Which Greeley Are We Voting for?: An Address Delivered in Richmond, Virginia, on July 24, 1872
WHICH GREELEY ARE WE VOTING FOR?: AN ADDRESS
DELIVERED IN RICHMOND, VIRGINIA, ON 24 JULY 1872
Unidentified newspaper clipping, “Campaign of 1872,” 6: 82-84, Box 95, Edward
McPherson Papers, DLC. Another text in Richmond , 25 July 1872.
On 24 July 1872 Douglass, en route to North Carolina, stopped at City
Springs Park in Richmond, Virginia, to speak at a Republican mass rally in
support of President Grant’s reelection. Colorful bunting, Chinese lanterns,
and hundreds of American flags adorned the stage, which was situated at the
lowest point in the park in order that the anticipated throng might view it
easily. Throughout the day, excursion trains brought carloads of people to
Richmond from nearby Petersburg, Fredericksburg, Lynchburg, and Norfolk.
By 4:30 PM. “one of the greatest crowds of people ever assembled together in
Richmond for political purposes,” approximately eight to ten thousand peo-
ple, surrounded the stage. One reporter noted the unusually large representa-
tion of black women in the audience. On the stage notable local Republicans
sat alongside the featured speaker and the vice-presidential candidate, Senator
Henry M. Wilson, who was accompanying Douglass on this tour. James H.
Clement called the assemblage to order and introduced Douglass, the day’s
first speaker. Although one observer described Douglass’s demeanor as digni-
fied and venerable, he also recorded that other black men of Virginia sur-
passed him in oratorical skills and that the audience received his speech with
only patient attention and polite enthusiasm. Richmond , 24
July 1872; Richmond , 24, 25 July 1872; , 1 August 1872;
Douglass to Amy Post, 18 July 1872, Amy Post Papers, NRU.
FELLOW-CITIZENS—I thank you very sincerely for the cordial and hearty
welcome with which you have greeted me. I attempt to speak here with
more difficulty, with less confidence, than you can imagine. This is the first
political campaign in which I ever took the stump for any candidate. I am a
new hand at the business. And this is the first time too that I ever took part
in a public demonstration in the late capital of the Confederate States of
America. Besides, when invited to participate in this demonstration I
supposed that I should be called upon merely to give color to the occasion
(laughter)—to be a sort of tail to the kite. I had no idea of occupying any
such prominence as it seems I am to occupy to-day. There is one thing,
however, that consoles me in venturing here on the sacred soil of Vir-
ginia—and in this, the Capital—and it is that although a stranger I am no
carpet-bagger. (Applause and laughter.) I am to the manner born,1, act 1, sc. 4, line 15. if there
is any advantage or merit in that. It is true that I was once advertised in a
very respectable newspaper under a little figure, bent over and apparently
in a hurry, with a pack on his shoulder, going North.2Although Douglass seems to be referring to an advertisement published at the time of his escape from slavery in 1838, such a notice has not yet been uncovered. Following John Brown,s raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, on 19 October 1859, in which Douglass was implicated, Govemor Henry A. Wise sought the arrest of the abolitionist, who had fled to Canada. In early November a cartoon appeared in that depicted Douglass, shoes flying from his feet and a traveler's trunk perched on his shoulder, hurriedly fleeing toward Canada. Captioned “THE WAY IN WHICH FRED. DOUGLASS FIGHTS WISE OF VIRGINIA," the cartoon quoted a letter Douglass had sent to Rochester, New York, newspapers before departing for England: “I have always been more distinguished for running than fighting." Douglass to Editor of the Rochester , 31 October 1859, in New York , 3 November 1859; , 12 November 1859. (Laughter) But that
was a long time ago, when I was quite young, and on the score of my youth
I hope you will pardon that indiscretion—the indiscretion of my going
North. I was young, and like most young people was anxious to see
everything that I had ever heard of or read of, and hence I went North.
Some of my friends in the South liked me very much at that time and went
after me. (Laughter) They could not have me go. They said they could not
endure to part with me. They loved me; they wanted to do me good. They
heard that I was going away off to old Massachusetts—that worst of all the
States, that State in which the black man is supposed to learn more mischief
in a day than Virginia can unlearn him in a year—and I did go there. You
will excuse me for talking about myself, for when a man has no other
subject he will talk about that. He is the most familiar with that, and on that
ground I am going to talk a little about myself. When a man who has gone
abroad from those he knew and loved in his youth returns, he should tell
something about what he has seen, heard, felt and learned while abroad.
