USA > Illinois > Illinois in 1818, 2nd ed > Part 18
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Governor Harrison at once issued a proclamation for an elec- tion of nine representatives; these assembled in Vincennes in 1805 and proceeded to nominate councilors to the president. The representatives from the Illinois counties were Shadrach Bond and William Biggs of St. Clair and Dr. George Fisher of Ran- dolph, while Jesse B. Thomas, later of Illinois, represented Dearborn county. Of the five councilors selected by Harrison from the ten nominated by the house-for the president secretly delegated his power of choice to the governor-two, Pierre Menard and John Hay were from the Illinois country. The leg- islature selected Benjamin Parke of Vincennes, a personal and political friend of the governor, as delegate to congress, and then proceeded to the passage of an indenture law. This act of 1805, which was revised and reenacted in 1807, provided that a slave over fifteen years of age might be brought into the ter- ritory and within thirty days enter into a formal agreement to serve as an indentured servant for a certain number of years. The agreement was to be made a matter of record, and should the slave refuse to bind himself, the master was allowed sixty days in which to remove him from the territory. Children born of indentured servants were to serve the master of the mother, males to the age of thirty, and females, of twenty-eight. Slaves under fifteen might be brought in and simply registered to serve, males until thirty-five and females until thirty-two years of age.
It is useless at this date to raise the question as to whether
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the indentured servitude established by this act was or was not "slavery or involuntary servitude" and thus in viola- tion of the ordinance. Certain it is that the ends sought by the act were approved by a majority of the people in Illinois and in the western part of what came to be the state of Indiana. Only in Dearborn and Clark counties of Indiana was there any considerable opposition to it.
During the summer of 1805 the anti-Harrison faction in Illi- nois circulated a petition for the division of Indiana territory. In this they were probably actuated principally by the belief that such a division would improve their political fortunes and would be distasteful to their opponents, the Harrison faction; but they may have been influenced also by a feeling that a separate Illi- nois might secure complete and unrestricted slavery and also by a fear that the growing antislavery population of eastern In- diana would put in jeopardy the indenture system. Besides pray- ing for division they asked that the slavery article might be repealed or modified so far as it affected the proposed new terri- tory. Among the grievances alleged by the petitioners was their "having been unwarrantably precipitated into the second grade of territorial government," and the story of that trans- action was recounted at some length.
Knowing that such a petition was in circulation, the supporters of Harrison introduced in the legislative session of 1805 a memo- rial to congress, praying among other things for the introduction of slavery and protesting against the proposed division of the territory. A proposition was also embodied in this memorial for the admission of the territory as a state before division, to- gether with a suggestion that division when it should come might well be by an east and west instead of a north and south line. Obviously such a division would be greatly to the advantage of Vincennes. The memorial was not adopted by the legislature but was sent to congress as a "Petition of the subscribers, mem- bers of the Legislative Council and House of Representatives of the Indiana Territory, and constituting a majority of the two Houses, respectively." The five members whose names do not appear on the petition were the councilors and representatives from St. Clair and Clark counties. Councilor Menard and Repre-
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sentative Fisher of Randolph, both followers of Harrison, signed as did also Representative Jesse B. Thomas of Dearborn. The name of another Dearborn man, Benjamin Chambers, presi- dent of the council appears; but he afterwards denied that he signed the petition. Both Thomas and Chambers, if Chambers signed, probably misrepresented their constituents. The people of Dearborn county the same year prepared a petition to con- gress complaining of the advance to second grade, protesting against the indenture law, and praying -that they might be joined to the state of Ohio.204
These three documents emanating from three distinct factions and representing the views of three distinct sections of the ter- ritory reached congress in December, 1805, and on the eighteenth were referred to a select committee, of which the delegate from Indiana territory was a member. A month later a number of additional documents from the Illinois counties were referred to the same committee. They consisted of a memorial prepared by "a Committee from the Several Townships in the Counties" and the minutes of the committee, including a series of resolu- tions. It would seem that the anti-Harrison faction felt some further action to be necessary to counteract the effect of the leg- islative petition. The resolutions, after calling for a division of the territory, express the respect of the people for the ordinance and call attention to "the Violation thereof By the late act of the Legislature of this Territory Authorizing the importation of Slaves, and involuntary servitude for a term of years." From this it might be inferred that the committee was hostile to the introduction of slaves, but the succeeding sentences show that this was for political effect entirely. "And altho' this Committee entertain no doubt but that the Act in Question will render serv- ice, by adding a Spring to the Growth of this Country, They express the disapprobation of a people, who never will Consent to a Violation of that ordinance, for this privilege of slavery. When Congress should deem a Change of the Ordinance expe- dient, they will Cheerfully agree to the measure." The memo- rial itself sets forth many reasons for desiring a division of the
204Indiana Historical Society, Publications, 2 :476-483, 492-494; American State Papers, Miscellaneous, 1:485; Dunn, Indiana, 336-341, 345.
