This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
Had the good citizens of the United States known about Rock Island City in 1836, they might not have been so eager to elevate the public image of the great orator, Daniel Webster, from politician to '"statesman."
The public Daniel Webster was a senator from Massachusetts in 1836, well on his way to becoming America's greatest orator.
Known as a sound conservative economist, Webster was chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and a strong defender of the Federal Bank.
But the private Daniel Webster was a man addicted to land speculation out west in Illinois, newly opened to settlement. In 1836, he sent his son west to buy land near large waterfalls where waterpower would soon increase the value of the investments. The money came from a tangle of borrowings, promissory notes, and requests for "refreshments" from Federal Bank officials in return for his support.
Webster himself invested in the most promising site: Rock Island City, just platted at the junction of the Rock River and the Mississippi where waterpower and transportation meant certain success. Rock Island City's founders had laid out a town of 1,380 lots on six hundred and eighty acres—ten times the size of the nearby villages of Rock Island and Davenport. A grand prospectus described the large brick buildings in the town, the steamboat landings and the busy paved streets.
Certain of success, Daniel Webster invested $60,000 in Rock Island City for a one-eighth interest, about ninety acres, and sat back to wait for the money to roll in. He did not have to wait long. Rock Island City turned out to be a "paper city," existing only in the dreams of the investors. A panic in Illinois in 1837 ended even the paper dreams, and the city was declared vacated by the Illinois Legislature in 1837. Twelve years later, Webster turned over his interest in Rock Island City to Congressman Caleb Cushing, in lieu of a $20,000 debt, which Webster had borrowed to speculate in land. Almost all of his land speculations had been failures, but none so spectacular as the loss of $60,000 in Rock Island.
Rock Island Lines with Roald Tweet is underwritten by Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.
