USA > Illinois > Newspapers and periodicals of Illinois, 1814-1879 > Part 3
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until late in the campaign did not assume the positions which they were in at the close.29
The Illinois Gazette favored the convention, but was so near the fence, and gave space to such free discussion of both sides, that writers on this bit of Illinois history have given accounts of its position in direct conflict with each other. A somewhat extended statement of the paper's position is given here in an effort to settle the question. Governor Ford has said that the Gazette was against the convention; Gov- ernor Coles, that it was for it.30 These two authorities have been the source of endless conflicting statements, and other contemporary writers, like Hooper Warren and George Flower, have contributed. In his History of the English Settlement in Edwards County, Flower asserts, and offers substantial proof, that the paper was pro-convention, while the editor, E. B. Washburne, furnishes the information in a foot-note, that Eddy, editor of the Gazette, was against the convention.
Henry Eddy and A. W. Kimmel conducted the Gazette until May 22, 1820, when their partnership was dissolved and James Hall became Eddy's partner and the editor. Hall at once acknowledged his ignorance of Illinois politics and chose a neutral course for his paper. This course he reaffirmed, when, in printing a letter from Daniel P. Cook relative to some political charges, Hall said editorially, “We
29 As late as April 22, 1823, Governor Coles wrote to Nicholas Biddle his belief that the Kaskaskia Republican would stand against the convention. Ten days earlier he had written to Richard Flower and Morris Birkbeck suggesting that they take the initiative in starting an anti-convention paper at Albion. See Washburne, Sketch of Governor Coles.
30 "Unfortunately for the friends of freedom, four out of five of the newspapers printed in this state are opposed to them; and the only press whose editor is in favor of freedom, although a pretty smart editor, has rendered himself unpopular with many of his foolish and passionate attacks upon many prominent men on his side of the question." Coles to Biddle, September 18, 1823. In Washburne, Sketch of Governor Coles, 160.
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wish it to be distinctly understood that we have not forsaken the neutral ground which we have thought proper to assume with regard to the ensuing election. Our columns are open to all communications temperately written, to which the authors place their names, or for which they are willing to be accountable. This is the only course which, situated as we are, completely in the dark with regard to the state of parties, and the merits of candidates, we could with any degree of propriety pursue." This position Hall held con- sistently for nearly two years, although he was suspected of sympathy with the advocates of slavery extension. Hooper Warren accused him of such sympathy in 1820 because of an editorial in which Hall suggested a disparity between Illinois and the states of Kentucky and Missouri, caused by the great advantage which the last two had over the first from the privilege of holding slaves. Hall denied that what he said referred in any way to the political situation in Illinois, or that it was meant, as Warren charged, to favor the election of E. K. Kane.31 Two weeks later,32 in printing a letter from Morris Birkbeck who uttered a word of warning to his fellow-citizens lest they elect pro-slavery officials, Hall de- plored the fact that the question of slavery should be brought up. "From this state," he said, "it [slavery] is excluded; it cannot now be introduced; and were an attempt to be made for that purpose we should be among the first to oppose so material a change in our constitution." A change of attitude is hardly concealed in the following, however: April 6, 1822, a communication appeared announcing that the subject of the introduction of slaves into Illinois was in agitation in Union and Jackson counties. "Great exer-
31 Illinois Gazette, July 22, 1820.
32 Ibid, August 5, 1820.
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tions," said the editor, "will, in all probability, be used to procure a call for a convention to reconsider the important provision, in our constitution, against slavery. ... Good cause must be shown before the people will consent to a proposition so pointedly opposed to their former sentiments. Let those who advocate the measure exhibit their manifesto, that the people 'may the better judge.' Our Gazette is at the service of all who choose to make it the medium of temperate discussion, on this or any other subject, except such as in- volve the deadly rancour of political parties and partisans, or the more baneful and unforgiving hate of theological dogma. At present we shall take no part in the slave question, reserving the right to enter the lists at a future opportunity, should we so determine."
