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REMARKS OF MR. JONES.
Mr. Jones said: Mr. President, I have the honor to re-
port, on behalf of the committee who were charged with
the very agreeable duty of meeting the President of the
United States and his suite in the city of Baltimore, that
the committee have performed their duty. Having re-
ceived the President, the Secretary of State, and his suite,
I have now the honor to present them to this Convention.
Gov. Swann will now formally introduce to the body your
distinguished guests.
REMARKS OF GOV. SWANN.
Mr. President of the State Constitutional Convention—
In accordance with the unanimous wish of this Conven-
tion, as expressed in your resolutions of the 20th instant,
I have the satisfaction to present to you his Excellency
Andrew Johnson, President of the United States. He is
here to accept the hospitality which has been so cordially
extended to him by the State of Maryland. Standing by
the side al this great martyr of popular rights, it is in no
spirit of flattery that I bespeak for him the homage of a
people whose ancestral relations occupy so large a space
in the early history of this government.
Unawed by persecution—stripped of the most essential
powers heretofore delegated to the high office of which
he is the representative, in his honest efforts to recon-
struct a distracted and bleeding country—powers which
he has always conscientiously and judiciously wielded for
the good of the whole people—in the interest of patriot-
ism and not of party—when almost within reach of real-
izing, through his own instrumentality mainly, the cher-
ished object of his ambition—the re-establishment of har-
mony between the sections, and a cordial resumption of
the relations of the past—he stands before you today not
the less honored because of his failure, through untoward
interference, to accomplish his mission of patriotism and
duty. But the responsibility is not with him. The fever-
ish and unsettled condition of the country—the prostra-
tion of your industrial interests—the foreshadowed
threats of confiscation and red-handed agrarianism—the
false issues kept alive to excite and mislead the public
mind—paralyzing all the channels of healthy reaction and
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