Depew On Lincoln

1895

Address of Hon. Chauncey M. Depew, on the Occasion of the Celebration of the Birthday of Abraham Lincoln, at Burlington, Vt., Feb. 12, 1895.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN — The pleasure of appearing before you this afternoon is great, but marred by circumstances. I had supposed the occasion was to be the usual recreation for a busy man of the after dinner speech which pleasantly couples the mind without tiring it. To have it transformed into an afternoon address or oration means a preparation or the use of the Horatian method of the file and thumb nail, and my conditions made that impossible. You will pardon the absence of formality and accept the earnestness with which I approach a subject so grand in itself as the hero whose memory we celebrate, and principles so enduring and vivifying as those of the party of which he is the greatest ornament.

The tendency in all times has been for the people to grow so far apart from their national heroes that the hero becomes impossible. We cannot live with perfection. "We cannot have the camaraderie of personal communion with saints. The force and effect of continuing leadership is to be in touch with the leader. We have idealized already the worthies of the Revolutionary period, and especially Washington, so that they are out of the pale of humanity. To us they never possessed the foibles and weaknesses which are common to our race. I doubt if Washington ever did. I had occasion at the time of the Centennial to study closely his character and career. It was impossible to lower him to any plane where a horizontal view could be had of him. In the camp and in the cabinet, in the continental convention and around the campfire, in the midst of his soldiers or at the mess with his staff, he was always the same dignified, majestic and unapproachable figure.

For the time in which he lived, for the mission to which he was destined, those lofty characteristics were appropriate. The revolution knew little of the fierce democracy. The classes and the masses were distinctly defined and separated. The pride of birth, of ancestry and landed proprietorship was never more distinctly asserted and never more generally recognized. It is probable that for the purpose of bringing the wealth and the intelligence of the country to the support of the patriot cause it was necessary that one of this class who was infinitely superior to his fellows, and whose aim and ambition were only his country and its liberties, should lead the movement. The processes of evolution of democracy for 100 years had created a condition where Washington would have been a failure in the civil war. Abraham Lincoln, his opposite in every respect, because he was so different was the most successful leader of any revolution of modern or ancient times.

As we study the characteristics which made Lincoln great and successful we find them not in the usual gifts of great statesmen. Others have been more cultured, others have had more genius, others have had more experience and training, but none of any time had as the motive power of every action an indomitable and resistless moral force. You may call it the principle of natural religion, or whatever you may. It was an instinct for the right, a comprehension of justice, a boundless sympathy and compassion, an intense and yearning love for his fellows and their welfare which knew neither rank nor race, but gathered within its boundless charity all mankind.

The force and effect of this power in Lincoln can be best illustrated by the contrast between him and his great antagonist, Douglas. Douglas was born in Vermont. About him were all the influences of this liberty loving and intelligent commonwealth. His father was a clergyman, a college graduate, a man of brains and culture, and his mother a worthy helpmeet for her minister husband. Every authority of environment and atmosphere was for right, justice and liberty. His struggles with poverty were not those which enervate or degrade, but those which inspire men of fiber, energy, ambition and genius to the efforts which make a career. His natural abilities, trained in the best of schools, made him a teacher, a lawyer, a judge, a legislator, a senator and the leader of his party. It made him the ablest of debaters in the United States senate, the most formidable of foes upon the platform in a political campaign and the most adroit of politicians in framing issues which should capture or mislead the people. In any condition of the country's affairs, when great moral questions were not at issue, Stephen A. Douglas would have been president. Lincoln, on the other hand, was born in a slave state, the son of a poor white, and lived during his early youth in a cabin of one room, under conditions of abject poverty and ignorance. His mother died, his shiftless father moved to Indiana, a log cabin was erected which had neither partitions nor floors and scarcely windows or doors, a few acres were cleared to get the bare necessaries of life, and almost at the period of manhood Lincoln had no education, was dressed in skins, was associated with semisavages who relieved the hard conditions of their lives by brutal debauches and equally brutal fights among themselves, and yet he remained uncontaminated by the drinking, swearing, idle loafers, roughs or thugs who constituted his companionship.