Six months later Hall became involved in an acrimonious political dispute with Daniel P. Cook, who was a close political friend of Eddy, and a schism arose which resulted in the dissolution of the partnership of Hall and Eddy in November. No matter touching on slavery appeared until March, when an account of a meeting held at Jonesboro told that Alexander P. Field introduced a resolution which proposed an effort to elect members of the legislature who would recommend a convention for altering and amending the constitution. There was no editorial comment, and no mention of slavery. On March 8, Eddy strongly repro- bated the seating of Shaw, but, unlike Berry, made no reference to slavery. Berry's "Extraordinary Legislative Proceedings" 33 was reprinted from the Illinois Intelligencer without criticism. From March, 1823, until August, 1824, the columns of the Gazette were crowded with communica- tions on the convention and the slavery questions. In that
33 See p. xlvii.
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period Birkbeck's Jonathan Freeman letters were printed and other articles on the same side. No one of these was left unanswered by the opponents, but the paper kept almost clear of the controversy, only once venturing to express the prevailing opinion of that part of the state. In the following editorial, printed June 14, 1823, the Gazette, according to George Flower, "showed the cloven hoof ".
"The vote of the last legislature, recommending the case of a new convention, seems to have.produced a good deal of excitement in the western part of the state, and to have called forth already some pretty warm discussion. In this quarter, as yet, we have heard but little said on the subject, owing probably to the great degree of unanimity which prevails in favor of the measure. The people in this part of the state (in this and adjoining counties particularly) have too great an interest at stake in keeping up the manufacture of salt at the saline, to be easily diverted from the course they intend to pursue by making the question turn upon the propriety or impropriety of introducing negro slavery. They are persuaded that unless the time can be enlarged, during which the slaves of the neighboring states can be hired to labor at the furnaces, the works, after the year 1824, must be aban- doned, and this main source of revenue to the state be lost; besides all the advantages which they individually derive from the market, which, when in operation, those works create. The people in this part also, in common with others in all parts of the state, desire an amendment of the con- stitution in other particulars wherein it has been found defective, and many (we are far from concealing it) are in favor of the introduction of slavery, either absolute, as it exists at present in the slave-holding states, or in a limited degree - that is to say, to exist until the children born after
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its admission shall arrive at a certain age, to be fixed by the constitution." 34
When Coles secured control of the Intelligencer, the Ga- zette remarked, "Notwithstanding we have a high respect for the former editors, and the manner in which they executed their editorial functions, we cannot but hope that the Intelli- gencer will henceforth be conducted in a course, so as not to warrant any person in saying it disgusts the community." 35 The situation is most clearly revealed in one sentence printed August 7. The Gazette had vigorously supported Cook as candidate for Congress in opposition to Bond, although Cook was a strong anti-slavery man. No doubt the enmity which Eddy incurred by doing all in his power to defeat the pro-slavery Bond caused many supporters of the convention to regard Eddy as opposed to them on that proposition also. But that his loyalty to Cook in no wise influenced his sym- pathy for the convention is fairly indicated in his remark of August 7: "The convention question is lost - principally, we believe, from the effort made by Governor Bond's friends to force him upon its supporters, against the declared prefer- ence of Mr. Cook."
It is clear from the pages of the paper itself that the Gazette favored the convention. But it is more obvious that Eddy opened his columns freely to both parties in the dis- cussion, that he was as nearly non-committal as an editor well could be, and that his course was in striking contrast with that of Hooper Warren and his Spectator on one hand, and Theophilus Smith and the Illinois Republican on the other.
34 Ill. Gazette, June 14, 1823. See George Flower, Hist. of English Settlement in Edwards Co., 253. No copy of the Gazette of this date is preserved.
