It is reported as fact, by all writers on the earlier history of this State, that the holding of courts was conducted very much in the style reported of the back counties of Georgia and Alabama in our day. The sheriff would go out into the court-yard and say to the people, "Come in, boys,—the court is going to begin,"—or sometimes, "Our John is going to open court now,"—the judge being just one of the "boys."
Judges did not like to take upon themselves the onus of deciding cases, but shared it with the jury as far as possible. One story, well authenticated, runs thus: A certain judge, having to pass sentence of death upon one of his neighbors, did it in the following form: "Mr. Green, the jury in their verdict say you are guilty of murder, and the law in that case says you are to be hung. Now I want you and all your friends down on Indian Creek to know that it is not me that condemns you, but the jury and the law. What time would you like to be hung, Sir?" The poor man replied, that it made no difference to him; he would rather the court should appoint a time. "Well, then, Mr. Green," says the judge, "the court will allow you four weeks' time to prepare for death and settle up your business." It was here suggested by the Attorney-General that it was usual in such cases for the court to recapitulate the essential parts of the evidence, to set forth the nature and enormity of the crime, and solemnly to exhort the prisoner to repent and fit himself for the awful doom awaiting him. "Oh!" said the judge, "Mr. Green understands all that as well as if I had preached to him a month. Don't you, Mr. Green? You understand you're to be hung this day four weeks?" "Yes, Sir," replied Mr. Green, and so the matter ended.
One legal brilliant blazes on the forehead of youthful Illinois, in the shape of a summary remedy for duelling. One of those heroes who think it safer to appeal to chance than to logic in vindication of tarnished honor, and who imagine the blood of a dead friend the only salve to be relied on for the cure of wounded feelings, killed his opponent in a duel. The law of Illinois very coolly hanged the survivor; and from that time to this, other remedies have been found for spiritual hurts, real or imaginary. Nobody has fancied it necessary to fight with a noose round his neck. If ever capital punishment were lawful, (which I confess I do not think it ever can be,) it would be as a desperate remedy against this horrid relic of mediaeval superstition and impiety, no wiser or more Christian than the ordeal by burning ploughshares or poisoned wine. The rope in judicial hands is certainly as lawful as the pistol in rash ones; so the duellist has no reason to complain.
Some of the later days of Illinois, the days of Indian wars and Mormon wars, pro-slavery wars and financial wars, are too red and black for peaceful pages; and as they were incidental rather than characteristic, they do not come within our narrow limits. There is still too large an infusion of the cruel slavery spirit in the laws of Illinois; but the immense tide of immigration will necessarily remedy that, by overpowering the influence introduced over the southern border. So nearly a Southern State was Illinois once considered to be, that, in settling the northern boundary, it was deemed essential to give her a portion of the lake-shore, that her interests might be at least balanced. They have proved to be more than balanced by this wise provision.
The little excuse there is in this favored region for a sordid devotion to toil, a journey through the State, even at flying pace, is sufficient to show. The fertility of the soil is the despair of scientific farming. Who cares for rules, when he has only to drop a seed and tread on it, to be sure of a hundred-fold return? Who talks of succession of crops, when twelve burdens of wheat, taken from the same soil in as many years, leave the ground black and ready for another yield of almost equal abundance? An alluvial tract of about three hundred thousand acres, near the Mississippi, has been cultivated in Indian corn a hundred and fifty years,—indeed, ever since the French occupation of Illinois. What of under-draining? Some forty or fifty rivers threading the State, besides smaller streams innumerable, always will do that, as soon as the Nilic floods of spring have accomplished their work by floating to the surface the finest part of the soil. Irrigation? You may now grow rice on one farm and grapes on another, without travelling far between. It is true, there must be an end to this universality of power and advantage, some day; but nobody can see far enough ahead to feel afraid, and it is not in the spirit of our time to think much about the good of our grandchildren. "What has posterity done for me?" is the instinctive question of the busy Westerner, as he sits down under vine and fig-tree which his own hands have planted, to enjoy peace and plenty, after suffering the inevitable hardships of pioneer life. You may tell him he is not wise to scorn good rules; but he will reply, that he did not come so far West, and begin life anew, for the sake of being wise, but of making money, and that as rapidly as possible. He has forgotten the care and economy learned among the cold and stony hills of New England, and wants to do everything on a large scale. He likes to hear of patent reapers, Briarean threshing-machines, and anything that will save him most of the time and trouble of gathering in his heavy crops,—but that is all. The growth of those crops he has nothing to do with. That is provided for by Nature in Illinois; if it were not, he would move "out West."
