North, after leaving its 350,000 dead upon the field of battle and
bringing home its 500,000 maimed and wounded to be cared for,
crippled in its industries, staggering under the tremendous burden
of public and private debt, and both North and South weighted with
unparalleled burdens and losses—the whole nation suffering from that
loosening of the bonds of social order which always follows a great
war, and from the resulting corruption both in the public and the
private life of the people. These, Mr. Chairman, constitute the vast
field which we must survey in order to find the path which will
soonest lead our beloved country to the highway of peace, of liberty
and prosperity. Peace from the shock of battle; the higher peace of
our streets, of our homes, of our equal rights, we must make secure
by making the conquering ideas of the war every-where dominant and
permanent.
“With all my heart I join with the gentleman in rejoicing that—
“‘The war-drums throb no longer, and the battle-flags are furled’—
and I look forward with joy and hope to the day when our brave
people, one in heart, one in their aspirations for freedom and
peace, shall see that the darkness through which we have traveled
was a part of that stern but beneficent discipline by which the
Great Disposer of events has been leading us on to a higher and
nobler national life.
“But such a result can be reached only by comprehending the whole
meaning of the revolution through which we have passed and are still
passing. I say still passing; for I remember that after the battle
of arms comes the battle of history. The cause that triumphs in the
field does not always triumph in history. And those who carried the
war for union and equal and universal freedom to a victorious issue
can never safely relax their vigilance until the ideas for which
they fought have become embodied in the enduring forms of individual
and national life.
“Has this been done? Not yet.
“I ask the gentleman in all plainness of speech, and yet in all
kindness, is he correct in his statement that the conquered party
accept the results of the war? Even if they do, I remind the
gentleman that _accept_ is not a very strong word. I go further. I
ask him if the Democratic party have _adopted_ the results of the
war? Is it not asking too much of human nature to expect such
unparalleled changes to be not only accepted, but, in so short a
time, adopted by men of strong and independent opinions?
“The antagonisms which gave rise to the war and grew out of it were
not born in a day, nor can they vanish in a night.
“Mr. Chairman, great ideas travel slowly, and for a time
noiselessly, as the gods, whose feet were shod with wool. Our war of
independence was a war of ideas, of ideas evolved out of two hundred
years of slow and silent growth. When, one hundred years ago, our
fathers announced as self-evident truths the declaration that all
men are created equal, and the only just power of governments is
derived from the consent of the governed, they uttered a doctrine
that no nation had ever adopted, that not one kingdom on the earth
then believed. Yet to our fathers it was so plain that they would
not debate it. They announced it as a truth ‘self-evident.’
“Whence came the immortal truths of the Declaration? To me this was
for years the riddle of our history. I have searched long and
patiently through the books of the _doctrinaires_ to find the germs
from which the Declaration of Independence sprang. I found hints in
Locke, in Hobbes, in Rousseau, and Fénelon; but they were only the
hints of dreamers and philosophers. The great doctrines of the
Declaration germinated in the hearts of our fathers, and were
developed under the new influences of this wilderness world, by the
same subtle mystery which brings forth the rose from the germ of the
rose-tree. Unconsciously to themselves, the great truths were
growing under the new conditions until, like the century-plant, they
blossomed into the matchless beauty of the Declaration of
Independence, whose fruitage, increased and increasing, we enjoy
to-day.
“It will not do, Mr. Chairman, to speak of the gigantic revolution
through which we have lately passed as a thing to be adjusted and
settled by a change of administration. It was cyclical, epochal,
century-wide, and to be studied in its broad and grand perspective—a
revolution of even wider scope, so far as time is concerned, than
the Revolution of 1776. We have been dealing with elements and
forces which have been at work on this continent more than two
hundred and fifty years. I trust I shall be excused if I take a few
moments to trace some of the leading phases of the great struggle.
And, in doing so, I beg gentlemen to see that the subject itself
lifts us into a region where the individual sinks out of sight and
is absorbed in the mighty current of great events. It is not the
occasion to award praise or pronounce condemnation. In such a
revolution men are like insects that fret and toss in the storm, but
are swept onward by the resistless movements of elements beyond
their control. I speak of this revolution not to praise the men who
aided it, or to censure the men who resisted it, but as a force to
be studied, as a mandate to be obeyed.
“In the year 1620 there were planted upon this continent two ideas
irreconcilably hostile to each other. Ideas are the great warriors
of the world; and a war that has no ideas behind it is simply
brutality. The two ideas were landed, one at Plymouth Rock from the
_Mayflower_, and the other from a Dutch brig at Jamestown, Virginia.
One was the old doctrine of Luther, that private judgment in
politics as well as religion, is the right and duty of every man;
and the other that capital should own labor, that the negro had no
rights of manhood, and the white man might justly buy, own, and sell
him and his offspring forever. Thus freedom and equality on the one
hand, and on the other the slavery of one race and the domination of
another, were the two germs planted on this continent. In our vast
expanse of wilderness, for a long time, there was room for both; and
their advocates began the race across the continent, each developing
the social and political institutions of their choice. Both had vast
interests in common; and for a long time neither was conscious of
the fatal antagonisms that were developing.
“For nearly two centuries there was no serious collision; but when
the continent began to fill up, and the people began to jostle
against each other; when the Roundhead and the Cavalier came near
enough to measure opinions, the irreconcilable character of the two
doctrines began to appear. Many conscientious men studied the
subject, and came to the belief that slavery was a crime, a sin, or
as Wesley said, ‘the sum of all villainies.’ This belief dwelt in
small minorities for a long time. It lived in the churches and
vestries, but later found its way into the civil and political
organizations of the country, and finally found its way into this
chamber. A few brave, clear-sighted, far-seeing men announced it
here, a little more than a generation ago. A predecessor of mine,
Joshua R. Giddings, following the lead of John Quincy Adams, of
Massachusetts, almost alone held up the banner on this floor, and
from year to year comrades came to his side. Through evil and
through good report he pressed the question upon the conscience of
the nation.
“And so the contest continued; the supporters of slavery believing
honestly and sincerely that slavery was a divine institution; that
it found its high sanctions in the living oracles of God and in a
wise political philosophy; that it was justified by the necessities
of their situation; and that slave-holders were missionaries to the
dark sons of Africa, to elevate and bless them. We are so far past
the passions of that early time that we can now study the progress
of the struggle as a great and inevitable development, without
sharing in the crimination and recrimination that attended it. If
both sides could have seen that it was a contest beyond their
control; if both parties could have realized the truth that
‘unsettled questions have no pity for the repose of nations,’ much
less for the fate of political parties, the bitterness, the sorrow,
the tears, and the blood might have been avoided. But we walked in
the darkness, our paths obscured by the smoke of the conflict, each
following his own convictions through ever-increasing fierceness,
until the debate culminated in ‘the last argument to which kings
resort.’