35 May 29, 1824.
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The Illinois Intelligencer, before the beginning of the fight, was inclined to ignore the slavery question; its owners up to February 15, 1823, Wm. H. Brown and William Berry, were on opposite sides. In the number for February 15, however, there appeared a scathing editorial, entitled "Extraordinary Legislative Proceedings," denouncing the legislature 36 for its playing fast and loose with the Pike County members in order to gain the one vote necessary to call for a ballot on the convention. To this editorial Wil- liam Berry appended a note. "The above 'extraordinary legislative proceedings' have been published by my partner, Wm. H. Brown, Esq., without my approbation, and shall be answered next week." In the issue for the next week Robert Blackwell's name replaced Brown's, and signed edi- torials from all three participants set forth their respective views. Under Blackwell and Berry the paper was less partizan, but was friendly to the convention faction.37
At some time between March 19 and May 7, 1824, Berry disposed of his interest nominally to David Blackwell,
36 This editorial brought about the only threat I have found of legislative action, and the first instance of mob menace, against an Illinois newspaper. On Monday, February 17, 1823, Mr. Field, of Union County, moved the adoption of the following resolution: "That the Editors of the Illinois Intelligencer be requested forthwith to inform this House who is the author of a piece which appeared in their last paper, signed A, B. and which charges the Legislature with corruption and dis- honesty." The resolution passed, and there the matter ended. Public feeling outside of the legislature was so much aroused that a mob collected in front of the office of the newspaper and threatened to destroy the press and other equipment. But this demonstration proceeded no further toward results than the legislature itself had gone.
37 James H. Perkins, Annals of the West, appendix, 792-793, says: "The paper (at Vandalia) that performed the public printing, was the strong garrison (of the convention party in December, 1823). On the morning of the meeting of the con- vention party leaders this citadel surrendered to their opponents, hoisted the anti- convention flag, and prepared to pour grapeshot into their ranks. ... Governor Coles had purchased an interest in the press; David Blackwell, Esq., of Belleville, had been appointed secretary of state, to fill a vacancy and conduct the paper as editor."
This is inaccurate. David Blackwell did not become editor until after March, 1824.
.
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though Governor Coles was the real buyer.38 With this change the Intelligencer became an active opponent of the convention; David Blackwell in his "prospectus," printed May 14, asserted that he would give his uniform opposition to the convention. And he did so.
The Illinois Republican and the Republican Advocate (later the Kaskaskia Republican) were less permanent ele- ments in the early newspaper field, and did little more than contribute to the campaign discussions of 1823-24. The Illinois Republican at Edwardsville was established by a Pennsylvanian named Miller, and his son. Their coming was opportune; a paper to oppose the Spectator was much desired, and a group of citizens, including Theophilus W. Smith, furnished some necessary money to aid the under- taking. From the beginning the paper favored the pro- slavery party; when the convention campaign opened, it passed into the hands of Thomas J. McGuire and Company, and became the organ of the convention party,39 with Smith as virtual editor, aided by William Kinney, West, and others. Smith was a smooth, graceful, and plausible writer. His articles were polished and of considerable literary merit, but he was not the equal of his rival, Hooper Warren. No other papers in the campaign fought at such close quarters, or with such direct personal animosity and bitterness as these two at Edwardsville. Yet the editors went only once out- side of their editorial columns and their offices to flay their opponents. Their pens were facile and forcible.
The Republican Advocate was established at Kaskaskia by Elias Kent Kane and Governor Reynolds, at first under
38 Washburne, Sketch of Governor Coles, 167.
An interesting sidelight is thrown on this transaction in Governor Edwards's message to the legislature in 1826, and in a letter to Henry I. Mills. See Edwards Papers, 270.
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the nominal editorship of Robert K. Fleming, the printer; in January, 1824, in the heat of the campaign in which the paper supported the convention party, it was transferred to William Orr. Orr renamed it Kaskaskia Republican in March, 1824, and continued the paper until early in 1825, but the collapse of his cause deprived him of most of his support. In reviving his journal in 1826 under the title of Illinois Reporter, Orr remarked philosophically that he had been "taught by experience that his course in the political field should not be permitted to transcend the limits of temperate remark," and added, with something further of philosophy, that "extreme violence in political discussions, or unrestrained vituperation of those with whom we cannot coincide in matters of opinion, should not be indulged in."
How much the newspapers affected the results of the campaign can hardly be estimated. Two out of the five were against the convention, and the convention was de- feated; but in three of the four counties in which the papers were published, the convention faction won. St. Clair County voted against the convention, 506 to 408, and the result has been credited very largely to the vigorous efforts of the Spectator; Fayette County returned 125 for to 12I against; in Gallatin, where Eddy made his timid stand, 597 for to 133 against showed the temper of the southeast section of the state; in Randolph 357 were for and 284 against the proposal.
