If elected, I shall consider it not only my duty, but it will be my ardent desire, to labor for the attainment of this end.
Let me assure my countrymen of the Southern States that if I shall be charged with the duty of organizing an Administration, it will be one which will regard and cherish their truest interests--the interests of the white and of the colored people both, and equally; and which will put forth its best efforts in behalf of a civil policy which will wipe out forever the distinction between North and South in our common country.
With a civil service organized upon a system which will secure purity, experience, efficiency, and economy; with a strict regard for the public welfare, solely, in appointments; with the speedy, thorough, and unsparing prosecution and punishment of all public officers who betray official trusts; with a sound currency; with education unsectarian and free to all; with simplicity and frugality in public and private affairs, and with a fraternal spirit of harmony pervading the people of all sections and classes, we may reasonably hope that the second century of our existence as a Nation will, by the blessing of God, be pre-eminent as an era of good feeling, and a period of progress, prosperity, and happiness.
Very respectfully, Your fellow-citizen, R. B. HAYES.
The non-partisan verdict upon this letter is that it is faultless in style, sound in principle, courageous, broad and elevated in tone, liberal, wise, statesmanlike, and strong. It is, in short, the declaration of faith of an honest man who has a heart in his breast and a head on his shoulders, with purity in that heart and brains in that head.
The conclusions which follow our study of the public career of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, and the study of that interior life, the beauty of which the world will not know until he has passed from it, are briefly these.
In boyhood, in battle, in the civic chair, in the esteem of his State, in every duty and relation of life, he has been first, and now, it would seem, is first in the hearts of his countrymen. As a student, he was foremost; as a lawyer, he was in the front rank; as a soldier, he was the bravest; as a legislator, the most judicious; as a governor, second to none of Ohio's great magistrates.