Part 8 (1/2)
The vote of 1824 against calling a const.i.tutional convention marked the end of the slavery question as an obstacle to the immigration of an anti-slavery population. Slaveholders, never a large proportion of the immigrants, practically ceased to come to the state, while the immigration of anti-slavery southerners continued, and the aggregate immigration greatly increased. The population of the state was 55,162 in 1820; 72,817, in 1825; and 157,445 in 1830. Missouri, more populous than Illinois by more than 11,000 in 1820, was less so by 17,000 in 1830.(529) Governor Coles, in his message of January 3, 1826, said: ”The tide of emigration, which had been for several years checked by various causes, both general and local, has again set in, and has afforded a greater accession of population during the past, than it had for the three preceding years.
This addition to our population and wealth has given a new impulse to the industry and enterprise of our citizens, and has sensibly animated the face of our country. And as the causes which have impeded the prosperity of the state are daily diminis.h.i.+ng, and the inducements to emigration are increasing, we may confidently antic.i.p.ate a more steady and rapid augmentation of its population and resources.”(530)
From 1820 to 1825 the increase of population in Illinois was 17,655, while from 1825 to 1830 it was 84,628. Contemporaries have left some interesting records of immigration during the latter five years-a period in which the population of the state increased more than 116 per cent. Immigration had begun to be brisk by the fall of 1824. At the general election in August, 1820, there were 1132 votes cast in Madison county, while at a similar election in August, 1824, there were 3223 votes cast in the same territory, Madison county having been divided into Madison, Pike, Fulton, Sangamon, Morgan and Greene counties. A Madison county newspaper said: ”That country bordering on the Illinois River is populating at this time more rapidly than at any former period. Family wagons with emigrants are daily pa.s.sing this place [Edwardsville], on their way thither.”(531) During the five weeks ending October 28, 1825, about two hundred and fifty wagons, with an average of five persons to each, pa.s.sed through Vandalia, bound chiefly for the Sangamo country.(532) The unsettled condition of the slavery question from 1820 to August, 1824, is given as the cause of the slight increase in population during that period, and the settlement of the question is thought to have been a chief cause for the increase after 1824.(533) It must not be supposed, however, that any one cause excludes all others. The country as a whole had scarcely recovered from the great financial depression of 1819; Kentucky was in turmoil over her bank, land t.i.tles and old and new courts;(534) early in 1825 over 65,000 acres in a single county in Tennessee were advertised for sale for the delinquent taxes of 1824;(535) and in 1826 a great drought in North Carolina caused a marked emigration from that state.(536)
In 1829 emigration was great. Some forty English families from Yorks.h.i.+re came by way of Canada and settled near Jacksonville, Illinois. They brought agricultural implements and some money.(537) The _Kentucky Gazette_ lamented the fact that a large number of the best families of Lexington were removing to Illinois.(538) An Illinois newspaper reported: ”The number of emigrants pa.s.sing through our Town [Vandalia] this fall, is unusually great. During the last week the waggons and teams going to the north amounted to several hundred. At no previous period has our State encreased so rapidly, as it is now encreasing.”(539) Another editor estimated the annual increase in population from 1826 to 1829 at not less than 12,000(540)-a figure which was almost certainly too low. In 1830 a meeting of gentlemen from the counties of Hamps.h.i.+re and Hampden (Ma.s.sachusetts) was held at Northampton to consider the expediency of forming a colony to remove to Illinois. After a discussion it was voted to adjourn to meet on the 10th of October at Warner's Coffee House in Southampton. Similar meetings were held at Pawtucket and Worcester.(541)
The immigration to Illinois was but part of a general westward movement.
From Charleston, Virginia, we hear: ”The tide of emigration through this place is rapid, and we believe, unprecedented. It is believed that not less than eight thousand individuals, since the 1st September last [written on November 6, 1829], have pa.s.sed on this route. They are princ.i.p.ally from the lower part of this state and South Carolina, bound for Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan.-They jog on, careless of the varying climate, and apparently without regret for the friends and the country they leave behind, seeking forests to fell, and a new country to settle.”
