Speeches May LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. Chap...!.... ((i|i\ right No* Shelf... ...V\^ S" UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. ■ ^ SPEECHES OF THE STUMP, THE BAR, AND THE PLATFORM BY i/ Charles Sedgwick May REVIEW AND HERALD PUBLISHING CO., Battle Creek, Mich. chicago, ill. atlanta, ga. toronto, ont. V. ^\i-5 45^14 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1899, by CHAS. S. MAY, In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D C. CONTEMPORARY VOICES. As a lawyer, advocate, and orator, Governor May stands among the ablest in Michigan and the Northwest. His eloquence is fervid and convincing, and his English pure and flowing. — Representative Men of Michigan. As a citizen he is heUl in the very highest estimation, and his public and private life is as spotless and pure. His integrity is of the highest type, and his legal education is of the finest and most accomplished order. He is regarded as one of the finest orators in the Northwest. — The Michigan Sun. Hon. Chas. S. May is a speaker of national reputation ; a writer of dignity, force, and precision ; a lawyer in the front rank of his profes- sion in this State; a jurist of singularly clear and lucid mind. — Detroit Evening Ne7vs. Hon. Chas. S. May is a prominent member of the Detroit bar, and has a State reputation as an advocate. Some of his efforts in the courts of Michigan are pronounced remarkable exhibitions of eloquence and power. He is a gentleman of fine address, and whenever he appears before a jury, he is sure to have a large audience. Among his forensic efforts are several worthy of mention, such as his argument in the famous Pierce will case ; argument before the supreme court to compel the regents of the university, by mandamus, to establish a chair of homeopathy; argument in the .Sullivan murder case; address before he law department of the State university, entitled "Trial by Jury;" ^eulogy upon the late Charles Sumner : and his centennial lecture on Patrick Henry. — New York Graphic. Mr. May is an able lawyer, a fine speaker, and a gentleman of high character. — Chicago Tribune. The glowing eloquence of the latter part of the speech carried the audience like a resistless flood. Governor May already enjoys an envi- able reputation as one of the most eloquent orators in the Northwest. He is not a ranter, hut his soul flows out in the highest strains of fervid eloquence, which captivate the multitude. — Detroit Tribune. Hon. Chas. S. May responded for the delegation, in one of the most stirring and eloquent speeches to which we have listened in a long time. His manner was earnest and impressive, with a ready flow of language, and when referring to the affairs of our country, he was really sublime. In his allusion to the oft-repeated remark of New England's being left out in the cold, he burst forth in unsurpassed eloquence that was responded to most enthusiastically. No report of Governor May's speech could but fail to do him the greatest injustice. — Portland (Me.) Daily Press. 4 CONTEMPORARY VOICES. We print elsewhere an address, delivered yesterday before the graduat- ing class of the law school of Michigan University by Hon. Chas. S. May on the jury system. Mr. May is one of the ablest independent thinkers of the West. — Chicago Times, The crowd proceeded to the fair-grounds, where Hon. Chas. S. May addressed them for two hours in one of the most eloquent and convinc- ing speeches ever made by him. The address was eloquent, earnest, powerful beyond description, and surpassed even his Cleveland speech. — Detroit Free Press, No pen can describe the grandeur of his vivid and thrilling eloquence, r his magnificent final appeal to the jury to remember their duty to God, to law, and to society. In terms the strongest in the language did the brilliant orator inveigh against the traffic which had so much brutal- ized Sullivan. We can not describe the effect of Governor May's ora- fory, not only on the jury but on the spectators. Breathless attention was given by the squeezed and packed throng, who had that afternoon an intellectual treat such as is not often experienced in a lifetime. — Flint Democrat, Governor May's speech created the most unbounded admiration from all who heard it, for the clearness and force of its argument, as well as for its elevation of style and felicity of expression. In grandeur of sentiment and eloquent enforcement of principle, it was worthy of the great cause in whose behalf it was pronounced. Governor May is entitled to stand in the very front rank of orators in our whole country, and such a speech as he made the other night would have added to the laurels of many of our public men, who for statesmanlike elotjuence and ability have long since attained to a national reputation. — Ex- Congress- man Geo. Willard, in Battle Creek Journal. The man whose distinguished abilities have received such wide recog- nition, for whom the opposition votes in two Michigan Legislatures have been cast for United States Senator, and who is conceded to lie one of Michigan's ablest and most Ijrilliant orators. — Kalamazoo Daily Gazette. Of Hon. Chas. S. May nothing could here be said which would not be a repetition. His name has for many years been a household word in every home in Michigan, and a synonym for all that is brilliant and dignified in political oratory. — Kalamazoo Daily Herald. Mr. May is an exceedingly attractive speaker, of medium size and height, keen eyes, dark brown hair and mustache, deep, strong, musical voice. He speaks easily and fluently, warms with his subject to a bright glow of oratory, with a peculiar fire of earnest and impressive delivery which is singularly effective with juries. He has long been a leading advocate in Michigan, and is very prominent as a political and platform orator, whose speeches and addresses attract unusual interest. — Modern Jury Trials and Advocates. CONTENTS. Pace Pro-Si. AVKRY Outrages in Kansas . . 7 Trle AM) False Success . . . -27 Sustain the Govern mexi ... 42 Speech at Portland, Maine . . 67 Union, Victory, and Freedom • . . 71 The Trial of Republican Institutions . . 100 The Caucus System : Its Abuses and Their Remedn . . . 117 Speech ro Repuiu.ican Staie Convention . 127 Speech at Unveiling of Soldier's Tablet . 129 Liberal Republicanism \^indicaied . . 131 Charles Su.mner : A Eulogy . .163 Remarks at the Funeral of Dr. S. B. Thayer 199 Argument in Supre.me Court . . . 206 Trial i;y Jury .... 244 The Farmers' Movement . . . 285 Patrick Henry : A Centennial Lecture . 316 Argument in Pierce Will Case . . ^57 Reform and Honest CiovERNMENT . 385 Speech at Burns Banoi^et . . 433 The Legal Suppression of ihe Liquor Traffic 442 EXPLANATORY NOTE. It is proper to state that the author of these speeches has not availed himself of the customary- right of revision in such cases. These selections from his work of thirty years are here given in their chronological order, and as delivered and first pub- lished. No attempt has been made to adapt or mod- ify them to new conditions or opinions, or to take them out of the spirit and circumstances of the times which brought them forth. If this method leaves them with any blemishes or imperfections, it certainly should add to whatever historical value they may possess. PRO-SLAVERY OUTRAGES.' Mr. President and Felloiv Citizens: You have wisely chosen to celebrate this day in a manner befitting its most precious memories. Eighty years ago to-day our Revolutionary fathers pro- claimed from Independence Hall the great truth, which has just been repeated in your hearing, that ''all ))ien are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, diVC\ong which are life, liberty, and the pnrstiit of happiness." These words were as true centuries ago as they were when the pen of Jefferson inscribed them on that immortal instrument ; and to-day they have just as much of significance, and just as much of hope for down-trodden and oppressed humanity, this wide world over, as when they startled the security of British tyranny in 177f>. Truth never dies ; and truth alone, next to its great Author, is worthy of the lasting homage and admiration of mankind. W'e have assembled to-day to render unto Truth the things which are hers. Not as sectionalists, not as partisans, have we come, but as truly patriotic Amer- ican citizens, who love our country, and our whole country, and who, because we love her, would make her free. What signifies it for the American people to set apart one day out of the three hundred and sixty- ' Delivered at the Anti-Nebraska celebration at Battle Creek, Mich., July 4, iS5(). Mr. May was then twenty-six years of age, and one of the political editors of the Detroit Trilnnu. 8 PRO-SLAVERY OUTRAGES. five to make special boast of their liberty when the slaves who groan in bondage on our soil outnumber the free population of these States when the Consti- tution was adopted ? What signifies it for us to sing annual paeans of rejoicing over the downfall of British tyranny eighty years ago, when we have this very day in our own midst a tyranny ten times as rapacious and grasping as that which our fathers struck down in the seven years' war of the Revolution ? What were stamp acts, and a tax of three cents a pound upon tea, to the damning outrages which we have seen perpetrated under this tyranny in Kansas ; to the trampling under foot of the ballot-box ; to the gross usurpation of legislative powers ; to the enact- ment and attempted enforcement of statutes such as never have secured obedience among civilized men ; to the wanton destruction of private property ; to the flames of burning villages and the blood of unprovoked murder, which fill out the blackened catalogue ? My friends, we do well to think of these things to-day. And there is no treason in this. We are not traitors to our country, because we see her faults and her dangers, and seek to amend and avoid them. Rather are they traitors to the highest and holiest interests of this nation, who, with lip service to patriotism, and loud professions of devotion to freedom, assist, through the ballot-box, in maintaining the supremacy of a despotic oligarchy, which is as sure, unless speedily checked, to work our political ruin, and overthrow our free institutions, as the night is to follow the day. We honor this day and our Revolutionary fathers who have made it immortal in human annals, when PRO-SLAVERY OUTRAGES. 9 we seize upon it as a fitting occasion to inspire a deeper regard for the rights of man, and an intenser hatred of tyranny and wrong. We can best keep in fresh and everlasting remembrance the patriots ot our Revolution by catching from their heroic exam- ple the spirit and the courage now necessary to defend and protect the glorious legacy which they left us. My friends, it is idle to conceal the fact that our country is in danger ; that our liberties are threat- ened — not by a foreign foe, but by an enemy which has sprung up in our own midst. , I know that it has been the custom of alarmists in all our past political struggles to proclaim dire evils and calam- ities as sure to follow the defeat of this or that party. Men have heard this so many times, and it has grown so familiar to their ears, that they do not now fully realize the terrible significance of a true warning. But not without foundation have predictions of com- ing e\il been made in the past. When Texas was annexed, it was a true warning which proclaimed it as an evil-boding calamity to the country. When the Fugitive Slave Law was enacted, it was not a false prophet who discovered an indication of national demoralization and future danger in that measure of iniquity. When ruthless and treacherous hands struck down the Missouri Compromise, and removed the protecting a^gis of freedom from a broad and beautiful territory, it was no false fear which filled and oppressed all our hearts. To-day we are on the eve of the consummation of the worst calamities which have ever been predicted for our country, and I firmly be- lieve that we are now in the midst of a crisis whose 10 PRO-SLAVERV OUTRAGES. issue shall determine the question whether liberty or slavery shall be the great central idea and animating principle of this government. What a question for the American citizen ! Eighty years ago our fathers, plant- ing themselves upon that immortal declaration which has been read to-day, and appealing to the God of battles for the rectitude of their motives and the strength of their cause, bravely contended, against fearful odds, for civil and religious liberty, and through fire and blood bequeathed that liberty as an inestimable birthright to their posterity ; and now, before the grave has closed over the last soldier of the Revolution, we are called upon to decide the momentous question, whether liberty or slavery shall be our future portion as a people ! To point out some of the causes which have worked such fearful results, to glance at some of the steps which have led us to so great dangers, and to indicate the path by which we may return to peace and safety, let this be the object of my present discourse. When at the close of the Revolutionary war our fathers had conquered a peace and secured their independence, a feeling of mutual interest, depend- ence, and gratitude induced the formation of a league between the various colonies — ^ whose temporary union in the struggle with the oppressor had pro- duced such glorious results — to last for all time, and to form the basis of the new government which they were establishing. That league was the present Constitution of these United States. Slavery then existed in most of the colonies. It was an unfortu- nate inheritance from colonial rule, dating back to the earliest settlement of the country. It naturally PRO-SLAVERY OUTRAGES. 11 constituted one of the chief embarrassments in the organization of the new government. Our fathers clearly saw and felt the inconsistency of their posi- tion in establishing a free government for themselves, based upon their own great declaration of the inher- ent rights of all men, while they were holding a large proportion of their population in abject bondage. But although they saw and felt this, there appeared to them no immediate remedy for the wrong. While some favored direct emancipation, others, and much the larger number, did not deem this expedient or safe. The country was exhausted by the long struggle for independence ; it had no more than strength sufficient to meet the absolute and necessary demands incident to a new government, and it could not bear the shock of a universal and immediate emancipation of all the slaves in the colonies. This was the reasoning that prevailed ; and the framers of the Constitution resolved to make slavery no part of the new government, no common interest of the confederacy, but leave it to the discretion and the humanity of the States in which it existed. Upon this principle, and with the full understanding that it would soon give way before the expanding influences of freedom, the Constitution was adopted. I'^or the truth of this assertion I appeal to the debates in the convention which framed it, to the writings of Washington and Jefferson, and other Revolutionary patriots, and to all the contempo- raneous authorities of that period. This is history ; and it were as useless to deny it as it would be to deny that there was a battle of Bunker Hill or York- town. I do not design to weary you with historical 12 PRO-SLAVERY OUTRAGES. details. I have glanced thus at this subject because the enemies of freedom loudly demand, while they do everything to extend it, that slavery be left where the Constitution left it. Here is where the Constitu- tion did leave it. At the time of the adoption of that immortal instrument, the American flag nowhere floated over a single foot of slave territory belonging to the Union. Nowhere was slavery defended upon principle, but everywhere, both at the North and the South, it was freely admitted to be a great moral and political evil. Southern men, without contradiction or reprehension, frankly uttered sentiments in the Constitutional convention and the first Congress of the confederacy, which, if repeated now in either house at Washington, would subject their authors to the fiercest denunciation as rank Abolitionists and plotters against the Union. By this simple fact we may gather an idea of the im- mense distance which we have wandered from the early paths, and the great and portentous demoraliza- tion which we have suffered as a people. It would be, in many respects, an interesting and instructive process to inquire into the causes which have conspired to produce such a change of senti- ment at the South — which have turned the slave- holding States from the declared opinions and policy of their early statesmen to the present warm defense of slavery as an institution, and persistent demand for its extension. But I can not do this without extending the limits of this discourse beyond my design. I therefore turn from this branch of the sub- ject with the remark that supposed pecuniaty interest PRO-SLAVERV OUTRAGES. 13 has been the chief element in working the remark- able demoralization to which I allude. I pass over, also, a detailed account of the various political aggressions which slavery has made in the government. These are known to you all. You all remember what slavery gained by the Missouri Com- promise, in the aquisition of Florida, in the annexa- tion of Texas, in the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, and finally what it seeks to gain by the gigan- tic villainy of the Nebraska bill, and the kindred outrages under it. I propose to go behind these aggressions and these outrages, 'and show how they have been perpetrated, and who is responsible for them. The South is a political minority in this gov- ernment ; the South has not done these things alone. No, my friends, we of the Northern States, possess- ing as we do. and always have done, a political ma- jority and a numerical preponderance in the govern- ment amply sufficient to control and give character to its actions, have suffered these things to be, and are therefore, before man and heaven, justly respon- sible for them. Until the recent outrages in Kansas, slavery has always pushed its aggressions under the forms of law. It has been able to do this by first obtaining a com- plete control of the federal government in all its departments. When I say this I do not mean to be understood to say that the offices of the govern- ment have been filled exclusively by Southern men ; although they have been thus filled to an extent greatly out of proportion to the relative population of the two sections of the Union. But I do mean 14 PRO-SLAVERY OUTRAGES. to say that a Southern influence, a pro-slavery in- fluence, has pervaded every branch of the govern- ment. Does any man dispute this .' Tell me, when has slavery failed to use the government as an engine to secure the political power which it has coveted ? When has it suffered defeat in any struggle in Con- gress before the second day of February, 1856 .•* Certainly it was not when the Missouri Compromise was adopted, when Texas was annexed, when the Fugitive Slave Law was enacted, when the Nebraska bill was passed. And now I ask the question : Who at the North has been, whether wittingly or unwit- tingly, in complicity with the slave power in its repeated aggressions upon the Constitutional rights of the free States ? Who has furnished it the strength, without which it would have been powerless for the consummation of this great mischief? The so-called Democratic party — the party which to-day with one hand clutches at the throat of Kansas, while with the other it unlocks the treasury at Washington — can answer the question. For twenty-five years the slave power has found a ready and obsequious ally in that party. Through its agency all the later aggressions of slavery have been effected. Its votes extended slavery through the annexation of Texas. They assisted in provoking the Mexican war, a war which, however much of true patriotism and heroic courage it may have evoked, had no other real object than the acquisition of territory over which to extend the curse of human bondage. They secured the en- actment of the Fugitive Slave Law, which now dis- graces our statute books, and makes it a crime to indulge the noblest impulses of humanity. They PRO-SLA\ERY OUTRAGES. 15 tore down the great bulwark which our fathers reared to protect a fair and beautiful territory situated in the heart of the continent from the unnumbered evils and woes of human slavery. Aye, more than all this ; that party is to-day in conspiracy with the slave power to force slavery upon the people of Kansas by a series of outrages which, for atrocity, find no par- allel in the history of civilized man. For proof of all these charges I appeal to the record. Tell me if all these acts of aggression which I have named have not received the sanction of that party. Tell me if it is proposed, by the Cincinnati platform, to redress a single one of those great wrongs which have drawn the sympathizing eyes of Christendom upon Kansas, or avenge a single drop of that inno- cent blood which now cries in vain to heaven, from her soil, for vengeance upon her oppressors. How, then, can the responsibility be escaped ? And here let me say, that although I arraign the Democratic party as a political organization, and fasten this guilt upon it, I would by no means be un- derstood to charge all its individual members with an equal participation in the crime. I have no doubt that thousands of as honest and truly patriotic men as ever belonged to a political party have acted with this organization in all this record up to the Nebraska bill. But there I stop. My charity is not expansive enough to embrace those who approve of that meas- ure of iniquity and all the outrages which have buen committed under it, except on a plea of ignorance so broad as of itself to constitute a confession of guilt in such a land as this. I will not indulge in such a wretched misnomer as to call him a patriot who 16 PRO-SLAVERY OUTRAGES. seeks to wrest from my brother in Kansas every right which I hold dear. Charity is indeed a virtue of rare excellence ; but it ceases to be a virtue at all when sullied by falsehood. I have thus glanced at the most powerful agency by which the slave interest has been able to push its encroachments in the past, and by which it now seeks to consummate the most daring and infamous measure which it has yet attempted. But while by the landmarks of history and the transactions of the present I am able to trace these great wrongs to the door of the Democratic party, I will not pretend to deny that other political organizations in the coun- try, while they may have been guiltless of sharing in them, have not been sufficiently moved by them to a just indignation. My friends, are we not all more or less guilty upon this head ? It is not strange, how- ever, that we have failed fully to apprehend the dan- gers which have resulted from these successive en- croachments of slavery. We have been loath to believe that a power existed in the Republic so heart- less, so tyrannical, and so grasping as the slave power has shown itself to be. It was not until recently that that power tore off its disguise, and revealed to us its frightful and hideous proportions. When the Missouri Compromise was struck down in the very face of plighted public faith, and in spite of our earn- est and loud remonstrances, our eyes were opened, the spell was dissolved, and we saw the monster at full view and in his true character. Henceforward our hearts shall be fired and our arms shall be nerved to rescue not only Kansas but our common country from his grasp. PRO-Sr.AVERY OUTRAGES. 17 My friends, let us pause here and survey our true condition. This is the fourth of July, 1856, the eightieth anniversary of American independence. The world is looking at us ; let us look at ourselves. We are the only people on the face of the earth who claim to recognize fully the great principle of republican equality ; and^ yet every fifth man among us is a slave ! Our Declaration of Independence pro- claims to the world the great fact of the social and political equality of all men ; and yet we sell our brother from the auction block ! Our Constitution declares that it was ordained to establish liberty ; and yet the whole influence of the federal govern- niLHt is being wielded to uphold and extend slavery ! The most glorious page of our history is that which records the struggle of our ancestors against British tyranny ; and yet the history which we are writing to-day will record for the everlasting condemnation of future ages, a tyranny far more odious than that which nerved their arms to opposition ; a tyranny consisting not simply in extortionate taxation, and exercised over no mere dependence across the ocean, but one which seeks to force slavery into a virgin territory, in the very heart of our country — a terri- tory inhabited by those who were but yesterday our neighbors and fellow citizens. In an age of light and knowledge such as never dawned upon the world be- fore, when not only science and art are being carried to new heights of improvement, and the human intel- lect is penetrating the hidden mysteries of nature, but when the moral being of man also is becoming educated to the great truth of the common brother- hood of the human race, and is taking on the fresh 2 18 PRO-SLAVERY OUTRAGES. inspiration of a new humanity, we are prostituting the powers of a government which should shed an elevating and beneficent influence on mankind, to secure the extension of a barbarous system such as prevails nowhere else in Christendom. Are you civ- ilised men ? I show you here, in your own country, an institution whose parallel can not be found among Turks or Algerines. Are you friends of hu- manity? I show you your brother, robbed of his manhood and made a beast of burden in your fields, a piece of merchandise in your shambles. Are you good citizens f Here is a system which not only wars upon every principle which we hold dear as freemen, but threatens the existence of the Republic itself. Are yoji CJiristian men f Here is heathendom revived in our midst ; here are its bloody altars dark- ening the fairest portion of our land. How long shall these things be .-' " Hoarse, horrible, and strong, Rises to heaven that agonizing cry, Filling the arches of the hollow sky, How long, O God, how long I " But while slavery has made its aggressions upon freedom, and secured its triumphs through the agency of the federal government, it is not alone upon our law-makers and law-executors, upon our congressmen and our presidents, that it has exercised its potent and corrupting influence. It has not waited until our senators and representatives have arrived in Washington, but it has penetrated to the very firesides of our homes, and poisoned Northern public sentiment at its fountain-head. In various ways, and, as it were, by an infernal talisman, has it PRO-SLAVERY OUTRAGES. 19 been able to coil around the minds of Northern freemen chains as strong as those which bind the limbs of its own bondmen. How shall we account for the paradox exhibited by Northern men who are constrained to admit that slavery is a great political evil, and yet vote without murmuring for its exten- sion ; who confess it to be a sin in the sight of heaven, and yet hold, without remonstrance, the closest rela- tions of Christian fellowship with those who practise and defend it ! Who stands up here at the North to defend slavery upon principle .-• — Not one in ten thousand. Then how is it that through our votes it receives the strength which enables it to secure ter- ritory and power which justly belong to freedom and to us } What infernal spell is here .' What has closed our eyes to self-interest, and paralyzed our political conscience .'' What has steeled our hearts to the noble impulses of humanity, and made us in- sensible to crime, and outrage, and suffering .' What has poisoned the fountains of our religion, and made our pulpits dumb over wickedness so great as to rival even hell itself.'' Surely here is a great wrong, out of which has grown a gigantic inconsistency. My friends, within the past few weeks we have been furnished with fearful evidence of our own humiliation, and of the tyrannical and grasping character of that power at whose feet this govern- ment lies to-day. At the federal capital, in a cham- ber consecrated to freedom and hallowed by glorious recollections, a noble senator has been stricken down by the hand of ruffian violence for pleading the cause of justice and humanity ; a senator, the simple virtues of whose private life excite our admiration 20 PRO-SLAVERY OUTRAGES. and command our respect scarcely less than the varied accomplishments and the splendid eloquence which adorn his public career. And he was the rep- resentative of Massachusetts, the glorious old com- monwealth which rocked the cradle of American liberty ; whose gallant sons were the right arm of our strength in the struggle of the Revolution ; whose soil drank the first blood of the conflict, and is still illustrated by the fields of Lexington, and Concord, and Bunker Hill ! Such a man, representing such a State, is cloven down in the Senate of the Union — a place which should be guarded by the aegis of the Con- stitution, as the flaming sword of cherubim guarded the gates of paradise ! It v^z.^freedoi)iof speecJi which was borne bleeding and wounded from that Senate chamber in the person of Charles Sumner. He spoke bravely and eloquently for truth and humanity. He spoke unwelcome truths in the ear of the slave power, and for this he was stricken down. He was not merely the representative of Massachusetts. He spoke for you and for me ; he spoke for right and freedom. My friends, is there nothing in this to stir our blood .' Must such things be.? Shall we quail in base sub- mission, and suffer such outrages to go unrebuked ^ " Shall ruffian threats of cords and steel, The dungeon's gloom, the assassin's blow, Turn back the spirit roused to save The truth, our country, and the slave ?" No ; by each spot of haunted ground Where freedom weeps her children's fall ; By Plymouth's rock and Bunker's ground; By Griswold's stained and shattered wall; By Warren's ghost, by Langdon's shade ; By all the memories of our dead ; I'RO-SLAVERV OUTRAGES. 21 liy their enlarging souls which burst The hands and fetters round them set ; By the free Pilgrim's spirit nursed Within our inmost bosoms, yet ; Hy all above, around, below, Be ours the indignant answer,— No 1 On our Western frontier the sky has been reddened by the flames of burning villages, and lawless out- rage has stalked abroad at midday. A patient and long-suffering people, guilty of no crime but that of loving liberty better than slavery, have been invaded afresh by armed ruffians from a neighboring State, and their territory laid waste by fire and sword. Previously robbed by usurpation of their legal rights, a war of extermination is now being waged against them. And why is this ? Why is this people thus persecuted and outraged .-' Let the answer mantle the face of the boasted civilization and humanity of this country with shame. They are thus out- raged because they love liberty, and seek to make it the corner stone of the political edifice whose founda- tions they are now laying. For this offense they suffer. For this, the lawless Missouri bands and their allies have, by a series of invasions, brought calamities upon them only paralleled by the ten plagues with which God visited the ancient Egyp- tians. For this the whole South have conspired against them, and resolved upon their submission or their destruction. For this, when they have called upon the president of the United States for that assistance which it was his sworn duty to render, they have been met with threats of fresh insults and still more humiliating subjugation. In the extremity of their danger and their suffering, they have ap- 22 PRO-SLAVERY OUTRAGES. pealed in vain to Congress to redress their griev- ances ; they have in vain implored the interposition of the federal arm to stay the tide of aggression which was pouring over them. My friends, let us suppose for a moment that the people of Kansas were thus overrun and outraged by a savage tribe instead of American citizens — by Indians instead of Missourians. Who believes, then, that their condition would not excite the anxious sympathy of the whole country ? Who believes, then, that we should hear any cry against " Emigrant Aid Societies".'' Who believes, then, that the fed- eral troops would be ordered to take sides with the savages against their own countrymen ? W'e know well that three weeks would not pass over our heads before armed men enough would appear in Kansas to sweep the last North American Indian into the Pacific Ocean. And has it come to this .'* Must American citizens suffer without succor or re- lief, outrages at the hands of Missourians and South Carolinians, which, if committed by Sioux and Paw- nees, would stir our blood and nerve our arms to just vengeance .'* Where, in God's name, is our boasted liberty and our sympathy for the oppressed, when we stand by and see freedom of speech, of the press, of the elective franchise, trampled in the dust, and our own fellow citizens ground down beneath the iron heel of such a tyranny .-' Are we freemen ourselves .-* But, fellow citizens, there is somewhere a remedy for every human wrong ; and although our govern- ment is thus guilty, and thus false to its early promise, the path by which we may return to justice and safety PRO-SLAVERY OUTRAGES. 23 is easy and plain. Our political system furnishes us with the remedy for all these wrongs. In other countries where different systems of government pre- vail, national wrongs and national sins, when they become unendurable, are generally purged away through the fiery ordeal of revolution. This was the case in France at the close of the last century, when the vices of a long line of voluptuous and tyrannical kings had piled up a mountain of oppression and wrong, such as human nature could not longer bear. The nation rose to arms as one tiian. and in the frenzy of its indignation trampled in the dust not only the throne but all civil institutions and re- straints, nor stopped in its career of madness and blood until it felt the mighty arm of Napoleon guid- ing its helm of state. We, too, need a revolution ; but, happily, it may not be a revolution of blood. " We have a weapon firmer set. And better than the bayonet; A weapon that comes down as still .\s snowflakes fall upon the sod, Vet executes a freeman's will, As lightning does the will of (lod.'' This mighty weapon is at our hand. We have only to use it, and the work is accomplished. Slav- ery has waged its aggressions upon freedom, as we have seen, through the agency of that government of which you and I are a part. To stay its further advance, it is only necessary that the freemen of the great North, constituting, as they do, not only the moral strength but the political majority of the Republic, should speak out through the ballot-box an emphatic and decided protest. The immediate 24 PRO-SLAVERY OUTRAGES. admission of Kansas into the Union under her Free- State constitution will dry up forever that prolific source of troubles and dangers which has been opened in that Territory, and dispel those impending clouds of civil strife which now darken the Western sky. A simple Congressional prohibition will pro- tect all our Territories and vast unoccupied domain from the evils and woes of human bondage, and check the further progress of slavery on this conti- nent. These objects accomplished, and the rest will be easy. Freedom will resume its supremacy in the government. How, simple then, is the remedy for these great wrongs of slavery ! How plain is the path by which we may go back to the lost fountain of justice and freedom ! To the work of regeneration which lies before us we are called by every motive of patriot- ism and every impulse of humanity which can reach the heart of man. Do we love our country — this glorious land of hope and promise .'' Then by that love which attests us true and loyal citizens, let us rescue her from the destroyer's hand. Do we recog- nize a common brotherhood in the human race .'' do we believe that God made of one blood all the na- tions of the earth ? Then by that belief which proves our own humanity let us lift up our wronged and outraged brother to his rights of which he has been robbed, — to his manhood which has been degraded. We contend not alone when we thus seek to accom- plish such noble and beneficent objects. History lifts the curtain of the past, and reveals to us a noble army of heroes and reformers hastening to our assist- ance. 1< rom every burning stake where martyrs have I'RO-SLAVERY OUTRAGES. 25 laid down their lives for truth, — from every battle- field where heroes have bled for liberty, they come. Voices of encouragement call to us from out the sky. Washington, and Adams, and Jefferson, and a host of worthies who won our freedom, and have ascended themselves to the perfect freedom of the just in heaven, bend over us with words of hope and cheer. They point us to their own trials and sufferings, to the battle-fields of that glorious struggle in which the Republic had its birth, and implore us to rescue that great cause, for which they periled all, even life itself, from danger and reproach. They bid us be strong, as they were strong, in the hour of decisive trial. They unfold to our view the mighty future- with its teeming millions, its vast interests and great events, and call upon us to guard the tree of liberty, whose germ they planted eighty years ago, that it may finally overshadow with its wide-spreading branches all the nations and tribes of the earth. I will not indulge a doubt or a fear as to the final issue of the struggle between freedom and slavery in this country. Through the clouds and the darkness which now envelop us, do 1 already catch a view of the glorious sun of liberty, shining still in its ancient splendor. " Lol a cloud 's about to vanish From the day: And a bra/en wront; to cruiiil)le Into clay. Lo! the right's about to conquer; Clear the Way! It can not be that the hopes born in our struggle for independence are about to be turned into a fearful 26 rRO-SLAVERV OUTRAGES. mockery, while yet they inspire the bosom of man- kind. It can not be that this noble edifice of free government, — noble still, in spite of its defects, — which has been reared on the shores of this new world, is about to crumble and perish from the sight of men. Where, then, on the face of the earth, would its walls be rebuilded .'' Where, then,;, would its like be uplifted to the anxious gaze of a doubting, strug- gling world ? No, no ; it can not be. By that great law of progress which governs the human race, it can not be ; by the unfailing promises of God, it can not be. Upward, Upward, through all the ages ; UPWARD still, is the progress of humanity. Free- dom shall triumph in this struggle. This glorious land upon which nature has lavished her choicest gifts shall be its home in all time to come. Here shall its altars be ; and from these shores shall go forth to the ends of the earth its ennobling and beneficent influence. Let us rouse ourselves then for the contest. Let us fight as those who feel the inspiration of truth, and rejoice in the assurance of triumph. This is — "Our last great b.ittle for the right. One short, sharp struggle to be free! To do is to succeed; — our fight Is waged in Heaven's approving sight. The smile of ("md is victory." TRUE AND FALSE SUCCESS/ Gentlemen of the Aliimjii : This is your annual literary and social festival, the season of return to Alma Mater for a {q\v days' enjoy- ment of old friends and old memories. It is a pleas- ant occasion, and marks another wayside rest in the journey of your lives. The good mother has opened wide her arms to receive and welcome you ; your eyes again look out upon once-familiar and long-to- be-remembered scenes, and youT hands feel again the warm grasp of old and not untried friendships. At such a time nothing is more natural than that you should meet the eager inquiries from friends, *' Have you been prospered the past year } " " Have you been succcssficl ?" I know not what reply you have made or would make to these questions, but, as your orator to-day, I wish to put a question which is before all these, and which involves them all : What is success? What is true, and what \s false f If we look out into the world around us to-day, we shall see men all intent upon one great, absorbing life object ; and this, in each individual case, is called success. It is around and upon this object that all the activities of life circle and center. It is the thought b)' day and the dream by night. There is a very strong tendency to this exertion which is born with us, and society stimulates it and feeds it and fans it by magnifying the prize, and measuring us ' An address delivered before the Alumni of Kalama/oo College, June 18, 1862. 27 28 TRUE AND FALSE SUCCESS. by its possession. Of course there is no uniformity manifest, except in the end to be attained. While this, in a certain sense, is the same to all, the paths and processes by which it is reached differ as widely as human avocations are diversified and human aspi- rations are various. But while there is an almost endless variety in the means used by different indi- viduals to secure this common object, in all cases the character is shaped and the life is controlled by it. At the threshold of this discussion I meet the question, What is a proper measure or standard of success .■* This question is not confined in its scope to mere outward or worldly success, but goes to the root and philosophy of the whole subject. Men's ideas upon this matter may be very superficial, and their standards may be false ones. I am not seeking now to find what men call success, but to ascertain what is a true success, what is a real prosperity. It seems to me that there are two views to be taken of this subject, or ways of looking at it, which, as we ado[)t the one or the other, control our actions and our conduct with reference to it. The one view I would call the outwanU or purely material, and the other the iincard, or spiritual, view. Right here is the point of divergence in the paths which men fol- low. The one path is followed by the great mass, who look simply to the accomplishment of material objects and results ; the other by the philosophic few, who entertain a more enlarged and exalted con- ct'ptif)n of the duties and responsibilities of this mor- tal life of ours. The outward, or material, view, which is the popu- TRUE AND FALSE SUCCESS. 29 lar one, has reference only to the attainment of cer- tain given worldly objects or results ; as, for instance, the accumulation of property, or the securing of pub- lic station. It looks to the compassing of these ends not so much as it affects the individual himself, but as to its effect upon the public estimation of the individual. It is almost wholly governed by outward appearances and popular prejudices. This is also the purely selfish view. In this country, and in these times, the great, practical standard of this kind of success is the acquisition of property, or material aggrandizement. The world has a way — a harsh and false way — of measuring men simply by these outward results and appearances ; and as almost everybody, as it would seem, is in pursuit of money as the chief object and end of life, we have come into the practise of limiting the standard to success in making money. Of course, I am speaking here in general terms. Society does not, it is true, fail to pay some respect to achievements in other depart- ments of human exertion. But it is not such achieve- ments that excite the general emulation of the com- munity, and call out the strong efforts of the masses. Very few men, comparatively, are toiling nowadajs for ideal excellence in their callings, or for simple reputation or fame. It is presumed that many who seem to do this have an eye to the main chance, and seek to fill the swelling trumpet that it may blow a golden fortune in their path. At all events, a good many of our famous men do not seem to be at all impervious to the seductive influence of money. Now. not to dwell upon this point, it must be granted that the great mass of men around us are 30 TRUE AND FALSE SUCCESS. earnestly engaged in pushing what they deem to be their temporal fortunes ; in other words, engaged in earning or getting money and accumulating property. Up to a certain point, of course, this becomes a ne- cessity, in order to provide for constantly recurring wants, and to keep the world moving ; but beyond this the argument of necessity ceases, and we open into a broad field of moral inciuiry. The question comes up, When a man has provided for present needs and future contingencies, in other words, has secured what we call a competency, is he justified in taxing his intellectual and physical energies in still further accumulations.' And if he does thus tax his powers and amass wealth, has he achieved a true or a false success? Has he attained a real or a fictitious pros- perity ? I am speaking now of a man who hoards up wealth for wealth's sake, and not of one who acquires that he may distribute again for benevolence or com- merce. There are rich men who use their vast pos- sessions for the public good. Such do not come in for my censure. Rut where you will find one Gerrit Smith or Peter Cooper you will find a hundred Astors. My friends, it seems to me that any man who has looked out upon our societ)' and our boasted modern civilization, and stopped to reflect upon this subject ; to view it and philosophize upon it in the light of conscience, of revelation, and of a hereafter, must be impressed with the conviction that the wide-spread and inordinate love of gain, which we see on every hand, amounts to a fearful public malady and mad- ness. When a man loses the poise and balance of his faculties, and does things unwittingly which are against the public interest, and especialh' against his TRUE AND FALSE SUCCESS. 31 own, we call him insane, and shut him up in a mad- house. How less insane is a man who has permitted his love of money to grow till it has overshadowed and swallowed up his whole moral nature, and whose whole life has become a perpetual war upon his own highest and best interests .' Is not the man, who, for the mere sake of hoarding up unneeded gains, sacri- fices his own comfort, violates his conscience, de- frauds his neighbors, and blasphemes his Maker, worse than insane ? Is he not a moral suicide ? Such a man lifts his own hand, not against the poor body which must soon die and pass away, but against his own imperishable aqd immortal soul, which must carry these self-inflicted wounds into the presence of his final judge. It is not for earthly tribunals, nor for finite justice, to fix the penalty for such deep turpitude. I do not decry riches or rich men ; both, in them- selves, may be well. But I believe with Lord Bacon that " great riches have sold more men than they have bought out," and I believe the same great au- thority announced the true rule of moderation and of wisdom in the injunction, " Seek not proud riches, but such as thou mayest get justly, use soberly, dis- tribute cheerfully, and leave contentedly." Riches, like everything else which is given us here, have their uses. But as every other thing can be abused, so can they. It is in the fearful abuse of these boun- ties of earth and gifts of Heaven, that we are derelict and criminal. In the business world, when a man has lost a cargo on the ocean, become involved for a friend, or in any way become unable to meet the demands of his 32 TRUE AND FALSE SUCCESS. creditors, they take his sign down, turn him out- doors, and pointing their finders at him, say, " he has failed.''' Some, more humane than the rest, will pity him as unfortunate. What has this man lost .