USA > Illinois > The centennial of the state of Illinois. Report of the Centennial Commission > Part 4
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At the banquet special tables were reserved for the members of the Grand Army of the Republic, the Daughters of the Ameri- can Revolution and other patriotic organizations. A table was reserved for distinguished ladies, and at this were seated Mrs. Frank O. Lowden, Mrs. John M. Palmer, Mrs. Richard J. Oglesby, Mrs. John R. Tanner, Mrs. L. L. Emmerson, Mrs. Andrew Russe!, Mrs. Francis G. Blair, Mrs. Jessie Palmer Weber, Mrs. Hugh S. Magill and many other prominent women of the State.
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THIE ILLINOIS CENTENNIAL
GOVERNOR FRANK O. LOWDEN
Mr. Chairman and Fellow Illinoisans: We are just entering upon the one hundredth year of our existence as a State. There have been those who have believed that we ought not to celebrate this anniversary because of the great perils which environ us. Others of us have felt sure that a study of our past history would inspire us to be better men and women in this crucial present.
If we shall fully realize the State which these fathers founded for us a hundred years ago, it means that we shall fully realize the price the pioneers and those who followed them until today have paid for the blessings we enjoy, and it will strengthen our arms, it will renew our courage, it will make us look with a clearer and more steadfast eye at the dangers which confront us. I believe that this celebration under the auspices of the Centennial Commis- sion ought to be one of the most virile, one of the most persuasive and one of the most powerful of all the patriotic agencies which we of Illinois can invoke at this time. It has heartoned me greatly today, the magnificent attendance at this initial meeting --- men and women who know of our past, who know the sacrifices and the struggles which it has held. who know that while we have won great triumphs, we have not won those triumphs without great effort and without great devotion. They come to this capital city from every corner of the State, and their presenee is a pledge that this celebration of our one hundredth anniversary will be one of the epochal events in our one hundred years of history.
Governor Lowden upon taking his place as presiding officer of the evening, made a stirring address on the Illinois Centennial. In closing his address and introducing United States Senator Sherman, he said:
"But I am here, I realize, not to make a speech, but to intro- dnee to you those who will. I regret exceedingly that Governor Deneen, who was to respond to the first toast. is unavoidably detained. While I regret his absence I congratulate you that his place will be mest ably filled by Lawrence Y. Sherman, who will respond to the toast, 'The Pioneer State' And while I as a
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Governor do not concele that any more United States Senator can tale the place of any ex-Governor, I am willing, however, to admit that you will hear one of the best speeches you have ever heard in your life by Senator Shermsn."
THE FRONTIER STATE
UNITED STATES SENATOR L. Y. SHERMAN
Mr. Chairman, Members of the Commission, and my Fellow Citizens: The subject assigned me is "The Pioneer State." I came here to be a member of the audience. I think I could add to the appreciative interest of the audience if I were permitted to sit and listen to the addresses.
I remember more about the pioneers than I do about the pioneer State. These pioneers were a sturdy lot. They had to be; they could not have survived in any other way. They made the pioneer State what it was in those days. There were the pioneers of Turkey Hill. Turkey Hill was the predecessor of Belleville. There were the pioneers of English Prairie which in that part of the country was called Little Britain. There were the pioneers of the Scandinavian settlement in Henry County which gave its impress to a very large part of the population of the pioneer State. There were the pioneers of Portuguese religious refugees who made up a distinguishing feature of the early settlers in Sangamon and Morgan counties; there were the pioneers of the Iearian community which came along about the time that the Mormons left on their long pilgrimage to Salt Lake City, and settled at Nauvoo in Hancock County on the east bank of the Mississippi River.
