Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1880-06-04

vention. therefore, il 10 name one Of the tw'
men from whom the people of the Units
States are to select their President. II 4
performs its duties wisely, fcarlessiy ant
freely, it is to name the man whom the PEG
pie will make their President.
Your tenure Of ONCE Is brief, but scarcely
Fanny duty is entrusted to the most houored cit
liens of the republic which in dignity. in pub
lie importance and authority equals yours
1t is twenty years since the republican con.
vention met in this city which, after stormy
but friendly contest, pat in nomination Abra-
ham lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin. Lin
upon that ticket. in fresh and vigorous age,
is present with us to-day TO give US counsel
from the stores of an experience gathered
from a life of honorable public service. Lin
coin has gone To his rest, as have Douglas
and Breckenridge, his two competitors for the
great office of the Presidency. But the two
parties which confronted each other then con-
front each other now, unchanged in purpose,
in temper and in character. The democratic
was ruled, as now, by the South. The sii :
gle purpose of its being was to give political
supremacy to the oligarchics of the South,
and office without influence TO their subserv-
lent Northern allies. In the pursuit of that
end every great public interest was sacrificed
improvements, either in the West or in inland
rivers and lakes, in 1860 the credit of the ma
ton was poor; its treasury empty, its 6 per
cent bonds below par. Our unprotected man
ufactures contended. at fearful disadvantage,
with the pauper labor of Europe, on whose
workshops we depended for large portion of
| the necessaries and comforts of life. Our lit
tie navy was scattered over the four quarters
of the globe.
-Four millions of our countrymeu were in
hopeless bondage. To them every new State,
rs II took its place in the great family but
added a new dungeon to their gloomy prison.
house. Al last, as the democratic party let
go its hold on power. the National flag itself
seemed about to be folded and laid aside. to
be regarded thenccforth as miserable SYM
Dol of the fatality and folly of the last great
experiment of self-government, The demo-
cratic party contronts us to-day, rs l said,
unchanged III purpose. in temper and in
character, united in nothing else, providing
no other measure OF policy. 1t urges its
warfare upon the safeguards which the ma
ton has thrown around the purity Of its cleo
tons. Ii can see no other evil, except that a
freeman should east a free vote under the
protection of the National authority. In
Louisiana ami Mississippi it is the accom-
plice of the White League and the ku-klux;
in South Carolina il takes the honest ballot
from the box and stuiis tissue ballots into its
place: in New York it issues fraudulent nat
uralzation papers, three or four thousand in
| number; in Maine its ambitious larceny
tries to pilter whole State government at
once; in Delaware itlooks with complaccncy
On the whipping-post.
As in the war il found in the Constitution
nothing which could protect the National life,
| so in peace il finds nothing there which can
protect the National honor. Can YOU find in
the history of the democratic party for the
past l6 years anything that the democratic
party has either done or tried to do, except to
break down the legal safeguard So as to make
these things possible? The republican party
has no such miserable history. Rebellion
subdued, slaves freed, great public ways
| constructed, homestead laws, naturalization
| treaty, public credit rc-established, debt d.
minished and sound currency restored, flag
respected above all but not for these things
alone or chiefly does the republican party
live. The republic lives, the republican
party lives that every man within our borders
may dwell secure in happy home; may cast
apd have counted his equal vote may send
his child at the public charge to a free school,
| and until these things come to pass from the
Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada to the
Gulf the mission of our party is not accom-
plished nor its warfare with its ancient adver-
sary ended