“We were a family, I say again, and we did not let partisan politics disturb us then, and we do not let partisanship enter our circle here to-day.
“We did not quarrel about controversies outside of our great work. We agreed to be brethren for the Union, under the flag, against all its enemies everywhere, and brothers to all men who stood with us under the flag to fight for the Union, whatever their color of skin, whatever their previous politics, whatever their religion. In that spirit we went out; in that spirit we returned; and we are glad to be in Ashland to-day, for it is one of the homes of our regiment, where we were welcomed in the beginning and have always been welcome since. We are grateful for the welcome tendered us to-day by this great assembly of our old neighbors and friends of Ashland County.
“Now, fellow-citizens, a regiment like a family has the right to be a little clannish and exclusive. It does not deny the right of any other family to the same privileges, but it holds the members of its own family a little nearer and a little dearer than any other family in the world. And so the Forty-second Regiment has always been a band of brothers. I do not this day know a Forty-second man in the world who hates another Forty-second man. There never was a serious quarrel inside the regiment. There was never a serious disagreement between its officers. The worst thing I have ever heard said against it is that all its three field officers came home alive. And they are all here on this stand to-day. It was, perhaps, a little against us that no one of us had the honor to get killed or seriously crippled; but we hold that it was not altogether our fault, and we trust that some day or other you will have forgiven us, if you have not to-day, for being alive and all here together.
“I want to say another thing about the soldiers’ work. I know of nothing in all the circle of human duty that so unites men as the common suffering and danger and struggle that war brings upon a regiment. You can not know a man so thoroughly and so soon as by the tremendous tests to which war subjects him. These men knew each other by sight long before they knew each other by heart; but before they got back home they knew each other, as you sometimes say you know a son, ‘by heart;’ for they had been tested by fire; they had been tested by starvation; they had been tested by the grim presence of death, and each knew that those who remained were union men; men that in all the hard, close chances of life, had the stuff in them that enabled them to stand up in the very extremes they did; and stand up ready to die. And such men, so tried and so acquainted, never got over it; and the rest of the world must permit them to be just a little clannish towards each other; the rest of the world will not think we are narrow when they consider this particular fault of ours; a little closer to us than any of the rest of the world in a military way.
“Now, fellow-citizens, we are here to look into your faces, to enjoy your hospitality, to revive our old memories of the place, but, for more than any thing else, to look into each other’s faces, and revive old memories of a great many places less pleasing and home-like than Ashland. We have been meeting together in this way for nearly fifteen years, and we have made a pledge to each other that as long as there are two of us left to shake hands, we will meet and greet the survivor. Some of us felt a little hurt about ten years ago when the papers spoke of us as the survivors of the Forty-second Regiment. We were survivors it was true, but we thought we were so surviving that it need not be put at us, as though we were about to die. Now, I don’t know how it is with the rest of you. Most of mankind grow old, and you can see it in their faces. I see here and there a bald head, like my own, or a white one, like Captain Gardner’s, but to me these men will be boys till they die. We call them boys; we meet and greet them as boys, even though they become very old boys, and in that spirit of young, hopeful, daring manhood we expect to meet them so long as we live. Nothing can get us a great way from each other while we live. I am glad to meet these men here to-day. [Here another portion of the platform broke down, precipitating General Garfield and two or three of the reporters to the ground.] Continuing, he said: I was glad also that there was not any body hurt when that broke, and nobody made unhappy, and I will conclude all I wanted to say, more than I intended to say, by adding this: These men went out without one single touch of revenge in their hearts. They went out to maintain this Union and make it immortal; to put their own immortal lives into it, and to make it possible that the people of Ashland should make the monogram of the United States, as you see it up there (pointing to the monogram on the building), a wreath of Union inside of a very large N, a capital N, that stands for Nation, a Nation so large that it includes the ‘U. S. A.’ all the people of the Republic, and will include it for evermore; that is what we meant then and is what we mean now.
“And now, fellow-citizens and soldiers of the Forty-second Regiment—for I have been talking mainly to you, and if any of this crowd have overheard I am not particularly to blame for it—I say, fellow-citizens and comrades, I greet you to-day with great satisfaction and bid you a cordial good-bye.”
Two days later General Garfield was present at a reunion of an artillery company, held at Mentor, and since they had composed a part of the force with which Thomas stayed at last the furious onset at Chickamauga, their old chief of staff was all the more willing to say a few words for their edification. This he did as follows:—
“Comrades: This is really the first time I have met this battery as an organization since the Sunday evening of the terrible battle of Chickamauga, nearly seventeen years ago. I last saw you there in the most exposed angle of that unfortunate line, broken by the combined forces of Bragg and Longstreet. I then saw you gallantly fighting under the immediate direction of General Thomas, to reform that broken line, and hold the exultant rebel host in check until the gallant Steedman with reinforcements swept them back into the dark valley of the Chickamauga. I am now able to distinguish among your numbers faces which I saw there in that terrible hour. But how changed! I now see you here with your wives, children, and friends, peaceably enjoying this grand reception of your friends and neighbors here assembled to honor and entertain you.
“But nothing so attracts my attention as your young and active appearance. It is more than eighteen years since you left for the war, and yet you are not old. Indeed, many of you appear almost like boys. This I am pleased to observe; for if there be any men upon the face of the earth who deserve an extension of time, it is you who, in early manhood, so freely gave your services to your country, that it might live. Nothing can be more proper than these annual reunions. I am aware of the reputation which this organization, as well as my own regiment, always enjoyed of unity and good fellowship among its officers and men. May you, therefore, continue to enjoy and perpetuate that friendship to the very latest hour of your lives.”
General Garfield had now to learn that the people in their eagerness, and especially the politicians in their unselfish devotion, had decreed him no further rest, even at Lawnfield. Pilgrimages to Mentor became the order of the day. For meanwhile the October elections had been held, and all had gone triumphantly for the Republicans. Indiana, chief of the so-called “doubtful States,” had whirled into line with an unequivocal majority. Ohio had put a quietus on all hopes of the Democracy to carry her electoral votes for Hancock. The high-blown anticipations of the friends of “the superb soldier” were shockingly shattered. And so all the paths of political preferment led to Mentor; and all the paths were trodden by way-worn pilgrims, who, with sandal-shoon and scallop-shell urged their course thither to see him who was now their hope. On the 19th of October a train of these pilgrims, rather more notable than the rest, came in from Indiana. It was the Lincoln Club of Indianapolis, four hundred strong. They were uniformed, and wore grotesque cockades extemporized out of straw hats into a sort of three-cornered conspicuity. The General was, none the less, greatly pleased with his visitors, and spared no pains to make their brief stay at Mentor a pleasure, if not a profit. The club was formally introduced by Captain M. G. McLean, and in response General Garfield said:—