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renomination of Governor Curtin, and his whole time was devoted to the contest from the day of Curtin's renomination until his re-election. He spoke in every section of the State, and when not on the stump his time was given almost wholly to the management of the campaign. In 1864 Chambersburg was burned by McCausland's command, and a detachment passed one hundred other residences to visit the special vengeance of the Confederates on Mr. McClure by burning his house and barn with all their contents. His law office and printing office in the town shared the same fate. In July of that year the Republican Convention again nominated him for the Legislature. The district was then composed of Perry and Franklin, and was naturally Democratic, and he was again elected by several hundred majority with a Democratic colleague. He struggled along with his people in Chambersburg in the vain effort to retrieve the fearful misfortune that had fallen upon them, but the rebuilding of the destroyed properties under the enormously inflated prices of war times and the sudden depression that followed after the war bankrupted nearly half the people of the town, including Mr. McClure, and he was powerless alike to retrieve himself or to aid the people to whom he was bound by the strongest ties of gratitude.

He spent the year of '67 in the Rocky Mountains for the benefit of the health of his son, and when he returned in the winter of '68 he located in Philadelphia, where he resumed the practice of law. For four years he took no part whatever in politics, but in '72 he was provoked to an independent battle for the Senatorship in the Fourth District by the profligate and corrupt political methods of his own party. He ran against the regularly nominated candidate in a district that was Republican by over 8000 majority, and after a brief but spirited campaign he was elected by a decided vote, but counted out on the returns. He made a contest before the Senate, where he won his seat. In 1874 he was strongly urged to accept the nomination for Mayor, but he peremptorily refused. His nomination by the Democratic Convention was prevented only by a letter from him peremptorily declining to accept, and James S. Biddle was then nominated. Mr. Biddle finally declined, and Mr. McClure was nominated in defiance of his declination, and he was compelled to accept the contest as his own. He left the Senate for three weeks, and spoke every night from three to five times. It was a contest of unexampled intensity, and called out all the reserve forces of both the best and the worst elements of Philadelphia. It was the first

assault that had been made against the ruling power of the city that had degenerated into fearful maladministration and that summoned fraud with impunity to rescue it from defeat. No contest ever called out such an array of brilliant intellects in Philadelphia as did this contest for Mayor. Side by side with Mr. McClure were such able Republicans as William Henry Rawle, Henry Armitt Brown, E. Joy Morris, John W. Forney, John J. Ridgway, William Welsh, John P. Verree, Amos R. Little and many others of like distinction, and in Mr. McClure's last address in the campaign, delivered the night before the election, after having spoken in every ward of the city, he briefly summed up the political situation. He said: "Friends, let` us to the battle with courage and faith. We shall win by thousands, and even if the victory shall be stolen from us the battle is well worth the fighting. It has been fought at fearful cost because of the desperation of the enemy, but great wrongs can be righted only by such sacrifices. As for me, I have been but a straw in the current, and the high honor of being the best-abused man by the worst elements of all parties was unsought and accidental. Had I been willing to share the stained honors and corrupt profits of those who now disgrace our city authority, I could have won place, fortune and ease, instead of battling in fortuneless efforts for honesty in public trust. I own no part of this world's surface but a grave. My Government and my household gods are all I can claim of worldly treasures, but there are public duties which at times are paramount to individual interests and must be accepted, and I have made this battle for the people because they summoned me to the task. In performing it to the best of my humble abilities, I have been ambitious only that it may be remembered of one so humble as myself, that under my administration order reigned, law was respected, crime was mastered, economy was enforced, integrity ruled, and the honor and prosperity of the city were the jewels of her authority." Mr. McClure was returned as defeated by 10,000majority, and much as Philadelphia lost in municipal administration by that defeat, she gained probably much more by the establishment of a great newspaper that resulted from the disaster. On the 13th of March, 1875, Mr. McClure, in connection with Mr. Frank McLaughlin, established The Times daily newspaper, and from the day it was founded it was a conspicuous success, not only in influence and power but as a business enterprise. The newspaper is so well known to the world that it is needless here to speak of Mr. McClure's career as an editor. Since his acceptance of the chief

editorial direction of The Times he has rarely participated in public discussion. Occasionally in local battles, when the issue was one of reform, he delivered notable speeches, but with the exception of his reply to Mr. McKinley on the tariff in 1892, and several speeches on the tariff in Massachusetts and Connecticut in the same year, he has not been heard in our general political contests during the last twenty years.

