Introduction

          The third largest city in the United States and the heart of a metropolitan area of over 8 million people, it is the commercial, financial, industrial, and cultural center for a vast region and a mid-continental shipping point. A major Great Lakes port, it is also an historic rail and highway hub. O'Hare International Airport is the second busiest in the nation. An enormous variety of goods are manufactured in the area. Despite an overall decline in industry, Chicago has retained large grain mills and elevators, iron- and steelworks, steel fabricators, and meatpacking, food-processing, chemical, machinery, and electronics plants. The city has long been a publishing center; the Chicago Tribune is among the most widely read newspapers in the country.

About Chicago

          Chicago covers over 200 sq mi (520 sq km); it extends more than 20 mi (32 km) along the lakefront, then sprawls inland to the west. Its metropolitan area stretches in the north to the Wisconsin border and in the south to industrial suburbs on and beyond the Indiana border. In addition to its noted expressways and boulevards, Chicago has a system of elevated (partly underground) railways that extend into the heart of the city, making a huge rectangle, the celebrated Loop, which gives its name to the downtown section.

          The city, although proud of its reputation for brawling lustiness, was also the center of Midwestern culture. Theodore Thomas and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra founded a great musical tradition. Chicago's literary reputation was established in the early 20th cent. by such men as Carl Sandburg, Theodore Dreiser, Eugene Field, Edgar Lee Masters, and James T. Farrell. Saul Bellow and Studs Terkel would continue this tradition later in the century.

          Most notable in the development of American thought and taste in art was the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. One of the architects at the fair was Louis H. Sullivas who, together with D. H. Burnham, John W. Root, Dankmar Adler, Frank Lloyd Wrighs and others, made Chicago a leading architectural center. In 1909, D. H. Burnham and Edward Bennett devised their Plan of Chicago, later known as the "Burnham Plan," a forward-looking piece of city planning containing many features that were implemented later. It was here that one of the distinctive U.S. contributions to architecture, the skyscrapers came into being. Chicago's continuing interest in this type of structure is seen in the John Hancock Center (1968), the Amoco Building (1973, now the Aon Center), and the Sears Tower (1974), which was the world's tallest building until the opening in 1997 of the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

History of Chicago

          Notable as dividing lines in the city are the two branches of the Chicago River. In early days the river was important because the narrow watershed between it and the Des Plaines River (draining into the Mississippi through the Illinois River) offered an easy portage that led explorers, fur traders, and missionaries from the Great Lakes to the Great Plains. Father Marquette and Louis Jolliet arrived here in 1673, and the spot was well known for a century before Jean Baptiste Point Sable (or Point DuSable or Point de Sable), a black man possibly of Haitian origin, set up a trading post at the mouth of the river. John Kinzie, who succeeded him as a trader, is usually called the father of Chicago.

          A military post, Fort Dearbors. was established in 1803. In the War of 1812 its garrison perished in one of the most famous tragedies of Western history. Fort Dearborn was rebuilt in 1816, and the construction of the Erie Canal in the next decade speeded the settling of the Midwest and the growth of Chicago. Harbor improvements, lake traffic, and the peopling of the prairie farmlands brought prosperity to the city. The Illinois and Michigan Canal, however, authorized by Congress in 1827 and completed in 1848, was soon rendered virtually obsolete by the arrival of railroads.

          Pioneer Illinois was both a place of escape and a land of hope for its earliest American settlers. In its latter capacity, it began to attract the attention of publicists and literary tourists as early as the years just after the War of 1812. The resulting promotional and travel literature, followed later by contemporary indigenous descriptions and reminiscent accounts by pioneers and political figures, ensured that much source material for historians would come to exist for this formative period in the state's history. Indeed, to a large extent the pioneer history of Illinois was the history of Illinois until the Civil War era, and a heavily studied portion of that history for the rest of the nineteenth century. Throughout the twentieth century, the preeminence of Abraham Lincoln also encouraged research on frontier Illinois, although admittedly much of it evinces a bias toward the biographical. The end result for the period has been an unusual richness of conventional sources as well as a considerable output of what might be called traditional "impressionistic" historical work.

          A military post, Fort Dearborn , was established in 1803. In the War of 1812 its garrison perished in one of the most famous tragedies of Western history. Fort Dearborn was rebuilt in 1816, and the construction of the Erie Canal in the next decade speeded the settling of the Midwest and the growth of Chicago. Harbor improvements, lake traffic, and the peopling of the prairie farmlands brought prosperity to the city. The Illinois and Michigan Canal, however, authorized by Congress in 1827 and completed in 1848, was soon rendered virtually obsolete by the arrival of railroads.