^ — Lost his money, lost his lands, lost his bonds and mort- gages ; lost the accidents of his life, that is all. He may turn away from his closed store or counting- room, from the broken wrecks and rubbish of his business, and cross his threshold to meet a loving wife and affectionate, dutiful children, whose society is above all price, and which the sheriff can not sell, nor his creditors attach ; he may even feel a great burden rolled from his shoulders, and take up some new work ready to his hand, and with an honest heart and cheerful face go on in the way of duty to his family and his Maker. Such men there are ; such men I have seen, and so have you. But what shall we say of this other man, who has not lost his money, nor his goods, but who, in making more money and more goods, has lost his conscience., lost his i)itegrity, lost his human sympathy ? Has he failed .'' The world calls him successful, and envies him. His credit is good, he has large possessions. No matter though his home is but a gilded prison, where he tarries scarcely long enough to sleep and to eat, and is never irradiated by the sunny smiles of his children, nor sanctified to him as the scene of a husband's or a father's social joys and duties ; no matter though he toils after his sordid gains till his poor body can scarcely bear the weight of his greedy soul ; no matter though he denies himself such little comforts and conveniences as even the poor enjoy ; no matter though he turn away the hungry from his TRUE AND FALSE SUCCESS. 33 door unfed, and the naked unclothed ; no matter though he wrings unrighteous gains from orphans, and "devours widows' houses," — the world calls him prosperous, and envies him. You have seen such a man, too. I can not but regard him as unfortunate. He has lost nearly every- thing that is worth having. He may not know it, and the world may not recognize the fact, but Jic has failed ; failed, too, in the worst sense. I have some- times seen such a wreck. I have seen him in the counting-room, in the street. I have seen that eager and sordid countenance ; that grasping right hand, with no sympathy in its money-calloused palm, and those soulless, calculating eyes, which stare at you as coldly as two pieces of coin. That was once a man. Years ago, when he w^s young, he had human sympathies and a conscience. But he went into business, — went into it as most men do, with the idea that he must make money and be rich, and after years of toil and labor, beginning in honest enter- prise, but soon lapsing into doubtful bargains, and at last culminating in pure greed and unconscionable extortion, he has come to be what we see him. Now this man has been through a natural and a common process. He has been through the school of the world, and if he has developed fast, and grad- uated early, it is because he has proved an apt scholar. I can not but regard such a man's career as the most lamentable and ghastly of all human failures. While he has carried selfishness to its paradox, and has failed in the largest measure to himself^ he has failed also to his family, to society, to the state, and 34 TRUE AND FALSE SUCCESS. to his God. Not one single purpose of his being has been answered. Better for him and his race had he never lived. Born into a world of beauty, of sympathy, of noble opportunities and exalted activi- ties, endowed with an immortal nature which shall outlive the stars and endure eternal with God, he has prostituted his best faculties to base purposes ; he has repressed his nobler impulses, and chilled and frozen his human sympathies ; he has denied his obligations to his fellow men, and withdrawn himself from the human brotherhood ; he has made mer- chandise of his opportunities, and coined his activi- ties into gold ; he has piled up his possessions till they have shut out the sunshine from his path, and thrust a clod of earth betwixt his soul and heaven ! It is a relief to turn now to the other side of the picture. It is pleasant and consoling to know that human nature does not altogether abound in such misdirected energies and such misshapen characters. There are noble and true men whose lives point us to the higher and better way. There are men who use the world as not abusing it ; who do not look forever downward to the earth beneath their feet, but upward to the stars above their heads ; who drink in the whole deep import and philosophy of human life ; who welcome its duties and its responsibilities, and keep their souls ever fresh and young, and attuned to the mysterious, though melodious music of this unfathomed and unending existence. How noble and how true to the higher interests of an immortal nature appears that grand old man on the Hudson, spending the evening of a long and beauti- ful life at '"Sunnyside" amid books and flowers and TRUE AND FALSE SUCCESS. 35 friends, and passin<^ away at last as gently and as beautifully as a summer cloud floats from the hori- zon. We never think of Washington Irving as an old man. Such as he do not grow old in the sense that other men do. Their lives have no winters. They live in the balmy and genial spring, the gor- geous summer, and depart amid the fruits and the glories of autumn. I have said enough perhaps to show that this standard of material aggrandizement which the world has set up is a false standard when considered with sole reference to this life, because it does not even guarantee worldly happiness ; but when viewed in the light of the other and higher life it becomes criminal as well as false. The great truth of the soul's immortality has nowhere a grander significance than it takes on when applied to the subject which I am now discussing. In the light of that truth we see how small and how mean appear these purely temporal things and interests when compared with the great things and the great interests of the un- ending hereafter. The one are the mere incidents of a fleeting and transitory existence ; the other are the everlasting verities of eternity. No success can be true, no prosperity can be real, which tends to starve and degrade a man's soul instead of filling and exalting it. It can not, in any true sense, be said of a man that he has been successful and prosperous when he has turned his soul out-of-doors to make room for his goods. As the soul is above the body, so are the soul's interests above the body's wants. That success is worse than a failure which does not embrace and have reference to the hi^rher wants and 36 TRUE AND FALSE SUCCESS. needs of a man, which does not ennoble his soul as well as enlarge his possessions. How vain are our judgments ! how false and fool- ish are our distinctions ! How spiritually blind are we that we will not see that which our mortal hands can not clutch ! We kno2v, for Heaven tells us, and our souls witness it, that our interior moral natures and moral interests are infinitely above all the exte- riors of our fortunes ; that they are our first and last concern which we can not forego or abandon with- out fearful risks and fearful losses. No sane man in all the world will stand up, or can stand up, to dispute this proposition, and yet the world practi- cally ignores it every day. If I were a disbeliever in the doctrine of the soul's immortality, and wished to bring forward the strongest argument against it, I would take this almost universal neglect of men to live here with any reference to a hereafter ; this ceaseless jostling and jarring of little, petty, worldly interests and worldly concerns ; this hoarding and piling up of earthly goods and earthly riches. I do not know of anything which would tend more to shake a man's faith in the doctrine than this almost universal failure of men to appreciate and act upon it. It will be well for us who are yet in early or mid- dle life, to remember that there is a better and truer success than to be rich in money. Prudence, thrift, and a reasonable application to business that we may provide for ourselves and our families, all this is well. And if in honorable venture or enterprise, abundance should pour in upon us. it will still be well, if we do not permit our souls to contract and TRUE AND FALSE SUCCESS. 37 dwarf as our possessions increase and expand. I remember that I do not address a commercial au- dience to-day. Most of you are little given to buy- ing and selling and getting gains. It is one of the chiefest glories of such an institution as this that it lifts men up to a nobler life, to higher objects and ends of human ambition. But still it is a constant struggle that all of us need to make in order to shake off this prevailing influence around us. The earthward tendency is so strong, the intoxication of material success is so great, that we need constantly to keep in our minds pure ideals, and to have held up before us noble examples of the truer and better life. Like all men around us, we must confess that we, too, desire success, desire prosperity. It is for us to say what that success shall be, whether it shall be true or false. We may not be able, though we strive ever so hard, to succeed in accumulating worldly riches. We have no sure power over these accidents of for- tune. But the other and better riches of which I have spoken may be secured by our own volition. I do not intend here to trench upon the exclusive province of the Christian teacher. I have not the sanctions, I make not the professions, which would give me the right to do this. But I have a right to, and may with propriety, speak earnestly to you upon these high moral considerations. I seek in this to point you to what I deem a great and funda- mental truth, that all true success must depend upon the development and the growth of the moral and intellectual nature of man. Whatever answers this end, no matter what the world may call it, is most 38 TRUE AND FALSE SUCCESS. of all to be desired and sought, and whatever hin- ders or retards it, whether it be ignorance, or crime, or greed, should most of all be shunned and ab- horred. We should exalt our estimate of the value of those possessions that do not perish with their using. What hoarded gold, what lands or estates can an- swer to a man in the place of integrity, of honor, and self-respect ? Is he successful who has all else and yet has not these .'* Is he prosperous who has lost these in the effort to obtain the other ? Such riches do not decay, nor do they depreciate. They irra- diate the home of the poor man with a brightness not to be equaled by all the flashing gems and diamonds of India, and they will give a man passport and rank and station in the eternal courts, which the accumu- lated gold of the universe can not buy. Is it not better to be/V'tv than worldly rich ? And what freedom is to be compared to the freedom of thoiigJit, oi speech, and o^ action — a freedom which is entirely incompatible with a sordid life-effort to make money .'* The slavery of gold is debasing and exact- ing to the last degree. Its victims toil unceasingly with no other reward than the chains that bind them. These they forge and rivet day by day and year by year. O, how does a full-statured and independent man shine out in contrast with this cringing slave ! How unspeakably mean appears the one, how tran- scendently noble the other ! It can not take us long to decide which we will have for our model. Every manly instinct, every noble impulse, every right prin- ciple of our natures will tell us how great a thing and how above all calculations and reckonings of TRUE AND FALSE SUCCESS. 39 dollars and cents, it is to be able and ready, at all times, and in the face of all danger and all reproach of men, to speak out the thoiigJit and the truth within us. What better thing can a man accjuire in this world than a pure, manly, and irreproachable character among his fellow men ? What rirher legacy can he leave to his children ? This shall endure to them, and be a joy to them, long after time or accident or misfortune shall have corroded his gold and silver, or swept away his houses and lands. What higher object of earthly attainment can we have than a true happiness and calm contentment, with which all men are truly rich, without which the richest in worldly goods are poor indeed .-' Our ideas of success are, in the main, false and superficial. From our low, material point of view, our vision is contracted to outside appearances, and does not take notice of the inner life of man, nor of the outflowing consequences of his acts. What the world has called failures have been some of the grandest successes in all history. All along the pathway of human progress men have fallen beneath the scorn and obloquy and reproach of their genera- tion, who yet, before they fell, planted seeds of immortal growth, whose product now enriches and makes glad the earth. Martyrs to science, to liberty or religion, wiser than their times, they sowed that others might reap, and now enjoy, in the loud ac- claim of their posterity, and the noble society of the wise and just in heaven, an enduring and immortal success. Such men the world can not make poor. To such the dungeon, the rack, and the chain become 40 TRUE AND FALSE SUCCESS. but instruments and arguments to spread the knowl- edge of their triumph throughout the earth, and the scaffold of infamy which men build for their doom, a ladder of glory by which they mount into the heavens ! Let the ends of our ambition, then, be such as shall be worthy of our immortal natures. Let us have high objects in life, pursue them by honest means, and never forget that there is to be a hereafter. Then life to us shall have its great purpose, and death shall not come at last to snatch us in terror and despair from our hoarded goods and gold. How does that noble passage from Lord Bacon sound out over the petty strifes and struggles and ambitions of three hundred years : " He that dies in an earnest pursuit is like one that is wounded in hot blood, who for the time scarce feels the hurt ; and therefore a mind fixed and bent upon somewhat that is good doth avert the dolors of death ; but above all, believe it, the sweetest canticle is Nunc Diintttis, when a man hath attained worthy ends and expectations." Beautiful words, and full of majestic music to the soul ; may their sublime consolation crown our mor- tal years ! And now, if, in conclusion, I may be permitted to mount up from individual interests to national con- cerns, still following the analogy of my discourse, I would say that this nation will not have achieved a true and lasting success over its rebellious and fratri- cidal enemies, till not only the last musket shall be wrested from their bloody hands, but that barbarous and rebellion-breeding institution shall be swept away before the all-conquering and ever-enduring TRUE AND FALSE SUCCESS. 41 principles of human freedom, (iod .sets the rock of national prosperity and national life where the ocean's storms and waves sometimes beat and dash against it, but it shall stand unshaken and immovable so long as the national heart and the national con- science are true to lunnanity and true to him. SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT/ The Senate being in committee of the whole upon the special order (Mr. Grosvenor in the chair), and having under consideration the resolu- tions on the state of the Union, reported by the committee on federal relations, and resolutions offered as a substitute therefor by Mr. Warner. Lieutenant-Clovernor May said : — Mr. Chairman : It is not without great reluc- tance and many misgivings that I rise to take part in this discussion. But I believe, sir, that I am in the line of safe precedents, and I find some compensation, also, in the purpose which I have to raise this discussion above any individual crimination or recrimination. I purpose to speak to-day upon principles, and I trust in such a manner as not to forget what is due in courtesy to the opposition members on this floor, from whom, as the presiding officer of this body, I have ever received the utmost respect and kindness. It is not, sir, simply a question of party which we are discussing. In my judgment it is more a ques- tion o{ country ; and at such a time as this every pa- triotic man owes his counsel to the state. To speak out is a duty, and no man who loves his country should hold his peace. I care nothing, sir, for party for the sake of party ; and when my party shall for- sake or abandon the cause of my country, I will abandon it. But so long as that party is the only ' Speech delivered in the Senate of the State of Michigan, Keb. 9, 1863. 42 SUSTAIN THE (lOVERNMENT. 43 party which cordially and fully sustains the national administration, in the midst of its great trials and difficulties, I can not abandon it without abandoning at the same time the cause of my country. The resolutions reported by the committee on federal relations, and now before the Senate in com- mittee of the whole, present the simple proposition to support and encourage the government in its ef- forts to crush the rebellion. This would seem cer- tainly to be a very plain and manifest duty. And so it would be in the eyes of all men, if it were not that the spirit of party, made hot and mad by the ceaseless efforts of demagogues and a partizan press, has inter- vened between the citizen and his duty to his gov- ernment, and usurped for a time his right reason, and made him deaf to the call of his country, and blind to her highest and most sacred interests. RUT ONE GOVERNMENT, ONE COUNTRY. Sir, we have but one government, paternal and beneficent in its character — a government that has showered blessings and privileges and favors upon the citizens of this country. North and South, as equally and broadly as the dews of heaven have de- scended upon the earth we tread ; and to that govern- ment we owe perpetual allegiance and loyalty. Sir, we are all on board the same ship, now riding upon the stormy waves of popular excitement and civil war ; and the blasts which smite against her, and the lightnings which rend the starry flag that floats at her masthead are common calamities to us all ; and if at last this noble ship must go down, we shall all Igo to the bottom together, and the angry waters wil 44 SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT. close over our party strifes and divisions and ani- mosities, as well as over the noblest fabric of free government which in all the long ages has ever arisen to exalt and bless mankind. NO PRACTICAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE ADMIN- ISTRATION AND THE GOVERNMENT. But some men — a whole party indeed — are en- deavoring to make a distinction between support of the government and support of the administration. There is no logic in the distinction, and nothing but mischief and danger can come from the idea. Prac- tically, the administration is the government. If you will look into the Constitution of the United States, you will find there in that great chart of our liberties, the broad and majestic framework or political skeleton of your government ; you shall find mapped out there the provisions for the co-ordinate branches of the government, the executive, the legis- lative, and the judicial. You shall find there provi- sions for a president of the United States and for the heads of departments, with duties defined for times of peace and times of war. Go with me now, sir, to the capital of the nation, and I will show you in that much-abused Republican president and Republican cabinet, not the dry parch- ment, not the paper provisions, but the living, breath- ing government of the United States. It is to this government, this living representation of the people, chosen under the forms of law, and to its official acts, that we owe obedience and loyalty. We can not support the government as ive would liai-c it, but as it is. And it is a bald fallacy, a gross absurd- SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT. 45 ity, to say that we can support the government and at the same time oppose every measure of the admin- istration, which is the only living representative of the government. A STRUGGLE FOR NATIONAL LIFE. The administration at Washington, elected by the American people under all the forms and solemnities of law, and charged with the highest and gravest responsibilities that ever rested upon mortal man, is now in the midst of a great struggle for national life. Sir, whose struggle is this .' In liliosc behalf is it ivaged ? It is not for Abraham Lincoln; it is not for the Republican party. No doubt that care- worn president, broken and wearied by the trials, exactions, and responsibilities of his high station, would gladly throw aside the robes of office, and seek the rest and retirement of his quiet and simple home in Illinois. But he has accepted his high trust before man and heaven, and he can not now aban- don it. I repeat that this is not a struggle for a Repub- lican president or the Republican party, but it is a struggle of the luhole people to defend the national life against traitors banded in arms against it. It is your cause and my cause, and every man's cause who loves his country and would see her triumph over her enemies. I do not propose at this time to go back and dis- cuss the causes of this war. I have my own very clear conviction that it was caused by slavery; by the wicked and vaulting ambition of the slave power to rule this government. I believe this to be a 46 SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT. slaveholders' rebellion against the authority of the Constitution, and the rule of the majority of the American people. But I will not say more than this now. It is sufficient for the purpose of my argu- ment to-day, to ask if any man dare stand up on this floor^ in the State of Michigan, and say that the gov- ernvient did tvrong, when Sumter was bombarded, in defending the national life, and that it is now prosecuting an unjust and loirighteous war. Who dares to say this.' Has it not, indeed, been brought as an accusation against this administration b}- its political opponents, that it made such small and meager military provision at the outset of this war ; that it called out only seventy-five thousand men, when it ought to have called five times or ten times that number .' I take it, therefore, that it is too late for our adversaries to charge that this war was not rightly and righteously begun by the government in self-defense ; and this will, at one blow, annihi- late all the miserable sophistry of those gentlemen who have labored so hard to throw the responsibil- ity of this war upon the Republican party. They have already confessed that the government was compelled to take up arms, and they have charged it with imbecility because it did not do so more vigorously and on a grander scale in the outset. WHAT IS IT TO SUPPORT THE GOVERNMENT .' What, then, is it to support the government in this war .' Can we do this by assailing and crippling the administration .' It takes only coinmon intelligence to see that in just so far as we do this we " give aid SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT. 4( and comfort to the enemy." How much better, in- deed, than this would the arch-conspirator, the so- called president of the Southern Confederacy, have his guilty and desperate cause served at the North ? Suppose that to-day a delegation of the men of Northern birth, residents and supporters of the rebel confederacy, should call upon the rebel president, and tell him that they were anxious to pass through his lines, and return to their old homes in the North with the purpose to serve his cause here, and ask for his instructions ; what, suppose you, would he tell them ? What would be the character of his instructions? Would he say to them, " When you reach the North, procure at once a musket or a revolver, and shoot down the first Lincoln man you meet in the streets of Cincinnati or Buffalo?" Or would he tell them this : " Go North, but do not attempt at first any rtr;«^^ resistance to the government, for the temper of the people will not yet bear this, and you will be shot or hung at once for your temerity ; but join the opponents of Lincoln's administration, write articles in the newspapers, make speeches in the assemblies of the people, and charge the administration at Washington with usurpation and imbecility ; howl ' Abolitionist,' at every supporter of the government ; demand a 'change of rulers,' and in every way, pub- lic and private, throw obstacles and hindrances in the course of the administration, to the end that it be brought into contempt with the people, and the North be divided, and our cause be triumphant"? But, sir, I will not put further words into the mouth of the rebel president, or follow further the sickening parallel. By this simple illustration we may see how 48 SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT. the cause of treason may be and is served at the North. THE PROCLAMATION. In the light of these preliminary considerations, let us now approach the executive proclamation of free- dom ; for this, sir, is the great political subject that engrosses the public attention, and divides the friends and opponents of the administration. What is this proclamation ? I ask this question at the outset, for its true answer is a perfect solution of the whole problem of the discussion, and clears away a mass of objections and sophistries. NOT A POLITICAL PLATFORM. Men talk as if this proclamation were the emana- tion of a caucus, or a party platform, to be discussed before the people in their primary capacity, and by and by to be voted upon at the polls. This most ab- surd notion is the prop and foundation of a great mass ofobjection and denunciation now being hurled against it. Why, sir, this proclamation is not a theory, not a political platform, but the solemn, accomplished act of the government ; not /;/ fiituro, but in esse ; and it can not be opposed without opposing the govern- ment. In this sense, the time for all discussion upon it is passed ; it is too late even to remonstrate against it. And it is not only now a thing which is done, but it is a ivar vieasure, so declared upon military neces- sity by the head of the army and the nation, who is the proper and sole judge, and from whose decision there is no appeal, save through the bloody tribunal of revolution or rebellion. Is any man insane enough to suppose for a single SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT. 49 instant that it will be or can be recalled or revoked at the behest of a faction or a party ? It is a war order, also, from the commander-in-chief to our officers in the field, and has been read at the head of every division, and every regiment in the army. After all this will the president take it back ? Is there a citizen in the North so shameless as to desire him to take it back ? OBEDIENCE TO THE LAW. In this view of the case I might safely rest the whole subject, and stand simply upon obedience to law, to the civil and military power of the government. I remember, sir, in this connection, that when that most cruel and infamous statute, the Fugitive Slave Law, was passed, — a law which I believe to be not only cruel but unconstitutional, — and the men of the North, turned to the purpose of bloodhounds by its savage provisions, cried out in their human hearts and human sympathies, " We can not do this thing, we can not repress the noblest promptings of our natures, and hunt down the poor fugitives from the Southern prison-house fleeing toward the North star and liberty, these same gentlemen who now array themselves in fierce hostility to this war order of the president, turned upon us with a sort of soulless sanc- tity, and said we must obey the enactment because it was law. I commend now, to them, in a good cause, and for a just rule, the logic and the advice which they so freely proffered in behalf of slavery and barbarism. "iMEDDLING" WITH MILITARY "PLANS." I can not forget, also, that this same class of men have recently indulged in unseemly and clamorous 4 60 SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT. denunciation of everybody who has "meddled," or been thought to "meddle" with the "plans" of our generals. Has it not been said, indeed, that my whole party has " meddled " and interfered with the military "plans" of General McClellan, with his peninsular campaign especially, and have we not> again and again, been solemnly warned that nobodyy not even the cabinet at Washington, had any business to "meddle" with the military arrangements of any general in our army ? Now, sir, I again commend these gentlemen to their own logic. In what right or propriety do they not only "meddle" with, but absolutely howl at, this " plan " of the commander- in-chief .'' This proclamation, as I have already said^ is a military measure, a war order or plan simply^ made by the head of the army, and acquiesced in and obeyed by all his subordinates. It is as much and as purely a military measure to suppress this rebel- lion as was the " plan " for the peninsular campaign, or the battle of Antietam. And it is in this view, and for this purpose, that it is approved and sup- ported by the friends of the administration. THE PROCLAMATION CONSTITUTIONAL. But we are not afraid to go further, and to meet our adversaries upon the legal and moral j-ighteous- ness of this measure. And here, sir, I come in contact with that class of men who seem to think that the Constitution was made expressly to perpetuate slavery and to serve the cause of treason and traitors. I shall enter upon no dry, legal, technical argument of this question. I have no inclination to do so, and it would serve SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT. 51 little purpose if I should. Sir, men do not stop in the midst of civil convulsions and revolutions to decide such questions upon the quibbles of law- yers and the technicalities of courts. No doubt, sir, I could prove my case in that way, before the proper tribunal, but I prefer to-day to make the popular and decisive argument to the broad and now quickened common sense of the people. We need not ransack books and documents for precedents and authority to save the nation in this crisis from ruin. There is an argument in the stern necessities of the time and situation, which is higher and stronger than all others. THE GREAT RIGHT OF NATIONAL SELF-DEFENSE. I hold that the Constitution must be interpreted for and not against the nation. It is, of itself a great chart of national life and safety, not a death- warrant, not a millstone about the nation's neck to drag it down beneath the black waves of rebel- lion. There is in it, and must be in it, whether expressed in words or not, THE GREAT RIGHT OF NATIONAL SELF-DEFENSE. Nations have in this the same rights as individuals with this difference only, that they have a more solemn and weighty obligation resting upon them. The life of a single man, which, under the law, he may rightly defend with any and every means in his power, may be of small consequence to society or the state. But there are bound up in the life of such a nation as this, interests of priceless value to man- kind, and which take hold on distant ages. Will it be said that the individual, assailed by the robber 52 SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT. or the assassin, may defend his life to the last ex- tremity though it be the taking of life, but that the nation, when assailed by worse than robbers or assassins, must die because it world be " unconstitu- tional " to live ? This nation is assailed to-day by banded traitors and conspirators in arms ; its life is in danger ; can't we defend it ? Can't the nation defend itself? Away with the miserable sophistry that says we must give up. the struggle because we can not legally live. Sir, if we were mean enough and base enough to desire it ourselves, we could not give up this struggle. The recollections and immortal examples of a noble ancestry, not less than the solemn trust which we hold for future ages, would forbid it. We are not act- ing simply for ourselves, nor for one generation of men, but for a long line of generations, and with this great responsibility upon us we have no right to let the government be destroyed and the nation die. THE RIGHTS OF TRAITORS. Sir, we hear much said in these days about the " rights" of traitors ; about depriving the citizens of the disloyal States of their "constitutional guaran- tees." And these pleas in behalf of rebels are put forth by the very men who can see no " constitu- tional " right of the nation to defend its own life. Now, I ask by what infernal logic shall the Constitu- tion be interpreted in the interest of traitors who assail it, and against loyal men who defend it ? These men, too, can see no difference whatever be- tween the "rights" of citizens in States which have rebelled and those which are loyal, between times SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT. 53 of peace and times of war. What do they mean when they talk about the " rights " of traitors ? Do they pretend that the status of a rebel is the same as that of a loyal citizen .' Sir, go with me to yonder peni- tentiary, and see how many " rights " are enjoyed by those confined within its gloomy walls. Were they not, sir, citizens of Michigan .'' Mow happens it, then, that they now enjoy but one right in common with us, the right to breath God's air, though to them it is loaded with prison vapors .-' Why, sir, they have committed offenses against the State ; they have stolen from their neighbors; been convicted oi la^-ceny^ for instance, and for this all their civil rights have been taken from them. Now, what is the offense of these men, these fellow citizens of ours, to the offense of Jefferson Davis and his fellow rebels ^. What compkrison does larceny bear to treason .^ What is its comparative grade under the law ^ Sir, these traitors in arms have con- spired, wickedly and basely conspired, against the best government under the sun ; they are struggling to tear down this glorious fabric of free institutions, to undermine the pillars of this blood-consecrated Union, and to involve us and humanity in indescri- bable and appalling ruin. Have the)- any "rights" which we should carefully protect while they are en- gaged in the work .' Is it one of their " rights " that they shall not be injured or weakened in any measure while destroying us .' CONSTrrUTION.\L IK NECESSARY. Now, following the inevitable logic of this great right of self-defense, which inheres in the political 54 SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT. organization of every people, I hold that if this meas- ure, this proclamation of the president is necessary to crush the rebellion, or even if it will assist in crushing the rebellion, it is constitutional. Will it be said that more than three million black laborers at the South do not constitute an element of strength for the rebellion ? Here is a great servile population, inured to toil under a sun which is too hot for the white master, that till the soil, raise the crops, and labor in the fields of the South, with scanty- clothing, and food of the simplest and coarsest kind. Nowhere in the world can be found an equal number of laborers, doing the same amount of work at so lit- tle cost. Why not detach these laborers from the rebel cause ? Suppose, sir, that this war should be given over as a private enterprise to some man, some foreigner, if you please, who should be entirely free from our political prejudices and animosities, past and present. How long would it take him, if he were a man of common sense, to say nothing of genius, looking at this great servile, unpaid element of labor at the South and within the lines of the enemy, — I say how long would it take him to make up his mind that it would be an object of paramount importance to detach these laborers from the cause of the enemy, even if he did not seek to array them on his own side.? Can men be so blinded by partizan rage and bitterness as not to see so clear a thing as this.? I can not stop here, sir, to point out in detail the many ways in which these laborers might be made to serve our cause and hurt that of the rebels ; but will it, can it be insisted that as a practical war SUSTAIN THE GOVERXMEXT. 55 measure, this is of no moment and no consetjuence ? It seems to me that only lunatics can thus talk. A SERVILE INSURRECTION. But it is urged that this proclamation will pro- duce a servile, or slave, insurrection in the Southern States. Do luc fear such an insurrection .-' Are we more tender of rebels than of our own noble soldiers t I do not, by any means, admit that this consequence will flow from the proclamation, and I do not expect such an event, but should this even be the case, on the heads of Southern rebels will rest this blood. War is war ; and they, utterly without cause, inau- gurated war, and now they must take all its bloody chances and vicissitudes. We must not and can not forego that which will give us victory, out of tender- ness to a malignant rebel population. ''LIFE. LIBERTY, AND PROPERTY." But passing from this objection to the proclama- tion, I come now seriously and candidly to consider the only specific constitutional argument which I have ever heard urged against it. In the midst of this great and indiscriminate mass of denunciation which is hurled at this measure, I have seen but one position taken which is based upon a particular pro- vision of the Constitution. It is said that it violates that proxision. or section, of the Constitution which declares that neither the '■ life, liberty, nor property' of the citizen shall be taken "without due process of law." It is claimed that this measure of the presi- dent conflicts with that guaranty. Now, sir, mark the order in which these subjects, 56 SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT. guarded by the provision, stand arranged. '''Life,'"'' the highest and most sacred right and privilege which man can enjoy, and which he derives directly from the hand of his Creator; ''liberty'' next, the right to use life for its noblest ends and purposes ; and " propcrty^^ last and least in importance. Of course, it can not be pretended that the guar- anty is any stronger in the case oi property than in either of the preceding subjects. This being the fact, then, and looking at the Southern slave as prop- erty, the same as a mule or a horse, — a favorite view with this class of objectors, — it will follow that if it be "unconstitutional" to deprive the rebel master of his slave without " due process of law," it will cer- tainly be equally "unconstitutional" to deprive him of his " liberty "' or his " life " without this " process."' So this argument ends at last in the most puerile and absurd conclusion that, before we can shoot down or capture a rebel in battle, we must serve a writ or a warrant upon him through the machinery of the courts ! And here with this most complete reductio ad absiirdiim falls flat to the ground the only specific constitutional objection to the proc- lamation. CONTEMPT OF HUMAN RIGHTS. I am aware, sir, that there is one other objection to the proclamation, which, although it is not gener- ally urged in the form of argument, nevertheless enters largely into the whole subject. Incredible as it might appear upon its face, there is a class of men at the North, a much larger class than I could wish, who oppose this great measure because it will confer SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT. 5T freedom upon three millions of human beings ! Sir, it is one of the most lamentable features of this struggle that we are now having developed and culti- vated among us a contempt for the rights of man. I have observed with amazement and horror the per- sistent and seemingly concerted attempts of partizan demagogues and a venal press to pour ridicule, con- tempt, and denunciation upon a weak and unoffend- ing race among us, — a race guilty of no crime but the color of their skins and a degradation extending back through long and weary centuries. Upon the heads of these poor people, guiltless, by the common con- sent of mankind, of any part in our great quarrel, is being daily hurled a mass of vituperation and of venom ; in some instances directly calculated and intended to excite against them the lawless violence of a class of white men, more ignorant and degraded than themselves. Whence and from what spirit come such efforts as these .' Are we men or are we devils .-* The negro may not be your equal or mine, but he is neverthe- less a man, made so by the same God and common Father of us all, and bound with us to tha:t same great tribunal of the hereafter, where with us he will be judged, not according to the color of the skin, not according to these petty and false distinctions, but according to the deeds done here in the body. Sir, I believe that God has created of one blood all the nations of men. I believe in a common human- ity, and according to the precepts of this great law, I recognize in the humblest slave that toils under a rebel lash in the Southern fields, a man and a brother ; and you can not trample upon the rights of -58 SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT. the poorest and meanest member of this abused and outraged race among us without inflicting a common wrong, and striking a common blow upon humanity everj^where. To fall upon the weak and the defenseless, to insult and wrong those already abused and prostrate, is base and despicable to the last degree. Sir, it was the germ and very soul of the chivalry of the olden time to defend the weak and helpless against the strong and powerful, and the knight drew his inspira- tion in the battle from this lofty purpose and motive. I envy not the heart of that man among us who desires to add even a feather's weight to the wrongs under which this unfortunate race now suffers ; and although I step aside from the course of my argu- ment to-day to allude to this subject, I can not be- lieve that words spoken in behalf of common humanity in this Senate will fall upon unwilling ears. It will be a sad day for the Republic, and for our liberties, when the people are taught to despise or contemn human rights. I regard it as one of the proudest moments and highest privileges of my life that I am permitted, in this high presence, to speak these poor words in behalf of the wronged and outraged, who can not speak for themselves. NOT A CAUSE, BUT A CONSEQUENCE. But let no man misunderstand or misquote me. I do not, and my party does not, advocate support of this proclamation of the president because it will give freedom to the slave. That we do not hold to be its legal, its constitutional, basis and reason. The presi- dent could not and would not, for this reason, have SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT, 59 been justified in issuing it. Hut if, as one of the coii- scquctices of this measure, human slavery is to be overturned in this land ; if through the mad and guilty act of the Southern conspirators themselves, this great good is to result to mankind, as a lover of my country and a friend of humanity, I must rejoice at this beneficent consummation. So much the bet- ter if, in following the law and defending our own life, we may slay the great assassin — SLAVERY. WE MUST STAND BY THE REPUBLICAN I'ARTY. Why not then support this great war measure of the president's ? You will look in vain, sir, for any party in these resolutions. All they ask is that this Legislature support the administration in the prose- cution of the war. But shall we abandon the presi- dent because he was elected b)> Republicans, the cause of the nation because it is in Republican hands ? I turn now to those specious gentlemen on the other side, and put this question to them. Shall we let the ship sink because we don't like the pilot ? The Republican party has but one object, one prin- ciple, one purpose to-day, to support with all its heart and strength and energy^ without qualification or res- ervation, THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNION. How can it abandon this principle, this purpose, without treason to the cause of the nation? Gentle- men on the other side, when you ask us to lay aside our party, you ask us to lay aside our country with it ; when you oppose us and denounce us, you oppose and denounce the only men and the only party in this land that now stand boldly and firmly up to the support of the national administration. This is 60 SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT. the reason why we can not now abandon our party. We turn to you, and ask you to come and join us, forgetting the past, and stand shoulder to shoulder with us in this great work. The government, in its pressing dangers and sore trials, needs our united arms and counsels. Why will you not do this ? This republican ad- ministration must continue over two years longer ; it can not be legally displaced in a shorter time. What do you mean when you talk about "a change of measures and of rulers"? Do you mean rebellion at the North against the constituted authorities ? Is there some dark threat, some concealed design in these words? If so, I pray you to pause and reflect before you take the fatal step. Look well to the abyss before you, recall the common past with all its proud and glorious recollections, think on what the future may be. Ah ! if you enter upon this guilty design, the Fathers shall rise from their graves and rebuke you ; this generation shall curse you, and history shall load you with eternal infamy. But I can not believe that you are yet prepared for this open resistance to the government. But why, if you love your country, and are true to her, as you say you are, thus attempt to sow dissen- sion, division, and bitterness at the North .-• Can not the result of all this be seen } What other effect can it have than to ivcakcn us and stroigthoi our ene- mies ? What better aid than this could possibly be rendered here to the rebel cause ? SNEERS AT NEW ENGLAND. Sir, it has of late become a very common thing for those men at the North who oppose the administra- SUSTAIN THE GOVERXMKNT. 61 tion and its leading measures, to sneer at and de- nounce New England ; and all loyal men have been pained and shocked to see this unnatural prejudice elaborated in the recent message of a professedly loyal governor, and he, too, the chief magistrate of the great State of New York. Why do these men hate New England ? Who can not see that it is be- cause they hate that great sentiment and principle of human liberty, to which she has ever been true, and which constitutes her chiefest glory ? Where, sir, on the face of God's earth, can you find a people so intelligent, so free and liberty-loving, so imbued with all the elements of Christian civilization, as the people who reside among the hills and mountains of New England ? Hate New England ! Hate the mother that bore us ! And this, too, to appease the spirit of human slavery ! God forbid ! New England, sir, has ever been true to the country and to liberty through all our trials in the past, and she is true and loyal to- day ; and if, in the providence of God, this great re- bellion shall beat back the armies of the Union, and this wave of returning barbarism shall roll over our land, annihilating in its progress every vestige of free government, on the soil of New England shall be fought the last great battle for LIBERTY on this continent ; and before the standard goes down, the clash and clangor of the conflict shall mingle with the roar of the ocean's waves that beat and dash against the historic rock on which her glorious history began. 