, 1879. I regard it as the best statement
of the financial question made by me in that canvass. In it I
stated fully the action of the administration in respect to the
resumption of specie payments, and the refunding of the public
debt. The people of Maine had been greatly divided upon these
measures. The Greenback party was opposed to the effort to advance
the United States note to the value of coin which it represented,
but wished to make it depend upon some imaginary value given to it
by law. I said the people of Maine would have to choose between
those who strictly sought to preserve the national faith, and to
maintain the greenback at par with coin, and those who, with utter
disregard of the public faith, wished to restore the old state of
affairs, when the greenback could only be passed at a discount,
and could neither be received for customs duties, nor be paid upon
the public debt.

The Greenback party had embodied in their platform the following
dogmas:

"The general government should issue an ample volume of full legal
tender currency to meet the business needs of the country, and to
promptly pay all of its debts."

"The national banking system should be immediately abolished."

"We demand the immediate calling-in and payment of all United States
bonds in full legal tender money."

One of the Members of Congress from the State of Maine, Hon. G. W.
Ladd, was reported to have paid his attention to me, in a speech
in Portland, in the following language:

"Mr. Sherman has sold one hundred and ninety millions of four per
cent. bonds in one day to bloodsuckers who were choking the country,
and he should be impeached."

In closing my speech I said:

"It is to support such dogmas, my Republican friends, that we are
invited to desert the great party to which we belong. It may be
that the Republican party has made in the last twenty years some
mistakes. It may not always have come up to your aspirations.
Sometimes power may have been abused. To err is human; but where
it has erred it has always been on the side of liberty and justice.
It led our country in the great struggle for union and nationality,
which more than all else tended to make it great and powerful. It
has always taken side with the poor and the feeble. It emancipated
a whole race, and has invested them with liberty and all the rights
of citizenship. It never robbed the ballot box. It has never
deprived any class of people, for any