          Probably the best introduction to pioneer Illinois is still Theodore Calvin Pease, The Frontier State, 1818-1848 (Springfield, 1918). Although it lacks a quality of conceptual precision, Pease's book is full of information, and his insights and evaluations for the most part continue to be sound.

          The general buildup of population from Europe, the South, and the East is discussed in William V. Pooley, The Settlement of Illinois from 1830 to 1850 , Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin , History Series, 1 ( Madison, 1908), and Mark Wyman, Immigrants in the Valley: Irish, Germans, and Americans in the Upper Mississippi Country, 1830-1860 ( Chicago, 1984). Different groups and Louis Filler, The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830 -1860 ( 1960); Ray A. Billington, The Far Western Frontier, 1830 -1860 ( 1956); Harold U. Faulkner, Politics, Reform and Expansion, 1890-1900 ( 1959); Foster R. Dulles, America's Rise to World Power, 1898-1954 ( 1955); George E. Mowry, The Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 19001912 ( 1958); Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, 1910-1917 ( 1954); John D. Hicks, Republican Ascendancy, 1921-1933 ( 1960).

          By 1860 a number of rail lines connected Chicago with the rest of the nation, and the city was launched on its career as the great mid continental shipping center. Gurdon S. Hubbard had already contributed to the establishment of the meatpacking industry, with its large stockyards. In 1871 the shambling city built of wood was almost entirely destroyed by a great fire (according to legend started when Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicked over a lantern), which killed several hundred people, rendered 90,000 homeless, and destroyed some $200 million worth of property. Chicago was rebuilt as a city of stone and steel. Industries sprang up, attracting thousands of immigrants. Many ethnic groups contributed to the modern city, including Germans, Scandinavians, Irish, Jews, Italians, Poles, Czechs, African Americans, Lithuanians, Croats, Greeks, and Chinese. With industry came labor strife, highlighted by the Haymarket Square riot of 1886 and the great strikes at Pullman in 1894 (see Debs, Eugene V. , and Altgeld, John P. ). Upton Sinclair's novel of the Chicago stockyards, The Jungle, aroused public indignation and led to investigations and improvements.

          In 1837, when Chicago became a city, the members of the common council were made commissioners of schools for the city and ten school inspectors were elected. The schools were placed on a permanent and self-supporting basis by a special act of the legislature in 1839. In November, 1840, free public schools were permanently established and a Board of Inspectors was organized.

          Agriculture, of course, has been the mainstay of Illinois' economic life since early statehood, and for the study of pioneer Illinois farming, Allen G. Bogue, From Prairie to Corn Belt: Farming on the Illinois and Iowa Prairies in the Nineteenth Century ( Chicago, 1963) is without peer. Bogue uses both traditional and innovative sources and techniques, and covers the farm-making process from land acquisition through the development of equipment and the adaptation of crops and livestock appropriate to the needs of prairie farmers. Bogue's approach to agricultural history builds on Paul W. Gates work, especially Landlords and Tenants on the Prairie Frontier: Studies in American Land Policy (Ithaca, 1973), a collection of articles including three published in the 1940s that relate to Illinois: "Land Policy and Tenancy in the Prairie States," "Frontier Landlords and Pioneer Tenants," and "Cattle Kings in the Prairies." These studies tend to emphasize the apparently anomalous development of large landholdings in early Illinois in spite of a land policy supposedly intended to benefit small farmers.

          Political history is central to the treatments by Ford, Pease, and Buley; they are limited by the source materials their authors consulted and by the questions they asked of them. Ford's major source, of course, was his memory; Pease and Buley relied on such traditional evidence as newspapers and manuscript collections. Their books are therefore full of rather old-fashioned political history, including election campaigns and the rivalries of factional leaders. They generally overlook such matters as legislative or electoral behavior that are more difficult to document. Another work that is basic to an understanding of the politics of the era is John Francis Snyder, Adam W. Snyder and His Period in Illinois History, 1817-1842 ( Springfield, 1903; revised ed., Virginia, Ill., 1906). Although opinionated, and part biography, part reminiscence, and part history, it contains information not found elsewhere.

          The conditions of state politics in Illinois from 1818 to 1848 were set by the faulty first state constitution. Thomas Ford in his History acerbically commented on some of its weaknesses, and Arnold Shankman more temperately points out some others in "Partisan Conflicts, 1839-1841, and the Illinois Constitution," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, 63 (Winter 1970). Arthur Charles Cole , ed., The Constitutional Debates of 1847, Collections of the Illinois State Historical Library, 14 ( 1919), details the proceedings of the convention that jettisoned that instrument.

