USA > Illinois > The era of the Civil War, 1848-1870 > Part 20
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SCHUYLER
DE WITT
- LOGAN
CHAMPAION - VERMILION
MENARD
. ADAMS
BROWNIE -CLASS
PLATT
MACON
SANGAMON
- DOUGLAS
MORGAN
EDOAR
PIKE
SCOTT
CHRISTIAN
1 COLES
CUMBERLAND POUR
CALHOUN
JERSEY
FAYETTE EFFINGHAM
JASPER
CRAWFORD
BOND
MADISON
Democratic (Douglas)
47%
Republican
(Lincoln) 51%
WASHINOTON
JEFFERSON
MONROELL
5
HAMILTON
WHITE
FRANKLIN
0
65-75%
7
JACKSON
SALANE
TILLLAMSON
7
7
55-65 %
BARDIN
9
UTION
JOHNSON
POPE
Less than 55%
MABSAC
Union (Bell) over 5%
8
Democratic (Breckin- ridge) over 5%
MARION
RICHLANDL
CLINTON
ST CLAIR
WAYNE
EDWARDE
WWABASH
Over 75 %
RANDOLPH!
PERRY
7
RTMOULTRIE
GREENE
SHELBY
MACOUPIN MONTGOMERY
Presidential Election 1860
LAWRENCE
CLAY
ADN PAGE
KENDALL
WILL
KANKAKEE
LIVINGSTON
FORD
BOONE
CALLATION
201
THE ELECTION OF 1860
lishers of the Franklin Democrat at Benton to sell out at a ruinous sacrifice, because they had hauled down the Douglas and Johnson banner and were about to raise the standard of Lincoln and Hamlin.48 Voters of republican leanings were reminded that schoolmasters had been dismissed for voting for Fremont in 1856; clergymen, antislavery propagandists, were threatened with an investment in the martyr's garb-tar and feathers; the Reverend Mr. Ferree of Lebanon was pelted with eggs on the streets of Cairo while making a republican speech.49 In spite of everything, however, the conversion of a native occasionally took place, while an influx of intelligent immigration from the eastern states continued to carry the leaven of republican sentiment into "dough-faced" Egypt.50
48 See statement of A. Sellers, Jr., and G. Sellers, in Illinois State Journal, September 20, 1860. A number of new republican papers made their appear- ance in the southern portion of the state following Lincoln's nomination. Chicago Press and Tribune, June 11, 1860. Thomas H. Dawson sold out the Louisville [Illinois] Democrat to undertake the publication of a republican paper and the Mt. Carmel Register took the Lincoln train.
49 Golconda Herald, March 9, clipped in Chicago Press and Tribune, April 16, 1860; Cairo Gazette, July 26, 1860.
50 B. L. Wiley to Trumbull, January 10, 1860, Trumbull manuscripts ; Chicago Press and Tribune, October 16, 1860.
IX. THE GROWING PAINS OF SOCIETY
A N IMPERATIVE need in the development of Illinois was labor. Glowing words of welcome met the incoming settler or toiler; he was assured that " the product of labor is the only real wealth," and lecturers traveled about discussing " the dignity of labor." Yet the worker found himself allotted as a wage for eleven or twelve hours a day a sum which usually allowed him only to eke out a frugal existence and to prosper only barring misfortune or unemployment. The great mass of unskilled labor was paid at the rate of seventy-five cents a day in 1850, and this wage rose to a dollar and five cents average by the end of the decade. Immigrants from foreign countries sometimes found it difficult to find remuneration even at that rate, and in 1860 they constituted three-fourths of the paupers of the state. The more exclusive field of skilled labor, though it paid rather better than this, was closed to many youths by four and five year periods of apprenticeship.1
With uncertain periods of employment on works of internal improvement, with many engaged in seasonal occupations, the growing cities and towns of Illinois found themselves con- fronted with a new problem of poverty. Unemployment in a period of high prices brought the helpless, unorganized work- ers and their families to dire straits-and there were many such periods. Even the ordinary winter involved a severe strain upon the workers' finances; the unorganized poor relief of that day was ill prepared to cope with these demands. The winter of 1854, with a financial depression following a bad drought that sent wheat up to $1.40 a bushel retail, compelled the "friends of the poor" in the cities to recognize the prob-
1 Chicago Democrat, May 17, 1848, April 9, 1849. According to the 1848 report of the commissioners of patents, wages of mechanics and laborers were $8 to $to a week in central and southern Illinois and $15 to $20 in the northern section. Illinois State Register, March 10, 1848. At the same time serving maids received a dollar a week and, no longer content to possess a single calico dress, were reputed recklessly extravagant. Ibid., August 18, 1848.
