"PROHIBITION AND ITS OPPONENTS"

1886

A SPEECH BY JOHN A. MARTIN

Transcribed by Ernst F. Tonsing, Ph.D.

Thousand Oaks, California
July 31, 2004

[Following is a transcription of some pages of a speech by Col. John A. Martin, Governor

of Kansas 1884-1889. It is in two parts, pp. 1-4 and 6-7. It is puzzling how the two
portions fit together. The first seems to be a "stump speech" by the Republican
candidate, but the second seems to be a speech against the opponents of Prohibition.
Perhaps the missing page 5 would have clarified the relationship between the two parts,
but, after rehearsing the history of the relationship between the Democratic and
Republican parties during the time of Territorial Kansas and its early statehood, it is odd
that Martin would go over the same ground on page 6 to preface his remarks on the
Democratic opposition to Prohibition. While these were found in the same file in the
Kansas State Historical Society archives, one can easily consider the pages as remnants
of two different speeches.

[Sometime in 1886, John A. Martin wrote the first part of a speech to respond to the
assertion that the Democratic party is "the friend of the colored man," and "the friend of
the soldier" (p. 1). Internal evidence (the note penciled in at the top of page 2 referring to
the Knights of Labor meeting at Richmond), indicates that he delivered the talk sometime
during or after the middle of October, 1886. The speech may have been one used by
Martin as he campaigned against the Democratic governor of Kansas, Governor George
W. Glick. In it, Martin relates the attempts of the "Democrats," that is, the Southern
states, to promote slavery and to extend it into the Kansas Territory, to undo the
Emancipation Proclamation, and, more recently, to prevent Black Americans from
participating in the government. Terrorism, midnight murders and the Ku Klux Klans in
the attempt to disenfranchise Blacks are the results. Hardly is the party a friend of the
soldier, bringing, as it did, the carnage of the War Between the States. Even now, they
sneer at the "bloody shirt" worn by Union soldiers during that conflict, writes Martin.
Unfortunately, a fifth page is missing, which, no doubt, extended this discussion.

[Page 6 continues an argument that recalls the border conflicts in Territorial Kansas,
during which Missouri ruffians stole or stuffed the ballot boxes, and murdered hundreds
of Free-state settlers. Making a jump to 1886, Martin shows that the Democratic Party of
Kansas is now opposing the Constitutional amendment prohibiting the sale of liquor in
the state. Martin, initially, was opposed to prohibition and fought against the amendment
to the state Constitution and the enforcement legislation. When the more radical pro-
prohibition, Republican Governor, St. John, was defeated in 1882 by the anti-prohibition
Democrat, George W. Glick, Martin realized that he had to endorse prohibition to have a
viable chance at winning the popular vote in the 1884 elections.1 His position was clearly
stated at Washington, Kansas, October 24, 1884:

I want to be fairly, explicitly understood. If I am elected governor, when

in the presence of Almighty God and the sovereign people of Kansas, I
raise my hand to take the oath of office, I shall not do so with falsehood on
my lips and perjury in my heart. I will not equivocate. I will do my duty,
under the constitution and laws I have sworn to see faithfully executed. I
make no apology to any person under the shining stars for holding this
faith... Alike as a citizen and as a public officer I shall at all times maintain
and uphold these ideas of private and public duty, because the whole
fabric of our American system of government rests upon them.2

That was not all. In a letter by Martin on November 10, 1886, he writes:

I have one ambition which I wish to realize during my term of office, and
that is that on the expiration I may be able to surrender the office to my
successor, and say to him that there is not an open saloon within the limits
of the state of Kansas.3

In the present speech, Martin calls upon every citizen and public officer to enforce the
law that embodies the will of the majority. The text ends at the bottom of page seven in
mid-sentence.

