USA > Illinois > The centennial of the state of Illinois. Report of the Centennial Commission > Part 6
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Just so, as it seems to me, has the hour of sacrifice come to us, the American people. We have been required to offer all that we have and all that we are, and all that we ever expect to be, upon the altar of sacrifice. A- a people we have done it. And I ean almost hear the angel of God saying. "Now I know that thou fearest God." The Nation has withheld nothing : it has given its sons, and daughters; it has given munitions, and shot and shell; it has given ships on the ses, and under the sea, and in the sky; it has poured out its generous billions and is ready to pour out billions more, every billion it has. And now the hour has come when God is satisfied, and America's fidelity to the principles for which the great Washington warred and the great Lincoln died, has been tested and tried and found to be good and ample.
Just as in Abraham's day, Abraham's faith met the trial, so in America's day, America's faith has met the trial of war. And so has Illinois. We have sent 250,000 boys, a quarter of a million of our best, flower and cream of our youth; and, we will make it a million if our country needs them.
THE PAST OF ILLINOIS
There is one room in my home, which, in a certain sense, is haunted.
It is hero-haunted.
All libraries, great or small, are hero-haunted. And this small library of mine. is no exception.
One shelf bears only books and pamphlets and addresses made by men I have known, personally, in the flesh.
But oh, there are other shelves, from which step out, the spirits of a host, a shining. splendid host of men and women, whom
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1, perhaps even 1, in my humble way, may call my friends, because, like true and tested friends, they come, at a moments call, to help, to console, to bring a good heart and hope for the world that is before me.
Last night and this very morn, as I have been penning these lines, and sentences, I have felt, all about me, the friendliness of these friends of a life time; for they are friendly spirits who haunt my haunted room.
In one corner, right next to the writings of greatest antiquity. (the Holy Scriptures of course), old Aesop stands, with his Fable of the Old Man and his Sons, in which the old man with his bundle of sticks makes it plain to the boys that "In Union there is Strength." And Bunyan is there, with his Christian and his Faithful, his Muckraker and the Land of Beulah. and the his- torians are there : Old Rollin, with Egypt and Babylon, and Gibbon with Rome, and Guizot with France, and D'Aubigny with the Reformation, and Carlyle with Oliver Cromwell, and Prescott with Ferdinand and Isabella and Irving with Columbus, and Macauley with England.
And another stack of books proclaims the presence of George Bancroft with Florida and the Carribean with Virginia and the Cavaliers with New England, and the Puritans, with Lexington and Concord and the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere: and Weems is here with his Washington, and here are the Life and Works of John Adams and Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, and the "American Congress" by Thomas H. Benton, and by James G. Blaine, and "The American Statesmen," Patrick Henry and John Marshall and Andrew Jackson, and all that great tribe, their doughty deeds told by Von Holst and Lothrop and Schurz and Roosevelt, and here are "The American Conflict" by Horace Greeley and "The Civil War" by Lossing, and the Memoirs of Sherman and Sheridan, and the Letters of Grant and Lee, and "Women's Work in the Civil War," and the "Patriotism of Illi- nois." Oh, what a glorious roll !
But I love. I think, above all others about a hundred volumes -- for my library is pitifully incomplete-referring only to Illinois, and its men and women. I turn most often, and always have
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turned most often, to the shelves given over to Illinois. I am quite sure that I have turned thereto not only most often but most affectionately. The Illinois by Ford; the History of Illinois by Ninian W. Edwards, son of Ninian Edwards; Edward Coles by Washburne; Recollections by Chetlain ; the Illinois State Sanitary Commission by John Williams and Allen C. Fuller; Illinois by John Moses and by Grace Humphrey, and Lineoln-The Pioneer Boy, by Thayer; Lineoln, Lawyer, by Chief Justice Orrin N. Carter. Lineolu, the Christian, by Johnson; The True Abraham Lincoln, by William Eleroy Curtis ; Lincoln and Slavery, by Arnold ; Lincoln Master of Men by Rothschild; The Flini by Clark E. Carr, and Stephen A. Douglas by Clark E. Carr; Lincoln by Raymond, Lincoln by everybody. And "Abraham Lincoln" by Nicolay and Hay. And also the wonderful addresses at the annual banquets of the Lincoln Centennial Association, throngh which Judge Otis Humphrey has done more than any other man of recent years to revive the memory of Lincoln-Oh, the days and hours I have spent with these. And I want to mention especially the personal recollections of Jolin M. Palmer, Major General, Governor and Senator.
