The first of January, 1837, I arranged with the Fairbanks to leave
them and locate in either Louisville or St. Louis, and sell their
scales and other goods manufactured by them at Pittsburgh, on
commission. I returned to Derby and remained there until May, visiting
my sister Emeline then teaching in Montreal. I left Derby the
fifteenth of May for the South, leaving a few hundred dollars with the
Fairbanks and taking some thousands in notes belonging to them to
collect between Burlington, Vermont, and Buffalo, New York, and from
which collections when made I was to take the money due me and remit
to them the balance. I left with my father a fine span of horses,
harness, and wagon with which to follow me with my sisters when I
should get a home for them. My sister Rosetta had been lame for a year
and was under the care of a physician and surgeon. I left home and
friends with a sad heart, taking the stage for Burlington, my two most
intimate friends riding the first mile with me. One was Stoddart B.
Colby, who was afterwards the leading lawyer of Vermont and who died
Register of the United States currency and whose wife was burned on
the _Swallow_ in the Hudson River; the other, Timothy P. Redfield, now
one of the judges of the supreme court of Vermont and brother of my
other very dear and most intimate friend, Fletcher Redfield, for many
years Chief Justice of Vermont. I have never met either of them since.
I had to get out of the stage the first day to steady it over snow
drifts.
I reached Troy, New York, the third day and that evening the news came
there that the banks had suspended specie payment in consequence of
General Jackson’s order to the United States treasurer to remove the
United States deposits from the United States Bank to the
Sub-Treasury. All banks suspended specie redemption and for the time
no paper money was current or debts paid. All confidence was destroyed
between business men, and such a financial panic was never seen before
or since in our country. When I reached Buffalo I had not collected a
cent from $27,000 in notes against the best business men on the line
of the Erie Canal. In Buffalo I collected in bank bills $70. Here I
was with but little money and all business prostrated. I could not see
in prospect a time when I could hope to engage in the commission
business with success. I had nothing in Vermont to return to. I was
lonely and desolate. Young men were being discharged from stores and
factories in great numbers, and business men were failing everywhere.
I met at Buffalo a discharged clerk from a house in New York who was a
native of Vermont, and was seeking employment. Neither of us knew what
to do or where to go. We had been living at the Mansion House several
days and on one Sunday morning we walked down to the wharf and saw a
schooner there with her captain on her deck. I asked him if he was the
captain and where he was bound. He said he was the captain, that he
was bound to Chicago, that his schooner was a new one, etc. I asked
the price of fare in cabin with board to Chicago. He replied $20. I
turned to my friend Whitcombe and said, “Let us go to Chicago; we may
as well go to one place as another.” He replied, “I will go with you.”
I asked the captain when he sailed. He said, “At nine o’clock tomorrow
A. M. if the wind is fair.” I said, “Book us as passengers and we will
be on board in season.” We sailed June second. No steamboats had
sailed for the upper lakes then, nor until some days later. There was
no railroad west of Syracuse. The harbor was full of ice. Before
leaving Buffalo, I arranged with a merchant who knew me and who was
from Vermont (the father of Frank Fenton of Beloit) to furnish me with
provisions if on my arrival at Chicago I should find any sale for
them. We were four weeks and two days on the lakes, with head winds
and rough weather most of the time. Captain Clement was a very
agreeable gentleman, young like his passengers, and very social. Our
voyage was so much enjoyed by me as to have left the most pleasant
memories of it, although it was an aimless one. We were drifting into
the dark future without any plans, yet we were happy, full of life,
had that self-reliance on our own strength and mental endowments that
took away all anxiety for the future, and enabled us to enjoy the
present. The feeling was a desperate, devil-may-care one. As I look
back upon the first year of my western life, I wonder that I did not
become a reckless and ruined man. Captain Clement was, after this
trip, a large owner of steamboats on the lakes, some of which he
commanded; and for several years he has been the treasurer of the
North Chicago Rolling Mills and a large stockholder. He landed us in
Chicago the night of the third of July, 1837, and we celebrated the
Fourth there. Daniel Webster was in Chicago for the first and last
time in his life.
A delegation from Milwaukee came to Chicago to invite Webster to visit
their city. He had left for the East, and I, finding no encouragement
to go into business in Chicago, took passage in an old steamer with
this delegation to Milwaukee.