There is in me, therefore, no lack of gratitude for the signal honor conferred upon me by the people of Kansas. Indeed, the measure of my gratitude is so full and overflowing that it weighs upon me. I feel under obligations to so many people, I am profoundly grateful to so many, that when I think of it all, and of how I am to testify my gratitude or requite the obligations I am under, I am overwhelmed with a sense of the poverty of my vocabulary of thankfulness, and of the vain aspiration of my desire to return even a tithe of my multitudinous obligations. But, grateful as I am to the Republicans of Kansas for the signal honor they have conferred upon me—an honor which fills the full measure of my ambition—and proud as I am of the magnificent victory won in Kansas, I cannot forget that the Republican banner of the Nation is, for the first time in twenty-five years, trailing in defeat. If I loved the party merely for its gifts of honor and of office; if I cared nothing for its principles, and had no faith in their power to benefit and bless the people of America; if I regarded the contest between the Democratic and the Republican parties as a mere scramble for the spoils of office, I would be content with my own personal victory, and accept it as all that I was interested in. But I am a Republican, not only in name, but in fact. I am a Republican because I sincerely believe that the Republican party is the purest, the most intelligent, the most progressive, the most beneficent organization the world has ever known. I am a Republican because the Republican party saved the Union; because it abolished slavery; because it enfranchised the slaves; because it has made this Nation great, free, prosperous, and self-sustaining. I am a Republican because the Republican party advocates the protection of American industries and labor; because it is the party of school-houses, of education, of social order, of liberty regulated by law; and because it is a party that has never feared to attack vice, however strongly entrenched it might be. I am a Republican because the Republican party would be ashamed to prefer a Northern Copperhead to a Union soldier. I am a Republican because the Republican party does not, for expediency’s sake, ignore its greatest and bravest advocates and statesmen, while it sits upon a pedestal, like a Gessler’s hat in the market-place, a preposterous political accident, who had lived throughout the tremendous events of the past quarter of a century, utterly unknown outside of the small place wherein he resided. The Republican party has enriched the history of the age with a long list of imperishable names, and among them all no one shines with a more brilliant luster than that of its brave and glorious leader in the late campaign, James G. Blaine.