History of Chicago. From the earliest period to the present time, Part 168

Author: Andreas, Alfred Theodore
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Chicago, A. T. Andreas
Number of Pages: 1340

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"SECTION 2. This act to be in force from and after its passage." Approved February 7, 1865.

Mr. Eastman with the exultation of a fearless, out- spoken, conscientious abolitionist of the old school, who had lived to see the full consummation of his life-long work, and the fruition of his early hopes, thus closes:

" This is one of the immutable laws, that stand for- ever ! Every pigeon-hole of the legal archives was ransacked, and every taint of color in our laws searched out and buried forever."

Under these laws negro servants were advertised as runaways in the daily papers of Chicago, and the labor of free negroes sold. The more serious phases of the working of the atrocious laws did not often appear in the northern part of the State. Mr. Eastman's papers, before alluded to, abound in incidents illustrative of the working of the black code. Among them is one having its scene partially laid in Chicago :

One Nicholas Jones, a free-born colored man, born and reared in the South, there married (or rather took to himself, as no marriage like his was valida black woman who was a slave. They had several children. All efforts on his part to purchase his family having proved unavailing, he fled with them to the North, and came to Chicago to live. An agent of his wife's owner traced these fugitives to their city of refuge, where, with the co-operation of one Henry Rhines, the whole fam- ily, including the free-born husband were arrested. bound, bundled into a carriage and started for the South. Mr. Eastman states that their repeated calls for help along the road were unheeded until they had reached Ottawa, crossed the river, and commenced to cross the prairie beyond. There they were stopped by Sheriff William Reddick, and forced to show their claim to the colored cargo. Under the existing laws their right to the woman and children was established, but Jones himself was set free, and was allowed to return wifeless and childless and broken hearted to Chicago. Jones stated that while he was on his way to Ottawa, he saw Rhines rob his wife of what little money they pos- sessed, which she had concealed about her person. The date of this occurrence is not given. The story is a sad one, but it does not seem to have stirred the unsympathetic heart of either of the then leading polit- ical parties,

Below are other incidents in the history of Chicago having a bearing on the early development of anti- slavery sentiment in Chicago.

An advertisement published in Chicago in 1837, in the Commercial Advertiser, Hooper Warren, publisher. read

"ONE CENT REWARD. - Disappeared from my residence, on the morning of the ad inst., an industrious

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Black Girl, named Eliza Ann Thompson, about fourteen years old, rather large of her age, and foxy-looking; a great liar, and would steal some; as she not only has taken away her duds, but some other fixings which she had no right to. As near as I can ascertain, she was persuaded to run away by a bull . ! negro by the name of Joe Abbey, who had been prowling about my house some time for that purpose. 1 forbid all persons har- boring or trusting her on my account, as I will pay no (lebt or debts of her contracting after this date. The above reward will be given for her delivery, but no charges paid.

" January 3, 1837. JOHN C. HUGUNIN."

In 1842, Edwin Heathcock, a colored man, indus- trious and well-behaved, and a member of the Chicago Methodist Church, was working in a field on the North Branch of the Chicago River, having hired out as a laborer to earn wages for himself. While so em- ployed, a wordy quarrel arose between himself and employer, or some fellow workman, in which language was used not comporting with the dignity of either white or black, and which came near ending in a more serious affair. In retaliation the white man had the negro arrested on the ground of being in the State of Illinois without free papers or having given bonds. Heathcock was brought before Justice L. C. Kercheval, who had given much attention to the law governing such cases, and he promptly committed the negro to jail. It was impossible to make Heathcock say that he ever had a master or owner, or ever even wanted one. He was put in charge of Sheriff Samuel J. Lowe, in the log jail on the northwest corner of the court-house square ; the Grecian-columned brick court-house gracing the eastern corner. He was duly advertised for sale in the " Chicago Democrat," for six weeks, with the constitu- tional cut of a runaway negro, bare-headed, with a bundle held over his shoulder on a stick. The day of sale was to be Monday, November 14, 1842, if no mas- ter came to claim him. On the Saturday night preced- ing the sale, Mr. Eastman met, on Clark Street, Calvin De Wolf, then a young law student. Together they went to the printing office of the former, where by the dim light of an oil lamp, Mr. Eastman set up in type a little hand-bill headed, " A Man for Sale," giving the date and place of the Monday morning sale, and invit- ing the citizens of Chicago to be present. DeWolf stood behind the press and rolled, while Eastman pulled. The bills finished, they went out with their paste-pot and pasted them along the board fences that surrounded the court-house square, and pretty well lined the forty yards up and down Clark Street, where the citizens could have a fair chance to encounter them as they passed to and from their places of worship the following day. The bills were a surprise to some, and an offense to others, as was proved by the splashes of mud and tobacco which disfigured some of them, while others were torn from their exalted positions and tramp- led in the mud of early Chicago. Enough had been seen, however, to draw a crowd on Monday morning that blocked the corner of LaSalle and Randolph streets, and up the latter to the front of the log jail. Sheriff Lowe brought out the man, whom the law had put into his hands for sale. Says Mr. Eastman :

