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LINCOLN ROOM 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
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 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
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 MEMORIAL 
 
 the Class of 1901 
 
 founded by 
 
 HARLAN HOYT HORNER 
 
 and 
 
 HENRIETTA CALHOUN HORNER 
 
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 1 HERE is no new thing to be said of Lincoln. There 
 is no new thing to be said of the mountains or of 
 the sea or of the stars. The years go their way, but 
 the same old mountains lift their granite shoulders 
 above the drifting clouds; the same mysterious sea 
 beats upon the shore, and the same silent stars keep 
 holy vigil above a tired world. But to mountains and 
 sea and stars men turn forever in unwearied homage. 
 And thus with Lincoln. For he was mountain in 
 grandeur of soul, he was sea in deep undervoice of 
 mystic loneliness and he was star in steadfast purity 
 of purpose and of service. And he abides. " 
 
 -•-From a speech by Representative in Congress 
 Homer Hoch, of Kansas, delivered February 
 12, 1923, before the House in Washington. 
 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 
 
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS are due many people for their 
 valuable assistance in preparing this volume. Among 
 them are Fred A. Sapp, of Ottawa, publisher of the Daily 
 Republican-Times; Dr. Benjamin P. Thomas and Pro- 
 fessor H. E. Pratt, of the Abraham Lincoln Life Associa- 
 tion of Springfield; Dr. Louis A. Warren, of the Lincoln 
 National Life Foundation, of Fort Wayne, Indiana; Paul 
 M. Angle, secretary of the Illinois State Historical Asso- 
 ciation; the staff of Reddick's Library, of Ottawa; the 
 Chicago Public Library, and the Newberry Library of 
 Chicago; W. R. Foster, for many years superintendent 
 of the La Salle county public schools; Carlton Corliss, of 
 the Illinois Central staff; Mrs. Barbara Franz, caretaker 
 of the W. H. L. Wallace estate on the north bluff, in 
 Ottawa, and H. W. Fay, custodian of the Lincoln tomb 
 at Springfield. 
 
 Copyright 1940 
 By C. C. Tisler, Ottawa, Illinois 
 
BLACK HAWK WAR 
 
 U P from Sangamon county to La Salle, in the spring of 1832, came 
 Abraham Lincoln and his carefree, swashbuckling company of volun- 
 teer militia infantry, enlisted to fight a guerrilla warfare with the 
 Indians in a pioneer country. 
 
 Gay with the spirit of youth, giant in strength and proud of it, 
 black of hair and with deep-set gray eyes, already the burden of sor- 
 row had been laid on him by the death of his mother and of his sister, 
 Sarah Grigsby, the latter in childbirth. 
 
 Future governors and senators and generals and justices, regular 
 army men, farmers and laborers and rascals, it was a strangely assort- 
 ed army that gathered on the Illinois frontier in April, May and June 
 of 1832 to subdue Black Hawk and his Indian warriors. 
 
 The men who marched with Lincoln's company were his friends, 
 farm hands and small farmers of the rich Sangamon country. Bordry 
 Mathews and Usil Meeker and Michael Plaster and Royal Patter and 
 David Pantier and John and David Rutledge — these were his fellow 
 soldiers. 
 
 He had been chosen captain of his company, the Fourth Volunteer 
 Infantry, a matter that pleased him mightily, as he often said. Even 
 then the qualities of leadership that led him on and on to the martyr's 
 seat in Ford's theater on the nation's blackest and saddest night al- 
 ready were apparent and were recognized by the keenest judges of all 
 human nature — farmers and frontiersmen. 
 
 Let it be forgotten that he knew nothing of military tactics. But 
 let it be remembered that he marched fifty-nine men under his com- 
 mand into the very heart of the Indian country without the loss of a 
 man by desertion, accidental injury, death in battle, from wounds or 
 from disease. Let it be remembered that his company retreated in 
 the most orderly manner from Dixon to Ottawa, while other companies 
 fled in terror, pell mell, after one brief skirmish with the Indians, and 
 never stopped their headlong flight until they had reached their homes 
 in central and southern Illinois. 
 
 There they were reasonably certain that no painted devil would 
 rise from the brush or weeds back of the log barn, brandishing a rifle 
 or a tomahawk and screeching in a hideous manner that would rout a 
 man from the grave, so it seemed to the terror-stricken volunteers. 
 This after only one glimpse of an Indian in battle array, defending his 
 corn lands, his hunting grounds, his fishing waters and the graves of 
 his -ancestors from the relentless encroachments of the white settlers. 
 
 Only a week before the company reached Ottawa sixteen white 
 men, women and children had been slain by a raiding party of Indians 
 on Indian Creek, sixteen miles north of Ottawa. 
 
 [3] 
 
Lincoln served a day at Ottawa in the volunteer company of Cap- 
 tain Alexander White, as a private, then re-enlisted in the company 
 of Captain Elijah lies. 
 
 He served for the duration of the war, and was mustered out on 
 July 10, 1832, at White Water, on the Rock river in Wisconsin. With 
 a friend he made his way back to Sangamon county on foot and by 
 canoe, for his horse had been lost in service. 
 
 These are the brief facts of Lincoln's only service in the armed 
 forces of the United States, except when he commanded the armies 
 and navy of the United States in the Civil war. 
 
 He looked deep into the heart of the American volunteer in those 
 three brief months of service from April to July 1832. He learned 
 their thoughts, learned their habits, learned to command them, learned 
 to work and march and fight with them, these men who have always 
 been the backbone of American armed forces. The knowledge was 
 priceless when it came to commanding hundreds of thousands of the 
 sons and grandsons of these same types of volunteers in the Civil war. 
 
 EDITORIAL DESKS 
 
 (J UR fathers were gluttons for punishment. 
 
 Political speeches that lasted four hours were common to them. 
 Then the orators took time out to rest and for lunch while others took 
 up the cudgels against the party in power. 
 
 Such was the case when Stephen A. Douglas, at the age of twenty- 
 seven, was winding up his campaign for election to congress on the 
 Democratic ticket from the third district of Illinois, which included 
 La Salle county. 
 
 Douglas was seeking the first rung on the political ladder. In 
 Springfield, Abraham Lincoln was struggling to establish a law prac- 
 tice, after serving in the Illinois General Assembly, to which he had 
 been elected when he was only twenty-five years old. 
 
 The Illinois Free Trader, the first issue of which was published in 
 Ottawa on May 23, 1840, took note of the presence of Douglas in the 
 city, on October 25, 1840. He tried out his oratorical wings in the 
 second county court house, which for many years stood at the south 
 end of La Salle street, but was torn down in 1936. 
 
 The Free Trader story of the presence of Douglas in the city was 
 as follows, and is written in the characteristic style of that period 
 when politics were discussed: 
 
 "GREAT MEETING OF THE DEMOCRACY OF LA SALLE" 
 
 "On Monday, the 25th inst., agreeably to previous notice, the peo- 
 ple assembled in the court house at Ottawa. The meeting was or- 
 ganized by appointing Joel Strawn, president; H. P. Woodworth, 
 
 [4] 
 
Charles Hayward, Michael Canady, Asa Mann, William Stadden and 
 General McClasky, vice presidents, and William Chumasero and 
 Michael Ryan, secretaries. 
 
 "Stephen A Douglas, the Democratic candidate for congress, being 
 introduced to the meeting, took the stand amid the reiterated cheers 
 and cries of welcome from the audience. 
 
 "He proceeded to show up the Whig party in no enviable light. 
 He exposed their falsehoods and mannerisms. He reviewed the his- 
 tory of their party, the part these prominent leaders have taken in 
 opposition to the true principles of democracy, and in one of the most 
 able argumentative speeches that we have ever listened to he en- 
 chained the audience for upwards of four hours, portraying the truth 
 and beauties of democracy and exposing the deformities and evils of 
 federalism so as to carry conviction to every unprejudiced mind. He 
 was listened to by a large body of intelligent farmers with that atten- 
 tion which showed that they understood and appreciated the truths 
 and principles he advanced. 
 
 "He closed with a most eloquent and stirring appeal that seemed 
 to fire the soul and nerve the arm of every Democrat for the contest. 
 He resumed his seat amid the loud and long applause of an enrap- 
 tured audience. 
 
 "After an adjournment of an hour, Mr. Wentworth, the talented 
 and facetious editor of the Chicago Democrat, took the stand, and in 
 a speech of more than three hours' length, unfolded such a mass of 
 facts and showed so clearly the pernicious tendencies of Whig doc- 
 trines, and illustrated so beautifully the happy tendencies of the eter- 
 nal principles of democracy that no one could longer doubt the true 
 party for every friend of his country to pursue. 
 
 "He exposed the humbugs, the follies and the absurdities of the 
 federal Whig party in such an amusing way as to keep the audience 
 in a constant roar of laughter. His eloquent appeal to the Democ- 
 racy of La Salle awakened feelings that never again will slumber as 
 long as the enemy are in the field; it will long be remembered with 
 feelings of emotion and gratitude. 
 
 "After Mr. Wentworth had resumed his seat, Mr. Dodge made a 
 few eloquent and pertinent remarks, and the meeting adjourned. 
 
 "This has been one of the largest and most enthusiastic gatherings 
 we have had in old La Salle. The farmers came pouring in until the 
 court house was a 'complete jam.' The real Democracy of the county 
 is aroused. They are rising in indignation against that party which 
 has so little respect for their intelligence as to think to gull them by 
 misrepresentation, humbug and falsehoods. They are no longer will- 
 ing to countenance a party that has not the honesty to avow its 
 sentiments. 
 
 "Old Democratic La Salle is good for six hundred majority for 
 Van Buren. Democracy, the soul, light and life of freedom, is sure to 
 
 [5] 
 
triumph. It will live eternal with American liberty, and upon the 
 perpetuity of its principles depend the happiness and liberties of the 
 American people." 
 
 June 14, 1851, the Ottawa Free Trader, successor to the Illinois 
 Free Trader, took note of the presence of both Lincoln and Douglas 
 in Ottawa, who were here to attend a session of the Northern Grand 
 Division of the state Supreme Court. 
 
 Both Lincoln and Douglas had by that time served terms in congress 
 and had drawn national attention in political affairs, Douglas for his 
 adherence to the Democratic party and Lincoln for his efforts on be- 
 half of the Whigs. 
 
 It was the first and one of the longest newspaper notices of the 
 presence of Lincoln in Ottawa made by the Free Trader or its con- 
 temporary, the weekly Ottawa Republican. 
 
 However, the Free Trader did not, in later issues, mention the fact 
 that Lincoln, Stephen T. Logan and Douglas all had been reprimanded 
 by the court for their careless handling of a case which came before 
 that body. Lincoln was on one side and Logan and Douglas on the 
 other. 
 
