Alexander County IL Archives History - Books .....Chapter XII The Illinois Central Railroad 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 September 19, 2007, 7:33 pm Book Title: A History Of The City Of Cairo Illiniois CHAPTER XII THE ILLINOIS CENTRAL RAILROAD IT may be said we need nothing more concerning the early history of the Illinois Central Railroad, so much having been already written. We think, however, that what we shall say herein about the road and especially about its origin, will be found neither superfluous nor inappropriate. A full and complete history of the road might be written which would contain little about the city of Cairo; but a history of Cairo with little therein about the road would be unworthy of its title. As I have before remarked and shown, the present Cairo owes its origin to the Trustees of the Cairo City Property and the Illinois Central Railroad Company. To make the statement a little more complete and accurate, it may be said it owes its origin to Darius B. Holbrook and his Cairo City and Canal Company of March 4, 1837. But this leads us still a little further back and requires the statement to be made that Cairo and the Illinois Central Railroad, in their respective origins, were largely Kaskaskia enterprises. Nor must I fail to notice in this chapter the part taken by the Trustees of the Cairo City Property in the work of procuring government aid to build the railroad. This close connection of the starting of the city of Cairo with the origin or starting of the Illinois Central Railroad, I will now proceed to set forth as briefly as a clear understanding of the matter will allow. I cannot do this, however, without frequent references to Judge Breese and Senator Douglas, whose correspondence, in December, 1850, and January, 1851, furnishes quite an outline history of legislation concerning this railroad. So much has been said about the congressional land grant of September 20, 1850, and so little about the many years of hard and persistent work which led up to the grant, that one would suppose the road had its origin in that enactment; and hence a very imperfect view of the matter has been quite too generally taken and credit given and credit withheld contrary to and against the actual facts of the history of the enterprise. It now and then occurs that in the hour of exultant success they are forgotten who had borne the burden and heat of the day and made possible the success credited to others. Lapse of time may separate the first movers in the enterprise from those last in it and present at the finish; but when the clouds and dust of noisy triumph have lifted and cleared away, the final award will go without dissent to those in whose minds the great undertaking first took shape and by whose hands it was first started towards an actual existence. That a magnificient donation of lands was obtained instead of preemption rights merely, that it was to the state and not to a private corporation, were matters of importance; and that the work and management bestowed upon their procurement deserve high marks of recognition no one would deny; but in looking around to find to whom credit and honor should be given for the completed enterprise, it was very unjust that the award should extend no further than the finishing workmen. The man who plans and builds up to the laying of the corner-stone, if no further, should not be forgotten when the capstone is hoisted into its place and the celebration begins. Even if some changes were made in his plans as the work progressed, and even though he may have died and been years in his grave, yet the injunction still obtains that tribute and honor must go to whom tribute and honor are due. But I must not delay showing Judge Breese's connection with the starting of Cairo and with the beginning and growth of the Illinois Central Railroad enterprise. Judge Sidney Breese was the originator of the Illinois Central Railroad. Others completed the great undertaking; but he had carried it on so long and faithfully that the work remaining to be done was neither very long nor very difficult. He had gone from New York to Kaskaskia a year or two prior to the admission of the state into the Union, and there began the reading of law in the office of Elias Kent Kane. He must have been familiar with all of the proceedings of the legislature then taking place, and especially with the preparation of the act of January 9, 1818, incorporating the city and bank of Cairo, and also with the proceedings of the convention which there drafted our state constitution of 1818 and in the making of which Kane took so prominent a part. We read how he and his ox team conveyed the state records from Kaskaskia to Vandalia in 1821, and of the numerous offices he filled in early life and of his steady advancement in the esteem and favor of the people. He was no doubt well acquainted with John G. Comegys and his Kaskaskia associates and with what they did and were unable to do with their Cairo enterprise of 1818, at which early day there was no railroad anywhere in the United States nor in England, if anywhere else. Passing over a few years and many events, and premising that Breese kept well and fully abreast of the times with their then very promising outlook, we come to the year 1835, in the months of August and September of which he and Miles A. Gilbert and Thomas Swanwick, of Kaskaskia, entered the south halves of sections fourteen and fifteen, the east half of section twenty-two, all of sections twenty-three and twenty-four, the northeast quarter of section twenty-six and the west half of the northwest quarter of section twenty-five, of township seventeen south, range one west of the third principal meridian. A month or two later Anthony Olney