Produced by David Widger THE WORKS OF ROBERT G. INGERSOLL "HE LOVES HIS COUNTRY BEST WHO STRIVES TO MAKE IT BEST." IN TWELVE VOLUMES, VOLUME IX. POLITICAL NEW YORK THE DRESDEN PUBLISHING CO., C. P. FARRELL DRESDEN EDITION CONTENTS OF VOLUME IX. AN ADDRESS TO THE COLORED PEOPLE. (1867.) Slavery and its Justification by Law and Religion--Its Destructive Influence upon Nations--Inauguration of the Modern Slave Trade by the Portuguese Gonzales--Planted upon American Soil--The Abolitionists, Clarkson, Wilberforce, and Others--The Struggle in England--Pioneers in San Domingo, Oge and Chevannes--Early Op-posers of Slavery in America--William Lloyd Garrison--Wendell Phillips, Charles Sumner, John Brown--The Fugitive Slave Law--The Emancipation Proclamation--Dread of Education in the South--Advice to the Colored People. INDIANAPOLIS SPEECH. (1868.) Suspension of the Writ of Habeas Corpus--Precedent Established by the Revolutionary Fathers--Committees of Safety appointed by the Continental Congress--Arrest of Disaffected Persons in Pennsylvania and Delaware--Interference with Elections--Resolution of Continental Congress with respect to Citizens who Opposed the sending of Deputies to the Convention of New York--Penalty for refusing to take Continental Money or Pray for the American Cause--Habeas Corpus Suspended during the Revolution--Interference with Freedom of the Press--Negroes Freed and allowed to Fight in the Continental Army--Crispus Attacks--An Abolition Document issued by Andrew Jackson--Majority rule--Slavery and the Rebellion--Tribute to General Grant. SPEECH NOMINATING BLAINE. (1876.) Note descriptive of the Occasion--Demand of the Republicans of the United States--Resumption--The Plumed Knight. CENTENNIAL ORATION. (1876.) One Hundred Years ago, our Fathers retired the Gods from Politics--The Declaration of Independence--Meaning of the Declaration--The Old Idea of the Source of Political Power--Our Fathers Educated by their Surroundings--The Puritans--Universal Religious Toleration declared by the Catholics of Maryland--Roger Williams--Not All of our Fathers in favor of Independence--Fortunate Difference in Religious Views--Secular Government--Authority derived from the People--The Declaration and the Beginning of the War--What they Fought For--Slavery--Results of a Hundred Years of Freedom--The Declaration Carried out in Letter and Spirit. BANGOR SPEECH. (1876.) The Hayes Campaign--Reasons for Voting the Republican Ticket--Abolition of Slavery--Preservation of the Union--Reasons for Not Trusting the Democratic Party--Record of the Republican Party--Democrats Assisted the South--Paper Money--Enfranchisement of the Negroes--Samuel J. Tilden--His Essay on Finance. COOPER UNION SPEECH, NEW YORK. (1876.) All Citizens Stockholders in the United States of America--The Democratic Party a Hungry Organization--Political Parties Contrasted--The Fugitive Slave Law a Disgrace to Hell in its Palmiest Days--Feelings of the Democracy Hurt on the Subject of Religion--Defence of Slavery in a Resolution of the Presbyterians, South--State of the Union at the Time the Republican Party was Born--Jacob Thompson--The National Debt--Protection of Citizens Abroad--Tammany Hall: Its Relation to the Penitentiary--The Democratic Party of New York City--"What Hands!"--Free Schools. INDIANAPOLIS SPEECH. (1876.) Address to the Veteran Soldiers of the Rebellion--Objections to the Democratic Party--The Men who have been Democrats--Why I am a Republican--Free Labor and Free Thought--A Vision of War--Democratic Slander of the Greenback--Shall the People who Saved the Country Rule It?--On Finance--Government Cannot Create Money--The Greenback Dollar a Mortgage upon the Country--Guarantees that the Debt will be Paid-'The Thoroughbred and the Mule--The Column of July, Paris--The Misleading Guide Board, the Dismantled Mill, and the Place where there had been a Hotel, CHICAGO SPEECH. (1876.) The Plea of "Let Bygones be Bygones"--Passport of the Democratic Party--Right of the General Government to send Troops into Southern States for the Protection of Colored People--Abram S. Hewitt's Congratulatory Letter to the Negroes--The Demand for Inflation of the Currency--Record of Rutherford B. Hayes--Contrasted with Samuel J. Tilden--Merits of the Republican Party--Negro and Southern White--The Superior Man--"No Nation founded upon Injustice can Permanently Stand." EIGHT TO SEVEN ADDRESS. (1877.) On the Electoral Commission--Reminiscences of the Hayes-Tilden Camp-- Constitution of the Electoral College--Characteristics of the Members-- Frauds at the Ballot Box Poisoning the Fountain of Power--Reforms Suggested--Elections too Frequent--The Professional Office-seeker--A Letter on Civil Service Reform--Young Men Advised against Government Clerkships--Too Many Legislators and too Much Legislation--Defect in the Constitution as to the Mode of Electing a President--Protection of Citizens by State and General Governments--The Dual Government in South Carolina--Ex-Rebel Key in the President's Cabinet--Implacables and Bourbons South and North--"I extend to you each and all the Olive Branch of Peace." HARD TIMES AND THE WAY OUT. (1878.) Capital and Labor--What is a Capitalist?