veterans and their wives from Northwestern Kansas--_en route_ to the
Grand Encampment--under the lead of General W. H. Caldwell, Frank
McGrath, C. E. Monell, W. S. Search, Dr. A. Patten, J. W. Garner, and
Dr. J. R. King, of Beloit, Kan. Colonel W. C. Whitney, Commander of the
First Division, was orator, and assured General Harrison that "Kansas
grew more corn and more babies than any other State in the Union." In
response the General said:
_My Comrades_--I have a choice to make and you have one. I can
occupy the few moments I have to spare either in public address or
in private, personal greeting. I think you would prefer, as I shall
prefer, to omit the public speech that I may be presented to each of
you. [Cries of "Good! Good!"] I beg you, therefore, to permit me only
to say that I very heartily appreciate this greeting from my comrades
of Kansas.
The bond that binds us together as soldiers of the late war is one
that is enduring and close. No party considerations can break it; it
is stronger than political ties, and we are able thus in our Grand
Army associations to come together upon that broad and high plane
of fraternity, loyalty, and charity. [Applause and cries of "Good!
Good!"] Let me now, if it be your pleasure, extend a comrade's hand to
each of you. [Applause.]
GENERAL HARRISON'S LETTER OF ACCEPTANCE.
INDIANAPOLIS, IND., September 11, 1888.
HON. M. M. ESTEE AND OTHERS, COMMITTEE, ETC.:
_Gentlemen_--When your committee visited me, on the Fourth of July
last, and presented the official announcement of my nomination for
the presidency of the United States by the Republican convention, I
promised as soon as practicable to communicate to you a more formal
acceptance of the nomination. Since that time the work of receiving
and addressing, almost daily, large delegations of my fellow-citizens
has not only occupied all of my time, but has in some measure rendered
it unnecessary for me to use this letter as a medium of communicating
to the public my views upon the questions involved in the campaign. I
appreciate very highly the confidence and respect manifested by the
convention, and accept the nomination with a feeling of gratitude and
a full sense of the responsibilities which accompany it.
It is a matter of congratulation that the declarations of the
Chicago convention upon the questions that now attract the interest
of our people are so clear and emphatic. There is further cause of
congratulation in the fact that the convention utterances of the
Democratic party, if in any degree uncertain or contradictory, can
now be judged and interpreted by executive acts and messages, and
by definite propositions in legislation. This is especially true of
what is popularly known as the Tariff question. The issue cannot
now be obscured. It is not a contest between schedules, but between
wide-apart principles. The foreign competitors for our market have,
with quick instinct, seen how one issue of this contest may bring them
advantage, and our own people are not so dull as to miss or neglect
the grave interests that are involved for them. The assault upon our
protective system is open and defiant. Protection is assailed as
unconstitutional in law, or as vicious in principle, and those who
hold such views sincerely cannot stop short of an absolute elimination
from our tariff laws of the principle of protection. The Mills bill is
only a step, but it is toward an object that the leaders of Democratic
thought and legislation have clearly in mind. The important question
is not so much the length of the step as the direction of it. Judged
by the executive message of December last, by the Mills bill, by the
debates in Congress, and by the St. Louis platform, the Democratic
party will, if supported by the country, place the tariff laws upon a
purely revenue basis. This is practical free trade--free trade in the
English sense. The legend upon the banner may not be "Free Trade"--it
may be the more obscure motto, "Tariff Reform;" but neither the banner
nor the inscription is conclusive, or, indeed, very important. The
assault itself is the important fact.
Those who teach that the import duty upon foreign goods sold
in our market is paid by the consumer, and that the price of the
domestic competing article is enhanced to the amount of the duty
on the imported article--that every million of dollars collected
for customs duties represents many millions more which do not reach
the treasury, but are paid by our citizens as the increased cost of
domestic productions resulting from the tariff laws--may not intend
to discredit in the minds of others our system of levying duties on
competing foreign products, but it is clearly already discredited in
their own. We cannot doubt, without impugning their integrity, that
if free to act upon their convictions they would so revise our laws
as to lay the burden of the customs revenue upon articles that are
not produced in this country, and to place upon the free list all
competing foreign products. I do not stop to refute this theory as to
the effect of our tariff duties. Those who advance it are students
of maxims and not of the markets. They may be safely allowed to call
their project "Tariff Reform," if the people understand that in the
end the argument compels free trade in all competing products. This
end may not be reached abruptly, and its approach may be accompanied
with some expressions of sympathy for our protected industries and our
working people, but it will certainly come if these early steps do not
arouse the people to effective resistance.
