MASSACHUSETTS may be satisfied with the loyalty of Benjamin H. Bristow;
so am I; but if any man nominated by this convention can not carry the
State of Massachusetts, I am not satisfied with the loyalty of that
State. If the nominee of this convention can not carry the grand old
Commonwealth of Massachusetts by seventy-five thousand majority, I would
advise them to sell out Faneuil Hall as a Democratic headquarters. I
would advise them to take from Bunker Hill that old monument of glory.
The Republicans of the United States demand as their leader in the great
contest of 1876 a man of intelligence, a man of integrity, a man of
well-known and approved political opinions. They demand a statesman;
they demand a reformer after as well as before the election. They demand
a politician in the highest, broadest and best sense--a man of superb
moral courage. They demand a man acquainted with public affairs--with
the wants of the people; with not only the requirements of the hour,
but with the demands of the future. They demand a man broad enough to
comprehend the relations of this government to the other nations of
the earth. They demand a man well versed in the powers, duties, and
prerogatives of each and every department of this government. They
demand a man who will sacredly preserve the financial honor of the
United States; one who knows enough to know that the national debt must
be paid through the prosperity of this people; one who knows enough to
know that all the financial theories in the world cannot redeem a single
dollar; one who knows enough to know that all the money must be made,
not by law, but by labor; one who knows enough to know that the people
of the United States have the industry to make the money, and the honor
to pay it over just as fast as they make it.
The Republicans of the United States demand a man who knows that
prosperity and resumption, when they come, must come together; that
when they come, they will come hand in hand through the golden harvest
fields; hand in hand by the whirling spindles and the turning wheels;
hand in hand past the open furnace doors; hand in hand by the flaming
forges; hand in hand by the chimneys filled with eager fire, greeted and
grasped by the countless sons of toil.
This money has to be dug out of the earth. You can not make it by
passing resolutions in a political convention.
The Republicans of the United States want a man who knows that this
government should protect every citizen, at home and abroad; who knows
that any government that will not defend its defenders, and protect its
protectors, is a disgrace to the map of the world. They demand a man who
believes in the eternal separation and divorcement of church and school.
They demand a man whose political reputation is spotless as a star;
but they do not demand that their candidate shall have a certificate of
moral character signed by a confederate congress. The man who has, in
full, heaped and rounded measure, all these splendid qualifications, is
the present grand and gallant leader of the Republican party--James G.
Blaine.
Our country, crowned with the vast and marvelous achievements of its
first century, asks for a man worthy of the past, and prophetic of her
future; asks for a man who has the audacity of genius; asks for a man
who is the grandest combination of heart, conscience and brain beneath
her flag--such a man is James G. Blaine.
For the Republican host, led by this intrepid man, there can be no
defeat.
This is a grand year--a year filled with the recollections of the
Revolution; filled with proud and tender memories of the past; with
the sacred legends of liberty--a year in which the sons of freedom will
drink from the fountains of enthusiasm; a year in which the people call
for a man who has preserved in Congress what our soldiers won upon
the field; a year in which they call for the man who has torn from the
throat of treason the tongue of slander--for the man who has snatched
the mask of Democracy from the hideous face of rebellion; for the man
who, like an intellectual athlete, has stood in the arena of debate and
challenged all comers, and who is still a total stranger to defeat.
Like an armed warrior, like a plumed knight, James G. Blaine marched
down the halls of the American Congress and threw his shining lance full
and fair against the brazen foreheads of the defamers of his country
and the maligners of his honor. For the Republican party to desert this
gallant leader now, is as though an army should desert their general
upon the field of battle.
James G. Blaine is now and has been for years the bearer of the sacred
standard of the Republican party. I call it sacred, because no human
being can stand beneath its folds without becoming and without remaining
free.
