USA > Illinois > Illinois, the story of the prairie state > Part 5
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And in 1819 the legislature passed the famous "black laws," which were not repealed until 1865. No negro could settle in the state unless he had a certificate of freedom with the court's seal; and this he must register in the county where he proposed to live. This was to discourage free blacks from coming to Illinois. Every negro without this cer- tificate was considered a runaway slave. To har- bor a fugitive slave, or hinder his owner from re- taking him, was punished by a heavy fine and thirty stripes !
But the most odious feature of this law was that
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no adequate provision was made for punishing kid- nappers. Capturing free blacks, running them south, and there selling them into slavery was for years a common crime; and southern Illinois afforded a safe retreat for the kidnappers, who made this a regular business, profitable and almost respectable. Thus the free state of Illinois was given a com- plete slave code,2 as severe as in any southern state, where the number of negroes equaled or was greater than the number of whites-while in Illinois the slaves made up a very small percentage of the pop- ulation.
The question of slavery was uppermost then all over the country, because of the frenzied agitation when Missouri was admitted to the Union. The Missouri compromise line, which, it was hoped, would settle the question forever, was in fact sug- gested by an Illinois senator. The new state on the west was well advertised by this nation-wide discus- sion, and many people from the southern states emi- grated there, often from the wealthiest and best- educated classes. For some time there had been comparatively few new settlers in Illinois, and few sales of land.
"Many of our people who had farms to sell looked upon the good fortune of Missouri with envy ; whilst the lordly immigrant, as he passed along with his money and droves of negroes, took a malicious
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pleasure in increasing it, by pretending to regret the short-sighted policy of Illinois, which excluded him from settling with his slaves among us, and from purchasing the lands of our people."3
Even uneducated immigrants argued in the same way. One of them, asked why he did not stop in Illinois, replied, "Well, sir, your sile is mighty far- til, but a man can't own niggers here ; gol durn ye."4
Governor Coles, who had freed his negroes on the journey from Virginia to Illinois, urged the leg- islature to revise the "black laws," to emancipate the old French slaves, and to punish kidnapping ade- quately. These paragraphs in his message were enough to fan into a blaze the embers that had been smoldering. The slave owners determined to legal- ize slavery in Illinois.
Now this meant a complicated procedure-it was necessary to amend the constitution in a convention called for that purpose. The people must vote whether the convention should be called or not, and a two-thirds majority in both houses of the legisla- ture was necessary to submit the question to the people.
Now the legislature was strongly pro-slavery, and the resolution was sure of a two-thirds vote in the senate. But only a trick passed it in the house of representatives. In one of the northern counties there had been a contested election, and the house
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decided the matter, seating one of the two claimants. But some nine weeks later the slavery party found that they needed one more vote to make a two- thirds majority for the convention. Desperate, they determined to have this contested election reconsid- ered and seat the other man. In gratitude to their party for putting him into the legislature he would, of course, vote their way.
This scheme they actually carried out, unseating a representative who had served more than two months of his term, and sending a special messenger over a hundred miles to notify his opponent, created a member of the house for this one purpose. With relays of horses, the new representative made the trip in four days, arriving in time to vote for the convention resolution, which was thus carried.5 Against this outrage there was a storm of protest, for the manner in which it was done, for the ob- ject for which it was done. It proved to be a strong argument to plague its inventors. When the elec- tion took place it recoiled on their own heads like a boomerang.
The passing of the convention resolution the slavery party considered equal to a victory at the polls. Public dinners were held, with toasts wel- coming slavery to Illinois. They celebrated with a torchlight procession in Vandalia. The mob, wild and indecorous, marched to the residence of Gov-
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ernor Coles, with all the horrid paraphernalia of the old-time charivari, thus described by Ford :
"The night after the resolution passed, the con- vention party assembled to triumph in a great ca- rousal. They formed themselves into a noisy, dis- orderly and tumultuous procession, headed by" -and he calls the leaders by name-"followed by the majority of the legislature, and the hangers-on and rabble about the seat of government; and they marched with the blowing of tin horns and the beat- ing of drums and tin pans, to the residence of Gov- ernor Coles, and to the boarding-houses of their principal opponents, toward whom they manifested their contempt and displeasure by a confused medley of groans, wailings and lamentations. Their object was to intimidate and crush all opposition at once."6
The anti-convention party, defeated in the leg- islature, was determined to win before the people. Fortunately, voices could not be stifled, as in the house of representatives, where all debate was shut off. And the election was eighteen months away, giving the "friends of freedom" time to make a thorough canvass throughout the state, and save Il- linois from this shame and disaster.
