Part 53

After partaking of luncheon at the residence of Senator and Mrs. Evarts, the President was conducted to the Town Hall, and, being introduced to the assemblage by Colonel Perkins, he spoke as follows:

_My Fellow-citizens_--I am about completing a very pleasant trip through the State of Vermont--a trip which, while not the first, has furnished the only occasion on which I have really been brought in contact with the people of your State. My previous journeys were those of a summer tourist, snatching these fine and attractive views as we sped along some of your lines of railway, but getting little impression of the character of the people who occupy these towns and rural homesteads. It has given me great pleasure on this occasion to receive at the hands of your people everywhere a most cordial reception, It has been a source of constant regret to me that I am able on such occasions as we have here this afternoon to make so small a return for the care, preparation, and friendly interest which the people manifest. I am under such limitations as to them and about which I may talk that the fertility of a very rich and highly cultivated mind and imagination would be necessary to furnish one with something new or interesting to say in response to the repeated calls. I have supposed that all of these meetings were expressions of patriotism and of popular interest in a Government which Mr. Lincoln so felicitously described as "a government of the people, by the people, for the people." [Applause.] It is pleasant to have the personal esteem and respect of my fellow-citizens, but I have not thought of appropriating to myself these demonstrations. It is very gratifying to see a people in love with their civil institutions and with that glorious flag which typifies our diversity and our unity. [Applause.] I have said before that it seemed to me this is the essential element and base of every republican government, that the loyalty and love of the people should be given to our institutions and not to men. [Applause.] I think it is one element of discord and unhappiness in some of our sister republics that the minds of these patriotic and generous people are too much swayed by their admiration for men, that they are often swept away from the moorings of principle by the love of a leader. I have rejoiced to find everywhere in the State of Vermont what seemed to me to be a deep-seated, earnest patriotism. [Applause.] It is to be hoped that we may not soon have any call for such manifestations as you have given in the past on the battle-fields from Bennington to the surrender of Appomattox. [Cheers.]

It is pleasant to be here to day at the home of my esteemed friend and your fellow-townsman, the Hon. William M. Evarts. [Applause.] I am glad that he has introduced into Vermont model farming [laughter and applause], and has shown you what the income of a large city law practice can do in the fertilization of a farm. [Laughter and applause.] He has assured me to-day that his farm yields a net income. I accept the statement of my host with absolute faith--and yet Mr. Evarts' reputation as a bookkeeper is not the best in the world. [Laughter and applause.] It is pleasant to see him and to be for a while in his genial presence, and to have this journey illuminated by a visit to his home. I hope he may dwell long with you in peace and honor, as he will always dwell in the honor and esteem of our whole people. [Applause.]

CHARLESTOWN, NEW HAMPSHIRE, AUGUST 27.

Notwithstanding the heavy downpour, 1,000 or more sturdy citizens of historic old Charlestown welcomed the President to New Hampshire. The Reception Committee consisted of Hon. George Olcott, George S. Bond, Frank Finnigan, Col. Samuel Webber, Herbert W. Bond, and Frank W. Hamlin. Lincoln Post, G. A. R., Lyman F. Partridge Commander, also participated in the reception. Colonel Webber delivered an eloquent address of welcome.

The President, responding, said:

_Colonel Webber and Fellow-citizens_--I think it might be said to-day that New Hampshire has "gone wet," as they say when the election returns come in on a vote against prohibition. I am very much obliged to you for this extraordinary manifestation of your interest, for to stand in this downpour of rain is certainly an evidence that you have a most friendly interest in this little party of tourists, who touch in a journey through Vermont the mainspring of the State of New Hampshire. I have been talking about Vermont for the last two or three days, but if you will take the pains, in the comfort of your own homesteads, to read all the good things I have said about Vermont, and then understand that they are all said of New Hampshire, it will abbreviate my speech and will be expressive of my opinion of that sturdy, enterprising, masterful New England character which you share with them. [Applause.]

BELLOWS FALLS, VERMONT, AUGUST 27.

When the train arrived at Bellows Falls, the rain was pouring in torrents and the President was conducted to the Opera House by the veterans of E. H. Stoughton Post, G. A. R. The Committee of Reception consisted of Hon. Wm. A. Russell, Hon. A. N. Swain, Judge L. M. Read, Barnes Cannon, Jr., Wyman Flint, John T. Moore, C. W. Osgood, Thomas E. O'Brien, George H. Babbitt, and Capt. Walter Taylor, the latter a veteran of eighty years, who marshalled the hosts for Gen. Wm. Henry Harrison in 1836 and '40. The building was packed.

