Part 3 (2/2)

Illinois soon sought admission to the second grade of territorial government. In April, 1801, John Edgar wrote from Kaskaskia to St. Clair: ”During a few weeks past, we have put into circulation pet.i.tions addressed to Governor Harrison, for a General a.s.sembly, and we have had the satisfaction to find that about nine-tenths of the inhabitants of the counties of St. Clair and Randolph approve of the measure, a great proportion of whom have already put their signatures to the pet.i.tion.... I have no doubt but that the undertaking will meet with early success, so as to admit of the House of Representatives meeting in the fall.”(192) The movement for advancement to the second grade was not, however, destined to such early success, and when it did take place such a change had occurred that Illinois was much enraged.

The Illinois country early became restive under the government of Indiana Territory. Much the same causes for discontent existed as had caused Kentucky to wish to separate from Virginia, Tennessee from North Carolina, and the country west of the Alleghanies from the United States. In each case a frontier minority saw its wishes, if not its rights, infringed by a more eastern majority. In each case the eastern people were themselves too weak to furnish sufficient succor to the struggling West. The conflict was natural and inevitable. The grave charge against Governor Harrison, who had large powers of patronage, was local favoritism. So discontented was Illinois, that in 1803 it had pet.i.tioned for annexation to the territory of Louisiana when such territory should be formed.(193) Antagonism to the Indiana government became still more bitter when, in December, 1804, after an election which was so hurried that an outlying county did not get to vote, the territory entered the second grade of territorial government.(194)

In the summer of 1805, discontent in Illinois was again expressed in a memorial to Congress. About three hundred and fifty inhabitants of the region pet.i.tioned for a division of Indiana Territory, From the Illinois settlements to the capital, Vincennes, was said to be one hundred and eighty miles, ”through a dreary and inhospitable wilderness, uninhabited, and which during one part of the year, can scarcely afford water sufficient to sustain nature, and that of the most indifferent quality, besides presenting other hards.h.i.+ps equally severe, while in another it is part under water, and in places to the extent of some miles, by which the road is rendered almost impa.s.sable, and the traveler is not only subjected to the greatest difficulties, but his life placed in the most imminent danger.” It resulted that the attendance of Illinois inhabitants upon either the legislature or the supreme court was fraught with many inconveniences. Because of the extensive prairies between Illinois and Vincennes, ”a communication between them and the settlements east of that river [the Wabash] can not in the common course of things, for centuries yet to come, be supported with the least benefit, or be of the least moment to either of them.” Illinois objected to having been precipitated into the second grade of government. In the election for that purpose, said the memorialists, only Knox county voted in the affirmative, and Wayne county did not vote, because the writs of election arrived too late.

Since entering the second grade the County of Wayne (Michigan) had been struck off. It was believed that if the prayer for separation should be granted, the rage for emigration to Louisiana would, in great measure, cease, the value of public lands in Illinois would be increased, and their sale would also be more rapid, while an increased population would render Illinois flouris.h.i.+ng and self-supporting rather than a claimant for governmental support.(195)

At the same time that Congress received the above memorial, it received a pet.i.tion from a majority of the members of the respective houses of the Indiana legislature. This pet.i.tion asked that the freehold qualification for electors be abolished; that Indiana Territory be not divided, and that the undivided territory be soon made a state. It was said that the people were too poor to support a divided government, and that as the general court met annually in each county it was slight hards.h.i.+p to the frontier to have the supreme court meet at Vincennes.(196) It was probably true at this time, as it certainly was in 1807, that the general court met as above stated. Appeal by bill of exceptions was, however, allowed. The supreme court had no original, exclusive jurisdiction.(197) Nothing daunted by this memorial from the legislature, Illinois, in a short time, prepared another memorial-this time with twenty signatures. This adds to the grievances recited in the previous memorial that the wealthy appeal cases against the Illinois poor to the supreme court at Vincennes; that landholders on the Wabash are interested in preventing the population of lands on the Mississippi; that preemption is needed, and that it is hoped that the general government will not pa.s.s unnoticed the act of the last legislature authorizing the importation of slaves into the territory. It violates the Ordinance of 1787. The memorialists desired such importation, but it must be authorized by Congress to be legal. The population of Illinois was given as follows:

By the census of April 1, 1801: 2,361

Inhabitants of Prairie du Chien and on the Illinois River, not included in above: 550

”Emigration” since 1801, at least one-third increase: 750

Settlements on the Ohio River: 650

4,311(198)

The truth of some of the complaints from Illinois is apparent. That a land company on the Wabash wished to hinder settlement on the Mississippi is probably true, for Matthew Lyon, of Kentucky, said in Congress, in the winter of 1805-6: ”The price of lands is various. I know of two hundred thousand acres of land on the Wabash, which is offered for sale at twenty cents per acre.”(199) It is to be presumed that the company making the offer could not give a secure t.i.tle to the land.

