NOV 23 I! 
 
STET CAPITOLIUM FULGENS. 
 
 INAUGURATION 
 
 OF 
 
 THE STATE CAPITOL 
 
 AT 
 
 DES MOINES, IOWA, 
 
 ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE TWENTIETH GENERAL 
 ASSEMBLY BY 
 
 Hon. JOHN A. KASSON, 
 
 UPON INVITATION OF THE GOVERNOR AND GENERAL ASSEMBLY, 
 JANUARY 17, 1884. 
 
 PRINTED BY ORDER OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY. 
 
 DES MOINES: 
 
 GEO. E. ROBERTS, STATE PRINTER. 
 1884. 
 

 0; 
 
 ^< A^^.^O^JLtx-cL 
 
 Civu 
 
THE l^EW CAPITOL. 
 
 <Gfentlem€n of the General Assembly, Officers of State, and Fellow 
 Citizens : 
 For the people of Iowa, and especially for you, their representatives 
 in the Executive, Legislative and Judicial departments, this day 
 may well be devoted to congratulations. The people will rejoice 
 that this great structure, now so near completion, has been erected 
 with economy, honesty, and sound judgment, and without special taxa- 
 tion, or debt. Their representatives rejoice that they can now enter 
 into appropriate halls with abundance of heaven's pure air and clear 
 light, and with suitable chambers for the important work of their 
 committees. Their Executive and Judicial officers have special rea- 
 son to be glad that they are soon to leave the inconvenient and inse- 
 cure quarters hitherto assigned them, for the safe and spacious rooms 
 where fire cannot destroy, where thieves cannot easily break through 
 and steal, and where moth and rust are far less likely to corrupt. 
 All our people, in public or in private life, will to-day experience pro- 
 found gratification that all the high authorities of government, the 
 elect of their suffrage, enter in their name into the possession of a State 
 House befitting the intelligence and the wealth, the dignity and the 
 worth of a State which is justly proud of her record of good govern- 
 ment. It is the third time that the State has taken possession of a 
 Capitol building. As the immigrating farmer willingly passes his 
 first difficult years in a cabin of logs, and when his family is better 
 ^rown, and the tide of steady prosperity has enriched him, erects a 
 
4 THE NEW CAPITOL. 
 
 substantial dwelling in which, as he hopes, his children, and their 
 children after them, may preserve his name and virtues in lasting 
 memory, so Iowa, passing from her earlier official cabins, has devoted 
 a part of her increasing wealth to the erection of this enduring man- 
 sion for the residence of her elected government during generations 
 to come. 
 
 Our first prayer beneath this high dome is, that here the moral and 
 political foundations of this imperial State may be so deeply and so 
 wisely laid that remote generations shall recall and celebrate the 
 wisdom and the virtues of their ancestors who in the nineteenth cen- 
 tury erected and occupied tbis solid mansion of the State. 
 
 It is for us all a source of profound gratification that from the day 
 when the present Commissioners assumed control, with their accom- 
 plished Superintendent of Construction, the legislative bodies have 
 never withdrawn from them their confidence. Not one act of specu- 
 lation or spoliation, not one coin wasted or vainly spent, has defaced 
 the bright record of their administration. It shall be a part of the 
 legacy we leave to our children that all these vast and durable walls 
 have been laid in the cement of honesty, and built by the rule of 
 fidelity. More proud of this legend are we, than of all these classic 
 columns and brilliant domes which please the eye and gratify the 
 
 taste. 
 
 As this house of the government has been erected in integrity, 
 without turmoil or disorder, so may neither corruption nor violence 
 ever appear within its chambers. Let nothing be ever here trans- 
 acted against patriotism, religion, morality or education, nor against 
 the just principles of civil liberty, or public or private right. As the 
 wheels of time roll on, as generations of men arise, act their part, 
 and decay, may each generation represented in these halls leave to 
 its posterity a newly enriched inheritance of order, liberty, and jus- 
 tice. Let us cherish the hope that for centuries to come the eyes of 
 happy Industry shall see with joy the beams of the rising day play- 
 
ADDRESS. 5 
 
 ing upon these bright domes; and that there also, well-rewarded La- 
 bor may look with contentment upon the rays of the declining sun, 
 when the evening hour brings its welcome repose to toil. 
 