I was very much disappointed in my travels northward. I went away
from the South into the North, expecting to find people living in a very
humble way, in Spartan-like simplicity, inhabiting small huts and hovels;
for I had never known anything of wealth not derived directly from slave
labor. I had only seen wealth in connection with slavery. Wealth, intel-
ligence, refinement, luxury, all those elements that distinguish advanced
civilization, I had only seen in connection with the system of human
slavery. I had an idea that no man—I know my notions of political econo-
my must have been very crude—could acquire more than a bare subsis-
tence with his two hands. Knowing that those States were free, that there
were no slaves there, I expected to see the people living like we poor white
people in the South that had no slaves lived. I include myself with you
partly by permission and partly by circumstances over which I had no
control. (Laughter) I went up there expecting to find them living as we
poor white people used to live, and you know some of you how that was—
out on the outskirts of plantations, with a chimney built out of doors, not of
brick, but a little wood, a little hay and a little clay. (Renewed laughter.)
Judge of my surprise, my amazement, when after a few nights and days’
travel on a road of which you have heard frequently—the underground
railroad—(laughter) I found myself among the granite hills of New Eng-
land, in [New] Bedford, Massachusetts—judge of my amazement, I say,
when, instead of the little huts which we white people used to live in on the
outskirts of the plantations, there were magnificent residences on either
side, equaling anything of magnificence and grandeur that I had seen here
in Virginia. I saw in the streets fine ladies elegantly dressed, gentlemen
with broadcloth coats made after the latest Parisian pattern, and splendid
equipages rolling down the street, the people looking as healthy, as happy,
as wealthy, as intelligent, as refined, as the finest of the refined, the
wealthiest of the wealthy of the great State of Virginia. Not a slave, not
one. (Applause)
I was surprised. I didn’t know how that was. We poor white people at
the South had nothing of this. How was it? Whence came these magnificent
residences, these splendid equipages; whence this elegance; whence this
refinement; whence this intelligence? I hardly knew how to explain it. I
went down on the wharf, Gid. Howland’s wharf,3Douglass may be confusing Gideon Howland, Jr. (1770-1847) with George Howland (1781-1852). Gideon Howland, Jr., known to fellow townsmen as “Uncle Gid," was a partner in the prosperous shipping and whaling mercantile firm of Isaac Howland, Jr., and Company, which maintained offices at no. 3 Commercial Wharf in New Bedford, Massachusetts. George Howland, another prominent banker and whaling industry businessman, owned and operated “Howland’s Wharf" in the same town. William M. Emery, (New Bedford, Mass, 1919), 61-62, 116, 191-92; Henry H. Crapo, comp, (New Bedford, Mass, 1836), 46, 106; Leonard Bolles Ellis, (Syracuse, N.Y., 1892), 249, 509, 516. and saw vessels prepar-
ing for foreign voyages, and I was in search of a job then. I had my saw in
my hand and my buck on my back, and I was looking for a cord of wood to
saw; for I was not then what I am now. I was then a wood-sawyer and not a
Doctor of Laws, as Howard University has recently dubbed me.4Howard University awarded Douglass an honorary LL.D. degree at the first commencement of its collegiate department on 11 June 1872. Henry D. Cooke, the territorial governor of the District of Columbia, presented the degree to Douglass and lauded him as the “silvery tongued orator of America." , 13, 20 June 1872. (Cheers.)
A wood-sawyer, and all I wanted was a job of work, a cord of wood to saw
or a ton of coal to put away. But while I was looking for a job of wood-
sawing I was thinking of some explanation of the prosperity, the wealth and
the grandeur that I saw all around me. The first person I met that gave me
any information on the subject was a good-natured old ox, with long horns
and honest eyes. He was attached to a piece of rope, which passed through
a block and tackle extending to a derrick, and he was walking off, walking
off with a steady pace—with a steadiness, with a strength not unlike
Ulysses Grant—walking off attending to his own business. I found that in
his movement he was bringing out of the hold of the ship a large cask of oil;
in fact that this one solitary ox was unloading a great ship of a cargo of oil.
