USA > Illinois > The era of the Civil War, 1848-1870 > Part 3
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44 Illinois Journal, November 13, 14, 1849; May 1, 10, 1854; October 9, 1855.
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THE ERA OF THE CIVIL WAR
in advance for further help.45 In 1850 the chief Swedish settlements were in Chicago, Rockford, Galesburg and Vic- toria in Knox county, Bishop Hill and Andover in Henry county, Lafayette in Stark county, Berlin, later Swedona in Mercer county, and dispersed throughout these northern coun- ties. Swedish churches were to be found in Rockford, Ando- ver, and in Chicago with congregations in Moline, Galesburg, and in other communities. A newspaper printed in the Swedish language, the Swedish Republican, was published at Galva in Henry county for over a year, but was removed to Chicago in 1857.46
The Bishop Hill colony five miles west of Galva was a settlement made in 1846 by hardy pioneers who left their native land with their leader, Eric Janson, to secure a religious toleration denied to them at home. The original settlement of 400 increased to 700 or 800 by the end of 1850, although over a hundred were lost in 1849, the cholera year, when sixty persons died in one week; the migration continued until 1854 by which time 1,000 Swedish exiles had chosen to join this colony. Here was another interesting experiment in communism. With a tract of 12,000 acres large scale agri- culture was successfully practiced; in 1860 the settlers raised 3,000 acres of broom corn, 2,000 acres of wheat and of corn, and 2,000 in mixed crops, besides a considerable acreage of hay and pasture. Besides the brick, leather products, and other materials needed for local consumption, they manufac- tured 5,000 dozens of brooms annually, and produced some famous table linens, towels, and other needlework articles from flax raised by the colony. The society attained its great- est economic prosperity in 1860, just before its dissolution and the repeal of its charter of incorporation. Its collapse was occasioned by internal dissension and a factionalism that in-
45 Chicago Democrat, January 10, 1848, July 14, 15, 1852, August 15, 1859; Chicago Daily Journal clipped in Illinois State Register, August 9, 1848 ; Chicago Press and Tribune, September 4, 1858; Robert H. Clarkson to W. H. Swift, October 1, 1849, Swift manuscripts. Many Norwegians were inclined out of a sense of superiority to resent being confused with the Swedes, whose special susceptibility to " ship fever " or cholera on the ocean trip, they declared arose from a want of cleanliness and from an addiction to strong liquor.
46 Illinois State Register, January 10, August 22, 1850; Chicago Daily Democratic Press, April 15, 1856.
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PASSING OF THE FRONTIER
creased until the community feature was abandoned in 1860 and 1861.47
The scattered English element in Illinois was promised an important accretion as a result of the building of the Illinois Central railroad. English capitalists interested in the Central first used every possible means to direct the attention of emi- grants to the lands of the company; as a result in 1859 a large body of English farmers and mechanics began to settle in companies along that road south of Centralia; meanwhile the agents of the largest English stockholders elaborated a plan for making such settlement more attractive. A little later in the same year steps were taken in London toward the organi- zation of the "Prairie Land and Emigration Company " with a capital of $2,500,000, the object of which was to purchase prairie land in Illinois and colonize it with English farmers. 48 Such inducements encouraged English emigrants until the Civil War began; by 1860 they had reached a total of 41,745.
The great works of internal improvement of the forties had brought vast hordes of brawny Irish to the Illinois prairies, many of whom took their place in the permanent population of the state. A Chicago Hibernian Benevolent Emigrant Society was organized in January, 1848, to encour- age and assist immigrants seeking locations in the west. The railroad construction work of the fifties now offered employ- ment to those still on the ground and attracted a new immi- gration, mainly of those unfortunates driven from home by the potato famine.49 The Irish remained to a large extent a restless floating population, little attracted by agricultural opportunities, but looking primarily to the cities for the essence of real life; in 1860 they constituted four times as large an element of the population of Chicago as of the agricultural regions of Illinois.
47 Chicago Democrat, August 2, 1850; DeBow's Review, 9:330; Chicago Daily Journal clipped in Rockford Forum, October 9, 1850; Chicago Press and Tribune, July 17, 1860; Rockford Register, November 24, 1860; Private Laws of 1853, P. 328-329; Kiner, History of Henry County, 638-645; Stoneberg, "The Bishop Hill Colony," ibid .; Mikkelson, The Bishop Hill Colony.
