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ILLINOIS CENTENNIAL COMMISSION
THE CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF ILLINOIS
CLARENCE WALWORTH ALVORD
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
VOLUME II
ILLINOIS CENTENNIAL COMMISSION
OTTO LEOPOLD SCHMIDT, Chairman
JESSIE PALMER WEBER, Secretary
EDWARD BOWE EVARTS BOUTELL GREENE
JOHN J. BROWN GEORGE PASFIELD, JR.
JOHN W. BUNN WILLIAM NELSON PELOUZE
WILLIAM BUTTERWORTH ANDREW JACKSON POORMAN, JR.
LEONARD ALLAN COLP THOMAS F. SCULLY
ROYAL WESLEY ENNIS FREDERIC SIEDENBURG
EDMUND JANES JAMES
COMMITTEE ON CENTENNIAL PUBLICATIONS
EVARTS BOUTELL GREENE, Chairman
ROYAL WESLEY ENNIS OTTO LEOPOLD SCHMIDT
EDMUND JANES JAMES FREDERIC SIEDENBURG
THE CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF ILLINOIS
VOLUME TWO
THE FRONTIER STATE
1818-1848
BY
THEODORE CALVIN PEASE
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
CHICAGO
A. C. McCLURG & CO.
1922
COPYRIGHT, 1918
BY THE
ILLINOIS CENTENNIAL COMMISSION
V.ci
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE ........ i
II. THE NEW STATE GOVERNMENT, 1818-1828 ... 33
III. TEN YEARS OF STATE FINANCE ....... 52
IV. THE CONVENTION STRUGGLE ........ 70
V. THE WAR ON NINIAN EDWARDS ....... 92
VI. THE RISE OF JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY . . . . 114
VII. STATE POLITICS, 1830-1834 ......... 136
VIII. THE LAST OF THE INDIANS ......... 150
IX. THE SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTH ....... 173
X. THE INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT SYSTEM ..... 194
XI. THE WRECK OF THE INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT
SYSTEM, 1837-1842 ........... 216
XII. THE STRUGGLE FOR PARTY REGULARITY, 1834-1838 . 236
XIII. THE WHIG AND DEMOCRATIC PARTIES; THE CON-
VENTION SYSTEM ............ 251
XIV. THE PASSING OF THE OLD DEMOCRACY ..... 265
XV. STATE POLITICS, 1840-1847 ......... 278
XVI. STATE AND PRIVATE BANKING, 1830-1845 .... 303
XVII. THE INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT SYSTEM: THE
SOLUTION .............. 316
XVIII. THE SPLIT OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY, 1846-1848 . 327
XIX. THE MORMON WAR ............ 340
XX. THE SLAVERY QUESTION .......... 363
XXI. ILLINOIS IN FERMENT ........... 383
XXII. SOCIAL, EDUCATIONAL, AND RELIGIOUS ADVANCE,
1830-1848 .............. 410
BIBLIOGRAPHY .............. 443
INDEX ................ 455
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
STUMP SPEAKING Frontispiece
POPULATION OF ILLINOIS IN 1820 4
EDWARD COLES 76
ELIAS KENT KANE 94
POPULATION OF ILLINOIS IN 1830 174
CHICAGO IN 1843 192
THE CAPITOL AT VANDALIA 204
THOMAS FORD 290
POPULATION OF ILLINOIS IN 1840 384
PECK-MESSENGER MAP, 1835 4 12
PREFACE
THE time available for the writing of this volume was
necessarily shortened by the entrance of the United States
into the European war and my consequent decision to apply
for admittance to a Reserve Officers' Training Camp. The
final revision was done during the short interval between the
time when I was awarded my commission and the time of my
reporting for duty. Much of the work of revision, therefore,
that I should under normal conditions have done, I have of
necessity intrusted to others. When I entered the training
camp two chapters ( 8 and 21) were unwritten. Miss Agnes
Wright, my assistant, has supplied these and, in addition, has
given valuable assistance during the preparation of the manu-
script of the entire volume. My brother, Albert A. Pease, has
carefully read the volume in manuscript and has suggested
many improvements in the text. The editor-in-chief of the
series, Clarence W. Alvord, has very kindly added to the
customary duties of an editor a care for details which of right
falls to the author. I congratulate myself that in the emer-
gency I have been able to draw on my friends for competent
assistance ungrudgingly given.
It is a pleasant duty to acknowledge my indebtedness to
individuals not connected with the work of the Centennial
Commission. I am under obligation to Mr. Milo M. Quaife
for several important suggestions and for permission to repro-
duce the copy of the Peck-Messenger map in the Wisconsin
History Society's library. Mrs. J. B. Dyche has assisted me
with material of various sorts. The Chicago Historical Society
through its librarian, Miss Caroline M. Mcllvaine, has
accorded me every imaginable assistance and privilege in
connection with the prosecution of the work in Chicago.
THE FRONTIER STATE
Among those immediately connected with the enterprise I
must particularly mention Dr. Otto L. Schmidt and Mr. Evarts
B. Greene of the Centennial Commission, who officially and
unofficially have afforded me every possible assistance. A
third member of the Commission, Mrs. Jessie Palmer Weber,
in her capacity of librarian of the State Historical Library,
has given me the privilege of working there during the col-
lection of material at Springfield and has assumed responsi-
bility for the correctness of many quoted passages. My special
obligations to the editor-in-chief I have already mentioned. At
every stage he has done everything in his power to facilitate
the work.
THEODORE CALVIN PEASE.
Somewhere in France.
THE FRONTIER STATE
1818-1848
I. THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE
task of reconstructing for the student of history the
JL politics, manners, and customs of a frontier community
such as the Illinois of the first decade of statehood is not an easy
one. The newspapers of that day only dimly reflect the life
about them and contain no information whatever about the
phases of it which their readers took for granted. The contem-
porary traveler too often saw only a small part, and that inac-
curately, detached from its surroundings save in so far as the
inhabitants condescended to explain them to him, while too
often his prepossessions in favor of the land of political liberty
or his disgust at the impossibility of continuing his accustomed
habits of life lent a roseate or a dingy hue to his picture. The
reminiscences of the pioneer, set down long after the occurrence
of the events he tried to describe, are generally open to the
suspicion that they have been unconsciously foreshortened so
that the descriptions of the rapidly changing life and conditions
of the frontier are focused at but one point and that perhaps
not the most important. Under such limitations of information
the picture of Illinois a hundred years ago, if it is to be accurate,
must be somewhat indistinct.
Change and evolution sound the keynote of frontier Illinois.
For the first thirty years of statehood its politicians sprang up,
flourished, changed sides, and left the state to seek new careers
with a rapidity that is the despair of the chronicler. Pioneers
passed over its territory in waves with varying manners, ideals,
and habits of life. Civilization first of simple, then of more
complex, gradations sprang up with amazing rapidity behind
and among the frontiersmen. The half savage frontiersman
and the college-bred lawyer, the woman of the backwoods and
2 THE FRONTIER STATE
the fine lady rubbed elbows in the little village where the frame
house was rapidly replacing the log cabin. Into communities
without religion came numerous denominations striving to
supply the lack of spiritual life. Churches were organized,
were torn by quarrels and secessions, and yet reached out for
better education. Above all, this community ready and eager
to go up and possess the land continually had to fight politically
in the hope of obtaining from its landlord, the federal govern-
ment, better and better terms for the acquisition of its land.
In the beginning was the land ; the vast stretch of diversified
hill and plain, forest and prairie, scrub oak, barren, and swamp
stretched before the people. Shutting off the greater part of it
from them were the intangible but nevertheless annoying restric-
tions of the United States government, and the more concrete
barriers of Indian tribes, jealous of the presence of the white
settlers among them, and of the wilderness itself, untraversed
by roads and locking from the settler with its standing timber
and tough sod the cornfields of the future. The story of the
acquisition of this domain, of how the little community of fron-
tiersmen waxed to conquer its lands to cultivation, of how suc-
cessfully or unsuccessfully they sought to drive through it lines
of transport which might connect them commercially with the
outside world, and of how they wrestled politically with their
brethren of the eastern states for a freer hand at its legal
conquest is the material side of the history of provincial Illinois.
On the day when Illinois was both territory and state its
population of some 35,000 lay in two columns on opposite sides
of the state, resting on the connection with the outside world
furnished by the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the Wabash rivers
respectively. The population clustered in the rich river bottom,
gift of the Mississippi, where Illinois history began, and in the
neighborhood of the United States saline in Gallatin county.
It tended always to make settlements on water courses for the
sake of securing timber, water, and easy communication. Away
from the rivers lay an unpopulated region in the interior of
southern Illinois, where the traveler to St. Louis or Kaskaskia
C
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 3
who preferred to cut across by road from Vincennes or Shaw-
neetown rather than pole up the Mississippi, could still stage
tales of robbers, murders, and hairbreadth escapes. On the
east population had crept north, clinging closely to the Wabash,
as far as the present Edgar county. On the west settlements
had reached the southern part of Calhoun county and were
pushing up the creeks into Greene and Macoupin; they had also
followed the Kaskaskia and its south-flowing tributaries, so that
settlements lay in Bond, Clinton, and Washington counties.
Elsewhere there was wilderness.
To the north of the area of settlement lay another world
distinct and independent from that to the south. The Kickapoo
Indians still inhabited central Illinois, and the Sauk and Foxes,
chastised in the War of 1812, but still morose, occupied a little
of the territory northwest of the Illinois river the Military
Bounty Tract though this had for some time been surveyed
and allotted in military bounties to soldiers of the War of 1812.
The main strength of the Sauk and Foxes in Illinois, however,
lay in the territory near the junction of the Rock and the Mis-
sissippi, where Fort Armstrong on Rock Island had lately risen
to overawe them. In the territory east of them lay villages of
Winnebago and Potawatomi. Among them in northern
Illinois and on the Illinois and the Wabash rivers wandered
the fur traders of the American Fur Company; these came
south down the lake in their Mackinaw boats each fall, dragged
their boats over the Chicago portage to the Des Plaines river,
went into winter trading posts along the Illinois from which
trading expeditions were sent out during the winter, and carried
their harvest of furs to Mackinac in the spring. Besides Fort
Armstrong there lay in this district Fort Edwards on the Mis-
sissippi, Fort Clark at the present site of Peoria, and Fort
Dearborn ; though as Indian dangers waned and Indian cessions
were consummated, the forts were successively abandoned.
The terms upon which the United States government dis-
posed of its domain in Illinois materially affected settlement in
the state. From an early period in the history of the United
4 THE FRONTIER STATE
States land policy the method of regular surveys had obtained.
The face of the country was surveyed into rectangular town-
ships approximately six miles square. These were defined by
their number north or south of a line called the base line and
in ranges east and west of a principal meridian. Each township
was divided into thirty-six sections, each containing 640 acres
and capable of division into quarters and similar subdivisions.
In the method of disposing of these the federal government
had grown more and more liberal as the years passed. Starting
from the concept that the lands were a fund for the payment
of the national debt, it had gradually offered better and better
terms to the small purchaser. In 1 8 1 8 the system of sale was
as follows: Lands put on sale for the first time were set up at
auction at the land office in the district containing them. In
Illinois in 1818 there were but three offices Kaskaskia,
Edwardsville, and Shawneetown soon to be increased con-
siderably in number. If not bid in at auction for two dollars
an acre or more, lands might be bought at any time thereafter
at private sale, the terms being two dollars an acre, payable in
four annual installments. In 1820, however, in spite of stren-
uous opposition from the western representatives, the credit
system was abolished, and the land after having been put up
at auction sold at one dollar and twenty-five cents cash per acre.
The first result of the measure was to cut down sharply
purchases from the government. Great amounts of land in
southern Illinois had already passed out of the hands of the
government, partly as gifts to the old French inhabitants and
partly by speculative entries under the credit system. Numbers
of speculators as well as settlers had been lured by the low
initial payment into contracting for more land than they could
pay for; and it took act after act permitting the application of a
first installment on a large piece of land to apply as payment in
full on a smaller before they were extricated from their diffi-
culty. Meanwhile sales of the great body of land that remained
were slow. In 1822 sales were as low as 27,000 odd acres; in
1826 they were some 80,000, the next year they fell off to
Population of Illinois
per Square Mile in
1820
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 5
50,000, and not till 1829 did they pass the hundred thousand
mark. From 1820 to 1828 the equivalent of twenty townships
was sold. Of this the greater part lay in the Springfield land
office district, sales in the Edwardsville and Palestine districts
coming next in amount. In the Kaskaskia, Vandalia, and
Shawneetown districts, which served southern Illinois, the sales
were insignificant; in 1821 the three offices sold some 14,000
acres, but in 1822 they sold 5,916; in 1823, 2,636; in 1824,
4,160; in 1825, 2,963; in 1826, 5,4595 in l82 7 7>3395 and in
1828, 11,518. The significance of this situation is that the
course of settlement by men with money had shifted from the
south and had passed on to the Sangamon country and northern
Illinois. In the south settlers were squatting on the public land.
In 1828 W. L. D. Ewing estimated that in the counties of Clay,
Marion, Shelby, Tazewell, and Fayette there were 1,230
voters of whom 217 were freeholders. 1 The large sales under
the credit system with the great numbers of Military Bounty
tracts thrown on the market had created such a glut that men
with cash to pay for land would buy only the land of their
choice. Otherwise the newcomers to the state held their land
by squatters' right, and by the force of public opinion they were
able to maintain themselves against those who would buy the
improvements over their heads. The west was ripe for agita-
tion for new legislation in favor of the squatters legislation
which directly or indirectly would be opposed by men with
heavy landholdings.
In the Illinois of 1 8 1 8 the French. hahltan^^t^ mustered
strong in numbers in the villages of the American Bottom,
though with a few exceptions, such as the Menards, the well-
to-do and better educated of their race were to be found across
the Mississippi. Their economic and social life has been the
subject of the preceding volume of this series and furthermore
requires no special attention here, since the influence of the
French upon the development of Illinois in the nineteenth
century was negligible.
1 American State Papers, Public Lands, 5:554-556.
6 THE FRONTIER STATE
It is not easy to describe, or even to divide into classes, the
newcomers who were sweeping over the land of Illinois. On
the outskirts of settlement was a fringe of hunters leading a
half savage life in the forests, supporting their families by the
products of the hunt and by the produce of a few acres of corn-
land planted among the girdled forest trees. Their life was
a series of retreats before the advance of civilization, and they
were ever ready to sell their improvements to a newcomer and
to push out one stage further into the wilderness. 2
It is possible to differentiate this first class from later
comers only in degree, since the men of the whole frontier were
more or less migrating. The men who succeeded the hunters
came also from the south for the most part, yet they were in va-
rious degrees more civilized in their habits, laid less emphasis on
hunting and more on building, making improvements, and clear-
ing land for the cornfields. They very often possessed hogs
and cattle which furnished to the little towns a continually
increasing amount of raw products to be traded for store goods
and to be freighted in flatboats or keel-boats down the Ohio
and Mississippi as articles of commerce. This produce of the
farm was not only corn, ginseng, beeswax, salted pork, tallow,
hides, and beef, the last named sometimes bought by the store-
keepers on the hoof and slaughtered for market, but also vari-
ous rough wool and flax fabrics. Important in the frontier
market were such items as deer skins and venison hams,
distinctly the products of the rifle rather than of the hoe. 3
The habit of some writers to classify these southern meYi
as hunter pioneers and to contrast them with the New England
and northern farmers who settled the prairies of the north is
misleading unless the contrast is carefully limited and defined.
The settlers of the south hunted, as did white men everywhere
in the wilderness where there were no game laws. JThey
enlarged their cornlands by clearing the forest instead of cul-
tivating the prairies because, in the decade in which they settled
2 Fordham, Personal Narrative, 125-126; Flower, History of the English
Settlement, 129.
8 Fordham, Personal Narrative, 181 ; Birkbeck, Notes on a Journey, 155.
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 7
the state, farmers preferred such lands, chiefly because the
forested lands offered greater accessibility to wood and water,
partly because they lacked the capital necessary for breaking
up and fencing the prairie, and partly because the scarcity of
markets offered no temptation to raise grain that could not be
sold. Without a heavy ox team breaking the prairie was almost
impossible, and without improved transportation produce could
not be carried to market.
There has grown up a traditional interpretation of events
sanctioned now by age, that would explain the stoppage of the
northern thrust of the southern pioneers by the downpouring
of immigrants from the northeast into the valleys of the upper
Illinois river. There is little in the sources of information that
gives warrant for interpreting the encounter as a meeting of
opposing forces. It is true that the immigration of the north-
erners followed closely on the heels of the backwoods hunters,
but this relation in the time of the two movements has only
apparently justified the interpretation, for to all appearances
the two peoples settled down side by side in peace and concord
throughout the state, the southern element naturally enough
preponderating in the southern counties and the "Yankee"
element in the northern.
Besides this class of so-called hunter pioneers the commu-
nity had a set of young men of education, of legal training, and
of good address, who aspired to the leadership of the com-
munity. Frequently they had a few hundreds or thousands
to invest in land speculations. Some of them married into the
well-to-do French families. They were men of more finished
manner than the average pioneer, and their wives and daughters
speedily gave the community a touch of sophistication. Doubt-
less it was for this class the stores advertised the finer goods
such as silks, crepes, and other fabrics of similar character, and
kept the choicer wines, liquors, and groceries. 4
The conditions in the towns are more or less truthfully
4 In this chapter I have made much use of an unpublished monograph by
my assistant Miss Agnes Wright on the subject of social conditions in early
Illinois.
8 THE FRONTIER STATE
mirrored in the contemporary newspapers. In the towns, when
the state was young, the rising brick and frame houses con-
trasted sharply with the log cabins of the territorial days; yet
the stage of civilization must not be overestimated, for even
in 1821 Shawneetown had no courthouse, jail, church, or school.
The towns were disorderly places at best, a Shawneetown
Sunday being a byword. Frequently they were rendered
unhealthy by pools of stagnant water and by the lack of all
sanitation. In 1822 the trustees of Shawneetown had to pass
an ordinance providing for the removal of dead animals and
for the laying of sidewalks. Town government in so far as
it was distinct from other local government was rudimentary.
Towns were incorporated by individual acts which gave the
trustees power to legislate for the order of the town and to levy
taxes on town lots. 5
The towns of the early days could boast of only the most
rudimentary manufactures. The newspapers contain numer-
ous advertisements of grist mills, steam distilleries, log stills,
sawmills, etc. In 1817 Jesse B. Thomas set up a carding
machine in Cahokia, which was managed by Adam W. Snyder.
Promoters of towns were continually offering special induce-
ments to mechanics and skilled workmen to settle within their
communities in order that the simplest needs of the inhabitants
might be supplied, and the advertisements in the newspapers
show the presence of coopers, tanners, clock and watchmakers,
hatters, and milliners. There is some evidence, however, that
the economic position of such artisans was not altogether pros-
perous; at least the Illinois Gaz-ette in 1820 complained that
high rents had driven the mechanics from Shawneetown. 6
The most important function which the towns performed
was that of furnishing a buying and shipping point for country
8 Illinois Gazette, May 19, December 8, 1821, May 25, November 30, 1822;
Tillson, Reminiscences, 35 8. ; Laius of 1819, p. 249,259; Laivs of 1821, p. 160,176.
6 Illinois Gazette, March 30, July i, 8, 1820, April 10, 1824; Ediuardsville
Spectator, May 23, 1820, May 4, 1822; Illinois Intelligencer, February 17, De-
cember 15, 1819, September 9, 1820; Snyder, Adam W. Snyder, 28. A manufac-
turing company in Bond county was incorporated. There was also a general
incorporation law. Laius of 1825, p. 113.
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 9
produce and a distributing point for store goods. Stores were
ordinarily kept by men of considerable means. They adver-
tised in the local papers alluring lists of goods "just in" and
offered to dispose of them " cheaply for cash, for produce, or
on terms." Shawneetown, Edwardsville, and Carmi appar-
ently did a wholesale trade as well. Moreover, some store-
keepers at Edwardsville and one at Shawneetown regularly
advertised semiweekly auctions of goods. Occasionally mer-
chants employed peddlers to go through the country to sell their
merchandise. The Illinois Gazette contains an indignant adver-
tisement for a runaway peddler " from Connecticut, and is no
doubt a perfect chip of the old block 1 " One notices frequent
insistent advertisements calling on delinquent debtors to
settle. 7
In the Illinois of 1818 Shawneetown seemed to hold a
favorable position as the gateway, a fact which had been recog-
nized by the United States government by the designation of
the town as a port of entry. It was the natural Illinois entre-
pot for the eastern part of the state and for the country up the
tributaries of the Wabash. One rival to its trade near at hand,
however, was the New Harmony settlement of Frederick Rapp,
which in 1823 maintained a store in Shawneetown for the sale
of its goods, woolen cloths, cottons, hats, shoes, stockings,
leather, flour, wine, whisky, brandy, beer, etc., as well as a line
of eastern goods from Philadelphia. Rapp's failure to buy as
well as sell made him unpopular, however, with the resident
merchants. 8
On the west side of the state St. Louis had the position of
dominance. It held western Illinois subject to it commercially,
despite the attempts at Alton and at Cairo to build up rivals
on Illinois soil. Its merchants advertised in western Illinois
papers, and they were even able to regulate the discount at
which Illinois bank notes should pass; indeed, they exercised
some influence on the politics of the state.
7 Frequently merchants bought and sold goods on commission, see Illinois
Gazette, September 9, 1820. See also ibid., October 9, December 4, 1819.
8 Ibid., November 8, 1823.
io THE FRONTIER STATE
In the Illinois of 1818-1828 transportation was a serious
problem, and the means available for it necessarily influenced
the state's contact commercially and intellectually with the out-
side world. Transportation overland was an extremely diffi-
cult matter. The so-called roads of southern Illinois were of
but little account and transportation facilities were meager.
Not till 1819 was a stage line from Kaskaskia to St. Louis in
operation. In the summer of that year a second line from
Shawneetown to St. Louis was projected. In 1822 a stage
wagon was advertised to run from Springfield to St. Louis once
in two weeks, taking two days for the trip. 9
The state's main reliance had to be on river transporta-
tion^ At the time of the admission of Illinois to the union the
steamboat was just replacing the flatboat and keel-boat. The
keel-boat or flatboat was often of considerable size, nineteen
and even twenty-seven tons. The farmer who chose to eschew
steamer transportation to his market either himself navigated
a flatboat or keel-boat with his produce 10 or intrusted it to the
tender mercies of the river boatmen, hard drinking, desperate
men who terrorized the villages along the river, governing
themselves by a rough and ready code of their own in which
stealing under certain circumstances was permissible and mur-
der an ordinary matter. Year by year their importance was
destined to wane as law and order grew stronger in the river
towns and the steamboats multiplied in number. Sweeping
down the river to the tune of such doggerel boat songs as
" Hard upon the beach oar ! She moves too slow ; All the way
to Shawneetown, Long time ago," they lent to the frontier
a touch of the picturesque and romantic peculiarly grateful to
the literature of the next generation.
The river steamer, which was ultimately to displace these
men's monopoly, had its difficulties with the Ohio river. Feb-
ruary io, 1820, the Illinois Gazette noted the passage up the
river to Louisville of six or seven steamboats, delayed since
9 Illinois Intelligencer, January 20, 1819, July 5, 1823; Edwardsville Spec-
tator, August 7, 1819, April 27, 1822.
10 Illinois Gazette, December 15, 1822; Illinois Intelligencer, May 31, 1820.
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE n
June by low water. The previous spring, on the other hand,
high water had cut Shawneetown off from the outside world. 11
During the twenties the navigation of the Ohio and Mississippi
were improved by the federal government to the extent of the
removal of obstructions, the channeling of sand bars, and the
grubbing out of " snags " and " sawyers."
Even with improvement in the navigation of the Mississippi
river the problem of transportation was still a serious one.
The inevitable tendency of trade in the west until the coming
of the railroad was toward water routes. Down every Illinois
creek or river, produce naturally poured to the Ohio and Mis-
sissippi, thence to pile up on the wharves of New Orleans.
Manufactured goods had to come from the east whether they
were shipped by sea from Philadelphia and Baltimore to New
Orleans and thence brought up the Mississippi, or whether they
followed the stream down from Pittsburg. The balancing
of credits was an exchange problem that the age was not able
to solve ; and with her credits receivable at New Orleans and
her debits due in the east, Illinois was facing an impossible
situation that drained her scanty currency in remittances and
lent a specious excuse for the founding of unstable banks. 12 .
Some, foreseeing that Illinois could never prosper without
new outlets for its commerce, turned to the hope of internal
improvements. In 1824 George E. McDuffie pronounced in
congress that if the west's relations were to continue solely
with New Orleans, the union could not last fifty years. It was
said that the produce of the west was floated down the Missis-
sippi at high water to pile up at New Orleans in the unhealthy
season; that Illinois beef and pork which was not put up with
imported salt spoiled in the New Orleans market; that in the
last five years one-sixth of the flour unloaded there had spoiled;
and that even then the trade route to Europe was too long.
Thomas Hart Benton, in debate on " Foot's Resolution," laid
down a counter-proposition that internal improvements over
11 Illinois Gazette, March 27, April 3, 1819.
12 In 1821 a firm tried to devise an exchange of produce for goods at New
Orleans. Ibid., December 15, 1821; Edwardsville Spectator, June 18, 1820.
12 THE FRONTIER STATE
the mountains were useless to the west, and that she must still
find her market at New Orleans; but every year was to add
fresh demonstration that Benton's proposition was fallacious.
The Illinois-Michigan canal whereby the Illinois river might
be made tributary to a transportation system which would lead
over the Great Lakes to the Erie canal and the east was the
measure which to Daniel Pope Cook and to an increasing num-
ber of Illinoisans appeared the best remedy. 13
The history of the development of Illinois between 1818
and 1822 would be incomplete without mention of a concerted
scheme of colonization that, running in channels completely
different from those which carried the ordinary course of set-
tlement, was to influence the development of the state out of all
proportion to the numbers engaged in it. This enterprise was
the settlement of English Prairie in Edwards county by Morris
Birkbeck and the Flowers. At its inception the motive force
in the movement was the discontent with economic and political
conditions in England that affected men of the comparatively
affluent classes. For example, Morris Birkbeck by his industry
and ability had raised himself to the position of a tenant farmer,
farming on long lease a holding of 1,500 acres in the hamlet of
Wanborough; yet he was not a freeholder and therefore not
entitled to the vote; he chafed at the social and political inferi-
ority which thus marked him, as well as at the heavy taxes and
tithes levied on him by the parliament in which he had no voice
and by the church in which he was not a communicant. 14 He
aspired, to use his own words, to leave his children citizens of
" a flourishing, public-spirited, energetic community, where the
insolence of wealth, and the servility of pauperism, between
which, in England, there is scarcely an interval remaining, are
alike unknown." 15 The United States seemed to him the real-
ization of his political ideals; and except for his detestation
of slavery he looked on its institutions and the assumed polit-
ical and social virtues of its republic and citizens through glasses
13 Illinois Intelligencer, February 8, 1823.
14 Birkbeck, Notes on a Journey, 8-9; Birkbeck, Letters from Illinois, 28.
15 Birkbeck, Notes on a Journey, 10.
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 13
of rose tint. No less attractive perhaps was the opportunity /
it afforded him of becoming a freeholder at a rate comparable
to English rental values. George Flower, son of Birkbeck'j
friend, Richard Flower, who had been sent to the United State
in search of land, had conceived a romantic affection for th
prairies of which he had read in Imlay's Topographical
Description of the Western Territory of North America.
When at last he and Birkbeck crossed the Wabash into Illinois
and attained the Boltonhouse prairie, depressed as they had
been by the mighty forests through which they had journeyed,
the broad expanse of meadow stretching for miles embayed in
the surrounding timber seemed to them the manor park that
they coveted, and they hastened to acquire as much of it as
their funds would permit. 16
In presenting their design of a colony to the English public
by the publication of Birkbeck's letters, the promoters strove
to induce men of their own social status tenant farmers pos-
sessed of capital and desirous of becoming landholders to
take up land from them or in their vicinity. As a complement
this necessarily required the establishment of a class comparable
to English agricultural laborers or cottagers; and in fact the
enemies of the enterprise later insinuated that while holding
great tracts for wealthy emigrants who never came, the pro-
moters refused to sell smaller tracts to poorer men. The accu-
sation was made that they had founded a rich man's
settlement. The first settlers to come, however, were mechan- }
ics and laborers, who had not been concerned in the original:
enterprise but who were attracted by Birkbeck's books. 17
Birkbeck, who remained on the ground over winter with
the uncertain labor obtainable from the backwoodsmen half /
hunters, half farmers who surrounded him, was not able to
18 Birkbeck, Notes on a Journey, 16 ff., 37, 57, 58, 98, 107, 113; Birkbeck,
Letters from Illinois, 28-29, 4* > Flower, History of the English Settlement, 64;
Flower, Letters from Lexington and the Illinois, 102-103 ; Faux, Memorable
Days in America, 254-255.
17 Birkbeck, Notes on a Journey, 132-133, 141-163; Birkbeck, Letters from
Illinois, ip, 18-19, 755 Faux, Memorable Days in America, 235, 238-239, 244;
Flower, History of the English Settlement, 96.
I 4 THE FRONTIER STATE
; get accommodations completed for newcomers. Food for the
first year had largely to be procured from the nearby Rapp
/ community at New Harmony in Indiana. The newcomers and
| such wealthier immigrants as followed fared well or ill, accord-
ing to their ability to work for themselves and to make the best
of backwoods conditions. Men without large capital or enter-
prise missed the agricultural laboring class of England and the
presence of women servants, and they were described by per-
sons not well disposed to the enterprise as for the time reduced
to squalid wretchedness. Attacks inspired by the "borough
managers," so the leaders believed, and by men interested in
eastern lands who enlisted in their behalf the sharp pen of
Cobbett sometimes known as Porcupine Cobbett spread
the tales of the wretchedness and woe existing at English
Prairie. They made the most of expressions of pleasure by
Birkbeck at the absence of all religious observance on the fron-
tier and used them to brand the enterprise as irreligious; this
accusation was met by the building of churches, in one of which
Unitarian and in the other Episcopal services were installed by
Flower and Birkbeck, respectively. 18
To add to the difficulties of the settlement a feud broke out
between Birkbeck and George and Richard Flower. The
causes of it undoubtedly were connected with the marriage,
during the exploratory trip, of George Flower to Miss
Andrews; 19 but whether Birkbeck's anger was the jealousy of
a rejected suitor or the just resentment of a man who had
unconsciously been made a party to an impropriety in offense
of good taste, if not of good morals, it is not necessary to decide.
On George Flower's return Birkbeck refused to have any deal-
ings with him, and he was left to establish a home for his
father's family as best he might. The settlement clustered in
two groups, one centering in Wanborough, the town founded
18 See the descriptions of the various families in Faux, Memorable Days in
America, 252-273. Fordham, Personal Narrative, 216, 227 ff. ; Birkbeck, Letters
from Illinois, 23 ff. ; Flower, Letters from Illinois, 124, 129, 131-132, 144-145.
10 Faux, Memorable Days in America, 271 ff. Contrast this gossip with the
discreet silence of Woods, T<wo Years' Residence, 348-349.
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 15
by Birkbeck in August, 1818, the other in Albion, the town
some two miles to the east laid out by George Flower with
Elias Pym Fordham and others two months later. In the
course of two or three years the men who were determined
on success had made headway. By 1819 there were 400 Eng- J
lish and 700 Americans in the settlement. They had estab-/
lished comfortable homes and large farm structures, had disi
covered the futility, in default of labor, of extensive grair
farming, were turning their attention to the raising of cattle
sheep, and hogs, and were making progress. Practical farm-
ers with money and industry were doing well, and good laborers
imported by the leaders were acquiring lands of their own. 20 ^
The leaders had perhaps totally abandoned their desire of a
cluster of manors in southeastern Illinois, as they discovered
that the English agricultural laborers they imported also caught
the land fever. Men of narrower views believed they saw in
the lack of labor a justification of negro slavery and a necessity
for it. Men like Birkbeck were able to accept the facts as they
were and at the same time to foresee an Illinois of free farmers,
neither masters nor servants.
The enterprise had done much for Illinois. It had brought
the prairie into notice if not into vogue. Against the agriculture
necessarily practiced by the farmer of small means a corn-
patch among trees girdled by the ax, growing larger year by
year it had set the utility of prairie land either for grazing
or for grain when broken as it could be by men able to afford
a six-ox team. Through the numerous books of Birkbeck, the
Flowers, and others, it had brought Illinois into notice not only
in England but in the eastern United States and in continental
Europe as well. More important still L it had in Morris Birk.-__
beck brought to the state a leader whose services in the struggle
with slavery werqpast all estimate.
Almost equally important was Birkbeck' s influence in thel
advancement of scientific agriculture. The call for the forma-
20 Flower, History of the English Settlement, 130; Flower, Letters from Lex-
ington and the Illinois, 104, 157-142; Woods, Two Years' Residence, 258-259, 339.
16 THE FRONTIER STATE
tion of an agricultural society appeared October 8, 1819, in
the Edwardsville Spectator. It was signed "A Farmer of
Madison" and hence may very possibly have originated with
Edward Coles. At the meeting for organization held on No-
vember 10, the society elected Birkbeck president and Coles
first vice president, and it speedily drew the support of the
prominent men of the state. It offered premiums not only for
wheat, corn, hay, and fine livestock, but also for hemp, flax, cot-
ton, homespun cloth the premium for this last was in 1823
awarded to Governor Bond tobacco, castor oil, wool, malt
liquor, salt, and cheese. Agricultural societies, with some
emphasis on the policy of non-importation due to the hardness
of the times, were founded in Madison and Bond counties; and
these were affiliated with the state society. In 1825, however,
the society disbanded, turning over its funds to Sunday
schools. 21
The most interesting work of this society was the series of
proposals for better agriculture that emanated from its mem-
bers. Birkbeck's suggestions are of most interest. He repeat-
edly urged on the society the importance of turning a large
share of attention to grazing and dairying, insisting on the
need of growing finer grasses before fine wool could be hoped
for, and insisting on the need of stringent measures against
wolves, as a prerequisite to successful sheep raising. 22 In 1820
he voiced a prophetic warning against the danger of skinning
the soil, a practice already too prevalent in the older states.
He suggested various devices for successful prairie farming,
recommending also in an article in the Illinois Gazette the use
of ditches for prairie fencing. Coles came forward with a
method which he thought would reduce the expense of breaking
prairies, a second surface plowing followed by harrowing. 23
21 Illinois Intelligencer, January 19, 1822, December 13, 1823, January 25,
1826; Illinois Gazette, March i, 1823.
22 In 1823 the legislature offered a premium of $200 for the greatest number
of wolves above sixty killed in the state, and a premium of $40 for the greatest
number killed above ten in each county. In 1825 they substituted a general
bounty of one dollar per head. See also Illinois Intelligencer, May 13, 1820.
23 Illinois Gazette, May 5, 1821, January 5, 1822.
I?
One point of especial interest treated by the society was
the need of improving the health of the country by draining
standing and stagnant waters. These conditions were often
perpetuated in the small running streams of Illinois by mill dams
designed to afford pressure for water mills. In 1821 the Agri-
cultural Society announced a premium for an essay on the sub-
ject which detailed the foregoing objections to water power and
proposed animal power in its place.
If it is difficult to describe frontier Illinois in its physical
aspects since it is impossible to describe it in its mental and spirit-
ual; the evidence is even more fragmentary and more subject to
bias in the observers. Again, it is to be regretted that the news-
papers which might seemingly furnish unconscious evidence on
this subject do not reflect the mental attitude of great parts of
the population, since their circulation was very limited. One
wonders often how far. the traditional shibboleths of frontier
Illinois are humorous exaggerations ; for instance, how far was
the oft-cited prejudice against Yankees based on a piece of pop-
ular humor comparable to the mother-in-law joke?
Some general characteristics can be positively described.
English observers, friendly or hostile, commented on the open
and unabashed manner of the people. In the Illinois frontiers-
man there was none of the self-conscious awkward rusticity of
the English peasant. The instillation of the doctrine of liberty
and equality undoubtedly had so far borne fruit as to make
the conviction of his own dignity apparent in the conversation
of every man. The interpretation put upon this attitude
and the form it took naturally varied with the attitude of the
observer. If he expected his money to buy him obsequiousness
he was disappointed and had to complain often of a positive
bad faith and trickiness which at times may well have been a
desperate attempt on the part of the native to vindicate an
affront to his dignity. If the traveler met all men with an
open friendliness, he generally encountered in return a real
kindliness and courtesy. If the frontiersman was appealed to
as a man for help and sympathy he usually responded in liberal
18 THE FRONTIER STATE
measure. If he was hired as a servant, little good could be
expected from him. 24
Probably the jarring with backwoodsmen and accusations
of bad faith and trickiness in bargains made against them fre-
quently arose from the fact that on the frontier specific per-
formance of contract had hardly come to be regarded as the
touchstone of honesty. In a wild country where natural ele-
ments continually intervene to prevent the performance of a
set duty at the proper time, it is an easy and natural step to
regard personal convenience or even personal whims as worthy
to be taken into account. In Illinois men from older settled
communities might fume in vain, if they had not tact to wheedle
a performance of contract out of the party bound.
Probably this furnishes a clue to the reason for the dislike
of the Yankee so far as it was not a half humorous attitude.
Even in a moderately well-to-do settlement of southern men,
the Yankee's insistence on writings, mortgages, bonds, and the
like, and his superstitious observance of days and times con-
tributed to render him unpopular as being unneighborly. To
ask a man on the frontier to hire out his oxen rather than to
lend them was thought to imply a belief that he would " act like
a Yankee." Furthermore, the frontiersman divined the prim
New Englander's suppressed feeling of criticism for all the
shiftless, easy-going habits of frontier life. Taking thought
for the morrow and multiplying mechanical devices to meet
it were considered especially " Yankee;" and Mrs. John Tillson
found her clothespins looked upon as the latest Yankee notion.
In spite of the prejudice against Yankees, they were repeatedly,
as in Tillson's case, placed in situations of importance, often
probably because their education and disciplined attention to
business rendered them indispensable for many duties. 25
How far social distinctions divided the frontier state into
24 Fearon, Sketches of America, 398, 437 passim; Birkbeck, Notes on a
Journey, 107; Fordham, Personal Narrative, 196.
25 Woods, T<wo Years' Residence, 261, 317; Buck, "The New England Ele-
ment in Illinois Politics before 1833," Mississippi Valley Historical Associa-
tion, Proceedings, 6:49-61.
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 19
classes, it is difficult to say. Most observers remarked that,
the backwoods pioneer being omitted, the various classes did
not vary nearly so much in intellectual grasp as in England.
" In this remote part of America, judges, generals of militia,
colonels, captains, and esquires, are not generally men of prop-
erty or education ; and it is usual to see them employed in any
common kind of labour. Yet I have seen men among them that
possess very good abilities; far from ignorant, and much better
informed than could be expected from their appearance." 26 So
far as wealth and its means of display were concerned, however,
the basis for social distinction existed. When Shawneetown
was a village of one brick and several frame houses amid a
cluster of log cabins, it boasted one jewelry store which at
least advertised a surprisingly wide selection. Advertisements
of silks, satins, broadcloths, muslins, cambrics, and silk gloves,
among plaids and cheap stuffs and offerings of fine groceries
and Madeira wine as well as of whisky by the barrel prove the
existence of such distinctions. To take action against the im-
portation of such luxuries, societies were formed between the
years 1819 and 1821. The political aspirations of the well-to-
do men doubtless induced them, especially at elections, to keep
such distinctions in the background. Nevertheless the society
of afternoon teas and great dinners must have lived side by
side with the simple society whose social events were the dance
after the corn husking or barn raising and the gathering at the
county seat on court day or at the camp meeting, the last two
probably partaken of by rich as well as by poor. Woods
mentions husking, raising, reaping, rolling, picking, sewing, and
quilting frolics ; and they were much more common than their
mention in the contemporary literature of the frontier might
lead one to suppose. 27
Patriotism of a higher or lower type flourished in pioneer
Illinois. In the frontiersman, according to Fordham, it might
be described best as a belief that Americans, especially the
26 Woods, Two Years' Residence, 346.
27 Fordham, Personal Narrative, 210; Woods, Two Years' Residence, 300.
20 THE FRONTIER STATE
people of his own state, were the best soldiers in the world.
In the class reached by the newspaper, it took a finer form.
At the Fourth of July dinners so often noted in the papers
" The memory of Washington " usually was drunk in silence,
and there was almost always a toast to the heroes of the Revo-
lution, both toasts indicating a pride in what rapidly was coming
to be hallowed by distance as a great and glorious past. The
valor of the frontiersman and of the jack tar in the War of
1812 offered a new stimulus to national pride. Further, as the
newspaper reported for its readers, the monarchical weaknesses
of the old world, the contemptible foibles of the libertine
George IV and his immodest queen, the stirrings of revolution
and liberty in Europe and South America under the influence
and example of republican America made the nation seem
destined to an even nobler and more significant future as the
standard bearer of republican principles. Adherence to these
principles as yet seemed a bond of political unity beside which
considerations of dynastic allegiance or racial ties seemed
frivolous. In 1820 men were well content to ask no other
unity for the American nation. The doubts and fears that
beset the whigs in later days as to the influence of the foreigner
and the rabble on the future of the republic were thus far
characteristic only of the despised federalist minority.
The part which the newspaper played in the community is
an interesting one. The present day definition of news was
unknown to editors who thought it their duty to keep from their
readers anything that might be considered contrary to good
manners and morals; an editor might even rebuke as mere idle
curiosity the desire for the details of murders and steamboat
explosions. ' The paper's main function was to furnish a
medium of polite communications from the editor to his
patrons. Usually he regaled them with foreign news, accounts
of the proceedings of congress, and the state general assembly,
with occasional speeches made in congress, political articles,
and forecasts, accounts of improvements in agriculture or manu-
factures, and moral anecdotes in the manner of Franklin,
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 21
interspersed with jokes about the sea serpent matter nearly
all obtained by clipping from papers nearer the center of the
great world or of the United States. In times of election,
however, politics displaced all else.
The scissors usually supplied the literature, which was
sentimental in imitation of Goldsmith, humorous after the
manner of Sterne, or romantic in the fashion of the author of
Waverley in any case distinctly exotic in character. This
was supplemented by local contributions, political, controver-
sial, and humorous, though the point of many a satire, doubtless
keen enough in its hour, has long since rusted away completely.
On the whole the newspaper was much less a suggestive index
to the intellectual habits and tastes of the country than it was
ten years later.
The economic status of the newspaper was usually based
on the possession of state or national printing contracts or on
the desire for them. The printing week by week in their
columns of national laws and treaties or the issuing of laws and
journals of the state general assembly made the newspaper
business profitable. Editors were, in many cases, itinerant
editors partly by grace of their editorial capacity, partly by their
knowledge of printing. Such men were free lances willing to
enter the pay of any aspiring politician who was ready to pro-
vide a press and type, usually veterans of former wars, to loan
a few hundred dollars, and to drum up a small subscription list.
Without the bounty of public printing, newspapers could not
live save by subsidy. Four hundred was a very good list of
subscribers; and subscriptions often ran unpaid for years de-
spite the pleadings, threats, and blacklisting resorted to by the
editor. There are traces of other intellectual influences. Lists
of books advertised for sale are short but contain the titles of
some good books ; and no doubt the few persons with genuine
tastes for good reading could satisfy them as well as if they
lived in the east. There were literary and debating societies in
Fayette and in two neighboring counties. There was even a
Handel-Haydn society. That an outlet to spiritual aspirations
22 THE FRONTIER STATE
was doubtless offered by Masonry is indicated by the St John's
Day orations published from time to time, though apparently
Masonry met disapproval from a section of the clergy. 28
Such systematic education as the state afforded was supplied
by private schools and for a price, for the state during the first
decade made scarcely any use of its endowment from the federal
government. Some of the schools were of about the grade of
grammar schools; and girls' schools where needlework, paint-
ing, and similar subjects were taught for an extra charge were
not uncommon. Frequently board was offered also. Charges
for tuition varied from three dollars and fifty cents to seven
dollars a quarter, according to subjects taught, needlework in
girls' schools usually being an extra.
There were not wanting, however, more ambitious estab-
lishments. One at Salu was kept by a New England
schoolma'am. The Reverend Mr. Desmoulin had a school in
Kaskaskia in which he taught Latin and French. At Ebenezer
they advertised for a preceptor who was qualified to teach
Greek, Latin, and the higher mathematics. At Galena in 1829
a school (Aratus Kent's) purported to teach Latin and Greek.
One public school at Alton was free to the children of parents
residing in the corporation, for Alton had been incorporated
with an endowment of one hundred lots for religious and educa-
tional purposes. 29
The foundations of collegiate education were laid before
the end of the period. In 1827 the indefatigable John Mason
Peck opened a seminary at Rock Spring as a theological training
school, equipping it with the books and other property that he
had collected in the east. It was intended primarily for the
education of ministers, but in addition it offered courses in
literature and tne sciences. At a meeting at Rock Spring,
January i, 1827, Peck was appointed superintendent and agent
to obtain funds. It was decided that a farm for student labor
be operated and that subscriptions be solicited for buildings
28 Illinois Gazette, January i, December 2, 1820; Illinois Intelligencer, May
15, 1821 ; Edtvardsville Spectator, July 3, 1821.
29 Illinois Intelligencer, April 7, 1819.
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 23
payable in provisions, cattle, labor, books, or building materials.
Contribution entitled a subscriber to send his children or wards
without charge for rent or for the use of the library. The
school was to have a theological professor and one for mathe-
matics, natural philosophy, and languages. 30
Religion came to be the most universally pervasive intellec-
tual force of the frontier. As might be expected, on the frontier
the first tendency was toward a disregard of religious
observances. The emigrant from the older settled regions left
behind him the machinery and the establishment of sectarian
religion. Until that machinery could be set up again on the
frontier he lived without formal worship and often for the
time at least the sense of the need of it passed out of his life.
In cases where observance had been due to social convention
there was no doubt a welcome feeling of freedom and restraint.
Normally the frontiersman was unreligious. Birkbeck
noted with relish the absence of ceremony at baptism or funeral
and the tolerance of all backwoods preachers alike, whether
they raved or reasoned. Sunday was a day for riot and dis-
order. Other observers looked with horror on such a state of
things, did their best to set up at least stated regular worship,
and noted an improvement in morals as a result. 31 Yet for
years the riot and license of a Shawneetown Sabbath was a
shocking thing to a prim New England bride. Further, if one
may believe the early preachers of both Baptists and Metho-
dists, deistic and atheistic belief flourished on the frontier
among even the better classes. Evidence is not lacking to cor-
roborate the frequency of this attitude of mind, which
accentuated the sharp line drawn among men between the re-
ligious and the irreligious, the good and the wicked. The
latter term connoted those who did not fall in with the beliefs
and practices of the denominationally pious. The idea of the
sheep and goats divided by observances and beliefs, possibly
30 Ediuardsville Spectator, February 19, 1820; Illinois Intelligencer, March
24, 1824; Babcock, Memoir of John Mason Peck, 225-228.
31 Birkbeck, Letters from Illinois, 24-25 ; Flower, Letters from Illinois, 124-
125.
24 THE FRONTIER STATE
also by such habits as profane swearing and drinking, persists
in the pioneer narratives. "A man of good character," wrote
Fordham, "is an acquisition; not that there is a small propor-
tion of such men, but because the bad are as undisguisedly bad,
as their opposites are professedly good. This is not the land
of Hypocrisy. It would not here have its reward. Religion
is not the road to wordly respectability, nor a possession of it
the cloak of immorality." 32
Into this western wilderness containing many who had
grown accustomed to the lack of religious food, many who
openly professed diabolism, and many who yearned for re-
ligious observances, the organizations of the Protestant
denominations threw themselves.
At every point the Methodist order was best equipped for
waging a systematic and thorough campaign against the in-
different and hostile. Its organization was ideal for such a
purpose. In effect, under the executive leadership of the
bishops of the church, elected by delegates from local confer-
ences to the general conference, but holding for life, it was a
self-perpetuating aristocracy of the traveling elders organized
in their various conferences; while in its quarterly meetings,
love feasts, class meetings, and the like, it gave opportunity for
lesser officers, local preachers, and class leaders, and even the
rank and file to bear their share in their local government under
the guidance of the traveling eldership. For a man to be
"settled" was to lose his place in the government; he could
hold his position in this aristocracy with its ridiculously meager
stipend only by continuing itinerant until under burdens that
equalled St. Paul's his strength gave out.
The whole organization was an elastic one, capable of
adaptation to the changing march of the frontier and yet always
ready to respond to the touch of the executive officers. The
best men, transferred from circuit to circuit year by year, could
be thrown at one community after another until vast numbers
of people at some time had come under the influence of their
32 Fordham, Personal Narrative, 128.
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 25
preaching. The faith and theology of the Methodist rejected
the stern predestinarian doctrine of Calvin and proclaimed a
divine grace freely offered. They looked toward the sudden
working of the grace of God in the hearts of great audiences
gathered to hear impassioned preaching. The great Methodist
preachers of the backwoods were men with a tremendous gift
of eloquence which could sway congregations back and forth
like fields of waving grain while sinners by the hundreds " fell
slain," as the preachers said, and were led to the mourners'
bench to be exhorted and prayed with till the divine ecstasy took
the form of rapture and peace. This power the ministers com-
monly used and struggled for, and they were depressed when
they could not exercise it. Its importance in the development
of the church was tremendous. Once the preaching of Peter
Cartwright or James Axley had wrought this experience in a
man the local organization of exhorters, preachers, and class
leaders was at hand to lead and instruct him.
The men who were the most successful in the struggle for
the conquest of the frontier to Christ were a distinct type, un-
learned, well-nigh unschooled, only a stage or two above
illiteracy. They had a strong contempt for college-bred
ministers as unfit to follow in their footsteps, unable with their
written sermons to get the effects that the native eloquence of
the pioneer attained. Men who had spent four years in rubbing
their backs against the walls of a college 33 were not the men to
ride wretched roads week in and week out, swim their horses
over creeks, and by address, by stratagem, or by force of su-
perior muscle defeat the efforts of the rowdies to break up
camp meetings. The pioneer preached a Christianity emotional
rather than intellectual. His exegesis was often astonishing.
In the sermon attributed to Axley preached from the text
"Alexander the Coppersmith did me much evil," Alexander
figures as a reformed still-maker who turned class leader, but
who under the influence of a heavy peach crop, backslid, and
made stills for the brethren to the destruction of sobriety in
33 Sturtevant, Autobiography, 162.
26 THE FRONTIER STATE
the neighborhood Yet the pioneer preachers worked a revo-
lution in the moral life of the communities they served.
Methodists for many years were known by a plainness of dress.
Wherever they were, Axley and Cartwright on all occasions
struck straight from the shoulder at the vice of liquor drinking
and the sin of slaveholding.
The Baptist polity, on the other hand, represented the
natural centrifugal tendency of the frontier. The wilderness
congregations united by loose associational ties tended to split
or to divide. The application of the faulty logic of untrained
minds to the interpretation of the doubtful things of scripture
was continually resulting in the production of strange and weird
doctrines; and since there was lacking the organization by
which the Methodist church secured uniformity, the Baptists
were in their remote congregations likely to become far sepa-
rated from each other in matters of belief and practice.
Among the various denominations in Illinois Baptist,
Methodist, and Presbyterian differences of opinion arose in
general upon the various doctrines of predestination and of
baptism. These, however, were only the starting points for
subdivision. Thus the Cumberland Presbyterians in their prac-
tice came somewhat near to Methodism, while they were
scarcely Calvinistic in their beliefs. The Campbellites, on the
other hand, were non-Calvinistic Baptists.
When Illinois became a state, Methodism had long been
established in it. At that time the district of Illinois was united
with the Missouri conference, and there were a presiding elder
and seven circuit preachers. The church had a membership of
1,435 whites and 17 blacks. In 1824 a separate Illinois con-
ference including a part of Indiana was formed. Illinois itself
had a presiding elder and nine circuits with eleven preachers.
