Chicago History | Spring–Summer 1991 by Chicago History Museum

CHICAGO HISTORY

CHICAGO HISTORY The Magazine of the Chicago Historical Society

EDITOR

Spring and Summer 1991

RUSSELL LEWIS

Volume XX, Numbers 1 and 2

ASSOCLITE EDITOR CLAUDIA LAMM WOOD

ASSISTANT EDITORS ROSEMARY ADAMS PATRICIA BERECK

CONTENTS

WEIKERSHEIMER

PUBLICATIONS ASSISTANT

JUDY SPONSLER

DESIGNER

MATTHEW

BILL VAN NIMWEGEN

ASSISTANT DESIGNER

Onward Christian Soldiers: The Social Gospel and the Pullman Strike

TED GIBBS

LEE

Black Abolitionists OLIVIA MAHONEY

PHOTOGRAPHY JOHN ALDERSON

Stanislav Szukalski's Lost Tune

JAY CRAWFORD

DEPARTMENTS 3

From the Editor

ISSN 0272-8540 Articles appearing in this journal are abstracted and indexed in Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life. Footnoted manuscripts of the articles appearing in this issue are available from the Chicago Historical Society's Publications Office. Cover: Portrait of Emma J. Atkinson. CHS, ICHi-21943.

Yesterday's City

Chicago Historical Society OFFICERS Richard H. Needham, Chairman Philip W. Hummer, Treasurer Edgar D. Jannotta, Vice-Chairman Philip E. Kelley, Secretary W. Paul Krauss, Vice-Chairman Philip D. Block III, Immediate Past Chairman Ellsworth H. Brown, President and Director

TRUSTEES Lerone Bennett, Jr. Philip D. Block III Laurence Booth Charles T. Brumback Stewart S. Dixon Michael H. Ebner Sharon Gist Gilliam Mrs. Duncan Y. Henderson Philip W. H ummer Richard M. Jaffee Edgar D. Jannotta Philip E. Kelley

W. Paul Krauss Mrs. Brooks McCormick William]. McDonough Robert Meers Mrs. Newton N. Minow Richard H. Needham Potter Palmer Bryan S. Reid,Jr. Gordon Segal Edward Byron Smith, Jr. James R. Thompson Dempsey J. Travis John R. Walter

LIFE TRUSTEES Bowen Blair John T. McCutcheon,Jr. Andrew McNally III Mrs. Frank D. Mayer Gardner H. Stern

HONORARY TRUSTEES Richard M. Daley, Mayor, City of Chicago Richard Devine, President, Chicago Park District The Chicago H istorical Society is a privately endowed, independent institution devoted to collecting, interpreting, and presenting the rich multicultural history of Chicago and Illinois, as well as selected areas of American history, to the public through exhibitions, programs, research collections, and publications. It must look to its members and friends for continuing financial support. Contributions to the Society are tax-deductible, and appropriate recognition is accorded major gifts. Membership Membership is open to anyone interested in the Society's goals and activities . Classes of annual mem bership and d ues are as follows: Individual , $30; Family, $35; Student/ Senior Citizen, $25 . Members receive the Society's quarterly magazine, Chicago History; Past Times, a calendar and newsletter; invitations to special events; free admission to the building at all times; reserved seats at fi lms and concerts in our auditorium; and a 10 percent d iscount on books and other merchandise purchased in the Museum Store. Hours The Museum is open daily from 9:30 A.M. to 4:30 P.M.; Sunday from 12:00 NOON to 5:00 P.M . The Lib rary and the Manuscripts Collection are open Tuesday through Saturday from 9:30 A.M . to 4:30 P.M. All other research collections are open by appointment. The Society is closed on Christmas, New Year's , and Thanksgiving Days. Education and Public Programs Guided tours, slide lectures, gallery talks, craft demonstrations, and a variety of special p rograms for all ages, from preschool through senior citizen, are offered. Suggested Admission Fees for Nonmembers Adults, $3.00; Students (17-22 with valid school ID) and Senior Citizens, $2 .00; Children (6-17) $1 .00. Admission is free on Mondays. Chicago Historical Society

Clark Street at North Avenue

Chicago, Illinois 60614

(312) 642-4600

FROM THE EDITOR "Colors speak all languages," Joseph Addison, the British essayist and statesman wrote in 1712. Addison understood that colors are universally appealing and can be transformed into powerful symbols. With their distinct use of color, flags become potent symbols of identity, whether they are based on common ancestry, culture, land, occupation, or ideology. To evoke these special relationships, flags frequently bear colors and designs that are rich in historical significance. Chicago's city flag, for instance, can be read as a text of the city's history. It represents key events in the past by four six-pointed stars, each point signifying an ideal, motto, or an important date. But it is doubtful that many Chicagoans today can decipher their historically charged banner, and as new urban symbols emerge the municipal role of the flag changes. Flags share with seals and coats of arms a common origin as a utilitarian response to the preliterate world's demand for methods of quick identification. Seals developed as tools of commerce and government. Mesopotamians first introduced clay seals in the fifth century B.C. in place of a signature to verify contracts, accounts, and letters, and their use spread rapidly throughout the civilizations of the Middle East and eventually the Greek and Roman worlds . Flags, however, are rooted in battle. They originally helped leaders follow troop movements and gauge the course of battle; as wind indicators, flags also guided soldiers in aiming their arrows. But most important, flags identified friend and foe. As a result, early flags used simple, easily recognized designs. Ancient Egyptian soldiers probably used the first flag-like devices (streamers attached to poles), and Roman soldiers carried the vexillum, a square flag mounted on a crossbar and carried on a pole. Coats of arms first appeared on the shields of knights in the twelfth century to distinguish the armor-clad men from each other in battle. A feature of Europe's feudal system, heraldic insignia became firmly established among the ruling class within a century, appearing in the seals and flags of royalty, nobility, and clergy. Each family perpetuated its rank by passing down its coat of arms to the next generation. Identifying the growing number of family coats of arms fell to the herald, an official messenger of a medieval court, whose duties eventually encompassed defining the laws of heraldry, the rules that guided the design and proper use of coats of arms. Although most of Europe has officially abandoned the heraldic tradition, many national flags feature coats of arms and follow the laws of heraldry. Chicago's flag, designed by Wallace Rice and adopted in 1917, was not the city's first effort to create municipal colors. In 1892 Alfred J. Roewad's terra-cotta-colored banner, which was divided into three parts by a band of white forming an inverted Y, won a contest sponsored by the Tribune. Meant to symbolize the Chicago River, its two branches, and the three sections of the city, the simple yet elegant banner recalled the clear and direct designs of early flags and coats of arms. That it was too simple and thus did not evoke the glorified booster image of the city preferred by many citizens may explain why it is used today only as an unofficial municipal insignia. Despite this, the inverted Y symbol, more than the flag itself, is used in a variety of settings throughout Chicago: manhole covers, bridges, the elevator doors of the Cultural Center, and taxicabs all bear the emblem. Although the city flag and the municipal symbols and ideals it embodies no longer seem to inspire people, citizens' identification with color remains strong. In the place of flags professional sports teams' colors and insignia have become our dominant city symbols. And though many Chicagoans may have legitimate claim to a coat of arms, they are most likely to express their identity and their city allegiance by wearing a baseball cap bearing their favorite team's colors and logo. RL

Onward Christian Soldiers: The Social Gospel and the Pullman Strike by Matthew C. Lee

Although many Protestant churches declared their mission to include alleviating social and economic problems among the urban poor, most opposed the rights of labor during the Pullman Strike.

In 1894 Chicago was a large, lively, and troubled metropolis. Its population of more than 1.5 million had swung from the euphoria of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition through the deep depression of the winter into an uncertain spring and summer. Immigrants streamed in, and serious social problems abounded. As in other large cities, the struggle between booming capitalist interests on the one hand and the rights of labor on the other commanded considerable public attention. Remembering the Haymarket Affair of 1886, as well as other less dramatic local confrontations, Chicago's citizens were especially sensitive to this issue. This uneasy city was also home to HullHouse and Chicago Commons, to the new Baptist-affiliated University of Chicago, to numerous municipal reform groups, denominational newspapers, and prominent churches. It should have been an ideal forum for the expression of the Social Gospel, a new movement that had arisen in American Christianity during the four decades before World War I. Its adherents, though relatively few even in Chicago, profoundly affected how churches viewed their relationship to modern society. Social Gospelers rejected the conservative view that churches should concern themselves exclusively with saving souls and ignore the collective ills of an industrializing and urbanizing Mallhew C. Lee is a doctoral candidate in American history at UCLA.

Left, Green Stone Presbyterian Church, 112th Street and St. Lawrence Avenue, Pullman, Illinois. When confronted with confli ct between labor and management, many professed Social Gospel preachers in Chicago sided with management, as did E. C. Oggel, pastor of this congregation, during the Pullman Strike. Above, George M. Pullman, c. 1890, owner of the Pullman Palace Car Company. Reformer Jane Addams, appalled by Pullman 's conduct during the strike, called him "the Modern Lear," a man who thought only he knew what was best for all.

Chicago History, Spring and Summer 1991 country. They did not dispense with trying to bring individuals to God, but they also recognized the improbability of successfully proselytizing all of America. These moderate progressives applied Christian principles in solving contemporary social and economic problems, such as crime, poor sanitation, municipal vice, and conflict between labor and management. Historians such as Henry F. May, Charles H. Hopkins, Robert T. Handy, Janet Fishburn, and others have described the Social Gospel movement as Protestant, developing first in the Episcopal and Congregational churches and moving through the Baptist and Methodist to the Presbyterian; action-oriented; urban; essentially optimistic; middle-class; white; male; native-born; and sympathetic to the problems and goals of the laboring class. But late nineteenth-century laborers generally distrusted all clergy; they stayed away from church, criticizing the religious establishment for catering to the wealthy and ignoring the reality of the workers' plight. Because Social Gospel clergymen usually preferred solving labor disputes through cooperation, arbitration, and profit sharing to the more confrontational tactics favored by many labor groups, the Social Gospel failed to attract much labor support. But according to historians, appreciation of the cares of laboring men and women distinguished Social Gospelers from other clergy as long as the movement lasted. Despite the apparently congenial match between this movement and the Chicago of the 1890s, an examination of denominational newspapers reveals that most Protestant institutions in the city were highly ambivalent about Social Gospel precepts regarding the rights of labor. Such ambivalence is striking when compared with the prolabor attitudes expressed by the official Catholic voice of Illinois during the Pullman Strike of 1894. About twelve miles south of Chicago lay Pullman, a company town next to the tracks of the Illinois Central Railroad. Built in 1881 by George M. Pullman to attract employees for his Pullman Palace Car Company and to provide them with "an environment conducive to work and improvement," the town grew to about twelve thousand residents by 1894. The strike 6

that year was at first confined to the town of Pullman, but it soon grew into a violent nationwide conflict. In spring 1894 employees of the Pullman Palace Car Company had three main complaints: compensation, housing, and supervision. To keep his plant operating during the previous winter, George Pullman had cut wages and hours 20 to 50 percent, yet failed to lower rents and utility rates in the town accordingly. In addition, workers suffered under abusive and tyrannical supervisors. On May 7 and 9 , a delegation of workers met with company officials and requested that 1893 pay rates be restored and working conditions investigated. Management refused to grant a pay increase, telling workers that the company was operating at a loss. Workers were promised, however, that they would not be fired for making their requests, and that their complaints about foremen would be investigated. On May 10 three members of the delegation were laid off. Company officials later contended that the layoffs had no connection to the workers' grievance activities. Pullman employees, most of whom were members of Eugene V. Debs's American Railway Union (ARU), saw the firings as evidence of bad faith. In an all-night meeting they decided to strike but did not set a date. The next morning, an unfounded rumor spread that management had heard of the decision to strike and had decided to lock out the workers. Most of the employees decided to lay down their tools and walk out first. The company responded by sending home the few laborers left and closing the plant. The Pullman Strike had begun. The strike remained a local and peaceful affair for more than six weeks. On June 15 the Pullman strikers, many of them dependent on charity for their next meal, appealed formally to the American Railway Union for help. The union joined the strikers in appealing to the company to negotiate or submit to arbitration; the company ignored the workers' demands and refused to arbitrate. After a final warning to the company drew the same response, and although ARU president Eugene Debs advocated moving slowly, the ARU ordered its members not to handle Pullman palace cars as of noon on June 26.

Onward Christian Soldiers

During the depression of 1893, George Pullman cut wages and hours by 20 to 50 percent but continued to deduct rents and utilities from workers' paychecks at the previous rate. Consequently, workers often received only meager amounts for several weeks of work. Above, paycheck to 0. Millett in the amount of twelve cents for the second half of August 1893. Workers also complained of abusive supervisors and poor working conditions. Below, Pullman plant workers, 1894.

Chicago History, Spring and Summer 1991

WORKINGMEN OF CHICAGO~

HAVE YOU NO RIGHTS?-NO AMBITION?-NO MANHOOD? Will you still remain disunited while your masters rob kou of all your rights as well as all the fruits of your labor? A move1nent is now inaugurated by the Money Lords of America to allow only property-holders to vote! This is the :first.step to Monarch¥! Was it in vain that our forefathers fought and died for LIBERTY?

They have now passed alaw authorizing the arrest, as a vagabond, of any workingman out of employmant who may wander in search of work,-no warrant being necessary. They have passed a law makin .. it a criminal offense for workingmen to combine for an advance of their wages an offense punishable by imprisonment and fine ! The right of emploviars to combine In reducing our wages and liringing starvation and misery to our homes is protected by all the pollce and · soldiers in the country! These aristocrats refuse to pay their taxes but demand all "'' Improvements! . HOW LONG WILL YOU BE MADE FOOLS OF? E,er)· tlay l'WJ"J" hour, that we re_11111i11 disnnitctl, on!J h<'lp, 011r 01111rl'~sor~ lo bind more tirmh !hr c·haiu~ aromul us. 'r11ronidio11t the <•n1ire Lnnd our brothc•r~ ure callinl( 1111011 us to rlHe anti 1;rolet·t our Labor. Por the sMke of 0111· wil'es 111111 ('hilrlrcu. and 011r own self'-rc~pect, LET l'~ \\ \l'I' "o LO'.\(!f;R ! OJWA\IZE A'l' oxc~; ! !