Well I reasoned this way: This ox was worth about $70. Now that one ox
worth $70 was doing work which in my country it would require fifteen
slaves valued at $1,000 a piece to do. There was a capital of $70 in the
North as useful as a capital of $15,000 would be in the South. I thought
there was a great deal in that. But that was not all. I went over to Fall River,
only about fourteen miles from New Bedford, and there I had my eyes
opened again. Another explanation was afforded me. The industrious peo-
ple of Fall River had managed to enslave, not the people of that town, but to
enslave a beautiful stream of water, to harness it to the paddle-wheels of a
great mill, and that stream of water, without doing it the least harm in the
world, was turning and moving thousands of looms and millions of spin-
dles, all bringing wealth and civilization to the people of that community.5In 1813 David Anthony, a former employee of Samuel Slater, who is credited with introducing the Arkwright spinning frame into the United States, and Dexter Wheeler, a local technician and entrepreneur, constructed the Fall River Manufactory, which employed the force of the Fall River's descent to turn and move the looms and spindles. Other entrepreneurs soon built several more mills along the river and rapidly transformed the small shipbuilding village of Fall River into one of the nation's leading industrial centers. By the time of Douglass's arrival in 1838, there were at least five large cotton manufactories as well as several calico printing establishments and iron works. Douglass's figures for the number of looms and spindles, however, are inflated; by 1859 the mills employed only 192,620 spindles and 4,576 looms. Stephen Victor et al., eds., , 2 vols. (Boston, 1981), 1: 15, 43, 57-61; Thomas Russell Smith, (New York, 1944), 1-39.
I felt that I had learned a great deal. I had learned that people could be
wealthy, refined, intelligent, highly civilized, and that they could be Chris-
tians without slavery. It was a great thing. It reconciled me to the crime I
committed when I ran away (laughter), when I stole myself; but when I ran
away you know I ran away on my own legs (renewed laughter), and left
everybody else in possession of their legs (applause, laughter, and cries of
“Good”), and I could not blame myself a great deal.
Fellow-citizens, I have ventured down among you to-day not because I
have discovered any new political truth to apply to our present situation as a
Nation—indeed, it is not necessary for me or for anybody to go in search of
new truth until the old truths, long ago discovered and declared, have been
thoroughly recognized and reduced to practice by this State and Nation.
Properly speaking, however, there is no such thing in the world as new
truth or old truth, for truth is eternal. Error may be new or it may be old,
since it is founded in the misapprehension of what truth is. It hath its
beginning and must have its ending. It may exist in one age and be mistaken
for truth. It disappears in another age, and, if not supplanted by truth, is
supplanted by another error. But truth, eternal truth, is from everlasting
unto everlasting—can never pass away. Such a truth is man’s right to
liberty. He was born with it. It entered into the very idea of man’s creation.
It was his before he comprehended it. The title deed of it is inscribed on his
soul. No compacts, no agreements, no covenants, no combinations into
which men may enter can abrogate or destroy this grand, original, funda-
mental and eternal right. (Cheers.) If men form institutions that are in
accordance with this truth, they stand; and if they form institutions contrary
to it, they will fall. No power beneath the sky can uphold any free govern-
ment, any social system, inconsistent with the grand idea of universal
liberty and equality among men. This is the higher law of which statesmen
and scholars take cognizance, and woe betide any people who act in
disregard of it. (Applause)
Fellow-citizens, I wish to defend myself, in order to be the better able
to defend my cause. I have been charged with life-long hostility to one of
the cherished institutions of Virginia. I am not ashamed of that life-long
opposition. l have done nothing in this opposition which any white man
subjected to slavery would not be proud of having done. Virginia may
blame me to-day for her past, but she has herself to blame. It was, Virginia,
your own Thomas Jefferson that taught me that all men are created equal.6Douglass quotes the Declaration of Independence.
It was, Virginia, your own Patrick Henry that taught me to exclaim, “As
for me, give me liberty, or give me death.”7Douglass quotes Patrick Henry’s speech in the Virginia Convention, 23 March 1775, as recorded in William Wirt, , 7th ed. (New York, 1835), 141. (Cheers)
Now I feel I am on the soil of Virginia, and feel pretty much at home. I
know there was a time when it would not have been healthy to speak thus.
There was a time when l was requested to visit you, and I had to send my
regrets (laughter);8A reference to Governor Wise's attempt to secure Douglass's arrest in 1859. but I can come to see you now. A great change has taken
place in the world. The sun don’t get up where it used to; it don’t set where
it used to. The air, although it is tolerably warm, is a good deal more
pleasant than it used to be—more agreeable, in every way, than it used
to be.
