On the morning of August 25 the President, accompanied by Secretary Proctor and the other members of his party, left Saratoga on a journey through the Green Mountain State. They were accompanied by Vice-President E. C. Smith, of the Vermont Central road, and Superintendent C. D. Hammond, of the Delaware and Hudson.
[WHITEHALL, NEW YORK, AUGUST, 25.]
The first stop was at Whitehall, where the party was met by Hon. H. G. Burleigh, Gen. J. C. Rogers, William Sinnott, Luke H. Carrington, A. J. Taft, and Maj. John Dwyer, President of the Washington County Veteran Association. A train containing several hundred veterans, on their way to a reunion at Dresden, was in waiting, and a large crowd assembled around the President's car. The Burleigh Corps acted as a guard of honor. Ex-Congressman Burleigh, in a brief speech, introduced the President, whose remarks created much enthusiasm. He said:
Comrades and Fellow-citizens—It is pleasant to come this morning upon an assemblage of comrades gathering with their families to a social reunion to recall their services and sacrifices and to bathe their souls in the glory of this bright day and of this great land that they fought to save. [Applause.] Such assemblages are full of interest to the veterans, and they are full of instruction and inspiration to those who gather with them. It is our habit in the West, as it is yours here, to have these annual meetings, and it is always a pleasure to me when I can arrange to meet with the comrades of my old regiment, or of the old brigade, or with the veterans of any regiment of any State who stood for the flag. [Applause.] There is a pathetic side to all this. We gather with diminished ranks from year to year. We miss the comrades who are dropping by the way. We see repeated now that which we saw as the great column moved on in the campaign of the war—a comrade dropping out, borne to the hospital, followed to the grave—and yet these soldier memories and thoughts are brightened by the glories which inspire and attend all these gatherings of the veterans of the war. We see the old flag again, and I am glad to believe that there has never been a period in our history when there was more love for it. [Applause.]
It is quite natural that it should be so. These veterans who stand about me have seen many days and months in camps and battlefields and in devastated country through which they marched when there was on all the horizon one thing of beauty—that glorified flag. [Applause.] They brought home the love of it in their hearts, wrought in every fibre of their nature; and it is very natural that the children who have come on should catch this inspiration and love from the fathers who perilled everything that the flag might still be held in honor, and still be an emblem of the authority of one Constitution over an undivided Nation. We see to-day how worthy the land was for which our comrades died, and for which you, my comrades, offered your lives, in its great development and its increasing population, in its multiplying homes, where plenty and prosperity, the love of God and social order, and all good things abide. In this great Nation, striding on in wealth and prosperity to the very first place among the nations of the earth; in this land, in truth as well as in theory the land of the free, we see that which was worthy of the utmost sacrifice of the truest men. [Prolonged Cheers.]
I recall with pleasure that some of the New York regiments, coming to the Western army with Hooker and Howard and Gerry and Williams and others, served in the same corps to which I was designated during the great campaign upon Atlanta. Some of the comrades who made that march from Chattanooga to Atlanta and the sea are here to-day, survivors of one of the greatest, in all its aspects, of all the campaigns of the war. You came from those bloody fields upon the Potomac, and struck hands with us of the West as brothers. You helped us in the struggle there to cut the Confederacy in twain, and, lapping around by the sea, to strike hands with Grant again near Appomattox. [cheers.]
I thank you again most cordially for your friendly demonstration and presence. If I had the power to call down blessings upon my fellow-men, the home of every comrade here would be full of all prosperity. [Applause.]