USA > Illinois > McLean County > The good old times in McLean County, Illinois : containing two hundred and sixty-one sketches of old settlers, a complete historical sketch of the Black Hawk war and descriptions of all matters of interest relating to McLean County > Part 24
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" The war in question occupied quite a space in the general and striking news of the day throughout the country, having be- gun in 1831 and closed about the time I reached the State.
" On my arrival at Bloomington, in the autumn of 1832, I found the General had just returned from the war, and was do- ing a general mercantile business, dealing in almost everything that the wants of the country demanded, in a one-story frame building, occupying the place where his bank now stands. For some years he purchased his goods largely in St. Louis, of the then celebrated house of Warburton & King, and others, and not unfrequently rode to St. Louis on horseback to make his purchases, and occasionally wagoned his goods from that eity to Bloomington. The ordinary conveyance, however, was by steamboat to Pekin, and thence to this place by wagons. Sub- sequently his principal purchases were made in the cities of New York and and Philadelphia, whither he repaired twice a year to keep up his supply of goods. It was during one of these semi- annual visits that he became acquainted with the accomplished lady, Miss Mary Ann Enos, whom he afterwards married, and who has since shared his fortunes through life. It was also dur- ing a visit of this kind that he became acquainted with Mr. Hill, one of our oldest and most reputable men, still living among us, whom he, aided by his friends, James Allin and J. W. Fell,
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prevailed upon to remove to Bloomington and establish the first newepaper here published, the Bloomington Observer. This paper was well conducted, and had much to do at that early period (1836 and '37) in attracting attention to McLean County of emigrants and others seeking locations in the West. Though there was a period of several years after the discontinuance of this journal, during which no paper was here published, the Bloomington Observer may not inappropriately be considered as the beginning of one of our leading papers, which, under the various names of Western Whig, Intelligencer, and Pantagraph, is still published in our midst.
" The ordinary way of travel to and from the East at that time was by steamboats on the Illinois, Mississippi and Ohio Rivers to Pittsburgh, and thence by stage across the mountains to Philadelphia and New York. Not unfrequently the whole trip there and back, particularly in the winter season, was per- formed by stage. It was my good fortune to accompany the General during one of these winter trips by stage, and I shall never forget the hilarity and sport of that memorable trip. We had in company a Missourian as distinguished for his geniality, mirthfullness and fund of anecdotes as the General himself, pos- sibly even more so, and we were never at a loss for something to relieve what would otherwise have been not only a cold but tedious, monotonous trip.
" General Gridley's customers, at this time, extended over the whole county, then embracing nearly double the territory it now does; and it is not too much to say that he was not only known by all the people of the county, but that a very large share of the goods here sold were over his counter. The ordi- nary mode of doing business at this time was on credit, the peo- ple paying their store bills annually on Christmas, or the first of January. This being the case, it is not surprising that a man of his superior business qualifications should have so far extended his line of credit, that when the financial crash, commencing in '37 with the removal of the public deposits from the old United States Bank came, he was carried down in common with almost every man at that time, who did business on that basis. So entirely prostrated was the credit and business of the country that credit was not only gone, but property of every description was almost
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valueless. As an illustration in point, property in which I was interested, and for which $200 per acre had been offered and re- fused, was sacrificed by selling at less than $10 per acre. It re- fleets, therefore, no discredit on the business capacity of General Gridley, which then, as now, was considered of the very highest order, to state that, failing in collecting of those who justly owed him, he shared the common lot, and had to begin anew at the foot of the financial ladder. In its results, this failure, how- ever, looking at it from a financial stand-point, I have always looked upon as fortunate, as it developed his powers in other directions, and thereby secured a higher measure of success than he could reasonably have hoped for, had he continued in his old business. And this brings me to consider him in another re- lation.
