History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois, Part 16

Author: Perrin, William Henry, d. 1892?
Publication date: 1883
Publisher: Chicago, Ill. ; O.L. Baskin & Co.
Number of Pages: 948

USA > Illinois > Union County > History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois > Part 16
USA > Illinois > Pulaski County > History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois > Part 16
USA > Illinois > Alexander County > History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois > Part 16

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

On the 26th of February, 1882, the flood- line at Cairo was fifty-one feet ten and a half inches above low water mark. On the 26th of February, 1883, exactly one year to a day, the flood-line at Cairo was fifty-two feet two inches above low water mark. In these two

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unprecedented stages of water, as before re- marked, Cairo was the only river town that passed unharmed.

People wonder, and muse, and talk much about these two years, and their great waters, and the conclusion is a common one, that it is the general system of draining in all the country north of this, both open and tile draining, the cutting of the forests and open- ing the sluice-ways for the surface water, that has been one great cause of the higher waters in late years than was ever known formerly. Again, it is said that the towns and railroads and other improvements upon the river banks, tend to confine the waters, and thus swell the height of its flow; and the fact is cited that where a few years ago were ponds and pools of water, sometimes stand- ing the whole season through, are now often well-tilled farms, with a drainage so perfect that no water ever remains more than a few hours upon any of its surface. It looks rea- sonable that there is something in these theories-there probably is-but the fact that the waters were higher at the source of the river than here at the mouth (of the Ohio), would go far to contradict this theory. At Cincinnati this year (1883), the water was five feet higher than ever before known. As early as the 12th of last February, the rise in the Ohio had utterly paralyzed business, and had deprived 20,000 working people of Cincinnati, Covington and Newport of the means of livelihood. Five square miles of Cincinnati were covered with water from one inch to twenty feet deep. Many lives were lost, and many millions of dollars worth of property was destroyed, and along the Upper Ohio hundreds of thousands of people suf- fered inconvenience or loss from the wide- spread river overflows. In the Kentucky bottoms, opposite Shawneetown, the water was three and a half feet higher than ever

before known since the settlement of the country; while at Cairo the water of the year only exceeded that of last year by three and a half inches. There must have been other causes than cutting the trees or draining, for the floods of this year (1883), one pecu- liarity of them being that they were re- stricted to no particular locality, but seem to have been general, and to extend nearly over the whole world. The long-continued rains in the valley of the Ohio, that fell upon the frozen and ice covered grounds, where not a drop was absorbed into the earth, and started the raging torrent at the fountain heads, were the palpable, prime cause of the unusual waters. In Europe the rain-storm started that did so much damage here. It flooded the Theiss and Danube, the Rhine, in Ger- many, and the Rhone and all the rivers of France, and sent them, like the Ohio, boom- ing out of their banks and doing widespread damage. The course of the storm across the Atlantic could be distinctly traced to its out- burst in the region of the Upper Ohio and the lakes, and spreading rapidly all over our continent, until every section, often the most retired villages, far up in the mountains, and miles away from any lake or river, seemed scarcely safe. Indeed, one of the most awful calamities of the long list of disasters of this year was. that which took place out in the open prairie near Braidwood, Ill., where the rain had piled up the waters three feet into a lake, which, breaking through a mine, drowned the unfortunate miners within. Every tributary of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers was rising at the same time; the Allegheny, Monongahela, Licking, Kentucky and Cumberland were all at flood-tide; the Wabash was out of its bed, and carrying de- struction on its course. The rivers pouring into the lakes were also raging; the Miami flooded a large portion of Toledo; the Cuya-

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hoga has twice this year inundated Cleve- land, and even the Atlantic slope tells the same sad story, and in the far West it is again repeated.

We have told of the inundation of Cairo in 1858. The damage to the property of the town, except the falling of the hotel wall (and that was evidently from the imperfect building of the foundation more than the water) did not amount to $1,000. There was not a house, excepting the merest shanties, that was materially injured. The largest sufferer, in a pecuniary way, was Bailey Har- rell, whose stock of goods was injured to the extent of a few hundred dollars. The people of Cairo felt no suffering from actual want, and indeed they refused any outside aid when such assistance was tendered them. In one sense, the actual and material injury to the place was most insignificant and tri- fling; and yet, in another sense, by a singular chain of circumstances, it was almost an ir- reparable calamity to the interests of the city. In the most exaggerated way it was blown in the face of all the world, until men never after heard of Cairo except to shudder or shrug the shoulders, and either express the sentiment or believe it, that its very name meant floods, and drown- ings, and wreck and ruin. There is not a river-town from St. Louis or Pittsburgh to New Orleans but that has suffered from in- undations incomparably worse than has Cairo, and yet their raging waters are hardly passed away when the people seem to forget it all, and their calamity is not again whispered until the next high water and its devastation.

