USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > Discovery and conquests of the Northwest, with the history of Chicago, Vol. I > Part 28
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315
Site of Cleveland Determined upon.
selves. Now the rising star of a new power, in the twentieth year of its existence, had penetrated across the wilderness of New York, and was about to lay the dimension stone for the city of Cleveland, on a model destined soon to be repeated with success at other places along the margin of these shining waters. On the 2d of July the party arrived at Erie, which still retained the old French name of Presque Isle. Here the ruins of the old French fort still remained, as a frail memorial of French ambition crushed by the strong arm of England, who in turn had held but a transient lease of power. Passing on to the west, they arrived at Conneaut on the 4th of July. Here they celebrated the day with suitable toasts, and, says the Journal of Cleaveland, " drank several pails of grog, supped and retired in remarkable good order."
The party now began to lay out the country in town- ships, according to the admirable system of government surveys begun on the Ohio river in 1785.
On the 10th of August, having run a line around a large tract, they came back to Lake Erie again. Their provisions were exhausted, and from the following item in Cleaveland's Journal, their rum had come to its last gill. Says the record: "Just as we were starting for Conneaut, we sawa large party coming along the beach, and supposing them to be Indians, and having only a gill left in our bottle, we were hurrying to a spring to drink it before they could come up and tease us for it, but to our astonishnent, we found them to be two of the parties of surveyors coming in together."
While the surveyors were at work, Mr. Cleaveland made an excursion to the site destined to become the city which was to bear his name, arriving there on the 22d of August. Says Whittlesey, in his history of Cleveland :
"As they coasted close along the shore, overhung by a dense green forest, mirrored in the waters over which they were passing, the mouth of the river disclosed itself, as a small opening, between low banks of sand. The man who controls the party is seated in the stern,
316
Cleveland Settled.
steering his own craft, which is gracefully headed into the stream.
"His complexion was so swarthy, his figure so square and stout, and his dress so rude, that the Indians sup- posed some of the blood of their race had crept into his veins.
"A young growth of oaks, with low bushy tops, covered the ground. Beneath them were thrifty bushes, rooted in a lean, but dry and pleasant soil, highly favorable to the object in view. A smooth and even field sloped gently toward the lake, whose blue waters could be seen extending to the horizon. His imagination doubtless took a pardonable flight into the future, when a great commercial town should take the place of the stinted forest growth, which the northern tempests had nearly destroyed.
"Enough men were left to put up a storehouse for the supplies, and a cabin for the accommodation of the surveyors.
"Houses had before this been built by white people, near the mouth of the river; but not for the purpose of permanent settlement. Col. James Hillman avers that he put up a small cabin on the east side of the river, in 1786, near the foot of Superior street, of which, how- ever, nothing further is known. Some time previous to 1787, a party who were wrecked upon a British ves- sel, between one and two miles east of the river, built a hut, large enough to shelter themselves through one winter. On the west side of the river a log storehouse was erected, prior to 1786, to protect the flour which was brought here from Pittsburg, on the way to Detroit, This building, in a dilapidated state, was standing in 1797, when it was occupied awhile by James Kingsbury and his family."
Surveys for the streets of the new city were made in a few weeks, the first plat bearing date of October Ist, 1796. It was the first town laid out exclusively by New England citizens on the entire chain of lakes, and at this day is second in commercial importance only to Chicago.
CLEVELAND İN 1796.
318
Hut Built at Chicago.
· The same summer, a colored man from St. Domingo, named Jean Baptiste Pont Au Sable, in his forest wanderings, was attracted to the old portage of Chicago. Here he built a hut on the north bank of the main branch of the Chicago river, and settled among the Pottawattamies, who then dwelt at the place. With- out doubt he was well received by them, as he soon aspired to the dignity of a chief, but like many others before and since, his ambitious aims were never to be realized. Thus baulked, he relinquished the improve- ments he had made, and removed to Peoria. *
The small beginning he had made, however, was soon appropriated by a Frenchman named La Mai, who appears to have been only a transient occupant, like many others of his countrymen before him, and the only mark which gives significance to his brief residence here is the fact that he sold out his establish- ment to one who became the true pioneer of Chicago as an American city. This was John Kinzie, whose romantic adventures, incarnate with the spirit of forest life as it then was in its fascinations, will be told in future pages.
