USA > Iowa > Scott County > Davenport > History of Davenport and Scott County Iowa, Volume I > Part 76
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But the Germans were far from blind adherents of the republican party ; nor were they zealous partisans who follow party dictation, right or wrong, neverthe- less. On sundry matters they were prone to take instant alarm. The republican party chiefly contained the advocates and promoters of "temperance" legislation prohibiting the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages. The party in Iowa stood sponsor for the "Maine" law of 1855 against which the Germans stood solid in opposition. Because of their insistent attacks the law had been slowly "weakened" but in 1860 it was still obnoxious to their notions of personal liberty and their dearly prized customs. Again the republican party contained the ma- jority of the "Know-Nothings" of "Americans" whose racial and religious prej- udices had done them such gross injury in the middle of that decade. The Ger- mans in particular were far from disposed to take things for granted.
In the congressional canvass in 1858 "American" notions were bandied about so commonly in eastern and northern Iowa that Mr. Hans Reimer Claussen (Sept. 8) addressed Mr. Wm. Vandever of Dubuque, the republican candidate for congress, an open letter in which he bluntly asked some pointed questions as to the latter's attitude toward the proposal to make the process of naturalization more rigorous. He secured satisfactory responses. In the forepart of 1859 when the tide of anti-foreign feeling was apparently receding the Germans of the middle and western states were thrown into violent agitation by a constitu- tional amendment adopted in Massachusetts that increased the probationary pe- riod for naturalization by two years. A German farmer of Iowa (who, the writer suspects, was Nicholas J. Rusch of Scott county) wrote a stout letter to Horace Greeley's Tribune in which he served notice on republicans that if they did not repudiate, in unequivocal terms, the Massachusetts amendment their supremacy was no longer possible. He reminded them that "Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, New York, and perhaps Pennsylvania can be counted republican through the strength of the German republican vote;" and he pointedly suggested that the republicans should not forget that "Cæsar's le- gions were smashed in the woods of Germany." The letter drew an extended editorial from the Tribune.
The fires of adverse discussion spread furiously all over the western states. The Germans of Dubuque, Davenport, Burlington and Keokuk submitted a series of specific questions to Senators James Harlan and James W. Grimes and to Representatives Wm. Vandever and S. R. Curtis respecting their attitude toward the action of Massachusetts. Each and all responded explicitly repudiating the
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policy of the republicans of Massachusetts. About the same time Abraham Lin- coin in Illinois wrote his much quoted letter to Dr. Canisius of Springfield like- wise repudiating the Massachuetts amendment-a letter that was reprinted in Der Demokrat and given extensive circulation in the republican press of Iowa. So alarmed were the republican party leaders of the state at the belligerent tone of the Germans anent the matter that their state central committee, of which Mr. John A. Kasson was then chairman, issued a manifesto formally pronounc- ing the act of Massachusetts anathema. Their declaration was reprinted in the editorial pages of Greeley's paper with implied approval. Mr. Kasson, as chair- man, also addressed an open letter to the republicans of Massachusetts deploring their action and asking them to reject the proposed amendment at the polls. As an earnest of their sincerity the republicans of Iowa nominated for lieutenant governor, Mr. Nicholas J. Rusch. a leader of the German republicans of Scott county, then a state senator, who had been foremost in promoting the legislation making less rigorous the exactions of the "Maine" prohibition law. The "Amer- icans" and prohibitionists indicated their adverse disposition by reducing his ma- jority 694 votes, a reduction of 23.6 per cent below that of Kirkwood's majority-a fact that had the same sort of an effect upon the feelings of the Germans of eastern Iowa that the defeat of Carl Schurz two years before for lieutenant gov- ernor of Wisconsin by 107 votes had upon the Germans of that state.
When the legislature of Iowa convened January 9, 1860, both outgoing and incoming governors recommended a "Registry" law designed to restrict promis- cuous voting but the foreign born looked askance at such proposals because usu- ally they alone were contemplated and particularized and adversely affected; and the measure introduced was desperately opposed and defeated. The friends of the "Maine" law about the same time were making a vigorous push in that legislative assembly to strengthen its "weakened" provisions. The bill was no less vigor- ously resisted. So evenly drawn was the contest in the state senate that on the crucial test a tie vote resulted. Informing its readers that the bill was "begra- ben" Der Demokrat stated that its burial was due to the casting vote of Lt. Gov. Rusch.