Never was there such a campaign! Newspapers were established for one side or the other. Fiery handbills and pamphlets were printed and circu- lated broadcast in every county. The governor
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worked whole-heartedly against the convention with all his official and personal influence, giving his en- tire salary to the cause. The pioneer preacher, Peck, organized anti-slavery societies along with his Sun- day-schools, distributing Bibles and tracts crusading against slavery. Ministers and teachers helped. Stump speakers held forth. The rank and file of the people did scarcely anything but read handbills and papers, and wrangle and argue constantly, while industry was almost at a standstill.7
The convention party had on its side many of the ablest men in the state. But a great cause will produce earnest and effective leaders. The anti- slavery men were better organized and made up for their lack of wealth and influence and talents in energy and zeal. They made direct attacks on the merits of slavery, while their opponents avoided the issue, saying that the constitution needed changes in several particulars ; and if slavery was established it would doubtless be for a limited number of years. The people and the state were financially embar- rassed, and they painted golden pictures of the pros- perity which would come with slave labor.8
These arguments-religious, benevolent, political, expedient-were answered by Peck and Coles and Birkbeck, the founder of the Edwards County col- ony. He was the financier of the "friends of free- dom," and wrote constantly against slavery. Some-
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times he would issue a scholarly paper, with telling arguments and statistics showing the actual results of slavery in other states and countries, how it checked immigration and impeded manufacturing and hurt agriculture. Again, under the nom de plume of Jonathan Freeman, he would write to the newspapers a letter so simple and full of such homely illustrations that the most ignorant voter could not fail to understand his points. Here is a part of one :
"To the Editor of the Illinois Gazette:
"SIR-I am a poor man; that is to say I have no money. But I have a house to cover me and the rest of us, a stable for my horses, and a little barn, on a quarter of good land paid up at the land office, with a middling fine clearing upon it and a good fence. I have about thirty head of cattle, and a good chance of hogs; and by the labors of my boys, we make a shift to get along. We help our neigh- bors, who are generally as poor as ourselves-some that are newcomers are not so well fixed. They help us in turn; and as it is the fashion to be in- dustrious, I discover that we are all by degrees growing wealthy, not in money to be sure, but in truck.
"There is a great stir among the land-jobbers and politicians to get slaves into the country; because, as they say, we are in great distress ; and I have been thinking how it would act with me and my neigh-
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bors four citizens out of five in the state. I have already seen people from Kentucky, and some of the neighbors have been traveling in that country. They all agree in one story, that the Kentuckians are as bad off for money as we, some say worse. People that have been to New Orleans say it is the same all down the river ; no money. I don't see how those slave-gentry are to make it plenty, unless sending more produce to New Orleans would raise the price; as to our neighbors, give me plain farmers, working with their own hands, or the hands of free workmen. Not great planters and their negroes; for negroes are middling light-fin- gered, and I suspect we should have to lock up our cabins when we left home, and if we were to leave our linen out all night, we might chance to miss it in the morning. The planters are great men, and will ride about mighty grand, with umbrellas over their heads, when I and my boys are working per- haps bareheaded in the hot sun. Neighbors indeed ! They would have it all their own way, and rule over us like little kings; we should have to patrol round the country to keep their negroes under, in- stead of minding our own business; but if we lacked to raise a building, or a dollar, never a bit would they help us.
