I am glad to stand for this moment among you, glad to express my sympathy with you in every enterprise that tends to develop your State and local communities; glad to stand with you upon the one common platform of respect to the Constitution and the law, differing in our policies as to what the law should be, but pledged with a common devotion and obedience to law as the majority shall by their expressions make it.
I shall carry away from here a new impulse to public duty, a new inspiration as a citizen with you of a country whose greatness is only dawning. And may I now express the pleasure I shall have in every good that comes to you as a community and to each of you as individuals? May peace, prosperity, and social order dwell in your communities, and the fear and love of God in every home! [Cheers.]
[JOHNSON CITY, TENNESSEE, APRIL 14. 1891]
The President was welcomed at Johnson City by 3,000 people. S. K. N. Patton Post, G. A. R, with Maj. A. Cantwell, J. M. Erwin, and W. Hodges, acted as a guard of honor to the Chief Magistrate. The committee to receive and entertain the President comprised: Mayor Ike T. Jobe, Hon. W. G. Mathes, President Board of Trade; Hon. T. F. Singiser, Hon. A. B. Bowman, Hon. B. F. Childress, Thos. E. Matson, Jas. M. Martin, J. C. Campbell, H. C. Chandler, J. W. Cox, C. W. Marsh, L. W. Wood, J. A. Mathes, H. W. Hargraves, J. F. Crumley, M. N. Johnson, and W. W. Kirkpatrick.
Congressman Alfred A. Taylor presented the President, who spoke as follows:
My Fellow-citizens—The office of President of the United States is one of very high honor and is also one of very high responsibility. No man having conscientiously at heart the good of the whole people, whose interests are, under the law, in some degree committed to his care, can fail to feel a most oppressive sense of inadequacy when he comes to the discharge of these high functions.
Elected under a system of government which gives to the majority of our people who have expressed their wishes through constitutional methods the right to choose their public servants, when he has taken the oath that inducts him into office he becomes the servant of all the people, and while he may pursue the advocacy of those measures to which the people have given their approval by his choice, he should always act and speak with a reserve and a respect for the opinion of others that shall not alienate from him the good-will of his fellow-citizens, without regard to political belief.
I shall not speak of what has been done, but I have a supreme regard for the honor of the Nation, a profound respect for the Constitution, and a most sincere desire to meet the just expectations of my fellow-citizens. I am not one of those who believe that the good of any class can be permanently and largely attained except upon lines which promote the good of all our people.
I rejoice in the Union of the States. I rejoice to stand here in East Tennessee among a people who so conspicuously and at such sacrifice during the hour of the Nation's peril stood by the flag and adhered to their convictions of public duty [cheers]; and I am especially glad to be able to say that those who, following other views of duty, took sides against us in that struggle, without division in voice or heart to-day praise Almighty God that He preserved us one Nation. [Cheers.]