Year: 1874




Convention at Columbus.


PENDING QUESTIONS NATIONAL.


FELLOW CITIZENS: The two great
parties have now by their State Con.
ventions in Ohio nominated their
candidates and announced their
principles. The people of Ohio
have rejected the new Constitution
and thus have postponed for the
time all questions of State policy.
No General Assembly is to be cleo
ted. No Governor is to be elected,
The officers to be chosed are purely
ministerial or judicial, and no To-
cal question can be decided. The
people Of Ohio are now called upon
to choose between the only two ex-
isting National political parties and
at an election when their immediate
Representatives in Congress are to
be chosen. 1t is therefore Nation
al election. The issues and results
whatever they are or may be, affect
the whole people of the Uuited
States as much as the people of
Ohio.


CIVIL RIGHTS.


l said that all the fundamental
questions that have rise to the Re-
publican party are settled. And so
they are so far as the guarantee of
the constitution can settle them ;but
there are guarantees not yet enforc-
ed, and unless they are enforced
much of our success will be but
wasted energy. One is the guaran-
tee made dy the Fourteenth amend
ment, which secures by all citizens
equal rights and privileges and the
equal protection of the laws. The
same amendment gives to Congress
the power to enforce it by apprO-
pirate legislation. This has been
done to some extent by securing to
all citizens-white or black-native
and naturalized, the equal enjoy
ment Of the right to sue and be sued,
to testify, and to acquire and hold
property, but in some of the states
the right to travel on railways, to
stop at inns and fairly to share in
the benefits of common schools has
been denied. These rights are com
mon incidents of citizenship, which
all can enjoy without impairing their
by others. And especial
ly the right to enjoy equal facilities
in the education of children is a
right of primary Importance not on
ly to the individual, but to the
whole community. The education
Of youth is by far the most costly
object of local taxation, freely borne
because it is essential to the main
of a Republican form of gov
ernment. In the old constitution
Of Ohio, as well as in the (which
has been rejected it is provided that
'The General Assembly shall make
such provisions by taxation, or 9th
erWise, as with the income arising
from the school trust fund will Sc.
cure a thorough and efficient sys-
tenn of common schools throughout
the State"


Our system of common schools
has, in Ohio, been secured to all
voluntarily rejected
from pride, creed or prejudice. It
is a monument of wisdom. It is q
stream of perpetual fertility.


In populous communities where
the number of colored children is
sufficient for a separate school, it is
often preferable to form q separate
school by local authority, but where
there are few such children, they 90
to the same school with white child
ren and take part in the same class.
l am assured by some of the best
teachers in the State that practically
no difficulty occurs when white and
black are in the same class and
and that very often the col
ored children are, from their general
good humor, favorites with the white
children. The difficulty is not in
the school or with the scholars, but
with the parents in the blind unrea=
soning spirit of caste the debris of
slavery, and is strongest with the
most ignorant and vicious.


At all events the blacks are citi-
zens of the United States, armed
with the ballot and with equal rights
and privileges, entitled to equal
immunities and advantages, and it
is not for US as Republicans to deny
them any of their rights essential to
their manhood from a feeling of
caste or prejudice arising from color
or race or condition. They have
borne their part in the contests
through which they have passed,
and we must not shrink from fairly
enforcing the guarantees we have
given them. The Republican party
is the only one so constituted that
has the courage and disposition to
enforce this guarantee, and we owe
it to our honor as well as to the log
ic of the lofty principle that has
guided us. Equal rights to all to
do so. I voted for the civil rights
bill now pending in the House of
Representatives, not only because I
thought it was right, but because I
felt bound in honor to stand by and
enforce the great amendment to the
constitution, the pride and boast of
the Republican party and the con-
Meeting link by which the immortal
Declaration of Independence was
made part Of our constitution of
government I have seen, one by
lone, the narrow prejudices of caste
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