that number about fifty are under twenty-one years of age.
The Legislature of 1855, impressed with the necessity of providing a place in which the young delinquents might be confined, where the old and hardened criminal should have no power to lead them further astray, or induct them deeper into crime, provided for the purchase of a piece of ground for the purpose of establishing a House of Refuge. In April last, Governor Willard and the State officers negotiated with General James P. Drake for the purchase of one hundred acres of land, four miles west of the city, for that purpose.
The importance of such an institusion can not be overestimated, and it has had the frequent recommendations of my predecessors. In view of the fact that the penitentiary to a young mind is a perfect school for vice; that mere boys are sentenced there in order to avoid an expense to the county for their maintenance in the county jail; and that by contact with old offenders, come out at the end of their term as vicious as their instructors, I can hardly conceive a want more seriously felt than this. In our sister States, these institutions, under the names of "Houses of Reform," "Houses of Correction" "State Reform Schools," &c., have been tried with success. The establishment of a House of Refuge upon the ground selected and purchased for that purpose, is imperatively demanded-demanded alike by good morals and sound policy-and I recommend that prompt and adequate action be taken by you in the matter, and that an appropriation for that purpose be made.
By a law, approved March 5th, 1859, the Legislature provided for building a State Prison north of the National Road, and appropriated fifty thousand dollars to carry the provisions of the law into effect. As the Legislature failed to elect three directors, the Governor, by virtue of the law, appointed Dr. B. F. Mullen, John P. Dunn and John W. Blake such directors, who proceeded to locate the prison at Fort Wayne. But for some reason the Governor failed to approve of this location, and it was finally abandoned, and the location subsequently made at Michigan City. Under a contract made by the directors on the part of the State, with Messrs. Talbott and Costigan, for the building of such State Prison, I learn the full amount of the appropriation has been expended. As I have had no connection, either personal or official, with this transaction, I am compelled in this general manner to allude to it. In regard to the location of this prison, the making the contract and the direction of the work, in a matter of the importance of this, it is due to these directors, as well as to the public, that you should cause a full investigation to be made in reference to their action as such directors, and I respectfully recommend that you cause such an investigation to be made. Their report is herewith submitted.
The commission appointed under a joint resolution of the General Assembly at the last session, in relation to the settlement, adjustment and collection of the dues to the State, assembled in this city in July, 1859, to discharge the duties confided to them.
By the terms of the joint resolution, the authority of the commissioners seemed to be limited to the detailed statement of the unsettled accounts of all persons heretofore acting as officers or agents of State, and evidences of debt, delivered to them by the Auditor of State. They thoroughly investigated such accounts and claims, and, as far as practicable, have settled the same in pursuance of the terms of the joint resolution. The investigation required, in some instances, much labor, and the examination of a great variety of facts. The settlements so made were, in my opinion, such as the interests of the State rendered necessary, and I have, upon an examination of them, given my full approval thereof in writing. The report of their proceedings is herewith laid before you.
In order that the citizens of Indiana should compete favorably with those of her sister States in the full and profitable development of her mineral resources, the last Legislature, following out the wise and enlarged policy demanded by an increase in the number of our inhabitants, and a friendly emulation with our sister States, passed an act requiring a geological reconnoisance of our State preparatory to a more full and extended examination of all her hidden resources. This survey you placed under the fostering care of the able and energetic State Board of Agriculture, who have, in their direction of the survey, fully sustained their well-merited character for discernment in plan and promptness in the execution of work entrusted to their charge. Already with the five thousand dollars placed by you at their disposal, they have had nearly every county partially examined, and are ready, through their geologist, to report upon the most important localities, minerals, soils, etc., meriting more full and detailed examinations, should the same wise and liberal policy dictate a further prosecution of the work, and furnish the necessary means.
