[Speech of Thomas C. Ewing at the first annual banquet of the New York
Southern Society, February 22, 1887. Algernon S. Sullivan, the
President of the Society, was in the chair, and announced that General
Ewing would respond to the toast "Ohio and the Northwest." General
Ewing was greeted with applause and cheers for Ohio.]
MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:--Ohio and her four sisters of the
Northwest are always proud and happy to be reminded of the fact of their
kinship to Virginia. It was the valor and the intrepidity of the Old
Dominion which, long before the Confederation was formed, wrested that
great territory from the Frenchmen and the savages. It was her lofty
generosity which gave to the poor young Republic that vast territory out
of which has been formed five of our greatest States, and in which dwell
millions of our people. It was her humane and unselfish statesmanship
which annexed to the gift the condition that neither slavery nor
involuntary servitude, excepting punishment for crime, should ever exist
in that magnificent domain. Thousands of our Revolutionary heroes sleep
in Ohio in land given to them as a recognition of their own priceless
services, and the beautiful district between the Scioto and the Little
Miami is filled with their descendants. Therefore, Mr. President,
whenever Virginia sits at the head of the table, Ohio claims a seat as
one of the family.
I, too, coming from that great State, and proud of it and its condition,
may join in congratulating you, gentlemen, on the establishment of this
"Southern Society of New York." After the long season of strife and
discontent this is one of the many signs which mark the vernal equinox,
and foretell the coming summer. I believe, notwithstanding the infinite
disasters of the war, the overthrow of slavery, and with it all the
industrial system of the South, and the needless loss and the
humiliations of reconstruction--I believe that there is to-day a kinder
and more cordial fraternity between the North and South than ever
existed since the agitation of the slavery question sixty or seventy
years ago. This society formed, and meeting here in this great centre of
American political and business life, can do much to promote that peace.
We need more social intercourse between the Northern and Southern men,
and we need, above all, a clearer and manlier understanding of each
other, in order that the recollections of the war may cease to check the
growing accord between us.
Gentlemen, the North craves a living and lasting peace with the South;
it asks no humiliating conditions; it recognizes the fact that the
proximate cause of the war was the constitutional question of the right
of secession--a question which, until it was settled by the war, had
neither a right nor wrong side to it. Our forefathers, in framing the
Constitution purposely left the question unsettled; to have settled it
distinctly in the Constitution would have been to prevent the formation
of the union of the Thirteen States. They, therefore, committed that
question to the future and the war came on and settled it forever. Now,
the Northern people are not so mean, fanatical or foolish as to blame
the South because it believed then and believes now that it had the
right side of that question. How could we respect the South if it were
to say now that it was insincere then, or if it were to pretend that its
convictions on a question of constitutional construction had been
changed by the cuffs and blows of the war? It is enough that the North
and South alike agree that the war settled that question in favor of the
Northern construction finally and forever.
The North does ask that the settlement of the war as embodied in the
constitutional amendments shall be accepted, and obeyed in the letter
and spirit, as good faith and good citizenship require. There have been
undoubtedly very many instances of violation of the spirit of the
amendments and there will be in the future, but no more than from the
very nature of things was to have been expected; and I have no doubt
that they will decrease in number as time goes on, and will finally
disappear in the breaking-up of the color line in the South; and under
the influence of that great sentiment become more familiar and more
general every year, in favor of equal political rights to every American
citizen. Aside from these questions, there is nothing to perpetuate
alienation between the North and South. The new questions will lead to
new divisions on other lines; already the representatives of Alabama are
getting ready to stand with Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey in support
of the tariff on the iron industry; the spinners of the Dan and the Saco
will stand very soon with the spinners of the Willimantic and the
Merrimac in supporting the cotton interests, and now we see the
cotton-growers of the South and the wheat-growers of the Northwest
united in demanding a tariff for revenue only.
Common political interests, the ministry of social and political
intercourse, and perhaps higher than all, the pride of a common
citizenship are rapidly supplanting sectionalism among our own people
and leading us to stand together and work out our common destiny in
fraternal reunion. It has often occurred to me, as a cause of
thankfulness to Almighty God--and I believe He is guiding this Republic
so as to work out the problem of self-government for all mankind--that
the tremendous fact of the war has caused so little change in our system
of government; constitutional amendments have been so limited by
interpretation by the Supreme Court of the United States that they have
hardly added anything to the powers of the general Government or
impaired the powers of the States. The legislation following the war
when Congress seemed to have run mad with the theory that it could
legislate outside of the Constitution has to a large extent fallen under
the decisions of that high tribunal. One would have supposed that it
could have been certain that, considering the fact that the war was
waged to extend the extremest proposition of State sovereignty, that the
triumph of the Federal theory would have added enormously and
permanently to the powers of the general Government and diminished very
greatly and permanently the powers of the States. It is well for
Republican government that that evil was averted. We have our free State
Government, States still stand as the fortresses of American liberty,
and our Federal government moves in its orb with scarcely a perturbation
to mark the influence of the war upon it.
Gentlemen, we have successfully worked out the problem of
self-government, and our example will undoubtedly and in due time be
followed by the world. What else is there for this Republic to do? There
is a tremendous question yet unsolved which is now rising unbidden in
this and in every enlightened nation. It is the question of the proper
distribution of the earnings of labor and capital combined. This is a
question that will not down, and we have got to meet it. British
publicists and statesmen from whom we have taken in the past far too
much of our politics have either ignored that question entirely, or have
treated it as practically settled by the apothegm of Ricardo, that the
laborer is entitled out of his earnings to just enough food and clothing
to keep the machine of his body in working order, and that when that
machine becomes disarranged or worn out, he must go to the almshouse.
In the United States, so far as the question does not lie outside of the
powers of the State or general Government, so far as those powers can be
used fairly to adjust the question, methods of adjustment will fall
within the lines relating to revenue, currency, corporations, police
regulations. The settlement of the intricate problem and of that
immensely important one, will not be added to by flagrant assaults on
public authority, nor by the interference by bodies or individuals with
the free right of every single workingman to work for whatever he
pleases and for whomever he pleases and as many hours as he pleases; nor
by the confiscation of real or personal property. And on the other hand
that question will not be solved nor aided in its solution by police
interference with the right of free assembly and discussion, nor by
police interference with the right to form organizations open or secret,
nor by police interference with the right of laboring men to combine for
their own benefit if they keep within the limits of the law. On the
other hand, I dissent _in toto_ from some of the sentiments expressed in
the letter of Mr. Hewitt. [Abram S. Hewitt, Mayor of the City of New
York.] This question will only be settled by the people at the
ballot-box and by the enactment of such laws as will fairly distribute
the net earnings which labor and capital combine to make.
Gentlemen, let us who have borne the heat and burden of the Civil War,
commit it and its issues to the past, and join the incoming generation
in settling this great industrial question in such a way as will be just
to all, and best for the masses of the people. The South has always
produced great statesmen. It was her peerless and immortal son whose
love of the people and whose faith in their power of self-government did
most to establish and animate our free institutions. And again let the
New South send forth other statesmen armed with the power and animated
with the spirit of Jefferson, [Applause.]