We have shown how trifling and insignifi- cant was the only overflow Cairo has ever had since she has been walled-about by her levees. In contrast to this, look at the fol- lowing description, by an eye-witness, of the Upper Ohio in last February:

" The proportions of the calamity that is upon the people of the Ohio Valley are hour- ly increasing. There are suffering, desola- tion and death in each inch of the awful rise of the river upon a stage of water absolutely without precedent, and the details of distress which called for sympathy in the floods of Europe, except as to loss of life, are largely

* * repeated in this section to-day. *

* For thirty miles, beginning with the upper suburb of Cincinnati, and ending with Law- renceburg, Ind., twenty-five miles below, the damage, destitution and distress are unparal- leled in American history. Below Lawrence- burg, and to Louisville [equally true if he had said to Cairo-ED.] the situation is the same. Beginning with the upper suburb of Cincinnati, on the Ohio side, are Columbia, Pendleton, Fulton and , then Cincinnati, Sedamsville, Riverside, Fernbank, Lawrence- burg, Aurora, Rising Sun, Patriot, Vevay and Madison. On the Kentucky side are the towns of Dayton, Bellevue and Newport, and Covington, opposite Cincinnati, Ludlow, Bromley, Petersburg, Hamilton, Warsaw, Ghent, Carrollton, Milton, Westport and Louisville. At Patriot and Vevay, the river is five or ,six miles wide, and at all these points it simply extends from the Ohio to the Kentucky hills, covering all the rich bottom lands. Its average width is from one to two miles-a sea of yellow waters. At all these points more or less damage is done. No statistics are available, but a cool guess would place the number of people either homeless or imprisoned, at not less than 50,000. There are 15,000 at Newport alone, and 5,000 in Lawrenceburg; at Louisville, New Albany and Jeffersonville, it is in many respects even worse.

" The east end, up in Fulton and Colum- bia, has eight feet of water flowing through the main street. Many houses have been

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swept away, and many more are expected to follow. If the weather was not warm and pleasant, the suffering would be intense. The water is five miles wide from Columbia to the other shore of the Little Miami River, and all the houses on the bottom have disap- peared, not even the roofs being visible. Western avenue, on the western side of the city, along Mill Creek Valley, has been de- clared unsafe, and travel on it is stopped. The American Oak & Leather Company's tannery, the largest in the world, was sub- merged at 1 o'clock this morning (February 15). Along Mill Creek Valley are most of the packing houses. One packer has 3,000, - 000 pounds of meat under water, and from 10,000,000 to 15,000,000 pounds of dry- salted meats are in the same condition. No one has dared to make an estimate of the total loss here (Cincinnati), but they will be millions."

Of Lawrenceburg, Ind., an official report, among other things, specifies: "There never was," so they report, " in all history of the floods in the Ohio Valley, a city, town or hamlet so completely at the mercy of the an- gry element as is Lawrenceburg. For three days, the citizens were almost without a morsel to eat. In the lower portion of the city, everything is destroyed, save the dwell- ings, and they, of course, must be badly damaged. Hundreds of the houses are from ten to fifty feet under water. The people, driven from their homes, fled to the public buildings. All they possessed is destroyed. We steamed alongside the court house, woolen mills, churches, furniture factories and public school buildings. All of the above-named buildings were crowded with people rescued from watery graves.

" In the large and more secure residences, families have been driven to the second and

third stories. On the principal streets, the water ranges from seven to twenty-five feet deep. Few of the merchants saved any of their goods, and although precautions were taken, yet nearly all furniture is ruined. A great many houses in low lands have been swept away, and houses and contents are lost forever to the owners.

" The damage to factories cannot be esti- mated. In the city there are a great many furniture factories, all of which had on hand large stocks of lumber; in many cases this has all been swept away.

