USA > Illinois > Cook County > Growth of Cook County; a history of the large lake-shore county that includes Chicago, Vol. I > Part 4
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In January of 1816, when but 22, young Cook was appointed auditor of public accounts for the Illinois territory by the terri- torial governor, Ninian Edwards, which position he was to hold for some 15 months. In the meantime, however, the young barrister took additional steps to advance both himself and the welfare of his adopted territory.
In 1816 he and a friend purchased The Illinois Herald, only newspaper then published in the territory, and renamed it The Western Intelligencer. Cook became its editor.
A year later, at the age of 23, young Cook reached the con-
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clusion that he was not rising rapidly enough in the world. Maybe by going to Washington, D. C., he reasoned, President- elect James Monroe or somebody in the capital would appoint him to some important job, such as secretary of the Alabama territory. Moreover, his lawyer-uncle, Nathaniel Pope, already in Washington as the territory's delegate to the House of Repre- sentatives, might be able to lend him assistance.
It was in February of 1817 that young Daniel arrived in Washington. Failing to obtain a high post, he settled for a lesser governmental job, that of dispatch bearer, but still he felt that even greater success lay just around the corner. On April 5 he sent back to Kaskaskia his resignation as territorial auditor.
Within weeks Cook, always a dapper dresser and of polished manners, was sent to London with state papers which he de- livered to John Quincy Adams, then United States representa- tive to Britain. These papers asked Adams to return home and become secretary of state in the cabinet of President Monroe.
Together, the outstanding statesman, Adams, and the youth- ful messenger, Cook, returned on a slow boat to Washington. During the long trip they became well acquainted, which acquaintanceship eventually had much to do with making Adams president, and had a direct bearing upon the political setback that befell Cook a year before his early death.
The duties of a government messenger, Cook learned, could not always be so romantic and important as his trip abroad. When his tasks became more menial, young Daniel thought he was in a rut. He was learning the hard way that important governmental posts were not easy for mere youths to obtain. His health was not good, and he grew homesick-homesick for the sight of familiar faces, including that of Julia Catherine Edwards, comely daughter of the territorial governor. Cook quit his job.
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Cook Urged Statehood
On November 18-the year still was 1817-Daniel arrived back in Kaskaskia. His hopes soared anew and two days later, even before he had had time to say hello to everybody, he printed in his little newspaper an editorial advocating state- hood for the Illinois territory.
Statehood, at that time, was something to which neither the territorial residents nor their political leaders had given serious thought. The territory was too young, still in the process of organization, and its population too small.
Cook's first article appeared on Nov. 20. Cook knew that in less than two weeks the territorial legislature was to convene in regular session right there in Kaskaskia. He followed up in his next issue with an even more urgent appeal. This dwelt upon the full rights of man that could come only under state- hood; and he advocated vigorously that Illinois should come into the union as a slave-free state, even tho several slaves already had been brought into the territory.
Moreover, there still was enough boy in him at 23 to make him think it would be fun to beat the neighboring Missouri territory into the union. Missouri, torn by dissension over the slavery issue, already had taken preliminary steps seeking state- hood, but was following the slow, prescribed methods for admission.
Under existing federal rules a territory could not seek state- hood until its population, as established by census, reached at least 60,000. Young Cook, however, must have received a tip from his uncle in Congress that under certain circumstances the territory might slip in with as few as 35,000 residents. Tho no census had been taken, Daniel glibly published that the Illinois territory had 40,000 residents.
When the territorial legislature convened in Kaskaskia on Dec. 2 (1817), Daniel was very much on hand, not only as a reporter for his own newspaper, but also, thanks to an appoint-
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ment by Governor Edwards, as clerk of the house of repre- sentatives. He was in good position to favor his pet project for immediate statehood.
Almost at once one of the territorial legislators introduced a resolution memorializing Congress to grant Illinois statehood. Because much of the wording of the resolution was similar to that in Cook's newspaper articles, it is reasonable to presume that Cook, himself, drafted most of it.
Politics in the territory had not yet crystalized into serious factions. Governor Edwards favored the resolution, and the legislators, by now afire with enthusiasm, paid little attention to the resolution's anti-slavery provision, tho a short time later this was to become a highly contentious issue.
