USA > Illinois > The centennial of the state of Illinois. Report of the Centennial Commission > Part 17
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Gentlemen, note these words -- brothers, family, filial affec- tion, hearthis * * It is the whole question of Alsace-Lor- raine !
And after forty-seven years, your President, whose only con- cern is a lasting peace through justice, has heard the protests and pronounced this verdict :
"The wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine which has uusettled the peace of the world for
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nearly fifty years should be righted in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all."
At present the recruits of Illinois, your own sons, are perhaps occupying in French Lorraine, at St. Mihiel or Anx Eparges, the sectors which face the Lorraine still occupied by the Germans. If some day France owes to their gallantry the recovery of her chil- dren which were torn away from her, gentlemen, then you will know that your sons have been the soldiers of Right!
Your forefathers and ours were empire builders. It is for us to show that their spirit may prompt us now to build up a world better than the one we have known.
In the first place, we will have to reconstruct France. You will help us. France feels that in the past as well as during this war, she has served mankind. In the interest of mankind you will help us to rebuild France.
We will have to reclaim "No man's land" and bring back life into the field of death. For this undertaking of peace, of civiliza- tion and happiness, I look forward to the cooperation of the de- scendants of the French and American settlers who raised your fair State of Illinois out of the wilderness of the prairies.
We will also have the world to reconstruct. This war has shown most plainly that there is no safety for a free state except in a close partnership with all other free states, respectful of each others' rights !
During this war, the nations most jealous of their national prerogatives had to sacrifice something of their pride and accept the control of international organizations.
After the war. something must survive of this union. We must discard the policy of "laissez-faire" and establish in its stead a better justice and a great efficiency. The antiquated conception of the balance of power must give way to a new regime. What will this regime be? We know already the one that the German kultur would set up. It would control the whole of Europe and reach out to Persia and India, and the Far East. And once in control of Europe and Asia the Kaiser, as he bluntly told you. would stand no nonsense from America. So, in the end, it would
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amount to nothing less than the domination by the Germans of land, sea, sky and man.
The American conception of the new order is quite different. You know what it is, you Westerners, who have the far-seeing eye of the prairies, you citizens of Illinois, who gave to America the man who saved the Union. You have realized on this continent a Federal organization which, while respecting the rights of the states, is strong enough to insure fair relations between them. The society of nations is nothing else, gentlemen, but the American spirit extended to the world.
Perhaps our generation will see this League of Nations re- alized. Meanwhile, we must modestly begin by practising its spirit among our two countries, whose mutual feelings for the last hundred years are the surest promise of a better world to come.
Let us set ourselves to this momentous task with the spirit of those builders and settlers who are our ancestors. When they cleared the forest in the wilderness, they dreamed of the city which would rise some day near that clearing. It would be a beautiful city, open to all, where all men of goodwill would have a chance, where all men respectful of the rights of their fellows would live free.
Gentlemen, let us carry this dream one step further-let us work for a society of nations open to all peoples of goodwill and where all nations, great and small, will have the place they deserve.
THE CENTENNIAL ADDRESS.
ILLINOIS-THE LAND OF MEN
EDGAR A. BANCROFT
We are here tonight to celebrate with joy and pride both the growth and achievements of our State during its first hun- dred years. But we do not forget-we can not forget-how much back of that century, and how much now in this world-shatter- ing and saddening war we owe to France. As America has recalled proudly her debt to her in the days of LaFayette, so Illinois should remember what she owes to the France of nearly a century before- France the bravest, most generous and liberty loving of nations.
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Doctor Finley --- whose absence, compelled by a distant and im- portant mission, we all regret -- has told with rare poetic insight the romantic story of the carlier explorations of this region in his lectures before the Sorbonne, which be has collected in a book en- titled, "France in the Heart of America." In the preface, written since the war began, he gave this title a sentimental as well as a geographical tui2. How truly was France in the heart of America ! And with what profound satisfaction we recognize tonight that America is in the heart of France in fact no less than in sentiment ! Precious as are our past obligations to this heroic people, our future ties to them should be ever sacred.
