Speeches of Benjamin Harrison, Twenty-third President of the United StatesHarrison, Benjamin
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Speeches of Benjamin Harrison, Twenty-third President of the United States
Harrison, Benjamin
Harrison, Benjamin, 1833-1901; Speeches, addresses, etc., American; United States -- Politics and government
But I have not intended to discuss in detail any of these questions
with which we have grappled, upon which we have proclaimed a policy,
or which we must meet in the near future. I am only here to-night
briefly to sketch to you the magnificent career of this party to which
we give our allegiance--a union of the States, restored, cemented,
regenerated; a Constitution cleansed of its compromises with slavery
and brought into harmony with the immortal Declaration; a race
emancipated, given citizenship and the ballot; a national credit
preserved and elevated until it stands unequalled among the nations of
the world; a currency more prized than the coin for which it may be
exchanged; a story of prosperity more marvellous than was ever written
by the historian before. This is in brief outline the magnificent way
in which the Republican party has wrought. It stands to-day for a
pure, equal, honest ballot the country over. It stands to-day without
prejudice or malice, the well-wisher of every State in this Union;
disposed to fill all the streams of the South with prosperity, and
demanding only that the terms of the surrender at Appomattox shall be
complied with. When that magnificent act of clemency was witnessed,
when those sublime and gracious words were uttered by General Grant
at Appomattox, the country applauded. We said to those misguided men:
"Go home"--in the language of the parole--"and you shall be unmolested
while you obey the laws in force at the place where you reside." We
ask nothing more, but we cannot quietly submit to the fact, while it
is true everywhere in the United States that the man who fought for
years against his country is allowed the full, free, unrestricted
exercise of his new citizenship, when it shall not also be true
everywhere that every man who followed Lincoln in his political views,
and every soldier who fought to uphold the flag, shall in the same
full, ample manner be secured in his political rights.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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