The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 11, September, 1858

Both sexes worked hard, bore rough weather without flinching, and attended carefully to their religious duties; but, withal, they were gay and joyous, ready for dance and frolic, and never so anxious to make money that they forgot to make fun.

What must the ghosts of these primitive Christians think of their successors, ploughing in broadcloth and beaver, wading through the mud in patent-leather boots, and all the while wrinkled with anxiety, gaunt with ambition, and grudging themselves three holidays a year!

Immigrants in time changed the character of the population as well as its dress, and for a while there seems to have been something of a jumble of elements, new laws conflicting with old habits, hungry politicians preying upon a simple people, who only desired to be let alone, and who, when they discovered some gross imposition, were philosophical enough to call it, jokingly, being "greased and swallowed." This anarchical condition resulted, as usual, in habits of personal violence; and, at one time, an adverse vote was considered matter for stabbing or gouging, and juries often dismissed indictments, fearing private vengeance in case of a discharge of their duty. They made a wide distinction, in murder trials, between him who committed the crime in a passion and those who did the thing quietly; so that you had only to walk up to the person who had offended you, and shoot him in the open street, to feel tolerably sure of impunity. In short, there seems to have prevailed, at that time, north of Mason and Dixon's line, very much the same state of things that still prevails south of it; but there was other leaven at work, and the good sense of the people gradually got the better of this short-sighted folly of violence.

It is reported as fact, by all writers on the earlier history of this State, that the holding of courts was conducted very much in the style reported of the back counties of Georgia and Alabama in our day. The sheriff would go out into the court-yard and say to the people, "Come in, boys,—the court is going to begin,"—or sometimes, "Our John is going to open court now,"—the judge being just one of the "boys."

Judges did not like to take upon themselves the onus of deciding cases, but shared it with the jury as far as possible. One story, well authenticated, runs thus: A certain judge, having to pass sentence of death upon one of his neighbors, did it in the following form: "Mr. Green, the jury in their verdict say you are guilty of murder, and the law in that case says you are to be hung. Now I want you and all your friends down on Indian Creek to know that it is not me that condemns you, but the jury and the law. What time would you like to be hung, Sir?" The poor man replied, that it made no difference to him; he would rather the court should appoint a time. "Well, then, Mr. Green," says the judge, "the court will allow you four weeks' time to prepare for death and settle up your business." It was here suggested by the Attorney-General that it was usual in such cases for the court to recapitulate the essential parts of the evidence, to set forth the nature and enormity of the crime, and solemnly to exhort the prisoner to repent and fit himself for the awful doom awaiting him. "Oh!" said the judge, "Mr. Green understands all that as well as if I had preached to him a month. Don't you, Mr. Green? You understand you're to be hung this day four weeks?" "Yes, Sir," replied Mr. Green, and so the matter ended.

One legal brilliant blazes on the forehead of youthful Illinois, in the shape of a summary remedy for duelling. One of those heroes who think it safer to appeal to chance than to logic in vindication of tarnished honor, and who imagine the blood of a dead friend the only salve to be relied on for the cure of wounded feelings, killed his opponent in a duel. The law of Illinois very coolly hanged the survivor; and from that time to this, other remedies have been found for spiritual hurts, real or imaginary. Nobody has fancied it necessary to fight with a noose round his neck. If ever capital punishment were lawful, (which I confess I do not think it ever can be,) it would be as a desperate remedy against this horrid relic of mediaeval superstition and impiety, no wiser or more Christian than the ordeal by burning ploughshares or poisoned wine. The rope in judicial hands is certainly as lawful as the pistol in rash ones; so the duellist has no reason to complain.

Some of the later days of Illinois, the days of Indian wars and Mormon wars, pro-slavery wars and financial wars, are too red and black for peaceful pages; and as they were incidental rather than characteristic, they do not come within our narrow limits. There is still too large an infusion of the cruel slavery spirit in the laws of Illinois; but the immense tide of immigration will necessarily remedy that, by overpowering the influence introduced over the southern border. So nearly a Southern State was Illinois once considered to be, that, in settling the northern boundary, it was deemed essential to give her a portion of the lake-shore, that her interests might be at least balanced. They have proved to be more than balanced by this wise provision.

