May every prosperity attend you. May this ground, made memorable by one of the most gallant assaults and by one of the most successful defences in the story of the war, never again be stained by blood; but may our people, in one common love of one flag and one Constitution, in a common and pervading fealty to the great principles of our Government, go on to achieve material wealth, and in social development, in intelligence, in piety, in everything that makes a nation great and a people happy, secure all the Lord has in His mind for a Nation that He has so conspicuously blessed. [Great and prolonged cheering.]
[CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE, APRIL 15.]
Chattanooga was reached Wednesday morning at 8:30 o'clock. The President was received with marked cordiality and enthusiasm by the several thousand citizens assembled at the station. At this point the party was joined by the President's younger brother, Mr. Carter B. Harrison, and his wife, of Murfreesboro, Tenn. The following prominent citizens comprised the committee that received the President: Hon. J. B. Merriam, Mayor of Chattanooga; Hon. H. Clay Evans, Judge David M. Key, H. S. Chamberlain, D. J. O'Connell, Henophen Wheeler, John Crimmins, Maj. J. F. Shipp, Col. Tomlinson Fort, John T. Wilder, Adolph S. Ochs, John B. Nicklin, L. G. Walker, A. J. Gahagan, C. E. James, F. G. Montague, H. M. Wiltse, John W. Stone, J. B. Pound, E. W. Mattson, and Judge Whiteside.
The committee escorted the distinguished guests to the summit of Lookout Mountain. At the Lookout Inn President Harrison pointed out to his immediate companions the spot where he was encamped for a time during the war. From the mountain the party was driven about the city, which was profusely decorated. All the school children in the city stood in front of their respective schools and waved flags and shouted as the President and Mrs. Harrison drove by. Assembled around the platform where the general reception was held were many thousand people.
Ex-Congressman Evans, amid deafening cheers, introduced the President, who said:
My Fellow-citizens—I have greatly enjoyed the opportunity of seeing Chattanooga again. I saw it last as the camp of a great army. Its only industries were military, its stores were munitions of war, its pleasant hill-tops were torn with rifle-pits, its civic population the attendants of an army campaign. I see it to-day a great city, a prosperous commercial centre. I see these hill-tops, then bristling with guns, crowned with happy homes; I see these streets, through which the worn veterans of many campaigns then marched, made glad with the presence of happy children. Everything is changed.
The wand of an enchanter has touched these hills, and old Lookout, that frowned over the valleys from which the plough had been withdrawn, now looks upon the peaceful industries of country life. All things are changed, except that the flag that then floated over Chattanooga floats here still. [Cheers.] It has passed from the hand of the veterans, who bore it to victory in battle, into the hands of the children, who lift it as an emblem of peace. [Cheers.] Then Chattanooga was war's gateway to the South; now it is the gateway of peace, commerce, and prosperity. [Cheers.]
There have been two conquests—one with arms, the other with the gentle influences of peace—and the last is greater than the first. [Cheers.] The first is only great as it made way for that which followed; and now, one again in our devotion to the Constitution and the laws, one again in the determination that the question of the severance of the federal relations of these States shall never again be raised, we have started together upon a career of prosperity and development that has as yet given only the signs of what is to come.
I congratulate Tennessee, I congratulate this prosperous city, I congratulate all those who through this gateway give and receive the interchanges of friendly commerce, that there is being wrought throughout our country a unification by commerce, a unification by similarity of institutions and habits, that shall in time erase every vestige of difference, and shall make us, not only in contemplation of the law, but in heart and sympathy, one people. [Cheers.]