62 SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT. SHALL WE COMPROMISE ? Sir, what would Democrats have us do ? Shall we abandon the government ? Shall we submit to reb- els in arms ? Shall we compromise? I do not over- look the fact that the so-called Democratic party in the loyal States, and in this Legislature, have now fully planted themselves upon the doctrine of com- promise with the enemy. They so write, speak, and resolve, here and everywhere. They say that this contest can not and must not be settled with arms, and under this administration, and they are calling for a national convention to adjust the controversy and arrange the terms of peace. Have we ever thought of what it would be to com- promise now ? Who besides the Democratic party asks for compromise.? Do the rebels.?— No. They say they want only their independence of us ; the recognition of their rebel confederacy. Compro- mise, then, for us, means surrender. We must lower the flag when we ask for terms ; for all the world knows that we entered upon this contest to assert and maintain the rightful supremacy and majesty of the government. To propose or accept less than that now is to acknowledge that we have been beaten. Must we make this acknowledgment before the world .? Have we exhausted all our resources .' Sir, our fathers fought seven years to establish our liber- ties. Shall we fight no longer than ti^^'o years to defend them .? We are yet far from being van- quished ; we are still strong and powerful in all the resources of war, and we have a sacred trust in our SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT. 63^ hands which we hold for all coming time. We must not give over the contest yet. Before we do that^ we should reflect upon the fearful stake which we have in this great struggle. THE TREMENDOUS ISSUE. Sir, what does this rebellion seek to accomplish, and what has it cost us already ? It aims at nothing less than the utter subdivision of this great and beneficent government of ours ; at the destruction of human liberty on this continent, and the building up of a great slave empire in their stead. An issue so tremendous and vast as this calls for the last man, and the last dollar, and the last and utmost human effort, before the nation shall yield. History, at its stern and impartial bar, will hold us accountable for our conduct in this hour. THE SHARE OF MICHIGAN. This war has already cost us uncounted millions of treasure and an appalling sacrifice of our best and bravest lives. The share of our own noble State, in this common offering on the altar of the country, has been great and precious. More than forty-five thou- sand of our fellow citizens have gone forth to fight our battles and defend our liberties. How many of them have gone forth, never to return ! There are men in this Senate, and within the sound of my voice to-day, whose hearts have been torn by this accursed rebellion. The noble boy that went forth in the full flush of youth and early manhood ; the manly brother or husband who rallied to the old flag ; these have fallen in the shock and roar of the battle. 64 SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT. and they now sleep beneath the blood-stained fields, which their courage and valor have made immortal. Ah ! you shall wait long for their returning footsteps, but they will never come back. Willing and cheer- ful sacrifices, they have laid their lives upon the altar of their country. And others, not unknown to fame, and whose pre- cious lives are the common loss of the whole State, have fallen, too. The noble Wisner, once the chief magistrate of our growing commonwealth, who left a pleasant home, and business, and honors, to fall by the hand of disease in the camp, not less a victim to the cause than if he had died by rebel bullet or bayonet ; the gallant Richardson, so recently my own beloved commander, who sank under that ghastly wound at Antietam ; and Woodbury and Brodhead and Gilluly, these men, true and loyal sons of Mich- igan, have passed through the river of death, to receive on the other side the enduring reward laid up for those who defend their country in the hour of danger. A VOICE FROM THE BATTLE-FIELD. Shall we compromise ? Go ask those dead heroes who have fallen in our cause, for though dead, they yet speak. Listen to the voice that comes from those ensanguined and consecrated battle-fields, where Michigan's best blood has been shed : " Legis- lators of Michigan ! pause well before you listen to the counsels of those who would make our blood spilled in vain. It was in a noble cause that we took up arms, and for which we yielded up our lives ; do not, we pray you, surrender it, and thus rob pos- SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT. 65 terity of the fruits "of our sacrifices, and our memo- ries of just and merited honor. Stand yet by the old fla3, was the greatest and the sublimest cival act of the century ; that it was necessary, expedient, and just ; that it added immediately and immensely to the material and moral forces of the Union, and contributed directly and powerfully to the overthrow of the rebellion, and gives us now a Union not only re- stored 3 t free. Aside from the physical advantages it brought to the cause of the Union in its hundred and fifty thou- sand stalwart colored soldiers, and in crippling the strength of the enemy, its moral effect was great beyond calculation. As mind controls matter, so are moral forces greater than physical. This great act of justice touched the noblest springs of charac- ter in our own people, and arrayed on the side of the Union the world's conscience and the world's civili- zation. After that not only the North with its twenty millions and its vast resources ; not only the cabinet at Washington ; not only the veteran armies of Grant and Sherman ; but all the generous sym- pathies of mankind, all the hopes of progress, the beacons of knowledge, the aspirations of liberty, the stars in their courses, fought against the South- ern rebellion. But with all other helps and aids the Union must have been lost but for the steady and unconquerable heroism of our army, and the able and almost match- less generalship that finally led it to victory. How can I find words to speak the just eulogy of this army of citizen soldiers, or to express the deep gratitude which a nation feels for their heroic sufferings and achievements ! How forever thrilling and immortal THE TRIAL OF RErUHITCAN INSTITUTIONS. Ill will be that chapter in our history which recounts that when the Republic was assailed by organized and banded treason in which eleven States partici- pated ; with a treasury despoiled and empty ; a navy scattered on distant seas, and an army hardly large enough for a nucleus of organization, and now in- fected with treachery ; at the cry of danger a mil- lion men sprung from the fields, the workshops, the stores, and the schools of the North, and gave their loyal hearts and their brave arms to the defence of the nation. It was the rally of the people to save the peoples government. That swelling and sublime tide of enthusiasm which shook the nation when Sumter was bombarded, did not ebb till it had borne the Republic on its generous bosom through the storm and the tempest into a harbor of peace and safety. I can not follow that army through the varying fortunes, the successes and reverses of this great war. That gigantic task only history can perform. In the magnitude and extent of its operations ; in the num- ber and importance of its battles and sieges, as well as in the unapproachable grandeur of its issue, there has never been such a war as this. And through this vast and bloody panorama, on the hundred great battle-fields of the South, where the sons of the Cavaliers met the descendants of the Puritans, Northern courage and Northern endurance have been written out in successive chapters of glory which time will never efface. The genius of history and the muse of poesy as they transmit the great record and sing the great Iliad through the ages are only adequate for a theme so vast. 112 THE TRIAL OF REPUBLICAN INSTITUTIONS. I see before me to day, in this civic and peaceful procession, the toil-worn and battle-scarred repre- sentatives of this army of heroes. Soldiers and saviours of the Republic ! In the name of the thousands of your fellow citizens here assembled, I bid you welcome to this jubilee. We greet you with hearts full of love., and gratitude, and pride. During the four terrible years that have passed, your strong arms and manly bosoms, inter- posed between us and the enemies of our country, have been our wall of protection and defence. You have but just returned from the fields made forever memorable by your courage and valor in this great struggle for national life. In your number are those who have fought on nearly all the great battle-fields of this war. You followed the rising star of Grant down the banks of the Mississippi, over the ramparts of Henry and Donelson, through the murky smoke and sheeted flame of Shiloh, and up the frowning battlements of Vicksburg. You fought with Rosecrans at Stone River, and stood fast in the earth-rooted ranks of the stern hero Thomas, when the army was rescued in the terrible day at Chickamauga. You helped to save the day, and the nation, too, in the thunderous shock of Gettysburg, when the solid ranks went down like summer grass before the mower's scythe. And you went through the seven days of battle, and sent back from sulphurous Malvern your victorious defiance to the foe before whom you had retreated, but by whom you had not been vanquished. You charged through the bloody labyrinths of the Wilderness, over the storm-swept field of Spott- sylvania, and followed in that march of battles which THE TRIAL OF REPUBLICAN INSTITUTIONS. 113 closed its sure embrace around the doomed and finally captured chief army and chief city of the rebel- lion. You swept in the fierce onset of Sheridan and Custer in the Shenandoah ; and you have a part in the glory of that great host which followed the ban- ners of Sherman in the grandest march of history, when he rounded the majestic circle through (Geor- gia and the Carolinas ! Heroic defenders of your country, survivors of so many trials and dangers, God has graciously spared your lives, and permitted you to come back in glory and honor to your friends, your families, and your homes. A nation's hopes and prayers followed you into battle ; a nation's benedictions and blessings hail your victorious return. And for your comrades fallen on all the fields where you fought, a nation's tears and a nation's homage embalm their memories among the priceless treasures of the Republic. Mar- tyrs to the great cause of civil liberty, of love and devotion to country and law, their fame is linked forever with the earlier heroes of the nation, and will grow brighter and brighter with lapsing ages. And he, the chiefest martyr of all who fell, — the honored head of the army and the nation, — so pure so noble and magnanimous, and so gentle and simple in his life, withal, that republican institutions found in him their fittest and noblest type and representa- tive, — how his foul murder froze the nation's heart with horror, and choked the nation's voice with grief. The noblest sacrifice which the country has made in this war, he has gone to join the glorious army of heroes and martyrs whose blood has consecrated this great struggle for nationality, and whose spirits 114 THE TRIAL OF REPUBLICAN INSTITUTIONS. now look down upon the land they helped to save and redeem. To each and all of them we may say: — " If aught of things that here befall Touch a spirit among things divine; If love of country move thee there at all, Be glad, because his bones are laid by thine I And thro' the centuries let a people's voice In full acclaim: A people's voice. The proof and echo of all human fame; A people's voice when they rejoice • At civic revel and pomp and game, Attest their great commander's claim With honor, honor, honor to him. Eternal honor to his name." And thus has the nation been saved ; and not only saved, but purified, redeemed, and regenerated. Every foot of our territory has been reconquered from the enemy, every iota of our just authority has been reasserted in every nook and corner of the rebel 'i'^'"' Slavery, the great disturber of the public peace, and author of all our mischiefs and dangers, has gone down forever beneath the waves of civil strife which its own fell spirit lashed into fury. We have emerged from the great conflict free, strong, and confident. In the vast resources which we have developed, in the tremendous military strength which we have put forth, as well as in the now embodied sentiment of patriotism and love of country which we have evoked, we have a sure guaranty not only against future rebellions, but also against foreign interference. Warned ourselves by this fearful ex- ample, the nation will hereafter tread out the sparks of sedition before they flame up into open insur- THE TRIAL OF REPUBLICAN INSTITUTIONS. 115 rection, and foreign powers who have watched with an:iazement our suppression of this gigantic revolt, will so temper their diplomacy as not unnecessarily to provoke a contest with a Republic which can call into the field and equip and sustain, during four years of war, more than two millions of men. Safe, then, in our just authority and rights, at home and abroad, the problem of future national destiny and greatness lies all with us. I know there is still danger that we may not reap all the just fruits of our great victory, and may hinder and delay the upward springing march of freedom and civilization on this continent. But I pause on the threshold of the great questions and problems of reconstruction. Perhaps this is not the fit time and occasion to discuss them. May God give wisdom to our presi- dent and cabinet, so that nothing^ be done unwisely or in haste ; but, taking full time for reflection, the government reassert its authority in the rebellious States in such mercy and mildness as shall be com- patible with justice and law ; in such recognition of the full manhood and citizenship of the emancipated slave as shall comport with the national sense of the wrongs he has already suffered and the service he has rendered us ; and above all, in such manner as shall inure to the full safety of our national future. And now, under this sun of victory, and in this serene peace which has succeeded the commotions and the thunders of war and battle, how glorious and magnificent is the prospect that opens for our be- loved country. O land of Washington and of Lincoln ! land con- secrated by patriots* prayers, and tears, and strug- 116 THE TRIAL OF REPUBLICAN INSTITUTIONS. gles, and baptized in patriots' blood ! may thy noble institutions of civil liberty endure as long as thy hills and rock-ribbed mountains shall stand ; may thy broad and ocean-washed territory, the valleys of thy great rivers, the fertile plains and fields of the North and the South, and the waving prairies of the great West, be the home of uncounted millions of freemen, the chosen abode of Liberty, Justice, and Law ; and may thy radiant banner of stars forever float in the vanguard of the world's progress and the world's civilization ! THE CAUCUS system: its abuses and THEIR REMEDY.^ It may be safely assumed that political parties are inevitable and indispensable in a free government. They are necessary auxiliaries to the working of a political system like ours. They have prevailed in all governments just in proportion to the diffusion of political power among the people. It is only in des- potisms, where the will of one man has been law to the State, that their growth has been stifled and checked. It is easy to see how the existence of parties is inevitable and indispensable in a republic. Wherever there is freedom, there will be difference of opinion. All men can not think alike. Indeed, it is neither to be expected nor desired that there should be unanimity in political action. While it is the theory of our national and State constitutions to treat the people as a unit, and while the gathered will of the people is impressed upon our public statutes and policies by means of majorities, still it is to be ex- pected, in the very nature of things, that this result shall be attained by intelligent thought and discus- sion, and that wherever there are majorities, there will be minorities also. This is the natural working of republican institu- ' Article in Detroit I'ribune Dec. 4, 1868. After thorough exami- nation in the National Library and elsewhere this has been found to be the first announcement of the principle of legal control of the Caucus System. 117 118 THE CAUCUS SYSTEM: tions. Parties are subdivisions of the whole people. The party in power represents the majority view ; the party out of power the minority, or opposition, view. If we could conceive of a party in power with no opposition, it could safely be predicted that its administration would soon grow corrupt and danger- ous to the State. Parties, therefore, are a natural and necessary outgrowth of republican institutions. But political parties must have organization. They can not make their ideas and principles effective without it. Mere floating public sentiment accom- plishes nothing. It must be reduced to order and method, and the many agreeing minds be made to act in concert. This order and unity of action is what produces majorities at the polls — the control- ling power in our politics. There must be agreement as to the principles of the party, and also as to the candidate who shall represent them. Principles and policies are only made effective through elected pub- lic officers ; hence the candidates of a party are its representatives, and their selection its main object and duty. The cajicus is indigenous to our political soil, its natural fruit and outgrowth. Even before our birth as a nation, we hear of it in the selection of local colonial officers, and in the popular agitations which preceded the Revolution. And from its earliest men- tion in the garret of Thomas Daws, in Boston, in the year 1770, down to the last nominating conventions of either party, the caucus has been in constant and prevailing use. It was at first secret. But the advantages of or- ganization and concert of action which it afforded ITS ABUSES AND THEIR REMEDY. 119 were so obvious, and the necessity for these in order to party success was so apparent, that it soon became an open and widespread political agency. Its growth was not only natural, but its object was fair and its theory a good one. It was born out of the very necessity of things. How could the members of a party, scattered over a wide extent of territory, secure that concert of action essential to success, and agree upon the candidates who should represent them without these primary meetings where their will and sense could be taken ? Regarding the party as a part of the people agree- ing on certain measures, and united for common objects, the caucus simply borrowed the principle which our system of government has furnished, and collected the will of the party as that provides for gathering the will of the whole people. But while the original purpose of the caucus was a purely legitimate and fair one and its plan simple and unobjectionable, and while to-day its theory is the same as ever, it has happened that its practical work- ings have, of late years, been frequently unjust and mischievous, and that it has fallen into great and con- stantly increasing abuses. These abuses have come from various causes, but principally, first, because the caucus is a purely vol- untary agency, and the great body of every party has been mainly interested in the principles which the party has advocated and comparatively indifferent as to the candidates to be nominated ; and, second, because having had no legal sanction or restraints, it has fallen into the hands of selfish and designing men, who, taking advantage of this indifference as to can- 120 THE CAUCUS SYSTEM : didates, have, while loudly advocating principles, used it in the interest of factions and cliques. And the absence of all legal penalties and restraints has frequently resulted in downright fraud and outrage where the party could not be cheated by ordinary craft and cunning. The stronger a party, the more apt to be these abuses. For where a party has an assured ascend- ancy, selfish and designing politicians have only to carry the caucuses in order to secure the offices. Good men who may feel disposed to resent the out- rage attending the nomination are either intimidated into silence by the force of party drill, or coerced by their fears of the success of dangerous principles advocated by the opposite party. Thus it happens that fraud and outrage in the cau- cus are most frequently resorted to in the very cases where, through this party supremacy, the whole peo- ple are made to suffer by them. And thus, too, it is not unfrequently the case that the well-known and admitted general wish of the party for the nomina- tion of some favorite leader is defeated by the dex- terity or the fraud of a few men who may be opposed to him. And the more worthy he is the more apt is he to be sacrificed, for while his ability may make him the object of envy to narrow and selfish minds, his honor and integrity will prevent his resorting to the unjustifiable means which they will use against him, and he will therefore fall an easier victim. It is not so difficult to see these abuses as it is to point out their remedy. The reform needed is not to uproot the caucus system, but to make it answer its true end by giving to it the sanction of the law ; by ITS AHUSES AND THEIR REMEDY. llJl such legal provisions as shall secure to the party fair- ness of representation and protect it, as well as the public, from imposition and fraud. One of the chief difficulties of the case lies back of the field which maybe occupied by legislation, in the moral apathy of the people. This, of course, can not be corrected by any legal enactment. The law can not compel men to attend the caucus. The most it can do is to secure fairness in the methods of party action and nominations. 4t must be manifest to every observer of the work- ing, and especially the recent working, of our political machinery, that there are great and pressing public reasons why the law should interfere to protect the caucus from these growing abuses. The caucus is now not only a fixed fact and institution in our poli- tics, but it is also one of vast and incalculable impor- tance. It is the fountain of all political influence ; it is the arbiter of all political ambition. It underlies all and runs through all our political system. It makes all our public officers from the lowest to the highest — from constable to president. It dictates all our public measures and policies from the resolu- tions of a single township to the platform of a national convention. Its edicts are law to parties and public men, and party success makes them law to the whole country. Yet vast as is this power of the caucus, universal and omnipotent as is this agency in our politics, there is no legal recognition of it in our constitution and statutes. We would search in vain, even, for any such recognition of the existence of political parties. 122 THE CAUCUS SYSTEM : All this should be changed. Our public law should take notice of the existence of political parties, and make provision for the selection of candidates as well as for the election of public officers. How can this be done ? The most direct way, and the way most consistent with the necessities and analogies of the subject, is to treat political parties after the manner of corporations. Recognize the party as a political subdivision, or quasi corporation, and make provision for the manner of selecting its candidates as the law now provides for the number and manner of selection of State, county, town, and city officers. There is nothing incongruous or inconsistent in this proposition. It is just as competent for the law to divide the people by party as by geographical lines ; by lines of sentiment and opinion as by lines of the compass. It is the people of a county or a city that are organized into a body corporate, and not the empty roods and acres embraced in their geographical boundaries. If this view be a correct one, and true in principle as applied to the subject, it is not necessary to go into details. These will take care of themselves. But an outline of the working of this plan may be given in this wise. The subject is one that falls properly under the control of the States, to be regulated by State law. Let the State, by proper constitutional provisions and statutory enactments, provide for all primary meetings of any party : — 1. That the proper committee shall give due notice ITS ABSUES AND THEIR REMEDY. 123 of the time and place of the caucus and of the busi- ness to be transacted. '2. That ballot boxes be furnished and a registry- kept. 3. That in case of challenge the voter shall make oath that he voted the ticket of the party at the last election, and that perjury may be predicated on this oath. 4. That the persons having a majority of the votes at the caucus shall be declared duly elected as dele- gates of the party to discharge the proper duty in each given case. .*). That the committee act as judges and inspectors of the voting, and make certified returns to the proper convention of the party. Of course, only the leading features of the plan are here indicated. Provision could be made for minor details, as well as for the first organization of parties. Delegated conventions could also have legal sanction and protection, although there would be little need of this if the caucus is protected. How can this plan be put into practical operation and made effective .•* I answer by exacting a compliance with these pro- visions as a new or added qualification for office. In addition to the qualification of age, residence, etc., of the officer, provide, "and that he shall have been duly presented or nominated for the office by dele- gates of his party chosen in accordance with the ret[uirements of law." Here, too, we find no legal impediment. The questions of suffrage and eligibility to office are en- 124 THE CAUCUS SYSTEM tirely within the control of the different States, to be governed only by considerations of sound public policy. It is no more arbitrary to put into the consti- tution of a State a provision making a citizen ineli- gible to the office of governor unless he has been presented as a candidate for the office in a certain manner by his fellow citizens than it is to provide that he shall be ineligible to the office unless he has attained the age of thirty years. There is no dis- tinction in principle between the two cases. Public policy may as well control the nomination as fix the age of the candidate. Indeed, we find a most significant and weighty authority for this principle in that clause of the Con- stitution of the United States which provides for the selection of a president by the house of representa- tives from the three highest candidates in the elec- toral college. Here is, in effect, an added qualifica- tion for the office of president. The candidate must not only be a native-born citizen, and have attained the age of thirty-five years, but he must also be one of the three persons receiving the highest number of votes in the electoral college. No matter if he have the qualification of citizenship and of age ; no matter even if he have received a majority of the popular vote — all this would make no difference. He would still be ineligible, and all votes given for him would be void. It is the manner of presentation for the office which is here controlled by the Constitution, and this is the exact principle proposed in the fore- going plan. Nor does this plan contemplate any undue inter- ference with the right of suffrage. Its principle in ITS ABUSES AND THEIR REMEDY. 125 this respect will be found somewhat analogous to and no more arbitrary and oppressive than that con- tained in the registry laws prevailing in many of the States, the constitutionality of which has never been questioned. By these registry laws the citizen who has not registered his name within the specified time, and in the proper office, is disfranchised. So in the plan proposed he would lose his vote if he cast it for a candidate who had not come regularly and lawfully before the people for their suffrages. If a majority of the electors of a State should refuse or neglect to register, the minority of registered voters, however small, would control the elections. So, also, — and perhaps this is a more strictly analogous illustration — if the majority of the electors of a State should choose to vote for a citizen under the constitutional age for governor, their votes wou'ld be void, and the candidate who was eligible, however small his vote, would be declared elected. But it is needless to multiply illustrations. The principle would seem too plain for question. It is only its proposed application to a new field and a jurisdiction never assumed by the law that gives it an unfamiliar look, and makes a word of defense proper. In conclusion, it is believed that the plan for the legal organization and control of the caucus system thus briefly set forth in this essay will be found, on examination, to be without difficulty in law and in accordance with the plainest principles of moral equity. It would be the natural complement to the working of our political machinery ; the reaching down to the foundations of our political edifice. 126 THE CAUCUS SYSTEM. Some reform is -imperatively demanded. The cau- cus is an institution of our politics too vital and too full of moment to our national prosperity and life to be left longer without any legal safeguards or restraints, a subject of accident and a prey to fraud. This vast field of political influence lying back of the law, but controlling the law, must be occupied. This acknowledged source and fountainhead of all political power must be cleansed and guarded, so that henceforth all its streams may be pure and invigorating. If the great party which carried the country safely and triumphantly through the terrible crisis of the Civil war, and which is now successfully grappling with the difficult and momentous questions of recon- struction, shall lead the way in this reform, it will add another to its many titles to the gratitude of posterity and the enduring plaudits of history. speech to republican state convention; On taking the chair, Mr. May said : — I return you my profoundest thanks for the high honor you have done me in selecting me to pre- side over your deliberations. We are assembled as the representatives of the Republican party of Michi- gan, charged with the delicate and responsible duty of selecting Republican standard-bearers for 1866. The campaign which we this day open is one of the gravest and most momentous in all our political history. Through the treachery of a president who owes his position to Republican yotes, — a treachery almost unexampled in the history of public men, — it is now proposed to reconstruct the Union in the interest of those who for four years sought to destroy it. It was the great Republican, loyal organization which we represent to-day that carried the country safely through the late tremendous contest. [Ap- plause.] That organization never had a disloyal man in its ranks. [Applause.] Can any other party say as much .'' Can the country now safely leave this great question of reconstruction — the recon- struction of the Union in the interest of justice and liberty — in the hands of the men who during the war had sympathy only for slavery and rebellion .'' The country looks to-day to the same great loyal organization for future safety and peace. We want ' As reported in the Detroit daily papers. 128 SPEECH TO REPUBLICAN STATE CONVENTION. peace; we want peace and order and law — the same to-day as we wanted them during the perilous hours of the late great contest, when we so eagerly- poured out our blood and treasure to secure them. Can the country safely leave this great question in the hands of those men who practically and efficiently aided in the disruption of the Union by their votes given "on the side of the Rebellion, or those who more openly took up arms against the government ? No ; we can not trust the country in such hands. We want peace and safety and order, and we must have them through justice. We must reconstruct the pil- lars and columns of this great Union, upon the endur- ing foundations of eternal justice, so that this nation shall stand for ages, the delight and admiration of the world. We can not safely restore to the coun- cils of the nation the same men who in 1 professorships ; and the point I make upon this act of 1837 is, that it clearly and positively shows that such was not the understanding at the outset. It must be remembered that this act was in force up to the adoption of the constitution of 18o() ; that the University was operated under it, and the regents were controlled by it during all that time. Hence we have here the very best evidence of the original Legislative intent and construction upon the subject. And as the result of it all, we see the Legislature, as the immediate representative of the people, ac- cepting the grant, establishing the University, creat- ingthe board of regents, giving them numerous minute directions as to their duties, and expressly limiting their powers in the matter which we have now before us, and retaining full control over the University. It was here the Legislature, which, acting all the while for the people in the execution of the trust im- posed by the grant, created and gave the breath of life to this board of regents, who were to be but its stewards and servants, with no more power or au- thority than they derived from this very act. And the regents so understood it then, and continued to 214 ARf.UMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. discharge their duties as marked out for them by the Legislature, obeying in all things, great and small, the mandates of the superior power. Certainly, nothing more is needed to show that this right of Legislative control over the University was exercised unquestioned up to LS50. Has any new rule been adopted since ? This now becomes an important inquiry, and its answer is decisive of this case. IIL THE CONSTITUTION OF 1850 ^ NO NEW RULE ADOPTED. Coming now to the constitution of 1850, 1 contend, your honors, that no new rule on this subject was adopted by that instrument. I will not stop here to discuss the validity and effect of such a rule if it could clearly be found in the constitution, — in plain oppo- sition, as I insist it would be, to the clear and ex- press understanding between the State and the gen- eral government, — for happily no such radical change can be discovered in it ; no evidence of any intention on the part of its framers to inaugurate a new and different rule for the government of the University. The only material change made by the constitu- tion of 1850 with reference to the University was in the clause making the regents elective instead of appointable, as they had previously been ; that is all. Section ^), art. 13. It is evident from the face of the instrument that the framers of the constitution of 1850 took the regents as they found them, with their powers and ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 215 functions as defined, and then simply made them elective by the people, without intending to add to or take from their authority. This is certainly a fair inference from the language employed and from the absence of any language clearly enlarging their powers. For it would have been easy to have used such language as would have left no doubt upon the question. I do not propose to discuss here, under this head of the argument, the force and effect of the words used in Article 13 of the constitution as bearing upon the main question. My present purpose is to show that we have no evidence anywhere, either in the lan- guage of the constitution, the debates of the conven- tion, or outside understanding in any quarter, of any intention at the time to change the rule that had so long prevailed in the government of the University. I am contending here for the point that there was an unbroken understanding from the beginning clear up to 1855, up to the inception of this controversy upon the subject of homeopathy, that the control of the University was in the hands of the Legislature, and that the regents were simply overseers and agents, subject always to the will of the people who were their principals and masters. IV. THE RIGHT AGAIN ASSERTED AND E.KERCLSED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF 1851. I come now, if your honors please, to the act of 1851, passed immediately after the adoption of the consti- tution of 1859, an act reorganizing the University under that instrument. 1 Comp. Laws, p. 11<)8. 21f) ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. Here I find this right of control for which we con- tend in this case most fully asserted and exercised. Indeed, if we look at the act carefully, and weigh it as a contemporaneous exposition and construction of the constitution, made, as it was, largely by the same hands, it would seem to be conclusive of this whole question. See Cooley's Const. Lim., p. 67. It is contended here that the regents have all power over the University, and that they derive this power from the constitution of 1850. And yet we find this Legislature of 1851 reclothing the regents with power and. authority the same as the Legislature of 1837 had originally done ; reinvesting them with the same functions which they had under the old statute when they were appointed instead of elected, and stopping there, without any recognition of the enlargement of their powers by the new constitution. Is this consistent with the claim which is now made for the regents } Again, the act of 1851 is replete with commands and directions to the regents in regard to the gov- ernment of the University, extending even to the minutest particulars. They are not only repeatedly told that " they shall have power " to do this and to do that, but they are also as repeatedly commanded that "they sJialV do this and do that. Take, for instance, the directions that the regents "shall make provision for keeping a set of meteoro- logical tables at the University;" that the regents "shall provide for the arrangement and selection of a course or courses of study in the University ; " that the regents "shall make an exhibition of the affairs of the University;" that certain monies "shall be ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 217 expended by the regents in keeping the University- building in good condition ;" that the regents "may erect from time to time such buildings as are necessary;" that the regents "shall have power to expend so much of the interest arising from the University fund as may be necessary for the improv- ing and ornamenting the University grounds ;" that " it shall be the duty of the board of regents to organize and establish branches of the University," in certain cases. Still other instances might be given, but these are enough. On the very face of this act of IS.')!, in every sec- tion, sentence, and line of it, is clearly implied the right of the Legislature to control the University. Now I ask what becomes of the claim that the regents were made an independent body by the constitution of 1850, and that it was so understood then and afterward ? Could the Legislature of 1851 have so understood it .-' If so, why these numerous commands and directions so clearly inconsistent with the exercise of independent authority by the regents ? There can be but one conclusion from all this. The Legislature of 1851 did uot understand that their authority and control over the University had been abrogated or impaired. Nobody so understood it then. Nobody claimed it, not even the regents themselves, until long afterward. Even to-day, in every other thing but this matter of homeopathy, the regents are acting under this statute of IS.il, obeying it still in all other particulars. They have thus recognized the power of the Legis- lature every year since this act was passed and they 21cS ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. now are carrying on the University under it as a fundamental law and charter. Have we not here, your honors, a strong case of legislative construction, the legislative department being the first one called upon to act, and that too so soon after the adoption of the constitution ? I submit that this construction and interpretation by the legislative department of the State government, which has been continually and consistently held clear up to the act of 187*3, is entitled to great respect in this court. Cooley's Const. Lim., p. 38. IV. THE RIGHT NOT QUESTIONED UNTIL THE ACT OF 1855 ON THE SUBJECT OF HOMEOPATHY — NA- TURE OF THE PRESENT CONTROVERSY. May it please the court, there never was any pre- tense that this statute of 1851, with its plain asser- tion of superior power and its manifold assumptions of authority over the regents, violated the constitu- tion. To this day that act has remained unquestioned and has been obeyed in all things. Not until the Legislature of 1855 amended the act of 1851 by add- ing the proviso requiring that there "shall always be at least one professor of homeopathy in the medical department" did any question arise. Nor then did the regents at first fully rely upon the unconstitu- tionality of the amendment, for while technically raising the point, they nevertheless did entertain the question of compliance with the law, professing a half willingness to obey it " out of respect to the expressed wishes of the Legislature." The People, etc., vs. the Regents, 4 Mich., p. !>8. ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 219 And again, at a more recent day, they have made a professed compliance with this very law, by formal resolutions of their board, the ground of an applica- tion to this court for the conditional appropriation by the act of 1. The "specific object" here, as stated in the grant, was "to support a University in such a manner as the Legislature may prescribe!' This language must be taken together ; it is all descriptive of the ''object." Congress did not endow a University to be under the control of a church, synod, council, or irresponsible board of regents. By accepting the grant, the State promised that it should not be. This promise should be kept. ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 225 But there is still another important legal rule of construction which will assist us in the effort for a true understandinfT of the words in this section of the constitution which we are now discussing. I refer to the well-known principle that the whole instrument is to be examined where there is a doubt upon the construction of any section. Cooley's Const. Lim., p. 57. Each part of the constitution must be examined in the light of every other part. The constitution was adopted as a whole, and it must be compared with itself. If we have a doubtful clause, standing by itself, it may be made plain by comparison with other clauses. So says this rule of construction which all courts and judges recognize and obey. Now, if your honors please, let me apply this rule to the case before the court. Happily we shall not be left in doubt as to the sense in which the framers of the constitution of 1S5() used this word "supervi- sion " and the other kindred words which are grouped around it. The very first section of the article on education provides that the "superintendent of pub- lic instruction shall have the general supervision of public instruction, and his duties shall be prescribed by law." Here we have a demonstration of the whole argu- ment and from an authority which can not be ques- tioned. "General supervision ;" precisely the words used in reference to the regents — and in the same article and connection — upon the subject of educa- tion. Now, what is a fair and reasonable conclusion from this language .'' Can we not see here plainly that the constitutional convention did not mean by «5 226 ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. this language to give the regents a power superior to the Legislature, for who does not know that the superintendent of public instruction is not invested by the same words with any such power ? And to put the matter beyond all question, his duties are to be " prescribed by law ;" in other words, by the Leg- islature. Why now, I ask, may not the Legislature also " prescribe " for the regents, when their power is measured by precisely the same words in the con- stitution ? These questions can be answered only in one way, and I leave this point without further dis- cussion, for no more is needed. The light which shines from this first section of the article upon edu- cation completely dispels any darkness or doubt which might have rested upon the section which we have under consideration. I do not need to use argument where we have demonstration. I will not pause here to comment upon the mani- festly absurd and contradictory results which would flow from the construction put upon this clause in question by the learned counsel for the regents ; to test their construction by its practical effect and consequences, nor to point out the analogies be- tween the case of the board of regents managing the University, and that of the various boards having a like charge over our asylums, and other State educa- tional and eleemosynary institutions. These points are very fully covered by the able brief of my re- spected and learned associate in this argument, and they therefore require no special care at my hands. But before I pass from this head of the argument, I must deny, emphatically, the position taken by the learned counsel on the other side, that the conven- ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 227 tion debates show that his construction of the clause in question is the true one. I do not so read the debates. I do not find in them any warrant for such an inference. The framers of the constitution did not allude at all to the question we have here, though they did divide in sentiment, and express anxiety upon the policy of making the regents elective — of throwing their selection into the hands of political parties and conventions. Con. Debates, pp. 782-824, 802-804. This was the only question, your honors, which they discussed, and they passed no opinion upon the extent of power which they were conferring upon the regents. What concerned them was simply the man- ner of their selection. But is it not amazing, if the convention intended to make a new rule, and clothe the regents with abso- lute and independent power, that in all the debates upon the subject no member even- hinted at such an intention .' Have I not a right to draw a strong and overwhelming conclusion from this, and to insist that the convention debates, so far from helping the cause of the regents here, are very damaging to the claim which is set up in their behalf.' No help, cer- tainly, can be derived from that quarter to bolster up the pretension that the regents are an independent and irresponsible body in the State. Finally, upon this head, I invoke that rule of con- struction which has been so strongly affirmed by this court, and which holds that an act of the Legislature, not expressly prohibited by the constitution, or by necessary hnplication, can not be declared void as a violation of that instrument. Sears v. Cottrell, 5 228 ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. Mich., p. 2.')1 ; Twitchell v. Blodgett, 13 Mich., p. 162. Surely I must be justified in saying that the statute in question here has enough to support it to create at least a doubt of its unconstitutionality, and thus to entitle it, under the cases just cited, to every pos- sible presumption in its behalf. VI. THE TRUE RELATIONS OF THE LEGISLATURE AND THE REGENTS TO THE UNIVERSITY. What then, may it please the court, are the true legal relations between the regents and the Legisla- ture, and of both to the University.