And now the old century fades away in a peaceful twilight, burying in oblivion the crushed hopes of France and England, while the American star is rising above the dip of the horizon.
* Waburn, page 490.
COSTUMES OF EARLY SETTLERS OF THE NORTHWEST AND ITS ABORIGINES.
CHAPTER XIV.
William Henry Harrison; His Ancestry and Birth-Is Appointed Governor of the Indian Territory-Spanish Possession of Louisiana-Napoleon's Ambitious De- signs Shown-Chain of Diplomacy that Settled the Fate of Louisiana-Its Purchase from Spain- French Designs Frustrated by the British-Its Pur- chase by the United States-Consequent Necessity of a Fort on the Upper Lakes-St. Joseph Chosen for Its Locality-The Indians Object to Its Erection- Chicago Next Selected-The Fort Built Here-Marga- ret and Elizabeth, the Captives-Their Adventures, and What Grew out of Them-John Kinzie-His Youthful Life-He Settles in Chicago-The Fur Trade and the Engagé.
Private ownership to the soil is a condition peculiar to new countries. It may almost be called one of the modern inventions of civilization, first brought to per- fection in America. The effect of this distribution of nature's most valuable gift has been manifest in school houses, libraries, newspapers, magazines, pictures and well furnished habitations, universally brought into being where men own the soil they cultivate. The nineteenth century opened upon the people of the United States with a new field, on which these good things were to be multiplied in extent beyond limit, as far as could then be seen. The unmeasured fields beyond the Ohio-enriched by a thousand autumnal dressings of leaf mold, or the decay of prairie growth- - looked inviting to the husbandmen of New England and Old Virginia, and emigration from these places
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32 I
Harrison Appointed Governor.
4
began again after the assurance of peace with the Ind.ans.
A character is now introduced into history-one of those master spirits who can only live and grow in a new country. Not that men thus reared are conse- quently superior to the cultured men of old communities in all things, but that they exceed them in economizing effective force from apparently humble sources, in bringing about large results from small beginnings, and in the adaptation of ways and means to ends, cannot be denied. Such a man was William Henry Harrison, whose name deserves a place with a long list of illustri- ous Americans, who, like himself, grew into distinction from the toils of camp life in the forest.
He was born in Berkley, Virginia, in 1773. His an- cestors had made themselves conspicuous in the Crom- wellian wars in England, and his father was one of the signers of the Declaration of American Independence, and after it was achieved became governor of Virginia. William Henry was the youngest son. When Governor St. Clair was gathering his forces to invade the Indian country, he had an earnest desire to participate in the campaign, and for that purpose applied to General Washington, then president. He received an ensign's commission and started for Fort Washington. He arrived too late to take part in the ill-fated expedition of St. Clair, but joined Gen. Wayne in his successful campaign which succeeded it. After the treaty of Greenville, which restored peace to the forest, he was placed in command of Fort Washington, and shortly afterward married the daughter of Judge Symes, the same who was the proprietor of Symes' purchase, spoken of in a preceding chapter. His ambition soon took a higher range than to command a small squad of listless soldiers in a peaceful fort, and he resigned his commis- sion as captain, and was soon appointed secretary of the Northwest Territory, and, in 1792, was elected delegate to congress-he being the first to represent the interests of the Northwest at Washington. On the 13th of May, 1800, he was appointed governor of the territory of Indiana, which had been set off from the
322
The Northwest Organized.
Northwest Territory. Its area included the present states of Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. The seat of government was fixed at Vincennes, on the Wabash river.
The number of inhabitants of the Indiana Territory was 5,641 whites, while that of the Ohio division of the Northwest Territory was 45, 365 .* The number of Indians inhabiting the Indiana Territory was more than three times that of the whites. They had all tasted the fruits of war with their white neighbors; but being still in quiet possession of their hunting grounds, felt a happy assurance that they and their offspring should forever continue to occupy the limitless forests of the country, which then, from their vast extent, seemed to bid perpetual defiance to white settlements.
