Part 31

The presidential party travelled over the Western and Atlantic route from Chattanooga to Atlanta, passing through historic battle-grounds with which the President and other members of his party were once familiar. General Harrison actively participated in the Atlanta campaign and held the chief command at the battle of Resaca. It was with keen interest, therefore, that he viewed this memorable field in company with Marshal Ransdell, who lost an arm there. Short stops were made at the battle-fields of Chickamauga, Tunnel Hill, Resaca, Dug Gap, and Kennesaw. At Marietta the President was met by a committee from the city government of Atlanta, consisting of Mayor W. A. Hemphill, Aldermen Hutchison, Woodward, Rice, Shropshire, and Middlebrooks; Councilmen Murphy, Hendrix, Lambert, Holbrook, Sawtell, King, Turner, McBride, and City Clerk Woodward. These officials were accompanied by a special committee of citizens representing the Chamber of Commerce and the veteran associations, comprising ex-Gov. R. B. Bullock, Gen. J. R. Lewis, Capt. John Milledge, Julius L. Brown, S. M. Inman, Hon. J. T. Glenn, and Hon. W. L. Calhoun.

A vast throng greeted the President's arrival. Gov. William J. Northen and the other members of the Reception Committee received the party. Governor Northen said: "I am glad to welcome your excellency to the State of Georgia. You will find among us a loyal and hospitable people, and in their name I welcome you to the State."

Replying, the President said it gave him great pleasure to visit the Empire State of the South, the wonderful evidences of the prosperity of which were manifest in the stirring city of Atlanta.

In the evening the President and his party were tendered a reception at the Capitol by Governor Northen and Mayor Hemphill, assisted by Chief-Justice Bleckley, Judge Simmons, Judge Lumpkin, Gen. Phil. Cook, Comptroller-General Wright, Judge Van Epps, and the following prominent citizens: E. P. Chamberlin, J. W. Rankin, G. T. Dodd, Judge Hook, R. J. Lowry, J. W. English, Hoke Smith, Phil. Breitenbucher, J. G. Oglesby, John Silvey, Capt. Harry Jackson, Jacob Haas, W. L. Peel, B. F. Abbott, John Fitten, Joe Hirsch, George Hillyer, A. A. Murphy, P. Romare, J. B. Goodwin, David Wyly, G. H. Tanner, Dr. Henry S. Wilson, J. F. Edwards, M. A. Hardin, A. J. McBride, John J. Doonan, Hugh Inman, J. H. Mountain, M. C. Kiser, E. P. Howell, A. E. Buck, Edgar Angier, Col. L. M. Terrell, S. A. Darnell, John C. Manly, T. B. Neal, Walter Johnson, Major Mims, W. R. Brown, Col. T. P. Westmoreland, Albert Cox, Clarence Knowles, H. M. Atkinson, J. C. Kimball, C. A. Collier, Rhode Hill, Howard Van Epps, W. H. Venable, G. W. Adair, F. T. Ryan, L. P. Thomas, H. F. Starke, W. A. Wright, Amos Fox, R. L. Rodgers, H. C. Divine, W. M. Scott, A. B. Carrier, W. B. Miles, T. C. Watson, and L. B. Nelson.

At the conclusion of the reception the President, accompanied by Mayor Hemphill, Hon. A. L. Kontz, and Superintendent Slaton, visited the night school, where the boys gave him an enthusiastic welcome and called for a speech.

The President said:

I am glad to be with you to-night. Having but a few minutes to spare I would offer a few words of encouragement to you. Most, if not all, of you are here at night because your circumstances are such that the day must be given to toil. The day is your earning period. The night must, therefore, be set apart for study. I am glad to see that so many find it in your hearts to be here in this school; it is a very hopeful sign. I think it has in it the promise that you will each become a useful citizen in this country. Pluck and energy are two essential elements. A boy wants to be something. With pluck and energy success is assured. There is a day of hope above every one of you.

I bid you good cheer and would offer encouragement to every one of you, and I know every one of you may be useful and honorable citizens in this community, whose officers have taken the interest to organize this school for your benefit. I very sincerely and earnestly wish you God-speed. Stick to your studies and don't neglect to acquire a needful education, and you may one day occupy the positions of honor which are held by those to-day in charge of the affairs of your city.

