"To the Old Courthouse in the early days came the talented and genial James A. McDougal, then just upon the threshold of a brilliant career, which culminated in his election as a Senator from California; also John T. Stuart, the able lawyer and gentleman of the old school. He was a Representative in Congress more than two-thirds of a century ago, when his district embraced all Central and Northern Illinois extending from a line fifty miles south of Springfield to Chicago and Galena. In Congress he was the political associate and friend of Webster, of Crittenden, and of Clay. Many years ago, upon the occasion of Mr. Stuart's last visit to Bloomington, he told me, as we stood by the old 'Stipp' home, that he there, in 1831, witnessed the beginning of the judicial history of McLean County, when Judge Lockwood opened its first court. With deep emotion he added that he was probably the last survivor of those then assembled, and that his own days were almost numbered. His words were prophetic, as but a few months elapsed before he, too, had passed beyond the veil. There came also Edward D. Baker, Representative from Illinois and Senator from Oregon. To him Nature had been lavish with her gifts. His eloquence cast a spell about all who heard him. As was said of the gifted Prentiss: 'The empyrean height into which he soared was his home, as the upper air the eagle's.' Our language contains few gems of eloquence comparable to his wondrous eulogy on the lamented Broderick. His own tragic death in one of the early battles of the great war cast a gloom over the nation. "In his official capacity as prosecuting attorney came also to the Old Courthouse the youthful Stephen A. Douglas. A born leader of men, with a courage and eloquence rarely equalled, he was well equipped for the hurly-burly of our early political conflicts. Save only in his last great contest, he was a stranger to defeat. Public Prosecutor, Member of the Legislature, and at the age of twenty-eight Judge of the Supreme Court of the State; later a Representative, and at the age of thirty-three a Senator in Congress. Amid storms of passion such as, please God, we may not see again, he there held high debate with Seward, Chase, and Sumner; and measured swords with Tombs, Benjamin, and Jefferson Davis upon vital issues which, transferred later from forum and from Senate, were to find bloody arbitrament by arms. Beginning near the spot where we have to-day assembled, the career of Douglas was indeed marvellous. Defeated for the great office which had been the goal of his ambition; amid the war-clouds gathering over the nation, and the yet darker shadows falling about his couch, he aroused himself to the last supreme effort, and in words that touched millions of responsive chords, adjured all who had followed his political fortunes to know only their country in its hour of peril. With his pathetic words yet lingering, and 'before manhood's morning touched its noon,' Douglas passed to the great beyond. "Out of the shadowy past another form is evoked, familiar once to some who hear me now. Another name, greater than any yet spoken, is upon our lips. Of Abraham Lincoln the words of the great orator, Bossuet, when he pronounced his matchless eulogy upon the Prince of Condé, might truly be spoken: 666 'At the moment I open my lips to celebrate the immortal . glory of the Prince of Condé, I find myself equally overwhelmed by the greatness of the theme and the needlessness of the task. What part of the habitable globe has not heard of the wonders of his life? Everywhere they are rehearsed. His own countrymen, in extolling them, can give no information even to the stranger.' "Of Lincoln no words can be uttered or withheld that could add to or detract from his imperishable fame. His name is the common heritage of all people and all times. "When in the loom of time have such words been heard above the din of fierce conflict as his sublime utterances but a brief time before his tragic death? "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan-to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.' "The men who knew Abraham Lincoln, who saw him face to face, who met him upon our streets, and heard his voice in our public assemblages, have, with few exceptions, passed to the grave. Another generation is upon the busy stage. The book has forever closed upon the dread pageant of civil strife. Sectional animosities, thank God, belong now only to the past. The mantle of peace is over our entire land, and prosperity within all our borders. "Till the war-drum throbs no longer, The federation of the world.' "Through the instrumentality in no small measure of the man personally known to some who hear me, the man McLean County delighted to honor, no less as a private citizen than as President, this Government, untouched by the finger of time, has descended to us. Let it never be forgotten that the responsibility of its preservation and transmission will rest upon the successive generations of his countrymen, as they shall come and go. "Truly has it been said: "To-day is the pupil of yesterday,' and also 'History is the great teacher of human nature by means of object-lessons drawn from the whole