EDWARD COLES, for whom Pike's temporary seat of justice had been named, was a candidate for governor in the election
of August, 1822, which, as we have seen, had so many violent repercussions in Pike county. Coles, a Virginia slave-holder,
emerged in Illinois in 1822 as the foremost champion of the cause of human liberty in the new state. He had been
at Kaskaskia in 1818, when the first constitutional convention was in session there, at which time he had been
offered an appointment as registrar of the land office at Edwardsville, by President James Madison, whose private
secretary he had been.
Coles, returning to his Virginia plantation, put his affairs in order there, and packing such things as he would
need in the West into wagons, he set out with teams and wagons and such slaves as he had inherited, on the long
journey to Illinois. Reaching Brownsville, Pa., he secured two large rafts and floated down to Pittsburgh, thence
down the Ohio river. One beautiful April morning, while floating down the Ohio, he ordered the boats pulled to
shore, and there, surrounded by his slaves, he announced his mission in the West. He told of the fertility of the
new country to which they were going, and of the boundless opportunities that he believed awaited there. He promised
each of his slaves his freedom and each head of a family 160 acres of land and help to get started thereon if they
would go on with him to the Illinois country. Rejoicing at prospects of freedom and a new start in life, his slaves
joined with enthusiasm in the adventure. Continuing to Edwardaville, Coles settled there in 1819, his slaves settled
around him. To each slave, before landing in Illinois, he had given a certificate of freedom. At Edwardsville he
became registrar of the land office, and, being politically ambitious, began cultivating the favor of the people
of the new state.
Settling in Illinois in 1819, he announced as a candidate for governor in October, 1821, and in August, 1822, was
elected on the anti-slavery ticket out of a field of four candidates, two of whom were pro-slave and two anti-slave.
The state was strongly pro-slave, five-eighths of the total vote cast in the election being for the pro-slavery
candidates. The pro-slavery vote, however, was divided rather evenly between the two pro-slavery candidates, while
the anti-slavery vote was centered on Coles, enabling an anti-slavery candidate to win in a pro-slavery state,
his plurality in the state being 50 or 167 votes, according to two tabulations of the vote of record.
Governor Coles, in his message to the joint assembly of the two houses of the third legislature, made slavery the
paramount issue in the state. Going farther than any anti-slavery advocate in Illinois had yet gone, he demanded
the abolition of slavery, but here was a man demanding immediate manumission of the slaves, of whom there were
then about 900 in the state. Governor Reynolds, in his "My Own Times," says there were 917 slaves in
the territory of Illinois in 1820, which number had decreased to 746 in 1830.
Governor Coles' message, recommending immediate emancipation, fell like a bombshell in the state legislature. Receiving
by a joint assembly of House and Senate, the message was referred to a joint committee for action. This committee,
comprising five senators and three representatives, reported, with unanimity on the part of the senators, that
the people of the state had a right to alter their constitution and to make any disposition of negro slaves they
might choose, without breach of faith or violation of any compact, ordinance or act of Congress. The Senators went
further and recommended a convention resolution to be voted on by the people, authorizing a convention for the
amendment of the constitution. The legislature being strongly pro-slavery, there was no doubt that the purpose
of the pro-slavery majority was to legalize slavery in the state by constitutional amendment.
On February 10, 1823, the Senate, with all 18 Senators present and voting, passed the convention resolution 12
to 6. A two-thirds vote being required for passage, the resolution passed with not a vote to spare. The following
day, February 11, the Senate resolution was transmitted to the House.
Several days before, January 27, the House had taken a test vote, informally, on the resolution. All 36 members
of the House were present and voted. The test vote showed 22 for the resolution and 14 against, two short of the
necessary two-thirds majority. Nicholas Hansen, the Pike county member, anti-slavery from conviction, was still
playing ball with the pro-slavery majority in return for the pro-slavery majority's support of his bill to fix
a permanent seat of justice in Pike county. On the informal test vote of January 27, Hansen voted with the majority.
On the same poll, William McFatridge, representing Johnson county, voted against the resolution but he was later
converted to the majority side by a promise of the legislature to change the county-seat in his county, he, as
well as Hansen, using the slavery issue for county-seat advantage. Likewise, in the voting of January 27, Thomas
Rattan of Greene county was one of the 14 voting against the resolution, but Rattan, a pro-conventionist, voted
against on that occasion in order to move a no-consideration. Noses were thus counted and the conventionists approached
the actual test with the assurance that the resolution was safe, the preliminary count showing 24 for and 12 against
the resolution.
Now, February 11, 1823, the resolution passed by the Senate is submitted in the House and the real test is at hand.
All 36 representatives are in their seats and voting. The vote is taken. Then to a thunderstruck House, the tally
is announced. The vote is 23 for and 13 against. Lacking one vote of the necessary two-thirds majority, the resolution
is declared lost.
Thus, by a single vote, hung the slavery issue in Illinois. Had the vote on this day stood 24 to 12 instead of
23 to 13, there is little doubt that Illinois would have become a slave state. For up to this time, passage of
the convention resolution was considered tantamount to its success at the polls, Illinois, as has been seen, being
at this period strongly pro-slavery in Sentiment.
