I. The Land and Indian Questions. 1790 to 1809.
A proclamation issued by Estevan Miro, Governor and Intendant of the
Provinces of Louisiana and Florida in 1789, offered to immigrants a
liberal donation of land, graduated according to the number of laborers in
the family; freedom of religion and from payment of tithes, although no
public worship except Catholic would be allowed; freedom from taxation;
and a free market at New Orleans for produce or manufactures. All settlers
must swear allegiance to Spain.(146) This proclamation came at a time when
the West was divided in opinion as to whether to make war upon Spain for
her closure of the Mississippi or to secede from the United States and
become a part of Spain.(147) It tended to continue the emigration from the
Illinois country to Spanish territory, for public land was not yet for
sale in Illinois.
To the professional rover, the inability to secure a title to land was the
cause of small concern, but the more substantial and desirable the
settler, the more concerned was he about the matter. Settlement and
improvements were retarded. Before the affairs of the Ohio Company had
progressed far enough to permit sales of land to settlers, the little
company at Marietta saw, with deep chagrin, thousands of settlers float by
on their way to Kentucky, where land could be bought.(148) Squatters in
Illinois were constantly expecting that the public lands would soon be
offered for sale. The natural result was petitions for the right of
preëmption, because without such a right, the settler was in danger of
losing whatever improvements he had made. In 1790, James Piggott and
forty-five others petitioned for such a right. The petitioners stated that
they had settled since 1783 and had suffered much from Indians. They could
not cultivate their land except under guard. Seventeen families had no
more tillable land than four could tend. The land on which they lived was
the property of two individuals.(149)
[Illustration: Indian Cessions.]
Petitions from various classes of settlers, not provided for by the acts
of June 20, August 28, and August 29, 1788, led Congress to pass the act
of March 3, 1791. By this act, four hundred acres was to be given to each
head of a family who, in 1783, was resident in the Illinois country or at
Vincennes, and who had since moved from the one to the other. The same
donation was to be made to all persons who had moved away, if they should
return within five years. Such persons should also have confirmed to them
the land they originally held. This was intended to bring back persons who
had gone to the Spanish side of the Mississippi. Grants previously made by
courts having no authority should be confirmed to persons who had made
improvements, to an extent not exceeding four hundred acres to any one
person. As these lands had in some cases been repeatedly sold, the parties
making the improvements were frequently guiltless of any knowledge of
fraud. The Cahokia commons were confirmed to that village. One hundred
acres was to be granted to each militiaman enrolled on August 1, 1790, and
who had received no other grant.(150) This act throws considerable light
on the causes of discontent then prevailing among the settlers and on the
conditions to which immigrants came.
This same spring, about two hundred and fifty of the inhabitants of
Vincennes had gone to settle at New Madrid.(151) It is not strange that
the act of March 3, 1791, made provisions intended to induce the Americans
who had emigrated to the Spanish possessions to return. The history of the
threatened Spanish aggression upon the western part of the United States
is known in essence to anyone who has made the slightest special study of
the period at which it was at its height. Morgan’s scheme for a purchase
of land in Illinois was not carried out, and he turned his attention to
peopling his settlement at New Madrid. Down the Mississippi to New Orleans
seemed the natural route for Illinois commerce. Slavery flourished
unmolested west of the Mississippi. In 1794, Baron de Carondolet gave
orders to the governor of Natchez to incite the Chickasaw Indians to expel
the Americans from Fort Massac. The governor refused to obey the order,
because Fort Massac had been occupied by the Americans in pursuance of a
request by the Spanish representative at the capital of the United States
that the president would put a stop to the proposed expedition of the
French against the Spanish. The claim was advanced by Carondolet that the
Americans had no right to the land on which the fort stood, but that the
land belonged to the Chickasaws, who were independent allies of Spain. Two
other reasons given for not obeying the order were that it would preclude
the successful issue of the Spanish intrigue for the separation of
Kentucky from the United States, and would hinder negotiations, then
pending, for a commercial treaty between Spain and the United States.(152)
Carondolet regarded the Indians as Spain’s best defence against the
Americans,(153) yet the whites prepared for defence, and in anticipation
of the proposed French expedition of George Rogers Clark, a garrison of
thirty men and an officer was placed at Ste. Genevieve, opposite
Kaskaskia. Carondolet said: “This will suffice to prevent the smuggling
carried on by the Americans of the settlement of Kaskaskias situated
opposite, which increases daily.”(154)
Early in 1796, a petition was sent from Kaskaskia to Congress. The
petitioners desired that they might be permitted to locate their donation
of four hundred acres per family on Long Prairie, a few miles above
Kaskaskia, on the Kaskaskia River, and that the expense of surveying the
land might be paid by the United States. The act granting the
