The most important thing about the founding of the town is the heterogeneous character of its founders. A few incidents in their subsequent history will emphasize this, and also show how well they worked together when surrounded by the same conditions. When the commissioners came to locate a permanent county seat Springfield, then called Calhoun, had a formidable rival for the honor. Iles and Enos managed to have a mutual friend engaged as guide to the commissioners. The guide conducted them to the rival settlement by a long and rough route and upon being requested to take them back over a shorter route he took a course more difficult still. The commissioners decided that the rival settlement was inaccessible. Iles was twice state senator, major in the Winnebago war, and captain in the Black Hawk war, in which he served with Zachary Taylor, Jefferson Davis, Abraham Lincoln, John T. Stuart, Robt. Anderson, of Fort Sumter fame, and others. Iles was also a large stock dealer, selling hogs and cattle in St. Louis and mules in Kentucky, until 1838, in which year he lost ten thousand dollars on hogs packed at Alton. In 1838-9 he built the American House in Springfield. This was then the largest hotel in the state and its erection created a great sensation. He was four times state senator, and was an officer of the Bank of Edwardsville. Enos held his position as receiver until removed for political reasons by Jackson in 1829. Cox had an eventful career. He was removed from his position [pg 208] of register, under charges of misconduct, early in 1827; the next year he was keeping a hotel in Springfield; later he removed to Iowa, then Wisconsin, having secured a contract for the survey of public lands. He was three times a member of the Iowa territorial House of Representatives and twice a member of the territorial Council. A band of murderers, horsethieves, counterfeiters, and blacklegs, having gained possession of the town of Bellevue, on the Mississippi, in Jackson county, Iowa, Col. Cox led the citizens in a successful attack in which seven men were killed outright and some ten or fifteen wounded. At this time Cox was recognized as a pronounced drunkard, but his undoubted courage, ability to command, and strong physique secured him a following.[551]
Shadrach Bond, the first governor of Illinois, and Pierre Menard, the first lieutenant-governor, were both poorly educated, but they had a good knowledge of men and a large fund of information concerning practical affairs.[552] Edward Coles, the second governor of the state, is a good example of the polished, well-educated gentleman succeeding with a rude constituency. Coles was born in 1786, in Albemarle county, Virginia, fitted for college by private [pg 209] tutors, educated at Hampden Sidney and later at William and Mary College. His father's home was visited by Patrick Henry, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, the Randolphs, Tazwell, Wirt, and others. For six years Coles was the private secretary of President Madison, and during this time he became an intimate friend of Nicholas Biddle. In 1815 he visited Illinois in what must have seemed at that time great state, for he traveled not only with a horse and buggy, but with a servant and a saddle-horse as well. In 1816-17 he was sent as a special messenger to Russia, stopping at Paris on his return, meeting Louis XVIII. of France and becoming a friend of Lafayette. In 1819 he came to Edwardsville, Illinois, emancipated his slaves, and assumed his duties as register of the land-office. The rough pioneers were very anxious to get a title to their lands. “When the settler reached Edwardsville, dressed in jeans and wearing moccasins, with his money in his belt, having traveled on foot or on horseback long distances, and first presented himself to the Register of the Land Office, there he found Edward Coles, who had recently emigrated into the State from Virginia. It was known to some of them that he had been the private secretary for President Madison, and had been on an important mission to Europe.
“They found him a young man of handsome, but somewhat awkward personal appearance, genteelly dressed, and of kind and agreeable manners. The anxious settler was at once put at ease by the suavity of his address, the interest he appeared to feel in aiding him, and the thoroughly intelligent manner in which he discharged his duty. No man went away who was not delighted with his intercourse with the ‘Register.’ And herein is illustrated the great mistake so often made by politicians and candidates for popular favor. Too many candidates for [pg 210] the suffrage of the people in our early political contests thought it necessary, in order to make themselves popular, to affect slovenly and unclean dress and vulgar manners in their campaigns. There was never a greater mistake. However rough, ill-clothed and unintelligent the voter might be, he always preferred to vote for the man who was dressed and acted like a gentleman to the one who dressed like and acted like himself.”[553] Coles was always dignified, always gentlemanly, and always respected. His brief residence in Illinois affected its history for all time to come. Like Coles in several respects was his successor as governor, Ninian Edwards. Born in Maryland in 1775, educated by the celebrated William Wirt, and later graduating from Dickinson College, Pennsylvania, at nineteen years of age he came to Kentucky. Here he served two terms in the Kentucky legislature, was presiding judge of the general court, circuit judge, and chief-justice of the court of appeals. Henry Clay gave as Edwards' marked characteristics, good understanding, weight of character, and conciliatory manners. In his campaign for governor of Illinois, Edwards presented himself as the highest type of a polished and well-dressed gentleman, always riding in his own carriage and driven by his negro servant, and dressing in all the style of an old-fashioned gentleman with broad-cloth coat, ruffled shirt, and high-topped boots. The people were not repelled by such a display, but considered it an honor to vote for such a man. The egotistical Adolphus Frederick Hubbard, who was one of the two opponents of Edwards, intermingled bad grammar and poor attempts at wit in his electioneering speeches, and [pg 211] received less than one-tenth of the number of votes cast for either of the two other candidates.[554]
Works Consulted.
I. Sources.
American Historical Association, Annual Report of the. Washington: Government Printing Office.
Report for 1893, pp. 199-227, see Turner, Frederick Jackson; Report of 1896, Vol. I., pp. 930-1107, has “Selections from the Draper Collection in the possession of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, to elucidate the proposed French expedition under George Rogers Clark against Louisiana, in the years 1793-94.”
American monthly Magazine and critical Review. New York: H. Biglow, editor.