USA > Iowa > Report of the organization and first reunion of the Tri-State Old Settlers' Association of Illinois, Missouri and Iowa, 1884 > Part 2
USA > Illinois > Report of the organization and first reunion of the Tri-State Old Settlers' Association of Illinois, Missouri and Iowa, 1884 > Part 2
USA > Missouri > Report of the organization and first reunion of the Tri-State Old Settlers' Association of Illinois, Missouri and Iowa, 1884 > Part 2
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To some of us; sir, an individual interest attaches to the occasion. This kind old city of Keokuk is the pioneer cabin in which our strength was nurtured, and where we learned the strict lessons of industry and honor, and ever as our thoughts turn to her, we praise her for whatever of good we may have helped confer on our fellowmen. God bless the people of Iowa, and the old Gate City !
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But sir, we are not assembled for expression of merely personal feel -. ing. Three mighty States sit to-day in conclave to honor the old settlers. of this land.
Indeed, this is a noble purpose. What great sacrifices and services are now to be remembered and recalled, the priceless benefits of which we enjoy. We think not only of the living, of those of our own times, but reaching to the far distant past, we remember the discoverers of and pioneers of this far western land. We recall DeSoto, with his pageantry and search for gold; discovering in 1542 in the far south the great river on whose bank we assemble. We reverently refer to Joliet and Marquette, who in 1667, reached the river at the north: We think with pride of Laclede, who in 1764 founded St. Louis, the now great metropolis of the Mississippi valley. We mention old Daniel Boone, who died within the borders of Missouri; and we might still summon in long array the many men of courage and enterprise, self-sacrifice and devotion to the cause of progress, who in these western states have struggled and suffered for us all. Great respect is due ail such forerunners of the human race, laboring either in the civilization that assaults the physical roughness and resist- ance of the original wilds, or the more terrible fierceness of fraud and pas- sion that lurks among all ranks of men. Respect, did I say ? Let me rather exclaim admiration and devotion is due their memory. Tribute has been paid to such men by all nations. Let others refer to classic times and tell how the progenitors of nations of long ago were deemed to have sprung from the earth. I recall rather from our western annals the funeral of Marquette. DeSoto in splendor had sought the new Eldorado .. for gold, had perished and been buried beneath the Mississippi at night, that no man might find him more. Marquette had sought to civilize and redeem his fellow men-even the rude barbarians ; and dying on the banks of Lake Michigan, had there been buried. But soon the reveren- tial savages sought his grave; with pious hands brought forth his bones ; cleansed them in the waters of the lake he loved; placed them in a birch bark box woven by Indian maiden's hands, and in a long procession of thirty canoes filled with mourning chieftains, bore them with funeral dirge and stroke of steady rhythmic oar to the chapel of the Christian to rest forever more. Let us not forget the 'services of all such men of early or recent date.
"Ye natives, 'twas thus your adventurous sires, Forsaking their fatherland. altars and fires, The homes of their childhood, the graves of their kin, Gave all that they valued, for all they might win."
"They climbed every barrier ; no peril could daunt ;
Through storm and through pestilence, battle and want, And marching still on, with the path of the sun, Regained a lost home in a Paradise won."
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"Their star was the day-star, and westward it led,
'Till round them in beauty the bright Eden spread,
And the garden of gardens, that blooms round us here, Were found and were won by the brave pioneer."
Mr. President : If such is the gratitude we owe to the old settlers, it becomes me, as the representative of the great State of Missouri, to report progress to your association, and to exhibit on what benefits is based Missouri's admiration for those who have gone before or still live as honored pioneers. It would please me greatly to enter the arena in friendly competition with you, my old-time and tried friends of Iowa and Illinois, and match names for statesmanship and enterprise we could produce from Missouri, but the time and occasion do not serve. The names of Barton, Benton, Bates, Geyer, Gamble, Laclede, Choteau, Sarpy, Campbell and a host of others rush to memory. But a few short statistics" will tell why Missouri pays tribute here to-day to her and your old settlers.
It is because of their heroic efforts and unlimited self sacrifice, she can present her glorious record of the past as entitling her to your wel- come, and her bright hopes as worthy of your sisterly appreciation in friendly rivalry.