But let the dead past bury its dead,9Douglass quotes from the sixth stanza of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem “A Psalm of Life." , 22. and let us look, for a moment, at
the present, for I have not much more time to speak, as I do not mean to
detain you from hearing the man whom we mean to place in the second
highest office in the gift of this Government.10Henry Wilson. (Cheers) Look at his face.
Why, it is a benediction itself. I felt that, as he moved through here, and I
saw his broad, beneficent face. His heart is just like it; for I am as well
acquainted with his heart as you are with his face. (Applause)
Now, I partly expected to meet with some of my old friends, the late
masters in the State of Virginia. (A voice, “They are here”) I am glad you
are here. I never had anything against you in my life. I always loved you
and only hated slavery. That is all. I want to say a word to you to reconcile
you to the present condition of things. I believe that you, and all of us,
indeed, stand upon one common platform of patriotism. We want this
country prosperous; we want it peaceable; we want it happy. As a black
man I want it so; as a white man you want it so. Notwithstanding the past,
we still have a country. Slavery is dead, but we still have a country—a
glorious country—a country that may have a more glorious future than it
could have had had slavery continued to exist. (Applause)
A great many want to know, now-a-days, what is the true policy of this
country to secure this great and happy future if it is possible. Well, I have
got this to say; I lay this down as a general principle: That whatever was
wise, whatever was proper for your society in a state of slavery is of
necessity to-day very unwise, very improper, and even dangerous. Take,
for instance, the matter of free discussion. While slavery existed freedom
of speech was necessarily dangerous to society here. It could work evil,
and only evil, and that continually. It stirred up, or would stir up, society
from its foundation, so that freedom of speech was logically, taking slavery
as a base line, an evil. You could not have it; it was dangerous. But, now
that slavery has gone, that which was so perilous, that which was dan-
gerous and improper, is now the highest wisdom. Liberty, you know,
tolerates this. It is necessary to liberty that we look each other in the face
calmly and candidly, and with the utmost freedom express our convictions
in regard to public men and public measures.
Another thing was dangerous when you had slavery. That was educa-
tion. One of the most dangerous things in the world to slavery was educa-
tion. An educated negro had the devil in him. He was a regular mischief
maker, a marplot, a disturber, a conspirator. He was dangerous to have
around. My master used to say to me, “Give a nigger an inch and he will
take an ell. Learn him to read, and he will want to know how to write and
cipher, and so on, and be making mischief.”11Douglass’s master in Baltimore, Hugh Auld, chastised his wife, Sophia, with this expression when he found her teaching Douglass to read. Douglass, , 58; idem, , 146; idem, , 89. He was right. If slavery was
right, ignorance was right, and ignorance was proper. But slavery was not
right; it had to die, and ignorance must go with it. What was dangerous for
the black man to have when he was a slave is now your safety. Then you
might keep away from him the book. Now, in order to your safety, you must
give him books. Don’t burn down his school-house; don’t drive away his
teacher. The prosperity, the happiness and well-being of society depend
upon education.
But I won’t ring the changes upon this subject. My idea is this: that the
things that were right and proper for the South when we had slavery are
now the worst things possible. When you had slavery it was not inconsis-
tent with that institution that one man should own thousands and thousands
of acres of land. He owned them then for the benefit of others; he owned
them for his slaves, and for other people, but it would be the greatest
madness now for those old landholders to act upon premises or principles
which grew out of or were made reasonable by slavery, when slavery is no
longer. Let go your land; cut it up; create as much interest in it as possible,
and you will do wisely.
But let us come to the great question that we are here to discuss to-day.
