Major's Hall

Major's Hall, erected in 1852 by William Trabue Major and razed in 1959, was the birthplace of the Illinois Republican Party and the site where Abraham Lincoln delivered his famous "Lost Speech" on May 29, 1856, generally associated with the concluding statement, "We say to our southern brethren, 'We won't go out of the union and you shant.'" Lincoln later said in the Lincoln-Douglas Debate at Freeport on August 27, 1858, "I have supposed myself since the organization of the Republican Party at Bloomington, in May 1856, bound as a party man by the platforms of the party then and since." Major's Hall also nurtured Illinois State Normal University both in spirit and in fact; the University held its first classes there and spent its first three years there from October 5, 1857 to June 1860, leaving a strong imprint of Major's Hall upon the school.

Bloomington, Illinois · United States