EARLY PIKE COUNTY elections were exciting affairs, almost as exciting as a war. They were invariably bitter and
acrimonious. No quarter was asked or given. The honorable William A. Grimshaw, 1876 historian, speaking of these
early elections, has this to say:
"The wars of the roses were almost fought over. Towns and voters were scarce as at old Tarum in England, but
votes counted; so when the Ross family and the Atlas party were candidates there was a lively time, electioneering
from the mouth of the Illinois river all the way to Galena, in the present county of Jo Daviess, that being as
lively a place and as populous as any in the state, and a precinct of Pike county. Think of sending to rally voters
300 miles and then to send again and almost fight to get returns of elections! Such were the trials of candidates
in an early day."
"Fancy poll books," continues Grimshaw, "were made in those earlier days, with fictitious names
thereon, to defeat the Ross party."
So, in the election of 1824, we find a miniature "war of the roses" raging throughout Pike county. The
slavery issue has touched off the elemental passions in men. In the eighteen months' campaign preceding the election,
the smoldering embers of county-seat war are again kindled and fanned into blistering flame. Of all the elections
that have taken place on Pike county soil, by far the most exciting was that of 1824, to which period we have now
come in a recital of the county-seat adventures.
In the election of 1824, the campaign ground is again the great county as it was in its original vastness. From
the juncture of the rivers to the Wisconsin and Indiana lines and the shores of Lake Michigan, the campaign is
carried in all its relentless fury. Once more John Shaw is arrayed against Nicholas Hansen for the Pike seat in
the legislature, just as in the memorable election of 1822, out of which grew the famous Shaw-Hansen contest in
the legislature. Now both Pike and Fulton counties, the latter of which had been cut off from Pike in 1823, have
been made a single legislative district and all this great territory is voting in the Shaw-Hansen contest for the
fourth legislature which is to sit in 1824-26.
Once more in Pike county many of the old antagonists who have fought each other from the beginning of the county's
history are locked in a finish fight. Hansen is against Shaw in the legislative battle, and again the permanent
location of the county seat is the issue in that struggle. Leonard Ross is again pitted against his old antagonist,
Rigdon C. Fenton, the Shaw candidate for sheriff. Joel Bacon is once more the Shaw candidate for coroner, and is
opposed by John G. Curtiss, the Ross candidate. Ebenezer Smith and James Nixon are again on the Shaw ticket for
county commissioners, and James M. Seeley, their old antagonist, is once more on the other side. Shaw has picked
Thomas McKee for the third commissioner and the Atlas party has put forward two new partisans in the persons of
Levi Hadley and Zepheniah Ames, along with Seeley.
Throughout the wilds of Pike and Fulton the campaign is waged fiercely for the legislature, and to every cabin
settlement in Pike the battle for county offices is carried. Even to Fever River (now Galena) in the northwestern
corner of the state, 300 miles by trail from Atlas, the county candidates go electioneering. The Fever River settlement
occupied the northwestern corner of what is now Jo Daviess county (that portion west of the Fourth principal meridian)
and was remote from the rest of Pike county, the closest Pike county point to the south being 75 miles distant,
at Fort Armstrong, near the modern Rock Island.
In this election, perhaps more than in any other of record, the "fancy poll books" referred to by Grimshaw
were used to defeat the Atlas party. High-handed procedure on the part of public officials prevailed to an almost
unbelievable extent, and acts were perpetrated, even by election officials, and certifications made commissions
issued, that to this day are inexplicable in the light of the official abstracts of the vote. For instance, the
abstracts of the official returns from Pike county in the election of 1824, on file in the office of the secretary
of state at Springfield, and dug up out of the archives for the purposes of this article, show a set of officers
elected, certified and commissioned entirely different than those who actually served subsequent to this election.
Officials at Springfield are unable to account for the discrepancy existing between the official and the actual
record. The discrepancy, due apparently to an almost unbelievable act of retribution on the part of the Coles'
Grove party, against the Atlas party, will be explained in due course.
In Pike county, as in all parts of the state in the campaign of 1824, the slavery issue seared the souls of men.
From the backwoods pulpit, from the pioneer press, from the resounding stump, the partisans of slavery and the
champions of freedom thundered their opposing views. Pike county, prior to this campaign, which began in February,
1823, and lasted for 18 months, had been prone to look upon slavery with a degree of tolerance. The early settlers
were essentially anti-slave, but there had now grown up a feeling that the settlement of this region was being
retarded because of so many worthy emigrants from the slave states of Virginia and Kentucky passing through the
Illinois country to settle in Missouri where slavery existed.