MASS MftTIN_Gon MarKet St., near Ma~ison, :c...~+ u.c act "vvhile th.ere is yet time!

TO NIGHT!

THE COMMITTEE, Workingman's Party of the United States.

In the 1870s, Chicago became a center for radical politics, including the socialist and anarchist movements. This 1877 handbill (above) urged workingmen to take action, asking them, " How long will you be made fools of?" Memories of this earlier labor unrest prejudiced Chicagoans against the 1894 Pullman Strike. Right, local Pullman workers joined forces with the American Railway Union, canying the strike to a national level. On June 26, the American Railway Union ordered its members not to handle Pullman cars.

Denominational publications in Chicago paid little attention to the Pullman Strike during this period. They were interested in labor issues, however, and offered their opinions on causes of and solutions to the industrial unrest embodied in various other strikes and in the "Armies of the Commonweal" (large groups of unemployed men marching across the country in protest of economic conditions). Some editors blamed the "lying giant partisan press" for misrepresenting the facts of labor disputes and blowing conflicts completely out of proportion. The Congregationalist Advance of May 3 and the Baptist Standard of April 26 worried that gullible laboring men were being misled by politicians or people with darker purposes. Some editors hoped or believed that all the trouble could be traced to "a foreign horde, unfamiliar with the language and institutions of the country." But in early July the Methodist Epworth Herald believed it had identified the real source 8

of the labor problem: "the diabolical dominance of the saloon" in both individual and political life. Two church newspapers examined the alleged economic hardship of the laboring classes. The May 3 Presbyterian Interior referred to a study of conditions in Europe that found that labor's share in the value of what it produced had improved both relatively and absolutely in the previous thirty years, while management's share had decreased relative to labor's. By implication it questioned American labor's claim to be suffering in "misery and decay." David Beaton of the Lincoln Park Congregational Church in Chicago presented a similar argument in the Advance on May 3, blaming the workingman's poverty not on exploitative wages, but on excessive expenditures for liquor, tobacco, "unsuitable dress, unwholesome luxuries, and questionable pleasures."

Onward Christian Soldiers

Grand Mass Meeting -

OF-

PULLMAN EMPLOYES 1

-6..~D-

RAILROAD MEN, WILL BE HELD AT

.Central Turner Rall Tenth, Bet. Market and Walnut Streets, St. Lonis,

TUESDAY EVE'G, MAY 22d,'94 T

O'CLOCK.,

UNDER THE AUSPICES QF THE

American Railway Union

~:. V. DEBS, President and G. W. H()W ...t\.RD, Vice-President A. R. U. and other Prominent Speakers will address the meeting. "AcL<ANUO~ ,.!~G to attend ..

IB.ยง11 9

Chicago History, Spring and Summer 1991 Most Protestant papers saw the commonwealers as foolish, misguided, silly, ignorant, and dangerous. On the other hand, the Catholic New World, which had been established in 1892 under the auspices of the archbishop as the official organ of the Ecclesiastical Province of Illinois, saw labor's armies in a different light. When unemployed farmers could not get reasonable prices for their produce because of overproduction while thousands were starving, it was understandable that " those who suffer should passionately insist that there must be something wrong in the social system in which such things can happen." The willingness of the New World's writers to consider seriously the position that the source of unrest might lie in the system itself was accompanied by an unusually analytical and even-handed approach to the labor issues of the day . Like the rest of the denominational press, the New World depended

on the daily newspapers for information ; unlike most of that press, its editors read the news critically, often deferringjudgment until all the facts were in or disagreeing with the secular press ' interpretation. One of the few papers to mention the Pullman Strike when it occurred, the N ew World examined the little information available, covered the assertions of both sides, and presented questions that would have to be answered before the merits of the strike could be decided. The paper rega rded strikes as generally "ruinous to both sides," and although not averse to calling on federal or state intervention in case of violence , the paper supported laborers as "sensible men" amenable to reason and questioned the use of federal court injunctions to break strikes. The progressive, Americanist beliefs of the New World's sponsors and their willingness to articulate and defend those beliefs publicly ex-

The rnob burning cars between Forty-fifth and Forty-ninth streets. Despite the presence offederal troops, strike-related violence in Chicago increased during July 189 4. Sketch by Louis Braunhold, 1894.

Onward Christian Soldiers

plain the paper's relatively prolabor stance. One source of this orientation was Pope Leo XIII's forceful 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, which rejected socialism but recognized the laborer's right to fair wages, just treatment, and trade union membership. Certainly none of the Protestant groups, with their relatively decentralized organizational structures, had such an authoritative justification to support labor. But Pope Leo's statement was hardly one-sided; he sought to balance the interests of capital and labor in the light of Catholic teaching. He thought, for example, that strikes were injurious to everyone and ought to be prevented. So the encyclical does not fully account for the attitudes of Illinois Catholic officials toward the Pullman conflict. Implementation of the papal pronouncement required interpretation by American priests and bishops who were then embroiled in a dispute called the Americanism crisis. Many of these clerics questioned the extent to which the church should attend to-or even could relate to-contemporary American social and political issues. But Bishops John L. Spalding of Peoria, Illinois, and James Ryan of Alton, Illinois, were leaders of a group that advocated a distinctively American Catholicism that could deal effectively with pressing problems-'especially those involving laborers and immigrants-in a pluralistic, democratic society. It was Spalding who, with Archbishop P. A. Feehan of Chicago, had founded and named the New World in 1892. The potential influence of this publication was enormous from the start: in Chicago alone, Catholics outnumbered Baptists thirty-three to one, and Congregationalists and Episcopalians each more than forty to one. The rest of the denominational press also disliked strikes as solutions to conflicts between labor and management. Most papers grudgingly admitted that the workingman had the right to withhold his labor from the market, ill-advised though it might be to do so. They denied his right to interfere in any way with the labor of others, however. Sympathetic strikes in particular drew editors' fire. Yet these editors proposed remedies and clearly believed the seriousness of the situation required attention. For example, Epworth Herald editor Joseph F. Berry wrote in May

1894 that while radical Social Gospeler George Herron was not a great orator, "he is a thinker; and thinkers count these days," especially on issues that "vitally affect the industrial, social, and moral condition of the masses." The paper found that "many instances of rank injustice on the part of capital have been brought to light, for which we condemn the authors and sympathize with the sufferers." Berry's solution was to advocate training good, true, patriotic men in the mold of the Methodist Epworth League, destroying the "whisky devil," and evangelizing the masses. Other denominational papers were

,.~=n=•~=~··1

I CoIT?~::::~~ Arm8 I r ~ " ~ ~ = = · • ~ o~, ...

I rJoryorarH

Certijicate. i

Jiw /Jong pwu/id,

l1~,,•11/Jid1'.'K ,1111/ Inti' pr1110Jlcs o/ tltt' ( 1>i11111011,.'l'1rl ,·/n1(J', ,11,d for !ti., 11111,•a·,·rri11g l,~1•,rlt_1· to liis o//in-rs, ,,,fto 'i.,'i'rt' arrested 1111d a !tdd /11,/{l!/ .!-/- !tour. 4[/ !.a/>orli', /11d., al _lrw 11ss1•1t1J1g tltt' l1:i;aL n,..,lt/.1 (ll1rll 111c111- · h~r., ,f !ltt' ,-0111111011,, •tf/l Ir: //11 pu/i/1, 11 ,r/i1, ·,r I'. a c, _./ ,,, , 1

I I

lo t/1,

i ·1. ' ~· . . .-;:_.

l (..,"(,

'•-t .;:(.

..,L

h~/uJ-/~1. .

. ldj11ta11t. a

L::::::::·:£.:::::::::::~J 0

The Pullman Strike was only one manifestation of a growing discontent among laborers throughout the nation. This certificate identified its owner, J. Howard, as a member of the Commonweal Army, which was composed of large groups of unemployed men whq marched across the country in 1894 to protest economic conditions and draw attention to the plight of the worker.

Chicago History, Spring and Summer 1991

•

THE

ABSTAINER

No.130. •

AND THE

DRINKER.

BY EDWARD CA RS :',V ELL .

I am worn by a man who works and thinks.

We guard his feet from damp and. dust.

bd I by one who don't, and drink•

Like him we are always on the "bust."

l am the coat my master wean.

I rtsemble mine in tecrible tean. I

When master thirsts he comee to me,

.lry master's throat I only bu.ra, And coat him all he c&D. borrow or

I coai him nothing ; to &ll I'm free.

earn.

"WhereCore do ye apend money f"or that w-hleh I• not b ~ t and )'Ollr labor Cor that "W'hleh -Cl•fleth not, "-luJAH Iv. s. P11i.URhed by the liatio11al

Reade StreK, liew Iorlr.. Prlu $1 p,-r 1,000. Po t&!re SO cu.

- - - - - - - - -- - - - - - 12

Ttmperanu ">Ociety an<l PuhllcaU011 House, -liS-----=--=-=-i

-J

Onward Christian Soldiers less fanatically protemperance but just as emphatic about saving individual souls. Nearly all editors addressed secular concerns. They considered respect for law and order essential and believed that if it was not offered voluntarily, it should be coerced. They advocated federal or state military intervention to check a "spirit of lawlessness," to make both sides of a strike behave themselves, to protect the public and the rights of nonstrikers to take jobs, to guard the rights of capital, and to quell "riotous demonstrations." The Episcopal Living Church insisted that property rights be recognized and protected by the authorities. More charitable toward labor, the Baptist Standard called upon Congress to recognize and solve the problems of the unemployed. Less charitable toward the immigrant (especially the Catholic), the Congregationalist Advance of June 7 argued for immigration restrictions to protect American labor. Some publications were almost wistful in their search for solutions. If only labor and capital would realize their common interest; if only self-reliance and self-sacrifice would return to their former places in American hearts; if only men in the churches would unite in the institutional public work that was the other side of public worship; then things would be better, according to the Presbyterian Interior of May 3. People ought to help themselves, to find work, or at least to find better things to do than to ask for a handout from Congress, said the Living Church and the Advance. Even the Standard, advocate of congressional action , said that the best way to help the needy was to show them how to help themselves. Between armed conflict and self-help lay the nearly universally approved method of arbitration . If confrontation cannot be avoided , editors believed, it ought to be submitted to a hearing before an impartial judge. Both sides and the public would benefit immensely. Baptist Standard columnist W. H . Geistweit, who was more strongly prolabor than most of his colleagues, argued on May l O that the rich had to be taught that poor laborers had rights that Many churches blamed workers ' problems on excessive expenditures for liquor and on the "diabolical dominance of the saloon. " Left, N at ional Temperance Society broadside, 1894.

â&#x20AC;˘Âˇtnu:

ftOMY.TIVf..M

HAM

!'CllTHl'(O

lt\T Âˇ1

Even if the public did not support the workers ' grievances, the plight of their fam ilies drew attention and sympathy. The sketch above appeared in the Chicago Times on November 15, 1894.

even they were bound to respect; arbitration helped deliver that lesson . Opinions in the denominational press differed on the propriety of addressing social concerns in general, and labor issues in particular, in the pulpit. Ten percent of the Protestant clergy in Chicago addressed social issues in sermons on topics such as: "Church for Rich" (Congregationalist); "A Scriptural Suggestion to Labor and Capital" (Methodist); "Are Republican Institutions a Failure?" (Presbyterian). On May 13, three days after the delegation workers were fired , the Reverend E. C. Oggel delivered a sermon on "Capital and Labor" at his Green Stone Presbyterian S hurch in Pullman. Taking the Golden Rule as his text, Oggel deplored the strike as evidence that capital and labor were drifting apart when they ought to come closer together. Nine out of ten strikes hurt the workers more than the owners, said the minister, and this strike had little chance of success. Oggel asserted that business, not sentiment, dictated developments, and that conditions warranting a strike did not exist. Workers had legitimate grievances, but all honorable means of resolving them had not yet been exhausted. Half a loaf was better than none, and in his judgment the workers had two-thirds of

Chicago History, Spring and Summer 1991 a loaf. Laborers did not like Oggel 's message at all, and some accused him of being George Pullman's mouthpiece. Oggel left Pullman that week, never to return . William H. Carwardine, pastor of the First Methodist Episcopal Church in Pullman, was the first and most vociferous clerical champion of the strikers. In a scathing indictment of George Pullman and his model town experiment (first presented as a sermon May 20 and later published in expanded form as a book), Carwardine accused Pullman of exploitation, petty tyranny, and espionage. Opposed to strikes in general, the minister found the Pullman Strike eminently justifiable. Carwardine advocated arbitration as an immediate solution to conflict between labor and management, but he also believed that something was "radically wrong" with a society in which the gulf between rich and poor was so wide. By June 29 , two weeks after the appeal to the ARU, an estimated 50,000 to 120,000 workers had joined the boycott of Pullman cars, and an enormous amount of railroad traffic was disrupted, especially west of Chicago . The General Managers ' Association (GMA) , an organization of twenty-four rail lines having terminals in Chicago, acted to protect their contracts with Pullman and to destroy the American Railway Union. GMA members fired boycotters, hired replacement workers, supplied information to the press, pursued legal action against the ARU, and brought the federal government into the conflict on the side of management. On July 2 federal judges issued an injunction that was so broad it prohibited Debs and the other ARU leaders from even talking to railway employees about leaving their jobs. Grounds for the injunction lay in the Sherman Act, which prohibited restraint of interstate commerce, and in laws forbidding interference with the United States mail. Pullman cars were frequently attached to trains that carried freight or mail. The GMA refused to detach Pullman cars from these trains, so workers refusing to handle the trains were deemed violators of these laws. Debs regarded the injunction as illegal and inapplicable, and he continued the union's activities. The promanagement secular press exaggerated accounts of isolated incidents of sabo14

taged tracks , violence, and occasionally rowdy gatherings of people. Local federal officials, in close contact with the GMA and fearful of escalated violence , requested federal troops from nearby Fort Sheridan . Over the vociferous objections of Governor John P. Altgeld of Illinois and Mayor John P. Hopkins of Chicago, Grover Cleveland ordered the United States Army into Chicago late on July 3 to protect the flow of mail and commerce. The increased involvement of the American Railway Union complicated matters for religious observers. Now there were two levels of strikers-the primary local group and the sympathetic nationwide union- and the public was involved as well, as the flow of freight and passenger traffic was disturbed. On July 5, both the Congregationalist Advance and the Baptist Standard deplored the strikers' lack of concern for the public, and the former stressed the importance of public support for labor. The financial columnist for the Presbyterian Interior expressed irritation at the disruption of business caused by the boycott. He also echoed the

Archbishop Patrick A . Feehan headed the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago between I 880 and I 902. Together with Bishop john L. Spalding, he f ounded the New World in I 892, a denominational newspaper sympathetic to the problems of laborers and immigrants.