donation-land had provided for its location between the Kaskaskia and the
Mississippi. This land the petitioners declared to be private land and
some of it was of poor quality.(155) Confirmation of land claims directed
to be made upon the Governor’s visit in 1790 were delayed by the lack of a
surveyor and the poverty of the inhabitants.(156) The petition was signed
by John Edgar, William Morrison, William St. Clair, and John Demoulin(157)
“for the inhabitants of the counties of St. Clair and Randolph”(158)—the
Illinois counties. The petitioners ranked high in the mercantile and legal
life of the Illinois settlements, but they must have been novices in the
art of petitioning if they thought that a petition signed by four men from
the Illinois country, with no sign of their being legally representative,
would be regarded by Congress as an expression of the opinion of the
Northwest Territory. The part of the petition relating to lands was
granted, but the major part, which related to other subjects, was denied
on the ground that the petitioners probably did not represent public
sentiment.(159) During this same year Congress denied a number of
petitions for the right of preëmption in the Northwest Territory, because
such a right would encourage illegal settling. It was also during this
year that the first sales of public land in the Northwest Territory were
authorized. The land to be sold was in what is now Ohio. No tract of less
than four thousand acres could be purchased.(160)
In 1800, two hundred and sixty-eight inhabitants of Illinois, chiefly
French, petitioned Congress that Indian titles to land in the southern
part of Illinois might be extinguished and the land offered for sale; that
tracts of land at the distance of a day’s journey from each other, lying
between Vincennes and the Illinois settlements, might be ceded to such
persons as would keep taverns, and that one or two garrisons might be
stationed in Illinois. The petitioners state that the Kaskaskia tribe of
Indians numbered not more than fifteen members and that their title to
land could be easily extinguished; that not enough land is open to
settlement to admit a population sufficient to support ordinary county
establishments; that roads are much needed, and that many of the
inhabitants are crossing the Mississippi with their slaves. The petition
was not considered.(161)
A new factor now appears in the forces affecting Illinois settlement. The
Northwest Territory having advanced to the second grade of territorial
government, in December, 1799, its delegate took his seat in Congress. The
step was an important one for the struggling colony. Before this time such
petitions as were prepared by inhabitants of the territory for the
consideration of Congress had been subjected to all the vicissitudes of
being addressed to some public officer or of being confided to some member
of Congress who represented a different portion of the country. Up to this
time the public lands could only be bought in tracts of four thousand
acres. Largely through the influence of the delegate from the Northwest
Territory, a bill was passed which authorized the sale of sections and
half-sections. In consequence, emigration soon began to flow rapidly into
Ohio. Land in Illinois was not yet offered for sale, but this bill is
important because the policy of offering land in smaller tracts was to
continue.(162)
The territorial delegate was also active in procuring the passage of a
bill for the division of the Northwest Territory. While the bill was
pending, a petition from Illinois, praying for the division and for the
establishment of such a government in the western part as was provided for
by the Ordinance of 1787, was presented. The act for division was signed
by the President on May 7, 1800; it formed Indiana Territory, with
Vincennes as its capital.(163)
The propositions made by a convention of representatives elected by the
citizens of Indiana to prepare petitions to Congress, near the close of
1802, illustrate the needs of the time. It was desired that the Indian
title to land lying in Southern Illinois and Southwestern Indiana might be
extinguished and the land sold in smaller tracts and at a lower
price;(164) that a preëmption act might be passed; that a grant of
seminary and school lands might be made; that land for taverns, twenty
miles or less apart, might be granted along certain specified routes; that
donation-lands might be chosen in separate tracts, instead of in three
specified areas, in order to avoid “absolutely useless” prairies, and also
lands claimed by ancient grants; and that the qualification of a freehold
of fifty acres of land, prescribed for the electors of representatives to
the territorial legislature, might be changed to manhood suffrage, because
the freehold qualification was said to tend “to throw too great a weight
in the scale of wealth.” The petition was considered in committees, but it
led to no legislation.(165)
None of the above complaints was better founded than that concerning the
restriction of the suffrage, and it is well to note subsequent proceedings
in regard to it. No qualification less suitable to the time and place
could well have been devised, and this is especially true of the Illinois
portion of the territory, because there unsettled French claims were to
delay the sales of public lands until 1814, and thus early settlers could
neither buy land nor vote unless they owned it, unless indeed they
purchased land claims from the needy and unbusiness-like French. An
interesting petition of 1807 from the settlement on Richland Creek,(166)
for the right of preëmption, throws light upon conditions then obtaining.