--The Idle and the Industrious Artisans--No Conflict between Capital and Labor--A Period of Inflation and Speculation--Life and Fire Insurance Agents--Business done on Credit--The Crash, Failure, and Bankruptcy--Fall in the Price of Real Estate a Form of Resumption--Coming back to Reality--Definitions of Money Examined--Not Gold and Silver but Intelligent Labor the Measure of Value--Government cannot by Law Create Wealth--A Bill of Fare not a Dinner--Fiat Money--American Honor Pledged to the Maintenance of the Greenbacks--The Cry against Holders of Bonds--Criminals and Vagabonds to be supported--Duty of Government to Facilitate Enterprise--More Men must Cultivate the Soil--Government Aid for the Overcoming of Obstacles too Great for Individual Enterprise--The Palace Builders the Friends of Labor--Extravagance the best Form of Charity--Useless to Boost a Man who is not Climbing--The Reasonable Price for Labor--The Vagrant and his strange and winding Path--What to tell the Working Men. SUFFRAGE ADDRESS. (1880.) The Right to Vote--All Women who desire the Suffrage should have It--Shall the People of the District of Columbia Manage their Own Affairs--Their Right to a Representative in Congress and an Electoral Vote--Anomalous State of Affairs at the Capital of the Republic--Not the Wealthy and Educated alone should Govern--The Poor as Trustworthy as the Rich--Strict Registration Laws Needed. WALL STREET SPEECH. (1880.) Obligation of New York to Protect the Best Interests of the Country--Treason and Forgery of the Democratic Party in its Appeal to Sword and Pen--The One Republican in the Penitentiary of Maine--The Doctrine of State Sovereignty--Protection for American Brain and Muscle--Hancock on the Tariff--A Forgery (the Morey letter) Committed and upheld--The Character of James A. Garfield. BROOKLYN SPEECH. (1880.) Introduced by Henry Ward Beecher (note)--Some Patriotic Democrats--Freedom of Speech North and South--An Honest Ballot-- AN ADDRESS TO THE COLORED PEOPLE. * An address delivered to the colored people at Galesburg, Illinois, 1867. FELLOW-CITIZENS--Slavery has in a thousand forms existed in all ages, and among all people. It is as old as theft and robbery. Every nation has enslaved its own people, and sold its own flesh and blood. Most of the white race are in slavery to-day. It has often been said that any man who ought to be free, will be. The men who say this should remember that their own ancestors were once cringing, frightened, helpless slaves. When they became sufficiently educated to cease enslaving their own people, they then enslaved the first race they could conquer. If they differed in religion, they enslaved them. If they differed in color, that was sufficient. If they differed even in language, it was enough. If they were captured, they then pretended that having spared their lives, they had the right to enslave them. This argument was worthless. If they were captured, then there was no necessity for killing them. If there was no necessity for killing them, then they had no right to kill them. If they had no right to kill them, then they had no right to enslave them under the pretence that they had saved their lives. Every excuse that the ingenuity of avarice could devise was believed to be a complete justification, and the great argument of slaveholders in all countries has been that slavery is a divine institution, and thus stealing human beings has always been fortified with a "Thus saith the Lord." Slavery has been upheld by law and religion in every country. The word Liberty is not in any creed in the world. Slavery is right according to the law of man, shouted the judge. It is right according to the law of God, shouted the priest. Thus sustained by what they were pleased to call the law of God and man, slaveholders never voluntarily freed the slaves, with the exception of the Quakers. The institution has in all ages been clung to with the tenacity of death; clung to until it sapped and destroyed the foundations of society; clung to until all law became violence; clung to until virtue was a thing only of history; clung to until industry folded its arms--until commerce reefed every sail--until the fields were desolate and the cities silent, except where the poor free asked for bread, and the slave for mercy; clung to until the slave forging the sword of civil war from his fetters drenched the land in the master's blood. Civil war has been the great liberator of the world. Slavery has destroyed every nation that has gone down to death. It caused the last vestige of Grecian civilization to disappear forever, and it caused Rome to fall with a crash that shook the world. After the disappearance of slavery in its grossest forms in Europe, Gonzales pointed out to his countrymen, the Portuguese, the immense profits that they could make by stealing Africans, and thus commenced the modern slave-trade--that aggregation of all horror--that infinite of all cruelty, prosecuted only by demons, and defended only by fiends. And yet the slave-trade has been defended and sustained by every civilized nation, and by each and all has been baptized "Legitimate commerce," in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost: It was even justified upon the ground that it tended to Christianize the negro. It was of the poor hypocrites who had used this argument that Whittier said, "They bade the slaveship speed from coast to coast, Fanned by the wings of the Holy Ghost." Backed and supported by such Christian and humane arguments slavery was planted upon our soil in 1620, and from that day to this it has been the cause of all our woes, of all the bloodshed--of all the heart-burnings--hatred and horrors of more than two hundred years, and yet we hated to part with the beloved institution. Like Pharaoh we would not let the people go. He was afflicted with vermin, with frogs--with water turned to blood--with several kinds of lice, and yet would not let the people go. We were afflicted with worse than all these combined--the Northern Democracy--before we became grand enough to say, "Slavery shall be eradicated from the soil of the Republic." When we reached this sublime moral height we were successful. The Rebellion was crushed and liberty established. A majority of the civilized world is for freedom--nearly all the Christian denominations are for liberty. The world has changed--the people are nobler, better and purer than ever. Every great movement must be led by heroic and self-sacrificing pioneers. In England, in Christian England, the soul of the abolition cause was Thomas Clarkson. To the great cause of human freedom he devoted his life. He won over the eloquent and glorious Wilberforce, the great Pitt, the magnificent orator, Burke, and that far-seeing and humane statesman, Charles James Fox. In 1788 a