page: 20[View Page 20]The advantages of a thorough geological survey are manifold. It will show to our citizens and the world that we have more than twenty counties in which a good working coal can be developed to any required amount; coal beds from which oil can be extracted equal in quality, and nearly in quantity to that of Breckinridge county, Kentucky; abundant deposits of iron ore at present worked successfully at a few furnaces, chiefly on the edge of our coal fields; and also on the same coal field margin favorable locations for sinking brine wells and boiling salt; various localities in which extended search may develope lead and other metals-one deposit having recently been developed by analytical research in the laboratory of the State Geologist as rich in the valuable mineral cobalt, extensively used in arts and manufactures-besides, further, the examination and recommendation of many valuable quarries affording materials for building rock and road making, with, others affording grindstones and whetstones of excellent quality, and a good article of lithographic stone; as well, also, as numerous deposits adapted to the manufacture of firebrick, earthenware, etc. Besides all these important and practical results, I would more especially call your attention to the chemical analyses of thirty-three soils selected from different geological formations, designed to show the manner in which that important work should be performed for every county in Indiana.
To enumerate all the advantages which our State would secure, would occupy more space than can be appropriately devoted, notwithstanding the vital importance of the subject to our whole community, but it is confidently hoped enough has been here said to direct your attention to a work alike useful and interesting to the farmer, the mechanic, the engineer, and many others, as well as to the general lovers of science.
Our lamented man of science, of world-wide reputation and an ornament to our State, our late State Geologist, Dr. David Dale Owen, is lost to science and to us by death, and it will be indeed hard to fill the void thus occasioned. .As, however, he was occupied previous to the call made on him by our State Board, in the surveys of Kentucky and Arkansas, he had not personally taken the field. The work has been hitherto conducted and reported upon by his brother, Dr. Richard Owen, whose report is herewith submitted to you, with the necessary maps, diagrams, tables of analysis, etc., connected therewith.
It is now seventy-one years since the present Federal Constitution was adopted, and the United States formed into one nation under its provisions. In that time, under the benign influence of our Federal Union, our advancement in all the elements of national greatness and power, has been unparalleled; and now, in the very zenith of our power, in the morning of our national existence, with all the elements of our national and individual wealth in rapid process of development, we find ourselves on the brink of disunion, and from the high position we have hitherto enjoyed as a power among the nations of the earth, we seem about to fall into the fathomless depths of anarchy and civil war. As one of the members of this great confederacy of States, it is our imperative duty to carefully and honestly consider the causes that have so much disturbed our Federal relations, and if any remedy can be devised stay the progress of disunion, Indiana should be willing to seize upon it at once, and use that remedy to heal the dissentions existing between the Northern and Southern States. The Federal Government, based as it is upon a written constitution, formed of delegated powers from the several States, and possessing no powers that are not federal in their character, necessarily leaves untouched and to be exercised by the several States alone, all local rights of persons or property. Its mission is to regulate our intercourse with foreign nations, and to promote and secure domestic tranquility. Its strength rests with the affections of the people of the several States. It is a government of affection, and not of force, and the dangers that now surround us, arise from the fact that the fraternal bonds that have thus far held us together as a nation, have been growing weaker and weaker until they are about to break asunder. The causes that have produced this alienation of affection between the people of the different sections of the Union, in my judgment, are all traceable to the unwise, and, in many instances, fanatical agitation of the question of domestic slavery.
The very form of our Federal Government presupposes a difference in the local and domestic institutions of the several States, and has wisely left each State in the undisturbed right to control its domestic policy. At the time the Federal Constitution was adopted, twelve of the thirteen original States recognized slavery. But the institution was then in its infancy in this country, and had been forced upon the colonies by the mother country. Most of the leading men, both Worth and South, then looked upon its existence as ephemeral, and contemplated a day, at no great distance, when it would wholly disappear from our system. Far-seeing as the founders of this Government were, they did not estimate rightly the future of this institution. Subsequent developments have fixed the line of demarkation between free and slave institutions. This line has been established by self-interest, and not by any principle of religion or philanthropy. The Northern States relieved themselves from the burthen when they disposed of their slave property to their Southern neighbors and abolished the institution, and the Southern States found in the growing demand for the peculiar productions of their climate and soil, a profitable field for the employment of this species of labor, and they have cherished and maintained it, until it has become the basis of their social system as well as the mainspring of their wealth, and its productions now form the staple of the world's commerce.
