Page images
PDF
EPUB

The

hight, very slender of figure and immediately noticeable for his wealth of red hair and beard. color is very pronounced, and hence our engraving, in plain black and white, cannot adequately portray his most distinguishing feature. In short, he is, like his companion upon the Democratic ticket, exactly the man whom an observer would not select for a place requiring, as the Presidency or the Vice Presidency does, a large degree of dignity, reserved force, calmness of manner, consistency of purpose and equability of temper. None of these can justly be attributed to B. Gratz Brown.

[ocr errors]

APPENDIX.

DOCUMENTS, STATISTICS, CAMPAIGN NOTES.

Greeley's Letter of Acceptance-Henry Wilson's Ditto-Scraps From Greeley's PaperA Secessionist through 1860, '61, '62-Converted to Republicanism-Eulogizes Grant's Administration Repeatedly-What the Tribune Said for Grant in 1870 and 1871-Sumner's Falsehood Concerning Stanton Exposed-" Bayonet Legislation"-Of What it Consists -The New Tax Law-Burdens Lifted from the People-Interesting National Debt Statement-Election Statistics-National and State Governments-Presidential Tickets in the Field--Expose of Greeley's Intriguing for the Democratic Nomination in 1871.

HORACE GREELEY'S LETTER OF ACCEPTANCE:

NEW YORK, May 20, 1872.

GENTLEMEN : I have chosen not to acknowledge your letter of the 3d inst. until 1 could learn how the work of your Convention was received in all parts of our great country, and judge whether that work was approved and ratified by the mass of our fellow citizens. Their response has from day to day reached me through telegrams, letters, and the comments of journalists independent of official patronage and indifferent to the smiles or frowns of power. The number and character of these unconstrained, unpurchased, unsolicited utterances satisfy me that the movement which found expression at Cincinnati has received the stamp of public approval, and been hailed by a majority of our countrymen as the harbinger of a better day for the Republic.

I do not misinterpret this approval as especially complimentary to myself, nor even to the chivalrous and justly esteemed gentleman with whose name I thank your Convention. for associating mine. I receive and welcome it as a spontaneous and deserved tribute to that admirable Platform of principles, wherein your Convention so tersely, so lucidly, so forcibly, set forth the convictions which impelled and the purposes which guided its course -a Platform which, casting behind it the wreck and rubbish of worn-out contentions and by-gone feuds, embodies in fit and few words the needs and aspirations of To-Day. Though thousands stand ready to condemn your every act, hardly a syllable of criticism or cavil has been aimed at your Platform, of which the substance may be fairly epitomized as follows:

1. All the political rights and franchises which have been acquired through our late bloody convulsion must and shall be guaranteed, maintained, enjoyed, respected,

evermore.

2. All the political rights and franchises which have been lost through that convulsion should and must be promptly restored and re-established, so that there shall be henceforth no proscribed class and no disfranchised caste within the limits of our Union, whose long estranged people shall re-unite and fraternize upon the broad basis of Universal Amnesty with Impatial Suffrage.

3. That, subject to our solemn constitutional obligation to maintain the equal rights of all citizens, our policy should aim at local self-government, and not at centralization; that the civil authority should be supreme over the military; that the writ of habeas corpus should be jealously upheld as the safeguard of personal freedom; that the individual citizen should enjoy the largest liberty consistent with public order; and that there shall be no Federal subversion of the internal polity of the several States and municipalities, but that each shall be left free to enforce the rights and promote the well-being of its inhabitants by such means as the judgment of its own people shall prescribe.

4. There shall be a real and not merely a simulated reform in the Civil Service of the Republic; to which end it is indispensable that the chief dispenser of its vast official patronage shall be shielded from the main temptation to use his power selfishly, by a rule inexorably forbidding and precluding his re-election.

5. That the raising of Revenue, whether by Tariff or otherwise, shall be recognized and treated as the People's immediate business, to be shaped and directed by them through their Representatives in Congress, whose action thereon the President must neither over

rule by his veto, attempt to dictate, nor presume to punish, by bestowing office only on those who agree with him or withdrawing it from those who do not.