resolution was introduced in the House of Commons declaring that the slave trade ought to be abolished. It was defeated. Learned lords opposed it. They said that too much capital was invested by British merchants in the slave-trade. That if it were abolished the ships would rot at the wharves, and that English commerce would be swept from the seas. Sanctified Bishops--lords spiritual--thought the scheme fanatical, and various resolutions to the same effect were defeated. The struggle lasted twenty years, and yet during all those years in which England refused to abolish the hellish trade, that nation had the impudence to send missionaries all over the world to make converts to a religion that in their opinion, at least, allowed man to steal his brother man--that allowed one Christian to rob another of his wife, his child, and of that greatest of all blessings--his liberty. It was not until the year 1808 that England was grand and just enough to abolish the slave-trade, and not until 1833 that slavery was abolished in all her colonies. The name of Thomas Clarkson should be remembered and honored through all coming time by every black man, and by every white man who loves liberty and hates cruelty and injustice. Clarkson, Wilberforce, Pitt, Fox, Burke, were the Titans that swept the accursed slaver from that highway--the sea. In St. Domingo the pioneers were Oge and Chevannes; they headed a revolt; they were unsuccessful, but they roused the slaves to resistance. They were captured, tried, condemned and executed. They were made to ask forgiveness of God, and of the King, for having attempted to give freedom to their own flesh and blood. They were broken alive on the wheel, and left to die of hunger and pain. The blood of these martyrs became the seed of liberty; and afterward in the midnight assault, in the massacre and pillage, the infuriated slaves shouted their names as their battle-cry, until Toussaint, the greatest of the blacks, gave freedom to them all. In the United States, among the Revolutionary fathers, such men as John Adams, and his son John Quincy--such men as Franklin and John Jay were opposed to the institution of slavery. Thomas Jefferson said, speaking of the slaves, "When the measure of their tears shall be full--when their groans shall have involved heaven itself in darkness--doubtless a God of justice will awaken to their distress, and by diffusing light and liberality among their oppressors, or at length by his exterminating thunder manifest his attention to the things of this world, and that they are not left to the guidance of a blind fatality." Thomas Paine said, "No man can be happy surrounded by those whose happiness he has destroyed." And a more self-evident proposition was never uttered. These and many more Revolutionary heroes were opposed to slavery and did what they could to prevent the establishment and spread of this most wicked and terrible of all institutions. You owe gratitude to those who were for liberty as a principle and not from mere necessity. You should remember with more than gratitude that firm, consistent and faithful friend of your downtrodden race, Wm. Lloyd Garrison. He has devoted his life to your cause. Many years ago in Boston he commenced the publication of a paper devoted to liberty. Poor and despised--friendless and almost alone, he persevered in that grandest and holiest of all possible undertakings. He never stopped, or stayed, or paused until the chain was broken and the last slave could lift his toil-worn face to heaven with the light of freedom shining down upon him, and say, I am a Free Man. You should not forget that noble philanthropist, Wendell Phillips, and your most learned and eloquent defender, Charles Sumner. But the real pioneer in America was old John Brown. Moved not by prejudice, not by love of his blood, or his color, but by an infinite love of Liberty, of Right, of Justice, almost single-handed, he attacked the monster, with thirty million people against him. His head was wrong. He miscalculated his forces; but his heart was right. He struck the sublimest blow of the age for freedom. It was said of him that, he stepped from the gallows to the throne of God. It was said that he had made the scaffold to Liberty what Christ had made the cross to Christianity. The sublime Victor Hugo declared that John Brown was greater than Washington, and that his name would live forever. I say, that no man can be greater than the man who bravely and heroically sacrifices his life for the good of others. No man can be greater than the one who meets death face to face, and yet will not shrink from what he believes to be his highest duty. If the black people want a patron saint, let them take the brave old John Brown. And as the gentleman who preceded me said, at all your meetings, never separate until you have sung the grand song, "John Brown's body lies mouldering in the grave, But his soul goes marching on." You do not, in my opinion, owe a great debt of gratitude to many of the white people. Only a few years ago both parties agreed to carry out the Fugitive Slave Law. If a woman ninety-nine one-hundredths white had fled from slavery--had traveled through forests, crossed rivers, and through countless sufferings had got within one step of Canada--of free soil--with the light of the North Star shining in her eyes, and her babe pressed to her withered breast, both parties agreed to clutch her and hand her back to the dominion of the hound and lash. Both parties, as parties, were willing to do this when the Rebellion commenced. The truth is, we had to give you your liberty. There came a time in the history of the war when, defeated at the ballot box and in the field--driven to the shattered gates of eternal chaos--we were forced to make you free; and on the first day of January, 1863, the justice so long delayed was done, and four millions of people were lifted from the condition of beasts of burden to the sublime heights of freedom. Lincoln, the immortal, issued, and