Chicago began with soldiers.

Capt. John Whistler, to be precise, an Irishman who fought with the British during the Revolutionary War. After the peace, he joined the United States army and was sent to the western frontier, which at the time was Indiana.

There he helped build Fort Wayne. In the summer of 1803, he and his company of the First United States Infantry were dispatched to build a new fort at the mouth of the Chicago River, named after Thomas Jefferson’s secretary of war, Henry Dearborn.

A small settlement grew around the stockade. Then on Aug. 15, 1812, the garrison’s 66 soldiers tried to evacuate Fort Dearborn, joined by 15 friendly Miami, plus nine women and 18 children. They ran into an ambush of 500 Potawatomi warriors. Two-thirds were killed.

That first military effort i

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