202
203
THE GROWING PAINS OF SOCIETY
lem and devise alleviative measures. Meanwhile the editor of the Chicago Democrat acutely analyzed the cause : " Reduction of the Wages of Labor - High Prices - High Rents, &c, &c." In the next two winters there was only the normal problem of poverty; but 1857, the panic year, brought a general state of unemployment. In the midst of plenty, with barns and storehouses full of grains and foodstuffs held back because of the low prices, twenty thousand workers in Chicago were with- out the usual means of earning a livelihood and with their dependents faced actual starvation; the other cities of the state confronted a similar problem. Though municipal works were advocated, municipal bakeries and soup-houses suggested, and the sale of foodstuffs at cost by the city administration was urged, little effective relief was rendered; and the workers struggled through the winter as best they could. Unemploy- ment continued well into the spring. In June there was not nearly enough work on the streets of Chicago at seventy-five cents a day for two days a week to supply the demand; it was therefore decided to reduce the wage to fifty cents and put one-third more men into the city's service.2
Reformers who confronted these conditions usually found the explanation of poverty in the new difficulty of securing cheap or free land for the potential settler, who was there- fore driven to the cities to seek a livelihood. Land reform, accordingly, was the cure-all put forward for the eco- nomic ills of the day.3 Protection from exploitation by ruthless capitalists would come, they held, only when free homesteads were placed at the disposal of all would-be tillers of the soil.
Simultaneously with the appearance of a serious problem of poverty, the newspapers chronicled a great wave of crime in the larger cities of the state. The old offenses of the fron- tier were easily separated from these new developments ; horse- stealing in the rural districts continued to arouse vigilance
2 The tendency was to shift the responsibility for poor relief from the county to the town or township. Laws of 1851, p. 183-184, 194-195; Laws of 1852, p. 113; Laws of 1853, p. 261-262, 275-277, 464-465; Alton Weekly Courier, December 7, 1854; Alton Courier, December 12, 29, 1854, January 11, 25, 1855; Belleville Advocate, February 21, 1855; Chicago Weekly Democrat, February 10, 1855; Rockford Register, July 19, 1858.
3 See pages 89-90.
204
THE ERA OF THE CIVIL WAR
committees which often dispensed lynch law to the thief as fearlessly as they applied a coat of tar and feathers to the violator of the community standard of morality.+ These were not the urban crimes, however, the steady increase of which had been noticed in the cities. Various explanations for such growth had been given: some held that it was not real but merely the apparent result of improved facilities for knowing the evil transactions of society; some attributed it to the moral laxity that prevailed as a result of the growing inclination toward extravagance and dissipation; but an occasional critic soberly commented : "At the commencement of winter, espe- cially in the large cities, there is the prospect of more suffering and poverty, and crime is more rife, than at other seasons of the year. And it is observable, that most of the criminal acts now-a-days are committed in the cities."5 In the closing years of the decade the alarming increase of crime seemed to be accountable on no other basis.
Even the humble sociological observer of that day was able to discern some connection between this disorderly atmos- phere of the cities and the "demon drink." Intemperance was a prevailing feature of community life. Grogshops and saloons were licensed as fast as applications were made; Belle- ville, a city of 4,000, had forty licensed retail liquor establish- ments with "probably as many more unlicensed." The danger of such conditions had already been realized in the more set- tled states of the east; a temperance movement swept over New England, producing the "Maine law" brand of temper- ance, a crusade for total legislative prohibition on alcoholic liquors. Appearing just when the objectivity of the frontier was yielding to the subjective analysis of more intensive civili- zation, it is not surprising that the movement now spread to the states of the Mississippi valley and had a profound sig-
4 Horse-thief detecting societies were still common in certain parts of the state. See notice of a meeting in 1852 of the Brighton society in Printer's Scrap Book.
5 Belleville Democrat, December 11, 1858. See editorials on the increase of crime in the Rockford Register, May 16, 1857; Chicago Daily Times, August 28, 1857; Belleville Democrat, January 23, 1858 ; Chicago Democrat, August 13, 1859; Urbana Clarion, October 29, 1859. In the lists of crime, thefts of food and clothing were quite common; many were juvenile offenders especially in the cases of food stealing.
