USA > Illinois > The era of the Civil War, 1848-1870 > Part 22
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and thus free and relieve itself of all responsibil- ity." The pastor, a strong antislavery man but a stauncher Pres- byterian, appealed to the presbytery which declared that the members who voted for the resolutions had disqualified them- selves to act as members of the Presbyterian church and thus expelled a majority of the members of the church. The expelled members thereupon arranged to organize themselves into a Con- gregational church, the first to be organized in Chicago.44
An important figure in these church controversies over slavery was President Jonathan Blanchard of Knox College; convinced that "the heart of action in the Church" was the missions, he declared that from them " the foul spirit of Slavery must be dislodged before it will be cast out of the Church." 45 Accordingly, beginning in 1847 he had led a fight at the annual meetings of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in favor of refusing to receive slaveholders into the mission churches. This fight he kept up until hope was aban- doned that the American board would relinquish its partnership with slaveholders. Then the Illinois Wesleyan Missionary conference commended the uncompromising opposition to slavery of the American Missionary Association and urged affiliation with it instead of the formation of rival missionary societies among antislavery christians. President Blanchard showed, however, that the American Missionary Society and similar denominational organizations permitted the member- ship of slaveholders; antislavery Baptists even felt compelled to organize the American Baptist Free Mission Society. In July, 1852, therefore, a group of uncompromising opponents of slaveholding fellowship met at Chicago and formed the Free Mission Society for the Northwest. For the same reason the Western Tract Convention was organized in 1859 out of antislavery seceders from the conservative American Tract Society.46
This struggle tended to break down the denominational barriers that separated the christian antislavery forces. With
44 Western Citizen, February 11, May 6, 20, 1851.
45 Ibid., March 18, 1851 ; see also issues of August 21, 1849, July 29, 1851. 46 Ibid., March 25, June 24, September 2, 1851, June 1, July 20, 1852, Chicago Democrat, October 19, 1859.
THE GROWING PAINS OF SOCIETY 223
the prevailing "adoption of the doctrine of expediency as a substitute for the law of Christ," 47 churchmen could not but feel at times that the slavery issue was of more importance than sectarianism. A state convention to consider the union of the Illinois Congregationalist associations and new school presbyteries was called in 1850 with the approval of Dr. Blanchard and a number of prominent clergymen, including the Reverend Flavel Bascom, pastor of the First Presbyterian church of Chicago, and L. H. Loss of the Third church of that city. But this movement, intended to "deliver those of us who are Presbyterians from our ecclesiastical connection with slaveholders, through the General Assembly, and enable us to withdraw Christian fellowship from them without incur- ring the charge of violating ecclesiastical constitution by so doing," #8 brought results.
Non-sectarian energy was in the end largely absorbed in the Christian Antislavery Convention which held a national meet- ing at Cincinnati in April, 1850. A Chicago meeting in prep- aration for the convention drew considerable support from prominent clergymen and laymen, and a large delegation was sent to Cincinnati. A Christian Antislavery Convention for northern Illinois met at Ottawa in May, with an adjourned session in September, to effect a permanent organization of all Illinois christians who believed in non-fellowship as the only proper christian position to assume toward slaveholders. The first regular semiannual meeting was held at Granville, Putnam county, in January, 1851. Dr. Blanchard and other Illinoisians on the general committee appointed by the Cincinnati conven- tion arranged for the next interstate meeting at Chicago, July 3-5, 1851. Blanchard was chosen to preside over an enthu-
47 Western Citizen, January 22, 1850. There were also direct apolo- gists for slavery in the religious groups. C. H. McCormick, the reaper manu- facturer, tried to counteract the antislavery tendencies in Chicago Presby- terianism. Rockford Register, October 3, 1857. The Chicago Prairie Herald, established in 1846 by J. B. Walker, a professed abolitionist, was taken over in 1851 by a new editor who published articles to show that slaveholding of the worst description was practiced by members of the first christian churches and that neither Christ nor his apostles denounced it. As a result many of the subscribers of the Prairie Herald shifted their support to the Christian Era, edited by Reverend Epaphras Goodman. Western Citizen, March 18, August 12, 26, 1851.