The engine of the press finished the first period of its career under forced draft and high pressure, as it were. In the columns of these pioneer papers the early life of the state lies revealed frankly and realistically. The editors or contributors included nearly all the leaders in public life, and like the leaders, the papers were strongly partizan.
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But the partizanship was obvious and sincere; the earnest- ness with which either party advocated its cause is still refreshing; and in this earnestness with which the charge was made and repulsed and the countercharge brought forth, there are the simplicity and the strength of the pioneers of a great commonwealth. When the campaign was over the papers lost their strongest writers and much of their patron- age. One was discontinued; the others entered the next period weakened in character and in influence.
FROM 1824 TO 1840
The period from 1824 to 1840, although somewhat arbi- trarily limited, extends from the great convention contest to the most exciting presidential campaign, relative to news- paper activity, before 1860. It is also a formative period, in which almost every subsequent phenomenon of increase, congregation, and distribution of population was begun or indicated; and in which several types of periodicals were introduced.
In 1824 nearly the whole of the northern two-thirds of the state was included in five counties. The military bounty land tract was divided between Pike and Fulton; Sangamon, Fayette, and Edgar included their present territories and all that part of the state to the north of them and south of the Illinois river and the lower edge of Lake Michigan. By 1840, though fifteen counties were set apart subsequently, the county organization was practically what it is to- day. 40
The chief movement of population in the early part of the period was the rapid peopling of the valley of the Illinois river, of the prairies of the central part of the state, and of
40 Blue Book of the State of Illinois, 1905, pp. 414-430.
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the Fever river lead region in the vicinity of Galena.41 The greatest immigration into Central Illinois occurred in 1827 and 1828; from the end of the Black Hawk War until the financial disturbances in 1837 there was rapid growth along the Illinois river. Springfield, which was established in 1819, had a population numbering between six hundred and eight hundred in 1830; Jacksonville was of about the same size. The population of Sangamon County at that time was over forty-two thousand; that of the military tract was about thirteen thousand; Adams County was the most thickly settled district in that now populous area, and Quincy, the county town, contained perhaps two hundred persons. Peoria, whose first permanent settlers arrived in 1819, grew with great rapidity. Peoria County had been organ- ized in 1825 with a population of twelve hundred thirty- six; Galena counted a population of about two thousand, and the county more than twice that number. After 1834 the objective point for immigrants to Illinois was Chicago, where many stayed, and from which point the whole northern part of the state was peopled. This movement was checked by the financial depression beginning in 1837, but revived again in 1842.
Transportation facilities improved rapidly. Steam navi- gation on the Illinois river began in 1828, and on Lake Michi- gan in 1832. By 1830 nearly every important point in Illi- nois could be reached in a reasonably short time, since steam- boats departed almost daily for all Illinois points along the Mississippi, and others plied up and down the Illinois.
41 In the fall of 1825 the Western Emporium, published at Centerville, Indiana, estimated that between one hundred and one hundred twenty wagons loaded with families and effects passed through that town in fifteen days on their way to Illinois, chiefly to the northern parts. It believed that as many more had passed through Brooksville, Lawrenceburg, etc.
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Roads, also, were improved and extended.42 In 1824 a stage line led from St. Louis to Vincennes;43 by 1830 trips were made three times a week over this route, touching Belleville, Lebanon, Carlyle, Maysville, and Lawrenceville.44 A stage went once a week from St. Louis to Vandalia by way of Edwardsville and Greenville; and once a week to Galena by way of Edwardsville, Springfield, and Peoria. In 1836 a line of wagons was established between Chicago and Kan- kakee, where connection was made for the Illinois river; three years later a stage line operating between Chicago and Galena made the trip in two days.
