This suggestion of the possible ultimate redemption of the African race and African continent was made twenty-five years ago.  Every succeeding year has added strength to the hope of its realization.  May it indeed be realized.  Pharaoh’s country was cursed with plagues, and his hosts were lost in the Red Sea, for striving to retain a captive people who had already served them more than four hundred years.  May like disasters never befall us!  If, as the friends of colonization hope, the present and coming generations of our countrymen shall by any means succeed in freeing our land from the dangerous presence of slavery, and at the same time in restoring a captive people to their long-lost fatherland with bright prospects for the future, and this too so gradually that neither races nor individuals shall have suffered by the change, it will indeed be a glorious consummation.  And if to such a consummation the efforts of Mr. Clay shall have contributed, it will be what he most ardently wished, and none of his labors will have been more valuable to his country and his kind.

But Henry Clay is dead.  His long and eventful life is closed.  Our country is prosperous and powerful; but could it have been quite all it has been, and is, and is to be, without Henry Clay?  Such a man the times have demanded, and such in the providence of God was given us.  But he is gone.  Let us strive to deserve, as far as mortals may, the continued care of Divine Providence, trusting that in future national emergencies He will not fail to provide us the instruments of safety and security.

Note.  We are indebted for a copy of this speech to the courtesy of Major Wm. H. Bailhache, formerly one of the proprietors of the Illinois State Journal.

CHALLENGED VOTERS

Opinion on the Illinois election law.

Springfield, November 1, 1852

A leading article in the Daily Register of this morning has induced some of our friends to request our opinion on the election laws as applicable to challenged voters.  We have examined the present constitution of the State, the election law of 1849, and the unrepealed parts of the election law in the revised code of 1845; and we are of the opinion that any person taking the oath prescribed in the act of 1849 is entitled to vote unless counter-proof be made satisfactory to a majority of the judges that such oath is untrue; and that for the purpose of obtaining such counter-proof, the proposed voter may be asked questions in the way of cross-examination, and other independent testimony may be received.  We base our opinion as to receiving counter-proof upon the unrepealed Section nineteen of the election law in the revised code.

   A. Lincoln,
   B. S. Edwards
   S. T. Logan. 
   S. H. Treat

1853
Legal office work
to Joshua R. Stanford. 
Pekin, may 12, 1853