ATLANTA, APRIL 16.

On the morning of the 16th the President's party bade adieu to Atlanta. More than 10,000 people were present. Mayor Hemphill invited the President to the rear platform of the train and presented him to the assemblage. In response to their cheers he said:

_My Fellow-citizens_--I desire, in parting from you, to give public expression of my satisfaction and enjoyment in my brief visit to Atlanta. I saw this city once under circumstances of a very unfavorable character. I did not think I would like it, although we were making great efforts to get it. [Laughter.] I am glad after all these years to see the great prosperity and development that has come to you. I think I am able to understand some of the influences that are at the bottom of it, and I am sure that I look into the faces of a community that, whatever their differences may have been, however they viewed the question of the war when it was upon us, can have but one thought as to what was best. We can all say with the Confederate soldier who carried a gun for what seemed to him to be right, that God knew better than any of us what was best for the country and for the world.

You are thankful for what He has wrought and chiefly for emancipation. It has opened up to diversified industries these States that were otherwise exclusively agricultural, and made it possible for you not only to raise cotton, but to spin and weave it, and has made Georgia such a State as it could not have been under the old conditions. I am sure we have many common purposes, and as God shall give us power to see truth and right, let us do our duty, and, while exacting all our own rights, let us bravely and generously give every other man his equal rights before the law. [Cheers.]

Thanking you for your reception, which has been warm and hospitable, I go from you very grateful for your kindness and very full of hope for your future.

I cannot wish more than that those enterprising land-owners whose work in grading and laying new additions I saw yesterday will realize all their hopes. I am very sure if that is done Atlanta will not long be rated the second city of the South. [Cheers.]

At the conclusion of the President's address there were many calls for Mr. Wanamaker. These finally brought the Postmaster-General to the platform, who said:

That man is unfortunate who is called on to speak after a President. But at such a moment as this, parting from people who in a single night have shown so much kindness and good-fellowship, it is not difficult to return at least our grateful thanks for your most generous welcome. Of all objects in your city I have looked with most interest upon the house where a great light had gone out, and felt again the common sorrow in the absence of Henry Grady, a man whose life and influences were larger than Atlanta. The words he spoke and the principles he stood for cannot be forgotten. If we can but learn to know each other and understand each other there will be fewer differences than might be supposed. By more frequent intercourse and a fairer consideration of each other we should rise to a higher level of happiness. I wish we had come sooner and could stay longer. [Cheers.]

TALLAPOOSA, GEORGIA, APRIL 16.

The city of Tallapoosa was bedecked with flags and bunting in honor of the distinguished visitors, and gave the President a cordial reception. Mayor A. J. Head and the following representative citizens were among those who greeted the Chief Executive: James H. Rineard, Walker Brock, U. G. Brock, J. A. Head, R. M. Strickland, J. C. Parker, W. T. King, R. G. Bently, T. J. Barrett, J. T. Tuggle, R. J. McBride, G. W. Bullard, C. Tallafario, J. A. Burns, J. R. Knapp, C. W. Fox, M. C. Reeve, M. Munson, W. W. Summerlin, S. J. Cason, J. H. Davis, S. White, A. Hass, T. L. Dougherty, G. A. Stickney, N. L. Hutchens, O. F. Sampson, H. Martin, M. C. Haiston, G. W. Tumlin, and J. C. Murrey.

Responding to the welcoming cheers the President addressed the assembly as follows:

_My Fellow-citizens_--This large assemblage of people from this new and energetic city is very pleasant, and I thank you for the welcome that it implies. All of these evidences of extending industry are extremely pleasing to me as I observe them. They furnish employment to men; they imply comfortable homes, contented families, a safe social organization, and are the strength of the Nation.

