Chapter Thirteen of the History of Southern Illinois

These black laws as they were called were passed in 1819, and remained upon our statute books till February 12, 1853.

IN THE NEW CAPITAL

When the legislature convened in December, 1820. it met in the new capital city, Vandalia, At the time this spot was selected as the capital it was in a great wilderness. The commissioners were authorized to sell lots and to apply the proceeds in meeting the expenses of building and equipping the new capitol building. The town was carefully laid out and lots offered for sale. These were bought for business sites and for homes, and the place soon had the air of business about it. Many of the lots were sold on time and the purchasers failed to make payments. In such cases the lots returned to the state and were resold.

ATTEMPTED FINANCIAL RELIEF

The second general assembly was elected in August, 1820, and met in December of that year in the new capitol at Vandalia. There was in 1819 and 1820, great distress in the west, especially resulting, it was thought, from the character of the principal circulating medium. The “wild cat” banks which had sprung up since the expiration of the charter of the old United States bank in 1811, numbered, in 1819, something like four hundred, and there was great confusion in the circulation notes from these banks. In 1820 the banks in the neighboring states to Illinois began to suspend spece payment, and those in Illinois soon found themselves unable to stem the current and were P 140 obliged to suspend. The money which the immigrants brought with them into the west was often worthless, and it is said there were thousands of dollars of counterfeit money in circulation. Many towns that were laid out in the new western states had sprung up like mushrooms, and wilted down like the mown grass before the summer sun. Great distress prevailed and no one seemed to be able to suggest a remedy. Everyone waited for the meeting of the legislature, thinking there would surely be someone in that body who, Moses-like, could lead the people through the desert.

A part of the distress of the times came from the indebtedness of the people for their lands. In 1800, when the lands were put upon the market in smaller quantities, the price was fixed at two dollars per acre. One-fourth of this amount or fifty cents per acre, must be paid in cash, and on the other three-fourths, a credit of several years was given, or if the purchaser preferred he could pay all cash at once in which case the price was one dollar and sixty-four cents per acre. Most people preferred to buy on time and such people were careless about making the deferred payments. The government became lenient and few ever suffered for their negligence in making their final payments. By 1820 there was supposed to be owing to the general government more than twenty million dollars for lands bought on credit. Congress was memorialized to bring some sort of relief to the people. Senator Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky, introduced a bill which was enacted into law, providing that those indebted to the government for lands might relinquish enough land to pay the debt and thus receive a clear title to the rest of the land. The law also provided that hereafter the price of government land should be one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre—cash.

The legislature set itself earnestly to the task of bringing relief by chartering the “Illinois State Bank” with a capital of five hundred thousand dollars, backed by the credit of the sovereign state of Illinois. For the convenience of the people the bank was to have branches. The parent bank was to be located at Vandalia, with branches at Edwardsville, Brownsville, Shawneetown, and Albion. Bills of the denominations of one, two, three, five, ten, and twenty dollars were ordered printed. The bills drew two per cent interest and were redeemable inside of ten years. The bank was chartered for ten years. The charter provided that the money might be loaned in quantities of one hundred dollars on personal security and one thousand dollars on real estate security. Bills to the amount of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars were ordered printed, and distributed among the banks according to the population in the several localities where the banks were located.

It must not be understood that this gigantic financial scheme went into operation without vigorous opposition. When the bill was before the lower house the banks' friends, who were in a majority, refused to go into committee of the whole, hoping thereby to prevent their speaker, John McLean, from participating in the debate. He was indignant at that sort of treatment and immediately resigned his place as speaker and took his place on the floor and warned his colleagues with clearness of reasoning and accuracy of prophetic vision, of the ills which would come to the people and to the state. But his power as an orator and his force as a logician availed little, as the bill was P 141 triumphantly passed. When the bill came before the governor

BANK BILL ISSUED BY THE EDWARDSVILLE BANK IN 1821

and the supreme court as the board of revision, it was vetoed, but the measure was promptly passed over the veto.

