DeKalb County, Illinois - Chapter 2: A Brief History of the State, 1868

It was about two centuries ago that Louis XIV., the most ambitious, most illustrious and most dissolute of all the Icings of France, desirous of extending his dominions into the new world beyond the seas, sent out settlers to colonize the rich wilderness called after him, Louisiana, and embracing all the territory that was drained by the Mississippi river, including the beautiful country of the Illini tribe of Indians, named ultimately Illinois.

French villages or trading posts were established at St. Louis, Prairie du Chien, Kaskaskia, Prairie du Rocher, Peoria, Cahokia, Chicago, and some other less noted points, by settlers who, under LaSalle, Iberville, and various other Jesuit priests, became the first white inhabitants of our State.

For nearly one hundred and fifty years these villages made little progress. The original settlers generally intermarried with the Indians of the surrounding country, and their descendants partook, to some extent, of the wild, roving, indolent character of the aborigines, united with the politeness, gaiety and courtesy of the French. Most of their time was spent in hunting and fishing excursions from which they returned with the skins, fur and feathers, which were the staple articles of their trade in their annual excursions down the great Father of Waters. Each village had its own Catholic church, which was the place of gay resort on Sunday, and its priest, who was the loved advisor and companion of his flock.

In 1713 the country passed from the authority of the French at the conclusion of the treaty of Utrecht which ceded Canada to the English, the whole being known as New France.

In 1774 an act of Parliament, known as the Quebec act, designed to prevent the Canadians from joining with the other disaffected colonies in opposition to the British Crown, among numerous other privileges, attached all of this country north of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi to the province of Quebec.

When in 1778 the country was conquered from the British who then possessed it by the colonial troops under General George R. Clarke, many of his officers and soldiers remained and settled in the territory ; and in due time other hardy pioneers from Virginia, Pennsylvania and Kentucky, followed

Clarke, who was acting under authority of the Legislature of Virginia, claimed this part of the country as a conquest of that State ; and the Virginia Legislature in October of that year organized it as the County of Illinois, in the State of Virginia and as such it continued till the ordinance of 1787 reorganized it as the northwestern territory, and appointed Gov. St. Clair its territorial governor.

When in the war of 1812 British emissaries stirred up the Indians to Avar upon the settlement of those who confessed allegiance to the Union, these colonists then amounting to about 12,000 in number, maintained their position, and, with the aid of one company of regular troops, took the offensive, and made hostile expeditions into the territory of the neighboring tribes, burning their villages and driving them from the country. At the outbreak of the war, however, the company of troops posted at Chicago, who had received notice of the declaration of hostilities and orders to evacuate and destroy their post, were ambushed at Michigan City while escaping to Detroit, and massacred by the Indians. With the cessation of the war, peace returned to the little chain of Western colonies. By the famous ordinance of 1787, organizing this great northwestern territory, there were to be not less than three nor more than five States carved out from its limits, any one of which should be admitted into the Union so soon as it should have 60,000 inhabitants ; and the boundaries of those three States, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois were defined. They were each to extend to the British possessions on the north.

Illinois thus included all of the present State of Wisconsin. But Congress reserved the right to form one or two States out of the territory lying north of an east and west line drawn through the south point of Lake Michigan. But until 1814 Indiana and Illinois were both under one territorial government, whose head was at Vincennes, in Indiana, and the laws which governed their people went by the name of the laws of the " Vinsan Legislature At this time the Illinoians, anxious to have a legislature of their own, elected as delegate to Congress, one Judge Thomas, from whom they prudently took a bond, pledging him to procure a division of the two territories. This he accomplished, and came home from Washington with the appointment of Supreme Judge of the new Territory of Illinois.

In 1818 Judge Nathaniel Pope, father of the famous Gen. Pope, was a delegate to Congress from the territory of Illinois, and while at his post in Washington, unexpectedly received a petition from the territorial Legislature, then sitting at Kaskaskia, for the admission of the Territory into the Union as an independent State. He immediately brought the subject before Congress ; and before the adjournment an enabling act was passed for" this purpose. Through his wise foresight the northern boundary line of the State, which it had been intended should be the line running through the southern point of Lake Michigan, was moved north to its present location ; because it was deemed important that the State whichj from its great size and commanding position, it was already surmised would become the great empire State of the west, should be so attached to the great system of lake navigation at the north that her grand system of river navigation, inclining her to attach herself to a southern confederacy, if such should ever be attempted, would not be a paramount influence, but would be neutralized and controlled by a rival interest, which would make her, as she has since proved, an arbiter of the destinies of the Union, preventing its disruption, and by her commanding position and power checking the attempt to rend the Union in twain.

It was also deemed important that the Illinois and Michigan canal, which was even then projected, should have its entire course in one State. Urged by these considerations, Congress consented to move the northern boundary line fifty miles to the north ; and so it happens that a love of the Union caused that section of the country which is now our County of DeKalb, to be a part of the State of Illinois instead of Wisconsin.

