MADE TO THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF ILLINOIS, AT ITS TWENTY-FOURTH SESSION CONVENED JANUARY 2, 1865. VOLUME I. SPRINGFIELD: BAKER & PHILLIPS, PRINTERS. 1865. Gilt 3-5-51 MESSAGE FROM GOVERNOR YATES, TO THE TWENTY-FOURTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY. Gentlemen of the General Assembly: INTRODUCTION. In delivering to you the last message which it devolves upon me, as the executive of the State, to communicate to the General Assembly, I feel it to be our first duty to render thanks to Almighty God for the continued protection and goodness of his Providence, for the abounding blessings with which He has favored us as a State, and for the continuance to us, unimpaired, the possession and enjoyment of our civil and religious liberty. For though a sad and wasting war has prevailed in the land, and thousands of homes and hearthstones have been made desolate, our government has been preserved to us, our nationality has been maintained unbroken, and our free institutions have come out of the shock of battle, not only not destroyed or impaired, but stronger and dearer to us than ever before. The storms of revolution, which have so rudely beat around the tree of liberty, have served only to deepen its roots and strengthen its trunk, and the people at home stand reassured with new and unfaltering confidence in our institutions, while foreign nationalities are forced to pay the tribute of involuntary respect to a people who, true to the memories and traditions of their fathers, and faithful to the sacred trust of liberty committed to their care, stand unappalled by the dark events of the gigantic war in which they have been engaged. As a State, notwithstanding the war, we have prospered beyond all former precedents. Notwithstanding nearly two hundred thousand of the most athletic and vigorous of our population have been withdrawn from the field of production, the area of land now under cultivation is greater than at any former period, and the census of 1865 will exhibit an astonishing increase in every department of material industry and advancement; in a great increase of agricultural, manufacturing and mechanical wealth; in new and improved modes for production of every kind; in the substitution of machinery for the manual labor withdrawn by the war; in the triumphs of invention; in the wonderful increase of railroad enterprise; in the universal activity of business, in all its branches; in the rapid growth of our cities and villages; in the bountiful harvests, and in an unexampled material prosperity, prevailing on every hand; while, at the same time, the educational institutions of the people have in no way declined. Our colleges and schools, of every class and grade, are in the most flourishing condition; our benevolent institutions, State and private, are kept up and main D4799 |