ATLAS, SELECTED by the legislative commission as the permanent seat of justice for Pike county, assumed its jurisdiction
over the vast county with the sitting of the first commissioners' court there, on March 18, 1823. On May 1, following,
the first circuit court at Atlas convened in the little log court room, near the spot now marked by the D. A. R.
tablet, with Chief Justice Thomas Reynolds, an uncle of Justice John Reynolds, presiding.
Atlas, as has been seen, was designated the permanent county seat pursuant to an act of the third legislature.
The commissioners' court (forerunner of the county court) was in the hands of Atlas partisans. With both the commissioners'
and the circuit courts actually sitting in the new county seat, the pioneers at Atlas must have believed themselves
secure in their new authority. But from the very start the new seat of justice hovered in the shadow of disaster.
In order to understand what is about to happen, it is necessary to go back again to that famous election of August
5, 1822 and follow another chain of events growing out of that memorable contest. Following that election there
had been begun in the early circuit court and continued now for more than a year, a series of cases challenging
the authority of the new Atlas office holders, waged from court term to court term by that relentless partisan
of Coles' Grove, John Shaw, the Black Prince.
Now, at the October court term in 1823, with the courts sitting at Atlas and ruling all the territory from the
juncture of the great rivers north to Fort Armstrong, near the present site of Rock Island, a sudden change comes
in the personnel of the commissioners' court. One set of officers is ousted and another set steps into power. A
great justice of the state supreme court, one who is afterwards to become governor of the state, sitting in judgment
in the pioneer court house in Atlas, reverses himself a second time and thereby plunges the pioneer communities
once more into the throes of a county-seat conflict such as has not yet been known, intensified as it now is by
the relations of the antagonists to the opposing side in the great slavery issue that has been rocking the state
since February, 1823.
Justice John Reynolds, as we have been, on September 4, 1822, following the election of August 5 that year, certified
the election of David Dutton, James M. Seeley and Ossian M. Ross as county commissioners, revoking the certificates
of Ebenezer Smith, James Nixon and William Metz, Coles' Grove contenders in whose favor he had first entered judgment
in a contest filed before him. At the same time, Justice Reynolds found in favor of Leonard Ross and Daniel Whipple,
Ross's Settlement contestants for sheriff and coroner, and against Bigelow C. Fenton and Joel Bacon, the Coles'
Grove contestants.
Excepting from the certifications of Justice Reynolds, John Shaw filed actions in the circuit court accusing the
Ross's Settlement officials of usurpation of office. At a circuit court "begun and holden at Colesgrove in
and for the County of Pike, on Monday the seventh day of October, one thousand eight hundred and twenty-two, Present
the Hon. John Reynolds, Judge," we find David Blackwell, Esq., deputed by the Attorney General and admitted
by the Court to prosecute introducing motions on behalf of the then attorney general of the state, the Honorable
Samuel D. Lockwood, against the sitting county commissioners, which motion appears in the following words:
"On the motion of Samuel D. Lockwood, Esqr., Attorney General of the State of Illinois, founded on the affidavits
of John Shaw and Ebenezer Smith, it is ordered and ruled that David Dutton, Ossian M. Ross and James M. Seeley,
be and appear here in court, on Tuesday morning of the present term and show cause, if any they can, why an information
in nature of a Quo Warranto shall not be filed and exhibited against them for usurping the offices of county commissioners
of Pike county ever since the second day of September of the present year (1822)."
Similar motions were filed against Leonard Ross, founded on the affidavits of John Shaw, who avowed himself Relator,
and Bigelow C. Fenton, charging Ross with usurping the office of sheriff, and against Daniel Whipple, on the affidavits
of John Shaw and Joel Bacon, charging Whipple with usurping the office of coroner. These cases were all brought
as state cases and in the name of the people.
For an entire year, term after term, these cases occupied the attention of the court. At every session they were
ably argued, sometimes by Attorney General Samuel D. Lockwood in person, sometimes by some able assistant of the
Attorney General, and, on behalf of the defendants, by Alfred W. Caverly, the eloquent pioneer attorney from Green
county, who practiced much at the early Pike county bar.
On October 8, 1822, Justice Reynolds, after considering the evidence of the defendants showing cause why a writ
should not lie against them, citing commissions and certificates of election and satisfying the court as to their
respective oaths of office and sureties, held that the rule in each case be made absolute and the Attorney General
have leave to file an information in each case in the nature of a writ of Quo Warranto whereupon the Attorney General
filed such writ, and John Shaw, relator, entered into recognizance in the sum of $100 in each case to pay all costs
adjudged against him as a relator in the respective informations.
Each defendant was ordered by the court to file his plea with the clerk of the court by the first day of March
and the causes were continued to the next term of court which convened on May 1(1823) in the new seat of justice
at Atlas, at which term all the cases were continued until the following or October term, but on motion of Attorney
Caverly in behalf of the defendant commissioners, it was ordered that John Shaw, the relator, enter security for
costs previous to the first day of the next term or that the cause be dismissed and that he be served with an attested
copy of the rule.
At the October court term, 1823, in Atlas, the long drawn out contest over county offices is set down for final
hearing. Because of the issues involved, going, as they do, to the very heart of the county-seat contest, we may
well believe that this court term was an occasion to reckon time from in the Atlas settlement. Fortunately, from
a letter written by H. Starr (pioneer attorney at Coles' Grove and Atlas), preserved among the records of the Pike
County Old Settlers' Association, we are able to reproduce something of the atmosphere of that early court scene
at Atlas, as imparted by an eye and ear witness.