I am glad to see that these enterprises that are taking the ores from the earth and adapting them to the uses of civilization have not been started here unaccompanied by that more important work--the work of gathering the children into the schools and instructing them, that they in their turn may be useful men and women. [Applause.] I am glad to greet these little ones this morning; it is a cheerful sight. We are soon to lay down the work of life and the responsibilities of citizenship, these mothers are soon to quit the ever-recurring and never-ending work of the home and give it into new hands.

It is of the utmost consequence that these little ones be trained in mind and taught the fear of God and a benevolent regard for their fellow-men, in order that their lives and social relations may be peaceful and happy. We are citizens of one country, having one flag and one destiny. We are starting upon a new era of development, and I hope this development is to keep pace and to be the promoting cause of a very perfect unification of our people. [Cheers.]

We have a Government whose principles are very simple and very popular. The whole theory of our institutions is that, pursuing those election methods which we have prescribed under the Constitution, every man shall exercise freely the right that the suffrage law confides to him, and that the majority, if it has expressed its will, shall conclude the issue for us all. There is no other foundation. This was the enduring base upon which the fathers of our country placed our institutions. Let us always keep them there. Let us press the debate in our campaigns as to what the law should be; but let us keep faith and submit with the reverence and respect which are due to the law when once lawfully enacted. [Applause.]

The development which is coming to you in these regions of the South is marvellous. In ten years you increased your production of iron about 300 per cent.--nearly a million and a quarter of tons--and you have only begun to open these mines and to put these ores to the process of reduction. Now, I want to leave this thought with you: In the old plantations of the South you got everything from somewhere else; why not make it all yourselves? [Cheers.]

ANNISTON, ALABAMA, APRIL 16.

Many thousands greeted the President on his arrival at Anniston. The Reception Committee consisted of Mayor James Noble, J. W. Lapsley, H. W. Bailey, T. G. Garrett, B. F. Cassady, John J. Mickle, C. H. Camfield, J. J. Willett, J. C. Sproull, R. H. Cobb, I. Finch, and Alex. S. Thweatt. The committee appointed by the Alabama State Sunday-School Association, then in session, was: Joseph Hardie, Geo. B. Eager, P. P. Winn, M. J. Greene, and C. W. O'Hare. On the part of the colored citizens the Committee of Reception was: Rev. W. H. McAlpine, Wm. J. Stevens, S. E. Moses, Rev. J. F. Fitspatrick, and Rev. Jas. W. Brown. Daniel Tyler Post, G. A. R., H. Rosenbaum, Commander, G. B. Randolph acting Adjutant, also participated. The Hon. John M. McKleroy delivered the address of welcome, followed by Wm. J. Stevens in behalf of the colored people.

President Harrison responded as follows:

_Fellow-citizens_--I very much regret that I am able to make so little return to you for this cordial manifestation of your respect and friendship; and yet, even in these few moments which I am able to spend with you, I hope I shall gather and possibly be able to impart some impulse that may be mutually beneficial. I am glad to see with the eye that of which I have kept informed--the great development which is taking place in the mineral regions of the Southern States.

I remember, as a boy, resident upon one of the great tributaries of the Mississippi, how the agricultural products of those States, the corn and provisions raised upon the fertile acres of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, were marketed in the South. The old broad-horn took its way down the Mississippi, stopping at the plantations to sell the provisions upon which the people of the South were largely sustained. The South was then essentially a plantation region, producing one or two great staples that found a ready market in the world, but dependent for its implements of industry and domestic utensils upon the States of the North Mississippi Valley.

I am glad all this is changed, that you are realizing the benefits of diversified agriculture, and that the production upon your farms of the staples which you once bought elsewhere is largely increasing; and I am glad that to diversified agriculture you have also added these great mechanical pursuits which have brought into your communities artisans and laborers who take from the adjacent farms the surplus of your fertile lands. [Cheers.] There has been received in the South since the war not less than $8,000,000,000 for cotton, and while I rejoice in that, I am glad to know that in this generous region there are near 100,000 acres devoted to raising watermelons. [Laughter.]

No farmer, certainly no planter in the old time, would have consented to sell watermelons. You are learning that things which were small and despised have come to be great elements in your commerce. Now your railroads make special provision for the transportation of a crop which brings large wealth to your people.

