CHICAGO AND THX GREAT CONFLAGRATION. AKD EVERETT CHAMBEBUK Jim* tate n CINCINNATI AND NEW YORK: C. F, VENT. CHICAGO: J. S GOODMAN & CO. I PHILADELPHIA: HUBBARD BROS. BOSTOK : EDWARD F. Hovrr. AUBUEX, N. T. : F. M. SMITH. SAN FEANCISCO : F. DEWING & Co. 1872. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by C. IT-. VEIN"-! 1 , In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at "Washington, D. C. 6TEREOTTPF.D AT THB FBANKLIN TTFB FOUNDI1Y, CINCINNATI. OOI^TE^TS. PART FIRST. MM INTRODUCTION, ... '..9 I. Geographical position of Chicago Meteorology The river Com- mercial importance of the site, . . . . . . t . 11 II. Aboriginal history The early French explorers Origin of the name " Chicago" The fur-traders, 14 III. Fort Dearborn The original fort The first " white man " a negro John Kinzie Indian troubles The fort evacuated The massacre in 1812, . . . . . . . . . .17 IV. Re-occupation The fort rebuilt Major Long's visit in 1823, . 21 V. The canal The work advocated in Congress A company formed The first land-grant by the United States, 23 VL The town of Chicago Original survey Immigration An un- inviting place County of Cook organized Indian payment Winter experiences The Blackhawk war Packing New : com- ers The harbor A primitive post-office Churches Indian coun- cil The town Commercial relations A wolf-hunt, - 25 VII. Inflation The speculative epoch Government land-office Ho- tel keeping under difficulties First fire company Sale of wharf- ing lots Work commenced on the canal Marine statistics, . 39 VIII. The city Incorporation Election of officers Taking the cen- sus, 47 IX. The collapse Crisis of 1837 Its causes Five years of depres- sion Early commerce Education Water supply, . - .49 X. Growing again The Illinois and Michigan Canal constructed Its effect on business Land-sales The "Garden City" "Milti- more's Folly," .......... 58 XL The expectant period Railroad projects The cholera Gas Wharf-building Formation of the Board of Trade Grain-elevat- ors, 67 XII. The railroad era New departure A network of iron rails Rapid extension, 73 XIII. Commercial growth in the railroad era Grain trade Good resolutions Cattle-yards, . 79 (Hi) IV CONTEXTS. PAG XIV. Manufactures in the railroad era Establishment of factories Banking, 82 XV. City improvements in the railroad era Extension of bounda- ries Water supply Drainage Bad streets Public buildings Schools and churches Amusements Newspapers, . . .84 XVI. The panic of 1857 A financial storm Effects on commerce and the price of real estate Great depression in business, . 94 XVII. Lifting up Filling the streets, and raising to grade Wooden- block pavement Growth of population The produce movement Manufactures, . 97 XVIII. The rebellion Camp Douglas A nation in arms Recruit- ing for the field Building the camp The prisoners National Democratic Convention, 101 XIX. Outside Camp Douglas Purchase of government supplies Raising recruits The great conspiracy to burn the city The draft Cost of the war End of the rebellion Death of President Lincoln, ,107 XX. Aiding the soldiers The " Soldiers' Home" Sanitary labors The great fairs Receiving the returning veterans, . - . Ill XXI. Chicago during the war Twelve millions of dollars swept out of existence Wonderful growth of commerce and manufactures Numerous and extensive city improvements, . . . .113 XXII. Peace and prosperity Temporary depression on the close of the war Mercantile embarrassments Speedy recovery Tremen- dous strides onward, ......... 123 XXIII. Commerce of 1870 Statistics of business Foreign and do- mestic trade The banks and elevators Railroads, . . . 125 XXIV. Manufactures in 1870 The work of one decade Compari- sons Incomes of the people, ....... 133 XXV. Property Real estate Assessed and actual values of real and personal property Sales Extension of business area, . 136 XXVI The parks A grand system of public parks and boulevards Effects on real estate, . . . ' . . . . . 139 XXVII. Taxation City, State, and county taxes Municipal debt Special assessments, ......... 144 XXVIII. Building after the war Number and character of new busi- ness structures Churches, schools, universities, etc. The big tel- escope Hotels Tunnels under the river City buildings, . , 145 XXIX. The lake-tunnel Description of the "big bore," and its ca- pacities The giant crib Water supply, . . . . .155 XXX. Other public improvements Sewerage Street-paving Side- walks Deepening the canal, . . . , . . .160 XXXI. Commercial improvements Harbor extensions New dock system along the lake-shore Calumet The great union stock- yards, .... 163 XXXII. Chicago in 1871 Statistics of population, area, number of buildings, and valuations of property Religious and educational The railroad system Commerce and manufactures General plan of the city Sanitary, educational, scientific, literary, artistic, and moral status The city government, . , . . .167 CONTENTS. V PA OB XXXIII. Science of the fire The conflagrations in Chicago and the lumber regions of the North-west A startling chapter in the world's history Meteorological and climatic changes involved The cause Extraordinary drought Sun-spots, . . . .188 PART SECOND. L The great conflagration The fire as a hero It marches through four miles of solid buildings It takes them all A plain account of the operations of the " fiend," 201 II. A night of terror Fleeing for life A city full of sleepers sur- prised and stampeded Chased into the lake The merciless ele- ments Ruffianism and rapine A thousand dollars to a carter Escape to the prairies, ..*...... 214 III. Personal experiences The early stages of the fire The purlieu which generated it A scene for a fire-worshiper A weird pro- cession Discussing the future by the light of the past, . . 226 IV. Narrative of Alexander Frear A fond mother's mishaps Scenes on the avenues Rifling the dry goods palaces How a pious soul prayed herself to death Asking too much of Providence Hu- man diabolism Cheapness of life, ../... 236 V. Narrative of Horace White, Esq, How the " bloated aristocrats " took it A parrot equal to the emergency Sheridan in the fray The gunpowder cure, . 246 VI. Hon. Isaac N. Arnold defends his castle A vain contest Over- powered and routed Running the fire blockade, . . . 254 VII. The night after the fire Flood and flame A hopeless sortie A ghostly bivouac Separation of families Days and nights of suspense and anxiety Nothing to eat, ..... 263 VIII. The death roll Fatalities of the fire How brave men met their death A fatal leap A neighborhood swallowed up by flames Scene at the morgue. ......... 270 IX. The desolation completed The day after the fire A glimpse at the feeling in the country A view at daybreak Chicago's ghost, 277 X. The losses by the fire Property destroyed Can land burn up? Values of business blocks, hotels, and other prominent build- ings Produce and merchandise destroyed Real estate as affected by the fire Uninsurable losses Commerce and manufactures The effect on business The grand total, 285 XT. Insurance The fire underwriters Better than expected The adjusters Statement of assets and losses of companies doing busi- ness in Chicago Insolvent companies What is essential to real protection against loss by fire, ....... 304 XII. What was left The city not ruined Mistaken advice A state- ment of profit and loss Comparison of 1868 with 1871 The dis- aster equivalent to a destruction of three years' growth. . . Sla VI CONTENTS. PAGE XIII. The business outlook The first two days after the fire Pre- paring to resume Extraordinary calmness under suffering Work- ing with a will The newspapers Meeting of bankers and busi- ness men Cheering news from insurance companies, . . .319 XIV. Aid from the State Much sympathy and great expectations The Governor's message The canal lien assumed by the State The new Custom-house and Post-office The old land-marks to be renewed, 325 XV. The resurrection Business on its feet again The course pur- sued by the banks A plethora of money The Board of Trade, and produce movement Mercantile indebtedness Action of East- ern creditors Strength of Chicago's business men Retail dealers in council, ........... 329 XVI. Reconstruction Business on the lake-front Wooden and brick structures Loss of time Old customers and new friends Rail- road earnings Price of lumber The fire limits How shall the city be rebuilt ? . . . . . . x . . . . 336 XVII. The losses again Particular cases Noted buildings destroyed The Germans How the millionaires came out Not a vestige of a law library left Art and literary treasures despoiled Who lost and who gained by the fire, ........ 340 XVIII. Incidents and curiosities Oases in the desert A dwelling saved with cider Thrilling scene in the tunnel How the heat burnt up iron columns and left butter unmelted The man at the crib Human nature Good and bad phases Drawing the long bow, , . ' 348 XIX. Remarkable revelation Scripture for the occasion Married in the smoke of the flames How Robert Collyer and his people fought for their church Grandmother's rocking-chair How a coal-dealer saved his pile Fire as a curative agency More about the degree of heat The divorce business, etc., .... 358 XX. Why she was destroyed Origin of the fire Why it spread so fast and far Was there incendiarism ? The Communist story Chicago architecture Chicago administration Operations of the Fire Department, . 366 XXI. The newspapers and the fire What they said on Sunday morn- ing, October 8 Prophecies suddenly fulfilled "Old and tried" insurance companies tried too much The episode in the Tribune office A "red-hot" newspaper Cheery counsel in trouble How the journals rose from their ashes Curiosities of advertising, . 374 XXII. A week without water A day of chaos The exodus from the city No water Nights of terror Fear of incendiarism The citi- zen patrol Stories of summary vengeance Military law Halt! The relic business Restoration of water and confidence, . 388 XXIII. The churches after the fire The next Sunday Assembling under the ruined walls Robert Collyer's adventures Trying to save Unity Lessons of hope and courage, ..... 400 XXIV. Sympathy and relief How the world was shocked by the event The excitement in America Nothing like it since the war Showers of money and avalanches of goods for the sufferers CONTENTS. Vil MM Scenes and deeds in New York, Boston, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Lon- don, and other cities, . . . . . . 408 XXV. Administration of relief Gathering in the homeless Scenes in the churches Caring for the sick The "Relief and Aid So- ciety" Plan of its work History of its operations Board and lodging for 60,00011,000 houses built and furnished for $110 each in two months, 421 XXVI. Humors of the fire Enjoying a bonfire of one's valuables How a lap-dog was saved Burning up the freedom of the Ne- groes "Billy, propose a resolution" The first conundrum of the new era The calamitous cow No confidence in Chicago as a ruin The pathetic ballad of Eva Boston, etc., .... 434 XXVII. Good out of evil Some wholesome effects of adversity Business faults corrected Aristocracy scotched out How fire purifies How individuals may attain improvement How the body politic How humanity The sublimest spectacle of the century, 445 XXVIII. The new Chicago Five years hence Why Chicago will keep marching on Rate of recuperation Railroads and traffic Changes in the appearance of the city Harbor and river Things which will not be improved Population in 1876, . . . 454 Appendix A, ... 463 Appendix B, 495 Appendix C, ........... 510 Appendix D, ........... 525 ILLUSTRATIONS. 1. Map of Chicago. 2. Chicago in 1820. 3. Chicago in 1833. 4. Chicago in names. 5. Chicago in ruins. 6. Masonic Temple in ruins. 7. St. James Hotel 8. Tribune Building. 9. Chamber of Commerce, before the fire. 10. Chamber of Commerce, after the fire. 11. Post-office and Custom-house. 12. Where the fire begun. 13. First National Bank, before the fire. 14. First National Bank, after the fire. 15. Rush Medical College. 16. Fifth National Bank. 17. Bigelow House. 18. Pacific Hotel. 19. N. E. Cor. Clark and Randolph. 20. Tremont House. 21. Lasalle-street Tunnel. 22. Michigan Southern R. R. Depot. 23. Insurance Block. 24. Cor. Clark and Randolph Streets. 25. Jackson Street. 26. Field & Leiter's Store. 27. Cor. Lasalle and Washington Sts. 28. New ITonor6 Block. 29. St. James Church. 30. Church of the Holy Name. 31. First Presbyterian Church, south side. 32. Second Presbyterian Church. 33. Methodist Church Block. 34. New England Church, Congrega- tional. 35. St. Joseph's Priory, German Catholic. 36. Trinity Church, Mr. Collyer'g. INTRODUCTION. terrible conflagration in Chicago will long be remem- bered as one of the most prominent events of the nine- teenth century. In the evening of Sunday, October 8, 1871, a stable took fire, and within twenty-four hours thereafter the flames had swept over an area of more than twenty-one hun- dred acres, destroying nearly three hundred human lives, re- ducing seventeen thousand five hundred buildings to ashes, rendering one hundred thousand persons homeless, and sweep- ing out of existence two hundred million dollars' worth of property. Without a peer in her almost magical growth to what seemed to be an enduring prosperity, the city of Chicago experienced a catastrophe almost equally without a parallel in history, and the sad event awakened into active sympathy the whole civilized world. Such intense anxiety to catch every item of intelligence about the great conflagration, such a spontaneous outburst of liber- ality in aiding the sufferers, has never before been exhibited, except in times of national disaster. And, indeed, the calam- ity was universally recognized as affecting every one, not only 10 INTRODUCTION. in the United States, but in other countries. As the greatest primary market for produce on the face of the globe, Chicago had long been regarded as the cornucopia of modern civiliza- tion, while the energy and enterprise of her citizens had made her an object of envy to many other cities, and the wonder of the world. Her fame had spread far and near, and not even Solomon, in all his glory, ever excited so much admiration among those who went to see and found that the half had not been told them. The present volume is intended to supply the wide-spread popular desire to obtain full and accurate information, in per- manent form, about Chicago in her prosperity and affliction. It contains a concise resume of her previous history; a state- ment of her condition just before the fire; a graphic account of the great conflagration ; a carefully-revised summary of losses of life and property ; a description of the aspect of the city after the sad event; a history of the exertions made to aid the suffer- ers; with a review of the subsequent efforts made to rebuild the city 'mid the ashes of its former greatness. CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. I. GEOGRAPHICAL POSITION OF CHICAGO. /CHICAGO is situated on the south-western bend of Lake VX Michigan, at the head of the great chain of American lakes, and is nearly 600 feet above the sea-level, the height of the lake-surface being 574 feet. What is now the business portion of the city was originally but a few inches above the lake-level, and the surface was often covered with several inches of water for months together. It is only within the past few years that the place has been raised from seven to ten feet by the process of filling in, so as to give a drainage that permits of the clean- liness that is necessary to the health of the inhabitants. The average annual fall of rain is 31f inches; the average tempera- ture is about 50 degrees. The Court-house square, which is sit- uated about midway between the north and south limits of the city, and half a mile west of the lake-shore, is in north latitude 41 52' 20". The longitude west from Greenwich is 5h. 50m. 28s. (87 37'), and Oh. 42m. 17s. west from Washington. The city is surrounded by what is, relatively, almost a dead-level; the prairie stretching away to a distance of several hundred miles south, west, and north, with scarcely an undulation of im- portance. With such conditions it is evident that the term " Chicago (11) 12 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. River." about which the world has heard so much, is a mis- nomer. Within the city limits the western shore of the lake runs nearly due north and south, trending about two points to the west of north. One-eighth of a mile north of the Court- house line a bayou strikes -westward to the distance of five- eighths of a mile, then divides into two branches, both of which run nearly parallel with the lake-shore for a considerable dis- tance. Near the end of the south branch a canal commences, which extends to the Illinois River at Lasalle, a distance of ninety-six miles. This canal has recently been deepened, so that the waters of the lake flow slowly along the "river" and the canal, into the Illinois River, and thence into the Missis- sippi. If the bayou at Chicago were a "river," it would fur- nish an instance of that wonderful phenomenon, " water run- ning up hill." The current flows at the rate of about one mile per hour. The banks of this river and its branches have furnished the dockage of Chicago, and, at the time of the great catastrophe, all the available space was so fully occupied that large systems of additional docks were being constructed along the lake-shore, outside what was usually known as the " harbor." In the geographical and topographical position of Chicago, as above sketched, we have the key to the wonderful commer- cial prominence which she attained in such a short time, that some of those whose all was swept away in the conflagration of October, 1871, were among the earliest settlers in the village that afterward became a mighty city. The belt of only a few degrees in width, that includes the highest type of civilized ad- vancement and the greatest energy in the development of cereal growth, has the city of Chicago situated nearly midway between its southern and northern limiting lines, and the head of the GEOGRAPHICAL POSITION OF CHICAGO. 13 lake system was naturally the point at whict* the grain and other produce of the great North-west should be unloaded, first from wagons and afterward from railroad cars and canal-boats, to be placed on vessels, where the wind should replace horse or steam as a motive power, and carry that produce forward on its way to supply the wants of a hungry world. The place where the property changed hands was also the place where it would change ownership, as the smaller quantities laid down there would need to be massed into larger amounts for the long lake- journey in great vessels. That fact attracted capital to the spot, and then another point was soon developed : The growers of produce would spend their money in the place where they sold their property, if they could there find what they wanted on as favorable terms as elsewhere. And thus Chicago grew, in her double function of receiver and forwarder of Western produce to the East and to Europe, and of distributor of other necessaries and luxuries to the tillers of the soil and the manifold indus- tries that clustered around them. With this came the estab- lishment of numerous manufactories for the supply of the wants both of the city and of the country beyond, and the adoption of many processes by which the property in transit was better adapted to the wants of the buyer. These built up the city on the foundations laid by nature. The position with respect to the surrounding country established the place as the natural depot for collection and distribution in both directions; the en- terprise and energy of the men who were attracted thither by those natural advantages did the rest. The result of the operation of these two sets of causes, was a rapidity of growth that scarcely finds a parallel in the history of the world. Other cities have grown as rapidly for a few years, but we call to mind none, either in the old world or the 14 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. new, that has exhibited an almost uniform increase of popula- tion at the rate of more than ten and a half per cent, per an- num during thirty-five years, with an even greater augment in business volume and property values. That was the scale on which Chicago was developed, from the time of her incorpora- tion as a city, in 1837, till the memorable catastrophe in 1871; And the events of the short period that has elapsed since the calamity tend to show that she will exhibit as great a ratio of growth in the future. The history of such a wonderful progress can not but be of intense interest to millions of readers. II. ABORIGINAL HISTORY. FOR many centuries before Chicago was visited by a white man, it was the home of the Red-skins, and appears to have been successively occupied by several Indian tribes. There can be no doubt that the place was a favorite rendez- vous for Indians, as it afforded facilities for fishing, and formed the terminus of a long route of canoe travel, the divide between the waters of the Mississippi and the Illinois River being so shallow as to necessitate but a very short portage. The ear- liest of these tribes of which we have any record was the Tama- roas, the most powerful of many Illinois families, and who claimed the name Checaqua as that of a long succession of their chiefs, just as Pharaoh was the name of many successive Egyptian kings. The first white men known to have visited the region were Marquette and Joliet, two Jesuit missionaries, who were there in 1662-3, only three or four years before the great fire that ABORIGINAL HISTORY. 15 laid in ashes two-thirds of the city of London, England. It was subsequently visited by two other French explorers, Hen- nepin and La Salle. The first geographical notice of the place is found in a map, dated Quebec, Canada, 1688, on which " Fort Checagou " occupies the exact location of the present city, and the form of Lake Michigan is represented quite cor- rectly. In an atlas, published in 1696, by Le Sieur Sanson, " Geographer to the King ," we find the whole Mississippi River, from its origin to the Gulf of Mexico, is named Chaca- qua. In other old works it is called the " Chacaqua or Divine River." A manuscript, purporting to have been written in 1726 by M. de Ligny, at Green Bay, and brought from France by General Cass, mentions the place as Chicagoux; and that name is found to occur several times in the official correspond- ence of the earlier years of the present century. The name " Chicago " has been variously interpreted to mean "Skunk," or Pole-cat, an animal supposed to have abounded there, and "Wild Onion," after the herb which is known to have grown profusely on the banks of the creek. But the above historical facts tend to prove that the word had a much nobler meaning; added to which, we know that the word Checaque was used as the name of thunder, or the voice of the Great Manitou. It has been suggested, however, that all of the above intentions may be harmonized, if we attach to the name the meaning of "strong," as it is well known that the Indian speech contained many more of these incongruous congruities than are to be found in the languages of the present day. The Indians retained undisturbed possession of the site long after the whites had began to settle in the West. That settle- ment was principally made from the Southern States Virginia 16 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. and Kentucky -from the eastward, and by the French from the south, up the Mississippi. Hence the southern part of the present State of Illinois contained a considerable white popula- tion, while the wolf and the Red man only disputed with each other possession of all north of the State capital (Springfield), except in the little patch of ground occupied by the United States at the entrance of the Chicago harbor. Illinois was first or- ganized as a county of Virginia in 1778, and was made a separate territory in 1809, but the territorial lines did not include Chicago; the northern boundary running due west from the southern extremity of Lake Michigan to the Mississippi. In 1815, Hon. Nathaniel Pope, just elected to represent the territory in Congress, procured the passage of an act ex- tending the northern line of the territory to 42J degrees of latitude, thus giving to the State a most valuable line of lake frontage, which now contains the three harbors of Chicago, Calumet, and Waukegan. The territory was elevated to the dignity of a State in 1818, the capital being Kaskaskia. Shadrach Bond, of that city, was elected as the first governor, in October of the same year. The influx of settlers from the south was now quite rapid, but the immediate effect of the movement was to cause the different tribes of Illinois Indians to crowd northward, and make the site of Chicago alive with red-skins, who clung all the more pertinaciously to the soil, as the finger of fate point- ed to their removal farther west at no distant day. The business of trading for furs became an important one, and traders gathered in the vicinity to purchase their stocks and send them eastward. This traffic was first established about the beginning of the present century, and marked a prominent phase in the history of the location. FORT DEARBORN. 17 III. FORT DEARBORN. ITHHE year following his first visit to Chicago, Pere Mar- -*- quette returned, and erected a building for the purposes of worship. The French subsequently formed a plan to extend their possessions from Canada, along the Mississippi Valley, to New Orleans, and thence to sweep the continent eastward. They seem to have built a fort at Chicago, as a link in their great chain of domination. Canada was transferred to England by the victories of Wolfe in* 1759, and the fort was then aban- doned. After the close of the war of the Revolution the In- dians became very troublesome, owing to British intrigue, and only after having been effectively chastised by General Wayne did they consent to a treaty of peace, in 1795, the chiefs of many tribes assembling at Greenville, Ohio, to sign the com- pact. Among the articles signed we find one recording the first land-sale in Chicago, and furnishing the only clue we have to the first erection of the fort by the French. The Indians ceded to the United States " one piece of land, six miles square, at the mouth of the Chekajo River, emptying into the south- west end of Lake Michigan, where a fort formerly stood" It has been facetiously remarked that the first white man who became a resident of Chicago was a negro. This first amendment to the copper color (whose race has since risen to the dignity of the fifteenth degree) settled there in 1796. His name was Jean Baptiste Point au Sable. He built a rude cabin on the north bank of the main "river," and laid claim to a tract of land surrounding it. He disappeared from the scene, and his claim was "jumped" by a Frenchman named Le Mai, who 18 CHICAGO AND THE GEEAT CONFLAGRATION. commenced trading with the Indians. A few years later he sold out to John Kinzie, who was then an Indian trader in the country about St. Joseph, Michigan, nearly opposite Chicago, on the eastern shore of the lake. Mr. Kinzie was an agent of the American Fur Company. They had traded at Chicago with the Indians for some time, and this fact had probably more than any other to do with the determination of the Government to establish a fort there. The Indians were growing numerous in that region, being attracted by the facilities for selling their wares, as well as being pressed northward by the tide of emi- gration setting in from the south. It was judged necessary to have some force near that point to keep them in check, as well as to protect the trading interest. Louisiana was purchased from the French in 1803, giving to the United States the con- trol of the entire Mississippi Valley. In 1804 a fort was built by the Government, named "Fort Dearborn," in honor of a general of that name, and garrisoned with about fifty men and three pieces of artillery. Mr. Kinzie removed his family to the place the same year, and improved the Jean Baptiste cabin into a tasteful dwelling. His son, John H., but a few months old at the time of the removal, subsequently became one of the most prominent men of the city. For about eight years things rolled along smoothly. The garrison was quiet, and the traders were prosperous, the num- ber of the latter having been considerably increased. Then the United States became involved in trouble with Great Britain, which finally broke out into the war-flame. The Indians took the war-path long before the declaration of hostilities between the two civilized nations. On the 7th of April, 1812, they made an attack on one of the outlying houses, and killed and scalped the only male resideat, then descended toward the fort, FORT DEARBORN. 19 but refrained from making an attack, finding that the soldiers were ready to give them a warm reception. For some months they continued to harass and rob the outside settlers. The Government finally decided to abandon the fort, as it was too remote from headquarters to be successfully maintained in a hostile country. On the 7th of August, 1812, Captain Heald, the commander, received orders to evacuate the fort, if prac- ticable ; and, in th'at event, to distribute all the United States property among the Indians in the neighborhood. He hesitated for five days, knowing that a special order had been issued by the War Department to the effect that no fort should be surren- dered "without battle having been given." He then reluc- tantly decided to comply, as his little force of seventy-five men was evidently unable to cope with the Indians. On the 12th instant the Indians assembled in council, and Captain Heald informed them that he would distribute among them, on the next day, all the ammunition and provisions, as well as the other goods lodged in the United States factory, on condition that the Pottawatomies would furnish a safe escort for him and his command to Fort Wayne, where they should receive a further liberal reward. The Indians acceded to these terms, but Mr. Kinzie, who had learned the treachery of Indian character by long experience, afterward prevailed on Captain Heald to destroy all the liquor and the ammunition not needed by the troops on the journey. The next day the blankets, calicoes, and provisions were dis- tributed as agreed upon, and in the evening the liquors were thrown into the water, with all the ammunition, except twenty- five rounds, and one box of cartridges. They also broke up all the spare muskets and gun-fixtures, and threw them into the well. So much liquor was thrown into the river that the Indiana 20 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. drank largely of the water, saying that it was almost as good as " grog." The next morning Captain Wells, a relative of Captain Heald, arrived from Fort Wayne with fifteen friendly Miamis. In the afternoon another council was held, at which the Potta- watoraies professed to be highly indignant at the destruction of the whisky and ammunition, and made numerous threats, which plainly showed their murderous intention, only too well carried out on the ensuing day. On the morning of the 15th (August, 1812), the troops left the fort. Mrs. Kinzie, with her family of four children, two domestics, and two Indians, took a boat, intending to cross the lake to St. Joseph, but remained at the mouth of the harbor during the subsequent carnage, then returned to their home. The military party went southward, intending to march round the head of the lake. They had only proceeded about a mile and a half, when they were attacked by a party of Indians, who were concealed by a sand-ridge, whom they charged and dislodged from the position ; but the Indians were so numerous that a party of them were able to outflank the soldiers, and take the horses and baggage. A severe fight followed, in which the number of the soldiers was reduced to twenty-eight; and during that action a young savage toma- hawked the entire party of twelve children, who were in the baggage- wagon. Captain Heald then withdrew his troops, and a parley ensued, the consequence of which was that the troops surrendered, on condition that their lives should be spared, and were marched back to the fort, which was plundered and burned the next day. Mr. Kinzie did duty as surgeon, extracting the bullets with his pen-knife. Accounts vary somewhat as to whether the Indians kept faith in their agreement, some charging that they massacred the chil- RE-OCCUPATION. 21 dren and some of the women after the surrender. We believe the facts to have been as above stated. The total number of killed was fifty-two, which included twenty-six soldiers, twelve militiamen, two women, and twelve children. The prisoners were ransomed some time afterward, the Kinzie family being taken across the lake to St. Joseph and thence to Detroit, a few days after the massacre. IV. RE-OCCUPATION. FOR, four years the place was deserted by all save the In- dians. Even the fur-traders did not care to visit* the scene of so much disaster, and Chicago seemed to have been remanded into aboriginal darkness. In 1816, the fort was rebuilt, under the direction of Captain Bradley, and was thereafter occupied continuously by United States troops for twenty-one years, except for a short time in 1831. In 1837, it was abandoned, as the Indians had been removed far'to the westward. The fort stood, however, till 1856, when the old block -house was demolished. Its position was on the south bank of the river, just east of the place where Rush Street Bridge was afterward built. One old building, however, remained, almost rotten with age, till the great conflagration swept it away, as the last relic of military rule. It was a small wooden structure that had formed a part of the officers' quarters, and stood almost in the apex of the sharp corner formed by the meeting of Michigan Avenue with River Street. But the rebuilding of the fort failed to re-establish the entente cordzate that had existed between the Indians and 22 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. whites previous to the spring of 1812. Mr. Kinziedid not re- turn till some time after the fort was reconstructed. Gurdon S. Hubbard, Esq., who is still a resident of Chicago at the date cf this writing, visited the place in 1818, as agent of the American Fur Company, of which John Jacob Astor was then president. He came in a small schooner, which was sent there once a year with provisions for the garrison. On his arrival he found only two families on the site of the future city, outside the fort. John Kinzie lived on the north side of the river, nearly on the line of Michigan Avenue; and Antoine Oulimette, a French trader, who had married an Indian woman, resided on the same side, about two blocks further west. J. B. Beaubien arrived about the same time. In 1823, one more white resident appeared on the scene, Archibald Clybourne, who established himself about three miles from the fort, on the north branch. In 1827, he built a slaughter-house and entered into business as butcher for the fort. He has resided in Chicago ever since then, and was alive very recently. In the same year the place was visited by Major Long, on a Government explor- ing expedition, who drew a sorry picture of the place, which then only contained three families, all occupying log cabins. He said, in his subsequent report, that Chicago presented no cheering prospects, and contained but a few huts, " inhabit- ed by a miserable race of men, scarcely equal to the In- dians from whom they had descended," while their houses were "low, filthy, and disgusting, displaying not the least trace of comfort." His opinion of the site as a place for business was equally poor. He spoke of it as " aifording no inducements to the settler, the whole amount of trade on the lake not exceeding the cargoes of five or six schooners, even at the time when the garrison received its supplies from the Mackiuao," How THE CA3TAL. 23 wonderfully the aspect of the place changed, within half a cen- tury from the time of Major Long's visit, has been written with a pen of iron the record graven so deeply, that not even the great conflagration could efface it. Y. THE CANAL. rilHE project to connect the Mississippi River with Lake -*- Michigan, by a canal from the lake to the Illinois River, was the real cause of the up-growth of Chicago. The com- mercial advantages of the site as the terminus of that avenue of water communication, first attracted attention to Chicago, and led to the gathering of a most important community long before the canal was completed, or even begun. The measure was first agitated as a needed means of connection between the southern part of the State and the Atlantic Ocean, much shorter than that afforded by the Mississippi a secondary consideration being the great value of a ship canal, connecting the two great water-courses of the continent, in case of another war with a European power. That measure, designed f<5r the benefit of the south, then the only settled part of the State, has resulted in attracting to the northern portion a tide of emigration, and an abundance of capital, that has thrown the southern counties into a comparative shade, though ministering largely to their development. The canal project was agitated as early as the year 1814, the measure being urged in the presidential message to the Thirty-seventh Congress, and reported on by the military com- 24 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. mittee, and the select committee on the deepening the great lakes and rivers, the latter body styling it " the great work of the age" for military and commercial purposes. Governor Bond, of Illinois, pressed it upon the attention of the Legisla- ture, in the very first gubernatorial message ever delivered in the State in 1818. His successor, Governor Coles, also urged its importance in 1822 ; and an act was passed in February (14) 1823, appointing a Board of Inspectors, who made a tour of inspection in the year following. On the 30th of March, 1822, Congress had passed an act, by which the State was authorized to make the survey through the public lands, and reserving ninety feet on each side of the canal from any sale made by the United States. It was conditioned, however, that if the State did not survey, and within three years direct the canal to be opened, or if the canal should not be completed within twelve years, that the grant should be void. The com- missioners surveyed five routes, and made estimates of the cost of the work; the highest was $716,610. On the 13th of January, 1825, the Legislature passed an act incorporating the Illinois and Michigan Canal Company, with a capital of one million dollars, but no one was found willing to take the stock, and the charter was subsequently re- pealed. The matter was again taken up by Congress, princi- pally through the exertion of Hon. Daniel P. Cook, from whom was afterward named the county in which Chicago is situated. Congress granted to the State every alternate section in a belt of land six miles wide on each side of the proposed canal, pro- vided that the work should be commenced within five years, and completed within twenty years ; otherwise the State should pay to the United States all the money received for lands previously sold. On the 22d of January, 1829, the State pass- THE TOWN OF CHICAGO. 25 ed an act providing for the appointment of commissioners to adopt such measures as might be required to effect the required communication between the river and the lake. These com- missioners were directed to select the State lands, and to sell them where they thought proper to do so, and to lay off cer- tain parts into town lots. This was the commencement of the system of land grants, which has since been so extensively adopted in the United States, and upon this action was laid the foundation of the future city of Chicago. VI. THE TOWN OF CHICAGO. TTTNDER the direction of the commissioners, James Thomp- ^ son proceeded, in 1829, to Chicago, which then consisted only of Fort Dearborn. Jle made a survey of the site, and the first map of the city was prepared by him; it bears date August 4, 1830. The canal was not commenced till 1836, and the year 1848 had arrived before it was completed, and then on a much in- ferior plan to that at first proposed, but the effect was wonder- ful. The benefits of the measure were long antedated by the enterprising people, who saw that the completion of the work would establish a mighty commercial depot at the head of Lake Michigan; indeed, they, and those who came after them, have always been noted for the rapidity with which they could dis- count the advantages of an event long before its occurrence. As only one out of many instances of this, we may here note the fact that the expected greater demand for breadstuffs dur- ing the war between France and Germany, in 1870, caused her 3 26 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. grain-markets to touch a much higher poiut before the declara- tion of war than at any time after the event, and the price of wheat in Chicago actually fell almost steadily daring the entire time that the war was in progress. So with the canal. The place had grown to the dimensions of a city before the first sod was turned, and fell into the slough of despond long before it was finished. But we anticipate. The tide of emigration had set westward, to a limited extent, during the agitation of the canal measure, but the settlement of the West was retarded by the hostility of the Indians, who were particularly restless in 1828, murdering several emigrants and menacing the fort with destruction. A large military force, under General Atkinson, restored order. The country was fill- ing up to the westward, as the fertility of the rich prairies be- came known to the people of the East and of Europe. But the site of Chicago was still as barren and uninviting as when visited by Major Long in 1823. Near the fort, and again near the junction .of the two branches with the main river, the land was relatively high ; but between those points, and all around, was a low, wet prairie, only a few inches above the lake-level, and subject to inundation with every shower. An early writer says that it "scarcely afforded good walking in the driest sum- mer weather, while at other seasons it was absolutely impassa- ble." Another, who visited Chicago at even a later date, tells how he passed over the ground from the fort to the junction of tbs river with its branches, on horseback, and was up to the stinups in water the whole distance. He said: "I would not ha re given sixpence an acre for the whole of it." For a long time the usual mode of communication between these two points was by canoe, the "road" being too marshy for traveling. Of course such a site was barren of agricultural promise, and THE TOWN OF CHICAGO. 27 required strong faith in its commercial future to tempt the set- tler to brave the poverty and malarial sickness that threatened to starve him out while waiting for the realization of his hopes. It is no wonder that, in 1829, when Surveyor Thompson began his labors, he found only seven families there, outside the fort. TVo of these, Mr. Kinzie and his brother-in-law, Dr. Wolcott, the Indian agent, lived on the north side of the river; John Beaubien lived on the south side, near the fort, and John Mil- ler kept a log tavern near the fork, besides which three or four Indian traders, whose names have not been preserved, lived in what is now the West Division. Mr. Hubbard was not then a resident; he was frequently there for several weeks at a time, but did not locate permanently till 1833. The first map of the future city (August 4, 1830) only em- braced an area of about three-eighths of a square mile, the boundaries being Madison, Desplaines, Kinzie, and State Streets. The ground east of State, since known as the Fort Dearborn Addition to Chicago, was a Government reservation. The next step in the work of preparation for future occupancy, was the organization of Cook County, March 4, 1831, the limits of which included the whole tract now comprising the counties of Cook, Dupage, Lake, McHenry, Will, and Iroquois. Chi- cago is nearly midway on the eastern border of the present county. Two companies of troops then occupied the fort. In this year the number of male citizen residents had increased to fifteen, including the Government blacksmith, and Billy Cald- \vell, the Indian chief, who acted as interpreter for the agency. Not less than three of these kept tavern. Among the new arrivals, those who subsequently figured prominently in the history of the city, were George W. Dole, merchant; R. A. Kin- zie, merchant; P. F. W. Peck, merchant; Dr. Harmon, land 28 CHICAGO AND THE GEEAT CONFLAGRATION. speculator, and Mark Beaubien, tavern-keeper. Besides these, Russell E. Heacock resided three or four miles up the south branch of the river, and Archibald Clybourne on the north branch. In this year (1831) emigration set in so vigorously that by midsummer all the available buildings in the city were crowded with families, and several were obliged to seek accommodations at the fort, though many of those arriving intended to proceed further west. So great was the pressure that the infant Court of County Commissioners felt called upon to legislate for the protection of travelers, and ordered that tavern-keepers should only charge twenty-five cents for each half pint of wine, rum, or brandy ; twelve and a half cents for half a pint of whisky ; twelve and a half cents for dne night's lodging, and twenty- five cents for breakfast or supper. No less than four additional taverns were opened that year; licenses were granted to three persons to practice as merchants, and James A. Kinzie was pro- moted to the dignity of auctioneer. His first official act was to sell, in July, a portion of the ten acres previously deeded to the county of Cook, of which the present Court-house square is a part. He received a county order for $14.53f in payment for his services. In the latter part of September, 1831, about four thousand Indians assembled in Chicago to receive the Government an- nuity, which was paid by Colonel T. J. V. Owen. The terror of the residents at the scenes of drunkenness and debauchery that followed the payment, was deepened by the rumor that a deputation of Sauks and Foxes, belonging to the band of the notorious Black Hawk, was present, endeavoring to unite the Oltawas, Pottawatomies, and Chippewas, to join in an invasion of the Rock River country and drive out the white settlers. THE TOWN OF CHICAGO. 