" The machinery in some, if not all. the factories and mills, has been badly damaged, and mostly ruined. The county records have all been saved, they having been carried to the top stories of the court house. The rich and the poor are upon a common level, and indiscriminately huddled together. In one part of the court house, death was claiming its victims, while in another new lives were being ushered into the world.

The reports of the condition of the people have not been exaggerated. In fact, the half has not been told. The entire city, with a population of some 5,000, are in want, and are at the mercy of the public. Distress ex- tends from one end of the city to the other. The town has been without communication with the outside world for days, except by boats, and no regular packets are running. The telegraph offices are flooded, and the wires are down. The telephone office is in several feet of water. In short, there is not a dry square foot of ground in the place.

" The situation of the citizens of Law- renceburg, imprisoned in the court house, is constantly growing more dangerous. Added to the irregularity of the food supply, and the crowded quarters, is the possibility that the court house may collapse, from the un-

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dermining of its foundation by the flood of waters. Should that occur, the loss of life certainly will be great."

We forbear to extend these sad and har- rowing details, nor have we given the worst side of the picture, as drawn by correspond- ents who visited the different towns along the Ohio River.

While this terrible page of history was being written of every river town above this point, Cairo was peacefully and securely pur- suing her avocations; her railroads making their regular trips; not a wheel in any of her factories impeded for even a moment.

The ordinary business of the day was transacted in confidence and safety. No one was alarmed even in Cairo, except the negroes and a few nervous and timid " tenderfoots," who, when they would go upon the levee and look out upon the broadest expanse of waters they had ever seen, would quake, for fear Cairo's great levees would give way, and no Noah's ark was at hand to take them in. While Cairo was the one dry spot, the city of refuge to which came the sufferers from above and from below, the following appeal to the world's charity was being issued from nearly every town from here to Pittsburgh:

SHAWNEETOWN, Ill., via Evansville, Feb. 24. To Marshall Field & Co., Chicago:

Our people are overwhelmed with the most ap- palling misfortune ever visited upon any locality. The Ohio River is five feet higher than ever known, and still rising. Our wealth has gone down with

the angry waves. Hundreds are destitute, penni- less and suffering. We must have help. The river is from three to thirty-five miles wide, and carrying utter destruction before it. The loss in this imme- diate vicinity will reach $250,000 at least. We ap- peal to the charitable for assistance in this time of need. We have been under water for nearly three weeks, and it will take four weeks for it to subside. (Signed) SWOFFORD BROS., ALLEN & HARRINGTON, M. M. POOL, THOMAS S. RIDGEWAY, I. M. MILLSPAUGH, Mayor.

The very next day, February 25, Cairo sent out the following: "The river was fifty-two feet one inch at 6 P. M., and on a stand. Our levees are holding out splendidly, and no fears of trouble from that source are ex- pected."

While Cairo deeply deplored the calami- ties to her sister towns, and was ready and did lend a generous and helping hand to the sufferers, yet why should she not rejoice in that prudent care and forethought that placed these strong battling walls around her, that defied the angry waters, and un- shaken, stood guard over the peaceful slum- bers, the lives and the property of her peo- ple ?

The oft-repeated question, can levees be built that will secure your town against any water ? has been most triumphantly an- swered, both in the year 1882 and 1883. It is no longer a theory nor a guess, but a demonstration, as plain and strong as Holy Writ.

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CHAPTER VI.

THE PRESS-ITS POWER AS THE GREAT CIVILIZER OF THE AGE-CAIRO'S FIRST EDITORIAL VENTURES-BIRTH AND DEATH OF NEWSPAPERS INNUMERABLE-THE BOHEMIANS- WHO THEY WERE AND WHAT THEY DID-" BULL RUN" RUSSELL-HARRELL,

WILLETT, FAXON AND OTHERS-SOME OF THE "INTELLI- GENT COMPOSITORS"-QUANTUM SUFFICIT.

" A history which takes no account of what was said by the Press in memorable emergencies befits an earlier age than ours."-Horace Greeley.

TN the order of making settlements in the Mississippi Valley, it was the hunter and the trapper, the trader and the merchant, the ham- let, village or the mushroom city, and then the newspaper. Here it waited not, like of old, for that ripened civilization that was supposed to come of the centuries, that left people hungry, if not perishing, for that rich, juicy and nutri- tious mental pabulum that the editor was always supposed to furnish.