When General Pershing Jaid a wreath of roses on LaFayette's tomb he raised his hand in saluite and said with soldierly brevity. "LaFayette, we are here!" So, we may say, "France, you have long been here ; we rejoice that we are now there; for we both know that our cause is the same."
When the vanguard of America's army marched through the rejoicing streets of Paris last June, little French children khelt down at the curb as Ohl Glory passed. They felt and expressed it all. Since then the heart of America has been in France. *
Let us first recall briefly that earlier time of picturesque and chivalrous adventuring.
It was the French who first explored this region and made it known to the world-soldiers seeking new domains for the lilies of France; missionaries seeking converts to the Christian faith ; voyageurs seeking profit and adventure in this wild land. LaSalle, Marquette, Joliet, Hennepin, and their associates were the real discoverers of this vast expanse along the Upper Mississippi, with its fertile soil, natural beauty, abundant game and peaceful Indians. They mapped and named the water courses and other natural land- marks and the Indian villages. They established forts, founded missions, marked the trails and the sites for trading which they learned from the Indians. They were everywhere the forerunners of the pioneers. But it is a curious fact that the French established no enduring settlements. Cahokia, Kaskaskia and Peoria, Fort
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Saint Louie ( now Starved Rock) and Fort Crevecoeur, founded by the French fathers and soldiers, and nearly all their other out- posts of civilization languished unless and until they were taken over by American or English, pioneers.
It is to the intrepid missionary, Pere Marquette, that the State owes its name. Exploring the Mississippi, he came upon the footprints of a large band of Indians. Overtaking them, he asked who they were. They thrilled him with their answer: "We are the Illini-the tribe of men." Thus, this great land of prairies and wooded water courses between the rivers, and the lake became the Illinois territory, aud nearly a century and a half later the State of Illinois. And the whole significance of our hundred years must be found in the deeper meaning of our name-Illinois, the land of men. For, no matter how much we exalt quantities and values and incomprehensible numbers, we know that their origins and significances are, and must always be, in men. Back of all deeds is the doer, and back of all accomplishment is individual character.
*
When the Congress authorized the formation of this State, and President Monroe signed the Enabling Act one hundred years ago today. it was the result of a very brief campaign here and was not regarded elsewhere as of special significance. Relatively little discussion had preceded the presentation of the memorial from the territory or delayed the passage of the bill through House and Senate. This had been a separate territory only ten years. Its population was then less than thirty thousand, mostly from slave-holding states, and all its settlements, without important ex- ception, lay along the water courses near and south of the mouth of the Illinois River. Though this was a part of the Northwest Terri- tory, from which slavery wa- excluded by the famous ordinance of 1787, yet slavery existed here from the days of I'reneh control. The census of 1818 reported 829 "servants or slaves."
*Daniel Pope Cook, the very young and energetie editor and proprietor of the Territory's chief newspaper, the Western Intelli-
" He was defeated as a candidate for the State's first representative in Congress, but he was appointed its first Attorney General.
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gencer, published at Kaskaskia, is to be remembered as the main factor in bringing forward and pressing the question of statehood at that time, when the territory had scarcely half of the sixty thou- sand population required for a state under the ordinance of 1187.
Nathaniel Pope, our territorial delegate, in preparing the bill, fixed the northern boundary first at ten miles and finally at fifty miles north of the line through the south bend of Lake Michigan that had been indicated in the ordinance as the boundary of a new state. This change of boundary, in order to give Illinois access to Lake Michigan, seemed of small importance at the time, but it gave the State its entire lake frontage with its great metropolis and its fourteen northern counties which now have a population greater than that of all the rest of the State.