-' This is the solution of the whole problem. I maintain that this grant from the general govern- ment was to the people of Michigan, and that it was placed, in the first instance, subject to the control of the Legislature, and that this was done with a purpose and with a far-reaching design. The State, after accepting the grant with this understanding, by an act of the Legislature, which we have already dis- cussed, establishedand organized the L^niversity, and created the board of regents, giving them all the power they had, and making them subject to legisla- tive control. Afterward the constitution of l.S."SO, as I contend, only continued their power, simply making them elective. They were thus constituted, as they had been before, a legal body, with certain well- defined and well-understood duties to perform, and which they were to perform in obedience to the will and direction of a higher power. In other words, ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 229 they were to " supervise" the University inside the bounds of law and the limits set by the Legislature. The power and right of " supervision " thus given to the regents, I insist, does not authorize them to create or restrict any of the organic parts of the University. The word itself, as I have already shown, does not imply any right of this kind. To supervise, manage, and guard an institution already in being is a very different thing from creating or originating that institution or any of its parts. In the case we have here there was the creation of an addition to the present structure and organism of the University ; the founding of professorships of a new school of medicine in the institution. The regents, I contend, could not do this. They could simply gov- ern, not organize. This required the act of the Leg- islature, the supreme power in the State. The people who established the University in the first instance are alone able to direct in such a matter. The regents are simply to superintend that which has been established as a University. Their duties are strictly in the nature of overseership and agency, not in the way of organization. Hut again, I insist, your honors, that it would be not only a violation of the express terms of the grant, but entirely inconsistent and anomalous, under our system of government, to concede to the regents the power which they claim here. They ask us to concede, they ask this court to hold, that they are an independent, absolute, and autocratic power in the State. It is, in effect, gravely contended that the people of Michigan have, in three or four lines of their constitution, built up a body of men to control their 230 ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. favorite and most cherished institution for all time hereafter, as they shall please, without responsibility to the Legislature, to the people, or to anybody. Can this be so ? Nor will it do to say that the regents are re- sponsible to the people because they are elected by them. That is not legally or politically true. The people in a political system like ours act through representatives and not after the manner of the an- cient Athenian democracy. The State of Michigan, in a political and governmental sense, means the leg- islative, the executive, and the judicial departments of Michigan. And in the matter of expressing the will and wishes of the State in all things, the Legis- lature is the only authorized voice and organ of the people. Cooley's Const. Lim., p. 87. In the case we have here there can be no such thing as any legal responsibility to the people by a board of men who are elected separately, scatter- ingly, for terms of eight years. This, of itself, would destroy any collective responsibility. It is the State which here is having its work done by these regents, who are its servants, and it must be to their rightful master that they must stand or fall. Their responsi- bility is not to the political party or to the political caucus, but to the State whose will is only made known through the Legislature. So I say that an independent board of regents would be a political anomaly in the State. The stream can not rise higher than its source. " The Legislature is the supreme power of a State." Webster's Dictionary. There can be, of course, but one supreme power ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 231 in a State. But clearly, your honors, it must be supreme, absolute, irresponsible power, which is claimed here. For if the regents have the power in this matter which is claimed, then they have all power. If they can do this thing, then they can do anything and everything. Then the act of lM5l, with its numerous directions and commands to the re- gents, was but legislative interference, unauthorized and to be resented. It is well to look this pretense full in the face. There is no compromise or middle ground. It is all power, or it is power subordinate to the will of the people. But nobody has ever claimed that the Legislature of l(S5l transcended its powers, and the regents, as we have already seen, have obeyed that statute in all things. Now I ask, in the light of this, if the Legis- lature may dictate to the regents in the matter of keeping a meteorological table, may they not in rela- tion to the establishment of a chair of homeopathy .'' If they may interfere in the smaller thing, so inti- mately connected with mere property custody and administration duty, why may they not in the greater one which so vitally affects the larger interest of the University ? I think it will be difficult for the learned and astute counsel for the regents to tell why they may not. If it be claimed that the regents derive the power to regulate and control the number and kind of pro- fessorships in the University, from the clause in the constitution as explained and amplified by the lan- guage of the statute of 185L giving them the right "to fix, increase, and reduce the number of profess- ors," then I reply, /irsi, that this is a very different 232 ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. thing from creating new professorships of a different school, and second^ that in so far as this right is de- rived from the Legislature, it is, in the case we have here, expressly qualified by the act of 1855, provid- ing that there shall always be at least one professor of homeopathy in the medical department, and by the act of 1873, which is a legislative command for the appointment of two professors of the same school. And by the act of 1851, the University was " con- tinued under the name and style heretofore used." Have we not here a hint that no change was to be made in any important respect .' Such, in brief, may it please the court, I conceive to be the true legal relations of the Legislature and the regents to the University. Such used to be, be- fore this unfortunate controversy arose, the general understanding, and with that understanding we had peace and harmony. That we have now strife and discord is due, in my judgment, not so much to any real difficulty in the law or its application, nor to any suddenly ascertained imperfection in a system which has worked so long and so well, but to the inevitable conflict which must come in courts, in legislative halls, and among the people when ancient systems are disturbed in the effort of the new to sup- plant the old. ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 23?> VII. THE GRANT FOR THE SUPPORT OF A UNIVERSUrV — WHAT IS A UNIVERSITY, AND WHAT SHOULD BE INCLUDED IN IT? May it please the court, I come now to a most important question which I deem to be involved in this argument. The grant of these lands by Con- gress was "for the support of a University." In all dealings with this subject by the State through any of its departments or officers, this prime and declared object of the beneficent provision should not be lost sight of. We have no business with these lands or their proceeds for a single day or hour unless we devote them with sacred fidelity to this object. The constitution of 1850 has made solemn provision for this trust, and has declared that the grant " shall remain a perpetual fund, to be inviolably appro- priated and applied to the specific object of the orig- inal gift," etc. We can not keep good faith with the general government, we can not properly interpret the constitution or pass upon the constitutionality of these statutes in question, without keeping constantly in view, as the pole star of our action, the great pur- pose of Congress, representing the people of the United States in first reserving and afterward dedi- cating these lands to the State of Michigan. And this beneficent purpose becomes all the plainer from the fact that the endowment for a University followed, or rather came hand in hand with one for the support of schools, thus making provisions for a broad system of popular education. 1 Comp. Laws., p. 38. 284 ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. The intention thus evidently was to bestow upon the new State, as her magnificent dowry upon enter- ing the Union, an ample and unfailing fund from which to support, for all time to come, a full and per- fect educational system, beginning in the humblest primaries, expanding into the graded and high schools, and surmounted, at last, by a noble Univer- sity, the fruit and crown of all educational systems and ideas. It was not a seminary, it was not an academy, it was not a college which was thus pro- vided for, but a University. What is a University, and what is included in the term ? Here I must speak briefly and in general terms. The history and details on this subject, though inter- esting and important, can not be given. The primary and ancient signification of the word "university" was completeness. In this sense Cicero and the Latin writers used it. Modernly, and as now used, it signifies an educational institution where a broad curriculum of study, including the arts, the sciences, the classics, and all useful knowledge, is taught. Following the idea implied in the original derivation and use of the word, the main purpose of a University is to furnish a complete education. It is an assemblage of colleges — ^ like the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford. "A University is properly a universal school in which are taught all branches of learning." Web- ster's Dictionary. Our University, as established, includes the three great departments of literature, science, and the arts, of law, and of medicine. It is this last which now concerns us. ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 235 Each of these three great departments, I maintain, is to furnish a full and complete education in all things pertaining to it, or the fundamental idea of a University is violated. The qualities of fullness and completeness must extend to all its parts. In per- fect consonance with this, the statute of 18o7, estab- lishing the University, declared that " the object of the University shall be to provide the inhabitants of this State with the means of acquiring a thorough knowledge of the various branches of literature, science, and the arts." Rev. Statute of 184(), p. 216. And the statute of 1851, reorganizing the Univer- sity, after the adoption of the constitution, also declared that "the University shall provide the inhabitants of this State with the means of acquiring a thorough knowledge of the various branches of literature, science, and arts," thus echoing and repeat- ing the same language. 1 Comp. Laws., p. 1103. What then should be taught in the " medical department" of a University.', — Clearly everything which pertains to the science or practice of medicine Is it insisted here that homeopathy is not proved to belong to the science of medicine ? If so, I reply that that is a matter resting entirely in opinion ; for the science of medicine is not an exact science, and thus capable of demonstration. Is it a theory, sim- ply, and one on which the doctors differ. A learned physician of the old school, writing in our leading cyclopedia, admits this, and says: — '"The effect produced by medicines is known by practical experience, through long ages of observa- tion, but the modus operandi is still too little under- stood to warrant the assumption of a doctrine of any 236 ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. kind. The human being is not yet dynamically understood ; its modes of action in the physical or- ganism are abundantly mysterious, and until these problems are completely solved, the art of healing must be founded chiefly on a knowledge of effects, which knowledge is obtained from practical experi- ence alone." New Am. Cyclopedia, title Allopathy. It is no part of my purpose or duty in this argu- ment, your honors, to discuss the relative merits of these two opposing schools of medicine. That ques- tion lies outside of the record here, and must be re- ferred to another tribunal. The tribunal which is to settle such questions must be a body of men, edu- cated in the whole science and practice of medicine ; studying its laws, and observing its effects, and push- ing investigations into the region of new discoveries in the healing art. But it is for this very reason that I insist that the University is the proper and natural place where this education should be acquired, and where these investigations should be made. Above all theories of the truth is the absolute truth itself. There is a truth, — an ultimate right rule in the science of medicine, as in everything else, — and these doc- trines and systems and schools are but the gropings of men after it. VIII. HOMEOPATHY ENTITLED TO A PLACE IN THE UNIVERSITY. But aside from all these considerations, I maintain, if your honors please, that homeopathy, as a school or theory of medical science, has risen to such dignity and importance that it is justly entitled to a place in the University. ARCxUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 237 We must not from preconceived opinions shut our eyes to plain facts. This system of medicine which is now asking admission into the University — nay, which the University has been commanded by the people's representatives to receive — has already conquered half the civilized world. I-'ounded by a man whose eminent learning and devoted self-sacri- fice have placed him among the world's heroes and reformers, it has, in the last fifty years, so fruitful in great improvements, risen to commanding influence and recognition, alike among the common people and among scientists and scholars, and now fairly disputes the field with its venerable adversary. Originating in Germany, that land of master think- ers and profound investigators and scholars, it has spread all over Europe, so that to-day nearly every European government has acknowledged W, and some have directed it to be taught in their universi- ties together with the old system. Russia, Austria, Prussia, and the German States have established and support a hospital for both practices. Switzerland has not only provided hospital privileges for the new system, but orders it taught in her universities. Italy has also the most liberal provisions on the sub- ject. Indeed, on the Continent in the great uni- versities and among learned men the new school is fast becoming, if it be not already, the more popu- lar and commanding of the two systems. Leipsic, the city which once, in the spirit of these respond- ents, banished the great founder, has now erected his image in monumental bronze, where it proudly pro- claims to all beholders the contrition of his perse- cutors and the triumph of his ideas. 238 ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. In this country the progress of the new school has been scarcely less marked and rapid. Its advocates, its institutions, and its practitioners may be found in all parts of the Union. There are two homeopathic colleges in Missouri, two in Ohio, two in Pennsyl- vania, two in New York, one in Illinois, one in Massachusetts. Very many of the States — I think a majority — have acknowledged the system in their legislation. Massachusetts has appropriated a large amount for founding the Boston Univer- sity with a medical department in which homeopathy is taught. New York has just completed an insane asylum at a very large cost, in which homeopathic treatment is alone to be employed. In every city and large town in the United States the phy- sicians of this school may be found, in nearly equal' numbers with those of the old school, and having equally as good a practice, going into the best and most intelligent families. There are one hun- dred homeopathic physicians in Chicago, eighty in St. Louis, and probably a proportionately large num- ber in every large city in the country. Nor does this practice of the new school stop in the cities and large towns ; it is to be found in the country and rural districts also. Every city, village, and hamlet in this State is supplied with homeopathic physicians. There are more than four hundred in this State alone. But recently, the National Institute of this school, which met at Niagara Falls, was said to be numerically a larger body than its rival, the National Medical Association, which held its sessions in De- troit the week before. Shall it be said, your honors, that Michigan is so ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 281) bigoted, so narrow, and so far behind the age as to refuse to let such a system, with such recognition and influence all over the civilized world, be even investigated or studied in her great University ? I protest against such exclusion in the name of the law. which, I insist, forbids it ; in the name of the University whose good name will be tarnished, and whose usefulness will be impaired by it ; and in the name of human progress itself, which imperiously demands that all bars and doors of ancient prejudice be broken and opened to its victorious march. Let it not be said that the University will be in- jured by the admission of homeopathy. I have no faith in such chimeras and prophecies of evil. On the contrary, I hold that the University can not afford to be thus narrow and ungenerous. Her arms should be extended wide to embrace every honest effort after the truth in science. She will never be harmed by being broad and generous and catholic ; by being imbued with the spirit of the age and abreast with its progress. Only narrowness and bigotry will hurt her. I know, your honors, that predictions of evil have never been wanting when innovations have been proposed in the ancient order of things Such pre- dictions were heard in the University when it was proposed to admit women to its privileges. They were repeated when women were admitted as stu- dents to this very medical department. And yet the University survives with all its prosperity, and all men now see that it is broader and grander than ever for this action. And so it has been with the history and progress 240 ARC;UMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. of medical science. Every step in that great science, from its first crude half barbaric outlines to its pres- ent commanding position as one of the great depart- ments of human knowledge, has been opposed by prejudice and custom, and made the occasion of the direst prophecies of evil. Two hundred and fifty years ago Harvey announced the discovery of the great fact of the circulation of the blood, and brought upon his head the denunciation of the whole medical faculty. But he was right and they were wrong, and medical science, without that fact, would be to-day what astronomy would be without Galileo's immortal discovery. Less than a hundred years ago Jenner announced the discovery of vaccination, a process which is of such incalculable benefit to the human race ; which prevents and assuages one of the most terrible human scourges. The denunciations visited upon the disciples and followers of Hahnemann by the advocates of the old school are mild in comparison with those which this great benefactor had to endure. He was assailed by the doctors of his day as a reck- less, dangerous innovator, and an ignorant charlatan ; his discovery was pronounced "bestial" and "dia- bolical," and the most vehement predictions of wide- spread contagion, contamination, and disease were made if it should be adopted in practice. These instances are enough, though more might be given. It is the same old story now ; the customs, the habits, the prejudices of the past contending against the spirit of inquiry and progress which is abroad in this age, and which so lifts up and blesses mankind. ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 241 CONCLUSION. Finally, may it please the court, I urge that the highest considerations of public safety, welfare, and good, as well as the public right, unite in demanding that the principles of this new school be taught in the University. The office of the medical adviser and practitioner, of the physician, is one which is intimatel}' and closely connected with the tenderest and most sacred interests of the people. These men have our confi- dence as perhaps in all the relations of life we give it to no others. They enter our homes on their mis- sions of healing and mercy ; they have our lives and the lives of those who are dear to us in their hands. Is it not, I ask, of the first importance, of the highest consequence, that these men be educated for a trust so sacred .'' For our sakes, as well as their own, they should have the full advantages and opportunities of the University ; the general culture which they would drink in with its very air ; the instruction in anatomy, physiology, and surgery, with the advan- tages of clinics and the dissecting room ;*the study of pharmacy and chemistry, with its experiments ; and, besides all these, the privilege of access to a medical museum without a superior in the West. Every one of these studies, so important and indis- pensable to the proper education of a physician, is common to both schools of medicine, and should be pursued by both at a University which is the com- mon property and interest of the whole people of the State. Let it not be replied that the physicians of the old i6 242 ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. school are at hand to obey our call and that they have had and can have the advantages of our University. The people have the right to choose their physicians, but the more than four hundred practitioners of the new school in our State are shut out from the privileges of our highest seat of learn- ing. Is it said that they can be educated elsewhere .■* What ostracism is that .-* More than half the people of Michigan — a majority, as from this record I have a right to assume — are the believers in, and the patrons of, this new school of medicine, which every day is growing and increasing in numbers, power, and influ- ence. And yet I am to be told that they have no rights in the University which is an institution belonging alike to all the people of the State, and that their sons and daughters who may desire to be- come physicians must be sent by them beyond our borders, to States and communities more tolerant more generous, and more just. Is this right ? Is this for the good of the people of Michigan .'' Can we justify ourselves in such a policy of exclusion and bigotry by any sound rules of law, of -reason, or of morals.' Our University is made free from any denominational control in matters of religion ; should it not be equally free from the control of one school of medicine to the entire exclusion of the other.' Homeopathy does not demand that allopathy shall be driven out of the University. All it asks is that it shall be admitted. I do not stand here, your honors, to assail or impugn any man's rights or opinions or motives in this matter. But I do stand here to plead for equality before the law ; for the right of equal repre- sentation, a right so sacred and fundamental in our ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 248 system of government. This right is inherent in a republic, or the commonwealth itself is but an organ- ized political falsehood and delusion. The men of the old school are undoubtedly honest and earnest in their belief, but so are the men of the new school ; and this is a republic, and not a despotism. It will not do, your honors, to say that this court is at the head of a co-ordinate department of the State government, and therefore represents the sovereignty of the people as much as does the Legislature. The judiciary, it is true, is an inde- pendent department of the government ; but its powers, as clearly marked out and defined in our political system, are to interpret and construe the law, not to make it. Only the legislative depart- ment can do that, the department through which the people directly act and speak. On this great question, one of the most important which has ever arisen in this court or in the history of the State, the people have spoken through that department in words of unmistakable import. They have written their will and direction in these statutes, and have demanded that the regents open the doors of the University to the admission of homeopathy. They have demanded this, not in the arbitrary and wanton exercise of power ; not to destroy or injure, in the least, the noble University which they cherish and love ; not to persecute or crush out the opposing system of medicine ; but in the name of common right and justice ; in the name of equal privilege and the public welfare ; and finally, in the name of that supreme rule of equity and fair dealing, which is the highest protection of the citizen and the chiefest glory of the State. TRIAL BY JURY. We have read with great satisfaction an address upon this subject delivered by Hon. Charles S. May, at the commencement of the Law Department of the University of Michigan. It consists of a studied defense of the jury system, couched in dignified and stately, and yet at times in animated, language. It is, indeed, such an address as would have done honor to Edward Everett. — S^ Louis Law Journal. Mr. President and Gentlonen : I SHALL use the hour which custom gives me on this occasion in speaking to you of one of the great institutions of English justice and the common law ; an institution of high concern to the State and all its citizens ; of supreme and practical interest to every lawyer — the trial by jury. It is a theme of most ample dimensions, and I shall not undertake to give all its history or all its learn- ing. In the limits of such an address as this I shall only take a few views of the subject, and these chiefly of a practical character. About to enter, as these young men are, upon the practice of the law, I can think of no topic more fruitful in suggestions to me, or likely to be of more interest and profit to them. ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF TRIAL BY JURY. The trial by jury is Anglo-Saxon in its origin ; a part of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence. Greece did not know it, nor Rome. The Grecian dicasts, the Roman * An address delivered at the Commencement of fhe Law Depart- ment of the University of Michigan, March 24, 1875. 244 TRIAL BY JURY. 245 jtidiccs, the Saxon coiiipiwgators, these may have sug- gested and helped to form it, but each essentially dif- fered from it as we know it to-day. For the institution in its present form we go back in English history to the reign of Henry II, that same sagacious, far-seeing, and intrepid monarch who waged such stout and un- yielding battle with his powerful and ungrateful sub- ject, Thomas a Becket, for the supremacy of the civil over the ecclesiastical power. In the long line of English sovereigns, none has done a greater service to his countrymen and his race than this statesman king, who put the church below the state, and incor- porated into English jurisprudence the trial by jury in the place of the senseless and barbarous trials by duel and by wager of battle. Since the Grand Assize of 1 I7skine and Choate were almost equally great as jury lawyers, their lives and careers present a series of sharp and striking contrasts. Erskine, the scion of a noble Scotch family, with imperfect early education, and after years wasted in a most opposite and dissimilar pursuit, took up the law when weary and disgusted with the life of an army officer in time of peace. Choate, a New Eng- land farmer's son, came early to the bar, after full preparation, and worthily crowned with academic 280 TRIAL BY JURY. and collegiate honors. Erskine never became a scholar, and was never distinguished for learning in the law or wide reading of literature. Choate in all his subsequent career was a laborious student, and undoubtedly ranked higher in legal and general learning than any other advocate of his time. In the work which these men did at the bar the same con- trast is presented. It happened to Erskine to be employed in a remarkable succession of great state trials, in which he became the advocate of the rights and liberty of the citizen against public despotism ; and in giving the deathblow to the doctrine of con- structive treason, and vindicating the right of free speech and a free press, he performed the noblest service to the law and the free constitution of the empire, and won unfading and immortal forensic hon- ors. Choate, on the contrary, was never privileged to argue a single case of great public political impor- tance, but was compelled to use his vast and varied powers in questions of mere private interest and dis- pute,- — a circumstance which in his last days he recalled with pathetic regret. So in the splendid and unequaled gifts which each brought to the bar they were still dissimilar. Er- skine, who commanded the higher power and the better art, spoke in singularly clear and felicitous language, in sentences short, and rich with beauty, and strong with logic, and not unworthy of the great models of I^nglish speech which he found and studied in Shakespeare, Milton, and Burke. Choate, whose learning was deeper, and whose vocabulary was wider and ampler, spoke in sentences of remarkable length and resounding sweep and rhythm, and aston- TRIAL BY JURY. 281 ished all by the amazing affluence and gorgeousness of his diction. Both were men of high imagination ; but while Choate was more poetical and subtile in his fancy, Erskine was more vivid, intense, and prac- tical. Choate dazzled and overwhelmed a jury; Erskine swept and mastered them. Choate more resembled Cicero, who was a rhetorician as well as an orator; while Erskine was more like Demosthenes, who was the greater master of true eloquence. In their personal appearance and outward manner, also, these great advocates were widely different. Erskine was fresh and buoyant, full of vivacity, and of fine and engaging presence ; Choate was angular and almost ungainly of form, of pale and haggard countenance, and with only the divine genius look- ing out from his deep and burning eyes to distin- guish him from an ordinary man. Possibly this may account for the fact that Erskine was full of personal vanity, while Choate was singularly modest and unenvious. But in the midst of these many contrasts one great and striking parallel stands out in their public careers. Each left the bar for a brief season for serv- ice in a legislative assembly, the one in the British House of Commons and the other in the Senate of the American Congress. Each wearied and failed in the new and uncongenial place ; and stranger coin- cidence still, — each met and quailed before a great parliamentary leader ; Erskine before the imperious orator and statesman, William Pitt, son of the great commoner of England, and Choate before another proud and arrogant parliamentary chieftain, Henry Clay, the great commoner of America. 282 TRIAL BY JURY. Returning now to the bar and the courts, after their legislative failures, the old contrast stands out again in their lives, even to the very close. Erskine went upon the chancellor's woolsack for a brief period, and then retired at fifty-seven from the bar and the courts. Choate returned from the Senate to the bar while yet in his prime, and gave thereafter his best powers and most brilliant efforts to his pro- fession. Erskine died at seventy-three, after a long, sad evening to his life, in which he missed the old excitement of the courts, and found no compensation in the love of books, that sweet solace of cultivated old age. Choate broke down suddenly at sixty, while yet in full practice, his nerves shattered by the long contentions of the forum ; dying prematurely, and missing what he had so longed to enjoy — a peaceful and restful evening to his stormy and labo- rious life, when he could forget the fiery encounters of the bar in the sweet studies and unfailing delights of the books he loved so well. And so in death the great advocates present their last sad contrast, as each missed the closing felicity of his life — the one in living too long, the other in dying too soon. CONCLUSION. Thus all too briefly and imperfectly have I sketched this great institution of the trial by jury, and, as I turn away from the theme, I deeply realize how much is left unsaid. The greatness of the subject has em- barrassed and oppressed me. In considering it our minds run back through many stormy scenes of Eng- lish history, through many great political changes and revolutions, to the early and memorable days TRIAL BY JURY. 283 when the foundations of constitutional freedom were laid in England by the first successors of the Con- queror. Then and there began to be builded the grand and majestic edifice of the common law, and into its solid masonry was wrought the trial by jury. There let it remain so long as the magnificent struc- ture shall stand. It has been a glory and a boon to England ; it is and will be a blessing and a glory to us. No man can safely predict what our national future will be. The events of our recent history have disturbed that easy and boastful confidence in our institutions and our future that once prevailed. I invoke no specters to rise in our national pathway ; I cast no horoscope of coming ills, but whatever the future, whether cloudless and serene or stormy and tempestuous, it will be well to hold on to the trial by jury. We may never have tyrants, we may never have Caesars, but if we should have them, they will seek to accomplish the downfall of free government, not by directly over- riding the Constitution, but by using the forms of law to strangle and subvert its spirit. No central despotism, no rule of moneyed or political monopolies can successfully control for tyrannical or sordid pur- poses an institution which derixes its life and power from the great, honest masses of the people. And here will be our safety. For the jury system is the handmaid of freedom. It catches and takes on the spirit of liberty, and grows and expands with the progress of constitu- tional government. In England, in the seventeenth century, under the tyranny of the Stuarts, a jury, at the instance of a cowardly and despotic king, sent 284 TRIAL BY JURY. the noble Russell and the brave Sidney to the block for constructive treason. A hundred years later, an English jury acquitted Lord Gordon, and Hardy, and Home Tooke, and Thelwell, on the same charge, although pressed by the whole power of king and government ; and a little later still, not all the influ- ence of the ministry, though aided by the savage energy of a chief justice of England, could ring from an honest and fearless English jury an unjust verdict against a poor and humble private citizen, who, all unaided by counsel, conducted his own defense. No ; civil liberty can not dispense with any of her armaments. She needs them all to battle with tyr- anny and oppression. Trial by jury is one of the chiefest of these. The noble panegyric which Black- stone pronounced upon it in his immortal commen- taries is well deserved, and if it be true, as he suggests, that possibly Rome, Sparta, and Carthage fell because they did not know it, let not England and America fall because they threw it away. THE FARMERS' MOVEMENT. ITS USES AND ABUSES — THE TRUE CONDITIONS OF THE FARMERS' PROSPERITY AND ADVANCEMENT. Ladies and Gentlcincn^ Farmers of St. Clair County : Your invitation to me to address you to-day is evidence of a broad and catholic spirit, and does you honor. I am not a granger, nor even a farmer but a lawyer ; a member of a class not held, I believe, in these days in especial favor by the farm- ing community. It is true I was a farmer's boy, and once did a full man's work upon the farm in the pioneer days of western Michigan. But you did not know that, and the fact does not, therefore, detract from your liberality. You honor yourselves, further, in reviving this feature of the annual fair. The address went out of our fairs when the fast horse came in. The horse has not left yet, but the address is gradually coming back ; and possibly at some distant day, in some far-off millennium of human intelligence, it may fairly compete in popular favor and interest with the horse race. You certainly make a good beginning and set a good example in this matter. Now, fellow citizens, I do not come here to-day to 1 An address delivered at the St. Clair County Fair, at Port Huron. Mich,, Oct. 14, 1875. 285 286 THE farmers' movement. waste this hour of talk, which should be profitable, in the commonplaces of eulogy and flattery upon the farmer and the farmer's calling. You would not thank me to do that, — you might suspect my motives if I did it, — and, more than that, I should be ashamed to do it. It does not need that I should say these things which have been so often said before. It is enough for the honor and dignity of your calling that it is the broad industry which con- stitutes the supporting base of all material pros- perity, of all social order, of all human advancement ; and it is sufficient for its healthfulness and beauty that it is carried on in the pure air and under the open heavens. Neither eloquence nor poetry is needed to emphasize facts like these. What, then, shall I say to you ? I can not tell you what I know about farming, for that is not worth telling, and besides, would soon make an end of my speech. Shall I confess, then, that I have nothing to say to you, and make my bow and retire ? — No I ladies and gentlemen, I shall make no such confes- sion as that, for I think I can find, outside of commonplace flattery, and outside of personal experience, something practical and profitable to say to you. You are an audience of farmers before me to-day. You probably are not all grangers, though many of you, possibly most of you, are. But all over the land, in the last two or three years, the farmers have been organizing into granges, so that the grange has come to be a power in the State ; a political power, courted and dreaded by political parties ; a business power, eagerly watched by business men ; a social power, beginning to be THE farmers' movement. 287 largely felt in bringing farmers and their families into closer and better social relations. All this has had the effect to make the farming class, their rights, their privileges, their grievances, and their demands, the topic of widespread public and private discussion. Pardon me now, if I improve this occasion in speak- ing to you of some of the true uses of this great organization which has come so suddenly into being ; of some of its possible abuses ; and of the true and best conditions, national and personal, for the prosperity and advancement of the farming class. Let me talk to you plainly, sincerely, and ear- nestly of these weighty and important matters. Of course I must speak to you as an outsider, simply as a citizen to other citizens, from my own point of view, and with no knowledge save that which is common to all. I yiekl to no man in my respect for the farming class, and they have my full and hearty sympathy in every just and reasonable demand ; but the truth is first of all to be spoken. THE BENEFITS OF ORGANIZATION — OBJECTS OF THE FARMERS' MOVEMENT. There can be no question about the benefits of organization for farmers as for everybody else. Whatever is worth having in society, in business, in politics, or religion is worth organizing for. Indeed, it can not ordinarily be obtained without organiza- tion. The old fable of the bundle of sticks teaches a new lesson every day. A single farmer, crying out for reform or for a redress of grievances, no matter how honest and earnest he may be, is a compara- tively^helpless and insignificent object, and his cry is 288 THE farmers' movement. lost in the mass. But let twenty thousand farm- ers stand with him, and echo his cry for redress, and they become an immense power in the State. Men will hear them who would not listen to him. The single drops are combined to make a Niagara of power. The embattled farmers of Lexington and Concord, who, one hundred years ago, " Fired the shot heard round the world," were few and insignificant in numbers, and could not have stood against the power of the British king. But when they were joined by their brethren of the other colonies, from Massachusetts to the Carolinas, they swept the power of the king into the sea, and made us a nation. Now, the farmers in their movement have simply availed themselves of this power of organization. They have combined with one another to promote the common objects in which they are interested. In this they have done well and wisely if the ends which they strive for are honorable and worthy. Nobody can blame them for working together for any good and laudable purpose. Are their purposes as they announce them, good and laudable ? If they are, then they should have the sympathy and hearty co-operation of every good citizen, of every other class, provided, of course, they pursue these ends by justifiable means. Primarily, I suppose, the object of the farmers' movement may be stated to be twofold ; first, for improvonent^ and second for protection. As to the first of these objects there can be no possible ques- tion. The farming class, like every other class THE farmers' movement. 289 needs improvement, and the effort for it is most praiseworthy. I can not stop here to go into details, but every man must commend this aspect of the farm- ers' movement. It is a great thing and a grand thing for farmers to resolve that they will associate and labor together to increase the special knowledge and culture and facilities needed in their calling ; that they will seek out all new improvements, and try all better methods of farming ; and especially that they will improve their social ancK intellectual condition, and bring families and neighbors together for the noble cultivation and the sweet satisfactions of the intelle,tual and social life. These are things most beneficent and beautiful, and would, themselves, repay all the effort which has been put forth and suf- fice to make the grange a name of honor and dignity. But what of the other great object — that of pro- tection .'' Is there any need of that .'' Can it be that in this land of constitutional freedom, where every man's rights are supposed to be s-acredly guarded by the law, that peaceful, law-abiding, hard-working farmers — a whole class, a most indispensable and useful class, c()mi)rising so large a part of our popu- lation — should need to organize themselves together for protection against anybody } If that be true, is it not a sad reflection upon our institutions and our civilization } Fellow citizens, however strange the fact may seem, I think it must be confessed that there is a strong element of justice in the claim which the grangers make, that they are compelled to combine for protec- tion against the strong and selfish forces by which they are surrounded. Nor is the fact so strange after 19 290 THE farmers' movement. all. Human nature asserts itself here and now as it has done elsewhere and always, and human nature is selfish and grasping. The law will not protect men against all the evils in society and the State. It covers only a limited field. Rack of the domain which the law surveys with its eye, and guards with its protecting hand, is a region where human passion and greed have large swing and play. THE GRIEVANCES COMPLAINED OF. Now it is largely here that the cause of complaint arises. You farmers claim, and justly, I think, that in the jostling and clashing and grinding together of these great forces of human nature, where the one supreme law is selfishness, and the one supreme end is to make money, you are frequently crowded too hard, oppressed, and trampled down, and your great industry put under tribute to the money kings and the money power. Vou complain, and justly, that after working hard, early and late upon your farms through the long year, the crops that you have gathered in spite of drought, and rust, and fly, and weevil, are decimated and wasted by the extortionate rates for transportation to market, by the costs and charges of useless middlemen, and by the payment of usurious interest and inordinate taxes. Here is the grievance of which you complain ; here is the tyranny which you have banded together to resist As a class, second to none in solid usefulness and moral worth, you are entitled to a full and fair hear- ing in the great court of public opinion, and to a full redress of wrongs whenever the remedy can be found. THE farmers' movement. 291 Fellow citizens, we can not get along in this coun- try peacefully and prosperously while any class is oppressed, while any industry is repressed and tram- pled down. That is not in accordance with the genius of our institutions ; that is not the spirit of American liberty. Now, fellow citizens, I must talk to you in a general way, of course, and without going into all the details of this matter. As I have already said, I think your cause of complaint is well founded, in the main at least, and that the American people should give ear to it. But granted that the evil exists, is there any remedy for it .'' and if so, what is it ? I think there is a remedy, and that it will appear plain and simple enough when we look at the real and true causes of this state of things of which the farmers com[)lain. Here is a great difficulty in the State, causing a paral- ysis of industry and the oppression of a class. How has it come about .