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have more fully perfected all the plans he had so anxiously in view for that monument. In his last conscious moments his thoughts and words were of his interest in this memorial-its plans and erection-and thankfulness for the nation-wide sympathy with him in this subject. He greatly lamented leaving this labor of love unfinished.

The last letter I had from him, written only a short time before his death, was to assure me that Mr. Lincoln's Farewell Address delivered here the morning he departed for Washington, and which had not been included in the first plans, should have an appropriate position given to it in the memorial, with the Gettysburg speech and the last inaugural address. Since Senator Cullom's death I have had assurances that the memorial commission will place the tablet with this Farewell Address in a central position immediately behind the heroic bronze statue of Abraham Lincoln, thus giving it the most conspicuous position in the National Memorial Hall. "It is altogether fitting and proper" that this Address be placed in such prominence. These sentences were Mr. Lincoln's first words spoken on the threshold of his appearance in executive view as the Nation's chief. They embody, as we now see, a Nation's prelude by its Chief to the historic tragedy then ushering in. The words are no longer for the few he addressed them to in his home city, but-alike with him who spoke them they belong to the ages!

The nation has not been unmindful of the great services of President Lincoln. His fidelity and patriotism, his faith and hope, his inflexible purpose,-unshaken by disaster or defeat, -"to achieve and cherish a just and lasting union of the States," have now received prompt and gratifying recognition by all the United States, in provision for this memorial monument at Washington.

This national memorial admonishes our State and city to face their duty and presents the opportunity to arise to their privilege. Placing appropriately marked mementoes at the several localities in this city which can make voiceful and perennial here, all events associated with the life of Abraham Lincoln in his home town, is the part now remaining to be done by us, in honor and appreciation by our city and State, of our most illustrious citizen and the nation's First American.

The North-West Territory

BY CHARLES A. KENT.

The treaty of 1763 between France and England marking the end of the French and Indian War secured to the latter nation undisputed claim to the territory bounded by Spanish Florida on the south, the Atlantic Ocean on the east, the Mississippi River on the west, north to the Arctic Ocean. For two years after the treaty was signed, Pontiac's War prevented the full establishment of English authority over this Illinois country, so the tri-color of France waved over Fort Chartres till late in 1765, when the British ensign was hoisted there.

Soon thereafter the king of England proclaimed the country bounded by the Alleghanies, the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, and the thirty-fifth parallel on the south as "Indian Country," and directed settlers from the Atlantic seaboard colonies to refrain from entering the region. Following up such tactics as these, which added to the rapidly increasing friction between England and her American subjects, his majesty, the king, in 1774 deliberately chose to attach all the territory north of the Ohio River and west as far as the Mississippi to the Province of Quebec, and French laws were to operate within its boundaries.

The attention of settlers had been drawn to this region through and at the time of Washington's sweeping victory over the French in the capture of Fort Du Quesne in 1755, thereby opening the way for colonial migration thither. Men who would build homes, adventurers and military leaders came flocking over the Alleghanies from Virginia chiefly, since the Potomac and Alleghany rivers afforded the best route

from that State, but also from New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania.

Under the provision and encouragement of the Quebec Act, French settlers, missionaries, and even local forms of government predominated now for a time, strongly stimulated and supported by English direction, all too often through misrepresentation of the character and motives of the struggling pioneers who braved the terrors of Indian treachery and frontier hardships to establish homes in the western wilderness. Under such a practice of the crown, the Indians were won over in many cases and at once and the same time turned against the settlers of English extraction from east of the mountains, and therein one can easily see how the Quebec Act of 1774 added much in precipitating the inevitable conflict, breaking into a war of revolt on the part of her American colonies, which came with determination and full fury in 1775. In many of the remote settlements and centers of French residence and military strength scattered about, the French were systematically misinformed as to the rise of the American colonists against the mother country, and had been taught to dread the Virginia farmers and hunters and look upon them as perpetual enemies.

Among those coming from Virginia were George Rogers Clark and Daniel Boone. A few months' stay among the settlers of Kentucky convinced Clark of the attitude of the English government, and he resolved to hasten with all speed back to Patrick Henry, the governor of Virginia, and make the situation plain to him.

The autumn of 1777 and the following winter brought three important events which were to have a distinctive bearing on western history. (a) Burgoyne, a British general commanding the land forces in the eastern campaign of the Revolution, finding himself and army completely hemmed in at Saratoga by General Greene, surrendered with six thousand soldiers. England was now willing to grant the colonists everything except actual independence; (b) France entered into a treaty of alliance and friendship with the colonies the following February, wherein it was agreed that the war with England