“This conflict of opinion was not merely one of sentimental feeling;
it involved our whole political system; it gave rise to two
radically different theories of the nature of our Government: the
North believing and holding that we were a Nation, the South
insisting that we were only a confederation of sovereign States, and
insisting that each State had the right, at its own discretion, to
break the Union, and constantly threatening secession where the full
rights of slavery were not acknowledged.
“Thus the defense and aggrandizement of slavery, and the hatred of
Abolitionism, became not only the central idea of the Democratic
party, but its master-passion—a passion intensified and inflamed by
twenty-five years of fierce political contest, which had not only
driven from its ranks all those who preferred freedom to slavery,
but had absorbed all the extreme pro-slavery elements of the fallen
Whig party. Over against this was arrayed the Republican party,
asserting the broad doctrines of nationality and loyalty, insisting
that no State had a right to secede, that secession was treason, and
demanding that the institution of slavery should be restricted to
the limits of the States where it already existed. But here and
there, many bolder and more radical thinkers declared, with Wendell
Phillips, that there never could be union and peace, freedom and
prosperity, until we were willing to see John Hancock under a black
skin.
* * * * *
“Mr. Chairman, after the facts I have cited, am I not warranted in
raising a grave doubt whether the transformation occurred at all
except in a few patriotic and philosophic minds? The light gleams
first on the mountain peaks; but shadows and darkness linger in the
valley. It is in the valley masses of those lately in rebellion that
the light of this beautiful philosophy, which I honor, has not
penetrated. It is safer to withhold from them the custody and
supreme control of the precious treasures of the Republic until the
midday sun of liberty, justice, and equal laws shall shine upon them
with unclouded ray.
“In view of all the facts, considering the centuries of influence
that brought on the great struggle, is it not reasonable to suppose
that it will require yet more time to effect the great
transformation? Did not the distinguished gentleman from
Massachusetts [Mr. George F. Hoar] sum up the case fairly and
truthfully when he said of the South, in his Louisiana report of
1874: ‘They submitted to the national authority, not because they
would, but because they must. They abandoned the doctrine of State
sovereignty, which they had claimed made their duty to the States
paramount to that due to the nation in case of conflict, not because
they would, but because they must. They submitted to the
constitutional amendments which rendered their former slaves their
equals in all political rights, not because they would, but because
they must. The passions which led to the war, the passions which the
war excited, were left untamed and unchecked, except so far as their
exhibition was restrained by the arm of power.’
“Mr. Chairman, it is now time to inquire as to the fitness of this
Democratic party to take control of our great nation and its vast
and important interests for the next four years. I put the question
to the gentleman from Mississippi [Mr. Lamar], what has the
Democratic party done to merit that great trust? He tried to show in
what respects it would not be dangerous. I ask him to show in what
it would be safe. I affirm, and I believe I do not misrepresent the
great Democratic party, that in the last sixteen years they have not
advanced one great national idea that is not to-day exploded and as
dead as Julius Cæsar. And if any Democrat here will rise and name a
great national doctrine his party has advanced, within that time,
that is now alive and believed in, I will yield to hear him. [A
pause.] In default of an answer, I will attempt to prove my
negative.
“What were the great central doctrines of the Democratic party in
the presidential struggle of 1860? The followers of Breckinridge
said slavery had a right to go wherever the Constitution goes. Do
you believe that to-day? Is there a man on this continent that holds
that doctrine to-day? Not one. That doctrine is dead and buried. The
other wing of the Democracy held that slavery might be established
in the territories if the people wanted it. Does any body hold that
doctrine to-day? Dead, absolutely dead!
“Come down to 1864. Your party, under the lead of Tilden and
Vallandigham, declared the experiment of war to save the Union was a
failure. Do you believe that doctrine to-day? That doctrine was shot
to death by the guns of Farragut at Mobile, and driven, in a tempest
of fire, from the valley of the Shenandoah by Sheridan less than a
month after its birth at Chicago.
“Come down to 1868. You declared the Constitutional Amendments
revolutionary and void. Does any man on this floor say so to-day? If
so, let him rise and declare it.
“Do you believe in the doctrine of the Broadhead letter of 1868,
that the so-called Constitutional Amendments should be disregarded?
No; the gentleman from Mississippi accepts the results of the war!
The Democratic doctrine of 1868 is dead!
“I walk across that Democratic camping-ground as in a graveyard.
Under my feet resound the hollow echoes of the dead. There lies
slavery, a black marble column at the head of its grave, on which
I read: Died in the flames of the Civil War; loved in its life;
lamented in its death; followed to its bier by its only mourner,
the Democratic party, but dead! And here is a double grave: Sacred
to the memory of Squatter Sovereignty. Died in the campaign of
1860. On the reverse side: Sacred to the memory of the Dred
Scott-Breckinridge doctrine. Both died at the hands of Abraham
Lincoln! And here a monument of brimstone: Sacred to the memory of
the Rebellion; the war against it is a failure; _Tilden et
Vallandigham fecerunt_, A. D. 1864. Dead on the field of battle;
shot to death by the million guns of the Republic. The doctrine of
Secession; of State Sovereignty. Dead. Expired in the flames of
civil war, amidst the blazing rafters of the Confederacy, except
that the modern Æneas, fleeing out of the flames of that ruin,
bears on his back another Anchises of State Sovereignty, and
brings it here in the person of the honorable gentleman from the
Appomattox district of Virginia [Mr. Tucker]. [Laughter.] All else
is dead.
“Now, gentlemen, are you sad, are you sorry for these deaths? Are
you not glad that Secession is dead? that slavery is dead? that
Squatter Sovereignty is dead? that the doctrine of the failure of
the war is dead? Then you are glad that you were out-voted in 1860,
in 1864, in 1868, and in 1872. If you have tears to shed over these
losses, shed them in the graveyard, but not in this House of living
men. I know that many a Southern man rejoices that these issues are
dead. The gentleman from Mississippi has clothed his joy with
eloquence.