the men of the North sustained the great proclamation. As in the war there came a time when we were forced to make you free, so in the history of reconstruction came a time when we were forced to make you citizens; when we were forced to say that you should vote, and that you should have and exercise all the rights that we claim for ourselves. And to-day I am in favor of giving you every right that I claim for myself. In reconstructing the Southern States, we could take our choice, either give the ballot to the negro, or allow the rebels to rule. We preferred loyal blacks to disloyal whites, because we believed liberty safer in the hands of its friends than in those of its foes. We must be for freedom everywhere. Freedom is progress--slavery is desolation, cruelty and want. Freedom invents--slavery forgets. The problem of the slave is to do the least work in the longest space of time. The problem of free men is to do the greatest amount of work in the shortest space of time. The free man, working for wife and children, gets his head and his hands in partnership. Freedom has invented every useful machine, from the lowest to the highest, from the simplest to the most complex. Freedom believes in education--the salvation of slavery is ignorance. The South always dreaded the alphabet. They looked upon each letter as an abolitionist, and well they might. With a scent keener than their own bloodhounds they detected everything that could, directly or indirectly, interfere with slavery. They knew that when slaves begin to think, masters begin to tremble. They knew that free thought would destroy them; that discussion could not be endured; that a free press would liberate every slave; and so they mobbed free thought, and put an end to free discussion and abolished a free press, and in fact did all the mean and infamous things they could, that slavery might live, and that liberty might perish from among men. You are now citizens of many of the States, and in time you will be of all. I am astonished when I think how long it took to abolish the slave-trade, how long it took to abolish slavery in this country. I am also astonished to think that a few years ago magnificent steamers went down the Mississippi freighted with your fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters, and maybe some of you, bound like criminals, separated from wives, from husbands, every human feeling laughed at and outraged, sold like beasts, carried away from homes to work for another, receiving for pay only the marks of the lash upon the naked back. I am astonished at these things. I hate to think that all this was done under the Constitution of the United States, under the flag of my country, under the wings of the eagle. The flag was not then what it is now. It was a mere rag in comparison. The eagle was a buzzard, and the Constitution sanctioned the greatest crime of the world. I wonder that you--the black people--have forgotten all this. I wonder that you ask a white man to address you on this occasion, when the history of your connection with the white race is written in your blood and tears--is still upon your flesh, put there by the branding-iron and the lash. I feel like asking your forgiveness for the wrongs that my race has inflicted upon yours. If, in the future, the wheel of fortune should take a turn, and you should in any country have white men in your power, I pray you not to execute the villainy we have taught you. One word in conclusion. You have your liberty--use it to benefit your race. Educate yourselves, educate your children, send teachers to the South. Let your brethren there be educated. Let them know something of art and science. Improve yourselves, stand by each other, and above all be in favor of liberty the world over. The time is coming when you will be' allowed to be good and useful citizens of the Great Republic. This is your country as much as it is mine. You have the same rights here that I have--the same interest that I have. The avenues of distinction will be open to you and your children. Great advances have been made. The rebels are now opposed to slavery--the Democratic party is opposed to slavery, _as they say_. There is going to be no war of races. Both parties want your votes in the South, and there will be just enough negroes without principle to join the rebels to make them think they will get more, and so the rebels will treat the negroes well. And the Republicans will be sure to treat them well in order to prevent any more joining the rebels. The great problem is solved. Liberty has solved it--and there will be no more slavery. On the old flag, on every fold and on every star will be liberty for all, equality before the law. The grand people are marching forward, and they will not pause until the earth is without a chain, and without a throne. SPEECH AT INDIANAPOLIS. * Hon. Robert G. Ingersoll, Attorney-General of Illinois, spoke at the Rink last night to a large and appreciative audience among whom were many ladies. The distinguished speaker was escorted to the Rink by the battalion of the Fighting Boys in Blue. Col. Ingersoll spoke at a great disadvantage in having so large a hall to fill, but he has a splendid voice and so overcame the difficulty. The audience liberally applauded the numerous passages of eloquence and humor in Col. Ingersoll's speeeh, and listened with the best attention to his powerful argument, nor could they have done otherwise, for the speaker has a national reputation and did himself full justice last night--The Journal, Indianapolis, Indiana, September 23, 1868. GRANT CAMPAIGN THE Democratic party, so-called, have several charges which they make against the Republican party. They give us a variety of reasons why the Republican party should no longer be entrusted with the control of this country. Among other reasons they say that the Republican party during the war was guilty of arresting citizens without due process of law--that we arrested Democrats and put them in jail