The Settlement of Illinois, 1778-1830 Part 5

IV. Transportation and Settlement, 1809 to 1818.

At the close of the War of 1812, an unparalleled emigration to the frontiers of the United States began. Contemporary accounts speak of its great volume. "Through New York and down the Alleghany River is now the track of many emigrants from the east to the west. Two hundred and sixty waggons have pa.s.sed a certain house on this route in nine days, besides many persons on horseback and on foot. The editor of the Gennessee Farmer observes, that he himself met on the road to Hamilton a cavalcade of upwards of twenty waggons, containing one company of one hundred and sixteen persons, on their way to _Indiana_, and all from one town in the district of Maine. So great is the emigration to _Illinois_ and _Missouri_ also, that it is apprehended that many must suffer for want of provisions the ensuing winter."(279) "Nothing more strongly proves the superiority of the western territory than the vast emigration to it from the eastern and southern states; during the eighteen months previous to April, 1816, fifteen thousand waggons pa.s.sed over the bridge at Cayuga, containing emigrants to the western country."(280) "Old America seems to be breaking up, and moving westward.... The number of emigrants who pa.s.sed this way [St. Clairsville, Ohio], was greater last year than in any preceding; and the present spring they are still more numerous than the last. Fourteen waggons yesterday, and thirteen today, have gone through this town.

Myriads take their course down the Ohio. The waggons swarm with children.

I heard today of three together, which contain forty-two of these young citizens."(281) From Hamilton, New York: "It is estimated, that there are now in this village and its vicinity, three hundred families, besides single travellers, amounting in all to fifteen hundred souls, waiting for a rise of water to embark for 'the promised land.' "(282) "The numerous companies of emigrants that flock to this country, might appear, to those who have not witnessed them, almost incredible. But there is scarce a day, except when the river is impeded with ice, but what there is a greater or less number of boats to be seen floating down its gentle current, to some place of destination. No less than five hundred families stopped at Cincinnati at one time, and many of them having come a great distance, and being of the poorer cla.s.s of people, before they could provide for themselves, were in a suffering condition; but to the honor of the citizens of Cincinnati, they raised a donation and relieved their distress."(283) Of the remote districts, Missouri and Michigan were receiving crowds of immigrants.(284)

The changes in government and in the land question in Illinois were typical of changes in other frontier regions, but although worthy of note as helping to make a more attractive place for settlement, they are by no means sufficient to account for the great migration to the westward. Why that migration took place and how it was accomplished are interesting and important questions.

Emigration from New England resulted largely from financial and industrial disorganization caused by the close of the war, and a year of such continued cold weather as to produce a famine. This movement was interesting, dramatic, and large in volume, but its influence upon Illinois was slight, because the tide was stayed to the eastward of that state.(285) Migration from the South was also large, and it was from this source that most of the immigrants to Illinois came. In 1816 there was a severe drought in eastern North Carolina, and many planters cut their immature corn for their cattle, while great numbers sold their property and joined the emigrants.(286) Kentucky, still a favorite place for settlement, was in the midst of a land boom which reached such proportions as to cause a large volume of emigration to Illinois, Missouri, and the southwest. The buyer of Kentucky land was often a neighbor who wished to enlarge his farm and work on a larger scale, or some well-to-do immigrant who preferred the location to a more remote region. Land sold on credit and at fict.i.tious prices, the seller in turn buying land for which he frequently could make only the first payment. Retribution did not come, however, until after 1820, and for some years it seemed as if Kentucky was to become a source of population, for it was to Illinois and Missouri, and to a lesser degree to Alabama, what New England was to Ohio.(287) Probably chief among the reasons for migration from the South was the increase of slavery, with the resulting changes in industrial and social conditions.

