USA > Illinois > Edwards County > History of the English settlement in Edwards County, Illinois : founded in 1817 and 1818, by Morris Birkbeck and George Flower > Part 14
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189
HOW THEY REACHED ALBION.
tled in the same prairie, with Wood, Brissenden, and Scavington, are gone; but the latter remain there stronger and more flourishing than ever.
It is a noticeable fact that emigrants bound for the Eng- lish Settlement in Illinois, landed at every port from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico. This arises from the fact that the laborers and small-farmers of England are very imperfectly acquainted with the geography of America. Indeed, among all classes in England there is a very inadequate idea of the extent of the United States, and scarcely any of the nationality of each state. The child at school, looking at the map of England, sees all the counties, and London as the metropolis of the king- dom. On the map of America, he sees the states, and Washington as the metropolis of the republic. He feels that the states of America and the counties of England are relatively the same. I question if half-a-dozen maps are to be found in all England, of the different states marked with county boundaries. It is a point not ex- plained to him by his teachers. Thus the error grows up with him. As various as their ports of debarkation, were the routes they took, and the modes of conveyance they adopted.
Some came in wagons and light carriages, overland; some on horseback; some in arks; some in skiffs; and some by steam-boat, by New Orleans. One Welshman landed at Charleston, S. C. "How did you get here?" I asked. "Oh," he innocently replied, "I just bought me a horse, sir, and inquired the way." It seems our Settlement was then known at the plantations in Carolina and in the
190 ENGLISH SETTLEMENT IN EDWARDS COUNTY.
mountains of Tennessee. The great variety found among our people, coming as they did from almost every county in the kingdom, in complexion, statue, and dialect, was in the carly days of our Settlement very remarkable. Of the variety of places from which they came, I had some singu- lar indirect testimony.
When a youth, I accompanied my drawing-master on his annual sketching tour into the southern counties of Wales, and adjoining counties of England. From some three hundred pencil-sketches, we selected six for pictures in body color, an art I was then learning. Like many first productions of children, my parents put these, my first efforts, into frames, and hung them up. By some means they came in our baggage, and were hung up in my cabins on the prairies. One day, the Welshman, Williams, look- ing earnestly at one of them, asked me where that place was. I told him it was "Pont ne Vaughan," Glamorgan- shire, South Wales. "I thought it was, sir, or I should not have asked; and there stands the Widow Griffith's house. I have been there, sir, a hundred times." And there he stood, exclaiming sometimes in Welsh, sometimes in English, pleased at the representation that recalled to him the happy scenes of his youth.
On another occasion, my shepherd challenged another picture. "Is not that the River Severn, near Bristol, sir?" "Yes." "And there are the two islands, called the 'flat' and the 'steep holmes,' on which I have gathered bushels of birds' eggs," said he. In this way were my early pic- tures nearly all recognized. That representations of places, taken nearly a half-century before in secluded places in
19I
TROUBLES, ANNOYANCES, CONTENTIONS.
England, far apart from each other, should be sent into a wilderness of another hemisphere, there to be recognized by persons, some of whom were not born at the time the sketches were taken, seems a very strange thing.
It will be seen that our position is not on any of the . great highways of travel. We caught none of the float- ing population as they passed. Most of those who came set out expressly to come to us. This circumstance indi- cates some leading sentiment that, in a greater or less degree, is common amongst us all. We are, generally speaking, republican in politics, with a strong bias for equal freedom to all men. A portion amongst us are of more liberal sentiments than strict sectionalism will allow. All, more or less, of a reflective and reading cast, with a certain vein of enterprise, or we should not have been here.
Thus far we had been successful, contending and over- coming material objects. We were now to have our share of trouble, annoyances, and bitter contentions. Enemies. were rising up, seeking to arrest the current of emigration.