Shortly after the bill became a law, a resolution was before the senate asking the secretary of the treasury to accept the issue of the Illinois State Bank in payment of land. Lieutenant Governor Pierre Menard, who was presiding over the senate, did not approve of the resolution and did not believe the secretary of the treasury would accept the bills in payment for lands, and while the debate continued, became deeply interested. The debate ended and the vote must be taken. The doughty Frenchman said, “Zhentlesmen of de senate! It is moved and second dat de notes of dis bank be made land office money. All in favor of dat motion say aye; dose against it say no. De ayes have it, and now Zhentlesmen I bet you one hundred dollar he never be made land office money.” Mr. Menard had made a true prediction.

The history of this bank can be written in a few words. There was no real provision made for the redemption of the bank’s issue, the expectation being that the bills would always remain at or above par.

The bills actually fell to twenty-five per cent of their face value and soon ceased to circulate. For ten years it was a source of great disappointment to its friends and a menace to the growth and prosperity of the state. The charter expired in 1831 and the state borrowed one hundred thousand dollars in order to close up its business and everybody drew a sigh of relief.

There was not any other legislation of very great importance at this session. The two houses quarreled, and opposed the wishes generally of the governor. However, there were created several new counties, namely: Lawrence, Greene, Sangamon, Pike, Hamilton, Montgomery, Fayette. At this time the Pike county boundary read as follows: ‘‘Up the middle of the Illinois river from its month to the fork; up the south fork (Kankakee) to the Indiana state line; north with the state line to the north boundary of the state; west with the said state line to the west boundary of the state; thence with said boundary to the place of beginning.” It will be noticed that Chicago was in Pike county. P 142

MILITARY TRACT

Shortly after the War of 1812, congress set aside in the territory of Illinois, what afterwards came to be called the ‘‘Illinois Military Tract,” for the payment of the soldiers of the War of 1812. This bounty land as it is frequently called, lay west of the Illinois river and was bounded on the west by the Mississippi, and extended one hundred and sixty-nine miles north of the mouth of the Illinois river. For a few years after the close of the war, immigration to this region was quite active, but by 1820, and for a year or so later, very few settlers came. It is said that the titles to the land did not long remain in the hands of the soldiers, but that they were soon held by speculators.

THE ENGLISH PRAIRIE SETTLEMENT

Reference has already been made to the conditions of this country at the close of the War of 1812. Everything favored immigration. The Indians were gradually becoming reconciled to the presence of the whites. They ceded large tracts of land to the United States, and the government was taking steps to have those lands settled as rapidly as possible. Lands in the west were being rapidly surveyed, towns were springing up, and offices were established, steam navigation on the western rivers was reducing the time and danger of the journey to the west, and at the same time increasing the comforts of travel. The government offered land at $2 an acre with the privilege of paying one-fourth cash and three-fourths on time. Many travelers through the west, upon returning to New England and to the middle and southern states, gave flattering reports upon the richness of the soil, abundance of game, and the superiority of the climate.

In the older states to the east of the Alleghenies, the war produced many conditions which favored the movement of immigration into the west. New England had previous to the war been a commercial section. They built ships and engaged in the carrying trade. Manufacture was not then regarded as a line of industry. The embargo, the non-intercourse act, and the war made the New Englanders a manufacturing people. When the war was over, men could not easily adjust themselves to the new conditions. Wages were low, work was scarce, and business deranged. Under these conditions people were easily persuaded to cast their lot in the rising west. The route of travel for the New Englanders was usually up the Mohawk valley, by Oswego, up Lake Ontario, over the Niagara portage, down the Alleghany river to Pittsburg, and thence down the Ohio. Another route for the Chesapeake region was up the Potomac, across the mountains to Wheeling, and thence down the Ohio, For the people of the Carolinas the route lay across the mountains into the upper valleys of the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers and thence to southern Indiana, Southern Illinois or to Missouri.