The little excuse there is in this favored region for a sordid devotion to toil, a journey through the State, even at flying pace, is sufficient to show. The fertility of the soil is the despair of scientific farming. Who cares for rules, when he has only to drop a seed and tread on it, to be sure of a hundred-fold return? Who talks of succession of crops, when twelve burdens of wheat, taken from the same soil in as many years, leave the ground black and ready for another yield of almost equal abundance? An alluvial tract of about three hundred thousand acres, near the Mississippi, has been cultivated in Indian corn a hundred and fifty years,—indeed, ever since the French occupation of Illinois. What of under-draining? Some forty or fifty rivers threading the State, besides smaller streams innumerable, always will do that, as soon as the Nilic floods of spring have accomplished their work by floating to the surface the finest part of the soil. Irrigation? You may now grow rice on one farm and grapes on another, without travelling far between. It is true, there must be an end to this universality of power and advantage, some day; but nobody can see far enough ahead to feel afraid, and it is not in the spirit of our time to think much about the good of our grandchildren. "What has posterity done for me?" is the instinctive question of the busy Westerner, as he sits down under vine and fig-tree which his own hands have planted, to enjoy peace and plenty, after suffering the inevitable hardships of pioneer life. You may tell him he is not wise to scorn good rules; but he will reply, that he did not come so far West, and begin life anew, for the sake of being wise, but of making money, and that as rapidly as possible. He has forgotten the care and economy learned among the cold and stony hills of New England, and wants to do everything on a large scale. He likes to hear of patent reapers, Briarean threshing-machines, and anything that will save him most of the time and trouble of gathering in his heavy crops,—but that is all. The growth of those crops he has nothing to do with. That is provided for by Nature in Illinois; if it were not, he would move "out West."

Stories of this boundless fertility are rife here. One pioneer told us, that, when a fence is to be made and post-holes are wanted, it is only necessary to drop beet-seed ten feet apart all around the field, and, when the beet is ripe, you pull it up and your post-hole is ready! To be sure, there was a twinkle in the corner of his eye as he stated this novel and interesting fact; but, after all, the fertility in question was not so extravagantly "poefied" by this canard as some may suppose. Our friend went on to state, that, in his district, they had a kind of corn which produced from a single grain a dozen stalks of twelve ears each; and not content with this, on most of the stalks you would find, somewhere near the top, a small calabash full of shelled corn! To put the matter beyond doubt, he pulled a handful of the corn from his pocket, which he invited us to plant, and satisfy ourselves.

The reader has probably concluded, by this time, that beets and corn are not the only enormous things grown in Illinois.

A friend told us, in perfectly good faith, that a tract of his, some fourteen thousand acres, in the southern part of the State, contained coal enough to warm the world, and more iron than that coal would smelt,—salt enough for all time, and marble and rich metallic ores of various kinds besides. In one region are found inexhaustible beds of limestone, the smoke of whose burning fills the whole spring air, and the crevices of whose formation make very pokerish-looking caves, which young and adventurous ladies are fond of exploring; in another we come to quantities of that snow-white porcelain clay of which some people suppose themselves to have been originally formed, but which has been, in a commercial point of view, hitherto a desideratum in these United States of ours. The people at Mound City (an aspiring rival of Cairo, on the banks of the Ohio) are about building a factory for the exploitation of this clay, not into ladies and gentlemen, (unpopular articles here,) but into china-ware, the quality of which will be indisputable.

One soon ceases wondering at the tropicality of the Illinoisian imagination. Ali Baba's eye-straining experiences were poor, compared to these every-day realities.

