Fellow citizens, I am a Republican and proud of my party's history.
The history of the United States has been made rich and resplendent with
victories and achievements of our party. We are proud of our nation's
history from its earliest dawn down to the present, and for the valuable
lessons it has taught. We would not expunge or obliterate a single line.
We accept it as a whole, from Plymouth Rock to Bunker Hill, from Bunker
Hill to Fort Sumter, from Fort Sumter to Appomattox, and from Appomattox
down to the campaign of 1896. We dedicate crowns of laurel for the
giants who have evolved the mighty principles and tenets of the
republican party--Washington and Grant, Blaine and Logan, Sherman and
Garfield, Harrison and McKinley, and most of all, that gentle soul, that
man of equal poise, whose peer has never lived since the days of blessed
Galilean--Abraham Lincoln! (Applause.) Our history is one of greatness
and sublimity. Its pages are rich with the names of orators more
eloquent than a Burke, with the names of statesmen more acute than the
"Iron Chancellor" and the names of warriors greater and mightier than
Napoleon.
IN THE DARK AND TURBULENT DAYS OF THE REBELLION, THE REPUBLICAN PARTY,
WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF DEMOCRATIC PATRIOTS, SAVED THIS NATION, WHILE
NOW IN THE CLOSING DAYS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, BY THE LIVING GOD,
PATRIOTS WILL SAVE AND PROTECT OUR NATION'S HONOR.
Ours is the greatest nation on earth, and the possibilities of the
future are almost limitless; if we make no mistake in the great
principles of protection, reciprocity and a sound currency, which have
for their immediate object the betterment of the conditions of the
wage-earners of this land.