Benjamin Harrison photo

Executive Order

January 19, 1893

GENERAL ORDERS, NO. 4

HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY,

ADJUTANT-GENERAL'S OFFICE

I. The following proclamation (order) has been received from the President:

EXECUTIVE MANSION,

Washington, D.C . January 18, 1893.

To the People of the United States:

The death of Rutherford B. Hayes, who was President of the United States from March 4, 1877, to March 4, 1881, at his home in Fremont, Ohio, at 11 p.m. yesterday, is an event the announcement of which will be received with very general and very sincere sorrow. His public service extended over many years and over a wide range of official duty. He was a patriotic citizen, a lover of the flag and of our free institutions, an industrious and conscientious civil officer, a soldier of dauntless courage, a loyal comrade and friend, a sympathetic and helpful neighbor, and the honored head of a happy Christian home. He has steadily grown in the public esteem, and the impartial historian will not fail to recognize the conscientiousness, the manliness, and the courage that so strongly characterized his whole public career.

As an expression of the public sorrow it is ordered that the Executive Mansion and the several Executive Departments at Washington be draped in mourning and the flags thereon placed at half-staff for a period of thirty days, and that on the day of the funeral all public business in the Departments be suspended, and that suitable military and naval honors, under the orders of the Secretaries of War and of the Navy, be rendered on that day.

Done at the city of Washington, this 18th day of January, A. D. 1893, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and seventeenth.

BENJ. HARRISON

By the President.

JOHN W. FOSTER, Secretary of State.

II. In compliance with the instructions of the President, on the day of the funeral, at each military post, the troops and cadets will be paraded and this order read to them, after which all labors of the day will cease.

The national flag will be displayed at half-staff.

At dawn of day thirteen guns will be fired, and afterwards at intervals of thirty minutes between the rising and setting of the sun a single gun, and at the close of the day a national salute of forty-four guns.

The officers of the Army will wear crape on the left arm and on their swords and the colors of the Battalion of Engineers, of the several regiments, and of the United States Corps of Cadets will be put in mourning for a period of six months.

The date of the funeral will be communicated to department commanders by telegraph, and by them to their subordinate commanders.

By command of Major-General Schofield:

R. WILLIAMS, Adjutant-General.

Benjamin Harrison, Executive Order Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/205555

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