Mr. Swain introduced President Harrison, who said:

_My Fellow-citizens_--I will wait a moment until they turn out the footlights. They put a barrier between us, and I always prefer to get my light from above. [Applause.] We can only tarry in this busy city a few moments. The inclement character of the day has driven us to shelter, and the finding of a shelter has consumed some small part of the allotment of time which our schedule gives to you. I greatly appreciate the value and importance of these manufacturing centres, which are now, fortunately for us, not characteristic of New England alone, but are found west of the Ohio and of the Mississippi and of the Missouri. I am one of those who believe that in a diversification of pursuits we make most rapid increase in wealth and attain best social relations and development. I am one of those who believe that Providence did not set apart the United States to be a purely agricultural region, furnishing its surplus to supply the lack of other people of the world while they do all the manufacturing for us. I think there are suggestions in our very geographical position, and a great many of them in our history and experience, that we may well desire and reach for that condition in which we shall raise our own food and in which a manufacturing class, withdrawn from agriculture and other pursuits, shall furnish the farmer a market for his surplus near to his fields and gardens, while he exchanges with the farmer the products of the shop and the loom.

I would not introduce politics. I do not intend to cross any lines of division, but I think we all agree, though we may differ as to the means by which it is to be done, that the nearer together the producer and the consumer can be brought the less waste there is in transportation and the greater the wealth. [Applause.] It is known to you all that our 65,000,000 people furnish per capita a larger market than any other like number of people. This grows out of the fact that our capacity for purchasing is larger than is found in those countries where poverty holds a larger sway. The workingman buys more, has more to buy with in America than in any other land in the world. [Applause.] I mentioned the other day at St. Albans that this was the era of the battle for a market. The whole world is engaged in it. The thought was suggested to me by a sentence in the address of President Bartlett at the observance of the centennial of the battle of Bennington in 1877. He says, "Trading Manchester furnished two regiments to Burgoyne to conquer a market." The foreign policy of the United States has never been selfish. There has always been, if you will trace it through the struggles of Greece and of our South American neighbors for independence and a free Government, a brave, generous tone of sympathy with struggling people the world round in our diplomatic policy. I think we may well challenge comparison with the foreign policy of any other great Government in the world in this regard. It has never been our policy to push our trade forward at the point of the bayonet. We have always believed that it should be urged upon the ground of mutual advantage; and upon this ground alone are we now endeavoring, by every means in our power, to open the markets of our sister republics in Central and South America to the products of American shops and farmers. [Applause.]

We do not covet their territory. The day of filibustering aggression has gone by in the United States. We covet their good will. We wish for them settled institutions of government, and we desire those exchanges that are mutually profitable. We have found that we were receiving from some of these countries enormous annual imports of sugar, coffee, and hides, and we have now placed these articles on the free list upon the condition that they give to the products of the United States fair reciprocity. [Applause.] If our own laws, or any aggressive movement we are making for a larger share in the commerce of the world, should excite the commercial jealousy and rivalry of other countries we shall not complain if those rivalries find only proper expressions. We have come to a time in our development as a Nation when I believe that interest on money is low enough for us to turn some of our accumulated capital from the railways into steam transportation on the sea; that the time has come when we shall recover a full participation in the carrying trade of the world, when under the American flag steamships shall carry our products to neighboring markets and bring back their exchange to our harbors. Larger foreign markets for the products of our farms and of our factories and a larger share in the carrying trade of the world, peaceful relations with all mankind, with naval and coast defences that will silently make an effective argument on the side of peace, are the policies that I would pursue. [Applause.]

BRATTLEBORO, VERMONT, AUGUST 27.

Just before the train reached Brattleboro the rain ceased, and the President rode in a procession to the house of Col. J. J. Estey. The Committee of Reception consisted of Colonel Estey, Col. Kittredge Haskins, Dr. H. D. Holton, N. I. Hawley, F. W. Childs, ex-Governor Holbrook, Judge Wheeler, Hon. B. D. Harris, Hon. J. L. Martin, E. C. Crosby, Judge R. W. Clarke, C. F. Thompson, Col. W. C. Holbrook, George S. Dowley, Colonel Fuller, Dr. Conland, Dr. Ketchum, and G. A. Hines. Veterans of the G. A. R., and the Estey Guard, escorted the Chief Executive through the city. Several thousand were assembled on the grounds.

