USA > Illinois > The era of the Civil War, 1848-1870 > Part 5
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August 1, 1852, the cars made their entrance into Rockford amid the firing of cannon and ringing of bells, while on the fourth of September, 1853, the road was opened to Freeport, 125 miles west of Chicago. This was for a time the western terminus, the Illinois Central being used to cover the remaining fifty miles to Galena. With the completion of branches to the Wisconsin line from Elgin and Belvidere, the Galena and Chicago was ambitious enough to project an air line across the state to Fulton on the Mississippi; this was over half com- pleted by the end of 1853, and by the beginning of 1856 it went into complete operation furnishing through service as the shortest line between Chicago and the Mississippi. The early operations of the road were very extensive and profitable, with net earnings varying from ten to twenty per cent. Such earnings in 1849 on less than twenty miles of road were $25,000. Dividends of ten per cent and eight per cent were declared in February and October, 1850. The road soon paid a higher percentage to stockholders than any road in the union, with semiannual dividends of from eight to twelve per cent.
Another early Chicago connection was the Aurora branch or Chicago and Aurora railroad, chartered in 1849. It used the Galena and Chicago track for thirty-three miles, while the remaining ten miles down the Fox river valley to Aurora it completed in 1850. Books were then opened for stock to continue it forty-three miles farther to Mendota on the pro- jected Galena branch of the Illinois Central. This was com- pleted in the fall of 1853.
By this time stable foundations had been laid for the Rock Island and Chicago, originally the Peru and Rock Island. Work was commenced in the fall of 1851; 34 a year later the line was opened to Joliet; in February, 1853, the rails were laid to Ottawa, and the road was hurried westward at a rate of nearly a mile a day, progressing more rapidly than any railroad in the state. On February 22, 1854, the completion of the road was celebrated with pomp and ceremony at Rock Island, for this made the first continuous connection of the Great Lakes with the Mississippi. Steamship connections with St. Louis and St. Paul were immediately established, and a
34 Ottawa Free Trader, October 4, 1851.
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bridge built across the river to tap the central Iowa country.35
During these years the Illinois Central was making rapid progress. The surveys were completed by the beginning of 1852 and the work was promptly put under contract; a force of 10,000 laborers prosecuted the work with vigor from the terminal points toward the center. By the end of 1853, 175 miles of track had been laid; the Chicago branch was opened to Urbana in midsummer of the following year; on the first of January, 1855, all the main line and most of the Galena and Chicago branches were in operation. Connections with other lines enabled the company to open through passenger and freight service, although the formal laying of the last rail and the driving of the last spike did not take place until September 27, 1856.36 With additional improvements the Illinois Central became almost immediately the best built and equipped railroad in the west.
The Springfield and Alton railroad, another north and south line authorized in February, 1847, began operations in the middle of 1850. In September, 1852, through trains were running from Springfield to Alton, where they connected with fast steamers for St. Louis, making the total distance in four hours. Before that time an extension to Chicago had been planned; and the general assembly on June 19, 1852, changed the name to Chicago and Mississippi Railroad Company. On October 18, 1853, the road was completed to Normal; and the first communication by railroad from New York City to the Mississippi river was established by way of the Chicago and Rock Island to La Salle, and from there to Normal by the Illinois Central. Then, in the flowery language of the rail- road celebration after-dinner orator, the iron horse that sipped his morning draught from the crystal waters of Lake Michi- gan could slake his evening thirst upon the banks of the Mis- sissippi. By October, 1854, with the complete installation of its own train service, the "Alton" road had opened another through connection between the Father of Waters and the
35 This bridge became a subject of serious controversy with the federal government, incited in part by rival St. Louis interests.
36 Chicago Daily Democratic Press, October 2, 1856.
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Great Lakes. Before 1860 a railroad extension from Alton to St. Louis was completed.
