USA > Indiana > Indiana, a redemption from slavery > Part 29
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1 Woollen's Sketches, p. 394.
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posted the doctor as "a base slanderer, an infamous fiar, and a contemptible coward," and so the peace was kept.1
But far beyond any little circle of personal friends were the Harrison party exasperated by the election of Jennings, and they let no opportunity pass without ex- pressing their sentiments. On the fourth of July, at a public celebration near Vincennes, where Governor Harrison presided, the following toast was proposed and drank : "Jonathan Jennings - the semblance of a dele- gate- his want of abilities the only safety of the people - three groans." On the same day, at a meeting in Harrison township, in the same county, Dennis Sullivan proposed : "Jonathan Jennings - may his want of tal- ents be the sure means to defeat the anti-republican schemes of his party." 2 It is astonishing how this hatred of Jennings lasted in Knox County ; and it can easily be followed through the accounts of the national birthday celebrations, for that was one of the few days in the year on which the primeval newspaper appeared to have a local editor. In none of these, for more than a decade, was there a respectful allusion to Jennings, and very seldom a toast to him of any kind; yet politi- cal differences were then more largely thrown aside on the fourth of July than on other occasions, and the num- ber of persons toasted was limited only by the amount of fluid on hand and the capacity of the celebrators.
The legislature which was chosen at this same election convened on October 16, 1809, in compliance with the governor's proclamation of August 8. Its constitution is immaterial to us, because it was decided by Congress to
1 Western Sun, June 10, June 24, July 1, 1809.
2 Ibid., July 8, 1809.
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be a body unauthorized by law.1 The suffrage act passed by Congress had provided for the redistricting of the Territory by the legislature, but there was no legisla- ture to redistrict it, and could be none until it was redis- tricted. The terms of the old legislature extended to June 30, 1809, but the division act took effect on March 1, and its passage was not heard of in Indiana until after it was in effect. Possibly the old legislature might have been called, as a quorum remained in Indiana; but on learning of the passage of the division act, while still in ignorance of the suffrage act, the governor had redis- tricted the Territory himself, and had called for only eight representatives, which was one less than the mini- mum prescribed by the law. Still, Governor Harrison and a majority of the legislature maintained that the organization was valid; but the minority disputed it, and after wrestling with the problem for five days they agreed to suspend. They adopted a memorial to Con- gress, reciting the situation, and asking an act to restore order from the existing chaos. It is noteworthy also that this assembly, although it had an anti-slavery ma- jority, passed resolutions asking the reappointment of Governor Harrison, - the House unanimously and the Council three to one.2 His term expired that summer, but President Madison had not yet reappointed him.
The memorial was sent to Congress; thither went Jennings ; thither also went Randolph to contest the election. On December 4, Randolph presented his me- morial, which included the memorial of the assembly, setting forth the circumstances of the apportionment and the election ; and this was referred to the committee on
1 The names of the members are in Dillon, p. 438.
2 Western Sun, November 4, 1809.
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elections, composed of Messrs. Findley, Clay, Sturges, Troup, Taylor, Van Rensselaer, and Garnett. On the 22d this committee reported that the election was illegal and void on account of the facts set forth in the memo- rial of the assembly. They stated, however, that both Randolph and Jennings advocated the legality of the election before them ; that Randolph " argued in support of the governor's authority to order the election ; " that he based his case on the irregularity of part of the re- turns from Dearborn, where Jennings had a majority, and on the failure to hold any election in two precincts of Dearborn ; that Jennings claimed he had never had any notice of the irregularities alleged ; that he said he could show them not to exist if he had opportunity ; and also that he claimed that the election in Knox County was not conducted in accordance with the provisions of the law. The report was hardly just, for, whatever Randolph may have argued before the committee in person, he certainly did argue the total invalidity of the election in his memorial. In that, after setting forth the irregularities mentioned by the committee, he said : "In addition to these reasons for giving to the people the privilege of having another election, the memorial of the legislature of the Territory strongly evinces the pro- priety. When it is considered that it must be the ob- ject of Congress to preserve the republican system in its purest state, your memorialist cannot believe it will sanction an election illegally conducted, and an election in which a respectable portion of the people have been deprived of their right of suffrage ; he therefore prays that the seat of the said Jennings be vacated, that an- other election may be had," etc.1