and Alexander M. Jenkins entered other lands in the same and other sections, and David J. Baker still others in the same and other sections. The whole of the entries amounted to about twenty-three hundred acres. Quite a large part of these lands are now embraced in the present city of Cairo. I must not proceed further before joining the name of Darius B. Holbrook with the names of the men already mentioned,-Breese, Baker, Jenkins, Gilbert, Olney and Swanwick. I will let Judge Breese tell us how Holbrook came to be one of the Cairo men of whom I am now speaking. In his letter of January 25, 1851, to Senator Douglas, we find the following: "At the called session of the legislature which followed it in '35-'36, I found Mr. Holbrook at Vandalia, then a stranger to me, endeavoring to procure charters for manufacturing purposes, as I understood. Believing him to be the man of great intelligence and expanded views, I unfolded my plans to him and seizing upon the project, which had been started in 1818 to build a city at the mouth of the Ohio, which the projectors, Gov. Bond, and others, had then denominated 'Cairo,' he fell into my views, and being a man of great energy, he proposed the formation of a company to construct the road and build the city." These entries of lands may be said to be the beginning of the second attempt to start a city here; and we shall now see how closely the starting of the Illinois Central Railroad followed the entry of the lands; for in the state senate, at Vandalia, on the 29th day of December, 1835, Col. John S. Hacker, representing Alexander and Union Counties, introduced a bill to incorporate the Illinois Central Railroad Company. The persons named therein as incorporators were Alexander M. Jenkins, David J. Baker, John S. Hacker, Henry Eddy, Wilson Able, Richard G. Murphy, Pierre Menard, Miles A. Gilbert, Francis Swanwick, John Reynolds, Harry Wilton, Sidney Breese, John M. Krum, D. B. Holbrook, Simon M. Hubbard, James Hughes, Albert G. Snyder, and forty other persons, all of whom with a few exceptions lived in the southern part of the state as it was then known. Some amendments were made to the bill, but it soon passed both houses and was approved January 16, 1836, a day on which eight other railroad companies were incorporated by the legislature. No time seems to have been lost by the men who made these land entries and procured this incorporation of the railroad company; for on the 13th day of the February following, the board of directors held a meeting at Alton, and no doubt having in mind that canal donation act of March 2, 1827, and its allowance by the act of March 2, 1833, for a railroad in lieu of a canal, proceeded at once to draw up a memorial to congress for aid in their railroad undertaking, and deputed the president of the company, Alexander M. Jenkins, and the treasurer of the board, D. B. Holbrook, to proceed at once to Washington to present their application for government aid. At that meeting of the directors, Breese was no doubt present; nor can there be any doubt as to the part he took in the preparation of the memorial. Miles A. Gilbert was the secretary of the company and of that meeting and his name is affixed to the papers accompanying the memorial, one of which is his certificate of the appointment of Jenkins and Holbrook to present the memorial to congress. It is an able paper and would probably fill eight or ten pages of this book. It is Document No. 121 of House Reports of the second session of the 24th congress, pages 305, 519, etc. This memorial was very probably the first request ever made of the general government for aid in the construction of a railroad. The act of March 2, 1833, granting to the state the right to use the grant of March 2, 1827, for the construction of a railroad in lieu of the canal, is not a like case. There the donation had already been made. Jenkins and Holbrook proceeded to Washington almost immediately, and placed the memorial and accompanying papers in the hands of the Illinois members, who at once laid the same before congress and had the proper reference made; and on March 3ist, only two and a half months after the act of incorporation had been passed, a favorable report was made and a bill presented to congress making a pre-emption grant. Considering the means of travel at that early day, it will be seen that these Southern Illinois and Illinois Central railroad men pushed forward their scheme for government aid with a zeal seldom equaled. The prayer of the memorial is in these words: "In conclusion, your memorialists for the foregoing reasons, and many more which the subject itself will suggest to the wisdom and foresight of congress, pray that such a donation of lands as the importance of the subject may indicate as reasonable and proper may be made to said company; and that a pre-emption right to the whole or a portion of the public lands lying immediately on the route of said road, within a distance to be specified on each side thereof may be secured to them for a reasonable time within which it may be practicable to complete the same." (Signed) "A. M. Jenkins, President of the Illinois Central Rail Road Co." (and) "D. B. Holbrook, Treasurer of the Illinois Central Rail Road Co." The bill was printed, but congressional action was soon arrested by the state's embarking upon a system of railroad construction for itself and this led our members of both houses of congress to withhold their support from this particular enterprise. Douglas and Breese knew all about the internal improvement scheme. Douglas always led, seldom followed; and it is altogether probable that to him more than any one else that ruinous policy of state railroad building was undertaken. He voted for the hill of February 27, 1837. I