Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: I deem it a great thing that Illinois, to-day equal to a kingdom in territory, industries, resources and population, is able to look back to sons who were exemplars of civil and military virtue-sons who dwelt in the cold, thin atmosphere of place and fame only to find wider fields of usefulness. That felicity is hers, its pride and consolation make tender her sorrow and chasten her sacrament of tears. Every resentment is hushed, every imperfection forgotten. Time has sweetened her grief with a portion of the refinement wrought by sorrow. Death, which clothes in turn the king and the outcast with equal fortune and majesty, has come between us and two citizens of this State, of late the first in rank and fame. But he has not touched their completed example through whose agency as an incentive other sons of Illinois may, in and of themselves, become their equals. Doubtless to close a war with honor, to wisely adjust questions of finance and commerce, to settle a dispute as to boundaries, to develop the resources of a nation, are large achievements. But who can point to any achievement in whose department of the military art or of American statesmanship which we can rank for its consequences above the Milligan decision of Judge Davis, concurred in by all his associates on the Supreme bench, which adjudged that military commissions organized during the civil war in a state not invaded and not engaged in rebellion, in which the federal courts were open and in the proper and unhindered exercise of their judicial powers had no jurisdiction to try,convict or sentence for any criminal offense, a citizen who is not a resident of a rebellious state, nor a prisoner of war, nor a person in the military or naval service, nor could congress invest them with any such power. That decision went to the legal extent of saying that an act of congress contrary at the constitution is null, and that the judicial department is clothed with the power to determine and declare such repugnancy It is certain that the framers of the constitulion intended it to be so. But to have asserted it against congress and the executive-to have vindicated it by a demonstration than which the reasoning of mathematics boasts nothing surer-this is an achievement which a thousand years may not exhaust, or reveal all the good. But for this decision there would have been no day when the property, the personal liberty and even the life of a man would have necessarily been safer here than in the worst days in Bagdad or Cairo. Bayonet and saber might have saved the gov ernment as the fathers framed it, but it would not have been worth the saving if, as an incident to its preservation, it had claimed to hold only in abeyance the right to annihilate the protection of law, and take away the liberties of a citizen. By placing on impregnable grounds the civil law as the sole rule of conduct, prescribing what is wrong and providing for the conviction for crime and its punishment, Judge Davis' achievement was as glorious as any in our annals. The Milligan decision was in harmony with the fundamental law and in line with other decisions long anterior, made under far unlike circumstances which time and the fever of exasperation attendant on internecine war had worn out of memory. By its wide-reaching and enduring importance it stands with the achievements of the Jewish king who found and again published the buried and forgotten tables of the law, hewn and written on Sinai. True it created no law, and this is its striking glory. It declared and made again operative the law which had decayed in vitality and ceased to have a soul, and by this declaration emancipated the people from a thraldom most profound-the caprice of an irresponsible, unauthorized commission which would seek to justify its existence by condemning those accused before it-a commission whose office was to find guilty those at the bar. It was no light thing to declare the law and assert its supremacy against congress and the centralized triumphant war power of the government, when popular clamor maddened by a fervor of hate cried for a species of wild justice more dangerous to liberty than the crime alleged to have been committed. The origin, the growth and fury of this clamor, the calculated value the decision would acquire if announced by Judge Davis, the life-long partisan of Lincoln, the Achilles in the struggle to nominate him for president, the executor of his estate, the guardian of his children, the unwearied politician for his country's sake, goes to my estimate of the grandeur of his conduct. Had he been a man to be moved by infirmities common to great minds even, he might have shrunk from a decision rebuking the babel of importunity for vengeance- a decision putting in jeopardy the popularity of a judge who had five times as a candidate for office tasted the significance of popular applause and the value of popular confidence. But David Davis sitting on the Supreme Bench as arbiter of individual rights, assailed by the policy of an administration he had helped to elect, in the room where Marshall in bronze still looks down on his successor and Webster's voice yet lingers, pronounced the decision which, easy now to utter, was not easy then. I do not say his achievement was brave, but it was the deed of a judge who held first and always that the rights, the liberties of the citizen must and shall be preserved. It was sublimer than heroism even as duty is sublimer than mere courage. To-day we are glad and proud that no one