General Harrison addressed them and said:
Gentlemen—It is very pleasant for me to meet you to-night in my own home. The more informal my intercourse can be made with my fellow-citizens the more agreeable it is to me. To you, and all others who will come informally to my home, I will give a hearty greeting. I am glad to see these representatives from the State of Pennsylvania whose business pursuits have called them to make their home with us in Indiana. The State of Pennsylvania has a special interest for me in the fact that it was the native State of a mother who, though nearly forty years dead, still lives affectionately in my memory. I welcome you here to this State as those who come to settle among us under new conditions of industrial and domestic life, to bring into our factories and our homes this new fuel from which we hope so much, not only in the promotion of domestic comfort and economy, but in the advancement of our manufacturing institutions. Your calling is one requiring high skill and intelligence and great fidelity. The agent with which you deal is an admirable servant but a dangerous master, and through carelessness may bring a peril instead of a blessing into our households and into our communities. I am glad that Indiana, so long drained upon by the States west of the Mississippi, has at last felt in your coming from that stanch, magnificent Republican commonwealth some restoration of this drain, which has made the struggle for Republican success in Indiana doubtful in our previous elections. It is time some of the States east of us, having such majorities as Pennsylvania, were contributing not only to our business enterprise and prosperity, but to the strengthening of the Republican ranks, which have been depleted by the invitations which the agricultural States of the West have extended to our enterprising young men. I welcome your here to-night, and will be glad to have a personal introduction to each of you. [Applause.]
[INDIANAPOLIS, SEPTEMBER 29.]
Ohio and Illinois did honor this day again to the Republican nominee. From Cleveland came 800 voters; their organizations were the Harrison Boys in Blue—200 veterans of the Civil War—commanded by Gen. James Barnett; the Garfield Club, led by Thomas R. Whitehead and Albert M. Long; the Logan Club, headed by Capt. W. R. Isham, and the German Central Club. Prominent in the delegation were Hon. Amos Townsend, John Gibson, and Major Palmer, the blind orator. Gen. E. Myers spoke for the Buckeyes. The city of Normal, McLean County, Illinois, sent a delegation of 200 teachers and students of the State Normal School, including 70 ladies. Student William Galbraith spoke for his associates.
General Harrison, in response, said:
Gentlemen and Friends—The organizations represented here this morning have for me each an individual interest. Each is suggestive of a line of thought which I should be glad to follow, but I cannot, in the few moments that I can speak to you in this chilly atmosphere, say all that the names and character of your respective clubs suggest as appropriate. I welcome those comrades in the Union army in the Civil War. [Cheers.]
Death wrought its work in ghastly form in those years when, patiently, fearlessly, and hopefully, you carried the flag to the front and brought it at last in triumph to the Nation's capital. [Cheers.] Death, since, in its gentler forms, has been coming into the households where the veterans that were spared from shot and shell abide. The muster-roll of the living is growing shorter. The larger company is being rapidly recruited. You live not alone in the memories of the war. Your presence here attests that, as citizens, you feel the importance of these civil strifes. You recall the incidents of the great war, not in malice, not to stir or revive sectional divisions, or to re-mark sectional lines, but because you believe that it is good for the Nation that loyalty to the flag and heroism in its defence should be remembered and honored. [Cheers.] There is not a veteran here, in this Republican Club of veterans, who does not desire that the streams of prosperity in the Southern States should run bank-full. [Cheers.]
There is not one who does not sympathize with her plague-stricken communities, and rejoice in every new evidence of her industrial development. The Union veterans have never sought to impose hard conditions upon the brave men they vanquished. The generous terms of surrender given by General Grant were not alone expressions of his own brave, magnanimous nature. The hearts of soldiers who carried the gun and the knapsack in his victorious army were as generous as his. You were glad to accept the renewal of the Confederate soldier's allegiance to the flag as the happy end of all strife; willing that he should possess the equal protection and power of a citizenship that you had preserved for yourselves and secured to him. [Cheers.] You have only asked—and you may confidently submit to the judgment of every brave Confederate soldier whether the terms are not fair—that the veteran of the Union army shall have, as a voter, an equal influence in the affairs of the country that was saved by him for both with the man who fought against the flag, and that soldiers of neither army shall abridge the rights of others under the law. [Great cheering.] Less than that you cannot accept with honor; less than that a generous foe would not consent to offer.
To the gentlemen of the John A. Logan Club let me say: You have chosen a worthy name for your organization. Patriot, soldier, and statesman, Logan's memory will live in the affectionate admiration of his comrades and in the respect of all his opponents. His home State was Illinois, but his achievements were national.