The Northwest was now organized into two territories, possessing only the germs of her ultimate grandeur, and these were not within the reach of human vision to fore- cast. Spain held the whole west side of the Mississippi, and such portions of the eastern side as came within the limits of the present state of Louisiana, which included the port of New Orleans. She was a menac- ing power in our rear by means of her immense terri- torial possessions to the west, and on our southern flank by means of the Floridas.
But greater insecurity to America at that time came from the slipshod character of our relations with Eng- land, from the fact that she refused to open her colon- ial posts to our commerce, and any trade we carried on with them had to go through English merchants. This embarrassment perplexed the brains of congress till it became an issue of the war of 1812, and will be con- sidered, in a diplomatic account of it, in its chronological place.
At the close of the American revolution the treaty between Great Britain and the United States became an acknowledged law of England, America and France, after the latter power had made a treaty with England, which immediately followed it. This latter treaty was
* Carey's Atlas, published in Philadelphia, 1801.
323
Spain Closes Mississippi Ports.
the ultimate fulfillment of the contract, which was tripartite, and in effect ratified it.
All Europe was satisfied with this treaty, with the exception of Spain. That power still protested against the western boundary of the United States, conceded by the treaty, on the ground that it divested her of territory on the east side of the Mississippi which right- fully belonged to her, and which England had no right to grant to America.
By no official act had Spain yet recognized the inde- pendence of the United States during the revolutionary war, although she had rendered good service to its cause by her war with England, into which she had been reluctantly drawn to aid France, her ally, accord- ing to the terms of their family compact of 1761.
During this war she had won back from England East and West Florida, the possession of which had complicated her relations with the United States.
After the peace of 1783, a treaty with Spain was necessary, and even essential to the preservation of the United States in its integrity, inasmuch as its extended limits were not respected by her powerful, not to say dangerous neighbor, who still held fortified posts on the American side of them, in defiance of the treaty of 1783, to which she was not a party.
In July, 1785, D. Diego Gardoqui arrived in Phila- delphia, as minister from Spain to the United States, and John Jay, then secretary for foreign affairs, was authorized to treat with him on the boundary question. But the policy of Spain was still undetermined, and no treaty could be made on terms consistent with the requirements of the United States. Pending this delay Spanish designs came to the surface by her closing the port of New Orleans, and refusing the naviga- tion of the Mississippi to the western territories of the United States under an ill-founded ambition that she could force the territories west of the Allegheny mount- ains to secede from the Atlantic states, in order to obtain an outlet to the sea under Spanish protection.
That this Spanish injunction on the Mississippi had an influence was soon made manifest, but it only elicited
5
324
Negotiations Renewed by Pinckney.
a recommendation from the eastern states, that for the sake of peace, the United States had better forego the navigation of the Mississippi for a long term of years, while the western states took a belligerent atti- tude toward Spain, and not without difficulty could be restrained from making a raid on New Orleans to accomplish by force what diplomacy had failed to do. In 1793 the Jacobins of the French revolution, by the execution of Louis XVI, the king, and Marie Antoinette, the queen, annihilated the family compact of the Bour- bon kings of France and Spain.
All Europe now rose up in arms against France, except Sweden, Denmark, Tuscany, Switzerland, Genoa and Venice ; but against this formidable coalition France more than held her own and brought Spain to the verge of ruin, threatened as she was by the fore- bodings of a revolution at home. Her humiliation was now America's opportunity. Thomas Pinckney was sent to Madrid to renew negotiations for a treaty, which was effected between him and Manuel Godoy, on the part of Spain, October 27, 1795, and was called the treaty of San Lorenzo el Real. It conceded to the United States the boundaries assigned to her by the peace of Paris in 1783, and granted the free navigation of the Mississippi, with the right of deposit for American produce in New Orleans or some other port. This was the last link in the diplomatic chain that gave to the United States possession of her domain.
