Beside the fact that I thoroughly believed in the soundness
of bimetallism, as I now believe in it, I thought we ought
not to give our antagonists who were pressing us so hard,
and appealing so zealously to every debtor and every man in
pecuniary difficulties, the advantage, in debate before the
people, of arraying on their side all our great authorities
of the past. We had enough on our hands to encounter Mr.
Bryan and the solid South and the powerful Democratic Party
of New York and the other great cities, and every man in the
country who was uneasy and discontented, without giving them
the right to claim as their allies Alexander Hamilton, and
George Washington, and Oliver Ellsworth, and John C. Calhoun,
and Daniel Webster, and Henry Clay, and Thomas H. Benton.
I was, therefore, eager that the Republican Party should state
frankly in its platform what I, myself, deemed the sound doctrine.
It should denounce and condemn the attempt to establish the
free coinage of silver by the power of the United States
alone, and declare that to be practical repudiation and national
ruin.
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