. Henceforth you belong to the whole
country. Under circumstances so auspicious, we trust you will
indicate your acceptance of the nomination."
The governor, who had had no intimation as to what the length or
character of the address would be, was left in doubt with respect to the
response expected from him by the committee. He, however, without
embarrassment, but in an intentionally subdued tone of voice, gave this
appropriately brief reply:
"SIR: I have only to say in response to your information that I
accept the nomination. Perhaps at the present time it would be
improper for me to say more than this, although even now I should
be glad to give some expression to the profound sense of gratitude
I feel for the confidence reposed in me by yourselves and those for
whom you act. At a future time I shall take occasion to present my
acceptance in writing, with my views upon the platform."
Since his nomination for the presidency, Governor Hayes has changed in
no perceptible respect the habits, recreations, or labors of his daily
life. He rises early and accomplishes much work before breakfast. He
labors in the executive office in the capitol from nine until five,
discharging his varied duties as governor, answering or dictating the
answers to be given his official, political, and private correspondence,
and remaining at all times accessible to visitors of every age, sex,
color, and condition, who seek to see him. His evenings are passed with
his family, or at the social parties of his many friends. He makes his
customary trips to his home and farms near Fremont, and, while
profitably managing large property interests, finds time to devote to
pioneer history, to domestic architecture, to gardening, to general
literature, to languages, and other liberal studies and pursuits. He is
sobered, but not overpowered or oppressed by the new responsibilities
cast upon him. He suffers himself to be--as he ever has been--natural.
Moderate, discreet, and wise in all things as he has been in the past
and is in the present, he is conspicuously one who grows wiser each day
that he lives.
Governor Hayes has reached the age of fifty-four, is five feet nine
inches in height, and weighs one hundred and eighty pounds. Perfect
health and habits leave him just in the ripe maturity of physical
manhood and mind. His shoulders and breast are broad, his frame solid
and compact, his limbs muscular and strong. He has a fresh, ruddy
complexion, is full of activity and elasticity, and is very fond of the
amusements of young people. He has an exceptionally high and full
forehead, a prominent nose, and bluish-gray eyes. A heavy sandy mustache
and beard, which are silvered a little, conceal his mouth and chin. His
light-brown hair is thin and slightly sprinkled with gray.
The Governor is the father of eight children, five of whom are now
living. Those still living were born as follows: Birchard Austin,
November 4, 1853; Webb Cook, March 20, 1856; Rutherford Platt, June 24,
1858; Fanny Hayes, September 2, 1867; Scott Russell, February 8, 1871.
The youngest of these children was born in Columbus, the others in
Cincinnati. The oldest son graduated at Cornell University, in the class
of 1874, and is now at the Harvard Law School. The second son passed
three years at Cornell, and is now at home. The third son is at Cornell.
Three weeks from the day that Governor Hayes was nominated for the
Presidency, his private secretary, Captain A. E. Lee, put upon the
telegraphic wires, at Columbus, the following accurate copy of:
THE LETTER OF ACCEPTANCE.
COLUMBUS, OHIO, _July 8, 1876._
Hon. Edward McPherson, Hon. Wm. A. Howard, Hon. Joseph H. Rainey,
and others, Committee of the Republican National Convention.
GENTLEMEN: In reply to your official communication of June 17, by
which I am informed of my nomination for the office of President of
the United States by the Republican National Convention at
Cincinnati, I accept the nomination with gratitude, hoping that,
under Providence, I shall be able, if elected, to execute the
duties of the high office as a trust for the benefit of all the
people.
I do not deem it necessary to enter upon any extended examination
of the declaration of principles made by the convention. The
resolutions are in accord with my views, and I heartily concur in
the principles they announce. In several of the resolutions,
however, questions are considered which are of such importance that
I deem it proper to briefly express my convictions in regard to
them.
The fifth resolution adopted by the convention is of paramount
interest. More than forty years ago, a system of making
appointments to office grew up, based upon the maxim "To the
victors belong the spoils." The old rule, the true rule, that
honesty, capacity, and fidelity constitute the only real
qualifications for office, and that there is no other claim, gave
place to the idea that party services were to be chiefly
considered. All parties, in practice, have adopted this system. It
has been essentially modified since its first introduction. It has
not, however, been improved.
At first the president, either directly or through the heads of
departments, made all the appointments. But gradually the
appointing power, in many cases, passed into the control of members
of Congress. The offices, in these cases, have become not merely
rewards for party services, but rewards for services to party
leaders. This system destroys the independence of the separate
departments of the government; it tends directly to extravagance
and official incapacity; it is a temptation to dishonesty; it
hinders and impairs that careful supervision and strict
accountability by which alone faithful and efficient public service
can be secured; it obstructs the prompt removal and sure punishment
of the unworthy. In every way it degrades the civil service and the
character of the government. It is felt, I am confident, by a large
majority of the members of Congress, to be an intolerable burden,
and an unwarrantable hindrance to the proper discharge of their
legitimate duties. It ought to be abolished. The reform should be
thorough, radical, and complete.
We should return to the principles and practice of the founders of
the government, supplying by legislation, when needed, that which
was formerly established custom. They neither expected nor desired
from the public officer any partisan service. They meant that
public officers should owe their whole service to the government
and to the people. They meant that the officer should be secure in
his tenure as long as his personal character remained untarnished,
and the performance of his duties satisfactory. If elected, I shall
conduct the administration of the government upon these principles;
and all constitutional powers vested in the executive will be
employed to establish this reform.
The declaration of principles by the Cincinnati Convention makes no
announcement in favor of a single presidential term. I do not
assume to add to that declaration; but, believing that the
restoration of the civil service to the system established by
Washington and followed by the early presidents can be best
accomplished by an executive who is under no temptation to use the
patronage of his office to promote his own re-election, I desire to
perform what I regard as a duty, in stating now my inflexible
purpose, if elected, not to be a candidate for election to a second
term.
