Part 9

For it is clear that it was water and not lead that the pioneers of Muscoda sought. Surveyors and prospectors had found no hopeful signs of mineral north of townships 6-1 W and 7-1 E. A few years later (1839) Dr. David Dale Owen, the geologist, made his famous survey of the lead region and excluded from it everything north of the heads of Blue River in townships 6 and 7-1 E. When the lands in township 8-1 W were offered for sale in November, 1834, it was precisely the river front lots and subdivisions which were taken first. Parrish entered fractional lots 2 and 3 of section 1; Frederick Bronson the northeast fraction of the southeast quarter of section 1; Isaac Bronson the south half of the southeast fractional quarter; Garrit V. Denniston the southeast half of the fractional southwest quarter; and Denniston and Charles Bracken fraction No. 4 of fractional section 1. Other water front tracts in section 2 were bought by Denniston at this time; between 1836 and 1841 other tracts in the same sections were bought by others. All of these lands were obviously deemed favorable locations for a prospective town dependent on river transportation.

The way in which the village was begun, by the erection of a smelting furnace, is rather startling, in view of the absence of lead in the region adjacent. The motives which induced Colonel William S. Hamilton of Wiota to build a furnace at English Prairie can only be conjectured.

Colonel Hamilton was the son of the great Alexander Hamilton, Washington’s Secretary of the Treasury. As a lad of seventeen in 1814 he entered West Point but resigned in 1817 to accept a commission as deputy surveyor-general under Col. William Rector, surveyor-general for Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas. From that time young Hamilton was almost continuously in the West, though he made one trip east, on horseback, to see his mother. He was in Wisconsin as early as 1825 and in 1827 began his career as a lead miner and smelter in what is now Lafayette County at Wiota or Hamilton’s Diggings. He took part in the Indian troubles of 1827, and also in the Black Hawk War.

It is not known with certainty when Hamilton established his furnace at English Prairie. Tradition says it was in the year 1835. If the furnace was operating then, it is strange that so careful an observer as Featherstonhaugh, who dropped down the Wisconsin in August, 1835 and stopped at English Prairie to draw a sketch of its landscape, should have failed to note that fact.[79] We are probably justified in asserting that the furnace was not there at that time. But we know it was there in 1837, for Captain Frederick Marryat, a famous English writer who descended the river in that year, saw “a small settlement called the English prairie” where there was a “smelting-house and a steam saw-mill.”[80] I incline to think the year 1836 was the date of its beginning. In 1835 Hamilton was a candidate for member of the Council from the western part of Michigan Territory. His canvass was conducted in the lead mining region and his advertisement appeared in the Galena papers. He was elected to and became president of the so-called “Rump” Council which met at Green Bay January 1, 1836 and sat for two weeks. During that session the town of Cassville, on the Mississippi, was designated as the territorial capital, Hamilton making the principal argument in favor of the movement. Much interest was manifested in internal improvements designed to develop a through line of transportation via the Wisconsin and Fox rivers.[81] The territory of Wisconsin was just being organized by Congressional action and great expectations were being awakened in consequence.

The miners and smelters had theretofore sold their lead through the commission merchants of Galena, by whom it was sent to St. Louis. But as new mines were opened farther and farther north, the cost of transportation to Galena--by means of the “sucker teams”[82]--steadily increased. Moreover, in the year 1836-37 the price of lead declined so alarmingly that little of it was made and the smelters had nearly all ceased to operate. Yet, it was felt that prices would rise again promptly in response to the demand for lead. In the same period, due no doubt partly to the hardships of the miners and smelters, there was widespread and loud dissatisfaction with the treatment accorded the lead owners by the Galena middlemen. Efforts were made to establish some other lead shipping port as a rival to Galena, which helps to explain the rise of both Cassville and Potosi.

The inference from these facts is that Hamilton probably thought he saw in a smelter located at the steamboat landing at English Prairie a possibility of immediate profit, even though margins were very narrow, and a chance to build up a flourishing business. He could buy the cheapest ore--that which was produced near the northern edge of the lead region, Centerville, Wingville, and Highland. The haul from those places would be short and all down grade and if the mineral were taken direct from the mines there would be no rehandling until the bars of pure lead were ready to be dumped from the furnace floor into the hold of the steamer. The teams employed to bring down the raw mineral could carry freight back the fifteen or twenty miles to the mines much more cheaply than it could be transported from Galena or Cassville three or four times as far. Finally, abundant supplies of wood were at hand to feed the furnace, and French rivermen were a source from which to recruit labor.

