Until 1908 the state had a prohibition law “by remonstrance,” under which if a majority of the legal voters of a township or city ward remonstrated against the granting of licences for the sale of liquor, no licence could be granted by the county commissioners in that township or ward. Under this system 800 out of 1016 townships and more than 30 entire counties were in 1908 without saloons. In 1908, when the Republican party had declared in favour of county option and the Democratic party favoured township and ward option, a special session of the legislature, called by the Republican governor, passed the Cox Bill for county options.
Education.—Indiana has a well-organized free public school system. Provision was made for such a system in the first state constitution, to utilize the school lands set aside in all the North-West Territory by the Ordinance of 1787, but the existing system is of late growth. The first step toward such a system was a law of 1824 which provided for the election of school trustees in every township and for the erection of school buildings, but made no provision for support. Therefore, before 1850 what schools there were were not free. The constitution of 1851 made further and more complete provisions for a uniform system, and on that basis the general school law of 1852 erected the framework of the existing system. It provided, for the organization of free schools, supported by a property tax, and for county and township control. The movement, however, was retarded in 1858 by a decision of the supreme court holding that under the law of 1852 the system was not “uniform” as provided for by the constitution. In 1865 a new and more satisfactory law was passed, which with supplemental legislation is still in force. Under the existing system supreme administrative control is vested in a state superintendent elected biennially. County superintendents, county boards, and township trustees are also chosen, the latter possessing the important power of issuing school bonds. Teachers’ institutes are regularly held, and a state normal school, established in 1870, is maintained at Terre Haute. There are normal schools at Valparaiso, Angola, Marion and Danville, and a Teachers’ College at Indianapolis, which are on the state’s “accredited” list and belong to the normal school system. In 1897 a compulsory education law was enacted. In 1906-1907 the state school tax was increased from 11.6 cents per $100 to 13.6 cents per $100; an educational standard was provided, coming into effect in August 1908, for public school teachers, in addition to the previous requirement of a written test; a regular system of normal training was authorized; uniform courses were provided for the public high schools; and small township schools with twelve pupils or less were discontinued, and transportation supplied for pupils in such abandoned schools to central school houses. The proportion of illiterates is very small, in 1900, 95.4% of the population (of 10 years old or over) being able to read and write. The total school revenue from state and local sources in 1905 amounted to $10,642,638, or $13.85 per capita of enumeration ($19.34 per capita of enrolment). In 1824 a state college was opened at Bloomington; it was re-chartered in 1838 as the State University. Purdue University (1874) at Lafayette, maintained under state control, received the benefit of the Federal grant under the Morrill Act. Other educational institutions of college rank include Vincennes University (non-sectarian), at Vincennes; Hanover College (1833, Presbyterian), at Hanover; Wabash College (1832, non-sectarian), at Crawfordsville; Franklin College (1837, Baptist), at Franklin; De Pauw University (1837, Methodist Episcopal), at Greencastle; Butler University (1855, Christian), at Indianapolis; Earlham College (1847, Friends), at Richmond; Notre Dame University (1842, Roman Catholic), at Notre Dame; Moore’s Hill College (1856, Methodist Episcopal), at Moore’s Hill; the University of Indianapolis (non-sectarian), a loosely affiliated series of schools at Indianapolis, centring around Butler University; and Rose Polytechnic Institute (1883, non-sectarian), at Terre Haute.
