At that time the State of Illinois—­as, indeed, the whole United States—­was convinced that the future of the country depended on the opening of canals and railroads, and the clearing out of the rivers.  In the Sangamon country the population felt that a quick way of getting to Beardstown on the Illinois River, to which point the steamer came from the Mississippi, was, as Lincoln puts it in his circular, “indispensably necessary.”  Of course a railroad was the dream of the settlers; but when it was considered seriously there was always, as Lincoln says, “a heart-appalling shock accompanying the amount of its cost, which forces us to shrink from our pleasing anticipations.”  Improvement of the Sangamon River he declared the most feasible plan.  That it was possible, he argued from his experience on the river in April of the year before (1831), when he made his flatboat trip, and from his observations as manager of Offutt’s saw-mill.  He could not have advocated a measure more popular.  At that moment the whole population of Sangamon was in a state of wild expectation.  Some six weeks before Lincoln’s circular appeared, a citizen of Springfield had advertised that as soon as the ice went off the river he would bring up a steamer, the “Talisman,” from Cincinnati, and prove the Sangamon navigable.  The announcement had aroused the entire country, speeches were made, and subscriptions taken.  The merchants announced goods direct per steamship “Talisman” the country over, and every village from Beardstown to Springfield was laid off in town lots.  When the circular appeared the excitement was at its height.

[Illustration:  The black hawk.

From a photograph made for this Magazine.

After a portrait by George Catlin, in the National Museum at Washington, D.C., and here reproduced by the courtesy of the director, Mr. G. Brown Goode.  Makataimeshekiakiak, the Black Hawk Sparrow, was born in 1767 on the Rock River.  He was not a chief by birth, but through the valor of his deeds became the leader of his village.  He was imaginative and discontented, and bred endless trouble in the Northwest by his complaints and his visionary schemes.  He was completely under the influence of the British agents, and in 1812 joined Tecumseh in the war against the United States.  After the close of that war, the Hawk was peaceable until driven to resistance by the encroachments of the squatters.  After the battle of Bad Axe he escaped, and was not captured until betrayed by two Winnebagoes.  He was taken to Fort Armstrong, where he signed a treaty of peace, and then was transferred as a prisoner of war to Jefferson Barracks, now St. Louis, where Catlin painted him.  Catlin, in his “Eight Years,” says:  “When I painted this chief, he was dressed in a plain suit of buckskin, with a string of wampum in his ears and on his neck, and held in his hand his medicine-bag, which was the skin of a black hawk, from which he had taken his name, and the tail of which made him a fan, which he was almost constantly using.”  In April, 1833, Black Hawk and the other prisoners of war were transferred to Fortress Monroe.  They were released in June, and made a trip through the Atlantic cities before returning West.  Black Hawk settled in Iowa, where he and his followers were given a small reservation in Davis County.  He died in 1838.]