" I believe it was the only slave sale that ever took place in Chicago. Chicago, however, always does jus- tice to her natives. Its first white settler was a black man-Jean Baptiste Point De Saible-who preceded John Kinzie in the settlement of Chicago, and who is the black root from which all our glory has sprung-the parent of the half million population ; so before they

sold a negro as a slave in 1842, they previously made a precedent by selling a white man ; for before this, some time in the thirties, as Judge Caton testifies, a Maryland vagrant (there being nothing here that could be done for him) was sold as a vagrant or vagabond, and was bought by George White, the black crier of auctions and lost children. So the way was justified for this sale by Sheriff Lowe.

"Sheriff Lowe brought out his prisoner, placed him on the sidewalk and offered him for sale, to pay the expenses of his imprisonment. There were people enough there to have invited strong competition for a bargain. Edwin Heathcock seemed to shudder from the effect of the chill air, in contrast with the seething jail, or from the fact that he was passing through a scene to which he was not accustomed. Some of us might have felt a little queer, if we were being sold by the Sheriff, instead of our horse or our dog. Sheriff Lowe tried to be complacent ; but being an English- man, although a good Democrat enough to be Sheriff, he felt himself encumbered with embarrassing circum- stances, and he was rather solemn. The people looked on glum and scowling. He offered the man for sale, . and called for bids. The offer was answered by expres- sive silence. He felt called upon to explain that he was only the agent of the law, and that as the man had been committed and had not proved his freedom, neither had any master proved that he was a slave, the law required him to sell the negro to pay expenses-pay for solving that muddle of the law, which itself could not solve ; but Sheriff Lowe did not admit that. No bids came in. The auction went on ;- ' Here is an able bodied man ; 1 am required to sell him for a term of service, . for the best price I can get for him, to pay his jail fees. How much am I bid, and so on.' No bids. Said he, 'Gentlemen, this is not a pleasant job. Don't blame me, but the law. I am compelled to do it. If I can get no bid for this man I must return him to jail. The law requires me to sell him ; if 1 get no offer, I must return him to jail, and continue the sale at another time.'

"Still no bid came at these pathetic appeals. Like the Irishman who had joined himself to a potato cask by putting his hand through the bung-hole and grasp- ing a potato, he had got a man on his hands, and he couldn't drop him. Finally the threat of putting the poor man back into that miserable jail prevailed so far that a voice was raised from the opposite side of the street-' I bid twenty-five cents.' This was the voice of the late Mahlon D. Ogden. Appeals were made in the usual manner for an increase of the bid. . Do 1 hear no more-only twenty-five cents for this able- bodied man ; only a quarter?'. But no further bid was made, nor did the good Mr. Ogden raise his, and the man was struck off to Mahlon D). Ogden for twenty-five cents. Mr. Ogden took out a silver quarter and handed it to the Sheriff, in presence of the crowd, who gave a liberal cheer. He then called the man to him. 'Edwin, I have bought you ; 1 have given a quarter for you ; you are my man-my slave! Now, you go where you please."

