e news, and make
new or renew old acquaintance. When the scattered picnic is going
on everyone who approaches is invited to eat. When the appetite
is satisfied all gather around a temporary platform, and speeches,
long and short, upon every topic but politics, are made. I have
attended many such meetings and all with sincere pleasure. This
particular picnic was notable for its large attendance--estimated
to be over three thousand--and the beauty of the grove and the
surrounding farms. I made an address, or rather talked, about the
early times in Ohio, and especially in the Miami valley, a section
which may well be regarded as among the fairest and most fruitful
spots in the world. The substance of my speech was reported and
published. The sketch I was able to give of incidents of Indian
warfare, of the expeditions of St. Clair and Wayne, of the early
settlement in that neighborhood, and of the ancestors, mainly
Revolutionary soldiers, of hundreds of those who heard me, seemed
to give great satisfaction. At the close of my remarks I was
requested by the Pioneer Society to write them out for publication,
to be kept as a memorial, but I never was able to do so.

On the 26th of August I made, at Mt. Gilead, Morrow county, my
first political speech of the campaign. The people of that county
were among my first constituents. More than thirty years before,
in important and stirring times, I had appeared before them as a
candidate for Congress. I referred to the early history of the
Republican party and to the action of Lincoln and Grant in the
prosecution of the war, and contrasted the opinion expressed of
them by the Democratic party then and at the time of my speech.
During the war our party was the "black abolition party," Lincoln
was an "ape," Grant was a "butcher," and Union soldiers were "Lincoln
hirelings." I said:

"Our adversaries now concede the wisdom and success of all prominent
Republican measures, as well as the merits of the great leaders of
the Republican party. Only a few days since I heard my colleague,
Senator Payne, in addressing soldiers at Fremont, extol Lincoln
and Grant in the highest terms of praise and say the war was worth
all it cost and he thanked God that slavery had been abolished.
Only recently, when the great procession conveyed the mortal remains
of Grant to their resting place, I heard active Confederates extol
him in the highest terms of praise and some of them frankly glorie