have neither time nor space to take up and consider the various bills introduced by Breese and by Douglas, and possibly one or two other persons at the instance of the one or the other senator. It is sufficient to say that Douglas reached the senate in December, 1847, and that he worked diligently for government aid for an Illinois railroad. That there were jealousies between them and others interested in the work, is somewhat fully set forth in Wentworth's Congressional Reminiscences in Fergus's Historical Series No. 24. This is an exceedingly interesting paper, giving his account of this railroad enterprise in congress during his service of eight years in the lower house. But Senator Douglas neither wanted nor sought an Illinois central railroad. The road he wanted was a Chicago road, a road running direct from the mouth of the Ohio to Chicago, and which would have had four-fifths of the state west and north of it; a road which would have left Vandalia, Decatur, Bloomington, and LaSalle far to the westward. The road he insisted upon all the time was one from Cairo direct to Chicago and thence to the upper Mississippi. That was the way he desired to connect the upper and lower Mississippi with the Lakes. He and his Chicago associates, strongly supported by their eastern friends, wanted to draw all the business to Chicago, whence, after reaching there, it would go eastward, and little if any of it towards the Gulf. They would have succeeded with this plan had not our other members in congress plainly said that they would not stand for such a road, which could not in any view be called a central railroad. The old line of road from Cairo to Galena had been before the people too long, and had been insisted upon so strongly that to give up the line wholly for another which had in view only the interests of one city in the state was quite out of the question. Douglas' constant insistance on the Chicago road weakened the enterprise of a central railroad all the time. He and Breese had found their plans in whatever shape presented meeting with successful opposition all the while. One wanted more, and the other less because of the great doubt as to their being able to get anything at all. Breese believed in asking less and getting something, rather than asking more and getting nothing. This leads to the inquiry, how did Douglas at last get his donation of September 20, 1850? The history of it is told by his brother-in-law, Col. J. Madison Cutts, of the Army, in that large government volume entieled [sic] "Public Domain, 1884, by Thomas Donaldson, 262-264." Douglas seems to have come finally to Breese's belief and to have found that government aid would have to be given up unless the scheme could be so presented as to look like something entirely new. He knew quite as well as any one else how solid the Democratic-South was against his railroad land grant and that unless he could fall upon a plan that would appeal to their self interest, there was little use of keeping the matter longer before congress. He, therefore, went south, to Mobile and two or three other cities, and laid before the proper parties his Illinois railroad scheme, so modified as to take in the entire country from the Ohio River to Mobile, although there were no government lands either in Kentucky or Tennessee. This was something that had never been offered before. The southern senators, especially those in Alabama, Mississippi and Kentucky, were kept in ignorance of the object of Senator Douglas' visit to the south; and it was only after they were importuned by many of their constituents that they consented to abandon their long continued opposition to a government grant. It was something new to these southern men in and out of congress and it led to a new view of the matter of government aid. All Douglas had to do and all he did do was to take some one of his or Breese's old and beaten bills, change its title and add section seven to bring in Mississippi and Alabama as donees, and the work was done. In this way the old status in quo of fifteen years was so immediately changed that one must have wondered why it had not been thought of long before. The short and simple title of the old bill, making a grant of lands in Illinois in aid of a central railroad was changed to "An act granting a right of way and making a grant of land to the states of Illinois, Mississippi, and Alabama in aid of the construction of railroad from Chicago to Mobile." This title of Senator Douglas' donation act of September 20, 1850, is a fair and just representation of his attitude towards an Illinois central railroad. All he wanted was a road to Chicago. This bill would have been, throughout, just what its title indicates, had not our other members of congress insisted that the grant should be for a railroad substantially as provided for in the acts of 1836, 1843 and 1849. But we must submit proof of Douglas' opposition to a central railroad. In his letter of January 5, 1851, to Breese, he says: "You can learn, if you will take the trouble to inquire of the Hon. Thomas Dyer, who is now a member of the Legislature with you, that in the month of September, 1847, I urged him and many other citizens of Chicago to hold public meetings and send on memorials in favor of a donation of lands to the state to aid in the construction of a central railroad, with one terminus in Chicago. It was necessary that the road connect with die Lakes, in order to impart nationality to the project and secure northern and eastern voters. The old line from Cairo to Galena parallel with the Mississippi, with both termini on that stream, was regarded as purely a sectional scheme, calculated to throw the whole trade upon the Gulf of Mexico at the expense of the Lakes and the