What I would like to find out is whether it is you or I who have switched off from the councils of our political fathers, and whether the causes of the difference of opinion still exist.
John Sherman
The Public Record
John Sherman was an American politician from Ohio who served in federal office throughout the Civil War and into the late nineteenth century. A member of the Republican Party, he served in both houses of the U.S. Congress. He also served as Secretary of the Treasury and Secretary of State. Sherman sought the Republican presidential nomination three times, coming closest in 1888, but was never chosen by the party. Between 1861 and 1897, John Sherman served in the U.S. Senate for nearly 32 years and holds the record for longest serving senator from the state of Ohio.
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I had the honor to cast my first vote for Henry Clay for President of the United States, and supported him with all the natural enthusiasm of youth, and remember yet my sorrow when it was at last known that he was defeated.
It is to make this discovery that I come here to-night, and I will speak to you, not for the purpose of reviving past controversies, but to see whether, after all, the people of Ohio and Kentucky ought not now to stand side by side in…
The election of a Republican House of Representatives is of vital importance, because if we can have not only a Republican Senate, but a Republican House of Representatives, we will tie up Cleveland and his administration so that he and it…
I there made a strong appeal for the election of Benjamin Butterworth and Charles Brown to Congress, the former being one of the ablest and most promising men in congressional life, and the latter a gallant soldier, who had lost a leg in…
The river counties are associated with my early recollections and the people are uniformly generous and kind.
Still, Judge Thurman and I have learned enough to know that farming is the chosen employment of a large proportion of the human race, and is, besides, the chosen recreation of nearly all who have been successful in other pursuits.
If the many millions of farmers in the United States have had my experience in farming they would have to get more than seventy-five cents a bushel for wheat to make the two ends meet.
But we love our country more, and no man from Ohio would ever be true to his mother unless he were more true to his country all around, from one end of the land to the other.
We love Ohio as our mother who nurtured us and fed us in our in our infancy; and, under any circumstances, although we may hear ill of Ohio, we never fail to remember all that is good that can be said of Ohio, and to be true and honorable…
They not only better their own condition, but the condition of all around them, and I can pick out from all over this community, and from this little dinner party, men who came from Ohio poor, but with an honest endeavor to do what was…
Not that our people have a fondness for money, but they have come here to better their condition--and I hope in God they will.
The reason was that 'Westward the star of empire wends its way.' But latterly the star of empire seems to have settled about this city of New York, until more than 200 Ohio men can sit down to an Ohio feast in the city of New York.
Why, my countrymen, I can show by statistics--and statistics never lie--that Ohio never had her fair share of the public offices.
In Ohio was the beginning of that magnificent march of progress which adds luster to the history of the northwest, as an evidence of growth and progress unexampled in the previous history of mankind.
They went there to redeem that land from a wilderness, and they made of Ohio the most prosperous, the richest and fairest commonwealth the world has ever known.
It is true that Vermont and Kentucky and Tennessee were admitted into the union of these states before Ohio was, but they were offshoots of New York and Virginia, while Ohio was the first fruit of that great commonwealth.
Ohio is the first fruit of the Federal Union.
When we go to any other country, we don't go to rob them of anything, but to add to their wealth.
No Arab in his tent, restless and uneasy, feels more uncertain and movable than a man from Ohio, who can better his condition anywhere else.
Our friends and fellow-citizens from old England's shore, from Ireland and Scotland and Germany, form their societies of the city of New York; and why should not the State of Ohio, more important than any of these countries by this…
You have gathered the sons of Ohio, and those who have been identified with its history, into a society where you may meet together and preserve and revive the recollections of Ohio boyhood and Ohio manhood.
Her churches and colleges are not endowed of King Charles or Queen Anne.
She never wore the collar of colonial subserviency.
The love of our own state and pride in her history spring largely from the fact that she and her institutions, in birth and growth, are purely American.
Politicians like John Sherman