48 Ibid., January 21, 1851; Moses and Kirkland, History of Chicago, 2: 332-333.
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siastic session of 250 delegates which the regular papers passed over as a meeting of fanatics and enemies of the country. The Illinois delegation consisted of 130 persons, of whom 60 were Congregationalists, 29 Baptists, and the rest scattered between a half dozen denominations. The only Chicago clergy- man who actively participated in this meeting was Reverend A. M. Stewart of the Scotch Presbyterian church. A western branch of a similar organization known as the League of Universal Brotherhood was founded in Illinois and during its brief existence seemed to find favor with the Methodists of the state.49
The Christian Antislavery Convention disappeared from existence during the conservative reaction after 1851; but in October, 1859, it was revived at a general meeting in Chicago as the Northwestern Christian Antislavery Convention. Again Blanchard was a leading figure, calling the convention to order and explaining his support of the republican cause as nearer the truth than any other. By this time the activities of antislavery leaders were no longer unpopular, and the convention was regarded with favor by the spokesman of the growing republican party.
When the voice of protest came from the pulpit at the passage of the fugitive slave law and of the Nebraska bill, the democratic press and politicians began to deplore the tendency of the clergy to leave their sacred calling and enter into political strife. "When ministers enter the arena of pol- itics, and associate themselves with the corrupt and lying hypocrites who lead the black republican party, and utter sedi- tious harangues from the pulpit, they are no longer entitled to that respect which their sacred calling commands," declared the Joliet Signal, when four of the local clergy participated in a republican ratification meeting as vice presidents. Such a challenge did not, however, reduce the zeal of the antislavery clergymen for the republican cause. Many a radical abandoned altogether his aversion to mingling in politics. While the Covenanters of Coulterville were unable to enter politics or to
49 Western Citizen, February 5, April 2, May 7, August 13, 20, 1850, March 18, June 17, July 8, 15, 29, December 30, 1851; Ottawa Free Trader, June 1, 15, 1850.
THE GROWING PAINS OF SOCIETY 225
do more than lend their moral support to the cause of freedom, the Shakers of Lebanon held that when freedom was at stake, it became a duty to let their votes be given in its defense.50 It was thus that many a black-frocked emissary of freedom found courage to spread the gospel of republicanism even to the remotest corners of Egypt.
Illinois of 1850 had a Negro population of 5,436, a perse- cuted group which increased to 7,628 by 1860. This increase was in large part the normal expansion of a fairly prolific race. Although the border slave states had a large free Negro popu- lation which they would gladly have seen transferred to Illinois, the state was after 1853 legally closed against Negro immigra- tion, whether free or slave. Although no additions were made to the " black laws" of the state in the way of imposing further disabilities upon the Negro population, yet in the constitutional convention of 1847 there had been adopted after a struggle a provision which instructed the legislature to pass laws pro- hibiting the immigration of colored persons. This section was separately submitted to the people for ratification and was adopted by a vote of 50,261 to 21,297, the opposition coming chiefly from the northern counties. The state legislature did not act, however, until the session of 1853 when a drastic act was passed which provided for a heavy fine for every Negro bond or free who entered the state; in default of payment the Negro was to be sold at public auction to the person bidding the shortest period of service in return for the payment of the fine. The antislavery forces in the legislature were outnum- bered nearly two to one and were impotent to do more than amend the bill to provide for jury trial.51
On the merits of this measure which the New Orleans Bee declared "an act of special and savage ruthlessness," public opinion in Illinois was divided. In spite of its defense by the Register, the central democratic organ, as just and neces- sary for the state to protect itself against the pauper, vagrant, and vagabond blacks who for twenty years had overrun the
50 Joliet Signal, April 4, 1854, June 17, 1856; Cairo City Times, October 24, 1855; Rushville Times, September 5, 1856; Illinois State Register, January 7, 1857; William Edgar to Trumbull, January 27, 1857, Trumbull manuscripts ; Illinois State Journal, October 13, 1856.