The enabling act passed, a convention was called in the summer of 1818, which formed a State constitution. Its leading spirit, to whom the State is indebted for most of its peculiar features, was Elias K. Kane of Kaskaskia, afterwards a United States Senator, and who gave its name to our neighboring; County of Kane. The Constitution having been adopted, an election was held, and Shadrach Bond, a plain old farmer lately from Maryland, was chosen first Governor of the State. Pierre Menard, an old French settler, was elected Lieutenant Governor ; E. K. Kane, Secretary of State ; John Thomas, Treasurer; E. C. Berry, Auditor, and D. P. Cook, Attorney General. Ninian Edwards and Jesse B. Thomas were made the first Senators. The names of most of these first officers will be recognized as having been perpetuated in the names of counties since organized in the State. At this time the population of the State was about 56,000, but scarcely any portion of it was located north of Alton. In October of this year the first Legislature convened at Kaskaskia, and after voting itself a sufficient allowance of stationery, at a cost of $13.50, it organized and put in operation the State government and adjourned till the next winter.

At the winter session a code of laws were passed, mostly borrowed from the statute books of Kentucky and Virginia. In the main they were very good laws, more clearly expressed and more easily understood than the majority of laws since enacted ; but they contain the infamous black laws, which ever after disgraced the statute book and the State, until repealed in the winter of 18(30. This code permitted immigrants to bring their slaves with them ; and if the signatures of the slaves could be obtained to an agreement to that effect, it compelled their continual service as slaves - or registered servants, as they were called. It forbid any free negro to reside in the State without giving bonds for his good behavior and that he would not become a county charge. Any negro found without a certificate of freedom could be arrested and sold for a specified time. Any negroes assembled for a dance or revelry Avere to be committed to jail and whipped by the sheriff, not to exceed thirty-nine lashes on the bare back.

This Legislature also provided for a new seat of government at Vandalia, a point then uninhabited, and named by a wag who suggested to the commissioners that the Vandals, a tribe of Indians, formerly resided there, and that Vandalia would perpetuate their musical Indian name.

Few events of importance in the history of the new State occurred until in 1821, the Legislature established a State Dank upon an absurdly insecure basis, which made money plentiful until in 1824 it failed, and brought great financial distress upon the inhabitants.

In 1822, Edward Coles, an accomplished Virginian, was elected Governor, and in 1823 there commenced a long struggle for the establishment of slavery in Illinois. Missouri had in 1820 been admitted into the Union as a slave State, under the Missouri compromise act, and that State was rapidly filling up with settlers from the eastern slave States, who thronged the public roads with long trains of teams and negroes, exciting the envy of those who had farms to sell and were prevented from disposing of them to these rich slaveholders, only because slaves could not be held in this State.

of a sincde vote the Legislature decided to submit to the vote of its people the question of calling such a convention. For nearly eighteen months the question was debated with great earnestness, and one of the most exciting and extraordinary contests ever known in the State was kept up ; but it was finally decided by a majority of nearly 2,000 that Illinois should be consecrated to freedom.

The construction of a canal uniting the waters of Lake Michigan with the Mississippi through the Illinois river was the great work of the early days of the infant State ; and as early as 1821 the Legislature appropriated $10,000 to pay the expense of a survey of the route. The survey was completed next year, and the expense was estimated at $750,000. Its final cost was about thirty millions. In 1826 Congress appropriated 300,000 acres of public lands in aid of the scheme, the State Legislature gave State bonds to the amount of $300,000, and the work was begun.

In 1824, '25 and '26, the lead mines of Galena began to attract attention, and in 1827 seven thousand settlers about those mines were engaged in seeking fortunes by prospecting for and extracting the ore. They were a migratory population, running up the Mississippi to work the mines in the spring and back to their homes again in the fall. It is supposed that this peculiarity in which they resemble the fish called suckers, gave Illinoisans the name which has attached to them ever since. Another theory, however, accounts for the origin of the name by the asserted fact that the early immigrants were of the poorer class of the population of the Southern States, and called Suckers by the wealthy slaveholders and tobacco growers, because they were like the worthless suckers on the tobacco plant, which were picked oft* from the parent stem and thrown away.

and his tribe of Indians, who, repudiating the treaty of 1804 by which some of the chiefs of his tribe had sold and ceded his lands to the whites, declared his determination to repossess the lands of his fathers, and drive out all whites who had settled upon them. He proceeded to destroy their houses, fences and crops, and of course excited great distress and alarm. A battalion of volunteers, aided by some hundreds of United States regulars, soon drove them across the Mississippi again, and burned their villages near Rock Island. A threat of pursuing them into their own country, brought Black Hawk to terms, and induced him to sue for peace. A new treaty was made which bound the Indians to remain forever on the western side of the great river.

