Speeches of Benjamin Harrison, Twenty-third President of the United StatesHarrison, Benjamin
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Speeches of Benjamin Harrison, Twenty-third President of the United States
Harrison, Benjamin
Harrison, Benjamin, 1833-1901; Speeches, addresses, etc., American; United States -- Politics and government
The Banquet Committee and Committee of Reception for the occasion
comprised the following prominent members: James S. Moore, Frederick
G. Laird, LeRoy T. Steward, Wm. H. Johnson, James E. Rogers, F. W. C.
Hayes, Henry T. Smith, Harry J. Jones, Chas. S. Norton, Irving L. Gould,
T. A. Broadbent, Jas. Rood, Jr., Wm. A. Paulsen, T. M. Garrett, Geo. W.
Keehn, Harry P. Finney, C. B. Niblock, Wm. A. Lamson, S. E. Magill, R.
D. Wardwell, Fred. G. McNally.
President Lauman was toastmaster, and opened the banquet with an address
of welcome to Senator Harrison.
The other speakers of the evening were Edward J. Judd, Theodore
Brentano, Hon. Thomas C. MacMillan, Hon. John S. Runnells, Newton Wyeth,
Mayor Roche and President Tracy of the State League of Republican Clubs.
Amid hearty applause General Harrison rose to respond to the toast, "The
Republican Party." He spoke as follows:
_Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Marquette Club_--I am under
an obligation that I shall not soon forget in having been permitted
by your courtesy to sit at your table to-night and to listen to the
eloquent words which have fallen from the lips of those speakers who
have preceded me. I count it a privilege to spend an evening with so
many young Republicans. There seems to be a fitness in the association
of young men with the Republican party. The Republican party is a
young party. I have not yet begun to call myself an old man, and yet
there is no older Republican in the United States than I am. My first
presidential vote was given for the first presidential candidate of
the Republican party, and I have supported with enthusiasm every
successor of Frémont, including that matchless statesman who claimed
our suffrages in 1884. We cannot match ages with the Democratic party
any more than that party can match achievements with us. It has lived
longer, but to less purpose. "Moss-backed" cannot be predicated
of a Republican. Our Democratic friends have a monopoly of that
distinction, and it is one of the few distinguished monopolies that
they enjoy; and yet when I hear a Democrat boasting himself of the age
of his party I feel like reminding him that there are other organized
evils in the world, older than the Democratic party. "The Republican
party," the toast which you have assigned to me to-night, seems to
have a past, a present and a future tense to it. It suggests history,
and yet history so recent that it is to many here to-night a story of
current events in which they have been participants. The Republican
party--the influences which called it together were eclectic in their
character. The men who formed it and organized it were picked men.
The first assembly that sounded in its camp was a call to sacrifice,
and not to spoils. It assembled about an altar to sacrifice, and in a
temple beset with enemies. It is the only political party organized
in America that has its "Book of Martyrs." On the bloody fields of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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