ARNOLD AND FARNSWORTH. 523 ern States an army of men equal to our entire army in numbers. They are our friends. They will work for us, and fight for us, if you will but say the word. [Cries: "We will."] You are allowing them now to cultivate corn and wheat to feed your enemy. You are letting them work in the trenches and build fortifications against you. The entire element is ready—and I speak from my knowledgeis ready to act and work and fight for you. A rebel throat is none too good to be cut by a black man. I find in Virginia that the only reliable, truthful men from whom we can obtain information about the rebel armies, their roads and their scouts, were in the poor hovels of the negro. Using all the skill and experience I have had as ● lawyer, I have questioned white men, and when I had done, some old negro too old to bear arms would nod to me to meet him behind the barn, and would tell me massa lied,' and would impart to me information which subsequent experience proved true. I have never known them to tell an untruth to me. I want to see an expression go forth from this meeting, lifting up the hands of the President and Cabinet for using every agency we can lay our hands upon. The voice of the people is the voice of God. It is authoritative with statesmen and generals. That voice I trust will be heard. I hope the fruits of this meeting will be felt. I hope it will not be an exodus for the accumulated gas of speeches. Organize your companies and train them at home for any emergency which may occur. I want to see the wealthy merchants who own these large buildings, the well-to do lawyers and thriving physicians, come down with the sinews of war to aid the men who are fighting the battles of the stay-at-homes. I see before me at least two regiments of men. are you doing here? You've all got your little property at stake. Put your names on the muster roll. What "As I may not have another opportunity of addressing you, and may not meet you for a long time, and perhaps never, take my most fervent hopes and prayers that I may meet you and shake hands with you in Richmond." HON. ISAAC N. ARNOLD. And at the same meeting Hon. Isaac N. Arnold said: "This glorious uprising of the people is the highest example of the moral sublime. The days of the crusaders have returned. Starting from the nation's capitol, all along through New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana, you see a vast uprising of the people, with a fixed, stern determination, at any cost, to crush out this vast rebellion. But it is in the Northwest, and in this great city of the Northwest, that the zeal and energy of patriotism is most active and all-pervading. "Illinois is meriting for herself and her children a glorious record. She had won distinguished honors in the Mexican war. Bissell and Hardin had associated their names and the name of Illinois with Palo Alto and Buena Vista; but in this far more glorious war, in which the faithful fights for his country against rebels and traitors far more cruel and barbarous than Mexican guerrillas, Illinois covered herself with glory. The bones of her sons lie scattered on every battle field in the valley of the Mississippi. With more than 60,000 of her gallant sons in the field, the President, whom Illinois has given to the nation, calls for troops. "Illinois springs to the rescue. Her commercial capital speaks to-day in a voice which will thrill the nation. The Northwest is ready. As a citizen of this city, I claim to-day to express my thanks to the Board of Trade. You have done nobly, and your efforts will tell in all the Northwest, and be felt throughout the loyal States, and I doubt not also the gallant soldiers you raise will be felt among the barbarians in arms against our country. "There is nothing to discourage us. Our armies during the last six months have achieved great success. When Congress assembled in December last, the capitol was besieged. The rebel flag was visible from the dome of the capitol. Rebel guns could be heard at the White House. The Potomac was blockaded. The Mississippi from Cairo to the Gulf was in possession of the traitors. New Orleans, Norfolk, much of Missouri, Kentucky, and all of Tennessee, were in their hands. Since then Western valor has cleared the Mississippi, driven the enemy out of Missouri, a great part of Arkansas, and Kentucky and Tennessee. On the 4th of July the old flagGod bless and preserve it forever-floated in every State in the Union. "We have fought and won the great battles of Henry and Donelson, Pea Ridge, Island No. 10, and Shiloh. Butler now holds New Orleans, and is teaching the she traitors of the Crescent City better manners. Norfolk and St. Augustine are ours. We have annihilated the rebel navy, and our gun-boats hold undisputed sway over every harbor, and river, and navigable stream in the enemy's territory. One vigorous, active campaign, and our triumph is achieved. “Every great war has underlying it a great idea. What is the great idea which gives impulse and motive power to this war? It is our nationality. The grand idea of a great continental republic, ocean bounded, and extending from the lakes to the Gulf, commanding the respect of the world, is an idea, implanted deeply in the American heart, and it is one for which every American patriot will fight, and if necessary die. Nowhere is this sentiment stronger than in the Northwest. With one hand we clasp the East, and with the other the Northwest will gripe the South, and we will hold this Union together We will not see this grand Republic split up into contemptible Mexican provinces-always fighting and destroying each other. Incident to this idea of Nationality and becoming every day stronger, is another-that this grand Republic must be all free, filled with one great, free population. "The suicide of slavery is being enacted before our eyes. Let the cursed, barbarous, traitor-breeding institution die. The slaveholder has himself given to it the mortal wound; let no timid Northern doughface attempt to staunch the blood. The end of slavery will prove the regeneration of the nation. "Liberal bounty is offered to the gallant volunteer. I wish to state a fact which may not be generally known. The Congress just adjourned, provided by law that all our foreign born soldiers should become the adopted children of the Republic; he who fights for the flag shall be immediately a citizen. We could not do less for the gallant Germans, the countrymen of Sigel, and Osterhaus, and Willich. For the brave Irishmen who, under Meagher, and Shields, and Mulligan, are fighting for the old flag. To every Irishman, I would say, remember Corcoran, and rally to his rescue. "Who shall pay the cost of this war? Let us quarter on the enemy, confiscate the property, and free the slaves of rebels." THE LAST INAUGURAL ADDRESS. As this chapter was passing through the press, the nation was startled with the announcement of the President's assassination. The sad story belongs elsewhere. But in view of it the people of Illinois will read with mournful interest the last utterances of Abraham