Here was a truly royal domain-with more acres of arable land than all England. It was, indeed, a new and fairer Mesopotamia, with leagues on leagues of verdant prairies, brilliant with wild flowers and fringed with forests along the streams. Beneath the riches of its deep black soil lay undreamed of wealth of coal and oil, of lead and zine and other minerals. Upon its lakes and rivers there was no sail, only the silent canoe of the Indian and the voyageur and the slow, cumbersome river boat of the pioneer. There was no smoke cloud anywhere of town or factory. The rude, primitive salt works at Shawneetown was the solitary industry of Illinois. The blacksmith and itinerant cobbler supplemented the skill of the pioneer and his wife in providing the simple equipment and coarse clothing of the frontier life. The population-even including the 10,000 who came into the territory while it was framing a constitution for the State and thus made up the re- quired 40,000, and even ineluding the 6,000 Indians, who were practically the only inhabitants of the north three-quarters of the territory-amounted to only one person to each one and a quarter square miles.
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What miracles a hundred years have wrought ! The popula- tion has increased from 40,000 to about 6,000,000-nearly twice the population of the thirteen colonies in 1726. The production
-- 14 C C
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of Indian corn has increased from a few thousand bushels, then produced by the settlers and the Indians, to 365,651,400 bushels in 1917. The total wealth of the State has increased from $1,000,- 000 to $15,000,000,000-nearly four thousand fold; and today the value of our productions from field and factory and mine is nearly $3,000,000,000 a year. What a contrast between the little, crude salt works at Shawneetown and our vast and varied manufactur- ing enterprises today ! Our exhaustless coal measures, our un- equaled railroad transportation and the easy access by water to the Nation's great iron ore supply have been great factors in producing these results. Illinois plows, Ilinois cornplanters and Illinois harvesting machines have increased the food supply in every quarter of the world, as they firet increased it here. Illinois auto- matic machinery and machine shop equipments are lightening the labor of human hands in all countries. Illinois packing house products reach every corner of the globe, and Illinois watches keep time for every civilized nation.
Though the Illinois and Michigan Canal may seem now a rather sorry and expensive political reminiscence, it aided greatly in the growth of Illinois and of Chicago. Shadrach Bond, our first Governor, recommended it, and his successors, through dis- couragements and disasters not a few, persevered until it was com- pleted in 1848. When the Erie Canal was finished in 1826, the commercial East and the agricultural West for the first time natur- ally joined hands at Chicago, instead of by way of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers as theretofore. Chicago has been called the child of New York and the Erie Canal. When the railroads came later the routes of commerce east and west of Illinois had been so far fixed through Chicago, and the natural influences were still so controlling, that Chicago's position as the railroad center of our country was soon firmly established .*
If it seems one of the chief marvels of our hundred years that this young State should furnish the site of the Nation's second and the world's fourth city, it is because Illinois combines in the
* Tucker of Virginia said in 1818 that it cost the farmer one bushel ot wheat to c: rry two to a seaport town only eighty miles away. Land trans- portation was then limited by its cost to 100 miles.
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major and world-wide sense the granary and the workshop. The legend of Chicago's seal tells the story, "Ur's in horto."
These achievements are due to the foresight and character of the men, from Nathaniel Pope down through this wonder-working century, who discovered and developed the great natural resources and opportunities. For, important as the advantages of geographie and economie position and of natural resources are to such great accomplishments, they have required here, as they always do, an- other and yet more important factor-masterful men of vision. These accomplishments were largely by-products of the moral and political convictions and aspirations of the men and women of Illinois. From the beginning the people of this State have be- lieved that the principles of the Declaration and the Constitution furnish the only sure foundation for a free and civilized state.
THE SLAVERY ISSUE
Though one-third of the territory of Illinois and all of its settlements in 1818 were south of the Mason and Dixon line, and the majority of its population had come from southern states, a commonwealth of freedom was the ideal of those Illinois pioneers.
Geographically this State extended into and bound together the sections of North and South. Likewise historically it held the strategie place in defeating slavery and disunion and in saving the Nation for human freedom.
