CHAPTER IV.

EARLY WAR MEASURES.

PATRIOTIC GOVERNORS-RICHARD YATES-PARENTAGE AND EDUCATION-STATE LAGISLATURE-IN CONGRESS-ELECTED Governor-INAUGURAL-WHAT SHALL BE DONE?— ADJUTANT-GENERAL FULLER-FIRST CALL FOR TROOPS-THE SITUATION-THE MILI TIA-PROCLAMATION-SPECIAL MESSAGE-AID-GENERAL ORDERS Nos. 1, 2-CHARACTER OF THE FIRST CALL-WHY WAS IT So?-PERHAPS-HOPES OF PEACE-AWAITING CONGRESS-MR. CAMERON ON THE SITUATION-RICHMOND ENQUIRER-THE NAVY— AFTER THE EVENT-Egypt and ISRAEL.

IT

T was surely providential that in the loyal States there were so many Governors who proved to be, emphatically, men for the hour. There was Andrews of Massachusetts, Dennison and Tod of Ohio, Curtin of Pennsylvania, Morton of Indiana, with the noble of executives of Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota. With these, as the earnest patriot, the stirring orator, the efficient administrator, the active and prudent Commander-in-Chief, Illinois writes the name of her citizen-Governor, RICHARD YATES.

He was born at Warsaw, Gallatin county, Kentucky. In 1831 his father removed to Illinois and settled at Springfield. He graduated at Illinois College, Jacksonville, and subsequently studied the profession of law with Col. J. J. Hardin, who fell in the Mexican war. He represented his country three times in the State Legislature. In 1850, he was nominated, by a Whig Convention, to represent his district in Congress, and was elected, and found himself the youngest member of the body. In spite of a change in the district, which, it was supposed, secured it to the opposite party, he was elected over Mr. John Calhoun, a popular leader of the other party. At the next election he was defeated, the district sustaining, by its vote, the "Nebraska Bill" measure of Senator Douglas.

While in Congress he made his mark as an able member, and an able opponent of the extension of the area of slavery. His opposition to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and its associate

legislation was stern and persistent. In 1860 he received the nomination of the Republican State Convention as its candidate for Governor, and after a spirited and exciting canvass was elected.

On the 14th of January he delivered his inaugural message to the General Assembly, and in discussing national affairs, showed that, while disposed to tender every lawful measure of pacification, the State of Illinois, as represented by its executive chief officer would maintain the Union and vindicate the right of constitutional majorities. He said:

"Whatever may have been the divisions of parties hitherto, the people of Illinois will, with one accord, give their assent and firm support to two propositions : "FIRST That obedience to the Constitution and the laws must be insisted upon, and enforced as necessary to the existence of the government.

"SECOND-That the election of a chief magistrate of the nation in strict conformity with the constitution, is no sufficient cause for the release of any State from any of its obligations to the Union.

"A minority of the people may be persuaded that a great error has been committed by such election, but for relief in such a contingency, the Constitution looks to the efficacy of frequent elections, and has placed it in the power of the people to remove their agents and servants at will. The working of our government is based upon the principles of the indisputable rights of majorities. To deny the right of those, who have constitutionally succeeded by ballot to stations only to be so occupied, is not merely unfair and unjust, but revolutionary; and for a party which has constitutionally triumphed, to surrender the powers it has won, would be an ignoble submission, a degradation of manhood, a base desertion of the people's service, which should inevitably consign it to the scorn of Christendom and the infamy of history.

"The American people need no assurance that the Republican party, valuing as it ought the triumph it has won, will never be disposed to yield its honors or avoid its duties. They not only claim, but intend to have the administration for the period of time allotted to them by the Constitution.

"To give shape and form to their purpose of resistance, the dissatisfied leaders of the South Carolina movement have revived the doctrine, long since exploded, that a State may nullify a law of Congress and secede from the Union at pleasure. Such a doctrine can never for a moment be permitted. Its admission would be fatal to the existence of government, would dissolve all the relations which bind the people together, and reduce to anarchy the order of the Republic.

"This is a government entered into by the people of the whole country in their sovereign capacity, and although it have the sanction also, of a compact between sovereign States, does not receive its chief support from that circumstance, but from the original and higher action of the people themselves.

INAUGURAL MESSAGE.

87

"This Union cannot be dissolved by one State, nor by the people of one State or of a dozen States. This government was designed to be perpetual and can be dissolved only by revolution.

"Secession is disunion. Concede to South Carolina the right to release her people from the duties and obligations belonging to their citizenship and you annihilate the sovereignty of the Union by prostrating its ability to secure allegiance. Could a government which could not vindicate itself, and which had exhibited such a sign of weakness, command respect or long maintain itself? If that State secede, why may not California and Oregon, and with better reason, because they are remote from the Capital, and separated by uninhabited wildernesses and vast mountain ranges, and may have an independent commerce with the shores and islands of the Pacific and the marts of the Indies? Why may not Pennsylvania secede and dispute our passage to the seaboard through her territory? Why may not Louisiana constitute herself an independent nation, and dictate to the people of the great Northwest the onerous terms upon which her millions of agricultural and industrial products might find a transit through the Mississippi and be delivered to the commerce of the world.

"It will be admitted that the territory of Louisiana, acquired in 1803, for the purpose of securing to the people of the United States the free navigation of the Mississippi, could never have seceded; yet it is pretended, that when that territory has so perfected its municipal organization as to be admitted into the Union as a State, with the powers and privileges equal to the other States, she may at pleasure repudiate the union and forbid to the other States the free navigation which was purchased at the cost of all, not for Louisiana, but for all the people of the United States. A claim so presumptuous and absurd could never be acquiesced in. The blood of the gallant sons of Kentucky and Tennessee was freely shed to defend New Orleans and the Mississippi river from a foreign foe; and it is memorable that the chieftain who rescued that city from sack and siege, was the same who, at a later date, by his stern and patriotic rebuke, dispersed the ranks of disunionists in the borders of South Carolina.

"Can it be for a moment supposed, that the people of the Valley of the Mississippi will ever consent that the great river shall flow for hundreds of miles through a foreign jurisdiction, and they be compelled-if not to fight their way in the face of the forts frowning upon its banks-to submit to the imposition and annoyance of arbitrary taxes and exorbitant duties to be levied upon their commerce? I believe that before that day shall come, either shore of the "Father of Waters" will be a continuous sepulcher of the slain, and, with all its cities in ruins, and the cultivated fields upon its sloping sides laid waste, it shall roll its foaming tide in solitary grandeur, as at the dawn of creation. I know I speak for Illinois, and I believe for the Northwest, when I declare them a unit in the unalterable determination of her millions, occupying the great basin drained by the Mississippi, to permit no portion of that stream to be controlled by a foreign jurisdiction.

"If, wearied by the persistent clamors and panics accompanying these ceaseless threats of secession, any good citizen has suffered himself to entertain a thought