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0255364
Ilinois Centennial Publications
PUBLISHED BY AUTHORITY OF THE ILLINOIS CENTENNIAL COMMISSION
THE CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF ILLINOIS
CLARENCE WALWORTH ALVORD EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
- VOLUME III
ILLINOIS CENTENNIAL COMMISSION
OTTO LEOPOLD SCHMIDT, Chairman JESSIE PALMER WEBER, Secretary
EDWARD BOWE'
EVARTS BOUTELL GREENE
JOHN JOSEPH BROWN
GEORGE PASFIELD, JR.
JOHN W. BUNN
WILLIAM NELSON PELOUZE
WILLIAM BUTTERWORTH
ANDREW JACKSON POORMAN, JR.
LEONARD ALLAN COLP
THOMAS F. SCULLY
ROYAL WESLEY ENNIS
FREDERIC SIEDENBURG
EDMUND JANES JAMES
COMMITTEE ON CENTENNIAL PUBLICATIONS
EVARTS BOUTELL GREENE, Chairman ROYAL WESLEY ENNIS
EDMUND JANES JAMES
OTTO LEOPOLD SCHMIDT FREDERIC SIEDENBURG
Abraham Lincoln [O'Connor's Statue of Abraham Lincoln]
OCT 8 1952
THE CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF ILLINOIS VOLUME THREE
THE ERA OF THE CIVIL WAR 1848-1870
BY ARTHUR CHARLES COLE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY OF THE CHURCHCHE S CHRIST OF LAITSE DAY SAINTS
STATE
ILLINOIS
Milli
AUG. 26TH 1818
DATE MICROFILMED 7 april 1999
ITEM # 4
PROJECT and
124
ROLL # G. S. CALL #
XLIB 7-102 2055558 4434
Vol. 3
47464
977.3 Bric vol.3
PUBLISHED BY THE ILLINOIS CENTENNIAL COMMISSION SPRINGFIELD, 1919
COPYRIGHT, 1919 BY THE ILLINOIS CENTENNIAL COMMISSION
Litet !!
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER
PAGE
I. THE PASSING OF THE FRONTIER
I
II. THE COMING OF THE RAILROADS 27
III. AGITATION AND COMPROMISE, 1848-1852 53
IV. PRAIRIE FARMING AND BANKING 75
V. THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT IO1
VI.
THE ORIGIN OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY
125
VII. THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 153
VIII. THE ELECTION OF 1860 . 181
IX. THE GROWING PAINS OF SOCIETY 202
X. CHURCH AND SCHOOL, 1850-1860 230
XI. THE APPEAL TO ARMS 253
XII. RECRUITING GROUND AND BATTLEFIELD . 273
XIII. THE NEW ABOLITIONISTS AND THE COPPERHEADS . 290
XIV. THE REELECTION OF LINCOLN
312
XV. POPULATION IN WARTIME. .
330
XVI. THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION, 1860-1870 354
XVII. AGRICULTURE AND THE WAR . 373
XVIII. RECONSTRUCTION AND THE MILITARY POLITICIAN 387
XIX. THE SPOILS AND THE SPOILERS, 1867-1870 . 404
XX. RELIGION, MORALITY, AND EDUCATION, 1860-1870 420
XXI.
PLAY AND THE PRESS
436
BIBLIOGRAPHY
459
INDEX .
477
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Frontispiece
FOREIGN BORN POPULATION, 1860
16
RAILROAD DEVELOPMENT, 1850-1860 34
PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, 1848 . 60
VOTE FOR TREASURER, 1854 132
STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS
156
VOTE FOR CONGRESSMEN, 1858
178
PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, 1860
200
RICHARD YATES . 256
VOTE ON THE CONSTITUTION, 1862 270
LYMAN TRUMBULL 294
VOTE FOR CONGRESSMAN-AT-LARGE, 1862 . 298
POPULATION OF ILLINOIS IN 1860 330
PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, 1868 . 414
PREFACE
T HE development of Illinois out of the frontier and through the storm and stress of Civil War is the story of an evolving western democracy in a period of grave transi- tion; it was then that the hopes of the pioneer were finding buoyant expression in the prosperity of the prairies and in · the assumption of a full share of responsibility in the nation's burdens. The story of Illinois thus striving to be " first in war and first in peace " is complicated by the place taken by Illinois leaders on the roll of national heroes; indeed, the historian of this period finds himself torn between the demands of the common people for an interpretation of their democratic influ- ence over against the looming influence of the statesman on the hustings, in the national legislature, or in the presidential chair. In the synthesis here presented the author has tried to weigh with care the proportions due to every phase of the stirring life on the prairies of Illinois.
