l66 ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



who returned to their once happy homes to find their famiHes 

 scattered, their cattle confiscated, their buildings burned, their 

 improvements destroyed and their money worthless. It came to 

 us through disrupted families, sectional feeling and bitter denun- 

 ciation. 



During the four years of the blackest war clouds, the troubled 

 waters, the tempestous sea, the old ship of state launched nearly 

 a hundred years before, and whose first captain was Washington, 

 was guided safely into port by the renowned pilot who was 

 selected from that country, the name of which signified superior 

 men, and whose steady hand never let go of the wheel and whose 

 keen discerning eye was never detracted from the channel. And 

 this is not all. When the day seemed the darkest, when the 

 chances seemed the least, when the messages came to this wonder- 

 ful man who was commander general, and who seemed to be 

 guided by wisdom divinity that his great army was being rapidly 

 reduced and that defeat was following them everywhere, at that 

 time when he might have been expected to falter, he saw the 

 necessity of more help in the management of the army in the 

 field, and the sequel proved wisdom in the appointment of an 

 Illinois man to take charge of that great army, and you were 

 permitted to place on that roll of distinction the name of him 

 whom the whole world delighted to honor, Ulysses S. Grant, and 

 when finally he (with characteristic modesty) received the sword 

 of him, whose memory we all revere, the war was over. When 

 the pilot's mission seemed to have been filled, and the Lord of 

 Hosts said to him "Well done, come up higher," he was removed 

 and a nation mourned his loss and a monument was erected to 

 his memory in every section of the country. And when every cit- 

 izen of the United States, black and white, north, south, east and 

 west, of every religious belief and every political faith sought 

 to manifest their love, then in the hearts of eighty million people 

 was there a monument erected, and on the tablets of their mem- 

 ory was written, never to be erased, the name of him who every- 

 body loved, Abraham Lincoln of Illinois. |; 



