Adlai Stevenson: “May you long enjoy the love, esteem, and veneration of these States whose liberties you have asserted by your virtues.”

Inseparably linked with that portion of its history are names that will live with those of the Cabots and Columbus.

It is high privilege and high honor to be a citizen of this grand republic.

Illinois, in all that constitutes true grandeur in a people, knows no superior among the great sisterhood of States.

The great navigator in his lonely search for a new pathway to the Indies was buoyed by a courage, a yearning for discovery, scarce greater than that which in the heart of the new continent sustained the later voyagers and discoverers…