I am a Republican because I am opposed to the domination of the “solid South.” For fifty years the Southern States dominated this country. They were feebler in numbers, in wealth, in enterprise, in commerce, in all the elements that make a nation strong and great, than were the Northern States. Yet until the outbreak of the war, they governed the country absolutely. They made a frantic appeal to arms when their domination was at last challenged, and were crushed by arms. They have for the past eight years been kept “solid” by the most atrocious crimes that ever disgraced a civilized nation—by terrorism, by the Ku-Klux Klans, by midnight murder, by tissue ballots, by wholesale cheating and false counting. A South made “solid” by such methods is a standing menace to free government, and should be confronted by a North made “solid” by love of justice, peace, fair play, and a free and unintimidated ballot. The Republican party should remain in power until a Republican is as safe and as free in Mississippi as a Democrat is in Kansas; until every citizen, white or black, can cast his vote without fear, and have it honestly counted; and until the South consents to accept the idea of political toleration, and gives up the idea that it can ever again be the master of this Government. I am a Republican because the Republican party is not ashamed of its past. No Republican is afraid or ashamed to have his children read the history of the past quarter of a century. The Democratic party, when anything is said of its past history, pleads for the mercy of oblivion and forgetfulness. If the false disciple was to come back to earth, he would probably say: “What, are you fellows still harping about those thirty pieces of silver?” In very much the same mournful, injured tone, the Democrats say to the Republicans: “What, are you still flaunting the bloody shirt?” The faithful Republican has a right to be proud of his party’s history. It has never abandoned a position it has once taken, and it has never taken a position not in harmony with the greatest good of the greatest number. No Republican ever tore down his country’s flag, and spat upon it. No Republican ever called the soldiers of the Union “Lincoln hirelings” and “lop-eared Dutch.” No Republican ever mounted guard around the prison hell at Andersonville. No Republican ever rejoiced when the armies of the Union suffered a defeat, or grieved when the hosts of the Rebellion were driven from fields of battle. No Republican was ever a member of those traitorous, sneaking, cowardly Copperhead organizations, the “Knights of the Golden Circle” and the “Sons of Liberty.” No Republican belonged to Quantrill’s brutal gang of ruffians and assassins, who burned defenseless Lawrence, and murdered her unarmed citizens. No Republican ever rode at night with the bloody Ku-Klux. No Republican ever took part in such brutal massacres as those at Hamburg and New Orleans. No Republican ever attempted to win a