Early in the century the growing importance of the cotton crop began to hasten a stratification of opinion which was determined by physiographic areas. The western parts of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, the northern part of Georgia, and the eastern parts of Kentucky and Tennessee, respectively, being hilly and less fertile than the coastal plain, became the center of the southern anti-slavery sentiment. On the plain settled the wealthy planters, and later the poorer Germans and Quakers settled in the uplands. Only when cotton-raising became very profitable was slavery to intrude upon the latter location.(288)

During the war the production of cotton in the United States had been almost constant in amount and less than in preceding years, but 1815 saw an increase of over forty-two per cent and 1816 an increase of twenty-four per cent,(289) while in the latter year South Carolina, after an interval of thirteen years, resumed its slavery legislation by pa.s.sing the first of a series of acts which show that the slavery problem was becoming increasingly difficult. Similar legislation took place in Tennessee, and to a lesser degree in Kentucky.(290) Increased production of cotton was accompanied by an increase in price, middling upland cotton selling at New York at 15 cents per pound in 1814, at 21 cents in 1815, at 29- cents in 1816, at 26- cents in 1817, and at 34 cents in 1818, while South Carolina sea-island cotton sold at Charleston in 1816 at 55 cents a pound.(291) An increase in cotton production meant an increase of the plantation system with its slaves, this meant an increased demand for large farms, and also a strengthening of the antagonism between pro-slavery and anti-slavery parties. Even in 1812, a man who wished to sell, lease, or rent his manufacturing establishment in the northwestern part of Virginia, Frederick county, lamented in his advertis.e.m.e.nt that "some good men of strict moral or religious principles should object against forming settled abodes in Virginia" or other slave states.(292) Census reports show that the proportion of negroes to whites increased in the western counties of North Carolina during the decade 1810 to 1820 over the proportion in 1800 to 1810. Conditions above described naturally led to the emigration of at least four cla.s.ses of people: those who were anti-slavery, those who did not wish to change from small farming to the plantation system, the poor whites who found themselves increasingly disgraced and who at the same time found that their land was in demand, the slave-holder who wished a large tract of virgin soil. It is very important to note that these forces were merely beginning to operate in the time from 1814 to 1818, and that they did not reach their maximum of influence until after 1830, yet as the population of Illinois increased less than twenty-eight thousand from 1810 to 1818, it is altogether probable that a considerable proportion were influenced by the causes suggested. It is also true that some pioneers moved merely from habit, without any well-defined cause.

Although it is true that the first steamboat that pa.s.sed down the Ohio and Mississippi made its trip in the winter of 1811-12, and by 1816 an enterprising captain had made a successful experiment of running a steamboat with coal for fuel, also that the speed of steamboats in eastern waters was a matter for enthusiastic comment, yet it is also true that immigrants to Illinois did not usually arrive by steamer.(293) The development of steamboat navigation in western waters was slow, the first steamboat reaching St. Louis on August 2, 1817.(294) Peter Cartwright wrote of his trip from the West to the General Conference in Baltimore, in 1816: "We had no steamboats, railroad cars, or comfortable stages in those days. We had to travel from the extreme West on horseback. It generally took us near a month to go; a month was spent at General Conference, and nearly a month in returning to our fields of labor."(295)

Some instances of the manner and cost of emigration may be given. A man with his wife and brother having arrived at Philadelphia from England, _en route_ to Birkbeck's settlement(296) in Illinois, the party was directed to Pittsburg, which they reached after a wearisome journey of over three hundred miles across the mountains. At Pittsburg they bought a little boat for six or seven dollars, and came down the Ohio to Shawneetown, whence they proceeded on foot.(297) In the summer of 1818, a party of eighty-eight came over the same route in much the same manner, using flat-boats on the river.(298) In 1817, John Mason Peck, with his wife and three children, went from Litchfield, Connecticut, to Shawneetown, Illinois, in a one-horse wagon. The journey was begun on July 25 and Shawneetown was reached on the sixth of November. "Nearly one month was occupied in pa.s.sing from Philadelphia through the State of Pennsylvania over the Alleghany Mountains, till on the 10th of September he pa.s.sed into Ohio. Three weeks he journeyed in that State, and on the 23d of October recrossed the Ohio River into the State of Kentucky ..., and on the 6th of November again crossed the Ohio River, into the then Territory of Illinois, at Shawneetown."(299) Here the family was delayed by floods which rendered the roads impa.s.sable. Leaving the horse and wagon at Shawneetown to be brought on by a friend, they proceeded to St. Louis in a keel-boat, paying twenty-five dollars fare, and arrived at their destination on the first of December.(300)

