Often his only entertainments throughout the year were "bees" for raising log houses or barns for newcomers, and on these occasions all the settlers for scores of miles around would gather in a spirit of helpful comradery. Occasionally the mail carrier, either afoot or on horseback, would wish accommodation over night. Particularly fortunate was the man who maintained a river ferry at the crossing of some much-frequented trail; he could have frequent chats with strangers, and collect stray shillings from mail carriers or other travelers whose business led them through the wilderness.
Often the new settler brought considerable flour and salt pork with him, in his journey to the West; but it was not at first easy to get a fresh supply. Curiously enough, although in the midst of a wild abundance, civilized man at the outset sometimes suffered for the bare necessaries of life. As soon, however, as he could garner his first crop, and become accustomed to the new conditions, he was usually proof against disaster of this kind; fish and game were so abundant, in their season, that in due time the backwoodsman was able to win a wholesome livelihood from the storehouse of nature.
Satisfactory education for youth was a plant of comparatively small growth. At first there was not enough money in the country to pay competent teachers. The half-educated sons and daughters of the pioneers taught the earliest schools, often upon a private subscription basis; text-books were few, appliances generally wanting, and the results were, for many years, far from satisfactory. As for spiritual instruction, this was given by itinerant missionary preachers and priests, of various denominations, who braved great hardships while making their rounds on horseback or afoot, and deserve to rank among the most daring of the pioneer class. In due time churches and schools were firmly established throughout the Territory.
In addition to these farmer colonists, there came many young professional and business men, chiefly from New York and New England, seeking an opening in the new Territory for the acquisition of fame and wealth. Many of these were men of marked ability, with high ambition and progressive ideas, who soon took prominent part in molding public opinion in the young Wisconsin. There are, all things considered, no abler, more forceful men in the Wisconsin of to-day than were some of those, now practically all passed away, who shaped her destinies in the fourth and fifth decades of the nineteenth century.
The sessions of the legislature were the principal events of the year. Prominent men from all over Wisconsin were each winter attracted to Madison, as legislators, lobbyists, or visitors, crowding the primitive little hotels and indulging in rather boisterous gayety; for humor in those pioneer days was often uncouth. There was overmuch "horseplay," hard drinking, and profanity; and now and then, as the result of a warm discussion, a tussle with fists and canes.
The newspapers were given to rude personal attacks upon their enemies; one would suppose, to read the columns of the old journals, that editors thought it their chief business in life to carry on a wordy, bitter quarrel with some rival editor or politician. But this was largely on the surface, for effect. As a matter of fact, strong attachments between men were more frequent then than now. There was a deal of dancing and miscellaneous merrymaking at these legislative sessions; and travelers have left us, in their letters and journals, statements which show that they greatly relished the experience of tarrying there on their winter journeys across the Territory, and of being entertained by the good-hearted villagers.
Pioneers, in their stories of those early years, are fond of calling them the "good old times," and styling present folk and manners degenerate. No doubt there was a certain charm in the rude simplicity of frontier life, but there were, as well, great inconveniences and rude discomforts, with which few pioneers of our day would wish to be confronted, after having tasted the pleasures arising from the wealth of conveniences of every sort which distinguishes these latter days. As far back in time as human records go, we ever find old men bewailing prevalent degeneracy, and sighing in vain for "the good old times" when they were young. It is a blessing given to the old that the disagreeable incidents of their youth should be forgotten, and only the pleasant events remembered. As a matter of fact, we of to-day may well rejoice that, while Wisconsin enjoyed a lusty youth, she has now, in the fullness of time, grown into a great and ambitious commonwealth, lacking nothing that her sisters own, in all that makes for the prosperity and happiness of her people.
When white men first came to our land, the Indian trails formed a network of narrow, deep-sunken paths over the face of the country, as they connected village with village, and these with the hunting and fishing resorts of the aborigines. Many of the most important trails simply followed the still earlier tracks of the buffalo, which in great herds wandered from plain to plain, in search of forage, or in hiding from man, through the dark forest and over the hills. The buffalo possessed an unerring instinct for selecting the best places for a road, high ridges overlooking the lowlands, and the easy slopes of hills. In the Far West, they first found the passes over the Rockies, just as, still earlier, they crossed the Alleghanies by the most favorable routes.