To cap and crown the collection of Illinois literature (indis- pensable to anything like a satisfactory understanding of Illinois history and achievements, and Illinois ambitions and ideals) what a wonderful thing is that series of books by Buck and Sparks, and Alvord and Greene, and Thompson and Seott, and James and Carter and Pease, ealled "The Illinois Historieal Collections." And scareely less wonderful are the things entitled, "Publications of the Historical Library of Illinois" and "Transactions of the Illinois State Historical Society," for which we are indebted to the brilliant daughter of General. Governor and Senator John M. Palmer --- Mrs. Jessie Palmer Weber.
By these fascinating and most alluring pages, concerning the fathers of our fathers, with which we become ab olutely infatuated, when we pour over them-we are bound by links that no human hand can sever to the men and women of 1818 and 1861. I refer to them because from them we learn the thrilling history, and history of the brave deeds done by brave men, and the sweet lives
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led by sweet women, who were the brave fathers and the sweet mothers of our fathers and mothers. From them we take increased devotion to the causes to which they gave the last full measure of devotion. And the history which embalms the story of Illinois, is a wealth and richness, a depth and wideness, of legend and of love, if the agony and ecstaey of sacrifice mean anything. It is unrivalled by any Saga of the Northland, any Odyssey of the Greeks, or any folk-song of the far-off and fabulous lands where desert sweep or mountain height has exalted the souls of mystics to conceptions of immortal gods and sons of mien, so fantastic, as to partake of the shimmer and the glimmer of the poet's dream.
THE ILLINOIS WHICH OUR FATHERS HOPED WE WOULD HAVE TODAY
It follows, that you will understand me, (in this idea of mine, that in order to speak rightly of Illinois Today, I cannot ignore the fact that we are linked hy binding ties to the past) when F speak to you of the Illinois which our fathers hoped we would have today.
I will not dwell upon the Illinois of yesterday, as I have said, because my subject debars me from doing that-whether it be the Illinois of 1818 or the Illinois of other days that are gone.
But I am not debarred from recalling or quoting the standard which our fathers set up for us, the ideal they cherished for us, the degree of perfection which they prayed and warred for, and in hope of which they died. I hold in my hand an "Address de- livered at the Exhibition of the Junior Class of Illinois College at Jacksonville, on Wednesday, the 9th of April, 1834." I read four paragraphs of that address:
"But a short time since. and the spot on which we stand, was the lone and solitary desert where the untamed herd roamed un- molested, and nature, in undecorated simplicity, delighted in the undisturbed solitude. Here the chorus of the hunter and the whistle of the ploughman were unheard; here architecture had reared no monuments of ceaseless duration or blazing glory, no bright and towering edifices to eclipse contending nature of her
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resplendent lustre. But now, how changed the scene. The perse- Vering arm of civilization has gone into the 'Far West.' Here a literary institution has reared its towering edifices, not far away, over the undulating ridges of the wide extending plain stands a beautiful village, variegated with its lofty buildings, and busy groups; and all around, fields of waving green conspire to adorn and beautify the splendid scenery. Now the bellowing of the distant steamboat as she ploughs her way in mighty majesty along our far-famed Mississippi. our smooth, gentle and unruffled Illi- nois, tells us that there is a spirit in this land which will not slumber until every spot of these now solitary prairies shall bear the mark of cultivation, and every herb of grass indicate the presence of the farmer.
"A boundless field for future attainment is laid open before the western youth -- a field for enterprise. for industry, for benevo- lence and for patriotism, with either of which he may connect his future destiny : or, in other words, a beautiful landscape is spread out before him, filled with all the enticements to honor and use- fulness, which can charm and attract the attention of the youthful mind. Our territory is abundant in resources, intersected by large and noble rivers, possessing a soil unrivalled in fertility, having pre-eminent advantages in commerce and agriculture; or, in a word, it is a country amply fitted and suitably adapted to satisfy the wants, promote the comfort, and advance the interests of civilized men.
