USA > Indiana > Biographical and historical sketches of early Indiana > Part 3
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THOMAS POSEY.
ment was sent to the relief of the people of Wyoming, whose calamities have been made the subject of one of our finest poems.
In the spring of 1779 Colonel Posey joined the main army under Washington, and was assigned to the command of the Eleventh Infantry. Subsequently his regiment was transferred to the army of Wayne, and was with it at the taking of Stony Point. Marshall gives this account of Posey's actions in this battle :
" Colonel Fleury was the first to enter the fort and strike the British standard. Major Posey mounted the works almost at the same instant, and was the first to give the watchword, 'The fort's our own.'"
After the taking of Stony Point Colonel Posey went to South Carolina, and subsequently to Yorktown, at which place he wit- nessed Cornwallis's surrender. In the winter of 1781-2 he served with Wayne in Georgia, and on the 24th of June, 1781, was in the battle, near Savannah, fought with Guristersigo and his Indian followers. In this battle Posey killed several Indians with his own hands, displaying the greatest gallantry through- out the entire engagement. After this he served with Greene in South Carolina, being with him when peace was declared.
During the Revolutionary war Colonel Posey lost the wife of his youth. After the peace he married again, and settled in Spottsylvania county, Virginia.
In 1785 Colonel Posey was appointed colonel of the militia of his county, and the next year was made county-lieutenant, an office of much honor and dignity. He continued to act as county-lieutenant and magistrate until 1793, when he was again called into the military service of his country.
The Indians in the Northwest continued hostile. Many had been the expeditions sent against them, and many the chastise- ments they had received, but they had not been conquered. Washington determined to break their spirit and subdue them. and with these ends in view he appointed Mad Anthony Wayne to conduct an expedition against them. He also selected Gen- erals Wilkinson and Posey as his lieutenants. These men were
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all revolutionary soldiers and had large experience in fighting the foe they were chosen to conquer. General Posey was with Wayne for some time and aided greatly in rendering successful the campaign of that able and patriotic man.
Early in the winter of 1793 General Posey applied for leave of absence in order to visit his home. The following is Wayne's letter granting it :
" HEADQUARTERS, GREENVILLE, " December 5, 1793.
"DEAR SIR-I must acknowledge that it was with difficulty I at length prevailed upon myself to grant you leave of absence at a crisis when I was conscious that your aid and advice were extremely necessary to me, perhaps to the nation. Friendship may have prevailed over duty on this occasion, but I have the consolation that it may eventually be in your power to render as essential services to your country during your absence in the Atlantic States as you could have done in the wilderness of the West. I have only to regret the temporary absence of a friend and brother officer with whom I have participated in almost every vicissitude of fortune from the frozen lakes of Canada to the burning sands of Florida. I have, therefore, to request that you will endeavor to return to your command on or before the last of March ensuing, and, in the interim, I pray you to make a point of impressing every member of Congress with whom you may converse with the absolute necessity of the immediate completion of the Legion, and that you also pay a visit to the seat of government, and wait personally upon the President and Secretary of War, and give them every information, viva voce, that they may wish to receive relative to the situation of the Legion, together with the motives and circumstances which in- fluenced an advance and halt at this place. You will also sug- gest the expediency and policy of permitting settlers to take possession of it the moment the Legion takes up its line of march in the spring.
" Wishing you a safe and quick passage through the wilder- ness and a happy meeting with your family and friends, I am, with the truest and most lasting friendship and esteem, etc.,
"ANTIIONY WAYNE."
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THOMAS POSEY.
When the war was over, General Posey resigned his com- mission in the army, and soon afterwards removed to Kentucky. In a short time after settling there he was elected a member of the State Senate, and was chosen Speaker of that body. He thereby became ex-officio Lieutenant Governor of the State, and held the place during his entire service in the Senate.
