USA > Indiana > Historic Indiana : being chapters in the story of the Hoosier state from the romantic period of foreign exploration and dominion through pioneer days, stirring war times, and periods of peaceful progress, to the present time > Part 10
USA > Indiana > Historic Indiana : being chapters in the story of the Hoosier state from the romantic period of foreign exploration and dominion through pioneer days, stirring war times, and periods of peaceful progress, to the present time, centennial ed. > Part 10
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William Henry Harrison. From an engraving after the painting by Chappel.
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Indiana Territory
to New Orleans, it was natural that the early pioneers from the South who had slaves should retain them, it still being in accordance with the law. At the same time there had come into the Territory many Quakers, who always discountenanced slavery; and large num- bers of the citizens from the South, who had left slave States at great sacrifice, on account of their disap- proval of slavery, many of whom were of Huguenot descent, had been joined by people from New England. These elements made a strong minority, who persisted in a conscientious and continued fight against per- petuating the practice in the new Territory. It is a fact that, when the constitution for the new State was adopted by the commission appointed for that purpose, freedom won by only two votes! A trav- eller through Indiana at this time wrote home: "These people are forming a State government. The question in all its magnitude, whether it should be a slave-holding State or not, is just now agitating. Many fierce spirits talked about resistance with blood, but the preponderance of more sober views and habits of order and quietness prevailed." Indiana came in as a free State.
One of the perplexing and vexatious things in frontier life was the frauds practised in entering claims to the public lands. The times were so threat- ening in 1804 that the Commissioners, appointed to adjust the land titles for the Federal Government, in closing their report, said: "We close this melancholy picture of human depravity by rendering our de- vout acknowledgment that it has pleased Divine Providence to preserve us both from legal murder and private assassination." 1 The rapacity of land 1 Dillon, J. B., History of Indiana, p. 434. Indianapolis, 1859.
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speculators, the dishonesty of land agents, and the grasp- ing covetousness of some settlers kept up a constant source of hardship and discontent. Soldiers and the earlier inhabitants sometimes sold their lands to cunning speculators as low as thirty cents an acre, and then were paid in bogus scrip. The very first settlers came into the Territory before there were any surveys, and had to prove up after the government was ready to grant a title. Actual settlers tried to adjust their selections without dissensions or bidding against each other, sometimes casting lots to decide who should secure a certain tract. We read in an old journal that "the settlers tell foreign capitalists to hold off till they enter the tract they have already settled upon, and that then they may pitch in; that there will be land enough for all. If a speculator makes a bid or shows a disposition to take a settler's claim from him, he soon sees the whites of a score of eyes. A few days of public sale sufficed to relieve hundreds of their cash, but they secured their land, which will serve as a basis for their future wealth and prosperity, sure as time's gentle progress makes a calf an ox." Some speculators swept whole townships at a purchase. The fortunes of many who were after- wards the rich men of Indiana were made by securing cheap government lands, and not "signing deeds." The story is told by Sanford Cox of a clever ruse played upon land speculators that were constantly scouring the country.
" A man who owned a claim on Tippecanoe River, near Pretty Prairie, fearing that some one of the numerous land hunters might enter the land he had settled upon before he could raise the money to buy it, seeing one day a cavalcade of land hunters riding in the direction of his
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claim, mounted his horse and started off at full speed to meet them, swinging his hat and shouting at the top of his voice: 'Indians! Indians! The woods are full of them, murdering and scalping all before them!' They paused a moment, but he cried: 'Help! Longlois,-Cicots, help! ' They turned and fled, giving the alarm to the settlements, and never came back. As soon as the alarmer could gather up money enough, he slipped down to the land- office town, and entered his land, chuckling in his sleeve over outwitting the land hunters." 1
At one time "land spies " and "land sharks " were cir- cumvented by a whole neighborhood of settlers dressing up like Indians and making a noisy attempt to sur- round the speculators, who hastily left and spread the alarm of savages coming.
