Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1900 [PAGE 74]

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UNIVERSITY O F I L L I N O I S .

[Jan.

13 ?

throughout the State and country as a vigorous helper and exponent of all good works. He was a typical leader of the agitation for the abolition of slavery and led in a region of country where there could be no leadership in that great movement without marked heroism. But the particular work for which his memory will always be cherished by the University related to the application of higher learning to industrial progress and to the procuring of the congressional legislation which brought into being the great system of land grant universities now so potent throughout the land. Of this mighty undertaking he was at once the forerunner and the apostle. He believed that he had a commission from on high in this behalf, and doubtless he had. That commission led us into controversies, but they were controversies which he did not fear, in which his great qualities made him entirely at home, and they were controversies that broke new roads through fixed opinions and established systems, and made way for a new order of education which could bring the industrial masses to the substantial support of democratic institutions, To accomplish this great end he was not only actuated by his intellectual outlook and by his sympathies, but, what is of more moment, he worked to a plan. He came to the necessity of changing some of the details of his plan more than once, and then he did it with true consistency and unfaltering courage. For long years there was no sacrifice of time, of comfort,or money which was too great for him to make cheerfully in the interests of this beneficent work. At the State and national capitals, at the agricultural fairs, in the churches and the school houses, in neighborhood conferences, at the political conventions, and on the hustings, by letter and through the press, he agitated aggressively and uncompromisingly. Of course others came to his support, but he started in the lead and he maintained the lead until the undertaking was crowned with complete success. If the accomplishment of his purpose was a great satisfaction to him, the subsequent unfolding of the system of land grant colleges to such magnificent proportions was a yet greater one. The marked development of our own University, in his own State, which came in his last years, was a crowning pleasure to him. It brought into his great spirit a liberal measure of the eternal sunshine into which he has gone. And it reacted upon the university for he lost no opportunity to say things which would be an encouragement to it. All connected with the university will cherish his memory and emulate his virtues. As the growth of the University gladdened his life through his last years upon earth, so shall his spirit quicken and brighten the life of the University for all time. The members of the Board of Trustees tender their most sincere condolence to his daughter, their associate, as well as to the other members of his family, upon his death; but it asks to share with them in the inheritance of the memory of such a father, such a pure character of heroic mould, and such a forceful benefactor of the human race.

LUCY L. FLOWER, J A S . E. ARMSTRONG, S. A. BULLARD,

Committee, T h e b o a r d adjourned.

F. M. MCKAY,

W . L. P I L L S B U R Y ,

President,

Secretary,