again on this occasion. When I left the army so many years ago I
little expected to enter it again, as I soon will. Among the many
honors which may be placed on me in the future there will be none, I
can assure you, that I will esteem more highly than my membership in
this order, instituted by those who sustained the flag of Washington,
the flag of Perry, the flag that was baptized in the blood of the
Revolution and again in the second conflict with the mother country;
that floated over the halls of the Montezumas, and was sustained
in other wars, and which you made possible to wave over every foot
of our beloved country. I esteem it my greatest honor that I bore
even an humble part with you and all the comrades of the Grand Army
in bringing about this most desirable result. I wish to say before
parting with you, if I may never look upon your faces collectively
again, that the parting request I would make of you would be that each
of you, without regard to party (and I believe I can say this without
offence to any comrade of the Grand Army), stand shoulder to shoulder,
as we did during the war, to preserve a free and honest ballot.
There is nothing, I can assure you, that will do more to preserve
and maintain our institutions than this. Our country, separated as
it is by the great watery waste, need have no fear of interference
by foreign countries with its institutions; nor do we desire in any
way to interfere with them. Nor, indeed, is there any fear of another
civil war. The only fear we should now have is a corruption or
suppression of the free ballot, and your utmost exertions should be to
prevent it.
In concluding, he called for the choicest blessings upon his comrades,
saying: "To each one, God bless you and your families; God keep you and
protect you in your homes!"
INDIANAPOLIS, FEBRUARY 25, 1889.
_The Departure for Washington._
President-elect and Mrs. Harrison bade their friends and neighbors
good-by and left Indiana on February 25 for Washington. Governor
Hovey, Mayor Denny, and several thousand citizens escorted them from
their residence to the railroad station. In the escort column were
1,000 G. A. R. veterans from Geo. H. Thomas and other posts, commanded
by H. C. Allen. Conspicuous in their ranks was that distinguished
soldier-diplomat, General Lew Wallace. The members of the Indiana
Legislature saluted and joined the _cortége_ as it passed through
Pennsylvania Street.
General Harrison's carriage was completely enclosed within a hollow
square composed of 32 prominent citizens--a body-guard of honor. The
entire population of the city turned out to witness the eventful
departure, while numerous delegations were present from Danville,
Richmond, Crawfordsville, Terre Haute, and other cities. A great throng
greeted the distinguished travellers at the Union Station. From the rear
platform of the special inaugural train Governor Hovey presented the
President-elect amid tumultuous cheering.
General Harrison was greatly affected by the scene and the occasion.
Speaking with emotion he said:
_My Good Friends and Neighbors_--I cannot trust myself to put in
words what I feel at this time. Every kind thought that is in your
minds and every good wish that is in your hearts for me finds its
responsive wish and thought in my mind and heart for each of you. I
love this city. It has been my own cherished home. Twice before I have
left it to discharge public duties and returned to it with gladness,
as I hope to do again. It is a city on whose streets the pompous
displays of wealth are not seen. It is full of pleasant homes, and in
these homes there is an unusual store of contentment. The memory of
your favor and kindness will abide with me, and my strong desire to
hold your respect and confidence will strengthen me in the discharge
of my new and responsible duties. Let me say farewell to all my
Indiana friends. For the public honors that have come to me I am their
grateful debtor. They have made the debt so large that I can never
discharge it. There is a great sense of loneliness in the discharge of
high public duties. The moment of decision is one of isolation. But
there is One whose help comes even into the quiet chamber of judgment,
and to His wise and unfailing guidance will I look for direction and
safety. My family unite with me in grateful thanks for this cordial
good-by, and with me wish that these years of separation may be full
of peace and happiness for each of you. [Great cheering.]
KNIGHTSTOWN, INDIANA, FEBRUARY 25.
As the inaugural train sped along it was greeted at every station by
thousands of cheering spectators. The first stop was at Knightstown,
where the Soldiers' Orphans' Home is located. In response to their calls
General Harrison said:
_My Friends_--I thank you for this cordial gathering and
demonstration. I can detain the train but a moment, and I only stopped
at the request of the Superintendent of the Soldiers' Orphans' Home,
so that the children might have an opportunity to see me and that I
might wish them the bright and prosperous future which the sacrifices
of their fathers won for them. I bid you farewell.