recorded life of human nature.' There is, then, no dead past. Every event is in a measure significant. The annals of the ambitions, the crimes, the miseries, the wrongs, the struggles, the achievements of men in the long past are fraught with lessons of deep import to all succeeding generations. Each age is the heir to that which preceded. We make progress in proportion as we wisely ponder significant events. "McLean County had its historical beginning as a dependent but distinct political organization on the joyous Christmas Day of 1830. Stretching backward from that date, its history is bound up solely in that of Illinois, under its various organizations and names. A brief time upon occasion such as this given to a hurried review of the masterful epochs in the history of the great State of which our own county is so important a part, cannot be wholly misspent. Bearing in mind that 'that which comes after ever conforms to that which has gone before,' significant events of the past must be known, to the end that we intelligently comprehend the present, and are enabled, even in scant measure, to forecast the future. "No State of the American Union has a history of more intense interest than our own. Its early chapters, indeed, savor of the romantic rather than of the real. I do not speak of the long-ago time when Illinois forest and prairie were the home and hunting-ground of the red man, and his frail bark the only craft known to its rivers. That period belongs to the border-land age of tradition rather than of veritable history. It is of Illinois under the domination of civilized men I would speak. "For near a century preceding the Treaty of Paris in 1763, 'the Illinois country' was a part of the French domain. Inseparably linked with that portion of its history are names that will live with those of the Cabots and Columbus. The great navigator in his lonely search for a new pathway to the Indies was buoyed by a courage, a yearning for discovery, scarce greater than that which in the heart of the new continent sustained the later voyagers and discoverers, Marquette, Joliet, Hennepin, and La Salle. "America's obligation to France is enduring- for explorers in the seventeenth century no less than for defenders in that which immediately followed. The historic page which tells of the lofty heroism of LaFayette has for us no deeper interest than that which records the daring achievements of the early French pathfinders and voyagers. Two centuries and a half ago Marquette and Joliet, bearing the commission of the French Governor of Quebec, embarked upon their expedition for the discovery of new countries to the southward. Animated by the earnest desire of extending the blessings of religion no less than that of adding to the domain of their imperial master, they set out upon an expedition which has become historic. The bare recital of what befell them would fill volumes. Now meeting with the scattered tribes of Indians, bestowing presents and in turn sharing the hospitality offered; now speaking wordsof admonition and of instruction; now gathering up the crude materials for history; now reverently setting up the cross in the wilderness; again threading the pathless forests, or in frail barks sailing unknown waters, they pursued their perilous journey. "In time, after looking out upon the waters of Lake Michigan, crossing Lake Winnebago, visiting the ancient villages of the Kickapoos, 'with joy indescribable,' as Marquette declared, they for the first time beheld the Mississippi. In June, 1673, upon the east bank of the great river, they landed upon the soil of what is now the State of Illinois. At the little village they first visited they received hospitable treatment. Its inmates are known in our early history as 'the Illini' - a word signifying men. The euphonic termination added by the Frenchmen gives us the name Illinois. It is related that, upon the first appearance of Marquette and Joliet at the door of the principal wigwam of the village, they were greeted by an aged native with the words: "The sun is beautiful, Frenchmen, when you come to visit us; you shall enter in peace into all our cabins; it is well, my brothers, you come.' In the light of the marvellous results of the visit, the words of the aged chieftain seem prophetic. We, too, may say it was well they came. "The glory of having discovered the upper Mississippi and the valley which bears its name belongs to Marquette and Joliet. It was theirs to add the vast domain under the name 'New France' to the empire of le Grand Monarque. In very truth a princely gift. But no history of the great valley and the majestic river would be complete which failed to tell something of the priest and historian, Hennepin, and of the knightly adventures of the Chevalier La Salle. "Much, indeed, that is romantic surrounds the entire career of La Salle. Severing his connection with a theological school in France, his fortunes were early cast in the New World. From Quebec, the ancient French capital of this continent, he projected an expedition which was to add empire to his own country and to cast a glamour about his own name. It has been said that his dream was of a western waterway to |