was ever convicted and punished for treason in our country. That pride and gladness would not be ours had not the Supreme Court checked and vanquished those military commissions established under the umbrage of officials sworn to obey and execute the law but who strangely erred in trying to substitute an unknown summary proceeding for the trial and punishment of crime in place of the regular, orderly, dispassionate, hallowed form of proceedings in tribunals under the law. A calmer estimate of its whole value being now possible, and the danger being overpast which then lowered over each one, it is now manifest that while arms saved the Union a decision of the Supreme Court rendered by Judge Davis saved liberty. The Union itself was worth saving no further than it and liberty are one and inseparable. I would not dwell on this so long were it not that yesterday is a great way off, and twenty years ago lies in the historic period. The majority of our people were then school children. They know the travail that brought forth the security and liberty now guaranteed only as a dim something foreign to their consciousness. I pray that they may know what it cost a former generation, that they may know who set up fallen safeguards and appreciate the nature of the work and its difficulties. It was not a Milligan who was on trial. He may lie dead or stick in a coventry where he longs for death. His name is preserved like the fly in amber and gives title to the case adjudicated only as to the legality of certain proceedings. Now we know the ultimate tribunal of the nation has pronounced that no matter what offenses against law or our sense of natural justice may be committed, the perpetrator must go unpunished and unmolested unless the law has declared his offense to be a crime and provided for his punishment. That judicial declaration is our magna charta of life and liberty. Affecting all and operating unspent, it will live while the nation has an organized being. The intellectual qualities of Judge Davis appear so nicely and exquisitely proportioned that we quite neglect to consider their largeness. We observe the judgment which was their resultant. We admire the logic which, rejecting verbiage, went at once to the principle in the subject or question he was considering. We expected that while circuit judge few of his decisions would be appealed from, and still fewer be overruled. His position on the circuit bench, to use his own language, was the sole one of the five conferred on him which fully suited his taste, and which he deemed himself fitted for. The few anecdotes of him indicate his humor, the steadfastness of his friendship, his practiced sympathy with young men, his benevolence and personal attention to the poor and suffering. I will not decide whether it was sarcasm, humor or a blunder in words when, subsequent to his one term in the General Assembly of this State, he sentenced a hardened malefactor convicted of highway robbery to seven years in the Illinois Législature. I believe, however, that listening to the voice of mercy he relented and suffered the felon to reside in the penitentiary for the same length of time. I have not heard that Judge Davis ever sought any official position which he held. He was a lawyer as distinguished from an advocate. The tone of his mind was judicial, and on the bench he did his great work. Consider the last court of which he was a member, that the rule of conduct imposed on its judges is hardly less rigorous than the restrictions thrown around clergymen, that corruption has not approached them, scandal has not leered as they pass by, that no whiter ermine is worn than decks its judges, that they are attended by profound knowledge of law, that their charac ters are tempered by virtue and graced with culture, and then consider that in that august body David Davis was an ornament and a glory, and that the great qualities and splendid preparation for ful fellowship with his brethren of the silken robe were not fudged up for the occasion, but had been the furniture of years. Being equal to his place, it was only a sequence that he never fell below expectation and often rose above it. An ardent republican until 1870, he was in 1872 a candidate in the national convention of the liberal republicans for the presidency. Five years later he entered the United States Senate in place of Gen. John A. Logan, the republican nominee for re-election. Here he constituted the independent party, holding the balance of power between the prevailing national parties. In this delicate and responsible rofe by discretion and moderation he gained and held the esteem and confidence of the Senate. As its presiding officer, he observed the conservatism of a lawyer with the impartiality of a judge. Any sketch however brief of his career, must be mainly a study of character. By no base art did he ascend to mighty stations of influence, and he used his power for the greatest good to all. Practicing at the bar, he hated the gilded dishonesty termed legal chicanery. On the bench he was the unsparing protector of the rights and interests of legatees, widows and orphans and the virile scourge of a prevaricating witness. He loved and respected the law and its upright adminis tration, as a Christian should his God. He insisted that the laws are for the defense of the right, and his decisions are vitalized by this purpose. His rise through intermediate grades to the chair of the Senate, was due to those knowing his worth, and confessing that in him was the rare quality which sees the end from