Remarks to Members of the Grand Army of the Republic on Being Presented to the President in New Orleans, Louisiana

Comrades:

I wanted to thank you for coming here to greet me. I can not say how much it means to me to be greeted as I have been greeted by the men who wore the blue and the men who wore the gray in this trip through the Southland. At Little Rock my escort was composed of Union and Confederate soldiers, riding side by side, in pairs.

As I said at Richmond, second only to the man who wore the blue, I hold the man who wore the gray, and we should indeed consider ourselves fortunate as a nation that, forty years after the Civil War, we find all of our people can challenge as the possession of all every memory of valor left by both sides in the great contest.

Now we know but one rivalry—the rivalry to see which of us can do the most for the flag of a united country.