mhhbbHHHHHhBHBHbB X"\ 3'^ s ES lanwvunQOKOQIMWB SSSS WBBHBf Class __ Book Gopyriglit^ . COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. THE HISTORY OF INDIANA FOR BOYS AND GIRLS BY CHARLES W. MOORES AUTHOR OF The Life of Abraham Lincoln for Boys and Girls The L'fe of Christopher Columbus for Boys and Girls BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY (£bc RiticrsiDc press Cambciboe ZL CONTENTS I. In the Wilderness l II. Indians and Pioneers 12 III. Birth of the State 2 3 IV. The New Capital 33 V. Indiana before the War 4 2 VI. War-Time and After 53 VII. The Hoosier 62 COPYRIGHT, I916, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY SEP -5 1916 3>CI.A4:{7527 Ov4> / , THE HISTORY OF INDIANA CHAPTER I IN THE WILDERNESS i. The Indian inhabitants and the coming of the French. Indiana became one of the United States in 1816. Her first white visitors a century and a half earlier, under the leader- ship of the French explorer La Salle, found here a wooded wilderness in the undisturbed possession of Indians, who lived on such products of the soil as they could cultivate without tools and on the game they secured with traps and arrows. Soon the Jesuit missionaries began to come, one at a time, entering the Indiana country from Lake Erie by way of the Maumee River, carrying their light canoes over a nine-mile portage through the woods near what is now Fort Wayne, and reembarking upon the Wabash River to follow it to its mouth. Other adventurous French priests found their way from the northeast to the headwaters of the Ohio River, and, drifting with its rapid current as far as the Illinois border, pushed up the Wabash to where Lafayette now stands. To their superiors in Quebec and in far-off France these devoted men carried back their story of a race of intelligent and hospitable natives who lived in the rich Indiana valleys and had not yet begun to hate or fear the white invader. Following the trail of these early missionaries, but drawn by the spirit of adventure and the love of gain, there came next the forest rangers and fur traders to live among the natives, in Indian fashion, and engage in commerce with them. These first fur traders were hospitably received, as the missionaries had been, for they came with no thought of settlement and their coming did not threaten the expulsion 2 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA of the natives. But while they kept the good-will of the In- dians, they brought the beginning of trouble, for they taught the red men of the West the use of firearms and the taste of whiskey. To the wilderness of Indiana and the prairies of Illinois, discovered by La Salle in the seventeenth century and visited by French missionaries and French fur traders, the crown of France at once laid claim. In due time log forts were built along the Wabash and the banner of France was flung to the breeze to tell of King Louis's sovereignty and to warn English explorers and settlers to keep away. These forts at Miamis (near Fort Wayne) and Ouiatanon (near Lafayette) and Vincennes were trading posts rather than fortifications, and here French adventurer and Indian trader met upon friendly terms beneath a flag whose real mean- ing the red men never understood. 2. Beginning of British rule. As a result of the French- and-Indian Wars in the middle of the eighteenth century, France lost her American possessions east of the Missis- sippi River. Her flag came down from the little log forts in the Wabash Valley and in Illinois and her control over all the western territory passed into British hands. At that time in what is now Indiana there were only a few thousand Indians. Some of these lived in a handful of vil- lages, less than half a dozen in number; others ranged the forest at large. All of them lived north of the Wabash. The only white families were those of the French traders who gathered for protection at Post Ouiatanon and at Vincennes. Not more than eight hundred white people called Indiana their home. With the beginning of British rule after the treaty of l 7&3i good feeling between Indians and the whites ended in the Northwest. The American pioneers, British subjects, began to build homes in the wilderness. This meant the cutting-down of the forests, the seizure of the land, the conversion of boundless hunting grounds into farms and settlements, and in time, the expulsion of the Indians. IN THE WILDERNESS 3 3. Life among the British pioneers. The change from French to British rule was a gradual one. The frontier was not attractive to the British military governors who came to Indiana to stay among a people whom they did not under- stand and for whom they had little sympathy. The Indians had reason to hate their new rulers; and the French, simple- minded, easy-going, and usually illiterate, seemed to the British to be wholly bad. Evil as was the first British opin- ion of the people in the Wabash country, the grave danger of disease, particularly of malaria, added still more to the discontent of the British newcomers in the performance of their governmental duties. Thomas Hutchins reported to the Government in 1768: " The fever and ague has raged with such uncommon violence as to put it out of our power to do scarce anything more than to bury some of our new officers and men." And Lieutenant Fraser described the Indians as " cruel, treacherous and cowardly," and the French traders as " unconscientious rascals " with an uncanny power over the Indians and a " passion for drunk- enness." Doubtless many of the fur traders were a hard lot and in their intimate life among the savages had debased both their Indian associates and themselves. But the Vincennes French lived a harmless and a happy life and gave to the old trading settlement a distinct charm, as if a bit of pro- vincial France had been transplanted to the wilderness. The dress of these pioneers was more elaborate than that of their Indian neighbors, but the men went barefoot and were content with leather trousers and hunting shirt, held together by a belt of the same material. Their society dress substituted for the belt a gayly beaded broad sash. The women wore a skirt to the knees which revealed below a petticoat of bright colors extending to the ankles. Feast days and holidays were many, and games and dances and music, especially in the winter time, made life in this little French community a less solemn affair than it was to the Americans who came to live among them. 4 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA 4. The Indians become hostile. Firearms and whiskey made dangerous neighbors of the once friendly Indians. The missionary priests, even with the support of the hand- ful of French settlers about the trading posts, found it im- possible to civilize the Indians or to keep their confidence, while increasing numbers of lawless forest rangers and trappers were teaching them intemperance and dishonesty and vice. Friendship between the races disappeared and the lonely log cabin in the forest became the pioneer's castle, fortified against Indian treachery and watched over as far as possible, when danger threatened, by the garri- son at the once peaceful trading posts. As the subjects of King George III came in increasing numbers, the Indians, already suspicious and unfriendly, were encouraged by their French friends to a more open hostility against the English. 5. The Revolutionary War unites the American and French settlers. South of the Ohio, emigrants from Vir- ginia had been moving across the mountains into Kentucky, and had opened up little settlements as far in the interior as the Falls of the Ohio, at Louisville. The Revolutionary War came on. Three years of unsuc- cessful fighting in the seaboard States had brought little encouragement to the American army. But in 1778 the treaty between the United States and France gave to Wash- ington a new French army and the promise of money to keep up the war. The news of the French alliance as it reached the frontier gave to the old French settlers and their newer American neighbors a common interest in resisting British rule, and put it into the heads of the pioneers to send to Virginia for help in expelling the common enemy. Fort Sackville, as the Vincennes post was now called, had become the center from which Colonel Henry Hamilton, the British military governor, hired Indians to go out among the homes along the Kentucky border, burning property and bringing in the scalps of American settlers. IN THE WILDERNESS 5 6. The settlers appeal to Virginia for help against the British. The Virginia emigrants, whose families were vic- tims of these raids into the Kentucky country, naturally deemed the defense of their homes as important as the military operations in the East, and they sent the best- known of their young woodsmen, George Rogers Clark, a frontier surveyor, back to old Virginia as a member of her legislature, and charged him especially with the duty of securing military protection. Clark was more than the emissary of a defenseless peo- ple. He was a modest young man twenty-five years old, tall and strong and dignified as the Indians whom he under- stood so well, and with a power of endurance and a heart of courage that any Indian might have envied; and he knew the wilderness by heart. The Virginia legislature having adjourned, he submitted to Governor Patrick Henry the necessity for the defense of the Kentucky frontier, and then demonstrated his own secret plan for wresting the Northwest Territory from the English by the capture of the wilderness forts along the Wabash and at Kaskaskia on the Mississippi. Although scarcely more than a boy, Clark had the confidence and friendship of Thomas Jefferson, and was able to command a sympathetic hearing from Governor Henry. Out of it all came two letters of instruction from the Virginia gov- ernor, a public letter commissioning Clark as lieutenant- colonel to raise troops for service in Kentucky, and a secret letter authorizing the enlistment of three hundred and fifty men " to attack the British post at Kaskaskia " and erect a new military post at Louisville. Still a third letter, signed by Thomas Jefferson and others, promised to the soldiers who would enlist a liberal grant out of the land which they might conquer " in the country now in the possession of the Indians, if they are so fortunate to succeed." 7. George Rogers Clark's campaign against the British. Full as the story of the American Revolution is of splendid sacrifice and romantic adventure, no campaign among them 6 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA all, not even that of Valley Forge, involved greater suffer- ing or called for finer courage than the journey of George Rogers Clark and his little army into the wilderness, and their conquest from Great Britain of the great Northwest Territory, out of which came the States of Wisconsin, Michi- gan, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and part of Minnesota. When Clark's men reached the Falls of the Ohio with the powder and supplies Virginia had given them at Pittsburg, they left their families on Corn Island. Then the force, one hundred and seventy-five strong, embarked, and — to the terror of the superstitious among them — shot the Falls of the Ohio just as a total eclipse of the sun came on. The soldiers kept to their boats until they neared the Illinois country, when they left their little fleet. Then, without wagons or horses to carry their military equipment, they started on a tramp of a hundred and twenty miles through the bottom- less prairie mire and over an unknown wilderness of woods, streams, and swamp to the settlement at Kaskaskia. This journey they covered in a week, and relying, as they knew they could, on the encouragement of the French inhabitants, they hid until midnight, when they slipped into the fort and surprised the British commandant, Philip Rocheblave, in his sleep. Clark's own history of the incident is brief: " I broke into the fort and secured the governor." The fort with all its supplies fell into Clark's hands without the firing of a shot, and with it the command of the Mississippi River at that point. 8. Clark wins the support of the French settlers and the Indians. Clark easily won the allegiance of the French settlers at Kaskaskia when he explained to a group of their frightened leaders that, although prisoners of the American army, they would be freed and given " all the privileges of our government" and the secure possession of all their property, if they would agree to espouse the American cause. The parish priest, Father Pierre Gibault, was the one leader on whom they all relied, and when he asked per- mission to assemble his people in the church and decide IN THE WILDERNESS 7 what to do, Clark gave his consent and assured Father Gibault that the religion and the personal welfare of his people would not be disturbed. This converted the priest into an active supporter of the American cause. A short and successful campaign followed against the other forts along the Mississippi farther north and opened the way for the taking of Vincennes. Father Gibault, full of enthusiasm for the American cause, agreed to attempt a parochial visit to the little settlement on the Wabash, and taking Dr. Jean Lafont with him as Clark's representative, succeeded so well that Gibault's friends at Vincennes raised the American flag over the settlement, and converted the fort, temporarily abandoned by its English governor, into an American post. Thus far the conquest of the Northwest had called for no righting. Endurance and diplomacy had brought success. Clark had readily won the support of the French, partly because of their dislike of the English, but quite as much because of his own attractive personality and his tact and wisdom in dealing with simple and straightforward men. He knew that if the British garrison should return, he could not hope to hold Vincennes without a fight, for he had left only one man in charge and one private soldier with him. Moreover, he had reason to fear that the Indians of the Wabash country might join the British forces and drive the Americans back to Kentucky. With the same diplomacy which had won him the French support, he went to work to arrange an alliance with the Indians and to assure their neutrality in the coming struggles with the English. It is strange that he succeeded, for he had no money and could not offer any of the gifts with which the favor of the In- dians had always to be bought. 9. A winter of hardships. Meanwhile Governor Hamilton at Detroit had learned of the loss of Kaskaskia and Vin- cennes, and in the early winter brought a force of some six hundred men down the Wabash and recaptured the fort from Clark's garrison of two men. 8 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA When the news reached Clark that the British had re- turned and retaken Fort Sackville, his situation was des- perate. He was in the heart of the wilderness, with the enemy in overwhelming numbers between him and the Kentucky frontier. The period of enlistment had expired and his men were free to return to Virginia. Many of them were eager to do so. His French allies, although friendly, were naturally discouraged over Governor Hamilton's re- turn. Winter had brought new dangers, for the Wabash was in flood and the prairies for miles on each side were covered with water and ice. There was no game, for the waters had driven animal life back to higher land. The food supply was nearly gone. His little army of Americans and French was not strong enough to meet the enemy, and there was no hope of reenforcement from far-off Virginia. He made up his mind that the apparent impossibility of the undertaking would prove his greatest safeguard, and he determined to defy the midwinter ice and flood and take the British by surprise. Clark had the qualities of a great general, for by means of spies he kept himself always informed of the position and strength of the enemy, while at the same time with marvel- ous skill he kept the enemy in ignorance of what he was doing. To take Fort Sackville called for more than courage. It required the genius of generalship. The odds against Clark were such that before he could surprise the British by an assault he must learn all he could about the state of affairs within the fort. In this crisis a new-found friend came to his help just as Father Gibault had done before. Colonel Francis Vigo, a Spanish veteran trading at St. Louis, volunteered to visit the British post and secure the desired information. Vigo succeeded in getting himself taken as a prisoner of war, but by the help of his French friends at Vincennes secured his freedom and returned to Clark with the much-needed information that Hamilton was in winter quarters, and, ex- pecting no trouble, had let many of his men go until the IN THE WILDERNESS 9 return of spring would enable them to commence their cam- paign against the Americans. It was now February and Clark realized that the sur- prise he had planned must fail unless carried out at once. To carry the heavier stores of ammunition and supplies the Americans built a large boat, equipped it with two four- pound cannon and four large swivel guns and put it in charge of Lieutenant Rogers. " The vessel," Clark re- ported afterwards, " was much admired by the inhabitants, as no such thing had been seen in the country