 Lincoln, by implication, received the bulk of the censure, for he 
 lost the case. 
 
 At that time in Illinois history the state Supreme Court was an 
 ambulatory affair, with sessions held three times annually — once each 
 at Mt. Vernon, Springfield and Ottawa. 
 
 Mt. Vernon was the seat of the Southern Grand Division of the 
 court, Springfield of the Central Grand Division and Ottawa of the 
 Northern Grand Division. 
 
 There was no state system of Appellate Courts in Illinois, as there 
 is today. Cases were appealed directly to the state Supreme Court, 
 instead of being carried to the Appellate Court and then to the Su- 
 preme Court, with the exception of criminal cases. 
 
 As a result the Supreme Court justices usually found themselves 
 facing a heavy and crowded docket. At Ottawa it happened on at 
 least two occasions that the court had 400 cases to decide, a tremen- 
 dous task and responsibility for three men. It did not add to the good 
 temper of the justices or to their patience with careless or long- 
 winded attorneys. 
 
 The trio of justices who scolded Lincoln, Douglas and Logan for 
 their careless manner of presenting the case to the court were Chief 
 Justice John Dean Caton, and Associate Justices Samuel H. Treat and 
 Lyman Trumbull, later United States senator from Illinois. 
 
 A far cry from the many ornate court rooms of today, with their 
 modern conveniences for attorneys, justices, witnesses and jurors, the 
 room in which Lincoln, Douglas and Logan argued the case that re- 
 
 [6] 
 
suited in their censure was very plain. It had bare walls and bare 
 floor, only the barest of furniture, and was large enough only for the 
 transaction of the legal business that came before the justices. 
 
 The old court house was torn down in 1881 to make way for the 
 fourth county building. In spite of its historic associations with 
 Lincoln and others of the nation's great men — soldiers, jurists, states- 
 men — the court house erected in 1842 was the object of much ridicule 
 by newspaper editors of Ottawa. They termed it the "old rookery." 
 
 Lincoln arrived in Ottawa June 11, 1851, and remained until June 
 13, in the interests of two law cases which he represented before the 
 Supreme Court. 
 
 He and Attorney R. Wingate represented William K. Stephenson, 
 of Saline county, in a mandamus suit filed before the court at Ottawa 
 to compel Judge Samuel Marshall to hold a term of court at Raleigh, 
 in Saline county. 
 
 The General Assembly, without a vote of the people in Saline and 
 Gallatin counties, had merged the two counties and established a 
 county seat at Equality, replacing the old one at Raleigh. 
 
 The state was represented before the court by A. G. Caldwell and 
 H. B. Montgomery. The decision ruling that the General Assembly 
 had acted illegally by merging the counties without a vote of the 
 people involved was handed down June 16. It was not made public 
 until July 3. 
 
 On that date Lincoln wrote to a friend, Andrew McCallum: "I 
 have news from Ottawa that we win our Gallatin and Saline county 
 case. As the Dutch justice said when he married folks, 'Now, vere ish 
 my hundred dollars?'" 
 
 On Saturday, June 14, the weekly Ottawa Free Trader, a Demo- 
 cratic organ, took note of the opening of the court session and of the 
 argument before that body between Lincoln, Douglas and Logan. 
 
 The paper said editorially, "The June term of the Supreme Court 
 of the state for the Third Grand Division commenced at this place 
 Monday. We understand that a number of heavy cases are on the 
 docket, in which some of the most distinguished legal talent of the 
 state is engaged. 
 
 "Among the gentlemen of the bar already in attendance from 
 abroad we notice the Hon. Stephen A. Douglas, Hon. John A. Mc- 
 Clernand, Hon. A. Lincoln, Stephen Logan, Robert Blackwell, Hon. 
 N. H. Purple — one time state Supreme Court justice — A. G. Caldwell, 
 O. Peters, A. 0. Merriman, Mr. Ballance, Mr. Powell, Hon. N. B. Judd 
 (who nominated Lincoln for the presidency at the Chicago Wigwam 
 in 1860), I. N. Arnold, James H. Collins, Mr. Wilson, Mr. Wingate, 
 Mr. Taylor, of Mt. Vernon, Colonel W. B. Warren, of Jacksonville, etc. 
 
 "Thus far but two cases have occupied the attention of the court. 
 The first is that of James Dunlap versus David A. Smith et al., 
 
 [7] 
 
assignees of the Bank of Illinois, at Shawneetown, on an error to 
 Sangamon. 
 
 "The following is a synopsis of the case: Dunlap in 1843 gave 
 his note to the Bank of Illinois (Shawneetown) for $131,000 payable 
 in state indebtedness. After the act placing the bank in liquidation, 
 suit was brought by the defendants in error against Dunlap, and judg- 
 ment rendered for $38,000, the actual value of the state indebtedness. 
 By the act to wind up the affairs of the bank it was enacted that the 
 specie in the bank should be divided among the creditors of the bank 
 (except for stock) pro rata, and certificates issued by the bank for as 
 much of their indebtedness as was not paid in specie. Dunlap offered 
 to pay the judgment for $38,000 in these bank certificates, and moved 
 the Circuit Court that the judgment be satisfied upon such payment. 
 This motion was resisted upon the ground that the note upon which the 
 judgment was rendered was a stock note and should be paid in specie. 
 The Circuit Court overruled the motion and Dunlap brought the case 
 to this court. 
 
 "The questions arising were, first, whether the record shows the 
 note to be a stock note, and second, if it is a stock note, whether it 
 may not, by virtue of the act placing the bank in liquidation, be paid 
 in bank certificates, the act providing that said certificates shall be 
 received for all debts due the bank. 
 
 "The case was very ably argued by Hon. S. A. Douglas and S. T. 
 Logan for plaintiff in error and Hon. A. Lincoln for defendant in 
 error. The decision of the court is not yet given. 
 
 "The case, en passant, we may remark, furnishes a beautiful com- 
 mentary on banking in Illinois, and is well worth the study of such as 
 have not yet made up their minds how they shall vote on the bank 
 question next fall." 
 
 The Free Trader did not know that the decision, ruling against 
 Lincoln and his client, had been handed down by the court on Friday, 
 June 13. 
 
 The court held that the act did authorize the debtors of the bank 
 to discharge their obligations in notes and certificates, unless such in- 
 debtedness arose as a subscription to the bank's stock. The court 
 authorized Dunlap to discharge his indebtedness to the bank in its 
 depreciated stock, and entered judgment against him in the sum of 
 $28,137.35. 
 
 Then the court sharply criticized the three attorneys who had pre- 
 sented the case to the tribunal — Lincoln, Logan and Douglas. The 
 court said, "It is to be regretted that in so important a case as this 
 the parties have not thought proper to bring before the court the 
 whole transaction out of which Dunlap's indebtedness arose. Had this 
 been done it is possible that the court might be called upon to pro- 
 nounce a different judgment; but as the case is presented in the rec- 
 
 [8] 
 
ord, by which alone the court must be covered, Dunlap's right to dis- 
 charge the judgment in the notes and certificates of the bank is clear. 
 The judgment of the Circuit Court is reversed and the case remanded." 
 
 Lincoln traveled extensively in 1859 and 1860, prior to his nomi- 
 nation for the presidency in the historic Wigwam in Chicago, May 18, 
 1860. His travels were frankly made to put himself before the people 
 as a potential presidential candidate of his party in 1860. 
 
 Taken from the files of the Council Bluffs, la., Nonpariel of August 
 13, 1859, and reprinted at Ottawa, is the following comment on Lin- 
 coln's trip to that western outpost of American civilization: 
 
 "Hon. Abe Lincoln and the Secretary of State for Illinois, Hon. O. 
 M. Hatch, arrived in our city last evening and are stopping at the 
 Pacific House. The distinguished Sucker has yielded to the earnest 
 importunities of our citizens, without distinction to party, and will 
 speak upon the great political issue of the day at Concert Hall this 
 evening. The celebrity of the speaker will insure a full house. Go 
 and hear 'Old Abe.' " 
 
 A few days later, when Lincoln reached St. Joseph, Missouri, the 
 Sentinel of that border state town had this to say of him: 
 
 "Hon. Abe Lincoln, the great Illinoisan who ran the Little Giant 
 so hard last year, and Hon. 0. M. Hatch, Secretary of State for Illi- 
 nois, arrived in our city yesterday from Omaha, on the Campbell, and 
 are stopping at the Planters. 
 
 "A number of our citizens called upon them and were much pleased 
 at the great Standard Bearer of the Republicans of Illinois. 
 
 "Mr. Lincoln called at our office yesterday evening and took a view 
 of the giant proportions of the Young Queen of the West from the 
 observatory. In personal appearance he looks much like any other 
 'six foot' Kentuckian, and is very affable in manners. He and Mr. 
 Hatch leave on the cars this evening for their homes in Illinois." 
 
 A month previous to this western swing, Lincoln, according to 
 Carlton Corliss, of the Illinois Central railroad, made what may have 
 been his last trip through La Salle county. 
 
 On July 14, Lincoln and a party of officers left Springfield for a 
 trip over the Illinois Central lines for the purpose of appraising the 
 company property in connection with a suit filed in the Supreme Court 
 February 1, 1859. The party went to Galena, then to Chicago and 
 back to Springfield, making a short trip. 
 
 Editorially, the Republican at Ottawa on Saturday, March 3, 1860, 
 said of Lincoln, in backing him as a candidate for the Republican nomi- 
 nation at the national convention in May 1860: 
 
 "Mr. Lincoln is the first choice of the Republicans of Illinois, and 
 the impression appears to be fast gaining ground in other western 
 states and even in the east, where they have enough candidates of 
 
 [9] 
 
their own, that honest Abe Lincoln is the best man to bear the Re- 
 publican banner in the approaching contest. Honest and true and 
 thoroughly imbued with the patriotic national principles upon which 
 our union was founded, he is one of the fittest men the nation affords 
 to place at the helm to guide the ship of state clear of the dangers 
 that threaten it from the Democratic plotters of dissension. The na- 
 tion has long enough been cursed by the corrupt slave Democracy, and 
 it is now due the people that a man shall be elected President who will 
 strive to retrieve the wrong that has been done. Mr. Lincoln pos- 
 sesses a national heart and will sufficient to redeem any trust that his 
 fellow citizens may see fit to impose upon him, and it is believed that 
 he enjoys a national popularity among all friends of National Liberty 
 that would make his nomination by the Chicago convention be hailed 
 with joy wherever there is a heart that beats for freedom. 
 
 "Other candidates there will be before the convention whose claims 
 will be presented by their friends with more zeal than Mr. Lincoln 
 will permit his supporters to use in his behalf, for all who know the 
 man are well aware that if he should be honored with the nomination 
 it will not be from any solicitation on his part. His friends in Illinois 
 and elsewhere will probably bring his name before the convention with 
 the conviction that he is the best man for the people; but if there is 
 another man preferred by the majority they will yield their preference, 
 though not without an effort to first place his name in nomination." 
 