1 Liberty Hall, Jannary 31, 1810.
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On January 8, the House, in committee of the whole, agreed to this report and so rose, but while the House was considering their report an adjournment was made. Attempts to proceed to final action were made on the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th. On the last two days when the case was up, there were protracted debates on the construction of the suffrage act and the act for division, of the last session ; and in these the friends of Jennings gained ground rapidly, for when the yeas and nays were taken, at three o'clock on the afternoon of the 12th, the House stood 83 to 30 against the adoption of the re- port. A motion was then made to recommit, but it was negatived without division.1 During the contest Jen- nings managed to let it be generally understood that he was in opposition to Governor Harrison, and Randolph in friendship with him, and this had some weight in the determination of the case. One of the members, who considered the election invalid, said in explanation of his vote : " I shall vote against the sitting delegate, be- cause I am clearly of opinion that the election was illegal ; but I am sorry for it, for I understand that the sitting delegate is the people's man, and the other is the Governor's man, his Secretary of State, or Attorney General, or something or other." 2
As to the legislature, the House arrived at an opposite conclusion. The memorial, which had been presented on November 28, was referred to Messrs. Poindexter, Cochran, Breckenridge, Witherspoon, and Jennings. The committee held that the election of the legislators was wholly unauthorized by law. On December 5, Mr. Poindexter reported a bill giving the governor power to
1 Annals 11th Congress, pp. 1173-1199.
2 Jennings's handbill of October 10, 1810.
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apportion and call an election for the next assembly, and also power to call special elections in case of the death, resignation, or removal of a councilor or a delegate to Congress. The bill became a law, and under this settle- ment of the difficulty the territorial government was re- sumed.
On February 21, 1810, the governor issued his proc- lamation calling for an election on April 2. He made no change in the apportionment for councilors, but re- districted the Territory for representatives with provi- sion for nine members, three each from Knox and Dear- born, two from Clark, and one from Harrison. The councilors chosen at this election were Solomon Manwar- ing of Dearborn, James Beggs of Clark, John Harbison of Harrison, William Jones and Walter Wilson of Knox. The representatives were Ephraim Overman, Richard Rue, and John Templeton of Dearborn ; John Paul and Thomas Downs of Clark ; Dennis Pennington of Harri- son ; Peter Jones, John Caldwell, and General W. Johns- ton of Knox. The delegates and councilors from Knox were pro-slavery men, with the exception of Johnston ; the remainder of the members were all anti-slavery men. This legislature - the Third General Assembly of Indi- ana - convened at Vincennes on November 12, 1810, and passed a number of laws, among which were a few that we have occasion to notice. Early in the session they created the new counties of Jefferson, Franklin, and Wayne, from portions of Clark and Dearborn. By the apportionment act, passed later on, one representa- tive was given to each county except Knox, which still retained three. This act also provided that the delegate to the 12th Congress should be elected on the first Mon- day in April, 1811, the delegate to the 13th Congress on
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the first Monday in August, 1812, and that thereafter delegates to Congress should be elected biennially on the first Mondays in August. The great work of this as- sembly, and the one to which we turn with special inter- est, was the repeal of the indenture law.
There were three distinct features of the repeal act. The first was the immediate and unconditional repeal of the indenture law of 1807. The second was a provi- sion to prevent the kidnaping and unlawful removal of negroes from the Territory. It enacted that any one who attempted to remove, or aided in removing, any negro, without first proving his right to do so under the laws of the United States and the Territory, before a judge or justice of the peace, and receiving a certificate thereof which should be filed in the county clerk's office, should be fined $1,000, disqualified from holding any office of trust or profit, and be subject in damages to the party aggrieved. The third was the repeal of so much of the act concerning servants as allowed the im- portation of negroes indented in other territories or states, and provided for the enforcement of these foreign indentures.1 This law passed the House without diffi- culty. In the Council the Knox County men opposed it, and the Dearborn and Harrison County men favored it. This made a tie, and James Beggs, the president, voted for its passage. The governor was very willing to take action which might get the slavery question out of poli- tics, for his party was evidently doomed to defeat, in everything outside of Knox County, so long as it re- mained. He approved the repeal act on December 14, 1810, and this blot of the past five years was removed from our statute books.