I mention this as a good illustration of the changing conditions into which you are entering. You are realizing the benefits of home markets for what you produce, and I am sure you will unite with me in those efforts which we ought to make, not only to fill our own markets with all that this great Nation of 65,000,000 needs, but to reach out to other markets and enter into competition with the world for them. [Cheers.] This we shall do, and with all this mechanical and commercial development we shall realize largely that condition of unification of heart and interest to which those who have spoken for you have so eloquently alluded. [Cheers.]

And now, wishing that the expectations of all who are interested in this stirring young city may be realized, that all your industries may be active and profitable, I add the wish that those gentler and kindlier agencies of the school and church, of a friendly social life, may always pervade and abide with you as a community. [Cheers.]

BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA, APRIL 16.

Large delegations came from Mobile, Selma, Montgomery, Sheffield, and other points in Alabama, to participate in the grand ovation tendered President Harrison and his party at Birmingham on April 16. Gov. Thomas G. Jones and the following members of his staff welcomed the presidential party at Henryellen: Adjt.-Gen. Charles B. Jones, Col. F. L. Pettus, Col. Eugene Stollenwerck, Col. M. P. Le Grand, Col. W. W. Quarles, Col. B. L. Holt, Lieut. James B. Erwin, and J. K. Jackson, Secretary to the Governor. The Governor's party was accompanied by five members from the Citizens' Committee: Col. E. T. Taliaferro, Rufus N. Rhodes, J. W. Hughes, R. L. Houston, and C. A. Johnston.

On arrival at Birmingham, in the afternoon, the President was greeted by an enormous gathering and formally welcomed by Mayor A. O. Lane at the head of the following distinguished committee: H. M. Caldwell, Joseph F. Johnston, B. L. Hibbard, William Youngblood, W. J. Cameron, J. A. Van Hoose, R. H. Pearson, E. H. Barron, M. M. Williams, J. O. Wright, James Weatherly, Chappell Cory, Louis Saks, D. D. Smith, J. P. Mudd, Charles M. Shelley, Paul Giacopazzi, James A. Going, Joe Frank, T. H. Spencer, P. G. Bowman, J. M. Martin, G. W. Hewitt, T. T. Hillman, E. Soloman, F. P. O'Brien, Lewis M. Parsons, Robert Jemison, John McQueen, Geo. L. Morris, B. Steiner, Mack Sloss, J. A. Yeates, J. M. Handley, Fergus W. McCarthy, E. V. Gregory, F. H. Armstrong, Geo. M. Morrow, Thomas Seddon, E. W. Rucker, W. H. Graves, Gus Shillinger, M. T. Porter, Edwin C. Campbell, Eugene F. Enslen, R. L. Thornton, Charles Whelan, W. S. Brown, John M. Cartin, Wm. M. Bethea, I. R. Hochstadter, John W. Johnston, Wm. Vaughn, Jas. E. Webb, and Robert Warnock. George A. Custer Post, G. A. R., commanded by Ass't Adjt.-Gen. W. J. Pender, escorted the President on the march through the city. The following officers participated: W. H. Hunter, Department Commander; F. G. Sheppard, Past Department Commander; William Snyder, Commander; A. A. Tyler, Senior Vice-Commander; Henry Asa N. Ballard, Surgeon; Edward Birchenough, Assistant Quartermaster-General; A. W. Fulghum, Past Commander; and John Mackenzie, Officer of the Day.

Both the Governor and the Mayor delivered eloquent addresses of welcome, to which President Harrison responded as follows:

_Governor Jones, Mr. Mayor, and Fellow-citizens_--The noise of your industries will not stay itself, I fear, sufficiently to enable me to make myself heard by many in this immense throng that has gathered to welcome us. I judge from what we have seen as we neared your station that we have here at Birmingham the largest and most enthusiastic concourse of people that has met us since we left the national capital. [Great and prolonged cheering.] For all this I am deeply grateful. The rapidity with which we must pursue this journey will not allow us to look with any detail into the great enterprises which cluster about your city; but if we shall only have opportunity to see for a moment these friendly faces and listen to these friendly words, we shall carry away that which will be invaluable, and, I trust, by the friendly exchange of greetings, may leave something to you that is worth cherishing. [Great cheering.] I have read of the marvellous development which, in the last few years, has been stirring the solitude of these southern mountains, and I remember that not many years after the war, when I had resumed my law practice at Indianapolis, I was visited by a gentleman, known, I expect, to all of you, upon some professional business. He came to pursue a collection claim against a citizen of Indiana; but he seemed to be more interested in talking about Birmingham than anything else. [Laughter and cheers.] That man was Colonel Powell, one of the early promoters of your city. [Cheers.] I listened to his story of the marvellous wealth of iron and coal that was stored in this region; of their nearness to each other, and to the limestone necessary for smelting; to his calculations as to the cheapness with which iron could be produced here, and his glowing story of the great city that was to be reared, with a good deal of incredulity. I thought he was a visionary; but I have regretted ever since that I did not ask him to pay me my fee in town lots in Birmingham. [Laughter and cheers.]

My countrymen, we thought the war a great calamity, and so it was. The destruction of life and of property was sad beyond expression; and yet we can see now that God led us through that Red Sea to a development in material prosperity and to a fraternity that was not otherwise possible. [Cheers.] The industries that have called to your midst so many toiling men are always and everywhere the concomitants of freedom. Out of all this freedom from the incubus of slavery the South has found a new industrial birth. Once almost wholly agricultural, you are now not the less fruitful in crops, but you have added all this. [Cheers.] You have increased your production of cotton, and have added an increase in ten years of nearly 300 per cent. in the production of iron. You have produced three-fourths of the cotton crop of the world, and it has brought you since the war about $8,000,000,000 of money to enrich your people. But as yet you are spinning in the South only 8 per cent, of it. Why not, with the help we will give you in New England and the North, spin it all? [Cheers.] Why not establish here cotton mills that shall send, not the crude agricultural product to other markets, but the manufactured product? [Cheers.] Why not, while supplying 65,000,000 of people, reach out and take a part we have not had in the commerce of the world? [Cheers.] I believe we are to see now a renaissance in American prosperity and in the up-building again of our American merchant marine. [Cheers.] I believe that these Southern ports that so favorably look out with invitations to the States of Central and South America shall yet see our fleets carrying the American flag and the products of Alabama to the markets of South America. [Great cheering.]

In all this we are united; we may differ as to method, but if you will permit me I will give an illustration to show how we have been dealing with this shipping question. I can remember when no wholesale merchant ever sent a drummer into the field. He said to his customers, "Come to my store and buy;" but competition increased and the enterprising merchant started out men to seek customers; and so his fellow-merchant was put to the choice to put travelling men into the field or to go out of business. It seems to me, whatever we may think of the policy of aiding our steamship lines, that since every other great nation does it, we must do it or stay out of business, for we have pretty much gone out. [Cheers.] I am glad to reciprocate with the very fulness of my heart every fraternal expression that has fallen from the lips of these gentlemen who have addressed me in your behalf. [Cheers.] I have not been saved from mistakes; probably I shall not be. I am sure of but one thing--I can declare that I have simply at heart the glory of the American Nation and the good of all its people. [Great and prolonged cheering.] I thank these companies of the State militia, one of whom I recognize as having done me the honor to attend the inaugural ceremony, for their presence. They are deserving, sir [to the Governor], of your encouragement and that of the State of Alabama. They are the reserve army of the United States. It is our policy not to have a large regular army, but to have a trained militia that, in any exigency, will step to the defence of the country; and if that exigency shall ever arise--which God forbid--I know that you would respond as quickly and readily as any other State. [Cheers.] [The Governor: "You will find all Alabama at your back, sir!"] [Continued cheering.]

I am glad to know that in addition to all this business you are doing you are also attending to education and to those things that conduce to social order. The American home is the one thing we cannot afford to lose out of the American life. [Cheers.] As long as we have pure homes and God-fearing, order-loving fathers and mothers to rear the children that are given to them, and to make these homes the abodes of order, cleanliness, piety, and intelligence, the American society and the American Union are safe [Great cheering.]