e middle of the Mississippi should be our western border and that
the navigation of the entire river to the Gulf should be free to
all the people of the United States. Passing over the later
faithless attempt of Spain to abrogate this salient provision of
the treaty, it is enough that the question was forever put at rest
by the purchase by our Government in 1803, for fifteen millions of
dollars, from the great Napoleon, of the entire Louisiana country,
stretching from the Gulf to the domain of Canada--out of which have
been carved sixteen magnificent States, destined to abide and remain
forever sovereign parts of our federal Union.

"And while Spain has sustained crushing and retributive defeat and
her flag has disappeared forever from mainland and island of the
western world, the great river, gathering its tributaries from
northern lake to southern sea, flows unvexed through a mighty realm
that knows no symbol of authority save only our own Stars and
Stripes.

"Illinois was represented for the first time in a legislative
chamber in the general assembly of the Northwest Territory,
which convened in Cincinnati in 1799. By act of Congress in
May, 1800, a new territorial organization was created, by which
the territory now embraced in the States of Indiana and Illinois
was formed, to be known as 'Indiana Territory,' and the capital
located at Vincennes. In February, 1809, by act of Congress,
the 'Territory of Illinois' was duly organized, its seat of government
established at Kaskaskia. Nine years later--December, 1818--with a
population scarcely one-half that of McLean County to-day, it
was duly admitted a State of the federal Union.

"Beginning with Illinois at the coming of Joliet and Marquette
in the seventeenth century, we have rapidly followed its thread of
history for a century and a half, until it became a State of the
American Union. We have seen it under the rule of the Frenchman, the
Briton, the Virginian, under its various territorial organizations,
until eighty-nine years ago it reached the dignity of statehood.
We have seen its seat of authority at Quebec, at New Orleans, at
Cincinnati, at Vincennes, and finally at Kaskaskia. We have noted
something of its marvellous development, of its wonderful increase
in population.

"Just one hundred and seven years ago, when by act of Congress
Illinois became part of the Indiana Territory, it contained a
population of less than two thousand white persons, on