without indictment, in Lincoln bastiles, without making an affidavit before a Justice of the Peace--that on some occasions we suspended the writ of _habeas corpus_, that we put some Democrats in jail without their being indicted. I am sorry we did not put more. I admit we arrested some of them without an affidavit filed before a Justice of the Peace. I sincerely regret that we did not arrest more. I admit that for a few hours on one or two occasions we interfered with the freedom of the press; I sincerely regret that the Government allowed a sheet to exist that did not talk on the side of this Government. I admit that we did all these things. It is only proper and fair that we should answer these charges. Unless the Republican party can show that they did these things either according to the strict letter of law, according to the highest precedent, or from the necessity of the case, then we must admit that our party did wrong. You know as well as I that every Democratic orator talks about the fathers, about Washington and Jackson, Madison, Jefferson, and many others; they tell us about the good old times when politicians were pure, when you could get justice in the courts, when Congress was honest, when the political parties differed, and differed kindly and honestly; and they are shedding crocodile tears day after day--praying that the good old honest times might return again. They tell you that the members of this radical party are nothing like the men of the Revolution. Let us see. I lay this down as a proposition, that we had a right to do anything to preserve this Government that our fathers had a right to do to found it. If they had a right to put Tories in jail, to suspend the writ of _habeas corpus_, and on some occasions _corpus_, in order to found this Government, we had a right to put rebels and Democrats in jail and to suspend the writ of _habeas corpus_ in order to preserve the Government they thus formed. If they had a right to interfere with the freedom of the press in order that liberty might be planted upon this soil, we had a right to do the same thing to prevent the tree from being destroyed. In a word, we had a right to do anything to preserve this Government which they had a right to do to found it. Did our fathers arrest Tories without writs, without indictments--did they interfere with the personal rights of Tories in the name of liberty--did they have Washington bastiles, did they have Jefferson jails--did they have dungeons in the time of the Revolution in which they put men that dared talk against this country and the liberties of the colonies? I propose to show that they did--that where we imprisoned one they imprisoned a hundred--that where we interfered with personal liberty once they did it a hundred times--that they carried on a war that _was_ a war--that they knew that when an appeal was made to force that was the end of law--that they did not attempt to gain their liberties through a Justice of the Peace or through a Grand Jury; that they appealed to force and the God of battles, and that any man who sought their protection and at the same time was against them and their cause they took by the nape of the neck and put in jail, where he ought to have been. The old Continental Congress in 1774 and 1776 had made up their minds that we ought to have something like liberty in these colonies, and the first step they took toward securing that end was to provide for the selection of a committee in every county and township, with a view to examining and finding out how the people stood touching the liberty of the colonies, and if they found a man that was not in favor of it, the people would not have anything to do with him politically, religiously, or socially. That was the first step they took, and a very sensible step it was. What was the next step? They found that these men were so lost to every principle of honor that they did not hurt them any by disgracing them. So they passed the following resolution which explains itself: _Resolved_. That it be recommended to the several provincial assemblies or conventions or councils, or committees of safety, to arrest and secure every person in their respective colonies whose going at large, may, in their opinion, endanger the safety of the colony or the liberties of America.--Journal of Congress, vol. 1, page 149. What was the Committee of Safety? Was it a Justice of the Peace? No. Was it a Grand Jury? No. It was simply a committee of five or seven persons, more or less, appointed to watch over the town or county and see that these Tories were attending to their business and not interfering with the rights of the colonies. Whom were they to thus arrest and secure? Every man that had committed murder--that had taken up arms against America, or voted the Democratic or Tory ticket? No. "Every person whose going at large might in their opinion, endanger the safety of the colony or the liberties of America." It was not necessary that they had committed any overt act, but if in the opinion of this council of safety, it was dangerous to let them run at large they were locked up. Suppose that we had done that during the last war? You would have had to build several new jails in this county. What a howl would have gone up all over this State if we had attempted such a thing as that, and yet we had a perfect right to do anything to preserve our liberties, which our fathers had a right to do to obtain them. What more did they do? In 1777 the same Congress that signed the immortal Declaration of Independence (and I think they knew as much about liberty and the rights of men as any Democrat in Marion county) adopted another resolution: _Resolved_. That it be recommended to the Executive powers of the several States, forthwith to apprehend and secure all persons who have in their general conduct and conversation evinced a disposition inimical to the cause of America, and that the persons so seized be confined in such places and treated in such manner as shall be consistent with their several characters and security of their persons.