New towns and settlements forming deeper in the inte- rior, and with a fresher popularity, have to encounter envy and disparaging remarks from many of the inhabitants of older towns and settlements, themselves young and want- ing population. To pass them and their town is felt as a sort of insult. There are persons in almost all places ready to exaggerate the difficulty of travel, and dilate on the disadvantages of the place, to which the traveler is. bound. Others, less scrupulous, give utterance to every plausible falsehood to arrest the stranger. This we had to endure, and we suffered from its influence, perhaps in
192 ENGLISH SETTLEMENT IN EDWARDS COUNTY.
a greater degree, from the circumstance of our Settlement being more widely advertised and known. We lost many families, that came out to join us, from this cause. Scores and hundreds were, by these fabulous stories, arrested, and many of them ultimately detained from thirty to a hun- dred miles east of us.
The most remarkable instance of this kind of influence occurred in the person of Mr. Filder, who came over in my ship. He was over fifty years of age, of apparent firmness and resolution, worth forty thousand pounds, and came out expressly to make a member of our Settlement in Illinois. He was one of those who made the journey from Pittsburgh on horseback. He traversed the states of Ohio and Indiana, and arrived at the old town of Vin- cennes. He had doubtless passed over much rough coun- try, and experienced many annoyances-bad roads, swol- len streams, bad cooking, buggy beds-altogether enough to put an elderly gentleman a little out of sorts.
Finding that he was a man of property, and hoping to detain him at Vincennes, they plied him with awful accounts of the English Settlement, and the way to it. When he got there, he would find no water to drink; all the people there were shaking with the fever and ague. To get there, he must sell his horse and buy a canoe, to get through the swamps and waters; and much more of the like kind. Although within one day's ride, forty miles, and on the verge of the prairie country, for which he had taken a voyage of three thousand miles, and a journey of one thousand inland, for the purpose of seeing them, these unfavorable reports made such an impression on him, that
193
COBBETT'S SLANDERS.
he rode back the journey, and recrossed the Atlantic, without seeing what he came to see.
It was as early as the year 1819, that William Cobbett wrote his two letters to Morris Birkbeck, which appear in the third part of his "Year's Residence in the United States of America." These had a wide circulation in England and in America. Written with his usual force and talent, these letters, with his after-efforts, had a decided effect in checking the current of emigration to our Settlement, and in diverting it to other channels. The more so as there was truth mingled with his special pleading, mistaken premises, and erroneous deductions. He accused Mr. Birkbeck of propagating misstatements, in the form of letters, addressed to fictitious persons in order to give them the semblance of truth. He quotes from a particu- lar letter as containing evidence of its own falsity. Now this particular letter I took to England, and delivered to the person to whom it was addressed, Mr. John Graves, a gentleman of great worth and respectability, of the Society of Friends, living near St. Albans, Hertfordshire.
In replying, Mr. Birkbeck made use of an expression to this effect (for I have not the words to quote from), "there is something in your character that throws a doubt on the · motive of your statement." The expression, I think, is correct. With all the strong points of Cobbett's character, and in them there was much to admire, there was still that doubt existing in the minds of his most ardent admirers. His sobriety, amazing industry, persistent perseverance, self-instruction, the bringing of himself from obscurity to name and honorable notice, are admirable powers and
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194
ENGLISH SETTLEMENT IN EDWARDS COUNTY.
traits of character. The cloud of mistrust, which hung over his motives, even among his many admirers, I pre- sume was from his peculiar position as a political writer. No man could, for so many years as he did, and writing with his force and ability, maintaining one set of political opinions, praising all who agreed with him, and pouring out vituperation and abuse on all who differed from him, change suddenly, argue for all he had formerly denounced, praising those he had blamed, and vilifying those who he had formerly eulogized, either maintain his character for consistency, or dispel all doubts of his honesty. I have known many of Cobbett's adinirers, and I rank myself among them; but I have never known a half-dozen per- sons who yielded to him their implicit confidence. Be this as it may. He was in a position, by issuing his disparag- ing statements through his widely-read Register, to do us much harm, and would have done us much more, had he been implicitly believed.
Some of these statements were replied to, in England, by the pen of my father, and in letters to individuals by myself, and by Mr. Birkbeck, in a printed address in pam- phlet form, "To Emigrants arriving in the Eastern States; published by C. Wiley & Co., 3 Wall Street, New York." The reports spread in the Eastern States, at first from sources to us unknown, were anonymous. They were most dismal-"That all our bright prospects had vanished, and that we had been visited by every calamity, physical and moral; by famine, disease, and strife; that the sound have been too few to nurse the sick, and the living scarcely able to bury the dead," etc. Cobbett's active pen, it was
195
WARFARE AGAINST THE SETTLEMENT.
said (with what truth, I know not), was employed by cer- tain land-speculators, in New York and Pennsylvania.
