288 MAJOR JOHN F. LACEY 



Wisconsin is its southwesterly portion. Illinois is a fa- 

 vored state, but its finest land is its northwestern part, 

 next to our state. North Missouri is the best part of our 

 neighbor on the south. Northeastern Kansas is the most 

 fertile part of the Sunflower state. Eastern Nebraska is 

 the richest part of that state, and southeastern Dakota is 

 the best and most fertile of that commonwealth. 



So in the center of this zone of fertility our situation 

 is most gratifying and serene. 



In the old Greek days it was the temple ; in the Roman 

 days, the citadel ; in the middle ages the cathedral, which 

 formed the architectural center of the town. But in our 

 days the school-house in Iowa first attracts the eye of the 

 traveler as he looks from the car window. 



We tax ourselves heavily — but three-fifths of it all 

 goes to the support of our system of education, and the 

 duty of the state to her children is recognized in the high- 

 est degree. 



When our national constitution was adopted, there was 

 a cancer in the body politic in the form of human slavery. 

 The words "slave" and "slavery" were sedulously 

 avoided in that instrument by the use of the terms "per- 

 sons held to service and labor," and in the clause as to 

 representation the words "three-fifths of all other per- 

 sons," evaded the use of the obnoxious terms. 



The "importation of such persons as the states may 

 think proper," was the phrase by which the slave trade 

 was protected up to the year 1808. We had something in 

 our organic law that our forefathers blushed to call by 

 its right name. 



But a great crime against human rights could not be 

 protected by the mere use of sounding phrases. But we 

 must make allowances for the state of the public con- 

 science in those old days. 



