SLAVERY IN ILLINOIS

When the territory comprising the state of Illinois passed under control of the United States, negro slavery existed in the French villages situated on the so-called American Bottom, a strip of fertile land extending along the east bank of the Mississippi River from Cahokia on the north to Kaskaskia on the south, embracing the present counties of St. Clair, Monroe, and Randolph. The first European settlements had been made here about 1718, by colonists coming up the great river from Louisiana, under the auspices of John Law's Company of the Indies.

The earlier occupation of the country by French explorers and Jesuit priests from Canada had been in the nature of fur-trading and religious propagandism, rather than permanent colonies, although marriages had been solemnized in due form between French men and Indian women, and a considerable number of half-breed children had been born. Five hundred negro slaves from Santo Domingo were sent up the river in 1718, to work any gold and silver mines that might be found in the Illinois country. In fact, slavery of red men existed there to some extent, before the Africans arrived, the slaves being captives taken in war.

In 1784-85, Thomas Jefferson induced Rev. James Lemen, of Harper's Ferry, Virginia, to migrate to Illinois in order to organize opposition to slavery in the Northwest Territory and supplied him with money for that purpose. Mr. Lemen came to Illinois in 1786 and settled in what is now Monroe County. He was the founder of the first eight Baptist churches in Illinois, all of which were pledged to oppose the doctrine and practice of slavery. Governor William H. Harrison having forwarded petitions to Congress to allow slavery in the Northwest Territory, Jefferson wrote to Lemen to go, or send an agent, to Indiana, to get petitions signed in opposition to Harrison. Lemen did so. A letter of Lemen, dated Harper's Ferry, December 11, 1782, says that Jefferson then had the purpose to dedicate the Northwest Territory to freedom.[13]

In 1787, Congress passed an ordinance for the government of the territory northwest of the river Ohio which had been ceded to the United States by Virginia. The sixth article of this ordinance prohibited slavery in said territory. Inasmuch as the rights of persons and property had been guaranteed by treaties when this region had passed from France to Great Britain and later to the United States, this article was generally construed as meaning that no more slaves should be introduced, and that all children born after the passage of the ordinance should be free, but that slaves held there prior to 1787 should continue in bondage.

Immigration was mainly from the Southern States. Some of the immigrants brought slaves with them, and the territorial legislature passed an act in 1812 authorizing the relation of master and slave under other names. It declared that it should be lawful for owners of negroes above fifteen years of age to take them before the clerk of the court of common pleas, and if a negro should agree to serve for a specified term of years, the clerk should record him or her as an "indentured servant." If the negro was under the age of fifteen, the owner might hold him without an agreement till the age of thirty-five if male, or thirty-two if female. Children born of negroes owing service by indenture should serve till the age of thirty if male, and till twenty-eight if female. This was a plain violation of the Ordinance of 1787 and was a glaring fraud in other respects. The negroes generally did not understand what they were agreeing to, and in cases where they did not agree the probable alternative was a sale to somebody in an adjoining slave state, so that they really had no choice. The state constitution, adopted in 1818, prohibited slavery, but recognized the indenture system by providing that male children born of indentured servants should be free at the age of twenty-one and females at the age of eighteen. The upshot of the matter was that there was just enough of the virus of slavery left to keep the caldron bubbling there for two generations after 1787, although the Congress of the Confederation supposed that they had then made an end of it.

This arrangement did not satisfy either the incoming slave-owners or those already domiciled there. Persistent attempts were made while the country was still under territorial government, to procure from Congress a repeal of the sixth article of the Ordinance, but they were defeated chiefly by the opposition of John Randolph, of Roanoke, Virginia. After the state was admitted to the Union, the pro-slavery faction renewed their efforts. They insisted that Illinois had all the rights of the other states, and could lawfully introduce slavery by changing the constitution. They proposed, therefore, to call a new convention for this purpose. To do so would require a two-thirds vote of both branches of the legislature, and a majority vote of the people at the next regular election. A bill for this purpose was passed in the Senate by the requisite majority, but it lacked one vote in the House. To obtain this vote a member who had been elected and confirmed in his seat after a contest, and had occupied it for ten weeks, was unseated, and the contestant previously rejected was put in his place and gave the necessary vote. Reynolds, who was himself a convention man, says that "this outrage was a death-blow to the convention." He continues:

The convention question gave rise to two years of the most furious and boisterous excitement that ever was visited on Illinois. Men, women, and children entered the arena of party warfare and strife, and families and neighborhoods were so divided and furious and bitter against one another that it seemed a regular civil war might be the result. Many personal combats were indulged in on the question, and the whole country seemed to be, at times, ready and willing to resort to physical force to decide the contest. All the means known to man to convey ideas to one another were resorted to and practiced with energy. The press teemed with publications on the subject. The stump orators were invoked, and the pulpit thundered with anathemas against the introduction of slavery. The religious community coupled freedom and Christianity together, which was one of the most powerful levers used in the contest.

At this time all the frontier communities were anxious to gain additions to their population. Immigration was eagerly sought. The arrivals were mostly from the Southern States, the main channels of communication being the converging rivers Ohio, Mississippi, Cumberland, and Tennessee. Many of these brought slaves, and since there was no security for such property in Illinois, they went onward to Missouri. One of the strongest arguments used by the convention party was, that if slavery were permitted, this tide of immigration would pour a stream of wealth into Illinois.

Most of the political leaders and office-holders were convention men, but there were some notable exceptions, among whom were Edward Coles, governor of the state, and Daniel P. Cook, Representative in Congress, the former a native of Virginia, and the latter of Kentucky. Governor Coles was one of the Virginia abolitionists of early days, who had emancipated his own slaves and given them lands on which to earn their living. The governor gave the entire salary of his term of office ($4000) for the expenses of the anti-convention contest, and his unceasing personal efforts as a speaker and organizer. Mr. Cook was a brilliant lawyer and orator, and the sole Representative of Illinois in Congress, where he was chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, and where he cast the vote of Illinois for J. Q. Adams for President in 1824. Cook County, which contains the city of Chicago, takes its name from him. He was indefatigable on the side of freedom in this campaign. Another powerful reinforcement was found in the person of Rev. John M. Peck, a Baptist preacher who went through the state like John the Baptist crying in the wilderness. He made impassioned speeches, formed anti-slavery societies, distributed tracts, raised money, held prayer-meetings, addressed Sunday Schools, and organized the religious sentiment of the state for freedom. He was ably seconded by Hooper Warren, editor of the Edwardsville Spectator. The election took place August 2, 1824, and the vote was 4972 for the convention, and 6640 against it. In the counties of St. Clair and Randolph, which embraced the bulk of the French population, the vote was almost equally divided—765 for; 790 against.

In 1850, both Henry Clay and Daniel Webster contended that Nature had interposed a law stronger than any law of Congress against the introduction of slavery into the territory north of Texas which we had lately acquired from Mexico. From the foregoing facts, however, it is clear that no law of Nature prevented Illinois from becoming a slaveholding state, but only the fiercest kind of political fighting and internal resistance. John Reynolds (and there was no better judge) said in 1854: "I never had any doubt that slavery would now exist in Illinois if it had not been prevented by the famous Ordinance" of 1787. The law of human greed would have overcome every other law, including that of Congress, but for the magnificent work of Edward Coles, Daniel P. Cook, John Mason Peck, Hooper Warren, and their coadjutors in 1824.

The snake was scotched, not killed, by this election. There were no more attempts to legalize slavery by political agency, but persevering efforts were made to perpetuate it by judicial decisions resting upon old French law and the Territorial Indenture Act of 1812. Frequent law suits were brought by negroes, who claimed the right of freedom on the ground that their period of indenture had expired, or that they had never signed an indenture, or that they had been born free, or that their masters had brought them into Illinois after the state constitution, which prohibited slavery, had been adopted. In this litigation Trumbull was frequently engaged on the side of the colored people.

