Pullman's Palace Car Company 1882 - Signed by Union General Horace Porter

Beautifully engraved certificate from the Pullmans Palace Car Company issued in 1882. This historic document has an ornate border around it with a vignette of a cherub holding fruit, a train car, and an old manufacturing complex. This item is hand signed by the Company’s President (Horace Porter) and Secretary and is over 128 years old. Punch cancelled through signatures.


Certificate Vignette



Horace Porter was born April 15, 1837 in Huntington, PA (United States of America), the son of David Rittenhouse Porter (1788-1867), a two time governor of the State of Pennsylvania. President Abraham Lincoln was the granduncle-in-law of David R. Porter. Horace Porter's grandfather distinguished himself as a U. S. Revolutionary War general (1776).

Horace Porter served as a Captain in the Union Army, and as an aide-de-camp to General Ulysses S. Grant during the U.S. Civil War (1864-65). Porter accompanied Grant into battle at Cold Harbor, the Wilderness, and the Petersburg campaign. Throughout the war, Porter kept extensive notes of the campaigns, and he was present at General Lee's surrender at McLean's house on April 9, 1865. Later, his first-hand accounts and analyses were published as "Campaigning with Grant" by General Horace Porter.


The Battle of Appomattox Court House (April 9, 1865) General Lee surrendered to General Grant Horace Porter is the forth standing person from right to left



Porter's military career led him to the rank of General, and he was awarded the Medal of Honor in the name of the President of the United States of America on July 8, 1902. Citation: "While acting as a volunteer aide, at a critical moment when the lines were broken, rallied enough fugitives to hold the ground under heavy fire long enough to effect the escape of wagon trains and batteries."

From 1897 to 1905 he served as the U.S. Ambassador to France. General Porter died May 25, 1921 and he is buried at the Old First Methodist Churchyard in West Long Branch, NJ - United States of America.

Horace Porter's daughter, Elsie Porter, married Dr. Edwin Mende and moved to Switzerland. The Mende-Porter couple had several children. Their daughter, Erna, married Pierre Musy, the son of Dr. Jean-Marie Musy, ex-President of Switzerland.

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Dinner to Horace Porter By Mark Twain

Delivered at a dinner in honor of Gen. Horace Porter, Ambassador to France, at the Lotos Club, June 17, 1902. Frank R. Lawrence, president of the Club, announced at the beginning of the event that there would be no formal speeches, joking that Porter might have lost his ability to speak in English after his long residence abroad. Speeches were nonetheless made by the guest of honor, Major Gen. John R. Brooke, Rear Admiral Albert S. Barker, William H. McElroy, John S. Wise, and George H. Daniels, and Mark Twain. Major Gen. Brooke used the occasion to defend the U.S. army against criticism of its operations in the Philippines. "Our army in the Philippines has been attacked," he said, "and from that attack it has come out without a blemish to its blades or a stain on its flag.... They need no defense, but can one refrain from defending them when they have been thus unjustly attacked?" His comments may have been directed at Twain whose satirical essay "A Defence of General Funston" was published in the May 1902 issue of the North American Review.

The chairman has told the truth. He hasn't had much practice, but he did it this time. I did say that I should be very glad indeed to say something in case anybody preceding me should furnish me a text. That anybody preceding me should furnish you statistics that need to be corrected, or facts of any kind that seemed feasible things, did not occur to me. It is my line to correct them. I have stood for truth all my life. I have been a sort of symbol of veracity, and it has not always been recognized. But there have been things said tonight which furnish me here and there a text, and they are pleasing texts. I don't see that I have any real fault to find with anything that I have heard.

I didn't quite like to hear men whose heads are still brown, like the chairman's, and black, like the guest's, talk too much of people who have been in this club longer than they have, meaning me. And to hear them calling your distinct attention to the stuff which I wear upon my head and which has been tanned to its present tone by hard work in the interest of civilization! I have first to correct an opinion of the guest of the evening, as everybody can have an opinion. Compliments are paid to him in a gracious way, and in a truthful and righteous way, the way in which Mr. Lawrence has turned these compliments, when he speaks of this brilliant bird of passage from the coal-hole of the Lotos Club. I like to hear him pay these compliments. I like to see the chairman show off what he can do with language. And I like to see him throw out his culture and his knowledge in this mysterious way, and talk about the date of the battle of Bunker Hill just as if he was there and knew all about it. He throws out this historical information with a scandalous air of having it always on tap. He has been studying a cyclopedia today. There was a man here who knew the date of the battle of Bunker Hill. I don't take these random historians at par. I shall look myself when I get home, and see if they 're right.

