The settlement at Fort Dearborn made little growth until after the War of 1812. It was far in the wilderness, being reached from Detroit by a trail through the woods, and from Mack inac by lake schooners of which usually two came each year, in spring and fall.
The Massacre of 1812.— In 1812 the second war with Great Britain broke out, and at the outset in the Northwest all the advantage lay with the British and their Indian allies. Mack inac was captured, thus securing to the British the control of the upper lakes, and General Hull, in command at Detroit, sent orders that Fort Dearborn should be evacuated, and that the surplus stores should be divided among the Indians. These orders were executed, and on 15 August the garrison, escorting a number of women and children, set out for Detroit by the road which wound along the lake shore. At a point among the sand hills near the eastern end of the present Eighteenth street the savages attacked in force, and the whole body of whites were captured or destroyed. Two of the women and 12 children were butchered during the fight and a number of the wounded men were killed afterward. The Indians then burned the fort and divided the plunder.
In 1816, after peace was fully restored, Fort Dearborn was reconstructed on a somewhat lar ger scale than before, and under protection of its garnson a small village slowly grew up.
Political Jurisdictions.— In the old days of French and British occupation the territory, in cluding• the valleys of the Wabash and Illinois rivers, west to the Mississippi and north to Lake Michigan, was commonly known as the °Illinois Country.* The main French settlements were at Vincennes, on the Wabash, at Kaskaskia on the river of that name, and at Cahokia and Fort Chartres, on the Mississippi. In 1763, by the Treaty of Paris, the French government yielded to Great Britain all claim to land east of the Mississippi, and thus the Illinois country be came British. By the °Quebec Act* of 1774— one of the legislative acts of the British govern ment which led to the Revolutionary War— all of the newly-acquired land between the Ohio and the Great Lakes was included in the prov ince of Quebec, thus placing it under the arbitrary military government at that time pre vailing over Canada.
In 1778 a small army of Virginia troops sent out by Gov. Patrick Henry, .under com mand of Col. George Rogers Clark, seized Kas kaskia and Vincennes, and thus replaced British authority by American throughout the Illinois country. The treaty of peace of 1783 drew the northern line of the new republic through the Great Lakes, instead of through the Ohio River, as doubtless would have been done had it not been for Clark's victorious expedition, and thus the site of Chicago became finally American and not British. Virginia organized the Illinois
country as a county — the county of Illinois and under that government it continued from 1778 until the cession of all the Northwest by Virginia to the United States, in 1783.
While Clark's expedition determined the exclusion of British authority from the Illinois country, there remained a dispute as to jurisdic tion over it among several of the States. Vir ginia claimed all the territory between the Ohio, the Mississippi and the lakes, on the ground mainly of conquest. New York claimed the same territory, on the ground of a treaty with the Iroquois, who were asserted to have ex tended their conquests as far as the Mississippi. Massachusetts and Connecticut claimed, under their original charters, to own all the land between their northern and southern boundary lines of latitude west of New York as far as the Mississippi. Under these various claims Chicago is in territory claimed respectively by Virginia, New York and Connecticut. The con flicts were settled by acts of cession on the part of the various States to the United States.
After the Virginia act of cession of 1783 the authority of that State was withdrawn from the Illinois country and for several years the French villagers were a law unto themselves. In 1787, however, the ordinance for the govern ment of the Northwest Territory was enacted by Congress, and thus the Chicago area came legally into that Territory. In 1790 Governor St. Clair visited Kaskaskia and formed Saint Clair County from the southwestern portion of the Illinois country. The wilderness north of that had practically no white population, and hence no local government was needed. In 1796, however, the county of Wayne was or ganized, which included Detroit and the Chi cago area. It was in this year that the British finally withdrew their garrisons from Detroit, and the new county was named from the victor over the Indians in the campaign of 1794, who also made the Treaty of Greenville in 1795. In 1800 the Indiana Territory was organized, in which all the Illinois country was included, and in 1809 the Illinois Territory was created, including all west of the Wabash River and north to British America. When the boundaries of Wayne County were changed, in 1803, the Chicago area was left out, and it was not in cluded within any county until 1812, when the county of Madison was formed. Under the laws of the Territory of Illinois, Chicago was included in Edwards County in 1814, and in Crawford County in 1816. In 1818 Illinois was admitted to the Union as a State. Under the laws of the State Chicago was successively in cluded in Clark County, organized in 1819; in Pike County, 1821; in Fulton County, 1823; in Peoria County, 1825; and finally in Cook County, organized 15 Jan. 1831.