But her troubles with Spain were not yet ended. She still held her posts on the east bank of the Missis- sippi, and the Baron de Carondolet, the governor, by means of a secret agent, named Thomas Powers, tried to convince the western people that he retained them in order to protect their interests, when they should form a confederacy of their own, independent of the Atlantic states. That this treacherous pretense had corrupted the minds of some, there is abundant evidence, but their acts have gone into deserved oblivion, without marring the records of history.
The policy of Spain was now changing with whimsi- cal turns, according to success of French arms, and she
4
325
Spain Cedes Louisiana to France.
was again the ally of France. Both of these nations had made depredations on American commerce, and against claims for such spoliation, both united to evade American demands for remuneration by subtle techni- calities. France went so far in her unfriendly attitude as to withdraw her ministers, and war seemed inevitable with both countries.
Not long after this untoward event, Mr. Murray, the American minister at Holland, was informed by Talley- rand, the French minister at the same court, that the attitude of France to the United States should be changed to a more charitable view. Soon after this interview, friendly relations were renewed and war averted. The result of this was that Spain withdrew her troops from the east bank of the Mississippi in the summer of 1798, and General Wilkinson, by order of the secretary of war, immediately took possession of the evacuated posts and erected Fort Adams, six miles above the parallel of thirty-one degrees.
By the treaty of St. Ildefonso, in 1800, Spain ceded Louisiana to France, but this was kept secret till the peace of Amiens had sheathed the sword between France and England, in 1802. America was now startled by the change of owners on her western border that soon became known after the proclamation of this peace. Napoleon was first consul of France. The fleets of Spain were at his disposal, and the United States might soon have to contend with his victorious soldiers, under the direction of his master mind, instead of the dispirited armies of Spain whose leaders were palsied by the recoil of over-reaching ambition. New Orleans might become the foothold for French invasion, the Mississippi the highway for her armies, and the reduction of Canada their object.
Great Britain looked with no less disfavor on the situation. The headlong career of Napoleon had excited her apprehensions, to avert which she broke the peace of Amiens by declaring war against France, and invited the United States to become her ally in it, which alliance was respectfully declined. This last turn of the wheel in the policy of England dashed Napoleon's
326
Cession of Louisiana to the United States.
hopes of a revival of French empire in America to the ground, and his quick penetration formed a resolution to dispose of his newly acquired province, which, instead of being an inviting source of grandeur, had suddenly become an unwieldy responsibility, difficult to defend and barren of revenue.
Robert R. Livingston was then minister at the court of France; James Monroe was commissioned there also to assist in the negotiations then pending for the pur- chase of Louisiana. Ten millions were at first offered for it, but the bargain was closed at $15,000,000, with some offsetting abatements on account of spoliation claims.
The treaty of cession was signed at Paris April 30, 1803, by Robert Livingston and James Monroe on the part of the United States, and by Barbe Marbois on the part of France, and ratified by congress on the 2 Ist of the following October.
The cession of Louisiana to the United States was the most crushing blow that Spain had yet received in the territorial distribution of North America. It separ- ated the Floridas from her western possessions, and rendered it impossible to hold them with safety or profit.
That the sale of this province to the United States violated the treaty by which France had acquired it of Spain was believed in diplomatic circles. From the protest that Spain made to the French court as soon as the sale was made known, it was inferred that in the articles of cession conveying Louisiana from Spain to France in 1800, it was stipulated that she should not sell it to the United States, but this supposition cannot be verified, because the treaty has never come to light, except a single clause in its third article, necessary to entail it by territorial limits, not definitely, but by the natural landmarks of river valleys yet unexplored.
In 1810 Charles IV, the Bourbon king of Spain, was dethroned by Napoleon. This revolution produced two political parties in West Florida, one of which, led by Col. Kemper, was in favor of annexation to the United States, to which end a convention met at Baton
327
United States Occupy West Florida.
Rouge in the autumn of 1810, and addressed a letter to the secretary of war soliciting such a union.