At that time the membership had increased to 3,705 whites and
27 colored. Jesse Walker, the indefatigable preacher who had
first worked in Illinois in 1806, was assigned as missionary in
the settlements between the Illinois and Mississippi rivers and
Fort Clark. There he formed the first class at Peoria. In
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 27
1825 he was assigned as missionary to the Potawatomi located
on the Fox river above the Illinois. The expense of the enter-
prise was $1,000 a year. In 1829, however, when their lands
were sold, the mission among the Potawatomi was abandoned,
and missions at Galena and Fox River were opened. 34
The only other denomination of comparable strength in
the state was the Baptist. In 1825 the Baptists were estimated
to have fifty-eight preachers and exhorters, and the Emanci-
pating Brethren and the Christian Body had thirteen each. 35
In the midst of the individualism characteristic of the denomina-
tion there stands out the figure of one man, John Mason Peck.
Peck was born in 1789 in the Congregational atmosphere of
Connecticut. The birth of his first child in 1 8 10 first discovered
to Peck his disbelief in efficacy of pedobaptism. Becoming at
length a Baptist by conviction, he began to preach a little and
in 1813 was ordained. In 1816, to prepare himself for a mis-
sionary career, he studied in Philadelphia, gaining some
knowledge of Hebrew and a greater mastery of Latin and
Greek, as well as some acquaintance with medicine. In 1817
he was dispatched by the Baptist Board of Foreign Missions
as missionary to the west, where he settled himself for the time
at St. Louis. His duties soon carried him to the Illinois side of
the river. In 1820 the board abandoned the St. Louis mission.
In 1822 the Massachusetts Missionary Society appointed Peck
a missionary; and in April of that year he removed to Illinois,
still keeping an eye to the maintenance of his hard-won foothold
in St. Louis.
Peck's activity was tireless. From the time of his coming
to the west he rode circuit as assiduously as a traveling Metho-
dist elder, braving the dangers and hardships of the wilderness.
With indefatigable Yankee energy he was ever founding,
establishing, and sustaining Sunday schools, Bible societies,
missionary societies, and their auxiliaries, laboring for better
schools, striving with the perversions and oddities of doctrine
3 * Lcaton, Methodism in Illinois, 48, 151-152, 213.
35 Edtuardsville Spectator, October 22, 1825.
28 THE FRONTIER STATE
ithat had grown up in the wilderness. He was not successful in
avoiding the excitement of enmity among the Baptists, partly
as the result of the jealousy of local illiterate preachers who
feared that the better educated missionary preacher might
lessen their prestige among the people, partly from a distrust
that the mission system was an approximation to Methodism
and that the organization of general societies was an encroach-
ment on the autonomy of the individual church governments.
Peck soon had a growing opposition to contend with in Illinois.
His opponents in clumsy satires made light of educated minis-
ters. They opposed all concerted denominational methods,
such as the establishment of Bible societies, missionary societies,
and Sunday schools. This opposition they justified partly, one
would judge, on predestinarian grounds, considering that such
aids to salvation were flying in the face of divine election. A
further development of this opposition was the "two seed"
doctrine of Daniel Parker, at one time Illinois senator, which
predicated the fact that the seed of the woman and the seed of
the serpent were fixed to all eternity, declining any attempts of
the missionary methods to change the one to the other. 36
Sometimes the opposition took unusual or interesting forms.
In Sangamon county in 1823 an association debarred from
membership any Baptist holding membership in a missionary
society. In the legislature in 1828 Cartwright and James
Lemen sponsored a bill for the prevention of vice and im-
morality, and a member proceeded to amend the clause
prohibiting the disturbing of congregations in this fashion:
" that if any person on the Sabbath or first .day of the week,
should attempt to disturb the peace or good order of any con-
gregation or body of people gathered together for the purpose
of worshiping Almighty God, by offering to sell pamphlets or
books of any description whatever; or by begging money, or
36 Babcock, Memoir of John Mason Peck, 12-14, 30, 106-110, 172. See Illi-
nois Intelligencer, December 7, 1822, for a letter by Parker, declaring a Baptist
paper was full of philosophy and enticing words of men's wisdom. Training
preachers he pronounced a mark of the beast. His declaration that not one. as-
sociation in five in the west corresponded with the Board of Missions is inter-
esting.
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 29
any other thing for the support of Missionary Societies, Bible
Societies, or Sunday Schools, shall be fined any sum not more
than $15, nor less than $5." 37 Strangely enough twelve votes
were mustered in the house of representatives for this amend-
ment. Occasionally a charge of attempts to unite church and
state was used against some particular candidate. It was
undoubtedly true that appeals were occasionally made to re-
ligious people to vote against " an enemy to religion." John
Russell was several times attacked on charges that he wished to
set up Presbyterianism as the state religion and the same
charge was frequently brought against S. H. Thompson with
reference to his Methodist connections. The supporters of a
convention in 1824 attempted to argue that the Methodists
were trying to run the state. 38
Other denominations in Illinois were of minor importance.
In 1825 it was said that there were fourteen Cumberland
Presbyterian ministers and two Presbyterian, with one each for
the Covenanters, Dunkards, and Independents. In Bond
county in 1824 it was said that the Methodists, Presbyterians,
and Cumberland Presbyterians would frequently unite in
services. 39 There was enough Universalism to cause much an-
noyance to the orthodox ministers. Catholic activity, at first
confined to a few French parishes and missions in the southern
part of the state, was, in the late twenties and early thirties,
beginning to follow the thickening population into central and
northern Illinois.
As a corollary to the efforts of distinctly denominational
religion on the frontier must be noted the activities resulting in
the spread of Sunday schools and Bible societies. It is said
that the first Sunday school in Illinois was established at Alton
in May of 1819. In 1821 a female society at Edwardsville
had been in operation over a year. In 1822 the ladies and gen-
tlemen of Vandalia were asked to meet to form a Sunday
school. In 1824 societies to promote the formation of Sunday
37 H ouse Journal, 1828-1829, i session, 78.
38 Illinois Intelligencer, July 27, 1822, December 9, 1825.
39 Ibid., November 12, 1824.
30 THE FRONTIER STATE
schools were established in Greene, Madison, Sangamon, Mor-
gan, and St. Clair counties, as well as in a few others. The total
number of schools was thirty-five with 1,047 scholars, who had
recited according to report, 82,441 verses, the Bible verses
memorized being the important quantitative unit of measure.
The purpose of the schools was to furnish a little education in
communities that could not sustain ordinary schools, to teach
reading, instill moral habits, induce a due observance of the
Sabbath, but chiefly to commit scripture to memory. In 1826 a
general Sunday School Union for Illinois and Missouri was
formed, which in its second annual report, claimed 77 schools,
340 teachers and superintendents, and 2,546 scholars in Illinois.
It planned to establish depositories of books at Kaskaskia,
Shawneetown, Vandalia, and Springfield. Its appeal was to
all denominations. Apparently both the county and the state
societies were founded under Peck's leadership in the hope of
checking the anti-mission movement. In December of 1823,
perhaps under his guidance also, Bible societies were formed in
Greene and Madison counties; in 1824 one was also formed in
Bond county. In 1825 there were said to be twenty-two auxil-
iaries and branch Bible societies in the state. 40 These societies
appear to have encountered opposition from the same source
as that to missions, even in such an important task as the distri-
bution of Bibles. In 1826 it was estimated that in Madison
county there were 720 families in which were 3,237 persons
able to read and 27 families in which no one could read. There
were 79 families in which some person could read and which
had no Bibles. In 1828 a state Bible society, on the call of the
Bond county society, was formed at Shoal Creek.
With a purpose closely akin to these the American Tract
Society depository was founded in Greenville in 1824 and 1825
with William M. Stewart as agent; Bond county, it may be
noted, seemed to take a prominent part in many enterprises of
the sort. In November of 1824 a temperance society was
40 Edwardsville Spectator, October 22, 1825; Babcock, Memoir of John
Mason Peck, 185, 192; Illinois Intelligencer, August 28, 1821.
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 31
formed there which a year later served as the nucleus of a state
society; the members pledged themselves to abstain from offer-
ing liquor at house raisings, a habit apparently already frowned
upon in the county. They attacked the use of liquor upon the
ground, familiar enough nowadays, that it was the fruitful
source of idleness, profanity, and crime, depicting drunkenness
as a vice that produced tenfold more misery than stealing or
dueling, caused 10,000 deaths a year in the United States, and
wasted $12,000,000 directly for spirits and $60,000,000 in-
directly through its use. The society, however, did not insist
upon prohibition but rather upon the barring from public office
all those addicted to strong drink. 41
Crude and artificial as often were the forces promoting a
higher culture on the frontier, one feels as he takes his leave of
the period no reason to regret their work. The virtues of man
living in the state of nature are alluring, but an analysis of the
social life of the frontier discloses nothing of good that
necessarily must be lost in a change to a higher civilization and
much that might well be replaced by something better. The
neighborliness that found expression in the barn raising does
not seem so great when compared with the every day acts of
kindness that flourish in a rural community today, when the
comparative value of time and labor in the one and the other
case is considered. Side by side with the honesty and open-
hearted hospitality existed the villainy of the scoundrel who had
fled to the backwoods to evade the law. The summary punish-
ment inflicted on the outlaw by the backwoodsman was well
replaced by the due forms of law. The squalid surroundings
of the backwoods cabin happily disappeared before the trim
farmhouse. And even the emotionalism or dogmatism of the
early preacher compared favorably with the intellectual dark-
ness of the years before Peck and Cartwright, or the intellectual
self-complacency of the shallow freethinker. A young Eng-
lishman at first fired with enthusiasm for the free life of the
frontier finally came to see in the freedom little but lawless-
41 Illinois Intelligencer, November 13, 1824, April 21, 1827.
32 THE FRONTIER STATE
ness. On the page after that on which he records the killing
of six Indians, men and women, on English Prairie in the spring
of 1817, he wrote "Instead of being more virtuous, as he is
less refined, I am inclined to think that man's virtues are like
the fruits of the earth, only excellent when subjected to culture.
The force of this simile you will never feel, until you ride in
these woods over wild strawberries, which die your horse's
fetlocks like blood yet are insipid in flavour; till you have seen
waggon loads of grapes, choked by the bramble and the
poisonous vine; till you find peaches, tasteless as a turnip, and
roses throwing their leaves of every shade upon the winds,
with scarcely a scent upon them. Tis the hand of man that
makes the wilderness shine. His footsteps must be found in
the scene that is supremely & lastingly beautiful." 42
* 2 Fordham, Personal Narrative, 225.
II. THE NEW STATE GOVERNMENT,
1818-1828
THE constitution of 1818 and the laws under which the
people of the state lived for the first ten years of its
existence afford an interesting elaboration and commentary on
certain phases of the general life of the people already de-
scribed. Such material, of course, has to be used cautiously;
the passage of a law by no means implies that the condition
toward which it is apparently directed prevailed to any con-
siderable extent. Without some such study, however, the
picture of early Illinois would be incomplete. Reserving the
financial legislation to a later chapter, the important elements
in Illinois' early legal history will be next considered.
The government of Illinois in its constitution and in its
tendency for the first fifteen or twenty years after 1818 was a
government by the legislature. The observer is impressed not
only by the extent of the power exercised by the general
assembly in comparison with that exercised by the judiciary and
the executive, but by its assumption of the choice of local officers
which are now by almost universal practice chosen by individual
communities.
The legislature by the terms of the constitution was to meet
biennially; there were to be between one-third and one-half as
many senators as representatives. In practice the first and
second general assemblies consisted of fourteen senators and
twenty-nine representatives; there was a slight increase there-
after until 1 83 1. 1 The representatives were elected annually
for each assembly and the senators for terms of four years,
half of the senate retiring every two years. In addition to its
1 Up to that time the senate regularly had eighteen members excepting the
fourth with nineteen. The house was composed of thirty-six increasing to
thirty-seven in the third and forty in the fourth.
33
34 THE FRONTIER STATE
powers of legislation the assembly enjoyed the usual powers
in impeachment, counted the votes in gubernatorial elections,
elected members of the supreme court, appointed the auditor,
attorney-general, state treasurer, state printer, and other
necessary state officers. By a two-thirds vote it could submit
to the voters the question of calling a convention to amend the
constitution. The senate could pass on the governor's nominee
for secretary of state and had a similar voice in the selection of
other officers created by the constitution without a specific pro-
vision for their election.
On the legislative department the constitution grafted a
very curious body, almost indeed a third house the council
of revision. The origin of this institution was generally traced
to a similar one in New York, and when it became unpopular
Elias Kent Kane was usually charged by his enemies with re-
sponsibility for it. The council was composed of the governor
and the justices of the supreme court; its duty was to examine
all laws passed by the house and senate and to return such as it
disapproved, which last could be passed over its veto by a
majority of the members in each house. In practice the insti-
tution prevented some useless legislation by calling to the atten-
tion of the legislature technical defects in laws passed; but the
council's vetoes of laws on grounds of public policy or of
unconstitutionality were apt to be futile or merely irritating,
because legislators in early Illinois were rarely absent during
the session and the majority of members elected in each house
required to pass a bill over the veto of the council was usually
only one or two greater than the vote by which it originally
passed. Furthermore, the supreme court in deciding cases in-
volving the constitutionality of state laws was continually
embarrassed by the fact that the justices in the council of re-
vision had already passed on them. This function of the
justices undoubtedly heightened the political character, already
too apparent, of the early Illinois judiciary.
The powers of the executive of the state were defined by the
constitution within narrow limits. The governor could pardon
THE NEW STATE GOVERNMENT 35
and reprieve and could nominate to the senate for appointment
all officers whose choice was not otherwise prescribed by the
constitution or whose functions were not exclusively local. He
was commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the state and
of the militia. In case of his impeachment, resignation, or
absence from the state he was to be succeeded by the lieutenant
governor, who normally presided over the senate. The veto
power, however, which has come to be an important function
of the governorship, he could exercise only by his single vote
in the council of revision.
The judiciary was only sketched in by the constitution. In-
ferior courts could be established and their judges appointed
by the legislature and removed by it on the formal application
of two-thirds of each house. The supreme court till 1824 was
to consist of four justices chosen by joint ballot of the assembly,
and charged with both circuit and supreme court duties. At the
end of that period the legislature might remodel the supreme
and circuit courts and elect judges who were to hold office during
good behavior. As might have been foreseen this gave a
political cast to the first supreme bench; and it is not surprising
that in 1822 two justices should have been openly candidates
for governor and a third a potential candidate for either the
governorship or the senate.
The court as first constituted consisted of Joseph Phillips,
Thomas C. Browne, William P. Foster, and John Reynolds.
Of these men Foster never acted and was succeeded by William
Wilson ; Phillips resigned in 1822 and was replaced by Thomas
Reynolds. In 1825 the legislature reconstituted the court with
a chief justice, three associate justices, and five circuit judges.
The justices elected under this law, however Samuel D.
Lockwood, Theophilus W. Smith, Thomas C. Browne, and
William Wilson by an act of 1827, were compelled to return
to circuit duties; and the circuit judges were legislated out of
office. 2
2 In this and in following chapters when the date of a law is given in the
text, no further reference is made.
36 THE FRONTIER STATE
The displaced circuit judges drew up a communication to
the senate protesting against the act as calculated to displace
the balance of the three divisions of government and leave the
tenure of the judiciary at the whim of the legislature. This
was the main argument advanced by their supporters; while
those who favored the abolition of their offices urged economy
and the advantage of keeping the supreme justices fresh in the
law by service in the circuits, instead of leaving them to be in
session twenty-eight days in a year and a half to decide sixty-
three cases. They discounted the argument that the benefit of
appeal would be destroyed by referring to the supposedly
similar experience of Great Britain, the United States and New
York state. On one ground or another probably the majority
of the people were in favor of the repeal. 3
Local government in Illinois for its first decade was as rudi-
mentary as the state government. The constitution had little
to say on the subject. It provided that three county commis-
sioners be elected in each county to transact all county business
but left their duties and term of service to be regulated by law.
The first general assembly expanded the constitutional pro-
vision regarding county commissioners by defining their duties
as follows : " That said court in each county, shall have juris-
diction in all matters and things concerning the county revenue,
and regulating and imposing the county tax, and shall have
power to grant license for ferries and for taverns, and all other
licenses and things that may bring in a county revenue; and
shall have jurisdiction in all cases of public roads, canals, turn-
pike roads, and toll bridges, where the law does not prohibit
the said jurisdiction of said courts ; and shall have power and
jurisdiction to issue all kinds of writs, warrants, process, and
proceedings, by the clerk throughout the state, to the necessary
execution of the power and jurisdiction with which this court
is or may be vested by law." The court, it was expressly
stated, had no legal jurisdiction in the ordinary sense, "but
3 Illinois Intelligencer, January 6, 27, 18*7; Ed<wards<ville Spectator, Feb-
ruary 25, September 29, 1826; Illinois Gazette, October 14, December 2, 16, 1826.
THE NEW STATE GOVERNMENT 37
said court shall have jurisdiction in all cases where the matter
or thing brought before the said court, relates to the public
concerns of the county, collectively, and all county business."
The function of the court was clearly designed to be adminis-
trative. 4 This act, however, did not specify the term of office
of the members and indeed none did until 1829.
Of other county offices the sheriffs and coroners were by
constitutional provision to be elected biennially. Notaries
public, public administrators, and recorders were appointed by
the governor and senate, surveyors by nomination of the house
of representatives to the senate. The first general assembly
assigned probate functions to the county commissioners; the
third to a probate judge who was to hold office till the end of
the next general assembly. In 1825 the assembly installed new
probate judges elected by the legislature on joint ballot. The
county commissioners and the circuit judge both appointed
their own clerks. In most cases the returns from fees were
small and the county offices themselves were held as minor
prizes and rewards in the political game. Very often, especially
in the case of a new county, several of these offices were held
by the same man. " The offices in a new county " was a not un-
common political proffer or request. In such cases through
long tenure county clerkships sometimes became almost private
political freeholds especially in view of the fact that the law
recognized little or no responsibility on the part of the county
to provide clerks with offices or equipment. It will be seen
that the legislature allowed to the people of the counties a voice
in the selection of few of their officers. 5
As defined by the constitution and the earlier statutes there
was nothing unusual in the duties of the Illinois justices of the
peace. By the act of 1 8 19 they were to be elected by the senate
on the nomination of the house of representatives; constables
were to be appointed annually by the county commissioners'
4 Laws of 1819, p. 175.
5 Laws of 1819, p. 18, 31; Laws of 1821, p. 62; Laws of 1823, p. 87,132; Laws
of 1825, p. 70; Washburne, Edwards Papers, 397-398; Reynolds to Grant, 1830,
in Eddy manuscripts.
38 THE FRONTIER STATE
courts. In 1827, however, the law was changed to provide for
their election by districts. The jurisdiction of the justice as
first defined extended to civil matters not exceeding one hundred
dollars, with appeal in all cases in which over four dollars was
at stake. The act of 1819 gave him general powers in criminal
cases to commit for all offenses and to free on recognizance in
minor cases. He was also given a rather vague jurisdiction in
criminal matters, which later acts rendered more specific. He
could commit vagrants and could discharge apprentices from
their masters, subject to appeal, or could correct them for mis-
behavior. 6
One minor function of local government may here be dis-
cussed. Poor relief was provided for by a statute of 1819
which called for the annual appointment of overseers of the
poor in each township by the county commissioners. They
were directed to farm out the poor and to apprentice poor chil-
dren, and they might in behalf of the poor administer bequests
not aggregating in yearly value $1,200. There were added
elaborate provisions as to how a person might obtain a settle-
ment in the district and penalties for being without one, which
sound strangely on the frontier. Indeed the whole matter was
one of form only and Governor Coles, in answering a query
from New York regarding the Illinois poor system, was happy
to be able to remark that in no county had the poor been suffi-
cient in numbers to exercise the statutes. 7
The constitution had left the appointment or election of
many officers now chosen by popular vote in the hands of the
governor and the general assembly. For the limited number
left to the popular choice any male white inhabitant above the
age of twenty-one residing in the state six months was entitled
to vote. For members of the general assembly the constitution
prescribed the payment of a state or county tax and United
States citizenship and for the governor United States citizen-
ship for thirty years. The specific laws relating to elections
6 Laws of 1819, p. 5, 88, 162, 186-195.
1 Ibid., p. 127-139; Laivs of 1827, p. 309-310; Greene and Alvord,
Governors' Letter-Books, 1818-1834, p. 51.
THE NEW STATE GOVERNMENT 39
were altered rapidly by the various general assemblies. The
successive laws provided for the division of the counties into
election districts with judges chosen by the county commis-
sioners' court. In 1819 and 1823, provision was made for vote
by ballot, in 1821 and 1829, by viva voce. All the acts after
1823 allowed the voter to cast his vote at any polling place in
the district in which an office for which he had the franchise
was to be filled.
The question between viva voce and ballot voting gave rise
to some interesting political discussion. In 1819 there seemed
to be a tendency to defend viva voce voting as a necessary
complement to the hustings, where the candidate appeared, to
be interrogated or pledged by the voter if he wished. Vote by
ballot, on the other hand, was held to imply some form of
previous nomination; and a nomination by clique or meeting
enabled a man to stand aloof and unpledged and be elected by
his friends. 8 Whatever force this theory may have possessed
disappeared with the multiplication of polling places. One
has more sympathy with the attacks made in 1821 on viva voce
voting as a relic of British tyranny which admitted of overawing
voters. The general assembly was attacked for ordaining
viva voce vote in popular elections and for conducting its own
by ballot; and as a result of this criticism the assembly in 1829
provided by law that its own elections should be viva voce. 9
At first the quinquennial state census was apparently designed
as an aid to apportionment. The laws of 1819 prescribed only
returns of heads of families, free white males of twenty-one
years, other free whites, free people of color and slaves. The
laws of 1829, however, contained additional provisions for
returning the number of persons of both sexes and colors in
ten-year age periods, the number of males eighteen to forty-five
subject to militia duty, and the number of factories, machines,
distilleries, etc.
In the legislation of Illinois during the period of its first
8 Illinois Intelligencer, March 17, June 9, 1819.
8 Ibid., January 16, July 31, 1821; Senate Journal, 1821, i session, 68.
40 THE FRONTIER STATE
constitution the militia occupies a much more prominent place
than a legislature of this day would assign it. Indications are
not wanting that its importance was much less than the bulk
of legislation would imply. The constitution defined the militia
as all free white males from eighteen to forty-five except those
exempted; it provided for the exemption of conscientious ob-
jectors, it prescribed the election of company and regimental
officers by the whole of their respective commands, and election
of general officers by the officers of the commands in question.
The legislature provided for conscientious objectors by allow-
ing them to obtain release from drill, not from active service,
by payments for flags and martial musical instruments or for
the poor of the county, or by additional road service.
The militia was organized on a territorial basis ; its unit was
the company whose captain was to enroll in a specific district all
those liable for duty; the regiment represented a county, and
the brigades and divisions, groups of counties. The men were
brought together in company, battalion, or regiment for drill
several days in each year. The officers formed regimental
courts-martial which assessed petty fines for nonattendance at
musters or for improper equipment. 10
In spite of elaborate militia statutes, notices in newspapers
of militia elections, and even store advertisements of martial
trappings, one doubts if the militia service was a very important
one in men's minds, or even if the musters gained in the social
life of communities such a place as that held by the circuit court
days. Coles in reporting to the war department in 1826 ex-
pressed the belief that a volunteer corps would be far more
valuable. He thought that the musters were productive of
little military knowledge and that their effect on society was bad.
He believed one muster a year for companies and regiments
would be enough, though he thought the officers would need
additional training in "the duties of the field and camp."
" The Militia," he said, " as now organized is a mere school of
10 Laws of 1819, p. 13-14, 270-296; Laws of 1821, p. 13, 106-112; Laws
of 1823, p. 40; Laws of 1827, p. 296; Laws of 1829, p. 107-108.
THE NEW STATE GOVERNMENT 41
titles where honors are conferred more from a momentary
impulse of personal kindness than from a sense of the qualifi-
cations of the individuals." 11 This criticism was amply justified
in the course of time, for when in 1861 the call came for six
regiments of militia, there were " no available, efficient, armed
and organized militia companies in the State, and it is doubted
whether there were thirty companies with any regular organ-
ization." 12
The problem of transportation in pioneer Illinois was a most
important one. By general acts, by special licenses to individuals
and corporations, by state aid, successive legislatures labored at
the problem, and none too successfully. The general acts left
the handling of this problem in its primary sense of good local
roads under the charge of the county commissioners' courts.
In local districts in their counties these courts were required
annually to appoint supervisors of highways who were empow-
ered to call on the people of their districts for specific amounts
of labor or for money commutation in lieu of them which might
be expended for hiring extra labor and teams and buying
scrapers or materials. These acts generally laid the burden of
labor on the highways on all males of from eighteen to fifty
years, but the act of 1825 allowed in addition a levy of one-half
per cent on all taxable property to be collected in labor or
money. The provision was repealed in 1827. In this provi-
sion lay a direct issue as to whether good roads were to be con-
sidered so universal a benefit that the poll tax principle was
properly applicable, or whether the benefit to property was
sufficiently great to warrant its taxation. The debate assumed
a class character; and while in Illinois legislation the poll tax
principle prevailed, it may be questioned if it was a triumph of
justice. 13
In dealing with tne problem of long distance transportation
the legislature was inclined to rely on private enterprise. In
11 Greene and Alvord, Governors' Letter-Books, 1818-1834, p. no.
12 Reports General Assembly, 1863, 1:467.
13 Laws of 1825, p. 130, 135; Laws of 1827, p. 340, 346; Ediuardsville Spec-
tator, May 9, 1820, January 15, 1826.
42 THE FRONTIER STATE
1819 it allowed county commissioners' courts to authorize the
establishment of ferries and to fix rates for fares, which rates
the owners apparently sometimes tried to alter at pleasure. It
further authorized by similar means the construction of toll
bridges and turnpikes. In addition the legislature was free
with special acts allowing individuals to erect toll bridges or
build turnpike roads, sometimes with a provision allowing
county purchase after a term of years. Sometimes a lottery was
authorized for some such purpose as improving the Grand
Rapids of the Wabash or draining the American Bottom. In
1825 the county commissioners of Sangamon county were
allowed to receive subscriptions and to levy a tax for the im-
provement of the Sangamon river.
Sometimes the state legislature made grants in aid. Thus
in 1823 it provided for the laying out of a series of roads radi-
ating from Vandalia and appropriated $8,000 to build them in
Fayette county. Frequently it passed acts appointing com-
missioners to lay out specified roads. "Vast sums from the
public Treasury," protested the council of revision in 1827,
"have been thrown away on commissioners to view and mark
out roads, which have never been and never will be opened." 14
In 1827 and 1829 the legislature set about appropriating the
proceeds from the sale of the surplus saline land which had
been authorized by congress. The act of 1827 provided for its
use in improving Saline creek, for a local road, and for a canal
on the Little Wabash, allotting the proceeds from the Vermilion
saline to the improvement of the Great Wabash. In 1829 it
distributed all the proceeds above $10,000 to various counties
for miscellaneous public works. This was apparently the
triumph of a scheme of legislative logrolling in which amend-
ments and additions without number were proposed for the
benefit of various localities and vain appeals made for economy
or for reimbursing the school fund instead. Two broad pro-
jects of internal improvement by federal activity or federal
aid the Cumberland road and the Illinois and Michigan
14 Senate Journal, 1826-1827, i session, 126.
THE NEW STATE GOVERNMENT 43
canal though projected in this period, were not undertaken
till later and may most appropriately be considered elsewhere.
From the first session of the general assembly the question
of the establishment of an adequate code of statute law came
up repeatedly. The first legislature was criticized sharply
for repealing the territorial code and for the alleged discrep-
ancies and omissions in the laws with which they sought to
replace it. In the session of 1823 a joint committee of the
general assembly decided against revision of the laws until a
permanent judiciary could be established, possibly intending
to postpone consideration till the question of a revised consti-
tution was settled also. That question settled, the legislature
of 1825 required the justices of the supreme court to digest the
statutes and report discrepancies to the general assembly for
adjustment. They were also directed to consider the expedi-
ency of printing with the statutes the English statutes in force
in the state, a reminiscence of the act of the first general assem-
bly which had made the rule of decision, subject to legislative
alteration, the common law of England and all statutes with
certain exceptions made in aid of it before i6o6. 15
In reporting to the general assembly of 1827 the justices
excused themselves for not undertaking the prescribed research
in early English laws on the plea that many of the statutes were
barbarous, long since obsolete and at variance with free insti-
tutions, as well as by the fact that there was no set of the Acts
of Parliament in the state. They had further decided it would
be inexpedient to prepare a digest since a permanent statutory
code was designed. Meanwhile they wished to examine the
new Louisiana code and, if they might take the time necessary,
the new New York code. Their uncertainty as to the sense of
the legislature on the revenue and execution laws, they con-
cluded, prevented them from having the work completed. The
legislature appointed a joint committee of fourteen which set
to work on the judges' recommendation. Their work, though
18 Illinois Intelligencer, May 25, 1819; Edwardsville Spectator, December
27, 1819; Senate Journal, 1822-1823, i session, 77; Laivs of tStQ, p. 3.
44 THE FRONTIER STATE
partly enacted into law in the form of statutes, was not finished
until the session of 1829.
The early criminal codes of Illinois were influenced in their
tenor by the impossibility of providing for punishment by im-
prisonment. In spite of repeated statutes requiring county
commissioners to provide strong jails, there were probably even
as late as 1829 many counties without them. A state peniten-
tiary did not exist, and the expense of keeping malefactors to
serve out prison terms was a burden which counties were unwill-
ing to assume. Accordingly, when fines could not be collected,
the most feasible method of punishment for the more serious
offenses appeared to be whipping. In spite of such traces of
savagery as the fact that an act providing for punishment by
extreme mutilation was lost in the Illinois house in 1823 by a
vote of but fourteen to eighteen, it is probable that tender-
hearted juries often neglected to apply the punishment of whip-
ping. None the less, the early codes have on their face savage
penalties in which the whipping post and even the brand play a
part. 16
By the criminal act of 1819 only four offenses were pun-
ishable by death. From this list the code of 1827 subtracted
assault and arson, unless a life were lost in the fire, while adding
two corollary offenses. As to punishments by whipping, the
code of 1827, while applying it to nine offenses including crimes
of violence, forgery, counterfeiting, and altering marks and
brands, cut down the number of lashes; in certain cases the
code of 1819 prescribed five hundred lashes, but the later code
in no case exceeded a hundred. The large number of addi-
tional offenses created by the act of 1827 were punished by fine
or by civil disability.
Some of the offenses specified in the early act are interesting
commentaries on the economic conditions of the day. In the
act of 1819 were penalties for hog stealing, altering marks
punished by a fine of fifty to one hundred dollars and from
twenty-five to thirty-nine lashes and for defacing brands
19 House Journal, 1826, 2 session, 58; ibid., 1828-1829, i session, 7.
THE NEW STATE GOVERNMENT 45
punished by a fine of five dollars plus the value of the animal
and forty lashes if a first offense and by branding for a second.
Persons killing cattle or hogs in a wood were required to show
the head, ears, and hide to the next magistrate under penalty
of ten dollars. Every person owning livestock was required
to record his brand or earmark with the county commissioners'
clerk, and a person buying neat cattle must within eight months
brand them with his own brand before two credible witnesses.
Any man bringing earless hogs to a house was to be judged a
hog stealer. The act is strangely reminiscent of the custom of
the Anglo-Saxon frontier a thousand years earlier.
Certain interesting aspects of social life are touched in the
various Illinois codes. In 1819 and 1827 acts were passed
against dueling, the first of them limiting the death penalty to
the principal, and the second making any participation in a
fatal duel murder. Both acts punished anyone concerned in
the formalities of a duel with civil disability. There was
repeated legislation from 1819 against gambling. In 1825 the
purchase or importation of packs of cards or other gambling
devices was punished by a fine. In 1 827 a curious provision was
enacted making payments of gambling debts recoverable at
law at treble value by the loser or, if he did not act, by any
other person. There was a severe penalty prescribed against
tavern keepers who tolerated gambling or who kept open on
Sunday. The term tavern was given a definition by an act of
1823 which had forbidden county commissioners to grant
"grocery" licenses unless the applicant gave security to pro-
vide lodging for four persons besides his family. The code of
1827 continued the penalty against tavern keepers who toler-
ated gambling; further it provided a fine for tavern keepers
who sold liquor without a license or sold it to a slave without
his master's consent. There was a general penalty for keeping
a tippling house open on Sunday or for keeping a gambling or
disorderly house.
Most curious of all, both for the spirit that prompted them
and for the spirit which they were intended to combat, were
46 THE FRONTIER STATE
the Sunday laws. The act of 1819 assessed a fine of two dol-
lars on persons fighting, working, shooting, or hunting on
Sunday. Further it assessed swearing of oaths at from fifty
cents to two dollars. Persons swearing or behaving in a dis-
orderly manner before a court or a congregation were fined
from three to fifty dollars. No provisions on the subject appear
in the code of 1 827, but in 1 829 an act provided that any person
disturbing Sunday by work be fined not to exceed five dollars,
and anyone disturbing a congregation be fined not to exceed
fifty dollars.
Acts of 1819, 1825, and 1827 provided for divorces to be
granted by circuit courts. The act of 1825 allowed divorce
from bed and board for cruelty or for habitual intoxication.
Otherwise only impotence, adultery, and the existence of a
previous spouse were recognized as valid reasons. In spite
of these provisions, the legislature was repeatedly appealed to
for special divorces and was usually in the throes of contest
over the principle of granting them. A limited right of impris-
onment for debt was granted by the act of 1823, but it applied
only in case of an affidavit that the debtor was on the point of
absconding and lasted only till security was given or an oath of
insolvency taken.
It is comparatively difficult to determine the character and
the amount of crime that flourished in the Illinois of the first
decade of statehood. In default of searching court records
one is thrown back on the newspaper accounts, which of course
are far from complete and indeed difficult to estimate. Crimes
of violence exclusive of those resulting from mere affrays like
that one at Vandalia when James Kelley, cashier of the state
bank, was killed in the act of cowhiding his assassin, found
their most fruitful source in the gangs of desperadoes, half
counterfeiters and horse thieves, half robbers and murderers,
such as the one which infested southeastern Illinois in the early
years of statehood. These gangs, having their rendezvous at
taverns where they trapped unwary travelers well supplied with
money, often mustered sufficient strength to make open war
THE NEW STATE GOVERNMENT 47
on the posses sent out against them. Occasionally the inhabi-
tants in desperation enforced a lynch law of their own, as for
instance when in Hamilton county in 1823 two persons were
acquitted of the death of a bad character whose house they had
gone to search. 17
Among lesser crimes counterfeiting and horse stealing throve
exceedingly. The temptation to the former was irresistible
when the large number of banks of issue and the comparative
ignorance of the people is considered, and the plates once made
the business could be conducted as well in the seclusion of the
woods as in cities. Horse stealing was so prevalent in Madison
county in the first years of statehood that Mrs. Ninian Edwards
was compelled to lead the family horses through the house into
the yard every night.
From the beginning. Illinois had a savage black code. By
jact of {he firsf legislature all Efagipoes and mulattoes settling in
the state must produce a certificate of freedom to be recorded
by the clerk of the circuit court. Any person bringing in Negroes
to be emancipated must give bond of one thousand dollars for
each. All resident blacks must enter their names and evidence
of their"lfre"edbm with the circuit clerk, and no one was to hire
them unless they produced the clerk's certificate to their free-
dom. Harboring runaway slaves, like receiving stolen goods,
was felony. Blacks without certificates were to be advertised
in the papers and hired out for a year. If no owner appeared
within that time the black was given a certificate of freedom.
No Negro might be a witness, except against a Negro, a mulatto,
or an Indian. The code of 1827 stated that justices of the
peace had jurisdiction over free Negroes, indentured servants,
or slaves in cases of larceny and with the verdict of a jury might
condemn them to stripes. The act of 1819 had also left to
justices power of inflicting similar punishment on insubordinate
servants. The law of 1829 provided that no black or mulatto,
not a citizen of one of the United States, was to enter the state
unless he gave bond of a thousand dollars and exhibited a cer-
17 Illinois Gazette, July 19, 1823.
48 THE FRONTIER STATE
tificate of freedom. This law was ushered in by a report by
Joseph Kitchell which pronounced the presence of negroes
with masters a moral and political evil and their presence with-
out them a greater one, especially as they could never be citi-
zens. This measure passed the house by a vote of twenty-five
to eleven and probably represents the sentiment of the day.
The clause of the act of 1819 which penalized the bringing
in of servants without giving bond caught at least one illus-
trious victim in Edward Coles, who had brought in his slaves
a month after the passage of the act but five months before it
was published and had, through ignorance, neglected to comply
with its provisions. He was sued on behalf of Madison county
late in 1823 or early in 1824, and a verdict for $2,000 was
given against him. The next legislature passed an act releasing
all penalties, judgments, or verdicts under the provision of the
law of 1819, as Coles' enemies alleged at his special instance.
Samuel McRoberts, however, who was now the presiding judge,
overruled a plea to set aside the judgment and verdict, arguing
that the legislature could not legally revoke the penalty. His
decision was reversed by the supreme court in 1826. Mean-
while it gave rise to a long newspaper controversy between
Coles and McRoberts. 18
With the presence of free blacks in the state the kidnapping
of them into slavery in the south was all too common, especially
in the decades 1820-1840. For instance in 1823 certain
freedmen from Vincennes were kidnapped and carried off
through Shawneetown in spite of the fact that a son of William
Henry Harrison endeavored to raise a pursuit. 19 There were
repeated laws on kidnapping. The act of 1819 penalized it by
a fine of one thousand dollars. The act of 1825 made it a fel-
ony punishable by twenty-five to one hundred stripes, by two to
four hours in the pillory, and by a fine of one thousand dollars.
It was much more closely drawn than its predecessor and in-
cluded the case of kidnapping from one county of the state to
18 Ed<wards<ville Spectator, April 12, 26, 1825.
19 Illinois Gazette, August 2, 1823.
THE NEW STATE GOVERNMENT 49
another and prohibited the selling of indentured servants out of
the state. The code of 1827 had somewhat similar provisions.
The act of 1829 prohibited marriage between the races under
penalty of stripes, fine, and imprisonment. Jacob Ogle in 1823
was not permitted by the legislature to introduce a petition
from persons of color begging for the suffrage. When Flower
sent some freed Negroes from Illinois to Haiti, they were
stopped in Shawneetown under suspicion of being fugitive
slaves. It was intimated that the men in charge of them might
design to sell them at New Orleans. The prevailing attitude]
toward the Negro or his friends was distinctly one of distrust
and dislike. 20
There were Negroes other than freedmen in Illinois not
only the slaves of the old French inhabitants supposedly guar-
anteed them by the Virginia act of cession but numerous inden-
tured servants as well, held on long terms that made them
slaves in all but name. Exactly what the economic status of
these indentured servants was is hard to say. The indenture
records kept in various counties, however, afford some light on
the problem. Sometimes a cash consideration as high as $500
is named, but probably in such cases the sum was paid to the
former owner of the slave in or out of Illinois. Oftener the
consideration was a suit of clothes, a blanket, or something of
the sort. The term of service varied widely, but the normal
period usually was one that terminated at the slave's sixtieth
year. Sometimes whole families down to the babe at the breast
were indentured, but more frequently the indentures represent
the acquisition of an adult slave. Except near the saline at
least as many women as men were indentured. Undoubtedly
this points to the presence of southern women unable to handle
alone the task of housewifery or to procure white help. The
need of servants in his own home doubtless caused many a
young man, who was making his way to prosperity without
being able to give his wife the benefits of it, to favor slavery.
The indenturing of new servants ceased of course with
20 House Journal, 1822-1823, i session, 36; Illinois Gazette, April 3, 1829.
50 THE FRONTIER STATE
the new state constitution. A rush to indenture servants is
especially noticeable in White and Gallatin counties at the time
when the first draft of the new constitution would have reached
them, about August 25, 1818. After the admission of the
state there was open trading in French slaves and in indentures
with varying terms to run. Slavery was not to be pronounced
legally at an end in Illinois for a quarter of a century thereafter.
Upon the first legislature the duty of providing a new capi-
tal had been laid, not by popular demand, but by the influence
of speculators in the constitutional convention. Kaskaskia, for
a hundred and fifty years the seat of empire in the central west,
was still by post road, by water, and by commercial connection,
the most important city of the state; a change from this logical
capital was premature and unnecessary. But in a day when the
projection of a new town was the favorite get-rich-quick scheme,
speculators were not likely to let slip so fat an opportunity as
the promotion of a new capital. The question was brought
before the convention by the introduction of three written pro-
posals from proprietors of sites on the Kaskaskia river north
of the government surveys, offering to donate land to the state
for a capital site. At once the convention took issue. A bitter
wrangle ensued with the outcome a draw, for the resolution
finally adopted, though it made a change necessary, was de-
signed to remove the transaction from the field of private
speculation. As incorporated in the constitution, it provided
that the first legislature should petition congress for four
sections of land for a capital site " on the Kaskaskia river, and
as near as may be, east of the third principal meridian;" if
the petition was granted commissioners were to be appointed
to select and lay out a town site to be the seat of government
for twenty years. In case the petition was refused, the general
assembly was to fix the capital where it thought best. By
requiring that the site be located east of the third meridian
where no individuals had land claims, it was thought that the
state, and not private enterprise, would profit from the sale
of lots. The gains from this source were practically the only
THE NEW STATE GOVERNMENT 51
advantage reasonably to be expected from the change, and to
many minds they seemed trifling indeed as compared to the sac-
rifices entailed.
In spite of some such protests, the legislature, when it con-
vened, proceeded as directed by the constitution. Its petition
was granted by congress and five commissioners selected as the
new site for the capital Reeve's Bluff, a beautiful spot in the
midst of an unsettled wilderness eighty miles to the northeast
of Kaskaskia.
The legislative ruling that only one hundred and fifty lots
of the new site were to be put on sale caused such absurdly
high prices to be bid for them that on paper the state realized
over $35,000. Only a small portion of this sum was paid in
cash, however, and it became impossible to exact full payment
when in a short time the dream of a swift-growing city was seen
to be chimerical. This uninhabited spot was christened Van-
dalia ; 21 having thus been chosen as the repository of the state
archives, these were bundled into a small wagon and carried
through the forest to the temporary building erected for them.
21 The name was probably taken from the name of the proposed colony of
Vandalia that was an issue in British politics and later American during the
last quarter of the eighteenth century.
III. TEN YEARS OF STATE FINANCE
THE public finance of early Illinois introduces the student
to a strange world, in which currency normally circulates
at a score of different discounts from par, in which banks are
organized to loan money on the state's credit to hard-pressed
citizens, and in which the state derives but a small portion of
its little revenue from the taxation of its own citizens. Illinois
state finances, while not expressed in sufficiently great sums to
be impressive, are sufficiently bizarre to be interesting.
As an introduction to the public finance of the state it will
be necessary first to consider the currency and private finance.
The currency in circulation in Illinois for the first years of ks
majority was emphatically of an opera bouffe character. Not
merely did the notes composing it pass at a discount ; they passed
at forty different discounts, varying with the reputation, of the
banks from which they issued or purported to issue. Some were
issued by solvent banks, some by specie paying banks, some were
issued by banks that had failed, some were counterfeit notes
of existing banks and others of purely fictitious ones. Of the
notes in circulation, a few were issued by New England banks,
a few came from western New York, more came from Pennsyl-
vania and the District of Columbia, still more from thf banks
of Ohio and of the south, in particular Tennessee and Ken-
tucky. Local notes composed but a small fraction of the total,
and notes of the Bank of the United States were very rare.
In great measure the uncertainty of the note issues in cir-
culation was due to the course of western trade. Illinois was
poor ; her agricultural products were her main source of wealth ;
and these, poured down the Mississippi in such quantities as
to glut the markets of New Orleans, afforded meager returns.
Furthermore, New Orleans was not able to act as the source
52
TEN YEARS OF STATE FINANCE 53
of supply for the needs of the state; and the manufactured lux-
uries and necessaries that Illinois drew from older communities
came from the northeast, notably from Philadelphia and Pitts-
burg. Means of making payments in the eastern cities were
scanty in the extreme. The good eastern money brought in by
immigrants found its way to the land offices and from them it
was drawn into the government treasury to be spent in the
east. The west was accordingly compelled to drain out the
dregs of its good money to pay its eastern debts. The one
means of relief would have been a commercial or exchange
organization capable of setting off credits at New Orleans
against debits in the east, but no such organization existed.
The Bank of the United States had hoped to establish a uniform
currency by making notes issued at one branch redeemable at
all others; but the western branches had issued such floods of
notes to be applied in local improvements or land speculation
that the United States Bank was threatened by the drain of
its specie in the east. The fact that it was compelled to receive
for the government the notes of any bank at all prevented it
from circulating its own notes locally in the west and providing
a different system of exchange; and it refrained for some years
from any issue of notes whatever in the west.
Under these circumstances the question, whether or not the
government land offices would accept the uncertain currency of
the west was vital to the people of the state. William H. Craw-
ford, secretary of the treasury, undertook the task of devising
a means whereby the government might accept the better notes
current in the west and convert them into eastern funds. The
Bank of the United States had at first agreed in localities where
it had no branches to designate local banks to receive the
public money from land offices. It soon discovered that in
spite of the treasury limitations as to notes which were land
office money, it was becoming responsible for vast sums of
paper it could not convert into current funds without delay and
loss by exchange. In June, 1818, therefore, it announced that
it would henceforth be responsible only for the transmission
'54 THE FRONTIER STATE
of legal currency of the United States or of funds convertible
into it. Crawford then undertook to use state banks in the
west as deposit agencies, requiring them to transmit the gov-
ernment funds in their possession by degrees to the United
States Bank; and in 1819 he granted them fixed government
deposit balances. At the same time he required them to be
responsible for the transmission without depreciation of bank
notes deposited by land offices, but allowed them to discon-
tinue receiving notes of any particular bank on due notice to
the receiver of the depositing land office. 1 In 1820 he entered
into arrangements by which the depository banks were to re-
ceive and remit at par notes of certain eastern banks and of
specie paying banks in their own community. This was a
distinctly able measure toward building up sound local cur-
rencies.
Undoubtedly this policy saved the west from much hard-
ship. Had it not been entered into, the government could have
received only specie, United States Bank notes, and good east-
ern notes, all of which were rare in the west. Undoubtedly as
Crawford's enemy, Ninian Edwards, later charged some gov-
ernment money was lost in transactions with fraudulently con-
ducted banks; possibly also Crawford used the measure to
favor his political friends ; but when all has been said the policy
was essentially statesmanlike in character and was executed,
if one can judge from the State Papers, with much skill.
The Bank of Missouri served the longest as a depository
bank for Illinois. Crawford had designated it first as the de-
pository for the Illinois receivers. In 1819 he allowed it a
fixed government deposit of $175,000. At one time it held as
much as $600,000 of government funds awaiting transmission,
much of it in such notes as the United States Bank would not
accept, and much of it of uncertain value from any standpoint.
Yet only $152,000 was caught in the bank when it finally sus-
pended; and part of that may have been in uncurrent notes
received before the bank had a right of veto on the paper it
1 American State Papers, Finance, 3:725, 741, 747-750, 4:583, 587, 844, 853.
TEN YEARS OF STATE FINANCE 55
received. 2 It suffered heavy drains of specie to pay accounts
for which exchange could not be procured $90,000 in a year;
in June, 1821, it appealed to Crawford for an additional de-
posit of $50,000 and in August suspended. It had loaned
nearly the full amount of its paid-in capital, $210,000, over
half the sum going to the directors, who had in addition bor-
rowed $80,000 on mortgage, $60,000 on personal security, and
$37,000 as indorsers. The reason for its downfall is obvious,
but considering conditions in the west it had served with fair
efficiency as the government's fiscal agent.
Needless to say, there was from the beginning jealousy in
Illinois at the preference accorded to the bank across the river
in receiving deposits from United States land offices. At the
time of admission Illinois had two banks in operation, the
Bank of Edwardsville and the Bank of Illinois at Shawnee-
town; the banks of Cairo and Kaskaskia, though chartered,
were not in operation. The Bank of Illinois numbered among
its officers many of the most substantial men of Shawnee-
town John Marshall, Leonard White, Samuel and John
Caldwell, John McLean, Michael Jones. Through the earlier
part of its career it was distinctly well managed. The Bank
of Edwardsville, though displaying on its list of sponsors the
great name of Ninian Edwards, had men in its directorate
whose financial stability was seriously questioned. The bank
was backed by Richard M. and James Johnson and General
Duval Payne of Kentucky. In 1819, $214,250 of its stock
was held in Kentucky, $18,000 in St. Louis, and $66,750 in
Illinois. Only a tenth of this was paid in. Both the Bank of
Illinois and the Bank of Edwardsville were made government
depositories late in i8i8. 3
The career of the Bank of Edwardsville as a government
agent was short and troublous. Its ownership apparently
involved it in a series of associations with several other banking
enterprises of uncertain character and in resulting rivalries
2 American State Papers, Finance, 3:753, 758.
3 House Journal, 1819, 2 session, 107; American State Papers, Finance, 3 : 741.
56 THE FRONTIER STATE
with other banks. It was connected with the Bank of St. Louis,
a rival to the Bank of Missouri, which finally failed. Crawford
was continually assailed by recriminations from the two rival
banks, the Edwardsville institution accusing the Bank of Mis-
souri of robbing it of specie through presenting its notes re-
ceived in land office deposits. The Bank of Edwardsville was
never allowed to decide what notes it should accept. It was in
continual difficulty with the government over failures to make
remittances, for which it excused itself by the plea that eastern
funds could not be procured in the state and that it was impos-
sible to ship specie. Benjamin Stephenson, the president, in
his capacity as receiver of the land office, failed to make deposits
regularly. Ninian Edwards cautiously disclaimed responsi-
bility for the institution in 1819, and in 1821 it failed, carrying
a heavy government deposit with it.
The Bank of Illinois had a better record than its rival in
its career as a government agent. It made its remittances
with comparative regularity and in good funds. Its notes
passed at par in Illinois in 1822. In 1824 it declared a seven
per cent dividend. Its sound condition undoubtedly was due
to the fact that late in 1819 it voted for the future to discount
bills of lading only; thus it practically confined its discount
business to the equivalent of good commercial paper, repre-
senting bona fide transactions. Eventually it abandoned busi-
ness, only to resume it ten years later at the time of the internal
improvement excitement. 4
The first general assembly under the provision of the state
constitution attempted to contribute to the financial world of
Illinois a state bank with a capital of $4,000,000 half sub-
scribed by the state and half by private persons. Of the
capital only one-fifth was to be paid in during the first six months.
The bank's notes were to be receivable for state dues at par so
long as they were payable on demand and were to draw twelve
per cent interest a year when they were not so payable. The
* American State Papers, Finance, 4:956; Illinois Intelligencer, June 15,
1822, July 17, 1824; Illinois Gazette, December n, 1819.
TEN YEARS OF STATE FINANCE 57
enterprise from the first encountered the bitter hostility of the
Illinois Emigrant which claimed that it was the work of a
Kaskaskia clique. The Intelligencer retorted that the Emi-
grants hostility was due to the solicitude of the Shawneetown
newspaper for the welfare of the Bank of Illinois. The debate,
however, was futile as the bank never went into operation. 5
Undeterred by the fiasco the second general assembly of
1 8 20 1 821 proceeded with a scheme for another bank. It was
to be administered by a head office and four branches, each with
a local directorate. Its capital was to be $500,000, and it
might issue $300,000 in notes bearing two per cent interest
which were to be loaned among the counties, each citizen being
entitled to a total discount not in excess of $1,000. Loans
in excess of $100 were to be secured on real estate. The faith
of the general assembly was pledged to the redemption of these
precious notes in ten years, one-tenth of them each year.
Against money received from the United States government
by the state treasurer which was to be deposited in the bank,
demand notes to the amount of twice the sums deposited were
to be issued and loaned in sums not exceeding $300 at six per
cent. A replevin law, applicable for three years to all execu-
tions in satisfaction of which state notes were not accepted,
indicates the purpose of the whole act. Times were hard and
money scarce, and a benevolent state accordingly issued money
in plenty to loan its citizens and protected their debts in case
these could not be satisfied in it.
Men were not wanting in the legislature to point out the
obvious arguments against the plan. Wickliffe Kitchell and
three others protested in the house, holding that the operations
of the bank would be a palpable evasion of the constitutional
provision against state emissions of bills of credit. Further
they held that the bank would encourage speculators and make
bankruptcy easy. Joseph Kitchell in the senate had previously
offered a resolution denouncing the establishment of a bank
5 Illinois Intelligencer, March 17, April 21, May 19, 1819; Illinois Emigrant,
April 17, June 5, 12, 1819.
