From the foregoing, it can be seen that most of the official and commercial affairs of the Hardin County region was transacted in Shawneetown. It was a center of population and visitors there judged the rest of backwoods Illinois by its actions. Sometimes unjustly, some- with amusing insight. Reading these old records today we get a picture of old "Shawanoe" as an uncurried, ripsnorting border town where river rowdies and cutthroats the length of the Ohio congregated and devoted their energies to raising the roofs of the six or niore village taverns.
As one pioneer preacher related it was the most unpromising point for ministerial labors in the Union — which at that time took in a lot of pretty rough territory.
Another visitor wrote:
Among two or three hundred inhabitants not a single soul made any pretentions to religion. Their shocking profaneness was enough to make one afraid to walk the street and those who on the Sabbath were not fighting and drinking at the taverns and grog shops, were either hunting in the woods or trading behind their counters ... a laborer might almost as soon expect to hear the stones cry out as to expect a revolution in the morals of the place."
Shawneetown, however, had no monopoly on such dubious activities. One traveler, an Englishman by the name of Flint, who found some American traits quite admirable, appeared to find others just as lamentable.
In Cincinnati, New Year's day, 1819, his one journal entry was: "During the night I heard much noise of fighting and swearing amongst adult persons." Elsewhere he wrote: "... The river Ohio is considered the greatest thoroughfare of banditti in the Union. Horse stealing is notorious, as are escapes from prison — jails being constructed of thin brick walls or of logs fit only to detain the prisoner while he is satisfied with the treatment he receives . . . Runaway apprentices, slaves, and wives are frequently advertised. I have heard several tavern keepers complain of young men going off without paying their board . . . "
And he really goes to town in writing of the river boatmen:
It gives me great pleasure to be relieved from the company of boatmen. I have seen nothing in human form so profligate as they are. Accomplished in depravity, their habits and education seem to comprehend every vice. They make few pretentions to moral character; and their swearing is excessive and perfectly disgusting . . . The Scotsman recently referred to missed a knife. On his accusing them, one degraded wretch offered to buy his fork. I have seen several whose trousers formed the whole of their wardrobe. They are extremely addicted to drinking. Indeed I have frequntly seen them borrowing of one another a few cents to quench their insatiable thirst."
However, Flint makes a more sober commentary in the following:
Most of them (i. e., backwoodsmen) are well acquainted with the law, and fond of it on the most trifling occasions. I have known a lawsuit brought for a pail of the value of 25c. . . . Many of them are sometimes truly industrious, and at other times excessively idle. Numbers of them can turn their hands to many things, having been accustomed to do for themselves in small societies. They are a most determined set of republicans, well versed in politics, and thoroughly independent. A man who has only half a shirt and without shoes or stockings, is as independent as the first man in the states; and interests himself in the choice of men to serve his country as much as the highest man in it, and often from as pure motives — the general good without any private views of his own .... I was struck to find with what harmony people of different religions lived together, and have since had no reason to alter my opinion. I have had much conversation with Baptists, Methodists, and Quakers. They all expressed much charity for those other sects, although most of them seemed to have a high opinion of their own."
Extracted from History of Hardin County, Illinois, written in 1939 by the Committee for the Centennial, pages 35-37.
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