“Gentlemen: You come as bearers of dispatches, so your chairman tells me. I am glad to hear the news you bring, and exceedingly glad to see the bringers of the news. Your uniform, the name of your club, the place from which you come, are all full of suggestions. You recollect the verses that were often quoted about the old Continental soldiers: “The old three-cornered hat and breeches, and all that were so queer.” Your costume brings back to our memory the days of the Continentals of 1776, whose principles I hope you represent. You are called the Lincoln Club, and Lincoln was himself a revival, a restoration of the days of ’76 and their doctrines. The great Proclamation of Emancipation, which he penned, was a second Declaration of Independence—broader, fuller, the New Testament of human liberty; and then you come from Indiana, supposed to be a Western State, but yet in its traditions older than Ohio. More than one hundred years ago a gallant Virginian went far up into your wilderness, captured two or three forts, took down the British flag, and reared the Stars and Stripes. Vincennes and Cahokia, and a post in Illinois, were a part of the capture. Your native State was one of the first fruits of that splendid fighting power which gave the whole West to the United States, and now these representatives of Indiana come representing the Revolution in your hats, representing Abraham Lincoln in your badges, and representing the victory both of the Revolution and of Lincoln in the news you bring. I could not be an American and fail to welcome your costumes, your badges, your news and yourselves. Many Indiana men were my comrades in the days of the war. I remember a regiment of them that was under my command near Corinth, when it seemed necessary for the defense of our forces to cut down a little piece of timber—seventy-five acres. We unboxed for my brigade about four thousand new axes, and the Fifty-first Regiment of Indiana Volunteers chopped down more trees in half a day than I supposed it was possible could fall in any forest in a week. It appears that in the great political forest from which you have just come, your axes have been busy again. I especially welcome the axmen of the Fifty-first Regiment, who may happen to be here, and thank you all, gentlemen, for the compliment of your visit, and for the good news you bring. I do not prize that news half so much for its personal relations to you and to me, as I do because it is a revival of the spirit of 1776, the spirit of Abraham Lincoln, the spirit of universal liberty, and the spirit of just and equal law all over this land. That gives your news its greatest significance. Gentlemen, I thank you again, and shall be glad to take you by the hand.”
After the speeches, the members of the Lincoln Club all had the pleasure of shaking the hand of General Garfield, and of hearing an individual welcome from his lips.
Two days afterwards, the Cuyahoga Veteran Corps came on a similar pilgrimage to Lawnfield, and were similarly well received. General M. D. Leggett, commander of the corps, made the introductory address; and, in answer, General Garfield said:
“Comrades: Any man that can see twelve hundred comrades in his front-door yard has as much reason to be proud as for any thing that can well happen to him in this world. After that has happened, he need not much care what else happens, or what else don’t happen. To see twelve hundred men, from almost every regiment of the State, and from regiments and brigades and divisions of almost every other State—to see the consolidated field report of the survivors of the war, sixteen years after it is over—is a great sight for any man to look on. I greet you all with gratitude for this visit. Its personal compliment is great.
“But there is another thought in it far greater than that to me and greater to you. Just over yonder about ten miles, when I was a mere lad, I heard the first political speech of my life. It was a speech that Joshua R. Giddings was making. He had come home to appeal to his constituents. A Southern man drew a pistol on him while he was speaking in favor of human liberty, and marched over toward him to shoot him down, to stop his speech and quench the voice of liberty. I remember but one thing that the old hero said in the course of that speech so long ago, and it was this: ‘I knew I was speaking for liberty, and I felt that if the assassin had shot me down, my speech would still go on and triumph.’ Well, now, gentlemen, there are twelve hundred, and the hundred times twelve hundred—the million of men that went out into the field of battle to fight for our Union—felt just as that speaker felt—that if they should all be shot down the cause of liberty would still go on. You and all the Union felt that around you, and above you, and behind you, were a force and a cause and an immortal truth that would outlive your bodies and mine, and survive all our brigades and all our armies and all our battles. Here you are to-day in the same belief. We shall all die, and yet we believe that after us the immortal truths for which we fought will live in a united Nation, a united people against all factions, against all section, against all division, so long as there shall be a continent of rivers and mountains and lakes. It was that great belief that lifted you all up into the heroic height of great soldiers in the war, and it is that belief that you cherish to-day, and carry with you in all your pilgrimages and in all your reunions. In that great belief, and in that inspiring faith, I meet you and greet you to-day, and with it we will go on to whatever fate has in store for us all.
