USA > Illinois > The era of the Civil War, 1848-1870 > Part 9
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The more enterprising farmers of central Illinois were with decided advantage beginning to introduce blooded stock to improve the breed of cattle raised. It was next suggested that a joint stock company be organized to import first grade cattle from the east and from Europe. This suggestion was acted upon in December, 1856, when the Illinois Stock Importing Company was organized at Springfield with an immediate sub- scription of $12,700 worth of capital stock. A few months
14 Western Journal, 4: 14 ff .; F. S. Frazier to Trumbull, February 5, 1857, John H. Bryant to Trumbull, February 12, 1857, Trumbull manuscripts; Illinois State Journal, January 13, 1858.
15 Prairie Farmer, November, 1854; cf. Chicago Weekly Democrat, Decem- ber 23, 1854. His cattle sales in that season exceeded $96,000. Strawn for years either supplied or controlled the St. Louis beef market.
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later its agents headed by Dr. H. V. Johns, former president of the Illinois Agricultural Society, were sent to England to make purchases. Some eighty head of imported stock arrived in Springfield in August, 1857, and were sold at auction to citizens of Illinois on the understanding that they should remain in the state for two years.
For pork growing few regions were as favorable as the Illinois prairies. Allowed to run at large upon the open plains as well as in the few timbered districts, hogs multiplied so rapidly that it was often a matter of difficulty to decide to whom a lot of grunting porkers owed allegiance. For this reason there were many advocates of a law for their confine- ment.16 Since this was the only problem in hog raising-for there seemed to be no hog cholera or other disease until the spring of 1859-hogs were the chief means of converting the corn of the state into good marketable form. In 1850, 1,915,- 907 hogs were raised; by 1860 the number had increased to 2,502,308.
. Woolgrowing met with less success than other livestock interests in spite of the fact that Illinois seemed admirably adapted for sheep raising and although for some time the annual output of wool, chiefly from the northern counties and certain central districts, showed an increase. Extensive wool- growers like Truman Humphreys of Peoria and James McCon- nell of Sangamon county insisted that wool could be grown in Illinois more profitably than anywhere else in the United States. With uncertain prices for wool, however, and with a more certain reward in other fields, most farmers were content to leave these opportunities to the advocate of wool- growing. In the census of 1850, 894,043 sheep were listed with a wool crop of 2, 150, 113 pounds; but by 1860 an actual decrease of 14 per cent was indicated in the census total of 769, 135 sheep.
The total value of the livestock of the state in 1850 was $24,209,258 and consequently meat packing had become an important industry ; in that year animals to the value of $4,972,- 286 were slaughtered. Pork brought in this decade prices ranging from $2 and $2.50 per hundred in the early years to
16 Cairo Weekly Delta, November 23, 1848 ; Prairie Farmer, November, 1848.
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$5 and $6 in the latter part. For an average pork packing town 20,000 was a fair season's packing, and nearly a half million were packed annually in the state. In Alton and in the towns along the Illinois, notably Beardstown-the origi- nal Porkopolis-and Peoria, thousands of hogs were slaugh- tered each year; but with the opening of the canal and of the railroads more and more of the hogs were taken to Chicago to be slaughtered. By 1859 this tendency was so marked that Chicago had become the third pork packing city in the west and promised shortly to eclipse its rivals in the hog trade. The same development in the beef packing industry made Chicago in 1860 the greatest general meat packing center in the west.
The decade of progress along agricultural lines increased 5,039,545 acres of improved lands in 1850 to 13,096,374 ten years later. Unimproved holdings of 6,997,867 acres in- creased to 7,815,615. This represented an increased acreage of 73.7 per cent. The number of farms nearly doubled and the value of farm property nearly quadrupled. These statis- tics reflect the extraordinary demand for land that prevailed throughout the decade. Illinois, indeed, was still in the whirl of land speculation. The inpouring of settlers and the opening of the canal and of the railroads combined to produce a heavier demand and a greater accessibility for unoccupied holdings. Generally speaking, land sales came to involve fewer and fewer direct transactions between the government and the actual settler.