before. Many, anxious to retrieve their characters, turned out, and the ladies began also to be spirited and interest them- selves in the expedition, which had great effect on the young men." Recruits were secured from the French of Kaskaskia and the vicinity and the boat was sent by the Mississippi and Ohio to wait at a point below Vincennes for Clark's little army to arrive overland. Good Father Gibault and a crowd of his French parish- ioners escorted the land party out of the town, and the priest, " after a suitable discourse to the purpose," Clark writes, " gave us all absolution. We set out on a forlorn hope, indeed, for our whole party, with the boat's crew, consisted of only a little upwards of two hundred." At the very start of their two-hundred-and-forty-mile journey they found floods everywhere. Clark's " greatest care was to divert the men as much as possible in order to keep up their spirits." The last nine miles was flooded all the way. The food had given out on February 18, and the water for four miles was breast-high and full of ice. The hunger and pain these men suffered for four weary days threw them into despair. They could not safely retreat, and the thought of an assault upon the British fort on the farther bank of the Wabash filled them with terror. A little drummer boy twelve years old saved the day, for when Colonel Clark mounted the lad on the shoulders of a stalwart Virginia trooper six feet two in height and bade him beat the charge upon his drum, the boy fell to with such io THE HISTORY OF INDIANA spirit that Clark drew his sword and plunged breast deep into the freezing flood with the command, Forward march! and the little army of pioneers forgot their cold and hunger and laughed at their quaint musician as they followed on. At last, on the 24th of February, 1779, Vincennes was reached and, preparatory to the assault, the good-will of the French inhabitants was assured. Without disclosing how absurdly small his " army " was, Clark wrote to Gov- ernor Hamilton demanding the surrender of Fort Sackville, and adding, " Beware of destroying stores of any kind that are in your possession; for, by Heaven, if you do, there shall be no mercy shown you." 10. The British governor surrenders. The battle was fought. The American pioneers were masters of the rifle, and their every shot reached its mark. Inside the fort, Hamilton, ignorant of the enemy's strength, but imagining himself greatly outnumbered, spent the evening playing cards with his prisoner, Captain Helm, Clark's commandant during the few weeks of the American possession in the early winter. One of Clark's men, knowing where Helm's quarters were, amused himself by firing his bullets so they would knock the clay from the chimney into the apple toddy which Helm was sure to have standing upon his hearth. Captain Helm felt the humor of the situation and tried to prepare for the morrow's surrender by convincing his Brit- ish captor that not even a tankard of toddy was safe against a Kentuckian's marksmanship. Outside the fort the Americans had not forgotten that Governor Hamilton was the man who had hired the In- dians to raid the Kentucky border, and with scalping knife and tomahawk and firebrand, to make of that country what its name signified, " the dark and bloody ground." As they at last had found their opportunity to avenge the sorrows of their own people, they fought to win. After eighteen hours' resistance, on February 25 Governor Hamilton surrendered the fort and all of his supplies and was sent to Virginia as a prisoner of war. IN THE WILDERNESS n ii. The Northwest Territory becomes a part of the United States. The surrender of Fort Sackville was the beginning of the end. Between Vincennes and Detroit, up the Wabash Valley, a few scattering posts still remained under British control, but they soon passed into the hands of the Americans, and the War of the American Revolu- tion, so far as the territory northwest of the Ohio River was concerned, was over. The territory, by the generalship of George Rogers Clark and the courage of his men, became a possession of the State of Virginia, and, for all time, a part of the United States. QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS 1. What years are covered by this chapter? 2. What four classes of French people came to that part of the country that is now called Indiana? 3. Review in your history the account of the Jesuit missionaries and give the story of one of them. 4. Make a list of all the places mentioned in this chapter and locate them on the map. 5. What influence did Patrick Henry have in bringing on the Revolu- tion? 6. What three men were most prominent in wresting the Northwest Territory from the British? 7. Why did the Northwest Territory become a possession of Virginia rather than of some other State? COMPOSITION SUBJECTS 1. Write an account of the life of a French or English family settled in the Northwest Territory at the time of George Rogers Clark. 2. Write the conversation, as it might have taken place, between Clark and Governor Patrick Henry when Clark applied for help in taking the Northwest Territory from the British. CHAPTER II INDIANS AND PIONEERS 12. The Indians become weakened and hostile by con- tact with white people. The only people who ever kept up neighborly relations with the Indians in the Wabash coun- try were the French. Through all the years the French forest rangers, fur traders, priests, and even settlers con- tinued to be their friends. Many of the French fur traders married Indian women and settled down to a half-civilized life among the natives. Between the two races there was no reason for misunderstanding, for the French did not covet the Indian lands and had no thought of crowding the Indians out. But as the American colonists began to settle in the wilderness, the French and Indians alike foresaw the inevi- table breaking-up of their fur trade and the destruction of their vast hunting grounds. In France's war with England over their American bound- aries the Indians naturally joined with their friends the French and fought the invading Americans in the savage fashion, making occasional forays into the white settle- ments to destroy property and frighten the settlers away. Later, when the American colonies rebelled against Eng- lish rule, the English soldiers upon the frontier hired the Indians to wage a terrorizing war against the Americans. This, as we have seen, was kept up until the influence of the French in the latter part of the Revolution softened the hostility of the savages. But through a century of contact with the whites the red men had sunk lower and lower. Fighting the white man's wars and drinking his liquor took from the Indian all the respect and love he once had for his white neighbor. The new settler encountered a different sort of Indian from the INDIANS AND PIONEERS 13 kind the early French priest and trapper had lived with. Enmity between the races was established and the immi- grants who came thronging into the new territory came determined to expel the Indians, either by treaty or by the rifle. 13. General St. Claims defeat. Indian depredations in- creased and the cry of distress went up from the scattered settlements north of the Ohio and along the entire Ken- tucky border. A little army of fourteen hundred untrained soldiers was sent by President Washington into the heart of the Indian country, under the command of General Arthur St. Clair, the governor of the Northwest Territory, with instructions to suppress the Indian uprisings and if possible frighten the savages into accepting terms of peace. St. Clair's campaign ended with a single short battle on the Ohio line, near the headwaters of the Wabash. Chiefs Blue Jacket and Little Turtle with their braves surrounded the American camp in the night, and in the early morning of November 4, 1791, began the slaughter. Of two hundred and fifty women who had come to share with their husbands the dangers of the campaign, only a few escaped with the surviving remnant of St. Clair's army. 14. General Wayne's victory and the founding of the city of Fort Wayne. This defeat to the American arms made all efforts toward peace impossible for a time. The Indian outrages continued for three years until General Anthony Wayne, with a much stronger army, again met Little Turtle and his braves near the head of the Maumee River and fought and won the battle of Fallen Timbers. The Indians had been encouraged in their warfare by the British, who, in spite of the Treaty of 1783, were still trying to hold a part of the Northwest Territory, but Wayne's victory had its effect upon the savages and quieted the activities of their British allies. From his headquarters at Fort Defiance, a few miles to the east, Wayne sent to the defeated enemy this warning against their British allies: 11 Brothers, be no longer led astray by the false promises of 14 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA the bad white men at the foot of the Rapids, for they have neither the power nor the inclination to protect you." He at once built a fort at the head of the Maumee River, in order to secure the fruits of his victory and stop the en- croachments of the meddling British. The fort was called Fort Wayne in his honor, and became the site of an impor- tant and growing city of the same name. Courtesy Hyman-Coitman Centennial History af Indian AN OLD VIEW OF FORT WAYNE Erected in 1704 by order of General Wayne. Across the Maumee just below this fort was fought the disastrous battle between General Harmar's men and Chief Little Turtle's Miarnia in 1790 15. The Treaty of Greenville. In June. 1795, General Wayne called the chiefs together at Greenville, Ohio, to conclude a treaty of peace. This treaty gave to the whites all the Indian lands in Ohio to the south and east of Green- ville, and in Indiana a wedge-shaped strip east of a line running from Greenville to the mouth of the Kentucky River, besides Clark's Grant, opposite Louisville, Kentucky, and a few small parcels already occupied by the whites at Fort Wayne, Ouiatanon, and Vincennes. When Wayne dismissed the peace council he made a farewell speech to the INDIANS AND PIONEERS 15 tribes in which he said: " I fervently pray the Great Spirit that the peace now established may be permanent and hold us together in the bonds of friendship until time shall be no more." But his prayer was not to be granted, for Indian wars and periods of peace, turn about, continued until the year 1818, when the entire State of Indiana was at last thrown open for settlement and the removal of all the more important tribes to the west of the Mississippi made the new country a safe place for the home-builders from the South and East who were waiting, eager to "go in and possess the land." 16. Revolutionary veterans settle in the West. The end- ing of the Revolutionary War had released a vast army from military duty. These veterans were young men who had been following Washington and his generals for eight years. They were used to hardships of all kinds, fond of the out- of-doors, and responsive to the spirit of adventure. As the army disbanded the men found themselves out of employ- ment and out of funds. The Continental Congress had no money to pay their long delinquent wages, but it began to plan for discharging its heavy debt by promising them homestead lands at a nominal price in the new Northwest whenever the Indians could be induced to give up their hunting grounds and go beyond the Mississippi River. Without waiting to secure the consent of the Indians the Government confirmed the gift by Virginia to the men who had taken Kaskaskia and Vincennes and gave them a whole county of rich forest lands known as " Clark's Grant," at the very spot north of the Falls of the Ohio where George Rogers Clark and his men had left their families in 1779 and undertaken the conquest of the wilderness. Southern Ohio, along the river, was taken first, and every- body, in Congress and out, bought land. President Wash- ington himself took up several thousand acres as far west as the present eastern boundary of Indiana. 17. Two streams of immigrants. As the Indians began to move farther back, a flood of emigration, gathering along 16 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA the Atlantic seaboard, found its way through the Wilder- ness Trail into Kentucky and thence northward, and down the Ohio into Indiana and Illinois. A smaller stream of emigration followed the Great Lakes and the Maumee River into the Wabash Valley, and from Lake Michigan into the valleys of the St. Joseph and the Tippecanoe, in northern Indiana. From the time the French surrendered the territory to the British in 1765 until near the end of the century there was almost no increase in population. The French settlement at Vincennes grew a little by the coming of a few immigrants from Kentucky. Clark's Grant attracted a few sturdy vet- erans of the Revolution, who came in 1786. Occasional settlers were beginning to clear the way for their log cabins about Vevay and Lawrenceburg and Jeffersonville, in the valley of the Ohio, and in the rich river bottoms of what has always been called the Pocket, at the mouth of the Wabash River. Immigration was slow at first because of the fear of the Indians rather than the difficulties in clearing the forests and opening the roads. But after treaties had been made with the savages the new country lost its chief terror and the stream of immigration became an irresistible flood. 18. Difficulties of travel in the wilderness. A traveler in the twentieth century finds it hard to picture to himself the Indiana wilderness of a hundred years ago. He does not even understand why the crude maps of that day gave so much importance to the rivers, and why the books of travel and later the gazetteers and geographies named and de- scribed so carefully every little stream in the State. We who travel by railway and over paved highways forget that the first settlers had to build their wagon-roads and bridle- paths through dense woods, and that, for forty years, travel by land anywhere in Indiana was over winding ways among stumps and fallen timber cleared out with the axe, and al- ways unpaved. And always in the half darkness of the woods there was the unspeakable terror of the savage in hid- INDIANS AND PIONEERS 17 ing behind some tree, ready to kill. There were no wide prairie landscapes as in Illinois and farther west. On ac- count of the labor and the dangers of road-building the first settlements were along the rivers, which furnished a natural highway for travel that, clown stream at least, was always easy to follow and comparatively safe. On the Ohio and the Wabash when there was reason to fear the rifle of some Indian skulking along the bank, wide planks were set up along the edge of the boat to protect those on board. For immigrants coming from the East, the Ohio River was the route most often chosen by those bound for the Indi- ana country. At the first it was easy enough to drift down the swift current of the stream and find unoccupied lands along the northern bank. But to reach the interior of In- diana by water was not so easy. The steamboat was not yet invented. The smaller streams were obstructed by fallen trees and the resisting current of the larger streams made it hard for the navigator to propel his heavily loaded boat by long poles pushed against the bottom. He had to pick his way through the shallows and along the eddies nearer shore and he found there the overhanging branches and the waterlogged timbers always in the way. The settlements along the Ohio River began at Clark's Grant in 1786. Land farther north was richer and more desirable, but hard to reach because of the difficulty of traveling up the streams and the greater barrier which the dense forests presented. It was twenty years before the incoming settlers pressed their way up the valley of the Whitewater toward Brookville and Richmond, and thirty years before the rich lands about Terre Haute were taken by the pioneer. Northern Indiana was settled later. 19. The Swiss at Vevay. One of the earliest Ohio River settlements was at Vevay, where, attracted by the beauty of the neighboring hills, John James Dufour and a little group of families who had come with him from the district of Vevay, in Switzerland, secured a grant from the United States in 1801, planted their vineyards and named the 1 8 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA settlement after the old home beyond the sea. In the com- munity thus started the customs of the Old World were pre- served and a social life as distinct from the rest of pioneer America as that of French Vincennes was kept up for many years. 20. The Germans at Harmonie. Soon after, another colony of foreigners located on the western border of In- diana, not far from the mouth of the Wabash, in a region noted for the richness of its soil and the beauty of its sur- roundings. Here Frederick Rapp came in 1814 to choose a home for a religious society of German peasants called Rappites, who under the leadership of George Rapp came in flatboats the next year by way of the Ohio and the Wabash Rivers. There were eight hundred of them, grown folk and little children. The Rappites wore the queer, old- fashioned garb of the peasantry of Wiirttemberg and brought with them farming tools and machinery and com- fortable furnishings that promised for southern Indiana a civilization such as it had not yet seen. They took up thirty thousand acres and held it in common, building strange Old-World houses and planting vineyards and orchards and gardens, as the Swiss settlers at Vevay had done. To their new home they gave the name of " Har- monie." They built good schools and a big church for all to worship in, and their venture prospered. There was music on the hillside while the people cultivated their grapes and flower gardens abounded. 