USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > Historical review of Chicago and Cook county and selected biography, Volume I > Part 9
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47
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to each that which the law declares to be his right? not merely to the high and the learned, the popular and the handsome, the enter- taining and the instructive, the eloquent and the strong, but to the hated and the despised, the ugly of form and feature, the negro and the mongolian, the Greek and the Jew, the ignorant and the stupid ; to all the equal protection and opportunity which the constitution we boast of awards. He who answers this can tell what the future of Chicago, America, the World, will be. Steam and electricity have bound the world together, henceforth no people can live alone. The time will come when not in Timbuctoo nor London, in Chicago or an isle of the sea, not on the arid plains of Arabia, or the snow-capped mountains of Hindoostan, shall man be thrust aside, cast out and trampled on because of racial antipathy. The day is at hand when neither in Turkey nor Russia, within shadow of the Pyramids or be- neath the folds of the American flag, shall a human being, though accused of the most dreadful of crimes, be denied a trial, and in de- fiance of law, burned at the stake, without a thrill of horror encir- cling the earth, and the blush of shame mantling the face of each of us. Five thousand American citizens lynched since the close of the Civil War, and nobody punished therefor. Five thousand constitu- tionally guarded human beings defiantly murdered by mobs and the subject not thought worthy the attention of political conventions, leg- islatures, Congress or presidents. There was in 1865 a president who said, "But if God wills that the contest go on until every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by another drawn by the sword, * as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, "The judgments of God are true and righteous alto- gether.' "
Shivering beside the dying embers of his camp fire, primitive man wearily turning upon the ground on which he lay, prayed for the coming of God, the glorious, warmth-giving Sun. To his appre- hension, with the reddening east, his prayer was answered.
In the evolution of civilization, no influence has been more con- stant than that of religion. If belief in God as a conscious, working, willing and loving Father is to pass away or be supplanted by a name for an unconscious force deaf to prayer and blind to tears, which controls all and cares for none; man but a bubble on the ocean of eternity, tossed by its billows, dissolved in its waters and lost in its
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immensity ; it is impossible to say what the effect upon mankind will be. Impossible, because no such situation has hitherto existed.
Peoples, nations, cities, faiths, arise and pass away ; religion re- mains. Of the great cities of Europe, Rome is the only one that was relatively of commanding importance at the beginning of the Chris- tian Era. In times past, cities, being fortified places, were not infre- quently besieged and destroyed as a measure or a result of war. They were sometimes made the spoil of a victorious army or given to the flames for the purpose of blotting out their commercial rivalry. A notable instance of this was the destruction of Carthage by Rome. The prosperity and riches of their former military and political rival inspired the Romans with the idea that only by a total destruction could the rivalry of the Carthagenian merchants be overcome. Carth- age, was by order of the Roman senate, fired by its soldiers, and burned for seventeen days, at the end of which the ashes of the ex- piring flames concealed the site of what had been the greatest com- mercial emporium laved by the waters of the Mediterranean. As the historian Mommsen truly said: "Where the industrious Phoenicians bustled and trafficked for five hundred years, Roman slaves hence- forth pastured the herds of their distant masters."
Such barbarism is not likely to be hereafter repeated, because self- interest forbids. The ties that now bind the business world together, the extent of credits and co-operation through corporations and other- wise, is such that no section and no city can be destroyed without the loss thus occasioned extending to the antipodes. The Germans dur- ing the Franco-Prussian war, might have destroyed Paris, but its de- struction would probably have caused the failure of half the banks in Berlin.
When the representatives of South Carolina were in Washington threatening secession and boasting of the consequent greatness of the south, a northern member of Congress said to them: "If South Carolina sets at naught the authority of the United States, I will raise corn in the streets of Charleston"; a threat which is said to have after- wards been actually carried out, although in a manner that involved the barbarism only of a useless humiliation.
