Life and Public Services of Gov. Rutherford B. Hayes; By Russell H. Conwell

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1876 Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XXV. EXTRACTS PROM GEN. HAYES'S SPEECHES. Reconstruction.--Paying National Debt in Greenbacks.--Issue of Bonds.--The History of Parties.--Negro Suffrage.--The Word White.--Equality before the Law.--Administration of State Affairs.--Dedication of Fountain.--Dedication of a Soldier's Monument, &c. In fulfilment of our purpose to give to the reader an impartial and comprehensive study of Gen. Hayes's character as a statesman, we now give a number of extracts from his speeches, having selected them not so much with a view to the excellence of each as to exhibit the different phases of his thought, and the influence of circumstances upon the style and material of his addresses. There may be an occasional error in a word or phrase as reported by the shorthand writers of the time; but it will be more just to the speaker and the public, and more in accord with Gen. Hayes's whole life, to take them with these slight errors, if such there should be, than to ask him to rewrite them, and incur the danger of being charged with having changed them to escape just and fair criticism. As these are, to many of us, the most important part of his history, we would have them in their original phraseology, that we may not only see him as he is, but also as he was. The first speech from which we quote in this connection was delivered Aug. 5, 1867, at Lebanon, O., and in which he said, --Gen. Jackson was, no doubt, right as to the existence of a settled purpose to break up the Union, and to establish a Southern Confederacy, as long ago as 1832. But why was there such a purpose? and on what ground did it stand? Great political parties, whether sectional or otherwise, do not come by accident, nor are they the invention of political intrigue. A faction born of a clique may...