The downstate interests were engaged in converting their own cross-state projects from mere paper schemes into sub- stantial railroad lines. The neglected Northern Cross line, the sole railroad remnant of the internal improvement orgy of 1837, was transferred to a private company and became known either as the Springfield and Meredosia, or Sangamon and Morgan railroad; in 1853, however, the legislature changed the name to the Illinois Great Western, and in 1860 it became a part of the Toledo, Wabash, and Great Western. This road was overhauled in 1848 and opened for regular passenger service to Naples in the summer of 1849. For a time energies were concentrated on securing a federal land grant to aid its completion across the state. In 1853 the eastern extension was brought to within a dozen miles of Decatur; the track was slowly carried forward until in 1857 the Indiana state line was reached, putting into operation 174 miles of road. The connection across the state, however, was not completed until 1858.
The Central Military Tract railroad was built in 1854 and formed an extension of the Aurora branch railroad from their common junction with the Illinois Central at Mendota to Galesburg where it connected with the Quincy and Gales- burg branch of the Northern Cross railroad. In 1856 the Central Military Tract was consolidated with the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy railroad, which also secured the North- ern Cross line from Galesburg to Quincy. The Peoria and Oquawka railroad, incorporated to carry out the project of a great central railroad, was slowly carried forward in the period from 1853 to 1857.
The railroad problem of southern Illinois was complicated by rival cross-state enterprises. Alton and the backers of "state policy" continued to fight the St. Louis interests in their alliance with the rival land speculators, and the advocates of more southerly routes. The "state policy" forces had held their own down to 1850, although their opponents could match their professions of principle. The latter championed as true liberal "state policy" the privilege of railroad construction
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for every part of the state where the people were willing to undertake the enterprise and supply the capital.37 Men like Governor French, Governor Matteson, Ben Bond, Bissell, and Koerner zealously pleaded for a free field for all enterprises; and Douglas was induced to go on record as in favor of a free field for cross-state lines. 38 The rival factions accordingly marshalled their forces in railroad conventions. The contest became so keen that even political issues were at times subord- inated to the railroad question; a bipartisan combination at Alton supported "state policy" legislative candidates while elsewhere politics were sacrificed to the hopes of the backers of the roads.
The "railroad war" continued to be waged in each suc- cessive session of the legislature. Alton interests back of the Terre Haute and Alton were especially zealous in their hos- tility toward the Atlantic and Mississippi line, as it prepared for an aggressive campaign under the presidency of Colonel John Brough. In spite of a powerful backing, however, Brough's road repeatedly met with defeat even after the Ohio and Mississippi railroad from Vincennes to Illinoistown secured legislative sanction on February 12, 1851. In 1853 the assembly granted charters for enterprises totalling several thousand miles of railroad, but rejected the bill for the "Brough road" and tabled a resolution in favor of a general railroad law.39 The authorization of the Vincennes road placed an additional obstacle in the way of the Atlantic and Mississippi; although it had previously rallied the liberal policy forces on the basis of the sectional resentment of Egypt to northern selfishness, the Vincennes backers now came to look upon the "Brough road" as a possible competitor for financial support.
37 Belleville Advocate, January 12, 1853.
38 Banks to French, January 10, 1850, Manly to French, August 28, 1851, French manuscripts; Douglas to Manly, December 28, 1850, Illinois State Register, January 16, 1851.
39 It was even proposed by Joseph Gillespie that in return for a payment of one per cent of their gross earnings, the railroads already chartered should be given a virtual monopoly under state supervision, their consent being necessary to any charters for new roads running within twenty-five miles of any road already incorporated; all the territory between the Terre Haute and Alton and the Ohio and Mississippi roads was to be closed to east and west roads. Illinois State Register, February 3, 10, 1853.
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By the fall of 1853, however, after the Ohio and Missis- sippi had sold its bonds and was on a firm financial footing; the "Brough road" supporters decided that the time was ripe to press their project by a combined opposition against "the narrow contracted policy of Alton." They immediately began an active campaign for an extra session as confident of the support of Governor Matteson as they had been of that of Governor French.40 Breese, McClernand, Reynolds, Logan, Casey, and Morrison were active in organizing the forces that favored the call. At the close of a vigorous newspaper fight between northern and southern Illinois journals, an extra ses- sion convention was held at Salem on November 25, 1853, which, with twenty-four counties represented, proved the reality of the demand. Governor Matteson responded in January with his proclamation. Downstate interests began their cam- paign for a liberal railroad policy and were finally able to secure the charter for which its supporters, including two governors of the state, had been laboring for over five years. St. Louis gave the Illinois legislature a festival in honor of the passage of the bill that marked the end of the great Illinois railroad war.