Mankind, possibly, may in time reach an intellectual and moral standard so great that men will endeavor to uphold or bring about conditions opposed to that which as individuals they desire, hope and
*
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seek for themselves, but no such humans have thus far appeared. Prosperity, advancement, opportunity, must appear to be coming to all and must in reality come to most, or our civilization will be sub- merged by an advancing flood of the myriads who do not perceive gain to them in the rise of stocks, bonds and lands.
Savings banks, as now existing, are most useful institutions, and would be more so if depositors not only received interest, but, on deposits kept for certain times, a share in the profits of the bank. In England, value of the railroads is represented, principally, by railroad stock; in America such value is mostly represented by bonds. In England elections do not turn upon and parties are not organized with a view to hostility to railroad investments; in America they largely are.
If in the United States there were five million individual owners of dividend-paying railroad stock, we should hear upon the hustings, in newspapers, magazines and legislative halls no more of railroad barons, lawyers, legislators and governors than we now do of farmer barons, lawyers, legislators and governors.
A store with six thousand employees, in which may be purchased everything desired for a cottage with a family of three, as well as all needed for a hotel capable of accommodating a thousand guests is at once a convenience, an exhibition and a delight to the people who take pride in showing its wonders to strangers; but one thousand small stores such as our grandparents purchased the wedding outfit and the family belongings in, would be far more useful socially, politically and, in the coming years, commercially.
At present, in Chicago and Illinois, we seem to be entering upon an era of oppressive taxation, and may have to stagger for many years under the burdens thus created; the people will in time, as some seventy years ago they did, call a peremptory halt upon visionary schemes and reckless expenditure. Each generation inherits the sav- ings of the past. If man in ages past had consumed all he produced we should be shivering in the nakedness, groping in the darkness and toiling in the ignorance of our barbarian ancestors. The greatest benefactors of the race are those who have taught man to accumulate and hand down to his successors.
In all time useful and harmful things have been done and said. Those who speak and those who write are always to the fore, they
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magnify their work, have the ear of, and influence the understanding of mankind.
He who has turned one rood of desert land into fruitful soil, re- deemed one acre of miasmatic swamp and made it a garden, as he who has builded a home and left it for those who shall live after him, has beyond question done something to justify his having been.
Many men serve God without knowing it. Those who made Chi- cago what it is, those who shall keep it a place where the door of op- portunity is opened wide to all, all, ALL, to the sons of Ham, the sons of Shem and the sons of Japhet; the children of the free and the descendants of the bondman, will not only deserve the thanks of mil- lions yet to be, but above the scroll that holds their names, the Re- cording Angel will write, "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord."
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS R
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MICHIGAN AVENUE, NORTH FROM HARRISON STREET
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Civic Development of Chicago
The material development of Chicago has taken its place as one of the striking facts of history, having long since outgrown even national distinction. Its civic development could not, of necessity, keep pace with the expansion of its commerce, trade, industries and territorial expansion, since men must live and thrive before they will pay close attention to the higher duties of citizenship. Although the civic spirit, or local patriotism, has always been pre-eminent in Chi- cago, the strong development of its municipal institutions has been of comparatively recent date, and the subject in its entirety has received little attention. As is usual in all movements of special force its beginnings and its early progress have centered in certain personalities, who have possessed in an unusual degree those traits which call forth from their associates that enthusiasm which is founded on confidence, and which is proof against obstacles and adversity.
