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S • P • E • C • U • L • A • T • O • R • S 
"Seized by Speculators": Private Bridges and the Public Will in Ottawa, Illinois Kay J. Carr "Most Melancholy Accident," the headline read in the Illinois Free Trader on April 2,1841. Returning to his Ottawa residence after visiting a patient on the south side of town, Dr. Aaron Bain was traveling north on an Illinois River ferry boat when he fell into the icy water and drowned. Tragic though it was to his family, friends, and patients, Dr. Bain's death was not unusual in the early history of the Illinois and Michigan Canal. So much attention was paid to the construction of the canal before 1848—when it was officially opened—that other parts of the transportation infrastructure were often neglected. Such was the case in Ottawa, the seat of La Salle County. Everybody in the town agreed that, in order to compete with other towns for economic supremacy, infrastructure improvements had to be made. But there were disagreements over the best method to make decisions about those improvements. And those disagreements made it difficult to construct the very bridges that would prevent such accidents as the one that killed Dr. Bain. Founded by the state as the future western terminus of the Illinois and Michigan Canal in 1830, Ottawa initially grew on both sides of the Illinois River. Settlers and investors in La Salle County all recognized the importance of the terminus of the canal, with the county second in population only to Cook County from 1860 to 1890. But the canal was extended west to La Salle because engineers determined that Ottawa's port was not deep enough to accommodate the steamboats that were needed to hook up with the boats coming down the canal from Chicago. Ottawa was typical of towns along the canal because its residents, many of whom were transients, knew they could make much money if they played their economic cards rights. After the announcement that the canal would be extended downstream, Ottawa's urban facilities were relocated along the canal, north of the Illinois River and west of the Fox River. Residents on the south, earlier-settled side of the Illinois— and on the east side of the Fox—eventually lived in a less-dense environment than the new northsiders and had to travel across the water to acquire services, market their crops, and share in the general canal wealth. They wanted bridges across the two waterways. Such was the demand for bridges that a privately owned wooden toll bridge was built over the Fox River in 1848 at a cost of $6,850. The wider Illinois River was more difficult to span. The ferry was the only method for travelers to cross the river until 1855.
It is ironic that Ottawa's best chance to improve its infrastructure came at about the same time that it began to reap benefits from the Illinois and Michigan Canal. In February 1850 businessmen in Chicago proposed to build a railroad west from Chicago to the Fox River, and then south along the Fox to connect with the Illinois River and the canal. For Ottawans, it was a wonderful chance to improve their own transportation facilities. If the railroad company decided to build to the town, it would build the much-needed bridge across the river. However, Ottawans also recognized that the directors would want to build to La Salle where the railroad could meet both with the traffic of the canal and with the steamboat traffic of the river. The editor of the Ottawa Free Trader, William Osman, declared that Ottawans needed to "Improve the River!" from La Salle to their town so that the proposed Fox River Railroad could be built to Ottawa rather than to La Salle. A group of "leading men of this place," according to Osman, took it upon themselves to travel to Chicago to negotiate with the owners of the proposed railroad. All of the canal towns were dominated by such "leading men." Even though they were outnumbered by immigrants 22 (mostly from Ireland) and by migrants from rural parts of the eastern United States, the leading families were wealthier and enjoyed the most social prestige. At the meeting, Ottawa's leaders committed all of the citizens of their town to pay part of the expenses for conducting a survey along the Fox River for the proposed railway. The same leaders then returned to Ottawa and announced the formation of a company to build a twelve-foot dam on the Illinois just west of Ottawa in order to make the river navigable all the way to Ottawa. The cost of the river improvement project was estimated at $20,000 to $30,000. The leaders were sorely disappointed when, despite their efforts, the Chicago businessmen announced their intention in July 1850 to build to La Salle rather than to Ottawa. Osman's Free Trader played an important role in Ottawa's politics, economy, and social life. Any town of importance in Illinois—and especially along the canal—during the period before the Civil War had at least one newspaper, and editors were important social commentators. Many towns, including Ottawa, had more than one newspaper because they were openly associated with local and national political parties. The Free Trader and Osman were associated with the Democratic Party. Osman chastised Ottawa's residents for not acting in time to defeat their rivals down the river. "What is Ottawa doing?" he asked. He argued that Ottawans needed to compete with the other towns of central Illinois or "our water-power and our mineral lands will sleep for ages."