Not only was there a large immigration from the Atlantic states into the newer western states, but from the close of the Napoleonic wars in Europe, there was a steady stream of immigration from England to this country. In 1815 England’s debt had reached the enormous sum of £831,000,000, specie payments were suspended, and the paper money was rapidly depreciating. Prices were soaring upwards, P 143 the harvests were bad, and legislation was against the poor. The “Corn laws” were passed in 1815 which provided that no corn (grain) should be imported until the price should reach 50 cents per quarter. In case one’s income from his labor would not support him, he must be supported from the “poor rates.” Thousands of soldiers and sailors who had helped to win England’s victories in the past fifteen or twenty years, were then without employment. Of 644 ships in England’s navy, 530 went out of service. The use of machinery was another cause of idleness everywhere, and riots were the order of the day. There was great need of reform in the political world. Some boroughs with not more than a half dozen voters would send two representatives to parliament. Some great cities like Manchester and Birmingham were without representation in parliament.

Many prominent Englishmen attempted to right the wrongs. Among those who were struggling to better the conditions in England at this time was one William Cobbett, the publisher of a vigorous little newspaper called the Political Register. In addition to publishing the Register, he was a pamphlet-writer and for his strong denunciation of the wrongs perpetrated on his fellow countrymen, he was arrested, fined, and imprisoned. At the end of two years he was released upon bail and came to America and settled, on Long Island. While here, in 1818, he wrote a pamphlet or book, descriptive of this country, dedicated to his friend Timothy Brown, Esq., of Peckham Lodge, Surrey. In the dedication he says: This book “I dedicate to you in testimony of my consistent remembrance of the many, many happy hours I have spent with you, and of the numerous acts of kindness which I have received at your hands. You were one of those who sought acquaintance with me, when I was shut up in a felon’s jail for having expressed my indignation at seeing Englishmen flogged in the heart of England, under a guard of bayonets and sabres, and when I had on my head a thousand pounds fine and seven years’ recognizances. You at the end of two years took me from the prison, in your carriage, to your house, you and your kind friend Walker, are even yet held in bonds for my good behavior, the seven years not being expired.”

This Mr. Cobbett lived on Long Island, and in 1818 was engaged in the culture of rutabagas. It seems, also, that Mr. Cobbett was very busily engaged in trying to prevent Englishmen who arrived in Boston, New York, Baltimore, and other ports, from coming into the western country. Just what his motives were we may not know, but it has been surmised that he was in the employment of speculators and others who were interested in keeping the immigrants, those from England as well as those who were leaving the Atlantic coast, from coming into this western country, In the preface of the book above referred to, he says: “Yet it was desirable to make an attempt, at least, towards settling the question, whether the Atlantic or the western countries were the best for English farmers to settle in.’’

In 1816 to 1817 several men of prominence in England agitated the idea of coming to America. It was just while this stir was going on in England that Edward Coles, ambassador from the President, James Madison, to the Czar of Russia, while on his return trip, spent several weeks in England (probably in the spring of 1817). There he met Morris Birkbeck then a man fifty-four years of age. He was at that time the lessee of a large estate called Wanborough, near London. He P 144 was greatly interested in Mr. Coles’ description of the prairies in this western country. He and George Flower, who was also a man of culture and means, determined upon the planting of a colony in the broad prairies of Illinois. Mr. Birkbeck sold out his lease for $55,000 and sailed from London in April, 1817. George Flower had preceded Birkbeck the previous year (1816), and had visited the western prairies, and returned to Virginia where he passed the winter of 1816 to 1817. During this winter he was much in company with Thomas Jefferson, to whom he had letters of introduction from La Fayette. When Birkbeck landed at Norfolk, Virginia, in the month of June, 1817, his friend, George Flower, joined him and they proceeded west to the Illinois country by way of the Ohio river, and Vincennes. From here they went into the prairie afterwards called English Prairie. These two Englishmen each planted a colony. Birkbeck called his settlement Wanborough after his old home in England; Mr. Flower called his Albion, which is an old name for England. The former settlement was about two miles west of Albion.

