GRANT MEMORIAL MONUMENT.

[Riverside Park, New York, April 27, 1892.]

Mr. President and fellow-citizens: My assignment in connection with these exercises has to do with mechanics rather than with oratory. The pleasant duty of bringing to our memory to-day those brilliant incidents of public service and those personal and manly virtues which have placed the name of Ulysses S. Grant so high upon the scroll of fame, and settled the love of the man so deeply in all patriotic hearts has been devolved upon another, who never fails to meet these high occasions with credit to himself and with pleasure to all his favored hearers. No orator, however gifted, can overpraise General Grant. The most impressive and costly memorial structure that an architect can plan or wealth execute is justified when the name of Grant is inscribed upon its base. This stone which has now been laid, accompanied by this magnificent expression of popular interest, is only the top stone of a foundation, but it speaks to us of a structure, imposing and graceful in its completeness, which shall rise from this supporting base. Shall it rise with stately progress, without check or tardiness, until the capstone is set amid the plaudits of the liberal and patriotic citizens of this great city? Thus his fame grew, from Belmont to Appomattox, in whose honor this tomb is builded. I am glad to see here what seems to me to be adequate assurance that this work, so nobly started upon, will be speedily consummated. Your distinguished citizen, who has assumed as a labor of love the burden of conducting this great enterprise, learned of his beloved friend and commander to exclude the word "failure" from his vocabulary.

GENTLEMEN: When you called upon me on the 13th day of May, just prior to my departure with Mrs. Harrison, I expressed myself somewhat fully to you orally upon the subject of the memorial which you submitted, and promised to respond in writing at the earliest practicable moment.

Those who have read my public addresses and official papers must be aware of the fact that I have felt the reproach which lawlessness has brought upon some of our communities. I have endeavored to hold up the law as the one single admissible rule of conduct for good citizens. I have appealed against race discriminations as to civil rights and immunities, and have asked that lawabiding men of all creeds and all colors should unite to discourage and to suppress lawlessness. Lynchings are a reproach to any community; they impeach the adequacy of our institutions for the punishment of crime; they brutalize the participants and shame our Christian civilization. I have not time to explain to you the limitations of the Federal power further than to say that under the Constitution and laws I am, in a large measure, without the power to interfere for the prevention or punishment of these offenses. You will not need to be assured that the Department of Justice will let no case pass that is one of Federal jurisdiction without the most strenuous endeavors to bring the guilty persons to punishment. I will give the matter you have suggested the most serious consideration and you may be assured that my voice and help will be given to every effort to arouse the conscience of our people and to stimulate efficient efforts to reestablish the supremacy of the courts and public officers as the only proper agency for the detection and punishment of crime and the only security of those who are falsely accused.

With great respect, very truly, yours,

BENJ. HARRISON.

SOLDIERS AND SAILORS' MONUMENT.

[Rochester, N. Y., May 30, 1892.]

Fellow-citizens: Every external condition, and some internal conditions affecting my strength, admonish me that I should speak to you with brevity. I have enjoyed greatly the exercises which are now being consummated in this beautiful city. You have met a great occasion greatly. I have never seen anywhere a more magnificent expression of patriotism than I have witnessed here.

These streets upon which the institutions of trade have been for a time covered with the starry banner, this great marching column in which the veterans of the war march again to the old music and follow with faithful hearts the old flag that they may do honor to those brave comrades who were permitted under God to make a supremer sacrifice than they to the flag they dearly love; these

following companies of the children of our public and parochial schools; these banners, the music of drum and fife and bugle, the cheering multitude, the great open-hearted, loving expression which we saw as we moved along your streets, all testify to the fact that our Constitution, our civic institutions, and that glorious flag that symbolizes them, are set upon a granite foundation in the people's hearts. As the old hymn says, "What can shake our sure repose?" If we should fail, comrades, to meet any occasion of peril which may be in the pathway of this nation, it seems to me that the trundle-beds of this country would furnish its defenders. War is not attractive to our people. We have not many of that class of men, of whom we sometimes heard during the war, who would rather fight than eat.

I had one of that class in my regiment, and he got into the ditch the first serious engagement we became involved in. No, our people are smitten with the love of peace. We had not before the civil war so much cultivated in the North as had our friends in the South the military spirit. We were a peaceful people. They said, but they will say so no more, that we were a craven set of peddlers. It took a great deal to separate the home-loving, peaceful people from their homes-these farmers and artisans and clerks and professional men.