His energies would be shown occasionally with his enormous strength in protecting the weak or rescuing the defeated and a promise of his future powers given by holding spellbound at times his rough auditors by his rustic eloquence or entertaining them at night with his endless fund of anecdote, drollery and mimicry. An insatiable craving for knowledge led him to learn to read and to write. The only books within miles about him were "Robinson Crusoe," a short history of the United States, Weems' "Life of Washington" and Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress." These he soon knew by heart. This master of the English tongue, this most felicitous of phrasemakers, this most eloquent of speakers, framed his sentences and formed his style by writing compositions with charcoal upon a wooden shovel or the shingles from the mill. A clerk in a store on starvation wages, a storekeeper without capital and his business sold out by the sheriff, a surveyor earning $10 or $15 a month and a lawyer with no other equipment than Blackstone and the statutes of Illinois — such was Lincoln at a period when the accomplished and cultured Douglas was already the idol of his state. And yet thus on the threshold of a career, with such surroundings, such teachings and such impressions, in the midst of a community which drank, Lincoln was a temperance man; in the midst of a community that swore, Lincoln was free from blasphemy; in the midst of a community not highly moral, Lincoln was as pure as an angel; in the midst of a community which regarded the negro as no better than the horse or the mule, Lincoln was an abolitionist.

Sailing down the Mississippi river upon a flatboat, with a crew composed of his rough comrades, who boasted they were half horse and half alligator, who anchored at night for roistering riots in the villages and continued them when they reached New Orleans, Lincoln was apart from them while of them. He wandered one day into the slave market and saw a young girl put up at auction. He witnessed the brutal examination of her by the buyers and spectators, the coarse jokes that were exchanged in the crowd and the cynical beastliness of the auctioneer, and the slumbering fire of moral and religious wrath planted in him by his mother, or inherited from some saintly ancestor, broke out with the declaration, "If I live, the day will come when I will hit slavery a blow from which it shall perish." That slave girl on the block aroused the moral forces within him which kept him from the temptations of his environment and made him the hero and the martyr of liberty.

The peoples in all ages have loved gladiatorial combats, whether of the mind or muscle. The keen delight of the Greek in the contests of his orators, and of the Roman in the bloody fights of his gladiators, illustrated the principle. The debate between Douglas, the leader of his party, the inventor of the phrase, "popular sovereignty," which was to stand both for the principle and the policy which would save his party from being overwhelmed by the rising spirit of liberty in the country, and the possible president of the United States, and a man who, though unknown, excited interest because the Republican party in his state deemed him worthy to be placed against the champion, was a picture which made Illinois the battleground of freedom.

If Lincoln had possessed less of this controlling moral principle; if he had been actuated by the same motives which governed Douglas; if his god had, been his personal ambition more than the welfare of the race, or the presidency more than patriotism, he would have defeated Douglas. The repeal of the Missouri compromise had thrown open the territories of the great northwest to slavery. Douglas had met the rising tide of indignation and stemmed it by a proposition which apparently left the people of the territory to decide whether their institutions should be free or slave. The decision of the supreme court in the Dred Scott case had shown that this alleged principle was a flimsy pretext. Nevertheless it was generally accepted. The south was committed to slavery and regarded its extension as necessary to the existence of the system. The business of the north was bound up in the preservation of slavery. The press and the pulpit were largely with their congregations, their constituencies and their readers. "Abolitionist" was a term of reproach and opprobrium. "Antislavery" was little better. To touch slavery was to touch the Union, and to touch the Union was to imperil the republic, and so slavery became the cornerstone of the republic. The Declaration of Independence was an empty sound for Fourth of July declamations and assaults upon the monarchial systems of other countries. Lincoln wrote his speech. He read it to the leaders of his party. It was based upon this thought, couched in these words: "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved. I do not expect the house to fall, but I expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the states — old as well as new, north as well as south." The leaders of the party with one voice said, "That speech defeats you and elects Douglas." "Ah," said Lincoln, "I know that, but I am looking beyond Douglas and beyond the senatorship. That sentiment appeals to the conscience of the north against the extension of slavery in the territories and against the system of slavery." It was the gauntlet of liberty thrown into the arena which began the battle that ended with the publication of the proclamation of emancipation.

There never was such a president, never such a ruler as Abraham Lincoln. He did not represent hereditary privileges, for he came from the plainest of the plain people; he did not represent heredity, for he had none; he did not represent the colleges or the universities, for he knew them not; he did not represent capital and great accumulations, for he had neither, but he did represent the toiler upon the farm, in the workshop, upon the highway, in the factory, anywhere, everywhere where honest men and honest women were striving to better their conditions and to illustrate the dignity of labor and the nobility of American citizenship. Without this touch with the plain people his ability, his genius, would have made him distrusted, for it may be taken as almost an axiom that there is no career for great genius by popular vote. He knew the country, the limitations of his power, how far and how fast the administration could go in the great struggle, better than the cabinet or congress or journalists or advisors. "Call for troops to suppress the rebellion," shouted the northern press, the northern pulpit and the representatives in congress. But he said, with the adoration that exists for the constitution and its strict interpretation, and for the Union, and with the dread there is of its dissolution, the flag must be assailed before a response can be had. Against the advice of every member of his cabinet he said, "Let us send provisions to the beleaguered United States soldiers heroically defending the flag in Charleston harbor." The unarmed provision ship was driven bank, the flag fired upon, the fort was captured, the plain people who were his constituents understood then the situation, and millions of soldiers responded to his call.