 This noble Capitol to-day becomes a monument between two eras 
 in the history of Iowa, dividing the frontier transitory record of the 
 State from its grander history begun wil^h the census of 1880. The 
 past of our State presents a brief record which is within the mem- 
 ory of living men. No misty traditions of antiquity have either 
 obscured or illuminated our course. We have lived chiefly in our 
 anticipated future, to which we have sought to give form and reality. 
 When the bell of Independence Hall rang out the peal of Liberty in 
 1776, Iowa was unknown, except as a land whose borders had been 
 discovered by the French. When Spain ceded the region to Napo- 
 leon, and Napoleon in turn ceded it to the United States in 1803, it 
 was still unexplored, unknown, and nameless. First attached in 1804, 
 under the name of the "District of Louisiana," to the jurisdiction 
 of the Territory of Indiana, it became, in 1805, part of the Territory 
 of Louisiana, and in 1812, by change of name, part of the Territory 
 of Missouri. In 1834 all the country north of the State of Missouri 
 and west of the Mississippi river, as far as the Missouri and White 
 Earth rivers, was attached to the Territory of Michigan. Two years 
 later, in 1836, Wisconsin Territory was created, and embraced all 
 that had so lately been transferred to the jurisdiction of Michigan. 
 After two years more, in 1838, the Territory of Iowa was estab- 
 lished, including what are now the States of Iowa and Minne- 
 sota and a large section of Dakota. Seven years later, in 1845, 
 Congress offered to admit us as a State by the side of Florida, 
 on certain conditions, which established our western boundary at 
 longitude 17 degrees, 30 minutes west of Washington, separating 
 from us the entire Missouri " slope.'' This our people wisely 
 refused; and finally, in December, 1846, Congress extended our 
 
g THE NEW CAPITOL. 
 
 ■western boundary to the proper limit of the Missouri river, and 
 Iowa became one of these United States. Thus, only thirty-seven 
 years ago, Iowa with 130,000 people and two i-epresentatives 
 became a member of this great Union of States, which she now 
 supports with nearly two millions of loyal people, with eleven 
 representatives in Congress, with over 21,000 school-houses, more 
 than 22,000 teachers, and 464,000 pupils; and with a greater pro- 
 portion of her people able to read than is shown by any other State 
 of the Union. 
 
 This record becomes the more notable when it is remembered 
 that the very hill upon which this Capitol stands, and all the valleys 
 and plains for many leagues around, were forty years ago in the 
 occupation of the aboriginal tribes. All this fair domain between 
 the two great rivers of the continent was in the possession of roving 
 or resident tribes until 1830. In that year the relinquishment of the 
 Indian title began by a treaty which covered, with ill-defined bound- 
 aries, all the region west of the divide between the Des Moines and 
 Missouri rivers, as far north as the forks of the Des Moines river, 
 and thence westward, taking in the valleys of the Boyer, Little Sioux, 
 and Floyd rivers, to which was added a strip extending northeast- 
 ward to the Mississippi river. These concessions were made by the 
 loways, Otoes, Omahas, Missourias, Sacs and Foxes, and four bands 
 of Sioux, all of whom claimed rights in the districts relinquished to 
 the United States. The Sioux separately ceded a strip of territory 
 twenty miles wide running from the Mississippi liver below La 
 Crosse southwesterly to the Des Moines river, on which cession are 
 now found the towns of Cresco, Osage, Charles City, and others as 
 far as Dakotah City. The Sacs and Foxes ceded a like strip imme- 
 diately adjoining i^ on the south, on which are now many towns, 
 embracing Waukon, West Union, Postville, and others to Fort 
 Dodge. This double concession, forty miles in width, formed a 
 neutral zone between alien tribes. All of Iowa north of these con- 
 