The Indian followed in the footsteps of the buffalo, both to pursue him as game, and better to penetrate the wilderness. The white man followed the well-defined Indian trail, first on foot, then on horseback; next (after straightening and widening the curving path), by freight wagon and by stagecoach; and then, many years later, the railway engineer often found his best route by the side of the developed buffalo track, especially in crossing the mountain ranges. The Union Pacific and the Southern Pacific railways are notable examples of lines which have simply followed well-worn overland roads, which were themselves but the transcontinental buffalo paths of old.
An interesting story might be written concerning the development of the principal Indian trails in Wisconsin into the wagon roads of the pioneers, and some of these into the military roads made by the federal government for the marching of troops between the frontier forts. Without fairly good roads, at least during the winter and summer months, it would have been impossible for Wisconsin to grow into a great State; for good roads are necessary to enable settlers, tools, and supplies to get into the country, and to afford an outlet for crops. For this reason, in any newly settled region, one of the first duties of the people is to make roads and bridges.
We have still much to do in Wisconsin, before we can have such highways as they possess in the old eastern States. In many parts of our State, the country roads in the rainy seasons are of little credit to us. But the worst of them are much better than were some of the best in pioneer days, and some of our principal thoroughfares between the larger cities are fairly good.
The federal government set a good example by having its soldiers build several military roads, especially between Forts Howard (Green Bay), Winnebago (Portage), and Crawford (Prairie du Chien). In Territorial and early Statehood days, charters were granted by the legislature for the building and maintenance of certain tollroads between large towns; some of these were paved with gravel or broken stone, others with planks. Many of the plank roads remained in use until about 1875; but before that date all highways became the property of the public, and tollgates were removed. Bridges charging tolls are still in use in some parts of the State, where the people have declined to tax themselves for a public bridge, which therefore has been built by a private company in consideration of the privilege of collecting tolls from travelers.
Early in the year when Wisconsin Territory was erected (1836), and while it was still attached to Michigan Territory, there was a strong movement, west of Lake Michigan, in favor of a railway between Milwaukee and Prairie du Chien, connecting the lake with the Mississippi River. Congress was petitioned by the legislative council of Michigan to make an appropriation to survey the proposed line. There were as yet very few agricultural settlers along the route; the chief business of the road was to be the shipment of lead from the mines of the southwest to the Milwaukee docks; thence it was to be carried by vessels to Buffalo, and sent forward in boats, over the Erie Canal, to the Hudson River and New York.
This was in January; in the September following, after Wisconsin Territory had been formed, a public meeting was held in Milwaukee, to petition the Territorial legislature to pass an act incorporating a company to construct the proposed lead-mine road, upon a survey to be made at the expense of the United States, and there was even some talk of another road to the far-away wilderness of Lake Superior.
But this early railway project was premature. Wisconsin had then but twenty-two thousand inhabitants, and Milwaukee was a small frontier village. Then again, railroading in the United States was still in its infancy. In Pennsylvania there was a small line, hardly better than an old-fashioned horse car track, over which a wheezy little locomotive slowly made occasional trips, and the Baltimore and Ohio railway had not long before experimented with sails as a motive power. It is not surprising, therefore, that Congress acted slowly in regard to the overambitious Wisconsin project, and that it was nearly fourteen and a half years before a railway was actually opened in this State.
Indeed, many people thought at that time that canals, costing less in construction and in operation, were more serviceable for Wisconsin than railways. The people of northern Wisconsin were particularly eager for canals; in the southern part, railways were most popular. The most important canal project was that known as the Fox and Wisconsin rivers improvement. From the earliest historic times, these two opposite-flowing rivers, whose waters approach within a mile and a half of each other at Portage, had been used as a boat route between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. We have seen, in preceding chapters, what an important part was played by this route in the early history of Wisconsin. But when large vessels became necessary to the trade of the region, and steam navigation was introduced, it was found that the historic water way presented many practical difficulties: the Fox abounds in rapids below Lake Winnebago, and in its upper waters is very shallow; the Wisconsin is troubled with shifting sand bars. In order to accommodate the traffic, a canal was necessary along the portage path, and extensive improvements in both rivers were essential.
