USA > Iowa > Report of the organization and first reunion of the Tri-State Old Settlers' Association of Illinois, Missouri and Iowa, 1884 > Part 28
USA > Illinois > Report of the organization and first reunion of the Tri-State Old Settlers' Association of Illinois, Missouri and Iowa, 1884 > Part 28
USA > Missouri > Report of the organization and first reunion of the Tri-State Old Settlers' Association of Illinois, Missouri and Iowa, 1884 > Part 28
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Would you see the metropolis of the great valley of the Mississippi ? Go to St. Louis. Would you see the livest city on this continent ? Go to Kansas City. And -if you would like to see a man fuller of energy and resources than the devil himself, try a Kansas City real estate agent.
Between such States as Illinois, Iowa and Missouri there can be no rivalry, other than that generous contention as to who can best sow and best reap. Between them there can be no petty jealousies, for only small men and weak com- munities are jealous. With the constantly broadening spirit of liberality the rich fruit of frequent intercommunication, and that fraternal sentiment which kindles at the thought of our common country, with one flag, one hope and one destiny, we will become more homogenious, as year after year the Old Settlers and their offspring shall gather be- neath the monument of the warrior-chief Keokuk.
Last but in our estimation not least as the representa- tive of our young but own vigorous Iowa, I take great pleasure in introducing one of her young men not unknown to fame, the Hon. John S. Runnells, of Des Moines, Iowa :
I rise with pleasure to perform the duty which has been assigned to me. In the occasion, as well as in the theme, there is much to make easy the "task of speech." And while impressed fully with my own short-comings, while fully realizing that the mantle should have fallen upon worthier shoulders, I recall the remark of a great Roman who said, in speaking of the glories of his country : "Any one could be eloquent upon such a theme."
The occasion is certainly as impressive as it is inspiring. I see before me the representatives of the pioneers, aye, the pioneers themselves, of three great States. We are stand- ing now to-day upon the confines of those States, and can look from the eminences'about us beyond their boundaries and far into their very territory-three States which contain within themselves the possibilities of mighty empires, Each , one of you who participate in these festivities today is the
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representative of a State greater than was the kingdom of Judea when the fame of Solomon, with his riches and glory, filled the caath ; he is the representative of a state greater than Greece when Thermopyla was held or Marathon was . won ; greater than the Rome of the Tarquins ; greater than the France of Charles Martel ; greater than the Spain of the Cid, or the Britain of William the Conqueror. I see before me old men whose eyes have looked upon the wilderness and seen it expand into a civilization more perfect than three thousand years have developed in the land of Pharoahs. I see before me little children whose eyes have opened to a life rich in every comfort, satisfied in every want, adorned with numberless luxuries-a life including homes of taste, with pictures and music and flowers ; a life made easy by railways and telephones ; made intelligent by daily news- papers and schools and teachers ; made moral and religious by wholesome laws and frequent temples of the Most High -I say I see before me little children born into such a life as this, whose fathers and mothers looked upon the land where all this busy, eager, happy life is seen to-day, before its surface had ever been broken by the plow, or decorated with the dwellings of civilized man. Within the span of a lifetime in Illinois, in Missouri and in Iowa, this wonder has been wrought. The same eye that saw the foundations laid is permitted to-day to behold the completed temple. And we gather here to-day-those who have witnessed its entire construction and those who were permitted only to look upon its finished beauty-to commemorate the work in which so many of you bore so honorable a part.
For the youngest in this trinity of sisters I speak. I know not how or when she was christened, but I know it must have been some with accurate taste who named her Iowa-the " beautiful land." The name was an inspiration. Like the billows of the sea her prairies roll and swell and undulate from river to river, with many a fair stream spark- ling upon her breast like jewels flashing upon the bosom of beauty. To him who had left his old home and was seeking a new one, and who had traveled far, and was worn with his journey, it must have burst upon his gaze like another Eden. He saw a wealth soil rich as the valley of the Po. surpassing even the valley of the Nile, There were no forests to be cut down ; there were no hills to be leveled ,
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there were no fertilizers to be procured ; but only the gar- nered wealth of nature which had been accumulating for ages to be levied upon and converted to his use.