The Press is the Third Estate in this coun- try-it has been called the palladium of Amer- ican liberties. One thing is quite certain, that the wisest and best thing our forefathers did was to establish a " free press," nominally, if not actually. True, it is absolutely free so far as the Government is concerned, but sometimes it is not so free from military dictation or from mob rule, and a few instances have occurred, in the history of the country, where there has been a foolish, violent and fanatical public sen- timent, grossly wrong in all its parts, that has crushed out the truth, and actually suppressed the only true friend the people had-the local press. But in return, the press can say it has committed outrages upon the public quite as often or oftener than have wrongs been perpe- trated against it. The averages, say, are even ; then if two wrongs can make a right, a reason- able justice has been done, and the great pal-

ladium remains, and the Government did wisely foresee the eventual wants of mankind in this respect. And under the benign rays of their wisdom, the American people enjoy a free press, and this means free speech, free schools, free religion, and, supremest, and best of all, free thought ; for here is where the world has suf- fered most, because as a man's thoughts are the highest part of him-that which makes him the superior to the ox that grazes upon the hill-it is here that he can suffer infinitely the most ; where wrongs may be inflicted that are ineffaceable, incurable and shocking. For it was thought, and nothing else but thought, that has produced the present civilization and all its joys and pleasures-all that marks the difference in us and those miserable crea- tures who once were here, owning and possess- ing all this graud country, and whose mode and manner of life may all be drawn from the simple fact that they would bury the live wife in the same grave with the dead husband. This is a historic fact, although it occurred among a prehistoric people. They had no free speech, free press or free thought. They may have had a strong government, a govern- ment of iron and lead, and they may have wor- shiped that government as dutiful children worship a cruel father, but they have never had a free thought, except one of the basest kind, but the fact remains that they were a despicable people, because they had none of that civilization that eventuates in a free press.

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It was the great invention of movable types that has made the present greatness of the press possible. "The types are," remarked one of the greatest men the world has pro- duced, "as ships which pass through the vast seas of time, and make ages to participate of the wisdom, illuminations and inventions, the one of the other ; for the image of men's wits remain in books, exempted from the wrongs of time, and capable of perpetual renovation, neither are they fitly to be called images, because they generate stili and cast their seeds in the minds of others, provoking and causing infinite action and opinions in succeeding ages. We see, then, how far the monuments of wit and learning are more durable than the monuments of power or of the hands. For have not the verses of Homer continued twenty-five hundred years or more, without the loss of a syllable or letter ? during which time, infinite palaces, temples, castles, cities, have decayed or been demolished. That whereunto man's nature doth most aspire, which is immortality or continuance ; for to this tendeth generation, and raising of houses and families ; to this buildings, foundations and monuments ; to this tendeth the desire of memory, fame and celebration, and in effect the strength of all other human desires." The types do infinitely more than this ; they are men's highest source of unalloyed enjoyment in this world. They may be made to contribute more to his real pleasures than anything else. While they are the most enduring thing of life, the joy and pleasures they bring, which they give for the asking, they give food and pleasure to the mind. For in life what pleasure equals that of the acquisition of new truths ? This is not only the greatest pleasure to the healthy mind, but it is the most enduring. It is the perennial fountain of knowledge, where the thirsty mind may drink deeply, drink draughts of which all the nectar the gods ever quaffed are but puddle water. And it is not alone to

the mind thirsting for the deep draughts of knowledge that its blessings are confined, but it gives equally to all-the thinker, the worker, the idle, the dissolute, the rich, the poor, the king and the outcast, aye, even the wretched leper to whom the work of the types are all in this world that can save him from a living tomb. It is the philosopher's toucli-stone, the Aladdin's lamp, the genial ray of sunshine that penetrates all dungeons, that will go and abide forever wherever human life can exist.

