But yet it is not of antiquity that I desire to speak, for ancient history is not of the greatest interest to you now. The Scripture speaks, I think—my Postmaster-General is near, and if I fall into error will correct me [laughter]—of a time when the old things shall pass away and all things shall become new. Tennessee is realizing that beatitude; the old things, the old way of doing things, the stiff clay and steep mountain roads have passed away and the steam-car has come.
The old times of isolation in these valleys, when these pioneers, some of whom I see, made their frontier homes, have passed away, and influences from the outside have come; life has been made easier to men and easier to the toiling women who used to carry the water from the spring at the bottom of the hill in a piggin, but who now by modern appliances have it brought into the kitchen.
You have come to know now that not only the surface of the soil has wealth in it, but that under the surface there are vast sources of wealth to gladden the homes of your people and to bring with new industries a thrifty population. But of all these old things that have passed away and the new ones that have come, I am sure you are exultantly glad in this region, where there was so much martyrdom for the flag, so much exile, so much suffering, that the one Union, the one Constitution, and the one flag might be preserved, to know that those old strifes have passed away, and that a period of fraternity has come when all men are for the flag and all for the Constitution, when it has been forever put out of the minds of all people that this Union can be dissolved or this Constitution overthrown. [Great cheering.]
On all these new things I congratulate the citizens of Tennessee. Turn your faces to the morning, for the sun is lightening the hilltops; there is coming to our country a great growth, an extraordinary development, and you are to be full participants in it all. While other nations of the world have reached a climax in their home development, and are struggling to parcel out remote regions of the earth that their commerce may be extended, we have here prodigious resources that are yet to be touched by the finger of development, and we have the power, if we will, to put our flag again on the sea and to share in the world's commerce. [Cheers.]
[GREENVILLE, TENNESSEE, APRIL 14.]
The home of President Andrew Johnson—Greenville, Tenn.—gave the President a cordial greeting through its welcoming committee, consisting of Mayor John M. Brabson, Aldermen A. N. Shown, J. D. Britton, E. C. Miller, and W. H. Williams; also Burnside Post, G. A. R., W. T. Mitchell Commander; A. J. Frazier, and the children of the public schools, in charge of Principal L. McWhisler.
President Harrison said:
My Fellow-citizens—The arrangements for our journey will not permit me to tarry with you long. I thank you most sincerely for this cordial demonstration. I rejoice to see in the hands of the children here that banner of glory which is the symbol of our greatness and the promise of our security.
I am glad that by the common consent of all our people, without any regard to past differences, we have once and forever struck hands upon the proposition that from the lakes to the gulf, from the St. Lawrence to the Bay of California, there shall be one flag and one Constitution. [Great cheering.] The story that it brings to us from the time of its adoption as our national emblem is one in which we may all find instruction and inspiration. It is the flag of the free.