The Settlement of Illinois, 1778-1830 Part 6

During the third quarter of 1820, all sales in Illinois were at the minimum price and a considerable proportion were of the minimum area. At the same time, some of the land in Ohio, and a very few tracts in Indiana, sold at a higher price, one tract in Ohio, but only one, selling for more than seven dollars per acre.(339) To October 1, 1821, the land-offices in Illinois reported:

Acres Sold. Surveyed, but Unsold.

Shawneetown 592,464 2,401,936 Kaskaskia 419,898 1,615,942 Palestine 714 2,880,720 Edwardsville 437,993 2,696,727 Vandalia 7,923 2,545,677

All land in the districts of Shawneetown and Kaskaskia had been surveyed, but the remaining districts were still indefinite on the north.(340) At this time, Illinois money pa.s.sed in the state at par, and the Bank of Illinois was among those whose notes were received in payment for public lands.(341)

As more and more land was opened to settlement, a new difficulty arose and became increasingly troublesome. All public land was to be entered at the same minimum price, and as a natural result, the poorest land was not taken up and settlement became widely dispersed on the best tracts of land. In December, 1824, the Illinois legislature sent a memorial to Congress portraying the evils of spa.r.s.e settlement, and asking that land that had been offered for sale for five years or more might be sold at fifty cents per acre. Better roads, better markets, and better inst.i.tutions were expected to result from such sales.(342) Two years later, another memorial was sent. This asked that land be offered for sale at prices graduated according to the quality of the land, suggested that the poorest land might well be donated to settlers, and declared that settlement was r.e.t.a.r.ded by the high minimum price of land.(343) Governor Ninian Edwards pointed out that in 1790, Hamilton had recommended that public lands be sold at twenty cents per acre, which "was the price at which Kentucky, long afterward, sold her lands."(344) In 1828, the Committee on Public Lands recommended that public lands unsold at public sale be first offered at one dollar per acre, and if still unsold, that the price be reduced twenty-five cents per acre each two years until sold or reduced to twenty-five cents per acre; that eighty-acre homestead claims be given to such persons as would cultivate and occupy them for five years; and that lands unsold at twenty-five cents per acre be ceded to the states in which they lay, upon payment of the cost of survey and twenty-five cents per acre. At this time, there was in Illinois 1,403,482 acres surveyed and sold; 19,684,186 acres surveyed and unsold, of the 39,000,000 acres estimated to be in the State.(345) Still another memorial from the legislature was sent to Congress in 1829. It pointed out, in strong terms, the inconvenience arising from the high price at which public land was offered for sale. Unsold public land could neither be taxed nor legally settled. It was stated that of the forty millions of acres in Illinois, little over one and one-half millions had been sold at public sales. A granting of the right of preemption, which implies the presence in the state of squatters, is suggested.(346)

The implication of the presence of squatters was well founded. When Peter Cartwright, in 1823, visited a settlement in the Sangamon country, he found it a community of squatters, on land which had been surveyed, but was not yet offered for sale. Money was h.o.a.rded up to enter land when Congress should order sales. Cartwright paid a squatter two hundred dollars for his improvement and his claim, bought some stock, and rented out the place, to which he was to remove from Kentucky the following year.(347) This squatting on surveyed land, and even on unsurveyed land, was a regular procedure. It added much to the difficulty of governing the state-hence the memorials to Congress, and hence the great significance to Illinois of an act of May 29, 1830, which gave to all settlers who had cultivated land in 1829 the right to preempt not more than one hundred and sixty acres.(348) This law was of general application. Even now the Illinois legislature sent another pet.i.tion concerning preemption to Congress, because one of the provisions of the act of May, 1830, was that the plat of survey should have been filed in the land-office, and this provision debarred about one thousand Illinois squatters from the benefit of the act. A modification in their favor was desired.(349)

The land claims of the ancient settlers, as they are called in government doc.u.ments, continued to occupy the attention of Congress, in a desultory way, throughout the period, but their influence upon settlement had practically ceased with the opening of the public land-offices.(350)