RICHMOND, INDIANA, FEBRUARY 25.
The city of Richmond was reached at 5 o'clock in the afternoon, where
several thousand people greeted the travellers. General Harrison said:
_My Friends_--I have so long had my home among you that I cannot
but feel a sense of regret in leaving the soil of Indiana. I go with
a deep sense of inadequacy, but I am sure you will be patient with my
mistakes, and that you will all give me your help as citizens [cheers
and cries of "We will!"] in my efforts to promote the best interests
of our people and the honor of the Nation we love. I thank you for
this cordial greeting. [Cheers.]
COLUMBUS, OHIO, FEBRUARY 25.
At Piqua the President-elect and his party were welcomed by Ohio's chief
executive, Gov. J. B. Foraker, and his wife; and, notwithstanding the
hour, some 20,000 people greeted their arrival at Columbus. The roar of
cannon rendered speaking difficult. Governor Foraker presented General
Harrison, who here made his last public speech before being inaugurated
as President. He said:
_My Fellow-citizens_--I thank you for the wonderful demonstration
of this evening. In these evidences of the good will of my friends
I receive a new stimulus as I enter upon the duties of the great
office to which I have been chosen. I beg to thank you again for your
interest. [Great cheering.]
WASHINGTON, D. C., MARCH 4, 1889.
General Harrison and his family, accompanied by Hon. James N. Huston,
Hon. W. H. H. Miller, Mr. E. W. Halford, Mr. E. F. Tibbott and family,
Miss Sanger, and the representatives of the press, arrived in Washington
on the evening of February 26. The President-elect was met by Col. A.
T. Britton, Geo. B. Williams, Gen. H. V. Boynton, J. K. McCammon, Gen.
Daniel Macauley, and other members of the Inaugural Committee, and
escorted to the Arlington Hotel.
The inaugural celebration was conducted by several hundred residents
of Washington, acting through committees. The Executive Committee,
having supervising charge of all matters pertaining to the celebration,
comprised the following prominent Washingtonians: Alex. T. Britton,
Chairman; Myron M. Parker, Vice-Chairman; Brainerd H. Warner, Treasurer;
Henry L. Swords, Secretary; Elmon A. Adams, Joseph K. McCammon, James
E. Bell, James G. Berret, Robert Boyd, Henry V. Boynton, Almon M.
Clapp, A. H. S. Davis, Frederick Douglass, John Joy Edson, Lawrence
Gardner, George Gibson, Charles C. Glover, Stilson Hutchins, E. Kurtz
Johnson, George E. Lemon, John McElroy, Geo. A. McIlhenny, Crosby S.
Noyes, Albert Ordway, Charles B. Purvis, Melancthon L. Ruth, Thomas
Somerville, Orren G. Staples, John W. Thompson, Henry A. Willard, George
B. Williams, Louis D. Wine, Simon Wolf, Levi P. Wright, and Hallett
Kilbourn. General James Beaver, Governor of Pennsylvania, was Chief
Marshal of the day, and with a brilliant staff led the great column
in its march to and from the Capitol. The veterans of the Seventieth
Indiana Regiment were accorded the post of honor on the route to
the Capitol, and on conclusion of the ceremonies escorted their old
commander to the White House. Chief-Justice Fuller administered the oath
of office.
President Harrison delivered his inaugural address from the terrace of
the Capitol in the presence of a vast concourse and during a rainfall.
THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
There is no constitutional or legal requirement that the President
shall take the oath of office in the presence of the people. But
there is so manifest an appropriateness in the public induction to
office of the chief executive officer of the Nation that from the
beginning of the Government the people, to whose service the official
oath consecrates the officer, have been called to witness the solemn
ceremonial. The oath taken in the presence of the people becomes a
mutual covenant; the officer covenants to serve the whole body of the
people by a faithful execution of the laws, so that they may be the
unfailing defence and security of those who respect and observe them,
and that neither wealth and station nor the power of combinations
shall be able to evade their just penalties or to wrest them from a
beneficent public purpose to serve the ends of cruelty or selfishness.