First Passenger on the Underground Railroad to Chicago .- Mr. Eastman says : "I believe I sent the first passenger on the underground railroad to Chicago, but he had to go through Chicago not alone into it to get to freedom." The facts, as given by him, are as follows :

In the fall of 1839, Mr. Eastman was living in the little town of Lowell, on the Vermilion River, in La Salle County. On a very cold morning in October of

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that year, a farmer came to him, stating that he had met a very strange person down on the river bank, who upon his approach aimed a shotgun at him with a warning to keep back, and that he believed he was a fugitive of some kind-perhaps a runaway slave. Mr. Eastman asked the farmer to go back, and if it was a black man, tell him he was among friends, and bring him up to him. The farmer soon reappeared with the stranger, whom Mr. Eastman describes as a most strange, famished, terrified negro, clad in rags and skins. and armed with a murderous looking knife extemporized from the end of a scythe, and an equally rough looking gun, both of which he carefully guarded, evidently sus- picious that they might be taken from him. Other neighbors joined Mr. Eastman and his companion, and the negro was finally made to believe that even if, as they suspected, he was a runaway, no harm would be done him-that he was among friends. One of the party, whose home was nearest the spot where this inter- view occurred ( Mr. H. L. Dutton, afterward a resident of Hyde Park), took the fugitive to his table, and a good neal had the effect of thawing his reticence and loosen- ing his hitherto silent tongue. It being now understood. although the man did not admit it, that an escaped slave was present, plans were discussed as to his dis- posal, which was not so easy a matter to determine in 1839 as it might seem to the reader of 1884. Mr. East- man says :

"We were living in a moral community. On one side of the river, and not a gunshot distance from us was a Congregational church; on the other side was Vermilionville, with a Baptist church, and a Methodist meeting; and the founder of the town named in Peck's Guide Book of Illinois was a leader in the Baptist Church, and a reader of the Chicago Democrat. This man was an exemplary man, but, alas, he was a Democrat ! Down the river a little way was another exemplary man, who was an attendant at the Congrega- tional Church; but, alas, he was a Whig! The little party that had determined to engage in the unlawful business of sheltering-perhaps, in the sense of the law. secreting-this runaway property consisted of four; the one who had just fed him was a deacon of the Congrega- tionalist Church; another who had fallen into this bad business was a leader in this Baptist Church of Ver- milionville; another was 'a boisterous millwright who was in for the fun of the thing; and the fourth was myself, who at that time represented the sense of the no offense in hindering us; but there was a grave offense in our hindering that 'any person,' who figures so largely in authority in the law. So now. in all this we were willful transgressors. There were enough of us to have made it a 'conspiracy' if we had been negroes; and we should have been seditious, and might have been dis- persed by proclamation, or treated as rioters by force of arms, and as white men subjected to imprisonment. We knew the penalty to which we made ourselves liable. and therefore added to our other sin that of concealing the crime. We were moral thieves in thus projecting plans, secretly to run that negro into freedom. We knew that the most active man among us, and probably his good wife, had already made themselves liable to a five-hundred-dollar fine in giving that man a breakfast. That Democratic farmer who had left us had already made himself liable by bringing the negro up out of the bushes by the river bank. I had made myself fiable by the ' comfort' [ gave him while standing in the road- he, in the meantime, not permitting me to handle his shotgun. We all began to realize that we were in for it, and might as well . be hung for an old sheep as for

a lamb.' So we resolved to take him over the river to a farmer from New Hampshire, who we knew was a reader of the Bible and Rogers's Herald of Freedom. and there secrete him till he could be sent to Canad ... And then we all went stealthily down to the river. not by the common road and the ford, but by a pathway through the bushes, and crossed the river by stepping from stone to stone. As we thus passed along in Indian file, the negro in the midst, we knew that we were breaking the law of Illinois. We were aiding him to escape, and were liable to be indicted. We thought of the good Baptist world at large. Now, as we discussed the matter in the presence of that rabbit-skin-clad negro. we considered how we could possibly protect him, and get him safely off to that land of freedom in Canada. At the word Canada this stolid man's eyes seemed to kindle up with some expression of intelligence. The thought came over one of the party that if any person might desire to interfere with our intentions, that is. hinder us, it might be necessary for us to 'hinder ' him, in the language of the law that makes 'hinder ' an offense, with penalty of imprisonment. Now, there was the Democratic founder of the town, and the good Whig Justice of the Peace, further down, and we would rather have met the devil than either that Whig or Democrat. We thought of the religious community up in that vil- lage we must needs pass if we took the common road. and as Fred Douglass said, 'would rather meet a wolf than a Christian.'

