William Henry Harrison

“ Will foolish men never learn that war and bloodshed are as offensive to the maker of us all, as they are destructive of the happiness of those which might engage in it?
My Children, aim your arrows at the buffaloe, the bear, and the deer, which are provided for your use, but spare your brother man; let those whom the Great Spirit has placed upon the same Island, live in peace with each other. Let the nations to whom it has pleased God to give abundance of the comforts of life, share them with their neighbors who may be deficient. ”

“ The boasted privilege of a Roman citizen was to him a shield only against a petty provincial ruler, whilst the proud democrat of Athens would console himself under a sentence of death for a supposed violation of the national faith—which no one understood and which at times was the subject of the mockery of all—or the banishment from his home, his family, and his country with or without an alleged cause, that it was the act not of a single tyrant or hated aristocracy, but of his assembled countrymen. Far different is the power of our sovereignty. ”

“ When the genuine spirit of liberty animates the body of a people to a thorough examination of their affairs, it leads to the excision of every excrescence which may have fastened itself upon any of the departments of the government, and restores the system to its pristine health and beauty. But the reign of an intolerant spirit of party amongst a free people seldom fails to result in a dangerous accession to the executive power introduced and established amidst unusual professions of devotion to democracy. ”

“ My children, the great tree of peace which was planted at Greenville, I have watered and cultivated with the greatest care, and I have cherished the hope that this tree would spread its branches over the whole of this great Island,, and that the white and red people would smoke the pipe of friendship under its shade till the end of time. ”

“ A person elected to that high office, having his constituents in every section, State, and subdivision of the Union, must consider himself bound by the most solemn sanctions to guard, protect, and defend the rights of all and of every portion, great or small, from the injustice and oppression of the rest. I consider the veto power, therefore given by the Constitution to the Executive of the United States solely as a conservative power, to be used only first, to protect the Constitution from violation ”

“ Never with my consent shall an officer of the people, compensated for his services out of their pockets, become the pliant instrument of Executive will.
There is no part of the means placed in the hands of the Executive which might be used with greater effect for unhallowed purposes than the control of the public press. The maxim which our ancestors derived from the mother country that "the freedom of the press is the great bulwark of civil and religious liberty" is one of the most precious legacies which they have left us. ”

“ My Children whilst your father, the President, was forming plans for your future happiness, and was communicating to me his directions upon the subject of clearing your understandings, and making you acquainted with those arts by which the white people are enabled to live with so much ease and comfort, how much must he have been grieved and surprised to hear that two of his people had been murdered by some of those very persons for whose welfare and happiness his thoughts were thus anxiously employed. ”

“ The people of the District of Columbia are not the subjects of the people of the States, but free American citizens. Being in the latter condition when the Constitution was formed, no words used in that instrument could have been intended to deprive them of that character. If there is anything in the great principle of unalienable rights so emphatically insisted upon in our Declaration of Independence, they could neither make nor the United States accept a surrender of their liberties and become the subjects—in other words, the slaves—of their former fellow-citizens. ”

“ It is the ardent wish of the President of the United States, as well from a principle of humanity, as from duty and sound policy, that all prudent means in our power should be unremittingly pursued for carrying into effect the benevolent views of congress relative to the Indian nations within the jurisdiction of the United States. ”

“ The danger to all well-established free governments arises from the unwillingness of the people to believe in its existence or from the influence of designing men diverting their attention from the quarter whence it approaches to a source from which it can never come. This is the old trick of those who would usurp the government of their country. In the name of democracy they speak, warning the people against the influence of wealth and the danger of aristocracy. ”

“ When those were becoming scarce the Great Spirit communicated to them the method of raising grain for bread, and taught them to bring the ox and the horse under their subjection though they had been as wild as your deer and buffaloe and thus to assist them in cultivating the earth.
My Children, our Great Father, who lives in heaven has admirably contrived this earth for the comfort and happiness of his children; but from the beginning he has made it a law that man should earn his food by his own exertions: the beasts of the forest cannot be taken without trouble and fatigue ”

“ When this corrupting passion once takes possession of the human mind, like the love of gold it becomes insatiable. It is the never-dying worm in his bosom, grows with his growth and strengthens with the declining years of its victim. If this is true, it is the part of wisdom for a republic to limit the service of that officer at least to whom she has intrusted the management of her foreign relations, the execution of her laws, and the command of her armies and navies to a period so short as to prevent his forgetting that he is the accountable agent, not the principal ”

“ The Kaskaskias being reduced to a few families, I presume we may purchase their whole country for what would place every individual of them at his ease, and be a small price to us: say by laying off for each family wherever they would chuse it as much rich land as they could cultivate, adjacent to each other, inclosing the whole in a single fence, and giving them such an annuity in money or goods for ever as would place them in happiness ”

“ And it is preposterous to suppose that a thought could for a moment have been entertained that the President, placed at the capital, in the center of the country, could better understand the wants and wishes of the people than their own immediate representatives, who spend a part of every year among them, living with them, often laboring with them, and bound to them by the triple tie of interest, duty, and affection. To assist or control Congress, then, in its ordinary legislation could not, I conceive, have been the motive for conferring the veto power on the President. ”

“ I do not indeed apprehend in the least that the neighbouring tribes have any inclination to make open war upon us—I fear only the effect of some sudden resentment arrising from their constant intercourse with the people of this town. In this intercourse causes of irritation are constantly produced twice within a few weeks an appeal was made to arms by both parties—one occasioned by some drunken Indians attempting to force a House in which one was killed and an other wounded. The other at the time when the two white men were killed as above mentioned. ”

“ The broad foundation upon which our Constitution rests being the people—a breath of theirs having made, as a breath can unmake, change, or modify it—it can be assigned to none of the great divisions of government but to that of democracy. ”

“ Many of your young men spend the whole profit of their hunting in whiskey, and their children and old fathers are left to struggle with cold and hunger. Nay more, when reason is driven away by the intoxicating draft—what shocking scenes have been exhibited. The knife of a brother is aimed at a brother's life, and the tomahawk of the son is frequently buried in the head of his father; and those beautiful plains which were only to be stained by the blood of the deer and buffaloe are crimsoned with the gore of your best chiefs and warriors. ”

“ All others lay claim to power limited only by their own will. The majority of our citizens, on the contrary, possess a sovereignty with an amount of power precisely equal to that which has been granted to them by the parties to the national compact, and nothing beyond. We admit of no government by divine right, believing that so far as power is concerned the Beneficent Creator has made no distinction amongst men; that all are upon an equality, and that the only legitimate right to govern is an express grant of power from the governed. ”

“ To accomplish those objects I beg leave, Sir, respectfully to recommend to the President, that a deputation from each of the neighboring tribes, viz: the Delawares, Potawatamies, Miamis, Eel river Indians, Weas, Kickapoos, Sacks, and Kaskaskias should be assembled early in the ensuing summer, and that some person on the part of the United States be empowered to agree with them on the permanent boundaries between theirs and the lands of the United States at this place and the Illinois, country. ”