“Now, gentlemen, if you yourselves are glad that you have suffered
defeat during the last sixteen years, will you not be equally glad
when you suffer defeat next November? [Laughter.] But pardon that
remark; I regret it; I would use no bravado.
“Now, gentlemen, come with me for a moment into the camp of the
Republican party and review its career. Our central doctrine in 1860
was that slavery should never extend itself over another foot of
American soil. Is that doctrine dead? It is folded away like a
victorious banner; its truth is alive for evermore on this
continent. In 1864 we declared that we would put down the Rebellion
and Secession. And that doctrine lives, and will live when the
second Centennial has arrived! Freedom, national, universal, and
perpetual—our great Constitutional Amendments, are they alive or
dead? Alive, thank the God that shields both liberty and Union. And
our national credit, saved from the assaults of Pendleton; saved
from the assaults of those who struck it later, rising higher and
higher at home and abroad; and only now in doubt lest its chief, its
only enemy, the Democracy, should triumph in November.
“Mr. Chairman, ought the Republican party to surrender its truncheon
of command to the Democracy? The gentleman from Mississippi says, if
this were England, the ministry would go out in twenty-four hours
with such a state of things as we have here. Ah, yes! that is an
ordinary case of change of administration. But if this were England,
what would she have done at the end of the war? England made one
such mistake as the gentleman asks this country to make, when she
threw away the achievements of the grandest man that ever trod her
highway of power. Oliver Cromwell had overturned the throne of
despotic power, and had lifted his country to a place of masterful
greatness among the nations of the earth; and when, after his death,
his great scepter was transferred to a weak though not unlineal
hand, his country, in a moment of reactionary blindness, brought
back the Stuarts. England did not recover from that folly until, in
1689, the Prince of Orange drove from her island the last of that
weak and wicked line. Did she afterward repeat the blunder?
“For more than fifty years pretenders were seeking the throne; and
the wars on her coast, in Scotland and in Ireland, threatened the
overthrow of the new dynasty and the disruption of the empire. But
the solid phlegm, the magnificent pluck, the roundabout common-sense
of Englishmen steadied the throne till the cause of the Stuarts was
dead. They did not change as soon as the battle was over and let the
Stuarts come back to power.
“And how was it in our own country, when our fathers had triumphed
in the war of the Revolution? When the victory was won, did they
open their arms to the Loyalists, as they called themselves, or
Tories, as our fathers called them? Did they invite them back? Not
one. They confiscated their lands. The States passed decrees that no
Tory should live on our soil. And when they were too poor to take
themselves away, our fathers, burdened as the young nation was with
debt, raised the money to transport the Tories beyond seas or across
the Canada border. They went to England, to France, to Nova Scotia,
to New Brunswick, and especially to Halifax; and that town was such
a resort for them, that it became the swear-word of our boyhood. ‘Go
to Halifax!’ was a substitute for a more impious, but not more
opprobrious expression. The presence of Tories made it opprobrious.
“Now, I do not refer to this as an example which we ought to follow.
Oh, no. We live in a milder era, in an age softened by the more
genial influence of Christian civilization. Witness the sixty-one
men who fought against us in the late war, and who are now sitting
in this and the other chamber of Congress. Every one of them is here
because a magnanimous nation freely voted that they might come; and
they are welcome. Only please do not say that you are just now
especially fitted to rule the Republic, and to be the apostles of
liberty and of blessings to the colored race.
“Gentlemen, the North has been asked these many years to regard the
sensibilities of the South. We have been told that you were brave
and sensitive men, and that we ought not to throw firebrands among
you. Most of our people have treated you with justice and
magnanimity. In some things we have given you just cause for
complaint; but I want to remind you that the North also has
sensibilities to be regarded. The ideas which they cherished, and
for which they fought, triumphed in the highest court, the court of
last resort, the field of battle. Our people intend to abide by that
verdict and to enforce the mandate. They rejoice at every evidence
of acquiescence. They look forward to the day when the distinctions
of North and South shall have melted away in the grander sentiment
of nationality. But they do not think it is yet safe to place the
control of this great work in your hands. In the hands of some of
you they would be safe, perfectly safe; but into the hands of the
united South, joined with the most reactionary elements of the
Northern Democracy, our people will not yet surrender the
government.
“I am aware that there is a general disposition ‘to let by-gones be
by-gones,’ and to judge of parties and of men, not by what they have
been, but by what they are and what they propose.
“That view is partly just and partly erroneous. It is just and wise
to bury resentments and animosities. It is erroneous in this, that
parties have an organic life and spirit of their own—an
individuality and character which outlive the men who compose them;
and the spirit and traditions of a party should be considered in
determining their fitness for managing the affairs of a nation. For
this purpose I have reviewed the history of the Democratic party.”
Long ago an arrangement was perfected by which each State of the Union
should be allowed to place in the halls of Congress two statues of
distinguished citizens. On December 19, 1876, the State of Massachusetts
announced its readiness to comply with this arrangement, by presenting
two statues, one of John Winthrop and one of Samuel Adams.
Speaking on the resolution of that day, accepting this gift, Mr.
Garfield made one of the most felicitous of the many speeches of this
kind that he has left on record. One paragraph from this address can not
be omitted here:
“As, from time to time, our venerable and beautiful Hall has been
peopled with statues of the elect of the States, it has seemed to me
that a Third House was being organized within the walls of the
Capitol—a house whose members have received their high credentials
at the hands of history, and whose term of office will outlast the
ages. Year by year we see the circle of its immortal membership
enlarging; year by year we see the elect of their country, in
eloquent silence, taking their places in this American Pantheon,
bringing within its sacred circle the wealth of those immortal
memories which made their lives illustrious; and year by year that
august assembly is teaching a deeper and grander lesson to all who
serve their brief hour in these more ephemeral Houses of Congress.
And now two places of great honor have just been most nobly filled.”
Of a truth, General Garfield understood and appreciated the greatness of
the Republic, and the grandeur of the character which belonged to its
founders!
The election for President, in 1876, and the difficulty which arose in
deciding its results, will not be forgotten by this generation, or left
out of the studies of American statesmen in the future. We still vividly
recollect how narrow the majority, and how uncertain; how all depended
on three doubtful Southern States; how the “visiting statesmen” went to
New Orleans to watch the count before the Returning Board; how the
nation waited breathless while these momentous calculations were being
made. And finally, we long shall remember that famous Electoral
Commission which by an eight to seven vote made R. B. Hayes President of
the United States.