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territory, condemns the petition of the members of the legis- lature, and asks for the permission to hold slaves as "promotive of the prosperity of this Country." No mention is made of the indenture law in the memorial, but other acts of the legislature are denounced because they increased the power of the gov- ernor. Accompanying the memorial and the minutes was a census estimate by Robert Morrison, who had taken a census in 1801; he reckoned the population of St. Clair and Randolph counties at 4,31I.
The special committee, in its report of February 14, 1806, to the house of representatives, opposed the admission of the terri- tory as a state before the division and also the proposals for immediate division, but favored the suspension of the slavery article for ten years. No action was ever taken on the report, but it was clear that congress would never authorize the admis- sion of the territory as a single state. The result was a momen- tary truce between the two proslavery factions in the legisla- tive session of November, 1806, and the adoption by unanimous vote of a series of resolutions asking for a suspension of the "sixth article." Benjamin Parke, the delegate from Indiana, was chairman of the committee of the house of representatives, to which these resolutions were referred; and on February 12, 1807, he presented a report favoring suspension of the slavery article. This report was referred to the committee of the whole house but was never considered.
Meanwhile the advocates of division in Illinois were continu- ing their campaign and on February 20, 1807, another memorial from their committee was referred to the same committee of the house of representatives which had reported on the legislative resolutions. At the same time a counter petition from Ran- dolph county was received which denied the representative char- acter of the Illinois committee and opposed division. This peti- tion bears one hundred and two signatures, but nearly all the names are French and forty-two are signed with a mark. Among recognized supporters of Harrison who signed were Dr. George Fisher, James Gilbreath, and two of the Menards. Six days after receiving these petitions the committee reported to
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the house a resolution declaring the expediency of division. This resolution was adopted, but no further action followed.
The election of the second house of representatives of the Indiana territorial legislature in February, 1807, showed an in- crease in the strength of the factions opposed to Harrison, but all three of the Illinois representatives were reelected. At the first session of the legislature, in August, 1807, the principal matters of interest were the reelection of Parke to congress and the adoption of another memorial asking for the suspension of the slavery article. Between the first and the second sessions of the second territorial legislature the political situation changed materially. John Rice Jones, member of the council from Knox county, broke with Harrison, probably on a matter of patronage, and joined the opposition. Menard and Hay resigned from the council, and Fisher and Bond205 were pro- moted to their places, thus necessitating the election of a repre- sentative in each of the Illinois counties. These elections re- sulted, after a bitter contest between the factions, in victories for the anti-Harrison party in both cases, the successful candidates being Rice Jones, a son of the councilor, in Randolph, and John Messinger, the first "Yankee" in Illinois politics, in St. Clair. As a result of these changes the anti-Harrison factions had a majority in the legislative session of 1808 and were able to effect a combination on the question of division. This was possible in spite of their radical differences on the slavery issue because the elimination of the Illinois counties would in all probability give the antislavery forces a majority in Indiana proper. Early in the session resolutions in favor of division were adopted and forwarded to congress, but it took several weeks for the two factions to agree on a delegate to take the place of Parke, who had resigned. The man finally selected was Jesse B. Thomas, of Dearborn county, who pledged himself to work for division. The Harrison men supported Michael Jones, register of the land office at Kaskaskia, possibly with the
205This Bond was the nephew of the Shadrach Bond who served in the legislature of the Northwest territory. He was sometimes known as "Shad- rach Bond, Jr."
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object of inducing the Illinois representatives to support an Illi- nois man, but Jones received only three of the ten votes.
Sometime in the spring of 1808 the Illinois advocates of di- vision had prepared three petitions to congress which on April 16 were referred to a committee of the house of representatives of which Parke was a member. The first of these petitions points out the weakness of the counter petition presented in 1807, as signed by so large a proportion of illiterate Frenchmen, and as- serts that the committee which signed the memorials of 1806 and 1807 was truly representative of the sentiment of the counties; the second contains an elaborate series of charges against Gov- ernor Harrison including among them his sanctioning of the in- denture law "which may properly be entitled 'A Law for the Establishment of disguised slavery in opposition to the Na- tional Will';" while the third was merely a brief request for division. Inasmuch as the names of John Edgar and William Morrison appear at the head of the signatures to the second petition it is clear that the reference to the indenture law was not an indication of antislavery sentiment.