21. Robert Owen and New Harmony. For some reason the Rappite community gave up its rich acres in 1824 and went back to Pennsylvania, and Harmonie was sold to Robert Owen, a Scotch philanthropist and student of social problems who thought to build a New Harmony where property should continue to be held in common and every man's service should be for the general good. Owen's colony brought families from abroad to the new settlement. Schools for all were carried on at the cost of the public, at a time when free schools elsewhere were unknown. Great INDIANS AND PIONEERS 19 teachers were there to give the children the best training the world offered. A free library was opened in the wilderness, with twenty thousand books, and a literary club and a community theater were started. The community idea was soon abandoned, but the schools and libraries and clubs and theater, so rare in that early day, continued at New Harmony to exert an always growing influence upon the life of the new State, Indiana. Great men had founded the strange colony and great men still lived there, one of whom, Robert Dale Owen, was to be a leader in thought and in the political life of Indiana for fifty years to come. 22. Hardships of the first settlers. The Pilgrim Father who crossed the wintry sea in 1620 to build at Plymouth Rock a state where men might have civil and religious liberty was no braver than his pioneer descendant who, two centuries later, came out of the comfortable East to make his home in the wilderness of Indiana. Across the Allegheny Mountains his journey into the West lay along streams and through woods where treacherous Indians were waiting for him all the way. But the savage was the least of the dangers he had to face. When he entered the forest, bears and cougars were ready to dispute his path. About his new home wolves and foxes watched for his stock. The region was full of wild creatures waiting to devour his chickens and his crops. More to be feared than any living creature was the peril of disease that threatened his life and that of his children until the lands could be drained and intelligent physicians be found for every neighborhood. Malaria was universal. Epidemics came and there were not enough well people to feed and nurse the sick. Fever and ague remained wherever there were streams and made steady work impossible and life a torment. Where com- petent medical attendance was not to be had, the more ignorant of the pioneers sought relief for their ailments in spells and charms. 23. Slavery in Kentucky helps the settlement of In- diana. The Kentucky settlements from which many of the 20 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA first Indiana immigrants came were twenty or thirty years older, enough older so that a richer class of people had come from Virginia and theCarolinas into Kentucky, bringing their negro slaves with them. The poorer of these Kentucky pio- neers soon found it unbearable that their free labor should have to compete with the labor of slaves and they began to dream of building new homes across the river where slavery was forbidden and where no one looked down on common labor. Escape from the blighting effect of slavery drove many a Kentucky pioneer into the free territory in Indiana, and the attraction of cheaper land and a more adventurous life drew thither many who had become restless as civiliza- tion began to develop about them. 24. Abraham Lincoln's family moves to Indiana. One of the many Kentuckians who came to clear the forests of Indiana was a good-natured, happy-go-lucky farmer from the hills below Louisville. His name was Thomas Lincoln, and though he could barely read and write he could do many things well. He was learned in woodcraft and he could build a cabin or make a cupboard or a bedstead as skillfully as any trained artisan. An Indian's rifle had killed Thomas Lincoln's father and left the boy homeless in the new country to grow up without book learning and to pick up what knowledge he could while laboring for others and competing in much of his labor with his neighbors' slaves. And so, in time, when he became a man and was able to sell his land, he left the neighborhood where the hardship of his life had become too great to bear and, packing his few possessions upon a scow, floated down the stream to the Ohio. Thence he rowed across to the mouth of Anderson's Creek, in Spencer County, Indiana, and cut his way into the woods to the eighty-acre piece where the new home was to be. With him into the wilderness went his wife Nancy, and two children, Sarah, aged nine, and Abraham, aged seven, all eager to begin life again in a new world of strange surroundings where wild game was plentiful and the streams were full of fish, where the land need not be paid for until INDIANS AND PIONEERS 21 after a long time and life meanwhile promised more happi- ness than hardship. They came into the woods in the cold weather and there was no time to build a real house before the winter should be upon them. So they set to work to throw together a half- faced camp to shelter them until the coming spring would give them a chance to cut down the big trees needed for a log house and to clear the ground for a garden. Every pioneer was familiar with the architecture of the half-faced camp. Three of its four sides were of poles and saplings which were covered as well as possible with brush and dead leaves. The fourth side was open always to the weather, but before it burned, through the night, the campfire which kept wild beasts away and warmed the little family that lay on the hard earth w T ith their feet toward the blazing logs. Al- though the winter grew cold and the snow drifted deep about the camp and the wolves howled in the forest, these pioneer children knew they were safe, and in the novelty and interest of their daily work they were content with their life together, though there were no neighbors within many miles. The Lincoln family lived as the rest of the Indiana pioneers lived. But the little woodsman seven years old dreamed his dreams and puzzled his mind over many things and grew strong, and thoughtful, and wise. And because of this life and the way he took it, he became the one Ameri- can whom the whole world wonders at and loves. The boy Abraham Lincoln became a citizen of Indiana in 1 81 6, the year Indiana became a State. LTntil he was twenty-one years old he lived in his father's log cabin, work- ing out of doors at clearing the forest and cultivating the land. Occasionally, for a few weeks at a time, he attended a country school to learn what he could of "reading and writing and ciphering to the rule of three." 25. The simple and independent life of the pioneers. Homes were very far apart in Indiana in 181 6. There was no furniture in the pioneer's first house except what he made with his own hands. The floors were of hard-packed 22 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA earth, and the windows were closed with greased paper instead of glass. Except at the schools, where for many miles around the children came to be taught for three months in the year, there were no general social gatherings. When a new house was building, neighbors came to roll the logs into place and put the structure together. When a pioneer died, there was a funeral to which the people came if a wandering preacher could be found to hold the service. Sometimes camp-meetings and religious revivals brought the families together. And whenever the rumor of Indian troubles ran through a settlement the sense of a common danger drew the pioneers nearer. But the daily round of their lives was lonely. They learned to depend on them- selves, and the children as they grew up were taught how to do everything that had to be done, not only in the cultiva- tion of the soil, but in the making of whatever was needed to use or to wear in the simple life that was theirs. QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS 1. Why were the Indians and the white people on friendly terms during the early period of settlement in the Northwest Territory? 2. What changed the character of the Indians and their attitude to- wards the white people? 3. How was the city of Fort W 7 ayne founded? 4. What were the terms of the Treaty of Greenville? 5. What part did the Swiss, the Germans, and the Scotch have in set- tling Indiana? 6. Locate all the places mentioned in this chapter. COMPOSITION SUBJECTS 1. Imagine yourself a Revolutionary veteran. Write a letter to a friend explaining your reasons for emigrating from Virginia to the North- west Territory, and the way you expect to go. 2. Write an account of a typical day's experiences on a farm in the Northwest Territory in the days of Abraham Lincoln's childhood. 3. If you had lived in Massachusetts or Virginia in 1800 would you have emigrated to the Northwest Territory? Give reasons for your an- swer. CHAPTER III BIRTH OF THE STATE 26. The beginnings of popular government in the North- west Territory. Popular government in this region dates from the adoption of the Ordinance of 1787 by the Conti- nental Congress. Before that year there had been military administration by soldiers from France and from England, and periods without government, but the people had had no voice in the administration. The "Ordinance of 1787 for the Government of the Territory of the United States North West of the River Ohio/' was designed to keep order in a vast region which extended from Pennsylvania to the Mississippi River and from the Canadian border to the Ohio, in which there were a few white settlers, so far sepa- rated as to make self-government impossible. The great value which this new empire derived from its charter was in the provision: " There shall be neither slavery nor involun- tary servitude in said territory." This condition was in- serted upon the demand of General Rufus Putnam and Manasseh Cutler and their associates, founders of the Ohio colony, who carried with them into the West their New England hatred for human slavery. The Ordinance con- tained this other provision, which made the new country attractive to the home-builder: " Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged." 27. The first local governments in the Territory. Marietta, Ohio, was the first capital and General Arthur St. Clair was the first governor. In that part of the territory which is now Indiana the only local governments which were set up under Governor St. Clair's authority were at Clarksville, near 24 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA Jeffersonville, where a justice of the peace and a captain of militia were installed in office, and at Vincennes, where the county of Knox was organized, with boundaries extending from the Ohio line westward to the Illinois River, and from the Ohio River north to Canada. Of course, in a county of such size it was not easy to keep the peace and establish among the scattered people any particular respect for gov- ernment. As there were perhaps a hundred thousand Indians in the Northwest Territory and less than five thousand whites, the chief concern of Governor St. Clair was to keep the Indians quiet and, with the aid of such troops as he could get, pro- tect the scattered white settlements. He had little time to give to the problems of civil government, serious as they were. It is doubtful if he visited Indiana during his adminis- tration except upon his Indian campaigns. A famine in Vincennes in 1790 enlisted his interest and brought a boat- load of grain from the Government for the relief of the in- habitants. 28. The first court of justice in the Northwest Territory. The sessions of the general court at Vincennes were almost as rare as the governor's visits. There were three judges for the Northwest Territory, and their first court was opened with great dignity at Marietta in 1788. A procession was formed, led by the high sheriff with drawn sword. After him in order came the citizens, the army officers, attor- neys, supreme judges, governor, and clergyman, and the newly appointed judges of the common pleas. They marched up a path which had been cut and cleared through the forest for the occasion. The clergyman prayed, and the sheriff solemnly proclaimed : ' ' Oyez : a court is now opened for th( administration of even-handed justice to the poor and to the rich, to the guilty and the innocent, without respect of per- sons, none to be punished without a trial by their peers." A multitude of Indians who had come to make a treaty stood by while the court was being installed. The judges sat once a year at Marietta and at Cincin- BIRTH OF THE STATE 25 nati, and if weather and Indians — equally unfriendly — permitted, once at Detroit, or at some point farther west. The judge, with an annual salary of eight hundred dollars, had to find his way by water and through the woods when he went on circuit. There were no roads and no taverns. One judge, while riding the circuit in 1789, was drowned vhile trying to cross a stream. 29. Slavery in the Northwest Territory. In the older settlements like Vincennes there were negro slaves who had been there before the Ordinance of 1787 made slavery un- lawful. The owners of these slaves and the settlers who had come in from the South were already insisting that laws be passed to legalize slaveholding, and the feeling on the sub- ject made a sharp division among the inhabitants of the new country. Governor St. Clair took the position that only the slaves already in the Territory could be held in slavery. The leader of the pro-slavery sentiment was William Henry Harrison, and the anti-slavery people supported and fol- lowed Jonathan Jennings. Political lines were drawn on this question only, and no attention was paid to the old party divisions between Federalists and Republicans. 30. Indiana Territory is organized. In 1798 the growth of the white population and the consequent increase in the difficulty of governing a widely scattered people led to the division of the Territory. This was brought about by the election of William Henry Harrison as delegate to Congress. Harrison was thoroughly familiar with the frontier, and on account of his wide acquaintance in the East and his great ability, soon secured the passage of an act creating the new Territory and naming it Indiana. Its eastern boundary was the west line fixed by the Treaty of Greenville. It excluded a narrow strip of what is now southeastern Indiana, but which was added to Indiana in 1802, and included all west- ward to the Mississippi River and northward to Canada. The region east of Indiana Territory continued until 1802 as the Northwest Territory, with General St. Clair still its governor. 26 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA Indiana Territory was organized with a population of about five thousand, of whom 929, of English descent, lived at Clark's Grant, and 2497, mostly French, were at Vin- cennes. The rest were along the Mississippi River and near Lake Michigan as far north as Mackinac. In July, 1800, the government of Indiana Territory was set up at its new capital, Vincennes, and six months later came Governor William Henry Harrison to establish order and govern with a strong hand until a territorial legislature could be brought together to provide much-needed laws and a system of government. In 1804, while Harrison was governor at Vincennes, the Louisiana Purchase was made by President Jefferson, and the new territory west of the Mississippi River was organized as the District of Louisiana, and the territorial officers of Indiana were appointed to govern Louisiana. This government of Louisiana from Vin- cennes as its capital lasted a little more than a year. In 1805 a section of territory on the north was cut off to form the present State of Michigan, and in 1809 a separate territorial government was given to Illinois. One important event occurred during the territorial period of Indiana history. This was the founding, in 1806, of Vincennes University and the beginning of a system of higher education in the wilderness country. 