interesting in Des Moines. Many stanch Southerners and not a few
abolitionists generated an electrical atmosphere. The first resident
Governor, James W. Grimes, who later brought Iowa fame in the United States
Senate, spoke out strongly against the arrogance of the slaveholders and
the border outrages. The city was on John Brown's "underground railway,"
and the spiriting of slaves through the town gave zest to public
discussion. When Brown came through with the slaves he had captured in
Missouri he stopped over night, February 16, 1859, with James C. Jordan, a
State senator. The next day his ferriage was paid by the editor of the
_State Register_, John Teesdale. One of Brown's most trusted companions,
who died by his side when Lieutenant Robert E. Lee recaptured Harper's
Ferry, was a Des Moines boy, Jeremiah G. Anderson, who had joined Brown's
forces in Kansas in 1857.
[Illustration GOVERNOR SAMUEL J. KIRKWOOD.]
One of the most dramatic incidents in Iowa history grew out of the
ill-fated expedition against Harper's Ferry. With Brown were Edwin and
Barclay Coppoc, of Springdale Ia., the Quaker village where the
conspirators were drilled. Edwin was captured and hanged. Barclay escaped
and after exciting adventures in Maryland and Pennsylvania got back to
Springdale, where the entire community armed to prevent his capture by the
Virginia authorities. On January 23, 1860, an agent of Governor Letcher, of
Virginia, called on Governor Samuel J. Kirkwood with a requisition for
young Coppoc. Kirkwood discovered flaws in the papers, among them that no
indictment had been found or crime charged, and he refused to honor the
requisition. The agent became excited. Just then two members of the
Assembly, Ed. Wright and B.F. Gue, came into the Governor's room, overheard
the conversation with the agent, and discovered his object. They left and
immediately dispatched a messenger to Springdale to warn Coppoc, who was
hurried off to Canada. Slavery sympathizers in the Legislature soon heard
of the matter and introduced a resolution calling on Kirkwood for an
explanation of his proceedings. He sent in a ringing message in which he
said:
"Permit me to say in conclusion that one of the most important
duties of the official position I hold is to see that no
citizen of Iowa is carried beyond her border and subjected to
the ignominy of imprisonment and the perils of trial for crimes
in another State otherwise than by due process of law. That
duty I shall perform...."
In the uncertain days preceding the Civil War, when the friends of liberty
in the North were timid, Kirkwood's message had the effect of a tocsin
call.
When Sumter was fired on and President Lincoln called for troops, Simon
Cameron, Secretary of War, telegraphed Kirkwood that one regiment was
expected from Iowa. The Governor was not then in the city. The messenger
who carried the telegram from Davenport to Iowa City found him out on his
farm working in a field. On reading the message he musingly asked:
"Why, the President wants a whole regiment of men! Do you suppose that I
can raise as many as that?"
Within a few days ten regiments were offered him. Iowa sent nearly 79,000
men to the front, who played a conspicuous part in the great struggle. Des
Moines contributed her full share; among the number three became generals,
one, M.M. Crocker, being an especially brilliant officer under Grant in the
campaigns in the West.
The history of the Western States is rife with struggles over the location
of county seats and State capitals, the incidents of which are often
picturesque and exciting. The selection of Des Moines as the capital city
of Iowa was an important event in her history. Largely in consequence
thereof the city has become not only the metropolis of the State but its
chief nerve centre too.
Iowa's first territorial capital was Burlington. From 1841 to 1857 it was
at Iowa City, when the State archives were moved to Des Moines. The change
was not made without a spirited contest, the marks of which are seen to-day
in the State's constitution. For, in order to placate the people of Iowa
City and secure permanency for the arrangement, the constitutional
convention of 1857 inserted the provision that the State University should
forever remain at Iowa City, and the capital at Des Moines,--a piece of
log-rolling not unlike that resorted to by Alexander Hamilton when the
national capital was located at Washington. There was a deal of politics
and dissension in Des Moines over the selection of the site of the capitol;
so much indeed that the animosities then engendered exercise a baneful
influence in dividing the city even now. A superb site was chosen on a
high hill in East Des Moines whence one can look over the hills and dales
of the river valleys for miles around. The first capitol was a plain
three-story brick structure, donated by the citizens of the east city as a
part of the inducement to the commission to locate where they did. After
the Civil War the building became inadequate; the ravages of time rendered
it unfit for a repository of the State's precious papers; and the people of
Des Moines began to agitate for the erection of a capitol commensurate with
the needs and dignity of the State. Thereupon followed a contest whose
incidents were most interesting and instructive.