"This is what I have been thinking, and so I sus- pect we all think, but they who want to sell out; and they that want to sell, will find themselves mis- taken if they expect the Kentuckians to buy their improvements, when they can get Congress-land at a dollar and a quarter an acre. It is men who come
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from Free states, with money in their pockets, and no workhands about them, that buy improvements. "Yours, JONATHAN FREEMAN."9
Election day, the first Monday in August, 1824, finally came. The aged, the crippled, the chronic invalids, everybody that could be carried to the polls, was brought in to cast his vote, for or against the convention. The ballots more than doubled the number at the presidential election a few months later. The result was a majority of some sixteen hundred against the convention. This was the most important, the most excited and angry election in the early history of the state. But it was regarded as final. Once for all the question of slavery was settled for Illinois.
If you are interested in this chapter and want to know more about the slavery campaign in Illinois, read Washburne's Sketch of Edward Coles. Flow- er's story of the English settlement in Edwards County gives a fine account of Birkbeck's share in carrying the election for the "friends of freedom."
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XIII
A DISTINGUISHED GUEST
A PLEASANT episode occurred in 1825 to vary the monotony of western life. Lafayette, the brilliant young Frenchman who fought under Wash- ington in the Revolution, paid a second visit to America, as the guest of the nation.
As soon as he reached New York the legislature sent him an address of welcome, and earnestly in- vited him to visit Illinois. With their letter was sent an affectionate note from Governor Coles, who had known Lafayette in Paris; and the Frenchman replied from Washington :
"It has ever been my eager desire, and it is now my earnest intention, to visit the western States and particularly the State of Illinois. The feelings which your distant welcome could not fail to excite have increased that patriotic eagerness. I shall, after the celebration of the 22d of February anniversary day, leave this place for a journey to the southern, and from New Orleans to the western states, so as to return to Boston on the 14th of June, when the cornerstone of Bunker's Hill monument
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is to be laid, a ceremony sacred to the whole Union, and in which I have been engaged to act a peculiar and honorable part."1
The whole journey was a series of receptions and ovations, of which his secretary kept a charming record, writing "that he gives the details of a tri- umph which honors as well the nation which be- stowed it as the man who received it." But as La- fayette's trip progressed he found it impossible to visit all the places that were inviting him and re- turn to Boston in June. So in April he writes to Governor Coles, from New Orleans :
"I don't doubt that by rapid movements, can gratify my ardent desire to see every one of the Western States, and yet to fulfill a sacred duty as the representative of the Revolutionary Army, on the half secular jubilee of Bunker Hill. But to do it, my dear sir, I must avail myself of the kind, indul- gent proposal made by several friends to meet me on some point near the river, in the State of Illinois. I will say, could Kaskaskia or Shawneetown suit you to pass one day with me? I expect to leave St. Louis on the 29th of April. Excuse the hurry of my writing, as the post is going, and re- ceive in this private letter, for indeed to the Gov- ernor, I would not know how to apologize for so polite proposals, receive, I say, my high and affec- tionate regard. LAFAYETTE."2
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Accordingly Illinois received the great French general, not at Vandalia, the capital, but at Kas- kaskia. Writes the secretary :
"It was decided that we should stop at Kaskaskia, a large village of that state, and although nearly eighty miles distant, we arrived there a little while before noon, so fortunate and rapid was our navi- gation. Since the application of steam to naviga- tion, the changes produced in the relations of the towns on the Mississippi is prodigious. Formerly the voyage from New Orleans to St. Louis required three or four months of the most painful toil that can be imagined; the action of the oar was not al- ways sufficient to overcome the resistance of the current. They were often obliged to warp the boat by hand, advancing from time to time with a small boat to tie a rope to a tree or stone on the shore. At present the same passage, which is nearly fifteen hundred miles, is made in ten days, without fatigue."3
The Illinois legislature had appropriated $6,475 for the entertainment of the guests, almost a third of the state's income for the year. About noon, April thirtieth, the boat, gaily decorated for the oc- casion, arrived at the wharf in Kaskaskia. Governor Coles had sent his aid-de-camp, Colonel William Stephen Hamilton, "the son of your old and particu- lar friend, Alexander Hamilton," to meet Lafayette en route, and himself joined the party in St. Louis.