Shawneetown was a sort of center from which emigrants radiated to their destinations. It owed much to its location, being on the main route from the southern states to St. Louis and what was then called the Missouri, and being also the port for the salt works on Saline Creek. It was the seat of a land-office. The town thus had a business which was out of all proportion to the number of its permanent inhabitants. In 1817 it consisted of but about thirty log houses, a log bank, and a land-office.

When a certain traveler came to the place from the South, in 1818, he found the number of wagons, horses, and pa.s.sengers waiting to cross the Ohio, on the ferry, so great that he had to wait "a great part of the morning" for his turn.(301)

During the latter part of the territorial period freight charges from Philadelphia to Pittsburg, by land, were from seven to ten dollars per hundredweight;(302) from Pittsburg to Shawneetown, one dollar; from Louisville to Shawneetown, thirty-seven cents; and from New Orleans to Shawneetown, four dollars and a half.(303) The use of arks was common.

These were flat-bottomed boats of a tonnage of from twenty-five to thirty tons, covered, square at the ends, of a uniform size of fifty feet in length and fourteen in breadth, usually sold for seventy-five dollars, and would carry three or four families. A common practice was to re-sell them at a somewhat reduced price to someone going further down the river. Two dollars was the charge for piloting an ark over the falls of the Ohio.(304)

There is much truth in the remarks made by a German traveler in 1818-19.

He said: "The State of Illinois is from one thousand to twelve hundred miles distant from the sea ports. The journey thither is often as costly and tedious, for a man with a family, as the sea pa.s.sage. Any father of a family, unless he is well-to-do, can certainly count on being impoverished upon his arrival in Illinois. At Williamsport, on the Susquehanna, I found a Swiss, who, with his wife and ten children, had spent one thousand French crown-dollars for their journey. In the village of Williamsport, an old German schoolmaster, who seems to have been formerly a merchant in Na.s.sau, told me that the pa.s.sage of himself and family had cost thirteen hundred dollars. For an adult the fare is seventy-five dollars-one dollar is equal to one thaler, ten groschen, Prussian-for children under twelve years, half so much, for children of two years, one-fourth so much, and only babes in arms go free."(305)

It can now be understood why people emigrated to the West, and also why many went overland. A family too poor to go by water could go in a buggy or wagon, and if poorer still they might walk, as many actually did. The immigration to Illinois, which was but a small fraction of the great westward movement, was still largely southern in origin, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and even New York still staying, in large measure, the tide from New England. In New England it was the "Ohio fever" and not the Illinois fever which carried away the people, and the designation is geographically correct. The men prominent in Illinois politics at the close of the territorial period, and at the beginning of the state period, were natives of southern states, a fact hardly conceivable if New England had been largely represented in Illinois. Then, too, the natural routes from the South led to, or near to, Illinois, the great road from the South crossing the Ohio River at Shawneetown, and the Kentucky and c.u.mberland rivers being natural water routes. Another fact to be noticed is that much of the emigration was of relatives and friends to join those who had gone before, and as Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, the Carolinas, and even Georgia, had furnished a large number of early settlers to Illinois, this was a powerful inducement to continued emigration from the same sources.

Similarly Ohio and Michigan had early received settlers from the East.

Immigration to Illinois was not large in comparison to that to neighboring states or territories. Indians still held the greater part of Illinois, and the inconveniences incident to frontier life were more p.r.o.nounced as the distance from the East increased. Pro-slavery men, and anti-slavery men as well, were still in doubt as to the ultimate fate of slavery in Illinois. This had a deterrent effect upon immigration.

