The past and present of Warren County, Illinois ... - University Library

;34 HISTORY OF THE STATE OF ILLINGIS.is honest, and we can trust him still."Holding to this single point withthe energy of faith and despair we held .together, and, under God, hebrought us through to victory.His practical wisdom made him the wonder of all lands.certainty did Mr. LincolnWith suchfollow causes to their ultimate effects, that hisforesight of contingencies seemed almost prophetic.He is radiant with all the great virtues, and his memory shall shed aglory upon this age that shall fill the eyes of men as they look into history.Other men have excelled him in some point, but, taken at allpoints, all in all, he stands head and shoulders above every other man of6,000 years. An administrator, he saved the nation in the perils ofunparalleled civil war. A statesman, he justified his measures by theirsuccess. A philanthropist, he gave liberty to one race and salvation toanother. A moralist, he bowed from the summit of human power to thefoot of the Cross, and became a Christian. A mediator, he exercised mercyunder the most absolute abeyance to law. A leader, he was no partisan.A commander, he was untainted with blood. A ruler in desperate times,he was unsullied with crime. A man, he has left no word of passion, nothought of malice, no trick of craft, no act of jealousy, no purpose ofselfish ambition. Thus perfected, without a model, and without a peer,he was dropped into these troubled years to adorn and embellish all thatis good and all that is great in our humanity, and to present to all comingtime therepresentative of the divine idea of free government.It is not too much to say that away down in the future, when therepublic has fallen from its niche in the wall of time ; when the greatwar itself shall have faded out in the distance like a mist on the horizonwhen the Anglo-Saxon language shall be spoken only by the tongue ofthe stranger ; then the generations looking this way shall see the greatpresident as the supreme figure in this vortex of historyCHICAGO.It is impossible in our brief space to give more than a meager sketchof such a city as Chicago, which is in itself the greatest marvel of thePrairie State. This mysterious, majestic, mighty city, born first of water,and next of fire; sown in weakness, and raised in power ;planted amongthe willows of the marsh, and crowned with the glory of the mountains ;sleeping on the bosom of the prairie, and rocked on the bosom of the sea ;the youngest city of the world, and still the eye of the prairie, as Damascus,the oldest city of the world, is the eye of the desert. With a commercefar exceeding that of Corinth on her isthmus, in the highway tothe East ;with the defenses of a continent piled around her by the thousandmiles, making her far safer than Rome on the banks of the Tiber