Looking the Republican Party Squarely in the Face: An Address Delivered in Cincinnati, Ohio, on June 14, 1876
LOOKING THE REPUBLICAN PARTY SQUARELY IN THE FACE:
AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN CINCINNATI, OHIO,
ON 14 JUNE I876
New York Times, 15 June 1876. Other texts in Cincinnati Enquirer, 15 June 1876; Indi-
anapolis Journal, 15 June 1876.
Shortly after 12:00 P.M. on 14 June 1876, the Republican party opened its
national convention in Cincinnati, Ohio, amidst music and fanfare. The
gathering, much larger than any of the party’s previous conventions, included
a number of black delegates, many of whom were current and former con-
gressmen from southern states. After Edwin D. Morgan, former governor of
New York, called the proceedings to order, a long list of Republican notables
and supporters, including the Reverend Henry Highland Garnet, spoke to the
delegates. As the day’s business drew to a close, Douglass stepped to the
speaker’s platform and, speaking on the subject of preserving the rights of the
freedmen, moved the audience to frequent applause.
MR. CHAIRMAN1Theodore Medad Pomeroy (1824-1905) of New York was temporary chairman of the convention. Born in Cayuga, New York, he graduated from Hamilton College in 1842 and moved to Auburn, New York, where he practiced law and later served as mayor (1875-76). After holding local and state offices he became a Republican congressman (1861-69). When Schuyler Colfax resigned as Speaker at the close of the Fortieth Congress, Pomeroy was elected to the position for one day, 3 March 1869. He later entered the banking business and was an officer of the American Express Company. ACAB, 5: 61; NCAB, 12: 255-56. AND GENTLEMEN OF THE NATIONAL CONVENTION: Al-
low me to express my deep, my heartfelt gratitude to you for the warm,
cordial invitation you have extended to me to make my appearance on this
platform at this time. The work to which you have called me is somewhat
new; it is the first time in my life that I have ever had the pleasure of looking
the Republican Party squarely in the face (applause and laughter), and I
must say, and I hope you will acquit me of everything like a disposition to
flatter, that you are pretty good looking men. (Laughter and applause.) But
I will not detain you here by any attempt at a speech. You have had
speeches, eloquent speeches, glorious speeches, wise speeches, patriotic
speeches, speeches in respect of the importance of managing correctly your
currency, speeches in defense of purity of administration, and speeches in
respect of the great principles for which you struggled, and for which the
race to which I belong struggled on the battle-field and poured out their
blood. (Cheers.)
The thing, however, in which I feel the deepest interest, and the thing
in which I believe this country feels the deepest interest is that the princi-
ples involved in the contest which carried your sons and brothers to the
battle-field, which draped our Northern churches with the weeds of mourn-
ing and filled our towns and our cities with mere stumps of men, armless,
legless, maimed, and mutilated—the thing for which you poured out your
blood and piled a debt for after-coming generations higher than a mountain
of gold to weigh down the necks of your children and your children’s
children—I say those principles involved in that tremendous contest are to
be dearer to the American people in the great political struggle now upon
them than any other principles we have. (Applause and cheers.)
FURTHER PROTECTION DEMANDED.
You have emancipated us. I thank you for it. You have enfranchised us,
and I thank you for it. But what is your emancipation—what is your
enfranchisement? What does it all amount to, if the black man, after having
been made free by the letter of your law, is unable to exercise that freedom;
and after having been freed from the slaveholders’ lash he is to be subject to
the slaveholder’s shotgun? (Cheers.) Oh, you freed us; you emancipated
us; I thank you for it; but under what circumstances did you emancipate us?
Under what circumstances have we obtained our freedom? Sir, our case is
the most extraordinary case of any people ever emancipated on the globe. I
sometimes wonder that we still exist as a people in this country; that we
have not all been swept out of existence, and nothing left to show that we
had ever existed. Look at it! When the Israelites were emancipated, they
were told to go and borrow of their neighbors—borrow their corn, borrow
their jewels—load themselves down with the means of subsistence after
they should go free in the land which the Lord God gave them.2Douglass paraphrases Exod. 12: 34-36. When the
Russian serfs had their chains broken and were given their liberty, the
Government of Russia—aye, the despotic Government of Russia—gave
to these poor emancipated serfs a few acres of land on which they could live
and earn their bread; but when you turned us loose, you gave us none. You
turned us loose to the sky, to the storm, to the whirlwind, and, worst of all,
you turned us loose to the wrath of our infuriated masters. (Applause.)
The question now is, do you mean to make good the promises in your
Constitution? Talk not to me of finance. Talk not of mere reform in your
administration.3Issues of fiscal policy and civil service reform dominated political discussion in 1876. The money question, revolving around the disposal of greenbacks, became a vital campaign issue. The high protectionist tariff, in effect since the Morrill Act of 1861, also provoked intense debate, many arguing that no tariff at all should be levied on raw materials, or at least none for purposes other than revenue. After the Whiskey Ring scandal of 1875 reached into the cabinet of President Ulysses S. Grant, new cries arose, from both Democrats and Republicans, for a purging of existing and potential corruption in presidential administrations. Such prominent agitators for civil service reform as Henry and Charles Francis Adams, Carl Schurz, and Theodore Dwight Woolsey, president of Yale College, worked to keep their objectives in the forefront of the Republican convention of 1876. Ari Hoogenboom, Outlawing the Spoils: A History of the Civil Service Reform Movement, 1865-1883 (Urbana, Ill., 1961), 135-41; Schlesinger, American Presidential Elections, 2: 1382-95. (Applause.) I believe there is honesty in the American
people—honesty in the men whom you elect—wisdom in the men to
manage those affairs;4Prior to the Republican National Convention, Senator James G. Blaine of Maine was the leading contender for the presidential nomination. Other aspirants included Governor John Hartranft of Pennsylvania, Postmaster General Marshall Jewell of Connecticut, Senator Oliver P. Morton of Indiana, Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York, Secretary of the Treasury Benjamin Bistrow, and Governor Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio. On the seventh ballot, taken on 16 June, Hayes received the nomination. William A. Wheeler of New York, a party regular, received the vice-presidential nomination. Schlesinger, American Presidential Elections, 2: 1395-99. but tell me, if your hearts be as my heart, that the
liberty which you have asserted for the black man in this country shall be
maintained! (Applause.) You say, some of you, that you can get along
without the vote of the black man of the South. Yes, that may be possible,
but I doubt it. At any rate we, in order to secure our protection hereafter,
feel the need, in the candidate whom you will place before the country, of
the assurance that the black man shall walk to the ballot-box in safety, even
if we have to bring a bayonet behind us. (Applause.) And I have these
feelings—without bringing forth either of the gentlemen named here—
that the Government of the United States and the moral feeling of this
country will surround the black voter as by a wall of fire, and instead of
electing your President without the black vote you may count in the number
of your victorious Republican States, five or six at least of the old master
States of the South. (Cheers.) But I have no voice to address you any
longer, and you may now move down there for an adjournment. (Laughter
and applause.)