the beginning. I am sure his greatness was all his own, the steady endeavor, the ambition to deserve well of his generation and his country, the benificence of his daily life were his own. The renown he gained was the effiux of qualities which owed to accident no more than a theater for their proper display. Though the man walks no more in and out before us, in the fullness of years ere his sinews shrunk, his eye grew dim, or his bones had lost their marrow, or his powers of usefulness had abated, he passed away. Death wrapped his mantle about him and he became invisible. But he cannot die until the vitality and good shall have fled from his famous decision. He is not dead. "There is no death! The stars go down to rise upon some fairer snore; And ever near us, though unseen, the dear immortal spirits tread; For all the boundless universe is life-there are no dead." Here, by these observances, Illinois laments and honors the wise citizen, the fearless judge, the stainless legislator, and holds his fame as no mean part of her heritage. Henceforth immortal, be his life his eulogy--Lis name his epitaph. Song, "Nearer my God to Thee," by the Quincy Quartette. Hon. William H. Collins, representative from Adams county, delivered the following address on the life and public services of Gen. John A. Logan: MR. PRESIDENT: The best tribute love can pay to the memory of the heroic dead is sympathetic interpretation of his character and service. The laurel wreath will fade, the monumental shaft will crumble to dust, but if we lay our hearts beside his till they learn the same beat, the same subtle force which made him noble will flow from him through our deeds and make them pure, through our lives and exalt them. A man's only imperishable monument is his contribution to the institutions and life of his age. The wealth and light of a luminuous personal life enriches and illuminates life itself. So we honor the hero by turning with sympathetic attention to those elements of nature which were the foundation of his character and made possible his brilliant career. Gen. Logan was of the people. He was born and reared on the frontier. He had not in early life the advantages with which older communities of wealth and culture endow their favorites. His culture was limited and provincial. His early political education was adverse to progressive ideas and high ideals. The dominant sentiment in Southern Illinois, during his boyhood, was not in sympathy with progress or with liberty as a principle. The spirit of the party of his inheritance tended to imbue his mind with the heresy of State rights. He became the apologist of slavery and even the champion and advocate of barbarous legislation on the "color line in his native State. The call of the country in the extremity of her peril was the divine voice to break the spell that bound him and call him to a nobler service. As the sun breaks through the barriers of cloud that bar his dawn and rises steadily toward meridian splendor, in the sublime courage of his convictions he "broke his birth's inviduous bar" and became the champion of national unity, the highest type of the volunteer soldier in the armies of progress and liberty. What, then, were some of the elements of his character and career? He was a man of rare physique. He had a sound mind in a sound body. All men who have greatly served the world have been men of large vital power. Nature in a prodigal mement had given him an opulent endowment. I first saw him early in the war on the streets of Cairo. He had on a plain cavalry suit, top boots and short jacket. He was just in from the batte of Belmont. I shall never forget my impression. He was not massive, but compact and sinewy. He had the "wrestling thews which throw the world." With swarthy face, elastic step, head poise like that of a gladiator upon his strong shoulders, and eyes as bright as meteors, he stood the personification of fiery energy. Phidias would have chosen him as a model of Mars. His exact measure in marble or bronze would have been the embodiment of manly beauty and martial power. He could make the cold ground his bed. He could bear heat, cold, rain, snow, thirst, hunger and fatigue. Sleepless nights of vigilance did not exhaust his vitality or impair the vigor of his brain. It is a compliment to earth to consign his body, now cold in death, to her motherly care. He had a correct conception of national unity. A man's fundamental faith is the key to his action Whatever may have been the impressions of his early life, or the spirit and philosophy of the party with which he then affiliated, the first delibera te blow which treason struck at the life of the nation, destroyed his last element of sympathy with the doctrine of state rights. Henceforward his final conviction and fundamental philosophy was that the States constitute a nation, one and indivisible, with an absolate and permanent sovereignty, limited only as defined by the constitution. Hence, in a war for the Union, he had no misgivings. Some of our generals were greatly weakened by their doubts as to the "right of coercion." They did not have, to sustain them in the field, an absolute conviction of the moral rightfulness of their cause. Not so with General Logan. Every fiber of his nature revolted at the conception of a country divided by a cordon of forts and confronting armies reaching from sea to sea. He could not see his flag torn to shreds. Rather than that the Mississippi should be vexed by a hostile keel, from Itasca Lake to the Gulf, he would have it roll red with patriot blood to "a sickened sea.