[The pages are typewritten, single-spaced, with a number of corrections and additions in
pencil. These revisions are placed in italics to distinguish them from the typed portions.
A portion of paragraph two is canceled by a diagonal line. It appears in a footnote. At
the end of paragraph four, Martin encloses in brackets an anecdote that he would have
inserted ad lib, and writes notes on several others in pencil. The transcription follows the
original in spelling, punctuation, indentation, pagination and style, except that double-
spaces are inserted between the paragraphs. -Ernst F. Tonsing]

(1)
I have referred to the fact that the Democratic party is accustomed to
masquerading in strange disguises, and prone to assume virtues it has not. In the present
campaign in Kansas this tendency has passed the limits of burlesqe [sic], and become a
broad farce. For the Democratic party of Kansas is posing, to-day, as the friend of the
colored man, and as the friend of the soldier. Could anything, considered in the light of
its past history, be more ludicrous than this? For more than a quarter of a century the
Democratic party was the prop and support of human slavery. Its leaders, north as well

1
James C. Malin, "Was Governor John A. Martin a Prohibitionist?" Kansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 1,
No. 1 (November, 1831), p. 63.
2
Ibid.
3
Ibid., p. 46.
as south, were the servile tools of the slave power. It broke down the barriers of the
Missouri Compromise in order to extend the area of slavery.4 It endeavored, for six long
years, to fasten slavery upon Kansas. It drove out, imprisoned or murdered hundreds of
the early settlers in Kansas because they were in favor of making this a free State. It
stuffed ballot-boxes, suppressed newspapers, and burned the cabins and homes of our
people, in order to establish slavery in Kansas. Its leaders attempted to destroy the
Union, and establish on its ruins a Confederacy whose corner stone was human slavery.
It denounced the Emancipation Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln as unconstitutional. It
opposed every attempt to enfranchise the slaves, and during two National campaigns it
endeavored to defeat the Republican party on this issue. In no less than seven State[s] of
this Union the vote of the colored electors is systematically suppressed, by force or fraud,
by the shot-gun or tissue-ballot.6 In these States fully five thousand black men have been
cruelly murdered, by the Democratic party, because they dared assert their Constitutional
rights as American citizens. I can remember, not very many years ago, seeing in
Democratic processions, banners inscribed with all manner of insulting references to the
negro, and denunciations of the Republicans as "nigger-lovers" and "wooly-heads." The
colored people were, for twenty years, constantly reviled and denounced, by Democratic
newspapers and orators, as "baboons" and "apes," and the Republican party was opposed,
ridiculed and denounced because it demanded justice for the blacks.

(2)

The amendments to the Constitution abolishing slavery and enfranchsing [sic] colored
men were resisted at every step, by every Democrat in the land. The Democratic party
was always and everywhere the enemy, the bitter, unrelenting enemy, of the colored
race.7 Yet now it is posing as the friend of the colored man, and has, in the hope of

4
The "Missouri Compromise" of 1820, that slavery was to be prohibited north of the 36° 30' line, was
enacted as the price of admitting Missouri as a slave state.
5
Fraudulent elections occurred in the Kansas Territory often. For example, in the election for a Territorial
Legislature on March 30, 1855, armed men from Missouri guarded almost all of the polling places in the
territory. The judges of the election appointed by the governor were driven away from the voting stations,
and some thousand men crossed over from Missouri to Lawrence, bringing two pieces of artillery.
6
The "tissue-ballots" were undersized ballots, called "little jokers," that were issued to African Americans
instead of regular ballots. Pre-marked ballots were stuffed into the ballot boxes, and the insertion of the
smaller ballots would not reveal their presence in the boxes. The "tissue-paper" ballots were then easily
extracted before the ballots were counted. The abuse was particularly notorious in the state of Florida.
This state had Jim Crow laws, and the activities of racist organizations, such as the Ku Klux Klan, were
particularly violent. Intimidation and lynching were effective in making sure that Black citizens were
excluded from the polling stations. There were twice the number of lynchings in Florida than Louisiana,
Georgia and Mississippi, and three times the number in Alabama. Florida was among the first states to
legislate a multiple ballot box law, requiring voters to insert eight separate ballots in eight separate ballot
boxes. The law was intended to confuse Black Americans in voting, whose illiteracy—40% in 1900—
made the placing of the right ballot in the right box difficult. A poll tax was enacted in 1889 in Florida,
which was not repealed until 1938. Questions of fraud and discrimination have been raised in nearly every
election in Florida to the present.
7
Written in pencil above the number on this page is the following: The Knights of Labor at Richmond. An
arrow from the beginning of the line is drawn to the sentence beginning with, "Yet now..." Martin no
doubt intended to mention this labor organization, which was meeting at Richmond, Virginia, in mid-
October, 1886 (this gives the approximate date of Martin's use of this speech). It was founded by tailors in
getting a few votes, actually nominated one of the hated race as a candidate for a State
office!8 Evidently they still think that the colored men of this State are the ignorant,
credulous, degraded beings the Democrats for years declared them to be; that they have
no memories; that they have forgotten the years of their bondage, and the insults, the
injustice, the cruel shames and wrongs the Democratic party has heaped upon their race.
The colored man who votes a Democratic ticket justifies, fully justifies, every outrage,
wrong, insult and crime the Democratic party has perpetrated against his race—justifies
the terrorism, the Ku Klux Klans, the midnight murders, the wholesale cheating and false
counting, by means of which a million of his race in the South are disfranchised, and
reduced to a condition of servitude but little better than slavery.