29 Their design was thwarted by the chief, Billy Caldwell, who used all his influence in favor of peace. The lake commerce of 1831 was quite large, not less than three vessels arriving during the year, one of which came to carry away the troops to Green Bay. The others were the Tel- egraph, from Ashtabula, Ohio, and the Marengo, from Detroit; the former brought a stock of goods, as well as many emigrants. The fort had been vacated by the soldiers in June, leaving it free for occupancy by the emigrants, of whom about four hun- dred took up their quarters there in September. Most of these stayed there through the winter, which was a long one, and so bitterly cold that most of the other residents of the place also took refuge in the fort, for the double purpose of companion- ship and protection the latter not more from the Indians than from the prairie-wolves, which were very numerous. The only communication they had with the outside world was effected by a half-breed Indian, who visited Niles, Michigan, once in two weeks, on foot, and brought in whatever papers he could pro- cure there were few letters in those days. The long winter evenings were "improved" by a debating society, occasional dances, and a weekly religious meeting, on the Methodist plan. It is noteworthy that in 1831 the first ferry was established across the river there were then no bridges. Mark Beaubien filed a bond of 200 to carry all citizens of Cook County across the river free, on condition that he should be permitted to takn toll from those not resident in the county. Early in 1832, Chicago was startled by the intelligence that Black Hawk, with a party of five hundred braves, was ad- vancing on the settlements on Rock River. Soon thereafter, people came flocking in from that district to seek refuge, their houses having been fired, and their stock taken by the 30 CHICAGO AND THE GIIEAT CONFLAGRATION. Indians. By the middle of May there were fully seven hun- dred people in the fort, two thirds of whom were women and children, many of the men having driven their stock farther south, in search of a more favorable location. A " council " was now called, at which the Indians at first seemed anxious to join the marauders, but finally consented to send out one hundred braves against them, if desired. In May a force of twenty-five men was organized at the fort, under command of Captain J. B. Brown, to scour the country. They were joined by a force of three thousand mili- tia, and a detachment of regular troops from Rock Island, un- der command of General Atkinson. The Indians were finally routed, and Black Hawk delivered up a prisoner of war, on the twenty-seventh of August, 1832. In September, a treaty was concluded at Fort Armstrong (Rock Island), by which the Indians agreed to remove west of the Missouri, on condition that they should receive an annuity, and that a reservation of forty miles square should be set off to Keokuk, their prin- cipal chief. General Winfield A. Scott was ordered to proceed to the West, to take part in the Black Hawk war. The cholera at- tacked the soldiers on the lake, and so many were prostrated that a large number were landed at Fort Gratiot, now Port Huron. The remainder proceeded to Chicago, where they communicated the infection both to the garrison and the peo- ple outside. The war was ended by the volunteers before General Scott could take part in the conflict, but he carried back with him such glowing accounts of the place that general attention was attracted to it, and, chiefly through his recom- mendation, Congress subsequently made the first appropriation for the improvement of the harbor. THE TOWN OF CHICAGO. 1 The autumn of this year, 1832, witnessed the commence- ment of the packing trade in Chicago. Mr. Dole erected the first frame building, and immediately afterward began the slaughtering of two hundred cattle, which he had bought on the Wabash River, at two and three-quarter cents per pound The same winter he slaughtered three hundred and fifty hogs, for which he had given three cents per pound, live weight. This was the beginning of a business, for which Chicago after- ward became as famous as for her grain and lumber trade. She surpassed Cincinnati in the total exhibit of hogs slaugh- tered, in the winter of 1862-3, and up to the time of the great catastrophe had steadily kept in the advance of that city, wresting from her, and retaining, the right to be called the world's Porkopolis. The year 1832 was marked by a considerable increase in the population and importance of the city. Among the new citizens who afterward became prominent, were Dr. Kimberly, Fhilo Carpenter, J. S. Wright, G. TV. Snow, and Dr. Max- well. South Water Street was formally extended to the lake, across Government property, from State Street eastward, and a road was surveyed to give communication with the southern part of the State. The first Sunday-school was organized in August, by Philo Carpenter and Captain Johnson, with thir- teen children ; and Rev. Jesse t Walker, a missionary of the Methodist Episcopal Church, built a log hut west of the fort, for divine worship. This place was called " Wolf Point/' and an intense rivalry sprung up, about this time, between the dwellers there and those in the vicinity of the fort. The good people never dreamed, at that epoch, that the population of Chicago would be more than enough to make up a respect- able sized village, and each place was anxious to become 32 CHICAGO AND THE GKEAT CONFLAGRATION. the site of that village, when it should have attained to the dwarfish growth which was the utmost limit of their expecta- tions. Of course there was then no Court-house. The sessions of the County Commissioners, and of the Circuit Court, were generally held in the fort. The first building erected on the public square was an estray pen, put up in 1832, on the south- western corner, at a total cost -of twelve dollars. It is inter- esting to note that the total tax list of the entire county was returned by th,e sheriff this year at $148.29, of which amount $10.50 was uncollectable. The treasurer's report for the year ending April 25, 1832, shows the receipt of 225.50 for licenses, and a balance in hand of $15.93. But though poor, the county was not in debt ; those were happy days compared with the present, when the great calamity has piled up an enormous loss on the top of a city debt of fourteen and a half millions of dollars. The next year, 1833, the place grew apace. An appropria- tion of thirty thousand dollars was made by Congress for the improvement of the harbor, and work was at once commenced At that time the main channel was narrower than now, and instead of running in an almost straight line into the lake, it turned short to the southward, round the fort, to a point near the present foot of Madison Street, and there connected with the lake over a bar of sand and gravel, the water on which was about fifteen yards wide, and only a few inches in depth. Vessels arriving at the port were obliged to anchor outside, and discharge or take on cargo by the aid of boats. A channel was cut through the bank, running straight out into the lake, an embankment formed to cut off the water from the former channel, a pier run out to a short distance on the north side of THE TOWN OF CHICAGO. S3 the new mouth, and a light-house built to mark the entrance to the new-formed harbor. In the following spring, a great freshet washed out more sand from the channel than had been removed by the dredges, but at the same time it swept away some six hundred feet of piling that had just be*n built to protect the south shore. It was now believed thai a permanent harbor had been gained, which would never more be choked up. Subsequent experience has shown the fallacy of this hope, as continuous expenditures have been necessitated to keep open a passage for vessels. Further appropriations were made, of $ 32,800 in 1835; of $32,000 in 1836; and $40,000 in 1838, and work was suspended for a long time after the last-named sum had been exhausted. This was but one of the many extensions made in 1833. A jail was built " of logs, firmly bolted together," on the north- west corner of the Court-house square, which stood there for just twenty years, when it was superseded by the Court-house. The first regular postmaster was appointed, in the person of J.' S. C. Hogan, the keeper of a variety store on South Water Street, though a gentleman named Bailey is reported to have previously officiated in that capacity. Mr. Hogan 's office is currently reported to have been graced with a number of old boot-legs, nailed up against the wall, -which did duty as private boxes for such of the citizens as were honored with the most extensive correspondence. This year, too, was marked by trie establishment of nc less than three church societies. The First Presbyterian was organized June 26th, with a membership of nine citizens and twenty-five members of the garrison, by Rev. Jeremiah Porter, who was Chaplain of a detachment of United States troops that came from Green Bay early in the year. The First Baptist Church was organized on the 10th of Octo- 34 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. ber, with a membership of fourteen, by Rev. A. B. Freeman; and Rev. Mr. Schaffer commenced the erection of a Catholic church-edifice, which was completed the following year. The Methodists also held their first quarterly meeting in the au- tumn, with John Sinclair as Presiding Elder. Another memorable event of 1833 was a gathering of about seven thousand Pottawatomie Indians, on the 27th of Septem- ber, at which a most important treaty was made. The chiefs met the Government commissioners in council, in a large tent on the north side of the river, opposite the fort, and formally ceded to the United States all their territory in Northern Illi- nois and Wisconsin, amounting to about twenty millions of acres, for the. sum of $1,100,000. They received as first pay- ment about $56,000 in money, and $130,000 in goods; the remainder they were to receive in instalments, covering a period of twenty-five years. It is reported that not less than twenty thousand dollars' worth of the goods were stolen by the Indian traders during the first two nights, after the owners had been liberally saturated with whisky, for which they had paid out a large proportion of the articles furnished them. A letter from a traveler, who witnessed the scenes, was unearthed and pub- lished in the Tribune in 1869. We are sorry that the destruc- tion of the files of that paper in the great conflagration prevents us from reproducing it. The description there given of the disgusting revels of the red men, and the rapacity of the whites, was almost enough to make one lose faith in human nature. The great event of the year was, however, the incorporation of Chicago as a town. A public meeting was held August 5th, to decide whether the important step should be taken or not. A total of twelve votes were cast for the measure, and one against it, the negative being our old friend of the South THE TOWN OF CHICAGO. 35 Branch settlement Russell E. Heacock. An election was held on the 10th of the same month, at the house of Mark Beaubien, the original Charon of the place, who was also noted as the keeper of two fast horses ; and we give the following as the list of voters on the occasion, which probably comprised every legal voter in the place, except one, as Heacock resided outside ; about six others had arrived just previous to the election, who were afterward voters : E. S. Kimberly,* J. B. Beaubien, Mark Beaubien, T. J. V. Owen,* William Ninson, Hiram Pearsons, Philo Carpenter, George Chapman, John S. Wright, John T. Temple, Matthias Smith, David Carver, James Kiuzie, Charles Taylor, J. S. C. Hogan, Eli A. Rider, Dexter J. Hapgood, G. W. Snow, Madore Beaubien,* Gholson Kercheval, G. W. Dole,* R. J. Hamilton, Stephen F. Gale, Enoch Darling, W. R. Adams, C. A. Ballard, John Wat-kins, James Gilbert in all twenty- eight votes. The four marked with a star, and John Miller, were elected Trustees of the Town. Mr. Owen was elected President. The following statistics of the new-born corporation will be of interest: Area of the town, about . . . . . . . 560 acres Number of inhabitants, 550 Number of voters, 29 Number of buildings, 175 Valuation of property, $60,000 00 Valuation of taxable property, 19,560 00 First year's taxes, 48 90 The business of the year included the packing of 500 or 600 head of cattle, and nearly 3,000 hogs, at the slaughter-house of Mr. Clybourne, of which 250 head of cattle and 1,000 hogs were packed by Mr. Dole. 36 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. The first important public improvement ordered by the new trustees was the establishment of a second ferry across the river, the point chosen being at Dearborn Street. They next extended the limits of the town to take in an area of about seven-eighths of a square mile. The new boundaries were Jackson Street on the south, Jefferson and Cook Streets on the west, Ohio Street on the north, State Street on the east, from Jackson to the river, and the lake-shore on the north side, from the river to Ohio Street. Of course so important a place could not exist long without a newspaper, and accordingly -we find that John Calhoun issued, on the 26th of November, 1833, the first number of the Demo- crat, which was also the first newspaper ever published in North- ern Illinois. The early files of that journal are full of inter- esting matter; even the advertisements speak volumes, for they tell of the way in which business was transacted in those days. There was not much done, except by way of exchange in goods and produce, while land bought was largely paid for in prom- ises. In the first number the editor strongly advocated the prosecution of the work on the Illinois and Michigan Canal, as the one great means necessary to the growth of the city. During the summer of 1833 not less than 160 frame houses were erected, and the number of stores was increased from five or six to 25. Among the new buildings was the Green Tree Tavern, by J. H. Kinzie, which was the first structure ever erected in the place for that purpose; its predecessors were simply private residences, thrown open to the public for a con- sideration. Among the arrivals we find the names or S. B. Cobb, Walter Kimball, Star Foote, S. D. Pierce, Manoel Tal1 ' Se vehicle. So he employed half a dozen boys, CHAMBER OF COMMERCE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE AFTER THE FIRE. RUSH MEDICAL COLLEGE. FIFTH NATIONAL BANK. PERSONAL EXPERIENCES. 233 gave each of them a coffin, took a large one himself, and headed the weird proce&sion. The sight of those coffins, upright, and bobbing along just above the heads of the crowd, without any apparent help from any body else, was somewhat startling, and the unavoidable suggestion was that they were escaping across the river to be ready for use when the debris of the conflagra- tion should be cleared away. But just as men in the midst of a devastating plague carouse over each new corpse, and drink to the next who dies, so we laughed quite merrily at the ominous spectacle. " At last it became too warm to be comfortable on the east side of the river. The fire was burning along Market Street, and many were the conjectures whether Lind's block would go. The buildings opposite burned with a furnace-heat, but Lind's block stands now, a monument to its own isolation. "And then the question was every-where asked, 'Will Chi- cago ever recover from this blow?' Many suggestions were offered on this subject. The general opinion was that the city could never again obtain a foothold. Said one old gentleman, 1 Our capital is wiped out of existence. You never can get what money is stored up out of those vaults. There is n't one that can stand this furnace-heat. Whatever the fire consumes to- night is utterly consumed. All loss is total; for there will not be an insurance company left to-morrow. The trade of the city must go to St. Louis, to Cincinnati, and to New York, and we never can get hold of it again. We could n't transact any busi- ness even if we had customers, for we have n't got anywhere to transact it. Yes, sir, this town is gone up, and we may as well get out of it at once.' Thus all seemed to talk, and there was none of that earnest, hopeful language of which I have heard so much since, and have been rejoiced to hear. But what else 20 234 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. could I expect? Those men stood facing the burning city. They saw those great hotels and warehouses toppling, one after another, to the ground. Their spirits were elastic, as subsequent events have proved, but on that terrible night they were drawn to their utmost tension, and the cord came near breaking. " Tired with my two nights' work and of the sad sight before me, I joined the crowd, crossed the river, went up Canal Street and lay down on a pile of lumber in Avery's yard. My posi- tion was at the confluence of the north and south branches, di- rectly opposite the middle of the main river, and exactly on the dock. All solicitude for the remaining portion of the city, and all appreciation of the magnitude of the tragedy that was being acted across the river, had left me. I did not care whether the city stood or burned. I was dead, so far as my sensibilities were concerned. Half a dozen fellows strangers were with me on the lumber-pile, and were as listless as myself. The chief matter which seemed to interest them was the probable weight of one of their party a fat fellow, whom they called Fred. I became quite interested in the subject, and joined in the guessing. Fred kept us bursting in ignorance awhile, and then, in a burst of confidence, told us he weighed 206, and begged us not to mention it. Meanwhile, Wells-street bridge took fire, and, as affording something novel, attracted our at- tention for a few minutes. The south end of the bridge caught alight, and then the north end. But the north end burned less rapidly than the south, and soon outbalanced the latter, when, of course, the whole structure tipped to the northward, and stood fixed, one end in the water, at an angle of about sixty degrees. Then the fire communicated with the whole frame- work, till the bridge looked like a skeleton with ribs of fire. But presently the support underneath burned away; then the PERSONAL EXPERIENCES. 235 skeleton turned a complete summersault and plunged into the river, as if, warmed into life, it had sought refuge from the flames which were consuming it." [Our contributor here details his adventures upon the north side, which were not of particular moment.] "When I had regained a footing in the favored West Divis- ion, it was seven o'clock. Then a curious-looking crimson ball came up out of the lake, which they said was the sun; but oh how sickly and insignificant it looked! I had watched that greatest of the world's conflagrations from its beginning to al- most its end; and although the fire was still blazing all over the city with undiminished luster, I could not look at it. I was almost unable to walk with exhaustion and the effects of a long season of excitement, and sought my home for an hour's sleep. As I passed up West Madison Street, I met scores of working girls on their way * down town,' as usual, bearing their lunch-baskets as if nothing had happened. They saw the fire and smoke before them, but could not believe that the city, with their means of livelihood, had been swept away during that night." CHAPTER IV. PERSONAL EXPERIENCES CONTINUED. Narrative of Alexander Frear A fond mother's mishaps Scenes on the Avenues Rifling the dry goods palaces How a pious soul prayed herself to death Asking too much of Providence Human diabolism Cheapness of life. "R.ALEXANDER FREAR, a New York alderman, seems to have seen as much of the fire and its concomitants as" any other person in the city; and he tells his adventures in a plain and straightforward way which is at the same time very graphic. The beginning of his narrative, as we quote it, finds Mr. Frear upon the west side of the river, endeavoring to com- fort his brother's wife (his brother being absent from the city) by assuring her (what proved to be the fact) that her house, on Ewing Street, would not be touched by the flames. Neverthe- less, she would not be appeased until her goods and children had been sent over to the house of a friend on Wabash Avenue. Then, presently, the anxious mother had to follow in a coach, procured half a mile away, and with her satchel full of valuables in her hand. After a hard drive, through a roundabout route, they were stopped by the jam at the corner of Wabash Avenue and Washington Street. The narrative proceeds : "In the confusion it was difficult to get any information; but I was told that the block in which the Kimballs lived (the (236) PERSONAL EXPERIENCES. 237 refuge of Mrs. Frear's children) was burning, and that the peo- ple were all out. To add to my distress Mrs. Frear jumped out of the vehicle and started to run in the direction of the fire. Nothing, I am satisfied, saved her from being crushed to death in a mad attempt to find her children but the providential ap- pearance of an acquaintance, who told her that the children werr all safe at the St. James Hotel. ... I found thai Mrs. Frear*s acquaintance had either intentionally or unin- tentionally deceived her. The children were not in the house. When I informed her of it she fainted. When she was being taken up stairs to the parlor I found she had lost her satchel. Whether it was left in the cab when she jumped out, or was stolen in the house, I can not say. It contained two gold watches, several pins and drops of value, a cameo presented to her by Mrs. Stephen A. Douglas, a medal of honor belonging to her husband (who was an officer in the First Wisconsin Vol- unteers during the war), and about $200 in bills and currency stamps, besides several trinkets of trifling value." Leaving his charge in the care of some ladies, Mr. Frear proceeded in search of the children. He went to the Sherman House, where all was panic. " I looked out," he says, " of one of the south windows of the house, and shall never forget the terribly magnificent sight I saw. The Court-house Park was filled with people who appeared to be huddled together in a solid mass, helpless and astounded. The whole air was filled with the falling cinders, and it looked like a snow-storm lit by colored fire. The weird effect of the glare and the scintillating light upon this vast silent concourse was almost frightful. While in the corridor of the Sherman House I encountered my nephew, and he asked me if I wanted to see the fire, saying he had one of George Garrison's horses and only wanted a rubber blanket to 238 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. throw over him to protect him from the sparks. I told him about Mrs. Frear, but he thought there was no reason to worry. He got a blanket somewhere, and we started off in a light wagon for Wabash Avenue, stopping at "Wright's, under the Opera House, to get a drink of coffee, which I needed very much. There were several of the firemen of the Little Giant in there. One of the men was bathing his head with whisky from a flask. They declared that the entire department had given up, over- worked, and that they could do nothing more. While we stood there an Irish girl was brought in with her dress nearly all burnt from her person. It had caught on the Court-house steps from a cinder. When we went put a man in his shirt- sleeves was unhitching the horse; and when we came up he sprung into the wagon, and would have driven off in spite of us if I had not caught the horse by the head. He then sprang out and struck my nephew in the face, and ran toward State Street. " We drove as rapidly as we could into Wabash Avenue, the wind sweeping the embers after us in furious waves. We passed a broken-down steamer in the middle of the roadway. The avenue was a scene of desolation. The storm of falling fire seemed to increase every second, and it was as much as we could do to protect ourselves from the burning rain and guide the horse through the flying people and hurrying vehicles. Look- ing back through Washington Street, toward the Opera House, I saw the smoke and flames pouring out of State Street, from the very point we had just left, and the intervening space was filled with the whirling embers that beat against the houses and covered the roofs and window-sills. It seemed like a tornado of fire. To add to the terrors the animals, burnt and infuriated by the cinders, darted through the streets regardless of all hu- PERSONAL EXPERIENCES. 239 man obstacles. "Wabash Avenue was burning as far down as Adams Street. The flames from the houses on the west side reached in a diagonal arch quite across the street, and occasion- ally the wind would lift the great body of flame, detach it en- tirely from the burning buildings, and hurl it with terrific force far ahead. All the mansions were being emptied with the greatest disorder and the greatest excitement. Nobody en- deavored to stay the flames now. A mob of men and women, all screaming and shouting, ran about wildly, crossing each other's paths, and intercepting each other as if deranged. We tried to force our way along the avenue, which was already littered with costly furniture, some of it burning in the streets under the falling sparks, but it was next to impossible. Twice we were accosted by gentlemen with pocket-books in their hands, and asked to carry away to a place of safety some valu- able property. Much as we may have desired to assist them, it was out of our power. Women came and threw packages into the vehicle, and one man with a boy hanging to him caught the horse and tried to throw us out. I finally got out and endeavored to lead the animal out of the terrible scenes. When we had gone about a block I saw that the Court-house was on fire, and almost at the same moment some one said the St. James had caught on the roof. I was struck on the arm by a bird-cage flung from an upper window, and the moment I released the horse he shied and ran into a burning dray-load of furniture, smashing the wheel of the wagon and throwing my companion out on his shoulder. Fortunately he was only bruised. But the horse, already terrified, started immediately, and I saw him disappear with a leap like that of a panther. "We then hurried on toward the St. James Hotel, passing through some of the strangest and saddest scenes it has ever 240 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. been my misfortune to witness. I saw a woman kneeling in the street with a crucifix held up before her and the skirt of her dress burning while she prayed. We had barely passed her before a runaway truck dashed her to the ground. Loads of goods passed us repeatedly that were burning on the trucks, and my nephew says that he distinctly saw one man go up to a pile of costly furniture lying in front of an elegant residence and deliberately hold a piece of burning packing-box under it until the pile was lit. When we reached the wholesale stores north of Madison Street the confusion was even worse. These stores were packed full of the most costly merchandise, and to save it at the rate the fire was advancing was plainly impossible. There was no police, and no effort was made to keep off the rabble. A few of the porters and draymen employed by these stores were working manfully, but there were coster mongers' wagons, dirt carts, and even coaches backed up and receiving the goods, and a villainous crowd of men and boys chaffing each other and tearing open parcels to discover the nature of their contents. I reached the St. James between two and three o'clock on Monday morning. It was reported to be on fire, but I did not see the flames then. Mrs. Frear had been moved in an insensible state to the house of a friend on the north side. I could learn no other particulars. " The house was in a dreadful state of disorder. Women and children were screaming in every direction, and baggago being thrown about in the most reckless manner. I now con- cluded that Mrs. F rear's children had been lost. It was re- ported that hundreds of people had perished in the flames. " There was a crowd of men and women at the hotel from one of the large boarding-houses in the neighborhood of State and Adams Streets, and they said they barely escaped with their FIELD & LETTER'S STORE. COR. LASALLE AND WASHINGTON STREETS. PERSONAL EXPERIENCES. 241 lives, leaving every thing behind. At this time it seemed to me that the fire would leave nothing. People coming in said the Sherman House was going, and that the Opera-house had caught. Finally word was brought that the bridges were burning, and all escape was cut off to the north and west. Then ensued a Ri;ene which was beyond description. Men shouted the news, and added to the panic. Women, half-dressed, and many of tiiem with screaming children, fled out of the building. There was a jam in the doorway, and they struck and clawed each other as if in self-defense. I lost sight of my nephew at this time. Getting out with the crowd, I started and ran round to- ward the Tremont House. Reaching Dearborn Street, the gust of fire was so strong that I could hardly keep my feet. " I ran on down toward the Tremont. Here the same scene was being enacted with tenfold violence. The elevator had got jammed, and the screams of the women on the upper floors was heart-rending. I forced my way upstairs, seeing no fire, and looked into all the open rooms, calling aloud the names of Mrs. Frear's daughters. Women were swarming in the parlors; in- valids, brought there for safety, were lying upon the floor. Others were running distracted about, calling upon their hus- bands. Men, pale and awe-struck and silent, looked on with- out any means of averting the mischief. All this time the upper part of the house was on fire. The street was choked with peo- ple, yelling and moaning with excitement and fright. I looked down upon them from an upper window a moment, and saw far up Dearborn Street the huge flames pouring in from the side- streets I had traversed but an hour ago, and it appeared to me that they were impelled with the force of a tremendous blow- pipe. Every thing that they touched melted. Presently the smoke began to roll down the stairways, and almost immedi- 21 242 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. ately after the men who had been at work on the roof came running down. They made no outcry, but hurried from the house as if for their lives. I went up to the fourth story, look- ing into every room, and kicking open those that were locked. There were several other men searching in the same manner, but I did not notice them. While up here I obtained a view of the conflagration. It was advancing steadily upon the hotel from two or three points. There was very little smoke; it burned too rapidly, or what there was must have been carried away on the wind. The whole was accompanied by a crackling noise as of an enormous bundle of dry twigs burning, and by explosions that followed each other in quick succession on all sides. " From the street-entrance I could see up Dearborn Street as far as the Portland Block, and it was full of people all the dis- tance, swaying and surging under the reign of fire. Around on Lake Street the tumult was worse. Here for the first time I beheld scenes of violence that made my blood boil. In front of Shay's magnificent dry goods store a man loaded a store- truck with silks in defiance of the employ6s of the place. When he had piled all he could upon the truck, some one with a revolver shouted to him not to drive away or he would fire at him, to which he replied, 'Fire, and be damned!' and the man put the pistol in his pocket again. Just east of this store there was at least a ton of fancy goods thrown into the street, over which the people and vehicles passed with utter indiffer- ence, until they took fire. I saw myself, a ragamuffin on the Clark-street bridge, who had been killed by a marble slab thrown from a window, with white kid gloves on his hands ; and whose pockets were stuffed with gold-plated sleeve-buttons, and on that same bridge I saw an Irish woman leading a goat PERSONAL, EXPERIENCES. 243 that was big with young, by one arm, while under the other she carried a piece of silk. " Lake Street was rich with treasure, and hordes of thieves forced their way into the stores and flung out the merchandise to their fellows in the street, who received it without disguise, and fought over it openly. I went through the street to \Vabash A venue, and here the thoroughfare was utterly choked with all manner of goods and people. Every body who had been forced from the other end of the town by the advancing flames had brought some article with him, and, as further progress was delayed, if not completely stopped by the river the bridges of which were also choked most of them, in their panic, aban- doned their burdens, so that the street and sidewalks presented the most astonishing wreck. Valuable oil-paintings, books, pet animals, musical instruments, toys, mirrors, and bedding, were trampled under foot. Added to this, the goods from the stores had been hauled out and had taken fire, and the crowd, break- ing into a liquor establishment, were yelling with the fury of demons, as they brandished champagne and brandy bottles. The brutality and horror of the scene made it sickening. A fellow, standing on a piano, declared that the fire was the frieua of the poor man. He wanted every body to help himself to the best liquor he could get, and continued to yell from the piano until some one, as drunk as himself, flung a bottle at him and knocked him off it. In this chaos were hundreds of children, wailing and crying for their parents. One little girl, in par- ticular, I saw, whose golden hair was loose down her back and caught fire. She ran screaming past me, and somebody threw a glass of liquor upon her, which flared up and covered her with a blue flame. It was impossible to get through to the bridge, and I was forced to go back toward Randolph Street. 244 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. There was a strange and new fascination in the scenes that I could not resist. " It was now daylight, and the fire was raging closely all about me. The Court-house, the Sherman House, the Tremont House, and the wholesale stores on Wabash Avenue, and the retail stores on Lake Street, were burning. The cries of the multitude on the latter streets had row risen into a terrible roar, for the flames were breaking into the river streets. I saw the stores of Messrs. Drake, Hamliu, and Farwell burn. They ignited suddenly all over in a manner entirely new to me, just as I have seen paper do that is held to the fire until it is scorched and breaks out in a flame. The crowds who were watching them greeted the combustion with terrible yells. In one of the stores I think it was Hamlin's there were a number of men at the time on the several floors passing out goods, and when the flames blown over against it enveloped the building, they were lost to sight entirely; nor did I see any effort whatever made to save them, for the heat was so intense that every body was driven as before a tornado from the vicinity of the build- ings. I now found myself carried by the throng back to near Twake Street, and determined, if possible, to get over the river. I managed to accomplish this, after a severe struggle and at the risk of my life. The rail of the bridge was broken away, and a number of small boats loaded with goods were passing down the stream. How many people were pushed over the bridge into the water I can not tell. I myself saw one man stumble under a load of clothing and disappear; nor did the occupants of the boats pay the slightest attention to him nor to the crowd overhead, except to guard against any body falling into their vessels." From the north side, Mr. Frear made his way to the west PERSONAL EXPERIENCES. 245 side, where he fell down and slept in the hall of his brother's house; but was aroused in half an hour to join in another res- cue of Mrs. Frear, whose refuge on the north side was about to be burned. This accomplished, just in time to save the lady from the flames, Mr. Frear and the friend who had told him of her whereabouts hauled her, shrieking with hysterics, in a baker's wagon, some four miles, over much debris, to the home where she ought to have staid in the first place. Her property, including the jewelry, money, and relics, were all gone; but the children were soon heard from. They were safe at the River- side suburb. CHAPTER V. PERSONAL EXPERIENCES CONTINUED. Narrative of Horace White, Esq. How the "bloated aristocrats" took it A parrot equal to the emergency Sheridan in the fray The gunpow- der cure. A MONG the severest sufferers by the general calamity was *-\ Horace White, Esq., editor of the Tribune, who lost, be- sides other property, his elegant home on Michigan Avenue, containing a remarkably select and scholarly library, for which he would not have taken $25,000. Mr. White, on discovering that the fire was one of unusual magnitude, arose from his bed for the purpose of going to the Tribune office and writing an editorial paragraph perhaps advising every body to build ab- solutely fire-proof edifices like the Tribune building. He thus describes the scene which met him as he passed out upon the street : "Billows of fire were rolling over the business palaces of the city and swallowing up their contents. Walls were falling so fast that the quaking of the ground under our feet was scarcely noticed, so continuous was the reverberation. Sober men and women were hurrying through the streets, from the burning quarter, some with bundles of clothing on their shoulders, others dragging trunks along the sidewalks by means of strings and ropes fastened to the handles, children trudging by their sides (246) PERSONAL EXPERIENCES. 247 or borne in their arms. Now and then a sick man or woman would be observed, half concealed in a mattress doubled up and borne by two men. Droves of horses were in the streets, mov- ing under some sort of guidance to a place of safety. Vehicles of all descriptions were hurrying to and fro, some laden with trunks and bundles, and others seeking similar loads and im- mediately finding them, the drivers making more money in one hour than they were used to see in a week or a month. Every body in this quarter was hurrying toward the lake-shore. All the streets crossing that part of Michigan Avenue which fronts on the lake (on which my own residence stood) were crowded with fugitives, hastening toward the blessed water." After a season at the office of the Tribune,, during which the editorial was written (but never printed), Mr. White went home to breakfast, noticing as he went that the employes of Messrs. Field, Leiter & Co.'s immense dry goods store were showering that massive pile of pure marble and iron with water from their own pumping engines. He felt sure that that building, as well as the Tribune, First National Bank, and Illinois Cen- tral Railroad Depot, would, with every thing to the east of them, be reserved from the destruction of the flames. This was, per- haps, a good calculation, from his point of view; but he would not have made it if he could, from a balloon, or from a high vantage point to the south-west, have marked the general course and scanned the mighty plan (as it seemed) of the de- vastating monster. Mr. White's narrative continues: "There was still a mass of fire to the south-west, in the direction whence it originally came, but as the engines were all down there, and the buildings small and low, I felt sure that the firemen would manage it. As soon as I had swallowed a cup of coffee and communicated to my family the facts that I had 248 CHICAGO AND THE GEEAT CONFLAGRATION. gathered., I started out to see the end of the battle. Reaching State Street I glanced down to Field, Leiter & Co.'s store, and to my surprise noticed that the streams of water which had before been showering it as though it had been a great arti- ficial fountain, had ceased to run. But I did not conjecture the awful reality, viz: that the great pumping engines had been disabled by a burning roof falling upon them. I thought that perhaps the firemen on the store had discontinued their efforts because the danger was over. But why were men carrying out goods from the lower story ? "This query was soon answered by a gentleman who asked me if I had heard that the water had stopped? The awful truth was here! The pumping engines were disabled, and though we had at our feet a basin sixty miles wide by three hundred and sixty long, and seven hundred feet deep, all full of clear green water, we could not lift enough to quench a cooking-stove. Still the direction of the wind was such that I thought the remaining fire would not cross State Street, nor reach the residences on Wabash and Michigan Avenues and the terrified people on the lake-shore. I determined to go down to the black cloud of smoke which was rising away to the south- west, the course of which could not be discovered on account of thehight of the intervening buildings, but thought it most prudent to go home again and tell my wife to get the family wearing apparel in readiness for moving. I found that she had already done so. " I then hurried toward the black cloud, some ten squares distant, and there found the rows of wooden houses on Third and Fourth Avenues falling like ripe wheat before a reaper. At a glance I perceived that all was lost in our quarter of the city, and I conjectured that the Tribune Building was doomed PERSONAL EXPERIENCES. 249 too, for I had noticed with consternation that the fire-proof post-office had been completely gutted, notwithstanding it was detached from other buildings. The Tribune was fitted into a niche, one side of which consisted of a wholesale stationery store, and the other of McVicker's Theater. But there was now no time to think of property. Life was in danger. The lives of those most dear to me depended upon their getting out of our house, out of our street, through an infernal gorge of horses, wagons, men, women, children, trunks, and plunder. "My brother was with me, and we seized the first empty wagon we could find, pinning the horse by the head. A hasty talk with the driver disclosed that we could have his establish- ment for one load for twenty dollars. I had not expected to get him for less than a hundred, unless we should take him by force, and this was a bad time for a fight. He approved him- self a muscular as well as a faithful fellow, and I shall always be glad that I avoided a personal difficulty with him. One peculiarity of the situation was that nobody could get a team without ready money. I had not thought of this when I was revolving in my mind an offer of one hundred dollars, which was more greenbacks than our whole family could put up if our lives had depended on the issue. This driver had divined that as all the banks were burned, a check on the Commercial Na- tional would not carry him very far, even though it should carry me to a place of safety. All the drivers had divined the same. Every man who had any thing to sell had perceived the same. 