In 1809, on account of the unsatisfactory conditions of our re- lations with France and England, Congress ordered the raising of an army of 100,000 men, and the President fixed the quota of Kentucky at 5,000. General Posey was commissioned a major general and assigned to the command of the Kentucky troops. He at once proceeded to organize and equip his forces. but the call for troops was premature. War was not declared, and the forces were disbanded. Soon after this General Posey removed to Louisiana. He never seemed contented except when on the frontier, and whenever his home ceased to be near the dividing line between civilization and the woods he moved away.
In 1812, when war was about to be inaugurated with Great Britain, General Posey, then a citizen of Louisiana, raised a company of infantry at Baton Rouge, and for some time was its captain. Seldom in the history of military men do we find one who. having held a major-general's commission, consents to command a company. But with General Posey patriotism was stronger than pride. Had he believed it best for his country. he would have shouldered a musket and marched in the ranks.
John N. Destrihan was one of the first Senators sent by Louisiana to the Senate of the United States. Soon after his election he resigned, and Governor Claiborne appointed Gen- eral Posey to fill the vacancy. He sat in the Senate until March 3, 1813, when President Madison appointed him Governor of Indiana Territory. He reached Vincennes the next May and entered upon the discharge of his official duties. Soon after this the Territorial capital was removed to Corydon, necessi- tating a change of the Governor's residence to that town. On the 6th of the next December he delivered his first message to the Legislature. He was in delicate health at the time, and on the 27th of the same month he addressed a letter to the presi- dent of the legislative council, in which he said :
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" I wish you to communicate to your honorable body that the delicate state of my health will not admit of my longer continu- ance at this place [Corydon]. I find myself badly situated on account of the want of medical aid. My physician is at Louis- ville, and I have taken all the medicine brought with me. The weather is moderate now, which will be favorable to my going to Jeffersonville, where any communication that the two houses of the Legislature may have to make will find me. Mr. Pra- ther will, in the most expeditious manner, bring them on; and it will take but a short time for me to act upon them and for his return, which would not detain the Legislature in-session more than a day longer. Be assured, sir, that nothing but imperious necessity compels me to this step."
On the 6th of January, 1814, the legislative council passed the following preamble and resolution :
" WHEREAS, Both houses of the Legislature did, on the 4th inst., inform the Governor that they had gone through their legislative business, and were ready to be prorogued ; and,
" WHEREAS, The expense of near fifty dollars per day doth arise to the people of the Territory by reason of the Legislature being kept in session-all of which evils and inconvenience doth arise from the Governor leaving the seat of government during the session of the Legislature and going to Jefferson- ville, and the Legislature having to send their committee of enrolled bills to that place to lay them before him for his approval and signature ; be it, therefore,
" Resolved, That in order to prevent any further expense ac- cruing to the Territory at the present session, that the President of the Legislative Council and the Speaker of the House of Representatives be, and are hereby authorized to receive the report of the Governor of the laws by him signed or rejected, and his order of prorogation, and communicate the same to the clerks of their respective houses, who shall insert the same in their journals in the same manner as if the two houses were in session."
The House of Representatives concurred in this resolution. whereupon the two houses adjourned without day.
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THOMAS POSEY.
On the first Monday in December, 1815, the Legislature of the Territory met in session at Corydon. Governor Posey, who resided at Jeffersonville, was too unwell to be present, and sent his message to the two houses by his private secretary, Colonel Thom. The message was a brief one, treating principally upon questions affecting the internal affairs of the Territory. This was his last formal communication to the Legislature, and to it that body responded in the following complimentary language :
" They (the Legislature) can not refrain from declaring their perfect approbation of your official conduct as Governor of this Territory. During your administration many evils have been remedied, and we particularly admire the calm, dispassionate, impartial conduct, which has produced the salutary effects of quieting the violence of party spirit, harmonizing the interests as well as the feelings of the different parties of the Territory. Under your auspices we have become one people."
In May, 1816, delegates were elected to make a State consti- tution, and in the following June they met at Corydon and per- formed the work. The next August officers were elected for the new State. At this election General Posey was a candidate for Governor, but was beaten by Jonathan Jennings, by a very decisive vote.