31. Indiana Territory and the Indians. From 1800 to 1 81 2 Governor Harrison's duties kept him almost con- stantly absent from the capital, and much of the time he was in camp and on the march struggling with the Indians for control of the Wabash Valley. The various treaties which the chiefs made with the American representatives were not generally satisfactory to the tribesmen, and the Indians continued to be restless and troublesome until 181 1 , when war broke out. Harrison, still in command of the troops, gave up the civil govern- ment and entered actively into the Indian campaign. He began by strengthening the forts along the Wabash and built Fort Harrison on the bluffs above Terre Haute. BIRTH OF THE STATE 27 Continuing up the Wabash, Harrison, with his little army of Kentucky and Indiana militia and United States regu- lars, encountered the enemy, under the command of a leader called " The Prophet," at the Indian village of Prophets- town, near Lafayette, and before dawn on November 7, 181 1, won a bloody victory on the battle-ground of Tip- pecanoe. This second battle on Indiana soil stirred the imagination of the settlers and made popular heroes of all who took part. Among the killed were Colonel Abraham Owen; Major Joseph H. Daviess, attorney-general of Ken- tucky; Captain Spier Spencer, of Corydon; Captain Jacob Warrick; Colonel Isaac White; and Thomas Randolph, late attorney-gen- eral of Indiana Ter- ritory. Owen, Da- viess, Spencer, Warrick, White, and Randolph Coun- ties, organized soon after, were named for them. Other he- roes of Tippecanoe whose names were given to Indiana counties were Joseph Bartholomew, Tous- saint Dubois, William Henry Harrison, Benjamin Parke, John Tipton, and Davis Floyd. The Indian troubles in Indiana would have ended with this battle had not war with England broken out the fol- lowing year. But the Indians were again encouraged by their old allies, the English, and for another year kept up their unsuccessful resistance to the American arms and terrorized the settlers. The lonely settlements throughout the Territory protected themselves as well as they could by erecting blockhouses and by scout duty watched for the coming of the wandering bands of savages. Blockhouses AN OLD VIEW OF FORT HARRISON Erected in 1811 near Terre Haute 28 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA were built throughout the length of the Wabash. At Pigeon Roost, in Scott County, twenty-four whites were massacred on September 3, 1812. A few days later at Fort Harrison a night attack by Indians was successfully resisted by the commandant, Captain Zachary Taylor, afterwards Presi- dent of the United States, who bravely kept up the fight against overwhelming numbers until daybreak, when the enemy withdrew. The American soldiers destroyed the Indian villages in northeastern Indiana, but were unable to draw the Indians, now living on the bounty of the British, into a battle. A few forays and an occasional skirmish were all that developed. The time was near when the Indian as an enemy to civilization in Indiana should be no more. 32. Daniel Boone in the Indiana Territory. The early settlement of Indiana owed much to Daniel Boone, the woodsman and trapper and Indian fighter who in his fre- quent journeys over the Wilderness Trail had led the cara- vans of emigrants out of Virginia and Pennsylvania and over the Cumberland Mountains into the heart of Ken- tucky. But his explorations and long hunting journeys were not confined to Kentucky, for the wild life north of the Ohio River soon called him into Indiana, and before 1800 he was pitching his hunting camp among the hills of Har- rison County. The earliest of those who came to live in that picturesque county were Dennis Pennington and Squire Boone, brother of Daniel Boone. Squire Boone was a famous hunter, the tales of whose strange adventures with bears and with Indians are still told about the old county seat at Corydon. He was buried in a cave which he had discovered and where he had once hidden to escape the Indians. 33. Corydon is made the county seat of Harrison County. The settlement of Harrison County proceeded rapidly. Among the first to enter land in the county was Governor Harrison himself, who in 1804 bought from the Government the land where Corydon stands and held it for a short time. Three years later he took up other land in the same region BIRTH OF THE STATE 29 and built a water mill and set out a large orchard, some of whose trees were still standing a century later. The county seat of Harrison County was laid out in 1807, and as the governor passed through the new settlement on one of his many official journeys he was asked to name the place. At the home of Edward Smith, where Harrison was being entertained, the daughter of the house was called upon to sing the governor's favorite song, and she sang — "Sweet Cory don's notes are all o'er, Now lonely he sleeps in the clay, His cheeks blown with roses no more Since death called his spirit away." The young governor chose the name Cory- don for the town be- cause the pioneer's daughter sang the song so well. In 181 1 a court-house was built at Corydon by Dennis Pennington. Its walls were two and a half feet thick, of blue lime- stone. It was built so well that a hundred years later no flaw could be foun.d in it. 34. Corydon becomes the capital of Indiana Territory. Until Illinois Territory was organized in 1809, Vincennes, the old capital, stood at the center of population, but the cutting-off of Illinois left the town on the extreme western border of the new Territory of Indiana. Efforts began at once to move the capital farther east, and on March II, 1 81 3, the legislature, after failing to agree upon Madison, THE OLD STATE HOUSE AT CORYDON Erected in 1811-12 by Dennis Pennington 3 o THE HISTORY OF INDIANA Lawrenceburg, Vevay, Charlestown, Clarksville, and Jef- fersonville, finally chose Corydon. The capital was moved in May. The Pennington Court-House became the State House and held that distinction for eleven years. 35. Indiana becomes a State. Indian troubles were now at their worst, and one session of the legislature was omitted on this account. The people began to find fault with the Government at Washington for not protecting the terri- torial citizens, and to demand the admission of Indiana as a State which could protect its own people. Jonathan Jen- nings, delegate to Congress, presented petitions for admis- sion to the Union in 1812, and in 181 5 was able to show that there were now living in Indiana more than the ne- cessary sixty thousand free white people. The appeal for statehood was granted in April, 1816. An election was held in all the settled portions of the State, from Centerville and Brookville on the northeast to New Harmony and Vincennes on the west, and the forty-three delegates so chosen gathered on June 10, 1816, at Corydon to make a constitution. There were about five hundred people in the village of Corydon in 1816, and the men who gathered there came by boat or on horseback — for there were no roads. The hotel accommodations were few, and many of the delegates stopped at the Old Capital Tavern, a mile out of town on the New Albany road. The little State House, forty feet square, was their gathering-place, and the work of constitution- making was soon over. The delegates were the leading men of the new State, men of character and ability who came determined to create a system of government that would protect the rights of the people and keep the State clean from the stain of human slavery. Among the men who gathered at Corydon to make a con- stitution were Jonathan Jennings, of Clark County, soon to become the first governor of the State, and a noted hater of slavery; William Hendricks, a gentleman of the old school, who was to be Indiana's first Congressman and later a BIRTH OF THE STATE 3i Senator of the United States; General James Noble and General Robert Hanna, afterward Senators of the United States; James Scott, of Clark County, soon to become a judge of the Supreme Court; Davis Floyd, an officer under George Rogers Clark; Benjamin Parke, a cavalry officer at the battle of Tippecanoe and later judge of the United States District Court; John DePauw, of Washington THE OLD CONSTITUTION ELM TREE Still standing at Corydon. Under this tree, it is said, the first constitution of Indiana was adopted, June 29, 1816 County, father of Washington C. DePauw, the benefactor of DePauw University; and Dennis Pennington, the Cory- don pioneer who had built the State House. When the little State House was too warm during the sultry June days, the convention adjourned to meet under a big tree near by. The old elm, one of the largest of its kind anywhere, has been tenderly cared for by the people of Corydon for the shelter it gave to the founders of Indiana, and is known as " The Constitution Elm." On December 4, 1816, Congress admitted Indiana into 32 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA the Union. Jonathan Jennings entered upon his duties as its first governor at Corydon and the history of the State really began. QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS 1. Make a list of the most important men mentioned in this chapter. 2. How did each of these men contribute to the prosperity of the Ter- ritory? 3. What are the most important places mentioned in this chapter? 4. Locate each of these places and state why it is important. 5. Explain the process by which the Territory of Indiana was changed to the State of Indiana. COMPOSITION SUBJECTS 1. Describe and dramatize the "First Court of Justice in the North- west Territory." Describe several cases that might have come before this court. 2. Discuss the following question from the standpoint of the people who lived in Indiana Territory in 1806: "Resolved, That a university should be established in Indiana Territory." 3. Write such a petition as Jonathan Jennings might have presented to Congress in 18 12 asking that Indiana be made a State. CHAPTER IV THE NEW CAPITAL 36. The Quaker settlers. Soon after Indiana came into the Union in 181 6, and particularly when the Indians moved west in 181 8, Indiana suddenly began to grow. The popu- lation in 1810 was 24,520; in 1816 it was 63,897; in 1820, 147,178; and in 1830, 344,508. Immigrants no longer stopped in the Ohio River Valley, but began to occupy the lands along the upward course of the streams toward the center of the State. Before 1820 the beautiful Whitewater country as far north as Wayne County was settled by families of well- to-do pioneers. Among these were many members of the Society of Friends, who seem to have had no fear of the Indians. As early as 1803 the Friends were providing the Indians with farming tools and teaching them how to cultivate the land. In the proceedings of the Society at Baltimore that year this report appears: — The committee procured last spring for the use of the Indians six sets of plow irons, sets of harness, 50 axes, 6 mattocks, 6 iron wedges, fifty hoes, which were sent to Pittsburg to be conveyed to Fort Wayne by way of Cincinnati, and delivered as a present from the Society of Friends to Little Turtle and other chiefs to be disposed of to such of their people as they knew were desirous of using them . . . for since there has been no liquor in the Indian country they are very industrious and appear to be fond of rais- ing stock. 37. Farming on the Whitewater. The letters of the In- diana pioneers are full of descriptions of their life in the woods. One of the early settlers near Brookville wrote from his new home to the friends back in Virginia in January, 1824: — 34 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA We have bought a small farm of 125 acres and a crop of corn and hogs. Four hundred dollars was the price with twenty acres cleared, two cabins which are comfortable in time of storm, a tolerable barn and six good springs of water. As to fruit trees, there are 130 apple, 150 peach, cherry and English plum trees plenty — all good age to begin bearing. We have two milk cows and ten hogs. Since new year's we have salted fourteen hundred pounds of pork and beef. This soil is good for wheat, rye, corn, oats, sweet and Irish potatoes, cabbage, tobacco, flax, hemp and any quantity of water and musk melons, turnips plenty — still growing in the field. . . . It appears to be healthy in this part of the country. But few have had the fever or ague. There are people here from the Jerseys very numerous, some Yankees, Pennsylvanians, South and North Carolinians and some from Virginia and Ireland. The most of these people are pro- fessors of religion, they think. There are Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, United Brethren, New-lights and a large settle- ment of Quakers or Friends nicknamed. If Franklin Taylor would wish to know the price of teaching — $8.00 per scholar and room plenty here. Within four miles are eleven grist mills; carding and fulling and spinning machines plenty. We are settled within two miles of Fairfield, one mile from the east fork of White Water, where sugar trees are plenty. The man we bought of last season made four hundred pounds of sugar. Plenty of neighbors who seem very kind. 38. Influence of Brookville. Brookville was an important center in the social and political life of that time, for all the land that was bought of the Government in the northeast- ern part of the State had to be bought at the Brookville Land-Office. The men of that little town had much to do with governing early Indiana, and many were born there, in the time of its greatness between 18 10 and 1830, who have made the State of Indiana proud of them. Governors, senators, generals, foreign ministers, judges, writers, artists, and men of science have been among them. 39. Settlement of central and northern Indiana. Set- tlements also followed the long-familiar water highway of THE NEW CAPITAL 35 the Wabash as far as Logansport, and up White River to Hamilton County. One of the first settlements in central Indiana was made by members of the Finch family, from Connersville, in the spring of 1819. The party traveled from Connersville to Noblesville by way of Newcastle and Anderson, and one of them, who was nine years old at the time of the journey has told his story of the migration. It was snowing hard, although it was the first of April. They made their way very slowly with their ox- team, driving some stock and cutting the road as they went. I got to crying and they came to see what was the matter. I told them I was so cold that my back was cracked. ... All the playmates I had from April until July were little Indians. My favorite was one with a red head. I used to go hunting with him with bow and arrows for ground squirrels and birds. In .1819 about thirty families were living in the woods near Fort Wayne where the followers of La Salle had found their portage from the Maumee to the Wabash, and where in 1794 General Anthony Wayne had made life safe for the white settler. In 18 19 Fort Wayne ceased to be a military post, and in 1822 the establishing of a government land- office turned the attention of all newcomers from the east and northeast toward what was soon to become a settle- ment of commercial importance, just as it had been the chief trading post in Indiana over a hundred years before. Travel by land about Fort Wayne at that time is de- scribed in a letter written in 1805 by Ziba Foote, who had gone there to do surveying for the Government. He was coming back to escape the malaria, which was killing the newcomers, and was drowned while in the execution of his duty. I determined to go back to Cincinnati with all speed, for if I stayed there I thought I should die. The next day there came along four men with but two horses. I packed up to start with them when the fever came on and I was obliged to stay. The next 36 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA morning, feeling fresh and resolute, I got my horse and overtook them before night. That night we all slept in the woods. Next noon we arrived at Fort Defiance. Here I was taken with the fever again and they left me. I went on after them next morning, about three miles, lost my road and went back, hired a man for three dollars to pilot me eighteen miles. He turned back; I kept on, expecting to overtake the company and knowing if I failed I must sleep in the woods alone. It rained very hard constantly. I spurred on till dark. I could go no farther, but must spend the night alone in those dark woods. In the first place I knew I should need water in the night, but had only my boots to hold it, so I climbed down the river bank and filled one boot with water and placed it so I could drink out of it in the night. I tried for a long time to strike a fire, but it was raining very hard. I begged, prayed, and cried, but had to give it up. So I took my two blankets and lay down in the woods, almost doubting if I should ever rise again. The rain poured down until twelve o'clock. At daylight I hurried on, and at evening we reached a house. The valley of the St. Joseph River, between Elkhart and South Bend, first visited by the French missionary to the Indians, Father Marquette, in 1673, was opened for settle- ment between 1820 and 1825. 