" About this time the whole country was stirred by the mem- orable contest of 1840, the chief basis of the contest being the financial blunders, as viewed from the Whig stand-point, of the then dominant party. This, aggravated by the disclosure of an alarming amount of official corruption in high places, gave to the Whig party an opportunity to make a contest with reasonable prospects of success, and to make the matter doubly sure, that party laid aside their old and tried statesman, Henry Clay, and placed in nomination a successful military man, General Harri- son. The whole country, from center to circumference, was deeply excited ; monster mass meetings and immense proces- sions consisting not only of men and women, bands of music, &c., but canoes on wheels, drawn by horses, and filled with men going through all the motions of boatmen; log cabins drawn in the same way, conveying coons perched in conspicuous places, bar- rels of hard cider, &c., were everywhere in order, and in no part of our country more conspicuously so than here in Illinois. Into this contest every man having any capacity for stump-speaking threw himself; and not a few made their appearance who, up to this period, had never supposed they had that capacity. Among this number, as I have good reason to know, was Asahel Gridley.
"During the period I am reviewing it was thought necessary to get up one of those formidable processions then so common and visit what was then called the village of Peoria, demonstrating very largely on the way, particularly in the towns, in two of which
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-Tremont and Washington-we stopped to hold mass meet- ings. It was at the latter place that I first heard the General make a regular or set speech. Judge Davis, Dr. John F. Henry and a number of others, myself included, accustomed to speak- ing, had taken our turn, when, seconded by a number of others, I called for the General. He immediately responded, and though wholly unprepared, made a speech that for clearness, point, and telling effect, was inferior to nothing we had heard dur- ing our trip. I slept with him that night, and have good reason to know that that was a turning point in his history. This ef- fort had roused him to a consciousness of power in a new di- rection.
" Shortly after this it became necessary to place in nomina- tion candidates for the legislature, and it was quite natural that the people should fix upon one so capable as General Gridley of leading them to success in a county which had up to that period been regarded as Democratic. I need scarcely say he was elect- ed, and that though so recently in political life, he immediately took a high rank among the members of the House, composed of such men as Lincoln, Hardin, Governor Bissel and others. Nothing of striking interest occurred during the period for which he was elected to the Lower House, particularly as affect- ing the interests of his immediate constituents. So far as I now recollect, and though out of chronological order, I will pass over his early professional experience, and say a few words in con- nection with his services for four years in the other branch of the legislature.
" For several years prior to 1850 a good deal had been said in the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States in favor of a grant of land to aid in the construction of what is now the Illinois Central Railroad, and through the efforts of Judges Breese, Douglas and others the prospect of such a grant began to look promising. It was, therefore, eminently proper that the people of this part of the State should at this time send to the legislature some of their most efficient men, in order to secure, if practicable, Bloomington as a point on the contem- plated road, should the grant be made. Most fortunately for the future of Bloomington and McLean County (and I may say with equal propriety for the interests of De Witt and Macon
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Counties and their respective county seats), the people were alive to that matter, and, overlooking mere availabilty (which unfor- tunately too often controls such matters) elected General Gridley to the Senate for four years commencing December, 1850. It was during this period that the grant in question was made, and the great struggle was had as to the location of that road. It was at this time too that the charter of the Alton & Sangamon Railroad-as it was then called-was so amended as to make Bloomington a point on another great trunk road, (now known as the Chicago & Alton Railroad,) and thus Bloomington secured to us a pre-eminence as to railroad facilities equal, if not supe- rior, to any other point in the State; for it is well known that the roads subsequently located here were attracted, largely, by our prominence as a railroad centre. Few among those who now constitute our population-a population more than twenty fold what it was then-stop to reflect or even know the great point on which our rapidly increased population was deter- mined. From a somewhat intimate acquaintance with our State and its legislation for the last forty years, I have no hesitation in saying a solution of the matter is found largely in the legisla- tion above alluded to, and that, had we not had General Gridley, or some other man of much more than ordinary ability to then represent us, Bloomington's population would now probably be numbered by hundreds instead of thousands. This opinion will not seem unreasonable when we reflect that in the act of con- gress making the grant no points except the termini were de- . signated, and that by a slight deflection west of the third prin- cipal meridian the neighborhood of which the road had to be located, it would run through a country at that time much better developed, passing through a large number of county seats a little west of that meridian, including Springfield and Peoria, the former then, as now, the seat of government and the latter then largely outnumbering us in wealth, population and influ- ence. True, the railroad company, if such a location had been made, would not have secured quite so much land on the imme- diate line of its road, but it would thus have insured more speedi- ly a business for the road, which was a matter of paramount importance, and also a readier sale for the contiguous lands which it would thus have secured.