A Dr. Johnson, personifying, as he professed, a society for the benefit of European emigrants arriving in the port of New York, makes charges, without any scruple, against our situation and ourselves. It turned out that he was a large land-owner in New York and Pennsylvania. These calumnies were forcibly and well answered. But the venom had spread before the antidote could be applied. Hun- dreds who saw the denunciatory accusations, never saw the replies. When these statements were all tripped up, the last charge was made, and the cry of infidelity was raised. But we were out of reach. Their abuse was, in some sort, an advertisement. We had powerful interests to oppose us. The British Government did not like to see its people strengthening the United States, and neglecting its own colonies. A number of books and newspaper statements appeared suddenly in England, some anonymous, some under assumed names, and one or two with real names full of disparagement, falsehood, and abuse.
Mr. Fearon's book of travels, although appearing under his own name, it is said, was edited and published by the poet-laureate, and so worded by him as to give an unfavor- able turn to everything American in the eyes of the Eng- lish emigrant. To sum up, the British Government lent the weight of its influence against us. The most popular writer of the times was actively engaged against us. The Eastern land-speculator. Tories everywhere. The bigoted religious (and they were legion) were all against us. They disparaged where they could not deny, and scrupled not
196
ENGLISH SETTLEMENT IN EDWARDS COUNTY.
to substitute falsehood for truth, whenever the occasion suited. They influenced the wavering, intimidated the weak, and forcibly restrained those over whom they had control.
Thus stood the war without, when we were suddenly called upon to turn our weapons to an enemy at home-an enemy more to be dreaded than all the political writers and land-speculators put together. It was the evil genius of SLAVERY that stood within our borders, plotting and contriving how to make the whole State its prey.
CHAPTER X.
Conspiracy against Liberty-The Convention Question-The Salines - Slaves to Work them-How Slavery got a Foothold in Illi- nois-Provision of the First Constitution-Gen. Willis Hargrave -System Adopted to Change the Constitution-The Project Exposed-The Pro- Slavery Men holding all the Offices-Judge Samuel D. Lockwood an Exception-Letters of "Jonathan Free- man" and "John Rifle"-Handbill "Pro Bono Publico"-Letters of Morris Birkbeck - The Election takes Place-Vote of Ed- wards County-Slavery Men Active and Unscrupulous-Gov. Coles and Mr. Birkbeck-The latter appointed Secretary-of-State by Gov. Coles-The Outrages on Gov. Coles by the Slavery Party-Letter of Gov. Coles to Mr. Birkbeck-Honorable Excep- tions among the Pro-Slavery Men, Judges Wilson and Browne -The Cloven-Foot Exposed by the "Shawneetown Gazette "- The Death of Mr. Birkbeck-Buried at New Harmony, Ind .- His Memory to be held in Respect and Gratitude.
THERE are questions asked at the present day. Scarcely any one person can give all the answers. It is some- thing like asking a soldier to give a description of a battle in which he fought. He necessarily gives the history of that part of the field that came under his own observa- tion. This effort to obtain a convention undoubtedly had a local origin. But the ramifications of this conspiracy against liberty, soon after its inception, extended over all the State, even to the extreme north. There are those, doubtless, now living, who can tell what part the centre and north of the State took in this transaction, as I am about to describe the action of the south. My impression
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ENGLISH SETTLEMENT IN EDWARDS COUNTY.
is that the treachery came from the south, and the traitors* from the north; at least, so many of them as were neces- sary to give an effective aid to the southern faction, that desired to introduce slavery and establish it over the State.
The better to understand the coming controversy, the circumstances of the territory must be referred to, as they existed previous to the year 1817, and the different tone of feeling that existed in the two parties living in the south- ern part of Illinois; one strongly opposing, the other as determinedly sustaining, the introduction of slavery into the new State.