From the time this line was formed a gradual but perceptible change in the tone of sentiment, both North and South, began to manifest itself. In the beginning of the agitation of the slavery question in the free States, the advocates of anti-slavery sentiments found but few sympathizers, and the abolition lecturers met with but an indifferent reception at the hands of the people. The honest instincts of the masses recoiled from the danger with which these sentiments were pregnant, and the fear of the popular mind has been page: 21[View Page 21]fearfully verified in the events that are now transpiring around us. In the change of popular sentiment on this subject, the politician and the demagogue have had much to do; but their efforts would have been powerless but for the aid they have received from a much more powerful as well as dangerous class. I refer to that class of political teachers who belong to the ministry, and who claim to speak by authority. In all ages of the world, the ministers and priests of the prevailing religion have exercised a most potent influence over the minds and conduct of men; and in no country more than in our own, notwithstanding our boasted independence. Their power for good or evil is greater than any or all others. They stand as the professed representatives of heaven, in attempting to reclaim a world from sin. Clothed with this sacred robe, as ambassadors from that high court, they claim to pass the judgment of Heaven upon the acts and conduct of their fellow men; and when this high mission is faithfully and conscientiously performed by one capable of understanding the true relation between man and his maker, when the Christian religion is applied to the world as it is, and not as it ought to be, no nobler spectacle can be presented than that feature of our social system that is so strikingly exemplified in the church circle of which its minister and pastor is the center, and no class of men are entitled to higher regard than those ministers who faithfully, and in a spirit of charity, discharge the high duties of such a station. But unfortunately for us as a nation, too many who have thus armed themselves with this double power for good or evil, have turned their attention to political reforms, aud invoke, in their misguided zeal, all the fanatical elements by which they are surrounded. Profoundly ignorant of the political bearings of questions of social and political economy, they claim to judge all such questions from a moral point of view, and to condemn or approve according to their standard of moral right, without any regard to the effect of such a decision upon the well-being of society at large, and without considering the probable result of their pretended moral reform upon the political condition of the country, and their labors have thrown every wave of sectional commotion higher than the last, until the whole country is convulsed by it. The slavery agitation in the free States has naturally produced ultraism at the South, and, as a consequence, the country has become divided into sectional parties, separated by geographical lines. Against these ultraisms, North and South, it is the duty of the conservative element of the whole country to interpose; and this must be done at once, or disunion is inevitable, if it be not already accomplished. The points of difference between the slaveholding and the non-slaveholding States are few, and even those are more imaginary than real. We are as much interested in the development, growth and prosperity of the Southern States as they are themselves, because southern productions have become necessaries of life. On the other hand, they are deeply interested in our prosperity, and suffer from any cause that retards it. The Constitution demands that their fugitive slaves be returned to them. Equity and common honesty require that they shall have full and equal rights in the territories belonging to the General Government. The future condition of the territories, so far as the extension of slavery is concerned, will ultimately be determined by the natural laws that have hitherto controlled that species of property: that is, climate, soil, and productions, so that any question that can now be made upon it must be more an abstraction than a living, vital principle. Why then is it so difficult to adjust all differences between us, and what has caused this fearful political commotion, this panic that has prostrated all the commercial relations of the entire Union? This state of things followed immediately upon the result of our late Presidential election, and it would be difficult, I apprehend, to give as a reason for the present condition of things any other than the result of that contest. The South regarded the election of a Northern candidate by a Northern party as the sequence of anti-slavery agitation, as the solemn verdict of the people in the free States against the South and her institutions, and the instinct of self-preservation is now causing in the South that