The first dawnings of civic life in what is now the city of Chicago shine around the sturdy person of John Kinzie, the father of the Fort JOHN KINZIE. Dearborn settlement and known for nearly a quar- ter of a century prior to the legislative creation of Chicago as the "good friend of the Indians." A Canadian by birth and an Indian trader over the line, as well as a noted silversmith of Detroit, Mr. Kinzie had an estab)- lished reputation, both among the red men and his white co-workers, before he settled outside of Fort Dearborn, the crude stockade com- pleted during the previous year. Here he again established himself as a trader, and, with the passage of years, it became evident that he was one of the enduring men of the world, who seldom turn back for long after they have once set their shoulders to the tasks before them. When Mr. Kinzie first came to this new field of work the war depart- ment had established an Indian agency at Fort Dearborn. This was one of the first authoritative recognitions of the geographical impor- tance of the locality, and when the energetic, fair-minded trader and silversmith was appointed a sub-agent in 1816 the government did a wise act; for not only was Kinzie a thorough Indian linguist and a good judge of the savage character, but his straightforward dealings
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as a trader had secured him the confidence of the savages and as long as he held the position the settlers outside the fort had little fear of a repetition of the massacre of 1812. His son-in-law, Dr. Alexander Wolcott, was afterward appointed Indian agent, and Mr. Kinzie was retained as sub-agent.
In 1823 what is now Chicago was embraced in Fulton county, and the settlement was then for the first time recognized as a voting pre- cinct. But the dwellers in the few huts outside the stockades required no civic organization; a military company was more applicable to the conditions and the times. On September 2, 1823, an election for a major and company officers of the Seventeenth Regiment of Illinois Militia was ordered to be held; and there was only one place to hold it-Mr. Kinzie's log house, which in comparison with the other huts was a most commodious polling place. The Fulton county authorities gave the order, but there is no record of the election. The first one recorded as having been held in Chicago, was that of August 7, 1826, when a solid vote of thirty-five was cast for Ninian Edwards for governor, and Daniel P. Cook for congressman. Most of the voters were French halfbreeds, traders and others connected with the fort, or in government employ ; but John Kinzie was the chief judge of the election and it was held at his house, so he still continued to be the principal civic functionary of these parts. In July of the previous year he had been appointed justice of the peace" for Peoria county, and in the latter portion of the same year (1825) agent of the American Fur Company. In 1827 he took final leave of the old house, in which had so long resided the foremost Indian trader and peace-maker of this section ; and in which had been born a crude governmental organi- zation, guaranteeing judicial and civil protection to the few white men who possessed the hardihood to make their homes along the reedy and swampy Chicago river. At the time of his death in 1828 Mr. Kinzie was residing with his friend, Colonel Beaubien, a fellow spirit in the life of those times. Without basing his actions on any religious motives, John Kinzie was the William Penn of Illinois, and the esteem in which he was held by the Pottawatomies is shown by the treaty made with them in the September following his death, in which they gave "to Eleanor Kinzie and her four children by the late John Kinzie, $3,500, in consideration of the attachment of the Indians to her de- ceased husband, who was long an Indian trader, and who lost a
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large sum in the trade, by the credits given them, and also by the destruction of his property. The money is in lieu of a tract of land. which the Indians gave the late John Kinzie long since, and upon which he lived." It may not be too much to say that to this deep affec tion of the Pottawatomies for Mr. Kinzie, more than to any other cause, was due the fruitless efforts of Black Hawk and his emissaries to arouse their enmity against the settlers of Chicago. Thus he was the primary agent in founding the proper conditions of peace for the material and civic development of the infant town.