The author is greatly indebted to several institutions which have responded generously to his appeals for assistance by the loan of source material: The Library of Congress, the Illinois State Historical Library, the Chicago Historical Society, McKendree College Library, the Belleville Public Library, the Joliet Public Library, the Rockford Public Library, and Red- dick's Library of Ottawa. A large number of individuals and newspaper offices have cooperated by placing at the disposal of the author their private files of newspapers which were other- wise unavailable. Acknowledgments for such favors are due the publishers of the Rushville Times, the Carthage Republi- can, the Jonesboro Gazette, the Canton Register, the Jackson- ville Journal, Quincy Whig, Aurora Beacon, and to Mrs. Grace Scripps Dyche of Evanston for a copy of her father's Gem of the Prairie for 1848 and 1849. The trustees of the Cairo Trust Property have loaned valuable materials now under their
THE ERA OF THE CIVIL WAR
custody, as have Mr. W. T. Norton and Mr. J. True Dodge of Alton, Mr. Judson Phillips of Jonesboro, and Mrs. James W. Patton of Springfield.
In the accomplishment of this essay in historical writing, I have been aided by the facilities offered by the Centennial Com- mission. Mrs. Jessie Palmer Weber of the Illinois State His- torical Library and Miss Caroline M. McIlvaine of the Chi- cago Historical Society have been exceedingly helpful in many ways. I am especially indebted to those who have served me in the capacity of assistants: Mr. Jacob Hofto, Miss Jessie J. Kile, Miss Jeannette Saunders, and Miss Agnes Wright. The usual editorial acknowledgments are due to my chief, Clarence W. Alvord.
ARTHUR CHARLES COLE.
URBANA, July 1, 1918.
THE ERA OF THE CIVIL WAR 1848-1870
I. THE PASSING OF THE FRONTIER
T HE year 1848 marks the beginning of a new epoch in Illinois history. Not only had the polity of the common- wealth found it necessary to lay aside its swaddling clothes for a new constitution, but its citizens began to move forward in strides that rendered obsolete existing institutions and pre- vailing methods in almost every phase of the life of the times. Agriculture was revolutionized in many of its aspects; urban life discarded more and more of the traces of the frontier; the prairies were filled up by a progressive population which flowed in from every corner of the new and the old world; industry developed into new and untried fields; and the state came to take a front rank among Mississippi valley common- wealths. The way was prepared for the leading rôle Illinois was to play in bearing the burdens of the union in the storm and stress of civil war.
The outstanding feature of life in Illinois during the fifties was the passing of the frontier. Every aspect of its social and economic make-up declared that the spirit of western pioneering could not perpetuate its dominance over the grow- ing commonwealth. Every stroke of a hammer, every rattle of a farm machine, every puff of a locomotive, was a blow at the peace and calm of the untamed prairie wilderness, still the haunt of the rabbit, the deer, and even the wolves-a taunt to the slow and inefficient man power of the primitive first settlers.