The two exceptional and far-seeing provisions in the Enabling Act were: (a) Changing the northern boundary, and (b) giving three of the five per cent of the sales of public lands (which had usually been set apart for public roads) to the cause of public education."*
The Constitution under which the State was admitted con- tained rather complicated provisions as to slavery, that in effect recognized and legalized its existence as an indentured servitude under rigid restrictions for a limited time, but definitely provided for its abolition within a generation.
The real fight over slavery in Illinois came with the election of Edward Coles as the second Governor in 1822. He was a Vir-
. One-sixth of the total to go to the founding of a college or university.
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ginian of education and high connections and substantial property. Ile had been private secretary to President Madison, and was a special ambassador to Russia in 1817. He inherited slaves, and, on his way to Illinois in the spring of 1819, he freed some twenty or more, but brought them to Illinois and gave 160 acres of land to each head of a family. He was known to be strongly opposed to slavery. In the election of 1823 the slavery party elected the Lieutenant Governor and controlled both branches of the legis- lature by large majorities. Governor Coles, in his first message, reconnnended the freeing of the slaves and the revision of the black laws for the protection of free negroes. The slavery party met this challenge by passing through the legislature, by the necessary two-thirds votes, a resolution for a constitutional con- vention. Its sole purpose was to protect slavery in Illinois. The question then went to the voters and a bitter campaign was waged in the summer of 1824. Although substantially the entire popu- lation was in the southern half of the State and had come mainly from the slave states, Governor Coles won a great vietory. Of the 11,618 voters then in the State, 6,610 voted against the con- stitutional convention, which meant against slavery, and 4,922 in its favor. This settled finally the character of Illinois as a free State, and thus at once stimulated immigration from the free states of the North. It also showed that the southern stream of settlers, that came first, held largely the same enlightened views as those who came later from New England and New York and Pennsyl- vania.
It was Senator Douglas of Illinois who, a generation later, revived as a national issue the question of slavery by his bill to repeal the Missouri compromise. Out of that controversy sprang the candidacy of Abraham Lincoln for the United States Senate and the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. Lincoln came from Kentucky, a slave state, while Douglas came from Vermont. Lin- coln, convinced that slavery was wrong, stood firmly against its extension. Douglas, though born and educated in New England, sought the path of compromise, and was more hostile to abolition- ists than to slaveholders. In their debates they made Illinois the platform upon which the essential moral quality of this issue and
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the impossibility of permanent compromise were strikingly shown to the American people.
In the Civil War Illinois rose to her supreme height in the contributions she made to the cause of freedom and union through President Lincoln, General Grant, Senator Trumbull, Richard Yates, our War Governor, General Logan, General Palmer, Gen- cral Oglesby and many more, who, at the front-255,000 brave sons- in the Congress, in the Legislature and in private life de- voted themselves with unselfish ardor to saving our Republic. The war ended forever the question of slavery, which had divided our State and Nation for so many years, and the cause for which Love- joy gave his life at Alton in 1837 was won. And the great lead- ers who were so conspicuous in our first fifty years are our most inspiring possessions, our most abiding influences.
EDUCATION
Though the Enabling Act wisely provided that the larger portion of the proceeds from public lawls within the State should go to education (because, as he so erroneously stated, the Illinois country did not need much money for good roads!) Nathaniel Pope's wise foresight was vain. Funds from this source were ah- sorbed and lost in the later craze for public improvements.
While schools and churches were almost the first desires of many Illinois pioneers, public education here as elsewhere, was very slowly developed. During the first fifty years the real centers of learning and enlightenment were the communities where private initiative and gifts had founded academies and denominational colleges. They offered the opportunity of a liberal education to the children of the poor and well-to-do alike. Shurtleff, MeKen- dree, Illinois and Knox Colleges were early examples of these cen- ters of moral and mental enlightenment and progress in this State. They constantly drew hither the more desirable settlers, and through their students and graduates disseminated higher ideals of conduct, business and government. They combine, as no other institutions of learning have done with equal emphasis, the develop- ment of the moral and religious as well as the intellectual nature. They ministered largely to the moral indignation against slavery
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which found full expression in "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Edward Beecher, president of Illinois College, and Jonathan Blanchard, president of Knox College, were strong anti-slavery leaders in the discussions that followed the murder of Lovejoy.