The editor attributes this movement to the fact that slavery had rendered white labor disreputable.(542) Three thousand persons bound for the West arrived at Buffalo in one week and six thousand per week were reported as pa.s.sing through Indianapolis, bound for the Wabash country alone.(543) The great northern tide was chiefly bound to Ohio and Michigan,(544) northern Illinois not being open to settlement. Five years after Detroit received three hundred arrivals per week, Chicago had about a dozen houses, besides Fort Dearborn. This was the Chicago of 1830.(545)
CHAPTER VII. SUCCESSFUL FRONTIERSMEN.
The character of the men who succeed in gaining the favor of those among whom they live indicates the character of those whose favor has been gained. Preachers, land dealers, lawyers, town builders, and politicians can not thrive in a hostile community. It is worth while in studying Illinois in its frontier stage to notice some of the chief traits of its leaders.
No better type of the pioneer preacher need be sought than the Rev. Dr.
Peter Cartwright. He preached in the West for nearly seventy years, during which time he delivered some eighteen thousand sermons, baptized some fifteen thousand persons, received into the church nearly twelve thousand members, and licensed preachers enough to make a whole conference. He was for fifty years a presiding elder in the Methodist Episcopal church. His home was in Illinois from 1824 until his death in 1872. Aside from his ministerial duties he twice represented Sangamon county in the Illinois House of Representatives; was a candidate for congressman against Abraham Lincoln in 1846; and was a member of an historical society founded as early as 1827.
Cartwright had a number of traits that attracted frontiersmen. In person he was about five feet ten inches high, and of square build, having a powerful physical frame and weighing nearly two hundred pounds. ”The roughs and bruisers at camp-meetings and elsewhere stood in awe of his brawny arm, and many anecdotes are told of his courage and daring that sent terror to their ranks. He felt that he was one of the Lord's breaking plows, and that he had to drive his way through all kinds of roots and stubborn soil.... His gesticulation, his manner of listening, his walk, and his laugh were peculiar, and would command attention in a crowd of a thousand. There was something undefinable about the whole man that was attractive to the majority of the people, and made them linger in his presence and want to see him again.” He had a remarkable power to read men, his first impressions being quickly made and almost always correct.
He was often gay, but never frivolous; often eccentric, but never silly. A c.u.mberland Presbyterian, after attending a communion service administered by Cartwright and at which the Baptist, Rev. John M. Peck, was present, wrote: ”After meeting, I invited these two men to spend the night with me, which they did; and such a night!-of all Western anecdotes and manners, flow of soul and out-spoken brotherhood-we had never seen, and never expect to enjoy again. These were, then [1824 c.], the two strongest men of mark in the ministry, in this State [Illinois].” Cartwright's vitality was remarkable. In the sixty-sixth year of his ministry, and the eighty-sixth of his life, he dedicated eight churches, preached at seventy-seven funerals, addressed eight schools, baptized twenty adults and fifty children, married five couples, received fifteen into the church on probation and twenty-five into full connection, raised twenty-five dollars missionary money, donated twenty dollars for new churches, wrote one hundred and twelve letters, delivered many lectures, and sold two hundred dollars worth of books. Many frontier preachers of the time were lacking in common sense, but they were not popular. This is the testimony of a contemporary (1828) writer whose a.n.a.lysis of western character has rarely been excelled.(546)
John Edgar, a native of Ireland, was one of the largest landholders who ever lived in Illinois. At the outbreak of the American Revolution he was a British officer living at Detroit, but becoming implicated in the efforts of his American wife to aid British soldiers in deserting, he was imprisoned. He escaped, and in 1784 settled in Kaskaskia, where his wife joined him two years later, having saved from confiscation some twelve thousand dollars. This made Edgar the rich man of the community. ”In very early times, he erected, at great expense, a fine flouring mill on the same site where M. Paget had built one sixty years before. This mill was a great benefit to the public and also profitable to the proprietor. Before the year 1800, this mill manufactured great quant.i.ties of flour for the New Orleans market which would compare well with the Atlantic flour.”