On the currency question, I have frequently expressed my views in
public, and I stand by my record on this subject. I regard all the
laws of the United States relating to the payment of the public
indebtedness, the legal tender notes included, as constituting a
pledge and moral obligation of the Government, which must in good
faith be kept. It is my conviction that the feeling of uncertainty
inseparable from an irredeemable paper currency, with its
fluctuations of values, is one of the great obstacles to a revival
of confidence and business, and to a return of prosperity. That
uncertainty can be ended in but one way--the resumption of specie
payments; but the longer the instability connected with our present
money system is permitted to continue, the greater will be the
injury inflicted upon our economical interests, and all classes of
society.
If elected, I shall approve every appropriate measure to accomplish
the desired end, and shall oppose any step backward.
The resolution with respect to the public school system is one
which should receive the hearty support of the American people.
Agitation upon this subject is to be apprehended, until, by
constitutional amendment, the schools are placed beyond all danger
of sectarian control or interference. The Republican party is
pledged to secure such an amendment.
The resolution of the convention on the subject of the permanent
pacification of the country, and the complete protection of all its
citizens in the free enjoyment of all their constitutional rights,
is timely and of great importance. The condition of the Southern
States attracts the attention and commands the sympathy of the
people of the whole Union. In their progressive recovery from the
effects of the war, their first necessity is an intelligent and
honest administration of government, which will protect all classes
of citizens in all their political and private rights. What the
South most needs is peace, and peace depends upon the supremacy of
law. There can be no enduring peace if the constitutional rights of
any portion of the people are habitually disregarded. A division of
political parties, resting merely upon distinctions of race, or
upon sectional lines, is always unfortunate, and may be
disastrous. The welfare of the South, alike with that of every
other part of the country, depends upon the attractions it can
offer to labor, to immigration, and to capital. But laborers will
not go, and capital will not be ventured, where the constitution
and the laws are set at defiance, and distraction, apprehension,
and alarm, take the place of peace-loving and law-abiding social
life. All parts of the constitution are sacred, and must be
sacredly observed--the parts that are new no less than the parts
that are old. The moral and material prosperity of the Southern
States can be most effectively advanced by a hearty and generous
recognition of the rights of all by all--a recognition without
reserve or exception.
With such a recognition fully accorded, it will be practicable to
promote, by the influence of all legitimate agencies of the general
government, the efforts of the people of those States to obtain for
themselves the blessings of honest and capable local government.
If elected, I shall consider it not only my duty, but it will be my
ardent desire, to labor for the attainment of this end.
Let me assure my countrymen of the Southern States that if I shall
be charged with the duty of organizing an Administration, it will
be one which will regard and cherish their truest interests--the
interests of the white and of the colored people both, and equally;
and which will put forth its best efforts in behalf of a civil
policy which will wipe out forever the distinction between North
and South in our common country.
With a civil service organized upon a system which will secure
purity, experience, efficiency, and economy; with a strict regard
for the public welfare, solely, in appointments; with the speedy,
thorough, and unsparing prosecution and punishment of all public
officers who betray official trusts; with a sound currency; with
education unsectarian and free to all; with simplicity and
frugality in public and private affairs, and with a fraternal
spirit of harmony pervading the people of all sections and classes,
we may reasonably hope that the second century of our existence as
a Nation will, by the blessing of God, be pre-eminent as an era of
good feeling, and a period of progress, prosperity, and happiness.
Very respectfully,
Your fellow-citizen,
R. B. HAYES.
The non-partisan verdict upon this letter is that it is faultless in
style, sound in principle, courageous, broad and elevated in tone,
liberal, wise, statesmanlike, and strong. It is, in short, the
declaration of faith of an honest man who has a heart in his breast and
a head on his shoulders, with purity in that heart and brains in that
head.
The conclusions which follow our study of the public career of
Rutherford Birchard Hayes, and the study of that interior life, the
beauty of which the world will not know until he has passed from it, are
briefly these.
In boyhood, in battle, in the civic chair, in the esteem of his State,
in every duty and relation of life, he has been first, and now, it would
seem, is first in the hearts of his countrymen. As a student, he was
foremost; as a lawyer, he was in the front rank; as a soldier, he was
the bravest; as a legislator, the most judicious; as a governor, second
to none of Ohio's great magistrates.
The most striking characteristic of Hayes as a soldier was his personal
intrepidity. Anthony Wayne, Francis Marion, and Ethan Allen were called
brave men in the Revolution, and so they were; but we look in vain in
their histories for as numerous proofs of unsurpassable daring as the
hero of Cloyd Mountain, Cedar Creek, and South Mountain, has given us.
Four horses shot under him; four wounds in action; fighting after he
fell; a hundred days exposed to death under fire--these are the
evidences of as lofty a courage as is yet known among men.
As a regimental, brigade, and division commander, his most striking
quality as a leader was his impetuosity. General Crook used to say that
Hayes fought infantry as other men fought cavalry. He was always wanting
to move forward, to charge, to get at the enemy with cold steel. His
favorite step was the double-quick; his choice of distance two paces;
and his preferred mode of fighting, the hand-to-hand grapple. This meant
business, was decisive, and was soon over.
Another characteristic was his constant care for the comfort of his
soldiers. He was much in the hospitals, cheering up the wounded, writing
letters for them, and sending last messages from the lips of the dying
to wives, mothers, and friends. He shared his blanket, his last crust,
his last penny, with the neediest of his men, and abstained from food
when they had none.
His house is to-day, and has been since the war, a soldiers' home, where
all who served with him are invited to come at all times and partake at
his own table with his wife and children. Seldom is this generous
hospitality imposed on by the members of his large military family.
Once, only, a pseudo-soldier, whom the children called the "Veteran,"
having served two days and a half in the army, remained just double the
term of his military service under the governor's roof. He doubtless
found that the rations at this camp were good.