A survey in retrospect revealed the fact that for four years countless controversies over applications for special railroad charters had wrecked the dispatch of legislative business.41 "State policy" was therefore shelved even by its advocates as having fulfilled its purpose and become an obstacle in the way of progress.
The construction of two of the three southern lateral lines was completed in the latter half of the decade. The Terre Haute and Alton was organized for active work in 1850, but the road was not built until the period from 1853 to the end of 1855. Before it was completed, however, it secured a col- lateral branch to Illinoistown. This direct connection with St. Louis, like that of the Chicago and Alton, robbed Alton of the special advantage that her backers had expected to enjoy as a railroad terminus; they had to be content with the posi-
40 Belleville Advocate, September 28, 1853. Lieutenant Governor Koerner went on record as in favor of the special session. Koerner, Memoirs, I : 607-608 ; Chicago Daily Democratic Press, October 28, 1853.
41 Ibid., January 17, 1855; Illinois Journal, January 3, 1855.
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tion of an important way station, while the St. Louis interests chuckled over the advantages that accrued to their city.
The Ohio and Mississippi road was opened from Illinois- town to Vincennes in July, 1855, although the connection with Cincinnati was not completed until nearly two years later. This road traversed a rich belt of country and brought important advantages to St. Louis as a direct east and west line of com- munication. It failed, however, to draw from Chicago the trade that was now accustomed to go east by the lake route. After energy had been expended in securing the charter for the Terre Haute and Illinoistown line, this project fell through and was not taken up again until 1865; St. Louis was thus deprived of another important eastern connection.
Belleville had contributed in Gustave Koerner, John Rey- nolds, and Don Morrison some of the most enthusiastic backers of both the Ohio and Mississippi, and Mississippi and Atlantic lines. They expected that their city would be made a station on both lines. The first disappointment came when the Ohio and Mississippi line decided, because of the land holdings of St. Louis investors and of Illinois speculators, 42 to pass.four miles to the north of Belleville; bitterly did the Belleville lead- ers denounce the land sharks and speculators in bounty land warrants and tax titles. In their chagrin they hit upon the scheme of building a road to Illinoistown, which they were able successfully to execute by the fall of 1854, after which they carried a northern extension to Alton there to connect with the Alton and Terre Haute. This saved them from excessive disappointment over being left off the line of the road from Terre Haute and over the later failure of that project.
At the end of 1850, the completed portions of the North- ern Cross line and of the Galena and Chicago Union railroad had given the state only a little over one hundred miles of railroad, yet in the first six years of the decade Illinois built a larger mileage than any other state in the union. With 2,235 miles of track it outranked all the states of the middle west.43 By 1860 with important eastern connections running into Chi-
Belleville Advocate, June 30, 1852; Koerner, Memoirs, 1 : 565, 586, 587.
42 Including even Don Morrison.
43 Urbana Union, February 19, 1857.
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cago, with the Chicago and Milwaukee (1855), and with the Chicago and Northwestern railroad systems tapping the state of Wisconsin at different points, Illinois was ade- quately provided with railroad communication with the outside world.