On Dec. 10, twenty-two days after young Daniel reached town with his idea for statehood, the legislators unanimously adopted the resolution. The memorial was handed Congress on Jan. 16 (1818) by Delegate Pope, shortly thereafter it cleared committees, and on April 6 it was passed by the house and on April 14 by the senate. President Monroe signed it on April 18.
The Illinois Constitutional Convention, held in Kaskaskia on Aug. 28, adopted a state constitution and selected Kaskaskia as the first state capital; on Oct. 6 Shadrach Bond was inaugu- rated as the first state governor; and on Dec. 3 (1818) Presi- dent Monroe signed the act of admission by which Illinois became the 21st state of the union. Thus Cook's territory won the race for statehood over Missouri by two years, eight months, and seven days. (Missouri was admitted Aug. 10, 1821.)
During this year of 1818 when the territory was preparing itself for statehood, young Cook kept himself as busy as ever. Not only did he edit his paper and supervise official govern- ment printing in the paper's job shop, but practiced law with such success that early the same year he was appointed judge of the western circuit courts.
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Tho he was to hold the judgeship only a few months, he quickly won for himself an enviable reputation for his fairness. Traveling on horseback from one to another of the new counties surrounding Kaskaskia, he held court in private homes or in any other building that could accommodate small gatherings.
One record remains that on May 11, 1818, when in Union county, Judge Cook convened a grand jury in a log cabin, presided as evidence was presented, then had the jury retire to the adjoining woods for its deliberations. The jurors, com- posed of backwoods farmers and hunters, sat on the trunk of a fallen tree as they pondered over the evidence and made their findings.
Tho his court cases were of all types, the pioneer society of Cook's time was such that a typical case involved the settle- ment of a dispute between two hunters over the ownership of the meat of a wild hog that one had shot and the other captured.
In the elections that fall, with statehood virtually assured, the youthful Judge Cook sought to become the new state's first representative in Congress for the remainder of the term that would follow statehood. He was defeated by 14 votes, however, by another ambitious young barrister, John McLean of Shawneetown, who was to become his strongest political opponent thruout the rest of his abbreviated life.
Never long out of public office, Judge Cook was chosen by the state legislature in December of 1818 (some evidence indicates it was the following March) as the first attorney gen- eral of the new state of Illinois.
Becomes Our Congressman
This Cook held until the following August (1819) when he came back to defeat McLean for congressman by a majority of 633. The count was 2,192 for Cook to 1,559 for McLean. Thus Cook, at 25, became the second congressman to represent the young state, and he was re-elected in 1820, 1822, and 1824.
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During the campaign in which he first defeated McLean, there appeared in Cook's own newspaper, The Western Intelli- gencer, the words of a song, Cook and Liberty, the first stanza of which read:
To choose a good congressman, now is the time, Good counsel I'll give, 'tho' I give it in rhyme,
I swear by my conscience (and would on the Book), I think our best choice will be Daniel P. Cook.
This bit of whimsy may not have been written by Cook himself, for his writings and speeches bore a more scholarly touch.
Cook was a registered Democrat of Randolph county.1 By 1826, however, he was running on the Whig ticket. His success- ful campaigns against McLean centered largely around the question of slavery. Tho Cook had led the state into the union slave free, there was constant agitation to amend the new state constitution to permit slavery. McLean was the leading spokes- man for the pro-slavery element.
In their campaigns these young and able orators often en- gaged in public debates on the slavery subject. Theirs was a prelude to the great Lincoln-Douglas debates that were to follow in 1858.
In an analogy one could say that it was Cook, then a Demo- crat, who brought Illinois into the union a slave-free state and kept it that way, and that it was Lincoln, the Republican, who later went ahead to free the nation. The work of each man complemented that of the other.
Tho Cook's rise to power was aided at the outset by his uncle, Nathaniel Pope, and by his prospective father-in-law, Ninian Edwards, his noteworthy accomplishments were largely of his own making. He stood on his own abilities, and in the light of history, rose above all other Illinois figures of his
1. Hubbs, Idols of Egypt, p. 177.
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generation.
While in Congress Cook worked prodigiously for the welfare of his young state. For one thing, he recognized the need of a canal that would connect the Great Lakes, at Chicago, with the navigable waters of the Illinois river, even as Joliet had envisioned a century and a half earlier. Such a waterway, he reasoned, not only would assist in the development of northern Illinois, but would benefit the entire middle-west and the nation.