[Illustration HON. JOHN A. KASSON.]
The urgent need of a new capitol was generally admitted. But the justness
or propriety of a measure is not alone sufficient to secure legislation.
The jealousy of rival towns was fanned into fierce opposition. Their
representatives fought an appropriation with tooth and nail. Two million
dollars was magnified into unheard-of proportions. Time-serving politicians
who admitted privately that the State needed a capitol badly, tore passion
to tatters in portraying the poverty and distress of the taxpayers. With a
State "full of barefooted women and barefooted children" they asseverated
such an expenditure would be criminal. Such "politics" long prevailed. In
1867, the people of Des Moines elected to the House of Representatives,
Hon. John A. Kasson, to conduct the fight for the appropriation. No better
man could have been chosen. He had attained distinction as Assistant
Postmaster-General under President Lincoln, and as a member of Congress.
With what tact, patience and diplomacy he carried on the contest his career
since as our country's envoy to the courts of Austria and Germany
indicates. For five years Mr. Kasson struggled with recalcitrant
representatives through trying vicissitudes before he got the
appropriation. As it was, he escaped defeat by but one vote to spare, and
that vote he would have lost but for the timely aid of a Catholic priest,
Father Brazil, of the city. The opposition resorted to the rascally ruse of
getting a bibulous member who was friendly to the measure dead drunk and
locking him up to prevent his attendance at the time of the vote. On being
informed of the trick, Father Brazil sought out the recreant son of Erin,
secured him, and marched him up to the House chamber just as the roll was
about to be called, and sat severely by until his charge had answered
"Aye."
[Illustration THE CAPITOL, DES MOINES.]
It took twelve years to build the capitol. During practically all of that
time its construction was under the absolute control of three
commissioners, John G. Foote, Peter A. Dey, and Robert S. Finkbine, and
the stately structure that now adorns Capitol Hill is a monument to their
intelligence and integrity. Not an unwise expenditure nor a dishonest or
corrupt transaction was ever charged against their stewardship, and the
people of Iowa hold their names and services in grateful memory. It is a
sad commentary on our public morals that the erection of a State capitol
without suspicion of corruption is so exceptional as to be noteworthy and
the proud distinction of the people of this Western commonwealth.
[Illustration THE IOWA HISTORICAL LIBRARY.]
From a frontier fort and a huddle of huts, Des Moines has grown to be a
stately city whose corporate limits include fifty-four square miles and a
population of nearly 70,000, almost double the population of any other city
in Iowa. Her citizens boast that "without riots, booms, or conflagrations"
she has steadily grown in strength and stature. Her industries and commerce
make the city a hive of activities. Seventeen railroads radiate from Des
Moines, enabling the city to become the wholesale and retail jobbing centre
of the State. Sixty miles of electric street-railways and fifty-eight miles
of paved streets make her suburbs readily accessible. There are vast
deposits of coal and clay under and about the city. The smoke of three
hundred factories, large and small, tinge her atmosphere with the hues of
Pittsburg. Among insurance men the city is called the "Hartford of the
West," as fifty-one insurance companies have their headquarters in Des
Moines and employ five thousand people. In her various colleges and schools
of law, medicine, and commercial practice there is a population of nearly
six thousand. Thousands of visitors annually come to the State Agricultural
Fair and to the political and educational conventions that assemble in the
city. Congress has recently provided for the establishment of an army post
just south of the city limits, and the War Department is about to expend
several hundred thousand dollars in erecting barracks and in the
preparation of drill-grounds for troops.