58 THE FRONTIER STATE
without specie capital with which to redeem its paper on de-
mand. The council of revision objected to the bill on the
"bills of credit" ground and provoked only an overruling
which was preceded by a peevish report adducing among other
arguments for the bill that as the notes would not be accepted
outside the state they would remain at home for the use of
the citizens of Illinois ! In spite of the opposition of McLean,
the speaker of the house, the bill became a law. 6
The measure once passed, the Illinois Gazette, while de-
ploring it, was inclined to make the best of it and even attacked
the Shawneetown merchants for receiving state bank paper
only at a fifty per cent discount. The Edwardsville Spectator
approved the measure from the first. Some of the bank's
opponents, such as Joseph Kitchell, were apparently conciliated
by offices in the bank. The notes were speedily disposed of at
a fifty per cent discount. A further issue of notes proposed
in January of 1823 was fortunately voted down. 7
The state bank indeed is not to be judged and condemned
by the ordinary principles of banking, for this most extraordi-
nary bank was, if its officials may be believed, almost philan-
thropic in purpose. " When it is recollected," said a document
of 1827, "that the establishment of the State Bank was a
MEASURE of RELIEF that its object was not to loan money
on usury to the wealthy, for the purpose of gain, but to lighten
the burthens of our indigent and embarrassed citizens and
that, therefore, if any preference was to be shewn among appli-
cants for loans, it was to be exercised in favor of those who
were encumbered by debt the only real matter of surprise
is that loans made under provisions so liberal, would have been
reduced with so much promptitude, and so little loss." 8 On
reading this statement the professed economist will cheerfully
resign the subject, although colorably pertaining to him, to
the historian.
6 House Journal, 1820-1821, i session, 145-227.
7 Illinois Gazette, July 8, 1821.
8 Replication of William Kinney, Abraham Prickctt, and Joseph A. Beaird
to Edwards' charges, Illinois Intelligencer, February 3, 1827.
TEN YEARS OF STATE FINANCE 59
The capital was divided, $83,516.86^ to the Edwards-
ville branch, $48,834 to Brownsville, $84,685 to Shawneetown,
$47,265.02 to Palmyra, and $35,699.11^ to the head office
at Vandalia. The capital of the Edwardsville and Shawnee-
town branches was practically loaned out a few months after
the banks went into operation. The Illinois Gazette sarcas-
tically suggested that the only way one could obtain a loan from
the bank was by being indebted to a director. This suggestion
may explain the attitude of a storekeeper like William Kinney
connected with the Edwardsville branch who accepted the notes
in satisfaction of specie claims of $20,000. The reader may
wonder whether the claims were good or bad. There is not
very much doubt that the Edwardsville branch loaned some
money for political reasons, some for the establishment of a
proslavery press. Loans were frequently made on real estate
of value insufficient to cover them. To add to the opera boufe
character of the situation the justices of the supreme court
declared that in their opinion the act establishing the bank was
unconstitutional and their opinion made the directors chary
of legal proceedings to enforce collections from debtors. 9
The situation was brought to the attention of the legislature
in 1823 by the auditor, who in his report pointed out that the
notes were circulating at fifty per cent discount, thereby taxing
unduly state officers who were paid in them at par, and giving
an advantage to nonresidents who paid their taxes at par in
the depreciated paper. He offered the wise suggestion that
while the measure was one of relief and had been salutary,
the time had now come to press the liquidation of the bank as
the law prescribed. A legislative committee suggested a repeal
of the replevin provision in the law, and the legislature voted
an increase of fifty per cent in the salaries of state officers;
but the main difficulty in the application of any adequate reform
measure was found to be the lack of reports from which the
conditions of the branches could be learned. 10
9 Illinois Intelligencer, December 23, 1826, February 3, 1827; Ed<wardsville
Spectator, December n, 1821; Illinois Gazette, July 28, 1821.
10 Illinois Intelligencer, January n, 1823; Laics of 1823, p. 131, 181.
60 THE FRONTIER STATE
The legislature of 1825, after an investigation, found the
condition of the bank hopeless. Except at Edwardsville and
Palmyra the expenses of the institution had exceeded its profits
from discounting. The books of the Shawneetown branch were
in hopeless disorder and those at Brownsville little better. Leg-
islation was needed to force the Shawneetown branch to turn
over to the head office the funds necessary to advance the work
of liquidation. The assembly reenforced the legal provision
requiring the cashiers to retire annually ten per cent of the
notes and provided that cancelled notes be burned or, if re-
issued, be stamped so as not to draw interest. It put an end
to the business of the branches except as collecting agencies.
By one act, however, it fatally involved the state finances with
those of the bank since it provided that auditor's warrants for
appropriations made in terms of "state paper" should issue
at its current value to be determined by state officers ; the law
recognized the current value as thirty-three and one-third
cents on the dollar. Probably this was due to a desire to issue
in auditor's warrants a currency in which debtors could pay
their debts; but the effect on state finances was disastrous. 11
The auditor's report for 1826-1827 summarized the result
of this policy. The value of state paper rose to seventy cents
on the dollar, approximately one-half the warrants being issued
at or above fifty. About one-third of the state paper had been
retired and destroyed. The house in 1825-1826 was inclined
to oppose further relief and passed a measure that warrants
be issued at specie value and be payable in state paper at fifty
per cent discount; but the friends of relief were strong in the
senate and secured the retention of the old system. Edwards
in his campaign for the governorship in that year criticized
acutely the fatuous policy of the legislature. He pointed out
that in the first place the issue of auditor's warrants was made
necessary by the fact that nonresidents were required to pay
taxes only biennially. The debased warrants could then be
used by nonresidents to pay their taxes at their face value and
11 Laws of 1825, p. 16, 82, 182; Illinois Intelligencer, August 3, 1826.
TEN YEARS OF STATE FINANCE 61
must themselves ultimately be paid at par. If yearly settle-
ments of taxes were required, he declared, the notes would rise
in value because of the need of a medium in which to pay. 12
As governor, Edwards hampered himself by his own actions
from carrying through a wiser policy. The legislature enacted
a law for a gradual scaling up of the rate of discount at which
warrants were to issue which would carry them to par by
November 29, 1830. But Edwards frittered away his influ-
ence by violent attacks on his political enemies which brought
him no advantage. He attacked James M. Duncan, cashier
at the head office of the state bank, for failures in duty which
certainly did not amount to malfeasances and of which a legis-
lative committee acquitted him. He attacked T. W. Smith,
Kinney, and the other directors and cashiers of the Edwards-
ville bank. There can be little doubt that they were guilty at
least of improper conduct but the legislature in Smith's case
took refuge behind the fact that his charges against the bank
for services were a proper matter for judicial determination;
and the men accused were cleared. 13
The intent and purpose of the act in the first instance
had been that the bank should by gradually retiring its notes
automatically liquidate as its loans were paid. A series of acts
reduced the organization of the bank to a collecting agency.
Thus in 1829 the position of cashier of the head office was
abolished, the auditor and treasurer performing his duties.
The collections came slowly. There was the troublesome ques-
tion of constitutionality already adverted to; and further there
can be little doubt that the directors and presidents used to the
fullest extent the borrowing privilege which the original law
granted them. In 1827 a statement of the Brownsville branch
showed that William M. Alexander had borrowed $1,900.83 ;
Abner Field, $1,700; William McFatridge, $750; Joseph
Duncan, $2,000, and Edward Cowles, a well-known merchant
of Kaskaskia, $1,750. Of these, Cowles had paid in full,
12 Illinois Intelligencer, August 3, 1826.
13 Laws of 1827, p. 81; Illinois Intelligencer, January 20, February 3, 10,
17, 1827.
62 THE FRONTIER STATE
Field had paid $922, and Duncan $275. The statement speaks
for itself. With such influential debtors the cry for leniency
in dealing with bank debtors was soon raised. In his farewell
message Governor Coles had deprecated the extension of
inducements to debtors to pay up. Meanwhile he urged as
the true remedy as simple an administration of bank affairs as
possible. A contrary point of view was set forth in a house
resolution offered by John Reynolds, January 19, which urged
that inducements to secure immediate payments would save
the expense of administration. An act was passed allowing
debtors on paying up past due installments to renew their notes.
Two years later they were allowed to pay up in three annual
installments with interest. The bank lingered as a problem
after the passage of the first decade of state history. 14
Some of the complications in the revenue of Illinois intro-
duced by the currency and the banks have been already hinted
at. A clearer understanding of the problem may be obtained
by an analysis of the source from which the state's revenue
was derived. In 1821-1822 it received but $7,121.09 from
resident taxpayers and $38,437.75 from nonresidents owning
land in the state ; in its capacity as landed proprietor the state
received $10,563.09 from the rental of the salines and in its
capacity of land speculator, $5,659.86 from the sale of Van-
dalia lots.
The importance in the state finances of the method of taxing
nonresidents is self-evident. The enabling act had prohibited
the state from taxing nonresidents at a higher rate than resi-
dents, from taxing land within five years from the time of pat-
enting, or taxing the bounty lands remaining with the patentees
for three years after the date of the patent. The state's
dealings with nonresident landholders under these provisions
are interesting. The first revenue act of 1819, while prescrib-
ing a triple tax on landholders who did not schedule their lands
and bank stock before a certain day, left nonresidents too short
a time to comply and caused them to believe the state was
14 Greene and Alvord, Governors' Letter-Books, 1818-1834, p. 132.
TEN YEARS OF STATE FINANCE 63
swindling them out of their lands. The second general assem-
bly allowed those subject to triple tax till January i, 1822, to
redeem for a single tax plus interest and provided for the adver-
tising in the eastern cities of lands on which taxes were unpaid.
The auditor even under the circumstances thought it unwise
actually to force a sale and contented himself with an advertise-
ment as a threat to secure payment of delinquent taxes. The
act of 1825 gave nonresidents till January i, 1826, to redeem
for a single tax and interest all lands stricken off to the state
under the act of 1819 and 1823; it further allowed a period
of two years in the future during which land could be redeemed
for one hundred per cent penalty. The legislature of 1826 pro-
vided that sales for taxes of lands owned by nonresidents
thenceforth be held once a year instead of biennially. A further
provision designed to prevent nonresidents from taking advan-
tage of their virtual monopoly of state paper by allowing resi-
dents only to pay in specie and at the prevailing premium was
dropped at the suggestion of the council of revision. 15
The nonresidents, however, were not without their revenge
for the treatment which the laws clumsily accorded them. Time
and again, as nearly as one can judge, they forced the state to
terms by refusing to pay the excessive penalties laid for failure
to pay taxes. It was believed also that the nonresident tax-
payers in the east had bought up the notes of the state banks
at a discount to use them at par in paying their taxes. Thus they
deprived the people of the use of the notes as a medium of
exchange and taxed them the amount of the depreciation.
Edwards claimed for himself at least part of the credit for the
attempt to obviate this situation by forcing annual sales of
nonresidents' lands. 16
Administratively the state's first revenue law was as bad as
it well could be and it was only gradually that the defects in it
were remedied. It was questionable if, in dividing lands into
three classes and setting an arbitrary value on each, the law of
15 Laws of 1825, p. 106.
16 About 6,000 tracts were sold in 1827, most of them for the whole tract.
Few were stricken off to the state. Illinois Intelligencer, January 27, 1827.
64 THE FRONTIER STATE
1819 did not violate the constitutional provision that all prop-
erty be taxed according to value. Taxation was made on the
basis of lists turned in by the taxpayers, resident and nonresi-
dent. Furthermore, while the auditor was authorized to obtain
from land offices abstracts of lands entered, it must have been
impossible for county assessors to know surely whether land
was listed or entered; and the auditor had no check as to the
amount of tax he was entitled to receive from the sheriff. The
auditor gave as a reason for not selling lands for taxes in 1822
that the validity of both the tax law and the law allowing state
sales for nonpayment of taxes was seriously questioned. The
auditor's report of that year is important because of its sugges-
tion that local taxation records be based on lists sent to the
counties by the auditor showing lands entered in the county
according to the United States land office records. A further
suggestion that the auditor be allowed to fix the necessary tax
rate was premature.
The most important part of the local machinery of taxation
perhaps is the dividing by whatever method of state from county
revenues. The act of 1819 retained for the state the tax on
bank stock, on nonresidents' land, and two-thirds the tax on
residents' land, giving the county the tax of one-half per cent
on slaves and servants and permitting it to levy an additional
tax of one-half per cent on personal property. The act of 1821,
when the state revenue seemed likely to be superabundant,
assigned the county two-thirds of the residents' land tax. In
1827 in answer to an urgent need of more county revenue the
county was allowed all the land tax paid by its residents. The
counties in the Military Tract were dealt with in a somewhat
different fashion. A subsidy of $750 was granted to Pike
county in 1821. In 1823 this grant was continued and Fulton
county received $450. In 1827 this was altered to a gift of
$275 to each Military Tract county, in return for which the
state took all the land tax. 17
17 The grand jury of Madison county represented the county revenue as
inadequate. Ed<wardsville Spectator, September 27, 1823.
TEN YEARS OF STATE FINANCE 65
By virtue of the enabling act the state came into possession
of the salines including the reservations made to supply fire-
wood for salt boiling. The state thus had the regulation of a
large landed estate that normally would have furnished no
inconsiderable portion of the revenue. In 1823 Thomas
Mather estimated the income from the saline as one-seventh
of the state revenue. The state, however, was to learn by
experience the difficulty of making this estate productive. 18
The difficulty was the securing of punctual payments of rent
from the persons to whom the saline was leased. At the state's
admission the saline, of course, was in the hands of private
lessees holding under leases from the United States govern-
ment. They asked for a renewal of their leases and offered
$8,000 a year if they were permitted to sell salt at $1.25 a
bushel and $10,000 if they could sell at $1.50. The legislature
at its first session rejected both propositions. At the second
session the legislature leased the saline to the former lessees,
probably on the basis of salt at seventy-five cents a bushel and
a rent payable in salt. In the carrying out of the leases there
was continual difficulty. The lessees refused to pay over to the
state the salt due on the unexpired portion of the 1818 rent;
and by March, 1820, some were still delinquent. 19
The assembly of 1821 created the office of superintendent
of the saline and charged it with the duty of taking possession
of establishments which had forfeited their leases. In practice,
however, it proved difficult to make the agent answerable to the
auditor; and in 1823 the assembly had to pass an act requiring
reports of leases not yet entered to the auditor and accounts
regularly kept with him.
As a matter of practice the state found it impossible to col-
lect from the lessees of the saline the rents which they had
agreed to pay; and the legislature of 1823 began the practice
of condoning the nonpayment of them by releasing the securities
of one of the lessees from liability for a balance of $1,511.11
18 House Journal, 1822-1823, i session, 157.
19 Greene and Alvord, Governors' Letter-Books, 1818-1834, p. 16, 19, 23,
26, 27.
66 THE FRONTIER STATE
due the state. In great measure the loss was probably due to
the fact that the salt spring gave too weak a solution to furnish
a commercial product that could compete in price with Kanawha
salt. Much of the legislation of relief was directed to the pur-
pose of encouraging the lessees to search for springs of a
greater strength. Thus in 1823 it offered to those lessees who
had paid up their rent an extension of their leases for ten years
in case they found salt water stronger by a third than that pre-
viously used. In 1825 certain of the Shawneetown lessees were
excused from paying the state arrears of rent in case they
expended them in searching for stronger salt water. In 1822
the Illinois Gazette had announced that the discovery of a
new salt spring had cut the price of salt to fifty cents a bushel. 20
Governor Coles, who during his term had taken much interest
in the problem of the saline and had inquired particularly into
the practice of older states in managing theirs, in his farewell
message advocated that a tax per manufactured bushel be sub-
stituted for the fixed rents, which indeed had been calculated
upon the basis of a much higher price for salt than could be
obtained in the face of the competition from Kanawha and
imported salt. The inferior quality of the salt rendered it unfit
for salting provisions for the southern market, which was the
most important commercial use for it The legislature in 1827
passed an act leasing the saline until 1836 to two lessees at a
price proportioned to the strength of the water they should find.
The surplus land attached to the saline and to the Vermilion
saline was sold under the authority of successive acts of the
federal government.
The state of Illinois started on its career with an endowment
for schools from which much more might have been expected
than actually was obtained. The state received section sixteen
in each township for the benefit of its schools, two townships of
thirty-six sections each for a seminary, and three per cent on net
proceeds from the sale of lands in the state. Of this amount
one-sixth was for a college or university.
20 Illinois Gazette, February n, 1822.
TEN YEARS OF STATE FINANCE 67
Legislation on the subject of the school land was at first
limited to a provision authorizing local renting of it for the
benefit of schools and preventing waste on it. 21 The school act
of 1825 was more general in scope and was really an able
attempt to establish at any cost a good system of primary
education at public expense. The act made provision for the
creation by local initiative of school districts containing not less
than fifteen families which might levy taxes on themselves for
the support of schools, provided they did not exceed one-
half per cent or ten dollars a person. It provided also in the
interest of the district schools for the regulation of the share of
school land pertaining to each district and for state aid to the
amount of the state's school fund and of a fiftieth of its revenue
in addition. The law, which was defended because it taxed
rich and poor alike for schools, was attacked as a " Yankee
device " and was repealed by the next general assembly, which
left the payment of the tax purely optional with the payer; it
retained, however, the provision for the apportionment of the
section sixteen lands among the school districts interested in
them. In 1829 an act, passed subject to the assent of congress,
allowed the sale of school lands at a minimum of a dollar and
twenty-five cents an acre and the investment of the proceeds
in mortgages. The same legislature passed an act for the sale
of the seminary lands.
Meanwhile there had already begun the process by which
the school fund of the state arising from the three per cent of
the sales of public lands was diverted to other uses. The act
of 1821 had required the treasurer to pay into the state bank
the payments made by the federal government for the fund.
These payments as being made in good funds were made the
basis for the issue of bank notes to double their amount payable
on demand in specie. The legislature of 1825 in spite of its
excellent school law was guilty of directing the use of the school
fund to redeem state bank notes, auditor's receipts payable in
legal United States currency being placed in the fund. In 1829
21 Laics of iSiff, p. 107, 260 ; Laws of 1821, p. 60.
68 THE FRONTIER STATE
the fund was invaded not for an emergency but to supply the
ordinary expenses of the government. The governor was
authorized to borrow all the specie in it and in the seminary
fund at six per cent interest and to use it in paying warrants
drawn at their specie value. The fact that this was the device
used to get the state warrants back on a specie basis cannot
excuse the act.
Considered as a whole, the administration of the state's
finances during the first decade of statehood cannot be com-
mended. The state in 1 8 1 8 had found it necessary to authorize
a loan of $25,000 to pay the territorial debt and to meet the
expenses of the first year of statehood. In 1820 Bond had
been able to report that the territorial debt had been extin-
guished and that the treasury was in a flourishing condition. In
1823 the auditor's report showed receipts of $79,946.83
against warrants of $46,285.72 leaving a net balance of about
$33,661.11. The items comprised are of interest. The gen-
eral assembly cost $14,966.18, the judiciary, $7,932.33. Sala-
ries of state officials amounted to $8,470.74 and the printing
of the laws and journals cost $2,976.22. The device intro-
duced by the legislature of 1825 of issuing warrants at three
for one soon changed the aspect of the finances of the state.
The auditor's report for 1826 showed a total fund of $132,000
to meet warrants amounting to $154,000; but as $29,000 of
these were in the school fund, representing sums extracted from
it for state expenses, the state was practically solvent It had
due from nonresidents $26,000 in taxes and from the saline
lessees $24,000, which on account of the exemption from rent
of the lessees in return for boring for salt water could not be
collected. 22
In short, the history of the first ten years of Illinois finance,
public and private, is the story of the struggle of men with con-
ditions which they did not understand and which they had not
the courage to meet, even according to the intellectual light that
they possessed. In the beginning they had sought to establish
22 Senate Journal, 1818, i session, 7.
TEN YEARS OF STATE FINANCE 69
banks, public and private, in order to remedy by abundant
issues of notes the dearth of money in the country or to relieve
the financial distress of hard-pressed individuals. In the case
of one bank, good management made it efficient and safe ; in the
case of the other bad management led to complete failure. The
state bank, begun as a measure of relief, threw the expense of
the relief that it afforded to individuals upon the people of the
state at large. Because the legislatures did not have the cour-
age to pay for liquidating it, they diverted to this end the trust
fund of the schools and borrowed of the future by warrants
issued at triple the value of the service for which they paid. In
part the obliquity exhibited in Illinois finance may be attributed
to the fact that so little of the state's revenue was actually
drawn from its citizens. The state wisely parted with its poten-
tial revenue as owner of the saline in order to reduce if possible
the price of salt; but it relied for years on possible speculative
returns from Vandalia lots and developed its system of taxation
with an eye to the fact that much of it was paid by nonresidents.
Among the evils of absentee landlordism in Illinois was the fact
that the state was slow to attain the sense of sobriety and
responsibility arising in a state of things in which the voter
realizes that his demands on his government in the way of
service must be reimbursed by him in his capacity of taxpayer.
IV. THE CONVENTION STRUGGLE
THE union into which Illinois entered on the third of
December, 1818, was a union already at the verge of
sectional strife on the issue of slavery. The session of congress
in which the first Illinois representatives took their seats saw
the beginning of the struggle as to whether Missouri was to be
slave or free; and the last aftermath of that struggle was not
gleaned till in the summer of 1824 the people of Illinois finally
registered their resolution that their constitution should not be
altered to admit slavery. For the first six years of Illinois'
[ existence as a state, the question of slavery hung like a threaten-
ing storm over her politics.
Distrust of the effectiveness of the more or less ambiguous
antislavery clause in her constitution led the opponents of
slavery in congress to cloud the title of Illinois to statehood.
John McLean, the first representative from Illinois, appeared
in the house Tuesday, November 19, after the session had
begun. The house decided, however, that he should not be
admitted till it was satisfied that the constitution of Illinois
corresponded to the enabling act. When the resolution for ad-
mission came up for third reading four days later, opposition,
hitherto in the interest of orderly procedure, was now directed
against the constitutional provisions allowing indentured
< service and limited slavery. James Tallmadge of New York,
; later famous for his part in the Missouri struggle, declared
that in these provisions the Illinois constitution contravened the
Ordinance of 1787. Richard C. Anderson of Kentucky replied
that the ordinance was not a compact either with Virginia or
with the people of the territory, and that Virginia by her deed
of cession had protected the right of the French inhabitants
to their slaves. William Henry Harrison of Ohio defiantly
70
THE CONVENTION STRUGGLE 71
assured Tallmadge that the people of Ohio would never come
to congress or to New York for permission in case they desired
to repeal their constitutional prohibition of slavery. Finally,
only thirty-four representatives in a house of one hundred and
fifty-one followed Tallmadge in voting against the admission
of the new state ; and Illinois took its place in the union.
The validity of the northwest ordinance again came into
discussion during the Missouri debate which followed hard on
that over the admission of Illinois. If the slavery restriction
in that ordinance were a valid limitation on the states that had
grown up under it, these latter could hardly be considered on
an equality in all respects with the older states, which could
lawfully admit or exclude slavery. The supporters of the
slavery restriction pointed to the ordinance as a proof that the
new states need not necessarily be on a complete equality with
the old; the supporters of the Missouri constitution naturally
argued that in view of the federal constitution's guarantee of
equality, the ordinance could not prohibit slavery to the states
that had been under it. The representatives from the north-
west, among them Daniel Pope Cook of Illinois who had suc-
ceeded McLean, generally maintained the validity and the
sacredness of the ordinance. "This ordinance," said Benja-
min Ruggles of Ohio, " has been to the people of the North-
western territory a rule of action a guide to direct their
course ' a cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night.' " l On
the other hand representatives from the south argued that in
spite of the ordinance the people of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois
might alter their governments as they saw fit. John S. Bar-
bour of Virginia was inclined to argue that the Virginia cession
required that the new states must be as sovereign as the old.
In view of such doctrine the slavery leaders in Illinois may
well have wondered if the decision of 1818 need be regarded
as final.
The votes of the Illinois delegation in congress were not
1 Annals of Congress, 16 congress, i session, 281; see also ibid., 15 congress,
2 session, 1170 if., 1411 ff.
72 THE FRONTIER STATE
calculated to inspire in the foes of slavery a conviction that the
new state would make an unflinching resistance to the intro-
duction of that institution. The two Illinois senators. Ninian
- ~~** ---
Edwards and Jesse B. Thomag, consistently supported the
~Cause uf Missuurir Their votes in no instance would have
altered the result; but McLean, voting in the house on one
crucial roll call with the majority of one, may possibly have
turned the tide. 2 Daniel Pe.-Cook^ .who
in the session of 1819-1820, voted against the Missouri Com-
promise; but he was not above countenancing the use of the
popularity Edwards had gained in Missouri to endeavor to
secure the election of his brother John Cook as senator from
that state.
It was on the Missouri question, however, that Cook beat
McLean in the Illinois congressional election of 1819.
McLean defended his vote on the ground that the attempted
dictation to Missouri of an antislavery proviso was a violation
of state sovereignty. He attempted to evade Cook's assaults
by accusing the latter of being really proslavery and of con-
cealing his belief as a matter of policy. Cook's friends insisted
that he had always been the unflinching foe of slavery. They
accused McLean of having made in the former canvass anti-
slavery pledges which he had violated. Worse still they alleged
he was the tool of John Scott, the Missouri territorial delegate;
Missouri when admitted a slave state as McLean wished would
give the slave states control of the senate. " McLean," said
one writer, "will vote us under the feet of slaves." 3 Cook's
supporters in their publications usually assumed that the people
of Illinois were generally opposed to slavery three- fourths
of them according to one writer and that her representatives
had misrepresented and disgraced her.
The congressional election of 1820 indicated in its course
the possible relation between the triumph of slavery in Missouri
and its adoption in Illinois. Early in July the Edwardsville
z Annals of Congress, 15 congress, 2 session, 1273.
3 Edivardsville Spectator, June 19, 1819; Illinois Intelligencer, June 30,
July 14, 1819.
THE CONVENTION STRUGGLE 73
Spectator, edited in Edwards' interest by Hooper Warren, 1
charged Kane who was Cook's opponent with a share in a
deliberate plot to amend the constitution to introduce slavery.
Kane was to be put forward for congress to test the strength
of the party; control of the Illinois Gazette and of the Illinois
Intelligencer was to be secured; and a third proslavery press
was to be established at Edwardsville. Cook's friends took up
the cry, recalling that in the midst of the Missouri debate
Missouri slaveholders had talked of setting up at Edwardsville
a press to advocate the extension of slavery in Illinois in order
to keep the people of Illinois busy at home. Denials appeared
speedily from Kane and from the various persons accused in the
plot. Kane insisted that Edwards was responsible for the attack
on him and that it was made to aid Cook's cause. With some
pertinence he adverted to Edwards' twenty-two slaves and to
the fact that Edwards had voted on the same side with McLean,
who had been defeated the year before. Edwards retorted
with a denial. 4 If the plot actually existed, however, the defeat
of Kane in the election shortly afterward checked it for the
time being.
That same year saw an open proposal for amending the
constitution to admit slavery, which emanated from a new
quarter and from a man who strangely enough has frequently
been set down as an anti-convention man, Henry Eddy. In
offering himself as a candidate for the legislature in 1820, he
addressed the voters of Gallatin county as follows: "With
regard to the Saline, then, I am clear for extending to it, for
another term of years, the privilege which it now enjoys of
hiring and indenturing servants for the purpose of working
the same. And being of this opinion, I am, of course, in favour
of a convention, for that object can only be effected through
the means of another convention, our present constitution
having limited the time during which that privilege may be
4 Edwardsville Spectator, July 4, n, 25, August i, 1820; Illinois Gazette,
August 5, 1820. Much of the material for the remainder of the chapter is found
in contemporary numbers of the Illinois Intelligencer and Edwardsville Spec-
tator,
74 THE FRONTIER STATE
claimed to the year i825." 5 He alleged as reasons for
speedy action the fact that the salines in the neighborhood
kept money in circulation, and business good, and the time
when western Illinois was still dependent on Illinois salt
was, he thought, the favorable moment to strike. The
economic interest of eastern Illinois in the call of a conven-
tion is obvious. Eddy was elected and duly introduced into
the Illinois general assembly resolutions corresponding to his
proposal.
Widespread financial distress in Illinois in the years im-
mediately following 1820 insured a favorable hearing to advo-
cates of a fundamental change in the economic order. The act
of 1820 abolishing credit sales and lowering the price of public
lands to a dollar and a quarter necessarily caused financial
embarrassment and reduced the value of lands in private
hands. 6 It was a period of hard times which in 1821 prompted
the establishment of a state bank distinctly as an institution to
afford relief. It was not surprising that many should have
listened to the assertions of the slavery party that the admission
of the institution would bring in planters with ready money who
would spend it freely and who would especially use it in buying
up at good prices the farms of those anxious to leave the state.
Many a man naturally opposed to slavery may well have
wished for the institution that he might sell his property and flee
from the wrath to come.
/ The canvass for governor in 1822 turned frankly on the
question of slavery. Joseph B. Phillips, who announced his
candidacy February 20, 1821, was soon accused by letters in
the Spectator of designing to introduce limited slavery and thus
pave the way for a complete extension of the institution to the
state. At first Phillips' friends denied the charge; but July 3
the Intelligencer published a letter which admitted Phillips'
proslavery_leanings, assured the proslavery forces in the~state
that they had a majority, and called on them to rally for the
5 Illinois Gazette, July 8, 1820.
* Ibid., July 31, 1824.
THE CONVENTION STRUGGLE 75
cause and no longer to be withheld by mere sentiment from pur-
suing the true interests of the state. 7
Curiously enough such announcements did not seem to
cause excitement The Intelligencer began publishing a series
of scriptural parodies which touched on Phillips' alleged con-
version from slavery advocacy on a former occasion for the
sake of a seat in the supreme court. The Spectator contented
itself with pronouncing the scheme chimerical and with warning
the voters to beware of the many wealthy men who wished to
own slaves and to use care in selecting their representatives.
Instead of pressing the proslavery charge against Phillips it
printed letters depicting the evil results of the activity of judges
in politics and accusing Phillips of blasphemy, irreligion, and
gambling. 8
Edward Coles who announced his candidacy October 30,
182!, might have been expected to find greater favor in the
sight of an antislavery man like Hooper Warren. Coles was
a Virginian of the planter class who had served as private
secretary to Madison and who had been sent on a special
mission to Russia. By inheritance a slave owner, he had emi-
grated to Illinois that he might free his Negroes and establish
them on land of their own in a free state. It is significant of a
certain feeling for the dramatic in the man that he reserved
the announcement of their freedom to his slaves to a beautiful
morning in April as his boats were gliding down the Ohio
below Pittsburg. Principle was the food on which his soul
was nourished; in their cooler moments even his bitter enemies
were compelled to admit his untarnished integrity. Withal
there was about him a certain stiffness, a certain consciousness
of his own virtue, possibly a tendency to pose. For some
reason his personality seemed to grate on Hooper Warren,
who consistently assailed him in the Spectator with a studied
malice that was so obvious as to defeat its own end. He made
clumsy mockery of Coles' somewhat awkward attempts to
7 Edtvardsville Spectator, April 10, 1821; Illinois Intelligencer, July 3, 1821.
8 Ed<wards<ville Spectator, May 22, November 6, 27, 1821; Illinois Intelli-
gencer, July 31, 1821.
76 THE FRONTIER STATE
mingle familiarly with men. On the ground that Coles was
register of the Edwardsville land office, Warren represented
him as a federal appointee from without the state. He even
juestioned the sincerity of Coles' opposition to a convention
md tried to fix on him the stigma of holding slaves in
[issouri. 9
The Edwards faction, unable to agree on a candidate of its
'own for governor, was apparently hostile not only to its old
enemy, Phillips, but also to Coles and to a third candidate,
James B. Moore. In the case of Coles at least the hostility was
natural as Coles was a supporter of Edwards' enemy, Secretary
William H. Crawford. Pope and other members of the faction
endeavored to persuade Edwards to run ; when he refused they
considered John Reynolds. Finally Pope, having come to a
decision in favor of some candidate, tried, much to Edwards'
displeasure, to bind the party to his choice. Probably this
candidate was Thomas C. Browne of the supreme court, who
had been quietly making ready for some time but who
announced his candidacy only at the end of the campaign. He
did not gain the full support of the Edwards party, Edwards
flatly refusing to take any part in the contest. 10
4 Coles was elected by a narrow margin. He received 2,854
tes^tcnZj'S^yTor ?hillips, 2,443 f r Browne, and 622 for
oore. Certainly the Edwards faction had not efficiently
' exerted itself for any candidate; and while there is little evi-
dence in regard to the activity of their opponents it seems
unlikely that the selection turned in any decisive fashion on
factional alignments. Apparently the personality and opinions
of the candidates played a controlling part.
Coles, evidently concluding that the bold course was the
safe one, determined to force the fighting on the slavery issue.
In his message to the assembly in December he pointed out
the fact that slavery, contrary to the spirit of the northwest
9 Edtoardsvllle Spectator, April 9, 1822.
10 Washburne, Edwards Papers, 190-192. This is a draft letter of Edwards
which Washburne surmised was written to Governor Bond. Internal evidence
shows without doubt it was to Pope.
[From original owned by Chicago Historical Society]
77]
ordinance, existed in the state and concluded that the provision
of the act of cession protecting the French inhabitants could be
regarded as having expired after the passage of forty years;
he suggested the abolition of the institution, the repeal of the
black code, and the passage of effectual laws against the kid-
napping of free blacks. A majority of the senate committee
to which the antislavery recommendations of the governor
were referred Risdon Moore and John Emmet submitted
a favorable report. The minority member, Conrad Will, dis-
sented. The house committee returned an unfavorable report.
Both these dissenting reports declared the abolition of the
slavery existing in the state to be beyond the power of the
legislature. The senate report argued that the convention of
1 8 1 8 had been hampered by the provisions of the Ordinance of
1787 but that as a sovereign state Illinois could deal with the
whole question in a new constitutional convention. This, the
senate report concluded with clumsy irony, was the only way
of settling the question that the governor had at heart.
The slavery advocates now openly set about submitting the
question of a convention to popular vote. The senate off
but little opposition. There, on February 10, 1823, the resolu-
tion passed twelve to six. The canal bill was before the senate
at the same time with the resolution for a convention, indeed
it was passed with a negative vote of only three immediately
after the passage of the convention resolution. In both houses
the pro-convention group captured some votes by threatening
the canal bill with destruction unless the convention resolution
went through. They brought into play every form of petty
politics. Sometimes they brought pressure on individual mem-
bers by introducing bills that would if passed irritate their
constituents. Sometimes they resorted to bargains on the
location of county seats and the creation of new counties.
Sometimes they drummed up among a recalcitrant member's
constituents instructions in favor of a convention.
In the house the convention party tried ftfrgst vote on \
January 27 and found twenty-two affirmative and fourteen /
78 THE FRONTIER STATE
negative votes, the latter including William McFatridge and
Thomas Rattan who finally voted for the convention. It was
evident that the vote would be a close one, and on January 29
a resolution formerly presented by A. P. Field to the effect
that the two-thirds vote requisite to pass the resolution was a
two-thirds vote of both houses sitting together was reconsid-
ered and passed. This device, however, can have been in-
tended to serve only as a last resort
The pro-convention leaders were suspicious, with good
/reason as it proved, of the loyalty of some who had hitherto
/voted with them, notably of Nicholas Hansen, the member
s from the Military Tract. Hansen they apparently hoped to
keep in line, however, by threatening him with bills which
would injure his district and through the fact that his name
was on the list of commissioners in the canal bill. When the
vote in the house of representatives was taken February 1 1
on the senate resolution for a convention, Hansen deserted;
and the vote stood twenty-three to thirteen. Dumbfounded
apparently by the reverse, the convention party moved to recon-
sider; but a vote of nineteen to sixteen sustained the chair in
the obvious decision that on a vote lost for want of two-thirds,
the motion to reconsider must come from a member of the
minority. James Turney moved that the senate be requested
to state the number voting for and against the resolution in
that house, obviously an attempt to enforce the interpretation
that two-thirds of both houses together would suffice. The
legislature adjourned in confusion. That night a mob of legis-
lators headed by a justice of the supreme court, furious at their
defeat, groaned under the window of one of the anti-conven-
tion leaders, George Churchill, and burned Hansen in effigy. 11
The convention leaders probably decided over night on the
means to retrieve their defeat the unseating of Hansen. At
the beginning of the session Hansen's seat had been contested
by John Shaw. Elections in Shaw's " Kingdom of Pike " were
strange matters; in this particular one a dispute about the
11 Edivardsville Spectator, February 15, March 29, 1823.
THE CONVENTION STRUGGLE 79
judges of election in one precinct had resulted in eighty-three
votes for Shaw in a polling place set up by the electors and of
twelve votes for Hansen in another one presided over by the
regular judges of election. The returns for Shaw were thrown
out; he filed notice of a contest but at Hansen's request he let
it be held over for a few days and did not file it again until the
legal time for filing had expired. The house committee on
elections seated Hansen, very possibly because he was a bitter
enemy of Edwards and could therefore be trusted to vote for
Thomas for senator. Certainly inasmuch as they threw out
Shaw's contest on the ground that it had been filed too late;
and, since the delay occurred at Hansen's request and for his
benefit, the equity of their procedure is not very clear. The
seating of Hansen, however, as compared with his unseating
on February 12 was the quintessence of justice and orderly
procedure. 12
On the twelfth of February, a day by a curious coincidence
commemorative of a greater struggle with slavery, the general
assembly convened for as strange a day's work as ever was done
by an Anglo-Saxon parliament. The house by a division of
twenty-one to thirteen ordered a reconsideration of the report,
accepted two months before, that Hansen was entitled to a
seat; it considered certain documents laid before it, notably an
affidavit that to the affiants' belief a majority of the votes were
cast for Shaw; and the conventionist members offered what
reasons they could for the course they were about to take. By
a vote of twenty-oneVo fourteen the name of Shaw was substi-
tuted for that of Hansen in the report. Shaw now took his
seat, and Turney moved to reconsider an appeal from the
decision of the chair on a motion for a reconsideration of the
convention resolution. The decision was reversed, the recon-
sideration ordered; and the resolution for the conventioi
passed twenty-four to twelve. It only remained to chastise
12 Stevens, " The Shaw-Hansen Election Contest," in Illinois State Historical
Society, Journal, 7:389 ff. ; Edwardsville Spectator, February 15, March 9, 1823.
I believe the evidence to the effect that Hansen was originally seated to gain
his vote for Thomas is better than Mr. Stevens judges it.
80 THE FRONTIER STATE
Hansen; and his name, on Field's motion, was stricken out of
the list of canal commissioners. 13
Conventionists and anti-conventionists began immediately
to organize for the eighteen months campaign before the people
on the acceptance or rejection of the proposed call for a con-
vention. The advocates of a convention held a meeting at
Vandalia February 15 and appointed a committee to prepare
an address and resolutions which defended the call of a conven-
tion on various grounds not connected with the slavery issue.
On February 18, fifteen of the eighteen members of the
I assembly who voted against the convention held a meeting and
1 adopted an address arraigning the methods of the majority
I and exposing their design of introducing slavery. The persons
J present agreed to subscribe each for a given number of copies
of the Spectator provided Warren's loyalty to the cause were
assured. 14
i
The opponents of a convention pushed the work of local
organization. On March 22 the "St. Clair Society for the
prevention of slavery in the state of Illinois" was organized
for the purpose of " disseminating light and knowledge on the
subject of slavery, by cool and dispassionate reasoning, by
circulating pamphlets, handbills, and other publications." A
similar society was formed May 9 in Monroe possibly with
but a small membership. In the next month an organization
similar to that of St. Clair was formed in Edwardsville, though
it did not specify the nature of the propaganda to be under-
taken. On the fourth of July citizens of Morgan established
a more elaborate organization apparently designed to support
antislavery candidates for office. 15
As the day of the election approached, the opponents of
slavery held caucuses or conventions to nominate anti-conven-
13 That Coles, as Hooper Warren insinuated, had bought Hansen over by a
promise of the recordership of Fulton county is unlikely. The bargain could not
possibly have been consummated after the consideration had been earned. Ed-
ivardsville Spectator, February 15, 1823.
14 Ibid., March i, 1823.
15 Ibid., April 12, July 12, September 20, 1823; Illinois Intelligencer, July
26, 1823.
THE CONVENTION STRUGGLE 81
tion candidates. They drew the issue even in contests for
local offices ; and naturally in legislative elections they concerted
measures to prevent divisions of the anti-conventionist forces
and a possible recurrence of the events of 1823. In St. Clair
county a convention made up of delegates elected in each
township was called to nominate county and legislative candi-
dates. A similar call was issued in Bond, Fayette, and
Montgomery for the choice of a candidate for senator. All
this the convention party denounced as caucus methods.
From the sources of information available the convention-
ists appear to have been slower in organizing than their
opponents. In August a meeting in Madison county recom-
mended the appointment of township committees to promote
the cause of the convention; in October, 1823, and March,
1824, township party organization was adopted in White and
Wayne counties. The anti-conventionists averred that on
December 3, 1823, a convention meeting at Vandalia adopted
a state organization consisting of a central committee of ten,
and committees of five in each county, and of three in each,
township. 16
The conventionists complained of the influence of the clergy
which was generally thrown on the antislavery side. The
Christian church conference located on the Wabash and a
Baptist sect, the Friends of Humanity, both denounced slavery
as a sin. The Methodist circuit riders and preachers assailed
slavery and slaveholders to the point of provoking bitter
retorts. Conventionists accused them of denouncing slavery
in Illinois and stopping at the houses of slaveholders in Mis-
souri and pronounced their real dislike of a convention due to
the fear that it might exclude them from the legislature. The
Illinois Republican was so prolific in abuse of this sort that
Warren took occasion to brand it as hostile to the Methodists
as a body. He believed further, he said, that the clergy of all
denominations were zealous in opposition to the convention.
18 Edwardsvillt Spectator, January 27, February 17, April 13, 1824; Illinois
Intelligencer, November i, December 6, 1823 ; Illinois Gazette, April 10, 1824.
82 THE FRONTIER STATE
Illinois tradition affirms that John Mason Peck labored assidu-
ously against a convention though no contemporary evidence
of his activity appears. 17
In newspaper publicity the resources of the two parties
were more evenly divided. For Henry Eddy's Illinois Gazette
the politic course was proslavery, and while the paper admitted
articles on both sides its guarded expressions of sympathy were
for the convention. Coles at the beginning of the struggle
suggested that Morris Birkbeck and Richard Flower establish
an anti-convention newspaper for eastern Illinois at Albion,
but the suggestion was never carried out Coles had hopes
of the support of the Kaskaskia Republican Advocate till April
of 1823; but finally under the editorship of R. K. Fleming it
supported the convention, as did the Illinois Republican at
Edwardsville. 18
The editors of the Illinois Intelligencer, William H. Brown
and William Berry, disagreed on the issue involved in the con-
vention struggle. In order to force out the anti-conventionist
Brown, the assembly before adjournment voted the public
printing to Berry and Robert Blackwell. Under the new pub-
lishers the newspaper at once took up the cause of the
convention. A year later, however, with its purchase by Coles
and a coterie of anti-conventionists, David Blackwell replaced
his brother as editor; and the Intelligencer became an open
opponent of slavery. 19 The Edwardsville Spectator at the
beginning of the struggle pursued an anomalous course. Its
strictures on the Shaw-Hansen scandal were those rather of
an enemy of Edward Coles and Nicholas Hansen than of an
opponent of the convention. T. W. Smith hoped for a time
to win Warren over; but the anti-convention forces by promises
of financial support assured the newspaper's loyalty to the side
of freedom.
Coles further sought support from outside the state. His
17 Ediuardsville Spectator, May 24, August 2, November i, 22, 1823 ; Illinois
Intelligencer, May 17, July 5, August 23, 1823, May 17, 1824.
18 Washburne, Edward Coles, 178.
id., 167.
THE CONVENTION STRUGGLE 83
friendship with Nicholas Biddle introduced him to certain
Philadelphia Quakers who supplied him with antislavery tracts
for distribution by the thousand. These were forwarded to
St. Louis merchants along with their goods and were thence
forwarded to Coles. Their source apparently was never
learned by the conventionists. Had it been there would doubt-
less have arisen a tremendous outcry against the interference
of citizens of other states in the affairs of Illinois. 20
The conventionists entered the controversy with their
opponents under one serious handicap. They apparently
judged it unwise to take an irrevocable position that the con-
vention was designed to introduce slavery; yet they did not
positively deny that some alteration in that direction was
intended. There was an undercurrent of slavery sentiment
noticeable in all their manifestoes. At the beginning, however,
they emphasized the anti-conventionist opposition to submitting
the question of a convention to the people, representing it as ;
denial of the popular right to alter and remodel the governmen
at will. The anti-conventionists, they said, were unwilling tc
trust the people; they were contemners of instructions from
their constituents; they were even federalists. On the other
hand the anti-convention party argued that the convention
which would be called would not carry out the will of the
people. They pointed to the fact that under the existing
system of representation, eight northern counties would have
eight members in a convention and nine southern and eastern
ones, with substantially the same number of voters, fifteen.
Once the southern counties on indifferent grounds had secured
a convention, their delegates in it could decide as they would
the question of slavery and freedom. 21
Meanwhile the conventionists were all things to all men.
"They avow the object to be," said one writer, "to amendi
the particular defect which you may imagine the constitution/
to have. Thus if you should be in favor of removing the seat
20 Washburne, Edward Coles, 154-164.
21 Illinois Intelligencer, March 8, 29, May 31, 1823; Edviardsville Spectator,
March i, April 12, 1823 ; Kaskaskia Republican, April 20, 1824.
84 THE FRONTIER STATE
of government to Alton or to Carmi, to Edwardsville or to
Palestine, Kaskaskia, Covington or [MS. torn] [be] assured
that his particular wish will be effected by having a convention.
If you have no other objection to the constitution but the county
commissioners court and the council of revision, then these are
the only alterations that will be made to it. If one is in favor
of altering the constitution and appointing the judges for a
term of years, he is assured that that is one of the principal
objects to be effected; if on the other hand another should be
opposed to it he will be assured there is no danger of such an
alteration being adopted. If one is opposed to the extension
of Slavery, he will be told that it is not contemplated, and that
if it were to be attempted, it could not be effected. If on the
other hand he should be in favor of making this a slave holding
state, he is assured that that is the great and chief object in
view." 22 Such were the types of argument employed. The
antislavery party answered them by pointing out for instance
that the constitutional provision regulating county commis-
sioners was so elastic that it said nothing of the duties or pay
of the commissioners, or by stating that Elias K. Kane of the
.convention party had himself been the sponsor for the council
of revision. 23
Where slavery, limited or unlimited, was the avowed
motive for the convention, the arguments varied. In the
-. neighborhood of the Gallatin saline, the Illinois Gazette printed
\ articles dwelling on the advantage to accrue from the renewal
I of the supply of indentured Negroes, which otherwise under
the existing constitution would be cut off in 1825. Starting
from the propositions that it was vain to expect a sufficient
supply of white labor to man the salt works, since not even
enough to supply the saline with agricultural produce was
forthcoming, and that the work in so warm a climate could be
I performed only by Negroes, they concluded that the welfare
of the saline was bound up in slave labor, and that the pros-
22 Edwards-wile Spectator, May 25, 1824.
23 Ibid., March 2, April 13, 1824.
THE CONVENTION STRUGGLE 85
parity of the whole district depended on the salines. Such
arguments were used to persuade the people of Gallatin that
slavery was an object well worth buying at the expense of
support to the canal, even though the latter would diminish the
importance of their county as the gateway to Illinois. 24
So far as the conventionists undertook to justify slavery in
the abstract they relied on the current method of reasoning of
the day what may be called the diffusion argument. Admit-
ting that the presence of slavery in America was a thing bitterly
to be deplored, they proposed so far as was possible to amelio-
rate the situation by extending as widely as possible the area
in which slaves were to be found. This would not only improve
the material condition of the slaves by enabling their masters
to keep them in a country where food was cheap but in the long
run would tend to bring about their emancipation. "Usually
the conventionists claimed that their intention was at most only
to introduce a limited slavery which in time would abolish itself.
Sometimes they suggested provisions by which a man might
hold a limited number of slaves for a term of years, the
offspring of the slaves to be free at a certain age. Lest the
state be overrun with free blacks, the freedmen were to be sent
to Africa by that fashionable slavery specific, the Colonization
Society. 25
For this policy advantages both moral and material were
claimed. Many slaveholders, it was said, who disapproved of
the institution would be glad to avail themselves of so excellent
a scheme. It would extend Christianity among the Negroes,
supply labor of a type adapted to clear the soil without suffering
the sickness that impaired the strength of the white settlers and
suited to the menial tasks of drawing water and making fires
in the salt works, which Adolphus Frederick Hubbard had
singled out as the duties prescribed to Negroes by the laws of
nature. In the background of the minds of advocates of this
34 Illinois Intelligencer, June 28, July 5, 1823; Illinois Gazette, July 5, 1823,
January 10, 1824.
25 Kaskaskia Republican, March 30, 1824; Illinois Gazette, October n, De-
cember 20, 1823, January 10, April 17, 1824; Illinois Intelligencer, November
22. 1823.
86 THE FRONTIER STATE
benevolent scheme was often the idea that the philanthropic
slaveholders who entered the state would buy lands and
improvements from the pioneers then in possession and would
with their wealth form a welcome addition to the upper classes
of the population. The complacent smugness of such argu-
ments which passed current in the Gazette particularly prompts
a savage desire to let a sentence which was written in all
seriousness stand as a caricature of them. After commenting
on the fact that the great men of the state were all slaveholders
the writer added: "Other strong inducements I have for the
introduction of slavery into this state are, that in the sickly
season, the sick could have more attention paid them the
community would flourish, our state would be more republican,
and more populous the condition of the slaves much amelio-
rated, and the several churches of Christ would be considerably
enlarged." 26
The antislavery writers in their range of arguments well-
nigh ran the gamut. There is hardly a line of argument used
by the abolitionists of later days but has its prototype in this
period. The question of the validity of the slavery prohibition
in the Ordinance of 1787 and of the guarantee in the Virginia
deed of cession was debated at length. 27 The pretense of
biblical authority for the institution was exposed by a keen
, analysis of the limited slavery of the Jewish law as revealed in
the books of Moses. Slavery in itself was denounced as a sin
and the parent of vices and sins; it was declared contrary to
the fundamental principle enunciated by the Declaration of
Independence that all men are created equal. Sketches descrip-
tive of the misery of the slave appeared set in language
appealing to the emotions as frankly as did Uncle Tom's
Cabin. Above all the antislavery pamphleteers insisted that
slavery was a moral issue and this more than a quarter century
before the Lincoln-Douglas debates. 28 The following passage
26 Illinois Intelligencer, April 26, 1823.
27 See above p. 47-50.
28 Edwardsvllle Spectator, July 12, August 16, 1823; Illinois Gazette, Novem-
ber 8, 1823.
THE CONVENTION STRUGGLE 87
is a startling analogy to a well-known memorandum of Lin-
coln's " Is it not quite as unjust, because some men are black,
to say there is a natural distinction as to them ; and that black
men, because they are black, ought to be slaves ... is it not
the hight [sic] of arrogance to allege that because we have
strong feelings and cultivated minds it would be great cru[el]ty
to make slaves of us; but that because they are yet ignorant and
uncultivated, it is no injury at all to them? Such a principle
once admitted lays the foundation of a tyranny and injuce[jfc]
that have no end." 29
On material grounds the opponents of slavery pointed out
the flaws in the diffusion argument. The history of mankind
and of the slave trade from Africa and from the old south was
cited to show that no matter how great the drain from it a
reservoir of population always filled again to its ancient level.
Slavery in Illinois it was said would only increase the demand
for slaves and provoke anew kidnapping and the slave trade.
Nay furthermore as the cool climate of Illinois unfitted it for
the slave crops but adapted it as a home for men, the state
would be degraded to a breeding ground of slaves for the
southern market!