Mr. Greeley thundered in The Tribune, Mr. Sumner in the senate, the clergymen in their pulpits and the orators upon the platform that he should destroy the Confederacy at once by freeing the slaves. He knew as no other man did the strength and power of the feeling which had grown up in the country of the sort of sacredness that hedged about property in slaves. But when defeat after defeat came, when there was despair of the result, when the future of the republic looked dark, when the people had been educated to regard the Union as more sacred than slavery, then he promulgated his immortal proclamation. Other presidents and other rulers have deemed their full duty performed in their annual communications to their congresses or their parliaments, but Lincoln every day was addressing letters by which he was counseling and arguing with the people upon the questions of the hour, the perils of the country and the duties and dangers that were before him. Now he writes to Mr. Greeley, now to the workingmen of Manchester, now to the workingmen of New York, now to a state convention, now to a convocation of clergymen, but always to the people of the United States. Whenever his great brain and his great heart welled up so that he seemed about to be suffocated by the difficulties of the situation and by the impossibility of solving his problems, Lincoln poured his troubles out to the people of the United States and asked for their sympathy, their advice and their support. The appeal was never made in vain. Politicians raved against him and said that his utterances were unwise and his actions indiscreet. Earnest men who had the cause at heart called conventions to prevent his renomination and then to defeat him for re-election, but the plain people with whom he had been talking as with familiar friends, whose homes he had entered, at whose firesides he had sat, by whose bedsides he had talked, in whose inmost circles and in the midst of whose family prayers he had been, responded with an overwhelming support which gave him again the presidency, and the presidency by practically the unanimous voice of the people.

Lincoln knew nothing of the dignity, so far as it is expressed in manner and dress, which belongs to high station. The instinctive sense of propriety and consciousness of superiority and greatness which hedged Washington was absent in him. In our time, in the fierce light of our publicity, with the scintillations of electricity rendering brilliant every nook and corner and cranny of a public man's existence and thought, the temptations to enlarge the wreath which the people place upon his head are almost irresistible. The test of greatness is the wearing of the halo. It destroyed Napoleon, it ruined two-thirds of the generals in the war, it has driven great and little politicians, from the commencement of our republic until now, into obscurity. But Lincoln was never troubled as to the size of his head. he never overestimated nor underestimated who he was, what he was nor what he represented. He never forgot where he came from and never lost sight of the fact that except by the accident of position he was neither better nor worse than those who placed him in the presidential chair. He possessed what no other ruler over did, or, if he did, no other ruler dared to use — the power of humor. The portentous solemnity of our public men pervades our political atmosphere even to depressing melancholy. The loss the statesman knows the more solemn he is, the thicker his head, the more owlish his bearing. A president of the United States once said to me: "No man can ever succeed in this country who gives rein to his humor or his fun. The people no longer look upon him as a serious man, and only serious men are recognized in the consideration of public affairs."

When Mr. Lincoln came to Washington, he was unknown to the great leaders of the party. He had the courage, which only a very great man can have, of summoning them all into his cabinet. The rule has been growing to summon only lesser men into the cabinet. In modern times as soon as the president has selected his constitutional advisors the whole detective agency of the newspapers is set to work to find out who they are, where they come from and what they have done. The village attorney, the village scribe, the local philosopher bound upon the national platform with theories as broad as their environment and as useful. The process has the merit of elevating the chief by the depreciation of his subordinates. Lincoln believed in more harmonious pictures. Napoleon, surrounded by the marshals of France, every one of them a hero of a great battle, every one of them the demonstrated leader of a mighty army, himself the acknowledged chief and leader of them all, formed a picture that commanded the admiration of his time and has arrested the attention of posterity. This Illinois lawyer, orator and statesman called to his aid the men who had demonstrated in the senate, in the house and in the courts that they were the leaders of men. What a spectacle! This ungainly giant of the west, angular and awkward, uncouth of manner, inelegant of address, with the courtly Seward for secretary of state, the stately Chase for secretary of the treasury, the worldly, dominant and shrewd Cameron for secretary of war and the imperious Stanton as his successor! Chase turns to his friends and intimates that the country has a mountebank for president. Seward, ever anxious to be useful, writes a private note offering to perform all the duties of the presidency and leave the ornaments of its name and station to Lincoln. He receives in reply a letter which ignores the insult, but says in effect, "I will run the administration, and you run your department, except when I think that you had better run it in some other way." In less than a year every one of those great leaders recognized that he was in the presence of his chief and superior.