Atlantic Sea Board." Did this statement of Senator Douglas as to the line he desired the road to follow need confirmation, it is found in the proceedings of a public meeting at Chicago January 18, 1848, presided over by the Hon. Thomas Dyer, just mentioned in his letter. The proceedings were published in a small pamphlet, a copy of which is now in the possession of the Hon. William B. Gilbert, who received it from Col. Taylor. The following is a copy of one or two of its pages: "Proceedings and resolutions of a public meeting held at Chicago on the subject of a railroad to connect the upper and lower Mississippi with the great lakes, printed at Chicago by R. L. Wilson, Printer, Daily Journal Office, 1848. "A public meeting was held at the court house Januaty 18, 1848. Thomas Dyer, Chairman; Dr. D. Brainard, Secretary; Col. R. J. Hamilton, J. Butterfield, M. Skinner, A. Huntington and E. B. Williams were appointed by the chairman a committee to report resolutions; which were reported and unanimously adopted. John S. Wright, M. Laflin, J. Frink, J. Rogers and William Jones were appointed a committee to confer with citizens. [The last resolution of the five offered is in these words:] "Resolved that our senators and representatives in the congress of the United States, be requested to use their best exertions to secure the passage of a law granting to the State of Illinois the right of way and public lands for the construction of a railroad to connect the upper and lower Mississippi with the lakes at Chicago, equal to every alternate section for five miles on each side of said road." The remainder of the pamphlet of 16 pages is taken up with Mr. Butterfield's address. In that address is found the following: "It is proposed to construct a railroad, to connect the upper and lower Mississippi with the great lakes. This railroad to commence at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers at Cairo; thence to proceed to Chicago, the head of lake navigation, and from thence to Galena on the upper Mississippi." Let us now show what connection the Trustees of the Cairo City Property Trust had with the above Chicago meeting and the general work then going on to secure government aid for an Illinois central railroad. This land trust company was an association of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Portland, Syracuse and other men, owning about ten thousand acres of land between the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and at their junction, and who were lavishly spending their money east and west to obtain national aid for a central railroad, which they well knew was necessary to their Cairo enterprise. The western representative of these men was Samuel Staats Taylor, of New Brunswick, New Jersey, long connected with the United States Bank. His headquarters were at Chicago, where he remained from 1846 to April, 1851, and until the hard and long protracted work at Washington and Springfield had been brought to a close. The Cairo men, or men interested in Cairo, beginning with Breese, Holbrook, Jenkins, Gilbert and others, and ending with the Cairo City Property people, had been working, many of them continuously, for fifteen years, to obtain a central railroad, in furtherance of their city enterprise here at the junction of the two rivers. To show what Taylor was doing at Chicago as the representative of the Cairo City Property, I give here two separate statements made in his own handwriting fifty years ago. They were entered by him on the large sheets of an abstract of the title to the lands of the trust here, and are as follows: "Public meeting of citizens of Chicago held January 18, 1848, at the Court House, pursuant to public notice, to consider the feasibility of constructing a railroad to connect the upper and lower Mississippi with the Great Lakes, recommending that a grant of public lands be made to the State of Illinois for the purpose. This meeting was gotten up at the instance of Justin Butterfield, who prepared and delivered at it an elaborate speech (a copy of which see on file), copies of which and of the proceedings were sent to the different County Seats along the proposed line of the road, and public meetings held at them advocating the project and instructing their representatives in Congress to support it. Mr. Butterfield in this acted upon the suggestion of S. S. Taylor, agent of the Trustees of the Cairo City Property, who occupied an office in Chicago with Mr. Butterfield; and those Trustees paid all the expenses attendant upon the movement." "The entire receipts of the Trustees of the Cairo City Property, from sales, rents, wharfage, and all other sources have been used in improvements and other expenditures at Cairo, except what was required to repay in New York moneys borrowed at the beginning of the trust, about 1848, to defray expenses connected principally with arrangements and legislation for procuring from Congress the grant of land to the State to build the Illinois Central Railroad." The receipts of money from the sources above enumerated were probably a million and a half to two million dollars, and all of it was expended here at Cairo, "except what was required to repay in New York, etc." This excepted amount is not given, but it would not have been mentioned at all, had it not been up in the tens of thousands. Holbrook was one of the very largest shareholders, and never expected to do or effect much without the use of money. He and his Trustees of the Cairo City Property, from the time of their appointment, September 29, 1846, worked on and constantly for the road, being very willing to get a Chicago road, if not an Illinois central road. They did very little at Cairo during the intervening four or five years and not until they