The "Open Sesame" in this case has been spoken through the railroad-whistle. Railroads cannot make mines and quarries, and fat soil and bounteous rivers; yet railroads have been the making of Illinois. Nobody who has ever seen her spring roads, where there are no rails, can ever question it. From the very fatness of her soil, the greater part of the State must have been one Slough of Despond for three quarters of the year, and her inhabitants strangers to each other, if these iron arms had not drawn the people together and bridged the gulfs for them. No roads but railroads could possibly have threaded the State, a large and the best portion of whose surface is absolutely devoid of timber, stone, gravel, or any other available material. The prairies must have remained flowery deserts, visited as a curiosity every year by strangers, but without dwellings for want of wood. The vast quarries must, of course, have lain useless, for want of transporting power,—our friend's coal and iron undisturbed, waiting for an earthquake,—and the poetical pioneer's beets and Indian corn unplanted, and therefore uncelebrated. Well may it be said here, that iron is more valuable than gold. Population, agriculture, the mechanic arts, literature, taste, civilization, in short, are all magnetized by the beneficent rail, and follow wherever it leads. The whole southern portion of Illinois has been nicknamed "Egypt," —whether because at its utmost point, on a dampish delta, reposes the far-famed city of Cairo,—or whether, as wicked satirists pretend, its denizens have been found, in certain particulars, rather behind our times in intellectual light. Whatever may have been the original excuse for the sobriquet, the derogatory one exists no more. Light has penetrated, and darkness can reign no longer. Every day, a fiery visitant, bearing the collective intelligence of the whole world's doings and sayings, dashes through Egypt into Cairo, giving off scintillations at every hamlet on the way,—and every day the brilliant marvel returns, bringing northward, not only the good things of the Ohio and Mississippi, but tropic on-dits and oranges, only a few hours old, to the citizens of Chicago, far "in advance of the (New York) mail." With the rail comes the telegraph; and whispers of the rise and fall of fancies and potatoes, of speculations and elections, of the sale of corner-lots and the evasion of bank-officers, are darting about in every direction over our heads, as we unconsciously admire the sunset, or sketch a knot of rosy children as they come trooping from a quaint school-house on the prairie edge. Fancy the rail gone, and we have neither telegraph, nor school-house, nor anything of all this but the sunset,—and even that we could not be there to see in spring-time, at least, unless we could transmigrate for the time into the relinquished forms of some of these aboriginal bull-frogs, which grow to the nice size of two feet in length, destined, no doubt, to receive the souls of habitual croakers hereafter.

But if the railroads have been the making of the land, it is not to be denied that the land has been the making of the railroads. Egyptian minds they must have been, that grudged the tracts given by the United States to the greatest of roads, the greatest road in the world. Having bestowed a line of alternate sections on this immense undertaking,—vital in importance, and impossible without such aid,—the Government at once doubled the price of the intermediate sections, and sold them at the doubled price, though they had been years, and might have been ages, in market unsold, without means of communication and building. Who, then, was the loser? Not the United States; for they received for half the land just what they would otherwise have received for the whole. Not the State; for it lays hands on a good slice of the annual profits, not to speak of incalculable benefits beside. Not the farmer, surely; for what would his now high-priced land be worth, if the grand road were annihilated? Not the bond-holder; for he receives a fair, full interest on his money. Not the stock-holder; for he looks with eyes of faith toward a great future. It was a sort of triangular or quadrangular or pentangular bargain, in which all these parties were immensely benefited. The traveller blesses such liberal policy, as he flies along towards the land of oranges, or turns aside to measure mammoth beets or weigh extra-supernal corn, to "bore" or to "prospect," to pick at oölite and shale or to "peep and botanize" through an inexhaustible Flora. The present writer has certainly reason to be grateful,—not, alas! with that gushing warmth of feeling which the owners of shares or bonds naturally experience,—but as an "'umble individual" who could not have found material for this valuable article, if certain gentlemen who do own the said shares had not been very enterprising.

The man who may be said to have devised the land-basis for railroads through unsettled tracts—a financier of unsurpassed sagacity, and once the soul of commercial honor as well as intelligence—should not, in his dishonored grave, and far beyond the reach of human scorn or vengeance, be denied the credit of what he accomplished before the fatal madness seized his soul and dragged him to perdition. Let it be enough that his name has come to be an epithet of infamy in his land's language. Let not the grandeur of his views, the intent with which he set out, and the good he achieved, be lost in oblivion. Pride—"by that sin fell the angels!"—cast him headlong down the irrecoverable steep,—

"And when he fell, he fell like Lucifer,"—

aye! like Wolsey and Bacon,—

"Never to rise again!"

