CHAPTER XXXII. LETTER TO GOVERNOR BAKER-NOMINATED BY INDIANA CONVENTION-NOMINATION OF On the fifteenth of February, 1868, Mr. Colfax wrote to Governor Baker, of Indiana, the following letter, which was read in the State Republican Convention of Indiana, that met at Indianapolis, February 20th, 1868: "HIS EXCELLENCY GOVERNOR BAKER: "MY DEAR SIR: I should be glad to accept your kind invitation, and thus enjoy the privilege of looking into the faces of the representative men of our organization in Indiana, when they come together next Thursday in their biennial convention. But the rules of the House do not allow its presiding officer to be absent during its sessions, and I must therefore deny myself this great pleasure. It may not be inappropriate, on the threshold of the important campaign before us, to look back for a few minutes at those deeds and triumphs of our young and patriotic party which are garnered up in our national history, and which no defamation by our enemies can ignore or obscure. "When the Rebellion, with its Democratic President, Democratic Cabinet officers, and Democratic Generals, threw down the gauntlet at the feet of the nation they had resolved to destroy, and when the Democratic leaders of the North, in reply, exclaimed 'No coercion,' it was the Union Republican party that wrote on its banners, 'The last man and the last dollar, if need be;' and the unconquerable armies their Congressional legislation called to the field, finally 'coerced' the rebellion into subjection. "In the darkest days of the struggle, when at every street-corner we were tauntingly told by Democrats, 'You can't conquer the South,' there was one party that never despaired of the Republic, and that party was the one whose delegates now meet at our State capital. "When unprecedented and onerous taxation became necessary to maintain our credit, to pay and supply our heroic soldiers, we dared to defy the prejudice which every Democratic speaker and editor attempted to inflame against the burdens of taxation; and, thus daring, triumphed. "When conscription laws became a military necessity, to fill up our regiments decimated again and again by the bullets of the enemy and the diseases of the camp, the siege and the march, and when the land was filled with Democratic denunciations of these laws, we risked popularity, victory, and all, by defending them as bravely as our veterans defended the country in the field. "When Mr. Lincoln at last struck at slavery as the cause of all our woes, as well as the right arm of the rebellion, and when Democratic orators and writers most scandalously and persistently calumniated us as having converted the war for the Union into an abolition war to free negroes, we fearlessly allied our cause to that of the humble and the helpless, and Providence rewarded us for our fidelity by that brilliant succession of triumphs which gave victory to the Union as well as freedom to the slave. "When the National Convention of our opponents at Chicago dared to hang out the white flag of surrender, by proclaiming the war a failure, and demanding an immediate cessation of hostilities, we promptly accepted the issue. And the soldier with his cartridge-box, and the voter with the ballot-box, united in stamping their indignant condemnation on the disgraceful avowal. "When the Government was compelled to issue bonds by the hundreds of millions for the preservation of our national existence, Democrats ridiculed them as worthless, and cautioned the people against risking their means in them. But the loyal people were deaf to their warnings; and now the same party denounce them as having made too good an investment in their purchase. "When 'greenbacks' were authorized by a Republican Congress, who can forget the Democratic predictions that it would ultimately take a hatful of them to buy a hat? And now they have the assurance to seek to make political capital out of their popularity. "When the Thirty-ninth Congress rejected the President's policy of reconstruction, and insisted on one which should embody constitutional guarantees for the future, with full protection for all who loved the flag and the Union, our enemies denounced us as wishing to postpone reconstruction. Now these same Democrats, with their ally, the President, are striving to put every possible stumbling-block in the way of the return of these selfexiled States. "When 'the Fourteenth Article' was proposed as an amendment to the Constitution-embodying no mandatory suffrage enactment, but protecting equally the civil rights of all, native-born and naturalized, making a voter in Indiana just as potential as one in South Carolina, and no more, and barring the door of the Treasury against any payments for emancipated slaves or the rebel debt, the whole Democratic party denounced it, and urged the South to spurn it, as they did. Now the two Democratic States of Kentucky and Maryland demand payment, out of the people's taxes in the Treasury, for the slaves the nation emancipated; and the two Democratic Legislatures of Ohio and New Jersey endeavor to withdraw the assent of those States to this beneficent Constitutional Amendment, leaving the door open for the presentation of these Democratic claims if a Democratic Congress could be chosen. "I will not extend this letter by a defence of the Congressional policy of reconstruction, for Senator Morton's able vindication of it has covered the whole ground unanswerably. Suffice it to say that Congress, having authorized the suffrage of every free man in the Southern States, rebels and all, except those who, by violating official oaths, had added perjury to treason, and the Democratic party having denounced us for this limited and temporary disfranchisement, the same party shouts its rejoicings over the fact that the remainder of the unrepentant rebels in Alabama have recently and voluntarily disfranchised themselves, in the vain attempt to prevent the reorganization of that State on a loyal basis. "Nor is this all. The President, now in full sympathy with the same Democratic party which opposed his election-the same person who, as a candidate, declared that treason should be made odious, but who, as Chief Magistrate, is the hope and admiration of every rebel in the land-whose oath binds him 'to take care that the laws be faithfully executed,' and who keeps it by striking down officer after officer for the performance of this duty-who retains in office and under salary as his Attorney-General a gentleman who says publicly that he will not appear before the Court to defend 'the laws' from hostile attack-(despite his anti-Stanton message, in which he claims that these Executive officers should be in unison with him)-stands at last self-convicted before the country as having striven to induce the General of our armies to defy a law he did not himself dare to resist. Signally failing in this, his Democratic supporters unite in bitter denunciations of that single-hearted and illustrious officer, with epithets which I will not soil these pages by repeating. But the heart of the country, always generous and just, turns towards this gallant and slandered Commander, with even more affection than before, and longs for the hour when, at the ballotbox, the people will vindicate his fair fame from these malignant aspersions, and call him to that seat of power and responsibility which has been honored by the Father of the Country thatour greatest soldier saved. "And the Congress to whose fidelity and inflexible firmness the nation, despite the criticism of friend or foe, owes the prevention of rebel reconstruction in the South, will, instead of taking any backward step, 'speak to the people that they go forward,' until every star on our banner, paled though they may have been by treason, shall shine with that brilliancy which only loyalty insures. "Very truly yours, "SCHUYLER COLFAX." The Republican State Convention of Indiana, in harmony with the action of all the Republican State Conventions, instructed its delegates to cast the vote of the |