carry New York against any opponent, and can carry not only the North, but several States of the South, New York is for Ulysses S. Grant.

"Never defeated-in peace or in war-his name is the most illustrious borne by living man.

"His services attest his greatness, and the countrynay, the world-knows them by heart. His fame was earned not alone by things written and said, but by the arduous greatness of things done; and perils and emergencies will search in vain in the future, as they have searched in vain in the past, for any other on whom the Nation leans with such confidence and trust. Never having had a policy to enforce against the will of the people, he never betrayed a cause or a friend, and the people will never desert or betray him. Standing on the highest eminence of human distinction, modest, firm, simple, and self-poised, having filled all lands with his renown, he has seen not only the bigh-born and the titled, but the poor and lowly, in the uttermost ends of the earth, rise and uncover before him. He has studied the needs and the defects of many systems of government, and he has returned a better American than ever, with a wealth of knowledge and experience added to the hard common sense which shone so conspicuously in all the fierce light that beat upon him during ixteen years the most trying, the most portentious, the most perilous in the Nation's history.

"Vilified and reviled, ruthlessly aspersed by unnumbered presses, not in other lands, but in his own, assaults upon him have seasoned and strengthened his hold on the public heart. Calumny's ammunition has all been exploded; the powder has all been burned once-its force is spent-and the name of Grant will glitter, a bright and imperishable star in the diadem of the Republic, when those who have tried to tarnish it have mouldered in forgotten graves; and when their memories and their epitaphs have vanished utterly.

"Never elated by success, never depressed by adversity, he has ever, in peace as in war, shown the very genius of common sense. The terms he presented for Lee's surrender foreshadowed the wisest prophecies and principles of true reconstruction. Victor in the greatest war of modern times, he quickly signalized his aversion to war and his love for peace by an arbitration of international disputes, which stands the wisest, the most majestic example of its kind in the world's diplomacy.

"When inflation, at the hight of its popularity and frenzy, had swept both houses of Congress, it was the veto of Grant, single and alone, which overthrew expansion, and cleared the way for specie resumption. To him, immeasurably more than any other man, is due the fact that every paper dollar is at last as good as gold.

With him as our leader, we shall have no defensive campaign. We shall have nothing to explain away. We shall have no apologies to make. The shafts and arrows have all been aimed at him, and they lie, broken and harmless, at his feet.

"Life, liberty and property will find a safeguard in him. When he said of the colored men in Florida, 'Wherever I am, they may come also,' he meant that, had he the power, the poor dwellers in the cabins of the South should no longer be driven in terror from the homes of their childhood and the graves of their murdered dead. When he refused to receive Dennis Kearney in California, he meant that communism, lawlessness and disorder, although it might stalk high-headed and dictate law to a whole city, would always find a foe in him. He meant that, popular or unpopular, he would hew to the line of right, let the chips fly where they may.

"His integrity, his common sense, his courage, his unequaled experience, are the qualities offered to his country. The only argument--the only one-that the wit of man or the stress of politics has devised, is one which would dumbfounder Solomon, because Solomon thought there was nothing new under the sun. Having tried Grant twice and found him faithful, we are told that we must not, even after an interval of years, trust him again. My countrymen!-my countrymen!-what stultification does not such a fallacy involve. The American people exclude Jefferson Davis from public trust. Why? Because he was the arch-traitor and would-be destroyer. And now the same people is asked to ostracise Grant, and not to trust him! Why? Why? I repeat. Because he was the arch-preserver of his country, and because, not only in war, but twice as Civil Magistrate, he gave his highest, noblest efforts to the Republic. Is this an electioneering juggle or is it hypocrisy's masquerade? There is no field of human activity, responsibility or reason in which rational beings object to an agent because he has been weighed in the balance and not found wanting. There is, I say, no department of human reason in which sane men reject an agent because he has had experience, making him

exceptionally competent and fit. From the man who shoes your horse to the lawyer who tries your cause, the officer who manages your railway or your mill, the doctor into whose hands you give your life, or the minister who seeks to save your soul-what man do you reject because by his works you have known him, and found him faithful and fit?