These settlements came to be known as the “English Prairie Settlements” and were visited by all the travelers whether seeking homes in the new state or as mere passers-by viewing the new country. It also bore the name of “The Marine Settlement” on account of the fact that many of the settlers in that locality were once mariners.

Birkbeck bought sixteen thousand acres of land in the immediate locality of Albion, and hoped to sell a large portion of it to actual settlers. Mr. Birkbeck was a highly educated gentleman and yet was not afraid of manual labor. Mr. Flower settled what afterward came to be Albion though he himself lived a mile or so distant at what was called “Park House,” a country seat after the style of the English country residences.

George Flower returned to England in 1817 or 1818 and brought to this new English settlement his father, Richard Flower, his mother, his sisters and two brothers. His family reached Lexington, Kentucky, in the late fall or early winter and remained here till the next June, 1819.

When Mr. George Flower left the English settlement to return to England for his father and other members of the family, it was understood that Mr, Birkbeck would purchase land for Mr. George Flower and have a residence by the time he should return. In June, 1819, when George Flower landed at Shawneetown the entire family walked to Albion, a distance of forty-five miles, and upon arriving at Albion found no house of any kind in which they might live. It seems that an estrangement had grown up between Mr. George Flower and Mr. Birkbeck which was the occasion of there being two settlements, Albion and Wanborough.

While living at Lexington the father, Richard Flower, wrote to friends in England in answer to certain questions in which these people were interested. In speaking of slavery he says: ‘‘It is this that keeps the wealth of Europe from pouring its treasures into the fertile regions of Kentucky and the industry of thousands from approaching the state. It would be painful to relate all the horrors I have beheld in slavery under its mildest forms. Whites, full of whiskey, flogging their slaves for drinking even a single glass. Women, . . ., smarting under the angry blow, or the lash, . . . lacking food in the P 145 midst of abundance, and clothing insufficient to satisfy the demands of even common decency.”

On August 16, 1819, the same gentleman writing from “Illinois, near Albion,” describes the new home. He speaks particularly of the improved state of health of all the people of the settlement. He urges immigration to the western prairies rather than to stop on the Atlantic shores. The prairies were easily broken and the grazing was abundant. Servants were scarce on account of the ease with which young women found husbands. Female help commanded from $8 to $10 per month. On the English prairie which stretched from the Little Wabash eastward to the Bonpas creek, a distance of sixteen miles, and extending north and south four miles, there were sixty English families and about one hundred and fifty American families. Counting five persons to each family we have one thousand and fifty inhabitants of the English prairie in 1819. “As to the reward of his industry, every farmer who conducted a farm in England, may here become the proprietor of his own soil with that capital which affords him only a tenant’s station, a precarious subsistence in his own country; an inducement, I should think, sufficient to make thousands follow our steps, and taste the blessings of independence and the sweets of liberty.” On the subject of slavery Mr. Flower speaks with the earnestness of a Phillips, a Garrison, or a Giddings. “One human being the property of another! No! . . . I rejoice, my dear friend, in the choice the English have made of a free state; and am certain we shall be able to cultivate from the services of free men, cheaper than those who cultivate by slaves.” In this same letter Mr. Flower says “the log cabins, the receptacles of the insect tribe are no longer erected. I have had the pleasure of laying the first brick foundation in Albion; it is to be an inn where travelers, I hope, may find rest without disturbance from insects. We have also nearly completed our market house which is sixty feet by thirty. A place of worship is begun.” Services were held each Lord’s day by some member of the colony. It was the intention which was afterward carried out to establish a reading room in the church building which should be open on Sunday afternoon.