Onward Christian Soldiers melodramatic pronouncements of the daily press with references to mob law and thousands of sidetracked cars. The Congregationalist Advance of July 5 was more analytical and balanced in its treatment than its Baptist or Presbyterian counterparts. Like the daily press, it blamed "dictator Debs," as well as the tendency in society for individuals in groups to abdicate their responsibility in favor of autocratic bosses. It did not, however, spare capital in its criticism: "As to the Pullman Company, we have seen no occasion for wasting any sympathy over that." The newspaper judged the company's "lofty and arrogant refusal ... to submit ... to arbitration ... a grave mistake." The rest of the weekly religious press, because of their publication schedules, did not have a chance to comment on these events until they had turned decidedly uglier. But at least two area ministers did comment. The Reverend H . A. Delano of the First Baptist Church of Evanston condemned the tyranny of Debs. Pastor J. P. Brushingham hosted reformist economics professor E. W. Bemis of the University of Chicago at Fulton Street Methodist Church in a discussion of the strike and delivered a message of support for reform groups such as the Chicago Civic Federation. The level of violence in Chicago rose 'after July 3 despite the presence of the federal troops. Deputy marshals who were recruited from among the less upstanding elements of society probably contributed to the trouble; much if not most of the violence during this period was perpetrated by individuals who were not members of the American Railway Union. By July 8, 6,000 state and federal troops, 5,000 deputy marshals, and 3,100 police occupied Chicago and the vicinity. The ARU strike began to fall apart, despite Debs's denial that rallies for popular support had failed. Debs was arrested, first for conspiracy and later for contempt of court. The American Federation of Labor and the major railroad brotherhoods refused to assist the strikers. Some workers were tricked into returning to work by being told their comrades in the next town had returned ; others quietly gave up . By July 11 , trains were moving as far away as California, the Pullman plant rehired workers by July 18, and the army left Chicago on July 20.

Although he was opposed to strikes in general, the Reverend Will iam H. Carwardine, pastor of the First Methodist Episcopal Church in Pullman, championed the strikers ' cause.

The conflict left thirty people dead , sixty injured, and seven hundred arrested. The violence in Chicago provoked from religious institutions a frequently fearful demand for the imposition of law and order. Like the daily papers, most denominational publications assumed that the strikers and the mobs were one and the same. The Presbyterian Interior anxiously called for government intervention; words and phrases such as "insurrection," "fraught with the gravest perils," and "anarchistic and murderous ... mob" dotted its columns during this phase of the strike, from July 4 to July 20. The Interior was the most gleeful of the denominational papers when the strike appeared it would soon fail. On July 12, the Congregationalist Advance sarcastically criticized Governor Altgeld's objections to federal troops, citing the need to quell "this Debs carnival of lawlessness and violence." In this same period, the Episcopal Living Church blamed Altgeld's "temporizing" and Mayor Hopkins's "tardiness" for failing to prevent the strike's 15

Chicago History, Spring and Summer 1991

t., fil

otl a..

AND CALIFo.n.zv-

xx..~AV

LX~~.S,

-<;TT.A_:E.E:1:D

t],.,

l"-4_

l(ansa_s City, St~ Joseplt, J.eavenwortlt, Council Bluffs, Omaha, 1

LAWRENCE, CHEYENNE, TOPEKA, FORT SCOTT,

.6,~nt. ;:r:<1i ~\ •.:.~ii~., ~~\~~~{; 1

¾ ....-4---... ~·11. JJ. . \.,...,..-~'°'.......-~,,......--~ . . . . /~

1 .

/'c>.~

,,-.$.1'

"~'--._""'

,._

ire..-:•.,,._,

-'l

/a..A"..o

,._

"- !o

ft,)

•;;o

I,,

Denver City, Pueblo, Santa Fe. New Mexico,

SACRAMENTO, SAN FRANCISCO, .,\..utl 1111

Point,.. in

ihn .:\IISJ,c;. Dl~,,l'1tICT~ ..

THE ONLY ROAD WEST OUT OF ST. LOUIS RUNNINC THE

0Plebratecl

1•111111111.,11

Pa1::tt•c• ('1ut•!-t?

From St. Louis to Kansas City, St. Joseph and Omaha, \\'ithout (;han,re:

Pe..nlea buying their Tickets Yla the HORTH MISSOURI RAILROAD ~can have Sleep In~ Car Accommodations secured for them 1n PULLI\IIAN'S CARS, from ST, LOUIS to SACRAI\IIENTO, by notifying

E. R. MOFFA'IT. Ticket Agent. 113 N. Fourth Street. bet. Chestnut and Pine, ST. LOUIS, Wber,, E'. £RY L 'FOR. tATIO.'i resP<"cl•~" th• DIFl'"ERENT ROUT:ES wlll be gladly a,ven.

Onward Christian Soldiers terror, destruction, and interference with business. Support for authority, including the military, was the Baptist Standard's message. Even the normally judicious Catholic New World stated that "the reign of law and order must be restored at any cost" and believed that " the interference of the National Government" was "clearly justified." Many publications identified losers in the conflict; none saw clear winners. The public lost convenience, time, supplies, and money. Commerce and industry in many areas were crippled for a time; both capital and labor in and far beyond Chicago lost resources. In the midst of so many losses, most editors again called for arbitration. All the denominational publications assigned blame for the upheaval to both sides. Most publications found some merit in the original strike

and condemned George Pullman for refusing to arbitrate. The Methodist Epworth Herald of July 21 blamed the greed and obstinacy of both sides, as well as an unidentified "radical defect somewhere in our political and social machinery." The Living Church bewailed the strikers' selfish inattention to the Golden Rule and faulted the tyranny of the unions, and especially that of Debs, in carelessly throwing out of work "hundreds of thousands of men" employed by the idled railroads and the industries that depended on them. Labor, said the Episcopal paper, had " not suffered nearly so much as Capital" from recent economic troubles . On July 12, the Advance, with characteristic bluntness , assigned the largest share of guilt to Debs and argued that the use of the Interstate Commerce Act against him and his associates was justified.

The lu xurious Pullman cars traveled along numerous routes west and east of Chicago (left, c. 1876). When the American Railway Union called a boycott of trains carrying Pullman cars, the strike disrupted traffic across the nation. President Cleveland ordered f ederal troops to Chicago on J uly 3 to quell the violence. Above, National Guard troops assembled in front of the Arcade Building in the town of Pullman.

Chicago History, Spring and Summer 1991

Defending Debs throughout July, the New World cited his endless public condemnations of violence and labeled his indictment and arrest for conspiracy as serious mistakes because they could be interpreted as federal favor toward management. This Catholic paper implicitly affirmed the legitimacy of the strike as a bargaining tool and expressed its hope for a settlement satisfactory to both sides by suggesting a modification of the ARU demand for removal of Pullman cars that would preserve the sanctity of contract and thus make the demand more palatable to railroad management. The paper found George Pullman's argument against arbitration unconvincing, contending that "Mr. Pullman dreads investigation." The New World suggested that Pullman's intransigence was revenge against his employees, who had voted Democratic in the last presidential election against his express wishes . More broadly, the paper argued that "the great railroad strike of 1894 would never have taken place" if the GMA had pursued "a rational and conciliatory course." Protestant pulpits, like the denominational media, resounded with opinions on the strike. Methodist pastor J. M. Caldwell, typical of the Protestant clergy, denounced violence by workingmen-in his view, a consequence of following Debs instead of Christ. A few clergy and church officials went beyond preaching and took action; most of these men held ambivalent or negative opinions toward labor, and most believed that the strikers participated in the bloodshed and destruction. At the height of the violence, Reformed Episcopal bishop Samuel Fallows and Baptist minister Poindexter S. Henson joined in a call for a mass meeting of Chicago citizens who sought conciliation and arbitration. (fhe meeting was later canceled to preserve peace; instead, a committee of one hundred from the Civic Federation was to meet only after "suppression of insurrection," but it never accomplished anything.) Seven Chicago representatives of national Congregationalist societies who deplored the violence wrote President Cleveland to express their "approval, ... admiration, . .. [and] gratitude" for his position in "maintaining the sovereignty of our nation in this time of disloyal uprising." Archbishop John Ireland of St. Paul, on a visit 18

to Chicago, recognized the legitimacy oflabor's grievances and favored arbitration, but he chastised laborers for their destruction of property and disrespect for "social order and the laws of public justice." Even Carwardine told the strikers that they had won their victory in public opinion and that now they should call off the boycott to end the suffering on all sides. They refused to call it off, and they refused again-loudly-when First Regiment chaplain H. W. Thomas urged them to return to work. Most of the original Pullman strikers who remained after the army departed (many strikers had left to find other work) returned to work by the end of August. The denominational press during the strike aftermath devoted considerable attention to the causes and effects of the strike and to the prevention of more upheaval. The increasingly desperate plight of the workers' families in Pullman drew sympathy, especially after Governor Altgeld visited the town and appealed to the people of Illinois for assistance. The tyranny of the union, and of Debs in particular, was a common theme in many papers, although the Catholic New World continued its defense of Debs into August. Most papers applauded the use of troops and contrasted federal decisiveness with state and local weakness in upholding law and order. On August 16, the Interior reported that one Presbyterian church had honored its young members who had served valiantly in the militia with a testimonial service. Reiterating their distaste for strikes, many publications called for mutual respect between management and labor, to be embodied in arbitration. The Congregationalist Advance took a more concrete approach than most, saying that merely prating about this solution would do no good-it was time to work out the particulars. The Advance and the Baptist Standard agreed that the investigation by the United States Strike Commission-consisting of U. S. Bureau of Labor Commissioner Carroll Wright and lawyers John Kernan and Nicholas Worthington, appointed by President Cleveland to examine the causes of the strike-would contribute to the resolution of the conflict. Some papers tried to solve the larger questions of capital versus labor. In late July, the Epworth Herald and the Interior believed that

Onward Christian Soldiers

AN OLD LES~ON REPEATED. Th

Wtll th worloJL&P. . of It th J' d th T will SOOD 1.

a titea tn the

• aw

CO lll?'Y C miDl

taa

...n.

d fi 11 do th

tr m w

cal!

rOW"D.

• rt d1 cult.-

·~:

In this cartoon from July I 1, I 894, Debs was portrayed as the golden calf, the false god the Israelites turned to after leaving Egypt. Ministers attributed the violence of the Pullman Strike to workers who followed Debs instead of Christ.

Chicago History, Spring and Summer 1991

I '

(P:i\,A.OVES ·" WH£R£ .DO WE THE END

OJ' •

ORl!:AT 8TRIK&

Months after the strike ended, various groups, including labor unions and the federal government, claimed some degree of victory. But a general sentiment expressed in newspapers at the time was that Pullman workers had been controlled by labor unions and had fared no better after the strike. The cartoon above appeared in the Chicago Tribune on July 17, 1894.

the problems would not be solved until immigration was stopped. The Advance saw little reason to hope that inequalities among men would disappear, and it argued that people should appreciate what they had. The New World, on the other hand, expressed regret that the Pullman strikers had lost and earnestly sought a practical answer in a series of columns during August on government ownership of the railroads and arbitration. The paper rejected government ownership as unnecessary, since it had already been established that the people had the "right to interfere in the management of the roads so far as is needed to protect the public interests." In an articulate discussion of political economy, the paper also argued that "the labor employed in operating the railroads has a right to a voice in the management of the

roads," and that arbitration was needed because "it is a hollow mockery to pretend that the conditions essential to freedom of contract exist" in wage negotiations between employees and great corporations such as those roads. No other religious paper argued so forcefully for the rights of labor. Among Chicago-area ministers, Methodist William H. Carwardine continued to be by far the most vocal supporter of the strike effort. Virtually every week during this period he lectured and preached in his own and other pulpits, disputing George Pullman's arguments, denouncing his ambition and greed, and calling for application of the Golden Rule to relations between labor and management. He joined two other Pullman ministers (Swedish Methodist and Swedish Lutheran Evangelical) in an unsuccessful effort to mediate between the strik-

Onward Christian Soldiers ers and the company. Carwardine testified effectively before the Strike Commission, published a book elaborating his arguments, and opened his home as a storehouse for relief supplies. He was no saint, of course, but he was the Pullman strikers' most steadfast clerical friend. Other clergymen supported labor from their pulpits, but most qualified their support and diverted attention away from the central issues. In two sermons, Baptist minister J. Lockhart urged his listeners to vote against any party subsidized by organized capital and to give credit to the large number of strikers who had not joined in the violence, but he criticized labor for extending the strike beyond Pullman. He also believed that immigration and the saloon had contributed to the conflict. Centenary Methodist Church pastor H. W. Bolton contended that the men at Pullman were not guilty of murder and arson, but that the strike provided the opportunity for anarchists to wreak destruction. Stepping back from the immediate situation, Dr. H. W. Thomas, the pastor of the People's Church (and chaplain of the First Regiment), believed that it was not his place to judge the merits of the strike, but that capital and labor, as "two arms of the same body," ought to recognize their mutual interest; each persori had his place to fill and ought to do so lovingly and gladly. Presbyterian minister Frederick Campbell sounded a similar theme when he told his congregation that as a rule workingmen were God's people and as such ought to be content with what they had. First Baptist Church pastor Poindexter S. Henson actually was thankful for hard times, which he said were the result of not living right, because they would drive people back into the church. In Chicago in 1894, the mature Social Gospel as described by historians-the Social Gospel of profound sympathetic concern for labor-did not exist. Protestant ambivalenceeven animosity-toward the workingman was the order of the day. Congregationalists and particularly Episcopalians, supposedly pioneers in the movement, failed to live up to their reputations. And the official pronouncements of Catholics suggest that the Social Gospel was less purely Protestant than historians have acknowledged. The Catholic attitude

toward labor, as set forth in the New World, was more consistently positive and had more potential impact in Chicago than that of any other religious group.