'Pay as you go' had become the watchword of the hour. Never was there a community so hastily and completely eman- cipated from the evils of the credit system." A quantity of trunks, etc., was thrown into the wagon, and Mr. White, taking in his hand a cage containing what he calls 250 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. "a talented parrot" the family pet left his brother and wife to prepare the next load, and started off for a friend's house, half a mile to the southward. They were an hour or more on the way, owing to the jam, and were at one time deterred by a howling German, who declared that he had lost every thing, and others ought to do the same. "Presently," Mr. White continues, "the jam began to move, and we got on perhaps twenty paces and stuck fast again. By accident we had edged over to the east side of the street, and nothing but a board fence separated us from Lake Park, a strip of made ground a little wider than the street itself. A benevo- lent laborer, on the park side of the fence, pulled a loose post out of the ground, and with this for a catapult, knocked off the boards and invited us to pass through. It was a hazardous undertaking, as we had to drive diagonally over a raised side- walk, but we thought it was best to risk it. Our horse mounted, and gave us a jerk which nearly threw us off the seat, and sent the provision basket and one bundle of clothing whirling into the dirt. The eatables were irrecoverable. The bundle was rescued, with two or three pounds of butter plastered upon it. We started again, and here our parrot broke out, with great rapidity and sharpness of utterance, 'Get up, get up, get up, hurry up, hurry up, it's eight o'clock,' ending with a shrill whistle. These ejaculations frightened a pair of horses close to us, on the other side of the fence, but the jam was so tight that they could n't run. "By getting into the park we succeeded in advancing two squares without impediment, and might have gone farther had we not come upon an excavation which the public authorities had recently made. This drove us back to the avenue, where another battering-ram made a gap for us, at the intersection of PERSONAL EXPERIENCES. 251 Van Buren Street, the north end of Michigan Terrace. Here the gorge seemed impassable. We were half an hour in passing the terrace. From this imposing row of residences the mil- lionaires were dragging their trunks and their bundles, and yet there was no panic, no frenzy, no boisterousness, but only the haste which the situation authorized. . . . Arriving at Eldridge Court, I turned into Wabash Avenue, where the crowd was thinner. Arriving at the house of a friend, who was on the windward side of the fire, I tumbled off my load and started back to get another. Half way down Michigan Avenue, which was now perceptibly easier to move in, I discovered my family on the sidewalk, with their arms full of light household effects. My wife told me that the house was already burned, that the flames burst out ready-made in the rear hall before she knew that the roof had been scorched, and that one of the servants, who had disobeyed orders in her eagerness to save some article, had got singed, though not burned, in coming out. My wife and mother and all the rest were begrimed with dirt and smoke, like blackamoors every body was. The 'bloated aristocrats' all along the street, who supposed they had lost both home and fortune at one swoop, were a sorry but not despairing con- gregation. They had saved their lives at all events, and they knew that many of their fellow-creatures must have lost theirs. I saw a great many kindly acts done as we moved along. The poor helped the rich, and the rich helped the poor (if any body could be called rich at such a time) to get on with their loads. "Presently we heard loud detonations, and a rumor went around that buildings were being blown up with gunpowder. The depot of the Hazard Powder Company was situated at Brighton, seven or eight miles from the nearest point of the fire. 252 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. At what time the effort was first made to reach this magazine, and bring powder into the service, I have not learned, but 1 know that Colonel M. C. Stearns made heroic efforts with his great lime wagons to haul the explosive material to the proper point. This is no time to blame any body, but in truth there was no directing head on the ground. Every body was ask- ing every body else to pull down buildings. There were no hooks, no ropes, no axes. " I had met General Sheridan on the street in front of the post-office two hours before. He had been trying to save the army records, including his own invaluable papers relating to the war of the rebellion. He told me that they were ^11 lost, and then added that the post-office did n't seem to make a good fire. This was when we supposed the row of fire-proof build- ings, already spoken of, had stopped the flames in our quarter. Where was General Sheridan now? every body asked. Why did n't he do something when every body else had failed ? Presently a rumor went around that Sheridan was handling the gunpowder; then every body felt relieved. The reverbera- tions of the powder, whoever was handling it, gave us all heart again. Think of a people feeling encouraged by the fact that somebody was blowing up houses in the midst of the city, and that a shower of bricks was very likely to come down on their heads." The experience of Mr. White and his family is perhaps the average one of the wealthier classes of the South Division. That of the same classes in the North Division (represented in the narrative of Mr. Arnold, contained in the next chapter) was much rougher, from which may be deduced an inference as to that of the fifty times more numerous poor families, who PERSONAL EXPERIENCES. 253 had no twenty dollars to give to an exceptionally liberal cart- man, no sympathizing friends down the avenue to afford them shelter and other comforts, and generally no hour's or even a half hour's time in which to calculate upon the means of escape from the devouring element. CHAPTER VI. PERSONAL EXPERIENCES CONTINUED. Hon. Isaac N. Arnold defends his castle A vain contest Overpowered and routed Running the fire blockade. A MONG the many beautiful homes destroyed in the North * Division of the city, few, if any, were at once more ele- gant and home-like than that of the Hon. Isaac N. Arnold, the friend and biographer of Lincoln. The house was a large, plain, brick mansion, occupying with its grounds the whole block bounded by Erie, Huron, Pine, and Rush Streets. The grounds were filled with the most beautiful shrubbery and trees, and entirely secluded by a very luxuriant lilac hedge. Perhaps the most noticeable feature was the vines of wild grape, Virginia creeper, and bitter-sweet, which hung in graceful festoons from the massive elms, and covered with their dense foliage piazzas and summer-houses. There was a simple but quaint fountain, playing in front, beneath a perfect bower of overhanging vines. A great rock, upon which had been rudely carved the features of an Indian chief, had been pierced, and through this a way had been made for the water, and over the head of the old chief the water of Lake Michigan was always throwing its spray. On one side of the entrance was a little greenhouse, always gay with flowers. Two vineries of choice varieties of foreign grapes, PERSONAL EXPERIENCES. 255 and a large greenhouse and barn, constituted the out-buildings. On the lawn was a sun-dial with the inscription: " Horas non numero nisi serenas." * Alas! the tablet vindicated its motto but too well. It was broken by the heat or in the melee which accompanied the fire, and the dark hours which have followed pass by without its reckoning. But pleasant as was the outside, it was the interior wherein its great attractions lay; and the chief of these was the library. Here were the collections of the lifetime of a man of taste, wealth, and culture a law library and a miscellaneous library of seven or eight thousand volumes. Many of the books were specialties, and the objects of pride and affection. Among them were the speeches of Burke, Sheridan, Fox, Pitt, Erskine, Cur- ran, Brougham, Webster, Wirt, Seward, Sumner, etc., all su- perbly bound; a pretty full collection of English literature and history; the Abbotsford edition of Scott's novels, in full Russia binding; Pickering and Bacon, in tree calf; a full set of the British poets; all of Bonn's libraries, etc. In American liter- ature and history the library was rich, including beautiful edi- tions of the works of Cooper, Irving, Paulding, Willis, Bryant, Longfellow, Prescott, Holmes, the writings of Washington, Mad- ison, Jefferson, Hamilton, Marshall, Story, Bancroft, and others. Mr. Arnold had a very complete collection of the proceed- ings of Congress and the debates, from the organization of the Government down to the present day. In his library also was perhaps as full a collection of the books and pamphlets in rela- tion to slavery, the rebellion, the war, and President Lincoln, as * "I number none but sunny hours." 256 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. existed in any private hands. He had also ten large volumes of manuscript letters, written by distinguished military and eivil characters during and since the war of the rebellion, including many from Lincoln, McClellau, Grant, Farragut, Sherman, Hal- leek, Seward, Sumner, Chase, Colfax, and others, of great per- sonal and historic interest. For the last ten years, Mr. Arnold had been collecting the speeches, writings, and letters of Lincoln for publication, and had many volumes of manuscripts and letters, the material for a strictly biographical work upon Abraham Lincoln, several chap- ters of which were ready for publication. These, with many rare and curious relics, prints, and engravings, have all perished. The pictures were not numerous, but of very decided merit. There were landscapes by Kensett, Brown, and Mignot ; fam- ily portraits by Healy; the original study of Webster's reply to Hayne, now in Faneuil Hall, Boston, in which were forty por- traits of distinguished Americans, many of them from life; a portrait of Webster, by Chester Harding, etc. The failure of Mr. Arnold to save any thing, was the result of a most determined effort to save every thing, and his too confident belief that he could succeed. Nor did this confidence seem to be unreasonable. His house, standing in the center of an open block, with a wide street and the Newberry block, with only one house, in front, and the Ogden block, with only one house, to the right, directly in the pathway of the flames, it is not surprising that he believed he could save his house. Be- sides, he had connections by hose with hydrants, both in front and rear of his house. Mrs. Arnold had placed what proved a better estimate upon the danger; and, calling up the family, and dressing little Alice, a child of eight years, she left the house and went to her daughter's (Mrs. Scudder), leaving Mr. PERSONAL EXPERIENCES. 257 A. and the remainder of the family consisting of an older daughter, a lad of thirteen, a school-girl of fifteen, and the servants to fight the battle with the flames. There was a sea of fire to the south and south-west; the wind Mew a perfect gale, carrying smoke and sparks, shingles, pieces of lumber and roof, directly over the house. Every thing was parched and dry as tinder. The leaves from the trees and shrubbery covered the ground. Mr. A. turned on the water to the fountains, to wet the ground and grass, and attached the hose to the hydrants. He stationed the servants on each side of the house, and others on the piazzas, and for an hour and a half perhaps two hours was able, by the utmost vigilance and exertion, to extinguish the flames as often as they caught. During all this time the fire was falling in torrents. There was literally a rain of fire. It caught in the dry leaves; it caught in the grass, in the barn, in the piazzas, and as often as it caught it was extinguished before it got any headway. When the barn first caught, the horses and the cow were re- moved to the lawn. The fight was successfully maintained until three o'clock in the morning. Every moment flakes of fire,falling upon dry wood, would be kindled by the high wind into a rapid blaze, and the next instant they would be extin- guished. Every moment the contest grew warmer and more desperate, until, by three o'clock, the defenders of the castle were becoming seriously exhausted. At the hour mentioned, young Arthur Arnold called to his father, "The barn and hay are on fire!" "The leaves are on fire on the east side!" said the gardener. " The front piazza is in a blaze ! " cried another. "The front greenhouse is in flames!" "The roof is on fire!" "The water has stopped!" was the last appalling announcement. " Now, for the first time," said Mr. A., " I gave up all hope of 22 . 258 CHICAGO AND THE GEEAT CONFLAGRATION. saving my home, and considered whether we could save any of its contents. My pictures, papers, and books could I save them?" An effort was made to cut down some portraits a landscape of Kensett Otsego Lake, by Mignot it was too late! Seizing a bundle of papers, Mr. Arnold gathered the children and serv- ants together, and, leading the terrified animals, they went forth from their so dearly-cherished home. But whither? They were surrounded by fire on three sides; to the south, west, and north raged the flames, making a wall of fire and smoke from the ground to the sky. Their only escape was eastward to the lake- shore. Still leading the horses and cow, they went onward to the beach. Here were gathered thousands of fugitives, hemmed in and imprisoned by the raging element. The Sands, from the Government Pier north to Lill's Pier, a distance of three- quarters of a mile, were covered with men, women, and chil- dren some half-clad, in every variety of dress, with the mot- ley collection of effects which they sought to save. Some had silver, some valuable papers, some pictures, carpets, beds, etc. One little child had her doll tenderly pressed in her arms; an old Irish woman was cherishing a grunting pig; a fat woman had two large pillows, as portly as herself. There was a singu- lar mixture of the awful, the ludicrous, and the pathetic. Beaching the water's edge, Mr. A. says he paused to exam- ine the situation and determine where was the least danger. South-west, toward the river, were millions of feet of lumber, many shanties and wooden structures yet unburned, but which must be consumed before there could be any abatement of the dan- ger. The air was full of cinders and smoke ; the wind blew the heated sand worse than any sirocco. Where was a place of refuge? W. B. Ogden had lately constructed a long pier north of and PERSONAL EXPERIENCES. 259 parallel with the old United States pier, which prolongs the left bank of the river out into the lake, and this had been filled with stone, but had not been planked over; hence it would not readily burn. It was a hard road to travel, but it seemed the safest place, and Mr. Arnold and his children worked their way far out upon this pier. With much difficulty the party crossed from the Ogden slip in a small row-boat and entered the light-house, where they, with Judge Goodrich, Mr. E. I. Tink- ham, and others, were hospitably received. The party remained prisoners in the light-house and on the pier on which it stood for several hours. The shipping in the river above was burning, the immense grain elevators of the Illinois Central and North-western Railroads were a mass of flames, and the pier itself, some distance up the river, was slowly burning toward the light-house. A large propeller, fastened to the dock a short distance up the river, took fire and burned. The danger was that as soon as the hawsers by which it was moored should be burned off, it would float down stream and set fire to the dock in the immediate vicinity of the light-house. Several propellers moved down near the mouth of the river, and took on board several hundred fugitives and steamed out into the lake. If the burning propeller should come down it would set fire to the pier, the light-house, and vast piles of lumber, which had escaped in consequence of being directly on shore and detached from the burning mass. A fire company was or- ganized of those on the pier, and with water dipped in pails from the river, the fire was kept at bay. But all felt relieved when the propeller went to the bottom. The party were still prisoners on an angle of sand, and the fire running along the north shore of the river. The river and the fire prevented an escape to the south. West and north the flames were still rag 260 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. ing with unabated fury. The party waited for hours, hoping the fire would subside. The day wore on noon passed one, two o'clock, and still it seemed impossible to escape to land. Mr. Arnold, scouting to the northward, found his gardener right where he had left him, sitting upon the horse, fur out in the lake, and holding on faithfully to the pony by its halter, and to the cow by her horns. The escape to the north was pro- nounced impracticable for the ladies. And all the while they were in great danger and great anxiety concerning the fate of the missing mother and child. Between three and four o'clock P. M., the tug " Clifford " steamed down the river, having escaped from the burning dis- trict, and tied up to the dock near the light-house. Could she return, taking the party up the river, through and Beyond the fire to the west side? The captain thought he could. The bridges at Rush, State, Clark, and Wells Streets had all burned, and their fragments had fallen into the river. .The great ware- houses, stores, elevators, and docks along the river were still burning, but the fury of the fire had exhausted itself. The party determined to go through this narrow channel to run the gaunt- let of the fire to a point outside of the burnt district. This was the most dangerous experience of the day. The tug might take fire herself her woodwork had been blistered by the heat as she came down. The engine might become unmanageable after she got inside the line of fire; or she might get entangled in the floating timbers and debris of the fallen bridges. However, the party determined to make the attempt. A full head of steam was gotten up, the hose was attached to the pumps, so that if the boat or the clothes of its passengers took fire they could be readily put out. The ladies and children were placed in the pilot-house, the windows shut, and the boat started the PERSONAL EXPERIENCES. 261 men crouching close to the deck in the shelter of the bulwarks. At the State Street bridge the pilot had to pick his way very carefully through a mass of debris, and the situation began to look exceedingly hazardous. But it was too late to turn back, and so the voyagers pushed on, shooting as rapidly as possible past th: hottest places, and slowing where the danger was from below. As they were passing State Street bridge the pumps gave .nit, and they now ran great risk from fire. Arthur's hat blew away, and his father covered his face and head with a handkerchief which he had dipped in the water. Finally they passed the Wells Street bridge, and were still unscathed. "Is not the worst over?" asked Mr. Arnold of the captain. " We are through, sir," was the answer. " We are safe, thank God ! " came from hearts and lips, as the boat emerged from the smoke into the clear, cool air outside the fire lines. Search for the missing ones was immediately commenced. Mr. Arnold spent over twenty-four hours in driving and wan- dering in pursuit of his wife now passing among the throng of refugees at Lincoln Park and peering into every grimy countenance now getting a clue, whether true or false, and dashing off by a train into a suburb now baffled entirely and compelled to commence the search entirely anew. Some time during the following afternoon his efforts were rewarded by learning that his wife and child were at the house of Judge Drummond, of the U. S. Circuit Court, at a suburb called Win- field ; and there, during the evening of Tuesday, the family were reunited and joined in thanks to God for their mutual de- liverance. We have given this sketch of a single family's experience in 262 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. this terrible ordeal, not because it is more thrilling than that of thousands of other families, but rather because it is a speci- men of the whole, and because Mr. Arnold is well known in the West. There were many homes in the North Division which, like this one, were noted for their exclusive elegance their aristocratic seclusion, one might say arid which gave the inhabitants of this quarter a just pride in their locality. The three residences mentioned in the present chapter the New- berry, the Ogden (Wm. B.), and the Arnold places, with the famous McCagg place, on North Clark Street, and one or two others, occupied territory which alone was worth at least a quarter of a million to each place, and this gave the proprietors some such prima facie title to aristocracy as landed estates do to their owners in England. They indicated at once that the occupant must possess a mine of wealth in the form of stores over-town, in order to maintain such homesteads in the face of constant offers of hundreds of dollars per foot of their street front. But they are all gone now, stores and giant elms together! Mr. McCagg, who was away in Europe at the time, lost, besides his mansion and its contents, which included many precious paintings and a library of rare works, one of his greenhouses, the finest in the "West. Mr. Perry H. Smith, the well known railroad manager and capitalist, lost a library valued at $50,000, and noted for the superb bindings of its volumes, many of which Mr. Smith had but just brought from Europe. CHAPTER VII. THE NIGHT AFTER THE FIRE. Flood and flame A hopeless sortie A ghostly bivouac Separation of fam- ilies Days and nights of suspense and anxiety Nothing to eat fire raged all day in the North Division, and nightfall -- of Monday found the thousands of fugitives in the places of refuge which they had first sought the open prairie to the north-west of the city, the cemetery and Lincoln Park at the north-east, and the beach and piers near the mouth of the river. Those in the last-named localities had suffered a great deal dur- ing the day from the advancing rigors and dangers of the heat. They were pent up in their uncomfortable prison by the wall of tire which still presented an impassable barrier. At times this approached so close as to drive the shrinking refugees far into the water, where they could keep their bodies submerged and their heads constantly drenched, as their only protection against the scorching air and shower of burning brands. This process was sometimes very dangerous, however,. for if the paniu on shore should become too great, the people farthest out in the lake many of them mothers with babes in their arms would be forced beyond their depth and drowned. On the piers, and on the shore of the basin, which is quite abrupt, this danger was very serious, especially at night; and it was reported that a number were drowned from this cause. (263) * 264 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. On the Sands, too, there were great numbers of animals, which Lad fled or been taken from their stables, and which constantly threatened to trample down the women and children, and greatly increased their terror. Nor were the four-footed beasts the only brutes that congre- gated on that unhappy beach. There were many of the vilest inhabitants of the city swarming there among their vermin- haunted bedding, which they had tugged in, with great ado, and they were storming the sensibilities of the gentler victims by their mingled curses and carousals for they had saved astonishing quantities of vile whisky, and many of them had become beastly drunk. Others were at the fighting stage, and made both night and day hideous with their bowlings, and threatenings, and obscene utterances. During the afternoon of Monday, the fire advancing into the collection of shanties which approaches the lake along the Sands, a sortie was organized by the men, with water in hats and all manner of improvised buckets, in the hope that the progress of the fiery wave might be stayed. As well attempt to beat back, with a puny broom, the breakers which sometimes come dashing in from the lake with almost earthquake force! The poor shanties were little and worthless enough, God knows; but the appetite of the flames was not yet appeased, and it de- manded more. Therefore the shanties went into the monster's maw, along with all the noble blocks and magnificent homes that had gone before; and the men retreated, exhausted, to the brink of the lake. Hunger had, by this time, added its terrors to those of ex- posure, fear of death, and anxiety for missing relatives and friends. None of the fugitives had tasted food since early on Sunday evening, and the most of them had to fast until some THE NIGHT AFTER THE FIRE. 265 time on Tuesday ; so that the night of Monday, although less turbulent and exciting than that of Sunday, was one of greater suffering after all ; suffering which the victims, exhausted by hunger, blistered with heat, and chilled by water, still in terrible suspense about missing ones, and deprived of the unusual stim- ulus of the sudden onset of the night before indeed weakened by the reaction of that excitement, as well as by the other causes mentioned were but poorly able to bear. From all these horrors there was no avenue of escape, except for the few who were able to reach and board a tug or propeller, and find rest and refuge on the capacious bosom of the lake. The outlet to the west or north being shut off by fire, and that to the south by water, the prisoners had only to stand their ground, keep their vitality aglow as best they could, and trust to God " to deliver them from the fiery furnace." At Lincoln Park and the old cemetery to the south of it, and along the Lake-shore Drive, the number of refugees was much greater and their sufferings much less. They were not impris- oned by the hostile elements; they were not threatened with death. They had merely lost all their property even being compelled to see the household gods and valuables which they had moved into the cemetery or the park burn up before their eyes. They had only to lament the probable fate of a missing father or brother, or to hope against hope for his safe return. As to physical condition, they were simply blinded by smoke, weakened by hunger, and choking with thirst at every gland and pore that was all. So these Lincoln Park and cemetery victims might be pronounced very comfortably off! The scene in the cemetery was a very weird one, as may be imagined. It is an old burial-ground, from which many of the bodies had been removed, leaving some old headstones scattered 23 266 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. about, and many, with their mounds, still standing among the thick undergrowth of grass and small oak trees. By nightfall on Monday there could not have been less than thirty thousand men, women, and children, huddled within this ghostly inclosure* Some had sat here all day, seeing the devilish flame? advance from street to street, from mile to mile, and others now rushed in breathless, dragging a trunk, or carrying some bundle, piece of furniture, or household utensil. Almost all the new-comers ran rapidly about, crying for a brother, sister, child, or friend. As twilight became dusk, and dusk reddened into the mock daylight furnished by the conflagration, the assembled thou- sands, tired of searching for friends, disconsolately sought rest- ing-places for the night among the grass-grown graves. To quote the description of a writer in the World: " The eyes of all looked as if they suffered from ophthalmia black and red with smoke and cinders till they were almost blind. There were piles of every sort of furniture that ever came to the city. There were pails, bureaus, chairs, tables, trunks, tubs, clocks, great plate mirrors leaning against the trees and flashing back the illumination, a few bedsteads in need of reconstruction, clothes in little piles, carpets, pictures, rolls of cloth here and there, new shoes on strings, and suspicious-looking boxes that had been 'saved' from jewelry stores by the wrong man. Here is a group of girls wailing in a poor, heart-broken way for their mother their sick mother whom they left in a burning bed- room. Here is a refined and handsome lady, all alone, with a bundle of dresses on her right arm, and a caster laid by her side on the ground. Here is a strong, able-bodied man, recogniza- ble as a banker/ sitting sadly on a grave, with his hat over his aching eyes, gazing thoughtfully into a frying-pan which he holds in his hand. Every- where are rushing crowds, exclama- THE NIGHT AFTER THE FIRE. 267 (ions, salutations of woe in every language under heaven, and weeping aloud by those who have lost their friends and will not be comforted. Here conies a young man who exhibits an ice- pitcher, and laughingly declares that it is all he possesses in the world. There are no strangers here. There are no ceremonies. The cement of a kindred sorrow has done its work. Every body speaks freely to any body, and even the churl finds his human side and turns it genially toward us. "Meantime the roaring ocean of flame nears us. It bom- bards even this sacred necropolis with its hellish missiles. Every-where among the dead leaves fall the blazing embers. The torches alight head first upon the hollow graves. Groups dodge and run, and here and there a fire is kindled by the brands, and there is a struggle to stamp it out. The fire howls up to heaven, and bends and bows over the cemetery like an iris of doom. The park is lighted up as by a million fire-bal- loons, sailing over in endless succession. Now the dead-house is afire, and a shudder of horror runs through the multitude. It defies the extinguishers. It burns until it is consumed. But it was, happily, tenantless. At the head of the graves stands usually a cheap pine head-board, and these in many instances are burned up, and in a few cases the fire burrows down into the peaceful tenement beneath, for the drought has been so se- vere that the very soil is combustible. At last the raging sea sweeps by to the northward, following the line of houses, and the most reckless or courageous of these elfin junketers lie down upon the graves to sleep the queerest camp that ever gathered under heaven. At two o'clock came the blessed rain, and the multitude shivered with chill while they welcomed it. It was a dreadful night in the cemetery. A muffled moan of discomfort went through it from night to morning, and hundreds doubtless 268 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. contracted fatal diseases in the exposure. It was a night not to forget in this world or the next a night in which the demon of fire invaded the realm of the quiet angel of death." The scene on the prairie to the westward of the city, whither t\e fugitives had been thronging all through Sunday night and Monday, was much the same, minus some of the weird features. There was the same contrast of classes Mr. McCormick, the millionaire of the reaper trade, and other north-side nabobs, herding promiscuously with the humblest laborer, the lowest vagabond, and the meanest harlot. There was the same com- munity of suffering, which brought them all to the level of weak mortals, humbled before a power whose superiority, how- ever they might have ignored it heretofore, they must now ac- knowledge. There was the same terrible suspense about absent ones, whose fate, through many, many hours, was unknown to those who held them most dear. This general separation of families may at first seem extra- ordinary; but it will be recollected that the onset of the fire was very rapid, and that it soon had the city divided in twain by an impassable stream or wave of flame; that, in the attempt to save property, which the instincts of all prompted, the weaker ones would be consigned to some place of supposed safety, while the stronger went back to wrestle with the rapacious monster for some of the precious possessions on which he had fixed his levy ; and that in this attempt so rapidly did the foe advance separation was almost inevitable. It is also to be noted that the flight, on this occasion, was in all directions the thorough- fares being glutted not only with the stream of north-side fu- gitives, but with the vast throng which, until the bridges were burned, came pouring over from the south side, and also with the thousands who rushed in from the west, either as idle spec- THE NIGHT AFTER THE FIRE. 269 tutors or to help in the rescue of friends whom they hoped to reach. Under these circumstances, it is not to be. wondered at that hundreds perished in the flames; that almost every family became separated, and that each straying member was racked with the tortures of a terrible anxiety concerning the fate of the missing ones. Thus passed the long and weary hours of Monday night over a hundred thousand houseless heads. CHAPTER VIII. THE DEATH ROLL. Fatalities of the fire How brave men met their death A fatal leap A neighborhood swallowed up by flames Scene at the Morgue. ri^HE loss of life in this conflagration was less than would -*- have been predicted in view of the extent and rapidity of the burning. The exact number will never be ascertained. The destruction was in many districts so complete that no ves- tige of a human body or skeleton would be discernible among the debris of consumed buildings; and in other cases the exca- vation and rebuilding went on in such a hurry that no report would be made, if indeed notice was taken by the workmen, of bones found. Perhaps twenty or thirty persons were known to have perished, and were reported in the first issue of the news- papers. The coroner found, during the fortnight following the I fire, the remains of one hundred and seven persons, only a very few of which were identified. The fire in the West Division resulted, so far as is known, in the death of but two persons, Jacob Wolf, an old man, who was overtaken in his house on Harrison Street, near Jefferson, and Mary Dealm, who perished on Jackson Street, near Clin- ton. In the south section of the city it was reported that a group of six men, stationed on the roof of a Madison Street store to fight fire, were carried down with the building and (270) THE DEATH ROLL. 271 ^wallowed up by the flames; also that five men in a cart, passing by one of the tall dry goods stores, were killed by falling walls; but we can find no confirmation of these statements in the coro- ner's records. Several deaths in this quarter of the city are, how- ever, well authenticated. One of the victims was John McDevitt, the noted billiard champion, who was wandering about, intoxi- cated, in the neighborhood of the post-office, and who perished, a victim to his dissolute habits. Samuel Shawcross, a mer- chant tailor who did business on Washington Street, and who kept a bachelor's room, was wakened only when surrounded by flames. He rushed, half dressed, toward his shop, and while passing through the alley by Field & Leiter's immense store, was crushed by the falling walls' of that building. An- other victim was Henry J. Ullmann, a banker, who rushed into his office to save a large quantity of coin and currency, and who never came out alive ; though some of his friends feel sure that he did escape and was struck down upon the street by a ruffian, who escaped with his booty. There were four other dead bodies recognized in the South Division of the city two of them of notorious cracksmen who were trying to rifle a store on South Water Street. Another was that of H. P. Dewey, an insurance agent, who perished in an attempt to es- cape from a fourth story window, at No. 125 Dearborn Street. The scene was witnessed by hundreds of people, including one of the editors of the Tribune^ who thus describes it : " While Madison Street, west of Dearborn, and the west side of Dearborm were all ablaze, the spectators saw a lurid light appear in the rear windows of Speed's Block. Presently a man, who had apparently taken time to dress himself leisurely, ap- * Mr. Sydney Howard Gay. 272 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. . peared on the extension built up to the second story of two of the stores. He coolly looked down the thirty feet between him and the ground, while the excited crowd first cried jump! and then some of them more considerately looked for a ladder. A long plank was presently found, and answered the same as a ladder, and was placed at once against the building, down which the man soon after slid. But while those preparations were going on there suddenly appeared another man at a fourth story window of the building below, which had no projection, but was flush from the top to the ground four stories and a basement. His escape by the stairway was evidently cut off, and he looked despairingly down the fifty feet between him and the ground. The crowd grew almost frantic at the sight, for it was only a choice of death before him by fire or by being crushed to death by the fall. Senseless cries of jump! jump! went up from the crowd senseless but full of sympathy, for the sight was absolutely agonizing. Then for a minute or two he disappeared; perhaps even less, but it seemed so long a time that the supposition was that he had fallen, suffocated with the smoke and heat. But no; he appears again. First he throws out a bed ; then some bed-clothes, apparently ; why, probably even he does not know. Again he looks down the dead, sheer wall of fifty feet below him. He hesitates, and well he may, as he turns again and looks behind him. Then he mounts to the window-sill. His whole form appears, naked to the shirt, and his white limbs gleam against the dark wall in the bright light as he swings himself below the window. Somehow how none can tell he drops and catches upon the top of the windows b^low him, of the third story. He stoops and drops again, and seizes the frame with his hands, and his gleaming body once more straightens and hangs prone downward, and then drops in- THE DEATH ROLL. 273 etantly and accurately upon the window-sill of the third story. A shout more of joy than applause goes up from the breathless crowd, and those who had turned away their heads, not bearing to look upon him as he seemed about to drop to sudden and certain death, glanced up at him once more, with a ray of hope, at this daring and skillful feat. Into this window he crept to look, probably, for a stairway, but appeared again pres- ently, for here only was the only avenue of escape, desperate and hopeless as it was. Once more he dropped, his body hang- ing by his hands. The crow r ed screamed, and waved to him to swing himself over the projection from which the other man had just been rescued. He tried to do this, and vibrated like a pendulum from side to side, but could not reach far enough to throw himself upon its roof. Then he hung by one hand and looked down ; raising the other hand he took a fresh hold and swung from side to side once more to reach the roof. In vain ; again he hung motionless by one hand, and slowly turned his head over his shoulder and gazed into the abyss below him. Then, gathering himself up, he let go his hold, and for a second a gleam of white shot down full forty feet to the foundation of the basement. Of course it killed him. He was taken to a drug store close by, and died in ten minutes." It was in the North Division, however, that the fatalities were the most numerous and shocking. There, -especially in the quarter adjoining the river and north of Chicago Avenue, which was thickly covered with the cottages of the poor, the flames ran along as fast as a man could walk, and, what was worse, was constantly leaping to new points, both due forward and laterally, and propagating itself faster than its victims could possibly flee before it, even if they had not attempted to save any of their goods. It was in this way that the monster 274 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. devoured hundreds with his fiery breath. Between Townsend Street and Wesson, and within three blocks of Chicago Avenue, on an area of not more than forty acres, there were found the bodies of forty-five poor creatures, none of which were recog- nizable, but which were undoubtedly the German and Scandi- navian people inhabiting that quarter. The rapidity of the flames alone, however, would not have caused the destruction of so many lives, but for the combination of other circum- stances which worked fatally. There was a general hegira across all the bridges leading to the west side. Chicago Av- enue was the best of the thoroughfares tending in this direction. Through this the people poured like the mountain torrent through its too narrow gorge. All at once, when the fiercest blasts of the monster furnace had begun to sweep through this section with heat which threatened death to thousands, it was discovered that the bridge was for the time impassable. The people were rushing, tumbling, crowding, storming toward it in terribly irresistible numbers. Those who were nearest the burning bridge could not turn back because of the pressure of the frantic multitude. They attempted to make a stand, by passing along the word to beat back the on-surging mass of men, and women, and horses, and wagons. But the task was simply impossible, as at the rearmost of the crowd were now fairly lashed by the flames and could not stop. Whether the foremost hundreds would or not, they were forced to turn to the northward and attempt to escape through the burning streets to North Avenue, half a mile further north, where was another bridge. Into the vortex of flame they plunge may Heaven send them guidance through it ! Out from that vortex of flame some two-score of them never emerge. May Heaven send sweet mercy to their souls ! Alas ! They knew THE DEATH ROLL. 275 not that those streets, or lanes, had no outlet for some three hundred yards or more. This exceptional case pf great mortality, caused by people being pent up in "no thoroughfares," serves to illustrate how lives were saved in other cases by the fact that nearly every street in Chicago is a thoroughfare; that they are straight and level; and that bridges occur at frequent intervals. Had it l>een otherwise and the fire stretched, as it did, over three miles, as the streets run, in barely six hours, the poor citizens would have been mown down by thousands. One noble fellow, Johnny Beart, perished at Lill's Brewery while attempting to rescue the horses which he had been wont to drive. Mrs. Inness, a Scotch lady, mother of two Lake Street merchants, who, and a sister, made up the family, was killed by a falling wall, at Indiana and Erie Streets, after becoming separated from her family and lost in the smoke. One Andrew Monahan, an old constable, died on North Mar- ket Street, from suffocation. Other poor wretches, who had evidently been sick or intoxicated, died on the very door-step, or the sidewalk, while trying to crawl into the open air. Others, who found themselves stifled with the hot breath of the flames, insanely sought refuge in confined places. One such was found dead in a water pipe lying on the ground near the water- works. In one house on Bremer Street, eight bodies were found; evidently a whole family had died to- gether. Something remarkable was the devotion to property of ten blacksmiths who assembed at the shop at which they worked, on Chicago Avenue, broke in the door, rushed in for their tools, and were all crushed by falling walls. Others died but not many, as was at first reported and widely be- lieved on the prairie to the westward, from the effects of the 276 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. exposure which they had undergone in the fire. Maria Bur- gess, a woman of the town, died two days afterward from ex- posure. Indeed, the cases of death resulting from exposure, as well as those of death produced indirectly by the fire, like that of W. E. Longworth, a carpenter, who committed suicide on. account of the ruin of his property, are numerous, but are not capable of being collated. The total number of deaths caused by the fire is estimated by Coroner Stephens and Dr. Ben. C. Miller, county physician, at near three hundred. This does not include still-born chil- dren. The amount of illness, and the seeds of disease, perma- nent or temporary, traceable to the fire and the exposure, ex- citement, etc., incident to it, can not, of course, be computed; but it is worthy of remark that some half dozen cases of insan- ity, growing out of the dreadful event, have come under the notice of the county physician. The dead bodies were gathered up as soon as possible by the coroner and given interment at the county burying-ground. That officer brought in, on the second day after the fire, some seventy bodies, or fragments of bodies, which were placed in an extemporized morgue and exposed to the view of such of the public as chose to see the horrid sight. Over three thousand persons availed themselves of the privilege, on that day, all in the hope, or rather the dread, of being able to recognize the remains of some missing friend. The sight of the charred and shapeless fragments was as loathsome as that of the anxious, wretched throng was heart-rending. A few, and only a few, of the fragments were recognized; and so the mourners of miss- ing ones went back to their places of temporary shelter, to hope against hope, and to continue the search for that which, all the while, they dreaded most bitterly to find. CHAPTER IX. THE DESOLATION COMPLETED. The day after the fire A glimpse at the feeling in the country A view at daybreak Chicago's ghost. MONDAY was not a day of blank dismay only. There was a prompt manifestation of vitality in the city gov- ernment, which showed itself in several practical ways. First, the Mayor telegraphed to neighboring cities for aid; for fire- engines to help stay the ravages of the fire, and for bread to feed the many thousand hungry and destitute. He also got together a council of the city officers, consisting of hinKelf, the Comptroller, and the President of the Police Commissioners, who jointly signed a proclamation for the purpose of restoring confidence, and organizing measures for relief and protection. The head-quarters of the city government were fixed at a church, nearly two miles to the west of the ruined City Hall, and the authorities immediately commenced to act as the emer- gency required. Business men were acting, too, on their own individual re- sponsibility. Some of them had engaged new quarters before the roofs of their old establishments had fallen in. It will not do tc say that many of them ordered goods by telegraph on that day, for, in the first place, the telegraph wires and machinery mostly went with the rest so that people were lx?sieging the (277) 278 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. out-of-town offices all day in vain to transmit news of their own safety to distant friends; and, in the next place, the dire- ful consequences of the conflagration upon the business credit of the city were at first overestimated, at home as well as at the East. Hence the most that could be done in the way of busi- ness on that day was for some heads of houses to dash into the surviving district the west side or the extreme south and en- gage, at a smart bonus, such quarters as they could find for the continuation of their business. It was impossible to make visits to the ruins on Monday, on account of the great heat and the still tumbling walls. All travel between the east and west sides of the river was done through Twelfth Street, which thus became gorged with vehi- cles and pedestrians. All railroad trains on the south side stopped at Twenty-second Street, two miles south of their usual terminus. There was no gathering together of the people on this day, for there was nowhere to gather. Even the loafing power of the city was staggered for the time. There was no running f the street-railroad cars, or other of the signs of life which usually are visible, even on Sabbaths and holidays. In short, the day seemed a dies non a day burnt out of the his- tory of the city. This was the aspect of the case in the South Division of the city. That in the north, where the flames were still raging with fury, has already been described. At night, all who had beds to lie in or roofs to shelter them, lay down and slept heavily, as was necessary to recuperate them from the exhaust- ing experiences of the past twenty hours, and to prepare them for the duties of the morrow the raising of the new Chicago out of the chaos in which all was now enwrapped. A citizen of Chicago, who was so unfortunate as to miss see- THE DESOLATION COMPLETED. 