Arriving at Washington early in November, General Garfield was requested
by President Grant to go to New Orleans with the little company of
Democratic and Republican leaders who were there. General Garfield
arrived in New Orleans on November fourteenth. In common with other
members of the Republican Committee, he refused to unite in any movement
to in any way influence the Returning Board in its canvass of the vote.
He was there simply to witness what was done; not to take part in the
proceedings.
These visitors of both parties were given opportunities to witness the
count, five of each party being there all the time. They were furnished
with copies of all testimony taken; and to simplify the work, the study
of this testimony was distributed out among individuals. General
Garfield was given all the papers regarding East Feliciana parish, which
he thoroughly examined, and even recalled and re-examined some of the
witnesses.
In the work before the Returning Board, that Board allowed these
witnesses to ask questions, and to take copies of all the papers. Each
party was also represented by counsel, who argued the disputed points.
This was the work of the “visiting statesmen.” When the canvassing of
votes was completed, without waiting for or trying to influence the
result, General Garfield returned to Washington, as did nearly all the
others.
It has been a question whether outsiders ought to have been at New
Orleans at all in this emergency. Certainly a public man ran great risk
of doing himself harm by going, and it required the utmost
circumspection to get out of it, clear from suspicion of evil. A year
afterward this affair was examined by the Potter Committee, and of
Garfield, the worst they could say was this: “We found no fault in him.”
But the struggle at New Orleans did not decide it all. When January came
it was seen that there would still be trouble in deciding who were
elected. It was feared by all that an attempt to decide by the existing
laws, without the help of further provisions, might lead to serious
difficulties.
Accordingly, on January 29, 1877, there was passed in the House a law
providing for the Electoral Commission, a body to be composed of five
Associate Justices of the Supreme Court, five Senators and five
Representatives, to whom should be committed the duty of deciding, by
their recommendation, the votes of any disputed States.
General Garfield was opposed to this commission, which he thought an
unhappy way of ending the trouble. His views are given in a speech made
to the House, on January 25, wherein he said:
“What, then, are the grounds on which we should consider a bill like
this? It would be unbecoming in me or in any member of this Congress
to oppose this bill on mere technical or trifling grounds. It should
be opposed, if at all, for reasons so broad, so weighty, as to
overcome all that has been said in its favor, and all the advantages
which I have here admitted may follow from its passage. I do not
wish to diminish the stature of my antagonist; I do not wish to
undervalue the points of strength in a measure before I question its
propriety. It is not enough that this bill will tide us over a
present danger, however great. Let us for a moment forget Hayes and
Tilden, Republicans and Democrats; let us forget our own epoch and
our own generation; and, entering a broader field, inquire how this
thing which we are about to do will effect the great feature of our
republic, and in what condition, if we pass this bill, we shall
transmit our institutions to those who shall come after us. The
present good which we shall achieve by it may be very great; yet if
the evils that will flow from it in the future must be greater, it
would be base in us to flinch from trouble by entailing remediless
evils upon our children.
“In my view, then, the foremost question is this: What will be the
effect of this measure upon our institutions? I can not make that
inquiry intelligibly without a brief reference to the history of the
Constitution, and to some of the formidable questions which
presented themselves to our fathers nearly a hundred years ago, when
they set up this goodly frame of Government.
“Among the foremost difficulties, both in point of time and
magnitude, was how to create an executive head of the Nation. Our
fathers encountered that difficulty the first morning after they
organized and elected the officers of the Constitutional Convention.
The first resolution introduced by Randolph, of Virginia, on the
29th day of May, recognized that great question, and invited the
Convention to its examination. The men who made the Constitution
were deeply read in the profoundest political philosophy of their
day. They had learned from Montesquieu, from Locke, from Fénelon,
and other good teachers of the human race, that liberty is
impossible without a clear and distinct separation of the three
great powers of government. A generation before their epoch,
Montesquieu had said:
“‘When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same
person or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty,
because apprehensions may arise lest the same monarch or senate
should enact tyrannical laws and execute them in a tyrannical
manner.
* * * * *
“‘There would be an end of every thing were the same man or the same
body, whether of the nobles or of the people, to exercise these
three powers, that of enacting the laws, that of executing the
public resolutions, and of trying the causes of individuals.’
“This was a fundamental truth in the American mind, as it had long
been cherished and practiced in the British empire.
“There, as in all monarchies, the creation of a chief executive was
easily regulated by adopting a dynasty, and following the law of
primogeniture.
“But our fathers had drawn the deeper lesson of liberty from the
inspirations of this free New World, that their Chief Executive
should be born, not of a dynasty, but of the will of a free people
regulated by law.
“In the course of their deliberations upon this subject, there were
suggested seven different plans, which may be grouped under two
principal heads or classes. One group comprised all the plans for
creating the Chief Executive by means of some one of the preëxisting
political organizations of the country. First and foremost was the
proposition to authorize one or both Houses of the National
Legislature to elect the Chief Executive. Another was to confer that
power upon the governors of the States, or upon the legislatures of
the States. Another, that he should be chosen directly by the people
themselves under the laws of the States. The second group comprised
all the various plans for creating a new and separate
instrumentality for making the choice.
“At first the proposition that the Executive should be elected by
the National Legislature was received by the Convention with almost
unanimous approval; and for the reason that up to that time Congress
had done all that was done in the way of national government. It had
created the nation and led its fortunes through a thousand perils,
had declared and achieved independence, and had preserved the
liberty of the people in the midst of a great war. Though Congress
had failed to secure a firm and stable Government after the war, yet
its glory was not forgotten. As Congress had created the Union, it
was most natural that our fathers should say Congress should also
create the Chief Executive of the nation. And within two weeks after
the Convention assembled, they voted for that plan with absolute
unanimity.
“But with equal unanimity they agreed that this plan would be fatal
to the stability of the Government they were about to establish, if
they did not couple with it some provision that should make the
President’s functions independent of the power that created him. To
effect this, they provided that the President should be ineligible
for reëlection. They said it would never do to create a Chief
Executive by the voice of the National Legislature, and then allow
him to be reëlected by that same voice; for he would thus become
their creature.
“And so, from the first day of their session in May, to within five
days of its close in September, they grappled with the mighty
question. I have many times, and recently very carefully, gone
through all the records that are left to us of that great
transaction. I find that more than one-seventh of all the pages of
the Madison papers are devoted to this Samson of questions, how the
Executive should be chosen and made independent of the organization
that made the choice. This topic alone occupied more than
one-seventh of all the time of the Convention.