-' The natural, normal working of the laws of trade would not produce it. Those laws work evenly and equally when not disturbed. Things have been so arranged and adjusted in this world by divine Providence that the mighty forces of com- merce, when left to themselves, move as evenly and truly as the tides of the ocean or the courses of the stars. Through all the great avenues and channels of trade, flows, with steady and majestic pulse beat, that which ever contributes to the calm health of nations. Now, if instead of regularity there is a fitful flow or obstruction ; if instead of health there is dis- ease, then we may know that the evil agency of man is here disturbing the currents of this great circula- tion. And so we have here, through such untoward 292 THE farmers' movement. agency, this unhealthy action in the body politic, this disturbance of the true relations between capital and labor, between the producing interests and the other commercial interests. The forms and symptoms of this great public disease are many and various. Here the arm of industry is withered and paralyzed ; there the life blood of trade is stagnant. Here, at the extremities, among the poorer classes, the circulation is feeble and fluctuating ; there, to the center and the head, is a flow that threatens congestion. The poor are growing poorer, the rich are growing richer ; and all over and everywhere in the land are monopolies and rings and unhealthy combinations of men prey- ing upon their neighbors. THE REMEDY — WHERE IT MUST BE FOUND. Now what is the remedy for this state of things .'' To follow and complete the figure, I would say restore the circulation ; remove the disturbing causes ; put things back in the old and healthy channels ; let the life blood of trade flow back from the engorged centers to the wasted extremities. But how can this be done .' That is a practical question, and demands a practical answer. Some men say that it can not be answered : that it can not be done ; that it is above the power of man, and that the whole thing must be left to work itself clear by the operation of laws which are beyond the reach alike of legislation and of public opinion. Still others claim that it can be done speedily and summarily by acts of Congress and the legislatures, and by the co-operation of the farmers themselves. Now I think in this matter, as in so many others, THE farmers' movement. 293 the truth will be found somewhere between these extreme positions. In the first place, the mischief is deep seated ; it has been some time in coming on, and it will take time to eradicate it. It can not be done in a day. And then I think it will take the law, and public opinion, and co-operation all combined, to bring about the remedy. It may not need much in the way of resort to the legislative power ; it may not be the best policy to bring on a contest and a conflict in the legislatures and the courts with the railroad power on the question of transportation, but the weapons of the law should not be entirely thrown away. They should be held in reserve, at least, to be used when necessary. THE REMEDY OF TFIE LAW — A REPLY TO CHAS. FRANCIS ADAMS, JR. A gentleman bearing a historic name, and worthily upholding, in the fourth generatiQn, the honors of an illustrious family, himself a railroad commissioner and an authority on this subject, has lately given it as his mature conviction that the law is entirely powerless to control railroad corporations, and that the only remedy for any wrongs they may commit must be found in public opinion. Not the statutes, but publicity, he says, is the true and effectual weapon, the best corrective and constable. It is true Mr. Adams spoke in Wisconsin, where the Potter law, a perhaps too violent legal remedy, has been applied ; and he comes from Massachusetts, where public opinion may have more than its wonted power and authority. But with all deference to his large^ intelligence and his ample experience in this matter- 294 THE farmers' movement. I must take issue with him on the proposition which he so broadly states. I know the question is hardly a practical one here in Michigan, where no contest is likely to occur with the railroads, but I must pro- test against the principle that the railroad power is above and beyond the law. That is a startling proposition in a republic like ours. Railroads, while owned by stock companies and corporations as pri- vate property, in a larger and broader sense belong to the whole people. When I say people, I mean the State, which has the right of eminent domain, and which gives the franchise in the first instance to the railroad corporations. It will hardly do, I appre- hend, to say that the corporation is greater and stronger than the State which has breathed into it the breath of life. I am not contending here for any given meas- ure of power, for any particular degree of regulation, much less for any proposition to do away with or dis- turb vested rights ; but for the broad right of the people, through constitutional provisions and stat- utes, to hold the railroad power amenable to them, to be exercised within the limits which they shall set, and in a manner not to be unjust or oppressive to any commercial interest or industry of the State. To say that this power does not reside in the State, and can not be exercised if occasion shall arise, is to confess the utter impotence of the law-making de- partment to protect the people, and, logically, to pre- pare the way for a complete surrender of everything to the great railroad corporations. Indeed, Mr. Adams himself, with refreshing but startling frank- ness, suggests this surrender when he holds this remarkable language : THE farmers' movement. 295 "See how Scott, and Garrett, and Vanderbilt are developing, each in his own way, but goaded on by the others, the great, universal, irresistible law of railroad concentration : how ludicrously impotent your statutes, and even your constitutional provisos, are to impede, or even hamper them ; and how steadily, unitedly, and yet unconsciously, they work toward that unity, which some successor of theirs, in the next generation, perhaps, will accomplish. What will then result .'' Our political philosopher perhaps might foretell ; I certainly can not. Of one thing only do I feel convinced, and that is that through law or over laws, by developing existing political systems, or by gradually substituting others in place of them, in this generation or in the next, somehow or in some way, the government and the concentrated railroad system of the future must and will come together and merge in each other." And what is it that the succe,ssor of Scott and Garrett and Vanderbilt in the next generation is to accomplish over our laws and our ludicrously im- potent statutes.' And what is meant by the merg- ing of the concentrated railroad system and the government with each other ? Does Mr. Adams mean that this government is to have a railroad king in the next generation ? Is this the terrible sugges- tion, half concealed in the phrase, "by developing existing political systems, or by gradually substitut- ing others in place of them .''" Surely Mr. Adams is talking wildly here, for this is a sad centennial out- look for the great-grandson of the champion of American independence. Now, fellow citizens, making all due allowance for 296 THE farmers' movement. the extravagance of rhetoric, and for careless use of language, I think I find in this utterance of Mr. Adams a most dangerous doctrine, which it will not do for Americans in any way to countenance. Ours is a poor political system indeed, and weak in its central part and its vital essence, if it does not pos- sess the power to protect the people from railroad tyranny and extortion; if railroads can run over our statutes and through our constitutions at will. And we have come to a sorry pass if our only hope in such dire emergency is public opinion and moral suasion ; if our railroad commissioners, instead of being armed with the power of the law to compel justice, must be sent as simple missionaries to these railroad magnates, humbly imploring them to refrain from public outrage. No, no. Such a doctrine as that will never do. When a power like that springs up in the government, it ceases to be a government, because it can not govern. There was once a venerable president of the United States, who, in a great crisis of our history, announced the doctrine that the government had no power to coerce a State or prevent secession. But the people had no idea of letting the government go to pieces on such a fallacy as that ; they found a power, which, after four years of terrible struggle, crushed secession and rebellion, and the name of that poor old president will be forever pilloried in history as the author of the lame and impotent, if not treasonable, conclusion that the government had not the power to defend its own life ; had not the legal and constitutional right to punish its enemies and vindicate its authority. THE farmers' movement. 297 So let us have no such preposterous doctrine in reference to the railroad power. The government has the same right to protect itself against that as it had against secession. Slavery tried to be king in this country, and to set itself above the law ; but it went down before the indignant patriotism of the people, and tlied in a sea of blood. So let it be with any other power which shall defy the law, and under- take to trample on the Constitution. We have no room or place for kings or oligarchs in this country, whether of slavery or money. The people are the only masters here. But if we must have a king, I should pray that it be not Scott, or Garrett, or Vanderbilt. (iive us a king who is kingly, one who represents the historic idea and state of kingship ; give us no vulgar money king. Better the old pope, with his mitered bishops and cardinals, his tiara on his head, and his long succession from St. Peter with its mingled historic glory and shame, lit up with the blaze of sacrifice and fete and burning stake, and solemn and grand with the pomp and music of great cathedrals ; better the crown and scepter of an emperor which shall represent a thousand years of history and the high state and circumstance of royalty, with its tourna- ments and pageants and wars, than the upstart sway of a vulgar dynasty founded upon money alone ! BUT OTHER QUESTIONS MOKE IMPORTANT — BANKS, TAXATION, AND GENERAL EXTRAVAGANCE. Now, fellow citizens, I am glad to know that this question is largely an abstraction ; and that here in our own State, at least, there is no immediate dan- 298 THE farmers' movement. ger of any collision with the railroads, which I understand are carrying the farmers' produce at comparatively just and reasonable rates. So the question of transportation is not giving our farmers here any serious trouble. As to the middlemen, you are applying somewhat the remedy of co-operation, which perhaps is well I certainly see no reason why farmers should not have the right to buy and sell for themselves if they desire, and nobody has any business to complain if the farmers can make better bargains, and are satis- fied. This is a free country, and if the middlemen lose employment by this system of co-operation they must turn their hands to something else. There is plenty to do in the world. But I can not look upon this matter of the middlemen and their charges as so important to farmers as do some others. After all, I apprehend there is a convenience if not a necessity in the old system ; and where the work is done, the middleman is entitled to his percentage, as every man to a just reward for his labor. It seems to me that the questions pertaining to our banking system, to the high rates of interest for money, to our taxation, the general extravagance of our people, and the recklessness of our legislation are the most important that can engage the atten- tion of farmers at this time, and that call most loudly upon all good citizens for a remedy. It is these which are the most prolific breeders of monopolies ; it is these which spoil the farmers' market at one end of the line, and keep him from just returns for his labor, while they devour and eat away the little substance which he has by interest and taxation at THE farmers' movement. 299 the other. They do not, it is true, accomplish this directly, but they are the causes which produce the evil state of things which is felt on every hand. Out of this evil condition of things, which can be felt better than it can be described, grow rings and com- binations and monopolies, political and commercial. It is a morbid and unhealthy state, which needs to be changed as soon as possible for the old and health- ful ways. Now, to accomplish this change, to return to a bet- ter state of things, is a great work which imperatively demands the co-operation of all good citizens. In this work I would call in legislation when it is needed, I would arouse public opinion, and I would use all the influences, moral and political, that can be brought to bear upon law-makers and politicians, upon railroad officers and bank officers, — upon all who by reason of authority or by force of pretension are in any way responsible for the evils under which the community groans and suffers. The gods help those who help themselves. When we have done all we can do, then we may charge the rest to fate. WHAT THE FARMERS CAN DO — THEIR POLITICAL POWER. And now what, in this needed work, can this great farmers' organization do ? I think it can do much ; that if wisely directed it can largely right its own wrongs, and help to purify the political and business atmosphere around us. I certainly hope that it will use its utmost power to break up every corrupt political ring and every unjust business monopoly in 300 THE farmers' movement. the State. For one, I will bid it Godspeed while it is doing this. We do not want any rings and monop- olies in the State. Down with them, wherever they are. They are the' chief and worst enemies of the republic and of popular liberty. I know the grange is not a political, partisan organization, and it does not need to be for this purpose, for it will be found to be true that both parties and all parties are liable to be corrupt, and to put forward unprincipled and corrupt men as candidates for popular suffrage. Grangers are citizens and voters, and it is here that they can help themselves and help the State by voting down unprincipled and corrupt men, no mat- ter who puts them up. In this sense the grange should be, and, I take it, is, a political power. At all events, many of our worst politicians have had some reason to think so, in these recent years. So I say. one of the best uses of the grange, and one of the plainest duties of farmers, is to assist in purify- ing our politics, the bad and dangerous source from which flow so many of our public ills. They need not do this as partisans, — that would not help the matter, — but as independent citizens, looking to nothing but the good of the State and country. THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PICTURE — ABUSES OF THE MOVEMENT. Fellow citizens, let me turn now to the other side of the picture, and speak to you of some of the pos- sible abuses of the farmers' movement. As I have no ends to serve but those of truth and justice, let me speak frankly and plainly. While I believe that this great organization of farmers in the country is. THE farmers' movement. 301 in the main a good one, promising, if conducted on right principles, to accomi)lish great, necessary, and beneficent objects, yet I think I can see, also, that i( it shall yield to bad counsels or leadership, and be hurried to overzeal and injustice, it may become a powerful engine of public mischief, defeating its own professed objects, and coming to be at last a hin- drance and menace to the country. Then the stronger it shall be the worse it will be. Instead ot helping the country out of its difficulties, commer- cial and political, it will only serve to sink us deeper and deeper into trouble. So great is the difference between power directed to just ends and controlled by wise counsels, and power perverted to bad and unjust ends and controlled by unwise and evil counsels. INJUSTICE TO RAILROADS. Now there are some dangers to which this farm- ers' organization is plainly exposed. In the first place it is liable, naturally liable, to do some injus- tice to the railroads and the railroad interests. This would come about, naturally, by the farmers looking exclusively, from the point of self-interest, to one side of the question. That side, of course, would be their side, and as they feel keenly the difficulties and embarrassments under which they suffer, their own want of just return for their labor, the pinching of hard times, and the heavy hand of taxation, the tend- ency is to lay too much blame upon the railroads as the cause of all this by reason of their high rates for transportation and their combinations to prevent competition in the carrying trade. 302 THE farmers' movement. I think there is an element of justice in this com- plaint against the railroads, and that their great and growing power needs to be checked somewhat and carefully guarded, especially as the tendency is all the time to railroad concentration and monopoly. But let us not be unreasonable or unjust. Railroads not only have their great and beneficent uses, but they have their rights as well as the farmers. These should be scrupulously protected. The vested rights of a railroad corporation should be held as sacred as any other rights under the law. No war should be made upon them ; no prejudice should be excited against them. I need not tell you how important railroads are to our commerce and our civilization. It would be almost impossible for human speech to exaggerate their importance. Where and what would we be with every railroad track in the country torn up, and we remanded to the condition of things which existed fifty years ago .^ How would we like that ? See then what untold, incalculable benefit the railroads have been to the country, and espe- cially to the West. This mighty railroad system in the West, reaching to the shores of the Pacific, and penetrating to every important town and center, is the great civilizer, the most potent and powerful agent in the development of our resources and our prosperity. And to no class is this agent more important and beneficial than to the farming class. Farmers, you of all others must depend upon railroads. You can not get along without them. They are the great equalizers and supporters of your market. Before this vast system of railroads, you were at the mercy THE FARMERS' MOVEMENT. 303 of local fluctuations. You had no steady, certain market. One year your grain would command a fair price, the next there would be a local surfeit, the crops could not be moved, and the price would drop down to comparatively nothing. Now this is no longer so. The railroads have become the great dis- tributors and equalizers, and your markets com- mand the general average of the country and the civilized world. INJUSTICE TO THE MIDDLEMEN. Again, there is danger that this movement may be carried to unjust lengths against what are termed the middlemen. I imagine it will always be found in our political economy that some hands will be needed between the producing class and the con- suming class, and this will make it necessary that there should be some middlemen. The farmers will never be able to dispense entirely with this class. They may lessen its numbers as they apply the prin- ciple of co-operation, but they will find it inconven- ient if not impossible to sell all their commodities directly to the last market, and much more inconven- ient to make all their purchases of the manufac- tures in the wholesale market. That will be found to be too great a burden for them, and it will be too great a revolution and innovation in the immemorial ways and methods of trade. I imagine the retail dealer and shopkeeper will never be entirely abol- ished, and so long as he stays we should use him well, if he behaves himself. The farmers themselves will find this class of middlemen too useful and con- venient to make indiscriminate war upon them. In 304 THE FAR>rERS' MOVEMENT. the sharp competition that prevails about them, they are not likely to amass any very enormous or unjust gains out of the farmers or anybody else. THE DANGER FROM CLASS PREJUDICE AND THE INFLUENCE OF DEMAGOOUES. But a greater danger still to the farmers' move- ment, and the greatest abuse into which it is likely to fall, is the inculcation of a wrong, senseless, and unjust class prejudice. I wish to speak plainly upon this point, for I deem it one of very great impor- tance. You can not have such a movement as this among the farmers, founded upon a complaint of great injustice and goaded on by a prevailing sense of wrong done to them in some way by other classes of the community, without a constant danger to overzeal and exaggeration. And you can not. in the very nature of things, have a movement of such magnitude and proportions as this without its con- taining some overzealous and fanatical men who will assume to be leaders, and constantly keep fanning and inflaming this tendency to feeling and prejudice against other classes, and especially what are called the upper or ruling classes in the community. Joined with these men, in this unfortunate work, will be another class of leaders not so honest but equally pernicious, — demagogues, farmer dema- gogues, — who seek to ride into prominence and office on the back of the grange, and who will travel about from grange to grange and from county to county prating of the wrongs of the farmers and the outrages upon their rights, and continually stirring up and harrowing the minds of their hearers by con- THE farmers' movement. 305 trasting their condition with that of the other classes and the people in the cities and towns, — lawyers and merchants and men of leisure who live in ele- gant houses, fare sumptuously, cut off coupons, and draw official salaries ! Now, fellow citizens, farmers, this is foolish and dangerous talk, and these are foolish and dangerous men. They wrong you and they wrong us who are not farmers. I beg you not to believe what they say. They are doing you a great injury every day. Prejudice begets prejudice, feeling begets feeling, and these men have already succeeded in calling out a counter prejudice which is and will be one of the chief obstacles against which the farmers' movement must hereafter contend. Nobody whose opinion is worth anything has any other feelings but those of good will and respect for the farming class. Nobody wishes to oppress them, nobody feels above them. On the contrary just the opposite feeling prevails among the other classes of the community. I am almost ashamed to talk of this subject, these things look so paltry, senseless, and foolish. Why, it is the highest ambition of the professional man and the business man some day to become a farmer, even if it be on a small scale ; and to own and occupy a little piece of God's green earth, where he can breathe the pure air of heaven, and drink in the deep and healthful inspirations of nature. Many of these men, against whom it is sought to array this senseless prejudice, are farmers' sons, whose early life and associations were on the farm, and who look back to those early days with the tenderest of human feelings. Will such a man despise the 20 306 THE farmers' movement. farmer, or cease to sympathize with him ? When in the hot strife and bustle of the town, engaged in the contentions of professional life or the rivalries of business, with head heated and heart weighted with responsibility, or stung by man's selfishness or ingratitude, he walks the hard and narrow pavement, how will his memory go back to the days of his boyhood, and how will he long to live them over again and exult in their boundless freedom and peace ! No, fellow citizens, this class feeling on the part of the farmers is as uncalled for as it is dangerous. The men of the cities and the towns, the men of other vocations and callings, are not the farmer's enemies, lying in wait for his destruction. They are, rather, his friends and co-laborers in the great work of the world, — work of head and hand and brain and muscle, — as necessary to him as he to them. This is the beautiful, divine ordination that men are made to fill every useful calling, and what- ever is useful is honorable. To the lot of the farmer has fallen a labor of primal dignity and usefulness, and no man on God's earth can hold his head above him. And then we are a republic ; we have no favored classes ; all men are equal before the law. Its privileges and its blessings are open to all alike. But I hear it said, the farmers are denied their share of the offices. Well, I do not know about that. I do not know as anybody is entitled to an office in this country. The theory is that ofifices are duties, rather than perquisites ; but certainly, if a farmer, is THE farmers' movement. 307 better fitted to discharge the duties of an office than his neighbor, he ought to have it. If you have in this congressional district, as perhaps you have, a farmer who is better fitted and qualified to represent you in Congress than the merchant or lawyer, then by all means send him ; but do not send him simply because he is a farmer. Men ought to be sent to Congress or put into high public positions because of their qualifications, and not because of their busi- ness. In this sense farmers ought to have their share of the offices, and I think it is no small share that they are fitted to hold. But there is no occa- sion for feeling or prejudice on this point, for I have never known a time in our politics when farmers were not thought the most available candidates for office. This is a small question, and ought never to have been raised. It can be safely left, I think, to the solid good sense of the great body of farmers who are not asking or seeking for office themselves, and who will judge wisely of the qualifications of all candidates presented for their suffrage. Away, then, with this whole matter of class jealousy and preju- dice. There is no need of it, we have no room for it ; it ought never to be mentioned. I pray you, farmers, turn a deaf ear to every man who shall try to incite you to it. Distrust any counsels, from whatever quarter, that shall have a tendency to build up in this free country any walls of prejudice between one class and another, or provoke any senseless opposition and bitterness between neigh- bors and friends. 308 THE farmers' movement. some of the true conditions of the farmers' prosperity. And now what are the true and just conditions of the real prosperity and advancement of the farming class ? Let me glance at some of them very briefly. First, what of the national conditions .'' In consider- ing these, let it never be forgotten or lost sight of that, as a rule, the conditions which make the pros- perity of one class make the prosperity of all classes. I mean, of course, all honest classes. There is a great sympathy of industries, by which if one suffers all suffer. The State that is well and strong must have, like the well and strong man, healthy and perfect members. If any are diseased or paralyzed, the whole body suffers. So, in this matter, the farming interest needs just what every interest needs, just what we all need, — national health. As a nation we are still suffering from the effects, the inevitable derangements, of our recent great civil convulsion. A state of war is an unhealthy state, as you know, a state of fever and paroxysm ; and a great civil war, especially, is a violent and terrible shock to a people whose true prosperity consists in peace and orderly industry. From this great shock of the war we have not yet recovered. The commercial derangements have not yet been arranged and smoothed into order, the broken threads have not yet been mended, the perturbed elements have not yet calmed and settled. Not until we get rid of this legacy of the rebellion shall we have serene peace and calm national health. THE farmers' movement. 309 A SOUND CURRENCY — NO INFLATION. We have, as a natural fruit of the war, an impaired and unsettled national currency. One of our first needs is to restore this to a sound and permanent basis, to the old basis which existed before the war. I believe it to be one of the greatest and first condi- tions of national health and prosperity to retrace our steps in this matter of the currency, — steps which the terrible necessities and emergencies of the war compelled us to take, — and return as soon as possible to the old and safe ways and to the solid foundation of specie payment. I know this is not a political gathering, and I am not making a political speech, but I can not forget that I am speaking to an audi- ence of farmers ; and farmers, of all men in the coun- try, are interested in the question of a safe and stable currency. I believe if our feet are taken off the solid rock of gold and silver, we shall, be drifted away into a sea of untold disasters and troubles ; and you farmers will suffer as much as anybody. There can be no real prosperity for you or for anybody builded upon inflation. However beautiful and inviting it may be pictured, it is an airy, unsubstantial structure, and will finally vanish away. What you want is something reliable, something permanent, something which shall beget confidence. Remember that if inflation shall raise the prices of your farms and commodities, that this is only specious and illusory, for the bubbles of inflated values will be blown all around you, and what you buy will go up with what you sell. And remember, further, what the history of this matter teaches, that you will be 310 THE FARMERS' MOVEMENT. the greatest sufiferers when the inevitable collapse shall come. Your values will be the last to go up and the first to come down, and thus you will be made the football of fortune in this great game of fast and loose. No, fellow citizens of the farming class you, most of all, need to cling to the ancient and safe ways, to the honest and unalterable standard of values which all Christendom recognizes and all history approves. FREE BANKING — NO MONOPOLY. And with such a currency, I believe, should go the principle of free banking and no bank monopolies. That is the only true rule in a republic. There should be no favors shown by the government to any class, and no privileges dealt out to any set of men which are not free to all others. Our national bank system, I think, has violated this principle of equality, which should be held sacred, and has tended to build up a monopoly with especial privileges to a class. This has had its evil effects which you, farmers, have felt. Let it be entirely rectified and the whole interest question adjusted upon a fair, even, and equitable basis. PUBLIC HONESTY, COMPETENCY, AND SIMPLICITY. But back of these ^needs is another one of great importance, — perhaps I should say of first impor- tance, — the need of sterling honesty, competency, and economy in our public affairs. We need to return to a gold basis here, also. Here the farmers suffer with all the other honest classes and industries, and here they need with us all, as a prime condition THE FARMERS' MOVEMENT. 311 to prosperity, a true and genuine reform in our pub- lic ways. We have inherited from the war and its natural outgrowth a wild spirit of speculation and extravagance, a haste to be rich without reference to the means, and this has bred recklessness, dishonesty, and corruption in our legislation and our public life. I speak here, not as a partisan, but as a citizen. No party is entirely free from the taint of corruption. We need to watch both parties and all parties with ceaseless vigilance. How many of our public ills under which farmers, and indeed all the people, groan and suffer could be traced directly to this prolific source of public extravagance and corruption. Our currency evils, our banking and interest evils, our grinding taxation, our general commercial derange- ment, and our paralyzed trade and industry, — all these have largely if not chiefly come from the want of true statesmanship and a rigidly honest and economical administration of our public affairs. Now the remedy is plain. It must be a true and genuine civil service reform, beginning at the head and working clear through every department of the government. Here again I speak not as a partisan, but as an independent citizen, owing no allegiance to any party but the party of the public good. But do I not speak truly .'' I appeal to Republicans and Democrats alike, have we not need of political reform ? Is it not at this moment one of the first needs of the country, and one of the truest conditions of our future national prosperity .'' I trust the farmers, to whichever party they may belong, will watch the politicians, and insist by their influence and their votes that the public interests shall be well and 312 THE farmers' movement. sacredly guarded by those in power; that the pub- lic substance shall not be wasted, nor the public wel- fare imperiled by incompetent or dishonest public servants. We need especially among our public men, a return to the simple and more democratic ways of the fathers and the early statesmen of the republic. Extrava- gant living by our senators and representatives and our high officials sets a bad example to the people, leads to temptations inconsistent with the purity of legislation, and tends all the time to supplant and do away with that simplicity which is one of the chief glories of democratic institutions. Seventy-four years ago, at the opening of the century, when the government was young, one of the greatest of our presidents rode on horseback to his inaugural, and quietly hitched his horse to the capitol fence before the ceremony began. That was Thomas Jefferson, the author of our Declaration of Independence, and the profoundest philosopher of our new political sys- tem of self-government. His example could be studied with profit by some of our so-called states- men of to-day, who like to ride and live in kingly state and extravagance. WHAT FARMERS THEMSELVES MAY DO. But some of these conditions so essential to the farmer's prosperity and advancement, are under his own exclusive control. They pertain to a field which he alone may cultivate, free from all outside inter- ference or restraint. I refer here to his individual, personal duties and privileges, — the duties and privi- leges of his home and his neighborhood. Here is a THE FARMERS' MOVEMENT. 313 great field and opportunity for improvement, and the grange will help him in his efforts. I have already spoken of the beautiful social feature of the organiza- tion. Nothing could be more fit and useful than this. The grange picnics and public gatherings are wholly admirable. I think our farmers do not fully improve their opportunities to better their social and intellectual condition. They work too hard ; they cultivate more land than they need ; they read and enjoy themselves too little ; they cheat themselves out of the best things of life ; they should work less and manage more — it will pay better. A good farmer should not be his own hired man, and drudge his life out with hard work. He should take time for rest, keep up his spirits, read, calculate, plan, and make good bargains ; and more than all, he should not neglect the higher social and intellectual enjoyments. Let him keep up his home and beautify it ; fill it with music for his daughters, and make it attractive for his sons — so attractive that they will not want to leave it, to go and be clerks and paid servants in the towns. There is not attention enough paid in this Western country to this matter of the home and the home feeling. Our homes are the true foundations of the State, the true nurseries of all the great and holy things of life. That nation is the strongest where the home feeling is the deepest. Here, I think. is the chief secret of the power of England. The Englishman, unlike the Frenchman, is attached to his home ; and largely for this reason that little island in the sea is the center of the world's civilization and power. 314 THE farmers' movement. There is no reason in the world why our farmers should not exercise a great social and political influ- ence in the State. They occupy a really command- ing position, a position corresponding to that of the landed gentry in England. If they would really think so, our farmers are far better off than the busi- ness and tradesmen class in our towns. How small the proportion of these that ultimately succeed and escape bankruptcy, and how slavish and exacting is their daily work. Whatever else may happen, the farmer need not fail in business. He has the solid earth beneath him to stand upon, and the great com- mercial storms and disasters which sweep over the country, toppling down the great fortunes of trade and the lofty business structures, leave him still un- scathed, the last sure bulwark and stronghold of the State. CONCLUSION. Farmers and citizens : the cry of our burdened industries for relief is a just cry, and should pene- trate the ears of the nation. Lord Bacon says, with sententious wisdom, "A people burdened with tribute is unfit for empire." The farmers' movement is but a great organized effort to shake off burdens too griev- ous longer to be borne. The founders of our repub- lic one hundred years ago refused to pay the tribute to King George, and to-day we boast ourselves a nation of freemen, — a nation which would redden the sea with blood before it would pay one cent of tribute to any foreign power under the sun. Let us see to it that no class or industry in our own midst shall be required to pay tribute to any other. THE farmers' movement. 815 . Plato, in his ideal republic, while making the State supreme, and merging in it all the interests of individual and domestic life, exalts Justice as the great controlling and harmonizing principle which runs through and regulates its every department and holds it together. Such justice in the State I invoke for the farmers and their cause. Not the blind jus- tice of the courthouse and the law, which is simply- impartial, but that active spirit of justice which is star-eyed and all pervading ; which lifts up the lowly and. pulls downs the proud and haughty; which lightens the burdens of labor and wrests from the hands of unrighteous power its ill-gotten gains ; which exalts every industry and levels every mo- nopoly. Give us such justice as this to go hand in hand with our freedom and our great progress, and we will build on these Western shores a government of fairer, more symmetrical, and more majestic propor- tions, even, than that lofty and severe ideal structure whose glowing and immortal conception filled the soul of the grand old Greek. PATRICK HENRY. Ladies and Gentlemen : I am to speak to you this evening of one of the purest patriots of our country and one of the most wonderful orators of the world. In these centennial days as our eyes turn with quickened interest to the actors in the drama of the Revolution, three imposing figures stand out upon the scene — Washington, Jefferson, and Patrick Henry. Other great actors and figures there were, but these stand pre-eminent. Looking at them in the order of their service, Thomas Jeffer- son was the political thinker and writer of the Revo- lution, and wielded its pen — the pen which wrote its immortal declaration ; Patrick Henry was its great and inspired orator, and spoke its voice in words of thrilling power which reached the ears of the world, and will forever echo in history ; while George Washington was the great leader of its armies, who unsheathed its sword, and executed its stern but just decrees. Immortal triumvirate ! Never were pen and voice and sword used more loftily and unselfishly in the great cause of human freedom. It is my purpose now to recall for a brief hour the majestic presence of the great orator of the Revolu- tion — to make him pass before our vision as he ' A Centennial Lecture, delivered at Chicago, Detroit, and other Michigan cities. 316 PATRICK HENRY. 317 appeared in the flesh one hundred years ago ; to see his lofty port ; to catch the flash of his eagle eye, and to hear the accents of that thrilling voice which sent the holy fires of patriotism and liberty through every nerve of the men of '76. GREAT CHARACTERS PRODUCED IN REVOLU- TIONARY EPOCHS. Patrick Henry has been well styled the orator of nature and the child of the Revolution. No ordi- nary, peaceful times, indeed, could have produced him. It is one of the striking peculiarities of revolu- tions that they develop great men, and throw to the surface of affairs strong and great characters. There are plain reasons for this. Revolutions are mighty upheavals of society, powerful agitations of the state, in which the people, stirred with contending pas- sions, with alternating hopes and fears, instinctively turn to their natural leaders, to -the born kings of men. In such times there is no place for weak, timid, or cowardly public men. They who can not ride the storm must fall before it. The small, com- monplace men, with their routine ways, who manage tolerably well in peaceful times, are now sent to the rear, and the men with the strong arms and heroic souls are called to the front. When the ship rides in calm waters and on peaceful seas, only ordinary skill may guide her, but when the winds rave and the waves are lashed into fury, then supreme skill and lofty courage are needed. So, also, in these Revolutionary periods, there is ordinarily an upheaval from the bottom of society, 31 S PATRICK HENRY. and, for a time, a leveling of all class distinctions. The common peril and purpose obliterate all artifi- cial divisions, and the leaders come from every rank and condition. Sometimes they come from the lower orders, like Robespierre and Danton ; now from the sturdy middle class, like Hampden and Cromwell ; again from the aristocracy and nobility, like Mira- beau and Lafayette. They need no other creden- tials of leadership save those which God has given them in superior endowments of mind and soul. But these upheavals not only throw these great characters to the surface ; they furnish grand oppor- tunities to them. Revolutions are the tableaux of history. Their scenes and actors are illuminated with a thousand converging rays of historic light, and stand out with vivid distinctness against the historic background. They do not come on sud- denly ; their bolts do not fall from a clear sky. The final culmination of arms is always preceded by moral efforts and struggles ; the conflict of ideas precedes that of bullets. Always there is at the foundation a deep sense of wrong which produces protests and remonstrances against the governing power, and an appeal to the reason and conscience of men. Here the orator comes in and plays his part before the soldier is called into action. This was the case in our own Revolution ; it was so also in the great French Revolution. Every great strug- gle of this kind has had its orators who have put its protests and demands into burning words and pleaded its cause at the great bar of history. It is in such times and at such crises that eloquence has reached its highest power and made its most splendid exhi- PATRICK HENRY. 319 bitions. How could it be otherwise ? Kloquence is born out of excitement and passion, and when the orator speaks for millions of men around him who are swayed by tremendous feeling and all on fire with popular excitement, it is natural that his words should be all aflame and instinct with terrible energy and intensity. It is then that eloquence clothes itself with the thunder and the lightning and becomes godlike. Mirabeau, in the French Assembly, swaying that tumultuous body at will, and Patrick Henry, in the Virginia Convention, overawing the majority and bending them to his great purpose of resistance, were something more than mortal men to behold. Men instinctively bow before such demigods, and obey their voice as they would a voice from heaven. Such is the commanding power of eloquence when it speaks through the mouths of its great masters in the su- preme crises of the state. PATRICK HENRY BEFORE THE REVOLUTION — HIS BOYHOOD AND YOUTH. I do not propose to give you a narrative of the life of Patrick Henry, or to follow even in connected order the outlines of his history. This would be out- side of my purpose and entirely unnecessary ; for every intelligent schoolboy knows his biography. In the brief time at my command I shall attempt rather to sketch the character of this extraordinary man and to dwell upon the exhibitions of that won- derful eloquence which made him the most powerful advocate of independence and which has scarcely a parallel in history. The boyhood of great men does not always differ 320 PATRICK HENRY. from that of men of common mold. All men are much alike in their infancy, and there is no certain sign by which future greatness can be predicted. Precocity is indeed an abnormal condition, and the promises of genius are frequently broken. There is no certain criterion here. Sometimes the fire flames up in early youth only to go out in sudden darkness, the pitcher broken at the fountain, as in the case of the marvelous boy Chatterton ; sometimes the early promise ripens into golden and long fulfillment, as with our own venerable poet Bryant ; again great- ness lies hidden in common life until it flowers sud- denly out after forty years, as in the lives of Crom- well and Washington. The early years of Patrick Henry were without any sign of his future distinction. The fires of his genius were hidden beneath a most unpromising boyhood. Born of the yeoman or middle class, he had such advantages for education as fell to the lot of other lads in that early provincial society. Per- haps I should say that his lot was better in one respect, for his father was a man of liberal education, besides being a magistrate and a person of excellent standing and repute in his county. But the father had eight other children to provide for, and while he sought to instill knowledge and the love of learning into the mind of his second son, he had no patri- mony with which to endow him, no fortune to bequeath to him, which should lift him above the necessity of earning his daily bread. The boy grew up without improving the few advantages which he had. He was not undutiful or vicious, but he was unstudious, ignorant, and idle. He would not, or PATRICK HENRY. 321 could not, learn. The open book was a dreamy haze before his unfixed eyes, and conveyed no knowledge to his roaming mind. He was a dull scholar. As he approached to man's estate he was as loath to work as he had been to study. He was lazy, indolent, thriftless. All the testimony upon this part of his life unites in presenting the picture of an ignorant, awkward young man, who with all the incentives to work about him, with poverty like a stern taskmas- ter behind him, yet absolutely refused or neglected to labor with his fellows, but lay basking in idleness whole days in the fields by the open furrow ; or turning his back upon work which needed to be done, wandered with his gun into the woods, or sat with rod and line from morning until night on some log by the lazy stream. He seemed wholly incapa- ble of mental or bodily application. Head and hands alike were paralyzed. The spell of idleness and re very was upon him. But he must work or starve, for this was appar- ently the penalty for his neglect of books. So we have furtive and unsuccessful attempts which the young man made to break away from his gun, his fishing rod, and his dreaming. But the spell was now re-inforced by the power of habit ; business ventures failed upon his hands, and twice was he a bankrupt before the age of twenty-four. At last, in sheer despair, with a wife and child to support, with- out industry, without business, without money, lazy and ignorant, he catches at the law as a makeshift and a possible means of livelihood. Only barely does he secure admission to the bar, so small is his preparation, and then follow years of pinching pov- 21 322 PATRICK HENRY. erty and humiliation, as the just and natural fruit of all this idleness and ignorance, for the law has no better or different reward for these than have other avocations. Pause here, now, and survey this young man at whose boyhood and youth I have only hastily glanced, as he stands at the threshold of his career. What promise have we in the history of this awkward youth of the Hanover Slashes, who will not study, who will not work, who idles and dreams away the precious golden hours of his boyhood, who has failed in every employment, and who now, as we have seen, has almost surreptitiously gained his admis- sion to the bar ? Certainly, without exaggeration, the life of the future orator presents at this point a most discouraging record and outlook. Only one ray, one solitary gleam of light, flashes across this dull background of his boyhood, and that is the pic- ture we have of him going with his mother to hear the eloquent Davies preach, and the record how the lad of fourteen was moved and stirred by the words of the orator ; a slight circumstance, a faint sign of what was within him. But that sign was long passed, and now the boy has grown into the man, still idle, still ignorant, and still thriftless. Tell me now what shall be the outcome of all this ? Judged by every principle of human nature, by every law and maxim of human industry, by every obser- vation of human experience, what shall be expected of such beginnings .'' These all will say, you will say, that the boy is father to the man, that as the sowing has been, so will be the reaping, and that mediocrity, obscurity, humiliation, and poverty will PATRICK HENRY. 