51 Public Laws of 1853, P. 57-60.
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southern part of the state, many democrats vigorously joined the whig press in assailing the law. The Ottawa Free Trader, claiming that it would establish a peon system more heartless and cruel than southern slavery, declared: "We should like to see the man that would mount the auctioneer's block in this town and sell a freeman to the highest bidder, and we should like to see the bidder." Less than a half dozen journals openly and unequivocally indorsed the law. Asked the Jonesboro Gazette, a democratic sheet published within thirty-five miles of Cairo: "How long will the people of this hitherto 'Free State' suffer this shameful enaction to disgrace their statute book ? "52
There was a widespread feeling that the law was uncon- stitutional; some said that it could not be enforced against a hostile public opinion. The law was applied, however, to various cases; and Negroes seeking homes on the prairies of Illinois were put upon the block and sold to the highest bidder. In 1857 a free mulatto named Jackson Redman was arrested in St. Clair county and found guilty of violating the act of February 12, 1853; legal notices were accordingly posted up about the streets of Belleville offering Redman for sale at pub- lic auction. Only the interposition of Gustave Koerner, the German republican leader who advanced the sum of $62.50 to cover the fines and cost, saved the victim from the clutches of the black law. Such cases generally aroused widespread indig- nation, although apologists were to be found; D. J. Van Deren, the editor of the Mattoon Gazette, even advocated the reestab- lishment of slavery in the state as preferable to the possibility of extending to the Negroes political and social equality.53
Sympathy for the Negro, whether the southern slave or the northern victim of the black laws, was aroused by the publica- tion of Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1852. Hundreds of copies of every edition were avariciously consumed by interested Illi- noisians. Proslavery sympathizers sneered at this "higher
52 New Orleans Bee clipped in Morgan Journal, April 28, 1853; Illinois State Register, February 24, 1853; Illinois Journal, March 1, 1853; Ottawa Free Trader, February 26, 1853. Cf. Galena Jeffersonian clipped in Quincy Whig, April 11, 1853; Alton Courier, April 14, 1853.
53 Joliet Signal, March 1, 1852; St. Clair Tribune, April 17, 1857; Belleville Advocate, April 22, 1857; Chicago Daily Democratic Press, August 6, 14, 1857.
THE GROWING PAINS OF SOCIETY 227
revelation of an abolition prophetess," but the friends of the Negro in Illinois were inspired to undertake the work of secur- ing for them equal rights before the law. In spite of ill-suc- cess bills were constantly introduced into the legislature to allow Negroes to testify in the courts, to abolish the distinction between Negroes and whites in the public schools, to repeal all laws making distinctions between the races. None of these propositions, however, received the necessary support. Public men of the day, nevertheless, were timid about the Negro question; many members of the republican party even were frightened by the specter of "Negro equality" paraded by their opponents. When in 1857 the Joliet True Democrat came out in favor of extending the right of suffrage to the col- ored men of Illinois, many republican organs bolted for cover, while others refused to commit themselves.
Northern Illinois was much more charitable to the Negro than Egypt. Race hatred often broke out in southern towns; in 1857 people of Mound City undertook to drive out all Negroes. Only in Chicago did the colored people display any aggressiveness in defense of their rights. There they held mass meetings and sent a delegate to the Colored National Convention at Cleveland in 1848; they urged that the black code be repealed to wipe out this injustice. In their Chicago Literary Society they openly condemned the fugitive slave law and the black law of 1853, urging the repeal of both. They even organized to protect each other from being borne back to bondage under the operation of the fugitive slave law, and in 1860 a colored military company was formed in Chicago. Although a state colonization society had an active existence in Illinois, receiving support from the leaders of all political parties, a colored people's convention at Chicago in 1853 rejected the idea of colonization in all its forms; in the closing years of the decade, however, the proposition of emigration to Hayti received considerable support from them.54
The Negro population of the state dwelt in true humility in obscure corners of the towns and cities, with their own 54 Mound City Emporium, August 6, 1857; Gem of the Prairie, September 23, 1848; Chicago Democrat, October 9, 1850, June 20, 1851; Illinois State Register, November 6, 1853; Central Illinois Gazette, August 18, 1858; Chicago Press and Tribune, April 26, 1859.