279 ing the terribly grand spectacle of the fire, thus describes for us his impressions on reentering the city on Tuesday morning, after the fatal Monday : " I was spending a few days at Burlington, Wisconsin, to re- cruit my health. This occupation was of course superseded by the news of Monday morning; for with Chicago burned, no Chicago man could afford to be on the sick list any longer. The village mentioned is off on a cross-road, having very poor connections with Chicago; yet it did not take fifteen minutes to inflame the people with the most intense excitement over the great disaster. The panic set in about eleven o'clock in the forenoon, and during the rest of the day the post-office and es- pecially the telegraph office were thronged with persons eager to communicate with relatives in the city, and utterly unable lo do so. I could not get a train to Chicago that day, so I went to Milwaukee, where communication with the center of interest would be easier. At Racine, boarding the train from Chicago, I found it doubled in length, and filled with refugees from the doomed city at least a thousand of them plunged in all de- grees of despondency, and manifesting all degrees of hardship and privation. From some of these I learned particulars of the conflagration. At Milwaukee we were met at the depot by what seemed to be the entire population of the town come to hear the latest news, or tender their hospitality to any friends who might be on board the train. They told me there had been no business transacted in the city since the news of the fire came in the forenoon. Every body was carrying water to his house- top, and watching for the extras which the newspaper offices were issuing nervously every half-hour. "Taking a night train, I reached Chicago at daybreak. Drawing aside the curtain of my berth in the sleeping-car, I 280 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. gazed upon the scene as we passed along by the remains of the North Division. I will confess it, I was at that moment in a mood for sight-seeing. But it was soon subdued, I assure you, by the scenes upon which I gazed. For half a mile along the North Branch, there was little visible but the flames and smoke of objects still burning. The way in which the devouring ele- ment was left to revel at will in factories, warehouses, and stores of fuel, even along the river's bank, told but too plainly how complete had been its victory over every capability of resistance. There had been copious showers during the night, and the gale had died away; yet the fire seemed superior to all these, as well as all human obstacles, and continued its work unconcerned. But it burned languidly, and tossed off racks and sprays of flame in a wanton way, as if the monster had glutted himself on human blood and human handiwork, and was now dawdling: 7 O with the relics of his feast, like a sated and stupefied glutton. And the ribs of the burning buildings showed against the red flame like the naked bones of the monster's victims. "Alighting from the car, I took my way, in the gray dawn, through the damp and deserted streets. The rain was over, but the leaden clouds added a gloom to the already gloomy scene. To relieve this gloom there was, if I chose to accept it, the bright glow of a mile of burning coal a mountain-range of flame along the river containing fuel enough to have made cheerful ten thousand households through all the long, cold winter. Alas! the waste and the want! It seemed to me at that moment as if I should never enjoy again the ruddy glow of an evening fire. I passed down Canal Street a forlorn sort of thoroughfare, at best a relic of the old Chicago, upon which we had all come to look with contempt. To the left was the worthless wreck of the new Chicago of all which had begotten THE DESOLATION COMPLETED. 281 ihis pride, and this contempt for the ' day of small things.' Its black, bleak desolation, its skeleton streets, its sha'peless masses of brick and mortar, its gaunt and jagged spires, only remnants of walls but yesterday so proud and stately, stared at me from every point. "The turbid river was encumbered with masses of charred wood, with black hulks of vessels, and skeletons of fallen bridges. One or two propellers were hugging the hither shore, like white doves frightened from their nests, and shrinking to- ward what semblance of cover offered itself, if, perchance, it might shelter them from the fell pursuer. "The hour was early, and so exhausted exhausted or par- alyzed had the people apparently become by their excitement and suffering, that the streets were almost utterly deserted. I was thus left alone with these pitiful ruins; and the intensity of the emotion which they excited was doubtless greatly en- hanced by the circumstance. There had been a few men at a saloon on the way, evidently firemen and watchmen, who had availed themselves of the approach of daylight to refresh them- selves with a dismal sort of oarouse; but I had left these be- hind, and was alone with the ruins. "ALONE WITH THE GHOST OF CHICAGO ! " It stared at me till I was fain to hide it from my eyes, and to rush on more rapidly. My bosom was heaving with an un- wonted emotion ; my eyes were filling, and my throat begin- ning to tingle with a feeling to which I have been of late years a stranger. " Coming upon Adams Street, where the ruins of an iron via- v duct were still standing, I resolved to look the situation in the face. The structure, though tottering, bore my weight, and I pushed on to its further end. The ruins of the river bridge lay 24 282 CHICAGO AND THE GKEAT CONFLAGRATION. in the stream beneath me. The town, or what had been the town, lay prostrate -beyond. It was with the greatest difficulty tliat I could trace any semblance by which the various landmarks of Chicago could be identified. But for the still erect walls of the Court-house, Post-office, and Tribune building, this "would have been utterly impossible. The Chamber of Commerce, the Sherman House, the elegant stores of State Street, the Palmer House, the Opera-house, the new palaces of marble to the south of the Post-office -all were leveled in the dust, or shattered into unrecognizable fragments. The grand Pacific Hotel, which I had been accustomed to gaze on with pride each morning from this precise point of view, was a jagged and crumbling ruin beautiful still, but a hopeless ruin nothing more. My idols and I now realized to what an unwise extent I had made them my idols were now shattered and scattered at my feet. My interests were in some, but I had loved them all, and now I mourned them all equally. "The scene of Sunday night must have been terrible, but it could not, with all its horrors, have been so affecting to the tender emotions as this. Then there were flames roaring and devouring, men cursing and striving, noble hearts risking them- selves to save others, brutes of men plundering and extorting, women and children fleeing and screaming, and every thing to excite the mind and stimulate the nerves. Here every thing tended to subdue and overcome one. Here I saw not a few bodies threatened with sudden destruction; I saw the coined product of the mind, the muscle, the flesh and bones, the hopes and ambitions of a hundred thousand fellow-beings, expended through twenty years, all swept into oblivion. There was more life represented in those miles of streets, now prostrated, than in all that surging, shrieking throng of Sunday night; and here THE DESOLATION COMPLETED. 283 it was all all confronting me, like a fleshless, lifeless ghost, and holding up to me, in token of distress to me alone its spectral hands; for such seemed the gaunt obelisks which the demon had left as monuments of his rage, along with the yel- low and mephitic flames which flickered from the coal-heaps among the ruins, as if they were traces of the sulphurous domain from which the destroyer had come. "The mute appeal, the solitude, the hour, all together so Dvercame my feelings, that I leaned against a column of the bridge, and gave way to tears wept as I had not supposed I could do, by whatsoever moved. "From this condition of feeling I was aroused by the ap- proach of a young man, who, though of rather fine mien in most respects, bore that unkempt, unshaven, unwashed appear- ance which I afterward found to characterize the whole popula- tion of the city for the week following the fire. He came with a small flask to procure water from the river. He was a stranger to me, but somehow he seemed like a brother, so close did the great ordeal bring men together. We talked considerably of the details of the conflagration. I remarked upon the fearful danger to the remainder of the city, resulting from a total fail- ure of the water supply/ " ' Oh,' he said, cheerfully, ' we '11 have water again in a few days. We'll be all right again soon.' " ' Yes,' I echoed, though mechanically, ( we '11 be all right again soon/ "And the sun shone out at that moment from a rift in the clouds, at the point where the cloudy arch dipped into Lake Michigan, diffusing a rosy light and warmth, as if in confirma- tion of our cheerful prophesyings. His brightness seemed to foreshadow the future glory of Chicago quite as plainly as the 284 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. paling lamps behind us had suggested the faded luster of her past. And with this my Chicago buoyancy came back, and I regained such a flow of spirits that it was not for any mere purpose of keeping my courage up that I whistled all the way past a huge stack of coffins, which some enterprising under- taker had saved from the ruins in a capacious wain and left to embellish the street which led to my home." CHAPTER X. - THE LOSSES BY THE FIRE. Property destroyed Can land burn up? Values of business blocks, hotels, and other prominent buildings Produce and merchandise destroyed Real estate as affected by the fire Uninsurable losses Commerce and manufactures The effect on business The grand total. AMID such a general wreck, th'e attempt to gather correct statistics of the losses entailed by the great conflagration, may well seem a hopeless one. So many records were de- stroyed ; so many people driven from the city, who could alone give accurate information on some essential point; such a uni- versal scattering and destruction among those who remained, that it is practically impossible to cover every item in the im-* mense aggregate of loss. We essay the task with diffidence, notwithstanding the fact that we have taken all possible pains in the investigation of losses. The following statements are probably very near the truth in the aggregate made up of details obtained by per- sonal inquiry from many hundreds of the parties most inter- ested in the sad exhibit. The limiting lines of the area swept by the flames have been already indicated, and the position of the burnt district will be easily understood by a glance at the accompanying map. In the West Division about 194 acres were burned over, (285) 286 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. including 16 acres swept by the fire of the previous evening. This district contained several lumber-yards and planing-mills, the Union Depot of the St. Louis and Pittsburg & Fort Wayne Railroads, with a few minor hotels and factories, several board- ing-houses, and a host of saloons. The buildings burned about 500 in number were nearly all frame structures, and not of much value, but were closely packed together. About 2250 persons were rendered homeless in this division. In the South Division the burned area comprised about 460 acres. The southern boundary line was a diagonal, running, from the corner of Michigan Avenue and Congress Street, west-south-west to the intersection of Fifth Avenue (Wells) and Polk Street. On the other three sides the bounding lines were the lake and the river only one block (the Lind) being left in all that area. This district contained the great majority of the most expensive structures in the city, all the wholesale stores, all the newspaper offices, all the principal banks, and insurance and law offices, many coal-yards, nearly all the hotels, and many factories, the Court-house, Custom-house, Chamber of Commerce, etc. as stated more at length in our chapter descriptive of Chi- cago in 1871. The number of buildings destroyed in this division was about 3650, which included 1600 stores, 28 hotels, and 60 manufacturing establishments. About 21,800 persons were ren- dered homeless, very many of whom were residents in the upper stories of the palatial structures devoted, below, to commerce. There were, however, many poer families, and a great many hu- man rats, resident in the western part of this territory. In the North Division the devastation was the most wide- spread, fully 1450 acres being burned over, out of the 2533 acres in that division. And even this statement fails to convey an idea of the wholesale destruction wrought there, because the THE LOSSES BY THE FIRE. 287 territory unburned was unoccupied. Had there been any ex- cept widely-scattered structures in the unburned portion, they, too, would have been destroyed, as the fire licked up all in its path, and paused only when there was no more food whereon to whet its insatiable appetite. Of the 13,800 buildings in that division, not more than 500 were left standing, leaving 13,300 in ruins, and rendering 74,450 persons homeless. The build- ings burned included more than 600 stores and 100 manufac- turing establishments, the latter being principally grouped in the south-western part of this division. That part next the lake, as far north as Whiting Street, was occupied by first-class residences, of which only one was left standing that of Mahlon D. Ogden. On Chicago Avenue was the Water- works, and this was the initial point of a line of breweries that stretched out almost to the cemetery. The river banks were piled high with lumber and coal, which was all destroyed, except a portion near the bend of the river, at Kinzie Street. The space between the burned district and the river, to the westward, contained but little improved property. Lincoln Park lay to the north- ward, on the lake-shore. The fire burned up the southern part of this park the old City Cemetery but left the improved part untouched, except a portion of the fencing. One of the saddest among the many sad scenes that met the eye after the conflagration had done its work, was tha.t in the old cemetery the flames had even made havoc among the dead, burning down the wooden monuments, and shattering stone vaults to fragments, leaving exposed many scores of the remnants of mor- tality that had smoldered for years in oblivion. The total area burned over in the city, including streets, was 2100 acres, or very nearly 3 square miles. The number of buildings destroyed was 17,450; of persons rendered homeless, 288 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. 98,500. Of the latter, more than 250 paid the last debt of na- ture amid the carnage fell victims to the Moloch of our mod- ern civilization. To give a statement of individual losses would be to publish a directory, which no one would read. Instead of this we pro- pose to give a synopsis of the principal losses, in buildings, produce, merchandise, other personal property, on churches and schools, public improvements, etc., with the effects of the ca- tastrophe on the pecuniary values of the property untouched by the fire. Before tabulating, "we may premise that the de- preciation in the price of the real estate in the city is estimated by the most careful judges to average fully thirty per cent. Several sales in the burned district in the South Division were made immediately after the fire, at a reduction of about eighteen per cent, from previous prices. Since then a reaction has set in, and real estate in that district has sold at nearly previous prices. Property situated directly south and west of that area has slightly increased in selling value, owing to the enhanced demand for business purposes. But in the North Division, and in the boulevard regions of the West Division, prices have fallen not less than fifty per cent., and not far from thirty per cent, on the south side, in the suburban districts. The following are approximate estimates of the values of seventy-nine principal business blocks, exclusive of their con- tents. In the preparation of this table we have received valuable assistance from C. N. Holden, Esq., City Tax Com- missioner, and Assessor W. B. H. Gray. Of course the value of the land is not included : Arcade, Clark, near Madison, $75,000 Berlin, Monroe and State, . ... 15,000 Boone's, Lasalle, near Washington, . . . . . 15,000 THE LOSSES BY THE FIRE. 289 Bowen's, etc., Randolph, near Michigan Avenue, Bryan, Lasalle and Monroe, ..... Burch's, Lake, near Wabash, ..... Calhoun, Clark, near Madison, . . . Chicago Mutual Life Ins., Fifth Avenue, near Washington, Cubb's, Lake and Michigan, . . . . . Commercial, Lasalle and Lake ..... Commercial Ins. Co., Washington, near Lasalle, Crosby's, State, near Washington, .... De Haven, Dearborn, near Quincy, .... Depository, Randolph, near Lasalle, .... Dickey's, Dearborn and Lake, ..... Dole's, South Water and Clark, . . . -. . Drake & Farwell, Wabash and Washington, Ewing, Clark, near Kinzie, Exchange Bank, Lake and Clark, .... Fullerton, Washington and Dearborn, .... Garrett, Randolph and State, Honore, Dearborn, near Monroe (2), .... Keep's, Clark, near Madison, . . . . Kent's, Monroe, near Lasalle, ..... King's, Washington and Dearborn, .... Larmon, Clark and Washington, .... Lincoln, Lake and Franklin, . . . . . Link's, Ifike and Lasalle, Lloyd's, Randolph and Wells, Lombard, Monroe and Custom-house Place, . . . Loomis, Clark and South Water, ..... McCormick's, Lake and Michigan Avenue, McCormick's, Randolph and Dearborn, McCormick's Reaper Factory, near Rush Street bridge, Magie's, Lasalle and Randolph, . Major's, Madison and Lasalle, ..... Marine Bank, Lake and Lasalle, .... Masonic, Dearborn, near Washington, .... Mechanic's, Washington, near Lasalle, . . 25 $200,000 250,000 120,000 30,000 30,000 180,000 50,000 40,000 75,000 35,000 80,000 50,000 30,000 400,000 75,000 80,000 60,000 25,000 500,000 65,000 55,000 30,000 25,000 30,000 60,000 100,000 200,000 30,000 180,000 100,000 640,000 50,000 150,000 75,000 50,000 50,000 290 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. Mercantile, Lasalle, near "Washington, .... $100,000 Merchants' Ins. Co., Washington and Lasalle, . . . 200,000 Monroe, Clark and Monroe, 60,000 Morrison, Clark, near Monroe, 100,000 Morrison, Clark, near Washington, 40,000 Newberry, Wells and Kinzie, . . . f * 50,000 Norton, South Water, near Fifth Avenue, .... 25,OOC Newhouse, South Water, near Fifth Avenue, . . 60,000 Oriental, Lasalle, near Washington, 140,000 Otis, Madison and Lasalle, 100,000 Palmer's, State and Washington, ..... 175,000 Phoenix, Lasalle, near Randolph, 40,000 Pomeroy's, South Water, near Lasalle, . . . . 30,000 Pope's, Madison, near Clark (2), 160,000 Portland, Dearborn and Washington, 1 . 100,000 Purple's, Clark and Ontario, 100,000 Raymond's, State and Madison, 100,000 Republic Life Ins., Lasalle and Arcade Court, . . . 350,000 Reynolds', Dearborn and Madison, 150,000 Rice's, Dearborn, near Randolph, 100,000 Scammon, Randolph and Michigan Avenue, . . . 130,000 Shepard's, Dearborn, near Monroe, 80,000 Smith & Nixon's, Washington and Clark, .... 200,000 Speed's, Dearborn, near Madison, 50.000 Steele's, Lasalle and South Water, . . . . . 60,000 Stone's, Madison, near Lasalle, 30,000 Turner's, State and Kinzie, 50,000 Tyler's, Lasalle, near South Water, 55,000 Uhlich's, Clark, near Kinzie, .. . . . . . 55,000 Union, Lasalle and Washington, . . . . ' . 120,000 Volk's, Washington, near Franklin, 15,000 Walker's, Dearborn, near Couch Place, : 60,000 Wicker's, State and South Water, . " . . . . 60,000 Wright's, State and Kinzie, 30,000 Lill's Brewery 150,000 Sand's Ale Brewing Go's. Establishment, .... 100,000 THE LOSSES BY THE FIEE. 291 Illinois State Savings, $75,0000 First National Bank, ....... 160,0000 City National Bank, 50.000 Total of 79 blocks, without contents, .... $8,015,000 Public Buildings, etc. Custom-house and Post-office, $650,- 000 (money in do., $2,130,000); Court-house, $1,100,000- Chamber of Commerce (2), $284,000; Armory, $25,000; Huron Street Police Station, $14,000; Larrabee Street Police Station, $22,000; Gas-works, $50,000; Water-works (parti- ally), $200,000; Long John Engine-house, $14,000; J. B. Rice do., $7,000; A. C. Coventry do., $7,000; A. D. Tits- worth do., $8,000; Fred. Gund do., $14,000; Hook and Ladder buildings, $10,800; machinery of Fire Department, $26,550; battery of artillery, $10,000; 800 muskets, $10,- 400; eight bridges, $200,000; lamp-posts, $20,000; damage to river tunnels, $6,000; telegraphic apparatus, including 50 miles of wire, and 60 alarm-boxes, $50,000. The lineal feet of sidewalk burned was 486,029 in the North Division ; 132,- 662 in the South, and 24,130 in the West ; total, 642,841 feet, or 121| miles. The half of this would give 60| as the number of miles of street-line burned over; but the street crossings make fully one-sixth of the whole ; allowing for this we have 73 miles of streets in the area of the conflagration. This in- cluded not far from one-half of all the wooden-block pavement in the city, much of which was partially ruined. The destruc- tion of streets foots up $500,000, and of sidewalks $940,000, involving a loss of about $1,440,000. Total loss on public buildings, bridges, and streets, $6,298,750. Central Railroad depots and dockage, $775,000; Rock Island & Lake-Shore Depot, $450,000; Galena depots, $525,- 000; West Side Union Depot (damaged), $10,000. Total on 292 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. railroad buildings, and rolling stock, without contents, $1,- 760,000. Newspapers, buildings and newspaper stock Tribune, $325,- 000; Times, $100,000; Journal, $100,000; Republican (stock $61,000), $186,000; Stoats Zeitung, and Post, $160,000; Mail and Union (stock alone), $12,000; Volks-Zettung (stock), $5,000. Totd, nine dailies, $888,000. Hotels Palmer, $250,000; Sherman, $360,000; Tremont, $360,000; Briggs, $200,000; Bigelow, $300,000; Metropoli- tan, $100,000; Adams, $125,000; Massasoit, $75,000; Matteson, $75,000; City, $60,000; St. James, $120,000; Revere, $150,- 000; Nevada, $80,000; Hatch, $60,000; Anderson's, $40,000; Burke's, $60,000 ; Central, $40,000 ; Clifton, $150,000; Eagle, $10,000; European (Rollback's), $40,000; Everett, $30,000; Garden City, $50,000; Girard, $10,000; Hess, $20,000; Hotel Garni, $50,000; Howard, $10,000; Hutchinson's, $20,000; New York, $25,000; Orient, $50,000; Schall's, $40,000; Washington, $20,000; Wright's, $10,000. Total loss on enu- merated hotels, $2,890,000, without including furniture. Theaters, Halls, etc Opera-house, $250,000; McVicker's, $75,000; Farwell Hall, $150,000; Hooley's, $35,000; Dear- born; $50,000; Museum, $100,000; Metropolitan, $100,000; Turner Hall, $25,000 ; Academy of Design, $30,000 ; Olympic, $50,000. Total on public halls, $865,000, without including furnishing of numerous offices in those buildings. Public Schools Jones, $13,170; Kinzie and branches, $21,390; Franklin and branch, $77,195; Ogden, $39,- 675; Pearson Street, $16,750; Elm Street, $16,950; Lasalle Street, $32,650; North Branch, $32,000. Total, including furniture and heating apparatus, $249,780. THE LOSSES BY THE FIRE. 293 The following was the loss on churches and church property : Baptist North, $15,000; Second German and Swedish Churches, $7,000; North Star, $20,000; Lincoln Park Mis sion, 3,500; Publication Society, $10,000; "Standard," $25,- 000. Total, $80,500. Congregational New England, $70,000; Lincoln Park, $2,000 ; other losses, $3,000. Total, $75,000. Episcopal Ascension, $20,000; St. Ansgarius, $17,500; St. James, $200,000; Trinity, $100,000. Total, $337,500. Jewish North Side, Sinai, and Kehilath Benai Sholom, $30,000; hospital, $25,000. Total, $55,000. Methodist Episcopal First (business block), $130,000 ; Grace, 85,000; Yan Buren Street (German), 10,000; Clybourue Avenue (German), $10,000; First Scandinavian, $10,000; Bethel (colored), $10,000; Quinu's (colored), $15,000; Garret Biblical Institute (property in Chicago), $85,000. Total, $355,000. Scandinavian Lutheran First Norwegian, and Swedish. Loss, $25,000. Presbyterian First Church and mission, Second, Fourth, Bremer Street Mission, Erie Street Mission, Clybourne Avenue Mission; total, 465,000. The University was saved, also the Fullerton Avenue Church. Roman Catholic Holy Name, $250,000; St. Mary's, $40,000; Immaculate Conception, $30,000; St. Michael's, $200,000; St. Joseph's, $120,000; St. Louis, 25,000; St. Paul's, $25,000; these losses include pastors' residences and schools. Convent? Sisters Mercy, $100,000; Good Shepherd, $90,000; also, St Joseph's Orphan Asylum, $40,000; Christian Brothers' Col- lege, $80,000; Alexian Hospital, $60,000; Bishops' residence, $40,000 ; other losses, $250,000. Total, $1,350,000, 294 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. Swedenborgian Temple, $36,000; North Mission, $5,000. Total, $41,000. Unity Church (Rev. Eobert Collyer), $175,000; Illinois Street Mission, $25,000 ; Mariners' Bethel, $5,000. Grand total of Church losy (some only estimated), $3,- 000,000. Leading Boole Stores "Western News Co., S. C. Griggs & Co., Slid Keen, Cooke & Co., books, $600,000; buildings, $500,000; others 265,000. Law Libraries, ..... $200,000 Young Men's Library (20,000), . . . 30,000 Historical (60,000 books, 145,000 pamphlets), . 200,000 Academy of Science (5000), books. . . . 20,000 Young Men' s Christian (10,000), . . . .12,000 Union Catholic (5000), . ..' . 7,000 Franklin (3000), . . . . 4,000 Other public libraries, (10,000) . . . 16,000 The loss on private libraries can scarcely be estimated; Mr. McCagg's was worth fully $40,000; other private libraries would foot up a total of over $500,000. Total books, with three stores, $2,354,000. Grain Elevators Central A, $150,000; National, $80,000; Galena, Hiram Wheeler's, and Munger & Co.'s, average, $125,000 each. Contents, 1,642,000 bushels of grain, worth $1,210,000. Several small warehouses near them, where grain was stored on private terms, swell the aggregate to $2,100,000. Provisions, 8000 bbls. pork, ' 6000 tierces lard, 1,000,000 Ibs. meats; total, $340,000. Flour, 15,000 barrels, wcrth $97,500. Lumber, 65,000,000 feet in yards, with 2,500,000 feet more THE LOSSES BY THE FIRE. 295 in plan ing-mills, and 2,000,000 each of shingles and lath. Total, $1,040,000. Coal burned (80,000 tons), $600,000. National Banks (All burned but one.) Clearing-house, City, Commercial, Cook County, Corn Exchange, Fifth, First, Fourth, German, Manufacturers, Mechanics, Merchants, Na- tional Bank of Commerce, Loan and Trust Co., North-western, Second, Third, Traders, Union. Other Banks Germania; Hibernian (Savings); Marine; Real Estate, Loan & Trust Co.; Union Insurance & Trust Co.; Chicago (Savings) ; Commercial Loan Co.; German (Sav- ings) ; Merchants, Farmers, & Mechanics (Savings) ; Mer- chants (Savings) ; National Loan & Trust Co.; Normal Co.; Illinois State Savings Institution, and twenty-one other bank- ing firms. The loss on personal property of banks, exclusive of build- ings, could not be obtained. It was probably about $1,000,000. This includes money burned up, but does not include evidences of indebtedness in one form or anothe^ as if any of those accounts were lost to the banks, it was simply so much less to be paid by the debtors. Dry Goods, Wliolesale O. L. American & Co.; Bo wen, Hunt & Winslow; Day, Tilden & Co.; J. Y. Farwell & Co.; Richards, Crumbaugh & Shaw ; Stetthauers & Wineman ; Field, Leiter & Co.; D. W. & A. Keith & Co.; Rosenfeld, Munzer & Co.; Carson, Pirie & Co.; C. Gossage & Co.; Hamlin, Hale g-^ with renewed energy in the work of reconstruction. A drive through the burned district in the middle of Novem- ber showed very many of the edifices partially rebuilt, while from the sites of many more the rubbish had been cleared away and workmen were busy in re-arranging foundation lines, and preparing to raise other piles more durable, if less imposing, than those which had so recently succumbed to the fiery ele- ment. On several sites temporary wooden structures had been thrown up, and "shingles" announced that the occupants were ready to do business. These were, however, of the irregular order. The general current of endeavor evidently was in the direction of getting back permanently to the old place as quickly as possible. Hence, those who could not obtain quar- ters westward and southward of the burned district, had con- structed temporary wooden buildings on the lake-shore, on what was known as Lake Park, on the base-ball grounds to the northward of that tract, and on Dearborn Park. The whole of this area was covered with frame structures, placed (336) FIRST NATIONAL BANK BEFORE THE FIRE. CROSBYS' OPERA HOUSE. RECONSTRUCTION. 337 there by permission of the Board of Public Works, the altitude being limited to twenty feet, and the tenure to one year. Most of these places were already open, and there the wholesale dry goods, and groceries, and boots and shoes, and iron and hard- ware merchants displayed their goods, as close to the old theater of operations as possible, yet not so close as to interfere with the work of reconstruction. The work of rebuilding was pro- ceeding with almost equal rapidity in the North Division. With all this, there were a great many indications of radical changes in the direction of business. It seemed probable that while the heavier wholesale houses would return to the old quarters, large numbers of the lesser dealers, the banks, etc., particularly those handling the lighter classes of goods, would become permanently located much farther south than hereto- fore, while much of the commission business would remain in the West Division, instead of re-concentrating in the neigh- borhood of South Water Street. The indication was that the center of the business portion of the city would be removed at once some five or six blocks farther southward by the fire; it was already spreading slowly in that direction previous to the date of the great conflagration. One noticeable feature of the situation was ^the time lost in traveling among business men. Some^had settled down in the South Division, and others in the West, and the journey be- tween the two sections was a long one, while it was not of the most pleasant, as the streets were filled with heavily laden vehi- cles, and deep in mud with every shower. Then there was considerable inequality in prices, a fact that was not materially remedied by the establishment of several branch offices, by bankers and others, in that division in which the main office was not located. The effect of this scatteration was shown in 29 338 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. the middle of November, by the sale of New York exchange between banks, on the same day in one place it sold at par, in another at a premium of three-quarters of one per cent. But there was one cheering fact amid all this; and that was that the merchants were all busy, the orders pouring in upon them from all quarters to such an extent as to tax all their powers to supply the demand. Many of them were actually bare of stock, though large consignments had been sent from the East; but the delivery of a considerable proportion of these goods was delayed by the fact that the railroads, too, were taxed to the utmost, and one or two lines were fairly glutted with merchandise. It was remarked by many of the leading merchants that none of their old customers in the country had forsaken them to try the advantages proffered by a thousand and one other places, each of which endeavored to seize the "opportunity" to make itself great by catching a few of the crumbs that had fallen from the table of Chicago. More than this: not a few remarked that buyers who had previous!)' hovered between Chicago and other points, purchasing a little here, and a little there, now sent all their orders to the men Avho had suffered so much, and borne it so bravely. The following statement of the October earnings of a num- ber of prominent Western railroads shows the effect of the fire in Chicago : 1871. 1870. Chicago & Alton, $459,577 $475,628 Central Pacific, 1,005,475 828,447 Illinois Central, 761,965 903,225 Kansas Pacific, 392,500 355,899 Lake Shore & Michigan Southern, . . 1,395,041 1,287,778 Milwaukee & St. Paul, .... 841,150 908,313 Toledo, Wabash & Western, . . . 600,204 451,291 Union Pacific, 800,000 719,523 Michigan Central, . . . . . 532,802 511,477 RECONSTRUCTION. 339 The character of many of the structures erected was neces- sarily temporary. So much lumber was used that the price of common descriptions had advanced more than thirty per cent, within a month from $15 to $20 per thousand feet though a part of the advance was credited to the destruction of the forests by the fires that raged so extensively in the lumber regions of Wisconsin and Michigan about the time of the Chicago dis- aster. So many wooden buildings had been run up that a uni- versal protest went out against the erection of any more, in those districts where other buildings would be imperiled by their contiguity. Then ensued a lengthy newspaper discussion of the case, and the general expression of sentiment that no more wooden buildings should be permitted to be erected within the boundaries of the city of Chicago. The fire limits were ex- tended by the Common Council after the fire. They will prob- ably be still further extended to include the whole city. That a stringent fire ordinance is wanted in Chicago, none can doubt. Brick buildings are not indestructible by fire, but they do not feed the flames like wooden ones ; and are not only safer, but cheaper when the ultimate cost is taken into the account. No other city of the size of Chicago permits the safety of the whole to be jeopardized by frame structures; and, with an inexhaustible supply of good clay for brick-making, and first-class building stone in her immediate neighborhood, there is no necessity for permitting this suicidal policy in the future. With a raised grade, which permits better drainage, and proper regulations concerning the erection of buildings, the future Chicago may prove that she has learned a valuable lesson from adversity, and show that she had the good sense to profit by it. CHAPTER XVII. THE LOSSES AGAIN. Particular cases !Noted buildings destroyed The Germans How the millionaires came out Not a vestige of a law library left Art and literary treasures despoiled Who lost and who gained by the fire. THE most noteworthy buildings lying within the burnt district, and consequently falling a prey to the flames, are comprised in the following list : Churches. Trinity (Episcopal), First Presbyterian, New Jerusalem Temple (Swedenborg), North Presbyterian, St. James's (Episcopal), New England (Congregational), Unity (Unitarian), Grace (Methodist), Cathedral of the Holy Name (Roman Catholic), St. Joseph's (Roman Catholic), St. Mary's (Roman Catholic), Synagogue (Hebrew), St. Paul's (Universal- ist), Sisters of Mercy (Convent), Illinois Street (Union), St. Joseph's Priory. Public Buildings. Court-house and City Hall, Post-office, "Water-works, Historical Hall, Chamber of Commerce, United States Warehouses, South Side Gas-works, North Side Gas- works, Armory (police station), Elm Street Hospital, Franklin School, Mosely School, Lincoln School, and many smaller schools. Theaters, etc. Crosby's Opera-house, Hooley's Opera-house, McVicker's Theater, Dearborn Theater, Farwell Hall, Metro- (340) THE LOSSES AGAIN. 341 Hall, Crosby's Music Hall, German House, Turner Hall, Academy of Design, Wood's Museum, Olympic Theater. Hotels (first class). Sherman, Pacific, Tremont, Bigelow, Palmer, Briggs, St. James, Matteson, Revere, Metropolitan, Nevada, Clifton, Adams. Railway Buildings. Great Central Depot, Michigan South- ern Depot, Galena Depot, Illinois Central Freight Depot, Michigan Central Freight Depot, Galena Freight Depot, Gale- na Elevator, Wheeler's Elevator, Illinois Central Elevator "A," Munger & Armour's Elevator, National Elevator, Pull- man's Palace Car Building. Principal Business Blocks. Bookseller's Row, Field & Lei- tei's Store, Tribune Building, Merchants' Insurance Building, First National Bank, Union National Bank, Drake-Farwell Block, Sturges' Building, Honore Block, McCormick's Reaper Works. Among the heaviest individual losers were Messrs. Wm. B. Ogden, Cyrus H. McCormick, and Potter Palmer; though Mr. Ogden's losses would scarcely have been felt by that large capi- talist, had it not been for the nearly simultaneous destruction of immense interests in the Wisconsin pineries, in which he was an owner to the extent of two million dollars or more. In Chicago his principal losses were in railroad buildings, insur- ance stock, and north-side real estate, which Mr. Ogden made a specialty, and which was greatly depreciated in value by the conflagration. Mr. McCormick's losses also mounted into the millions, as did those of his brother, L. J. McCormick. Each of the McCormicks owned many stores and houses, and among their joint property was their extensive reaper works, which contained at the time two thousand finished reapers and a large store of unfinished machines and materials. Potter Palmer has 342 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. long been reputed to own a mile of front upon State Street, the principal thoroughfare from the river to the south end of the city. Upon this avenue he had already erected stores and hotels to the value of over three-quarters of a million of dollars, and the Grand Hotel, which would swell the amount to two mil- lions, was already well upward with its massive walls. Mr. Palmer also owned large interests in two or three mercantile establishments, and was popularly understood to. have mort- gaged all his real estate for carrying on his speculations. On the day following the fire it was currently reported and gener- ally believed (so prepared was the popular mind for any thing wonderful) that Mr. Palmer had gone crazy over his losses, and shot himself in a paroxysm of insanity. Nor was this impres- sion dispelled until, from a town in New York, whither Mr. Palmer had gone to attend the dying bed of a parent, came his clarion note : "I will rebuild my buildings at once. Put on an extra force, and hurry up the hotel." And within a few days the New York merchants received his telegram announcing, "The mercantile firms with which I am connected, either as special or general partner, will pay in full at maturity." Another severe sufferer was John B. Drake, proprietor of the Tremont Hotel. His furniture, silver, ete., were very rich, arid his largest building (part of the Drake- Farwell Block) had but just been re-occupied, after its fatal destruction of one year ago. But Drake was buoyant, like the rest, and was soon ensconced in the biggest hotel the flames had left for him to hire, and had his workmen overhauling the warm bricks of the twice- consumed store. It is useless, however, to attempt any enumeration of the brilliant ruins which this unparalleled disaster worked. In the THE LOSSES AGAIN. 343 first place, they are like the goods in the auctioneer's catalogue, "too numerous to mention," and in the next place, they will not stay ruined long enough to be caught and impaled in the cabinet of the historian. There were, however, many cases of complete ruin or, at least, of such sweeping disaster that it will take years, and in some cases more years than the victim has left in him, to re- cover any thing like his former foothold. The merchants, as a rule, fared as hard as any equally numerous class. Messrs. Field, Leiter & Co., the heaviest dry goods dealers, saw $2,300,000 worth of their goods dissolve before their eyes, with no hope, at the moment, that they would be indemnified for any considerable fraction of its value. Messrs. J. V. Farwell and C. B. Farwell (M. C.), members of the dry goods firm which bears the former's name, saw $1,900,000 of their stock go the way a similar amount had gone just a year before. A score of other merchants could count up losses scarcely less than these. But large dealers have great credits and great facilities of other kinds for resuming business. It is the smaller dealers who have suffered, proportionately, the worst. Professional men suffered severely too even those whose homes were spared them. Many of the physicians and all of the lawyers had their offices within the burnt district of the South Division, and therein were their libraries, apparatus, and all their professional outfit. The legal gentlemen of Chicago six hundred and fifty in number lost over half a million dol- lars worth of law books alone all the law books, in fact, that there were in the city. Operators in the great characteristic staples of Chicago trade grain, provisions, etc. the "commission men," or "Board of Trade men," did not suffer so severely. Of many of these. 344 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. the stock in trade is of an altogether too unsubstantial sort to suffer much by fire. These gentlemen, many of them, deal in actual commodities, but a small proportion of which, fortu- nately, was destroyed in this wreck. Many others deal so ex- clusively in "options," "puts," and "calls," that a smart shower in the country during the summer will make or unmake them much more completely than ever so terrible a fire in Chicago. Besides this advantage, the most of your Board of Trade men have become so accustomed to the vicissitudes of business that they bear the buifetings' of fortune as well as the prize fighter bears the bruises which prostrate another. So they can count themselves rich on Wednesdays and Saturdays, they are content to be " ruined " on Thursdays and Mondays, and " come up smiling" every time. A class who suffered very severely are the musicians. A majority of them lived in the ill-fated North Division, and lost their homes. Others lost the churches or the theaters where they principally earned their livelihood. Others lost very val- uable collections of books, music, and instruments; while those who escaped with these, had their public burned away from them that is, forced upon such a course of economy as should very seriously interfere with the revenues of music teachers and all such. Among the prominent musicians who fled before the fiery monster were Dudley Buck, the celebrated organist, who has gone to Boston ; flans Balatka, the conductor, gone to Mil- waukee; A. J. Creswold, organist, gone to St. Louis; Alfred II. Pease, pianist, gone to Buffalo. Akin to this subject is that of art and letters generally. Chicago had accumulated a much greater wealth of art treas- ures than the world generally knew of; much greater than any other city of its age ever amassed. Besides the galleries THE LOSSES AGAIN. 