It was thus amidst conditions that harass party leaders and make political campaigns a ticklish business that the Germans of Davenport formulated their resolutions adopted March 7th, proclaiming their intense and unalterable opposi- tion to the selection of Judge Bates of St. Louis as the republican candidate for the presidency and their determination to vote against him if the national con- vention at Chicago should nominate him despite their protest.
The reception accorded their action was various but instructive. The party press could not denounce the action for fear of alienating an essential element of their party strength; and they could not safely concur or commend enthusiastic- ally lest radical "Americans" or "teetotalers" or "conservatives" on the slavery question shy and fly the track. For the most part the leading party papers of Iowa maintained a discreet and masterly silence. Some ventured to criticize. The editors of the republican organ of Davenport, The Daily Gazette, Alfred and Add. H. Sanders, had perforce to take notice of the action of their influential fel- low citizens. They reprinted the entire preamble and the resolutions. In an ex-
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tended editorial they, conceding them freely the right to free expression of diver- gent opinions on matters of common interest, venture to deny many of the allega- tions against Judge Bates and frankly state that, although he is not their first choice, they prefer success with him as the nominee to defeat with Chase or Seward. In a similar fashion, Mr. John Teesdale, another influential republican editor, expressed himself in the columns of The Iowa State Register at Des Moines. The democratic editors of the state, of course, were not indisposed to make much of the matter. Mr. J. B. Dorr reprinted the vital portions in The Dubuque Herald and joyfully pointed out to republicans the prospects for "war in camp."
Mr. Claussen and his confreres struck at the psychological moment. Judge Bates had been prominently mentioned for the presidency and he was a candidate of high potential. Many of the leading party papers had urgently commended him to the national convention. His nomination was promoted by King-makers, by the Blairs of Maryland and Missouri, by Charles A. Dana, Dudley Field and Horace Greeley of New York, by John D. DeFrees and Schuyler Colfax of Indi- ana, by John A. Kasson of Iowa. The immense continental circulation of the New York Tribune had given his candidacy a tremendous impetus, a fact which the Germans of Davenport accurately discerned.
The German press of the country, however, was almost universally critical and antagonistic. Judge Bates' support of Fillmore, his "Americanistic" affilia- tions and views thereby signified, his views respecting the Fugitive Slave law they could not stomach.
Mr. Claussen and his associates communicated the Davenport resolutions to German leaders and organizations outside of Iowa especially in the eastern states. He wrote Senator Harlan that general approval was accorded it. It was copied by the German papers of Milwaukee and St. Louis. The Press and Tribune of Chicago realized their pith and point and, while deploring the declaration of war on Judge Bates as unwise, observed "there is no disguising the fact that the nomination of Mr. Bates would give much offense not only to German republi- cans but to the entire political element of the party, and this fact will undoubtedly be duly considered by the Chicago convention." That paper was at the time an open advocate of the nomination of Mr. Lincoln and its sentiments were proba- bly not without prejudice and design ; nevertheless they indicate a clear recogni- tion of the widespread hostility among the Germans to the consideration of the Missourian.
The German republicans of Cincinnati, Ohio, were alert and active in the furtherance of "straightout" doctrine and in downright fashion. At the instiga- tion of such leaders as Frederich Hassaurek, George Lindeman, Gustav Tafel and Judge John Bernhardt Stallo a meeting of the German republicans took place in their Turner hall, on the evening of March 21. A series of resolutions ex- pressing the views of the Germans on national issues were passed. Mr. Tafel then presented at the request of Judge Stallo a communication the latter had re- ceived that afternoon from Davenport containing the resolutions of March 7th. The communication was read in both German and English ; whereupon a motion was introduced and carried "that they heartily endorse them."