The Republican party holds that a protective tariff is
constitutional, wholesome, and necessary. We do not offer a fixed
schedule, but a principle. We will revise the schedule, modify rates,
but always with an intelligent provision as to the effect upon
domestic productions and the wages of our working people. We believe
it to be one of the worthy objects of tariff legislation to preserve
the American market for American producers, and to maintain the
American scale of wages by adequate discriminative duties upon foreign
competing products. The effect of lower rates and larger importations
upon the public revenue is contingent and doubtful, but not so the
effect upon American production and American wages. Less work and
lower wages must be accepted as the inevitable result of the increased
offering of foreign goods in our market. By way of recompense for
this reduction in his wages, and the loss of the American market, it
is suggested that the diminished wages of the workingman will have an
undiminished purchasing power, and that he will be able to make up
for the loss of the home market by an enlarged foreign market. Our
workingmen have the settlement of the question in their own hands.
They now obtain higher wages and live more comfortably than those of
any other country. They will make choice of the substantial advantages
they have in hand and the deceptive promises and forecasts of these
theorizing reformers. They will decide for themselves and for their
country whether the protective system shall be continued or destroyed.
The fact of a treasury surplus, the amount of which is variously
stated, has directed public attention to a consideration of the
methods by which the national income may best be reduced to the level
of a wise and necessary expenditure. This condition has been seized
upon by those who are hostile to protective customs duties as an
advantageous base of attack upon our tariff laws. They have magnified
and nursed the surplus, which they affect to deprecate, seemingly
for the purpose of exaggerating the evil, in order to reconcile the
people to the extreme remedy they propose. A proper reduction of the
revenues does not necessitate, and should not suggest, the abandonment
or impairment of the protective system. The methods suggested by
our convention will not need to be exhausted in order to effect the
necessary reduction. We are not likely to be called upon, I think, to
make a present choice between the surrender of the protective system
and the entire repeal of the internal taxes. Such a contingency,
in view of the present relation of expenditures to revenues, is
remote. The inspection and regulation of the manufacture and sale of
oleomargarine is important, and the revenue derived from it is not so
great that the repeal of the law need enter into any plan of revenue
reduction. The surplus now in the treasury should be used in the
purchase of bonds. The law authorizes this use of it, and if it is not
needed for current or deficiency appropriations, the people, and not
the banks in which it has been deposited, should have the advantage
of its use by stopping interest upon the public debt. At least those
who needlessly hoard it should not be allowed to use the fear of a
monetary stringency, thus produced, to coerce public sentiment upon
other questions.
Closely connected with the subject of the tariff is that of the
importation of foreign laborers under contracts of service to be
performed here. The law now in force prohibiting such contracts
received my cordial support in the Senate, and such amendments as may
be found necessary effectively to deliver our working men and women
from this most inequitable form of competition will have my sincere
advocacy. Legislation prohibiting the importation of laborers under
contract to serve here will, however, afford very inadequate relief to
our working people if the system of protective duties is broken down.
If the products of American shops must compete in the American market,
without favoring duties, with the products of cheap foreign labor
the effect will be different, if at all, only in degree, whether the
cheap laborer is across the street or over the sea. Such competition
will soon reduce wages here to the level of those abroad, and when
that condition is reached we will not need any laws forbidding the
importation of laborers under contract--they will have no inducement
to come, and the employer no inducement to send for them.
In the earlier years of our history public agencies to promote
immigration were common. The pioneer wanted a neighbor with more
friendly instincts than the Indian. Labor was scarce and fully
employed. But the day of the immigration bureau has gone by. While
our doors will continue open to proper immigration, we do not need to
issue special invitations to the inhabitants of other countries to
come to our shores or to share our citizenship. Indeed, the necessity
of some inspection and limitation is obvious. We should resolutely
refuse to permit foreign governments to send their paupers and
criminals to our ports. We are also clearly under a duty to defend our
civilization by excluding alien races whose ultimate assimilation
with our people is neither possible nor desirable. The family has been
the nucleus of our best immigration, and the home the most potent
assimilating force in our civilization.
The objections to Chinese immigration are distinctive and
conclusive, and are now so generally accepted as such that the
question has passed entirely beyond the stage of argument. The laws
relating to this subject would, if I should be charged with their
enforcement, be faithfully executed. Such amendments or further
legislation as may be necessary and proper to prevent evasions of
the laws and to stop further Chinese immigration would also meet my
approval. The expression of the convention upon this subject is in
entire harmony with my views.