And yet his task was not an easy onc. The foundations of the liberty we enjoy, of the blessings that are ours, were laid in suffering, in privation, in hardship, oftentimes in tears. To found a State is of the highest order of achieve-
ment. It is the offspring both of denial of body and of struggle of mind. It involves the surrender of case, the abandonment of comfort, the locusts and wild honey of the wilderness. It exacts courage, fortitude, patience, hope. The men who have done this work, in whatsoever age, have been kingly men. To found a State in a new land wherein great numbers of people may dwell together, establishing their customs, making their laws, creating the complex machinery of society, conquering and decorating the earth, cultivating the arts and erecting a fabric which shall har- monize permanence and progress, so that general happiness may result-to do this is not only heroic, but great. To win a battle, to make the lightning tell our thoughts and the steam carry our burdens-these are great achievements, but less great than this.
The age of the pioneer is the heroic age. When Iowa shall be so old that her conspicuous events are no longer matters of individual recollection, but of tradition ; when she shall come to have a history, then will the men who found her a wilderness and made her a State, occupy the most notable page. Just as the time of the Pilgrims was the heroic age of the Republic, so the period of settlement was the heroic epoch of the States. You who came with your energy, your courage ; who invaded the solitude ; who took up the burden of a new civilization; who broke the prairie and bridged the stream, and built the school house and erected the church-spire-you are the founders of our empire. Yours are the names that will be engraven upon our gates. In Holy Writ when comparison was sought with him who had accomplished much it was made with him: that " buildeth a city."
One of the greatest epic poems ever written-one of the greatest productions of the human mind-recounts in stately. verse the history of him who built the "walls of lofty Rome." Our Enleid, if it shall ever be written, will tell the
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story of those who came to a beautiful land, and who endured much, but who erected upon its soil a great and free commonwealth, and made it fit to be the home of a moral, intelligent, self-respecting, self-governing people.
To my mind the hardships you endured were salutary, even though grievous to be borne. Some one has said that "luxury is never the midwife of greatness." Nations, no more than individuals, travel a royal road to success. As adversity is the school of genius ; so toil and struggle and privation are the necessary training of a strong, virile and vigorous people. The nations of the East opened their eyes to lands flowing with milk and honey. Spices dropped from the leaves ; every month furnished its fruits without labor ; and all the necessities of life were supplied by the bounty of prodigal nature. And so the people were slothful, self-indulgent, and effeminate. Progress was unknown ; invention was unheard of ; liberty slept and despotism was law.
To no such land did you come, pioneers of Iowa. You, indeed, found surpassing fertility of soil, but it yielded its richness only to your tireless assaults. It required both your hard labor and natures lavish wealth to create the Iowa of to-day. And it was not the gold and silver and precious stones which you found in the soil, but the toil and prudence and energy which you contributed that was the largest factor in the result. The gifts of nature to our State should not make us forgetful of the men who trans- formed it into a home of civilized refinement. How well they performed their duties we know. From this spot westward and northward your eyes will tell you how well they per- formed it. The wilderness and the solitary place were made glad by them, and the desert rejoiced and blossomed as the rose. The land was a desolate wilderness before they came ; at their touch it became as the Garden of Eden. An eminent American once speaking of the war for inde- pendence described it as the "miracle of Revolution." Great as was that achievement, which I would be the last to disparage, to my mind it is far less of a miracle than the transformation, in less than half a century, of an unbroken wilderness into a community ; a state ; aye an empire, of two millions of souls. You know the beginning how small it was, for you yourselves made it. You digged the spring
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with your own hands. You watched the first reluctant drops bubble forth. And happier than most founders of States, you can look around you to-day and see how broad and decp a stream the current has expanded into, what valuable, and rich, and costly things it bears along -- through what a valley of happiness and prosperity and contentment it rolls, with ever widening borders and deepening waters.