THE GROWING PAINS OF SOCIETY 205
nificance in Illinois life and politics. In 1849 John Hawkins, the father of the "Washingtonian " temperance movement, appeared in Chicago; in an address on the necessity of temper- ance effort in that city, he declared that after having carefully inspected the situation in the Illinois metropolis he could frankly state that in all his tours over the United States he had never seen a city or town which seemed so much like one universal grogshop as Chicago. A little later considerable interest was aroused by the temperance lectures of James E. Vinton of New York, known as the " Mohawk Dutchman." These men found a fertile field for their evangels and spread their propa- ganda throughout the state.6
Up to the year 1847 temperance agitation in Illinois had been feeble and unpopular. Small temperance groups, chiefly offshoots of the New England movement, had worked in obscurity in Chicago, Springfield, Jacksonville, and other points. In November, 1845, the Sons of Temperance, a secret ritualistic organization pledging its members to the practice of temperance, entered the state. Two years later when a state organization was formed there were only six divisions in Illinois; but before another six months 91 units had been chartered with a membership of 3,000, with new divisions rapidly forming. Their processions in the regalia of the order and their public exercises became a feature of all legal holiday celebrations. It was not long before temperance became "the order of the day;" a temperance paper, the Illinois Organ, was established, subsidiary organizations were formed-a "Temple of Honor" for the especially fervent Sons of Tem- perance, the Cadets of Temperance for the younger genera- tion; and for zealous sisters local "Ladies Temperance Unions" and "Daughters of Temperance." In the course of four years of activity in the state the Sons of Temperance recruited only four thousand members; in the year of 1849- 1850, however, 6,626 were enrolled, while the number of divisions rose to over 270. Although this pace could not
6 Belleville Advocate, June 13, 1850; Western Citizen, August 28, 1849. Chicago had at that time 275 authorized drinking establishments, one for every sixty inhabitants; see Chicago Democrat clipped in Illinois Journal, July 21, 1849; Alton Telegraph, December 28, 1849; Ottawa Free Trader, October 19, 1850, March 8, 1851; Illinois State Register, October 14, 1852.
206
THE ERA OF THE CIVIL WAR
be maintained, steady progress continued in the years that followed.7
It is to be remembered that the temperance cause was not built up into a single organization; various societies carried on their respective lines of activity. The churches often under- took independent campaigns against intemperance; the Cath- olics had their Sons of Temperance order and total abstinence societies. A good deal of temperance activity was carried on without formal and permanent organization; mass meeting and temperance conventions were assembled with remarkable ease. General state temperance union meetings were held regularly each year and a national convention at Chicago on November 18, 1857.
The goal of the Sons of Temperance and similar societies was too vague for the more aggressive temperance advocates. Moral suasion, the approved method, did not promise entire reform and was thus unsatisfactory to those who wanted a complete purification of society. Many urged, therefore, that some form of political action ought to be undertaken which would strike at the root of the evil. The relative desirability of a high license system, with its " respectable " grog aristoc- racy working behind cut glass and mahogany cases, and of a low rate, producing a democratic system of bunghole dispens- ing "doggeries," was discussed by certain temperance forces, while others argued for the entire prohibition of liquor selling. The license system itself was scrutinized and attacked; the reformers pointed out countless infractions of the license laws both by the licensed dealers and by their unauthorized com- petitors. A vigilance committee in Ottawa kept a careful eye on the grogshops in the hope that it might eventually expel
7 Gem of the Prairie, February 19, 1848; Quincy Whig, April 19, 1848; Illinois Organ, July 1, 1848, September 21, 1850. The movement now attracted favorable attention. "This institution bids fair to become one of the most efficient engines of social improvement ever devised by man, and all such as desire the amelioration of the condition of the human race, will not long with- hold from it their aid and influence," was the commendation of the editor of the Illinois State Register, October 22, 1847. Its political rival, the Journal, also undertook to point out the advantages of the movement and commended the rescue work carried on by the Sons of Temperance. Illinois Journal, August 7, 1850. List of the 272 divisions on June 1, 1850, Printer's Scrap Book. Illinois State Register, October 22, November 19, 1847, February 11, 1848, August 1, 1850; Ottawa Free Trader, May 3, 1851; Chicago Democrat, May 8, 1851; Beardstown Gazette, March 31, 1852; Alton Courier, October 29, 1853.
THE GROWING PAINS OF SOCIETY 207
every rumseller from town.8 The no-license forces finally gathered strength to carry the elections in Quincy, Rockford, and Springfield in the spring of 1850 and barely lost in Ottawa.
