USA > Illinois > The centennial of the state of Illinois. Report of the Centennial Commission > Part 21
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Immediately after Governor Lowden's address the official party went to Evergreen cemetery, where, in a simple ceremony, the Gov- ernor placed a wreath of flowers upon the tomb of Shadrach Bond,
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the first governor of the State. In placing the wreath, Governor Lowden said:
"It is a great privilege to be able to bring this wreath to the tomb of the first Governor of Illinois. May we not indulge the hope that the new century, just opening. may redound as greatly to the credit of Illinois as the century which Governor Shadrach Bond inaugurated."
The Invocation was offered by the Right Reverend Henry Althoff, Bishop of Belleville in the following words :
Almighty, Eternal God, we the people of the State of Illinois, assembled in these venerable historie surroundings, consecrated by labors, sacrifices and religious life of onr forefathers, most humbly and devoutly invoke Thy adorable Name, on this solemn and memorable occasion of the Centennial observance of our State.
We offer Thee, Heavenly Father, our profound homage and the love of our hearts iv grateful remembrance of all the benefits which Thy bountiful Hand has bestowed upon cur State and its people during the past one hundred years of its existence.
We are mindful today that the history of our State is a glorions one, made such, under Thy loving Providence, by the wise administration of its rulers and the wholehearted cooperation of its people, united, loyal and virtuous, and devoted to the ad- vancement of trade and business, of art and science, and of educa- tion and religion.
Deign, O Lord, evermore to bless our State and grant each of us the grace to be filled with the knowledge of Thy holy Truth and the love of Thy holy law.
Grant, also, Thy blessing and protection to our country, to the President and to all our fellow-citizens.
Have in Thy keeping our dear young men who have donned our country's uniform and are fighting for the honor of our country's flag. 'Give them strength and comfort in their trials.
We pray that the Cross of Thy Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, planted here by the saintly missionaries and their colaborers, may be honored more and more and be the source of great blessings to the people of this State. Ainen.
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Then the party immediately drove to the hill above Fort Gage, where, on a platform overlooking the site of old Kaskaskia itself and near the old cemetery in which the dead of Kaskaskia lie buried, a brief program was given. Dr. Otto L. Schmidt, chairman of the State Centennial Commission presided.
Mr. Gary Westenberger sang 'The Star-Spangled Banner,' and the Illinois Centennial songs. Mr. Frederick Bruegger read Mr. Rice's ode to Kaskaskin, and Governor Lowden spoke briefly.
The party then took the train and returned to Springfield.
ADDRESS OF GOVERNOR FRANK O. LOWDEN AT THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES AT CHESTER
It is indeed fitting that one of the great celebrations of this Centennial year should be held in Randolph County, for here we are nearer the beginnings of Illinois, the real beginning of Illinois, than we could be at any other spot within our boundaries.
Within a very short distance from here were old Kaskaskia and Fort Gage; a little farther were Prairie du Rocher and Fort Chartres, and so here more than any other place within the State, memories sweep in from our earliest years.
It is indeed a very notable fact that for almost one hundred years within this county there was transplanted a bit of old France, and that old bit lived in peace and happiness and security with a wilderness all about it. It is almost impossible to explain the fart that here for one hundred years was a civilization when the savages roamed the woods and prairies on every hand. So to- day the Centennial Commission planned wisely when it planned to have this celebration here.
During all those earliest years the aecounts that come to us make those days rich in romance. Little Kaskaskia, insignificant if measured by the number of its inhabitants, had life that gave color and hope to all this western land. When at the close of the French and Indian Wars Ka. kaskia became a part of the British soil and the Fleur de Lis was hauled down that the Cross of St. George might be run up in its place, the character of the town changed but little. The French remained; their old mode of life
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remained, as the records in your court house here diselose. For a few years Kaskaskia was nominally under English rule, but in fact the life of the city changed hardly at all.