40. The first roads. These were the beginnings of home- building in the heart of Indiana and along its northern borders. Before any rapid growth could be possible in the interior, roads must be built, for there was no approach by water as there was in the region crossed by the Ohio and the Wabash Rivers and their tributaries. Most of these later comers were from New England and other Northern States. Road-building had not yet begun. The pioneer seeking a new home where there were no navigable streams followed the old Indian trails or cut through the trees what was called a " trace," a winding way wide enough for a bridle path or perhaps even for the passage of a cart, but in no sense a road. 41. WhetzelPs Trace. The Indians in the upper valley of White River belonged to the Delaware tribe and were friendly to the settlers, who had begun to push their way THE NEW CAPITAL 37 to the very edge of the Indian reservation. With the con- sent of their chief, Anderson, Jacob Whetzell cut a trace westward from Brookville. This trace ran to the bluff of White River near Waverly, and where Greenwood now stands crossed another trace that led northward to the White River Ford near the mouth of Fall Creek. These traces were followed mostly by Indians and by whites who visited the Indians to trade with them. Along the traces, in what was still considered Indian land, a few of the more adventurous had built their homes before the land was offered for sale by the Government, and in 1 8 19 or 1820 two cabins were put up near the mouth of Fall Creek by John Pogue and John McCormick, who came to Indianapolis be- fore the place was opened for settlement and when it was still without a name. 42. Locating the new capital. In 1820 the legislature, sitting at Corydon, named a commission of ten to locate the four square miles of land which Congress had donated to the State of Indiana for its capital. Nine of these men en- tered upon their duties. They were George Hunt, of Wayne ; John Connor, of Fayette; Stephen Ludlow, of Dearborn; John Gilliland, of Switzerland; Joseph Bartholomew, of Clark; John Tipton, of Harrison; Jesse B. Durham, of Jackson; Frederick Rapp, of Posey; and Thomas Emison, of Knox. They met with Governor Jennings on May 22, 1820, on the banks of White River just below Noblesville. For sixteen days they studied the advantages of various points between Noblesville and Waverly, and on June 7, 1820, fixed upon the ford of White River at the mouth of Fall Creek as the location for the permanent capital. Their choice was influenced by the hope that White River might become the great highway of travel for steamboats, just beginning to appear upon the Ohio and the lower Wabash, and was determined, no doubt, by the fact that they had found here the geographical center of Indiana. It is in- teresting to recall that the White River Ford at the mouth of Fall Creek is the place where Lieutenant Zachary Taylor, 38 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA afterwards President of the United States, is said to have crossed with his troops in 1812 on their way to garrison Fort Harrison at Terre Haute. The site of the new capital was densely wooded, with oak, elm, ash, poplar, maple, walnut, beech, hickory, buckeye, and other varieties of forest trees. 43. Indianapolis is named and begins to grow. In 1821 the legislature approved the location chosen for the new capital, named it Indianapolis, — city of Indiana, — and appointed three commissioners to lay off a town within the four miles square. The lots were platted and the first sale occurred in October of the same year. Settlers had been coming in rapidly and the first day's sale disposed of over three hundred lots, for the most part bought for homes. The population came about half and half from Brookville, by Whetzell's Trace, and from Kentucky and beyond, through the woods and by White River. For some time political divisions in the little community were altogether between the Whitewater crowd and the Kentucky crowd. 44. How the capital was moved. The legislature was meeting at Corydon every winter and bringing together each new year representatives from the newly settled north country, to whom it was a great hardship to travel on horse- back for two or three weeks in winter time to a capital on the southern border of the State. The site of the capital having been fixed and its streets and public squares laid out and many of its lots bought and built upon, the sentiment in favor of the removal from Corydon to Indianapolis became too strong to resist. In 1824 a law was passed at Corydon, which enacted that Indianapolis be " adopted and established as the perma- nent seat of government of this State upon the second Mon- day in January, 1825," and Samuel Merrill, then the treas- urer of the State, was appointed " to superintend generally the removal of the records, documents, and public property of every description ... to Indianapolis previous to the second Monday in January, 1825," and he was directed "to THE NEW CAPITAL 39 keep a fair and exact account of the expenses necessarily incurred in the said transportation and removal." By a joint resolution he was later directed " to sell to the highest bidder all the chairs, tables, and other furniture, which in his opinion cannot be advantageously removed to Indiana- polis." Colonel Samuel Merrill, the son of the treasurer, says: — Four four-horse wagons and one or two saddle horses formed the means of conveyance for the two families, consisting of about twelve persons, and for a printing press and the state treasury in silver in strong wooden boxes. The gentlemen slept in the wagons or on the ground to protect the silver. The families found shelter at night in log cabins which stood along the road at rare, though not inconvenient, intervals. The country people were many of them as primitive as their dwellings, which usually consisted of but one room, serving for all the purposes of domestic life — cooking, eating, sleeping, spinning, weaving, and the entertain- ment of company. Mr. Merrill, himself, described the trip: — Though the distance was only 125 miles, such was the state of the roads that it required about ten days to perform the journey in a wagon. Specimens of bad roads that it is thought cannot well be beat may still be found at some seasons of the year, but the veterans of those days, unless their memories deceive them, have seen and experienced more of the depth and width of mud- holes than can well be conceived in this degenerate age. " The fair and exact account of the expenses necessarily incurred in the transportation and removal," presented by Mr. Merrill to the legislature for payment, was as follows: — To Messrs. Posey & Wilson for boxes $7-56 To Mr. Lefler for one box .50 To Seybert & Likens for transportation of 3945 pounds at $1 .90 a hundred 74-95 To Jacob & Samuel Kenoyer for transportation of one load 35-06 Total $1 18.07 Deduct for proceeds of sale of furniture at Corydon, November 22, 1824 52.52 Net cost of removal $65.55 4 o THE HISTORY OF INDIANA Seventy years after, one of Mr. Merrill's family, who was at the time of the trip a girl seventeen years old, described this journey to her children. .She said: — The road was laid with rails or logs for miles, then covered with water that seemed bottomless. When the horses and wagon would go down, it seemed they might have reached China. At such times, my sister would scream with fright. One day we traveled two miles and a half only. The water lay in the road too deep to venture in and trees had to be felled to make a road around. Once Mr. Douglass's wagon stuck fast, and had to be pried out. The next morning, after traveling that short distance, Mr. Merrill said, when we were ready to start, looking back to where we had started the day before : ' ' Suppose we go back and take a fresh start?" However, we journeyed forward. I walked all the way, only when we came near Columbus, as it was raining, which it did after the first day almost every day. When near Columbus Mr. Merrill insisted on my riding in the wagon; the first thing I knew he lifted me into the wagon. I sat there until we reached the hotel, which looked fine with a hand- some sign. Mr. Seybert, the teamster, had a fashion of putting bells on his horses whenever we came near a town. We begged him to leave them off when he drove into Indianapolis, but he would n't consent. So we went into the seat of government with fine, large, strong horses strung with bells, all ringing. The sound brought the good people out to stare at us. I was glad to be in a covered wagon at that time. And so the capital found its way through the wilderness, a hundred miles and more, to the little group of log cabins scattered along Washington Street, where there were stumps and ponderous logs and vast swampy places all along that famous thoroughfare, and where the hardships of life which every family had to suffer drew all the people into a com- mon sympathy and understanding. THE NEW CAPITAL 41 QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS 1. What different classes of people settled in Indiana between the years 1816 and 1830? 2. What important events were happening in the country outside of In- diana during these same years (1816-30)? 3. Dscribe the roads and locate on the map the two important " traces" mentioned. 4. Give the reasons for moving the capital from Corydon to Indiana- polis. 5. What were the important places during this period of the State's history? Locate them. COMPOSITION SUBJECTS 1. Write a brief paragraph about each of the men mentioned in the sec- tion, Influence of Brookville, stating what each did to make him a person of national importance. 2. Describe Indianapolis as it appeared to the " girl seventeen years old " when she entered it riding in Mr. Merrill's wagon. Give some idea of her probable feelings. CHAPTER V INDIANA BEFORE THE WAR 45. The building of roads, canals, and railways. In his message to the legislature of 181 7, Governor Jonathan Jen- nings recommended that a general plan be adopted for clearing and deepening the streams, building roads, and constructing canals, so that travel from one part of Indiana to another might be made easy. In this way the State would grow strong, because the developing of its roads and water- ways would bring more people and give the citizens every- where a market for what they could grow upon their farms. These plans for internal improvements were undertaken all over the country until many of the States, particularly in the old Northwest Territory, had planned the building of roads and canals and railways that could never be paid for either by taxes or by the tolls which the improvements themselves would produce. The need of these improve- ments was greater in Indiana than anywhere, because In- diana had denser woods and more swamps and impassable streams. The fact that it took ten days to travel from Corydon to Indianapolis, and also that immigrants traveling westward toward the new capital had to cut their own way through the wilderness or follow laboriously over the old trails and traces, convinced the legislature and, indeed, all the people of Indiana, that roads must be built at any cost. In 1836 this idea had so taken possession of every one that untold millions of dollars were appropriated for improvements, and the work was actually commenced all over Indiana when there was no money to be had except what the State could borrow. And so the State borrowed so much with which to build canals and roads and railways that it was unable, out INDIANA BEFORE THE WAR 43 of all the earnings of the various enterprises, to pay even the interest on the debt. A single law passed in 1836 appropriated thirteen million dollars, one sixth of all the wealth in the State, and pro- vided for a canal in the Whitewater Valley, another from Fort Wayne to Evansville by way of Indianapolis, a third to connect these two, and either a canal or a railway from Fort Wayne to Lake Michigan by way of Goshen, South Bend, and LaPorte. Besides these canals, roads and railways were planned for every- body, everywhere. The State borrowed all it could and spent while the money lasted, but the system was too big and too costly to succeed. Hard times and failure came. Some of the canals were finished, some were not. All were abandoned. The canals failed partly because of the financial panic which made it impossible to get money to complete the system, but mainly because the building of railways, which began in 1839, furnished a cheaper and quicker means of travel. The completion of a line between Madison and Indianapolis in 1847 brought the capital into daily contact with the river traffic along the Ohio, and for a short time, until other railroads were built, added greatly to the com- mercial importance of both towns. The line began at the southern end and was built very slowly. Each day its tracks and trains came nearer to Indianapolis. When the trains reached to within ten miles of the city, as the tracks were building, the people thronged the country roads to THE OLD NATIONAL ROAD BRIDGE OVER THE WHITE RIVER AT INDIANAPOLIS 44 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA see what the locomotive looked like, and when the first train pulled into the new station at South and Delaware Streets the whole population of Indianapolis turned out to see the wonderful sight. The first railway trains were flimsy affairs and the traffic they carried would seem insig- nificant to the modern railway man. In a letter written by the president of the Madison road, in 1846, is given some idea of what business the road was doing. "To-day has been very profitable to us," he wrote, " as the receipts for passengers alone must have been over $450, much more than any one day has ever yielded before. The cars were crowded, a load of hay caught fire, and an axle broke, and the train was detained two hours, so that the labor and anxiety were very great." As the railways multiplied, the capital city began to reap the benefit of its new commercial connections. Direct lines were finished to Lafayette and Chicago, to Lawrence- burg and Cincinnati, to Richmond and Terre Haute, and to Cleveland, and in time the Wabash and Erie Canal and the Wabash River were paralleled by the Wabash Rail- way. Just as the opening of the east and west highways, particularly the National Road, had brought the first im- migrants into the wilderness, the railways brought into Indiana men in search of employment and others in search of investment. More than any other influence the railways have stimulated the increase in population, built up the commercial prosperity of the State, and made Indianapolis and other manufacturing cities centers of trade. 46. The Wabash and Erie Canal. One canal, the Wabash and Erie, was completed in 1843 from Toledo to Lafayette, and prospered for a short time. It brought a number of towns in the Wabash Valley into closer relations with one another, and until railways interfered with its business and floods and misfortunes of various kinds made it necessary to spend all of its earnings in repairs, it was wonderfully popular. Long caravans — hundreds of wagons — loaded with farm products waited at every stopping-point along INDIANA BEFORE THE WAR 45 the way for the canal boat to come and carry their cargo to- ward the eastern markets. Travelers chose the canal boat as the most comfortable mode of rapid transit — for often it made a speed of eight miles an hour — and enjoyed the social life on board much as people of the twentieth century enjoy the social life of a transatlantic liner. When the canal boat came to town horns were blown by the mariners to summon the populace, and the world turned out to see the boat go by. During this period Fort Wayne received from the business which the canal brought to it a commercial importance which it never afterwards lost. 47. No money for free public schools. While the leg- islatures were lavishing public money and exhausting public credit upon internal improvements, they were overlooking something else of greater importance. The constitution the people had made at Corydon in 181 6 required the State, " as soon as circumstances will permit, to provide by law for a general system of education, from township schools to a state university," which should be free for all. But the canals and roads used up so many millions of dollars that there were no free schools for thirty-five years. Indiana was the first State to advance the idea of a free school for every child in the State. But the idea called for money and the State had none. So, for many years, although everywhere there were schools for short terms, none of them were free. 48. The first schools and teachers. Many of the men who came to Indiana while it was still a Territory had lived in the woods and had had no opportunity for book learning. But they believed in education for their children. Wherever a settlement was started, some one was found to teach the boys and girls and a log schoolhouse was built for them. Sometimes these teachers were men of little scholarship. Quite as often the busiest man or woman in the community would volunteer to do the teaching. One of the famous teachers at the beginning was Mrs. Julia Dumont, of Vevay, a woman of real scholarship, with a gift for making 46 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA children learn. She was the wife of a pioneer statesman and taught because she loved to teach. One of the first teachers in Indianapolis was the treasurer of the State, who, al- though busy with state affairs, was willing to teach because he was a scholar and knew how to teach. Many of the chil- dren of early Indianapolis were taught by Henry Ward Beecher, afterwards one of the world's greatest preachers. The man who taught the boy Abraham Lincoln in the log schoolhouse in Spencer County was one of the busiest men in his part of the State and one of the most active of its public officials. The first schoolhouses were built of logs and had not even greased paper over the openings left in the logs for the light to enter. They had no floor and no chimney. In some of them, the fire was built on a raised earthen platform in the middle of the single room, and the smoke and sparks went out through a hole in the roof. The children sat with their backs to the walls and faced the fire, studying by the light that came through the ceiling. In the country, homes were far apart, and children some- times tramped as much as four miles through the woods and the mire to school. One little boy we read about had to make this journey every day by a path that was sometimes hard to find and that was often visited by wild beasts, so that every day his mother would go with him and go after him, carrying her baby in her arms. 49. The methods of instruction. Children of all ages were taught in the same room. A loud school was one in which a single child recited while all the other pupils studied aloud. The noise of such a school in action sounded to the way- farer like a nest of raging bumblebees. There were few books, almost the only volume in uni- versal use being the speller. A boy's scholarship was often determined by whether he could " spell down" the rest in the daily spelling-match. To do this he would commit to memory column after column of words with no idea of their meaning. In some districts he was the best reader INDIANA BEFORE THE WAR 47 who could read the lesson in a loud voice with the greatest speed, and the champion could race through a paragraph so rapidly that only those who had already studied the passage could guess what it was all about. 