Mr. McClure was one of the founders of the Republican party. Being an anti-slavery Whig, after the repeal of the Missouri Compromise he logically gravitated into the new party which was to write such thrilling records for the nation. He was a delegate to the first Republican State Convention ever held in the State, at Pittsburg, in 1855, when Passmore Williamson was nominated for Canal Commissioner, and in '56 he was a delegate to the first Republican National Convention, held in Philadelphia, that nominated Fremont and Dayton for President and Vice-President. From that time until 1868 he was a delegate in every Republican State Convention, with the single exception of 1867, when he was sojourning in the Rocky Mountains. He was one of the delegates at large to the Republican National Convention that met in Baltimore in 1864 and renominated Lincoln, and he was chairman of the Pennsylvania delegation in the Chicago Convention of 1868 that nominated Grant and Colfax. Although not personally in sympathy with Grant, he believed that his election to the Presidency would do more to harmonize the two sections of the country than the election of any politician, and his purpose was openly proclaimed to make his last political battle for Grant's election. He devoted much of his time that year to the contest, and after the election he settled down to the practice of his profession with the hope of retrieving his broken fortunes. He took no part in politics whatever until 1872, when a combination of circumstances forced him into the field as an independent candidate for State Senator. He had been tendered the nomination for Senator without a contest upon the condition that he would yield his objections to the infamous registry law that was then in force in Philadelphia, and to which he was earnestly opposed. He peremptorily declined to yield his objections, and would gladly have continued in private life, but the issue of honest politics became so sharply defined that he was finally coerced into an independent revolt that made him the candidate for Senator and gave him the office after a desperate contest, first before the people and afterward before the Senate. He was not in accord

with the political methods which dominated in his own party in either State or nation, and he was one of the first to lead in the anti-Grant revolt in Pennsylvania, and was chairman of the delegation of the Liberal Republican National Convention held at Cincinnati in 1872 that nominated Greeley and Brown for President and Vice-President. He was compelled to accept the position of chairman of the State Committee, and again gave his whole time and efforts to that brilliant but luckless contest. It was his battle for the State Senate, and for reformed legislation as a Senator, that made him the citizens' candidate for Mayor in '74 in disregard of his repeated and positive declinations. After his retirement from the Senate, and the defeat of the Liberal Republican movement, he ceased to be a partisan, and when he founded The Times newspaper he declared his purpose to owe no allegiance to any political organization or to any party power. Since then his position has been one of absolute independence, and during the twenty years he has been in the editorial chair he has been, as he promised, "independent in everything; neutral in nothing."

Of Mr. McClure's literary addresses not one-third of them have been preserved. Since 1870, when he delivered his first address before Washington College, and when he was inside of a college building for the first time in his life, he has delivered commencement addresses nearly or quite every year, but only seven of them were written out by himself. None of the others have been preserved. They differ from the average commencement addresses in the fact that they are all singularly earnest, practical lessons to the young men to whom they are addressed, and each one discusses some important topic regarded as most vital at the time. All of them are quite optimistic in tone, with the single exception of his address on the "Duties of To-day," delivered at Gettysburg in 1878. The country had then passed through a fearful carnival of lawlessness and riots extending from one end of the country to the other during the year 1877, and this address points out the root of the evil that had given us such a tide of turbulence. His address before the literary societies of the Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va., delivered in 1886, was the first of the kind ever delivered there by a Northern man who discussed our Civil War from the standpoint of the North. It was somewhat criticised at the time, but its candid truthfulness and sincerely sympathetic tone so impressed the college faculty that two years afterward they conferred upon Mr. McClure the honorary degree of LL. D.

As a Legislator Mr. McClure rarely addressed the House. He well understood the great art of biding his time and that it is of great importance to the success of a speech that it be properly timed in the progress of debate. With strong convictions upon all public questions, aggressive and combative, he never suggests an apology for the faith that is within him, but with rare powers of logic, humor, sarcasm and earnestness he has often at the close of a discussion turned back the tide of opposing opinion, and has gained a victory for his cause. The policy which he announced in his first editorial in The Times, that it would be "independent in all things, neutral in nothing," truthfully represents his own attitude toward all momentous questions.

His address in the Legislature in 1861 on "The threat of Rebellion expresses the affectionate and brotherly remonstrance of the North with their brethren in the South, and without a word to give offence, it proclaimed the firm determination, that war must come, rather than concession to Southern demands.

Mr. McClure's services to the Country and State during the war of the Rebellion are a part of the well-known history of the time. After peace had been declared he was one of the first and most eloquent advocates for the restoration of the Union between North and South in spirit, as well as in name. He made several visits to the South, traveling through all the States, and both by public addresses and in letters to The Times he pointed out the wonderful resources of the South and was largely influential in interesting Northern capital to develop its industries.

In presenting these addresses to the public, it is believed that they will be found interesting and instructive, as embodying much valuable historic information, and as the expression of the thoughts and opinions of one who had a large share in shaping the issues and events of the times; and that they may well be studied as striking examples and illustrations of the high and difficult art of elaborate and persuasive address.

Philadelphia, June, 1894.

C. W. McKEEHAN.

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