48 Belleville Advocate, April 16, 1859; Mound City Emporium, May 12, 1859; Our Constitution, May 14, August 6, 1859; Chicago Press and Tribune, May 17, August 5, 1859.
49 Gem of the Prairie, January 29, February 5, 1848; Illinois State Register, March 24, 1853.
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There seemed to be two strains, sometimes combined in the same individuals, in the Irish population of the state. There were on the one hand the brilliant idealists who sup- ported the cause of civil liberty and liberal institutions in all its forms and expressions, whether in the Irish struggle for independence or in the European contests for self-government. Their local and state Hibernian societies were important agencies for the expression of this high ideal as well as of the feeling of brotherhood among the Irish. Irish relief work was carried on, and men like Senator Shields held themselves in readiness to join in the redemption of their native land when the hour to strike should come.50
But to the people of Illinois the Irishman more often appeared in another guise. To them he was pictured as the noisy, quarrelsome seeker after excitement, who found it in the company of John Barleycorn, in bloody street brawls, and even in the lower depths of crime. When an overwhelming majority of the visitors at police court were repeatedly re- ported to be Irishmen, it was not surprising that the public should make such adverse deductions.51 The common prac- tice of contemporary journalists was reflected in the point raised by the Chicago Tribune, December 23, 1853: "Why do our police reports always average two representatives from 'Erin, the soft, green isle of the ocean,' to one from almost any other inhabitable land of the earth?
Why are the instigators and ringleaders of our riots and tumults, in nine cases out of ten, Irishmen?" There fol- lowed the report of a riot at La Salle and of the murder of a contractor by a set of Irishmen. The Tribune, aroused to the point of approving action under lynch law, declared: "Had the whole thirty-two prisoners that were taken been marched out and shot on the spot, as the citizens did the Driskells in Ogle County, some years ago, the public judgment would have sanctioned it at once."
A more careful analysis, however, revealed a situation that scarcely warranted such a superficial judgment. The railroad contractors were often shrewd schemers and hard
50 Aurora Beacon, September 14, 1848; Illinois Journal, January 22, 1849. 51 Chicago Democrat, December 17, 1849.
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PASSING OF THE FRONTIER
men who sought to impose upon the ignorant Irish laborers and to direct matters to their own advantage. Palpably unfair treatment was almost certain to arouse the temper of the hot- headed Irishman. As it was, however, thousands quietly sub- mitted to conditions upon the public works that brought death or ill health, " from exposure to miasmi, bad accommodation in camps and shanties, and from improper diet;" when sick- ness fell upon them they were discharged and turned loose upon the world.52 It is to be remembered, moreover, that the Irishmen who drew the fire of public criticism were largely members of the sturdy band of humble toilers, brutalized by the religious and political oppression and economic exploita- tion of their native Ireland and, in this land of opportunity which they had so eagerly sought, deprived of contact with the finer forces.
The German " forty-eighters," the unsuccessful revolution- ists of 1848, fled to America in a steady stream and were led to Illinois by Friedrich Hecker, the organizer of the revolt in Baden. Conditions continued favorable to a heavy emigra- tion of refugees from the political and economic oppressions of the fatherland. The German population of Illinois in 1860 was 130,804, with Chicago, Belleville, Galena, Quincy, Alton, Peoria, and Peru as the chosen places of settlement. This influx was directed to Illinois by the guidebooks of John Mason Peck and similar works. Charles L. Fleischman, United States consul at Stuttgart, prepared in 1850 to write an emigrant's guidebook exclusively on Illinois, having pre- viously written two general works.53
Early in 1854 a number of prominent Chicago business men enlisted their support in a movement in favor of a law to create the office of commissioner of emigration, whose prin- cipal duty it should be to travel through Germany for the purpose of directing the stream of German emigration to Illinois. The Illinois Staats-Zeitung, however, opposed the move as a sharp business transaction and a political maneuver in the interest of ambitious local politicians. Nothing devel- oped along this line; instead, taking their cue from the Irish,
52 Illinois State Register, December 22, 1853.
53 Charles L. Fleischman to French, March 20, 1850, French manuscripts.
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Chicago Germans organized a society for the protection of German immigrants arriving at that city and employed an agent to devote his time to the care of the new arrivals.54 Similar societies were organized, as the need for them was felt, at other points of German settlement and carried on an important relief work.