Why, General Porter stands up here, and he also throws out very nice things, and sometimes they suggest Wagner's music from the pen and point of view of Bill Nye. Bill Nye said that he had heard that Wagner's music was better than it sounded. You can take what General Porter says in the same way. Now he has been abroad over five years, and has been working in my interest and Mr. Armour's interest, trying to get our literature introduced, our pork from the pen. Well, that is a good thing to do, and he has been and is working very hard, and has done admirably well. He has sold more than forty copies of my works in France every year, and it was only half that when he went away. He has done exceedingly well. We have never had a representative there who has done his work more to my satisfaction than General Porter.

And he has been learning French. I wish he had made his speech in French. Not because any one would have understood it, I could not have understood my share, perhaps. But I should like to hear him. I think General Porter did know French before he went away. He has complimented me on my study of the German language; I think I did yeoman service in trying to tame that language. I had not the same success with it that he had with the French. I have great reverence for the German language. I did the best I could with it. I stood by it many years. I worked it hard and it worked me hard. There were many pleasant incidents connected with the struggle. We had a very dear old lady, a sweet old soul, who took a great fancy to a young lady who was traveling with us. She took so strong a fancy to that young American woman, that she poured out her practical German affection upon her, and she couldn't say too much, or find too much praise in that young person and everything connected with her. And this dear old lady was always trying to find similarities between the Germans and the Americans, and was always delighted when she could show a sort of relationship in methods of expression and feelings. And she said one day, "Why, you talk the same as we talk. We say, 'Ach Gott,' and you say, 'God damn.'"

But the remarks of Admiral Barker carry me back to the time when I was in Austria. That was the time when the war broke out. It was threatening daily, that Spanish War, and the admiral says that Americans are more comfortable there on the other side, and are now treated with higher regard than they were at any earlier time. It is no doubt true. At the time I speak of, 1898, Americans who were sojourning in Vienna had a sufficiently uncomfortable time, for it was said, it came from America, that we were going to fight Spain for Cuba's sake, and that our sole reason for that was the humanitarian one that we were going to put forth our strength to achieve the freedom of the downtrodden Cubans, and that we should not charge anything for that, but would do it simply from our American principle of standing by weak nations who were struggling for their freedom, and ask nothing for that but the consciousness of doing this thing. They thought we were too selfish to pour out blood and treasure for that cause. I had to stand hearing people say in all kinds of German, with languages mixed, that that was all nonsense, folly, romance, humbug, that we had an ulterior motive for that war, and that our humanitarian purpose was a mere pretense. I had to stand all that. Everybody in that country had to stand that, and put up with that. It was hard enough, because I believed thoroughly that we had no object in view but the high and noble one of setting that people free. And I said it; and I instructed the young American people, younger than I was, and we were in trouble, and met with scoffs on all hands, and jeers. And I strengthened them, and I said to them, "Don't you be afraid. It is all true, absolutely true. Speak out and say so. These people don't understand fighting for any such purpose as this, but we understand it, and we do it. Stand by your flag and don't be afraid."

We went all through that and we have waited to see the result, and now I should like to stand in Vienna and say, "See what we have done. We have done everything. We have kept our word. We set those Cubans free. We said we should do it and we did it." If there is anything in this world we have to be proud of for a long time, it is that fact. I am glad I have lived long enough to be able to say to those Viennese that I was right and they were wrong.(1)

General Porter has done a great many things to be proud of; and a great many things for which we have reason to be proud of him. More than one of you have understood in one way or another what General Porter has accomplished in that short life which has resulted in that black head of his. Men get older some time or another. All of you know how brilliant he is. He should have a school. He has done some meritorious things, but you haven't heard of the greatest victory he ever won, on the battle-fields or in the diplomacy of Paris over wise men. I saw him put to a test one night that would have taxed any other man severely. He saw it through, and I should tell about that for his everlasting credit.