When Cook first sought federal aid for the project, Con- gress was luke-warm and offered only token help, and even at home Cook found some opposition. In fact, one state senator from southern Illinois argued before the state legislature that the canal should not be constructed because it would be an inlet for hordes of "blue-bellied Yankees."1
In the end, however, Cook scored a victory that, judged even by Twentieth century standards of federal aids, was tre- mendous. On March 2, 1827, with Cook on his way out as a "lame duck" member, Congress granted Illinois 285,629 acres of land in alternate sections, checker-board style, along the ten-mile-wide route of the proposed Illinois-Michigan canal. Proceeds from the sale of this land eventually were to cover the major costs of the completed waterway.
It is significant to note that at the time of the grant which was to mean so much to the eventual welfare of Chicago and Cook county, Congressman Cook was chairman of the ways and means committee of the House of Representatives. His holding of this powerful position indicates the esteem in which he was held in Washington.
That Cook was defeated for re-election to Congress in the fall of 1826 was due, in part, to his aforementioned personal friendship with John Quincy Adams, the able secretary of
1. Brown, Hon. Daniel P. Cook, Chi. Hist. Soc., p. 14.
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State who had helped draft the Monroe doctrine.
It was early in 1825, following the previous fall's elections, that Adams, Henry Clay, William Crawford, and Andrew Jackson, presidential aspirants, found themselves deadlocked, no one having a majority of the electoral votes.
Under the rules of government, this threw the matter into the House of Representatives for a decision. There Adams won the support of the Clay and Crawford factions, and, with the help of Cook, his personal friend, Adams was chosen over Jackson by a single vote.
Jackson's followers in Illinois, who were in goodly number, cried that Cook had "betrayed his trust." The strength of this opposition at home undoubtedly was underestimated by Cook, for in the elections of 1826, being in ill health and not having the formidable McLean to run against, he campaigned but little.
The result, surprising to both sides, was that his opponent, Joseph Duncan of Jackson county, a comparative unknown, won by 641 votes. A remark common after the election was: "We did not intend to beat little Cook, but to so lessen his majority that he would feel his dependence upon us."1
Tho stung by his surprise defeat, Cook sought to make his closing months as a "lame duck" congressman outstanding. In this he again was successful, but as chairman of the ways and means committee, he put in long hours of work that further undermined his now rapidly-failing health.
When the legislative session came to an end that spring of 1827, Cook accepted a government diplomatic mission to Cuba. He expressed hope that the Caribbean clime would restore his health, but this it failed to do. In June he returned to his home which then was Edwardsville, north of Kaskaskia.
That fall he expressed a desire to visit once again his birth place in Scott county, Kentucky, and it was there that he died
1. Brown, ibid, p. 27.
UNIVERSITY OF BLING
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on Oct. 16, 1827, and was buried. He was 33 years old.
On May 6, 1821, during his second term in Congress, young Cook married the Edwards girl. Her father, Ninian Edwards, at that time United States senator for Illinois, later became governor. (It was only poetic justice that Congressman Cook, in partial repayment for the early favors bestowed upon him by his father-in-law, at one time secured for Ninian Edwards the appointment as ambassador to Mexico.)
Following the death of her illustrious young husband, Julia Catherine Cook moved with their only child, John (born June 12, 1825), to Belleville, Illinois, where she died three years later. The son was to become in time and in turn, mayor of Springfield in 1855, a brigadier general in the Civil War- here fighting in behalf of his father's anti-slavery principles -and Sangamon county's representative in the Illinois Gen- eral Assembly. John Cook died in 1910 at his home near Ran- som, Michigan, 28 miles southwest of Adrian, in Hillsdale county.
There is no record that Daniel Pope Cook ever had the pleasure of visiting the site of the great county that was to be named after him when that county was created by an act of the Illinois legislature on Jan. 15, 1831, less than four years following his death.
Local historians at Georgetown, Kentucky, seat of Scott county, report they know nothing of Daniel Pope Cook- nothing regarding his birthplace, early life in their community, nor even the whereabouts of his grave. Such is understandable for it was not there but in young Illinois that Cook made his contributions to society. As a fitting tribute to the memory of the great man, Cook county could do well to seek out his grave, if possible, and there erect a suitably inscribed tablet com- memorating his deeds.