“After a long and earnest debate, after numerous votes and
reconsiderations, they were obliged utterly to abandon the plan of
creating the Chief Executive by means of the National Legislature. I
will not stop now to prove the statement by a dozen or more pungent
quotations from the masters of political science in that great
assembly, in which they declared that it would be ruinous to the
liberty of the people and to the permanence of the Republic if they
did not absolutely exclude the National Legislature from any share
in the election of the President.
“They pointed with glowing eloquence to the sad but instructive fate
of those brilliant Italian republics that were destroyed because
there was no adequate separation of powers, and because their
senates overwhelmed and swallowed up the executive power, and, as
secret and despotic conclaves, became the destroyers of Italian
liberty.
“At the close of the great discussion, when the last vote on this
subject was taken by our fathers, they were almost unanimous in
excluding the National Legislature from any share whatever in the
choice of the Chief Executive of the nation. They rejected all the
plans of the first group, and created a new instrumentality. They
adopted the system of electors. When that plan was under discussion,
they used the utmost precaution to hedge it about by every
conceivable protection against the interference or control of
Congress.
“In the first place, they said the States shall create the electoral
colleges. They allowed Congress to have nothing whatever to do with
the creation of the colleges, except merely to fix the time when the
States should appoint them. And, in order to exclude Congress by
positive prohibition, in the last days of the Convention they
provided that no member of either House of Congress should be
appointed an elector; so that not even by the personal influence of
any one of its members could the Congress interfere with the
election of a President.
“The creation of a President under our Constitution consists of
three distinct steps: First, the creation of the electoral colleges;
second, the vote of colleges; and third, the opening and counting of
their votes. This is the simple plan of the Constitution.
“The creation of the colleges is left absolutely to the States,
within the five limitations I had the honor to mention to the House
a few days ago. First, it must be a _State_ that appoints electors;
second, the State is limited as to the number of electors it may
appoint; third, electors shall not be members of Congress or
officers of the United States; fourth, the time for appointing
electors may be fixed by Congress; and, fifth, the time when their
appointment is announced, which must be before the date for giving
their votes, may also be fixed by Congress.
“These five simple limitations, and these alone, were laid upon the
States. Every other act, fact, and thing possible to be done in
creating the electoral colleges was absolutely and uncontrollably in
the power of the States themselves. Within these limitations,
Congress has no more power to touch them in this work than England
or France. That is the first step.
“The second is still plainer and simpler, namely, the work of the
colleges. They were created as an independent and separate power, or
set of powers, for the sole purpose of electing a President. They
were created by the States. Congress has just one thing to do with
them, and only one: it may fix the day when they shall meet. By the
act of 1792 Congress fixed the day as it still stands in the law;
and there the authority of the Congress over the colleges ended.
“There was a later act—of 1845—which gave to the States the
authority to provide by law for filling vacancies of electors in
these colleges; and Congress has passed no other law on the subject.
“The States having created them, the time of their assemblage having
been fixed by Congress, and their power to fill vacancies having
been regulated by State laws, the colleges are as independent in the
exercise of their functions as is any department of the Government
within its sphere. Being thus equipped, their powers are restrained
by a few simple limitations laid upon them by the Constitution
itself: first, they must vote for a native-born citizen; second, for
a man who has been fourteen years a resident of the United States;
third, at least one of the persons for whom they vote must not be a
citizen of their own State; fourth, the mode of voting and
certifying their returns is prescribed by the Constitution itself.
Within these simple and plain limitations the electoral colleges are
absolutely independent of the States and of Congress.
“One fact in the history of the Constitutional Convention, which I
have not seen noticed in any of the recent debates, illustrates very
clearly how careful our fathers were to preserve these colleges from
the interference of Congress, and to protect their independence by
the bulwarks of the Constitution itself. In the draught of the
electoral system reported September 4, 1787, it was provided that
Congress ‘may determine the time of choosing and assembling of the
electors _and the manner of certifying and transmitting their
votes_.’
“That was the language of the original draught; but our fathers had
determined that the National Legislature should have nothing to do
with the action of the colleges; and the words that gave Congress
the power to prescribe the manner of certifying and transmitting
their votes were stricken out. The instrument itself prescribed the
mode. Thus Congress was wholly expelled from the colleges. The
Constitution swept the ground clear of all intruders, and placed its
own imperial guardianship around the independence of the electoral
colleges by forbidding even Congress to enter the sacred circle. No
Congressman could enter; and, except to fix the day of their
meeting, Congress could not speak to the electors.
“These colleges are none the less sovereign and independent because
they exist only for a day. They meet on the same day in all the
States; they do their work summarily in one day, and dissolve for
ever. There is no power to interfere, no power to recall them, no
power to revise their action. Their work is done; the record is made
up, signed, sealed, and transmitted; and thus the second great act
in the Presidential election is completed. I ought to correct
myself; the second act _is_ the Presidential election. The election
is finished the hour when the electoral colleges have cast their
votes and sealed up the record.
“Still, there is a third step in the process; and it is shorter,
plainer, simpler than the other two. These sealed certificates of
the electoral colleges are forwarded to the President of the Senate,
where they rest under the silence of the seals for more than two
months. The Constitution assumes that the result of the election is
still unknown. But on a day fixed by law, and the only day of all
the days of February on which the law commands Congress to be in
session, the last act in the plan of electing a President is to be
performed.
“How plain and simple are the words that describe this third and
last step. Here they are:
“‘The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the
Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates,
and the votes shall then be counted.’
“Here is no ambiguity. Two words dominate and inspire the clause.
They are the words _open_ and _count_. These words are not shrouded
in the black-letter mysteries of the law. They are plain words,
understood by every man who speaks our mother-tongue, and need no
lexicon or commentary.
“Consider the grand and simple ceremonial by which the third act is
to be completed. On the day fixed by law the two Houses of Congress
are assembled. The President of the Senate, who, by the
Constitution, has been made the custodian of the sealed certificates
from all the electoral colleges, takes his place. The Constitution
requires a ‘person’ and a ‘presence.’ That ‘person’ is the President
of the Senate; and that ‘presence’ is the ‘presence’ of the two
Houses. Then two things are to be _done_. The certificates are to be
opened, and the votes are to be counted. These are not legislative
acts, but clearly and plainly executive acts. I challenge any man to
find anywhere an accepted definition of an executive act that does
not include both these. They can not be tortured into a meaning that
will carry them beyond the boundaries of executive action. And one
of these acts the President of the Senate is peremptorily ordered to
perform. The Constitution commands him to ‘open all the
certificates.’ Certificates of what? Certificates of the votes of
the electoral colleges. Not any certificates that any body may
choose to send, but certificates of electors appointed by the
States. The President of the Senate is presumed to know what are the
States in the Union, who are their officers, and, when he opens the
certificates, he learns from the official record who have been
appointed electors, and he finds their votes.