To an enterprising, speculative, acquisitive character like Hamilton, who had no family to tie him to a particular spot, such arguments would appeal strongly, and there is no inherent reason why the venture should not have succeeded. Hamilton operated the furnace, either personally or by proxy, at least till 1838 and possibly longer, selling it finally to Thomas Jefferson Parrish, whose principal mining and smelting business was located at the head of Blue River, afterwards Montfort.

The fact that Parrish owned the ground at the steamboat landing and that in 1837 he was postmaster at English Prairie (then called Savannah) suggests that he may have been a partner in the business from the first and perhaps local manager of the furnace. At all events, Hamilton continued his business at Wiota and very soon cut loose entirely from the English Prairie venture.[83] That place, under the name of Savannah or English Prairie, was a calling place for river steamers as early as 1838 and is scheduled as forty-one miles from the mouth of the Wisconsin.[84] It was said that the only boat which regularly plied on the river in that year was the _Science_, piloted by Captain Clark, who made his first voyage in June, 1838.[85] But there were doubtless visits from steamers running to Fort Winnebago (Portage) during that and earlier years.

In one of the Milwaukee papers for 1841 is a statement that “four sucker teams” had brought in lead from Thomas Parrish’s furnace “near Muscoday in Grant County.” This reference has been taken as proof that the Muscoda furnace was still in operation. I think it refers not to the Muscoda furnace but to one of several furnaces Parrish was conducting in the lead region near the heads of Blue River. The phrase “near Muscoday” used as far from the lead region as Milwaukee may very well mean some place fifteen or twenty miles from the Wisconsin; and the word “near” instead of “at” certainly excludes Muscoda itself. Setting this evidence aside, there is no proof that the Muscoda furnace was operated as late as 1841. Nor, on the other hand, is there proof of its earlier discontinuance. We simply do not know how long it was kept alive or how large a business it developed at the “Landing.”

SIGNS OF HARD TIMES

Two things suggest that the little village failed to develop a “boom” or even to gain a basis for healthy growth. These are the land entries in the territory adjacent and the story of the post office. Practically, there were no new entries of land between the years 1841 and 1849. This is true for all the townships in the tributary region--7, 8, and 9, range 1 W, and 7, 8, and 9, range 1 E. The post office under the name of Savannah appears in the government list for the first time in the report for 1837. At that time Thomas J. Parrish was postmaster. In 1839 S. A. Holley was postmaster, the office then being listed as English Prairie. The postmaster’s compensation was $5.68. Charles Stephenson’s compensation in 1841 was even smaller, $3.36, the net proceeds of the office amounting to only $7.55. In 1843, for the first time, the post office was called Muscoda. The postmaster was Levi J. D. Parrish, who received as compensation $9.29, the net proceeds of the office having risen to $16.51.

It is probable that most of the seeming prosperity of 1843 was due to the presence of the land office, which had been removed from Mineral Point to Muscoda in 1842. Some have charged that the change was brought about through James D. Doty’s influence in order to save the town. If so, the scheme failed, for the land office promptly went back to Mineral Point in 1843, and May 16, 1845, the post office department discontinued the office at Muscoda. Muscoda was not listed in the post office report for 1847 or in the report for 1849. In 1851 it reappears, with James Moore as postmaster. Now the compensation is $39.74 and the net proceeds $53.09. The exact date of its restoration is not given but it must have been as early as 1850, and possibly 1849 or even 1847.[86]

BEGINNINGS OF SETTLEMENT

The reopening of the Muscoda post office, about 1850, synchronizes with the first movement of pioneer farmers into the good lands tributary to that place. A number of tracts of land were purchased by actual settlers in this and adjoining townships in the years 1849 to 1851. Indeed, Conrad Kircher’s purchase dates from 1847. Charles Miller and Emanuel Dunston bought land in 1849; Isaac Dale and Moses Manlove in 1851. We know also that the Moore family owned land at Muscoda as early as 1851. Across the river, in township 9-1 W, Robert Galloway, William Pickering, William and Andrew Miller, and two or three others bought in 1849; several in 1850; and a few others before 1854, when the great rush came.

