76 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



get me a train I would seize one. General Bates approved of everything I 

 did, but I had to fight all the red tape in Christendom to get us away. 



I was asked this afternoon what I thought of the Cubans? I will say 

 frankly that we were greatly disappointed. We did not come away with 

 a bright idea of them. Cuba is a lovely spot and the time will come when 

 it will be healthy, but we shall have to put up the little red school houses 

 just as thick as you plant corn here. The time will come when the Cubans 

 will grow into a great deal stronger and better race than they are today. 



I was asked today. (I am speaking in reference to Gen. Shatter.) I was 

 asked by one, to what extent I credit to him the victory? I think Gen. 

 Shatter was a wonderfully lucky man. I think that we would have won 

 that campaign just as surely if Gen. Shatter had been commanding his 

 department in California. 



I was asked what I thought of the Secretary of War? I will say that 

 putting the present Secretary of War alongside of Secretary Stanton of 

 the old war, seems to me a good deal like setting up beside a cast iron 

 patriot a bag of mush. 



I was asked today what I thought of the abilities, and merits of the 

 regular army and the volunteers? I don't want to say a word, for it is a 

 matter on which I feel very strongly and get excited about, because I think 

 there has been made a very unjust attempt to cast on the volunteer soldiers 

 all the odium of the sickness and everything else that went wrong, and it is 

 absolutely unjust. I saw and know of just as fine regiments in the vol- 

 unteers, just as brave, just as well disciplined, just as patient as any regular 

 regiment that ever lived since the creation of the world. When they tell 

 yo u that your boys have not been good soldiers, they tell you what is abso- 

 lutely false. Illinois has at least no cause to hide her head. Its volunteer 

 soldiers have simply been superb. They are my boys just as much as they 

 are your boys. And I say that as regards the First Regiment of Illinois, it 

 went through Purgatory, sent there by Gen. Shatter himself, unjustly; 

 and they went without a whimper. He could not force a cry from us, try 

 his best. 



We never asked a favor of any one. We were obliged to remain after 

 all the others had gone. We were sent, after the surrender, in those eruci- 



