Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - History of the University (Powell) [PAGE 542]

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Report of a Committee on Location of the University

501

Those who voted for this infamous measure may affirm as often as they please that they knew nothing about the corruption money distributed by this ring. The people can never be made to believe one word of it. The people of these several rival counties can never forget that they have been put to all this expense and trouble merely to be cheated by the knaves and fools that were in and around the last legislature. Let it not be imagined that our complaint is because the institution did not come to Jacksonville. The undersigned never even asked any living man, either in or out of the legislature, to either vote or use his influence in behalf of Jacksonville, except the citizens of the county themselves; he has ever steadfastly refused to accept any official position whatever, either on the proposed board or under it. A just regard to each and all counties alike, was all that any member of the state committee ever insisted on at the capital; nothing more and nothing less; while it was agreed among them all that each should encourage and aid his own people to make the very best bid they could for the interest of the institution and of the state. The democratic members of the South and East, could truly allege, that their decision was a load accommodation to their friends, and the responsibility of the infamy would rest on their political opponents who alone were in power. But the Republicans of the North and West had not even this poor excuse for the evident} injustice of this act. I t is well known that the Governor of the State was sorely distressed and perplexed by the result of such legislation. But as he had no effective veto power he did not attempt to arrest its progress. General Fuller and others in the Senate, Mr. Baldwin of LaSalle, the speaker, Mr. Corwin and others of the house did all in their power to arrest this infamy and to defend the rights of the people and taxpayers of the state. By these results your state is most deeply disgraced in the eyes of our sister states—who were looking to us for a worthy example in this high regard. The institution has lost at least two hundred thousand dollars of cash funds, freely and nobly proffered to its acceptance by counties who had higher ends in