          Considering the frequency of vigilantism across the state in the 1830s and 1840s, there are surprisingly few studies of violence, law enforcement, and the judiciary in frontier Illinois. On the courts in general, John Wesley McNulty work on Sidney Breese is helpful. His Ph.D. dissertation, "Chief Justice Sidney Breese and the Illinois Supreme Court: A Study of Law and Politics in the Old West" (Harvard Univ., 1962), was followed by two articles, "Sidney Breese: His Early Career in Law and Politics in Illinois," Newspapers in the early days of Chicago, as in other parts of the country, were marked primarily by their political affiliations. They were party or personal organs and were only beginning to be NEWSpapers.

          The breakup of the old political parties began to be manifest in 1848. Many Whigs were leaving that party to join the Free Soil group (Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, Free Men). Perhaps it was the first time anyone had heard of the "Four Freedoms." Van Buren was the Free Soil candidate. The abolitionists had started the Native American or KnowNothing movement, nominating John P. Hale for president.

          The Tribune and the Journal, accusing each other, disputed in 1849 over which paper had supported slavery. Slavery had been a steadily mounting national issue for the last decade, with the abolitionists becoming so radical that they proposed disunion as one way out. The British, who had been blamed for permitting slavery in the colonies and for its subsequent growth, had in the meantime abolished this traffic in human beings in the West Indies, and British speakers were fomenting the issue in this country, taking the abolition side. It was suggested at a later period that the British were seeking to break up the United States; that its ruling classes had always been the enemies of this Republic. The Tribune agreed with this, but thought that the common people of England were with the people of this country in ideals, a view which was to be borne out by the development of the Civil War.

          The great issue had been settled, it was thought, by the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which provided, after the admission of Missouri as a slave state, that slavery should never be extended north of 36 degrees, 30 minutes latitude. New territory added by the Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican War.

          Any agenda for further research on frontier Illinois politics should include additional analysis of existing poll books for such key counties as Sangamon, to expand on John Rozett's work. Also needed is a study of the development of the General Assembly, both structurally and in terms of its output; very little is generally known about state legislatures in the nineteenth century, although Rodney O. Davis, "'The People in Miniature': The Illinois General Assembly, 1818-1848," Illinois Historical Journal, 81 (Summer 1988), is a start for Illinois. The pioneer judiciary of Illinois would reward systematic investigation, for this is a field that is yet basically pristine. Equally undone is any consideration of the federal influence in the state's early political system, through the agencies of land office personnel, judges, and U.S. marshals. And in spite of the past emphasis on biography, there are still important full political biographies to be written and published. Ninian Edwards, Edward Coles, John Reynolds, and Thomas Ford all continue to rate scholarly attention.

          This was the year (1849) that Lincoln returned from Congress to Illinois to practice law on the old Eighth Judicial circuit, a time of preparation for him in political thought, the calm before the storm of 1854. Senator Douglas, whom John Wentworth pictured as the young giant of the West, had just moved to Chicago from Quincy, had bought a large south side acreage, and was tiding high in favor at home and in Washington. It looked then as if Lincoln was making no progress; that Douglas was the man of the future.

          In these middle years of the nineteenth century a period of slow but steady expansion began for the Tribune. Its changes in political principles at this time may have had something to do with its expansion, but the newspaper itself began to improve and offered more features. In 1851 the paper was five columns in width; in 1852, seven columns; and later that year, when Fowler took charge, with Henry Duane Wilson as political editor and Stewart as local and commercial editor, it went to nine columns and began to boast of being the largest paper in Illinois. Mr. Scripps had sold his interest to the Whigs, represented by Wilson, in June, 1852.

          More correspondence began to be printed under fancy pen names and on December 13, 1852, a "home department" was established, "edited by a lady," name unknown. She began to write about wash houses for the poor and mud versus ladies in Chicago's streets. The mud squirted through the planks upon the ladies' dresses, it appears, and much was to be desired in the way of municipal cleanliness.

          In the same year the Tribune added a new press room with a Hoe cylinder and an Adams press and proudly "invited the ladies in" to inspect it. Its home was now in the Evans Block on Clark Street opposite the Sherman House. Another "telegraph service" was added. The paper of that period stood for a tariff, according to Whig principles. This may seem unimportant in view of the greater issue of slavery, but the question of the tariff was to become of increasing political importance. In 1860 it was Lincoln's stand on the protective tariff that endeared him to the Republicans of Pennsylvania, rather than his slavery views. And, incidentally, the vote of that state was necessary to his nomination and election.

