CHAPTER II. LIFE AT BURLINGTON. 1836-1853. In the spring of 1836, the young adventurer left the paternal roof to seek his fortunes in the far West. He came first to Alton, Illinois, and after visiting Pittsfield, Peoria, and Monmouth, in that State, his attention was directed to Burlington, a new town on the west bank of the Mississippi River, in what was known as the "Black Hawk Purchase." Thither he turned his steps, and landed in the town on the 15th of May, and at once embarked in business as an attorney-at-law, though not yet twenty years of age. The Black Hawk Purchase was a strip of land lying along the west bank of the Mississippi River, from the north line of the State of Missouri to opposite Prairie du Chien, and extending back forty or fifty miles, which was ceded to the United States upon the close of the Black Hawk War, by treaty, September 21, 1832. It contained about six million acres of fair and fertile land, and by the terms of the treaty the Indian possession ceased on the 1st day of June, 1833. From that day explorers and settlers flocked rapidly into the country. A census, taken a few months after his arrival, showed a population of more than ten thousand, viz.: 6,257 in the county of Des Moines, 4,274 in the county of Dubuque. These counties had been organized by an act (September, 1834) of the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Michigan, to which Congress had attached (June 28, 1834) the territory north of the State of Missouri. The division line between these counties was a line drawn due west from the foot of Rock Island. Burlington was the seat of justice of Des Moines County. The town was laid out in 1834, and named after Burlington in Vermont. The business and trade of the region found a natural centre at this point, and assured the growth of a flourishing town. The first court was held here in April, 1835. By an act of Congress, approved April 20, 1836, the country north of the States of Illinois and Missouri to the boundaryline of the United States, lying between Lake Michigan and the upper peninsula of the State of Michigan on the east, and the Missouri and White Earth Rivers on the west, was constituted on the 4th of July, 1836, a separate Territory by the name of Wisconsin. The second session of the first Legislative Assembly of this Territory was held at Burlington, November 6, 1837, and a special session June 11, 1838. By an act of Congress, approved June 12, 1838, the Territory of Wisconsin was divided, and the portion west of the Mississippi River was constituted a separate territorial government, by the name of Iowa. This act took effect on the 4th of July, 1838. The Legislative Assembly of the Territory was convened at Burlington for three successive years, 1838, 1839, and 1840. Thus, in a little more than two years, Mr. Grimes lived under three different territorial governments; under that of Iowa, during the whole period of its existence, eight years and a half. In September, 1836, he went up the Mississippi River to attend a council of the chiefs, braves, and principal men of the Sac and Fox Indians, at Rock Island. By appointment of Henry Dodge, Governor of Wisconsin Territory, and commissioner on the part of the United States, he served as secretary of the commission. Two treaties were made. One relinquished to the United States the lands lying between the then boundary-line of the State of Missouri and the Missouri River, which were soon after added to that State, and contained six counties, with a population of 102,441, and the flourishing city of St. Joseph, with a population of 19,565 (census of 1870). The other ceded to the United States four hundred sections of land lying along both sides of the Iowa River, in what is now Louisa County, and which Keokuk, Wapello, and their bands, had occupied as a reservation, under the treaty of September 21, 1832. In the mutation of affairs, it came to pass that from the territory ceded to the United States under the first treaty, there went forth, in less than twenty years, a violent effort to carry slavery into Kansas, in resistance to which Mr. Grimes bore a conspicuous part, and rendered efficient service. The young lawyer took the attorney's oath, "to demean himself honestly," before Judge Irvin, one of the Associate Judges of the Territory of Wisconsin, February 24, 1837. In the practice of law he early secured business, and established a reputation for ability and integrity in the management of cases. In April, 1837, he was appointed city solicitor by the trustees of the town of Burlington. He pleaded nonage, but the board insisted upon the appointment, and he entered upon the duties of the office, and assisted in drawing up the first police laws of the town. He again held the same office in 1840. During the second session of the first Legislative Assembly of Wisconsin Territory, held at Burlington in the winter of 1837-38, he was employed as assistant librarian of the Territorial Library. At this session, a member of the House from Dubuque County was charged with having taken a bribe of three hundred dollars from John Wilson, for the purpose of obtaining a charter for a ferry over the Mississippi River at Davenport. The matter excited a