USA > Indiana > A history of Indiana from its exploration to 1850 > Part 19
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The constitution was not submitted to the voters for ratification. The president of the convention, Jonathan Jennings, was directed to issue to the county sheriffs writs of an election to be held August 5, under the old election laws, for the choice of a governor, lieutenant governor,
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members of the General Assembly, sheriffs and coroners. It was the harvest season of the year and many of the members were anxious to get home. The crowd of fifty men taxed heavily the tavern accommodations of the vil- lage of Corydon. There was every inducement for com- pleting the work as soon as possible. In this regard it stands in contrast to the convention of 1851, with its two thick volumes of talk.
The two senators and the representatives appeared at the opening of Congress, December 2, when the Senate, by resolution December 6, and the House, by resolution intro- duced by William Henry Harrison, December 9, declared the State a member of the Union.12
As would be inferred from the character of the mem- bers of the convention and the brevity of the session, there was nothing novel in the constitution. The political theory of these men was somewhat more democratic than that advocated by Jefferson. The constitution as finally adopted was a judicious compound of the constitutions of Ohio, Kentucky, and the United States. The first article, which was a bill of rights, restated the fundamental maxims of English government in almost the exact words of the Ohio law.
Article II, dealing with the separation of powers, which is an exact copy of article I of the Kentucky constitution, divided the powers into executive, legislative and judicial. There is only one different word-"Indiana" is used in place of "Kentucky."
Article III, dealing with the legislative department, is a copy almost verbatim of the Ohio constitution. The date
12 Annals, Fourteenth Cong., Twentieth Session. No detailed study of the Convention of 1816 has ever been made. Dillon and Dunn give a few pages to a bare outline of its work as gleaned from the scant record of the "Journal." The "Journal" was kept by William Hendricks, the secretary. No record was kept of the discussions in committee. There is evidence that a great deal of the short sessions was occupied by dif- ferent members in laying political plans. The "Journal" has been recent- ly reprinted in the 1912 Indiana Bar Association Report. This report also contains an able article on the Convention of 1816, by W. W. Thorn- ton.
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for State election is the first Monday of August, in prefer- ence to the Ohio date, which was on the second Tuesday of October. Representatives were to be chosen annually, as in Ohio, but senators were to serve three years, plainly a compromise between the two year term of Ohio and the four year term of Kentucky. The qualifications of repre- sentatives, 21 years of age, and senators, 25 years of age, were lower than in either State. Both had to be taxpayers, the same as in Ohio.
The voting qualifications were expressed in the same words as in the Ohio law, the voter being required to be 21 years old, and one year a resident.
Judged from our time, there were remarkably few offi- cers to be chosen at public election. They were the mem- bers of the General Assembly, governor, lieutenant gov- ernor, associate circuit judges, sheriffs and coroners; the coroner and lieutenant governor being merely emergency officers to fill possible vacancies. Only three offices were thus filled by popular election, legislator, governor and sheriff.
In harmony with the spirit of the times, nearly all power was placed in the hands of the General Assembly. The governor had only a suspensive veto, which could be overcome by a majority of each House. He appointed a few officers, principally judges of the supreme court, but always by and with the advice and approval of the Senate. All circuit judges, and the secretary, auditor and treasurer of State were chosen by the General Assembly.
The most notable innovation in the Indiana constitu- tion was Article IX, dealing with the subject of education. It has been noted that all the material differences between the Indiana and other constitutions were in favor of a wider democracy. Ohio had taken a short, halting step in the direction of public education, but the Indiana conven- tion is entitled to the distinction of having first recognized the governmental obligation of educating all its citizens. Of all the sections of the constitution the one requiring that the General Assembly provide by law for a general system
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of education, ascending in a regular scale, from township schools to a State university, wherein tuition shall be gratis and equally open to all, was most democratic, and forward looking. It took a century to put this article into success- ful operation.13
13 Journal of Constitutional Convention of 1816; Revised Laws of In- diana, 1824; Ben Perley Poore, Constitutions and Charters; Laws of Indiana, 1817; Thorpe, Constitutions.
