The Government and Its Representatives, 1818 to 1830.
In some respects the character of the state government of Illinois shows the character of the settlers. The nativity of the governors and the congressmen of the state indicates that the South was the origin of a majority of the population. Before the end of 1830 there had been no northern-born representative of the state in the national House of Representatives; the first northern-born senator was chosen in the last month of 1825, and the first northern governor in 1830.[370] Pierre Menard, a French Canadian, the first [pg 146] lieutenant-governor, came to Illinois in 1790, and can not fairly be cited as a type of the French descendants of the first white settlers of Illinois.[371] As a matter of fact, the French element was not a political factor of importance. Nor is it true that all southerners were pro-slavery, for the most noted anti-slavery governor of Illinois, and her governor during the Civil War, were from the South, while her first northern senator was pro-slavery. The great influx of immigrants from New England and the rest of the North did not come until after 1830. It was retarded, after the opening of the Erie Canal (1825), by the Winnebago and Black Hawk wars, and did not reach its height until the latter war had closed and the Indian claims to land in northern Illinois had been extinguished. Immigration from the northern states increased proportionally, however, after 1820.
Illinois men in Congress give a number of indications of the feeling of the people on questions having a more or less intimate relation to settlement. Constant and insistent demands for more land-offices, more post-roads, more pensions, donations of land for poor settlers, grants of land for internal improvements, the right of preëmption for squatters, and the reduction of the price of public lands show that the frontier was in favor of a liberal governmental expenditure.[372] Congressmen from Illinois, without exception, favored the tariff bills of 1824 and 1828.[373] In 1828, the only senator from Illinois who voted on the [pg 147] question, voted for the bill abolishing imprisonment for debt on processes issuing from a United States court.[374] Since Illinois early abolished such imprisonment, it is interesting to note that three hundred and thirty-eight persons were committed to the Essex county jail in New Jersey, for debt, in the year ending April 1, 1823, of whom one hundred and forty-one were in close confinement. The aggregate of debt was fifty-five thousand dollars.[375]
Within the state one of the phenomena which has characterized frontier regions appeared about the year 1821. A desperate gang of immigrants had robbed and plundered until, after a most notable robbery, “a public meeting was held, and among other things, a company was formed, consisting of ten law-abiding men of well-known courage, who bound themselves together, under the name of the Regulators of the Valley, to rid the country of horse thieves and robbers.... A regular constitution was drawn up and subscribed to.” After the leader of the desperadoes had been killed the remainder fled.[376] A frontier condition is indicated also by the fact that when Sangamon county was formed, on January 30, 1821, a special law provided that housekeepers in the county should perform the duties and receive the privileges of freeholders. The same provision was made for Morgan county two years later. As land sales in the Sangamon country, in which these counties lay, did not begin until [pg 148] November, 1823, these laws probably resulted from the formation of counties whose entire population consisted of squatters.[377] The persistence of wolf bounties bears testimony to continued wild surroundings.[378] In 1829 alien Irish, and presumably all other aliens, could vote at all elections. An election law of this year provided that voting should be by the voter's approaching the bar, in the election room, and naming in an audible voice the persons for whom he voted, or, if the voter preferred, by delivering to the judges a ballot which should be read aloud by them, the alternative being for the benefit of illiterate voters. Voting had previously been by ballot.[379]
Although frontier conditions obtained, there were evidences of their gradual amelioration. A law of 1823 provided that counterfeiting, which, in the territorial period, had been punishable by death, should be punished by a fine of not more than one thousand dollars, whipping with not fewer than one hundred nor more than two hundred lashes, imprisonment for not more than twelve months, and being rendered forever infamous.[380] The state established a system of common schools to be supported, in part, by the state, in 1825; but in 1829 the sections of the act which provided that two per cent of all money received into the state treasury, and five-sixths of the interest of the school fund, should be for the support of public schools, were repealed,[381] taxation for such a purpose not being then in accord with public sentiment. A [pg 149] mechanic's lien law, passed in 1825, provided that in case of a contract between a landowner and a mechanic, the mechanic should have a lien upon the product of his labor for three months, after which the lien lapsed unless suit had been commenced. Three years later an unsuccessful attempt to secure such a law was made in New York.[382]
Two accounts on the records of the state are of sufficient interest to give at length. The first gives the amount of money received into the treasury during the two years ending December 27, 1822:
“The amount paid into the treasury by the different sheriffs within the two years ending as aforesaid, is $ 7,121.09
The amount of a judgment obtained against the former sheriff of Randolph [County] for non-resident tax of 1818, is 147.14
The amount from non-residents for the two preceding years, including back taxes, redemptions, interest, &c., is 38,437.75
The amount from non-residents' bank stock, is 97.77
The amount from the Saline on the Ohio, is 10,563.09
The amount from the Saline on Muddy river, is 200.00
The amount from the sale of Lots in the town of Vandalia, is 5659.86
Total amount of money paid at the Treasury between the 1st of January, 1821, and the 27th of December, 1822, $62,226.70”
The balance in the treasury was $33,661.11, but Governor Edwards, in his message of December 2, 1828, reported a state indebtedness of $44,140.03 and taxes in Illinois as [pg 150] precisely eight times as high as those in Kentucky which were payable in the same kind of currency.[383] The rage for internal improvements was partly responsible, and for this in turn the wide dispersion of the settlements in Illinois, caused by the fact that all public lands were offered at the same minimum price and that the prairies were in large measure shunned, furnishes a partial explanation.