"But these great natural advantages and these anticipated Elisia of Glory will prove to be but phantoms if they are not under the direction of enterprising, intelligent and benevolent men.
"Are the rising generation prepared, as their fathers, in obedience to the general laws of nature, step off the stage of human action, to take this priceless inheritance into their hands, to roll onward the wheels of civil government. to corroborate the interests of their State, and to concentrate all their efforts to hear upon her glory? Are they prepared to guide the Ship of State if necessary, safely through the storms and tempests of civil com- motion, over the boisterous waves of party malignity, to check the
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prodigalas wad licention: ness of the press, to disconcert faction, to expose con-piracy, to demoli h the bulwarks of vice and immorality, of to reprobate every other attempt to disturb the general quiet, or to impair our liberties? Or, (listen to this) if the countlees legion. of some foreign despot should invade cur borders and overrun our land, could they amid such a calamity, bear the Republic safely through to victory and to triumph ?
"Shall not Illinois have her historians, who shall record the valor and achievement of her sons? Her poets, who shall sing the glory, grandeur and beauty of the West? Her orators whose magic voice would move and electrify the nation ? We are led to inquire who knows but that there may be among them some Clay, before whose mighty genius the mists of delusion have fled with terrific haste, some Washington in whose breast the destinies of nations might be dormant, some Milton 'pregnant with celestial fire,' some Currau who when thrones were crumbling and dynasties forgotten, might 'stand the landwark of his country's genius,' a mental pyramid in the solitude of time, round whose summit eternity must play. We live in a State which must excite a spirit of restless unsatisfied perseverance, engender the liveliest emotions, and enkindle the most glorious anticipations. We behold the dawn of that day when an almost countless population will overspread our prairie -. Youth of Illinois, do you wish that your posterity shall look back upon the present era with admiration, as the founders of that glory destined to encircle our beloved State? Do you wish to add another strong link to this grand confederation-to promote the cause of human liberty, and universal emancipation from the shackles of depotism, do you wish to see (through your undying example) the standard of Liberty planted upon every shore ?
"Then act worthy of our high vocation."
These paragraphs were written and declaimed in 1834, only 16 years after our State was admitted to the Union, and they were written by an Illinois boy of 19.
And this Illinois boy was my father.
These words show what high hopes our fathers had of and for Illinois. Even as I read them I seem to hear the song of the
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hammer on the anvil of Illinois industry, the song of the bell in the belfry of the Tilinois church ard school, and the clash of arms and roar of artillery in the days when Ulinois went forth in its war-times.
You may call this sophmorical if you like. But when I first read it, it reminded me of the splendid story of how, when Elisha, the prophet, told the young man who longed for help to look up and lift his eyes, the young man saw that, "All the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire."
You have here the star dard. And I am quite sure that words would fail me if I should attempt to undertake to improve upon this expression in any expression on my part of what Illinois must be and do in this now present day in order to be worthy. Every word of the school boy address could well be addressed today to the youth of Illinois. Here is the standard. Our fathers looked for- ward and they pointed forward. And Illinois is keeping the faith. The fathers having brawn asked us to add brain and bravery. The thing has been done. The educated State with knowledge and science has duly appeared in the fulness of time. Today it faces the test of all its brawn and all its brain and all its bravery.
My idea of what Illinois ought to be I get, I think, from my father and my mother.
My conceptions of the possibilities and opportunities of Illi- nois, I derive, I think, from my father and my mother. From them I get the realizing sense of the obligation today resting upon Illinois in view of the opportunity which has been devised to it, to us, as a precious privilege. as an invaluable inheritance, by the men and women of Illinois, who have passed this way before. Per- haps it will better express and convey my meaning if I say, I derive my conception of what Illinois ought to be-or at least a large part of that conception-from two scenes in the life of my father, in both of which my mother was an important actor or co-worker.
The time of one of these scenes is 1868, the year of the other is 1863. The one I witnessed with my own eyes, the other I saw through the eyes of my mother, as she told me the tale over the
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pale face of my father, as he lay in his manly beauty the day before his burial.
The seene of 1868 brings up before me the Impeachment Trial (in the Senate at Washington), of the President of the United States, Andrew Johnson-a scene imprinted forever on my memory, because I saw it, a hundred times. myself, when a boy at the age of eight.