The petitioner inclosed a map of the settlement, with the following
explanation: “Those persons whose names are enclosed in said plot, within
surveyed lines, have confirmed and located rights, amounting to 3,775
acres; ... the residue of the said settlers, occupying about 6,000 acres
of land, have, without any right, settled upon the public land.” The map
shows that there were eleven owners and twenty-two squatters.(167) As the
law then stood, the twenty-two squatters, occupying more than three-fifths
of the land, could not vote. The eleven land-owners must have secured
their land either under the acts of 1788 or that of 1791, or by the
purchase of French claims, a trade vigorously carried on. In 1808,(168)
Congress so far extended the suffrage in Indiana as to make the ownership
of a town lot worth one hundred dollars an alternative qualification to
the possession of a freehold of fifty acres. This was in advance of the
law in some of the Eastern states.
After 1802, the land question can not be traced without reference to the
Indian question in Illinois. That question became important as soon as
American occupation was assured, and it remained important for fifty years
after the Revolution. The desire of the American settlers for land was
directly counter to the desire of the Indians to preserve their
hunting-grounds. Before the close of the eighteenth century, the list of
bloody deeds in Illinois had grown long.(169) The United States Government
appreciated the gravity of the situation and early made efforts to
purchase the land from the Indians. That part of the treaty of Greenville,
of 1795, which affected Illinois, extinguished the Indian title to a tract
six miles square, at the mouth of Chicago River; one six miles square, at
Peoria; one twelve miles square, near the mouth of the Illinois River; the
post of Fort Massac, and the land in the possession of the whites.(170)
The treaty of Fort Wayne, in 1803, ceded four square miles or less, at the
salt springs on Saline Creek, and some land west and southwest from
Vincennes. This treaty, with another made in the following August, ceded
three tracts of land, each one mile square, between Vincennes and
Kaskaskia, to be sites for taverns.(171) The treaty of Vincennes, of
August, 1803, ceded land in Illinois bounded by the Ohio, the Mississippi,
the Illinois, and the western watershed of the Wabash, except three
hundred and fifty acres near Kaskaskia, and twelve hundred and eighty
acres to be located. This last treaty was made with the depleted Kaskaskia
tribe.(172) As the claims of various tribes overlapped, an Indian treaty
rarely signifies that all controversy in regard to the land ceded is at an
end. Frequently one or more treaties must yet be made with other tribes,
and frequently a tribe refuses to abide by its agreement.
Previous to 1804, no land was sold in the Northwest Territory west of the
mouth of the Kentucky River. An act of March 26 of that year provided for
the opening of a land-office at Detroit to sell lands north of Ohio; one
at Vincennes to sell lands in its vicinity ceded by the treaty of Fort
Wayne; and one at Kaskaskia to sell so much of the land ceded by the
treaty of Vincennes (August, 1803) as was not claimed by any other tribe
than those represented in the cession. The register and the receiver of
public moneys of these respective districts were to be commissioners to
settle private land claims. Evidences of claims should be filed before
January 1, 1805, and after the adjustment of claims the public lands
should be sold at auction to the highest bidder. Two dollars per acre was
to be the minimum price; no land should be sold in less than
quarter-sections, except fractional portions caused by irregularities in
topography or survey, and lands unsold after the auction might be sold at
private sale. Although this act provided for the sale of public lands in
Illinois after private claims should have been satisfied, and directed
that such claims should be filed not later than January 1, 1805, Congress
repeatedly extended the time for the filing of claims, and ten years after
the passage of this act there were still unsatisfied claims.(173) Not
until 1814 did sales of public land begin in Illinois. The delay retarded
immigration of that class which would have made the most desirable
citizens.
By the treaty of St. Louis, November 3, 1804, the Sauk and Foxes ceded
that part of Illinois west of the Illinois and Fox rivers. Black Hawk, the
principal chief of the Sauk, did not sign the treaty.(174) By the treaty
of Vincennes, 1805, the Piankashaws ceded a tract lying between the lower
Wabash and its western watershed.(175) No more Indian titles to land in
Illinois were extinguished, and no public land was sold in Illinois until
after that part of the country became a separate territory.