The unique event of 1848 was the placing upon the mar- ket of the Illinois and Michigan canal lands, an event which had been delayed by the interests of a clique of Chicago specu- lators. Prominent Chicago politicians claimed preemption rights which held up some of the most valuable pieces; 17 and, with money scarce and the speculative feeling supposedly not very high, the sales went off with little spirit. The remaining lands, increased by 35,000 acres under a new construction of the federal grant, were offered to the public in annual sales. A rush to these sales began in 1852 and 1853; Chicago hotels
17 Colonel Charles Oakley to French, August 26, September 6, 1848, French manuscripts.
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were crowded, considerable excitement and competition among purchasers developed, and the bidding was prompt and spir- ited. By 1855 the best of the lands had been taken, although the sales continued to be held each successive year until the end of the decade.
On September 28, 1850, congress donated to the several states in which they lay, the public swamp lands and lands liable to overflow. These lands, which eventually totalled I, 833,413 acres, were promptly surveyed; and the general assembly of Illinois granted them to the counties in which they were located for the construction of the necessary levees and drains to reclaim them; the balance, if any, was to be dis- tributed among the townships equally for education or roads and bridges as the county authorities might decide. These lands had been placed on sale and many disposed of when the federal government intervened on account of certain technicali- ties, which were not adjusted until after the purchasers had gone through a long siege of uncertainty. When in 1857 the rights of the states were confirmed by congress, the lands were again placed on the market; and all sales were later formally approved by the general assembly.18
In 1851, the assembly first directed the auditor to with- hold from sale state lands along the more important railroad lines and later suspended the sale of all state holdings until two years later when they were again placed on the market, the proceeds to be devoted to the liquidation of the state indebtedness, with preemption rights for squatter settlers.19
The state, however, was not the most important factor in the land sales of this period. The various federal land offices dispensed tracts from the millions of acres still in the possession of the federal government. Cash sales continued to be heavy while thousands of acres were entered with Mexican War land warrants and with warrants under the bounty land act of September 28, 1850. The lands along the Illinois Cen- tral were withheld from sale for a year while the selections
18 Laws of 1852, p. 178-186; Laws of 1859, p. 201, 202; see petitions in Trumbull manuscripts for 1856.
19 Laws of 1851, p. 23, 204; Laws of 1853, p. 231-234. These preemption rights and sales in general were extended under acts of February 15, 1855, and February 16, 1857.
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were being made for the Illinois Central railroad under its grant of 1850, after which there was a heavy rush both by actual settlers and by speculators; soon all lands within the grant were entered. Sales were especially brisk in southern Illinois, where the best lands were soon exhausted. The poorer lands, however, spurned in the open market, were quickly taken up, when, in 1854, congress passed a graduation act which permitted land entries at as little as twelve and one- half cents an acre.
As a result of these activities the public lands rapidly dis- appeared. The Quincy land office was closed up in June of 1855; already the Shawneetown district was rapidly approach- ing the 100,000 acre minimum which would terminate its claim to a separate land office. It was not long before the books of the general land office showed only a little over one quarter of a million acres remaining unsold.20
This left the Illinois Central the greatest landed proprietor of Illinois. An immense tract of two and a half million acres scattered over forty-seven counties and equal to ten counties of over four hundred square miles was transferred by the federal government to the railroad through the state as an intermediary. The selections were made and the titles com- pleted by the spring of 1852 when the company prepared to open up its land office. The lands were divided into four classes : about 50,000 acres-valuable either as especially suitable for town sites or as containing mineral wealth -were to sell at not less than $20 per acre; 350,000 acres of superior farming land at $15 an acre; 1,300,000 acres at $8; and the remainder at $5. These prices were to be applied to land which, lying on the unbroken prairies, had previously been undesirable at $1.25 an acre; and while this schedule was being fixed, the government was selling its adjacent holdings at a maximum of $2.50 an acre. On September 27, 1854, the company opened its Bloomington office which in the first month reported the sale of 15,242 acres in McLean county at an aver- age price of $9.97. In another year the company was aggres- sively pushing the sale of its lands in all parts of the state. By