Among the obstacles to settlement was the holding of land by non-residents. Such lands were subject to a triple tax in case of delinquency, and when sold for taxes and costs frequently did not bring enough for that purpose, in which event they reverted to the state and the state paid the costs. Redemption, although possible, was rare.(351) In 1823, about nine thousand quarter-sections of land in the Military Tract, lying between the Illinois and the Mississippi, were advertised for sale, because of the non-payment of taxes by non-resident landholders.(352) At this time, two of the prominent men of the state who wished to dispose of a large amount of state paper, advertised that they would pay such delinquent taxes at twenty-five per cent discount.(353) In 1826, thirty-eight pages of the _Illinois Intelligencer_ were filled with a description, in double column, of lands owned by non-residents, the lands being for sale for taxes. In 1829, a similar list filled thirty-two pages.(354) Much discontent was manifested in the state on account of the laws concerning the public lands, and Governor Edwards' message to the legislature, in 1830, elaborated a theory that all public lands belonged of right to the states in which they lay.(355)

Illinois early understood that an Illinois-Michigan ca.n.a.l would help to people her northern lands. This led to many efforts to secure such a waterway. In 1819 a favorable topographical report concerning the route for the proposed ca.n.a.l was made,(356) and in 1822 the state was authorized to construct the ca.n.a.l, but no tangible aid was given.(357) In 1825 the legislature pet.i.tioned Congress for a grant of the towns.h.i.+ps through which the ca.n.a.l would pa.s.s. A committee report of March, 1826, which was almost identical with another presented in February, 1825, pointed out that the cost of transporting a ton of merchandise from Philadelphia, New York, or Baltimore was about ninety dollars, and required from twenty to twenty-two days. The probable cost by the proposed ca.n.a.l, the Lakes, and the Erie Ca.n.a.l, from St. Louis to New York was from sixty-three to sixty-five dollars per ton, and the time from twelve to fifteen days. The ca.n.a.l would bind Illinois and Missouri to the North.(358) Congress received a memorial from the legislature on the same subject in January, 1827, requesting the grant of "two entire towns.h.i.+ps, along the whole course of the ca.n.a.l," and declaring that markets at New Orleans fluctuated because of speculators, and that grain and goods sent from the West to the Atlantic ports by way of New Orleans was exposed to the dangers of both the southern climate and the sea.(359) A few weeks later the desired grant was made, the state being given one-half of five sections in width on each side of the ca.n.a.l, the United States reserving the alternate sections.(360) The ca.n.a.l commissioners promptly platted the original town of Chicago and sold lots at from twenty to eighty dollars each, but no immediate settlement followed the land sale, and Chicago remained for some years longer an Indian town. The prospect of having a ca.n.a.l doubtless had some influence upon settlement, but at the close of 1830 the actual construction of the ca.n.a.l was still a thing of the future. By the close of 1828, Congress had donated to Illinois, for various purposes, chiefly for schools and internal improvements, 1,346,000 acres.(361)

The salt springs had been vested in the state of Illinois with the provision that no part of the reservations should be sold. Large reservations were made at the Saline River salt works and at the Vermilion saline near Danville, the object being to reserve a supply of wood for the making of salt. Upon the discovery of coal near the springs the state was permitted to sell not more than thirty thousand acres of the Saline River reservation.(362)

Illinois as a landowner sometimes mingled church and state. The original proprietors of Alton having donated one hundred lots, one-half for the support of the gospel, and one-half for the support of a public school, the state vested the donated lots in the trustees of the town, upon its incorporation in 1821. A similar donation made by the proprietors of Mt.

Carmel was confirmed in the same manner.(363) The c.u.mberland Presbyterians having built a church on a school section, the state provided that for ninety-nine years the building should be used as a schoolhouse also, the school being under the joint direction of the trustees of the towns.h.i.+p and the church society.(364)

The receipts for public lands in 1828 and 1829, respectively, were:

1828 1829.