By the end of 1850 Ottawans were given another chance to connect their water transportation facilities with a railroad and to have a bridge built over the river. The Illinois Central Rail Road Company announced in January of 1851 that it would build to La Salle, or Ottawa, or Utica (also on the Illinois and Michigan Canal), wherever was best for the company. Osman immediately began to write editorials that made Ottawa's case. It would make the most sense for the company to build to Ottawa, he argued, because it could then build a bridge across the Illinois at the head of navigation; that is, the railroad would come to Ottawa if the river were deepened. If the railroad built directly to La Salle, a bridge at that town would block any future access to Ottawa by steamboats. Osman was careful to point out that the inhabitants of his town were "not desirous of commencing a controversy with the people of. . . LaSalle upon this subject." Ottawans had to court the company, and it was into the river project that the town's leaders began to pour all of their energies. If improvements to the river were completed, wrote Osman, Ottawa would be in "a position where we can compete successfully with all our neighboring towns in the purchase of all kinds of produce, which will open a market here not even surpassed by Chicago." The State of Illinois would even help to deepen the river if the voters of each part of town agreed to help defray the costs. North and south Ottawa residents went to the polls in January 1851 to decide whether they would pay to build a dam on the Illinois River just west of town. In March 1850, ten months before the vote to decide whether to fund the dam, eleven of Ottawa's leading citizens bought the land where the dam was to be built by signing personal notes worth $100 each. If the dam was built and the river was deepened, they stood to make a sizeable profit. The purchasers were Lorenzo Leland, William Hickling, William Cushman, John V. A. Hoes, Joseph Glover, David Sanger, John Armour, William Reddick, George H. Norris, George S. Fisher, and Richard Thorne. All were members of leading families. However, the purchase of the land was not made public until a year after the fact; it was only then that they defended themselves by claiming to have obtained the land for the good of the town. In the Free Trader, they said they had feared that the land would be "seized by speculators" who would then sell it at a highly inflated price. They also said they had planned all along to turn the land's deed over to a "River Board" or directors of an improvement company, and that they expected to be reimbursed only their original $100 investments plus the interest that they had paid on the notes. Indeed, the land was eventually turned over to nine directors of a public improvement board, three of whom were also among the eleven purchasers. Most residents of Ottawa did not miss the irony in the purchasers' claims of good citizenship. Ottawans who lived on the north side of the Illinois River (closest to the canal) quickly voted to pay for a dam, but the residents on the south side of the river balked at the prospect of taxing themselves. They had no objection to the prospect of a railroad and of a bridge, but they were convinced that the venture would unfairly line the pockets of the town's elite businessmen. Therefore, given the unlikelihood of immediate river improvements to Ottawa, the Illinois Central Rail Road Company decided to build to La Salle, leaving Ottawa without a railroad and without bridge. Even before the Illinois Central directors 23
announced they would build to La Salle, the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad Company decided to build east and west to both Ottawa and La Salle along the north side of the canal. The river improvements were not necessary for the new railroad to come to town, but the railroad would not build a bridge over the Illinois River. Two weeks later the Illinois Central decided not to build through Ottawa. Therefore, many citizens were confused when, in January 1853, their yearly tax bills included the never-approved river improvement levy that was designed to attract the Illinois Central. It seems that, at the special session of the Illinois legislature in the fall of 1852, a bill was passed to authorize the collection of the tax so that the eleven land purchasers could be reimbursed for their bad investment. When the news of the bill's passage reached Ottawa, the public outcry was so great that the legislature changed its mind and relieved the taxpayers. Ottawa's eleven land purchasers were left holding the bag by a restless public. After the dust-up over the tax bills, in February 1853, Osman reported and supported the Illinois General Assembly's charter of "The Illinois River Bridge Co." According to the company's charter, the ten stockholders (five of whom were also investors in the land-buying scheme) would advance $1,000 to $1,500 apiece toward the construction of a bridge. A week later, the voters of Ottawa agreed to incorporate from a village to a city, partly in order to head off the investors and publicly to finance the construction of a bridge by contributing $10,000 to the cost of the venture; the use of a new public bridge would be free to travelers. But the village trustees had already agreed to lend $10,000 worth of credit to the private company before the incorporation vote, and the new city council voted to uphold the agreement. A bridge was constructed across the Illinois River; the 920 feet-long, $60,000 wooden structure was built to connect north and south Ottawa. As with the Fox River Bridge, the owners of the Illinois River Bridge were authorized to charge fees to patrons in order to recoup their investments. So, the bridge was finally realized, but it would be in private hands and the citizens would have to pay tolls to use it. Construction of the Illinois River bridge had been controversial from the start. Many of Ottawa's non-elite residents resented the very idea of permitting the land investors to profit from the construction and operation of a bridge. After all, the bridges were necessary to the improvement of the entire town. All but one of the original owners of the Illinois River Bridge company (chartered by the state in 1853) were wealthy landowners and businessmen from New York or New England: John V. A. Hoes, Lorenzo Leland, David Strawn, Milton H. Swift, Alson