Lincoln under other conditions might have made a great playwright, or he might have been a great actor. He was unconsciously dramatic. His disappearance at Harrisburg on the way to Washington for the first inauguration, his reappearance at the capital when the thugs were waiting to assassinate him, was a dramatic surprise which excited the whole country. His appointment of Hooker to the command of the Army of the Potomac, in a letter which told him plainly his weaknesses and his failures and the reasons why he ought not to have the responsibility of the command placed upon him, was both a comedy and a tragedy. His offer to McClellan to borrow his army if he only knew what to do with it, as it was apparent McClellan did not know, was one of those strokes of genius in expression which removed the popular idol and broke it. A messenger summoned the cabinet to the White House. The first to enter was the stately, the dignified, the always proper secretary of the treasury, Salmon P. Chase. The president looked up from his book and said: "Mr. Chase, I was just reading a most interesting work, which I have enjoyed more than anything I have met with in a long time. Let me read you a part of it." And thereupon he began reading to him Artemus Ward's lecture on "Wax Figgers." The astonished and irritated secretary of the treasury, listening as the other members of the cabinet gathered, indignantly exclaimed: "Mr. President, we did not come here to hear this idiotic nonsense. For what are we summoned?" Mr. Lincoln put his hand in his drawer, pulled out a paper and said, "Gentlemen, I summoned you to submit this paper, not to ask your advice as to whether I should issue it or not, because I intend to issue it no matter what your advice may be, but to ask suggestions as to its form." And he read to them the immortal proclamation of emancipation, the document which was to set 4,000,000 of human beings free, the document which was to relieve the constitution from the curse of slavery, the document which was to make the Declaration of Independence for the first time in our history the vital force in the principles and in the policies of the United States, the document which was to remove the stain which made us a byword and reproach among all civilized people, the document which carried out in letter and spirit the vow made so many years before when the flatboatman saw the girl sold in the shambles at New Orleans. A few suggestions were made, a few hesitating protests against the fierce determination of the president for publication, an earnest request for delay until a victory should come, and that most memorable of cabinet meetings in the history of the United States adjourned, and as they filed out this incomprehensible president put the proclamation of emancipation back in the drawer and resumed the reading of Artemus Ward.

I remember as if it was yesterday an afternoon with Mr. Lincoln. I was but a boy, though secretary of New York state. Horatio Seymour was the Democratic governor, and the legislature was Republican. The soldiers' vote was to be obtained. The Republican legislature would not trust the governor, and it devolved upon me the duty of collecting the soldiers' vote. Mr. Lincoln looked up as I pressed my way through the crowd in the reception room and said, "Well, Depew, what can I do for you?" I said: "Mr. President, I do not want anything. I am in Washington on a mission from our state to get out from the armies our New York soldiers' vote, and I simply called to pay my respects." He said: "It is so rare that any one comes here who wants nothing. Please wait, and I will get rid of those people in a few minutes." The room was soon emptied, the faithful Jerry was guarding the door, and on the lounge the tired president was rocking to and fro, holding his long knees in his arms and telling story after story to relieve his mind, and he said: "Depew, they say I tell a great many stories. I think I do. They say I lower the dignity of the presidential office by those broad anecdotes. Possibly that is true. But I have found in the course of a long experience that the plain people of the country take them as they are, and are more easily reached and influenced and argued with through the medium of a humorous illustration than in any other way."

While I was there Mr. John Ganson of Buffalo was a member of congress. His face and his head were hairless and polished like a billiard ball. He was a Democrat, but supported the president. The conditions of the army were very blue in the east and in the west. Ganson came in one day and said: "Mr. President, I am risking my re-election in supporting your war measures. The campaign seems very unsatisfactory. Of course I will not give out anything you tell me. What is the situation at the front?" Mr. Lincoln, in his searching and sad way, looked at him for a moment as if he was about to reveal the secret of the whole army and then tumbled Ganson out of the reception room by saying, "Ganson, how clean you shave!" Lord Lyons, who was a bachelor, went up to announce the marriage of the Princess Alexandra. As is usual on such occasions, the secretary of state had prepared a formal reply to the address of the English minister. Mr. Lincoln fumbled in his pockets, and, unable to find Mr. Seward's courtly response, grasped Lord Lyons cordially by the hand and said, "Lyons, go thou and do likewise."