6. That the Public Lands must be sacredly reserved for occupation and acquisition by cultivators, and not recklessly squandered on the projectors of Railroads for which our people have no present need, and the premature construction of which is annually plunging us into deeper and deeper abysses of foreign indebtedness.

7. That the achievement of these grand purposes of universal beneficence is expected and sought at the hands of all who approve them, irrespective of past affiliations.

8. That the public faith must at all hazards be maintained, and the National credit preserved.

9. That the patriotic devotedness and inestimable services of our fellow-citizens who, as soldiers or sailors, upheld the flag and maintained the unity of the Republic shall ever be gratefully remembered and honorably requited.

These propositions, so ably and forcibly presented in the Platform of your Convention, have already fixed the attention and commanded the assent of a large majority of our countryman, who joyfully adopt them, as I do, as the basis of a true, beneficient National Reconstruction-of a New Departure from jealousies, strifes, and hates, which have no longer adequate motive or even plausible pretext, into an atmosphere of Peace, Fraternity, and Mutual Good Will. In vain do the drill-sergeants of decaying organizations flourish menacingly their truncheons and angrily insist that the files shall be closed and straightened; in vain do the whippers-in of parties once vital because rooted in the vital needs of the hour protest against straying and bolting, denounce men nowise their inferiors as traitors and renegades, and threaten them with infamy and ruin. I am confident that the American People have already made your cause their own, fully resolved that their brave hearts and strong arms shall bear it on to triumph. In this faith, and with the distinct understanding that, if elected, I shall be the President not of a party, but of the whole People, I accept your nomination, in the confident trust that the masses of our countrymen, North and South, are eager to clasp hands across the bloody chasm which has too long divided them, forgetting that they have been enemies in the joyful consciousness that they are and must henceforth remain brethren

Yours, gratefully,

HORACE GREELEY.

To Hon. Carl Schurz, President; Hon. George W. Julian, Vice-President; and Messrs. William E. McLean, John G. Davidson, J. H. Rhodes, Secretaries of the National Convention of the Liberal Republicans of the United States.

HENRY WILSON'S LETTER OF ACCEPTANCE.

WASHINGTON, June 14, 1872.

Hon. Thomas Settle and others, President and Vice-President National Republican Convention, held at Philadelphia:

GENTLEMEN: Your note of the 10th inst., conveying to me the action of the Convention in placing my name in nomination for the office of Vice-President, is before me. I need not give you assurance of my grateful appreciation of the high honor conferred upon me by this action of the fifth National Convention of the Republican party. Sixteen years ago, in the same city, was held the first meeting of men who, amid the darkness and doubts of that hour of slaveholding ascendancy and aggression, had assembled in National Convention to confer with each other on the exigencies to which that fearful domination had brought their country. After a full conference, the highest point of resolve they could reach, the most they dared to recommend, was an avowed purpose to prohibit the existence of slavery in the Territories.

Last week the same party met, by its representatives from thirty-seven States and ten Territories, at the same great centre of wealth, intelligence, and power, to review the past, take note of the present, and indicate its line of action for the future. As typical facts and headlands of the nation's recent history, there sat on its platform, taking a prominent and honorable part in its proceedings, admitted on terms of perfect equality to the leading hotels of the city, not only the colored representatives of the race which were ten years before in abject slavery, but one of the oldest and most prominent of the once despised Abolitionists, to whom was accorded, as to no other, the warmest demonstrations of popular regard and esteem, an ovation, not to him alone, but the cause he had so ably, and for so many years represented, and to men and women living and dead, who had toiled through long years of obloquy and self sacrifice for the glorious fruition of that hour. It hardly needed the brilliant summary of its platform to set forth its illustrious achievements. The very presence of those men was alone significant of the victories already achieved, the progress already made, and the great distance which the nation had traveled between the years of 1856 and 1872.