Colonel Estey welcomed and presented the President, who made the following address:

_My Fellow citizens_--Governor Proctor held out to me the suggestion that this trip to Vermont would be a very restful one. He has the queerest appreciation of what rest means of any man I know. [Laughter.]

When I attended the centennial demonstration of the inauguration of Washington in New York, I spent part of one day on the bridge of the _Despatch_ bowing to the fleet in the bay as we moved down to the Battery, and the balance of the day shaking hands at the City Hall, attending a ball at night; ten hours the next day reviewing a procession, with a banquet at night; and about as many hours the day following reviewing the civic procession; and when released from the stand about 5 o'clock in the evening I hurried to the Jersey City depot to take the train, scarcely able to stand upon my feet. One of the gentlemen of the committee said to me: "Well, Mr. President, I hope you have enjoyed these three days of rest in New York." [Laughter.]

I wish I could see you more satisfactorily than I am able to do on a hurried trip like this, but Governor Proctor kept me up very late last night, and he was the last man down to breakfast this morning himself.

All that I have seen in your State has but increased the respect I have always entertained for your people. My recent journey of somewhat great length through the country has very deeply impressed upon me the fact of the unity of our people. The building of these great railroad lines making every part of every State familiar, and stretching across the continent so as to bring within easy access the most distant parts of our country, has had a great tendency to unify our people and to wipe out whatever there was provincial or local in our character. It has rubbed off some of the edges of the New England character, and has rubbed on some of the New England polish upon the West. In fact, wherever we have any combining, nothing makes it homogeneous except a thorough mixer, and the American people have certainly had a most thorough mixing. [Cheers.]

One of your war Governors was saying to me to-day, as we came along in the train, your own distinguished fellow-citizen, that on a journey West not long ago everywhere Vermont men came to meet him; and as I went recently across the continent the railroad train scarcely stopped at any station that some one from Indiana did not reach up his hand and claim recognition; and so it is in all the States.

The West is now turning a little back toward the East, and I have found some people, who probably had some ancestral connection with New England, but whose birth, early residence, and business life were in the West, who have come back to the old home. All this is pleasant, all this is surety of the future of our country. It is pleasant to know that the South is being obliterated, that all that made it distinctive in the sense of separation or alienation is being gradually wiped out. [Applause.]

Of course, the prejudices of generations are not like marks upon the blackboard, that can be rubbed out with a sponge. These are more like the deep glacial lines that the years have left in the rock; but the water, when that surface is exposed to its quiet, gentle, and perpetual influence, wears even these out, until the surface is smooth and uniform. And so these influences are at work in our whole country, and we should be hopeful for it, hopeful for its future. I am sure you each feel pride in your American citizenship, and would show readiness to defend it in war, and I am sure that from every class of your community would come the response: "We will maintain it, honorable and high, in peace."

I thank you most sincerely for your friendly greeting, and regret that I am not able to speak to you more satisfactorily, and can only accept with a heart full of appreciation these marks of your respect. [Applause.]

RUTLAND, VERMONT, AUGUST 28.

The President and his party were guests of Secretary Proctor on the night of the 27th, at the village of Proctor, in the Green Mountains. The morning of the 28th, the party visited Rutland, and were met by the local Reception Committee: J. C. Baker, H. H. Dyer, W. G. Veazey, ex-Judge Barrett, J. W. Cramton, Dr. J. D. Hanrahan, C. H. Joyce, J. N. Woodfin, E. P. Gilson, P. W. Clement, George E. Lawrence, Henry F. Field, John N. Baxter, P. M. Meldon, John A. Sheldon, George J. Wardwell, Dr. Norman Seaver, and Henry Carpenter, President of the village.