Her rank in population among the states of this great union has been as follows :
1830 she was 3Ist with 140,455 inhabitants. 1840 she was 16th with 383,702 inhabitants. 1850 she was 13th with 682,044 inhabitants. 1860 she was 8th with 1, 182,012 inhabitants. 1870 she was 5th with 1, 192,295 inhabitants. 1880 she was 5th with 2, 168,380 inhabitants.
And she had at the last mentioned date within her borders the city of St. Louis, the sixth in rank, as to population and wealth, among the great municipalities of our country.
The banners of the city are flying to-day, my friends. She is adorned with all the vesture of a proud and beautiful metropolis. By the banks of this broad and majestic river, she looks to the south and she looks to the north, and she welcomes all in freedom, equality and peace. Missouri says, too, she owes to the old pioneers that her per centage of increase of population was-
From 1860 to 1870, 45.6. From 1870 to 1880, 22.9. And in the same time Illinois was : From 1860 to 1870, 48.3. From 1870 to 1880, 21. And Iowa : From 1860 to 1870, 76. From 1870 to 1880, 36
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On the last decade Missouri stands as against Illinois, 25.9 to 21.I with the greater population in Illinois ; as against her sister Iowa, 25.9 to 36, with the lesser population in Iowa.
Missouri's average size of farm is 129 acres ; Iowa's, 134 acres ; and Illinois, 124 ; and of these homes of independence and industry, Illinois has 255,741 ; Iowa, 185,351 ; and Missouri, 215,575.
Missouri says that by the last census of the United States, she stands seventh in rank for the value of her manufactured products.
Missouri reports that she has compared with adjacent States, either formerly slave-holding or non-slave-holding, of illiteracy in her over two millions of population she has to acknowledge 13.4 (thirteen and four- tenths) per cent. Yet Kentucky has 29.9 per cent. and Arkansas has to confess to 38 per cent. and she cannot understand why everybody is proud to hail from old Kentucky, and it is popular to cry out against "poor old Missouri." I can come even here to glorious old Iowa, with all her energy and progress, and bear high the banner of Missouri without fear even of you my old friends and comrades of Iowa and Illinois.
OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
Missouri has 10,329; Iowa, 12,635; Illinois, 15,203; but with these Illinois has high school education connected with 113; Iowa, 141 ; while Missouri has it with 239.
Missouri is not here a jealous rival, but she wants you to understand that your welcome is gratefully acknowledged by her, but only as an equal, and all the aspiring sister of this glorious triad of States.
Settlers we are. Old settlers we claim to be. But some settle and grow old, and some settle a good deal in a very short time. Missouri has had some settlers who are not so very old.
Ye glorious and triumphant States of Iowa and Illinois, how prosper- ous has been your. careers. Fresh as the prairies you found your homes ; no blight was on your land ; no cloud was on your sky.
Your advance in population and marvelous prosperity among the freedom-loving nations of the world was easy.
But alas, not so for old Missouri. She alone, from all this mighty northwest, was excepted and not made free soil.
Oh, what a burden was on her in this moving world! What an eclipse was on her star in the galaxy of States !
Settlers, what is it to settle ? Is it merely to clear the forest, or will we gladly admit to our band those who clear out barbarity and all the horrid enemies of freedom ?
Missouri not only bore slavery like a nightmare, while the grand States of Iowa and Illinois were free, with all the blessings that freedom
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gives, but she bore war on her own soil, with 190,000 of her own men fighting for freedom.
Your war was abroad. It was within her borders ; in her very bosom. You helped her, and God bless you for it. Your troops opened the bat- tle of Pea Ridge and closed the last fighting on her soil at Osage and In- dependence.
Providence be thanked for her redemption. Old settlers of her bor- ders, brave pioneers of the past, rejoice in Iowa! Be very proud of Illinois, but rejoice also for your other child, Missouri. She is coming on, young in her new birth, and radiant with her brilliant future. Do you mention the James boys? I reply we have to settle law and order in Missouri ; and as you, when assailing the wilderness with your axes, have had to leave a stump or a snag here and there, and a hollow to fill, so we have our James to root out and our glorious fields of social harvest yet to gather. The axes are swinging and sounding. Comrades and fellow set- tlers-soldiers who settled this Union on freedom's side-we are with you and greet you. The events of our past history are marvelous, but the greatest are yet to come. Who can foretell the future of the old settler's glory ?