---Journal of Congress, vol. 2, p. 246. If they had talked as the Democrats talked during the late war--if they had called the soldiers, "Washington hirelings," and if when they allowed a few negroes to help them fight, had branded the struggle for liberty as an abolition war, they would be "apprehended and confined in such places and treated in such manner as was consistent with their characters and security of their persons," and yet all they did was to show a disposition inimical to the independence of America. If we had pursued a policy like that during the late war, nine out of ten of the members of the Democratic party would have been in jail--there would not have been jails and prisons enough on the face of the whole earth to hold them. . Now, when a Democrat talks to you about Lincoln bastiles, just quote this to him: _Whereas_, The States of Pennsylvania and Delaware are threatened with an immediate invasion from a powerful army, who have already landed at the head of Chesapeake Bay; and whereas, The principles of sound policy and self-preservation require that persons who may be reasonably suspected of aiding or abetting the cause of the enemy may be prevented from pursuing measures injurious to the general weal, _Resolved_, That the executive authorities of the States of Pennsylvania and Delaware be requested to cause all persons within their respective States, notoriously disaffected, to be apprehended, disarmed and secured until such time as the respective States think they may be released without injury to the common cause.---Journal of Congress, vol. 2, p. 240. That is what they did with them. When there was an invasion threatened the good State of Indiana, if we had said we will imprison all men who by their conduct and conversation show that they are inimical to our cause, we would have been obliged to import jails and corral Democrats as we did mules in the army. Our fathers knew that the flag was never intended to protect any man who wanted to assail it. What more did they do? There was a man by the name of David Franks, who wrote a letter and wanted to send it to England. In that letter he gave it as his opinion that the colonies were becoming disheartened and sick of the war. The heroic and chivalric fathers of the Revolution violated the mails, took the aforesaid letter and then they took the aforesaid David Franks by the collar and put him in jail. Then they passed a resolution in Congress that inasmuch as the said letter showed a disposition inimical to the liberties of the United States, Major General Arnold be requested to cause the said David Franks to be forthwith arrested, put in jail and confined till the further order of Congress. (Jour. Cong., vol. 3, p. 96 and 97.) How many Democrats wrote letters during the war declaring that the North never could conquer the South? How many wrote letters to the soldiers in the army telling them to shed no more fraternal blood in that suicidal and unchristian war? It would have taken all the provost marshals in the United States to arrest the Democrats in Indiana who were guilty of that offence. And yet they are talking about our fathers being such good men, while they are cursing us fordoing precisely what they did, only to a less extent than they did. We are still on the track of the old Continental Congress. I want you to understand the spirit that animated those men. They passed a resolution which is particularly applicable to the Democrats during the war: With respect to all such unworthy Americans as, regardless of their duty to their Creator, their country, and their posterity, have taken part with our oppressors, and, influenced by the hope or possession of ignominious rewards, strive to recommend themselves to the bounty of the administration by misrepresenting and traducing the conduct and principles of the friends of American liberty, and opposing every measure formed for its preservation and security, _Resolved_, That it be recommended to the different assemblies, conventions and committees or councils of safety in the United Colonies, by the most speedy and effectual measures, to frustrate the mischievous machinations and restrain the wicked practices of these men. And it is the opinion of this Congress that they ought to be disarmed and the more dangerous among them either kept in safe custody or bound with sufficient sureties for their good behavior. And in order that the said assemblies, conventions, committees or councils of safety may be enabled with greater ease and facility to carry this resolution into execution, _Resolved_, That they be authorized to call to their aid whatever Continental troops stationed in or near their respective colonies that may be conveniently spared from their more immediate duties, and commanding officers of such troops are hereby directed to afford the said assemblies, conventions, committees or councils of safety, all such assistance in executing this resolution as they may require, and which, consistent with the good of the service, may be supplied--Journal of Congress, vol. i, p. 22, Do you hear that, Democrat? The old Continental Congress said to these committees and councils of safety: "Whenever you want to arrest any of these scoundrels, call on the Continental troops." And General Washington, the commander-in-chief of the army, and the officers under him, were directed to aid in the enforcement of all the measures adopted with reference to disaffected and dangerous persons. And what had these persons done? Simply shown by their conversation, and letters directed to their friends, that they were opposed to the cause of American liberty. They did not even spare the Governors of States. They were not appalled by any official position that a Tory might hold. They simply said, "If you are not in favor of American liberty, we will put you 'where the dogs won't bite you.'" One of these men was Governor Eden of Maryland. Congress passed