Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 10.djvu/129

 GARFIELD

��to-night. Not in Chicago, in the heat of June, but at the ballot-boxes of the Republic, in the quiet of November, after the silence of deliberate judgment, will this question be settled. And now, gentlemen of the Convention, what do we want ? '

Bear with me a moment. "Hear me for my cause," and for a moment "be silent that you may hear."

Twenty-five years ago this Republic was bear- ing and wearing a triple chain of bondage. Long familiarity with traffic in the bodies and souls of men had paralyzed the consciences of a ma- jority of our people; the narrowing and disin- tegrating doctrine of State sovereignty had shackled and weakened the noblest and most beneficent powers of the national government; and the grasping power of slavery was seizing upon the virgin territories of the West, and drag- ging them into the den of eternal bondage.

At that crisis the Republican party was bom. It drew its first inspiration from that fire of liberty which God has lighted in every human heart, and which all the powers of ignorance and tyranny can never wholly extinguish. The Re- publican party came to deliver and to save. It entered the arena where the beleaguered and as- sailed Territories were struggling for freedom, and drew around them the sacred circle of lib- erty, which the demon of slavery has never dared

' At this point a voice called out: " We want Qarflpld " 101

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