USA > Michigan > Genesee County > History of Genesee County, Michigan, Her People, Industries and Institutions, Volume I > Part 7
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medicines in saddle bags. Roads were few and postal facilities were meager. The railroad was gaining ground. The pioneers were not without their amusements, though the sports and pastimes were crude enough. Among these, the hunt, the husking-bee, the raising-bee, sleighing parties, dancing and the spelling-bee held first place. On the whole, the pioneers of this period, while suffering many privations, were contented, happy and free from many of the ills that a more advanced civilization has brought to the people of our own day.
AN ERA OF SPECULATION.
Up to the summer of 1837 prosperity in Michigan, considering pioneer conditions, was quite general. The recent immigrations were unparalleled in the history of the West. Michigan was the land of promise. All were producers. The newly elected Legislature reflected the new impulse. From 1835 to 1837, fifty-seven new townships were provided for and sixty-six state roads ; eleven railroads and nine banks were chartered. Speculation was rife. To the imagination, nothing seemed impossible. The wildest schemes found ready backers. Land was bought in great quantities, at inflated prices, without even being seen. Fortunes were expected to be made by rise in prices. Everybody seemed about to grow rich.
A most interesting phase of this mania was the condition of the cur- rency. The first bank established in Michigan, at Detroit in 1806, had not been successful. Various devices for currency were subsequently resorted to. In 1817 another Detroit bank was founded; fifteen banks were in exist- ence within the limits of the state when Michigan was formally admitted to the Union. A disastrous step was taken when, on March 15, 1837, the Legislature passed a general banking law, by which any association of per- sons might by voluntary action assume banking powers. This law was a response to the popular cry against "special privileges," enjoyed apparently by a few corporations who desired a monopoly of this profitable line of business. It was supposed that proper safeguards were made, in the various provisions in the law, protecting the public. Along in the spring, it happened that owing to financial pressure, business houses in leading Eastern cities failed, which, starting a panic, resulted in a run upon the banks of New York. Banks began to fail in New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Balti- more. To add to the embarrassment in Michigan, the same Legislature which had authorized the general banking law, had authorized Governor Mason to borrow five millions of dollars for the building of railroads, canals
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and other improvements. The Legislature now authorized Michigan banks to suspend specie payments, with the general banking law still in force; which, of course, left to the people authority to organize banks and issue bills while in a state of suspension. As a result, the state was soon flooded with an irredeemable currency. Issues were secured on wild land at values limited only by the consciences of the owners, and on city lots which sur- veyors afterwards located well out in Lake Michigan. Banks were located with a special design not to be found. In 1838 the bank commissioners reported : "The singular spectacle was presented of the officers of the state seeking for banks in situations the most inaccessible and remote from trade, and finding at every step an increase of labor by the discovery of new and unknown organizations. Before they could be arrested, the mischief was done; large issues were in circulation and no adequate remedy for the evil." It was said that every village plat, if it had a hollow stump to serve as a vault, was the site of a bank. The bank inspectors were deceived in many ways. It is said that in some cases what appeared to the inspectors to be kegs of specie were in reality kegs of nails, with a few coins on top. Adja- cent banks kept each other informed of the movements of the inspectors; as soon as the inspectors got through at one place, the specie inspected would be sent on by special messenger to the next bank, to be there again inspected. New banks were formed faster than the inspectors could close up the "rotten" ones. When a bank failed it was, of course, the laborers and the small farmers who suffered most, for they had no means of keeping informed as to what banks were unsound, nor of getting rid of doubtful bills. By 1840 only about a half dozen of this brood of "wild cat" banks were still con- sidered sound. The paper of the others was, of course, absolutely worth- less. It is reported of one of the Campaus at Grand Rapids, that in grim irony he papered the walls of his room with them, saying, "If you will not circulate, you shall stay still." Land was a drug on the market. Distrust in business was universal. This situation was not peculiar to Michigan. 'Other states had similar experiences and it was natural that these results should be followed by a political revolution; the Whigs swept into power, making William Henry Harrison, President of the United States, and Will- iam Woodbridge, governor of Michigan.
INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS.
During the period of rapid growth under the great immigration of 1835-37, Michigan had undertaken a great system of public improvements,
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especially in roads and canals. So impressed were the people with the ap- parent magic of the Erie canal upon the growth of New York, that in the constitution of 1835 it was provided, that "Internal improvements shall be encouraged by the government of this state; and it shall be the duty of the Legislature as soon as may be. to make provision by law for ascertaining the proper objects of improvements, in relation to roads, canals and navig- able waters; and it shall also be their duty to provide by law for an equal, systematic and economical application of the funds which may be appro- priated to these objects."
Governor Mason acted promptly upon this mandate from the people, recommending to the Legislature an extensive program of roads, railroads and canals. The Legislature as promptly responded, authorizing the gov- ernor to borrow on the state's credit five million dollars to carry out the proper improvements. Three lines of railroads were to be built: one from Detroit to the mouth of the St. Joseph river; one from Monroe to New Buffalo, and one from the mouth of the Black river to the navigable waters of the Grand river. A canal was to be built from Mt. Clemens to the mouth of the Kalamazoo river, and another around the falls of the St. Mary's river. By facts and figures it was demonstrated that the railroad from Detroit to the mouth of the St. Joseph must pay thirty per cent annually upon the cost. In vain, Governor Mason questioned whether the sum the state had under- taken to borrow would build the works undertaken; in vain, he suggested leaving the minor works to individual enterprise. When a state enters upon a system of public improvements, sections and localities will not submit to waive their claims, in favor even of the general welfare, as opposed to their local advantage.
In 1839 there began a series of misfortunes which were to lead ulti- mately to the total abandonment of the internal improvement scheme. The two banks which had possession of all the state bonds for the five-million- dollar loan-the Morris Canal and Banking Company and the Pennsylvania United States Bank, which had hypothecated the major portion of the bonds for their own debts-had failed. About one-half the face value of the loan had been received by the state, but the whole amount of the bonds was in the hands of parties who would insist on having full payment. Should the state refuse to pay, it would be stamped in the money market with the dis- grace of repudiation, to which the people of Michigan would be extremely sensitive. The general bank crash of the time added to the startling condi- tion. Work on the state railroads was dragged along with the greatest diffi- culty .. Ordinary state expenses could be met only by borrowing. To raise
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the money by taxes would have been intolerable to a people already in dire distress. Happily, the state was able to reach an agreement with the bond- holders. In the end all the bonds were retired, and the state's good name was saved.
It finally began to dawn upon the comprehension of even the dullest, that most of the projects which the state had undertaken were wild and chimerical. The Central and Southern railroads were an exception; these were now well under way. But the idea began to mature that the building and managing of railroads is essentially a private business. The Legislature invited proposals from state creditors for the purchase of the railroads. In 1846, both these roads, so far as then built, were sold to corporations chart- ered for the purpose of purchasing. Under the new management they went rapidly forward to completion, soon becoming great national highways, quite as useful to Michigan as it ever was dreamed they could be. In the con- stitution of 1850 the people of the state expressly prohibited the state "to subscribe to or be interested in the stock of any company, association, or corporation," or "to be a party to or interested in any work of internal improvement, nor engaged in carrying on any such work, except in the expenditure of grants to the state of land or other property."
In 1841, with John S. Barry as governor, the Democratic party came back to power in Michigan. Governor Woodbridge had been elected to the United States Senate. Barry was the man for the times-a man of hard sense, economy and frugality ; a man of experience in public life, scrupulously honest there as in his business as a merchant. The story is told that he mowed the state-house yard, sold the grass and put the money in the state treasury. The farmers of Michigan gave him two terms in succession, and elected him again in 1850; between his second and third terms came Alpheus Felch, William L. Greenley and Epaphroditus Ransom.