In the dingy printing office is the epitome of the world of action and of thought-the best school in Christendom-the best church. Here is where divine genius perches and pauses, and plumes its wings for those lofty flights that attract and awe all mankind and in all ages- here are kindled and fanned to a flame the fires of genius that sometimes blaze and dazzle like the central sun, and that generate and renew the rich fruitage of 'benign civilization. The press is the drudge and pack-horse -- the crowned king of all mankind. The gentle click of its types is heard around all the world ; they go sounding down the tide of time, bear- ing upon their gentle waves the destinies of civilization, and the immortal smiles of the pale children of thought, as they troop across the fair face of the earth in their entrances and exits from the unknown to the unknown, scattering here and there immortal blessings, that the dull blind types have patiently gath- ered, to place them where they will live forever. It is the earth's symphony which endures, which transcends that of the "morning when the stars sang together," and when its chords are swept by the fingers of the immortals, it is the echo of those anthems that float up forever to the throne of God. Of all that man can have in this world, it is the one blessing, whose rose need have no thorn, whose sweet need have no bitter. It is freighted with man's good, his hap- piness and the divine blessings of civilization. By means of the press, the lowliest cabin equals

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the lordliest palace in the right and authority to bid enter its portals, and be seated in the family circle, the sweet singer of Scotland-the delightfully immortal Burns - who died at thirty-seven, and over whose grave his mis- taken, foolish countrymen were relieved of the poor outcast and sot ; they thought they were burying an outcast, when the clods that covered his poor body hid the warm sunlight of Scotland. Or bid the crowned monarch of mankind come in, and with wife, children and friends tarry until bed-time, and tell the real story of Hamlet; or Lord Macaulay will lay aside titles and dignity, and with the poor cotter's family hold familiar discourse in those rich resounding sentences that flow on forever like a great and rapid river ; or Charles Lamb, whose heart was saddest, whose wit was sweet- est, whose life was a mingling of smiles and tears, and let him tell the children and the grandsires the story of the invention of the roast pig ; or Johnson, his boorishness and roughness all gone now, in trenchant sentences pour out his jeweled thoughts to eager ears ; or bid Pope tell something of the story of man's inhumanity to man ; or poor, poor delightful Poe, with his bird of evil omen, croaking, croaking, " nevermore !" Or Dickins, George Elliott, Bunyan or Voltaire, or any of the thousands of others, when all may be fed to fullness.

Thanks, then, a million times thanks, to our , dear old Revolutionary sires for giving us the great boon of a free press. If our Government endures, and the people continue free, here will be much of the reason thereof, for, mark you, freedom, though once never so well established, will not maintain and prepetuate itself, because by the laws of heredity that lurks in every man, more or less, the latent customs or habits or mental convictions of a barbarous ancestry leave the seeds of monarchy and despotism. True, the Americans have this (speaking in reference to a democratic form of government)

less than any other people in the world ; they are farther removed from an ancestry that worshiped under kingly rulers - an ancestry that perhaps honestly worshiped an autocrat and that would have almost let out its own blood, had they known they would produce a posterity that would cease to worship at the same shrine, or even emigrate to some foreign country, and learn to detest and hate all im- perial pretensions. Hence, we say, the American people have this tendency to return to monarchy less than any other people in the world, and yet even here it is as true now as when uttered, that "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." The press, therefore, is essential to the perpetuation of free institutions in America.

That the press can do no wrong, it is not our intention in the remotest way to assert. So great an institution, so varied its interests, so numerous its controllers and its guides, that it would be a foolish man indeed who would even hope that it ever would become infallible. A wise people, therefore, will jealously watch it, while it is standing upon the. watch-tower, hunting for the ambitious usurper to catch and slay him. This is the very genius of free institutions-vigilance and untiring watchful- ness upon the part of all.

But it is of the coming of the press, the printers, the editors, the writers, publishers, and others brought here in connection with the press, even including that strange creature, who always accompanies those pious and very moral gentleman, the "devil," that it is our purpose to immediately speak. They were altogether a remarkable set, who published remarkable papers, and some still more remark- able articles. They, as has always been the case everywhere, had their differences, their quarrels even, but be it said to their credit, no matter from what cause it came, the disputes never resulted in anything more serious than a few bitter paragraphs, and then their injured

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History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois, Part 16

Author: Perrin, William Henry, d. 1892? Publication date: 1883 Publisher: Chicago, Ill. ; O.L. Baskin & Co. Number of Pages: 948

Author: Perrin, William Henry, d. 1892?
Publication date: 1883
Publisher: Chicago, Ill. ; O.L. Baskin & Co.
Number of Pages: 948