“I thank you, comrades, for this demonstration of your faith and confidence and regard for me. Why, gentlemen, this home of mine will never be the same place again. I am disposed to think that a man does not take every thing away from a place when he takes his body away. It was said that long after the death of the first Napoleon, his soldiers believed that on certain anniversary days he came out and reviewed all his dead troops, he himself being dead; that he had a midnight review of those that had fought and fallen under his leadership. That, doubtless, was a fiction of the imagination; but I shall have to believe in all time hereafter the character and spirit and impressions of my comrades live on this turf, and under these trees, and in this portal; and it will be a part of my comradeship in all days to come.”
On the 28th of the month a delegation of Portage County citizens, two hundred strong, headed by Judge Luther Day, of Ravenna, visited Mentor, and paid the customary respects to him who was now regarded as well nigh certain to carry away the greatest honor known to the American people. After the company was formally introduced by Judge Day, the General, in response, said:
“Judge Day, Ladies and Gentlemen: I once read of a man who tried to wear the armor and wield the sword of some ancient ancestor, but found them too large for his stature and strength. If I should try at this moment to wear and sway the memories which your presence awakens, I should be overwhelmed, and wholly unable to marshal and master the quick-coming throng of memories which this semicircle of old friends and neighbors has brought to me. Here are school-fellows of twenty-eight years ago. Here are men and women who were my pupils a quarter of a century ago. Here are venerable men who, twenty one years ago, in the town of Kent, launched me upon the stormy sea of political life. I see others who were soldiers in the old regiment which I had the honor to command, and could I listen to the teaching and thoughtful words of my friend, the venerable late Chief Justice of Ohio, who has just spoken, without remembering that evening in 1861, of which he spoke too modestly, when he and I stood together in the old church at Hiram, and called upon the young men to go forth to battle for the Union, and be enlisted before they slept, and thus laid the foundation of the Forty-second Regiment? How can I forget all these things, and all that has followed? How can I forget that twenty-five years of my life were so braided and intertwined with the lives of the people of Portage County, when I see men and women from all its townships standing at my door? I can not forget these things while life and consciousness remain. No other period of my life can be like this. The freshness of youth, the very springtide of life, the brightening on toward noonday—all were with you and of you, my neighbors, my friends, my cherished comrades, in all the relations of social, student, military and political life and friendship. You are here, so close to my heart that I can not trust myself to an attempt to marshal these memories with any thing like coherence. To know that my neighbors and friends in Portage County, since the first day of my Congressional life, have never sent to any convention a delegate who was hostile to me; that through all the storm of detraction that roared around me, the members of the old guard of Portage County have never wavered in their faith and friendship, but have stood an unbroken phalanx with their locked shields above my head, and have given me their hearts in every contest. If a man can carry in his memory a jewel more precious than this, I am sure Judge Day has never heard what it is.
“Well, gentlemen, on the eve of great events, closing a great campaign, I look into your faces and draw from you such consolation as even you can not understand. Whatever the event may be, our post is secure, and whatever may befall me hereafter, if I can succeed in keeping the hearts of Portage County near to me I shall know that I do not go far wrong in any thing, for they are men who love the truth for truth’s sake, far more than they love any man.
“Ladies and gentlemen, all the doors of my house are open to you. The hand of every member of my family is outstretched to you. Our hearts greet you, and we ask you to come in.”