During the term of Governor Ransom the state capital was removed from Detroit to Lansing, a more central place for the rapidly growing state. In the same year, 1847, came two notable immigrations. The first was that of a group of Hollanders, to western Michigan, who, under their leader, Rev. Van Raalte of the Dutch Reformed church, founded the city of Hol- land, and, later, Hope College. This was the vanguard of a large influx of Hollanders to this section, which has built on a permanent foundation the interests of Grand Rapids and the neighboring country. Quite different was the other immigration, that of James Jesse Strang and his followers, to Beaver Island, in northern Lake Michigan. Strang had been a Mormon elder at Nauvoo, Illinois, and, upon the death of Joseph Smith, claimed to
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have been divinely sanctioned as his successor. He was defeated, however, by Brigham Young, who drove him away. First, he went to Wisconsin; but presently he removed to Beaver Island, where he founded a kingdom whose capital he named after himself, St. James. Here he made laws, enforced them, and gained a considerable following. Not the least of his achieve- ments was getting himself elected to the state Legislature, for two successive terms, where he is said to have performed his duties ably and to have won many friends. But his introduction of polygamy into his colony at Beaver island led to his assassination; shortly after his death, the colony dispersed.
The experience of the people during the fifteen years since 1835 had revealed many defects in the first state constitution. In 1850 a new con- stitution was adopted; among other provisions, the governor's power of appointment was restricted, and restrictions were imposed upon the legis- lative power of the state Legislature, especially in relation to finances. In general, it favored greater liberty, more privileges to individuals and less to the governing bodies.
A NEW REGIME.
With the exception of the brief Whig ascendency under Governor Woodbridge, the state was continuously under control of Democratic power until 1854. In that year, at Jackson, was formed the first state organization of the Republican party in the United States, which elected as governor of Michigan, Kinsley S. Bingham, re-elected him in 1856, and maintained an ascendency unbroken for twenty-eight years. In 1860 the Republicans elected as governor, Austin Blair, the "war governor," whose statue stands today in front of the capital in Lansing, a witness to the love and respect of the people.
During the quarter of a century of statehood prior to the Civil War, Michigan made substantial advance in education. The schools at the time Michigan became a state were very primitive. There were no professional teachers. The best to be had were promising sons, or daughters, who took what the people could afford, "boarded around," and kept the children busy with the "three R's" in a log shanty. Of school conveniences as we know them, there were few or none. Two names stand out at the beginning of the new regime of statehood destined to be long remembered in the edu- cational history of Michigan: Isaac E.' Crary and John D. Pierce. The former was a member of the constitutional convention of 1835; the latter was the first superintendent of public instruction under the new constitution. These men were neighbors, in Marshall, and had often discussed together
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the subject of state education. Pierce was a graduate of Brown, who, in 1831, had been sent out to the West by the Congregationalists as a home missionary. Through Crary, who had great influence with Governor Mason, he now became superintendent of public instruction, to whose charge was given the whole subject of state education and the management of a million acres of land transferred by Congress to the state as trustee of the sixteenth section in every township in Michigan. In response to a request from the Legislature, Pierce reported a system of common school and university edu- cation which in its essential features forms the foundation of the educational system in operation in Michigan today.
CIVIL WAR DAYS.
In 1860 Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States, by the Republican party, on a platform hostile to slavery. Some Southern states thereupon announced that, rather than submit to this, they would secede from the Union. They called popular conventions, formally adopted ordinances of secession, and formed among themselves the Confederate States of America. The Northern states held that these states were still in the Union, since, by assent to the Constitution, all the states had made an indissoluble bond. Certain border states sympathized with the South as to slavery and secession, but they would not go so far as to join them in main- taining a new republic by force. The border states tried to be peacemakers, and proposed compromises. One of these is known as the Crittenden Com- promise, proposed by Senator Crittenden of Kentucky. It satisfied neither side, and a similar fate met all the compromises proposed, even those of the peace conference called in 1861. Michigan refused to take part in this con- ference. It seemed to her that no conference could be called a peace con- ference worthy the dignity of the state, when held under a threat of war, unless the North should surrender principles upon which Abraham Lincoln had been elected. Nor did Michigan sympathize with President Buchanan's view, that the federal government could not constitutionally use force to keep the states in the Union.
