ed
with its history, into a society where you may meet together and
preserve and revive the recollections of Ohio boyhood and Ohio
manhood. Why should you not do that? Why should you not have an
Ohio society as well as a New England society, or any other kind
of society? Our friends and fellow-citizens from old England's
shore, from Ireland and Scotland and Germany, form their societies
of the city of New York; and why should not the State of Ohio, more
important than any of these countries by this represented?

"Now, gentlemen, there is one characteristic of Ohio people which
has marked them from the beginning of their history, and marks them
now. We are a migratory race. We are the Innocents Abroad. No
Arab in his tent, restless and uneasy, feels more uncertain and
movable than a man from Ohio, who can better his condition anywhere
else. We are a migratory race, and why should we not be? Do we
not deserve the best of every land? When we go to any other country,
we don't go to rob them of anything, but to add to their wealth.
If I want to prove that Ohio people are migratory, what better
evidence can I have than is afforded by the men who are here around
me? Here is my friend, General Ewing, born in one of the garden
spots of Ohio, under circumstances when it would be supposed that
he ought to be content with his lot; but he goes walking off to
Kansas, and then to the war, and then into Washington, and finally
settles down near New York here, under the shadow of the Sage of
Greystone! Among others here around me I see a grandson of old
William Henry Harrison. I see here innumerable representatives of
the Puritan fathers, with all the virtues of the old fathers and
some besides. I see here representatives not only of Virginia and
New England, but of New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania--all from
Ohio.

"My countrymen, in the early days Ohio was the camping ground of
all the old states. Ohio is the first fruit of the Federal Union.
It is true that Vermont and Kentucky and Tennessee were admitted
into the union of these states before Ohio was, but they were
offshoots of New York and Virginia, while Ohio was the first fruit
of that great commonwealth. Every state of the old states had a
camping ground in the State of Ohio, either by reservation, by
purchase or by settlement. Nearly all of the early descendants of
Ohio were sons of Revolutionary fathers who came out to Ohio. They
went there to redeem t