The other seene (of 1863) blazes before me, even as if it were yesterday, because in it my mother told me how my father in a great fervor and frenzy of feeling, depieted and enaeted, before her, his own experience, of holding in his arms the dying "Boy in Blue" direct from the field of battle, while that boy with fast failing breath, faltered out his last message for the dear ones at home.
In the year 1868, my father wrote to my mother a pathetic letter, in which he said, ealling her "Kate" (the name he always used) "The impeachment trial of the President, Andrew Johnson, is coming on before the Senate, and it will last a hundred days, in the awful climate of Washington ; you know of my illness, and so do our enemies, and they will unhorse me, or any other loyal Senator, if they can, and they will keep me out of my seat in the Senate by any trick within their power; but if you will come on, and sit every day in the north Senate gallery, I know I can en- dure." And then he added, "P. S., bring the boy;" and I was the boy.
Now, my mother was a fragile little hody, who looked like a little flower, which would just fold up and blow away; but be not deceived; you never can tell about the American woman-and, as fast as steam and train eould carry her, she struck for Washing- ton. I have often thought of it. Andrew Johnson, did not know she was coming, the Senate didn't know it, no one knew it except one anxious soul, one American Senator, stalwart and radical, but awaiting the arrival of that train, as if it bore the most valor- ous, reenforcement ever borne onward to field of battle-and she WAS a valorous reenforcement.
I will never forget the day when she came down the steep stairs of the north Senate gallery, and took her seat in the front
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row; a Senator of the United States stood right up at his seat and took out his handkerchief and weved it at her and saluted her as royally as if she were an Empress of old taking her seat in the coliseum or other arena of Rome in her glory.
When the early and primitive Christians sought for a word with which to name their most sacred ordinanee of religion, they took the Roman word "Sacramentum" because in all the world there was nothing so solemn, nothing so sacredly kept, as the oath taken by the Roman Soldier, and that oath was called "Sacra- mentum." And whenever I go to Washington, I go for a moment and sit in my mother's seat in the north Senate gallery, and I say to myself, "Sacramentum, Sacramentum; Holy Ground, Holy Ground," for there my mother sacrificed herself for her country, as surely as any soldier ever did on any other field of fire; for she was never well afterward, though she lived through forty years of suffering.
She would sometimes say to me, "Son, if you will look for- ward a little, I will show you a great Senator," and she would point out old Ben Wade of Ohio, or Oliver P'. Morton of Indiana, or Reverdy Johnson of Maryland, or Charles Sumner of Massa- chusetts. Why, I can see them yet; they had great big heads and great big bodies too; and they moved with conscious power ; and they, in that far off day, gave me an idea of what an Ameri- can statesman ought to be, which thank God, has never departed from me.
Well she is in another gallery tonight, possibly looking down at us, as I love to believe all those great patriots, those magnificent Americans, are looking down, these days, from heaven's ramparts. And I feel like saying, "If you will lean forward a little, mother, you will see that we are worthy (or at least straining every nerve to be worthy) of the sacrifices of the past."
Our fathers' fathers, and our mothers' mothers-we cannot ignore thein today. My father was born in Kentucky. So was my mother -- in Lexington, the hub of the famous blue grass region. The parents of both of them were born in Virginia. My father's father was born in Old Caroline County, Virginia, "In the forks of the Mattaponisah." In 1809 (108 years ago) he took his young
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wife the sweet Milieent Yates and put her on the pillion behind him and rode, horseback, through the Cumberland Gap in Ken- tucky, when Kentucky was the dark and bloody ground, head erect, eye alight, soul aloft, fearing neither God, man or devil -- well, fearing God-but not afraid of any mortal man that walked this old world of ours. Fearless, thank God; yia, not afraid. Yet; let us be frank about this. The pioneers were raised up for their time. They were the men for that time. Their efforts were prodigious, their journeyings were alnost endless, their hardships and privations were terrible things for men and women and little children to face. They knew the rifle, the ax, and the saddle bag. they knew the cabin of logs without a floor. My father was born in such a cabin. But they did not prefer these things. They did not like them. There was no magic about these things, and no magie appeal. They got away from them, gladly, just as fast and as far as they could. George Washington loved beautiful Mount Vernon. He did not remain wedded to any log cabin.
Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson may have known the log cabin, but they were glad to diseard it and to ereet stately "Monticello" and "The Hermitage." Our fathers' fathers who lived outside Illinois and came into it-they did not plan or wish a state composed of rifle, ax and saddle bag, or cabin of logs. They had higher aspirations. They wished and planned to put aside ax work and promote head work. And so they sent their sons to college. And they did well. They builded better than they knew. For while it may be true, that the city bred man of today would have starved to death had he tried to make a living in the environment only of the rifle, ax, and saddle bags, it is also true that the ax man would perich today quickly if he had to face a modern army. Why, even the farmer farms by machinery today, and the wars of today are not to be won by frontiersmen or by pioneer weapons but by arithmetic, by trigonometry, by logarithms. by differential calculus. by artillery trajeetories, and by the con- quest of the air together with the navigation of the submarine depth. With his level head the man of 1818 knew this: and he taught his sons, our fathers, a reverenee and deference for knowl- edge and seience which caused our fathers (our immediate fathers)
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to adopt a standard and a stature for us to come up to as much superior to the log cabin life as the large modern dwellings in your neighborhood, are superior to the log cabin in which my father was born in Kentucky.
PRESENT CONDITION IN ILLINOIS
Not many words are required (and you will be glad, I am sure)-not many words are required to describe Illinois today. Today Illinois has a greatness in commerce, in industry, in finance; a greatness in agriculture, in mining, in manufacturing ; a greatness in transportation; a greatness in education, in educa- tional institutions and pursuits ; a greatness in journalism, and law and medicine, and professional endeavor; and there is a greatness in the sciences and the arts and a world of effort by inventors; and in generosity and benevolence and philanthrophy there is another greatness; and there is a greatness and glory in religion worthy of all praise; never before in history has there been so much of charity and good will, never so much of the milk of human kindness, and never so much of the love of God in the hearts of the people as at present. all over Illinois. All of these various greatness are and should be a source, to all of us, of heart- felt pride.
But the one overwhelming, overtowering, overpowering con- dition of Illinois today, the one thing, characteristic and per- meative of Illinois today, as never before, is that Illinois is at war; terribly at war. Our hearts are in Camp Grant, in Camp Dodge, in Camp Pike, in Camp Logan and in Camp Zachary Taylor, aud with our sons of Illinois in France, and on the ocean.
The kid has gone to the colors, And we don't know what to say, The boy that we loved and cuddled Stands up for the flag today.
The kid not being a slacker, Stood forth with patriot joy
To add his name to the roster, And oh, God, we're proud of our boy.
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We stand at the opening, the threshold of an appalling era of sacrifice, as grave as that when Abraham "Took the wood and put it on the altar and bound Isaac and put him on the altar on the wood." When God can say to America "Now I know that thou fearest God, seeing that thou hast not withheld chy son, thine only son, from me" -- then and not till then, will our sacrifice ccase. We must not murmur or complain. All human progress has been won only through human agony. A million men have died in America that Liberty imight live. A million American women have agonized that American freedom might not die. Who are we that we should escape or be immune?
I believe that the hand of God, the Divine Hand, is in all this terrible trial of America and of Illinois; that for His own purpose Je determined that the world, the whole world, should not be energized and spiritualized by the agony and ecstacy of the sacrifice of war, with America left out.
The veritable miracle at the Battle of the Marne, which one day saw two million men marching on Paris, so that a War Lord, with helmet of silver on his head and cape of velvet on his should- ers, might ride through and under the Arch of Napolcon, as con- queror of the world, and next day saw that whole two million in full retreat, rushing northward almost in panic-what are we to infer from that ?
We know what the consequences would have been, if the War Lord had won. France would have been on her knees; England would have come to her knees; then the British Navy would have been exacted as an indemnity : then the German and French navies added, then westward to American shores. Then the weak Ameri- can Navy would have been wiped out; then the coast cities would have been bombar led; then the foreign hosts would have landed; then the little American Army of 15.000 regulars and 225,000 National Guard would have been annihilated. Then Con- gress would have retired from Washington to Chicago, to Omaha to Denver: then a erowned king would have marched up Broad- way in New York, and up Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington; and a humiliating peace would have resulted, and America would have had to pay an indemnity of one-half of all our possessions,
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