20 Chicago Weekly Democrat, June 23, 1855; Chicago Daily Democratic Press, March 22, 1858.
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1857 with its grant half sold the company had realized $14,000,000.21
Thousands of squatters who had developed improved farms were found in southern Illinois on the lands along the Illinois Central. The general assembly recommended to congress that squatters on the federal domain be granted preemption rights for a period of twelve months; the company, left to itself, pur- sued a policy of similar generosity toward the bona fide settler. In addition it extended long credits to settlers generally and was lenient to purchasers who found themselves unable to make their payments.22
The speculator also had his innings in all this confusing race for control of the soil. Thousands of acres in every county remained the unimproved property of purchasers who were holding them for a rise in value ; extensive feeling among the settlers was aroused against these land monopolists, many of whom were eastern capitalists.23
The great bulk of the speculators, although they often followed outside leadership, was found in the local residents - successful farmers, lawyers, business men, and politicians. Governor French in his second term took advantage of the renewed agitation in favor of the Illinois Central railroad to buy up warrants and locate lands through a dozen friends and agents all along the probable route. His interests were also linked with the supporters of the Atlantic and Mississippi, a group of southern Illinois democratic leaders, who, while pressing its claim before the people and in the legislature, avidiously bought land about the strategic points on the line. Uri Manly, one of them, after having waited twenty years for such an opportunity, was fortunate enough to secure the land at the intersection of the Illinois Central and this proposed railroad; when the legislature refused a charter in 1851 and
21 Beardstown Gazette, July 30, 1851; Peru Daily Chronicle, May 5, 1854; Ottawa Free Trader, September 5, 1857.
22 Laws of 1851, p. 207-208 ; M. Brayman to Noah Johnston, November 4, 1852, in Illinois State Register, December 2, 1852; Chicago Press and Tribune, March 18, 1859.
23 The Munn Illinois Land Company, an eastern concern, declared a divi- dend of $15 a share in 1851. Cairo Sun, May 22, 1851. The proverbial acumen of poets was proved by William Cullen Bryant, who sold his holding on the Rock Island railroad for $to per acre shortly before it rose in value to many times that amount. Boston Post clipped in Illinois State Register, June 29, 1854
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again in 1852, he complained that he had lost a $15 accretion on two pieces of 4,000 acres in Effingham county, besides 2,300 acres in Clark county. "I had made a town-a city where our Road & the Central crossed," he lamented to his colleague in misfortune, Governor French.24
With the rapid disappearance of the public domain and with the inflated prices of speculative holdings, agrarian move- ments began to take form in Illinois. Many citizens came to decry, with John Wentworth of the Chicago Democrat, the trend toward "the tenant system, under which Republicanism is impossible. This system," they held, "tends to separate classes in society; to the annihilation of the love of country; and to the weakening of the spirit of independence." 25 Already by 1850 the landless were the most numerous class of people in Chicago. The remedy agreed upon by all advocates of land reform was the free grant of homesteads to actual settlers, thus taking from the capitalist his last stronghold, the monop- oly of the soil. Such reformers were numerous within the ranks of both political parties; in his zeal for his party, how- ever, the whig politician often claimed a homestead policy as "true whig policy " while the democrat claimed the same honor for his party.
Radical land reformers, who were usually also aggressive abolitionists as well, spurned the advance of the old political parties and organized independent land reform associations, carrying on an aggressive propaganda of their own. In 1848 the "national reformers" held a national industrial congress and chose as their presidential candidates, Gerrit Smith of New York, and William S. Wait of Illinois. In the fall of that year the " national reformers" held a meeting in Chicago in which they repudiated the newly organized free soil party and its reform platform because it failed to assert "man's inherent and inalienable right to a limited portion of the soil upon which he subsists" as the real and only ground of " free soil." Later, however, when Van Buren placed himself on sat- isfactory ground and the free democracy of Chicago adopted
24 Uri Manly to French, September 3, October 27, December 17, 1851, January 29, March 2, 1852, French manuscripts; see also French manuscripts for 1850 and 1851.