Kaskaskia $ 4,639.82 $ 10,503.99 Shawneetown 7,250.28 16,058.79 Edwardsville 23,536.49 38,001.35 Vandalia 4,489.71 24,258.13 Palestine 25,671.62 59,026.81 Springfield 56,507.63 108,175.47 $122,095.55 $256,024.54(365)

The receipts for 1828 were for 96,092.91 acres; of 1829, for 196,324.92 acres.(366) From October 1, 1829, to September 30, 1830, sales, receipts, and prices were:

Acres. Average Price per Acre.

Illinois 291,401.28 $364,369.87 $1.2504 Indiana 413,253.63 521,715.13 1.2624 Alabama 233,369.27 291,715.20 1.25 Missouri 182,929.63 228,748.12 1.2505 Michigan 106,201.28 132,751.68 1.25 Ohio 160,182.14 201,923.50 1.2606 Mississippi 103,795.61 130,475.87 1.257(367)

The northward movement of population in Illinois is well indicated by the figures for 1828 and 1829. The Indian barrier was being pushed back, and the Sangamon country, with its land-office at Springfield, was a favorite place for settlement. The rapid increase in the amount of land sold is also striking. As the third decade of the century closed Indiana was the favorite place for frontier settlement. The sales of public lands in Ohio were diminis.h.i.+ng. A prophetic glance would have seen that as the ever-s.h.i.+fting frontier pa.s.sed westward Illinois was to overtake and then to far surpa.s.s Indiana in number of settlers.

The period from 1818 to 1830 saw the Indian t.i.tle to a great fertile tract of land in Illinois extinguished, the price of all public lands lowered and the land offered for sale in smaller tracts, the right of preemption granted to squatters who had settled before 1830, considerable grants of land made to the state for internal improvements, the great salt spring reservations reduced. These changes did much to make Illinois a more attractive place for settlement. When a committee of workingmen in Wheeling, Virginia, made a report, in October, 1830, on a method of escaping from the ills of workingmen, they presented an elaborate plan for buying land and forming a colony in Illinois.(368) The experience of the squatter who settled with four or five sows for breeders and in four years or less drove forty-two fat hogs to market and sold them for $135, with which he bought eighty acres of land and paid his debts, was not a rare one.(369)

As 1830 closed there were still problems connected with the land to solve.

The Indian question persisted, non-resident landholders were troublesome, and the state would still seek grants for internal improvements, but none of these was to be long a serious impediment to settlement.

The Government and Its Representatives, 1818 to 1830.

In some respects the character of the state government of Illinois shows the character of the settlers. The nativity of the governors and the congressmen of the state indicates that the South was the origin of a majority of the population. Before the end of 1830 there had been no northern-born representative of the state in the national House of Representatives; the first northern-born senator was chosen in the last month of 1825, and the first northern governor in 1830.(370) Pierre Menard, a French Canadian, the first lieutenant-governor, came to Illinois in 1790, and can not fairly be cited as a type of the French descendants of the first white settlers of Illinois.(371) As a matter of fact, the French element was not a political factor of importance. Nor is it true that all southerners were pro-slavery, for the most noted anti-slavery governor of Illinois, and her governor during the Civil War, were from the South, while her first northern senator was pro-slavery. The great influx of immigrants from New England and the rest of the North did not come until after 1830. It was r.e.t.a.r.ded, after the opening of the Erie Ca.n.a.l (1825), by the Winnebago and Black Hawk wars, and did not reach its height until the latter war had closed and the Indian claims to land in northern Illinois had been extinguished. Immigration from the northern states increased proportionally, however, after 1820.