"Skulking along under the shelter of fences and bushes, the party reached the house of the New Hamp- shire farmer, who 'read the Bible and Herald of Free- dom,' and found in the 'bay' of the old fashioned New England barn a safe hiding-place for the fugitive. who, fairly in the hay almost to his eyes, opened his heart and disclosed the story of his wrongs, his suffer- ings, and his final escape from the Alabama plantation to the sympathizing circle seated on the railing of the 'bay.'. He had supposed vaguely that 'the North meant liberty, and that Illinois was a part, at least, of the North, and found out his mistake in geography when, having reached the State, after incredible hard- ships, he was arrested as a runaway slave and thrown into jail. He was advertised, but no master appearing. was sold to pay jail expenses. After serving his time with his new master. he again started for the land of freedom, which he now knew was Canada, and had reached the little hamlet where Mr. Eastman lived be- fore he found 'aid or comfort.' He remained one night in the barn to which he had been taken, and the next night farmer. Clark took the first passenger to the nearest station on what became the great ‘under- ground railroad,' and which later had so many branches centering in Chicago. The first night the fugitive reached Ottawa, thence on by night stages in farmers' wagons to Northville, then to Plainfield, to Cass, then to Deacon Vial's at Lyons, who brought him to Chicago and deposited him with Dr. Dyer. After caring for him a little while, the good Doctor thought it advisable to give him a chance to see Canada-to reach Canaan at last-and placed him on board the steamer . Ilinois.' Captain Blake, with his gun and his knife Captain Blake, as usual, when several days out, made a tour of discovery to see what he might find on board. and among the firemen he found a 'new hand.' at which discovery he was very wroth, and made awful threats in language more forcible than polite. How. ever, his fury ended by the positive determination tu . kick him off the boat at the first port he came to' So as he came into the Detroit River, he made a grand

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circuit, as if to show off his fine boat to a circle of admiring Southerners on board, and ran it into a port on the Canada shore, where he had no passengers to leave, but where he furiously dragged the negro from the lower regions and energetically . kicked him off' into freedom.'

Mr. Eastman gives the following as the last slavery disturbance in Chicago :

" In 1845-46 a certain negro was arrested by Henry Rhines by virtue of a writ issuing from the office of Justice Lewis C. Kercheval, and brought before that Justice to answer to the charge of seeming to be free when he was not, and to respond to a claim of owner- ship by a man residing in Missouri. There was no master or agent in Chicago to look after the interests of this claim, but the negro was brought before the Justice to answer to the charge. It was soon noised abroad that Rhines had " got hold of another nigger, and had him in Kercheval's office." Dr. Dyer, the stanch friend of the then oppressed race, with a score of black friends of the prisoner, and quite a number of "respect- able " people besides, soon arrived at the office, where the Justice was engaged in making out the paper of "extradition," and Mr. Kercheval was coldly informed that that case was to be contested. Lawyer Collins was sent for, and as the rumor that "a nigger had been caught " spread abroad, great crowds of people gathered on the street and filled the Justice's office on the second floor of a wooden building on Clark Street. It was very evident there was to be a full trial. Mr. Collins critic- ally examined all the papers that had been prepared in the case, as well as the evidence submitted to prove that this man was a slave of somebody in Missouri. He could find no flaw in Kercheval's decisions' through which the man might escape, and suddenly sprung upon him this startling proposition: " This man is charged with being a slave in Missouri ; now, I deny that slavery exists in Missouri." The Justice affirmed that the proposition was absurd; that everybody knew that slavery existed there. "I deny it," protested Mr. Col- lins, "and you can't take as evidence what everybody says; it must be proved before your honor. Your honor's court is of too highi a grade to be taking evi- dence on hearsay." No one could be found who could testify "from personal knowledge " that slavery existed in Missouri. Mr. Collins claimed that it must therefore be proved by the law itself, and it struck the Justice that this was but reasonable and just, and in accordance with proper legal practice.

In the meantime the crowd was getting very dense in front of the building. blocking up Clark Street from Lake to Water, and the little office and stairway was so closely packed that there was great danger of breaking down and being lost in one common muddic.

" It must be proved," says the Justice, and where is the " Stat-tuts of Wisconsin!" Now these "Stattuts " were not in the Justice's office: they were not com- monly at hand. A messenger was sent for the " Stat- utes of Wisconsin." Rhines remained on hand to guard his prisoner. It was with great difficulty that the mes- senger squeezed his way down the office stairs and through the outside crowd on his mission to a neighbor- ing law office to get the required authority, and there was therefore a long and solemn waiting for his return-an ominous pause in the process of administering justice. Suddenly, from his " durance vile," and from before the very presence of the Justice, uprose that " nigger," and somehow, like a bubble, glided over the heads of the throng and down the staircase to the sidewalk. The crowd moved on to follow, and Rhines, like " Jill."

