rier which we could not overcome. Members from the old states opposed offering governmental inducements for western emigration, and the whig party wished the lands sold and the proceeds distributed. Thus matters had continued, from my entrance into congress, in 1843,10 September, 1850. Fortunately our canal had been intrusted to a company upon terms which caused our canal indebtedness to appreciate, and secured its ultimate payment. As some of the holders of our canal bonds were also holders of our other bonds, and as they mostly were residents of the older states and members of the whig party, whence came the opposition to our grant, the thought occured that we could utilize such bondholders in securing our land grant. A correspondence ensued which resulted in a committee being sent to Washington. I met them at the depot. And their first inquiry was for Mr. Webster. I could receive no encouragement from them, until a consultation with Mr. Webster was had. I afterward found out that their original designs were to have their grant made directly to a company; but Mr. Webster satisfied them that a provision in a charter, like that which was inserted, eventually making the money payable to the state solely applicable to the payment of our state debt, could not be repealed. I went with them to the secretary of state's department, and he received us very cordially. He knew all about our contract with the canal company, and he had been consulted as to its irrepealability. He said there were a great many measures that ought to be adopted by congress, and which could be, if a spirit of compromise could be brought about. He said the new states wanted land grants and the old states wanted some modification of the tariff laws; but there were members who cared for neither, and who could defeat both, unless the friends of both would adopt that
SPIRIT OF CONCESSION
and compromise that had been so happily brought to bear in the adjustment of the slavery question. "Now," said he to me, "my friend George Ashmun is a man of remarkably practical good sense and discretion, and, if men of conflicting interests would rally around him in a spirit of compromise, be is capable of doing a great deal of good. I will advise him to call upon you." And then he made an appointment for the gentleman at his residence. I knew Mr. Ashmun's relation to Mr. Webster from seeing him take Mr. Webster's seat in the senate, when he arose to make his celebrated 7th of March speech in that year: and Mr. Ashmun handed him his books of authority, opened at the appropriate page, as he progressed. He will be remembered as the president of the national convention which first nominated Mr. Lincoln. One Saturday, Mr. Ashmun said: "Mr. Webster thinks that you and I, by acting in concert, can do our respective people and the country at large a great deal of good. What do you say?" I said: "You know what we Illinois men all want. Lead off." "Now," he said, "help where you can, and where you can not help, dodge. And have all your men ready for Tuesday." Promptly upon that day, September 17, Mr. Ashmun made the motion to proceed to business upon the speaker's table, and when our hill was reached, so well did I know our original force, I could estimate the value of recruits. And when I saw our old opponents voting for the bill in such numbers, I was so confident of the result that I ventured to telegraph the bill's passage to Chicago, and it was known there quite as soon as the speaker declared the result—101 to 75. But for Mr. Webster and Mr. Ashmun. I am confident we should have had to wait for a new apportionment, and then our company would have had to compete with the owners of other land-grant roads in the loan market. And Webster would have been dead.