Four newspapers survived the convention campaign, to connect the preceding with the period now being considered. To these were added one hundred and fifteen new journal- istic ventures, and thirty-one others that belong to a most difficult class, based on a sort of incorporeal hereditament ; papers with new names or old names, but related more or less mythically with preceding publications. An attempt to follow the wandering titles and peripatetic subscription lists of many of these early papers carries the investigator too near the psychical for any practical purposes of record. However, of these one hundred and sixty that had exist- ence in these sixteen years, but fifty-two remained for the census enumerator in 1840, several of which were but temporary campaign sheets. 45
42 The General Assembly in 1830 passed many laws establishing new roads, and shortening and improving others. Some of the more important highways authorized at that session were: One from the west bank of the Wabash opposite Vincennes, to Chicago, through Palestine, York, Darwin, Paris, and Danville; one from Springfield to Rock Island via Sangamontown, New Salem, Miller's Ferry, Havana, and Lewiston; one from Pekin to Vermillion County; and one from Alton to Galena,via Carrollton, Whitehall, Jacksonville, Bairdstown (sic), Rushville and Macomb.
Davidson and Stuvé, History of Illinois, 352.
44 Peck, Gazetteer of Illinois, 1837, p. 325, says that stages ran each way on alter- nate days over this route, and twice a week between Shawneetown and Carlyle. See also Mitchell, Illinois in 1837, p. 66.
45 See fourth paragraph subseq.
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The geographical distribution of the papers established in this period is of much significance. Whereas in the first decade no paper was projected in territory farther to the north than Vandalia, two years later the Miner's Journal appeared at Galena, two hundred miles northward; in the next year the Sangamo Spectator was established at Spring- field; Jacksonville followed in 1830 with the Western Observer, Alton in 1832 with the Spectator, and Chicago with the Democrat in 1833. Add to these the Chronicle and Bounty Land Advertiser, begun at Beardstown in 1833, the Enquirer, set up in the same year at Danville, on the eastern edge of the central belt of the state, the Illinois Champion and Peoria Herald in the north central section, 1834, and the Bounty Land Register, begun in 1835 at Quincy, on the extreme western side, and the limits of distribution have been reached. What remained now was but the filling in.of the spaces between these remote points, and much of this was accomplished within the period.
The filling-in process was urged to abnormal activity by the grand internal improvement scheme. No fewer than nineteen newspapers were established in towns along the Illinois river and the canal route, including Alton and ex- cluding Chicago, between 1836 and 1840. But as no part of the state was left out of this comprehensive scheme, papers grew, declined, and died in all parts of the state. Yet aside from the impetus of the improvement scheme there was the spirit of the time that made for recklessness. Immigration and speculation were abnormally augmented, settlers were pouring into the state, town sites were being laid out on all sorts of theories of future development. A contemporary editor has given an explanation of the newspaper situation that doubtless is true.
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"The establishment of newspapers appears to be a lead- ing characteristic of the present age. So great is the rage for getting up papers, that the patronage necessary for their maintenance is thought a secondary consideration, if, indeed, it is not deemed of too little consequence to elicit even a passing enquiry. Is there a town or city in embryo, with its plat designated, its streets and alleys, and public grounds marked out, having within its bounds some half a dozen houses, a tavern, a store, and a blacksmith shop ?- its crowded population and wealth and greatness are seen in perspective, and a press is wanted, the sacrifice of some poor printer is demanded, to magnify its beauties, extenuate its faults, transform its very evils into blessings, and give assurance to the world of, not what it is, but what it is to be. Is there a little village, with its political parties or factions in array ?- the one must have its paper to promulgate its doctrines and vindicate its rights; and anon the opposing party, having in their imagination great principles and im- portant interests at stake, must also have its organ through which it can be heard, that the encroachments of contending power may be stayed. Is there a wealthy and ambitious demagogue, grasping for office as the only means of obtain- ing a short-lived and perchance an unenviable distinction ? - the press is the great lever by which he is to consummate his wishes. Is there a lawyer, brief in years, brief in legal acquirements, with professional prospects briefless, the press is the fulcrum upon which his last hope for political prefer- ment is based - the all-powerful engine by which he is to elevate himself to the summit of his imaginary glory, to the highest goal of his ambitions,- and straight the learned Theban mounts the editorial tripod, and with more than
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