323 be the lot of the boy who would not study and the young man who would not work. Not so fast — not so fast. Here is a great law, which, with all our wisdom and all our maxims, we are likely to overlook. God's ways are deeper than ours, and sometimes all our worldly calculations are upset by the exhibition before our astonished eyes, at that which looks like a miracle, but which is only a profounder law, which, with our dull vision, we can not see. O ! Genius thou art justified of thy children, and thy divine spark, though long buried and seemingly lost, is never wholly quenched. So here is thy mira- cle to be reproduced. Out of this chrysalis of con- tradictions, out of all this ignorance and indolence and want of thrift, out of all these mean surround- ings and hindrances, there is to burst upon the world a royal orator, such as God only sends once in a thousand years — an orator to take rank and company with the greatest, and shine forever as a fixed star in the galaxy of eloquence. The time approaches when this new luminary shall break through the obscuring clouds. The Revolution was still a long way off, but the early murmurs of discontent were already beginning to be heard. Patrick Henry was now a lawyer, but he was a very ignorant, and naturally a briefless one For three years he had been without business and dependent upon his father in-law for support, in whose plain, old Virginia tavern he is said to have been reduced to the humiliation of tending bar. He was reaping as he had sown, and only poverty and despair were apparently before him. It was here 324 PATRICK HENRY. also when his proud spirit must have chafed under his bitter fortune that he soothed himself with his violin, and played off his pleasantries upon the coun- try loungers at the tavern. And here, too, while in the bitter school of adversity, he was learning human nature from close and every-day contact with the common people. THE "parson's cause." A SERIO-COMIC LAW SUIT. The occasion for the first exhibition of his powers borders upon the ludicrous. They had, it seems, a State religion in Virginia, in those old days, and the established clergy were paid by law in tobacco — a sort of currency then in vogue and passing as legal tender among the people. Even our currency, I think, is better than that. We smile, too, at the idea of paying ministers in that way, but bad as the pay seems, it was probably a good deal better than the preaching ; for, from all accounts, these clergy were an unspiritual, bibulous, fox-hunting set. It appears that in 1755, at a time of great public distress, a law had been passed in the colony giving an option to the people for ten months, to pay the clergy in money, at the rate of two pence for every pound of tobacco — sixteen thousand pounds being the whole yearly salary. Think of it, a year's preach- ing for sixteen thousand pounds of tobacco ! Well, the people, the ungrateful parishioners of these clergymen, it would appear, very generally availed themselves of the benefit of this law. They held on to their tobacco and turned the preachers off with the two pence. PATRICK HENRY. 325 Now this was making tobacco altogether too cheap to suit the notions of the clergy, — it was an inflation of their currency, which they thought they could not stand, — and they grumbled a good deal, although they did not resist, but sullenly pocketed the insult and the two pence, and kept on with their preach- ing. But when in l7o8 a similar law was passed, they appealed to King George and his council across the sea, being themselves very obsequiously loyal to the king, and for this and other reasons, very gener- ally hated by the people. The king and council, not unwilling to gratify their loyal pets, and to rebuke the rising independence of the people, set the law aside as unconstitutional. This was turning the tables, and the clergy, per- ceiving their advantage, immediately brought suit for their arrearage of salary, claiming that they had been unlawfully and unconstitutionally swindled out of their tobacco. You will perceive at once that this was a sort of inverted salary grab, or move on their part, for back pay — old style. It must be confessed that in a strictly legal point of view they had the advantage, and when the court very properly overruled the demurrer to their decla- ration, and the case stood on a simple inquiry of damages before a jury, any good lawyer would have pronounced it a hopeless one. There could be no question about it at all ; it was a plain matter of computation — the mere finding of the difference between the two pence per pound, which the clergy had received, and the market value of tobacco at the time. 326 PATRICK HENRY. THE FIRST TRIAL OF PATRICK HENRY'S POWERS. At this stage Patrick Henry appears upon the scene. The people are making a show of resistance, and some attorney is needed as a matter of form. The briefless young lawyer is ready for a job, how- ever hopeless, and for want of a better advocate the people take him. It is more than probable that his ignorance of the law was so great that he did not know how hopeless the case was. But ready for some excitement to break the monotony of his dull life, laying aside his fiddle and gun, and rousing himself, he goes up with the crowd that fills the Hanover Courthouse on that December morning in 1763, and nervously takes his place at the table as the counsel for the defendants. How awe-inspiring and critical the moment for him ! On the bench of the presiding magistrate sits his own father, on either side of him the other judges, around them and behind them in the chief seats, like their prototypes of old, the plaintiff clergymen, glowering derisively upon the young attorney, and anticipating their certain and speedy triumph. There is the jury in their box, and there are the benches all filled with the anxious people — the people who had known this awkward, ignorant young man from his earliest boyhood, but had never known anything of him that could give them assurance in such an hour as this. On the other side, representing the plaintiffs, was a veteran counselor, all at ease, with his long practice and established reputation, and sure of victory. What a terrible array is all this for the young man to face. Talk of courage, the courage of war and PATRICK HENRY. 327 battle ! For such an hour and effort as this it takes more real courage and nerve than to ride with the six hundred into the mouth of hell ! And how para- doxical it seems — at such a time the speaker's best friends are more appalling to him than any strangers or enemies, and his own father than a king would be upon his throne. Who can tell what thoughts, rapid, vivid, and despairing, like the thoughts of a drown- ing man, filled and flashed through the mind of Patrick Henry in that fearful hour, when for the first time in his life he stood before an audience to try his powers — and such an audience! How could he know that he had any powers ? He had never spoken in public. Did he bitterly regret that he had undertaken the terrible responsibility, and in- wardly curse himself for his temerity .'* Did he feel the pangs of remorse for precious hours idled and dreamed away, whose improvement might have given him that assuring knowledge which would now sit like a comforting angel by his side.-* Did hope utterly sink within his breast as he looked into the anxious face of his father, as he beheld the forms of the clergy, or encountered the wondering stare of his old friends of the store, the dance, and the tavern ? Did he feel that he must fly from all this, rush out into the free sunshine, and escape the terrible peril at the cost of confession of weakness or imposture.-* Or did he summon the hero within him to beat off these thick, thronging phantoms of despair, and lift his soul into the upper air for the divine help of genius .'' We shall see, for now the supreme moment has come for him to speak. He rises awkwardly, nerv- 328 PATRICK HENRY. ously, almost staggering with confusion and embar- rassment. His memory, his perception, all his mental faculties and powers seem to pass into sudden eclipse, — he forgets, he loses all he intended to say, his tongue seems paralyzed and thick, and he stam- mers out a few feeble, half-formed, incoherent sen- tences. A shudder runs through the crowd — the young man is going to fail, to break down ! See, he can hardly stand upon his feet ; he weakens every moment, he will presently be completely overpow- ered, and sink into his seat. O, how does that father on the bench, before all the people, feel now .-' How do the people themselves feel for their young advo- cate and their cause, now about to be buried in shame and defeat ? And the hated clergy on their high seats, they nod and wink at each other, exult- ing like devils at the poor young man's discomfiture. But like devils they shall soon be cast out and down, for the young man begins to recover himself, — he stands more erect, his voice sounds out clearer and louder, his memory comes back, his faculties are once more under his control ; his form begins to dilate and expand and to take on unwonted and wondrous grace, and his eyes, now uplifted until they sweep and survey his audience with an eagle glance, seem to flame with supernatural fires, and to burn into the very souls of the astonished spectators. The transformation is as complete as it is sudden. The awkward, backwoods youth, a moment ago but a stammering clown, about to receive a terrible pun- ishment for his presumption, is now changed into the great and godlike orator, clothed with the grace of Apollo, and holding in his hand the lightnings and the thunders of Jove. PATRICK HENRY. 329 No wonder the excited multitude, when the splen- did exhibition was done, carried the newborn orator upon their shoulders in triumph, and hailed him as the man of the people ! It was a moment for the painter, and ought to be immortalized upon canvas ; for there in that Hanover Courthouse was enacted one of the memorable scenes of history, — there was ushered into the world an orator, full armed like Minerva from the brain of Jove, who was to take rank with Demosthenes. The spell of indolence and dreaming, of poverty and revery, is now broken, and Patrick Henry begins to play his great and divinely ordered part on the Revolutionary stage. No more poverty and despair now — no lack of business or friends. From that hour it is a new world to him. He had made a discovery ; he had found out the power within him ; he was rich now in the posses- sion of something which all the money in the world could not buy. His neighbors and friends would now see that his awkward manners and uncouth speech were but the rough setting of the flashing diamond ; and all men would now be generous to the seeming faults of his boyhood, for genius had woven her brooding spell upon him. and he could not break away from her dreams and her reveries. The orbit of genius indeed, like that of the blazing comet, is always irregular, and it is not fair to judge it by our ordinary rules. PATRICK HENRY AS A LAWYER. I have dwelt thus at some length upon the first exhibition of Patrick Henry's wonderful eloquence because the circumstances themselves are so remark- 330 PATRICK HENRY. able that they will never lose their interest, and because I wished to picture to you the full height and measure of this great orator of nature as he thus so suddenly steps upon the scene. I shall pass now lightly over the next two years of his history in which he devotes himself, somewhat irregularly, it is true, to the practice of the law, as I wish to dwell more particularly upon his public career, and espe- cially upon those scenes where he figures so con- spicuously as the great orator of the Revolution. Little need be said of him as a lawyer, for though he thoroughly understood human nature, and had great power over juries, still his lack of early culture and his great deficiency in legal knowledge serve to make his figure at the bar a minor one and not at all essential to his fame. Some of the qualities of the great lawyer, and especially the great advocate, he unquestionably had, besides the piercing and mag- netic eloquence which finds such ample scope and room before a jury. Among the few memorials of him which are preserved is an argument, or the full outlines of an argument, before the Circuit Court of the United States for the State of Virginia on a con- stitutional question, which is a logical and powerful piece of legal reasoning, and which conclusively shows that his mind was not destitute of that breadth and strength and cogency which distinguish the great common law lawyer. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION — CHARACTER OF THE STRUGGLE. But the time now rapidly hastens when Patrick Henry is to be called to his destiny as the orator of PATRICK HENRY. 331 the Revolution. His speech in the parson's cause was but the prelude or overture to the still greater and grander efforts which he was to make for liberty and independence. The American Revolution was one of the greatest political events in the world's history. An ocean separated the two contending powers and the com- batants came from different continents. And so, while in one sense it was a civil war, between men of the same blood, the victory of the colonies easily and naturally resulted in the birth of a nation. Macaulay has said that it is a rule without exception that the violence of a revolution corresponds to the degree of the misgovernment which produces it, and he has pronounced our Revolution the mildest of all. This may be true, if we look sim[)ly at the elements of fiendish atrocity and cruelty and internal disorder which frequently mark such struggles ; for the men of our Revolution, on either side, 'were distinguished for civilization and culture ; their lines ran back to the days of chivalry, and the magnanimous conduct of our noble Gen. Philip Schuyler toward the van- quished Burgoyne deserves to stand out beside the immortal act of Sir Philip Sidney. But our struggle was, nevertheless, one of the longest and most ardu- ous upon record. It was, indeed, a long, stout con- test between foes who had never learned to yield. Compared, also, with the grievances for which other peoples have rebelled, the causes which pro- duced our Revolution seem light and trivial. But we must remember the character of the men against whom these causes were made. Our fathers were, for the most part, unmixed Englishmen, and had 332 PATRICK HENRY. inherited the best blood and the noblest traditions of the Anglo-Saxon race. They were the descend- ants of the sturdy barons who humbled the pride of King John, and of Pym and Hampden, and the men who sat in the Long Parliament and curbed the insolent tyranny of the Stuarts. Taxation without representation was enough for them. And it made no difference to them whether these taxes were levied and attempted to be collected directly or indirectly ; whether by Stamp acts, by a Boston Port bill, or a tax upon tea. True, they could have paid these petty insignificant taxes and never felt it ; but the outrage and the insult they would have felt. So they went to war upon a princi- ple ; they made a stand at the very threshold of the temple of civil liberty, and thus rendered an inesti- mable service to their posterity and taught the world the sublime lesson that " resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." But resistance to tyranny and not independence was the first thought of our fathers. There would have been no blood shed and no separation from the mother country if England had imposed no further exactions after the repeal of the Stamp act. The Colonies were still loyal up to the fight at Lexing- ton. In 1861 our Southern States went into rebellion because they feared the area of slavery would be cir- cumscribed and because a Republican president had been elected. The causes were utterly insufficient, but the South, unlike the colonies, would not accept the Crittenden compromise. They sought separa- tion and independence as an end ; they would not listen to reason, and so they misquoted history when they appealed to the example of our fathers. PATRICK HENRY. .S33 But the British ministry was not content after the repeal of the Stamp act, and so there were fresh ex- actions and new acts of Parliament all intended to force the colonies into obedience. The right was still arrogantly claimed to bind the colonies in all things whatsoever. Then the excitement on this side the water was renewed, and for nearly ten years the war of moral resistance, the contest of ideas, of resolves and petitions, of public meetings, protests, and memorials, was carried on before a hostile gun was fired. The Revolution really began as early as 1761 — one hundred years before the great rebellion. The colonies were widely scattered ; the country was new ; there were no railroads and telegraphs and few newspapers ; it was a long way from Boston to Charleston. There was yet no organization, no political union or concert of action. The sturdy patriots, each in his place, were fighting where they stood. Massachusetts and Virginia were the leaders, but South Carolina, too, was full of liberty as she afterward was of slavery. Boston was the real head- quarters of the Revolution, as Charleston was of the great rebellion. James Otis was a flame ot fire, Samuel Adams was a great organizer of resistance, while Joseph Warren and John Adams were the gal- lant leaders of the young guard of liberty. PATRICK HENRY APPEARS UPON THE REVOLUTION- ARY STAGE. — HIS SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF BURGESSES AGAINST THE STAMP ACT. It was in the midst of this great excitement that Patrick Henry appeared upon the scene. He was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses, and took 334 PATRICK HENRY. his seat in May, iTOo, just after the passage of the Stamp act. The House of Burgesses was a colonial legislature, and the grave public exigency had filled it with the best talent of Virginia. On its humble benches sat a score of orators and statesmen who would have done honor to any legislative body under the sun. Pendleton, Randolph, Nicholas, Lee, Jeffer- son — these were shining names, some of them des- tined to stand high in the annals of the country, and all of them representing men of power. What could Patrick Henry do in such an assembly ? These were men of culture and various learning, profound law- yers, accomplished scholars. He was still ignorant of law and literature, was a backwoods young dele- gate, all unused, indeed, to the mere presence of cultivated and refined society. His manners were awkward, his speech uncouth, his dress unfashionable and slovenly. What could he do in a body of ora- tors, scholars, and gentlemen ? History has told us what he did do. He had found out his power. His speech in the parson's case was to him like a direct revelation from God. It reassured him ; it made him bold — not presump- tuous, not immodest, but self-reliant and brave. The great champions of liberty, the divinely appointed men who stand out as leaders in every great effort of humanity, always have this splendid confidence, this high enthusiasm, this divine egotism that seems whispered into their souls by the lips of angels. Patrick Henry knew he was ignorant and unlettered, he knew that he had come from the country where he had idled and dreamed the years away, hunting, fishing, fiddling, which these men had carefully im- PATRICK HENRY. 335 proved in the noble studies of the University. But he knew also that God had conferred upon him, in full measure, the divine gift of genius, and that he had within him a power which no learning of books could give, and which would lift him to the level of any great and supreme occasion. He did not, therefore, hesitate or falter in what seemed his duty. The Stamp act had alarmed and roused the people of the colonies. He was a man of the people, sprung from their ranks, he had always identified himself with their cause, and he fully sympathized with their demands. Unlearned in books and the precedents of history, he was wise in the knowledge of men, and more clearly than any other man of that day he saw and realized the full scope and significance of the impending contest. While his associates were in favor of more petitions to the crown, of more temporizing and makeshifts of compromise, his penetrating mind took in the whole situation at a glance, and he boldly came forward in the House with a set of resolutions, which with char- acteristic carelessness he had written on the fly leaf of a law book, but which stoutly and squarely denied the right of Parliament to tax the colonies and sounded the keynote of the Revolution. I have not time to give you the particulars of the memorable discussion which followed the introduction of these resolutions. Patrick Henry had nearly the whole talent of the assembly against him, but by the exhi- bition of the most undaunted courage, the most prodigious will, and the most wonderful and over- powering eloquence, he finally carried his resolu- tions, and thus to him is due the supreme honor of 336 PATRICK HENRY. first asserting that the exclusive right of taxation belonged to the colonies, and that the Stamp act and all other acts of a like character were unconstitu- tional and void. This was indeed the beginning of real revolution, the first great step toward separa- tion and independence ; for it was the bold asser- tion of a power in the colonies that belonged only to the idea of an independent government. No won- der, then, that the great orator encountered a pas- sionate and vehement opposition from all the cringing loyalists and timid conservatives in the house, and that their cries of "treason, treason," echoed on every side when rising to the sublime height of his terrible climax he thundered: ''Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell, and George the Third — may profit by their example." It took lofty courage to speak such words as these at such a time, but by this bold and magnificent effort, Patrick Henry placed himself at the head of the Revolutionary movement in Virginia, giving it a powerful impetus, and the fame of his brave resolu- lutions and his noble speech soon spread to the other colonies, and became an inspiration to the strug- gling patriots everywhere. Thus at the early age of twenty-nine this awkward, ignorant young lawyer of the Hanover Courthouse, had become the foremost orator of a great revolution which was destined to change the political face of the world. HE IS ELECTED TO THE FIRST CONTINENTAL CONGRESS. But it was ten years yet to Lexington and Con- cord, and in the meantime there came a lull in the PATRICK HENRY. 337 contest when England repealed the Stamp act, and the colonies hoped that at last they were to have justice from the mother country. Then Patrick Henry resumed the practice of the law in his hum- ble circuit, but soon returned to the front of the struggle when fresh acts of British tyranny again roused the people of America from their short dream of peace and reconciliation. He continued to hold a seat in the House of Burgesses and to take the lead in every movement of the patriots until 1774, when, chiefly through his suggestion and instrumentality, the first Continental Congress was called to meet in Philadelphia. Of course I am giving the merest glance and allusion to a period which was crowded with stirring events, but I must hasten on to the grander and still more momentous occasions when his eloquence was to electrify and sway his fellows, and sound out to millions the war cry of the Revo- lution. In that august and historic body, the first Continental Congress, which assembled in Carpen- ter's Hall, in the city of Philadelphia, on the fourth day of September, 1774, Patrick Henry took his seat as a member. Virginia had not forgotten her bold and brilliant young orator in making up that delega- tion of remarkable men — a delegation which, besides his, includes the name of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee, Peyton Randolph, and Edmund Pendleton. Surely, there were giants in those days. Would to God we had some of them now ! And these great men from Virginia met there and sat down with such men as Samuel Adams and John Adams, from Massachusetts ; John Jay and Philip Livingston, from New York ; Thomas Mifflin 22 338 PATRICK HENRY. and John Dickinson, fronn Pennsylvania ; Henry Middleton and John Rutledge, from South Carolina. The solemn silence of that great assembly was first broken by the voice of Patrick Henry in a memora- ble speech, which is said to have been grand and sublime beyond description, but of which no record remains. Here, also, he was first to sound out the keynote of the Revolution, and proclaim the lofty duty of the hour. From that moment it was never doubted that he was the noblest orator of America and the most powerful advocate of independence. HIS GREAT SPEECH IN THE VIRGINIA CONVENTION — "GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH." But events are now rapidly hastening toward the most glorious occasion and the crowning effort of eloquence in the great orator's career. The Conti- nental Congress with all its wisdom and ability — a wisdom and ability which drew from the great Lord Chatham that noble panegyric in the British Parlia- ment — had not been able to ward off the impending danger. The British ministry, backed by an obsti- nate and foolish king, still had influence enough in Parliament^to override the wise counsels of Chatham and Burke and^Fox, and other noble friends of Amer- ica, and fresh acts of coercion were passed. The Congress adjourned, and with the awful clouds of war gathering black and portentious, Patrick Henry went home to Virginia to prepare for the worst. Here in the Virginia Convention, in March, 177;">, he moved that the militia should be organized and "the colony be immediately put in a state of defense." This^was the signal for an outburst of opposition PATRICK HENRY. 339 such as had i^reeted him ten years before when he offered his celebrated resolutions denouncing the Stamp act. All the elements of loyalty which still clung to the crown, of conservatism which dreaded so bold a step, and of timid compromise which still hoped for reconciliation and peace, were now arrayed against him. In advance of the final appeal to arms, a year before the declaration of independ- ence, before a hostile gun had been fired, he was proposing a measure of real and actual war. To adopt it was to draw the sword and defy the mili- tary power of England. But Patrick Henry knew that the hour had come. He saw with the visior. of a prophet that longer petition and remonstrance was vain. So, now, firm and undaunted as of yore, he looked this great opposition in the face, and gathered his strength for the supreme and most glorious effort of his life. No words of mine can do justice to this memorable speech. No language of mine can paint before your eyes with adequate vividness and power that scene in the Old St. John's Church in Rich- mond, when the great orator rose to make his final reply to the many plausible, strong, and vehement arguments which had been urged against his motion. Back through a hundred years, in imagination, we may see him now, as he stands there in the prime of his manly strength, with lofty mien and flashing eye, and our ears may catch the sublime utterances of that wonderful voice which so thrilled through every chamber of the soul. O. what a sight is that ! What a scene ! See how, Samson-like, he twists and breaks the strongest arguments of his adver- 340 PATRICK HENRY. saries like wisps of straw, and tramples their studied objections beneath his feet in the rush and sweep of his tremendous onset. What to him now is opposi- tion but the fulcrum of his power and the opportunity of his genius .-* He rises with the great argument until he seems more than human, and the dele- gates hold their breath in awe. Never before has human eloquence reached a higher point. At last the great orator approaches the climax of his speech and pronounces its immortal peroration. With a glow of splendid passion which dilated his form and irradiated his face like an angel's, with his eyes flashing supernatural fire, with lofty attitude and the imperious gesture of a god, he exclaims : — "There is no retreat but in submission and slav- ery ! Our chains are forged. Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston. The war is inevi- table — and let it come. I repeat it, sir, let it come." " It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry. Peace, peace, but there is no peace. The war is actually begun. The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms. Our brethren are already in the field. Why stand we here idle ? What is it that gentlemen wish .'' What would they have ? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery ? Forbid it, Almighty God ! I know not what course others may take ; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!" Oh ! it was a sublime sight ; it was genius on fire ; it was the orator in highest action — every note sounded in that magnificent keyboard of eloquence. PATRICK HENRY. 341 The words of that speech will echo in history as long as the guns of Lexington and Bunker Hill. AFTER HISTORY — \VAR GOVERNOR AND STATESMAN. Patrick Menry had been prophet as well as orator, and his stern and solemn warning : " We must fight, I repeat it, sir, we must fight," was not uttered a moment too soon. For now the war began in deadly earnest ; the great cause of the colonies was trans- ferred from the field of discussion to the field of arms, and the voice of the orator was drowned in the rattle of musketry and the roar of cannon. Here the great mission of Patrick Henry as the inspired orator and mouthpiece of the Revolution may be said to have ended. It was now the time for the soldier to take up the great work, and so this same year Wash- ington enters upon the scene as the Commander-in- Chief of the Continental army, and l)egins that lofty career which made him " first iii war. first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen." But though the great orator had done his noblest work, and now gave way for the sword, he was not for- gotten, nor did he cease to be useful to the Revolu- tionary cause. From the forum he passed to the cabinet and the council table, and in 177f^» — just one hundred years ago — was elected the first Republi- can governor of Virginia — an office which he held until 1779, when he was no longer eligible. I shall not pause upon his career as war governor and statesman. It must suffice to say that he was wise in counsel and vigorous in action as he had been powerful and commanding in speech. Never did he lose hjart or hope in the great cause. The war, as 342 PATRICK HENRY. we know, had its alternating hopes and fears, its vicissitudes of success and failure, its great excite- ments and depressions. We, of this generation, who were thrilled by Sumpter, Appomattox, and the Assassination, can realize how our fathers felt over Lexington, Valley Forge, and Yorktown. When the war was over, Patrick Henry, as I have already said, was again elected governor of Virginia, for three consecutive terms, when he was no longer eligible. He sat also in the Virginia Convention to ratify the Federal Constitution — an instrument whose adoption he vigorously opposed because he thought it violated the sovereignty of the States. In 1795, he declined the office of secretary of state offered him by Washington, as he afterward did another election as governor of Virginia, and the post of envoy to France, tendered him by President Adams. Soon, too, he retired wholly from the prac- tice at the bar, which, in the intervals of official labor, he had irregularly followed, and his public career was now closed. HIS RETIREMENT AND OLD AGE, It was in 1704, at the age of 58, that Patrick Henry retired wholly from professional and public employ- ment to spend the evening of his days upon his farm in the quiet enjoyment of domestic and private life. It was an early age for such a step, as he should have been yet in his prime, but his nerves had probably been somewhat shattered and his bodily strength impaired by the stormy life through which he had passed and the tremendous excitements of the Revo- lution. For six years he enjoyed serene rest and PATRICK HENRY. 343 peace. History has preserved a beautiful picture of the great orator during those last years when, crowned with the honors and gratitude of the peo- ple, with his devoted family and friends about him, in peace after so much strife, in comparative afflu- ence after so much poverty and distress, with pa- triarchial dignity and simplicity he rounded out his career — fit ending of a life so pure and great. He was the father of a large family of children, some of whom by a second wife were still young, and in their society he found great delight, joining in their s[)c)rts witii infinite zest and frequently being caught by a sudden visitor, like that great king of France, down upon the floor in the midst of their play, himself a child again. I confess that to me such a picture as this is very beautiful and touching, for the love of children is one of the best signs of a noble nature. To his neighbors and friends ,he was genial and kindly, and to the people, by whom he was almost idolized, he was open and hospitable. His home was a kind of Mecca for strangers and pilgrims who came long distances to see the great champion of inde- pendence, and these were always welcome, and usu- ally rewarded with delightful conversations with the venerable patriot. He was simple and abstemious in his habits, of deep religious feelings and rever- ence, and like Milton, great in song as he in elo- quence, he was wont to gather his family and domes- tics about him on Sunday evenings for a season of sacred music, when, taking down the violin of his youth, he would join in the grateful melody. It is hard to think that this beautiful picture of 344 PATRICK HENRY. Patrick Henry's old age and retirement should be marred by the angry excitements of political strife, and that from its serene quiet he was again to be plunged into the turmoil of politics. Harder still to think that the aged patriot who was now the object of undivided reverence and honor was soon to be subjected to unjust suspicions, reproaches, and denun- ciations for a change of his political views and party relations, and that, shattered by this last unexpected battle, he was to die in the midst of the strife. Patrick Henry had been a Republican, and had opposed the adoption of the federal constitution, as I have already told you, because he thought it vio- lated the rights of the States. He had sided with Jefferson and against Hamilton in the political divi- sions of that day. But alarmed at the terrible spec- ters of the French Revolution then at its height, and the tendencies to anarchy which he thought he saw on this side of the water, and moved also by the per- sonal wishes of Washington, he now threw his great influence with the Federalists, and became a candi- date for a seat in the State legislature. He hoped in this way to be instrumental in repairing the mis- chief of the celebrated Virginia State rights resolu- tion of 1798. In the short and violent struggle which followed and which resulted in his triumphant election, he made the last speech of his life. It was worthy of his fame, and when, quivering from its excitement, he descended from the rostrum, a by- stander exclaimed: '"The sun has set in all his glory." He did not live to take his seat, but died on the 6th of June, 1799, thus preceding by a few months PATRICK HENRY. 345 only his illustrious friend, Washington. So great and bitter was the feeling caused by his defection from his party that resolutions in honor of his mem- ory offered in the legislature when it assembled, were laid upon the table by the Republican major- ity. Yet, who doubts now that Patrick Henry was brave and honest in this as he had been when he stood for the rights of the colonies against the power of England ? Pie differed with his party ! How great such a thing appears at the time in the eyes of men excited and inflamed by party zeal and bigotry ! How small it seems in the calm light of history ! It is an almost forgotten circumstance in his history, and has not left a shadow upon his fame. It does not take a hundred years for the people to be just to a great man's courage of opinion. In these very recent times a similar act of independence subjected our greatest and most illustrious statesman to unjust reproach and vituperation, but it was only a passing cloud, and the fame of Charles Sumner shines out now without a spot upon its grand effulgence. AN ESTIMATE OF HIS CHARACTER. Here the curtain falls upon this great actor in the drama of Independence, and we may now pause and take an estimate of his character. The Revolution- ary stage upon which he performed his part was an exalted one, and he had the whole civilized world for his audience. And yet the fame of no other great character of the Revolution — perhaps I might say of no other great character of the last century— so largely rests upon tradition. He left scarcely a writ- ten memorial. The perfect art of stenography which 346 PATRICK HENRY. now catches every word of an orator, however rapid his delivery, was unknown in his day, and so his wonderful speeches were lost. Like magnificent intellectual fireworks, they blazed up in splendid creations before his astonished auditors, and then went out, leaving only an entrancing memory behind. So a few scattered portions, or fragments of his speeches, imperfectly reported by long hand, and the written testimony of a few eye and ear witnesses of their power, — this is all the certain data which we have. In the diary of John Adams, is the bald out- line of his great speech in Carpenter's Hall, in Phila- delphia, at the opening of the Continental Congress, — a few naked, cheap generalizations, — but this brief record of his great New England rival is liter- ally all that is preserved of this memorable effort. His biography, by W^illiam Wirt, though written near his own times and respectably voluminous, con- tains little that is reliable, and besides richly deserv- ing the criticism of Jefferson that it was a "poor book," amounts to little more than an echo of his traditionary fame which filled all Virginia. There are reasons, it is true, which go far to ex- cuse this poverty of facts. The man himself was severely simple in his ways, and moved almost exclu- sively among the common, unlettered people in a rural district away from the centers of intelligence and publicity ; he was only once, and for a brief session, a member of the Continental Congress ; he filled no cabinet position or office connected with the general government ; and from lack of early culture, as well as from natural indolence, he never used his pen. Beyond his local repute as advocate and orator PATRICK HENRY. IHI among the plain people who saw him almost every day, his wider and historic fame was made on a few great occasions and by a few master strokes in the white heat of the Revolution. At such times he appeared suddenly upon the scene, at the critical and supreme moment, like the black Knight in "Ivan- hoe," with dazzling and almost supernatural power, and when the all-conquering blow had been given, he retired again to the ranks of the common people from which he had come. And yet, with all these drawbacks, we need have no difficulty or uncertainty in pronouncing Patrick Henry to have been one of the most extraordinary men and wonderful orators in the world's history. He was a great man by God's original endowment alone, and derived little help from learning or experi- ence. Cast in a lofty and antique mold, like one of Plutarch's heroes, he strode across the stage with the conscious port and self-reliant tread of the born king of men. He was one of those providential men who are divinely sent to do some great work at the su- preme moments of histor)-. The Revolution needed its orator to speak its voice, to utter its protests, to rouse to resistance, and it found him in Patrick Henry, who gathered up the thoughts of excited mil- lions, and put them into burning and immortal words. The character of the man well comported with the loftiness of his mission. His life was pure, his integ- rity unquestioned, he was free from petty vices or selfish ambitions ; he was indeed an example of pub- lic and private virtue. He could not have been the noble knight of liberty which he was if his soul had not been as clear and white as the lofty device upon 848 PATRICK HENRY. his shield. The true heroes of history are always pure and single of life, for God does not profane his truth by giving it into the keeping of unclean hands, nor allow the shocking inconsistency of its vindica- tion by untruthful and dishonest champions. 1 know it has been said of him by a few, that he was a dema- gogue, because he so constantly mingled with the common people, spoke in their idiom, and reflected their sentiments. But to me all this seems a con- firmation of the simple honesty of his character. The child of nature, as he was, nature was strong within him. and sprung himself from the bosom of the common people, he never ceased to feel the powerful attachments of his origin. Living no arti- ficial life among books, or courts, or cabinets, he was never weaned from the rough but honest and fresh simplicity of his early years. And this daily contact and touching with the masses, together with his own almost divine endowments, pre-eminently fitted him to be what he unquestionably was — a great tribune of the people. Had he not known them as he did, he could not have spoken for them as he did. How true, also, was all this of Abraham Lincoln, our best beloved man of the people of this nineteenth century- As I have already said, Patrick Henry knew little of books or of black letter learning. But he knew men and principles by intuition ; what other men studied out slowly and laboriously, he knew, he saw as by a flash of vivid light. He read and studied the great book of human nature with its open pages all about him, and he knew well the springs of human character and action. It is doubtful indeed if this very want of reading and learning was not an PATRICK HENRY. 84!) advantage to him in the part which he played, as it made him more independent, original, and self-reli- ant. But we must be careful not to make this the standard or rule for other men. He was ignorant, but he was great. Let us not therefore despise learn- ing. It is true, Karning could not have made him what he was, and it is natural, therefore, that he should have undervalued it. As a statesman, apart from the orator, he was bold, far seeing, and incorruptible. His opportunities in this direction, it is true, were not large, but so far as he was entrusted with the practical conduct of public affairs, he gave eminent satisfaction. Here he served only his State, having never entered upon the larger field of national politics ; but six times was he elected governor of Virginia, and at last declined the honor. He was gifted with remarkable forecast, as his whole public career so well shows, and his keen penetration of character was something wonderful. He was first of all his contemporaries to discover and proclaim the greatness of Washington, and long afterward, as he looked across the sea, his eye caught the rising star of Napoleon, then but a plain republican gen- eral, and he predicted, with striking exactness, his subsequent career of empire and blood. PATRICK HENRY AS AN ORATOR. But it is when viewed as an orator and the mouth- piece of the Revolution that we find the chief secret of Patrick Henry's power and his strongest claim upon the remembrance of history. Patriot and statesman he was, but other men of the Revo- lution were as patriotic as he, and other names 350 PATRICK HENRY. Stand above his in the ranks of statesmanship. But as an orator he stands supreme, and towers above all others. Here he plays no secondary part. I know there were other great orators and speakers in that struggle who richly deserve to rank with the best and greatest ever produced in any land or age. There at its opening was James Otis, whose speech, in 1761, against the writs of assistance was pronounced a flame of fire ; there from New England, also, was John Adams, the great debater and colossus of the Declaration on the floor of the Congress of 1776 ; there was the silver-tongued Richard Henry Lee, from his own Virginia, who was not inaptly or un- worthily called the Cicero of America ; and there were Rutledge and Pendleton and Mason, and a score of orators from all sections of the country to make up the great array. But so immensely did Patrick Henry surpass them all that their fame has been overshadowed and dwarfed by his colossal reputation, and he seems to stand out alone on the historic page. We can not analyze and criticise the parts and powers of such an orator as he was. No lines or rules of school or art are adecjuate to bound or measure him. Lesser orators can be largely made by study, and can be judged by the rules and stand- ards of their art. But the truly great orator is God- created and sent, and is above all rules and criticism ; he sweeps all criticism away in a great rush and flood of nature, and men can only look up wonderingly to admire and adore. So it was pre-eminently with Patrick Henry. He was a great prodigy of natural eloquence. He knew PATRICK HENRY. 