That a large portion of present Cook county and a huge
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chunk of northern Illinois are in Illinois at all is due to an afterthought on the part of Nathaniel Pope, lone delegate in the House of Representatives for the Illinois territory. We speak of the 8,000-square-mile territory in Illinois lying north of an east-west line drawn thru 75th street on Chicago's south side and extending westward across the state.
While the enabling act for statehood was under considera- tion by Congress in 1818, Pope noted that the territorial legis- lature, in its hasty drafting of its memorial, had included within the state's proposed boundaries only a tiny, four-mile stretch of the shore of Lake Michigan lying between the aforemen- tioned 75th street and the Indiana state boundary.
That the new state was not to include the prospective ship- ping port at the mouth of the Chicago river, together with other highly desirable shore line to the north, weighed heavily upon Pope. So before it was too late, he introduced his own amendment to fix the northern boundary of the state on the line of forty-one degrees and thirty minutes north latitude, which was about 41 miles north of the line fixed by the bill.
Pope's amendment was approved by both houses of Congress and incorporated in the act by the time it reached the president. And Monroe, having previously proclaimed both the Lake Michigan shoreline as well as the black prairies to the west as being "worthless," naturally had no objection to the inclu- sion of this land if the new state was so brash as to want it. He signed the act and the northern boundary of Illinois thereby was fixed where it is today.
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Wisconsin's Effort Fails
Wisconsin, which was admitted to the union in 1848, made unsuccessful attempts in 1840 and for the next few years to have "Pope's addition" taken away from Illinois and given to Wisconsin on the grounds that the northern boundary of Illi- nois was contrary to that suggested for future states in the
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Ordinance of 1787 that governed the Northwest territory.
Fearing that the public debt in the new state of Illinois would be too great for taxpayers to bear, a large number of the residents of northern Illinois favored the merger with Wis- consin and on July 6, 1840 held a convention at Rockford, proclaiming the fourteen northern counties of Illinois to be in Wisconsin territory.
Illinois hotly rejected the idea, however, and neither the northern residents nor Wisconsin could muster strength to get Congress to make the change, which is why Cook county today remains in Illinois instead of being in Wisconsin. There is little evidence that of any of the residents of Cook county favored the secession proposal.
During the years immediately preceding the creation of Cook county, there were a few items of historical note regard- ing the tiny community around Fort Dearborn that should be mentioned.
What may have been the first tax assessment ever made in the area that now is Cook county occurred in 1823 when officials of Fulton county, to which most of northern Illinois was attached, levied a tax of five mills to the dollar (50 cents on each $100 of assessed value).
This applied to personal property only, and even household furniture was exempt. That it did not cover real estate was because, at that time, the land about the fort was owned by the federal government, and many of the dozen or fewer families who occupied it were squatters.
With the assessed valuation of all such taxable property fixed at $2,284, the tax totaled only $11.42. It was collected by Amherst C. Ranson, a justice of the peace.1 It is possible that Ranson was from elsewhere in the state, the state's legal records showing that John Kinzie was justice of the peace in
1. Andreas, History of Chicago, Vol. 1, p. 174.
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the Chicago settlement from 1821 to 1825.
The area's second tax assessment of which there is record was that made by John L. Bogardus, Peoria county assessor, in 1825. (Cook county by that time, as explained earlier, was in Putnam county, but was under the jurisdiction of Peoria county officials.) That tax, too, covered only personal property, and the rate by then had doubled. It was $1 on each $100 of assessed value.
There were 14 taxpayers living in the Chicago area. Their 1825 assessed valuation totaled $9,047, and their combined taxes, $90.47.
These taxpayers, their valuations, and their tax bills were:
Name
Valuation
Tax
Beaubien, John B.
$1,000
$10.00
Clybourne, Jonas
625
6.25
Clark, John K.