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About the middle of March a call was issued from a German republican club of New York asking the German republicans of the northern free states to be rep- resented at the national republican convention in May, to send delegates to a conference of German republicans in Chicago to be held on the eve of the na- tional republican convention. The object in general was to counsel with the duly accredited German delegates to the national convention with a view to advanc- ing the principles they so ardently desired to promote :- which, in brief, were the reaffirmation of the republican platform adopted at Philadelphia, the restric- tion and extinction of human slavery, liberal and just treatment of the immigrant, economy and equity in the disposition of the public lands and the nomination of candidates for president and vice president who stood specifically for their principles.
The conference took place as designed. It was not a numerous gathering but it included many of the most influential German leaders in the country among its membership. Among those who were present either as delegates or as attend- ants were Frederich Hassaurek and Dr. C. Brodbeck of Ohio, R. Wagner of Minnesota, Messrs. A. Kreckel, Frederich Wenzel, John C. Vogel and others of Missouri, Gustav Koerner of Illinois, Nicholas J. Rusch of Iowa and Carl Schurz of Wisconsin. Their discussions and deliberations were watched with keen interest by the partisans of various candidates before the larger convention ; and considerable space given reports thereof in the despatches to sundry papers.
Generally speaking the German republicans secured what they most desired at Chicago, namely, definite and satisfactory declarations in the platform. They had not a little to do with it. Messrs. Koerner and Schurz were both on the committee on resolutions and Mr. John A. Kasson represented Iowa therein and he was the one who, according to Horace Greeley also a member, brought sundry divergent members to a common agreement and was empowered to prepare the final draft for the convention which was adopted amidst tremendous applause and approval with almost no material modification. In respect of their choice for the nomination of the party candidates the Germans on the whole failed to realize their primary preferences. Senator Seward was the choice of the major number of German republicans. Governor Chase came next probably, and Mr. Lincoln came third although probably a second choice with all.
Precisely what direct, positive influence, if any, the resolutions adopted and proclaimed by the German republicans of Davenport on March 7, 1860, had in bringing about the conference of the Germans at Chicago on May 14th and the particular effect they may have had upon the ultimate decision of the national republican convention in the matter of the platform and the choice of the nomi- nee, one cannot say with much assurance. But more or less influence they cer- tainly exerted. They certainly signalized and typified a general discontent and belligerency common among German republicans all through the north respecting Judge Bates. Certain it is that his candidacy attained the zenith of public favor on or about March Ist. No less certain is it that quickly following the action of the Germans at Davenport there was widespread expression of opinion both by the German press and by German organizations adverse to his candidacy and his chances of securing the nomination rapidly and steadily declined. The pow-
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erful party chiefs who urged the nomination of Judge Bates for the primary pur- pose of defeating radicalism as exemplified by Senator Seward, found it impos- sible to mollify the Germans. They had to make a change of front.
Abraham Lincoln, the dauntless antagonist of the "Little Giant" and author of the letter to Dr. Canisius was satisfactory to Frederick Hassaurek, Gustav Koerner, Nicholas J. Rusch and Carl Schurz. Seward was persona non grata to "conservatives" on the slavery question and obnoxious to radical "Americans" because of his course as governor of New York. Bates was no less disagreeable, if not impossible, as a candidate to abolitionists and the naturalized citizens. The German immigrant and his contentiousness anent his personal freedom and po- litical status was, in the writer's judgment, one of the chief rocks on which the plans and hopes of both Greeley and Weed wrecked at Chicago on May 18, 1860, and whereby resulted the compromise that first made Abraham Lincoln the can- didate of the republican party for president of the United States.
CHAPTER XXXI.
DAVENPORT'S BAPTISM.
COULD ROCK ISLAND BE DAVENPORT ?- WOULD DAVENPORT HAVE BEEN ROCK ISLAND? -FOR WHOM WAS DAVENPORT NAMED ?- THERE SEEMS TO BE NO DOUBT THAT COLONEL GEORGE DAVENPORT WAS SO HONORED-A LIFE WHICH RANKS WITH THE HEROES OF ROMANCE IN VARIETY AND THRILLING INCIDENT-ONE OF THE FOUNDERS OF THE CITY THAT BEARS HIS NAME-AN INDIAN CEREMONY.