The spectacle of the Democratic party posing as "the friend of the soldier" is no
less ludicrous, in the light of its past history, than is its pretense that it is "the friend of the
colored man." I am a Republican because, among other reasons, I was a Union soldier. I
know that there were loyal Democrats during the war, and I shall never fail to do full
justice to their patriotism. But I know, also, that while thousands of Democrats proved
themselves true patriots during the war, the Democratic party, as a political organization,
was persistently and consistently disloyal. From the first flash of the gun at Sumpter until
the last shot at Bentonville, it never ceased to predict failure for the Union arms, and it
did all in its power to make its prophecy a reality. It discouraged enlistments, it resisted
the draft, it encouraged foreign countries to interfere in our affairs, it assailed the
greenback currency, it did all in its power to break down the credit of the government,
and it slandered and denounced the patient, suffering, great-souled President upon whom
the sorrows of a stricken nation hung so heavily. No

Philadelphia in 1869, as a Masonic-like, secret organization that grew rapidly when its arcane rituals were
abandoned in 1881. The movement increased in size until 1886, when it had a membership of nearly
1,000,000. However, internal conflicts, its involvement in many strikes ending in failure, and the tragic
May 1, 1886, "Haymarket Riot" in Chicago, linked to the Knights of Labor, where a bomb killed twelve
people, including eight policemen, largely discredited the movement. George Douglas Howard Cole,
"Trade (Labour) Unions," vol. 22, Encyclopaedia Britannica (1963), p. 377.
8
Martin does not mention that in 1881, E. P. McCabe, a Black and a Republican, was elected County
Clerk, then, in 1882, and was elected State Auditor, being reelected in 1884. He was probably the first
Black to hold an elective office in a northern state.
9
The dangling word, "No," is attached to the following sentences at the top of page 3, which have been
crossed out by pencil. The passage is strongly worded, and was, perhaps, deemed by Martin as too
vehement for his purposes. In it Martin refers to the notorious Confederate prison at Andersonville in
which several soldiers in his unit, the Eighth Kansas Volunteers, lost their lives. He also mentions the
"Knights of the Golden Circle," a secret order of Southern sympathizers in the north who were called
"Copperheads" during the Civil War. The first "castle" or branch was organized in 1854 in Cincinnati,
with the object to extend slavery into the northern part of Mexico, that is, Texas. While the group did not
engage in treasonable activities, some of its members sought to resist the draft, discourage Union
enlistment, and to protect deserters. The order spread, and adopted the name, "Sons of Liberty" in 1864.
The passage in Martin's speech reads as follows:

[No] Republican ever tore down his country's flag, and spat upon it. No Republican ever called the
soldiers of the Union "Lincoln Hirelings" and "lop-eared Dutch." No Republican ever mounted guard
around the prison hell at Andersonville. No Republican ever rejoiced when the armies of the Union
suffered a defeat, or mourned when the hosts of the Rebellion were driven from a field of battle. No
Republican was ever a member of those sneaking, cowardly Copperhead organizations, the "Knights of the
Golden Circle" or the "Sons of Liberty " No Republican was ever a member of Quantrill's brutal gang of
 (3)

There is a splendid anthem which, during the war, was sung in every camp, and to whose
majestic music two million soldiers marched—the Song of Old John Brown.10 There is
another, n[o] less thrilling in its glorious chorus, which warms and stirs the hearts of loyal
soldiers whenever they hear its splendid music—the song which tells the story of the
great March to the Sea.11 No Democratic Convention can sing, or dares to sing, either of
these songs.