CHAPTER X
THE GOVERNMENT AT CORYDON, 1816-1825
§ 42 THE NEW CONSTITUTION IN OPERATION
THE summer of 1816 was a busy time with the voters and politicians of Indiana. The news of the passing of the Enabling Act reached the territory about May 1. The elec- tion of delegates to the constitutional convention was held May 13. The convention sat from the 10th to the 29th of June. The regular State and county election was held August 5, and the First General Assembly convened at Corydon November 4, 1816. Jonathan Jennings was the central figure in all this activity. He had been the delegate in Congress in charge of the Enabling Act; he was a dele- gate in the constitutional convention; presided over its de- liberations; as its president it became his duty to issue writs of election and put the constitution into active opera- tion; and in the campaign he was the leading candidate.
The election of August 5, 1816, was warmly contested in some parts of the State. The Vincennes Western Sun, July 20, has ten columns devoted to letters of candidates. These letters make rather dull reading at present. There was no important issue before the people. All voters be- longed to the Republican Party and supported Monroe. An echo of the old-time struggle between the Wabash and Ohio settlements appeared in the campaign between Jennings and Governor Thomas Posey. That there was some spirit in this contest is shown by the number of votes cast. Jen- nings received 5,211 to 3,934 for Posey,-a total of 9,145 votes out of a possible 12,112 shown in the enumeration less than a year previous. In the race for lieutenant gov- ernor only 7,474 votes were cast, of which Christopher Har-
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THE GOVERNMENT AT CORYDON
rison, of Salem, received 6,570. In the race for Congress, William Hendricks defeated Allen D. Thom, receiver of public money at Jeffersonville, and George R. C. Sullivan, an attorney of Vincennes, by decisive majorities. Sullivan withdrew from the race two days before the election, in the hope of throwing his support to Thom, but the announce- ment did not reach most of the counties till after the elec- tion.
The first session of the General Assembly met at Cory- don November 4, 1816, and remained in session till January 3, 1817. It was fortunate for the new State that so many good men were returned to the First Session, for the con- stitution had left the organization of the State government very largely in the hands of the General Assembly. No State or local officers were elected by the people except the governor and sheriff and a deputy for each in case of emer- gency. By far the larger number of officers had to be pro- vided by the General Assembly.
How much of its work was of this nature will be shown by a brief review. On the first day, November 4, the Houses organized, on the second, they met in joint session and canvassed the votes for governor and lieutenant gov- ernor, declaring Jennings and Harrison elected. On No- vember 8 the Houses again met together and chose James Noble and Waller Taylor to represent the State in the United States Senate. November 16 William H. Lilly was elected auditor of State, and Daniel C. Lane treasurer of State. There was some tendency shown to parcel out the offices among the members but this was soon stopped by a vote of the House, which expressed it as the belief of that body that it would be a violation of the constitution to elect one of its own members to a State office. Robert A. New was chosen as secretary of State. November 14 the Houses, again in joint session, chose Jesse L. Holman, Thomas H. Blake and Joseph Bartholomew to cast the vote of the State for James Monroe for President. December 20, in joint session, the General Assembly chose Benjamin Parke judge of the first circuit court, David Raymond, judge of the sec- ond, and John Test judge of the third. Not only was it
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necessary to elect these officers but to outline and define the work of the various offices.
The constitution recognized the existence of township government and assumed that it would continue. In one section it provided that a competent number of justices be elected by the qualified electors for a term of five years.1 In another place it provided that all town and township officers be appointed in such manner as shall be directed by law.2
It was made the duty of the board of commissioners of the county to divide each county into a suitable number of townships and order an election to be held to choose jus- tices, not to exceed three, for each township. These jus- tices were to be commissioned by the governor. At the sug- gestion of the board of commissioners the sheriff was authorized to appoint an election inspector for each town- ship, who might, if he thought necessary, divide the town- ship into voting precincts.3
The constable of the township was made the ministerial officer of the justice's court. He was appointed annually by the county board. The justices had county-wide juris- diction over petty crimes and misdemeanors, and township- wide jurisdiction over civil cases involving not over fifty dollars.4
The board of county commissioners was directed to ap- point a necessary number of freeholders in each town- ship to supervise the laying out and repairing of the high- ways. For the road-working every male person between the ages of eighteen and fifty was liable for not more than six days' work.5 The commissioners were also empowered to appoint a lister in each township to do the work now done by the township assessor.6 Then, for fear the legisla- tors had left out some detail in the scheme of local govern-
