USA > Illinois > Iroquois County > History of Iroquois County, together with Historic notes on the Northwest, gleaned from early authors, old maps and manuscripts, private and official correspondence, and other authentic, though, for the most part, out-of-the-way sources > Part 42
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This transaction was Judge Chamberlain's, and the credit or re- sponsibility, whether it be approved or condemned, belongs to him. By his zealous championship it was accomplished, and for several years his overmastering will, ingenuity and prestige were constantly employed to keep the tide of opposition from - breaking over its banks in proceedings either to nullify the sale or to test its validity. The committee of the board had been previously appointed to con- fer with the county court and Tallman on the subject. Their delib- erations occupied two days. The report of the committee recom- mended making the contract, but Mr. Williams voted against its adoption, not being satisfied with the scheme, - but after it was done supported the sale. The same committee was instructed to complete the bargain jointly with the county court. This sale was unknown to the general public for some time, but when it was published there
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HISTORY OF IROQUOIS COUNTY.
was deep agitation. Some indorsed it; many shook their heads in grave doubt of its expediency and soundness, while others were outspoken in their denunciation.
We quote from an editorial in the Iroquois "Republican," of May 21, 1857, by Dr. Blades, in which he says: "Whether it be correct or not, there is an impression pervading the public mind of this county, that the county has had its interests badly financiered in disposing of the swamp lands, under the contract to Mr. Tallinan. There are but few who believe that the board of supervisors and the old county court had any other view in the matter than for what they deemed for the best interests of the county. But a considerable portion of our citizens believe they have made a bad job of it, not- withstanding"; and "a large number believe that the contract was made without sufficient consideration, and that it is not a valid one. And they demand that if the contract is not a good one, the board should repudiate it." Again : "The people want this matter satis- factorily explained, and they are determined it shall be, from what indications we can gather." He then urges the board to publish the facts upon which it is assumed that the sale is for the best inter- ests of the county, and was at the time it was effected ; and also that an able attorney be employed to investigate the subject and pass an opinion upon it, out of respect to the demands of the people.
Owing to the scantiness of authentic inaterial we cannot under- take to follow this important question in detail to the time it ceased to engross attention and be a factor in the politics of the county. Like Banquo's ghost, it would never down. The reason was, that the sale was not believed by many to be certainly completed in law until some years afterward. There was continual uneasiness, a strong disposition to overturn, if possible, what had been done ; repeated threats concerning such an intention ; and prophetic decla- rations as to the issue, should it once be tried. The board of super- visors could not but be in a feverish state, and the subject was often warmly debated. Tallman was present during several of these ses- sions, at which all his art and persuasion, as well as those of his friends, including Judge Chamberlain, were required to appease the high state of feeling and subdue the determination to take such steps as would ultimately have made it a matter of judicial investi- gation.
We have often to recur to the fact that the people were beaten in their ulterior object in adopting township organization, and we have already stated how the contingency of such an event had been fore- stalled by a special act procured, conferring on the county court full
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powers for the control of the swamp lands. The people certainly were not looking for so surprising a thing as the sale of those lands on such terms by the first board of supervisors. Having had enough of that business with Morgan, and lost faith in the efficiency of the county court to manage that interest, had they not adopted town- ship organization to take the control of it into their own hands through a board elected every year? It is not to be wondered at that they were sorely displeased, if they were not amazed, at so irresolute a proceeding. All they could do, then, was to possess themselves in patience until a new board was elected. As soon as this was done notice was given convening the supervisors on May 18, 1857, for the purpose principally of making an appropriation to investigate the swamp land business. No record of this meeting is in existence, we believe, so it is impossible to outline the proceed- ings, but from collateral sources we are able to state that the ques- tion got an airing, which called out the editorial by Dr. Blades, from which we have made extracts. The board adjourned till June 16. The situation must have been felt to be critical, for Tallman was sent for to be present, to defend his interest. This subject was made the special order for two o'clock in the afternoon. An effort was made to obtain an order rescinding all former orders pertaining to the contract. Tallman was invited to explain how he became pos- sessed of the lands, and did so in a lengthy speech, giving a history of the sale. He held that the county had no title of any value ; that it was unable to procure it, and that he and his friends stood a better chance of doing so through congress. Joseph Thomas and Judge Chamberlain followed him with substantially the same argu- ment. The latter, also, took occasion to justify his motives and to defend himself against the aspersions of those who were trying to break the contract. James Fletcher, then the acknowledged head of the Iroquois bar, was employed to reply, which he did in an able manner, showing up the whole transaction. Then the board engaged in a full discussion, when a vote was taken, and the proposition lost by nine to three. Following is a record of the vote : Ayes - B. F. Brady, Chebanse ; Dr. E. K. Farmer, Milford ; Dr. William Miller, Crab Apple. Nays -Samuel Williams, Belmont; George West, Middleport ; William Smith, Concord; William B. Lyman, Beaver; Thomas Maggee, Wygant; Michael B. White, Ashkum; R. W. Andrews, Onarga ; Wesley Harvey, Ash Grove; James H. Major, Loda. The board then passed a resolution, by an exactly similar vote, indorsing in every particular the contract with Tallman. This was the third ratification of the sale by the supervisors. Messrs.
