Building Up the Western Cities general to lay out designated tracts of land as towns. Madison, Burlington, and Dubuque were thus laid out into in-lots, with streets, avenues, and public squares. The lots were arranged in three classes the first to be sold at the rate of forty dollars an acre, the second at twenty, the third at ten. A purchaser could not acquire more than one acre. These town-surveys were the subject of several amendatory acts-as that of 1838,* which provided for a Territorial surveyor, who should follow the precedents set by the surveyor of Ohio. His office was at Dubuque. Usually a Territorial survey has gone no further than that of townships and counties. The survey now ordered was extended west of the Mississippi. The act provided also for the survey of the boundary between Wisconsin and Michigan. Two townships were set apart by Congress for the support of a university; a grant was made for public buildings, and another in aid of a canal to connect Lake Michigan and Rock River.† Wisconsin resembled Alabama in the rapidity with which population poured in. The Territory was soon divided, and the name Iowa given to the southwestern part.‡ The old Northwestern model was again followed, but Iowa had a new feature in the Congressional appropriation of five thousand dollars to be ex * June 12th. + June 18th. June 12, 1838. See Iowa City, a Contribution to the Early History of Iowa, by Benjamin F. Shambaugh, M.A.; State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, 1893. Also, Documentary Material Relating to the History of Iowa, edited by Benjamin F. Shambaugh, A.M., Ph.D.; Historical Society, etc. pended in books for the use of the Territorial officers. The survey of the southern boundary was ordered, and the usual land grant was made. A year later the Legislature defined the eastern boundary, along the middle of the main channel of the Mississippi, and declared it under concurrent jurisdiction with Wisconsin. The organization of new Territorial governments barely kept pace with the movements and demands of population. By the removal of the Indians, the East experienced a great relief-and the East now began at the Mississippi. In ten years the frontier had moved more than two hundred and fifty miles north and northwest, in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin. The new-comers were chiefly from New England, New York, and Pennsylvania, but Ohio was rapidly becoming a parent of States. In the same period similar changes had gone on in the Southwest. The Indian tribes, so long elements of discord in surveyed Alabama and Mississippi, were now in the Indian Country, and a prosperous population was in possession of their ancient lands, save the desolate pine barrens of Georgia and the swamps of Western Mississippi. The unoccupied portions of Arkansas and Missouri were dense forests and impassable swamps. The entire Southern country, which had gone into private ownership since 1820, was less accessible than the new country of the North and Northwest. Michigan, Wisconsin, * June 18th. + March 3, 1839. 1830 to 1840. Transportation the Need of the Time and Iowa were easily accessible, and their settled parts were in a prairie country. Heavy timber was yet abundant in New York and Pennsylvania; the forests of Michigan and Wisconsin were not to be converted into lumber camps till the Eastern supply of lumber began to fail. As there was no market for timber that stood far from great waterways, the settlements in the timber districts, North and South, like those first made in the colonies, were in the most accessible valleys and near the great lakes-the natural highways of the country. Population was increasing most rapidly at the centres of trade, and among these were Cincinnati, Louisville, Detroit, and Chicago. All the coast cities having harbors suited to the increasing draft of ships, and the cities along the Erie canal, were growing beyond precedent. Interstate commerce was by waterways and wagon-roads. States were competing with one another for the carrying-trade from the West to the Atlantic seaboard. Everywhere internal improvements were demanded, and in most cases beyond the ability of the States to construct and to maintain. The statute - books were swelling with acts for the construction of canals that would connect the great lakes with the Ohio, the Ohio with the Delaware and with Chesapeake Bay, and the larger eastern tributaries of the Mississippi one with another. Other acts proposed wagon-roads and railroads aggregating thousands of miles, connecting rivers and canals, and weaving a vast net-work of highways over the whole country. Creeks were to be en larged into rivers. Political careers were made, broken, and mended by the army of office-seekers who, especially in the newer States, were loudly advocating internal improvements. The great West was rapidly mortgaging its credit for roads, bridges, railroads, and canals. Was not the State bound to receive vast accessions to its population? How were people to reach it? Build roads, bridge streams, issue bonds, and borrow money. Immigration would pour in, and the increase of taxable property would pay the debt. This was the stock argument. Lincoln used it in 1832, when first he stumped the New Salem district as "an avowed Henry Clay man." His circular letter which began his political career admits us, without reserve, into the secrets of his ambition and the wants of the West. It is the voice of the people living in the great valley. Address to the People of the Sangamon County.* FELLOW-CITIZENS, Having become a candidate for the honorable office of one of your Representatives in the next General Assembly of this State, in accordance with an established custom and the principles of true Republicanism, it becomes my duty to make known to you, the people whom I propose to represent, my sentiments with regard to local affairs. Time and experience have verified to a demonstration the public utility of internal improvements. That the poorest and most thinly populated countries would be greatly benefited by the opening of good roads, and in the clearing of *Abraham Lincoln: Complete Works. Edited by John G. Nicolay and John Hay. Vol. i., pp. 1-4, 7. Lincoln on Transit in the West navigable streams within their limits, is what no person will deny. Yet it is folly to undertake works of this or any other kind without first knowing that we are able to finish them— as half-finished work generally proves to be labor lost. There cannot justly be any objection to having railroads and canals, any more than to other good things, provided they cost nothing. The only objection is to paying for them; and the objection arises from the want of ability to pay. With respect to the county of Sangamon, some more easy means of communication than it now possesses, for the purpose of facilitating the task of exporting the surplus products of its fertile soil, and importing necessary articles from abroad, are indispensably necessary. A meeting has been held of the citizens of Jacksonville and the adjacent country, for the purpose of deliberating and inquiring into the expediency of constructing a railroad from some eligible point on the Illinois River, through the town of Jacksonville, in Morgan County, to the town of Springfield, in Sangamon County. This is, indeed, a very desirable object. No other improvement that reason will justify us in hoping for can equal in utility the railroad. It is a never-failing source of communication between places of business remotely situated from each other. Upon the railroad the regular progress of commercial intercourse is not interrupted by either high or low water or freezing weather, which are the principal difficulties that render our future hopes of water - communication precarious and uncertain. Yet, however desirable an object the construction of a railroad through our country may be, however high our imaginations may be heated at thoughts of it, there is always a heartappalling shock accompanying the amount of its cost, which forces us to shrink from our pleasing anticipations. The probable cost of this contemplated railroad is estimated at $290,000; the bare statement of which, in my opinion, is sufficient to justify the belief that the improvement of the Sangamon River is an object much better suited to our infant re sources. Respecting this view, I think I may say, without the fear of being contradicted, that its navigation may be rendered |