Illinois men in Congress give a number of indications of the feeling of the people on questions having a more or less intimate relation to settlement. Constant and insistent demands for more land-offices, more post-roads, more pensions, donations of land for poor settlers, grants of land for internal improvements, the right of preemption for squatters, and the reduction of the price of public lands show that the frontier was in favor of a liberal governmental expenditure.(372) Congressmen from Illinois, without exception, favored the tariff bills of 1824 and 1828.(373) In 1828, the only senator from Illinois who voted on the question, voted for the bill abolis.h.i.+ng imprisonment for debt on processes issuing from a United States court.(374) Since Illinois early abolished such imprisonment, it is interesting to note that three hundred and thirty-eight persons were committed to the Ess.e.x county jail in New Jersey, for debt, in the year ending April 1, 1823, of whom one hundred and forty-one were in close confinement. The aggregate of debt was fifty-five thousand dollars.(375)

Within the state one of the phenomena which has characterized frontier regions appeared about the year 1821. A desperate gang of immigrants had robbed and plundered until, after a most notable robbery, "a public meeting was held, and among other things, a company was formed, consisting of ten law-abiding men of well-known courage, who bound themselves together, under the name of the Regulators of the Valley, to rid the country of horse thieves and robbers.... A regular const.i.tution was drawn up and subscribed to." After the leader of the desperadoes had been killed the remainder fled.(376) A frontier condition is indicated also by the fact that when Sangamon county was formed, on January 30, 1821, a special law provided that housekeepers in the county should perform the duties and receive the privileges of freeholders. The same provision was made for Morgan county two years later. As land sales in the Sangamon country, in which these counties lay, did not begin until November, 1823, these laws probably resulted from the formation of counties whose entire population consisted of squatters.(377) The persistence of wolf bounties bears testimony to continued wild surroundings.(378) In 1829 alien Irish, and presumably all other aliens, could vote at all elections. An election law of this year provided that voting should be by the voter's approaching the bar, in the election room, and naming in an audible voice the persons for whom he voted, or, if the voter preferred, by delivering to the judges a ballot which should be read aloud by them, the alternative being for the benefit of illiterate voters. Voting had previously been by ballot.(379)

Although frontier conditions obtained, there were evidences of their gradual amelioration. A law of 1823 provided that counterfeiting, which, in the territorial period, had been punishable by death, should be punished by a fine of not more than one thousand dollars, whipping with not fewer than one hundred nor more than two hundred lashes, imprisonment for not more than twelve months, and being rendered forever infamous.(380) The state established a system of common schools to be supported, in part, by the state, in 1825; but in 1829 the sections of the act which provided that two per cent of all money received into the state treasury, and five-sixths of the interest of the school fund, should be for the support of public schools, were repealed,(381) taxation for such a purpose not being then in accord with public sentiment. A mechanic's lien law, pa.s.sed in 1825, provided that in case of a contract between a landowner and a mechanic, the mechanic should have a lien upon the product of his labor for three months, after which the lien lapsed unless suit had been commenced. Three years later an unsuccessful attempt to secure such a law was made in New York.(382)

Two accounts on the records of the state are of sufficient interest to give at length. The first gives the amount of money received into the treasury during the two years ending December 27, 1822:

"The amount paid into the treasury by the different sheriffs within the two years ending as aforesaid, is $ 7,121.09

The amount of a judgment obtained against the former sheriff of Randolph [County] for non-resident tax of 1818, is 147.14

The amount from non-residents for the two preceding years, including back taxes, redemptions, interest, &c., is 38,437.75

The amount from non-residents' bank stock, is 97.77

The amount from the Saline on the Ohio, is 10,563.09

The amount from the Saline on Muddy river, is 200.00

The amount from the sale of Lots in the town of Vandalia, is 5659.86

Total amount of money paid at the Treasury between the 1st of January, 1821, and the 27th of December, 1822, $62,226.70"

The balance in the treasury was $33,661.11, but Governor Edwards, in his message of December 2, 1828, reported a state indebtedness of $44,140.03 and taxes in Illinois as precisely eight times as high as those in Kentucky which were payable in the same kind of currency.(383) The rage for internal improvements was partly responsible, and for this in turn the wide dispersion of the settlements in Illinois, caused by the fact that all public lands were offered at the same minimum price and that the prairies were in large measure shunned, furnishes a partial explanation.

