USA > Illinois > DeKalb County > The voters and tax-payers of De Kalb County, Illinois; containing, also, a biographical directory a history of the county and state, map of the county, a business directory, an abstract of every-day laws > Part 3
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The value of her farm implements is $211,000,000, and the value of her live stock is only second to the great State of New York. Last year she had 25,000,000 hogs, and packed 2,113,845, about one-half of all that were packed in the United States. This is no insignificant item. Pork is a growing demand of the old world. Since the laborers of Europe have gotten a taste of our bacon, and we have learned how to pack it dry in boxes, like dry goods, the world has become the market.
The hog is on the march into the future. His nose is ordained to uncover the secrets of dominion, and his feet shall be guided by the star of empire.
Illinois marketed $57,000,000 worth of slaughtered animals-more than any other State, and a seventh of all the States.
Be patient with me, and pardon my pride, and I will give you a list of some of the things in which Illinois excels all other States.
Depth and richness of soil ; per cent. of good ground ; acres of improved land; large farms-some farms contain from 40,000 to 60,000 acres of cultivated land, 40,000 acres of corn on a single farm ; number of farmers ; amount of wheat, corn, oats and honey produced ; value of ani- mals for slaughter; number of hogs ; amount of pork ; number of horses -three times as many as Kentucky, the horse State.
Illinois excels all other States in miles of railroads and in miles of postal service, and in money orders sold per annum, and in the amount of lumber sold in her markets.
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HISTORY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS.
Illinois is only second in many important matters. This sample list comprises a few of the more important : Permanent school fund (good for a young state) ; total income for educational purposes ; number of pub- lishers of books, maps, papers, etc .; value of farm products and imple- ments, and of live stock ; in tons of coal mined.
The shipping of Illinois is only second to New York. Out of one port during the business hours of the season of navigation she sends forth a vessel every ten minutes. This does not include canal boats, which go one every five minutes. No wonder she is only second in number of bankers and brokers or in physicians and surgeons.
She is third in colleges, teachers and schools; cattle, lead, hay, flax, sorghum and beeswax.
She is fourth in population, in children enrolled in public schools, in law schools, in butter, potatoes and carriages.
She is fifth in value of real and personal property, in theological seminaries and colleges exclusively for women, in milk sold, and in boots and shoes manufactured, and in book-binding.
She is only seventh in the production of wood, while she is the twelfth in area. Surely that is well done for the Prairie State. She now has much more wood and growing timber than she had thirty years ago.
A few leading industries will justify emphasis. She manufactures $205,000,000 worth of goods, which places her well up toward New York and Pennsylvania. The number of her manufacturing establishments increased from 1860 to 1870, 300 per cent .; capital employed increased 350 per cent., and the amount of product increased 400 per cent. She issued 5,500,000 copies of commercial and financial newspapers-only second to New York. She has 6,759 miles of railroad, thus leading all other States, worth $636,458,000, using 3,245 engines, and 67,712 cars, making a train long enough to cover one-tenth of the entire roads of the State. Her stations are only five miles apart. She carried last year 15,795,000 passen- gers, an average of 363 miles, or equal to taking her entire population twice across the State. More than two-thirds of her land is within five miles of a railroad, and less than two per cent. is more than fifteen miles away.
The State has a large financial interest in the Illinois Central railroad. The road was incorporated in 1850, and the State gave each alternate sec- tion for six miles on each side, and doubled the price of the remaining land, so keeping herself good. The road received 2,595,000 acres of land, and pays to the State one-seventh of the gross receipts. The State receives this year $350,000, and has received in all about $7,000,000. It is practically the people's road, and it has a most able and gentlemanly management. Add to this the annual receipts from the canal, $111,000, and a large per cent. of the State tax is provided for.
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HISTORY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS.
THE RELIGION AND MORALS
of the State keep step with her productions and growth. She was born of the missionary spirit. It was a minister who secured for her the ordi- nance of 1787, by which she has been saved from slavery, ignorance, and dishonesty. Rev. Mr. Wiley, pastor of a Scotch congregation in Randolph County, petitioned the Constitutional Convention of 1818 to recognize Jesus Christ as king, and the Scriptures as the only necessary guide and book of law. The convention did not act in the case, and the old Cove- nanters refused to accept citizenship. They never voted until 1824, when the slavery question was submitted to the people; then they all voted against it and cast the determining votes. Conscience has predominated whenever a great moral question has been submitted to the people.