Edgar built a splendid mansion in Kaskaskia and entertained royally. At a time when hospitality was common he improved upon it. His home was the fas.h.i.+onable resort for almost half a century. It was here that Lafayette was entertained. In addition to his flour mill, which attracted settlers to its vicinity near Kaskaskia and which for many years did most of the merchant business in flour in the country, Edgar owned and operated salt works near the Mississippi, northwest of Kaskaskia, and also invested largely in land. Before the commissioners appointed to settle land claims he claimed thirty-six thousand acres in one claim as the a.s.signee of ninety donation-rights, while he and John Murry St. Clair claimed 13,986 acres which proved upon survey to cover almost thirty thousand acres. In territorial times Edgar paid more taxes than any one else in the territory. In 1790 Edgar was appointed chief justice of the Kaskaskia district of St. Clair county; in 1800 he was ”Lieutenant-Colonel Commandant of the First Regiment of Militia of the County of Randolph”; in 1802 he was commissioned an a.s.sociate judge of the Criminal Court of Randolph county, by Governor Harrison. He had never studied law ”but common sense, a good education, and experience in business with perfect honesty made him a very respectable officer.” Edgar's correspondence with Clark and Hamtramck show him to have been a leader in Illinois during its period of anarchy preceding the establishment of government in 1790. He offered to board a garrison on the credit of the United States, if a garrison should be sent to protect Illinois. At a time when slaveholding was regarded as eminently respectable by the people of Illinois, Edgar held slaves, and in 1796 he was one of four who pet.i.tioned Congress to introduce slavery into the territory. He was a member of the legislature of the Northwest Territory, was wors.h.i.+pful master of the first Lodge of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons in Illinois, const.i.tuted at Kaskaskia in 1806, and was major-general of militia, in which capacity he presided at reviews with much dignity. In person Gen. Edgar was large and portly. He was definitely charged with forgery by the commissioners to settle land t.i.tles at Kaskaskia. In one case a letter signed in a fair hand by one who had made his mark to a deed was produced by Edgar. The letter was an offer of the illiterate owner to sell his land to Edgar. There is no indication that this conduct of the hospitable and popular man changed the esteem in which he was held by his contemporaries.(547)
John Rice Jones, the first lawyer in Illinois, was eminently successful.
He was born in Wales in 1759, received a collegiate education at Oxford, England, and afterward took regular courses in both medicine and law. In 1783 he was a lawyer in London and owned property in Wales. The next year he came to Philadelphia where he practiced law and became acquainted with Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, Myers Fisher, and other distinguished men. In 1786 he came to Kentucky and joined Clark's troops against the Wabash Indians. A garrison was irregularly established at Vincennes and Jones was made commissary-general. He sold seized Spanish goods to partially indemnify those whose goods had been seized by the Spanish. In 1790 Jones removed to Kaskaskia, bringing to his residence on the frontier a mind well trained by education and experience. He early became a large landowner, in 1808 paying taxes on 16,400 acres in Monroe county alone.
The list of offices held by Jones shows him to have been prominent wherever he went. He was attorney-general of the Northwest Territory, a member and president of the legislative council of the same, joint-revisor with John Johnson, of the laws of Indiana Territory, one of the first trustees, as well as a chief promoter, of Vincennes University, official interpreter and translator of French for the commissioners appointed to settle land claims at Kaskaskia, and after his removal to Missouri, about 1810, a member of the Missouri Const.i.tutional Convention of 1820, and, upon the admission of the state, justice of its Supreme Court until his death in February, 1824. In Missouri he engaged in lead mining and smelting with Moses Austin and later with Austin's sons. He made an exhaustive report on the lead mines of Missouri in 1816. Jones was well versed in English, French and Spanish law, especially in regard to land t.i.tles. He was an excellent mathematician, and had also a thorough acquaintance with the Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, English, and Welsh languages. The pioneers recognized his peculiar fitness for a legal career on the frontier. Governor Reynolds, a fellow-townsman of Jones, says: ”Judge Jones lived a life of great activity and was conspicuous and prominent in all the important transactions of the country ... His integrity, honor, and honesty were always above doubt or suspicion. He was exemplary in his moral habits, and lived a temperate and orderly man in all things.”(548)
The founding of the towns of Mt. Carmel, Alton and Springfield ill.u.s.trates the work of successful town building on the frontier. Mt. Carmel was laid out in 1817, Alton in 1818, and the land where Springfield now stands was entered in 1823.