In this period a new center of German culture was devel- oping at Chicago. There the Teutonic immigrants created a set of social institutions in which the familiar atmosphere of the fatherland was transplanted. German Lutheran churches and parochial schools under Lutheran preachers-the only schoolmasters -had appeared at an early date to perpetuate their fundamental social traditions. Now the refinements which they had sorely missed in their new western home were enthusiastically added : a German theater which made brilliant the dramatic atmosphere of Chicago; an orchestra which built up a musical reputation for the city, and a Männerchor, in which the lusty "liedersingers" vied with each other in the attempt to produce a spirited ensemble. The German brass band, the German militia companies of black jäger rifles, of Washington rifles, of Washington grenadiers, and of Washing- ton light cavalry were features of many a gay procession. A German Odd Fellow lodge fostered the fraternal spirit among these settlers in true American style. Meantime other German settlements actuated by the same cultural impulse were acquir- ing the same institutions and stimulating the spiritual develop- ment away from frontier conditions.
There was much of an atmosphere of revolutionary democ- racy in these German circles. The forty-eighters were full of the failure of their cause. Many were downhearted, but others looked upon their residence in the United States as a training for future revolutionary attempts. In 1852 they invited Dr. Gottfried Kinkel, the German revolutionist, to include different Illinois groups in his tour of the country to collect funds for the German revolutionary committee which they hoped would soon strike another blow. This erstwhile professor of history and literature at Bonn was welcomed at
54 Chicago Daily Democratic Press, February 2, June 19, 1854, November 5, 1857; Free West, February 23, May 18, 1854.
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Chicago and Belleville with elaborate orations, and generous contributions were made to his fund.55
The hopelessness of the revolutionary cause, however, caused the German population in general to settle down into more conservative channels. The Turnverein was introduced into Illinois in 1851 with a company at Peoria and Chicago; Belleville and Springfield soon had their own German gym- nastic companies. The Northwestern Turnerbund held its annual meeting in 1858 at Belleville, and in the following year the United States Turner organization met in convention as the guests of the Chicago society. The social democratic atmosphere of this movement, however, had not been trans- planted to America; and the political significance of the move- ment was very slight. The meeting at Belleville was addressed by Friedrich Hecker of that city, one of the originators of the Turner movement in America ; his brilliant attack upon Doug- las and his plea for the republican party showed that American issues had replaced the problems of the fatherland in the minds of leading revolutionary exiles. In 1850, however, the centen- nial of Schiller's birth was commemorated in festivals at Chi- cago and Belleville which did much toward arousing a feeling for German nationality on a democratic basis.56
Rich as was the cultural atmosphere of their communities and content as they were with the surroundings they were able to create, these Germans could not confine their influence within these narrow barriers. Politically courted by both parties, their leaders took a prominent part in democratic politics and later transferred their allegiance to the new repub- lican movement. Gustave Koerner continued a prominent figure in the politics of Illinois; with him were associated men like Caspar Butz, a prominent Chicago politician; George Schneider, editor of the Illinois Staats-Zeitung, and one of the founders of the republican party of Illinois; Friedrich Hecker, a republican elector on the Fremont ticket in 1856; and George Bunsen, an early advocate of a public school system, and an important influence in the educational development of the state.