 Following the nomination of Lincoln as the Republican candidate 
 for President in the Wigwam in Chicago in May 1860, newspaper cor- 
 respondents descended like a plague upon the modest home in Spring- 
 field where Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln and their three sons lived. 
 
 Some of the stories of these men on Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln were 
 carried in the Ottawa newspapers of the period. Among them was 
 one from the correspondent of the Cincinnati Gazette. He devoted a 
 small amount of space to a description of the modest Lincoln home, 
 an equal portion to Lincoln, his character and appearance, and the 
 balance to a story on Mrs. Lincoln. His remarks are in sharp contrast 
 to whispering campaigns, petty meannesses and fabrications out of 
 whole cloth that unhappy Mrs. Lincoln bore to the end of her life. 
 
 Of Mrs. Lincoln the Gazette reporter said: "Few men, perhaps, 
 have been so fortunate in their domestic relations as Mr. Lincoln. 
 The accomplished manners and vivacious conversation of Mrs. Lincoln 
 have been noted by all who met the lady in the quiet and hospitable 
 home. She is one imminently worthy of the man with whose high 
 destinies she has become, by her early preference, permanently asso- 
 ciated, and in whose present fortunes she takes so lively an interest. 
 
 "Mrs. Lincoln is one of four daughters of Col. Todd, of Lexington, 
 Ky., all of whom, by happy coincidence, have, on their marriages, 
 settled at Springfield. On the mother's side I learned she is related 
 to the Parsons family of her native state. 
 
 [10] 
 
"Should Mrs. Lincoln be called on to preside at the White House, 
 as there can be little doubt she will be if she lives until the fourth of 
 March next, the hospitality of the 'people's place' will be dispensed 
 by her with a grace and dignity unsurpassed during any previous 
 presidential tenure." 
 
 Of Lincoln, the correspondent, who was a keen judge of human 
 nature, said, "On all who have approached him Mr. Lincoln leaves the 
 same impression of a truly noble character." 
 
 After all, that is the highest tribute that could be paid to him. It 
 expresses more in a few words than do volumes written about Lincoln 
 by men who never met him and who are forced to judge his life and 
 character from the record that he left. 
 
 HISTORIC OTTAWA 
 
 F 
 
 EW cities of its size in the middle west can match Ottawa in the rich 
 background of a history that dates to the time of the French explor- 
 ers and priests to the period when Indians lived in one of the loveliest 
 parts of a virgin land, unspoiled, untouched, by the often devastating 
 hand of the white man. 
 
 Soldiers, explorers, great jurists, the immortal Lincoln, politicians 
 who in the exciting days before the Civil war helped to shape events 
 towards the inevitable conflict of one part of the nation against the 
 other — all these have been part of the rich history of Ottawa. 
 
 Tragic events and history-making events have taken place in the 
 city or within a few miles of it. The bodies of massacred white set- 
 tlers and Indians slain in intertribal warfare have dotted the plains 
 and bluffs near the city. 
 
 Ottawa as Lincoln knew it was a typical small city of ante-bellum 
 days, where one could walk a short distance and hear English spoken 
 in half a dozen different American accents, or hear the tongues of 
 Europeans pushing their relentless way west with other settlers. 
 
 The city was at the head of navigation on the Illinois river prior 
 to the Civil war, and was a port of call for steamers from the deep 
 south bringing molasses, rum, tobacco and other products. 
 
 Ottawa was only eighty miles from Chicago, then the last frontier 
 for every adventurer, pioneer, ambitious lawyer, merchant, doctor, 
 schemer, visionary and potential empire builder, as well as for crimi- 
 nals of every stripe and hue that a frontier could spawn. 
 
 The hardy broke the isolation between Ottawa and Chicago, prior 
 to 1853, when the Rock Island linked the two cities, and dared a 
 journey over rough, rutty, poorly built trails that passed for roads, 
 filled with dust in the summer and with impassable mud or snow in 
 the winter. 
 
 [11] 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 
Stage coaches of the Frink and Walker line, plying between Ottawa 
 and Chicago, carried fence rails as standard equipment. If the coach 
 became mired in the mud the passengers were expected to get out and 
 help pry it from the bottomless ooze, regardless of what happened to 
 their clothes. 
 
 Ottawa, the cosmopolitan town, gave Scots, Germans, French, 
 Irish and Norwegian soldiers to the Mexican war, and many more 
 of the same nationalities, as well as others, to the Civil war. 
 
 It was an era when culture strove for a foothold in the parlors of 
 little towns springing up on the western prairies, while porkers rooted 
 in the streets and foraged in the back yards of the same homes. 
 
 Typical of other towns of the pre-Civil war period were the busi- 
 ness houses, commercial institutions and factories that sprang up in 
 Ottawa to supply the needs of a pioneer country. 
 
 Boot and shoe stores, gun shops, plow factories, casket shops, flour 
 mills, grain elevators, reaper factories, foundries, sawmills, a tan- 
 nery, sash, door and blind factories — these were necessary in a new 
 country, along with wagon shops and carriage factories. 
 
 Taken from the old Ottawa Weekly Republican for March 8, 1856, 
 are figures showing the extent of the city's retail business, factory 
 production and grain trade for the preceding year. 
 
 The report showed the wheat trade in Ottawa was only 37,000 
 bushels in 1853, which grew in 1854 to 42,000 bushels, and in 1855 
 soared to 124,000. In the same way the corn trade grew from 225,000 
 bushels in 1853 to 553,000 bushels in 1854, and to 827,000 bushels in 
 1855. The city at that time had six elevators. 
 
 The city had four banks, operated by G. S. Fisher, Eames, Allen & 
 Company, M. H. Swift — a private banker — and True & Waterman. 
 
 Hotels were numerous. Among them were the Empire House, on 
 State street, south of Van Buren; the Farmers' House, also on State 
 street, south of Moore; the Central Hotel, on Columbus street, and the 
 Delano House, on East Superior street, operated by Beaupre & Pren- 
 tice. Others were the Fox River House, in a grove of locusts on the 
 same street; the Mansion House, stopping place of the elite, at the 
 corner of Main and Court streets; the Ottawa House, at the foot of 
 Columbus street, and the Geiger House, on La Salle street, near 
 Washington park. 
 
 Toll was collected to cross the Illinois river bridge. George Baker 
 & Brother ran a starch factory at the foot of La Salle street. John 
 Hossack was an important figure of the day, and ran a grain business. 
 
 The Rock Island railroad ran one express train and one mail train 
 per day each way out of Ottawa. S. Morse was agent. Sam Black 
 ran a profitable business rounding up stray cattle, horses and hogs. 
 Oliver Cornell was a land agent. Lumber dealers included John 
 Hossack, N. F. Fairfield, Randolph Sizer, N. W. Woodruff and James 
 Graham. 
 
 [12] 
 
The City Flour Mills, operated by Schutt & Newman, were at the 
 south end of La Salle street. The Green & Stadden mill at Dayton 
 was four miles up the Fox river from Ottawa. The Aqueduct mill, 
 operated by James Keeler, was on Champlain street near the Illinois- 
 Michigan canal. 
 
 Four firms in 1855 built 500 wagons in Ottawa, keeping a small 
 army of workmen busy the year around, and the total value of their 
 output was $25,000 for one year. 
 
 In the same year there were constructed in Ottawa 1,000 plows 
 to break the tough prairie sod. Reapers were built here, cooper shops 
 flourished, and the King Sash Factory employed forty-five men. 
 
 Contractors in 1855 did a business of $385,000 in Ottawa. Two 
 new schools, five homes and a $40,000 artificial gas plant were built. 
 
 The total value of all goods made in the city in 1855 was over 
 $800,000. The grain and flour trade had a value of $1,100,000, while 
 the lumber trade amounted to $170,000. Merchandise sales amounted 
 to $1,000,000. Hotels took in $150,000, canal tolls were $17,000, and 
 Rock Island receipts $52,000. Ottawans in 1855 purchased 10,000 rail- 
 road tickets. 
 
 The city had the usual number of groceries, clothing merchants, 
 general stores, saloons and seventeen dry goods stores. The pioneer 
 store of the city was that of George E. Walker, which was established 
 at what is now 125 West Main street. 
 
 Orcutt and Jencks in the days when Lincoln visited Ottawa carried 
 the mail between the city and Aurora, through Newark, Bristol and 
 Oswego. The mail left Ottawa at 9 a. m. on each Tuesday, Thursday 
 and Saturday and arrived at Aurora at 9 p. m. the same day. 
 
 The city had two red-hot political organs, the Free Trader, suc- 
 cessor to the Illinois Free Trader, founded in 1840, and the Ottawa 
 Republican, which was founded as the Constitutionalist in 1844. The 
 former was a Democratic paper and the latter a Whig and then a Re- 
 publican publication. 
 
 The churches of the city, St. Columba Catholic, the Congregational, 
 Christ Episcopal and the Baptist, were founded in the period between 
 1838 and 1841. The Methodist church dated back to 1833. Lincoln 
 attended the Congregational church, then situated at what is now 315 
 Madison street, when he was a guest of Ottawans. St. Joseph's con- 
 vent was established in 1859. 
 
 These show only the business, commercial and industrial sides of 
 the city as it was long ago. From the endless stream of pioneers 
 pouring into Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas and Nebraska the city 
 drew a brisk trade which formed the foundations of comfortable 
 fortunes. 
 
 The morals of the town, despite the editorial scoldings of the week- 
 ly newspapers, were no better and no worse than those of other towns 
 
 [13] 
 
of the same size and the same period. The majority of people led a 
 hard, rough life in a new country. 
 
 On the other side of the picture was that of a city whose leaders 
 in intellect, in brilliancy of mind, in achievement, of contribution to the 
 welfare of the nation and state were not surpassed by those of any 
 other American city of the same size. Their work, like that of Lincoln, 
 endures. 
 
 Such was the city as Lincoln knew it, a city which in three years, 
 between 1850 and 1853, doubled in side. In the former year its popu- 
 lation was 3,200, while in 1853 it had grown to 6,400, where it re- 
 mained until the Civil war broke out. 
 
 CANAL COMMISSIONER 
 
 A COMMISSION to hear claims against the Illinois-Michigan canal 
 was established by act of the General Assembly in June 1852, and 
 Lincoln and Noah Johnston, the latter of Mt. Vernon, were appointed 
 members. During November 1852 the Free Trader, at Ottawa, under 
 the signature of Lincoln and Johnson, carried the advertisements that 
 the commission would sit at Ottawa. 
 
