84 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN’S ASSOCIATION. 
present before your honorable body the details of our past 
history, undoubtedly it would be seen that no one class, 
more if so much, abounde in these, as did the farmers. The 
hardy soil of New England gave us men, if not money, and • 
at a time too, when men were most needed. A glance along 
up to the present time will show this has ever been true of 
the soil of our country. 
. Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe has well said “America is 
above all other things an agricultural country, and her 
aristocracy, whether of talent or wealth, generally trace 
back their origin to a farm.” By referring to her book 
“ Men of Our Times” we shall find this illustrated in the 
parentage of some of our greatest aud best men. Our be¬ 
loved Lincoln was the son of a poor farmer, and “ at seven 
years of age was set to work, ax in hand, to clear up a farm 
in a Western forest.. Until seventeen his life was that of a 
simple laborer, with probably not more than six months’ 
schooling in his whole life. At nineteen he made his trip 
to New Orleans as a hired hand on a flat-boat, and on his 
return split the timber for a log cabin, and built it, and 
enclosed ten acres of land with a rail fence of his own 
handiwork.” Of Salmon P. Chase, it is said, “ his parents 
were of the best class of New England farmers. Bible- 
reading, thoughtful, shrewd, closely and wisely economi¬ 
cal.” Literary material was so scarce in that region that 
his first writing lessons were taken on strips of birch bark. 
His father died when he was young, leaving his mother 
with little property except a small estate of her own. She 
was of Scotch blood, at once “ shrewd, pious, courageous 
and energetic,” belonging to that class of New England 
mothers, whose chief aim “ toward which they set their 
faces as a flint,” was to give their sons a college education, 
and who accomplished it by “ infinite savings, and unknown 
economies.” At fourteen he went to live with an uncle, 
where he remained two years, working on a small farm 
“just as hard as he could.” After graduating from Dart¬ 
mouth college, being penniless, he was offered fifty cents by 
his uncle, the senator, with which to buy a spade to begin 
with, for then, said he, “ you might hope to come to some¬ 
thing.” Such training, says Mrs. Stowe, gave us a secretary 
of the treasury, and chief justice of the United States. 
Henry Wilson, United States senator and vice president, 