“The Constitution contemplated the President of the Senate as the
Vice-President of the United States, the elect of all the people.
And to him is confided the great trust, the custodianship of the
only official record of the election of President. What is it to
‘open the certificates’? It would be a narrow and inadequate view of
that word to say that it means only the breaking of the seals. To
open an envelope is not to ‘open the certificates.’ The certificate
is not the paper on which the record is made; it is the record
itself. To open the certificates is not a physical but an
intellectual act. It is to make patent the record; to publish it.
When that is done the election of President and Vice-President is
published. But one thing remains to be done; and here the language
of the Constitution changes from the active to the passive voice,
from the personal to the impersonal. To the trusted custodian of the
votes succeeds the impersonality of arithmetic; the votes have been
made known; there remains only the command of the Constitution:
‘They shall be counted’—that is, the numbers shall be added up.
“No further act is required. The Constitution itself declares the
result:
“‘The person having the greatest number of votes for President
shall be President, if such number be a majority of the whole
number of electors appointed.’
“If no person has such majority, the House of Representatives shall
_immediately_ choose a President; not the House as organized for
legislation, but a new electoral college is created out of the
members of the House, by means of which each State has one vote for
President, and only one.
“To review the ground over which I have traveled: The several acts
that constitute the election of a President may be symbolized by a
pyramid consisting of three massive, separate blocks. The first, the
creation of the electoral college by the States, is the broad base.
It embraces the legislative, the judicial, and the executive powers
of the States. All the departments of the State government and all
the voters of the State coöperate in shaping and perfecting it.
“The action of the electoral colleges forms the second block,
perfect in itself, and independent of the others, superimposed with
exactness upon the first.
“The opening and counting of the votes of the colleges is the little
block that crowns and completes the pyramid.
“Such, Mr. Speaker, was the grand and simple plan by which the
framers of the Constitution empowered all the people, acting under
the laws of the several States, to create special and select
colleges of independent electors to choose a President, who should
be, not the creature of Congress, nor of the States, but the Chief
Magistrate of the whole Nation—the elect of all the people.”
But the Electoral Commission was constituted by law, and Garfield
himself chosen unanimously by his party as a member thereof. He
accepted, saying: “Since you have appointed me, I will serve. I can act
on a committee when I do not believe in its validity.” That fact could
not affect the justice of his decisions.
It is impossible to even hint at more than a small portion of the vast
field of work which occupied General Garfield during this and the
succeeding Congress.
On November 16, 1877, he made a very able speech on the subject of
Resumption of Payments; an address which would serve to perpetuate his
fame, if he had no other monument.
In the _Atlantic Monthly_ of February, 1876, appeared an article from
his pen, entitled “The Currency Conflict.” On June 4, of the same year,
he opposed, in an elaborate address, a tariff bill brought in by Mr.
Morrison, of Illinois.
June 22, 1876, was to him the “sad occasion dear” of a revival of
precious memories. In the preceding December his old friend and
fellow-student of Hiram, Miss Booth, had died, and this day in June was
appointed there for a memorial address by General Garfield. As at all
such times when he spoke, we are struck with a sense of the wonderful
delicacy of this man’s nature, which responded so perfectly to every
delicate and holy sentiment known to the human heart. His very first
words were:
“_Mr. President_: You have called me to a duty at once most sad and
most sacred. At every step of my preparation for its performance, I
have encountered troops of thronging memories that swept across the
field of the last twenty-five years of my life, and so filled my
heart with the lights and shadows of their joy and sorrow that I
have hardly been able to marshal them into order or give them
coherent voice. I have lived over again the life of this place. I
have seen again the groups of young and joyous students, ascending
these green slopes, dwelling for a time on this peaceful height in
happy and workful companionship, and then, with firmer step, and
with more serious and thoughtful faces, marching away to their posts
in the battle of life.
“And still nearer and clearer have come back the memories of that
smaller band of friends, the leaders and guides of those who
encamped on this training-ground. On my journey to this assembly, it
has seemed that they, too, were coming, and that I should once more
meet and greet them. And I have not yet been able to realize that
Almeda Booth will not be with us. After our great loss, how shall we
gather up the fragments of the life we lived in this place? We are
mariners, treading the lonely shore in search of our surviving
comrades and the fragments of our good ship, wrecked by the tempest.
To her, indeed, it is no wreck. She has landed in safety, and
ascended the immortal heights beyond our vision.”
The death of Michael C. Kerr having made necessary the selection of a
new Speaker, the Democratic majority in the House elected Samuel J.
Randall, and the complimentary vote of the Republicans went to General
Garfield. He was also their candidate in the two succeeding Congresses.
He had divided the honor of leadership pretty evenly with Mr. Blaine,
until, in 1877, the latter gentleman went to the Senate, and left
Garfield without a rival. Fourteen years of able and faithful service
had done their work grandly for his power and his fame.
On February 12, 1878, Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson, of New York City,
presented to Congress that great painting of Carpenter, “Lincoln and
Emancipation.” At her request the presentation address was made by
General Garfield.
His important speeches during this Congress were even more numerous than
usual; especially in the special session held in the spring and summer
of 1879. One of the best was that of February 19, 1878, on the “Policy
of Pacification, and the Prosecutions in Louisiana.” At this time there
were two serious political storms brewing in the air. First, there were
divisions in the Republican party, and an alienation of some of its
leaders from President Hayes; second, the Democratic party, with its
cries of “fraud,” concerning the last election, and its Potter
Committee, and its prosecutions against the members of the Louisiana
Returning Board, was trying to destroy the people’s confidence in the
Government as then constituted. The latter quarrel no doubt was the
salvation of the party concerned in the former. Its members rallied and
united. Garfield was leader and chief promoter of Republican harmony, as
well as the strongest bulwark against the enemy.