Few cities in the West possess scenery of greater natural beauty than that
which greets the eye in and about Des Moines. The junction of the rivers
near the centre of the city gives her topography a configuration similar to
that of Pittsburg. On the south and east her limits are marked by a range
of wooded hills through which the silver stream of the united rivers makes
its way. The view of the landscape across the river valley to the horizon's
edge which is visible from most points is particularly pleasing to the eye
in the spring and summer months. The main part of the city between the
"Forks" is in a forest of native oaks, elms, and hickories so dense that
the looker from the Capitol dome can scarce perceive the residences. To the
attractions of nature the landscape gardener and architect have added much.
Nearly five hundred acres of parks give the people fine pleasure resorts in
the hot summer months. Many handsome wholesale and retail houses and
manufacturing establishments grace her thoroughfares. The city has nearly
completed a beautiful Public Library, located on the west bank of the Des
Moines River, and, as a result of the years of devotion and unremitting
labors of Mr. Charles Aldrich, the State has begun the erection of the
Historical Library, which will be one of the chief attractions of Des
Moines.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
ST. LOUIS
"THE FUTURE GREAT"
BY WILLIAM MARION REEDY
Situated at the heart of the continent, midway between the East and West,
the North and South, St. Louis is a unique mixture of the characteristics
of all sections of the United States. In the early seventies a weird
character named L.U. Reavis wrote a book called _St. Louis, the Future
Great City of the West_, in which he advocated the removal hither of the
seat of the national Government and predicted great things for the city.
The fourth of American cities in population, St. Louis is preparing to hold
a World's Fair in commemoration of the one hundredth anniversary of the
purchase of the Louisiana territory, on a scale of magnificence which
attracts universal attention. With the completion of the Chicago drainage
canal, destined soon to be a ship canal connecting Lake Michigan with the
Mississippi River, with the necessary improvement of the Mississippi to
its mouth, and with the certain construction of an Isthmian canal, St.
Louis is sure to be in as close touch with the world at large as if it were
a seacoast city. Always the natural commercial centre of the Mississippi
Valley, since it became the focus of a mighty network of railroads St.
Louis has been the market of the prosperous West, the new South and the
great Southwest, with its wealth of agriculture, mining, manufactures, and
its almost magic development, shown, for instance, in the fact that Texas
is now only a few thousand behind Missouri in population, and must in
consequence of the recent discoveries of enormous oil lands soon overtake
States like Illinois and Ohio and Pennsylvania. The prophecies of the
city's greatness are coming to realization. Its future is here, but bright
as the future is, it is not so bright as to allure us into forgetting the
picturesque past.
The old town on the Mississippi has ever been modest to a degree that has
caused the thoughtless to make mock of its conservatism, but the steadiness
of character and the regard only for the realities of progress which have
marked St. Louis have their justification in that they have resulted in a
city known in times of depression and panic as "the solid city." A city
that owns itself, with a proper sense of dignity, it has never advertised
itself in the modern meretricious fashion. And so the story of St. Louis,
an honest tale, will speed best being simply told.
[Illustration COLONEL AUGUSTE CHOUTEAU, ONE OF THE FOUNDERS OF ST. LOUIS.
FROM A PAINTING IN MISSOURI HISTORICAL SOCIETY COLLECTION.]
St. Louis was founded by Pierre Laclede Liguest and a few companions, all
French _voyageurs_, in 1764; at least it was in that year that Laclede's
lieutenant, Auguste Chouteau, cleared away the site of the present city.
Laclede Liguest, or, as he is sometimes known, Liguest Laclede, a merchant
of New Orleans, had from the French Government a monopoly of the fur trade
in the Missouri River country. He left New Orleans with his family and a
small party in August, 1763, with the intention of founding a town near the
confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. Shortly after the town
was laid out occurred the cession to Great Britain of the Illinois country,
on the east bank of the Mississippi. The French inhabitants of that country
having followed from the north in the wake of Marquette in 1673, and of La
Salle in 1678, hated the English, and began to move over to the new town,
which soon grew into importance. A trading point for the Indians, Laclede
and his companions so managed them that there was none of the friction
which marked the contact elsewhere of the English and the natives. When the
laying out of the city began a band of one hundred and fifty warriors, with
their squaws and papooses, outnumbering the whites five to one, appeared
and camped near the strangers. The Frenchmen treated the savages with such
tact and kindness that they not only did no harm, but even of their own
volition assisted in the work. The first cellar was excavated with the aid
of the squaws, who carried off the clay in baskets, and were paid in beads
and other trinkets which Laclede had brought up from New Orleans. The
Indians became so friendly that they were a hindrance rather than a help,
and finally, to induce them to depart, Laclede hinted that the French
soldiers at Fort Chartres were to be summoned.
