Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1872-07-24
Greeley's Acceptance of the Democratic
Nomination.
what he Knows About 50 Principles NJ
Once InCOniesIHbiy Republican aud
EmphaTicaIIy Democratic"

NEW YORK, July 23.-The following is Gree
ley'S acceptance OF the Baltimore nomination.:
NEW YORK, July Is, 1872.
Gentlemen: Upon NATURALIZATION il seems
fit that ! should give TO your letter of the 10th
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 convention saw tit to accord its
highest honor to one who had been prominently
and pointedly opposed to your party in the earn
est and sometimes angry controversies of the
last forty years. is essentially noteworthy That
many OF yon originally preferred that the lib
eral republicans should present another candi-
date for president, and would more readily have
united with us in the support of Adams or
Irumbull, Davis OF Brown, is well known.
/ 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 impracti-
cable.
Gratfcd as / am at your concurrence in the
Cincinnati nominations, certain as | am that
you would not have thus cOncurrcd had YOU
not deemed me upright and capable, find
nothing in the circumstance calculated to in
lucnce vanity or nourish selEcouccit. But that
your convention saw fit in adopting the Cincn-
natl ticket to rC-atilrm the Cincinnati platform,
is to me Il source of the prOiOundCst satisfac-
important step by no party necessity, real or
supposed II might have accepted the candl-
dates of the liberal republicans upon grounds
entirely its own, or it might have
presented them as the first wing
national convention did Harrison and Tyler
without adopting any platform whatever That
it chose to plant itself dciberately-by a vote
nearly unanmOuS-upOn the fullest and clear
est enuncatOn of principles which are at once
incontestaby republican and cmphatcally dem
Ocratle, gives trustworthy assurance that 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 chattcl
savcry-a struggle none the less earnest or ar
duous because respect for constitutional obliga-
tons constrained me to act for the most part on
the defensive in resistance to the diffusion rather
than in direct efforts for the extinction of hui
man bondage. Throughout most of those
years my vision was uncleared, my eXertionS
were rarely animated by even so much as a hope
that | should live to see my country peopcd
by ireemen alone. The afilrmance by your con-
vention of the Cincinnati platform is most
conclusive pro of that not merely is slavery
abolished, but that its spirit is extinct; that,
despite the protests of a respectable but isolated
few, there remains among us no party and no
formidable interest which regrets the overthrow
or desires the re-eStablShment of human bond
age, whether in letter or in spirit | am there
fore justified in my hope and trust that the first
century of American independence will not close
before the grand elemental truths on which its
righttulneSs was based by Jefferson and the
Continental congress Of '76 will no longer be
regarded as "glttering gcneralties," but will
have become the universally accepted and hon
ored found ,tons OF our political fabric. | de-
mand the prompt application of those princi-
piles to our existing condition.
Having done what could for the complete
emancipation of the blacks, | now insist on the
full enfranchisemGnt of all my white country
men. 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 contempates not
the hundreds prescribed, but the millions who
are denied the right to be ruled and represented
| by the men of their unietered choice Pro-
| scnptOn 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 admirably, there is one
| thing which | am sure they cannot wisely or
| safely undertake. and that is the selection for
| states remote from ana unlike their own of the
persons by whom those states shall be repre-
| scented in congress. II they could do this
| to good purpose, then republican Institutions
were unfit and arstOcracy the only true pGHtl-
| cal system. Yet what have we recently wit
messed: Zebulon B. Vance, the unquestiOned
choice Of a large majority of the present legisa
| ture of North Carolina, a majority backed by a
majority of the people who voted at its election,
refused the seat in the federal senate to which
he was fairly chosen, and the legislature thus
constrained to choose another in his stead or
leave the state unrepresented for years
The votes of New England thus de-
pryed North Carolina of the senatorof hcrchoiCe
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 till after the close OF his term. protest
against the dslranchisement of state, pre-
sumptlvely of u 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 disabilities after that
seat had been filled by another, only serves to
place in Il stronger light the indignity to North
Carolina, and the arbitrary, capricious tyranny
which dictated it,.
thank you thatmy name is to be conspcuously
associated with yours in a determined effort to
render amnesty complete and universal in
spirit as well as in letter. Even defeat in such
"A case would leave no sting, while triumph
would rank with those victories which no blood
reddens and which evoke no tears but those of
gratitude and JOY
Gentlemen, your platform, which is also mine,
assures me that democracy is not henceforth to
stand for one thing and republicanism for
another, but that those terms are to mean in
politics, as they always have meant in the die
ti0nary, substantially one and the same thing,
namely Equal rights, regardless Of creed or
cline or color | hail this as a genuine new
departure from Outworn feuds and meaningless
contentious in the direction of progress and
reform. Whether | shall be found worthy to
bear the standard Of the great liberal movement
which the American people have inaugurated is
to be determined, not by words but by deeds.
With me, if | steadily advance-Oyer me,if |
falter, its grand array moves on to achieve for
our country her glorious, benefcent destiny.
remain, gentlemen, yours,
HORACE GREELEY.
To the Hon. James r. Doolittle, chairman of
the convention, and Messrs. f. W. Sykes, John
G. Mac Cabe and Others committee. IA