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Evidently there was no way to notify the village of their coming, so that the success of this impromptu reception is the more remarkable.
"General Lafayette was not expected at Kaskas- kia, and nothing had been prepared for this unfore- seen visit. While we were landing some one ran to the village, which stands a quarter of a mile from the shore, and quickly returned with a carriage for the general, who, an instant after, was surrounded by many citizens, who ran before to receive him. In the escort which formed itself to accompany him we saw neither military apparel nor the splendid triumphs we had perceived in the rich cities; but accents of joy and republican gratitude which broke upon his ear, was grateful to his heart. We followed the general on foot, and arrived almost at the same time at the house of General Edgar, a ven- erable soldier of the Revolution, who received him with affectionate warmth, and ordered all the doors to be kept open, that his fellow citizens might enjoy, as well as himself, the pleasure of shaking hands with the adopted son of America."
A great multitude of patriotic people assembled. From the steps of the Edgar house the governor gave an address of welcome, to which Lafayette re- plied in very good English, expressing their grati- fication for the honor done them. Men who were there differ widely in their descriptions of the hero;
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one says he was "tall and slender, with a florid com- plexion," another "inclining to corpulency."
"Age had bent his form a little," narrates a pio- neer, "but he was still gay and cheerful. It seemed that his lameness added to his noble bearing, as it told to the heart the story of the Revolution."4 And another comments : "He limped slightly, the result of a wound he received on achieving our liberties, which added much interest to his character." But he was still the courtly, affable French nobleman, enthusiastic for liberty, who had won Washington's heart half a century before.
"During an instance of profound silence," writes the secretary, "I cast a glance at the assembly, in the midst of which I found myself, and was struck with astonishment in remarking their variety and fantastic appearance. Beside men whose dignity of countenance, the patriotic exaltation of expression, readily indicated them to be Americans, were others whose coarse dresses, vivacity, petulance of move- ment, and the expansive joy of their visages, strongly recalled to me the peasantry of my own country ; behind these, near to the door, and on the piazza which surrounded the house, stood some im- movable, impassable, large, red, half-naked figures, leaning on a bow or a long rifle; these were the In- dians of the neighborhood."
While the general was resting, before the ban- quet, his son George Washington Lafayette and the
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secretary visited the encampment of the Indians, come to Kaskaskia for the yearly sale of their furs. The record gives many more pages to their interest in the red men than to the Illinois entertainment.
But we do know that there was a public reception, where some soldiers who had fought under him at Brandywine and Yorktown advanced from the crowd to shake hands with their old general. Then came a dinner at the tavern, the big, square banquet room decorated with laurel, while the guest table had a rainbow canopy of roses and other flowers.
Lafayette proposed this toast to Kaskaskia and Illinois : "May their joint prosperity more and more evince the blessings of congenial industry and free- dom."
Governor Coles followed with one to the inmates of La Grange (Lafayette's home in France) : "Let them not be anxious; for although their father is a thousand miles in the interior of America, he is yet in the midst of his affectionate children."
When Ex-governor Bond proposed "To General Lafayette : may he live to see that liberty established in his native country which he helped to establish in his adopted country," the general rose and observed that he would drink the latter part of the toast standing.5
Following this was a ball, where Lafayette led the grand march with a granddaughter of Pierre Men-
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ard, and the weary visitors left at midnight on their steamer. This ball was a great occasion; women who were honored with an invitation preserved as souvenirs their white gloves, the slippers in which they danced, and their fans with the hero's picture.
During the ball an uninvited guest arrived-an Indian squaw whose father, Louis DuQuoin, a chief of the Six Nations, had fought under Lafayette during the Revolution. Hearing that the great White Chief was to be in Kaskaskia, she came to see the man with whose name she had been familiar since childhood. To identify herself, she brought an old worn letter that Lafayette had written to her father, who had preserved it with the greatest care and had bequeathed it to her as a most precious legacy.6
The weekly newspaper published in Vandalia, in its last issue for May, 1825, reports another enter- tainment given for Lafayette in Illinois. Going up the Ohio River, en route for Pittsburgh, the party stopped at Shawneetown.
