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[126] the Indians on the frontier in the Blackhawk war. In early manhood Abraham Lincoln removed to Illinois, and, now, becoming a captain of volunteers, he and Jefferson Davis were under the same flag engaged in the same warfare. John Hampden and Oliver Cromwell had once engaged passage for America, and George Washington was about to become a midshipman in the British navy. Had not circumstances changed these plans Hampden and Cromwell might have become great names in American history. And suppose Admiral George Washington, under the colors of King George III., had been pursuing the Count D'Estaing, whose French fleet hemmed Cornwallis in at Yorktown—who knows how the story of the great Revolution might have been written? Had Jefferson Davis gone to Illinois and Lincoln to Mississippi, what different histories would be around those names; and yet I fancy that the great struggle with which they were identified would have been changed only in incidents and not in its great currents.
Richmond, VA. 1889.
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