For Further Reading Several works explore the relationship of church and society during the late nineteenth century and beyond. For more information on the Social Gospel, see Henry F. May, Protestant Churches and Industrial America (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1949); Ronald C. White and Charles Howard Hopkins , The Social Gospel: Religion and Refonn in Changing America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1976); Charles Howard Hopkins, The Rise of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism, 1865-1915 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940); and Janet F. Fishburn, The Fatherhood of God and the Victorian Family: The Social Gospel in America (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981). Sydney Ahlstrom discusses the tensions religious and societal issues created among and within denominations in A Religious History of the American People (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972). The Catholic position is explored in Richard L. Camp, The Papal Ideology of Social Refonn: A Study in Historical Development, 1878-1967 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1969); Donal Dorr, Option for the Poor: A Hundred }fors of Vatican Social Teaching (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, I 983); and J. S. Hennessey, American Catholics: A History of the Roman Catholic Community in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981). For more information on the Pullman experiment, see Stanley Buder, Pullman: An Experiment in Industrial Order and Community Planning, I 8801930 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967) and Almont Lindsey, The Pullman Strike: The Story of a Unique Experiment and of a Great Labor Upheaval (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1949).

Illustrations 4, CHS Prints and Photographs Collection; 5, CHS, ICHi13639; 7 top, CHS Archives and Manuscripts Collection; 7 bottom, from the Buffalo Illustrated Express, July 15, 1894, Newberry Library Special Collections; 8, CHS, ICHi14001; 9, Newberry Library Special Collections; 10, from the Buffalo Illustrated Express, July 15, 1894, Newberry Library Special Collections; 11, CHS, ICHi-22648; I 2, CHS, ICHi-22649; 13, from the Chicago Times, November 15, 1894, CHS Library; 14, from A. T. Andreas, History of Chicago (1884-86), CHS Library; 15, from The Pullman Strike (1894) by William H. Carwardine, CHS Library; 16, CHS, ICHi-22647; 17, CHS, ICHi-21195; 19, from the Chicago Inter-Ocean , July 11, 1894, CHS Library; 20, from the Chicago Tribune.July 17, 1894, CHS Library.

I '

Black Abolitionists by Olivia Mahoney

Although denied political power by law, Chicago's black abolitionists made their voices heard through committees, publications, conventions, and civil disobedience.

Editor's note: "/ am opposed to slavery, not because it enAHOUSE slaves the black man," black DIVIDED Presbyterian minister Daniel AMERJCA IN THE A. Pa=P wrote in 1839, "but AGE OF LINCOLN ,_, . _ because it enslaves man. " â&#x20AC;˘ â&#x20AC;˘~- Who freed the slaves? For decades history books have celebrated Abraham Lincoln as the Great Emancipator who single-handedly abolished slavery from the land. Today, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation is revered as one of the nation's great documents offreedom. Yet Lincoln was not the first or the most courageous champion of African-Americans' rights. Recently historians have begun to acknowledge the important role African-Americans played in their own liberation. Through armed rebellion, sermons, political parties and conventions, editorials and tracts, and the underground railroad, free and enslaved African-Americans such as Denmark Vesey, Joseph Cinquez, Nat Turner, Paul Cuffe, David Walker, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Henry Highland Garnet, John and Mary Jones, and Frederick Douglass led the struggle to break the shackles of bondage. In this article, the fourth in Chicago History's A House Divided series, exhibition co-curator Olivia Mahoney tells the story of the black Chicagoans who participated in the national abolitionist movement and their efforts to rid Illinois of its oppressive Black Codes.

:ae:

Olivia Mahoney is the Society's associate curator of Decorative and Industrial Arts. She recently served as co-curator of the exhibition A House Divided: America in the Age of Lincoln.

On September 30, 1850, more than three hundred black Chicagoans gathered at Quinn Chapel, the first black church in Chicago, located on the east side of Wells Street near Washington Street, to protest the Fugitive Slave Act, federal legislation that provided a more effective method of returning fugitive slaves to their owners. John Jones, a free black abolitionist and a leading figure of the black community, rose to address the crowd. He read a series of resolutions conceived by himself and fellow black abolitionists, Henry 0. Wagoner and WilliamJohnson, also of Chicago.Jones invoked the proclamations of an earlier struggle for liberty: We who have tasted freedom are ready to exclaim with Patrick Henry, "Give us liberty or give us death" ... in the language of George Washington, "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." We will stand by our liberty at the expense of our lives and will not consent to be taken into slavery or permit our brethren to be taken.

To protect its members from "being borne back to bondage," the group created a vigilance committee consisting of a black police force of seven divisions; each division had six persons who were to patrol the city each night to watch for slave catchers. The group also formed a correspondence committee, modeled on that of the American Revolution, called the Liberty Association, "for the general dissemination of the principals of Human Freedom." The committee's resolutions reveal how Chicago's black abolitionists viewed themselves

I AT the next regular meeting of the

UPPER AL TON LYCEUM, TV ESB.II.ÂĽ Et,ening, Feb.

To be held on 11, at the Seminary Hall, the following question, by order of the Society, will eome up for debate:-" Has Congress pomer lo abolish SlatJeru in lhe District of Columbia, without the consent of the inhabitants thereof?" Gentlemen and Ladies are respectfully inâ&#x20AC;˘ vlted to attend. M. H. ABBOTT, Sec. pro tem. Upper A.ltou,Feb. S, 1~39.

Black Abolitionists

and their fellow African-Americans: as a free people, heirs to the rights won by the American Revolution, ready to sacrifice their lives, if necessary, to maintain that freedom . This view of African-Americans as rightful citizens of the Republic was central to the abolitionist movement of the mid-nineteenth century and key to understanding the actions of those in Chicago and elsewhere who worked to end slavery. The abolitionist movement arose in the 1830s, inspired in part by the Second Great Awakening, a wave of Protestant revivalism that swept America in the 1820s and 1830s. Revivalist preachers rejected Calvinist notions of predestination and emphasized each person's ability to rid the self of sin and reach salvation through an exercise of free will. Indeed, saved individuals could help transform society by convincing others to reform. The vision of a society freed from sin spawned several reform movements, including prohibitionism, pacifism, and abolitionism. The abolitionist movement of the 1830s succeeded earlier attempts to address slavery in America. In 1787 the Constitutional Convention debated-but eventually allowed-slavery. It created a provision that counted three-fifths of the slave population in determining a state's representation in Congress and its number of electoral votes; it permitted the slave trade to continue for twenty years; and it required every state to return fugitive slaves. At the time, many Americans, black and white, hoped that slavery could be confined to a particular region, where it would die of its own accord. Also in 1787, the Congress of the Confederation passed the Northwest Ordinance, which forbade slavery in new American territory north and west of the Ohio River. In 1808 Congress forbade the importation of slaves, and in 1820 it passed the Missouri Compromise, which allowed Maine to enter the Union as a free state, Missouri to enter as a slave state, and excluded slavery from the Louisiana Purchase north of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes. The Missouri Compromise was the first of several congressional Opposite: Alton, Ill inois, hosted this debate over the issue of slavery in the District of Columbia. Ill inois's largest city at the time, the town was also home of the abolitionist newspaper, the Alto n Observe r, the site of Elijah P. Lovejoy's murder, and the location of the Convention of the Colored Citizens of the State of Ill inois, I 856.

attempts to keep equal the number of slave and free states entering the Union. Before 1830 Americans who opposed slavery could join the American Colonization Society. Founded in 181 7, the society believed that slavery could be eliminated gradually and with the cooperation of slaveholders. The society believed that deep-seated prejudices precluded the black and white races from ever living together, and it proposed the resettlement of freed slaves in West Africa. The society, led at times by James Monroe, James Madison, and John Marshall, attracted people sincerely convinced of the evil of slavery. The abolitionist movement of the 1830s departed radically from its predecessor. The new abolitionists condemned slavery o n moral and constitutional grounds and believed that it should be abolished immediately rather than gradually, with slave owners' consent. Most important, the movement rejected colonization, asserting instead that African-Americans, once freed, should be citizens of the Republic. Abolitionists attacked slavery at public lectures, in antislavery newspapers, and in thousands of pamphlets and broadsides. William Lloyd Garrison, a white newspaper editor from Boston, was the most prominent leader of the abolitionist movement. The appearance of Garrison's newspaper, The Liberator, in 1831 and Garrison's founding of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833 marked the emergence of the new abolitionist movement. Garrison's first editorial for The Liberator reflected his strong views against slavery: "I will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with mod~ration .. .. I will not equivocate-I will not excuse-I will not retreat a single inch; and I will be heard!" Garrison advocated abolishing the Constitution and severing ties with the Southern states to end the North's involvement with slavery. "No Union With Slaveholders" became his followers' motto, but many other abolitionists advocated more moderate positions. Nevertheless, Garrison remained the movement's leading figure . Although the abolitionist movement aroused hostility among some Northerners who feared that it would disrupt the Union, it attracted many. By 1840 nearly one hundred thousand

Chicago History, Spring and Summer 1991

I '

Below, this Wells printing press is believed to have been used by Elijah P. Lovejoy, publisher and editor of the antislavery newspaper, the Alton Observer. Right, an engraving depicts the 183 7 attack on Lovejoy's office that ended in the abolitionist's death. In addition to publishing the Alton Observer, Lovejoy also helped organize the Illinois Anti-Slavery Society.

Northerners had joined local antislavery societies. The ranks included farmers, merchants, laborers, and clergy. Thousands of women participated in the movement by organizing meetings and circulating petitions. As a result, many, becoming aware of their own subordinate political position, began to demand rights for themselves. Some, like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, rose to prominence and later led the women's suffrage movement.

Black Abolitionists

African-Americans also participated in the abolitionist movement. From the time of the American Revolution, African-Americans had spoken out for freedom. In the early nineteenth century, African-Americans such as Richard Allen, bishop of the African Methodist Church in Philadelphia, spoke against colonization efforts and for black citizenship. Preeminent among African-Americans advocating freedom and citizenship for the slave was Fred-

erick Douglass. An ex-slave who escaped to freedom in 1838, Douglass was one of several former slaves, such as Sojourner Truth and Josiah Henson, who published dramatic accounts of their lives, persuading many to support abolitionism. Douglass's powerful oratorical abilities and his abolitionist newspaper, the North Star, made him a national figure . As the abolitionist movement spread from its birthplace in New England, it took root in sev27

Chicago History, Spring and Summer 1991

' '

SOlOUBNIIR TRUTH.

Born a slave in New York State, Sojourner Truth fought for the abolition of slavery and for women's rights. It was at a women's suffrage convention that she, in response to a man who disparaged women's abilities, asked, "Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with him."

eral western states, notably Illinois, which gave the movement its first martyr, Elijah P. Lovejoy. Originally from Maine, Lovejoy moved to St. Louis, Missouri, in 1827 where he published the St. Louis Observer, a newspaper with anti-Catholic and antislavery views. In 1837 Lovejoy moved across the river to Alton, Illinois, at the time the state's largest city. Lovejoy published a weekly antislavery newspaper, the Alton Observer, which contained views not always popular with the citizens of Alton, a city with strong economic ties to the South. With his brother Owen, Lovejoy also helped organize the Illinois Anti-Slavery Society. On three occasions, mobs attacked Lovejoy and destroyed his printing presses by throwing them into the Mississippi River. On November 7, 1837, a mob shot Lovejoy to death as he defended his printing press. The murder galvan-

ized the nation. Freedom of the press had been threatened, and abolitionists found in Lovejoy a martyr for the cause of liberty for people black and white. Lovejoy's death marked the beginning of the abolitionist movement in Chicago. Shortly after the murder, several prominent citizens met on the third floor of the Saloon Building at the corner of Clark and Lake streets "to condemn this assault on the constitutional right of the freedom of the press." The group posted a guard at the door, but no violence occurred. The meeting was led by Dr. Charles Volney Dyer, who came to Chicago from Vermont in 1835. Dyer, one of Chicago's earliest medical practitioners, was a fierce opponent of slavery. Also attending was Philo Carpenter, originally from Massachusetts and a Chicago resident since 1829. Carpenter was Chicago's first druggist, a real estate investor, and a member of the temperance reform movement. Calvin De Wolf, a teacher from Pennsylvania, and the Rev. Flavel Bascome were also present. De Wolf later practiced law with Lemuel Covell Paine Freer, one of Chicago's preeminent attorneys and abolitionists. De Wolf also served as the city's justice of the peace between 1854 and 18 79. Bascome, originally from Connecticut, came to Chicago in 1833 and served as the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church. With the formation of the Chicago AntiSlavery Society in 1840, Chicago's abolitionists formally organized themselves. The hub of early abolitionist activity was the First Presbyterian Church, located on Clark Street. Pastor Flavel Bascome organized monthly prayer meetings in opposition to slavery. Although members of the congregation generally supported Bascome, conservatives within the congregation believed that abolitionism would fragment the church. Bascome offered to hold the meetings elsewhere but maintained his right to announce the meetings from the pulpit and to attend himself. Despite the opposition, Âˇ Bascome continued to hold meetings at the church, and no meeting was ever disrupted by his opponents. In 1842 Dr. Charles Volney Dyer invited Zebina Eastman, an antislavery editor originally from Massachusetts, working in Lowell, Illinois, to come to Chicago to publish an aboli-

Black Abolitionists tionist newspaper. Eastman had moved to Lowell in 1839 to assist abolitionist Benjamin Lundy with the publication of the antislavery newspaper, Genius of Universal Emancipation. When Lundy died in August of that year, Eastman continued to publish the paper under the name Genius of Liberty, and it became the official publication of the La Salle County and Illinois Anti-Slavery societies. Eastman, accepting Dyer's invitation, moved to Chicago, where he published The Western Citizen from 1842 to 1853. Its motto, "The Supremacy of God and The Equality of Man," expressed the views of Chicago's abolitionists. The Western Citizen was the official organ of the Illinois Liberty party, a branch of the national antislavery political party founded in 1839. The Liberty party was composed of moderate abolitionists who, unlike Garrison, professed loyalty to the Constitution and to the Union. Most of Chicago's white abolitionists, including Dyer, Freer, Carpenter, and De Wolf, belonged to the Liberty party. Chicago's abolitionists were also actively involved in the underground railroad, a loose network of routes and hiding places for helping runaway slaves escape to Northern states or to Canada. Although the network did not involve actual trains, it borrowed its imagery from the world of railroading. "Station masters" and "agents" harbored fugitive slaves in their own homes or helped them move to the next hiding place or "station." In Chicago Charles Dyer was the recognized station master, or head of the city's network. Other agents included Philo Carpenter, Allan Pinkerton, the city's first detective (and head of the Secret Service during the Civil War and later of the Pinkerton Detectives), and several members of the black community. It is impossible to obtain an accurate count of the number of fugitive slaves who passed through the city because of the secretive nature of the activity. Some fugitives undoubtedly settled in the city, but most journeyed on to Canada on foot or boarded The Illinois and The Great Western, lake steamers bound for Windsor, Canada. Those passing through or settling in Chicago received support from a small but growing black community. The city's early black settlers were free (often of mixed black and white an-

cestry) and from the East and the Upper South, drawn to Chicago by economic opportunity and by the city's reputation as a racially tolerant town. Between 1833 and 1845, the city's black population grew from 33 to 145 people. By 1850 the city's population of 23,047 included 378 African-Americans. Within this growing community, leaders emerged; they focused on abolishing slavery and securing citizenship rights for African-Americans. John Jones, the black community's predominant leader, came to Chicago in 1845 at age twenty-three with his wife, Mary Richardson Jones, a free African-American from Tennessee. Born in North Carolina,Jones was the son of a free mulatto mother and a father of German ancestry. A skilled tailor,Jones established his own business in his home at 119 Dearborn Street, catering largely to a white clientele. His business prospering, Jones invested in real estate, and by 1860 he had become one of the nation's wealthiest African-Americans.