          In May, 1850, the Tribune made another move, to the second floor of the Masonic Building, 173 Lake Street. The paper's pages were widened by a column and lengthened to 26 by 40 inches. It began to print the news of hotel arrivals and to boast of its circulation. From July, 1850, to October, 1851, the daily circulation increased from 1,120 to 1,800. The paper was printed on an Adams power press owned by the firm of Wight and Bross, proprietors of the Herald of the Prairies .

          In July, 1850, on the occasion of the death of President Zachary Taylor, Abraham Lincoln, then in the city trying a law suit, was asked by the citizens to deliver the eulogy. The Tribune reported and commended the address highly. An act of February 25, 1845, defined the rate of school tax and authorized the council to impose one mill on the dollar. The charter of 1851 gave the council the power to establish and maintain schools and to manage school finance. In 1854 the first superintendent of schools was elected and a charter amendment of February 16, 1857, established a board of education.

          Notable as dividing lines in the city are the two branches of the Chicago River. In early days the river was important because the narrow watershed between it and the Des Plaines River (draining into the Mississippi through the Illinois River) offered an easy portage that led explorers, fur traders, and missionaries from the Great Lakes to the Great Plains. Father Marquette and Louis Jolliet arrived here in 1673, and the spot was well known for a century before Jean Baptiste Point Sable (or Point DuSable or Point de Sable), a black man possibly of Haitian origin, set up a trading post at the mouth of the river. John Kinzie, who succeeded him as a trader, is usually called the father of Chicago. The Civil War era brought Illinois to the height of its importance in the nation. Between 1850 and 1860, the population of Illinois increased from 851,470 to 1,711,951, and its ranking among the states advanced from eleventh to fourth. Four successive presidential elections beginning in 1860 placed an Illinois resident in the White House. A few miles of unprofitable railroad at the beginning of 1848 expanded to a comprehensive network by 1870. Chicago grew from a town to the capital of the Midwest (Arthur Charles Cole, The Era of the Civil War, 1848-1870 Springfield, 1919) stands as the work that defines the period and still provides the best comprehensive survey. Prodigious research included use of nearly every extant Illinois newspaper. As Cole's work suggests, the Civil War generation cared passionately about politics, and later generations cared passionately about Abraham Lincoln. Much of Illinois history in this period is most easily accessible through the Lincoln literature, which is discussed in a later chapter.

          Prominent Illinois Democrats of Lincoln's day have usually received inadequate treatment. The magnificent exception is Robert W. Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas ( New York, 1973), which supplants all other Douglas biographies. Johannsen also edited The Letters of Stephen A. Douglas ( Urbana, 1961). Potential biographers might profitably look to other Democrats for a subject, despite the fact that Democrats are underrepresented in manuscript collections.

          The paper's first annual trade review, child of Scripps' energy, was printed on December 28, 1850. Andreas in his History of Chicago presents a facsimile of this paper's first page. Nearly all the four pages were occupied by this review and by small ads. Commerce, real estate, and city improvements were covered carefully. According to the paper there were now six exchange dealers or banks in the city, thirty-two forwarding and commission merchants, fourteen wholesale grocers, fifty lumber dealers, and a large number of drug, hardware, leather, and other merchants. The streets were being planked, 240 miles having been laid during the year. On September 4, 1850, Chicago was lighted by gas for the first time. It had 112 street and bridge lamps. European news as published was a month or more old, fresh from some steamship just arrived in New York.

          In July, 1851, Mr. Wheeler disposed of his interest in the Tribune to Thomas J. Waite, who became business manager. Wheeler went to New York, where he died a few years later. Waite, who was only twenty-two years old, died on August 26, 1852, of cholera, and his interest was bought from his estate by Henry Fowler, who later became a Presbyterian minister in Auburn, New York. An evening edition of the paper was printed for a few months in 1850-51.

References:

Dick Simpson; 2001. Rogues, Rebels, and Rubber Stamps: The Politics of the Chicago City Council from           1863 to the Present Westview Press.

Michael Kammen; 1997. In the Past lane: Historical Perspectives on American Culture Oxford University           Press.

Peterson Virgil W. 1952. Barbarians in Our Midst: A History of Chicago Crime and Politics . Boston,

Pierce Bessie Louise. A History of Chicago . 3 vols. Chicago, 1937-57.

Weber Harry P. Outline History of Chicago Traction . N.p., n.d.