1 Constitution, Art. V, Sec. 12.
2 Constitution, Art. XI, Sec. 15.
3 Laws of Indiana, 1817, ch. 14.
4 Laws of Indiana, 1817, ch. 4.
5 Laws of Indiana, 1817, ch. VIII.
6 Laws of Indiana, 1817, ch. XIX.
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ment, the commissioners were authorized to do and transact any and all county business not provided for.7
An unforeseen business soon developed in the case of poor relief. A law of the next General Assembly directed the county commissioners to appoint two overseers of the poor in every township, whose duty it should be to look after the worthy paupers. This was done by the overseers by auctioning off each individual pauper to the lowest bid- der, that is, to the person who would care for him for the smallest amount.
Children of the poor and orphans were bound out as apprentices, boys until twenty-one years of age, girls until eighteen. Vagrants, so decreed by the court, were sold out to the highest bidder, the proceeds of his work, if any, going to those dependent upon him, the balance going to the vagrant after he had served out his nine months' indenture.
The constitution dealt briefly with the county: Article XI, section ten, provided that a recorder might be elected for each county if the circuit court clerk was unable to do the work; Article XII, section eight, provided for the elec- tion of a sheriff and coroner for each county. The General Assembly was given power to create and organize counties but no specific form of county organization was laid down.
The First General Assembly constructed a simple sys- tem of commissioner government for the county. The form was almost the same as that of the present. There were three commissioners chosen for three year terms, one retir- ing each year. The circuit court clerk was clerk of the board, a duty now performed by the county auditor. The sheriff was, and still is, the ministerial officer of the board. The commissioners had control over the county affairs, levying county taxes and paying out the county money, con- trolling county roads and attending to and owning county property.8
The board was authorized to appoint a county treasurer, to receive, care for, and pay out on order, all county reve- nues, procure and keep correct a set of legal weights and
7 Laws of Indiana, 1817, ch. XXVII.
8 Laws of Indiana, 1817, ch. XV.
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measures, appoint fence viewers, pound keepers, viewers to lay out new roads, select grand and petit jurors, appoint superintendents of school sections, election inspectors, poor overseers, and later to establish ferries and taverns.9 It was no easy office in a new country.
The strongest department of our early territorial and State government was the judiciary. During the territorial era, however, the system had become unduly complicated, and in one or two particulars, was not working well. There had been disclosed a ridiculous inconsistency in the appel- late court. The old territorial judges, three in number, went on circuit, and as circuit judges they often sat to- gether. On appeal, although all three might sit together, one was a quorum and thus one might overrule a decision given on circuit by all three; or one as supreme judge might overrule himself as a circuit judge; or, a lawyer might appeal a case and be sustained by one judge and the next year be reversed on the identical question by the other judge.
The Territorial General Assembly had tried to remedy this, and, in the constitution, it was effectually cured by giving the supreme court appellate jurisdiction only and re- quiring two of the three justices to concur in all decisions. They were not allowed to hold circuit court and hence would be under no necessity of overruling themselves.
The State was divided into three circuits, in each of which a circuit court was organized. This court consisted of three judges, a president judge, appointed by the Gen- eral Assembly, and two associate justices, elected by the voters of the county. It was a strange mixture of State and local government. Thus the First Circuit, composed of Knox, Gibson, Warrick, Posey, Perry, Pike and Daviess counties, had one president judge, Benjamin Parke, and fourteen associate justices, two for each county. The presi- dent judge was usually a skilled lawyer, but the associates more often knew little of the law. They were rather se- lected for their general worth and standing in the com-
9 Laws of Indiana, 1817, ch. XVII.
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munity. They were regarded as the leading men of the county and were often politicians.
