_Question_. What phases will the Southern question assume in the
next four years?
_Answer_. The next Congress should promptly unseat every member
of Congress in whose district there was not a fair and honest
election. That is the first hard work to be done. Let notice, in
this way, be given to the whole country, that fraud cannot succeed.
No man should be allowed to hold a seat by force or fraud. Just
as soon as it is understood that fraud is useless it will be
abandoned. In that way the honest voters of the whole country can
be protected.
An honest vote settles the Southern question, and Congress has the
power to compel an honest vote, or to leave the dishonest districts
without representation. I want this policy adopted, not only in
the South, but in the North. No man touched or stained with fraud
should be allowed to hold his seat. Send such men home, and let
them stay there until sent back by honest votes. The Southern
question is a Northern question, and the Republican party must
settle it for all time. We must have honest elections, or the
Republic must fall. Illegal voting must be considered and punished
as a crime.
Taking one hundred and seventy thousand as the basis of representation,
the South, through her astounding increase of colored population,
gains three electoral votes, while the North and East lose three.
Garfield was elected by the thirty thousand colored votes cast in
New York.
_Question_. Will the negro continue to be the balance of power,
and if so, will it inure to his benefit?
_Answer_. The more political power the colored man has the better
he will be treated, and if he ever holds the balance of power he
will be treated as well as the balance of our citizens. My idea
is that the colored man should stand on an equality with the white
before the law; that he should honestly be protected in all his
rights; that he should be allowed to vote, and that his vote should
be counted. It is a simple question of honesty. The colored people
are doing well; they are industrious; they are trying to get an
education, and, on the whole, I think they are behaving fully as
well as the whites. They are the most forgiving people in the
world, and about the only real Christians in our country. They
have suffered enough, and for one I am on their side. I think more
of honest black people than of dishonest whites, to say the least
of it.
_Question_. Do you apprehend any trouble from the Southern leaders
in this closing session of Congress, in attempts to force pernicious
legislation?
_Answer_. I do not. The Southern leaders know that the doctrine
of State Sovereignty is dead. They know that they cannot depend
upon the Northern Democrat, and they know that the best interests
of the South can only be preserved by admitting that the war settled
the questions and ideas fought for and against. They know that
this country is a Nation, and that no party can possibly succeed
that advocates anything contrary to that. My own opinion is that
most of the Southern leaders are heartily ashamed of the course
pursued by their Northern friends, and will take the first opportunity
to say so.
_Question_. In what light do you regard the Chinaman?
_Answer_. I am opposed to compulsory immigration, or cooley or
slave immigration. If Chinamen are sent to this country by
corporations or companies under contracts that amount to slavery
or anything like it or near it, then I am opposed to it. But I am
not prepared to say that I would be opposed to voluntary immigration.
I see by the papers that a new treaty has been agreed upon that
will probably be ratified and be satisfactory to all parties. We
ought to treat China with the utmost fairness. If our treaty is
wrong, amend it, but do so according to the recognized usage of
nations. After what has been said and done in this country I think
there is very little danger of any Chinaman voluntarily coming
here. By this time China must have an exceedingly exalted opinion
of our religion, and of the justice and hospitality born of our
most holy faith.
_Question_. What is your opinion of making ex-Presidents Senators
for life?
_Answer_. I am opposed to it. I am against any man holding office
for life. And I see no more reason for making ex-Presidents
Senators, than for making ex-Senators Presidents. To me the idea
is preposterous. Why should ex-Presidents be taken care of? In
this country labor is not disgraceful, and after a man has been
President he has still the right to be useful. I am personally
acquainted with several men who will agree, in consideration of
being elected to the presidency, not to ask for another office
during their natural lives. The people of this country should
never allow a great man to suffer. The hand, not of charity, but
of justice and generosity, should be forever open to those who have
performed great public service.
But the ex-Presidents of the future may not all be great and good
men, and bad ex-Presidents will not make good Senators. If the
nation does anything, let it give a reasonable pension to ex-
Presidents. No man feels like giving pension, power, or place to
General Grant simply because he was once President, but because he
was a great soldier, and led the armies of the nation to victory.
Make him a General, and retire him with the highest military title.
Let him grandly wear the laurels he so nobly won, and should the
sky at any time be darkened with a cloud of foreign war, this
country will again hand him the sword. Such a course honors the
nation and the man.
_Question_. Are we not entering upon the era of our greatest
prosperity?
_Answer_. We are just beginning to be prosperous. The Northern
Pacific Railroad is to be completed. Forty millions of dollars
have just been raised by that company, and new States will soon be
born in the great Northwest. The Texas Pacific will be pushed to
San Diego, and in a few years we will ride in a Pullman car from
Chicago to the City of Mexico. The gold and silver mines are
yielding more and more, and within the last ten years more than
forty million acres of land have been changed from wilderness to
farms. This country is beginning to grow. We have just fairly
entered upon what I believe will be the grandest period of national
development and prosperity. With the Republican party in power;
with good money; with unlimited credit; with the best land in the
world; with ninety thousand miles of railway; with mountains of
gold and silver; with hundreds of thousands of square miles of coal
fields; with iron enough for the whole world; with the best system
of common schools; with telegraph wires reaching every city and
town, so that no two citizens are an hour apart; with the telephone,
that makes everybody in the city live next door, and with the best
folks in the world, how can we help prospering until the continent
is covered with happy homes?
_Question_. What do you think of civil service reform?
_Answer_. I am in favor of it. I want such civil service reform
that all the offices will be filled with good and competent
Republicans. The majority should rule, and the men who are in
favor of the views of the majority should hold the offices. I am
utterly opposed to the idea that a party should show its liberality
at the expense of its principles. Men holding office can afford
to take their chances with the rest of us. If they are Democrats,
they should not expect to succeed when their party is defeated.
I believe that there are enough good and honest Republicans in this
country to fill all the offices, and I am opposed to taking any
Democrats until the Republican supply is exhausted.
Men should not join the Republican party to get office. Such men
are contemptible to the last degree. Neither should a Republican
administration compel a man to leave the party to get a Federal
appointment. After a great battle has been fought I do not believe
that the victorious general should reward the officers of the
conquered army. My doctrine is, rewards for friends.
--_The Commercial_, Cincinnati, Ohio, December 6, 1880.