a resolution requesting the Council of Safety of Maryland to seize and secure his person and papers, and send such of them as related to the American dispute to Congress without delay. At the same time the person and papers of another man, one Alexander Ross, were seized in the same manner. Ross was put in jail, and his papers transmitted to Congress. There was a fellow by the name of Parke and another by the name of Morton, who presumed to undertake a journey from Philadelphia to New York without getting a pass. Congress ordered them to be arrested and imprisoned until further orders. They did not wait to have an affidavit filed before a Justice of the Peace. They took them by force and put them in jail, and that was the end of it. So much for the policy of the fathers, in regard to arbitrary arrests. During the war there was a great deal said about our occasionally interfering with the elections. Let us see how the fathers stood upon that question. They held a convention in the State of New York in Revolutionary times, and there were some gentlemen in Queens County that were playing the role of Kentucky--they were going to be neutral--they refused to vote to send deputies to the convention--they stood upon their dignity just as Kentucky stood upon hers--a small place to stand on, the Lord knows. What did our fathers do with them? They denounced them as unworthy to be American citizens and hardly fit to live. Here is a resolution adopted by the Continental Congress on the 3d of January, 1776: _Resolved_, That all such persons in Queens County aforesaid as voted against sending deputies to the present Convention of New York, and named in a list of delinquents in Queens County, published by the Convention of New York, be put out of the protection of the United Colonies, and that all trade and intercourse with them cease; that none of the inhabitants of that county be permitted to travel or abide in any part of these United Colonies out of their said colony without a certificate from the Convention or Committee of Safety of the Colony of New York, setting forth that such inhabitant is a friend of the American cause, and not of the number of those who voted against sending deputies to the said Convention, and that such of the inhabitants as shall be found out of the said county without such certificate, be apprehended and imprisoned three months. _Resolved_, That no attorney or lawyer ought to commence, prosecute or defend any action at law of any kind, for any of the said inhabitants of Queens County, who voted against sending deputies to the Convention as aforesaid, and such attorney or lawyer as shall countenance this revolution, are enemies to the American cause, and shall be treated accordingly. What had they done? Simply voted against sending delegates to the convention, and yet the fathers not only put them out of the protection of law, but prohibited any lawyer from appearing in their behalf in a court. Democrats, don't you wish we had treated you that way during the war? What more did they do? They ordered a company of troops from Connecticut, and two or three companies from New Jersey, to go into the State of New York, and take away from every person who had voted against sending deputies to the convention, all his arms, and if anybody refused to give up his arms, they put him in jail. Don't you wish you had lived then, my friend Democrat? Don't you wish you had prosecuted the war as our fathers prosecuted the Revolution? I now want to show you how far they went in this direction. A man by the name of Sutton, who lived on Long Island, had been going around giving his constitutional opinions upon the war. They had him arrested, and went on to resolve that he should be taken from Philadelphia, pay the cost of transportation himself, be put in jail there, and while in jail should board himself. Wouldn't a Democrat have had a hard scramble for victuals if we had carried out that idea? Just see what outrageous and terrible things the fathers did. And why did they do it? Because they saw that in order to establish the liberties of America it was necessary they should take the Tory by the throat just as it was necessary for us to take rebels by the throat during the late war. They had paper money in those days--shin-plasters--and some of the Democrats of those times had legal doubts about this paper currency. One of these Democrats, Thomas Harriott, was called before a Committee of Safety of New York, and there convicted of having refused to receive in payment the Continental bills. The committee of New York conceiving that he was a dangerous person, informed the Provincial Congress of the facts in the case, and inquired whether Congress thought he ought to go at large. Upon receipt of this information by Congress an order for the imprisonment of the offender was passed, as follows: _Resolved_, That the General Committee of the city of New York be requested and authorized, and are hereby requested and authorized to direct that Thomas Harriott be committed to close jail in this city, there to remain until further orders of this Congress.