Cabet, a Frenchman and member of the French Chamber of Deputies and editor of a newspaper, had some ideas that were un- popular in his own country. He got together a colony of adherents of his ideas and came to the New World, finally settling at Nauvoo. The Icarian community flourished! for many years but it at last fell a prey to the constitutional defects incident to that form of human society. It failed, the land was distributed and sold at foreclosure, finally passing into the hands of those who held it in
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severalty and it now belongs to prosaie Hancock County farmers engaged in raising grain and incats and furnishing their part toward. the provisioning of the army that we are starting across the sea. Cabet was willing to risk his fortune in an effort to make this experiment. I saw one of the last surviving members several years ago while on a visit to Nauvoo, Ile was then eighty-five years of age. He had lived in three continents. He spoke fluently three languages, was well educated and had seen much of the world and knew human nature. I asked him why the experiment failed, since the community had all property in common, labor in com mon, and sent their children to a common house to be reared, to be fed at a common table, educated in a common way by a common mother, all the cares of maternal life assumed by the community with everybody having the same kind of meals, the same kind of treatment, the same lind of clothes, with nobody possessing too much and none too little. He looked at me long and soberly and said: "It failed and will continue to fail because the Almighty has made the human race as it is." A few of the descendants are up there yet and they have added their quota to the mixture which has made up the pioneer State of Illinois.
These are particular localities. Other nations which have sent their sturdy emigrants to our borders left their impress upon our institutions and upon the history of our State. These men of the pioneer race that emigrated to our State and laid the foundations of an empire of six millions of people were the real pioneers of Illinois. They were a self-reliant, self-possessed lot. I have said a good many times about the man dwelling in the large cities of our State, that if the average boy of the city were taken by the scruff of the neck and thrown into the middle of a great prairie or a great forest that he would nearly starve to death by his in- ability to take care of himself in such new surroundings.
The pioneer of Hlinois learned to take care of himself on the boundless prairies and in the illimitable forests. He knew the laws of nature. Ile knew the action of the elements. He knew the peculiarities of the aboriginal inhabitants with whom he struggled part of the time and made peace the rest of the time. He knew how to live in the wooded belts of this country. He knew how to
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extract a livelihood from the great plains, and in both the wood- lands and the prairie land he learned to be a pioneer, and from the rugged elements furnished by Old Mother Nature he learned to extract a livelihood and subjugate their rude resources and to build up from all these elements given him the foundations of a mighty State. These were the empire builders of Illinois.
Ilow many boys could go out from Springfield into timber land with powder, tinder, flint lock gun and knife and without any of the provisions or requirements of civilized lite sustain their own lives against all comers either man or beast? Our pioneer fathers came to Illinois and crossed the Ohio River from the dark and bloody ground of old Kentucky in the days of Boone and Simon Kenton, and literally they lived upon what nature furnished them from the beginning. They had neither bread, meat nor salt. They had only their sturdy hands, their courageous hearts, their elear eyes and their resolute wills and with these as a mighty power given them by their Maker from above they laid the cornerstones and hewed out the foundations of Illinois. How many, I repeat, of the boys raised in the city, young men from eighteen to forty years of age could pro out on the prairie and in the timber of a mighty wilderness and with nothing but a rifle or a hunting knite carve out their livelihood and build there huts and raise their families and defend themselves against all the elements and the wild beasts and still wilder men that preyed upon them ? That is the test.
We return in such circumstances to the original primeval strength of human nature and the greatness of human character against difficulties. We of this day, of the more modern Illinois are not facing the same elements, facing the same duties of our pioneer ancestors of Illinois and of the Middle West of our country. We are not facing that kind of problem now but, with the civilized agencies at hand, with all that science has done to make effective our efforts, whether they be of peace or war, we are now facing in Illinois and in all the states of the Union a greater problem when any of our pioneer ancestors met to maintain themselves and their families in the face of rugged nature. We today, with all the civilized agencies about to be invokedl for and against us, are facing the problem of helping to maintain free government in the world
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against the autocracy of Germany. We may thank our great Father above that he gave to our ancestors blood and sturdy frame to transmit to ns of this generation the same characteristics to be used in a different way, it is true, but the same masculine strength that will be required to meet our full responsibility in the great struggle we now face.