In the courthouse yard at Atlas, in Rufus Brown's tavern, in John Shaw's store, at backwoods meetings, in the pioneer
cabins, under sheds where men awaited their turn at the early grist mills, wherever men gathered, the slavery issue
was the absorbing topic, and debate was bitter.
Justice John Reynolds, sitting in the Pike county courts of the period and representing clients in those courts
even after he quit the bench, was in the midst of the struggle, and what he had to say years later in his history,
"My Own Times," re-published by the Chicago Historical Society in 1879, is worthy of consideration here,
reflecting as it does his own observations of that exciting conflict.
Says Reynolds, relative to the period in question:
"The Missouri question, so called at that day, 1823, more of a political character than the public lands,
agitated little Illinois to the very center. The state had then not more than fifty thousand inhabitants, but the
subject of slavery was discussed in the courtyards, sometimes in the pulpits, and at all gatherings of the people,
as well as in the presses and on the stump throughout the state. In the elections that year, this question was
the prominent element. At that day, there was no question of Democracy or Whiggery. John McLean, the member then
in Congress, voted on the Missouri side of the question, which beat him at the election. Daniel P. Cook took the
other side and was elected.
"The discussion of the subject was bitter and acrimonious. The subject has always engendered bitter feeling
among the people, and has a tendency to array one section against the other. The people in Illinois in 1820 were
ready almost to commit violence on one another, and in fact the whole Union was so agitated that, like an earthquake,
no one knew when it would subside, and all friends of the integrity of the Union were alarmed and shuddered at
the fearful consequences of the agitation, and the sectional feelings produced on the occasion."
Thus, John Reynolds, writing years after this momentous struggle, reveals that even then the friends of the Union
realized that the future of that Union was at stake in the terrific joining of forces in Illinois, the ultimate
outcome of which had been determined to no small extent by Nicholas Hansen, the representative from Pike, sent
to the legislature as a result of the county-seat contest in the new county. Nicholas Hansen's vote against the
convention and slavery, in the first instance, and the furor that arose throughout the state over his unjust unseating,
in the second instance, made this Pike county representative two times an important determining factor in the slavery
issue.
George W. Smith, in his history, states that in the campaign of 1823-24 "the press of the south, as well as
the papers of St. Louis, which had a considerable circulation in Illinois at that time, ably supported the convention
(undoubtedly proposed by the slave men for the purpose of amending the 1818 constitution to permit slavery in the
state)." This historian states also that Henry Biddle, Roberts Vaux and other wealthy Quakers in Philadelphia,
aided the anti-conventionists principally with literature.
Into Pike county during this campaign came the greatest leaders of the day, slave and anti-slave, to address pioneer
gatherings and set up organizations for and against slavery. It is proper and interesting to look back and see
how some of the prominent men of that day, most closely associated with Pike county and best known among its pioneers,
stood in this great crisis of state and national history. On the side of slavery were some of the most brilliant
men of early times, among them the following:
Elias Kent Kane, early settler in the original county and one of the ablest men of his day, a graduate of Yale
and a brilliant lawyer, a member of the first constitutional convention and first Secretary of State under the
first Governor, Shadrack Bond, a United States Senator and a U. S. Territorial Judge before the state's admission,
and a member of the family to which belonged the celebrated Elisha Kent Kane of Arctic renown. Kane managed and
controlled the Republican Advocate, a pro-convention newspaper, during the campaign.
Thomas Reynolds, for a time Chief Justice of the Supreme bench of the state and afterwards Governor of Missouri.
He occupied the bench at the first term of the circuit court at Atlas, in May, 1823. He was a strong advocate of
slavery and assisted Kane in the management of the pro-slavery Republican Advocate.
Shadrack Bond, first Governor of the state, well known in Pike county but not popular with the Pike voters, receiving
only 12 votes in the county in the 1824 election for Congress, as against 176 for his opponent, Daniel Pope Cook.
Chief Justice Phillips, a pro-slave candidate against Edward Coles in the 1822 election, receiving 10 votes in
the certified Pike returns as against 89 for Coles.
John McLean of Shawneetown, who campaigned in Pike, a fine orator, a member of the General Assembly and a member
of Congress from Illinois, and, in 1824, elected U. S. Senator to succeed Ninian Edwards.
Jesse B. Thomas, a campaigner in the county, prominent in the early Pike courts, a Territorial Judge before the
state's admission, and early Illinois Senator.
