Remarks in Sherman, Texas

You can have no idea what a pleasure it is to me to be here again. If you are half as glad to have me as I am to be here we will call it square. It is nearly seven years ago that I came here to take part in raising the regiment, some of my comrades from which are here to escort me today. You who wore the blue and gray know how close the tie is that binds you to the men by whose side you have faced bullets, with whom you have lain in trenches, with whom you have known fatigue and hunger and thirst and danger. I know that in greeting all of you none of the rest of you will object to my saying that there is a peculiar pleasure to me in being greeted by the veterans who wore the blue or the gray in the great Civil War.

It was the greatest war of the century, and it left behind the most perfect peace of the century.

Think of what it means to our country to have the President of the United States, a man with both Northern and Southern blood in his veins, come here and drive up between, as a guard of honor, on the one side of the Union, and the other the Confederate veterans. I cannot thank you for all that your coming here argues. I want to say how deeply touched I am by the reception accorded me. Excepting only the Union and Confederate veterans, the people whom I have been most pleased to see are the school children and the college girls. I admire the men and women of Texas, and I am glad to see the children of the right quantity and quality.

I saw in one of the papers today the statement that they hoped I would go out of Texas thinking more of it. I do not know that that is possible, because I think so much of it already; but if I could have thought more of it I would have thought more within the last half hour, since coming within its limits.