Early in 1806, there came to Congress from Illinois a petition which
betrayed the anxiety of the French settlers, and of the Americans who had
bought French claims, lest the peculiar shape of their holdings should be
disturbed by the orderly system of government surveys. The petitioners
asked that a line might be run from a point north of Cahokia to an
unspecified river south of Kaskaskia, in such a manner as to include all
settlements between the two points, and that the land so included be
exempt from the mode of survey and terms of sale of other public lands of
the United States. The petition was apparently not reported upon, but a
detailed map of the region referred to shows that the holdings were left
in their bewildering complexity.(176)
By the time Indiana Territory was divided some progress had been made in
extinguishing Indian titles, and some also in investigating land claims of
the French and their assignees; but the American immigrant had still the
hard choice of buying a French claim with uncertain title or squatting on
government land with the risk of losing whatever improvement he might
make, and often the added risk of being killed by the suspicious, hostile,
untrustworthy Indians. This was one class of hindrances to settlement.
Another hindrance, next to be noticed, was the unstable governmental
conditions following the anarchy already recited.
II. Government Succeeding the Period of Anarchy, 1790 to 1809.
When St. Clair County was formed, in 1790, it was made to include all the
settlements of the Northwest Territory to the westward of Vincennes. On
account of its geographical extent it was divided into three judicial
districts, but it could not be made into three separate counties, because
there were not enough men capable of holding office to furnish the
necessary officials. The American settlers were few and a large proportion
of them were unskilled in matters of government, while the French were
totally unfit to govern. In 1795, St. Clair, when referring to conditions
in 1790, wrote that since then the population of Illinois had decreased
considerably.(177) Combining this decrease with the fact that there were
in the settlements in what is now Missouri 1491 inhabitants in 1785, 2093
in 1788, and 6028, including 883 slaves, in 1799,(178) the conclusion is
inevitable that emigration across the Mississippi was the immediate cause
of the decrease in Illinois.
In 1795, notwithstanding the decreased population, and perhaps in the hope
of checking the decrease, St. Clair County was divided by proclamation of
Governor St. Clair. The division was by an east and west line running a
little south of the settlement of New Design.(179) St. Clair County lay to
the north, Randolph County to the south of the line.(180)
The early laws of the Northwest Territory throw light upon the conditions
existing upon the frontier. Minute provisions for establishing and
maintaining ferries, with no mention of bridges, indicate the primitive
methods of travel.(181) Millers were required to use a prescribed set of
measures and to grind for a prescribed toll, the toll for the use of a
horse-mill being higher than that for a water-mill, unless the owner of
the grain furnished the horses.(182) Guide-posts were to be put up at the
forks of every public road.(183) No stray stock should be taken up between
the first of April and the first of November, unless the stray should have
broken into the inclosure of the taker-up.(184) In those days stock was
turned out and crops were fenced in. Prairies or cleared land were not to
be fired except between December 1 and March 10, unless upon one’s own
land.(185) The following rates of county taxation were prescribed:
Horses, per head, not more than $.50
Neat cattle, not more than .12-½
Bond servant, not more than 1.00
Single man, 21 yrs. or older, with less than $200 worth of property, not
more than 2.00 nor less than .50
Retail merchants, not more than 10.00(186)
A bounty, varying at different times between 1799 and 1810 from 50 cents
to $2 per head, was given for killing wolves.(187) Imprisonment for debt,
a law antedating by many years similar laws in several of the other parts
of the United States, was practically abolished.(188) A frontier region
does not have that social stratification which makes oppression of the
debtor class easy. A county too poor to build a log jail without
difficulty is not likely to be so senseless as to make a practice of
confining and boarding its debtor class.
For the purpose of taxation land was to be listed in three classes
according to value. No specification as to the value of the respective
classes was prescribed. The tax was eighty-five, sixty, or twenty-five
cents per one hundred acres, according as land was first, second, or third
class. No unimproved land in Illinois was to be listed higher than second
class.(189)
The laws above cited were enacted by the legislature of the Northwest
Territory. In May, 1800, that territory was divided, the western part,
including Illinois, becoming Indiana Territory. This made the Illinois
country more distinctly frontier by again reducing it to the first grade
of territorial government, Indiana Territory, as such, not being
represented in Congress until December, 1805.(190) Among the reasons
advanced for dividing the Northwest Territory was the fact that in five
years there had been but one court for criminal cases in the three western
counties.(191)
Illinois soon sought admission to the second grade of territorial
government. In April, 1801, John Edgar wrote from Kaskaskia to St. Clair:
“During a few weeks past, we have put into circulation petitions addressed
to Governor Harrison, for a General Assembly, and we have had the
satisfaction to find that about nine-tenths of the inhabitants of the
counties of St. Clair and Randolph approve of the measure, a great
proportion of whom have already put their signatures to the petition.... I
have no doubt but that the undertaking will meet with early success, so as
to admit of the House of Representatives meeting in the fall.”(192) The
movement for advancement to the second grade was not, however, destined to
such early success, and when it did take place such a change had occurred
that Illinois was much enraged.