John Reynolds, an early Supreme Court justice and a familiar figure in the log courtrooms at Coles' Grove and Atlas,
a member of the state legislature, a member of Congress, and fourth Governor of the state.
William Kinney, a Baptist preacher, politician, an excellent public speaker and a member of the state legislature.
An early writer notes his visit to Pike county in the 1823-24 campaign.
Among the foremost opponents of slavery whose influence was felt in Pike county in the memorable campaign were
the following:
Edward Cole, then Governor of the state, popular in Pike county and for whom Coles' Grove had been named. Coles
is not known to have visited Pike in this campaign, but his influence in the county was great.
Morris Birbeck, an intimate friend of Coles, referred to in an early writing as having visited Atlas in 1823 and
it is assumed that he was there to confer with the Rosses in the anti-slavery campaign. He was an intelligent and
well- educated Wiltshire Englishman whom Coles met when traveling through England and who had become interested
in the Illinois country from Coles' description thereof. He brought to Illinois a colony of English settlers who
established themselves at or near Albion. He was not a public speaker but was an able, controversial writer and
in the Illinois Gazette assailed slavery with able and convincing arguments. He was one of the foremost champions
of human freedom in the state.
Daniel Pope Cook, son-in-law of Ninian Edwards, a powerful and eloquent champion of freedom who fulminated from
the Pike county stump in 1824. He it was who defended the Indians, Pemesan and Shonwennekek, charged with murder
at the first term of circuit court held in Pike county in October, 1821, being appointed as defense counsel by
Justice John Reynolds who was then on the bench. Cook, in the Illinois Intelligencer, of which he was part owner,
thundered against slavery in this campaign.
David Blackwell, who practiced at the early Pike county bar at Coles' Grove and Atlas, was a member of the state
legislature, secretary of state in 1823, and during the slavery campaign, assumed charge of the Intelligencer while
it was advocating the convention and made it anti-convention.
Samuel D. Lockwood of Jacksonville, a frequent practitioner in the Pike courts, attorney general of the state in
1821, and a loyal supporter of Gov. Coles and his policies, vigorously assailed slavery in the Pike county campaign.
He was later on the supreme bench of the state.
John M. Peck, a Baptist clergyman along missionary lines, checkmated the Baptist preacher Kinney, being a strong
anti-slavery advocate who settled at Rock Springs, near Belleville, in 1820, and who during the 1823-24 campaign,
organized an anti-convention society in St. Clair county, after which similar organizations were patterned in other
counties.
Hooper Warren, editor of the Spectator at Vandalia, and George Churchill, contributor of anti-slavery articles
to his paper, were both bitter opponents of the convention and slavery.
Jonathan H. Pugh of Bond county, another who practiced at the early Pike county bar, was an able assailant of slavery.
William H. Brown, part owner of the Intelligencer during the unseating of Nicholas Hansen, wrote a critical editorial
and gave a detailed account of that high-handed action in the next issue of his paper following the occurrence,
whereupon the pro-slavery legislature to punish Brown, gave the contract for public printing to his partners, William
Berry and Robert Blackwell, which compelled Brown to surrender his partnership to Blackwell and Berry, and Robert
Blackwell made the paper pro-convention for a year, until Governor Coles and his anti- convention friends purchased
it and placed David Blackwell, brother of Robert, in charge, whereupon the paper became anti-convention. The public
printing was often practically the sole source of revenue for a newspaper, and it was thus held as a club over
the editor's head by unscrupulous politicians.
As we have already seen, Illinois, at the time the convention resolution was being considered by the legislature
in February, 1823, was strongly pro-slavery in sentiment. The legislature was nearly, if not quite, two-thirds
pro- slavery, as shown by the voting in both houses on the convention resolution. Nicholas Hansen, switching his
vote to the anti-slavery side on February 11, 1823, had defeated the convention resolution which required a two-thirds
vote in each house. He had previously, pursuant to a county-seat compact, voted with the pro-slave crowd for Judge
Jesse B. Thomas, the pro-slave candidate for the U. S. Senate. Had he voted with the pro-slave majority on the
convention resolution, giving the resolution the necessary two-thirds majority, Illinois doubtless would have joined
the slave states in the Union line-up. For up to that time, sentiment in Illinois was distinctly pro-slave.