To the man of today, however, the most powerfully con-
vincing arguments against slavery were those which warned
the free farmer of Illinois of the ruin that the introduction of
the institution would bring upon him. Here the slavery penmen
were face to face with overwhelming odds in the character of
the combatants who opposed them. Confronting them was
Morris Birkbeck, a man trained in the principles of human
liberty, intellectually the descendant of well-nigh six generations
of radicals who had labored for the people's freedom. The
conventionists who opposed the petty tricks of political election-
eering or addresses smacking of the college debating hall to
the writings of Birkbeck were holding up a lath sword against
the hammer of Thor. With a greater cause than Swift's to
inspire him the author of the earlier letters of "Jonathan '
29 Illinois Intelligencer, May 21, 1824.
88 THE FRONTIER STATE
Freeman " may claim a comparison not discreditable with " the
Drapier's" letters. Birkbeck, knowing how to make a phrase
of homely English do the work of a highly polished paragraph,
in his "Jonathan Freeman" letters strove in simple language
to inspire the small farmer who was dispirited by hard times
to renew his faith in his ability to subdue the land and possess
it without calling in slaveholders.
" I am a poor man, that is to say, I have no money but I
have a house to cover me and the rest of us, a stable for my
horses, and a little barn, on a quarter of good land, paid up at
the land office, with a middling fine clearing upon it. ... We
help our neighbors, who are generally as poor as ourselves;
some that are new-comers are not so well fixed. They help us
in turn, and as it is the fashion to be industrious, I discover that
we are all by degrees growing wealthy not in money, to be
sure, but in truck.
"There is a great stir among the landjobbers and politi-
cians to get slaves into the country, because, as they say,
we are in great distress; and I have been thinking pretty
much about how it would act with me and my neighbors. . . .
" I have lately seen people from Kentucky . . . are as bad
off for money as we some say worse. . . . As money seems
to be all we want, and they want it just as much as we do, I
don't see how those Slave Gentry are to make it plenty." He
believed that farmers wanting to sell out would not be able to
sell their improvements to slaveholders, for "they can get
Congress land at a dollar and a quarter an acre. It is men who
come from free states with money in their pockets, and no
work-hands about them, that buy improvements." 30 As for
the saline, white workmen would flock to it once the Negroes
were excluded. The scarcity of which the farmers complained
was not a scarcity of the essentials of a healthy robust life, but
merely a scarcity of the money to purchase luxuries. Instead
of repining because their produce brought little in the New
30 Edwards ille Spectator, November i, 1823. The slaveholder was an em-
ployer of Negro, not of white labor, and his money would be spent not in the
state but in the east for luxuries.
THE CONVENTION STRUGGLE 89
Orleans market, they should learn to produce at home the
articles of manufacture they required. In the wilderness they
enjoyed plenty and liberty, and with that they should be
content.
With equal effect Birkbeck pointed out the loss of social
solidarity that would result if the slaveholder came in. " The
planters are great men, and will ride about, mighty grand, with
their umbrellas over their heads, when I and my boys are
working, perhaps bare-headed, in the hot sun. Neighbors
indeed! they would have all their own way, and rule over us
like little kings: . . . but if we lacked to raise a building or
a dollar the d 1 a bit would they help us." 31 Freemen
came from slave states because " it is impossible for free men
to thrive by honest labor among slaveholders and slaves."
The planter would not tax himself for free schools; but the
farmer must suffer from the pilfering of negroes and ride
patrol all night while his women shared with the planter's wife
the dread of a slave insurrection. In a word Birkbeck suc-
ceeded in fitting the argument against slavery squarely to Illi-
nois conditions.
In the election the proslavery men were routed. The vote
was 4,972 for a convention and 6,640 against it. The con-
ventionists polled their majorities in the counties of the south.
Gallatin gave them 82 per cent, Pope, 69, Alexander, 60,
Jackson, 66, Hamilton, 67, Jefferson, 70, Franklin, 60. They
carried Wayne with 63 per cent of the votes, and Randolph
with 55 per cent. On the other hand they either lost or won
by insignificant margins in such counties as Union, Johnson, and
White of the south, while the north central counties were decid-
edly against them by fair majorities and the northern counties
by overwhelming ones. In Pike the anti-conventionists got
90 per cent, in Fulton, 92, in Morgan, 91, in Sangamon, 83,
in Clark, 79, in Edgar, 99. In the group of eleven counties
bordered on the north by St. Clair, Washington, Marion,
Wayne, and White, casting 3,788 votes, 62 per cent of the
31 Edwardsville Spectator, November i, 1823.
90 THE FRONTIER STATE
vote was for slavery. In the nineteen counties to the north of
this, out of 7,814 votes cast only 33 per cent was for slavery,
and these figures are increased by the 5 1 per cent and 45 per
cent cast in Fayette and Montgomery respectively.
It is unlikely that the two factions 32 that divided state
politics were definitely aligned in the contest. The leaders of
the anti-Edwards faction were actively for the convention. On
the other side Cook was definitely aligned against it though he
took no very active part in opposition, and Edwards, while
remaining publicly noncommittal, privately confided to a few
friends his opposition to the measure. Yet many loyal lieu-
tenants of Edwards such as Henry Eddy and Leonard White
were active conventionists. In view of the rapid changes of
affiliation and the lack of data as to the factional alignments
at different times it is impossible to say definitely how many of
the conventionists or anti-conventionists were at the time active
in either faction. After the election many anti-conventionists
were found in Edwards ranks but many conventionists as well.
As Peck remarked, after the election the question of the intro-
duction of slavery in Illinois was at an end politically, though
Edwards was not above trying to revive it for political effect.
Future political movements and alliances had no relation to
the position of parties in the convention struggle.
The two men who had been most closely associated in the
struggle, Coles and Birkbeck, made no political advantage out
of the triumph of their cause. Coles as a candidate for the
senatorship in 1824 joined the coalition against Edwards only
to see the prize fall to Elias Kent Kane, a proslavery man.
Several of Coles' nominations to office were rejected by the
senate, notably that of Birkbeck to be secretary of state, an
office he had held in the interim. In his messages of 1824 and
1826 Coles reiterated his suggestion that the assembly provide
by law for the abrogation of the remnants of slavery in the
state and the repeal of the black code and adopt effective meas-
ures against kidnapping; but in spite of the antislavery attitude
32 For discussion of these two political factions see below, p. 92 ff.
THE CONVENTION STRUGGLE 91
of the state long years passed before this was done. Coles'
work in Illinois was finished. He wished to run for congress
in 1828 and did run in 1830; but both times his ambition was
disappointed. He left the state and its politics for a long,
happy, and apparently uneventful life at Philadelphia.
The end of Birkbeck's career was a tragedy. The country
of the Illinois had but poorly recompensed his high hopes. It
had brought him financial losses, galling criticism, disappoint-
ment in love, and estrangement from his friends. He had
performed with high efficiency the duties of secretary of state,
but the enemies he had made by his war on slavery sought to
wound him so far as they could by rejecting his nomination for
the office. A few months later while swimming his horse over
a swollen creek he was swept away to his death. Long since
those most directly interested in preserving his memory have
left the state, and his name has been practically forgotten in
the commonwealth he served so well.
V. THE WAR ON NINIAN EDWARDS
HE question of slavery apart, Illinois politics for the first
JL twelve years of statehood consisted of a struggle between
personal factions. Till the rise of Jacksonian democracy
national parties in the modern sense of the word were nonexist-
ent; and in Illinois the divisions and disputes over the presi-
dential aspirations of Crawford, Adams, Clay, Calhoun, and
Jackson were secondary in interest to the contests between the
state factions and at best served only to intensify their strife
or to create cross divisional lines. At first sight political con-
tests within the state are a maze of personal and factional
rivalries. The clue lies in the existence of two factions, the
Edwards and anti-Edwards, each a rather loose group of
personal followings, in which disaftections, mutinies, and
changes of side occurred with confusing rapidity.
In the case of the Edwards faction at least the bond of
union was partly common business interests. During the con-
stitutional convention in 1818 the attempts of Nathaniel Pope,
Benjamin Stephenson, and others of the Edwards faction to
secure the location of the state capital on one of their town
sites reacted against Governor Ninian Edwards when he was
candidate for the senate in I8I9. 1 Stephenson, Edwards, and
Theophilus W. Smith in 1820 were concerned in promoting an
addition to Edwardsville. Both Stephenson and Edwards,
along with William Kinney, and with Richard M. and James
Johnson of Kentucky were interested in the Bank of Edwards-
ville. Thomas Hart Benton bitterly attacked the institution in
the St. Louis newspapers; and, when in 1822 he assailed the
national policy of leasing the lead mines to the Johnsons and
others, it was Edwards who came to their support. The con-
1 Buck, Illinois in 1818, p. 286-292.
92
WAR ON NINIAN EDWARDS 93
duct of the Bank of Missouri toward the banks of Edwards-
ville and Shawneetown created a common bond of financial
interest between Edwards and John Marshall and John Cald-
well of the Shawneetown bank; and both men politically were
his friends and supporters. 2
The central figure in this party was the stately Ninian
Edwards, already a politician of note in Kentucky when in
1809 he was appointed governor of Illinois territory. Kindly,
charitable, generous, and at the same time pompous, overbear-
ing, and affected, he had many warm friends, many enemies
too, and perhaps many associates who humored his foibles
so long as doing so would promote their own advantage. The
quality of mental balance was almost completely lacking in,
Edwards. By turns he was bold and overcautious, headstrong
and vacillating, now plunging rashly into an enterprise such as
the attack on Crawford, of which he had not counted the cost,
now hestitating between two courses and striving to follow both
when an irrevocable decision between them had to be made.
A mental shiftiness sometimes led him into equivocal positions
which he could justify only by elaborate explanations. Notably
in the Crawford imbroglio by piling up card houses of circum-
stantial evidence to prove his innocence of charges which he
should have been able to ignore or to deny flatly, he frittered
away his fair fame. His contemporaries, like students in these
latter days, doubtless grew weary of reiterations and of elab-
orate proofs of his abilities and integrity. Finally, trying to
hit on a course that would throw away none of his claims on
the various presidential candidates, he was swept away in the
flood of intolerant Jacksonism.
Aligned with the Edwards faction were Nathaniel Pope,
formerly delegate in congress and at the beginning of the state
period a federal judge, Daniel Pope Cook, his nephew, in a
year or two to become Edwards' son-in-law, Thomas C.
Browne, a justice of the state supreme court, and Leonard
~ Annals of Congress, 17 congress, i session, 465-470; Washburne, Edwards
Papers, 156, 158.
94 THE FRONTIER STATE
White of Gallatin county. Of the lesser men William Kinney,
Theophilus W. Smith, and E. J. West were soon to desert
the faction and ultimately to become leaders of the opposi-
tion.
Comparatively little of the methods and purposes of the
opposition party is known except from its opponents. Of its
leaders, Jesse B. Thomas had begun his career with the bargain
of the Illinois country delegates that had led to the division of
Indiana territory. John McLean from the eastern side of the
state was a man of considerable ability but with an irascible
temper which led him to bitter and vindictive outbursts against
enemies or false friends. Joseph B. Phillips, till his removal
from the state after his defeat for governor, was another
member of the party; Shadrach Bond, a man of no great spirit
or ability, was soon by Kane's influence drawn from a position
of neutrality into the faction. 3
Elias Kent Kane, who was apparently till his death in
December, 1835, the chief of the faction whenever he chose
to exert his influence, is the enigma of early Illinois politics.
In the case of every other man of prominence, the man, his
friends, or his enemies have left materials for a sketch or a
caricature of him. Kane is a man in a mask. Letters to and
from him, even from father and friends, newspaper puffs, the
epithets of enemies, a school boy's letter about him, survive;
but among them can be found not one human touch, not one
phrase that can endow the man with a living personality. No
anecdotes that would characterize him have survived. Cata-
logs of his political abilities, virtues, and vices can be found;
again and again is seen his influence at work; but from all these
can be drawn no picture of Kane himself. It is known that he
was of a decayed aristocratic New York family, a graduate
of Yale who came to Illinois to seek his fortune. Yet strangely
he seems to have taken no interest in the great enterprise that
in the days of his highest power Yale men undertook at Illinois
College. The distinctive gift of his alma mater to her sons
3 Washburne, Edwards Papers, 150.
[From original owned by Illinois State Historical Library]
WAR ON NINIAN EDWARDS 95
has sometimes been said to be a certain reserve and convention
of manner; and at the last one is compelled to dismiss Kane
as so far typically a Yale man.
At the time of the institution of state government the two
factions appear to have reached a compromise as to the dispo-
sition of offices. Shadrach Bond, who had belonged to neither
faction, was elected governor without opposition; both sides
had been anxious that he should withdraw from the congres-
sional race in which McLean beat Cook by fourteen votes.
In the legislature, Cook was elected attorney-general, and
Thomas C. Browne and Joseph B. Phillips, judges of the su-
preme court by decisive majorities. Ninian Edwards was
similarly elected to one senatorship, receiving thirty-two votes
out of forty cast. Jesse B. Thomas of the opposite faction was
elected to the other seat on the fourth ballot, by a majority of
three over Leonard White, an Edwards man. In this election
a bargain apparently had failed, and in the congressional elec-
tion none can have existed. The fact, however, that Edwards,
who drew the short term expiring in 1819, hesitated about
announcing his candidacy for reelection led to an attempt to
defeat him by arousing jealousy among eastern Illinois mem-
bers on the score that both senators were from the western part
of the state. He was finally elected by a vote of twenty-three
to nineteen. 4
Edwards and Thomas carried their factional rivalries to
the senate. They were soon at outs on the question of federal
appointments in the state. Edwards, who fared the worse
in the contest for registerships and receiverships, rather injured
his standing by the energy of his protests. Jealous of interfer-
ence with his power of appointment, President Monroe refused
to entertain Edwards' proposal that he and Thomas be per-
mitted each to select two of four officers for the new land offices.
The president and the more staid part of official Washington
appear to have been surprised and puzzled at the bitterness of
* Senate Journal, 1818, i session, 16, 28; Washburne, Edwards Papers, 149-
150, 154.
96 THE FRONTIER STATE
the contest between the two factions. 6 ;< The local parties, in
which you appear to have lived," wrote William Wirt to
Edwards, "have kept you in a constant state of partisan war-
fare which, of all conditions of human life, is best calculated
to sharpen the observation of character, to whet the sagacity
in the detection of hostile movements, even at a distance, and
to fructify the invention in the adoption of countervailing
manoeuvres. But when a man rises, as you have risen, above
the horizon of this petty warfare, he ought to forget all local
feuds. . . ." 6 Such was the counsel of a friend who had
attained a mental poise such as Edwards never achieved. The
advice was calculated to conditions of the political age that
was passing rather than of that which was coming in; but
Edwards might well have taken it to heart.
The rivalry between Edwards and Thomas was soon inten-
sified by their affiliations in the presidential conflict. Thomas
together with Thomas Hart Benton, whom Edwards had
sought to defeat for the Missouri senatorship by running
Cook's brother against him, espoused the cause of William H.
Crawford. Daniel Pope Cook, who, as has been seen, had in
1819 and 1820 been elected to congress over the anti-Edwards
leaders, McLean and Kane, apparently was inclined to favor
Adams. Edwards was at first inclined in the same direction,
but by his own account seeing that Calhoun had a better chance
against Crawford, he transferred his allegiance to the war
department. 7 Soon he and Cook were carrying on a dangerous
and daring warfare against the redoubtable Crawford.
In the session of congress of 1821-1822 Cook began a
vigorous attack on Crawford, the secretary of the treasury,
for appointing Jesse B. Thomas to the lucrative task of exam-
ining western land offices. He pursued this in the house with
a persistency that probably detracted from its effect, persevering
even after a committee report exonerated Thomas and Craw-
5 Crawford to Edwards, January 10, 1821, in Chicago Historical Society
manuscripts; Washburne, Edwards Papers, 167, 181, 185.
"Washburne, Edwards Papers, 188-189.
7 Adams, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, 5: 304, 525.
WAR ON NINIAN EDWARDS 97
ford of unconstitutional or improper conduct 8 The attack
was doubtless for the moment against Thomas rather than
Crawford. The Calhoun leaders were anxious to see Thomas
as a Crawford partisan defeated for reelection to the senate;
and Edwards was urged directly by Calhoun to secure his
defeat even by a bargain. "The reelection of Thomas," he
wrote, " would have a very bad effect. You must run but one,
and if necessary you ought to come to an understanding." 9
The Illinois papers of the Edwards faction attacked Thomas
during the course of 1822, accusing him of trying to buy his
election by promises of offices and charging that he was in
opposition to Monroe and in alliance with Crawford.
The Edwards faction was not under strict enough disci-
pline to agree on any one candidate to oppose Thomas. Pope,
perhaps in the earlier part of the year, had endeavored to
pledge the Edwards support to John Reynolds. Edwards was
incensed that this should have been done without his knowledge ;
very likely at this time he had none too good an opinion of
Reynolds' ability and integrity; and he was piqued at being
pledged without his knowledge to support another Edwards'
faction aspirant for the senatorship whom Pope proposed to
get out of the way by that means. At the meeting of the
assembly, Lockwood, White, and John Reynolds were all can-
didates on the Edwards side. 10 Reynolds tried to postpone
the election in the hope that the charges brought against
Thomas might gain weight or that the various persons to
whom he was reported to have promised the same offices might
grow suspicious. He also appealed to Edwards for unity in
the faction and for efficient use of the patronage to fix wavering
supporters, but with no result. Thomas, Kane, Bond, Joseph
Kitchell, and McLean were united; and January 9, 1823,
8 Annals of Congress, 17 congress, i session, 635-637, 829-831, 876, 897-898,
912-916; Illinois Intelligencer, May 4, 1822; Ed<wards<ville Spectator, February
5, 1822.
9 Edwards, History of Illinois, 493.
10 Washburne, Edwards Papers, 192-203. This is a draft without an address.
Washburne believed it was written to Bond, but a careful study of its contents
leaves no doubt that it was to Pope.
98 THE FRONTIER STATE
Thomas was reflected, receiving a majority of six over Reyn-
olds, White, and Lockwood.
Meanwhile, Edwards and Cook had become directly in-
volved in a contest with the secretary of the treasury. Craw-
ford's financial policy toward the western states has been con-
sidered in a preceding chapter. 11 Here it may be recalled that
he had undertaken to use the unstable banks of the west in col-
lecting the revenue from the public lands in the more than
unstable bank note currencies of that region. Statesmanlike
as the measure was, it had resulted in losses to the govern-
ment; and no doubt a politician so active as Crawford had not
failed, where he could, to advance his political fortunes by
his financial favors. On specific points this policy was attacked
by Edwards and Cook, the latter securing in the house of repre-
sentatives repeated calls on Crawford for the production of
great masses of correspondence with agent banks. Edwards,
by the use he endeavored to make of this material against
Crawford, involved himself in what became known as the
A. B. plot.
The A. B. plot had developed in 1823, when there appeared
in the Republican, the Calhoun organ at Washington, a series
of articles under the signature A. B. which not only attacked
Crawford for malfeasance in his official relations with banks
but further insinuated that, under a call made by the house the
year before for correspondence relating to banks, certain letters
had been withheld and crucial parts of another marked for
omission when the correspondence should be printed. To
weigh the testimony fully would require a chapter by itself;
here it may be said that at best the evidence was far from prov-
ing conclusively bad faith on the part of anyone concerned and
that the details alleged to have been suppressed were of no
great importance. John Quincy Adams, by no means likely
to be prejudiced in favor of Crawford, believed the design
of the A. B. letters was to remove Joseph Gales and William W.
Seaton, Crawford supporters, from their post of public print-
11 See above, p. 53 ff.
WAR ON NINIAN EDWARDS 99
ers. 12 An investigation, perhaps of a somewhat partisan
cast, finally exonerated all accused in the A. B. letters. It was
generally understood that Edwards was the author of the
letters; and the fact that he had used information obtained in
a semiofficial capacity as a basis for anonymous attacks on
his political enemies seriously impaired his prestige with men
like Adams and Monroe and was sedulously used against him
by the partisans of Crawford.
Edwards' senatorial career indeed had not been especially
gratifying or profitable to him. His financial interests had
suffered by his absence from Illinois. His reputation for so-
briety of judgment had been impaired not only by his supposed
leadership in the A. B. plot, but possibly also by an occasional
vehemence such as marked his attempt in 1820 to amend the
land bill in the senate, an attempt which some senators con-
sidered indecorous. He had seen Thomas outstrip him in the
race for preferment when in 1820 the latter received an
appointment on the senate committee on the public lands. Per-
haps on account of his ill health he was not active in the senate
during the 1822-1823 session, frequently failing to answer to
his name and presenting almost no memorials and petitions;
in this session he was on no standing committee. During his
term he had repeatedly considered resigning, for the first time
in 1819, then in 1821 when in a huff at his discomfiture over
appointments, again in 1822 when he resented Pope's attempts
to dissuade him from resignation, and finally in 1823 when
Calhoun entreated him to remain. 13 Early in 1824, however,
he sought from Monroe the nomination as minister to Mexico.
Monroe was at first inclined to refuse to consider him because
of the A. B. affair. Cook was earnest in his efforts with Adams
in behalf of his father-in-law, and Edwards obtained the nomi-
nation. For some time it seemed that the senate might reject
it for the same reasons that had influenced Monroe in his
12 Adams, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, 6:227-228, 296-297, 370-372.
is Washburne, Edwards Papers, 202-203; Edwards, History of Illinois, 496;
Annals of Congress, 16 congress, i session, 9, 26.
ioo THE FRONTIER STATE
opposition, but finally it confirmed the appointment. Edwards,
however, was destined never to set out on the mission. A new
outbreak of his feud with Crawford brought both men to a
death grapple.
Edwards in his arraignment of Crawford for depositing
the public money in banks where it proved a total loss had had
to encounter the uncomfortable fact that he himself had been
instrumental in securing a deposit for one of the defaulting
institutions, the Bank of Edwardsville. He had asserted, how-
ever, that in the fall of 1819 he had disclaimed further respon-
sibility for the bank in a newspaper publication, a copy of which
he had sent to Crawford, and that further he had induced Ben-
jamin Stephenson, in his capacity as receiver at Edwardsville,
to write Crawford suggesting that for the present he had better
not deposit further with himself as bank president. So Edwards
had testified before a house committee in February of 1823.
In view of the attacks previously made on him, it is not sur-
prising that Crawford, in sending to congress a report contain-
ing a last installment of the correspondence demanded by the
various calls, should have concluded with the statement that no
such letter as Edwards described was to be found in the
treasury files.
Edwards, on the point of departure from Washington when
this report appeared, regarded it as an attempt to ruin his
good name. Continuing on his journey toward Illinois, he sent
to the house of representatives a communication with accom-
panying documents, recapitulating several of his former charges
against Crawford and reiterating his statement as to the exist-
ence of the letter. At the Edwardsville land office he procured
a copy of the rough draft of the letter in question and of another
which referred to it. The house of representatives promptly
recalled him to testify in an investigation. It seemed at the
time that the presidential race was likely to be run with Craw-
ford against the field ; and his partisans realizing that Edwards'
charges against him, if established, would ruin his chances,
rallied around him. Edwards' old associates, on the other
WAR ON NINIAN EDWARDS 101
hand, hesitated to imperil themselves by defending him too
openly; and he was left to fight almost single-handed against
his enemies.
In this situation Edwards found himself committed to
charges which were not susceptible of plain demonstration.
The death of Stephenson had left no direct witness to the
writing of the letter save Edwards. The existence of the draft
letter in the Edwardsville oJffice indorsed by Stephenson, but
as it developed written in Edwards' own hand, was no positive
proof that Stephenson had actually sent a letter casting doubts
on the solvency of his bank, or that Crawford had received it.
Edwards tried to meet the difficulty by deducing from the later
letters by Crawford a fine-spun thread of proof that the letter
had actually been received. Crawford's counsel before the
committee were able to advance an interpretation at least as
plausible in favor of their client; what was more important, by
a comparison of dates and of the time taken by the mails they
showed that it was impossible that the letter could have been
taken into account in a letter which Edwards argued was a fur-
tive answer to it. Edwards was reduced to the position of
impeaching Crawford's veracity on his own word, plus a tenu-
ous line of circumstantial evidence.
On the other specifications of his charge Edwards was
equally unfortunate. In general they depended for proof on
elaborate arguments drawn from intricate bodies of evidence,
the sifting of which is wearisome to the scholar and inex-
pressibly dull to the lay reader. Edwards' proofs were suf-
ficient to convince Crawford's enemies but not to silence his
friends. Further Crawford's counsel by various witnesses,
notably Senator James Noble of Indiana, sought to discredit
Edwards' veracity by proving that when he feared that his
nomination would be rejected by the senate he had denied to
several persons the authorship of the A. B. letters. The stroke
from the politicians' point of view was a masterly one. Instead
of being content merely with turning aside Edwards' charges
by controverting evidence and interpretation, they impugned
102 THE FRONTIER STATE
the veracity of the man on whose unsupported evidence much
of the charge was based.
In meeting this counter attack Edwards' intellectual habits
betrayed him into his supreme error. Instead of taking the
stand and denying on his oath the testimony against him, he
devoted himself to building up by a long series of witnesses,
letters, and affidavits a structure of circumstantial evidence
designed to show that it was impossible that such conversations
should have taken place, but in each instance falling a little
short of demonstration. The committee, though made up in
Crawford's interest, in exonerating him left a serious blemish
on Edwards' reputation.
It is impossible to decide whether Edwards or Crawford
had the major part of truth on his side. In view of Crawford's
political situation it is impossible to accept implicitly the con-
clusion of a committee numbering several of his friends and
allies. It is as easy to explain the facts regarding Stephenson's
letters by supposing them to have been suppressed in Craw-
ford's office as to explain them by supposing that Stephenson
wrote the first letter to please Edwards, and the second to
convince him the first had been sent, and actually forwarded
neither. It is easy to believe that Crawford in his dealings
with banks had shown political friends "undue favors," such
as Edwards alleged. There are certain grave discrepancies in
the testimony designed to fix on Edwards the denial of the
A. B. letters. Finally one must remember that by their enemies
at least many of Crawford's followers were accounted des-
perate and unscrupulous politicians.
On the other hand certain facts of Edwards' conduct point
toward what was at least a moral obliquity in his character.
Occasionally he seemed to attempt a suppression of facts. The
affidavit which he secured to describe the draft of Stephenson's
letter specifies that the draft was indorsed in Stephenson's
hand but not that it was written in Edwards'. In the whole
course of his narratives Edwards overemphasized the warning
Crawford might have taken from his publication and from
WAR ON NINIAN EDWARDS 103
Stephenson's letter, for both publication and letter were labori-
ous in their attempts to shift responsibility without giving cause
for real alarm. Edwards' conduct in the A. B. affair had not
seemed to dissentients or even to friendly onlookers overscru-
pulous on the point of honor; further, several of his attacks
on Crawford's dealing with specific banks were trivial and
unfair. To dismiss Edwards with a clear character and to give
him the verdict against Crawford is impossible.
Whatever be the conclusion as to Edwards' deserts there
can be no doubt that for the time being he was brought to the
verge of financial ruin. He had of course resigned his senator-
ship before accepting the Mexican appointment; and his deten-
tion to testify as to his charges against Crawford compelled
him to resign that also. He was obliged to refund the portion
of his salary which had been advanced him; and the sum he
had already invested in his outfit proved almost a dead loss.
He was prepared to dispose of his speculative landholdings at
a heavy sacrifice, and he even professed himself willing to
accept a county clerkship to support his family. 14
Meanwhile Cook had upheld the political fortunes of the
Edwards faction in Illinois against the ablest and most popu-
lar leaders of the opposition. In 1819 and 1822 he defeated
McLean; in 1820, Kane; and in 1824, Bond; all by decisive
pluralities. His tremendous personal popularity was the prin-
cipal cause of his success. In 1819 and 1820, it was true, he
had triumphed on the antislavery principle ; but his opponents
seemed able to devise no issue that would enable them to over-
come his popularity. Charges that he had been guilty of
improper use of his frank and of associating politically with
federalists were of no avail. In 1822 James Hall, under the
signature of Brutus attacked him in the Illinois Gazette, accus-
ing him of assailing Crawford for bank policies that had helped
the west in its need, but to no purpose. In 1824 the attempt
on the part of Bond's friends to identify Cook with the anti-
14 Washburne, Edwards Papers, 225-229, 230-231, 429; Adams, Memoirs of
John Quincy Adams, 6:374-375.
io 4 THE FRONTIER STATE
convention party led the Gazette to remark that half the con-
ventionists in eastern Illinois were for Cook and that for Bond
to create a coalition between Cook's friends and the anti-
convention party was suicidal. It is much more significant to
find attacks circulating which represented Cook and Edwards
as members of a reigning family. 15 In years to come such
charges had their effect.
One issue, however, had been raised against both Cook
and Edwards as early as 1820 and was destined to annoy them
both so long as they remained in politics. The accusation was
made that from self-interest they had voted against a reduction
of the price of public land in 1820. Edwards and Cook both
declared that they had voted against the bill which reduced
the price of public land from $2 to $1.25 an acre, because it
also oppressed the west by abolishing the credit sales system.
Edwards pointed to the fact that in the senate he had repeatedly
endeavored to lower the price still more and to secure preemp-
tions to actual settlers, pressing his amendments with such
vehemence that at last he had fallen in a swoon on the floor
of the senate. Edwards must have known the futility of offer-
ing for the approval of eastern senators such radical price
amendments as he did; the whole series that he proposed has
a touch of buncombe to it. No doubt the reduction in price
operated disastrously on men like Cook and Edwards with
heavy speculative holdings, and it was said on fair authority
that Edwards had written to his associate in speculation express-
ing his fear lest the measure pass. Of a piece with this charge
was one brought against Cook in 1822 to the effect that he had
opposed the creation of a new land office and of preemption
rights in the Sangamon country with a view to the possibility
of his own family's monopolizing the land in case it were
sold at Edwardsville. 18 This charge was, however, effectively
denied.
10 Illinois Gazette, June 29, July 6, 1822; Ediuardsville Spectator, July 18,
1820, July 27, 1822; Illinois Intelligencer, July 22, 1820, July 27, 1822; Kaskas-
kia Republican, April 20, 1824.
16 Illinois Gazette, June 29, July 27, August 3, 1822; Illinois Intelligencer,
July 27, 1822; Edwards, History of Illinois, 510, 517, 518.
WAR ON NINIAN EDWARDS 105
Local issues, or local applications of national issues, pre-
dominated in congressional elections. Thus in his address to
his constituents in 1824, Cook found but little room and no
important place for the Monroe Doctrine and the slave trade.
Instead he stressed the feasibility of an Illinois-Michigan
canal, appropriations for the improvement of the Ohio and
the Mississippi, the extension of the Cumberland road, a pos-
sible system of national internal improvements, a more liberal
policy of relief to purchasers of public land and finally and
most important the tariff. The tariff by virtue of the home
market argument was made an important political issue in the
west in the early twenties. Thus in 1824 Bond's avowed policy
of encouragement of agriculture was set down in his party as
opposition to protected manufactures. 17 Crawford was at-
tacked in Illinois as hostile to internal improvements and pro-
tection, and it is not clear that as yet his friends ventured to
join issue on the question. The appearance of the tariff as a
sectional issue must be noted in this connection. About 1820,
because of its interest in a protective tariff, the east was assailed
for hostility to the west. In view of the future trend of poli-
tics toward a low tariff alliance between west and south, it is
interesting to note the declarations of southern members that
if oppressed by a high tariff the south could no longer afford
to furnish the principal market for the livestock of the west.
As yet, however, in the limited materials for Illinois history
available, no answering echo can be detected. 18
The presidential question was before the people of Illinois
for nearly three years before the election of 1824. For some
time, as nearly as one can determine, predilections of individ-
uals often expressed by Fourth of July toasts in favor of one
candidate or another determined their respective allegiances.
As the election drew near, however, the field narrowed. Cal-
17 Illinois Gazette, April 24, July 17, 1824. Cook on the tariff of 1824 voted
generally for protection, dnnals of Congress, 18 congress, i session, 1545, 2236,
2289-2294, 2310-2316, 2327-2330, 2337, 2338, 2627-2629.
IK Illinois Gazette, June 3, 1820; Annals of Congress, 18 congress, i session,
1677.
io6 THE FRONTIER STATE
houn withdrew from the race. Clay and Crawford, in spite
of the fact that factional considerations would suggest Craw-
ford's support by the anti-Edwards men, were believed to have
little strength in one or another of the three electoral districts
in which the state was divided. Later it was said that Kinney,
Kane, McLean, and others of the anti-Edwards faction had
favored Crawford. Accordingly the presidential election,
though attracting fewer voters than the congressional election,
became complicated by coalition candidates, trades, and rumors
of trades.
In the third district, comprising southwestern Illinois, noth-
ing remarkable occurred. In the first district a delegate
convention nominated James Turney as a candidate for elector
pledged to vote for either Jackson or Clay according to the
turn of events. The Intelligencer, which favored Clay, warned
his supporters not to be deceived as Clay actually was stronger
than Jackson or Crawford, whom it regarded as the probable
beneficiary of the movement. Finally Jackson, Adams, Clay,
and Crawford electors were all run. 19
In the second district a different set of problems presented
themselves. The chief of them was the danger lest the Jackson
vote be split among several electors and an Adams man be
chosen. Henry Eddy was nominated as Jackson elector by a
public meeting which his enemies stigmatized as a caucus. This
and the statement that Eddy secretly favored Adams led
Joseph M. Street to offer himself as elector pledged to vote
for Jackson for president and some republican for vice
president. The suspicion was openly expressed that he was a
stalking horse to divide the Jackson vote and secure the election
of a nominal Clay elector who would vote for Crawford. Both
Jackson and Adams men denounced this scheme; and in parody
of Street, an Adams man, A. G. S. Wight, offered himself as
elector for " Crawford for President, and Joseph M. Street,
or some well known Republican for Vice President." 20
19 Illinois Intelligencer, September 24, October 22, 1824.
ao Illinois Gazette, October 16, 1824.
WAR ON NINIAN EDWARDS 107
In view of the interpretations later put upon Cook's pledge
to vote in the house for the man who had a majority of the
vote in Illinois it is important to note the results. An Adams
elector was chosen in the first district, and Jackson electors in
the other two. In no case had the presence of two electors
for the same candidate caused a serious split in the vote. In
the state at large Adams had 1,542 votes; Jackson, 1,272;
Clay, 1,047; an d Crawford, 219. This estimate, however,
does not include 629 votes cast in the first district for Turney,
the Jackson and Clay elector. His vote given to either Jackson
or Clay would have given either a plurality over Adams. On
the other hand the Edwardsmlle Spectator in its abstract of
the votes lists Turney's under " Crawford," and this undoubt-
edly represents the source of a portion of the vote. It is not
surprising that Cook apparently considered that he had received
no popular mandate and was at liberty to follow his personal
inclinations which led him in the house of representatives to
cast the vote of Illinois for Adams.
Six months later, and almost a year before the congressional
election of 1826, Joseph Duncan offered himself as a rival can-
didate to Cook. Duncan had played a minor part in state poli-
tics for several years, serving as a senator in the legislature
of 1824-1826; he can scarcely be classed with anti-Edwards
faction. Intellectually he was by no means the peer of Cook,
nor did his followers claim it; and it is not surprising that
Cook and his friends hardly took his candidacy seriously.
Duncan, however, had a fair military record. As a boy of
seventeen serving as ensign it had fallen to him to be the first
to give his vote in council of war for the defense of Fort
Stephenson, one of the military successes of the War of 1812,
whose memory was still green in the west. His military service
and the fact that he was a farmer were made to contrast favor-
ably with Cook's long career in public office; he had the hearty
support of the anti-Edwards faction; and to improve his
position, immediately after the adjournment of the legislature
in 1826, he began a thorough canvass of the state.
108 THE FRONTIER STATE
It soon became apparent that the campaign against Cook
was to be carried on by negation rather than assertion. Mut-
terings of discontent with his vote for Adams had appeared
a full year before Duncan was held up to the people as
" a citizen who has been weighed in the balance and not found
wanting." Cook's friends soon concluded that this vote was
a vulnerable point which must be defended. Sometimes they
endeavored to explain Cook's conduct as according with his
pledges. Sometimes they appealed to the voters to remember
that Cook had dLfered with them but this once in six years.
As a motive to forgiveness of this offense, if offense it were,
they pleaded the influential position Cook had attained in
congress and the great services that in virtue of it he had ren-
dered and could still render to his constituents, notably on
behalf of the canal. ,
A second vulnerable point in Cook's position was reached
by the cry that the Edwards-Cook connection formed a reigning
family. ' The public land vote of 1820 was brought out for use
against both Cook and his father-in-law. To this charge
Cook's supporters replied by attempting to demonstrate in the
family relations of James M. and Joseph Duncan, their uncle
R. K. McLaughlin, and David Blackwell a family dynasty
similar to the Cook-Edwards-Pope alliance ; but the attack was
hardly as successful as that of their opponents, who could point
to the fact as a graphic demonstration of their charge that
while Cook was running for congress, Edwards was running
for governor. 21
Edwards had embarked on the campaign for the governor-
ship in the hope of receiving a popular vindication from the
charges made against him in his controversy with Crawford.
In the 1824 legislature he had stood for reelection to the
senate and had been defeated for the unexpired term by John
McLean who, in his turn, was beaten for the full term by Elias
Kent Kane. In spite of the fact that the election left his enemies
21 Edivardsville Spectator, May 27, June 30, July 7, 28, August 4, 1826;
Illinois Intelligencer, January 25, June 29, August 3, 1826; Illinois Gazette, April
*8, 1836.
WAR ON NINIAN EDWARDS 109
quarrelling among themselves and that Lockwood and Browne
of his faction were reelected to the supreme court, the rebuff
was a hard one ; and he naturally listened to those of his friends
who assured him that the people were anxious to prove their
confidence in him by giving him an overwhelming vote for gov-
ernor. R. M. Young assured him of a vote of five or more to
one in the southwestern counties where the Jackson men were
anxious to rebuke Crawford. Till the campaign of 1826 was
near its climax Edwards retained his confidence that his vindi-
cation was to be by a flood of popular votes and could not
understand why his opponent Thomas Sloo did not give up
the contest unless he trusted to some bit of eleventh-hour chi-
canery. 22
Edwards set forth on a state wide personal campaign.
Everywhere his main theme was an arraignment of the financial
mismanagement of the state in recent years. He assailed the
legislature for paying out state paper at a third its face value
and for issuing auditor's warrants at a similar depreciation.
He took credit to himself for having secured annual sales for
taxes of nonresidents' land as well as residents'; under the
former system he averred nonresidents had deprived the people
of Illinois of a currency by hoarding depreciated state paper to
use in paying their taxes. " Such impositions as these," so
ran his drafted speech, "upon a free, high-minded and inde-
pendent people, I boldly assert have no parallels in the annals
of free government, and they are only to be borne by that
Christian charity. . . ," 23 One writer not disposed to be
unfriendly to Edwards stated that sometimes his denunciations
traveled even farther and covered the whole course of govern-
ment from the halcyon days of his territorial role and
" arraigned and charged at the bar of public opinion every
man who has shared with yourself the confidence of the people."
Edwards, it may be noted, denied this charge in its terms rather
than in its spirit. 24 It would not be surprising if in oratorical
22 Washburne, Ediuards Papers, 237-239.
23 Edwards, History of Illinois, 203-206, 213-214.
24 Illinois Intelligencer, July 6, 1826.
no THE FRONTIER STATE
enthusiasm he sometimes transgressed the bounds of his manu-
script speech. Whether, as his opponents suggested, in each
county he expressly exempted its delegations from his censures
cannot be known.
Edwards' attacks on the legislature drew forth a retort
which contributed powerfully to Cook's defeat and to the nar-
rowness of his own plurality. Strangely enough it came from
George Forquer, a man hitherto, and later, hand-in-glove with
Edwards politically and even then inclined to favor him as
against his opponent. Forquer was a man of hot and suspicious
temper, quick to suspect and resent treachery on the part of a
political associate; and possibly in a moment of irritation at
Edwards' attacks on the legislature of which he had been a
member and of distrust of Edwards' good faith toward himself,
he published in the Illinois Intelligencer of July 6 an article
signed "Tyro." In spite of the signature the blow was sped
by the hand of a master of controversy, and it reached not only
Edwards but the whole system of factional strife in politics
which he personified.
"Tyro" pronounced that the attacks of Edwards on the
legislature as a body merely to pave his own way to political
power were enough to alienate all thinking men from him.
Though politically able, he was by no means infallible ; instead
of seeking the office as a vindication he was pursuing it madly
through ex-cathedra denunciations of measures and men. He
should remember, " Tyro " added, that the days when the
factional strife of the territorial parties could keep men in
political subjection had departed. "The sycophants of terri-
torial bondage have lost their influence and dwindled into con-
tempt. The dazzling halo, with which the former exercise of
lordly power, occasioned the ignorant to associate your name,
is broken, and you now stand before them as an object of
political charity a naked, crumbling monument of a morbid
ambition. A race of men, honorable in their views, pure in
their feelings, with talents hereafter to be felt, are now in
political embryo, who have not been tamed or degraded under
WAR ON NINIAN EDWARDS in
the banners of either of the old parties that originated the
territorial feuds, and which have ever since harassed the coun-
try with the most intolerant proscription." Forquer had dis-
cerned the fallacy that underlay the whole factional system
it imbued its adherents with the idea that the open and avowed
end of politics was the gratification of a personal ambition.
Under "Tyro's" analysis the absurdity of Edwards' seeking
a public office to salve his honor of a thrust received in factional
warfare is self-evident.
" On the first appearance of Tyro" wrote John Marshall
after the election, " I anticipated the storm that was to follow.
... I was not mistaken, it was a fatal storm. You must be
aware now that the freedom with which you commented on the
management of the finances, State Bank, &c., however just was
nevertheless very impolitick. It arrayed almost every man that
had been in the Legislature since 1821 and all the Bank and
Circuit Court interest against you, which, by a little manage-
ment aided by the cry of 'a family of rulers' was unfortun-
ately brought to bear on Mr. Cook." 25
The attempt to turn the politics of a state to the advantage
of a personal faction had resulted fatally to the faction whose
work first was made apparent to the people. Edwards was
elected by a vote that considering the weakness of his opponent
and the great expectations with which he had begun the contest
was in itself a disgrace. He could muster but 6,280 votes
against 5,833 for Sloo and 580 for Adolphus F. Hubbard, the
butt and jest of Illinois politics. Joseph Duncan defeated Cook
by a vote of 6,322 to 5,619 excluding 824 votes cast for James
Turney.
Cook's defeat has usually been laid to popular resentment
at his vote for Adams. But while the issue was raised in the
campaign and while outside the state Cook's defeat was re-
peatedly assigned to it, the evidence that it was the deciding
factor is by no means conclusive. Edwards asserted that it
had not been, though his statement may be assigned to an
28 Washburne, Edwards Papers, 255.
ii2 THE FRONTIER STATE
anxiety to convince Clay that he held the balance between the
Jackson and administration forces in the state. Duncan, how-
ever, did not run as a Jackson man. Further, in 1826 Cook lost
decisively but few Jackson counties on which his hold had not
been precarious before, though in many instances he lost them
by increased majorities. Not one of the Jackson counties that
he lost in 1826 did he carry both in 1822 and 1824. Further
he obtained decisive votes in several strong Jackson counties
such as Pope, Gallatin, Edgar, Morgan, Greene, and Alexan-
der. Pope county he carried by an increased majority and
Gallatin and Alexander he had lost in 1824. Marshall's letter
already cited is evidence against the accuracy of the assertion.
Further the story that Cook's vote was the cause of his defeat
tended to establish itself in Illinois history, since in 1830 the
supporters of Kinney were anxious to prove Reynolds' apos-
tasy to Jackson ; and they argued that he had supported Cook
in 1826, representing Cook as at that time defeated on the
Jackson issue.
The explanations offered by friends who were in close touch
with the situation were Cook's inability to stump the state, the
reiterations of the old public land charge, and the use of the
fact that father-in-law and son-in-law were at the same time
running for the two highest offices in the gift of the people of
Illinois. 28 Yet the historian may speculate whether in view of
the letter of Marshall and the article by "Tyro" the causes
mentioned were not symptoms of a cause rather than causes
themselves. Their gravamen after all lies in the assump-
tion that Edwards and Cook in their political course had been
moved by their pecuniary interests and their personal ambi-
tions. It was that against which "Tyro" had really pro-
tested, the governing of the state for the benefit of the leaders
of a personal clique.
Finally one may note that Edwards and Cook assumed
toward their constituents an attitude characteristic of the past
18 Edwards, History of Illinois, 451 ; Washburne, Edivards Paptrs, 260-
261 ; Edtvardsville Spectator, July 7, September 29, 1826.
WAR ON NINIAN EDWARDS 113
rather than the future. Edwards had pompously asserted that
he was a candidate for office by the call of the people, and that
anyone contesting with him must do so for sinister motives. 27
Cook's friends repeatedly urged the grants he had obtained at
Washington and the further benefits that he as a member of
ability and a friend to the administration could procure for the
state. Yet in spite of apostrophes to the paramount abilities of
Edwards and of promises of canal lands to be procured by
Cook, the people of Illinois had voted in great numbers for
men admittedly of narrow abilities who could promise little
in the way of public services. The older political order was
fading away, and Jacksonian democracy was on the horizon.
27 Illinois Intelligencer, August 3, 1826.
VI. THE RISE OF JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY
first waves of the rising tide of westernism which
JL found its expression in Jacksonian democracy had helped
to undermine Cook's popularity in 1826. As year after year
the tide rose the old factions of Illinois politics were to take
note of it and to seek to turn it to their own political advantage
or else to endeavor to evade its full force without traveling
with it; but in the end the whole factional system of state
politics was to be swept away by the flood tide of the new
democracy. To understood fully the character and ideals of
the movement on which Jackson rode triumphant through the
latter part of his political career is to understand the history
of the United States for two decades. Such an understanding
is not easy to attain. Sometimes nearer, sometimes farther,
from the heart of the movement was the chicanery and man-
agement of crafty politicians. The personnel changes: old
leaders go over into opposition, and late converts take their
places. Intellectually the movement develops and evolves so
that the radical ideals of 1837 and 1840 to the Jackson men of
1824 would have appeared outlandish. Any estimate of Jack-
sonism must take careful account of the fact that it was an
idea intensely alive and therefore intensely variable.
Perhaps the surest guide to the underlying elements of
Jacksonism that persisted throughout the movement is the
character of Jackson himself. That his character could divide
men into worshippers and bitter critics was shown in the con-
gressional investigation of the Seminole campaign during the
session of 1818-1819, the first in which the state of Illinois
had a voice. To men of one type of mind the raid into Spanish
territory, the execution of Arbuthnot and Ambrister, and above
all, Jackson's deliberate disregard of his orders in raising a
"4
RISE OF JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 115
company of Tennessee riflemen and mustering them into
United States service, instead of calling on neighboring states
for militia as he had been instructed, were alike characteristic
of a "military chieftain" ruthless and lawless, the very coun-
terpart of the men who have in Europe and South America
made republican government a travesty on liberty.
On the other hand in the defenses of Jackson's character
and conduct one catches an echo of the spirit of the American
frontier its directness and its disregard of all theories of
action not corresponding with the facts of life. Jackson had
been set the task of defending the frontier. He had taken the
shortest and most direct way to do it, using the forces best
suited to it, and not refraining from regard to the sensibilities
of men who actually sympathized with the Indians. The means
he had taken were neither humanitarian nor constitutional, but
they were effective. Such a man to a west that had seen the
doubts, hesitations, and failures of the Jeffersonian school
seemed formed more nearly in the image of Washington and
the revolutionary heroes.
The men who urged Jackson's claims to the presidential
succession contrasted the claims of the man who had served
his country in the field with the claims of those who had served
her in congress or in the cabinet. They felt that the closet
statesmen at Washington had disregarded Jackson's just claims
because he was not one of themselves and had not been initiated
into their methods of political finesse. The caucus which nomi-
nated Crawford must have seemed the very embodiment of
such methods. The feeling culminated in 1825 when John
Quincy Adams was elected president by the house of representa-
tives, in spite of the fact that Jackson, of the four candidates,
had received a plurality of electoral and possibly of popular
votes. That the wirepullers should triumph over the plain
soldier aroused intense indignation. 1 The cause of Jackson
was associated by his friends with the broader cause of democ-
racy. In the session of 1825-1826 a constitutional amendment
1 Annals of Congress, 15 congress, 2 session, 256, 517, 529, 656, 689.
n6 THE FRONTIER STATE
introduced in congress providing for a direct popular vote on
the presidency put on record in the debate those who were will-
ing to trust the people and those who were not. On one side
were men who averred that the constitution of the United
States did not permit of democracy and that a legislative train-
ing in statesmanship was an implied requisite for a holder of
high office ; men who defended the caucus because they believed
that, if the congress did not eliminate a plurality of candidates
before the election, the house or the senate would have to
choose between them in the end ; and finally, men who used the
states' rights argument. 2 Everett stated bluntly what was per-
haps in the minds of many, when he declared that a president
elected by an overwhelming majority would be a dangerous
one.
On the other side were those who believed that the people
should nominate and elect the president directly, that he should
be dependent on them for office and responsible to them for
his acts. 3 This was the theory which was later to be so boldly
asserted by Jackson in his claim to represent the popular will
and which was exemplified by him in his war on the senate.
In Illinois the Jackson campaign of 1828 began December
9, 1826, when in the house of representatives A. P. Field offered
a resolution indorsing Jackson and asserting that the election
of Adams was by bargain and sale and contrary to the will of
the majority. Three days later a motion to lay on the table
till July 4, the usual way of killing a measure, was lost by a
vote of 1 6 to 20. The counter-argument, as expounded by
Alfred W. Cavarly, was that such action would prejudice the
land grants for which the people of Illinois were petitioning
congress, that it was unusual and could not be supported by any
valid proof of the charges made. A compromise amendment
offered by Thomas Reynolds which merely expressed confidence
in Jackson was lost 18 to 18. Field finally moved to make the
matter a mere nomination of Jackson, but his motion was
2 Storrs, Archer, Stevenson, Ingersoll, and Mitchell of Tennessee.
3 Saunders, Cambreleng, Drayton, Polk, Isacks, Lecompte, and Mitchell of
South Carolina.
defeated 19 to 17. January 8, 1827, a motion to take up the
resolution was lost 1 8 to 1 8 by a slightly different alignment
of votes. On the last day of the session, with five Adams men
and one Jackson supporter absent, a resolution declaring for
Jackson passed 19 to 1 1. Such was the alignment of the house.
Although no vote directly indicating the alignment was taken
in the senate there was said to be an administration ma-
jority of 2.
Outside the legislature the movement in favor of Jackson
was continued through the agency of county meetings. One
was held at Belleville on March 8, which recommended Jack-
son as a candidate and urged the holding of similar meetings
to take measures for his election. "They hope," was the
comment of the administration organ, the Intelligencer, "by
this mean, not only to discover their own strength but to give
tone to public feeling; and if possible, induce a belief that
Jackson is the strong candidate." 4 In May, Kinney, West,
T. W. Smith, and Kane were busy with a project to publish a
Jackson newspaper in the state; and the next fall Fleming
began printing the Illinois Corrector at Edwardsville. In the
late fall and winter under the tutelage of the leaders district
conventions to nominate electors were held; and in these as
well as in the county meetings which elected delegates to them,
resolutions were adopted denouncing Adams and praising Jack-
son. The Illinois Gazette asserted that the county meetings
rarely consisted of over twelve or fifteen persons and that they
were drummed up in county after county by political circuit
riders like A. P. Field. Undoubtedly there was machinery at
work, but in view of the results there must have been something
more. 5
In the political comment of the Illinois administration
papers one notes surprise or even alarm at the lengths to which
the Jackson enthusiasm was going. The Intelligencer com-
* Illinois Intelligencer, March 24, 1827.
5 Kinney to Kane, May 12, 1827, in Kane manuscripts; Illinois Intelligencer,
October 12, 1827, January 5, March i, 29, May 10, June 21, 1828; Illinois
Gazette, May 3, 17, 1828.
n8 THE FRONTIER STATE
mented sarcastically on such ebullitions of enthusiasm as public
meetings in which the planting of hickory trees was an impor-
tant part of the exercises. It complained that New York had
been lost to Adams by the votes of the riffraff. One Fourth
of July orator of the preceding year had reminded his hearers
that popular rights was the favorite theme of demagogues and
that the fathers of the republic had equally opposed the des-
potism of a monarch and the licentiousness of the mob. 6 The
Intelligencer clipped from Niles Weekly Register an editorial
speculating as to why the election of a president should be
fraught with so much more violence than the elections of sena-
tors, especially in view of the fact that the senate with its
power of trial in cases of impeachments was by so much the
more important branch of government! The enthusiasm for
Jackson presaged to men of conservative mind the end of a
stable and balanced political universe, in which sobriety, stand-
ing, and solid talents had governed.
