and as the original company paid nothing all they get is clear gain; and whether the railroad is built or not, the people for years, all along the beautiful route, would be kept in suspense.  There was no more need of a car track along Lafayette avenue than there was need of one from the top of Trinity Church steeple to the moon!  The greater facility of travel, the greater prosperity!  But I am opposed to all railroads, the depot for which is an unprincipled speculator’s pocket.

It was only a few weeks later that I had to condemn a much greater matter, a national event.

On March 1, 1878, the Silver Bill was passed in Washington, notwithstanding the President’s veto.  The House passed it by a vote of 196 against 73, and the Senate agreed with a vote of 46 against 10.  It would be asking too much to expect anyone to believe that the 196 men in Congress were bought up.  So far as I knew the men, they were as honest on one side of the vote as on the other.  Senator Conkling, that giant of integrity, opposed it.  Alexander H. Stephens voted for it.  I talked with Mr. Stephens about it, and he said to me at the time, “Unless the Silver Bill pass, in the next six months there will not be two hundred business houses in New York able to stand.”  Still, the Silver Bill seemed like the first step towards repudiation of our national obligation, but I believe that at least 190 out of those 196 men who voted for it would have sacrificed their lives rather than repudiate our national debt.

I had an opportunity to comprehend the political explosion of the passage of this Bill all over the country, for it so happened I made a lecturing trip through the South and South-west during the month of March, 1878.

There is one word that described the whole feeling in the South at this time, and that was “hope.”  The most cheerful city, I found, was New Orleans.  She was rejoicing in the release from years of unrighteous government.  Just how the State of Louisiana had been badgered, and her every idea of self-government insulted, can be appreciated only by those who come face to face with the facts.  While some of the best patriots of the North went down with the right motives to mingle in the reconstruction of the State governments of the South, many of these pilgrimists were the cast-off and thieving politicians of the North, who, after being stoned out of Northern waters, crawled up on the beach at the South to sun themselves.  The Southern States had enough dishonest men of their own without any importation.  The day of trouble passed.  Louisiana and South Carolina for the most part are free.  Governor Nichols of the one, and Governor Wade Hampton of the other, had the confidence of the great masses of the people.