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" The railroad company, however, had not the fixing of the location. It was done by representatives of the people, and the odds in numbers being against us, growing out of a more sparse population east than west of the meridian, and having the State government influence, added to that of Peoria, to contend with, it was a fight of no ordinary importance to us, in which the chances against us seemed largely to preponderate. Thanks to the untiring devotion and consummate ability of our senator, aided, of course, by help outside, as well as in the legislature, those seeming advantages were overcome, and the location was so fixed in the charter as to secure the road through our midst, and, what was more, through the county seat of two of the other counties by him represented. If General Gridley had rendered no other service to this community, this alone is of sufficient importance to entitle him, in all coming time, to our grateful remembrance.
"And here it may not be inappropriate to observe, that, not- withstanding he has been thus intimately associated not only with the legislation connected with our system of railroads ex- tending out from this point, but, more or less, with the practical construction of several of them, no man can truthfully say, that he ever derived the slightest pecuniary benefit from any contracts, speculations in stocks or bonds, connected with any of said roads, or, even the less objectionable way, of sharing in the pro- fits of town speculations on their lines. Though the General makes no pretensions to any superior virtue to his neighbors, and has never been averse to availing himself of proper and legitimate modes of speculation, he has wisely concluded he would not avail himself of the facilities for money-making offered by any official position he might hold. Had our repre- sentatives in the State Legislatures and in Congress, our rail- road directors and others officially connected with the building of our roads, more generally observed the same rule, how widely different would be the present condition of things financially throughout the country ; and how much higher would stand the American character among the nations of the world. In sketch- ing the life and character of anyone in times like these-of wide-spread official degeneracy-it is indeed pleasant to note this, to my mind, important and most creditable fact.
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" Omitting other and important services which he rendered his constituents, the four years of his senatorial career, during which there were no less than four sessions of the Legislature, let us pass to a brief notice of his career in another and more lucrative department of business. I shall never forget an interview I had with him at his own house, and at his own suggestion, soon after his return from the Legislature in the spring of 1841. We had both, financially, been utterly prostrated, and both ambitious of getting ' on our pegs' again. We were in a fitting condition to sympathize with each other and take counsel together. The ex- citement of political life and the events of the winter had up to this period kept him from dwelling with too much intensi- ty on the dark picture then opening before him, but he was now at liberty to concentrate his mind on home matters, and seemed more thoroughly saddened in spirit than I had ever before or since known him. The great question was, what he should do to repair his shattered fortunes, and to supply the wants of a growing family. His private affairs financially, added to the de- pressed condition generally of the country, forbid his return to his former calling ; politics were too precarious to tempt him to do what thousands of lesser pretensions were then doing, flock- ing to Washington to get some 'fat office,' and though his mind had been running on the probable chances of professional suc- cess he seemed quite undetermined what to do. I need scarcely say I advised him to immediately qualify himself for the prac- tice of law, and this advice, aided by similar suggestions from other quarters, may have contributed to bring about that result. Knowing his intellectual sharpness, and his success as a public speaker, I felt, and so expressed myself, that he had only to try, to succeed. How well my anticipations have been verified let the legal dockets of McLean and adjoining counties for more than fifteen years, commencing soon after the period here alluded to, answer. Lacking the advantages of a collegiate education and of a thorough course of legal studies, in special pleading and the more technical departments of practice, it will hardly be pretended that he was an adept-very few are-but, if good hard 'horse sense,' as he would call it, in the management of a suit; if a rare faculty of seizing hold of the strong points of a case, and making the most of them; if the ability to present
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in strong, forcible and telling language adapted to the common apprehension, the leading facts in behalf of the interests of a client, omitting those non-essentials, the enumeration of which only tends to bother and confound a juror; in short, if success is to be the measure by which his ability as a lawyer is to be esti- mated, then was he not merely a respectable but an able attor- ney. That such is the popular verdict, not only the records in question will testify, but all our old inhabitants who knew him when in professional life.
