_Question_. Do you really think, Colonel, that the country has
just passed through a crisis?
_Answer_. Yes; there was a crisis and a great one. The question
was whether a Northern or Southern idea of the powers and duties
of the Federal Government was to prevail. The great victory of
yesterday means that the Rebellion was not put down on the field
of war alone, but that we have conquered in the realm of thought.
The bayonet has been justified by argument. No party can ever
succeed in this country that even whispers "State Sovereignty."
That doctrine has become odious. The sovereignty of the State
means a Government without power, and citizens without protection.
_Question_. Can you see any further significance in the present
Republican victory other than that the people do not wish to change
the general policy of the present administration?
_Answer_. Yes; the people have concluded that the lips of America
shall be free. There never was free speech at the South, and there
never will be until the people of that section admit that the Nation
is superior to the State, and that all citizens have equal rights.
I know of hundreds who voted the Republican ticket because they
regarded the South as hostile to free speech. The people were
satisfied with the financial policy of the Republicans, and they
feared a change. The North wants honest money--gold and silver.
The people are in favor of honest votes, and they feared the
practices of the Democratic party. The tissue ballot and shotgun
policy made them hesitate to put power in the hands of the South.
Besides, the tariff question made thousands and thousands of votes.
As long as Europe has slave labor, and wherever kings and priests
rule, the laborer will be substantially a slave. We must protect
ourselves. If the world were free, trade would be free, and the
seas would be the free highways of the world. The great objects
of the Republican party are to preserve all the liberty we have,
protect American labor, and to make it the undisputed duty of the
Government to protect every citizen at home and abroad.
_Question_. What do you think was the main cause of the Republican
sweep?
_Answer_. The wisdom of the Republicans and the mistakes of the
Democrats. The Democratic party has for twenty years underrated
the intelligence, the patriotism and the honesty of the American
people. That party has always looked upon politics as a trade,
and success as the last act of a cunning trick. It has had no
principles, fixed or otherwise. It has always been willing to
abandon everything but its prejudices. It generally commences
where it left off and then goes backward. In this campaign English
was a mistake, Hancock was another. Nothing could have been more
incongruous than yoking a Federal soldier with a peace-at-any-price
Democrat. Neither could praise the other without slandering himself,
and the blindest partisan could not like them both. But, after
all, I regard the military record of English as fully equal to the
views of General Hancock on the tariff. The greatest mistake that
the Democratic party made was to suppose that a campaign could be
fought and won by slander. The American people like fair play and
they abhor ignorant and absurd vituperation. The continent knew
that General Garfield was an honest man; that he was in the grandest
sense a gentleman; that he was patriotic, profound and learned;
that his private life was pure; that his home life was good and
kind and true, and all the charges made and howled and screeched
and printed and sworn to harmed only those who did the making and
the howling, the screeching and the swearing. I never knew a man
in whose perfect integrity I had more perfect confidence, and in
less than one year even the men who have slandered him will agree
with me.
_Question_. How about that "personal and confidential letter"?
(The Morey letter.)
_Answer_. It was as stupid, as devilish, as basely born as
godfathered. It is an exploded forgery, and the explosion leaves
dead and torn upon the field the author and his witnesses.
_Question_. Is there anything in the charge that the Republican
party seeks to change our form of government by gradual centralization?
_Answer_. Nothing whatever. We want power enough in the Government
to protect, not to destroy, the liberties of the people. The
history of the world shows that burglars have always opposed an
increase of the police.
--_New York Herald_, November 5, 1880.