It is just one hundred and forty years ago today that that little army of which: Mr. Rice has written so beautifully, came upon the scene; an army smaller than an infantry regiment ; smaller in fact than even a battalion of an infantry regiment of today, re- cruited largely in Virginia, and sailing down the Ohio, disembarked at Fort Massac on our southern boundary. The original purpose was to sail down to the mouth of the Ohio and up the Mississippi to Kaskaskia by your own present site of Chester. In order, how- ever, to surprise the enemy, George Rogers Clark disembarked his force at Fort Massac. marched through the storms, through the woods and over the prairies until on July 4, 1278, he reached the environs of that old town. There he divided his army into two parts, one of which he seut into the streets of the town, the other, which he commanded in person, went to take Fort Gage, which contained, as you know, the garrison for the protection of the terri- tory in this vicinity. Both parties were successful and again the sovereignty of Kaskaskia changed. The flag of England came down and the Stars and Stripes were run up in its place.
Thus it happened that that little expedition, smaller in num- bers I have said than a single battalion of a modern infantry regi- ment, conquered for the United States. a vast empire; an empire larger than the territory over which the armies of the civilized world have been raging during the last four years, because after the fall of Kaskaskia it was made possible for him to go on farther up and seize Vincennes, and in that way this vast Northwest was added first to the domain of Virginia, afterwards to the Territory of the United States.
We are indeed on historic ground. I never come to Chester that I do not feel under the spell of those carly days as I cannot feel anywhere else within our borders. Upon this great bluff whereon we stand today, you have a view across the Father of Waters, and over the fields on the other shore you have sweeping in from every side the memories of more than two hundred years of civilization. I never come here that I do not resolve that at
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some time in my life I will come and spend a few days; I want to come here and examine at leisure the priceless records which are contained within your vaults in your court house, and to study anew and to dream over the early beginnings of what I believe to be the greatest State in the entire union of states.
So, my friends, it is not only fitting that we should be here today, it is not only doubly fitting that we should have selected our natal day for this celebration, but it is peculiarly appropriate that we should be gathered here in territory above which have floated at different times, not only the Stars and Stripes, but also the English flag and the French flag, because those three flags to- day are flying side by side on the greatest battle line of history, facing a common foe, a foe not only of the three countries which those flags symbolize, but a foe to all mankind, a foe to civilization everywhere the wide world round.
When this war commenced there were many of our people who could not understand all that it meant. There were those among us who said, "The war is three thousand miles away," and so it seemed at that time. We who loved peace, who have become ac- customed to peace, could hardly believe that a nation in this twen- tieth century of the Christian era should start out to conquer the world, should set out to terrorize the world with practices of frightfulness such as the world had never seen; but as we followed the armies of the Central Empires across the Belgian frontier, we found that they had been frankly telling the truth when they taught for a half a century that nations are above the moral law, and that no ethical consideration binds them to their plighted word. They had solemnly guaranteed the neutrality of Belgium, and yet, referring to the treaty in which they made that guarantee as but a serap of paper, their hosts swept aeross upon the people of poor little unoffending Belgium. Then we began to see that a nation that had set out upon this career of conquest, threatened us, our independence, our security, as it threatened all the rest of the world. This war, "three thousand miles away!" I want to tell you, my friends, from the bottom of my heart, I believe this war is nearer to our hearts and our hearthstones than any war in all our past.