In 1842, a colored woman named Sarah Borders, with three children, who was held under the indenture law by one Andrew Borders in Randolph County, escaped and made her way north as far as Peoria County. She and her children were there arrested and confined in a jail as fugitive slaves. They were brought before a justice of the peace, who decided that they were illegally detained and were entitled to their freedom. An appeal was taken by Borders to the county court, which reversed the action of the justice. The case eventually went to the supreme court, where Lyman Trumbull and Gustave Koerner appeared for the negro woman in December, 1843, and argued that slavery was unlawful in Illinois and had been so ever since the enactment of the Ordinance of 1787. The court decided against them.[14]

Trumbull was not discouraged by the decision in this case. Shortly afterward he appeared before the supreme court again in the case of Jarrot vs. Jarrot, in which he won a victory which practically put an end to slavery in the state. Joseph Jarrot, a negro, sued his mistress, Julia Jarrot, for wages, alleging that he had been held in servitude contrary to law. The plaintiff's grandmother had been the slave of a Frenchman in the Illinois country before it passed under the jurisdiction of the United States. His mother and himself had passed by descent to Julia Jarrot, nobody objecting. Fifty-seven years had elapsed since the passage of the Ordinance of 1787 and twenty-six since the adoption of the state constitution, both of which had prohibited slavery in Illinois. The previous decisions in the court of last resort had generally sustained the claims of the owners of slaves held under the French rÉgime and their descendants, and also those held under the so-called indenture system. Now, however, the court swept away the whole basis of slavery in the state, of whatever kind or description, declaring, as Trumbull had previously contended, that the Congress of the Confederation had full power to pass the Ordinance of 1787, that no person born since that date could be held as a slave in Illinois, and that any slave brought into the state by his master, or with the master's consent, since that date became at once free. It followed that such persons could sue and recover wages for labor performed under compulsion, as Joseph Jarrot did.

This decision, which abolished slavery in Illinois de facto, was received with great satisfaction by the substantial and sober-minded citizens. Although the number of aggressive anti-slavery men in the state was small and of out-and-out abolitionists still smaller, there was a widespread belief that the lingering snaky presence of the institution was a menace to the public peace and a blot upon the fair fame of the state, and that it ought to be expunged once for all. The growth of public opinion was undoubtedly potent in the minds of the judges, but the untiring activity of the leading advocates in the cases of Borders, Jarrot, etc., should not be overlooked. On this subject Mr. Dwight Harris, in the book already cited, says:

The period of greatest struggle and of greatest triumph for the anti-slavery advocates was that from 1840 to 1845. The contest during these five years was serious and stubbornly carried on. It involved talent, ingenuity, determination, and perseverance on both sides. The abolitionists are to be accredited with stirring up considerable interest over the state in some of the cases. Southern sympathizers and the holders of indentured servants in the southern portion of the state were naturally considerably concerned in the decisions of the supreme court. Still there seems to have been no widespread interest or universal agitation in the state over this contest in the courts. It was carried on chiefly through the benevolence of a comparatively small number of citizens who were actuated by a firm belief in the evils of slavery; while the brunt of the fray fell to a few able and devoted lawyers.

Among these were G. T. M. Davis, of Alton, Nathaniel Niles, of Belleville, Gustave Koerner, of Belleville, and Lyman Trumbull. James H. Collins, a noted abolition lawyer of Chicago, should also be highly praised for his work in the Lovejoy and Willard cases, but to the other men the real victory is to be ascribed. They were the most powerful friends of the negro, and lived where their assistance could be readily secured. They told the negroes repeatedly that they were free, urged them to leave their masters, and fought their cases in the lower courts time and time again, often without fees or remuneration. Chief among them was Lyman Trumbull, whose name should be written large in anti-slavery annals.

He was a lawyer of rare intellectual endowments, and of great ability. He had few equals before the bar in his day. In politics he was an old-time Democrat, with no leanings toward abolitionism, but possessing an honest desire to see justice done the negro in Illinois. It was a thankless task, in those days of prejudice and bitter partisan feelings, to assume the rÔle of defender of the indentured slaves. It was not often unattended with great risk to one's person, as well as to one's reputation and business. But Trumbull did not hesitate to undertake the task, thankless, discouraging, unremunerative as it was, and to his zeal, courage, and perseverance, as well as to his ability, is to be ascribed the ultimate success of the appeal to the supreme court.

This disinterested and able effort, made in all sincerity of purpose, and void of all appearance of self-elevation, rendered him justly popular throughout the State, as well as in the region of his home. The people of his district showed their approval of his work and their confidence in his integrity by electing him judge of the supreme court in 1848, and Congressman from the Eighth District of Illinois by a handsome majority in 1854, when it was well known that he was opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska Bill.

[13] These facts are detailed in a paper contributed to the Illinois State Historical Society in 1908 by Joseph B. Lemen, of O'Fallon, Illinois.