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.