Below the circuit courts was an army of justices of the peace, as stated under "Township Government." The sys- tem was given a modern appearance by lopping off all ex- traordinary tribunals of the common law, such as quarter sessions, chancery, probate, and other special courts. In place of these the circuit courts were endowed with com- mon law and equity powers. A beginning was made also in simplifying the pleadings, though many of the ludicrous old writs of English common law survived to the great joy of the special pleader at the bar. The work of the conven- tion and of the First General Assembly indicate the pres- ence in these bodies of good lawyers. Chief of these, no doubt, were Isaac Blackford, Benjamin Parke, James Scott, John Johnson and Joseph Holman.
The organization of the courts was carried still farther by the Second General Assembly, which not only laid down the main lines of the civil code of the State as it exists to- day, but added a criminal code which received few changes except in the manner of punishment until after 1850.10 The whipping post, as a means of punishment, still dis- graced the State, though the substitution of fines and im- prisonment was noticeable in the code of 1818.11 All bar- barous punishments disappeared in the code of 1824.12
10 Laws of Indiana, 1818, ch. I-XIII inclusive.
11 Compare article by Judge D. D. Banta, Indiana Magazine of His- tory, December 1913, 234.
12 Vincennes Centinel May 6, 1820: "On Thursday last the minds of our citizens were shocked by the shameful spectacle of a fellow citizen tied to a sign post and flogged like a dog under the sentence of the circuit court now sitting in our town. He was found guilty of a petty species of that same crime for which so many heroes and statesmen have been celebrated and for which their names have been given to posterity. The sight was truly disgusting and it was evident that the manly mind of the officer who executed the sentence revolted at the performance of that odious duty. The criminal code of Indiana is a disgrace to civilization and it ill becomes our lawyers to boast of their refinement. while they sanction this species of degrading brutality, or to laud their purgation from British brutality, while they harbor this relic of its foulest barbarism. Corporal punishments are worse than useless; for nine times out of ten they are fatal to the mind of the victim-he is lost to society-he sinks under a sense of shame; or is sensitive and
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HISTORY OF INDIANA
In the State government the General Assembly was all- powerful. Many functions now performed by other agents were then retained as the duties of the General Assembly. It laid down new roads and streets and vacated old ones; it chartered all municipal and private corporations from a county government to a county library ; it licensed ferries and taverns, fixing rates of service in either case; it elected United States senators and impeached squires; it char- tered a State bank, and granted divorces.
The General Assembly met annually and its meeting constituted the chief political event in the year's history. The politicians of the State gathered to its meetings, the newspapers of the State burdened themselves, to the ex- clusion of all other news, with the minute details of the Legislative journals. The electioneering of candidates for the General Assembly was never ended. The candidates were present at the log-rolling in the spring and at the harvest in the summer; at the huskings in the fall they talked with their constituents about what the General As- sembly should do when it met; on muster days the candi- dates and more important politicians, usually under the im- posing title of "jinerall," reviewed the militia or led in the maneuvers.
The executive department was reduced to a minimum. The governor, drawing the highest salary in the State, $1,000 per year, could be absent from his post for weeks at a time. The secretary of state, auditor of state, treasurer of state, with duties similar to those pertaining to their offices at present, were small clerks drawing salaries of $400 each annually. The supreme and circuit judges drew $700 per year, while members of the General Assembly were paid $2 per day.
§ 43 INDIANS
WHEN Indiana was admitted into the Union the Indians still had a claim on about two-thirds of its soil. The In- revengeful ; the petty felon becomes the hardened ruffian. If guilty he is then desperate, if innocent the scars on his shoulders keep knocking at his heart and calling for satisfaction in a voice that is never mistaken. or unheeded."
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dian Boundary line extended from a point on the west boundary of the State in Vermillion county, passing near Montezuma, in Parke county; Gosport, in Owen county ; to Driftwood river, a few miles east of Brownstown. This was the famous "ten o'clock" line. From Brownstown the boundary led in a broken line northeast to Greenville, Ohio.
