During the congressional debate on the acceptance of the Illinois Constitution, objection to admitting the state was made on the ground that the number of inhabitants was doubtful, and that slavery was not distinctly prohibited, Tallmadge, of New York, who later wished to restrict slavery in Missouri, being the chief objector. The state was admitted, however, and on December 4, 1818, the representatives and senators from Illinois took their seats in Congress.[278]
Between 1809 and 1818, Illinois passed from a non-representative territorial government to a liberal state government. The energy of the settlers had done much to hasten the change, and the change, in turn, did much to hasten settlement.
IV. Transportation and Settlement, 1809 to 1818.
At the close of the War of 1812, an unparalleled emigration to the frontiers of the United States began. Contemporary accounts speak of its great volume. “Through New York and down the Alleghany River is now the track of many emigrants from the east to the west. Two hundred and sixty waggons have passed a certain house on this route in nine days, besides many persons on horseback and on foot. The editor of the Gennessee [pg 119] Farmer observes, that he himself met on the road to Hamilton a cavalcade of upwards of twenty waggons, containing one company of one hundred and sixteen persons, on their way to Indiana, and all from one town in the district of Maine. So great is the emigration to Illinois and Missouri also, that it is apprehended that many must suffer for want of provisions the ensuing winter.”[279] “Nothing more strongly proves the superiority of the western territory than the vast emigration to it from the eastern and southern states; during the eighteen months previous to April, 1816, fifteen thousand waggons passed over the bridge at Cayuga, containing emigrants to the western country.”[280] “Old America seems to be breaking up, and moving westward.... The number of emigrants who passed this way [St. Clairsville, Ohio], was greater last year than in any preceding; and the present spring they are still more numerous than the last. Fourteen waggons yesterday, and thirteen today, have gone through this town. Myriads take their course down the Ohio. The waggons swarm with children. I heard today of three together, which contain forty-two of these young citizens.”[281] From Hamilton, New York: “It is estimated, that there are now in this village and its vicinity, three hundred families, besides single travellers, amounting in all to fifteen hundred souls, waiting for a rise of water to embark for ‘the promised land.’ ”[282] “The numerous companies of emigrants that flock to this country, might appear, to those who have not witnessed them, almost incredible. But there is scarce a day, except when the river is impeded with ice, but what there is a greater or less number of [pg 120] boats to be seen floating down its gentle current, to some place of destination. No less than five hundred families stopped at Cincinnati at one time, and many of them having come a great distance, and being of the poorer class of people, before they could provide for themselves, were in a suffering condition; but to the honor of the citizens of Cincinnati, they raised a donation and relieved their distress.”[283] Of the remote districts, Missouri and Michigan were receiving crowds of immigrants.[284]
The changes in government and in the land question in Illinois were typical of changes in other frontier regions, but although worthy of note as helping to make a more attractive place for settlement, they are by no means sufficient to account for the great migration to the westward. Why that migration took place and how it was accomplished are interesting and important questions.
Emigration from New England resulted largely from financial and industrial disorganization caused by the close of the war, and a year of such continued cold weather as to produce a famine. This movement was interesting, dramatic, and large in volume, but its influence upon Illinois was slight, because the tide was stayed to the eastward of that state.[285] Migration from the South was also large, and it was from this source that most of the immigrants [pg 121] to Illinois came. In 1816 there was a severe drought in eastern North Carolina, and many planters cut their immature corn for their cattle, while great numbers sold their property and joined the emigrants.[286] Kentucky, still a favorite place for settlement, was in the midst of a land boom which reached such proportions as to cause a large volume of emigration to Illinois, Missouri, and the southwest. The buyer of Kentucky land was often a neighbor who wished to enlarge his farm and work on a larger scale, or some well-to-do immigrant who preferred the location to a more remote region. Land sold on credit and at fictitious prices, the seller in turn buying land for which he frequently could make only the first payment. Retribution did not come, however, until after 1820, and for some years it seemed as if Kentucky was to become a source of population, for it was to Illinois and Missouri, and to a lesser degree to Alabama, what New England was to Ohio.[287] Probably chief among the reasons for migration from the South was the increase of slavery, with the resulting changes in industrial and social conditions. Early in the century the growing importance of the cotton crop began to hasten a stratification of opinion which was determined by physiographic areas. The western parts of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, the northern part of Georgia, and the eastern parts of Kentucky and Tennessee, respectively, being hilly and less fertile than the coastal plain, became the center of the southern anti-slavery sentiment. On the plain settled the wealthy planters, and later the poorer Germans and Quakers settled in the uplands. Only when cotton-raising became very profitable was slavery to intrude upon the latter location.[288]