As I sat in his room that afternoon it was not congressmen who crowded about him, it was not senators, but it was wives and mothers who wanted to get to the front, and whom the war department would not permit to go where their loved ones lay wounded in the hospitals. It was wives and mothers and fathers pleading for husbands and sons condemned to be shot. No petitioner for mercy ever left Lincoln with his petition not granted.

I was dining one night with General Sherman, and except Mr. Choate and myself all the guests were commanders of armies in the war. They were all lamenting how Mr. Lincoln had impaired discipline by pardoning the men who had been court martialed and condemned to be shot and the proceedings of the court martial approved by them, and finally Slocum said, "Sherman, what did you do?" That stern old warrior answered grimly, "I shot them first." But with Mr. Lincoln it was impossible to approve a death warrant. To the father pleading for his son he gave a respite, and when the father wanted something more his answer was, "If your boy lives till that sentence is carried out, he will be so old that the world will think Methuselah was a baby in years when he died." On his first visit to General Grant's headquarters the driver of the mules was arguing with his team in that picturesque fashion which the army teamster thinks can be best understood by the mule. Mr. Lincoln's rebuke of the blasphemy, which he detested, was unique. "My friend," said he, "are you an Episcopalian?" "No, Mr. President; I am a Methodist." "Oh, " said Mr. Lincoln, "I thought you were an Episcopalian, because my secretary of state, Mr. Seward, sometimes talks that way, and he is a warden in the Episcopal church in Auburn."

It is significant of our time and of the questions interesting to us, as we celebrate the birthday of this savior of the republic, this foremost of statesmen, this plainest and most honest of mortals, this most dignified, most humorous, most serious, most sad of men, this most gentle of human beings, this leader in his time, and of all time, of the Republican party, that his first speech was for a protective tariff. He was first, last and all the time an American — an American when Napoleon, invading Mexico, would have broken up the Union, an American when Great Britain would have interfered for the purpose of destroying the republic — because, as Lord Salisbury said, we kept shop and were her rivals in business — an American in his earnest devotion to the Union and the constitution, an American in his love of liberty, an American in his belief that within the borders of the United States should be manufactured all that the people of the United States might require for themselves. He loved the Union above all things. He was the representative of the cult which was started by Daniel Webster. The world little knows what it owes to that great brain. "The Union, one and inseparable, now and forever," was the inspiration of the schools. It created a mighty wave of unreasoning worship of the Union. Lincoln absorbed it; Lincoln understood it. In his inaugural address — the first one — it was the Union; in his inaugural address — the second one — it was the Union; in all his letters and speeches it was the Union. It was the Union with slavery or the Union without slavery, but always the Union of the states.

We cannot pass by this celebration, we cannot relegate again to the books and the libraries this heroic and majestic figure without enforcing by his example and teachings the sentiment of the hour. There are always great crises coming periodically in the history of nations. It was the Revolutionary war which gave us our republic. It was the debates with Hayne and with Douglas which gave us the love of union. It was the civil war which ended slavery, and now it is the mighty contest of industrial forces, of economic principles, of the proper relations of the currency and the credit of the United States to its trade and credit in other countries upon which are builded our hopes or our fears. We have had a civil war in which no blood has been shed, but there have been more desolated homes, more closed industries, more sacrifices of property, more ruin and misery than was occasioned by the war from 1861 to 1865. This has been caused by the same forces, springing largely from the same territory, coming largely from the same pale of intelligence and motives in different sections, as that which precipitated the great struggle. The generation which followed the civil war knew what the Democratic party in power meant and kept it in the minority for a quarter of a century. The world is fond of experiments, and experiments run in cycles. What has been will be. So, after 30 years, we have tried the Democratic party in power once more. We gave them the presidency and congress, and we have had repeated, industrially and financially, the experiences of the Democratic party in power as it was evidenced in their rule prior to 1860. The Democratic party stands for nothing national. Its principles in the east are antagonistic to its principles in the west. Its ideas in the west are hostile to its ideas in the south, and its views on the Pacific coast have no relations to its principles or ideas or views anywhere else in the country.