I prediet that the great State of Illinois will be no laggard in this task and as our fathers faced the struggle with the elements so shall we of this generation faec the struggle with men in mortal combat wherever and whenever necessary, that we may give a good account of ourselves with our Allies across the sea, that we shall help check the break at the last in the Italian line, that we shall be at last present in a united effort with Haig and Foch and Pershing on the von Ilindenburg front when it is sent back in its retreat and broken until it will retire to the other side of the Rhine where it belongs. We of this pioneer State of Illinois will be found at last on every front and we will bring or help to bring peace to a troubled world as the supreme duty of civilized man at this hour and time.
I thank you for the opportunity to look into your faces and say these few words to you. I came to listen and to be informed. I never have been Governor of this State. Here are four who either have been or now are Governors. They know more about this State than I do. They have had practical experience. Mine, outside of the Legislature, has been largely theoretical. Not one of these Governors or ex-Governors that are facing me now that I have not advised many times what to do. Many times they seemed to know more about how to do it than I did, and after it was all done I am not prepared to say but that they were right. But these Governors are the successors to a mighty line of executives in this State. Beginning with Shadrach Bond and ending with Frank Lowden, there never has been a Governor of Illinois that could not stand among his fellows of all our country and in the sight of his constituents give a fair account of himself and his administration. I thank you and the chairman and toastmaster of the evening for this opportunity to meet with you. Inside of two days I shall be sitting over on the left hand side of President Marshall and from
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that time on until next summer, outside of voting taxes and talking I do not expect to do anything else, so get your pocketbooks out and be ready. But the taxes will be for war purposes. It is not all shouting and rallying around the flag; part of it is paying taxes and we are going to have plenty of that before this is over. I now surrender, Mr. Chairman, the time that I have left and will listen for the remainder of the evening.
ILLINOIS IN THE CIVIL WAR
JOSEPII W. FIFER, GOVERNOR OF ILLINOIS, 1SS9-1893
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: I am indeed glad to be here upon this most interesting occasion. It is highly proper that we celebrate the anniversary of the day when Illinois became a member of the Federal Union, and this celebration is only a pre- lude to the greater one that is to follow next year.
Illinois is associated with the earliest history of our country. It cut some figure in that long war between the Latin and the English speaking peoples for the possession of a continent. It will be remembered at an early day the French took possession of Canada and extended westward to Sault Ste. Marie, then turning southward they took possession of the territory around Chicago, LaSalle, Peoria and Kaskaskia, thence they followed the Missis- sippi to its mouth, thus forming a semicircle around what is now the eastern portion of the United States. At many places they built forts, made settlements and left the impress of their names upon our State. Some were gold seekers; but the main object of some, however, was to Christianize and civilize the Indian, and the work of LaSalle. Marquette and others in this regard is worthy of all praise and their efforts mark them as among the most exalted moral characters of history.
A little while before this the English settled at Jamestown and Plymouth aud soon thereafter they were joined by the Dutch of New York and the Germans of Pennsylvania. They were peoples of the home and the fireside. They felled the forest, erected churches, school houses and institutions. In time they followed the star of empire westward across the Alleghany Moun-
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tains and landed in the great Mississippi Valley and thus came in conflict with the French settlements and civilization which I have described. Then was begun a chronic warfare lasting for many years and which finally culminated in the Victory at Quebec on the Heights of Abraham, when the greater portion of this vast continent passed forever from the hands of the Latin into the hands of the English speaking peoples.