1 Laws of 1810, p. 54.
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The deciding vote of James Beggs on this occasion has always been a matter of just pride to his family. In a recent letter his venerable daughter, Mrs. Susan Armstrong, of Laporte, says : " My Father being Presi- dent of the Council gave the casting vote which made Indiana a free state ; for which I say God bless James Beggs." To her pious benediction we may all fervently add, So may it be ; for these acts, in the few years they had been in force, had spread their pernicious influence far enough to demonstrate their dangerous character. Under them the number of slaves in Indiana proper had increased from 28 to 237. In the Illinois division they appear by the census reports to have increased only from about 140 to 168; but it is evident that the in- dented negroes of Illinois were not counted as slaves in the census of 1810, for 613 free negroes were reported in that year, while in 1820 the report from Illinois was 917 slaves and only 506 free negroes. After Illinois became a state, and the operation of the indenture law as to new importations was stopped, the number decreased naturally to 747 slaves in 1830, and to 331 in 1840 ; and thereafter the institution died out under the decisions of the courts and the Constitution of 1848, as has been recited. What might have resulted in Indiana had the law continued in force, no one can say ; but on any line of conjecture, we have cause to be thankful to our Indi- ana men of that early day who thus, from pure princi- ple, uprooted and exterminated this iniquitous and un- constitutional system.
After the session of the legislature came on the sec- ond campaign of Jennings and Randolph, though in one sense it had commenced before the legislature convened. After the congressional committee on elections had
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agreed on their report, Randolph, supposing that the report would be adopted and a new election would occur, had written a letter announcing himself a candi- date, and this duly appeared in print. Jennings fol- lowed close on his heels with a handbill setting forth Randolph's memorial and the congressional proceedings thereon, but without comment. Randolph replied, de-
nouncing this handbill as an attempt to show that he had asked the election to be held illegal on account of the governor's not having authority to call for it. This line of defense was injudicious, to say the least ; for by putting this construction on the publication of the bare record, he admitted the very thing he wished to deny. Besides that, he certainly had put before the committee all the papers on which they found the election illegal, and he had asked that Jennings's seat be vacated, and a new election held. True, the committee said he argued in favor of the legality of the election, but the grounds which both they and he said he did urge were only irregularities in Dearborn County, and these could not have vitiated the entire election. Their utmost result would have been to displace Jennings and seat himself ; but he did not ask for the seat; he wanted another election. Jennings answered Randolph in another and very ingenious broadside that left him in worse position than ever, for, in addition to being confronted with a charge of attempting to deprive the Territory of a repre- sentative in Congress, he now had before him the ex- planation of what seemed a very plain case of misrepre- sentation. The most satisfactory thing he could do was to call Jennings a liar, and this he did with great fer- vor.1 All this occurred in 1810.2 The writs for the