Woodruff, Henry F. Eames, the Norris & Fisher law firm (owned by George H. Norris and George S. Fisher), the Walker & Hickling wholesale grocery company, Richard Thorn, and John G. Nattinger. The exception was William Hickling, an emigrant from England, who was in business with his American brother-in-law, George E. Walker. Five of the investors had also been in the group of land purchasers for the proposed dam. These elite citizens of Ottawa were certainly united in their concern about the future of their town; they served as village trustees in the early days, and they were elected as mayors and city councilmen after Ottawa was incorporated as a city. It should be noted that the town's elite businessmen were not at all united when it came to local, state, and national politics. Hoes, Leland, Walker, and Hickling were all Democrats; Strawn, Woodruf, and Thorne were Republicans. Norris and Fisher, whose law firm was a stockholder in the bridge company, split their political loyalties; Norris was a Democrat and Fisher was a Republican. To them, political affiliations were based upon abstract philosophies; they did not let it interfere with the more important pursuit of economic gain and control. The leading citizens were, however, united in their determination to make economic choices that would benefit themselves and their town. But the businessmen were no longer free to make those decisions by themselves. Over the two decades before the bridges were built, other groups of people had taken up residence in Ottawa and were, by 1860, nearly half of the town's electorate. Twenty-seven percent of Ottawa's families were Irish-Catholic; they had arrived in the town as workers on the Illinois & Michigan Canal and had stayed on as day laborers. Thirteen percent of families were from the various German-speaking states of central Europe; they had migrated to the American Midwest to continue their professions as craftsmen and small-store proprietors. There were also immigrants from Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, and France and a small contingent of families from the American South. Although they spoke different languages and practiced different religions, all of the new arrivals had one thing in common: they were poorer than the elite citizens and, because they were so, they had never had 24 much power in their societies of origin. That, however, would not be the case in Ottawa. The immigrant and southern residents in Ottawa were not as wealthy as the northeasterners, but they were as eager to participate in the development of their town as any of the other citizens. Their challenge was to convince Ottawa's leaders of their eagerness and of their abilities to do something about it. They did so by objecting to the ways in which the town leaders had presumed to make decisions for them without their consent—in the vote on the river improvement tax and in the incorporation election. They would also do so by wrenching control of Ottawa's bridges, slowly but surely, away from their elite counterparts. The Irish and German-Catholic residents of Ottawa were particularly united in their challenge to the elite businessmen. Usually voting in league, they took advantage of the political fragmentation of the businessmen and eventually seized control of city hall for their local Democratic Party. Unable to shed their political differences that were based upon long held philosophical beliefs, the elite businessmen had no choice but to bend to the prevailing winds of democratic reform. Beginning in the late 1850s and into the 1860s, the immigrants and their American children flexed their political muscles and were able to take over local decision making from the long-established elite families. Some of the entrenched businessmen joined the new citizens in their fight. But most of them dug in their heels, bemoaning the passage of the old deferential ways. Within a few years of the Illinois River bridge opening in 1855, the citizens of Ottawa and surrounding towns were objecting to the "constant tribute" that they were paying to the river companies in tolls. In January 1869 a committee appointed by the Ottawa City Council recommended that the entire council apply to the state General Assembly for permission to levy a tax for the public purchase of the Fox River bridge and to buy one-half of the Illinois River bridge; three of the five committee members were either members of the eleven Ottawa land purchasers or were stockholders in the Illinois bridge. But the committee reported to the council that the other stockholders in the bridges were not willing to sell to the populace. The council voted in January 1869 to ask the General Assembly for permission to buy the bridges anyway. The Fox River bridge was purchased by the city of Ottawa in January 1869 for $7,000. Ottawans agreed to pay $31,200 for the Illinois River Bridge, but only if the surrounding township would pay an additional $11,000. The other townships would not pay, so the company refused to sell. In 1871 the city of Ottawa contracted with the Canton Bridge Company to build an iron bridge across the Illinois River, which the city purchased in 1878. The owners of the original bridge were left with a wooden white elephant. When it was all said and done, Ottawa's bridges were owned by the people. The town's leaders may have had the welfare of all the residents in mind when they worked in private to improve their town's transportation infrastructure, but their altruism was not appreciated by the town's citizenry. Time after time, the taxpayers objected, not to the idea of railroads or of bridges, but to the fact that elite economic leaders took the matters into their own hands. The people of Ottawa did not readily go along with the private financing of improvement projects, especially when it meant that their economic leaders stood to profit substantially from the risks of investment. And, in this case, the people eventually won. The story of Ottawa's people and their struggle to control the influence of an elite minority is a typical one; similar struggles took place in towns all along the canal, from Chicago to La Salle. The construction and operation of the Illinois and Michigan Canal offered new opportunities for anybody who could get to northern Illinois; and most people, no matter their origins, were not going to let traditional social conventions get in their way of taking those opportunities.
