To our Democratic friends who desire to return to the State bank system, I commend the reading of the message of Governor T. W. Bartley to the Legislature of Ohio of December 3, 1844, which states and powerfully exhibits the significance of most of the facts to which I have just referred.

In striking contrast with this system, to which the Democrats would have us return, the Republican party has created and proposes to perfect and perpetuate the national banking system, of which I have already spoken.

It will be noticed in the review I have made, that the Democracy, by refusing to give the people a safe, uniform national currency, have compelled them to resort to the wretched State bank system, and though they have at times declaimed against all banks, yet they have always, when in power, compelled the people to suffer from the worst of all the systems. I commend this subject to the good people of Ohio, with full confidence that they will not permit the policy of the Democracy to prevail.

The charge is made against us Republicans, and it met us everywhere last year, that we are increasing the public debt; that the burdens of the people are great; that the Democrats wished to put us out of power and liberate the people from the great burdens under which they are laboring. But even last year we were doing something toward diminishing the public debt, though the chief obstacle was the Democratic administration then in power at Washington. Our chief drawback was Andrew Johnson and his office-holders. We had in the Indian Department, in the Internal Revenue Department, and in various disbursing departments of the government, an array of corrupt officials, the like of which never before disgraced the annals of the Republic. In our whole history it is scarcely possible to find a record so dark as that of the Whiskey Ring. During the last two years the nation has been disgraced, the people demoralized, the treasury robbed, and the people outraged by men kept in office for partisan purposes. Take one fact as an illustration. Six months before Andrew Johnson went out of office, a man in Cincinnati is declared to have offered $5,000 in order to get a whiskey inspectorship in Cincinnati for the remainder of Johnson's term, when the salary of that office was but $3,000 a year. And it made no difference if charges were brought against this Ring, and they were convicted; the last act of Andrew Johnson as he went out of office

was to pardon a set of thieves and counterfeiters convicted under the laws of the United States. Any change under such circumstances must have been a blessing.

A man of your own city, whose honesty and ability are undoubted, was placed at the head of the revenue department, and another man from our State, of whom we are all proud,2 was placed at the head of the Interior Department, where he has control of Indian affairs. Hundreds of thieves have been turned out, the collection of the revenue has been honestly made, and the public debt reduced. The Democratic statistician, Delmar, who was employed last year by "three wise men of Gotham" to make an estimate of the national revenues and expenditures, stated that for the last fiscal year the revenue would exhibit a deficit of $154,000,000. He estimated that the expenditures would exceed $475,000,000, and the receipts be less than $322,000,000. Instead of this, the expenditures were $320,000,000, and the receipts over $370,000.000, showing an actual surplus of $50,000,000, of which $35,000,000 accrued during the last quarter, under the new administration. During one of the years of Andrew Johnson, with a tax of two dollars on the gallon of whiskey, only $13,000,000 was collected; now we are receiving revenue at the rate of $50,000,000 per annum from whiskey, and the tax is but fifty cents on the gallon, with special taxes, which make the total tax only about sixty-five cents a gallon.

We can carry the comparison through all branches of the revenue department, and show marked improvements since the new administration came in. During the six months ending the 1st of August, our public debt was reduced more than $43,500,000. For the coming year, if there are no great drawbacks, we may expect a surplus of $100,000,000, without any increase of taxes. This will result from the honest collection of the revenues, and the reduction of expenses in the several departments of the government. The savings in expenditures for the coming year, as compared with those of last year, are estimated at $2,000,000 for the army, $1,000,000 for the PostOffice Department, and $20,000,000 for civil and miscellaneous expenses. In view of these facts, what becomes of the charges and accusations of the Democracy? Will they continue to prophesy evil, while the administration is maintaining and en2 Hon. J. D. Cox.

1 Hon. Columbus Delano.

hancing the public credit, and moving steadily forward toward the payment of the public debt?