were assured of a great road to the north. Just how much money they spent, or how it was spent, or to whom or where it was paid, there is no one now living who can tell much about it; but Breese's letter to Douglas above referred to, contains this significant passage: "In the passage of the present law, I had no share, nor have I claimed any; but you know and I know how it was passed. * * * As great as may be the credit to which you are entitled, and I will not detract from it, you know that it received its most efficient support in the house, from a quarter where neither you nor any of your colleagues, save one perhaps, had much if any influence. It was the votes of Massachusetts and New York that passed the bills, and you and I know how they were had. I venture to say, the much abused Mr. Holbrook and Col. Wentworth contributed most essentially to its success." This language of Judge Breese's is most suggestive. Observe some of its clauses: You know and I know how it was passed * * * from a quarter where neither you nor any of your colleagues, save one, perhaps, had much if any influence * * * It was the votes of Massachusetts and New York that passed the bills, and you and I know how they were had. I venture to say the much abused Mr. Holbrook and Col. Wentworth contributed most essentially to its success. We will now let in a little more light on these suggestive statements of Breese to Douglas. For their illumination, we will refer to Wentworth, Holbrook, Webster, Congressman Ashmun and possibly one or two others. Wentworth was in congress from December, 1843, to September, 1850; and in his Reminiscences, we are giving much concerning the last days of the congressional struggle for aid for an Illinois central railroad. It seems to come from one who knew much about what was going on for and against the scheme. He enlarges on the part the great Massachusetts senator took in the matter; how the eastern men going to Washington inquired for him, then Secretary of State under President Fillmore; how Webster gave them assurances and turned them over to Ashmun, whom he regarded as equal to almost any emergency; and then how things moved on rapidly under Ashmun's lead to the triumphant end. Back of it all were Webster and Ashmun, and a few other Massachusetts and New York men, with none of whom, Breese says, Douglas had much, if any, influence. But there was another man there, a member of the third house, Darius B. Holbrook, as smart and as wise as almost any of them and far shrewder than most of them. He had known Douglas long and well; he knew Ashmun, a Massachusetts man like himself; he knew everybody worth knowing in such an enterprise as they had in hand; but above all, he knew Webster, had known him as a client knows his lawyer for fifteen years, perhaps many more. He had paid Webster a good round fee in London, August 23, 1838, for his opinion as to the validity of the Cairo bonds Holbrook was putting on the London market. See the opinion at the end of this chapter. Holbrook was far better acquainted with the whole history of the railroad enterprise than Douglas. He had been with it all the time, fifteen years, instead of three or four, and a directly interested party. He could reach the Whigs in congress easier than Douglas, a bitter partisan all his life. Holbrook went to the fountain-head of whiggery, and enlisted a simon-pure section of it in his behalf, which Douglas never could have done. He had no doubt spent all of his London money of 1838, but its place was well supplied by money from Cairo men, that is, men of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Portland and Syracuse, shareholders in Cairo City Property Trust, whose western representative in Chicago was Col. Samuel Staats Taylor, of New Brunswick, who arranged the Butterfield public meeting there January 18, 1848, and who knew all about the expenditures of the Trustees from September 29, 1846, to February 10, 1851, and from that time to 1896. From the one date to the other, these Cairo trust gentlemen did nothing at all at Cairo besides preserving their Cairo property and working for the railroad land grant, on which they knew their Cairo city so largely depended. No one can be found who would desire to detract from the credit or honor due Senator Douglas for his work and management which brought the long drawn out matter to a successful end. But almost every award or suggestion of honor to him has somehow seemed a denial of honor to all others. He seemed quite willing to accept the tender of exclusive honor and credit, although in his correspondence with Judge Breese in 1851 he seemed willing to accord the latter a fair share of what was being lavishly bestowed upon him. He knew all about Breese's commencement of the work, his efforts in and out of congress and that only the vicissitudes of politics removed him from his cherished work in that body. He well knew that he had only taken up and carried through successfully the undertaking Breese had planned and carried forward a decade before he took hold of it. He knew that the chief difference between them was that Breese did not believe a donation of lands to the state could be gotten and both knew that one of the bed-rock principles of their party was opposition to such government aid or aid of am/ kind for such enterprises. In Judge Breese's letter of January 25, 1851, in reply to Douglas' of the 5th of that month, he presents at some length this difference between himself and Douglas as to the line to be adopted for the road. Douglas failed to draw the whole road over to Chicago and had to content himself with a branch, which differed very little from the branch road provided for in Breese's and Holbrook's act of February 10, 1849, which was for a road from