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HISTORY OF IROQUOIS COUNTY.
Brady, Farmer and Miller entered a formal protest against it. The spirit was bitter and the session stormy. The board continued its sitting well into the night, a sharp struggle going on in the endeavor to expunge the protest. Early the next morning Tallman called on Brady to learn the grounds of his hostility. He informed him, among other things, that he was standing by the sentiment of his town ; that the people who sent him believed the sale was an iniquity ; that the county was getting comparatively nothing for this magnifi- cent land grant; and that the county, besides, was in debt several thousand dollars for expenses incurred on account of the lands. Tallman simulated surprise at this last fact, and said at once that he would pay the amount (some $6,000) and clear the county from debt. In good faith he bound himself by contract with the supervisors ' (dated the 16th) to do it. This contract was lost in the fire of 1866, and all we know of it is what we learn from another, between Tall- man and the county court, dated the 22d, and preserved in the swamp land record, ratifying it and engaging to fulfill all its require-
inents. Tallman agreed to pay the indebtedness due by the county to the state for the expense of selecting the swamp lands, some $2,500 ; and also to pay certain coupons due upon the county bonds previous to the first of September, 1856, amounting, according to reasonable inference, to $1,500 or $1,600, but not in excess of the latter sum .* The board, in this agreement, authorized the county court to carry out fully all contracts made or to be made with Tall- man respecting the sale of the swamp lands, and to execute the necessary conveyances ; " and to do all and every other act by which said Tallman shall enjoy the full benefit of his purchase and con- tracts."
The grounds on which the board held the sale to be advantageous to the county at the time it was made, are stated by Dr. Blades (who was opposed to the sale), in the issue of the "Republican " of May 28. He says: "They set out with the proposition that the county was $50,000 [$47,000] in debt for stock in the Eastern Exten- sion of the Peoria & Oquawka railroad; that the people of the
* This will not make the $6,000. We are not able to account for that sum, and doubt if the amount was more than $4,000 ; though all our information (not purport- ing to be exact) puts it at $6,000, and we have so stated it. We subjoin this addi- tional suggestion : When the surveyor-general, under the direction of the secretary of the interior, listed the swamp and overflowed lands to the governor, the state was charged, contrary to the law, with the cost of the lists and plats, which amount the governor paid under protest. The proportion which fell to Iroquois county was $3,314.50. This may have been included in Tallman's contract, in which case the aggregate reached about $7,000.