The upbuilding of towns and cities was one of the strong- est indications of the rapid development of the state. Illinois of 1850 boasted only ten incorporated cities : Chicago, Alton, Springfield, Beardstown, Pekin, Quincy, Peoria, Bloomington, Galena, and Rock Island. Inasmuch, however, as several of these had been insignificant hamlets in 1840, this represented a remarkable development toward a more highly civilized
1
-
2
THE ERA OF THE CIVIL WAR
commonwealth. There were in addition, moreover, towns of from three to five thousand inhabitants in places to which ten years before not so much as a trail had led.1 It was noted that the growth of towns and villages seemed to run parallel with the growth of grain; cities grew up only at points of special vantage for the penetration of interior districts by incoming settlers and for the ready exchange of farm prod- ucts for the finished output of the factory and workshop. For this reason the river towns of the forties had swelled into thriving cities, their life supplied by the sonorous breathing of steam engines; and a business formerly confined to the barter of hazelnuts, butter, and eggs, for buttons, beads, cap ribbons, powder, and shot, was replaced by a business of thou- sands of dollars in merchandise and produce.2 For this reason, too, the network of railroads that came to traverse the states developed the municipalities in the fifties; while the smaller communities were receiving new accretions by the hun- dreds, Chicago increased from a city of 29,963 in 1850, to 80,028 in 1855, and 109,260 in 1860.
Rapid accumulation of population prevented the municipal improvements that might well have been expected of places of such size, for in most senses the cities and towns were mere overgrown villages. Housing facilities could not keep pace with such rapid growth; dwellings were small and crude, often mere shacks. Bloomington erected over 250 new dwellings in 1850, and a scarcity was still noted, while newcomers to Springfield, after looking in vain for some place of residence, passed on in hopes of finding a more favorable location.3 Home-owning was fairly general among the older towns- people; but rents for the newcomers were uniformly high, sometimes exorbitant. There was a steady shortage of dwell- ings in Alton, and houses were "worth from fifteen to twenty per cent. per annum on their cost." 4 In Chicago houses that cost $500 sometimes rented for $300 and $400 a year; "a moderate little tenement which might be got in the suburbs of
1 Chicago Daily Journal clipped in Illinois State Register, June 22, 1850.
2 Naples Observer clipped in Belleville Advocate, September 12, 1850.
3 Illinois Journal, May 18, 20, 23, 1850.
4 Alton Courier, February 7, 1854, see also September 27, 1852, March 9, 1853, March 20, 1854.
3
PASSING OF THE FRONTIER
London for £25 per annum here fetches £200," reported a visiting Britisher.5
Alongside these conditions, however, were others which showed how hard it was for Illinois to outgrow entirely the frontier atmosphere that had shortly before prevailed in most parts of the state. The backwoods pioneer was not wholly out of his element in the cities, still less in the towns and villages. Even the editor of the Charleston Courier protested at the "enormous rent" he had to pay for his newspaper plant, $60 a year. At the same time the sturdy shoemaker at Morris had high hopes of establishing his economic pros- perity on a capital of $50; he proposed to build a "small house 12 by 12 middling lumber nails, doors, windows, $12.00 put up by a few neighbors gratis. $25.00 for stock in my line of business which is shoemaking and the Ballance as a reserve and i am certain of doing well." Both men applied to the governor of the state for the necessary loans, the one as a political backer, the other as a stranger whose only security was "the word of a man of honor," and who submitted as a text Raleigh's lines, " True nobleness is not confined to palaces alone." " It is to be hoped that Governor French was able to justify their confidence -the sublime confidence of the pioneer in the spirit of democratic cooperation.
No town or city was sufficiently urban to develop a drain- age system. In bad weather the streets approached the con- dition of a quagmire with dangerous sink holes where the boatman's phrase " no bottom " furnished the only description. An absence of civic pride made them the dumping ground of the community rubbish so that the gutters were filled with manure, discarded clothing, and all kinds of trash, threatening the public health with their noxious effluvia.7
In Chicago the drains in the streets, the alleys, and the
5 Chicago Weekly Democrat, April 7, 1855. Special correspondence of London Times clipped in Chicago Tribune, November 12, 1860; see also Chicago Press and Tribune, April 2, 1859. Missionary effort in the west was discour- aged by rents of $200 or $300 for houses that would bring only $60 in the east. Presbytery Reporter, 4:74.
6 J. J. Brown to French, April 3, 1849; James Campbell to French, July, 1851, French manuscripts.
7 The square at Springfield always seemed in a disgusting condition. Illinois State Register, March 17, 24, 1853; Illinois Journal, September 13, 1853.