ADDRESS. 7 
 
 cessions was claimed by different bands of the Sioux until 1851, when 
 their relinquishment was obtained. But these first concessions in 
 1830 seem to have been made not so much in the interest of the 
 whites as to prevent wars among the Indian tribes, disputing their 
 respective rights to that territory. The advancing tide of immigra- 
 tion, however, was by this time ready to cross our great Mediterra- 
 nean river, and open up the country on its western bank. The Sacs 
 and Foxes yielded to its demands, and in 1832 gave to white settle- 
 ment a district equal to two or three tiers of counties up and down 
 the Mississippi. Again, in 1837, they yielded to further pressure, 
 and gave up one and a quarter million of acres along the Cedar and 
 Iowa rivers, including their chief's, Keokuk's, village. This still left 
 all central Iowa south of Fort Dodge and as far west as the Mis- 
 souri water-shed, in possession of the allied tribes, who numbered, all 
 told, about two thousand two hundred and fifty souls. But the 
 friendly character of these red men had given opportunity to the 
 whites to hear of these clear skies, this fruitful soil, and these 
 wooded streams, and even to see these lands of promise, and so to 
 covet them. Under the influence of the progressive human tide 
 pressing on from the east, in 1842 they finally threw themselves into 
 the arms of the Federal Government to choose for them a new home 
 further west; and agreed to surrender all their immemorial heritage 
 in three years from that time. "When, at midnight following the 
 eleventh day of October, 1845, the signal gun from Fort Des Moines, 
 on yonder point, announced the end of all aboriginal right, the last 
 of these faithful tribes had left their ancestral grounds forever, and 
 the complicated law of the white man succeeded to the simple usages 
 of the native tribes. And so was the very ground now covered by 
 the shadow of these walls transferred from the dominion of Asiatic 
 tribal organization to the control of our European Christian civiliza- 
 tion. 
 
g THE NEW CAPITOL. 
 
 These tribes of Sacs and Foxes were among the best Indians of 
 their race. The testimony of our frontiersmen, and the official rec- 
 ords of the Government describe them as thoroughly entitled to the 
 respect of our race. The United States agent at the Raccoon 
 Agency, just before their migration, attributes to them "the manly 
 virtues and innate principles of honor and honesty." After their 
 migration, the agent speaks in his reports of their "fidelity and re- 
 gard for truth, their sense of honor and honesty, and pride of per- 
 son and Nation." It should be told to our children that these sons 
 of the soil to whom we have succeeded left behind them a noble 
 name for manly virtues which we may well desire to emulate. 
 Would that my voice might reach them now with these words of 
 praise; and that they might be consoled for the logs of this Eden- 
 land of their ancient possession by knowing that the ground over 
 which they roamed to find food for little more than two thousand 
 souls, now gives home and food to near two million souls, under the 
 protection of the same Great Spirit who rules both them and us. 
 ;ii Those of us who have known the liberal pleasures as well as the 
 struggles of the spacious frontier life, the invigorating contests with 
 wiM nature and wilder beasts, the simpler manly virtues which it de- 
 velops, the self-reliance, personal independence and courage which 
 spring spontaneous from it, may well indulge a feeling of sympathy 
 m the passing away of those tribes who had for centuries enjoyed 
 that life^along these running waters, under the shade of these oaks 
 and walnuts, and over these blossoming prairies, where some of us 
 once wandered with gun and fishing-rod in the days that have fled 
 with the game. Shall the restless and eager life of the white man 
 Be sweeter than the life of the peaceful savage whom we have dis 
 placed — savage only to his enemies? Shall our greed of wealth be 
 more profitable to the human soul than his greed of game? Shall 
 truer virtue be found in our speculating marts of trade and in our 
 
ADDRESS. 9 
 
 •crowded bins and stockyards, than that which was nourished in the 
 the sheltered tents of the red men, and under the influence of the 
 brilliant heavens that beamed over their unplowed prairies? Shall 
 the means of personal happiness, now far removed from the simplici- 
 ties of nature, be more fruitful for us than they were for them as 
 they reposed on the- very breast of Nature? Let the philosopher 
 who shall live at the close of the twentieth century answer these 
 questions. 
 