In time the colonies declared their independence of the mother country and during the war which cusued England held what is known as the Northwest Territory by three fortifications, located respectively at Detroit, Michigan; Vincennes, Indiana, and Kas- kaskia, Illinois. Hamilton, the English Governor of the territory, was constantly fitting out Indian expeditions during the war to prey on the frontier settlements of the colonies. Patrick Henry, then Governor of Virginia, in order to break up these forays fitted out an expedition under George Rogers Clark, whose men were in part recruited in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. He crossed the Alleghany Mountains where additions were made to his little army. He then dropped down the Ohio River in boats improvised for the purpose, landed at some point in Massae County, this State, and from there he marched his army, composed of less than 200 men, to Kaskaskia. That place being a French town was friendly to the American cause and by the information received from a Catholic priest he had no difficulty in capturing the place and soon thereafter took Fort Gage which was the main defense of that settlement. Early the following spring he marched on Vineennes and captured that place also and with its surrender Governor Hamilton was made a prisoner and was sent by Clark under guard on horseback to Virginia where he was kept in a common jail for some time, and was afterwards exchanged. This is known in history as the conquest of the Northwest by George Rogers Clark and is one of the most thrilling pages in our national history.
At the close of the Revolutionary War, England gave up the Northwest Territory with reluctance, The United Colonies claimed it, however, by right of conquest, and the right was conceded. Out of this territory there have been carved the great states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin, which states hold today
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a population of over 20,000,000 free people. This territory fell to the state of Virginia on the facts here given, and it was by Virginia eeded to the General Government without consideration, the most munificent gift that was ever made by one people to another. By the ordinance of 1787 it was provided that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude should ever exist in the territory. It should be said in this connection that largely through the efforts of Edward Coles, another Virginian, one of the early Governors of our State, and for a time privato secretary to Mr. Madison, Illi- nois remained a free State. All of which affords some foundation for the speech of an eloquent Virginian, who, in reference to his own State, said, "Although her territory may be overrun by hostile armies and her fields washed into gullies, still the product of her soil has been heroes and statesmen."
The passing years rolled by and Illinois became part and parcel of the Federal Union and her history then mingled with the broader stream of our National life and is as familiar as the primer to every school boy.
Illinois is today the broadest and richest agricultural expanse beneath the sun. This little sensation at the pit of the stomach which we call hunger has caused vast migrations. It brought our Aryan forefathers into Europe. The track of man has always been toward the most abundant food supply and this fact is destined to make Illinois the most popular State in the Union. She has 56,000 square miles of territory, 36,000 of which is underlaid with coal, which gives her a double wealth and makes it possible for her to become the greatest manufacturing State. Her manu- factured products now reach millions of human beings and find their way into the remotest corners of the civilized world. Within her borders, school houses and churches are never out of sight. She has approximately 2,000,000 of people who are among the freeest, the most industrious, the most intelligent and virtuous people in the world. They now, at the close of the first century of their State's existence, turn their faces in hope and confidence toward the great future of this great land which the fathers have conquered and bequeathed to us as an inheritance forever.
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To nearly every generation falls the duty of performing some heavy task. Our heroi: forefathers fought the Revolutionary War to a successful conclusion and planted free institutions in a wilder- ness. To the generation of 1812 fell the duty of defending the rights of American seamen and Lundy's Lane and that acute tragedy at New Orleans under Jackson attest the heroism of our soldiers at that period. Again the fortitude and valor of America's volunteer soldiers was displayed in the war with Mexico; a war that gaves us a vast territory out of which great states have been carved; states now filled with intelligence and wealth and all the progressive ideas of our modern civilization.
Possibly the heaviest task of all fell to the generation of 1861. It was early prophesied by the great statesmen of early times that if there should ever be civil war between the north and the south, Illinois, by reason of her geographical position, was destined to become a conspicuous figure, and such prophecy was fulfilled in good round measure.
