Year: 1872

I GENTLEMES-Upon mature delibera-
ton it seems ft that I should give TO
your letter Of the 10th inst, some fur
thor and fuller responce than the hasty un-
premeditated words which acknowledge
ed and accepted your nomination at our
meeting on the 18th.


That your convention saw fit to accord
its highest honor to one who had been
prominently, pointedly opposed to your
party in the earnest and angry contro-
versy of the last forty years, is eminent
ly noteworthy. That many Of you orig
inally preferred that the Liberal Repub-
licans should present another candidate,
and would more readily have united both
of us in the support of Adams or Trum-
bull, Davis or Brown is well known. i
owe my adoption at Baltimore wholly to
the fact that had already been nomi-
mated at Cincinnati, and that a concen-
tration of forces on any new ticket had
been proved impracticable. Grateful as
| am at your concurrence in the Cincin-
matt nomination, certain as | am that
you would not have thus occurred had
you not deemed me upright and capable,
| find nothing in the circumstance cal
culated to inhame vanity or nourish self
conceit.


But that your convention saw fit in
adopting the Cincinnati ticket to reaf-
firm the Cincinnati platform, is to me
source Of the profoundest satisfaction.
That body was constrained to take this
important step by no party necessity, real
or supposed. 1t might have accepted
the candidates of the Liberal Republi-
cans upon grounds entirely its own, or it
might have presented them, as the first
Wing National Convention did Harrison
and Tyler, without adopting any plat
form whatever. That it chose to plant
itself '.o..Ssiately by vote nearly unan-
imous upon the fullest and clearest enun-
citation of principles which a.e at once
incontestably Republican and emphati-
cally Democratic, gives trustworthy as
surance that a new and more auspicious
era is dawning upon our long-distracted
country.


Some of the best years and best efforts
of my life were devoted to a struggle
against chattel slavery, a struggle none
the less earnest or arduous because res
pect for constitutional obligations con-
strained me to act for the most part on
the defensive, in resistance to the diffu-
sion rather than in direct efforts for the
extinction of human bondage. Through
out most of those years my vision was
uncheered, my exertions were rarely an-
mated by even so much as hope that
| should live to see my country
peopled by freemen alone. The affirm
ance by your convention of the Cincin-
natl platform is a most conclusive proof
that not merely is slavery abolished, but
that its spirit is extinct; that despite the
protests of respectable but isolated few,
there remains among us no party and no
formidable interest which regrets the
overthrow or desires the establishment Of
human bondage, whether in the letter or
in the spirit. l am thereby justified in
my hope and trust that the first century
of American independence will not close
before the grand elemental truth on
which its rightfulness was based by JEFF
erson and the Continental Congress Of
'76 will no longer be regarded as glitter
ing generalities, but will have become
the universally accepted and honored
foundation of our political fabric.


demand the prompt application Of
those principles to our existing condition,
Having done what l could for the com
pletc emancipation of the blacks, | nov
insist on the full enfranchisement Of al
nv white countrymen. Let none say thu
ban has lust been removed from all but
A few hundred elderly gentlemen, t.
whom eligibility to office can be of littl,
consequence. My view contemplate,
not the hundred prescribed, but the mil
lions who are denied the right to be ruleC
and represented by the men of their un