Oh, who fell before him in battle, tell me who?
He drove the savage legions and British armies, too,
At the Rapids and the Thames and old Tippecanoe.
Oh, what, tell me what will little Martin do?
Oh, what, then, what will little Martin do?
He’ll follow the footsteps of Price and Swartout, too,
While the log cabins ring again with Tippecanoe!”
The spirit of the ’40’s pervaded Western politics for many years after that strenuous campaign. Men who had voted for “Tippecanoe” Harrison were pointed out as citizens of unusual worth and dignity in my youth; and organizations of these veterans were still in existence and attentive to politics when Harrison’s grandson was a candidate for the Presidency.
I find myself referring frequently to the continuing influence of the Civil War in the social and political life of these Western States. The “soldier vote” was long to be reckoned with, and it was not until Mr. Cleveland brought a new spirit into our politics that the war between the States began to fade as a political factor; and even then we were assured that if the Democrats succeeded they would pension Confederate soldiers and redeem the Confederate bonds. There were a good many of us in these border States who, having been born of soldier fathers, and with Whig and Republican antecedents, began to resent the continued emphasis of the war in every campaign; and I look back upon Mr. Cleveland’s rise as of very great importance in that he was a messenger of new and attractive ideals of public service that appealed strongly to young men. But my political apostasy (I speak of my own case because it is in some sense typical) was attended with no diminution of reverence for that great citizen army that defended and saved the Union. The annual gatherings of the Grand Army of the Republic have grown pathetically smaller, but this organization is not a negligible expression of American democracy. The writing of these pages has been interrupted constantly by bugle-calls floating in from the street, by the cheers of crowds wishing Godspeed to our young army in its high adventure beyond the Atlantic, and at the moment, by stirring news of American valor and success in France. In my boyhood I viewed with awe and admiration the veterans of ’61-’65 and my patriotism was deeply influenced by the atmosphere in which I was born, by acquaintance with my father’s comrades, and quickened through my formative years by attendance at encampments of the Grand Army of the Republic and cheery “camp-fires” in the hall of George H. Thomas Post, Indianapolis, where privates and generals met for story-telling and the singing of war-songs. The honor which it was part of my education should be accorded those men will, I reflect, soon be the portion of their grandsons, the men of 1917-18, and we shall have very likely a new Grand Army of the Republic, with the difference that the descendants of men who fought under Grant and Sherman will meet at peaceful “camp-fires” with grandsons of the soldiers of Lee and Jackson, quite unconscious that this was ever other than a united nation.
