Speech delivered at Manhattan, Kansas, November 21st, 1884.
MY FRIENDS AND FELLOW-CITIZENS OF MANHATTAN: I came to your jubilee, as
some of you know, with grave reluctance. This was not because I failed
to appreciate your generous kindness in desiring to celebrate my
election. It was not because I was not sincerely thankful to you for
your earnest support in the canvass just closed. It was not because I
was not deeply and profoundly sensible of the great honor done me by the
people of this intelligent and prosperous State. Nor was it because I
would not willingly and gladly meet with the people of this
enterprising, beautiful and growing city—the seat of one of the most
important of our great institutions of learning—on the occasion of any
social or political celebration to which their partiality and kindness
might summon me.
But when I first received your invitation, the result of the great
quadrennial struggle between the opposing and enduring forces of
Loyalty, Liberty and Progress was not yet determined. And it seemed to
me that no gratulation personal to myself, no celebration of a victory
that embraced only the narrow confines of a State, was allowable while
the tremendous issues of the National contest were involved in doubt.
I come now, in response to your summons, with a heavy heart. The
Republican victory in Kansas was, I know, complete. The largest vote
ever polled in the State shows the largest Republican majority, and the
vote cast for me exceeds the wildest anticipations of my most sanguine
friends. To receive nearly double the votes cast for the Republican
nominee two years ago; to turn a minority of nearly ten thousand into a
majority of nearly forty thousand; to be indorsed by a majority of the
votes cast in all but about half a dozen counties of the State; to
receive over twenty-five thousand more votes than were cast for the
Republican candidate for President four years ago; and notwithstanding
the fact that the whole force of the enemy’s attack was massed against
me, to fall only a little more than six thousand votes behind the poll
for James G. Blaine, who for ten years past has been the idol of the
people of Kansas—this is indeed a victory, a triumph, of which any man
would have a just right to feel proud.
And I certainly am proud of it, and as grateful as I am proud. I am
grateful to the generous Republicans of the State, who, after nominating
me with unprecedented unanimity, supported me with unparalleled
earnestness and enthusiasm. I am grateful to the eloquent and vigorous
speakers, who, in city, town, village and school-house, pleaded my cause
with the people, defended me against unjust assault, and did far more
than justice to my services or my deserving. I am grateful, especially,
to the thousands of earnest, enthusiastic young men whose torches, for
weeks, turned night into day from Doniphan to Barber, and from Cherokee
to Cheyenne, and who, with flashing flambeaux, blazing rockets and loud
hurrahs, often did what neither the logic, the eloquence nor the wit of
orators could do, to arouse the sluggish and convert the doubtful. I am
grateful to the bright, enterprising, enthusiastic journalists of
Kansas—and no State in the Union can boast of brighter or better
newspapers than can Kansas—who so ardently and intelligently supported
me. I am grateful to hundreds of Democrats and Greenbackers in the
State, who, believing that I stood for obedience to law, voted for me. I
am grateful even to the opposition, who, as a general rule, treated me
courteously and fairly. The exceptions to this rule only emphasized it.
There is in me, therefore, no lack of gratitude for the signal honor
conferred upon me by the people of Kansas. Indeed, the measure of my
gratitude is so full and overflowing that it weighs upon me. I feel
under obligations to so many people, I am profoundly grateful to so
many, that when I think of it all, and of how I am to testify my
gratitude or requite the obligations I am under, I am overwhelmed with a
sense of the poverty of my vocabulary of thankfulness, and of the vain
aspiration of my desire to return even a tithe of my multitudinous
obligations.
But, grateful as I am to the Republicans of Kansas for the signal honor
they have conferred upon me—an honor which fills the full measure of my
ambition—and proud as I am of the magnificent victory won in Kansas, I
cannot forget that the Republican banner of the Nation is, for the first
time in twenty-five years, trailing in defeat. If I loved the party
merely for its gifts of honor and of office; if I cared nothing for its
principles, and had no faith in their power to benefit and bless the
people of America; if I regarded the contest between the Democratic and
the Republican parties as a mere scramble for the spoils of office, I
would be content with my own personal victory, and accept it as all that
I was interested in. But I am a Republican, not only in name, but in
fact. I am a Republican because I sincerely believe that the Republican
party is the purest, the most intelligent, the most progressive, the
most beneficent organization the world has ever known. I am a Republican
because the Republican party saved the Union; because it abolished
slavery; because it enfranchised the slaves; because it has made this
Nation great, free, prosperous, and self-sustaining.