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HISTORY OF IROQUOIS COUNTY.
county were induced to assume that debt on account of the prospect that we should be able to pay that stock with the proceeds of the swamp lands ; that it came shortly to appear that as a large majority of those lands were contested, which necessarily put the county to considerable expense in defense, in many instances absorbing the value of the land, and in others the lands would be wholly lost ; that the commissioner of public lands had decided that every separate tract must be re-surveyed and proved up by at least two witnesses in person at the land office at Springfield, all of which tended strongly to show that the lands would not only be worse than valueless, but that in the end the county would be left with the onerous debt of $50,000 lianging over it with no other resource than that of special taxation wherewithal to meet that debt ; they very plausibly maintain that they were making a bargain which certainly appeared to be for the best interest of the county." We continue to quote from the same candid authority, in an article published more than a year earlier (May 8, 1856), being a notice of the first meeting of the board of supervisors held on the 2d and 3d, and before the first contract was entered into with Tallman. "The question as to the proper authorities to control the county swamp lands occupied much of the time, some members of the board being of the opinion that they had the legal right exclusively to manage the swamp lands as well as any other interest of the county, and that the interests of the county require the postponement of the coming land sale [May 6]; that the lands are daily becoming more valuable, and that if sold on credit, or partly on credit with interest, the accruing interest could be used to meet the interest we are bound to pay semi-annually on our railroad bonds. A motion to apply for a bill of injunction on the former court or upon Judge Chamberlain, to prevent the approaching sale of such lands, was discussed and finally lost." The actual situation in regard to these lands before Tallman pur- chased them, was not nearly so alarming as it was made to appear when the sale had been accomplished, and "reasons" were in demand to excuse it. He got the lands and all the benefits accruing from them, which would indicate that the difficulties were either greatly magnified, or that his business ability was scarcely less in degree and far more practical and conspicuous than the combined wisdom of the county court and board of supervisors. Starting with the result and running back from effect to cause, the impolicy of this sale and the puerility of the reasons assigned are so apparent that he who runs may read.
We must now go back a few months in our relation to note some
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HISTORY OF IROQUOIS COUNTY.
transactions of essential interest. At the January term of the county court Tallman presented twenty county bonds, together with his personal bond with three good sureties-J. B. Warner, Samuel Stocking, of Oneida county, New York, and W. P. Swift & Co., of Chicago - for the delivery of ten other bonds, in pursuance of his contract, and an order was entered to issue certificates for the lands. On the following day another order was made countermanding the first, together with the certificate of sale annexed on the record, another contract (marked B) having in the meantime been executed between Tallman and the county court. In substance the stipulations of this were that the contract of October 16, 1856, was "based on the condition that time should be given said Tallman in which to drain said lands [no such condition appears in the contract], inasmuch as many of the lands were under contest; and it being impossible to ascertain what lands, or how many, the county was entitled to by reason of an order issued by the commissioner of the land office at Washington, permitting parties to contest away any of such lands," it was agreed that this should form a part of the above mentioned contract, and that the county court should get an amendment to the law extending the time for draining the lands as the law then stood, with the express understanding that the court should convey the lands to Tallman, conditioned that if it should be unable to procure such amendment, Tallman should pay over the expenses of draining the lands, which expenses were to be estimated by the county engi- neer; or he might drain them after it should be found what lands were not under contest. In case there should be any informality in the conveyance the court guaranteed a perfect future one. The cer- tificate of the county engineer or surveyor was to be the only evi- dence required as to the proper draining of the lands, and upon the production of such certificate he was thereupon to be discharged from any further liability in that regard. But no advantage was to be taken of him even if the lands sold to him by the contract of Octo- ber 16 should not be drained within the time required by law.
A quit-claim was this day -- January 3, 1857-executed to Tallinan for 44,029 acres for $30,000, covered by the thirty bonds of $1,000 each. At the same time he made choice of the remaining interest of the county in the lands sold by the government, including those within six miles on either side of the Central railroad, or the proceeds of the same, and also the $50,000 of railroad stock for which he was to deliver the seventeen remaining and outstanding bonds. On the 5th he deposited his personal bond with two good securities (William P. Swift & Co. and A. J. Galloway), guaranteeing the delivery of the bonds.
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HISTORY OF IROQUOIS COUNTY.
In fulfillment of the contract just cited, Judge Chamberlain, seconded by Joseph Thomas and others, did secure an amendment to the law extending the time of drainage, which law took effect February 16, 1857. We will turn aside to remark that for the first two years the proceedings of the board of supervisors were not pub- lished. The county papers at that day were conducted for more general objects, and the editorial department received greater atten- tion than is bestowed on similar publications now, and while they surpassed their successors in these features, they exhibited less local enterprise than is to be found in the press of to-day. This explains why even a synopsis of the official transactions of the county court and of the board of supervisors was never published. It is not sur- prising, then, that the sale to Tallman should not have come to the knowledge of the general public until the contract was copied from the records by Spottswood A. Washington, and published in the "Iroquois Republican " January 1, 1857, when the scheme was well matured and nigh accomplished for the legalizing of the sale in the act of February 16, already noticed.