Our civil compact is a government by majorities, and the law loses
its sanction and the magistrate our respect when this compact is
broken. The evil results of election frauds do not expend themselves
upon the voters who are robbed of their rightful influence in
public affairs. The individual or community or party that practises
or connives at election frauds has suffered irreparable injury,
and will sooner or later realize that to exchange the American
system of majority rule for minority control is not only unlawful
and unpatriotic, but very unsafe for those who promote it. The
disfranchisement of a single legal elector by fraud or intimidation is
a crime too grave to be regarded lightly. The right of every qualified
elector to cast one free ballot and to have it honestly counted must
not be questioned. Every constitutional power should be used to make
this right secure and to punish frauds upon the ballot.
Our colored people do not ask special legislation in their
interest, but only to be made secure in the common rights of American
citizenship. They will, however, naturally mistrust the sincerity
of those party leaders who appeal to their race for support only in
those localities where the suffrage is free and election results
doubtful, and compass their disfranchisement where their votes would
be controlling and their choice cannot be coerced.
The Nation, not less than the States, is dependent for prosperity
and security upon the intelligence and morality of the people. This
common interest very early suggested national aid in the establishment
and endowment of schools and colleges in the new States. There is,
I believe, a present exigency that calls for still more liberal and
direct appropriations in aid of common-school education in the States.
The territorial form of government is a temporary expedient, not
a permanent civil condition. It is adapted to the exigency that
suggested it, but becomes inadequate, and even oppressive, when
applied to fixed and populous communities. Several Territories are
well able to bear the burdens and discharge the duties of free
commonwealths in the American Union. To exclude them is to deny the
just rights of their people, and may well excite their indignant
protest. No question of the political preference of the people of a
Territory should close against them the hospitable door which has
opened to two-thirds of the existing States. But admissions should be
resolutely refused to any Territory a majority of whose people cherish
institutions that are repugnant to our civilization or inconsistent
with a republican form of government.
The declaration of the convention against "all combinations of
capital, organized in trusts or otherwise, to control arbitrarily the
condition of trade among our citizens," is in harmony with the views
entertained and publicly expressed by me long before the assembling
of the convention. Ordinarily, capital shares the losses of idleness
with labor; but under the operation of the trust, in some of its
forms, the wageworker alone suffers loss, while idle capital receives
its dividends from a trust fund. Producers who refuse to join the
combination are destroyed, and competition as an element of prices is
eliminated. It cannot be doubted that the legislative authority should
and will find a method of dealing fairly and effectively with those
and other abuses connected with this subject.
It can hardly be necessary for me to say that I am heartily in
sympathy with the declaration of the convention upon the subject of
pensions to our soldiers and sailors. What they gave and what they
suffered I had some opportunity to observe, and, in a small measure,
to experience. They gave ungrudgingly; it was not a trade, but an
offering. The measure was heaped up, running over. What they achieved
only a distant generation can adequately tell. Without attempting to
discuss particular propositions, I may add that measures in behalf of
the surviving veterans of the war and of the families of their dead
comrades should be conceived and executed in a spirit of justice and
of the most grateful liberality, and that, in the competition for
civil appointments, honorable military service should have appropriate
recognition.
The law regulating appointments to the classified civil service
received my support in the Senate in the belief that it opened the way
to a much-needed reform. I still think so, and, therefore, cordially
approve the clear and forcible expression of the convention upon this
subject. The law should have the aid of a friendly interpretation
and be faithfully and vigorously enforced. All appointments under it
should be absolutely free from partisan considerations and influence.
Some extensions of the classified list are practicable and desirable,
and further legislation extending the reform to other branches of
the service to which it is applicable would receive my approval. In
appointment to every grade and department, fitness, and not party
service, should be the essential and discriminating test, and fidelity
and efficiency the only sure tenure of office. Only the interests of
the public service should suggest removals from office. I know the
practical difficulties attending the attempt to apply the spirit of
the civil service rules to all appointments and removals. It will,
however, be my sincere purpose, if elected, to advance the reform.
I notice with pleasure that the convention did not omit to express
its solicitude for the promotion of virtue and temperance among our
people. The Republican party has always been friendly to everything
that tended to make the home life of our people free, pure, and
prosperous, and will in the future be true to its history in this
respect.