3ol absolutely nothing of eloquence as an art ; it is prob- able that he never looked at a single rule of rhetoric in his life. What Daniel Webster has so well and wisely said of true eloquence was peculiarly true of him. His eloquence did indeed come from the man and the occasion, and was " like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force." It did not come from far. Neither labor nor learning had toiled for it, and its conceptions swiftly outran all the deductions of logic. It was a great and sublime force, heaven-sent for the good of men. Nor is this any wild exaggeration of speech or panegyric. Happily, we are not left here to any vague tradition ; for, besides the concurrent testimony of many others, Jefferson, a most competent author- ity, who heard him often, has said that "he spoke as Homer wrote," and that his eloquence " was sublime beyond description." John Randol[)h, too, the keen and eloquent Virginian of the succeeding genera- tion, who must have heard him frequently in his youth, has left the striking and epigrammatic eulogy, " He was Shakespeare and Garrick combined." What more is needed on this point when such judges exalt his genius to the height of Homer and Shakespeare ? Coming closer to his style and method, we see that it was distinguished for a bold and rapid gener- alization and a vivid imagery, seizing upon the strong and salient points of the subject with an iron logic and grasp, and illuminating it with the splendid light of his imagination. His speeches were generall}- short. No audience could long endure such rapt and terrible tension. His personal presence 352 PATRICK HENRY. was in full keeping with the peculiar character of his eloquence. The tall, spare form, the nervous lines of his face, the stern knit brows, the fiery and soul-pene- trating eyes, and the striking and majestic attitude — all these well comported with the thrilling, awe- inspiring, and sublime effect of his speeches. But this stern, severe man, so full of lofty seriousness and passionate fire, had in his composition a vein of rich- est humor, and could relax into passages of such infi- nite drollery and ridicule as would set his audience in a roar. A notable instance of this was the oft- quoted speech to a jury, after the Revolution, where he so effectually laughed John Hook, the "beef" claimant, out of court. His voice, too, had an inde- scribable charm and power, and lingered and haunted the memory long after its wonderful cadences had died away upon the ear. But he needed contact with his audience to fire his genius and give this grace and majesty to his person. Demosthenes, in the calm of his study, could light his mind from within, but Henry needed the great debate and the high war of words to wake up his faculties to their fullest play ; just as many great commanders have needed the roar and thunder of battle to bring out their genius. So, too, he was fired by the danger of the conflict. The true orator is always brave as well as honest, and no genuine elo- quence ever yet came from the lips of a coward or a demagogue. Patrick Henry was as courageous and as real a hero of the Revolution as Israel Putnam or Anthony Wayne. I have not time, as I could wish, to compare our great Revolutionary orator with his illustrious rivals PATRICK HENRY. 353 and compeers of other ages and lands. There is but one English parliamentary orator in all her long list of noble speakers and orators who had the original fire of genius and power and majesty of delivery to entitle him to compare with Patrick Henry, and that was his contemporary the great Lord Chatham. There are not wanting resemblances between these two great orators who sent their answering voices across the Atlantic in the cause of American liberty. There are suggestions of resemblance, too, in the eloquence of that fierce and terrible orator of the French Revolution which so soon followed ours. In Patrick Henry and Mirabeau we find the same immense passion, the same powerful and unbending will, the same overawing majesty. Hut the com- parison can not be followed ; for Henry, with all his enthusiasm and passionate energy of speech, was controlled by high moral principles, and was the champion of orderly, constitutio'nal liberty, while Mirabeau, who has been called a monster, displayed his vast powers in wonderful but inconsistent exhibi- tions in a wild pandemonium of public passion and anarchy. After all, the nearest resemblance is to that great and wonderful orator of antiquity who stood and spoke so grandly for Grecian liberty against the Macedonian tyrant, as our orator did for American liberty, against the tyrant of England. Patrick Henry will stand for our Demosthenes. There was the same simple and severe character, the same lofty patriotism, the same unquenchable love of liberty, and finally, the same kindling and overpowering eloquence that could thrill and ani- mate his countrymen to deeds of noble daring. 2\ 354 PATRICK HENRY. CONCLUSION. Thus have I endeavored to sketch the character and eloquence of the great patriot and orator to whom this country owes so much. To me it has not been an ungrateful task; I trust that to you it has not been an unprofitable one, thus to revive, at the opening of this centennial year, these memories of the great champion and advocate of independ- ence. It has been a lesson of patriotism which we need to learn ; it has been the study of a character whose contemplation will do us good. We have had great orators since the Revolution- ary period. Besides Fisher Ames, who was brilliant but early lost, Clay was magnetic and all-persuasive ; Webster was massive and godlike, Everett was full of classic grace, and Prentiss and Corwin had the true, original fires of genius. But the noble race of great speakers is dying out. In our forty millions we can not number as many as, more than one hun- dred years ago, sat in the House of Burgesses for the humble province of Virginia. Are they still here, waiting only for occasion to call them out ? Has the press, with its now all-pervading influence, driven them from the field of public discussion, and become the only leader and educator of the people ? I will not undertake to answer these questions. I can only see, as all men may, the plain fact of the decline of popular and parliamentary eloquence. We do not have orators because, for some reason, they are not wanted ; for the same great law of supply and demand holds good here as in the pettiest huckster- ings of commerce. Small credit, however, is it to PATRICK HENRY. 355 our boasted civilization that oratory is so little valued, for it is the noblest of all intellectual accom- plishments. The Greeks and Romans, whom we call pagans, paid bounties to eloquence and gave their highest honors to orators. Can we say as much in this Christian land and in this nineteenth century .? A half dozen great speakers, not one of them in pub- lic life, linger superfluous in the evening of their days ; when they are gone who shall take their places ? One of these — the silver-tongued agitator, Wendell Phillips — has spoken in a style so charm- ing and brilliant and with a voice of such delightful cadence that as an orator, simply, he is entitled to rank with the greatest in our Pantheon. hV'llow citizens, we stand upon the threshold ot our Centennial. One hundred years of liberty ! Short time, indeed, in the history of nations, but long enough to show us some of our magnificent possibilities of power and empire^ ; long enough, too, to disclose to us the dread possibilities of national disaster and decline. As we keep the great jubilee, a re-united people, let us bow with pious reverence at the shrines of the noble men of the Revolution — soldiers, statesmen, and orators, who made us a nation. Their immortal names beam upon us from the heavens above, and like celestial luminaries shine forever on our pathwa\'. Some of the greatest of our dangers we have triumphantly passed. God alone may tell what others are still before us. But come what may in the future ; let the storm rage again as it raged before ; let the heavens again be black and men's hearts begin to sink within them; we know this — 356 PATRICK HENRY. thank God — that our children, or our children's children, when that dark day shall come, can look up as we of this generation looked up into the serene and majestic face of Washington, and hear him say : " My countrymen, the preservation of the sacred fires of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people " — at bold and indomitable John Adams, and catch the ring of his manly voice, speaking such characteristic words as we may well imagine him to have uttered : " Sink or swim, survive or perish, I am for the declaration" — at the calm, philosophic Jefferson, as he writes the immortal words : " We hold these truths to be self- evident, that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" — and, finally, into the transfigured coun- tenance and the flashing eyes of Patrick Henry, and hear again his thrilling cry : " Give me liberty, or give me death." ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE.^ TiiK argument of Hon. Chas. S. May, for contestants, occupying four houi s in its delivery, is conceded on every hand to be the ablest ever made to a jury in this county; clearly and logically discussing the facts in the case, eloquently depicting the wrongs of Pierce to his first wife and children, and leaving an impression upon the jury which could not be shaken off. — Chicago Times. The proponents' case was opened by Arthur Brown, Esq., who spoke for two hours and a half. He was followed in the afternoon by Geo. M. Buck, for the contestants, who spoke for one hour, and prefaced, in strong, clear words, the main argument for the contestants, which was to be made by Hon. Chas. S. May. Hon. A. B. Maynard, of Detroit, was to re[ily to Mr. May, and the anxiety in town was intense to hear the efforts of these legal luminaries. Mr. May opened at half-past three in the afternoon, but long bef(5re he began every foot of space in the court room was filled with an eager and excited crowd, who breathlessly listened to every sentence of his argument. He appealed to the reason of the jury, and built from the facts a barrier which the most vehement endeavors of Mr. Maynard failed to break through. He spoke for four hours, his argument con- tinuing into the evening. His speech was spoken of in the highest terms, many pronouncing it the finest jury effort ever made at the Kalamazoo bar. Mr. Maynard opened at half-past eight on Tuesday morning, and spoke until noon. He appreciated the importance of the case and the 1 \l Kalamazoo Circuit, February, 1876. This argument is too long too be given here in full. It has been thought best to make no abstract or condensation, but to give entire the last third of it, embracing the discussion of the important (juestion of Undue Influence. The other main question of mental capacity had been ex- haustively discussed under different heads. One hundred and fifty witnesses were sworn in the case, and the iury, after deliberating twenty-six hours, rendered a verdict breaking the will. 357 358 ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. eloquent argument which he had to reply to, and did his utmost to break its force and effect. — Detroit Evening News. When Mr. Buck closed, a dense crowd had filled the court room, all anxious to hear Hon. Chas. S. May, who was to make the main argu- ment for the contestants, and who, it was expected, would be more brilliant and eloquent than ever before in a jury case. It was a scene long to be remembered in the history of the court. In the audience were large numbers of ladies, and when Mr. May rose at the close of the short intermission, a silence pervaded the room that was the forerunner of the rapt attention he received during the four hours in which he spoke. He was pale, anxious, and earnest. Each listener leaned forward to catch his opening sentences. He began slowly and calmly. But soon rousing with his subject he gathered the facts into logical order, and clothing them in eloquent words wove thein into a powerful and irresistible argument. At 5:30 P. M. the court adjourned until evening, when the crowd was more dense and excited than before. Mr. May continued his argument. The afternoon he had devoted to reasoning and convincing; in the evening he fairly blazed with excitement and eloquence. When he closed, the crowd so forgot they were in a court of justice as to attempt to cheer, and the impression was general that the contestants would be successful. We believe it to be the greatest jury effort of Mr. May's life, and one of the finest ever made in the State. — Kalamazoo Gazette. Gentlemen of the Jnry : I approach now, the discussion of the last main head, or division, of my argument — the question of undue infltience. And here, while the ground is entirely independ- ent in law and fact from the two other main propo- sitions which I have examined, I ask you this preg- nant and vital question at the outset : If in your judgment you should find this mental, physical, and moral weakness which I have depicted, not com- plete ; if it still leaves testamentary capacity, does it not make it more probable that this old man should ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. 859 fall under the influence of a strong-minded and artful woman ? Remember, it was upon this wreck of a man that the influence of this woman was exerted. What do we mean by undue influence ? I think, gentlemen, that this is the true test here : Is this such a will as Isaac Pierce would have made if he had been left alone and wholly to himself; if he had been left entirely free to carry out his own mind and intention .-' For I hold that this could not be a case of the exercise of a legitimate and healthful influence by the wife over the husband. Considering all the proved and unquestioned relations of these parties from the beginning to the end ; considering, too, their unhappy domestic state in the later years and his undisputed habits, I say it could not have been a case of fair influence — it was dictation, intimidation, coercion, or it was nothing. Was this will made as /w wanted to make it ? Did it express his real sentiments and feelings toward his children and the objects of his bounty.' Now, gentlemen, we are not left wholly in the dark as to the kind of will which Isaac Pierce in his calm, sober, and better moments desired to make. EXPRESSIONS OE PREVIOUS INTENTION. If we look into the testimony, we shall find that Isaac Pierce at many different times before this will was made gave expression to his real wish and inten- tion in regard to the final disposition of his property among his children and dependents. Let me recall some of these to your minds : — Away back in the early days upon the farm, as his sons Loren and Horace tell you. he used to 360 ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. encourage the boys in the midst of their toil by say- ing to them : '* You are not working for me, but for yourselves. All this property will be yours." And the boys believed him, and worked on hopefully through the long summer days. He told John Bloom, after his separation from his first wife, that he meant his property should all go to his children. He told Dr. Babcock, as long ago as 1856, when he was sick and thought he was going to die, that he had not made the provision he had intended for his first wife and children. He spoke particularly of Mrs. Parish, and said he had intended to do more for her ; and he begged the doctor to save his life and restore him to health, so that he should not die and leave this all undone. In 1855, two years after he put his first wife away, he told Geo. Whiting that "Aunt Katy should have all she needed ; that he had driven her away from the home she had helped to make, but calculated she should not come to want." These are some of his earliest expressions. That his good intentions were never changed, we shall see as we come nearer the time when this pretended will was made. In July, 1871, the very month it was made, he told his dausfhter, Lucinda Milliman, that he had never helped her, but he intended to do so. In the spring of 1871 he told Peter Bovee that if he was called away suddenly, he wanted things left to suit himself; that he was going to leave his prop- erty to his own children. In 1870 he told Henry Hobart and D. T. Dell that ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. 3f)l he did not know as he had given his first wife enough. In 1871 he told Henr}' Troutwine he should give Emeline what she brought into the family. The rest of his property he designed his children should have, and they should share equally. He said he had never given his daughter Lucinda anything, and he intended to give her a good, nice property. He should do nothing for Jennings Hadley. Here, gentlemen, we have, in these expressions, the constantly repeated intentions of this man with regard to the final disposition of his property, for a period of twenty years, and clear down to the very month when he made this will ; and these expres- sions are always consistent — always to the same purpose. EXPRESSIONS AFTER THE WILL W^\S MADE. Now, if we turn again to the' testimony, we shall find that after the date of this will he continued still to talk in the same way as before ; continued still to express his intention to provide for his first wife and children. I grant that there are contrary and incon- sistent expressions proved after this time, but it is a most significant fact as bearing upon this question of undue influence that Isaac Pierce is still found talking in the old way, and telling his friends and neighbors of his intention to do things exactly con- trary to what he had been made to say and do in this will. So, gentlemen, we find him saying to William H. Tubbs, in June, 1872, that he had deeded one hun- dred acres of land for Emeline's support, — -that, you 362 ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. will remember, was a long time before the will, — and he was not going to give her any more. That he had made his will, but he never intended to die and leave it on the face of the earth. He told his daughter, Polly Clarke, the Sunday before he died, that he was going to make a division of his property among his children ; that he would either give Loren the Elwell forty or the Jones forty. The Elwell forty is given to Emeline in the will. He told Stephen Smith, a week before his death, that the Hadley boys should not get one cent of his property ; said he calculated to make a will, and leave his property equally among his children. He told James Shaver, in 1872, that he had made a will to suit his wife, but the next time he went to Kalamazoo he was going to make one to suit himself. He told Andrew J. Spicer, while in California in 1872, that he had got to go home and settle up his business ; that he had made a will, but it did not suit him, and if he did not get home there would be ''one of the d dest law suits on record." And finally, in that same year, 1872, he told Ephraim Bonner the same thing in language still more emphatic and blasphemous, saying that if he should die and leave that will, then " hell would be out for noon." From all this, gentlemen, we can see what kind of a will Isaac Pierce would have made if he had been let alone. That he did not make such a will as, from all these expressions, he clearly wished to make, was due to the dominating and controlling influence of another, substituting other purposes and intentions ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. 363 in the place of his own. So I say, gentlemen, that if you find this state of facts, if you find that this man's will did not express his own mind, but the mind of his wife Emeline, and was made in her interest, then it is a case of undue influence, and you must so pro- nounce it. EMELINE — THE WOMAN IN THE CASE. And now I come, i^entlemen, to discuss more clearly the relations of this woman Emeline to these facts. She is the woman in the case ; and not the first one, either, who has figured in cases like this, and been accused of exercising undue influence over men. Such cases and instances are very common in the courts. They are, indeed, of longer standing than the courts ; they are as old as human nature itself; for I do not forget that, according to the sacred legend, it was the first woman wjio unduly inlluenced the first man to eat of the forbidden fruit. I am to show you here the powerful influence of an artful and designing woman over a man of rough nature and strong passions ; a woman twenty years younger than the man, and first securing her influ- ence over him through the unlawful gratification of his strong and unregulated passions. HISTORIC INSTANCES —THE MISTRESSES OF KINGS. Is there any inherent improbability in such a case.' Why, gentlemen, history is full of instances like this. — instances where great monarchs and rulers of men have fallen, through the same source of human weak- ness, under the influence and control of the other 364 ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. sex. Who has not heard of the mistresses of kings, and the part they have played in the history of the world.'' Louis XIV of France was called ''The Grand Monarch " and ''Louis the Great," so splen- did was his long reign and so powerful was he among the sovereigns of the world ; and yet, though this man was an absolute monarch over France, and dic- tated law to all Europe, sending out his great mar- shals and armies to victorious fields of conquest, and ruling in his cabinet with arbitrary and autocratic will, he himself was conquered by the charms and blandishments of a solitary woman, — a woman with- out royal blood, a butcher's daughter, who ever after, until the day of his death, exercised supreme influ- ence over him, dictating war and peace, — even com- pelling him in the interest of her religious fanaticism to revoke that royal edict of Nantes, and let slip the dogs of religious persecution, deluging a whole region in innocent blood. I could give you many more signal instances of this kind. The very next successor of this great king of whom I have spoken, the next. Louis in that long line, had his Pompadour, as the other his Main- tenon ; another woman from humble life, who ruled the ruler of the nation with an artful and unbending will. And there was the English Charles II, with his famous mistress, and in our recent times the way- ward and romantic Lola Montez, the dancing girl who came to rule the king in a European court. Shakespeare, who has illustrated all human nature and passion, has drawn a powerful picture of wom- an's influence in his Lady Macbeth, who, urging her ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. 3f)5 guilty but hesitating lord to the terrible deed of blood, says to him : " Only look up clear; To alter favor ever is to fear; Leave all the res/ to nie.^'' Why, gentlemen, these counsel say to you that it is impossible that the wife of this man could have had this inOuence over him ; that Isaac Pierce was a self-willed, strong man. A strong man ! Well, was he stronger than Samson, who could tear down the gates of a city .'^ And yet Samson, gentlemen, was weak enough when his head reposed in the lap of his Delilah. So it was with Isaac Pierce. Rough and strong as he was by nature, he came at last like Samson, through the same channel of influence, to obey the will of an artful and designing woman. ISAAC PIERCE AND HIS FAMILY IN 1S.')2. Now, gentlemen, let us turn to this testimony, and see when and how this influence began. Let me take your minds back to 1852, and show you Isaac Pierce there with his family on the old homestead at Climax. Married to his first wife in the State of New York in 1824, he had removed with his young family to Michigan ten years later, and had settled down upon his first purchase of land in the beautiful region where he continued to live during all this his- tory, for nearly forty years, until the day of his death. At this time, 1S.')2, he had with him besides his wife, — "Aunt Katy," as she was afterward called, — six children ranging in years from sixteen up to 366 ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. twenty-seven, three boys and three girls. He was now about fifty years of age and the possessor of eight hundred and fourteen acres of land, eight hun- dred and sixty-nine acres being all he owned at the day of his death. The story of this family had been like the story of other pioneer families in this region, only a little rougher and harder. They began with little, and they worked hard, boys and girls alike, — the daugh- ters and the mother frequently working in the fields with the men ; and the testimony many times shows us " Aunt Katy " bringing with her own hands the family wood from the field to the house. "We all worked hard," say these children on the stand ; and so testify also all the witnesses who knew them in those early days. Isaac Pierce at this time, though a rough, austere man, seems not to have been an unkind father, and he was well disposed toward his family. Drinking had not got to be so settled a habit with him, and he worked hard with the rest. He had overcome all the difficulties of a new coun- try, and brought his family safe through all the trials and dangers of that new home ; his judgment had been good, his plans had worked well, and he was a man now in easy circumstances, and comparatively rich among so many of his less prosperous neigh- bors. THE BEGINNING OF TROUP.LE. But a great trouble was about to fall upon that quiet and peaceful family. In the late summer of that same year 1852, Isaac Pierce met this woman, then Mrs. Emeline Hadley, an interesting young ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. 867 widow, in her mourning weeds tor her husband who had suddenly died in the month of July, in the town of Pennfield, in the county of Calhoun, which was their home. .She met Pierce at Battle Creek, — it seems she knew him, at least by reputation, before — and applied to him to become administrator of her husband's estate. He seems to have been struck with her person and her request, and at once under- took the duty. And then commenced his relations and intercourse with her, destined to change the whole course and current of his after life. He began soon to make visits to Pennfield, which were fre- quently repeated, and we catch a glimpse of him defending her law suit at Battle Creek. SIGNING THE SEPARATION I'Al'ERS. Pierce is soon infatuated, and nothing can now stand in the way of his dreadful purpose. All his ungovernable passions are roused, and he turns fiercely upon the wife of his youth as an obstacle in the way of his new and unholy desires. You remem- ber that in the solemn night time, the youngest child, Lucinda, had heard her father's voice, in high and terrible words, demanding that her mother should consent to a separation, and leave her home and children forever. At last, by the most terrible threats and commands, by the use of language too shocking and awful for me to repeat, he compels her to come to Kalamazoo, where this same (ieo. Thomas Clark, the adviser and tool of Pierce, had drawn up the separation papers for her to sign. V^ou remem- ber these papers, gentlemen, with their false and 368 ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. lying preamble, " Whereas, unhappy difficulties have arisen between the said Isaac and his wife Cathar- ine." What difficulty had she made.'' The wretched wife at first could not sign the papers. She took the pen, officiously put into her hand by Clark, and then burst into tears, saying she could not do it ; "she could not sign away her home and children." The superservicable Clark is ready to urge her, to tell her of his brother's case in Eng- land, and how that was managed. Pierce stands by, overawing her by his presence and by the stern and unbending purpose which she sees written in his face. At length she yields, takes the pen, signs her name, and turns weeping and sorrowfully away. Then, with a heavy and broken heart she returns for a brief season to the home where she had worked so long and endured so much for her husband and her children. It was in the month of November that Pierce brought Mrs. Hadley into his family at Climax. Up to this time, these children tell you. Isaac Pierce had lived peacably and pleasantly enough with his wife. But a terrible domestic cloud had now begun to gather. Quarrels and high words began to be heard by the affrighted children between the father and mother. Pierce leaves his wife's bed ; he makes no conversation with her ; he does not treat her any longer as his wife, but instals Mrs. Hadley at the head of the table, and is even found in the night time sharing her room and bed. Aunt Katy passes around uncomplaining but sad, and frequently in tears. ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. 369 THE CULMINATION OF THE TRAGEDY. Finally the awful climax of her troubles comes, the day of fate and doom to this poor woman, when she is sent away forever from her home ; taken away by the orders of this infatuated and infuriated man, who had once solemnly sworn at the altar to love and cherish her ; taken with a few cheap and hum- ble articles of household furniture and sent, by a back way, over the hill to the little log house in the hollow which was to be her future abode ; taken while protesting and crying out in the agony of her soul that she could not go, that she could not thus leave the home she had worked so hard to make, and the children she had nourished and loved. How can I picture to you that scene of domestic desolation and ruin, that terrible scene of a wife's dethronement and banishment ? Gentlemen, I have heard the great actors and tragedians of this genera- tion who tread the mimic stage, and thrill and melt excited thousands with their delineations of human sorrow and passion ; but I have heard from the lips of Lucinda Milliman, on that witness stand, the story of a real tragedy in humble life, more pathetic and powerful than any imagined griefs of kings, or queens, or any catastrophe whatever of human greatness. That agonized wife and mother in the midst of her weeping children ; her tearful protestations and pleadings, the domoniac husband and father standing by, lost now to all feelings of gratitude and pity, and hurrying up the cruel preparations for her departure — oh! gentlemen, it was a spectacle to make the blessed angels weep ! Well might the wretched 24 370 ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. mother have cried out in the homely but pathetic language of Michigan's own poet : — "Over the hill to the poorhouse — my children dear, good-by; Many a night I 've watched you when only God was nigh; And God will judge between us: but I shall ever pray That you may never suffer the half of what I do to-day." Gentlemen, a scene like this must melt and mov^e all human hearts. It brings to our minds that other scene enacted upon a royal stage, between crowned heads, over which the world has hung and wept for years, where a great emperor put away the wife of his youth, — the wife who had loved him and helped to place him on his throne. That separation and banishment has come to be one of the touching stories and tragedies of history ; but human nature is the same in farmhouse and palace, and this tragedy in humble life appeals as spontaneously and power- fully to the deepest and tenderest sympathies of all our hearts. How overmastering must have been the influence to drive this man to such a crime ! How cool and calculating the disposition of this woman, Emeline, who could look calmly on and witness it ! / turn to you now, and ask yon this all-important question: If this woman zvho sits Jure could make Isaac Pierce do such a deed as this in the day of his strength and prinu\ could she not influence him in the day of his weakness and decline to make this will? Gentlemen, this was a horrid piece of business, blasting and withering to the good name of the liv- ing and the dead alike. And yet I have heard here a wretched plea in defense of it, — a plea put forth by this guilty party to it, — the plea that the ban- ished wife was not neat and tidy in the management ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. 371 of her household ! (iod of mercy, what a defense is this ! Was it not enoui^h for this poor old woman to suffer, to be exiled and driven from her home, to be crushed and outraged in her deepest affections, to have her life blasted by this great grief? Was not her cup already full ? Did it need that this insult should be added to all the rest before she dies ? And what do you think, i^entlemcn, of that disposition which prompted such a plea as this? "Aunt Katy worked hard," ''she labored faithfully for her hus- band and children," "she backed the wootl up to the house," "she did the best she could," — that is what the witnesses say. " She did as well as she could,'' reluctantly says one of the witnesses who comes here to heap this insult upon her old, gray head. Who could do bet- ter than that ? And was Isaac Pierce, from this tes- timony, the man to complain of untidiness in his wife ? Gentlemen, I dismiss this wretched plea with- out further words. The proponents are welcome to all they have made by it. AFTER YEARS — THE INFLUENCE OF EMELINE NEVER BROKEN. Gentlemen, the influence of this woman over Isaac Pierce was never broken during the twenty years she lived with him. Once having secured her con- trol over him, he was submissive and obedient ever after. She was the only person who ever ruled him. Sometimes he chafed a little under his chains, and complained to his friends, but the testimony no- where shows an instance where he confronted her or resisted her authority. 3Y2 ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. Gentlemen, this question must not be misunder- stood. Influence in its very nature is intangible ; it is not to be proved and demonstrated like a physical fact. It is a psychological fact, and must be proved after its order. A look, a word, a gesture — these may be its signs, and indicate its presence without the power to prove direct or flagrant acts, or words of command. Undue influence of one person over another is the domination of the will of the one over that of the other, and this condition may exist and continue without noise or friction, — a steady, silent, but nevertheless powerful force. So I say that this case is not to be decided by the number and strength of the separate instances of the exercise of undue influence which we have proved. The counsel ridicule and make light of these. But, gentlemen, I put the case upon a stronger basis than these instances: I rest it upon the general fact of the peculiar, yea, the guilty relations of these parties at the beginning ; upon the mastery which this woman then gained over Isaac Pierce through infatuation and through passion ; upon the proved continuance of that power so acquired, aided and constantly made more easy and secure by the continued decline of the man in bodily and mental strength, thus weak- ening his will and making it all the time less able to resist. INSTANCES OF UNDUE INFLUENCE. But in saying this, gentlemen, in taking this strong general ground upon this question, I do not, by any means, mean to admit that we have not proved instances of actual and tangible influence on the part ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILE CASE. 373 of this woman. As you will readily see, such facts must always be difficult to prove, hidden and con- cealed, as they ordinarily are. by domestic retire- ment and privacy. In the case here we can not call upon this woman and her children — the later family of Pierce — to prove them, and so we are compelled to rt-ly upon testimony from the outside. But with all these difficulties in the way, see what we have proved, tending to show the great influence which this woman, Kmeline, had over Isaac Pierce. I recapitulate only the \ital substance of what the witnesses say : — 1. Her Acts and Expressions. — Polly Clark tells you that she heard Emeline forbid Pierce going to Battle Creek when he wanted to ; and he minded her, and did not go. Loren Pierce says she overawed his father, and prevented him giving the deed to witness which he had promised. Esquire Gutches testifies that the night before they were to start for California the first time, she refused to stir a step until IMerce should settle with James Milliman ; and she carried her point. W'm Webster says that luneline broke up a trade which he had made with Pierce for a horse ; would not let him ha\e the horse, and ordered him off the place. Thomas P^ldrcd heard her say to Pierce, " Vou won't get rid of me as you did of Aunt Katy. I will stick to you until you are as dead and cold as a wedge." John Radford tells you that when the new house was built she wanted the four-lighted windows, and 374 ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. Pierce the twelve-lighted. He got the latter kind, but she made him take them back and get the other. Capt. Barney Vosburg, a prominent witness for proponents, tells you that when Pierce was away from home, Emeline was invariably with him. 2. His Conduct and Expressions. — Henry Trout- wine swears that Pierce complained to him about Emeline interfering with his business : said she wanted to control his business, and make him do things he did not want to do. Elias Wright testifies that Pierce told him he could not let him have a piece of land to sow to wheat, because it would make disturbance in the family ; that he did not dare to do it. Fredrick Stellay says that Pierce complained to him about Emeline. Said he might as well live in hell as with her ; she would not let him do as he wanted to. He once complained that she would not let him bet at a horse race! Gentlemen, isn't that carrying dictation a good ways .'' Levi Taylor says she interfered when Pierce was settling with Billington, and at another time refused to let him go to Battle Creek to pay a debt. James Shaver swears that when Emeline wanted some money for a sewing-machine agent, Pierce went into the house with her ; and he came out, saying he might as well live in hell as not to let her have what money she wanted. At another time Pierce com- plained that his wife had forbidden every place in town selling him liquor, and that he could not get a drop. Gentlemen, what a commentary is that upon this man's degradation, and the complete helplessness of ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. 375 his situation in this woman's hands ! He could be no longer his own master after that. John Christol testifies that Tierce told him he had a hell on earth, and had to make things to suit his wife. Wm. Webster says that on the morning of the 2!tth of July, 1871, Pierce told him that he was going to make a will, to see if it would not satisfy his wife. And finally, Caleb Sweetland, Jr., one of the pro- ponents' own witnesses, and an intimate acquaintance of Emeline, and a friend of her family, tells you that Pierce used to say that " he could do nothing with- out mother." THIS INFLUENCE EXERTED TO OBTAIN THE WILL. Now, gentlemen, I think that you will agree with me that here is a very considerable mass of testi- mony tending to show the possession of a strong and powerful inlluence by this womAn over this man. The cjuestion naturally arises now : Did she exert this influence upon him in order to obtain this will .-* In the first place, I ask you, gentlemen, what would be natural and probable in such a case .-* Con- sider her situation and that of her children by Pierce. Consider the grave legal questions and doubts which might arise in regard to her true relations to him and to his property, to the legality of her marriage, to the legitimacy of her children. Lender such cir- cumstances what would be natural for her to do ? Would she not desire, above all other things, that Pierce should make his will, and thus settle these grave questions and doubts forever, and confine the property to her and her children .' Remember the 37() ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. other wife was still living, and her children, these contestants, were all about her. Why, gentlemen, human nature itself answers these questions. This woman could not have been true to her own interest and to the interests of her children if she had not exerted her uttermost power and influ- ence to obtain a will such as she needed for her pro- tection. Do you believe her when she swears that she never spoke to Pierce in her life about a will, and did not even know what he was coming to Kalama- zoo for when the will was made .'' Gentlemen, on this subject, it is a most significant fact that this will is made in the interest of this woman and her children, and that, too, in the very face of all these declarations and expressions by Isaac Pierce of a contrary intention. What do you suppose induced him thus to forget and deny his own words, to forget his duty as a man and a father, and to disinherit his own blood .'' What power drove from his mind the remembrance of these more than orphaned children of his unfortunate daughter, Mrs. Parish.'' Ah, gentlemen, this is not such a will as, on what he thought was his death-bed, he told Dr. Babcock he wanted to make. ''TO KEEP. PEACE IN THE FAMILY." No, gentlemen, this will was wrung from Isaac Pierce in his old age, in his weakness, in his sickness, in his intoxication, by the ceaseless and persistent importunity and authority of this woman. Against her oath, denying all this, saying she never spoke a word to him on the subject, I put the oft-repeated declarations of Isaac Pierce himself, I call him from ARGUMENT IN TIIK PIERCE WILL CASE. 377 the grave to confront and impeach her. You will believe him when he tells you that this will was not his, but hers ; that it was made to please her, and get rid of her ceaseless importunity — "to keep peace in the family." llow many times did this old man use that expres- sion, as he complained in the bitterness and sorrow of his heart of his domestic troubles. Besides the many other things which he had to do "'to keep peace in the family" was the making of this very will. You have seen how for this purpose of keep- ing peace, as he himself said, he wanted his son Loren to pay him the thousand dollars for the land, telling him he would pay it back to him ; how, according to the testimony of the venerable Moses Hodginan, he exacted the mortgage from Milliman and his daughter, privately assuring them that they would never need to pay it ; how he took the note from his other son-in-law, Clark, telling him it did not need to be stamped, as he only wished it to sat- isfy his wife. In all these instances he used this same expression — " to keep peace in the family." But more than all this, he told John Christol, in May, 1871, that he had got to make a will to suit his wife — "to keep peace in the family." He told Ephraim Bonner in the month following, that he was going to make a will to suit Mrs. Pierce and " to keep peace in the family." And finalh-, on the evening of that very 20th day of Jul}-, when returning from Kalamazoo, he told George Whiting at Galesburg that he had been to town doing some business "to keep peace in the family;" that he had "signed the death warrant of his first wife and children." 378 ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. How significant and impressive is such testimony as this ! Again I ask you, gentlemen, can you doubt that it was the influence of this woman, her importunity, her demands, her authority and control, which induced and coerced this weak and worn-out old man to make this will ? She was twenty years younger than he, in the full vigor of her prime ; a keen, artful, self- poised, and calculating woman, as her whole appear- ance on this trial abundantly shows. She was just the woman to hold with a steady and iron grasp the power which, long before, she had acquired over this man. NO RATIFICATION OF THE WILL. Need I say to you, gentlemen, that this will once made under these circumstances could never be rati- fied by Isaac Pierce.'' I know the counsel on the other side have made this point, and they will ask the court to charge you that you may find a ratifica- tion of this will by Pierce, no matter under what circumstances it was made. Now I take issue with the gentlemen most de- cidedly on this question, and I say in the first place, that as a matter of law there could be no such thing as a ratification in this case. And for the simple reason that if this paper was signed by Isaac Pierce when not in his right mind, or when intoxicated, or when under the influence of another, then it was not his act in the law. it was not his will, but was void and of no effect whatever. It is void, in such case, because there is no consenting mind or will. Cer- tainly, I must be right in saying that if this man ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. 