The circumstances attending the passage of this act were such that they cannot be passed without notice. Franklin Blades was repre- sentative from Iroquois county in the general assembly at the time, and it was well known that he did not favor the sale, though he was by no means extreme in his opposition. In getting the law amended on the point of drainage the occasion was taken to encompass another, if not the principal, object, which was carefully concealed. Artful and gradual approaches were necessary not to awaken the sus- picions of representative Blades. Joseph Thomas got Uri Osgood, of Joliet, to draft the bill " in an ambiguous and circuitous manner on purpose to escape detection," and assured Blades "that the only end sought in having the bill passed was merely to extend the time of drainage." A letter from Judge Chamberlain to Blades, the burden of which was drainage, contained this clause : "We want an act amending the special law, already passed, with reference to the swamp lands of Iroquois county, extending the time, and also with regard to some other points of less importance." This feinting had the effect to call off Blades' attention from the "points of less im- portance," and in the hurry of business, as he afterward admitted in a published explanation, he "took the bill and read it (we are now convinced too carelessly), and not detecting, through a mass of gar- bage and meaningless tautology and ambiguity, the clandestine clause legalizing the swamp land sale, we introduced it. We are certain that not one single member of either the house or the senate ever
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HISTORY OF IROQUOIS COUNTY.
suspected the legal effect of that bill." In the running controversy between John W. White, of Pike Creek, and Judge Chamberlain, the former indirectly charged that the bill was got through by "trickery or ledgerdemain," whereupon the judge replied by assert- ing that Blades knew all about it, and referred to the fact of their having had correspondence on the subject. This brought Blades out in astonishment that the judge should charge that he "did know all about the passage of the bill," which charge itself was cautiously worded and perhaps literally true, without his knowing "all about" the contents of the bill. Judge Chamberlain is entitled to the ben- efit of everything that can be said to his credit or in his defense. We aim to keep this object in view. In a published communication in answer to Mr. White he stated that he did not know that the bill contained the legalizing clause until he received a copy of it from Springfield. We have sought to find if Judge Chamberlain explained away the shadow of dark doings in this matter, but without success.
This discussion transpired in the campaign of 1857, when he was a candidate for reëlection. On November 3 he received 758 votes, to 472 for his opponent, H. C. Bryant, whichi majority of 286, while being an apparent indorsement of the policy he had championed from the beginning, reflected not the less a nervous but groundless appre- hension that, if elected, Bryant would involve the county in costly litigation. This was the superior harping-string of the canvass, as it was among the leading ones four years later. This' dread of going to law was co-extensive with the dissatisfaction prevailing ; and the most violent opposers of the sale shrunk from it; even as prominent and outspoken a man of that number as John W. White said in one of his communications : "I, as a citizen of the county, am opposed to going to law in this matter if it can be possibly avoided ; it would be ruinous to the county." The student who has observed in the history and practical workings of politics, instances of a popular dread of unsettling or burdening the business interests of a com- munity or state, not subject to fluctuations of danger and security, must have been struck with the uniformity with which the candidates who were looked upon in the light of disorganizers have been de- feated. Of the very large class who doubted the wisdom of the financiering, but few thought anything could be gained by trying to abrogate the proceedings of the court and the board.