 As the Indian with bow and arrow disappeared in the west, the 
 frontiersmen advanced from the east with axe and plow. They 
 gathered around the meeting of the rivers in this valley, and be- 
 lieved they could see even then the dawning aurora of a bril- 
 liant future. They eagerly expected the rising sun of prosperity. 
 But oh, the weary waiting for its comingi The cold blasts of 
 winter, the overfloodings of the streams in spi'ing, the unsold 
 harvests of the autumn, the tedious roads to market, the hope- 
 less improvement of navigation, the tired expectancy of promised 
 railways! Old settlers of Central Iowa, you remember the years 
 that seemed decades, the decade that seemed a century. But we 
 now hail the risen sun. The long expected time of prosperity 
 has come. Instead of straggling wains, dragged by worn beasts 
 over miring roads and across swollen streams, there now depart 
 each day from beneath the shadow of this Capitol eighty trains of 
 cars, propelled by a tireless power, and laden with busy men, or 
 with the wealth of State and Nation, over iron ways radiating to all 
 points of the compass, directed to the interior of a continent or to 
 the shores of two oceans, and to markets in foreign lands. Instead 
 of dangerous fords, iron bridges span our streams. Tall groves and 
 houses of comfort defy the wintry blasts of our prairies. Churches . 
 and school-houses illuminate the country and beautify the towns. 
 The joy of this time would be complete if it had pleased Heaven to 
 
10 THE NEW CAPITOL. 
 
 spare the lives of all oiir hardy pioneers to see this day. They were 
 the daring scouts of civilization — these early settlers who bore the 
 severest hardships of the struggle, and opened the way for the hap- 
 pier multitude who now enjoy the ripened fruits of their planting. 
 All hail to the memory of these departed, and a living welcome to 
 you who survive! May Heaven long preserve you in the well-earned 
 comfort of your declining years. 
 
 Taking leave of our past, what shall be our future in the history of 
 the Republic? Shall we grow into a powerful member of this great 
 Union of States, or bury ourselves in the fatness of our fruitful 
 fields and populous pastures? The real facts which most concern 
 our personal comfort and happiness are undoubtedly those which 
 have for their scene our hearths, our farms, our churches, schools^ 
 and workshops. But these are rarely gathered up by the pen of 
 history. It is the larger community, the State, which embodies the 
 resulting character of all this local training; the State, which has its 
 own rooftree and hearthstone, preserves its own records, and de- 
 velops a character of its own; — it is the State which passes intO' 
 history, and by its perpetual record conveys to posterity the impres- 
 sions which they shall entertain of their ancestors. The Legislature 
 of the little emigrant colony of Plymouth, over two hundred years- 
 ago, declared: "Forasmuch as the maintenance of good literature 
 doth much tend to the advancement of the weal and flourishing^ 
 state of societies and republics, this court doth, therefore, order that 
 in whatever township in this government, consisting of fifty families 
 or upwards, any meet man shall be obtained to teach a grammar 
 school, said township shall allow at least twelve pounds to be raised 
 by rate on all the inhabitants." While we know little of the men 
 who thus resolved, of their names, mode of living, or conditions, 
 this noble record of their devotion to education has illuminated all 
 the later pages of the history of Massachusetts. Three states of 
 
ADDRESS. 11 
 
 this Union maintained for two generations a character among their 
 sister states as individual and distinct as that of an eminent man. 
 among his associates. In proportion as the traits of State character 
 are more marked and resolute, the longer they endure. The influx of 
 new elements among the masses of population in many of our States 
 has subjected this character to modifications, until even the family 
 likeness is in some cases dangerously near to disappearance. Our 
 Northwestern States are so miscellaneously settled, and are still so 
 young, that no artist can yet venture to draw a portrait which will 
 be recognized as faithful a half century hence. But for the last 
 quarter of a century the pulses of Iowa, and her impulses, have been, 
 so thoroughly felt, her tendencies and the influences working in her 
 development are so clearly shown, as to justify the indulgence of 
 a noble hope of her future. Her liberality in the support of schools,, 
 and of religious and charitable institutions, the superiority of her 
 people in the comparative tables of popular education, the more 
 equal diffusion of wealth and comfort within her borders, her un- 
 questioned love of liberty, temperance, and justice, and her mili- 
 tary and civil courage in their maintenance, so distinguish her as 
 to lend a halo to the brightest uromise of coming historj . ' 
 
