Tanglefoot: An Almost True Story of Civil Wars and Cities - Hardcover

Richard Connelly Miller

9780965842365: Tanglefoot: An Almost True Story of Civil Wars and Cities

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0965842363 ISBN 13: 9780965842365

Publisher: DFI Books, Dada Foundation Imprints, LLC, 2005

Tanglefoot, an illustrated factual fiction, follows the trail of Captain George Wellington Streeter from the Civil War, through his traveling road show featuring a trunkless white elephant, and, thence, on to Chicago where he built a steamboat. A tremendous storm stranded her in shallow water on a sandbank. As he could not tow her free, he filled in the surrounding area with sand and debris from construction sites. When he claimed formal title to his homemade island and connected it to the shore and began selling cheap lots he precipitated a long and dramatic struggle with a consortium of neighboring millionaires who coveted his land and loathed the sight of the shacks and tents of Streeterville. For decades, resorting to legal actions and police raids and thugs and hired killers, his adversaries tried to drive him out. With the help of writs and Winchesters, butt strokes and bludgeons, amiable judges and friendly reporters, and of the widespread sympathy generated by this dramatic struggle staged in full view of everyone, the Captain defended Streeterville until he died at eighty-four. This story is one of dramatic confrontations between selfish aspirations to rise to the summits of society and power and the pioneer spirit with its egalitarian vision. In a deeper sense, Tanglefoot is about a civil war going on inside all of us. It is a real life dramatization of the many faceted American dream. Today Captain Streeter’s District of Lake Michigan, the area on the lakeshore just north of the Chicago River, is part of the Gold Coast, the Miracle Mile. People still call it Streeterville.

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From the Inside Flap:

The area of Chicago now known as Streeterville, the part just north of the Chicago River at the foot of Chicago Avenue, home of the Tribune Tower and a portion of the Miracle Mile, was born in 1886 in a terrible storm when a small steamboat operated by Captain George Wellington Streeter-- a Civil War infantry veteran-- and his wife Maria was stranded in shallow water and partially wrecked. Having decided to live aboard while repairing the damage, they built a stone wall to accelerate the natural deposition of sand and then started expanding their island with construction debris until, eventually, they'd created a large area joined to the shore. When Streeter learned the jurisdiction of Illinois and Chicago ended at the old shoreline he claimed title to his new land, declared it to be the Federal District of Lake Michigan, and began selling cheap lots. Millionaires, notably Potter Palmer who'd made his money selling cotton during the war, built mansions on nearby Lake Shore Drive and viewed this “squatter's” settlement much as did those years later who hated Houseboat Bohemia in Sausalito, California. Soon by means of legal actions and hired thugs and police raids Streeter's enemies began trying to drive him out. For decades, with the help of sympathetic supporters, Streeter and wife defended their land with shotguns, writs, Winchesters, legal actions, and his old Civil War musket cut short to double as a bludgeon. These millionaires and their Chicago Title and Trust Company embody money-driven self-seeking hierarchical society; Streeter, who regarded them as Money Hogs, represents the pioneer spirit of mutual assistance and egalitarian society. This story is one of dramatic confrontations between these yin-yang traits of American character, a civil war which then and now goes on around and inside all of us. Streeter kept on fighting until 1921 when he died at the age of eighty-four. Nowadays, people still call the area Streeterville, but have forgotten why, They ride on North Streeter Drive and frequent a saloon on East Chicago Avenue named Streeter's. Tanglefoot is Civil War army slang for bad whiskey, of which Cap Streeter and his wife Maria were legendarily fond.

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