Parke failed to secure a favorable report on these petitions, although he had agreed to support the division movement, and in December, 1808, they were referred to a new committee ap- pointed to enquire into the expediency of dividing the Indiana territory, and headed by Jesse B. Thomas. This committee had various other documents before it-the legislative resolution already mentioned, a petition from the grand jury of St. Clair county praying for division, presented December 2, depositions denying their signatures from men whose names appeared on the petition containing the attack on Harrison, and a petition from Harrison's followers in Knox county, including Benjamin Parke, opposing division. Thomas appears to have had little difficulty in securing a report favorable to division, and the passage of an act, approved February 9, 1809, for the establish- ment of the territory of Illinois.
From the foregoing account of politics in Indiana territory it is evident that there were in Illinois in 1809 two parties or fac- tions which had been working at cross purposes for a number of years. These may be classified as the Harrison and anti-Harri-
AN OLD-FASHIONED BED [Original owned by W. O. Converse, Springfield]
PIERRE MENARD'S HOME AT KASKASKIA [From original owned by Chicago Historical Society]
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son parties, the former comprising most of the holders of office and the latter headed by a number of men of considerable wealth and influence. It is doubtful if the great majority of the people owned affiliations with either of the factions and on the rare occasions when elections were held the voters were doubt- less influenced as much by the personality of the candidates as by their party alignments or their positions on the issues of the day. In the struggle over division, the anti-Harrison party had been victorious, but that struggle was only an incident in the hostility between the two groups, which persisted for a number of years and exerted an appreciable influence upon the politics of Illinois territory.
The Ordinance of 1787 again formed the basis of the con- stituent act of the new territory and for the third time the people of Illinois found themselves under the rule of a governor and judges.206 The faction which had favored division apparently ex- pected to secure the offices, and Jesse B. Thomas, who as dele- gate had brought about the separation, did succeed in securing one of the judgeships for himself. For governor, however, the president selected Ninian Edwards, chief justice of the court of appeals of Kentucky, who endeavored to hold himself aloof from both of the factions. Both of the other judges were from outside the territory, while the secretary was Nathaniel Pope, also of Kentucky, and a personal and political friend of the gov- ernor. Around these two men there gradually grew up a new party composed largely of importations but receiving, on the whole, more supporters from the ranks of the old anti-Harrison faction than from those of their opponents.
Had Edwards accepted the suggestions made to him that none but advocates of division should be appointed to office, he would doubtless have received the complete support of the anti- Harrison men, and the old factions would have been continued as the "ins" and the "outs." With reference to the patronage, however, the governor adopted the policy of refusing to remove men who were giving satisfactory service and of following the wishes of the people concerned, so far as they could be ascer- tained, in such appointments as were made. Thus the militia
206Thorpe, Constitutions, 2:966.
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companies were allowed to select their own officers, and civil ap- pointments were frequently based on recommendations or peti- tions from the township or county. Occasionally, however, per- sonal factions played a part; as when Benjamin Stephenson, a newcomer from Kentucky, was appointed sheriff of Randolph county in 1809.207 Stephenson was soon recognized as one of the leaders of the Edwards party and in 1814 was sent as delegate to congress, a position which enabled him to secure an appoint- ment as receiver of the new land office at Edwardsville.
For the first three years of the territory the attorney general- ship was the chief piece of territorial patronage at the governor's disposal, but after the passage to second grade he had the ap- pointment of a territorial treasurer and an auditor of public accounts as well. In 1816 Edwards appointed to the latter office Daniel Pope Cook of Kentucky, a young nephew of Nathaniel Pope, the secretary.208 At the close of the territorial period Cook was a close personal and political friend of the governor and later became his son-in-law.
The principal local officers in 1809, all of whom were ap- pointed by the governor, were three judges and a clerk of the court of common pleas, sheriff, coroner, surveyor, treasurer, re- corder, and as many justices of the peace as might be needed in each of the counties. By the Indiana law in force at the time of the division, the court of common pleas conducted the adminis- trative business of the county, heard appeals from justices' courts, and had original jurisdiction in civil and criminal cases, with appeal to the general court of the territory. These courts of common pleas were notoriously inefficient so far as their judicial functions were concerned, for the compensation was too low to induce men trained in the law to serve as judges ; and by a series of laws adopted by the governor and judges in June and July, 1809, the systems of judicature and local administra- tion were reorganized. The courts of common pleas were abolished. Their administrative functions were transferred to courts made up of the justices of the peace of the county, which