Yet the story of Illinois railroad development in the fifties is not finished without a mention of the numerous projects dreamed of by those who wished to have a hand in networking the state with railroad lines, for nowhere perhaps did the rail- road fever rage more violently than in the state of Illinois. It seemed that the people would not be content until a railroad was located on every four miles of the state. Thousands of miles of road were authorized by the general assembly that never passed the state of paper projects; others were begun only to collapse of their own weight, worthy as well as merely ambitious enterprises going to ruin with the rest. At the begin- ning of 1851, the legislature petitioned congress for federal aid in behalf of the Alton and Mt. Carmel line provided for in the internal improvement act of 1837; but by the end of the year a lone Irishman working under the direction of General William H. Pickering, its indefatigable proprietor, was mak- ing the last effort to rescue this important project from oblivion. 44
A tremendous array of forces gave to Illinois its railroads and railroad schemes. Local investors and land speculators conceived an enterprise and rallied the support of the com- munity; farms were mortgaged to assist in the accumulation of capital; counties and municipalities voted to subscribe stock. In addition, the aid of eastern capitalists was called in. But such capital, even in the case of one of the more promising enterprises, was supplied only when special privileges were con- ferred upon the easterners who took every advantage of the Illinoisians. "Swarms of hungry cormorants " clamoring for special legislation besieged the state capitol. It was said that the bills pressed by these lobbyists "were prepared in New York, and were first canvassed by Wall street men before they
44 Laws of 1851, p. 204; Allen to French, December 9, 1851, French manu- scripts ; a manuscript note to Pickering by Joseph Gillespie, 1879, is appended to a letter from Pickering to Gillespie, July 20, 1860, Chicago Historical Society manuscripts.
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were sent to Springfield to secure legislative endorsement." 45 At times western investors were refused directors to represent their interests. In 1853 rumors circulated of a corruption fund of $80,000 to defeat the Mississippi and Atlantic railroad. Only the general enthusiasm for railroad development pre- vented a strong reaction in line with democratic prejudices against corporations and corporation influence.46
The service furnished by these newly built railroads varied according to circumstances. Most of them were constructed to meet a long felt want; the heavy freight and passenger traffic that immediately began often taxed the roads to their utmost capacities. When earnings ran as high as sixteen per cent roads like the Galena and Chicago were able to add new accommodations in response to the growing demands. All lines ran daily freight and passenger trains in each direction and in instances the time-table gave the traveler a wide range of choice. Good time was made by passenger trains; thirty miles an hour was a common speed, and Chicago and Alton trains were able to average twenty-two miles and rarely vary ten minutes from schedule. When the traveler, accustomed to a ride of three days and nights from Chicago to Springfield in Fink and Company's stages, made the trip by rail in twelve hours, it seemed "more like a sketch from some part of the Arabian Nights, than a matter of stern reality." 47 The ele- ment of luxury in travel was introduced into Illinois with the appearance of the sleeping coach on the Illinois Central line. Rates were very reasonable; while varying greatly passenger fares in most cases did not exceed three cents a mile. During the later fifties the Galena and Chicago and the Northwestern roads competed for traffic between Chicago and Rockford and both cut the passenger fares to one dollar.48 Accidents, how- ever, were frightfully common at the start especially because of
45 Chicago Daily Democratic Press clipped in Illinois State Register, August 4, 1853.
46 Belleville Advocate, March 30, 1853; Chicago Daily Democratic Press clipped in Alton Courier, April 12, 1853. As it was, a sober vote of warning came from papers like the Chicago Daily Democratic Press, Illinois State Register, July 28, 1853, and others.
47 Alton Courier, June 3, 1853, February 22, 18 54.
48 Chicago Democrat, April 2, 1853 ; Rockford Republican, December 1, 1859; Rockford Register, January 7, 1860.
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the want of fences along the right of way to keep out the cattle.49
The railroads rendered obsolete the prevailing methods of handling the mails. Very few of the 861 post offices located in Illinois in 1850 enjoyed regular daily mail service. Trans- ported by the stage lines over unimproved and often impass- able roads, the mails suffered serious delays from schedule as a result of washed out bridges and flooded roads. River mails were next adopted and worked a considerable improvement for the regions able to take advantage of them. But the railroad made possible the general and prompt transmission of the mails at all seasons. It took time, however, to perfect arrange- ments; in 1853 a traveler from New York could carry the city papers to Alton and deliver them four days in advance of the mails.50 In a few years, however, a letter from New Orleans could be delivered in Chicago within three days.
The coming of the railroads hastened the forces that were revolutionizing the prevailing social and economic practices of the day. The railroads brought a great influx of population, first of laborers to participate in railway construction and later of immigrant passengers. The consequent heavy demand for both the food and other products of the state improved the local market. Reduction in the cost of transportation coupled with the new element of reliability, automatically increased the producer's share in the market prices of his crops. Prices in the east and west were now more nearly equalized.