In 1806, a congressional committee reported on the various memorials and pet.i.tions from Illinois, but the report led to no legislation and thus settled nothing, and in 1807 pet.i.tioning continued.(200) Illinois again pet.i.tioned for separation from the remainder of Indiana Territory, this pet.i.tion bearing seventeen signatures. An inclosed census is lost, but a population of five thousand is spoken of. A new and significant paragraph occurs: ”When your Memorialists contemplate the probable movements which may arise out of an European peace, now apparently about to take place, they cannot but feel the importance of union, of energy, of population on this sh.o.r.e of the Mississippi-they cannot but shudder at the horrors which may arise from a _disaffection in the West_....” A government was needed, and that of Indiana Territory was not acceptable to the people of Illinois. One hundred and two inhabitants of Illinois sent a counter-pet.i.tion, in which they said that Illinois had paid no taxes and needed no separate government, also that the committee that prepared the above pet.i.tion was not legally chosen. Most of the signers of the pet.i.tion were Americans, while most of the signers of the counter-pet.i.tion were French, forty-two of the latter being illiterate.(201) The report of a congressional committee on the pet.i.tion was adverse,(202) as was also a report on three pet.i.tions for division that came from Illinois in the spring of 1808.(203) In the following December, the representative of Indiana Territory in Congress was appointed chairman of a committee to consider the expediency of dividing the territory, and to this committee pet.i.tions both for and against division were referred. This territorial delegate was in favor of division, and his committee presented a favorable report, in which the number of inhabitants of Indiana east of the Wabash was estimated to be seventeen thousand, and the number west of the Wabash to be eleven thousand-numbers thought to be sufficiently large to justify division, and an estimate which the census of 1810 proves to have been almost correct. In February, 1809, the bill providing for the division so ardently desired by Illinois was approved, the division to take place on the first of the next March. The western division was to be known as Illinois Territory and was to have for its eastern boundary a line due north from Vincennes to the Canadian line.(204) In the debate in the House of Representatives, preceding the pa.s.sage of the bill for division, the arguments in its favor were that the Wabash was a natural dividing line; that a wide extent of wilderness intervened between Vincennes and the western settlements; that the power of the executive was enervated by the dispersed condition of the settlements; that to render justice was almost impossible; that the United States would be more than compensated for the increased expense by the rise in value of the public lands. Opponents of the bill declared that the complaints made by Illinois were common to many parts of the country; that the number of officers would be needlessly increased by the proposed division; and that ”a compliance with this pet.i.tion would but serve to foster their factions, and produce more pet.i.tions.” No significant geographical division of the vote on the bill is apparent.(205)

III. Obstacles to Immigration. 1790 to 1809.

In addition to the inability to secure land t.i.tles on account of unsettled French claims, to the presence of Indians and to the discontent with the government of Indiana Territory, almost every cause which made settlement on the frontier difficult was found in the Illinois country in its most p.r.o.nounced form, because Illinois was the far corner of the frontier. The census reports of the United Status give the following statistics of population:

1790. 1800. 1810.

Kentucky 73,677 220,955 406,511 Ohio 45,365 230,760 Indiana 2,517 24,520 Illinois 2,458 12,282

These figures show how conspicuously small was the immigration to Illinois. Enough has already been said to show some of the reasons for this sluggish settlement. When, in 1793, Governor St. Clair wrote to Alexander Hamilton, ”In compa.s.sion to a poor devil banished to another planet, tell me what is doing in yours, if you can s.n.a.t.c.h a moment from the weighty cares of your office,”(206) he doubtless felt that the language was not too strong, and voiced a feeling of loneliness that was common to the settlers. Nor was there a lack of land in the East to make westward movement imperative. Ma.s.sachusetts was much opposed to her people emigrating to Ohio, because she wished them to settle on her own eastern frontier (Maine), and Vermont and New York had vacant lands.(207)

