BIRTHDAY PROMISE of
THE REPUBLIC
COMPLIMENTS OF
The Republican City Central Committee
KANSAS city, MISSOURI
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2010 with funding from
State of Indiana through the Indiana State Library
http://www.archive.org/details/birthdaypromiseoOOcell
T^e BIRTHDAY PROMISE <f
THE REPUBLIC
DELIVERED AT THE
LINCOLN DAY BANQUET
OF THE
YOUNG MEN'S REPUBLICAN CLUI
OF MISSOURI
CONVENTION HALL
FEBRUARY FOURTEENTH
NINETEEN-SIXTEEN
By JOHN F. CELL
ATTORNEY- AT-LAW
KANSAS CITY. MO.
Republican City Central Committee
1121 Grajstd Avenue
KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI
To the V^oter:
This brochure is sent to you by the
Repubhcan City Central Committee,
With the full expectation that it will
arouse you to action in the present cit-ff
campaign, and that you will "pass it
on, ' ' and that you will be sure to register
and Vote, and ur^e ipour friends to reg-
ister and vote for clean city government.
REPUBLICAN CITY CENTRAL
COMMITTEE
/^^ w^
The Birthday Promise of the RepuHic
' * A new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated
to the proposition that all men are created equal"; —
that was the Birthday Promise of the Republic. But
how to make that promise good was the anxious
thought of every statesman. Our ability to make that
promise good depended upon whether this nation, or
any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, could long
endure.
At the very outset, two world forces, organization
and disintegration, began to war against each other
for supremacy in our national life. The strong central
government idea of the giant minded Hamilton mili-
tated against the States' Rights doctrine of the great-
est of Democrats, Thomas Jefferson; and the policies
of Hamilton triumphed. When called to the post as
first Secretary of the Treasury, he produced that series
of brilliant treasury measures which were the wonder
of two continents. As the funding system povided
for the payment of the depreciated securities with the
most rigid honor; as the assumption of not only the
foreign and domestic debts, but also of the state debts,
''cemented more closely the union of states," by plac-
ing the interests of the moneyed classes with the cen-
tral government ; as the national bank was created and
its legality shoAvn by evoking the implied powers of
the Constitution, which have since become the most
fruitful source of national legislation ; as the report on
manufacturers recommended and secured the adoption
3
THE BIRTHDAY PROMISE OF THE REPUBLIC
of the great principle of a protective tariff, — as all
these measures were produced, one by one, Hamilton
was unfolding and executing the great comprehensive
policy, whereby the foundation of this Republic was
laid so broad and so deep that the shocks and storms of
political controversy for more than a century have not
been able to overturn it.
"He smote the rock," said Webster, "of the national
resources and abundant streams of revenue gushed
forth. He touched the dead corpse of the public credit,
and it sprung upon its feet. The fabled birth of
Minerva from the brain of Jove was hardly more sud-
den or more perfect than the financial system of the
United States, as it burst forth from the conception of
Alexander Hamilton." Our nation has followed these
Hamiltonian policies in the main up to the present time.
Under that splendid leadership, we have grown from a
few states that skirted the Atlantic seaboard until our
domain extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from
the Great Lakes to the Gulf, — until we are the richest
and most powerful nation on the globe, commanding
the respect and wonder of the world.
But how did the Fathers dare tell us "that all men
are created equal, ' ' for at that time, twelve of the thir-
teen states held slaves. They dared make the promise,
for they knew that the love of liberty that is planted in
every human breast, and the ever joyous return of our
natal day, awakening in us fond hopes that this should
be "the land of the free and the home of the brave,"
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THE BIRTHDAY PROMISE OF THE REPUBLIC
would in the fullness of time, take that foul blot from
our nation's life; and so, practical statesmen that they
were, they placed slavery in the course of ultimate
extinction. They refused to put the word "slave" in
the time honored Constitution of the Republic. They
excluded slavery from all the unorganized territory of
the nation, and they prohibited the importation of
slaves after twenty years.
There came a day however, when the string of com-
promise was played out. The South determined to put
slavery on the cotton gin basis. Slavery must be ex-
tended. In 1854, Stephen A. Douglas put through con-
gress the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, a measure which burst
the cordon the Fathers had bound around the slave
states; and which transferred the battle ground of
slavery from the halls of congress to the territories of
the nation.