Cairo to Chicago, via the southern terminus of the canal. Breese and Holbrook were compelled to yield to Chicago's demand that the road should not go on northward to Galena or Dubuque; but in the final outcome, the other members of congress were able to draw the line back to the old route. Col. Wentworth either knew nothing about the senator's trip to the south or credited it with no great results. At all events, his account so fully corroborates what Breese said to Douglas, in his letter of January 25, 1851, as to whence the needed aid came, that we must be pardoned for quoting somewhat at length from the same. I have alluded to the superior confidence which all capitalists had in the opinions of Mr. Webster. This was of inestimable service to the Illinois delegation in the House of Representatives in securing our early railroad, grant. I accent the word early because, since the census of 1850, the numerical strength of the Western States has been so greatly increased that liberal grants have been secured without difficulty. During the period in which we were struggling for our grant, we had, at different times, for senators, four able and influential men who had been upon our Supreme Bench together, James Semple, Sidney Breese, Stephen A. Douglas, and James Shields. But, as the new States had the same number of senators as the old ones, they did not meet with the same obstacles that we did in the House. Yet they were very sensitive as to any one's having superior credit over the others for extra efforts. Gen. Shields, at his last visit to Chicago, complained to his friends, that, as a member of the committee upon public lands having charge of the bill, he had not had sufficient credit for his efforts in the matter. "But," said he, "so thought each of the others, and no one was upon speaking terms with all the others at the time of his death." There was never any serious controversy in the Senate about the passage of the Illinois Central Railroad Grant, as the Senate journals and the congressional Globe will show. The jealousy of our senators in respect to each other's credit for the passage of the bill in the Senate, arose from the indiscretion of friends in claiming too much for their favorite, and yet with no disposition to injure the others. But in the House we could secure nothing of this kind to quarrel about. We labored, and labored, and labored; but it did no good. There was a great sectional and political barrier which we could not overcome. Members from the old States opposed offering governmental inducements for western emigration, and the Whig party wished the lands sold and the proceeds distributed. Thus matters had continued from my entrance into Congress, in 1843, up to September, 1850. Fortunately, our canal had been intrusted to a company upon terms which caused our canal indebtedness to appreciate and secured its ultimate payment. As some of the holders of our canal-bonds were also holders of our other bonds, and as they mostly were residents of the older states and members of the Whig party, whence came the opposition to our grant, the thought occurred to me that we could utilize such bond-holders in securing our land grant. A correspondence ensued, which resulted in a committee being sent to Washington. I met them at the depot, and their first inquiry was for Mr. Webster. I could receive no encouragement from them until a consultation with Mr. Webster was had. I afterwards found out that their original designs were to have the grant made directly to a company; but Mr. Webster satisfied them that a provision in a charter, like that which was inserted eventually, making the money payable to the State solely applicable to "the payment of our interest— paying State indebtedness until the extinction thereof," could not be repealed. I went with them to the Secretary of State's department, and Mr. W. received us very cordially. He knew all about our contract with the canal company, and he had been consulted as to its irrepealability. He said there were a great many measures that ought to be adopted by Congress, and which could be if a spirit of compromise could be brought about. He said the new States wanted land grants and the old States wanted some modification of the tariff laws; but there were members who cared for neither, and who could defeat both unless the friends of both would adopt that spirit of concession and compromise that had been so happily brought to bear in the adjustment of the slavery question. "Now," said he to me, "my friend George Ashmun is a man of remarkably practical good sense and discretion and, if men of conflicting interests would rally around him in a spirit of compromise, he is capable of doing a great deal of good. I will advise him lo call upon you," and then he made an appointment for the gentlemen at his residence. I knew Mr. Ashmun's relation to Mr. Webster from seeing him take Mr. Webster's seat in the Senate when he arose to make his celebrated 7th-of-March speech, in that year; and Mr. Ashmun handed him his books of authority, opened at the appropriate page, as he progressed. He will be remembered as the president of the national convention which first nominated Mr. Lincoln. One Saturday, Mr. Ashmun says: "Mr. Webster thinks that you and I, by acting in concert, can do our respective people and the country at large a great deal of good. What do you say?" I said: "You know what we Illinois men all want. Lead off." "Now," he says, "help us upon the tariff where you can, and where you can not, dodge. And have all your men ready for Tuesday." Promptly upon that day, 17th September, 1850, Mr. Ashmun made the motion to proceed to business upon the speaker's table, and when our bill was reached, so well did I know our original force, I could estimate the value of recruits. And when I saw our old opponents voting for the bill in such numbers, I was so confident of the result that I ventured to telegraph the bill's passage to Chicago, and it was known there quite as soon as the speaker declared the result—101 to 75. But for Mr. Webster and Mr. Ashmun, I am confident we should have had to wait for a new apportionment, and then our company would have had to compete with the owners of other land-grant roads in the loan market. And Webster would have been dead. But I must bring this chapter to a close, already too lengthy for a local history like this. I cannot do so, however, without stating some of the conclusions which the foregoing pages clearly establish. 