character of action which threatens to shake the fabric of our Government to its centre. The triumph of the Republican party in the late Presidential contest is the proximate cause of our present political troubles. But the state of popular sentiment necessary to produce these results has been maturing for years, and is the result of slavery agitation. The Southern mind has become impressed with the belief that there is no longer any safety to them or to their property in a union with non-slaveholding States; and that belief does not rest upon any one act of the prevailing party, but in the chain of events that connect together the history of anti-slavery agitation. Underlying, as the institution of slavery does, the whole structure of Southern society, both social and political, and forming to them one great element of their wealth, regarded by them as indispensible to the growth and development of the country, and sensitive to all attacks from every quarter, there can only be permanent peace and tranquility between the two great sections of the country, when we of the free States are ready to stop this discussion of the abstract question of morals connected with this institution, and to look upon it only as a political question, and as it stands connected with our interests as a nation. Compromises of political differences may do much, but that which is most needed at this time, is a restoration of the sentiments of kindly feeling between the North and the South that so strikingly characterized the early history of our republic, and then we may hope that an honest and faithful discharge of all our constitutional obligations toward each other, will result in healing the present breach and insure to us as a nation a brilliant future. It gives me great pleasure to say that Indiana, as a State, has hitherto faithfully kept the bond of union with all her sister States Her record is unstained by any act of bad faith. She has never attempted, directly or indirectly, to evade or avoid any of the requirements of the Federal Constitution, and no man can doubt but if the same could be said of every other State, instead of discord, peace and harmony would reign throughout our borders: Let us then take pride in maintaining the high position we have thus far occupied as a conserva page: 22[View Page 22]tive, Union-loving State, and, while we throw our weight into the scale in favor of any practical mode of settling the present trouble, let us also endeavor to aid in that more permanent and lasting settlement that must flow from a restoration of amity and cordiality among all our people, North and South. Then, as you have met in a legislative capacity, you should place Indiana in this controversy where she rightfully belongs, as a conservative, law-abiding and union State. Show to the people of this confederacy that Indiana will maintain the constitutional rights of every State in this Union-that she will extend to the South all rights in the territories belonging to this Government that she would claim for herself-that she will look to the Constitution and the laws to determine rights of property, and not permit any moral questions to interpose to effect that determination, and that all property recognized by the Constitution and laws shall be alike protected. This position, although it may not affect the action of the extreme Southern States, yet it may do much to bring about a convention of the border, free and slave States. And regarding, as I do, these States to be conservative, and in favor of maintaining the Union as it is, it would be well for the peace of this country, if they could meet in convention and consult together in regard to the present unhappy differences existing between the North and the South. They might by their conservative action, induce the extremists of the North and South to pause and reflect upon the consequences which must necessarily result from their fanatical course, and if by their action, this much could be gained, there would then be hope that by a union of the conservative elements of the country, these unhappy differences might be satisfactorily settled and the best government under heaven, saved from the horrors of disunion and civil war.
A. A. HAMMOND
The business of the joint session being then concluded, the Senators retired.
MEMORY OF GOVERNOR WILLARD.
Mr. HEFFREN submitted the following:
Resolved, That the House of Representatives of the State of Indiana has received with the deepest sensibility, the announcement of the death of Governor Ashbel P. Willard.
Resolved, That the officers and members of this House will wear the usual badge of mourning for thirty days, as a testimonial of the profound respect this House entertains for the memory of the deceased.
Resolved, That the proceedings of this House in relation to the death of Governor Willard, be communicated to the family of the deceased by the Clerk.
Resolved, As a further mark of respect for the memory of the deceased, that this House do now adjourn.