During the war the production of cotton in the United States had been almost constant in amount and less than in preceding years, but 1815 saw an increase of over forty-two per cent and 1816 an increase of twenty-four per cent,[289] while in the latter year South Carolina, after an interval of thirteen years, resumed its slavery legislation by passing the first of a series of acts which show that the slavery problem was becoming increasingly difficult. Similar legislation took place in Tennessee, and to a lesser degree in Kentucky.[290] Increased production of cotton was accompanied by an increase in price, middling upland cotton selling at New York at 15 cents per pound in 1814, at 21 cents in 1815, at 29-½ cents in 1816, at 26-½ cents in 1817, and at 34 cents in 1818, while South Carolina sea-island cotton sold at Charleston in 1816 at 55 cents a pound.[291] An increase in cotton production meant an increase of the plantation system with its slaves, this meant an increased demand for large farms, and also a strengthening of the antagonism between pro-slavery and anti-slavery parties. Even in 1812, a man who wished to sell, lease, or rent his manufacturing establishment in the northwestern part of Virginia, Frederick county, lamented in his advertisement that “some good men of strict moral or religious principles should object against forming settled abodes in [pg 123] Virginia” or other slave states.[292] Census reports show that the proportion of negroes to whites increased in the western counties of North Carolina during the decade 1810 to 1820 over the proportion in 1800 to 1810. Conditions above described naturally led to the emigration of at least four classes of people: those who were anti-slavery, those who did not wish to change from small farming to the plantation system, the poor whites who found themselves increasingly disgraced and who at the same time found that their land was in demand, the slave-holder who wished a large tract of virgin soil. It is very important to note that these forces were merely beginning to operate in the time from 1814 to 1818, and that they did not reach their maximum of influence until after 1830, yet as the population of Illinois increased less than twenty-eight thousand from 1810 to 1818, it is altogether probable that a considerable proportion were influenced by the causes suggested. It is also true that some pioneers moved merely from habit, without any well-defined cause.
Although it is true that the first steamboat that passed down the Ohio and Mississippi made its trip in the winter of 1811-12, and by 1816 an enterprising captain had made a successful experiment of running a steamboat with coal for fuel, also that the speed of steamboats in eastern waters was a matter for enthusiastic comment, yet it is also true that immigrants to Illinois did not usually arrive by steamer.[293] The development of steamboat navigation in western waters was slow, the first steamboat reaching St. Louis on August 2, 1817.[294] Peter Cartwright wrote of his trip from the West to the General Conference in Baltimore, in 1816: “We had no steamboats, railroad cars, or comfortable [pg 124] stages in those days. We had to travel from the extreme West on horseback. It generally took us near a month to go; a month was spent at General Conference, and nearly a month in returning to our fields of labor.”[295]
Some instances of the manner and cost of emigration may be given. A man with his wife and brother having arrived at Philadelphia from England, en route to Birkbeck's settlement[296] in Illinois, the party was directed to Pittsburg, which they reached after a wearisome journey of over three hundred miles across the mountains. At Pittsburg they bought a little boat for six or seven dollars, and came down the Ohio to Shawneetown, whence they proceeded on foot.[297] In the summer of 1818, a party of eighty-eight came over the same route in much the same manner, using flat-boats on the river.[298] In 1817, John Mason Peck, with his wife and three children, went from Litchfield, Connecticut, to Shawneetown, Illinois, in a one-horse wagon. The journey was begun on July 25 and Shawneetown was reached on the sixth of November. “Nearly one month was occupied in passing from Philadelphia through the State of Pennsylvania over the Alleghany Mountains, till on the 10th of September he passed into Ohio. Three weeks he journeyed in that State, and on the 23d of October recrossed the Ohio River into the State of Kentucky ..., and on the 6th of November [pg 125] again crossed the Ohio River, into the then Territory of Illinois, at Shawneetown.”[299] Here the family was delayed by floods which rendered the roads impassable. Leaving the horse and wagon at Shawneetown to be brought on by a friend, they proceeded to St. Louis in a keel-boat, paying twenty-five dollars fare, and arrived at their destination on the first of December.[300]