4
THE ERA OF THE CIVIL WAR
vacant lots were "reeking with every description of filth;" "all the slops of the houses, and the filth of every kind whatso- ever, incident to cities, are emptied in the gutters, and offend the nostrils of every traveler, either on the sidewalks or the streets," complained a zealous advocate of clean streets. Michigan avenue was decorated with manure heaps while the contents of stables and pigsties were deposited upon the lake shore, a horrible stench arising from that "Gehenna of abominations." The rain washed this filth into the lake to be mixed with the drinking water supply of the city, for nothing short of frogs or fish seemed to clog the supply pipes of the city water system. The zealous apostle of cleanliness was often served with "chowder" in his bathtub. Some improve- ment was made in the later years of the decade; paving with planks, macadam, or cobblestones reduced the problems, although only a few dozen miles were paved out of the four hundred miles of city streets.8
Then, too, every city had its hog nuisance or some equiva- lent. The streets, squares, and parks seemed public hogpens ; hog holes with all their filth met the eye and nose at every turn. Springfield wrestled with this problem long and ear- nestly; the controversy came to a climax in 1853, when an ordinance allowing the hogs to run at large was successively passed and repealed, followed by the requirement that they be rung if allowed to run at large. The city council was equally divided over this question and the mayor pursued a vacil- lating course in casting the deciding vote; while the hog and anti-hogite forces wrangled, his swineship contentedly pulled himself out of the mushy batter of his gutter-wallow, threaten- ing to upset pedestrians as he carefully chose a freshly painted fence against which to plant himself and transfer the unctious matter with which he was loaded. In the fall of that year swine were more numerous on the streets of Springfield than in the pens of the state fairgrounds. Urbana had a record of more hogs in the community than people, and the porker had equal rights with citizens upon the streets. Decatur's anti-
8 Chicago Democrat, March 30, May 7, 1849, August 7, 1851; Free West, June 22, 1854; Chicago Press and Tribune, October 8, 1858, March 25, April 2, 1859.
5
PASSING OF THE FRONTIER
hogite forces triumphed by a narrow margin in 1859. For a time cows ran at large on the streets of Chicago, often passing the night on the sidewalks. Quincy prided itself on the use of geese instead of hogs as street scavengers.9
At the beginning of the decade not one of the cities of the state was provided with public utilities. Chicago almost imme- diately, however, arranged to have its streets lighted by gas and shortly afterwards provided itself with a sewerage system and a water system, though the latter was far from carrying out the original plan to supply the city with pure and whole- some water. Pekin and Rockton prepared to install a water system in 1853, while Quincy and Peoria put their energies into gas companies. Not until two years later were Spring- field and Quincy able to arrange for water systems; by that time gas, light, and coke companies were organized in all the more progressive cities. Soon primitive wooden mains were installed and the decade brought to Illinois the beginnings of the so-called "modern conveniences." 10
Chicago, the "garden city," became in this period a cos- mopolitan metropolis, the commercial emporium of the Lake Michigan region and the adjacent states. The foreign born population came to outnumber the native born, with a con- siderable representation for every national group. After the completion of the Illinois and Michigan canal the current of trade which formerly flowed down the Mississippi was turned eastward, making Chicago the great market place of the west to the disadvantage of St. Louis which had previously dominated the situation. Excellent and extensive railroad connections next brought additional advantages; in 1854 seventy-four trains a day tapped the upper Mississippi and the whole northwest. By 1851 the total value of the trade of the lake port reached nearly $30,000,000; in 1855 it had a grain trade of 20,487,953 bushels, nearly twice that of its rival on the Mississippi. It had already become the greatest primary wheat depot in the world; in spite of a chronic com-
9 Illinois State Register, May 5, 12, June 30, 1853; Illinois Journal, May 12, September 7, November 9, 1853; Urbana Union, September 27, 1855; Chicago Democrat, September 19, 1849; Quincy Whig, August 15, 1853; June 26, 1854. 10 Quincy Whig, August 15, 1853, June 26, 1854; Private Laws of 1853, P. 417-422, 504-505, 510-511, 516-517; Private Laws of 1855, P. 544 ff.