The second account of the state, above referred to, shows that in 1822 it cost $151.82 to make a trip from Vandalia to Shawneetown and return, and one from Vandalia to Kaskaskia and return, to convey to the capital some money paid by the United States on the three per cent fund due the state.

The former trip occupied fourteen days, the latter eight days.(384)

Governor Ca.s.s' protection of Galena during the Winnebago War of 1827 may have been influenced by its uncertain governmental status. In 1828 miners in what is now southwestern Wisconsin voted for members of Congress from Illinois, and in 1829 Galena was enumerated among the thriving towns of Huron or Ouisconsin Territory. November 29, 1828, one hundred and eighty-seven inhabitants of Galena and vicinity sent a memorial to Congress asking that a separate territory be formed, the territory to be bounded on the south by a line drawn due west from the southern point of Lake Michigan to the Mississippi, and by the northern boundary of Missouri. The memorial began: "The undersigned, inhabitants of that portion of the 'Territory Northwest of the Ohio,' lying north of a due east and west line drawn through the southernmost end of Lake Michigan, and west of that lake to the British possessions, comprehending the mining district, more generally known as the Fever River Lead Mines." The pet.i.tioners referred to the violation of the Ordinance of 1787, and also stated that they were subject to two separate governments, each some hundreds of miles from them, and each unacquainted with their needs. The pet.i.tion was read and tabled.(385) It is true that the situation of Galena was peculiarly difficult. No mail could be carried along the rude trail from Peoria to Galena during the wet season, and when the Illinois legislature, seeking to give relief, pa.s.sed a bill for laying out a road between the "Illinois settlements and Galena," it was vetoed by the governor and council because the road would pa.s.s through lands of the United States and of the Indians. When the river was frozen provisions were very high, and mail was sent forward from Fort Edwards once a month.

These conditions were more aggravating as the number of inhabitants increased, and in 1827, notwithstanding the trouble with the Winnebago Indians, there were about four thousand men at Galena, and they mined about fifteen times as much lead as had been mined in 1823. In January, 1828, a congressional committee reported favorably on a proposition to open a road to Galena.(386) In a letter written one year later by the delegate from Michigan Territory, to the committee on territories, the suggestion is made that a new territory, to be called Huron, should be formed, because the region at Galena was said to have received hundreds of settlers during the preceding summer and to have at the time of writing ten thousand or more, and government in the lead region could not be properly carried on from Detroit, which was eight hundred or one thousand miles distant, by the routes commonly traveled. The legislature of Michigan was said to be compelled to meet in the summer in order to enable delegates to attend and that was the busy time at the mines.(387) A congressional act of February, 1829, provided for the laying out of a village at Galena. The plat was not to exceed one section of land, no lot was to be larger than one-fourth of an acre, unimproved lots were to be sold at not less than five dollars, improved lots were to be graded, without reference to their improvements, into three grades, to sell at the rate of twenty-five, fifteen, and ten dollars, respectively, per acre, the occupants having the right of preemption.(388) Another mode of relief, which the inhabitants were working out for themselves, is described in a Galena paper of September 14, 1829: "Mr. Soulard's wagon and mule team returned, a few days since, from Chicago, near the southernmost bend of Lake Michigan; to which place it had been taken across the country, with a load of lead. This is the first wagon that has ever pa.s.sed from the Mississippi River to Chicago. The route taken from the mines was, to Ogee's ferry, on Rock River, eighty miles; thence an east course sixty miles, to the Missionary establishment on the Fox River of the Illinois; and thence a north-easterly course sixty miles to Chicago, as travelled, two hundred miles. The wagon was loaded with one ton and a half of lead.

The trip out was performed in eleven, and the return trip in eight days.