 The advertisement read: "To claimants on account of the Illinois 
 and Michigan canal. All claimants within the provisions of an act of 
 the General Assembly of the state of Illinois, entitled An Act to con- 
 stitute a commission to take evidence in relation to certain claims, 
 approved June 23, 1852, are hereby notified that the undersigned, two 
 of the commissioners in said act, will meet on the 3rd day of December 
 next at Ottawa, on the line of said canal, for the purpose of taking evi- 
 dence according to said act. Dated October 28, 1852." 
 
 Where the commission sat at Ottawa is not known. It may have 
 been in the old weather-beaten, small, state Toll Collector's office, 
 off Columbus street at the canal, or the commission may have met in 
 one of the numerous grain elevators then lining the canal proper as 
 well as the lateral canal. 
 
 The commissioners remained at Ottawa from December 3 to 8, 
 probably the longest stay that Lincoln ever made in the city. 
 
 December 11 the Free Trader carried a brief item saying, "The 
 commissioners to take evidence on canal claims have gone to Chicago. 
 They have appointed our late Sheriff, R. Eaton Goodell, as their clerk." 
 
 Goodell, at twenty-five, had finished a two-year term as Sheriff a 
 short time before the canal commissioners met at Ottawa. He mar- 
 ried a daughter of Governor Joel Matteson, of Illinois, whom Lincoln 
 represented in a law case at the April 1859 term of the state Supreme 
 Court at Ottawa. All court records showing that Lincoln handled the 
 case here are missing, but since it was a very important one it is al- 
 together likely that he did appear at Ottawa on behalf of Matteson. 
 The trip here was probably the last one that Lincoln made to the city. 
 
 [14] 
 
ILLINOIS CENTRAL 
 
 (JnE of the life lines of the Union army, the Illinois Central rail- 
 road was built with the aid and cooperation of the giants of the nation 
 in the decade that preceded the Civil war. 
 
 Over it poured thousands of men and vast amounts of supplies for 
 the northern armies in the western theater of war. It was an artery 
 of supply which raiding Confederate troops never severed, to leave the 
 Union forces in a precarious position. 
 
 Stephen A. Douglas, perennial opponent of Lincoln in politics, was 
 one of the leaders in the long battle to construct the Illinois Central. 
 Another was Judge Sidney Ereese, of the Illinois Supreme Court. 
 Still others who backed the railroad project were such farsighted 
 statesmen as Senators Henry Clay, Thomas H. Benton, John C. Cal- 
 houn, Lewis Cass, Jefferson Davis, James Shields, William R. King, 
 William H. Seward and Sam Houston. They were aided by Repre- 
 sentatives in Congress William Bissell, John A. McClernand, attorney 
 and fellow townsman of Lincoln, John Wentworth and Alexander H. 
 Stephens. 
 
 September 26, 1850, President Millard Fillmore signed the land 
 grant act providing for construction of the Illinois Central railroad 
 from a point at or near the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers 
 to the terminus of the Illinois and Michigan canal at La Salle. A 
 branch line was to be built from there to Galena, in the northwest 
 corner of the state. 
 
 Burdened with a debt of $17,000,000 from its disastrous venture 
 into canal and railroad building ten years previous, there was much 
 opposition in Illinois to the state embarking on another railroad build- 
 ing venture. Opposition was overcome, and on February 15, 1851, the 
 Illinois General Assembly granted the charter to the railroad. Pros- 
 perous and astute eastern business men and financiers were in the 
 group to which the charter was made out. These included David A. 
 Neal, Boston shipowner; Robert Schuyler, pioneer railroad man; 
 Franklin Haven, banker; John Sanford, Indian agent and fur trader; 
 Jonathan Sturges, coffee importer; Thomas Ludlow, American agent 
 for the great Dutch banking house of Crommelin, and many others. 
 
 The line was surveyed through La Salle county. South of La Salle 
 a change was made in the location of the proposed line. The em- 
 bankments and sodded piers on which stone was to be placed for 
 bridge heads are still to be seen. The railroad took a different route. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln, prior to his nomination for the presidency in 
 1860, represented the Illinois Central in many important law cases. 
 He never failed to acknowledge the vital part that Douglas played in 
 backing the railroad construction or to commend him for his vision in 
 so doing. 
 
 [15] 
 
In an article published in the Illinois Central magazine for July 
 1913, under the title "The Illinois Central Railroad, When It was 
 Young," W. T. Dowell, of Memphis, Tenn., wrote: 
 
 "In the winter of 1856 I was in a snow-bound train south of La Salle 
 for two days and nights. The mercury stood at thirty degrees below 
 zero, and as there were no sleeping cars at that time and the road 
 used wood (not coal), we kept warm by continually poking wood into 
 the stoves and slept as best we could when not laughing at Abraham 
 Lincoln's stories. He was at that time one of the attorneys for the 
 Illinois Central and had been in Ottawa attending the Supreme Court, 
 looking after a case for the road. 
 
 "While we were snowbound one day, in speaking of the railroad 
 and its future, Mr. Lincoln said, 'Too much credit can not be given 
 Judge Stephen A. Douglas for his foresight in getting the bill through 
 the United State senate ceding alternate sections of land to the Illinois 
 Central company along the line of the proposed railroad, which en- 
 abled the company to build its road. While the road is new, and of 
 course not as well equipped as one would like it to be, the day is not 
 far distant when the seven per cent gross earnings of the road will 
 pay the running expenses of the state, economically administered/ " 
 
 A PARTY IS BORN 
 
 OTTAWA in the ten-year period that preceded the outbreak of the 
 Civil war was a hotbed of politics, which is easily understood, for the 
 city was the home of some of the best attorneys in the Middle West, 
 and law and politics since time immemorial have been inextricably 
 mixed. 
 
 Lincoln had two purposes in coming to Ottawa. One was to trans- 
 act legal business in the courts; the other, and it far overshadows in 
 importance any law case that he ever tried here, was to mix with 
 attorneys who attended the courts, coming from all sections of the 
 northern and central parts of the state. 
 
 He was the master politician of his day, one of the old-time, horse- 
 swapping, give and take, attack and counterattack type of politicians 
 whose likes are few and far between. In the difficult art of lining up 
 support for his policies and in keeping that support he had no superior 
 in his day. His hand on the pulse of public sentiment through his in- 
 numerable contacts with lawyers, politicians, old friends, statesmen 
 and professional men apprised him of changes in public sentiment long 
 before others suspected them. 
 
 By the middle of 1854 there was strong agitation all through the 
 north for the formation of a new political party, and in this Lincoln 
 took the keenest interest. Ottawa men were among the leaders in 
 the move in Illinois, and it is to the eternal credit of Ottawa that its 
 
 [16] 
 
attorneys and other prominent citizens took such an important part in 
 the formation of a political party which gave the world one of its 
 immortal statesmen and humanitarians. 
 
 The repeal of the Missouri Compromise had precipitated bloody 
 and bitter civil war in the Kansas territory between the Free-Soilers 
 and those who wished to see slavery established in the territory. 
 Money was gathered and donated in Ottawa and other northern towns 
 to help free-soil settlers in "bleeding Kansas" preserve the territory 
 from the encroachments of slaveholders. 
 
 The Free Trader and the Republican in Ottawa at that time were 
 filled with lurid tales of the guerilla warfare being waged on the west- 
 ern prairies between white men, while savage Indians hung on the 
 flanks of northern and southern men, slaying each alike with impar- 
 tiality and with equal brutality. 
 
 Ottawa was the birthplace of the name "Republican" for the new 
 party in process of formation in 1854, out of the ruins of the Whig 
 party, which for so many years had unsuccessfully opposed the all- 
 powerful Democrats then in control of national affairs. 
 
 June 25, 1854, there was printed in the Ottawa Weekly Republican 
 a call for a county convention under the signature of Judge E. S. 
 Leland, of Ottawa. 
 
 "The Republican party," the call said, "originated from a belief 
 that the institution of human slavery was a great wrong, and because 
 of strong disapprobation of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise 
 and of the conduct of the northern politicians who were disposed to 
 tolerate slavery in consideration of the assistance which they hoped 
 to receive from the people of the slave states in obtaining the honors 
 and emoluments of office." 
 
 August 1, 1854, five hundred farmers gathered in the court house 
 square at Ottawa to take part in the convention. Many left their har- 
 vest fields and paid the unheard of sum of $10 per day to harvest 
 hands to work in the fields while their employers took part in the 
 solemn deliberations attendant on the formation of a new party. 
 
 Heading the list of prominent men elected to carry on the work of 
 the convention were Judge Leland, president; E. T. Bridges, La Salle; 
 T. Hampton, publisher of the Republican, at Ottawa, and J. F. Linton, 
 of Peru, one of the publishers of the Peru Daily Chronicle. Hampton 
 and Linton were convention secretaries. 
 
 Out of the deliberations of the meeting came long resolutions 
 which condemned the further spread of slavery and expressed fear 
 that neither the Whigs nor the Democrats as they were then managed 
 could be relied on to present candidates who would be true to the prin- 
 ciples of freedom. The convention thanked the representatives in the 
 General Assembly and in the halls of Congress for their opposition to 
 slavery. It pledged itself not to work for any candidate unless he was 
 opposed to the further spread of slavery. 
 
 [17] 
 
The convention elected delegates to a convention at Bloomington 
 September 12, at which a congressional candidate of the Republican 
 party was to be nominated. It set September 2 as the date for the 
 La Salle county Republican convention at which county and legislative 
 candidates were to be named. 
 
 Many prominent men who had cast their lot with the new party 
 doubted the wisdom of the name "Republican." That was brought out 
 at the Bloomington convention when Jesse O. Norton was nominated 
 for congress. After much debate the name "Republican" was adopted, 
 and the party principles drawn up at Ottawa were approved. 
 
 Newspaper stories carried an account of a mass meeting at Bloom- 
 ington October 5, and called it an "Anti-Nebraska meeting." 
 
 Lincoln was among those who doubted whether the word "Repub- 
 lican" should properly be applied to the new party, in which he was 
 keenly interested and whose greatest and immortal standbearer he 
 was to become four years later. 
 
 In the fall of 1856 Lincoln took the stump for the Republican ticket 
 of John C. Fremont for president and William L. Dayton for vice 
 president. 
 
 He stumped the length and breadth of the state of Illinois, making 
 in all over fifty speeches, in one-day stands, with other orators and 
 those seeking office on the Republican ticket. 
 
 Ottawa was on the itinerary of Lincoln and his fellow campaigners, 
 and the rally was held here October 7, in Washington park, then en- 
 closed with an iron fence. 
 
 The Chicago Daily Journal of October 8 had the following to say 
 of the meeting at Ottawa: 
 
 "What Has Caused This Great Commotion? 
 "Glorious Meeting at Ottawa 
 "Twenty Thousand in Council 
 "Lincoln, Lovejoy, Yates, etc. 
 