` Rather than that the nation should be divided into states discordant, dissevered, belligerent, built upon the ashes of a dead republic with international relations, and dynastic as well as despotic ideas, he would have the last man who could lift a rifle surrender his life upon the altar of patriotic consecration. His conscience, his instinct of patriotism, his profoundest conviction, his passionate devotion to national unity, gave him the advantage which comes to a man in action who has the cordial consent of all his faculties. The He had a correct conception of the war. There were two theories of the civil war held by the loyal element of the North There were those who believed that the secession ordinances had been carried by the fraud and violence of politicians, and that the military task was to make war not on the States, but on armed mobs in the States, and that with the suppression of the mob, the States would gladly resume their former relations and the status of slavery would be undisturbed. other theory was that the army had to subdue a great rebellion; that the people of the seceding States were a unit in its support, and that it was impossible to wage a "gentle" war. The one thought that by proceeding in a spirit of compromise, the passions of war would disappear, the political philosophy of secession be abandoned and the Union be restored "as it was." The other recognized that there were fewer men at the South in sympathy with the Union than there were sympathizers with the rebellion in the North. They clearly saw that the war was to be waged till the military power ⚫ of the entire seceding States was utterly destroyed. General Logan personally knew the leaders of the rebellion. He knew Cataline in Rome. He read their purposes. He knew their aims and their power. He knew it was no insurrection of a few fire-eating enthusiasts. He had no purpose to fight them gently, nor did he propose to invade their soil in a spirit of deferent apology for rude interferHe did not propose to hold their personal chattels with one hand and fight with the other. He fought to the death. He fought to utterly crush and annihilate them. Secession was to him black and damnable treason. He would strangle it in its own blood. He would strike it blow on blow till ground to powder. His only question was how to strike it hardest. The swath of ruin cut by the scythe he helped to swing from Chattanooga to the sea,was the expression of his conception of the war. All the generals acting on the gentle theory of war were failures. Only those who, like him, rose to a true conception of it, achieved success, led their armies to victory and secured the lasting admira tion, gratitude and love of the nation. ence. He was in the highest sense a patriot. There is a subtle, indefinable, spiritual element in the devotion of a patriot. Gen. Logan's patriotism possessed him like the sense of chastity in woman, sustained by the same divine instinct. It was absolute devotion to an ideal. Love of country inspired him. As reason is the eye of God in the human soul, conscience is his voice and to that voice he ever listened. The call of conscience and of country was for him the same. He was ready to respond with a bound. Patriotism, which with a fine phrenzy rushes to the bloody sacrifice of battle, is the sublimity of altruistic devotion, akin to the sacrificial love which led the Savior to the cross. He was a soldier by nature. He was a born fighter. His quality as a military leader was not the result of study, training or reflection. It was endowment like the poetic or inventive gift. He was the consummate flower of the military spirit developed by republican institutions. He was the ideal soldier of democracy. Not a great strategist, he was a fighter and leader of men in actual battle. Possibly too impatient of the sober study which would plan a great campaign, he was the inspirer of the army and the trusted lieutenant to execute great tasks. His intense and impatient temper chafed at inaction and delay. He was not content in camp. It was when the bugle sounded for the battle that he was most himself. In camp he chafed against inaction, as an eagle beats with its pinions its prison bars, but when the storm cloud of battle burst, the "Black Eagle," delighted in its fury soared aloft on its fiery billows, and the shadow of his wings meant death to its foe. It was this passion of patriotism and soldierly instinct within him which furnishes the key to his unrelenting and bitter fight against what he conceived to be military insubordination or constructive disloyalty. His fight against Gen. Porter was not personal. But had he been present with the fifteenth corps at the second battle of Manassas, when Pope's right wing was being hard pressed, he would not for a moment have considered any questions of etiquette or personal feeling or military precedence. He would have leaped like a tiger to meet the terrible invitation of battle, and his troops would have kept step to the beat of his brave heart and marched toward the sound of the enemy's guns. There was something wonderful in his power to inspire men with contempt for danger and death. Those who saw him at the battle of Champion Hill will never forget that matchless presence as he road along the wavering line, his eyes flashing with tears and fire. They never will forget how that glorious spirit kindied the blood of that line of battle until it fairly leaped with a new inspiration, and the word "Forward" from his ringing voice was the doom of the