A similar story can be told for township 9-1 E (now Orion) where J. H. Schuermann and Daniel Mainwaring (settlers) bought lands in 1849; Albert C. Dooley in 1850; and Jacob Roggy in 1851. One of the purchasers of 1848, John H. Siegrist, was probably the earliest actual settler in the township. A half dozen families bought in township 8-1 E as early as 1849; and a few others were added before 1854. A very few settlers were to be found in township 7-1 W prior to 1854, and while there were a good many settlers and miners in township 7-1 E, the greater part of that township was served from Highland where a post office was established as early at least as 1847 and where there was much lead mining activity, and from Blue River which had a post office from 1839. These mining centers doubtless drew their supplies from the steamers unloading at Muscoda, for the road to the river at that point had been open for many years, but settlement was more numerous and local activity much more intense, as revealed by the post office returns. The Highland post office led the Muscoda post office in importance for just about ten years--from 1847 to 1856. With the coming of the railroad, Muscoda drew ahead.

THE RAILROAD

If one had no other evidence than the sales of land at the United States Land Office, it would still be clear that in the years 1854 to 1856 something important was astir affecting the value of lands in those townships (7, 8, and 9-1 W, and 7, 8, and 9-1 E) which pivot on Muscoda as the trading point. For, while up to 1854 only scattering tracts of land had been entered, and those largely by speculators using military land warrants in making payment to the government, by 1856 nearly every forty-acre subdivision of first-rate land and much of the second-rate land also was under private ownership. And the state lands in the townships had also been purchased to the same extent. Besides, the vast majority of the purchasers of government land during those years were actual settlers, with only an occasional speculator.[87]

These facts challenge attention and call for an explanation. Wisconsin had been in course of settlement for about two decades. The earliest settlements were in the southeastern and eastern parts of the state where the economic support was the market reached by the Great Lakes and the Erie Canal; and in the southwestern section where the basis of prosperity had been lead-mining. The lead found its market mainly down the Mississippi, though increasingly the superiority of the route open to the lake ports had impressed itself upon the people.

At the legislative session of 1841-42 a bill was introduced for the chartering of a railroad from Milwaukee, via Madison, to Potosi. Despite continuous effort, the first railroad bill to pass, in 1847, provided only for a railroad from Milwaukee to Waukesha. In 1848 this was by law extended to the Mississippi.

The agitation of plans for a railroad from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi tended to give the lake route an overshadowing importance in the popular mind. Actual construction work on the Milwaukee-Waukesha section began in 1849; that portion of the road was completed by the end of the year 1850, and in another year it was practically completed to Whitewater on Rock River. It reached Madison in the year 1854.

The intention of the company had been to build to the Wisconsin River so as to intercept steamboat transportation at or near Arena. Thence the road might run along the river to its mouth, or it might run along the ridge between the Wisconsin and the south flowing streams, reaching the Mississippi at some point, like Potosi, lower down. By the year 1853 it had been determined to follow the Wisconsin Valley route to the Mississippi, and during that summer the line was surveyed from the mouth of Black Earth Creek to Prairie du Chien.

It can easily be imagined how the clangor of railway construction echoed in the minds and hearts of intending settlers. That they should have watched, with greedy eye, the reports of progress of the location of the road and hurried away to the land office as soon as it was definitely located, to buy the good lands adjacent to the right-of-way, is a perfectly normal phenomenon. The township plats showing original purchasers of the government land tell the story. In section 1, township 7-1 W, four forty-acre tracts were bought in 1854; eleven in 1855; and one in 1856. In section 2, one in 1854; twelve in 1855; and two in 1857. A single forty had been bought as early as 1847. The other sections of that township show very similar dates and proportions in the entries; the same is true of the other townships of the group. The 1854 entrymen were those who pursued the railway surveyors with keenest determination. The slower ones came mainly in the two years following, during which trains actually were put on the roadbed. In October, 1856, the village of Muscoda, which had maintained a precarious existence for twenty years, awoke to newness of life at the sound of the puffing locomotive. And the beginning of permanent prosperity for the village meant the beginning of prosperity for the rural neighborhood tributary to it.

POPULAR CENSORSHIP OF HISTORY TEXTS

JOSEPH SCHAFER

Wisconsin has now a unique law on the subject of school history texts. That law provides, section 1:

No history or other textbook shall be adopted for use or be in any district school, city school, vocational school or high school which falsifies the facts regarding the War of Independence or the War of 1812 or which defames our nation’s founders or misrepresents the ideals and cause for which they struggled and sacrificed, or which contains propaganda favorable to any foreign government.

The method provided in other sections of the law for banishing textbooks which have been adopted but which are repugnant to the above provision is as follows: Upon complaint of any five citizens, filed with the state superintendent of public instruction, a hearing shall be arranged, to be held before the state superintendent or his deputy, in the county from which the complaint came. Previous notice must have been given through the press to the public and by mail to the complainants and to the publishers of the textbook complained of. A decision must be rendered within ten days. If the book shall be found obnoxious to the provisions of the law, that fact shall be noted by the state superintendent in the list of books for schools which he publishes annually. Thereafter the book so listed may be used only during the remainder of the year in which the state superintendent publishes it as proscribed. The penalty for retaining it beyond the time limit, shall be the loss to the school or district concerned of the state aid normally falling to its share.

