AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN
Upon the anniversary of that tremendous contest, surrounded on all sides by the memorials erected by a grateful people, with all things to suggest the more than forty thousand men who were here stricken, we have come to dedicate a monument to a man who held no rank, who wore no uniform, and who belonged to no army. It is a most impressive occasion. It is an event of no ordinary significance. It means that upon the citizen and his character the state rests.
This quiet Pennsylvania town, typical in its repose, as well as in its strength and in its everlasting fame, of the great commonwealth wherein it was fostered, had sent forth its young men to do battle in the cause of their country, and they were carrying their muskets in the Army of the Potomac. When invasion was threatened and the storms of war began to roll near, it contributed a company to a regiment which by a strange fatality was sent here and was the first force to encounter on this ground the Army of Lee, and when the cannon roared and muskets rattled through its streets, the old constable of the town, a hero of two earlier wars and hoary with the frosts of over seventy years, plunged into the fray and was thrice wounded. It was fitting that Pennsylvania should arise to repel the invaders. It was meet that at every vital point in this most fateful of contests, fought upon her soil, her sons should be to the fore. Happy is that land, and much has the future in store for it, which, when grave dangers threaten, can call upon young and old, soldier and citizen, to come to the rescue and call not in vain. While such courage and such virtue characterize its people it need fear neither aggression from abroad nor dissension at home.
In July, along with Judge John Stewart of Franklin County, I inspected the tuberculosis camp at Mont Alto, and during the same month the quarantine station maintained by the state on the Delaware. The governor is commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the state and the army consisted of the National Guard of three brigades, numbering about ten thousand men. The Guard is to a considerable extent supported by the United States under an act of congress which provides that it may be called into the national service. The money was, of course, a temptation, but the system is wrong in principle and would never have been established had I been governor at the time.