foe, as if spoken by the iron lips of fate. I shall not attempt an estimate of Gen. Logan as a statesman. He passed from the saddle to the Senate. He was a man of much thinking rather than a man of much thought. He had not that profound genius which enlarges for the race the field of truth. He did not add to the intellectual life of the nation. He was not a master of literary art. He was a lense through whose crystal clearness the current of popular thought and passion was concentrated to a white heat and burned its way to practical results. He was an organizer. He was as brave, persistent and true in politics as in war. He held to his convictions and to his friends. He gave and received many blows, but no one could charge him with dishonor. His fidelity to his party was a soldier's fidelity to his army. He carried the military instinct into civil and political life. His devotion to his party was supreme. In his estimate of political forces he deemed its success essential to the welfare of his country. It may not be profane to stand with unshod feet, bared head and reverent spirit, upon the threshhold of his domestic life. The complete manliness of a man is to be suspected who does not win and wear as his joy and crown, as the best gift of God, the love of a woman. "I know Of no more subtle master under heaven Not only to keep down the base in man, And courtliness and the desire of fame, And love of truth and all that makes a man." There is one "into whose study of imagination" comes, appareled in most precious habit, every noble organ of the great soldier's life. "More moving delicate and full of life Than when he lived indeed." Her sympathy, devotion, help and love was his constant benediction. And while domestic love and home is the civil unit and the basis of civilization, the memory of that dual life and love shall be a priceless heritage of the American people. Art has gathered about the head of its loftiest ideal a concentering halo as indicative of celestial relationship and heavenly blessing; not less about the tender grace and beauty of their dual but blended life, gathers an aureole of radiant light. It was the complement and the relief of the hard and rugged life of the soldier and the politician. When the noise of battle, the musket's volley, the cannon's roar, the wild battle cry of charging lines, when the passionate struggles of political strife and the voice of the roaring multitude, was hushed, then came to him her presence with its sympathy, sweet peace and love, as in Beethoven's symphony, after a dark passage of torn, tangled and tormented chords, there breaks forth a strain of melody ineffably sweet. It may be said to those who gather about his grave: "He is not here, he is risen." A double immortality is possible. All true service is immortal. The law of conservation of force shows us that influence never dies. The life of a great man is a permanent and cumulative force in the institutions and life of the race. It grows in power and widens in reach from age to age. believe also in personal immortality. Logan's clay is not Logan. The glorious spirit passing from the visible to the invisible will find a sphere where unselfish love and devotion to great achievement shall find employment under conditions which make activity rest. And the thought comes to me that in the development of the great hero's subtler and more spiritual nature, in the softening and purifying processes of suffering, suffusing his soul with the spirit of patient love and peace, he was preparing to join Lincoln, Grant, Thomas, McPherson and the glorified spirits who had gone before to the invisible world, so many in the sublime consecration of an altruistic death on the field of battle. I have ever thought of Lincoln as the man of the century. In perfect balance of faculty, in intuitive insight, in comprehensive grasp of principles, as the best expression of the divine mind in his time, he stood upon the pinnacle of human greatness. I have ever thought that Grant was the great captain of his age. He commanded armies the like of which the world had never seen, and came out of the struggle with a record that has furnished military criticism with a new standard of measurement of military achievement, and added new lustre to the galaxy of great captains who have a place in the skies of history. It does not take one laurel from General Logan to rank him next to these great men as one of their most trusted and brilliant lieutenants. His service, name and fame shall ever be associated with them. Lincoln went up, like Moses, from the summit of his achievement. Grant passed down the pleasant slopes into the promised land and reaped the rich harvests of peace. Logan, with the ban ner of advance in a grasp which only death could relax, fell on the shining tablelands of history, far up toward the goal of his ambition, and with the light of a triumphant future already bright upon his brow. The separate stars which cluster like jewels in the hilt of Orion's sword, come to us from out the infinite depths of the sky, braided in one blending splendor. The name and fame of Lincoln, Grant, Logan, each in his peculiar service, "pure and pointed as a star," down the long perspective of history, shall blend forever in beautiful and undying light. Solo "I Know that My Redeemer Liveth," by Mrs. E. H. Henkle, of Springfield. Hon. George E. Bacon, a Senator from the Thirty-first District,. delivered the following oration: MR. PRESIDENT:-We come to-day as the representatives of the people of this great State, assembled in this, their