As early as 1839, Congress was asked to aid in this work, and from time to time such aid has been given. But, although several millions of dollars have, through all these years, been spent upon the two streams, there has been no important modern navigation through them between the Great Lakes and the great river. The chief result has been the admirable system of locks between Lake Winnebago and Green Bay, making available the splendid water power of the lower valley of the Fox.
Another water way project was that of the Milwaukee and Rock River Canal. This was designed to connect the waters of the Milwaukee and Rock rivers, thereby providing an additional way for vessels to pass from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi. A company was incorporated, with a capital of a million dollars, and Congress made a large grant of land to Wisconsin Territory. But after some years of uncertainty and heavy expense the project was abandoned as impracticable.
The Territorial legislature began to charter railway companies as early as 1836, but the Milwaukee and Mississippi was the first road actually built. The track was laid in 1851 and a train was run out to Waukesha, a distance of twenty miles. In 1856 the line reached the Mississippi. This was the modest beginning of the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul system.
The Chicago and Northwestern Railway entered Wisconsin from Chicago about the same time (1855). Numerous small lines were built before the War of Secession, nearly all of them being soon swallowed up by the larger companies. During the war, there was stagnation in railway building, but when peace was declared there was renewed activity, and to-day Wisconsin is as well provided with good railways as any State of its size and population in the Union.
In the fourth decade of the nineteenth century there was much agitation, both in France and America, over the teachings of a remarkable man named François Marie Charles Fourier. He claimed that if people would band themselves together in communities, in the proper spirit of mutual forbearance and helpfulness, and upon plans laid down by him, it would be proved that they could get along very well with no strife of any sort, either in business, or religion, or politics. Then, if the nations would but unite themselves in the same way, universal peace would reign.
During the stirring times of the French Revolution and of the great Napoleon, there had been much social agitation of the violent sort. A reaction had come. The talk about the rights of man was no longer confined to the violent, revengeful element of the population; it was now chiefly heard among the good and gentle folk, among men of wealth and benevolence, as well as those of learning and poverty.
In France, Fourier was the leader among this new class of socialists. In France, England, and Holland, colonies more or less after the Fourier model were established; and it was not long before communities came to be founded in the United States. The most famous of these latter was Brook Farm, in Massachusetts, because among its members were several well-known authors and scientists, who wrote a great deal about their experiences there. But the only community in America conducted strictly on Fourier's plan, flourished in Wisconsin.
The New York Tribune, edited by Horace Greeley, a noted reformer, was earnest in advocating Fourierism, as it was called, doing much to attract attention to "the principle of equitable distributions." One of the many readers of the Tribune was Warren Chase, of Kenosha, a young New Hampshire man, thirty years of age, who became much attached to the new idea.
This was during the winter of 1843-44. Chase gathered about him at Kenosha a group of intelligent men and women, some of whom had property, and they formed a stock company, incorporated under the laws of Wisconsin Territory, but based strictly on the plans laid down by Fourier.
Having purchased six hundred acres of government land, in a gentle valley within the present Ripon township, in Fond du Lac county, nineteen pioneers, led by Chase, made their way thither in May. There were no railroads in those days, and the little company proceeded overland through flower-decked prairies, and over wooded hills, in oxcarts and horse wagons, with droves of cattle, and tools and utensils.
The reformers called their colony "Ceresco," after Ceres, the goddess of agriculture. Plowing was commenced, buildings were erected, shops and forges established. Very soon some two hundred men, women, and children had arrived, and in due time many branches of industry were in full operation.
The Ceresco community was, as suggested by Fourier, styled a "phalanx." The members were classified, according to their capacity to labor, in educational, mechanical, and agricultural series, each series being divided into groups. The government was headed by a president and nine councilors; each series had a chairman, and each group a foreman.
Labor was voluntary, the shops being owned by the community at large; while the land was divided equally among all the members, old and young, save that no family might possess over forty acres. As the community grew, more land was purchased for their use. The council laid out the work to be done, or the policy to be pursued. When there was a question to be decided, the series interested voted upon it; but in some important cases, the matter was referred for final action to the several groups. Each person received pay according to his value as a worker, the record being kept by the foreman of his group. They were not paid upon the same scale; for instance, the members of the council and the school-teachers received more than skilled mechanical laborers, and these in turn more than ordinary workmen.