The Illinois country early became restive under the government of Indiana
Territory. Much the same causes for discontent existed as had caused
Kentucky to wish to separate from Virginia, Tennessee from North Carolina,
and the country west of the Alleghanies from the United States. In each
case a frontier minority saw its wishes, if not its rights, infringed by a
more eastern majority. In each case the eastern people were themselves too
weak to furnish sufficient succor to the struggling West. The conflict was
natural and inevitable. The grave charge against Governor Harrison, who
had large powers of patronage, was local favoritism. So discontented was
Illinois, that in 1803 it had petitioned for annexation to the territory
of Louisiana when such territory should be formed.(193) Antagonism to the
Indiana government became still more bitter when, in December, 1804, after
an election which was so hurried that an outlying county did not get to
vote, the territory entered the second grade of territorial
government.(194)
In the summer of 1805, discontent in Illinois was again expressed in a
memorial to Congress. About three hundred and fifty inhabitants of the
region petitioned for a division of Indiana Territory, From the Illinois
settlements to the capital, Vincennes, was said to be one hundred and
eighty miles, “through a dreary and inhospitable wilderness, uninhabited,
and which during one part of the year, can scarcely afford water
sufficient to sustain nature, and that of the most indifferent quality,
besides presenting other hardships equally severe, while in another it is
part under water, and in places to the extent of some miles, by which the
road is rendered almost impassable, and the traveler is not only subjected
to the greatest difficulties, but his life placed in the most imminent
danger.” It resulted that the attendance of Illinois inhabitants upon
either the legislature or the supreme court was fraught with many
inconveniences. Because of the extensive prairies between Illinois and
Vincennes, “a communication between them and the settlements east of that
river [the Wabash] can not in the common course of things, for centuries
yet to come, be supported with the least benefit, or be of the least
moment to either of them.” Illinois objected to having been precipitated
into the second grade of government. In the election for that purpose,
said the memorialists, only Knox county voted in the affirmative, and
Wayne county did not vote, because the writs of election arrived too late.
Since entering the second grade the County of Wayne (Michigan) had been
struck off. It was believed that if the prayer for separation should be
granted, the rage for emigration to Louisiana would, in great measure,
cease, the value of public lands in Illinois would be increased, and their
sale would also be more rapid, while an increased population would render
Illinois flourishing and self-supporting rather than a claimant for
governmental support.(195)
At the same time that Congress received the above memorial, it received a
petition from a majority of the members of the respective houses of the
Indiana legislature. This petition asked that the freehold qualification
for electors be abolished; that Indiana Territory be not divided, and that
the undivided territory be soon made a state. It was said that the people
were too poor to support a divided government, and that as the general
court met annually in each county it was slight hardship to the frontier
to have the supreme court meet at Vincennes.(196) It was probably true at
this time, as it certainly was in 1807, that the general court met as
above stated. Appeal by bill of exceptions was, however, allowed. The
supreme court had no original, exclusive jurisdiction.(197) Nothing
daunted by this memorial from the legislature, Illinois, in a short time,
prepared another memorial—this time with twenty signatures. This adds to
the grievances recited in the previous memorial that the wealthy appeal
cases against the Illinois poor to the supreme court at Vincennes; that
landholders on the Wabash are interested in preventing the population of
lands on the Mississippi; that preëmption is needed, and that it is hoped
that the general government will not pass unnoticed the act of the last
legislature authorizing the importation of slaves into the territory. It
violates the Ordinance of 1787. The memorialists desired such importation,
but it must be authorized by Congress to be legal. The population of
Illinois was given as follows:
By the census of April 1, 1801: 2,361
Inhabitants of Prairie du Chien and on the Illinois River, not
included in above: 550
“Emigration” since 1801, at least one-third increase: 750
Settlements on the Ohio River: 650
4,311(198)
The truth of some of the complaints from Illinois is apparent. That a land
company on the Wabash wished to hinder settlement on the Mississippi is
probably true, for Matthew Lyon, of Kentucky, said in Congress, in the
winter of 1805-6: “The price of lands is various. I know of two hundred
thousand acres of land on the Wabash, which is offered for sale at twenty
cents per acre.”(199) It is to be presumed that the company making the
offer could not give a secure title to the land.