As a civil magistrate, Governor Hayes has developed executive and
administrative abilities of the highest order. He has a practical,
common-sense, direct way of doing things. He first finds what things
ought to be done, and then how. When his own party has been in a
minority, he has made friends with a few of the most reasonable men in
the opposition, and through them, as instruments, has accomplished his
purposes.
He is a discriminating judge of human nature, and is magnetic enough to
make legislators follow his lead, as his soldiers followed him.
He has fixed rules of official conduct to which he adheres in all cases.
For example, if he has a judge to appoint--and he has appointed many to
fill vacancies--his simple inquiry is, Whom do the members of the legal
profession want, who live in the judicial district to be provided for?
When that fact is accurately ascertained, the appointment follows as a
matter of course, even though the lawyer preferred may be his personal
enemy. In the interests of learning, higher education, human
benevolence, and equal rights, Hayes has accomplished more than any
governor Ohio has yet had. We make this statement with the honorable
records of old Jeremiah Morrow, Corwin, Chase, Tod, Brough, and Cox
spread before us.
In a word, Governor Hayes is square-built, solid and sound, mentally,
morally, and physically. His integrity is a proverb; his fidelity to his
convictions is recognized by political enemies; his record is of
unassailable soundness; and there is absolutely nothing vulnerable in
his character. He has a Lincoln-like soundness of judgment, and is as
inexorably just as old John Marshall. He is a man absolutely free from
eccentricities and affectations; he neither walks nor talks on stilts.
His manners have the warmth and grace that sincerity and simplicity
give. In bearing, he is animated and thoughtful, manly and refined. His
firmness, while it does not amount to obstinacy, marks the clear-cut
individuality and decision of his character. He has the guiding faculty
and the power of containing himself. He takes a just measure both of
himself and of other men. If the country will do this, his future is as
secure as his past. If president, he would do the right thing at the
right time, in the right way. His election will give us, not a "solid
South" or a solid North, but a solid Union!
Since experience has taught us how essential it is that the
representative of the women of America in the executive mansion should
worthily represent all that is best and most elevated in our social
life, a word in regard to the companion of Governor Hayes may not be out
of taste. If any public man in our history has been more fortunate and
happy in his home surroundings and family relations, we are not aware
who he may be. If the voice of the people should decree the
transplanting of the ideal home of this family from the capital of Ohio
to the capital of the Republic, the pure and elevating influences
radiating from such a home would pervade and purify the social life of
the National city, if not of the land. A severer simplicity would mark
the inner and the outer life of the president's household. Extravagance
in dress and living, wastefulness in vain displays and in ambitious
entertainments, would find no encouragement from the mistress of the
Nation's mansion. The lessons of truth and piety, of purity and virtue,
of charity and benevolence, of sincerity and self-forgetfulness, would
be taught by example. A whole people could here find in illustration the
sacredness of the family and the holiness of home.
A union of rare accomplishments, social and domestic, with beauty of
features, manners, and character, may yet be found in a successor of
Mrs. Madison.
A doctor of divinity and a doctor of laws, the president of the Ohio
Wesleyan University, bears this weighty testimony, in a public address,
to the correctness of what we have hereinbefore recorded:
"It is in no spirit of partisanship, nor with the slightest
reference to merely political ends, but simply in illustration of
our subject that we add, already there are hopeful signs of
reformation in our National life. It is a sign of progress that the
suspicion of sullied purity is beginning to be fatal to a public
man. It is an omen of good when in a large and representative
convention, with the names of many distinguished men before it, one
is borne above them all on the tide of popular enthusiasm and with
ringing peals of applause is presented to the American people,
without effort of his own, as a candidate for the highest office in
the Nation, not only because of his eminent ability, but largely
because of the transparent purity of his character and his high,
manly, moral worth.
"It is doubtless a cause of honest pride to the citizens of this
town, irrespective of political creeds and preferences, that the
man thus highly distinguished is a native of your classic city. By
reason of its youth this university can not claim him as a son, but
it regards with maternal pride his not less worthy companion, who,
after graduation at one of the best female colleges in the State,
indicated her rare good sense by passing through much of the
college curriculum of our university here.
"If, by the decree of the people and the providence of God, this
worthy pair, honored graduates of Ohio's higher schools of
learning, shall be lifted to the highest position and power and
influence in the Nation, we have reason to believe that they will
illustrate the salutary influence of that cultured goodness of
which we have spoken, and that the National capital and the entire
National domain will enjoy a purer atmosphere."
APPENDIX.
_Speech of_ GENERAL R. B. HAYES, _delivered at Lebanon, Ohio, August 5,
1867._
_Fellow-Citizens:_
President Lincoln began his memorable address at the dedication of
the Gettysburg National Cemetery with these words:
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this
continent a new Nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal."
This was Abraham Lincoln's opinion of what was accomplished and
what was meant by the Declaration of Independence. His idea was
that it gave birth to a Nation, and that it dedicated that Nation
to equal rights.
Now, so far as the performance of duty in the present condition of
our country is concerned, "this is the whole law and the prophets."
The United States are not a confederacy of independent and
sovereign States, bound together by a mere treaty or a compact, but
the people of the United States constitute a Nation, having one
flag, one history, "one country, one constitution, one destiny."
Whoever seeks to divide this Nation into two sections--into a North
and a South, or into four sections, according to the cardinal
points of the compass, or into thirty or forty independent
sovereignties--is opposed to the Nation, and the Nation's friends
should be opposed to him.
Washington, in his Farewell Address, says:
"The unity of government, which constitutes you one people, is also
now dear to you. It is justly so; for it is a main pillar in the
edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquillity
at home, your peace abroad; of your safety, of your prosperity, of
that very liberty which you so highly prize.... The name of
American, which belongs to you in your National capacity, must
always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation
derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of
difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and
political principles. You have, in a common cause, fought and
triumphed together; the independence and liberty you possess are
the work of joint counsels and joint efforts--of common dangers,
sufferings, and successes."