But little mob violence has ever been felt in the State. In 1817 regulators disposed of a band of horse-thieves that infested the territory. The Mormon indignities finally awoke the same spirit. Alton was also the scene of a pro-slavery mob, in which Lovejoy was added to the list of martyrs. The moral sense of the people makes the law supreme, and gives to the State unruffled peace.
With $22,300,000 in church property, and 4,298 church organizations, the State has that divine police, the sleepless patrol of moral ideas, that alone is able to secure perfect safety. Conscience takes the knife from the assassin's hand and the bludgeon from the grasp of the highwayman. We sleep in safety, not because we are behind bolts and bars -- these only fence against the innocent ; not because a lone officer drowses on a distant corner of a street; not because a sheriff may call his posse from a remote part of the county ; but because conscience guards the very portals of the air and stirs in the deepest recesses of the public mind. This spirit issues within the State 9,500,000 copies of religious papers annually, and receives still more from without. Thus the crime of the State is only one-fourth that of New York and one-half that of Pennsylvania.
Illinois never had but one duel between her own citizens. In Belle- ville, in 1820, Alphonso Stewart and William Bennett arranged to vindi- cate injured honor. The seconds agreed to make it a sham, and make them shoot blanks. Stewart was in the secret. Bennett mistrusted some- thing, and, unobserved, slipped a bullet into his gun and killed Stewart. He then fled the State. After two years he was caught, tried, convicted, and, in spite of friends and political aid, was hung. This fixed the code of honor on a Christian basis, and terminated its use in Illinois.
The carly preachers were ignorant men, who were accounted eloquent according to the strength of their voices. But they set the style for all public speakers. Lawyers and political speakers followed this rule. Gov.
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HISTORY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS.
Ford says: "Nevertheless, these first preachers were of incalculable benefit to the country. They inculcated justice and morality. To them are we indebted for the first Christian character of the Protestant portion of the people."
In education Illinois surpasses her material resources. The ordinance of 1787 consecrated one thirty-sixth of her soil to common schools, and the law of 1818, the first law that went upon her statutes, gave three per cent. of all the rest to
EDUCATION INSTEAD OF HIGHWAYS.
The old compact secures this interest forever, and by its yoking morality and intelligence it precludes the legal interference with the Bible in the public schools. With such a start it is natural that we should have 11,050 schools, and that our illiteracy should be less than New York or Pennsylvania, and only about one-half of Massachusetts. We are not to blame for not having more than one-half as many idiots as the great States. These public schools soon made colleges inevitable. The first college, still flourishing, was started in Lebanon in 1828, by the M. E. church, and named after Bishop McKendree. Illinois College, at Jackson- ville, supported by the Presbyterians, followed in 1830. In 1832 the Bap- tists built Shurtleff College, at Alton. Then the Presbyterians built Knox College, at Galesburg, in 1838, and the Episcopalians built Jubilee College, at Peoria, in 1847. After these early years colleges have rained down. A settler could hardly encamp on the prairie but a college would spring up by his wagon. The State now has one very well endowed and equipped university, namely, the Northwestern University, at Evanston, with six colleges, ninety instructors, over 1,000 students, and $1,500,000 endow- ment.
Rev. J. M. Peck was the first educated Protestant minister in the State. He settled at Rock Spring, in St. Clair County, 1820, and left his impress on the State. Before 1837 only party papers were published, but Mr. Peck published a Gazetteer of Illinois. Soon after John Russell, of Bluffdale, published essays and tales showing genius. Judge James Hall published The Illinois Monthly Magazine with great ability, and an annual called The Western Souvenir, which gave him an enviable fame all over the United States. From these beginnings Illinois has gone on till she has more volumes in public libaaries even than Massachusetts, and of the 44,500,000 volumes in all the public libraries of the United States, she has one-thirteenth. In newspapers she stands fourth. Her increase is marvelous. In 1850 she issued 5,000,000 copies; in 1860, 27,590,000 ; in 1870, 113,140,000. In 1860 she had eighteen colleges and seminaries ; in 1870 she had eighty. That is a grand advance for the war decade.