[Illustration THE OLD CHOUTEAU MANSION BUILT FOR LACLEDE IN 1765. FROM
DAGUERREOTYPE IN MISSOURI HISTORICAL SOCIETY COLLECTION.]
Shortly after the little village was begun, news came that the territory of
Louisiana had been ceded to Spain. The French Governor, M. d'Abadie, who
announced the fact to the people with tears, is said to have died of grief.
St. Ange de Bellerive became Commandant or Governor-General in 1765,
instituted a government, and demeaned himself in such manner generally that
unto this day he is remembered affectionately in every published history of
the town. The first two grants of land in the village were made to Laclede
by De Bellerive, August 11, 1766. The Spaniards do not appear to have paid
much attention to the village of St. Louis, for there was some doubt
whether De Bellerive had any authority to make grants. Although the best
authorities agree that De Bellerive acted with the authority and consent of
the Commandant-General of New Orleans, it seems that he was practically
elected Governor by the inhabitants. It is amusing to read in a history of
St. Louis and Missouri, published in 1870, that De Bellerive in 1776, began
to make grants, "hoping for a retrocession of the country to France, when
the grants would be legalized by confirmation." The first marriage in the
new colony was celebrated April 20, 1766, the contracting parties being
Toussaint Honen and Marie Baugenon. The first mortgage was recorded
September, 1766. It was specified that payment should be made in peltries,
though no definite value was attached to the number of deer hides to be
delivered by Pierre Berger to Francis Latour.
August 11, 1767, news came that Spain was making ready to take possession
of the country. The transfer had been made by secret treaty in 1762. The
people accepted the situation in a sort of dumb rage. The following year a
body of troops arrived under the command of a man named Rios, acting under
the authority of Don Antonio d'Ulloa, Governor of Louisiana. To the joy of
the inhabitants, De Bellerive was not disturbed in his office, and the
Spanish troops left in the summer of 1769.
It was the great distinction of De Bellerive that he was the friend of
Pontiac, the Ottawa chieftain, and about the time of the departure of the
Spaniards, Pontiac arrived at St. Louis. He represented all the poetry and
nobility, the grandeur and genius of the Indian character. After Red
Jacket, he was the greatest Indian the New World had known. Dreaming of
driving the English into the sea he had confederated the tribes between the
Allegheny and the Mississippi, the Ohio and the Lakes into a league against
them. He had been known and beloved by the gallant but unfortunate Montcalm
at Quebec. He had participated in the ambuscade in which Braddock with his
life had paid the penalty of narrow-mindedness, and had planned the
massacre of Michilimackinack, in which more than two thousand of the
English had lost their lives. The French "loved him for the enemies he had
made," and he was "fêted and caressed," says an early chronicler, "by many
of the principal inhabitants of the village." St. Ange de Bellerive
entertained the warrior at the house of Madame Chouteau, but Pontiac was
now a broken man. His dream of driving back the English beyond the
Cumberland had faded. His allies had been seduced from his support by
presents and by firewater. He, too, had made the acquaintance of the fiery
liquor, and drink was then such a passion with him that De Bellerive and
his friends not only endeavored to prevent the sale thereof to him in the
village, but tried to dissuade him from crossing the river to Cahokia in
response to the invitations of certain of his friends there. Not to be
dissuaded, Pontiac crossed the river in the uniform of a French officer,
which had been given him by Montcalm. Wandering on the outskirts of the
village of Cahokia, he was tomahawked by a Kaskaskia Indian, who had been
given a barrel of whiskey to do the deed by an English trader named
Williamson. His friend De Bellerive had the chief's remains brought to St.