1 Woollen's Sketches, p. 398.
2 Jennings's last - mentioned circular was dated October 10,
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election were not issued by the governor until February 2, 1811.1
Jennings was obliged to leave the Territory to attend the session of Congress, in the winter of 1810, but his campaign did not cease. It is said that he sent copies of his handbills to every voter in Indiana. He also trusted much to letters. In those days, when window- glass was a rarity, and greased paper served the pur- pose in the frontier cabins, old residents say that the well-known writing of Jonathan Jennings (he was an unusually good penman) could be seen in the sashes of every schoolhouse in the Territory. Meanwhile his opponent had a clear field, and he and his friends let none of it lie fallow. Randolph canvassed the entire Territory, and he had stanch friends in all parts look- ing after his interests, - Harrison and a host of smaller fry in Knox, Waller Taylor in Clark, and Dill and Vance in Dearborn. But Jennings also had many active and influential friends ; and he was aided by two moves which were blamed to the opposition. One of these was the appointment of Solomon Manwaring, who was temporarily unpopular, judge of the common pleas for Dearborn, in place of Benjamin Chambers, resigned.2 The other was the enforcement of the militia law, which was obnoxious to the Quaker settlers of the Whitewater. The act of September 17, 1807, had made the militia to consist of " every free, able-bodied, white, male citizen of the Territory" between the ages of eighteen and forty-five, excepting only the judges and clerk of the
1810. The record first published by him began to appear in the Liberty Hall on January 31, 1810.
1 Executive Journal.
2 Ibid., December 14, 1810.
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Supreme Court, the Attorney General, ministers of the gospel licensed to preach, jail-keepers, and such persons as were exempt by the laws of the United States. Any one who refused to perform militia duty was subject to fine in the courts.1 This did not excite material objec- tion until 1810, when the anticipation of war with Eng- land, and consequent hostilities by the Indians, had called for its strict enforcement. On August 25, 1810, at the monthly meeting of the Society of Friends held in Richmond, a memorial was adopted, addressed to the governor and legislature, asking an amendment of this law, and Benjamin Harris and Andrew Hoover were appointed delegates to present it to the governor. On December 19, 1810, the legislature amended the law so that Friends were exempted absolutely in time of peace, and made subject in time of actual war " to such addi- tional tax or contribution in lieu of military services as the legislature may think proper to impose." 2 Although Harrison approved this amendatory act, it was passed by an anti-Harrison legislature, and there was enough opposition to it from the minority to make it almost a party question. In fact, after war had come, a majority of the legislature considered the discrimination un- called for ; and by the elaborate militia law of January 3, 1814, exemption in time of peace was granted only on payment of a special tax of five dollars annually.3
The slavery question was also kept in the campaign by Jennings, who was too adroit a politician to let an issue like that die away. Randolph was very anxious to be rid of it, and insisted that the repeal of the inden-
1 Rev. Laws, 1807, ch. xlii.
2 Laws, 1810, p. 104; Minutes Richmond Monthly Meeting.
8 Laws, 2d Sess. 4th Genl. Ass., p. 25.
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ture law had entirely settled it. On December 15, the day after the governor approved the repeal act, he issued a letter to the people in which he said: "Nor will I from party views cant upon a subject now finally put to rest. An act concerning the introduction of negroes and mulattoes into this Territory is repealed."1 But Jennings would not let him off so easily, nor would the people, for with them, as with the generality of mankind, the antagonisms of yesterday had more weight in politics than the problems of to-day. It is wonderful how many more of the political campaigns of this child-world of ours are fought out on the memories of the past than on the questions of the present.
To the astonishment and mortification of Randolph and his friends, Jennings was again victorious. Dear- born, where they had expected a majority, divided al- most evenly ; Clark and the new counties rolled up majorities that overcame Knox and Harrison ; and the thing was done. Here ended Randolph's political career. When the army was organized that summer for the Wa- bash campaign, Harrison would have given him an ap- pointment, but, there being no vacancies, he volunteered as a private and acted as aid-de-camp to Harrison. At Tippecanoe he fell by an Indian bullet, mortally hurt. General Harrison bent over him and asked if there was aught he could do to help him. Randolph replied no, - that he was spent, - but to watch over his child. And so he died as a gallant gentleman in the service of his country, and they buried him on the field by the side of his friend, the Kentucky hero, Jo. Daviess.
Harrison's connection with territorial politics lasted but little longer, and with no permanent effect. The 1 Western Sun, December 15, 1810.