"Let us now consider him as a banker. It was during his senatorial career that he formed an acquaintance with the Hon. Jonathan Scammon, a politician of some reputation, and one of the leading bankers of Chicago, who encouraged him to organize a bank in Bloomington-the McLean County Bank-being the first here established. It was in the spring of 1853, in pursu- ance of an act of the legislature, this bank was organized for business, with General Gridley as its president and financial manager, and in that position he has ever since remained, gradu- ally absorbing, as his means would enable him, the stock of his two co-incorporators, J. Y. Scammon and J. H. Burch, having long since become its sole proprietor. This bank has now been in operation more than twenty years, affording banking accom- modations in the way of loans to a vast number of our leading dealers in stock and other business men, and furnishing a safe and reliable depository to our merchants and others for their cash, as received in the ordinary way of business. It would be interesting to know how many millions of other people's money have passed through this bank, undiminished by the loss of a farthing, but I am reliably informed it is more than ten-fold greater than the aggregate wealth of the entire county.
Here, too, adopting the practical standard, it may very safely be said he has achieved a great success, and at the same time extended accommodations to thousands in the way of mov- ing our annual crops, operating in cattle, hogs, etc. For a long time this was the only bank for a vast circuit of country, reach- ing in most directions more than fifty miles, and it is fair to assume that a large share of the ample fortune accumulated by the General is in the results of its operation.
In the year 1857, the Bloomington Gas Light and Coke Com-
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pany, having been unsuccessful, was taken hold of by the Gene- ral, and that here, too, his efforts have been crowned with suc- cess, let the massive and thoroughly appointed gas works, with their fifteen miles of piping, their four hundred city lamps and nine hundred individual consumers, bear witness. Into this, a mere wreck, financially, he infused life and vitality, and has built a business that of itself most men would be exceed- ingly proud; and yet this has constituted but a small part of the work of this remarkable man. In addition to his daily and never ceasing labors in connection with the bank, he has not only accomplished this and a part of the time, as has been seen, served us faithfully in the Senate, but he has made large and costly im- provements in the way of building ; acted for years as railroad director and president of one of our leading roads that had not yet been built had not he and a few other co-workers performed labors and assumed responsibilities few would have done ; be- sides doing his full share in matters of general interest, as ef- fecting our material prosperity, in fostering into being manufac- turing and other improvements demanded by a growing city. It is no disparagement to the just claims of others who have aided in building up our city, to state that in both public and private improvements no man has cut so important a figure ; and when we add to this the highly important services he rendered us in his labors to secure to Bloomington its prominence as a rail- road center, as heretofore stated, it is no easy matter to estimate the amount of good he has accomplished. That he has here left his mark in ineffacable characters, and that he will long be remembered as one of the chief actors in building up our city and neighborhood, cannot admit of a doubt.