Either side in the campaign freely barbed its arguments
with abuse of the opposing candidate. For the Jackson forces
the "corrupt bargain" between Clay and Adams by which
Clay in return for the secretaryship of state was alleged to
have thrown his forces to Adams did full duty in spite of the
numerous refutations that were published. The South Ameri-
can policy of Adams and the alleged loss of the West India
trade were duly considered, together with such matters as his
lavish furnishing of the east room of the White House and his
purchase of a billiard table a' piece of furniture that in the
Illinois statutes figured only as a gaming device. In view of
Clay's duel with Randolph, the accusation was made that the
government at Washington was a " duelling administration ! " 7
For the reason that files of two Illinois administration
newspapers have been preserved and almost no Jackson papers
have been handed down, it is easier to outline the attack on
Jackson than to state his defense. Efforts were made to prove
6 Leonard Ross at Atlas. Illinois Intelligencer, August 4, 1827.
''Ibid., November 4, 1826, August n, September 8, 15, 1827.
RISE OF JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 119
that the real attempt at bargain and intrigue in 1825 had been
in his favor. The statement that Jackson was a federalist in
disguise was supported by the publication of his letter to
Monroe in 1817 urging the latter to appoint federalists to
office. Jackson himself was represented as a rowdy, a cock-
fighter, a gambler, and a devotee of the code of honor. 8
Toward the end of the campaign his opponents fell back on
such charges as that he was a Negro trader and a ferreter out
of flaws in land titles.
Naturally in this campaign also Jackson was represented
as a "Military Chieftain." A remark of Jefferson to Coles
to the effect that the heavy popular vote for Jackson made
him doubt the stability of free institutions was made to do
duty in Illinois. His arbitrary conduct when New Orleans
was under martial law was represented as an instance of his
military violation of civil power. The incident most relied
on, however, was his execution of six militiamen for what was
represented as at the most a technical desertion after their term
of service had expired. 9 For many a long year of his service
in the democratic party Sidney Breese writhed under the charge
that he had distributed " coffin handbills," with the coffins of
the six depicted at the top and subscribed with doleful verse :
He ordered Harris out to die,
And five poor fellows more !
Young gallant men in prime of life,
To welter in their gore
'T was all in vain, John Harris prayed,
'T is past the soul's belief.
Hard as a flint was Jackson's heart,
He would not grant relief
8 Illinois Gazette, June 7, 1828; Illinois Intelligencer, August 4, October 13,
November 17, 1827, April 5, May 24, 1828.
9 Ibid., August 4, December i, 1827.
120 THE FRONTIER STATE
Sure he will spare ! Sure Jackson yet
Will all reprieve but one
Oh hark ! those shrieks ! that cry of death !
The dreadful deed is done ! 10
Besides all the personal issues there were issues of national
policy at question in the election. The administration news-
papers represented that the Adams policy of internal improve-
ments and protection to manufactures was the policy pre-
eminently adapted to the needs of the west. ' The insufficient
market for western produce at New Orleans was a graphic
argument for a system that would both enable manufactures
to spring up on the soil of Illinois and furnish her with outlets
to additional markets. Many of the Jackson men were dis-
posed to agree with this estimate of the true interest of the
west and to insist that Jackson also favored the policy. The
administration papers forced the fighting on the tariff issue,
a live national issue even at this early date, accusing the
Corrector of hedging and vacillating on it.
The Adams internal improvement policy offered an issue
even more vital to Illinois. 11 Edwards as early as 1825 had
pointed out to Clay the strength that the administration would
gain by the announcement of a project for a connection between
western waters, the lakes, and the Atlantic. In the meetings in
northern Illinois held to celebrate the passage of the canal bill
of 1827 there were resolutions and speeches full of gratitude
to Edwards, Cook, Adams, Clay, and the internal improvement
policy. Calhoun's casting vote against the measure in 1826
and the unfriendliness to it of Jackson's friends were supposed
to have seriously imperiled Jackson's chances. Consequently
the Intelligencer laid its greatest emphasis on the importance
of the internal improvement policy to Illinois. Toward the
10 Chicago Democrat, April 29, 1840.
^Illinois Intelligencer, April 21, 1827; Illinois Gazette, February 23, 1828;
Kimmel to Eddy, November 7, 1827, in Eddy manuscripts. The Jackson con-
vention at Springfield resolved that it was convinced that its candidate, Andrew
Jackson, was for protection and internal improvement. Illinois Intelligencer,
May 10, 1828.
RISE OF JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 121
end of the campaign in an attempt to stir up sectional prejudice
the administration papers represented anti-tariff and anti-
internal improvement as policies dictated by the slave states. 12
The supporters of Jackson endeavored to demonstrate
Adams' hostility to western interests on another issue, that of
the public lands. Ever since the spring of 1824 Benton had
been urging a measure designed to remove the complaint that
the United States arrested the development of the western
states by disposing of its lands on terms too unfavorable to
the purchasers. His graduation bill embodied the principle
that the unsold public lands be each year reduced in price
twenty-five cents an acre till they reached twenty-five cents,
when if they did not find purchasers they should be ceded to
the states. The measures also provided that when the price
of public lands had reached fifty cents an acre, they should be
donated to actual settlers in eighty acre tracts. Benton intro-
duced this bill year by year, but it was not till 1826 that he
was permitted even to speak on it. In that year, when in a
propaganda for the measure he had secured a memorial from
the Missouri legislature indorsing it, it was taken under the
wing of the Jackson party in the state. In congress it received
the support of Kane and Duncan, but roused the opposition of
such men as Benton's colleague and rival, David Barton, who
insisted it was an attempt to carry on the movement, frustrated
in 1820, which had been throwing the public domain into the
hands of speculators. It was defeated in 1828 in the senate,
eleven Jackson senators, as the administration men pointed
out, voting among the twenty-five opponents of the measure.
The Jackson men, however, turned to Richard Rush's last
report as secretary of the treasury in which he injudiciously
urged protection to manufactures on the ground that it would
keep population in the east where it could accumulate capital
instead of spreading it thinly over the lands of the west. His
further argument that the low price of the public lands acted
12 Washburne, Edwards Papers, 240; Illinois Gazette, June 28, 1828;
Illinois Intelligencer, March 17, August 4, November 3, 1827, July 5, 1828.
122 THE FRONTIER STATE
as a bounty on agriculture which should be supplemented by
one on manufactures was, if anything, still more unfortunate.
Both were used by the opposition to prove the sinister aspect
of the whole Adams policy toward the west. 18
The question of the public lands in Illinois politics followed
a rather unusual course. First it must be noted that side by
side with Benton's scheme in congress appeared the suggestions
on the part of certain members that congress might well cede
the public lands to the states in which they lay. This plan was
usually based on an extreme theory of state sovereignty which
proclaimed that, as the new states were admitted into congress
on an equal footing with the old in all respects, it was prepos-
terous that the federal government should control the soil in
them, and accordingly declared that all compacts recognizing
such a right were null and void. Benton had disclaimed any
such implication in his measure ; but the theory was enunciated
by several westerners, such as Hendricks, who were well dis-
posed to it. Tazewell indeed had in 1826 proposed a corre-
sponding measure. 14 Other senators had favored the principle.
But in Illinois, Edwards, who had declared in his message of
1826 that if the state did not receive the cession it must have
classification and who in 1828 supported Forquer's rival pro-
posal for a graduation based on a classification by value, came
out in his 1828 message with a tedioo and labored defense of
the right of the states to the public lands based on doctrines
of state sovereignty. This measure may have been an attempt
to outbid his old enemies, Benton, Kane, and Duncan for
popular support or it may have been, as his enemies suggested,
designed in the interest of his own landholdings to stir up such
animosity in the east as would ruin the chances of the gradu-
ation bill. Possibly, as Duff Green suggested, he hoped that
the measure would be the basis of a coalition between the west
and his old friends of Calhoun's party in the south. On pub-
lic lands, tariff, and internal improvements in 1828-1829 it
13 Congressional Debates, 1827-1828, p. 483-521, 614-629, 678, 2832 ff.
14 Ibid., 1827-1828, 152 ff., 625-629; ibid., 1825-1826, p. 782.
RISE OF JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 123
was a question of alliances : would the west accept tariff and
internal improvements and yield up the public lands policy
to the jealousy of her growth harbored in the east, or would
she ally herself with the south in return for free trade and a
favorable land policy? The alternative was not clearly per-
ceived in 1828 ; nor was it definitely recognized for some years;
but in the large, so far as Illinois was concerned, the decision
had been made.
The graduation policy as presented by Benton was a meas-
ure democratic in its intent. In spite of what was said by
Barton and others one cannot help feeling that Benton was
right in holding that speculation on a large scale in unim-
proved land was a hazardous business so long as so much wild
land was still in government hands and that hitherto specu-
lators had burnt their fingers in handling both public lands
and military bounty lands. 15 Benton argued that the measure
would give to the poor the opportunity by which they might
rise to the position of useful citizens; he even argued that it
was the duty of the government to settle the wild lands as
expeditiously as might be, since men naturally had a right to
the soil.
The tide flowed toward Jackson. Although the final vote
9,582 to 4,662 was overwhelmingly in Jackson's favor,
the change in sentiment was by no means immediate or general
throughout the state. On May 16, 1827, Joseph M. Street
reported to Edwards from Shawneetown that the old Clay,
Adams, and Crawford men were nearly all supporting the ad-
ministration; and early in the next month he ascribed the
weakness of Jackson to the bitter factional feeling in that
section against Kinney and Smith. In a later letter he reported
McLean much cooler toward Jackson. As late as August 15,
1827, one of Kane's correspondents believed that, while at
that time Jackson had a majority in the state, in the end Adams
would run very well. By February 22, 1828, Smith estimated
that the Adams men had given up Illinois.
15 Congressional Debates, 1825-1826, p. 720.
i2 4 THE FRONTIER STATE
While the political issues of the future were brewing in the
real Jackson movement, the leaders of the faction were watch-
ing events and planning that their personal interests should
not suffer. Such old Crawford men as Kinney, Kane, T. W.
Smith, Bond, and McLean had gone over to Jackson. By
1828-1829 the fervency and zeal of these converts for party
regularity and proscription of their opponents was viewed
by the older Jackson men, such as S. H. Kimmel and A. P.
Field, with ill-concealed impatience.
On the other side Edwards was balancing on the political
fence which divided the Jackson forces and the administration.
On the one hand Duff Green was assuring him of Jackson's
regard, his disposition to condone Cook's vote for Adams, and
the certainty of Edwards' triumph if he only would come out
for the constitutional amendment, which was the Jacksonian
profession of faith. On the other hand, Edwards after his
election took an independent if friendly tone toward Clay.
While he did not hesitate to speak plainly on attacks against
himself originating in administration sources, he declared that
he could not, in view of the attitude of Jackson's friends
toward the canal, expect the Jackson interest to predominate
in Illinois. He explained the small plurality by which he had
been elected by saying that he had made exertions to throw all
his opponents on the Jackson side, so that he might eventually
turn the balance either way. The hint to the administration
was obvious. Edwards was supposed in 1827 to have come
out for Jackson, but he supported a declared Adams man for
congress in 1828, so that his position remained more or less
equivocal. 16
In state politics Edwards gathered what hope he could
from the fact that the ranks of his opponents were disinte-
grating. The two senate rships to be filled in 1824 had sown
discord. In the spring of that year Kane, Kinney, Sloo, and
Kitchell all had their eyes on the prizes. McLean and Coles
also stood forth as candidates. Kane apparently succeeded in
16 Washburne, Edwards Papers, 256, 259.
RISE OF JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 125
combining the forces in support of McLean in order to beat
Edwards who was hoping for a vindication by reelection.
On the third ballot McLean had thirty-one votes to nineteen
for Edwards and two for Pope. A week later Kane was
elected for the long term, beating Lockwood, McLean, Coles,
and Sloo. McLean, who believed he had been tricked into
entering the contest only to be humiliated, was furious and
refused to be soothed by asservations that he had been
reserved to cap the triumph of the coalition by beating Cook
for congress. Another member of the coalition had to com-
plain of similar treatment. In the election of justices of the
supreme courtr, Wilson and Browne were confirmed, Lockwood
and T. W. Smith elected, and John Reynolds frozen out.
Exactly how the justices of the Edwards faction were elected
is a problem. Reynolds very probably had been displaced by
T. W. Smith's intrigues, and he did not hesitate to say that
he had been the "whetstone" in the affair. 17
The effect on the make-up of the factions of this intriguing
is admirably described by a political observer of 1827 whose
statements are corroborated by such independent evidences as
exist "Smith, Kinney, and West, are about to set up a News-
paper at Edwardsville ostensibly for Jackson, but in fact to
operate in State politics. Smith and Kinney want to be Senator
and Governor. They go against Edwards, Thomas, but most
especially and bitterly against McLean. Party No. 8 consists
of John Reynolds and Tom Reynolds the Beairs, etc., Jno
Reynolds wants to be Senator is inveterate against Smith,
Edwards, Thomas and dont much like McLean. Party No.
5 consists of Jesse B. Thomas Solus the privates and officers
yet to be enlisted. The Honorable Jesse is very bitter against
Smith and Co., but more against McLean. He swears that
McLean is a dishonest man and a dishonest politician that
he cant, and by G he shant be elected !
"I do not see how the above named men can ever again
17 Kinney to Kane, April 10, 1824, in Kane manuscripts; McLean to Sloo,
January 16, 1825, in Illinois State Historical Society, Transactions, 1911, p. 39;
Reynolds to Cook, December 30, 1824, ' n Edwards manuscripts.
ii6 THE FRONTIER STATE
imaigamate, at any rate they will not join with Party No. 4
which consists of Jno McLean and his friends Nor with
Party No. 5 which is composed of Edwards & Co.
"Depend upon it, my dear Sir," he continued, "these com-
binations which are going on in our State will ruin every man
who is engaged in them. The people are beginning to com-
plain loudly. Kinney is sinking faster than I ever saw any
man, his violence disgusts even his friends. Thomas and
Edwards are gone. Smith is universally feared, his ambition
and his intriguing spirit alarm friends and foes. Lockwood
and Wilson are greatly depreciated. All of these men must
go down. McLean stands best, but his prospects are very
doubtful. . . ," 18
Other evidence attests the precarious condition of Edwards
and his faction. It did not have control of the legislature
chosen in 1826, and thereby all Edwards' assaults on the admin-
istration of the bank and finances were frustrated. In the leg-
islative elections he was beaten. By the death of Cook in 1827
he lost a man of popularity and of recognized ability and what
was worse a loyal comrade. There were none too many such
left among Edwards' followers. Still he patiently worked
away, seeking once more to attain victory by the old methods.
The senatorial election of 1828 was the point toward which
all eyes turned. Thomas, who had not followed his old asso-
ciates into the Jackson ranks, was out of it. His one hope had
been a close contest with many candidates. By 1828 Edwards
believed that Kane would succeed in bringing Reynolds, Bond,
and Kinney to a bargain by which Smith would obtain the
honor. Meanwhile Edwards, though not himself avowedly
a candidate, kept himself informed of the probable disposition
of candidates for the legislature in certain districts. Street
believed Lockwood the only available candidate. Pope was
anxious to run, being privately told by Smith and his followers
that he was their second choice; but Edwards was provoked
18 Hall to Sloo, June 3, 1827, in Illinois State Historical Society, Transac-
tions, 1911, p. 41-42.
RISE OF IACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 127
because Pope was not supporting Forquer against Duncan for
congress. Accordingly he secretly appealed to McLean, sug-
gesting that he support Forquer, promising in turn to support
him for the senate even as against Pope and warning him that
the combination behind Smith was planning to drive him out
of state politics. McLean, however, apparently felt sure of
his election and made no particular response to Edwards'
overture, except by answering in a friendly tone after Forquer's
defeat. He was elected senator unanimously, but his election
redounded in the end to the benefit of the Kane group. Two
years later Forquer lamented the fact that Kane by playing
on McLean's violent likes and dislikes was able politically to
do with the latter as he would. 19
Meanwhile in a conference of his political associates at
Vandalia Forquer late in 1827 had been put forward as a
candidate for congress against Joseph Duncan. Breese and
Coles had hoped for such indorsement from the group and
each was correspondingly disappointed. On the other side,
Kinney, Kane, West, Smith, and Reynolds supported Duncan
as the Jackson candidate against Forquer, who was avowedly
an Adams man. Forquer's friends tried to make the contest
a personal comparison between the candidates, criticizing Dun-
can for various alleged oversights, blunders, and neglects that
had hindered the state's interests. Further they tried to draw
an issue between Benton's graduation scheme, reported to the
house by Duncan, and a measure devised by Forquer for classi-
fying public lands according to value, at one dollar, seventy-
five cents, and fifty cents an acre with cession of all lands below
the latter value to the state and immediate donations to actual
settlers as compared with the eight years, during which they
would have to wait under Benton's bill, after the land was
brought into market. The expense of valuing the land was
the obvious objection to this measure which Forquer's friends
tried to explain away. 20
19 Washburne, Edwards Papers, 343, 353, 358, 360, 477.
20 Illinois Intelligencer, July 5, 12, 26, 1828; Illinois Gazette, July 19, 1828;
Forquer to Eddy, December 15, 1827, in Eddy manuscripts.
ii8 THE FRONTIER STATE
As contrasted with Edwards' and Cook's campaign of two
years before, it is interesting to note the democratic and popu-
lar appeal made by Forquer. Against his opponent's claim
to be a simple farmer whose shortcomings should be on that
account condoned he set up the fact that he himself had been
a mechanic. " Forquer, having been a mechanic," wrote
Edwards to Eddy, "operates like a charm. . . . Our tickets
should be ... headed with the figure of a plow & plane,
&c, ' For the peoples friend, who, like them, knows what it is
to get his living by the sweat of his brow.' " 21 Forquer's handi-
caps in other directions, however, were too many to be over-
come thus even in the year of Jackson's election. The admin-
istration party was badly split between Edwards and anti-
Edwards men, who had introduced their factional discords
even in the chaos of Adams' election. Forquer lost many
administration votes and by his own account received no real
support from the great semi-independent feudatories of the
Edwards group; and the fact that he was for Adams was used
to turn the Jackson vote against him. In his defeat by a vote
of 10,398 to 6, 1 66 Edwards had suffered still another humili-
ating reverse.
The revolution of factions and Edwards' own restless
political ambitions were next to bring him into alliance with
John Reynolds, a man for whom he had hitherto scarcely con-
cealed his contempt. Since Edwards had rebuffed Reynolds'
senatorial aspirations in 1822-1823, the latter had gone over
to the opposition, had in some way lost their support for
reelection to the supreme bench in 1824-1825, and had in 1826
supported Cook. In 1828, as has been seen, he was a satellite
in the Kane constellation and had exchanged several broad-
sides of abuse with Edwards. During the following session
he had endeavored to strike some bargain in regard to the
senatorship with both Kinney and Smith in return for support
for governor. Disappointed here he had turned to the
21 Edwards to Eddy, Election, August, 1828, in Eddy manuscripts; Illinois
Intelligencer, July 12, 1828.
Edwards group, and in spite of the intention of the Jackson
following to proscribe all Adams men, he had assisted together
with McLean in electing Forquer attorney-general over
McRoberts. 22
Immediately after the legislative session he began his cam-
paign. " I must stir or git beat. The people is with me," he
wrote to Grant, February 7, 1829. Artfully emphasizing his
Jackson affiliations he was nominated later in the fall by Jack-
son meetings. His circular set him forth as a child of the
people, pitiful to the poor who suffered from taxation, and a
friend to internal improvements and to a speedy distribution of
the school fund for the benefit of the children then growing up
in ignorance. So large were his promises that one irrev-
erent critic suggested that, after promising internal improve-
ments and lighter taxation to boot, it only remained to engage
that the Mississippi run upstream one half the year and
downstream the other for the special benefit of the river
trade. 23
By this time Reynolds had made his formal peace with
Edwards, predicating his overtures on the practical ground
that they had many friends in common and on the ideal one
that it was necessary to unite to procure the good of the people.
He again offered the senatorship bargain in general terms.
Edwards in reply somewhat condescendingly accepted his
overtures, stipulating that he have an authoritative voice in
drawing the plan of the gubernatorial campaign apparently
planning to bring in his public land doctrines on Reynolds'
shoulders to prepare for his own future political success with
them.
The characters of John Reynolds and William Kinney, the
two men who confronted each other as rivals in the race for
the governorship, are an interesting contrast. John Reynolds,
by virtue of a certain kindliness of spirit and a degree of cun-
22 Illinois Intelligencer, January 9, February 20, June 12, July 10, 24, 1830;
Illinois Gazette, January 17, December 12, 1829.
23 Galena Advertiser, November 9, 30, December 28, 1829, January n,
February 15, 1830.
130 THE FRONTIER STATE
ning, was to shuffle his way through Illinois politics, getting
much of what he wanted. He had been brought up in pioneer
Illinois, had seen some ranger service in the War of 1812,
and apparently in imitation of Edwards had adopted as a
political asset the sobriquet of " The Old Ranger." He had
had a narrow schooling in a primitive Tennessee academy
termed by courtesy a college and had acquired some small
classical learning which in certain circles he took care to dis-
play. Toward the end of his life he tried to carry on a learned
correspondence with Joseph Gillespie, and at the end of a
sophomoric composition on the traitor Count Julian and the
ruin of the Visigothic kingdom, he begs his correspondent to
write him his views on the pyramids of Egypt! The books
which he wrote in the latter part of his life confirm the con-
temporary tradition of his mental slovenliness. His discourse
couched in the shambling phrases of the pliant demagogue,
while not ungrammatical, is strikingly unidiomatic. When he
endeavored to cover his meanness of spirit with dignified or
distant phrases, he is a pantaloon peeping from behind his
mask. In politics, even in his seeking for office, he affected a
transparent reserve. " I am in the hands of my friends," was
his favorite phrase. Aided by his ability to avoid committing
himself he pushed his way by means of factional politics,
never hesitating to abandon old friends whom he no longer
needed till at length in an age of sharply defined parties he
discovered that the older political methods would no longer
serve.
Kinney was the antithesis of Reynolds. He too was a
product of frontier Illinois and had attained prosperity as a
storekeeper. In that day his business did not seem incongruous
with his calling as a Baptist minister. Hot-tempered,
vehement, a good hater, a keen and open seeker for office, he
exhibited in politics few of the conventional ministerial traits.
He was far more straightforward, far more loyal to his
friends than Reynolds. He was almost completely illiterate,
but except in having his political addresses written for him,
RISE OF JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 131
he made no effort to conceal the fact. His keen mother-wit
was the source of a long series of shrewd characterizations of
men and events, couched in rustic metaphor which often rises
to the height of epigram. Genuinely trained in the world's
culture he would have been the most remarkable man in the
Illinois of his day.
Reynolds' plan of campaign was what might have been
expected. He urged his friends to emphasize the contrast
marked by his service as a ranger while Kinney stayed at home
and speculated, until it was discovered that such comparisons
called out derogatory comments on his own military services.
In the neighborhood of the saline he saw to it that his policy
of low saline rents to encourage large production was empha-
sized. He suggested that Kinney and the Reverend Zadoc
Casey, candidate for lieutenant governor, be decried as minis-
ters of the gospel who meddled with politics; he repeated the
story that Jackson, solicited by Kinney for an office, told the
latter that as a preacher he had an employment higher than
any the president could confer and one which should demand
his full attention. The tale was made to do duty in spite of
Kinney's denial of its truth. In the attacks on Kinney directed
by Edwards, Kinney's record on the state bank received impor-
tant attention ; and toward the end of the campaign Edwards
insisted that it was necessary to inject the subject of the public
lands more forcibly into the contest. Finally, as a last resort
to remedy a " strange defection " among the Methodists,
Edwards played on their old distrust of Kinney as a slavery
advocate. 24
The contest witnessed a use of the press by both sides to an
extent previously unknown in state politics. Of the older
papers, the Illinois Intelligencer under James Hall's editorship
was frankly for Kinney on personal grounds, as Hall was an
Adams man of 1828. Hall accordingly drew on himself much
** Reynolds to Eddy, July 13, 1830, Reynolds to Grant, June i, 1830, in
Eddy manuscripts; Illinois Intelligencer, April 3, 10, 17, 1830; Illinois Gazette,
March 6, April 17, 1830; Edwards to Cyrus and B. F. Edwards, July 15, 1830,
in Edwards manuscripts.
132 THE FRONTIER STATE
abuse ranging from charges that he was a bankrupt and a
defaulter to ridicule of his publication, the Western Souvenir**
The Illinois Gazette edited by A. F. Grant supported
Reynolds; R. K. Fleming, who had edited a Jackson paper in
1828 but had been defeated for election as state printer, was
employed under Breese's direction to print a Reynolds paper,
the Western or Kaskaskia Democrat. Hooper Warren who
had edited the Sangamo Spectator in Edwards' interest at
Springfield moved to Galena and on July 20, 1829, began the
publication of the Galena Advertiser. The Miner's Journal
already in existence there finally threw its support to Kinney.
At Springfield, S. C. Meredith in 1829 set up a Kinney paper
directed by McRoberts, which Forquer vainly tried to capture
under the noses of the opposition by inducements to Meredith.
In the winter of the same year Forquer established the Courier
there, ostensibly as a Jackson paper. 26
That an Adams man should edit even secretly in Reynolds'
interest a Jackson paper was an illustration of the anarchy,
from the view of national politics, implicit in the factional
alliance between the friends of Reynolds and Edwards. Old
Jackson men in the Reynolds ranks, like S. H. Kimmel,
McLean, and even Reynolds himself, had to urge the Adams
men in the Edwards group either to refrain from attacks on
Jackson or to say openly as little as might be on behalf of
Reynolds. The Jackson contingent in the Reynolds party took
the position that they were good Jackson men, often older and
truer supporters of the Old Hero than were the new converts,
and in no wise worthy of being read out of the party because
they deprecated the proscription of Adams men in state politics
or because they had not, like Kinney, been fortunate enough to
gain the president's ear by misrepresentation. 27
25 Illinois Intelligencer, January 9, 1830; Galena Advertiser, July 27, 1829,
January 25, March 29, 1830.
26 Illinois Intelligencer, February 6, 20, April 3, September 29, 1830; Flem-
ing to Kane, September 29, 1828, in Kane manuscripts; Washburne, Edwards
Papers, 467.
2T Kimmel to Grant, October 29, 1829, McLean to Grant, December 18,
1829, in Eddy manuscripts; Washburne, Edwards Papers, 432; Illinois Gazette,
The attitude of the two opposing camps is better under-
stood in view of the fact that during 1829 a hot struggle for
recognition and support from Washington had gone on
between the two factions. Edwards through his brother-in-
law, Duff Green, was in touch with the Calhoun party there;
and apparently he was inclined for a time to speculate on par-
ticipating, four years after 1828, in a contest in which Calhoun
and Van Buren would be the contestants; but Duff Green
warned him that Jackson would almost certainly be a candidate
for reelection. In May Green assured him that Jackson at
length understood the state of parties in Illinois and was
resolved to sustain Edwards and his friends. With this proof
of Jackson's friendship to Edwards it is interesting to compare
a letter of Hooper Warren of July 6, asking Edwards whether
he wished the Advertiser to support Jackson in the new views
of proscription and of opposition to the American system that
had developed since Warren's last conference with Edwards.
In Washington, Kinney with the aid of Kane and Duncan suc-
ceeded during the summer in persuading Jackson to recognize
them in appointments. For the time Edwards' representative,
Duff Green, believed that he had undeceived Jackson; but in
November he had to admit that Duncan's influence with
Samuel D. Ingham had prevailed against Edwards' candidates.
Three months before Ingham had warned S. H. Kimmel that
the administration would recognize no Jackson faction that
had formed a coalition with Adams men. For the time Kinney
appeared to have the indorsement of Washington. 28
In the background of the Kinney-Reynolds contest were
Edwards' perennial ambitions for election to the senate.
Green had already pointed out to him that, if he came into
the senate on his doctrine of the right of the state to the public
lands, it might well be the ground of an alliance of the west
February 16, 1828, December 5, 26, 1829, April 3, 1830; Illinois Intelligencer,
May 17, October 4, 1828. To impeach Reynolds' Jacksonism, the point was
raised that Cook, whom he had supported in 1826, had been beaten because of
his Adams vote. Illinois Intelligencer, May 22, 1830.
28 Washburne, Edwards Papers, 379, 399, 427, 450; Ingham to Kinney,
August i, 1829, in Eddy manuscripts.
i 3 4 THE FRONTIER STATE
and Calhoun's friends in the south against the east. Toward
the end of the campaign Edwards brought the land issue into
the gubernatorial election. The opposition had already
revived the old story of Edwards' land speculations, and now
they opened up on him in full cry, maintaining that his measure
was designed to advance his own pecuniary interest by frus-
trating the west's hope of obtaining by moderate demands a
reasonable measure of relief. Kinney pronounced against
state ownership on the ground that the legislation would allow
the public domain to fall into the hands of wealthy specu-
lators. 29
Forquer was afraid that the intrusion of Edwards' sena-
torial ambitions into the election would result in Reynolds'
defeat. He impressed upon Edwards his belief that if he
appeared as an open contestant the forces of Kane, Duncan,
and Kinney would coalesce and bring about Reynolds' over-
throw and that the opposition was trying to drag Edwards into
the campaign with that end in view. Edwards' friends had
met the charges of a bargain with Reynolds by assertions that
Edwards was not a candidate for the senatorship; but
Edwards, stung by an anonymous attack by Kane, prepared an
address to the people expressing a willingness to enter into a
contest with his antagonist. Forquer advised against its pub-
lication, however, until Edwards should have been openly
attacked by J. M. Duncan, lest its premature appearance would
mean defeat for both Reynolds and Edwards.
But the chief political factor in the campaign proved to
be Reynolds' own personality; his election was a triumph for
his policy of cautious campaigning designed to alienate as few
voters as possible. Further, it meant a passing triumph of
the older factional school of politics over the tendency to wage
local elections on national issues. After his election, the
governor prepared for publication in the newspapers an
unsigned leader announcing that his policy would be one of
29 Washburne, Edwards Papers, 379, 427, 494; Illinois Intelligencer, June
12, 1830; Illinois Gazette, June 12, 1830; Jones to Browne, June 25, 1830, in
Eddy manuscripts.
RISE OF JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 135
moderation and not proscription. Reynolds, temporizing suc-
cessfully with Jacksonism, had gained the full advantage to be
derived both from anti-Jackson voters and from factional
alliances. The conquest of Illinois politics by the Jackson
party was delayed, but it was inevitable.
VII. STATE POLITICS, 1830-1834
THE course of Illinois politics between the years 1818
and 1836 may stand as a warning to the superficial his-
torian of the danger which attends an attempt to describe and
classify political parties at different periods by the same terms
or under the same categories. Not only is there danger of falling
into the comparatively obvious error of using at too early a stage
the terms whig and democrat but also the danger, less appar-
ent, of attempting to explain state politics exclusively in terms
of national issues and leaders. The cautious student must
recognize the fact that state factions differed from period to
period, not only in alignment and personnel but in degrees of
unity and cohesiveness. Thus till 1826 it is easiest to explain
Illinois politics in terms of two local factions. By 1830 it
becomes difficult to use this classification and after 1830 it is
impossible. For three or four years after that date it is neces-
sary to describe politics in terms of individual cliques and
followings, which at first used Jackson's name and then his
measures as issues with which to embarrass their opponents.
Only by degrees did the outlines of what are truly national
parties emerge from the confusion.
The decay of the factional system in Illinois politics is illus-
trated in a series of letters from George Forquer in 1830
which when analyzed are an illuminating commentary on the
political conditions of the time. To Forquer the successful
management of a campaign meant the bringing to bear in favor
of his candidate all influences and groups in any way obligated
to him and the keeping neutral of as many other groups and
influences as possible. "We must make Wilson and Lock-
wood and their friends fight with us. They shall not be indif-
ferent any longer, and hold themselves like Pope, ready to dine
136
STATE POLITICS, 18301834 137
with our enemies whilst our slain carcasses are yet bleeding.
Embroil every man of them in the contest. . . . Could you
write without attacking Kane, would it not be better? If you
can whip his forces by killing off his generals, is it not the
safest way to whip him too ? Fix it so as to force him to attack
as Duncan has done. They intend to have him in the scales.
Give him no excuse to say he has been dragged into it. They
will drag him in." 1 In urging Edwards against openly chal-
lenging Kane to a contest for the senate, he wrote "Every
man here when pushed for his real sentiments believes that
Kinney is quite enough for us at one time. All agree that Kane
and him at once against you and Reynolds and we are gone." 2
The conditions in the Edwards faction made apparent by
these letters were significant of the change that was taking
place in it. The minor cliques of the older party, surrounding
Samuel D. Lockwood, Thomas Mather, and William Wilson,
secure in the spoils of past contests were slow to risk themselves
in battle at the call of their old leader. T. W. Smith and
Breese soon drifted away into independence. Outside the old
Edwards ranks, Kane, Kinney, the Duncans, and Reynolds had
each his little following, or rather a circle on which he was able
to exert influence. The practical politicians counted on com-
binations of these cliques and influences rather than on the
shadows of the two old factions. The times were ripe for the
intrusion into politics of new rallying cries of wider appeal
than personal popularity and for the creation of new parties.
These came to pass through the introduction of national issues
into state politics and of resulting national party divisions.
The disintegration of both factions is strikingly illustrated
in the senatorial election of 1830. Kane and Kinney probably
maintained something more than a benevolent neutrality
toward each other on the governorship and senatorship. The
death of McLean, however, left both senatorships vacant and
caused Wilson, T. W. Smith, R. M. Young, and others to
enter the field each with his personal following. Reynolds was
1 Washburne, Edwards Papers, 519-520. -Ibid., 516-517.
138 THE FRONTIER STATE
thought to favor a coalition between Wilson and Young. Wil-
liam L. May, a member of the Springfield clique, suggested a
coalition between Kane and Smith. The final result was the
choice of Kane and John M. Robinson, a man from eastern
Illinois of whom little is known at this time except that he was
probably opposed to Kane. But while William C. Greenup
gleefully announced to Kane that the Edwards forces were
disintegrating so fast that both Edwards and Reynolds had
offered to sign a recommendation for Kinney to be governor
of Huron territory, Kane was apparently meditating a realign-
ment D. J. Baker believed that he had made tentative ad-
vances through him to Edwards. In January, 1831, Kane
offered to support Edwards for congress in preference to
Duncan. Duff Green through whom the offer was made be-
lieved that Edwards might in this way attain the leadership of
the Illinois delegation. 3
The secret of Kane's vacillation is perhaps to be found in
the situation in national politics. As it reacted on the state it
appeared primarily as a sheaf of personal rivalries. The
Jackson party was split up into cliques. The power of Cal-
houn and of his mouthpiece, Duff Green of the Telegraph
still the official newspaper of the party was waning. Cal-
houn was not the only aspirant for the power of Jackson when
the Old Hero should be ready to relinquish it. Those who had
formerly supported Crawford were now wavering between
their allegiance to their former leader or to Van Buren. Kane's
position was still uncertain, and even in 1831 Duff Green be-
lieved that Edwards might influence the whole Illinois delega-
tion for Calhoun. 4
3 Rountree to Kane, February 15, 1830, Prentice to Kane, January 31,
1830, James M. Duncan to Kane, February 25, 1830, McRoberts to Kane,
March 12, 1830, Greenup to Kane, November 3, 1830, May to Kane, October
21, 1830, D. Turney to Kane, October 15, 1830, in Kane manuscripts; Eddy to
Grant, December 9-10, 1830, Breese to Browne, September 14, 1830, in Eddy
manuscripts; Washburne, Edioards Papers, 557, 569.
* Edwards' information came partly through Duff Green, who believed
Jackson would not run. Washburne, Edwards Papers, 488-489. Green wrote
that he believed Kane, as soon as he thought it safe, would turn on him in Van
Buren's interest. Ibid., 552-554, 570.
STATE POLITICS, 18301834 139
Edwards was anxiously scanning the situation in Illinois
which had become for a man of his type extremely difficult.
His position was hard to maintain. For his strength he still
had to rely in a measure on Adams and Clay men. Yet to
oppose the cause of Jackson openly in a state wide canvass was
to insure defeat. Edwards, still loyal to Calhoun, privately
assured Jackson of his good will and desire for his reelection,
protesting bitterly, however, against the deciding voice that
Kane and Kinney had in Illinois appointments. He assured
Jackson that they were old Crawford men, that they were dis-
tributing offices among totally unworthy men of the same clique
and were proscribing the original Jackson men. He even tried
to inspire Jackson with the fear that they were plotting the
union of diverse elements on Crawford against him, should he
stand for a reelection.
In 1831 at the last state wide election for a member of
congress, Edwards had refused to run; and Duncan had won
easily over Field and Breese, the one an avowed Jackson man
and an opponent of Edwards' land policy, the other a sup-
porter of that policy, constructively a Jacksonian if his land-
bill past were forgotten, but otherwise with a whiggish
tendency.
Edwards was near the end of his career. In 1832 with
the state divided into congressional districts he entered the
race in the first district at a late hour. Charles Dunn and
Breese, the latter not without a trace of bad faith, were already
in it along with Charles Slade. Edwards' belated entrance
prevented him from stumping the district. Mather deserted
his old leader, and the Adams and Clay men abandoned him
because he was supporting Jackson. With a divided vote,
Edwards was defeated by Slade.
As a matter of fact the opposition to Van Buren, disap-
pointed in Calhoun, took up Richard M. Johnson for the vice
presidency. As a western man, he was a candidate who could
be favorably contrasted with Van Buren; and his candidacy
could be made to take the form of a popular protest against
140 THE FRONTIER STATE
the political management for which Van Buren had become
notorious, especially as it was exemplified in the Baltimore
convention, which it was claimed was a device to force on the
country the candidate of a clique. The issue was sharply joined
at a Jackson meeting held at Vandalia, January 2 and 3, 1832.
McRoberts and Ewing after a vain attempt to adjourn the
meeting sine die withdrew with their followers; and Field,
John Dement, and Duncan remained to direct the Johnson
men. An address was drawn up indorsing Johnson and pro-
testing against appointing uninstructed delegates to Baltimore.
Reynolds and Edwards lent the movement their support. On
March 26, in spite of the protests of the Illinois Advocate tKat
a Johnson indorsement would result in throwing the vote
of the state to Clay, a Johnson convention met at Vandalia
to appoint electors pledged to Jackson and Johnson. The
personnel of the convention is most interesting. Some of
the men in it, as James W. Stephenson, J. S. Hacker, and
Dr. Early, emerged sound democrats. Others ended as
whigs. 5
The movement as might have been expected was unsuccess-
ful. The nomination of Van Buren at Baltimore compelled a
reasonable party regularity. Of the Johnson electors, three
refused to serve, but before the election an attempt to reinstate
the ticket was made. From the first the victory of Jackson
and Van Buren in Illinois was assured. Even the whigs, while
believing Illinois ready for a movement against Jackson and
Van Buren, felt that Clay's land bill was too heavy a load for
him to carry in Illinois and professed it wiser to support Wirt
or McLean, whom it was thought Edwards would support.
With 1832 a new element of complexity appeared in the
Illinois political situation which finally in connection with the
older factional alignments and the personal issues of 1829-
1832 caused the redistribution of partisans into whigs and
democrats. Until that year, as nearly as one can judge, if a
5 Illinois Intelligencer, January 21, 1832. John M. Robinson was for
Johnson, Robinson to Grant, February 9, 1832, in Eddy manuscripts; Wash-
burne, Edwards Papers, 579-580.
STATE POLITICS, 18301834 141
candidate was personally loyal to Jackson the voters were
inclined to permit him considerable freedom of belief on what
they considered the minor issues. Tests of party faith other
than adherence to Jackson had not yet been devised. Thus in
1831 Duncan could avow his freedom from partisanship on
political measures and still be supported by Jackson men. 6
But with 1832 and the years following, the demand that not
only Jackson's name but also Jackson's measures be adopted
caused a realignment among the factions.
Till 1832 national issues in general did not take a strong
hold on the people or influence seriously the alignment of fac-
tions. With the Jacksonian policy of the removal of the
Indians from the neighborhood of the settlements the west
was heartily in sympathy, but no one was inclined to court
defeat by opposing it. Edwards' public land policy was, of
course, a prominent issue in 1830, 1831, and 1832; but it was
hardly so expressed as to come into collision with any nation-
ally proposed* measure. When Clay prepared his distribution
measure in 1832 even his friends were inclined to regard it as
indefensible in Illinois.
On the tariff and internal improvements issues, the Clay-
Adams men, if Breese is any criterion, were inclined to push
the fighting. Breese came out boldly for protection and
internal improvements and endeavored to force that issue
against his rival, Coles. The year before he had suggested to
Judge Thomas C. Browne that the Gazette publish an attack
on Kane for his support of the president's internal improve-
ments veto and possibly as a result had drawn from Kane a
letter hedging on both the tariff and internal improvements,
but indicating his opposition to a recharter. The newspapers
occasionally raised the tariff question. These issues, however,
till 1832 seemed not only to create little division among the
factions but also to have aroused little interest among the
people. 7
9 Illinois Intelligencer, July 16, 1831.
''Ibid., December 4, 1830, May 21, September 16, 1831; Breese to Grant,
June 22, 1831, and Breese to Browne, September 14, 1830, in/ Eddy manuscripts.
i 4 2 THE FRONTIER STATE
The election of 1832 saw a sharply drawn party division at
least so far as the Clay element was concerned. Specifically
they assailed Jackson for his policy against internal improve-
ments and a protective tariff and for the danger to the country
and especially to the currency of Illinois involved in his refusal
to recharter the Bank of the United States. Indeed they ap-
parently thought their best chance was to divide the Jackson
men by supporting candidates favorable to their doctrinal
position. The Jackson forces were none too well united on
points of doctrine. The republican Jackson meeting at Van-
dalia, December 14, 1831, took no definite stand on the tariff
question but laid the emphasis on Jackson's opposition to the
"aristocratic doctrine" of vested interest in office, and his
distinctly western attitude as friend to the settler and advocate
of Indian removals. 8
The issues steadily increased in national importance in
the years following 1832. On the question of nullification
Illinois had no doubts whatever. The senate spread Jackson's
proclamation against the nullifiers on its journals and ordered
3,000 copies of it printed. Both houses joined in a resolution
against the nullifiers. The removal of the bank deposits
seemed at the outset to arouse no excitement in Illinois. The
Sangamo Journal indeed avowed its belief that the people of
southern Illinois gave themselves little concern about it and
would not approve the call of a special session to charter a
bank. It avowed also that the destruction of the bank had
been the issue in 1832 and that Jackson was acting under a
mandate from the people, however ill-considered a one it might
be. Not till the spring of 1834 did the calling of meetings to
approve or to protest begin. 9
8 Sangamo Journal, December 8, 15, 22, 1831, January 5, August 2, Sep-
tember 22, October 27, 1832; for meeting at Vandaha see Illinois Intelligencer,
February 18, 1832, and see also December 24, 1831. The Vandalia Whig and
Illinois Intelligencer in its prospectus advocated Jackson's reelection but pro-
nounced for the whig measures. Illinois Intelligencer, March 3, 1832.
The only votes against the first resolution were cast by Davidson, Forquer,
Mather, and Snyder; against the second were William B. Archer and David-
son. Senate Journal, 1832-1833, i session, 70; Sangamo Journal, October 26,
November 2, 9, 1833. See protest of Gallatin in Vandalia Whig, April 3, 1834,
STATE POLITICS, 18301834 143
The two new elements described above, the personal rival-
ries between Jackson's would-be successors and the growing
importance of national issues based on his measures, completed
the breakdown of the older system of politics predicated on
personal loyalty to Jackson and the older factional system.
The flux was not fully completed for some years; not till 1836
can the rearrangements be regarded as the secessions of indi-
viduals and groups from one party to the other rather than as
changes in the alignment of factions.
The best known change, that of Joseph Duncan, came with
a certain dramatic quality and may be stated in detail both as
typifying the forces at work and as being the pivot on which
numerous other changes occurred. Duncan was certainly con-
sulted by Kinney and Kane about the appointments by which
they raised to power in Illinois their friends of the Crawford
following. He had relied for his influence on his close accord
with Secretary Samuel D. Ingham, a Calhoun man who fell in
the cabinet reorganization. In 1830 the Kane followers sus-
pected Duncan's loyalty to their chief in the senatorial contest,
and Kane early in 1831 proposed to throw Duncan over and
support Edwards. It is doubtful if the breach between them
was ever closed. Personal ties doubtless were drawing Duncan
away from his earlier alliance. Further he had maintained a
policy of independence toward Jackson's measures for which
in 1831 he had been criticized at home. He voted to pass the
Mayville turnpike bill over Jackson's veto. Jackson's veto of
the Wabash internal improvement measure doubtless irritated
him more than his temperately worded letters indicate. Re-
peatedly in the session of 1833-1834 he voted against
administration measures. 10
Very possibly by 1 833 he realized that he could no longer
hope for national patronage and accordingly prepared to
relinquish his seat in congress to seek a position of importance
in state politics. Everything impelled him toward a change
and approval, of Hillsboro and Danville in ibid., February 27, June 12, April
13, 1834.
10 Congressional Debates, 1833-1834, p. 2182, 2207, 2375, 2627, 2739.
144 THE FRONTIER STATE
of camps, and by 1833 the opposition to the administration in
Illinois was prepared to accord him enthusiastic support. His
candidacy for governor was announced early in 1833 by the
Vandalia Whig, and the whig papers began a policy of keeping
him before the public. " By keeping him constantly before
them as an old public servant, against whom nothing is as yet
alleged, and confirming by an occasional commendation in the
newspapers the favorable standing he now occupies, they will
be prepared for a formal annunciation when his friends think
the proper time has come for it." u The Jackson-Van Buren
party promptly prepared for war. They sent an agent into the
state, if Duncan is to be believed, under pretext of examining
land offices to stir up opposition to him. The Advocate at
once declared war on him, and indicated the council of revision
as the source of his candidacy. The council was at that time
made up of Reynolds, Wilson, Lockwood, and T. W. Smith,
most of them till recently Edwards' partisans. 12 The Jackson-
Van Buren party began to canvass the list of available men to
oppose him. First Berry was suggested, then Ewing; finally,
November 27, the name of R. K. McLaughlin, Duncan's uncle,
was proposed by a Coles county convention. A month later a
Belleville meeting brought out Kinney and on him the sup-
port of the Jacksonian or Van Buren party finally centered. 13
Duncan by no means received the undivided support of the
whig papers. For some reason the Sangamo Journal opposed
his candidacy with asperity. It was accused by the Shawnee-
town Journal of having been bought up by Slade and Kane
with the federal printing to support Van Buren and oppose
Duncan. 14 The Sangamo Journal had previously denounced
11 Grant to Dement, June 26, 1833, in Eddy manuscripts; Sangamo Journal,
February 9, 1833 ; Illinois Advocate, February 2, 1833.
12 In February it was supposed that A. P. Field was grooming Richard M.
Young for the race. Grant to Reynolds, February 6, 1834 and Reynolds to
Grant, February 10, 1834, in Eddy manuscripts.
13 The Sangamo Journal, March 30, 1833, denied Swing's candidacy, and in
the January 25, 1834 issue, expressed the opinion that Duncan would not run
against his uncle. See also Illinois Advocate, December 7, 1833.
14 Shavmeeto<um Journal clipping in Vandalia Whig, April 3, 1834. The
Alton American was inclined to believe the charge, see issue of April 14, 1834.
STATE POLITICS, 18301834 145
the Banner and the Patriot of Jacksonville for having per-
mitted themselves to be influenced to suppress charges against
Duncan's financial integrity. It charged the existence of a
Jacksonville regency headed by Duncan which sheltered itself
under Jackson's name though it was opposed to his principles.
It countered the charges of the Vandalia Whig by the insinua-
tion that Duncan had bought it to his support with a promise
of the state printing, and by slurs on its opposition to Jackson.
Certainly its opposition could not have taken a form more em-
barrassing to Duncan. 16
In the spring of 1834 the Sangamo Journal gave enthusi-
astic support to the candidacy of General James D. Henry,
the Illinois hero of the Black Hawk War. It is difficult to
estimate exactly what was behind this movement. Henry was
extolled as a man independent of party and as a mechanic; he
was nominated by a series of county meetings, but the hopes
of his supporters were destroyed by his sickness and death in
the spring of 1834. Thereafter the Sangamo Journal inclined
to the support of R. K. McLaughlin.
Of the four candidates McLaughlin offered his record as
state treasurer and his former unflinching opposition to the
state bank. James Adams' position in the campaign is not so
clear; he was perennially a candidate and always an unsuccess-
ful one. In spite of his later democratic affiliations the Chicago
Democrat affected to believe that General Adams would be
elected by the votes of the old Adams men, the stalwart Jackson
votes being split between Kinney and McLaughlin and the
"milk and cider" votes going to Duncan. Kinney based his
hopes of office on his personality, his friends alleging that his
errors were of the head and not of the heart. He was senti-
mentally pictured as a farmer and as a democrat in personal
habits. The attacks he found it necessary to meet were mostly
on his opposition to the canal and on his connection with the
state bank. To the first charge the answer of his followers
was a straight denial ; to the second the claim that the Edwards-
18 Sangamo Journal, February i, April 19, 1834.
146 THE FRONTIER STATE
ville branch of the state bank with which he had been connected
had really given relief to the public and had lost the state
nothing. For the rest he relied on his undoubted allegiance
to Jacksonism. 16
Duncan of course had to stand or fall by his congressional
record, so far as the voters understood it. The Chicago Demo-
crat and the Illinois Advocate, assailing him as a deserter from
Jacksonism, singled out his proposal for a bank and his other
anti-administration votes. The Alton Spectator answered that
he had stood firmly for his principles from the beginning on
both internal improvements and the bank it was Jackson
who had departed from his. At a later time Duncan claimed
that he had never, since 1830, used Jackson's name to carry
his elections, being convinced that Jackson, his mind weakened
by grief at the death of his wife, had been persuaded to drop
his own principles and adopt Van Buren's. 17 Considering the
political conditions in 1834 it is hard to see how any but the
ignorant could have failed to see that Duncan was no longer
in harmony with the federal administration. Possibly the lack
of a specific renunciation of Jacksonism caused it to be taken for
granted that he still made formal profession of faith. In 1834
that was still considered sufficient.
After the election, however, in spite of a few attempts by
Jackson papers to regard his election as a Jackson success,
there could be no doubt of his position. The Sangamo Journal
judging him on his congressional record pronounced him an
opposition man; an anti-administration toast proposed by him
at a dinner after his election should have left no doubt of it;
and the Jackson papers generally took the fact of his apostasy
for granted. 18
18 Alton American, April 14, June 2, 1834; Chicago Democrat, July 23,
1834; Illinois Advocate, April 19, 1834; Alton Spectator, February n, April
17, 1834. The Alton Spectator pointed out that both Kinney and Van Buren
were hostile to the canal, June 5, 1834.
17 Chicago Democrat, March 4, May 21, July 2, 23, 1834; Alton Spectator,
July i, 1834; letter in the Sangamo Journal, February 4, 1837.
18 Chicago Democrat, August 27, September 17, November 12, 1834; San-
gamo Journal, August 30, October 4, 18, December 6, 1834.
STATE POLITICS, 18301834 147
The story is told on doubtful authority that as Duncan was
proceeding to Illinois to take his place as governor, he met
Reynolds, then newly elected to congress ; and after comment-
ing on their exchange of offices, he was told by Reynolds that
they were likewise changing political alignment, Duncan going
over to the whig opposition while he himself had elected to
stay by Old Hickory. Whether authentic or not^the story
shows an acute grasp of the political situation of the day.
Duncan was passing through the zone of doubt in the direc-
tion of the opposition while Reynolds was traversing it in
the opposite direction to a place in the Jackson-Van Buren
ranks.
In 1834 in neither the congressional race of the third dis-
trict between William L. May and Benjamin Mills nor in that
of the second between Casey and William H. Davidson was the
anti-Jackson line sharply drawn. Mills was in favor of R. M.