6
THE ERA OF THE CIVIL WAR
plaint of a shortage of capital, by 1860 over five million dollars of capital were invested in Chicago.11
This precocious western city presented many incongruities. In 1850 it had several impressive public edifices, "large ware- houses and stores, five or six stories high, splendid hotels, five public schools and dwellings, frequently magnificent churches; " 12 ten years later it had taken on even more met- ; " 12 ropolitan atmosphere. Yet at the same time these massive stone and brick stores, warehouses, and factories, even "palatial" hotels, were surrounded by wooden huts and shanties. Rough stumps of pine trees were set along the roads in all directions to carry telegraphic wires. On the occa- sion of the visit of the Prince of Wales in 1860, the London Times correspondent reported that Chicago was an "extraor- dinary mélange of the Broadway of New York and little shanties of Parisian buildings mixed up in some way with backwoods life." 13 The streets, though filthy, were generally broad and pleasant; and a commendable zeal for planting rows of shade trees furnished the beginnings of city beauti- fication. An extensive park system was planned and given authorization by the state legislature. Regular omnibus service was started on the principal thoroughfares in 1850, while the State street horse railroad was opened in April, 1859. The community supported seven daily papers in 1853, besides weeklies and monthlies. With the westward march of the American people, Chicago came to have a central location; equipped with fifty-seven hotels in 1855, eight of which were "first class," it had come to be a point of attraction as a convention city.14
Springfield, the state capital, a city of 4,533 in 1850 and of 9,320 in 1860, was a place of few attractions. It had little civic beauty, was famous for the wretched condition of its streets, and for a long time lacked a single good hotel. Citi-
11 DeBow's Review, 15: 374; Chicago Daily Democratic Press, January 7, 1856; Illinois State Register, December 21, 1854.
12 DeBow's Review, 15: 374. It was called " the city of churches; " it laid claim to having more free public schools than any city of its size in the world. Chicago Democrat, May 4, June 5, 1849.
13 Chicago Tribune, November 12, 1860.
14 Chicago Press and Tribune, March 5, April 2, 1859; Chicago Democrat, April 21, 1855.
7
PASSING OF THE FRONTIER
zens talked of a waterworks system during the entire decade without accomplishing anything; nor did it acquire any other public utilities. It was amazingly slow in starting a system of public schools. Yet it had all the optimism of the day; lots on the public square sold as high as $100 a foot and farming property on the outskirts was worth up to $100 an acre; its citizens always vigorously opposed the numerous proposals from rival cities to move the state capital to a more suitable point.15
Alton, an important port on the Mississippi, struck out aggressively for a railroad connection with Chicago and for a cross-state line to Terre Haute; these brought so important a westbound traffic to the city that, with the rush of settlement to Kansas, a direct steamship line to that territory was estab- lished which, as the easiest route, gave the city many of the economic advantages that St. Louis had previously secured from this movement. Peoria was a beautiful young city in 1860 with an important commerce sustained by a tributary agricultural region of unsurpassed fertility and first-rate facil- ities for manufacturing.16 In the decade it had passed Galena, to become, with a population of 14,045, the second largest city in the state.
Cairo was in this period Illinois' great city of prophecy, the speculation of a company of eastern capitalists. Situated at "the most important confluence of rivers in the world" and at the center of the American republic, at the southern terminus of the Illinois Central, it was expected-as the entrepôt between the northern and southern markets-to dominate commercially the Ohio, Wabash, Tennessee, and Cumberland valleys as well as the great northwest, becoming, as a great inland emporium, the largest city in the world. In 1850, however, it was an embryo city of 242 inhabitants, living largely in wharf boats and small temporary shanties, waiting for the marshy bottom lands to be reclaimed from the over-
15 Illinois State Journal, February 28, 1861; Illinois State Register, August 25, September 1, 8, 1853. The only change they ever would concede was that the name "Sangamo" or "Illini " was more suitable than Springfield for the state capital.
