24 STATE AGKICULTUEAL SOCIETY. 
yield of that year being over twenty-seven millions of bushels 
—the largest amount that, np to that time, had ever been pro¬ 
duced by any one State. Her pastures gave food to innumer¬ 
able flocks and herds of superior blood. Her hundreds of 
young orchards and vineyards had begun to rejoice in crops of 
luscious fruit. Her forests of timber resounded on every side 
with the stroke of the woodman’s axe and the shouts of num¬ 
berless teamsters. Her mines of lead had* already yielded up 
rich treasures to delving thousands of her hardy ^momen, and 
her scarce!}^ less rich mines of zinc, and iron, and copper, had 
attracted the attention of enterprising capitalists in various 
portions of the countiy. ISTumerous factories had found their 
places on her exhaustless water-powers. Her noble rivers 
and lakes, whose waters so lately had never been disturbed by 
other craft than the lone canoe of the savage, now teemed with 
the fast-increasing commerce of a marvel ous new empire— 
the Empire of the North-West. Railroads, with bands of 
iron, uniting her northern with her southern and her eastern with 
her wmstern limits, already bound her territory compactly into 
one. Flourishing cities, towns and villages were found on her 
many harbors, along her water-courses and on a thousand crests 
of her undulating openings and prairies. The school-house, that 
symbol of American civilization and sign of our future glory 
as a nation, opened wide its friendly doors in every neighbor¬ 
hood. Colleges for the higher education welcomed hundreds of 
her aspiring youth to the treasuries of Literature, Science and 
the Arts. Charitable and reformatory institutions worthy of 
the older States fitly crowned the summit of manj' a noble 
eminence and reflected the approving smile of God upon the 
practical benevolence of her people; while thousands of church- 
spires silently pointed the citizen and stranger alike to the 
Great Source of this wondrous prosperity. 
More marve lous changes were never wrought upon so broad 
an area in so short a time. 
We have said the year 1860 was a golden year in our histo¬ 
ry. So, also, was it the crowning and closing year of its first 
period ; for, with 1861, dawned a new era. The dark wing of 