Mr. Lincoln might have lived and added to his greatness by a speedier settlement of the issues which arose out of the civil war. Mr. Cleveland was president for four years without power, and had he never been reelected, with a Democratic party on his hands, he might, with the halo which was thrown around him, have gone down to posterity as one of the great presidents of the country. But Cleveland was re-elected and did have the Democratic party on his hands, and what might have been is not, and Cleveland is not regarded as one of the great presidents of the country.

We have won our victory. It is the victory of returning common sense, the victory of experience over hope. We are not yet out of the woods. The Republican party can only hold the country where it is and prevent further damage until it assumes the responsibilities of power. The difficulty with the Democracy is not only of inexperience, but of incompetence. The evolution of the student is first his devotion to phrases, and the more vague they may be the more wise they seem, and from the phrase he comes to theory. The theory makes him a skeptic in religion and a Mugwump in politics. Then he either settles down to the stern realities of life and successful solutions of his problems, or he becomes bankrupt in business and in faith. The Democratic party captured the country by the phrases "free raw materials," "the tariff is a tax," "the markets of the world." We have lost the markets of the world, we have little left to tax, and our raw materials and manufactured articles and labor are all free, because there are so few purchasers or employers. We are governed by the party which gave us the German tariff, which has left solvent only the business upon which Republican protection is continued, the party which reversed the good old policy that you should pay your debts with money which you earned and adopted the new one of paying them with borrowed money. Micawber is its financial authority. That party is suspending credit by the eyelids and business by the hair in the effort to solve the currency problem, which needs little better solution than to leave it alone.

After thousands of years of hopeless experiments the Democratic leaders are still striving to square the circle and lift oneself over the stone wall by the straps of one's boots. They are still striving to pay debts without assets, still striving to give money where none has been earned and distribute currency where there is no property to exchange for it, still striving give value to the air and to coin and mint theories, and they have reduced the national credit so that the government has to pay 3-3/4 per cent interest where the citizen can borrow for 3 per cent. Against that the Republican party puts in practice the maxims of "Poor Richard" and the principles which have made commercial nations prosperous and commercial peoples rich. This is not the time nor is there occasion for despair. The hand of the Republican engineer is on the throttle, and the train can no longer run away. The conductor can stop the momentum or side track the cars, but the engineer will not let him derail them.

The Republican house of representatives is the living protest of the country against paralysis and despair, and it will hold the fort until in 1896 the relief comes and the country is saved.

At the siege of Lucknow a handful of soldiers were defending their own lives and the lives of their wives and little ones against the hordes of sepoys about them. The food was giving out; the hunger belt was drawn closer. It seemed that the day of relief and salvation would never come. Suddenly the keen ears of the Scotch woman heard the distant bagpipes, and she shouted: "Dinna ye hear the slogan? It is Havelock and his highlanders." "Dinna ye hear the slogan?" It came in the last election and gave the Republicans the house of representatives. "Dinna ye hear the slogan?" It came from the breaking of the solid south. "Diana ye hear the slogan?" It came from Missouri, from Maryland, from Tennessee, from West Virginia. "Dinna ye hear the slogan?" It is the marching of the army which answered once, "We are coming, Father Abraham, 300,000 more," to the victory of 1896. Then the Republican senate will respond to the Republican house, and the Republican house will respond to the Republican president, and the country will receive prosperity, happiness and peace.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, March 15, 1895, p. 3.

Brass Tacks At Washington

1916

Judge Hughes and the Republican Party are challenged in the new Democratic National Textbook to speak out for or against the record of achievement made by President Wilson and the Democrats.

The challenge is issued in twenty-one brief, direct and pointed questions addressed to Judge Hughes and the Republicans by the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Committee. All the large issues, domestic and international, are treated. The questions carry the caption "Appeal for Light for Sixteen Million Voters: Let Mr. Hughes and the Republican Party Answer."

These questions are:

1. Do you favor repeal of the Federal Reserve Act passed by a Democratic Congress, recommended and approved by President Wilson, under which the danger of financial panics is forever banished from the United States?

2. Would you have protested against the violation of Belgian neutrality and have backed the protest by plunging America into the European carnival of slaughter?

3. Do you favor repeal of the Rural Credits Act, passed by a Democratic Congress, recommended and approved by President Wilson, which gives long-term credit at interest rates that promise an annual saving of $150,000,000 to the farmers?

4. Would you have recognized Victoriano Huerta as President of Mexico?

5. Do. you favor repeal of the Clayton Anti-trust Act, passed by a Democratic Congress and approved by President Wilson, which overthrew the principle that the labor of a human being is a mere commodity of commerce?

