John Sherman: “Senators, Representatives and Fellow Citizens:--I return to you my most grateful thanks for the very high honor you have…”

If my life is prolonged I will do all I can to add to the strength and prosperity of the United States, but nothing to extend its limits or to add new dangers by acquisition of foreign territory.

During forty years of public life, though many able men have aspired to the office I hold, the people of Ohio, through their general assembly, have preferred me to represent them.

Though my grateful thanks are due to them and have been often expressed, yet I have felt, as they do, that my duty was to the whole country.

It was settled by this war that we have a country limited in its powers by the constitution of the United States fairly construed.