Litchfield enquirer., 1872-08-01
Mr. 0reeley's Acceptance of the
 Baltimore Nomination..

edged and accepted your nomination on the 18th. That your convention saw fit to accord it's highest honor to one who had been prominently and pointedlY op- posed to your party in the earnest and sometimes angry controversies of the last 40 years, is essentially noteworthy. That many of you originally preferred that the liberal republicans should present anoth- CT candidate for president, and would have more readily united with us in the support of Adams and Trumbull, Davis, or Brown, is we'll known. lowe my adop- tion at Baltimore wholly to the fact that I had already been nominated at Cincln- nati, and that 8 concentration or forces upon any new ticket had been proved im- practicable. Gratifed as I am at your concurrence in the Cincinnati nomination certain as am that you would not have thus cOncurred had you not deemed me upright and capable, find nothing in the circumstance calculated to inhame my vanity or nourish my self conceit, but that your convention saw fit in adopting the Cincinnati ticket, to re-afirm the Cincin- natl platform. That body was constrain- ed to take this important step by no par ty necessity, real or supposed. It might have accepted the candidate of the iber- al republicans upon grounds entirely it's own, or it might have presented them as the first national convention did Harrison and Tyler, without adopting any platform whatever. That 1t chose to plant itself deliberately, by vote nearly unanimous, upon the fullest and dearest enunciation of principles which are at once, soundly republican and emphatically democratic, gives trustworthy assurance that 8 new and more prosperous era is dawning upon our long distracted country.
 Some of the best years and best efforts of my life were devoted to struggle against chattel slavery, a struggle none the less earnest or arduous because re- spect for constitutional obligations con- strained me to act, for the most part, on the defensive, in resistance to the diffu- sion, rather than in direct efforts for the extinction of human bondage. Through out the most of those years, my vision was uncheered, my exertions were rarely animated, by even so much as hope that l should live to see my country peopled by freemen alone. The afirmance, by your convention, of the Cincinnati plat form is most conclusive proof that not merely is slavery abolished, but that it's spirit is extinct, that despite the protests of respectable but isolated few, there remains among us no party and no for midable interest which requires the over- throw or re-establishment of human bond age, whether in letter or in spirit. I am thereby justified in my hope and trust the first century of American independ- ence will not close before the grand ele- mental truths on which it's rightfulness was based by Jefferson and the continent al congress of '76. will no longer be re- garded as "glittering generalities," but will have become the universally accepted and honored foundations of our political fabric.
 l demand the prompt application of these principles to our existing condition. Having done what could for the com plete emancipation of the blacks, now insist on full enfranchisment of all my white countrymen. Let them not say the law has just been removed from all but few hundred elderly gentlemen, to whom eligibility to office can be of little conse- quence. My view contemplates. not the hundreds prescribed, but the millions who are denied the right to be ruled and rep resented by men of their unfettered choice. Prescription were absurd, if those did not wish to elect the very men whom they are forbidden to choose. ~I,have a profound regard for the people of New England, wherein was born, and in whose com mon schools was taught. I rank no people above them in intelligence, capac- ity, and moral worth, but while they do many things we'll, and some things admi- rably, 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 those states shall be represented in congress. If they could do this to good purpose, then republican institutions were unfit and aristocracy the only true politi- cal system. Yet what have we recently witnessed? Zebulon B. Vance, the un- questioned choice of large majority of the present legislature of North Carolina, majority backed by majority of the people who voted at it's election, denied the seat in the federal senate to which he was fairly chosen, and the legislature 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, who in our late contest was, like Governor Vance, a rebel, and fighting rebel, but had not served in Congress before the wal, as Vance had, though the latter remained faithful to the Union till the close of his term. I protest against the disfranchisement of a state, presumptively, or of a number of states, on grounds so narrow and technic- al as this. That the same senate which refused Governor Vance his seat proceeded to remove his disabilities after that seat been filled by another, only serves to place in stronger light the indignity to North Carolina, and the arbitrary, capricious tyranny which dictated it. I thank you, gentlemen, that my name is to be con- spicuously associated with yours in de- termined effort to render amnesty com plete and unqualified. Even defeat, in such cause, 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 al- so mine, assures me that democracy is not henceforth to stand for one thing and re- publicanism for another, but that these terms are to mean in politics, as they al- ways have meant in the dictionary, one and the same thing namely: Equal rights, regardless of creed, or cline, or color. l hail this as genuine departure from out ward forms and meaningless contentious in the direction of progress and reform. Whether I shall he found worthy to bear the standard of the great liberal movement which the American people have inaugu- rated, is to be determined, not by words but by deeds. With me, if I steadily ad- vance, over me, if falter, it's grand ar- ray moves on to achieve for our country her glorious. benefcent destiny.
 I remain, gentlemen, yours,
 HORACE GREELEY.
 To the Hon. James R. Dooittle, chair man of the convention, Messrs. F. W. Sykes, John o. McCabe and others, com mittee.
 Schuyler Colfax's place on the Indiana stump is to be taken by his lifelong polit- ical opponent, Graham N. Fitch, years ago democratic United States senator, but who now joins Morton for Grant, in- stead of going for Greeley, like Hen dricks, Kern and Voorhies.