USA > Iowa > Appanoose County > Past and present of Appanoose County, Iowa : a record of settlement, organization, progress and achievement, Vol. I > Part 9
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"That is a common opinion but I have long doubted the truth of the asser- tion. Iowa has been very slow in making progress in education, in the promo- tion of libraries, in the improvement of our city governments, in the beautifying of our cities and towns, and in the public provision of facilities for art and culture. In New England, cities promote general culture as a matter of course. In IN56 Governor Grimes, himself a New Englander. urged public provision for libraries in country and town. But nothing came of it. Our people did not become aroused to the importance of libraries until late in the gos, and then you know it was probably the munificence of the ironmaster of Pittsburgh and the conditions of his gifts that stirred our people into active promotion of libraries.
"Take the long struggle of the friends of the State University before they got that institution of learning on a firm foundation. It was not until after 18So that the vigorous opposition to its enlargement and expansion ceased From the '50s right on to the "Sos the advocates of university education found it hard to overcome, not only active opposition, but the inertia and in lifference of legislators and the public towards public expenditures for education. This same characteristic was observable in many other directions. We have made marked progress in lowa to be sure. But it has been hard sledding. 1 can tell
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you I do not understand the reasons for such an attitude of constant hostility and bushwhacking opposition to forward movements that prevailed so gener- ally in Iowa before 1880. It was hardly in harmony with the known liberalism of New Englanders."
This attitude towards "forward" movements in lowa, this "unprogressiveness" many would not regard in such an adverse fashion. In their estimation it represents not indifference to the finer arts and culture of civilization but rather a strenuous individualism, a sturdy independence and self-dependence instead of an inclination to resort constantly to the agencies of government. New Eng- landers from the very beginning of their colonial history have been much given to socialism. They turn naturally to the state and communal authorities to secure civic or social improvements and popular culture. The people of lowa. on the contrary, have certainly been normally inclined to improve things chiefly via the individualistic route. They have been and now are instinctively opposed to the enlargement of governmental power that entails increased taxation and greater interference with what the people are prone to regard as the peculiar domain of personal freedom and selection.
All of a piece with the traits just referred to is the "placidity" of so much of our life. One often hears the comment that there is little that is interesting or picturesque either in our history or in the character of the population. We are pronounced "prosaic." There is much that is old-fashioned. out of date ; but it is not quaint or romantic. Travelers have noted that while there is much of commendable success and wealth throughout the commonwealth, there is a monotony in the local life, a lack of ambition and general contentment with things as they are. Land and lots, corn and cattle, "hog and hominy." these things we are told constitute our summum bonum. The hasty and promiscuous obser- vation- of travelers who sojourn briefly among us are not always to be accepted without salt. Yet the fact is obvious that there is in the lowan's character and in his life a noticeable trait that we may designate Languor, a certain inclina- tion to take things easy, not to worry or to fuss even if things do not satisfy. We may observe it in commercial and mercantile pursuits, in city and town government-, in rural and urban life. This is clearly not a characteristic of the New Englander. The Yankee, whether found in Maine, or Connecticut, or New York, is alert, aggressive, eager in the furtherance of any business or cul- ture in which he is interested. In all matters of public concern, especially if they comprehend considerations involving right and wrong, the New Englander is ardent, disputation-, relentless. He agitates, educates and preaches reformation. But this is not the characteristic disposition of the lowan.
DOM WHAT REGIONS SHOULD WE EXPECT TOWN'S PIONEERS?
There is a subtle attraction about exclusive explanations of political events or institutional developments that is wont to lare us into erroneous conclusions conclusions that are too extensive or sweeping. It is untruc to say that the populitien of lowa prior to 1850 was made up entirely of emigrants from any one se tion of the country. The pioneer population, no less than the present population, we shall find, was an infusion of peoples hailing from various regia. The representatives of the several race ciements each and all played
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parts more or less important in the life of the state. But in the coalescence or collision of the peoples from the various sections in their new habitat some one race or group of immigrants predominated and determined the character of the government and the general drift of political opinion. In what follows I am concerned to ascertain and to make clear what the dominant elements or .streams were among the pioneers of Iowa.