In 1838 Iowa was created a territory, and in 1846 she was admitted into the Union as a State. She then had a population of one hundred thousand people ; she now has two millions. She then had a valuation of ten millions of dollars ; she now has one of four hundred and fifty millions. Her population to-day, after forty years of statehood, is two- thirds that of England in the time of Elizabeth and Shakes- peare. We have grown more in four decades than England grew in thirteen centuries after the Roman conquest, and we have more wealth than the Greece of Socrates and Plato, the Rome of Brutus, or the France of. Charlemagne. How think you would the wealth of the famous rich men of anti- quity compare with the value of a single crop of corn in Iowa ?
It used to be said by the people of a certain section of the country-" cotton is king." It never was true ; but if it were, it is true no longer. If God ever gave the sceptre to any product of the earth, if He ever placed the crown upon any child of the soil, He placed it upon that cercal which, standing erect in its majesty, like a thing of life, bears upon its green stalk the food and strength and life-sustaining power for millions of the human race. I have tried to esti- mate for myself its importance to the world, but I have failed. I have tried to measure the breadth of its influence upon the necessities, the comforts, the happiness of man- kind, but I could not. I only know that from the moment the seed is dropped into the ground until the ripened car reaches the granary a struggle is going on between the forces of nature to create it and the forces that would destroy it, more momentous than all the struggles of politi- cal parties. Every rain which falls upon it to quicken its growth is of infinitely greater consequence than all the fluctuations of the stock market, or the contests of the bulls and bears upon the Board of Trade. The shrivelling of its green leaves by the drouth fills millions of hearts with dread,
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The prolonged withholding from it of the dews and the rains summons before countless waiting eyes the gaunt spectre of want. Every day of sunshine during its season is all the more gladsome to mankind because it helps to germinate the seed, or strengthen the tiny shoot, or develop the car. or fill the kernel with its milk of life. The sun, the rain, the heat, all the great forces of nature, all the chemistry of the soil, all the agencies created by the divine mind and working in the bosom of the earth, are ministers of its growth and servants of its bidding. The stalk that carries its yellow kernel higher and higher toward the skies, carries greater wealth, is freighted with more resources and bears more of the means of human happiness than all the mines of bonanza kings, all the commerce or treasure-laden ships of the Spanish Main. Happy the man who can gaze out from his door upon his own broad acres, and listen to its rustling leaves, and hear the music of its growth, and behold the waving billows upon the green sea of his own field of corn. Co-worker with nature-fellow laborer with Providence in working out the great miracle of reproduction, he beholds in the fruit of his labor a product, every kernel of which is gold-gold in color and gold in worth, and gold in the uni- versality of its value, and which will carry strength and healing-happiness and content-power to labor and capa- city to enjoy-to myriads upon myriads of the human race.
There is an old Scandinavian legend illustrating this idea. It recites that there was once a giantess who had a daughter, and the child saw a husbandman plowing in the field. The sight was a strange one to her. To . satisfy her curiosity she ran and picked him up with her fingers and thumb and put him and his plow and his oxen into her apron, and carried them to her mother. "Mother, what sort of a bectle is this that I found wriggling in the sand ?" But the mother said, "put it away, my child, we must be gone out of this land, for these people with the flow will rule it."
But her agricultural wealth is not Iowa's chief claim to greatness. Humboldt said " Governments, religion, books, property, are nothing but the scaffolding to build a man. Earth holds up to her master no fruit but the finished man." A fertile land is barren in the hands of an effeminate race. If our pioneers had not brought with them the metal of true
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manhood, worthless would have been the riches of the prairies. All the fertility of the valley of the Nile, possessed by one race for four thousand years, fertilized anew with every season, has left Egypt weak and powerless-a foot- ball among the nations. "Countries are well cultivated," says Montesquien, "not as they are fertile, but as they are free." It is the character of the people, meant the great philosopher, their mental and moral conditions, rather than the physical ones alone, which determine the resources of a State. If upon this soil there has been developed nothing more valuable than corn and wheat, then has the State been founded in vain. There is a greatness not to be measured by money or harvest fields, or the figures of the census. There is a height which cannot be touched by mere material advantages. The fairest land upon earth would be poor, indeed, if peopled by savages. But the Puritans and their descendants have made of barren rocky New England the home of a civilization whose influence and power have spread abroad to remotest lands, impressing her genius and her thought upon the law and the government of the whole enlightened world.