6. Will you, Mr. Hughes, recommend, and will the Republican Party in Congress support a law establishing universal compulsory military service in the United States?

7. Do you advocate repeal of the Federal Trade Commission Act, passed by a Democratic Congress, recommended and approved by President Wilson, which has given so much assistance to legitimate business enterprises and under which adequate protection against unfair competion is provided?

8. Mr. Hughes, would you have tried the policy of diplomatic negotiation as a means of summoning the moral force of law and neutral opinion to stop Germany's illegal use of submarines?

9. Do you favor repeal of the "porkless" Good Roads Act, passed by a Democratic Congress and approved by President Wilson, for the development of rural highways?

10. Would you, Mr. Hughes, have broken relations with Germany and sent our young men by the hundreds of thousands to nameless graves at the bottom of the Atlantic or in Flanders before the policy of diplomatic negotiation had had thorough trial?

11. Will you undertake to repeal the income tax, passed by a Democratic Congress, recommended and approved by President Wilson, which places a just share of the burden of taxation upon those best able to bear it?

12. Do you favor violating neutrality and risking the future safety of your country by placing an embargo on munitions of war?

13. Do you favor repeal of the Agricultural Extension Act, passed by a Democratic Congress, recommended and approved by President Wilson, which for the first time provides facilities for carrying direct to the farmer practical scientific knowledge of how to increase the profits of his farm?

14. Do you favor intervention in Mexico?

15. Do you advocate repeal of the Grain Standards and Warehouse Acts, passed by a Democratic Congress, recommended and approved by President Wilson, which aid commerce in the great staple cereals and enable owners of stored agricultural products to secure loans on warehouse receipts on better terms?

16. What is your attitude towards the disloyalists of your party who have attempted to prevent the enforcement by President Wilson, both on the part of the American government and by all American citizens, of an honest neutrality towards all the warring nations of Europe?

17 Inasmuch as the largest amount collected in any one year under the highest tariff ever enacted (Payne-Aldrich Act) was $333,000,000, what form of taxation would you substitute to pay a "Preparedness" cost of $630,000,000?

18. Do you favor the reactionary Republican plan of granting huge subsidies to favored corporations, money collected from the people by taxation, as the best way of encouraging the development of an American merchant marine?

19. Do you favor repeal of the Child Labor Law, the Anti-Injunction Law, the Seaman's Act and related social justice measures of high importance, passed by a Democratic Congress and recommended and approved by President Wilson?

20. Do you favor re-enactment of the Payne-Aldrich Act which betrayed your party's campaign pledge of 1908 and which has been repudiated by many Republican and all Progressive leaders?

21. Do you stand with those Progressives and progressive Republicans in Congress who voted for practically all the progressive measures mentioned above, or do you stand with the reactionary Republicans who voted against them?

In conclusion, the two Democratic Committees say,

"President Wilson and the Democratic Party submit their case to the American people on the record they have made. Broadly speaking that is the issue of the campaign. Upon the public survey and estimate of that record depends the outcome of the election.

"If, as charged by you, Mr. Hughes, and your supporters, that record is bad and does not justify the continued confidence of the country it will become your duty, if elected, to do all in your power to change that record. We submit that in all fairness the American people, for whose verdict you are contesting, are entitled to know how much of this record you and your party will attempt to destroy if placed in power."

—The Fryeburg Post, Fryeburg, Maine, Sept. 12, 1916, p. 8.

Republican Uber Alles

Maine, 1916

Portland Sept. 12. — Maine Republicans reinforced by returning Progressives, won a signal victory at the State election yesterday.

They elected a Governor, auditor, two United States senators, four congressmen, and wresting control of the State House of Representatives from the Democrats, will be able on a joint ballot of the Legislature to elect the other State officers not chosen by popular vote.

Carl E. Milliken led his ticket, defeating Gov. Oakley C. Curtis, who sought re-election, by a plurality of approximately 12,000.

The Republican drift extended to county tickets, the greater number of counties choosing county attorneys and sheriffs. These offices are important locally because the holders are charged with the enforcement of the prohibition law.

The vote was heavy, as has been expected, for the campaign has been waged with a determination not seen in recent years. The country was searched out for speakers of national prominence by both parties, and the greater number of these battled on national issues. The fight was particularly hot for the two United States senatorships, and the four places held by Maine in the lower House at Washington. The national defense, the tariff and the eight-hour law for railroad men loomed large in the discussions.

The Progressives, who two years ago cast 18,226 votes, returned largely to the Republican party, in the opinion of Republican leaders.