Johnson for the succession as against May who advocated
leaving the choice to a convention; but both made profession
of faith in Jackson and both were supposed to be at the same
time in favor of a bank. Similarly in the second district,
Davidson while opposing the removal of the deposits from the
bank and favoring its recharter was occasionally at least repre-
sented as pro-Jackson. 19 But in the first district Reynolds,
while running as avowedly a Jackson man, courted the aid of
the same knot of opposition men who were supporting Duncan
for the governorship.
Reynolds claimed the support of A. F. Grant and Eddy at
Shawneetown. A newspaper edited by R. W. Clarke was
established there to support both Reynolds and Duncan.
Friends of both men supported the enterprise by their subscrip-
tions. The race began as a three-cornered one between Slade,
Reynolds, and Adam W. Snyder, a partisan of Kinney. Slade
had voted both for a recharter and against a restoration of
deposits, votes which he had been able to reconcile to his own
19 Chicago Democrat, May 7, 1834; Alton American, January 30, 1834;
S any a mo Journal, February 8, June 7, 1834.
i 4 8 THE FRONTIER STATE
satisfaction by a process of casuistry but for which he was held
up to derision as a wobbler. In the election, however, he was
set down by his opponents as opposed to a bank. The death
of Slade left the decision between Reynolds and Snyder. Both
men, of course, were avowed Jackson men, but Snyder was in
favor of a United States Bank. His candidacy was under
especial patronage of the St. Clair Gazette. Reynolds pro-
posed a bizarre scheme for a new bank and also a temporary
recharter of the old bank. 20 His expressed ideal was a modi-
fied United States Bank, " so that all parties will be satisfied." 21
Reynolds was elected. As the death of Slade and the resigna-
tion of Duncan made necessary special elections to fill out their
unexpired terms, Reynolds and May each in his district offered
themselves for these also on the ground that the additional
terms would give them needed experience and acquaintance.
Reynolds delayed his announcement until he was sure that men
to whom he was under obligation did not offer themselves and
then pulled the wires necessary to make audible the voice of
public opinion soliciting him to become a candidate. Pierre
Menard became a candidate for the unexpired term in
Reynolds' district, and Pope appealed for support for him on
the ground of his benevolence and also because in spite of his
national republican affiliations his name had never been in-
volved in the Jackson and anti-Jackson war. 22 Reynolds pro-
tested that the only result of Menard's entrance would be that
a Kinney partisan would beat him. He accused Pope of
already having gone over to Kinney. This was true in so far,
at least, that Pope had declined supporting him and had taken
up Snyder on the ground that Reynolds was " playing for all
the pockets," an art which indeed was the alpha and omega of
the politics of "John of Cahokia." Again he asked the help
of his Shawneetown friends, but not long after his election
20 Alton Spectator, April 24, May 25, July 15, 1834; Shawneetoiun Journal
clipping in Vandalia Whig, April 24, 1834; Eddy to Clarke, April 26, 1834, in
Eddy manuscripts.
21 Reynolds to Eddy, February 17, 1834, in Eddy manuscripts.
22 " It is hoped that his name is a Talisman to neutralise the senseless noise
about Jackson-ism." Pope to Eddy, August 7, 1834, ' n Eddy manuscripts.
STATE POLITICS, 18301834 149
perceived the truth of Pope's warning that Reynolds was now
" Ultra-Jackson and Anti-Bank." 23
The process of political disintegration in Illinois had
reached its height. Personal jealousies and factional rivalries,
personal adherences to Jackson, Van Buren, Johnson, and dif-
ferences over administration measures had thrown politics
into confusion. The changes that had in four years taken
place in the " Springfield clique " on account of the dominant
Jacksonian powers in the state can be traced and are doubtless
significant of what was passing elsewhere. In 1830 Forquer
found that there was opposed to the Edwards faction in Sanga-
mon county a knot of men probably headed by May, including
A. G. Herndon, E. D. Taylor, and James Adams. About 1 832,
probably disgusted with the failure of the Edwards faction to
follow their leader, Forquer accepted the support of the clique
for the state senate. Two years later he succeeded May as
register at Springfield when the latter resigned that office, to
which he had been appointed through Kane's influence, to enter
congress. It was later charged by the whigs that this was all a
deliberate bargain, by which Forquer had sold himself; and
it was also said that Peter Cartwright had made a bargain
to support Duncan, the report alleging that John Calhoun,
said to be another old opposition man, had bought him up by
the promise of a surveyor generalship. In 1837-1838 the
clique, headed as it was supposed by Forquer, read May but
of the party altogether. Herndon, in 1835, disappointed of
an office, was said to have joined the opposition. 24 Out of
such personal rivalries and alliances cemented by national issues
and national party allegiances was to arise a new political
organization in Illinois based on broad and fundamental
differences.
23 Pope to Eddy, September 23, 1834, in Eddy manuscripts.
24 Sangamo Journal, May 2, 1835, February 6, 13, June 18, July 16, 30,
1836; Chicago Democrat, August 12, 1835. Apparently a letter from May to
Duncan existed as proof of the charge that Cartwright had made a bargain
to support Duncan.
VIII. THE LAST OF THE INDIANS
ILLINOIS in 1830 presented that sharp dualism of devel-
opment common to frontier societies. A small group of
talented lawyers and jurists questing fortune in the west had
brought with them the intellectual outlook of eastern cities;
the towns of Illinois buzzed with political life. Affairs of
state and nation, however, came only as whispers from afar
off to the pioneer who, pushing out farther and farther from
the tiny urban centers of the state, must single-handed win a
home from forest wilds. He had, by this time, satisfied his
most primitive wants. The replacement of the coonskin cap
and leather breeches by store hat and homespun suit indicated
the degree to which all material comforts had advanced ; cabins
were more substantial, clearings a little more extensive, settle-
ments larger and closer together. Opportunities for mental
and social development were still excessively meager. This
poverty the pioneer felt keenly, if inarticulately; but at best he
could enrich his life very slightly. A political campaign
with its sharp personal interests, its clashes, its victories, its
eager seeking and jovial solicitation of the voter formed a
spot of vivid color in the drab months of the year. For the
rest, the annual wolf-hunt, the house raising, the revival meet-
ing must afford stimulus and diversion. Any news, any excite-
ment, was welcomed. A wedding was an event seized upon
and celebrated by the countryside for twenty-four hours; the
report of a murder, the trial of a criminal was sufficient to
draw an avid audience fifty miles. 1 Events like these broke, for
a little, the isolation of the frontiersman's clearing the clear-
ing that was but a hole he himself had painfully cut out of the
malaria infested forest.
1 Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, 1:39-41.
150
THE LAST OF THE INDIANS 151
It was the forest, moreover, that concealed somewhere in
its depths Indians the great menace of the pioneer. To be
sure, this menace was connected only remotely in his mind with
the particular redskin who came begging at his door, whom
he chased out of his cornfields or pursued after a raid on his
hog pen; the latter was a creature to be dealt with good-
naturedly, summarily, or sternly. One could usually drive a
good bargain with him where peltries and a little whisky were
concerned. When " Injuns " was whispered, however, its
black magic called up not the image of these improvident, good-
natured creatures, but that of a mounted gang of demons, who
with wild whoops rode down upon a cabin "to imbrue their
hands in the blood of innocent women and children."
This fear had not for many years been fed by direct expe-
rience. As settlements had thickened in the land, contact with
the whites had broken down the independence of savagery
and had robbed the Indian of the virility that had once made
him a foe to be dreaded. Except on the outer fringes of set-
tlement, knowledge of the Indian was identical with the legacy
of horror tales treasured in each family. Combined with this
fear, however, was hate, engendered by the War of 1812, that
many settlers had brought with them when they emigrated to
Illinois at the close of that conflict. Young, enterprising men,
who in the campaigns of the preceding years had felt the lure
of the untouched solitudes along the Mississippi, came pouring
west to find a home on land that they felt should now be torn
from the hostile Indian. It was this great increase in race
hostility that brought about a new interpretation of Indian
removal. 2 In response to it, Illinois extinguished Indian land
2 Abel, " History of Indian Consolidation West of the Mississippi," in
Annual Report of the American Historical Association, 1906, 1:233-412. Indian
removal, when reduced to its simplest terms, was the exchange of tribal hold-
ings within a state for unoccupied federal land in the far west. Originated by
President Jefferson, the policy had had a vacillating and uncertain career under
succeeding administrations. Indian removal was at times a method of lenient
dealing, at times a means of harsh treatment of the aborigines. Gradually it
became identified with democratic measures, as involving the doctrine of states
rights, with an economic appeal to south and west alike. Jackson, with a
westerner's hate of the Indian, had influenced Indian affairs since Monroe's
administration; his own inauguration left no doubt of the future meaning of
152
titles with astonishing rapidity; small nomadic tribes made it
easy for a man with the zeal of Ninian Edwards to render
vast tracts clear of Indians far in advance of white popula-
tion. To the pioneer, as well as to the politician and land
speculator, Jackson's federal policy of removal of the Indians
to some trans-Mississippi territory was a confirmation of their
own conviction that the land belonged to the white man; they
welcomed the means it supplied of ridding the country of the
redskin.
Except for the episode of the so-called Winnebago War
in 1827 which lasted only long enough to send panic through
the frontier, most Illinoisans of the thirties had had no oppor-
tunity to express the peculiar complex of emotions that made
up their feeling toward the aborigines. The Indians were
far to the north and west of the settlements; for, although
the population had by 1830 grown to over 157,000, it was
confined to the south and central portions of the state along the
wooded rivers and streams. The prairie country was still
almost superstitiously avoided, and it was only the discovery
of lead at Galena which caused a sudden spurt of immigration
to cross the transverse barrier of the Illinois river. The
whole of the north country was a trackless wilderness except
to the fur trader and Indian; even to them much of it was
unknown.
Practically all this land north of the Illinois had been
ceded by the Sauk and Foxes to the federal government in
1804. In November of this year five of their chiefs and
headmen had gone to St. Louis to endeavor to secure the
release of a tribesman held there for the murder of a white
man. It is possible that in the council preceding their depar-
ture, some instruction was given as to the sale of land. The
Sauk and Foxes, small tribes, held much more land than they
used, and they were envious of those tribes near them who
were enjoying annuities from the government. 3 It is, however,
Indian removal. With the passage of the " force bill" in May, 1830, he
committed the government to forcible removal of the Indian to the west.
3 Drake, Life and Adventures of Black Haivk, 60.
THE LAST OF THE INDIANS 153
a matter of conjecture only, as to whether the tribe had
instructed a sale of some sort; but it is certain that the United
States government has usually misapprehended the nature of
the power exercised by the Indian headmen. They repre-
sented in no sense a centralized or autocratic power; what
obedience they secured in civil matters was obtained through
tact and persuasion, and the proved wisdom of their advice.
Individual liberty was paramount in the Indians' scheme of
things ; coercion was unknown among them. A majority never
bound the minority, however small, to regard its decision. In
an evolved Indian government even Jeffersonian democracy
would have been felt an irksome restraint. When this funda-
mental attitude of the Indian is borne in mind the difficulty of
making and keeping any treaty is evident. In this instance the
treaty was negotiated by William Henry Harrison who became
popular with westerners for his success in securing land ces-
sions; it was his custom to deal with factions and isolated bands
by methods somewhat unscrupulous, though the practice
was an invariable trouble breeder. 4 In this transaction he
treated with five chiefs, away from home, on a mission which
was, at least primarily, for a different purpose; while these
headmen were befuddled by fire water, he concluded a treaty
which, in return for an annuity of one thousand dollars, stripped
the Sauk and Foxes of fifty million acres of land. This land,
though overlapping into Wisconsin and Missouri, formed in
Illinois the great triangular wedge between the Mississippi and
Illinois river systems. By the terms of the treaty, however,
the Sauk and Foxes were allowed to live and hunt upon the
land so long as it was the property of the federal government. 5
4 Abel, " History of Indian Consolidation West of the Mississippi," in
Annual Report of the American Historical Association, 1906, 1:267. Jefferson
strongly disapproved of such methods and in May, 1805, he ordered Harrison
to make explanations to certain threatening chiefs and to "counteract the
effect of his own questionable methods."
5 Thomas Forsythe, agent for the Sauk and Foxes, and for this reason
knowing them better than any other white man, in 1832 wrote of this episode:
"The Sauk and Fox nations were never consulted, nor had any hand in this
treaty, nor knew anything about it. It was made and signed by two Sauk
chiefs, one Fox chief and one warrior.
154 THE FRONTIER STATE
In 1816, 1822, and 1825 the Sauk of the Rock river coun-
try, without making any specific reference to its substance,
unconditionally assented to and confirmed the treaty of i8o4. 6
Black Hawk, a war chief who fought with the British in the
War of 1812, acknowledged the land cession when he finally
signed a treaty of peace in 1816, athough he later claimed
that he was ignorant of its conditions. 7
The great village which had for a hundred years been the
principal seat and burying ground of the Sauk was on the
north side of Rock river near Rock Island, with that of the
Foxes three miles away on the Mississippi. 8 Here they lived
during the spring and summer months, while the women culti-
vated the great fertile cornfields, lying parallel with the
Mississippi. The crops from these fields never failed; year
after year they supplied the Indians bountifully with corn,
beans, pumpkins, and squashes. The island across from them
was a garden filled with strawberries, blackberries, plums,
apples, and nuts; and the river abounded in fine fish. The
uncultivated land about the villages afforded rich pasturage
_"When the annuities were delivered to the Sauk and Fox nations of
Indians, according to the treaty above referred to (amounting to $1000 per
annum), the Indians always thought they were presents (as the annuity for the
first twenty years was always paid in goods . . . ), until I, as their Agent,
convinced them of the contrary, in the summer of 1818. When the Indians
heard that the goods delivered to them were annuities for land sold by them
to the United States, they were astonished, and refused to accept of the goods,
denying that they ever sold the lands as stated by me, their Agent. The Black
Hawk in particular, who was present at the time, made a great noise about this
land, and would never receive any part of the annuities from that time forward.
He always denied the authority of Quash-quame and others to sell any part of
their lands, and told the Indians not to receive any presents or annuities from
any American otherwise their lands would be claimed at some future day."
Printed as appendix to Mrs. J. H. Kinzie, Wau-Eun, 383; Royce M Indian Land
Cessions in the United States, 666 and map 16.
Ibid., 680.
7 He says of the transaction, "Here, for the first time, I touched the goose
quill to the treaty not knowing, however, that by that act, I consented to give
away my village. Had that been explained to me, I should have opposed it,
and never would have signed their treaty.
"What do we know of the manner of the laws and customs of the white
people? They might buy our bodies for dissection, and we would touch the
goose quill to confirm it, without knowing what we are doing. This was the
case with myself and people in touching the goose quill the first time." Black
Hawk, Autobiography, 69.
8 The Sauk had about eight hundred acres under cultivation.
THE LAST OF THE INDIANS 155
for their horses, while hunting grounds and lead mines lay
not far away.
Miners on their way to Galena observed this chosen spot,
and about 1823, although the far fringe of settlements was
still fifty miles away, squatters appeared to give the Indians
their first experience of the white man as a neighbor. Appar-
ently at the mercy of the red men, these daring forerunners
were quite untouched by fear; in violation of both federal law
and the provisions of the treaty of 1804, they at once began
to take possession of the Indian cornfields. Of all the vast
domain ceded to the whites, this particular region was the
only part actually used by the Indians; but the newcomers,
feeling that the land by right belonged to the white man, and
relying on the support of both public and official opinion,
worried themselves not at all over fine discriminations. They
wanted the fields. They took them.
The Sauk and Foxes, though a spirited people, had killed
no white man since the treaty of 1816; their meekness under
the treatment of these whites is surprising. Each year the
squatters encroached further upon their fields, continually
fencing in greater portions. Indian women and children were
severely whipped for venturing beyond the limits thus set, and
boys and men were summarily chastised when the temper of
the newcomers was aroused. 9
The proximity of the whites quickly had its effect on the
social organization of the red men. " Many of our people,
instead of going to their old hunting grounds, where game was
plenty, would go near to the settlements to hunt and, instead
of saving their skins to pay the trader for goods furnished
them in the fall, would sell them to the settlers for whiskey!
and return in the spring with their families, almost naked.
. . ." 10 Each year only increased this unhappy condition. The
most important Sauk chief, Keokuk, an able, eloquent, and
9 Black Hawk was himself severely beaten on the suspicion of hog-stealing,
an affront to his dignity that he never forgave. Black Hawk, Autobiography,
83-84.
10 Ibid., Si.
156 THE FRONTIER STATE
sagacious man, felt the futility of protesting at the advance
of the whites. He decided, upon the advice of the Indian
agent at Rock Island, that his people had better remove to
their lands across the Mississippi, and all his influence was
used to bring about the migration.
Black Hawk, a fighter from his youth, now an old war
chief over sixty years of age, was by nature an active protes-
tant. Having had but slight contact with the Americans, and
that, unfortunately, of an untoward nature, he was quite
frankly no friend of theirs. The British, however, had long
ago secured and thereafter retained his friendship. He and
his band made frequent trips to Canadian Maiden, an unfailing
source of presents and flattering words. This old man, his
resentment easily roused and slowly quieted, disdained the
counsel of Keokuk. His reaction in this matter may have been
influenced by the fact that his own power waxed only in days
of war; he was clearly jealous of Keokuk and the latter's sway
over the people, and Keokuk's talk of removing roused the old
warrior's contempt for his supineness. The faction opposing
Keokuk's plan found a ready champion in Black Hawk, who
at one stroke thus divided Keokuk's power and increased his
own, and in addition opened a possibility of the Indians' stand-
ing their ground against the arrogant white neighbors to the
end of retaining the beloved homeland. The struggle between
the chiefs lasted two seasons ; when Keokuk's eloquence finally
persuaded the majority of the tribe to cross the river, Black
Hawk and his band remained staunchly at their village.
In spite of his warlike nature, up to this time the old chief
had in advice and action shown a paradoxical meekness and
forbearance in dealing with the white intruders. For a long
time he was concerned only with being allowed peaceably to
remain in his village. These settlers, however, were bringing
a biting realization of the full meaning of federal claims, and
with the sharp goad of mistreatment he had become convinced
that the treaty to which the whites so constantly referred was
a fraud. Even to Black Hawk's simple standard, the thousand
THE LAST OF THE INDIANS 157
dollars annuity was too greatly disproportionate to the land
involved. The only living signer of the treaty had always
vigorously denied that he had ever so much as considered
the sale of land north of Rock, river, much less consented to
it in a signed treaty. When Black Hawk told his story to the
British agent at Maiden, and later to General Cass, they
affirmed that if it was true the whites could not remove him;
and Black Hawk determined now to employ different tactics
with the intruders. Almost simultaneously with his decision,
however, the squatters, who for seven years had with increas-
ing self-assurance been encroaching more and more daringly
upon his homeland, took out preemption rights over a few
quarter sections of land which included most of the village, the
graves, and the cornlands that time out of mind had belonged
to the Sauks; the force of the provision in the treaty of 1804
that guaranteed the right of the Indians to live and hunt upon
the land as long as it remained the property of the United
States was thus cleverly evaded.
The squatters, now squatters no longer, but preemptioners
with legal property rights over part of the disputed land, at
once ordered the Indians to remove not from the land actu-
ally sold, but to the west side of the Mississippi. To their
astonishment, fortified by advice of friends that the land had
never been legally ceded, Black Hawk turned upon them and
indignantly ordered them to leave the country. Strangers
appropriating their fields, strangers plowing up the graves of
their fathers, strangers in the homeland regarding the Sauk
as intruders these burning realities were dire fulfillment of
the fear of white rapacity that had come upon him when first
he learned that the yearly presents his people had been receiv-
ing were in reality payment for tribal lands. To Black Hawk
it ^appeared incomprehensible that the Great Father should
wink at the forcible seizure of this one small point of land
when the whites had gained from his people such quantities
beside. If such was the case, however, he proposed a stand
against the aliens.
158 THE FRONTIER STATE
At this unexpected change of front the settlers fled in panic.
In April, eight of them sent a memorial to Governor Reynolds
setting forth their grievous wrongs at the hands of the Indians.
It appeared that the Sauk on the Rock river had " threatened
to kill them; that they acted in a most outrageous manner;
threw down their fences, turned horses into their corn-fields,
stole their potatoes, saying the land was theirs and that they
had not sold it, . . . levelled deadly weapons at the citizens,"
and as a final outrage these Indians had gone "to a house,
rolled out a barrel of whiskey, and destroyed it." 11 On April
30, thirty-seven settlers again asked protection from the Sauk,
who it was claimed were acting in " an outrageous and men-
acing manner," and in May, receiving no reply, sent a personal
delegation to the executive.
Governor Reynolds, from memorials, letters, and rumors
was convinced of the imminent danger of an Indian war; in
fact, he proclaimed Illinois in a state of "actual invasion"
and called for volunteers. 12
By June there were six hundred volunteers and ten com-
panies of regulars in the field under General Edmund P.
Gaines, marching across the northern wilderness. They were
a comforting array to the terrified inhabitants. The Indians,
dismayed by this menacing reply to their crude effort to secure
justice, watched the demonstration of the assembled troops
in front of their village on June 25 ; and during the night the
whole band quietly withdrew to their lands in Iowa, so that
the next day the troops entered an empty village. On June
30, 1831, General Gaines and Governor Reynolds were able
to negotiate a treaty of capitulation and peace by which the
Indians not only confirmed the ancient cession of 1804 but
solemnly agreed never to cross to the eastern side of the
11 Drake, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk, 100 ; Stevens, Black Haivk
War, 80-85. Black Hawk avers that he pleaded with the whites to cease selling
whisky, but that one man in particular persisted until he went with a party
of Indians, rolled out a barrel and destroyed the liquor. " I did this for fear
some of the whites might be killed by my people when drunk." Black Hawk,
Autobiography, 89.
12 Sangamo Journal, April 26, 1832.
THE LAST OF THE INDIANS 159
Mississippi except by permission of the United States gov-
ernment.
The Indians, however, had left their growing crops in
Illinois, and it was too late to plant anew in Iowa. By autumn
they were out of provisions. One night a little company of
their young men crossed the river to steal roasting ears from
the crops they had left on their old lands. The whites fired
upon them and complained loudly of the double offense of
thieving and of violating the treaty. Much more startling
was the daring of an expedition of Foxes, who went up the
Mississippi to avenge upon the Menominee warriors the mur-
der of eight Fox chiefs the previous year. 13 They fell upon
a party of twenty-eight drunken braves encamped on an island
opposite the fort at Prairie du Chien, and scalped and muti-
lated the whole band. This to the Indian code was only just
reprisal; Black Hawk indignantly refused to deliver up any of
his band for trial, especially since no such demand had been
made of the Menominee the year before.
During this episode famine conditions continued. At the
invitation of the Prophet, Black Hawk determined to cross
the Mississippi the following spring and raise a crop with his
friends, the Winnebago. He had a childlike conviction that
so long as he showed no warlike inclinations and was not enter-
ing his old village, the government would not molest him.
After his people had been strengthened by a year's plenty, he
hoped to perfect the rosy, if somewhat nebulous, plans that
he had formed from reports brought to him by Indian runners.
They assured him that a powerful coalition of British, Winne-
bago, Ottawa, Chippewa, and Potawatomi stood ready to aid
the Sauk and Foxes not only in regaining their village but in
repaying the humiliation and injustice they had suffered from
the Americans. The supreme importance of filling the stomachs
of his band made the present consideration of war impossible.
With naive security in the thought of his present peaceful
intentions, he with his four hundred warriors took their
* s Sattffamo Journal, May 3, 1832.
160 THE FRONTIER STATE
women, children, and belongings and in full view of Fort
Armstrong, crossed the Mississippi in April, 1832, and started
up Rock river toward the Winnebago country. 14
General Henry Atkinson with a small company of regulars
had recently been stationed at Fort Armstrong to enforce the
demand of the Indian department for the Fox murderers of
the Menominee. Upon news of the invasion, he sent an
express ordering the band to return. Black Hawk, affronted
at his preemptory tone and protesting his peaceful mission of
making corn, refused and continued to refuse when threatened
with force.
Meanwhile, the news had spread, and Illinois was ablaze
with excitement. Conditions in the state were ripe for an
Indian war; a month after Governor Reynolds' fiery appeal,
sixteen hundred volunteers rendezvoused at Beardstown. They
were backwoodsmen, hardy, courageous, excellent marksmen
and horsemen, who had progressed across a continent by the
aid of rifle and ax with an appeal to fisticuffs in case of
personal difficulties. Their independence, their isolation, their
whole habit of life, built on a proud consciousness of Anglo-
Saxon and Jeffersonian tradition, produced the sharpest indi-
vidualism. These men, starving for incident, heard in the call
to arms a promise of a frolic more venturesome than a wolf
hunt; it involved an appeal to the spirit of public service to
hunt down and destroy a pest more deadly than wolves. 15
They themselves were unconscious of the tremendous psychic
hold the savage had established over them in the form of a
fear, which in the face of a threatened reverse would stampede
them in frantic hysteria.
The troops had been gathered in from the fields. Will-
ingly, even in the face of two successive bad seasons, they left
14 When the Black Hawk and party re-crossed to the east side of the
Mississippi River in 1832, they numbered three hundred and sixty-eight men.
They were hampered with many women and children, and had no intention to
make war." Printed as appendix to Mrs. J. H. Kinzie, Wau-Eun, 385; Thwaites,
"The Story of the Black Hawk War," Wisconsin Historical Collections, 12:230.
15 In 1814 the territorial legislature offered fifty dollars to any citizen killing
or taking a depredating Indian, while only two dollars was given for a wolf.
THE LAST OF THE INDIANS 161
their plows, grabbed their rifles, and rode away to form them-
selves democratically into companies at the nearest crossroads.
They chose their officers as children form for a tug of war, by
standing in line behind the man of their choice. Then, whoop-
ing, yelling, firing their guns in the air, they raced off to war. 16
That such troops would be able to understand or submit
readily to discipline was not possible. Allow the man whom
they had recently honored by electing captain a man whom
they knew thoroughly as no better than themselves allow
such a one to take advantage of his position to direct an action
undesirable to them? Incomprehensible! To the recently
elected captain this point of view seemed entirely reasonable.
With an active sense of political favors to come, he was not
the one to insist when thoroughly convinced that such insistence
would effect nothing but his own unpopularity.
The rollicking volunteers, divided into four regiments,
a spy battalion, and two odd battalions, marched to Fort Arm-
strong where, on the seventh of May, General Atkinson
assumed command. It was at once agreed that General Samuel
Whiteside with the recruits should proceed about fifty miles
up Rock river to Prophetstown, there to rest until the ten
companies of infantry regulars from the fort with provisions
could follow in keel-boats. The troops, arrived at Prophets-
town, burned the vacant village by way of pastime and marched
on toward Dixon, with splendid improvidence abandoning
baggage trains and provisions in order to make better time.
Upon their arrival they found two independent battalions of
mounted volunteers under Major Isaiah Stillman, itching to
get into a scrimmage and display their prowess. Accordingly,
Whiteside sent them to spy out the land farther up Rock river
and, if possible, to find the Indians. On the fourteenth of
May, Stillman, with his men on the alert for a chance to scalp
a savage, encamped in a small grove of scrub oak completely
surrounded by open, undulating prairie.
leWakefield, History of the Black Haivk War, 154; Nicolay and Hay,
Abraham Lincoln, 1:89.
i6i THE FRONTIER STATE
The Indians were not far away. For a week Black Hawk
had been in council with the Prophet and the Winnebago; and
to his dismay he was learning that the fair promises of British
and Indian aid awaiting him when he should require were
empty. Hospitality even was not of the warmest. Black
Hawk, himself an unsophisticated old fellow, was often the
dupe of the wily and mischievous who had persuaded him into
believing that which he secretly desired. Added to his own
growing fear that his hopes were groundless came the sharper
one that his people should discover the fruitlessness of their
quest. Disturbing rumors of war preparations among the
whites were brought him. With gathering apprehension he
pushed on to Sycamore creek in the hope that his council there
with the Potawatomi might bring forth something more hope-
ful. But the advice of Shabonee, the friend of the whites, was
well heeded; Black Hawk could effect little. The Potawatomi
were politely aloof; they had no corn to share, much less had
they men. Only a handful of hotheads and jingoes listened
to Black Hawk. The day of a sharp repulse to white aggres-
sion would never dawn; the story of British aid was false;
and the Indians were now too well acquainted with buttered
bread to risk plainer fare.
For Black Hawk the bubble had burst; he was defeated;
he was now ready to return and make corn in Iowa. On the
heels of his resolution came the news of an encampment of
three hundred and forty soldiers only eight miles away. Here
was a chance, with not too great a loss of dignity, to accede
to the whites, and he immediately sent three young men under
a flag of truce to arrange a council at one of the other camps.
The Indians rode to Stillman's eager men, who, toward sunset,
saw the approaching trucebearers nearly a mile away; await-
ing no orders, many jumped upon their horses and ran the
Indians in amid yells and imprecations. While their mission
was being explained five other Indians whom Black Hawk
had sent to watch the effect of his message were observed on
a knoll about three-quarters of a mile away. The excitement
THE LAST OF THE INDIANS 163
in camp increased; first twenty men, then others, dashed away
to bring in the newcomers. The Indians, seeing the headlong
approach, wheeled to ride away. The whites fired; two of the
Indians were killed; and when the camp heard the shots, one
of the Indians who had accompanied the flag of truce was shot
down in cold blood. 17
With the shooting, it became impossible for the officers
to exert any control over the raw and independent men. Here
was the fun they had left home to find. Little groups continued
to gallop away in an irregular stream over the darkening
prairie to join their comrades who had been so fortunate as
to be first in an Indian fracas.
In the bedlam of the camp, the two remaining Indians
escaped; three of the party of five hurried to Black Hawk
with the news of the reception given his flag of truce. Black
Hawk was astounded. He had with him forty warriors only;
but, seeing the pursuing riders approaching, he formed his
men behind a clump of chaparral with a stirring appeal dearly
to sell their lives in avenging their wantonly murdered com-
rades. When the foremost of Stillman's men was all but upon
them the Indians burst from cover with a crackle of rifles
whooping, yelling, and dashing madly into the midst of the
advance guard. That squad in one blinding flash realized its
temerity; imagination peopled thickly the early darkness with
blood-thirsty savages. With a yell of " Injuns ! Injuns ! " the
troops wheeled and fled headlong toward camp the whole
force in a very madness of fear. 18
The astonished Indians pursued, but it was impossible to
come up with the flying foe. They had to satisfy themselves
with dispatching those unfortunates who fell behind. The
men did not stop when they reached camp but abandoning
everything rushed on through toward Dixon. All night and
the next day exhausted men came straggling into Atkinson's
camp with fearful and wonderful tales of the fifteen hundred or
17 Stevens, Black Hawk War, 132-133; Sangamo Journal, October 6, 1832.
18 Captain Adams and a handful of men made a brave stand and fought
till they fell. Stevens, Black Hawk War, 134.
164 THE FRONTIER STATE
two thousand Indians deployed about with diabolical military
genius by General Black Hawk ! 19 Each was convinced that
the slaughter had been tremendous that any not yet arrived
in camp were slain. The actual loss in fact was only eleven
men, but the immediate effect on Indians and whites was tre-
mendous. Black Hawk, feeling that he had been precipitated
into certain war, was elated by his success; the capture of pre-
cious provisions, blankets, saddlebags, and camp equipage
now made it possible for him to think of carrying on hostilities.
Sending out scouting parties to watch the movements of the
whites, he removed his women and children to the swampy
fastnesses of Lake Koshkonong, near the headwaters of Rock
river in Wisconsin. Leaving them here, he and his braves,
with parties of recruits from the Winnebago and Potawatomi,
descended on terrified northern Illinois to harass it with border
warfare.
The panic that had arisen in Illinois at news of the Indians'
first coming was as nothing compared to that which now swept
over the state. Everywhere on the frontier homes were hur-
riedly deserted, while families and whole settlements scuttled
to forts. 20 The frontier shivered with an apprehension which
feverishly increased as stories of bushwhacking warfare began
to come in.
Governor Reynolds at once issued a fresh levy for two
thousand men. This was necessary as the troops, completely
disheartened by Stillman's disaster, clamored to be discharged.
Many had enlisted for a few weeks only; though there was
now direct need of their services a storm of protest arose from
them in which the bad weather, the neglected fields, the lack
of provisions, and the futility of further pursuit, all played
a part as reasons for abandoning the enterprise. The impos-
sibility of carrying on a war with an unwilling militia as
soldiery was only too apparent; late in May the governor
mustered them out of service. Three hundred rangers ree'n-
19 Sangamo Journal, May 3, 14, 24, 1832.
20 Ibid., May 31, June 21, 1832.
THE LAST OF THE INDIANS 165
listed at once so that the frontier might have some protection
while a new army was being raised. 21
During this interval, an irregular border warfare was
carried on in which two hundred whites and about as many
Indians lost their lives. News of the massacre at Indian creek
where fifteen men, women, and children were slaughtered, 22
of the sharp skirmish on the Pecatonica where Major Henry
Dodge and a gallant handful avenged five murdered whites,
and of the desperate attack on Apple river fort hurried the
army into service. In less than three weeks after Stillman's
defeat thirty-two hundred mounted militiamen took the field
under Atkinson. This force was divided into three brigades,
with Generals Alexander Posey, Milton K. Alexander, and
James D. Henry in command. Colonel Jacob Fry's rangers,
Dodge's Michigan rangers, and the regular infantry completed
the fighting force of four thousand men, or ten to one of the
Indian strength. 23
The real problem that faced these commanders was that
of bringing to the consciousness of the unruly men under them
a realizing sense of the necessity of obedience. Neither the
disciplined companies of infantry under Atkinson nor the thou-
sand regulars being rushed from the seaboard under General
Winfield Scott could win the war against a mounted enemy,
unwilling to make a stand. But a militia, however well-
mounted and however intrepid, which refused to submit itself
to discipline, would convert the war into a series of Still-
man's runs.
In General James D. Henry, Illinois found the man for
such troops. A blacksmith in civil life, his avocation had been
the study of military tactics and memoirs. The narrow limits
of the incident called the Black Hawk War afforded him the
^Sangamo Journal, May 24, 31, 1832; Galenian, June 13, 1832; Stevens,
Black Hawk War, 141.
22 Sangamo Journal, May 31, 1832.
28 Thwaites, "Story of the Black Hawk War," in Wisconsin Historical
Collections, 12:246. It is to be remembered that the description of the Wis-
consin country is drawn from contemporary accounts of men suffering from the
hardships of marches through a wilderness.
166 THE FRONTIER STATE
opportunity to display an alert tactical sense, a military judg-
ment far above that of his colleagues, and, most important, a
power in handling men that in a few weeks turned obstinate
material into a trained army.
For some weeks, however, it was not evident that the
second campaign would be more fruitful than the first. Though
all advantages were with the whites, the army seemed unable
to apprehend how weak an enemy they were pursuing. Black
Hawk had no army only a band of warriors heavily encum-
bered with the unaccustomed responsibility of women and
children. For more than a year they had been ill nourished,
and they had now been reduced to a literally starving condi-
tion. The rugged country through which they fled was quite
unknown to them; their guides, as ill-fortune pressed close,
deserted them. Though it was midsummer, these dreary
wastes of bogs, morasses, lakes, and pine forests yielded
neither game, fruit, nor fish. They lived on the bark of trees,
roots, and horseflesh. 24 Black Hawk had selected this deso-
late country in the belief that the whites could not follow into
its fastnesses; but when Atkinson with the main army pursued
him to the headwaters of Rock river at Lake Koshkonong, he
was forced to flee onward, west and north in the hope that he
and his starving band might reach and cross the Mississippi
to safety.
The army, after the hopeful rush on the warm trail to
Koshkonong, only to find a hastily deserted camp, began to
flounder about in aimless marches and unsatisfactory explora-
tions. Spirits rapidly sank. Men grumbled that they could
wander forever in that hateful northern country and the In-
dians could remain that long a will o' the wisp. Sleeping
uneasily on their arms in fear of a night attack, being short
rationed for days at a time, wading hip deep through water
and mud, marching toward nothing but long stoppages all
this they were enduring with never a sight of a hostile Indian !
2 * Drake, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk, 152; Black Hawk, Auto-
biography, 130.
THE LAST OF THE INDIANS 167
The whole thing seemed ridiculously futile; Governor Rey-
nolds and his staff with other prominent Illinoisians having
had sufficient experience of war left for home. By the middle
of July the volunteer force had been reduced one-half. Fatigue,
delay, hardship, privation were not the frolic for which they
had enlisted. 25
Under these circumstances Atkinson fell back to Fort Kosh-
konong to await the return of Henry, Alexander, and Dodge
who with their commands had been sent to Fort Winnebago
for supplies. While there, these officers were positively
assured that Black Hawk was encamped about thirty-five miles
north of Atkinson. Elated at his proximity, they agreed to
disobey orders and to march directly toward Black Hawk.
Alexander, however, almost at once reported that his men
refused to go. Henry, of different stuff, quelled a threatened
mutiny among his officers and with Major Dodge started on
a three days forced march over miles of treacherous swamps.
Then, unexpectedly, they struck the broad, fresh trail of Black
Hawk trying to escape by way of Four Lakes and the Wis-
consin.
The men were rejuvenated. Tents, baggage, blankets,
and even clothing were dumped in a pile in the wilderness;
and the forced march continued. Here at last was a chance
for real fighting and a speedy end to the war; there was no
grumbling even when a terrific rain storm forced the men to
travel over a hundred miles with nothing in their stomachs
but a little wet flour and raw meat. They were hot on the
trail, with the rear guard of the Indians only two or three miles
in advance. Pots and kettles and all manner of Indian camp
equipment lined the way. Exhausted old men, too ill to keep
up with their flying bands, fell behind to disclose by their weak-
ness the straits to which Black Hawk was reduced. 26
25 Reynolds, My Own Times, 251-252; Ford, History of Illinois, 132-135.
26 Ford, History of Illinois, 139-146. Some half dozen of these old creatures,
blind and infirm, were promptly shot and scalped by the whites. Thwaites,
"Story of the Black Hawk War," in Wisconsin Historical Collections, 12:253;
Wakefield, History of the Black Hawk War, 109-110.
i68 THE FRONTIER STATE
Late in the afternoon of July twenty-first, the Indians
came within a mile and a half of the Wisconsin river. To
protect the crossing of the main body, a chosen war party
of about fifty braves, directed by Black Hawk, made a stand
on the bluffs. After a wild charge, the Indians fought lying
down in the tall grass. The whites left their horses behind
and, "with the most terrific yells that ever came from the
head of mortals, except from the savages themselves," charged
the position again and again with a heavy fire. 27 The fighting
continued for a half hour with casualties about even, when
the Indians began to retreat slowly toward the river. Henry,
instead of following up this seeming advantage, did not pursue
them into the unknown, marshy ground ahead. He knew that
disaster would have met his men in the darkness, though the
engagement itself had cost them only one life and eight
wounded. There are varying accounts of the Indian loss, but
this valiant stand of the weakened warriors accomplished its
end; it kept the superior force of the whites at bay until the
band crossed the Wisconsin. 28
For the Indians, ugly misfortune was biting close; they
realized it keenly. Just before the dawn of the day following
the battle of Wisconsin Heights, the troops encamped on the
battlefield were terrified to hear the shrill, eager tones of an
Indian in a long harangue, which they supposed was addressed
to a war party. The Indian guides and interpreters had left
the army after the battle, and no one in camp understood the
oration. Henry felt it necessary to quell the rising fear of
his men by an address reminding them of their dauntlessness
on the previous day, of the diabolical wickedness of the enemy,
appealing to them to stand firm, and prophesying that they
would again be successful. That the Indian's oration was a
speech of surrender in which he confessed their starving condi-
tion, their inability to fight when encumbered by women and
children, and their anxiety to be permitted peaceably to pass
27 Wakefield, History of the Black Hawk War, in.
28 Sangamo Journal, September i, 1832.
THE LAST OF THE INDIANS 169
over the Mississippi, to do no more mischief, was not learned
till after the annihilation of the band at Bad Axe. 29
A large party of women, children, and old men begged
canoes and rafts from the Winnebago and floated down the
Wisconsin, trusting that as noncombatants the garrison at
Fort Crawford would allow them to escape. But a party of
regulars from Prairie du Chien attacked them, capturing
thirty-two women and children; the rest of the party were
killed or drowned during the onslaught; and those who escaped
into the woods perished with hunger or were there massacred
by a band of three hundred Menominee allies under a staff of
white officers. 30
Those of the Sauk who had no means of descending the
Wisconsin started out over the densely wooded hills and inter-
vening black swamps toward the Mississippi. "Many of our
people were compelled to go on foot, for want of horses,
which, in consequence of their having had nothing to eat for
a long time, caused our march to be very slow. At length we
arrived at the Mississippi, having lost some of our old men
and little children, who perished on the way from hunger." 31
On the afternoon of the same day the steamboat Warrior
was seen approaching under the command of John Throck-
morton. Black Hawk, eager that no more of his miserable
band should die, told his braves not to shoot, hoisted a white
flag, and called out in the Winnebago tongue to send a little
canoe that he might go aboard and give himself up. 32 The
captain, though the message was translated to him, affected to
believe that the flag was a decoy and ordered them to send a
boat on board. This was impossible, because every boat the
Indians could secure was being used to carry a load across the
29 Ford, History of Illinois, 146; Wakefield, History of the Black Hawk
War, 115-116, 134.
30 Thwaites, "Story of the Black Hawk War," in Wisconsin Historical
Collections, 12:255; Black Hawk, Autobiography, 132.
31 Ibid., 133. Twenty-five warriors, wounded at Wisconsin Heights, also
died and marked the trail for the whites. Ford, History of Illinois, 146.
32 Sangamo Journal, October 6, 1832.
170 THE FRONTIER STATE
Mississippi and all were far beyond call. The captain in
writing an account of the incident, August 3, 1832, continues:
"After about fifteen minutes delay, giving them time to remove
a few of their women and children, we let slip a six-pounder,
loaded with canister, followed by a severe fire of musketry;
and if ever you saw straight blankets, you would have seen
them there. . . . We fought them for about an hour or more
until our wood began to fail. . . . This little fight cost them
twenty-three killed, and of course a great many wounded.
We never lost a man. . . ." 33
Such was the reception of Black Hawk's last chance at
surrender, for the army bringing destruction was close upon
him. Following the battle of Wisconsin Heights Henry's
command, in need of provisions, fell back to Blue Mounds
whence the whole force under the command of Atkinson started
in pursuit of the Indians. No effort was spared to make time
over the toilsome way and the army was only twenty-four hours
behind Black Hawk in reaching the river. Upon their ap-
proach, the Indians, in order to gain time for crossing, sent
back about twenty men to intercept the army within a few
miles of their camp. This party was to commence an attack
and then retreat to the river three miles above the Indians.
The ruse succeeded. The attacking party fired and then fell
back before the charge of the whites; the army immediately
began a hot pursuit.
Henry was bringing up the rear with the baggage; Atkin-
son, jealous that the Illinois militia and its commander rather
than the regulars with their chief should have discovered the
enemy and won a victory, had placed the recently victorious
brigade in the rear and had left it without orders. Reaching
the point of attack, Henry plainly saw the main trail leading
lower down. His three hundred men were formed on foot
and advanced upon the main body of three hundred Indians,
who were taken completely by surprise. They fought des-
33 Drake, Life and Adventures of Black Haiok, 153-154; Ford, History of
Illinois, 156-157.
THE LAST OF THE INDIANS 171
desperately; but in their famished condition they were no match
for their opponents, who with bayonets fiercely forced them
back from tree to tree toward the river. Women, with children
clinging around their necks, plunged desperately into the river
to be almost instantly drowned or picked off by sharpshoot-
ers. 34 Atkinson, hearing the din behind, returned a half hour
later, and the slaughter proceeded more fiercely than ever.
The steamboat Warrior came back to rake with canister the
islands that some of the Indians had reached. Old men,
women, and children alike were slain. "It was a horrid sight,"
wrote a participant, " to witness little children, wounded and
suffering the most excruciating pain, although they were of the
savage enemy, and the common enemy of the country." 35
The massacre of the Bad Axe continued three hours. One
hundred and fifty Indians were killed outright and as many
more lost their lives by drowning. About fifty, mostly women
and children, were taken prisoners. Three hundred Sauk
succeeded, either before or during the battle, in reaching the
Iowa side, to be there set upon by one hundred Sioux, sent out
by General Atkinson; half of them were slain, and many
others died of exhaustion and wounds before they could reach
their friends in Keokuk's village. Thus by the second of
August not more than one hundred and fifty of the band of
nearly a thousand which crossed the Mississippi in April, lived
to return to their lands in Iowa.
On August 7, 1832, General Winfield Scott, who had been
delayed by the outbreak of cholera among his troops, arrived
to assume command. 36 The following day he mustered the
34 Sangamo Journal, October 6, 1832, September 7, 1833.
35 He piously reflected, however, that " the Ruler of the Universe, He who
takes vengeance on the guilty, did not design those guilty wretches to escape
His vengeance for the horrid deeds they had done, which were of the most
appalling nature. He here took just retribution for the many innocent lives
those cruel savages had taken on our northern frontiers." Wakefield, History
of the Black Ha<wk War, 132-133.
30 Sangamo Journal, August 2, 1832. The asiatic cholera first reached this
country in June, 1832, and broke out among Scott's detachment of troops while
they were passing up the Great Lakes. It was so virulent that two of the four
vessels proceeded no farther than Fort Gratiot; the others, after a period of
delay reached Chicago in July. Fort Dearborn was converted into a hospital,
172 THE FRONTIER STATE
volunteers out of service. Black Hawk, with several of his
prominent men, was taken prisoner and held as hostage for
some months, during which time he was taken through the
eastern states so that the white man's power might be fully
impressed upon him. In June, 1833, he was released, and
shorn of all power the old chief returned to the remnant of
his people in Iowa. "Rock river," he said, "was a beautiful
country. I loved my towns, my cornfields, and the home of
my people. I fought for it. It is now yours. Keep it as we
did." 37
He was conquered; no other Indian in Illinois questioned
the dominance of the white race. The north country was now
ready for white possession.
where the pestilence raged violently for several days; checked there in August,
it again broke out among the troops at Rock Island, to be finally arrested by
removing the men to small camps on the Iowa side of the Mississippi. Quaife,
Chicago and the Old Northwest, 328-337; Stevens, Black Hawk War, 242-249.
37 Ibid., 271 ; Quaife, Chicago and the Old Northwest, 337. Thwaites,
"Story of the Black Hawk War," in Wisconsin Historical Collections, 12:264-
265.
IX. THE SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTH
EVEN before the Indians had retreated from northern
Illinois, the advance of settlers into that region began.
This advance of population northward is one of the most sig-
nificant facts in the history of the decade from 18301840. It
influenced not only the character of the population through
the type of immigrants who poured in, but also the demands
of the state for public land legislation and the consequent
course of political events. Further by making evident the
need of better transportation the immigration provoked the
internal improvement mania of 1837. The land speculator,
as elsewhere in Illinois, seeing a future metropolis in his town
site, turned to a railroad as the quickest means of realizing his
vision; and what was of greater consequence of persuading
others that it was a reality.
By 1830 it was evident that the tide of immigration was
passing by the vacant lands of southern Illinois and turning
to the north. Already in the rich bottoms of the Sangamon
the pioneer stage had passed, and settlement was thickening in
Sangamon and Morgan counties at a rate that was provoking
the jealousy even of Madison and Greene, to say nothing of
the counties to the south. 1 Throughout the Military Tract
the population was beginning to spread; the southern end of
the tract had been settled ever since the days when Shaw and
Hansen had contested the throne of the kingdom of Pike; but
now pioneers were moving north. Peoria on the Illinois river
was laid out in 1826. In the same year an Ohio speculator
plotted Lacon under the name of Columbia. When in 1826
a pioneer from Bond county settled near Magnolia his nearest
1 Alton Spectator, November 23, June 25, 1833 ; Sangamo Journal, January
19, February 2, July 12, 1833.
173
i 7 4 THE FRONTIER STATE
neighbors were fur traders at Hennepin. In 1835 he sold out
his holdings for $4,200 only to lose his profits in town lot specu-
lation. In 1830 the county of Putnam, then including Bureau,
Marshall, and most of Stark, had 700 inhabitants. 2 The town
plots of Macomb and Monmouth dated from 1831. Rush-
ville, in 1829 a hamlet of seven cabins, was incorporated in
1831 with 1 80 inhabitants.
The spread of population tells a part of the story. 3 In 1831
there were some ten thousand people in the southeastern part
of the tract Calhoun, Pike, Adams, Schuyler, and Fulton
and the increase of population to this day has necessitated the
formation of but one additional county in that region. Else-
where in the tract there were some two thousand inhabitants,
most of them in Hancock, Knox, and Henry; north of them
there was a straggling population. The Indian traders,
Colonel George Davenport and Russell Farnham at the Sauk
village, were the leaders of a few squatters, whose settlement
later became Rock Island; and at Dixon's Ferry where the
Peoria-Galena trail crossed the Rock there was a little settle-
ment with a few others along the trail above it. By 1840 Knox
county alone had seven thousand inhabitants, while the four
counties just north and west, Jo Daviess, Whiteside, Carroll,
and Rock Island, had together a population of some nine
thousand persons. 4
Another interesting means of visualizing the settlement of
the north is found in the record of the public land sales, though
one must be careful to make the proper allowance for the
activity of the speculator. Illinois land sales for the period
were very speculative in character, varying more from year to
year than those in Missouri ; in all the west the prevailing rule
was large sales in one state in one year and in another the
next. Thus in 1834 less land was sold in Illinois than in Ohio,
Indiana, Alabama, Mississippi, or Michigan. In 1835 the
2 Peoria Register, April i, 1837, May 5, August 25, September 8, 1838;
Pooley, Settlement of Illinois, 380, 381.
3 Ibid., 559.
4 Sixth Census of the United States, 376.
^HANCOCK kDONOUoJ-'' L)LTON -^
Population of Illinois
per Square Mile in
1833
SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTH 175
sales leaped from 354,013 acres to 2,096,623, outstripping
Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Alabama. Illinois did not dis-
tance Mississippi till 1836. Again in 1836 Indiana outran
Illinois. 5 As passing events drew the attention of the specu-
lator now to this state, now to that, the sales rose to high
figures, then fell to comparatively low ones. A glance at the
table of sales reveals the fact that the boom of 1835-1837
was most evident in the western and central Illinois offices
Edwardsville, Springfield, and Quincy and at Chicago. In
the other Illinois offices the increase was more uniform, show-
ing least in the ill-starred Vandalia district. In all the offices
the sales reached their height in 1836, then showed a rapid
decline and a more moderate rate of sales thereafter.
Before examining in detail the settlement of northern
Illinois it is necessary to consider for a moment the unusual
speculative conditions which existed in the Military Tract.
This territory lying between the Illinois and the Mississippi
rivers had been set aside for the location of military land war-
rants issued to soldiers in the War of 1812. By 1837, 17,075
patents had been issued for 2,831,840 acres of land. 6 This
by no means included the whole which contained 3,500,000
acres. Further, all tracts much in excess of, or much less than,
1 60 acres had been excluded from selection. Accordingly the
government still had considerable desirable land in the region.
The greater part of the lands, however, passed into the hands
of speculators. Some of it, forfeited for nonpayment of taxes,
was snapped up by such Illinois magnates as Ninian Edwards.
The general policy of speculators was to hold out for high
prices. Romulus Riggs of Philadelphia, who affected a senti-
mental interest in the state and named his daughter for it,
offered in 1837 two hundred and sixty-six quarter sections for
sale at prices which S. H. Davis supposed would run from five
to forty dollars an acre. 7 Davis pointed out that it was foolish
5 Executive Documents, 24 congress, 2 session, number 6, p. 8, n; Senate
Documents, 25 congress, 3 session, number n, p. 12, 16.