 The dangerous influences which threaten to defeat this promise- 
 are visible, and demand your vigorous activity to suppress them. 
 The State will rise no higher .than the motives and the intellect of 
 the men who in all ranks most prommentlv represent it. If you 
 allow your offices to be sold as patronage, or claimed as a personal 
 right, and fill them in response to personal solicitation, or party dic- 
 tation, without regard to fitness, you fail in your duty to the State. 
 If you listen to demagogues who appeal to prejudice against meas- 
 ures of justice, who defame the character of your elected officers to 
 gratify malice or to obtain office for themselves, you prepare the 
 way for the degradation of all public life, and for the humiliation of 
 
12 THE NEW CAPITOL. 
 
 the State itself. Some new Peter-the-hermit will yet arise among 
 the people to preach a new crusade against the system of falsehood, 
 forgery and defamation, which are still tolerated as weapons of 
 political warfare. Let your curse rest upon them, and your heel 
 •crush them out. They degrade us in the eyes of all foreign nations, 
 and they insult the purity and patriotism of our own people. As 
 your vengeance should be swift upon those who are proved corrupt, 
 so let it fall with the speed of a thunderbolt upon the forgers and 
 libellers who fear not to corrupt the public mind with falsehood, 
 and defame the reputation of the State and Nation by reckless 
 assaults upon their representative officers. 
 
 Let your indignation also flow in full tide against the corrupters 
 of the ballot box. Our laws are not yet severe enough against these 
 •enemies of the Republic. Tricks and deceptions which rob the 
 voter of his sovereign right are not adequately punished. Fraudu- 
 lent"^ tickets are repeatedly delivered to the ignorant and unwary. 
 And yet a single vote has been known to shape the policy o± a State. 
 The ballot is the crown of popular sovereignty, and it should be 
 guarded wun a care like that bestowed upon the jeweled emblenr 
 with which kings go to their coronation. 
 
 What influence will the five hundred and seventy periodical 
 presses of Iowa exert upon the future character of our State? What 
 will this enormous power for good ojj, evil do to form the reputation 
 and build up an honorable name and fame for our home Republic? 
 Shall their columns be filled with a mixture of good and evil, of 
 truth and falsehood, that they may thrive by ministering to all 
 depraved as well as elevated tastes? The preaching of your 
 •churches and the teaching of your schools will be robbed of half 
 their educational force, if the press fails to contribute its share to 
 the elevation of public sentiment. The hurried demand of the 
 daily page upon overtaxed brains leads too often to recklessness of 
 
ADDRESS. 13; 
 
 assertion, to viciousness of argument, and even to the invention of 
 facts, while verification of their statements awaits the leisure of. 
 their author. Meanwhile the public mind is led astray, and public 
 opinion in part corrupted. The great majority of their issues, it is 
 willingly believed, are useful instructors among the moral forces of 
 the community. But from this central hearthstone of the State we 
 to-day invoke them all to recognize a higher responsibility to truth. 
 and justice, a more thorough emancipation from prejudice of party 
 and of person, and a deeper appreciation of their influence upon, 
 the destinies of Iowa. 
 
 Formidable social and economic questions have in recent years 
 risen in the political horizon, to which we direct our troubled gaze 
 as we should look at some unknown comet stretching across the 
 heavens. The simpler manners and the greater equality of fortunes 
 have passed away. The progress of our race in this nineteenth cen- 
 tury has been so rapid, and signal discoveries of science occur so fre- 
 quently, that when we pause to look backward along the line of our 
 own advance we are filled with astonishment. The venerable man of 
 four score years who may listen here to-day knew a time when no 
 boat was propelled by steam; while now all great seas and all inland 
 waters are vexed by their ceaseless wheels. The mature man of three 
 score years knew a time when no vehicle for freight or passengers 
 moved rapidly on iron rails, governed by an unseen force; while now 
 their noise disturbs the tranquility of two continents. Men of still 
 more vigorous years know a time when electricity was an unchained 
 force; while now, subjected to our use, messages are instantaneously 
 transmitted by it thousands of miles over land and under seas, 
 annihilating time and outspeeding the coursers of the sun. The boy 
 still at school, with satchel slung upon his shoulders, remembers the 
 time when the human voice was lost at a short radius in the atmos- 
 phere; where now it travels, guided by a delicate wire, for scores of 
 