In the past the hawk-bird of nature-soared over wilds where no civilized being trod. There were the mighty rivers, now named the Mis- souri, the Mississippi and the Ohio, and the lakes. But all was silence ; the wild herds and barbarous men all these hills, plains and valleys held. But now ascend, oh, spirit of this land-mercurial commerce-winged of foot and far speeding in thy eagerness. In broad expanse are seen the factories and ports of commerce, increasing trade and many new designs to compass man's end. The steamboat plys the waters, the telegraph be- comes the nerve of civilization, the telephone speaks through space and man's voice becomes like that of disembodied spirits, art and science add · on every hand to the growth of human knowledge.
But this is where but now the eagle in his solitary circle swept and knew no danger.
But spirit of my native land, sweet liberty ascend and tell us what is to be.
Her voice has been heard and repeated by our most gifted and pa- triotic countryman, Washington Irving.
"Vast regions of inexhaustable fertility, deeply embosomed in our immense continent, and watered by the mighty lakes and rivers, I pic- ture them to myself, as they soon will be, peopled by millions of indus- trious, intelligent, enterprising, well-instructed and self-governed free- men blessed by a generally diffused competence, brightened with innum- erable towns and cities, the marks of a boundless, internal commerce, and the seats of an enlightened civilization. I regard them as the grand and
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safe depositories of the strength and perpetuity of our union. There lie the keys of an empire ; there dwells the heart of our giant republic that must regulate its pulsations and send the current through every limb. There must our liberties take their deepest root and their purest nourishment; there, in a word, must we look for the growth of a real, free-born, home- bred national character, of which our posterity may be proud "
Hail, comrades, let us go forward !
MUSIC-"OLD SETTLER'S SONG."
Right here where Indian fires were lighted, Long, long ago -- Where dusky forms by rum incited, Danced wildly to and fro- We Old Settlers come to greet you, . Proffer heart and hand- Breathe too a fervent prayer to meet you Yonder in the spirit land.
Gone tawny chief, whose war-cry sounded, All but his name- That, far and néar, has been resounded, Linked with our rising fame- KEOKUK, with pride we gather On thy golden strand- While from the skies a loving father Blesses our sunset land.
O ! brothers, there are dear old faces Hid 'neath the mold- Forms missing from their wanted places, Hands we have clasped, still and cold- While the scores of years behind us Tell we're hastening on- And that when friends return to find us, Softly may fall, "They are gone."
Here brothers, where our noble river Chants through its waves- May we remain till called to sever, Make and guard our graves- And with welcoming shouts we'll greet you When you reach heaven's strand- Fling wide the golden gate and meet you Brothers, in the Edenland.
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RESPONSE FOR ILLINOIS BY HON. HENRY STRONG.
MR. PRESIDENT AND OLD SETTLERS OF MISSOURI, ILLINOIS AND IOWA: As I look upon this assembly and see these fathers and mothers, who were little children when I first knew them, I feel like an old settler.
It is with unfeigned pleasure that I join you in this reunion of old settlers, to respond for the great commonwealth, by whose side for forty years, hand in hand, with equal step, Iowa has walked in the grand march of modern progress. In State organization, Illinois ante-dates you nearly thirty years. But remember, our justly proud young neighbor, that those thirty years belong to the "Cycle of Cathay," that they were before the era of the cultivator and the reaper, and the railroad-they would not count five years now-so, you see, we are almost twins, our seniority being just enough to entitle us to your becoming deference. Therefore, just because we put on long dresses first, and sat up Saturday nights with our beau, I pray you, gentle sister, don't imagine you see any wrinkles across the river. We, too, inhaling the breezes of the prairies, and the spirit of liberty, have found what. DeLeon sought in this western world, have been baptized in the fountain of eternal youth.
It is hard for me to bear in mind that I am representing Illinois, and not Iowa, on this occasion. And in this presence I might be indulged a word of reminiscence, while I recognize in this assembly so many familiar faces, and when so many mingled memories to me are centered here. I cannot make it seem that a generation has come and gone since I first looked upon this place. Instinctively my mind calls the roll of the friends of other days; of the men whose high character and enterprise so largely contributed to the rapid advancement and prosperity of this noble State, and who stamping their own impress upon her material and social progress, have given to Iowa an enviable place in the sisterhood of States
It is just one hundred years since Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, Thomas Hardy and Arthur Lee, authorized thereto by the State of Virginia, formally ceded to the United States the County of Illinois, which then comprised what was known as the northwestern territory, and embraced all the country north of the Ohio river up to the boundary of British America, and all east of the Mississippi river (including Indiana) not claimed by any other of the original thirteen States. A good sized county, I hear you say. Three years later the organic law of the territory was enacted by congress, the celebrated ordinance of 1787, by which this magnificent domam, richer in all material resources than even the fabled wealth that turned Columbus' prows across the untried sea, was forever consecrated to freedom.