Should anyone care to riddle himself with a query that has no answer he might try to guess the name the city of Davenport would have borne had Rock Island been Davenport instead,-not Farnhamsburg, nor Stephenson nor Rock Island, but Davenport, indeed,-a name which is as much our own as is the flag which floats from the city hall our flag. Yet so it might have been.
The story of the naming of the sister city across the river has nowhere been definitely written down, but this incident survives with a probability of truth in development and unquestioned verity in foundation. It can be listed among George Ballou's record of things "which ought to be true." It begins in this way. Colonel Davenport and Russell Farnham were associates in fur barter in 1826. Three years later they began to enter land in what has become wealthy and pros- perous Rock Island county. Shortly after, the three original county commis- sioners, Colonel George Davenport, J. W. Spencer and William Vanatta, putting their heads together, planned the turning of an honest penny through platting and marketing a town which should have all the advantages of any other "future great" and the added security which the guns of Fort Armstrong would afford.
A DREAM CITY.
They secured a surveyor and on the virgin slate ready to hand worked a page of geometry with stakes and compass and chain, squared the upland into streets and lots, four corner lots to the block and others less valuable, with plazas for markets and landscape gardening, sites for city hall, court house, and state capitol, perhaps-the ambition of early town boomers had no roof,-with streets named for local dignitaries, white and red, ample accommodations for railroad depots
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and trams, with prophetic planning for schools, religious temples and universi- ties. When this beautiful dream town had been evolved by topographic magic from the rough and ready shanty of Russell Farnham and its associate line of similar edifices the necessity for a name well sounding and commercially adequate appeared. After cogitation selection was made of the cognomen of the earliest settler in all the region, the best known man and the principal proprietor of the handsome map which pictured steamboats snubbed to the bank and the iron horse cavorting in the outlots,-Davenport. This marvel of the cartographer was to be Davenport. It was a rosy plan, but difficulties lurking in the background be- gan to come to the front, and in the style of the true weaver of fiction these com- plications will be brought contemporaneous with this date which was 1832 or a year or two later.
In 1831 there had been something going on in western Illinois which some have called war and others have styled a massacre. In any event the state was cleared of certain red people who had more or less right to their homes, their cornfields and the graves of their fathers. One incident of this belated chapter of the War of 1812 was the so called battle of Stillman's Run in which Black Hawk's Indians approaching with a flag of truce were fired upon, after which the American soldiers seized by causeless panic fell into frenzied flight that stopped not until there were a few in every northern county of Illinois. Among these swift footed soldiers was a Colonel Strode, not in command of any forces en- gaged, but present as a spectator-one of the gallery, as the golfers phrase it. Some accuse him of having ordered the shooting of the party with the truce flag -perhaps not-but be his part in the matter little or much, he took full share in the footrace, nor tarried by the way until the declivities of Galena worked a ritard in the staccato syncopation of his footfalls.
Comment upon this deplorable incident among those who had seen real service who knew how to fight and respect a flag of truce, was piquant. Colonel Daven- port took a part in the condemnation and several spicy bits of criticism upon the winged colonel from his pen appeared in the Galena Advertiser. Colonel Strode was only human, and these things rankled in his soul, so he bided the time when he could catch Colonel Davenport in a bottle and drive in the stopper.
IN THE LEGISLATURE.
The opportunity speedily arrived. Among those elected to the session of the Illinois legislature following the Black Hawk war was Colonel Strode, his ability to run in any line being thus demonstrated. Before that legislature came for sanction the plat of a new city on the Mississippi to be named Davenport. Here ascended Colonel Strode into the air several feet and popped his heels together. He made a better rally than he had done at Stillman's Run, and shot away from the handsome plat in evidence the illuminated title in the corner. In vain Colonel Davenport's friends gathered to his standard. They defeated the name suggested by the Strode faction, but could not save the name of Davenport. The only way out was a compromise and the name written on the plat by the delegated wisdom of the Sucker state was Stephenson, the name of still another Colonel-colonels were thicker in Illinois after the Black Hawk war than in
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Kentucky at her best-a sort of receiver at the lead mines. So Stephenson, the new town became and continued until wise men gave it the title of the best known island in the Mississippi valley, and the island, and the arsenal, the city and the ralroad-all Rock Island-are known from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and then some miles.
