150 years ago today a Chicago editorial looked at the year just past and saw the terrible destruction of the Great Chicago Fire in October 1871 as a source of hope for the coming year – citizens had a great opportunity to apply their energy and industriousness to the work of rebuilding the city. The piece next offered a series of New Year’s resolutions for various city stakeholders, and then the Tribune resolved to continue it’s own work as an advocate for non-partisan “Truth, Justice, and Right.”
From the January 1, 1872 issue of The Chicago Tribune:
The Russian is coming
THE NEW YEAR.
The New Year has come with Alexis, bringing with it sundry provocations to make allusions to scythes, hour-glasses, biers, garlands, cherubs, and other properties which pertain to the last act of 1871 and the first act of 1872. The curtain goes down upon a reality of ruins, and rises again upon the future no man can draw, except with the inspiration of hope. We transfer from the books of 1871 to the new set, a clear balance of acres of broken brick, stone, and iron, and a dozen broken Aldermen, with a determination to remove the one entry and correct the other, as a basis for this year’s work. At the commencement of no previous year has Chicago had such a magnificent field for labor. There is work enough for every man, woman, and child, and plenty of money to pay for it; and, as work brings contentment and peace with it, our chances for a Happy New Year ought to he of the brightest description.
The Old Year left us a margin of time sufficient to clear away the wreck and now we have some three hundred and sixty-six days for good honest endeavor. The fire which burns over the prairie in the fall makes the young grass of the next spring always greener and stronger, and the soil richer and more productive. The same result will ensue in our own case, if we hasten to seize upon the advantages offered us. It would be quite superfluous for us to suggest what course should he adopted or what dangers avoided in shaping and making the New Chicago. Every jagged wall and heap of bricks is eloquent enough with these suggestions, and it is to be presumed that every owner of a pile of this sort has wisdom enough to heed these suggestions and act thereon.
Opportunity for the New Year
As all of us become violently virtuous on New Years Day and make sundry resolutions, it is probable that we shall do the same to-day. It will be in order, therefore, for city officials to resolve to be honest and spurn bribes and other moneyed considerations to do wrong; for property-owners to resolve to build no more shams, and for builders to observe honesty as a material part of their contracts; for the horse railroad companies to be compassionate toward their brute servants and not tax them beyond their strength; for the West Side Gas Company to furnish a better article for illumination; for grocers to put less sand in their sugar, and for all dealers to give better measure and weight; for young men to drink less whiskey, and for young women to wear less finery; for the unmarried to get married. and for the married to stay married; for the clergy to write better sermons, and for the laity to pay better attention to them; for the lawyers to be more scrupulous, and for the doctors no longer to consort with death; for the rich to be more charitable to the poor, and for the poor to be more tolerant of the rich; for insurance men to be repentant, for insurers to reduce per cents, and for Board of Trade men not to doctor grain; and for every man to forgive his enemy and not let the sun go down upon his wrath, this evening.
It were useless to speak of the New Year elsewhere, for we shall have all that we want to do here with it; and, in the great work of municipal reorganization to be done, the newspaper must of necessity take a prominent place. While wishing all its readers a Happy New Year, and thanking all its patrons for favors in the Old, THE TRIBUNE will henceforth, as always, labor for the best interests of the new city; will still continue to be the people’s Tribune, advocating the right without regard to men; and, in the administration of City, State, and National affairs, demand only the Truth, Justice, and Right, for these are higher than Party, Creed, and Sect.
Hospitality, American Style
Grand Duke reviews NY City Metropolitan Fire Brigade
Grand Duke tours Chicago’s burnt district
According to Wikipedia, Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich actually arrived in Chicago on December 30, 1871:
The city was recovering from the great fire. Joseph Medill, mayor of Chicago, had written to the Grand Duke:
“We have but little to exhibit but the ruins and débris of a great and beautiful city and an undaunted people struggling with adversity to relieve their overwhelming misfortunes.”
He visited the destroyed part of the city and was impressed by the rhythm of the reconstruction. He gave US$5,000 (equivalent to $250,000 today) in gold to the homeless people of Chicago. Alexei also visited the stockyards and a pork processing plant.
As the Tremont House Hotel had been burnt to the ground, he was accommodated in the New Tremont House which had opened on Michigan Avenue, where he was awarded the “Freedom of the City”. On New Year’s Day General Philip Sheridan initiated him into the American custom of making “New Year’s calls upon the ladies”.
Wikipedia goes on to say that later in January the Grand Duke participated in a buffalo hunt in Nebraska, apparently with Generals Sheridan and Edward Ord, Lt. Colonel George Custer, and “Buffalo Bill” Cody.
Custer and Grand Duke pose
You can never tell. The Chicago Tribune’s January 1, 1871 editorial seems kind of ironic after a year:
Our own city of Chicago is striding forward –
“To her throne amid the marts,”
with a rapidity unexampled in the history of cities. Republican palaces are rising around us on every street. Edifices, modelled after the residences of the crowned heads of Europe in their order of architecture, are rising on our central streets, and will be devoted to the purposes of commerce, or the wants of travel — thus reasserting, in stone and iron, the essential truth of the sovereignty of the people. Where the people resort, there are our palaces; and none in the world are vaster or more permanent. In all these exhibitions of progress there is not merely the toil of the effort, but the enjoyment of success. Side by side with the temples of trade, and not less costly, are those of art, of song, of worship, and of amusement. These are significant proofs that our enterprise is not sordid, but that our success is human, and that, hand-in-hand with it, go all the amenities, graces, and enjoyments of a true life. Trusting that all these may fall within the experience of our readers, one and all, we tender them gratefully and cordially the wish of the hour — a Happy New Year.
From the Library of Congress: Chicago ruins, looking northwest from Michigan Ave. hotel; Grand Duke’s drive through the burnt district, from Frank Leslie’s illustrated newspaper, vol. 35, no. 899 (1872 Dec. 21), p. 301; the photo of Custer and Alexiei; Currier & Ives 1876 wish.
Harper’s Weekly provided a lot of coverage of the Archduke’s American visit from the middle of October through at least the end of 1871. The portrait, cartoon, and review of the fire brigade come from that publication. You can see almost all of Harper’s Weekly for 1871 at HathiTrust.
hope it is a good one
