war, defeat, and disaster in every part of the world, after all their anxiety and toils, under the shelter of equal and impartial justice, find a peaceful home.

We enter this day upon the second century of our national existence. We are surrounded by circumstances calculated to inspire high hopes for the future.

May prosperity and eternal progress attend this nation in the time to come. May every link added to the mighty chain of generations be worthy of the glorious past, and as year after year, and century upon century shall roll away, upon each return of this glad day may a prosperous, happy, united, and free people welcome to these shores the sun in his coming with martial music, the booming of cannon, the voice of eloquence and sons of freedom.

ILLINOIS, RESOURCES AND RECORD.

AN ORATION BY CHARLES H. FOWLER, D.D., LL.D.

DELIVERED AT THE CENTENNIAL EXPOSITION, PHILADELPHIA, AUG. 29, 1876, AT THE REQUEST AND BY THE APPOINTMENT OF HIS EXCELLENCY, HON. J. L. BEVERIDGE, GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS.

In

MR. PRESIDENT, FELLOW-CITIZENS OF ILLINOIS AND OF THE REPUBLIC, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:-A peasant espoused a princess. She was heavily dowered and highly endowed. She had genius and culture. Her form was the perfection of symmetry. Her motion was the rhythm of poetry. Her face was the beauty of the morning. Her glance was the benediction that follows prayer. repose she was a model. In motion she was a song. Seen, she was a hope; detained, an inspiration; retained, a transfiguration. The peasant went with her to a royal court where the guests were expected to compete for an hour on the throne by showing their rarest treasures. A high courtier, seeing the peasant emptyhanded, yet hopeful, said, "Why hope ?" The peasant replied, "You have not seen her!" That court is this company of the assembled nations. That princess is the Prairie State, from the great valley beyond the mountains. When you have seen her you will not question my presence or my hope. I am here at your invitation, by the authority of yonder commonwealth, to commend to you, and through you to all men everywhere, the great State of Illinois, only fourth in population and not second in honor or promise among all the States of the great Republic. If you do not grant us this day a favorable verdict, I shall appeal to mankind, to impartial history, and to the next Centennial.

The soil seems predestined to greatness. Albert Gallatin, who has prepared the best work upon the Indian languages, says that “Illinois is from a Delaware word, Leno, or Leni, or Illini, which signifies the real or superior men."

Some of the vulgar may ask why the sons of Illinois are called Suckers, which, like nearly all nicknames, from Yankee to Wolverine, is a term of disrespect. The answer is found in the jealousies that always spring up in the presence of success. In the early days the settlers were in the habit of going up the river every spring to Galena, and, having worked in the famous lead mines during the summer, they returned down the river in the fall. This was the habit of suckers in the rivers. The transfer of the epithet was easy. It refers also to the poor whites from the South that followed the wealthy, like suckers on the corn. Its transformation has been certain. The nation has had abundant reason to bless the Suckers.

In area the State has 55,410 square miles of territory. It is about 150 miles wide and 400 miles long, stretching in latitude from Maine to North California. It embraces a wide variety of climate. It is tempered on the north by the great inland, saltless, tideless sea, which keeps the thermometer from either extreme. Being a table land, 600 feet above the level of the sea, one is prepared to find on the health maps prepared by the general Government an almost clean and perfect record. In freedom from fevers and malarial diseases and consumptions, the three deadly enemies of the American Saxon, Illinois as a State stands without a superior. She furnishes one of the essential conditions of a great people-sound bodies. I suspect that this fact lies back of that old Delaware word, Illini, superior men.

The great battles of history that have been determinative of dynasties and destinies have been strategical battles, chiefly the question of position. Thermopylae has been the war-cry of freemen for twenty-four centuries. It only tells how much there may be in position. All this advantage belongs to Illinois. It is in the heart of the greatest valley in the world, the vast region between the mountains-a valley that could feed mankind for a thousand years. It is well on toward the centre of the Continent. It is in the great temperate belt, in which have been found nearly all the aggressive civilizations of history. It has sixty-five miles of frontage on the head of the lake. With the Mississippi forming the western and southern boundary, with the Ohio running along the south-eastern line, with the Illinois River and Canal dividing the

State diagonally from the lake to the lower Mississippi, and with the Rock and Wabash Rivers furnishing altogether 2,000 miles of water-front, connecting with, and running through, in all, about 12,000 miles of navigable waters.

