So acceptable was his two years' administration of the chief executive office of the State, that no competitor entered the lists against him or contended with him for the nomination. On the question of his re-nomination the unanimity in his party was absolute. He appeared before the convention, in response to its invitation, and delivered the speech printed in the Appendix to this volume, which sounded the key-note of the campaign. We ask the reader to turn, at this point, to this speech, as it is impossible to epitomize it without filling as much space as is filled by the speech itself. The well-founded and well-supported charges he made against the Democratic Legislature of the State brought upon him the savage strictures of the Democratic partisan press, showing that he had penetrated the weak point in his adversaries' somewhat defenseless defenses.
The Republican platform condemned the reckless expenditures of the Legislature, its efforts to disfranchise soldiers, students, and all having African blood in their veins, and squarely declared for the ratification of the fifteenth amendment.
The Democratic Convention, which assembled July 7, 1869, denounced the fifteenth amendment, and had much to say about the reserved rights of the States. The platform contained these resolutions, which sound, at this day, like an inscription from the tombs of the Ptolemys:
"_Resolved_, That the exemption from tax of over $2,500,000,000 in government bonds and securities is unjust to the people and ought not to be tolerated; and that we are opposed to any appropriation for the payment of interest on the bonds until they are made subject to taxation.
"_Resolved_, That the claims of the bondholders, that the bonds which were bought with greenbacks, and the principal of which is by law payable in currency, should nevertheless be paid in gold, is unjust and extortionate; and, if persisted in, will inevitably force upon the people the question of repudiation."
Here we have the bald proposition to repudiate the interest on the public debt unless it is taxed contrary to law, as made known by repeated decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States; and secondly, the direct threat to repudiate the principal of the National debt unless it is paid off in broken promises to pay. As the greenback is simply a debt or a due bill, this paying debts with debts was a patentable discovery in the science of finance. Taken in connection with the declaration of Vallandigham in the canvass before, that the whole bonded debt should be immediately "paid" in greenbacks, the resolution simply meant that the war debt should not be paid at all. This robbing the men whose money saved the Republic was not acceptable then to the farmers and laborers of Ohio, and will probably not now be more acceptable to the capitalists of New York. It is well, however, to recall the antecedents of a party that first tried to get into power through discreditable expedients, before resorting to a declaration of honest principles in finance.