The day is Saturday, October 18, 1823. The weather is gusty and raw. A chill wind sweeps over the prairies and
whistles around the little log court house in Atlas. Within the log court room a cheerful fire blazes on the hearthstone.
The court room is crowded. The crowd overflows onto the prairies. A large one for those days, the crowd possibly
numbers a hundred settlers.
From Coles' Grove and the southern settlements have come John Shaw and his followers. From Atlas and the regions
to the north have come the partisans of the Atlas party. The clans of Shaw and the clans of Ross are met in Atlas
to await the verdict of the court. The puncheon floor in Rufus Brown's tavern resounds with the tread of many feet.
On the bench in the log court room with its split log seats sits the Honorable John Reynolds, justice of the supreme
court, later to be elected governor of the state. Before him at the bar are the brightest legal lights of the time,
eminent attorneys from Pike and Greene and Morgan and Sangamon and Fulton and Madison counties. James Turney, attorney
general of the state, is there, prosecuting the cases in the name of the people against the Atlas office-holders,
charged by John Shaw with having usurped their offices for more than a year. Present also is Alfred W. Caverly,
representing the defendant commissioners and the defendants Ross and Whipple. Caverly is described by an early
historian as a "smooth and pretty talker." He died at Ottawa in the late ‘seventies, at a very advanced
age.
At length, coming from the clerk's office, a log building nearby, appears James W. Whitney (My Lord Coke), clerk
of the court, with his record book under his arm, his "odd dress and hair pulled to the back of his head and
tied with a buckskin thong making him the observed of all," according to Attorney Starr, the observer of the
scene. And we may well suppose that when Lord Coke arrived in the little court room, Belus Jones, another early
day court character, was not far behind, for Belus, in early days, according to the historian Grimshaw, was to
My Lord Coke as a bobtail to a kite, it being a common saying at court time: "No court till Coke and Belus
come."
The three cases against the acting county officers are called in turn. My Lord Coke's records of the day, entered
in his peculiar hand and style, are a jumble of legal terms and phraseology. Each is a case brought in the name
of the people by John Shaw, relator, on information in the nature of Quo Warranto, the plaintiffs appearing by
the Attorney General filing their replications, the defendants by their counsel filing their demurrers to the replications,
the plaintiffs thereupon joining in the demurrers, whereupon arguments are heard by the court upon both sides relating
to the said demurrers and the court considers the same and is of the opinion that the demurrers be sustained and
leave is given plaintiffs to amend their replications. The plaintiffs then file their amended replications, the
defendants file their special demurrers thereto and the plaintiffs file their rejoinders in the demurrers, arguments
are heard and the court overrules the demurrers, to which opinion the defendants except. Then the defendants file
a rejoinder, to which rejoinder the plaintiffs and the defendants join in the demurrer, and thereupon the matters
of law involved in the demurrers are "solemnly argued," the arguments pro and con being based upon the
election returns of August 5, 1822, and the setting up by the electors of a polling place in the Coles' Grove precinct
without the jurisdiction of the regularly constituted election judges, the facts at issue being identical with
those involved in the astounding Shaw-Hansen contest in the state legislature, which have heretofore been related
in detail.
And now, Justice Reynolds, who has twice before handed down decisions in these election cases and once before reversed
himself, considers the evidence and the arguments of opposing counsel and hands down a decision against reversing
himself and fanning into life the smoldering embers of county-seat war. Following is the opinion of the Justice.
"It is the opinion of this Court that law is in favor of the Plaintiffs: therefore it is considered by the
Court that the said demurrer be sustained; and for want of a sufficient rejoinder in this behalf it is considered
by the Court that the said defendants are not the County Commissioners of Pike County, and it is also considered
by the Court that Ebenezer Smith, James Nixon and William Metz are the legal County Commissioners of the said County
of Pike; and it is considered by the Court that the defendants pay the costs of this prosecution."
In the cases against Leonard Ross and Daniel Whipple, Justice Reynolds reaches an opposite conclusion, for reasons
not readily apparent from the record but seemingly due to an agreement entered of record in these two cases that
had more far-reaching implications than John Shaw, the relator, suspected. Justice Reynolds, citing the stipulations
of this agreement, held as follows:
"Therefore it is considered and adjudged by the Court that the aforesaid Leonard Ross is the legal sheriff
of Pike county; and the aforesaid Daniel Whipple is the coroner of said county; and it is further adjudged by the
Court that the Relator, John Shaw, pay the costs in these cases against Leonard Ross, and the Relator and Joel
Bacon, in the case against Daniel Whipple, pay the costs in suit and that the Plaintiffs have execution therefor."
Shaw appealed from the judgment of the Court but was unsuccessful, Ross continuing uninterruptedly as sheriff of
the county until 1827, when he was succeeded briefly by Levi Hadley, being then re-elected and serving until 1829;
Whipple was unsucceeded as coroner until 1832.
The Atlas commissioners, thus ousted after having sat as the legally elected commissioners for a full year, immediately
prayed an appeal, which was granted, and with Leonard Ross and William Ross as sureties, entered into bond in the
sum of $100, the securities being jointly and severally approved by the Court. The Atlas commissioners, however,
were never to sit again as legal representatives of the county of Pike, they having held their last term of Court
in September preceding their unseating by Justice Reynolds. The new capital at Atlas was now definitely in the
hands of its enemies, John Shaw and the partisan commissioners of Coles' Grove.