6 Executive Documents, 25 congress, 2 session, number 83.
7 Peoria Register, October 14, April 8, July 8, 1837.
i 7 6
THE FRONTIER STATE
to pay such prices when federal land of good quality could still
be had for $1.25 an acre, especially in Peoria and Knox
counties. 8
During the same period the prices of town lots also showed
the influence of the speculators' activity. In 1836 lots in
Quincy sold as high as seventy-eight dollars a front foot. In
April, 1837, desirable town lots in Monmouth were worth
one thousand dollars. Less desirable ones were selling at the
rate of seventy-five to one hundred dollars. In Peoria at the
A TABLE or
1820
1821
1822
1823
1824
1825
1826
1827
1828
1829
Shawneetown
2,392
3,329
2,050
1,253
2.278
1.357
2.086
3.340
4,512
8,143
Kaskaskia
1,658
1,627
1.661
793
1.278
711
1,901
2.256
3.415
6,380
Edwardsville
2,649
35.243
5.373
11.223
5,541
5.748
6,584
8.398
18,829
28.602
Vandalia
9,227
2,205
640
614
895
1,472
1,743
3.591
19.405
Palestine
954
16,474
7.903
11.936
10.323
12,915
9,466
20.537
47.221
Springfield
38,720
22,339
26 767
56,122
33,398
45,206
86,492
Danville
Galena
Chicago
Totals
6,699
50 380
27 763
60 532
43 986
45 801
80 080
58 601
96,090
196.243
This table Is compiled from the following sources : Executive Documents, 21 con-
gress, 2 session, number 2, p. 57 ; ibid., 23 congress, 2 session, number 3, p. 92 :
ibid., 24 congress, 1 session, number 5, p. 10 ; ibid., 24 congress, 2 session, number 6,
p. 8 ; ibid., 26 congress, 2 session, number 38, p. 10 ; Senate Documents, 23 congress,
1 session, number 9, p. 62 ; ibid., 25 congress, 2 session, number 11, p. 13 ; ibid.,
25 congress, 3 session, number 17, p. 8 ; ibid., 26 congress, 1 session, number 21,
p. 13.
same time the best lots sold for one hundred dollars a front
foot; 9 and in March, 1837, there were twelve or fourteen
houses within sight on Kickapoo prairie when nine months
before there was not a house.
In the Rock river country the effects of the boom of 1836
1837 were more apparent. On the way to Savanna in Carroll
county, Dayton, Cleveland, Portland, Lyndon, and Union
Grove had all been laid out in 1836, most of them then having
from three to twelve houses, with lots selling at from ten to
one hundred and twenty-five dollars. On the road to Galena,
8 By 1838 land near Peoria cost from ten to thirty dollars an acre; land in
the tract could then be had for three to five dollars an acre. Peoria Register,
October 20, December 8, 1838.
9 Ibid., April i, 1837.
SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTH 177
Grand Detour and Dixon had been laid out in 1836. In 1839
they were towns of fifty houses, and the most desirable lots in
them and in Oregon were held at from four hundred to six
hundred dollars. 10
It was in the northeast, however, that the records of land
sales indicate the highest prices and most rampant speculation.
The price of unimproved land in the vicinity of Ottawa had
in 1838 increased to three dollars an acre. In the years 1835
1837 land speculation was focused at Chicago. June 18, 1834,
ND SALES
830
1831
1832
1833
1834
1835
1836
1837
1838
1839
7.720
20,523
17.624
28.936
6.904
10,299
160.430
100.977
54.102
97.858
5.000
11.186
17.417
29.235
15.196
19.870
156.738
105.405
90.303
149.108
30.020
100.350
80.713
92.261
124,302
345,794
503,572
111.823
42.789
58.904
15.362
43.174
8.021
21.615
20.207
29.165
127.345
183.891
109.516
178.239
36.413
54.872
23.773
22.043
22.135
38,376
285,025
144.744
106.547
143,123
)1.933
99,496
59.996
109.642
66.804
478.976
480,837
104,388
68.835
29.999
160
1.118
29.604
36.131
367.337
r.69,37(?
142,909
165.243
50.776
9,647
13.710
26.901
62.331
155.784
277.023
67.323
35.690
35.240
280.979
202.365
35,764
87.891
229.471
370.043
436.992
15,618
17.640
160.154
T6.448
339.408
122.372
360.237
354.010
2,096.623
3,199,703
1,012,842
778,556
1.132.872
the Democrat remarked the fact that seventy-five buildings
had been erected in Chicago since spring. By December the
city had a population of 3,279. Next year strangers were
crowding in so fast that for want of accommodation they were
sleeping on floors. Provisions were scarce, and flour sold at
twenty dollars a barrel. It became necessary to meet the
criticism of the envious east with assertions that prices of one
hundred and fifty-five dollars a foot for town lots were based
not on speculation but on the exigency of the business situation.
Lots, that in the spring of 1835 sold for nine thousand dollars,
by the end of the year were held at twenty-five thousand dol-
lars; and rents were correspondingly exorbitant. 11
The same effects of feverish speculation and settlement
were to be seen to the south of the Illinois river. In the nar-
rative of a journey to the northeast of Springfield in 1837,
Bloomington was noted as a town with six or eight stores,
10 Peoria Register, May 25, June i, 1839.
11 Chicago American, August 15, 1835, January 2, July 9, 1836.
178 THE FRONTIER STATE
separated from Decatur by an almost unsettled country.
Mackinaw had drawn together twenty-four houses and five
stores, the existence of five or six mill " seats " within two or
three miles being an attraction. Speculative town sites were
scattered far and wide. Washington in Tazewell county, with
three or four hundred inhabitants, had four stores, two black-
smith shops, one cabinet shop, a steam mill, four schools, and
six liquor-selling establishments designated under various
names. 12 The nucleus of a town was a mill to grind grain, a
store to supply dry goods and hardware for the sustenance of
the family and the supply of the farm, and a grocery or public
house to supply wet goods for the comfort of the inner man.
A special feature of the settlement of the north was the
coming of settlers in colonies or organized groups. As early
as October, 1832, Simeon Francis, who was inclined to depre-
cate the tendency to form colonies, noted wagon trains passing
through to Fulton county from Ohio and another company of
emigrants from Vermont, which led him to comment on the
advantages for the settler of prairie and timber country.
Sometimes there was more of the speculative than of the group
spirit in the movement, as when in 1839 it was rumored that
six eastern capitalists were about to offer for sale to actual
settlers forty thousand acres near Mt. Auburn in Christian
county. This, however, was not a typical case. La Grange
in Henry county was settled by a colony from New York and
New England that bought twenty thousand acres, setting apart
a quarter section for a town site. 13 In 1833 a caravan of
fifty-two people from Vermont, New Hampshire, and northern
New York, led by the Lyman brothers, came by wagon to
settle in Sangamon county, the country having been previously
explored by two of their number. A Connecticut colony estab-
lished Rockwell in LaSalle county. In 1836 three colonies
were located, one at Tremont in Tazewell, one in Knox county,
12 Sangamo Journal, June 10, September 9, 1837.
13 1 bid., October n, 20, 1832. As early as 1834 there was a society in
Massachusetts, the Old Colony Brotherhood, to promote emigration to Illinois.
Chicago Democrat, November 12, 1834.
SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTH 179
and one somewhere near Varna called Lyons. The founding
of Weathersfield in Henry county by a colony from the Con-
necticut town of that name is of interest. The first settler
came out to the purchase in October, 1836; in the next year,
sixteen men were there, six with their families; by July of
1839 there was a population of one hundred. Each colonist
had a quarter section of prairie, twenty acres of timber, and a
village lot. In 1836 a New York colony settled at Galesburg
on sixteen sections of which one thousand and four acres were
reserved for a college. The purchaser of each eighty acres
was allowed the free tuition of a youth at any time within the
limit of twenty-five years in the institution which is now known
as Knox College. In 1839 a Catholic colony was projected at
Postville in Logan county. 14
It remains to consider the broader economic principles
underlying the progress of the individual settlers in the north.
These are not so obscure as those effecting the settlement of
southern and central Illinois in the preceding decade. In fact
it is possible to describe the processes of home-making from
abundant data collected almost on the spot by careful observers
in so many specific instances as to make generalization possible.
The problem of the settler in this decade was to sustain
himself on the land while he broke and fenced enough prairie
to farm successfully. Instead of grubbing up the underbrush
and planting his corn in the shadow of girdled trees as the
earlier pioneer did, the later settler added to his field by break-
ing each year a little more of the tough prairie sod. When he
himself did not own the oxen necessary for the work, he was
able to hire it done at a fairly well-established price of $2.50
an acre. Similarly there were standard prices for fencing
usually $1.25 to $2.00 a hundred rails, a rate increasing with
the distance it was necessary to haul them. At every turn
whether for breaking prairie or hauling rails, the use of oxen
was necessary and the man who located his farm on heavy
14 Peorla Register, July 8, 1837, May 12, June 30, 1838, July 6, 1839; San-
gamo Journal, January 23, 1836; Gale, Brief History of Knox College, passim;
Chicago Democrat, May 22, 1839.
i8o THE FRONTIER STATE
prairie at a distance from timber found himself penalized for
his choice in dollars and cents.
The generally established principle for the location of a
farm was that it must contain both prairie and timber, usually
in a ratio of two to one. A man could, it is true, avoid the
necessity of having timber of his own by helping himself from
timber lots still belonging to the federal government or owned
by nonresidents, but to some New England consciences the
latter method if not the former seemed unethical. For the
future development of a farm, however, the wise man held to
the proper proportion of timber and prairie as essential. The
speculator accordingly made haste where he could to seize on
the timber at the edges of the great prairies, secure in his
knowledge that those who were foolhardy enough to enter the
adjacent untimbered land would in the end have to buy from
him at his price.
Still, as the decade passed, men began to assume such risks.
An observer in Tazewell county in 1837 noted with surprise
that settlers had pushed out four or five miles into the prairie.
Repeatedly it was proposed to plant timber on the prairies, or
to use "stone coal" for fuel and to substitute sod fences or
white thorn hedges for the usual rail fence. In 1 839 the cost
of putting a rail fence around a "forty" was from two to
three hundred dollars, a rate which seemed to call for a more
economical system of fencing. It was this need that caused
the popularity of the Osage orange hedge which was advocated
by Jonathan B. Turner. In the minds of most settlers, how-
ever, proximity to timber as to water was still essential. 15
His selection of land once made, the settler's method of
conquering it depended on whether or not he had money. If he
had financial resources, he built a cabin for his family, bought
or hired several yoke of oxen, and set to breaking prairie at a
rate of twenty to forty acres a year, meanwhile buying grain
to sustain his family and his oxen. His sod corn, however,
16 Sangamo Journal, February 2, 1832; Peoria Register, August n, 1838;
Chicago Democrat, March 25, 1834.
SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTH 181
raised on the newly broken prairie, unless the hogs got into it
while it was still unfenced, produced perhaps fifty bushels an
acre. Sometimes he came out alone in the spring to plant the
first crop and brought his family in the fall. If on the other
hand he had merely his own labor and a yoke of oxen, he
easily found enough work to support his family, while in his
spare moments he improved his own land. If he was a skilled
carpenter or millwright, he was sure of good wages and he
might rent a farm while waiting to develop his own claim. If
the owner stocked his leasehold for him, the rent was half or
two-thirds of the produce. If he stocked it himself, it was
one-third. Meanwhile his wages, if he was industrious, at
length enabled him to buy a claim and usually to enter it at
government price when the land was put on sale. 16
An integral part of this system was, as may be imagined,
a recognition of the binding force of squatters' right. Long
before the country was put on sale by the federal land officers,
squatters had established claims on the most desirable combi-
nations of timber, prairie, springs, and healthful sites. Such
claims the rough and ready custom of the frontier accepted as
valid, and another settler coming on the land was forced by
public opinion to recognize the claim by buying off the occupy-
ing claimant. Except where extensive improvements had been
made, the prices of such claims were not high; but the business
was moderately profitable, and many pioneers made and sold
one claim after another in their progress toward the sunset.
This perennial squatter, so obnoxious to the eastern congress-
man, was defended by the westerner, because he was aiding in
the development of the country by enabling the permanent
settler to purchase even in the wilds a little grain, a few broken
acres, and a cabin that, until other itinerant squatters had
helped him to raise a better one, would shelter his family. 17
Property rights so acquired and transferred were real
bases of land titles and wealth, and there were exact rules to
1B Peoria Register, July i, 1837, April 7, September i, 29, 1838, June 15,
1839.
17 Ibid., August 25, 1838.
i8z THE FRONTIER STATE
govern them. Thus in the early days of the settlement of the
north, laying four logs for the foundation of a cabin estab-
lished a claim for the duration of a year. In order to keep off
the claim jumper, it was necessary in 1837 to build a cabin
sixteen or eighteen feet square or to break five acres of land.
These improvements served to hold the claim for six months.
In the Military Tract the usual claim was one hundred sixty
to two hundred forty acres, but in the north three thousand
acres could be so held, and even town sites were said to have
been located on such claims. 18
In the face of legislation and executive rulings framed by
indignant eastern statesmen, such claims were maintained by
force of public opinion, usually manifested in the settlers'
meetings, which before each district was put on sale bound all
settlers to hold together in support of each other's claims
against outside bidders and sometimes even established boards
of arbitration to decide disputes between claimants. Some-
times, in case settlement had preceded survey, these boards
devised ways by which each man might make secure his im-
provements by a common bargain. Having once reached an
agreement among themselves, the settlers attended sales in a
body to exercise moral suasion on any rash outsider who dared
to bid over the minimum for an "improvement." Under
such circumstances scarcely a tract of land was struck off at
ordinary sale at more than $1.25 an acre. 19
The settlers were not able in the same way to guard them-
selves against usurious interest charges in case they had to
borrow money to buy their claims. Frequently a sale was set
at a time that seemed almost designed to give the money lender
his opportunity, before crops were harvested or shortly after
money had been put into improvements on assurances that the
sales would not take place for a year. At such times short
term loans brought ten per cent a month, thirty to fifty per
cent a year, and thirty to forty per cent for two years. A
16 Peoria Register, July i, 1837, J u 'y 28 l8 3 8 -
19 Chicago American, January 14, 1837; Chicago Democrat, March 9, May
4, July 20, 1836; Executive Documents, 25 congress, 3 session, number 241.
SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTH 183
lesser annoyance was the seeming caprice of land office receiv-
ers in the designation of the bank notes which they would
accept. Frequently it was charged that, by refusing to take
the money brought to them, the receivers compelled the buyers
to pay a brokerage of from two to five per cent to have it
"shaved" by some local financier. Land office officials were
often charged with trickery and with speculation in this and
other ways. 20
As has been said before the determination of the national
public land policy turned on the fact that the economic interests
of east and west and their theories of the purpose of the public
domain were fundamentally different. To the easterner the
public land was the heritage of the states, bought by the blood
of their sons in the Revolution, and the pledge of national
unity and good faith. To him as to Alexander Hamilton it
was the source of a fund for public finance, not the future
home of a great part of the American people. 21 Indeed as the
easterner saw settlers flocking into the new lands of the west
draining eastern towns of labor and leaving the farms in the
old cradles of liberty to revert to wilderness, he sometimes did
not attempt to conceal his dislike of western settlement and his
desire to retard its progress. To the westerner who com-
plained that settlement was too slow and who called for legis-
lation to accelerate it, he listened with ill-concealed derision.
Against the squatter, that typical western figure, the
easterner's wrath was especially aroused. He considered him
a worthless trespasser on the public property, whose trespasses
had repeatedly to be condoned by preemption acts. Said
Samuel A. Foot : " The disposal of the public lands has been,
in this way, absolutely wrested from the Government, and
monopolized by speculators and squatters; land system is vir-
tually broken down, and we are gravely told, * it is best for us
20 Pe or'ta Register, August 4, September 29, November 17, 1838; Chicago
American, October 7, 18, 26, November i, 1839; Sangamo Journal, June 25,
July 30, 1836.
21 Congressional Debates, 1830-1831, p. 471. Ohio was passing out of the
ranks of the public land states. Ibid., 1831-1832, p. 1452.
184 THE FRONTIER STATE
it should be so,' and nothing remains for us but to give the
squatters preemption rights; and, instead of legislating for
them, we are to legislate after them, in full pursuit to the Rocky
Mountains, or to the Pacific Ocean." 22 In the mind of the
easterner the squatter was a prolific source of trouble with the
Indians, equally galling to the humanitarian sentimentalists
from districts that had not heard the war whoop since Queen
Anne's War and to the thrifty public financiers. Of the squat-
ter's lauded services as a pioneer of settlement, the eastern
congressman was frankly skeptical.
On the other hand, to the westerner from the public land
state the vacant national domain appeared as the source of
freeholds for uncounted thousands, the basis of the majesty
and power of great commonwealths. Only let the govern-
ment unbar the gate and all this dream would speedily be real-
ized. Meanwhile, so long as men without money had to squat
without title upon the public domain and men with money had
to limit the extent of their exploitation by the high government
price of wild land, all these advantages were postponed. States
sat with the greater portion of their lands under the control of
a landlord who elected to keep it desert, yielding no revenue
to the state, adding nothing to its population and wealth. The
public land policy, that in the opinion of the easterner was
draining the older states of population, to the mind of the
westerner was locking up the west from settlement. The one
trembled at the rapidity of change and development, the other
fretted because he saw how much more rapid settlement might
become under more liberal land laws.
The debate on Foot's resolution, which was designed to
limit the sale of public lands by forcing the sale of those already
on the market, apart from its significance in constitutional his-
tory, places the two points of view in sharp contrast. To the
westerner it appeared that the Connecticut senator's inquiry,
by stopping surveys, would leave only undesirable and picked
over lands in the west, would cut off emigration to states like
22 Congressional Debates, 1829-1830, p. 443.
SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTH 185
Illinois, and would close for many years to come the northern
half of its domain. 23 Robert Y. Hayne had been quick to
point out to the west that its true friends lived in the south and
the debate resolved itself in its earlier phases into an argument
between Webster and Benton as to whether or not the tradi-
tional New England policy was to hamper the west. Benton,
eschewing the internal improvements that the east proffered
the west through the American system, elected to stand fast
with the south in an alliance based on free trade and liberal
public land policy; and in its broader outlines that alliance
comprehends the history of the older democracy until the dis-
aster of 1840.
The western land policy generally supported in congress
was that of Thomas Hart Benton. It is true that in Illinois
politics Edwards' doctrine of the state's right to the public
lands persisted till 1833, and its revival in congress by a Mis-
souri representative in 1839 merely embarrassed Benton and
the advocates of his policy by serving as a red rag to arouse
the east. Clay cleverly sought to connect Edwards' policy
with Benton's. 24 "The Senator," he said, "modestly claimed
only an old smoked, rejected joint; but the stomach of his
Excellency yearned after the whole hog!" 25 The outlines of
Benton's policy of graduation, the scaling down year by year
of the price of unsold land, and preemption, the allowing of
special purchase privileges to actual settlers, has already been
outlined. In general it may be said that preemption measures
were intended to enable the small buyer to earn on the public
land enough to acquire title to a farm; graduation measures
by successive reductions of price were designed to bring onto
the market parts of the older west, such as southern Illinois,
that still were thinly settled. 26
The east and the whig party, as the diminution of the
23 Congressional Debates, 1829-1830, p. 4, n, 23, 44, 6p, 96.
24 Illinois Intelligencer, April 16, May 21, 1831; Illinois Advocate, Janu-
ary 26, 1833; Sangamo Journal, April 19, 1823.
25 Congressional Debates, 1831-1832, p. 1102.
26 Ibid., 1829-1830, p. 8.
186 THE FRONTIER STATE
public debt seemed about to force a new disposal of the public
land revenue allotted to its discharge, were obliged to find a
rival public land policy. They found it in the distribution
measure first proposed in 1832 by Henry Clay, a westerner,
but not a citizen of a public land state. Clay's policy proposed
the distribution among the states of the revenue from the sale
of the public land, with especially favorable consideration to
western states. The measure was adroitly conceived that the
west might be conciliated by the offered sop of hard cash. The
east, its framers hoped, would welcome a measure which would
postpone the necessity for reducing the price of the public
lands and would prevent the immediate drain of factory
operatives to cheap lands in the west. The supporters of the
policy designed to enlist the aid of the old advocates of the
American system by laying stress on the state works of internal
improvement which the distributed funds might initiate.
Above all, the measure was in their intent one step in the
direction of federalization of power.
Distribution remained a standing whig policy for years to
come, and Benton accepted its challenge. He avowed openly
that distribution must be defeated before his measures could
be adopted, and he once more summoned the south to an
alliance with the west. A distribution measure was passed in
1833, however, but was vetoed by the president. Meanwhile
there was passed a series of acts granting preemptions for
short terms of years in 1830 for two years, in 1833 and in
i8 34 . 27
In 18351836 a further development in what may be called
the western land policy took place under the initiative of Sena-
tor Robert J. Walker of Mississippi, a state still as much
western as southern. The tremendous sales of 1834 and 1835
in Illinois had provoked the fear that the public domain would
pass into the hands of speculators, and Walker to prevent it
proposed a preemption and graduation measure designed to
27 Congressional Debates, 1829-1830, p. n, 44; ibid., 1831-1832, p. 785, 903,
1148, 1167; ibid., 1836-1837, p. 789.
SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTH 187
limit sales to actual settlers in quantities not exceeding a sec-
tion. Emphatically this would have benefited the small farmer
of the north rather than the planter of the south. Concerning
this measure, Clay prophesied that if it were passed the public
domain was gone. Even some of the western senators opposed
it. Calhoun's alternative measure, which proposed to cede
the lands to the several states for one-third their proceeds,
procured him some passing popularity in the west. 28
Distribution in the form of deposit with the states suc-
ceeded in congress in 1836, after it was apparent that a pure
distribution measure could not be passed over Jackson's veto.
Meanwhile the land speculator was becoming a more and more
disturbing problem, and his ubiquity is revealed by his figuring
as a type character in the newspapers of that day. Walker
designed his suppression, as has been seen, through preemption.
Benton characteristically aimed at the same result by a proposal
that only gold and silver be received in payment for lands; and
this proposal was finally embodied in Jackson's specie circular,
which, Benton pronounced, had itself served as a preemption
act. 29
In Illinois as elsewhere the whigs and democrats took
ground on the rival land policies, and Illinois elected to adopt
the democratic policy. Benton's policy, in 1831 and 1832,
found indorsement by the Illinois legislature and in public
meetings. 30 Preemption in 1834 was a popular measure.
Duncan, however, voted for the distribution act of 1833, which
met the opposition of the Illinois Jackson papers and politi-
cians; the Sangamo Journal favored it. The issue was also
drawn in the presidential campaign of 1836, the whigs advo-
cating distribution as a measure which would give the state a
fund for internal improvements. In 1837 the Illinois senate
approved Walker's measure. Van Buren's first message,
deprecating temporary preemption acts as inducing a disregard
28 Congressional Debates, 1835-1836, p. 1028, ibid., 1836-1837, p. 663, 733;
Congressional Globe, 25 congress, 3 session, appendix, 44 ff.
29 Ibid., 25 congress, 2 session, appendix, 291 ff.
30 House Journal, 1832-1833, i session, 740.
i88 THE FRONTIER STATE
for law, advocated graduation by quality; but the Illinois
papers pointed out that this proposal showed no more friend-
ship for the west than Clay's plan. Clay indeed, no longer
"Harry of the West," suffered the consequences of his con-
temptuous remarks on squatters which were noted down by R.
M. Young for use against him in Illinois. 31
In the end, the public land policy acted upon by these two
opposing forces remained stationary. On the one side the
whigs were never able to secure a full measure of distribution ;
on the other, while the democrats in 1841 secured a permanent
preemption measure, they never achieved graduation. Yet the
democrats throughout had stood more or less consistently for
the interests of the western settler and in their policy was the
germ of the homestead legislation, that prevented the total
eclipse of the small freehold domain in the west. Whether
graduation would have assisted the penniless farm laborer, or
whether it would only have depreciated the holdings of those
who had already bought for the benefit of the new land specu-
lators cannot be said. The democratic party, however, es-
poused the policy that looked particularly to the development
of the west; and it is significant that Illinois, generally indorse-
ing that policy, gave its votes to the party that maintained it.
On public lands, as on other matters, the party of Andrew
Jackson was still the party of the west.
After a digression, in which has been noticed the influence
of the settlement of northern and central Illinois on the state's
political course, a return may be made to the consideration of
a more obvious result from settlement development of com-
merce and the consequent demand for more adequate
transportation. Indeed the great speculative public land sales
of 1834-1837 may be regarded as the decisive cause of the
more than speculative internal improvement scheme on which
31 Illinois Advocate, October 5, 1833; Alton Spectator, December 28, 1833;
Alton American, January 3, 1834; Sangamo Journal, August 10, 1833, March 12,
April 2, June 25, July 2, July 16, 1836, May 10, 1838; Chicago American, Janu-
ary 30, 1836; Illinois State Register, June 24, August 19, 1836; Senate Journal,
1835-1836, i session, 80, 85; Congressional Globe, 25 congress, 3 session, ap-
pendix, 225.
SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTH 189
the state embarked in 1837. That system and the state's later
attempts to extricate itself from the ruin it brought divides the
pioneer period of the state's history from the era of transition.
Some notice has already been paid to the meteoric rise of
Chicago in the commercial field; but the city which showed the
steadiest commercial development in the decade was Alton.
Alton had been hampered at the beginning of its career by liti-
gation over the title to its site, and its aspirations to rival St.
Louis had led it into a long drawn out and fruitless struggle to
procure the passage of the Cumberland road through it rather
than through St. Louis. It had been some time before Alton
succeeded in enlisting the full strength of Illinois on its side.
By 1831, however, the city was making rapid progress in im-
portance as a produce market. New England capital came to
its support. Griggs, Manning, and Company offered St. Louis
prices for produce, calling for forty thousand bushels of wheat
and offering to execute commissions in the east at a charge of
two and one-half per cent. 32 By 1835 there were at least three
firms of commission and forwarding merchants in business in
the city; beef, pork, lard, whisky, furs, flour, lead were coming
in for export from Quincy and Galena as well as from Alton's
natural hinterland. Apparently tributary to Alton were num-
erous small towns where storekeepers bought of its whole-
sale merchants and forwarded local produce to its market.
Business methods in Illinois were from the modern point of
view somewhat rudimentary. Alton merchants sold old stocks
of goods at auction to country merchants on long credit. Col-
lections everywhere were slow, a favorite business principle
being that in hard times one did better by not driving his debtor
to extremities. Newspapers, it is true, preached the modern
gospel that true advertising consists in setting forth your wares
in such fashion as to create a desire for them; and they laid
down the rule that the true index of a town's business was the
newspaper advertising of its merchants. Yet even while they
32 Alton Spectator, May 14, October 23, 1832, January 22, 27, 1833, Decem-
ber 31, 1835.
i 9 o THE FRONTIER STATE
urged this precocious wisdom on their patrons, they felt it
necessary to advise them to show civility and courtesy to their
customers and to warn them to beware of expecting every man
who was shown goods to purchase. 33
Galena in 1830 was a typical mining town which had
grown up between 1823 and 1829 with the rise of lead produc-
tion from 335,130 pounds to 13,343,150. The population
was migratory, the miners coming to work in the lead mines
in summer and most of them returning south in winter. It was
a typical bonanza town with wages as high as twenty-five dol-
lars a month and speculatively high rents, until the fall in the
price of lead in 1829 produced genuine hard times. Even in
1837 a two-story frame store rented for eight hundred dollars
a year, and lots were held at two hundred dollars a foot. The
federal government in 1829 was still the landlord, leasing the
lead mines on shares which were hard to collect. In 1829 it
provided for a sale of town lots to holders, which curiously
enough aroused some local opposition. In the thirties a doc-
trine, which had considerable vogue, that the federal govern-
ment could not constitutionally lease its land made the collection
of rents almost impossible ; and the commissioner of the general
land office as well as the state legislature urged the sale of the
mineral lands to private holders. 34
The most significant natural development in transportation
between 1830 and 1840 was the establishment of a network of
communication lines radiating from Chicago. Chicago's
career began as a distributing point for merchandise brought
by the Great Lakes route. In 1831 Enoch C. March imported
goods to St. Louis via Chicago at one-third less cost than by
way of New Orleans. In 1833 O. Newberry shipped several
hundred barrels of beef from Chicago to New York via Albany
at a cost of only thirteen dollars a ton. In 1834 weekly ar-
33 Alton American, December 13, 1833; Galena Advertiser, August 31,
1829; Peoria Register, May 26, 1838; Sangamo Journal, July 13, 1833.
34 Galena Advertiser, July 20, August 3, September 14, November 9, 1829,
February 8, 15, 1830; Peoria Register, October 21, 1837; Illinois Intelligencer,
October 7, 1831; Miner's Journal, July 22, September 20, 1828; Senate Docu-
ments, 25 congress, 2 session, number 131.
SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTH 191
rivals of steamers from Buffalo were advertised. In 1835,
255 sailing ships arrived at Chicago; in 1836, 49 steamboats
and 383 sailing ships. By 1839 there was a full-fledged steam-
boat pool which divided profits according to tonnage. Chicago
merchants, not content with three weeks time and aspiring for
even quicker and cheaper transportation, hoped that the New
York and Erie railroad would enable freight to be shipped
through as early as March 10 while the Erie canal was still
frozen. Once this railroad and those across Michigan were
in operation, it was said New York and Chicago would be only
seventy-four hours apart. 35 Even with the twelve to fourteen
days which was the minimum time required for freight between
Chicago and the east in 1839, there were great possibilities in
supplying other Illinois markets; thus it was believed that
Galena could get goods two months quicker and much cheaper
by way of Chicago. For penetrating the central part of the
state, there was the Illinois river which was navigable as far
up as Peoria or even Ottawa. The bad roads above Peru,
however, were a serious difficulty, in rendering it a route of
commerce tributary to Chicago.
Indeed the Illinois river for a time seemed more likely to
become the trunk line of a considerable transportation system
tributary to the Mississippi. In 1828 steamers went up to
Naples, in 1829 to Pekin, in 1830 to Peoria. In 1831 there
were 186 steamer arrivals at Naples, 32 at Beardstown, and
17 at Peoria. In 1837 the Peoria Register advertised seven
packets to ply between Peoria and St. Louis and one between
Peoria and Pittsburg. Nevertheless there were serious diffi-
culties. The bar at Beardstown was a particularly obstinate
handicap. In even the most favorable seasons navigation was
practically at an end in September. Even thus, Naples,
Beardstown, and Peoria enjoyed direct commercial relations
with the outside world at Pittsburg and New Orleans. In
1838 Peoria had a daily stage to Springfield which linked it
35 Illinois Advocate, October 21, November n, 1831; Chicago Democrat,
June 4, 1834; Alton Spectator, July 9, 1833; Chicago American, September 26,
November 21, December 5, 1835.
i 9 2 THE FRONTIER STATE
with Terre Haute and St. Louis, as well as triweekly stages to
Galena, Ottawa, and Rushville and semiweekly ones to
Oquawka. 86
Even from the earlier settlements the smaller rivers of
Illinois had served for the transportation of freight. The
Talisman's trip up the Sangamon is well known. As early as
1829 flatboats with cargoes of lead descended the Pecatonica
and the Rock. In 1836 a steamer ascended the Rock as far as
Dixon and in 1838 as far as Rockford. In 1839 there was a
St. Louis and Rock river packet.
The Mississippi, however, remained the state's most im-
portant transportation route, and the ease of its navigation
brought prosperity to the towns along its banks. In 1839
Savanna, a town of two hundred fifty inhabitants, was sending
four hundred tons of freight a year to Oregon, Rockford,
Freeport, Beloit, and Elkhorn. In 1837 Monmouth imported
from St. Louis through Oquawka. Alton and Galena have
already been mentioned; Warsaw and Nauvoo belong to a
later period. 87
In the midst of wild land speculations, it was inevitable
that calculations of the cost of bringing produce to market
from some " Stone's Landing," portentously rechristened
" Napoleon," should have an important part. Already fair
transportation routes were in existence; the question was how
to improve them. The federal government would improve
the Mississippi; in a liberal mood it had already endowed the
Illinois and Michigan water route that would allow Chicago
merchants to take their toll of what passed in and out by the
lakes. To improve such rivers as the Illinois and the Rock
by state enterprise was feasible. Men were not content, how-
ever, with these comparatively modest improvements. Not
only were the "Goose Runs" of Illinois to be improved into
Register, July i, 1837, April 7, September 15, December 8, 1838,
July 27, August 17, 1839; Chicago American, July 6, August 31, 1839; Chi-
cago Democrat, February 10, 1836; Sangamo Journal, February 9, 1832; Illinois
Intelligencer, November 19, 1831.
87 Sangamo Journal, November 28, 1835; Peoria Register, April i, 1837,
April 27, May 12, 1838, October 12, 1839.
^ u
go
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1
w
SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTH 193
" Columbus Rivers," but scarcely five years had passed since
the railroad had demonstrated its practicability, before
dreamers in Illinois were devising routes by which the new
discovery might give fabulous values to the lands away from
the water routes. A state wide mania for improved transpor-
tation ended in logrollings and bargains which initiated a state
system of internal improvements based on calculations imperial
enough to have originated in the brain of Beriah Sellers
himself.
X. THE INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT SYSTEM
THE internal improvement scheme of 1837 is not only
the opening of a new era in the state's history; it is also
the climax of the former one. The various threads of the
state's political and economic interests the desire of southern
Illinois for an equivalent to the Illinois and Michigan canal,
the local rivalries over the location of the state capital, the
aspirations of land speculators all were woven together to
produce the fabric of the internal improvement system. It
can indeed be most easily explained if each thread be fol-
lowed separately to the point where it intertwines with the
others.
The problem of connecting the waters of the Great Lakes
at Chicago with the Illinois river seemed enticingly simple.
The Des Plaines branch of the Illinois flows south parallel to
the lake shore and sometimes not ten miles away from it.
Moreover the two branches of the Chicago river, uniting from
north and south to flow into the lake, contribute to lessen even
that distance. Between the south branch and the Des Plaines
lay in dry weather a portage of no longer than three miles, and
in the wet season a lake or slough five miles long and six to
forty yards wide through which Mackinaw boats of six and
eight tons could pass into the Illinois without a portage. So
nearly even were the levels of the two rivers that the change
of the breeze would float objects from the " lake " now into
Lake Michigan, now into the Des Plaines. This route, unim-
proved as it was, was regularly followed by the fur traders of
Mackinac. 1
The engineering problem, though simple in appearance,
was in reality extremely difficult. Since the bed of the Des
Plaines was in 1819 estimated to be some two feet higher than
1 American State Papers, Miscellaneous, 2: 555.
194
INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT SYSTEM 195
the lake, a bed channel would simply have turned the waters of
the river into the lake. To correct this difficulty 2 Major
Stephen Long recommended the construction of two locks at
the two ends of the slough ; but the opinion was generally held
that in the dry season there would not be enough water to
operate them and that it would be necessary to construct the
canal to a lower point, somewhere near the falls of the Des
Plaines. There was of course also the possibility of using some
other portage, for instance that to the Kankakee, or that from
the St. Joseph or Maumee to the Wabash, all of which were
enumerated in the engineers' report of 1819.
At the beginning Illinois was concerned rather with obtain-
ing means to construct the canal than with the engineering
problem involved. After some differences both houses of the
second general assembly concurred in a resolution directing the
congressional delegates to work for a grant of the two per cent
fund reserved for roads and of a strip of land a section wide
along the canal route to the Illinois river. At the next session
of congress in accordance with a resolution offered by Cook,
an act was passed granting a strip ninety feet wide on each
side of the canal and reserving from sale the adjoining sections.
Meanwhile, the canal had become a subject of newspaper
discussion apparently both as a political question and as a
matter of sectional rivalry. In 1822 articles began to point
out the importance of a route to market other than that through
New Orleans. 3 For this very reason it was generally supposed
that southeastern Illinois would be opposed to a project that
would tax that region to destroy its monopoly of the route to
market via the Mississippi. Opposition developed a second
time in the general assembly of 18221823, when A. P. Field
proposed once more to memoralize congress to apply the two
per cent fund to digging the canal. A canal bill after vicissi-
tudes apparently promoted by members representing constitu-
2 American State Papers, Miscellaneous, 2:555. Since the foregoing was
written the full account of the Illinois and Michigan canal by J. W. Putnam
has appeared. See also Annals of Congress, 17 congress, i session, 2586.
3 Illinois Intelligencer, November 30, 1822.
i 9 6 THE FRONTIER STATE
encies of the Ohio and the Wabash rivers was finally passed,
February 10, 1823. Curiously enough it was finally reported
back to the house the same day with the convention resolutions,
probably both as parts of the same bargain. 4
As finally passed, the bill provided for five commissioners
to lay out a route for a canal and to calculate its cost; it
directed them further to bring to the attention of the governors
of Indiana and Ohio the desirability of improving the Wabash
and the Maumee rivers. 5 The commissioners tried in vain to
get the services of New York canal engineers, but finally were
content with Justus Post to whom later they added Rene Paul.
The legislature of 1825 determined to turn the enterprise
over to a private corporation which it created, consisting of
Coles, Bond, Post, Erasmus Brown, W. S. Hamilton, Joseph
Duncan, and John Warnock, who were to receive all canal
grants and complete a canal in ten years ; they were permitted
to charge a toll of one-half cent per ton per mile on tonnage of
boats through it, three cents on Illinois produce or merchandise,
six cents on foreign merchandise, and eight cents on all else.
In fifty years the state might buy the canal for cost plus six per
cent interest.
Congressman Cook could hardly have been expected to
approve this scheme. His political opponents were in control
of it; it was contrary to the solution at which he himself had
been working a generous congressional land grant. During
the session of 18231824, he had attempted to unite the inter-
ests of the enterprise with those of similar ones in which other
states might join and to secure a grant to the state of lands
along the canal reserved from sale by the federal government. 6
In November of 1825, therefore, he published an address
urging a repeal of the canal act. In part his argument was
that the sum of money which it would finally be necessary
to raise to purchase the canal would be huge. He, therefore,
advised borrowing on the credit of the school lands and the
4 House Journal, 1822-1823, 1 session, 262.
5 Laws of 1823, p. 151.
e Annals of Congress, 18 congress, i session, 873, 1914.
INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT SYSTEM 197
three per cent school fund, or better still seeking aid from the
government ; in the latter case he possibly intended to combine
the project with one for an armory on the Illinois or Fox river.
By an optimistic calculation he sought to show that the probable
increase of Illinois population and of traffic would enable the
state to finance the canal from the tolls. He was on safer
ground when he pointed out the danger to the state of placing
such a transportation monopoly in private hands and of the
chance that it would control the politics of the state. Cook's
figures were attacked, but his argument against the monopoly
was not destroyed. As the Edwardsville Spectator pointed
out, his opponents had to admit that the terms of the act were
too unfavorable to the state ; yet it was impossible to interest
investors on less favorable terms. The legislature, meeting
in special session January, 1826, to redistrict the state, repealed
the act, the senate voting fourteen to three. 7
In congress a bill for a canal grant had been brought up in
the session of 1825 and again in 1826. The Intelligencer
alleged that it suffered from the jealousy of Mississippi and
Louisiana members, who feared that trade would be deflected
from New Orleans. Finally in 1827, the act was passed. It
granted the state one-half the land to a depth of five sections
on each side of the canal, reserving for the benefit of the United
States all alternate sections; the canal was to be toll free to
the United States government and was to be begun in five
years and completed in twenty. The act may perhaps be
regarded as a last triumph of the liberal internal improvement
policy of the administration; it was certainly regarded as a
triumph in Illinois. 8
Two successive Illinois assemblies undertook to utilize
the grant thus obtained. An act was passed in 1829 which
provided for the biennial appointment by governor and senate
of three commissioners, one of whom was to act as treasurer.
7 Illinois Intelligencer, November 25, 1825; Edwardsville Spectator, Decem-
ber 3, 1825; Senate Journal, 1826, 2 session, 58.
8 Illinois Intelligencer, March 25, 1825, April 21, 1827; Congressional
Debates, 1826-1827, appendix, xviii.
198 THE FRONTIER STATE
They were to survey a route, to select the land granted by
the United States, and to sell it in tracts or in town lots. They
were to use the funds obtained as soon as practicable for the
construction of a canal, four feet deep and forty feet wide at
the surface. This act, which as can be seen was very loosely
drawn, was amended in 1831 so as to increase the efficiency
of the board. 9 It raised the question of the practicability of
improving the navigation on the Illinois river below the Fox
in lieu of the lower route of the canal, and also the question
of the use of the Calumet as a feeder below the Chicago and
the Des Plaines; but of greater importance it raised the more
fundamental question whether a railroad might not serve the
state better than a canal. The commissioners, in their report
of November 22, 1831, recommended on professional advice
the construction of a railroad instead of a canal. During the
winter of 1832 they made inquiries in New York as to possible
financial supplies but without eliciting any offer which the state
could accept.
The canal project, after a period of quiescence during
1833, became a political issue of importance in 1834; and
candidates for office gave the matter much attention. Some
merely declared for the measure. Of those who were more
specific, some advised the completion of the enterprise by a
private company; others specifically declared against taxation
for it. In the south there was some attempt to move for the
construction of a canal from the Wabash to Alton as more
advantageous; this proposition of course called forth angry
protests from the north. 10
There was much dissent from the current opinion that
expense must be avoided at all hazards. The Chicago Demo-
crat denounced the proposal to endow a New York company
9 La<w s of 1829, p. 14; Laws of 1831, p. 39.
10 Alexander M. Jenkins, Alton American, June 2, 1834; Benjamin Roberts,
Illinois Advocate, July 5, 1834; James Evans, Sangamo Journal, July 5, 1834;
James Shepherd and James Adams, ibid., July 12, 1834; William Alvey, ibid.,
July 19, 1834; R. K. McLaughlin, ibid., July 26, 1834; William B. Archer, ibid.,
August 2, 1834; George Forquer, ibid., June 25, 1834. Forquer's proposal com-
prised a scheme for purchase in ten years for cost less the value of canal lands.
INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT SYSTEM 199
with the canal lands and to allow it to construct a railroad
instead of a canal. Would the people, it asked, in order to
keep the state's skirts free of debt, hand over canal lands that
in five years would be worth two millions? 11 It disagreed
with the findings of James M. Bucklin, an engineer of promi-
nence, who had been consulted by the commissioners in 1831
as to the relative desirability of a railroad, concluding that
he had overestimated the cost of a canal. Governor Duncan
clung obstinately to the idea of a canal planned on an elaborate
scale. In his inaugural he urged that the state proceed boldly
with the enterprise relying on additional federal grants. He
presented the stock arguments for canals as against rail-
roads permanency and freedom from repair costs. They
furnished avenues of trade, so he pointed out, by which farmers
in defiance of monopoly might carry their own produce to
market. With a view of future developments imperial in its
scope he suggested at the outset a cut sufficiently wide for a
steamboat canal, except on the summit level where the cut
could later be widened; and since the tolls would yield, in his
estimation, a revenue out of proportion to any sum the work
could possibly cost, he urged the state to undertake the work
on its own account. A similar light-hearted optimism had
marked his attitude toward the project, when it was discussed
in congress. 12
In the legislative session of 18341835 the debates on the
canal act turned on the question as to whether the faith of the
state or merely the canal land and its resources were to be
pledged to the enterprise. The argument of the opponents of
state credit was that if the lands were as valuable as they
appeared to be they should be sufficient to attract capital; but
the proposers of the measure argued that capitalists were
ignorant of the value of the lands. As the act was finally
Democrat, April 30, November 19, December 17, 1834; Sangamo
Journal, June 21, 1834,
12 House Journal, 1834-1835, i session, 25; Chicago Democrat, December
17, 1834, January 21, 1835, indorsed Duncan's policy. Sangamo Journal, July
26, 1834.
200 THE FRONTIER STATE
passed, the credit of the state was not pledged. The division
on the roll call was sharply north and south, giving some color
to the charge of the Chicago Democrat that the southern part
of the state was trying to retard the progress of the northern. 13
The act of 1835 authorized the governor to negotiate a
loan not to exceed $500,000 on the canal lands and toll for the
construction of the canal. He was to appoint with the advice
of the senate a canal board of five, distinctly an executive tool
of the governor, to construct a canal forty-five feet wide and
four deep. The method of construction was not prescribed.
Ex-Governor Edward Coles found in the east that the funda-
mental objection of the capitalists to this loan was the failure
to pledge the faith of the state for the payment of principal
and interest. It was pointed out that interest would have to
be paid either out of the loan or from sales of town lots, the
sale of which was purely discretionary with the authorities ; and
that it would not be possible, in case of default, to take pos-
session of the canal. Capitalists regarded the transaction as
based too much on the pleasing prospect of a further federal
grant which might not be forthcoming. The character of the
security behind the loan made it impossible to float it in
Europe, where five per cent loans had ultimately to find a
market. The northern friends of the enterprise, accepting
Coles' conclusions, declared for a special session to formulate
a proposition more acceptable from the financial point of
view.
Primarily for purposes of apportionment a special session
of the legislature was held. Duncan was optimistic as usual
in his message. He predicted that the sale of United States
lands at Chicago showed that the lands and town lots owned
by the state, not counting the additional grants that might be
relied on from congress, were even then worth from one to
three millions. " It is now no longer to be dreaded," pro-
13 Chicago Democrat, December 24, 1834; Illinois Advocate, February 4,
n, 1835; House Journal, 1834-1835, i session, 459. In advancing to the third
reading, it was then amended by striking out the credit of the state and passed
40 to 12, p. 503. See also ibid., 470, 472, 501.
INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT SYSTEM 201
ceeded Duncan, " that any reasonable sum of money borrowed
for the purpose of constructing this canal, will become a charge
on the State Treasury." He therefore advised a loan and the
sale of lots at Chicago from time to time to pay the interest. 14
He still insisted on a steamboat canal.
The canal bill was drawn up by its supporters in Chicago
and altered and corrected by George Forquer. According to
whig accounts it was endangered and nearly defeated by the
partisan efforts of the democrats to provide for the appoint-
ment of commissioners. The act as it was finally passed,
largely through the influence of the whigs, provided for the
negotiation by the governor of a loan on the credit of the state
for $500,000, issuing for it a six per cent stock redeemable
after 1860, with a provision that it should not be sold for less
than par. The governor and senate were to appoint three
commissioners, removable for cause, to hold office until Janu-
ary, 1837, after which they were to be appointed biennally as
the legislature should direct.
The canal was to be of boat size and supplied with water
from Lake Michigan and such other sources as the commis-
sioners might decide. The commissioners were instructed to
sell lots in Chicago and Ottawa on annual installments. The
canal was to begin at or near Chicago on canal lands and ter-
minate near the mouth of the little Vermilion on land owned
by the state. The needed legislation had been obtained; but,
as events showed, the difficulties had only begun. The fate of
the various projects in the public improvement system began to
be vitally connected with the interests of the various aspirants
in the impending contest over the location of the state capital ;
and in the trades and bargains, by which local projects of one
kind and the other were advanced, local and sectional interests
were predominant. The state capital was originally located
in the wilderness at Vandalia with the intent that the state and
not private speculators should profit from the exploitation of
14 Coles to Duncan, April 28, 1835 in House Journal, 1835-1836, 2 session,
14; Delafield to Coles, April 20, 1835 in ibid., 19 ff . ; ibid., 8.
202 THE FRONTIER STATE
town lots ; but population had not followed the seat of govern-
ment. The town lot speculation had been a failure ; the town
was supposedly unhealthy, and its boarding houses were reputed
expensive and poor. An agitation begun, as it was claimed,
by legislative candidates from Sangamon and Morgan counties
in 1832 looked toward a settlement of the question of the loca-
tion of the capital, after the allotted twenty years at Vandalia
had expired. As soon as this subject was broached in the
legislature, complicated sectional alignments appeared. By
clever maneuvering the Madison county members, it was
claimed, defeated a proposal for a location by a board of
commissioners and substituted one providing for a popular
referendum on Jacksonville, Springfield, Alton, Vandalia,
Peoria, and a town to be located at the geographical center
of the state. 15
As it was passed, the act was by no means to the taste of
the people of Springfield. The amended bill had been carefully
devised to break up the phalanx of the north. It was evident
that with Peoria, Jacksonville, and the geographical center all
to contend with, the chances of either Alton or Vandalia were
brighter than Springfield's. The Sangamo Journal bewailed
the fact that the choice must be a minority one. It protested
that no one could determine where the geographical center
was or what was its fitness; it depicted the reputed unhealthi-
ness and the liability to summer malaria of Alton. 16 The
Alton Spectator advised it to look at the matter philosophi-
cally, remembering that if any town had been left out, Spring-
field might well have been it.
In December the idea of a convention to overcome the
effect of the act by uniting the northern politicians on some
one location was discussed. A meeting at Springfield on
January 4, 1834, called such a convention to meet at Rushville
15 Illinois Advocate, October 29, 1834; Alton American, May 12, 1834;
House Journal, 1832-1833, i session, 271 ; Senate Journal, 1832-1833, i ses-
sion, 290.
10 Sangamo Journal, May 9, June i, July 20, 27, 1833. The Journal was
especially angry with the grasping spirit of Alton, ibid., January u, 1834.
INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT SYSTEM 203
the first Monday in April. The meeting duly convened on
April 7 with delegates present from Knox, McDonough, San-
gamon, Hancock, Morgan, Macon, Tazewell, Adams, Warren,
Putnam, Schuyler, Peoria, and Cook counties. An attempt
was made by a Schuyler delegate to recommend a repeal of
the law and the selection of Springfield by popular vote. A
postponement was moved and the adoption of an address
protesting against the multiplication of northern aspirants and
recommending Springfield was secured by an overwhelming
majority. The minority, however, from Peoria, Putnam,
Tazewell, Knox, and Cook complained that the convention had
organized at an unduly early hour, before all the delegates
had arrived. They believed that designating any one northern
place would unite the whole southern part of the state; rather
than have that happen, they preferred that the act should be
repealed. 17
With a view to the vote, all the aspirants put forth their
arguments for themselves and against their neighbors. A
Vandalia meeting, July 3, protested against the unfairness of
deciding the question six years before the expiration of the
allotted time, as Vandalia was just beginning to develop and
urged the unconstitutionality of the law. The board of trade
of Alton, June 16, issued an address calling attention to that
city's well-nigh year-round water communication which made
it accessible from various parts of the state. The location
of the capital there they urged would insure the location of
the Cumberland road as the state wished it. It would enable
Alton to rival St. Louis in earnest, for " the great city of the
Northwest is yet to be reared on the banks of the Mississippi."
Jacksonville could argue a large population, a college, and a
reputation for culture; Springfield could claim a location near
the center of the state. Peoria urged its facilities for manu-
facture, its location on the main routes of travel between
Galena, Chicago, St. Louis, and the south, and its water con-
17 Sangamo Journal, January n, April 19, November 15, 1834; Chicago
Democrat, April 23, 1834; Illinois Advocate, July 19, 1834; Alton Spectator,
April 17, 24, 1834.
204 THE FRONTIER STATE
nection. 18 Against Jacksonville and Springfield was alleged
their distance from navigable rivers. In the referendum vote
Alton was successful but by a narrow margin only.
The decisive struggle came in 1837. In Sangamon county
the legislative elections had resulted in the choice of nine
staunch whigs the famous "Long Nine." They stood for
the unity of the county and a common effort to promote its
interests. In revenge for this complete overthrow the demo-
cratic -opponents, John Calhoun and his friends, attempted to
defeat the Springfield project, some of them lobbying for
Peoria and some for Illiopolis, a town set near the center of
the state in which Duncan was said to be interested. In May
of 1837, Simeon Francis of the Sangamo Journal sardonically
noted that the town was represented only by a wolf trap, a fit
symbol of those trapped there. 19 The measure for which the
Sangamon county members determined to work was a vote by
the general assembly thus they could ultimately hope to
eliminate rivals that divided their vote. By a narrow margin
they carried their new act. On the vote that followed, Spring-
field was successful on the fourth ballot; and Vandalia at the
next session sought in vain to secure the repeal of the act. On
June 20, 1839, Governor Carlin issued his proclamation re-
moving the capital to Springfield on or before July 4.
The means by which the Sangamon delegation achieved
their triumph were probably maneuvering and trading of the
frankest sort. Orville H. Browning in his somewhat pompous
way at a dinner in Springfield gave all praise to the delegation,
pronouncing that it was their "judicious management, their
ability, their gentlemanly deportment, their unassuming man-
ners, their constant and untiring labor for your interests," 20
that had won Springfield her triumph. Stephen A. Douglas
more bluntly denying that he had traded his vote to the dele-
18 Sangamo Journal, July 27, 1833, June 21, 1834; Alton Spectator, July i,
1834; Chicago Democrat, April i, 1834.