Flavel Bascome, originally from Connecticut, came to Chicago in 1833 and served as pastor of the First Presbyterian Church. The hub of early abolitionist activity, the church was the site of Bascome 's monthly antislavery prayer meetings.

Chicago History, Spring and Summer 1991

I I

No. 2.

NORTH-WE.STERN LIBERTY

ALMANAC, FOR

I S47: BEING THF: THIRD YEAR AFTER BISSF.XTILE, AND UP TO JULY FOURTH; THE SEVENTY-FIRST YEAR OF INDEPENDENCE.

Calculated for the Latitude of 42° no1·th; applirable #Q lllinoi•i Indiana, .Michigan, Wiscon.,in, Ioioa 1 ,to,

Slave Territory.

Free nrrjtorv,

~---------------~•~ BY Z. EASTMAN,

A. D. & c. BlJRLEV, BOOKSELLERS AND PUBLISHERS, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS,

Black Abolitionists

WISTIRN CITIZIN.

De•otcd to l 'lii•erMI Li~rtr-th,· luten:111, of the North-West- Protec-tioa or Free Labor- rolitical Reform- Religiott--Tempc:~AKJ'icalt•re--Gencrtil latdfiJtatt, h

Soon after his arrival in Chicago, Jones became actively involved in the abolitionist cause. He became friends with Charles Dyer and Lemuel C. P. Freer, who taught Jones to read and write. In J 84 7 Jones joined the Illinois Constitutional Convention's debate about the immigration of free AfricanAmericans into the state. Some convention delegates feared that an influx of AfricanAmericans would degrade white labor and antagonize white citizens. In September J 84 7, Jones published two articles refuting this po-

Abolitionists attacked .1lavery in lectures, new.1paf1ers, f1am/1hl ets, and broarliides. 0/1po.1ite, Zebina Eastman 's Orth-Western Liberty Almanac, 1847. Above, masthead f or the Western Citi,en, 1842. The newsf1af1er's motto was later "The Suf1remacy of God and the Equality of Man." Zebina L:·astman (below) published the Western Citizen from 1842 to 185].

sition in the Chicago Tribune, later reprinted in Zebina Eastman's The Western Citizen. Jones maintained that African-Americans were citizens entitled to all rights, arguing that the founding fathers had not inserted the word "white" into the definition of free citizens. The ideals of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, the standards of republican government, and black service in the Revolution, he argued, were sufficient grounds for recognizing black citizenship. Despite Jones's arguments, the constitutional convention included in the state constitution the anti-immigration provision, which became known as the Black Codes. Jones continued to work against the codes until they were repealed in 1865. Abram T. Hall, a free African-American from Pennsylvania, joined Jones in his efforts. I !all came to Chicago in 1845 at age twentythree, worked as a barber, and became active in the black community by helping to establish Quinn Chapel. Hall and Jones began working t0gether in 1848 when black Chicagoans meeting at the O livet Baptist Church (which Jones had helped establish) selected them as delegates to the National Colored Convention to be held in Cleveland. The meeting was organized by the National Negro Convention, a society formed in 1830 to promote citizenship rights for African-Americans. At a series of national conventions held in Northern cities between 1830 and 1855, free African-Americans discussed slavery, colonization, abolitionism, and black citizenship. Although the conventions fai led to create a plan to enact the movement's goals, they did succeed in providing AfricanAmericans with a national forum to discuss and debate significant issues. At the Cleveland convention, between sixty and seventy delegates representing a cross section of black artisans, merchants, laborers, and professionals elected Frederick Douglass president and John Jones vice-president. 31

Chicago History, Spring and Summer 1991

I I

After returning to Chicago, Jones and Hall lobbied against Illinois's Black Laws, originally passed by the state's first general assembly in 1819. These laws stipulated that AfricanAmericans could not sue or be sued; they could not testify against whites in court, nor could they make a contract. The Black Laws also prohibited African-Americans from owning property or merchandise, from visiting the homes of whites, or from entertaining whites in their homes. They had no right to an education, and they had to file certificates of freedom with the county clerk to prove their status. To fight these codes, Jones and Hall organized a black abolitionist correspondence committee to petition the state legislature to repeal the laws. The committee included Henry 0. Wagoner, a barber by training who had worked briefly for Zebina Eastman on The Western Citizen; William Johnson, who worked in Chicago as a barber; and William Styles, a tailor. Chicago's black abolitionists, however, did not remain concerned with state issues only. In the autumn of 1850, they strongly protested the passage of the Compromise of 1850 and its provisional bill, the Fugitive Slave Act. This legislation brought slavery onto the center stage of American politics. The compromise, passed after heated debate in the House and Senate, admitted California to the Union as a free state but let the inhabitants of the remaining territories acquired from Mexico in 1848 make their own decisions about slavery. Settlers could vote slavery in or out, a policy that became known as popular sovereignty. The Fugitive Slave Act denied runaway slaves the right to a trial by jury, authorized federal marshals to call upon bystanders to help them capture suspected fugitives, and imposed stiff fines and imprisonment on any citizen who aided escaped slaves or prevented their capture. Antislavery forces in the North declared the law tyrannical and unconstitutional. In Chicago the response to the law was swift and dramatic. Resolving to resist the legislation, the black community met on September 30 at Quinn Chapel. On October 21, the Chicago Common Council formally denounced the Fugitive Slave Act as unconstitutional and nonbinding. By a vote of nine to two, the council resolved that the "Senators and Representatives in Congress

from the free States who aided and assisted in the passage of this infamous law ... are only to be ranked with the traitors Benedict Arnold and Judas Iscariot." It also resolved that it would not require the police to assist in the arrest of fugitive slaves. That evening, a large crowd gathered at City Hall "to give an expression of public feeling in opposition to the abominable and infamous slave law." George Manierre, a Chicago attorney and abolitionist, read a series of resolutions condemning the law as an unconstitutional attack upon the personal liberties of all people, white as well as black. Manierre's statements were met with loud cheers of approval from the audience. After the resolutions had been read, the audience clamored for Stephen A. Douglas, Illinois senator and architect of the Compromise of 1850, to make a statement. He invited all interested parties to hear his defense at a meeting at City Hall the next evening. Douglas, the country's preeminent politician and a noted orator, spoke to an audience of four thousand for three-and-one-half hours. He defended the compromise on the grounds of popular sovereignty, the "great fundamental principle . .. that every people ought to possess th~ right of forming and regulating their own internal concerns and domestic institutions in their own way." Douglas went on to argue that the Fugitive Slave Act "in some respects ... guards the rights of the negro, charged with being a fugitive from labor, more rigidly than it does those of a white man who is alleged to be a fugitive from justice." Conceding that the law did not provide for "all the safeguards, that the wit of man can devise, for the protection of the innocent and the free," Douglas nonetheless claimed that the new law would actually prevent the kidnapping of free African-Americans by Southerners because it forced the latter to establish legal rights of ownership. Douglas's arguments convinced most of the audience to repudiate the council's resolutions. The next day, the city council met to respond to Douglas. Amid much noise and confusion, the council declared its intention to adopt a new series of resolutions denouncing the law in slightly milder terms than had the original resolutions. The meeting, however, ended without a regular motion, and because the

Black Abolitionists

lla

•-m~~ ltrt

NEW ARRANGEMENT 6 ,.•NIGHT AND DAY. The impro~·rd n11,I s1 •!,,nd11I I .ru >rnotiH••• Clntks<ih I "I fide the outcasts-let the npprcs~ed go frcr.;'-Bible. nnd l,11111.ly • •ll'tlh tlu.:tr trn111, 1,11<.,.t 111, 1n the h•: t style fTr'For scats 11pply at nny of the trap doors, or to ncco11111101ht1nn fnr pn,, 11_:;,,r . \\ ill I u11 tlu·1r lt' ~11br the cu11Juctot of the train: J. CllOS~. Proprirtnr. trips ,lurin;.: th,. pr, ••·Ill w n•on, ll!'l\\l'l 11 1l11: lw,r,l,•rq of tho J';i1nar ·l1111)11111_111 1 !ll :rnrl Lil11 rt~·vilk·. lj pptrf'rh<lcl;.'· , ~- Tl. Fnr the ~pccial licncfit of l'to-~la1•,·ry Police Gentl,•111,·11_:11111 l.:11l rl'~. \Iii., 111:1y 1;,,h tn 1111prn,·t: tlw1r ~tlierr,, an /!lira heavy wagnu for Tcxa•. will he furhcolth o~ ,;11·cum~la11,·,·•, h~· a north•i rn t·111r, ;ire rc~pcet- 111~hed, ~vhc11el'cr it may be nccc~sary, i:i 11'hic:h they will lont11rdcd as dead freight, to the" Y nfley of lfosfully .in~-~1~,t !" J:;'':c ? · th ·11· paln'.11a(!... 1-ibA [:-, l· l{LI·,. 11·rr.•1••rf1J r "' rnlw·. c:11~, '. rtlwars :i( the ritik of the O\~ncrs. Ne,.,· ~:rry ('lu1h,n;t _funi.i;h c,I ,;ratuitn11sly to ,twh ns D:::r_Ext;·a !lvercoats provided for _~•Jch of them as have ".fall II w,11,,,g t/11 r ro. arc nlOwted with pro1ractc<l c/111/y-phohw.

,,q

!'e

Although the underground railroad, the network that helped slaves escape to the North, did not involve actual trains, it bon-owed its imagery frorn railroading. "Station 11UJ.Sters" and "agents" housed fugitive slaves.

meeting was not formally adjourned, its actions were open to question. On November 29, the council met again and passed a final set of resolutions, stated in milder terms, condemning the Fugitive Slave Act. The city's debate over the Fugitive Slave Act did not dissuade Chicago's abolitionists, who remained adamantly opposed to the law. On November 11, 1850, the Committee for the Relief of Fugitives in Canada met at the office of The Western Citizen. White abolitionists George Manierre, Philo Carpenter, and Lemuel Freer were among those in attendance, and they voted to add John Jones, William Johnson, and Lewis Isbell, a twenty-threeyear-old barber from Kentucky, to the committee. The committee collected food, clothing, and money (about $150 and "15 barrels of flour, 1 barrel of clothing, 9 boxes clothing, l sack clothing and 13 bags of flour and meal") for fugitive slaves escaping to Canada via Chicago.

After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, underground railroad activity increased throughout the North. In Chicago agents such as John Jones and Charles Dyer were joined by Lewis Isbell and William Johnson. According to Jones's daughter, Favinia Jones Lee, Jones was responsible for "sending hundreds of fugitives to Canada." Their home was "a haven for escaped slaves" and a meeting place for white as well as black abolitionists. Frederick Douglass and John Brown were among those who visited Jones in Chicago.Jones reportedly believed that Brown's plans to set off a slave revolt by attacking the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, were impractical and fu. tile. At Quinn Chapel, a group of black women known as the "Big Four" provided food, clothing, and shelter to runaway slaves. To date research has identified only one of the "Big Four": Emma J. Atkinson, who had settled in Chicago with her husband, Isaac, in 184 7. Like abolitionists elsewhere, Chicago's black 33

Chicago History, Spring and Summer 1991

I I

abolitionists who harbored fugitive slaves did not keep written accounts of their secret activities. The memories and oral traditions of Chicago's black community, however, have kept a portion of this history intact. Despite their attention to national affairs, Chicago's black abolitionists remained concerned with Illinois's Black Codes. In December 1852, the Literary and Debating Society, a community association under the presidency of Henry 0. Wagoner, formally condemned the codes and called for a mass meeting to be held on December 27, with addresses by John Jones and William Johnson.Joseph H. Barquet of the society canvassed the state's northern counties for petition signatures. Despite their efforts, Chicago's black abolitionists again witnessed Mmy (below) and john (above right) Jones. The Joneses provided a pla.ce for fugitive slaves to stay and opened their home to abolitionist meetings. After the Civil War, john Jones served on the Cook County Board of Commissioners as one of the first African-Americans to win elective office in the North.

the passage of restrictive codes against AfricanAmericans. On February 12, 1853, the Illinois legislature passed an anti-emigration article into law. The law was directed at fugitive slaves and those who assisted them. It stipulated that any person who brought an African-American, free or slave, into the state would be fined not less than one hundred dollars nor more than five hundred dollars and be imprisoned for not more than one year. African-Americans entering the state on their own and remaining ten days could be fined fifty dollars and, if the fine was not paid, sold to any person who would pay. The Western Citizen published a letter from Joseph Barquet, an African-American, that refuted the action of the legislature: What means Illinois when she lately spoke those words of inhibition?-the ink that inscribed those enactments should have turned to blood, and palsied should have been the arm that would sign a bill of sale of liberty .... The house added insult to injury;

Black Abolitionists the petition of three thousands of our friends , and the friends of justice and right, have been tramped under foot, and a load of wrong is now allotted us furthermore . Remember, my fellow countrymen in bonds, that wrongs do not justify a nation, nor set at nought the march of progress.

