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Kansas University Weekly.
electric spark whose glimmer is but for a moment, nor the fairest light that reaches the earth from the remotest visible star is lost. God's power and dominion over all the vast domain of mind and matter will remain undiminished to all eternity.
If we cannot conceive of the annihilation of a grain of sand, or a diminution of the mass of the material universe, or of the sum of the forces that pervade it, how can we conceive that death, as we see it, can extinguish a human soul? Or how can we conceive that the moral influences diffused through a community by a beneficent life can ever cease to operate through an endless chain of existence? We are immoral, not only in individual existence but in the moral forces that we set in motion through individual activities. And so our departed friend though dead yet speaks h, and the influence of that life in its multiform manifestations, upon which we meditate today and from which we seek lessons of wisdom and courage, will continue to operate unspent to the latest time
Solon O Thacher was born August 31, 1830 in Hornersville, New York. His primary education was received in the public schools of his native county. His further education was continued in the Alfred academy, and completed in the Union College, in which he received a thorough classical training. He subsequently prosecuted a course of legal study in the Albany Law School from which he graduated in 1856. Thus, in addition to being the lineal inheritor of those traits of mind and character—mental acuteness and moral earnestness—which develop and strengthen in a long line of puritan ancestry, he brought to the active duties of life a preparation and equipment that insured a high degree of success.
His country needed his services. As he entered, fresh from the schools, upon the stage of active life he was confronted with the commencement of a new political era for the United States. The Whig party had performed its mission and had sunk into decay. That party had performed great services to the nation It had given expression and form, and imparted strength and vigor to the sentiment and spirit of nationalism. It was firmly planted upon that interpretation of the constitution which regarded that instrument as constituting the American states one indissoluble Union. That doctrine had taken deep root in the northern mind and had become entrenched in the federal judiciary. The pro-slavery interests, intensely jealous of outside interference with slave institutions in the state wherein they existed, had clung tenaciously to the opposite doctrine of each state possessing the right to determine for itself the validity of the acts of the national government,
and to acquiesce or not as best suited its own policy or convenience. The Whig party had performed this further service for the nation, it had by compromise measures and repeated concessions to the slave interest postponed the final issue which the existence of slave institutions in the midst of a government whose guiding and central principle was human freedom and civil liberty, rendered inevitable, until the spirit of nationalism, fostered by the Whig party, had time to embody itself in a new and more aggressive organization. This was realized in the organization of the republican party, a party that rapidly absorbed the best brains and blood of the northern states, and which, inheriting the best doctrines and traditions of the Whig party, brought to their interpretation an enlarged spirit of liberty
It seems but a natural sequence that Solon O. Thacher, endowed with the generous sympathies engendered by a liberal education, entering upon the responsible duties of life at the commencement of this auspicious period, should be found assisting at the birth of a political party destined to a great career. Accordingly we find him representing a constituency in the state of New York in the first convention called in that state to organize the new party, through whose instrumentality not only should human slavery vanish from these states, but the righteous breath of its leader, Lincoln, should blast the spirit of slavery everywhere and impart a new impetus to the civilization of mankind,
Two years later, in 1858, he came to Kansas where the preliminary skirmish of the impending battle was on.
Congress was still dallying with the Lecompton constitution. For three years slavery had existed in fact, as well as by force of law, in the territory of Kansas The territorial legislature that convened in Lawrence in 1858, abolished the slave code and adopted a body of laws congenial to free institutions. The work of laving the foundations upon which should be built the superstructure of a new state had yet to be done. Kansas had already indulged in constitution manufacture to a considerable extent, but more for political effect than with a well founded expectation that the fresh production would become the fundamental law of a great state But now it was clearly seen that Kansas would range herself with the northern phalanx of states, and the work of forming a constitution adequate and adapted to a new and expanding state was to be seriously entertained and entered upon.
It may serve as an index to the mental force and solidity of character of Judge Thacher at that early period of his life to note the fact that, though in 1859, his residence in Lawrence had covered little more than a year, he was chosen by a constituency the most distinguished in the territory for devotion and sacrifice for the free state cause, and which furnished the leadership in the movement that resulted so auspiciously for Kansas, to represent them in the convention that formed the constitution under which we have lived for thirty-four years.
That his part in the formation of that instrument was conspicuously useful would readily be inferred from the composition of the convention. With a few exceptions the members of that convention were neither statesmen nor lawyers. They were for the most part men of respectable ability and character, but who had never meditated deeply upon the nature of government, the philosophy of its constitution and the distribution of power to its several parts by means of written constitutions, so as to preserve a harmonious balance between them. But these things had occupied the thoughts of Judge Thacher, and as a student of history he knew the nature of the limitations necessary to be imposed upon the exercise of power to guard well the rights and liberties of the people.
The constitution then formed has servied the state well Its phraseology is comprehensive and clear, and nod faculty has arisen in giving it satisfactory interpretation. It needs no radical touch to bring it up to the full measure of our present requirements.
Among the bright young men who were Judge Thacher's associates in that important public work were Senator Ingalls, Judges Kingman. Burris, Simpson, and the late Governor John A. Martin.
Of the five judicial districts into which the state was divided by the Wyandotte constitution Solon O. Thacher was elected judge of the fourth district. He entered upon the duties of that office upon the admission of the state to the union in January 1-61, and continued in the office up to 1864, when he resigned to accept the nomination of the republican union state convention, in September of that year, for governor. Judge Thacher succeeded to the high and responsible office of judge of the fourth judicial district while still a young man. His mind, however, was already well matured, and his reputation was high both among the members of the bar in his district and the profession generally. With a large mind well stored with legal learning, a patient habit, an affable bearing and a love of justice he possessed those qualities that make a successful jurist.
Judge Thacher was a consistent and steadfast adherent to the principles and policies of the republican party but not a blind follower of all the arts and methods employed in the name of that party. In 1864 he was tendered and accepted a nomination for governor at the hands of