Photo caption: "Columns of the old state capitol, Springfield."]]>
Photo caption: "Detail from side of front entrance, old Capitol, Vandalia."]]>
The song is dedicated to Union general Benjamin F. Butler, who was the first Union commander to allow escaped slaves to stay within Union lines. Claiming the former slaves were "contraband of war," Butler used the Confederates' insistance that slaves were property against them. He claimed that as property they could be legally "confiscated" under the rules of war. Butler's policy allowed thousands of slaves to find safety behind Union lines and influenced Lincoln's later decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation."]]>
According to the verso, Esther and Isabel were the two oldest of the three sisters who died at a young age. The third, and youngest of the sisters who succumbed to scarlet fever, was Eudora.]]>
Political cartoonist Harold R. Heaton illustrates the precarious position of Governor Charles S. Deneen (1905-1913), a Republican governor caught between warring party factions (Conservative and the Progressive Republicans), and the whim of machine politics.]]>