The Republican

A newspaper from New York, called the Republican, expresses the sentiments of the Republican plan for the economy. The Dispatch immediately goes on to criticize these ideas.

THE REPUBLICAN. An American newspaper is about being published in New York. Its name expresses its views. The Republican. This short paragraph explains its mission: Financial and commercial America versus Europe-gold, like our cotton, for sale. Greenbacks for money. [Applause.] An American system of finance. American products and labor free. Foreign manufactures prohibited. [Applause.] Open doors to artisans and immigrants. Atlantic and Pacific oceans for American steamships and shipping. New York the financial centre of the world. Wall street emancipated from Bank of England, or American cash for American bills. [Applause.] The credit fancier and credit mobilier system, or capital mobilized to resuscitate the South and our mining interests, and to people the country from ocean to ocean, from Omaha to San Francisco. [Cheers.] More organized labor, more cotton, more gold and silver bullion, to sell foreigners at the highest prices. Ten millions of naturalized citizens demand a penny ocean postage to strengthen the brotherhood of labor. [Loud cheers.] If Congress vote one hundred and twenty-five millions for a standing army and freedmen's bureau for the blacks, cannot they spare one million for the whites? [Loud and continued cheers.] Many think that greenbacks mean repudiation-giving French assignats, Confederate debt, and continental money, as examples. There is no analogy. Those debts and those times had no commerce-no agriculture-no manufactures-no trade back of them. We have. Give us fifteen years free from taxes and foreign imports, with the export off cotton, and sixty millions of people would pay off the whole debt as a donation. [Loud applause.] Greeley yelled out " On to Richmond "-we blindly plunged in and got Bull Run. He now shrieks, "On to specie payments," to give another Bull Run. [Sensation.] But a military Bull Run and a financial Bull Run are two distinct things. Panic now would throw back the nation ten years. [Applause.] What is more disgusting than to see these editors, who could not run a bank, build a factory, launch a steamboat, stow a ship, or construct a railway, have the impudence to instruct the nation on finance. [Laughter and applause.] Who wants Adam Smith, Bastier, or John Stuart Mill, flung at them when the finance ship is in the breakers? [Sensation and applause.] The Revolution newspaper will wake up some of these dead editors into the present century with an American system of finance. [Applause.] As they borrow all their ideas from England, why not borrow their facts. European revolution followed our war of 1776-'83, as European revolution will follow our war of 1861-'67. Pitt's greenback four-months' order in council in 1797 lasted twenty-five years. Can we resume in as many months? [No.] Alabama bondholders after the battle of "Waterloo (1815) yelled for specie as our Alabama bondholders, through Edmunds, Morrill, Banks, and Eliot, are yelling now; Parliament yielded. Gold rose to 40 per cent., and three thousand bankrupts were in the gazette that year (1816) [sensation], and the starving people rose en masse, and specie payment was again postponed. McCulloch is doing the same thing here? forcing bankruptcy and starving the people. [Shame.]

“The Republican,” Reconstructing Virginia, accessed March 30, 2023, https://reconstructingvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/765.