50. The missionary preachers were also teachers. Pri- vate schools and neighborhood pay-schools and seminaries for teaching the higher branches depended upon the fees which the parents paid, but many of them received money from the churches, and many of the teachers were sent into the new country by the religious societies in the East, who believed that religion and education belonged together. The preachers were better educated than the people to whom they ministered, and they came with the spirit and the pluck of missionaries to give the benefit of their piety and their scholarship to a people that sorely needed both. And so the first preachers were teachers, too. This had been true from the days of the Jesuit missionaries. The French priests at Vincennes, a century earlier, brought scholarship as well as religion to the people of the settle- ments and taught in their parish schools the children of the whole community, whether they belonged to the church or not. 51. The progress of education was slow. As late as 1850 thousands of the children of Indiana attended no schools at all. The average school year for all the children in the State was only eight weeks long. The census for 1850 showed that one grown person in every five in Indiana could neither read nor write. In some counties where there were colleges, but no common schools, the number of illiterates was twice as great in 1850 as it had been ten years before, and half the people could not read. It was many years before the people would consent to the payment of a tax to keep up free schools. The pioneers were busy with clearing their farms of timber and making them fit for cultivation, and in earning and saving enough money to pay the cost of the land, and they were too poor while they owed these first debts to want to pay taxes even for 48 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA schools. The Government had set apart certain lands for sale for school purposes, but these sales produced little money and so free schools had to wait until more prosper- ous times should come. 52. Indiana University. A state seminary was opened at Bloomington on May I, 1824, and Latin and Greek were taught to ten ambitious students. The state seminary was WMHm&!&ik- '*&*?* '$& fe V Courtesy Hiimnn-Cottman Centennial History of Indiana THE FIRST BUILDINGS ON INDIANA UNIVERSITY CAMPUS later called Indiana College and finally Indiana University. Its first faculty consisted of the Reverend Baynard Rush Hall, who is remembered more because of a book called The New Purchase, in which he gave his impressions of the backwoods life in Indiana, than for the learning which he imparted to the ten young men who constituted the entire student body. Of these first ten students one became a tanner, one a merchant, three physicians, two ministers, and three law- yers. One of the ten was Joseph A. Wright, who in later years became governor of Indiana and American minister to Prussia. 53. Religious societies found colleges. The same church INDIANA BEFORE THE WAR 49 enterprise which sent preachers into Indiana as missionary teachers provided colleges to the people of the State long before free common schools were opened. Hanover Col- 'lege was established in 1827, and Wabash in 1833, both by the Presbyterians; Franklin in 1835, by the Baptists; Asbury (now De Pauw University) in 1837, by the Meth- odists; the University of Notre Dame in 1842, by the Catholics; Earlham in 1847, by the Friends; and North Western Christian University (now Butler) in 1855, by the Church of the Disciples. These colleges and Indiana University furnished the scholarship required for the teachers and ministers of the period before the Civil War, and, with the influences that grew out of the schools in the New Harmony colony, were the source of the agitation which began in 1846 in favor of a universal system of free common schools. 54. Caleb Mills and the free schools. One of the teach- ing preachers was Caleb Mills, of Massachusetts, who came first as a missionary organizer of Sunday schools, about 1830, and three years later helped to establish Wabash College, at Crawfordsville. In 1846 Caleb Mills began to publish each year a message to the state legislature and to the people, in which he called attention to the number of people in Indiana who could not read, and pleaded for free schools for all the children and the levy of enough taxes to wipe out the disgrace of Indiana's illiteracy. In this fight for free schools he met with strong opposition, but he had the help of the educated people of the State, of the men. connected with the colleges, and particularly of Robert Dale Owen, of New Harmony; Daniel Read, of Indiana University; Calvin Fletcher, of Indianapolis; and John I. Morrison, a famous teacher of Salem. 55. The present system of schools is established. While this agitation for free schools was going on, the people held a convention at Indianapolis in 1850 to frame a new con- stitution for the State. The convention brought together a number of the strong men of the State, including Professor 50 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA Daniel Read, of Indiana University; John I. Morrison; Robert Dale Owen ; Schuyler Colfax and Thomas A. Hen- dricks, each afterwards Vice-President of the United States; Michael G. Bright, afterwards United States Senator; Alvin P. Hovey, afterwards a general in the Civil War and governor of Indiana; and William McKee Dunn. The new constitution made possible what Caleb Mills and the friends of education who worked with him had so long tried to get, and the next legislature provided by law a system of free common schools which has slowly but con- stantly grown in usefulness and power. The coming of the missionary preachers resulted in the building of schoolhouses as well as churches. It was natural that the building of schools and churches should develop the spirit of neighborliness and change the frontier from a scattered multitude of independent settlers, each bent on his own pursuits, into a series of social communities all bent on making a society that would be good for the people as a whole. 56. Religious life and leaders. The religious exercises of the pioneers were sometimes as dignified as church services are in modern times. More often they were suited to the rough, uncultivated ways of men and women who had had no opportunity for learning. Among these what the wor- ship lacked in dignity it made up in warmth. Camp-meet- ings brought together for weeks at a time many scores of families who lived in the woods where the circuit rider evangelist was preaching and services were held every day and late into the night. These were occasions of intense religious enthusiasm and the preacher, himself sometimes ignorant of everything but the Bible and human nature in the rough, exerted a powerful influence over the moral and the social life of the people. One of the Presbyterian ministers was " Father " John M. Dickey, of Washington, Indiana, who besides preaching ran a little farm, made and repaired shoes, wrote deeds, wills, and advertisements, surveyed and taught, and gave INDIANA BEFORE THE WAR 51 good value for his yearly pay of eighty dollars. His wife made all the garments of a family of thirteen and entertained visitors innumerable. These preachers were natural leaders of men and made themselves felt in state politics also. Among them were many from New England and New York and Pennsylvania who had strong convictions regarding human slavery, and who sometimes created feeling by preaching against slavery and more often joined in the secret efforts that the enemies of slavery were making to help fugitive slaves to find their freedom in Canada. 57. Anti-slavery sentiment is strong. The southern part of Indiana had been settled mainly by immigrants from the South, while the rest of the State was rilling up rapidly from the free States in the East. Even among the Southern set- tlers public opinion was sharply divided. The passage by Congress of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 embittered the enemies of slavery, because they said it required them to become slave-hunters and to go out to capture unhappy fugitives and send them back to servitude. From various points on the Ohio River well-defined routes of escape were arranged, with stations where slaves could safely hide and evade pursuit. These routes of escape to Canada were popularly called the " Underground Railway." One of the most traveled ran from Lawrenceburg to Michigan by way of Richmond and Fort Wayne; another ran from Madison, New Albany, and Leavenworth to Michigan, through Co- lumbus, Indianapolis, Westfield, and South Bend; and the third ran from Evansville northeasterly, through Terre Haute and Crawfordsville, to join the second route at South Bend. One of the busiest of the " stations " on the Underground Railway was in the settlement of Friends at Newport (now Fountain City), near Richmond. Levi Coffin, an anti- slavery leader, was the moving spirit in keeping up the organization for hiding the runaway negroes in the day- time and providing them with food and clothes and the use 52 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA of an occasional team so that they could move on at night to the next stopping-place. Not less than a hundred slaves were cared for by the Wayne County Friends each year at the Newport " station," where they were hidden in the hay- loft, or under the bed or in the attic of some faithful aboli- tionist whose conscience bade him break the Fugitive Slave Law because he believed it to be wrong. QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. 1. What caused the failure of the plans to improve the waterways of the State? 2. Describe the educational situation at the time Indiana became a State: (a) Constitutional provisions; (b) teachers; (c) schoolhouses; (d) pupils. 3. Why were the constitutional provisions for free public education carried out slowly? 4. Name the principal colleges and universities in Indiana to-day. Ex- plain how each was founded. 5. What part did Indiana take in the anti-slavery movement? COMPOSITION SUBJECTS 1. Dramatize "A day in school in the early history of Indiana." 2. Write such a message as Caleb Mills might have sent to the state legislature regarding the need of free schools. CHAPTER VI WAR-TIME AND AFTER 58. Immigration to central and northern Indiana. In- diana's pioneers had first come from the South, but as the State grew, families from the free States had come into the " New Purchase " until the people who hated human slavery began to outnumber those who held to the South- ern view. The National Road which the Government had undertaken to build from Maryland to Missouri brought a stream of emigrant wagons from the Eastern States through Richmond and Indianapolis to Terre Haute and beyond. Caravans of " prairie schooners " halted each night farther west and lighted the thousand-mile way with their cheery camp-fires. The pioneer child who wanted " to see the world " had only to run down to the road and watch the endless train of wagons move by. The talk of these enter- prising strangers interested him because it brought him news of the East, where the government was conducted and in whose cities business was carried on. The excite- ment of this daily experience was stirred by the thrill of the bugle as it announced the coming of the stagecoach with its splendid teams of spirited horses. And the daily march of the endless caravan and the stirring scene, when with the stage came news from abroad, brought to the settlers along the way a contact with the world and gave them day by day the opinions of all sorts of men. Most of these emi- grants were discussing politics and many of them were beginning to feel that the time was at hand when the growth of slavery must be stopped. From its earliest his- tory Indiana was the battle-ground of public opinion. 59. Sentiment against slavery increases. With the en- forcement of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, and the con- 54 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA sequent pursuit and capture of runaway negroes in the free State of Indiana, men who had been indifferent before began to take sides. The successful operation of the Underground Railway in violation of the laws of Congress embittered the friends of slavery and encouraged its enemies to greater activity. In the presidential campaign of i860 the only issue was whether slavery should be made lawful in the Territories. The people began to fear that slavery might be made lawful in Indiana and throughout the North. Enough immigrants had come into the State since 1850 to give a majority to the Republicans, who were opposed to slavery, and assure the electoral vote of Indiana for Abraham Lincoln. But the vote was close. Indiana still had many citizens who sympa- thized with their Kentucky neighbors and who believed that the election of Lincoln meant the estrangement of the slave States and their secession from the L^nion, and who also were willing that the slave States should go in peace. The state election of i860 resulted in the choice of Henry S. Lane for governor and Oliver P. Morton for lieutenant- governor. Later in the winter Lane was made United States Senator and Morton became governor in his place. Oliver P. Morton had been an active Democratic politi- cian in Wayne County, and was a man of ability and cour- age, and a natural leader of men. But the feeling of Wayne County was strongly anti-slavery. For ten years its best people had been openly helping the runaway slaves in their escape to Canada, and Morton's sympathy for the miserable fugitives had compelled him to leave the old Democratic party and cast in his lot with the new organization under Lincoln's leadership. On February 11, 1861, on the way to his inauguration, Abraham Lincoln visited Indianapolis, and in a speech at the Bates House, then standing at Illinois and Washington Streets, made his first appeal to the people to stand for the Union in the struggle that was at hand. WAR-TIME AND AFTER 55 60. The call for troops. On Friday, April 12, 1861, the telegraph brought the news to the anxious North that the flag over Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor, had been fired upon by the guns of South Carolina. All day Saturday men stood about the streets, too hurt to speak, and waited for the news. At last came the word that all expected, " Sumter has fallen." Then came the President's call for seventy-five thousand men. As the dumb crowds stood about the bulletin boards, they looked up to the flag over- head and saw there something they had never seen before, the soul of a nation in trouble. Before the call came for volunteers, Governor Morton telegraphed to President Lincoln, " On behalf of the State of Indiana, I tender to you for the defense of the nation, and to uphold the authority of the Government, ten thou- sand men." 61. Oliver P. Morton, " the war governor." The Civil War had begun. For four years, at the State House, or at the battle front, or at Washington, wherever he was most needed, Oliver P. Morton, " the war governor," watched over the Indiana boys in the army as tenderly as if they were his own. Indiana soldiers were in every battle and in every hospital in the South, and wherever fighting was going on or men needed sympathy or care, Morton's agents were at hand to report their needs to the governor and see that they were cared for. When the nights grew cold in the West Virginia mountains in the fall of 1861, Morton went on to Washington to secure overcoats for their protection. The day after the battle of Shiloh he chartered Mississippi River steamers to bring home the wounded and sent to the field sixty surgeons and more than three hundred nurses. When prisoners from the Confederate armies were brought to Indianapolis in February, 1862, he gave especial care to their comfort, engaging efficient hospital service for them and equipping a bakery so as to give them home-made food, and calling upon the citizens to remember that the prisoners " were but a few months ago friends and neighbors " for 56 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA whom " we should bear a memory of the past and add no bitterness to their hard fate." Prisoners from the South were thus cared for through a bitter winter at Lafayette and Terre Haute and at Camp Morton in Indianapolis. What these unhappy men suffered in their poverty and ex- posure to cold would be hard to realize now. In time a strong sentiment of hostility to carrying on the war grew up, and a legislature was elected in 1862 which was determined to interfere with the " war governor's " plans by discouraging men from enlisting, advising soldiers to desert, and refusing to provide the governor with money to keep the men at the front. But Morton was not to be discouraged. Relief associations were organized in every part of the State. When a regiment came home a warm lunch awaited it at the state line at Jeffersonville, and a royal welcome was provided all along the way until the men had scattered to their homes. Day after day as sol- diers going or returning passed through the streets, the women were organized to bring home food to them and watch after their comfort. When the unfriendly legislature adjourned without providing money to pay the enormous war bills, and even allowed the interest on the state debt to default, Governor Morton borrowed the money on his own credit. 