IV. Life of the Settlers.

According to the marshal's return the manufactures in Illinois, in 1810, were as follows:

Spinning-wheels, $630 Looms, 460; cloth produced, 90,039 yards, $54,028 Tanneries, 9; leather dressed, $7,750 Distilleries, 10,200 gallons, $7,500 Flour, 6,440 barrels, $32,200 Maple sugar, 15,600 lbs., $1,980(306)-$104,088

This list incidentally indicates the average price of several manufactured articles. For the first six months of 1814, the internal revenue a.s.sessed in Illinois was:

Licenses for stills and boilers, $490.14 Carriages, $62.00 Licenses to retailers, $835.00 Stamps, $5.60-$1392.74

Of this amount ($1392.74), $1047.37 had been paid by October 10, 1814.(307) For the period from April 18, 1815, to February 22, 1816, the following were the internal duties:

Hats, caps, and bonnets, $ 66.50- Saddles and bridles, $65.25 Boots and bootees, $7.26 Leather, $184.35--$323.37

This was the smallest sum listed in any part of the United States, except Michigan Territory.(308) For 1818:

Licenses for stills, $214.91 Licenses at 20c. per gal., $549.23 Duty on spirits at 25c. per gal., $701.26 On eighteen carriages, $36.75 Licenses to retailers, $1248.80 On stamped paper and bank-notes, $4.50 Manufactured goods, $220.14-$2975.59

Of this amount, $1966.41 was paid, only Indiana and Missouri territories paying a smaller proportion of their a.s.sessment.(309) The small proportion paid in these three territories may have been due to the poverty of their inhabitants.

Most of the manufactured articles were consumed within the territory. Both cotton and flax were raised and made into cloth; maple sugar was sometimes sold and exported, but a large proportion of the supply was used as a subst.i.tute for sugar, another subst.i.tute much used being wild honey. A certain Smith's Prairie was celebrated for the numerous plum and crabapple orchards that grew around its borders. The large red and yellow plums grew there in such abundance that people would come from long distances and haul them away by the wagon-loads, and would preserve them with honey or maple sugar, which was the only sweetening they had in pioneer times.(310)

Previous to the War of 1812, little commerce was carried on, although a few trips had been made to New Orleans with keel-boats or pirogues, and some goods were occasionally brought over the Alleghany Mountains by means of wagons. The round trip to New Orleans and back then required six months; the trip down was easy and required a comparatively short time, but the return trip was slow. It was entirely a barter trade, money being almost unknown. Furs, wild honey, and other commodities of Illinois, as well as lead from the Missouri mines, were carried down and exchanged for groceries, cloth, and other articles of a large value and small bulk. As a natural consequence of having to be transported up stream, goods of that nature were extremely dear, the common price of tea being sixteen dollars a pound, of coffee fifty cents, and of calico fifty cents per yard.(311) To go up the Mississippi from St. Louis to Prairie du Chien, in 1815, required from twelve days to a month, while the return trip was made in from six to ten days.(312)

In the great American Bottom of the Mississippi, extending from the mouth of the Kaskaskia almost to the mouth of the Illinois, cattle raising was a leading industry, the cattle being driven to the Philadelphia or Baltimore markets.(313) Towards the close of the period land could easily be secured by government entry. The fertility of the land was such as must have been new to those immigrants who came from the poorer parts of the older states. Land was subject to a tax of a little more that two cents per acre, the tax being about equally divided between the territory and the county.(314) Public lands were not to be taxed by the state, after 1818, until five years from the date of their sale. Governor Edwards, who was a large landowner, offered to pay three dollars per acre for plowing.(315) Prairies were not yet settled to any considerable extent, but it is worthy of note that a traveler of 1818-19 suggested what was eventually to be the solution of the question of prairie settlement. He wrote: "It will probably be some time before these vast prairies can be settled, owing to the inconvenience attending the want of timber. I know of no way, unless the plan is adopted of ditching and hedging, and the building of brick houses, and subst.i.tuting the stone coal for fuel. It seems as if the bountiful hand of nature, where it has withheld one gift has always furnished another; for instance, where there is a scarcity of wood, there are coal mines."(316) The remedy suggested was the one adopted, except that brick houses did not become common.