We are going, in the course of a few months, to choose a President and Vice
President of the United States, and you and I and all of us are to have a
voice, a free voice, an uncontrolled voice, an untrammelled vote on that
question. (Applause.) We are going to have it, and now it is of the gravest
possible consequence what the choice of the American people shall be in
regard to that. I hear from several sources that all the intelligent colored
people of the South are going to vote for Horace Greeley and B. Gratz
Brown.12Son of a judge in Lexington, Kentucky, Benjamin Gratz Brown (1826-85) graduated from Yale College in 1847. Two years later he entered the practice of law in St. Louis, Missouri, as a partner of Francis Blair, Jr. Brown served in the Missouri House of Representatives (1852-58) and was an unsuccessful candidate for governor in 1857 on behalf of a free soil political faction that later evolved into the state‘s Republican party. After brief service in the Union army at the beginning of the Civil War, Brown was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1863. Although he originally held to Radical Republican positions on such issues as black suffrage and Confederate disenfranchisement, Brown’s views moderated and in 1870 a coalition of Democrats and anti-Radical Republicans elected him governor. In 1872 Brown ran as Horace Greeley’s vice-presidential candidate on the unsuccessful ticket of the Democratic and Liberal Republican parties. Norma L. Peterson, “The Political Fluctuations of B. Gratz Brown: Politics in a Border State, 1850-1870," , 50: 22-30 (October 1956); Sobel and Raimo, , 2: 850-51; , 3: 105-06. (Loud cries of “No!”) Well, I hope you won’t have many such
intelligent ones in Virginia. (Applause and laughter.)
Now, I did not come here to abuse Horace Greeley. I didn’t come here
to say harsh things of him, nor of Gratz Brown. I can call a man a knave and
a fool, or a mean, miserable wretch, and all that sort of thing, if I want to,
but that don’t prove anything. I should like right well to be able-to vote for
Horace Greeley. I should like to do it on the score that he is a workingman,
and on the score that he is an editor, a brother editor with me. I should like
to vote for Horace Greeley if I only knew which Greeley my vote would
elect. (Applause and laughter.) But there is just where the trouble is with
me. He is a many-sided man. There have been a good many Horace
Greeleys. You know, when Gough13John Bartholomew Gough (1817-86) was born into a Methodist household in Sandgate, England, but at the age of twelve left England for the United States with a family to whom he had been apprenticed. After living on a farm in Oneida County, New York, for two years, Gough moved to New York City, where he worked as a bookbinder. In the depression of 1833 he lost his job and experienced an extended period of penury and familial hardship, during which he began to drink very heavily. Gough drifted throughout New York, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, working occasionally as an actor or bookbinder while continuing his alcoholic bouts. When his wife and young child died simultaneously in 1841 during one of his ten-day drinking sprees in Worcester, Massachusetts, he sunk into a suicidal depression. The following year a Quaker convinced him to attend a temperance meeting at which he signed the total-abstinence pledge and began a new career. Slipping into drinking briefly only once after signing the pledge, Gough became a famous temperance lecturer in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. His fine voice and skill for imitation drew thousands to hear him, and he estimated, shortly before his death, that over nine million people had heard his more than 9,600 lectures. Among these many lectures was one at the Broadway Tabernacle in New York City on the evening of 28 January 1845, to which Douglass alludes. Ernest Hurst Cherrington, ed., , 6 vols. (Westerville, Ohio, 1925), 3: 1125-27; John B. Gough, (Springfield, Mass., 1869); , 3: 336; , 7: 445-46. presented himself at the door of the
Tabernacle in New York, he said to the door-keeper: “Let me in; I am
Gough.” “I’ll be d—d if I do,” said the door-keeper; “there are no less
than seven Goughs gone in here already.” (Loud guffaws.) There have been
a great many Horace Greeleys in my time. I knew one once who used to say
red-hot things against slavery. I liked that man. Capital man he was. If my
vote would elect that Horace Greeley, and I was sure he would stay “put,”
why, I would vote for him. But there is just the trouble, gentlemen. In
voting for Horace Greeley we don’t know which Greeley we are trying to
elect—whether it is the Greeley of thirty years ago, of twenty years ago, or
of ten years ago, in the van of the Republican party, or the Greeley of to-
day, at the head of the Democratic party. (Applause)
Now, my friends, I will be short. What the South wants, what Virginia
wants, what the whole country wants at this time above all things, after this
terrible ten years of commotion, after this terrible ten years of agitation and
suffering, is quiet and repose, by which all the old wounds in the body
politic shall be healed, and the Nation come into one homogenous whole.
