Thomas V. Cooper

“ Here, sir, is the true history of the origin, rise, and progress of the party of National Republicans, who date back to the very origin of the government, and who, then, as now, chose to consider the constitution as having created, not a Federal, but a National Union; who regarded “consolidation” as no evil, and who doubtless considered it “a consummation devoutly to be wished” to build up a great “central government,” “one and indivisible.” Sir, there have existed, in every age and every country, two distinct orders of men—the lovers of freedom, and the devoted advocates of power. ”

“ No government in all the past has been without its misshaped ends; and few, indeed, have survived three generations without revolution. We must have been more than mortals, if our history does not present much that we would be glad to efface. We should be unlike all great peoples of the earth, if we did not mark the ebb and flow of public virtue, and the consequent struggles between the good and evil elements of a society in which freedom is at times debased to license. We have had seasons of war and of peace. We have had tidal waves of passion, with their sweeping demoralization. ”

“ Thomas F. Bayard is a statesman who will need no introduction to the American people. His name and his record are known wherever our flag floats—aye, wherever the English tongue is spoken. His is no sectional fame. With sympathies as broad as the continent, a private character as spotless as the snow from heaven, a judgment as clear as the sunlight, an intellect keen and bright as a flashing sabre, a courage that none dare question, honest in thought and deed, the people all know him by heart, and, as I said before, they need not be told who and what he is. ”

“ The call for free trade is as unavailing as the cry of a spoiled child, in its nurse’s arms, for the moon, or the stars that glitter in the firmament of heaven. It never has existed, it never will exist. Trade implies, at least two parties. To be free, it should be fair, equal and reciprocal. But if we throw our ports wide open to the admission of foreign productions, free of all duty, what ports of any other foreign nation shall we find open to the free admission of our surplus produce? ”

“ He says that he looks forward to a time when slavery shall be abolished everywhere. I look forward to a time when each State shall be allowed to do as it pleases. If it chooses to keep slavery forever, it is not my business, but its own; if it chooses to abolish slavery, it is its own business—not mine. I care more for the great principle of self-government, the right of the people to rule, than I do for all the negroes in Christendom. I would not endanger the perpetuity of this Union, I would not blot out the great inalienable rights of the white men for all the negroes that ever existed. ”

“ It is in vain you talk of the goodness and benevolence of an Omniscient Ruler to him, whose life from the cradle to the grave is one continued scene of pain, misery and want. Talk not of free agency to him whose only freedom is to choose his own method to die. In such cases, there might, perhaps, be some feeble conceptions of religion and its duties—of the infinite, everlasting, and pure; but unless there be a more than common intellect, they would be like the dim shadows that float in the twilight. ”

“ Our cause must never be abandoned; it is the cause of free institutions and self-government. The Constitution and the Union must be preserved, whatever may be the cost in time, treasure, and blood. If secession is successful, other dissolutions are clearly to be seen in the future. Let neither military disaster, political faction, nor foreign war shake your settled purpose to enforce the equal operation of the laws of the United States upon the people of every State. ”

“ Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all; religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt that, in the course of time and things, the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages which might be lost by a steady adherence to it? ”

“ With suffering Greece now is the crisis of her fate,—her great, it may be, her last struggle. Sir, while we sit here deliberating, her destiny may be decided. The Greeks, contending with ruthless oppressors, turn their eyes to us, and invoke us by their ancestors, slaughtered wives and children, by their own blood, poured out like water, by the hecatombs of dead they have heaped up as it were to heaven, they invoke, they implore us for some cheering sound, some look of sympathy, some token of compassionate regard. ”

“ Will not Americans learn prudence from the past? Misfortune should have taught us charity for each other. We have passed through the ordeal of persecution together; we have been subjected to the same difficulties, and the same oppression; we have been baptized (I may say) in the same stream of calumny. Then, in the name of God—in the name of our common country—in the name of Americanism—in the name of American nationality—in the name of religious freedom—in the name of the Union, I beseech you to learn charity for the difference of opinion which prevails among you. ”

“ Sir, the great conflict now raging in the Old World has presented a phenomenon in military science unprecedented in the annals of mankind, a phenomenon that has reversed all the traditions of the past as it has disappointed all the expectations of the present. A great and warlike people, renowned alike for their skill and valor, have been swept away before the triumphant advance of an inferior foe, like autumn stubble before a hurricane of fire. ”

“ Sir, I thank God that if I am gifted with little of the spirit which is said to be able to raise mortals to the skies, I have yet none, as I trust, of that other spirit, which would drag angels down. When I shall be found, sir, in my place here in the Senate, or elsewhere, to sneer at public merit, because it happened to spring up beyond the little limits of my own state, or neighborhood; when I refuse, for any such cause, or for any cause, the homage due to American talent, to elevated patriotism, to sincere devotion to liberty and the country ”

