The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863

Various

The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 / Devoted to Literature and National Policy

THE GREAT PRAIRIE STATE

I should not wonder if some of your readers were less acquainted with this Western Behemoth of a State than with the republic of San Marino, which is about as large as a pocket handkerchief. The one has a history, which the other as yet has not, and of all people in the world, our own dear countrymen—with all their talk about Niagara, and enormous lakes, and prodigious rivers—care the least for great natural features of country, and the most for historical and romantic associations. When an Englishman, landing at New York, begins at once to inquire for the prairies, it is only very polite New Yorkers who can refrain from laughing at him.

But it is not so much of natural features that I wish to speak at present. Illinois has been abused lately; brought into discredit by the misbehavior of some of her sons; but this only makes her loyal friends love her the more, knowing well how good her heart is, how high-toned her feeling, how determined her courage.

Looking at this State from New York, the image is that of a great green prairie, the monotony of whose surface is scarcely broken by the rivers which cross it here and there, and the great lines of railroad that serve as causeways through the desperate mud of spring and winter. A scattered people, who till the unctuous black soil only too easily, and leave as much of the crop rotting on the ground through neglect as would support the entire population; rude though thriving towns, where the grocery and the tavern, the ball room and the race course are more lovingly patronized than the church, the Sunday school, and the lyceum; where party spirit runs high, and elections are attended to, whatever else may be forgotten; where very unseemly jokes are current, and language far from choice passes unrebuked in society; in short, where what are known as 'Western characteristics' bear undisputed sway, making their natal region anything but a congenial residence for strangers of an unaccommodating disposition—such is the picture.

It were useless to deny that most of the points here indicated would be recognized and placed on his map by a Moral and Social topographer who should make the tour of the entire State from Cairo to Dunleith, both inclusive; but it is none the less certain that if he noted only these he would ill deserve his title. Cicero had a huge, unsightly wart on his eloquent nose; the fair mother of Queen Elizabeth, a 'supplemental nail' on one of her beautiful hands; Italy has her Pontine Marshes, New York city her 'Sixth Ward'; but he must be a green-eyed monster indeed who would represent these as characteristics. Illinois deserves an explorer with clear, kind eyes, and a historiographer as genial as Motley. All in good time. She will 'grow' these, probably. While we are waiting for them, let us prepare a few jottings for their use.

A great State is a great thing, certainly, but mere extent or mere material wealth, without intellectual and social refinement and a high moral tone, can never excite very deep interest. Not that we can expect to find every desirable thing actually existent in a country as soon as it is partially settled and in possession of the first necessities of human society. But we may expect aspirations after the best things, and a determination to acquire and uphold them. These United States of ours—God bless them forever!—have a constitutional provision against the undue preponderance of physical advantages over those of a higher kind. Rhode Island (loyal to the core), and Delaware (just loyal enough to keep her sweet), each sends her two Senators to Congress; and huge Illinois—whom certain ill-advised Philistines are trying to make a blind Samson of—can send no more. If we say the State that sends the best men is the greatest State (for the time, especially the present time), 'all the people shall answer Amen!' for one loyal heart, just now, is more precious than millions of fat acres. Whether Illinois could prudently submit to this appraisal, just at the present moment, remains to be proved; but that her heart is loyal as well as brave, there can be no question.

Without going back, in philosophical style, to the creation of the world, we may say that the State had a good beginning. Father Marquette and his pious comrade Allouez, both soldiers of the Cross, explored her northern wilds for God, and not for greed. They saw her solid and serene beauty, and presaged her greatness, and they did all that wise and devoted Catholic missionaries could do toward sanctifying her soil to good ends forever. They found 'a peaceful and manly tribe' in her interior, the name Illinois signifying 'men of men,' and the superiority of the tribe to all the other Indians of the region justifying the appellation. Allouez said, 'Their country is the best field for the gospel,' and he planted it as well as he could with what he believed to be the Tree of Life, long nourished with the prayers and tears of himself and his successors. The Indians took kindly to the teaching of the good and wise Frenchman, and it is said that even after troubles had begun to arise, owing, as usual, to the misconduct of rapacious and unprincipled white settlers, many of the Indians held fast by their newly adopted faith, and even showed some good fruits of it in forbearance and honesty of dealing. All this was not far from contemporary with the period when Cotton Mather, in New England, while teaching the principles of civil government, was persecuting Quakers and burning witches; and in yet another part of the new country, William Penn, neither Catholic nor Puritan, was making fair and honest treaties with savages, and winning them, by the negative virtue of truthfulness, to believe that white men could be friends.

The Great Colbert, minister to Louis XIV, under whose auspices the French missionaries had been sent out, very soon came to the conclusion that it was important to enlarge and strengthen French influence in this great new country, particularly after he had ascertained the existence of the 'Great River,' which Father Marquette had undertaken to explore, and by means of which he expected to open trade with China! But the minister of finance required rather more worldly agents than the single-hearted and devoted ministers of religion, and he found a fitting instrument in the young and ardent Robert de la Salle, a Frenchman of enterprise and sagacity, worldly enough in his motives, but of indomitable energy and perseverance. He was very successful in establishing commerce in furs and other productions of the country, but lost his life somewhere near the mouth of the Mississippi, which he first explored, after escaping a thousand dangers. His name is famous in the land, and a large town was called after it; but what would he say if he heard his patronymic transformed into 'Lay-séll,' as it is, universally, among the 'natives'?

It is in La Salle's first procès verbal for his government that we find the first mention of the river 'Chekagou,' a lonely stream then, but which now reflects a number of houses and stores, tall steeples, colossal grain depots, and—the splendid edifice which fitly enshrines the northern terminus of the Illinois Central Railroad, the greatest railway in the world, and certainly one of the wonders which even the ambitious and sanguine La Salle never dreamed of; a daily messenger of light and life through seven hundred miles of country, which, without it, would have remained a wilderness to this day.

The first settler on the banks of this now so famous river was a black man from St. Domingo, Jean Baptiste Point-au-Sable by name, who brought some wealth with him, and built a residence which must have seemed grand for that time and place. He did not stay long, however, and the Indians, who had probably suffered some things from the arrogance of their white neighbors, thought it a good joke to say that 'the first 'white man' that settled there was a negro.' Like some other jokes, this one seems to have rankled deep and long, for to this day Illinois tolerates neither negro nor Indian. The Indian, as an Indian, has no foothold in the State; and the negro, even in the guise of born and skilled laborer in the production of the crops which form the wealth of the country, and of the new ones which are to be transplanted hither in consequence of the war, is forbidden, under heavy penalties, to set foot within her boundaries—the threat of slavery, like a flaming sword, guarding the entrance of this paradise of the laborer.

Illinois has not suffered as much in tone and character from unprincipled speculators as some others of the new States. Her early settlers were generally men of muscle, mental as well as bodily; men who did not so much expect to live by their wits and other people's folly, as by their own industry and enterprise. Among the early inhabitants of Chicago and other important towns, were some whose talents and character would have been valuable anywhere. Public spirit abounded, and the men of that day evidently felt as men should feel who are destined to be the ancestors of great cities. In 1837, when the business affairs of Chicago were in a distressing state, and private insolvency was rather the rule than the exception, many debtors and a few demagogues called a public meeting, the real though not the avowed object of which was to bring about some form of repudiation. Some inflammatory suggestions, designed to excite to desperate thoughts those whose affairs were cruelly embarrassed, having wrought up the assembly to the point of forgetting all but the distresses of the moment, a call was made for the mayor, who came forward, and in a few calm and judicious words besought all present to pause before they ventured on dishonorable expedients. He entreated them to bear up with the courage of men, remembering that no calamity was so great as the loss of self-respect; that it were better for them to conceal their misfortunes than to proclaim them; that many a fortress had been saved by the courage of its defenders, and their determination to conceal its weakened condition at all sacrifices. 'Above all things,' he said, 'do not tarnish the honor of our infant city!'

These manly words called up manly thoughts, and the hour of danger passed by.

At one time the legislature were induced, by means of various tricks, together with some touches of that high-handed insolence by which such things are accomplished, to pass a resolution for a convention to alter the constitution of the State, with a view to the introduction of SLAVERY. One of the newspapers ventured an article which exposed the scandalous means by which the resolutions had been carried through the House. The 'proofs' of this article were stolen from the printing office, and the parties implicated in this larceny attempted to induce a mob to demolish the office and the offending editor. But the pluck which originated the stinging article sufficed for the defence of the office. The effort to establish slavery in Illinois was kept up for a year or more, but the bold editor and other friends of freedom labored incessantly for the honor of the State, and succeeded at length in procuring an overwhelming vote against the threatened disgrace.

Laws against duelling are laughed at in other States, but Illinois made hers in earnest, affixing the penalty of death to the deliberate killing of a man, even under the so-called code of honor. This severe law did not suffice to prevent a fatal duel, the actors of which probably expected to elude the penalty with the usual facility. The State, however, in all simplicity, hung the survivor, and from that day to this has had no further occasion for such severity.

Of late, the same Personage who has in all ages been disposed to buy men's souls at his own delusive price, and to make his dupes sign the infernal contract with their blood, has been very busy in certain parts of the State, trying to get signatures, under the miserable pretence that party pays better than patriotism, and that times of whirlwind and disaster are those in which he, the contractor, has most power to advance the interests of his adherents. But some of those who listened most greedily to the glozings of the arch deceiver begin already to repent, and are ready to call upon higher powers to interfere and efface the record of their momentary weakness. In all diablerie the fiat of a superior can release a victim, so we may hope that godlike patriotism may not only forgive the penitent, but absolve him from the consequences of his own rash folly. To have been instrumental in dimming for one moment the glorious escutcheon of Illinois, requires pardon. To such words as have been spoken by some of her sons we may apply the poet's sentence:

'To speak them were a deadly sin!And for having but thought them thy heart withinA treble penance must be done.'

The recent Message of Governor Yates is full of spirit, the right spirit, a warm and generous, a courageous and patriotic one. He glories in the great things he has to tell, but it is not 'as the fool boasteth,' but rather as the apostle, who, when he recounts only plain and manifest truths, says, 'Bear with me.' And truly, what wonders have been achieved by the 'men of men'! Since the war began, Illinois, though she has given one hundred and thirty-five thousand of her able-bodied men to the field, and though the closing of the Mississippi has produced incalculable loss, has sent away food enough to supply ten millions of people, and she has now remaining, of last year's produce, as much as can be shipped in a year. This enormous productiveness has given rise to the idea that Illinois is principally a grain-growing State, but she none the less possesses every requisite for commerce and manufactures. Not content even in war time with keeping up all her old sources of wealth, she has added to the list the production of sugar, tobacco, and even cotton, all of which have been found to flourish in nearly every portion of the State. The seventh State in point of population in 1850, she was the fourth in 1860, and in the production of coal she has made a similar advance. In railroads she is in reality the first, though nominally only the second; possessing three thousand miles, intersecting the State in all directions. Ten years ago the cost of all the railroad property within her bounds was about $1,500,000; in 1860 it was $104,944,561—an instance of progress unparalleled. But these are not the greatest things.

Education receives the most enlightened attention, and all that the ruling powers can accomplish in persuading the people to avail themselves of the very best opportunities for mental enlargement and generous cultivation is faithfully done. It is for the people themselves to decide whether they will be content with the mere rudiments of education, or accept its highest gifts, gratis, at the hands of the State. If the pursuit of the material wealth which lies so temptingly around them should turn aside their thoughts from this far greater boon, or so pervert their minds as to render them insensible to its value, they will put that material wealth to shame. It is true that in some cases the disgust felt by loyal citizens at infamous political interference may have operated to prevent their sending their children to school; but these evils are sectional and limited, and the schools themselves will, before long, so enlighten the dark regions as to render such stupidity impossible. It is to the infinite credit of the State that since the war began there has been no diminution, but on the contrary, an increase in schools, both private and public, in number of pupils, teachers, school houses, and amount of school funds. Of eight thousand two hundred and twenty-three male teachers in 1860, three thousand went to the war, showing that it is among her most intelligent and instructed classes that we are to look for the patriotism of Illinois. The deficiency thus created operated legitimately and advantageously in giving employment to a greatly increased number of female teachers.

As to patriotism, let not the few bring disgrace upon the many. It is true that scarcely a day passes unmarked by the discovery that some grovelling wretch has been writing to the army to persuade soldiers to desert on political grounds; yet as these disgraceful letters, as published in the papers, give conclusive proof of the utter ignorance of their writers, we must not judge the spirit of the State by them, any more than by the louder disloyal utterances of men who have not their excuse. Governor Yates speaks for the PEOPLE when he says:

'Our State has stood nobly by the Constitution and the Union. She has not faltered for a moment in her devotion. She has sent her sons in thousands to defend the Flag and avenge the insults heaped upon it by the traitor hordes who have dared to trail it in the dust. On every battle field she has poured out her blood, a willing sacrifice, and she still stands ready to do or die. She has sent out also the Angel of Mercy side by side with him who carries the flaming sword of War. On the battle field, amid the dying and the dead; in the hospital among the sick and wounded of our State, may be seen her sons and daughters, ministering consolation and shedding the blessings of a divine charity which knows no fear, which dreadeth not the pestilence that walketh by night or the bullet of the foe by day.'

Governor Yates himself, on receiving intelligence of the battle of Fort Donelson, repaired at once to the scene of suffering, feeling—like the lamented Governor Harvey of Wisconsin, who lost his life in the same service—that where public good is to be done, the State should be worthily and effectively represented by her chief executive officer. There on the spot, trusting to no hearsay, Mr. Yates, while distributing the bounteous stores of which he was the bearer, ascertained by actual observation the condition and wants of the troops, and at once set about devising measures of relief. After Shiloh, that Golgotha of our brave boys, the Governor organized a large corps of surgeons and nurses, and went himself to Pittsburg Landing to find such suffering and such destitution as ought never to exist on the soil of our bounteous land, under any possible conjuncture of circumstances, however untoward and unprecedented. Without surgeons or surgical appliances, without hospital supplies, and, above all, worse than all, without SYSTEM, there lay the defenders of our national life, their wounds baking in the hot sun, worms devouring their substance while yet the breath of life kept their desolate hearts beating. Doing all that could be done on the spot, and bringing away all who could be brought, the Governor returned, sending the adjutant-general back on the same errand, and going himself a second time as soon as a new supply of surgeons and sanitary stores, contributed by private kindness, could be got together. And so on, as long as the necessity existed. The great expenses involved in the relief and transportation of many thousands of sick and wounded, expenses unusual and not provided for by law, were gladly borne by the State, and careful provision was made against the recurrence of the evil. May our Heavenly Father in His great mercy so order the future as to make these preparations unnecessary, wise and humane though they be! Says Governor Yates:

'I have hope for my country, because I think the right policy has been adopted. There remains but one other thing to make my assurance doubly sure; and that is, I want to see no divisions among the friends of the Union in the loyal States. Could I know that the people of the Free States were willing to ignore party, and resolved to act with one purpose and one will for the vigorous prosecution of the war and the restoration of the Union, then I should have no doubt of a happy end to all our difficulties. * * *

'If the members of this General Assembly, and the press and people of Illinois, in the spirit of lofty patriotism, could lay aside everything of a party character, and evince to the country, to our army, and, especially to the secession States, that we are one in heart and sentiment for every measure for the vigorous prosecution of the war, it would have a more marked effect upon the suppression of the rebellion than great victories achieved over the enemy upon the battle field. For, when the North shall present an undivided front—a stern and unfaltering purpose to exhaust every available means to suppress the rebellion, then the last prop of the latter will have fallen from under it, and it will succumb and sue for peace. Should divisions mark our councils, or any considerable portion of our people give signs of hesitation, then a shout of exultation will go up, throughout all the hosts of rebeldom, and bonfires and illuminations be kindled in every Southern city, hailing our divisions as the sure harbingers of their success. We must stand by the President, and send up to him, and to our brave armies in the field, the support of an undivided sentiment and one universal cheer from the masses of all the loyal States. The stern realities of actual war have produced unanimity among our soldiers in the army. With them the paltry contests of men for political power dwindle into insignificance before the mightier question of the preservation of the national life. Coming into closer contact with Southern men and society, the sentiments of those who looked favorably upon Southern institutions have shifted round. They have now formed their own opinions of the proper relations of the Federal Government to them, which no sophistry of the mere politician can ever change. Seeing for themselves slavery and its effects upon both master and slave, they learn to hate it and swear eternal hostility to it in their hearts. Fighting for their country, they learn doubly to love it. Fighting for the Union, they resolve to preserve, at all hazards, the glorious palladium of our liberties.

'I believe this infernal rebellion can be, ought to be, and will be subdued. The land may be left a howling waste, desolated by the bloody footsteps of war, from Delaware bay to the gulf, but our territory shall remain unmutilated—the country shall be one, and it shall be free in all its broad boundaries, from Maine to the gulf, and from ocean to ocean.

'In any event, may we be able to act a worthy part in the trying scenes through which we are passing; and should the star of our destiny sink to rise no more, may we feel for ourselves and may history preserve our record clear before heaven and earth, and hand down the testimony to our children, that we have done all, perilled and endured all, to perpetuate the priceless heritage of Liberty and Union, unimpaired to our posterity.'

And in this fervid utterance of our warm-hearted Governor, the free choice of a free people, let us consider Illinois as expressing her honest sentiments.

A WINTER IN CAMP

I was painfully infusing my own 'small Latin and less Greek' into the young Shakspeares of a Western college, when the appointment of a friend to the command of the –th Iowa regiment opened to me a place upon his staff. Three days afterward, in one of the rough board-shanties of Camp McClellan, I was making preparations for my first dress parade. The less said of the dress of that parade, the better. There was no lack of comfortable clothing, but every man had evidently worn the suit he was most willing to throw away when his Uncle Samuel presented him with a new one; and a regiment of such suits drawn up in line, made but a sorry figure in comparison with the smartly uniformed –th, which had just left the ground. Their colonel, in the first glory of his sword and shoulder straps, was replaced by a very rough-looking individual, with a shabby slouched hat pushed far back on his head, and a rusty overcoat, open just far enough to show the place where a cravat might have been. It was very plain, as he stood there with his arms folded, thin lips compressed, and gray eyes hardly visible under their shaggy brows, that whether he looked the colonel or not was the last thought likely to trouble him. I fancied that he did, in spite of all, and that he saw a great deal of good stuff in the party-colored rows before him, which he would know how to use when the right moment came: subsequent events proved that I was not mistaken. The regiment had no reason to be ashamed of their rough colonel, even when the two hundred that were left of them laid down their arms late in the afternoon of that bloody Sabbath at Shiloh, on the very spot where the swelling tide of rebels had beaten upon them like a rock all day long.