Such speculative operations, however, had the result of entailing financial embarrassment. In 1871, Alexander had to contract his business and part with his Champaign county property. This embarrassment was due to many causes, not the least serious of which was cattle mortality by splenetic fever, by which he lost $100,000. He also sustained heavy losses by shrinkage in cattle values, and the Champaign county investment proved disastrous. He also became involved in railroad complications. The railroads were keen competitors for the livestock traffic and in 1871, Alexander severed his relations with the Pennsylvania railroad, making a contract with the New York Central, by which that company gave him a low rate conditional to a specified tonnage. By way of resentment, the Pennsylvania railroad put merely nominal rates into effect, thereby glutting eastern markets and crippling Alexander's trade, which had become so colossal as to be unwieldy. To carry on such gigantic operations, he was compelled to trust to innumerable assistants, many of whom proved to be either incompetent or unfaithful. Confronted with liabilities aggregating $1,200,000, he was forced to make an assignment, but his estate was sufficient not only to pay off every creditor, but leave him a large sum for a fresh start in life. It was while energetically engaged in retrieving his fortune that he died, in 1876. Those survivors of John T. Alexander, who remember his activity as Illinois' greatest operator, describe him as being tall and commanding in appearance. Even at the time of his death, he was hale and youthful. He was of sanguine temperament, naturally impulsive, but quiet and non-assuming in manner, sparing in speech, and undoubtedly one of the great American captains of industry in his time, an outstanding figure in a trade that boasts many conspicuous men. The old Alexander mansion in Morgan county, the greatest house in the countryside half a decade ago, remains in a somewhat dilapidated condition, and the decaying out-buildings convey a mournful hint of vanished greatness. Here, during Alexander's time, Abraham Lincoln, Stephen A. Douglas, Richard Yates, and others, whose illustrious names adorn Illinois history, were the guests of America's greatest cattleman. _Jacob Strawn_ Jacob Strawn came from Ohio and settled in Morgan county in 1827, and a few years later was probably the most extensive cattle dealer in the world, but his operations were, to a large extent, local and his most distant shipping point, Saint Louis. His pastures in Morgan county embraced about 15,000 acres and his business reached its maximum about 1860.