This brings us to a record unsurpassed in the history of any age,
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HISTORY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS.
THE WAR RECORD OF ILLINOIS.
I hardly know where to begin, or how to advance, or what to say. I can at best give you only a broken synopsis of her deeds, and you must put them in the order of glory for yourself. Her sons have always been foremost on fields of danger. In 1832-33, at the call of Gov. Reynolds, her sons drove Blackhawk over the Mississippi.
When the Mexican war came, in May, 1846, 8,370 men offered them- selves when only 3,720 could be accepted. The fields of Buena Vista and Vera Cruz, and the storming of Cerro Gordo, will carry the glory of Illinois soldiers along after the infamy of the cause they served has been forgotten. But it was reserved till our day for her sons to find a field and cause and foemen that could fitly illustrate their spirit and heroism. Illinois put into her own regiments for the United States government 256,000 men, and into the army through other States enough to swell the number to 290,000. This far exceeds all the soldiers of' the federal government in all the war of the revolution. Her total years of service were over 600,000. She enrolled men from eighteen to forty-five years of age when the law of Congress in 1864-the test time-only asked for those from twenty to forty-five. Her enrollment was otherwise excessive. Her people wanted to go, and did not take the pains to correct the enrollment. Thus the basis of fixing the quota was too great, and then the quota itself, at least in the trying time, was far above any other State.
Thus the demand on some counties, as Monroe, for example, took every able-bodied man in the county, and then did not have enough to fill the quota. Moreover, Illinois sent 20,844 men for ninety or one hundred days, for whom no credit was asked. When Mr. Lincoln's attention was called to the inequality of the quota compared with other States, he replied, "The country needs the sacrifice. We must put the whip on the free horse." In spite of all these disadvantages Illinois gave to the country 73,000 years of service above all calls. With one-thirteenth of the popu- lation of the loyal States, she sent regularly one-tenth of all the soldiers, and in the peril of the closing calls, when patriots were few and weary, she then sent one-eighth of all that were called for by her loved and hon- ored son in the white house. Her mothers and daughters went into the fields to raise the grain and keep the children together, while the fathers and older sons went to the harvest fields of the world. I knew a father and four sons who agreed that one of them must stay at home ; and they pulled straws from a stack to see who might go. The father was left. The next day he came into.the camp, saying : "Mother says she can get the crops in, and I am going, too." I know large Methodist churches from which every male member went to the army. Do you want to know
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HISTORY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS.
what these heroes from Illinois did in the field ? Ask any soldier with a good record of his own, who is thus able to judge, and he will tell you that the Illinois men went in to win. It is common history that the greater victories were won in the West. When everything else looked dark Illi- nois was gaining victories all down the river, and dividing the confederacy. Sherman took with him on his great march forty-five regiments of Illinois infantry, three companies of artillery, and one company of cavalry. He could not avoid
GOING TO THE SEA.
If he had been killed, I doubt not the men would have gone right on. Lincoln answered all rumors of Sherman's defeat with, "It is impossible ; there is a mighty sight of fight in 100,000 Western men." Illinois soldiers brought home 300 battle-flags. The first United States flag that floated over Richmond was an Illinois flag. She sent messengers and nurses to every field and hospital, to care for her sick and wounded sons. She said, " These suffering ones are my sons, and I will care for them."
When individuals had given all, then cities and towns came forward with their credit to the extent of many millions, to aid these men and their families.
Illinois gave the country the great general of the war-Ulysses S. Grant-since honored with two terms of the Presidency of the United States.
One other name from Illinois comes up in all minds, embalmed in all hearts, that must have the supreme place in this story of our glory and of our nation's honor ; that name is Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois.
The analysis of Mr. Lincoln's character is difficult on account of its symmetry.
