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
_My Fellow-citizens_--I desire, in parting from you, to give
public expression of my satisfaction and enjoyment in my brief visit
to Atlanta. I saw this city once under circumstances of a very
unfavorable character. I did not think I would like it, although we
were making great efforts to get it. [Laughter.] I am glad after all
these years to see the great prosperity and development that has come
to you. I think I am able to understand some of the influences that
are at the bottom of it, and I am sure that I look into the faces of
a community that, whatever their differences may have been, however
they viewed the question of the war when it was upon us, can have but
one thought as to what was best. We can all say with the Confederate
soldier who carried a gun for what seemed to him to be right, that God
knew better than any of us what was best for the country and for the
world.
You are thankful for what He has wrought and chiefly for
emancipation. It has opened up to diversified industries these States
that were otherwise exclusively agricultural, and made it possible
for you not only to raise cotton, but to spin and weave it, and has
made Georgia such a State as it could not have been under the old
conditions. I am sure we have many common purposes, and as God shall
give us power to see truth and right, let us do our duty, and, while
exacting all our own rights, let us bravely and generously give every
other man his equal rights before the law. [Cheers.]
Thanking you for your reception, which has been warm and
hospitable, I go from you very grateful for your kindness and very
full of hope for your future.
I cannot wish more than that those enterprising land-owners whose
work in grading and laying new additions I saw yesterday will realize
all their hopes. I am very sure if that is done Atlanta will not long
be rated the second city of the South. [Cheers.]
At the conclusion of the President's address there were many calls for
Mr. Wanamaker. These finally brought the Postmaster-General to the
platform, who said:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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