My promise is spoken; yours unspoken, but not the less real and
solemn. The people of every State have here their representatives.
Surely I do not misinterpret the spirit of the occasion when I assume
that the whole body of the people covenant with me and with each other
to-day to support and defend the Constitution and the Union of the
States, to yield willing obedience to all the laws and each to every
other citizen his equal civil and political rights. Entering thus
solemnly in covenant with each other, we may reverently invoke and
confidently expect the favor and help of Almighty God, that He will
give to me wisdom, strength, and fidelity, and to our people a spirit
of fraternity and a love of righteousness and peace.
This occasion derives peculiar interest from the fact that the
presidential term which begins this day is the twenty-sixth under our
Constitution. The first inauguration of President Washington took
place in New York, where Congress was then sitting, on April 30, 1789,
having been deferred by reason of delays attending the organization
of the Congress and the canvass of the electoral vote. Our people
have already worthily observed the centennials of the Declaration of
Independence, of the battle of Yorktown, and of the adoption of the
Constitution, and will shortly celebrate in New York the institution
of the second great department of our constitutional scheme of
government. When the centennial of the institution of the judicial
department by the organization of the Supreme Court shall have been
suitably observed, as I trust it will be, our Nation will have fully
entered its second century.
I will not attempt to note the marvellous and, in great part, happy
contrasts between our country as it steps over the threshold into its
second century of organized existence under the Constitution, and that
weak but wisely ordered young Nation that looked undauntedly down the
first century, when all its years stretched out before it.
Our people will not fail at this time to recall the incidents which
accompanied the institution of government under the Constitution,
or to find inspiration and guidance in the teachings and example of
Washington and his great associates, and hope and courage in the
contrast which thirty-eight populous and prosperous States offer to
the thirteen States, weak in everything except courage and the love of
liberty, that then fringed our Atlantic seaboard.
The Territory of Dakota has now a population greater than any of
the original States--except Virginia--and greater than the aggregate
of five of the smaller States in 1790. The centre of population when
our national capital was located was east of Baltimore, and it was
argued by many well-informed persons that it would move eastward
rather than westward. Yet in 1880 it was found to be near Cincinnati,
and the new census, about to be taken, will show another stride to
the westward. That which was the body has come to be only the rich
fringe of the nation's robe. But our growth has not been limited to
territory, population, and aggregate wealth, marvellous as it has
been in each of those directions. The masses of our people are better
fed, clothed, and housed than their fathers were. The facilities
for popular education have been vastly enlarged and more generally
diffused. The virtues of courage and patriotism have given recent
proof of their continued presence and increasing power in the hearts
and over the lives of our people. The influences of religion have been
multiplied and strengthened. The sweet offices of charity have greatly
increased. The virtue of temperance is held in higher estimation. We
have not attained an ideal condition. Not all of our people are happy
and prosperous; not all of them are virtuous and law-abiding. But,
on the whole, the opportunities offered to the individual to secure
the comforts of life are better than are found elsewhere, and largely
better than they were here 100 years ago.
The surrender of a large measure of sovereignty to the general
Government, effected by the adoption of the Constitution, was not
accomplished until the suggestions of reason were strongly re-enforced
by the more imperative voice of experience. The divergent interests
of peace speedily demanded a "more perfect union." The merchant, the
ship-master, and the manufacturer discovered and disclosed to our
statesmen and to the people that commercial emancipation must be
added to the political freedom which had been so bravely won. The
commercial policy of the mother country had not relaxed any of its
hard and oppressive features. To hold in check the development of
our commercial marine, to prevent or retard the establishment and
growth of manufactures in the States, and so to secure the American
market for their shops and the carrying trade for their ships, was the
policy of European statesmen, and was pursued with the most selfish
vigor. Petitions poured in upon Congress urging the imposition of
discriminating duties that should encourage the production of needed
things at home. The patriotism of the people, which no longer found a
field of exercise in war, was energetically directed to the duty of
equipping the young republic for the defence of its independence by
making its people self-dependent. Societies for the promotion of home
manufactures and for encouraging the use of domestics in the dress of
the people were organized in many of the States. The revival at the
end of the century of the same patriotic interest in the preservation
and development of domestic industries and the defence of our working
people against injurious foreign competition is an incident worthy of
attention.
