Of the two hundred regiments of brave and loyal troops that Illinois sent out to battle for the right, in the war of the great rebellion, none had a more brilliant career, or shed. A brighter light upon the State or the Nation, than the eighth illinois cavalry. From the time when it was first set down upon the sacred soil of Virginia, sole representative in the great Army of the East, of the State of Illinois, down to the day when, the great struggle over, it chased to their lair the assassins of our martyred President, or scattered the Bushwhackers in the mountains of Virginia, its name and fame was ever prominently before the country. No Regiment was more peculiarly a pride and a power among the lovers and defend~ ers of the Union — none more emphatically a terror to its rebel foes.