It must be a strong pull that could withdraw them from association that so closely bound their affections and their lives, but when the moment came and the dreaded war was present, with what magnificent self-denial, with what alacrity every family tie and every commercial interest were put beneath the supreme duty to save the nation and redeem the flag from dishonor. Out of this war we have brought a mutual respect that would not otherwise have been possible.

Some of us fancied that the Southern people were given to vaporing-that each one of them was equal to five Northern soldiers. But the South learned that Paul Revere still rode the highways of Massachusetts, and that the man of Concord still plowed his fields. And we, on our part, learned that the spirit of the cavalier which was found in the Southern army was combined with the reserve and steadfastness of Cromwell's Ironsides.

We have found a plane of mutual respect, and I am glad of it; and not only this, but we have found a common country. I do not think-indeed, I am sure that no war ever waged in history before our civil war brought equal blessings to the victor and to the vanquished. No companies of weary, sad-eyed captives at the chariot wheel adorned our triumph and return. We brought into full

participation in the glories of restored Union those who had mistakenly sought to destroy it.

It gladdens my heart now to believe that the love of the old flag is so revived in these Southern hearts that they would vie with martial ardor to be in front of the charge if we should ever be called to meet a common enemy. Glorious victory and God-given and God-blessed peace! No yoke upon the defeated except that yoke which we wore, comrades, when we resumed our place as citizens— the obligation to obey the Constitution, and all laws made in pursuance of it, as the condition of peaceful citizenship.

We are happy in our great national isolation-happy, as your distinguished orator has said, that we do not need to burden our people to maintain standing armies, and do not live under a perpetual threat that the chariot wheels of war may roll through our peaceful villages. No nation in the world is able to wage war, on our soil, with the United States, and when the generous work upon which we have entered of building, equipping, and manning a suitable navy is completed, no nation in the world will be hasty to engage us upon the sea.

We are now entering into competition with the great nations of the world in the markets of the world. We will push these purposes peacefully.

The diplomacy of the United States has always been a sentimental diplomacy. We do not push our trade by the bayonet, by aggression, by the subjugation of helpless people. We push it only upon the basis of friendliness and mutual trade advantage. Holding up the dignity and honor of our country, we shall expect others to respect our rights as we shall respect theirs.

United we will enter upon a career of wealth and development, accompanied by the sweet influences of the school, of the churches, of the home-refining, the gold of trade- by their purifying influences to save, under God, the great heritage, committing to His care the generation that is to take from our lips these lessons of patriotism that they may be fitted, if such an exigency should come, to do the part their fathers did.

What they did who can tell? We say you saved the nation. Who can expand that thought until its full meaning is before the soul? Who can look down the pages of history and say what one issue would have involved in disaster, contention, weakness, and blood, and what the other has involved on this ascending plane of brightness and glory.

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF WOBURN, MASS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,

Hon. EDWARD F. JOHNSON,

Washington, September 27, 1892.

Woburn, Mass.:

MY DEAR SIR: The celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation of Woburn, which is to be held on October 7, is an event of such interest that I would have been glad to accept the invitation of the committee to participate in the exercises which your citizens have planned, if the circumstances had been such as to make it possible for me to leave Washington. I very much regret that it will be-as your people will understand without more particular reference-impossible for me to be present. The brave and intelligent founders of our early civil communities are worthy of honor; and this generation will derive profit from a study of the influences and principles from which have grown our civil government and our great increase and development as a nation. Very respectfully, yours,

BENJ. HARRISON.

RECEIVING RIGGIN STATUETTE.

[Presented by George W. Turner, Executive Mansion, February 8, 1893.]

Sir: The gift which you tender to me and the kind and appreciative words with which you accompany it, are very grateful to me. I have felt great interest and enthusiasm in the rebuilding of the American Navy. I have felt that it was not only essential as a matter of national defense, but that there was a prestige and influence for peace and good neighborhood between the nations of the earth in the completion and equipment of these great ships that nothing else could furnish. As to the incident to which you refer, I felt that the honor of our country and of the Navy had been touched, and that nothing was left to us but, in a quiet and dignified and yet firm way, to insist upon suitable redress. It was given in a generous spirit, and I think the result of it has been that our relations with that brave people, whose history is so full of martial achievements and prowess, as well as with the sister Republics of

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