Gentlemen of the convention, in the name of the great Republic, the
only Republic that ever existed upon this earth; in the name of all her
defenders and of all her supporters; in the name of all her soldiers
living; in the name of all her soldiers dead upon the field of battle,
and in the name of those who perished in the skeleton clutch of famine
at Andersonville and Libby, whose sufferings he so vividly remembers,
Illinois--Illinois nominates for the next President of this country,
that prince of parliamentarians--that leader of leaders--James G.
Blaine.
"THE PAST RISES BEFORE ME LIKE A DREAM."
EXTRACT FROM A SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE SOLDIERS' REUNION AT
INDIANAPOLIS, SEPT. 21, 1876.
THE past rises before me like a dream. Again we are in the great
struggle for national life. We hear the sounds of preparation--the
music of boisterous drums--the silver voices of heroic bugles. We see
thousands of assemblages, and hear the appeals of orators; we see
the pale cheeks of women, and the flushed faces of men; and in those
assemblages we see all the dead whose dust we have covered with flowers.
We lose sight of them no more. We are with them when they enlist in the
great army of freedom. We see them part with those they love. Some are
walking for the last time in quiet, woody places, with the maidens they
adore. We hear the whisperings and the sweet vows of eternal love as
they lingeringly part forever. Others are bending over cradles, kissing
babes that are asleep. Some are receiving the blessings of old men. Some
are parting with mothers who hold them and press them to their
hearts again and again, and say nothing. Kisses and tears, tears and
kisses--divine mingling of agony and love! And some are talking with
wives, and endeavoring with brave words, spoken in the old tones, to
drive from their hearts the awful fear. We see them part. We see the
wife standing in the door with the babe in her arms--standing in the
sunlight sobbing---at the turn of the road a hand waves--she answers by
holding high in her loving arms the child. He is gone, and forever.
We see them all as they march proudly away under the flaunting flags,
keeping time to the grand, wild music of war--marching down the streets
of the great cities--through the towns and across the prairies--down to
the fields of glory, to do and to die for the eternal right.
We go with them, one and all. We are by their side on all the gory
fields--in all the hospitals of pain--on all the weary marches. We stand
guard with them in the wild storm and under the quiet stars. We are with
them in ravines running with blood--in the furrows of old fields. We are
with them between contending hosts, unable to move, wild with thirst,
the life ebbing slowly away among the withered leaves. We see them
pierced by balls and torn with shells, in the trenches, by forts, and
in the whirlwind of the charge, where men become iron, with nerves of
steel.
We are with them in the prisons of hatred and famine; but human speech
can never tell what they endured.
We are at home when the news comes that they are dead. We see the maiden
in the shadow of her first sorrow. We see the silvered head of the old
man bowed with the last grief.
The past rises before us, and we see four millions of human beings
governed by the lash--we see them bound hand and foot--we hear the
strokes of cruel whips--we see the hounds tracking women through
tangled swamps. We see babes sold from the breasts of mothers. Cruelty
unspeakable! Outrage infinite!
Four million bodies in chains--four million souls in fetters. All the
sacred relations of wife, mother, father and child, trampled beneath
the brutal feet or might. And all this was done under our own beautiful
banner of the free. The past rises before us. We hear the roar and
shriek of the bursting shell. The broken fetters fall.
These heroes died. We look. Instead of slaves we see men and women and
children. The wand of progress touches the auction-block, the slave-pen,
the whipping-post, and we see homes and firesides and school-houses and
books, and where all was want, and crime and cruelty, and fear we see
the faces of the free.
These heroes are dead. They died for liberty they died for us. They
are at rest. They sleep in the land they made free, under the flag
they rendered stainless, under the solemn pines, the sad hemlocks, the
tearful willows, and the embracing vines. They sleep beneath the shadows
of the clouds, careless, alike of sunshine or of storm, each in the
windowless palace of Rest. Earth may run red with other wars--they are
at peace. In the midst of battle, in the roar of conflict, they found
the serenity of death. I have one sentiment for soldiers living and
dead: Cheers for the living; tears for the dead.