345 of the Academy of Design, and the Opera-house, there were the private collections of Albert Crosby, which must have been worth $75,000 ; those of E. B. McCagg, S. M. Nickerson, and E. E. Moore, at least $50,000 each ; and those of E. H. Shel- don, Perry H. Smith, and others, which approximated these values. The gallery of Mr. McCagg contained, among its most valuable works, Powers' statue of Pocahontas, and Healy's great painting of the Conference at Hampton Roads, both of which were lost. Of public libraries, the city had none worth mourning after very bitterly. Cincinnati and St. Louis both eclipsed her in this respect. The collection of the Historical Society books, pamphlets, papers, and paintings was totally destroyed. It contained 17,500 bound volumes, 175,000 pam- phlets, and complete sets of files of the Chicago newspapers. This collection embraced a complete record of the history of Chicago from its earliest days to the present. In addition to the library, the society owned the original draft of the Emanci- pation Proclamation by President Lincoln, a complete set of the Chicago battle flags, the Healy Gallery of three hundred paintings, Diehl's Hamlet, Couture's Prodigal Son, and V oik's bust of Mr. Lincoln, the only one for which Mr. Lincoln ever gave a sitting, and the most perfect likeness of the departed statesman then extant. We take this memorandum chiefly from a pamphlet recently published by the society which there- in felicitates itself upon the (t splendid fire-proof building " in which its precious archives are stored! Reckoned by nationalities, our German fellow-citizens suf- fered the worst. They dwelt mostly upon the north side of the river, which the satirists were wont to call Nordseit, in their honor. They loved their homes, and invested upon them their savings; storing them with household treasures, and investing 346 CHICAGO A3TD THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. them with the home comforts and luxuries in which the Ger- man, more than any other European, delights. Through these the billows of flame came sweeping on that fetal morning, a huadred times more ruthlessly and ruinously than the warlike Frenchman would have swept through other German homes had the tide of battle turned otherwise than it did at Worth and Saarbrnck. And a most bloody invader, and a most piti- less forager, the fire-fiend proved to be! The old saw that a it *s an ill wind that blows nobody any good" did not miscarry in this memorable case. There are several classes who have profited materially by the general calamity. We have already seen how the cartmen profited, temporarily, during the horrible night and day of the fire; nor did their profits soon cease; for there was a vast deal of hauling and shifting of personal effects following the general upheaval of locations. The Belief Society had a world of carting to do, too, axA the drays and express wagons never had so busy a month before. Teams and heavy wagons were also in feverish demand all winter, and the streets were so full of them as to be dangerous to light craft and pedestrians. Builders and their employes, especially brick masons, profited by the catastrophe, as might be expected ; also brick-makers, from Omaha to Phil- adelphia, who sold out their stocks at once at several dollars per thousand advance. Insurance agents reaped a harvest also, whatever may have been the hardships of their principals in settling for losses; for every body wanted new insurance after the experience of the 8th and 9th. Lawyers will get plenty of business at adjusting insurance, managing land-title cases, and other litigation growing out of the commercial earthquake caused by the event. The county records having been destroyed with the Court-house, and all legal titles to real estate having thus THE LOSSES AGAIN. 347 been seriously impaired, the lawyers will have plenty of jobs at nursing into life the faint glimmers of titles now remaining, and to be found chiefly in the abstract books of two or three firms devoted to that business. These archives were, fortu- nately, saved from the general wreck, and containing, as they do, complete chains of title, from the original Government patent down to the time of the latest transfer, are expected to yield not only much benefit to the public, but comfortable for- tunes to their owners. Indeed, it is impossible to enumerate the classes who will be pecuniary gainers by the great fire; but it is sufficient to say that, with the classes already mentioned^ the retail news men, some of whom made thousands of dollars during the first fort- night after the fire, the shop-keepers of the West Division, the holders of leases who sold out at large bonuses, and the dealers in safes (each of whom had "the only strictly fire-proof" after the fire), and all others similarly favored, there are not less than 75,000 persons, out of the 800,000 remaining in Chicago after the fire, who will be better off next spring than if the city had not burned. These did not, except in a very few isolated in- stances, willfully extort profit out of the misfortunes of their fellows, but merely gained, incidentally, by having something to sell, labor or property, the demand for which was enhanced by the crisis. The opposite rule of course prevailed much more extensively : and in general it may be remarked that the severest losers by the fire were those who had most, or had ventured most; those whose property was in the form of buildings, or stocks of goods, or investments in the future of Chicago; and those whose trade or industry depended upon the patronage of the luxurious classes. CHAPTER XVIII. INCIDENTS AND CURIOSITIES. Oases in the desert A dwelling saved with cider Thrilling scene in the tunnel How the heat burnt up iron columns and left butter un- melted The man at the crib Human nature Good and bad phases Drawing the long bow. TTUXDREDS of incidents of the Great Conflagration might . -* - be related, in addition to the hundreds which have already been told in the narratives of eye-witnesses. Indeed, there is no limit to the stories, either thrilling or curious, which are truthfully told, illustrating the wonderfully rapid progress and terrible fury of the flames, or the peculiarities of human nature under the influence of extreme excitement. Unfortunately there is a limit to our space, which can not be devoted exclusively to these incidents at the expense of the more important events accompanying or following the conflagration. One of the most curious features of the fire w r as the escape of two houses in the midst of the burnt district of the North Division. One of these was the residence of Mahlon D. Ogden, brother of AVm. B. Ogden, and himself an extensive property holder. His house faces Washington Park ; but so doqs Robert Collyer's Church, and so did other buildings now no more, which had the park to the windward, and had also the benefit of stone walls, whereas the Ogden mansion is of wood, with an elaborate (348) INCIDENTS AND CURIOSITIES. 349 French roof and several combustible out-buildings. The park in front, a mere square, had been devoted to the city by Mr. Ogden, many years ago; and it proved a valuable breastwork against the fire on this occasion, as if in acknowledgment of the wisdom and generosity of the gift, and as a hint to other landlords to do likewise. It was not, however, without a severe struggle that the falling brands were extinguished, and the mansion, with its valuable contents, saved from destruction. As another curiosity, one of the elegant conservatories of Mr. E. B. McCagg, directly west of Mr. Ogden's house, and close upon Lasalle Street, went through the fire without the cracking of a glass or the withering of a leaf, while the other green-house to the leeward, and the mansion, in the center of the spacious grounds both seemingly more protected than the other were consumed. The other house mentioned is that of a policeman named Bellinger, which had apparently little advantage of isolation, but was saved by dint of much exertion on the part of its occu- pant, aided by a favorable freak of the flames. Bellinger was fortunate enough to- have a small quantity of water on hand when the supply from the Water-works gave out. He tore up a section of sidewalk, and determined to shed the last drop not of his blood, but of his water, which, in such a crisis, was still more precious in defense of his castle. This he did to the best advantage, that is, reserving it until a spark alighted on the shingles. He stood his ground manfully until the red demon approached threateningly near, and then he redoubled his vigilance. Of this there was need, for now the sparks and brands fell thicker and faster, and his scant ladlefuls of water hissed and went up in puffs of steam as they struck the blister- ing shingles. By and by the last ladleful was gone, and the 350 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. flames had not yet ceased to rage around him. If he only had a little more water a bucketful merely he thought he could save a home for his wife and little ones; the home which he had been struggling so long to build for. them. The wish did him honor, and the divine source of it sent him a thought which proved the wish's realization. In the cellar was a barrel of cider, which he had lately got in to drink with the winter's nuts and apples. He rightly judged that the red guest who now threatened his house with a visit wanted that cider worse than he did. To speak in plainer and more policeman-like terms, he knew that cider would quench fire as well as water, and that his cider was what was wanted on the roof at that time. He called to the family to draw and bring to him all the contents of the cask. It was done. The libation was poured out (in the right spots), and the home was saved. There was a thrilling scene in the Washington Street tunnel. About three o'clock in the morning of Monday, while the tun- nel was filled with people rushing wildly in both directions, the gas-works blew up, stopping immediately the supply of gas, and causing total darkness throughout the long and narrow passage. The situation was a terrible one. The sudden dark- ness, the great excitement under which all the persons were laboring, and the fact that many were bearing articles of furni- ture, etc., with which it would be dangerous to collide, all served to increase the danger of a panic such as should inevita- bly result in the crushing and killing of many persons per- haps in detaining them until all should be suffocated by a blast of fiame and smoke. But some one with a quick judgment and stentorian voice cried out, " Keep to the right ! " and so every one did, the word " to the right ! " being passed along INCIDENTS AND CUEIOSITIES. 351 from mouth to mouth. But there was not much more going through the tunnel to the eastward that night. The fact that building stone was every-where baked and blistered into mere chips, even where it was used only for side- walks or foundations, attests to the fearful heat which prevailed cvery-where. But in the interior of buildings the fervor was unprecedented; as witness the melting of the great Court-house bell, the burning up of many safes, so that they could be punctured with a single touch of the crowbar, and the fusion of metals generally. In the stores of Messrs. Heath & Milligan, on Ran- dolph Street, filled with paints and oils, the temperature was above 3000 degrees, as shown by the melting of white lead and other stores requiring that degree of heat to fuse them. How much hotter it became, there was no index to determine ; but this is known : that large masses of iron, such as iron col- umns, and the framework of a large elevator, were literally burned up, so that no trace of them could be found : but (what will strike some unthinking ones as curious) the little wire ropes which were used to work the elevator were not seriously in- jured. Iron wire is, owing to the peculiar process by which it is spun, one of the least fusible or combustible of substances. The contents of hundreds of safes were utterly consumed. Indeed, this was the rule with all safes not in vaults ; while all fairly built brick vaults brought every thing intrusted to them out safely. A box of matches and linen coat came out of the Tri- bune vault as good as new, and a jar of butter preserved its integ- rity completely through three or four days of fire in the vault of the Fidelity Deposit Company, without once lapsing into the melting mood. This fire has shown that brick is the most fire- proof of building materials ; that brick and air are the only trustworthy non-conductors of heat, and that iron is, by reason 352 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. of its tendency to swell and warp, a bad material to use for floors, girders or lintels, in the erection of large buildings. The " Man at the Crib " is a character dear to public esteem in Chicago, though not one in ten thousand of the citizens has ever seen him. They all know that he is always there in his wave-washed prison, two miles out into the lake, watching the mouth of the tunnel from New Year to New Year. On this night his vigils were directed toward the atmosphere above instead of the water below, for even there his view of the burning city, which would otherwise have been splendid, was shut out first by black smoke and then by the driving shower of fire brands and livid coals which were falling about him, three miles from their place of starting. The man had one advantage over the inhabitants of the city on that dread night. There was no danger of his water supply giving out ; and he used it freely, to subdue the flames from which even his lonely, iso- lated perch was not exempt. If the house had burned down, even to the water's edge, the accident would not have affected the water supply ; but it would have been uncomfortable for the " Man at the Crib," unless he could have got his boat out betimes. As already remarked, one of the most interesting features of the conflagration was the suddenly clear insight which it af- forded of the innermost recesses of men's hearts. If a man was a coward, or a selfish knave, he could not conceal it fiom the gaze of his fellow-men on that dread night; while if he was a hero (as many and many proved to be, let it be said to the credit of humanity !) his sterling metal shone clear and bright in the glare and heat of the all-assaying flames. Nor did the gentility or social standing of the man always afford the true clue to the result. The Rev. Robert Collyer told in the hear- INCIDENTS AND CURIOSITIES. 353 ing of the writer, that during the small hours of Monday morning, while all was panic and terror, and women and chil- dren and invalids were in danger, and heroes were developing out of simple sotils who had never suspected themselves of he- roism before, he saw " the biggest man in the city " scampering away at his best pace and exclaiming, " It 's all going to burn up, and I 'm going to get out of this as soon as I can." "And so raying," added Mr. Collyer, " he kept on running toward the north, and for aught I know he is running yet." The opposite kind of cases are more pleasant to contemplate. One of the city journals puts such a one on record in this lan- guage : "On Monday evening, a knot of men, from 35 to 40 years of age, stood on Michigan Avenue, watching the fire as it fought its way southward in the teeth Of the wind. They were looking grimy and dejected enough, until another, a broad- shouldered man of middle height, with a face that might have belonged to one of the Cheeryble brothers shining through the over-spreading dust and soot, approached them, and clapping one of theft 1 number on the shoulder, exclaimed cheerfully: 'Well, James, we are all gone together. Last night I was worth a hundred thousand, and so were you. Now where are we?' 'Gone/ returned James. Then followed an interchange, from which it appeared that the members of the group were young merchants, -worth from $50,000 to $150,000. After this, said the first speaker, ' Well, Jim, I have a home left, and my family are safe ; I have a barrel of flour, some bushels of pota- toes and other provisions laid in for the winter; and now, Jim, I'm going to fill my house to-night with these poor fellows,' turning to the sidewalks crowded with fleeing poor, 'chuck full from cellar to garret ! ' The blaze of the conflagration revealed 30 354 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. something worth seeing in that man's breast. Possibly the road to his heart may have been choked with rubbish before. If so, the fire had burned it clear, till it shone like one of the streets of burnished gold which he will one day* walk." A few items are worthy of noting down for their personal interest merely. Col. John Hay writes to the New York Tribune concerning Mr. Robert Lincoln, son of the late Presi- dent: "He entered his law office about daylight on Monday morning, after the flames had attacked the building, opened the vault, and piled upon a table cloth the most valuable papers then slung the pack over his shoulder, and escaped amid a shower of falling firebrands. He walked up Michigan Avenue with his load on his back, and stopped at the mansion of John Young Scammon, where they breakfasted with a feeling of per- fect security. Lincoln went home with his papers, and before noon the house of Scammon was in ruins, the last which was sacrificed by the lake side." Mr. Scammon's house, it may be mentioned, was ia the famous Terrace Row, spoken of in Mr. "White's sketch (Chap. V.), as were also the residences of Ex- Lieutenant-Governor Bross, of the Tribune, and S. C. Griggs, of the book trade. It was a row of Illinois-marble fronts, five lofty stories in height, and eclipsing Buckingham Palace in ele- gance, according to the Rev. Newman Hall, of London. Among those who fled from the fire was Hon. Lyman Trumbull of the United States Senate, who escaped, with a trunk full of clothing only, from the Clifton House, where he was boarding. There were many theatrical and musical exhib- itors at the hotels when the fire came along and settled their bills for them. Theodore Thomas .and his famous orchestra were at the St. James Hotel, and escaped with their instruments only. Mrs. Lander, the tragedienne, was also among the fugi- INCIDENTS AND CURIOSITIES. 355 lives. Mrs. Abby Sage (McFarland) Richardson, whose griefs and grievances have made her name familiar to the country, was sojourning in the city at the time, and intending to become a permanent resident; but the fire altered her determination in this regard, and she fled to New York. Many celebrated persons own property in Chicago, and lost more or less, according to its location; for instance, General Buckner and Ex-Governor Magoffin, of Kentucky, among noted Southerners, and Madame Parepa Rosa, Mile. Nilsson, Mr. Joseph Jefferson, and Mr. Ole Bull, among musical and dramatic celebrities. The two ladies named, nevertheless, con- tributed liberally to the relief of those made destitute by the fire. So far as wonderful and startling incidents go, it would have been better (at least more thrilling to the reader), if this account could have been made out on the week of the fire; for then a thousand blood-curdling stories were passing current, which have since been proved to be without foundation. Here is one of them : "A wealthy railroad man, on the north side, was holding a party at his residence when the conflagration commenced. When his house became endangered by the 'fire drawing near, he dispatched his wife and children to a place of safety, and then commenced with a select few a bacchanalian revel. When the fire became unbearable, the party moved to the front steps of the mansion with their bottles and glasses. There they continued the horrible carnival, their demoniac yells and wild laughter becoming louder and more boisterous as the fire became more threatening. On the south side, the distilleries were running their liquors from the buildings. The gutters were full of the raw spirits, while men were flocking to them 356 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. with every conceivable manner of vessels, some even wallow- ing in the liquor. In some places the fire communicated with the alcohol, and the street became instantly a burning sheet of flame. In some cases the men drank freely and immoderately, sunk into a drunken torpor, and only awoke from their insen- sibility to find themselves irretrievably enveloped in flames." The writer of the above has been dubbed the champion liar by some of the newspapers; yet he is altogether excelled by a writer in an Illinois newspaper, who requires his readers to swallow (and in all probability they did) the following yarn : "The scene now manifested beggars all description. Noth- ing like it since the burning of Moscow. The only elevator standing is burning underneath its pier. The fire is still burn- ing and spreading west. Eight hundred persons were smoth- ered to death in Washington Street tunnel. Thirteen hundred prisoners in the Bridewell were left to suffocate: not one escaped! Seventeen men were shot who were caught firing buildings. The whole has been the act of an incendiary clique. People are dying for want of water; nothing but the lake re- mains with which they can quench their thirst, and that is cov- ered with dead bodies, oil, filth, etc. Fifteen thousand people to-night lay outdoors without blankets to shelter them. The Journal) Tribune, and Times establishments are among the ruins. There is not a newspaper left in the city. Potter Palmer's loss is over four millions of dollars. Every Insur- ance Company in the United States is ruined, and will not be called on to pay the losses. What the people want is some- thing to keep them from starving. The towns along the Illi- nois Central Eailroad are doing nobly. Can not you get up a car-loa& and send them to-day. Any thing will do that can be eaten, There is not one hundred buildings left within three INCIDENTS AND CURIOSITIES. 357 miles of the Court-house in any direction. The loss of lives is now estimated at between 9000 and 10,000." We can perhaps excuse this writer's enthusiasm in killing off thirteen hundred persons in the Bridewell (two miles to windward of Chicago), and eight hundred more in the tunnel, as his object was obviously to excite sympathy, bring in the provisions, and (incidentally) to furnish something relishable for the patrons of his paper ; but he ought, in the interest of the public health, to have forborne to strew the surface of the lake with "dead bodies, oil, etc.," thereby injuring greatly the quality of the only obtainable water supply ! In the art of drawing the long bow, the clergymen were scarcely behind the newspaper writers. The Rev. Mr. Eddy went from Chicago to Indianapolis, whence he spread a fear- fully exaggerated story of the situation in Chicago; and in Baltimore he stood up in the pulpit and told his hearers (before asking them to contribute their money) how he "saw the black- ened corpses of robbers and incendiaries hanging to gibbets," whereas no such hanging took place, except in the imagination of the Rev. Mr. Eddy and other persons of excitable tempera- ments. One of the several "histories" of the conflagration, written by a Chicago clergyman of great piety, treats the hangings as actual facts, and solemnly asserts that five hundred children were born on the streets and prairies during the night of Monday. This last statement is not so bad an exaggeration as the others; for it is a matter of fact, or at least founded upon a very intelligent estimate, that more than one hundred women were brought to labor by the excitement and exertions of those fearful nights. Doctor Paul, who himself had six cases (another physician having eight), estimates the whole number at one hundred and fifty. CHAPTER XIX. INCIDENTS AND CURIOSITIES CONTINUED. Remarkable revelation Scripture for the occasion Married in the smoke of the flames How Robert Collyer and his people fought for their church Grandmother's rocking-chair How a coal-dealer saved his pile Fire as a curative agency More about the degree of heat The divorce business, etc. A S a curiosity, this incident, which is strictly authentic, is -^*- worth recording : Among the ruins of the Western News Company's establishment, where an immense stock of periodi- cals and books was reduced to ashes, there was found a single leaf of a quarto Bible, charred around the edges. It contained the first chapter of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, which opens with the following words : " How doth the city sit solitary that was full of people ! how is she become as a widow ! she that was great among the nations and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary! She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks: among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her." And that was the only fragment of lit- erature saved from the News Company's great depot. In elaboration of this idea, the Chicago Times commenced its first issue after the fire with this scriptural quotation, which many will say was written with a prescience of Chicago's ca- lamity : . . . Tho merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abun- da,nce of her delicacies. (358) INCIDENTS AND CURIOSITIES. 359 How much she has glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much sor- row and torment give her; for she saith in her heart, I sit a queen and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow. ... She shall be utterly burned with fire. . . . And the kings of the earth . . . shall bewail her, and lament for her when they shall see the smoke of her burning, Standing afar off for fear of her torment, and saying, Alas, alas, that great city, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come. And the merchants of the earth shall weep, and mourn over her, for no man buyeth their merchandise any more : The merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thyne wood, and all manner vessels of ivory, and all manner vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble : And cinnamons, and odors, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariotS, and slaves, and souls of men ; . . . The merchants of these things, which were made rich by her, shall stand afar off ... weeping and wailing, And saying, Alas, alas, that great city, that was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold, and precious stones, and pearls ! For in one hour so great riches is come to naught. And every ship- master, and all the company in ship, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, stood afar off, And cried when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, "What city is like unto this great city! And they cast dust on their heads, and cried, weeping and wailing, say- ing, Alas, alas, that great city wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness I for in one hour is she made deso- late. It may be added, as another incident for the curious, that while the great disaster increased greatly the number of births and deaths, it seriously diminished the number of marriages duricg the week. Indeed, it might be supposed that at such a 360 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. time of general distress, there would be neither marrying nor giving in marriage ; yet such was not entirely the case. The books of the County Clerk show that twenty licenses were issued during the week commencing with the 8th the usual number per week being between ninety and a hundred. The reader can readily see that one effect of a common misfortune would be to bring all its victims closer together in feeling, as well as in fact; and that the natural tendency among betrothed pairs would be to become united at once. It seems that this tendency prevailed over the drawback of reduced means in the proportion of cases named. Among the twenty grooms was the son of Chicago's most widely-known divine; and it is no dis- paragement of the bride to record that, her bridal trousseau having been seized by the flames, along with other more valua- ble, but perhaps not more valued possessions, she "stood up" in a calico frock, and depended upon friends who were not among the " burnt out " for other articles of feminine wear essential to the nuptial occasion. There were great quantities of movables lost during the flight of the people from the pursuing element, which were not ultimately consumed. Some of this property was carried off by thieves or by treacherous carters, with intent to appropriate it to their own uses; some of it left somewhere, the flustered and flurried owners knew not where; some of it was taken care of by kindly-disposed persons, who saved the property, but lost all trace of its owner. Of all such property there was a depot soon established at the Central Police Station, where were collected a great store of goods wanting owners; some of them brought in voluntarily, and others (and much the greater part) ferreted out by the police. Within three weeks nearly a million dollars' worth of movable property was thus accumu- INCIDENTS AND CURIOSITIES. 361 lated and ultimately restored to its owners. Of course this Bu- reau of Missing Property was diligently visited by all who had reason to hope for any good out of it; and some of the scenes, as the seekers for that which was lost came upog the object of their search, were very interesting. Every article had become Irebly valuable now; for, in the first place, hard times had come on, and possessions of any sort were none too plenty; and, in the next place, each article recovered was a tie which bound its owner to the dear old home, the dear old times, and the dear old Chicago. A single incident will illustrate this. Two ladies enter the rooms, one of them being in quest of certain lost trunks of wearing apparel, etc. They pass through the several rooms in a tedious quest, relieved only by feminine satisfaction in inspect- ing other people's property. Of this there was an endless va- riety. There were oil paintings, trunks, bedsteads, bureaus, car- pets, gamblers' tools, chairs, sewing-machines, clocks, clothing, silverware, boots and shoes, books, sofas, etageres, billiard-balls, guns, and almost every thing conceivable. The place resem- bled a magnified pawn-shop, or a demoralized bazaar. At length the lady finds that for which she was searching, and goes to the office to sign the necessary papers and receive her certificate. Meanwhile the other lady continues her stroll through the building. Suddenly a glad cry sounds in the furniture-room, "Great heavens! that's grandma's rocking-chair!" is heard from the lady, and in the next instant she had picked up the chair and hugged it in her arms. It was an ordinary-looking chair, with rockers, the paint worn off in many places, with here and there a bit of iron to brace the joints, together; but it had been in the family over seventy years. " Streaks of good luck " seemed to be rare on this bitter oc- 31 362 CHICAGO AXD THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. casion when all fell together; yet they were not altogether want- ing, as for instance : A few weeks before the Great Conflagration, there appeared in the morning papers the report of an incipient fire in Mr. Holbrook's coal-yard. The loss was but nominal, but the mere fact of a fire in a coal-yard led to an investiga- tion, and the result was that Mr. Holbrook and several other dealers were satisfied the fire was the result of spontaneous combustion. One of the dealers present, a Mr. Pratt, having thought the matter over, determined, after consultation, to take out policies for insurance in the sum of $45,000. Coal- dealers very seldom insure their stock; but Mr. Pratt argued that if Holbrook's yard caught fire from spontaneous combustion, Pratt's yard was liable to the same calamity; hence the insur- ance. Then came the great fire, and Mr. Pratt's was one of the first coal-yards consumed. He now finds himself the holder of policies in Eastern and foreign companies, and will undoubtedly receive fully $30,000 in payment of his losses. Very singu- larly, he was the only dealer in the city who was insured. Per contra, there were numerous narrow escapes from good luck, if the expression be allowable. There was, for instance, the heaviest firm in the diamond and jewelry line. They had always insured in Eastern companies, especially the .ZEtna, to the exclusion of Western. Quite lately, however, the head of the firm had been persuaded to relinquish his staunch adherence to Eastern insurance, and patronize home institutions. Then the fire came on, and his insurance was burned up with his other effects. The safes in which the silver and jewels were placed, proved to be no more protection than as if they nad been pasteboard. The elaborately carved ornaments of gold were reduced to poor little nuggets, and the many trays full of costly diamonds were found to have their " life burnt out of them," INCIDENTS AND CURIOSITIES. 363 as the jewelers say ; that is, their brilliancy was gone, and they were as worthless as glass. The diamond is pure carbon, and quite susceptible to heat, though impervious to most other destructive influences. A paragraph was given, in the preceding chapter, to the illustration of the terrible heat which prevailed every-where within the. range of the fire. One fact, which perhaps shows more forcibly than any other what a fiery furnace was the whole atmosphere, is this : that the contents of some safes which were taken into the open street were badly singed. It is also remarkable, that the massive stone work of the Lasalle Street tunnel, standing in the middle of a broad street, was much chipped and charred by the heat clear into the arched passage; while the iron railing around the unenclosed portion of that thoroughfare was so twisted and torn as to show that it must have been at a white heat during the worst of the fire. All this heat must have been derived by radiation from the build- ings thirty feet away. Mr. Fred. Law Olmsted, a well-known architect of New York, writing on this subject, remarks : " Besides the extent of the ruins, what is most remarkable is the completeness with which the fire did its work, as shown by the prostration of the rains and the extraordinary absence of smoke stains, brands, and all debris, except stone, brick, and iron, bleached to an ashy pallor. The distinguishing smell of the ruins is that of charred earth. In not more than a dozen cases have the four walls of any of the great blocks, or of any buildings, been left standing together. It is the exception to find even a single corner or chimney holding together to a height of more than twenty feet. It has been possible, from the top of an omnibus, to see men standing on the ground three miles away, across 364 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. what was the densest, loftiest, and most substantial part of the city. Generally, the walls seem to have crumbled in from top to bottom, nothing remaining but a broad low heap of rubbish in the cellar so low as to be overlooked from the pavement. Granite, all sandstones, and all limestones, whenever fully exposed to the south-west, are generally flaked and scaled, and blocks, sometimes two and three feet thick, are cracked through and through." The fatal effects of the conflagration on human life, and its influence in inducing disease, have already been referred to. It is also noticeable that many permanent cures were effected by the excitement attendant upon the fire aided perhaps, in some cases, by the greater necessity for work after the fire. A friend of the writer of this chapter bears personal testimony to this. He was suffering from a painful local inflammation, which had refused for several weeks to yield to medical treatment. The fire came on, and the disease was among the things miss- ing when the debris was cleared away. Having seen similar instances in the army, when even such diseases as incipient fever have been cured by a battle, we were not surprised at this. The physicians report numerous cases of chronic debility, whether local or general, cured by the extraordinary stimulus of the occasion. As a bad effect of the same stimulus, many went crazy over the event. Of this, two notable instances are those of an architect and engineer, and of a safe-dealer, named Harris. The latter rushed to the telegrapii office, ordered an appalling number of safes from the manufactory, and hired the ruins of an immense church to exhibit them in, before his lunacy was discovered. The divorce business, for which Chicago has become some- what famed, was revived the moment the Equity Courts re- INCIDENTS AND CURIOSITIES. . 365 sumcd their sessions ; but the credit for this promptitude is due rather to the enterprise of the divorce shysters than to the activity of married pairs in promoting this branch of industry, for, although the lawyers were promptly out with their adver- tisements, announcing "divorces legally obtained without pub- licity," and "no fee unless decree is obtained," the people did not seem to respond with any enthusiasm, and it it is worthy of note that even after five or six weeks had elapsed, the applications for divorces did not reach more than one-fifth the number before the fire. Perhaps this paragraph properly be- longs in the chapter of benefits derived from the disaster. CHAPTER XX. WHY SHE WAS DESTROYED. Origin of the fire Why it spread so fast and far Was there incendia- rism? The Communist story Chicago architecture Chicago admin- istration Operations of the Fire Department. TN the first chapter of this history of the Conflagration, we -*- attributed the origin of the fire to the upsetting of a lamp in a cow-barn. No investigation made since that chapter was written has disproved the theory therein set forth ; nor has any revelation of any achievements or exploits of the Fire Depart- ment on the night of the great fire demonstrated the propriety of altering any thing which we have written or implied con- cerning that force. On the contrary, a statement of the Marshal of the Fire Department, taken with a view to setting him and his aids right in this history, has but confirmed the opinion that the efforts of the department on the night in question were tardy in being got on foot, and of the most weak and desultory char- acter thereafter. It is a sufficient commentary upon the energy and force of the Police and Fire Commission of Chicago to mention that at the date of furnishing this chapter to the press some five weeks after the Conflagration no investigation has been made, or or- dered, into the conduct of the Fire and Police Departments on that occasion; no recommendations submitted; nobody removed (366) WHY SHE WAS DESTKOYED. 367 for cowardice or incompetency ; nobody promoted for bravery or efficiency. The causes which contributed to the rapid spread and fearful extent of the Chicago Conflagration have already been hinted at in various places in this volume. They may be summarized thus : 1. The city was carelessly, and, with the exception of a single square mile, very badly built. 2. The weather at the time was remarkably dry. 3. The wind blew a steady gale, in the most fatal direction, during the whole prevalence of the fire. 4. The Fire Department, though well equipped, is not well officered. 5. The Fire Department was particularly demoralized on the night of the fire. These are, it will be seen, reasons enough to insure the de- struction of the city ; and one had but to know them, and to sup- ply the initiatory outbreak of flame in the De Koven-street quar- ter, to predict the precise programme of the occasion. There was no need to kindle an incendiary fire, for scarcely a day elapsed without, at the least, three or four outbreaks, and some of them were almost certain to happen in the fatal spot. The only points lacking to enable one to predict the fire beforehand as well as we have all been doing it since, were those hinging on the question, how great a degree of heat could be produced by so many burning buildings, with such a monstrous blow- pipe to furnish the oxygen and % such a mighty bellows to waft the brands onward? The data for answering these questions had never been furnished by any previous conflagration. They will be lacking no longer. As to (1), the architecture of Chicago, it may be remarked, 368 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. that while it had been of late years noted for its airy elegance and its appearance of massiveness, it had been open to serious objection, which the city press had not neglected to make pub- lic, on account of the profuse use of flimsy ornamentation about the cornices and windows, and the inflammable character of much of the roofing. It is also a fact that many of the most showy and massive-looking front walls were nothing but thin brick ones, veneered with the Chicago marble. This marble (a limestone which barely misses being marble) is, like other limestones, more pervious to heat than brick, sandstone, or granite. But when the storm of fire had blown over, and the completeness of the ruin was ascertained, even including all the buildings which had dispensed with show for the sake of strength and the fire-proof quality, it was difficult to say that any kind of buildings would have stayed the flames after they had gained such terrible impetus in traversing the mile lying between the historical cow-stable and the well-built portion of the city. At all events, the fault which tempted Chicago's fate, lies more with the Chicago public than with Chicago architects. The temptation in Chicago to build of lumber was very great; and such was the hurry of every body to get under cover and commence producing revenue; and such the desire of every citizen to see the city grow, and productive enterprise to build up, that these tinder-boxes were allowed to be placed wherever it happened even in the most dangerous places. As the writer of this had the opportunity of saying in one of the daily journals, a few days after the fire : " We have been too good- natured toward those who have, to save a few hundred dollars of their expenses, persistently kept in jeopardy the safety of the whole community, by maintaining in the heart of the city great WHY SHE WAS DESTROYED. 369 numbers of the most inflammable structures. It was the thou- sand or so of dry pine shanties and rookeries between the lake and the river, and south of Monroe Street, which did the busi- ness for Chicago on that terrible night. With these huddled around them, and emitting vast clouds of burning brands, which the hurricane forced into e^ry cranny and through every win- dow, the fine stone rows of the avenues and of the principal streets could no more resist the raging element than the chaff can resist the whirlwind. There may have been, apd doubtless were, occasional weaknesses in the construction of the later- built stores and public edifices a too fragile cornice, or win- dows too much exposed but the fact that buildings for which every thing possible to architecture had been done to make them fire-proof went with the rest, tells plainly that the only fault the grand fault to which the general destructiveness is trace- able was in allowing the fire so much material on which to feed until it became too great for human power to resist. We had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in spasmodic efforts to exorcise the fire fiend from our limits, and yet we were all the while furnishing him with the material and the space with which to organize for his deadly work. We had been industriously feeding him on the only rations whereon he could thrive." So far as the question of building is concerned, it may be added that the fire at De Koven Street needed only to have been .started a mile further to the south and west, among the rookeries which there abound, to have swept away nearly all the West Division, as well as the North and South. The wind and the drought were the dispensations of Provi- dence, and were sent in accordance with the All-wise plan and the good and beneficent laws of nature. It rested with the :_;. -.:.-T :,,-. F .:' :L ,- - - :.:,: : u ki w i- :- M _:.:-: "_ir !: ::; .:, I i V ,r:: v,, ,,., 1 ". .. :_ ' - ._ ~ - ... .: ^ : Tl Jfr JL briy |rfU ir ir iinr . .. -..: . ::. : : :' :. JBHIti. tlii"*m** lilHC flM inmt ss^sw vi ::;. nn : I :._ - mi :;-: UlillPR 372 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. at or after the hour named, much could have been done toward checking the progress of the flames, or preserving any particular buildings, which was omitted by reason of a lack of water at the hydrants. The district burned subsequent to that hour was near enough to the river or to the lake to have been saved by water from these sources, if engines could have been brought to bear, or if any thing could have saved what lay in the track of the then irresistible, insatiate flames. But, at least, the panic and privation which ensued among the people of the city would have been spared, but for the loss of the Water-works. Various theories were set up, chiefly by persons anxious to produce a sensation or to fill up a column, concerning the reason for the unprecedentedly wide spread of the devastation. One of these was invented by a morning paper in Chicago, which purported to be the confession of a member of the Inter- national Society a Communist of Paris, and one of a gang deputed to burn Chicago. The motive for such a deed did not appear to be sufficient, nor was the story free from marks which betrayed its origin in the brain of a professional newspa- per writer. Another theory, equally ridiculous, was that the stone used in Chicago buildings was impregnated with petro- leum. This theory was founded upon certain Munchausenish stories of New York reporters, and upon a statement by Prof. Silliman, that a certain stone near Chicago, used to some extent in building, contains large quantities of petroleum. But it so happens that the only edifice built of the "oil-bearing" stone (the Second Presbyterian Church) is the best preserved ruin anywhere in the vicinity, while Potter Palmer's immense store, of Vermont marble and iron, which stood near by, had scarcely one stone upon another on the second day after the fire. WHY SHE WAS DESTROYED. 