In this age we look with admiration at his uncompromising honesty. And well we may, for this saved us. Thousands throughout the length and breadth of our country who knew him only as " Honest Old Abe," voted for him on that account ; and wisely did they choose, for no other man could have carried us through the fearful night of the war. When his plans were too vast for our comprehension, and his faith in the cause too sublime for our participation ; when it was all night about us, and all dread before us, and all sad and desolate behind us; when not one ray shone upon our cause ; when traitors were haughty and cxultant at the South, and fierce and blasphemous at the North ; when the loyal men here seemed almost in the minority ; when the stoutest heart quailed, the bravest cheek paled ; when generals were defeating each other for place, and contractors were leeching out the very heart's blood of the prostrate republic : when everything else had failed us, we looked at this calm, patient man standing like a rock in the storm, and said: "Mr. Lincoln
3
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HISTORY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS.
is honest, and we can trust him still." Holding to this single point with the energy of faith and despair we held together, and, under God, he brought us through to victory.
His practical wisdom made him the wonder of all lands. With such certainty did Mr. Lincoln follow causes to their ultimate effects, that his foresight of contingencies seemed almost prophetic.
He is radiant with all the great virtues, and his memory shall shed a glory upon this age that shall fill the eyes of men as they look into his- tory. Other men have excelled him in some point, but, taken at all points, all in all, he stands head and shoulders above every other man of 6,000 years. An administrator, he saved the nation in the perils of unparalleled civil war. A statesman, he justified his measures by their success. A philanthropist, he gave liberty to one race and salvation to another. A moralist, he bowed from the summit of human power to the foot of the Cross, and became a Christian. A mediator, he exercised mercy under the most absolute abeyance to law. A leader, he was no partisan. A commander, he was untainted with blood. A ruler in desperate times, he was unsullied with crime. A man, he has left no word of passion, no thought of malice, no trick of craft, no act of jealousy, no purpose of selfish ambition. Thus perfected, without a model, and without a peer, he was dropped into these troubled years to adorn and embellish all that is good and all that is great in our humanity, and to present to all coming time the representative of the divine idea of free government.
It is not too much to say that away down in the future, when the republic has fallen from its niche in the wall of time ; when the great war itself shall have faded out in the distance like a mist on the horizon ; when the Anglo-Saxon language shall be spoken only by the tongue of the stranger ; then the generations looking this way shall see the great president as the supreme figure in this vortex of history,
CHICAGO.
It is impossible in our brief space to give more than a meager sketch of such a city as Chicago, which is in itself the greatest marvel of the Prairie State. This mysterious, majestic, mighty city, born first of water, and next of fire; sown in weakness, and raised in power ; planted among the willows of the marsh, and crowned with the glory of the mountains ; sleeping on the bosom of the prairie, and rocked on the bosom of the sea ; the youngest city of the world, and still the eye of the prairie, as Damas- cus, the oldest city of the world, is the eye of the desert. With a com- merce far exceeding that of Corinth on her isthmus, in the highway to the East ; with the defenses of a continent piled around her by the thou- sand miles, making her far safer than Rome on the banks of the Tiber ;
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HISTORY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS.
with school's eclipsing Alexandria and Athens ; with liberties more con- spicuous than those of the old republics ; with a heroism equal to the first Carthage, and with a sanctity scarcely second to that of Jerusalem-set your thoughts on all this, lifted into the eyes of all men by the miracle of its growth, illuminated by the flame of its fall, and transfigured by the divinity of its resurrection, and you will feel, as I do, the utter impossi- bility of compassing this subject as it deserves. Some impression of her importance is received from the shock her burning gave to the civilized world.
When the doubt of her calamity was removed, and the horrid fact was accepted, there went a shudder over all cities, and a quiver over all lands. There was scarcely a town in the civilized world that did not shake on the brink of this opening chasm. The flames of our homes red- dened all skies. The city was set upon a hill, and could not be hid. All eyes were turned upon it. To have struggled and suffered amid the scenes of its fall is as distinguishing as to have fought at Thermopylæ, or Salamis, or Hastings, or Waterloo, or Bunker Hill.
Its calamity amazed the world, because it was felt to be the common property of mankind.
The early history of the city is full of interest, just as the early his- tory of such a man as Washington or Lincoln becomes public property, and is cherished by every patriot.
