Speeches of Benjamin Harrison, Twenty-third President of the United States

by Benjamin Harrison

Marquette Club Banquet.

On the evening of March 20, 1888, General Harrison was the honored guest of the Marquette Club of Chicago—one of the leading social and political organizations of that great city—at their second annual banquet, given at the Grand Pacific Hotel.

The officers of the club for that year were: George V. Lauman, President; William H. Johnson, First Vice-President; Hubert D. Crocker, Second Vice-President; Charles U. Gordon, Secretary; Will Sheldon Gilbert, Treasurer.

The Banquet Committee and Committee of Reception for the occasion comprised the following prominent members: James S. Moore, Frederick G. Laird, LeRoy T. Steward, Wm. H. Johnson, James E. Rogers, F. W. C. Hayes, Henry T. Smith, Harry J. Jones, Chas. S. Norton, Irving L. Gould, T. A. Broadbent, Jas. Rood, Jr., Wm. A. Paulsen, T. M. Garrett, Geo. W. Keehn, Harry P. Finney, C. B. Niblock, Wm. A. Lamson, S. E. Magill, R. D. Wardwell, Fred. G. McNally.

President Lauman was toastmaster, and opened the banquet with an address of welcome to Senator Harrison.

The other speakers of the evening were Edward J. Judd, Theodore Brentano, Hon. Thomas C. MacMillan, Hon. John S. Runnells, Newton Wyeth, Mayor Roche and President Tracy of the State League of Republican Clubs.

Amid hearty applause General Harrison rose to respond to the toast, "The Republican Party." He spoke as follows:

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Marquette Club—I am under an obligation that I shall not soon forget in having been permitted by your courtesy to sit at your table to-night and to listen to the eloquent words which have fallen from the lips of those speakers who have preceded me. I count it a privilege to spend an evening with so many young Republicans. There seems to be a fitness in the association of young men with the Republican party. The Republican party is a young party. I have not yet begun to call myself an old man, and yet there is no older Republican in the United States than I am. My first presidential vote was given for the first presidential candidate of the Republican party, and I have supported with enthusiasm every successor of Frémont, including that matchless statesman who claimed our suffrages in 1884. We cannot match ages with the Democratic party any more than that party can match achievements with us. It has lived longer, but to less purpose. "Moss-backed" cannot be predicated of a Republican. Our Democratic friends have a monopoly of that distinction, and it is one of the few distinguished monopolies that they enjoy; and yet when I hear a Democrat boasting himself of the age of his party I feel like reminding him that there are other organized evils in the world, older than the Democratic party. "The Republican party," the toast which you have assigned to me to-night, seems to have a past, a present and a future tense to it. It suggests history, and yet history so recent that it is to many here to-night a story of current events in which they have been participants. The Republican party—the influences which called it together were eclectic in their character. The men who formed it and organized it were picked men. The first assembly that sounded in its camp was a call to sacrifice, and not to spoils. It assembled about an altar to sacrifice, and in a temple beset with enemies. It is the only political party organized in America that has its "Book of Martyrs." On the bloody fields of Kansas, Republicans died for their creed, and since then we have put in that book the sacred memory of our immortal leader who has been mentioned here to-night—Abraham Lincoln—who died for his faith and devotion to the principles of human liberty and constitutional union. And there have followed it a great army of men who have died by reason of the fact that they adhered to the political creed that we loved. It is the only party in this land which in the past has been proscribed and persecuted to death for its allegiance to the principles of human liberty. After Lincoln had triumphed in that great forum of debate in his contest with Douglas, the Republican party carried that debate from the hustings to the battle-field and forever established the doctrine that human liberty is of natural right and universal. It clinched the matchless logic of Webster in his celebrated debate against the right of secession by a demonstration of its inability.

No party ever entered upon its administration of the affairs of this Nation under circumstances so beset with danger and difficulty as those which surrounded the Republican party when it took up the reins of executive control. In all other political contests those who had resisted the victorious party yielded acquiescence at the polls, but the Republican party in its success was confronted by armed resistance to national authority. The first acts of Republican administration were to assemble armies to maintain the authority of the Nation throughout the rebellious States. It organized armies, it fed them, and it fought them through those years of war with an undying and persistent faith that refused to be appalled by any dangers or discouraged by any difficulties. In the darkest days of the rebellion the Republican party by faith saw Appomattox through the smoke of Bull Run, and Raleigh through the mists of Chickamauga; and not only did it conduct this great civil war to a victorious end, not only did it restore the national authority and set up the flag on all those places where it had been overthrown and that flag torn down, but it in the act and as an incident in the restoration of national authority accomplished that act which, if no other had been recorded in its history, would have given it immortality. The emancipation of a race, brought about as an incident of war under the proclamation of the first Republican President, has forever immortalized the party that accomplished it.

But not only were these dangers and difficulties and besetments and discouragements of this long strife at home, but there was also a call for the highest statesmanship in dealing with the foreign affairs of the Government during that period of war. England and France not only gave to the Confederacy belligerent rights, but threatened to extend recognition, and even armed intervention. There was scarcely a higher achievement in the long history of brilliant statesmanship which stands to the credit of our party than the matchless management of our diplomatic relations during the period of our war; dignified, yet reserved, masterful, yet patient. Those enemies of republican liberty were held at bay until we had accomplished perpetual peace at Appomattox. That grasping avarice which has attempted to coin commercial advantages out of the distress of other nations which has so often characterized English diplomacy naturally made the Government of England the ally of the Confederacy, that had prohibited protective duties in its constitution, and yet Geneva followed Appomattox. A trinity of effort was necessary to that consummation—war, finance and diplomacy; Grant, Chase, Seward, and Lincoln over all, and each a victor in his own sphere. When 500,000 veterans found themselves without any pressing engagement, and Phil Sheridan sauntered down towards the borders of Mexico, French evacuation was expedited, and when Gen. Grant advised the English Government that our claims for the depredations committed by those rebel cruisers that were sent out from British ports to prey upon our commerce must be paid, but that we were not in a hurry about it—we could wait, but in the mean time interest would accumulate—the Geneva arbitration was accepted and compensation made for these unfriendly invasions of our rights. It became fashionable again at the tables of the English nobility to speak of our common ancestry and our common tongue. Then again France began to remind us of La Fayette and De Grasse. Five hundred thousand veteran troops and an unemployed navy did more for us than a common tongue and ancient friendships would do in the time of our distress. And we must not forget that it is often easier to assemble armies than it is to assemble army revenues. Though no financial secretary ever had laid upon him a heavier burden than was placed upon Salmon P. Chase to provide the enormous expenditures which the maintenance of our army required, this ceaseless, daily, gigantic drain upon the National Treasury called for the highest statesmanship.