Governor Austin Blair took a strong stand upon the platform of an indestructible Union. "Safety lies in this path alone," he said. "The Union must be preserved, and the laws must be enforced in all parts of it, at what- ever cost. Secession is revolution, and revolution in the overt act is treason, and must be treated as such." Michigan was at peace without a peace con- ference. Hostile action by the Southern states would be in the nature of
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insurrection and, if need be, the army of the federal government must be called upon to suppress insurrection. In case the regular army could not do it, the state militia must be called out.
This sentiment was echoed by Senator Chandler, who in 1854 had suc- ceeded Senator Cass. "The people of Michigan are opposed to all com- promises," he said. "They do not believe that any compromise is necessary ; nor do I. They are prepared to stand by the Constitution of the United States as it is; to stand by the government as it is; to stand by it to blood if necessary."
War was inevitable. On April 12, 1861, Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbor, was attacked, and a few days later surrendered. Michigan was roused as one man. From the University of Michigan to the humblest red school house, students listened to professors and teachers on the great issue of preserving the Union. Speakers in every center of population from city to hamlet spoke to thoughtful and earnest audiences of people on the duty of every citizen to rise to the defense of the Union, even to his last drop of blood, if necessary. In Detroit the citizens listened to the now aged General Cass, who affirmed: "It is the duty of all zealously to support the government in its efforts to bring this unhappy civil war to a speedy and satisfactory conclusion, by the restoration in its integrity of that great charter of freedom bequeathed to us by Washington and his compatriots."
When the call to arms came from President Lincoln, Michigan was among the first to send volunteers to seal the Union with their blood. Dur- ing the great struggle that followed, Michigan put into the field nearly a hundred thousand men. When the war was over, no state in the Union had greater cause to rejoice over the record made by her sons, many thousands of whom were left in soldiers' graves on Southern battlefields.
ZACHARIAH CHANDLER.
During the war, and in the year immediately preceding, Michigan had in the Senate of the United States a man who, of all her sons, can alone dispute rank with Lewis Cass as the greatest figure in her political history- Zachariah Chandler. Chandler was fortunate in the time of his advent on the political stage, succeeding Cass in 1857, when large questions were before Congress and the American people. Where Cass had been conservative, Chandler was the most radical of radicals; he was an anti-slavery man, with the courage of his convictions.
Zachariah Chandler was born in Bedford, New Hampshire, December
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IO, 1813. He was educated for business and in early life taught school. In 1833 he caught the "Michigan fever," emigrated to the new territory and settled in Detroit, where, under the name of Moore & Chandler, he and his brother-in-law opened a general store on Jefferson avenue near Randolph street. Chandler showed his business acumen in giving all the speculative schemes of this period a wide berth, and hence was in a way to become rela- tively prosperous notwithstanding the general financial crash of 1837. He was also public-spirited and when, after 1850, he began to give considerable thought to political matters, his wide acquaintance throughout the state due to numerous business trips which had brought him into personal contact with men in every locality prominent and influential in business and public con- cerns, he was equipped to turn his great talents to the public service. In 1850 he was elected a delegate to the Whig state convention. In 1851 he was elected by the Whigs mayor of Detroit, as against John R. Williams, who had held the office for six years and was one of Detroit's most con- spicuous and popular citizens. Three years later the Republican party was organized "under the oaks" at Jackson and developed strength enough to elect its candidate for governor. In the Republican campaign of 1856 Mr. Chandler gave full rein to all his wonderful energy. Michigan Republicans gained an overwhelming victory. Fremont, the Republican candidate, car- ried Michigan by nearly twenty thousand majority. The Republican state ticket was elected, and the Legislature was Republican by a majority on joint ballot of seventy-two. It was this Legislature which chose Mr. Chandler United States senator to succeed Lewis Cass.