But this is not all. These waters are made most available by the fact that the lake and the State lie on the ridge running into the great valley from the east. Within cannon-shot of the lake the water runs away from the lake to the Gulf. The lake now empties at both ends, one into the Atlantic, the other into the Gulf of Mexico. The lake thus seems to hang over the land. This makes the dockage most serviceable; there are no steep banks to damage it. Both lake and river are made for use.

The climate varies from Portland to Richmond; it favors every product of the Continent, including the tropics, with less than halfa-dozen exceptions. It produces every great nutriment of the world, except bananas and rice. It is hardly too much to say that it is the most productive spot known to civilization. With the soil full of bread and the earth full of minerals, with an upper surface of food and an under layer of fuel, with perfect natural drainage and abundant springs and streams, and navigable rivers, half-way between the forests of the North and the fruits of the South, within a day's ride of the great deposits of iron, coal, copper, lead, and zinc, containing and controlling the great grain, cattle, pork, and lumber markets of the world, it is not strange that Illinois has the advantage of position.

The next plateau in the advance of history is the coming of the white race, in the person of La Salle, who discovered the wide prairies of Illinois in 1670. Trained a Jesuit, and leading a business life, he saw at once the future field of the Church and of commerce. Three years later came two other noted characters, who, like La Salle, gave their heroic faith and purpose to the new land, and left their names on its early settlement-Joliet, a fur trader of Quebec, and Père Marquette, a Jesuit of France. Coasting the northern shore of Lake Michigan, they entered Green Bay, ascended Fox River, crossed over into the Wisconsin River, thus taking France and Romanism into the Mississippi Valley a hundred years in advance of all rivals. A mile north of Evanston, on the old Green Bay road, I have stood upon a cleared and barren

spot where Marquette planted the cross and built a church, two hundred years ago. Then it was on the shore of the lake; now

it is some distance inland.

It is a good thing to plant in a country first a cross, and take possession of it in the spirit of missionaries and in the name of God. For conscience finally gains all battles.

The first military occupation was at Fort Servecœur, in 1680. The first settlement in the Mississippi Valley, was in Illinois, at Fort St. Louis, on the Illinois River, in 1682. Constructively, in the old way of constructing geographies and empires, Illinois. was for one hundred years a part of Florida, though no Spaniard ever set foot on it. In 1675, it became a possession of the French crown, a dependency of Canada, and a part of Louisiana. In 1765 the English flag was run up on old Fort Chartres, and Illinois was counted among the treasures of Great Britain.

In 1779 it was taken from the English by Colonel Clark. This man was resolute in nature, wise in council, prudent in policy, bold in action, and heroic in danger. Few men who have figured in the history of America are more deserving than the colonel. Nothing short of first-rate, first-class ability could have rescued Vincens and all Illinois from the English. And it is not possible to over-estimate the influence of this achievement upon the Republic. In 1779 Illinois became a part of Virginia. It was soon known as Illinois County. In 1784 Virginia ceded all this terri tory to the General Government, to be cut into States, to be Republican in form, with "the same right of sovereignty, freedom and independence as the other States."

In 1787 it was the subject of perhaps the wisest and ablest legislation found in any merely human records. No man can study the secret history of the "Compact of 1787," and not feel that Providence was guiding with sleepless eye these unborn States. The ordinance that on July 13, 1787, finally became the incorporating act, has a most marvellous history. Jefferson had vainly tried to secure a system of Government for the Northwestern territory. He was an emancipationist of that day, and favored the exclusion of slavery from the territory Virginia had ceded to the General Government; but the South voted him down as often as it came up. In 1787, as late as July 10, an organizing