During the summer of 1816 Benjamin Parke met the Weas and Kickapoos in council at Fort Harrison. They ceded a small strip of land on Vermillion river. The In- dians seemed in an accommodating mood and the agent was hopeful that they would consent to go beyond the Missis- sippi.13
Later in the year 1816 ex-Governor Posey, Judge Parke and a man named Sharpe were commissioned to hold a council with the Miamis, Pottawattomies and Delawares. Nothing was accomplished at this time. Two years later Governor Jennings, Benjamin Parke, then federal judge for the district of Indiana, and Gen. Lewis Cass, governor of Michigan, met the tribes at St. Mary's, Ohio, and suc- ceeded in purchasing nearly all the land south of the Wa- bash. The Delawares agreed to take a grant of land be- yond the Mississippi, and the Weas, Kickapoos, Pottawat- tomies and Miamis, all having claims on the ceded terri- tory, agreed to withdraw to the north of the Wabash. This ceded land was commonly known in Indiana as the "New Purchase." Three years were given the Delawares in which to gather up their property and leave the State. In the fall of 1820 the remnant of this once powerful tribe, whose ancestors had received Henry Hudson, on the Hudson, and William Penn, on the Delaware, took up their western march, the disheartened train passing Kaskaskia about the middle of October.14
In September, 1820, Judge Parke concluded negotiations by which the Kickapoos also abandoned the State, thus op- ening up the Wabash country as far north as the present site of Lafayette.
13 American State Papers; Indian Affairs, II, 91; United States Stat- utes at Large, VII, 145.
14 Vincennes Centinel, November 4, 1820.
(16)
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The government had early recognized its obligations to aid the Indians, but though Congress had appropriated money liberally for the purpose, no lasting benefit had de- rived to the Indians. It was found impossible to regulate the trade between the white and red men so that the latter were treated fairly. In despair of regulating the inde- pendent traders by means of licenses and police, the gov- ernment, in 1796, had taken the business into its own hands. Agents for the various tribes were appointed and factories established where the Indians might buy and sell at a fair and uniform price.
In 1806 a superintendent of the Indian trade was ap .. pointed. This system was considered somewhat better than the old, but the condition of the Indians was little improved. The government factors were forbidden to sell whiskey to the natives, but unprincipled traders, most of them crimi- nal outcasts from the east, swarmed into the Indian coun- try, furnishing liquor to all who had anything to give in return, denouncing the government agents as robbers, and inciting the Indians to all kinds of deeds of violence on one another or to depredations on the settlers. The evidence is conclusive that for every Indian killed in war ten were killed in drunken brawls. The squaws were neglected and the papooses frozen and starved, that meat and furs might be carried to the nearest trading post and bartered for whiskey.15
The condition of the Indians excited pity among most of the pioneers. Bands of dejected, hopeless, Indian va- grants from the Indian towns often visited the settlements, usually begging food or clothes. Many of the churches at- tempted to do something for them.
On March 26, 1817, Isaac McCoy, a Baptist preacher of the Maria Creek Church, Knox county, wrote to the board of managers of the Baptist Missionary Convention of the United States, asking service, under its direction, among the pioneers beyond the Mississippi. Instead of sending him beyond the Mississippi the board sent him as a mis- sionary among the Wabash Indians of Indiana.
15 American State Papers, Indian Affairs, II, 70.
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Mr. McCoy, his wife, and their seven small children, established a mission school in a hut in the forests of what is now Parke county. Gen. Thomas Posey, United States agent for the Weas, Miamis and Kickapoos, assisted. Mc- Coy accompanied the traders, who went early in 1818, to deliver the annuities of the government. The goods were placed on the ground and two Indians chosen to divide them. They drew cuts for first choice and then proceeded, taking piece about, until all articles were appropriated. The trader put whatever value he saw fit on the goods.
The mission school was twenty miles from the nearest white settlement. Here, in a log hut, were gathered a dozen or so Indian children, ranging in age from five to twelve years. Mrs. McCoy took care of them just as she did her own children. All ate at the same table and slept in the same room with the missionary and his family. The larger number of the children were half breeds, children of white traders and Indian squaws.
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