"the right of the people to regulate their local and domestic affairs in their own way."

From the day of its introduction in the Senate, the KansasNebraska Bill had been debated almost continuously for over four months, and then on the day of its final passage, the leading Senators who had, throughout that long debate, fought against the advancement of slavery into the territory consecrated to freedom by the Missouri Compromise-the Senator from Ohio, Salmon P. Chase; the Senator from New York, William H. Seward, and the Senator from Massachusetts, Charles Sumner-during the closing hours of that fateful day, spoke unavailing, solemn, almost prophetic words, expressive of their intense solicitude for the great and precious interests imperilled by that Bill-intense solicitude for the peace and even existence of the Union.

Lincoln, in his brief Autobiography, written at the request of Jesse Fell, here in Bloomington, "at a desk in the old court room," says:

"In 1846 I was once elected to the Lower House of Congress—was not a candidate for reëlection. From 1849 to 1854, both inclusive, practised law more assiduously than ever before. Always a Whig in politics; and generally on the Whig electoral tickets, making active canvasses. I was losing interest in politics when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again."

We are now prepared to understand fully what was the cause that aroused and brought together, in Major's Hall on the twenty-ninth day of May, 1856, so many of the great men of the free State of Illinois.

The cause can be stated in one word-freedom-the preservation of free soil for free men in all that territory which stretches from the west line of the State of Missouri to the Rocky Mountains, and extends northward to the Dominion of Canada. It was declared in the Resolution of the Convention, which resolved:

"That the repeal of the Missouri Compromise was unwise, unjust, and injurious and that we will strive by all constitutional means, to secure to Kansas and Nebraska the legal guarantee against

slavery, of which they were deprived at the cost of the violation of the plighted faith of the nation."

This Resolution was drawn by Lincoln. It was the text of his great speech in Major's Hall-it was the text of all his political speeches. No one has been able to reproduce from memory the line of his argument, still less his forceful eloquence, on that occasion. This is not strange.

Some of you, now here, have heard in this city, as I have, able political speeches made by James G. Blaine, Benjamin Harrison, Lyman Trumbull, John A. Logan, Richard J. Oglesby, John M. Palmer, Owen Lovejoy, Robert G. Ingersoll, Leonard Swett, and Lawrence Weldon, yet I venture to say that none of you can, to-day, state the line of any one of those speeches.

But from Lincoln's other speeches-always on the same text-can be formed some idea of the clear statements of facts and principles, the convincing logic, the impressive manner, the power and eloquence of his Major's Hall speech.

Some of you, as I did, heard Lincoln speak in the Court House Square on the afternoon of September 4, 1858. The proceedings on that day were reported in the Weekly Pantagraph of September 8. Let me recall to your memory the long procession, formed under the direction of William McCullough, Chief Marshal, and Ward H. Lamon, Charles Schneider, James O'Donald, and Henry J. Eager, Assistant Marshals. You saw that procession march to the residence of Judge Davis, there receive Lincoln, and then counter-march down Washington Street to the public square.

You saw the banners bearing these mottoes, "Our country, our whole country and nothing but our country"; "The Union-it must be preserved"; "Freedom is national-slavery is sectional"; "Honor to the honest. God defend the right."

You then saw above the north door of the old brick Court House the representation of a ship in a storm and underneath the words, "Don't give up the ship-give her a new pilot."

The ship came safely into port, and now-this moment

Abraham Lincoln was
The droblest man I ever
Jan.

He could make a cat
laugh. Never was anoth.

Mive

er than so
vivalions;
have I sun another who
provoked so much muth
And who entered into rollick.
ing fun with mushgher the
was the most comic cal and
muman beings,
joense of
langsing
at his own jokers
as at than of this.
did not. wonder that,
while actively engaged in
his oppo.
party polities,

"

nents who had sun time.
in this moods, called Abra
ham Lincoln a Clown and
an ape.

