Tir: Adjutant General's Office, Washington, Aug 20, 1866, Your resignation has been accepted by the President of the United States, to take effect the First day of September 1860 Maj. I am, sir, very respectfully. JC Kelton Assistant Adjutant General. Several John M. Palmer, U. S. Volunteers Carlinville (63.) martial for the trial of the officers of the Freedman's Bureau. I spent the Fourth of July at Richmond, Virginia, and witnessed the rejoicing of the late slaves over their emancipation. I took the cars next morning and arrived at Raleigh the same evening, where I organized the court and proceeded to business. On the 12th of July, during my absence from home, I was elected commander of the new organization, and was informed of my election while at Raleigh by a letter from Governor Oglesby, who was connected with the organization. I was much disappointed over the non-acceptance of my resignation by the secretary of war, but Mr. Stanton informed me that he had kept me, an officer of rank, for court martial purposes, but if I would go to Nashville, Tennessee, he would accept my resignation on the first of September. While in Washington, upon my return, I called upon General Grant, who was in command of the army, and he offered to recommend me for an appointment in the regular army as brigadier-general, which I declined, telling him that I would rather be a police magistrate of the town in which I lived than a brigadier general in time of peace; but I told him that I would give him ten thousand dollars for his first year's salary as president of the United States. He also declined my offer, the salary was then twenty-five thousand dollars a year. On my return to Illinois, I resumed the practice of law with Mr. Hay, and in April, 1867, removed my family to Springfield, where I have resided ever since. In November, 1868, I was elected governor of Illinois, which dissolved my partnership with Mr. Hay. Our partnership was a most agreeable and profitable one. He was a great lawyer and an honest man; his logical power was unsurpassed by any one with whom I have ever been associated. We tried many causes of great importance. CHAPTER XXI. Inaugural address-Condition of the times-Change in situation of North and South-Democratic party-Railway corporations-Governor Oglesby-Public schools-Incorporation laws-Vetoes-Local taxation-Lake-front bill and veto. I am now about to enter upon a period of my life which is so near to the present time that I will not be able, with a just regard for the feelings of some who are living, or to the memory of the dead, to write with the same freedom that I have felt in the narration of the events less known, or that occurred before and at a more distant point of time. I had been elected to the office of governor of the State of Illinois at the preceding state election, by a majority so large that I could not doubt but that I had the personal confidence and respect of the people of the state. I had lived in Illinois since my boyhood and watched its advance in population, in wealth and intelligence; still, it was not the Illinois I had known from 1831, until I left the state with my regiment, in 1861. From 1831, until the time I have mentioned, the people were poor, but contented; and, though property was of small value in the currency which was supplied by local banks of this and other states, the people of Illinois were practically without money. I remember that when I left home for the army I had in the bank at Carlinville, where I lived, nearly three hundred dollars in gold; it was worth some one hundred and twenty, and rose to two hundred and forty, as compared with the bills of the banks and the government issues, which were called "greenbacks." I had left home in May, 1861, with about seventy-five dollars of the bills of the banks organized under the state laws. I had ordered a uniform at Jacksonville, after I took command of my regiment, at a cost of some forty dollars; in a night, the bills became so depreciated that they were not worth the price of the uniform. At the time of my leaving home for the army, the Rebels were exhibiting great activity, and, in the minds of many thoughtful men, the Southern Confederacy was already established and the Union dissolved. I did not myself feel the greatest confidence in the ultimate success of our intended efforts to suppress the rebellion. The indifference of many and hostility of some of my acquaintances made me apprehensive that, before the struggle would end, even Illinois might be the theater of civil conflict. But, now that the war was over, all its just objects were accomplished, and the Rebels had submitted to the Union army and slavery was abolished, it seemed to me that the country should henceforth be governed by the principles of the federal and state constitutions, and that the rules of orderly and good government should again prevail. I have no doubt but that, in point of sentiment, the feeling in that direction was general; but, as a matter of fact, there was then no organized public opinion capable of demanding the return to constitutional government, or a return to the habits of economy and honesty which, up to the beginning of the civil war, characterized the American people. There was at the same time a complete change in political, social and financial power between the two sections of the Union. Before the war, the "South" dominated the government, and its social ideas influenced all sections of the Union. Its condition was now changed; its power was overthrown; its people were humbled by defeat, and were humiliated by poverty; its political ideas were odious, while the North had in turn become prosperous and arrogant. The people of the Northern states, feeling that they were in possession of the Federal government, feared nothing for themselves and regardless of the facts of history, that "precedents of despotism become public law and in progress of time are turned against the authors." When I speak of the eagerness of the people to employ despotic measures against the people of the subjugated states, I, of course, refer to the dominant element of the Republican party; the Democratic party, which then represented only a minority in the Northern states, was disorganized, and had neither the resolution nor the force to resist the obvious tendency of the radical Republican party policy. As I have elsewhere stated, the Democratic party was placed in a false political position by the fatal mistake of Douglas, in his attempt to repeal the Missouri Compromise. He mistook the state of public sentiment in both sections of the Union. The feeling of hostility to slavery in the free states, which had been so long repressed, upon the repeal of the compromise of 1820, burst forth with a vehemence that astounded the country, while the pro-slavery sentiment which then controlled the politics of the South, blind to the future, became more exacting and defiant. The Northern Democracy suddenly found itself between two determined forces, and vainly attempted to find some common ground of compromise. Mr. Douglas attempted to interpose between the exasperated parties the specious theory of popular sovereignty, as applied to the territories. Popular sovereignty, as interpreted by Mr. Douglas, proposed that the people who settled the new territories, should at some time settle the question of the entrance of slavery, for themselves, but, in the meantime, it conceded the right of citizens of all the states to remove into the new territories, and carry with them their property and hold slaves, if slavery was lawful in the states of their former residence. He claimed, that notwithstanding the immigrants to the territories from slave states had the right to remove to the territories with their slaves, and hold them there as slaves, and the settlers would have no constitutional right to prohibit slavery, still they might in effect repel slavery by "unfriendly legislation." The |