The passage of this bill in the senate with only one vote against it, created a good deal of surprise, which changed to admiration for the oratorical powers of its author and sponsor, Senator John Cashman of Manitowoc County, when it was learned that his impassioned appeal to patriotism figuratively swept senators “off their feet.”

History students can have no quarrel with the motive assigned by Senator Cashman for the passage of this law. He says: “The history of a nation is its proudest asset. It includes the record of its great men, their ideals, sacrifices, and achievements. To preserve that history in all its original purity and teach it to the rising generations is a nation’s first duty.” With every word in that stirring exordium the historically minded man or woman will cordially agree. Thoughtful persons, whether historians or not, will also sympathize with Senator Cashman when he undertakes to rebuke anything approaching levity in characterizing the fathers of the Republic or captiousness in criticizing their policies, motives, and achievements. Unfortunately, there always have been among writers some who display a certain air of “smartness” or superciliousness which hardly comports with the inherent dignity of the historian’s office, or with the aim of doing equal and exact justice to all persons and to all causes discussed. Yet it will probably be no light task to convince an impartial umpire that writers of textbooks which have been adopted for use in the schools, after careful scrutiny by boards of education and other school officers responsible to the people, have been guilty of “treason to the nation,” as Senator Cashman seems to think has often been the case.[88] The framers of the constitution, with wise prevision, limited the application of the word “treason” in such a way as to exclude that indefinite class of crimes known elsewhere under the name of _constructive treason_, which in England and other countries had provided a favorable soil for plotters of revenge against individuals and in times of high tension always yielded a sinister harvest of oppression and suffering. So they defined treason against the United States narrowly as consisting only in “levying war against them or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort,” and they also provided that conviction under a charge of treason could be secured only on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act or confession in open court.

This view of the fathers as relates to treason was of course lost sight of during the Civil War, when in the North it used to be fashionable for men to pillory as “fool” or “traitor” (with an emphatic expletive) anyone who had the temerity to vote the Democratic ticket; it was lost sight of in the recent war when men were called traitors because they refused to buy liberty bonds or because they declared the draft a violation of the rights of the individual; and it is likewise lost sight of when we condemn under the term treason opinions on history which we may regard as too favorable to our nation’s one-time enemies, or too contemptuous of the characters or the acts of our own distinguished men of a past age. It would be strange if the impulses engendered by the war and the peace were not reflected more or less in editions of books prepared since 1917. It is probably true that some authors have overstressed the “hands across the sea” sentiment, while others perhaps lean unduly in an opposite direction. But that any of them have been guilty of treasonable acts or even intentions is what no one who knows the historical profession can believe without the most explicit proof.

But this question of treason aside, the problem still remains to determine what is the history of our country “in all its original purity.” What shall be the test of purity inasmuch as, happily, there is no established list of authorized books or records from which writers must derive their facts? Are they not compelled either to investigate each point for themselves or to accept as probably correct the results of other men’s investigations? To be sure, every important event creates its own legend or tradition, and such legends tend to be preserved and to be handed down from generation to generation. But legends are not history. No one worthy to rank as a careful historian would presume to write the history of the Great War on the basis of legends now crystallizing about it. No more can one write the history of the Revolution on such a legendary basis. This view, that much which once was thought to be history but was in fact mere legend, is not in any sense new. James Russell Lowell, who ranks among the very distinguished Americans of the last generation, wrote, in 1864, that the early reports of the battle of Lexington claimed for the Yankee minutemen a non-resistant attitude.

The Anglo Saxon could not fight without the law on his side. But later, when the battle became a matter of local pride, the muskets that had been fired at the Red coats under Pitcairn almost rivalled in number the pieces of furniture that came over in the Mayflower. Indeed, whoever has talked much with Revolutionary pensioners knows that those honored veterans were no less remarkable for imagination than for patriotism. It should seem that there is nothing on which so little reliance can be placed as facts, especially when related by one who saw them. It is no slight help to our charity to recollect that, in disputable matters, every man sees according to his prejudices, and is stone blind to whatever he did not expect or did not mean to see. Even where no personal bias can be suspected, contemporary and popular evidence is to be taken with great caution, so exceedingly careless are men as to exact truth, and such poor observers, for the most part of what goes on under their eyes.[89]