August 2, 1876, to April 30, 1883. John B. Hawley was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under the Administration of Hayes. Horatio C. Burchard was appointed by President Hayes Director of the Mint. Robert T. Lincoln was appointed Secretary of War by President Garfield. M. L. Joslyn was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Interior by President Arthur. David Davis was President pro tempore of the Senate and acting Vice-President from October 13, 1881, to March 3, 1883. S. P. Rounds was appointed, by President Arthur, Public Printer in April, 1882.

Of the thirty-eight States, but nine have been honored with the Presidency, and but two have held the office more times than Illinois. Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe were from Virginia, each of whom served two terms. Vice-President Tyler was from Virginia, and he succeeded to the Presidency in April, 1841, after the death of Harrison. Jackson and Polk were from Tennessee, Jackson was twice elected and Polk once. Vice-President Johnson, of Tennessee, became President in April, 1865, on the death of Lincoln by assassination.

Of the other States, John Adams and John Quincy Adams were from Massachusetts; Van Buren was from New York; Vice-Presidents Fillmore and Arthur were from New York; Fillmore became President in July, 1850, on the death of Taylor, and Arthur in September, 1881, on the death of Garfield, by assassination. Pierce was from New Hampshire; Buchanan from Pennsylvania; Hayes and Garfield from Ohio.

The Presidential chair has been occupied, up to this period, by seventeen different persons, who were elected President, and by four who were elected Vice-President.

It will ever remain a proud fact in history, that Illinois furnished the Nation, during the momentous struggle of 1861-65, with a statesman and a warrior whose

ability, sagacity and patriotism were equal to the greatest emergency, and that they carried the country triumphantly through the most stupendous rebellion that has ever existed in the tide of time.

CHAPTER LVIII.

SPEECH OF ROSCOE CONKLING.

Nominating Ulysses S. Grant for the Presidency before the National Republican Convention, at Chicago, in June, 1880.

"And when asked what State he hails from,

Our sole reply shall be,

He hails from Appomattox
And its famous apple-tree.'

"In obedience to instructions which I should never dare to disregard, expressing also my own firm convictions, I rise, Mr. President, in behalf of the State of New York, to propose a nomination with which the country and the Republican party can grandly win. The election before us is the Austerlitz of American politics. It will decide, for many years, whether the country shall be Republican or Cossack. The supreme need of the hour is not a candidate who can carry Michigan. All Republican candidates can do that. The need is not of a candidate popular in the Territories, because the Territories have no vote. The need is of a candidate who can carry doubtful States. Not the doubtful States of the North alone, but also the doubtful States of the South, which we have heard, if I understood aright, ought to take but little or no part here, because the South has nothing to give, but everything to receive. The need which urges itself on the conscience and reason of the Convention is of a candidate who can carry doubtful States, both North and South. And believing that he, more surely than any other man, can

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 high-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 sixteen 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.

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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.