This speech of February 19 contains the following pithy paragraph,
descriptive of the way in which the nation had passed through the
transformations of war:
“There was, first, the military stage—the period of force, of open
and bloody war—in which gentlemen of high character and honor met on
the field, and decided by the power of the strongest the questions
involved in the high court of war. That period passed, but did not
leave us on the calm level of peace. It brought us to the period of
transition, in which the elements of war and peace were mingled
together in strange and anarchic confusion. It was a period of civil
and military elements combined. All through that semi-military
period the administration of General Grant had, of necessity, to
conduct the country. His administration was not all civil, it was
not all military; it was necessarily a combination of both; and out
of that combination came many of the strange and anomalous
situations which always follow such a war.”
Again:
“Our great military chieftain, who brought the war to a successful
conclusion, had command as chief executive during eight years of
turbulent, difficult, and eventful administration. He saw his
administration drawing to a close, and his successor elected—who,
studying the question, came to the conclusion that the epoch had
arrived, the hour had struck, when it was possible to declare that
the semi-military period was ended, and the era of peace methods, of
civil processes, should be fully inaugurated. With that spirit, and
at the beginning of this third era, Rutherford B. Hayes came into
the Presidency. I ought to say that, in my judgment, more than any
other public man we have known, the present head of the
administration is an optimist. He looks on the best side of things.
He is hopeful for the future, and prefers to look upon the bright
side rather than upon the dark and sinister side of human nature.
His faith is larger than the faith of most of us; and with his faith
and hope he has gone to the very verge of the Constitution in
offering both hands of fellowship and all the olive-branches of
peace to bring back good feeling, and achieve the real pacification
to this country.”
After this came a brief protest against the Bland Silver Bill, February
28, 1878. On March 6, 1878, he delivered his “New Scheme of American
Finance,” being in answer to a personal attack of William D. Kelley, the
great protective tariff advocate, of Pennsylvania. Other addresses were,
“The Army and the Public Peace,” May 21, 1878; reply to Mr. Tucker on
the “Tariff,” June 4, 1878; “Honest Money,” a speech delivered at
Boston, in Faneuil Hall, September 10, 1878; “Suspension and Resumption
of Specie Payments,” at Chicago, January 2, 1879, before the Honest
Money League of the North-west; in memory of Joseph Henry, January
16,1879; “Relation of Government to Science,” February 11, 1879; in
memory of the late Hon. Gustave Schleicher, February 17, 1879; and a
very interesting speech of February 26, 1879, about the “Sugar Tariff.”
When March 3,1879, came, the Forty-Fifth Congress went out with much of
its important business undone; two of the great appropriation bills had
not passed on account of political difficulties. The Democrats attempted
to force assent to some of their schemes by tacking their propositions
to the Appropriation bill. But this measure the Republicans resisted to
the last. And so it happened that in March, 1879, President Hayes was
obliged to call an extra session. But here the old fight was renewed,
and a long “dead lock” followed.
Throughout this struggle, Garfield was the central figure in the front
rank of his party in the House. Scarcely had Congress assembled when the
old Army Bill was reported. Then, in Committee of the Whole, the old
“rider” was moved as an amendment. The Chair decided this amendment in
order, whereupon there was great indignation on the Republican side, and
a remarkable debate ensued. Garfield made his principal protest while
things were in this situation, on March 29, 1879, in a speech entitled
“Revolution in Congress.”
Throughout this special session the fierce heat of political conflict
grew more intense every day, like the sun whose burning rays beat down
upon the Capitol. On April 4, Garfield spoke again on the subject which
had occupied his attention six days before. April 26, he spoke on the
passage of the Legislative Appropriation Bill; May 17, against unlimited
coinage of silver; June 19, on the Judicial Appropriation Bill; June 21,
concerning a proposed survey of the Mississippi River, in the course of
which he said:
“But for myself, I believe that one of the grandest of our material
national interests—one that is national in the largest material
sense of that word—is the Mississippi River and its navigable
tributaries. It is the most gigantic single natural feature of our
continent, far transcending the glory of the ancient Nile or of any
other river on the earth. The statesmanship of America must grapple
the problem of this mighty stream. It is too vast for any State to
handle; too much for any authority less than that of the nation
itself to manage. And I believe the time will come when the
liberal-minded statesmanship of this country will devise a wise and
comprehensive system, that will harness the powers of this great
river to the material interests of America, so that not only all the
people who live on its banks and the banks of its confluents, but
all the citizens of the Republic, whether dwellers in the central
valley or on the slope of either ocean, will recognize the
importance of preserving and perfecting this great natural and
material bond of national union between the North and the South—a
bond to be so strengthened by commerce and intercourse that it can
never be severed.”
Thus refreshed by something more liberal than the recent discussions in
which he had been engaged, Garfield soon resumed the struggle, and on
June 27, 1879, gave the Democratic party and the South a regular
broadside on “State Sovereignty.”
The Special Session of 1879 came to an end on July 1st. At its beginning
the dominant power in the House loudly proclaimed its intention to push
its measures through at all hazards. The appropriation bills, with their
obnoxious “riders,” were passed; the President vetoed them. It then
became a question of revolution or yielding. There was no revolution!
Every dollar called for by the Government was voted, except the pay of
the United States marshals, who overcame the difficulty by paying their
own expenses, trusting a future session of Congress to repay them.
According to his custom, General Garfield spoke often during the Ohio
campaign of 1879; a good specimen of his stump speeches is the one at
Cleveland, on October 11th, of this year. At the Andersonville Reunion,
held in Toledo, Ohio, on October 3d, he had been present and addressed
the throng of Union soldiers and ex-prisoners who met there.
During the regular sessions of the Forty-Sixth Congress his activity was
undiminished. In his speech of March 17, during the discussion of a bill
to pay the United States marshals for the year ending June 30, 1880, we
find such sterling utterances as these:
“Mr. Chairman: When I took my seat as a member of this House, I took
it with all the responsibilities which the place brought upon me;
and among others was my duty to keep the obligations of the law.
Where the law speaks in mandatory terms to every body else and then
to me, I should deem it cowardly and dishonorable if I should skulk
behind my legislative privilege for the purpose of disobeying and
breaking the supreme law of the land.
“The issue now made is somewhat different from that of the last
session, but, in my judgment, it is not less significant and
dangerous. I would gladly waive any party advantage which this
controversy might give for the sake of that calm and settled peace
which would reign in this Hall if we all obeyed the law. But if the
leaders on the other side are still determined to rush upon their
fate by forcing upon the country this last issue—that because the
Democratic party happen not to like a law they will not obey
it—because they happen not to approve of the spirit and character of
a law they will not let it be executed—I say to gentlemen on the
other side, if you are determined to make such an issue, it is high
time that the American people should know it.