We have seen that while there are many facts in the history of Iowa that tend strongly to substantiate the tradition that New Englanders first settled the state the absence of the distinctive local institutions of New England and in their stead political conditions, institutions and social habits of radically unlike types, suggest, if they do not enforce, the conclusion that peoples from other regions dominated by different habits and ideals constituted the major portions of the streams of pioneer immigration prior to 1850. Our question now is- Whither shall we proceed from New England to discover the ancestral seats of the pioneers whose habits, notions and traditions of government and society so powerfully affected the currents of politics and the development of forms of government in lowa during the formative period of the state when its fun- damental institutions were given their "set" and the civic and social traits of the people were so largely determined? Into the lands of the tall pines and the deep snows north of the great lakes and the St. Lawrence: or into the middle states ; or into the vast regions south of Mason and Dixon's line and the Ohio river?
The nativity of the pioneers of Iowa, those settling in the state prior to 1850, unfortunately cannot be determined precisely by a resort to census enumerations. We are compelled to have recourse to inductive proofs gathered from sundry sources and to various deductive or general considerations governing the move- ments of population westward from the Atlantic seaboard from colonial times up to the outbreak of the Civil war. Such evidence is circumstantial and often variable in character ; nevertheless, it affords us basis for definite conchisions.
The character of a state's immigration is determined of course by many and various conditions and factors. But in the last analysis the nature of the immi- gration and the rate of influx are determined by two sets of conditions and causes, both being in the long run of equal force and importance. The first set is the character of the economic advantages which a state offers and the ex- pense of travel thereto. The second complex of causes is the conditions, econ- omic, political and social, in the countries or states whence the population may or does emigrate. In brief, we shall discover the character of lowa's pioneer population in sundry fundamental facts or laws that control the conduct of peoples in their migrations. We must appreciate Iowa's geographical location. the chief features of her topography, her natural products having commercial value, the routes and modes of travel to her borders. We must likewise realize the character of the predominant industries in the regions whence the state may have received its immigration and the economic, political and social con- sequences with respect to the redundant population in those regions. Space limits obviously prevent satisfactory treatment of all these antecedent conditions and factors and I shall consider chiefly the first set of considerations mentioned.
Furs metals, wooded streams and beautiful prairies, with highly fertile acres and favorable climate, have been lowa's chief economic advantages through-
.
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out her history. Prior to 1830 furs and metals were the attractions that lured frontiersmen within the state's borders. The one mineral found, viz : lead, while of consequence, was not a very important factor so far as concerned its imme- diate effect upon pioneer immigration. Furs, on the other hand, was an impor- tant factor. Buffalo and deer flourished on our prairies and beaver and otter thrived in our rivers and streams. Since 1840, however, neither our metals nor our fur-bearing animals have constituted the predominant or persistent attractions of lowa. The attraction has been her beautiful and bountiful lands.
The routes of travel by which the pioneers gained access to the haunts of our beavers and to our fertile acres were mainly three : First by the great lakes to Green Bay, thence up the Fox river to Lake Winnebago, thence across to the Portage, and down the Wisconsin river ; second, via the Ohio river, thence up the Mississippi and Missouri rivers ; third, overland by wagon. The degree of use of these routes before the advent of the railroad can only be surmised. Prior to 1845 certainly the river routes were the highways chiefly used by the westward bound emigrants. From 1845 overland travel by wagon became increasingly common until the railroad became a practicable mode of travel. round about 1860.
With such commercial and industrial attractions and such routes of travel thereto we should naturally presume that lowa's pioneer population in the main hailed from the land of the pines and from south of Mason and Dixon's line. Indeed, when we consider the nature of the industries of the people to the north- cast and southeast prior to 1840, and the economic effects upon redundant popu- lation such a conclusion seems to be enjoined.
The first people to penetrate and frequent lowa in any numbers were the French and Canadian hunters, traders and voyageurs. No large or durable French settlements. however, were found when the immigrants began to come into the state after 1830. From this fact it is perhaps commonly assumed that people of French extraction or of Canadian lineage formed no considerable pro- portion of the state's carly population. This conclusion, however, is hardly warranted. But as our special concern here is the major factor in the pioneer population. 1 shall pass over this interesting element and turn immediately to the population that came into Iowa via the Mississippi river and overland by wagon. From what section did the major or predominant number come?
