Land Speculation of the 1830s

The Midwest

Source:
William Leggett, A Collection of the Political Writings of William Leggett, New York: Taylor and Dodd, (ed.)Theodore Sedgwick, Jr., Volume 2, pp. 83-85. Appeared on September 14, 1836. in the New York Evening Post.

A traveller, once, in Indiana, on setting out early one morning from the place where he had passed the night, consulted his map of the country, and finding that a very considerable town called . . . Vienna . . . occupied a point on his road but some twelve or fifteen miles off, concluded to journey as far as that place before breakfast. Another equally extensive town ... was laid down at a convenient distance for his afternoon stage; and there he proposed halting for the night. He continued to travel at a good round pace until the sun had attained a great height in heaven, and until he computed that he had accomplished more than twice or thrice the distance which he proposed to himself in the outset.... Still he saw no town before him, even of the humblest kind, much less such a magnificent one as his map had prepared him to look for. At length, meeting a solitary wood-chopper emerging from the forest, he accosted him, and inquired how far it was to Vienna. "Vienna!" exclaimed the man, "why you passed itfive and twenty miles back: did you not notice a stick of hewn timber and a blazed tree beside the road? That was Vienna." The dismayed traveller then inquired how far it was to the other place, at which he designed passing t he night. "Why you are right on that place now," returned the man; "it begins just the other side of yon ravine, and runs down to a clump of girdled trees which you will see about a mile further on the road." "And are there no houses built?" faltered out the traveller, who began to suspect that, as the song says-"The heath this night must be his bed."

I never saw a busier place than Chicago was at the time of our arrival. The streets were crowded with land speculators, hurrying from one sale to another. A Negro, dressed up in scarlet, bearing a scarlet flag, and riding a white horse with housings of scarlet, announced the times of sale. At every street-corner where he stopped, the crowd flocked around him; and it seemed as if some prevalent mania infected the whole people. The rage for speculation might fairly be so regarded. As the gentlemen of our party walked the streets, storekeepers hailed them from their doors, with offers of farms, and all manner of land-lots, advising them to speculate before the price of land rose higher. A young lawyer, of my acquaintance there, had realized five hundred dollars per day, the five preceding days, by merely making out titles to land. Another friend had realized, in two years, ten times as much money as he had before fixed upon as a competence for life. Of course, this rapid money-making is a merely temporary evil. A bursting of the bubble must come soon. The absurdity of the speculation is so striking, that the wonder is that the fever should have attained such a height as I witnessed. The immediate occasion of the bustle which prevailed, the week we were at Chicago, was the sale of lots, to the value of two millions of dollars, along the course of a projected canal; and of another set, immediately behind these. . . . Whereas, wild land on the banks of a canal, not yet even marked out, was selling at Chicago for more than rich land, well improved, in the finest part of the valley of the Mohawk, on the banks of a canal which is already the medium of an almost inestimable amount of traffic. If sharpers and gamblers were to be the sufferers by the impending crash at Chicago, no one would feel much concerned; but they, unfortunately, are the people who encourage the delusion, in order to profit by it. Many a high-spirited, but inexperienced, young man; many a simple settler, will be ruined for the advantage of knaves.