The Council Bluffs nonpareil. [volume] (Council Bluffs [Iowa]) 1857-1867, 1857-06-27
THE PROGRESS OF RAILWAs

GOV. CHAsE's SPEECH.
The following is the speech Of welcome
to the guests Of the great Rail Road Cele-
bration, delivered at Marietta, Ohio, June
I'd, 1857 =
csat,emea-The Committee Of Arrange
ments for this suspicious occasion, has as
signed to me the very agreeable duty Of
welcoming you to Ohio. 1t is, indeed, an
anspicious occasion that unites the citizens
of so many States in celebrating the happy
consummation Of great work, SO long ago
commenced, as steadily urged, and at length,
Notwithstanding manifold discouragements
and difficulties almost innumerable, SO tri-
umphantly accomplished.
Ii is with especial qualification that well
come to our soil and our hospitalities the
Representatives Of that ancient and honored
Commonwealth whose infancy was guided
by the wisdom of religious federation, and
whose maturer age was illustrated by the
conception and Inauguration Of the first
railroad attempted from the seaboard,
across the mountains, into the vast interior,
and the representatives of that ancient Do
minion, honored mother Of Washington and
jefferson, under whose auspices she settle
ment of the Northwest was inaugurated.
1t gives me grea. pleasure to include IN
this cordial welcome those members OF the
| Federal Administration, and those Senators
and Representatives of our sister states IN
the Federal Congess, whose presence here
attests the national value of the occasion,
and the diplomatic Representatives of that
French native and French Government,
whose dominion once extended over all this
beautiful land.
l greet with no less satisfaction and with
salutations no less hearty, the Directors and
officers of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad,
the members of the City Government OF
Baltimore, the gentlemen of the Press
members of that other government which
governs us all-and those other distinguish
ed citizens, whose concurrence to this cele-
bration makes this one of those bright days
which we anticipate with pleasure and re-
member with delight.
Welcome, gentlemen, welcome, one and
all. May you derive from your brief sojourn
within the limits of Ohio, a pleasure as real
and as great as that which your coming af-
fords us. To you, sir, (turning to General
Cass,) may say something more than WI
come to Ohio! may almost say, welcome
home! Welcome, may certainly say, to
the theatre Of your earliest manhood i
Welcome to the community from which you
received your first political trust! Welcome
to the spot which witnessed, near half cen
tury ago, the commencement Of that long
career of distinguished public service and
high public trust through which you have
moved-a career long, yet we trust, to be
protracted through vigorous and honored
age, in the midst of heart felt regards and
affections which may be augmented, per-
haps, by political sympathies but cannot be
extinguished by political differences. Here,
sir. now, as then, rolls the same beautiful
Ohio: there, with willing tribute, comes the
same swift Muskingum; yonder are the same
verdant slopes; above our head is the same
benignant sky. Would that could add
that now, as then, here and around you,
stands the friends of your youth to welcome
you back to the spot consecrated by youth
full friendship. A few, indeed, yet remain
to greet YOU. The rest-but let me not
awaken vain regrets. Even the departed
survive in their spirit and greet you through
their works.
Ny qualification in welcoming you to Ohio.
gentlemen, is doubled by the circumstance
that, at the same moment, | NAV welcome
you to the spot where the foundation of the
State was laid-where, indeed, the Anglo
Saxon settlement was begun.
Hither, on the 7th day of April, 1888, not
vet quite seventy wears ago, after winters
Journey across the Alleghanies, through
deep SHOWS and over almost impossible
ways; after a voyage in boats constructed
by themselves, down the foughioghany
down the Monongahela, down the Ohio; I'M
der the lead of Rufus Putnam, a Brigadier
General of the Revolutionary army. who
possessed and fully deserved the entire con-
fdence of Washington-came the first set
tiers of Ohio-noble souls-devoted patr-
ots-brave soldiers-who, having galantly
aided in achieving the independence of their
country, now consecrated their energies to
the establishment of new homes for free
men, and new Empire of Freedom in the
Western Wilderness.
Here they found, in singular preserva-
| ton. those remarkable and extensive earth
works existing, though in somewhat i'm
paired condition, to this day, the purpose of
which, whether civil or military, secular or
ecclesiastical, battles antiquarian research,
though all agree that they must have been
constructed in remote antiquity, and by a
race of men which has long since disap-
peared.
Here, too, they found the successors of
that race, the red men of the forest, still re-
sentful of their wrongs in Pontiac's war,
and Jealous of the encroachments Of the
white man.
With characteristic energy and prompti-
tude, on the very next day after their arrl-
val, they commenced the work of dividing
the land, and prepared at once for cultiva-
ton and defence. Hope pictured for them
bright though distant future; but not even
the magic pencil of hope could have pic
tured the magnificent reality. From this
germ in the wilderness has already sprang a
State as rich in resources and as powerful
in arms as were the whole United Colony at
the era of the Revolution. Other States
have risen in rapid succession. Westward
and still westward, the Star Of Empire has
taken its way, carrying, by its mighty at
traction Anglo Saxon dominion and Anglo
Saxon civilization, in the form Of Republi-
can institutions and Republicans States,
across the Mississippi, across theprairies,
across the mountains, till it pauses at last
at the very gates of evening, to look down
over the Pacific, now vexed by the keels of
an unwonted commerce, upon the latest ac-
cession to the Republic, young, brilliant,
golden robed California. To what spot,
then, in Ohio, gentlemen, could welcome
you--to what spot in the great central val
ley in the Ohio can you be welcomed, more
fraught with historic interest, or more sug-
gestive of the grand, hopeful future than
this? -
And what an event it is, gentlemen, which
we here unite in celebrating? What
thoughts of it, too. awaken of the past, and
what heroes of the time to- comet Three
distinct periods seem to mark the progress
OF, means of communication between the
Eastern and the Western-Western once,
but Western now no longer-sections Of our
country. Our fathers were glad to avail
themselves of the Indian trails and buffalo
paths on land and of canoes and broad
horns upon the water. Eighty-seven years
ago, red man, standing here on the shore
Of the Ohio, might have remarked floating
down with the stream, a rude canoe, man
ned by two Indians, and bearing three white
men, of whom one in the p rime of manhood,
was easily distinguished from the others by
his dignihed bearing and by his athleticpro-
portions. 1t was Washington, who had
crossed the mountains on horsebaback the