Spirit of Jefferson. [volume] (Charles Town, Va. [W. Va.]) 1844-1948, 1872-08-06
Spirit Of Aeffersoll.
Jefferson County, West Va.
TUESDAY MORNING, AuGgsr 8, 1872.
Mr.. Greeley's Letter Accepting the
Baltimore Nomination.


Baltimore Nomination.
NEW YoRK, July 23.-The following is
Mr.. Greeley's letter accepting the Baltimore
nomination, in reply to the letter of the COM
mittee appointed to notify him thereof
New YoRK, July Is.
Gentlemen: Upon mature deliberation it
seems fit that [ should give to your letter of
the 10th inst. some further aud fuller response
than the hasty, unpremeditated words in
which I acknowledged and accepted your
nomination at our meeting on the 18th inst.
| That your convention saw fit to accord the
| highest honor to one who had been promi-
nently and pointedly opposed to your party in
the earnest and sometimes angry controver-
sizes OF the last forty years, is essentially note.
worthy. That many of you originally pre-
ferred that the Liberal Republicans should
present another candidate for President, and
would more readily have united in the sup
| port of Adams, or Trumbull, or Davis, or
Brown, is we'll known.
owe my adoption at that time, or at all, to
the fact that had already been nominated at
Cincinnati, and that contraction of forces
upon any new ticket had been proved imprac-
ticable.
Gratified as am by your concurrence in
the Cincinnati nomination, would not have
thus consented, had you not deemed me up
right and capable. find nothing in the cir
cumstances calculated to inaame vanity or
nourlsh selt-conceit, but that your convention
saw tit in adopting the Cincinnati ticket to re-
affirm the Cincinnati platform, is to me a
source of the profoundest satisfaction.
That body was constrained to take the i'm
~ M ,ark1,
posed. 1t might have accepted the candidates
of the Liberal Republicans upon grounds al
ready its own, or it might have presented. as
the first Whig National Convention did Harri.
son and Tyler, without any platform whatever.
That it chose to plant itself deliberately by
vote nearly unanimous upon the fullest and
clesrest enuuciation of principles, which are
at ouce incontestibly Republican, and em.
phaticaliy Democratic, gives trustworthy as
surance that a new and more auspicious era is
dawning upon our long distracted country.
Some of the best years and best efforts of
my life were devoted to a struggle against
chattel slavery, struggle none tho less ear
nest or arduous because respect for constitu>
tional obligations constrained mo- to act for
the most part on the defensive, in resistance
to the diffusion rather than in direct efforts
for the extinction of human bondage.
Throughout most of those years my vista
was uncheered my exertions were never ami
mated by even so much as hope that I
should live to see nv country peopled by free.
men aoue. The af6rmance by your conven-
ton of the Cincinnati platform is mos. con-
osusive proof that not merely is slavery abol-
Ished, but that its spirit is extinct; that, de-
spite tho protests of respectable hut isolated
few, there remains among US no party and NO
formidable interest which regrets the over
throw OF desires tho re>establishment of
human bondage, whether in the letter or in
the spirit.
am thereby justified in my hope and trus.
that the first century Of American indepen-
dence will not close before the grand ele-
mental truths, on which its rightfulness was
based by Jefferson and the Continental Com
gress of '76, will no longer be regarded as
"elitterins generalitie.," but will have become
the universally accepted and honored founda.
tions of our political fabric, I demand the
prompt application of those principles to our
existing condition. Having done what I
could Tor the complete emancipation of the
blacks, [ now insist on the full enfranchise-
ment 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 con.
sequence.
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. 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, and
in whose common schools I was taught I
think no other people above them in intelli-
gence, capacity aud moral worth but while
they do many things we'll, and some admira-
bly,, there is one thing am sure they cannot
do wisely or safely, and that is to undertake
the selection for States remote from, and un-
like their own, of the persons by whom those
States shall be represented in Congress.
IF they could do this to good purpose, then
Republican institutions are unfit and aristoc>
racy the only true political system. Yet what
have we recently witnessed? D. B. Vance,
the unquestioned choice of large majority
of the present Legislature of North Carolina,
a majority backed by majority of the peo>
pie. who voted at its election. refused the seat
in the Federal Senate, to which he was fairly
chosen, and the Legislature was thus con-
strained to choose another in his stead, or
leave the State unrepresented for years.
The votes of New England thus deprived
North Carolina of the Senator of her choice
and compelled her to send another in his stead;
another who, in our late contest was. like
Vance. rebel, and fighting rebel, but who
had not served in Congress before the war
.as Vance had. though the latter remained
faithful to the Union until after the end of his
term.
protes. against the disfranchisement of
State, presumpsively of number of States,
on grounds so narrow and technical as this
The fact that the same Senate which refused
Vance his seat proceeded to remove his disa-
bilities after that seat had been filled by
another, only serves to place in stronger light
the indignisy to North Carolina aud the arbi-