16 Presbytery Reporter, 3: 247; Western Journal, 1: 113-114, 2:267 ff; Chi- cago Daily Democratic Press, July 12, 1855.
8
HE ERA OF THE CIVIL WAR
flow of the rivers.17 With the beginning of active work on the Illinois Central, rapid developments took place, so that by 1860 the city had an enthusiastic population of 2,188, with the neighboring towns of Mound City and Emporium com- peting for a share of the expected prosperity.
Some of the more important centers of that period were places which after a few decades ceased to find favor with Dame Fortune. In 1860 Quincy was a bustling river port of 13,718 which prided itself on its gas plant and other civic improvements. Belleville, "a firm city of brick," with half a dozen breweries, was a prosperous community of 7,520, famous throughout the west for its lager beer. It sold great quantities of dry goods, hardware, and groceries to the . Illinois back country; its place with reference to St. Louis corresponded to that of East St. Louis of today, then the insignificant village of Illinoistown.18 Beardstown, thriving on the transportation facilities furnished by the Illinois and Mich- igan canal, was an important market for grain and provisions, but won its right to public attention chiefly through the busy scenes at its hogpens and slaughterhouses. Peru was for a time the successful competitor of its near neighbor, La Salle, for the benefits of the termination of the canal. Separated by only a half-mile, connected by river steamers with St. Louis and by the Illinois Central with Chicago and Galena, and crossed by the Rock Island and Chicago route, the two places promised to furnish the location for an important trade empo- rium. The spokesman of the sister town of Ottawa was com- pelled to admit that there was "more enterprise in a half dozen men in Peru than in the whole of Ottawa put together." The latter, however, soon began a rapid development so that real estate boomed and farms two or three miles out sold for from fifty to one hundred and fifty dollars an acre.19
These cities and towns were the focusing points of a popu- lation of 851,470 that had by 1850 found homes in the mid- west commonwealth. The state had already given proof of
17 DeBow's Review, 19: 683; Illinois Organ, April 26, 1851; Chicago Daily Journal, June 10, 1851.
18 Belleville Advocate, February 22, 1849, March 2, May 4, 1859.
19 Ottawa Free Trader, November 30, 1850, May 13, 1854; Beardstown Gazette, April 30, 1851.
9
PASSING OF THE FRONTIER
having attained its majority by showing a natural increase of a native born population of 333,753. This generation which had played no direct part in the westward march of the pio- neer bade fair to outgrow the ideas and ideals of their sires. Already names of native Illinoisians began to appear on the roll of the houses of the general assembly,20 although as candidates for important offices they were still rare.
Another decade during which the population of the state increased to 1,711,95I was to work important consequences - in obliterating the more important frontier survivals. So rapid, indeed, did the forces of progress move in Illinois that the growing sophistication drove out the restless pioneering spirits to the frontier regions of the far west. In the period after 1848, they contributed largely to the development of Cali- fornia, Kansas and Nebraska, and Colorado. With the dis- covery of gold in California the "gold fever" attacked Illinoisians; "Ho, for California !" became the rallying cry everywhere. In the winter of 1848-1849 companies began to form at various points ready to move west in the spring.21 These companies, organized under strict regulations which excluded all but persons of industry and good reputation, usually elected a captain, lieutenants, sergeant, and wagon master and hired a guide to conduct them on the Overland trail. Stout wagons were procured, drawn by horses, a double team of mules, or three or four yoke of oxen. At first the young men were the victims of the California fever, then the infection spread to the older generation-for the romance of the gold fields made a wide appeal. In certain districts about Quincy, by February, 1849, a majority of the males were making preparations to leave. Prosperous farmers and settled artisans joined the restless youths; 10,000 to 15,000 were scheduled to leave that year. Illinois seemed the banner state in its contribution of "forty-niners;" a majority of the wagons on the Overland seemed to hail from Illinois. Plans for a company of fifty or sixty were made in Alton in January; by March one hundred and twenty selected emigrants took 20 Alton Courier, March 11, 1853.
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