You, pioneers of Iowa, fortunately for our State, em- bodied the best type of American character. You brought hither with you reverence for law. You accepted the law as, in the language of another, "your guardian angel and your avenging friend." You believed that license was not liberty. You brought with you the Bible and its hallowed influences. You brought with you love of home. I doubt not if on this day you were to recall the experiences of your early years in the new home, and they were to be spread out upon canvas before us, we should behold it filled with events which were what an English writer called the " Unconscious teachers of the best education.". There was courage in the midst of danger ; there was endurance of hardship ; there was prompt decision when no one was nigh to advise-neither the oracle of friendship nor the lamp of precedent. And then there were all the sacred ministries of life-the love of children, courtship, marriage, death, and all the solemnities of burial. All of these things which made up your busy existence, your various sensations, your fiery trials and your oft times dear bought triumphs, were the crucible in which was moulded the character of the Iowa
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people. Such as we are to-day we owe in a large degree to them and to you. We can indulge in little vain-glory which does not take its rise in you or in what you have done. Our boasting is your exaltation ; our prosperity is your triumph.
But while we have received so much from the pioneers, we have incurred a duty thereby not lightly discharged. We of to-day are under the highest impulse to show how great and strong a State can be made. No scene fitter for the ideal State than the soil of Iowa. We are so strongly entrenched in the favor of Heaven by her matchless gifts of soil and sky, that we can afford to turn our backs resolutely upon whatsoever is unwise in the past, and set our faces steadfast and dauntless to the future. I should like to see arise upon this fair land-so fair that the sad hearted Indian declared as he left it that it rested forever under the smile of the Great Spirit-I should like to see arise here an ideal American nationality, exemplifying the highest character, enacting the wisest laws and embodied in the best men and women.
One of the most beautiful. things Milton ever wrote-not even excepting his immortal epic, was an address to Parlia- ment, in which he said : "Truth came into the world with her divine Master and was a perfect shape, most glorious to look upon ; but when He ascended and His apostles after Him were laid asleep, then straight arose a wicked race of deceivers, who, as that story goes.of the Egyptian Typhon with his conspirators, how they dealt with the good Osiris, took the virgin truth, hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces and scattered them to the four winds. From that time ever since the sad friends of Truth, such of them as durst appear, imitating the search that Isis made for the mangled body of Osiris, went up and down gathering them up limb by limb still as they could find them. We have not yet found them all, lords and commons, nor ever shall do until the Master's second coming ; He will bring together every joint and member, and shall mould them into an im- mortal feature of loveliness and perfection."
The ideal State is perhaps as remote as the fabled restoration of truth, so eloquently described by Milton. But some things may be done to lead us nearer to it. We can advance toward the wisest government by governing
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less. The fallacy from which the American people has suffered most has been the belief that all evils could be remedied by the law. If anything has troubled us we have gone to the legislature for relief, just as the hypochondriac runs to the doctor. If we have not prospered in our affairs, we have been too prone to charge our misfortunes to the the currency or the taxes. If we have seen things needing amendment in the moral way, we have concluded there was too much license. And so we have attempted to patch up our estates and amend our ethics by the same panacea-the statute. Let us remember, however, that while the law can do much, it cannot do everything. It can never supply the place of personal moral worth. It can never compensate for mental deficiencies. It is as true in material things and in moral things as in spiritual ones that we must " work out our own salvation with fear and trembling." Our govern- ment is not a paternal one. Its spirit is that of the largest individual liberty consistent with the rights of other indi- viduals. But we must care for ourselves ; we must promote our own interests ; we must be the architects of our own prosperity ; we must rely upon ourselves for our own pre- servation. I would recall from the time when you pioneers of Iowa came into the wilderness and the desert, relying upon your own strong hands, your own brave hearts, your own heroic souls, for the prosperity you sought-I would recall, I say, from that time the spirit with which you undertook the settlement of this State, and implant it anew in the political soil of these more favored times. In the name of that spirit by which the childhood days of the State were so abundantly blessed, I would banish the philosophy which tells us that we are poor or we are bad because the laws are deficient or the laws are wrong. Lift up anew, like another serpent in the wilderness, the standard of per- sonal worth. Make the State stronger and better by mak- ing its component parts stronger and better. In Greece, when the conqueror at the Olympian games returned to his home, the city tore down its walls because it had ample protection in the presence of one so brave and strong. Just as we develop and strengthen the individual ; just as he becomes more intelligent and virtuous, so can we relax the stringency of the law and diminish the number of ont statutes, until in the fullness of time everything which the
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law or the statute would protect shall be held sacred by the individual conscience. The object of Statehood is man- hood. That is the best government which develops the best men. But the best men can never, so long as human nature remains as it is, be found under any system which attempts to substitute the sanctions of the law for the safeguards which every man ought to create in his own bosom. 'In like manner men can never be prosperous, they can never discharge the functions of good citizens, under a policy which makes them rely for success upon the law, or co- operation or combination or any other device instead of honest self-reliant labor.