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churches and sometimes separate schools maintained with the assistance of white patrons; only now and then were appeals made for aid in purchasing the freedom of relatives in the south. The tranquillity of the black men's domicile was dis- turbed by kidnappers and slave hunters. Cases of kidnap- ping and carrying off of free Negroes were fairly common in the southern part of the state, where organized bands of kid- nappers operated boldly under the knowledge that the Negroes would not be admitted to the witness stand. Matters became so bad in Cairo that the mayor called out the citizens to break up the operations of a local gang of armed kidnappers, who worked in league with a band of Missourians.55
In 1848 in the case of Illinois v. Sherman Thurston and Thomas Field, Judge H. T. Dickey of the seventh judicial cir- cuit had declared unconstitutional the section of the code defin- ing kidnapping as criminal. Fortified by the fugitive slave law of 1850 Missouri slave hunters made their appearance in Negro settlements in northern Illinois creating a panic among even the older colored residents, many of whom fled to Canada for protection; United States Marshal Benjamin Bond and his successors pursued various fugitives to Chicago only to find that their victims had been secreted or hurried off to safety in the Queen's dominion. While the law took its course in downstate communities, it became generally recognized that in the hostile atmosphere of Chicago, the Illinois terminus of the under- ground railroad, execution of the fugitive slave law was im- possible except at the muzzle of the musket. When in June, 1851, a Negro resident of Chicago was forcibly arrested and claimed as Moses Johnson, a fugitive slave belonging to a Missourian, the city was alive with excitement. Special con- stables were created, and five companies of militia called out. A surging tide of humanity surrounded the hall in which the trial was carried on, contemplating a rescue if the case went against the alleged fugitive. The commissioner who conducted the trial, however, discharged the prisoner, and the pent up energies of the crowd found a harmless safety valve in the celebration of his release. Cases of fugitives being snatched from the custody of the officers were rather frequent, Negroes
55 Cairo Weekly Times and Delta, July 29, 1857.
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often constituting the rescuing parties; republican city officials winked at these affairs and treated them as good jokes. Mean- while the conductors of the underground railroad were busily forwarding their human freight from the south on to Canada and freedom. Even consignments of fifteen and twenty pas- sengers were successfully dispatched to their destination.56
The most famous rescue of the period was the Ottawa case in which a group of leading citizens on October 20, 1859, par- ticipated in the rescue of a fugitive from the custody of the United States marshal.57 Seven of the rescuers were promptly indicted by the federal grand jury; John Hossack, one of the most prominent of the group, was tried first and found guilty by the federal district court. In October, 1860, he and his associates were given small jail sentences as well as fines. Even the republicans acknowledged an obligation to the constitutional guarantee; it is interesting to note that "the jury who con- victed Hossack under the Fugitive Slave law, stood Eight Republicans and Four Democrats and were not over two hours in making their verdict." 58 The republican state central com- mittee refused to involve itself in the case financially; but Mayor Wentworth of Chicago assumed responsibility for the payment of the fines and directed a popular subscription for the payment of the costs of the case so as to hasten the day of the prisoners' release. The local democracy washed their hands of this instance of mob violence so that the case played an important part in the closing weeks of the campaign for Lincoln's election.
56 Gem of the Prairie, October 7, 1848; Western Citizen, November 5, 1850, June 10, 1851; Chicago Democrat, June 4, 5, 6, 7, 1851, October 10, 1859, Chicago Daily Journal, June 7, 1851; Aurora Guardian, December 7, 14, 1854; Chicago Weekly Democrat, January 6, 1855; Chicago Democrat, October 10, 1859. 57 Ottawa Free Trader, October 22, November 5, December 31, 1859. 58 " I was on the jury myself and know how hard it was to vote against my prejudices." Isaac R. Hitt to Trumbull, December 17, 1860, Trumbull manuscripts.
X. CHURCH AND SCHOOL, 1850-1860
D URING the fifties the foundations of a democratic educa- tional system were firmly laid in Illinois. At the beginning of this decade, although the state boasted eighty-one private schools, the public school was lacking in many towns and cities; and in none of the rural regions, not even the counties of north- ern Illinois into which New England settlers were transplant- ing their township system and their ideal of free common schools, were there adequate educational facilities. The 1848 report of Secretary of State H. S. Cooley, ex officio superin- tendent of common schools, presented an incomplete list of 2,002 schools with an enrollment of 51,447 pupils.1 Several of these, however, were private or select schools; at that time Chicago alone had nineteen and two years later about thirty, although only four public schools existed to justify its claim for generous provision in this field. Springfield likewise sup- ported its quota of private schools, but nobody seemed disposed to push the matter of establishing a system of common schools.