The Dred Scott Decision, in line with the Kansas-
Nebraska Bill, broke down all barriers to the extension
of slavery over the whole nation. Statesmen of that
day began to speak a new language. "I don't care
whether slavery is voted up or voted down ; if any
community wants slavery, they have a right to have
it," became the stock phrases of the day. All differ-
ences between slavery and liberty were being eradi-
cated and pressed out of view.
The great Methodist Church was rent in twain.
Every Presbyterian General Assembly was rocked with
dissension. John Brown made his midnight raid on
5
THE BIRTHDAY PROMISE OF THE REPUBLIC
Harper's Ferry. The nation's life hung in the balance.
This nation was aflame. Free institutions were at
stake. The Birthday Promise of the Republic seemed
about to vanish as a dream in the night.
In the midst of all this confusion, the nation was
startled by a voice from the plains of Illinois. It came
as if from the Mount, " 'A house divided against itself
cannot stand'. I believe this government cannot en-
dure permanently half slave and half free. I do not
expect the union to be dissolved — I do not expect the
house to fall — but I do expect that it will cease to be
divided." That was the voice of Abraham Lincoln.
Who was this man Lincoln, from the walks of the
plain common people? His early life is summed up in
"The short and simple annals of the poor." He went
to college to the writers of Sacred Story ; to the
dreamer of Bedford Jail ; to the author of Aesop 's
Fables, and to the historian of the life of Washington.
He took lessons in God's great out-of-doors, from the
earth beneath him, from the forests about him, and
from the sun, moon and stars, as they sang above him.
He was a failure as a flat-boatman ; an indifferent sur-
veyor; a postmaster, who kept the office in his hat;
an unsuccessful groceryman, making debts that took
him ten years struggle to pay off ; judged by the ordi-
nary standards of success, a second rate lawyer; and
a man who, when called to the presidency, was com-
mercially rated at three thousand dollars. Worth in
money only a few thousands, but worth millions in
9
THE BIRTHDAY PROMISE OF THE REPUBLIC
honesty, courage, and common sense, he was made the
first Republican President. Strange mixture and
mingling of the awkward and the beautiful, of the
grotesque and the lovel3^, of the humorous and the
sober, of the lenient and the firm, of the patient and
the brave, of the commonplace and the tragic : and at
last our "Martyr Chief."
You remember Hawthorne's beautiful story, "The
Great Stone Face." You recall the boy Ernest, as he
searched, from day to day and year to year, for some-
one who looked like that face on the mountain side,
half smile and half tears, until finally one day the
people said, "Behold, Ernest himself is the image of
The Great Stone Face." In like fashion, Abraham
Lincoln looked at and pondered the Declaration of
Independence, from day to day and year to year, until
he himself became the perfect personification of lib-
erty. This man himself was the Birthday Promise of
the Republic, the savior of the union, the perfect apos-
tle of freedom. He blazed the path the nation has
from then until now.
Fellow Republicans, we should take heart. The
night of Democratic failure is far spent. The day of
Republican opportunity is at hand. When I recall how
the Republican Party, under the leadership of Hamil-
ton, the maker of the nation, gave us the qualities of
strength and order ; how his policies arrested the forces
of disintegration, and gave us a strong central govern-
ment under which we have grown to be the greatest
7
THE BIRTHDAY PROMISE OF THE REPUBLIC
and richest nation on earth ; when I remember how
this great ruling party, under the leadership of Lin-
coln, became the great human rights party that has
always put the man above the dollar; that its guiding
policy has always been America for Americans; when
I remember all these things, I can see clearly why the
Republican Party, after a brief vacation, is coming
back. It is coming back because Progressives and
Republicans alike are determined to make it and keep
it the party of Lincoln. It is coming back because it
is destined to a future more glorious even than its
past. It is the fit instrument with which to make the
Birthday Promise of the Republic a reality.
This Republican Party, founded by Hamilton, and
broadened out by Lincoln, is big enough for all Pro-
gressives and all Republicans alike. It was big enough
for the silent soldier, Ulysses S. Grant; for the canal
driver, James A. Garfield; for the "Plumed Knight,'"
James G. Blaine ; and for the patient William jMcKin-
ley. This party is big enough for the genial ex-presi-
dent, William Howard Taft; and this party is big
enough for that man who has a grip on the plain com-
mon people, as no other statesman has had since Lin-
coln's day — that fearless champion of American honor
and American democracy, Theodore Roosevelt.