373 That there may have been cases of incendiarism which helped on the conflagration is not improbable. If so, they were the result of the excitement and demoralization produced by the terrible event, rather than of any preconcerted plan. It is not impossible that the building near the Water- works, from which the roof of the engine-house caught, was set on fire by an incendiary, or by accident, independent of the general confla- gration. Some circumstances would seem to indicate this; yet the people who went through the fire and witnessed its awful phenomena believe, almost without exception, that this fire also was set by a brand from the main conflagration. Some of the grounds for anticipating disastrous conflagra- tions, and for providing against them by all available means, may be found from the following table of fires occurring in Chicago during the eight years preceding 1871 : Tear. Fires. Losses. Insurance. 1863, 186 $355,660 $272,500 1864, 1865, 193 .... 243 651,798 1,216,466 485,300 941 692 1866, 315 2 487 973 1 646 445 1867, 515 4,215,332 3,427,288 1868, 468 3 138617 1 956 851 1869, 490 1,241,151 841 392 ^70, 700 2 305 595 2 052 971 Total, 3,110 $15,612,592 $11,624,439 This enormous total of losses includes only those, sustained by the insurance companies of New York and Hartford, leav- ing out of the reckoning the home companies, the Cincinnati, Cleveland, Buffalo, Albany, and Boston concerns, and the few foreign companies which have consented to take risks in Chi- cago. The city has the worst fire record of any large city in America. CHAPTER XXI. THE NEWSPAPERS AND THE FIRE. What they said on Sunday morning, October 8 Prophecies suddenly ful- filled "Old and tried" insurance companies tried too much The episode in the Tribune office A "red hot" newspaper Cheery counsel in trouble How the journals rose from their ashes Curiosi- ties of advertising" I T is not amiss to devote a chapter to the record of the news- papers of Chicago, in connection with the Great Confla- gration. They are such powerful, and altogether noteworthy establishments, and represent so truly the ambition, the energy, and the progressiveness for which the people of Chicago are distinguished, that they bear to the aggregate of the city's con- stituencies at least the proportions which a chapter of this book bears to the whole. Nowhere in the world does the growing power of the newspaper press, and the growing disposition to use that power independently for good ends, find better illustra- tion than in Chicago ; and when the fire came and tried the stuff of which all of us were made, the newspapers went through tho crucible with the rest ; and not only did they prove pure metal, but they evinced the qualities of the true philosopher's stone, transmuting into gold that which seemed to be but ashes; or what is more to the point, they acted like quicksilver in re- solving out from the dross with which it had become incrusted, the pure gold of many a faltering citizen's heart. (37-n THE NEWSPAPERS AND THE FIRE. , 375 On the morning of the eighth of October the day of Chicago's doom the Tribune (by common consent the acknowledged chief of these valiant journals) contained (and this illustrates its enterprise) three columns equivalent to eighteen pages of this book of description of a fire which had broken out after mid- night on the night of the seventh. It contained also over one thousand advertisements, all devoted to Chicago business, or the "Wants" of Chicago people. It contained sixty long columns of matter in all equal to four hundred pages of this book, or nearly two complete numbers of any of our first-class monthly magazines. Its real-estate article, on that morning, commenced with this epitome of the condition of affairs in Chicago : " There has scarcely been a time for ten years past when there seemed to be so many schemes of one kind or another on foot, and which, if carried out, will affect the value of real estate in nearly all parts of the city and its suburbs. To use the expres- sion of one who has been warily watching the growth of the various projects for new railroads and new suburban quarters, for both residences and manufactories 'Every body seems to be swelled up with big schemes.' " Further on we read : " The new manufacturing enterprises, of which not less than six or seven will have been started within the next nine months, thus furnishing employment for from fifteen hundred to two thousand more mechanics than are at work here now ; these, together with the new railroad projects, and the rapid increase of population and business from other causes, have stimulated the speculative feeling until it has even infected some of the coolest and most conservative people who have always held aloof from speculation. It is in this that lies the only danger of the 376 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. present situation, and it would be well to remember that when prospects look the most flattering, is the very time when it is necessary to exercise the greatest caution." This was not prophetic, though it almost seems so now ; it was merely the good advice which had been doled out in moder- ate doses to the fortune-chasing Chicagoans, at intervals for years, and in spite of which they had gone on and made fortunes. But this good advice vindicated itself at last. In the same day's issue of the Times the real-estate arti- cle commenced thus : " There never was a time when there was more going on in Chicago in the way of construction than now. New buildings are looming up in every direction above the surrounding structures, while probably not a day passes without the con- struction of new buildings, even though the season is so far advanced. The city's growth this year has been unparalleled." The Tribune, in the article referred to, went on to describe the routes by which three of the five great new lines of rail- road contemplating an entrance into the city were going to effect that entrance. Thus the newspapers of October 8th, the last day of the old Chicago, placed on record the fact that the people of the city were never so active, never so prosperous, never so ambitious, never so sanguine of the future as on the morning of that fatal day. These cheering announcements read now like a mockery of the cruel fate that followed so close upon their heels. Not so the hint thrown out in this paragraph from the introduction to the account of the Saturday night fire : " For days past, alarm has followed alarm, but the compara- tively trifling losses have familiarized us to the pealing of the Court-house bell, and we had forgotten that the absence of rain for throe weeks had left every thing in so dry and inflammable THE NEWSPAPERS AND THE FIRE. 377 a condition that a spark might start afire which would sweep from end to end of the city." Within twenty-four hours that prophecy was verified ; the fire was kindled, and the conflagra- tion did " sweep from end to end of the city." But it would seem as if corporations had not the gift of prophecy, for we find in the same issue of the Tribune a paragraph headed "The Great Fire," and remarking with regard to that fire and the Mutual Security Insurance Company, that "the agents will be ready to commence the work of adjusting early on Monday morning," that " happily for the stockholders of this sterling old company, their ample surplus far exceeds the loss, and leaves their handsome capital unimpaired," and that "the re- sult is a lesson to property-owners to insure in none but old and tried companies." This " old and tried company " which had been so brave through the " Great Fire," and which had dispatched an agent post haste, after midnight, to insert a flaming advertisement and an editorial puff in the morning papers, could not find assets enough, twenty-four hours after- ward, to pay five cents on each dollar of its losses. The journals of that morning announced for the week and for the winter an unprecedentedly rich season of stage amuse- ments opera, with the world's best prima donnas and the finest accessories ever known in America, the opening on the morrow of the finest temple of music and the drama to be found on this continent, and all manner of feasts for the senses of the luxu- rious and the taste of the refined. Chicago had become almost another Pompeii in luxury, if not in licentiousness ; she has become almost another Pompeii in the suddenness of her fate ! The storm struck ; the offices of the journals referred to were busy hives on that awful night. Nothing like it had ever been known in the city. The city editor and his reporters rose to 32 set- to wadddk, O&os were wnli^ o^t fkaft he lad To iRvck tbej al tk Mortal wffl eio-jct iargnM datffllAey ::, :*-,::: _i 77;* : 7 ^ -^^ :: ~ 380 CHICAGO AND THE CHEAT CONFLAGRATION. iron shutters the men had been unable to close: Then the fine stronghold in which not only its proprietors but all the people had proudly confided, fell, and they said "there's no use hop- ing any longer. Every thing must go." This was a little after ten o'clock, on Monday morning. A t three o'clock, when the business part of the town was all gone, and every Chicago newspaper with it, and fifteen thousand buildings were burning simultaneously throughout eight wards of the city, and the terror-stricken population were all shrink- ing along the margin of the lake or the suburban prairies, the Evening Journal, true to the spirit of Chicago journalism, came out with a small extra, containing a clear and comprehensive account of the conflagration. Some printers of the Evening Post establishment rallied at a small job printing shop, on the west side of the river, and got out a Post for the emergency. The Tribune Building had not ceased to blaze, or rather to melt, for there was not much about it to make a blaze of, before Joseph Medill, one of its chief stockholders (since elected mayor of the city), had sought out a job-office on Canal Street a locality where nobody had dreamed there was any thing of the sort and bought it out, type, presses, and lease of three spacious floors; so that on the morrow the force of the Tribune was at work producing a broadside sheet for Wednes- day morning. That issue sounded out like a tocsin which called every man in Chicago to his duty. It gave a twelve column account of the great calamity. It was headed " Chicago destroyed;" but this was merely a rhetorical flourish of the younger Medill, for the editorial columns abounded in ringing, cheering utterances. We can not forbear quoting the principal of these : THE NEWSPAPERS AND THE FIRE. 381 "CHEER UP." " In the midst of a calamity without parallel in the world's history, looking upon the ashes of thirty years' accumulations, the people of this once beautiful city have resolved that CHI- CAGO SHALL EISE AGAIN! " With woe on every hand, with death in many strange places, with two or three hundred millions of our hard-earned property swept away in a few hours, the hearts of our men and women are still brave, and they look into the future with undaunted hearts. As there has never been such a calamity, so has there never been such cheerful fortitude in the face of desolation and ruin. "Thanks to the blessed charity of the good people of the United States, we shall not suffer from hunger or nakedness in this trying time. Hundreds of train-loads of provisions are coming forward to us with all speed from every quarter, from Maine to Omaha. Some have already arrived more will reach us before tnese words are printed. Three-fourths of our inhabited area is still saved. The water supply will be speedily renewed. Steam fire engines from a dozen neighboring cities have already arrived, and more are on their way. It seems impossible that any further progress should be made by the flames, or that any new fire should break out that would not be instantly extinguished. "Already contracts have been made for rebuilding some of the burned blocks, and the clearing away of the debris will commence to-day, if the heat is so far subdued that the charred material can be handled. Field, Leiter & Co. and John V. Farwell & Co. will recommence business to-day. The money and securities in all the banks are safe. The railroads are working with all their energies to bring us out of our afflic- 382 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. tion. The three hundred millions of capital invested in these roads is bound to see us through. They have been built with special reference to a great commercial mart at this place, and they can not fail to sustain us. CHICAGO MUST RISE AGAIN. "We do not belittle the calamity that has befallen us. The world has probably never seen the like of it certainly not since Moscow burned. But the forces of nature, no less than the forces of reason require that the exchanges of a great region should be conducted here. Ten, twenty years may be required to reconstruct our fair city, but the capital to rebuild it fire- proof will be forthcoming. The losses we have suffered must be borne; but the place, the time, and the men are here, to commence at the bottom and work up again ; not at the bottom neither, for we have credit in evry land, and the experience of one upbuilding of Chicago to help us. Let us all cheer up, save what is yet left, and we shall come out right. The Chris- tian world is coming to our relief. The worH is already over. In a few days more all the dangers will be past, and we can resume the battle of life with Christian faith and western grit. Let us all cheer up !" This bugle-call had an electrical effect upon the spirits of the people. Perhaps it only echoed the sentiment which they were already uttering to each other, as the "soul of a young man speaks to another," in Longfellow's Psalm of Life; and the refrain of it was the same as that which the poet has made a household word : "Let us then be up and doing, With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait." THE NEWSPAPERS AND THE FIRE. 383 But Chicago would not consent to wait any such period as their Tribune had set for them; and to-day one can hear no longer period than five years appointed among Chicagoans for the complete rebuilding of their city. The Journal and Post, at the same time, joined in the strain with manful utterances. The latter said, on Wednesday : "There is now only one way to look ahead. Chicago has a future as certainly as it has a past. Upon all the blackened walls and tottering towers, upon clinging cornice and ruined pavement, is written broadly the cheery word RESURGAM. There is manliness enough left here to reconstruct the city even in this terrible calamity and this deep desolation. There is waste, but there is not despair. The brave hearts of our citi- zens, even more than the sympathy of other cities, stands to us as a pledge of victory. The land is left, the grand position is left, and the men are left who reared the recent magnificent city from the prairie mud. They can do it again, and they will do it again. The consequences of the most disastrous fire the world has ever suffered, will be conquered and forgotten by the most intrepid spirit of determination the world has ever reared." At the same time the Post had coolness enough to interpose a timely word in deprecation of panics, and warning against acts of violence, in the name of the law, such as were liable to result from the excited, condition of the public mind at that time. There were but three or four presses large enough to print a newspaper of respectable size in the city ; and these were, single cylinders, and not in first-rate condition, so that the working of the editions was very slow. The Tribune had been accus- tomed to two eight-cylinder Hoes, either working 10,000 sheets per hour, and the other papers had had a four-cylinder 381 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. each ; so that but a small portion, even of the city editions of either newspaper could be printed. None were mailed, or even sent to city subscribers by carriers, for several days. The price of a newspaper for the first few days was twenty-five cents, in- variably, except the Tribune, which on the first day sold readily for half a dollar, and even a dollar. To obtain them for sale upon the street, the boys (and such men as desired) had to " fall in," form a queue and wait, perhaps an hour or two for a chance to buy. The price at the counting-room was never raised above the regular five cents, nor was the price of adver- tising raised. Displayed advertisements were refused by the Tribune, as more was received than could have been printed in the paper, leaving out all other matter. There was never such a rush of advertising in Chicago as during the few weeks fol- lowing the fire. The lists of missing persons were advertised constantly without charge, and on some days filled two columns of space. The Republican resumed publication on the 12th, and the Evening Mail on the same day. The German papers were slower ; while the Times, after announcing an intention to suspend for a month rather than issue an inferior sheet, resumed on the 18th in good style. On the 15th, the Tribune said : "When, on last Wednesday, we called upon the people of Chicago to cheer up, we did not appreciate or estimate the force of character that was in them. Our citizens have displayed a noble heroism, worthy of the abounding charity that has been showered upon them. They have shown capacity to help themselves, and that alone is worth every thing in the way of re-establishing their credit and procuring the necessary capital to build up again. Let them go on as they have begun, not calling on Congress or the gods for donations, or stay laws, and THE NEWSPAPERS AND THE FIEE. 385 they will come out of the fire right side up, and presently we shall have our Chicago again, nobler and more beautiful than before. . . . With tears for the dead and dying, with sor- row and tender care for the maimed and sick, with faith in God, and stout hearts in our breasts, we now begin to clear away the ruins." The newspapers were, indeed, during the terrible week fol- lowing the conflagration, among the most necessary articles, ranking along with food, water, and fire-engines. Besides fur- nishing the facts about the calamity which still hung like a spent thunder-cloud in the horizon, and disproving many har- assing falsehoods which were circulating about, and which thronged like vermin in all the out-of-Chicago papers, they served the very necessary purpose of enabling thousands of per- sons to announce their whereabouts, and advertise for those who were missing; also for announcing the new location of men of business a class of announcements which soon became very numerous. The Tribune of the 22d of October the thirteenth day after the fire contained 1536 advertisements, chiefly of business and professional men announcing their change of loca- tion. The manner of this announcement was as oool as could be. It was usually to the effect that "Messrs. A. & B. have removed their store to No. C. Street." No reference to any fire or other indication that the removal was not entirely a com- monplace affair. The advertisements of those days will be found valuable mementoes of the time whenever in future days the few exist- ing files of Chicago papers for October, 1871, shall be over- hauled. Some of them indicated the new lines of business which had been created by the fire. Thus several scientific men announced their readiness to restore charred papers to 33 386 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. legibility; printers and stationers announced blank "proofs of loss " as their main stock in trade ; and all the lawyers in town were found to have been transformed into "Adjusters." The sign-painting interest also looked up wonderfully. The " Per- sonal " advertisements of doubtful morality, asking " the beau- tiful blonde with the blue parasol who noticed gentleman in McVicker's Theater" to "communicate," etc., etc., had all dis- appeared given place to appeals of this sort : If the gray- whiskered man who was seen removing trunks marked M. E. W. & T. C. Welsh, from the open space opposite Lincoln Park, at junction of North Wells and Clark Streets, will deliver them at 91 South Peoria Street, he will be liberally rewarded, and no questions asked. PERSONAL The party that took contents of large trunk, carried away small canvas covered trunk, and oil painting, left in carriage on lake- shore, foot of Erie Street, last Monday, will be paid more for return of same to subscriber, and no questions asked, than they will sell for. Address J. D. HARVEY, 36 South Canal Street. PERSONAL If A. W. Morgan can furnish information regarding Rillie Snow's trunks, or if he has them, and will forward to Rillie Snow, Council Bluffs, Iowa, he will be liberally rewarded. Some advertisers showed their disposition to smile through it all. One firm, dealing in stoves, announced that " the warm climate at the old stand, 168 Lake Street, being rather unfavor- able to the stove business," the business would henceforward be carried on at such a place. A firm of jolly sign-painters an- nounced their removal in this choice poetic fashion : SINCE the great k- Lamity to our pat- Rons we would say That we are not quite flat Broke, but conclu- Ded to move our ENTIRE STOCK into our new Shop (away from the fire). THE NEWSPAPERS AND THE FIRE. 387 111 Desplaines, corner Monroe, SIGNS painted at prices llemarkably LOW, For MORE information see MOOERS&GOE. A list of the newspapers published in Chicago on the 7th of October, 1871, was given in an earlier chapter of this book. On the forenoon of the 9th, but one of them, and that an infe- rior weekly, could boast an office of publication, or an ounce of type. CHAPTER XXII. A WEEK WITHOUT WATER. A day of chaos The exodus from the city No water Nights of terror- fear of incendiarism The citizen patrol Stories of summary venge- ance Military law Halt! The relic business Restoration of water and confidence. TUESDAY, the 10th of October, may be called a day of transition from chaos to order; though it looked upon the surface like chaos merely. The Mayor and city government were busy providing for the re-establishment of quiet and con- fidence, and the Board of Trade and other authorities in busi- ness were organizing for the resurrection of Chicago ; but little of this was apparent to the general observer. The visitor to Chicago (that is the unburnt part of it), Tuesday morning, saw, perhaps, first of all, an occasional puff of smoke, curling up- ward from chimney-tops of houses, and yet not many ; for the Mayor's order of the previous night had prohibited all kitchen fires, and only the very reckless or the very hungry made bold to construe the shower of the previous night as a contravention of the order. He saw an occasional face show itself on the street, haggard and red-eyed, from the effects of the previous twenty-four hours' experience. He saw water-carts moving through the streets and being surrounded, every time they halted, by men in dressing-gowns and women in their meanest (388) A WEEK WITHOUT WATER. 389 wear, bearing buckets and pitchers, to buy, at a shilling a pail- ful, the fluid which had suddenly become so precious. He saw wagons drive up to church doors, carrying sick or wounded or burnt victims of the flames, now first furnished with a shel- ter. He saw fire engines, probably from abroad, getting into position to play upon the blazing coal heaps along the river; their occasional sharp whistle was almost the only sound to break the solemn stillness of the morning. By and by, how- ever, the people began to stir, and then suddenly all became a Babel of confusion. Wagons of every description, and in num- bers which no one thought the city could boast, were plying hither and thither with reckless speed. The whole male popu- lation, apparently, was soon on the street some hastening to the places of general congregating, as if to escape from the state of apprehension in which the night had been passed some seeking for tidings of friends whom they knew to have been burned out some on the hunt for a new place of business some bound for the burnt district on a tour of curiosity, if for no other motive. The streets through the burnt district were found some of them to be passable for carriages, though there were such ac- cumulations of fallen bricks and stones, fragments of tin roofs, telegraph wires, and rails of street railways, warped so as to stand like huge pot-bails all along the street, that this method of locomotion was by no means easy. Only one bridge be- tween the east and west sides of the river was passable without going far south that at Randolph Street. Across the North Branch there was also but one that at Kinzie Street; while there was for several days no communication at all across the main river, the bridges being all destroyed and the Lasalle Street tuunel obstructed. The streets having been, in grading, 390 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. raised from five to twelve feet above the original level of the town, stood up like causeways, and conveyed to the senses a gloomy impression, like the skinny bones of a wasted invalid, whom we had known only as a rotund person. Over these cadaverous causeways the population poured, stopping occasion- ally to gaze at the ruins of known buildings, or to accost each other with the new salutation, " How did you come out of it?'' instead of " How do you do?" The appearance of the most conspicuous ruins on this and the few following days is correctly portrayed by the cuts which are contained in this work; but the sight which confronted the people of Chicago the most painfully on that day can not be reproduced by the artist. It was the completeness of the wreck ; the total desolation which met the eye on every hand ; the utter blankness of what had a few hours before been so full of life, of associations, of aspirations, of all things which kept the mind of a Chicagoan so constantly crowded, and his nerves and muscles so constantly driven. Even the distances seemed to have been burned up Avith all things else, and any of the few landmarks left would suddenly come up and confront one, like an apparition, when he thought it far away. These landmarks were so few, however, that, even in the most frequented quarters of the city, which one had never missed sight of for a day, one found himself frequently puzzled, and inquiring, " Where are we now? What building was this?" The nearest street, outside of the burnt district, at all adapted to the purposes of commerce, was Canal Street, run- ning along the west side of the river. At right angles with this were Randolph and Madison Streets, constituting the main thorough fares to the western city limits; and these streets, as well as State Street and Wabash Avenue, upon the south A WEEK WITHOUT WATER. 391 side, were thronged, during Tuesday and Wednesday, with people in search of stores and offices. These jostled each other desperately upon the rough sidewalks of this quarter, as did the carts and wagons flying over the pavements, with trunks and household goods from the lake-shore and prairies. This rush has kept up ever since; but the character of the traffic has been changed the wagons being now laden with merchan- dise and building materials, and the grimy, smoky, excited crowd of citizens having given way, in part, to a current of sight-seers from abroad. These began to arrive in large numbers on the very day following the fire; so that the trains which came into town were greatly overloaded ; but those which went out were much more so. An exodus set in on the 9th, and was followed up so well that by the 16th some 60,000 people had left the city; but of these nearly a half came back within the next two or three weeks. The distractions of the day gave way, as night approached, to a dread of further fires, founded upon stories of incendiarism, which were rife. Every hour brought new accounts of at- tempted arson and of summary justice upon the perpetrator of the heinous act. The police reported numerous cases of men, women, and children hung to lamp-posts, beaten to death or shot down for acts of incendiarism. These were all religiously believed, even by those not constitutionally credulous. The gen- eral belief was that not only was the town beset by incendiaries who burned to plunder, but that a mania for arson had over- taken the more desperate and ignorant classes of the commu- nity. The consequence was a fearful state of panic on Tuesday and the following nights. Fifteen hundred special policemen were sworn in on the west side and five hundred on the east 392 CHICAGO AND THE GFwEAT CONFLAGRATION. side, and, armed with pistols, muskets, and such other weapons as they could produce, patroled every square in the city, chal- lenging every person seen after nine o'clock in the evening. There were but few out, however, since there was no longer any business, any shows, or any carousing all saloons being closed at eight o'clock by the Mayor's order. It will be readily im- agined that few citizens slept soundly through these nights of panic and alarm. With a remnant of the city far more in- flammable than the part which burned, with incendiaries prowl- ing about to kindle fires, with plenty of wind prevailing to spread them, with no water to check them, and with' the bright glare of the burning coal piles to deceive the watcher ever and anon into the belief that the dreaded conflagration had actually set in, it is no wonder that the people of the West Division were kept in a miserable state for the few days and nights suc- ceeding the fire, before the military came to their relief, and some water from the river was got into the mains, and the stories of incendiarism were, for the most part, exploded. On the 10th, it was found that the bakers and provision dealers were, as might have been expected, putting up the price of food. The supply of provisions, it was supposed, had been seriously affected by the conflagration ; the wholesale meat mar- kets, located on Kinzie Street, were all destroyed; but the sharks found Chicago a bad town in which to get up a " corner " on provisions, for the supply was not interfered with for a day ; and even had not the Mayor come out with a stringent proclamation against extortion, * it is not likely that any rise in prices of eatables could have been maintained. Not a single article of food, or fuel, or wear was, to our knowledge, enhanced in price on account of the fire. On the contrary, meats became * See Appendix " B," I. A WEEK WITHOUT WATER. 393 cheaper than ever on the week succeeding the conflagration, and so continued. Perhaps there is not another city in the world where such quantities of provisions could have been destroyed, with such a result. Meantime, what were the constituted authorities of the city doing toward restoring order and confidence to the citizens? The Mayor (R. B. Mason) had convoked his staff on Monday forenoon, and issued a proclamation suited to the exigency, pledging the faith of the city for the expenses of relieving the suffering, warning all lawless persons against the consequences of their acts, and assuring the citizens that the fire had spent its force, and that " all would soon be well." The headquarters of the city government were fixed in the church on Washington Street, a mile west of the river. Other proclamations followed in quick succession; one, which appeared on the 10th, giving orders relative to police organization, and investing "the mili- tary" with full police power. Unfortunately, however, "the military" of Chicago was a very limited army the only force capable of mustering and arming was two companies of Norwegian militia, who were put on duty 011 Tuesday. Militia companies from other Illinois citips began to come in on Tuesday also six companies in all, from Bloomingtou, Springfield, Champaign, and other towns, having arrived by Wednesday, under the charge of Adjutant General Dilger, who was sent by Governor Palmer for the purpose. Up to this time the panic had been increasing. But little confidence was felt in the police force, although that body numbered near 400 regulars, and any number of "specials." The people were in such a state that they welcomed the sight of muskets and the signs of martial law as heartily as the citizens of this free country are generally supposed to abominate such demonstra- 394 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. tions of force. Especially did they hail with acclamation the announcement made in a proclamation on the llth that the preservation of good order in the city was entrusted to Lieu ten- ant-general Sheridan.* This gallant officer immediately, by virtue of his authority, as commander of the Military Division of the Missouri, ordered hither six companies of regular U. S. troops two from Omaha, three from Fort Leavenworth, and one from Fort Scott. He was also furnished by General Halleck with four companies from Kentucky ; so that he had soon a full regiment of troops at his command, exclusive of the State militia. The regulars were stationed through the Burnt District of the South Divis- ion, which being destitute of street lamps and strewn with valuable safes two or three score to every block was ex- tremely liable to the depredations of thieves. It was currently reported that a thousand of these had left New York on the evening of the 9th for Chicago. Doubtless there were many such who started hither, but the preparations, and the announce- ment that Sheridan was at the helm, doubtless demoralized their calculations, for few of them were heard from through their works. The militia troops were set to patrolling the tin- burnt division of the city, in which duty they were superseded, before Saturday night, by a battalion raised tinder Colonel Frank T. Sherman, ex-postmaster, and sworn in for twenty days' service. For several days Chicago might be said to bristle with bayo- nets. Military rule seemed to be the form of government best adapted to the emergency in which the community found itself and was unanimously approved by the hearts of the citizens, whatever constitutional lawyers and jealous police commis- *See Appendix "B," I. - A WEEK WITHOUT WATER. 395 sioncrs may have thought of it. Under the shadow of the American Eagle's protecting wing, the people went and came with equanimity -about their business, and at night they lay down and slept soundly, lulled by the tread of the vigilant sentry. The abnormal susceptibility to excitement about fire continued, however, and whenever there was an alarm sounded, you might see a sudden rush of the whole population in that vicinity, and a very sudden stamping out of the incipient con- flagration. Millionaires (those who had been such) would rush out to twopenny fires and come back, much blown, with full particulars. The Fire Department seemed to have been mus- tered out of service, and the old-fashioned era of axes and water-buckets to have returned. A gentleman's barn took fire on Wabash Avenue, and before an engine could arrive, the citizens had formed a line from the lake to the barn, and ex- tinguished the fire by passing buckets of water. Meantime, however, the engines of the Water-works were still disabled, though a hundred men were working on them constantly, night and day. A way had been found, however, to fill many of the mains by pumping water from the river into them. Locomotives all sorts of engines were rigged to pumps and set to work with all their might; and with euoh success that, in a week after the fire, about a third of the peo- ple of the inhabited portions of the city had water such as it was i n their basements. By this time, however, it was found out that the stories about the catching and hanging of incen- diaries were all false, and the popular mind was quite easy about fires ; especially as copious showers of rain had fallen on the sixteenth. The privation resulting from a lack of water for drinking and culinary purposes was still seriously felt, however. The 396 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. people were obliged to supply themselves from the artesian wells at the western extremity of the city, or from the lake; and the progress of the work at the Water-works was anxiously watched. The engineer, Mr. Cregier, could not give any posi- tive assurance whether the engine at which he was Avorking, with his three hundred machinists, would not prove to be so swollen or warped by the fire that its delicate pistons and cylin- ders would refuse to play. In that case it was not simply a week, but a winter without water! On the evening of the 17th, just eight days after the fall of the insane roof of shin- gles, the thousand pieces of the great engine were all put in place, and the crucial experiment made on which so much com- fort or privation, health or sickness, soberness or intemperance, depended. The fires were lighted under the boilers, and a head of steam was put on in order to thoroughly test the engine be- fore setting it to work. The engineer, and the whole corps of tireless men who had toiled to complete the work, stood around. It was an anxious moment, and the faces of those present be- tokened the intensity of the strain. The word was given, and at 8:27 o'clock the machine was set in motion, the giant wheel slowly revolved, and once more the iron heart throbbed on Chicago Avenue, forcing the precious fluid from the lake at each pulsation through the monster arteries away to the city limits. And then, once more, the city breathed freely; and not only breathed, but drank freely, not considering that the pipes had become foul from the deposits of the muddy stream from the river. The consequence was much sickness for about two weeks, especially among children. On the 24th the city was visited by dense clouds of smoke, which rendered the atmosphere almost utterly opaque as much so as the thickest fog of an autumn morning. It did not come A WEEK WITHOUT WATER. 397 from the coal heaps, several of which were burning, for the whole country for a radius of a hundred and fifty miles around Chicago was visited by the same phenomenon. The smoke was doubtless from the burning woods of Michigan, and was brought across the lake by a strong caster; but that it should visit so large an area at once, and only for a single day, while no similar effect came from the great Chicaga fire, nor from the vast burnings then going on in Wisconsin, was somewhat re- markable. The relic business came to be a notable feature of the situa- tion about these days. This was carried on by boys, who gathered relics of the conflagration from the cellars of ruined stores melted crockery and steel ware being the staples and peddled them at ridiculously low prices to visitors and citizens. "Relics of the fire," their regular ciy, became a sort of by- word ; so that people, advertising for board, in the newspapers, would jocularly describe themselves as "relics of the late fire." Fragments of the Court-house bell were the relics most sought after, and are highly prized by those fortunate' enough to secure them. The Italians, ever on the lookout for odd branches of trade, went into the relic business more elaborately than the gamins. Passing along Randolph Street, a week or more after the fire, the writer came upon one of these compatriots of Gari- baldi, whose countenance, indeed, bore a striking resemblance to that reputed hero, except that it had taken on a hard Yankee look which almost disguised its nationality until the speech of the man betrayed it. He had pre-empted, miner fashion, a " claim " consisting of the basement of a crockery store, and had excavated a few dozen pieces of demoralized table-ware. Surrounded by these and by two large heaps of rubbish, and covered from head to foot with a thick sprinkling of ashes ; he 398 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. harangued his audience : " Step up, dzentlemen, buy relics of the fire. Here's beayoutefool china soocher bool (displaying a badly smoked and misshapen article) ; you haf him For only twanety-five cents. Here's beayoutefool set cups eight of 'em all froze together do for walking-stick;" and he found cus- tomers pretty readily. Himself undoubtedly a victim of the conflagration, he was a true specimen of the Chicago business man ready to do business on no capital if none is at hand, and prompt to organize victory out of defeat; to "mount," as the poet says, " on stepping stones of our dead selves." The period of military rule came to an end on the 23d of October. It was doubtless by a melancholy occurrence which served to elicit some serious animadversions on the policy of employing military usages to the extent which characterized this period. Thomas Grosvenor, Esq., prosecuting attorney for the city in the police-courts, was shot fatally, on the morning of the 21st, by a young man named Treat, belonging to Colonel Sherman's " home-guard," and acting as sentinel near the Douglas University, of which he is a student. Mr. Grosvenor, going home after midnight, was challenged by the sentinel, and refused to halt. Treat told him he should fire upon him if he did not obey. The reply was "Fire, and be d d." The sentinel, true to his word, drew up and fired, shooting Gros- venor through the lungs. He was soon after arrested and held for the action of the grand jury. The popular voice generally sustained the boy, and blamed the victim for his rashness ; but a gloom was spread over the community by the event, not only because the deceased was a popular man, but because the situa- tion had really become such as not to require military aid any longer. Accordingly, on the 23d, Mayor Mason, after some sharp correspondence with the Board of Police Commissioners, A WEEK WITHOUT WATER. 399 who had been piqued from the first at the temporary diminution of their consequence, relieved General Sheridan of the duty which he had asked him to accept, twelve days before. And thus ended the period of dearth, of panic, and of military law.