64

438 LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

what old for such service and never much of a stump speaker, I obeyed the
summons. In company with my young friend Charles S. Morris, a man rarely
gifted with eloquence, I made speeches in five different states, indoors and
out of doors, in skating rinks and public halls, day and night, at points where
it was thought by the National Republican Committee that my presence and
speech would do most to promote success.

While the Committee was anxious to have the question of tariff made the
prominent topic in the campaign, it did not in words restrict me to that one
topic. I could not have gone into the field with any such restriction, had any
such been imposed. Hence I left the discussion of the tariff to my young
friend Morris, while I spoke for justice and humanity, as did that noble
woman and peerless orator, Miss Anna E. Dickenson, whose heart has ever
been true to the oppressed, and who was a speaker in the same campaign. I
took it to be the vital and animating principle of the Republican party. I
found the people more courageous than their party leaders. What the leaders
were afraid to teach, the people were brave enough and glad enough to learn.
I held that the soul of the nation was in this question and that the gain of all
the gold in the world would not compensate for the loss of the Nation's soul.
National honor is the soul of the Nation, and when this is lost all is lost. The
Republican party and the Nation were pledged to the protection of the con-
stitutional rights of the colored citizens. If they refused to perform their
promise, they would be false to their highest trust. As with an individual, so
too, with a nation, there is a time when it may properly be asked "What doth
it profit to gain the whole world and thereby lose one's soul?"

With such views as these I supported the Republican party in this some-
what remarkable campaign. I based myself upon that part of the Republican
platform which I supported in my speech before the Republican Convention
at Chicago. No man who knew me could have expected me to pursue any
other course. The little I said on the tariff was simply based upon the prin-
ciple of self protection taught in every department of nature whether in men,
beasts or plants. It comes with the inherent right to exist. It is in every blade
of grass as well as in every man and nation. If foreign manufactures oppress
and cripple ours and serve to retard our natural progress, we have the right
to protect ourselves against such efforts . Of course this right of self-protec-
tion has its limits, and the thing most important is to discover those limits
and to observe them. There is no doubt as to the principle, but like all other
principles, it may not justify all the inferences which may be deduced from
it. There seems to be no difference between the Republican and Democratic
parties as to the principle of protection. They only differ in the inferences