The phalanx at first lived in temporary quarters, and a year later erected a large building "four hundred feet in length, consisting of two rows of tenements, with a hall between, under one roof." Each family lived in its own compartments, but all ate in common at a boarding house called the "phalanstery," where a charge was made of seventy-five cents a week for each person. The "unitary" was a large building used for business and social meetings, these being held in the evenings; each Tuesday evening the literary and debating club met, Wednesday evening the singing school, and Thursday evening a dancing party.
Unlike many other communities, the Fourier colonies were not religious in character. Each member of the phalanx at Ceresco might worship as he pleased. At various times, for the membership fluctuated somewhat, ministers of different denominations were members of the colony, and frequently there were visits from wandering missionaries.
None of the colonists were allowed to use intoxicating liquors as a beverage. There must be no vulgar language, swearing, or gambling; and one of the by-laws commanded that "censoriousness and fault-finding, indolence, abuse of cattle or horses, hunting or fishing on the first day of the week, shall be deemed misdemeanors, and shall be punishable by reprimand or expulsion." These punishments were the only ones which the community could inflict upon its members, for it had no judicial powers under the law.
But there was small need of punishments at Ceresco. Its members were, as a rule, men and women of most excellent character. There was never any dishonesty, or other serious immorality, within the phalanx; the few neighboring settlers regarded the reformers with genuine respect. All the proceedings of the community were open, and its carefully kept accounts and records might be inspected by any one at any time. Whenever charges were brought against a member, they were laid before the full assembly at the next weekly meeting; a week elapsed before consideration, in order to give ample opportunity for defense; then the entire body of colonists, women as well as men, voted on the question, acquitting the offender or reprimanding him or, by a two-thirds vote, expelling him from the phalanx.
Wisconsin was then sparsely settled at best; the peaceful little valley of Ceresco was equally far removed from the centers of population at Green Bay and in the southern portion of the Territory. Yet many pioneers came toiling over the country, to apply for admission to this Garden of Eden. But it is recorded that not one in four was taken into fellowship, for the phalanx desired "no lazy, shiftless, ne'er-do-well members," and only those believed to be wise, industrious, and benevolent were taken into the fold.
And thus the Ceresco phalanx seemed mightily to prosper. Its stock earned good dividends, its property was in excellent condition, the quality of its membership could not be bettered. Far and near were its praises sung. The New York Tribune gave weekly news of its doings, and was ever pointing to it as worthy of emulation; the Brook Farm paper hailed it as proof that socialism had at last succeeded.
Had each member been equally capable with his fellows, had the families been of the same size, had there been no jealousies, no bickerings, had these good folk been without ambition, had they, in short, been contented, the phalanx might have remained a success. They were clothed, fed, and housed at less expense than were outsiders; they had many social enjoyments not known elsewhere in the valley; and, according to all the philosophers, should have been a happy people.
The public table, the public amusement rooms, and all that, had at first a spice of pleasant novelty; but soon there was a realization that this had not the charm of home life, that one's family affairs were too much the affairs of all. The strong and the willing saw that they were yoked to those who were weak and slothful; there was no chance for natural abilities to assert themselves, no reward for individual excellence.
Wisconsin became a State in 1848. Everywhere, ambitious and energetic citizens in the rapidly growing commonwealth were making a great deal of money through land speculations and the planting of new industries, everywhere but in Ceresco, where the community life allowed no man to rise above the common level. The California gold fields, opened the following year, also sorely tempted the young men. The members of the phalanx found themselves hampered by their bond. Caring no longer for the reformation of society, they eagerly clamored to get back into the whirl of that struggle for existence which, only a few years before, they had voted so unnecessary to human welfare.
In 1850 the good folk at Ceresco voted unanimously, and in the best of feeling toward one another, to disband their colony. They sold their lands at a fair profit to each; and very soon, in the rush for wealth and for a chance to exercise their individual powers, were widely distributed over the face of the country. Some of them ultimately won much worldly success; others fell far below the level of prosperity maintained in the phalanx, and came to bemoan the "good old days" of the social community, when the strong were obliged to bolster the weak.