The Kansas troubles were in the front when Chandler entered the Senate. His plan of action was characteristic of the man; he met the threats of the opposition with open defiance. His first speech struck straight from the shoulder. He said, "The old women of the North who have been in the habit of crying out, 'the Union is in danger!' have passed off the stage. They are dead. Their places will never be supplied, but in their stead we have a race of men who are devoted to this Union and devoted to it as Jefferson and the fathers who made it and bequeathed it to us. Any aggression has been submitted to by the race who have gone off the stage. They were ready to compromise any principle, anything. The men of the present day are a different race. They will compromise nothing. They are Union-loving men; they love all portions of the Union; they will sacrifice anything, but principle, to save it. They will, however, make no sacrifice of principle. Never! Never! No more compromises will ever be submitted to save the Union. If it is worth saving, it will be saved. The only way that we shall
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save it and make it permanent as the everlasting hills will be by restoring it to the original foundations upon which the fathers placed it. I trust in God civil war will never come; but if it should come, upon their heads, and theirs alone, will rest the responsibility for every drop of blood that may flow." Of the Dred Scott decision he said: "What did General Jackson do when the supreme court declared the United States bank constitutional? .Did he bow to it? No! He said he would construe the constitution for himself. I shall do the same thing. I have sworn to support the consti- tution of the United States, and I have sworn to support it as the fathers made it, and not as the supreme court has altered it." Speaking upon the John Brown raid at Harper's Ferry, he said: "John Brown has been exe- cuted as a traitor to the state of Virginia, and I want it to go upon the records of the Senate in the most solemn manner to be held up as a warning to traitors, north, south, east, west. Dare to raise your impious hands against this government, its constitution and its laws, and you hang. Threats have been made year after year for the last thirty years, that if certain events happen this Union will be dissolved. It is no small matter to dissolve this Union. It means a bloody revolution or it means a halter."
Senator Chandler bore his part nobly in the exciting issues of the war and reconstruction. Only once, in 1875, when there was a small Republican majority in the state Senate coincident with recalcitrancy of some members, was Chandler defeated for re-election to the United States Senate. But he was timber too valuable to lie idle; Grant called him into his cabinet as secretary of the interior, where he served until the end of Grant's term. In 1879, on the resignation of Isaac P. Christiancy, Chandler's senatorial opponent in 1875, the Michigan Legislature promptly elected Chandler to fill the vacancy. In February of that year he took his seat in the Senate, and a few days afterward made what was probably the most memorable speech of his senatorial career -- the famous phillippic against the participation of Jefferson Davis in the benefits of an act pensioning veterans of the Mexican War. On the evening of the last day of October of that year, after a powerful campaign speech in Chicago, he had retired late to his room in the Grand Pacific hotel; the next morning he was found dead in his bed, from a stroke of apoplexy which had cut him off without warning. His body was laid to rest in Elmwood cemetery, Detroit, amid the grief of a nation.
While Mr. Chandler was in the Senate of the United States, Michigan had had seven governors, all but one having served two terms. In 1864 Henry H. Crapo, of Genesee county, was elected to succeed Governor Austin Blair. Mr. Crapo's opponent was William M. Fenton, also of Genesee, who went to the front as colonel of the Eighth Michigan Infantry and served
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with distinction in several campaigns. Despite the fact that Colonel Fen- ton's military record and his standing as a citizen were unimpeachable, the strong party spirit and Republican strength in the state elected Mr. Crapo by a majority of over seventeen thousand.
GOVERNOR HENRY H. CRAPO.
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