Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1868 [PAGE 168]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

356

the lakes to the sea; the law-making power was invoked, and earnest, determined men thundered again and again at the doors of General Assemblies and Congressional Halls, demanding to be heard on thi3 great question. At times, in some of the States, the issue went to the hustings, and even the tumultuous roar of rival political parties was awed and hushed for a time by the great voice of the toiling masses, demanding an education suited to their needs. Repeated disappointments and defeats only resulted in fresh combinations, more determined efforts, and large accessions of strength. Able and gifted men from every pursuit in life, from every class of society, and from every quarter of the Union poured into the swelling tide the contributions of their learning, experience and genius. In the West, the man whose voice rang out earliest, loudest and clearest, in this great movement—whose words pealed and thundered through the minds and hearts of the people, and the round shot of whose tremendous broadsides of irrefragable facts and logic, and fiery rhetoric, plowed and plunged and ricochetted through these prairies, with an energy and vehemence that no bulwarks of ignorance or apathy could withstand, and which brought nearly every farmer and artisan hurrying to his standard, from far and near, and put in motion the imperial columns of our free-born yeomanry—the man who threw into the struggle not only the best energies of his mind, but the unwavering faith of his soul and the deepest longings of his heart, and who^plead for the uplifting and regeneration of the masses and for the "millennium of labor," as the patriot pleads for his country and the christian for the salvation of God—the man whose able reports, instructive addresses, and thrillingly eloquent speeches were caught up and re-echoed by the enlightened press of the whole country, without regard to sect or party, and which furnished at once the material and the inspiration of auxiliary and co-operative movements and organizations in many other States—and the man who, as I believe, through all these multiplied and overwhelming labors, was animated not by considerations of self-aggrandizement or sordid gain, but by the loftier purpose of serving his race and honoring God by uplifting and blessing the toiling millions of His children—

that man was JONATHAN BALDWIN TURNER, of Illinois.

This is not blind adulation nor fulsome eulogy. I know whereof I affirm; I am familiar with the procession of events to which I have referred, and the connection of that great and good man therewith ; and I could not suffer this glad day to pass without a few words in vindication of the truth of history, and a grateful recognition of his services. I speak in this matter only for myself, and at the promptings of my own feelings and judgment—no other person is in any manner responsible for what I have said, or may say, in this regard. And if I speak warmly of Prof. Turner as a man, it is because I have known him over thirty years, during twenty of which he was my near neighbor, during four of which he was my teacher, and during all of which he has been my friend, ever kind and true. If his right to the place to which I have assigned him as the western pioneer and leader in this great educational movement, is challenged, I refer to the printed records and documentary history of the whole agitation, from the convention at Granville, in November, 1851, down to the passage of the bill creating this Institution, in February 28th, 1867, Through all those sixteen years of struggle and effort, you will find him towering up as the central figure, the very Ajax of the fight; closely identified with every phase of the controversy, and with all its vicissitudes of fortune. His reports, addresses, memorials and other papers, are