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 battlefields 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.]