The second account of the state, above referred to, shows that in 1822 it cost $151.82 to make a trip from Vandalia to Shawneetown and return, and one from Vandalia to Kaskaskia and return, to convey to the capital some money paid by the United States on the three per cent fund due the state. The former trip occupied fourteen days, the latter eight days.[384]
Governor Cass' protection of Galena during the Winnebago War of 1827 may have been influenced by its uncertain governmental status. In 1828 miners in what is now southwestern Wisconsin voted for members of Congress from Illinois, and in 1829 Galena was enumerated among the thriving towns of Huron or Ouisconsin Territory. November 29, 1828, one hundred and eighty-seven inhabitants of Galena and vicinity sent a memorial to Congress asking that a separate territory be formed, the territory to be bounded on the south by a line drawn due west from the southern point of Lake Michigan to the Mississippi, and by the northern boundary of Missouri. The memorial began: “The undersigned, inhabitants of that portion of the ‘Territory Northwest of the Ohio,’ lying north of a due east and west line drawn through the southernmost end of Lake Michigan, and west of that lake to the British possessions, comprehending the mining district, more generally known as the Fever River Lead [pg 151] Mines.” The petitioners referred to the violation of the Ordinance of 1787, and also stated that they were subject to two separate governments, each some hundreds of miles from them, and each unacquainted with their needs. The petition was read and tabled.[385] It is true that the situation of Galena was peculiarly difficult. No mail could be carried along the rude trail from Peoria to Galena during the wet season, and when the Illinois legislature, seeking to give relief, passed a bill for laying out a road between the “Illinois settlements and Galena,” it was vetoed by the governor and council because the road would pass through lands of the United States and of the Indians. When the river was frozen provisions were very high, and mail was sent forward from Fort Edwards once a month. These conditions were more aggravating as the number of inhabitants increased, and in 1827, notwithstanding the trouble with the Winnebago Indians, there were about four thousand men at Galena, and they mined about fifteen times as much lead as had been mined in 1823. In January, 1828, a congressional committee reported favorably on a proposition to open a road to Galena.[386] In a letter written one year later by the delegate from Michigan Territory, to the committee on territories, the suggestion is made that a new territory, to be called Huron, should be formed, because the region at Galena was said to have received hundreds of settlers during the preceding summer and to have at the time of writing ten thousand or more, and government in the lead region could not be properly carried on from Detroit, which was eight hundred or one [pg 152] thousand miles distant, by the routes commonly traveled. The legislature of Michigan was said to be compelled to meet in the summer in order to enable delegates to attend and that was the busy time at the mines.[387] A congressional act of February, 1829, provided for the laying out of a village at Galena. The plat was not to exceed one section of land, no lot was to be larger than one-fourth of an acre, unimproved lots were to be sold at not less than five dollars, improved lots were to be graded, without reference to their improvements, into three grades, to sell at the rate of twenty-five, fifteen, and ten dollars, respectively, per acre, the occupants having the right of preëmption.[388] Another mode of relief, which the inhabitants were working out for themselves, is described in a Galena paper of September 14, 1829: “Mr. Soulard's wagon and mule team returned, a few days since, from Chicago, near the southernmost bend of Lake Michigan; to which place it had been taken across the country, with a load of lead. This is the first wagon that has ever passed from the Mississippi River to Chicago. The route taken from the mines was, to Ogee's ferry, on Rock River, eighty miles; thence an east course sixty miles, to the Missionary establishment on the Fox River of the Illinois; and thence a north-easterly course sixty miles to Chicago, as travelled, two hundred miles. The wagon was loaded with one ton and a half of lead. The trip out was performed in eleven, and the return trip in eight days. The lead was taken, by water, from Chicago to Detroit. Should a road be surveyed and marked, on the best ground, and the shortest distance, a trip could be performed in much less time. And if salt could be obtained at Chicago, from the New [pg 153] York Salt Works, it would be a profitable and advantageous trade.”[389]
As the life history of an individual recapitulates the history of the development of a species, so does the history of Galena, in respect to the difficulties of its early settlers, recapitulate the history of the several parts of the United States in their early days. As Illinois had sent petitions for relief to the governments of the Northwest Territory, of Indiana Territory, and of the United States, so did Galena send similar petitions to the governments of Illinois, of Michigan Territory, and of the United States. In each case the prayers of the petitioners were but partially granted. In each case the difficulties from Indians, lack of facilities for commerce, distance from the seat of government, inability to secure lands, were gradually mitigated until the steady onward sweep of settlement engulfed the outlying region and it ceased to be the frontier, and turned its energies to other questions—different, although probably as difficult. Galena, even at the close of 1830, was a frontier region on the outskirts of Illinois settlement.