It is no sin to hope that the All-seeing eye discerned in those noble undertakings and beneficent results the germ of wings that shall one day bear him back to light and mercy. Let us, who benefit by his good deeds, not insist on remembering only the evil!

Chicago, the Wondrous, sits amid her wealth, like a magnificent sultana, half-reclining over a great oval mirror, supplied by that lake of lakes, the fathomless Michigan. Perhaps the resemblance might be unpoetically traced to particulars; for we are told by lotos-eating travellers, that Oriental beauties, with all their splendor, are not especially clean. Certain it is that our Occidental sultana dresses her fair head with towers and spires, and hangs about her neck long rows of gems in the shape of stately and elegant dwellings,—yet, descending to her feet, we sink in mud and mire, or tumble unguardedly into excavations set like traps for the unwary, or oust whole colonies of rats from beneath plank walks where they have burrowed securely ever since "improvements" began. At some seasons, indeed, there is no mud; because the high winds from the lake or the prairies turn the mud into dust, which blinds our eyes, fills our mouths, and makes us Quakers in appearance and anything but saints in heart. Chicago-walking resembles none but such as Christian encountered as he fled from the City of Destruction; yet in this case the ills are those of a City of _Con_struction.—sure to disappear as soon as the builders find time to care for such trifles. Chicago people, it is well known, walk with their heads in the clouds, and, naturally, do not mind what happens to their feet. It is only strangers who exclaim, and sometimes more than exclaim, at the dangers of the way. Cast-away carriages lie along the road-side, like ships on Fire Island beach. Nobody minds them. If you see a gentleman at a distance, progressing slowly with a gliding or floundering pace, you conclude he has a horse under him, and, perhaps, on nearer approach, you see bridle and headstall. This is in early spring, while the frost is coming out of the ground. As the season advances, the horse emerges, and you are just getting a fair sight of him when the dust begins and he disappears again. So say the scoffers, and those who would, but do not, own any city-lots in that favored vicinity; and to the somewhat heated mind of the traveller who encounters such things for the first time, the story does not seem so very much exaggerated. Simple wayfarers like myself, however, tell no such wicked tales of the Garden City; but remember only her youth, her grandeur, her spirit, her hospitality, her weight of cares, her immense achievements, and her sure promise of future metropolitan splendors.

The vicinity of Chicago is all dotted with beautiful villa-residences. To drive among them is like turning over a book of architectural drawings,—so great is their variety, and so marked the taste which prevails. Many of them are of the fine light-colored stone found in the neighborhood, and their substantial excellence inspires a feeling that all this prosperity is of no ephemeral character. People do not build such country-houses until they feel settled and secure. The lake-shore is of course the line of attraction, for it is the only natural beauty of the place. But what trees! Several of the streets of Chicago may easily become as beautiful drives as the far-famed Cascine at Florence, and will be so before her population doubles again,—which is giving but a short interval for the improvement. No parks as yet, however. Land on the lake-shore is too precious, and the flats west of the town are quite despised. Yet city parks do not demand very unequal surface, and it would not require a very potent landscape-gardener or an unheard-of amount of dollars to make a fine driving-and riding-ground, where the new carriages of the fortunate might be aired, and the fine horses of the gay exercised, during a good part of the year.

To describe Chicago, one would need all the superlatives set in a row. Grandest, flattest,—muddiest, dustiest,—hottest, coldest,—wettest, driest,—farthest north, south, east, and west from other places, consequently most central,—best harbor on Lake Michigan, worst harbor and smallest river any great commercial city ever lived on,—most elegant in architecture, meanest in hovel-propping,—wildest in speculation, solidest in value,—proudest in self-esteem, loudest in self-disparagement,—most lavish, most grasping,—most public-spirited in some things, blindest and darkest on some points of highest interest.

And some poor souls would doubtless add,—most fascinating, or most desolate,—according as one goes there, gay and hopeful, to find troops of prosperous friends, or, lonely and poor, with the distant hope of bettering broken fortunes by struggling among the driving thousands already there on the same errand. There is, perhaps, no place in the world where it is more necessary to take a bright and hopeful view of life, and none where this is more difficult. There is too much at stake. Those who have visited Baden-Baden and her Kursaal sisters in the height of the season need not be told that no "church-face" ever equalled in solemnity the countenances of those who surround the fatal tables, waiting for the stony lips of the croupier to announce "Noir perd" or "Rouge gagne." At Chicago are a wider table, higher stakes, more desperate throws, and Fate herself presiding, or what seems Fate, at once partial and inexorable.