In 1806, a congressional committee reported on the various memorials and
petitions from Illinois, but the report led to no legislation and thus
settled nothing, and in 1807 petitioning continued.(200) Illinois again
petitioned for separation from the remainder of Indiana Territory, this
petition bearing seventeen signatures. An inclosed census is lost, but a
population of five thousand is spoken of. A new and significant paragraph
occurs: “When your Memorialists contemplate the probable movements which
may arise out of an European peace, now apparently about to take place,
they cannot but feel the importance of union, of energy, of population on
this shore of the Mississippi—they cannot but shudder at the horrors which
may arise from a _disaffection in the West_....” A government was needed,
and that of Indiana Territory was not acceptable to the people of
Illinois. One hundred and two inhabitants of Illinois sent a
counter-petition, in which they said that Illinois had paid no taxes and
needed no separate government, also that the committee that prepared the
above petition was not legally chosen. Most of the signers of the petition
were Americans, while most of the signers of the counter-petition were
French, forty-two of the latter being illiterate.(201) The report of a
congressional committee on the petition was adverse,(202) as was also a
report on three petitions for division that came from Illinois in the
spring of 1808.(203) In the following December, the representative of
Indiana Territory in Congress was appointed chairman of a committee to
consider the expediency of dividing the territory, and to this committee
petitions both for and against division were referred. This territorial
delegate was in favor of division, and his committee presented a favorable
report, in which the number of inhabitants of Indiana east of the Wabash
was estimated to be seventeen thousand, and the number west of the Wabash
to be eleven thousand—numbers thought to be sufficiently large to justify
division, and an estimate which the census of 1810 proves to have been
almost correct. In February, 1809, the bill providing for the division so
ardently desired by Illinois was approved, the division to take place on
the first of the next March. The western division was to be known as
Illinois Territory and was to have for its eastern boundary a line due
north from Vincennes to the Canadian line.(204) In the debate in the House
of Representatives, preceding the passage of the bill for division, the
arguments in its favor were that the Wabash was a natural dividing line;
that a wide extent of wilderness intervened between Vincennes and the
western settlements; that the power of the executive was enervated by the
dispersed condition of the settlements; that to render justice was almost
impossible; that the United States would be more than compensated for the
increased expense by the rise in value of the public lands. Opponents of
the bill declared that the complaints made by Illinois were common to many
parts of the country; that the number of officers would be needlessly
increased by the proposed division; and that “a compliance with this
petition would but serve to foster their factions, and produce more
petitions.” No significant geographical division of the vote on the bill
is apparent.(205)
III. Obstacles to Immigration. 1790 to 1809.
In addition to the inability to secure land titles on account of unsettled
French claims, to the presence of Indians and to the discontent with the
government of Indiana Territory, almost every cause which made settlement
on the frontier difficult was found in the Illinois country in its most
pronounced form, because Illinois was the far corner of the frontier. The
census reports of the United Status give the following statistics of
population:
1790. 1800. 1810.