The charitable and correctional institutions of Indiana are well administered in accordance with the most improved modern methods, and form one of the most complete and adequate systems possessed by any state in the Union. The state was one of the first to establish schools for the deaf and the blind. Its Institution for the Education of the Deaf was established in 1844, and its Institution for the Education of the Blind in 1847, both being in Indianapolis. The first State Hospital for the Insane was opened in Indianapolis in 1848 and became the Central Indiana Hospital for the Insane in 1883; other similar institutions are the Northern Indiana Hospital at Logansport (1888), the Eastern at Richmond (1890), the Southern at Evansville (1890), and the South-eastern at North Madison (1905). There are a Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Orphans’ Home at Knightstown (1868), and a State Soldiers’ Home at Lafayette (1896); a School for Feeble-Minded Youth (1879), removed from Knightstown to Fort Wayne in 1890; a village for epileptics at New Castle (1907); and a hospital for the treatment of tuberculosis, authorized in 1907, for which a site at Rockville was purchased in 1908. There are five state penal and correctional institutions: the Indiana Boys’ School (1868-1883, the House of Refuge; 1883-1903, the Reform School for Boys), at Plainfield; the Indiana Girls’ School, established at Indianapolis (1873), and removed to Clermont in 1907; a woman’s prison (the first in the United States, authorized in 1869 and opened in 1873 at Indianapolis), which is entirely under the control of women (as is also the Indiana Girls’ School) and has a correctional department (1908), in reality a state workhouse for women, formed with a view to removing as far as possible sentenced women from the county jails; a reformatory (1897), at Jeffersonville, conducted upon a modification of the “Elmira plan,” formerly the State Prison (1822), later (1860) the State Prison South, so called to distinguish it from the State Prison North (1860) at Michigan City; and the prison at Michigan City, which became the Indiana State Prison in 1897. The old State Prison at Jeffersonville was at first conducted on the lease system, but public opinion compelled the abandonment of that system some years before the Civil War. The prisoners of the reformatory work under a law providing for trade schools; the product of the work is sold to the state institutions and to the civil and political divisions of the state, the surplus being disposed of on the market. At the State Prison practically one half the prisoners are employed on contracts. Not more than 100 may be employed on any one contract, and the day’s work is limited to eight hours. The remainder of the population of the prison is employed on state account. The policy of indeterminate sentence and paroles was adopted in 1897 in the two prisons and the reformatory. Prisoners released upon parole are carefully supervised by state agents. Indiana has an habitual-criminal law, and a law providing for the sterilization of mental degenerates, confirmed criminals, and rapists. There are also an adult probation law and a juvenile court law, the latter applying to every county in the state. Each of the state institutions mentioned above is under the control of a separate bi-partisan board of four members. The whole system of public charities is under the supervision of a bi-partisan Board of State Charities (1889), which is appointed by the governor, and to which the excellent condition of state institutions is largely due. In the counties there are unsalaried boards of county charities and correction and county boards of children’s guardians, appointed by the circuit judges. The township trustees, 1016 in number, are ex-officio overseers of the poor. They dispense official outdoor relief. Nowhere else have the principles of organized charities in the administration of public outdoor relief been applied to an entire state. Each county provides for the indoor care of the poor in poor asylums and children’s homes, and for local prisoners in county jails. Provision is made for truant, dependent, neglected and delinquent children. No child can be made a public ward except upon order of the juvenile court, and all such children may be placed in family homes by agents of the Board of State Charities.
Finance.—The total true value of taxable property in the state was, according to the tax levy of 1907, $1,767,815,487, and the total taxes, including delinquencies, in the same year amounted to $38,880,257. The total net receipts for the fiscal year ending September 30, 1908, were $4,771,628, and the total net expenditure $5,259,002, the cash balance in the treasury for the year ending September 30, 1907, amounted to $1,096,459, leaving a cash balance on September 30, 1908, of $609,085. The total state debt on September 30, 1908, was $1,389,615.
History.—Of the prehistoric inhabitants of Indiana little is known, but extensive remains in the form of mounds and fortifications abound in every part of the state, being particularly numerous in Knox and Sullivan counties. Along the Ohio river are remnants of several interesting stone forts. Upon the earliest arrival of Europeans the state was inhabited chiefly by the various tribes of the Miami Confederacy, a league of Algonquian Indians formed to oppose the advance of the Iroquois. The first Europeans to visit the state were probably French coureurs des bois or Jesuit missionaries. La Salle, the explorer, it is contended, must have passed through parts of Indiana during his journeys of 1669 and the succeeding years. Apparently a French trading post was in existence on the St Joseph river of Michigan about 1672, but it was in no sense a permanent settlement and seems soon to have been abandoned. It seems probable that the Wabash-Maumee portage was known to Father Claude Jean Allouez as early as 1680. When, a few years later, this portage came to be generally used by traders, the necessity of establishing a base on the upper Wabash as a defence against the Carolina and Pennsylvania traders, who had already reached the lower Wabash and incited the Indians to hostility against the French, became evident; but it was not, apparently, until the second decade of the 18th century that any permanent settlement was made. About 1720 a French post was probably established at Ouiatenon (about 5 m. S.W. of the present city of Lafayette), the headquarters of the Wea branch of the Miami, on the upper Wabash. The military post at Vincennes was founded about 1731 by François Margane, Sieur de Vincennes (or Vincent), but it was not until about 1735 that eight French families were settled there. Vincennes, which thus became the first actual white settlement in Indiana, remained the only one until after the War of Independence, although military posts were maintained at Ouiatenon and at the head of the Maumee, the site of the present Fort Wayne, where there was a French trading post (1680) and later Fort Miami. After the fall of Quebec the British took possession of the other forts, but not at once of Vincennes, which remained for several years under the jurisdiction of New Orleans, both under French and Spanish rule. The British garrisons at Ouiatenon and Fort Miami (near the site of the later Fort Wayne) on the Maumee were captured by the Indians as a result of the Pontiac conspiracy. All Indiana was united with Canada by the Quebec Act (1774), but it was not until three years later that the forts and Vincennes were occupied by the British, who then realized the necessity of ensuring possession of the Mississippi Valley to prevent its falling into the hands of the rebellious colonies. Nevertheless, in 1778 Vincennes fell an easy prey to agents sent to occupy it by George Rogers Clark, and although again occupied a few months later by General Henry Hamilton, the lieutenant-governor at Detroit, it passed finally into American control in February 1779 as a result of Clark’s remarkable march from Kaskaskia. Fort Miami remained in British hands until the close of the war.