It is not a departure, but a return, that we have witnessed. The
protective policy had then its opponents. The argument was made, as
now, that its benefits inured to particular classes or sections. If
the question became in any sense, or at any time, sectional, it was
only because slavery existed in some of the States. But for this there
was no reason why the cotton-producing States should not have led
or walked abreast with the New England States in the production of
cotton fabrics. There was this reason only why the States that divide
with Pennsylvania the mineral treasures of the great southeastern
and central mountain ranges should have been so tardy in bringing to
the smelting furnace and the mill the coal and iron from their near
opposing hillsides. Mill-fires were lighted at the funeral pile of
slavery. The emancipation proclamation was heard in the depths of the
earth as well as in the sky--men were made free and material things
became our better servants.
The sectional element has happily been eliminated from the tariff
discussion. We have no longer States that are necessarily only
planting States. None are excluded from achieving that diversification
of pursuit among the people which brings wealth and contentment.
The cotton plantation will not be less valuable when the product is
spun in the country town by operatives whose necessities call for
diversified crops and create a home demand for garden and agricultural
products. Every new mine, furnace, and factory is an extension of the
productive capacity of the State more real and valuable than added
territory.
Shall the prejudices and paralysis of slavery continue to hang
upon the skirts of progress? How long will those who rejoice that
slavery no longer exists cherish or tolerate the incapacities it puts
upon their communities? I look hopefully to the continuance of our
protective system and to the consequent development of manufacturing
and mining enterprises in the States hitherto wholly given to
agriculture as a potent influence in the perfect unification of our
people. The men who have invested their capital in these enterprises,
the farmers who have felt the benefit of their neighborhood, and the
men who work in shop or field will not fail to find and to defend
a community of interest. Is it not quite possible that the farmers
and the promoters of the great mining and manufacturing enterprises
which have recently been established in the South may yet find that
the free ballot of the workingman, without distinction of race, is
needed for their defence as well as for his own? I do not doubt that
if these men in the South who now accept the tariff views of Clay and
the constitutional expositions of Webster would courageously avow and
defend their real convictions they would not find it difficult, by
friendly instruction and co-operation, to make the black man their
efficient and safe ally, not only in establishing correct principles
in our national Administration, but in preserving for their local
communities the benefits of social order and economical and honest
government. At least until the good offices of kindness and education
have been fairly tried the contrary conclusion cannot be plausibly
urged.
I have altogether rejected the suggestion of a special executive
policy for any section of our country. It is the duty of the Executive
to administer and enforce in the methods and by the instrumentalities
pointed out and provided by the Constitution all the laws enacted by
Congress. These laws are general, and their administration should be
uniform and equal. As a citizen may not elect what laws he will obey,
neither may the Executive elect which he will enforce. The duty to
obey and execute embraces the Constitution in its entirety and the
whole code of laws enacted under it. The evil example of permitting
individuals, corporations, or communities to nullify the laws because
they cross some selfish or local interests or prejudices is full of
danger, not only to the Nation at large, but much more to those who
use this pernicious expedient to escape their just obligations or to
obtain an unjust advantage over others. They will presently themselves
be compelled to appeal to the law for protection, and those who would
use the law as a defence must not deny that use of it to others.