Not until the last fifty years did the early plans for public education become effective. Our public school system had hardly begun by 1855 and progress was slow until after the Civil War. It is in her later years that Illinois has developed her great State university and the two other universities on private foundations at Chicago .* In libraries, in the fine arts, and in music Illinois has facilities, opportunities and students which give her a relative rank even greater than her wealth and commerce.
Indeed, the connection is closer than is sometimes realized between the agencies for religious, moral and mental development and the physical evidences of great wealth and enterprise. For it is not alone the combination of the trained scientific mind and business sagacity that have produced the vast wealth of our State. Sterling moral character, fine public spirit, high personal and com- mercial ideals have given energy and stability to our great business enterprises. And the men who have won the largest successes have themselves attested the truth of this statement. Philip D. Armour established the Institute of Technology as well as a world-wide business to fitly perpetnate his name. The memory of the com- mercial genius of Marshall Field will persist in the centuries to come, not so much in the marvelous business which he created as in the monumentt which is near its completion on the shore of Lake Michigan, and the influence of that monument will increase and expand with the years. George M. Pullman, whose engineer- ing skill lifted Chicago out of the swamp before he established the business that bears his name, took pains to assure a continued in- fluence of elevation in the great training school which he founded. Similar instances are to be found in all paris of our State. Among
* Jonathan B. Turner's: contribution is worthy of remembrance. Ile came to Illinois in the early thuties He was the bader in the movement creat- Ing State Universities by National aid and to furnish agricultural and tech- nical instruction. He also intryineed the offer orange hedges to save the expense of rail fences and of ditches and emlakments then in general use. In this war American Universities and Colleges have made the priceless con- tributions of patriotic enthusiasm and eager young men specially competent for leadership in every branch of war service. And the roots of the osage orange-now supplanted by wire fencing-have yield d a dye for their uni- fornis.
+ The Field Columbian Museum.
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us of Illinois no man is regarded as truly successful unless he adds high personal character and a generous civic spirit to his business abilities.
It was the moral and idealistic training of American schools and colleges that made the martyrdom of Belgium and Germany's ernel crimes against humanity on land and sea and from the air potent and irresistible arguments for our joining the Allies. It was largely our college men who went, and inspired others to go, overseas to aid French and English arms long before our declara- tion of war. We should never forget the moral heroism and vicarious sacrifice of this proud American vanguard of 30,000 men, fighting under foreign flags for the life and soul of neutral America.
The queenly stature of Illinois in the sisterhood of states has been made due to her steadfast devotion to liberty, justice, educa- tion, and all the agencies of moral, aesthetic and spiritual enlight- enment, and to a patriotismo that embraces all these.
What a powerful inspiration in the trying days of this World War have been the memories of the Illinois leaders in the War for the Union! Every Illinoisan who knows what Lincoln and Grant and Logan and Palmer and Oglesby strove for is bound to know and feel that their work is vain unless the Prussian arms and creed are beaten to the dust. But we all knew that as they sought a half century ago to save this Nation, not for its power or its glory, but because in its survival were bound up the deepest interests of man- kind, so America is fighting with the Allies in this war. And their, spirit and capacity and devotion have reappeared during the past twelve months in the varied labors and solid service of Governor Lowden. His record and his character are one of the strong promises for our second century. By his words and his acts he has made clear the purpose for which America fights : and that all that Illinois has, all that Illinois is, are but dust in the balance as com- pared with the cause for which American soldiers are fighting and dying on the Western front.
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