The following is a list of prices prevailing in Albion in 1819: A fine turkey, 25c; fowls (chickens), 12c; beef, 5c; eggs, 12 1/₂c; cheese, 30c; butter (scarce), 16c; bacon, 15c; flour, $9 per bbl.; deer (whole carcass including skin), $1.50; melons, 12 1/₂c; honey, $1 per gal.; whiskey, $1 per gal.; fine Hyson tea, $2 per lb.; moist sugar, 31c; coffee, 62c; fish, 3c.

On January 18, 1820, Mr. Richard Flower writes again to friends in England. He speaks of the drouth of the preceding autumn and says they have few wells and are obliged to buy water at 25c a barrel, brought from a neighboring spring. Farm laborers are scarce. For Christmas dinner they had a company of thirty-two at Park House, the Flower homestead. They danced to the music of instrument and song. The Sunday service was attended by forty or fifty persons, and in the afternoon the library and reading rooms were quite well patronized.

Mr. Birkbeck, whose residence was a couple of miles west of Albion, at Wanborough, was also busily engaged in opening up his lands and providing for the comfort and advancement of those who might settle near him. P 146

This settlement was visited by a Mr. Hulme, an Englishman, in 1818-19, the next year after the founding. Birkbeck was then living in a log cabin with his two sons and two daughters. The cabin cost $20. He was beginning a more pretentious home near the cabin. Mr. Birkbeck had about him no settlers except his own laborers and some American neighbors who had settled near his lands. Mr. Birkbeck, at the time, had no land in cultivation except for garden purposes. He had occupied his time since arriving in building houses, barns, mills, fences, etc. His fences Mr. Hulme describes as follows: ‘‘He makes a ditch four feet wide at the top, sloping to one foot wide at the bottom, and four feet deep. With the earth that comes out of the ditch he makes a bank on one side, which is turfed toward the ditch. Then a long pole is put up from the bottom of the ditch to two feet above the bank; this is crossed by a short pole from the other side, then a rail is laid along between the forks.”

Two years later Mr. John Woods, an Englishman, seeking a suitable home in the new country, visited both Albion and Wanborough. Of the latter place he says there was a store or two, twenty-five cabins, a tavern, several lodging houses, several carpenters, bricklayers, brickmakers, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, sawyers, a tailor and a butcher. At this time also they were building an oxmill (tread mill), a malt house, a new brick tavern, and several new houses. They were also digging wells. Mr. Birkbeck had by this time finished his frame house. Wanborough was just in the edge of a small woods. The town was laid out in blocks by streets running east and west and north and south.

Albion, two miles east of Wanborough, had at this time, 1820, twenty cabins, a place of worship, a market house, two taverns, two stores, a surgeon, carpenters, brickmakers, bricklayers, wheelwrights, blacksmiths, sawyers, a shoemaker, and several wells.

Four miles east of Albion was the Bonpas bridge across the Bonpas creek. At this point was a water sawmill, a tavern, and a store with a few cabins. The mill was owned by Messrs. Le Serre and Grutt, lately from the Channel islands.

Mr. Woods settled in Wanborough and owned farms in the neighborhood. In speaking of stock running at large, he says: “Beasts, sheep, and pigs are all marked in their ears, by cutting and notching them in all possible directions and forms, to the great disfigurement of some of them; yet these marks are absolutely necessary in this wild country where every person ‘s stock runs at large; and they are not sometimes seen by their owners for several months, so that without some lasting mark it would be utterly impossible to know them again. Most people enter their marks with the clerk of the county in which they reside. . . . The county clerk’s fee for entering a mark is 12½ cents.”

These English settlers were a very thrifty people and the population grew rapidly. In the vote for or against the slave proposition in 1824, there were five hundred and eighty votes, which would represent a population of nearly three thousand people. The settlements are of considerable interest since it is generally conceded that no other man did more than Mr. Birkbeck to save the state from the curse of slavery in 1824. P 147