“ Every patriotic memory bears in perpetual freshness the inscriptions of our noblest deeds, and every devoted heart quickens its pulsations at the contemplation of the power and safety of government of the people. In every trial, in peace and in war, we have created our warriors, our pacificators and our great teachers of the country’s sublime duties and necessities. ”

“ Nearly forty years ago, when the slave power dominated the country—when the dark shadow of human slavery fell upon us all here in the North—there arose a body of conscientious men and women who proclaimed the doctrine that emancipation was the duty of the master and the right of the slave; they proclaimed it to be a duty to let the oppressed go free. Rewards were offered—they were denounced, mobbed—violence pervaded the land. Yet these faithful ones maintained with fidelity, against all odds, the sublime creed of human liberty. ”

“ We, who come here as agents and representatives of those narrow-minded and selfish men of New England, consider ourselves as bound to regard, with equal eye, the good of the whole, in whatever is within our power of legislation. Sir, if a railroad or canal, beginning in South Carolina, appeared to me to be of national importance and national magnitude, believing as I do that the power of government extends to the encouragement of works of that description, if I were to stand up here and ask, “What interest has Massachusetts in a railroad in South Carolina?” ”

“ Are we enemies to the power of the crown? No, sir, we are its best friends: this friendship prompts us to wish, that the power of the crown may be firmly established on the most solid basis: but we know, that the constitution alone will perpetuate the former, and securely uphold the latter. Are our principles irreverent to majesty? They are quite the reverse: we ascribe to it perfection almost divine. We say, that the king can do no wrong: we say, that to do wrong is the property, not of power, but of weakness. We feel oppression, and will oppose it ”

“ Are we, sir, to go on a crusade, in another hemisphere, for the propagation of two objects—objects as dear and delightful to my heart as to that of any gentleman in this, or in any other assembly—liberty and religion—and, in the name of these holy words—by this powerful spell, is this nation to be conjured and persuaded out of the highway of heaven—out of its present comparatively happy state, into all the disastrous conflicts arising from the policy of European powers, with all the consequences which flow from them? ”

“ I am not before you to garner the scars and disjointed columns of free government. The Republic that has been reared by a century of patriotic labor and sacrifice, more than covers its wounds with the noblest achievements ever recorded in man’s struggle for the rights of man. It is not perfect in its administration or in the exercise of its vast and responsible powers; but when was it so? when shall it be so? No human work is perfect. ”

“ His fame was born not alone of things written and said, but of the arduous greatness of things done, and dangers and emergencies will search in vain in the future, as they have searched in vain in the past, for any other on whom the nation leans with such confidence and trust. Standing on the highest eminence of human distinction, and having filled all lands with his renown, modest, firm, simple and self-poised, he has seen not only the titled but the poor and the lowly in the utmost ends of the world rise and uncover before him. ”

“ We declare that this republic can only endure as a free government while built upon the love of the whole people for each other and for the nation; that it cannot be pinned together by bayonets; that the civil war is over, and that every passion and resentment which grew out of it must die with it, and that we must be, in fact, as we are in name, one united brotherhood of free men.
Our country finds itself confronted by conditions for which there is no precedent in the history of the world. ”

“ They were that the saved republic should be run by its saviours, the emancipation of slaves, the reconstruction of the States, the reception of those who had fought to destroy the republic back into the fold, without the penalties or punishments, and to an equal share with those who had fought and saved the nation, in the solemn obligation and inestimable privilege of American citizenship. They were the embodiment into the Constitution of the principles for which 2,000,000 of men had fought and 500,000 had died. ”

“ But you, gentlemen of the convention, who must keep in view the success so important to be achieved in November, pray consider the elements of his strength. Who more than he will as a candidate appeal to the best traditions of our party and our country? In whom more than he will the business interests of the country, now re-awakening to new life and hope, confide for that economy and repose which shall send capital and labor forth like twin brothers hand in hand to the great work of building up the country’s prosperity and advancing its civilization? ”

“ Visit the dark and narrow lanes, and obscure recesses, which have been assigned by common consent as the abodes of those outcasts of the world, the free people of color. Sir, there does not exist, on the face of the whole earth, a population so poor, so wretched, so vile, so loathsome, so utterly destitute of all the comforts, conveniences, and decencies of life, as the unfortunate blacks of Philadelphia, and New York, and Boston. ”

“ His mind is free; his person is safe; his property is secure; his house is his castle; the spirit of the laws is his body-guard and his house-guard; the fate of one is the fate of all measured by the same common rule of right; his voice is heard and felt in the general suffrage of freemen; his trial is in open court, confronted by witnesses and accusers; his prison house has no secrets, and he has the judgment of his peers; and there is nought to make him afraid, so long as he respects the rights of his equals in the eye of the law. Would he propagate truth? Truth is free to combat error. ”