Many, however, for various reasons desired general state wide action. A cry arose for the complete banishment of the liquor dealer from the state. So much strength was displayed by the temperance forces that the legislature in January, 1851 abolished the existing license law and prohibited the selling or giving away of spirituous liquors in less quantity than one quart; this law was expected to pacify temperance advocates, while the liquor forces were shrewd enough to see the impos- sibility of enforcement. The law justified the forecast and became immediately an absolute nullity until its repeal and the substitution of the license system in February, 1853.9
Disillusioned by this development, the temperance forces now took up Maine law prohibition, which was being vigorously agitated throughout the middle west. Hard-headed business men who had at first eyed it with suspicion as the propaganda of the traveling tract peddler and the would-be reformer, iden- tified with all the incipient isms of the day, now came to look upon it as a force that might work incalculable good. As the Maine law came to be regarded as a preventive scheme more desirable than legislative interference in the field of morals and religion, the temperance movement underwent rapid recon- struction. Its most aggressive expression was now found in a newly created system of Maine law alliances with township and county divisions and an active state organization. By the beginning of 1854 forecasts were made that two-thirds of the voters of the state would be members of the different alliances and the enactment of the Maine law was regarded as a settled fact.10
A more careful analysis revealed the fact that the strength of this movement lay in the northern counties in the old New England districts; neither Egypt where, according to its
8 Ottarra Free Trader, June 8, 1850.
9 Laws of 1851, p. 18-19; Laws of 1853, P. 91-92, 127; Belleville Advocate, January 30, 1851 ; Illinois Organ, February 1, 1851; Western Citizen, February II, 1851.
10 Joliet Signal, March 9, 1852; Alton Courier, September 16, 1853; Peru Daily Chronicle, February 14, 1854.
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THE ERA OF THE CIVIL WAR
spokesman, "the use of intoxicating drinks seems more natu- ral than the use of water," 11 nor the democratic strongholds in the north were effectively organized for the cause. Peti- tions, however, poured into the legislature from all sides requesting prohibition legislation. When a special committee in February, 1853, reported adversely upon a petition with twenty-six thousand signatures which had been referred to it, only greater activity was aroused among the Maine law forces. When in the session of 1854 the general assembly again ignored the demand that the Maine law question be submitted to the people, the temperance forces entered the field of state politics with a grim determination. Previous to this the most significant political action of the temperance forces was the canvass made by them in Chicago in the municipal election of 1852. Placing a city ticket in the field, they conducted an active canvass and ran second in the field of four mayoralty candi- dates, in spite of the fact that their original candidate for mayor was induced to leave the field. The contest was again attempted in 1854 with even greater success.12
Up to this time the great political stumblingblock for the temperance forces had been the democratic party. The Spring- field machine was strongly opposed to the temperance propa- ganda and inclined to favor making it a party issue, inasmuch as nearly every whig paper in the state was out for temper- ance; 13 the democratic party had thereby acquired the nick- name of "whisky party." There were democrats, however, who saw the evil consequences of the dictation that came from Springfield; they saw that the temperance issue had already counted subtly against them in county, legislative, and even congressional elections; this rebellious spirit helped to feed the anti-Nebraska revolt of 1854. In several districts, where the democratic party split over the temperance issue, inde- pendent temperance democratic candidates were placed in the field.
11 Cairo Weekly Times and Delta, February 3, 1858.
12 Aurora Guardian, January 19, February 23, 1853. The Illinois Central refused to transport spirituous liquors over any part of its seven hundred miles of railroad. Belleville Advocate, August 17, 1853; Chicago Democrat, February 9 to March 3, 1852; Free West, February 9, March 9, 1854.
13 Alton Courier, November 18, 1853.
THE GROWING PAINS OF SOCIETY 209
Temperance agitation at this time found an ally in the antislavery extension propaganda - the enemy of slavery the natural foe of rum. Some even declared that the Nebraska question was of no greater importance than that of the Maine law; in the northern section, temperance conventions nomi- nated the congressional and legislative candidates put forward by the new republican movement.14
The anti-Nebraska victory of 1854 was, therefore, more than an anti-Nebraska victory, it was a reform triumph, a temperance victory. The new legislature was a strong anti- Nebraska temperance body, anxious to secure the enactment of the Maine law. The opponents of prohibition hoping to save themselves from certain defeat immediately suggested that any legislation ought to be submitted to the people for ratification. Finally, however, the temperance advocates were able to push to enactment a somewhat ambiguous measure for total prohibition; it provided for a popular referendum, at a special election on the first Monday in June, 1855.15
Thereupon an exciting three months' contest began between the Maine law and anti-prohibition forces. Both sides put their full strength into the field. Temperance workers stumped the state, copies of their organs were strewn broadcast, their organizations conducted a systematic campaign with the sup- port of a majority of the regular newspapers. But the oppo- sition revealed strength that was scarcely in accordance with calculations. They used to advantage both the fact that the Maine law had not been successful in the New England states that had given it a trial and that real temperance did not involve prohibition. Morality on compulsion was decried and the revolutionary interference with personal liberty that the law involved, while the farmer was reminded that the law would have a tendency to destroy the market and lower the price of corn. These arguments were used with telling effect in Egypt, in the German stronghold around Belleville, and
14 The Free West, the antislavery organ, was one of the strongest tem- perance journals in the state. Aurora Guardian, September 14, October 19, 1854; Canton Weekly Register, October 11, 1854; Free West, October 5, 1854. 15 Alton Courier, November 20, 23, 1854. Thomas J. Turner, the new speaker, was a "fiery liquor prohibitionist" as well as an "uncompromising abolitionist." St. Clair Tribune, January 13, 1855; Laws of 1855, P. 3-30.
