John Sherman

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 I would wave the bloody shirt as long as it remained bloody.

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.

I closed with an exhortation to support Governor Foraker and the Republican ticket and to elect a legislature that would place Ohio where she had usually stood, in the fore front of Republican states, for the Union, for liberty and justice…

Upon this issue I will go before the people of the south, and, turning my back upon all the animosities of the war, appeal only to their sense of honor and justice.

If they do this we will have peace, union and fraternity.

Upon this issue we intend to make our appeal to the honest and honorable people of the southern states.

We are for the exercise of national authority, for the preservation of rights conferred by the constitution, and upon this broad issue we invite co-operation from the south as well as the north.

Now the Union is saved and slavery is abolished, we fight for the equal political rights of all men, and the faithful observance of the constitutional amendments.

Then we fought for the preservation of the Union, and, as a means to that end, for the abolition of slavery.

Fellow-citizens, the line drawn between the two parties is now as distinct as it was during the war, but we occupy a different field of battle.

The preservation of the Union was the central idea of the war.

They fought to secure to themselves and their posterity the blessings of a strong national government; the preservation of the Union--a Union not of states, but of the people of the United States; not a confederate government, but a…

Our soldiers fought in no holiday contest, not merely to test the manly qualities of the men of the north and the south, not for power or plunder, or wealth or title.

While we waive the animosities of the war, we must never fail to hold on, with courage and fortitude, to all the results of the war.

Generosity, forgiveness and charity are great qualities of the human heart, but, like everything else that is good, they may be carried to excess, and may degenerate into faults.

Anger and hate and prejudice are not wise counselors in peace or in war.

When we point out these offenses committed in the south, it is said that we are raising the bloody shirt, that we are reviving the issues of the war--that the war is over.

This is the spectre that now haunts American politics, and may make it just as vital and necessary to appeal to the northern states to unite again against this evil, not so open and arrogant as slavery, but more dangerous and equally…

By this system, and by the acquiescence of a few northern states, the men who led in the Civil War have been restored to power, and hope, practically, to reverse all the results of the war.

We deprived them of no political power, no blood was shed; no confiscation was had; and more generous terms were conceded to them than ever before had been extended to an unsuccessful party in a civil war.

This strange turn in events has but one example in history, and that was the restoration of Charles II, after the brilliant but brief Protectorate of Cromwell, and, like that restoration, is a reproach to the civilization of the age.

This country is now represented abroad by men, who, within twenty-five years, were in arms to overthrow it, and the governing power in the executive branch of the government is in sympathy with the ideas of, and selects the chief officers…

Our adversaries now concede the wisdom and success of all prominent Republican measures, as well as the merits of the great leaders of the Republican party.

I referred to the early history of the Republican party and to the action of Lincoln and Grant in the prosecution of the war, and contrasted the opinion expressed of them by the Democratic party then and at the time of my speech.