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partisan action of the legislature in extending special thanks to Boyd's regiment to the exclusion of the re- mainder of the army, the controversy over the compara- tive merits of the militia and the regulars, and the stupid performances of Boyd, turned popular sympathy largely in Harrison's favor, but did little for his party. Public approval should have gone to him much more than it did for his actual service in the Tippecanoe campaign, but party feeling was strong, and by partisans very little credit was conceded to him. Jennings shrewdly kept out of the wrangle, and exerted himself in securing pay and pensions for the soldiers, as a result of which he made friends all around. He entered the lists as a candidate for reelection to Congress the next year, the election for the 13th Congress being held on the first Monday in August, 1812. Waller Taylor took the field against him. He, also, endeavored to avoid any issue on the slavery question. In his handbill of June 17, 1812, he says : "With respect to Territorial politics, and to that question, the discussion of which has caused so much sensibility in the Territory, I mean the introduction of negroes, I must observe that I never have been an ad- vocate for their admission. If I have expressed an opinion upon the subject, it has been that it would be a present benefit and a future evil. Being well assured also that an immense majority of the people are opposed to the measure, I here pledge myself to you not only to refrain from taking any measure myself to favor their introduction, but to oppose it should it be brought for- ward by others." It was a vain attempt. The men who had been fighting against slavery since the founda- tion of the Territory, and those who had been coming to the Territory because it was free and because they hated
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slavery, could not forget and would not forgive so read- ily. The majority went against him, and Jennings was shown to be invincible before the people.
This was the last territorial election in which Har- rison was a factor of any importance. Already his time had been much occupied with the military prepara- tions of the frontier for the war which was just begin- ning, and by his appointment to the command of the Army of the Northwest, on September 24, his civil ser- vice in Indiana was brought to an end. The affairs of . the Territory were conducted by Secretary (acting Gov- ernor) Gibson until May 25, 1813, when General Thomas Posey was installed as governor. (Here, therefore, we take leave of Governor Harrison. Of his influence on the de- velopment of Indiana, outside of the performance of his official duties, our knowledge is unhappily meagre. ) His biographers who might have told us most were aiming at political results, and confined their treatises chiefly to a review of his acts in connection with the negotiation of Indian treaties and other public business, which for historical purposes might be gathered as well, if not better, from the public records. The great mass of his papers and letters were destroyed at the burning of the old homestead at North Bend some thirty years ago. There are probably many of his private letters scattered over the country, but no one has taken the trouble to collect them. Enough is available, however, to show that his influence, aside from this matter of slavery, was for the good of the commonwealth. We know that pub- lic education had no more earnest champion than Wil- liam Henry Harrison. He labored for it much, and he often urged others to labor for it. Nor was his endeavor merely to secure the limited result of a rudimentary edu-
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cation to the masses, which some modern lights would have us consider sufficient. He was broad enough to know that the public welfare called for some citizens of the highest culture, - that it required a Jefferson to draw the Declaration of Independence, a Hamilton to devise a sound financial policy, a Marshall to declare the import of the Constitution, - and therefore he la- bored for the university maintained by the state as he did for the log schoolhouse. In this regard he was a blessing to the Territory.
We know that his administration of Indian affairs was one that did credit to his humanity, his integrity, and his judgment. ) Not only did. he seek to be just to this unfortunately situated race in his dealings witlı them, but also to protect them as far as possible from the evils of their contact with civilized life, particularly from the frightful effects of the use of liquor. In this respect he ranked with Washington and Jefferson of the earlier statesmen, and with all intelligent, fully civilized Americans of the present who are informed in the In- dian question. It is true that in the territorial times he was accused of defrauding the Indians, but he offered a reward of $100 for the name of the author of the charge ; and when he learned that William McIntosh was respon- sible for it, he at once sued him for slander. The jury gave him a verdict for $4,000, but he did not desire more than vindication; he remitted two thirds of the judgment to McIntosh, and gave the other third to some of the orphans of men who had fallen in the war of 1812.1 Afterwards, in Congress, this charge was repeated, by insinuation, by Jonathan Jennings, who demanded a
1 Western Sun, February 15, 1812; Woollen's Sketches, p. 395; Dawson's Harrison, p. 176; Ter. Court Docket, April Term, 1811.
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