The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1872-07-25
Mr.. Greeley's Letter Of Acceptance

Oentlenen:-Upon mature elaboration it
seems fit that should give to your letter of the
10th instant some further and fuller response
than the hasty, unprecedented words in which
acknowledged and accepted your nomination
at our meeting on the 18th. That your con-
ventiou saw fit to accord its highest honor to
one who had been prominently and pointedly
opposed to your party in the earnest and some
times angry controversies of the last forty years
is essentially noteworthy. That many of you
originally preferred that the Liberal Republi-
cans shonld present another candidate for
President, and would more readily unite with
us in the support of Messrs. Adams or Trum-
bull or Davis or Brown, is well known. l owe
my adoption at Baltimore wholly to the fact
that had already been nominated at Cincinn-
att, and that a concentration of forces upon
any new ticket had been proved impractical
BILE. H-zl.I a g .-1 i
Gratifed as am at your concurrence in the
Cincicnati nominations, certain as l am that
you would not have thus concurred had you not
deemed me upright and capable, 1 find nothing
in the circumstances calculated to infame vani-
ty or nOursh self c0nceit. But that YOUR con-
vention saw fit in adopting the Cincinnati tick
ct to re-affirm the Cincinnati platform, is to me
a source of the prOfOundest satisfaction. That
body was constrained to take this important
step by no party necessity, real or supposed. 1t
"
Liberal Republicans upon grounds entirely its
own, or it might have presented them as the
first national wing convention did Harrison and
Tyler, without any platform whatever That it
chose to plant itself deliberately by vote near
ly unanimous upon the fullest and clearest
enunciation of principles which are at once in
contestably Republican and emphatically
Democratic, gives trustworthy assurance that
a new and more suspicious era is dawning up-
on our long distracted country.
Some of the best years and best efforts of my
life were devoted to a struggle against chattel
savery-a struggle none the less earnest or ar
duous because respect for constitutional obliga-
ton constrained me to act for the most part on
the defensive in resistance to the diffusion rath-
er than in direct efforts for the extinction of
human bondage Throughout most of those
years my vision was uncheered-my exertions
were rarely animated by even so much as
hope that should live to see my country peo-
Piled by freemen alone. The affirm lance by your
Convention of the Cincinnati platform is a
most conclusive proof that not merely is slav-
cry abolished, bnt that its spirit is extinct
that despite the protests OF a respectable but
isolated few, there remains amon,y us no party
and no formidable interest which regrets the
overthrow or desires the re-establishment of hui
man bondage, whether in letter or in spirit.
am thereby justified in my hope and trust that
the first century of American independence
will not close before the grand elemental truths
on which its rightfulness was based by Jeffer-
son and the Continental Congress of 1875 will
no longer be regarded as ''glittering generali-
ties" but will have become the universally ac-
cepted and honored foundations of our political
fabric.
demand the prompt application of those
principles to our existing condition. Having
done what could for the complete emancipa-
ton of the blacks, now insist on the full en-
REIMBURSEMENT of all my white countrymen
Let none say that the ban has just been re-
moved from all but few hundred elderly gem
tlemen, to whom eligibility to Office can be of
little consequence. My view contemplates not
the hundreds prescribed, but the millions who
are denied the right to be ruled and represented
by the men of their unfettered choice Pro-
scrption were absurd if these did not wish to
elect the very men whom they are forbidden to
choose. 1888
1 have profound regard for the people of
that New England, wherein 1 was born, and in
whose common schools was taught. 1 rank
no other people ahead of them In intelligence,
capacity and moral worth But while they do
many things well, and some admirably, there
is one thing.which am sure they cannot wisely
or safely undertake, and that is the selection
for States remote from and unlike their own,
of the persons by whom these States shall be