55 Koerner, Memoirs, 1: 576, 580; Bess, Eine populäre Geschichte der Stadt Peoria, 434.
56 Koerner, Memoirs, 2 : 45-50, 69.
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The German voters held the balance of power between the whig and democratic parties before 1856 and between the democratic and republican parties after that date. The demo- crats rewarded them by giving Koerner the lieutenant gover- norship in 1852, and the republicans in 1860 honored in the same way Francis Hoffman, a Chicago banker and a former whig. The Lutheran and Catholic clergy exercised a strong political influence upon their congregations; being conserva- tives like the rest of their profession, they were slower to see that they were acting " wickedly, and against God's Holy will, by their supporting the Democratic party." Those in the outlying towns of Washington and Clinton counties were a unit for Buchanan in 1856, but in 1860 their ranks were broken as the result of an aggressive campaign by republican agents.57
The German press of Illinois, firmly grounded in this decade with a daily in every important center, showed better than anything else that the Germans had turned their backs upon Europe and taken up the political issues of the state and nation. These papers were naturally democratic organs until the slavery issue led them into the new republican party. The Illinois Staats-Zeitung was established at Chicago in 1848 and, under the editorial direction of George Schneider and his asso- ciates, wielded an important influence. It became a daily in 1851. Other experiments to establish German papers in Chi- cago inevitably failed after a short struggle. This was true in other Illinois German centers where a single paper was successfully established, and other attempts to enter the field fell stillborn.
As thus these different racial elements began to make potent their distinctive contributions to the evolution of the prairie state, it became increasingly evident that the simple society of the frontier state was giving way to the complexity of a mature commonwealth.
57 William H. Pickering to J. Gillespie, July 20, 1860, Gillespie manuscripts.
II. THE COMING OF THE RAILROADS
D URING the decade preceding the war, the coming of the railroads revolutionized life on the prairies of Illinois. The advent of the "iron horse," his rapid multiplication, and his fiery plunges through the unsettled wildernesses that sepa- rated the river valleys, trampled under foot the trappings of the frontier state and furnished the power which produced industrial Illinois of today. There is romance in the story of how those changes were wrought; it is a wild and confused tale of lofty idealism smothered by lust for wealth and for power, of a spirit of public service buried in zeal for self- aggrandizement, of popular will compromised by factionalism and intrigue. It is the tale of human life in natural re- action to the complex economic institutions of modern society in which public welfare is at the mercy of men tempt- ed to confine their vision within the narrow horizon of self- interest.
The great need of the pioneer west had always been good transportation facilities to connect the sturdy farmer with an entrepôt in which to market his surplus and from which it might be transported to the agents of the ultimate consumer in the industrial centers in the east. The facilities of Illinois in 1848, however, were limited either to the use of muddy prairie roads by the mud wagon, the prairie schooner, the stage, and other wheeled vehicles, or to the navigation of river systems that networked the state. Neither of these methods had been brought up to a high state of efficiency: river improvement was a prime necessity, but the state treasury did not permit of expenditures in that field, and the federal government had been dispensing "pork" with considerable economy. The general assembly did continue to create state roads by legis- lation, laying them out by stakes in the prairie and blazes on the trees, but experience demonstrated that even a sovereign
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state could not legislate a mudhole into a turnpike. Attempts at road improvement by local authorities and by private cor- porations availed little.
Coincident with the revival of railroad agitation, the plank road fever seized Illinoisians.1 A general law was enacted in 1849, with later revisions to make easy the incorporation of plank road associations.2 Companies secured charters and ambitiously organized to give the cities of their state the advantages of improved transportation over "farmer's" or "poor man's roads." From a provoking indifference that prevailed in 1848, the farmers aroused themselves to a state of tremendous enthusiasm. Hundreds of plank roads were located, and stock was eagerly taken up. Chicago entered the field with the Southwestern plank road toward Naperville and the Northwestern road toward Elgin; in the first six months of only partial operation of the latter the toll receipts were so heavy that the road paid expenses and forty-two per cent on the money invested.3 Another project was that of building a road from the southern limits of the city to the north line of Will county; $53,000 of stock was subscribed on the first day, and three months later teams were rattling over the first mile and a half.4 So it was all over the state. A traveler up the Illinois river reported almost every town and landing " engaged in constructing plank roads to the inte- rior. Florence is building a road to Griggsville and Pitts- field-Beardstown to Virginia - Frederic to Rushville and Macomb- Copperas Creek to Canton -Liverpool to Can- ton, also Pekin to Bloomington. Peoria has several in con- templation. So also has Peru, La Salle and Ottawa. The plank road fever fully keeps pace with the railroad excite- ment." 5 By the middle of 1851, six hundred miles of plank road were said to have been built or laid out; at a cost of approximately $15,000 a mile, this involved an investment of nearly a million dollars. While mere child's play compared
1 Joliet Signal, April 10, 1849; Illinois State Register, January 24, 1850; Chicago Democrat, July 31, 1850.
2 I Laws of 1849, p. 138-146; Laws of 1851, p. 11-12, 15-18, 146-147.
3 Prairie Farmer, July, 1850; Illinois State Register, January 31, 1850.
4 Chicago Daily Journal, May 28, 1850.
5 Chicago Tribune clipped in Illinois State Register, March 13, 1851.
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with the difficulty and expense of railroad construction or with the facilities thereby afforded, these projects brought immediate results in the improvement of transportation conditions.
