Friends, we have against us also, I am sorry to say, 95 per cent of the
respectable, amiable, silk-stocking vote. [Laughter.]
And it is amusing to see how exactly the conditions now parallel the
conditions 55 years ago, when Abraham Lincoln was making his fight for
the Union and for freedom.
After his defeat by Douglas in 1858, in November of that year, he wrote
a letter to a friend, dating the letter at Springfield, Ill. It’s a
letter I should like to have framed at this moment in every house in
the Back Bay. [Laughter.] He said:
In the late contest we had with us a considerable proportion
of the plain Democracy, but we lost almost all the old silk
stocking, exclusive Whigery. I do not mean that we lost all the
Whigs, but only those of the nice, exclusive, silk-stocking
type. [Laughter.]
Now that was written by Abraham Lincoln 54 years ago, and it has just
happened in your own city, and in mine, and in the country generally at
the present moment.
In consequence, friends, we have against us the money; we have
against us the politicians; we have against us every newspaper that
can be reached or controlled [hisses] by the money power [cries of
“right,” and applause]; we have against us the timid silk-stocking
element――understand, not the silk-stocking man who feels competent to
hold his own in the turmoil of actual life, not the silk-stocking man
who is content to go out into the world and take his chances as any
other man takes his.
We have got that man with us. We have got that man with us. [Applause.]
We have against us only the silk-stocking man who is not quite
confident enough in himself to believe in himself, who is not quite
confident enough in himself to believe that he can hold his own
with the rest of his fellow-Americans without advantage on his part.
[Applause.]
We have these men that I have spoken of against us, and we have not
got anybody with us except the people. [Great applause.] And on next
Tuesday I want the people――I want you――to go to the polls and vote the
same way you shout. [Cries of “you bet, you,” and applause.]
In Massachusetts, as in Illinois, and as in most other States this
year, it is such a contest in the civic field as you saw in the
military field in 1775 and 1776.
It is a contest between the Minute Men and the mercenaries. [Applause].
And I want to show that in civic life you are competent to do the
work that your forefathers have done; done with honor in the past.
[Applause.]