capitol, to pay the last tribute of respect to the memory of Gen. John A. Logan, the distinguished and honored son of Illinois. We are paying the last tribute of respect to one who was long a Senator from Illinois, and whose name will be forever connected and linked with her history. We are pronouncing the parting words over the last resting place of one who played a prominent and leading part in this State, and who identified himself with every prominent measure in national affairs for the last thirty years. I care not how eloquent the tongue, how grand and sublime the rhetoric, words fail to express the high esteem which the Grand Army of the Republic and the people of this State held for Gen. Logan. Sir, of all the created universe which the Creator has called into existence, the grandest, noblest and most beautiful is that of an honest man. Man carries within himself the attributes of his Maker. The mind of man is the soul of man; it is that faculty of the human soul or mind which receives and comprehends the ideas communicated to it by his senses; and I believe that while min is the superior work of his God as regards his mind, that it is not only his right, but it his duty, to fit, qualify and prepare his mind, as Logan did, for the highest duties and responsibilities of life. As it was mind that called all things into existence, so was it mind that established and laid down' the laws by which the universe is governed. And nations that have violated and perverted those laws have fallen to stand no more as a nation. And who of us can answer but what it may be equally true of us as individuals if we neglect the higher law? Sir, our State and country loudly calls for more men like gallant Logan; for our country demands to-day men true and noble as was he. In this age, when public men are investigated, the times demand men with clean hands and pure hearts; men whose consciences are not tainted with the foul breath of prejudice and acts of immoral conduct; men whose lives will shed lustre upon the community, and, perhaps, upon the pages of history, and redound to the glory and honor of the day and generation in which they flourished; men whose minds are free from hate and prejudice, and whose lives are enlisted in advancing the happiness and welfare of the human family; men when placed in the halls of our National legislature, or in any position of trust-when placed there by the people-will not only do honor to themselves, but also to their constituents; men who can stand in the sacred desk and rightly divide the word of truth, and live it and practice it themselves in their daily avocations; men who are true to their God and true to their country, who rise in the world to eminence and fame-not by means of wealth, but by educating and improving their heads and hearts. It was on February's morning, 1826, Gen. John A. Logan beheld for the first time the beautiful light of day. He possessed a strong body and a ready and willing mind that assisted him to overcome and surmount the obstacles of poverty, and all things else that beset him, to reach the goal of his ambition. Self-made, as all men are that are worth the making, he had graudly risen from a life of poverty and hard and narrow conditions by fighting his own way, thinking out his own thoughts, and uttering them in his own way without fear, until, by the fortune of political life, he reached a third election from the people of this great State to a seat in the upper house of our National legislature. Sir, Logan was ever the ideal gentleman in the estimation of the people of his locality. Many times in his young manhood was he honored by them to minor positions which were in the gift of their suffrage. Three times did they send him to represent them in these halls. Twice they elected him to represent them in Congress. And, sir, thrice as delegate at large did the people of this great State elect him to represent them in the lower house of our National legislature. In my estimation the life of General Logan is full of instruction, teaching a great and important lesson to young men commencing a career of honorable ambition. He entered upon the hardships and trials of life, relying on nothing but a bright and keen intellect and his indomitable will. All his undertakings in early life, from which he started to achieve success, were unpromising and humble. I can'not now recall to mind any other man whose career better proves that industry, which develops the talents, will overcome all obstacles than his. Logan became a power, not only in his own State, but in all the galaxy of States that comprise the Union. Sir, in the memorable campaign of 1884, when General Logan was the candidate of his party for the second position in their gift, whether in the northland or in the southland, no one was received with greater ovations and more enthusiasm than was he. Logan in his life illustrated, to my mind, better than in any other, the value of self-reliance; for it is true that the history of the prominent minds of the old world is a history of men well circumstanced in life, but the history of the prominent minds in our own country is a history of self-made men. Two centuries of religious liberty in this country, and we find that the early warrior has ripened into the typical volunteer soldier of the world. This grand country of ours, containing as it does all its colleges, academies and seminaries of learning, its churches and benevolent institu- tions, will rise higher in the estimation of the world just in the ratio that its men develop. |