Lincoln before he was struck down by the hand of the assassin. On the 4th of March, 1865, in the presence of a vast concourse of people, he delivered his second inaugural address as follows: "FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN:-At this second appearing to take the oath of the presi dential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a course to be pursued, seemed very fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably encouraging to all. "With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured. Оп the occasion corresponding to this, four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it; all sought to avoid it. While the Inaugural Address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it, without war-seeking to dissolve the Union and divide the effects by negotiation. "Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish; and the war came. One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate and extend this interest, was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. "Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invoke His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any man should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces. “But let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayer of both should not be answered that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes. 'Woe unto the world because of offenses, for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.' If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of the offenses that in the providence of God must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now so wills to remove that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern that there is any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away; yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said that the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. "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, and care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphans-to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." THE LAST SPEECH. The last speech which President Lincoln ever made in public was delivered in Washington, on the 11th of April, 1865, after his return from Richmond, upon the vexed question of reconstruction, and will forever stand as a monument of the goodness of his heart. President said : The "We meet this evening not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart. The evacuation of Petersburg and Richmond, and the surrender of the principal insurgent army, give hopes of a righteous and speedy peace, whose joyous expressions cannot be restrained. In the midst of this, however, He from whom all blessings flow must not be forgotton. A call for a national thanksgiving is being prepared, and will be duly promulgated. Nor must those whose harder part gives us the cause of rejoicing, be overlooked. Their honors must not be parceled out with others. I myself was near the front, and had the high pleasure of transmitting much of the good news to you. But no part of the honor for plan or execution is mine. To Gen. Grant, his skillful officers and brave men, all belongs. The gallant navy stood ready, but was not in reach to take active part. By these recent successes the re-inauguration of the national authority-reconstruction, which has had a large share of thought from the first-is pressed much more closely upon our attention. It is fraught with great difficulty. Unlike a war between independent nations, there is no authorized organ for us to treat with. No one man has authority to give up the rebellion for any other man. ments. PRESIDENT'S LAST SPEECH. 527 We must simply begin with and mold from disorganized and discordant eleNor is it a small additional embarrassment that we, the loyal people, differ among ourselves as to the mode, manner and measure of reconstruction. As a general rule, I abstain from reading the reports of attacks upon myself, wishing not to be provoked by that to which I cannot properly offer an answer. In spite of this precaution, however, it comes to my knowledge that I am much censured for some supposed agency in setting up and seeking to sustain the new State Government of Louisiana. In this I have done just so much and no more than the public knows. In the annual message of December, 1863, and the accompanying proclamation, I presented a plan of reconstruction, as the phrase goes, which I promised, if adopted by any State, would be acceptable to and sustained by the Executive Government of the nation. I distinctly stated that this was not the only plan which might, possibly, be acceptable; and I also distinctly protested that the Executive claimed no right to say when or whether members should be admitted to seats in Congress from such States. This plan was in advance submitted to the then cabinet, and approved by every member of it. One of them suggested that I should then and in that connection apply the Emancipation Proclamation to the theretofore excepted parts of Virginia and Louisiana, that I should drop the suggestion about apprenticeship for freed people, and that I should omit the protest against my own power in regard to the admission of members of Congress. But even he approved every part and parcel of the plan which has since been employed or touched by the action of Louisiana. The new constitution of Louisiana, declaring emancipation for the whole State, practically applies the proclamation to the part previously excepted. It does not adopt apprenticeship for freed people, and is silent, as it could not well be otherwise, about the admission of members to Congress. So that as it applied to Louisiana every member of the Cabinet fully approved the plan. The message went to Congress, and I received many commendations of the plan, written and verbal, and not a single objection to it, from any professed emancipationist, came to my knowledge until after the news reached Washington that the people of Louisiana had begun to move in accordance with it. From about July, 1862, I had corresponded with different persons supposed to be interested in seeking a reconstruction of a State government for Louisiana. When the message of 1863, with the plan before mentioned, reached New Orleans, Gen. Banks wrote to me that he was confident that the people, with his military co-operation, would reconstruct substantially on that plan. I wrote to him and some of them to try it. They tried it, and the result is known. Such has been my only agency in getting up the Louisiana government. As to sustaining it, my promise is out, as before stated. But as bad promises are better broken than kept, I shall treat this as a bad promise and break it whenever I shall be convinced that keeping it is adverse to the public interest, but I have not yet been so convinced. "I have been shown a letter on this subject, supposed to be an able one, in which the writer expresses regret that my mind has not seemed to be definitely fixed on the question, whether the seceded States, so called, are in the Union or out of it. |