lass. His early home was one of the humblest,
where he was a stranger to the luxuries and to many of the ordinary
comforts of life. His opportunities for education were only such as
were common in the remote habitations of our Western country one
century ago.

"Under such conditions, began a career which in grandeur and
achievement has but a single counterpart in our history. And what
a splendid commentary this upon our free institutions,--upon the
sublime underlying principle of popular government! How inspiring
to the youth of high aims every incident of the pathway that led
from the frontier cabin to the Executive Mansion,--from the humblest
position to the most exalted yet attained by man! In no other
country than ours could such attainment have been possible for the
boy whose hands were inured to toil, whose bread was eaten under
the hard conditions that poverty imposes, whose only heritage
was brain, integrity, lofty ambition, and indomitable purpose.
Let it never be forgotten that the man of whom I speak possessed
an integrity that could know no temptation, a purity of life that was
never questioned, a patriotism that no sectional lines could limit,
and a fixedness of purpose that knew no shadow of turning.

"The decade extending from our first treaty of peace with Great
Britain to the inauguration of Washington has been truly denominated
the critical period of our history. The eloquence of Adams and
Henry had precipitated revolution; the unfaltering courage of
Washington and his comrades had secured independence; but the more
difficult task of garnering up the fruits of victory by stable
government was yet to be achieved. The hour for the constructive
statesman had arrived, and James Madison and his associates, equal to
the great emergency, formulated the Federal Constitution.

"No less critical was the period that bounded the active life of
the man whose memory we honor to-day. One perilous question to
national unity which for nearly three-quarters of a century had
been the subject of repeated compromise by patriotic statesmen;
the apple of discord producing sectional antagonism, whose shadow had
darkened our national pathway from the beginning,--was now for weal
or woe to find determination. Angry debate in the Senate and upon
the forum was now hushed, and the supreme question that took hold of
national life was to find enduring arbitrament in the dread tribunal
of war.

"It was well that in suc