Really good roads were entirely lacking. Most of the settlements were connected by roads that were practicable at most seasons for packers and travelers on horseback, but in times of flood the suspension of travel by land was practically complete. A post-road had been established between Vincennes and Cahokia in 1805, and in 1810 a route was established from Vincennes, by way of Kaskaskia, Prairie du Rocher, and Cahokia, to St.

Louis. At this time and place, however, a post-route does not necessarily imply anything more than a bridle-path. Mail was received at irregular intervals, although the trips were regularly made in good weather. The post-office nearest Chicago was Fort Wayne, Indiana, whence a soldier on foot carried the mail once a month.(317) A report for the first six months of 1814 shows, in Illinois, nine post-offices, three hundred and eighty-eight miles of post-roads, about $143 received for postage, and $1002 paid for transportation of mail-a balance of some $859 against the United States.(318) At this time even Cleveland, Chillicothe, and Marietta received mail but twice per week.(319)

Books were very scarce,(320) and no newspapers had been published in Illinois before its separate territorial organization. Between 1809 and 1818 there were founded the _Illinois Herald_ and the _Western Intelligencer_, at Kaskaskia, the latter becoming the _Illinois Intelligencer_ on May 27, 1818; and the _Shawnee Chief_, at Shawneetown.(321) In 1816 the citizens of Shawneetown gave notice through the papers of Kaskaskia, Frankfort, Kentucky, and Nashville, Tennessee, that they would apply to the Legislature of Illinois for the establishment of a bank.(322) This may indicate that the papers of the places named had a considerable circulation in Illinois.

The character of the immigrants left much to be desired. A good observer wrote: "After residing awhile in White County, Tennessee, I migrated in May, 1817, to the southern part of the then Territory of Illinois, and settled in Madison County, twenty-five miles east of St. Louis, which town then contained about five thousand inhabitants. The surrounding country, however, was quite spa.r.s.ely settled, and dest.i.tute of any energy or enterprise among the people; their labors and attention being chiefly confined to the hunting of game, which then abounded, and tilling a small patch of corn for bread, relying on game for the remaining supplies of the table. The inhabitants were of the most generous and hospitable character, and were princ.i.p.ally from the southern states; harmony and the utmost good feeling prevailed throughout the country."(323) Naturally this description was not of universal application, but the source of the population and the reasons for removing from the old homes make it probable that it was widely appropriate.

If it was difficult for an emigrant to reach Illinois, and if, after reaching it, he was inconvenienced by the poor facilities for commerce, the bad roads, the infrequency of mails, the scarcity of schools and churches, he at least found it easy to obtain a living, and to some of the immigrants of the territorial period it was worth something not to starve, even though living was reduced to its lowest terms. The poorest immigrant had access to land on the borders of settlement, because the laws against squatting were not enforced. This same cla.s.s could procure game in abundance, while maple sugar, wild honey, persimmons, crabapples, nuts, pawpaws, wild grapes, wild plums, fish, mushrooms, "greens," berries of several kinds, and other palatable natural products known to the Illinois frontiersman, were to be had in most, if not all, of the localities then settled. Hogs fattened on the mast. Log houses could be built without nails. The problem of clothing was probably more difficult at first than that of food, but although clothing could not be picked up in the woods, the materials for making it could be grown in the fields. Spinning, and the processes necessarily preceding and following it, involved a certain amount of labor. Taxes were not high, nor were tax laws rigidly enforced.

It is thus easy to understand the reasoning that may have led a large proportion of the immigrants during this period to leave their old homes.

