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3 the victory over St. louis Among the usual police reports of drunkenness, brawling, and petty mayhem common in mid-nineteenth-century Chicago newspapers, a new type of crime began to appear with greater frequency beginning in the late 1840s. “We warn the farmers and others visiting the city to keep their eyes open for mock-auction sales,” the Gem of the Prairie cautioned readers in 1848. “Swindling on a wholesale scale has become the order of the day among a class of Hackman [taxi drivers] in this city,” the Chicago Tribune wrote in 1856. “It appears that he made the acquaintance of a very clever, sociable chap on the cars,” the Tribune wrote of an unnamed country “greenhorn” who had arrived in the city via a train. “Finally a bet was proposed, and [the confidence man] who had no small money, asked a loan of the countryman of something less than a hundred dollars, and proposed to give him as security a check on the Bank of Commerce in this city for $640, and a $100 bill on a New York bank.” Of course, both the check and bank bill were bogus, and the greenhorn was left poorer but wiser. Even in the immediate weeks after Appomattox, the Times warned veterans traveling though Chicago that attempts “to grasp [the vets] much loved greenbacks amount almost to open pillaging.” “From this inland port the hardy sons of trade are to go forth, to cross seas, to traverse deserts, to explore the arcana of nature, and gather up the riches of continents,” the religious New Englander and Yale Review warned in 1854, “unless, like Nineveh, and Babylon and old Tyre, its wickedness will antedate its doom, and call down the scourge of God to execute it.”1 With an ever-increasing number of trains daily depositing new “pigeons,” slang for naive or gullible persons, it was only a matter of time before Chicago earned a reputation as a “fast city.” As Karen Halttunen observed, in early 58 . chapter three American literature—beginning with a young Benjamin Franklin—seduction tales of young country men being victimized in cities were almost as popular as those involving women. “In the nineteenth century, the raw country youth entering the city to seek his fortune was coming to symbolize the Americanon -the-make,” Halttunen wrote. “And in the central drama of antebellum advice literature, that inexperienced young man had just set foot in the city when he was approached by a confidence man seeking to dupe and destroy him.” Tim Gilfoyle described a young New York City man’s introduction into the graft of urban life. “As I learned the different systems by which one could earn money easy and with less risk than picking pockets and other rough ways, I started in for myself and was quite successful in making money in ‘sure thing graft’ as it is called by crook.” The Richmond Examiner revealed in 1866 that “pocket picking and larceny” were common at Chicago prayer meetings. In 1870 the New York humor magazine Punchinello chronicled a Chicago horse who supposedly picked its hostler’s pocket and chewed his tobacco. “Well,” the magazine sniffed, “that is just what one might expect of a Chicago horse.”2 Mid-nineteenth-century Chicagoans radiated in their new persona of self-important busyness. “The pavements are so filled that locomotion is attended with difficulty, and, spread out for a hundred yards or more, is a dissolving view of bright eyes, rosy cheeks, whiskers, hats of all kinds, gaily trimmed bonnets of various patterns, gaiter boots, shapely and unshapely ankles, breeches, dresses, and all surroundings and appearances of a crowded street in a great city,” the Times bragged. In particular, the paper pointed with pride to the short period of time that it had taken for their muddy settlement to become a modern, crime-ridden nineteenth-century city, in decades rather than the century or more required for Paris, London, and New York. With its combination of youthful energy and gospel of success mentality, it was widely believed that postbellum Chicago could not help but become the greatest western city. The speeding locomotive of destiny came to a crashing halt with the 1871 fire, but Chicago’s rebirth from its ashes only gave further testimony to its greatness, especially as it accelerated past St. Louis during the 1850s to become the region’s largest trading center and, in 1880, to become the Midwest’s most populous city. With requisite...

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