Twenty-three years ago this fall a Regiment of Kansas soldiers was engaged, for
two days in a desperate conflict with the armed hosts of treason, amid the tangled
underbrush at Chicamauga. Two years before they had marched away from the State,
proud, happy and hopeful, each with the glad picture of a country saved imprinted on his
heart and lighting up the future of his imagination. Life was a dear and love as sweet to
those Kansas boys as to any of you assembled here to-day. But when the sun went down
on the second day of that fierce battle, sixty-five per cent, of those Kansas boys—sixty-

ruffians and assassins, who burned defenceless [sic] Lawrence, and murdered her unarmed citizens. No
Republican ever rode, at night, with the bloody Ku Klux. No Republican ever attempted to disfranchise the
soldiers of the Union while they were absent fighting the battles of their country. No Republican ever
called Abraham Lincoln "a baboon and an ape," or denounced Ulysses S. Grant as a "drunken tanner," and
a "bloody butcher."
10
Martin refers to this very familiar song, sung to the tune, "Battle Hymn of the Republic," where "John
Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave." It has as the rousing chorus:

Glory, glory, hallelujah,

Glory, glory, hallelujah,
His soul goes marching on.
11
Martin could be referring to the 1865 song, "Marching Through Georgia," by Henry Clay Work, which
had as a refrain:

Hurrah! Hurrah! We bring the Jubilee.

Hurrah! Hurrah! The flag that makes you free,
So we sang the chorus from Atlanta to the sea,
While we were marching through Georgia.

More likely is the 1865 song, "When Sherman Marched down to the sea," by Samuel Hawkins Marshall
Byers of the Fifth Iowa,

Oh, proud was our army that morning,

That stood where the pine darkly towers,
When Sherman said, "Boys, you are weary,
But to-day fair Savannah is ours."
Than sang we a song for our Chieftain,
That echoed o'er river and lea,
And the stars on our banners shone brighter,
When Sherman marched down to the sea.
five out of every hundred—were lying, dead or wounded, on the blood-stained field.
They had been, for more than two years, my comrades, my friends, my boys, and I loved
them, one and all. Not

a shot fired at them, not a bullet that laid one of them low, was fired by a Republican.

The Democrats call this sort of talk "waiving the bloody shirt." But this insulting
sneer only illustrates the character of that party. The "bloody shirt" that is thus derided is
the old gray army shirt that covered the breasts of patriot heroes, and was torn and stained
by bullets aimed at the life of the Republic. That old gray army shirt went over the rebel
works at Donaldson, into the cedars at Stone River, through the tangled forests of the
Wilderness, and up the blazing heights of Mission Ridge. That old gray army shirt was
torn and stained at Corinth, Chancellorville and Antietam, and sanctified at Prairie Grove,
Chicamauga, Gettysburg and Atlanta. That old gray army shirt is as full of glory, and as
beautiful, in every true patriot's eyes, as are the stars and stripes of our splendid flag,
because it typifies the loyalty, the heroism and the sacrifices of the glorious men who
wore it, and with whose patriotic blood it was reddened. This is the "bloody shirt" that is
made, in every campaign, the stale joke of every Democratic orator, and the cheap catch-
word of every Democratic journal. And the Democrats who, for twenty years past, have
been sneering at the "bloody shirt," are the gentlemen who are to-day posing as "friends
of the soldier," and asking the support of soldiers for their candidates.

During the war a young man, whose father was an Indiana Copperhead, enlisted
in the army.

(Anecdote of loss of leg at Chicamauga.)

Fairchild's story.
Pension bill for disabled soldiers = all disabled soldiers to have
pensions—bill twice passed = now in House.

1
The last battle at Chicamauga took place along a small creek in northern Georgia, September 19-20,
1863, when Confederate General Braxton Bragg attacked Union troops commanded by General Rosecrans.
The Union forces were routed the second day. At the end of the fighting, the casualties totaled 35,000.
At the top of page 4 are the following notes in pencil:

Union soldiers removed - 52

27 Civilians 5
Cos 57
Civilians appointed 42
Union soldiers 10
Rebel soldiers 5
57
 (6)14

cratic administration was being exerted to force upon the people of Kansas a Constitution
in the making of which they had no lot or part; a Constitution which denied the people of
this territory the right to vote upon the question of its adoption or rejection. Now the
Democratic party of Kansas is denouncing and refusing to respect or obey a
Constitutional provision fairly submitted for the decision of the people, and adopted by
them. Then the Free State men of the Territory, for refusing to obey laws enacted by a
Legislatute [sic] elected by armed hordes of invading Missourians, and by the ballot-box
stuffers of Kickapoo, Palmetto and Delaware crossing, were denounced by the Democrats
as "nullifiers" and "traitors," and were arrested and imprisoned by troops of the United
States or by posses [sic] summoned by the U. S. Marshal from Missouri. Now the
Democratic party is bitterly denouncing and attempting to nullify a law enacted by the
legally elected representatives of the sovereign people.1 Then the Democrats assumed to
have great respect for the "majesty of the law," although the law was invoked to sustain a
great sin and crime. Now the Democratic party holds in contempt a law, the purpose of
which is to extirpate one of the greatest evils of the age.

I direct your attention, my fellow citizens, to these striking contrasts of

Democratic action, past and present, and I want you to remember the equally notable fact
that the Democratic party was for the Constitution and the laws when, although illegally
adopted, they could be invoked to sustain that "sum of all villanies," human slavery, and
is against the Constitution and the laws when, although legally adopted, they are invoked
to abolish the saloon.

In 1880 the poeple [sic] of Kansas, acting in their sovereign capacity as voters,
and at an election where every citizen voted in security and freedom, adopted a
Constitutional amendment, prohibiting the sale of intoxicating liquors except for medical,
scientific and mechanical purposes. At three subsequent biennial elections the people of
Kansas have reaffirmed this decision, by electing Legislatures overwhelmingly in favor
of enacting laws to enforce this provision of the Constitution.16 This action of the people
was deliberate and intelligent. The

(7)

prohibition amendment was fully discussed, on the stump and in the newspapers. Every
voter in Kansas understood its purpose and effect, and the people adopted it by a majority

14
Page 5 is missing. Page 6 begins in the middle of a word of a discussion of the Pro-slavery Lecompton
Constitution of 1857, which was submitted after an huge fraudulent vote by the Slave-state partisans with
the Free-state citizens of the Kansas Territory abstaining.
15
Prohibition was passed by the Legislature in 1879, and adopted at the general election November, 1880,
with 92,302 for the amendment to the Kansas State Constitution, and 84,304 against. It prohibited the
"manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors," except for medical or scientific purposes, forever in Kansas.
16
The amendment in the Kansas State Constitution remained until 1948, when it was appealed. Control of
the sale of liquor in grocery stores, as well as the rule that restaurant employees who open wine bottles
must be over twenty-one years of age remain in the books. Craig Miner, Kansas: The History of the
Sunflower State (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2002), p. 156.
of nearly nine thousand. What, then, is the duty, the clear, unmistakable duty, of every
citizen? It is to accept and respect this decision of the sovereign people, and to join with
the majority in seeing that the Constitution and laws are fairly, honestly and fully
enforced. And what is the duty of every public officer? Clearly, it is to support and
sustain the law, not only by exercising all the official authority conferred upon him, but
with all the moral and personal influence he can command. In a free popular
government, such as ours is, laws are simply the decision of the majority formulated in
statutes, and the public officer who fails to respect the law, or encourages its
disobedience, is not only false to his oath of office, but he takes upon himself the
authority of a despot, putting his individual opinion above the sovereign will of the
people.

On this question, however, the Democratic party is progressing backward. Two

years ago its platform declared in favor of high license. In this campaign, it is before the
people on a platform which denounces "all sumptuary laws, State or National;"17
denounces the Constitution of this State as an invasion of "the individual liberty and
manhood of the citizen;" and demands, "instead of Constitutional or statutory prohibition,
a well regulated and just license system." Not high license, mark you, nor local option,
but simply a license system—in other words, permission for everybody who chooses to
go into the saloon business to do so, upon the sole condition that he shall pay a license
fee for the privilege.

Thus, as I have said, the Democratic party of Kansas has progressed backwards
during the last two years. Gov. Glick's platform, two years ago,18 was high license; the
Democratic platform, this year, is low license and free whiskey. In "poor old Missouri,"
a State whose Democracy no one will question, a Democratic Legislature has enacted a
local option and high license law. And local option, bear in

[Here the manuscript ends.]

17
Sumptuary laws regulate the habits of citizens primarily on moral or religious grounds, and are backed by
the law-enforcing agencies of a state.
18
George W. Glide was elected in November, 1882 as Governor of Kansas, and served two years until John
A. Martin was elected.