l^ THE NEW CAPITOL 
 
 ■miles, and speaks gently in the ear which listens, even beyond the 
 horizon of the human eye. Such events, so strange, so wonderful, 
 occurring within our own time, surpass the imaginative compass of 
 an Arab story, and fill us with awe and amazement. Unable to fore- 
 cast the productive future, we tremble as its opening scenes are dis- 
 played to our bewildered sight. We ask what is to be the effect of 
 the enormous accumulations of wealth rendered possible by the 
 numerous amazing inventions of man? What shall be the fate of 
 Labor, which applies all these discoveries to the production of this 
 vast wealth? Shall it share m the improvement of human conditions, 
 or be left to retrogradation? Remembering that extreme wealth 
 and extreme poverty are the two widely separated ends of the human 
 chain, shall the great middle classes which so largely outnumber 
 both the others, reconcile the rights of one with the interests of the 
 other, and so maintain ^our peaceful development? These pregnant 
 questions, gentlemen, will demand your unimpassioned thought for 
 years to come, for they must in part be hereafter resolved by legis- 
 lation within the halls of which you this day take possession. The 
 country is feeling its way steadily toward their solution. Let Pa- 
 tience be a welcome guest at your deliberations, and let Justice con- 
 trol them. For Justice is the richest jewel in the crown of govern 
 ment — justice to the low, justice to the high, justice to all. Legisla- 
 tion must not take away from industry, activity and extraordinary 
 capacity the legitimate earnings of these superior qualities; for that 
 would be to discourage the best labor, and to retard the advance of 
 society. Nor, on the other hand, must it give to superior faculty such 
 advantages as will enable it to oppress humbler natures, or deprive 
 them of their fair protection, and their fitting share in the world's 
 advance. The just principle must be found upon which proper social 
 legislation shall be based. It may possibly be recognized by analogy 
 to the care bestowed by governments upon those in its military ser- 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 15 
 
 vice who are wounded or diseased in the line of duty. It may be 
 found in the compulsory and regular contribution from the profits of 
 the enterprise to a beneficial fund; or in the principles of an insur- 
 ance association. Voluntary efforts of enlightened wealth are already 
 opening the way, and blazing the path of future legislation. The 
 principles of justice, reinforced by the sentiment of Christianity, will 
 surely lead our fair-minded countrymen to the settlement of these 
 questions without the violence and disorder which are so dangerously 
 distracting the older nations of Europe. 
 
 We, gentlemen, shall soon pass from the stage of public action. 
 The hope of the country will soon pass to the next generation. The 
 fair flower of Iowa, now in her public schools or just leaping the 
 fences into political life, will claim the control of the destinies of the 
 State. I appeal to them to avoid the common road which leads 
 through the passions and prejudices of men; and to choose the path 
 which demands higher courage, but which leads assuredly to an hon- 
 orable fame. The generosity of their years should easily lead them 
 to resist the despotism of the strong, as well as to scorn the ways of 
 the demagogue. To gain greatness for themselves or for their State 
 they must be guided by the nobler sentiments of the human heart 
 and by the higher qualities of the human intellect. It is of the very 
 nature of greatness that it represents these qualities, as it is devel- 
 oped by them. But it is of the very nature of prejudice and passion 
 that they cannot endure in leadership; they must die of the moral 
 mephitic gasses which are evolved out of their own active heat. You 
 may try to convert them to a better nature, but try not at all to build 
 yourself upon them. They may make a Marat, who flooded a city 
 with blood; but never a Napoleon, who curbed and conquered them 
 and organized an empire upon their fall. Truth alone is indestruct- 
 ible. 
 