More significant by far was the completion of the Illinois and Michigan canal in the spring of 1848. This important connection between the Illinois valley and the Great Lakes was the dream-child of the prophets of the pioneer west, and its achievement meant the fulfillment of a long cherished vision. Heavy traffic began immediately, and a line of packets went into regular operation between Chicago and Peru. In the 180 days of navigation in that season nearly $88,000 was collected in tolls from 162 licensed boats on the canal. Navi- gation opened again in April, 1849; and in spite of complaints of mismanagement made by Chicago commercial interests,6 receipts averaged nearly fifty per cent more than the previous season. By 1850 and 1851 the limits of the canal were so nearly reached that it was necessary to restrict its use to boats drawing no more than four feet and three inches. Though boats carrying nearly six thousand bushels of corn passed through the canal, the suggestion was made that it ought to be enlarged into a ship canal navigable by steamers of three to five hundred tons.
As a result of the canal traffic the entire upper river valley experienced a tremendous awakening. Lockport became a bustling town with large freighting and boat-building inter- ests; and Joliet, Ottawa, La Salle, and Peru shared in the general prosperity. To Chicago, however, went the special advantages of the trade that followed the new route. The contents of the enormous granaries on the banks of the Illinois, which previously had no other outlet than the Mississippi river, now took advantage of cheap transportation by way of the canal. Unless a clear margin of from five to eight cents a bushel prevailed in favor of St. Louis, corn almost invari- ably took the cheaper northern route; and Chicago received the huge profits of the middlemen.7 It was not evident, how-
6 Ibid., July 3, 1849; Chicago Daily Journal, April 15, 16, 1851.
7 St. Louis Intelligencer clipped in Illinois State Register, April 1, 1852; ibid., April 18, 1852.
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ever, that the canal could endure the competition of parallel- ing railroad lines.8
A natural complement to this development was the grow- ing importance of Chicago as a lake port. In 1850 a fleet of 145 sail and four steamers, totalling 20,637 tons, was registered in the district of Chicago. Inasmuch as the com- mercial supremacy of that port depended not upon the rail- roads but upon the superiority of its lake marine for the economical interchange of products with the east, energetic efforts were made to maintain the advantage even after the building of the trunk roads opened a sharp competition. Before the coming of the railroads, the various companies operating steamships on the lakes had in 1848 and 1849 taken advantage of the favorable situation to fix uniform and increased rates. Such arrangements could not hold later, however, when it was seen that only by low freight rates could there be a steady increase in the tonnage of lake commerce. A policy was pursued of furnishing more and more extensive accommodations, which finally led to the consideration of a ship canal for direct trade with Europe by way of Georgian Bay to Lake Ontario.9
One essential to extensive water transportation was the matter of river and harbor improvement; regardless of party affiliations, federal aid was invoked by Chicagoans and citizens of northern Illinois. A river and harbor convention was held at Chicago in July, 1847, which declared the constitutional authority of congress over improvements of a national char- acter; the Great Lakes, and the Ohio and Mississippi rivers were designated as within the purview of congressional powers. Since financial embarrassment prevented the state itself from undertaking internal improvements, a northwestern Illinois river convention at Peoria in November, 1851, unanimously urged the national government to assume the expense of remov- ing the obstacles to navigation from the Illinois river. Public sentiment in the west became too strong on this subject to brook the opposition of democratic leaders, who diplomatically
8 See letters to W. H. Swift in the Swift manuscripts.
9 Chicago Democrat, April 20, May 8, 1848; September 17, 1849; Chicago Daily Democratic Press, October 17, 1855.
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