The first American settlement was made at Clarksville, between the present cities of Jeffersonville and New Albany, at the Falls of the Ohio (opposite Louisville), in 1784. The decade following the close of the war was one of ceaseless Indian warfare. The disastrous defeats of General Josiah Harmar (1753-1813) in October 1790 on the Miami river in Ohio, and of Governor Arthur St Clair on the 4th of November 1791 near Fort Recovery, Ohio, were followed in 1792 by the appointment of General Anthony Wayne to the command of the frontier. By him the Indians were signally defeated in the Battle of Fallen Timbers (or Maumee Rapids) on the 20th of August 1794, and Fort Wayne, Indiana, was erected on the Maumee river. On the 3rd of August 1795, at Greenville, Ohio, a treaty was concluded between Wayne and twelve Indian tribes, and a narrow slice of the east-south-eastern part of the present state (the disputed lands in the valley of the Maumee) and various other small but not unimportant tracts were ceded to the United States. Then came several years’ respite from Indian war, and settlers began at once to pour into the region. The claims of Virginia (1784) and the other eastern states having been extinguished, a clear field existed for the establishment of Federal jurisdiction in the “Territory North-West of the Ohio,” but it was not until 1787 that by the celebrated Ordinance of that year such jurisdiction became an actuality. The North-West Territory was governed by its first governor, Arthur St Clair, until 1799, when it was accorded a representative government. In 1800 it was divided, and from its western part (including the present states of Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin, the north-east part of Minnesota, and a large part—from 1803 to 1805 all—of the present state of Michigan) Indiana Territory was erected, with General William Henry Harrison—who had been secretary of the North-West Territory since 1798—as its first governor, and with Vincennes as the seat of government. Harrison made many treaties with the Indians, the most important being that signed at Fort Wayne on the 7th of June 1803, defining the Vincennes tract transferred to the United States by the Treaty of Greenville; those signed at Vincennes on the 18th and the 27th of August 1804, transferring to the United States a strip north of the Ohio river and south of the Vincennes tract; that concluded at Grouseland on the 21st of August 1805, procuring from the Delawares and others a tract along the Ohio river between the parcels of 1795 and 1804; and the treaties of Fort Wayne, signed on the 30th of September 1809, and securing one tract immediately west of that of 1795 and another north of the Vincennes tract defined in 1803. In January 1805 Michigan Territory was erected from the northern part of Indiana Territory, and in July following the first General Assembly of Indiana Territory met at Vincennes. In March 1809 the Territory was again divided, Illinois Territory being established from its western portion; Indiana was then reduced to its present limits. In 1810 began the last great Indian war in Indiana, in which the confederated Indians were led by Tecumseh, the celebrated Shawnee chief; it terminated with their defeat at Tippecanoe (the present Battle Ground) by Governor Harrison on the 7th of November 1811. After the close of the second war with Great Britain, immigration began again to flow rapidly into the Territory, and, having attained a sufficient population, Indiana was admitted to the Union as a state by joint resolution of Congress on the 11th of December 1816. The seat of government was established at Corydon, whither it had been removed from Vincennes in 1813. In 1820 the site of the present Indianapolis was selected for a new capital, but the seat of government was not removed thither until 1825.