A saline, or water strong enough to make salt, was found in a district of country about ten or twelve miles : north-west of Shawneetown, on the Ohio River. The salines were reserved from sale by the United States. The General Government leased these salines to individuals, and afterward to the State of Illinois, allowing slaves to. be brought into the Territory for the purpose of working them. Under the Territorial law, hundreds and thousands of slaves were introduced into the southern part of the Ter-
* Mr. Flower is at fault when he describes the "traitors" as coming from the "north." The northern counties of the State, as they existed in 1822, were Greene, Pike, Fulton, Edwards, Bond, Fayette, Montgomery, Wayne, Lawrence, Crawford, Clark, Madison, and Sangamon. In the Senate, in the "Convention Legislature, " these counties were represented by five anti- convention men and two convention men. In the House, in the same Legis- lature, these same counties were represented by nine anti-convention men (including Hansen) and four convention men (excluding Shaw). It will be seen, therefore, that the great body of the anti-convention men in the Legis- lature were from the northern counties of the State, having an organization in 1822. The only anti-convention senator from the middle or southern portion of the State, as settled at that day, was Andrew Bankson of Washington County, and the only anti-convention representatives were Thomas Mather and Raphael Wieden of Randolph County.
199
PLANTING SLAVERY IN THE SOIL.
ritory, chiefly from the states of Kentucky and Tennessee.
For all practical purposes, this part of the Territory was as much a slave-state as any of the states south of the Ohio River. To roll a barrel of salt once a year, or put salt into a salt-cellar, was sufficient excuse for any man to hire a slave, and raise a field of corn. Slaves were not only worked at the saline, they were waiters in taverns, draymen, and used in all manner of work on the north side of the Ohio River. As villages and settlements extended farther, the disease was carried with them. A black man or a black woman was found in many families, in defiance of law, up to the confines of our Settlement, sixty miles north, and in one instance in it. In some, but not many, cases, they were held defiantly; in others, eva- sively, under some quibble or construction of law; in most cases, under a denial of slavery. "Oh, no! not slaves; old servants attached to the family; don't like to part with them," etc. And in many cases it was so. In some of those "attached" cases, however, there was found no bar to trading off the poor darkey for a few loads of salt, or, what was better, a little ready cash. This was the planting of slavery on our soil, within the bounds of the saline, legally and without virtuality. The evil plant took such strong root, that, in a few years, it was found difficult to pluck it up and cast it from us.
In article 6, section 2, of our first constitution, will be found the limitations to the term of service and the period fixed for the termination of slavery, before legally per- mitted in this section of the State. It reads thus: "No person, bound to labor in any other State, shall be hired to
200
ENGLISH SETTLEMENT IN EDWARDS COUNTY.
labor in this State, excepting within the tract reserved for the salt-works, near Shawneetown, nor even at that place for a longer term than one year, at any one time. Nor shall it be allowed there after the year 1825. Any viola- tion of this article shall effect the emancipation of such person from his obligation to service."
Here the whole thing was supposed to be settled. Every body thought freedom established, and slavery excluded; and, under that belief, emigrants from free-states and from Europe came in, and began to make permanent settlements for themselves and families.
As the time for excluding slavery drew near, the lessees of the saline-Granger, Guard, White, and others, and conspicuous among these, for the zealous advocacy of the convention cause, was Major Willis Hargrave,* afterward legislator and general, with other characters in the neigh- borhood, made a bold stroke to perpetuate their system of servile labor, not by asking for an extension of time for hiring hands to work the saline, but they sought so to change the constitution as to make the whole of Illinois a slave-state.
Their mode of proceeding was in private caucus. In these meetings, they adopted resolutions, embodying a system of action. After the system of action was more matured, they appointed a committee of five from each
* Gen. Willis Hargrave was the official inspector of the Gallatin Saline. His residence was at Carmi, White County. He represented that county in the Territorial Legislature, in the sessions of 1817-18, and was a member of the first Senate of the State from 1818 to 1822. He was a man of influence in his day, and was one of the boldest and most outspoken advocates of a change in the constitution, so as to make Illinois a slave-state. While others temporized and hesitated, he openly advocated making Illinois a slave-state.