The sentiment of Nationality is the sentiment of the Declaration of
Independence; it is the sentiment of the fathers; it is the
sentiment which carried us through the war of the Revolution, and
through the war of the late Rebellion; and it is a sentiment which
the people of the United States ought forever to cultivate and
cherish.
The great idea to which the Nation, according to Mr. Lincoln, was
dedicated by the fathers is expressed in the Declaration in these
familiar phrases: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that
all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights
governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers
from the consent of the governed."
An intelligent audience will not wish to hear discussion as to the
import of these sentences. Their language is simple, their meaning
plain, and their truth undoubted. The equality declared by the
fathers was not an equality of beauty, of physical strength, or of
intellect, but an equality of rights. Foolish attempts have been
made by those who hate the principles of the fathers to destroy the
great fundamental truth of the Declaration, by limiting the
application of the phrase "all men" to the men of a single race.
But Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration leaves no room to
doubt what he meant by these words. The gravest charge he made
against the King of Great Britain in the original draft of the
Declaration of Independence was the following:
"He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its
most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant
people, who never offended him, capturing and carrying them into
slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their
transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of
infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great
Britain, determined to keep open market where MEN should be bought
and sold."
In this sentence the word "men" is written by Jefferson in capital
letters, showing with what emphasis he wished to declare that the
King of Great Britain was making slaves of a people to whom
belonged the rights of men.
Unfortunately for our country, that King, and others who "waged
cruel war against human nature itself," had already succeeded in
planting in the bosom of American society an element implacably
hostile to human rights, and destined to become the enemy of the
Union, whenever the American people, in their National capacity,
should refuse assent to any measures which the holders of slaves
should deem necessary or even important for the security or
prosperity of their "peculiar institution."
I need not, upon this occasion, repeat what is now familiar
history--how, by the invention of the cotton-gin, and the
consequent enormous increase of the cotton crop, slave labor in the
cotton States, and slave breeding in the Northern slave States,
became so profitable that the slaveholders were able, for many
years, largely to influence, if not control, every department of
the National Government. The slave power became something more than
a phrase--it was a definite, established, appalling fact. The
Missouri controversy, South Carolina nullification, the Texas
controversy, the adoption of the compromise measures of 1850, and
the repeal of the Missouri compromise in 1854, were all occasions
when the country was compelled to see the magnitude, the energy,
the recklessness, and the arrogance of the slave power.
Precisely when the men who wielded that power determined to destroy
the Union it is not now necessary to inquire. Threats of disunion
were made in the first Congress that assembled under the
constitution. Upon various pretexts they were repeated from time to
time, and no one doubts that slavery was at the bottom of them. In
1833 General Jackson wrote to Rev. A. J. Crawford: "Take care of
your nullifiers; you have them among you; let them meet with the
indignant frown of every man who loves his country. The tariff, it
is now known, was a mere pretext ... and disunion and a Southern
Confederacy the real object. The next pretext will be the negro or
slavery question." General Jackson was no doubt right as to the
existence of a settled purpose to break up the Union, and to
establish a Southern Confederacy, as long ago as 1832. But why was
there such a purpose? On what ground did it stand?
Great political parties, whether sectional or otherwise, do not
come by accident, nor are they the invention of political intrigue.
A faction born of a clique may have some strength at one or two
elections, but the wisest political wire-workers can not, by merely
"taking thought," create a strong and permanent party. The result
of the Philadelphia Convention last summer probably taught this
truth to the authors of that movement. Great political movements
always have some adequate cause.
Now, on what did the conspirators who plotted the destruction of
the Union and the establishment of a Southern Confederacy rely? In
the first place, they taught a false construction of the National
constitution, which was miscalled State rights, the essential part
of which was that "any State of the Union might secede from the
Union whenever it liked." This doctrine was the instrument employed
to destroy the unity of the Nation. The fact which gave strength
and energy to those who employed this instrument was that in the
southern half of the Union, society, business, property, religion,
and law were all based on the proposition that over four millions
of our countrymen, capable of civilization and religion, were,
because of their race and color, "so far inferior that they had no
rights which the white man was bound to respect." The practice,
founded upon this denial of the Declaration of Independence,
protected by law and sanctioned by usage, was our great National
transgression, and was the cause of our great National calamity.
In a country where discussion was free, sooner or later, parties
were sure to be formed on the issues presented by the slaveholders.
The supporters of the Union and of human rights would band together
against the supporters of disunion and slavery. For many years
after the struggle really began, the issues were not clearly
defined, and neither party was able to occupy its true and final
position, or to rally to its standard all who were in fact its
friends. Old parties encumbered the ground. Men were slow to give
up old associations and leave the discussion of obsolete,
immaterial, or ephemeral issues.
At last the crisis came. In 1860, Mr. Lincoln, who was unfriendly
to slavery and faithful to the Union, was elected president. The
party of disunion and slavery were prepared for this event. Their
action was prompt, decisive, and defiant. They proceeded to
organize southern conventions, and formally to withdraw from the
Union, and undertook to establish a new government and a new Nation
on the soil of the United States.
Prior to 1860 the party calling itself Democratic had gathered
under one name and one organization almost the whole of the
secessionists of the South and a large body of the people of the
North, many of whom had no sympathy either with secession or
slavery. In 1860 the secessionists were so arrogant in their
demands that the great body of the Democratic party in the North
refused to yield to them, and supported Mr. Douglass in opposition
both to Mr. Lincoln, and to the disunion and slavery candidate, Mr.
Breckenridge. But it was well known that many leading Democrats who
supported Mr. Douglass leaned strongly toward the southern Calhoun
democracy, and that their sympathies were with slave-holding or at
least with slaveholders.