Be it our sacred duty, pioneers of Illinois, of Missouri, of Iowa-be it our sacred duty to carry on to fulfillment the work you so well began. We meet to-day to commemorate the auspicious beginning you made. It was yours to build ; it is ours to preserve and perpetuate, perhaps to enlarge and strengthen, always remembering as we will that a single day of folly may destroy the slow work of a hundred years of glory.
Other and deserved monuments may be reared hereafter to commemorate the great services you have rendered to your state and to the world. Meanwhile our grateful hearts shall hold you in tender respect, and fond remembrance, and we will keep alive upon their altars the fires of our gratitude. The institutions you founded, the states you builded-these will be your everlasting memorials, and in them the long procession of the generations shall witness your glory.
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OFFICERS FOR 1888.
At the close of the address of Hon. John S. Runnells the committee appointed to nominate an Executive Committee and Officers for the ensuing year reported as follows, and which report was unanimously adopted :
PRESIDENT.
HON. H. H. TRIMBLE.
TREASURER. J. F. DAUGHERTY.
SECRETARY. J. H. COLE.
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE.
ILLINOIS.
HON. JAMES H. MATHENY, Springfield.
HON. CLARK E. CARR, Galesburg.
HON. BENJAMIN WARREN, La Harpc."
MISSOURI.
GEN. L. J. SMITH, Jefferson City.
COL. H. M. HILLER, Kahoka. HON. THEOPHILUS WILLIAMS, Memphis. IOWA. 1
HON. JOHN H. GEAR, Burlington. HON. HOYT SHERMAN, Des Moines. HON. EDWIN MANNING, Keosauqua.
Owing to the lateness of the hour the president of the day announced that in order to make the trains volunteer speeches, etc., would have to be omitted.
On motion adjourned sine die.
D. J. AVRES, Secretary.
LETTERS RECEIVED.
Letters were received from :
HON. SAM'L, F. MILLER.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES, WASHINGTON, May 22, 1887.
Hon. Edward Johnstone :
My Very Dear Friend :- I received yesterday your more than kind letter and am sorry to say that I see little prospect of being able to visit you at the Tri-State Old Settlers' Reunion on the 30th of August.
I am engaged to deliver an address to the graduating law class of the Michigan University on the 29th of June.
I shalt probably be in Keokuk for a few days then, but cannot afford to stay until the 30th of August, and. in fact, I have engaged my cottage at Block Island for the summer-the nicest resort I have found anywhere in the world.
I trust you will have a successful meeting, and request that you convey to all my old friends my best wishes.
I take great interest in gatherings of this character, and think that the "Tri-State Old Settlers' Association " should especially be favored and perpetuated.
Your friend, SAM'I. F. MILLER.
S. L. CLEMENS.
HARTFORD, June 20, 1887.
Dear Sir :- Frankness, candor, truthfulness-these are native to my nature ; and so I will not conceal from you the fact that if there is one thing which I am particularly and obstinately prejudiced against, it is travel. I should dearly like to see the friends ; and would like to be there ; and if there would do my full share, and be as good or as bad, as proper or improper as circumstances might require to make things prosper and go lively- but the journey lies between, and it blocks the way. Truly your friend,
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