--Amer. Archives, 4th series, vol. 6, P. i, 344. And yet all that he had done was to refuse to take Continental money. He had simply given his opinion on the legal tender law, just as the Democrats of Indiana did in regard to greenbacks, and as a few circuit judges decided when they declared the Legal Tender Act unconstitutional. It would have been perfectly proper and right that they, every man of them, should be, like Thomas Harriott, "committed to close jail, there to remain until further orders." Did our forefathers ever interfere with religion? Yes, they did with a preacher by the name of Daniels, because he would not pray for the American cause. He thought he could coax the Lord to beat us. They said to him, "You pray on our side, sir." He would not do it, and so they put him in jail and gave him work enough to pray himself out, and it took him some time to do it. They interfered with a _lack_ of religion. They believed that a Tory or traitor in the pulpit was no better than anybody else. That is the way I have sometimes felt during the war. I have thought that I would like to see some of those white cravatted gentlemen "snaked" right out of the pulpits where they had dared to utter their treason, and set to playing checkers through a grated window. It is not possible that our fathers ever interfered with the writ of _habeas corpus_, is it? Yes sir. Our fathers advocated the doctrine that the good of the people is the supreme law of the land. They also advocated the doctrine that in the midst of armies law falls to the ground; the doctrine that when a country is in war it is to be governed by the laws of war. They thought that laws were made for the protection of good citizens, for the punishment of citizens that were bad, when they were not too bad or too numerous; then they threw the law-book down while they took the cannon and whipped the badness out of them; that is the next step, when the stones you throw, and kind words, and grass have failed. They said, why did we not appeal to law? We did; but it did no good. A large portion of the people were up in arms in defiance of law, and there was only one way to put them down, and that was by force of arms; and whenever an appeal is made to force, that force is governed by the law of war. The fathers suspended the writ in the case of a man who had committed an offence in the State of New York. They sent him to the State of Connecticut to be confined, just as men were sent from Indiana to Fort Lafayette. The attorneys came before the convention of New York to hear the matter inquired into, but the committee of the convention to whom the matter was referred refused to inquire into the original cause of commitment--a direct denial of the authority of the writ. The writ of _habeas corpus_ merely brings the body before the judge that he may inquire why he is imprisoned. They refused to make any such inquiry. Their action was endorsed by the convention and the gentleman was sent to Connecticut and put in jail. They not only did these things in one instance, but in a thousand. They took men from Maryland and put them in prison in Pennsylvania, and they took men from Pennsylvania and confined them in Maryland, Whenever they thought the Tories were so thick at one point that the rascals might possibly be released, they took them somewhere else. They did not interfere with the freedom of the press, did they? Yes, sir. They found a gentleman who was speaking and writing against the liberties of the colonies, and they just took his paper away from him, and gave it to a man who ran it in the interest of the colonies, using the Tory's type and press. [A voice--That was right.] Right! of course it was right. What right has a newspaper in Indiana to talk against the cause for which your son is laying down his life on the field of battle? What right has any man to make it take thousands of men more to crush a rebellion? What right has any man protected by the American flag to do all in his power to put it in the hands of the enemies of his country? The same right that any man has to be a rascal, a thief and traitor--no other right under heaven. Our fathers had sense enough to see that, and they said, "One gentleman in the rear printing against our noble cause, will cost us hundreds of noble lives at the front." Why have you a right to take a rebel's horse? Because it helps you and weakens the enemy. That is by the law of war. That is the principle upon which they seized the Tory printing press. They had the right to do it. And if I had had the power in this country, no man should have said a word, or written a line, or printed anything against the cause for which the heroic men of the North sacrificed their lives. I would have enriched the soil of this country with him before he should have done it. A man by the name of James Rivington undertook to publish a paper against the country. They would not speak to him; they denounced him, seized his press, and made him ask forgiveness and promise to print no more such stuff before they would let him have his sheet again. No person but a rebel ever thought that was wrong. There is no common sense in going to the field to fight and leaving a man at home to undo all that you accomplish. Our fathers did not like these Tories, and when the war was over they confiscated their estates--took their land and gave it over to good Union men. How did they do it? Did they issue summons, and have a trial? No, sir. They did it by wholesale--they did it by resolution, and the estates of hundreds of men were taken from them without their having a day in court or any notice or trial whatever. They said to the Tories: "You cast your fortunes with the other side, let them pay you. The flag you fought against protects the land you owned and it will prevent you from having it." Nor is that all. They ran thousands of them out of the country away up into Nova Scotia, and the old blue-nosed Tories are there yet. In his letter to Governor Cooke of Rhode Island, Washington enumerates an act of that colony, declaring that "none should speak, write, or act against the proceedings of Congress or their Acts of Assembly, under penalty of being disarmed and disqualified from holding any office, and being further punished by imprisonment," as one that met his approbation, and which should exist in other colonies. There is the doctrine for you Democrats. So I could go on by the hour or by the day. I could show you how they made domiciliary visits, interfered with travel, imprisoned without any sort of writ or affidavit--in other words, did whatever they thought was necessary to whip the enemy and establish their independence. What next do they charge against us? That we freed negroes. So we did. That we
{'title': 'The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 09 (of 12) by Robert Green Ingersoll', 'source': 'Project Gutenberg', 'lang': 'en'}