Scarcely had the Federal Union been formed until the ques- tion was asked, "Has a state the right to dissolve it?" On one side of that question were ranged the Kentucky and Virginian resolutions, those who wrote them and all who advocated their principles. On the other side were the luminous opinions of Marshall, the convincing orations of Hamilton and Webster and the imposing majesty of Washington. Heated discussion and much ill will arose. One side maintained that this was a weak league of states, any one of which might any day jostle from its uncertain place in the Union; the other said, "No, we are a Nation with a Nation's rights and a Nation's power, grand, sovereign and free." The conflict was indeed irrepressible. Early in '61 a dark cloud rose out of the gulf and hung ominously over Kentucky and Tennessee. From out of that cloud the lightnings finally struck and we older ones know what followed, but none can ever describe it.
It were idle now to contend in the pride of individual opinion where the right lay in that great conflict. Ilistory is already recording the final verdict and that verdict will be just and kind to all, but let no faint-hearted patriot doubt that God's eternal
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truth will be established in it. We are glad to believe the courago displayed on both sides is now the common heritage of the great American people.
In that great crisis Illinois with a population of little over one and a half millions gave to the cause of the Union in round numbers, 260,000 soldiers, among them being over 60 generals. She was conspicuous in all the battlefields of the West, and her soldiers won renown in every battle in which they were engaged. It was around the bivouac fires of the soldiers of Illinois that were organized the beginnings of victory. She furnished at least two- thirds of the army that took Vicksburg and of the 36 regiments at the battle of Fort Donelson, she furnished 19, and it was there that the silent man from Galena voiced the Nation's high resolve in the demand for immediate and unconditional surrender. 1 plain, simple, silent man who from humble beginnings rose step by step until he became the greatest soldier of the modern world; with his head far above the clouds while the lightning played only about his feet.
As our State furnished the great soldier for that historic crisis she was destined also to furnish the great statesman. Illi- nois, if she had done nothing more, would have done her full duty in giving to the country Abraham Lincoln. Many another star rose and set in that great conflict, but his burned with an ever increasing luster to the last. Great, serene, and steadfast, a statesman, yet one of the people, and trusting only God more than the people, Lincoln seized the helm of State in the darkest hour this Nation ever saw and left it in the dawn of a resplendent glory to lie down weary and broken beneath a monument of public gratitude, the greatest and most enduring that marks the grave of mortal man today.
We of the great prairie State will always feel proud it was two citizens of Illinois, Lincoln and Grant, who completed the work begun by Washington and Hamilton, cemented forever the jostling fragments of the Union and made the term "American Citizens indeed the panoply and safeguard of him who wears it." If you would know the full story of Illinois in the great Civil War then go read the records in yonder Capitol and learn the story
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how, mto do balance of destiny wherein a half a century ago uncertair trembled, the fate of the Republic, Illinois drew her swor and helped to turn the scale. How her brave sons stood shoulder ., shoulder with their comrades of so many sister states, baring th .. .: bosoms to the storm that se nearly rent a Nation.
Since these tragic events I have passed from a young to an old man kad I had hoped never to see another war. I know from bitter ex- jonce something of the allurements of war. The ad- vancing : onet line of victory has always been au imposing spectacle. . nd the assaulting column stands ever in the focus of the worl." attention. I should like, after the war, to direct the minds of bir people from the soaring cagle and the splintered crag to t'.« praceful vocations of life ; to a nation of happy homes, to flaming forges and waving fields of grain. And for our future security, I would not rely alone upon battleships, forts and arsenal , but upon our school houses and churches, as well. Surely the far-off day will come when nations shall not be ruled by force. That day i- distant, I know, but it will come in God's own good time and when it does, we shall, let us hope, behold a land withont a soldier at. l without a beggar.
We horo recently witnessed the events of the Spanish War in which our brave soldiers drove a tyrant from the Western Hemisphere and gave liberty to a people. Now we are far into the fourth year of the greatest war of all history, and in the language of the great Douglas there can be but two parties, patriots and traitor . President Wilson is not of my party and I differ from him regarding industrial questions affecting the public wel- fare. But he is my President and the President of 100,000.000 free people and I shall do what I can to uphold his hands until an honorable and a lasting peace shall be secured.
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