The evidence of this is abundantly furnished in their recorded
opinions. The most distinguished and perhaps the most influential
Democrat now actively engaged in politics in Ohio, who presided
over and addressed the last Democratic State Convention held at
Columbus, Mr. Pendleton, delivered a speech in the House of
Representatives on the 18th of January, 1861.
You will recollect how far the slaveholders had progressed in their
great rebellion at that date. Mr. Pendleton himself says:
"To-day, sir, four States of this Union have, so far as their power
extends, seceded from it. Four States, as far as they are able,
have annulled the grants of power made to the Federal Government;
they have resumed the powers delegated by the Constitution; they
have canceled, so far as they could, every limitation upon the full
exercise of all their sovereign rights. They do not claim our
protection; they ask no benefit from our laws; they seek none of
the advantages of the confederation. On the other hand, they
renounce their allegiance; they repudiate our authority over them,
and they assert that they have assumed--some of them that they have
resumed--their position among the family of sovereignties, among
the nations of the earth.... To-day, even while I am speaking,
Georgia is voting upon this very question. And unless the signs of
the times very much deceive us, within three weeks other States
will be added to the number."
Mr. Pendleton might also have said that prior to that date, forts,
arsenals, dock-yards, mints, and other places and property
belonging to the United States, had been seized by organized and
armed bodies of rebels; the collection of debts due in the South to
Northern creditors had been stopped; South Carolina had declared
that any attempt to reinforce Fort Sumter by the United States
would be regarded by that State as an act of hostility against her
and equivalent to a declaration of war; the Star of the West, an
unarmed vessel, with the American flag floating at her mast-head,
carrying provisions to the famishing garrison of Fort Sumter, had
been fired on and driven from Charleston harbor; in short, at that
date the rebels were engaged in actual war against the Nation, and
the only reason why blood had not been shed was that the National
government had failed in its duty to defend the Nation's property,
and to maintain the sacredness of the National flag.
At that crisis Mr. Pendleton delivered and sent forth a speech
bearing this significant motto: "But, sir, armies, money, blood,
can not maintain this Union--justice, reason, peace, may." The
speech was according to its motto. Accustomed as he is to speak
cautiously, and in a scholarly and moderate way, we can not be
mistaken as to his drift. On the authority of the National
government he says:
"Now, sir, what force of arms can compel a State to do that which
she has agreed to do? What force of arms can compel a State to
refrain from doing that which her State government, supported by
the sentiment of her people, is determined to persist in doing....
Sir, the whole scheme of coercion is impracticable. It is contrary
to the genius and spirit of the Constitution."
These extracts sufficiently and fairly show Mr. Pendleton's notion
of the duty and authority of the Nation in that great crisis. He
held the States rights doctrines of Calhoun and Breckenridge, and
not the National principles of Washington and Jackson.
As to the treatment of rebels already in arms, and as to the
"demands" of the slave power, consider this advice which he gave to
Congress and the people:
"If these Southern States can not be conciliated; if you,
gentlemen, can not find it in your hearts to grant their demands;
if they must leave the family mansion, I would signalize their
departure by tokens of love; I would bid them farewell so tenderly
that they would be forever touched by the recollection of it; and
if in the vicissitudes of their separate existence they should
desire to come together with us again in one common government,
there should be no pride to be humiliated, there should be no wound
inflicted by my hand to be healed. They should come and be welcome
to the places they now occupy."
Thus we see there were those who, with honeyed phrases and soft
words, would have looked smilingly on, while the great
Republic--the pride of her children, the hope of the ages--built by
the fathers at such an expense of suffering, of treasure, and of
blood, was stricken by traitors' hands from the roll of living
Nations, and while an armed oligarchy should establish in its stead
a nation founded on a denial of human rights, and under whose sway
south of the Potomac more than half of the territory of the old
Thirteen Colonies--soil once fertilized by the best blood of the
Revolution--should, for generations to come, continue to be tilled
by the unrequited toil of slaves.
The best known, the boldest, and perhaps the ablest leader of the
peace Democracy in the North is Mr. Vallandigham. He was chairman
of the committee on resolutions in the last Democratic State
Convention in Ohio, and reported the present State platform of his
party. He, probably, still enjoys in a greater degree than any
other public man the affection and confidence of the positive men
of the Ohio Democracy, who, from beginning to end, opposed the war.
On the 20th of February, 1861, he delivered a speech in the House
of Representatives in support of certain amendments which he
proposed to the Constitution of the United States. In an appendix
to that speech, he published an extract from a card in the
Cincinnati _Enquirer_ of November 10, 1860, from which I quote:
"And now let me add that I did say, ... in a public speech at the
Cooper Institute, on the 2d of November, 1860, that if any one or
more of the States of this Union should at any time secede, for
reasons of the sufficiency and justice of which, before God and the
great tribunal of history, they alone may judge, much as I should
deplore it, I never would, as a representative in Congress of the
United States, vote one dollar of money whereby one drop of
American blood should be shed in a civil war.... And I now
deliberately repeat and reaffirm it, resolved, though I stand
alone, though all others yield and fall away, to make it good to
the last moment of my public life." Here was another strong man of
large influence solemnly pledged to allow the Union to be broken up
and destroyed, in case the rebel conspirators chose that
alternative, rather than forgo their demands in favor of oppression
and against human rights.
On the 23d of January, 1861, the Democratic party held a State
Convention at Columbus. Remember, at that date the air was thick
with threats of war from the South. The rebels were organizing and
drilling; arms robbed from the National arsenals were in their
hands; and the question upon all minds was whether the Republic
should perish without having a single blow struck in her defense,
or whether the people of the loyal North should rise as one man,
prepared to wage war until treason and, if need be, slavery went
down together. On this question, that convention was bound to
speak. Silence was impossible. There were present war Democrats and
peace Democrats, followers of Jackson, and followers of Calhoun.