But the actual placing of Chicago on the maps of the world. which is the customary preliminary to the task of giving a community a civic organization, was due to a delicate, but intense
DANIEL
P. COOK. character, who was a pathetic antithesis to the robust and aggressive John Kinzie. Daniel P. Cook was the man-the brilliant Kentucky lawyer, four times a congress- man from Illinois territory, its first attorney general, the admired associate of Clay and Calhoun, Adams and Monroe, and the beloved son-in-law of the state's first governor, Ninian Edwards. He lived the thirty-three years of a burning consumptive, evincing a re- markable brilliancy of both mind and practical achievements. His accomplishments were so great in his comparatively brief career as a congressman that his friends could not but believe that he foresaw his early end and was possessed with a feverish desire to do all within his power within the short time allotted to him. The last five years of his life brought him especially close to the hearts of the settlers around Fort Dearborn, and the final act of the general government providing a generous grant to aid in the construction of the Illinois and Michigan canal was the culmination of his earthly labors. The act, which was passed on the 2nd of March, 1827, granted the alternate five sections of land on each side of the canal, amounting to more than 300,000 acres of land, and embraced the site of the city of Chi- cago. Before its final passage its earnest, able author, had been con- fined to his bed, and, after a vain attempt to find health in Cuba, died at his old Kentucky home October 16, 1827. Ile certainly earned the honor of giving Cook county his name, four years later, and to him Chicago owes its location on the map, and its consequent creation as a civic body. Under authority of the congressional act, which he so faithfully fathered, the commissioners appointed by the state legisla
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ture located the canal, laid out towns and sold lots to obtain funds for the construction of the work. As one of these towns, Chicago was surveyed on section 9, township 39, range 14; the plat was filed August 4, 1830, and although work upon the canal was not inaugurated until six years thereafter, Chicago was a town upon the map. It was backed by something substantial and its further civic development depended upon settlement and local initiative.
In 1830, the year prior to the organization of Cook county, elec- tions were held at the house of James Kinzie (son of John) for justice of the peace and constable and for state officers. The county was named and created in January, 1831, its territory then embracing what are now Lake, McHenry, DuPage and Will counties. The only voting place within this extensive area was Chicago, the county seat. A political organization was not effected until March, 1832, when three commissioners were elected, two of whom were residents of Chicago, which thus early dominated as the governing power of Cook county.
It appears that the dominant personal force in the affairs of the county, as centered in Chicago, resided with one Samuel Miller, one of the three county commissioners. His urban associate was Gholson Kercheval, connected with the Indian agency, and the third member of the board resided on DuPage river and seems often to have been absent from the sittings of the court. Mr. Miller had married a daughter of John Kinzie, was proprietor of a log hotel on the north side, part owner of the ferry and soon after his election to the county commissionership built the first bridge in Chicago over the north branch. The first public building ever erected in Chicago was called the "pen," a small, roofless wooden structure used in the sobering of obstreperous citizens, and Mr. Miller completed this structure, under contract, for twenty dollars; but the commissioners induced him to accept twelve dollars, charging that he did not do his work accord- ing to contract. A couple of years later a more metropolitan log jail was built, under other than the Miller auspices.
Chicago appeared in 1833 as a specific civic body, albeit only in the form of a town. It was an epochal year in many respects. Its slaughtering industry was then inaugurated, its harbor improvements commenced and the Indians who still held lands in northeastern Illi- nois relinquished them for the government reservations of the Indian
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Territory. The central figure in the final act by which the In-
T. J. V. dians ceased to have a claim to Chicago and the adja- cent territory, was Colonel Thomas J. V. Owen, for OWEN. three years Indian agent at this point. The treaty was signed by as many of the leading men of the United Na- tion of Chippewa, Ottawa and Pottawatomie Indians as could be gathered, and, with the departure of the last named from the Chicago region also went nearly all the half-breed families, leaving a goodly stock upon which to build the future citizenship of Chicago. This exodus has been anticipated by immigrants to the west, who in the spring of 1833 poured into the muddy streets of the settlement, and during the building season nearly one hun- dred and fifty frame structures added to its importance. It was obviously fitting that such a vigorous young community should have a civic body. In the August preceding the signing of the Indian treaty, its citizens voted in favor of furnishing it with one, and the town election on the roth of the month resulted in the election of five trustees, of which body Colonel Owen became president. It seems historic injustice that our popular friend, who ushered the Indians out of the country and ushered in the new town of Chicago, should not have survived long enough to really enjoy the sight of any civic development, for he only lived until October, 1835-
For two years after the incorporation of the town and the opening of the Pottawatomie lands to settlement a flood of emigrants poured into Chicago, greatly stimulating its trade, building powers and indus- tries. In 1835 the government opened a land office in Chicago, in 1836 the first ground in the actual construction of the canal was broken in the town, real estate took a tremendous boom in the place and Chicago became the seething center of the land craze which swept over this western country, and culminated in the panic and crash of 1837. For about three years Chicago was an Oklahoma City at its best- and worst.
