general Government and to the citizens of Boone County. What, then, is the objection to connecting the Agricultural College with the State University? Is there any well-founded one? And are not the arguments in its favor unanswerable ?

We sometimes hear it said that the people of Boone County are disloyal! Such an accusation may reach the prejudices of some, but it is no argument addressed to the judgment of sensible men. As in every other county in the State, it is true that there were to be found disloyal persons amongst us, but in this connection the fact should always be stated that the County of Boone furnished 1200 brave soldiers to the Federal army! Whatever may have been the political status of this people in years gone by, we think we may safely say that now none are more anxious to uphold the laws and to maintain the just authority of the Federal Government. But, in my view, the ever-changing political sentiment of a county is no criterion for fixing the location of an institution like this. The people may be Conservative to-day, Radical to-morrow. Twenty years ago I well remember, when I had the honor of accepting a seat in the Senate of the State, a man whose views were narrow, and who has since met a sad fate, in order to defeat some liberal provision of law for the State University charged upon the people of this vicinity that they entertained "free-soil sentiments." By the same individual a similar charge was hurled against the present distinguished head of the University, and hence it was inferred that the institution was not entitled to the fostering care of the State. But we find that same gentleman still at the helm; he has weathered the storm in all the vicissitudes of party and of our country. True to his calling, he has borne aloft and elevated the standard of popular education in Missouri, and, Radical though he is in his political sentiments, no greater benefit can accrue to the State than that he be allowed to aid in shaping the character and destiny of the infant institution whose foundation you are now preparing to lay.

The Governor of the State, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, the Curators of the University, whose memorial now lies upon your desk, all disinterested umpires, argue the necessity and propriety of uniting the Agricultural College with the State University. Prompted only by a desire to serve the cause of education in the State, and asking pardon for this long communication, I remain, with high regard, your friend and obedient servant, JAMES S. ROLLINS.

VINDICATION OF THE LOYALTY OF THE PEOPLE OF BOONE COUNTY.

Extract from the speech of the Hon. James S. Rollins delivered in the Missouri House of Representatives March 9, 1867, on the Bill making an appropriation for the benefit of the State University.*

In urging the passage of this Bill I have met with but one solitary objection-but one! It is said that the "people of Boone County are disloyal"! Mr. Speaker, I should be unworthy of a seat on this floor if I failed to do justice in a manly way to those who sent me here. I would not give the snap of my finger for a Representative who would not, according to the truth, vindicate his constituents when unfairly assailed. This I will do, but in their defense I need not go beyond the truth. Sir, shall we tear down this Capitol and remove it from this place because traitors have met around this board? Sir, Boone County furnished none of the leaders of this illfated rebellion. They came from Chariton, from Saline, from Cole, from St. Louis, from Buchanan, from Jasper, from Knox, from Lewis - counties all claiming to be supremely Radical now. It was your leaders, men of age and experience, and high social and political position, who seduced from the paths of loyalty and patriotism the honest and unsophisticated boys. of my county. The guilt attaches to the leaders and to the counties that furnished them, far more than to those who were led astray.

But will gentlemen attempt to punish every county, many of whose people took the Southern side in this rebellion? If so, then every county in the State will receive a rebuke at your hands, for there was not one that did not furnish soldiers to the Southern army. This all of you know to be true. Why then will you select Boone, this old mother of counties, and make an example of her because some of her people were led astray? Will you discriminate in your legislation against St. Louis County because some of her disloyal people have recently extended to Sterling Price a warm and

*This bill was introduced by Mr. Rollins, and appropriated $10,000 for rebuilding the President's house, which had been burnt down, and also 1 per cent. of the State revenues, after deducting 25 per cent. for Common School purposes, for the support of the State University. The Bill became a law March 11, 1867,

and under it the University receives annually from $14,000 to $16,000. We may say that without the means derived from this law the University might have suspended operations, and that its permanent growth was made secure by the passage of it.

cordial welcome on his return to the State? Sir, for one I would not. On the contrary, I would extend the sails of her commerce upon the bosom of the broad river that sweeps by the great city; I would build up her noble charities, her institutions of learning, her manufactures, her capital and her labor, and make her what she is destined to be, the great inland city of the American continent; but in doing this I would allow those who had been untrue to their country to take back seats, as I desire they should do in every town and county in this State. Sir, the argument against the passage of this Bill is not worth much. True, there were men who were disloyal in Boone, but, to her credit be it spoken, she is not represented by such on this floor. If they had followed my advice they would have traveled in an opposite direction, and to-day many of them repent that they did not heed the warnings of their humble friend! But, Mr. Speaker, let us have the whole history. Let us have the good along with the bad. Let us hold the scales of justice even and see which side will preponderate. This is honorable, this is fair. There are some traditions connected with Boone County. She is an old county here in the center of the State, organized before many of you were born. She is named after that daring old pioneer Daniel Boone, whom my venerable friend to my right, Judge Ryland, knew so well, and whose ashes still sleep beneath the sod of Missouri, and who more than a half-century ago opened the way to this bright and beautiful land that we might enjoy its blessings.

Mr. Speaker, Boone County has not always been disloyal! I have a word to say to my friends from the Southwest. When I was a youth, about the year 1829, I remember that the Indian savages were pressing heavily upon the sparse settlements of the southwest border, and a call was made by the Governor for troops to drive them back. Who gave their services then to protect the infant settlements of the present counties of Bates, of Vernon, of Jasper, of Lawrence, and the whole Southwest? Sir, I speak it with pride, they were the chivalrous, patriotic, and hardy sons of Boone County who interposed their shields, turned back the savage warriors, and protected the mothers and daughters of the Southwest from the Indian tomahawk and scalping knife. Gentlemen, you have now a glorious opportunity to illustrate your magnanimity and to cancel a debt of gratitude, the payment of which has been so long deferred.

