CONTEXT
When U.S. Grant and his family returned in 1879 from a
two-year journey around the world, Chicago decided to throw a huge
welcome home party. It lasted three days, and included a parade
with over 80,000 Civil War veterans. MT attended all the festivities,
and his speech felt like the climax of the whole event. It was the
fifteenth and last speech delivered at the banquet at the Palmer House
on November 14, the last day of the celebration. At around 2 a.m. MT
stood on a table amidst 500 men who had been eating, drinking and listening
to oratory for more than six hours, and gave this toast. The topic was his
own idea. He'd been asked to respond to "The Ladies," but turned that down as
too familiar to his audiences, and proposed "The Babies" instead.
He wrote this to Livy several hours after the event, while the shouts
and laughter of the crowd were obviously still ringing in his
ears:
A little after 5 in the morning.
I've just come to my room, Livy darling, I guess this was the
memorable night of my life. By George, I never was so stirred since I
was born. I heard four speeches which I can never forget. One by Emory
Storrs, one by Gen. Vilas (O, wasn't it wonderful!) one by Gen. Logan
(mighty stirring), one by somebody whose name escapes me, and one by
that splendid old soul, Col. Bob Ingersoll, — oh, it was just the
supremest combination of English words that was ever put together since
the world began. My soul, how handsome he looked, as he stood on that
table, in the midst of those 500 shouting men, and poured the molten
silver from his lips! Lord, what an organ is human speech when it is
played by a master! All these speeches may look dull in print, but how
the lightning glared around them when they were uttered, and how the
crowd roared in response! It was a great night, a memorable night. I
am so richly repaid for my journey — and how I did wish with all my
whole heart that you were there to be lifted into the very seventh
heaven of enthusiasm, as I was. The army songs, the military music, the
crashing applause — Lord bless me, it was unspeakable.
Out of compliment they placed me last in the list — No. 15 — I was
to "hold the crowd" — and bless my life I was in awful terror when No.
14 rose, at 2 o'clock this morning and killed all the enthusiasm
by delivering the flattest, insipidest, silliest of all responses to
"Woman" that ever a wearied multitude listened to. Then Gen. Sherman
(chairman) announced my toast, and the crowd gave me a good round of
applause as I mounted on top of the dinner table, but it was only on
account of my name, nothing more — they were all tired and wretched.
They let my first sentence go in silence, till I paused and added "we
stand on common ground" — then they burst forth like a hurricane and I
saw that I had them! From that time on, I stopped at the end of
each sentence, and let the tornado of applause and laughter sweep around
me — and when I closed with "And if the child is but the prophecy of
the man, there are mighty few who will doubt that he succeeded," I say
it who oughtn't to say it, the house came down with a crash. For two
hours and a half, now, I've been shaking hands and listening to
congratulations. Gen. Sherman said, "Lord bless me, my boy, I don't
know how you do it — it's a secret that's beyond me — but it was great
— give me your hand again."
And do you know, Gen. Grant sat through fourteen speeches like a
graven image, but I fetched him! I broke him up, utterly! He told me
he laughed till the tears came and every bone in his body ached. (And
do you know, the biggest part of the success of the speech lay in the
fact that the audience saw that for once in his life he had been
knocked out of his iron serenity.)
Bless your soul, 'twas immense. I was never so proud in my life.
Lots and lots of people — hundreds I might say — told me my speech was
the triumph of the evening — which was a lie. Ladies, Tom, Dick and
Harry — even the policemen — captured me in the halls and shook hands,
and scores of army officers said "We shall always be grateful to you for
coming."
MT was back in Hartford on November 17 when he wrote Howells about
the event, but his sense of triumph remained vivid. He was especially
proud of the way he had cracked up Ulysses S. Grant:
Grand times, my boy, grand times. Gen. Grant sat at the banquet like
a statue of iron & listened without the faintest suggestion of emotion
to fourteen speeches which tore other people all to shreds, but when I
lit in with the fifteenth & last, his time was come! I shook him up
like dynamite & he sat there fifteen minutes & laughed & cried like the
mortalest of mortals. But bless you I had measured this unconquerable
conqueror, & went at my work with the confidence of conviction, for I
knew I could lick him. He told me he had shaken hands with 15,000
people that day & come out of it without an ache or pain, but that my
truths had racked all the bones of his body apart.