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We have had great wars before. There are those here today who wear the little bronze button that signifies another great war that we in this country had fought. I want to tell you that, dark as were the days during the early part of that war, there was never a moment when it meant as much to the people of this land as this war which is raging around the world today. Because, at that time, no matter which side had won there would have been some kind of a country left for the people of the North as of the South. We of the North believed that that country, if we had lost, would have been fragmentary and incomplete. We know that it would have fallen far short of its glorious destiny, but there would have been some country left which we could have called our own. There would have been some part of this continent above which would have floated the American flag, some place where we could have found a home; but if this war in which we are engaged today should go against us, which God forbid, we will not even have a fragment of a country left, because every foot of our land will be under the iron heel of Prussian military despotism forevermore so far as man can see. There will be no place we can call our home. There will be no room in all the sky for the American flag, or for any other banner of liberty, because this war is the final battle between the powers of autocracy on the one hand, and the powers of self-government on the other. That is not a new battle. It has raged in all the centuries at some place or another. It is the old war between God-given right of man to rule himself or the divine right of kings, so-called, to impose slavery upon all the world. It is the old battle. Heretofore that battle has been limited to one land, to one scene of action, to one theatre of war; but today all the nations of the globe are involved. That battle is flaming all about the world. Upon the one hand are those forces which believe that mankind is incapable of governing itself; upon the other all the forces which have faith in the worthiness. in the dignity, in the ability of man everywhere to captain his own soul.
When this war is over all the earth will be one thing or the other. All the world will be free, or all the world will rest beneath the power of the cannon and the sword for at least a thousand years. That is the issue which is involved in this struggle, and that is
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why on this Fourth of July people are gathering as they have never gathered before on our National Birthday to read again the mighty truths contained in the Declaration of Independence, and to re- solve anew that at whatever cost of men or money, we will carry on this war for democracy, for humanity, for civilization, aye, for religion, until we shall have driven forever the black flag which Prussian autocracy has run up, from the sky of all the world.
The Fourth of July in the past has been our national holiday; today it is an international holiday. In England wherever the Cross of St. George flies, alongside of it are the Stars and Stripes, and men over there are celebrating for the first time that event which lost England her colonies. I want to remind you that it is not as inappropriate as it might seem for England to join with us in our Fourth of July celebration, because England was not a unit in its war with us. The greatest souls of England, Burke, Pitt, Fox, all of their greatest inen, were with the colonies, with the colonies openly in that war. They, too, were fighting in the Parliament of England against George the Third for their own liberties, and our triumph was really the triumph of the people of England. We won not only our own independence, but we helped the liberty-loving portion of the British population to enlarge their own freedom, and the divine right of kings was buried forever in the grave with George the Third. Today England is as great a democracy. England gives the same privileges to her children that we give to ours.
It is fitting, very fitting, that in Paris also they are celebrat- ing our Fourth of July, not only because of long friendship, but because of the views of her people now and our people now. Away back in those days which followed the solemn event which in read- ing the Declaration of Independence, Senator Magill has brought so clearly to your minds today, France, then it is true a monarchy, sent LaFayette to our shores to assist us to win our liberties, and who can tell but for the assistance of the French soldiers and sailors, what the result of our Revolutionary War would have been.
Not only did that help us to win our liberties, it helped France again to win hers. The Lilies of France which LaFayette brought across the seas, which represented the Bourbon dynasty, were fol-
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lowed in a few years by the French tri-color, and that banner speaks of the equal rights of mankind just as eloquently as does our own, or as does the modern Cross of St. George.
Our Revolution, therefore, not only brought independence to America, but under its indirect influence it helped the great liberty loving statesmen of England to become masters of her future. It enabled France to throw off its tyranny and to erect in its stead a republic. As these three flags have floated, one after another above old Fort Gage, a few miles from your door, so they have influenced one another from the dawning of our history, until today all three, representing the God given inalienable rights of man as against the spurious divine right of kings, have a right, standing for the same great things, to float side by side on the Western front.
You of Randolph County, you for one hundred and forty years-an even one hundred and forty years-have lived secure and free and independent underneath the Stars and Stripes, so I can understand the sacrifices which you are making. I can under- stand the spirit of this meeting, because you know that now the final assault upon the independence and upon the supremacy of that flag is being made along the most stupendous battle fronts of his- tory. Oh, my friends, nothing matters unless we win this war. I can't understand, to save my life, how people can at this time give any thought to any consideration of all the future beyond the winning of this war. If we do not win it, the future matters not to any of us. If we should lose, if we should come under the domination of the Imperial Court at Berlin, then I say, and I say with all soberness, that the only Americans to be envied are those who are filling foreign graves and who have given up their lives that our country may live. Rather, infinitely rather, should any man who loves his wife or child, prefer to sleep among the flowers of Flanders or France than to survive this war unless we shall win a victory before it ends.