In another resolution of their State platform the Democrats charge that we are oppressing some of the people in the South, and that we propose to allow negroes to vote. When the Republican party determined to preserve both liberty and union, they resolved to realize the whole meaning of that first great truth of the Declaration of Independence, "That all men are created equal." We have no right to liberty ourselves unless we share it with all men. And I rejoice that, in looking over the history of the war, we can recognize the hand of Almighty God tracing out for us in blazing lines which could not be misunderstood the declaration that justice to all was the price we must pay for the Union. We fought two years with great disaster and small success; but when the Proclamation of Emancipation was made, that very day the tide of battle turned. I see before me many old soldiers of the Army of the Cumberland. They will remember with what darkness the sun went down on the 31st of December, 1862, on the field of Stone River. They will remember how our army had been driven back, how our thousands lay slain on the field; and they will remember how, when the morning of the 1st of January, 1863, came, and the Emancipation Proclamation flashed over the wires, our eagles were plumed anew, and the defeat at Stone River was turned into a glorious victory. They remember that a year before that date our cavalrymen had watered their horses in the Tennessee, but had been driven back until they saw the spires of Cincinnati. They also remember that, under the Proclamation of Emancipation, the march of the armies of the Cumberland and the Tennessee was always forward, -forward, stepping in blood, it is true, but always carrying their eagles to victory, until at last, on the shores of the Atlantic, joining the victorious army of the East, they struck the final blow, and the Rebellion perished.

Now, fellow-citizens, dare we, with so solemn, so impressive a lesson as this, dare we say that those men who helped us save the republic shall have no share in its liberty, its protection, and its citizenship? As worthy men we dare not. The last act in the great drama will be performed in a few months, when the Fifteenth Amendment is adopted, and fixed forever in the firmament of the Constitution. If, under the influence of the

Democratic party, the State of Ohio shall not be honored by aiding in that great and good work, it will still be done, even without the help of Ohio. That amendment will be set among the great lights in the firmament of our Constitution; and then, fellow-citizens, looking up into our political heavens, we may say in truth, "There is and there shall be no night there."

If I read the signs aright, this campaign is the end, the absolute end, of the old régime of Democracy. It tried to take a new departure, but failed. Its only hope of life is to wash its hands, to wash its heart, and be cleansed throughout, so that its flesh shall become as the flesh of a little child, and not the leprous thing we have seen it for the last nine years. Then, fellow-citizens, when the party is thus purified, the citizens of Ohio may invite some son of that regenerated Democracy to the Governorship of the State; then the people might feel that in their hands the interests of the State and the republic would be safe; but until then they will not be trusted.

NOTE. The views concerning-Major General Rosecrans expressed above were those that Mr. Garfield held from the time that he served under that officer in 1863 to the Presidential campaign of 1880. An interesting series of Garfield-Rosecrans documents will be found in the Appendix to this volume.

CIVIL SERVICE REFORM.

REMARKS MADE IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ON VARIOUS OCCASIONS.

ON the 14th of March, 1870, the House of Representatives being in Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union, and having under consideration a bill making appropriations to supply deficiencies in the appropriations for the service of the government for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1870, and for other purposes, Mr. Garfield made a brief speech which he entitled "Public Expenditures and the Civil Service." In the first part of the speech he replied to attacks made in the debate upon the Republican party on the score of prodigal and corrupt expenditure, and then addressed himself to the improvement of the civil service as a measure of administrative reform.

MR.

R. CHAIRMAN, -I desire to call the attention of the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations to a measure of economy and reform to which he may, with great propriety, direct his efforts, and in which, I have no doubt, he will have the hearty co-operation of the President and the executive departments, and the gratitude of all good men. I refer to our civil service. I shall not now enter that broad field which my distinguished friend from Rhode Island has occupied, but I call attention to the fact that our whole civil service is costing us far too much. Secretary McCulloch once made this remarkable statement: "If you will give me one half what it costs to run the Treasury Department of the United States, I will do all its work better than it is now done, and make a great fortune out of what I can save." The same might be said of all our executive departments. And if there is one thing to which my distinguished friend from Massachusetts can devote his attention with most marked results, with the applause of this House, and of the whole country, it is the reorganization of these departments.

1 Mr. Dawes.

2 Mr. Jenckes.