"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.
er than so vivacions; hive
have I sun anothy who
provoked so much muth
And who entered into rollick.
ing fun with mushglen the
was the most. Comireal and
muman beings,
at his own fiters
this. I

joense of
lang ring
as at. than of
did not wonder that,
while actively engaged in
his oppo.
party polities,

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

Abraham Lincoln was
the most. serious man I
Ever saw

When I heard him
protest against blighting

2

Our new Turnturies with
the curse of human Slavery,
in his debates worth Smatof
Douglas, no man could have
been more in earnest, tone
more serious. In his anal.

sis of legal problems, whath
er in the practin of his pro
ression of in the considera.
hon
State papers, he be
come wholly anotimes the
his subject

loped intojuvorce and com
mined with his own thoughts,
noting him notre aroused.
That was going on

when perhaps he woned in.
te into a chreussion of the
eubject that had occuped
his mind, or perhaps breaks
out into laughter and till
in juke as stary that Rot. The
When I saw time at. It
byshining as he exclanned that
tysbury
we here highly Masalan that
The dias chall not have died
in vain that the Nation ghat
under God, have a new birth
of fractom and that the gov.

table in a pour.

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

3

Comment of the people, by
the people, and for the people
shall not perish from the
earth! When I heard tim
declare in

his second mang
-ural address & Fondly
hope fervently do we pray
scourge of
war may spordilly pass away
Can wiles that t
Contium until all the wealth
filish up by the bondsm and
two hundred and fifty Years
of unrequited time

annte, and, motel every drop
of blood drawn with the
lash shall be paid by an.
this drawn with the sware
us was wain three thousand'
years

ay a. in still it onmot
Andgements of the
time and regations
With male to
with firminss
ward nome, with Charity for c
in the right, as
God gives us to see the rights —
as I looked upon him and mard
hum litter I hire sintimnights expon there
vocacions. Abraham Lincoln, was
His most salomon the most digni-

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

saw

Rochefon could says that
"Gravity is
mystery
an my story of the
borly invented to conceal dr.
forts of the mind." Sand Shifte
буй
bury says that "gravity.

и The

Essence of importure" had mone

zury
Muahan
this

am

Man is The smart serious
imals

Man is the most five-
lons of ammals. It is word that
man is the only animal that can
both laugh and cry. Mraham
Lincoln I
are free vent. to his
Cmotions. He went through life
with no mitrami; nor Mana
was honest.
upon his human nature, the
The expression.
his Juling
whither persons.
otherwise, hours in
-ipertation honest with himmile

It is because Abraham
Lincoln wns the most. human
of human brings that the is
has mim bun anothin

loves as
human

bring this four lives.
Clark Elar

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.