The first great political problem presenting itself was that of slavery, and for a decade or more the only party divisions were on pro-slavery and anti-slavery lines. Although the Ordinance of 1787 actually prohibited slavery, it did not abolish that already in existence. Slavery had been introduced by the French, and was readily accepted and perpetuated by the early American settlers, almost all of whom were natives of Virginia, Kentucky, Georgia or the Carolinas. According to the census of 1800 there were 175 slaves in the Territory. The population of settlers from slave states was considerably larger than in Illinois, the proportion being 20% as late as 1850. It was but natural, therefore, that efforts should at once have been made to establish the institution of slavery on Indiana soil, and as early as 1802 a convention called to consider the expediency of slavery asked Congress to suspend the prohibitory clause of the Ordinance for ten years, but a committee of which John Randolph of Virginia was chairman reported against such action. Within the Territory there were several attempts to escape, by means of legislation, the effects of the Ordinance. These efforts consisted in (1) a law regulating the status of “servants,” by which it was sought to establish a legal relation between master and slave; (2) a law by which it was sought to establish practical slavery by a system of indenture. By 1808 the opponents of slavery, found chiefly among the Quaker settlers in the south-eastern counties, began to awake to the danger that confronted them, and in 1809 elected their candidate, Jonathan Jennings (1776-1834) to Congress on an anti-slavery platform. In 1810, by which year the number of slaves had increased to 237, the anti-slavery party was strong enough to secure the repeal of the indenture law, which had received the unwilling acquiescence of Governor Harrison. Jennings was re-elected in 1811, and subsequently was chosen first governor of the state on the same issue, and the state constitution of 1816 pronounced strongly against slavery. The liberation of most of the slaves in the eastern counties followed; and some slave-holders removed to Kentucky. In 1830 there were only three slaves in the state, and the danger of the establishment of slavery as an institution on a large scale was long past.
The problem of “internal improvements” came to be of paramount importance in the decade 1820-1830. In 1827 Congress granted land to aid in the construction of a canal to connect Lake Erie and the Ohio river. This canal was completed from the St Joseph river to the Wabash in 1835, opened in 1843, and later abandoned. In 1836 the state legislature passed a law providing for an elaborate system of public improvements, consisting largely of canals and railways. The state issued bonds to the value of $10,000,000, a period of wild speculation followed, and the financial panic of 1837 forced the abandonment of the proposed plan and the sale to private persons of that part already completed. The legislature authorized the issue of $1,500,000 in treasury bonds, which by 1842 had fallen in value to 40 or 50% of their face value. A new constitution was adopted in February 1851 by a vote of 109,319 against 26,755.
Despite its large Southern population, Indiana’s answer to President Lincoln’s first call for volunteers at the outbreak of the Civil War was prompt and spirited. From first to last the state furnished 208,000 officers and men for the Union armies, besides a home legion of some 50,000, organized to protect the state against possible invasion. The efficiency of the state military organization, as well as that of the civil administration during the trying years of the war, was largely due to the extraordinary ability and energy of Governor Oliver P. Morton, one of the greatest of the “war governors” of the North. The problems met and solved by Governor Morton, however, were not only the comparatively simple ones of furnishing troops as required. The legislature of 1863 and the state officers were opposed to him politically, and did everything in their power to thwart him and deprive him of his control of the militia. The Republican members seceded, legislative appropriations were blocked, and Governor Morton was compelled to take the extraconstitutional step of arranging with a New York banking house for the payment of the interest on the state debt, of borrowing money for state expenditure on his own responsibility, and of constituting an unofficial financial bureau, which disbursed money in disregard of the state officers. Furthermore Indiana was the principal centre of activity of the disloyal association known as the Knights of the Golden Circle, or Sons of Liberty, which found a ready growth among the large Southern population. Prominent among Southern sympathisers was Senator Jesse D. Bright (1812-1875), who on the 5th of February 1862 was expelled from the United States Senate for writing a letter addressed to Jefferson Davis, as President of the Confederacy, in which he recommended a friend who had an improvement in fire-arms to dispose of. The Knights of the Golden Circle at first confined their activities to the encouragement of desertion, and resistance to the draft, but in 1864 a plot to overthrow the state government was discovered, and Governor Morton’s prompt action resulted in the seizure of a large quantity of arms and ammunition, and the arrest, trial and conviction of several of the leaders. In June 1863 the state was invaded by Confederate cavalry under General John H. Morgan, but most of his men were captured in Indiana and he was taken in Ohio. There were other attempts at invasion, but the expected rising, on which the invaders had counted, did not take place, and in every case the home legion was able to capture or drive out the hostile bands.
Politically Indiana has been rather evenly divided between the great political parties. Before the Civil War, except when William Henry Harrison was a candidate for the presidency, its electoral vote was generally given to the Democratic party, to which also most of its governors belonged. After the war the control of the state alternated with considerable regularity between the Republican and Democratic parties, until 1896, between which time and 1904 the former were continuously successful. In 1908 a Democratic governor was elected, but Republican presidential electors were chosen.