Great was the excitement in the House. The pro-slavery majority demanded the name of the betrayer. Threats and
denunciations swept the chamber. All was clamor and confusion.
It was then discovered that Nicholas Hansen, the member from Pike county, was the man who had switched his vote.
Hansen was anti-slavery from conviction. He felt that he had satisfied his debt to the pro-slavery majority who
had supported his county-seat bill when he voted with them and against his conviction for Judge Jesse B. Thomas,
the pro-slavery candidate for the U. S. Senate. Now, when the question of whether Illinois was to be slave or free
was before him, he voted his conviction. Being a New Yorker, his sentiments were strongly antagonistic to slavery.
The House continued in thunderous uproar until adjournment was taken. Hansen was denounced by the pro-slavery members
as a traitor and pledge-breaker. That night, in the State House, was held one of the most boisterous and tumultuous
meetings in the history of the state. Incendiary speeches, inflaming the minds of the people against Hansen, were
delivered. The town of Vandalia seethed with excitement. The pro-slavery sympathizers rallied their clans, which
with tin pans and horns paraded through the streets, making the night hideous with demoniac noises. Insults, brutal
and barbed with hate, were hurled at Hansen. Pike county's representative was burned in effigy in the streets of
Vandalia. Unbridled passion was in the saddle, riding down the opposition of the more even- tempered, whose voices
were hardly heard, much less heeded, amid the tumult.
After the meeting in the State House, tumultuous crowds surged through the town with Hansen's effigy in a blaze,
accompanied with the beating of drums, the sound of bugles, and shouts of "Convention or death." All
night the town was in the grip of the pro-slavery demonstration.
The Edwardsville Spectator, commenting on the uproarious proceedings, related that a mob of legislators, headed
by a justice of the supreme court, furious at their defeat, groaned under the window of one of the anti-convention
leaders, George Churchill (of Madison county), and burned Hansen in effigy.
And now, on the day following the events above related, the Illinois House proceeds to vent its malice in an act
that is destined to shock the whole state, an act so high-handed and disgraceful that even the calmer partisans
of slavery are sickened and revolted. The House proceeds to reopen the legislative contest from Pike county, which
it had formally disposed of on December 9 in Hansen's favor. The claims of John Shaw to the Pike seat in the House
are again considered. The pro-slavery majority, drunk with power, proceeds to put the House on record as setting
aside its former disposition of the election contest.
By a vote of 21 to 13, the House orders a reconsideration of the action in the Shaw-Hansen contest, considers certain
documents and affidavits pertinent thereto, holds a debate on same, and finally, by a vote of 21 to 14, the name
of John Shaw is substituted for that of Nicholas Hansen as a sitting, legally elected member of that body.
And what is the new evidence in the Shaw-Hansen contest upon which the slavery majority relies to warrant this
unprecedented action? Here is the evidence, of a character that challenges credulity. The new evidence is found
in the affidavit of Levi Roberts, a citizen of Coles' Grove, the document bearing the date of January 28, 1823.
The audacity of the slave men, says one historian, in using this affidavit as an excuse for reversing their action
of December 9, almost surpasses belief. The substance of the Roberts testimony is contained in these words: "From
the intimate acquaintance of this deponent with the citizens and inhabitants of the said (Pike) county, he says
and verily believes that a majority of 29 of all the legal and qualified votes in said county was given for said
John Shaw." A more flimsy or worthless piece of evidence could hardly be imagined, especially in view of the
transcripts of the poll books that were in evidence.
After the vote ousting Hansen and substituting Shaw is tallied and announced, Shaw takes his seat in the House
as the duly elected and sitting member from Pike county. From the pro-slavery side, a motion is then made by James
Turney of Washington county to reconsider an appeal from the decision of the chair, on a motion to reconsider the
convention resolution, and the decision is reversed, reconsideration ordered, and the convention resolution is
then passed by a vote of 24 to 12. The issue thus passed to the people, who for a period of 18 months, are to participate
in a fiery discussion reverberating from stump and pulpit all over the state.
Thus ended the memorable legislative session of February 12, 1823, described by one historian as being "as
strange a day's work as ever was done by an Anglo-Saxon parliament." That night, in Vandalia, the pro-slavery
elements celebrated what they construed as a great victory. The town was illuminated, and a procession, accompanied
by all the horrid paraphernalia and discordant music of a charivari, marched to the residence of Governor Coles,
and the quarters of the chief opponents of the convention, where they performed with their demoniac music to annoy
and insult those great champions of human freedom. It was charged and insinuated by no less a person than Hooper
Warren, journalist and editor of the Spectator at Vandalia, that Governor Coles had bought Hansen over by an offer
of a recordership in the new county of Fulton, which had just been cut off from the original Pike county. But the
facts warranted no such inference.
By a strange coincidence, the high-handed pro-slavery actions above recorded, occurred on February 12. Those pro-slavery
legislators of 1823 could not know that by their disgraceful acts on that day they had so far overshot their mark
as to make Illinois a free state. They could not know that on that day, 14 years before, in a log cabin in Kentucky,
Abraham Lincoln had been born. They could not know that this day, which they had so signally desecrated, was destined
to become a legal holiday in the state of Illinois, a day sacred to human freedom.