Читать книгу The Settlement of Illinois, 1778-1830 - Arthur Clinton Boggess - Страница 6

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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 [pg 083] 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 10.00186

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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

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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, [pg 086] 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 [pg 087] 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 [pg 088] 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

4,311198

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 [pg 089] 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 [pg 090] 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