Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1879-09-24
ELOQUENT WORDS.
Spoken by Vice President Will
lam A. Wheeler.
Before the New York Republican State
Convention, at Saratoga.


GENTLEMEN OF THE CONVENTION: Thrice
have I been honored with the position to which
YOU have now assigned me, and, if gratitude
can be computed by progression, thrice am l
grateful for your kind partiality. I had the
honor to preside over the Republican State
Convention twenty years ago, when the slave
power, having the constitution, the laws, the
Executive. Congress and the courts in COM
plete domination, was nevertheless demanding
for its peculiar interest rights and protection,
without the pale of the constitution, was Sc
cretly organizing a vast conspiracy against the
integrity of the Union, and kindling the flame
of the ruthless civil war which, within two
years thereafter, opened it's dread drama in
Charleston harbor in the glare of eleven bat
teries of artillery, which hurled their iron bolts
upon one small, siege-worn company Of United
States troops, whom the Government, in its
earnest desire to avoid hostile demonstrations,
was endeavoring to feed, and not to reinforce
It was at Sumter that the experiment of starry
ing the Government was initiated, with repet-
ton at Andersonvile and other places of his
torie brutality, and more recently at Washing
ton at the late extra session Of Congress. came
to this position again in 1872. The curtain had
then fallen upon the bloody drama opened at
Charleston The long, weary, battling years
that had interviewed had drifted into the dead
past. The flag had been lifted up from its hu-
initiation at Sumter, and, again lnviolate and
supreme, proclaimed the national sovereignty
from the Potomac to the Rio Grande. A half
million of the defenders of that sovereignty
were sleeping in soldiers graves The blood
of hundreds of battle-felds, the emblems of
mourning, the tears in s. million of sacrifcial
homes, the bereft the desolate, the helpless, the
SCARED, and the wasted, encountered on every
hand. attested the costliness of the sacrifices
which had been made for the national life.
We then confidently believed that, by an i'm
mutable law of the Supreme Ruler, such sacri-
fees had not been made In vain; that the ma
TONS blood, the nations tears, and the nations
treasures bad found compensation in the des-
truction of the germ of the fatal heresy of Sc
cession and in saving the grand framework of
our Government from falling into wretched
fragments. With immense majorities in Con-
gress and every Northern State, and omnipo-
tent to fix the status of its defeated enemies,
the Government, with magnanimity for which
the history of the world furnishes no parallel,
treating the contest as one of principle, and
not of personal hatred, and lifting itself above
the low level of mere personal triumph, had
condoned the crime of treason and rebellion,
ard actually reinvested traitors and rebels with
the rights they had forfeited, and made them
equal participants in the privileges they had
insolently cast off in their mad purpose to de-
stroy The national authority. This magnaLim-
ity has been supplemented by every possible
effort to establish in tie Southern section of
this country substantial era of reconciliation
and peace. Military garrisons have been with
drawn, all alleged national interference hereto
fore complained of discontinued, and, contrary
to all political precedent, appointments to Of
fee have been given to those who, few years
since, were moving heaven and earth to pros
trate the Gov eminent and Union. To-day we
are here confronting the consequences
of the magnanimity Of the Government
and of its wasted and despised efforts to con-
ciliate its late armed assailants In the light of
recent events it is not hyperbole to inquire
Was the surrender of Appomattox wretched,
hollow truce, patched up to enable the rebellion
to choose new line of assault upon the new
Union and was the mushroom Confederacy
proclaimed at Montgomery really failure, or
are the founders and ideas to become the liv-
ing, controlling forces of the country? The
spirit which defied the authority and sought to
living form in solid South, supported by the
whole power Of the party North, which
in 1861 declared that the constitution had
left the Government powerless in the
face of an armed enemy, which, with
valorous spirit but fainting flesh, pledged
itself to resist coercion unto blood; and
which, when our victorious legions had pre-
pared the winding-sheet of the rebellion, in its
National Convention assembled resolved the
war failure.
STATE RIGHTS AND MULTIPLICATION.
Stripped of all guise, the two great parties of
the country are again ranged on either side of
the liae of demarkation of the powers of the
National Government and the States. Wherein
now differs the issue from that made UP in
1861? Then, the Democratic party demanded
of President Lincoln that he should periure
himself in his official oath or they would over
throw the Government by armed force. Lin
coin answered, in his inaugural You have
no oath registered in heaven to destroy the
Government, while I have the most solemn one
to preserve, protect and defend it This
demand was referred to the last dread court of
arbitrament, where for four years, in the white
heat OF fearful war, the great argument pro-
ceeded, until at last, at Appomatto6 the YER
dict was delivered to- the matchless soldier
whose marshaling of the Union forces had
brought rebel traitors to submission and
avenged an outraged nation. That verdict was
that the constitution of the United States was
not compact entered into by the States, but
was ordained and established bv the people
of the United States for themselves and their
posterity; that no State or combination of States
can nullify the constitution; that the Union is a
family of States, Independent of each other for
local concerns, but united under one Govern
ment for the management of common interests
and the preservation of the general peace-a
plan, to borrow the language of another
7smost hopeful for combining the home-bred
blessings of a small State with the stability and
power of great empire" In short, that YER
dict was that the nationality proclaimed by oul
fathers shall stand until Justice, domestic tran
quillity, the common defense, the general vel.
fare, and the blessings Of liberty shall, in Gods
own good time, under the stars and stripes, be
the lasting heritage of all who may be dwelling
upon the face of this entire continent. And the
Republican party of the Empire State, remem
bering that the great charter of our nationality
was enacted upon her soil, and recalling the
heroic Deeds the sacrifices and the fidelity Of
the almost half million of her sons who partici
pated in that bloody assize, pledges itself here
anew to stand by the verdict
In this year of grace the same Democratic
party which sought to coerce President Lincoln
from his official duty has demanded of Presi-
dent Hayes that he should perjure himself In
his official oath; that he should surrender g
prerogadve given him by the constitution, sc
that Congress alone might become the law
making power, and that the party might, by
Congressional enactment, strip the Government
of the power to protect its citizens, to enforce
its laws for the preservation of the peace an6
for the security OF the ballot-box to the end tina
the palladium of our liberties might be left 8
prev to fraud and violence in the South an6
swindling repeaters in the North. This revo
lutionary demand was accompanied by tht
president rQfuainU the