essential to success. They declared treason too mighty for the Government to suppress. They appealed to the sordid to arrest staggering taxes and debt by demanding peace, when well they knew that peace involved dismemberment and death. They pleaded their unholy cause to the fears of the cowardly, and implored them to avoid the perils of the field by resisting conscription and impair the power of the Government by lawlessness. They aroused the prejudices of the humble by pointing to the degradation of negro equality, and even men plumed as popular leaders seemed to fear that they were so poorly endowed that the benighted African might outstrip them in the race of ambition. They appealed to every prejudice of the feeble, the venal, the faithless, to array them against the free institutions whose beneficence gave them every social, civil and religious right, but the people, although at times faltering as the dark shadows of disaster enveloped the nation, were still faithful to their Government. Like the disturbed and oscillating needle, that ever settles to the pole, they would rise from the cloud of perfidy that beset them and give their hearts and sacrifices to preserve the Republic of our fathers.

One hope for Democracy and slavery appeared as they turned to the court of last resort of Pennsylvania, and, in the name of Democracy, demanded that the only means by which our armies could be filled and enabled to triumph, should be set aside as an infraction of the sovereignty of the State and therefore void. They hoped that the people would be glad to grasp this pretext to turn upon themselves, their country, their children, and their God. It was the task of despair, but it was performed, and the right of this Government to defend its life when treason was fastened upon it in deadly strife as with hooks of triple steel, was gravely denied by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. Then did treason, the twin-born of slavery, triumph in our midst and compassed the judiciary, the

last refuge of the people, in its slimy embrace. But it aroused the people to a mighty struggle. Impelled by the despotism of treason, which mocked them in their perils, to the moral heroism which ever strengthens right in its midnight of gloom, they reversed their court by the decision of the ballot-box, from which there is no appeal, and I thank a just God that the Court, the State, the Nation lived, and lived loyally.

Am I not

This record of unmingled wrong and treachery is the history of the party whose representatives to-day will cast their votes against the ratification of the proposed amendment to the Constitution. It is their work; they were so bidden by slavery and they obeyed. right, sir, in saying that they are consistent? So far from being surprised that they so vote, I should think it strange indeed did they not maintain the shade of virtue that consistency and fidelity may give them. Slavery conceived in crime, and faithful to its creation for more than three-quarters of a century, is about to finish its task, and when it turns for the last time to behold its friends in the exercise of power, it would be cruel, most cruel indeed, for them to spurn it and leave it to die unmourned and dishonored. They owe it to the power which they worshiped when it was mighty. They followed its black plume of desolation until it made bondage national and freedom sectional; until it subverted the genius of the government and its fundamental law; until it plunged us into causeless war and brought bereavement to every circle; and now, when He who rules over all, in the fulness of His time, has declared that "vengeance is mine, I will repay," and when His last relentless stroke is about to fall upon it, it is fitting in this hour, in this death struggle, that they should be faithful to the institution that in other days made them great.

GRANT RULE IN THE SOUTH.*

I congratulate you, citizens of North Carolina, and I congratulate the country, that here, in this first battle for our national regeneration, we are to meet all the combined power and appliances of the party of disorder and oppression. I congratulate you and the cause of free and honest government, that here all the desperation and corruption of the administration managers confront us. I welcome to the field the trembling ministers of State, who leave their portfolios to excuse and defend their prostitution of power, to defeat the fair expression of your people at the ballot-box. I rejoice that, after paying to his partisans in your State nearly a quarter of a million of dollars for the past year, through the Federal marshal, the Secretary of the Treasury followed the corruption fund himself, to plead for a new lease of power for the men in your midst who, having bankrupted the State, are welcomed to the vaults of the National Treasury. It is well that the naked, vengeful arm of power is raised in your faces, and that the resources of the General Government are employed in all their multiplied forms, to make North Carolina forgetful of her holiest duties to herself. I am thankful, since the bonds of arbitrary power are of the arguments to be used for administration success, that bonds abound among you, and are flaunted before your citizens to coerce them into sustaining a national policy, that aims the deadliest blows at the very genius of our free institutions. As these are the weapons

* Delivered at Greensboro, North Carolina, July 22, 1872.

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of the enemy, and as they are to be met manfully and overthrown triumphantly if we would preserve government of the people, let us complain not that here, in this initial struggle of the great battle of 1872, usurpation and lawlessness will have no reserves for future conflicts.

It will be a sore trial for the old North State, but it is better that it should be so. A few will falter here and there, as they are beset by the persuasions of the venal, or intimidated by the threats of authority, but for every one that falters or falls there will be others, quickened by patriotism and self-preservation, to fill up the ranks and inspire the masses of your people to the noblest heroism. If failure is possible, we might do worse than fail now, if thereby the nation shall be taught how the popular will is to be subverted in the South to save the administration from the retribution it has so boldly challenged. I am mindful that in your last appeal to the supreme sovereignty of the people, for modifications of your fundamental law, a decision in favor of a convention was ostentatiously forbidden by the law officer of the National administration. I remember, too, that your people did forbear to seek for constitutional restraints upon the channels of power which had destroyed your State credit and impoverished you, rather than provoke the resentment of the political demagogues who mold the policy of the Government. It was wise then, for you were powerless, and your submission was heralded to the country as a victory for the party that is now, for the first time, fairly brought to trial face to face with your citizens.

Let us understand and appreciate this contest. Its importance is not limited solely to its result, as would be the case in any ordinary preliminary political struggle. Upon the one side defeat is annihilation. When the party in power falls, repudiated by the people because their authority has been prostituted and abused, it falls without hope. It is ever vigilant, active and desperate.

It leaves none of its means unemployed; its supporters are tireless in their work, and when they are defeated they must surrender the field. Upon the other side, the vanquished may be the victors in November, because palpable corruption, oppression, desperation and fraud have overdone their allotted work. If the people of North Carolina shall, in the face of the exhausting efforts of bad men in authority, defeat the Grant ticket in August, by multiplied thousands will your verdict be given for liberty, amnesty and law in November. But if, by the relentless exercise of arbitrary power, or by fraud, or by flagrant debauchery, or by all of them, a victory shall be gained by the administration, it will but arouse the nation to its hitherto unknown perils, and make the political subjuga. tion of a sister State the altar upon which usurpation shall immolate itself. That the hope of the administration in this contest, rests mainly, if not wholly, upon coercing, defrauding and corrupting your people, is notorious and even undenied. If allowed to vote as they would wish, no one questions that the citizens of North Carolina would elect Judge Merriman their Governor by not less than 20,000 majority. This is confessed by the enemy. With the National and State executives in their hands; with State and National officials swarming in your midst like the locusts of Egypt, devouring your substance and bringing dishonor upon your Commonwealth; with presses directed by the dependents of patronage; with laws so framed as to give license to fraud, and with public money to tempt the cupidity of the impoverished and oppressed, behold the desperation of their leaders. To meet them the people come single-handed. They control no patronage; have no means to seduce the citizen from his duty to himself and to his State; have no authority whereby to intimidate the weak, and no plunder to rally the camp-followers to their cause. They appeal to the intelligence, to the virtue, and to the