When Governor Posey's official term had expired, by reason of the admission of Indiana into the Union, he was appointed Indian agent for Illinois Territory, with headquarters at Shaw- neetown. Early in the spring of 1818, while descending the Wabash river from Vincennes, he caught a deep cold, which threw him into a fever. When he reached Shawneetown he was compelled to take to his bed. He continued to grow worse , until the 19th of March, when he died.
Governor Posey was a most amiable man in private life. He was a member of the Presbyterian church, and very active in church work. He was president of a Bible society, and did much to distribute the Scriptures among the poor and needy of the Territory.
In person, Governor Posey was exceedingly attractive and commanding. He was tall, athletic. and had a handsome face.
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His manner was graceful and easy, denoting the gentleman he was. Some ten years ago a correspondent of the Cincinnati Commercial started the story that Governor Posey was a natural son of George Washington, but the romance did not take root. Had he been Washington's son, begotten in wedlock, he would have honored his father's name.
Dillon, in his history of Indiana, says that when General Po- sey was appointed Governor of Indiana Territory, "he was at the time a Senator in Congress from the State of Tennessee." This is a mistake. He never lived in Tennessee, and never served her in any official capacity whatever. Five States might properly claim that he once lived within their borders, but Tennessee is not one of the five. She must be content with Jackson and Polk, and other eminent men who have served her ably and well, and leave to Virginia, to Kentucky, Louisiana, Indiana and Illinois the honor of having once been the home of Thomas Posey, a revolutionary patriot, and the last Territorial Governor of Indiana.
JONATHAN JENNINGS.
JONATHAN JENNINGS, the first Governor of Indiana, was born in Hunterdon county, N. J., in 1784. His father was a Presby- terian minister, and, soon after Jonathan's birth, removed to Fayette county, Pa. It was here that the future Governor grew to manhood. After obtaining a common school education he went to a grammar school at Cannonsburg, Pa. Here he studied Latin and Greek, as well as the higher branches of mathematics. Thus liberally educated, he commenced the study of the law, but before being admitted to the bar he left Pennsylvania and started for Indiana Territory. Arriving at Pittsburg, he took passage on a flatboat and floated down the Ohio river to Jeffersonville. where he landed, having determined to make that town his home. He was then very young, and in appearance younger than he really was. He resumed his legal studies, and in a short time was admitted to the bar. But clients were few, and the young attorney sought other means for a living besides the practice of his profession. He wrote an unusually good hand, and was soon made clerk of the Territorial Legislature. While filling this place he became acquainted with most of the leading inen of the Territory, and in 1809, when the Territory entered into the second grade and the people became possessed of a right to elect a delegate to Congress, he became a candidate for the place. His opponent was Thomas Randolph, then Attorney- general of the Territory, and a man of much learning and abil- ity. The contest between Jennings and Randolph was exceed- ingly exciting and bitter. Randolph was Virginia born, and believed in the divinity of slavery, while Jennings, a native of a free State, considered slavery a blight and a curse. The Terri-
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tory was but sparsely inhabited, the settlements being on its eastern and southern borders, with one at Vincennes, on the Wabash. The question at issue was that of slavery. The Governor of the Territory, William Henry Harrison, and the Virginians about him, were striving to have the provision of the ordinance of 1787 prohibiting slavery in the Northwestern Ter- ritory suspended or repealed, and Jennings and other free-state men were trying to prevent this. The territorial delegate would have much to do in determining the matter, hence the two par- ties battled fiercely for the election of their respective favorite. The intelligent reader need hardly be told that the Territory was then virtually a slave Territory. Negroes were bought and sold in the market at so much a head. The author has been permitted to examine the private papers of Mr. Randolph, and among them are two bills of sale for negroes, executed at Vin- cennes in 1809. There is, also, among Mr. Randolph's papers, a letter from General James Dill, Randolph's father-in-law, written from Vincennes to his wife at Lawrenceburg, saying he had not bought her a negro servant because they rated too high, but he hoped soon to find one at a price he could stand. Public sentiment at Vincennes was then as pro-slavery as it was at Richmond. Randolph was its representative and exponent, and it rallied to his support with all the dogmatism that used to characterize its adherents. Jennings was then a young man- a mere youth-but he met the assault of the pro-slavery men with the courage of a hero. He made a thorough canvass of the Territory, riding on horseback to all the settlements. As is known, the eastern part of Indiana was mainly settled by Qua- kers from the Carolinas. These people hated slavery, and they supported Jennings almost to a man, Randolph hardly getting enough votes in the Whitewater country to pay for the counting. General Dill, who followed Jennings in the canvass, hoping to counteract his work, in a letter to Randolph says that " wher- ever Jennings goes he draws all men to him." In a letter from Brookville, he says the only man he finds for Randolph is Enoch McCarty, and that he publicly declares that Jennings will be elected.