Louis, and they were buried somewhere in the vicinity of the site of the
present Southern Hotel, in the corridor of which was placed, in 1901, a
handsome tablet to the unfortunate warrior's memory. Whether Pontiac was
assassinated in accordance with official English instructions, or met his
death in consequence of a private grudge, was long a matter of dispute, but
there is no doubt that the passionate and sympathetic Frenchmen believed
for many long years that the chief was killed to relieve the English of the
danger of his presence and a possible utilization of his undoubted
abilities by the Power in possession of the west bank of the Mississippi.
Pontiac's death, however, was promptly avenged upon the Illinois Indians by
members of the tribes with which he had been in alliance.
Next came Don Alexander O'Reilly to take charge of the territory of
Louisiana. He arrived at New Orleans at the head of three thousand men to
enforce his authority. There was need for the soldiery, for though seven
years had elapsed since the cession of the territory, the Spaniards had
never actually taken possession. The people were still French to the core.
When they heard that Don O'Reilly was coming they even conferred together
upon the advisability of meeting him with force and preventing his landing.
The head men of the town counselled against this, however, and their advice
prevailed, but such was the spirit of insubordination, so many were the
execrations heaped upon the Spaniards, so frequent were the threats of
violence against them that Don Alexander had at once to adopt stern
measures. He promptly arrested a dozen of the ringleaders, had five of them
publicly shot, and the others, except one who committed suicide, sent as
prisoners to Cuba. The Spanish code was put into operation throughout the
territory, and O'Reilly's deputy, Lieutenant-Governor Piernas, arriving in
St. Louis in 1770, took possession of St. Louis, with the help of De
Bellerive, wisely conciliating the villagers. The village settled into
peace. The church, for which ground had been set aside even before the
founders of the town had prepared to build their own homes, was dedicated,
June 24, 1770, with solemn ceremonies. Where that first church of flattened
logs set on end with the interstices filled with mortar stood, there stands
a church to-day, and, says Elihu Shepard, since that time "the worship of
God on that block has not been suspended for a single day." All De
Bellerive's acts were formally confirmed by Piernas, and the little
settlement forgot its woes under a benign administration, which recognized
village prejudices, and shut its eyes to the loyalty everywhere apparent to
France.
[Illustration OLD FRENCH POST-HOUSE. BUILT IN 1770. INHABITED UNTIL 1870.]
Piernas narrowly escaped assassination at the hands of an Osage chieftain
who thought himself insulted at a meeting at the Commandant's house. The
Osage, while drinking with other Indians, divulged his intention to kill
the Governor, whereupon a Shawnee warrior stabbed him to the heart. The
slain chief was buried with honors in the big mound to the north of the
village, an eminence that gave to St. Louis for many years the name of "The
Mound City."
For twelve years the village was orderly and quiet. The people liked the
Governor who succeeded Piernas, but the next, Don Fernando de Leyba,--"a
drunken, avaricious, and feeble-minded man, without a single redeeming
qualification," they did not like. He came upon the scene in 1778, at a
critical time. The American Revolution was on. The French and Spaniards,
hating the English, were inclined to sympathize with the colonists, so far
as they knew or cared about things happening so far away. Fearing an attack
of English and Indians, the villagers threw up a trench and stockade about
the town, having three gates on the sides other than the one on the river,
and built a fort in the centre of the city at what is now, approximately,
Fourth and Walnut streets, and supplied it with four small cannon and one
company of soldiers. The people were afraid to till the fields outside the
trench and stockade, and the men who might have braved attack were busy
building the defences. In the spring of 1780 fears of a famine forced the
men into the fields to plant the spring seeds.
On the morning of May 26, 1780, the attack came. It was led by
Canadian-French renegades, the main body being made up of about one
thousand Upper Mississippi Indians. The attacking party came from the
north, slew forty of the workers, carried fifteen up the river as
prisoners, in their war canoes, while the rest made their way back to the
fortifications, amid the booming of the cannon, which saved the fort.
Leyba, who was drunk, appeared upon the scene, it is said, sprawling in a
wheelbarrow and muttering incoherently, after the Indians had been
repulsed. He died a month later, covered with ignominy.