There was a determined and gallant struggle on the part of the war
Democrats, but the superior numbers, or more probably the superior
tactics and strategy, of the peace men triumphed.
The present candidate of the Democratic party for Governor of Ohio,
Judge Thurman, a gentleman of character and ability, a
distinguished lawyer and judge and a politician of long experience,
succeeded in passing through the convention this resolution:
"_Resolved_, That the two hundred thousand Democrats of Ohio send
to the people of the United States, both North and South, greeting;
and when the people of the North shall have fulfilled their duties
to the constitution and to the South, then, and not until then,
will it be proper for them to take into consideration the question
of the right and propriety of coercion."
In support of this famous resolution, Judge Thurman addressed the
convention, and, among other things, is reported to have said:
"A man is deficient in understanding who thinks the cause of
disunion is that the South apprehended any overt act of oppression
in Lincoln's administration. It is the spirit of the late
presidential contest that alarms the South.... It would try the
ethics of any man to deny that some of the Southern States have no
cause for revolution.... Then you must be sure you are able to
coerce before you begin the work. The South are a brave people. The
Southern States can not be held by force. The blacks won't fight
for the invaders.... The Hungarians had less cause of complaint
against Austria than the South had against the North."
When we reflect on what the rebels had done and what they were
doing when this resolution was passed, it seems incredible that
sane men, having a spark of patriotism, could for one moment have
tolerated its sentiments. The rebels had already deprived the
United States of its jurisdiction and property in about one-fourth
of its inhabited territory, and were rapidly extending their
insurrection so as to include within the rebel lines all of the
slave States. The lives and property of Union citizens in the
insurgent States were at the mercy of traitors, and the National
flag was everywhere torn down, and shameful indignities and
outrages heaped upon all who honored it.
This resolution speaks of fulfilling the duties of the people of
the North to the South. The first and highest duty of the people of
the North to themselves, to the South, to their country, and to
God, was to crush the rebellion. All speeches and resolutions
against either the right or the propriety of coercion merely gave
encouragement, "moral aid and comfort," more important than powder
and ball, to the enemies of the Nation.
Do I state too strongly the mischievous, the fatal tendency of
these proceedings? The resolution adopted by the peace Democracy of
Ohio is addressed in terms "to the people of all the States, North
and South," and in fact was sent, I am informed, to the governors
of all the States.
In the South, Union men were laboring by every means in their power
to prevent secession. Their most cogent argument was that the
National government would defend itself by war against rebellion.
To this, the rebel reply was, "There will be no war. Secession will
be peaceable. The peace party of the North will prevent coercion.
If there is fighting, it will be as Ex-President Pierce writes to
Jefferson Davis, 'The fighting will not be along Mason and Dixon's
line merely. It will be within our own borders, in our own
streets.'"
For the evidence of the correctness of this opinion, the rebels
could point confidently to such speeches and resolutions as those
we are now considering. Governor Orr, of South Carolina, in a
recent speech at the Charleston Board of Trade banquet, is reported
to have said:
"I know there is an apprehension widespread in the North and West
that, after the reconstruction of the Southern States, we shall
fall into the arms of our old allies and associates, the old
Democratic party. I say to you, gentlemen, however, that I would
give no such pledges. We have accounts to settle with that party,
gentlemen, before I, at least, will consent to affiliate with it.
Many of you will remember that, when the war first commenced, great
hopes and expectations were held out by our friends in the North
and West that there would be no war, and that if it commenced, it
would be North of Mason and Dixon's line, and not in the South."
Without pausing to inquire how much strength accrued to the
rebellion in its earlier stages by the encouragement it received
from sympathizers in the North, let us pass on to the spring and
summer of 1861, after the bombardment and surrender of Fort Sumter,
and when the armies of the Union and of the rebellion were facing
each other upon a line of operations extending from the Potomac to
the Rio Grande. The most superficial observer could not fail to
discover these facts.
In the South, where slavery was strongest, the rebellion was
strongest. Where there were few slaveholders, there were few
rebels. South Carolina and Mississippi, having the largest number
of slaves in proportion to population, were almost unanimous for
rebellion. Western Virginia, Eastern Kentucky, East Tennessee, had
few slaves, and love of the Union and hatred of secession in those
mountain regions was nearly universal.
The counterpart of this was found everywhere in the North. In
counties and districts where the majority of the people had been
accustomed to defend or excuse the practice of slave-holding and
the aggressions of the slaveholders, there was much sympathy with
the rebellion and strong opposition to the war. Men who abused and
hated negroes did not usually hate rebels. On the other hand,
anti-slavery counties and districts were quite sure to be Union to
the core.
In Ohio, as in other free States, the Democratic party could not be
led off in a body after the peace Democracy. Brough, Tod, Matthews,
Dorsey, Steedman, and a host of Democrats of the Jackson school,
nobly kept the faith. Lytle, McCook, Webster, and gallant spirits
like them, from every county and neighborhood of our State, sealed
their devotion to the Union and to true Democracy with their life's
blood.
They believed, with Douglass, in the last letter he ever wrote,
that "it was not a party question, nor a question involving
partisan policy; it was a question of government or no government,
country or no country, and hence it became the imperative duty of
every Union man, every friend of constitutional liberty, to rally
to the support of our common country, its government and flag, as
the only means of checking the progress of revolution, and of
preserving the Union of the States."
They believed the words of Douglass' last speech: "This is no time
for a detail of causes. The conspiracy is now known. Armies have
been raised, war is levied to accomplish it. There are only two
sides to the question. Every man must be for the United States or
against it. There can be no neutrals in this war--only patriots and
traitors."
As the war progressed, the great political parties of the country
underwent important changes, both of organization and policy. In
the North, the Republican party, the great body of the American or
Union party of 1860, and the war Democracy formed the Union party.
The Democracy of the South, for the most part, became rebels, and
in the North those who did not unite with the Union party generally
passed under the control and leadership of the peace Democracy.
