President Harrison being rowed ashore at foot of Wall Street,
New York, April 29, 1889.
CHAPTER IV.
NON-POLITICAL EVENTS OF PRESIDENT HARRISON’S TERM
President Harrison’s quadrennium was a milestone between two generations. Memorials on every hand to the heroes of the Civil War shocked one with the sense that they and the events they molded were already of the past. Logan, Arthur, Sheridan, and Hancock had died. In 1891 General Sherman and Admiral Porter fell within a day of each other. General Joseph E. Johnston, who had been a pall-bearer at the funeral of each, rejoined them in a month.
This presidential term was pivotal in another way. The centennial anniversary of Washington’s inauguration as President fell on April 30, 1889. In observance of the occasion President Harrison followed the itinerary of one hundred years before, from the Governor’s mansion in New Jersey to the foot of Wall Street, in New York City, to old St. Paul’s Church, on Broadway, and to the site where the first Chief Magistrate first took the oath of office. Three days devoted to the commemorative exercises were a round of naval, military, and industrial parades, with music, oratory, pageantry, and festivities. For this Centennial Whittier composed an ode. The venerable Rev. S. F. Smith, who had written “America” fifty-seven years before, was also inspired by the occasion to pen a Century Hymn, and to add to “America” the stanza:
“Our joyful hearts to-day,
Their grateful tribute pay,
Happy and free,
After our toils and fears,
After our blood and tears,
Strong with our hundred years,
O God, to Thee.”
Washington Inaugural Celebration, 1889, New York.
Parade passing Union Square on Broadway.
At the opening of this its second century of existence the nation was confronted by entirely new issues. Bitterness between North and South, spite of its brief recrudescence during the pendency of the Force Bill, was fast dying out. At the unveiling of the noble monument to Robert E. Lee at Richmond, in May, 1890, while, of course, Confederate leaders were warmly cheered and the Confederate flag was displayed, various circumstances made it clear that this zeal was not in derogation of the restored Union.
The last outbreaks of sectional animosity related to Jefferson Davis, in whom, both to the North and to the South, the ghost of the Lost Cause had become curiously personified. The question whether or not he was a traitor was for years zealously debated in Congress and outside. The general amnesty after the war had excepted Davis. When a bill was before Congress giving suitable pensions to Mexican War soldiers and sailors, an amendment was carried, amid much bitterness, excluding the ex-president of the Confederacy from the benefits thereof. Northerners naturally glorified their triumph in the war as a victory for the Constitution, nor could they wholly withstand the inclination to question the motives of the secession leaders. Southerners, however loyal now to the Union, were equally bold in asserting that, since in 1861 the question of the nature of the Union had not been settled, Mr. Davis and the rest might attempt secession, not as foes of the Constitution, but as, in their own thought, its most loyal friends and defenders.