In the year 1843 there came from New York to the village of Burlington, Racine county, an eccentric young lawyer named James Jesse Strang. Originally a farmer's boy, he had been a country school-teacher, a newspaper editor, and a temperance lecturer, as well as a lawyer. Possessed of an uneasy, ambitious spirit, he had wandered much, and changed his occupation with apparent ease. Strang was passionately fond of reading, was gifted with a remarkable memory, and developed a fervent, persuasive style of oratory, which he delighted in employing. He often astonished the courts by the shrewd eloquence with which he supported strange, unexpected points in law. It is related of him that, soon after he came to Wisconsin, he brought a suit to recover the value of honey which, he claimed, had been stolen from his client's hives by the piratical bees of a neighbor, and his arguments were so plausible that he nearly won his case.
In less than a year after his arrival in Burlington, the village was visited by some Mormon missionaries. They came from Nauvoo, Illinois, on the banks of the Mississippi River, where there was a settlement of so-called Latter-Day Saints, who lived under the sway of a designing knave named Joseph Smith. Strang at once became a convert, and entered into the movement with such earnestness that, with his oratory, his ability to manage men, and his keen zest for notoriety, he became one of the most prominent followers of the faith.
Six months after Strang's conversion, Joseph Smith, the president and prophet of the Mormons, was killed by an Illinois mob. At once there arose a desperate strife among the leaders, for the successorship to Joseph. Two of the number, Brigham Young and Strang, were men of ability, and the contest soon narrowed down to them. Young had the powerful support of the council of the church, known as "the twelve apostles"; but Strang produced a letter said to have been written by Joseph just before his death, in which Strang was named as his successor, with directions to lead the Mormons to a new "city of promise" in Wisconsin, to be called "Voree."
The "apostles" at Nauvoo denounced Strang as an impostor, declared that his letter was a forgery, and attacked him bitterly in their official newspapers, published at Nauvoo and at Liverpool, England. But Strang was not easily put down. A great many of the fanatics at Nauvoo believed in this impetuous young leader, who defended his cause with tact and forceful eloquence; and for a time it looked as if he might win.
However, in the end the "apostles" had their way, and the adroit Young was elected to the headship of the church. Strang at once called forth his followers, and in April, 1845, planted the "City of Voree" upon a prairie by the side of White River, in Walworth county, Wisconsin. It soon became a town of nearly two thousand inhabitants, who owned all things in common, but were ruled over, even in the smallest affairs of life, by the wily President Strang, who claimed to be divinely instructed in every detail of his rigorous government.
The people dwelt "in plain houses, in board shanties, in tents, and sometimes, many of them, in the open air." Great meetings were held at Voree, and the surrounding settlers gathered to hear Strang and his twelve "apostles" lay down the law, and tell of the revelations which had been delivered to them by the Almighty. Strang, who closely imitated the methods of Joseph, pretended to discover the word of God in deep-hidden records. Joseph had found the Book of Mormon graven upon plates dug out of the hill of Cumorah, in New York; so Strang discovered buried near Voree similar brazen plates bearing revelations, written in the rhythmic style of the Scriptures, which supplemented those in the Book of Mormon.
President Strang was a very busy man as the head of the Voree branch of the Mormon church. He obtained a printing outfit, and published a little weekly paper called Gospel Herald, besides hundreds of pamphlets, all written by himself, in which he assailed the "Brighamites" in the same violent manner as they attacked him in their numerous publications. He also, with his missionaries, conducted meetings in Ohio, New York, and other States in the East, gathering converts for Voree, and boldly repelling the wordy attacks of the Brighamites, whose agents were working the same fields.
Despite some backslidings, and occasional quarrels within its ranks, Voree grew and prospered. By 1849 there was a partially built stone temple there, which is thus described by an imaginative letter writer of the time: "It covers two and one-sixth acres of ground, has twelve towers, and the great hall two hundred feet square in the center. The entire walls are eight feet through, the floors and roofs are to be marble, and when finished it will be the grandest building in the world."