Starting with 560 acres in 1833, it embraced and occupied 23,000 acres in 1869, and, having now a population of more than 500,000, it com- mands general attention.
The first settler-Jean Baptiste Pointe au Sable, a mulatto from the West Indies-came and began trade with the Indians in 1796. John Kinzie became his successor in 1804, in which year Fort Dearborn was erected.
A mere trading-post was kept here from that time till about the time of the Blackhawk war, in 1832. It was not the city. It was merely a cock crowing at midnight. The morning was not yet. In 1833 the set- tlement about the fort was incorporated as a town. The voters were divided on the propriety of such corporation, twelve voting for it and one against it. Four years later it was incorporated as a city, and embraced 560 acres.
The produce handled in this city is an indication of its power. Grain and flour were imported from the East till as late as 1837. The first exportation by way of experiment was in 1839. Exports exceeded imports first in 1842. The Board of Trade was organized in 1848, but it was so weak that it needed nursing till 1855. Grain was purchased by the wagon-load in the street.
I remember sitting with my father on a load of wheat, in the long
HISTORY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS.
line of wagons along Lake street, while the buyers came and untied the bags, and examined the grain, and made their bids. That manner of business had to cease with the day of small things. Now our elevators will hold 15,000,000 bushels of grain. The cash value of the produce handled in a year is $215,000,000, and the produce weighs 7,000,000 tons or 700,000 car loads. This handles thirteen and a half ton each minute, all the year round. One tenth of all the wheat in the United States is handled in Chicago. Even as long ago as 1853 the receipts of grain in Chicago exceeded those of the goodly city of St. Louis, and in 1854 the exports of grain from Chicago exceeded those of New York and doubled those of St. Petersburg, Archangel, or Odessa, the largest grain markets in Europe.
The manufacturing interests of the city are not contemptible. In 1873 manufactories employed 45,000 operatives; in 1876, 60,000. The manufactured product in 1875 was worth $177,000,000.
No estimate of the size and power of Chicago would be adequate that did not put large emphasis on the railroads. Before they came thundering along our streets canals were the hope of our country. But who ever thinks now of traveling by canal packets ? In June, 1852, there were only forty miles of railroad connected with the city. The old Galena division of the Northwestern ran out to Elgin. But now, who can count the trains and measure the roads that seek a terminus or connection in this city ? The lake stretches away to the north, gathering in to this center all the harvests that might otherwise pass to the north of us. If you will take a map and look at the adjustment of railroads, you will see, first, that Chicago is the great railroad center of the world, as New York is the commercial city of this continent ; and, second, that the railroad lines form the iron spokes of a great wheel whose hub is this city. The lake furnishes the only break in the spokes, and this seems simply to have pushed a few spokes together on each shore. See the eighteen trunk lines, exclusive of eastern connections.
Pass round the circle, and view their numbers and extent. There is the great Northwestern, with all its branches, one branch creeping along the lake shore, and so reaching to the north, into the Lake Superior regions, away to the right, and on to the Northern Pacific on the left, swinging around Green Bay for iron and copper and silver, twelve months in the year, and reaching out for the wealth of the great agricultural belt and isothermal line traversed by the Northern Pacific. Another branch, not so far north, feeling for the heart of the Badger State. Another pushing lower down the Mississippi-all these make many con- nections, and tapping all the vast wheat regions of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and all the regions this side of sunset. There is that elegant road, the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, running out a goodly number of
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HISTORY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS.
branches, and reaping the great fields this side of the Missouri River. I can only mention the Chicago, Alton & St. Louis, our Illinois Central, described elsewhere, and the Chicago & Rock Island. Further around we come to the lines connecting us with all the eastern cities. The Chicago, Indianapolis & St. Louis, the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne & Chicago, the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern, and the Michigan Cen- tral and Great Western, give us many highways to the seaboard. Thus we reach the Mississippi at five points, from St. Paul to Cairo and the Gulf itself by two routes. We also reach Cincinnati and Baltimore, and Pitts- burgh and Philadelphia, and New York. North and south run the water courses of the lakes and the rivers, broken just enough at this point to make a pass. Through this, from east to west, run the long lines that stretch from ocean to ocean.
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