Late in the autumn of the same year, orders were issued by the United States to take military possession of West Florida, which order was executed by C. C. Claiborne, the governor of Orleans territory, without opposition; the authority for which act was the assump- tion by the United States that the purchase of Louisiana included all the territory west of the Perdido river and south of the latitude of thirty-one degrees, within which limits this province lay.
From this time forward acts of violence multiplied along the border of East Florida. Fugitive slaves found it a convenient asylum, and this inflamed the resentment of Georgia. (See Giddings' "Exiles of Florida.") General Jackson's invasion followed, which in turn evoked the protest of Spain, bitter as it was harmless, in her desperate extremity, struggling within the toils of Napoleon's grip.
The acquisition of the Floridas had ere this time become a settled policy of the United States, and the territory between the Sabine and the Rio Grande rivers, Texas, had begun to be looked upon with covetous eyes by southern politicians, who even in that early day had an eye to the future equilibrium of territory appropri- ated to slave and to free labor. Was Texas included in the Louisiana purchase? was now a question second in importance to the acquisition of the Floridas. To agree on a positive boundary line was an ultimate indispensability awaiting the settlement of these issues.
When France sold Louisiana to the United States she refused to give any defined limits of it, but, in sub- stance, executed a quit-claim deed of it by conveying it by description of its area, using the same language in this conveyance as that by which the province had been retroceded to her by Spain in 1800, to wit: "With the same extent it now has in the hands of Spain, and that it had when France possessed it, and such as it should be after the treaties subsequently entered into between Spain and other states." All that original portion of it east of the Mississippi and north of West Florida
328
Vacillating Attitude of Spain.
had been given up to England in the peace of 1763, and at the peace of 1783 conceded to the United States, which established the eastern border of Louisiana on these positive limits by which it had bisected.
From 1808 to 1815, relations between the court of Madrid and the cabinet at Washington had been sus- pended, which default in diplomatic representation was belligerent, and ominous of a declaration of war, at the option of either party. That this hiatus had been used to the disadvantage of Spain was demonstrated by the fate of West Florida as well as the aggressive move- ments of young America along the entire borders of the » two nations. Spain was the first to break the silence, which she did through her minister, Luis de Onis, in a letter addressed to James Monroe, then secretary of state, dated December 30, 1815.
The Spanish minister had a thorny path to travel, full of insurmountable obstacles with which the declin- ing power of Spain had invested it by her impractical demands, destined never to be fulfilled, not only on account of the injustice of some of them, but because they came in competition with the expanding designs of a young and vigorous nation, invincible as it was ambitious. The argument began as to whether West Florida was included in the Louisiana purchase, and consequently belonged to the United States, or whether Spain owned it by virtue of cession of it to her by Great Britain in 1783. No agreement was ever reached on this point, the reason for which was that the Spanish minister well knew that the cession of both East and West Florida to the United States was inevitable, and all he could do was to secure as valuable a considera- tion as he could for them. By a kind of implied con- sent, the Florida question was thus permitted to rest, and the right to Texas became the absorbing topic of dis- cussion.
The Spanish minister was firm in his resolution to claim that it belonged to Spain through her rights, guaranted by her early discoveries and explorations of the Rio Grande river, as well as her priority of permanent occupation and settlement of portions of it. John
329
Florida Ceded to the United States.
Quincy Adams disputed this claim, his best ground for which was the discovery of the country by La Salle in 1685, which constituted it a part of Louisiana, to which it was contiguous. Besides this point, he reviewed every French transaction in the way of discovery that could bring evidence to justify a French claim to it, and thereby vest it in the Louisiana purchase. The Span- ish minister, after an equally exhaustive review of historic events to justify his claim to it, still further fortified it by quoting an official act of President Jeffer- son in 1806.
At that time both Spain and the United States had military forces on the banks of the Sabine river to guard the frontier, and it was agreed by the commanders of each, that the Spanish troops should retire to and hold the west bank, while the United States troops should hold the east bank, which agreement President Jeffer- son assented to.
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