Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 7).djvu/165

Rh A gentleman who knew Gen. Harrison's ability told them not to be alarmed, and at the end of a week the fearful gentlemen had changed their minds and said that if they would allow Gen. Harrison to go on in that way he would certainly elect himself in spite of any blundering of the committee or campaign managers.

A few extracts from some of these speeches may give some idea of their quality. To the California delegation the day after the nomination he said : " I feel sure, too, ray fellow-citizens, that we have joined now a contest of great principles, and that the armies which are to fight out this great contest before the American people will encamp upon the high plains of principle and not in the low swamps of personal defamation or detraction." To a num- ber of veterans of the Union army : " We went not as partisans but patriots into the strife which in- volved the national life. . . . The army was great in its assembling. It came with an impulse that was majestic and terrible. It was as great in its muster out as in the brilliant work which it had done in the field. . . . When the war was over . . . every man had in some humble place a chair by some fireside where he was love<l and toward which his heart went forward with a quick step." To the Tippecanoe club, composed of men who had voted for his grandfather in 1840 : " I came among you with the herita^, I trust, of a good name, such as all of you enjoy. It is the only inheritance that has been transmitted in oar family." Qen. Harrison was not in the habit of boasting of his lineage, of which he hatl reason to be proud. If it was ever the subject of conversation in his pres- ence he never introduced it. To a delegation of farmers: "The law throws the lEgis of its protec- tion over us all. It stands sentinel almut your country homes ... it comes into our more thickly populated community and sj^icaks its mandate for individual security and public order. There is an open avenue through the ballot for the modifica- tion or repeal of laws which are unjust or op- rressive. To the law we bow with reverence, t is the one king that commands our allegiance." To a delegation of railway employees : "Heroism has been found at the throttle and brake as well as ufjon the battle-flehl, and as well worthy of song and marble. The trainman crushed be- tween the platforms, who used his last breath not for prayer or messages of love, but to say to the panic-stricken who gathered around him, ' Put out the red light for the other train,' inscribed his name very high upon the shaft where the names of the faithful and brave are written." To an Illinois delegation : " It was on the soil of Illinois that Lovejoy died, a martyr to free spetM'h. . . . Another great epcxjh in the march of liberty found on the soil of Illinois the theater of its most infiuential event. I refer to that high de- bate in the presence of your people, but before the world, in which Douglas won the senatorship and Lincoln the presidency and immortal fame. . . . The wise work of our fathers in constituting this government will sIuikI all tests of internal ilissen- siun and revolution, and all tests of external as- sault, if we can only preserve a pure, free ballot." To a delegation of coal-miners: "I do not care now to deal with statistics. One fact is enough for me. The tide of emigration from alt Kuropean countries has been ami is toward our shores. The gates of Castle Garden swing inward : they do not swing outwanl to any American laborer seeking a better country than this. . . . Here there are belter conditions, wider and more hopeful prospects for workmen than in any other land. ... 'I be more work there is to do in this country the higher the wages that will be paid for the doing of it. ... A policy which will transfer work from our mines and our factories to foreign mines and foreign factories inevitably tends to a depression of wages here. These are truths that do not require pro- found study." To an Indiana delegation : " I hope the time is coming, and has even now arrived, when the great sense of j ustice which possesses our people will teach men of all parties that party success is not to be promoted at the expense of an injus- tice to any of our citizens." As early as 31 July, 1888, he said : " But we do not mean to be content with our own market ; we should seek to promote closer and more friendly commercial relations with the Central and South American states, . . . those friendly political and commercial relations which shall promote their interests equally with ours." Addressing a company of survivors of his own regiment, he said : " It is no time now to use an apothecary's scale to weigh the rewards of the men who saved the country." To a club of rail- road employees : " The laboring men of this land may safely trust every just reform in which they are interested to public dis- cussion and to the tests of rea- son ; they may surely hope up- on these lines, which are open to them, to ac- complish, un- der our Amer- ican institu- tions, all those right things  they have con- ceived to be necessary to their lii;:liosi suicess and well-being." Addressing a meeting on the day of Sheridan s funeral : " He was one of those great commanders who, upon the field of battle, towered a very god of war. ... He rested and refreshed his command with the wine of victory, and found recuperation in the dispersion of the enemy that confronted him." To a delegation of farmers : " I congratulate you not so much upon the rich farms of your country as upon your virtuous and happy homes. The home is the best, as it is the first, school of citizenship."

All these campaign speeches, with a description of the circumstances of their delivery, are collected in a volume published by Lovell & Co., of New York. But more remarkable than these are the one hundred and forty addresses delivered during his trip to the Pacific coast and back — a journey of 10,000 mile-s, which was accomplished in thirty-one days, from 15 April to 15 May, 1890, without the variation of one minute from the prearranged schedule for arriving and departing from the hun- dreds of stations on the way. These addresses were non-political, and breathe throughout a spirit of high patriotism and a call to the high responsibili- ties of citizenship. In a letter to an American friend who had sent him the volume containing these si>eeches. Lord Chief-Justice Coleridge says: "The speeches give me a very high idea of Mr. Harrison. We know very little here of your politicians, and it is pleasant to be brought face to face with any one so manly aii<l high-minded as Mr. Harrison shows himself in the book you sent me. The perpetual demand which American customs make upon any one of the least position in the way of speech-mak- ing must be very trying. In a degree (not within