Kentucky 73,677 220,955 406,511
Ohio 45,365 230,760
Indiana 2,517 24,520
Illinois 2,458 12,282
These figures show how conspicuously small was the immigration to
Illinois. Enough has already been said to show some of the reasons for
this sluggish settlement. When, in 1793, Governor St. Clair wrote to
Alexander Hamilton, “In compassion to a poor devil banished to another
planet, tell me what is doing in yours, if you can snatch a moment from
the weighty cares of your office,”(206) he doubtless felt that the
language was not too strong, and voiced a feeling of loneliness that was
common to the settlers. Nor was there a lack of land in the East to make
westward movement imperative. Massachusetts was much opposed to her people
emigrating to Ohio, because she wished them to settle on her own eastern
frontier (Maine), and Vermont and New York had vacant lands.(207)
One who settled in Illinois at this period came through danger to danger,
for Indians lurked in the woods and malaria waited in the lowlands. The
journey made by the immigrants was tedious and difficult, and was often
rendered dangerous by precipitous and rough hills and swollen streams, if
the journey was overland, or by snags, shoals and rapids, if by water. A
large proportion of the settlers came from Maryland, Virginia, or the
Carolinas. Those from Virginia and Maryland were induced to emigrate by
the glowing descriptions of the Illinois country given by the soldiers of
George Rogers Clark, and these soldiers sometimes led the first
contingent. A typical Virginia settlement in Illinois was that called New
Design, located in what is now Monroe county, between Kaskaskia and
Cahokia. Founded about 1786 by a native of Berkeley county, the settlement
received important additions in 1793, and four years later a party of more
than one hundred and fifty arrived from near the headwaters of the south
branch of the Potomac, this last contingent led by a Baptist minister, who
had organized a church on a previous visit.(208) In general, persons
Scotch-Irish by birth were opposed to slavery, as were also the members of
the Quaker church. This caused a considerable emigration from the
Carolinas. Another motive for people from all sections was that expressed
by settlers of Illinois, in 1806, when they said that they came west in
order to secure “such an establishment in land as they despaired of ever
being able to procure in the old settlements.”(209) We have seen how long
deferred was the fulfillment of their hope of getting a title to the
coveted land. Although the East was not crowded, it is true that land
there was more expensive than that of the same quality in the West. In
1806, three dollars per acre was the maximum price in even the settled
parts of Indiana Territory, while fifty dollars per acre had been paid for
choice Kentucky land.(210)
The greater number of immigrants came by water, but a family too poor to
travel thus, or whose starting-point was not near a navigable stream,
could come overland. Illinois was favored by having a number of large
rivers leading toward it; the Ohio, Kentucky, Cumberland, Tennessee, and
their tributaries were much used by emigrants. The chief route by land was
the Wilderness Road, over which thousands of the inhabitants of Kentucky
had come. Its existence helps to explain the wonderful growth of
Kentucky—in 1774 the first cabin, in 1790 a population of 73,000. It
crossed the mountains at Cumberland Gap, wound its way by the most
convenient course to Crab Orchard, and was early extended to the Falls of
the Ohio and later to Vincennes and St. Louis. The legislature of Kentucky
provided, in 1795, that the road from Cumberland Gap to Crab Orchard
should be made perfectly commodious and passable for wagons carrying a
weight of one ton, and appropriated two thousand pounds for the work. Two
years later five hundred dollars were appropriated for the repair of the
road, and the highway was made a turnpike with prescribed toll, although
it did not become such a road as the word turnpike suggests.(211)
A traveler of 1807 described the river craft of the period. The smallest
kind in use was a simple log canoe. This was followed by the pirogue,
which was a larger kind of canoe and sufficiently strong and capacious to
carry from twelve to fifteen barrels of salt. Skiffs were built of all
sizes, from five hundred to twenty thousand pounds burden, and batteaux
were the same as the larger skiffs, being indifferently known by either
name. Kentucky boats were strong frames of an oblong form, varying in size
from twenty to fifty feet in length and from ten to fourteen in breadth,
were sided and roofed, and guided by huge oars. New Orleans boats
resembled Kentucky boats, but were larger and stronger and had arched
roofs. The largest could carry four hundred and fifty barrels of flour.
Keel boats were generally built from forty to eighty feet in length and
from seven to nine feet in width. The largest required one man to steer
and two to row in descending the Ohio, and would carry about one hundred
barrels of salt; but to ascend the stream, at least six or eight men were
required to make any considerable progress. A barge would carry from four
thousand to sixty thousand pounds, and required four men, besides the
helmsman, to descend the river, while to return with a load from eight to
twelve men were required.(212)
Shipments of produce from Illinois were usually made in flat-bottomed
boats of fifteen tons burden. Such a boat cost about one hundred dollars,
the crew of five men was paid one hundred dollars each, the support of the
crew was reckoned at one hundred dollars, and insurance at one hundred
dollars, thus making a freightage cost of eight hundred dollars for
fifteen tons. The boat was either set adrift or sold for the price of
firewood at New Orleans. It was estimated that the use of boats of four
hundred and fifty tons burden would save four dollars per barrel on