That is what we want. We want that above all things. You and I know as
well as we know anything, that there can be no repose, no security without
certainty. My objection to Mr. Greeley is that he is an uncertain man; that
he is a vacillating man; that he is at the present moment in doubtful
company, to say the least. Any uncertainty and doubt at the head of our
affairs can not be other than disastrous to the highest interests of this
country. What we want at the helm is a clear head and a firm and steady
hand, and these we have in Ulysses S. Grant. (Somebody in the crowd here
proposed three cheers for General Grant, which were given with great
enthusiasm.) That is right; that is better than anything I could say. We want
certainty. We do not want a candidate that is neither fish, flesh nor fowl. I
object to Mr. Greeley on the ground that he is ambiguous, a sort of amphib-
ious animal, living on neither land nor water, neither a Republican nor a
Democrat; neither a protectionist nor a free-trader;14Horace Greeley did indeed vacillate on this issue. In his carefully worded letter of 20 May 1872, in which he accepted the presidential nomination of the Liberal Republicans, Greeley offered no clear support either to the protectionists, who wished to establish tariffs protecting domestic industries, or to the free-traders, who advocated the elimination of all artificial trade restrictions. Rather, he asserted his willingness to follow whatever policy the people through their representatives formulated. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., ed., , 3 vols. (New York, 1971), 2: 1357-59. in favor of centraliza-
tion and against it; in favor of Ku-Klux laws and against them;15The debate over the Ku Klux Klan laws could not be separated from that over centralization. Responding to the inaction of southern courts and militia, Congress on 20 April 1871 passed the Ku Klux Act, which made all of the white terrorist group’s depredations subject to federal jurisdiction and military action. Moreover, the president could suspend the writ of habeas corpus if he deemed it necessary. Many southern states complained that the act allowed the federal government to usurp their constitutionally guaranteed jurisdiction. Greeley and the Liberal Republicans attempted to assuage both sides in the debate. Although upholding the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments and the equality of all men before the law, their platfonn also stated that “local self-govemment . . . will guard the rights of all citizens more securely than any centralized power. The public welfare requires the supremacy of the civil over the military authority, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus." Johnson, , 1: 44; Trelease, , 383-418. opposed to
Tammany and with it.16Although Horace Greeley editorialized in the New York in 1870 that the Tweed Ring of Tammany Hall “was the most corrupt gang of political adventurers that ever ruled and robbed a helpless city," he nevertheless supported Tammany's charter for city government in March 1870, which allowed the Tweed Ring to engage in some of its most lucrative depredations upon New York City. Greeley believed, as did many others, that the charter's concentration of power in the hands of the mayor would create a more responsible administration of the city when actually it provided a screen behind which the Tweed Ring fleeced the city. Greeley was, however, never a supporter of William Marcy Tweed himself or of Tammany. Republicans principally connected him with Tammany as a part of their campaign rhetoric because Tammany's party was the Democrats, the Liberal Republicans' partner in the election in 1872. Thomas Nast made the connection famous by portraying Greeley as the friend of Tweed in numerous political cartoons. William Harlan Hale, (New York. 1950), 342; James K. McGuire, ed., , 3 vols. (New York. 1905), 1: 415-17; M. R. Werner, (Garden City, N.Y., 1928), 171-73, 204-06. Well, I said I was not going to say any harsh things
about him, but let me tell you, my fellow citizens, speaking as a colored
man, I regard the election of Horace Greeley as one of the most calamitous
that could possibly befall this Republic.
What we want, I repeat, is certainty. We know Ulysses Grant, we know
Henry Wilson—a straight line, no sinuosity, no double dealing, no divided
voice, no uncertain sound to their trumpet. Ulysses Grant is friendly to all
classes. The worst enemies that he has can not accuse him of malice. He
did not approach General Lee with haughtiness nor with malice. They had
met and disputed on a great principle. The principle was decided in Grant’s
favor. He bore himself meekly; he bore himself in a manly way, and to-day
cherishes as affectionate feelings toward the people of the South as toward
any other people in the whole country. (Applause)
I know the man. I like a man in the Presidential chair and the man that
sits next him such as the poor people of my own race, as well as poor people
of every other race can approach, and approach easily. Talk about military
rings and inaccessibility! It is false, every word of it. General Grant, next to
Abraham Lincoln and Charles Sumner, is about the easiest man to ap-
proach, holding high public place in this country, that I have ever known.
The humblest man may approach him, and in his presence will be put
thoroughly at ease. It is good to have such a man down there at Washington
at the head of this Nation, this Democratic Nation, this Nation which has at
last settled down upon the broad principle of the Declaration of Independ-
ence, that all men—all men, not a part of them—are created equal. I say it
is good to have a man of that sort.
But I did not intend to occupy so much of your time. (Cries of “Go
on.”) I want you, before that sun gets too low, to get a daylight view of the
next Vice President of the United States. (Tremendous applause.)