stormy discussion. A committee of investigation was appointed, who recommended the expulsion of the offending member, and that Wilson should be brought before the bar of the House and be reprimanded by the Speaker. Mr. Grimes, who had been employed, with Henry W. Starr, Esq., as counsel for John Wilson, promptly sent a communication to the Speaker, protesting against the right to reprimand him, and asked to be heard in his defense. On the 16th of January, 1838, the House heard Messrs. Grimes and Starr, and rejected the proposition to reprimand Wilson by a vote of seventeen to seven; the whole number of members of the House was twenty-six. During the same winter he was appointed a justice of the peace by Hon. Henry Dodge, Governor of Wisconsin Territory, and formed a law-partnership with William W. Chapman, United States District Attorney for Wisconsin Territory, and subsequently the first Delegate to Congress from Iowa Territory. In the threatened disturbances between Missouri and Iowa on the "boundary question," in 1839-240, he was commissioned by Governor Lucas as first-lieutenant, and afterward captain of the Iowa Guards, and shared in the humor of the period. In January, 1841, he entered into a partnership with Henry W. Starr, Esq., which continued twelve years. Their practice was large and lucrative, and the firm stood at the head of the legal profession in Iowa. Mr. Grimes gained wide repute as a prudent and sagacious counselor, attentive to the interests of his clients, and as having a superior faculty for detecting sophistry, for lucid statement, and for disentangling things confused and mixed. Courts, and juries, and opposing counsel, listened to him with respect and confidence, assured of his knowledge of the law, and of his clear sense of truth and justice. Thoroughly independent and self-reliant, and shunning irrelevant and verbose speech, his mind grasped the strong points of a case, and his efforts were confined to the law and the evidence. He said to a young student: Stick to your law until you can make a lawyer of yourself, and get a practice, and save money; then it will do to play with politics. You do not need much money. I commenced with fifty dollars worth of law-books, and accumulated by degrees, until I had the best library in town. A determined, persistent industry will secure your success anywhere, and without it no one can succeed. Learn to read and speak deliberately; you can do neither too slowly. His home-letters of this period afford some information of the course of his life, and occasionally give his views of passing events. 3.-To Miss Sarah C. Grimes, Deering, N. H. BURLINGTON, DES MOINES COUNTY, } I intended to have written you when I first arrived in Alton, but not concluding to stay (and glad I am I did not, for it is very sickly there), and rambling about over Illinois, I did not find time for a convenient opportunity to write much. I am now permanently located, I hope, at this place. I am building an office,' and shall move into it next week. I shall then be on my own footing, and in my own possession. It is natural to suppose that you want to know something about the people of this country. Imagine yourself just where you are, but fifty years ago. The countries are very different. Here we have not so much wood as there is in New England at the present day, and the soil is not half nor one-sixteenth part so fertile there as here, but the people here now, and there then, are very much alike. The country is rather more thickly settled here, but the character of the people, their manners, customs, and dress, are similar. There are no more schools here now than there then. Imagine your grandmothers dressed in their old garments, whalebone stomachers, etc., and you will have a very correct idea of the dress of Illinois females. The morals of the people are as good as they were then in New England. You have heard father tell of the wild doings of the young men of those days, and it is just so here. Every one goes in for sport and social enjoyment, more so on this side the river than on the other. Burlington is on the bank of the Mississippi, and is about as large as Nashua village. The houses are not as large and splendid, for a good many are built of logs. But there are as many inhabitants, taking out the factory-girls there. One street runs exactly up the bank, facing the water. There is but one row of buildings on this street; the other side is a steamboat-landing. There are twelve stores on this street, not more than fifty feet from the water. My office is on Second Street, right back of Water Street, and parallel with it. There are three stores on Second Street, offices, etc. There are six doctors, five lawyers with myself, sixteen stores, five or six groceries, or, in New England, called grog-shops. No minister in town. We had one, but he died a few days ago. I found Mark M. Aiken in Peoria. I should not have known him, if he had not come up to me and called me Mr. Grimes. I had not seen him for ten years. He did not know I was in the country, but he said he knew it was one of our family from the re 'On Main Street, west side, between Columbia and Court Streets. It stood until destroyed by fire, June 19, 1873. |