Fifty Years of Public Service Personal Recollections of Shelby M. Cullom, Senior United States Senator from Illinois

CONTENTS CHAPTER I Birth to Admission to the Bar, 1829 to 1855 II Service as City Attorney at Springfield, 1855 and 1856 III Election to the Illinois Legislature: Lincoln-Dougla...

Tides of migration set in about the close of the Revolutionary War, originating in the most populous of the late Colonies (now States), debouching from the western slopes of the...

My election as City Attorney of Springfield signalized at once my active interest in politics at the very moment when the war cloud was beginning to take shape in the political...

In the year 1856 I had rather unusual experiences of both victory and defeat in one and the same political campaign. As candidate for the Legislature I won out, being elected; a...

More than four months had elapsed since Lincoln's epoch-marking speech at Springfield had brought on his great discussion with Douglas, when on October 20, 1858, Governor Seward...

Returning to the period preceding the Civil War, we observe that the whole nation was stirred by the conduct of a man whom most people believed to be crazy, but who in my judgme...

The election of Mr. Lincoln was made the pretext for secession. It has always seemed to me that the South was determined to secede no matter at what cost; and it has also seemed...

As days and years pass by and an enlightened humanity studies and comprehends the real greatness and simplicity of Abraham Lincoln, he comes nearer and becomes dearer to all. No...

I had a very active campaign for election to Congress in 1864. As I have stated elsewhere, I had, while Speaker, so framed the district that I thought it would surely be a Repub...

As I look back now over the vista of years that have come and gone, it seems to me that I entered the Lower House of Congress just at the beginning of the most important period...

After my six years' service in the Lower House of Congress, I returned home, not expecting ever again to take office, or engage in politics. There was a contest going on in the...

My acquaintance with General Grant began when he visited Springfield the first time immediately after the beginning of the Civil War. He came to Springfield with a company of so...

I first met him when he was a member of the Legislature, in 1856. He was a Democrat then, and a very active and aggressive one. It was in that year that we first elected a Repub...

General Palmer had a long, varied, and honorable career, beginning as an Anti-Nebraska Democrat in the State Senate of Illinois, in 1855, and ending as a Gold Democrat in the Un...

I knew the late Governor Oglesby intimately for very many years. As a young man, he served as a lieutenant in the gallant Colonel E. D. Baker's regiment in the Mexican War, was...

After I was re-elected Governor of Illinois, in 1880, my friends in the State urged me to become a candidate for the United States Senate to succeed the late Hon. David Davis, w...

The Republican Convention of 1884 was held at Chicago. The names of Joseph R. Hawley, John A. Logan, Chester A. Arthur, John Sherman, George F. Edmunds, and James G. Blaine were...

At the time the delegates gathered, Cleveland's Free Trade message of 1887 was before the country, interest in it having been augmented and enlivened by the passage of the Mills...

I have already, in other parts of these recollections, referred to the National Convention of 1892, and the reasons which induced me to support President Harrison for renominati...

The hard times, the business depression, all attributable to the Wilson Tariff Bill, made the Republicans turn instinctively to Governor McKinley, the well-known advocate of a h...

Colonel Roosevelt served as President of the United States from September 13, 1901, to March 4, 1909. What he accomplished during those years is still too fresh in the minds of...

At the time I am writing these lines, no question of governmental policy occupies so prominent a place in the thoughts of the people as that of controlling the steady growth and...

I have always admired Mr. Justice John Marshall Harlan, who has served some thirty-five years as a member of the Supreme Court of the United States, and who for a time after the...

It has been said that Charles Sumner considered the chairmanship of the Committee on Foreign Relations as the highest honor that could have been conferred upon him by the United...

When I became chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, in 1901, I found a large quantity of undisposed of matter on the dockets, both legislative and executive. I determi...

In 1850, the United States entered into what is known as the Clayton- Bulwer Treaty with Great Britain, the purpose of which was to facilitate the construction of a canal; but i...

For some years the Santo Domingo protocol and treaty were before the Committee on Foreign Relations, and in the Senate. They came before the Senate very suddenly. On January 20,...

During the public discussion of the Santo Domingo question and the protocol by which the Santo Domingo Improvement Company claim was sent to arbitration, and later during the co...

During the year 1904, there was a great general movement all over the world in the direction of arbitration treaties. Indeed, so general did it become, and so universal was the...

"No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States, and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them shall, without the consent of Congress, accept of any...

For a number of years there was considerable controversy over the ownership of the Isle of Pines, a small island separated from Cuba by about thirty miles of water, containing 1...

It had been my intention to close these recollections with the beginning of the Taft Administration, but their publication has been deferred until the Administration extended so...

The name of Springfield will forever be immortalized as the home and burial-place of Abraham Lincoln. As the hundredth anniversary of his birth approached, it was determined to...

I was twice elected Governor of Illinois, and have been elected to the United States Senate for five consecutive terms, and as I write this narrative I have served in the Senate...

Generally I might say that I am quite content; but as I sit down now in the evening time of my life, it is a source of sadness and wonder to me that I have survived both my wive...