Our relations with foreign powers should be characterized by
friendliness and respect. The right of our people and of our ships
to hospitable treatment should be insisted upon with dignity and
firmness. Our Nation is too great, both in material strength
and in moral power, to indulge in bluster or to be suspected of
timorousness. Vacillation and inconsistency are as incompatible
with successful diplomacy as they are with the national dignity. We
should especially cultivate and extend our diplomatic and commercial
relations with the Central and South American States. Our fisheries
should be fostered and protected. The hardships and risks that are
the necessary incidents of the business should not be increased by an
inhospitable exclusion from the near-lying ports. The resources of a
firm, dignified, and consistent diplomacy are undoubtedly equal to the
prompt and peaceful solution of the difficulties that now exist. Our
neighbors will surely not expect in our ports a commercial hospitality
they deny to us in theirs.
I cannot extend this letter by a special reference to other subjects
upon which the convention gave an expression.
In respect to them, as well as to those I have noticed, I am
in entire agreement with the declarations of the convention. The
resolutions relating to the coinage, to the rebuilding of the navy,
to coast defences, and to public lands, express conclusions to all of
which I gave my support in the Senate.
Inviting a calm and thoughtful consideration of these public
questions, we submit them to the people. Their intelligent patriotism
and the good Providence that made and has kept us a Nation will lead
them to wise and safe conclusions.
Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
BENJAMIN HARRISON.
CLAYTON, IND., SEPTEMBER 13.
_Reunion of the Seventieth Indiana Regiment._
General Harrison, accompanied by Mrs. Harrison and Mrs. McKee, on
September 13 attended the fourteenth reunion of the Seventieth Indiana
Regimental Association at Clayton village, Hendricks County.
The Seventieth Regiment was recruited from the counties of Hendricks,
Johnson and Marion. Of the one hundred and fifty-nine regiments sent to
the front by Indiana, but few, if any, achieved a more honorable and
distinguished record. It was the first regiment to report for duty under
President Lincoln's call of July, '62, and was recruited in less than a
month by Second Lieutenant Benjamin Harrison.
After the regiment had been recruited Lieutenant Harrison was elected
Captain of Company A, and when the regiment was organized, August
7, 1862, Captain Harrison was commissioned its colonel. It left
Indianapolis for the front August 13, 1862, and returned thirty-four
months later, with a loss of 189 men. It participated in eleven
engagements, including Resaca, Kenesaw, Marietta, Peach Tree Creek,
Atlanta, Savannah and Bentonville. The regiment was a part of Sherman's
army, and was attached to the First Brigade, Third Division, Twentieth
Corps. For several years past General Harrison has been successively
chosen President of the Regimental Association.
Several hundred veterans, with their families, accompanied the General
from Indianapolis, and were greeted at Clayton by five thousand people.
Three hundred veterans of the Seventieth saluted their Colonel as
he walked to the front and, assuming command, led the column to a
neighboring grove, where the exercises of the day were held. It was the
largest reunion in the history of the Association. Among the prominent
non-resident members in attendance were Lieutenant-Colonel James Burghs,
of Topeka; Capt. Wm. M. Meredith, Chicago (he was captain of Company
E, the color company of the regiment); Captain Tansey, now Judge,
of Winfield, Kansas; Captain Willis Record, of Nebraska; Lieutenant
Hardenbrook and Private Snow, of Kansas, and Cyrus Butterfield, of
Minneapolis. The orator of the day was Comrade J. M. Brown.
General Harrison, as President of the Association, presided. The
proceedings were opened with prayer by Comrade J. H. Meteer, followed by
an address of welcome by Miss Mary L. Mitchell, daughter of Captain W.
C. Mitchell, who directed her closing remarks to General Harrison.
With great earnestness the General replied as follows:
_Miss Mitchell_--I feel quite incompetent to discharge the duty
that now devolves upon me--that of making suitable response to the
touching, cordial and sympathetic words which you have addressed to
us. We thank you and the good citizens of Clayton, for whom you have
spoken, that you have opened your hearts so fully to us to-day. I am
sure we have never assembled under circumstances more attractive than
those that now surround us. The mellow sunshine of this autumn-time
that falls upon us, the balmy air which moves the leaves of those
shadowing trees, the sweet calm and spell of nature that is over
everything, makes the day one of those that may be described in the
language of the old poet as
"A bridal of the earth and sky."
Your hospitable welcome makes us feel at home, and in behalf of this
large representation of our regiment, possibly the largest that has
assembled since the close of the war, gathered not only from these
adjacent counties, but from distant homes beyond the Mississippi and
the Missouri, I give you to-day in return our most hearty thanks for
your great kindness.