Nevertheless, it was early seen by Strang that the growing opposition of neighboring settlers would in the end cause the Mormons to leave Wisconsin, just as the Nauvoo fanatics were compelled (in 1846) to flee from Illinois, to plant their stake in the wilderness of the Far West.
He therefore made preparations for a place of refuge for his people, when persecutions should become unbearable. In journeying by vessel, upon one of his missions, he had taken note of the isolation of an archipelago of large, beautiful, well-wooded islands near the foot of Lake Michigan. The month of May, 1846, found him with four companions upon Beaver Island, in this far-away group. They built a log cabin, arranged for a boat, and returned to Voree to prepare for the migration of the faithful.
The new colony at first grew slowly, but by the summer of 1849 the "saints" began to arrive in goodly numbers. Strang himself now headed the settlement; and thereafter Voree ceased to be headquarters for the "Primitive Mormons," as they called themselves, although a few remained in the neighborhood.
Very soon, about two thousand devotees were gathered within the "City of St. James," on Beaver Island, with well-tilled farms, neat houses, a sawmill, roads, docks, and a large temple. A hill near by they renamed Mount Pisgah, and a River Jordan and a Sea of Galilee were not far away.
One beautiful day in July, 1850, Strang, arrayed in a robe of bright red, was, with much ceremony, crowned by his "apostles" as "King of the Kingdom of St. James." Foreign ambassadors were appointed, and a royal press was set up, for the flaying of his enemies. Schools and debating clubs were opened; the community system was abolished; tithes were collected for the support of the government; tea, coffee, and tobacco were prohibited; and even the dress of the people was regulated by law. Never was there a king more absolute than Strang; doubtless, for a time, he thought his dream of empire realized at last, and that here in this unknown corner of the world the "saints" might remain forever unmolested.
But the sylvan archipelago, and Beaver Island itself, had other inhabitants; these were rude, sturdy, illiterate fishermen, who lived in huts along the coast, and had little patience with the fantastic performances of their neighbors, King Strang and the court of St. James. His majesty had, also, jealous enemies among his own subjects.
Trouble soon ensued. The fishermen frequently assaulted the "saints," and carried on a petty warfare against the colony at large, in which the county sheriff was soon engaged; for false charges came to be entered against these strange but inoffensive people, and they were now and then thrown into jail. The king, thereupon, in self-defence, "went into politics." Having so many votes at his command, he easily secured the election of Mormons to all the county offices, and of himself to the legislature of Michigan.
But despite these victories over outside foes, matters at home went from bad to worse. The enemies in his camp multiplied, for his increasingly despotic rule gave them abundance of grievances. At last, about the middle of June, 1856, two of the malcontents shot their monarch from behind. He was taken by vessel to his old home in Voree, where he was tenderly cared for until his death, a month later, by his poor, neglected wife, who had remained behind when he went forth to the island. His kingdom did not long survive him. The unruly fishermen came one day with ax and torch, leveled the royal city to the ground, and banished the frightened "saints."
To-day the White River prairie gives no evidence of having once borne the city of Zion, and even in the Michigan archipelago there remain few visible relics of the marvelous reign of King Strang.
Two years after Louis the XVI., Bourbon king of France, and his beautiful queen, Marie Antoinette, were beheaded by the revolutionists in Paris, in the closing decade of the eighteenth century, their imbecile child of eight years, called the "dauphin," was officially reported to have died in prison. But the story was started at the time, and popularly believed, that the real dauphin, Louis the XVII., had been stolen by the royalists, and another child cunningly substituted to die there in his place. The story went that the dauphin had been sent to America, and that all traces of him were lost; thus was given to any adventurer of the requisite age, and sufficiently obscure birth, an opportunity to seek such honor as might be gained in claiming identity with the escaped prisoner.
Great was the excitement in the United States, when, in 1853, it was confidently announced by a New York magazine writer that the long lost prince had at last been discovered, in the person of the middle-aged Eleazer Williams, an Episcopal missionary to the Oneida Indians at Little Kaukauna, in the lower valley of the Fox.