379 signed the paper when his reason was dethroned, or when his mental faculties were drowned in liquor, and when he had no such sound mind and memory as the law requires, that then his act was void ; and being void, that the law, reason, and common sense all would unite that he could not afterward, by any- thing he might say, give any effect to that which was wholly without effect and worthless in the begin- ning. The law is always founded upon reason and common sense. A man may ratify an act which he does while under some legal disability ; as for in- stance, a contract made before he was twenty-one years of age ; but he can never ratify that which he never did. In other words, in all cases of what the law calls ratification, it is always supposed that the act was an intelligent and conscious one, and that the disability was only from the outside. So I say that here there is no question of ratification at all. It is a misnomer and an ajiomaly to say that there can be any such thing as the ratification of a void will. Hut if it be urged that Tierce could ratify the will if it was simply made while under undue influence, then to this, in the second place, I reply that as a matter of fact the testimony shows that the influence of this woman was a continuing influence ; that it remained, and was never broken while this man lived. So the answer is complete and as broad as the proposition, h^or if the influence was so great as to be undue in law at the time when the will was made, then before he could ratify the act of making it he must be shown to have escaped or recovered from this influence and to be in a situation where he 380 ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. could speak his own mind and exercise his free will. When, I ask you, is this time proved to have been ? But, ^^entlemen, the court will tell you that there can be no such thingf as a ratification of this will ; that it must stand or fall upon the man's condition at the time it was made, and that nothing he could afterward say or do would breathe the breath of life into this paper, if at this time Isaac Pierce was not in the possession of a sound mind and memory, or was unable to exercise his own free will. Something can not be made out of nothinq- ; nor can so solemn and important a paper as a man's last will and testa- ment, which the law requires to be in writing, and duly and formally declared, attested, signed, and sealed, be revived from legal disability or death by a mere informal or casual verbal acknowledgment, made in reckless, blasphemous, or drunken speech. THE WILL UNNATURAL AND UNJUST. Gentlemen, there is still left one great test or prin- ciple to apply to this will in order to see whether it be the solemn and deliberate act of the testator, and that is the test of its humanity and its justice. I know a man has a right under the law to make an unjust will ; but 1 know, too, that when the question is whether he has made a will, and that question be at all in doubt, you may look into the provisions of the instrument itself to see whether they be contrary to natural justice, so that it may be determined whether the man would be likely to make such a disposition of his property. A will that is inhuman and unnatural is at the same time unreasonable, irra- tional, and improbable. ARGUMENT IX THE PIERCE WILL CASE. 881 I have therefore, gentlemen, the right to urge this consideration upon you. and to ask you to look to this question of justice. Need I take one moment to show that this will is grossly unjust.' Here are these children by the first wife, this man's first chil- dren, who helped him to accumulate this property, practically disinherited, their mother turned out of doors, while this woman h>meline, the tempter and destroyer of this honu', and her children, who have never earned or added anything to the estate, are given everything. Why should Isaac Pierce thus forget these older children .'' They had worked hard for him ; they were poor, and needed assistance as he well knew, and he had no feeling against them. Why should he cut them off in their poverty .' Why, gentlemen, all this evidence shows that these contestants had been most generous and forbearing in their conduct toward their father. They had always been respectful to him --^ even when his life had been such as not to command respect from the world ; they had been kind and attentive to him when suffering from accidents or sickness ; and finally they exercised a degree of forbearance when their mother was sent away, which seems, at first view, almost shocking to our human sympathies. The counsel has dwelt upon the fact that some of these contestants assisted their father in procuring the Indiana divorce from their mother. They did this, no doubt, thinking it was better than the open shame and danger of his living in adultery with this woman in the midst of a community excited and threatening a prosecution ; but notwithstanding this plain and perhaps sufficient motive which I can plead 382 ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. in their excuse, the fact remains that they rendered a much-needed service to their father. Why should Isaac Pierce forget all this when he came to make his will ? And there was his poor, unfortunate daughter in the asylum, and her help- less and more than orphaned children, whom he loved, and whom he told Dr. Babcock he intended to provide for. Why should he forget them ? Ah ! gentlemen, these questions can not be answered sat- isfactorily on any ordinary principles of human nature or natural affection. He could not have for- gotten these claims upon his bounty and his grati- tude if he had been in his right mind or in the free exercise of his will. O ! it needed all the audacity of the counsel to say that this will was just. Gentlemen, the argument is an insult alike to your reason and your humanity. If this be a just will, then where can one be found which is unjust .'' If this be a humane and a natural will, then where can be found a will which is inhuman and unnatural ? Look, gentlemen, at these opposing parties before you. Here on the one side are these contestants, the first children of Isaac Pierce, the poorly clad and hard-working boys and girls of that early, desolate home ; now past middle life, some of them verging toward old age, browned and bent by toil, in rusty and homely garb, still hard working and poor; cheated and kept out of their just inherit- ance, which now they so much need, by this relent- less and grasping woman who brought calamity and sorrow into their father's household. There, on the other side, sits the author of all this trouble, sur- rounded by her daughters, the later children of Isaac ARGUMENT IN THE ITEKCE WILL CASE. 383 Pierce, dressed in all modern extravagance and finery, — gay, frivolous, useless, modern young women, reared in luxury and educated at boarding schools. Tell me. which of these twain have earned the right to enjoy this property .'' CONCLUSION. Gentlemen, this man violated the physical and the moral law alike ; and he reaped the terrible penalty. For that great wrong to the wife of his youth his remorse was keen and lasting. It breaks out here and there, frequently, through the testimony. How touching and overwhelming was that incident related by Smith Lawrence, when Pierce passed his wronged and injured wife on the highway as the sun was set- ting, and gazing after her, exclaimed, as the tears came to his eyes : "L would give all that I am worth — I would give the whole town of Climax if I owned it, if I had li\ed with that woman ! " There was con- science — there were the scourges of memory at work. At last, bent and broken under the heavy load of moral guilt, of violated physical law and domestic trouble, with mind impaired and shattered, and confused by drink, under the powerful influence of another, he put his unsteady hand to a will which outrages every sentiment of human affection and controvenes every principle of natural justice. Gentlemen, it is your solemn prerogative now to correct and repair this terrible w^ork. You must set aside this wretched mockery of a will. Let this man's property descend to all his children, to the deserving and the undeserving alike. These con- testants will then only share equally with the chil- 384: ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. dren of this usurping woman, and she herself will remain the dead man's widow in the law, to the exclusion of that early, lawful wife, who still lives to suffer from man's injustice.' What more ought these proponents to ask or expect .'' Gentlemen, I beg of you to pause and reflect before you render a verdict sustaining this will. You have it now in your power to do a great and supreme act of justice, an act noble and godlike, and worthy of your sympathies as men and your oaths as jurors. It is the glory of a jury to be able to execute some portion of that justice which belongs supremely to God, — to vindicate the cause of the weak and op- pressed, and to blast and shatter the power of the oppressor. In the name, then, of common justice and humanity, I appeal to you for a verdict for these contestants. Let no preconceived opinions, no preju- dice, no obstinacy in your jury-room, no specious pleas of any kind, keep you from this high duty. For in doing this you will be true to your oaths, true to the law, true to what this dead man would say, could he now speak to you from the grave, and true to the eternal principles of justice and right. REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT.' Fellow Citizens : I am here at the request and appointment of the State Democratic Committee of Ohio to speak to you upon the political questions before the country. A stranger to your people, a citizen from another State, I have come too far to trifle with this occasion ; and so you will let me speak to you to-night seriously and earnestly, but I trust at the same time candidly, upon some of the most vital and important issues which enter into this election. My idea of the true object and end of polit- ical discussion is that it should consist of fair and candid argument, and nothing is worthy or of any real value which is not addressed to the reason and conscience of the citizen. Mr. Lincoln was the tru- est and best type of the political stump orator. He was always truthful, fair, and candid, as well as log- ical and earnest. He never trifled with the people nor abused their confidence, but always addressed their better reason and feelings. And so in Mr. Lincoln's spirit, if not with his abil- ity, let me now speak to you. You, citizens of Ohio, are a part of the great jury of the American people, who are sworn upon a thousand precious memories of the past to render an honest and true verdict between these political parties on the seventh of November next. The great argument is being made to you by ' Speech at Cleveland, Ohio, Oct. 4, 1876. 25 385 you give yourselves to this patriotic festival, and to the holy memories of Scotland and Robert Burns. Thanking God for that gifted child of genius and song, you stretch forth your arms to-night across the wintry sea to the dear old land, you clasp her to your hearts again, and exclaim in the noble and passion- ate language of your own Walter Scott : — •' < ) Caledonia I slern and wild, Meet nurse for a poetic child I Land of brown heath and shaggy wood, Land of the mountain and the flood. Land of my sires I what mortal hand Can ere untie the filial band That knits me to thv rugged strand 1 " LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC Mr. Chairman, Ladies a?id GentUinen : In looking around your great city to-day, and standing in the presence of this audience to-night, I am reminded of my first visit to Baltimore, when I marched with my regiment, with loaded guns, through your angry, tumultuous streets, in the excit- ing and memorable days of that springtime of 1861. I have passed over this great highway to the nation's capital many times in the peaceful days since, but I have not again walked your streets till after so many years I come once more, this time on a mission of peace, to join hands with you against another great danger to the republic. I can not tell you how much I regret that I come from a lost battlefield in our great cause — and these gentlemen here on this platform know that I begged to be relieved from my engagement ; but I feel now, after all, that I can repeat the words and the senti- ment of that famous message which a gallant king of France sent to his mother from a lost battlefield : "All is lost, save honor." Thank God, we saved our honor in Michigan. We made a most gallant strug- ' Speech delivered before the Maryland .State Temperance Alliance, at Oratorio Hall, Baltimore, April 26, 1887, and repeated in substance, at Chickering Hall, New \'ork City, May i, following. 442 LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LI(;)UOR TRAFFIC. 4-i3 gle against the enemy, — this time, and the first time in the history of such contests, out in full force, — and our standard of Prohibition went down before a subsidized press, before unfriendly and treacherous politicians, before respectable and cowardly business men, with their false issue of high license, and, at the last, before manifest and stupendous frauds on election day. Hut the seed which was sown in that contest will bear fruit a hundredfold, and you will hear from Michigan again. It often happens in the history of such struggles, as in the conflicts of arms, that the first battles are lost. Bunker Hill was a military victory for Great Britain, but a moral victory for the colonies ; and the confidence which it inspired was never lost throughout the whole struggle of the Revolution. Bull Run was a great defeat, and an unspeakable humiliation to the cause of the Union ; but when the pride as well as the patriotism of the North was aroused by it, the Confederacy was a lost cause from that hour. So may we improve the lesson oi Michigan. You are here, I am told, upon the eve of battle with the liquor traffic, and you are moving and ask- ing that the question of a constitutional amendment be submitted by your legislature. You have local option carried in a majority of your counties, as I see by the displayed table in the rear of this plat- form. So far, so good. But you want a broad, gen- eral rule, which shall include your whole State, and be a standard of direction to legislators and people alike. Now, our great republican system never looks so well, or appears so grand, as when the peo- 444 I.EGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. pie, in their primary capacity, are permitted to vote for their constitutions, and to put great principles of government into their organic law. It is a higher and more impressive function than the passage of a fluctuating statute, or the voting for mere men. My friends, the growth of Prohibition sentiment in the South has been rapid and wonderful, as we have all seen. Maryland was a part of the Old South, and should follow the New in this great movement. If the South was the citadel of slavery, it may turn out to be that the North will be that of the liquor traffic, and thus history will be balanced. This I know, that we can build a true and great republic only on the ruins of both. OUR NATIONAL DANGER — THE GREAT ENEMY. For we have an enemy to-day worse than slavery, bad and terrible as that was ; for that in a sense was far away, a cloud that hung, black and threatening, over our Southern sky, and finally burst into the lightning and thunder of our great Civil war, finding its speedy death in that vast and bloody tragedy. But this one, this enemy, is at our very doors, in our very midst ; it threatens us more nearly, it touches us more closely ; the cloud darkens our hearthstones ; we are enveloped in its very folds. Slavery was local, was geographical and sectional ; was an insti- tution peculiar to a part of the States and people only, and could be dealt with as such. The sharp, heroic surgery of the war cut off the diseased limb, and left the body alive and with new vigor and power. Hut our enemy of to-day is like a disease of the blood which carries poison into all our circula- LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 44o tion, moral, intellectual, and economic. The whole head is sick, the whole heart is faint. My friends, this enemy, like the vast, poisonous in- fluence which it is, is for the most part invisible to the naked, physical eye. Only, perhaps, in the two hun- dred thousand rumsellers. and their countless victims in this land, can we see its outward, physical mani- festation. But we know that it is intrenched deeply^ everywhere around us, in those old master passions of human nature, avarice, and appetite. These are its roots. Nearer the surface, we know that it is in- trenched in the license systems of thirty-three States of this Union, which give it the sanction and pro- tection of law. W'e know that it is intrenched in the revenue system of our general government, which has become a partner with it. W'e know that it is intrenched also in the hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of property invested in the business. We know that it has for generations been interwoven with our daily habits and social customs. And finally, in our day. we have seen it rise to the sur- face of affairs, thrust itself to the forefront of our politics, and through our defenseless and fraud- inviting caucus system, lay its hand, as slavery did in its day, upon both the old parties of the country. Need I tell you, my friends, that this great enemy which threatens anew the very life of the republic is the liquor traffic ? Look at the appalling figures. We spend in this land to-day twice as much for strong drink as for bread — drink that kills, instead of the bread which makes alive. We spend three times as much for drink as for all our clothing, and in a land of boasted 446 LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. light and culture, in the very blaze of this great nine- teenth century, we spend six times as much for de- basing, brutalizing drink as for all the education of our people in common school, college, and university ! And then, coming to the stupendous aggregate, we yearly sink in this vast sea of passion and appetite the enormous sum of nine hundred millions of dol- lars — a hundred millions more than we pay in this land of labor for all the labor in all the manufactur- ing establishments of the country ! Do you wonder, after this, that we should have a great labor question on our hands ? And this is our actual condition to-day, in country and city. Our young giant of a Republic struggling like Laocoon in the coils of the terrible serpent ; or, literally, staggering like a drunken man to his fall. God of mercy ! what a picture is that for the end of our first hundred years ! THREE CLASSES OF CITIZENS. Now, my friends, standing related to this terrible business, to this appalling state of affairs, there are three classes of citizens: — First, the criminal class, the men engaged in the business, and with these the morally indifferent, like the men in slavery times who did not care whether slavery was voted up or voted down ; second, the class for license and regulation^ for paltering, expedi- ency, and compromise ; and, third, the class for pro- hibition 2lX\A extirpation, — the class who are for the abolition and annihilation of the traffic. LE(iAL SUrrRESSIOX OI- THE LIQUOR TRAEKIC. 44'7 THE IRREI'RESSmLE CONFLICT. Between these classes of men the clash of opinion has commenced ; agitation, discussion, have begun. Now, as never before, we are brought face to face with this question, and in every State of this great l^nion the liquor traffic, the gigantic criminal of our age, is being arraigned at the bar of public opinion and confronted with its black catalogue of crimes. The public conscience is being aroused, the public judgment is being convinced, the public heart is being touched. God has so made humanity, has so fashioned the consciences and the hearts of men, that they can not rest, they can not be silent in the pres- ence of a great wrong. The moral forces of the universe are stronger and more enduring than the elements. There can be no rest or peace for wrong and wickedness in this world. The tempests of righteous public wrath and indig.nation shall smite and blast them ; even the silent and gentle forces shall undermine them. Such is the eternal order of Providence. So, my friends, this great battle against the liquor traffic is on ; the "irrepressible conflict" has begun. It will continue until this great question is settled. To paraphrase the memorable words of Mr. Lincoln, in reference to slavery, our house divided against itself can not stand. We can not endure as a people half drunken and half sober. Either we shall prohibit, and so arrest the further spread of this liquor traffic, or its advocates will push it forward until it shall become alike lawful (and baneful) in all the States of this Union, old as well as new, North as well as South. 448 LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIOUOR TRAFFIC. And a nation of drunkards can not be depended upon to maintain liberty on this continent. THE REMEDY — WHAT SHALL BE DONE ? The appeal is now made to all patriotic citizens : What shall be done.-* In view of this gigantic evil, and the rapid and startling inroads which it is mak- ing upon our national life, something must be done, and that soon. What shall it be } Now, my friends, one class, a very large class, and, I regret to say. including many intelligent and con- scientious men, says : Let us try license ; let us regu- late the traffic, and make it pay a revenue into the treasury to compensate for some of its loss and dam- age to society. It is a little suspicious that this view is heartily indorsed by the other class engaged in the business, and supposed to know what will help them ; but nevertheless some professedly temper- ance men continue to prate about the beauties of the license system as a remedy for the liquor traffic. But let no man be deceived in this matter. When we look this question squarely in the face, we shall find the truth to be that license is no remedy at all for this appalling evil, but rather a contrivance by and through which it is enabled to intrench itself in the respectability and protection of law. Now, my friends, not to go into the particulars and details of this great argument, — for I have not the time to-night, — there are, to my mind, two great and fundamental objections to the license system. LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 449 WRONG IN PRINCIPLE. I say, first, it is wrong in principle, — from top to bottom, all through, high or low license, — completely and fundamentally wrong. Now, this whole system of license and regulation, as it is called, recognizes the right, the moral and legal right, of the traffic to live. It ought not to live, not a single day, nor hour, but to die, rather, and be swept from the earth. Why do I say this .-• — I say it because the traffic is an immoral and illegitimate business, an alien and an enemy among the industries, and ought to be made an outlaw. There is one great and sure test by which we can know a legitimate business ; there is a beautiful law which governs in this matter, — the law of the mutual assistance and dependence of all useful callings among men, the great law of the sympathy of the industries, if I may so call it. ^ Under this law the test is that every man who is engaged in a le- gitimate business, while prosecuting that business primarily for himself, and to better his own private fortune, is all the time helping his neighbors and the general public, helping to build up society about him. The artisan or mechanic who fashions the raw materials of nature into shapes of usefulness and beauty which minister to the convenience or the luxury of men ; the manufacturer who pays out his money to employ honest labor, and sends out his wares to the ends of the world to meet human wants and needs ; the tradesman who buys and sells in the open market, and thus meets a great public demand, — all these, not to multiply instances further, are serving the public while bettering their own for- 29 450 LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. tunes. Now, you can not have too many mechanics in a town or city, if they can find work ; you can not have too many manufactories, if their goods and wares are ordered ; you can not have too many stores, if they are patronized. Enough of these make Chicagos and New Yorks and Londons. But how will this rule work when applied to the liquor traffic .'' Can't you have too many saloons ? Suppose a city has one hundred of these ; would it be best to have two hundred or four hundred .■' Would you build up a town on these .'' Would more patronage help the matter ? Suppose a city blessed — or rather cursed — with one hundred saloons should have the number quadrupled, until there should be a saloon to every hundred inhabitants, if you please, and all of them well patronized, would n't you expect to see the respectable, virtuous citizens of that town flee from it as from another Sodom .'* You know they would ; and this shows that the legitimate, inevitable effect of this traffic is not only not to build up, but to tear down and destroy society. Why, my friends, you might as well talk of found- ing the prosperity of a town or city upon smallpox or diphtheria as upon the liquor traffic. Would you license t/irsf ? Start not at the comparison. I do not exaggerate. These terrible scourges, dread as they are, are not, shall I say, a tenth part so destruc- tive to the human race as the liquor traffic. That great statesman, Mr. Gladstone, has said from his place in the British Parliament, that the traffic is a greater scourge to the English-speaking race of to-day than war, pestilence, and famine, combined, — those three great historic scourges of the human I,EGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 451 race. And what father or mother but would rather have the fair boy cut off in the bloom and innocence of childhood — transplanted to the everlasting gar- dens, where he may walk a radiant angel until you meet him there — than see him grow up to manhood to be brutalized and degraded by drink, and then go down prematurely into the awful blackness of a drunkard's grave .-• What wife or child but would rather see the husband and father fall suddenly before that other terrible scourge — cut down in his strength of body and mind, strength of virtue and character, with all that precious inheritance of sweet and grateful memories left to his family^ — ^than see him the staggering, bloated, disfigured victim of drink, the manhood and the virtue all gone out of him ; useless to himself and to everybody else ; a wreck, a shame, an incumbrance of living death to his family ! O my friends, how terrible, how un- speakably awful is all this ; and where does it leave us, as a people, that we have such things to say ! No, no ; this terrible traffic is not a business, is not an industry to be protected, but a great public enemy, and criminal, and I denounce it as such. What is a criminal? What is a crime? What does Webster say ? A crime is " an act which violates a law, human or divine;" "which violates a rule of moral duty;'' "a public wrong?' What single element of criminality is wanting here ? And it is the first terrible count in the arraignment of the license system that it makes the State a part- ner in this crime. It makes the State say, " Pay your money, though coined from widows' tears and or- 452 LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. phans' rags and shame ; pay your money, though wet with the blood of tragedy and murder, into our treas- ury, and you may go on and prey upon society, de- stroy the home, and sap the foundations of liberty." I tell you, my fellow citizens, that this whole system is worse, is more criminal and infamous, than the cel- ebrated " indulgences " of Tetzel and Leo X, which called out that immortal protest from the fiery soul of Martin Luther. I tell you, my friends, that the licensing of such a traffic by the State for a few dollars of revenue is a gigantic public scandal and infamy. And as a reve- nue system it is a failure, a miserable failure. It costs three dollars in direct taxes, to say nothing about the rest of the account, to collect every vile dollar paid into the public treasury. The figures show this. We have, in the first place, a vast police force in all our cities to suppress disorder and keep the public peace. Nine tenths of all this disorder comes from the liquor traffic, the promoter of riots, and broils, and disturb- ance, and the people have to foot the bill for the police to keep it down. We build courthouses and jails, and maintain the vast machinery of our public law through which justice is administered and our law-breakers and criminals are punished. All this costs money, which the people have to pay in taxes, and it is the legitimate and natural result of the liq- uor traffic to breed law-breakers and criminals. And then there are our pauper system and our lunatics and insane to care for ; for all of which the people pay the bills in taxes. And it is the business of the liquor traffic to make paupers and lunatics. When the great stupid public have footed up all this account, LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 453 and compared it with the license fees paid into the treasury, they will find, as the Irishman said, that they have " laid up a loss." Why, take the case of our general government. We get, it is true, nearly a hundred million of reve- nue every year from the traffic, but we suffer a bil- lion of waste and losses, waste of money and industry, direct : burying a yearly crop of sixty or seventy thousand drunkards, and endure besides consequen- tial damage and injury for which there can be no fig- ures and no computation in this world. And yet men talk about the "revenues "of this business, and so- called statesmen gravely propose to perpetuate this ghastly and unholy national prostitution by turning over this tainted and polluted price of blood and infamy to the States, to be divided among them for taxes and for education ! Heaven save us from such statesmen and such statesmanship ! HIGH LICENSE. Now, my friends, all I have said in opposition to this system applies to all license, high and low ; to the whole license system, root and branch, as wrong in principle and utterly pernicious. But I am aware that the cry of a large body of men now is that we must try high license. " High license ! " as though there were something very select and respectable in that term. None of your low license, if you please none of your disgustingly vulgar kind of license, but '■'■high license." Let me say right here, treating the subject seriously, and allowing for the good mo- tives of many misguided temperance men who talk this way, that the proposed remedy will not help the 454 LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. disease at all, — will not, as you say and doubtless hope, many of you, dry up or lessen the evils of the traffic. In the first place, it is open to the broad, general, and fundamental objections to the whole license system, which I have already made ; and it is open also to some further specific objections of its own. It will make a monopoly of the traffic. We have monopolies enough now. Possibly there may be less saloons, but there will be no less liquor sold. What restrictive power has high license .'' What single rumdrinker will it prevent from drinking ? Every- body will be able to get drink under high license as well as low license. The rumseller will be only too anxious to get his high license fee back, and the charge will not deter even the worst dram-drinker, who would pawn his wife's Bible for drink. But the high license fee will bribe the public to perpetuate the traffic under the miserably mistaken idea that the State can make money out of the liquor traffic. Men will be deceived into the idea, looking to only one side of the account, that it is a source of revenue. I have already demonstrated the fallacy of that conception. But I will tell you further, my friends, what high license will do ; it will make gilded and " respecta- ble " palaces of temptations for young men. This very talk about it by temperance and respectable men, who ought to know better ; this advocacy of it by fathers in the presence of their sons, as though it were a good thing, and even a temperance measure, will have the inevitable effect to make young men think that they can go with impunity into a " high " LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 455 license saloon, when perhaps they would never think of going to a saloon at all under other circumstances^ This would be a natural result of the example and the teaching. I tell you it is our young men that we want to save. We don't want to set any gilded traps to tempt them. It is the first step toward ruin that needs to be guarded against. That not taken, all is well. It is not so much a matter for the confirmed drunkards ; it is not the low grog- geries which are so much to be feared. They will naturally only take those who are far gone on the road and perhaps already lost. But it is our young men, I repeat, that we must save — save from the open, lawful, respectable bar. We must have a crop of young men in this country, for the next generation, God-fearing and sober, if we would maintain free institutions and civil liberty on this continent. THE LICENSE SYSTEM HOLDS OUT NO HOPE OF IMPROVEMENT OR END. My second great objection to the license system shall be briefly stated. I charge that the system holds out no hope of improvement or end of the traflfic. And the evil is all the while increasing. So we have this terrible prospect. It is a mere question of avarice and appetite playing upon each other. Men will sell while men will drink, and there will be no end, unless it be found when we shall become not only a nation of drunkards, but a nation of paupers as well. For so long as the law sanctions, men will be found to sell as long as men can be found to drink and pay. 456 LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. So license is despair. It can not stem the swollen tide of intemperance, rising higher every day, but turns our prow toward Niagara and the inevitable catastrophe. THE REMEDY OF PROHIBITION. I have been giving you the principal grounds and reasons on which, to my mind, this whole license system is to be condemned. They involve a ques- tion of moral principle, and that can not be violated with impunity. It was the lofty declaration of that great philosophic statesman, Edmund Burke, that "that which is morally wrong can never be politi- cally right." Much less can we undertake to make politically right a matter like this, where the conse- quences are so lasting, so widespread and terrible. In my judgment there is but one remedy for the evils of intemperance in our land, and that is not a remedy — a so-called remedy — of paltering and compromise, but one which is radical and consistent with moral principle ; one which goes to the root of the whole matter —the universal a>id complete pi'ohi- bition and annihilation of the liquor traffic. I need not tell you that this great remedy is law- ful and constitutional. There is no question or diffi- culty of that kind in the way. All our great lawyers and jurists agree ; all our courts, from the highest to the lowest in the land, hold that, under the great police power lodged in a State, or government, the State may lawfully lay its heavy hand upon the liquor traffic to stay its evils, or wipe it out alto- gether. Your own great jurist, Roger B. Taney, though wrong, as the world now holds, in the Dred LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 457 Scott decision, held and stated this view on the liquor traffic. So the way is open for the destruc- tion of the destroyer. Again, I hold that it is the natural, the legitimate, the sensible way of dealing with the question. No other way is sensible. Here is a great wrong and evil, which all good men, all good citizens, agree should be removed and abated as soon as pos- sible. How shall it be done .' Shall two temper- ance men agree that the curse should be removed, and then one of them immediately propose to remove it by licensing it .' to kill it by giving it the legal right to live ? Is that a sensible way of dealing with the question ? Is that the way men do in their fami- lies and their business with things that are wrong.-* Not if they are men of sense. A man of sense, in such cases, says, " That thing is wrong, and it must be stopped." If something goes' wrong at the house, ''stop ity If in the store or the business, he does n't say, " Oh, yes, let it go on;" but," Stop it." That is the natural and sensible way of doing business. This liquor business doesn't want puttering and palter- ing and compromising with any longer. It wants to be stopped. THE ANGLO-SAXON WAV. I tell you, my friends, that this way of dealing with the question — this utter prohibition and extinc- tion of the traffic — is the Anglo-Saxon way ; a way that sturdy race has always had in dealing with great public wrongs. It is a way born in the very gristle and marrow of the race. Vou may see it all along the track of history for a thousand years. Look at 458 LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. England — look at our parent stock. Why, seven hundred years back in the history of this race in England, those sturdy old barons took that graceless and infamous king of theirs out into the mede, and told him he must stop his tyranny and his lawless- ness or they would hurl him from his throne. And the craven John submitted, and signed the great charter — the Magna CJiarta which is now the mighty bulwark of civil liberty in England and America. Come down that stream of English his- tory to the struggle between the Parliament and people of England and the tyrannical kings of the House of Stuart. Hampden and Cromwell, and those other mighty Englishmen of that day, said to their treacherous king, who pleaded his divine right to tyrannize over England, that he must stop his oppressions and his tyranny, and when he refused, and drew the sword, and plunged the nation into war, they fought him, and took him prisoner, tried and condemned him to death, and his royal head rolled from the block in obedience to the stern decree of that great Puritan race. If we turn to our own history we shall see our fathers of '76 saying to George HI and his ministers across the sea, ""You must stop this oppression, — this taxation without representation,^ or we '11 stop it for you." And when the king and ministers refused, they rose in rebellion, threw the tea over-r board in Boston Harbor, declared their independ- ence at Philadelphia, and under that immortal leader whose marble statue crowns your city, whose majes- tic face and figure I have seen looking down upon you from the serene blue heavens of this beautiful LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 459 spring day, they fought seven years to lay the foun- dations of liberty and free government in this land. And still true to these great examples, and this great history of the race, the men of our time found a way — this same old way of prohibition — to stop slavery in its career, to kill it, and save the republic. Yes, prohibition is the right way, the sensible way, the effective way. It is approved on every principle of morals and of practical politics. Did you ever think of it, the license system itself approves of it, and adopts its great principle. Every license law I ever heard of prohibits the sale of liquor on certain days, as on Sundays, and holidays, and election days, and forbids the sale to certain classes, as young men under age, and common drunkards. Here is prohi- bition, pure and simple. Now I ask, in the name of reason and common sense, if the sale of intoxicating liquor is a good thing, why stop it at all ? And if it is a bad thing, why not stop it a// tJic tiuie Z It certainly is either a good thing or a bad thing. Do you know any reason, any good reason, in principle, I mean, why the law should thus discriminate.'' OBJECTIONS TO PROHIBITION. There is no good reason. But this inconsistency is on a par with the common stock objections which are always urged against prohibition. I shall not go into them at any length at all, only pause a moment to brush these intellectual cobwebs aside. And first, up pops some moral coward, and says, " YoH can't enforce pro/iibiiiony Who says you can't enforce law in this country ^ This is a government of law and the people, a government ruled by majori- 460 LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. ties, and when the people put their will into law, they have the power — the moral and the physical power — to enforce it. Look at what stands behind the Constitution and the statute in this land. First, the moral power of the sentiment, the consenting opinion which made the Constitution or the statute ; second, the whole police power and civil constabu- lary of the State ; and third, the entire military force, and power of the State ; and then back of all, if necessary, the army of the United States, to the last officer and the last man. Can't enforce the law ? What rumseller in Baltimore is going to head a rebellion against State and Union alike.-* Why, eleven States of this Union with eight millions of gallant men, once undertook to say that law should not be enforced, that the majority should not rule in this country, and even they failed. It took a great many lives, and a great deal of money to enforce law, but it was done, and that case ought to settle all such talk in this country. Somebody else cries out, " Prohibition don't pro- hibit." Who says it does n't .'' Why, some whisky let- ter writer, some irresponsible scribbler, or roving reporter, or general fault-finder in the interest of whisky. Who knows best .' Such as these, or the governors and officials of prohibition States, the responsible men on the ground, like that Kansas governor, whose eyes are now opened, like St. Paul, and whose official, sworn opinion and statement that it does prohibit has been read in your hearing from this platform to-night ? There is from every State where the law exists an overwhelming mass of such testimony as this, and it is simple effrontery and LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 4(J L * unmitigated dishonesty to urge against it such irre- sponsible and anonymous stuff and drivel. If prohi- bition did not prohibit, you would not hear so much about it, for the great mass of these objectors don't want it to prohibit, and that is what ails them. ''Oh," says another, "it violates perso7ia/ liberty.'' Now, what do you mean by that t If you mean the degree of civil liberty enjoyed by a free white, — no, not that }iou\ but a free American citizen, white or black, — I answer that that, according to Hlackstone, is his natural liberty so far restrained as may be necessary for the good of society. And the good of society requires that he should not be permitted to sell poison for drink. That is the liberty of an American citizen in this great republic of ours. It may not be the kind of liberty that a Fiji Islander or a Digger Indian enjoys, but it does very well for us, and we shall have to stand it, rumsellers and all. But still we hear other objections. " Stijuptuary lazvsy Utterly without sense or reason. There is nothing " sumptuary " in prohibition at all. It does not pretend to interfere with the amount of expenses in the citizen's household, — the old and true mean- ing of a " sumptuar}' law," — but only says he shall not sell alcoholic poison to kill his neighbors and destroy society. That 's all there is to that objec- tion. "Business interests." I have already an- swered that point. A more absurd and monstrous scarecrow was never invoked to frighten the people and serve the de\il. The vast waste of money in this land for drink every year is the very thing that hurts all our business interests ; these swelling mil- lions are just what are needed to bring riches to all our industries and prosperity to all our homes. 462 LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC But the last great objection is, that we are '• med- dling with other people's business." Yes, that is it, and that is just what we are doing, and propose to do, while "other people" have such a business. "Meddling!" Have we any right to ** meddle''? A noble ship is in mid-ocean, moving grandly over the waves, her sails all set, her officers and crew all on duty and watch, and her passengers happy and secure, — all on the upper deck, enjoying the wide and boundless prospect of wave and sky. Suddenly the startling cry is sounded," There are men down in the hold boring holes through the ship's bottom ! " In an instant, officers and crew and passengers rush down the ways, and there, sure enough, are men boring with augers through the ship's bottom t "Stop that! What are you doing? Don't you know that we shall all go to the bottom ? " " What business is that to you ? What are you 'meddling" with our business for? Aren't these our augers, and can't we use them ? '" How long do you think it would take that ship's crew to enforce prohibition in such a case ? Here we are : Our great ship of State, with officers and passengers, with a precious cargo of liberty and civilization, and proud and sacred - memories on board, the glorious stars and stripes at our masthead, sailing grandly over God's ocean of the nineteenth century. And down in the hold two hundred thou- sand liquor-sellers — three thousand, I am told, here in Baltimore — are boring holes in the ship's bottom, and, unless they are stopped, our mighty ship will begin to shiver soon through all her timbers, and lurch and sway from side to side, her proud flag will LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 463 droop in despair from her bending masthead, and then she will make the terrible plunge down into the black waves forever ! No, no, my friends ! All these objections are miserable sophistries of the devil, every one of them. That 's the way slavery talked. We could n't save this country ; it was n't " constitu- tional." We had got to die, because we could n't " legally " live ! But we did n't conclude to die on a legal technicality, on a quibble of lawyers ; and we propose to save the country now, in spite of all these objections and sophistries. For, my friends, it is the highest province and duty of government to protect and defend and perpetuate civil society. A government that can't or won't do that is a miserable failure. There is inherent in such a government a great right of national self-defense — the first great right and duty to defend the nation's life at all hazards. TJiat 's the lesson we learned in the Civil war, and the danger is really as great now, if not so imminent, as then. It is only another kind of enemy that we have to meet. GREATNESS AND IMPORTANCE OF THE ISSUE. Again, my friends, look at our condition to-day in this country. Nine hundred millions every year for drink ! Why, we spend ten times as much every year for whisky and tobacco as for popular education and religion combined ! Great heavens, what madness is this ! Are we insane ? are W2 a nation of lunatics .'* Ought we not to have a guardian appointed over us.? Shall we send for the sultan of Morocco or the queen of Madagascar .' Sure I am that if any graceless pri- vate citizen should go on at this rate of extravagance, 464 LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. and appetite, and folly, his friends could get a guar- dian appointed over him in any surrogate's court in the State of Maryland. But we were born into this condition of things ; we have grown up in it, and we get used to it. If we in this country to-day knew nothing of drink and its terrible consequences, and could look for the first time across the border to another people cursed as we are, we would start back from the terrible sight as we would from the mouth of hell ! After our Michigan battle some of the papers, the liquor papers, talked about the decline of Puritanism in this country, and congratulated their readers on the fact. I do not wish for the return of many things in historical Puritanism. I do not want its narrow- ness and bigotry in religion, but I would like to see some of its conscience, some of its courage, some of its stern principle, and some of its simplicity and ab- stinence infused as a leaven into the cowardice and hypocrisy and corruption and appetite of our modern life. Something of the lofty spirit of noble John Hampden and stern Oliver Cromwell would not hurt us just now. HOW MUST PROHIBITION BE ACCOMPLISHED ? But you ask me how must prohibition be accom- plished ? I answer, through political action, the nat- ural way, after its order, in a government like ours. The time for temperance lectures is past ; it is the public's business now. Primarily and emphatically, it is a political question. What do politics mean .'' This is Webster's definition: — "Politics — the science of government — the part LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 465 of ethics which consists in the regulation and govern- ment of a State or nation, for the preservation of its safety, peace, and prosperity ; the augmentation of its resources and strength, and the protectio)i of its citizens in their rights, with the preservation and improvement of their morals — ^ subject of vast ex- tent and importance." That 's " politics," not ward or saloon politics, but politics of the right kind, and I have quoted at length that you might see. Now, I say that every question which demands leg- islation, which demands constitutional provisions and statutory enactments, must in this country be a po- litical question, and the subject of political action. For ours is a government of laiv and the people. I tell you, my friends, that this liquor question is really now a great c[uestion of patriotism, a question how to save our country. I appeal to Republicans, to Democrats, to the men of all parties, to all patri- ots. Does it need that I should appeal to Christian men } And yet I am told that men who call them- selves Christians are found frequently on the side of the enemy in this great contest. Does it need that I should rebuke such as these .' Go look at the record ; look at the great book in which you profess to believe — that Old Testament record. From the awful Mount where the commands were delivered, to the sublime imprecations of the grand old prophets, it fairly flames and thunders with prohibition. "Woe unto him that putteth the bottle to his neighbor's lips to make him drunken." " Look not upon the wine when it is red ; for at the last it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder." And if you turn to the 4()r) LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. newer record, to the milder teachings of the great Founder, you shall find that he went into the temple and scourged with his lash of prohibition the offend- ers of his day — drove them from their infamous work. Hear him : " Woe unto you, hypocrites ! " " No drunkard shall enter the kingdom of heaven." No, you can find no justification or comfort in the record, and I have only words of indignation and contempt for any man who professes the religion of Jesus Christ and then serves the cause of whisky in this crisis. Fellow citizens, I appeal to you all. We must not give up or lose this great battle. We must not let it be said that after only a hundred years of liberty we fell as Rome did, and lost our great birthright of freedom in a mad revel of passion and appetite. Let no future Gibbon, in some distant land, and under some other civilization, write the sad story of the downfall of the great republic. Give us prohibition. Strike down this great enemy, the liquor traffic, and our young and still mighty nation, shaking off this terrible load, will bound forward in a splendid and triumphant career of greatness and glory. ^CT 12 189i