* * Unless we are to make a note of a blustering correspondence inaugu- rated by Governor Palmer, who considered his prerogatives invaded by the "invasion" of his territory by United States troops, and proposed to indite General Sheridan for the murder of Grosvenor, this is a phase of the affair not by any means completed at the time of putting this work to press. Nor is it of interest, except as a matter of constitutional law, the fact being that the people of Chicago, whose welfare was mainly concerned, were well satisfied with the action of Mayor Mason in taking the respon- sibility at a time when the safety of the people (the "supreme law") seemed to demand such action. The main question which the courts, when called on, will have to decide is, apparently, the legal right of the mayor to put the keeping of the city's peace out of the hands of the police authorities, even with their consent, which he claims was obtained. CHAPTER XXIII. THE CHURCHES AFTER THE FIRE. The next Sunday Assembling under the ruined walls Robert Collyer'a adventures Trying to save Unity Lessons of hope and courage. ~TT was a sad day, the Sabbath after the fire, when the stimu- -*- lus of work was off, and quiet meditation was in order. The solemnity and suggestiveness of the day were, moreover, greatly heightened by the meetings which the worshipers of the ruined churches held under the walls of their beloved sanctuaries. Chicago had come to be noted for the beauty of her church architecture, and the large number of her stately churches, built as they were, for the most part, of rough ashlars of Illinois gray limestone. A score or more of the best churches destroyed in this Conflagration were nearly new, and had been built only after great effort. The congregations of the most of them gathered on Sunday morning, and were ad- dressed in the open air by their pastors. As a specimen of these exercises, we will describe those at the church of the Rev. Robert Collyer, whose name is the best known of any Chicago clergyman's. - Mr. Collyer had labored during five or six years very zealously to build up his congregation, and rake together funds enough to erect their splendid church, which, with its organ, cost 135,000. An account of how they tried to save it, Mr. Collyer has written out for us, along with some other (400) THE CHURCHES AFTER THE FIRE. 401 of his adventures on the night of the fire, in the subjoined sketch : "You want me to tell you how we lost Unity Church. I was roused from a heavy sleep, at half- past one on Monday morning, by my wife, who said the fire was increasing on the south side, a storm of fire flakes, sweeping over northward and eastward, and we must get the children up and dress them it was not safe to delay another minute. "I was broad awake in an instant, did just as I was bidden, and then, when we were all ready, we roused some of the neighbors, who dressed their children too, and the policeman on our beat told us he had roused up all the people in his district. We did not think then there was very much danger the north side would take fire, except from these flying embers, and they were drifting eastward, toward the lake, more than they were northward toward our street. So when the children begged me to go with them over the bridge to see the fire, I went. We crossed at Wells Street, because that was almost entirely free from the falling flakes; the Court-house was afire at 'that time, the dome standing almost white with the intense heat, and buildings were catching to the eastward rapidly. We wanted to cross back by Clark or State Streets, but by that time the shower of fire was so heavy on Water Street, eastward of Wells, that I durst not take the children down in that direction, so we went back as we had come, reaching Clark Street by Michigan. By that time the north side seemed to be thoroughly alarmed ; there were lights in all the houses, swift moving figures could be seen in the rooms, and the people were getting their belong- ings into the streets. When we got home I sat down a little while, and then went to the corner of State Street and Chicago Avenue, to see how the fire seemed across the bridge. As I 34 402 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. stood there the great unfinished spire on the Church of the Holy Name began to lurch eastward in the terrible tornado, and, as I watched it, went down with a great crash on the roof of the church northward. This must have been an hour before the fire swept up as far as that corner. John Wentworth came along just then with a boy and two bags, which he said were full of papers; I invited him to come in and sit down, as my house was near; but he said he should go on, because the whole city was going to be burnt up. I did not believe him, and walked home ; but presently my little son ran in and said : 'Papa, the fire has crossed at State Street.' I ran down and found it was so. Then there was a light a little south of Lill's Brewery the neighbors said it was a cooper's shop. My wife had already begun to pack. I took a load on my shoulders and started for the church. As I turned the corner a poor woman said ' Oh ! Mr. Colly er, that is not what you meant, is it ? ' ' Yes/ I said, t Chicago Avenue is going, but I think we can save the church ; you had better all come there and bring your things.' By daylight the north side of the church was heaped up with the poor belongings of many German families, while they shel- tered with their children inside. Our own people came also and piled many precious things in the lecture-room, and in my study. Indeed, we hindered nobody ; all came in who would, and brought what they had. The fire then was sweeping up eastward, and a little more slowly westward. Ogden School caught from Chicago Avenue, then Chestnut Street from Ogden School, and then the New England Church. By this time we had begun to break down the fences, and hammer away at the sidewalks with our hands and feet, for we had no tools, except, I think, one hatchet and a shovel. A number of young men belonging to the church, and some others I did not know, THE CHURCHES AFTER THE FIRE. 403 worked with all their might. Mr. N. E. Sheldon, who lived near, caine up and said : ' Mr. Collyer, I think we can save your church the fire will catch in the basement first, where the coal and wood is; let us go down there.' So some staid outside to fight off the fire, and I went down with Mr. Sheldon, and three or four more, to take care of the inside. ~\Ve pulled back the kindling-wood, got water out of the waste-pipe, wet the win- dows, and Mahlon D. Ogden generously let us have as much more water as we asked for out of his cistern, though he knew it was all he had to save his own home, for by that time the Water- works had gone. I was very jealous all the while lest the fiend should come on us some other way, and take us by surprise. There was deadly danger I knew, and a lit- tle host of men and boys were carrying my library out of the study and tumbling it into the park for fear of the worst. When we felt pretty sure that the fire was fought off from the lower windows and doors, I went with an armful of books my- self, possibly several, I do not clearly remember; but I know that as I came back out of the park I saw a little puff of black smoke, intensely black, rising above the roof on the north side of the church, near the tower. It rose up presently into a great cloud ; then I knew we were beaten, shouted to the men to come out of the cellar, told what women were left to get away with their children as fast as they could, for the church would presently be in a blaze, and either then, or a little sooner, I think, I went up stairs into my pulpit, where I had stood the night before and talked to my people about poor, burnt Paris, as I saw it in July, took one great, mighty look at it, as you look at a dear friend you know you will never see again, then I took the Bible, came down stairs, locked my study-dox>r, put the key in my pocket, and came away. I have 404 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. the key still, and when we get another Unity Church, I shall have a lock made for that key, and the lock put on to my study-door. Very truly, yours, "ROBERT COLLYER. "P. S. As I read this over, I find I must make a stronger mark than I have made against Mr. Sheldon's name. He was not a member of my church, I only knew him by sight, but when he came among us it was like a captain with an unflinch- ing heart coming into a regiment that has half a mind to give up the fight. We had fought a hard battle ; he put fresh cour- age and pluck into us all, and worked like a hero to save our precious pile. If there was a special Providence over Mahlon Ogden's house to save it, I think its cool wings must have come down and about the place while his kinsman (Sheldon) was doing such a grand, unselfish work to save our church. R. C." "When the next Sunday came, Mr. Collyer, as well as the pastors of the New England Church and St. James's Episcopal Church, not far off, gathered his hearers under the walls of the sanctuary and addressed them. The preacher stood upon a carved stone which had fallen from the arch above, with hi.' people gathered about him in a half circle. The scene is de- scribed by a spectator as calling to mind the meetings of the early saints in caves and subterranean tombs. Plai* hymns were sung, and prayers put up, after which the pastoi said: " I wanted to get you to come together this morning, my friends, as many as could, who were left of our congregation, iu order that I might say a word or two to you out from my THE CHURCHES AFTER THE FIRE. 405 own heart, and then we might go home and think it over, and realize something of our altered, and yet unalterable, relations. I could not before trust myself to speak to you in regard to the great thought nearest to the heart of each ; I could not trust you to listen. The calamity was too near, and we all broke down in the effort; that is a subject that we must approach no more. " Some men of a stronger heart are, perhaps, able to thank God for this great affliction. I, myself, have tried to find some altitude of soul, some height of moral sentiment, from which I might look down and thank God for overshadowing us with this great sorrow. To such an elevation I may climb at last, but I have not yet attained it. Perhaps I may say, with the psalmist, at length : ^ It is well that I was afflicted ; before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep Thy law/ I might, in such an event, find the elements of grace for this life and that which is to come, \fhich could not have been found except in such a calamity. " But I can not get up to it this morning. I see, as yet, too vividly your homes burning, and you all, my poor, dear friends, fleeing in mortal terror for your lives, and I wanting to help you, and myself powerless to act. Well, well! It is too near. [A pause, and audible sobs in the congregation.] We will thank God as soon as we can. These great walls of hinderance are about you now. One day, doubtless, we shall be big enough in soul, and good enough, to get into this atmosphere of praise and thanksgiving for this great sorrow." He then told his hearers how well they could get along without the property which they had lost ; how they had once been even poorer than they were now; and how Lot's wife had been turned into a pillar of salt (which he said meant a 406 CHICAGO AND THE GKEAT CONFLAGRATION. bitter woman) for turning back and mourning over a burning Sodom. Further on he said, with much feeling: " The relations between us as pastor and people, dear friends, has been of the deepest and truest love ever known. I have always felt that it was so, and you have felt it too. Now we have received a shock in this relation such as we never expected, such as we never could have expected. For two or three days after it came I was stunned and did not know what to do. I could tell nothing about the future. - 1 think I must have been personally injured by my long fight with the fire. It was a day or two before I began to look about and think with myself what I could say to these, my children. At last it came to me in one word and this is what I have to say about it. If you will stay by me I will stay with you ; if you will work with me, I will work with you, and we will make the best fight we can against this adverse situation. I am not going to be a burden to you. You can not find a cheaper man anywhere than I will be. I preached seven years for seventy-five cents a year. I won't take any more than that if you can't spare any more. I do n't mean to task Unity Church, but I mean to stick by you if you will stick by me. Never fear for me, I can get along well enough. People will give me more for a lecture than they will give some folks, and if the worst comes to the worst, I can make as good horse- shoes and nails as any man in Chicago." It did not become necessary, however, for Collyer to resume his hammer and anvil, for gifts poured in upon him and his church from all quarters. He himself received as many as a hundred and seventeen packages by express in a single day, and his church was at once made the care of many wealthy THE CHURCHES AFTER THE FIRE. 407 societies at the East, which furnished money enough to rebuild it. Mr. Collyer went East after a little; and while in Boston received many gifts, including an order from a wealthy Uni- tarian to draw on him quarterly for a salary of $5,000 a year, in addition to the $3,000 which his parish had already voted him. CHAPTER XXIV. SYMPATHY AND RELIEF. How the world was shocked by the event The excitement in America Nothing like it since the war Showers of money and avalanches of goods "for the sufferers Scenes and deeds in New York, Boston, Cin- cinnati, St Louis, London, and other cities. WE can not tell the story of the Relief of Chicago.- We can not adequately describe the acts in which all Chris- tendom leant over Chicago and poured the precious balm of sympathy into her wounds, and bathed with the wine of relief her parched and blistered lips. In the first place, to give a full account of the measures in aid of the sufferers by the Chi- cago fire, would be to write the history of the civilized world for a very eventful week ; for the whole civilized world was mainly absorbed, during that week, in getting news from and sending succor to Chicago. Besides, if we had all the facts gathered in some series of volumes more bulky than any li- brary now left in Chicago, they could not be justly epitomized here. Those facts which are at hand are so numerous that we can hardly do aught more than to let out a few at random, though each presses itself upon us as richly worthy of men- tion. If the spread of the flames through the streets of Chicago was swift as the wind, the spread of the news of it, and of the sympathy which it awakened, was infinitely more so. A SYMPATHY AND BELIEF. 409 speaker, addressing one of the ten thousand relief-meetings which sprung up in every city and hamlet in America, de- scribed this phenomenon well when he said there was no acre of the United States but that some cinder from Chicago had lighted on it and kindled the fire of sympathy. And yet that figure does not express the suddenness and directness of the passage of the feeling. Chicago was connected with the world more intimately than perhaps any other city. In the first place, nearly every county, district, and department in the Northern United States, in Great Britain, Ireland, and conti- nental Europe, is represented in Chicago by persons who have immigrated hither, and left kindred and acquaintances at home. In the next place, the rapid growth of the city, and the re- markably active, enterprising, ambitious, audacious class of citi- zens which has accumulated with that growth, have attracted to Chicago the attention of the world, and brought hither travelers from all climes. Indeed, the press and the telegraph, which make all men travelers, in a sense, had been for the past few years so full of Chicago, as a theme, that every body in Christen- dom knew Chicago, or thought he did. The average emotion toward Chicago was that of admiration; which, at least, was not sufficiently offset by any other feeling to prevent the most hearty and unalloyed sentiment of regret and practical sym- pathy when the news of hef misfortune came flashing along the wires. To say nothing now about the veins and arteries of commerce, which permeated the whole civilized world, and makes the blood ebb away at New York or London whenever Chicago bleeds, there is a nervous system, of wires and print- ers' types," which connects all together, and which places Chi- cago in close rapport with all parts of the world, especially Anglo-Saxondom and the greater Germany. The world never 35 410 CHICAGO AND THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. knew how complete -and perfect this system is, until the shock at Chicago thrilled through all lands, and made the farthest extremities smart with pain or tingle with anxiety. The com- munity of language, the community of interests, but revealed the community of human nature and human sympathy, one touch of which can " make the whole world kin." The proud cities of the earth then wept on each other's breast, and found that they were rivals no more, but loving sisters. Blessed is that affliction which reveals such precious things ! The desoiation of Chicago was fully known to all her citi- zens at daylight on the morning of the 9th October. Within three or four hours it was known in fully ten thousand cities and villages of the United States, and ten millions of people were bestirring themselves, and asking each other anxiously for tidings from the stricken city. Almost the first thought which suggested itself was of the destitution which must prevail, where a hundred thousand people had been so suddenly made homeless, and (as was supposed) their whole stock of provisions, clothing in fact, all the accumulated wealth of the city de- stroyed, as it were, in a breath. The heart of every man told him what to do at once. The West had, fortunately, great stores of provision and of comfortable clothing; and these were sped on their way so promptly that, by the morning Commissioners. MARK SHERIDAN, J SHERIDAN'S FIRST REPORT. HEADQUARTERS MIL. Div. OF THE MISSOURI, 1 CHICAGO, October 12, 1871. J To Hie Honor the Mayor : The preservation of peace and good order of the city having been intrusted to me by Your Honor, I am happy to state that no case of outbreak or dis- order has been reported. No authenticated attempt at incendiarism has reached me, and that the people of the city are calm, quiet, and well dis- posed. The force at my disposal is ample to maintain order, should it be neces- sary, and protect the district devastated by fire. Still, I would suggest to citizens not to relax in their watchfulness until the smoldering fires of the burnt buildings are entirely extinguished. P. H. SHERIDAN, laeuienant-General. SHERIDAN ON THE KOMANCERS. HEADQUARTERS MIL. Div. OP THE MISSOURI, \ CHICAGO, October 17, 1871. J To His Honor Mayor Maton, Chicago, Itt. : I respectfully report to Your Honor the continued peace and quiet of the city. There has been no case of violence since the disaster of Sunday night and Monday morning. The reports in the public press of violence and disorder here are without the slightest foundation. There has not been a single case of arson, hang- ing, or shooting not even a case of riot or a street fight. I have seen no reason for the circulation of such reports. It gives me pleasure to bring to the notice of Your Honor the cheerful spirit with which the population of this city have met their losses and suf- fering. Very respectfully, your obedient servant, P. H. SHERIDAN, Lieutenant- General. 500 APPENDIX. DISMISSING CITY EMPLOYES, To the Heads of all Departments of the City Government : The late fire has, of necessity, caused the suspension of public improve- ments, and of much work heretofore done in various departments of the city government. It therefore becomes necessary to discharge all employed of the city government whose services are not absolutely required. I respect- fully request that you, in your several departments, immediately give notice of discharge to all such, with a view to the most rigid economy which must now be observed in all departments. E. B. MASON, Mayor. [Not dated. Issued the 19th.] FAST DAY BECOMMENDED. In view of the recent appalling public calamity, the undersigned, Mayor of Chicago, hereby earnestly recommends that all the inhabitants of this city do observe Sunday, October 29, as a special day of humiliation and prayer ; of humiliation for those past offenses against Almighty God, to which these severe afflictions were doubtless intended to lead our minds ; of prayer for the relief and comfort of the suffering thousands in our midst ; for the res- toration of our material prosperity, especially for our lasting improvement as a people in reverence and obedience to God. Nor should we even, amidst our losses and sorrows, forget to render thanks to Him for the arrest of the devouring fires in time to save so many homes, and for the unexampled sympathy and aid which has flowed in upon us from every quarter of our land, and even from beyond the seas. Given under my hand this 20th day of October, 1871. E. B. MASON, Mayor. SHERIDAN STEPS Our. . The Mayor to General Sheridan. Lieutenant- General P. H. Sheridan, U. S. A. : Permit me to tender you the thanks of the city of Chicago and its whole people for the very efficient aid which you have rendered, in protecting the lives and property of the citizens, and in the preservation of the general peace and good order of the community. I would like your opinion as to whether there is any longer a necessity for the continued aid of the military in that behalf. Very respectfully, E. B. MASON, Mayor. CHICAGO, Oct. 22. APPENDIX. 501 General Sheridan to the Mayor. CHICAGO, 111., Oct. 23. To His Honor, R. B. Mason, Mayor of Chicago : SIR : I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your kind note of the date of yesterday, and in reply I beg leave to report a good condition of affairs in the city. If Your Honor deem it best, I will disband the volun- teer organization of military on duty since the fire, and will consider myself relieved from the responsibility of your proclamation of the llth instant. With my sincere thanks for your kindness and courtesy in my intercourse with you, I am respectfully your obedient servant, P. H. SHERIDAN, Lieutenant- General. The Mayor to General Sheridan. Lieutenant- General P. H. Sheridan, U. S. A. : Upon consultation with the Board of Police Commissioners, I am satisfied that the continuance of the efficient aid in the preservation of order in this city which has been rendered by the forces under your command in pursuance of my proclamation is no longer required. I will therefore fix the hour of 6 P. M. of this day as the hour at which the aid requested of you shall cease. Allow me again to tender you the assurance of my high appreciation of the great and efficient service which you have rendered in the preservation of order and the protection of property in this city, and to again thank you in the name of the city of Chicago and its citizens therefor. I am respectfully yours, B. B. MASON, Mayor. CHICAGO, Oct. 23. Orders of Disbandment. HEADQUARTERS MIL. Div. OF THE MISSOURI, \ CHICAGO, 111., Oct. 24, 1871. J Special Orders No. 76. 1. The companies of the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Ninth, and Sixteenth United States Infantry, on duty in this city, are hereby relieved, and will proceed to their respective stations as follows : Companies F, H, and K, of the Fourth, and E, of the Sixteenth, to Louis- ville, Ky. Companies A, H, and K, of the Fifth, to Fort Leavenworth. Company I, of the Sixth, to Fort Hays. Companies A and K, of the Ninth, to Omaha. The Quartermaster's Department will furnish the necessary transportation. By command of Lieutenant-General Sheridan. Official : JAMES B. FRY, A. A. G. M. V. SHERIDAN, Lt. Col. A. D. C. 502 APPENDIX. 5RS M: CHICAGO, 111., Oct. 24, 1871. HEADQUARTERS MIL. Diy. OF THE MISSOURI, 1 General Orders No. 5. The First Regiment Chicago Volunteers, raised with the approbation of the Mayor, and in pursuance of orders dated October 11, 1871, from these headquarters, is hereby honorably mustered out of service and discharged. These troops were suddenly called from civil pursuits to aid Lieutenant-General Sheridan in preserving peace and good order, and in protecting the property in the unburnt portion of the city, a duty in- trusted to him during the emergency resulting from the late fire. They came forward promptly and cheerfully at a time rendered critical* by the un- paralleled disaster which visited the city on the 8th and 9th insts., a calamity producing general distrust and distress, leaving a large part of the city in smoldering ruins, a large part in darkness by the destruction of the gas-works, and the whole of it without water ; and this with a fire department crippled and exhausted by the struggle it had gone through. They have performed the arduous and delicate duties falling to them under these circumstances with marked industry, fidelity, and intelligence. The Lietenant-General thanks officers and men of the command for the services rendered, and com- mends them to the kind consideration of their fellow-citizens ; and he makes special acknowledgment of the valuable aid received from their commander, General Frank T. Sherman distinguished upon the battle-fields of the late war as well as from his efficient staff, Major C. H. Dyer, Adjutant, and Major Charles T. Scammon, Aide-de-camp. By command of Lieutenant-General Sheridan. JAMES B. FRY, Assistant Adjutant- General. SHERIDAN'S REPORT TO SHERMAN. HEADQUARTERS MILITARY DIVISION OF THE MISSOURI, \ CHICAGO, October 25, 1871. j To the Adjutant General of the Army, Washington D. C. : SIR : The disorganized condition of affairs in this city, produced by and immediately following the late fire, induced the city authorities to ask for as- sistance from the military forces, as shown by the Mayor's proclamation of October 11, 1871. [Copy herewith, marked A.] To protect the public inter- ests intrusted to me by the Mayor's proclamation, I called to this city com- panies A and K of the Ninth Infantry, from Omaha ; companies A, H and K of the Fifth Infantry, from Fort Leavenworth ; company I, Sixth Infantry, from Fort Scott, and accepted the kind offer of Major-General Halleck to eend to me companies F, H and K of the Fourth, and company E of the Sixteenth Infantry, from Kentucky. I also, with the approbation of the APPENDIX. t 503 Mayor, called into the service of the city of Chicago, a regiment of volun- teers for twenty days. [Copy of this call inclosed herewith, marked B.] These troops, both regulars and volunteers, were actively engaged during their service here in protecting the treasure in the burnt district, guarding the unburnt district from disorders and danger by further fires, and in pro- tecting the store-houses, depots, and sub-depots of supplies established for the relief of the sufferers from the fire. These duties were terminated on tiie 23dinst., as shown by letters herewith [marked C, D, and E], and on the 24th inst. the regulars started to their respective stations, and the volunteers were discharged, as shown by special order No. 76, and general order No. 5, from these headquarters. [Copies herewith.] It is proper to mention that these volunteers were not taken into the service of the United States, and no orders, agreements, or promises were made giving them any claims against the United States for services rendered. I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant, P. H. SHERIDAN, Lieutenant- General United States Army, Commanding. SHERMAN'S APPROVAL. General Sherman submitted the foregoing report to the Secretary of War, with the following emphatic endorsement : The extraordinary circumstances attending the great fire in Chicago made it eminently proper that General Sheridan should exercise the influence, authority, and power he did on the universal appeal of a ruined and dis- tressed people, backed by their civil agents, who were powerless for good. The very moment that the civil authorities felt able to resume their functions General Sheridan ceased to exercise authority, and the United States troops returned to their respective stations. General Sheridan's course is fully ap- proved. W. T. SHERMAN, General. II. OFFICIAL EXPRESSIONS OF SYMPATHY FROM ABROAD. PROCLAMATION BY THE GOVERNOR OF ILLINOIS. STATE OF ILLINOIS, \ EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT. J John M. Palmer, Governor of Illinois, To all whom these presents shall come, greeting: Whereas, in my judgment, the great calamity that has overtaken Chicago, the largest city of the State; that has deprived many thousands of our citizens of homes and rendered them destitute ; that has destroyed many millions in value of property, and thereby disturbing the business of the people and 504 , APPENDIX. deranging the finances of the State, and interrupting the execution of the laws, is and constitutes" an extraordinary occasion" within the true intent and meaning of the eighth section of the fifth article of the Constitution. Now, therefore, I, John M. Palmer, Governor of the State of Illinois, do by this, my proclamation, convene and invite the two Houses of the General Assembly in session in the city of Springfield, on Friday, the 13th day of the month of October, in the year of our Lord 1871, at 12 o'clock noon of said day, to take into consideration the following subjects : 1. To appropriate such sum or sums of money, or adopt such other legisla- tive measures as may be thought judicious, necessary, or proper, for the re- lief of the people of the city of Chicago. 2. To make provision, by amending the revenue laws or otherwise, for the proper and just assessment and collection of taxes within the city of Chicago. 3. To enact such other laws and to adopt such other measures as may be necessary for the relief of the city of Chicago and flie people of said city, and for the execution and enforcement of the laws of the State. 4. To make appropriations for the expenses of the General Assembly, and such other appropriations as may be necessary to carry on the State Govern- ment. In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the [SEAL.] great seal of the State to be affixed. Done at the city of Spring- field, this 10th day of October, A. D. 1871. JOHN M. PALMER. By the Governor, EDWARD KUMMELL, Secretary of State. BY THE GOVERNOR OF WISCONSIN. To the People of Wisconsin : Throughout the northern part of this State fires have been raging in the woods for many days, spreading desolation on every side. It is reported that hundreds of families have been rendered homeless by this devouring element, and reduced to utter destitution, their entire crops having been consumed. Their stock has been destroyed, and their farms are but a blackened desert. Unless they receive instant aid from portions not visited by this dreadful ca- lamity, they must perish. The telegraph also brings the terrible news that a large portion of the city of Chicago is destroyed by a conflagration, which is still raging. Many thousands of people are thus reduced to penury, stripped of their all, and are now destitute of shelter and food. Their sufferings will be intense, and many may perish unless provisions are at once sent to them from the surrounding country. They must be assisted now. APPENDIX. 605 In the awful presence of such calamities the people of Wisconsin will not be backward in giving assistance to their afflicted fellow-men. I, therefore, recommend that immediate organized efl'ort be made in every locality to forward provisions and money to the sufferers by this visitation, and suggest to Mayors of cities, Presidents of villages, Town Supervisors, Pastors of Churches, and to the various benevolent societies, that they devote themselves immediately to the work of organizing effort, collecting contribH- tions, and sending forward supplies for distribution. And I entreat all to give their abundance to help those in such sore dis- tress Given under my hand, at the Capitol, at Madison, this 9th day of October, A. D. 1871. Lucius FAIRCHILD. BY THE GOVERNOR OF MICHIGAN. STATE OF MICHIGAN, EXECUTIVE OFFICE, LANSING, October 9iA. The city of Chicago, in the neighboring State of Illinois, has been visited, in the providence of Almighty God, with a calamity almost unequaled in the annals of history. A large portion of that beautiful and most prosperous city has been reduced to ashes and is now in ruins. Many millions of dollars in property, the accumulation of years of industry and toil, have been swept away in a moment. The rich have been reduced to penury, the poor have lost the little they possessed, and many thousands of people rendered home- less and houseless, and are now without the absolute necessaries of life. I, therefore, earnestly call upon the citizens of every portion of Michigan to take immediate measures for alleviating the pressing wants of that fearfully afflicted city by collecting and forwarding to the Mayor or proper authorities of Chicago supplies of food as well as liberal collections of money. Let this sore calamity of our neighbors remind us of the uncertainty of earthly pos- sessions, and that when one member suffers all the members should suf- fer with it. I can not doubt that the whole people of the State will most gladly, and most promptly, and most liberally respond to this urgent demand upon their sympathy, but no words of mine can plead so strongly as the ca- lamity itself. HENRY P. BALDWIN. Governor of Michigan. BY THE GOVERNOR OF MISSOURI. JEFFERSON CITY, October 9, 1871. To the People of Missouri : A calamity unparalleled in the history of our country has befallen the great city of our sister State. Half of the houses of the people of Chicago 43 506 APPENDIX. are in ashes, and all of its business portion is destroyed. Every bank, rail- road depot, insurance office, newspaper establishment, every wholesale house, all its accumulated products and food supply, and nearly every trade appli- ance and the elevators are reported as utterly consumed. Such disaster will move the hearts of our citizens with the profoundest sympathy. Let us unite likewise in the most generous emulation, and extend the largest possible aid to them in this, the hour of misfortune. I, therefore, recommend all coun- ties, cities, towns, and other corporations, to all business and charitable asso- ciations, and to the community at large, to take immediate steps to organize relief committees to express the deep sorrow which Missouri feels at thia overwhelming affliction. It was only yesterday that they were united with you in congratulating you on your own soil and in your own chief city, whilst their own homes were being destroyed. Let us respond by throwing open wide our own doors to those who are without shelter, by sending bread and raiment at once, and by such contributions ward off further distress, as the generous heart of our own great State will be proud to transmit, in recog- nition, too, of the warm and intimate feeling that has heretofore so closely bound our citizens together. I can not forbear to extend to all who have been thus stricken down in the midst of an unbounded prosperity the sincer- est sympathy of Missouri's sons and daughters in their distress. Done at the City of Jefferson, this 9th day of October, A. D. 1871. B. GEATZ BfiowN, Governor of Missouri. BY THE GOVERNOR OF IOWA. To the People of Iowa: An appalling calamity has befallen our sister State. Her metropolis, the great city of Chicago, is in ruins. Over 100,000 people are without shelter or food, except as supplied by others. A helping hand let us now promptly give. Let the liberality of our people, so lavishly displayed during the long period of national peril, come again to the front, to lend succor in this hour of distress. I would urge the appointment at once of relief committees in every city, town, and township, and I respectfully ask the local authorities to call meetings of the citizens to devise ways and means to render efficient aid. I would also ask the pastors of the various churches throughout the State to take up collections on Sunday morning next, or at such other time as they may deem proper, for the relief of the sufferers. Let us not be satisfied with any spasmodic effort. There will be need of relief of a substantial character to aid the many thousands to prepare for the rigors of the coming winter. The magnificent public charities of that city, now paralyzed, can do little to thia end. Those who live in homes of comfort and plenty must APPENDIX. 507 furnish this help, or misery and suffering will be the fate of many thousands of our neighbors. SAMUEL MERRILL, Governor. DBS MOINES, October 10, 1871. BY THE GOVERNOR OP OHIO. CHICAGO, October 12th. To the People of Ohio: It is believed by the best informed citizens here that many thousands of the sufferers must be provided with the necessaries of life during the cold winter. Let the efforts to raise contributions be energetically pushed. Money, fuel, flour, pork, clothing, and other articles not perishable, should be collected as rapidly as possible especially money, fuel, and flour. Mr. Joseph Medill, of The Tribune, estimates the number of those who will need assistance at about 70,000. E. B. HAYES, Governor of Ohio. [Governor Eandolph, of New Jersey, and perhaps other Governors of States, issued a similar appeal to his people in behalf of the stricken city.] LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT. EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, I October 11, 1871. / To Hon. Samuel Hooper, Boston, Mass. : Would it not be well for the good people of Boston to dispense with the ceremony and expense of a public reception on the occasion of my visit to your city, and appropriate such portion of the fund set apart for that pur- pose, as is deemed advisable, for the relief of the sufferers by the Chicago disaster? I am sure such a course would please me. U. S. GRANT. PROCLAMATION OP THE MAYOR OF SALT LAKE CITY. The news having been confirmed of the terrible conflagration by which a great portion of the city of Chicago has been reduced to ashes, and one hun- dred thousand people have been stripped of their homes, clothing, and means of subsistence, therefore, I, Daniel II. Wells, Mayor of Salt Lake City, by the wish and authority of the City Council of said city, call upon all classes of the people to assem- ble in mass meeting, to-morrow, Wednesday, October llth, at 1 o'clock, p. M., at the Old Tabernacle, in this city, for the purpose of making subscriptions 508 APPENDIX. and taking such measures as are demanded for the relief of our fellow-citi- zens who are sufferers by this dreadful visitation. DANIEL H. WELLS, Mayor of Salt Lake City. October 10, 1871. THE MASONS OF NEW YORK STATE. To the Worshipful Masters, Wardens, and Brethren of all Lodges of Free and Accepted Masons in the State of New York : Brethren, a calamity, one of the most appalling either of ancient or mod- ern times, has befallen one of the fairest and hitherto most prosperous cities of our Union. Within a brief space of time the devastating element has swept out of existence the public and private edifices of Chicago, destroying mill- ions of dollars' worth of property, and leaving homeless and penniless thou- sands of its people, among whom are many of our brethren and their fami- lies. The cry of distress and the prayer for relief, speedy and sufficient, reaches our ears ; our hearts should not be shut to the appeal, nor our hands be idle in extending aid. We should show that our ancient order is founded upon brotherly love, and that we are ever willing to extend relief to suffer- ing humanity. Therefore, I, John H. Anthon, Grand Master of Masons of the State of New York, desire to lay before the Masons of the State of New York the appeal of our suffering brethren in Chicago, and all the desolate and op- pressed of that afflicted city, in order that a fund may be raised for their immediate relief; and I do fraternally and most earnestly beseech my breth- ren to give toward this object as liberally as their means will allow. I suggest contributions in money, knowing that relief committees will be organized, and that such sums as may be raised will be disbursed by them in a proper and efficient manner. Contributions, sent in drafts on New York to the order of the Grand Master, at his office, No. 271 Broadway, will be by him forwarded to Chicago. J. H. ANTHON. Grand Master's Office, October 9, 1871. GENERAL SHERIDAN TO SECRETARY BELKNAP. CHICAGO, October 9th. General Belknap, Secretary of War : The city of Chicago is almost utterly destroyed by fire. There is now no reasonable hope of arresting it, as the wind, which is yet blowing a gale, does not change. I ordered, on your authority, rations from St. Louis, tents from APPENDIX. 509 Jeffersonville, and two companies from Omaha. There will be many house= less people and much distress. (Signed) ' P. H. SHERIDAN, Lieutenant- General. CHICAGO, October 9th. W. W. Selknap, Secretary of War: The fire here last night and to-day has destroyed almost all that was very valuable in this city. There is not a business house, bank, or hotel, left. Most of the best part of the city is gone. Without exaggeration, all the valuable portion of the city is in ruins. I think that not less than one hun- dred thousand persons are houseless, and those who have had the most wealth are now poor. It seems to me to be such a terrible misfortune that it may with propriety be considered a national calamity. (Signed) P. H. SHERIDAN, Lieutenant- General. THE SECRETARY'S KESPONSE. WASHINGTON, October 10th. Lieutenant- General Sheridan, Chicago: I agree with you that the fire is a national calamity. The sufferers have the sincere sympathy of the nation. The officers at the depots at St. Louis, Jeffersonville, and elsewhere have been ordered to forward supplies liberally and promptly. (Signed) WILLIAM W. BELKNAP, Secretary of War. To the Mayor of Chicago : General Sheridan has been authorized to supply clothing, tools, and pro- visions from the depots at Jeffersonville and St. Louis to the extent and ability of the Department. (Signed) WILLIAM W. BELKNAP, Secretary of War. APPENDIX C. CONTEMPORARY OPINION CONCERNING THE CITY AND THE EVENT. REBUILDING THE CITY. SHE WILL RISE AGAIN. [From the New York World, October 11.] The appalling calamity which has so suddenly overtaken Chicago like a thief in the night, and which fills all imaginations with horror and all hearts with oppressive, agonizing pity, has, nevertheless, a hopeful side. It is not as if that great city and its inhabitants had been ingulfed by an earth- quake. The greater part of the people are spared, and although there will he much suffering for want of shelter, this will be but temporary, and con- tributions of food are already reaching them from sources of generous, com- miserating cities. None of these sufferers will die of starvation, and those of them who remain during the winter will have such protection from cold as can be given by tents and abundant clothing. By close overcrowding of the unconsumed dwellings in the city and suburbs, by the emigration of man- ufacturing laborers, by the placing of women and children with distant friends, or procuring them board in the country, it will not be necessary for any but the hardier class of laborers to pass the winter in tents. The stress of the suffering will not extend beyond the ensuing ten days, and will con- sist chiefly in exposure (especially if there should be cold, pelting rain storms), and in the desolating sense of the utter loss of property by people whom lives of toil had rendered comfortable. Many individuals are hope- lessly ruined, but a very few years will restore the city. The growth of Chicago, a city which has risen like an exhalation on the south-western shore of Lake Michigan, has been regarded by travelers and economists as one of the chief marvels of recent times. It is a phenomenon (510) APPENDIX. 511 which never had a parallel, but which will be eclipsed and outdone by the more astonishing miracle of the reconstruction of the burnt city out of its ashes. Forty and two years was this city in building, and yet it will be re- constructed in three years. It will rise again from its ruins as if by magic, and the wonder of its original growth will be forgotten in the greater wonder of its sudden new creation. There is not the slightest danger of the transfer of her grain trade and her various business to other lake cities. At present the other lake cities have not facilities to accommodate it; their elevators, warehouses, mercantile establishments, banks, etc., being proportioned to the business they already possess. To transact in addition the business of Chicago, they would need an enormous increase of structures, accommodations, and capital. But these can be replaced iu Chicago as quickly as they could be built at Milwaukee and other lake ports; and nobody will invest money for them elsewhere with the certainty that Chicago will be rebuilt as speedily as multitudes of busy hands can do the work. The lake commerce will always tend to one great center, and there is no other center which possesses such natural advantages as Chicago. These have been increased by costly artificial advantages which it has required thirty years of persistent industry to create. All the great railroad lines have been constructed with a view to Chicago as a starting point and a terminus. It might be easy to build a new town, if that were all ; but not easy to reconstruct the railroad system of the West with a new point of convergence. Chicago has still all the elements of a great city, except the mere build- ings. She has her river harbor, which has been dredged and enlarged, and her piers and breakwaters, which have been constructed at enormous expense. These can not be extemporized in any other place. She has her light-houses for the security of navigation. She has her expensive tunnel under Lake Michigan for supplying a city thrice her recent magnitude with pure water. She haa her entensive system of sewerage, which, being under ground and constructed of incombustible materials, has not been consumed. She has the grading of her streets and the excavation of her cellars and vaults. She has the outlying vegetable gardens and milk dairies for supplying her tables. Her vast cattle-yards were untouched by the flames. The destruction of her great railroad depots will scarcely obstruct travel and traffic, as passengers can be received and landed, and freight taken and delivered, in the open air, until the depots are rebuilt. And what is, perhaps, the most important of all her remaining advantages and sources of resuscitation, Chicago has not lost her shrewd, enterprising, energetic, indomitable men of business. They can more easily re-establish themselves in Chicago than they can form new connections elsewhere. They 512 APPENDIX. will not break from their creditors in the East, nor from their customers in the West. The vast, magnificent North-west must still be supplied with goods, and they will continue to furnish the supply. New men in new cities have not their business acquaintances, and can not build stores and collect stocks as quickly as the Chicago merchants can build and renew them. Chicago will restore herself before competitors can come into the field. WILL KISE QUICKLY. [From the New York Commercial Advertiser, October 14.] Chicago will recover, not by gradual steps, but with a bound. The calam- ity that befell her, appalling as it is, has only destroyed the results, not the causes of her prosperity. Chicago has still all the natural advantages that made her what she was. Her position in reference to the great chain of lakes, and the great grain-producing, stock-raising, and lumber regions of the North-west, with the network of railways connecting her with the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Gulf, made Chicago a great commercial center, and must continue to make her so still. The ground on which the city stands, the lakes, the rivers, the fields, the prairies, the forest, and the rail- v/ays, which gave her greatness, are all there to give it to her again. Com- merce must continue to flow through its natural channels and through the artificial ones provided for it. It would be more difficult to stop or divert it now than it would be to build a dozen cities. Chicago grew, from four thou- sand people in 1840, to thirty thousand in 1850, then to a hundred thousand in 1860, and then to three hundred thousand in 1870. The channels that poured population and wealth into the great city of the West at this aston- ishing rate still exist, and there is no reason to doubt that they will produce the same result in the future as in the past. ST. Louis' OPINION. [From the St. Louis Republican, Oct. 13.] That Chicago will be rebuilt, and that with wonderful rapidity, is a truth too manifest to be denied. The necessities that led to the erection of a great city at the end of Lake Michigan, demand its reconstruction. The de- struction of that city creates an immense vacuum, and the first instinctive efforts of the great North-west will be directed to filling it. The vast traffic that was wont to flow into Chicago will, for a time, be turned aside from it, for want of accommodations, and Milwaukee and St. Louis will temporarily profit by this diversion ; Milwaukee and St. Louis merchants will be called on to do the business which Chicago merchants did; the great Northwest, that sent its blood through the Lake City, is untouched, and possesses all its APPENDIX. 