We may determine this in various ways; first, by noting the nativity of the men chiefly in control in the state's prenatal period; second, by ascertaining the nativity of the first residents in numerous sections ; third, by the nativity of the men in power in the territorial and state governments in the pioneer days prior to 1850: fourth, by comparison of the returns of the national census of 1850; titth, by a study of the industrial, political, religious and social habits and institutions of the pioneers; sixth, by a study of contemporary opinion ; seventh, by a similar study of the pioneer immigration into and emigration from the state- of the Ohio valley, namely, Pennsylvania, the Virginias, Kentucky and Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, Wisconsin and Missouri. I shall under- take here but a brief consideration of some of these modes of approach to the subject
The nativity of the officers in charge of the governmental agencies in a region often, if not usually, indicates the nativity of the pioneer population-
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at least it points to the origin of the major political and social influence- that prevail when the political habits and institutions of the people are being estab- lished. In the first settlements of the upper Ohio valley the hardy pioneers usually pushed ahead of the army and the assessor and justice of the peace; but in the Lousiana Purchase the military authority always, and often the civil jurisdiction of the national government were "extended" over its vast unsettled regions previous to or coincident with the influx of settlers. The reports and correspondence of such officers would naturally have a pronounced influence upon relatives, old friends and neighbors "back in the states" that would induce emigration to the region where "splendid opportunities" awaited those who would but take them.
SOUTHERNERS IN CONTROL OF THE GOVERNMENT
When France released her authority over the Louisiana Purchase in 1804. the region embracing fowa was for a short time attached to the territory of Indiana, over which William Henry Harrison, a son of old Virginia, was gov- ernor. At St. Louis, in 1804, he negotiated the treaty by which the United States gained the right of access to most of the lands of the Sacs and Foxes. It was a Marylander, General James Wilkinson, stationed then at St. Louis, who ordered Lieutenant Zebulon M. Pike forth on his exploring trip up the Missis- sippi. Colonel George Davenport, a one time partner in the American Fur Company, and influential in the history of Scott county and Davenport. served under Wilkinson, being with him on the Sabine during the trouble with .Aaron Burr. Among the officers stationed at Fort Madison in the winter of isoS-o was a Kentuckian, Lieutenant Nathaniel Pryor, a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition.
The first governor having intimate relations with the region embracing lowa was Captain Meriwether Lewis a son of Virginia, the leader of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The brigadier general and Indian agent for the territory was his distinguished companion, Captain William Clark, another son of Vir- ginia. Upon the organization of Missouri Territory (that included lowa) in 1812, General Clark was made governor, holding the office until 1821. when Missouri entered the Union. Governor Clark's voice, however, continue I potent in the region as Indian agent until his death in 1838; one noteworthy in-tance being the treaty of 1824. whereby the half breed tract was established. It was at the instance of General Clark that Antoine Le Claire, afterward so promi- nent in the history of Scott county, was taken into the American service and given an English schooling to enable him to serve as an interpreter. Among the first "white" women in Clayton county, it is claimed, was a former slave or house servant of General Clark. She was a mulatto.