25 Chicago Democrat, January 22, March 28, 29, 31, 1848.
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" the true free soil principle," they were able to effect a working agreement. They immediately undertook an active campaign which culminated in an Industrial Congress at Chicago on June 6 and 7, 1850, which adopted resolutions offered by H. Van Amringe, a prominent lecturer and reformer, declaring that " the free land proviso would everywhere, on the cotton planta- tions of the South, and in the cotton factories of the North, unite all lovers of freedom and humanity, against all haters of freedom and humanity, and would strip the question of liberty of all prejudices resulting from sectional and partial agitation." These reformers saw the folly of fighting an autocracy that dominated the southern half of the nation while supporting in their own midst, "Factory Lords, Land Lords, Bankers, Spec- ulators, and Usurers." 26
Independent thinkers like John Wentworth had always seen the issue of land monopoly behind the slavery question; from this point of view the Wilmot proviso was "but a modifica- tion of the great principle, that the earth was given for the uses of man; and that, like the other essential elements to exist- ence, no portion of its surface should be the subject of monop- oly." For that reason he was a supporter of the preemption policy and in the spring of 1848 introduced into congress a resolution for the extension of three years of the time for pay- ment under the preemption laws; later he presented many Illinois petitions for land reform and on January 22, 1850, laid before the house a resolution passed by the lower house of the Illinois legislature in favor of a homestead law.27
With this official sanction from the most representative body in Illinois, it was now obvious that a radical reform had become popular. Douglas had introduced a homestead bill on December 27, 1849, and defended it with eloquence; Richard- son and other members of the Illinois delegation also accepted the principle of free grants to actual settlers and were kept busy presenting memorials of Illinoisians in its favor. When therefore, in the congressional campaign of 1850 the "Na-
26 Gem of the Prairie, May 20, July 1, 22, October 7, 14, 21, November 25, December 9, 1848. Wait, however, declined the nomination and was made elector at large on the ticket of the "national reformers." Chicago Democrat, November 3, December 12, 1848, June 7, 8, 17, 1850.
27 Ibid., November 20, 1848; Congressional Globe, 31 congress, 1 session, 302.
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tional Reform" Association of Chicago questioned the various candidates on their attitude toward land reform it received without exception favorable replies.28 In 1851, the general assembly adopted a joint resolution urging congress to enact a homestead law. With another land reform convention at Chicago on October 13, 1851, the reformers had completed their work and were gratified to see their views adopted by the lower house at Washington. In the senate the fight con- tinued without success until June, 1860, when the law was blocked by the veto of President Buchanan. With the organ- ization of the republican party and the incorporation of a homestead plank in its platform, the republicans claimed spe- cial consideration as the champions of the homestead bill; challenging the devotion of their opponents on all occasions, they were able to make effective use of Buchanan's veto as an argument in favor of the election of Lincoln in the campaign of 1860. On the basis of their success they were able to carry out their promises in the homestead law of 1862.
Railroad construction and the land boom of the fifties had an important effect upon the state of the public treasury. At the beginning of this period the state, with an indebtedness of $16,661,795, was still virtually bankrupt and unable to pay the accumulated and long overdue interest. Under the refund- ing act of 1847, however, the conversion of the internal improvement indebtedness was started under the direction of Governor French, and confidence in the credit of the state began to develop in the financial world. The constitution of 1848 placed the state on a basis of strict economy in the matter of salaries and general expenditures and article fifteen author- ized a two mill tax to be applied to the state indebtedness. With the authorization of the Illinois Central and various other railroads, moreover, Illinois stock began to take a rapid rise. New York bondholders for some time urged that the Central road be constructed by a company composed of bond- holders under special favors from the state.29 The last install-
28 Ibid., 31 congress, I session, 87, 262-267; Chicago Democrat, Novem- ber 4, 1850.
29 Aurora Beacon, September 26, 1850; Beardstown Gazette, April 30, 1851; James Holford to French, December 10, 1850, William Osman to French, April 29, 1851, French manuscripts.