The lead was taken, by water, from Chicago to Detroit. Should a road be surveyed and marked, on the best ground, and the shortest distance, a trip could be performed in much less time. And if salt could be obtained at Chicago, from the New York Salt Works, it would be a profitable and advantageous trade."(389)

As the life history of an individual recapitulates the history of the development of a species, so does the history of Galena, in respect to the difficulties of its early settlers, recapitulate the history of the several parts of the United States in their early days. As Illinois had sent pet.i.tions for relief to the governments of the Northwest Territory, of Indiana Territory, and of the United States, so did Galena send similar pet.i.tions to the governments of Illinois, of Michigan Territory, and of the United States. In each case the prayers of the pet.i.tioners were but partially granted. In each case the difficulties from Indians, lack of facilities for commerce, distance from the seat of government, inability to secure lands, were gradually mitigated until the steady onward sweep of settlement engulfed the outlying region and it ceased to be the frontier, and turned its energies to other questions-different, although probably as difficult. Galena, even at the close of 1830, was a frontier region on the outskirts of Illinois settlement.

Transportation.

Transportation was long a difficult problem, although it became gradually less so. Travel by either water or land was slow and difficult. When a party of about one hundred men, conducted by Colonel R. M. Johnson, went, in six or eight boats, from St. Louis to the site of the present Galena, in 1819, to make an arrangement with the Indians which would permit the whites to mine lead, the upward voyage occupied some twenty days.(390) Doubtless the journey of Edward Coles from Albemarle county, Virginia, to Illinois, in 1819, was typical of that of the better cla.s.s of immigrants.

At the Virginia homestead, slaves, horses and wagons were prepared for the long journey. A trusty slave was put in charge of the caravan of emigrant wagons and started out on the long journey over the Alleghanies to Brownsville, Pennsylvania. Mr. Coles started a few days later, overtook the party one day's journey from Brownsville, and upon arriving at that place bought two flat-bottomed boats, upon which negroes, horses and wagons, with their owner, were embarked. The drunken pilot was discharged at Pittsburg, and Coles acted as captain and pilot on the voyage of some six hundred miles down the Ohio to a point below Louisville, whence, the boats being sold, the journey was continued by land to Edwardsville, Illinois.(391)

April 5, 1823, a party of forty-three started from Cincinnati in a keel-boat, arriving at Galena, June 1, 1823. Twenty-two days were required to stem the flooded Mississippi from the mouth of the Ohio to St. Louis, and twenty of these were rainy days.(392) In 1822 the English settlement in Edwards county sent several flat-boats loaded with corn, flour, beef, pork, sausage, etc., to New Orleans.(393) Improvement of the Wabash was entrusted to an incorporated company in 1825, and several years earlier a ca.n.a.l across the peninsula at the junction of the Ohio and the Mississippi was contemplated.(394)

Many immigrants came overland. The following is typical: "In the year 1819 a party of six men, and families of three of them, started from Casey County, Kentucky, for Illinois.... The first three were young unmarried men, the last three had their wives and children with them. They came in an old-fas.h.i.+oned Tennessee wagon, that resembled a flat-boat on wheels.

The younger readers of this sketch can form but a faint idea of the curious and awkward appearance of one of these old fas.h.i.+oned wagons, covered over with white sheeting, the front and rear bows set at an angle of forty-five degrees to correspond with the ends of the body, and then the enormous quant.i.ty of freight that could be stowed away in the hole would astonish even a modern omnibus driver! Women, children, beds, buckets, tubs, old fas.h.i.+oned chairs, including all the household furniture usually used by our log-cabin ancestors; a chicken coop, with 'two or three hens and a jolly rooster for a start,' tied on behind, while, under the wagon, trotted a full-blood, long-eared hound, fastened by a short rope to the hind axle. Without much effort on your part, you can, in imagination, see this party on the road, one of the men in the saddle on the near horse, driving; the other two, perhaps on horseback, slowly plodding along in the rear of the wagon, while the boys 'walked ahead,'

with rifles on their shoulders 'at half-mast,' on the lookout for squirrels, turkey, deer, or '_Injin_.' "(395) Muddy roads sometimes caused emigrants to make long detours in the hope of finding better ones, and if the roads became impa.s.sable water transportation might be resorted to when the locality permitted.(396) The fear of breaking down was omnipresent and danger from professional bandits(397) was not lacking. There was also danger of being lost on the enormous prairies in Illinois.(398)