States surveyor said might become a considerable trading-post but for its distance from Fort Wayne,. became second only to New York as a center of business. Onward it strode, dredging the torpid river into a harbor with a score of miles of wharffrontage, pushing out docks and piers, erecting depots and elevators, constructing blocks of business houses unrivaled in substantial elegance, and pushing eastward, westward, northward, and southward her lines of railway communications, until, from the obscure trading-post, it became the first primary grain, pork, and lumber depot in the world.

Beauty came with utility; the unsightliness of the city gave way before the touch of capital and taste; broad avenues were opened; lines of trees tossed their arms on high; residences worthy of princes rose; elegant churches opened their sacred portals, while educational structures, unequaled in the Union, invited the children of the rich and the poor.

Statistics of mortality showed that no city was more healthy. The open plain and lake forbade the possibility of malaria, and the imperfections of early drainage were counteracted by the open soil and rapid evaporation. The climate, with the exception of the variable spring, is desirable; winter is stern and bracing, and summer is delightful. The grand old lake perpetually modifies the burning heat, and sends up toward nightfall over the glowing city a gentle influence rather than breeze, filling all homes with comfort, and wooing sweetest sleep. Autumn rivals the Italian after-summer. The sky is incon

ceivably glorious in crimson and gold; the air is tremulous with a haze barely perceptible, while the temperature is delicious. It is such an autumn, pouring glory on lake and land, as would have delighted Dante.

Young as the city was when the war came, music, sculpture, and painting had their temples and their worthy beginnings. The press of the city, secular and religious, daily and weekly, had taken rank as only next, if next, to those of the national metropolis. Its leading men were comparatively youthful, and youthful pluck was conspicuous in their methods of business; they struck in a manner truly Napoleonic; they introduced commercial trades as novel and irresistible as the warlike movements of the Corsican "corporal." Caution raised its finger,

The

and consideration said failure was inevitable. truth was, these young men were placed in a new order of things, and were prudent in apprehending its needs, and in adjustments to it. If success is the test of genius, the business men of Chicago may be content to accept the record of history for their vindication.

In 1838, the first shipment of wheat was made by Walker and Company, and amounted to 78 bushels. In 1848, the shipments, by lake, were 2,160,800. In 1858, the receipts were 9,639,644; in 1867–8, 13,483,261. In 1858, the receipts of corn were 8,252,641 bushels; in 1868, 25,223,468 bushels. From 250 cattle packed in 1863, the number advanced to the total received of 813,797. The lumber trade of

1847 reported, as receipts, lumber 32,118,225; shingles, 12,148,506; lath, 5,655,700. In 1867-8, the receipts were, lumber, 8,832,662,770; shingles, 447,039,295; lath, 146,846,280. In 1849, the first bar of strap-iron was laid on the Galena and Chicago Union railway; now, the Chicago and North-western owns and operates 1,176 miles of track; the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy stretches to Burlington, and southward to Quincy, and thence away over the great river to grapple Kansas and the South-west, with branches to Peoria and elsewhere. The Rock Island and Pacific crosses the Mississippi at Davenport, and reaching the capital of Iowa, thence by western lines, makes part of the links binding the oceans in unity. The Chicago, Alton and Saint Louis trav erses a country of exhaustless fertility, and clasps Saint Louis and Chicago with an iron bracelet. The colossal Illinois Central, starting from Cairo, reaches the Mississippi at Dunleith, and lake Michigan at Chicago. The Michigan Central, Michigan Southern, and Fort Wayne lines, are outlets to the East, to which the Chicago and Columbus promises another. Such are some of the achievements of these "visionaries." Pretty solid, one would say! No dead men partially galvanized are they who, in a few years, do work so super-Herculean.

The political convictions of such a people were earnest and even fiery. Worn-out platitudes had no power to sway them; timid conservatism had no influence over them, while they equally refused metaphysical abstractions, demanding that any party

challenging their allegiance should prove that it meant to do something. Douglas resided in their city; Lincoln was nominated in its wigwam, and two such men never could have headed parties of dreamers. They meant business, and they did business. Their contests, and those of their followers, were of concrete ideas; they moved for results, and carried with them the enthusiastic young masses of city and state.

It was of such a city, the question heading this chapter, was asked. Had its trade smothered its patriotism? Devoted to its own growth and enamored of its own greatness, cared it for the perpetuity of a common country? Would this intensely practical city go to war for an idea? It did; and from the outset the prescient prudence of its business men foresaw that measures for which the country was not then ready, must be adopted before the war could end with a preserved and united country.

With the fall of Sumter, all doubts as to what Chicago would do vanished. That eventful Sabbath morning when the news reached us described in a previous chapter, told that Chicago was to take a stand astonishing as it was gratifying.

The pulpits of that time, in our city, were remarkable for their strength. The occupants were, many of them, men of rare eloquence and power, and their early, manly delineations of the authority of Govern ment, the wickedness of causeless rebellion, the duty of Christian men to stand by the right, influenced not only the city, but being caught up and repeated