Speech #460010264

They and the ravenous and famishing horde at their backs. who are hungering and thirstinq for the spoils of office. have set their hearts upon gaining control of the National Government in 1880. and there is nothing that bad men can conceive. or human ingenuity inveit. to which they will not resort to accomplish their purpose. They understand fully that with a free. fair ballot and an honest count they would stand no more chance of consummating their designs than they would of being translated. In fraud. in intimidation. in ballotbox stuffing. in false registration. and fraudulent naturalization. in false counting. and in all manner of corruption and violence. which none but democrats could discover or would dare to resort to. lies the only road to a democratic victory in 1880. and they know it. and for this they are beginning to prepare by the repeal of every statute which stands in the way or which seems to offbr the slightest obstruction to their scheme. Sir. do the men who are engaged in this attempt at revolution. who are thus seeking. through the pollution of the ballotbox. to sap and mine the Government. who are. by repealing these laws. endeavoring to remove the last great prop which supports the Republic. who are intent upon striking down the ballot. and with it the cause of civil and religious liberty in this country. who are seeking to destroy the only free Government on earth and curse us with anarchy and despotism. who are ready and anxious to tear down the sacred right of suffrage and establish upon its ruins the edicts and beliests of a corrupt and servile political caues. who are laboring to encourage and protect fraud and corruption by relieving it from the possibility of detection of punishmentdo these men suppose that the people of the North are asleep and off their guard. that they fail to comprehend the situation or that they will ever submit to such degradation at the hands of the men who now occupy positions of honor and profit under the Government through republican leniency and magnanimity? It maybe well for the people of the South. amid their arrogant assumptions of toda. y. to remember the lessons of the war.