During the next several months , Chicago's black abolitionists became active again in conventions. In July John Jones attended the national convention in Rochester, New York, considered to be the most important of all the conventions because it set forth basic demands of equality and justice and established a plan for securing those rights. Three months later, between October 6 and 8, the first Convention of the Colored Citizens of the State of Illinois convened in Chicago. The state conventions originated with the National Negro Convention and followed a similar format: assembled delegates debated issues and passed resolutions . Thirty-nine free African-Americans from around the state attended the Chicago convention. The Chicago delegation numbered twenty, more than half of the total participants and the largest group from any one area. Black Chicagoans served in a number of leadership positions: John Jones was elected president while Henry Wagoner and Joseph Barquet were selected as convention secretaries. Several others, including William JohnÂˇ son, Abram T. Hall, and Lewis Isbell, served on various committees including finance, education, agriculture, and education. The delegates, encouraged by a visit from Frederick Douglass, the "colored man eloquent," passed a number of resolutions. They condemned slavery and colonization, the movement to resettle African-Americans to Africa; demanded that the state's Black Laws be repealed; and petitioned the state for broader citizenship rights. The convention also claimed that for African-Americans to be "owners of the land, to build houses, and to cultivate the soil " was "the surest means of making themselves and families independent and respectable." They urged African-Americans to form joint stock companies for business and lyceums for discussion, and they stressed the importance of education for their children. The delegates' concern with issues beyond slavery is

significant: they believed in their right to full and equal participation in American life. In 1854, several months after the Chicago convention adjourned, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, legislation that profoundly affected the course of events for the rest of the decade . The Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which prohibited slavery in the western territories north of latitude thirty-six degrees thirty minutes. Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas, the bill's sponsor, applied the principle of popular sovereignty (as he had done for the Compromise of 1850) to argue that territorial inhabitants should make their own decisions about slave ry. Douglas, a strong advocate of western development, believed that popular sovereignty would protect the area from the slavery controversy, thereby encouraging its growth. The bill's passage brought drastic changes to American politics . The old Whig party collapsed, thousands of Northerners aban-

Abram T. Hall, who worked as a barber, helped establish Quinn Chapel, the first black church in Chicago.

I '

C ',

(

j,,,yt.',

1,;

:,I

.. ·'---

(.,

..,,c·

,,;

~(<!:

I I 1,

/',., 1--

y--

._ '/II , 0,

I{, ..!

·,. ·,.

J; I (

'\l' ... , \ '\ (, \

r(,

1, ti, .,. ., l ',.,

'"I • /;'

... ,.

/ ,, 1,, Ji.

/,_r,1

)((,,

(

,/ /

•// /r,,,,,, / ;;;~'(1/; 'l?"t'<._

( t

( /I

I.. \.....

/Jc //r'/J rr l c_( /

, ..,I

, !.. ,,

1,l/ 'J I

f•,

, ,,, .

(ll

.11/ .

,11

\>. I'

/ / / , '/, I

,( ~/,,,

,/,

1,,

)

(...,

,1.1

' '

L~-• (

, ,:/, <' (

1 ._ ,-

(

/ ;/~ (', /

{._

/'(/,. ,, ///

I\;

/ ,f, _/ I

(l•\. -

/; l"/1'.ud,

,.,1;_ '(

.1..... ....

/ (

/...,:

, //

,//1

<); ,,

)

J.Lv.-,(J

/1,I(' ( t

I:.,

1;tl-t, f

( \

; ;, , ( ( < } < ' / (

'·

, / r' // (

~,Jt-l'T?

lf9-1t, I t'll'l"f IL

,/ /

,/,

ic? ,.r,;r

,... I, 1

,0'

. ,\..

''11.r-

17/f_.,

L .,l , , /

V''

.r., f

rr lr'ucnv ,

·r: ? .,,,.,

),;,

/( ,!./

,;/

/ ( ....... ..< /-: ~. (" I : /, " / l l''

.,f'

• >

'fr, ( • <•

111

CJ.. ,., .c

. :,,.(_.,,' , .

.. ,

,.,xr~

.,,.'~r ... ,

)

,-!(,_, ( ,7, . /

.,,

,.,

Ceremonial copy of the Thirteenth Amendment, which prohibited slavery in the United States. Illinois ratified the amendment on February 1, 1865. In December 1865, twenty-seven of thirty-six states had ratified the bill, and the amendment became law.

Black Abolitionists

doned the Democratic party, and the Republican party, dedicated to halting slavery's encroachment into the western territories, was born. The Kansas-Nebraska Act, far from suppressing the slavery question, forced it into the center of national politics, where it would remain until the Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves. The response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act in Chicago was overwhelmingly negative. Politicians, newspapers, churches, and citizens joined abolitionists in denouncing the bill. In August 1854, Stephen A. Douglas, as he later recalled, traveled "from Boston to Chicago by the light of my own effigy." On the evening of September 1, Douglas appeared before about nine thousand people to defend the KansasNebraska Act. A hostile crowd confronted him. Angry Chicagoans hissed, booed, and refused to let him speak. After two hours, Douglas gave up in anger and shouted: "Abolitionists of Chicago! It is now Sunday morning. I'll go to church and you may go to hell!" Chicago's response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act was the culmination of abolitionist activity in Chicago. The new Republican party attracted thousands of members, including most of Chicago's white abolitionists, who were formerly members of the Liberty party. As.nonvoters, African-Americans were excluded from the political process and unable to participate fully in efforts to end slavery. After 1854 Chicago's black abolitionists, led by John Jo!l.es, focused their attention on the state's Black Codes. They also continued to participate in conventions. In 1856 John Jones, Lewis Isbell, and William Johnson, among others, attended the Convention of the Colored Citizens of the State of Illinois, which took place in Alton, Illinois, the site of Lovejoy's murder nineteen years earlier. The convention again petitioned the government to repeal the Black Laws and to grant AfricanAmericans broader citizenship rights. Although they would have to wait several years for reform (slavery and Illinois's Black Laws were not abolished until 1865), Chicago's black abolitionists had accomplished a great deal by the 1850s. They had brought the issues of slavery and black citizenship rights to the forefront of state and national politics. And

even though denied full access, they had proven themselves to be effective participants in American politics.

For Further Reading The Black Abolitionist Papers, vol. 3 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991 ), edited by C. Peter Ripley, includes personal papers, business records, and essays. See Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (Boston: Anti-Slavery Office, 1845) for background on one of the nation's foremost black abolitionists. Benjamin Quarles's Black Abolitionists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, I 969) provides a general survey of black abolitionists. A History of Chicago, vol. II, From Town to City, 1848-7 I (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1937) by Bessie Louise Pierce includes a discussion of the city's response to the Fugitive Slave Law and its racial climate at the time of that legislation. The life and career of John Jones is explored in Charles A. Gliozzo's "John Jones: A Study ofa Black Chicagoan" (Illinois Historical journal, Autumn 1987). Robert W. Johannsen's Stephen A. Douglas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973) presents Douglas's view of slavery and discusses his visits to Chicago. Proceedings of the Black State Conventions, by Philip S. Foner and George E. Walker (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986), includes an overview of the black conventions and the particulars of the 1853 Chicago convention. The Chicago Common Council and the Fugitive Slave Law of I 850, an address read before the Chicago Historical Society by Charles W. Mann in I 903, explores Chicago's response to the Fugitive Slave Law. All sources except The Black Abolitionist Papers and Proceedings of the Black State Conventions are available in the Chicago Historical Society Library.

Illustrations 23, CHS, ICHi-22392; 24, CHS Prints and Photographs Collection; 26, CHS Decorative and Industrial Arts Collection; 26-27, CHS, ICHi-22019; 28, CHS, lCHi-22022; 29, CHS, ICHi-22578; 30, CHS Library; 31 above, CHS Library; 31 below, CHS, ICHi-22579; 33, from the Western Citizen,July 17, 1844, Illinois State Historical Library; 34 above, CHS, ICHi-22362; 34 below, CHS, ICHi-22363; 35, CHS, ICHi-22352; 36, CHS Prints and Photographs Collection.

STANISLAV SZUKALSKI'S LOST TUNE

The

anise Srnnishv Swk,lski was born in Poland in 1893, the son of a blacksmith. As a child he shocked his schoolteacher by carving an intricate human figure from his pencil. The principal, hailing him as a prodigy, called in the newspapers. Szukalski immigrated to Chicago with his family in 1907, returning to Poland two years later to study art in Krakow. The youngest Student ever admitted to the academy in Krakow, he nevertheless viewed academic training and the art establishment as "destructive to the artist." He retained this youthful defiance throughout his life, until his death at age ninety-one. After comThe captions and photographs are reprinted from The Lost Tune by Stanislav Szuhalski, courtesy of the Archives Szuhalshi, Sy/mar, California, and the Polish Museum of America, Chicago, Illinois.

The Lost Tune, 1915 A little creature of a man,

missh,â&#x20AC;˘pen and /moch-hneed, with infant face and bulging eyes, seehs

tune that he can

no longer recall. The hand

that gropes for the lost tune ,s much larger

stress its

role in the drama. Facing page: Stan,slav Szuhalsh,, 1913.

Bust of David, a Jragmenl, 191 4

pleting his studies in 1913, Szukalski returned to Chicago, where he befriended notable artistic and literary figures such as writers Ben Hecht, Maxwell Bodenheim, Carl Sandburg, and Sherwood Anderson; architects Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Sullivan; lawyer and writer Clarence Darrow; and artist Rudolph Weisenborn. His contempt for artistic standards and his eagerness to defy them influenced other Chicago artists. The biweekly meetings of the Vagabond Club, initiated by Szukalski and held in his studio, attracted scores from Chicago 's intelligentsia. His painting, drawing, and sculpture, as well as his writing, codified the ideas circulating among Chicago's artists and enabled modernism " to take root in the city. " 40

Summoned to Poland by the government in 1936, he was greeted with a hero's welcome and heralded as " the greatest living artist." He received government commissions for several national monuments, as well as private commissions. In all his time in America, Szukalski had remained a Polish patriot. Ben Hecht wrote of him that " no other history, problems, or people existed for him than those of Poland. " The Polish government provided a large studio that housed all of his works, which he had brought to Warsaw from America, and named it the Szukalski National Museum. Szukalski had come into his own . Yet few works remain from this early, prodigious period. In 1939 Germany invaded Poland, destroying Szukalski's studio, the museum and most of the sculptures, as well as his public monuments. Szukalski fled to America; the Polish government later took possession of the few works that had survived. The only records that remain of most of his works are the photographs taken by Szukalski and reprinted in the following article . Szukalski's own words serve as commentary. After World War II, Szukalski lived in California, continuing his work in relative obscurity until his death. In addition to sculpting, Szukalski compiled forty volumes of his drawings of elaborate pictographs, which were based on his own anthropological theory that all civilization originated at a common place and time.

The Orator, 1913

This was the first sculpture l made after leaving the Krakovia11 Academy. After completing the top-right fragment of

drapery , l was so pleased with the results that l received a large dose of encouragement, which made my works get better and better. Draperies are far harder to make in sculpture than anatomy; and si nee I refuse to study Jrom models, I have had to " lean on " my memory instead of aping what wou Id have been before me to copy. When the last World War started and my works were found stored in the State building, someone fired a gun at the Orator 's chest, leaving a pit. The bullet was actually aimed at me, but l was too Jar away and in untowards America.

One-Armed Man in the Wind, 1914

This was the second sculpture I made at the Chicago Art Institute after leaving the Krakovian Academy. I was still in my teens and my blacksmith father could not afford to rent a separate place for me to work. I was given a

work area in a classroom of Mulligan, whom I regarded as an untalented sculptor. He began to resent me after student friends started visiting the class to see how I progressed. He ordered me to become one of his students or lose my place of work.

As he said this, rather annoyed and searching for words to emphasize his an-

Bound Spring, 1916

noyance, a dry branch .frag-

The latest to be met among

ment Jell off the tree under

the literary men of Chicago,

which he had stopped

when I was twenty-one or

point at my sharp tongue,

twenty-two, was Carl Sand-

and conlled him on the head.

burg, an American Swede

"This only proves you said

who was then working Jor

the truth about me, and Karl

one of the Chicago news-

Marx's spirit intended to

papers. He must have been

bump me on the head, but

about forty then and despite

missed," I replied.

While we continued to

his maturity still a Socialist, which fact, even to my postado-

quibble about the logic of di-

lescence, was a sign of ar-

viding the wealth of diligent

rested mental development.

people so that every man and

usually had very little to talk

savage in Africa and Aus-

about with him; somehow

tralia would get his seventeen

our "gears" did not coincide.

dollars and twelve cents, to lose it to a cleverer person

One day we met in Washingwn Park, and 1 felt he was

the next day, I carved, with a

eager w win me over, because

pocket knife, this girl's figure,

a Jriend had told him that I

wrapped in cloth. Sandburg,

regarded socialism as a ready-

Jrom then on, must have

made religwn for adolescent

thought of me as another

misfits. I always was out-

bourgeois procapitalist, an

spoken, not with the inten-

unlikely subject of Russia.

tion to belittle people, but, as

As I write this in the au-

told by astrologers, as a Sag-

tumn of 1980, I notice in the

ittarius: my arrows rarely

newspapers and periodicals I

miss the man on top of whose

receive from Poland that the

head sits the proverbial "pi-

wurd communism 1s never

geon" I am supposed to hit

mentioned. Presently, the

win the point of argument.