CURRICULUM MATERIALS Overview Main Ideas Politics often implies "backroom" decisions that are made by a few in the interest of all. This is what happened when Ottawa attempted to build bridges across the Fox and Illinois rivers. The Illinois and Michigan Canal brought prosperity to the growing town, but in order to continue to expand, Ottawa needed bridges. No one questioned the need for these bridges. However, the method through which officials attempted to obtain them quickly came under fire. Connection with the Curriculum 25 Writing Standards. These materials may be appropriate for Illinois Learning Standards 14.C.3; 15.E.3a; 15.E.3b; 16.C.3c; 16.E.3c; 17.C.3a; 17.C.3b; 18.B.3a; 3.B.3a; 3.B.3a; 3.C.3a Teaching Level Materials for Each Student
Objectives for Each Student
Opening the Lesson Give each student a copy of the narrative portion of the article. Have the students read three to four paragraphs silently. Then help them pull out the important information in each section by discussing it. Have them underline those important phrases. Continue reading and discussing the article. Look for dates, people, and events. Also call students' attentions to what was done with public knowledge and what was not. Was this done for personal gain or for the public good? Discuss that transportation systems make use of water (canals and rivers) and land (roads and later railroads) and that Ottawa need them all to continue to grow. Developing the Lesson Have the students work on the first three handouts to organize their thoughts. These could be done individually or with a partner. The first handout will help them organize the order in which the events took place. The second handout will let them sort out who was on each side and their reasons for wanting the things that they wanted. The third handout will help the students develop a spatial perspective of where everyone and everything was located. Teacher's note: The bluff on the south side of the Illinois River is much higher than the north side. The present bridge cuts through the lowest point. There is a narrow shore at the river's edge on the south side under the present bridge known as Allen Park. Concluding the Lesson Go over the handouts with the students. Make sure the students understand that it was not so much the bridge people objected to as it was in way in which it was being handled. Think back to the Revolutionary War and "no taxation without representation." Do students see a similarity here? What about the dam the businessmen tried to build west of the city? Did it ever happen? (Yes, Starved Rock Lock and Dam). Extending the Lesson Be a newspaper reporter for the Ottawa Free Trader. Interview both the "leading men of this place" and the ordinary citizens. Don't forget to include the railroad companies and the members of the Illinois General Assembly in your report. Forty-nine communities border the I and M Canal. (For a list, go to http://www.canalcor.org/CCA2005/ctownhis.htmI) Construct a map of the canal that indicates their locations. Include the location of the Illinois River and any other rivers that come in contact with the canal. Assessing the Lesson The persuasive writing prompt (Handout 4) is intended to assess the students' understanding of the many factors that entered into the task of completing a new bridge for Ottawa. While the teacher is encouraged to take a Language Art grade, it is important to assess the Social Science Goals as well. 
26 Handout 1 Putting events in a time frame can help you better understand who is doing what and who is reacting to them. Use this time line to list the important events in the article.
1831 Ottawa, county seat 1836 Work begins, Illinois and Michigan 1848 1850 1851 1852 1853 1855 1860 1869 1871 1878 Present Day Two bridges across Fox River; one bridge on the Illinois River 27 Handout 2 
There are two sides to every story. The elite businessmen wanted to improve their town and their personal wealth. The non-elite residents, while agreeing on a need for bridges, did not care to pay for what they felt would mostly benefit the wealthy. List at least three reasons the businessmen wanted the bridge built. List at least three reasons why the other residents objected. 28 Handout 3 Use the map below to list the different groups mentioned in the article. Mark their areas of residence and if they were for or against the construction. What patterns do you see? 
Google a modern map of Ottawa. Can you add more bridges or railroads to this map? Investigate to find out how the city of Ottawa uses the canal today. 29  Handout 4 Editor William Osman wrote many articles about improving Ottawa in his newspaper, Ottawa Free Trader. The elite businessmen had much to say about what they were doing to improve Ottawa. Other residents had reasons to object to what was happening and how it was being handled. Choose the point of view of either a businessman or an immigrant. Write a persuasive paper to convince voters which way they should vote on the issue of constructing and paying for a new bridge. 30 |
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Note bridges, railroads, important roads, and any dams on the rivers located in those communities as well. Conduct some extra research to find out how those bridges came to be there.