From Colonel Davenport's disappointment came greater pride. In the fall of 1835 a company of men seated one evening on the porch of his handsome home looked across the swiftly rolling river to the incomparable site confronting them and planned a new Davenport which in later years crowned the bluffs in beauty, a town whose scenic loveliness of situation inspired the poet Taylor to write the tribute which began, "Seated upon her hills like a queen upon her divan," etc. Rock Island is all right-a lovely sister in the trinity of Davenport, Moline and Rock Island, but she never could have been Davenport, for Davenport is Daven- port, and that is something better.
HOW DAVENPORT GOT ITS NAME.
Mrs. Maria Purdy Peck, in her own graceful style and showing carefulness in research, wrote the following valuable and interesting article for the Half Century Democrat, published in 1905 :
"It is with pleasure that I respond to the request to furnish a contribution for The Half Century Democrat bearing upon the question of the double claimants for the honor of having bestowed the name of Davenport upon our city.
"That there are two came to my notice first about a dozen years ago when I was collecting material for a series of historical sketches for the National Maga- zine on 'Davenport and its Environs.' Investigations at that time were carried only far enough to convince myself that not one line or word, written or printed, not one atom of evidence of any kind belonging to the early period, was in ex- istence to support the claim that Davenport was named for Colonel William Davenport, and so I felt no compunctions about ignoring it entirely.
"Later, when the question became more serious by being brought forward in the newspapers, as a citizen interested in keeping our record straight I gathered some facts which were published in the Sunday Democrat. Some of the material made use of at that time is repeated in this article, much that is important is presented in more condensed form and new evidence is added which strength- ens greatly the contention that our city was named for George Davenport.
"Before saying more I wish to explain that to avoid confusion, I shall omit George Davenport's military title, which belongs to him by right, and speak of him only as George Davenport. Again, believing that one well authenticated fact is of more value than any number of theories, however plausible they may be, I shall confine myself to facts and deal as little as possible with theories; and further, that my own part is restricted to arranging the evidence supplied by others or discovered in more or less inaccessible places.
"Mr. and Mrs. Louis A. LeClaire, living on the corner of Eleventh and Main streets, are the careful custodians of a public document of inestimable value and interest, viewed from a historical standpoint. It is the original articles of agree- ment between Antoine LeClaire, George Davenport and six other men to found
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a town which was eventually named Davenport. Through the kindness of Mr. and Mrs. LeClaire in loaning, and the generosity of the Democrat in reproduc- ing, the document in its original form is presented to the public for the first time. Now what does this paper that has been hidden away and forgotten for so many years tell us about the naming of the town? It tells first that on the 23d day of February, 1836, there was a meeting at which seven persons were present, six of the eight original proprietors and G. C. R. Mitchell (afterward Judge Mitchell), whose name does not appear, but in whose well remembered handwriting the instrument was executed. Where was this initial meeting held? Franc B. Wilkie, author of 'Davenport Past and Present,' says that it was held at George Davenport's house on the island-the picturesque ruin of which over- looks Davenport today. At that meeting the articles of agreement to lay out a town on Mr. LeClaire's claim on the west side of the river was concluded but no name was selected. It speaks of 'a town to be laid out on said land'- further that the parties of the second part with Antoine LeClaire covenant and agree together to lay out a town on or before May 1, 1836, 'said town' occurring twice thereafter. The document tells us that Antoine LeClaire and George Davenport were the leading and controlling spirits in the enterprise. Mr. Le- Claire being the owner of the land, is mentioned as the party of the first part, and George Davenport's name leads all the parties of the second part each time they are mentioned.
"On the 18th of May, 1836, another transaction is recorded. At that time Alex. W. McGregor transferred his interest in 'the above named town of Daven- port' to Stanton Sholes. Both of the interested parties signed the agree- ment and the transaction was witnessed by Elnathan C. Gavit, as appears by his signature.
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