Continuing to quote from the same authority as before in a careful and exceedingly liberal editorial after the election : " We are satisfied that when the terms of the sale of the swamp lands to Mr. Tallman first became known, there was a large majority of the people of this
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county who were decidedly opposed to it. There were but very few, indeed, even among the warmest political friends of Judge Chamber- lain, who were so bold as to come out in approbation of the sale. But it seems that a great reaction has taken place, and we are inclined to impute that reaction to a fuller knowledge of all the circumstances connecting with the contesting of those lands and the uncertainty of ever obtaining a title to them. We are not sure that the majority are yet convinced that the sale was the best thing that could have been done with them; but having been made, they were strongly opposed to meddling with it." From this postulate Dr. Blades pro- ceeded to draw a conclusion that the result, induced by "a nervous apprehension, which was kept alive and increased by unscrupulous misrepresentation ; that in case Mr. Bryant should be elected county judge, he would proceed at once to involve the county in an expen- sive lawsuit, by contesting the validity of the sale," was a " handsome indorsement by the people," and "that the people, by an emphatic vote, have made it, with its good or bad policy, their own," and that " their decision should be cheerfully and without cavil submitted to." If the people had known that they still possessed an equitable right to the lands, it would have been a " handsome indorsement," and further cavil should have ceased ; but as the impression was growing that they were conveyed out of reach, and the fear of a chancery contest was made an element of the canvass, and consequently of the vote, it is just as clear that it was deemed best to permit Judge Chamberlain to complete, according to his own design, the policy which he had inaugurated, as that he was elected.
We have omitted thus far to chronicle that Col. Morgan, in June, 1857, commenced an injunction suit in the United States district court, at Chicago, to assert his rights under the original contract he made with the county, alleging the later one to be fraudulent and void ; and to set aside the contract with Tallman and restrain the county from selling the lands to him. On his own motion, Tallman bore one-half the expenses incurred by the county, and retained the Hon. I. N. Arnold, of Chicago, as one of the attorneys in the case. The county employed James Fletcher and George B. Joiner. An answer was filed to Morgan's bill, and the case was thrown out of court. The surface of public feeling was kept in a troubled state by the smoldering fires within, and every little while there would be an eruption when the board met. Tallman was, at least once, before this body in 1858, explaining and defending his course. He could well afford an occasional tilt; the stake he was at this time playing for was no mean forfeit. Meanwhile he was addressing himself to
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the matter of perfecting the title to the swamp lands by getting them, or as many as had been approved by the surveyor-general, patented to the state. A six-months sojourn in Washington with the agent for the state sufficed for that purpose. In course of time another special act touching the swamp lands was regarded as indis- pensable to the closing up of this vexed patchwork. It was forth- coming, and was accordingly obtained from the state, February 18, 1859-Judge Chamberlain and Ray W. Andrews attending the legis- lature for this and other purposes. George B. Joiner was employed by the county court to lobby this bill, for which he was allowed $50 from the swamp land fund. Nothing was left to petition for again, nothing left for a future subject of legislation-it was sweeping in every provision. The county court was given as full discretion in regard to selling and draining as an individual has in the disposition of his private property ; and this was a release from all obligation to drain the lands. A new article of agreement was drawn up April 22, to which the county court and Tallman were the parties, resell- ing the entire swamp land grant, the net proceeds of all the lands which had ever been sold by the county to other parties than Tall- man himself, and the proceeds of all such lands in the county which had been sold by the government, including whatever remote or con- tingent interest the county liad or ever should have in the lands within six miles of the Central railroad, and also a like interest in any land warrants or money arising from the grant to which the. county had or ever should have any right. The consideration was twenty-three $1,000 bonds, which Tallman had already delivered under his contract of October 16, 1856, and his guaranty, with two good sureties, to pay and deliver the remaining twenty-four $1,000 bonds at any time before maturity, with the coupons ; including, also, his guaranty to pay the state for selecting the lands, which were at this time sold to him subject to drainage, Tallman agreeing to sell them as soon as practicable, and to require purchasers to drain them when they required it and were susceptible of drainage. This guaranty, with the delivered bonds, constituted the whole consideration and purchase price of the lands, and every interest or benefit accruing at any time from them. Tallman presented his bond, wi h B. D. Hurl- burt and I. R. Warner, of Oneida county, New York, as sureties. Judge Chamberlain was then directed by the court to execute to Tallman a deed of conveyance in fee-simple for the lands, and to carry out every part of the agreement. This deed was of concurrent date with the contract, and conveyed 45,527 acres, "and a so all other lands, not heretofore described, that said county of Iroquois
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