No poetic legend lingers about the birth of Ill nois. As in the case of Iowa and many of the Western States, an Indian chief stood sponsor at
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her birth, and hence her name Illinois, "the men." Her history is your history, the common history of the pioneers of the west, and may be summed up in a few words-privation, suffering and danger, borne with patience, fortitude and courage.
I have sometimes wondered if to the prophetic mind of Marquette the vision of the future was opened, as he and Joliet in their birch canoes floated down this royal river, and here in the State of Iowa among the Illinois Indians planted their first mission in the valley of the Mis- sisippi; or whether the less religious and more daring mind of LaSalle ever dreamed of the empire that would grow up around his Kaskaskia and Peoria and Chartres. They carried no arms to subdue hostile tribes; they conquored with the calumet and the cross-()ld Fort Chartres, a classic name in the annals of this valley, that seems to connect the. antithesis of history, and recalls the golden age of both England and France ; of Louis the Great and the Duke of Orleans ; of the Mississippi bubble and John Law, who spending millions upon that fort, the citadel of his future commercial capital, made Frenchmen believe that every dollar of the irredeemable paper of his Grand Mississippi Company was worth forty dollars in gold or silver; who was the great original of the "Ohio idee" and from whom our friend General Weaver must-have learned his economy of finance.
It recalls the age of Queene Anne and the galaxy of genius that made her reign illustrious ; the age of Bolingbroke and Walpole, of Swift and Pope, of Marlborough, and the Prince Eugene. What memories and what contrast, too! There .Louis' court; here Marquette's wigwam ; there the splendid legions of the most splendid empire upon the earth ; here the pipe of peace, and the crucifix of the humble follower of Loyola. That glorious empire went down in revolution and blood, while the hut of the pioneer has become the freeman's castle, the royal home of the rulers of the great republic.
I see before me here to-day in this reunion of old settlers, the survivors of the men, who leaving their childhood's homes, founded in the valley of the Mississippi an empire of freedom, of intelligence, of security, of comfort, of abundance, and of every earthly blessing; who had the ambition to better their fortunes, and the courage and fortitude to brave dangers and endure privation, the faith to trust a destiny their own bold enterprise should carve out. They recognized the great truth in political economy, that the wealth of the soil is the best foundation of national greatness and individual prosperity.
They knew that three hundred thousand square miles of land, rich as the valley of the Po, must become the seat of empire and furnish the best guarantee, in the future, for all those institutions of religion, charity and learning that enrich the life of the citizen.
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They saw further than the statesman of their day. For even James Monroe, after crossing the Alleghanies himself, and obtaining the best information he could, reported that this country was a treeless waste which probably for a century to come would not be entitled to a member of congress.
Within half a century the President of the United States was elected from the valley of the Mississippi, and long since the prophecy of the pioneer has become the fact of history.
Were London surrounded, as Chicago and St. Louis are, by a quar- ter of a million square miles of soil of exhaustless fertility, the future of England would be more secure than it is. Were the sterile plains of Germany equal in power of production to the alluvium of Illinois and Missouri, Bismarck would not now be exhibiting the remarkable spectacle of the great imperial chancellor imposing a duty upon food, to protect her exhausted farms from the competition of Iowa wheat.
Were the hillsides of Normandy covered with the black loam of Kansas and Nebraska, France would not now be crying out against the invasion of American breadstuffs.
A few years ago when it cost five or six cents a ton per mile during the greater part of the year to transport wheat and corn and pork and beef from your farms to the sea-board, the self contained statesmen of Europe hardly knew of your existence. They put their noble fingers all over the map, when looking for Chicago or St. Louis. They have found them now. When the products of your farms are carried to the sea- board by rail, for less than one cent a ton per mile, and whole fleets enter the harbors of Europe, laden with everything that supports mankind, the political economists of the monarchies suddenly awake to the fact of your being, and have to admit that you are large factors in the happiness of their citizens.