Mr. HEFFREN said:
MR. SPEAKER:- We have just had communicated to us, in an official manner, the death of our late Governor, Ashbel P. Willard. This is the first time in the history of Indiana that her Chief Executive has deceased in office, and the reins of Government have fallen into the hands of him who was elected as the second in command. Indiana is called to mourn the loss of one of her brightest intellects, one of her most genial citizens, and a nation the loss of one of her first statesmen. Sir, I can not pass such an eulogy upon the life, services and character of the deceased as I could wish, but will leave to older and more experienced heads than mine the task, yet I can not suffer the present occasion to pass without offering a tribute of respect to his memory, and while we drop sympathetic tear over his grave, let us not forget to do his life and actions justice. Ashbel Parsons Willard was born October 31st, 1820, at Vernon, Oneida county, New York. His father was a highly respectable farmer, and at one time Sheriff of the county. Young Willard early evinced those powers of intellect which made him such fame in after years. He was of a family of five sons and a daughter. His sister and three of his brothers went to their long home before him. The cold grave closed over their remains and shut from his sight his kindred. A brother of our Governor still survives; the last of that family. They have all fallen, I believe, by that insidious and fell destroyer, consumption. One I well knew, and he was possessed of the same noble traits of character as was our lamented Governor and departed friend.
With the early history of the life of our late Governor I am not very familiar, but I understand that by constant and severe application, he almost ruined his health, and perhaps planted the seeds of his own destruction as he pored over his books by the flickering beams of the midnight lamp. In 1842, he started for the far off West, where "the star of empire takes its way," there to embark upon the tempest-tossed, turbulent sea of life. He arrived in Marshall, Michigan, where he remained a time, and from thence into Texas on horseback, and back to Kentucky, and finally settled at New Albany, Indiana, in the year 1845, where by industry, energy and preseverance, he won friends in the ranks of all parties who never deserted him in his later years.
In 1847, he returned East, and on the 31st day of May, of that year, was married to the beautiful and accomplished Caroline C. Cook, of Haddam, Connecticut. The offspring of that marriage who now survive are James H. and Caroline C. Willard. One, Ashbel P. Willard, Jr., preceded his father to the grave, and the dust of father and son now repose in quiet, side by side in the cemetery of New Albany. All remember the thrill of sadness that ran through our veins as the news was received that Ashbel P. Willard was dead. We felt an involuntary shudder pass over our frames and a chilling sensation through our hearts. We did not think it possible, that he who was onr delight and joy had passed, away from earth to return no more forever.
Yet so it was, for on Thursday, October 4, at about five o'clock, his spirit took its flight to the God who gave it. He died at St. Paul, Minnesota, far away from his intimate friends and associates, and I had almost said in a land of strangers but nowhere in the Union was Ashbel P. Willard a stranger, and no place on the soil of the United States, where civilization rules, but he would have been hospitably received. Just before he died he asked that the papers might be read to him, and he manifested great anxiety for the fate of his country, which he believed drifting to destruction. Alas! too well founded were his fears, too true his belief.
He was elected to the City Council of New Albany in May, 1849, and in 1850, a member of the page: 23[View Page 23]General Assembly, and held a seat upon this floor. He was one of the working men of this body, and the statute books of the State still bear the impress of his genius and wisdom. In 1852 he was elected Lieutenant Governor of the State by his party, and thereby became ex-officio President of the Senate. Four years ago, when I first entered the General Assemby of this State as a Senator from the county of Washington, Lieutenat Governor Willard was in the chair. Well do I remember the turbulent scenes of that organization. Well do I know the firmness and forbearance exhibited by our friend at that time, when there was danger upon every hand, and how well I remember the heroic courage he exhibited there. I well remember, sir, that, had it not been for his counsel, the floor of that Senate would have been bathed in blood and covered with the bodies of the slain. But his advice prevailed, and peace and concord once more held sway.