1835. First:—The present city of Cairo and the Illinois Central Railroad were started at the same time and by the same men, Breese, Baker, Jenkins, Gilbert, Olney and Swanwick, who entered the Cairo lands in August and September, 1835. In the December and January following, they joined Holbrook with them and procured the Illinois Central Railroad charter of January 16, 1836. The second day afterwards, namely, January 18, 1836, Holbrook procured his charter for the Illinois Exporting Company, the incorporators of which were James S. Lane, Thomas G. Hawley, Anthony Olney, John M. Krum, and himself, Holbrook. Breese says that in those months, he found Holbrook at Vandalia, and that he there unfolded his plans to him, and that the result was the proposal to "form a company to construct the road and build the city." 1836. Second:—Within the first three months of the year 1836, the board of directors of the railroad company met at Alton, prepared their memorial to congress for government aid, sent Jenkins the president, and Holbrook the treasurer, of the company, to Washington, who presented the same and had a favorable report thereon, and had a bill introduced for aid, as prayed for; and all this within less than three months after the passage of the railroad charter of January 16, 1836. 1837 and 1838. Third:—Following this railroad work came the purchase of other Cairo lands and the incorporation March 4, 1837, of the Cairo City & Canal Company, which was to Cairo what the act of January 16, 1836, was to an Illinois Central railroad. The intervention of the state, February 27, 1837, with its scheme of internal improvements, arrested and well nigh upset all these plans for railroad and city building by those Cairo men. It halted everything in congress for government aid; but while the Cairo men were pushed aside as to their own railroad plans, they accepted the situation and did all they could for the state central railroad from Cairo to Galena, and went on with their city work here at home and in London. 1839 and 1840. Fourth:—The State's railroad and river improvement work was tottering to its fall when John Wright & Company, of London, financing the Cairo enterprise, failed November 23, 1840; and then ensued a general state of business illness almost everywhere and especially in Cairo, followed by a protracted convalescence of three or four years. 1843 to 1846. Fifth:—Breese entered the senate and Douglas the house in December, 1843, and the former at once set to work again for government railroad aid, the latter doing little else than opposing the former's plans. Holbrook was at work to get his Cairo city work again under way and arranged for the transfer, September 29, 1846, from the Cairo City & Canal Company of everything it represented, to the Cairo City Property Trust, composed of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Portland, and Syracuse men, thus making the enterprise largely American instead of English. 1846 to 1851. Sixth:—During part of this time Breese and Douglas were together in the senate, still differing about the kind of government aid they should ask. Shields succeeded Breese in December, 1849, and the Illinois senatorial differences ceased. The Trustees of the Cairo City Property, one in New York and one in Philadelphia, by direction of those eastern share-holders, sent Samuel Staats Taylor, of New Brunswick, to Chicago, and he there occupied one of Butter-field's offices, and managed the western branch of the business of getting a railroad land grant. Holbrook devoted his time to the same work in New York, his home, in Philadelphia, Boston and Washington, supervising almost everything that was done and seeing that there was no lack of money where money was really needed. He and Went-worth enlisted Webster and Ashmun in their railroad and city scheme and thereby reached Massachusetts and New York men, sufficient in number and ability to assure the passage of the bill. If we are to accept what these two men have said about the matter, the great railroad land grant of September 20, 1850, became a law because of aid which was brought to it from Massachusetts and New York, rather than from the south. I have thus established the fact that the work of securing an Illinois central railroad and that of building a city here, were but the two parts of one enterprise, carried on almost continuously from August, 1835, to February, 1851, and chiefly by men east and west interested in the city here. It is also further shown and clearly proven that Judge Sidney Breese was the originator of what is now the great Illinois Central Railroad. Daniel Webster, as before remarked, knew all about Holbrook's scheme of city and railroad building, knew it as far back as 1839; and when the matter was again brought to his attention in 1850, when he was Secretary of State, he pointed out the way to success. Holbrook knew Webster's great influence with eastern public men and of their advocacy of internal improvements as well as of a protective tariff. Following the advice