Moscov,an predators use only

As I used some apt remark

the word socialism persistent-

aprnpos Sandburg's political

ly, so the nonhistoric nations

religion, socialism, he stopped

will smuggle into their popu-

and said: "Szukalsk1! You

lations' minds this deceptive

should have been a surgeon;

description of their cata-

you wou Id prove your argu-

strophic presence. The Ameli-

ment and perform your oper-

cans still report news that

ations using only words

"Socialist" Moscovians se-

instead of lancets."

cretly brew.

I I

Aesop, 1920

ciated his extraordinary

Aesop was a Gree/1 slave and

wisdom. After some years of

a hunchback. For that reason

servitude, Aesop was Jreed by

1 gave him the protruding

his master, for the Jame of

lower half of the Jace and

the Jable-teller spread

thick lips, which are charac-

through the isles, and it

teristic of hunchbackism. He was bought by the philosopher Xantus, who appre-

weighed heavily on Xantus to own such a man. Aesop, though then only a poor Jreed man, began lo wield considerable moral and political influence, for all his fables were but disguised political commentary. Yet no one could hold him responsible for his words since they were only fables about some animals and imaginary people. He was finally sent to central Greece as an ambassador by his island. While there, he observed the Athenians and made his oblique poliUcal commentary that, however, bruised and

cul

to the quicli.

One of these fables so in-

furiated the Athenians that they stoned him to death and threw his body off of a precipice. Some time later Greece was v1S1ted by a pestilence. Someone proposed that the gods had punished the Athenians because they had murdered so great a philosopher To appease his memory, the Athenians erected a monument to Aesop, whose influence upon the world is greater than all the other philosophers' combined.

A Stuttering Philosopher, 1915

While at the Academy of Krakow, I made only one very large study f ram a model to learn the structure of the human body. After a disagreement with the professor over my total dismissal of studies f ram models, I made only two drawings f ram a female model; one of her torso,

another one of her arm. After starting to work all alone, while living above Bry-

den 's Gallery on Wabash Avenue in Chicago, I made this figure of the Stuttering Philosopher who gesticulates with fingers and toes. His

neck is thick of the muscular effort he

through the blockage caused by his convulsing brain. He has particularly powerful abdomen muscles, typical of stutterers who so laboriously convey their frightened thoughts, thoughts which are tragically damned within and for which they need a very long breath.

Defense

(aha The Defender), 1916 The figure of Defense faces the sculpture of Law, pleading his case.

Law, 1916 Law was a sculpture in

which l advised myself to learn the making of draperies and of cloth. The folds of cloth are the most difficult of all things to do from memory. Anatomical details, after all, are limited to a certain number of 'form situations," and one can learn these situations as one might learn a larger alphabet. However, each movement of the body alters the fluid folds of a drapery, and different thicknesses of cloth will have different types of wrinkles and of an appropriate quantity. Here is the life-weary per-

sonificatwn of Law, stooped under the burden of /mowing too much. It was to be placed below another sculpture, Defense , who arches his body

over the Cause of his pleading argumentations.

' Annunciation, a fragment, 1916

The old woman has given birth to many children. She has watched them grow, struggle, and often die. The memory of their hardships still dwells in her heart. Now, the angel of Birth comes once more. With her weary hands she feels the infant move w1th111 herself She sees the struggles, hardships, and death awaiting the new onebut she 1s resigned and prays for her own endu ranee.

Labor, 1920

From whose wounded arm water flows. A .figure for a

Fall of Man, 1920

Sleep, a fragment , 1914

Atlantea, afragment, 1919

She is sitting on the horizon with her head in the clouds, gigantic yet beautiful. She grieves over her deluged

Metropolis, which perish ed beneath the seas, and over the vanished attainments of her Culture and Civilization, which are lost to human history.

Echo, (Side View), 1923

The figure of Echo is headless, as she does not originate

the sound of the echo. To hide the absence of her head, she places her hands together and deceives her listeners by distorting the sounds they make. She is resting her inflamed foot on a tree, tired of runningfrom hill to hill.

A Grain Merchant,

(aka Portrait of an American), 1915

Flight of the Emigrants, 1921

Whipped by misfortunes and oppression, the emigrants walk out of the seas, leaving

behind them bigotries, hatreds, and foreign as well as native parasitic tonnenters.

The Heavenly Nurse, J 922

The Heavenly Nurse gives a star to the infant, while the S11a/1e of Wisdom, himself, reaches for the central star, as

,f it

were a fly.

A Portrait of Van den Ber-

vivisection-correct bodies,

gen, 1921

without ever looking at

This portrait was one of three

models. In these few pieces I

sculptures I advised myself to

attempted to reduce forms to

do-always having been a

three dimensions.

pedagogue to myself-when in

Occasionally, while I

my early twenties. I had to

worked, a white-haired man

break away for awhile from

with the Hollandese name of

my anatomically inquisitive

Van den Bergen visited my

modeling in which, instead

studio. He was a former

of avoiding the details of

sculptor of exceptional abili-

anatomy, I made almost

ties but, as /, impractical, so that he fared worse and worse in this superpractical America. After passing

through the meat grinder of American misapplication of great men, he ended doing plaster heads for oculists' windows.

He was the noblest being I ever met, a highly cultivated man of considerable erudition. He must have been about seventy, while I was still in my early twenties.

He and I walked erectly, as a father and /115 son, and were most congenial in our views on the world and cul-

tural matters. He posed for me while we were discussing with other visitors, as 1 attempted to commemorate his stalwartness and spiritual

rectitude. Not academically tracing his features, I percolated the essence of his personality out of his less obvious presence in this ig-

noble world. To me he always seemed to resemble a Gothic steeple, and here I conveyed my admiration for him.

YESTERDAY'S CITY "A Wonderfully Busy Place" Edited by H. Roger Grant

HlJN1Ll) CO

Although travel accounts from the late nineteenth century are common, good ones are rare. One insightful narrative came from the pen of Frank W Blowers (1867-192 7), a resident of Detroit, Michigan, who in November 1888 wrote to his sister in England about a recent visit to Chicago. His fortytwo-page missive contains two parts: the first recounts his rail journey while the second (reprinted here) relates his four-day stay in Chicago. Blowers described the city's intricate cable-car system; several popular tourist attractions, including Lincoln Park, the Union Stock Yards, and the Pullman Company's car works; and local response to the hotly contested presidential election between incumbent Grover Cleveland and winner Benjamin Harrison. Passages from the following excerpt reveal Frank Blowers's background. He understandably made frequent references and comparisons to English life; he was born in London and immigrated to the United States when he was eighteen. He worked as a clerk and bookkeeper for the Chicago & Grand Trunk Railway (after 1900 the Grand Trunk West ern) at the time he wrote about Chicago, explaining his fascination with transportation. The Blowers letter is reprinted with the permission of his granddaughter, Normile 0. Baylis, of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Several changes have been made, mostly in punctuation for ease of reading.

H. Roger Grant is professor of history at The University of Akron and editor of Railroad History.

Chicago History, Spring and Summer 1991 About 6:30 the conductor came through the car and announced that breakfast price 70 cents-3 shillings English-was now ready in the Dining Car attached to the rear of train. At the same time handing a bill of fare through the curtains-I feasted in imagination and saved my 75¢ and my appetite until I reached Chicago. At 7 A.M. the Porter announced in a loud voice that Chicago would be reached in 1 hour so I got up washed, dressed and sat down in the smoking room for a cigar. (Upon retiring your boots are placed under the seat and are discovered brilliantly polished in the morning.) The train soon began to run across the streets of Chicago (all level crossings) and when crossing 16th street about a mile from the station, Harold Atkin made his appearance at the door, so having tipped the son of Africa the customary 25 cents for his attention, etc. I grabbed my overcoat and valise and we both jumped off and made for Harold's lodgings which are nearby on 16th street and arrived there in time for breakfast.

It is a long journey 12 hours as in consequence of the line being but a single track as are all the American Roads with one or two exceptions in the East-very fast traveling is not possible, except under special conditions. Atkin and I had a chat after breakfast and then lighting our cigars sallied forth to see the sights. We went up Michigan Avenue which is a beautiful street. It is as smooth as a billiard table-very wide, and runs as straight as an arrow for 4 miles. The cost of making and paving it was about £40 ,000.00 per mile and it is said to be the finest and most expensive avenue in the world. No heavy traffic is allowed on it and Mounted Policeman see that these regulations are obeyed. On either side are beautiful residences and mansions mostly built of stone. We then paid a visit to the engine house of the South Chicago Cable Car Railway. The street cars are propelled or rather drawn along by means of an endless cable which runs along under the road between the rails. In the centre of the road between the rails is a slot or open-

Grip Car, Sh<n,·ing Caule in Grip as \Vhen Dra\\·in~ a Train. This engraving illustrates how grip cars, which first ran in Chicago in I 882, operated. By the early I 900s, grip cars had been replaced by electric cable cars. From Chicago Surface Lines album. CHS, ICHi-05494

Yesterday's City

I A fountain in Lincoln Park, late I 800s. Previously the site of a cemetery, Lincoln Park has attracted pleasure-seeking Chicagoans and tourists since its dedication in 1865. CHS, ICHi-03434.

ing about half an inch wide which runs the whole length of the two tracks. Through this slot an iron lever passes from the car to the cable. The Endless Cable passes round large drums in the engine house and out under the road where it runs along over little wheels right under the slot to the end of the line then passing round another big wheel it comes back along the return track and so round to the Drums in the engine house again. It is of steel wires and about 1 Âź inches in diameter. The street cars (trams as you would call them) run coupled together in 3's or 4's. The front car is called the "grip" and is open all round. The gripman stands in the centre and works the

brake and the grip lever. The grip itself is of steel and is fixed in a removable framework under the car. The lever which is somewhat like a railway signal lever, works a bar of steel which passes down through the slot in the road as do the supports of the grip itself. On the end beneath the road is an arrangement with a wheel at either end over which the cable is caught and runs suspended. Between these two wheels are iron clamps through which the cable passes. When the gripman pulls the lever tight the clamps close on the cable which then pulls the grip and cars along with it, and by loosening the lever the cable is freed and the cars stopped by means of the brake. There are openings along 61

Chicago History, Spring and Summer 1991

Yesterday 's City

The sea lion pond at Lincoln Park Zoo, 1889. Lincoln Park attracted Chicagoans swept up in the bicycling craze of the late nineteenth century. CHS Prints and Photographs Collection.

the track covered with plates of iron for the purpose of oiling and repairing the wheels and drums over which the cable runs . [There are] other openings where the grip can be taken off the car and lifted out. We went all over this engine house which is open to the public. The Engines are very large and everything is kept as clean as a new pin. At the back of the building the cables pass over large wheels which are carried on moveable carriages held by an immense chain and springs. These allow the wheel and carriage to move back and forth and keep the cable tight, allowing for extra strain when a number of loaded cars take hold and gathering in the slack when they let go. The bear pit in Lincoln Park Zoo (left) was built in 1879 to more secu rely house the zoo's bears; the occupants, however, soon learned to escape uy climbing up the sides of the pit. Photograph by J. W. Taylor. CHS, ICHi-03 4 7 I .

Here are to be seen the two largest boilers in the world. They are circular "Tripod" Boilers, 40 feet high and 20 feet in diameter outside the brickwork. They give 700 horse power each and are fitted with a patent automatic stoker so that but one man is necessary to look after the furnaces and Boilers. Outside the Engine house we got onto a passing train of cars riding on the "grip" and went out to the south side Park. This cable system is a most wonderful thing as the cable is carried round corners etc. and works beautifully. The man on the grip car keeps ringing a gong to warn people out of the way. And at night a large headlight is carried which illuminates the track far ahead . The cars will only stop for you at the far side of street crossings or in the event of its being a

cctator stands on HE sp and this same this platform t scene appcare the

grca.

as if he had been

to his eye t the time of the on the spot a battle

Yesterday's City long "block" at a special stopping place denoted by a sign reading "cars stop here." It looks very odd to a stranger to see a string of 2 or 3, sometimes 4 cars coupled together go dashing along the street without any visible means of propulsion. At a certain distance out where the traffic is not so great the cables change and the gripman pulling his lever right over lowers the grip and drops the cable "picking up" the new one a few feet further on, and away we go again with the speed increased from 8 to 11 miles an hour. A mile or so further we pass another engine house and branching off we pick up another cable and dash along at 14 miles an hour soon arriving at the park where we got off. The fare is 5 cents (2 112d) any distance and a very cheap ride if you go the whole distance about 11 miles I think it is. We walked about the park which is only partly finished, with a beautiful paved terrace fronting the lake Michigan. It is laid out with fountains, ornamental waters for boating, beautifully arranged walks, drives-both for vehicles and horseback riding. The parks here are quite open. No gates or railings and the streets run right into the park as it were. After a stroll round, looking at the new breakwater in course of construction we took the grip cars on a different branch and returned to Atkins' diggings in time for dinner. This was a very enjoyable meal to me, after so much restaurant feed, as it was cooked and served up in family style and consisted of soup, a haunch of venison, 4 vegetables, pudding & pie followed [by] cheese celery coffee & dessert. The[re] are 5 others in the house with Atkin. All jolly fellows ranging from 24 to 40 years of age and all dine together by themselves. That is without any grim landlord or landlady at the table to watch how much you eat, as is usual in most boarding houses. A Mr. Howe who works in the same office with Atkin does the carving and superintends the meals raising a tremendous racket if things are not served up properly.

Panoramas, such as "The Merrimac and Monitor Naval Baille," were popular tourist allractions in Chicago during the 1880s. Other panorama subjects included the Crucifixion of Christ and the Great Chicago Fire. From The Merrimac and Monitor Naval Engagement lllustrated (1886), CHS Library.