"came tumbling after." Reaching the sidewalk, he tried to get out his pistol, but the pressure of the crowd forced him to point it past his own nose up to the heav- ens-an unprofitable direction in which to shoot. The Justice, in the meantime, waited for the arrival of the " statutes," and could have seen-had he looked, as his constable was obliged to see, to his discomfiture, in his utter helplessness on the outside-an eager and excited crowd, a mingling of men, wagons, horses and drays, and in the midst of shouts the negro hoisted onto the highest seat of the best carriage on the street, while the spare room was filled with young men, and then driven by these daring young fellows down Lake Street to Lawyer Collins's office, while an immense crowd fol- lowed shouting and cheering the rescued and rescuers. Arriving at the office, the negro ascended to the second story, the young men took out a front window, and the former prisoner, standing upon the sill, thanked the crowd below for his rescue from those whose purpose it was to remand him to slavery.

No prosecutions followed or were even threatened for thus placing obstacles in the way of the distribu- tion of law and justice, although the offenders, who had incurred the penalty of six months' imprisonment by this jolly performance, would have filled half a dozen jails like that of Chicago, and the officers of the law who designed to send this underground-fugitive back to slavery, had to digest their disappointment as best they might.

- -

To Mayor Curtiss, and to many of the good citizens of Chicago, however, this "demonstration " looked somewhat, yea, "very like " a mob, and there was great fear lest the fair fame of Chicago as a "law abiding city " should be tarnished. As a consequence of this anxiety, a proclamation was issued, calling a meeting of law-and-order people of the city in the court-house. The law-and-order people (on both sides) were on hand at the appointed time. Everything had been prepared. Resolutions had been prepared, and were about to be promulgated, that would forever squelch "abolitionism." Somehow, things did not work smoothly for the self- constituted law-protectors, and when J. Young Scammon arose in the rear end of the court-room and proposed a set of resolutions that had been brooded over by another kind of men, great was the consternation. Through much disturbance he was at length permitted to read them. They deprecated all illegal interference with the law, and especially illegal arrests of people who had made Chicago an asylum from oppression, declaring that Chicago was on the side of humanity. and was bound to protect legally the fugitive from oppression. The resolutions were passed by an enthu- siatic vote. This was the last slavery excitement under the Black Laws, and Chicago maintained thereafter her well-earned reputation as a law-and-order community.

The murder of Lovejoy at Alton, Ill., in 1837, seems to have been the first incident that aroused the apathetic people of Chicago sufficiently to result in anything like organization or public protest against the enor- mity of human slavery. Mr. Eastman in his article in Blanchard's History of the Northwest, gives the fol- lowing account of Chicago's connection with the early anti-slavery days :

"Soon after the murder of Lovejoy, there was a meet- ing called in Chicago-not to sympathize with the cause of abolitionism, but to condemn this assault on the constitutional right of the freedom of the press. It was called to be held in the Saloon Building, a small public hall on the corner of Clark and Lake streets, on the third floor, and the meeting was held not without

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fears that it would be broken up by a mob. There was an abundance of caution used in the calling and holding of the meeting, to avoid any collision . with the fellows of the baser sort.' Rev. F. Bascom, of the First Pres- byterian Church, Dr. C. V. Dyer, Philo Carpenter, Robert Freeman, Calvin DeWolf, and some few mem- bers of the Baptist and Methodist churches, were the leading spirits of this meeting. A watch was set to give seasonable warning of any approach of a mob, should any one be sent howling upon the track of these devout men, mourning for Lovejoy, and endeavoring to give voice to a right-minded public opinion. But there was happily no demonstration of mob violence, and the meeting was not a large one, but probably fully repre- sented the interest which Chicago then took in the fate of Lovejoy; the city was at least saved from the dis- grace of a mob. It was not then presumed that an abo- lition press would have fared any better in Chicago than it had at Alton. The public were not prepared to tolerate any such newspapers.

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History of Chicago. From the earliest period to the present time, Part 168

Author: Andreas, Alfred Theodore Publication date: 1884 Publisher: Chicago, A. T. Andreas Number of Pages: 1340

Author: Andreas, Alfred Theodore
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Chicago, A. T. Andreas
Number of Pages: 1340