In December, 1811, the month after the battle of Tippecanoe, Territorial Indiana and the whole Mis- sissippi Valley experienced the terrors of an earth- quake. It was the first disturbance of that character since the country had been explored, and no seismic phenomena have ever been so violent in the Middle West since. The first shock occurred the fifteenth of December, and they were repeated at intervals for two or three months. A resident of the valley at that time wrote that the shocks of these earthquakes must have equalled, in their terrible upheavings of the earth, anything of the kind that has been recorded. We are accustomed to measure this by the buildings over- turned and the mortality that resulted, but here the country was thinly settled. The houses, fortunately, were of logs, the most difficult to overturn that could be constructed. Yet, as it was, whole tracts of land were plunged into the river. This was the "Great
1 Cox, Sanford C., Old Settlers, p. 53. La Fayette, 1860.
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Shake" of 1811, as it was felt in the centre of the district affected. Up and down the tributary rivers the terror was only less felt, as the settlements were distant from that centre. Indiana Territory had so few towns, of any size, at that time that the experience came mostly to cabin settlements and solitary home- steaders in their isolated clearings.
An interesting fact in connection with the Mississippi River intrigues was that in the year 1806 the Ter- ritory of Indiana had many valuable accessions, in the deluded followers of Aaron Burr. These learned on their way down the Ohio that Burr's followers were regarded as traitors by the government; that if they proceeded farther toward the Mississippi they would be seized by soldiers, who had been detailed to watch the river and make arrests of the adherents of Burr. These deluded people saw the dreams of empire, with which that conspirator had enticed them away from their homes, to join with him in his scheme of establish- ing a great inland, independent government, vanish into an illegal myth. To protect themselves, they left the rivers and retired into the fastnesses of southern Indiana, where they began anew, under great hard- ships, to make homes for themselves. They be- came valuable settlers, but cherished no regard for that arch schemer, who lured so many from their old habitations.
We have already recounted, in the chapter on Spanish dominion, how in 1803, shortly after Indiana attained the rank of separate Territorial government, the long- drawn question of the free navigation of the Missis- sippi River, whereby the commerce of the Wabash and the Ohio might have an outlet, was finally settled by Napoleon selling the whole of Louisiana Territory
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to the American Government. During these trouble- some times on the frontier, the settlers upbraided the New Englanders for their indifference to the troubles of the West. They wrote to them that
"three times the quantity of tobacco and corn can be raised on an acre here than can be within the settlements on the east side of the mountains, and with less cultivation. Do you think to prevent the emigration from a barren country, loaded with taxes, to the most luxurious and fertile soil in the world? We are determined that the Spaniards shall not trade up the river, if they will not let us trade down it. In case we are not succored by the United States, our allegiance will be thrown off and some other power applied to. Great Britain stands ready with open arms to receive and support our claims. When once re-united to them, 'Farewell, a long farewell' to all your boasted greatness. You are as ignorant of this country as Great Britain was of America." 1
This whole question, which had annoyed the settlers for two decades, we dispose of in a few paragraphs, but their vexations had been most disheartening, and they hailed the opening of the river with rejoicing.
Seemingly this would have ended forever the battles of the river, but nine years afterwards, in the War of 1812 between the United States and Great Britain, the Western border was again disturbed and Indiana's commerce congested by the blockade of New Orleans, whereby it was intended to make a permanent con- quest of the lower Mississippi, and to secure for Great Britain in perpetuity the western bank of the river. Says Fiske: "In order to effect all this, it seemed necessary to inflict upon the Americans one crushing and humiliating defeat. That this could be done few
1 Ind. Magazine of History, 1906, vol. ii.
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Englishmen doubted, and so confident was the ex- pectation of victory that Governors and Command- ants for the towns along the Mississippi River were actually appointed and sent out in the fleet."1 Thus we see the great significance to the Indiana settlers, clustered along the Ohio and Wabash with all their tributary streams, of the great victory gained by Andrew Jackson at New Orleans, with his army of scarcely six thousand sturdy frontiersmen from the valley territory, when he met a force of twelve thousand British regulars on that December day in 1814.
"The faultless frontier marksmen, who thought nothing of bringing down a squirrel from the top of the tallest tree, wasted very few shots indeed. In just twenty-five minutes the British were in full retreat, leaving 2600 of their number killed and wounded. The American loss was only eight killed and thirteen wounded, for the enemy were mowed down too quickly to return an effective fire. This victory, like the three last naval victories of the war, occurred after peace had been made by our Com- missioners at Ghent. Nevertheless, no American can regret that the battle was fought. Not only the insolence and rapacity of Great Britain had richly deserved casti- gation, but Jackson's victory decided that henceforth the Mississippi Valley belonged indisputably to the people of the United States." 2
And it was the last struggle with a foreign power for its possession.