Wonderful to relate, they are even taking down their long shelved industrial creeds, and threatening to revise the supposed postulates of their political economy, by levying a duty upon the food they cannot them- selves supply. The American steer is goring the life out of the French ministry, and the sleep of the great Bismarck is disturbed by the grunt of the American hog. Yet, within the life-time of men before me, all of the States represented here to-day were a wilderness, a beautiful, glorious wilderness, it is true. A very wilderness of beauty they must have been, of prairie and river, and wood and lake, peopled only by the Indian and buffalo.
It was only in 1763 that France ceded Illinois to England, and twenty years later that we conquered it from Great Britain. It was not organized as a separate territory till 1809, and did not become a State till 1818. That is only a little over sixty years, and within the memory
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of some of you here. Now, not in the spirit of boasting, (which would be utterly unbecoming in a citizen of Chicago, as you know) but as most im- pressively exhibiting the rapid growth of the country, I may be allowed to mention a few facts. Born, as you have seen, near a half century after the Declaration of Independence, yet Illinois has a larger area in cultiva- tion than all the farms of England and Wales combined, and in improved agricultural extent, leads all her sister states, as well as in the value of her products of field and farm. Again, in railroads, that most valuable achievement of modern invention, and about the most reliable index of material prosperity, she stands at the head. And here let me say, that having long since severed all connection with railroads and become a farmer in four states, I have been led to look into the question of trans- portation from the Mississippi valley to the sea-board, and reached these conclusions :
First. That the farmers in the States represented here to-day and those adjacent pay less per ton per mile for moving their beef and pork and grain to market than any other farmers in the world. I can well remember when wheat at the sea-board was worth one dollar and twenty- five cents a bushel, and only three cents at the Illinois farm, and when it cost 300 bushels of good winter wheat to buy a Sunday coat.
Second. It is because railroad transportation is cheaper here than any where else in the world that this great valley, though over a thousand miles from the sea-board and over four thousand miles from Liverpool, is able to control the markets of the world and has made such wonderfully rapid growth.
Again, in the amount of internal revenue paid for the support of the general government, Illinois stands first. Her woods are limited, but not her fuel, for she possesses a much larger amount of coal lands than either England or Pennsylvania (which we are holding for a better price). But further, in manufactured products, only three States excel her. And what is more to be proud of, as an evidence of commercial intelligence and thrift, is the fact that only in two other states are there so many letters distributed and so much postage paid. Still better, my fellow suckers, is the fact, which I mention with special pride, that only in two other States are there so many schools and so many children in school. But best of all and affording the highest evidence of our intellectual advancement, I think that we, the immediate successors of the Sioux and the Pottawa. tamies, have a right to boast of the fact that, except New York, which contains the business metropolis of the United States, Illinois stands first in the number of newspapers published and read by her citizens.
Now, I want to whisper to you, (so that nobody from St. Louis shall hear it) another fact, that over there across the river, in that infant com- monwealth, and on the very ground that was an Indian trading post when
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some of you were grown, is a city which as a distributing center of agri- cultural product, excels all the cities of the world, ancient or modern, the aggregate of whose yearly business is over seven hundred million dollars. A city that fixes the price of wheat and corn, beef and pork and lard for the whole world, yesterday a hamlet ; to-day a commercial capital cover- ing more than fifty square miles, containing, including its suburbs, seven hundred thousand inhabitants; a city whose yearly lumber trade alone would freight a train of cars eighteen hundred miles in length. And the hogs yearly killed there, in single file, would reach a quarter way around the globe; in whose port over twelve thousand vessels yearly enter; a city which in a word is the largest grain market in the world, the largest beef and pork market in the world, the largest lumber market in the world, and I may add, whose commercial achievements are only equalled by the modesty of her citizens.
In all this wonderful progress Iowa and Missouri have been the rivals of Illinois. In rapidity of developement Iowa has even surpassed Illinois .. Had Missouri all the time been a free state, and an inviting field for New England enterprise and energy, her progress already so remarkable, would have been no less wonderful than that of her sister states, possessing as she does resources beyond computation. When we contemplate this aston- ishing progress, how our incredulous minds turn back to verify for themselves this almost fabulous chapter in American history, and to try to discover the succession of events that have produced these phenomenal results. They are your work, my fellow-citizens of the valley of the Mississippi.
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