207 Edwards, History of Illinois, 28-41 ; Washburne, Edwards Papers, 42-46, 76; James, Territorial Records, 8.
208 Ibid., 40.
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were also empowered to hear appeals from decisions of indi- vidual justices of the peace in cases of judgments not exceeding twenty dollars. All other jurisdiction of the courts of common pleas, both civil and criminal, was transferred to the "general court," composed of the United States judges, which was re- quired to hold two terms annually in each of the two counties. This simple system was doubtless satisfactory to all parties con- cerned, so long as the amount of litigation was small and there were only two counties. In January, 1811, however, possibly in anticipation of the increase in the number of counties which came the following year, the governor and judges passed an act restoring the courts of common pleas in the place of the county courts made up of justices, but from the phraseology of the act it would appear that the jurisdiction over civil and criminal cases transferred to the general court in 1809 was not at this time re- stored to the courts of common pleas.209
The advance of Illinois to the second grade of territorial gov- ernment took place in 1812, apparently without any opposition. As had been the case with Indiana territory the governor was authorized to make the change whenever convinced that a ma- jority of the freeholders desired it. On March 14 he issued a proclamation calling for a vote on the question on the second Monday in April. The result of the election was favorable, and in the normal course of events a restricted form of popular gov- ernment would have been established in Illinois similar to that set up in the northwest territory in 1798 and in Indiana in 1805. A strong sentiment had been developing, however, especially in the west, in favor of greater participation by the people in their governments. Several of the state constitutions recently adopted had dropped all property qualifications for suffrage; and con- gress, by an act of 1809, had liberalized the government of In- diana territory to the extent of providing for the election of the delegate and the councilors by the people, although the suffrage qualification remained unchanged.
In Illinois the restriction of suffrage and office holding to free- holders would have been especially objectionable in 1812, for
208 Alvord, Laws of the Territory, 2-6, 28.
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there were no sales of land until 1814 and the great majority of the inhabitants were squatters waiting patiently for the oppor- tunity to purchase the land on which they had located. On the very day on which he issued the proclamation for the election, Governor Edwards wrote a long letter to Colonel Richard M. Johnson, congressman from Kentucky, explaining the situation and asking for his assistance in securing an act removing the property qualification for suffrage and providing for the election of the delegate by popular vote. Should the provisions of the ordinance remain in force, he claimed, a majority of the present freeholders, who constituted less than one-tenth of the male pop- ulation of voting age, would be able to control the government for at least five years. The establishment of new counties, more- over, would be hampered by the impossibility of finding men with requisite qualifications to represent them in the legislature.
Two weeks later, March 30, Edwards transmitted to the speaker of the house of representatives two petitions numerously signed, praying for the extension of the suffrage and the privi- lege of electing the delegate by popular vote.210 One of these petitions from "Inhabitants of the Land district East of Kaskas- kia," in which the squatters comprised practically the whole population, rehearsed the arguments presented in Edwards' let- ter to Johnson. The other, from "citizens of the Territory," was signed by many of the leading residents of Kaskaskia. Colonel Johnson secured prompt action by congress, and on May 20 the president approved a law which enabled the people of Illinois to establish the most democratic form of territorial government to be found in the United States at that time. By the terms of this act suffrage was granted to all free white males, twenty- one years of age, who had paid a county or territorial tax, no matter how small, and had resided in the territory one year. It was further provided that the five councilors should be elected in five districts to be designated by the governor, and finally the delegate to congress was to be elected by the people instead of by the legislature.
210Edwards, History of Illinois, 306-309. The original of this letter and the petitions noted in the following paragraph, are in the House Files.
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On September 14, 1812, Governor Edwards issued two im- portant proclamations. The first of these established three new counties, Madison, Gallatin, and Johnson, making five in all, to serve as the districts for the five members of the council. The second proclamation made provision for an election to be held October 8-10, for delegate, members of the council, and rep- resentatives. Two representatives each were assigned to St. Clair and Gallatin counties and one each to the other three. The returns of this election are not known to be in existence, but Shadrach Bond, who had been both representative and councilor in the Indiana territorial legislature before the division, with leanings toward the Harrison party, was elected delegate to con- gress. Apparently there was some opposition to his election, for on November II a petition from Benjamin M. Piatt, attorney general of the territory and an appointee of Governor Edwards, was presented to congress "complaining of the undue election" of Bond and praying for an investigation. No investigation appears to have followed and Bond took his seat on December 3, 1812.
Aside from the patronage the only political issue of a general nature during the existence of Illinois territory had to do with the judiciary system. As has already been seen, several changes were made in this system during the period when the governor and judges had complete control. With the assembling of the first territorial legislature on November 25, 1812, the question came before the representatives of the people. The establish- ment of the three new counties made some readjustment neces- sary, and the outcome was the complete restoration to the courts of common pleas of the jurisdiction which they had exercised under the laws of Indiana territory. This of course relieved the general court of the local work which had been imposed upon it in 1809 and in fact left it with very little to do, a situation which appears to have been quite satisfactory to the judges. All of them were absent from the territory for long periods of time much to the dissatisfaction of the people. "The grand jury of St. Clair and Randolph counties," wrote Bond to Edwards, August 17, 1813, "presented all our judges for non-residence and non-attendance, but before they [the presentments] arrived
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