 "Ottawa, October 7. 
 
 "Today has been a great and glorious day for old La Salle. Her 
 freemen gathered in thousands from every hill and valley and came 
 up to honor freedom by their presence and pledge themselves anew to 
 her name. 
 
 "Of the many large meetings I have thus far attended in the state 
 the one held here today equalled the best of them in numbers and 
 enthusiasm. 
 
 "The crowd is variously estimated. The best idea of the hosts 
 present is to give the number of teams in the procession, which by 
 actual count were nine hundred and seventy-six — one, two, four and 
 six horse, beside the immense throng on foot, which had poured into 
 the city by railroads. Three stands were occupied. 
 
 [18] 
 
"From Stand No. 1 Messrs. Trumbull and Lincoln addressed the 
 people, each of whom made their best speeches. I never listened to 
 more clear, convincing, and effective public speaking. Stand No. 2 
 was occupied by Messrs. Lovejoy and Bross. The speeches of both 
 were excellent — that of the former being one of the most eloquent I 
 ever listened to. 
 
 "At Stand No. 3 addresses were delivered in German, and judging 
 from the plaudits of the Germans, I should think the speakers had en- 
 kindled considerable enthusiasm among their countrymen. Mr. Kreist- 
 man, of Chicago, was principal speaker. 
 
 "A free entertainment was given by the citizens of Ottawa, and 
 ample justice was done to their bounteous repast. 
 
 "In the evening a large crowd still lingered in town. They were 
 called together at the Court House, where the Hon. Richard Yates 
 enchained them in a burning and impassioned speech of great force. 
 
 "Altogether, you may congratulate our friends in La Salle on the 
 distinguished success of their meeting. It was an era of this glorious 
 campaign. 
 
 "Messrs. Lincoln, Lovejoy and Trumbull go from here to attend the 
 grand mass meeting at Joliet tomorrow, from which place you will 
 again hear from VERITAS." 
 
 Where the Journal was laudatory in its story of the meeting at 
 Ottawa the Free Trader was gently cynical, and poked fun at the 
 Fusionists and their meeting. Yet today, after the lapse of so many 
 years the mild sarcasm and ridicule that the Free Trader heaped upon 
 those who spoke and those who sponsored the meeting remains an 
 accurate and illuminating commentary of the times and of the great 
 day in Ottawa. 
 
 The Free Trader, in its issue of Saturday, October 11, said of the 
 meeting here: 
 
 "The Fusionist Gathering On Tuesday 
 
 "Tuesday was the great day of Fusionism in Ottawa — a day for 
 which the note of preparation had been sounding for the last four 
 weeks. No means, no machinery had been neglected to make this the 
 great gathering of the campaign in northern Illinois. A great ox 
 roast and free dinner had been prepared — a splendid pageant in the 
 way of a procession and great orators innumerable to exhort and ani- 
 mate and cheer the drooping spirits of the Fremonters. 
 
 "The Democracy, in view of the immense preparations, commenced 
 in season to brace themselves against the coming tempest, expecting 
 of course to be overawed by the display and lost and swallowed up in 
 the surging masses. 
 
 "At length the great and notable day came. Never shone a more 
 benignant sun upon a more beautiful morn. At an early hour flags 
 and streamers innumerable began to span our principal streets and 
 
 [19] 
 
dozens of excited marshals, on prancing steeds, rushed furiously in 
 every direction. Presently a column of dust is seen approaching from 
 the north, and away rush twenty marshals in blue ribbons to greet the 
 delegates from Newark. Another column approaches from the south, 
 and a dozen marshals rush in that direction. And so on in squads of 
 two, three and half a dozen of teams, they continue to arrive until 
 noon, when the order proceeds to form the procession. Happily it is 
 placed in array on Main street directly in front of our office and we 
 can see it. In an hour it is ready and the huge column gets in motion. 
 
 " 'Well,' say some Democrats, gathering courage and eyeing the 
 procession askance, 'this is not so great an affair after all. Let's go 
 and count it.' 
 
 "They station themselves at different points and count, and the 
 following is the result agreed upon by all, without a variance of a 
 dozen, as the procession passed the corner of La Salle and Madison 
 streets, where it was fullest: 
 
 "Vehicles of all sorts— 197. 
 
 "Men, women and children in wagons and on foot — 930. 
 
 "Looked like voters — 382. But to be liberal we shall concede 200 
 wagons in the procession and 1,200 people of all ages and sizes. There 
 were certainly no more. 
 
 "The speakers' stands were erected in the new public square (Wash- 
 ington Park) and thither in the afternoon we betook ourselves to see 
 what was going on. At one stand we found Deacon Bross blowing and 
 sweating apparently over some editorial cut from the Democratic 
 Press. At another stand Trumbull was telling what he did in the sen- 
 ate, and at a third stand a German was talking. About 4 o'clock the 
 crowd was largest, and we asked some Fusionist, 'How many people 
 do you estimate are now in the square?' 'Oh, ten or twelve thousand, 
 at least.' Well, let us figure on it a little. So we figure. The square, 
 pretty tightly packed, will hold 25,000 people. Is it half full? No. 
 Is it a quarter full? No. About an eighth? Yes; that is a liberal 
 estimate. So this immense crowd does not exceed 3,000 people, men, 
 women and children. But there are many outside, around town. Well, 
 say 2,000 more. That makes the great mass demonstration 5,000, and 
 no more, and we will stake everything on it, did attend the meeting 
 on Tuesday, including Democrats and all. 
 
 "But how this world is given to lying. Deacon Bross goes home to 
 Chicago and writes an account of the affair for his paper, the Press, 
 and says: 
 
 " 'By actual count, there were nine hundred and seventy-six wagons 
 in the procession, many of them four and six horse teams. The ex- 
 citement and enthusiasm as it moved through the principal streets 
 were intense. Beside the procession, the city was full of teams, and 
 
 [20] 
 
the intelligent citizens of La Salle and adjoining counties crowded the 
 streets on every side. The lowest estimate we heard anyone make of 
 the number of persons was from ten to twelve thousand.' 
 
 "That will do for a deacon. Nine hundred wagons would make a 
 procession five miles long, enough to fill all the streets in Ottawa east 
 of Fox River. 
 
 "Besides Bross and Trumbull, Lovejoy, Lincoln and Yates were the 
 only other speakers. Bissell, although promised on the bill, of course, 
 did not show up." 
 
 THE BAR OF OTTAWA 
 
 oELDOM has a small city of 6,500 people been represented at the 
 bar by such a brilliant assemblage of attorneys as those who made 
 their homes in Ottawa in the quarter century between 1850 and 1875. 
 
 Justices, an ambassador, state officials, brilliant leaders in their 
 profession, soldiers, and men who held important posts in the federal 
 government service were then among the members of the bar of 
 Ottawa. 
 
 Best known, perhaps, of all this group of prominent attorneys was 
 Justice John Dean Caton, of the Illinois Supreme Court, who laid the 
 foundation for much of the court procedure of later years and exerted 
 a powerful influence over the Middle West in its formative years. He 
 was an industrialist, a historian, organizer of a scientific society and 
 a host without a peer. 
 
 Judge E. S. Leland was one of the original members of the Appel- 
 late Court of Illinois, when it was organized in 1877. He had served 
 on the Circuit Court bench of La Salle county. His greatest work 
 was the writing of the platform of the principles of the newly organ- 
 ized Republican party, at Ottawa, in 1854, a platform which was 
 adopted throughout the northern states. 
 
 Washington Bushnell served as State's Attorney of La Salle 
 county from 1856 to 1860, and from 1860 to 1868 as State Senator. 
 Upon leaving that office he served as Attorney General of Illinois for 
 five years. His keen legal mind and roaring voice were famed through- 
 out the state of Illinois. 
 
 Burton C. Cook was State Senator from the county from 1852 to 
 1860, and in the spring of 1861 was made a member of the ill-starred 
 peace conference which in vain tried to reconcile the differences be- 
 tween the North and South to prevent the Civil war. He was a mem- 
 ber of congress from 1865 to 1873. Totally lacking in a sense of hu- 
 mor, he took life seriously. 
 
 Justice T. Lyle Dickey also served on the state Supreme Court 
 bench. He was captain of a company of volunteers in the Mexican 
 
 [21] 
 
war, and raised the Fourth Illinois Cavalry for Civil war service. His 
 service on the Supreme Court bench was from 1875 to 1888. Prior to 
 that he had been Circuit Judge in La Salle county. 
 
 Minister to the Argentine, through appointment by President 
 Andrew Johnson in 1866, Madison Hollister added to the fame and 
 brilliance of the Ottawa bar. He was Circuit Judge from the county 
 from 1855 to 1866. Following his service as ambassador he moved to 
 Idaho and became a justice on the territorial Supreme Court. 
 
 Lorenzo Leland was Circuit Clerk in La Salle county from 1842 to 
 1849, and later was clerk of the Supreme Court at Ottawa from 1849 
 to 1869. 
 
 J. 0. Glover, also an attorney, and Lincoln's host at the time of 
 the debate in 1858, was appointed United States district attorney for 
 northern Illinois by President U. S. Grant in 1871. He also was mayor 
 of Ottawa in 1858. 
 
 Among other prominent attorneys of the day known to Lincoln 
 through his attendance on court cases here were Oliver C. Gray, who 
 had served in the Mexican war; E. F. Bull, brilliant criminal lawyer; 
 Judge Chas. Blanchard, Judge H. G. Cotton and Judge J. C. Champlin. 
 
 GENERAL W. H. L. WALLACE 
 
 W. H. L. WALLACE, State's Attorney of La Salle county from 1852 
 to 1860, was a veteran of the Mexican war. 
 
 Soldier, attorney and politician, Wallace sought appointment from 
 Lincoln to the post of United States District Attorney for the North- 
 ern District of Illinois. 
 
 Lincoln received a petition signed by La Salle county residents 
 asking that the appointment be given to Wallace rather than to a 
 Cook county man, on the grounds that the latter county already 
 was the prospective recipient of several other important federal 
 appointments. , 
 
 January 11, 1861, Wallace wrote his wife from Springfield, giving 
 a glimpse of the crowded condition of the city, where politicians had 
 swarmed to seek office from the harassed Lincoln. Wallace said in 
 his letter: "I have seen Mr. Lincoln two or three times since I have 
 been here, but only for a moment, and he is continually surrounded by 
 a crowd of people. He has a world of responsibility and seems to feel 
 oppressed by it. He looks careworn and more haggard and stooped 
 than I ever saw him." 
 