But, on this great scale, even success fails to bring smiles. The winners sit "with hair on end at their own wonders," and half-fearing that such golden showers have some illusion about them and may prove fairy favors at last. Next to this fueling comes the thirst for more. Enlarged means bring enlarged desires and ever-extending plans. The repose and lightness of heart that were at first to be the reward of success recede farther and farther into the dim distance, until at last they are lost sight of entirely, confessed, with a sigh, to be unattainable. How can people in this State wear cheerful countenances? When one looks at the gay and social faces and habits of some little German town, where are cultivated people, surrounded by the books and pictures they love, with leisure enough for music and dancing and tea-garden chat, for deep friendships and lofty musings, it would seem as if our shrewd Yankee-land and its outcroppings at the West had not yet found out everything worth knowing. Froissart's famous remark about the English in France—"They take their pleasure sadly, after their fashion"—may apply to the population of Chicago, and it will be some time yet, I fancy, before they will take it very gayly.

At a little country-town, the other day, not within a thousand miles of Chicago, a family about leaving for a distant place advertised their movables for sale at auction. There was such a stir throughout the settlement as called forth an expression of wonder from a stranger. "Ah!" said a good lady, "auctions are the only gayety we have here!"

Joking apart, there was a deep American truth in this seeming niaiserie.

Chicago has, as we have said, with all her wealth, no public park or other provision for out-door recreation. She has no gallery of Art, or the beginning of one,—no establishment of music, no public library,—no social institution whatever, except the church. Without that blessed bond, her people would be absolute units, as independent of each other as the grains of sand on the seashore, swept hither and thither by the ocean winds.

But even before these words have found their way to the Garden City, they will, perhaps, be inapplicable,—so rapid is progress at the West. The people are like a great family moving into a new house. There is so much sweeping and dusting to do, so much finding of places for the furniture, so much time to spend in providing for breakfast, dinner, and tea, lodging and washing, that nobody thinks of unpacking the pictures, taking the books out of their boxes, or getting up drives or riding-parties. All these come in good time, and will be the better done for a little prudent delay.

There is, to the stranger, an appearance of extreme hurry in Chicago, and the streets are very peculiar in not having a lady walking in them. Day after day I traversed them, meeting crowds of men, who looked like the representatives of every nation and tongue and people,—and every class of society, from the greenest rustic, or the most undisguised sharper, to the man of most serious respectability, or him of highest ton. Yet one lady walking in the streets I saw not; and when I say not one lady, I mean that I did not meet a woman who seemed to claim that title, or any title much above that of an ordinary domestic. Perhaps this is only a spring symptom, which passes off when the mud dries up a little,—but it certainly gave a rather forlorn or funereal aspect to the streets for the time.

There is, nevertheless, potent inspiration in the resolute and occupied air of these crowds. Hardly any one stays long among them without feeling a desire to share their excitement, and do something towards the splendid future which is evidently beckoning them on. Preparing the future! It is glorious business. No wonder it makes the pulse quicken and the eye look as if it saw spirits. It may be said, that in some sense we are all preparing the future; but in the West there is a special meaning in the expression. In circumstances so new and wondrous, first steps are all-important. Those who have been providentially led to become early settlers have immense power for good or evil. One can trace in many or most of our Western towns, and even States, the spirit of their first influential citizens. Happy is it for Chicago that she has been favored in this respect,—and to her honor be it said, that she appreciates her benefactors. Of one citizen, who has been for twenty years past doing the quiet and modest work of a good genius in the city of his adoption, it is currently said, that he has built a hundred miles of her streets,—and there is no mark of respect and gratitude that she would not gladly show him. Other citizens take the most faithful and disinterested care of her schools; and to many she is indebted for an amount of liberality and public spirit which is constantly increasing her enormous prosperity. Happy the city which possesses such citizens! Happy the citizens who have a city so nobly deserving of their best services!