 " The eternal years of God are hers," 
 
 as well in politics as in religion. Truth and you together are 
 
IQ THE NEW CAPITOL. 
 
 stronger than you and all the hosts of error in company. In a time 
 of great passion and excitement John Milton wrote, " I care not 
 what error is let loose into the field, so Truth be left free to combat 
 it." One of the noblest things in this contest against popular error 
 and prejudice on the one hand and against the prejudices of organ- 
 ized wealth and position on the other, to which I summon the youth 
 of Iowa, is found in the manly qualities of courage and personal 
 independence which it evokes. Slaves of party and slaves of self 
 interest and prejudice abound, and will threaten you with defeat 
 if you take sides against them for public justice and public honor 
 in times of difficulty. But the battle, though prolonged, is surely 
 won in the end for truth an& justice. It is not the skirmish, but 
 the final victory, which wins the chaplet of immortality. We send 
 these messages to-day from beneath this dome to the blossoming 
 manhood of our State, now in university, college and schools, who 
 shall soon occupy our places in this Capitol, and shall here direct the 
 affairs and establish the fame of a greater State. 
 
 One sentiment more demands expression under these arches as 
 they are dedicated to future centuries. Need I say to you, men of 
 Iowa, who have so recently and so bountifully given your treasure 
 and' your blood to maintain it, that the strongest hope of the future 
 welfare of our State, under favor of the Almighty, is in the perpe- 
 tuity of the National Union. In that well-rounded circle we dwell 
 secure. Detached from that bond, a broken fragment, we should be 
 the prey alike of internal faction and of faithless and transient 
 external alliances. Jealousies of rivals on every side, obstructed 
 intercourse, commercial exactions, and frontier broils, would impov- 
 erish the people, excite their passions, and destroy their peace. In 
 the end we should fall like the petty Republics of Greece under 
 foreign domination, or like Rome seek relief from domestic faction 
 in submission to a despot's rule The rallying cry of all patriots 
 
ADDRESS. 17 
 
 must still be, the Constitution and the Union. The victories of 
 war and the glories of peace, won under the common flag, must 
 never be divided. May each generation transmit from these halls to 
 its succeeding generation the watchword: Let the Union remain 
 forever. When, in 1851, being the seventy-sixth year of our Inde- 
 pendence, the corner-stone was laid for the extension of the United 
 States Capitol, Mr. Webster deposited a memorial of the ceremony, 
 in which he declared that if it should thereafter be the will of God 
 that the structure should fall from its base and its foundations be 
 upturned, that memorial should make it known that the Union of the 
 States then stood firm, and the Constitution unimpaired, and grown 
 stronger in the affections of the people than ever before. 
 
 Standing to-day in this noble presence of all departments of the 
 government. Legislative, Executive and Judicial, and of the people 
 of the State, I would enlarge the lofty words of that great statesman. 
 If it shall hereafter be the will of God that the pillars and dome s, 
 towers and walls of this great structure shall fall prostrate, and evtn 
 its foundations be buried from the eyes of men, be it known that at 
 this time, in the one hundred and eighth year of our Independence, 
 the Union of the United States op America, having withstood the 
 shock of two foreign wars, and of one more terrible civil war, still 
 stands firm, and more strongly consolidated than ever before, having 
 been cemented by blood; that their Constitution still exists unim- 
 paired, and even improved by the introduction of universal human 
 liberty within its entire jurisdiction; and with more than its original 
 usefulness and glory; that it grows every day stronger in the affec- 
 tions of the great body of the American people, and attracts more 
 and more the admiration of the world. And all here assembled, 
 whether belonging to public or private life, with hearts devoutly 
 thankful to Almighty God for the preservation of the liberty and the 
 
18 
 
 THE NEW CAPITOL. 
 
 happiness of the country, and for the great prosperity of the State, 
 unite in sincere and fervent prayers that these walls and arches, 
 domes and towers, columns and capitals, may endure so long as the 
 Republic and Liberty survive. 
 
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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