The state of advancement in Indiana at this time may be understood from some passages in the Gov-
1 Fiske, John, Essays, Historical and Literary, vol. i., “ Andrew Jackson," p. 248. New York, 1902.
2 Ibid., page 251.
-
The Old State House at Corydon, Indiana. From a photograph by Mowrer.
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Indiana Territory
ernor's message to the Territorial Legislature when it met in 1813. Governor Posey rehearsed the causes of the war then going on with England, and then urged the Assembly to pass laws for raising revenues for roads and schools and the reorganization of the militia for better protection against the Indians! In the formal response of the Legislature, that august body of pioneers, clad in deerskin, replied in im- perious language, calling attention to the fact that the American nation had been forced into the war by the indignities practised on her by Great Britain, and added: "With you, Sir, we abhor that cringing and detestable policy which would submit to British aggression, and cherish a hostile colony-a scourge on our borders. We are astonished at the mistaken and obstinate policy of the New England States, in opposing the junction of the Canadas to the Union." 1
After living under the Territorial form of govern- ment for seven years, Congress granted Indiana the right to call a convention for the purpose of framing a constitution preparatory to admission into the Union of States. This convention assembled in the little town of Corydon, which had just been made the capital. It was in the month of June. In southern Indiana, when the corn is growing finely, the tempera- ture can be like the torrid zone. The honorable body which had assembled for the work found such weather prevailing, and held most of the sessions under a great spreading elm-tree, which still stands. The limbs of this tree cover nearly one hundred and twenty-five feet in diameter, and its shade was gratefully cool to the ardent law-makers who were assembled to close the Territorial stage of her history.
1 Dillon, J. B., History of Indiana, page 529. Cincinnati, 1858.
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Historic Indiana
With the opening of the nineteenth century, Indi- ana was to come into the galaxy of States, nearly a century and a half after La Salle revealed her fertile lands and streams to the people of the other con- tinent, and under conditions daily growing more favorable to peaceful occupancy.
CHAPTER VIII
THE NEW STATE-1816
NDIANA Territory, as well as the others west of the intervening Alleghany Mountains, was a long distance from the immediate watch-care of the Central Government, and in common with Territories at the present day felt the delays and the indifference to its necessities and peculiar conditions. In 1815, Congress received a petition from the settlers of Indiana, reciting that they now had 60,000 white inhabitants within their borders, and asking that honorable body to order an election for representatives to form a State government; and very significantly expressing at the same time the hope that if a State was organized, it would be permitted to be a free and not a slave State. "Let us be on our guard when our convention men are chosen," wrote good old Dennis Pennington, in 1815, "that they may be men opposed to slavery."
The following April, a bill favorable to the organiza- tion of a new State was passed in Congress, and a month later the election occurred. The commission sat in June to frame the constitution. Of those hardy frontiersmen who were to assume the responsibilities of forecasting the future commonwealth, Mr. Dillon says:
"The convention that formed the first constitution of the State of Indiana was composed mainly of clear-headed,
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Historic Indiana
unpretending men of common-sense, whose patriotism was unquestionable and whose morals were fair. Their familiarity with the theories of the Declaration of In- dependence-their Territorial experience under the pro- vision of the Ordinance of 1787-and their knowledge of the principles of the Constitution of the United States were sufficient, when combined, to lighten materially their labors in the great work of forming a constitution for a new State." 1
This is really a modest estimate of the commission, when we compare the instrument which they prepared with State measures originated by others, even in this day! The new constitution was comprehensive, digni- fied, and so liberal in its provisions for the future that it was a half century in advance of the times. It declared for reform and not vengeance, as the object of State punishment for crimes; it imposed on future Legislatures the requirement of providing asylums for the unfortunate; it prohibited the establishment of banks for the purpose of issuing bills of credit, or bills payable to order or bearer, except the regular State bank and its branches; and it is claimed that, previous to Indiana, no State had in its constitution declared for a graduated system of schools, extending from the district schools to the university, equally open to all, on the basis of gratuitous instruction. The legislation of the next thirty-five years did not accomplish the ideal of these early framers of the first constitution in regard to education, and it was over three quarters of a century before the penal code of the State contained as enlightened provisions as they had outlined.