During the period from 1821 10 1834, when lowa was merely a part of the nnorganized territory of the United States, its affairs were looked after by officers of the army and Indian agents, whose work consisted mainly of pro- tecting the Indians against aggressions' of the whites. Among them were many southerners who later acquired great fame in national affairs. The first officer sent to look after the Galena miners was Colonel Willoughby Morgan, a Vir- ginian. Colonel Zachary Taylor was another Virginian with whom the miners
HISTORY OF APPANOOSE COUNTY
in Dubuque came into direct collision on July 4, 1830. Colonel Taylor ordered them to disperse and on their refusal sent troops from Fort Crawford to arrest them. Years after he declared to Mr. Langworthy that "those miner- at Du- buque were worse to manage than the Seminoles or even the Mexican -. " .As- sociated somewhat intimately with Taylor, especially during the Black Hawk war, was a Kentuckian of note, Lieutenant Jefferson Davis. He is de lared to have acted with and for Taylor when the Mission school for the Winnebago Indians was established in Allamakee county in 1854. Davis was also assigned to the adjutantship of the First United States Dragoons, of which Henry Dodge was colonel. In that regiment Davis, we are told by the late General James C. Parrott, of Keokuk, himself a Marylander, was a "great crony of my (Par- rott's) Captain Browne." The captain referred to was Jesse B. Browne, after- ward one of the first merchants of Keokuk and the speaker of long's first territorial house of representatives that convened in Burlington in December, 1838. With another lowan, G. W. Jones, later of Dubuque, Jefferson Davis formed in those early days a fast friendship that endured until death severed the ties-a friendship that had a momentous influence upon the political views and conduct of one, if not both of lowa's first senators, a friendship that event- ually caused the imprisonment of General Jones on the charge of treasonable conduct during the Civil war. With that same regiment was Lieutenant .\1- bert M. Lea, a North Carolinian, whose report on explorations throughout Iowa determined the site of the second Fort Des Moines, and the publication of his little book of "Notes," in Philadelphia, in 1836. Another southerner of note in the same regiment was Captain Nathan Boone, the youngest son of the great Daniel Boone, of Kentucky. He aided Lieutenant Lea greatly in inr- nishing data for the latter's map of lowa.
Another distinguished southerner intimately associated with the | reterri- torial days of lowa was Robert E. Lee. With respect to Lee, Mr. Langworthy suggests that it was probably largely due to his report to congress in 1838 that lowa received her name. There are some who claim that Lee county was named in honor of the efficient and genial officer who studied the region of the Rapids so thoroughly. One of the classmates of Davis and Lee at West Point was afterward a notable figure in Iowa's history, Charles Mason, for many years judge of the supreme court and subsequently the author of the lowa Code of 1851. In the service with these men, especially in connection with the Black Hawk war, were Generals E. P. Gaines, a Virginian, and Henry Atkinson, a North Carolinian, after whom Fort Atkinson, located on Turkey river in Win- neshick county, was named. At this fort was stationed Captain J. J. Aber- crombie, a Tennesseean, and Lieutenant Alfred Pleasanton, a Washingtonian, both of whom rose to high rank in the Union army, and Lieutenant- Simon B. Buckner, Henry Heth, Abraham Buford and Mevander W. Reynolds, all of whom became general officers in the Confederate army. Another conspicuous figure in the negotiations with the Sacs and Foxes following the Black Hawk war was also a Virginian, General Winfield Scott.
Next to General William Clark, of Missouri, the most noteworthy Indian agent of the national government immediately charged with the supervision of the interests of the Indians in lowa and Wisconsin, was "a grand old Vir- ginian," General Joseph M. Street. It was he who strove so vigoroush to
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initiate the policy of mission schools among the Indians. His services for the nation's wards won for him honorable distinction in the Indian annals of the middle west. He lies buried in the graveyard at Agency City, Iowa, near by the grave of the chief Wapello, of the Sacs and Foxes. General Street's son- in-law. Captain George Wilson, was in the same company with Jefferson Davis at Fort Crawford. Both were in the company that expelled the Dubuque min- ers. Captain Wilson later became the first adjutant of the militia of the terri- tory of Iowa. General Street's son, Joseph H. D. Street, was the first register of the land office in Council Bluffs.
Another prominent, if not dominant, figure in the Black Hawk war was Henry Dodge. He soon thereafter became governor of Wisconsin Territory and thereby of lowa. He was a native of Indiana but he spent his youth in Kentucky and began his public career in Missouri in 1805. He gained distinc- tion in the latter state, holding many offices from sheriff and marshal up to the major general of Missouri's militia, and member of the constitutional con- vention of Missouri in 1820. He was one of the positive factors in the first legislative enactments passed by the legislature of Wisconsin that first met at Belmont, Wisconsin, and later at Burlington, Iowa.