19 Sangamo Journal, May 13, July i, 1837; House Journal, 1836-1837, i
session, 610, 613, 663, 702.
20 Sangamo Journal, July 29, 1837.
INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT SYSTEM 205
gation for a land office and indeed he voted for Jacksonville
to the last declared the delegation had traded everything
to obtain the capital. Peter Green of Clay county denied that
the trade had been made of votes for the capital at Springfield
for votes for a system of internal improvements for the south.
But later when it was proposed to repeal the internal improve-
ment system, Lincoln indignantly declared that a bargain had
been made between the friends of the system and the friends
of Springfield and that it was irrepealable. A casual examina-
tion of the legislative journals shows the Sangamon men always
working for everyone's interest, voting for all additions to
the system proposed, and splitting on motions to substitute
one thing for another. Thus the sectional contest over the
capital location led to the triumph of local interests in public
improvement legislation. 21
Meanwhile between 1829 and 1836 various local projects
for internal improvements had been broached, discussed,
expanded, all of them being based on more and more extrava-
gant calculations of profits. The time was ripe for their
friends to unite, and by bargains of one sort or another to com-
mit the state to putting under construction a wild and fantastic
system of internal improvements. At first such proposals had
attracted but passing notice. Thus in 1829 the Galena Adver-
tiser clipped an account of a projected railroad from Pittsburg
to the head of steamboat navigation on the Illinois and thence
to the Mississippi. In 1831 one or two meetings were held to
urge a railroad from Lake Erie to the Mississippi. On Decem-
ber 28, 1832, a Jacksonville meeting, while indorsing the broad
project, added a suggestion for a railroad from Jacksonville
to the Illinois river. Abraham Lincoln in offering himself for
the general assembly in 1832 suggested such a railroad with
an extension to Springfield but concluded that the estimated
cost, $290,000, was prohibitory. He judged it better to
improve the navigation of the Sangamon, making it available
for boats of twenty-five to thirty tons, and reenforced his
21 Illinois State Register, July 20, 1838; Sangamo Journal, April 22, 1837.
2o6 THE FRONTIER STATE
statement with arguments based on his flatboat trip down the
river. 22
In 1834 the project took a form which provoked the hos-
tility of the friends of the Illinois and Michigan canal. As
then framed the transverse project involved a canal from the
Wabash to the Mississippi to connect to the eastward with
the projected series of canals to Lake Erie and Buffalo. In
support of such a project it was argued that Lake Erie would
be open much earlier. in the spring than Huron and Michigan
and that a circuit would be thereby avoided. 23 Forquer in
1834 did not by any means reject the plan of an Illinois and
Michigan canal. Instead of the transverse canal, he sug-
gested a railroad via Danville, Decatur, Springfield, Beards-
town, Rushville, and Quincy. 24 The Alton Spectator sarcas-
tically pronounced that Forquer's scheme had special reference
to Springfield's ambitions for success in the capital election.
The Sangamo Journal in turn pronounced that the thing that
would really insure the position of Alton would be a railroad
which would make it the depot and market of the Sangamon
country. 25
This last project gained favor in Springfield during 1835.
In a meeting on May 25, Forquer elaborated the possible
advantages to be gained from a vigorous enlistment of local
support for the enterprise. He regarded such a railroad as
only a step in the completion of a line to the Wabash and Erie
canal, which should be accompanied by one to the Illinois and
Mississippi rivers. He computed the total cost at $1,248,000
22 Galena Advertiser, September 14, 1829; Sangamo Journal, January 5,
March 15, 1832.
23 Sangamo Journal, April 19, 1834. It stated the Alton Spectator and
Beardstown Chronicle were favorable to the project. See Alton Spectator,
April 24, 1834.
24 Sangamo Journal, June 28, 1834. James Adams in his canvass for gov-
ernor advocated a canal or railroad from the Wabash to the Mississippi. Ibid.,
July 12, 1834. Representatives from Adams and Schuyler counties met on
December 7, 1835, and urged a railroad from the Erie and Wabash canal to
Quincy via Springfield and Jacksonville and also suggested a railroad to the
Ohio via Vandalia. Ibid., December 19, 1835. There was a meeting at Macki-
naw to urge a railroad from the Wabash to the Illinois. Ibid. Ewing proposed
this in his message of 1834. House Journal, 1834-1835, i session, 16.
25 Sangamo Journal, April 25, 1835; Alton Spectator, August 26, 1834.
INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT SYSTEM 207
and estimated the tonnage as 45,000 annually, yielding $675,-
ooo in freights. The return from the bonanza he calculated
at eighteen per cent, and he believed the farmers perfectly
warranted in pledging their farms for stock. Once these roads
and the Charleston-Memphis line, together with the Wabash-
Erie and Illinois-Michigan canals were completed, Springfield
would sit enthroned with markets on three distant seaboards
as her vassals. A railroad convention of delegates from San-
gamon, Macon, Madison, and Macoupin was held a few weeks
later to push the Springfield-Alton railroad scheme. 26 The
cost of the Springfield and Alton railroad was estimated at
$500,000. But it was also estimated that the country would
provide for it 37,346 tons of freight a year assuming that
each of 3,000 farms exported annually 100 bushels of wheat,
200 of corn, and 100 of oats, 12 hogs, and 5 cattle. Imports
would be 1 2,500 tons annually. The gross receipts from Sanga-
mon county alone would yield $172,050 revenue annually, not
counting that of the three other favored counties. The mania
for calculations of imperial commercial enterprises was in
men's blood and had to run its course.
One section of the state began to vie with another in pur-
suing bubbles. In the fall of 1835 the project of the central
railroad began to take form. On October 28 the Chicago
Democrat printed a letter from Sidney Breese suggesting the
construction of a railroad from the junction of the canal with
the Illinois river to the mouth of the Ohio. Meetings in
support of such a project were held in Shelby county, October
19 and 20, and November 18; at Vandalia, October 26; and
at Decatur, November n. A meeting in Jackson county,
December 2, deplored the comparative apathy of southern
Illinois in pushing her interests and warned her that by stand-
ing still she was losing position. It demanded support from
southern members to the central railroad project. 27 An act
for a two and a half million dollar corporation with a long
28 Chicago Democrat, June 10, 1835; Sangamo Journal, April 25, May
22, 1835.
27 Illinois Advocate, October 21, 28, December 17, 1835.
208 THE FRONTIER STATE
and impressive list of incorporators passed the assembly
in 1836.
Several schemes, as might be imagined, centered on Chi-
cago. One that attracted some interest in 1835 was for a
railroad from Chicago to Vincennes. A federal land grant
was asked for it, and the company was incorporated with three
millions of capital to construct a railroad via Danville, Paris,
and Palestine, to be begun in three years and completed in
eight. There was provision for territorial location of direc-
tors and the road might be operated by steam or animal power.
Next summer stock subscription books were opened. 28 In
1837 T. W. Smith and others petitioned congress for a right
of way and a right to preempt in a ten-year credit a section
on each side of the road. In return, they made the offer to
carry the mails daily. At the time it was said that a million
dollars of stock had been subscribed.
Inevitably various localities of the state came each to the
conviction of the advisability of pooling local interests in inter-
nal improvements in a common stock. As early as 1830, Coles
had prepared for the historical society of the state an excellent
account of the state's physiography with reference to naviga-
tion and internal improvements; but such considerations were
not to have the decisive voice in the laying out of public works.
On November 2, 1833, the Sangamo Journal noticed the state-
ment of a London paper that fifty million dollars of English
capital could be lent to states desiring internal improvements
or state banks. In 1834 several candidates garnished their
announcements with statements for or against internal improve-
ment systems. 29 Duncan in his inaugural message proposed
the future improvement of the Illinois and Wabash channels
on some such fashion, but like a good whig he looked for a
possible change of heart on Jackson's part which would bring
28 House Journal, 1834-1835, I session, 141; Laws of 1835, p. 88; Chicago
American, September 26, 1835.
29 Illinois Intelligencer, January 16, 1830; Illinois Advocate, June 26, July
5, 1834. Easton Whitten and Benjamin Roberts offer for the senate in Bond
county against internal improvements in state money. James Evans offers for
the governor. Sangamo Journal, July 5, 1834 declares for the system.
INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT SYSTEM 209
federal aid. The Chicago Democrat, clipping the Peoria
Champion, on December 3, 1834, proposed as business for
the legislature the following railroads, Chicago to the Wabash,
Chicago to Galena, and Terre Haute to Quincy. In that
session, however, internal improvements were regarded as
possible rivals to the canal and as such for the moment to be
discouraged. 30
In 1835 the movement gained fresh impetus. Forquer's
speech, already cited, bears its testimony to the fact. On Octo-
ber 1 6, Sidney Breese 31 pointed out a possible combination
of internal improvement schemes which he thought might
supply transportation both to the south and west. The scheme
included a railroad on the route of the Illinois Central, for
which the credit of the state might be pledged. From it,
branches might radiate to the Wabash and the upper Mis-
sissippi. This prospect of juncture of the canal and the central
railroad was considered by some as stretching the credit of the
state too far. A member professed that in the next session
he voted against the canal, not because he thought there was
any danger in pledging the bulk of the stock for the canal, but
because of a scheme to couple canal and railroad and borrow
four millions for them. 32 Such a combination was proposed
by a meeting at Ottawa, November 18.
Breese's plan was indorsed by a letter in the Sangamo
Journal of November 28, 1835, which proposed also a rail-
road from Alton to Shawneetown to intersect the railroad
from Louisville to New Orleans as well as a railroad from
the Wabash and Erie canal to Quincy and from Springfield to
30 Henry reported in the house, January 10, 1835, that it was necessary to
put the whole energy of the state in the canal, and accordingly he moved the
rejection of the petition for the improvement of the Illinois river. House
Journal, 1834-1835, i session, 264. William J. Gatewood argued similarly on
the incorporation of a railroad from Logansport to Quincy. Forquer argued
on the other side that after all the south had gained from salines, the north
might be entitled at least to an incorporation. The difficulty was caused by a
squabble as to the terminus at Alton or Quincy. Sangamo Journal, January
17, 1835.
31 Sangamon Journal, October 31, 1835.
82 Illinois Advocate, December 2, 1835, January 16, 1836.
210 THE FRONTIER STATE
Alton. By way of financing these projects the author suggested
a combination of land and stock aid and a private company.
The editor of the paper commented that the novelty lay in the
setting forth of a system for the whole state.
In the Illinois senate in the session of 18351836, Edwards
offered a set of internal improvement resolutions in which he
proposed that, to limit the impending multiplication of ineli-
gible routes, the committee on internal improvements should
report bills incorporating companies for railroads from the
state line toward the Wabash and Erie canal through Danville,
Decatur, and Springfield to Quincy; from the termination of
the Illinois and Michigan canal through Bloomington to Deca-
tur; and from Alton through Edwardsville and Equality to
Shawneetown. He proposed state loans to these enterprises
and a state subscription of one-third the capital stock in case
the stockholders of a company had subscribed two-thirds. The
right to buy out the company on terms was reserved to the
state. A week later, he amended the resolution by providing
that the line to Bloomington and Decatur serve to connect
the canal with the Wabash and Mississippi and the Alton and
Springfield railroads. His intention was to extend the road
at a future time from Decatur via Springfield to Vandalia
where it would connect with the Kaskaskia river which was
to be made navigable, if it was possible to do so, by the use
of future appropriations. 33 Edwards saw far enough into
the defects, such as they were, of the haphazard system of
granting charters that obtained in the 1836 session; but his
positive argument for the concerted system which he outlined
was singularly wanting in insight. The plan he proposed was
merely building the railroads to connect the navigable rivers
and to furnish communication between the small cities of
that day.
Taken collectively the charters of 1836, which were passed
at haphazard and usually with no opposition, are rather inter-
esting. First it may be said that they varied widely in their
33 Senate Journal, 1835-1836, 2 session, 154, 198.
INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT SYSTEM 211
provisions, probably in accord with the preconceptions of the
lawyers who drew them up. Some of them contained provi-
sions by which the state might take the properties over after
a term of years, either at an appraised value, or at the original
cost plus a fixed yearly interest, or for cost plus cumulative
interest. Several contained provisions allowing the legislature
to regulate rates, if after a, term of years the profits of the
company exceeded a certain percentage. There were charters,
however, which lacked one or many of these provisions. Most
of them contained a forfeiture clause in the event the road was
not duly begun, and some specified elaborately the rate at
which construction must progress. Sometimes the charters
were for limited periods; in other cases the only limitation was
a power of legislative purchase in a term of years; sometimes
there was not even that. 84 The Illinois Central was granted
a monopoly limited by regulation of tolls and a right of pur-
chase after twenty-five years. 35 On stock issues, the limita-
tions devised often seemed rather intended to secure a wide
distribution of stock than any other purpose. Sometimes the
capital was specified in the charter, sometimes a specified
increase was allowed, and sometimes a limit was placed upon
the income. The sole limitation on the Mississippi, Spring-
field, and Carrollton railroad was that ten per cent of the
stock be paid in. The Warsaw, Peoria, and Wabash was
under practically no limitation whatever. 36 Some charters
included provisions for reports to the -legislature and others
did not. Had the hopes of 1836 ever reached fruition, Illinois
would have been covered with a railway system almost defying
regulation.
The details of the various evanescent charters of the 1836
session are of comparatively little interest. They suggest in
34 Charters of Mt. Carmel and Alton; Pekin, Bloomington, and Wabash;
Belleville; Alton, Wabash and Erie; Rushville; Wabash and Mississippi;
Central Branch Wabash; Wabash and Mississippi Union; Pekin and Tremont;
and Mississippi, Springfield, and Carrollton railroads in Laws of 1836, p. 8, 12,
16, 18, 20, 21, 23, 36, 54, 63, 65, 89, 90.
33 Ibid., p. 129.
36 Ibid., p. 12, 76.
212 THE FRONTIER STATE
no great degree the railroads of the present This is true in
the main probably because they were centered commonly at
Alton rather than at St. Louis. Of the projected lines, the
Galena and Chicago Union, the Illinois Central line from
LaSalle to Cairo, and one from Danville to Meredosia sug-
gesting the line of the Wabash are the only extensive lines
which still persist.
The fateful legislative session of 18361837 was the logi-
cal result of the charters of 1836. With so many enterprises in
the field, the feeble resources that would scarcely have suf-
ficed a single enterprise were diffused among many. It is
difficult in the case of most of the enterprises projected during
1836 to trace any successful prosecution of the task of organ-
izing them. In the fall, Gallatin, Wayne, Sangamon, and
probably other counties appointed delegates to a convention
at Vandalia to decide what parts of the various lines had better
be supported. 37
In the Illinois legislative session of 1836-1837 the internal
improvement system began with Douglas' resolutions. They
specified the Illinois and Michigan canal, a railroad from the
terminus of the canal to the mouth of the Ohio, a railroad
from Quincy to the Wabash and Erie canal, the improvement
of the Illinois and Wabash rivers, and surveys of other works.
These were to be constructed at the state's expense on a loan
of [blank in resolution] on the state's credit, and the debt
was to be floated by sales from the lands of the Illinois and
Michigan canal, that enterprise being compelled to forego its
I ' r _ privileged position and take its chance with the other works.
Three days later in the senate, Edwards proposed a joint
inquiry by the internal improvement committee of the two
houses as to the expediency of devising a system for the whole
state, the interest on the loan to be paid from a part of the
distribution fund. He left open the question of construction
by chartered companies. Full reports were made, and in con-
37 Sangamo Journal, February 13, August 27, November 26, 1836; Illinois
State Register, December 8, 1836.
INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT SYSTEM 213
sequence both houses passed resolutions begging shamelessly
for federal land grants. 38 The house internal improvement
committee reported on January 9. It began with the usual
appeal to the brilliant prospects of New York and the even
greater opportunity before Illinois. It fortified itself by the
fact that in the internal improvement convention the people
had been represented and had spoken their mind. It offered
a plan more conservative than the conventions certainly in
view of the huge sale of lands in the previous year and the
oncoming flood of immigration none too radical. It cheerfully
dispensed with inquiry into costs with the fact that the cost
of constructing railways in Illinois was capable of exact esti-
mate and that if the routes were surveyed first, the state could
not hope to buy adjacent lands at the federal price.
Descending to particulars, it recommended a loan of eight
millions in the hands of a board of fund commissioners. To
meet this debt the state might count on twelve million acres
of taxable land by 1842. The railroads were to be begun at
intersections with navigable streams and important towns and
to be extended in both directions from them. It estimated
the cost of railroads at $8,000 a mile or less and it recom-
mended the expenditure of $100,000 each on the Great
Wabash, and the Illinois and Rock, $50,000 on the Kaskaskia
and Little Wabash, $100,000 on the Great Western Mail
route, $3,500,000 on the Illinois Central, $1,600,000 on the
Southern Cross railroad, and $1,850,000 on the Northern
Cross. 39 As finally passed the act added $150,000 to the
appropriation for the Western Mail route, and added to the
act provisions for a railroad, Bloomington to Mackinaw
involving an expenditure of $350,000; one from Belleville to
intersect the Alton and Mt. Carmel at $150,000; one from
Lower Alton via Hillsboro to the Illinois Central railroad at
$600,000; one from Peoria to Warsaw to cost $700,000; and
a branch of the Illinois Central railroad from the point where
38 Senate Journal, 1836-1837, i session, 87, 89, 127; House Journal, 1836-
1837, i session, 36.
39 Ibid., 1836-1837, i session, 202.
2i 4 THE FRONTIER STATE
a line from Hillsboro to Shelbyville would intersect it to the
Indiana state line. In addition, $200,000 was divided between
the unfortunate counties which obtained no other appro-
priations.
The procedure by which these amendments were added is
difficult to trace. The bill was reported to the house along
with the report; it was reported back on January 23. Several
attempted amendments were defeated, the Sangamon members
usually voting for additions. An attempt to condemn the whole
system by resolution was lost by a vote of 9 to 70, most of the
opposition being from Greene, the lower Military Tract, and
Egypt. A second attempt to obtain a referendum on it at the
next election was lost 20 to 59, the opposition again coming
from the Military Tract and from Egypt. The amendments
usually were supported by the members interested in the addi-
tion, the members from Sangamon and Morgan and the
irreconcilables who wished to kill the bill. The bill passed
January 31, by a vote of 61 to 25. 40
February 16 the senate committee reported the bill with
amendments. In the senate two additions were voted down.
The Bloomington and Mackinaw railroad was added. William
O'Rear's proposal for a popular vote was lost 20 to 20. The
amendment for $200,000 to the counties not otherwise favored
was added here also and adopted 31 to 9. The third reading
was carried, 25 to 15 and the passage by a similar vote. 41
The representatives of White county in the house February 23
spread on the journal of the house a protest against the meas-
ure as designed to do nothing but raise the value of town lots
in certain favored spots ; and as saddling the state with a debt
the interest on which was ten times the ordinary revenue. It
pointed out that the locations of the railroad lines were made
not by any settled plan but rather as a result of logrolling. The
protesters pointed out especially the disaster that might result
from the method of financing by bank capital. 42
40 House Journal, 1836-1837, i session, 363, 366, 443.
41 Senate Journal, 1836-1837, i session, 445, 452, 466, 474, 475, 487.
42 House Journal, 1836-1837, i session, 680.
INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT SYSTEM 215
Two days later the council of revision returned the bill
with objections. Judges Browne and Lockwood objected to
certain mere technical provisions which could be easily altered.
Smith in concurring especially declined any expression of
opinion on the question of expediency which he left to the
general assembly. Duncan took issue on the ground that such
roads could be made in a free government only by citizens or
corporations. He pointed out the danger of interference in
elections of those in power over the system. The objections
of Browne and Lockwood were at once obviated and the bill
passed 53 to 20. On February 27 the senate adopted the
house amendment and passed the bill 23 to I3. 43 The state
had embarked on its mad speculation in haste; it was to have
full seven years in which to repent at its leisure.
48 Senate Journal, 1836-1837, i session, 529, 531.
XL THE WRECK OF THE INTERNAL IMPROVE-
MENT SYSTEM, 1837-1842
AS SOON as the internal improvement system had been
adopted by the legislature, the board prepared to begin
construction with all possible speed. It divided the state into
three districts each with a principal engineer. As the law pre-
scribed the policy of working on the enterprises simultaneously
in proportionate amounts, construction was allotted among
them. Accordingly 105 miles were put under contract on the
Northern Cross, 69^ miles on the Illinois Central, 24 on the
Peoria and Warsaw, 15 on the Alton and Shawneetown, 38
on the Alton and Mt. Carmel, 33 on the Alton and Shelbyville,
and 9^4 on the Bloomington and Pekin. The board estimated
the mileage of the roads at 1,341 24 and their total cost at
$11,470,444.50. It pointed out that this sum exceeded the
original figure set because the roads were found to be longer
than they had been estimated. By December of 1838 the
commissioners of public works had drawn on the fund com-
missioners for $1,142,027.00.
There was needed no acute observer to predict from the
manner of its inception the ill success of the internal improve-
ment system. Not only were some of the commissioners guilty
at least of neglect and mismanagement, if not of positive mal-
versation, but the enterprises were from the first befogged
in the atmosphere of logrolling and bargain, under which the
system had been initiated by the legislature. This condition
necessitated an equal attention to all the localities benefiting by
the improvements and contributing their share to the bargain
by which it was pushed into operation. Accordingly the pro-
vision requiring simultaneous construction on all the roads
prevented the concentrating of effort to complete any one and
216
WRECK OF THE SYSTEM 217
install it as a revenue producer. Out of a piece of newspaper
pseudoscience Governor Kinney evolved a phrase to describe
the situation. Writing to the citizens of Peoria who had asked
that part of the projected railroad in their vicinity should
be put under contract, he expressed the following opinion:
"Respecting the 25th section of the Internal Improvement
Law, to which you refer me, it is idle to say that there is any
thing therein contained as a positive injunction upon the Com-
missioners' that they should commence on each side of every
navigable stream, and progress each way at the same time,
and also at each principal town. You know that every town,
in the eyes of them that inhabit it, is a principal one. Such a
course of proceeding would cut upon the whole system of rail
roads into so many parts, disjointed and disconnected one
from the other for the time being, that it would appear in the
attitude of a 'jointed snake,' which had been whipped into so
many pieces that some of them would be decayed and rendered
useless before they could crawl to each other's relief, and
therefore bring the whole into disrepute at once." The jointed
snake was a good analogy for the internal improvement
system. 1
The mania for internal improvement was not satisfied even
by the system itself. Private enterprises flourished side by
side with it. Thus at the time when the system was beginning
its journey through the general assembly, there appeared in
the Sangamo Journal the prospectus of the Beardstown and
Sangamon canal. The thirty mile cut from Beardstown to
Huron would at a cost of six thousand dollars a mile take the
place of a river route of one hundred miles. A possible con-
nection with the Wabash canal was set forth and the prospects
of the vast quantities of produce from the Sangamon country
and of deflected trade from the Ohio were held out to
investors. The state was to be asked to subscribe one-third
of the capital. Among the other projects was one for a
railroad from Rock Island to Bloomington by way of Henne-
1 Sangamo Journal, March 17, 1838.
ai8 THE FRONTIER STATE
pin. Inside and outside the system men were living in a
gilded age. 2
In a very especial sense, as has been seen, the internal
improvement system was the offspring of southern Illinois,
which hoped to regain the ground that it had lost to the north-
ern portion of the state during the preceding fifteen years.
The men of Egypt hoped that the numerous railroads pro-
jected might turn back the tide of emigration which had flowed
either along the Great Lakes or through southern Indiana to
the head waters of the Illinois river. The traveler in 1839
commented on the backwardness of the region between Mt.
Vernon and Equality, where the old settlers were still living in
their rude cabins with very few improvements; but he added
that the internal improvement system had drawn new attention
to the south. Middle Illinois in view of the interest of the
south in the internal improvement system was inclined to be
somewhat sarcastic about it. In the assembly of 1837 there
was an amusing passage at arms between Peter Green of Clay
county and William Lane of Greene. Mr. Green advocated
a bill authorizing a state bounty on wolf scalps, only to be
told by Mr. Lane that his earnestness was due to the large
proportion of wolves to human beings in his county, especially
in comparison with Greene. Lane assured him, however, that
when the various railroads projected in Clay had been con-
structed the ringing of the engine bells would scare all the
wolves into Greene county, where, no railroads having been
projected, they might live in peace. 3
The faith of southern Illinois was pinned especially to the
Illinois Central railroad. Not only was it the center of the
system, having as tributaries the various crossroads and
branches, but it served to connect the outlet of the Illinois and
Michigan canal with year-round river transportation on the
Mississippi. What the central railroad was to the system
in the mind of the south, Cairo was to the central railroad.
2 Illinois State Register, September 15, 1837; Sangamo Journal, January 6,
1837, January 28, 1838; Alton Telegraph, May 9, December 8, 1838.
3 Sangamo Journal, February 25, 1837.
WRECK OF THE SYSTEM 219
Men foresaw the development of Cairo into a commercial
metropolis central to all the union; for was it not possible that
the great Charleston railroad might terminate, if not at Shaw-
neetown, at least at Cairo, thus uniting the junction of the Ohio
and Mississippi with the southern Atlantic seaboard? John
Logan of Jackson county, in the Illinois legislature, painted an
inspiring word picture of ocean going ships laden with the
produce of the West Indies discharging their cargoes at the
wharves of Cairo. Meanwhile, with just scorn he repelled
the possibility that the rival village of Caledonia, a little further
up the Ohio might hope to rival Cairo as the Venice of the
New World. 4
But while southern Illinois and other parts of the state
especially interested were enthusiastic over the system, the
program of improvements had met consistent opposition from
the first. It had been a political issue in the campaign of 1 838,
the democrats claiming that the whig nominees, Edwards espe-
cially, were then, or had been, hostile to the system. The whigs
it is true endeavored to disprove the assertion that Edwards
had opposed improvements, but admitted that he preferred
that they should be constructed by private enterprise rather
than by the state. Thomas Carlin, the democratic nominee,
declared in favor of the system, though he later believed its
scope was out of all proportion to the resources available for
its construction. 5
Joseph Duncan, of course, was the most inveterate oppo-
nent of the whole program ; and the tendency of the whigs, as a
party, especially in view of the fact that their political oppon-
ents upheld the system, was toward opposition. The Fandalia
Free Press, for instance, declared that, while it was not opposed
to a judicious employment of internal improvements, it con-
sidered that the system as it had developed had been rashly
and unwisely adopted and that with the cessation of federal
4 Illinois Slate Register, December 22, 1837, December 13, 1838, March 8,
15, 1839.
'"Ibid., February 9, March 9, July 13, 1838; Alton Telegraph, March 7,
1838.
220 THE FRONTIER STATE
deposits with the state, it was a difficult problem to obtain
the money with which to carry it out. The Sangamo Journal
pointed out the hindrance that a currency of gold and silver,
limited in amount, would impose upon the financing of such a
scheme. In the summer the Peoria Register began the publi-
cation of a series of bitter attacks written by a certain E.
Harkness. Harkness declared that all the enterprises could
not yield a revenue equivalent to the yearly interest on the
money expended. He maintained that in reality the state had
little surplus produce to export, not enough indeed to supply
the laborers on the works. Where, he asked, were the reasons
for the railroads to Cairo? What was the use of a railroad
beginning and ending on the Mississippi? Galena was the
only town upon its route that was not a mere name. Harkness
finally called upon the people to express immediately their
disapprobation of the system and of the men who had
framed it. 6
Until the arguments of the opponents of the system were
reenforced by actual failure of the state finances, they did not
become effective. The clue to the legislation of the session of
1839 is suggested in a New York letter published in the Peoria
Register January 19, 1839, in which the correspondent stated
that while London was flooded with state stocks, the preference
was given to those of free states engaged in internal improve-
ment. If Illinois would face the question of direct taxation,
she might with profit send a commission to London to borrow.
Of course, the prospect of taxation caused a recurrence of
attacks on the system. Defending it against O. H. Browning,
W. J. Gatewood of Gallatin warned him that, if its progress
was checked, southern Illinois would retaliate on the canal
which in earlier years it had sustained. He urged that the
statesmanlike attitude toward the question was not a calculation
of profits and losses in money but rather a consideration of the
matter in the broader aspect of the development of the state.
6 Illinois State Register, July 14, 1837; Alton Telegraph, March 14, Septem-
ber 22, 1838; Sangamo Journal, October 21, 1837; Peoria Register, August 25,
September 8, 22, 29, October 27, November 2, 1838.
WRECK OF THE SYSTEM 221
Abraham Lincoln suggested, in lieu of taxation, financing the
proposed improvements by a speculation in the unsold land of
the federal government. 7
The net result of the legislative session was an enlargement
of the system rather than its curtailment. In an amendatory
law certain further expenditures for additional work were
allowed. For the rest, a general taxation law was passed. It
levied twenty cents on each one hundred dollars of property
in the state. Needless to say this provoked opposition of the
bitterest sort. At first, the State Register was disposed to de-
fend the act. It pointed out that the law really was a poor
man's tax law, as it compelled speculators to list land at its true
value and carried no poll tax provision. It defended the
obnoxious provision requiring the filing under oath of one's
statement as being optional with the assessor to require or not
and insisted that the law was not passed necessarily to support
the internal improvement system, and hence could not be
directly connected with it. The state, it was said, had never
taxed itself hitherto and as a result had been led into uncertain
financial devices such as plundering the school fund and the
making of the Wiggins' loan. 8
The text of the foregoing comment was the proceedings
of a meeting in Bond county which attacked both the internal
improvement system and the revenue law. The report of the
meeting, rather able in its way, mercilessly cut to pieces the
specious promises and calculations of profit on which the sys-
tem had originally been founded. It stated that to pay interest
on the cost of the railroads centering at Alton, sixteen thousand
wagonloads of freight must pass in and out of the city in each
month. The Register, coming to see light by April, had ceased
to defend the revenue law and was inclined to leave it to the
people for their acceptance or rejection. The meeting in Bond
county was followed by one in Hillsboro, at which A. P. Field
was present. It urged a special session of the general assembly
7 Alton Telegraph, January 26, 1839; Illinois State Register, February 19,
March 15, 1839.
8 Ibid., March 29, 1839.
222 THE FRONTIER STATE
for the purpose of repealing the system. The Register depre-
cated the demand on the ground that the cry for a special ses-
sion was a whig device to break up the system and incidentally
to elect a whig to the United States senate. 9
The opposition to the law spread fast. In Bond county it
was proposed that the revenue law be defeated by the appoint-
ment of assessors who would refuse to serve. In one county
after another, resolutions attacking the system were passed,
frequently calling for a special session to curtail or classify it.
The revenue law, too, was often included in such denunciation.
Furthermore the enterprise was often arraigned as a white ele-
phant foisted on the state by bargain and corruption, sure to
involve the state in hopeless debt. Only occasionally was a
voice lifted in behalf of the system as it then stood. 10
The whigs were generally in favor of calling a special
session. So far as parties were aligned on the question, the
democrats were at first opposed to it, alleging their fear that
the whigs might take advantage of it to repeal the revenue law
or to engineer a coup d'etat respecting the secretaryship of state
-and the senatorship. The whigs denied that they had any
such intention. In the spring their papers were flatly for a
classification of the system, by which work would be continued
only on a part of it. They pointed out that the democrats
were inconsistent in favoring classification of the system and
opposing a special session, for if a change were to be of any
avail whatever it must come immediately. The democrats,
however, were by no means completely in favor of an alteration
of the system at this time. Thus on June 2 1 the State Register
pronounced against classification reporting a scheme by which
the people might yearly decide what sum they must spend upon
improvements. It pointed out the difficulty of satisfying by a
classification the jarring local interests and of deciding which
9 Alton Telegraph, March 24, April 13, May 24, 1839; Illinois State Register,
May 29, 1835, April 5, 19, 1839.
10 Alton Telegraph, May ir, 18, 1839; Illinois State Register, June 14, 1839;
Vandal'ia Whig, June 7, 1839; Peoria Register, June 15, July 6, 1839; Sangamo
Journal, June 28, July 26, 1839.
WRECK OF THE SYSTEM 223
locality must suffer the abandonment of its pet enterprise. The
same issue contained an illustration in point in the action of a
meeting in Edgar county which would not consent to the classi-
fication if its own route was omitted. 11
During the summer the two parties shifted their position on
the question of a special session. In July, Carlin had offered
as excuse for not calling one the fear that it might, like the
previous session, extend the system instead of curtailing it.
In September, the whig newspapers professed that in the pres-
ent situation they could see no need for a special session, though
they still inclined to favor classification. By November
democratic meetings were declaring against the internal im-
provement system or urging its classification. When Carlin
finally called a special session to meet on December 9 the State
Register took to task the Chicago Democrat for opposing his
action, adducing as reasons for the call the fact that the plans,
even if they were not too extensive for 1837, were certainly
too ambitious for 1839, and that the people generally desired
a reduction of the system to a size proportionable to the state's
hope of completing it. Possibly in this argument there was
the desire ascribed to the Register by the Journal of embarrass-
ing the " Long Nine " of Sangamon county by compelling them
either to abandon their pledges or to oppose the will of their
constituents. It was said at the beginning of the special session
that Carlin was coming to the capital late so that his message
might not be revised by the party leaders as it had been in
1838, when a proposal for classification had been omitted at
the behest of the locofoco leaders. The democratic leaders at
the beginning of the session were reported to have disclaimed
any responsibility for the call of the assembly, and they left
Carlin to state the reasons for it and to bear the brunt of the
consequences of having called it. 12
11 Chicago American, May 29, September 5, October 2, 1839; Sangamo
Journal, May 17, 24, June 14, July 19, 1839.
12 Illinois State Register, November 9, 16, 1839; Sangamo Journal, Decem-
ber 16, 1838, May 24, July 19, September 23, November 15, 1839; Alton Tele-
graph, December 14, 1839.
22 4 THE FRONTIER STATE
In his message to the general assembly Carlin pronounced
in favor of a classification of the internal improvement system
and of the adoption of a more economical method of carrying it
into effect. He ascribed the system in the first place to the
spirit of speculation, " the natural offspring of an inflated paper
circulating medium," that had affected not only individuals but
even such conservative bodies as the general assembly. In
spite of the fact that it was well understood that the system was
the result of mutual concession and compromise and that its
advantages were to be dispensed as equally as possible through-
out the state, it was necessary to classify immediately. The
localities with favorite improvements, which should be elimi-
nated by the scheme of classification, must bear their loss with
patriotism for the common good. The message detailed the
progress of the financial negotiations in London for funds to
support the system, which will be considered later. The session
finally provided for the cessation of work upon the system and
in effect by so doing brought about its permanent abandonment.
Thenceforth the state was confronted with the problem of
paying for the extravagance into which it had entered and from
which it withdrew too early to obtain any considerable advan-
tages. 13
The attempt to obtain in exchange for state bonds the
funds with which to carry on the internal improvement enter-
prise had begun in 1837, when Mather and Oakley, the fund
commissioners, endeavored to negotiate a loan in New York.
Finding no success there, they turned to the State Bank and to
the Bank of Illinois. The State Bank agreed to take seventeen
hundred and sixty-five bonds of one thousand dollars each and
the Bank of Illinois nine hundred similar bonds. A second
appeal to the New York market was more successful than the
first. The commissioners sold a million dollars in state internal
improvement stock to Nicholas Biddle, a similar amount to J.
Irvine, and three or four blocks of one hundred thousand each
18 Illinois State Register, January 4, 1840; Alton Telegraph, January 25,
February 8, 1840; governor's message to legislature, January 8, 1845, in House
Journal, 1839-1840, 2 session, 14.
WRECK OF THE SYSTEM 225
to other capitalists. May 7, 1839, the fund commissioners,
M. M. Rawlings and Charles Oakley, sold to John Delafield
$283,000 in state bonds, interest on the bonds beginning May
7, 1839. Delafield, by the terms of the contract, was to pay
for the bonds in five installments of fifty thousand dollars each
on the first of December, February, March, April, and May,
and one of thirty-three thousand dollars on June i. The con-
tract certainly was not favorable to the state. The committee
also made some sales of bonds in smaller amounts to eastern
banks and one more considerable to the contractor for the
Northern Cross railway.
Having exhausted the possibilities of the New York money
market the Illinois agents turned to London. On August 22,
1839, Rawlings and Oakley made a contract with John Wright
and Company of London. By this contract, which was rather
elaborately drawn, the Illinois agents agreed to turn over to
Wright for sale $1,500,000 in state bonds in return for two
advances and gave him the option on the flotation of a further
sum to the amount of $4,000,000. The borrowers on behalf
of the Illinois and Michigan canal, who had been working
independently, had now reached the same point in their pursuit
of money. Although the commissioners had disposed of a con-
siderable number of bonds to federal and state banks, to pri-
vate banks and investors, the terms were not advantageous to
the state ; and they too were obliged to seek money in London.
On October 30, 1839, Reynolds and Young made an agreement
with Wright and Company for the sale of a million dollars in
canal bonds. 14
No sooner had this series of loans been consummated than
the whole financial house of cards began to fall. First the
stages of the negotiations with the Wrights may be followed.
There was a fatal difference of opinion as to the interpretation
of the law prescribing that the Illinois bonds be sold at not less
than par. The contract for a million in sterling bonds of the
state had required Wright to advance but $250,000, and in
14 Reports General Assembly, 1839-1840, house, 393.
226 THE FRONTIER STATE
return for this he was to be the state selling agent, deducting
his commission from the proceeds. Further, the bonds were
drawn at the face value of 225 but were to yield only $1,000
in the United States, although the exchange between London
and Illinois might be as high as fourteen per cent In remitting
for interest and for final payment, therefore, the state would
remit far more than the par value of the amounts due trans-
lated into American currency in Illinois. A senate committee
declared the contract null and void, insisting that Wright was
no better than a financial shark. The report was drawn in
O. H. Browning's somewhat flowery style. "Well may we
say of London," exclaimed he, " ' the shark is there, and the
shark's prey, the spendthrift and the leech that sucks
him.' " 15 Hacker retorted with a report from the committee
of the senate on internal improvement, indulging in some
rather cleverly put personal allusions derogatory to Brown-
ing. 16 The majority and minority of the house committee dif-
fered as to the legality of the sale of canal bonds, which Wright
had been permitted to sell at 91 or over in London, retaining
for himself any excess between 91 and 95 and above 95 divid-
ing his profits with the state. A joint judiciary committee re-
ported against the legality of the sale. 17
Naturally such action by the Illinois general assembly did
no good to the financial interests of the state in London.
Whether Wright had intentionally misled the representatives
of the state or whether he had merely been too sanguine in
interpreting the contract and laws which they brought with
them, it is not necessary to state. But the report of the Illinois
committee compelled him for a time to cease his operations,
even though the general assembly did not adopt the report
recommending the disavowal of the contract. Carlin, under
the circumstances, could not in February of 1840 see his way
clear to continue the contract with Wright. The contractors
on the canal, however, proposed to proceed with the work, if
15 Senate Journal, 1839-1840, special session, 140.
16 Reports General Assembly, 1839-1840, senate, 209.
17 Ibid., 1839-1840, house, 123, 149, 393.
WRECK OF THE SYSTEM 227
they might receive canal bonds in payment which they could
hypothecate with Wright, according to the terms of the con-
tract which the legislature had not indorsed. Young, mean-
while, did not cease to urge on Carlin that the state contract
with Wright be carried out. Finally, on May i, Carlin
yielded and confirmed the sale of the million canal bonds.
Characteristically he protested to the last that it was not a sale
at par within the meaning of the act. 18 But Carlin's hesitation
and the attitude of the general assembly had done their work.
It was too late to save Wright's position in London. Over-
loaded with the state's bonds and possibly suffering from
the malignity of other houses opposed to dealing with
Americans and the American states, in November of 1840
Wright became bankrupt. William F. Thornton, president
of the board of commissioners, had previously on July 20
agreed to sell at a rate of 83 to Magniac, Smiths and Com-
pany 225,000 sterling in bonds belonging to the contractors, 19
and for a time that firm attended to the financial interests of
the state.
In apportioning blame for the disaster to the Wrights it is
impossible to avoid the conclusion that in a certain degree their
misfortune was their own fault. The interpretation which they
gave to the term " par " was certainly a forced one, and while
in all probability in view of the way Illinois securities were
marketed no better rates could have been obtained, they should
have been more cautious; and even in spite of any representa-
tion made to them, they should have recognized the fact that
they should have trusted their own judgment as to the terms
of the loan rather than the judgment of such men as Young and
Reynolds. At the same time the vacillation of Carlin and the
general assembly at the critical moment undoubtedly con-
tributed to rendering the financial position of the Wrights
critical.
It was in the United States that the effect of the fund com-
18 Reports General Assembly, 1840-1841, senate, 360, 362, 363, 364, 373, 374.
19 Ibid., 1840-1841, senate, 30 ff., 393.
228 THE FRONTIER STATE
missioners' policy was most apparent. The Atlantic Bank
which had bought the public improvement bonds broke before
the Illinois bonds had passed out of its hands, and these were
ordered returned to the state's order. John Tillson and the
other two fund commissioners worked at cross-purposes, and
Tillson was accused of malfeasance. It is not easy to deter-
mine whether or not he was guilty, but certainly he was
hoodwinked in at least one negotiation with the result that the
security for fifty bonds sold became worthless. He had also
private dealings with Delafield which may have affected his
course as a public officer. The state's contract with Delafield
soon led to a lawsuit devised to prevent him from disposing to
innocent third parties of the state bonds of which he had gained
possession. Governor Carlin had protested and rightly against
the terms of Reynolds' contract with the United States Bank
by which the state was compelled to pay principal and interest
in London, thereby giving the bank at home a premium based
on exchange. Furthermore, the use of various agencies for
marketing the state bonds made it impossible for any financial
house to deal in them successfully or to hold them for a favor-
able turn of the market. Again and again large customers
of the state, like the Wrights, had to complain that parcels
of bonds that had come on the market for small pur-
chasers were being passed about at rates which spoiled the
sale of larger holdings. In 1839 the canal commissioners
began the issuance of checks to pay contractors on the
canal; and by fall this method of financing was completely
out of control. 20
The problem of providing for interest on the state loan
was becoming increasingly difficult. An act of the session of
18391840 provided for the payment of interest on canal
bonds out of sales of canal lands. 21 The interest on state bonds
held in London due in July, 1840, was paid out of 20,000
received from John Wright; and for the payment of interest
20 Reports General Assembly, 1839-1840, senate, 370; house, 55; ibid., 1840-
1841, senate, 68.
21 Laws of 1840, p. 80.
WRECK OF THE SYSTEM 229
in the United States, Thornton borrowed $5,000 at home.
Far more difficult was the problem of providing interest in
January, 1841. In December the legislature passed an act
allowing the hypothecation of bonds. But even with this
proviso it was only by desperate effort that R. F. Barrett, the
fund commissioner, succeeded in obtaining the money necessary
for the interest. At the beginning of the session the assembly
adopted a law levying a tax of ten cents on the hundred dollars
for the interest on the loan and allowing the hypothecation of
bonds to anticipate it, in spite of the protests of certain demo-
crats at allowing banks to dictate the policy of the state in this
particular. The interest far July, 1841, was obtained by John
D. Whiteside as fund commissioner in return for the hypothe-
cation with Charles Macalister and Henry Stebbins of 804
bonds, a proceeding which saddled the state for years to come
with a dispute involving the question of the disposal of bonds
to innocent third parties. 22
Upon the abandonment of the internal improvement system
the vital question was how the state might pay what it had al-
ready borrowed to construct that system rather than how the
state might obtain funds to complete it. Interest in the ques-
tion of internal improvement shifted to the attempt of persons
interested in the Illinois and Michigan canal to engage the state
to find the funds necessary to proceed with that work. In
Cook county the canal question was an extremely important
one in local politics. Thus in the summer of 1840, partly as a
result of a disagreement in the democratic convention, it was
urged, especially by the Chicago American, that the democratic
ticket was anti-canal; and a canal ticket was nominated. The
whigs nominated no candidates against them and apparently
the ticket drew a good share of the whig support, the canal
laborers alone being held responsible for the defeat of the canal
ticket. John Pearson was elected senator over James Turney;
Ebenezer Peck, Albert G. Leary, and Richard Murphy repre-
22 Reports General Assembly, 1840-1841, senate, 327; ibid., 1842-1843, senate,
75; Laws of 1841, p. 167; Illinois State Register, December 18, 23, 1840.
2 3 o THE FRONTIER STATE
sentatives over W. B. Ogden, John M. Wilson, and G. A. O.
Beaumont. 23
The canal ticket, though defeated, had its revenge, for the
canal delegation, as it was called, had no success in its attempt
to push the interests of the canal in the legislature. The whig
papers stated that the partisanship of the canal members alien-
ated the friends of the canal in the general assembly and
frustrated their attempts to secure a measure for its continu-
ation. Pearson especially was accused of committing the
unpardonable sin of interfering with the local measures of his
fellow senators, and the fact that the Cook county delegation,
worked for the election of a partisan canal commissioner dis-
gusted the whigs, who would otherwise have been disposed to
favor the canal. Whatever may have been the cause, the legis-
lature finally adjourned without making any provision for the
continuance of the work. 24 According to the Alton Telegraph,
the canal members discovered that their party would not sup-
port them in behalf of the canal, and their partisanship drove
away whig support in the senate. The vote on the question
bears out this statement fairly well. 25
Certainly, whether or not the canal delegation could have
guided their enterprise more skillfully, there was great wrath
in the north among both whigs and democrats. As the San-
gamo Journal put it in commenting on the result of the session
of 18401841, the delegation had upset the judiciary, turned
out Thornton, the canal commissioner, elected Peck to an office,
and as a result had stopped work on the canal by antagonizing
its friends. The State Register had to take the Chicago Demo-
crat to task for its attacks upon the legislature. The political
23 Belleville Advocate, August 23, 1840; Chicago American, June 26, July
27, 30, August 5, 1840.
24 Alton Telegraph, February 13, 1841; Chicago American, January 14,
February 15, March 18, 1841; the contractors had proposed forming a corpora-
tion to contract with the canal commissioners for the completion of the canal.
According to the American it appealed to the canal members to give this project
a chance at success by refusing to caucus for the appointment of canal commis-
sioners, warning them if they did so they would prejudice the whigs against the
measure.
25 Alton Telegraph, April 10, 1841.
WRECK OF THE SYSTEM 231
careers of all members of the delegation except those already
ensconced in office were at an end, an effect which possibly
" Long John " Wentworth, whose views may be found in the
Chicago Democrat, did not deplore. Certainly neither Leary,
Murphy, Pearson, nor Peck ever again interfered with his
political ambitions in the north. 26
The canal region did its best to undo the fatal work of its
delegation. Meetings were held in the north demanding a
special session to devise a means for the continuance of work
on the canal. The newspapers issued similar appeals and de-
mands for the resignation of the canal members in the hope
that more efficient ones might figure in the special session.
Carlin, though he did not call a special session, was induced to
make promises of issuance of state bonds for the continuation
of work on the canal. The Sangamo Journal protested that
the issue of bonds was impossible, declaring that the only relief
would be by reverting to the method of a chartered company.
Being on the line of the canal the Chicago American was of
course in favor of Carlin's plan, but generally throughout the
state the whigs opposed the hypothecation of bonds for the
benefit of the canal or for any other purpose whatever. The
reason is to be found perhaps in clippings from the New York
Herald to the effect that the hypothecation of bonds to Macal-
ister and Stebbins had ruined the credit of the state. The
Sangamo Journal was inclined to think that, while the state
would not repudiate and would ultimately pay all, the bond-
holders must be resigned to wait for a few years without
interest until the restoration of prosperity under a whig admin-
istration in the nation would make it possible for Illinois to
pay off her seventeen millions of debt. 27
Eventually the hard times, the overwhelming debt, the
difficulty of meeting even such taxes as were laid, produced
throughout the state a cry for repudiation. In the general
assembly of 1841 one member, describing conditions in his
28 Sangamo Journal, March 26, 1841; Illinois State Register, March 19, 1841.
27 Sangamo Journal, September 10, October 22, November 19, December 3,
17, 1841; Alton Telegraph, November 13, December n, 1841.
232 THE FRONTIER STATE
neighborhood, declared that magistrates and constables were
the only business men. In Bond county, a meeting to protest
against additional taxation laid down the doctrine that the
state was not morally bound to pay its debts. In Montgomery
a nonpartisan meeting called for frugality in government, de-
nounced the baleful results of government debts, and advanced
the doctrine that there must be no taxation to pay principal or
interest on debt except in so far as the people had received
some return for it. In Scott county it was said that the bonds
were bills of credit and as such unconstitutional and not binding
upon the state.
Both whig and democratic papers denounced the doctrine
of repudiation as stated by such extremists, but there was some
sparring between the two parties in attempting each to force
the other to a definite stand. First the Sangamo Journal de-
clared that a proposed anti-repudiation article in the democratic
state platform of 1841 had been tabled. On the other hand
the Register declared that the Journal had come out for repudi-
ation or for taxation sufficient to pay the debt; and the Register
pronounced the people too honest for the one and too poor for
the other. On December 16, the Alton Telegraph declared
the Battle Axe to be the only paper in the state in favor of
repudiation; but by November 13, it had declared that the
payment of interest should stop unless the bondholders would
take still more bonds at par. It pointed out truly enough the
fact that Illinois bonds had been hypothecated at thirty-three
cents on the dollar, while Indiana bonds on which the interest
even was not paid were sold at a higher rate. It believed that
the legislature, refusing longer to issue state bonds unless
creditors would take them at par, should levy as heavy a tax as
possible for their ultimate payment. 28
The payment of the July, 1841, interest was the last
attempt to keep the state's finances solvent. From that time
the state defaulted on her interest, and her bonds fell far below
28 Illinois State Register, October 29, November 5, 1841; Sangamo Journal,
December 24, 1841.
WRECK OF THE SYSTEM 233
par. The financial situation sank into deeper and deeper con-
fusion. No proper accounts were kept, and the progress of
the various fund commissioners in settling with the state's
debtors, such as Delafield and the New York banks, multiplied
the intricacy of the situation. The party jealousies which had
hampered and biased the work of the state's financial officers
from the beginning continued in political squabbles, such as
that one on the canal route between the friends of Thornton
and of Isaac N. Morris. The taxation law of 1841 was used
by surrounding states as an argument by which to attract emi-
grants from Illinois to their own borders. The oft repeated
statement that Illinois was a ruined state was heard on every
hand. The railroad lines which had been intended to make
her the commercial center of the union were abandoned, finding
employment only where thrifty farmers used their rights of
way to grow beans. 29
In the maze of proposals, or appeals for relief, that came
from all sides, not much can be seen in 1842 but the claims of
personal, factional, sectional, or party interest. In 1842 there
was a recrudescence of repudiation sentiment which was, how-
ever, generally frowned upon. County meetings here and there
demanded strict economy in the legislature in the way of sala-
ries and the elimination of such time-wasting devices as
committees of the whole and allowing members to speak more
than one hour on a question. From the line of the canal ema-
nated various proposals for continuing that work, which still
went on. Sometimes these implied obtaining a larger federal
land grant, the sale of canal lots and lands, or the use of the
distribution fund. The people of southern Illinois rather be-
lieved that the distribution fund should go to rehabilitate the
school fund. Various schemes for the system as a whole were
proposed. The Chicago American of May 1 1, 1 842, published
a plan calling for drastic economy, a revision of local govern-
ment in the interest of economical administration, and taxation
29 Alton Telegraph, August 27, 1842; Illinois State Register, February 4,
August 26, 1842; Chicago American, June 14, July 27, 1842.
234 THE FRONTIER STATE
to pay the interest on the bonds; for the property itself the
newspaper went back to the old idea of 1836 of construction
by chartered companies, to whose stock the state should sub-
scribe. The State Register on behalf of Gatewood contended
with the Telegraph for the honor of the authorship of a scheme,
the crux of which was to dispose of the state lands at the gen-
erous estimate of $20 an acre. The Telegraph and the
Register were unable also to agree as to the amount of the debt,
the Register insisting that for practical purposes the bonds
sold by the bank, the appropriated school fund, the federal
deposit, and all bonds irregularly issued should be deducted to
the amount of six million. Another proposal was that the state
sell its property for bonds and scrip; the distribution fund
according to this proposal was to go to the school fund. The
Sangamo Journal published a letter which offered the solution
of a tax of thirty cents on the hundred to be directed to payment
of the state debt, using the proceeds of state lands and the dis-
tribution fund for expens 