The whole field of agriculture experienced a remarkable stimulus.51 The new inducements to immigration attracted many men of means who often came to Illinois demanding improved lands; as a result farm values experienced a rapid rise of almost fifty per cent. The new availability of large tracts of unimproved lands offered tempting fields for land speculation ; many a fortune was made on a gambler's risk of a successful guess of adequate railroad communications for the
49 The Chicago and Alton superintendent issued an order that section masters pass over their respective sections in hand cars within an hour of train time and drive off any cattle that might be on the track. Illinois State Register, November 10, 1853.
50 Alton Courier, August 1, 1853.
51 Hunt's Merchants' Magazine, 27: 759.
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land warrant locations. Methods of getting stock to market were improved; special stock-train service was furnished by certain roads at a great saving. Perishable fruits and vege- tables now found a wide market which gave added attractions to horticulture; railroad communication placed the tomatoes and berries of southern Illinois upon Chicago dinner tables weeks before the home crops were harvested.
In the towns and cities changes took place which paralleled those of rural life. Merchants found new demands for their goods both from the railroad workers and from the farmers who found it easier in every sense to keep in touch with the distributing centers. Manufacturing experienced a remarkable stimulus with the advent of the railroads ; both the raw material and the markets were brought nearer the factory. The rail- road further rendered accessible the inexhaustible supplies of mineral wealth with which Illinois was blessed. The railroads soon discovered that coal burning locomotives were far more economical than those that used wood; by the end of the decade, the Illinois Central began to adopt the former type.52 The process of supplying the railroads with coal promised to open up a new mining industry of equal importance to the manufac- turing establishments and to the households of the timberless state. Thus it was that many a sleepy town or village of log huts and shanties was aroused and converted into a bustling city.
Towns sprang up with mushroom rapidity along the rail- road lines that intersected the open prairies. In 1854, West Urbana was a depot on the Illinois Central; in another year it was a hamlet of a hundred houses with four or five hun- dred inhabitants, while three hundred buildings were in process of erection, including "two large hotels, six stores, a large furniture ware-house, four or five lumber yards, and a large ware-house for forwarding purposes," besides a Presbyterian church and a large school house costing some $4,000.53 A census taken sixteen months later revealed a population of over 1,200. In 1861 this was the thriving town of Champaign with a separate corporate existence. A little to the south at
52 Quincy Whig, April 16, 1858; Chicago Democrat, January 24, 1859. 53 Ibid., May 5, 1855.
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the junction of the Central and Alton and Terre Haute rail- road, the town of Mattoon sprang up almost overnight; in April there was not a sign of human life, by August there was "a large hotel," with another in process of erection, a post office, a dry goods store, and two groceries to supply a rapidly increasing population.5+ The hamlet of Earlville, thirty-five miles west of Aurora on the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy railroad, in a short time grew from a settlement of six or eight dwellings, a store, blacksmith shop, and a tavern into a place of a thousand inhabitants, with over a score of stores, three public houses, and four church organizations. Favorably situ- ated older settlements received similar benefits; Hillsboro and Carlinville were instances of towns that rapidly forged ahead when provided with railroad connections. Immigration poured in from every direction, merchants did a thriving business, the streets were often impassable because of the presence of farmers' teams. 55
The greatest advantages, however, were derived by the termini of the roads, particularly Chicago, Alton, and St. Louis. In 1856 thirteen railroads centered in or were con- nected with Chicago which was served by 104 trains daily. Alton had dreamed of superseding St. Louis as a western metropolis; and in the economic domination of central and southern Illinois, a sharp competition for control of the field ensued.56 In the summer of 1848 St. Louis tried to improve her harbor facilities by altering the channel of the Mississippi river with a dyke that would compel it to flow on the west side of Bloody Island. As this threatened to divert the channel away from the Illinois shore, Governor French was induced to exercise his authority to prevent the work; he accordingly authorized the sheriff of St. Clair county to use military force or a civil posse to enforce an injunction against the St. Louis authorities. The supreme court of Illinois sustained the gov- ernor in the dyke controversy, though later a compromise 54 Chicago Weekly Democrat, September 1, 1855; Presbytery Reporter, 4:327-328.
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