In 1856, Willard was nominated as a candidate for Governor. He made one of the most laborious canvasses ever made in Indiana. When we see him elected over so able and accomplished a speaker and gentleman as Oliver P. Morton by so large a majority, when, but two years before the State had been thousands against his party, we may well stand abashed at the power, will and majesty of his intellect. Sir, I have seen him sway the tumultuous crowd to and fro like the top of the tall oak in the storm; I have seen him, as the words of burning eloquence flowed from his lips, hold thousands enchained and enraptured, and when he had done, sigh that their feast was so short. He had all the elements of a popular orator and well he knew how to use them to make them tell upon his admiring hearers. His race was short but brilliant. He rose rapidly to distinction and honor, eminence and usefulness. Like the lightning that flashes athwart the sky, his intellect blazed upon us, but when it went out left us in deeper darkness. In him the youth of the land have a model to follow and an example to guide them onward and upward to fame and honor. Starting poor and alone, he carved his way in a few short years to the highest post of distinction in the gift of the people of his State. But he is cut off in the morn of manhood and vigor of his life. Forty summers had just passed over his head and he was called away from us. Yes, death has entered, as it were, into our circle and stricken down the husband and the father as well as our Chief Executive. The beaming eye so full of fire and intelligence that we were wont to look upon, is closed and lusterless. The hand that greeted us with warm friendship and kind affection is cold and clammy in death. The lips and tongue which poured forth streams of eloquence and enraptured us are silent, and that countenance upon which beamed, intelligence and wisdom, urbanity and generosity, has lost its teeling. The wife has lost a kind and doting husband, the children an affectionate and loving parent, the State a noble Executive, the people a kind hearted and noble friend.
But he is gone. His body has been borne to the cold and silent grave by his countrymen, and now reposes in solemn grandeur upon the banks of our own Ohio, whose waters, taking their rise in Pennsylvania and Virginia, mingle and intermix, and are dashed together over the falls of the Ohio, near where his bones now rest in quiet and repose. So may the people of that country which he so loved, mingle and commingle together, until time shall be no more.
And now, when his form has passed from our sight-when his body has been buried beneath the cold clods of the earth, and the dark and silent grave has received it-let us honor his memory and his services. Cut off in the zenith of his fame and glory, it is a warning to us all; and when the grass shall grow green over his grave-tall and rank and high-and be swayed to and fro by the night winds and breezes of heaven; when the nightingale shall pour forth her plaintive song near his last resting place-let us do his memory justice, and preserve his example in our hearts, so that when we are called from labor to refreshment, we may be ready to lay off these mortal habiliments and be raised and exalted to the home of the blest.
Mr. STOTSENBURG said:
MR. SPEAKER: Coming as I do from the city and county which was once the loved home of Ashbel P. Willard, and from the banks of the beautiful river where his ashes now repose, I can not refrain from adding a few words to the expressions of sympathy and regard which have been enunciated by the gentleman who preceded me. It is, indeed, eminently proper that this House should give its unanimous assent to the resolutions of condolence which have just been presented.
At a time, sir, when the State of Indiana was convulsed with the strife of politicians, and when men were grasping after worldly honors and emoluments, Ashbel P. Willard, the Governor of the proud Commonwealth of Indiana, was stricken down by the Destroying Angel. At any time such a calamity would have been greatly deplored and widely felt; but how striking and peculiarly impressive did the circumstances make it. The people of Indiana, casting aside all party differences, and forgetting the excitement of popular strife, with one heart and one voice unite in paying the last tribute of respect to their departed and honored Chief. Imitating their example, let us, the representatives of the people, turn aside for a moment from the pressing cares and anxieties of State and National affairs, and render our homage to the memory of him who was so lately the chosen leader of our State.
It was never my fortune to meet Governor Willard on any public arena; to notice the grasp of his mind or the powers of his great intellect. I knew him rather as a private citizen and as a friend. In all my intercourse with him I found him to be the soul of honor, kind, faithful and generous to a fault. His public acts and political career are known to all, and the record of his life has bee given to the world by abler and wiser men. As for his name and deeds are they not enrolled in your capitol?
How opportune was his death! Patriotic always, and with a heart throbbing with love for the union of the States, Providence vouchsafed to take him from us ere the black storm of civil war threatened to burst in awful desolation over our beloved America. He will never see the troops of a sister State marching with hostile ban page: 24[View Page 24]ners against brethren and friends, and he has been spared the pain of witnessing the bitter strife that is now precipitating us into a fratricidal war.
"Felix non solum claritate vita sed etiam opportunitate mortis."
The resolutions were adopted unanimously, and accordingly the House adjourned till tomorrow morning, 9 o'clock.