The Bonaparte family, represented by Louis Napoleon, were just then in control of France; but the Bourbon family, of which Louis the XVII., were he alive, would naturally be the head, considered themselves rightful hereditary masters of that country. Of course, there was at the time no opportunity for any Bourbon actually to occupy the French throne; but the people of that country are highly emotional, revolutions have been numerous among them, and displaced royalists are always hoping for some turn in affairs which may enable them once more to gain the government. It was this possible chance of the Bourbons getting into power once more, that added interest to the story.
Let us see what sort of person this Eleazer Williams of Wisconsin was, and how it came about that he made the assertion that he was the head of the Bourbons, and an uncrowned king. It had heretofore been supposed by every one who knew him that he was the son of Mohawk Indian parents, both of whom had white blood in their veins, living just over the New York border, in Canada. Certain Congregationalists had induced this couple to allow two of their sons, Thomas and Eleazer, to be educated in New England as missionaries to the Indians; and for several years they attended academies there, becoming fairly proficient in English, although their aboriginal manners were not much improved.
At last returning to his Canadian home, Eleazer neglected his Congregational benefactors, and soon became interested in the Episcopal Church. He would have become one of its missionaries at once, but just at that time the War of 1812-15 broke out; and instead he became a spy in the pay of the United States, conveying to his employers important information concerning the movements of British troops in Canada. When the war was over, having, as an American spy, incurred the dislike of the Canadian Mohawks, he was sent as an Episcopal missionary to the Oneida Indians, then living in Oneida county, New York.
Williams appears to have differed from the ordinary Indian type, although he was thickset, dark haired, and swarthy of skin. Some took him to be a Spaniard; others there were who thought him French; and comments which he had heard, concerning his slight resemblance to the pictures of the Bourbons, doubtless caused Eleazer in later years to pretend to be the lost dauphin. He was a fair orator, and in his earlier years succeeded well in persuading the simple red men about him. His plausible manner, and this ease of persuasion, finally led him astray.
The Oneida Indians in New York and their neighbors (formerly from New England), the Munsees, Stockbridges, and Brothertowns, were just then being crowded out of that State. A great company had acquired the right from the federal government to purchase the lands held by these Indians, whenever they cared to dispose of them. In order to hurry matters, the company began to sow among the poor natives the seeds of discontent.
Certain of their leaders, among them Williams, advocated emigration to the West. It appears that Williams, who was a born intriguer, conceived the ambitious idea of taking advantage of this movement to establish an Indian empire in the country west of Lake Michigan, with himself as dictator.
Moved by the clamor of the red men, the federal government sent a delegation to Wisconsin, in 1820, to see whether the tribes west of the lake would consent to accept the New York Indians as neighbors. This delegation was headed by Dr. Jedediah Morse, a celebrated geographer and missionary. Morse visited Mackinac and Green Bay, and returned with the report that the valley of the lower Fox was the most suitable place in which to make a settlement. That very summer, Williams himself, with several other headmen, had on their own account journeyed as far as Detroit on a similar errand, but returned without discovering a location.
The owners of the land selected by Morse were the Menominees and Winnebagoes, with whom Williams and his followers held a council at Green Bay, the following year. A treaty was signed, by which the New York Indians were granted a large strip of land, four miles wide, at Little Chute.
The ensuing year (1822), at a new council held at Green Bay, the New Yorkers asked for still more land. The Winnebagoes, much incensed, withdrew from the treaty, but the Menominees were won over by Williams's eloquence, and granted an extraordinary cession, making the New York Indians joint owners with themselves of all Menominee territory, which then embraced very nearly a half of all the present State of Wisconsin.
Ten years of quarreling followed, for there was at once a reaction from this remarkable spirit of generosity. In 1832 there was concluded a final treaty, apparently satisfactory to most of those concerned, and soon thereafter a large number of New York Indians removed hither. The Oneidas and Munsees established themselves upon Duck Creek, near the mouth of the Fox, and the Stockbridges and Brothertowns east of Lake Winnebago. As for Williams, the jealousies and bickerings among his people soon caused him to lose control over them, thus giving the deathblow to his wild dreams of empire.
