Excerpt from Speech of Hon. Salmon P. Chase: Delivered at the Republican Mass Meeting in Cincinnati, August 21, 1855, Together With Extracts From His Speeches in the Senate on Kindred Subjects

Mr. Chairman and Fellow Citizens:

More than thirty years have passed away since I, then a mere boy, became a dweller in this city. Few of those whom I now see before me have been here so long: to none of you, I am sure, is the prosperity of this beautiful city, or the advancement, in all respects, of her noble institutions, more dear. A boy citizen of the city before most of you were born, I have witnessed her progress with mingled pride, joy and gratitude, and in my measure and sphere have diligently sought, and shall always seek, to promote her welfare. Here in Cincinnati are all my interests centered. If she prospers, I partake in her prosperity. If she suffers, I, as well as the rest of you, must share the reverse.

Bound thus to you by common interests, and common hopes, and common affections, I stand before you to night in a position which, not many months since, I little dreamed of occupying: as the nominee of a great and powerful party for a high and responsible position - not one, it is true, invested with any control over Legislative action, nor indeed with any considerable power of any kind, but high and respectable nevertheless, because he who tills it must be taken to represent, in the great leading principles which he avows, the opinions of the people by whom he is elected.

You are aware, fellow citizens, that it has been my fortune, since my nomination as a candidate for Governor, to be assailed with envenomed bitterness. My whole past life - my entire political history has been ransacked for topics of accusation. Why I am thus pursued it seems hard to conjecture. I have never been the enemy of those who now start up as my enemies. They have suffered no wrong, no unkindness from me. And while I do not claim any immunity from error or freedom from faults, I dare boldly say that there is nothing in my political life which I hesitate to submit to the severest scrutiny.

The convention which placed me in nomination was composed of citizens from all political organizations, united by a common determination to resist the aggressions of the Slave Power, and especially to right the great wrong of the repeal of the Missouri Restriction. Among its members were numerous citizens whose experience in public affairs, genuine love of country and eminent abilities, entitled them to that large share of public confidence which they enjoyed. By this convention, and by a majority unusually large. I was placed in nomination. I had asked no human being to support me. I had even sought the permission of my friends to withdraw my name from the canvass. I would cheerfully and zealously have supported either of the distinguished gentlemen who were proposed for nomination. Nominated under such circumstances, I could not but be sensible that it was not because of any superior merit of mine, but because circumstance which have transpired during the last two years have identified me with a struggle in which the people of the country take a deep and abiding interest. In the Senate of the United States I have labored incessantly and to the uttermost of my ability to resist and arrest the greatest outrage of our generation, the ruthless subversion of that guarantee of Free Institutions which our Fathers had provided for the Northwest in the Missouri Prohibition. It was to mark its own abhorrence of this outrage, and to afford to the people of Ohio an opportunity of testifying their abhorrence of it, that the convention selected me as the standard bearer of Freedom during the political campaign in which we are now engaged.

It gratifies me to know that whatever may have been the political differences between myself and great numbers of those whom