Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 February 1881 — A FAREWELL ADDRESS. [ARTICLE]

A FAREWELL ADDRESS.

[From the New York Jun.] Kellow-Chtzens : About t> laydown the great trust which your suffrages conferred four years ago upon another person, it seems proper that I should address to you a few words of affectionate warning. It has been customary heretofore only tot the great Presidents, who were conscious of the love and veneration of the people, to take leave of their country in this solemn form. But, inasmuch as I can hardly be ranked among the Presidents at all, and history will probably take note of me only as an intruder in that illustrious line, I do not feel myself bound by those precedents. My situation in the administration of this office, to which I was not elected, has been one of singular embarrassment I had borne arms for my country, if not with distinction, at least with moderate credit My fellow-citizens of Ohio, deeming me an inoffensive sort of person, without sufficient force of character to engender enemies, repeatedly raised me, like a wooden image, to tbe place of Governor—an office in that State of no power and influence. But I was gratified with these apparent tettimcuials ofipublic favor, and, believing that no man of realabilities could receive the nomination at Cincinnati, I was not surprised when the battte of the Titans ended in the choice of the pigmy. And it was well so. A standard bearer of larger stature would have been struck, oerhaps fatally, by many missiles which passed harmless over my head. My defeat was a cruel disappointment, and the very largo majority of my opponent added greatly to the weight of the blow. But T owe myself the justice to state, in this, doubtless, the last communication tbe public will ever receive from me, that I had no thought then of resisting or reversing the popular will. Had I consulted only the promptings of my own heart I would have refused to be a party to the memorable conspiracy which was immediately formed to substitute the candidate rejected by the people for the candidate whom they had elected. So innocent was lof the design subsequently executed that I publicly acknowledged my defeat in a candid address from my own doorstep, and I confess that I was profoundly shocked when I saw Mr. Chandler’s celebrated dispatch boldly announcing my election hours after my defeat had been universally known and conceded. But, as the plot developed, and only the most agreeable features were communicated to me, while the dark details of crime and corruption were carefully hidden, the scruples which I soon came to regard as mere personal weaknesses gradually melted away, and I finally accepted the fruits of conspiracy and forgery with complacency and even pleasure. I will not recall the history of my induction into office. I wish, indeed, it might be erased from the memory of men, and I would cheerfully return to the conscience fund of the treasury, or make over to my defrauded competitor, all that had been saved of his four years’ salary, if that act could restore me to the state of innocence I enjoyed while yet the harmless Governor of Ohio. My position after the assumption of the Presidency, as before said, was one of peculiar delicacy and difficulty. 1 had read attentively the powerful letter of acceptance by the great statesman nominated at St. Louis, and inasmuch as the people had, by a large majority, expressed their approval of its contents, and I was in the occupation of the office to which its author had been elected, I conceived it to be my duty to effect some of the reforms therein recommended. But I found myself powerless; I was not a free agent. The Government was administered in my name, but I was little more than a passive instrument in the unscrupulous hands which had forged the various links in that so-called chain of title to the office I held. Those men were not reformers ; they had not brought me into power to forward the measures enunciated by my late opponent It was some time before I fully realized my abject dependence upon the secrecy and fidelity of the numerous agents employed in the great fraud, and meanwhile I was permitted to amuse the country with certain promises of reform, which were, however, confined to the civil service. At length even this pretense grew ridiculous. What I had intended for reform Mr. Sherman calmly converted into the simple process of turning out his political enemies and putting in his friends,’ and Mr. Sherman, as I was early made to mnderstand, was one of my masters. I loathed in my heart the leprous criminals who had conceived and executed the daring frauds in Louisiana and Florida. But no sooner had I taken the oath of office than I ascertained that my nearest friends and sponsors had promised them not merely protection, but high promotion and other rewards, and I was compelled to execute those promis?s under penalty of complete discovery in every shocking detail of the stupendous crime of which I seem to be enjoying the fruits. It is needless to pursue the narrative. It is enough to say that, except one Cazenave, who was paid in cash, they were all—visiting statesmen, Returning-Board knaves, forgers, thieves, secret negotiators and counsel before the Electoral Commissionpensioned upon your treasury. The last of these nominations, that of the notorious Stanley Matthews, for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, is even now pending in the Senate. But there was a still more grievous humiliation to be endured. When I realized my defeat • on the day after the election, I declared truly that the sharpest pang I then felt arose from apprehension concerning tbe fate of the colored Republicans in the contested Southern States. I now learned that in order to secure the completion of the fraudulent count, nij friends bad pledged me to abandon those colored Republicans, and to hand over those States to the Democrats, who claimed them, on precisely the same grounds as Mr. Tilden might have claimed the Presidency. I had no resource but to comply. This step, however, was only less fatal to me than would have been a refusal. It lost me—l will not say the respect, for to that I had no claim -but the support of the earnest Republicans, who declared that if I was elected, so were Packard and Chamberlain. It was soon plain that they, too, regarded me as a fraud in a new sense. This defection left me practically without a party, and I sought to supply the deficiency by an alliance with the Southern Democracy. I outlined a magnificent and dazzling scheme of internal improvements to be carried out in the South at the general expense, and I blew, with all the breath that was in me, the trump of resurrection over the tomb of the old Whig party. But nobody would trust a Fraud, and but ojjc solitary Whig emerged at my blast, in the person of the late Alexander H. Stephens. Having lost my own party it was evident to them that my ability to execute was less than my inclination to promise, and they prudently declined a coalition which on my side was based on nothing more substantial than the few offices which had not already been distributed. Under these circumstances it will be seen that the total failure of my fraudulent administration was a foregone conclusion, and I long 'since discovered that I must content thyself with drawing the salary of the Presidency in advance and hoarding what could be saved from it by rigid economy and a sordid affectation of temperance. This, with a scrupulous provision for a few personal friends, such as my family physician and my son Webb, at the public expense, has been my only solace under the sad humiliations of these later months of my residence in the White House. Conscious that all parties, and even men of no party, looked forward with a grateful sense of relief to the period of my final departure for Ohio, I have felt that some explanation was due to myself and to the public, of the difficulties which inevitably environ a fraudulent President. Had I been honestly elected, I could, no doubt, have done much for the reformation of the public abuses pointed out with such emphasis by Mr. Tilden, aud mildly alluded to by Mr. Carl Schurz in my own letter of acceptance. But I was the slave of my political creators ; the paralysis of the original fraud pervaded my entire administration. If, in what is here written, my countryman shall find anything to extenuate my failings, oranything to soften the judgment which must follow me into history, the object of this, my farewell address to the swindled people of the United States, will have been accomplished. Rutherford B. Hayes.