1 Dillon, J. B., History of Indiana, page 559. Cincinnati, 1858.
"Constitutional Elm" at Corydon, Indiana. This elm is still standing. From a photograph by Mowrer.
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The New State-1816
As an illustration of the primitive conditions which prevailed at that date, it is recalled that the com- mission held its sessions under a great elm in the yard, and the chairman of the Constitutional Commission, who was also the builder that was erecting the new State-house, was often called from hammer and trowel, to decide upon questions of State.
The duties of Statehood were assumed by thirteen sparsely settled counties lying along the Ohio and the southern part of the Wabash River. Less than one- fourth of the territory had been ceded to the white race. Two-thirds of the domain was still the hunting- ground of the Indians.
The men who had controlled political affairs during the Territorial time led in the organization of the State and portioned the offices and honors among them- selves, very much after the present fashion in politics. Jonathan Jennings became Governor. James Noble and Walter Taylor were elected to the United States Senate, and Williams Hendricks went to Congress. The first Assembly after the State was admitted into the Union convened in the new capital at Corydon on November 4, 1816. Governor Jennings's message to the first General Assembly was full of appreciation of the dignity and importance of the occasion, and the responsibilities of the Legislature in striking a high plane for their deliberations and enactments. An idea of the issues of the day may be gleaned from the points brought out in his address, some of which still have a familiar ring, and others passed with the passing of the pioneer conditions. He pointed out the necessity of providing for general education ; urged the necessity for better roads; that certainty of punishment must be established, as the surest way of preventing crime.
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Historic Indiana
He urged better protection from the Indians, and that there was need of laws prohibiting any attempts to seize and carry into bondage persons of color legally entitled to their freedom, and at the same time laws to prevent slaves, from elsewhere, seeking refuge within the limits of the State.
The tax rates for the year of admission into the Union are also interesting as an index of the times. For each one hundred acres of best land, the tax was one dollar. For each bond-servant over twelve years of age, three dollars; thirty-seven cents for each horse or mule. For each ferry across streams, from five to twenty dollars. Town lots were assessed fifty cents; and each "pleasure carriage" with two wheels, one dollar; four wheels, one dollar and a quarter; each silver watch, twenty-five cents; gold watch, fifty cents; for every billiard table, fifty dollars. We wonder of how many the crude wilderness towns could boast?
At this time there was not a mile of turnpike, plank road, or canal in the State! The Indian trails, which could only be travelled by a rider on horseback, were the only roads outside of the towns. It took the members elected to the National Congress twenty-eight days to travel on horseback to reach the sessions of that body.
The description of the diminutive county towns, in William Dudley Foulke's very interesting biography of Governor Oliver P. Morton, gives the reader a graphic picture of the county seat in that early time. He says that
"thither flocked the men of the county upon all great occasions, to the trials and to the musters. They brought with them their own food in their wagons or saddle-bags, and sought the shelter of the Court-house or of the great
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The New State-1816
trees near by. The men were clad in deerskin trousers, moccasins, and blue homespun hunting-shirts, with a belt to which hung a tobacco pouch made of polecat skin. The women wore gowns of homespun cotton, with calico or gingham sun-bonnet. The country folks came to town on horseback, the women sitting behind the men on the same horse." 1
At the same time the people in the towns were surrounding themselves with better homes and more of the conveniences of life. The impetus given to the development of the State, by having its own govern- ment and increased security from Indian raids, may be realized when it is recalled that the population increased eighty-seven thousand in the next four years. By 1820, there were 147,178 people in the State. New settlements were founded, homes rebuilt or enlarged, schoolhouses and churches built, orchards planted, and roads hewn through the forest.