 Two months passed; Lincoln took the oath of office in Washington, 
 and Wallace described the scene in a letter to his wife. He said in 
 part, under date of March 5, 1861: "Yesterday I looked upon a scene 
 which realized my dearest political hopes. I saw an honest and able 
 
 [22] 
 
man stand up before his countrymen in the presence of the repre- 
 sentatives of the civilized world and surrounded by the insignia of 
 power and without mental reservation take the solemn oath to pro- 
 tect and defend the constitution of our country and to take care that 
 its laws be enforced. It was an imposing scene. Conservative men 
 of all parties here are gratified with the tone and spirit of the Presi- 
 dent's address, and the direct and honest manner in which he met and 
 dealt with the exciting questions of the day marked him at once an 
 honest and capable man. 
 
 "He had been so abused and misrepresented that the great mass 
 of people here who did not know him were as much surprised at his 
 ability as they were pleased by the spirit of his first official act. The 
 fearful feeling of foreboding that seemed to pervade the whole at- 
 mosphere is changed to one of confidence and trust in the future. 
 
 "I have seen Mr. Lincoln but twice since I have been here. I called 
 today with about 500 other people from Illinois to pay our respects 
 to Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln in their new home. Mr. Lincoln seemed per- 
 fectly at home — that is, he was as awkward and easy there as he was 
 in Illinois. Mrs. Lincoln seems to support the dignity of her new 
 place with becoming grace. * * * I expect to see Mr. Lincoln tomor- 
 row and put my application before him." 
 
 On March 9 Wallace wrote: "Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln held their first 
 reception or levee last night. The throng was immense; ladies' crino- 
 lines suffered mercilessly. The crowd was thickly sprinkled with gay 
 uniforms of the army and navy and the diplomatic corps. Mr. Lincoln 
 wore white kid gloves, and worked away at shaking hands with much 
 the same air and movement as if he were mauling rails." 
 
 Early in May 1861 Wallace was appointed colonel of the 11th Illi- 
 nois Infantry by order of President Lincoln, and within a few weeks 
 he was on his way south — and to death — with his regiment. It was 
 cut to pieces at Fort Donelson, Tenn., February 1862, in the first of 
 the series of union victories in the west, which were a welcome con- 
 trast to the repeated reverses of the northern forces in Virginia that 
 same year. 
 
 Wallace was given charge of a brigade February 2, 1862 and re- 
 ceived his official commission as a Brigadier General March 21, 1862. 
 He died at Savannah, Tenn., April 10, 1862, from a bullet wound 
 through the head received at the battle of Shiloh, Tenn , April 
 6, 1862. He was buried on the north bluff, Ottawa, amid mourning 
 by the city. 
 
 LINCOLN AND NASH 
 
 JOHN FISKE NASH for more than half a century was one of the 
 leading men of Ottawa who met Lincoln many times prior to the time 
 he left Springfield forever, in February 1861. 
 
 [23] 
 
He first saw and heard Lincoln at Hennepin, Illinois river port 
 town, in the spring of 1846, when he (Nash) taught school in the 
 village, and Lincoln and Peter Cartwright were opponents for election 
 to congress. 
 
 Innumerable tales are told of Cartwright, one of the famous cir- 
 cuit-riding preachers of Illinois, who at eighty was still in the field, 
 performing marriages, conducting funerals, baptizing babies and con- 
 verts and driving the devil from the frontier. 
 
 Cartwright was the only man who ever defeated Lincoln on a 
 straight vote of the people. That was in 1832, after Lincoln returned 
 from the Black Hawk war and campaigned for a seat in the state 
 General Assembly from the district embracing New Salem. 
 
 Not until 1846 did Lincoln and Cartwright again cross political 
 swords, and this time Lincoln won. Cartwright was on the Democratic 
 ticket, while Lincoln campaigned as a Whig. 
 
 One of the old time "hell fire and brimstone" preachers, Cartwright 
 warned his audiences that the fires of Hades and the tortures of the 
 damned waited all "infidels" who had not been "converted" to Chris- 
 tianity. He was using these tactics because Lincoln was not a "con- 
 fessed" member of any church. 
 
 The village of Hennepin was on the itinerary of Lincoln and 
 Cartwright. 
 
 Nash recalled how the school board met the question of what was 
 to be done, since the students wished to hear both campaigners. Those 
 were the days when grown boys and girls of eighteen to twenty years 
 of age attended grade schools in the late fall, winter and very early 
 spring. 
 
 The board was divided between Whigs and Democrats. The Whig 
 members agreed to the dismissal of school when Cartwright spoke in 
 the village, and in return the Democrats agreed to let school out when 
 Lincoln spoke. 
 
 Nash remembered that Lincoln spoke on internal improvements, 
 the necessity of constructing canals and of making other such contri- 
 butions to the general welfare of the nation; and he also dwelt on the 
 threat of war with Mexico. 
 
 Like so many other of his early speeches, as well as numerous 
 others made in later years, his remarks at Hennepin were not 
 preserved. 
 
 Lincoln went to congress. Cartwright went back to the pulpit for 
 many years to come, traveling the circuits of Illinois at a superannu- 
 ated age when other men of less physical vitality had retired to the 
 comfort of an easy chair, a book and the lightest of work. 
 
 Nash was Circuit Clerk of La Salle county from 1855 to 1859, and 
 had many contacts with Lincoln, though he was never at any time on 
 terms of intimacy with him. 
 
 [24] 
 
Of Lincoln, Nash said: "I saw him many times in Ottawa, for he 
 attended every court session. He made up his yarns as he went along, 
 as Hawthorne did his characters, but I never heard him tell a dirty 
 story. 
 
 "I heard him speak in Princeton and in Bloomington, as well as 
 in Ottawa. His voice was loud and harsh, and could have been heard 
 by 10,000 people as easily as 1,000, so powerful was it. He was not 
 so ornate as Phillips, so great a rhetorician as Edward Everett or as 
 great a word painter as Ingersoll, but he could convert more people 
 to his way of thinking than any man since Jefferson." 
 
 Nash heard Lincoln speak at the state fair in Springfield in 1854. 
 Douglas also spoke at the fair, and Nash said his voice sounded as 
 though it came from the Lord God of Hosts. 
 
 Nash was in Major's hall, in Bloomington, when the famous "lost 
 speech" of Lincoln lit the torch of freedom that Lincoln and the Re- 
 publican party four years later carried into the White House. 
 
 He was finance committee chairman for the Lincoln-Douglas de- 
 bate at Ottawa, August 21, 1858, and again the paths of Lincoln and 
 Nash crossed. 
 
 In the dark winter of 1860-1861 Nash was one of the secretaries 
 of the state Senate at Springfield. His appointment was made by 
 Washington Bushnell, of Ottawa, who had been elected state Senator 
 on the Republican ticket in 1860. 
 
 Nash met Lincoln many times that winter, prior to the departure 
 of the president-elect for Washington. Lincoln and Bushnell had 
 offices in the Johnson building, and Nash saw Lincoln when the former 
 had conferences with his advisers, friends, political associates and job 
 seekers, who thronged the city from November to February. 
 
 "Lincoln was very courteous to me and greeted me very cordially," 
 Nash said; "but we never at any time were on intimate terms." 
 
 Bushnell, in the spring of 1861, came to the Johnson building in 
 the dead of night and dictated to Nash the draft of a joint resolution 
 calling on Senator Stephen A. Douglas to address the combined House 
 and Senate, called into session to vote money for arms and supplies 
 for the Union troops. Governor Richard Yates had appointed a state 
 commission of five men from the Senate and seven from the House to 
 draft plans for the state's participation in the war with troops and 
 supplies. Douglas, death already beckoning, delivered one of his pow- 
 erful and appealing speeches, calling on Illinois to defend the Union 
 to the bitter end. 
 
 Nash last saw Lincoln on the day he left his home town for Wash- 
 ington to take the oath of office as President of a nation already 
 divided by sectional differences into two armed and bitter camps. He 
 was not, however, fortunate enough to hear that immortal and pathetic 
 
 [25] 
 
farewell of a man leaving his home, his town, his friends and the 
 scenes that he loved for all time, to face burdens the full weight of 
 which even he probably did not realize. 
 
 MEMORIES 
 
 J\. SCHOOL boy's memories of Abraham Lincoln as he appeared in 
 Ottawa on different occasions were cherished for many years by 
 Charles Dickey, now deceased, son of Justice and Colonel T. Lyle 
 Dickey, a warm friend but a political foe of Lincoln. 
 
 Dickey was a member of the Fourth Illinois Cavalry in the Civil 
 war, which was commanded by his father, who later, for several 
 months, was chief of cavalry on the staff of General U. S. Grant, in 
 the western theater of war. 
 
 A fine old gentleman, he was one of the last survivors of his Grand 
 Army post, as well as one of the last members of the Fourth Illinois. 
 
 The description that he left of Lincoln, as seen through the eyes 
 of a boy, is as good and in some cases better than any given by the 
 scores of writers, good, bad and indifferent, who have tried to describe 
 a man that nobody knew fully in depth of soul, patience, ability, mys- 
 ticism, sadness, and ironbound and inflexible will. 
 
 Of Lincoln, Dickey said: "I was a boy of thirteen or so when 
 Lincoln used to come to our house, on the north bluff. My father, 
 Judge Dickey, Judge David Davis and Lincoln were great cronies, 
 drawn together by their common profession and by their love of poli- 
 tics. All three were great admirers of Henry Clay, and were old-line 
 Whigs. When Clay died the party broke up, and there were left only 
 the Democrats, the Know-Nothings, and the Abolitionists. I heard 
 many a hot argument about them from the three men, my father, 
 Lincoln and Davis, who later became a justice of the United States 
 Supreme Court, while my father became a justice of the Illinois Su- 
 preme Court. 
 
 "When the Supreme Court sat at Springfield my father stayed at 
 the Lincoln home, and when the court sat at Ottawa Lincoln was a 
 guest of my father. I played chess with him many times, and usually 
 beat him, as Lincoln was not a good player. 
 
 "My father, who was a great admirer of Stephen A. Douglas, was 
 equally as good a friend of Lincoln. When the two were candidates 
 for the senatorship in 1858, my father tcok the stump for Douglas in 
 southern Illinois. Douglas was elected. But the fact that at the time 
 my father was Lincoln's political opponent in no wise affected their 
 friendship. 
 
 "Scarcely two weeks after his defeat, Lincoln came to our house- 
 as usual, and there was not the slightest change in his manner. He 
 did not resent the fact that father had 'killed him in southern Illinois.' 
 
 [26] 
 
He frankly told father that he believed the speeches he (Dickey) had 
 made in southern Illinois were responsible for his defeat. Other than 
 that remark there was no mention made of the matter, and they 
 settled down again to controversies in law with the best of feeling. 
 