The spring of the succeeding year, 1832, had hardly opened, however, when the same treacherous Indian chief, who has acquired world-wide fame, and whose character has obtained an ill-deserved reputation for nobility and integrity, disregarding alike the treaty of his chiefs made with Gen. Harrison at St. Louis in 1804 and his own treaty extorted from him a few months before this time, again crossed the Mississippi at the head of a numerous band of his warriors, and prepared to reassert his right to the lands which had twice been solemnly released. He directed his march to the Rock River country, in the direction of the Pottawatomies, who inhabited this section of the State, and toward the Winnebagoes, whose wigwams were on Rock River.

In April, Governor Reynolds had assembled at Beardstown a force of eighteen hundred volunteers, who were placed under command of General Whiteside, an officer of the State militia who had been in command of a portion of the forces in the campaign of the previous year.

The army moved up the Mississippi to the mouth of Rock River, and thence by a forced march up the banks of that stream to the present location of the city of Dixon, and upon their route burned the Indian village of which the Prophet

From Dixon a small portion of the force was pushed forward in a northeasterly direction, and on the 12th of May discovered Black Hawk's forces near Stillman's Run, 'a small branch of the Kishwaukee, near the northeast corner of this county. Here a battle occurred in which the militia were outnumbered, and fled in disorder, reaching the main body of the army next day in small parties, with a loss of eleven men killed.

The army had pushed on to their present location with unnecessary haste, leaving their supplies and baggage behind them ; and they were now threatened with famine. Their immediate necessities were, however, supplied by Mr. John Dixon, then the only settler on Rock River, whose entire stock of cattle, hogs and corn they consumed ; and the supply train coming up, they next day started in pursuit of their foes, at the scene of the late disaster. Rut the Indians had now scattered in small detachments, and were carrying on a guerrilla warfare all over the countrv. About fifteen miles from Ottawa they massacred three entire families of white settlers, and afterwards related with great glee, how the women had squeaked as they run them through with spears, or gashed them with tomahawks.

The army, now returning to Dixon, found General Atkinson encamped there, with a force of regulars which increased the number of troops to twenty-four hundred men, and supplied them with an abundance of provisions.

They were now in condition for effective warfare, but the short time for which the volunteers had enlisted, had nearly expired; they were also much dissatisfied with Gen. Whiteside, their commander, and they earnestly demanded to be sent home. As it was useless to attempt to prosecute the campaign under these circumstances, they were marched across the country by the way of Paw Paw, in this County, to Ottawa, and on the 28th of May Avere there discharged. The

Governor now called out new volunteers who soon answered the call, and one regiment was organized out of the troops recently discharged, in which Gen. Whiteside volunteered as a private, and conducted himself with great bravery and skill.

The Indians now scattered all over the country, made desperate attacks upon all white settlements from Chicago to Galena, and from the Illinois river up to Northern Wisconsin. Thcs-e assaults of the savage foes were generally repulsed by the whites with oreat heroism. The Avar lasted all summer, the savages, generally defeated, were driven ultimately into Northern Wisconsin, where, at the last great battle of Bad Axe, they were routed and scattered, with a loss of one hundred and fifty of their best warriors. A few days afterward, Black Hawk was captured by the treachery of some of his allies of the Winnebago tribe, and the Prophet, the next most poAverful chieftain, soon shared the same fate. They Avere taken to Washington, and after some months of captivity, were conveyed through the great cities of the Union Avhere they Avere greatly lionized, being regarded by a perverted public opinion, as noble sufferers from Avrongs and chicanery of the domineering Avhite race Avho had stolen their lands, and driven them to desperation. The ladies, in some instances, publicly saluted them Avith kisses. Black Hawk returned to his people, and lived in peace with the AAThites eight years, when he died and Avas buried in the burial grounds of his forefathers.

Many men Avho have since occupied a large space in the history of the State and County, were more or less conspicuous in this AA'ar. Among them were General Scott, then in the zenith of his fame ; Zachary Taylor, a major of the regulars ; Abraham Lincoln, a captain of volunteers ; Jefferson Davis, a lieutenant of the regular forces ; General Atkinson, Gov. Dodge, Murray McConnel, Capt. Stephenson and Gen. Henry. The glory of this Avar Avas monopolized to a great extent by Gen. A. C. Dodge, but more properly belongs to Gen. Henry, Avho died too soon after to reap the reward due to his gallantry and skill.

The war ended, and danger from Indian disturbances forever quelled, various projects for internal improvements and the rapid development and settlement of the country occupied the attention of the inhabitants. Railroad charters were granted in 1833, but none of those then projected were ever built. It was not till 1836, that the grand system of internal improvements was planned which, in a few months, grew to such enormous dimensions as to rouse the people almost into a wild frenzy, cover the State with embryo cities, existing only in the imaginations of their projectors, swamp the State government under enormous debts, and ultimately, when there was not enough money in the hands of the entire population to pay even the interest on the State debt, force the State into bankruptcy. In this Legislature Dr. Henry Madden, ever a prominent citizen of our County of DeKalb, represented a district composed of the present Counties of DeKalb, LaSalle, Kane, Kendall, Iroquois, Grundy, and several others, and at this session he procured the passage of a bill for creating the County of DeKalb.