62. John Morgan's raid. The most exciting week in all the war-time was in July, 1863, when General John Morgan crossed the Ohio at Brandenburg, Kentucky, at the head of about two thousand Confederate soldiers on horseback and swept on through Corydon and Salem and Vernon and into Ohio. His hope was that the Indianians who had sympa- thized with the South would rally to his support, but Indi- ana disappointed him. Before he had reached the Ohio state line sixty-five thousand new recruits had turned out in arms ready to fight him, but they were unable to discover where he was. The effort to separate Indiana from the Union failed, and the effect of Morgan's raid was greatly to strengthen the loyalty of the people of the State. WAR-TIME AND AFTER 57 63. The soldiers return from the war. Lee's surrender at Appomattox in April, 1865, was the beginning of the end. In summer and fall the last of Indiana's 151 regiments be- gan to come home, and one regiment after another passed through the capital. They were greeted with a salute from the cannon in the early morning, and after a breakfast, provided by the women of Indianapolis, they marched down Washington Street through cheering crowds to the State House, where they listened to war songs and a speech by the war governor and then turned homeward. Most of the sol- diers were boys. They had gone through hardships and dangers together for love of their country, and they came home changed by their rude experiences. In their years of camp-life and on the march, following the flag, they had learned in how many ways a man may serve his country, and they came home with an interest in public affairs they had not known before. 64. Indiana in national politics. As Indiana had been a battle-ground of public opinion before the war, when the slavery question kept men bitterly divided, the problems of government which arose out of the war and later, kept the men of Indiana, most of whom had been soldiers, alert and full of political interest. Just as Indiana had furnished more than her share of soldiers to the armies of the Union, she now furnished more orators and public men than any other State. Within her borders were fought the fiercest of all the political battles. Division of political sentiment had been a distinguishing characteristic from the days of the earliest settlements when the first great contest ended in 18 16 with the admission of Indiana into the Union as a free State. The pioneer emigrants from Virginia and the Caro- linas and those who later came from New York and New England differed in their ideas of government and of poli- tics, and the two classes of settlers were so nearly equal in number that Indiana's vote on national questions was al- ways close, and in her national political campaigns, the most persuasive of all the political speakers were sent to 58 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA Indiana to win the narrow majority that was always to be had by the party whose arguments were strongest and whose organization was most efficient. Any Indiana boy who attended the barbecues and rallies and wigwam gatherings of the fall campaigns grew up under the influence of such orators as Thomas A. Hendricks, Joseph E. McDonald, Daniel W. Voorhees, Walter Q. Gresham, Oliver P. Morton, Benjamin Harrison, Albert G. Porter, and John L. Griffiths, from his own State, and from abroad, Stephen A. Douglas, Roscoe Conkling, James G. Blaine, Carl Schurz, and Horace Greeley. In later times, he listened to William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Jennings Bryan, and other modern orators. Indiana's vote was to be reckoned with, and to gain it the great political parties nominated Indiana candidates for Vice-President and for President, and turned constantly to Indiana for leadership. Following the Civil War the Indiana nominees for Vice-President were Schuyler Colfax in 1868, Thomas A. Hendricks in 1876 and 1884, William H. English in 1880, Charles W. Fairbanks in 1900, John W. Kern in 1908, and Thomas R. Marshall in 1912. In 1888 Benjamin Harrison, of Indianapolis, was nominated by the Republi- cans and elected to the Presidency. 65. The Harrison campaigns of 1840 and 1888. The campaign which resulted in the election of Benjamin Harri- son as President aroused an interest in Indiana that no presidential struggle had stirred since the election in 1840 of his grandfather, William Henry Harrison, the first gov- ernor of Indiana Territory. The elder Harrison's services in Congress in behalf of the Territory, and his wisdom and ability as governor at old Vincennes, had won him univer- sal respect, while his brilliant career as an Indian fighter, particularly in the battle of Tippecanoe in 181 1, made him a popular idol in the State where his greatest successes had been won. The log cabin and the coon skin were adopted as emblems of the pioneer candidate. During the three months' struggle the first settler and the oldest inhabitant WAR-TIME AND AFTER 59 became the most important of all the people. George Rogers Clark, then past eighty years old, was made chair- man of the first big meeting at Indianapolis. The State went mad for " Tippecanoe and Tyler too." In the contest of 1888 the old men who had voted for William Henry Harrison forty-eight years before formed " Tippecanoe Clubs " and turned out to pay their respects to " Old Tippecanoe's " grandson. The " grandfather's hat," a giant beaver hat of the early day, was the Harri- son emblem this time, and walls and windows were adorned with pictures of the pioneer log cabin. Indiana felt some of the same pride in her candidate that had been hers in the presidential campaign of 1840, though the contest was a close one, and Benjamin Harrison's support was drawn to him by his ability rather than by that sort of personal popu- larity which made William Henry Harrison's followers so loyal in their support. Visiting delegations, thousands each day, came from various parts of the United States to greet the Hoosier candidate and hear his brief but brilliant speeches in University Park at Indianapolis. 66. The Spanish-American War. The breaking-out of war with Spain in 1898 found Indiana's young men eager to enlist, as they had been in the Mexican War and in the Civil War. Thousands tendered their services and were rejected because they were not needed. Seventy- three hundred and one soldiers of the organized militia were accepted, out of all of whom only a single battery, the 27th, succeeded in getting into active service. General Lew Wallace, who had served brilliantly in the Mexican War and in the Civil War and had brought honor to his country as foreign minister and as author, sought a commission in the field in the hope of render- ing, in his old age, military service in a third of his country's wars, but was disappointed. General Henry W. Lawton, of Fort Wayne, made a brilliant record in the Spanish-American War, and died in battle in the Philippine Islands in 1899. 67. Interest in industrial education — Purdue University. The return of the soldiers in 1865 gave the same impetus 60 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA to industry in Indiana that it gave to her political life. Railways were built and trade was developed and cities be- gan to grow out of all proportion to the country communi- ties. And with the renewed prosperity there began to ap- pear a new and a deeper interest in education. One of the first laws passed after the war was the accept- ance of the gift by Congress of a generous grant to provide a college where scientific agriculture and technical and mechanic arts should be taught. This was in 1865. Other gifts were made by John Purdue, and by the people of La- fayette and of Tippecanoe County, and in 1874 Purdue University was opened at Lafayette. 68. The State Normal School. The same legislature which provided for state training in mechanics and agricul- ture at Purdue University put into effect in 1865 one of the plans for perfecting the school system which Caleb Mills had advocated so earnestly twenty years before, and en- acted a law for the creation of a school to prepare teachers for the common schools of Indiana. Five years later the Indiana State Normal School was opened at Terre Haute and at once won for itself a place of importance and au- thority in the school system of the State. Education in Indiana is no longer a thing of chance. The time has come when only educated men and women are permitted to teach, and when careful training in the science of teaching is required of every teacher. The early common schools commanded the service of many men and women of devoted scholarship and gave to the children a contact with cultivated people and an acquaintance with books that make real education. With the establishment of technical training at Purdue and of normal instruction at Terre Haute, the popular idea of education has broad- ened. The State has undertaken to give more than book learning to the child, and in the modern school system it trains him to use eye and hand as well as mind, and to make of himself a loyal citizen as well as a producer of things worth while. WAR-TIME AND AFTER 61 QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS i. On an outline map of the United States indicate the three main routes by which the pioneers came into Indiana. 2. A dramatization. Characters: An Indiana boy or girl standing by the National Road. Other boys and girls representing those coming from New Eng- land, from Maryland, from Virginia and Kentucky. Conversations showing views on slavery, reasons for emigrating, and conditions of life in the East and in Indiana. 3. In what different ways did Governor Morton prove himself a great "war governor"? 4. Compare the two Harrison campaigns. 5. How did the State show its interest in education at the close of the Civil War? COMPOSITION SUBJECTS 1. Write a paragraph showing why Indiana became an anti-slavery State. 2. Write a paragraph on one of the men mentioned in the section, "In- diana in national politics." (Let each member of the class select a man to write about.) 3. Write briefly regarding General Lew Wallace or General Henry W. Lawton. CHAPTER VII THE HOOSIER 69. How the "Hoosier" was named. Some time in the wilderness period, before schools were common and before the fashions of polite society had found their way into Indi- ana, the world estimated the people of the State by the impression made upon it by the flatboatman and river roustabout. Tourists along the Ohio River came in contact with men of rough dress and rougher manners, whose lack of polish justified describing them by the use of an old-time slang term in common use in the South, and when they told of adventures along the Indiana frontier they are said to have spoken of the uncouth and unlettered pioneers of Indiana as " hoosiers." The word " hoosier " had always meant an ignorant and uncultivated person, and the kind of Indianian of the period who appeared along the river front, working his flatboat for the river trade and leading the hardest of outdoor lives, came to be called " hoosier " by his superior neighbors in Kentucky and Ohio. Just when or how the name came into general use is not known, but, before 1833, it had been accepted by the people of Indiana, in the spirit of fun, no doubt, and, by common consent and almost at once, Indiana became the " Hoosier " State. It was thirty years and more before the cultivated people of the East discovered that the Hoosiers were not really ignorant and uncouth. In about the same period of time the people of Indiana began to discover for themselves that Hoosier has grown at last to mean something wholly different. A Richmond editor, named John Finley, who printed some of the earliest verse written in Indiana, pub- lished in 1833 a poem called " The Hoosier's Nest." It was a description of the log cabin in the Indiana wilderness, poor enough as poetry, perhaps, but a real picture of life as he saw it. THE HOOSIER 63 "The stranger stooped to enter in, The entrance closing with a pin, And manifested strong desire To seat him by the log-heap fire, Where half a dozen Hoosieroons, With mush and milk, tincups and spoons, White heads, bare feet, and dirty faces, Seemed much inclined to keep their places. Invited shortly to partake Of venison, milk, and johnny-cake, The stranger made a hearty meal And glances round the room would steal ; One side was lined with skins of 'varmints,' The other spread with divers garments; Dried pumpkins overhead were strung, Where venison hams in plenty hung. Two rifles placed above the door, Three dogs lay stretched upon the floor. In short, the domicile was rife With specimens of Hoosier life." Finley wrote other verses that won for him the name of poet laureate of early Indiana, but his title to fame is that he introduced the Hoosier to literature and fixed upon Indiana a nickname that her children are at last proud to bear. A New Orleans newspaper in 1839 described the " sim- plicity of character and independence of the Hoosier " who came to that interesting city to sell his cargo of Indiana products: — We do love to see a Hoosier roll along the levee with the pro- ceeds of the cargo of his flatboat in his pocket. It is the wages of industry. See with what pity he regards those who are confined to the unchanging monotony of a city life, and how he despises the uniformity of dress. He has just donned a new blue dress coat with flowered gilt buttons. His new trousers look rather short for the present fashion, but he glories in still sporting the same unpolished big boots and the woolen, round- topped, wide-leafed hat in which he set out from home. The Hoosier seems to say, "A life in the woods for me," and his happy and independent life attests the wisdom of his choice. 64 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA It would interest every patriotic American if he could see a picture of the Hoosier boy, Abraham Lincoln, nineteen years old, and six feet four inches tall, as he left his flatboat, with its cargo of Spencer County pork and grain, at the river front and wandered wide-eyed through the strange French city of New Orleans and watched for the first time the slave market whose tragedies made a life-long impres- sion on his sympathetic heart. 