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Construction of the I&M Canal
1838, A Year of Violence and Disease
By Ron Vasile
In
early 1838 canal contractor William Byrne had a problem. The town of
LaSalle had just been platted by the I&M Canal Commissioners, and
hundreds of young men were streaming into town, attracted by the
prospect of work digging the 96 mile long Illinois and Michigan
Canal. Most of the new arrivals were Irish, and some had experience
digging the Erie and other eastern canals. Others were fresh off the
boat from Ireland. All were seeking a measure of freedom and
opportunity that were unknown in their native land. They were a
hard-working bunch but some carried with them to America sectional
rivalries from their homeland, and others had a fondness for alcohol
and brawling.
At 6 foot 2 and powerfully built, the strapping Byrne could handle
any one man who gave him trouble, but he could not handle hundreds.
A devout Catholic, Byrne decided he needed help from above. He made
the three-day trip to St. Louis to petition the Catholic Bishop to
send missionaries to LaSalle. On March 29, 1838, Fathers J. B. Raho
and Parodi arrived in LaSalle at midnight and were greeted by a
tumultuous throng. The two men were to minister to the spiritual
needs of Catholics spread out over almost 18,000 square miles of
Illinois. Their first few months in LaSalle surely tested the depths
of their faith. In June many canal workers rioted along the line of
the canal. Known locally as the Irish Rebellion, the violence
apparently resulted from a dispute between two groups of Irish, the
Corkonians and the Far-Downers. The men from Cork tried to drive off
all of the Far-Downers working along the canal, beating them and
burning their shanties. William Byrne’s own men had been driven from
the canal, and he and others, some all the way from Chicago, joined
a posse to quell the violence. A resulting battle near Buffalo Rock
resulted in an undetermined number of dead Corkonians.
Father Raho had been away during the uprising, and Parodi was so
terrified that he hid with a family some three miles away. He wrote
of his disgust with the Irish “who declare themselves Catholic and
are worse than infidel and care only about money and liquor.” Raho
added that the Irish were “extremely depraved and untouched by the
grace of God.” But there was worse to come in the year 1838. July
and August brought stifling heat and humidity, and the canal diggers
began to die in large numbers. Common wisdom called the illness the
“canal cholera,” but it was not cholera but malaria and heatstroke
that killed somewhere between 700-1000 people. Father Raho wrote
that “The diseases in this area are horrible and so many die that
there is hardly time to give Extreme Unction to everybody. We run
night and day to assist the sick. For three weeks the temperature
was excessive, up to 110F, and this for a few days in a row.” He
lamented over the many who “die like dogs among the dirt and mud,”
but he also saw their deaths as a form of Divine Retribution for the
riots that had occurred earlier. “It almost seems that the Lord
wants to punish the workers of the canal for getting drunk all the
time, their riots, their fights and homicides.” By mid-August the
worn-out Raho lamented that “I am fatigued, I am tired. Would to God
I could go away from them. . . I would wish to be among the
Indians.”
The widespread violence and the numerous deaths that occurred along
the canal in 1838 are completely ignored in the “official” report of
the I&M Canal Commissioners. Chief engineer William Gooding noted
that early in the year men had been pouring into the region, and
this may have been a factor in the fights over who would work on the
canal. Gooding also complained that “exaggerated reports of the
unhealthiness of the country” were widely circulated, discouraging
new recruits. The engineer on the Western Division, Ward B. Burnett,
who helped stop the rioters, was a bit more honest, noting the
“severe sickness” of the region, confirmed by the fact that over 100
men were still sick and confined to their shanties as late as
December of 1838. Burnett also noted that the canal diggers,
desperate for medical care, had pledged a portion of their salary to
build a hospital in the region, but nothing came of this idea.
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