201
INFLUENCES FOR SLAVERY.
county, empowered to appoint a subcommittee of three in each precinct, well-wishers to slavery, to act in such a way as they thought best, to induce the citizens to vote for a convention to amend the constitution. At first it was endeavored to keep the main object out of view. It was · for a time stoutly denied that the amendments proposed to be made in the constitution were intended to introduce slavery. But it was impossible to keep the secret, and very soon the true object was no longer denied.
Then came articles in the newspapers, advocating the introduction of slavery for a limited time, quite plausible and mild at first. They were trying to tickle the fish, and did not want him to flounder before their fingers were in his gills, and they could throw him out of his element.
After the action of the conventionists at Vandalia, the advocacy of slavery, in full, appeared in all the papers in the southern part of the State, and in those of Louisville and St. Louis. For a long time, the people were asleep on the subject, and the slave -holders were enabled, under cover of this apathy, to mature all their plans. Neither is this surprising, when we consider the state of the country. Settlements were far apart; but few took newspapers, and fewer read them; personal communication was infrequent. The country people were all engaged in their daily labor, not dreaming of any impending change in our system of laws and government. As to the tone of feeling among the people residing in that large portion of the State south of our Settlement, it was actively or negatively in favor of slavery. Our influential men, and all who held office, from the governor to the constable, were from slave-states.
202
ENGLISH SETTLEMENT IN EDWARDS COUNTY.
Every sheriff and every clerk of the county were pro- slavery men. Every lawyer and all our judges were from slave-states, and pro-slavery. I know of but one excep- tion in the whole bar that attended our courts, and that was Samuel D. Lockwood,* for many years a lawyer and judge, now living, I believe, at Batavia.
The people were almost all of the class of poor whites, from the Southern States. Many of them had been negro- overseers. Such was the population south of our Settle- ment in Edwards County. The feeling in Edwards County was widely different; the English Settlement in the west and the Methodist Settlement in the east were strongly against slavery. When the action of the conventionists became known to our people, it aroused the indignation that had slumbered too long.
The mode of proceeding to influence the vote of the Legislature, I will give in the words of an eye-witness, to all the proceedings. The history of the business appears to be shortly this : "Certain members of that body (speak- ing of the assembly), anxious to introduce a forbidden sys- tem among us, formed themselves into a junto or caucus, soon after the commencement of the session, and offered to other members their votes in favor of any proposition which those members had any interest in carrying, in con- sideration of their pledging themselves to support the measure of a convention. By the accession of these, their
+ Samuel D. Lockwood was appointed a judge of the Supreme Court of Illinois, January 19, 1825, and held the office continuously till December 4, 1848. As a lawyer he held a good rank, and was distinguished by the probity of his character and the purity of his life. Illinois never had a magistrate more respected and beloved than Judge Lockwood.
203
THE CONTEST IN THE LEGISLATURE.
first victims, the caucus, in fact, became the legislature, as by comprising a majority of both houses, it was capable of carrying every question, that one excepted. Other represen- tatives, who had not as yet bartered away their independ- ence, soon discovered that they were completely at the mercy of the junto; and, in order to recover the means of serving their constituents on those points of local interest which, when combined, form the general weal, suffered themselves, one by one, to be bought over, until the faction had acquired nearly two-thirds of the whole number of votes-the strength requisite to carry their favorite meas- ure, without the accomplishment of which, they declared, they would not quit Vandalia.
"They repeatedly tried their strength by preparatory resolutions, and at length, on the 5th of February, brought forward the main question; but it was decided against them by a majority of two. They were not, however, to be so baffled. They carried a vote of reconsideration, and the resolution was laid upon the table. On the 11th of February, having gained over the deficient votes by means which it would seem invidious to mention, the resolution was again brought forward, and again lost, through the defection of a member who, on a former occasion, had voted for it. Notwithstanding this second decision, they persevered in their purpose.
"One of the party, although in the constitutional minority on the last division, again moved a reconsideration of the question. The speaker declared the motion to be out of order, because the mover was in the minority. They attempted to overrule the decision of the speaker, by an
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