De Alexander

Let us agree to put contentions aside and complete our task.

This right of judgment is the right of every citizen.

Whenever he is right he should be sustained; whenever misled by unwise or sinister advice, dissent should be expressed.

I am for one thing more--the success of the Administration in everything that is just and wise and real.

It would have been a luxury to unfrock some of them, but it has seemed to me the duty of every sincere Republican to endure a great deal rather than say anything to introduce division or controversy into party ranks....

A word of greeting to his neighbours had drawn down bitter and scornful denunciations because it did not endorse the Administration.

What, then, is the meaning and purpose of constantly accusing Republicans of this State of unfriendly bias?

The grasshoppers in the corner of a fence, even without a newspaper to be heard in, sometimes make more noise than the flocks and herds that graze upon a thousand hills....

They forget that parties are not built up by deportment, or by ladies' magazines, or gush....

Their stock in trade is rancid, canting self-righteousness.

Their vocation and ministry is to lament the sins of other people.

Some of them are men who, by insisting that it is corrupt and bad for men in office to take part in politics, are striving now to prove that the Republican party has been unclean and vicious all its life....

Who are these men who, in newspapers or elsewhere, are cracking their whips over me and playing schoolmaster to the party?

If the convention did not concur in all his acts, it should show the Democratic party that Republicans know what they want and the man by whom to secure such results.

In the same spirit they ought to support President Hayes, who, in obedience to many State and two or three National conventions, had taken up the war against abuses of the civil service.

Republicans did not endorse Lincoln's methods, but they upheld him until the great work of the martyr was done.

He was an Abolitionist when abolitionism meant martyrdom; he became a Republican when others continued Whigs; and he stood for Lincoln and emancipation in the months of dreadful discouragement preceding Sheridan's victories in the…

So fixed was his belief of moral responsibility that he preferred, after his unfortunate connection with Putnam's Magazine, to lose his whole fortune and drudge patiently for sixteen years to pay a debt of $60,000 rather than invoke the…

If this practical illustration exhibited the weakness of the President's order it also anticipated what the country afterwards recognised, that true reform must rest upon competitive examination for which the Act of March 3, 1871 opened…

But like Conkling he relied upon the use of patronage and the iron rule of organisation, and too little upon the betterment of existing political conditions.

He dealt with matters political with the light touch of a man of affairs, and although without sentiment or ideals, he worked incessantly, listened attentively, and was anxious to be useful, without taking the centre of the stage, or…

These characteristic traits, well marked in 1877, were destined to be magnified in the next two decades when local leaders recognised that his judgment, his capacity, and his skill largely contributed to extricate the party from the…

Yet the people plainly believed in the President's policy of conciliation, sympathised with his desire to reform abuses in the civil service, and honoured him for his frankness, his patriotism, and his integrity.

The President's policy quickly created discontent within the ranks of the Republican party.

He avoided public statements, but he scrutinised the returns with the acumen exhibited in securing the Tweed evidence, and left no flaw unchallenged in the title of his opponent.