513 blood unimpaired. It needs only new channels and new reservoirs to supply those which have been destroyed ; and it will turn spontaneously to St. Louis and Milwaukee to find them. But Chicago was a necessity, and a great city on the site where it stood is a necessity now. Things in this country have not reached that decayed condition which makes wastes, desolations, and the permanent ruin of ancient splendor, possible. The very convergence of railroads at Chicago proves the need of a great city there, and tails us tt.it the rebuilding of the one which we have seen destroyed will be witnessed. The noise of the ax, the hammer, and the saw will shortly be heard in the borders of the smitten city as it was never heard before; its palaces and temples will rise again from the seared and blackened earth, and in a few years the burnt district will be hidden by fair and stately buildings revealing no vestige of the great calamity. The sad feature in this bright picture of future glory and greatness is that the victims of the calamity will not largely participate in the enjoyment of it. The ruined great men of Chicago will have given place to others; those of them who have managed to save some- thing from the wreck of thejir fortunes will have these fragments to begin with again, and will thus be able to keep abreast with competitors in the new race about to commence; but the capital to rebuild the city and to control its commerce must come from elsewhere, and be directed by other men ; and when the reconstruction shall have been completed, and a towering city reared on the site of the destroyed one, we shall find that the new city is in the hands of a new generation. It will be some years to come before Chicago can again be a center of opulence, luxury, and extravagance, but it will be a good place for an indus- trious man to go to, if he desires to find profitable employment, and to grow up with its growth. MILWAUKEE OPINION. [From the Milwaukee Mews, October 16.] The year 1880, now less than nine years distant, will find Chicago with more than her late greatness, and with scarcely a scar of her present calam- ity remaining. Chicago was not an accident, nor the creature of specula- tion, nor a mushroom growth. It was brought into existence by the de- velopment and necessities of the great North-west, and at the time of its destruction no more than fairly represented that development and minis- tered to those necessities. It was forty years in its growth, just because the North-west was forty years in its growth. But it is now cut off, with all its growth, and all these necessities which created it remaining in active ex- istence. These necessities represent an omnipotent power. All the difficul- ties you can cite are but flax in the fire or mist in the sun compared with 514 APPENDIX. the concentrated vigor which must inevitably and necessarily center on this spot for recuperation and reconstruction. Where there is a will there is a way ; and here there is a will which can not flag, because it proceeds from precisely the same causes which have already lifted the city from the prairie marsh, and which causes are not obliged to pass again through a forty years' growth, inasmuch as they exist now in all the power and vigor pertaining to them before this destruction. Nine or ten years at farthest will witness the complete restoration of the city, but even this time may be shortened by an energetic grasping and wise application of the agencies which would hasten the result. Of one thing, let us disabuse ourselves, if we entertain such ideas that we can ever be permanently benefited by (his disaster remaining without rem- edy. As well hope that one part of the human body can be benefited by an unhealed sore on another part. Individual fortunes have been swallowed up, and many of the sufferers will know no recuperation ; but the time is not dis- tant when Chicago, in greatness and wealth, will exceed her late condition. C. L. SHOLES. NEW ORLEANS OPINION. "CHICAGO DELENDA EST." [From a New Orleans Paper.] Now that the first shock with which the Chicago calamity was received has passed away, we are enabled to estimate its magnitude more deliberately, and the hopeful promise which pierced the consuming flames of her speedy restoration seems to be now dying in the smoke of her smoldering embers. The magical growth and stupendous wealth of this great interior metropolis was, in the main, due to geographical, commercial, and other causes, which no longer exist in their original force. The center of a net-work of railroads, all immediately tributary, their gradual extension and multiplication, have since brought rivals into nearer competition, while the completion of the great national highway to the Pacific has materially lessened the importance of her location in trade chan- nels. Despite the remarkable boldness and dash manifested by Chicago in her outward evidences of prosperity, maintained in great newspapers, marrelous hotels, magnificent buildings, and speedy fortunes acquired, it was all seen through a glamour of unsubstantially. The rampant spirit of speculation haunted all her operations, and a gloss of dore covered all her enterprises. The growth of St. Louis, on the other hand, though slower, was more sure and solid. Although its buildings extended less rapidly, the value of real estate had advanced in a greater comparative proportion. Gradually the trade of Chicago Was being diverted toward the nearer, the more accessible and APPENDIX. 615 larger market, and already several prominent Chicago business houses had sought footing in the better field. This was the condition of affairs when the fire fiend came to sweep the Lake City with his besom of destruction, inflict ixg a blow from which she will scarcely recover in the present genera- tion. Already a large portion of her population has deserted; some, through the stress of poverty, have been driven to other localities, while no limited number of the more fortunate have seized upon the opportunity of trans- ferring their business to St. Louis. No doubt, the people of Chicago will struggle earnestly against their ad- verse fate, and that a new city will arise speedily from the ashes of the old one; but it will never be the Carthage of old. Its prestige has passed away, like that of a man who turns the downward hill of life; its glory will be of the past, not the present j while its hopes, once so bright and cloudless, will be to the end marred and blackened by the smoke of its fiery fate. GENERAL EXPRESSIONS FROM OUTSIDERS. HUMAN NATURE AT ITS BEST. [From the St. Paul Press, October 15.] This supreme tragedy, in which a hundred thousand human beings passed, in a single awful night, by one terrible stroke of Providence, from the extreme of human prosperity to the extreme of human misery, has melted the heart of Christendom as no other catastrophe of human woe has melted it within the memory of man. Such a calamity as this tests the quality of our civilization, and the result proves, as all great calamities prove, that men every-where are better and nobler than they seem, and that under all the sordid selfishness of trade there pulses a fine and sweet humanity, and through all the coarse ties which bind together the material interests of States, and cities, and tillages, there run sensitive electric nerves of fraternal love and sympathy which weave mankind together in a universal kinship. Such a magnificent outburst of human sympathy was never witnessed in this country as that which was evoked by the Chicago fire. The whole country leaped spontaneously to the rescue, and all its cities and villages rose up as if by a common impulse of generosity to relieve the victims of 516 APPENDIX. this sudden and overwhelming blow. Every telegraph line was subsidized to convey messages that instant relief was on the way, and thirty railroad lines were burdened the same day with the offerings of money, food, clothes, and other necessaries forwarded to the sufferers. In presence of this stupendous catastrophe, human nature rose to its most heroic and exalted mood, and never has it shone more brightly since the dark days of our civil war, than in the glare of the great Chicago conflagration. The aggregate contributions to the relief of the Chicago sufferers must already have reached millions. But the generosity of the sympathizing world is outdone by the heroism of the sufferers. So great a calamity was never so nobly endured. Thousands of men who have been toiling a lifetime for wealth or a competence, have seen the accumulations of years swept uway in a single night, and yet, reduced to beggary, as they are, there is no despair not even despondency. The fire has conquered their houses, but not their hearts. Their warehouses are low in the dust, but their courage and their hopes are still as high as ever and the marvelous en- ergy which built Chicago is now already busy clearing away the ashes of its ruins to rebuild it, as if it was not much of a fire after all. RAMIFICATIONS OF THE DISASTER. [From the N. Y. Commercial Advertiser, October 20.] It is not one of the least effects of the Chicago disaster that it reaches deep strata in our social life, as well as in our moneyed circles. The bankruptcy of many companies in New York and Chicago has in- volved in heavy losses hundreds of private citizens, to whom insurance dividends gave a handsome and constant income, but now their stock is worth nothing. A case in point occurred in this city last week a young lady, inheriting a large fortune, not long ago, invested the bulk of it in insurance stocks, attracted by the large profits of that method of invest- ment, but the failure of the companies since the Chicago disaster has reduced her to comparative poverty. Merchants in New York, Boston, and elsewhere, who had ventures in Chicago, safe in ordinary times, can now look for only partial payments, and in many cases must submit to total loss. Private capitalists, who had large resources a month since, and were eager to begin new enterprises, have been compelled, by this disaster, to alter their plans, and promising projects are set aside. Those who had money out on call have been forced to take it up, and the borrowers in all branches 'of business have come to grief accordingly. The sudden and serious blow to the business of the Stock Exchange has embarrassed a very large number, and all investments are less valuable now than they were when the month opened. And, to crown all, the terrible shaking up of the insurance companies in every part of the country has inspired a feeling of distrust in regard to the safety of the risks held upon property APPENDIX. 517 as yet untouched by fire. So it is not in one or two circles alone that the Chicago blow is felt, but in every community in the Union a direct effect is visible. NEW YORK'S NEED OF CHICAGO. To the Editor of the N. Y. Journal of Commerce : I was well pleased with the remarks of Governor Bross, of Chicago ; before the Chamber of Commerce; but there is one point which might well be added for the consideration of Xew York. It is this: New York can not afford to have Chicago ruined, or seriously injured. Some one well remarked that New York and Chicago were members of a firm, and it would not do to have the junior member ruined. It might well be said that the two cities are like the Siamese twins when one is sick the other is sick also, so intimately are the interests of the two connected. What Cincinnati is to Baltimore, Chicago is to New York. Blot out Chicago, and the trade she now has would be divided between St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Milwaukee. That part of it which St. Louis got would go largely to New Orleans and Baltimore. The part which Cincinnati got would largely go to Baltimore also, while the part which fell to the lot of Milwaukee would be divided between New York and Boston. It will readily be seen from the foregoing that the most serious blow which New York could receive would be the destruction of Chicago. I am speaking more particularly of grocery goods, such as sugar, cof- fee, etc. A careful estimate, based upon established facts, shows us that Chicago bought last year nine hundred thousand (900,000) barrels of sugar, or an average of three thousand (3000) barrels daily for every work- ing day in the year. I have not the data for the amount of coffee bought, but it was as large in proportion. Alreadya large part of that trade has been diverted to Baltimore and Boston, and with the ruin of Chicago, they, with New Orleans, would get the lion's share of it. New York is doing nobly in giving to the sufferers, but she must do something to keep up the credit of the junior partner, or of New York and Chicago will suffer badly. LESSONS FROM THE FIRE. [From the New York Times, October, 23.] When the great fire in London occurred, we can not doubt that public joy was expressed in Holland and Spain. The calamity of one great power was then thought the gain of all others. Now, political economy has taught, and religion sanctions the axiom, that the losses of one nation are the misfortune of all. Chicago herself feels this great generosity and 518 APPENDIX. sympathy of the world far more even than the money contributions, rich as those are. They seem to have given her new life and hope in her hard struggle. Now, too, for the first time, men have appreciated the precious value of that best feature in America a pure family life. In the utter beggary of all worldly goods, with years of penury and sacrifice opening before them, and all their hard-earned wealth suddenly turned to ashes, they have found a new treasure in the love of wife and child, which has shone brighter and purer the more utter and crushing the calamity. We hear of one wealthy merchant stripped of every thing, who sends his children away to his relatives, while his wife becomes his book-keeper, and they start in life anew in a single room. But the innumerable instances of woman's generosity and sympathy in this hour of man's misfortune, will never be known except on the records of heaven. It can not but be, also, that a profound moral lesson will reach both the West and the whole country from this tremendous calamity. The two cities which will suffer from it most have been the centers of national gambling and the wildest speculation. New York and Chicago have the evil reputation of containing the most insane and untiring hunters for wealth, the most unscrupulous speculators in grain and stocks, and the most extravagant spendthrifts of wealth suddenly made, who have ever been known under modern civilization. This awful misfortune suddenly falling on these classes, must touch those sentiments which are never utterly dried up in the human breast the desire for other goods than the things seen and temporal, and the sense of the nothingness of all worldly wealth, compared with the riches unseen and eternal. CHICAGO AND ST. Louis. [From the St. Louis Democrat, October 21.] That the annihilation of hundreds of millions of wealth in one city can absolutely benefit another city, is impossible. Wealth, in its broadest meaning, is the material for supplying human needs, and is the product of human toil. Its exchangeable character imparts to it a fluid nature, so that every important increase of it in one place is sooner or later an actual increase in other places, and every material diminution of it in one locality is sooner or later an actual diminution of it in others. If ten thousand houses are destroyed, all their occupants are not only made houseless, but temporarily cease to be producers, buyers, and consumers, to the extent that they were, and a blow is given to universal trade. As far as they can rebuild, so far the prices of materials and labor are raised, and so far the loss falls upon all who need such materials or labor. If active in- dustries are paralyzed, so much production is withdrawn from the total production, and every consumer ultimately suffers. This line of thought may be continued indefinitely, and will show that not even St. Louis, the APPENDIX. 519 | rival of Chicago, can be actually benefited by the prostration of the latter. In a thousand unimaginable ways this disaster will act and react, directly and indirectly, upon the essential thrift of some three hundred and forty thousand people of our city, and if it brings more money into some men's coffers, it will at last take still more money from the pockets of the masses. It is a blow to this whole agricultural region, and through it to the cities which that region sustains. That business will seek a level, like water, is an old and true adage. Subtract vastly from capital in one locality by send- ing it up in flames and smoke to the atmosphere, and the main level is lowered, and the prime sources of metropolitan growth every-where are reduced. Were it possible for any human being worthy of the name to exult in the ruin of a great city, this consideration alone, had he intelli- gence enough to pursue it, would prevent such a sentiment SUDDENNESS OF CHICAGO'S GROWTH. [From the London Times, October 11.] When Mr. Cobden complained that English schoolboys were taught all about a trumpery Attic stream called the Ilissus, but nothing of Chicago, it should have been remembered in fairness that at that time Chicago, had hardly existed long enough to be known by any but merchants. It will now not soon be forgotten. We may be confident, however, that the natural resources of the place, and the native energy of the Americans, will more than repeat the marvels of the original development of the city. The novelty and rapid growth of American civilization render the people far more indifferent to such calamities than dwellers in older countries who are conscious that their possessions are the accumulation of centuries. At the same time with the news of the fire the telegraph informed us that its mercantile effects were already being discounted in New York, and we have no doubt there are numbers wf enterprising speculators who see their way to fortune through the speedy reconstruction of the city. The most cordial sympathy will-be felt in this country with individual sufferers, and we can only wish the great mercantile community of the West the prompt recovery which their energy deserves. " RESURGAM." [From the London Telegraph, October 11.] It is idle to suppose that such a city is destined to become a Tadmor in the wilderness, or to sink into the chronic decadence of Sebastopol after the bombardment. "Resurgam" might be written upon every brick of the burnt-up houses of Chicago. It will rise again, and with a venge- at.ce. Luckily no venerable cathedrals, no historic palaces, no monu- ments of art, no hoary relics of antiquity have perished in the colossal fire. Chicago has blazed away with the rapidity of lace curtains, or of 620 APPENDIX. "ornaments" in a drawing-room grate. The articles were handsome and expensive, but they can be replaced. To repair the injury done, all that is wanted is a certain amount of resources, energy, and pluck; and in pluck, energy, and resources the American people will never be bankrupt. A swift steamer, laden with warm clothing and body linen, for both eexes and for all ages, would be the immediate testimony of our recogni- tion that blood is thicker than water, and that, when Americans are in distress, we have not forgotten our common parentage. CHICAGO'S MAGNIFICENCE A LONDON OPINION. [From the London News, October 11.] Nowhere in the world not in Manchester, not in London, not in New York were busier streets to be found. A river, hardly better than the Irwell, flowing through part of the business quarter of the city, and spanned by innumerable drawbridges, did, indeed, make hideous some of the city scenes, which showed like an uproarious Rotterdam or a great commercial Konigsberg. But the streets of shops and banks and theaters and hotels might stand a. rivalry with those of any city in the world. Enormous piles of warehouses, with handsome and costly fronts; huge "stores," compared with which Schoolbred s or Tarn's seem diminutive; hotels as large as the Langham or the Louvre; bookshops which are unsurpassed in London or Paris; and theaters where Christine Nilsson found a fortune awaiting her such as the Old World could not offer such were the principal features of that wonderful quarter which has just been reduced to ashes. Nor was Chicago wholly given up to business. Her avenues of private residences were some, we trust, still are as beautiful as any city can show. Michigan Avenue and Wabash Avenue were the streets where her merchant princes lived ; and there is nothing to be seen in Paris, London, or New York to surpass either avenue in situation or in beauty. Michigan Avenue is a sort of Piccadilly, with a lake instead of a park under its drawing-room windows. The other great avenue was dis- tinguished from almost any street of the kind in Europe or the United States by the variety of its architecture. Mr. Ruskin himself might have acknowledged that in this civilized and modern street, at least, the curse of monotony did not prevail, and the yoke of the' Italian style was not accepted. Let it be added that Chicago, having the .advantage of newness, and the warning of all the world before her, had but few narrow streets and lanes. The thoroughfares were, as a rule, nearly all of the same width. The inexperienced traveler often found himself sadly perplexed as he wandered through a city of broad white streets, each looking just like another, and any one seeming as well entitled as its neighbor to claim the leadership in business or fashion. Chicago will not remain in her ruins as an ancient city might have APPENDIX. 521 done. Already in the thick of all the wreck and misery we may be sure that active and undaunted minds are planning the reconstruction of many a gutted and blackened building, the restoration of many shattered for- tunes. It is only a few years since the city of Portland, in Maine, was destroyed by fire; and the traveler to-day sees there, a new, busy, and solid town, where the story of the conflagration has already become a tradition. The people of Illinois are still more energetic and fertile of expedient than the people of Maine, and they will not long leave the city, which was their pride, to lie in her smoldering ruins. The claims which Chicago used at one time to urge for the transference of the National Capital to the shore of her lake, are, indeed, put out of court for the pres- ent; and her rival, St. Louis, will, for some time to come, have the advantage of her in the race for commerce, wealth, and population. But the city whose rate of growth distanced that of any other on the earth, will not be long in recovering the effects even of the present calamity. So much at least of consolation may be found. Before the widows and orphans whom this catastrophe bereaves, shall have put aside the robes of mourning, Chicago will be rising from her ruins, perhaps more magnifi- cent than ever. Her restoration, we may feel assured, will be in keeping with the marvelous rapidity of her rise, and the awful suddenness of her fall. WHY SHE WAS BURNED A KEBEL VIEW. [From the Rushville, Ind., American.] Near one- half the city has been laid in ashes, and a hundred and fifty thousand people rendered homeless. The announcement, at first, seemed incredible. When the telegraph confirmed the facts, a thrill of horror and sympathy pervaded the universal heart. This fact presents a palliative for many of the outrages and cruelties of the past ten years, and shows that human nature has, after all, somo redeeming traits. It was far different when Sherman's army desolated and destroyed the fairest region of the South, robbing and plundering, and burning as they went, leaving the people to starve ; or, when Sheridan, a monster of cruelty, overran and destroyed the valley of Virginia, after- ward boasting that a crow would have to carry its provisions under its wing?, if it should attempt to fly over it; and thus he brought starvation on the old men, Avomen, and children of that region, so that thousands perished of famine. More property, and more lives were destroyed in these raids than all Chicago put together, and what was the sentiment of the North 1 One of exultation and rejoicing.. These acts of vandalism were paraded as victories, and the hei'oes were met on their return with ovations of men atrd oblations of kisses from many of the. gen tie damsels 44 522 APPENDIX. of the North, carried away by the military glory that settled around the heads of these vandal chiefs, that was degrading, sickening, disgusting ! What cared these women for the homeless, houseless, starving mothers and children of the South ? Nothing. They exulted in their sufferings ; laughed at the story of the ravishment of the daughters of the South, the burning and robberies of their dwellings, and slaughter of her strong men; shouted hosannahs and threw from the tips of their fingers kisses to the perpetrators of these acts of vandalism. That was then ! Now, . that which is not half so horrible, thrills their bosom with sympathy, and their hand is quick and liberal to the relief of the suSJerers. These things prove that man is a good deal lower than the angels, and sometimes, at least, a little higher than the devils. Chicago has lost, perhaps, three hundred million dollars by the fire. The property destroyed in the South is estimated at over one thousand millions. The fire in Chicago was the result of accident. The destruction of property in the South was done purposely, by Northern soldiers, and compares exactly with the acts of the Goths and Vandals, savages that overran and sub- jugated the Roman Empire. But we are living under a higher civiliza- tion. Chicago did her full share in the destruction of the South. God adjusts balances. Maybe with Chicago the books are now squared CHICAGO SUFFERING FOR THE WORLD'S SINS. The Rev. Dr. Bellows gave an eloquent sermon, in his church in New York, on Chicago, on the Sunday following the fire, after which a liberal collection was made. He said the real Chicago was not burned at all. Ten years will not leave one cinder-mark on her robes. Her wealth was visibly represented in her great warehouses, but her wealth is in the souls, breasts, and irrepressible elasticity of her citizens. She has gained a stimulant in activity, and a name which will realize all it has lost. The great lesson which Chicago presented is that humanity is loosened from its selfishness and shocked into a sense of the nobleness of true riches. God has not stirred Chicago for its sins. It is now punished for the sins of the world. No, FOK HER OWN ! [From the N. Y. Tribune, October 20.] The Rev. Granville Moody, of the Methodist Church in Cincinnati, has been preaching an occasional sermon on "Fire," in his preliminary prayer alluding to the calamity which had befallen Chicago, and at- tributing it to the fact that the city recently gave a majority vote against Sunday and the Liquor Laws. The Rev. Mr. Moody likewise found in the fire " a retributive judgment on a city which has shown such a de- votion in its worship to the Golden Calf," The Rev. Mr\ Moody ia APPENDIX. 523 Clearly of the opinion that when cities sink to a certain depth of iniquity, the Almigh'ty makes it his particular business to destroy them; and the following are cited as instances of those which either have been destroyed, or may expect to be destroyed, on account of their sins : Cincinnati, Babylon, Sodom, Zeboim, New York, Jerusalem, Gomorrah, Herculaneum, Boston, 1'j re ) Zoar, Pompeii, Chicago. MR. BEECHER ox THE CALAMITY. [From a " Lecture Room Talk " of Rev. H. "W. Beecher, Oct. 13.] It has become a matter of remark to those who study the interior of history that events move in cycles. In certain years there are riots, or commercial troubles, and so it would seem that there are years of ca- tastrophes, and this might be called the year of fire. In the burning of town after town, of men, women, and children by the scores, there would seem to be enough to terrify us, even if it were not for the greater disaster of Chicago. This last disaster can be measured by the way in which it dwarfs other calamities. I am utterly unable to take in the calamity of Chicago. As it is in the case of mountains when first seen, I can not ad- just my sight to take it in. It was so during the war. I could feel only so much, and then 1 was full, but the events went on. So with this disaster. The desolation of a house is as much as you can feel, but take a street of houses, and then a ward, and from that to miles, and tens of thousands, and fifty thousand, and two hundred thousand people homeless, and it is wholly immeasurable. The mass and magnitude of suffering can not be estimated. Yet, though we can not measure it and take it in, every in- dividual goes on suffering. Chicago is not destroyed ; like another Phoe- nix, it will rise again. The strong will take care of themselves ; but O, for the poor, the women and children, the aged and the stranger, my heart goes out Next to the greatness of the calamity is the admirableness of the sym- pathy. The whole northern part of the nation has uprisen and stretched out its arms and taken that great city to its heart. We know no Catholic, no Protestant, no Democrat, no Republican, and the hand of the charity of this nation is like God's hand, that sendeth rain upon the just and the unjust. It is sublime, and when you add that across the sea the kingdom of Great Britain and the German nation are sending their gifts, it shows how the great element of Christian sympathy has unitized the world. It is )ne of the auspicious signs of the times. There is one danger, and that is that our sympathy will be merely emotive, and that as the weary winter months move on we shall get tired. Suffering never gets tired. Mr. Beecher remarked, further on: "I have been struck with the indifferenco 524 APPENDIX. of some men to the terrific suffering. Some say there can'4 be a devil. I have only to say that if there is n't a devil there is very good material to make one of, and if God is too good to have a devil in chief, lie isn't too good to have one in detail. Nothing can exceed the wickedness and inhumanity of those men who have taken this occasion to prey upon thei? fellow-men." A POET'S TRIBUTE. Men said at vespers : All is well ! In one wild night the city fell ; Fell shrines of prayer and marts of gain Before the fiery hui-ricane. On threescore spires had sunset shone, Where ghastly sunrise looked on none; Men clasped each other's hands and said: The City of the West is dead ! Brave hearts who fought, in slow retreat, The fiends of fire from street to street, Turned, powerless, to the blinding glare, The dumb defiance of despair. A sudden impulse thrilled each wire That signaled round that sea of fire ; Swift words of cheer, warm heart-throbs came ; In tears of pity died the flame! From East, from West, from South, from North, The messages of hope shot forth, And, underneath the severing wave, The world, full-handed, reached to save. Fair seemed the old ; but fairer still The new the dreary void shall fill, With dearer homes than those o'erthrown, For love shall lay each corner-stone. Rise, stricken city ! from thee throw The ashen sackcloth of thy woe; And build, as Thebes to Amphion's strain, To songs of cheer thy walls again ! How shriveled, in thy hot distress, The primal sin of selfishness ! How instant rose, to take thy part, * The angel in the human heart! Ah ! not in vain the flames that tossed Above thy dreadful holocaust; The Christ again has preached through thee The gospel of humanity! Then lift once more thy towers on high, And fret with spires the Western sky, To tell that God is yet with us, And love is still miraculous! [JOHX G. WUITTIEH. APPENDIX D. THE WORK OF RELIEF. REPORT OF THE PHILADELPHIA COMMITTEE. 4 The following extracts from a report, made by a committee of the Phila- phia benevolent organizations to their constituents, are given, as affording not only a clear sketch of the operations of the Chicago Relief Society, but aa showing how its work was regarded from an outside standpoint. The account of the Committee is correct, except in two minor respects ; the money given out by the Bureau of Special Relief is intended as a downright gift, and the recipients of houses from the Shelter Committee are not asked to give even their notes in payment, except where their circumstances and prospects are such as to justify the expectation of their being able to pay. The committee, after enumerating the various departments of the Society's business, each in charge of a committee, proceeds: " To these committees a ninth was added during a visit of your com- mittee, entitled the Bureau of Special Counsel and Assistance, to take charge of cases which could not be readily disposed of by either of the others, its principal functions being to aid those who were suffering in silence because they had not made their wants known, and by supplying small sums of money, either as donations or as advances in the nature of loans, to be repaid if the recipients shall be able to do so in the future, so as to aid the beneficiaries in their efforts to take care of themselves. " Each of these committees is employed throughout the whole of the day in the discharge of its special duties, and the Chairmen of all of them meet every night as an Executive Board. At these nightly meetings all the proceedings of the various committees are reported, and all information of the progress and developments of the work of relief is concentrated. Your committee, by invitation, attended one of these meetings ... the Executive Board, where they had ample opportunity to observe its pro- ceedings ; and they were also invited to examine the whole work of relief critically, and to make suggestions in the way of improvement. *' The business of your committee mainly concerned the Executive Board, and the subjects of food, clothing, fuel, and shelter. Having been fully and satisfactorily advised of the general plan of operations, by the Chairman of the Executive Board, your committee next inquired into the faithful, intelligent, and impartial execution of the work in its details by the subordinate agencies. To this end they visited the office of the General (325) 526 APPENDIX. Superintendent of Distribution of Supplies, Mr. O. C. Gibbs. This gen tleman has been for a long time the Agent of the Relief and Aid Society. Here we found that under the general direction of the Executive Com- mittee, of which Wirt Dexter, Esq., is the Chairman, the work of relief was in operation under a thoughtfully-conceived and well-regulated and methodized system. The city had been divided into districts and sub- districts, in each of which there was a carefully selected Superintendent of Distribution, aided by citizens in whom the people of the districts have confidence, and by corps of visitors. Books had been opened and blank forms printed, so as to carry on the work with system and accuracy, as well as dispatch. Copies of all these printed forms were furnished your committee. They could easily see that the system adopted was well calcu- lated to prevent imposition on the part of the applicants not entitled to relief, to prevent to a great degree the duplication of aid by "repeating," to prevent wasteful and improvident application of supplies, and above all to make it certain that that meritorious class who suffer patiently, and who are reluctant to make their wants known, shall not be overlooked or neglected. "Each of the districts and sub-districts has headquarters where applica- tions for relief are received, where the claims of the applicants are examined according to a printed form of instructions, and where the results are filed and recorded. Each one of the districts is also furnished with a depot for the storage and distribution of supplies. After an application is approved and supplies are issued, the " visitor " for the particular locality in which the applicant is lodged, makes a further examination to verify the state- ments of the applicants. If they are found to be correct, a report to that effect is made; if otherwise, no further supplies are issued. In addition to this duty the visitors are charged with another important service. In order to find all who need or deserve aid, they have been instructed to go from house to house, until the whole of the city has been covered. By these means a full registry of all who are either in the receipt of aid, or who need it, . had been very nearly completed before your committee left Chicago. In the examination of applicants for relief according to the printed instruc- tions, every thing essential to the identification of the applicant and the verification of his or her necessities are set down in writing on the printed forms referred to, and filed for reference at the headquarters. of the dis- trict; and in every case where any person or head of a family is recom- mended for relief, and supplies of any kind are issued, a regular account is opened under the name of the beneficiary in a large ledger specially prepared for the purpose. "In this account all the particulars concerning the relief granted, what the supplies consisted of, the date when they were issued, how many per- sons they were to maintain, and how many days the supplies furnished ought to last with care and economy, are all noted, and can bo understood APPENDIX. 627 at a glance. By interchange of these recorded sources of information among the several districts, 'there is a reasonable approach to certainty, that no persons entitled to relief can procure supplies at more than one place. "Thus far your committee had 'ascertained the mode of distribution" of food, clothing, and fuel, according to the general plan, and in the details of its execution. It remained to them to pursue their inquiries as to the subject of shelter. The subject of providing shelter for the hundred thousand people whose houses had been destroyed was one of the most difficult with which the Relief and Aid Society had to grapple, and the way in which it has been dealt with, affords an opportunity to illustrate the intelligence, energy, business-like economy, and prompt dispatch with which its executive board does its work. Immediately after the fire, and before the Aid Society was intrusted with the work of relief, some of the homeless sufferers were taken into the houses of the unburned districts among their acquaintances, but the great body of them were housed tem- porarily in church buildings, school buildings, empty warehouses, &c. There was, of course, intense discomfort, and great risk of disease and death from privation, exposure, and overcrowding. Then the authorities commenced the hasty construction of barracks in long, close and incon- venient rows on vacant ground. These, although better than the crowded churches and other large buildings, were still very objectionable ; and the Aid Society, immediately upon coming into control of the relief funds, adopted a very different and much more effective plan. They procured estimates in minute detail for the construction of cheap separate dwellings of two kinds, one for families of not more than three persons, and one for families of four or five persons. These were immediately printed, with diagrams and schedules of particulars embracing all the necessary ma- terials. A copy is annexed to this report. The dimensions of the house for five persons are 16 feet by 20, one story high. The house contains two rooms, one 12 feet by 16, and one 8 by 16. Wherever a sufferer by the fire owned or had a lease upon the lot on which his or her house was situated, or could procure the use of a lot, an order was at once issued by the Committee on Shelter for all the materials for the construction of the house. Every thing was so well arranged in this business that three mechanics could put up such a house in two days. It is estimated that eight thousand of them in all will be required; and of these not less than three thousand had been erected before your committee left Chicago, And. the materials had been issued for at least one thousand more.. The total cost of the house for five persons, including a cook-stove, a mattress, bed ding, and half a ton of coal, is $110! The house is not furnished to the beneficiary as a gift, but in order to stimulate thrift, to cultivate the sen- timent of self-respect, and to guard against imposition, a note for the amount without interest is taken, payable iu one year. 528 APPENDIX. " This plan has worked admirably, and that it has been carried out with wonderful dispatch and economy, the facts your committee have recited fully prove. In further illustration of the forethought, energy, and economy of the Aid Society's movements, it is worthy of mention that immediately upon the adoption of the plan of furnishing separate dwellings for tho homeless sufferers, and before the plan was made public, apprehending a possible rise in the price of lumber, a member of the Executive Com- mittee, under authority of the committee, mounted his horse, visited the great lumber depots, and in three hours made contracts for all the lum- ber required, at six dollars per thousand feet less than the rise which immediately followed. " After a.n examination of all these matters, both in their general direc- tion and the administration of their details, and after considering informa- tion obtained from other trustworthy sources, your committee came to the conclusion that 'the mode of distributing' the relief money and supplies contributed to the suffering people of Chicago, as at present administered under the auspices of the ' Aid and Relief Society' of that city, is admi- rably adapted to the purpose, and that its direction is intrusted to able, experienced and eminently trustworthy hands. They were strongly im- pressed with the superior intelligence, large administrative capacity, and high character of the men who plan, direct, and give impulse to the work. "More than a hundred thousand people were left without the shelter of a roof, most of them without a change of clothes, and at least half of them utterly destitute. When your committee reached Chicago, they were grateful to hear the assurance that all of those who remained in Chicago and who need assistance were housed in some way, and were supplied with clothes sufficient for present emergencies. About forty thousand persons were being supplied with food on Thursday last, October 26, but the number was in course of reduction through the vigilance of the visitors and the exertions of the Committee on Employment. It is expected, how- ever, that not less than twenty-five to thirty thousand of the destitute will have to be carried through the winter and early spring months. The severest part of the trial, and the period of greatest distress for all these, are yet to come. These considerations suggest continued exercise of the benevolence already so generously expressed, and such encouragement and support to the excellent society charged with the administration of the world's bounty to the ruined city, as will strengthen its purpose to check all tendency toward profuse and wasteful distribution, so that its stores and resources may be husbanded to meet the wants of the trying season yet to come. "Jos. PATTERSOX, GKO. G. MEADE, WM. V. McKfiAX, GEO. II. STUART,'' p srt el IS7A 1 -