The Tiffin tribune. (Tiffin, Ohio) 1868-1887, 1872-08-01
SPEECH OF SENATOR CONKLING
A Review of the Situation.
NEW YnRK- Inlv q

NEW YORK, July %.
The meeting at Cooper Institute to-
night was one of the largest ever held
here. The crowd was quite as large
as on the evening that Sehurz spoke,
and some consider it larger. The hall
including the platform and lobbies
was full. The promptness with
| which the crowd assembled-the hall
being packed long before Senator
Conkling made his aPtsearance-an
H. s.44Aesss- nth which they applaud
ed every prOHineHG name read from
| the long list of Vice-Presidents, or the
happy hits of the speaker gave evil
dence of their unanimity. The meet
ing was in every sense orderly. The
audience rapidly poured into the hall,
and there We're many ward clubs with
| banners.
NEW YORK, July Ex-senator ROs-
eOe COnkling addressed q large and
enthusiastic Republican meeting to-
night, at Cooper Institute, upon the
subject "Grant and his defamers-
Deeds against words"
The hall was handsomely decorated
with flags and appropriate emblems.
Jacks on S. Schultz presided, assisted
by Geo. NJ. Van Mort, Postmaster
Jones, II. n. Sherwood, ex-senator
Morgan, with about $50 other Vice
Presidents, and over u hundred Sec
retaries.
The Senator said: For twenty years
it has been my privilege to address
my neighbOrs upon political issues.
Too much ardOr has perhaps been
among my faults, yet no canvass has
ever stirred me so deeply as this. No
election has ever appealed so strongly
to my sense of fair play. No canvass
within my memory has ever been so
full of foul play, injustice, and malice.
None has ever more strongly tested
the common sense and generosity of
the American people. Eleven years
service in Congress has made me a
close observer of four Presidents and
many public men. If among them
all there is one living or dead who
never knowingly failed in his duty,
that one is Ulysses Sidney Grant.
There was a forecast in giving him
the name Sidney, for his greatest,
gentIest quality is his magnaninity.
If there has been high official ever
ready to admit and correct an error;
if there has been one who did wisely,
firmly, well, the things given him in
charge, that one is a soldier in war,
a quiet patriot in peace, who has been
named again by every township in
forty-six States and Territories for
the great trust he now holds Yet
this man, honest, brave, modest, and
proved by his transcendent deeds to
be endowed with the genius of COM
mon sense and moral qualities ade-
quate TO the greatest affairs; this man
who saved his country, who snatch
ed our nationality, our cause from
despair, bore them on his shield
through the flame of battle in which
but for him they would have perished.
This man under whose administration
our country has fiOurished, as no one
dared predict; this man to whom the
nations gratitude and benedictiOn
are one, is made the mark for ribald
tests, and odious, groundless ISLANDERS.
Why is all this? Simply because he
stands in the way of the greed and
ambition of politicians and schemers.
A war of mud and missiles has been
yaged for months. The President,
his family, and nearly all associated
Will LlALlV AldNG BEGAA DEogeALL-A EAs
Truth and decency have been driven
far away. Every thief, cOrmOrant,
and drone, who has been put out; ev-
cry baffied mOUser for place or plum
der; every man with grievance or
grudge; all who have something to
make by a change, seem to wag an
unbridled tongue or drive q foul pen.
The President cannot enter the lists
of controversy and defend himself
The Droprieties of his station forbid
it. His chief competitor, managing
behind the curtain of a newspaper,
from which he pretends to have re.
tired, is free to defend and puff him
self, feels free to fill his paper with
base, scurrilous falsehoOd in the hope
of blackening a name which is one Of
the treasures OF the nation, which
will be the pride of pOsterity. All
this pollution will, in the end, disgrace
only its authors. 1t will not disgrace
Grant or the nation, because the ua-
ton will spurn and resent it. The
disgusting personalities emptied upon
Gen. Jackson secured his reelection.
An offended people struck back. and
they will strike back again.
Had the cool veterans of DemOcra-
ey formed or selected the issues to be
presented, they would have been wise
enough to 50 frame them that the
people could decide in their favor
without fixing a stigma upon Gen.
Grant, without blasting his name, or
doing him wrong. But the Demo-
cratic statesmen, leaders in hundreds
of fights, have been mere lockers On.
The leadership has been assumed by
Republican renegades and outs: men
so eaten up with envy, or so madden
ed with loss or refusal of place and
patronage that nothing would satisfy
them short Of a raneOrous, revenge
ful, personal raid. When n man turns
Turk he spits on the cross, and when
wide throated, ultra Republicans clan
destinely trade with the enemy, and
then turn open traitors TO their party,
they become the pleanest, fiercest Of
the opponents, just as the Yankee
slave OveTseer from New England
was always more brutal than those
| born in the south. When the men
whose vanity was hurt, and Others