shipping flour to New Orleans, where flour had often sold at less than
three dollars per barrel, but such boats were not yet used in the
West.(213) Canoes cost an emigrant from one to three dollars; pirogues,
five to twenty dollars; small skiffs, five to ten dollars; large skiffs or
batteaux, twenty to fifty dollars; Kentucky and New Orleans boats, one
dollar to one and one-half dollars per foot; keel boats, two dollars and a
half to three dollars per foot; and barges, four to five dollars per
foot.(214)
Horses, cattle, and household goods were carried on boats. Travel by
either land or water was beset with difficulties. The river, without pilot
or dredge, had dangers peculiar to itself. Sometimes, when traveling
overland, a broken wheel or axle, or a horse lost or stolen by Indians,
caused protracted and vexatious delays. It is well to notice, also, that
to travel a given distance into the wilderness was more than twice as
difficult as to travel one-half that distance, because of the constantly
increasing separation between the traveler and what had previously been
his base of supplies.(215)
Sometimes immigrants debarked at Fort Massac and completed their journey
by land. Two roads led from Fort Massac, one called the lower road and the
other the upper road, the former, practicable only in the dry season and
then only for travel on foot or on horseback, was some eighty miles long,
while the latter was one hundred and fifty miles long. Roads of a like
character connected Kaskaskia and Cahokia.(216)
A party of more than one hundred and fifty, which came from Virginia to
the New Design settlement in 1797, set out from the south branch of the
Potomac. They came from Redstone (now Brownsville), on the Monongahela, to
Fort Massac, on flat-boats, and then by land, in twenty-one days, to New
Design. The summer was wet and hot, a malignant fever broke out among the
newcomers, and one-half of them died before winter. The old settlers were
not affected by the fever, but they were too few to properly care for so
many immigrants.(217)
Commerce in Illinois was in its infancy. Some cattle, corn, pork, and
various other commodities were sent at irregular intervals to New
Orleans.(218) The fur trade was carried on much as under the French
régime. Salt was made at the salt springs on Saline Creek, the labor being
performed chiefly by Kentucky and Tennessee slaves under the supervision
of contractors who leased the works from the United States. The
contractors agreed to sell no salt at the works for more than fifty cents
per bushel, but by means of silent partners to whom the entire supply was
sold, the price was sometimes raised as high as two dollars per
bushel.(219) The commerce of the West suffered from a lack of vessels
going from New Orleans to Atlantic ports, and as a result corn sold in New
Orleans at fifty cents per bushel in 1805, while in some of the Atlantic
ports it sold for more than two dollars. At the same time the West had a
good crop, and Kentucky alone could have spared five hundred thousand
bushels of corn, if it could have been shipped.(220)
To secure laborers was difficult. A petition of 1796 said that farm
laborers could not be secured for less than one dollar per day, exclusive
of washing, lodging, and boarding; that every kind of tradesman was paid
from one dollar and a half to two dollars per day, and that at these
prices laborers were scarce. Labor was cheaper on the Spanish side of the
Mississippi, because of the larger proportion of slaves.(221) These wages
were doubtless high in comparison with those paid in the East, just as the
one dollar per day and board paid at the Galena lead mines in 1788 was
more than double the wages then paid in New England,(222) but an Illinois
price list of 1795 shows that the wages of 1796 were by no means
comparable to those of today in purchasing power. Making shoes was two
dollars per pair; potatoes were one dollar per bushel; brandy, one dollar
per quart; corn, one dollar per bushel.(223)
Among the early difficulties in the way of settlement, one of the most
persistent was the presence of prairies. This is by no means far-fetched,
although it sounds so to modern ears. In 1786, Monroe wrote to Jefferson
concerning the Northwest Territory: “A great part of the territory is
miserably poor, especially that near Lakes Michigan and Erie, and that
upon the Mississippi and the Illinois consists of extensive plains which
have not had, from appearances, and will not have, a single bush on them
for ages. The districts, therefore, within which these fall will never
contain a sufficient number of inhabitants to entitle them to membership
in the confederacy.”(224) Some of the most fertile of the Illinois
prairies were not settled until far into the nineteenth century. The false
prophets of the early days will be judged less harshly if we recall that
wood was then a necessity, that no railroads and few roads existed, that
wells now in use in prairie regions are much deeper than the early
settlers could dig, and that the vast quantities of coal under the surface
of Illinois were undiscovered.
As causes for the fact that more than a quarter of a century after the
Revolution, Illinois had a population estimated at only eleven thousand,
may be suggested the presence of hostile Indians; the inability of
settlers to secure a title to their land; the unsettled condition of the
slavery question; the great distance from the older portions of the United
States and from any market; the fact that Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana had
vast quantities of unoccupied land more accessible to emigrants than was
Illinois; the danger and the cost of moving; privation incident to a
scanty population, such as lack of roads, schools, churches and mills; the
existence of large prairies in Illinois. To remove or mitigate these
difficulties was still the problem of Illinois settlers. On some of them a
beginning had been made before 1809, but none were yet removed.