It

But grand as has been its record, the Republican party rests not on its past alone. looks to the future, and grapples with its problems of duty and danger. It professes, as objects of its immediate accomplishment, complete liberty and equality for all; the enforcement of the present amendments to the national constitution; reform in the civil service; the national domain to be set apart for homes to the people; the adjustment of duties on imports so as to secure remunerative wages to labor; extention of bounties to all soldiers and sailors who in the line of duty became disabled; continued and careful encouragement

and protection of voluntary immigration and guarding with zealous care the rights of all adopted citizens; abolition of the franking privilege, and speedy reduction of the rates of postage; reduction of the national debt and rates of interest and resumption of specie payment; encouragement of American commerce and of ship-building; suppression of violence and protection of the ballot-box. It also placed on record the opinions and purposes of the party in favor of amnesty, against all forms of repudiation, and indorsed the humane and peaceful policy of the administration in regard to the Indians.

But while clearly defining and distinctly announcing the policy of the Republican party on these questions of practical legislation and administration, the Convention did not ignore the great social problems which are pressing their claims for solution, and which demand the most careful study and wise consideration.

Foremost stands the labor question.

Concerning the relations of capital and labor, the Republican party accepts the duty of so shaping legislation as to secure full protection and the amplest field for capital and for labor, the creation of capital, the largest opportunities and just share of the mutual profits of these two great servants of civilization.

To woman, too, and her new demands, it extends the hand of grateful recognition, and proffers its most respectful inquiry. It recognizes her noble devotion to the country and freedom; welcomes her admission to wider fields of usefulness, and commends her demands for additional rights to the calm and careful consideration of the nation.

To guard well what has already has been secured, to work out faithfully and wisely what is now in hand, and to consider the questions which are looming up to view but a little way before us, the Republican party is to-day what it was in the gloomy days of slavery, rebellion, and reconstruction-a national necessity. It appeals, therefore, for support to the patriotic and liberty-loving; to the just and humane; to all who would dignify labor; to all who would educate, elevate, and lighten the burdens of the sons and daughters of toil. With its great record, the work still to be done, and under the great soldier whose historic renown, and whose successful administration for the last three years begot such popular confidence, the Republican party may confidently, in the language of the Convention you represent start on a new march to victory."

Having accepted, thirty-six years ago, the distinguishing doctrines of the Republican party of to-day; having during years of that period, for their advancement, subordinated all other issues, acting in and cooperating with political organizations with whose leading doctrines I sometimes had neither sympathy nor belief; having labored incessantly for many years to found and build up the Republican party, and having, during its existence, taken an humble part in its grand work, I gratefully accept the nomination thus tendered, and shall endeavor, if it shall be ratified by the people, faithfully to perform the duties it imposes. Respectfully yours,

་་

GREELEY FOR SECESSION.

HENRY WILSON.

THE TRIBUNE" defends the right to secede.

[From the N. Y. Tribune, November 9. 1860.]

And now, if the cotton States consider the value of the Union debatable, we maintain their perfect right to discuss it. Nay, we hold with Jefferson to the inalienable right of communities to alter or abolish forms of government that have become oppressive or injurious; and, if the cotton States shall decide that they can do better outside of the Union than in it, we insist in letting them go in peace. The right to secede may be a revolutionary one, but it exists, nevertheless; and we do not see how one party can have a right to do what another party has a right to prevent. We must ever resist the asserted right of any State to remain in the Union, and nullify or defy the laws thereof; to withdraw from the Union is quite another matter. And, whenever a considerable section of our Union shall deliberately resolve to go out, we shall resist all coercive measures designed to keep it in. We hope never to live in a republic whereof one section is pinned to the residue by bay

onets.

AS MUCH RIGHT AS THE COLONISTS HAD TO REVOLT IN 1776.

[From the N. V. Tribune, Dec. 13, 1860].

&c.,

We have repeatedly asked those who dissent from our view of this matter to tell us frankly whether they do or do not assent to Mr. Jefferson's statement in the Declaration of Independence, that Governments "derive their just powers from the consent of the governed; and that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new Government, &c. We do heartily accept this doctrine, believing it intrinsically sound beneficent, and one that, universally accepted, is calculated to prevent the shedding of seas of human blood. And if it justified the secession from the British Empire of three millions of colonists in 1776, we do not see why it would not justify the secession of five millions of Southrons from the Federal Uuion in 1861. If we are mistaken on this point, why does not some one attempt to show wherein and why? For our own part, while we deny the right of slaveholders to hold slaves against the will of the latter, we cannot see how twenty millions of

« PreviousContinue »