Year: 1872

| GREELEY's LETTER OF ACCEPTANCE.


GENTLEMEN Upon mature de6eration,
it seems fit that should give your letter OF
the 10th fuller response than the hasty, un-
premeditated words in which acknowledged
and accepted your nomination at our meeting
on the 18th That many Of you originally
preferred that the Liberal Republicans should
present another candidate for the presidency
and would more readily have united with us
in the support of Adams, Trumbull, Davis
or Brown is well known.


owe my adoption at Baltimore wholly to
the fact that had already been nominated
at Cincinnati, and that a concentration of
forces upon any new ticket had been proved
unacceptable. Gratfied as l am at your
concurrence in the Cincinnati nominations,
certain ;.s 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 van
ty, but that your committee saw fit in
adopting the Cincinnati ticket to reaffirm
the Cincinnati platform, is to me source Of
profound satisfaction. That body was con-
strained to take this important step by no
party necessity, real or supposed. 1t might
have accepted the candidates of the Liberal
Republicans on grounds entirel its own, or
it might have presented them as the first
Wing National Convention did Harrison and
Tyler, without adopting any platform what
ever. That it chose to plant deliberately by
II vote nearly unanimous upon the fullest
and clearest principles, which are at once
incontestibly Republican and cmphatically
Democratic, gives trustworthy assurance
that new and more auspcious era is dawn
ing upon our long distracted country. Some
of the best years and best eift rts of my life
were devoted to a struggle against chattel
slavery; a struggle none the less earnest or
arduous because of constitutional obligations,
constranng me to act for the most part on
| the defensive, in resistance to the diffusion
rather than in direct efforts for the extinction
of human bondage. Throughout most Of
these years my vision was unchanged, my
exertions were rarely animated by even SO
much as hope that should live to see my
country peopled by free men alone. The
affirmnnce by your convention of the Gin
cinnat platform is a most conclusive proof
not merely that slavery is abolished, but
| that its spirit is extinct. Despite the pro-


tests of a respectable but ISOLATED few, there
remains among us no party nor formidable
interest which regrets its overthrow, or de-
| sires the re-establishment of human bondage,
whether in letter or in spirit. am thereby
justified in my hope, and trust that the first
century Of American independence will not
close before the great truths OIL which its
rightfuIness was based by Jefferson and the
Continental Congress of '76, will no longer
be regarded as glttering generalities, but
will have become the universally accepted
and honored foundations of our polit cal fab
ric. l demand the prompt application of
these principles to our existing condition,
having done what could for the complete
emancipation of the blacks; now insist on
full enfranchisement of all my white country
men. Let none say that the ban has just
been removed from all but few hundred
elderly gentlemen, to whom eligibility to
office can be of little consequence. My
view contemplatss not the hundreds pro-
scribed. but the millions who are desiring
the right to be ruled and represented by
men Of their unfettered choice; prescription
were absurd if these did not wish to elect
the very men whom they are forbidden to
choose. have profound regard for the
people of that New England wherein was
horn. in whose common schools l was
brought up. rank no other people above


them in intelligence; but while they may
do many things we'll and some admirably,
there is one thing which am sure they
cannot wisely o. safely undertake, and that