I have seen a lot of your boys: I have seen boys from all over the State, because it has been a part of my duty to visit the camps where Illinois boys are stationed. I have seen the wonderful im- provement that those boys have made from week to week. As I have looked into their clear eyes and upstanding figures I have
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felt a thrill of pride in Illinois I had not known before, because I want to tell you that your honor and your future are safe in the hands of those young men. If you could only see them as I have seen them you would have no feeling of surprise at the news which comes from that portion of the battlefront held by American soldiers. Our men fight not only with their brawn, but they fight with their brains. They fight in the knowledge that they are fighting for the dearest things in all the world; and that makes an army invincible when brute force fails.
I want also to say to the mothers, because the mothers always have the hardest part, that you need have no fear for your boys. They go proudly, they go happily; they know that even though they fall their life will be more rounded and complete, will be a finer life in every way than though in piping times of peace they had lived a half a century more.
You need not fear for the conduet of those boys, I want to tell the mothers. The other day I received a paper published by our expeditionary forces in France, and found that the main item of interest in the life of our soldiers at the front today is adopting some little orphan boy or girl of some patriot who has given up his life for liberty. Different companies, different individuals. are saving from their salary in order that they may raise a fund to take care of those little boys and girls of sacred France. When your boys are thinking about the orphan children of our Allies, they are not going to do anything to disgrace you in their conduct in any way. I want to tell you they are safe.
We won't have as many young men when this war is over, but we will have a finer lot of young men than we have ever had in our past.
Just one other thought, then I am going to close. You know things were not going very well with us before the war. We were getting to be a very selfish people; we were thinking of material things only. Discipline was breaking down everywhere, breaking down in the home, in the school and in the church, ave! and in the nation. We were getting to look upon our citizenship as of no special value; we were coming to regard it as something which imposed duties upon the country toward us, and no duties upon us
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toward our country. We were becoming very fond of the flesh- pots. The old idea of brotherhood which your fathers and fore- fathers in the days of old Fort Gage knew so well was in some way slipping away from us. The old ideas of neighborliness which we knew when the country was newer were disappearing. We were living within ourselves too much. The Master's definition of who are neighbors had entirely escaped us so far as our practice went. Maybe this war was needed. At any rate I see a new light shin- ing in the eyes of the men and women, aye! and the boys and the girls of today that I have not seen for years. We were thinking too much of the things that you touch and handle and too little of the spiritual things of the world, and now that we are engaged in a conflict in which the material threatens to overwhelm all the spiritual forces of the universe, we are having a revival in our hearts and minds of the old ideals which our fathers and our mothers taught us and believed. When this war is over I have the faith to believe with all my heart that we are going to have a better country and a better civilization than we have had in all our past. I believe that under the providence of God we shall not have made these sacrifices in vain. I believe, just as I know that victory must finally come to our armies because there is still a God in the Heavens, so do I believe with equal faith that when the war is over we are going to have a better world than we have had in all the past.
To you people of this historic old county, one of the few above which have floated in succession these three great flags of de- .mocracy, to you, who are the favored above most of the people of our State, I think I can say, Illinois, which is just closing a century of glorious history in this Centennial year here, and in the first years of her second century, is going to be worthy of her historie past.
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THE FREEING OF ILLINOIS
BY WALLACE RICE
Where brims the broad Ohio as it foams adown the Falls Our Long Knives haste, grim, iron-faced, when free Vir- ginia calls ;
Kentucky's here on her frontier with tall men lean and dark
And, best of all for desperate work, their chief, George Rogers Clark.