In 1850 the federal census takers encouraged the advocates of public schools with a list of 4,054 schools and an attendance of 125,790; at the same time they fostered a wholesome con- cern over the illiteracy returns : 41,283 persons over 20 years of age were found who could neither read nor write, seven- eighths of whom were native born Americans. These, it was noted, were mainly residents of southern districts, the counties south of Springfield having three-eighths of the schools and five-eighths of the illiteracy. Not a single school or academy was to be found in such older communities as Logan, St. Clair, and Wayne counties, where true Egyptian darkness prevailed.
Public opinion was being prepared for the work of the coming decade. An "Illinois State Educational Society " was
1 Superintendent of Public Instruction, Report, 16: clxvi; Aurora Beacon, May 31, 1849; Alton Telegraph, June 22, 1849.
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organized in a protracted series of meetings in the winter of 1846 and 1847 in which resolutions were passed in favor of alteration of the school law and of the appointment of a super- intendent of public instruction. The editors of the state were requested to devote a portion of their columns to "the deeply interesting and important subject of common school educa- tion." 2 Thomas M. Killpatrick, president of the society, was authorized to act as its agent in imparting and receiving infor- mation on the subject of schools in the absence of a state superintendent. He went about the state lecturing on the needs of the state along educational lines; and the second annual meeting of the society at Springfield, January 15, 1849, attracted wide attention to its aggressive program.3 Local and county meetings to promote interest in education came to be held in various parts of the state at which permanent educational associations or societies were organized.
Some of the more prominent educators in the state, among them President Jonathan Blanchard of Knox College and the Reverend Francis Springer of Springfield, were brought out on the lecture platform. Professor Jonathan B. Turner of Jacksonville College, a minister and practical farmer, began to loom up as a prominent figure in this educational propaganda. He was already attracting state wide attention with a pet scheme for a state agricultural or industrial university, which received the support of the farmers and of many practical business men. The teachers, however, condemned this "wildcat" scheme as a "worse than Utopian dream," and centered their attention on a state normal school, at the same time trying to kill Tur- ner's hobby by having professorships of agriculture established in the colleges of the state. But either faction, it was argued, could build only upon an efficient common school system, toward which the first step should be the creation of the office of super- intendent of public instruction; the result was an agitation which bore fruit in the public school laws of 1854 and 1855. Matters came to a head in the winter of 1853 and 1854. At
2 Sangamo Journal, April 29, 1847.
3 Illinois Journal, September 29, 1848, January 26, 1849, July 25, 1850; Gem of the Prairie, October 14, 1848, January 6, 1849; Beardstown Gazette, Octo- ber 25, 1848; Rockford Forum, January 3, 1849; Illinois State Register, January 23, 1849; Aurora Beacon, February 15, 1849; Prairie Farmer, March, 1849.
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a common school convention at Jerseyville, December 19, 1853, arranged by Turner and his followers, he, as chairman of the committee on resolutions, presented a program which, except for its mention of a state industrial university, was everything that the strongest supporters of educational facilities could desire. On December 26 the leaders of the school teachers assembled a convention at Bloomington; after a struggle between the normal school advocates and the industrial college minority the meeting adopted resolutions for the establish- ment of a state normal school, of a state educational journal, and for the appointment of a state superintendent of public instruction; after the adjournment of the convention, a state teachers institute was organized to meet in annual session.4
The pressure of public opinion was now sufficient to secure legislative action. In the constitutional convention of 1847 the friends of educational reform had secured a favorable report from the committee on education, but the proposed article presented by John M. Palmer was finally defeated in the open convention. Since that time the assembly had enacted a few items on education, beginning with the act of April 13, 1849; the general trend was to make it easier to secure by taxation the funds necessary for the establishment and main- tenance of public schools.5 A bill to create the office of state superintendent passed the house in 1849 but failed in the senate. Finally, however, in a proclamation calling the special session of February 9, 1854, Governor Matteson included the propo- sition "to amend the school law and provide a superintendent of common schools for the state." After various propositions for a general free school system supported by a public tax had been defeated, a law was passed providing for an elective superintendent to hold office for two years commencing in 1856-a temporary appointee of the governor to serve until the election in November, 1855. Meantime, according to the law, this officer, Ninian W. Edwards, drew up a bill providing
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