70. Distinguished Hoosiers. How intelligence and schol- arship became general, and how in less than a hundred years Indiana inventions and reforms and Indiana litera- ture found a place among the best products of American civilization, can be understood by any student of Indiana history. During the century great things have been done by men and women born in Indiana or taught within the State. It was a Brookville boy, James B. Eads, who in after years first threw a steel bridge across the Mississippi River at St. Louis and controlled its current at the Gulf of Mexico so that ocean steamers could travel in safety to New Or- leans. It was an Indianapolis telegrapher, Thomas A. Edi- son, sending dispatches for seventy-five dollars a month while still a boy, who began as an operator to devise im- provements in telegraphy and in later life discovered some of the greatest secrets of electricity. It was a pioneer of South Bend, James Oliver, who discovered, after many years of study and experiment, how to make a plow of chilled cast iron that would do better work at less cost than a plow made of any other material and whose invention has made farmers the world over send to Indiana for their plows. It was a Portland boy, Elwood Haynes, who was the pioneer in making the first commercial automobile. One of the earliest leaders in scientific charity and the prevention of pauperism and crime was an Indianapolis preacher and social worker, Oscar C. McCulloch, and he was followed by Charles R. Henderson, of Lafayette, and William Alex- ander Johnson, of Fort Wayne, and Albion Fellows Bacon, THE HOOSIER 65 of Evansville, and Amos Butler, a native of Brookville. Natural science has had discoverers and investigators among its Indiana followers in David Dale Owen, the geolo- gist from New Harmony, John M. Coulter, long a teacher of botany at Hanover and Wabash Colleges and president of Indiana University, and David Starr Jordan, college president and student of fishes. Besides these, John Muir, a young Scotchman injured in an Indianapolis factory in 1867, was driven by his injury to a life out of doors and to the study of botany before he found his way to the Pacific Coast to study glaciers and write books. Other scientists of Indiana have been Harvey W. Wiley, the chemist, one- time teacher in the public schools and at Hanover and Butler Colleges, and John N. Hurty, the sanitarian. The beauty of the Indiana landscape and the interest of Hoosier life and character gave to William M. Chase and Hiram Powers and to John T. McCutcheon, student of art in Purdue University, and to Fred C. Yohn, an Indiana- polis boy, an interest in art that has enabled them to bring distinction to their native State. To this list should be added Janet Scudder, sculptor, a native of Terre Haute. The first of Indiana's judges, appointed to the Supreme Court in 181 6, published for the use of the bench and bar a collection of the opinions of the court, which under the name of Blackford's Reports found its way into the great law libraries of England and America and to this day is re- ferred to as authority for courts to follow. In 1840 Henry Ward Beecher, in a little church on the Governor's Circle, was preaching sermons that drew the attention of the East to Indianapolis, and the publication of his first volume, Lectures to Young Men, introduced one of the first of Indiana's writers to the literary world. Beecher's reputation as an author was overshadowed by his fame as an orator. Beecher was more than author and ora- tor, for he taught boys and girls and edited the Indiana Farmer and bore an active part in the social life of the com- munity. It is no small part of his claim to distinction that 66 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA he was one of Indiana's first writers, and one of the first to prove to the outside world that Indiana was not wholly illiterate. 71. The Hoosier literature. It is in literature quite as much as in art and science and politics and war that Indi- ana has won a place for itself in the front rank of America's men and women of mark. The roll of writers from Indiana is too long to include them all, but among them mention may be made of Forceythe Wilson, poet; Lew Wallace, author of Ben Hur; Edward Eggleston, author of The Hoosier Schoolmaster, and his gifted brother, George Cary Eggleston; Maurice Thompson and Will H. Thompson, poets and scholars; Sarah T. Bolton; Joaquin Miller, the California poet, who was born in the Whitewater Valley; Lyman Abbott, who preached at Terre Haute during the period of the Civil War. Other writers identified with Indi- ana are Maurice Francis Egan, Charles Warren Stoddard, John James Piatt, James Baldwin, Charles Major, Wil- liam Dudley Foulke, Robert Underwood Johnson, Annie Fellows Johnston, Jacob Piatt Dunn, James A. Wood- burn, Daniel Wait Howe, Charles Richard Williams, Mere- dith Nicholson, Booth Tarkington, William Vaughn Moody, Theodore Dreiser, George Ade, George Barr McCutcheon, Gene Stratton Porter, and Mary Hanna Krout. 72. James Whitcomb Riley. While the Civil War was in progress there was growing up in Greenfield, on the old National Road, a white-haired boy, son of a soldier, who, as he watched his father's comrades throng to the front in response to Lincoln's call for troops, became saturated with the spirit of Americanism, as many other boys did who were too young to enlist. This boy in later years gave expression to the feeling that the fife and drum aroused in the boy heart, and wrote for other boys and girls the poem Old Glory. Other influences moulded the boy's character and filled him with an interest in human nature as he found it in the average countryman of Indiana, which he expressed in the peculiar Hoosier speech. These average THE HOOSIER 67 Hoosiers he watched as they traveled the National Road past his father's house, or as he met them at the county seat on Saturday afternoons or in the little country school where his devoted teacher, Lee O. Harris, encouraged him to write them into verse. Because he understood real peo- ple and put their human nature, generous and kind and good-humored as it was, into his writings, he accomplished two great things: he found the American people ready to listen to his songs and read his books and so became a famous poet; and he introduced his own home folks, the Hoosiers, to the American people. The boy is grown up, but he is not grown old, and his name is James Whitcomb Riley. 73. Influence of the teachers. Most of the men and wo- men who have added to Indiana's literary fame have come into prominence during the past thirty years. In nearly every instance the place where they have grown to matur- ity has been in a cultivated community, where there were inspiring teachers and where people led cultivated, quiet lives and enjoyed the reading of books. The New Harmony settlement in Indiana's territorial days built schools and libraries and brought to Indiana men and women who cared for literature. In Vevay and in Brookville and Crawfords- ville and Bloomington, and wherever there were settle- ments, cultivated men gathered and gave to the neighbor- hood the benefit of their books and of their scholarship. The colleges were sending out this kind of people, and as better teachers were trained in the normal schools and in the colleges, the schools awakened the spirit of scholarship. Individual teachers did more to bring scholarship to the people than the great institutions of learning did. Such was Lee O. Harris's training of Riley, and Julia Dumont's teaching of the Eggleston brothers at Vevay. Such a teacher was John I. Morrison, of the old Salem Academy, and such have been Caleb Mills, of Wabash College, Cath- arine Merrill, of Indianapolis, Samuel K. Hoshour, May Wright Sewall, John Clark Ridpath, of Asbury University, Alembert W. Brayton, and many more. 68 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA 74. How a community gets its character. It is the belief of students of history that a community owes its character to the pioneers who founded it and to the leaders who in later years guided the thought and the life of its people. The pioneers of Indiana were American-born, soldiers of the War of Independence and their sons. They were men of enterprise and courage and patriotism. Among them in all parts of the State were scholars whose taste of college life had not robbed them of the spirit of adventure. It was to be expected that such founders of a State would provide libraries and schools and colleges for the training of their children and, as they were able, give generously to the en- dowment of the colleges they built. Such benefactors were Williamson Dunn, who gave land to three Indiana col- leges, and later on, Ovid Butler, John Purdue, and Wash- ington C. DePauw. Equally public-spirited were the early educational missionaries Asbury and Simpson and Mills and Hovey, who gave the best they had to the cause of education in Indiana. The result of it all is a State whose people are rightly proud of its scholarship and of its achieve- ments in all the activities that call for the use of trained minds. 75. The Indiana school system. The Indiana school sys- tem consists of the common schools, governed by township trustees and trustees of town and city boards chosen by the people of the several communities, Indiana University at Bloomington and Purdue University at Lafayette, and the State Normal School at Terre Haute for the training of common-school teachers. The system is guided by a state board of education of thirteen members. Of this board the governor appoints six. The remaining seven are the super- intendent of public instruction, chosen by the people of the State, the superintendent of schools in the three cities hav- ing the largest number of children of school age, and the presidents of the State Normal School and of Purdue and Indiana Universities. The schools are supported by local and general taxation and by the interest from the state THE HOOSIER 69 school fund. Special schools are maintained for boys at Plainfield, for girls at Clermont, for the feeble-minded at Fort Wayne, for the deaf, and for the blind, at Indianapolis. 76. The government of the State. The political govern- ment of the State has changed very little since the adoption of the present constitution in 1851. 77. The governor and his duties. The governor and most administrative officers are elected by the people upon nomi- nations made by the political parties. There are many ad- ministrative boards appointed by the governor. Among these are the trustees of the state institutions for the care of the insane and the epileptic and the treatment of tubercu- losis; the homes for soldiers and sailors at Lafayette, and their orphans at Knightstown; the prisons for women and for men, the reformatory for young men. The governor also appoints commissions for various public purposes, the pub- lic service commission, which regulates the telegraph, tele- phone, traction, gas, water, and lighting business of the State ; the public library commission, to maintain traveling libraries furnished by the State, state boards of finance, accounting, and taxation, of forestry, of health, of charities, of pardons, of medical registration, of dentistry, of phar- macy, of registration and examination of nurses, and of embalmers. The governor also appoints the officers of the militia and countless minor officials, and fills all vacancies in state offices, except in the legislature. The governor enforces the laws of the State and keeps the peace. When the legislature is in session he signs or vetoes the bills enacted. The effect of his veto is to require the bill to be passed a second time before it can become effective. He has the power of pardoning persons convicted of crimes and misdemeanors. His term is four years. 78. The legislative department. The laws are enacted by the general assembly, consisting of one hundred representa- tives and fifty senators. The representatives choose their speaker, or president. The president of the senate is the lieutenant-governor, chosen by the people of the State at 70 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA the time the governor is elected. The members of the two houses represent districts of the State apportioned according to population. The senator serves for four years and the representative for two. Sessions are held for sixty days, beginning in January every two years. 79. The judicial department. Laws are interpreted and controversies are determined by the courts. These are of many kinds and grades: in the various townships, justices of the peace, for unimportant controversies; in the cities, police courts to try minor offenses and violations of local ordi- nances; in the counties, the circuit courts, and where the population is dense and the litigation is heavy, additional special courts, superior courts, criminal courts, probate courts, and juvenile courts. The appeals from these local courts are taken to two courts of last resort, which meet at Indianapolis, the appellate court and the supreme court. Judges, except in the supreme court and the circuit court, serve for four years. Supreme and circuit judges serve for six years. All are chosen by popular vote, upon political nominations. 80. County administration. Each county, to regulate its local affairs, chooses a board of three commissioners, who conduct its business, look after its property and roads and bridges, and represent the State in the licensing of liquor dealers. In the spending of public funds they are supervised by a county council. Both commissioners and council are elected. The people elect most of the county administrative of- ficers. These are sheriff, auditor, clerk of the circuit court, treasurer, recorder, coroner, and surveyor. The trustees of the several townships in the county elect a county super- intendent of schools. 81. Township administration. The township officers are trustee, assessor, constable, road supervisor, justice of the peace, and the advisory board. The advisory board super- vises township expenditures just as the county council does. The chief township officer is the trustee, who administers THE HOOSIER 71 the township business under the supervision of the advisory board and in a general way looks after the business affairs of the rural schools, the maintenance of the roads, and cares for the poor. 82. City government. Cities are incorporated according to laws which differ according to the size of the city. In a general way their affairs are governed by a chief executive or mayor, a legislative body or council, and a city judge, all elected by the people. 83. Towns. Communities too small to be incorporated as cities are organized into towns, if the inhabitants so de- sire. The town affairs are managed by a board of from three to seven trustees, and its other officers are the clerk, treasurer, and marshal. The marshal keeps the peace, as the police do in the cities. 84. Taxation. Local taxes are assessed by the township assessor to meet the levy laid by the township trustee, the city council, and the county board. Besides the local taxes the general assembly levies a general state tax and the school trustees in the various townships, towns, and cities levy a special school tax. 85. Law enforcement. The maintenance of order in the State at large is entrusted by law to the county sheriff and in the cities to the mayor, who enforces the laws through his proper boards and the city police. QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS 1. What is the origin of the term "Hoosiers" as applied to the people of Indiana? 2. Describe the Indiana school system. Who were some of its founders? 3. The government of the State is divided into three departments — executive, legislative, and judicial. Of what does each department consist? Compare with the government of the United States. 4. Who are the county officers in the county in which you live? What are the duties of each? 5. Who are the township officers (or if you live in a city the city officers) in the township in which you live? What are the duties of each? 72 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA COMPOSITION SUBJECTS 1. Write a paragraph on the life of one of the men mentioned in the section, "Distinguished Hoosiers." 2. Write a paragraph on the writings of one of the authors mentioned in the section, "The Hoosier Literature." 3. As a review of the history of Indiana write an analysis of the subject "What has made Indiana great?" Write a paragraph on each of the topics of your analysis. BIBLIOGRAPHY Aley, Robert J., and Aley, Max. Story of Indiana. Banta, David D. Historical Sketches of Johnson County, Ind. Cockrum, Wm. M. Pioneer History of Indiana. Cockrum, Oakland City, Ind. The Underground Railway. Conklin, Julia S. Young People's History of Indiana. Sentinel Printing Co., Indianapolis. Cottman, Geo. S., and Hyman, Max R. Centennial History of Indiana. In- dianapolis. Dillon, John B. . History of Indiana from its Earliest Exploration to 1816. Bingham, Indianapolis. (Out of print.) Dudley, Robert {pseud.). In My Youth. Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis. Dunn, Jacob P. Greater Indianapolis. 2 vols. Indiana: A Redemption from Slavery. Houghton Mifflin Company. True Indian Stories. Sentinel Printing Co., Indianapolis. Eggleston, Edward. Circuit Rider. Charles Scribner's Sons. Eggleston, George C. First of the Hoosiers. Drexel Biddle, Philadelphia. English, Wm. H. Conquest of the Country Northwest of the River Ohio. Bobbs- Merrill, Indianapolis. Esarey, Logan. History of Indiana from its Exploration to 1850. Stewart, In- dianapolis. Foulke, Wm. D. Life of Oliver P. Morton. Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis. Hall, Baynard R. The New Purchase. (Out of print.) Howe, Daniel W. Making a Capital in the Wilderness. Ind. Hist. Soc, Pub., vol. iv, no. 4. Indiana Historical Society. Publications, vols. 1, 11, in, iv. Indiana Quarterly Magazine of History (from 1905 to date). Indiana University. Julian, G. W. Political Recollections 1840-72. Jansen, Chicago. Levering, Julia H. Historic Indiana. G. P. Putnam's Sons. Lockwood, George B. New Harmony Communities. McCulloch, Hugh. Men and Measures of Haifa Century. Chas. Scribner's Sons. Merrill, Catherine. Soldier of Indiana in the War for the Union. Merrill, In- dianapolis. Merrill, Samuel {ed.). Indiana Gazetteer. 3d ed. (Out of print.) Moore, Edward E. Century of Indiana. American Book Co. Nicholson, Meredith. Hoosiers. Macmillan. Nowland, John H. B. Early Reminiscences of Indianapolis. Riley, James W. Complete Works. Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis. Smith, Oliver H. Early Indiana Trials and Sketches. Moore, Cincinnati. Stickney, Ida S. Pioneer Indianapolis. Civic Studies of Indianapolis, no. I. Sulgrove, Berry R. History of Indianapolis and Marion County. Thompson, Maurice. Stories of Indiana. American Book Co. i 2 !T*. <> * ^. § ct g co 2 » § =. J i I * • ■^ 2 a a o ^ = - = -fc ; -^ 5"" ^ — c ~ c: Co s- o w — — a. I*s>ffg8 * c- a <^ r5. 5- S^SSa-