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ment of the $1,600,000 canal loan and interest was paid in October, 1853, when the canal passed to the exclusive direction of the state. The state debt had just reached its maximum and was officially reported at $16,724,177. The two mill tax was being applied to the payment of interest on outstand- ing bonds; a proposed constitutional amendment to appro- priate it to the purchase of state bonds failed of receiving pop- ular ratification in November, 1852. Matters improved, how- ever, so that internal improvement bond quotations began to approach par. In December, 1855, the first payment of the state's share of seven per cent of the profits of the Illinois Central railroad was made with the sum of $29,000. By 1859, certain Illinois indebtedness was commanding a premium of three per cent in certain markets, and it was no longer found necessary to collect the two mill tax.
In 1859 the fraudulent redemption of nearly a quarter million of 1839 ninety-day canal scrip was discovered, and ex-Governor Matteson was found to be the chief beneficiary. Inasmuch as he had been chairman of the senate finance com- mittee before his election as governor in 1852, it was hard to prove his plea of ignorance of the fraud involved. He was allowed, however, to give security for refunding the money to the state within a period of five years.
The same year witnessed certain irregularities that led to the resignation of Secretary of Treasury James Miller; simultaneously Governor Bissell under a misapprehension of the law ordered the funding of a portion of the Macallister and Stebbins bonds, but his mistake was discovered in time to withdraw his action without injury to the state. With the public finances rapidly attaining bedrock soundness, therefore, these frauds and charges of frauds became subjects of political discussion.
One obstacle to the free and untrammelled development of the state along economic lines was the absence of adequate banking facilities. The need of capital was a fundamental factor in the plans of the merchant, manufacturer, or farmer for expansion. The legal rate of interest was advanced to ten per cent in 1849, but little money could be had even at that price. Money handlers were able to violate the law with
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impunity and demand fifteen, twenty, and even twenty-five per cent. Little specie appeared in circulation, and the uncertain paper money of foreign banks-that is, of banks organized in other states-had the field. Agricultural and business prog- ress naturally was held back by these conditions.
Yet the outlook in 1848 was anything but encouraging. The attempt to extend the charter of the State Bank for two years had failed in 1848 ; and arrangements were made to wind up the affairs of that institution- a result that called forth from the Illinois democracy, the political majority, a sigh of relief that suggested vivid recollections of fingers burned in the banking debauch of the thirties. Although the bank demo- crats were evident in the commercial districts of northern Illi- nois, democratic leadership insisted that banks and the bank- ing issue be relegated to oblivion to save the party from their contaminating influence; a hard money policy was defined as an essential test of genuine democracy. Whig politicians shortly undertook to make their party the distinctive champion of the banking facilities for which the business interests clamored; this alignment stood out in the election of the constitutional convention and in the discussions of the banking issue in that body.
When the new constitution was drafted, though every attempt to secure a constitutional prohibition against banking failed, an article shaped by radical anti-bank democrats was adopted which required every bank charter authorized by the general assembly to be submitted first to the people for their acceptance or rejection.
This was an ironclad guarantee against special legislation in the interest of favored business interests; at the same time it conveyed to bank advocates the hint that they might secure their ends in a general banking system such as might parallel the "free" banking systems recently inaugurated by New York, Ohio, and other states. From this point of view the bank forces hailed the adoption of the new constitution as a favorable indication of popular acceptance of their viewpoint. Soon an active campaign was launched; the Chicago Board of Trade framed a bill for the authorization of general banking privileges to be submitted to the legislature, while the business
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interests in other cities organized meetings to agitate in favor of banks. 30
The faithful and vigilant sentinels on the democratic watch- towers of Illinois sounded the warning of this new danger. The party, therefore, incorporated in its 1848 platform a plank declaring "HOSTILITY TO A UNITED STATES BANK, AND ALL KINDRED INSTITUTIONS, WHETHER OF A STATE OR A NATIONAL CHARACTER, AUTHORIZED BY EITHER GENERAL OR SPECIAL LAWS." The interests of Illinois were declared by downstate democrats to be agricultural and not commercial. Governor French in his message of January, 1849, expressed himself explicitly and unreservedly against the introduction of banking institutions ; and for a time the tide was stemmed.31
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