“Here is the volume of our laws. More sacred than the twelve tables
of Rome, this rock of the law rises in monumental grandeur alike
above the people and the President, above the courts, above
Congress, commanding everywhere reverence and obedience to its
supreme authority. Yet the dominant party in this House virtually
declares that ‘any part of this volume that we do not like and can
not repeal we will disobey. We have tried to repeal these election
laws; we have failed because we had not the constitutional power to
destroy them; the Constitution says they shall stand in their
authority and power; but we, the Democratic party, in defiance of
the Constitution, declare that if we can not destroy them outright
by the repeal, they shall be left to crumble into ruin by wanton and
lawless neglect.’
“Mr. Chairman, by far the most formidable danger that threatens the
Republic to-day is the spirit of law-breaking which shows itself in
many turbulent and alarming manifestations. The people of the
Pacific Coast, after two years of wrestling with the spirit of
communism in the city of San Francisco, have finally grappled with
this lawless spirit, and the leader of it was yesterday sentenced to
penal servitude as a violator of the law. But what can we say to
Denis Kearney and his associates if to-day we announce ourselves the
foremost law-breakers of the country and set an example to all the
turbulent and vicious elements of disorder to follow us?
“I ask, gentlemen, whether this is a time when it is safe to
disregard and weaken the authority of law. In all quarters the civil
society of this country is becoming honeycombed through and through
by disintegrating forces—in some States by the violation of
contracts and the repudiation of debts; in others by open resistance
and defiance; in still others by the reckless overturning of
constitutions and letting the ‘red fool fury of the Seine’ run riot
among our people and build its blazing altars to the strange gods of
ruin and misrule. All these things are shaking the good order of
society and threatening the foundations of our Government and our
peace. In a time like this, more than ever before, this country
needs a body of lawgivers clothed and in their right minds, who have
laid their hands upon the altar of the law as its defenders, not its
destroyers.”
April 5, 1880, General Garfield made a trenchant argument against a pet
measure of the greenback apostle, Mr. Weaver. Five days afterward
occurred a debate between Garfield and McMahon, also of Ohio, on the
pending Appropriation bill.
On May first he made a personal explanation, defending his committee
action in regard to the so-called wood-pulp monopoly. This pulp is
obtained from soft wood and used in the manufacture of paper. The
newspapers everywhere were calling for a removal of the duty on this
their great necessity. Garfield stood out for a ten per cent. tariff, as
a protection to our manufacturers from the Canadian manufacturers, who
had no royalties to pay, and therefore could have undersold us. In this
speech Garfield met the charge of being a monopoly supporter, and
vindicated his policy on the disputed question.
Turning aside from this well-fought field where Garfield had so long
stood, as a great representative of all that is good in the recent
legislative history of our country, it is time to view the new honors
which were now preparing for him.
On the fourteenth of January, 1880, the Ohio Legislature elected James
A. Garfield to the United States Senate, to succeed Mr. Thurman, whose
term was to expire in the following March. So thoroughly had Garfield
recovered from the wave of scandal which a few years earlier had swept
over but could not overwhelm him, that he was the unanimous choice of
his party; and the Democratic minority itself cordially united to make
his election unanimous. All this came entirely without solicitation from
him for such an honor.
At an informal reception held in the Capitol at Columbus, the evening
after his election, General Garfield was called upon for a speech. In
response, he made a brief and appropriate address. The following is an
extract therefrom:
“FELLOW-CITIZENS:—I should be a great deal more than a man, or a
great deal less than a man, if I were not extremely gratified by
this mark of your kindness you have shown me in recent days. I did
not expect any such meeting as this. I knew there was a greeting
awaiting me, but I did not expect so cordial, generous, and general
a greeting, without distinction of party, without distinction of
interests, as I have received here to-night. And you will allow me
in a moment or two to speak of the memories this chamber awakens.
“I recognize the importance of the place to which you have elected
me, and I should be base if I did not also recognize the great man
whom you have elected me to succeed. I say for him, Ohio has had few
larger-minded, broader-minded men in the records of our history than
that of Allen G. Thurman. Differing widely from him as I have done
in politics, and do, I recognize him as a man high in character and
great in intellect; and I take this occasion to refer to what I have
never before referred to in public—that many years ago, in the storm
of party fighting, when the air was filled with all sorts of
missiles aimed at the character and reputation of public men, when
it was even for his party interest to join the general clamor
against me and my associates, Senator Thurman said in public, in the
campaign, on the stump,—where men are as likely to say unkind things
as at any place in the world,—a most generous and earnest word of
defense and kindness for me, which I shall never forget as long as I
live. I say, moreover, that the flowers that bloom over the garden
wall of party politics are the sweetest and most fragrant that bloom
in the gardens of this world; and where we can early pluck them and
enjoy their fragrance, it is manly and delightful to do so.
“And now, gentlemen of the General Assembly, without distinction of
party, I recognize this tribute and compliment made to me to-night.
Whatever my own course may be in the future, a large share of the
inspiration of my future public life will be drawn from this
occasion and these surroundings, and I shall feel anew the sense of
obligation that I owe to the State of Ohio. Let me venture to point
a single sentence in regard to that work. During the twenty years
that I have been in public life, almost eighteen of it in the
Congress of the United States, I have tried to do one thing. Whether
I was mistaken or otherwise, it has been the plan of my life to
follow my convictions at whatever personal cost to myself. I have
represented for many years a district in Congress whose approbation
I greatly desired; but though it may seem, perhaps, a little
egotistical to say it, I yet desired still more the approbation of
one person, and his name is Garfield. He is the only man that I am
compelled to sleep with, and eat with, and live with, and die with;
and if I could not have his approbation, I should have bad
companionship. And in this larger constituency which has called me
to represent them now, I can only do what is true to my best self,
applying the same rules. And if I should be so unfortunate as to
lose the confidence of this larger constituency, I must do what
every other fair-minded man has to do—carry his political life in
his hand and take the consequences. But I must follow what seems to
me to be the only safe rule of my life; and with that view of the
case, and with that much personal reference, I leave the subject.
“Thanking you again, fellow-citizens, members of the General
Assembly, Republicans and Democrats—all, party man as I am,—thanking
you both for what you have done and for this cordial and manly
greeting, I bid you good-night.”