I am a Republican because the Republican party advocates the protection
of American industries and labor; because it is the party of
school-houses, of education, of social order, of liberty regulated by
law; and because it is a party that has never feared to attack vice,
however strongly entrenched it might be.
I am a Republican because the Republican party would be ashamed to
prefer a Northern Copperhead to a Union soldier.
I am a Republican because the Republican party does not, for
expediency’s sake, ignore its greatest and bravest advocates and
statesmen, while it sits upon a pedestal, like a Gessler’s hat in the
market-place, a preposterous political accident, who had lived
throughout the tremendous events of the past quarter of a century,
utterly unknown outside of the small place wherein he resided.
The Republican party has enriched the history of the age with a long
list of imperishable names, and among them all no one shines with a more
brilliant luster than that of its brave and glorious leader in the late
campaign, James G. Blaine.
Is it strange, then, that even in the midst of our rejoicing over our
victory in Kansas my heart turns to the man who should have been the
central thought and figure of this jubilee—to the defeated leader—but
still the leader of the Republican hosts, as much to-day as a month ago;
to the Greatheart of the party, who never sulked in his tent when others
were preferred; and who never treacherously stabbed his party in order
to defeat a political rival.
There are to-day, all over the land, men who proudly boast that they
voted for Henry Clay, who, in his day and generation, was the greatest,
bravest and noblest of American statesmen, and who will be remembered
and revered a thousand years after the eleventh President of the United
States is forgotten. And so, a quarter of a century hence, the young
Americans who this year cast their first votes for James G. Blaine and
John A. Logan, the greatest statesman and the greatest volunteer soldier
of this age, will boast of it as the proudest act of their lives.
The great West presented, in the contest just closed, a stainless record
of unfaltering devotion to Republican principles. Here in the West, the
land of freedom and loyalty, the home of school-houses and of soldiers,
the Republican candidates received a support that was as enthusiastic as
it was overwhelming. The best blood and brain and energy of America
abide in the West. It is the bright boy of the family who leaves the old
homestead to make a name and a fortune for himself. It is the mother of
bright and energetic children who, when her husband talks of removing to
a new and broader country, gives a brave and willing consent. These are
the men and women who have peopled this goodly Western land and
transformed it by the magic touch of industry, energy and intelligence
into the granary of the world. And this is the land, the broad, rich,
prosperous land, where a big-hearted, big-brained people gave the
greatest and most brilliant of living Americans his largest and
heartiest support. We can at least rejoice over this result of the
campaign, and point with pride to the fact that Kansas, in her
Republican majority, leads all the other States.
The Republican party has lost a battle. It lost some during the civil
war. It is neither disheartened, dismayed, nor panic-stricken. It will
rally its forces, form its lines, and prepare for the contest of 1888.
It embraces within its ranks the best heart and brain of the American
people. It is the party of proud memories and glorious aspirations. It
has never done anything it has to apologize for or feel ashamed of. It
has governed the country wisely, honestly, bravely. It is as great a
party to-day as it was when Abraham Lincoln led it to victory, or when
Ulysses S. Grant was its commander, or when James A. Garfield was its
chosen candidate. Alike in fields of war, or finance, or administration,
it has justified the highest expectations of the loyalty, the honesty
and the intelligence of the Nation. Pharisees revile, demagogues
denounce, cranks rail at, and traitors hate it. But it is the party of
the honest, sensible, practical, logical people of the country, and to
them it can safely trust for vindication and final victory. Four years
of Democratic stupidity, dishonesty, arrogance and disloyalty, will
nauseate the Republic, and the people will turn to the Republican party
as the needle does to the pole, and gladly and proudly restore it to the
public confidence it has done nothing to forfeit, and to the power it
has never abused.