CHAPTER V. THE FIRST YEARS OF STATEHOOD, 1818 TO 1830.

The Indian and Land Questions.

One of the most important cessions of land in Illinois ever made by the Indians was that made by the Kickapoo in 1819, of the vast region lying north of the parallel of 39-a little north of the mouth of the Illinois River, and southeast of the Illinois River.(324) Settlement had been crowding hard upon this region and many squatters anxiously awaited the survey and sale of the land, especially of that in the famous Sangamon country. In northern Illinois settlement was still r.e.t.a.r.ded by the presence of Indians. In 1825, the Menominee, Kaskaskia, Sauk and Fox, Potawatomi, and Chippewa tribes claimed over 5,314,000 acres of land in Illinois,(325) and there was a licensed Indian trader at Sangamo, one at the saline near the present Danville, and two on Fever River.(326) Two years later there were three such traders at Fever River, and two at Chicago,(327) and in 1827-28 there was one at Fever River with a capital of about $2000.(328) In February, 1829, there were Indian agents at Chicago, Fort Armstrong, Kaskaskia, and Peoria, as well as others near the borders of Illinois.(329) At this time, the Ottawa, Chippewa, Potawatomi, Kaskaskia, and Winnebago claimed land in the state, although only about 6000 of the more than 25,000 members of these tribes resided in the state.

The eight members of the Kaskaskia tribe held a small reservation near the Kaskaskia River. Of the twenty-two hundred members of the Kickapoo tribe, which had relinquished all claim to land east of the Mississippi, about two hundred still lived on the Mackinaw River, but they were expected to move in a few weeks.(330) By a treaty of July 29, 1829, the Chippewa, Ottawa, and Potawatomi ceded their claims in northern Illinois.(331) There still remained the Winnebago tribe, and not until 1833 was Illinois to be free from Indian claims.(332)

A war with the Winnebago tribe was imminent in 1827. Settlers in the northern part of the state either fled to the southward or collected at such points as Galena or Prairie du Chien. "This was a period of great suffering at Galena. The weather was inclement and two or three thousand persons driven suddenly in, with scant provisions, without ammunition or weapons encamped in the open air, or cloth tents which were but little better, were placed in a very disagreeable and critical position."(333) The prompt action of Governor Lewis Ca.s.s, of Michigan, averted what would in all probability have been a b.l.o.o.d.y war, if prompt action had not been taken.(334)

To September 30, 1819, the record of land sales in Illinois was as follows:

Acres Unsold. Acres Sold. Price.

Shawneetown 4,561,920 562,296 $1,153,897 Kaskaskia 2,188,800 407,027 1,781,773 Edwardsville 2,625,960 394,730 795,531(335)

The balances unpaid by purchasers of public lands steadily increased from 1813 to 1819 until on September 30, 1819, there was due from purchasers of land in the area of the old Northwest Territory nearly ten million dollars.(336) An increase would have resulted merely from an increased sale of public lands under the credit system, but it is also true that the difficulty of collecting the unpaid balances became so great that the government at last abolished the credit system, by the act of April 24, 1820. The act provided that after July 1, 1820, no credit whatever should be given to the purchasers of public lands; that land might be sold in either sections, half-sections, quarter-sections, or eighth-sections; that the minimum price should be reduced from two dollars to one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre; and that reverted lands should be offered at auction before being offered at private sale.(337) At least two of the provisions of this act had long been desired by Illinois in common with other frontier regions: the reduction of the minimum price and the sale in smaller tracts. Under the new law a man with one hundred dollars could buy eighty acres of land, while previously the same man would have had to pay eighty of his one hundred dollars as the first payment on one hundred and sixty acres, the smallest tract then sold. The great danger had been that the second, third, and fourth payments could not be made. In Illinois, before July 1, 1820, there had been sold 1,593,247.53 acres of the public land at an average price of about $2.02 per acre. Some of this reverted from non-payment.(338)

[Ill.u.s.tration: Indian Cessions.]