Arrived at Memorial Hall the President was greeted by a large assemblage, including many ladies. He was presented by Colonel Baker and made the following address:

_My Fellow-citizens and Comrades of the Grand Army of the Republic_--It gives me great pleasure this morning, tired as I am, to see and to have an opportunity to express my thanks to this large assemblage of the good citizens of Rutland. My journey through your State has been attended with every evidence of respect which it was possible for the people to bestow. Your chairman has spoken of the fact that the President of the United States may travel everywhere through our country without any attendance of policemen. As I have had occasion to say before, the only peril he is likely to meet, if the railroads take good care of him and the cranks keep out of the way, is from the over-kindness of the people [laughter and applause]; and there is more peril in that than you will understand at first thought. It is pleasant to stand upon the steps of this Memorial Hall, erected as a place of deposit for trophies of the great Civil War and as a monument of honor to those soldiers from Vermont who aided so conspicuously in making that war successful. We cannot tell how much hung upon that contest. No orator has yet been inspired to describe adequately the gravity of the great issue which was fought out upon the battle-fields of the War of the Rebellion. We say it was a contest to preserve the unity of our republic, and so it was; but what dismemberment would have meant; how greatly it would have increased the cost of government; how sadly it would have disturbed the plan of our border communities; how it would have degraded in the eyes of the world this great people; how it would have rejoiced the enemies of popular government, no tongue has yet adequately described. But it was not to be so. God has desired that this experiment of free government should have a more perfect trial, and it was impossible that the brave men of the loyal States should consent to dismemberment of the Union. We were very patient, so patient, in the early contest, as it ranged through the great debate of convention and Congress that our brethren of the South altogether mistook the temper of our people. Undoubtedly there were evidences that the men of trade were reluctant to have those lines of profitable communication, which had been so long maintained with the South, broken off. Undoubtedly that character so undesirable in our politics--the doughface--was particularly conspicuous in those days of discussion, but we were altogether misjudged when the people of the South concluded that they might support their threats of disunion which had so long rung in Congress, and so long filled their boasting press, by force of arms.

I shall never forget, nor will any of you who are old enough to remember it, that great electric thrill and shock which passed through our whole country when the first gun was fired at Sumter. Debate was closed. Our orators were withdrawn, and a great wave of determined patriotism swept over the country higher than any tidal wave ever lifted itself upon a devastated coast [applause], and it was not to be stayed in its progress until the last vestige of rebellion had been swept from the face of our beloved land. The men of New England were a peaceful people. The farmers and the farmers' sons were not brawlers. They were not found at the tavern. They were abiding under the sheltering moral influences and quietude of these New England hills. But the man who thought that the spirit of 1776 had been quenched was badly mistaken. The same resolute love of liberty, the same courage to face danger for a cause that had its inspiration in high moral purposes and resolves abided in the hearts of your people. [Applause.] Possibly the war might have been avoided if the South had understood this, but it was so written in the severe but benevolent purposes of God. There was a great scroll of emancipation to be written. There was a martyr President, who was to affix his name to a declaration that would be as famous as that to which your fathers fixed their signature in 1776. It was to be in truth as well as in theory a free people [applause], and there was no other pathway to emancipation than along the bloody track of armies, not seeing at the beginning nor having the purpose that finally was accomplished, but guided by the hand of power and wisdom that is above us and over us to the accomplishment of that glorious result that struck the shackles from four millions of slaves. [Applause.]

I greet most affectionately these comrades of the war who are before me to-day. Let them abide in honor in all your communities. Let shafts of marble and bronze lift themselves in all your towns to tell the story of patriots' work well done and to teach the generations that are to come how worthy their fathers were. Let us preserve all these inspiring lessons of history, all these individual examples of heroism, of which Vermont furnished so many during the war. Let them not be forgotten. Let them be the illuminated and inspiring pages of your State's history, and then, whatever shock may come to us in the future, whenever the hand of anarchy or disorder shall be raised, whenever foreign powers shall seek to invade the rights or liberties of this great people, there will be found again an impenetrable bulwark in the brave hearts of a sturdy and patriotic people. [Applause.] You will, I am sure, crown your kindness by excusing me from attempting further speech and allowing me to express, as I part from you, my good wishes for Vermont and all her good people. [Applause.]

PROCTOR, VERMONT, AUGUST 28.

On the return to Proctor in the evening the President was tendered the final reception of his trip to Vermont. The village was elaborately decorated; an illuminated evergreen arch spanned the entrance to Secretary Proctor's beautiful grounds. The residences and grounds of E. R. Morse, F. D. Proctor, B. F. Taylor, W. E. Higbee, G. H. Davis, E. J. Boyce, J. H. Edson, and H. E. Spencer were also brilliantly illuminated. From a platform fronting the Secretary's home the party reviewed the procession of 1,000 workmen from the marble quarries.

Secretary Proctor, in an affectionate address, introduced President Harrison, who spoke as follows: