Alexander County IL Archives History - Books .....Chapter I Sketch Of The Illinois Country 1910 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/il/ilfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Joy Fisher sdgenweb@yahoo.com August 15, 2006, 4:51 am Book Title: A History Of The City Of Cairo Illiniois CHAPTER I SKETCH OF THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY THE geographical position of this place, at the junction of the two rivers, requires, it seems to me, a somewhat full account of the attention given it before any attempt was made to establish a city here, which was in the year 1818. This account may, therefore, be called the introductory chapter. The colonial grants to Virginia of May 23, 1609, and of March 12, 1612, were for territory extending "from sea to sea, West and Northwest" or from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. It was not then known how far westward it was to the Pacific coast; and the uncertainty about the western boundary of the grants afforded grounds for the territorial disputes which subsequently arose. The French had entered the country by way of the St. Lawrence quite as early as the English had entered it further southward; and the former, pushing westward and southward, crossed these so-called sea-to-sea grants, which to them had nothing more than a mere paper existence. They, also, not long afterward, came into the country on the south and by way of the Mississippi River. Their claims to the country were based on the right of discovery and on other grounds not necessary to be noticed here. They established posts here and there in their widely extended dominions. Differences now and then arose between the authorities in Canada and those at New Orleans. Both claimed jurisdiction over the Illinois country, which embraced the whole country between the Ohio and the Mississippi rivers and west of Canada. But these jealousies of each other never interfered with their hearty co-operation against the English. All told, their numbers in the whole country were less than one-tenth that of the English; but they went everywhere and easily obtained favor with the original occupants of the country. Religion, business and amusement went hand in hand; and soon it became apparent that New France was to extend from the Gulf to the Great Lakes and thence eastward to the Alleghanies, and that the English were to have nothing west of that mountain range. Nothing shows so clearly the character and extent of the French claim as the fact that it embraced the Ohio River country and reached to the present site of Pittsburg, where they established their Fort Du Quesne. The English, seeing their sea-to-sea grants so wholly disregarded, began to assert their supposed superior rights. They saw that should the French acquire permanent lodgment in the Valley of the Mississippi as they had in the Valley of the St. Lawrence and along the Great Lakes, they would be shut in by the Alleghanies and confined to the Atlantic coast. These territorial disputes, to which we can only make the barest reference, extended over well-nigh a century and a half. A few years of peace now and then ensued; but on the whole, a well-established state of controversy existed all the time. The two great nations were the actual claimants, and often the controversy in the new world was but the counterpart of that in the old, between the same parties. The English saw plainly that if they were not to be shut in by that coast range of mountains, they must maintain their asserted territorial lines by force of arms. The country was not uninhabited. The Indians were everywhere. Wherever one went in the great broad land, he found himself within the bounds of some one of its innumerable tribes. The contending parties took little account of these early occupants. Each enlisted their aid against the other. In the one case, the Indian was to help the Frenchman for the Frenchman's sake; in the other, the Englishman for the Englishman's sake; but all the while, the contest was for the land and country the Indian himself claimed. It was long a state of war, interrupted now and then by stirring events elsewhere. Canada was now and then entered, held, and abandoned by the English. Finally, in the year 1755 what proved to be the final struggle came on; and after the lapse of about seven years, the French and Indian or the French and English wars came to an end with the fall of Quebec, and the Treaty of Paris in 1763. It was a great victory. It was a great treaty. It settled the dispute which had lasted one hundred and fifty years. It cleared every cloud off the English title and made way for a consolidated empire, which never could have existed with New France between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi. How the fates of nations are decided! Often a single battle, a single mistake in diplomacy, a single failure to grasp the great situation—these sometimes turn nations upside down and turn the current of events the world over. The new world, or our part of it, was the prize between the Anglo-Saxon and the Latin. They were both seeking to establish great colonies—seeking to reproduce themselves upon the newest and most fertile continent the earth afforded. "Thus terminated a war which originated in an attempt on the part of the French to surround the English colonists and chain them to a narrow strip of country along the coast of the Atlantic, and ended with their giving up the whole of what was their only valuable territory in North America." "She was utterly stripped of her American possessions, little more than a hamlet being left her in lower Louisiana." (Hinton's United States.) The Illinois country, after thus passing from France to England, was placed under the care of Captain Sterling, who was succeeded by Major Farmer, who in turn was succeeded by Colonel Reed in 1765; in which year the country was annexed to Canada. Reed was succeeded by Colonel Wilkins, whose administration was far more satisfactory than those of his predecessors. Few persons in America and still fewer in England supposed that this victorious peace of 1763 would soon be followed by war between the victors themselves, but it was. The lapse of thirteen years witnessed the opening of our war of the Revolution, and in 1783, just twenty years after the peace of 1763, England surrendered to her thirteen colonies on the Atlantic coast, well-nigh all she had claimed and fought for during almost two hundred years. The Canadians seemed to think they wanted no more war, or they felt less friendly toward their neighbors than toward their distant rulers. Be that as it may, the peace of 1783 took the whole Illinois country out of what had been, under the French, alternately a part of Canada and a part of Louisiana. Bare reference can only be made to the campaign of General George Rogers Clark, whom Virginia in 1778 had sent into the Illinois country, and thereby laid the foundation for the claim she subsequently asserted, that the country was hers by conquest as well as by virtue of those sea-to-sea grants. She had by her act of December 17, 1778, organized the territory and called it the County of Illinois, for which reason it has been spoken of as the mother county of all the counties in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. In another part of the book, giving an account of "Fort Jefferson," we give a letter of General Clark to Governor Jefferson, written September 23, 1779. The colonies no longer fearing the French or the English, turned their attention to the question of the ownership of the Illinois country; and now arose a territorial dispute between them which constitutes one of the most interesting parts of our country's history. It is treated of and dwelt upon in so many histories and other works, that even partial enumeration of them is quite out of the question. Here, as in many other matters of those early days, Virginia was the chief actor and claimant. By the treaty of 1763, England had surrendered all of her claims to the territory west of the Mississippi. This gave a definite western boundary to those sea-to-sea grants under which Virginia claimed. But while she was willing that her southern boundary should be a straight east-and-west line, she desired her northern boundary to run northwestward after reaching the Ohio River. This gave her nearly the whole of the Illinois country. Those colonies without territorial possessions urged that the territories should be ceded to the General Government, because, they said, they had been won and secured by the common blood and treasure of all the colonies. Virginia, following New York, but not without saying New York had nothing to cede, ceded her Illinois country. She had long held out, insisting that if she ceded the northwest territory to the General Government, the latter should guarantee to her the territory she claimed south of the Ohio River—that is, Kentucky. This desire for such a guarantee seemed to cloud somewhat her claim or title to the territory north of the river. Her session was made March 1, 1784; and this was followed by the justly celebrated ordinance of July 13, 1787. The territory was divided by the act of May 7, 1800, and the western part called Indiana Territory. The eastern part, a little later on, namely, in 1802, was admitted into the Union as the State of Ohio. The Indiana Territory was divided by the act of January u, 1805, and the northern part called Michigan. It was again divided by the act of February 3, 1809, and the western part of it called Illinois, and the seat of government fixed "at Kaskaskia on the Mississippi River" We need not trace the history of the remainder of the northwest territory, which now embraces the State of Wisconsin and that part of Minnesota east of the Mississippi River. We have thus passed rapidly over the history of the Illinois country. From the Virginia charter of May 23, 1609, to the act of Congress, February 3, 1809, organizing Illinois territory, we have the long period of two hundred years. The same form of territorial government provided for by the ordinance of 1787 was extended in turn to the territories of Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois by those acts of Congress of 1800, 1805, and 1809. It provided for a Governor, a Secretary of the territory, and three Judges to hold the territorial court; and when the territory was found to contain five thousand free male inhabitants, they were to have a general assembly, to consist of the Governor, the legislative council of five members, and a house of representatives of one member for each five hundred free male inhabitants. It will thus be seen that there were two forms or grades of government provided for the territory. In the first form or grade, the Governor and the three Judges were, from time to time, to adopt, publish, and report to Congress such of the laws of the original states as they deemed suited to the condition of the territory, and these laws were to continue in force, unless disapproved of by Congress, until the organization of the general assembly; and this carried the territorial government into the second grade. The five members of the legislative council were to be selected by Congress out of the ten persons nominated by the territorial house of representatives. It is worthy of notice that this celebrated ordinance prescribed certain property qualifications for the holding of offices in the territory. The Governor was required to have a freehold estate in one thousand acres of land, the Secretary of the territory, the three Judges, and the members of the legislative council, in five hundred acres, and the members of the house of representatives were to be the owners in fee of two hundred acres of land within the territory; and an elector of a representative was required to have a freehold estate in fifty acres. The act of Congress of May 20, 1812, further modified the ordinance by requiring the members of the council to be elected by the people; and for this purpose the Governor was directed to divide the territory into five districts, in each of which one member was to be chosen. Voters were required to be taxpayers, not real estate owners. The act limited the number of representatives to not less than seven nor more than twelve, until there should be six thousand free male inhabitants above the age of twenty-one years in the territory, from which time the government was to proceed according to the original ordinance. Additional Comments: Extracted from: A HISTORY OF THE CITY OF CAIRO ILLINOIS BY JOHN M. LANSDEN WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS CHICAGO R. R. DONNELLEY & SONS COMPANY 1910 COPYRIGHTED, 1910 BY JOHN M. LANSDEN The Lakeside Press R. R. DONNELLEY & SONS COMPANY CHICAGO File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/il/alexander/history/1910/ahistory/chapteri75nms.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.net/ilfiles/ File size: 13.0 Kb