One who settled in Illinois at this period came through danger to danger, for Indians lurked in the woods and malaria waited in the lowlands. The journey made by the immigrants was tedious and difficult, and was often rendered dangerous by precipitous and rough hills and swollen streams, if the journey was overland, or by snags, shoals and rapids, if by water. A large proportion of the settlers came from Maryland, Virginia, or the Carolinas. Those from Virginia and Maryland were induced to emigrate by the glowing descriptions of the Illinois country given by the soldiers of George Rogers Clark, and these soldiers sometimes led the first contingent. A typical Virginia settlement in Illinois was that called New Design, located in what is now Monroe county, between Kaskaskia and Cahokia. Founded about 1786 by a native of Berkeley county, the settlement received important additions in 1793, and four years later a party of more than one hundred and fifty arrived from near the headwaters of the south branch of the Potomac, this last contingent led by a Baptist minister, who had organized a church on a previous visit.(208) In general, persons Scotch-Irish by birth were opposed to slavery, as were also the members of the Quaker church. This caused a considerable emigration from the Carolinas. Another motive for people from all sections was that expressed by settlers of Illinois, in 1806, when they said that they came west in order to secure ”such an establishment in land as they despaired of ever being able to procure in the old settlements.”(209) We have seen how long deferred was the fulfillment of their hope of getting a t.i.tle to the coveted land. Although the East was not crowded, it is true that land there was more expensive than that of the same quality in the West. In 1806, three dollars per acre was the maximum price in even the settled parts of Indiana Territory, while fifty dollars per acre had been paid for choice Kentucky land.(210)

The greater number of immigrants came by water, but a family too poor to travel thus, or whose starting-point was not near a navigable stream, could come overland. Illinois was favored by having a number of large rivers leading toward it; the Ohio, Kentucky, c.u.mberland, Tennessee, and their tributaries were much used by emigrants. The chief route by land was the Wilderness Road, over which thousands of the inhabitants of Kentucky had come. Its existence helps to explain the wonderful growth of Kentucky-in 1774 the first cabin, in 1790 a population of 73,000. It crossed the mountains at c.u.mberland Gap, wound its way by the most convenient course to Crab Orchard, and was early extended to the Falls of the Ohio and later to Vincennes and St. Louis. The legislature of Kentucky provided, in 1795, that the road from c.u.mberland Gap to Crab Orchard should be made perfectly commodious and pa.s.sable for wagons carrying a weight of one ton, and appropriated two thousand pounds for the work. Two years later five hundred dollars were appropriated for the repair of the road, and the highway was made a turnpike with prescribed toll, although it did not become such a road as the word turnpike suggests.(211)

A traveler of 1807 described the river craft of the period. The smallest kind in use was a simple log canoe. This was followed by the pirogue, which was a larger kind of canoe and sufficiently strong and capacious to carry from twelve to fifteen barrels of salt. Skiffs were built of all sizes, from five hundred to twenty thousand pounds burden, and batteaux were the same as the larger skiffs, being indifferently known by either name. Kentucky boats were strong frames of an oblong form, varying in size from twenty to fifty feet in length and from ten to fourteen in breadth, were sided and roofed, and guided by huge oars. New Orleans boats resembled Kentucky boats, but were larger and stronger and had arched roofs. The largest could carry four hundred and fifty barrels of flour.

Keel boats were generally built from forty to eighty feet in length and from seven to nine feet in width. The largest required one man to steer and two to row in descending the Ohio, and would carry about one hundred barrels of salt; but to ascend the stream, at least six or eight men were required to make any considerable progress. A barge would carry from four thousand to sixty thousand pounds, and required four men, besides the helmsman, to descend the river, while to return with a load from eight to twelve men were required.(212)

s.h.i.+pments of produce from Illinois were usually made in flat-bottomed boats of fifteen tons burden. Such a boat cost about one hundred dollars, the crew of five men was paid one hundred dollars each, the support of the crew was reckoned at one hundred dollars, and insurance at one hundred dollars, thus making a freightage cost of eight hundred dollars for fifteen tons. The boat was either set adrift or sold for the price of firewood at New Orleans. It was estimated that the use of boats of four hundred and fifty tons burden would save four dollars per barrel on s.h.i.+pping flour to New Orleans, where flour had often sold at less than three dollars per barrel, but such boats were not yet used in the West.(213) Canoes cost an emigrant from one to three dollars; pirogues, five to twenty dollars; small skiffs, five to ten dollars; large skiffs or batteaux, twenty to fifty dollars; Kentucky and New Orleans boats, one dollar to one and one-half dollars per foot; keel boats, two dollars and a half to three dollars per foot; and barges, four to five dollars per foot.(214)

Horses, cattle, and household goods were carried on boats. Travel by either land or water was beset with difficulties. The river, without pilot or dredge, had dangers peculiar to itself. Sometimes, when traveling overland, a broken wheel or axle, or a horse lost or stolen by Indians, caused protracted and vexatious delays. It is well to notice, also, that to travel a given distance into the wilderness was more than twice as difficult as to travel one-half that distance, because of the constantly increasing separation between the traveler and what had previously been his base of supplies.(215)

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