After dinner we walked down town and took the grip cars on State Street and rode out to Lincoln park, passing on our way under the Chicago river through a tunnel lit by electric light and very clean. We walked through Lincoln park which is very large with Ornamental Waters, Fountains, walks, Statues, Buildings, etc., etc., and quite open to the public day & night as is the other. The park has a beautiful drive along the lake front, being protected by a thick concrete sea wall against the tremendous waves which are driven up during a gale. In the Centre of the park the ground is artificially arranged in hills and dales forming beautiful shady walks in the summertime. Here are constructed dens and enclosures of rockwork and concrete protected in front by iron bars. These contain Wild animals of various kinds, Lions, Tigers, Leopards, Coyotes, Bears, Polar, Grizzly, Russian, etc., large cages of wire netting with the inside arranged with trees bushes, rockwork, its full of Monkeys, Eagles, rabbits, guinea pigs, Guinea fowl, Owls, Quail Pheasants, Squirrels, and all kinds of Strange birds & animals. In a fenced enclosure were various kinds of Deer. Two bucks with tremendous antlers were engaged in a trial of strength and having a great time. Then the coyotes and wolves got into a fight and kicked up a fearfu l howling. There were some buffaloes of various kinds . A tremendous Llama with a terrific smell attached. Some ornamental waters containing Seals, Otters, etc. And in with the Owls were some crocodiles. It soon got dark however and we took the cars home again. After Supper Mr. Tucker called in to see me. (He was the man by whom you sent out my old pipe etc.) and after a chat we walked down town to the Cyclorama of the "Battle between the Merrimac and Monitor." It was very realistic. From the platform on which we stood it was easy to imagine ourselves on the spot. The painting is very realistic and at the bottom where it touches the floor all round artificial work is constructed to connect with the picture. And is so well done that it is hard to trace where the painting ends and the other begins. As we stand looking out to sea where the ships are engaged in battle on our right the coast runs away in the distance and close down below us is the fort with its earthworks and 65

Chicago History, Spring and Summer 1991 Cannon. Part of it is painted and part built up with real guns etc. but so well done that it looks as natural as can be, back of us are the troops and field artillery coming into action. Some are already at work on our left firing at the ships[;] in front of us on the beach stands an old wooden fort which has been set on fire by a shell. Part of this hut is painted on the canvas and the rest built up to join the painting. An old negro is running out of the door, looking very frightened-this is a made up figure, as are the frightened children scurrying away clothed in torn and ragged shirts. A negro is painted standing in the water hauling out his canoe to go to the rescue of the sailors on a sinking warship. The Negro and the bow of the canoe are painted and the body of the canoe is the real thing while his wife and children pushing at the stern are made up models. There are some figures of soldiers firing and some wounded dead or dying. All life size models dressed in the proper uniforms. I enjoyed it very much. I think there are some of these Cycloramas in London at the Crystal or Alexandra Palace. After the Cyclorama we adjourned to Mr. Tuckers rooms on the 6th floor of the Pullman Building which is one of the Finest buildings in Chicago. It is a tremendous building 9 stories high with two fine entrances and grand staircases leading up above. The easiest and quickest way is to take one of the 6 hydraulic elevators which will run you up in no time & bring you down at the same rate. The building is of reddish stone & brick and is surmounted by a tower. On the first three floors are the general offices of the Pullman's Palace car company to whom the building belongs. The 4th I think is the Army Headquarter's Division of the Missouri. On the others are offices, Flats and suites of rooms for living and light housekeeping and at the top is a restaurant run by the Pullman Company. The entrance halls are paved in marble or tiles-and the waiting rooms are beautifully furnished and decorated. The building is lit through out with electric light and furnished with electric call bells, telephones, etc. Tucker has a nice room with electric lights, electric call bell at the door. Dressing room with hot and cold water and heated by steam-

pipes. The wood floors are beautifully stained and polished. We stayed until nearly twelve talking, smoking and listening to Harold's piano playing and then went home. On Monday Harold had to work so I was left to my own devices until lunch time and from then until 5:30 P.M. So in the morning I walked to Lincoln Park, crossing the river by one of the many swing bridges. The river is not very wide but the water is like mud. The sides are lined with docks and grain elevators where large steamers and sailing vessels are loading and unloading. When a vessel passes up or down the river the bridges are swung open by means of a steam engine placed in a little house on the top of each bridge. There is a bridge at each street which ends at the river. So you may guess they are very numerous. On my way I looked in at the West side In addition to housing the Pullman Palace Car Com/Jany and other offices, the Pullman Building at Michigan Avenue and Adams Street leased residential flats and suites. From Select Chicago, Illustrated in Albertype. CHS, ICHi-22646.

Yesterday's City Water Works where there are 4 tremendous pumping engines. The supply is obtained through a tunnel which goes out 2 miles under the lake, but as there have been complaints as to the purity of the water a new tunnel is being bored which is to go four miles out so as to get the water pure. I walked about the park and had another look at the animals. The little prairie dogs amused me very much, at work boring their way into the sandy earth in the bottom of their enclosure, and pounding the roof walls and floor of their burrows nice and smooth with the top of their heads. Then they would stop and sit on top of their little hillocks, sitting up on their hind quarters with their heads on one side to see what was going on. I saw a very nice mansion this morning built near the park and facing the Lake it belongs to a very rich man named "Potter Palmer" and is of stone built like a castle with embattled tow-

ers etc. At the back is a very large conservatory which connects the two wings of the house. It began to rain about noon and after lunch I amused myself looking into the shops and bazaars. I got rather wet too. I saw the first hansom cabs I have seen since leaving England. They are in general use here. Chicago seems a wonderfully busy place, everybody and everything is on the rush and the rattle and crash is something fearful after the quiet of Detroit. There are some tremendous buildings here. Ten and twelve stories high. To see the City now with its tremendous buildings and traffic one can scarcely believe that where all this is now standing was but about 17 years ago nothing but a heap of smoldering ashes. It certainly is the most wonderful city in the world. At 5:30 I met Harold and we went home to dinner. After which we went to the Columbia

Potter Palmer's castellated mansion at 1350 North Lake Shore Drive. Palmer moved from his home in the fashionable Prairie Avenue residential district to this new house in 1882, leading an exodus of Chicago's elite to the North Side. The house was demolished in 1950 to make way for a high-rise apartment building. CHS, ICHi-01256.

Chicago History, Spring and Summer 1991

This stereocard (above) shows the main portal to the Union Stock Yards, which opened on December 25, 1865. CHS, lCHi-21836. Right, the stockyard pens had capacity for twenty-one thousand cattle, seventy-five thousand hogs, and twenty-two thousand sheep. CHS, ICHi-04036.

Theater and saw Gilbert and Sullivan's new opera the "Yeomen of the Guard," which I enjoyed very much but not so much as I did Patience or the "Mikado." After the Opera had a look into the Palmer House Hotel a tremendous place which I cannot attempt to describe. Here is the celebrated Barber shop with the tiled floor-in the centre of each tile a silver dollar piece is let in so that it is known to all the world as being paved with silver dollars. The next day was Tuesday Election Day. I was again left to my own devices as Atkin could not get away and in the evening he had to work on the election returns at the "Chicago Tribune" office. I looked up Bob Rowlandson at noon and had a chat with him. Did a little shopping and after lunch with Atkin went for a ride on the cable cars to 67th street which is out of Chicago some miles. I walked back about a mile through the south side park and across the Boulevard which is an ornamental roadway running right round the City. It is of a tremendous width. On either side are fine houses & mansions each in its own grounds. Then the footwalks shaded with various trees. Then strips of lawn with flower beds, then the road for driving as smooth as a billiard table and the road for rid68

ing. And in the centre is a wide strip of grass lawn with seats[,] shady winding paths, various kinds of trees, bushes, etc., etc. with beautifully laid out Flower Beds, Fountains & statues. It is a lovely place and walking about along the shady paths you can hardly realize that you are only in the middle of the street. In the evening Mr. Howe gave me a line from Tucker asking me to call at his place and spend the evening looking at the "election" crowds, which I did. We took up our stand outside the "Times" office and then outside the "World" & "Herald" Buildings. As fast as the election returns came in they were written on glass and the figures shown by means of a stereopticon on a large sheet hung on the opposite side. The streets were packed with people shouting, singing "campaign" songs, yelling, hooting, blowing tin horns and trumpets and making a most infernal racket. I never saw such a sight before and enjoyed it very much. One party had a tin fog horn about 5 feet long which made a tremendous racket. Two men carried it on their shoulders while a third blew into it. Then there were bands and drum corps kicking up a tremendous racket one against the other . . ..

Yesterday's City

Chicago History, Spring and Summer 1991 Tucker took me to an oyster house where we laid in 1/2 dozen each and then walked around looking at the crowds until about 1 :30 A.M. when we separated. I managed to get standing room on a car and had to climb over the rail and gate in order to get off at 16th street. I enjoyed the novel scene very much but was sorry to find next day that Tucker was very ill and unable to work. He had been feeling unwell all day and the exposure to the damp night air laid him up. Atkin had obtained a holiday on Wednesday and was going to take me to the union stock yards, just outside Chicago .... The chief attraction their is the wholesale slaughtering of cattle and pigs. I did not go, not caring for the entertainment. These are the biggest stock yards and slaughtering establishments in the world. Thousands of animals are killed daily and train load after train load of dressed beef are sent out all over the country and consigned to England and Europe. I believe all the best Beef is sent to England. What we get here is very poor compared to the "roast beef of Old England." I have not seen a sirloin with any undercut to it for about 5 years now. I will try and get a description of the stock yards and send you as it is a wonderful place. Thousands of cattle and hogs are slaughtered daily, and everything is done so quickly with the aid of machinery, that a pig is killed, scalded, scraped, cleaned and cut up almost before it has done squealing. As I did not wish to go to the stockyards Atkin and myself spent the morning at the public Library and in looking over the City Hall. A magnificent building. After lunch we took an "Illinois Central" suburban train and went to Pullman about 14 miles distant. This is a model town of nice houses and stores churches etc. prettily laid out and belongs chiefly to Geo. M. Pullman, President of the Pullman Palace Car Co. Here are situate the Pullman Car works which are the largest in the world employing about 5000 men in the shops and factories. We obtained passes admitting us to all parts of the works and had a glance at everything. But the works are of such large extent that we had but just time to rush through. The buildings are of red brick and stone. And in front is a nicely laid out miniature Park 70

with fountain & small ornamental Lake. Everywhere both within and without the shops the greatest order and neatness are maintained. We saw all the various processes from the time the rough wood and lumber goes in to be worked until it is turned out made into a handsome car. They have some wonderful machinery here. We saw the whole process of sawing, planing, carving, gilding, decorating, painting, fitting upholstering, silverplating, making electric batteries[,] carving and working marble wash bowls and table tops etc., also grinding and frosting-glass, painting and decorating same. Making plate mirrors. Went through the rolling mills where the iron and steel plates are made and rolled, also saw the whole process of casting, turning and planing wheels. The powerful machines will plane a thick or thin shaving off a steel tire or axle as easily as if it were wood. Saw the tremendous forges and steam hammers and hydraulic hammers at work making wrought Iron axles and other work, smashing the lumps of white hot metal into shape as though it were so much dough. Then we saw the process of making paper wheels for the Pullman cars. Pressing wheels onto the axles by hydraulic power, and in fact everything connected with car building of every description. It would take a book to describe all the processes to you and in fact if I attempted to do so, I am afraid I should find myself at a loss, as we had such little time that we were unable to go into the detail of but a fraction of the various processes. We went through some of the new cars and they were lovely. They build them with covered and enclosed flexible passage ways leading from car to car so that one can walk the whole length of the train without going into the open air. These are called Vestibuled trains and are fast coming into use. The trains consist [of] Sleeping cars, drawing room cars, Dining Cars and are beautifully fitted and upholstered. There is a bath room and a barber shop on the train, also a library containing books and furnished with tables and desks and writing materials. They are lit with electric lights. The supply Pullman trains offered passengers the amenities of a hotel, including steeping, dining, drawing room, library, and even barbersho-p cars (right). CHS Prints and Photographs Collection.

Yesterday's City

Chicago History, Spring and Summer 1991

This I 88 I engraving of the toum of Pullman f eatures a guide to the car works and other sites. CHS, ICHi-0 I 9 I 8.

of electricity being carried in storage batteries under the cars which are charged at different stations. They are heated by steam supplied by the locomotive-and no expense is spared to make the passengers comfortable. It costs between 15,000 and 25,000 dollars to build and equip a Pullman car; the sleeping cars are I believe the most expensive. You can form some ideal of the vast extent of resources of these works as in addition to the "Pullman Cars" proper which are owned by the Pullman company. They build cars for railroad companies, also Freight cars of all descriptions and street tram cars. The works have built and turned out 100 freight cars (8 wheeled) in 8 hours. They also have several hunting cars-a combination of sleeping Dining and Drawing rooms-with kitchen and kennels for dogs, very comfortable for a party of hunters who can hire the car for anytime and carry their Hotel with them so to speak. We had a general look round at everything and then made a rush for an approaching train which we caught successfully and returned to Chicago in time for supper, after which we went down town . I left Atkin at the "Tribune" office and made my way alone to the station, Atkin having to go to work at once. At the depot where I arrived about 5 minutes before train time, I found Tucker waiting to see me off safely and talked with him for some time waiting for the train to go but an engine had run off the track in the yards and we had to wait an 72

hour while it was lifted on again. As Tucker was still feeling unwell he did not stay long, so I put in the time walking up and down. The Pullman was crowded and there were several on the car who had not secured berths and were anxiously awaiting the conductors arrival. I got in my work first however and was given the last berth. I was not a minute too soon either as the conductor was soon surrounded by a small crowd of men and women bewailing their hard fate at getting no berths. I had a cigar and went to bed, slept much better than when going, and was up, washed and dressed early. We did not reach Detroit until 9 A .M. Thursday morning 1 hour late, so I got some breakfast in the refreshment room and was soon pegging away at work as though nothing had happened. Thus ended my trip to Chicago, the account of which I trust will interest you . I stayed with Atkin as his guest and enjoyed myself very much, but nevertheless I was glad to get back to Detroit which seems fearfully quiet after the bustle of Chicago. A strange effect at first is produced by the appearance of the high electric lights on the 125 foot towers here, after the gas lamps of Chicago streets. After all I am afraid I have not told you much about Chicago, but one thing I can tell you for certain, it is the smokiest city I ever saw. The air is full of great black smuts which stick all over ones face and clothes. I put on a clean collar every time I entered the house after a trip down town.