At the beginning of the war, the creed of the Union party consisted
of one idea--it labored for one object--the restoration of the
Union. Slavery, the rights of man, the principles of the
Declaration of Independence, were for the time lost sight of in the
struggle for the Nation's life. As late as August, 1862, President
Lincoln wrote to Mr. Greeley: "My paramount object is to save the
Union, and not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could
save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I
could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I
could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also
do that."
Slowly, gradually, after repeated disasters and disappointments,
the eyes of the Union leaders were opened to the fact that slavery
and rebellion were convertible terms; that the Confederacy,
according to its Vice-President, Alexander H. Stephens, was founded
upon "exactly the opposite idea" from that of Jefferson and the
fathers. "Its foundations," said he, "are laid, its corner-stone
rests upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white
man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his
natural and normal condition." Mr. Lincoln and the Union party,
struggling faithfully onward, finally reached the solid ground that
the American government was founded on the broad principles of
right, justice, and humanity, and that, for this Nation, "Union and
liberty" were indeed "one and inseparable."
The leaders of the peace Democracy were for a time overwhelmed by
the popular uprising which followed the attack on Fort Sumter, and
were not able during the year 1861 or the early part of 1862 to
mark out definitely the course to be pursued. But, like the Union
party, they gradually approached the position they were ultimately
to occupy.
Their success in the autumn elections of 1862 encouraged them to
enter upon the pathway in which they have plodded along
consistently if not prosperously ever since. Opposition to the war
measures of Mr. Lincoln's administration, and in particular to
every measure tending to the enfranchisement and elevation of the
African race, became their settled policy. By this policy they were
placed in harmony with their former associates, the rebels of the
South. The rebels were fighting to destroy the Union. The peace
party were opposing the only measures which could save it. The
rebels were fighting for slavery. The peace party were laboring in
their way to keep alive and inflame the prejudice against race and
color, on which slavery was based.
The abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, the repeal of
the fugitive slave law, Mr. Lincoln's proclamation of emancipation,
in a word, every step of the Union party toward enfranchisement of
the colored people, the peace Democracy opposed. Every war measure,
every means adopted to strengthen the cause of the Union and weaken
the rebellion, met with the the same opposition. Whatever Mr.
Lincoln or Congress did to get money, to get men, or to obtain the
moral support of the country and the world--tax laws, tariff laws,
greenbacks, government bonds, army bills, drafts, blockades,
proclamations--met the indiscriminate and bitter assaults of these
men. The enlistment of colored soldiers, a measure by which between
one and two hundred thousand able-bodied men were transferred from
the service of the rebels in corn-fields to the Union service in
battle-fields--how Mr. Lincoln and the Union party were vilified
for that wise and necessary measure! But worse, infinitely worse,
than mere opposition to war measures, were their efforts to impair
the confidence of the people, to diminish the moral power of the
government, to give hope and earnestness to the enemies of the
Union, by showing that the administration was to blame for the war,
that it was unnecessary, unjust, and that it had been perverted
from its original object, and that it could not but fail.
I need not go beyond the record of leaders of the Ohio Democracy of
to-day for proof what I am saying. Mr. Pendleton, usually so
gentlemanly and prudent in speech, lost his balance after the
victories of the peace Democracy in 1862. At the Democratic jubilee
in Butler county over the elections, Mr. Pendleton is reported as
saying:
"I came up to see if there were any Butternuts in Butler county. I
came to see if there were any Copperheads in Butler county, as my
friends of the Cincinnati _Gazette_ and _Commercial_ are fond of
terming the Democracy of the country. I came up to tell you that
there are a good many of that stripe of animals in old Hamilton. I
have traveled about the country lately, and I assure you there is a
large crop of Butternuts everywhere: not only that, but the quality
and character of the nut is quite as good as the quantity."
Of course, Mr. Pendleton was applauded by his audience; and he
returned to his place in the House of Representatives at Washington
prepared to give expression to his views with the same plainness
and boldness which marked the utterances of his colleague, Mr.
Vallandigham.
On the 31st of January, 1863, he made an elaborate speech against
the enlistment of negroes into the service of the United States, in
which he said:
"I should be false to you, my fellow-representatives, if I did not
tell you that there is an impression, growing with great rapidity,
upon the minds of the people of the Northwest that they have been
deliberately deceived into this war--that their patriotism and
their love of country have been engaged to call them into the army,
under the pretense that the war was to be for the Union and the
Constitution, when, in fact, it was to be an armed crusade for the
abolition of slavery. I tell you, sir, that unless this impression
is speedily arrested it will become universal; it will ripen into
conviction, and then it will be beyond your power to get from their
broad plains another man, or from their almost exhausted coffers
another dollar."
In the same speech he says:
"I said two years ago, on this floor, that armies, money, war can
not restore this Union; justice, reason, peace, may. I believed it
then; I have believed it at every moment since; I believe it now.
No event of the past two years has for a moment shaken my faith.
Peace is the first step to Union. Peace is Union. Peace unbroken
would have preserved it; peace restored will, I hope, in some time
reconstruct it. The only bonds which can hold these States in
confederation, the only ties which can make us one people, are the
soft and silken cords of affection and interest. These are woven in
peace, not war; in conciliation, not coercion; in deeds of kindness
and acts of friendly sympathy, not in deeds of violence and blood.
The people of the Northwest were carried away by the excitement of
April and May. They believed war would restore the Union. They
trusted to the assurances of the president and his cabinet, and of
Congress, that it should be carried on for that purpose alone. They
trusted that it would be carried on under the Constitution. They
were patriotic and confiding. They sent their sons, and brothers,
and husbands to the army, and poured out their treasures at the
feet of the administration. They feel that the war has been
perverted from this end; that the Constitution has been
disregarded; that abolition and arbitrary power, not Union and
constitutional liberty, are the governing ideas of the
administration. They are in no temper to be trifled with. They
think they have been deceived. There is danger of revolution. They
are longing for peace."
