[Speech of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at the seventy-fifth annual dinner of
the New England Society in the City of New York, December 22, 1880.
The President, James C. Carter, in introducing General Grant, said:
"Gentlemen, it is our good fortune to have with us to-night as a guest
an illustrious fellow citizen, who in a great and fortunate career has
been enabled to render signal service to his country and to achieve a
just renown for himself. [Applause.] Long may he live! But however
long, he cannot outlive the regard or the affection of the sons of New
England. I give you, gentlemen, 'The Health of General Grant.'" The
announcement of the toast was greeted with loud and prolonged cheers,
the company standing.]
MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY OF THE CITY
OF NEW YORK:--I suppose on an occasion of this sort that you will
expect me to say something about this Society and the people of New
England and the pilgrims who first landed on Plymouth Rock. It was my
fortune last night to attend a banquet of this sort in the principal
city on New York harbor. [Applause and laughter.] I did not know until I
went there [Brooklyn] that it was the principal city [laughter]--the
principal city of the harbor of New York, a city whose overflow has
settled up Manhattan Island, which has built up fine houses, business
streets, and shown many evidences of prosperity for a suburb, with a
waste of people flowing across the North River that forms a third if not
one-half the population of a neighboring state. [Applause.] As I say, it
was my good fortune to attend a banquet of this sort of the parent
society [laughter], and to which all the societies known, even including
the one which is now celebrating its first anniversary in Las Vegas, New
Mexico, owe their origin. [Laughter.] I made a few remarks there, in
which I tried to say what I thought were the characteristics of the
people who have descended from the Pilgrims. I thought they were a
people of great frugality, great personal courage, great industry, and
possessed within themselves of qualities which built up this New England
population which has spread out over so much of this land and given so
much character, prosperity, and success to us as a people and a nation.
[Applause.] I retain yet some of the views I then expressed [peals of
laughter], and should have remained convinced that my judgment was
entirely right if it were not that some speakers came after me who have
a better title to speak for the people of New England than myself, and
who dispelled some of those views. [Renewed laughter.]
It is too many generations back for me to claim to be a New Englander.
Those gentlemen who spoke are themselves New Englanders who have, since
their manhood, emigrated to this great city that I speak of. They
informed me that there was nothing at all in the Pilgrim fathers to give
them the distinguishing characteristics which we attribute to them
[laughter], and that it was all entirely dependent upon the poverty of
the soil and the inclemency of the climate where they landed. [Shouts of
laughter.] They fell upon an ungenial climate, where there were nine
months of winter and three months of cold weather [laughter], and that
had called out the best energies of the men and of the women, too, to
get a mere subsistence out of the soil, with such a climate. In their
efforts to do that they cultivated industry and frugality at the same
time, which is the real foundation of the greatness of the Pilgrims.
[Laughter.] It was even suggested by some that if they had fallen upon a
more genial climate and more fertile soil, they would have been there
yet, in poverty and without industry. [Laughter.] I shall continue to
believe better of them myself, and I believe the Rev. Dr. Storrs, who
spoke here, will agree with me that my first judgment of them was
probably nearly correct.
However, all jesting aside, we are proud in my section of the country of
the New Englanders and of their descendants. We hope to see them spread
over all this land, and carry with them the principles inculcated in
their own sterile soil from which they sprang. [Applause.] We want to
see them take their independence of character, their self-reliance,
their free schools, their learning, and their industry, and we want to
see them prosper and teach others among whom they settle how to be
prosperous. [Applause.] I am very much obliged to the gentlemen of the
infant New England Society [laughter] for the reception which they have
accorded to me and the other guests of this evening. I shall remember it
with great pleasure, and hope that some day you will invite me again.
[Long-continued applause.]
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