"A salute of twenty-four rounds was fired as the Steam-Boat approached the landing," reads the ac- count in the faded, yellow paper. "The citizens of Shawneetown and the neighboring country were then formed in two lines extending from Mr. Rawl- ings' Hotel to the water's edge. The Committee of Arrangement and the Trustees of the Town passed
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down the line of citizens and received the NATION'S GUEST at the Steam-Boat. . . . As he passed up the line, the citizens uncovered them- selves, and observed the most perfect silence," while little girls showered flowers upon him.
There was an address of welcome, the orator of the day comparing their reception with the elaborate ceremony of other places.
" 'You find our state in its infancy, our country thinly populated, our people destitute of the luxu- ries and elegancies of life. In your reception we de- part not from the domestic simplicity of a seques- tered people. We erect no triumphal arches, we offer no exotic delicacies. We receive you to our humble dwellings, and our homely fare. We take you to our arms and our hearts.'
"The reply of Lafayette was short and unpre- meditated, and was delivered in a voice which seemed tremulous rather with emotion than with age."
After the reception, a collation and many toasts,
"General Lafayette was conducted to the Steam- Boat by the Committee, through lines formed by the citizens as before. . . . Another salute was fired at their departure. Throughout the whole of this in- teresting scene the citizens evinced by their respect- ful and kind deportment the warmest attachment for the person and the most exalted veneration for
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the character of this truly great man. The General, although apparently too frail to support the fatigue of such an interview, received the congratulations of the people with ease and cheerfulness, and seemed to be deeply touched by this humble though sincere display of national gratitude."
The book written by Levasseur, Lafayette's sec- retary, is very rare; but the tenth and twelfth vol- umes of the Illinois Historical Society have the story of this visit, told in detail. Davidson and Stuvé's history gives it an interesting chapter.
XIV
THE CRAZE FOR IMPROVEMENTS
W HEN immigration set in toward Illinois the settlers from the eastern states brought money with them. And the presence of money made a radical change in the condition of the peo- ple. It created new desires, the principal one being a mad wish to speculate in land. The national gov- ernment charged two dollars an acre, one-fourth to be paid in cash, the balance in five years. At that price everybody was eager to buy, thinking he could sell to the settlers who were sure to arrive and thus make a handsome profit. This they called "develop- ing the infant resources of a new country."1
Paper money was abundant. Every man's credit was good. Property rose rapidly in value. A spirit of speculation was rife. Towns were laid out, on paper. Lots bought, on time. Houses built, on promises. Everybody invested to the limit of his credit, expecting to make a fortune before his notes fell due. Everybody was in debt, inextricably, to everybody else.
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A day of reckoning was coming, before their dreams could come true. Paper towns failed to flourish. There was no commerce to bring money into the country. Contracts, wildly entered into, ma- tured. When the notes to the federal government came due, people could not pay them.
To put an end to these evils, in 1821 the legisla- ture created a state bank, whose only support was the credit of Illinois ; its sole capital, plates for mak- ing paper money. And paper money the state bank proceeded to make, issuing large quantities of notes payable in ten years. The bank was enormously popular at first, for it loaned to any citizen a hun- dred dollars on personal property, and a thousand on real estate. People imagined because the state had issued these notes they would be worth par. They could be used for taxes, and if any creditor refused to accept them he must wait three years to collect his debt.2
Thinking that laws could give paper money a specified value, the legislature even passed a resolu- tion that these notes could be used in payment for land at the federal office. When the question came up in the senate, the lieutenant-governor, the Frenchman Menard, said:
"Gentlemen of de senate, it is moved and sec- onded dat de notes of dis bank be made land office money. All in favor of dat motion say aye; all
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against it, say no. It is decided in de affirmative. And now, gentlemen, I bet you $100 he never be made land office money."
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