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THE ERA OF THE CIVIL WAR
among the Germans and Irish of Chicago, where some serious riots took place on April 21 and 22, 1855. Anti-prohibitionist papers were started in Chicago and Belleville, and the liquor dealers of Chicago subscribed a large fund with which to fight ratification. As a result the returns of the heaviest vote ever cast in the state shattered the hopes of the overconfident tem- perance forces. The northern counties lived up to expectations, but their "light" was smothered in what was called by them the "moral and intellectual darkness" of southern Illinois.16
This defeat, followed by the general shift of interest to the slavery controversy, took the wind out of the sails of the state wide temperance movement. Local eddies, however, made possible the adoption of prohibition ordinances in various towns and cities. Some victories had already been won in this field. Jacksonville, always a strong temperance center, passed a pro- hibition ordinance which was tested in the courts and resulted in a decision by the state supreme court in favor of local option without legislative authorization. Springfield had already en- acted a prohibition ordinance in 1854; Ottawa, Rockford, Aurora, Joliet, Canton, Macomb, Princeton, and other cities also gave it a trial. All Winnebago county became dry terri- tory.17 But the general unwillingness to assume responsibility for law enforcement permitted first a stealthy evasion of these ordinances and later complete and open free trade in every- thing intoxicating with the result that public opinion fell back upon the old license system, under which the old evils continued unabated. Chicago, with some eight hundred liquor dealers organized to defend the traffic, never got any farther than a strict license ordinance. Gradually by the end of the decade, a reaction set in which relegated the cause of temperance into the dim background. Temperance societies were no longer
16 Koerner, Memoirs, I : 622-623 ; Illinois Journal, April 22, 26, 1855; Aurora Beacon, April 26, 1855; Aurora Guardian, June 14, 1855. The majority against prohibition was 14,447, Illinois election statistics manuscripts ; cf. Ottawa Weekly Republican, July 7, 1855. The banner county was Winnebago with a vote of 2,163 to 363 for prohibition. The Germans of Chicago held a procession and meeting in celebration of the defeat of the liquor law. Chicago Weekly Demo- crat, July 7, 1855.
17 Aurora Guardian, May 4, 1854; Rockford Register, April 9, 1859. Even villages in southern Illinois, including Carlinville, Jonesboro, Carbondale, and Metropolis, caught the contagion and experimented with prohibition. See Central Illinois Gazette, June 22, 1859; Quincy Whig, July 17, 1854.
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THE GROWING PAINS OF SOCIETY
heard of; even the "Sons" appeared to have left the field. The churches, formerly silent partners in the temperance move- ment, found themselves unable to revive interest in the lost cause. 18
Throughout the struggle by the temperance forces for effective legal action, the more fanatical agitators now and again had recourse to mob action. Many a cask of liquor was absorbed by the thirsty soil when a storehouse was quietly entered and holes were bored into the containers to drain them of their contents. In other instances the work was done boldly and openly; "liquor riots" repeatedly took place in which bands of leading citizens attacked the hated groggeries, de- stroyed the liquor found on the premises, and threatened the proprietors with personal violence if they did not choose a more honorable calling. Inasmuch as there was a disposition to deplore such fanaticism, however, this work was often left for enraged feminine victims of the liquor traffic. Many an unnamed Carrie Nation came forward to lead her band of followers in a destructive assault upon the offending whisky shops; armed with hatchets, rolling pins, broomsticks, kitchen knives, and fire shovels, they routed the enemy, leaving empty barrels and broken glasses and decanters to decorate the streets. 19 The temperance forces generally extended their approval to such raids regardless of whether havoc was done to the property of licensed dealers or to illicit violators of prohibitory ordinances. This aggressive work of the women attracted more attention than their active and valuable services in the regularly organized temperance movement.
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