562 Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.
GATHERING UNDER THE OAKS.
On July 6th the Secretary of the Society
was the honored invitee
of the committee of arrangements at the
semi-centennial anniversary
celebration of the birth of the
Republican party held at Jackson, Mich.,
in a picturesque grove of oak trees just
outside the city limits.
It was at Jackson, Mich., on July 6,
1854, that the first great mass
meeting of members of the Whig,
Abolitionist, Anti-slavery Democrat,
and other members of nondescript
political parties met "under the oaks"
and organized and named the Republican
party. This meeting led to
the nomination of a State ticket for
Michigan, which was elected the
following fall. Some ten thousand voters
in Michigan signed the peti-
tion for this meeting. The anniversary
meeting was one of great
interest and patriotism. The platform
for the speakers was located in a
hollow of the grove, in front of a large
temporary enclosure, to the
seats of which were admitted some eight
hundred veteran Republicans
who cast their first vote in that party
for Fremont in 1856. Of these
eight hundred, some four hundred were
present at the initial meeting
held in Jackson fifty years before. It
was a remarkable audience of
political veterans, many of them scarred
and maimed from service in
the great rebellion. The honor address of the day was by Mr. John
Hay, the distinguished Secretary of
State, formerly private secretary
to President Lincoln, and since the
statesman and diplomat, and a life
member from its organization of the Ohio
State Archaeological and
Historical Society. His address was in
eloquence and scholarship worthy
of the occasion and the reputation of
the speaker. Addresses were also
made by Senators Fairbanks and Burrows,
Governor Bliss of Michigan,
Speaker Joseph Cannon and others,
HISTORICAL BULLETIN.
The Historical Bulletin, an
interesting publication issued at Wash-
ington, D. C., and devoted to genealogy,
patriotism and historical
research, in its issue for August, 1904,
has, as its initial article, an in-
forming account of the inception of the
National Society Sons of the
American Revolution, by George Williams
Bates, of Detroit, Michigan.
Mr. Bates is the Historian-General of
the National Society, S. A. R.,
and moreover one of its most
enthusiastic and popular workers. At
the last National Convention of the
Society, held at St. Louis, Mr. Bates,
who
on that occasion delivered
an admirable address
on the
Louisiana Purchase, was re-elected
Historian-General for the fourth
term, evidencing not only the value of
his labors in his office but
the appreciation of the same by the
members of the organization. Mr.
Bates is a descendant of a number of
distinguished New England