 "Lincoln fascinated me in many respects," Dickey said. "When 
 I heard that he was coming I was always glad, for he was full of en- 
 tertaining talk, and his facial expressions as he related these stories 
 and incidents were to my boyish mind a thing to marvel about. After 
 he left I would try to imitate his comical expressions, much to the 
 amusement of my brothers and sisters. It came to be a sort of show, 
 and I was commanded many times to make Lincoln faces for the en- 
 joyment of my playmates. But I must add that this was all done in 
 the spirit of pure fun and never meant to reflect in any way or to 
 make sport of our visitor, for we all adored him. Little did we think 
 that he was to become one of the greatest figures to cross the pages 
 of American history. 
 
 "On Christmas day 1855 my mother died. My older brothers and 
 sisters could get along very well, but my younger brothers and sisters 
 and I were the problems. Lincoln and Judge Davis knew this worried 
 father. Lincoln offered to take me into his home in Springfield for 
 the rest of the winter, and Judge Davis, then at Bloomington, offered 
 to take my sister. I don't know what came up to prevent it, but my 
 sister and I stayed that winter with Judge Davis. I always regretted 
 the circumstances that deprived me of the great privilege of being a 
 member of the Lincoln household even for such a short period of time. 
 
 "Father, in the spring, moved to Chicago and opened a law office on 
 Dearborn street, and I joined him. We lived in a small room back of 
 the office, and it was my duty to buy the provisions for the house. I 
 needed money, and went down to court to see father to get it. Father 
 and Lincoln were opposing attorneys. Father would argue, and Lincoln 
 listened as he paced back and forth along the broad aisle of the court 
 room. His coat tails flew behind him as he grabbed his chin with his 
 hand from time to time and hung on to it and twisted his whole jaw 
 from side to side. He seemed to me to look very funny and quite 
 ridiculous, and I believe that was the first time his homeliness ever 
 presented itself to me." 
 
 One of the pioneer editors of Illinois was J. F. Linton, who with 
 his brother, N. Linton, in 1854 founded the Peru Daily Chronicle, one 
 of the first daily papers in the state outside the city of Chicago. 
 
 Linton, when the semi-centennial observance of the Lincoln-Doug- 
 las debate at Ottawa was held in 1908, wrote his observances on 
 Lincoln, only part of which follows, as the article is too long for a 
 short publication. 
 
 He said in part: "I first met Lincoln in September of 1854, and 
 last saw him in May of 1864. I had the good fortune to be with him, 
 
 [27] 
 
along with a dozen other guests, at Mayor Glover's table on the day 
 of the first debate at Ottawa, and to spend the evening with him at 
 his hotel in Freeport on the evening of the second debate. 
 
 "I was also favored by being a member of the 39th Illinois Infan- 
 try, the only Illinois infantry regiment on the eastern front in the 
 war. On the Rappahannock, near Falmouth, Lincoln paid us a friendly 
 visit and treated us all as though we were at least his cousins. 
 
 "Lincoln has been uniformly described as uncouth and abnormal, 
 while in fact he was an exceptionally good-looking man, being sym- 
 metrically developed, mentally, morally, and physically. He was as 
 self-possessed and easy in his manner as any man I knew." 
 
 GREAT DEBATE 
 
 1 HE young corn was green, in long brave rows, under a hot June 
 sun when Lincoln made his famous "house divided" speech. The wheat 
 was golden under a burning July sun when he and Douglas completed 
 their arrangements for the series of seven public debates in seven 
 different places in Illinois. 
 
 The oats were in long straggling rows in the clipped harvest fields 
 of August when the Rail Splitter and the Little Giant met at Ottawa 
 on August 21, 1858, in the first of the debates. 
 
 The hills flamed with gold and red and brown and scarlet when the 
 last of the debates took place at Alton on October 18, when the die 
 was cast and the fate of Lincoln and Douglas was in the hands of the 
 electorate. 
 
 Ottawa on August 21, 1858, was a vast human sea filled with a 
 crowd of from 10,000 to 15,000 people shuffling back and forth on 
 crowded wooden sidewalks. In effect, it was more like a huge and 
 overgrown county fair than the meeting of two giants of the time, 
 met to debate the gravest and most momentous issues of their day, on 
 the answer to which depended the future course of the nation and its 
 very life. 
 
 The impression that the crowd was in a holiday mood, whereas it 
 should have been in the mood to pay strict attention to what was be- 
 ing said by the opposing champions of two different and widely oppo- 
 site theories of government and of human relationship to government, 
 was aptly summed up long years later by Mrs. Hannah Patterson, of 
 Ottawa. She was one of the last survivors of the debate and recalled 
 the appearance of the great opponents for many years. 
 
 "I remember how the crowd had a holiday air," said Mrs. Patter- 
 son. "It seemed out of place to me, for those were serious questions 
 that Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Douglas were debating. The people paid 
 for the gayety of that day in the horrors of Civil war." 
 
 [28] 
 
A brassy sky beat down on the tremendous crowd in Ottawa on 
 the day of the debate, where a contest of giants, which had been in- 
 evitable since their paths first had crossed on the prairies of their 
 adopted Illinois, was about to take place. The crowd milled and jostled 
 restlessly for hours before the debaters squared off in the afternoon. 
 
 By canal boat, by train and by foot, by wagon and by carriage, on 
 horseback, in groups and alone, they had gathered from all of north- 
 ern Illinois, from the central part of the state, from Chicago, and even 
 from distant states, for the meeting of Abraham Lincoln and Stephen 
 A. Douglas in debate in an inland town in Illinois. 
 
 Roads were thick with dust and crowded with the thousands, all 
 headed toward Ottawa. Many started long before dawn from many 
 miles away in order to make sure they would reach the city by 
 afternoon. 
 
 Farmers suspended work, busy as they were, and went to Ottawa. 
 Hawkers and fakers set up their stands. The campfires had gleamed 
 all night in Ottawa before the debate. Taverns and inns did a rush- 
 ing business. 
 
 At noon the human sea, faces sunburned in the August heat, 
 dressed in their best, which only added to their discomfort, because 
 clothes then, the year around, were hot and heavy, started making 
 its way to the park. On the northeast corner the new building of the 
 Northern Grand Division of the Illinois Supreme Court was half com- 
 pleted. It was an object of interest to both Lincoln and Douglas from 
 a professional standpoint as attorneys. 
 
 Chicago newspapers sent their best writers to cover the debate. 
 These men used a new system known as shorthand in order to more 
 easily set down every word spoken by the two senatorial candidates, 
 Lincoln and Douglas. They were the objects of much curiosity to 
 that part of the tremendous crowd which got close enough to see them 
 at work. 
 
 Here, indeed, was a contest of mighty men. Douglas, native of 
 Vermont, where no slave had ever set foot and remained in bondage, 
 had come to Illinois, seeking his fortune. Here he had earned his first 
 money, here he had studied law, here the people of the state had hon- 
 ored him with election to the United States senate, and there he had 
 risen by his own talents to a position of power and honor. 
 
 His eyes were on the presidency, but first was this matter of dis- 
 posing of an ungainly tall man with the shock of black hair, who like- 
 wise had been honored by election to congress by the people of Illinois, 
 and who now was to engage him in debate at seven designated places 
 in Illinois. 
 
 Never in all American history had there been such a contrast, 
 physically and sartorially, between two men seeking such a high office 
 as that of United States senator from the same state. 
 
 [29] 
 
Douglas was short and thickset and was only five feet and one 
 inch tall. His hair was thick and dark brown, streaked with grey, and 
 his eyebrows were bushy over dark blue eyes. He had a pugnacious 
 appearance, his neck was short and thick and set on square shoulders, 
 while his hands were small and chubby. Usually he was elegantly 
 dressed, and when he ascended a platform to make a talk he looked 
 and talked like a great statesman. 
 
 By contrast, Lincoln was born in Kentucky, of poor-white parents, 
 in a state where the black man was held in bondage and where the 
 average white family was doomed to utter poverty. Tall and thin, 
 where Douglas was short and stocky; possessed of large hands and 
 large feet, where those of Douglas were small and dainty, almost 
 effeminate; carelessly dressed, where Douglas was elegent, as a rule. 
 Lincoln, nevertheless, in spite of his awkward appearance, possessed 
 the God-given gift of holding an audience to the strictest attention 
 when he had once warmed to his subject. 
 
 Farmers, attorneys, politicians, merchants, gamblers, adventurers, 
 and all the heterogeneous population of what was still a comparatively 
 new country in northern Illinois were, shortly after noon, gathered by 
 the thousands in and around Washington park. 
 
 The early comers gained the most advantageous spots, and the 
 balance crowded as close to the speakers as they could, adding to the 
 heat of a vast human sea which already had been burned brown by a 
 hot summer sun. 
 
 Lincoln's train had been met at the Rock Island station at noon 
 by a delegation of Republicans, who escorted him to the home of 
 Mayor J. 0. Glover. 
 
 Douglas came in from the west, by carriage from Peru, in a long 
 procession of carriages, wagons, riders and people on foot. The Demo- 
 crats were determined to give Douglas an even greater reception than 
 the one which the Republicans had manufactured for Lincoln. 
 
 Douglas was entertained at the Geiger House, headquarters for 
 the Democratic party for the day. 
 
 Notables occupied the platform with Lincoln and Douglas when 
 the debate got under way at 2 o'clock. Among them were old Chief 
 Shabbona, then past eighty years of age and with less than a year to 
 live; Mayor J. 0. Glover, 0. C. Gray, B. C. Cook, Washington Bushnell, 
 leading attorneys of the city; Arthur Lockwood, merchant; William 
 Reddick, whose beautiful home, now a public library, stands opposite 
 the northeast corner of the park; George Walker, merchant and first 
 Sheriff of La Salle county; Judge John V. A. Hoes, kin of former 
 President Martin Van Buren; J. F. Nash, banker and Circuit Clerk; 
 John Manley, hardware merchant; William Cogswell, industrialist and 
 ardent supporter of Douglas, and W. H. W. Cushman, who amassed a 
 fortune after the Civil war. 
 
 [30] 
 
Lincoln was in a genial mood. He mingled with the crowd, patted 
 school boys on the head, and told one of them, "Rub against people. 
 Learn from them. Don't be afraid if they are larger and know more. ,, 
 He picked up two other small boys, joked with them, and told their 
 mother, "Here comes Douglas; a little man in some respects but a 
 mighty one in others." 
 
 Parades wound their way through the streets, winding up just be- 
 fore the speakers started their orations. In the Lincoln parade were 
 carried rails and a maul, symbolic of the work that he had done in 
 southern Illinois, swinging the same type of maul on ash, oak, walnut 
 and butternut logs. 
 
 The heat was oppressive. Lincoln loosened his black string tie and 
 handed his coat to Burton C. Cook with the request to "Hold it while 
 I stone Douglas." 
 
 Lincoln's confidence was matched by that of Douglas, who had 
 every reason to believe that in short order he could dispose of this 
 tall man from the state capital in the first of a series of history-mak- 
 ing debates on the soil of their adopted state. 
 
