92 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT JESSE OF MISSOURI STATE UNI- 

 VERSITY. 



When Missouri State University was founded, even Chicago, 

 that great city by the unsalted sea, that claims like Melchisedec of old, 

 to have neither beginning of days or end of life, was only then seven 

 years old, but even in knee-breeches stage it was putting on those 

 boastful airs which has characterized it ever since. Texas, now the 

 largest State in the American Union, was then an independent govern- 

 ment by itself, while New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada and Cali- 

 fornia all belonged to Mexico. They were ail foreign territory. Kansas, 

 even now the bolder wild people, still wilder then, was not admitted to 

 the Union until twenty-one years afterwards. In fact, the only states 

 west of the Mississippi river were Louisiana, Arkansas and Grand Old 

 Missouri. 



Among our public men the illustrious Benton in the twentieth 

 year of his service in the Senate, was covering with glory the name of 

 Missouri. 



Henry Clay and Daniel Webster were in the prime of life, and 

 Washington were leading to victory the old Whig party, of which the 

 younger members of this meeting know only by history. 



William Henry Harrison, owner of Grandfather's Hat, which you 

 see in the cartoons in the newspaper, was in theact of becoming Presi- 

 dent of the United States. 



The Democratic party after holding under one name and another 

 the reigns of government for forty years, was on the eve of overthrow. 



Calhoun and Benton and Jackson, whose names shall live forever 

 in the annals of Democratic statesmanship, were working like tigers to 

 save their party, but it was written in the Book of Fate that they were 

 to triumph, and so they did. As for the Republican party, it was not 

 born, or even dreamed of. Mr. Lincoln was only thirty-one years of 

 age. General Grant was only a stripling of eighteen, and Grover Cleve- 

 land, the mighty of girth now, was at that time only in kilts, and as to 

 William McKinley, our President now, it had not entered into the 

 hearts of men to even conceive of hira. 



In such a time was our University founded, the only exception 

 from the Alleghany mountains to the sea, except Indiana and Michigan. 

 She was granted 60,000 acres of ground on the condition that she 

 establish and maintain a seminary of learning ; much of the ground 

 upon which Westport and Kansas City now stand belonged to this 