Followed the diabolical ousting of Hansen and seating of the opponent, Shaw, an act so shameless that even the
more even-tempered slavery advocates were shocked thereby. Immediately, the ruthless unseating of Hansen became
an issue throughout the state. Pro-slavery sentiment in Illinois began to waver. The unseating of Hansen and the
seating of Shaw by the slavery crowd in order to carry the convention resolution was condemned from press, pulpit
and stump. The names of Hansen and Shaw echoed and re-echoed from one end of the state to the other. People were
aroused by the indefensible act of the slavery majority in the General Assembly. Around the Hansen-Shaw contest,
the campaign for and against slavery was fought with unstinted fury.
In Pike county, the home of both Hansen and Shaw, the contest developed a bitterness almost unbelievable. Acts
almost as shocking as the Hansen-Shaw affair itself, were resorted to by the opposing factions. For years, even
up to 1830, the unlawful efforts to control the Pike county election of 1824 were reflected in the criminal annals
of the county. Every judge in every election precinct in Pike county became a defendant in actions brought in the
name of the people. Candidates of the opposing factions for the county offices contested the election returns,
public officials suffered indictment, special elections were held to decide disputes that could not otherwise be
adjudicated, and even then some of the accepted results of the bitter contest are beyond present understanding.
It was charged in the campaign that the pro-slave majority in the legislature had first seated Hansen in order
to get his vote for Judge Thomas for the U. S. Senate, and that they unseated Hansen and seated Shaw to get the
latter's vote for the convention resolution, regardless of the equities involved. Governor Thomas Ford made the
following statement relative to this affair:
"Hansen would vote for Thomas, but Shaw would not; Shaw would vote for the convention, but Hansen would not.
The slavery party had use for both of them and determined to use one after the other. For this purpose they decided
in favor of Hansen, admitted him to a seat, and with his vote elected their United States Senator; and then toward
the close of the session, by mere brute force and in the most barefaced manner, they reconsidered their former
vote, turned Hansen out of his seat, and decided in favor of Shaw, and with his vote carried their resolution calling
for a new convention."
The pioneer newspapers took up the fight of these great opponents and the greatest controversial writers of the
day, slave and anti-slave, hurled charges and counter-charges at each other, and from stump and pulpit friends
of freedom shouted anathemas against slavery. Papers in other sections of the Union took sides for and against
the convention, because the issue of slavery was involved.
On February 15, 1823, three days after the unseating of Hansen, the pro-convention crowd at Vandalia had appointed
a committee to prepare an address to the people, giving the reasons for a new convention, among which reasons the
question of slavery was wholly ignored. A few days later, the anti-conventionists met and adopted an address in
which they charged that the main object of the conventionists was to establish and retain slavery.
Governor Edward F. Dunne, commenting in his Illinois history on the situation, says:
"Before the ousting of Hansen and passage of the convention resolution, the sentiment for slavery was largely
preponderant. Immediately, that sentiment began to lose ground. The high-handed, arbitrary and unfair methods pursued
by the House in evicting Hansen ans securing thereby a two-thirds vote for the convention, disgusted many fair-minded
citizens who had been tolerant of slavery."
The slave forces never admitted during the campaign that their purpose was to amend the constitution to perpetuate
slavery in the state. The masks were stripped from the conventionists, however, by the able anti- conventionists
of the day, and the slave men became objects of widespread suspicion. As Governor Dunne says: "A masked movement
in political life is feared as much as a masked man is dreaded in private life."
The following impassioned appeal, framed by fifteen of the eighteen legislators who voted against the convention,
reverberated from the Pike county stump.
"Consider the spectacle that would be presented to the civilized world if the people of Illinois, innocent
of this great national sin, and in the full enjoyment of the blessings of free government, sitting down in solemn
convention to deliberate and determine whether they should introduce among them a portion of their fellow-beings,
to be cut off from those blessings, to be loaded with chains of bondage and unable to leave any other legacy to
their posterity than the inheritance of their own bondage. The wise and the good of all nations would blush at
our political depravity."
Thus, in 1823-24, the Pike county settlers weigh and consider all the arguments that are heard years later upon
the slavery issue preceding and during the Civil war. Thus, 35 years before the Lincoln-Douglas debates, we find
the moral issues of the slavery question pounding at the hearts and consciences of our early citizens.
Now we have the background for the great battlefield on which the campaign of 1823-24 is fought. Meanwhile at Atlas
where the pro-Shaw Commissioners' Court has held that Coles' Grove is still the temporary seat of government, the
commissioners are meeting in special sessions prior to the election and adopting measures to the advantage of the
Shaw party and against the Ross party, and entered into what appears to be an astounding compact to foreclose the
election and insure the certification of the Shaw candidates, regardless of the election returns.