250
2.50
Crafts, John
5,000
50.00
Clermont, Jeremy
100
1.00
Coutra, Louis
50
.50
Kinzie, John-
500
5.00
Laframboise, Claude
100
1.00
Laframboise, Joseph
50
.50
McKee David
100
1.00
Piche, Peter
100
1.00
Robinson, Alexander
200
2.00
Wolcott, Alexander
572
5.72
Wilemet (Ouilmette), Antoine . . 400
4.00
Only a portion of these first taxpayers lived within the shadow of the fort. Clybourne and Clark lived several miles up the north branch of the Chicago river, and the Laframboise men (brothers) and Robinson lived at Hardscrabble, some five miles up the south branch. The largest taxpayer, Crafts, was the operator of an Indian trading post and his assessment would have covered his stocks.
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Low Taxes, Few Benefits
If present-day taxpayers, whose rate is in the neighborhood of $3.75 to $4.00 on each $100 of assessed value, yearn for the "good old days" when the rate was only $1.00, they should remember that taxpayers of those times, including 1825, had no public schools, no streets or roads, no fire or police protec- tion, no sewers, no running water, no health departments (deadly cholera epidemics sometimes ran unchecked), and no care was provided for the destitute and the indigent sick.
They also should know that the prevailing wage for work- ing men in those frontier days was 50 cents per day, and sometimes only $10 per month.
If one figures the present average working wage for Cook county residents at $16 per day, it can be seen that altho cur- rent taxes appear some four times higher, wages are about 32 times greater. The purchasing power of the dollar today, how- ever, is only about 22 cents as compared with the 100-cent dollar of 1825.1
Boiled down for comparison, this means that local taxes in 1825, when adjusted to wage and dollar-valuation differentials, were roughly three times greater than at present, and it still should be borne in mind that those early taxpayers received practically no benefits from their tax dollars.
(It is true that those frontiersmen and their families had the federal military protection accorded by Fort Dearborn, but only when the fort was garrisoned. During the 1820s there were periods of two and three years at a stretch when the fort went unmanned. )
The first election held in the area that now includes Cook county was on Aug. 7, 1826 when the area, tho technically in Putnam county, still was under the temporary jurisdiction of Peoria county.
1. Computed, in part, from information contained in Cost of Living Index, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
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There was but one precinct and it embraced the entire area lying east of the DuPage river. The polling place was the Indian Agency House, next to Fort Dearborn, and the judges of election were Alexander Wolcott, John Kinzie and John B. Beaubien.
Of the 35 who voted (21 had French names), all cast their ballots for the candidates running on the Whig ticket-Ninian Edwards for governor, Samuel H. Thompson for lieutenant governor, and Daniel P. Cook for congressman.
(This was the election, as explained previously, that was to be so ruinous to the brilliant, short-lived Cook after whom Cook county was named. Here we also see that Cook, tho earlier a Democrat, now had switched to the Whig ticket.)
During this "pre-dawn" era, just before the advent of Cook county and Chicago town government, the residents of the area, some of whom were survivors of the Fort Dearborn mas- sacre of 1812, lived in perpetual fear of another Indian uprising, but because these Indian scares extended into the early days of the county government, they shall be mentioned in more detail later on. *
As a guidepost to which the reader may refer while the formation of early government is being unfolded, we here list population figures for the residents of the Fort Dearborn settle- ment, including the more fearless who lived a few miles up both branches of the Chicago river. No federal census having been taken, the figures are estimates from the best available sources.
Year
Population
Year
Population
1829
30
1834
1,800
1830
45
1835
3,265
1831
60
1836
3,820
1832
150
1837
4,170
1833
350
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CHAPTER 4
COUNTY GOVERNMENT TAKES SHAPE
I N passing the act that created Cook county on Jan. 15, 1831, the state legislature at the same time designated the unincor- porated settlement at the mouth of the Chicago river as the new county's seat.
By then this settlement was being called Chicago and had a population estimated at between 50 and 60. The entire popula- tion of the county, which then covered an area two and one-half times the present size, may have been upwards of 100 whites, scattered among such settlements as Chicago, Hardscrabble (some five miles up the south branch of the river), and Hick- ory Creek (on the edge of the present site of Joliet), with a few along the DuPage river.
The initial step in the formation of the Cook county govern- ment was the election of officials. Accordingly, on Monday, Mar. 7, 1831 an election was held at which Gholson Kercheval and Samuel Miller of Chicago, and James Walker, who lived on the DuPage river, were elected county commissioners; James Kinsey, sheriff; and John K. Clark, coroner.
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