During the next twenty years, in which he continued to serve as a missionary to the Wisconsin Oneidas, Williams was a well-known and picturesque character. His home was on the west bank of the river, about a mile below Little Kaukauna. Although a man of much vigor and strength of mind, he soon came to be recognized as an unscrupulous fellow by the majority of both whites and reds in the lower Fox, and his clerical brethren, East as well as West, appear to have regarded him with more or less contempt.
Baffled in several fields of notoriety which he had worked, Williams suddenly posed before the American public, in 1853, as the hereditary sovereign of France. He was too young by eight years to be the lost dauphin; that he was clearly of Indian origin was proved by a close examination of his color, form, and feature; his dusky parents protested under oath that the wayward Eleazer was their son; every allegation of his in regard to the matter has often been exposed as false; and all his neighbors who knew him treated his claims as fraudulent.
Nevertheless, he succeeded in deceiving a number of good people, including several leading clergymen of his church; one of the latter attempted in an elaborate book, "The Lost Prince," to prove conclusively that Williams was indeed the son of the executed monarch.
The pretensions of Eleazer Williams, who dearly loved the notoriety which this discussion awakened, extended through several years. They even won some little attention in France, but far less than here, for several other men had claimed to be the lost dauphin, so that the pretension was not a new one over there. Louis Philippe, the head of the Bourbon-Orleans family in France, sent him a present of some finely bound books, believing him the innocent victim of a delusion; but, further than that, and a chance meeting at Green Bay, between Eleazer Williams and another French royalist, the Prince de Joinville, then on his travels through America, the family in France paid no attention to the adventurous half-breed American Indian who claimed to be one of them.
The reputation of Williams as a missionary had at last fallen so low, and the neglect of his duties was so persistent, that his salary was withdrawn by the Episcopal Church, and his closing years were spent in poverty. He died in 1858, maintaining his absurd claims to the last.
There had been a few negro slaves in Wisconsin before the organization of the Territory and during Territorial days. They had for the most part been brought in by lead miners from Kentucky and Missouri. But, as the population increased, it was seen that public opinion here, as in most of the free States, was strongly opposed to the practice of holding human beings as chattels. Gradually the dozen or more slaves were returned to the South, or died in service, or were freed by their masters; so that, at an early day, the slavery question had ceased to be of local importance here.
As the years passed on, and the people of the North became more and more opposed to the slave system of the South, the latter lost an increasing number of its slaves through escape to Canada. They were assisted in their flight by Northern sympathizers, who, secretly receiving them on the north bank of the Ohio River, passed them on from friend to friend until they reached the Canadian border. As this system of escape was contrary to law, it had to be conducted, by both white rescuers and black fugitives, with great privacy, often with much peril to life; hence it received the significant, popular name of "The Underground Railroad." Wisconsin had but small part in the working of the underground railroad, because it was not upon the usual highway between the South and Canada. But our people took a firm stand on the matter, sympathizing with the fugitive slaves and those who aided them on their way to freedom.
When, therefore, Congress, in 1850, at the bidding of the Southern politicians, passed the Fugitive Slave Law, Wisconsin bitterly condemned it. This act was designed to crush out the underground railroad. It provided for the appointment, by federal courts, of commissioners in the several States, whose duty it should be to assist slaveholders and their agents in catching their runaway property. The unsupported testimony of the owner or agent was sufficient to prove ownership, the black man himself having no right to testify, and there being for him no trial by jury. The United States commissioners might enforce the law by the aid of any number of assistants, and, in the last resort, might summon the entire population to help them. There were very heavy penalties provided for violations of this inhuman law.
The Fugitive Slave Law was denounced by most of the political conventions held in our State that year. In his message to the legislature, in January, 1851, Governor Dewey expressed the general sentiment when he said that it "contains provisions odious to our people, contrary to our sympathies, and repugnant to our feelings." But it was three years before occasion arose for Wisconsin to act.
In the early months of 1854, a negro named Joshua Glover appeared in Racine, and obtained work in a sawmill four miles north of that place. On the night of the 10th of March, he was playing cards in his little cabin, with two other men of his race. Suddenly there appeared at the door seven well-armed white men,—two United States deputy marshals from Milwaukee, their four assistants from Racine, and a St. Louis man named Garland, who claimed to be Glover's owner.