intended. The Republican party
during its long possession of power had divided into factions, as
the Democratic party had in 1860. We had the Blaine, the Conkling
and other factions, and many so-called third parties, and the
distinctive principles upon which the Republican party was founded
were in danger of being forgotten. It was my purpose to arouse
the attention to the Republicans in Ohio to the necessity of union
and organization, and I believe this speech contributed to that
result. It was the text and foundation of nearly all I uttered in
the canvass that followed.

Early in September Governor Hoadley, in commencing his campaign in
Hamilton, assailed by speech at Mt. Gilead, charging me with waving
the bloody shirt, and reviving the animosities of the war. He
claimed to be a friend of the negro, but did not deny the facts
stated by me. He allowed himself to be turned from local questions,
such as temperance, schools, economy, and the government of cities,
in all of which the people of Ohio had a deep interest, and as to
which the Democratic party had a defined policy, to national
questions, and, especially, to reconstruction and the treatment of
freedmen in the south. He thanked God for the "solid south."
Though an Abolitionist of the Chase school in early life, and,
until recently an active Republican, he ignored or denied the
suppression of the negro vote, the organized terror and cruelty of
the Ku-Klux Klan, and the almost daily outrages published in the
papers. On the evening of the 8th of September I made a speech at
Lebanon, in which I reviewed his speech at Hamilton in the adjoining
county. I said I would wave the bloody shirt as long as it remained
bloody. I referred to the copious evidence of outrage and wrong,
including many murders of negroes and of white Republicans, published
in official reports, and challenged him to deny it. I said that
by these crimes the south was made solid, and the men who had waged
war against the United States, though they failed in breaking up
the Union, then held the political power of the Confederate states,
strengthened by counting all the negroes as free men, though
practically denying them the right of suffrage. I said this was
not only unjust to the colored man but unjust to the white men of
the north.

In conclusion I said:

"Thirty-eight Members of Congress, and of the electoral college,
are based upon the six million of colored people in the south.