The election for delegate came off in May, and Jennings was victorious. His total vote in the Territory was 428, and that of
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JONATHAN JENNINGS.
Randolph 402. John Johnson received 81 votes at the same elec- tion ; so it will be seen that Jennings was elected by a plurality and not by a majority. To us of the present day the vote which elected Jennings seems too insignificant to make a congressman. Wards in some of our cities now contain more voters than did the Territory of Indiana at that time. But the vote, meager as it was, virtually fixed the status of Indiana upon the subject of slavery for years to come. Had Randolph been elected, the clause in the ordinance of 1787 prohibiting slavery in the Territory would have been abrogated and the "peculiar institution " established by law. This done, it would have remained to curse our people until the day that American slavery went down in blood.
Governor Harrison gave Mr. Jennings his certificate of elec- tion, and the delegate went to Washington and took his seat in the National Congress. But he was not permitted to hold it unchallenged. Mr. Randolph contested his election on the ground that at one of the voting places in Dearborn county, the election was not legally held. At this precinct Jennings received a greater majority than that given him in the Territory ; con- sequently, if the vote of this precinct could be thrown out he would be defeated. There was a grave question as to the le- gality of the entire election, but as Mr. Randolph had advised the Governor that an election could be held under the law, he refused to raise the point. Both Jennings and Randolph ap- peared before the committee on elections and stated their cases. The committee reported to the House " that the election held for a delegate to Congress for the Indiana Territory, on the 22d of May, 1809, being without authority of law is void, and con- sequently the seat of Jonathan Jennings as delegate for that Ter- ritory is hereby declared to be vacant." The report of the com- mittee was considered in committee of the whole, and adopted, but on being reported to the House, that body refused its con- currence, and confirmed Jennings in his seat.
Much bad feeling grew up between Jennings and Randolph on account of this election and contest. Each resorted to hand- bills and scattered them far and wide. Randolph was the more sarcastic and bitter ; Jennings, the more persuasive and convinc- ing. In a circular dated " Jeffersonville, Indiana Territory, Oct. 10, 1810," addressed to the people of the Territory, he says :
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" If Mr. Randolph succeeds in his wishes by fair means, with- out injuring me, rely upon it, that I shall never envy his success, nor take the advantage of his absence to traduce him. But, if he expects to ascend the political ladder by slander and detrac- tion, he ought not to be surprised if his borrowed popularity should forsake him and leave him, like other thorough-going politicians, without so much as the consolation of an approving heart."
The friends of Mr. Randolph partook of that gentleman's hatred of Mr. Jennings. Waller Taylor, then a territorial judge, in a letter to Mr. Randolph dated June 3, 1809, says he had publicly insulted Mr. Jennings without the latter's resenting it, and that Jennings was a " pitiful coward." He also says : "Jennings revenges himself on me by saying he never did any- thing to injure me, and professes esteem." Surely, if it be true, that " He that ruleth his spirit is greater than he that taketh a city," Jonathan Jennings was a great man. It is evident that Taylor's purpose was to provoke him to a duel, but he kept his temper and gave the hot-blooded Virginian no excuse for chal- lenging him.
In 1811 Mr. Jennings was re-elected to Congress, his oppo- nent being Waller Taylor, the same man, who, two years be- fore had tried to provoke him to mortal combat. In 1813 he was again re-elected, his competitor this time being Judge Sparks, a very worthy and popular man.