"What makes the Presidential office an exception to all things else in the common sense to be applied to selecting its incumbent? Who dares to put fetters on that free choice and judgment which is the birth-right of the American people? Can it be said that Grant has used official power and place to perpetuate his term? He has no place, and official power has not been used for him. Without patronage, without emissaries, without committees, without bureaus, without telegraph wires running from his house or from the seats of influence to this Convention, without appliances, without electioneering contrivances, without effort on his part, Grant's name is on his country's lips. He is struck at by the whole Democratic party, because his nomination is the death-blow of Democratic success. He is struck at by others, who find an offense and disqualification in the very services he has rendered and the very experience he has gained. Show me a better man. Name one, and I am answered. But do not point as a disqualification to the very experience which makes this man fit beyond all others.

"There is no 'third term' in the case, and the pretense will die with the political dog-days that gendered it. One week after the Democratic Convention we shall have heard the last of this rubbish about a 'third term.' Nobody now is really disquieted about a third term except those hopelessly longing for a first term, and their dupes and coadjutors. Without effort or intrigue on his part, he is the candidate whose friends have never threatened to bolt unless this convention did as they said. He is a Republican who never wavers. He and his friends stand by the creed and the candidate of the Republican party. They hold the rightful rule of the majority as the very essence of their faith against not only the common enemy, but against the charlatans, jayhawkers, tramps and guerillas who deploy between the lines and forage, now on one side and then on the other. The convention is master of a supreme opportunity. It can name the next President of the United States. It can make sure of his election. It can make sure not only of his election, but of his certain and peaceful inauguration.

"It can assure a Republican majority in the Senate and House of Representatives. More than all, it can break that power which dominates and mildews the South. It can overthrow an organization whose very existence is a standing protest against progress.

"The purpose of the Democratic party is spoils. Its very hope and existence is a solid South. Its success is a menace to order and prosperity. This convention can overthrow and disintegrate these hurtful forces. It can dissolve and emancipate a distracted 'solid South.' It can speed the Nation in a career of grandeur eclipsing all past achievements. Gentlemen, we have only to listen above the din and look beyond the dust of an hour, to behold the Republican party announcing, with its ensigns resplendent with illustrious achievements, marching to certain and lasting victory with its greatest Marshal at its head."

CHAPTER LIX.

OUR STATE BANKS.

What the People Lost when they went into Liquidation.

Next in importance to the change which took place in the political status of the negro on the advent of the Republican party into power in the State and Nation, was the overthrow of our State banking system. At the time the war ensued there were one hundred and ten of these institutions in operation, with eleven suspended.

The more remote the banks were from the commercial centers the better they were supposed to be. But when the financial crash of 1861 came, but few of them stood the test of honesty and fair dealing. The officers closed their doors with impunity, leaving the bill-holders to help themselves as best they could. Even in the best days of

their existence business men were compelled to keep in their possession all the known counterfeit detectives then printed, and they were legion. First, for the purpose of judging as to the genuineness of the notes, and, secondly, to learn their commercial value, which varied in amount from nothing to par. During the war all these banks went into liquidation. Their circulation, November 30, 1860, as shown by the biennial report of the Auditor of Public Accounts, was $12,320,694. The records of the Auditor's office show that in closing up these banks there was a loss of 35 per cent. on the dollar, amounting in the aggregate to $4,312,242.

The older citizens will fully attest the truth of our remarks regarding the character of these banks, and we imagine they would as soon think of the re-enslavement of the colored man as to consider the question of returning to the State banking system.

CHAPTER LX,

PATRONS OF HUSBANDRY.

In 1867, a society was organized in Washington City, which was known as the Patrons of Husbandry, and in 1873, the organization gained a strong foot-hold in Illinois. Its object was to do away with what were termed "middle men," which it claimed would enable the people to buy their supplies of first hands and at greatly reduced rates; and to compel railroads to carry a single bushel of grain or a single hog to market at the same rate of a car load. Political demagogues took hold of the organization and it became widespread, and the excitement which