Abraham Lincoln was
the most. serious man I
Cor sar

When I heard him protest agamit beighting

2

Our new Tenturies with the curse of human Slavery,

in his debates with

Douglas, no man could have
buen more in earnest, tone
more persons. In his anal.

of legal problems, whath
er in the practin of his pro
ression of in the considera.
hon up
State papers, he to
came wholly absorbed is
his subject
Sometimes the
loped inti Juvere and com
mined with his own thoughts,
That was going on

about Thime until aroused.
when perhaps he woned in.
te into a cerenssion of the
eubject that had occupied
his mice or perhaps break
int into laughter and till
in juke an
Stary that Rot. The
table in a roar.

When I saw time at 1.Ju
tysburg as he exclaimed that
we here highly Kerala that
The dead chall not have died
in vain that the Nation ghat
under God, have a new birth
of fraction and that the fov.

3

•ernment of the people, by the people, and for the

Liople shall not prick from the larst! When I heard trimm declare in

i

that intervently do we pray,
scourge of
war may thesililly pass awary:
mai mang
You wiles that it
улу
Contium until all the wealth
Wilish up by the bondsm and
two hundred and fifty Years.
of murequited twil shall be
sunle, and, motel Every drop
op blood drawn with the
lash shall be paid by an.
athas drawn with the sward
us was shine thru Thousand'
years ago in still it ommat
in said. The
Indgements of the
Lard wire time and regations

زر

altogether. With Male to
ward nome, with charity for all,
with firmness in the right, as
God gives us to see the rights
as I looked upon him and ward
han witter I hire sintimnights repon there
becasions. Abraham Lincoln, was
He most salinn the most digni.

4

-fied, the most majes.the, and
Wt. the same time the most. H.
-nignant-human being I ever

saw

Roches on camed suys

"Gravity is

that

a mystery of the
borly invented to conceal dr.
purts of the mind!" Lord Shafts
bury says that "granty

very Essence of impartire". Muahiam &'moen had move

zury

ар

this

man

Man The most serious.
7.
immer. Man is the most five-
lons op aminals. It is said that
is the only animal that case
Linealn
both laugh and ery. Abraham
9 are
free went to his
Comotions. We went throngs lefe
with no mistrams; nor tran
upon his human nature, the
was honest. in the expression
whither persons.
homers. In this man

Galesbury Ills.

Facsimile of Manuscript Tribute from Hon. Clark E. Carr, of Galesburg, Illinois. (Last two pages】

there flashes across your minds, the lines of Walt Whitman's best poem, "O, Captain, My Captain."

On that day, September 4, 1858, over fifty years ago, there were not less than seven thousand of you in and around the public square. The Court House, Phoenix block, Union block, and the sidewalks next the square were alive with people. Dr. Isaac Baker was the President of the Day, and Leonard Swett made the reception speech.

Lawrence Weldon, then of Clinton, and Samuel C. Parks, of Lincoln, spoke in the evening.

You who heard Lincoln then-listen again to a few of the words he spoke in regard to the irrepressible agitation of slavery and his own position as to slavery in the slave-holding States and freedom in the Territories. Said he:

"It is not merely an agitation got up to help men into office. . The same cause has rent asunder the great Methodist and Presbyterian churches. It will not cease until a crisis has been reached and passed. When the public mind rests in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction it will become quiet. We have no right to interfere with slavery in the States. We only want to restrict it where it is. We have never had an agitation except when it was endeavored to spread it. . . The framers of the Constitution prohibited slavery (not in the Constitution, but the same men did it) north of the Ohio River where it did not exist, and did not prohibit it south of that River where it did exist. I fight slavery in its advancing phase, and wish to place it in the same attitude that the framers of the government did."

This was a clear statement that the agitation of the slavery question, which had rent in twain the churches, would not cease until the public mind should rest in the belief that slavery was in the course of ultimate extinction-a clear statement that we of the North had no right to interfere with slavery in the Southern States, but should resist its further advancement into the national Territories.

Viewed from a political standpoint, this was the position of Lincoln-it was the platform of his party. But from the day he made his Major's Hall Speech, he never lost sight of the moral question as to whether slavery was right or wrong.