The Territory of Indiana was now ready to pass from its chrysalis condition and become a State. Early in 1816 Mr. Jennings reported a bill to Congress enabling the people of the Territory to take the necessary steps to convert it into a State. Delegates to a convention to form a State constitution were elected in May, 1816, Mr. Jennings being chosen one from the county of Clark. The delegates met at Corydon, June 10, and organized the convention by electing Mr. Jennings president and William Hendricks secretary. The convention continued in session nineteen days, and then adjourned, having made the constitution under which the people of Indiana lived and pros- pered for thirty-four years. The constitution required that an election should be held on the first Monday in August. 1816,
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JONATHAN JENNINGS.
for the election of a Governor, Lieutenant-governor and other officers, the Territorial officials in the meantime continuing in office. The candidates for Governor were. Jonathan Jennings and Thomas Posey, the then Territorial Governor. Governor Posey was a Virginian by birth. He was a gallant soldier in the revolutionary war, and for a time served in the Senate of the United States from the State of Louisiana. He was con- sidered the pro-slavery candidate, and, although the question of slavery had been settled in Indiana by the adoption of the State constitution, the pro-slavery men of the Territory still kept up their organization. Jennings had been a leader of the- free-state party since his entrance into public life, and now that he was a candidate for governor, that party rallied to his sup- port. He received 5,211 votes, and Governor Posey 3,934, his. majority being 1,277.
The making and putting into motion of the machinery of a new State requires ability of a high order. Revenue is to be created, laws for the protection of life and property to be drawn and passed, and divers other things to be done that the founda- tions of the government may be properly laid. The Governor proved himself equal to the task. The State machinery started off without impediment and ran without friction. It did its work well, for it was guided by a master hand.
In his first message to the Legislature, delivered Nov. 7, 1816 .. Governor Jennings says :
" I recommend to your consideration the propriety of provid- ing by law to prevent more effectually any unlawful attempts to seize and carry into bondage persons of color legally entitled to their freedom ; and at the same time, as far as practicable, to prevent those who rightfully owe service to the citizens of any other State or Territory, from seeking, within the limits of this State, a refuge from the possession of their lawful owners. Such a measure will tend to secure those who are free from any unlawful attempts to enslave them, and secure the rights of the citizens of the other States and Territories so far as ought rea- sonably to be expected."
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In his message to the Legislature of 1817, he thus refers to the subject of fugitive slaves coming into the State :
"Permit me again to introduce to your attention the subject of slaves escaping into this State, and to suggest the propriety of making further provisions by law calculated to restrain them from fleeing to this State to avoid their lawful owners, and to enable the judges of our Circuit Courts, or any judge of the Supreme Court, in vacation, to decide, with the aid of a jury, upon all claims of this character without delay. This subject, in the adjoining State of Kentucky, has produced some excite- ment in the citizens and an interference on the part of their Legislature. To preserve harmony between our State and every other, so far as may depend on our exertions, is a duty the discharge of which is intimately connected with our best in- terests as a State, and solemnly required of Indiana as a mem- ber of the Union."
On the 10th of December, 1817, Governor Jennings sent to the House of Representatives a letter from Governor Slaughter. of Kentucky, and his answer thereto. The letter was referred to a special committee, of which General Samuel Milroy was chairman. In his letter Governor Slaughter complains of the difficulty the citizens of Kentucky encounter in reclaiming their slaves who escape into Indiana, and says : " You must be sen- sible, sir, that occurrences of this sort can not fail to produce discontent here and a spirit of animosity toward your State, which is equally the interest of all to avoid." In his reply Gov- ernor Jennings says :
" With regard to the subject matter of your letter-the diffi- culty said to be experienced by your citizens in reclaiming their slaves who escape into this State-allow me to state in rela- tion to my views on this subject, that I have been and still am desirous that every municipal regulation, not inconsistent with the constitution of the United States or of this State. may be adopted by the legislative authority of the latter, calculated to secure to the citizens of every State or Territory of the Union the means of reclaiming any slave escaping to this State that
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