Stories of this boundless fertility are rife here. One pioneer told us, that, when a fence is to be made and post-holes are wanted, it is only necessary to drop beet-seed ten feet apart all around the field, and, when the beet is ripe, you pull it up and your post-hole is ready! To be sure, there was a twinkle in the corner of his eye as he stated this novel and interesting fact; but, after all, the fertility in question was not so extravagantly "poefied" by this canard as some may suppose. Our friend went on to state, that, in his district, they had a kind of corn which produced from a single grain a dozen stalks of twelve ears each; and not content with this, on most of the stalks you would find, somewhere near the top, a small calabash full of shelled corn! To put the matter beyond doubt, he pulled a handful of the corn from his pocket, which he invited us to plant, and satisfy ourselves.
The reader has probably concluded, by this time, that beets and corn are not the only enormous things grown in Illinois.
A friend told us, in perfectly good faith, that a tract of his, some fourteen thousand acres, in the southern part of the State, contained coal enough to warm the world, and more iron than that coal would smelt,—salt enough for all time, and marble and rich metallic ores of various kinds besides. In one region are found inexhaustible beds of limestone, the smoke of whose burning fills the whole spring air, and the crevices of whose formation make very pokerish-looking caves, which young and adventurous ladies are fond of exploring; in another we come to quantities of that snow-white porcelain clay of which some people suppose themselves to have been originally formed, but which has been, in a commercial point of view, hitherto a desideratum in these United States of ours. The people at Mound City (an aspiring rival of Cairo, on the banks of the Ohio) are about building a factory for the exploitation of this clay, not into ladies and gentlemen, (unpopular articles here,) but into china-ware, the quality of which will be indisputable.
One soon ceases wondering at the tropicality of the Illinoisian imagination. Ali Baba's eye-straining experiences were poor, compared to these every-day realities.
The "Open Sesame" in this case has been spoken through the railroad-whistle. Railroads cannot make mines and quarries, and fat soil and bounteous rivers; yet railroads have been the making of Illinois. Nobody who has ever seen her spring roads, where there are no rails, can ever question it. From the very fatness of her soil, the greater part of the State must have been one Slough of Despond for three quarters of the year, and her inhabitants strangers to each other, if these iron arms had not drawn the people together and bridged the gulfs for them. No roads but railroads could possibly have threaded the State, a large and the best portion of whose surface is absolutely devoid of timber, stone, gravel, or any other available material. The prairies must have remained flowery deserts, visited as a curiosity every year by strangers, but without dwellings for want of wood. The vast quarries must, of course, have lain useless, for want of transporting power,—our friend's coal and iron undisturbed, waiting for an earthquake,—and the poetical pioneer's beets and Indian corn unplanted, and therefore uncelebrated. Well may it be said here, that iron is more valuable than gold. Population, agriculture, the mechanic arts, literature, taste, civilization, in short, are all magnetized by the beneficent rail, and follow wherever it leads. The whole southern portion of Illinois has been nicknamed "Egypt," —whether because at its utmost point, on a dampish delta, reposes the far-famed city of Cairo,—or whether, as wicked satirists pretend, its denizens have been found, in certain particulars, rather behind our times in intellectual light. Whatever may have been the original excuse for the sobriquet, the derogatory one exists no more. Light has penetrated, and darkness can reign no longer. Every day, a fiery visitant, bearing the collective intelligence of the whole world's doings and sayings, dashes through Egypt into Cairo, giving off scintillations at every hamlet on the way,—and every day the brilliant marvel returns, bringing northward, not only the good things of the Ohio and Mississippi, but tropic on-dits and oranges, only a few hours old, to the citizens of Chicago, far "in advance of the (New York) mail." With the rail comes the telegraph; and whispers of the rise and fall of fancies and potatoes, of speculations and elections, of the sale of corner-lots and the evasion of bank-officers, are darting about in every direction over our heads, as we unconsciously admire the sunset, or sketch a knot of rosy children as they come trooping from a quaint school-house on the prairie edge. Fancy the rail gone, and we have neither telegraph, nor school-house, nor anything of all this but the sunset,—and even that we could not be there to see in spring-time, at least, unless we could transmigrate for the time into the relinquished forms of some of these aboriginal bull-frogs, which grow to the nice size of two feet in length, destined, no doubt, to receive the souls of habitual croakers hereafter.