If the general associations of men constitute any considerable factor in de- termining their conduct, in creating their attitude or state of mind with respect to life and its affairs, then enough has been shown to indicate that southern rather than New England ideas and traditions dominated the men who con- trolled lowa, when it was in the initial processes of beginning, when it was in- choate. as the lawyers would put it. Their presence in and about Iowa was unquestionably a potent fact in determining the character of the inflow of im- migrants that began in 1830. Let us ascertain as far as may be the nativity of the first settlers.
The first frontiersmen, other than the Canadian traders and trappers and voyageurs, to frequent Iowa were doubtless Kentuckians. Floyd's remains now lie on the bluffs of the Missouri river near Sioux City. When William Hunt was fitting out his Astorian party at St. Louis in 1810. he was anxious to se- cure and did enlist the services of several Kentuckian hunters and river men. On their way up the river both the scientist, Bradbury, and Hunt separately encountered three Kentuckians returning, who for three years preceding had been hunting and trapping at the headwaters of the Missouri and Columbia. That many of these "men of the western waters" had frequently penetrated Iowa far inland is surely not a violent presumption.
Colonel John Smith of Missouri, some time after the death of Julien Du- buque and the sale of the latter's "Mines of Spain" at St. Louis, went up the river in a keel boat with sixty men, bent on mining and smelting lead in the region round about Dubuque. The belligerant attitude of the Indians, how- ever. effectually interfered with his plans. The inhabitants of the mining region of Galena were mainly people from Kentucky, Tennessee and southern Illi- nois, a region inhabited largely by people from the former states. It was Colonel James Johnson, of Kentucky, brother of the celebrated Colonel R. M. Johnson, who in 1823 inaugurated the lead mining in the northwest between 1812 and 1813: and John S. Miller, of Hannibal, Missouri. Among that min- ing population was a notorious mining character. "Kentuck Anderson." who
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HISTORY OF APPANOOSE COUNTY
had a widespread reputation as a bruiser in fist fights, who later went over to Dubuque and in a feud six miles southwest of Dubuque was killed in 1836.
All of southwestern Wisconsin was settled chiefly by southerners. It was their presence and predilections that secured the adoption of the county com- missioner system of local government in Wisconsin, and maintained it until the state was admitted into the Union in 1848, despite the wishes and protests of the New Englanders and New Yorkers who had gained control in Michigan and who were rapidly coming into Wisconsin. Colonel Arthur Cunynghame traveling across Illinois in 1850 encountered numerous caravans or wagon trains of the Kentuckians and Tennesseeans returning from the Galena mines for the winter to their homes south of the Ohio. We shall see later that the Dodges and Governors Clark and Hempstead were among those interested in lead min- ing around Galena. lowa, no doubt received prior to 1850, no inconsiderable number of the southern people from southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois. It is clear that the people who first began to look with covetous eyes across the Mississippi to the attractive lands in lowa in the main hailed from the south.
We find southern men, or men of southern extraction, or of southern affilia- tion no less conspicuous and prominent in the government of the territory and state prior 10 1850 and even well up to the outbreak of the Civil war. Gov- ernor Robert Lucas, the first chief executive of the territory, was a native of Virginia, a descendant of that sturdy Scotch-Irish stock that so early pushed westward through the gaps of the Alleghanies into the valleys converging on the Ohio. His successor, John Chambers, although born in New Jersey in 1789. spent his life mainly in Kentucky from 1702 to 1844. "In his old age he re- turned to Kentucky, where he died. Governor James Clark was born in West- moreland county, Pennsylvania. In 1836 he went to Missouri, thence to Belmont. and finally to Burlington. He married a daughter of Governor Henry Dodge, and thereby probably resulted his appointment. The first governor of the new state was Ansel Briggs, a Vermonter, a whig in Ohio, who became a democrat when he settled in Jackson county, lowa, in 1836. His successor, Stephen Hempstead, although born in Connecticut, spent his youth in St. Louis, gained business experience in the lead mining region of Galena and settled in Dubuque in 18.30. Governors James W. Grimes and Ralph 1. Lowe were northern men by birth and affiliation. Governor Samuel J. Kirkwood was a Marylander, molded as was Governor Lucas by a subsequent residence in Ohio.
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