General Harrison, responding, said:
Mr. Adams and my Morgan and Brown County Friends—In previous campaigns I have not put you to the trouble to come and see me. My habit has been to go to you, and it has been my pleasure often to discuss before you the issues that were involved in our campaigns. The limitations which are upon me now prevent me from following this old habit, and put you, who desire to see me, to the trouble of coming here. My associations with the county of Morgan have been very close. Among its citizens are some of my most devoted personal and political friends. There are also in your county a large number of my comrades, to whom I am bound by the very close ties that must always unite those who marched under the same regimental banner. Your county furnished two companies for the Seventieth Indiana—brave, true men, commanded by intelligent and capable officers, and having in the ranks of both companies men as capable of command as any who wore shoulder-straps in the regiment. These men, together with their comrades of the Thirty-third and other regiments that were recruited in your county, went into the service from very high motives. They heard the call of their country, saying: "He that loveth father or mother or wife or child or houses or lands more than me is not worthy of me," and they were found worthy by this supreme test. Many of you were so careless of a money recompense for the service you offered and gave that when you lifted your hands and swore to protect and defend the Constitution and the flag you didn't even know what your pay was to be. [Cries of "That's so!">[ If there was any carefulness or thought in that direction it was only that the necessary provision might be made for those you left at home. No sordid impulse, no low emotion, called you to the field. [Applause.] In remembering all the painful ways in which you walked, ways of toil, and suffering, and sickness, and dying, to emerge into the glorious sunlight of that great day at Washington, we must not forget that in the homes you left there were also sacrifices and sufferings. Anxiety dwelt perpetually with those you left behind. We remember gratefully the sacrifices and sufferings of the fathers and mothers who sent you to the field, and, much more, of the wives who bravely gave up to the country the most cherished objects of their love. And now peace has come; no hand is lifted against the flag; the Constitution is again supreme and the Nation one. My countrymen, it is no time now to use an apothecary's scale to weigh the rewards of the men who saved the country. [Applause.]
If you will pardon me I will not further follow the line of remarks suggested by the kind words you have addressed to me through your representative. I notice the limitation which your spokesman has put upon you, but I beg to assure him and you that I am not so worn that I have not the strength to greet any of you who may desire to greet me. [Great applause.]
[INDIANAPOLIS, AUGUST 3.]
On the third of August, with the mercury registering ninety-nine degrees, thirty-five hundred visitors arrived from Montgomery and Clinton counties, Indiana. Their parade, carrying miniature log-cabins and other emblems, was one of the most enthusiastic demonstrations of the campaign. Fifty voters of 1840 headed the column led by Major D. K. Price, aged 92. The Montgomery County delegation was marshalled by John H. Burford, W. W. Thornton, T. H. B. McCain, John S. Brown, E. P. McClarkey, John Johnson, J. R. Bonnell, D. W. Roundtree, T. H. Ristine, H. M. Billingsley, Dumont Kennedy, and Clerk Hulett of Crawfordsville. Their spokesman was Hon. Peter S. Kennedy.
Among the Clinton County leaders were Albert H. Coble, Edward R. Burns, A. T. Dennis, Wm. H. Staley, R. P. Shanklin, S. A. Coulton, J. W. Harrison, J. T. Hockman, Nicholas Rice, Ambrose Colby, Oliver Hedgecock, and Dr. Gard of Frankfort. Judge J. C. Suit was their orator.
In reply to their addresses General Harrison said:
My Fellow-citizens—These daily and increasing delegations coming to witness their interest in the great issues which are presented for their consideration and determination, and bearing as they do to me their kind personal greetings, quite overmatch my ability to fittingly greet and respond to them.
You are here from every walk in life. Some of you have achieved success in the mechanical arts, some in professional pursuits, and more of you come from that first great pursuit of man—the tilling of the soil—and you come to express the thought that you have common interests; that these diverse pursuits are bound together harmoniously in a common governmental policy and administration. Your interests have had a harmonious and an amazing growth under that protective system to which your representatives have referred, and you wisely demand a continuation of that policy for their further advancement and development. [Applause.] You are in large part members of the Republican party. You have in the past contributed your personal influence, as well as your ballots, to the great victories which it has won. Among the great achievements of our party I think we may worthily mention the passage of that beneficent act of legislation known as the "homestead law." It was impossible to the old parties. It was possible only to a party composed of the sturdy yeomanry of the free States. [Applause.] It has populated our Territories and newer States with the elect of our citizenship. It opened a way to an ownership of the soil to a vast number of our citizens, and there is no surer bond in the direction of good citizenship than that our people should have property in the soil upon which they live. It is one of the best elements of our strength as a State that our farm-lands are so largely possessed in small tracts, and are tilled by the men who own them. It is one of the best evidences of the prosperity of our cities that so large a proportion of the men who work are covered by their own roof trees. If we would perpetuate this condition, we must maintain the American scale of wages. [Applause.] The policy of the subdivision of the soil is one that tends to strengthen our national life. God grant that it may be long before we have in this country a tenantry that is hopelessly such from one generation to another. [Applause.] That condition of things which makes Ireland a land of tenants, and which holds in vast estates the lands of England, must never find footing here. [Applause.] Small farms invite the church and the school-house into the neighborhood. Therefore, it was in the beginning the Republican party declared for free homes of a quarter-section each. That policy should be perpetuated as long as our public domain lasts, and all our legislation should tend in the direction which I have indicated. I cannot discuss all the important questions to which you have called my attention. I have before alluded to some of them. My Montgomery and Clinton county friends, I thank you for the cordial and hopeful words you have addressed to me. My highest ambition is to be found worthy of your respect and confidence. [Applause.]