The town of Mt. Carmel was founded by three ministers, Thomas S. Hinde, William McDowell and William Beauchamp, the first two being proprietors and the last agent and surveyor. McDowell probably never settled in Illinois. Hinde and Beauchamp were men of more than ordinary ability. The former was a son of the well-known Dr. Hinde, of Virginia, who was a surgeon in the British navy during the French and Indian war. Dr. Hinde moved to Kentucky and there the boy Thomas grew up. At one time he was a neighbor of Daniel Boone, and later of Simon Kenton. He was in the office of the Superior Court of Kentucky for some time, during which he became well acquainted with Governor Madison and his nephew, John Madison, kinsmen of President James Madison. He was well informed as to some of the obscure movements of Aaron Burr. This led him to send copies of the _Fredonian_, which he published in order to oppose Burr, to Henry Clay, then secretary of state, although the copies later unaccountably disappeared; and, in 1829, to write to James Madison, who was reported as contemplating the writing of a political history, offering to furnish information which he possessed at first hand concerning the conspiracy.
Madison denied any intention of writing a history, but asked Hinde to furnish an account of Burr's transactions to be filed with Madison's papers. This was done. In 1806, Hinde moved to Ohio to get away from slavery.
William Beauchamp was born in Kent county, Delaware, in 1772. He became a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1794, but located in 1801 on account of ill health. His ministry had been markedly successful and he had been stationed in New York and Boston. In 1807 he settled on the Little Kanawha River in Virginia, and in 1815 moved to Chillicothe, Ohio, where he acted as editor of the _Western Christian Monitor_, Hinde being a contributor. Beauchamp knew Latin, Greek and Hebrew, was a writer of considerable ability, and was well fitted to be editor. In 1816, however, the General Conference decided to establish a magazine, and in the following year Beauchamp retired from the editors.h.i.+p of the _Monitor_, having successfully established the first Methodist magazine in America.
Beauchamp, Hinde and McDowell were now fellow-townsmen. They resolved to establish a town where their ideas of rect.i.tude might be applied.
The site chosen for the town was a point on the west bank of the Wabash opposite the mouth of the White River, and twenty-four miles southwest of Vincennes. This point was selected because of the available water power and of the likelihood that main roads from east to west would pa.s.s here.
The town became a railroad and manufacturing center and justified the wisdom of its founders. An elaborate circular, called the ”Articles of a.s.sociation, for the City of Mount Carmel,” was issued at Chillicothe in 1817. The purpose of the a.s.sociation was announced to be ”to build a city on liberal and advantageous principles, and to const.i.tute funds for the establishment of seminaries of learning and for religious purposes.” The proprietors reserved for themselves one-fourth of the lots, these being called ”proprietors' lots;” one-fourth were called ”public donation lots;”
and one-half were called ”private donation lots.” The plan of survey and sale was described as follows: ”The front street is 132 feet wide; the others 99. The in-lots are six poles in front, and eleven and a half back; containing each sixty-eight perches, nearly half an acre. The most of the out-lots contain four acres and eight square poles; some of them more, (five and six acres on the back range); and a few of them less. There are 748 in-lots, and 331 out-lots-1079 in the whole.
”The lots are offered at private sale, at the following prices:
In-Lots On Front Street.
Corners, $150 each Not corners, 100