"Omitting any mere personal description of the man, and the leading traits of his character, except as herein disclosed, about which much that is highly complimentary to him might be said, I cannot close a notice of one so prominently known among us, without briefly referring to a somewhat striking feature in his character that has made him not unfrequently many enemies, and which we feel is not properly estimated by those who know him but superficially. I allude to that spirit of sharp criticism -shall I call it ?- in which he is too much accustomed to in- dulge towards those with whom he differs, or whose interests and
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his seem to come in collision. Many have supposed, on slight acquaintance, that this proceeded from a malevolent disposition and general ill-will towards those who differed with him. Long acquaintance has taught me, as it has hundreds of others, that this is a mistake, and that, whilst it is undoubtedly true that this is a defect in his character (and who have not their defects ?) it is wrong to suppose that he indulges in any such feelings as above indicated, except in the most transient and superficial way. Being of a highly impulsive nature, never having learned prop- erly to restrain a warm and imperious temper,-and being too utterly incapable of deceit or mental reservation, when any in- vasion is supposed to be made upon his rights he immediately fires up, with a zeal often more intense than wise, and under its influence says things which he would be far from doing in his cooler moments, and which are frequently recalled with equal emphasis, very soon thereafter. Under such circumstances, who that is well acquainted with him has not known him sometimes to assail even a friend, who, the very next hour, perhaps, he would not only speak well of, but cordially embrace, and per- chance render a most important favor. Ought not such invec- tives, as he himself will admit are much too often and too freely indulged in, instead of being imputed to a bad and malevolent heart, as some have done, to be asscribed to a mind so mercurial in its temper, so irrepressible, and so utterly incapable of giv- ing expression to anything else than the feelings of the moment ? In other words, without wishing to dignify as a virtue what he himself has often admitted to me to be decidedly wrong, is it not a species of frankness in speaking his thoughts, extravagant- ly and too often unjustly expressed of course, which many of us mentally indulge in when our rights are assailed, without giving expression to our feelings ? In other words, does not the average man very frequently think what he has the boldness, though indiscretion, at times certainly, to utter outright ?
" In closing this very important sketch of one of our leading citizens, it may not be amiss to say a word in relation to the part he took in the last political movement, with which his name is identified. I mean the Cincinnati Convention, in doing which, I confess I am largely influenced by a desire to show the mag- nanimous spirit displayed by him on that occasion.
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" Though connected with the Republican party, and feeling a deep interest in the election in 1860 and 1864 of its most dis- tinguished champion, the cares of business had so multiplied around him, that he had not taken, since the dissolution of the old Whig party, that active part in politics he had previously done. In 1872, believing that the mission of the Republican party had been accomplished, and that those in power, from their long continuance in office, had become both extravagant and corrupt, he was very decidedly in favor of a change; and overlooking entirely the fact that his personal relations had not been at all of a genial character with Judge Davis, and differing with him as he had on most measures of a local character, he yet was one of the very first to suggest that name as the most suitable for the American people to rally around, in order to reform the abuses that had crept into our national affairs.
" I shall never forget the response he made when I first spoke to him on the subject, in answer to which he made substantially this reply : 'Fell, you know my relations with the Judge have not been as pleasant as your own ; we are totally different men ; but he is a pure man, an able man, a man of immense executive ability ; he hates all kind of thievery and official corruption, and in short is the man of all men to reform existing abuses. I am for him against the world.' And when General Gridley said he was for any man it meant something. There was no double meaning ; no mental reservations; no backing down ; no half- way support. It meant work, and work he did with a zeal and ability inferior to no one, so long as there was a ray of hope of our success.
"In working in this cause, in the national convention, an- other pleasant incident occurred, in which friendly personal re- lations were restored between him and another of our old and leading citizens, between whom unpleasant relations had unhap- pily previously existed, I mean Dr. Stipp. In response to a sug- ยท gestion of a friend he said : 'We are not on speaking terms, but I am the youngest man, and I'll go this moment and tender him my hand.' He did so, saying : 'Doctor, here is my hand. Let us be friends ;' and it was grasped by the doctor with the same frankness and cordiality with which it was offered. It was beautiful to see the magnanimous spirit evinced by both these
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