There were few newspapers anywhere in that day, and on the border candidates for office were wont to issue flaming handbills, and broadsides, setting forth their own virtues, and the drawbacks from the election of their opponents. There were no caucuses or conventions then. Every candidate brought him- self out and ran on his own merits. Modesty generally was its own reward! Then, the best men succeeded in capturing office by sounding their own praises from the stump. It really was stump-speaking in those primitive times. The political candidate would round up a few voters at a battalion muster on training-day and harangue them; or, appoint a meeting, where there were a few logs in a clearing for the benches, on which the choppers gathered to listen, and a broad stump
1 Foulke, Wm. D., Life of Oliver P. Morton. Indianapolis, 1900.
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Historic Indiana
for the speaker, and you had a "log convention," such as downed slavery in the new Territory. Many amusing stories are told of these frontier campaigns. When Jonathan Jennings, who afterwards was the first Governor of the State, was running for Congress against Mr. Randolph, they both went about among the different neighborhoods 'lectioneering. Mr. Dunn tells the story of Mr. Randolph coming to a log-rolling on horseback, being received by Farmer Ruse with the salutation, "'Light you down"; he dismounted, and after chatting a few minutes was asked into the house. Randolph accepted the invitation, and, after visiting with the women folks a short time, rode away. On the next day Jennings came, who had a similar reception, but to the invitation to repair to the house, he replied, "Send a boy up with my horse and I'll help roll," and help he did until the work was finished, and then he threw the maul and pitched quoits with the men, taking care to let them outdo him, although he was very strong and well skilled in the sports and work of frontier farmers. So he went from house to house. People used to treasure up their anecdotes of his doings in his campaign, and how he would take a scythe and keep ahead of half a dozen mowers.
Captain Lemake, with his keen sense of humor, has told in his Reminiscences of an Indianian a very amusing story of a canvass for votes which he made in his youth. It was in a contest for sheriff of Vander- burg County to which he had been nominated, against his vigorous protest.
"I found this race a bitterly contested fight and no comfortably padded job. Through the out townships, over rough and muddy roads, in buggy and on horse- back, day and night I beat the bush. And all the
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The New State-1816
time there rang in my ears the professional office-seeker's chant :
He greets the women with courtly grace,
And kisses the babies' dirty face ;
He calls to the fence the farmer at work, And bores the merchant, and bores the clerk;
The blacksmith while his anvil rings,
He greets. And this is the song he sings:
'Howdy, howdy, howdy do? How is your wife, and how are you? Ah! it fits my fist as no other can, The horny hand of the working-man.'
"One day when riding along a country road looking for voters, I spied a dilapidated old Reuben plowing a field. No sooner had I tied my horse than the intelligent agriculturist left his plow and came over to the fence. After shaking his gnarly claw in the hearty manner that candidates have, I began my spiel. He listened patiently until I got through, and then with hems and haws said: 'Well, Cap, I'd like to vote for you firstrate, but the other fellow is sort o' kin to me and I don't like to vote agin him.' Rather taken back, I queried what relation- ship he claimed with my opponent; when he, with subdued pride, drawled out, 'Well I got an idee that he's the father of my oldest boy.' " 1
Politicians were often the butt of the proverbial Hoosier humor, and on account of it sometimes lost their election. Of one politician it was said that there was no tangible objection to him, but it was rumored that he could see a short rich man over the head of a tall poor man. The same humor sometimes came out in plea for office, as when a candidate for justice of peace boasted that he "had been sued on every
1 Lemcke, J. A., Reminiscences of an Indianian, page 66. Indian- apolis, 1905.
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Historic Indiana
section of the statutes, and ought to know all about the law."
Political influence and office went in the olden time, as much as now, to the lawyers; commercial life had a narrower horizon in those days than at present, and the young men of wit, who were selecting a career, turned very often to the profession of law. In the reminiscences of one of these men, who figured largely in the early bar of Indiana, he says that the lawyers were the most important personages in the country. They were universally called "'squires " by old and young. Queues were much the fashion, and nothing was more common than to see one of these 'squires with a queue three feet long, tied from head to tip in an eel skin, walking in evident superiority, in his own estimation, among the people in the court-yard, sounding the public mind as to his prospects as a can- didate for the Legislature. The crowds of that day thought the holding of court a great affair. The people came hundreds of miles to see the judges and hear the lawyers plead, as they called it. When court adjourned, the people returned to their homes and told their children of the eloquence of the attorney.
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