I have a word also to say to the Northeast in this connection. Early in the history of our State, in the year 1832, when that bold and bloody-minded champion, the renowned Indian chief Black Hawk, was organizing his various tribes for warlike forays from the lakes across the waste of Iowa, then almost tenantless, to the Missouri River, and was making ready to come down with all his strength and violence upon the feeble settlements of Clarke, Scotland, Schuyler, Putnam, Mercer, and other counties, and even westward across the Chariton and Grand Rivers, our old and patriotic

Governor John Miller (a good soldier himself) called for a regiment of troops, and they were mainly raised in the counties of Boone and Callaway! aye, Callaway, the daughter-in-law of Boone! With other troops they marched under the leadership of citizen of my town, my warm personal friend, General Richard Gentry, a brave and gallant soldier, after whom the fine county of Gentry is called, represented by my friend over the way. Sir, it was in this hour of peril to the people living upon the northern frontier, when your women and children and old men were fleeing to the settlements for safety, when the wild yell of the Indian savage resounded across the prairies, and "the lightning's red glare was painting hell on the sky," that these troops marched to the rescue, and stood as a wall of fire for four long months to shield and protect your infant settlements from invasion, until the last Indian war-whoop that startled the sleep of the frontier had died away in the distance, and the merry voices of children proclaimed once more the return of peace within our borders. Sir, but for the assistance that Boone County gave to you then, when you were weak and unable to protect yourselves, some of these gentlemen who now honor me with their attention might not be allowed to hold their seats here to-day. It was during that expedition that I myself slept in an Indian wigwam, upon the very spot where now stands the beautiful and thriving city of Keokuk, when the deep solitude of the forest was broken only by the dash of the waters as they rushed wildly over the Des Moines Rapids of the Mississippi River. Sir, it is in no spirit of boasting that I speak of these things, but to vindicate the truth of history, to allay your prejudices if any still linger in your hearts, and to persuade you if possible to do justice not only to the people of Boone County but to the cause of education and of liberal learning in our State.

Sir, still later in our history, in the year 1837, when through the agency of our illustrious Senator [Colonel Benton] the Secretary of War called upon Missouri for a regiment of troops to march to Florida to the defense of the people there, against the savage Seminoles led by their wily chiefs Osceola and Sam Jones, the County of Boone was prompt to furnish onehalf of the number. Commanded by our distinguished fellow-citizen, General Richard Gentry, they marched to that distant part of the republic to save the inhabitants of Florida from destruction by the overpowering savage foes by whom they were threatened and surrounded. Hundreds of the same men who went out to meet Black Hawk volunteered again for this expedition. Sir, it was in Florida, on the 25th day of December, 1837, at the desperate battle of Okechobee, on the shores of one of its glassy lakes, that our noble patriot Gentry, at the head of his regiment, fell mortally wounded; there to-day the bones of one-third of the men composing this gallant regiment lie bleaching amidst the live-oaks and beneath the torrid sun of that distant State of our glorious Union.

*The person after whom Callaway County is named married a daughter of Daniel Boone.

Sir, I come to a still later period in our history, a period familiar and yet painful to us all. I refer to the rebellion. Sir, whatever may be said or thought in ignorance of the facts, I assert that the people of Boone County were not unfaithful to the obligations of patriotism and of duty. In February, 1861, when there was a trial of strength at the ballot-box betwixt those who were for the Union and those who favored secession, Boone County gave a majority of fifteen hundred for the Union and against the secession of the State. When the two sections became involved in war and the Government called for troops, how far the people of Boone County, first and last, responded to the call let the report of your Adjutant-General answer. I hold it in my hand; from it we see that Boone County furnished between eleven and twelve hundred white soldiers to the Federal army! Many of these young men joined regiments in other States, and marched with Grant, and Sherman, and Blair, and fought well upon nearly every battle-field in the Southern States. These young men, faithful and loyal and true, went to the wars but they never returned! There is scarcely a Southern State whose sands were not moistened by the blood of patriotic men from the County of Boone! Their bones lie all over the States of Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, and on the route taken by Sherman in his splendid march to the sea:

The lightnings may flash, the loud thunder rattle,

They heed not, they hear not, they 're free from all pain;
They sleep their last sleep, they have fought their last battle,
No sound can awake them to glory again.

Far from their homes and their friends they perished, and were buried where the wild winds from the Gulf repeat daily their sad requiem and the beautiful magnolia sheds its perpetual fragrance upon their hallowed graves.

Besides these the County of Boone furnished between four and five hundred colored soldiers to the Federal Army, whose loyalty and fidelity will not be questioned, I presume, by any one here. Sir, with these facts in her history, I might well ask what county presents a better record than "Old Boone"? It is very true that many of her young men were led astray and went into the rebellion, and even of them I have heard it said, and I believe truthfully, that they made the best soldiers in the Southern army. The rebels from Boone all fought well, although in a bad cause, and since their return, according to the evidence of Governor Fletcher, are giving him less trouble than the people of almost any other county in the State.

Sir, the masses of the people of Boone County will compare favorably with those of any other county in this State, or any other State. They are a brave, liberal, intelligent, and hospitable people. As I have already