Fifteen or twenty-five years ago the Fellowcraft Club was formed. They had sixty-five members, and they held one meeting very successfully that I remember. At this meeting Mr. Gilder was chairman, and just for fun I made a proposition. I got Major Pond to say to Mr. Gilder that there was a young man here from down South who had a plan by which he proposed to teach young men how to make after-dinner speeches without any preparation. He would teach them how to choose any subject, take any text, and speak to that text without embarrassment of any kind. Mr. Gilder didn't want to introduce this young person, but he was persuaded to do so. Major Pond said that this man's name was Samuel Langhorne -- Langhorne is part of my name -- and when he stated what this man's name was, he said he hoped the club would call for Mr. Langhorne. And then Mr. Gilder called it out. I stepped forward.

I said: "There is no swindle about this, Langhorne is part of my name." I wanted to try this project, and I wanted to take a class to teach people after-dinner speaking. I wanted to try it on the dog, as the actors say, and I wanted to make the experiment there. My scheme was this, and it is based on this, that, as a rule, after-dinner speeches seem to me to consist of anecdotes, and remarks attached. From observation it seemed to me that the anecdotes are made for the speaker, and just this. A man gets up on his feet to make a speech, and he talks along and talks very handsomely. Presently he approaches an anecdote. You can see it in the air. You can smell it. And presently he says, "Now, how felicitously what I have just been saying is illustrated in the case of the man who," and then he tells the anecdote, and those people are caught, and they laugh, and the thing goes off, and it doesn't occur to them that that anecdote didn't illustrate a thing. But that doesn't matter, he talks along, and presently he brings out another anecdote, and they still don't notice that it doesn't illustrate, and the man goes on and takes out these anecdotes, and the people go home. And after all, his anecdotes never illustrated anything he had to say. And then I got those people to give me a text, to show them what I could do with it. And I asked them to send around a hat, and have everybody propose a text. I said it would make no difference what the text was, one was just as good as another on this plan. And after that they sent a hat around and somebody reached in and got one out.

The text I got out was portrait-painting. Well, it wasn't much of a text, considering what I knew about that subject. But I said that would do, one was just as good as another. And then I began to deliver the facts and the history about it, starting back to the primeval man who sketched the mammoth, and so on, and every now and then I dropped in an anecdote. I always said, you can see how felicitously what I have just said is illustrated in the case of the man who, and I went right along.

Now you see the whole scheme. Everybody here ought to be able to act on this line. He must have his anecdote ready, and he must always remember to say, "You see how felicitously this is illustrated in the case of the man who."

There wasn't a man there who got through his speech, because he never got to an anecdote without all those people jumping in to help him out, until it got to General Porter. And General Porter stood up there, and told nineteen anecdotes. They tried to shut him off, to shout him down, but they couldn't do it. He introduced each one by saying, "You see how felicitously what I have just been saying is illustrated in the case of the man who." There never was so much courage exhibited. He took a text himself, that "Truth is stranger than Fiction." He didn't illustrate it in a single instance. He always said he did, and it always carried, and he finished it most happily. Now all the anecdotes had been told before, taken from here and there. And General Porter said it was true from his own personal experience. He said he made a voyage across the Atlantic, a very stormy voyage. You see how he handled the thing, and he had the people's hair standing on end about the dangers, and he got up on that, that the ship was leaking and they had to keep at the pumps all the time, day and night, all the way. And then he wound up, "Why, we pumped the Atlantic Ocean through her sixteen times." That was his idea of truth being stranger than fiction. Everybody could see that it was. I have immense admiration for General Porter. I have more admiration for him than I have for the tax assessor of Tarrytown.

The tax assessors of Tarrytown understand their business better than anybody else. There are Tarrytown people here tonight. The way those tax assessors work is that in order to verify their figures they find out what the fellow is worth, and multiply it by fifty-seven. They would tax Porter on his personal appearance if he lived there. Oh, I am going to have a time up there. I am up there, and I have got to put an addition on that place. I have got to get a chicken-coop, and you can't have a chicken-coop in Tarrytown without risking something. I am going to build that one of chilled iron. I am going to save the coop itself when the assessor comes. I don't propose to get taken up. It is a great place. I am enjoying the prospect of going there. I haven't got there yet. It 's a great place. It has a lower death-rate and a higher tax-rate than any place on the civilized globe.

But I welcome General Porter back to his native shore. I welcome him with all my heart. I have a reverent affection for him, and this feeling has grown with the years during which I have observed him. He grows in my estimation all the time. I have a great opinion of his abilities, and a great opinion of his career as he has made it, and great hope that he will make it greater in the future. And if next time I don't have an opportunity to vote for Theodore Roosevelt for President, I hope to vote for Porter.