The closest fight was for congressman from the second district, where Congressman Daniel J. McGillicuddy was defeated by Wallace H. White, Jr., whose plurality was about 500.

United States Senator Charles F. Johnson, whose wide popularity had given the Democrats great hope of his return, was defeated by Frederick Hale, son of the ex-senator, whose margin was approximately 9500 votes. For the other seat in the Senate for the short term, former Governer Bert M. Fernald defeated Kenneth C. M. Sills, dean of Bowdoin college, with 12,000 votes to spare.

L. B. Goodall won from L. A. Stevens in the first congressional district by 3000. Congressman John A. Peters retained his seat, defeating John E. Bunker in the third district by 4000. Ira G. Hersey defeated Leonard A. Pierce in the fourth congressional district with a plurality of 5000.

—The Fryeburg Post, Fryeburg, Maine, Sept. 12, 1916, p. 7.

Against Taxing Wealth

1916

The high priests in their search for some vital and appealing issue against the Democratic party have hit upon another dangerous one.

They are squarely on record, as the Post pointed out yesterday, in opposition to the eight-hour day for railroad workers, and the other working men of the United States are asking themselves what this ominous assault means. Nor can they be blamed if they become convinced that the Republican party is identified with the capitalists and the big "interests." Or if they feel that logically Mr. Hughes and a Republican Congress — if such should be the results of the election — would at once move to repeal the railroad eight-hour law. The bosses can only blame themselves and their candidate for the feeling that the party has no sympathy this year for the aspirations and hopes of labor.

But there is another issue just as likely to burn the fingers of the G. O. P. orators and leaders. It is opposition to the taxation of wealth.

Already the business has begun. Assaults on the income tax law here in other States are now under way. The people are being told how iniquitous it is that the south pays so little of this tax and the north so much, as if that were some fault of the law. The logic of this is almost incredibly clumsy.

Our extraordinarily rich and prosperous northern states, Massachusetts among the rest, pay more income tax to the support of the federal government for the simple and sufficient reason that the wealth is here to be taxed. There isn't a southern state but would rejoice with exceeding great joy if from its borders went to the national treasury at Washington as much money as goes from Massachusetts, for that would mean that it was rich, that many of its citizens had great incomes which were doing their share in the Federal support.

Idle wealth was never justly taxed in these United States until the passage of the Democratic income tax law. On the shoulders of the poor rested by far the heavier burden. Now come the Republican stump speakers and attack this fairest and squarest form of taxation ever devised on the absurd ground that it is "sectional," keeping silent about the fact that wealth is taxed wherever found, whether north, south, east or west.

Against the eight-hour day and against the taxation of hitherto hidden and evading riches — that's where the Republican party is headed, if it is not already there. — The Boston Post.

Lincoln and McKinley on the Tariff

1911

The Republican party always stood for a protective tariff and still stands there. Under that policy this country has grown rich and powerful.

Without the protection to the industries it has enjoyed, New England would now be a howling waste, or pretty near it.

This is what President Lincoln said about a protective tariff:

"I do not know much about the tariff, but I know this much: When we buy manufactured goods abroad we get the goods and the foreigner gets the money. When we buy the manufactured goods at home we get both the goods and the money."

And this was President McKinley's opinion:

"Protection has vindicated itself. It cannot be helped by eulogy or hurt by defamation; it has worked its own demonstration and it presents in the sight of the world its matchless trophies." — Woburn (Mass.) Journal.

Lincoln's Party No More

Feb. 1914

Hundreds of thousands of American citizens paid tribute last week to the memory of Abraham Lincoln. To many of them who, entering upon the threshold of manhood, cast their first vote for that great man, there must have been painful thoughts of the decay and downfall of the party his election brought into power.

The Republican party in 1860 was the exponent of a great moral idea. As such it swept every northern state except one and elected Lincoln President by a popular plurality of 491,195 and an electoral plurality of 108. Fifty-two years later the Republican party, which had long ceased to be a party of a moral idea and had degenerated into an instrument of special privilege, crumbled to the ground. Only two lesser states, Utah and Vermont, gave their paltry eight electoral votes to the party candidate.

We do not believe, however, Lincoln would shed a tear, were he on earth today, over the party's downfall. It was a principle, not a party name, that he stood for. The Republican party of 1912 had the form but not the substance, the body but not the soul, of Lincoln's party. Lincoln's party ceased to be when selfish and unscrupulous men embezzled the prestige and throttled the principles of the organization. — Baraboo Democrat.