Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1871-1872, 1872-07-26

NEw-AoRk, July 49, 1872.
GENTLEMEN: Upon mature deIibeTation, it seems
fit that should give to your letter of the 10th inst
further and fuller response than the hasty uI-
premeditated words in which | acknowledged and
accepted your nomination at meeting on
the 18th.
That your Convention saw fit to accord its highest
honor to who had been prominently and point
eddy opposed to your party the earnest and
sometimes angry controversies of the last forty
years. is essentially noteworthy. That many of
You originally preferred that the Liberal Re
publieans should present another candidate for
President, and would more readily have united
with us in the support of Adams or Trumbull
Davis or Brown, is well known. I owe my
adoption at Baltimore wholly to the fact that
/ had already been nominated at Cincinnati, and
that concentration of forces upon any new ticket
had been proved impracticable. Gratifed as ] am
at your concurrence in the Cincinnati nominations
certain as l am that you would not have thus con-
CURED had you not deemed me upright and capable,
find nothing in the circumstance calculated to in
flame vanity nourish self-conceit.
But that your Convention saw fit in adopting the
Cincinnati ticket to rGaffirm the Cincinnati Plat
FORM to source of the profoundest satisfaction
That body was constrained to take this important
step by party necessity real supposed 1t might
have accepted the candidates of the Liberal Repub-
hcans upon grounds entirely its own, or it might
have presented them las the first Wing National
Convention did Harrison and Tyler without adopt
ing any platform whatever That it chose to plant
itself deliberately, by a vote nearly unanimous,
upon the fullest and clearest enuneiaion of princi
pies which are at once incontestaby Republican
and emphatically Democratic, gives trustworthy as
surance that and more suspicious era is dawn
ing upon our long distracted country.
Some of the best years and best efforts of my life
devoted to struggle against Chattel Slavery
a struggle the less earnest arduous because
respect for constitutional obligations constrained
me to act for the most part on the defensiyein re
sstapce to the diffusion rather than in direct efforts
for the extinction of Human Bondage. Throughout
NEST of these years, my vision uneheered,
my exertions were rarely animated, by even
so much as a hope that L e essssld live to see my
country peopled by freemen alone The affirmahCs
by your Convention of the Cincinnati Platform is
most conclusive proof that not merely is Slavery
abolished but that its spirit is extnct-that despite
the protests of respectable but isolated few there
remains among us no party and formidable inter
est which regrets the overthrow or desires the regs
Establishment of Human Bondage, whether in letter
or In spirit. l am thereby justified in my hone and
trust that the first century of American IDdepepd-
ence will not close before the grand elemental
truths on which its rghtfulness was based by JEFF
terson and the Continental Congress of '76 will no
longer be regarded glttering generalitiesD but
honored foundations of our political fabric
demand the prompt application of those prin-
eiples to our existing condition Having done what
could for the complete emancipation of Blacks
now insist on the full enfranchsemeut of all my
White countrymen. Let none say that the ban has
just been removed from all but few hundred
elderly gentlemen 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 he ruled and represented by
the men of their unfettered choice Prescription
were absurd if these did not wish to elect the very
men whom they are forbidden to choose.
have profound regard for the people of that
New-England wherein was born, in whose common
schools was taught. rank no other people above
them in intelligence, capacity, and moral worth.
But, while they do many things well, and some adj
miraby. there is thing which am sure they can
not wisely safely undertake. and that is the selec
ton. for States remote from and unlike their own
of the pessons by whom those States shall be repre-
scented in Congress. If they could do this to good