If our great corporations would more scrupulously observe their
legal obligations and duties they would have less cause to complain of
the unlawful limitations of their rights or of violent interference
with their operations. The community that by concert, open or secret,
among its citizens denies to a portion of its members their plain
rights under the law has severed the only safe bond of social order
and prosperity. The evil works, from a bad centre, both ways. It
demoralizes those who practise it, and destroys the faith of those who
suffer by it in the efficiency of the law as a safe protector. The man
in whose breast that faith has been darkened is naturally the subject
of dangerous and uncanny suggestions. Those who use unlawful methods,
if moved by no higher motive than the selfishness that prompts them,
may well stop and inquire what is to be the end of this. An unlawful
expedient cannot become a permanent condition of government. If the
educated and influential classes in a community either practise or
connive at the systematic violation of laws that seem to them to
cross their convenience, what can they expect when the lesson that
convenience or a supposed class interest is a sufficient cause for
lawlessness has been well learned by the ignorant classes? A community
where law is the rule of conduct, and where courts, not mobs, execute
its penalties, is the only attractive field for business investments
and honest labor.
Our naturalization laws should be so amended as to make the inquiry
into the character and good disposition of persons applying for
citizenship more careful and searching. Our existing laws have been in
their administration an unimpressive and often an unintelligible form.
We accept the man as a citizen without any knowledge of his fitness,
and he assumes the duties of citizenship without any knowledge as to
what they are. The privileges of American citizenship are so great and
its duties so grave that we may well insist upon a good knowledge of
every person applying for citizenship and a good knowledge by him of
our institutions. We should not cease to be hospitable to immigration,
but we should cease to be careless as to the character of it. There
are men of all races, even the best, whose coming is necessarily a
burden upon our public revenues or a threat to social order. These
should be identified and excluded.
We have happily maintained a policy of avoiding all interference
with European affairs. We have been only interested spectators of
their contentions in diplomacy and in war, ready to use our friendly
offices to promote peace, but never obtruding our advice and never
attempting unfairly to coin the distresses of other powers into
commercial advantage to ourselves. We have a just right to expect that
our European policy will be the American policy of European courts.
It is so manifestly incompatible with those precautions for our
peace and safety, which all the great powers habitually observe and
enforce in matters affecting them, that a shorter water-way between
our eastern and western seaboards should be dominated by any European
Government, that we may confidently expect that such a purpose will
not be entertained by any friendly power. We shall in the future, as
in the past, use every endeavor to maintain and enlarge our friendly
relations with all the great powers, but they will not expect us
to look kindly upon any project that would leave us subject to the
dangers of a hostile observation or environment.
We have not sought to dominate or to absorb any of our weaker
neighbors, but rather to aid and encourage them to establish free and
stable governments, resting upon the consent of their own people. We
have a clear right to expect, therefore, that no European Government
will seek to establish colonial dependencies upon the territory of
these independent American States. That which a sense of justice
restrains us from seeking they may be reasonably expected willingly to
forego.
It must not be assumed, however, that our interests are so
exclusively American that our entire inattention to any events that
may transpire elsewhere can be taken for granted. Our citizens
domiciled for purposes of trade in all countries and in many of the
islands of the sea demand and will have our adequate care in their
personal and commercial rights. The necessities of our navy require
convenient coaling stations and dock and harbor privileges. These and
other trading privileges we will feel free to obtain only by means
that do not in any degree partake of coercion, however feeble the
Government from which we ask such concessions. But having fairly
obtained them by methods and for purposes entirely consistent with the
most friendly disposition toward all other powers, our consent will be
necessary to any modification or impairment of the concession.
We shall neither fail to respect the flag of any friendly nation
or the just rights of its citizens, nor to exact the like treatment
for our own. Calmness, justice, and consideration should characterize
our diplomacy. The offices of an intelligent diplomacy or of friendly
arbitration, in proper cases, should be adequate to the peaceful
adjustment of all international difficulties. By such methods we will
make our contribution to the world's peace, which no nation values
more highly, and avoid the opprobrium which must fall upon the nation
that ruthlessly breaks it.
The duty devolved by law upon the President to nominate and, by
and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to appoint all public
officers whose appointment is not otherwise provided for in the
Constitution or by act of Congress has become very burdensome, and its
wise and efficient discharge full of difficulty. The civil list is so
large that a personal knowledge of any large number of the applicants
is impossible. The President must rely upon the representations of
others, and these are often made inconsiderately and without any just
sense of responsibility.