of Webster, Holbrook and Wentworth sought and obtained the aid of Ashmun, and the long pending and almost hopeless bill for government aid became a law. Breese said to Douglas: "I venture to say, the much abused Mr. Holbrook and Col. Wentworth contributed most essentially to its success." Webster and Holbrook's acquaintance and relations are shown by the following letter: London Augt 3rd 1839 I have perused and considered two Indentures of deeds of trust, as printed in a book laid before me, which book is marked on one side "City of Cairo," and on the other "Messrs. Wright & Co," (and on which book I have written my own name, at the end of one of the deeds of trust, page 10) viz One Indenture made and executed on the Sixteenth day of December One thousand eight hundred and thirty seven, between the Cairo City and Canal Company, and the New York Life Insurance and Trust Company, and to which Indenture the Illinois Exporting Company also became party: And on the other Indenture called a "Deed Supplemental," made and executed on the thirteenth day of June One thousand eight hundred and thirty nine, between the said Illinois Exporting Company, the said Cairo City and Canal Company and the said New York Life Insurance and Trust Company And I am of opinion: 1st. That the conveyance made to the said New York Life Insurance and Trust Company by the said Cairo City and Canal Company by virtue of said Indentures and deeds, is a good and valid conveyance, and effectually vests the property intended to be conveyed in the said New York Life Insurance and Trust Company for the purposes and the trusts in said Indentures mentioned and set forth. 2nd. That by these Indentures and deeds, the said New York Life Insurance and Trust Company has become bound, and is legally obligated to all holders of bonds, issued in pursuance of said Indentures, for the faithful administration and fulfillment of said trust, by the payment of the interest and principal of such bonds, according to their terms, to the full extent of all the proceeds of the property conveyed as aforesaid Danl Webster Legation of the U States London Augt 3rd 1839 This certifies that the foregoing signature is known to me to be the proper handwriting of the Hon. Daniel Webster, Counseller at Law, and a member of the Senate of the United States now in London In the absence of the Minister Benjamin Rush (Seal) Secretary of Legation We attest the foregoing as being a true copy of the original 10 September 1839 P. O. Donohoe ) Clerks to Messrs Few & Co Chas Marshall ) Solctrs ) Covent Garden London Aliens by the Statute laws of the State of Illinois can purchase and hold real Estate (Land) and may afterwards dispose of it by Will, Deed of Conveyance, or otherwise, without any limitation or restriction whatever and if the purchaser should chance to die intestate, it would descend to his heirs or next of kin of equal degree in equal proportions (the law of primogeniture not being in force in that Country) saving to the Widow, if any, in such cases the one third part of the land as dower during her natural life, and in respect to heirship, it makes no difference whether the children or next of kin of such Purchaser are at the time of his decease citizens of the United States, or subjects of Great Britain. It may not be unimportant also to know that land purchased originally from the United States at any of the Government Land offices in Illinois (there yet being a large portion of the public domain in that State unsold) is not subject to taxation for an)^ purpose whatsoever until the expiration of five years from the day of the purchase. This exemption is in consequence of a special compact between the United States and the State of Illinois, in consideration of certain immunities granted by the former to the latter. Richard M. Young of Quincy—Illinois and at present a Senator from that State to the Congress of the United States London Oct 25th 1839 267 Regent Street Honor to Whom Honor is Due.—This scriptural injunction was forgotten when some of Senator Douglas' Chicago friends proposed a celebration in his honor for the great work he had accomplished. It was to be for him and him only. Douglas himself saw this and protested somewhat in favor of others. He did not, however, even mention Breese, who, in any view of the history of the great work, should have been mentioned along with himself if not first of the two. Breese seeing the slight put upon him, like any other man of spirit, addressed to Douglas the letter of January 25, 1851, a few lines of the introductory part of which are as follows: "I thought I had discovered a studious endeavor on your part, and on the part of those with whom you have acted, to conceal from the public my agency in bringing the measure into favor, and in opening the way for successful legislation in regard to it. In none of the speeches and letters you and others who have your confidence, have made and written, has there been the least allusion to the part I have acted in the matter, nor in any of the papers in the state, supposed to be under your influence. Seeing this, and believing there was a concerted effort to appropriate to yourselves, exclusively, honors, to which I knew you were not entitled, I deemed it my duty, for the truth of history, to assert my claim, and in doing so, have been compelled, much against my will, to speak of myself, and of my acts in regard to it." In the language of lawyers, I respectfully sumbit that all that Judge Breese ever claimed for himself in regard to the Illinois Central Railroad has been fully established in the foregoing pages. 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/chapterx126gms.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/ilfiles/ File size: 47.2 Kb