Need I pause to inquire who would receive encouragement, or whose
spirits would be depressed, on reading these remarkable sentences?
Imagine them read by the rebel camp-fires, or at the fire-sides of
the rebel people. What hope, what exultation we should behold in
the faces of those who heard them! On the other hand, at Union
camp-fires, or by the loyal fire-sides of the North, what sorrow,
what mortification, what depression such statements would surely
carry wherever they were heard and believed!
The course of the peace Democracy of Ohio during the memorable
contest of 1863, between Brough and Vallandigham, is too well known
to require attention now. Judge Thurman was one of the committee
who constructed the platform of the convention which nominated Mr.
Vallandigham, and was the ablest member of the State Central
Committee which had charge of the canvass in his behalf during his
exile.
The key-note to that canvass was given by Mr. Vallandigham himself
in a letter written from Canada, July 15, 1863. That letter
contained the following:
"If this civil war is to terminate only by the subjugation or
submission of the South to force and arms, the infant of to-day
will not live to see the end of it. No, in another way only can it
be brought to a close. Traveling a thousand miles and more, through
nearly half of the Confederate States, and sojourning for a time at
widely different points, I met not one man, woman, or child, who
was not resolved to perish rather than yield to the pressure of
arms, even in the most desperate extremity. And whatever may and
must be the varying fortune of the war, in all which I recognize
the hand of Providence pointing visibly to the ultimate issue of
this great trial of the States and people of America, they are
better prepared now every way to make good their inexorable purpose
than at any period since the beginning of the struggle. These may
be unwelcome truths; but they are addressed only to candid and
honest men."
The assumption of the certain success of the rebellion, and that
the war for the Union would assuredly fail, was the strong point of
these gentlemen in favor of the election of Vallandigham and the
defeat of Brough. Fortunately, the patriotic people saw the
situation from another standpoint, and under the influence of
different feelings and different sympathies.
In the elections of 1863, the peace Democracy of Ohio and other
States sustained defeats which have no parallel in our political
history. But, notwithstanding their reverses, the year 1864, the
year of the presidential election, found the Ohio leaders possibly
sadder, but certainly not wiser nor more patriotic than before.
At the National Convention at Chicago, in August, Mr. Pendleton was
nominated for vice-president, Judge Thurman was a delegate of the
State of Ohio at large, and Mr. Vallandigham as a district
delegate, and as a member of the committee on platform, was the
author of the following resolution adopted by the convention:
"_Resolved_, That this convention does explicitly declare, as the
sense of the American people, that, after four years of failure to
restore the Union by the experiment of war, during which, under
pretense of military necessity, or war power higher than the
constitution, the constitution has been disregarded in every part,
and public liberty and private rights have been alike trodden down,
and the material prosperity of the country essentially impaired,
justice, humanity, liberty, and the public welfare demand that
immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities, with a
view to an ultimate convention of all the States, or other
peaceable means, to the end that at the earliest practicable moment
peace may be restored on the basis of the Federal Union of the
States."
This resolution does not seem to require explanation or comment.
But as General McClellan's letter accepting the nomination for
president did not square well with this part of the party platform,
Mr. Vallandigham, in a speech at Sidney, Ohio, September 24, 1864,
explained it at some length. In that speech, he said:
"I am speaking now of the fact that this convention pronounced this
war a failure, and giving you the reasons why it is a failure....
What has been gained by this campaign? More lives have been lost,
more hard fighting has been done, more courage has been exhibited
by the Federal as well as the Southern soldiers than in any former
campaign, and what has been accomplished? General Grant is nearer
to Richmond, occupying a territory of perhaps eleven miles, which
was not in the possession of the United States when the campaign
began, from City Point to the suburbs of Petersburg. To secure that
he gave up all the country from Manassas down to Richmond and a
large part of the valley.... How about the Southern campaign?
General Sherman, through the courage of the best disciplined, best
organized, and most powerful army that has been seen since the
campaigns of the first Napoleon, has taken Atlanta--a town somewhat
larger than Sidney. It has cost him sixty thousand men and four or
five months of the most terrible campaign ever waged on this
continent or any other, or any other part of the globe. He occupies
from two to five miles on each side of a railroad of one hundred
and thirty-eight miles in length. He has penetrated that far into
Georgia. What has been surrendered to obtain that? All of Texas,
nearly all of Louisiana, nearly all of Arkansas, Mississippi,
Alabama, and a part of Tennessee, which were in possession of the
Federals on the first of May. Kentucky has been opened to continual
incursions of the Confederate armies. All this has been surrendered
in order to gain this barren strip of country on the line of the
railroad. The war, then, has been properly pronounced a failure in
a military point of view. The convention meant that it has failed
to restore the Union, and there is not a Republican in the land who
does not know it."
In the Sidney speech, Mr. Vallandigham says, also:
"What will you have now? Four years more of war? What guaranties of
success have you? Do you want two million more of men to go forth
to this war as the Crusaders went to the sepulcher at Jerusalem?
The beginning of this administration found us with very little
debt, comparatively no taxation, and peace and happiness among the
States; and now look at the scene! Four more years of war, do you
tell me, when the first four, with every advantage, has failed?
Now, too, that the hearts of one-half of the people are turned away
from war, and intent upon the arts of peace? What will be the
consequence? Four thousand millions more of debt, five hundred
millions more of taxation, more conscriptions, more calls for five
hundred thousand men, more sacrifices for the next four years. All
this is what Abraham Lincoln demands of you in order that the South
may be compelled not to return to the Union, but to abandon
slavery."
All this logic, this eloquence, this taxing the imagination to
portray the horrors of war, failed to deceive the people; Lincoln
was re-elected; the war went on, and a few short months witnessed
the end of the armed rebellion, and the triumph of liberty and of
Union.