I am told that of the five speakers here this evening
I'm the Prodigal Son who ran away in 1912 and helped
form the Progressive Party. And I will respond to the
toast of our distinguished guest, Mr. Estabrook — "Get
8
THE BIRTHDAY PROMISE OF THE REPUBLIC
Together." You noticed the idea of Mr. Taft, that
the Progressives would come back in sackcloth and
ashes, didn't appeal to Mr. Estabrook. Mr. Estabrook
speaks the spirit of the great Lincoln, voiced in the
words, "With malice toward none, with charity for
all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see
the right, let us strive on "
As I remember, however, that story of the Prodigal
Son, there were two boys in that household. It's true
the younger son did run away and waste his substance
in riotous living, but the elder son did not have sand
and spunk enough to run away from home. I will
leave you to say which of the two was the real Re-
publican. And you will remember, when the younger
son came back home with his changed life, saying to
his father, ' ' I am no more worthy to be called thy son ;
make me as one of thy hired servants," the elder son
whined around that he had never even been given a
kid with which to make merry, and sneeringly said,
"this thy son" ran away. But I call the more than
one hundred thousand Progressives of Missouri, and
the more than four million Progressives of the nation^
to witness that Mr. Estabrook, and these other gentle-
men who stayed in the party, don't Avhine around, nor
do they sneeringly say, ' ' This thy son. " No ! No !
Thank God! But with quickening step, throbbing
heart, and outreaching hand, they say, "My brother!"
I want that we shall get together, as the men got
together in Lincoln's day. Let me therefore, in con-
9
THE BIRTHDAY PROMISE OF THE REPUBLIC
elusion, read you a few words from Lincoln's speech
to the first Republican Convention of Illinois, at Bloom-
ington, in Eighteen Hundred and Fifty-six. There
was in that convention every shade and variety of
opinion. On the one hand there was the extreme aboli-
tionist of the Lovejoy-Phillips type. On the other hand
there was the conservative old line Whig. Between
these, Abraham Lincoln, the practical statesman, found
a common meeting ground and moulded this dumb,
unformed sentiment into a mighty organization which
was to save the Union. Listen to his words : —
"We know that there is not a perfect agree-
ment of sentiment here on the public ques-
tions which might be rightfully considered in
this convention, and that the indignation
which we all must feel cannot be helped ; but
all of us must give up something for the good
of the cause. There is one desire which is
uppermost in the mind, one wish common to
us all — to which no dissent will be made, and
I counsel you earnestly to bury all resentment,
to sink all personal feeling, make all things
work to a common purpose in which we are
united and agreed about "
Fellow Republicans, in the name and spirit of the
great Lincoln, I counsel you earnestly to bury all re-
sentment, to sink all personal feeling, make all things
work to a common purpose in which we are united and
agreed about. I counsel you earnestly that as Lincoln
got together the discordant forces for the mighty pur-
pose of saving the Union, so we, forgetting those
10
THE BIRTHDAY PROMISE OF THE REPUBLIC
things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those
things which are before, must press toward the mark
for the prize of the high calling which Lincoln has set
for us by his noble and illustrious example.
That means all patriotic citizens must unite in a
common purpose to release Kansas City from the grip
of a vote-buying, vote-selling, corrupt, Democratic
machine, and restore our municipal government to a
real rule of the people. That means we must put this
great State of Missouri, the mysterious stranger, back
into the Republican column. That means, nationally,
we must drive from power this James Buchanan watch-
ful waiting Democratic administration, and put in its
place the Abraham Lincoln Republican Party of
achievement and accomplishment. That means we
must here and now dedicate our lives to the unfinished
work which they who fought before us have thus far
so nobly advanced; that from Abraham Lincoln
and the hosts of other honored dead, "we take in-
creased devotion to that cause for which they gave
the last full measure of devotion, — that we here highly
resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, —
that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of
freedom, — and that government of the people, by the
people, for the people, shall not perish from the
earth."
11
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