 It may have been this confidence in his ability that led Douglas to 
 take a desperate and long chance of disposing of Lincoln and his 
 senatorial ambitions through falsely connecting him with the anti- 
 Nebraska state convention of 1854. 
 
 Douglas, speaking first, pulled from his pocket what was supposed 
 to be a copy of a newspaper containing the account of the anti-Ne- 
 braska meeting of 1854 and the resolutions drawn up at the meeting. 
 It was his purpose to present the accusation that Lincoln took part 
 in the meeting and drafting of the resolutions, so that he (Lincoln) 
 would have to use up all his time replying to the Douglas accusations 
 and would not have time to present his side of the questions to be de- 
 bated on. In such a manner did Douglas plan to dispose of Lincoln. 
 It was one of the few bad political moves that Douglas made. 
 
 The resolutions, condemning slavery and its further extension, and 
 condemning the men in public office who either openly condoned its 
 further extension or secretly worked with the advocates of the further 
 spread of slavery while publicly pretending to be opposed to it, were 
 read by Douglas. 
 
 He called on Lincoln to answer the charges, to defend himself be- 
 cause he had helped to draft the resolutions, and to deny, if possible, 
 that he had been connected with the convention. 
 
 Lincoln had not been present at the convention. He said so in re- 
 ply to Douglas, and disclaimed any knowledge of having had a hand 
 in the preparation of resolutions, which he said were drafted in Kane 
 county. 
 
 Then he went on to present his side of the debate, after he had 
 been cheered by the huge crowd of 10,000 or more people for laying 
 low what was a false accusation by Douglas. 
 
 [31] 
 
He charged that Douglas and former President Franklin K. Pierce, 
 Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, of the United States Supreme Court, 
 and President James Buchanan all had had previous knowledge of 
 what the Dred Scott decision would be before it was made public. He 
 enlarged on his previous charge that a conspiracy was on foot to make 
 slavery legal throughout the nation, north and south, east and west, 
 in free territory and in territory that was not yet organized as a state. 
 
 The Dred Scott decision, ruling that slaves could not become citi- 
 zens even when they had fled to the free north, had thrown that part 
 of the nation into an uproar of anger and unrest unparalleled in the 
 nation's history. It had been a boon, a Godsend to the Abolitionists 
 and further fuel for the flames of hatred sweeping the nation and 
 rapidly dividing it into two armed and hostile camps. Outwardly 
 they were still under the same flag. In reality, on the questions of 
 state's rights and of slavery, its extension or its eventual abolition,, 
 they were as far apart as the poles. 
 
 Lincoln at Ottawa laid the groundwork for future debates, where he 
 was to make accusations and propound questions in such a manner 
 that Douglas either must lose the south by replying in one way and 
 forfeit the presidency in 1860, or by answering in the opposite man- 
 ner lose the senatorship from Illinois in 1858. 
 
 Because Douglas occupied practically all his time at Ottawa in 
 first presenting his forgery that Lincoln had been connected with the 
 anti-Nebraska convention of 1854, and, in his rebuttal, in enlarging on 
 the same accusations, Lincoln is considered winner of the debate at 
 Ottawa. 
 
 The debate at Ottawa set the stage for the one at Freeport, on 
 August 27. There Lincoln maneuvered Douglas into a trap from 
 which the latter emerged with the senatorship of Illinois in his pos- 
 session, but with his hopes for the presidential nomination in 1860 
 blasted. 
 
 Following the debate, Douglas was hoisted on the shoulders of sev- 
 eral husky supporters and was carried to the Geiger House. Soon 
 after, he left town. 
 
 An equal number shouldered Lincoln and carried him, protesting, 
 for nearly three blocks before he finally wriggled loose and walked to 
 the Glover home. He told his bearers, as his long legs dangled in 
 the air and his lanky body was carried along over the heads of the 
 crowd, "Now, boys, let me down, please." After he gained his feet 
 he shook hands with his bearers, among whom are known to have been 
 J. L. Waterman, Lipman P. Reed and Lowry Reedy. 
 
 The next day Lincoln wrote to a friend, J. 0. Cunningham, "Doug- 
 las and I for the first time this canvass crossed swords here yester- 
 day. The fire flew some, and I am glad to know that I am yet alive. 
 There was a vast concourse of people — more than could get near 
 enough to hear." 
 
 [32] 
 
Part of the huge crowd lingered in town long after the debate. 
 They called on Owen Lovejoy for a speech, and he made one that night 
 from the porch of the Glover home, to the delight of a crowd of a 
 thousand or more people. 
 
 On Monday, August 23, Lincoln spoke at Henry, on the Illinois 
 river, in Marshall county, to a crowd of farmers who left their thresh- 
 ing to throng the little town forty miles down river from Ottawa. Of 
 the Henry meeting, the Ottawa Republican on August 28, said: "Mr. 
 Lincoln left Ottawa on the Monday morning train between three and 
 four o'clock to fill an appointment in the afternoon. He spoke at that 
 place about two and a half hours to a crowd that was variously esti- 
 mated at from two to five thousand. We learn by a gentleman of 
 this city who was present that he made an even better speech than 
 he did in Ottawa. 
 
 "In the evening Capt. 0. C. Gray, of this city, addressed a large 
 audience assembled there and he kept them in an uproar with telling 
 hits against the 'African amalgamation Democracy.' The Republicans 
 of the county are wide awake and determined to give their opponents 
 an overwhelming defeat in November." 
 
 Partisan as it is, the Republican description of Douglas when he 
 was making his charges that Lincoln had taken part in the anti- 
 Nebraska convention of 1854 and had helped to draft resolutions first 
 drawn up at Ottawa, before the convention was held, is nevertheless 
 an interesting example of the manner in which newspapers of the 
 time colored their stories to suit their editorial policies. The Republi- 
 can said of Douglas: 
 
 "We can give but little idea of the appearance of the speaker while 
 perpetrating his fraud. His face was livid with rage and despair; he 
 threw himself into contortions, shook his head, shook his fists; his 
 whole body shook as with palsy; his eyes protruded from their sock- 
 ets; he raved like a mad man. His voice at times descended to a de- 
 moniacal howl; and such looks as he gave his opponent. They were 
 those of a fiend in despair. The most considerate part of his wor- 
 shippers were disgusted with their champion. 
 
 "At the close of Douglas' hour Mr. Lincoln came forward and was 
 greeted with rousing cheers from full three-fourths of the vast crowd. 
 He disposed of Douglas' grand onslaught by simply affirming that he 
 was not at the convention mentioned, had nothing to do with its reso- 
 lutions and consequently was not subject to criticism on them, what- 
 ever they were. 
 
 "This was answer enough for a fair opponent. Having disposed 
 of this, he entered upon leading topics, and in a very gentlemanly and 
 masterly manner gave Douglas such an excoriation as he will not get 
 over before November. He did not retort on Douglas by proclaiming 
 his assertion 'infamous falsehood,' but intimated it was such. His 
 
 [33] 
 
references to Douglas' record upon Supreme Court decisions cut Doug- 
 las up so badly that he did not attempt to reply, but occupied most of 
 his closing half hour by enlarging on his forgery with more vehemence 
 than before. 
 
 "Subtract the forgery from his two speeches and there is nothing 
 left. Candid, intelligent men of all parties are free to say that Lincoln 
 won the field. Douglas lost friends and lost votes by the exhibition 
 he made of himself in Ottawa, and when his wilful forgery becomes 
 generally known, he must lose every decent man in his party." 
 
 "THAT MAN MAY BECOME FREE" 
 
 JL/IBERATORS have their monuments in public squares and places 
 in history books, but the true story of the struggle for human freedom 
 is told in the lives of humble men and humble women. 
 
 The story of war is told not in the monuments to the memory of 
 generals and admirals, whatever their ability, but in the hearts of the 
 same humble men and humble women who serve their nation to the 
 best of their ability, and if need be go to a nameless grave in defense 
 of what they believe is a just cause. 
 
 There are no public markers in Ottawa to the memory of John 
 Hossack, Scotch born grain trader; Sister M. Louise Berry, Irish born 
 Sister of Mercy; Mrs. Sarah Gregg, member of a militant family of 
 patriots, or Private Sam Ankney, of a company of Maryland Union 
 volunteers. 
 
 Yet the story of the struggle for human freedom, of war, of efforts 
 to relieve its terrors, and to preserve the Union is told in the lives of 
 these four. 
 
 The memory of Hossack lives on in the hearts of those who love 
 freedom, who hate tyranny and who have the courage to defy the law 
 if they consider it unjust, rather than submit supinely. His courage 
 led him to defy the Fugitive Slave law in 1859-60 by aiding escaped 
 negro slaves, so that he was jailed and fined in Federal Court in Chi- 
 cago, with other Ottawans. The confinement was nominal. City 
 officials took them riding and gave a banquet for them. The jailing 
 of men and women for defying the Fugitive Slave law was not popu- 
 lar in the north in 1859 and, 1860. 
 
 Mrs. Gregg left a millinery shop in Ottawa to become an army 
 hospital matron. She left a diary that gives the intimate, some- 
 times heartbreaking and rarely humorous aspects of life in the Union 
 hospitals of the Civil war period. Some of her comments on bureau- 
 crats of the times are acid, and could be applied without the changing 
 of a word to those of 1940. 
 
 Sister Berry went forth from Ottawa with the Sisters of Mercy to 
 the battlefields of the Civil war to nurse the wounded and the dying 
 
 [34] 
 
and to give them the last sacraments. She taught for many years in 
 St. Xavier's Academy, in Ottawa, and told her pupils of the awful 
 sights of the battlefields on which she had labored. 
 
 Private Ankney was one of the men who served his nation as a 
 spy, swimming rivers under fire to bring information of vital interest 
 to the Union armies. Badly wounded, when Richmond fell, he was in 
 the old and by now terrified city, dressed as a Jewish peddler, with a 
 pack on his back. He saw Lincoln, and probably Lincoln saw him, 
 but Ankney was forced to pass by the man who had written him a 
 letter of thanks for his services to the Union. Ankney went to a 
 grave in St. Columba's cemetery five years after the war, one of the 
 hundreds of thousands who had served the Union well in its hour of 
 need. 
 
 Lincoln went on to the martyr's chair in Ford's theater, to immor- 
 tality and world-wide adulation of all people who hold dear the prin- 
 ciples of human liberty, justice and freedom for which he gave his 
 life on Good Friday night. 
 
 \ 35 
 
31490- -ILLINOIS OFFICE SUPPLY CO., OTTAWA, ILL. 
 
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA 
 
 973.7L63BT52L C001 
 
 LINCOLN'S IN TOWN. OTTAWA 
 
 3 0112 031792168