It will be readily conceived that such a congested condition of affairs would as seriously strain the unorganized civic body of Chi- cago as its hotels, lodging houses and general living accommodations. In fact, it was found entirely unequal to its seething and straining population. Its bridges. sidewalks and streets, at best only temporary makeshifts for a small, quiet populace, were as straw and paper against
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the wear and tear of such a torrent, and the town authorities were at last forced to the unheard of expedient of borrowing money to make neces- sary public improvements. On October 2, 1834, they voted to borrow sixty dollars, the first authorized loan on the faith of the corporation. But that was a drop of what was really required. An engine house was built and a hose company equipped, and as all the bridges were worn to things of shreds and patches, it was evident that if public improve- ments were to keep pace with the rapid strides of population the day for trying the credit of the town on a larger scale had arrived. There- fore in July, 1836, the trustees resolved to borrow $50,000 to be ex- pended on public improvements. The president of that body applied to the Chicago branch of the State Bank for half the loan, which was refused. The civic pride of Chicago was stirred, and in its indignant extremity it turned to one of its most notable newcomers, William B. Ogden, who was made the fiscal agent of the town with full authority to negotiate the loan, and, with corporate sanction, to make the neces- sary expenditures. The records of the town show that he accom- plished his purpose, and a week after obtaining the loan purchased two more fire engines. A new street was also at once projected from the town to the fort. Chicago had now a population of about four thou- sand, and Mr. Ogden was to be the leading figure in its new municipal era for many years to come.
At this intermediate period between the development of Chicago from a town to a city, William B. Ogden was a young New Yorker of
WILLIAM B. thirty-one, with a head as fine as his body was ath- OGDEN. letic. He had already served a term in the legisla- ture of the Empire state, and had been a strong ad- vocate of state aid to the New York and Erie canal. Naturally attracted to a locality which was seeking development along the same line, he sought an even wider field for his practical activities in a locality whose future was bright with unmeasured possibilities. In the midst of the land craze he located in Chicago as the representa- tive of a number of eastern capitalists who were making large invest- ments in this locality. Here he established a loan and trust agency, and as his fellow townsmen came within the radius of his influence they instinctively gave him their confidence and recognized in him a born leader. As has been already seen, he was appointed fiscal agent of the town, and, doubtless through his eastern connections, secured
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the loan which was necessary to start the corporation along the broad highway of public improvements and civic development. In this ca- pacity he purchased the two engines and the thousand feet of hose. which was the first practical step in the founding of something more than a "paper" fire department. Heretofore, the department had con- sisted only of ordinances passed by the town board and acts by the state legislature. The police department consisted of one constable. and the public school system had made but little more progress. It is true that various private schools had been taught from a period ante- dating the massacre of 1812; that Stephen Forbes and his good wife had a school of some proportions at the corner of Randolph street and Michigan avenue in 1830, and that in 1833 Colonel Richard J. Hamil- ton, commissioner of school lands for Cook county, had collected a fund of $39,000 by the sale of lands in the congressional township now covering the business district of Chicago. Four blocks were reserved from the sale. Had the entire township been held and its title been vested in the city school board, the public educational system of Chicago would have been the wealthiest municipal institution of the kind in the world. But the town needed the money badly then, and it is easy, in the light of the present, to see what a gigantic financial blunder was made seventy-five years ago. In 1835 a special school system (on paper) was established for Chicago, and late in the year the town was divided into four districts; at which time three public and four private schools were taught in town. But with the coming of the city, under the mayoralty of William B. Ogden, a new era of municipal development, all along the line, was in store for Chicago, although it was to be brought about through the travail of deep de- pression and disorganizing panic.
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