Beyond the broad Ohio lie the lands of Illinois
Whence British bribes send savage tribes to ravage and destroy.
As fierce allies they gain supplies, run forth to scalp and slay
Our settlers, women, youth, and babes, in merciless affray.
Across the broad Ohio come our frontiersmen and Fate. No martial pride struts at their side, but Liberty elate Smiles in their eyes as on the skies fair Freedom's banner, blows.
The starry sign of victory o'er tyrants and their woes.
Along the summer prairies green with grasses tall and sweet
Our sevenscore men, sevenscore and ten, march on with flying feet,
A thousand miles between their files and their Virginian leas. A hundred miles and twenty to the fortress they must scize.
Six days along the prairie speed our hardy bordermen They lose their way-lose near a day in finding it again ; And rest their flight that July night when, only two years gone,
The great bell boomed to tell the world of Freedom marching on.
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On Independence Night they bring Kaskaskia in view.
Before them lies upon the rise Fort Gage against the blue-
A fort whose name's a thing of shame borne late in Boston Town
By him who ordered murder at Old Concord for the Crown.
Over the evening river Clark is ferried with his band.
With silent stride they quick divide when once they gain the land,
Himself to creep upon the keep, and find the postern gate Ungarded. Black the entrance, but he does not hesitate.
Upon the astonished commandant, that grey French rene- gade
Rocheblave by name, with his shrewd dame, Clark comes with shining blade.
He curses Clark; and strikes a spark, for out he goes in chains.
A prison in Virginia he gets for all his pains.
Meanwhile our bold frontiersmen surge on down the vill- age street.
They take it hot without a shot in overthrow complete ; And then apace they gain the grace of matron, maid, and man-
France then, as now, is faithful friend; when was a better plan ?
To loud huzzas our drummers drum and every fifer pipes As down they drag the British flag and hoist the Stars and Stripes.
Forever freed by Clark's boll deed from tyrants over- blown These lovely lands of Illinois become Virginia's own.
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ADDRESS OF GOVERNOR FRANK O. LOWDEN AT FORT GAGE HILL, JULY FOURTH, 1918
Ladies and Gentlemen: This is indeed historie ground on. which we stand. While the main exercises of the day were held at Chester, it is exceedingly appropriate that we should pause here long enough on this beautiful afternoon to pay our little tribute to the pioneers of Kaskaskia in this great American bottom.
It is difficult for us of Illinois to realize that our written history extends so far back. It is hard for us to realize that long before George Washington was born we had a civilized and well ordered and happy and a joyous community within our border, and yet, that is the fact. It is difficult for us to realize the heroism of the men who founded these first towns and villages in Illinois -- Joliet, Marquette, LaSalle and Tonti. In fact, there never has been a braver, a more heroie, nor a more unselfish band of pioneers than the pioneers we associate with Illinois' earliest history.
The motive of the first was to bring the blessings of Chris- tianity to the savages who then inhabited Illinois, and just as in those far off days, more than two hundred years ago, the motive of the first visitors to Kaskaskia was humane, unselfish and for the benefit of others, so it is fitting that at this time we should cele- brate their virtues when their descendants are engaged again in a war, not for themselves, but for others, and it is in the spirit of Father Marquette, of Joliet, of LaSalle, of Tonti, and of many others I might name, that more than a million of our men today are across the seas fighting under the allied banners of the three lands which have at one time or auother held jurisdiction over old Kaskaskia.
It is a great story as well as a beautiful one. I like to think of the long-ago days when life was bright and full and free in Kaskaskia. I like to think of that visit of Lafayette when he came down the river and disembarked at Kaskaslia, and when be was met by the son of his old friend and comrade, Alexander Hamilton, who had been sent by the Governor of the State to give welcome to the old friend of his father. I like to think of the hours that he spent here, and one of the most delightful stories in all our
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