VALUABLE INDEED are the records that have been bequeathed to us by that delightful recorder of the olden times.
James W. (My Lord Coke) Whitney, These tell the story of a pioneer people, of the rude beginning of a new civilization
here in the western wilds, of the savage battles for supremacy in a new world, of the development of political
and institutional progress, of an irresistible spirit that conquered countless difficulties, of a great county
erected in the Illinois wilderness, a county from which thirty-two full and six parts of counties have since been
carved, a county that, when these earliest records were indited, embraced a third of the state and within whose
borders in those early days occurred a vast play of human passions and elemental emotions upon a background as
colorful as that of some old romance.
The old county commissioners' books, kept by Whitney from the county's beginning up to 1825, are of great interest
as showing how pioneer society was organized, for in these were combined all the elements of political organization.
The commissioners licensed ferries, taverns and peddlers, fixed ferry rates and the price of meals, whiskey and
rum and the rates of lodging for man and beast at the early taverns, kept stray jens and registered cattle brands,
apprentices, "negro servants and free persons of color, " regulated fencing of fields, designated grist
and saw mill sites by writs of "ad quod damnum," appointed county officers, and acted as the first courts
of justice.
Whitney's record of the early commissioners' court at Coles' Grove and Atlas, truly regarded, is an account of
the life of the early settlers — their social, economic, political, religious, legal, constitutional and institutional
development. Any document which throws any light on any phase of the life of the people, which helps the historian
to reconstruct and narrate the past life of the community has historical value.
Considered in this light, Whitney's inditings are indeed priceless. These archives reveal the origin and development
of the agencies and functions of our local government. They abound in personal, family and economic data concerning
local inhabitants, many of whom achieved more than local prominence. They mirror the hard facts of early existence,
the life of the early people. They contain innumerable items on social, political, legal, moral and economic conditions
and help to portray and explain the course of local development
The Whitney archives are indispensable to the reconstruction of Pike county's past. By his pen was indited those
voluminous entries that tell the story of the early county-seat war. Documentary evidence such as this is the basis
of accurate historical composition. If it were not for Whitney's written records, there could be no reliable history
of the county's beginnings or the earliest life of its people. Without these, it would be impossible for Pike county
ever to have its intimate early history in any more complete or authentic form than the lore and tradition of an
Indian tribe.
The Honorable William A. Grimshaw, Pike county historian of 1876, lamented the lack of these earliest records of
the commissioners' courts, which he then believed to have been lost. Said he, in the course of his history: "The
earliest record book of the proceedings of the County Commissioners, prior to the June term, 1832, is lost. A fire
took place at Atlas which consumed some records and files of the Courts, and it is probable the aforesaid record
was then lost."
Fortunately, the record was not lost, at least not permanently. The precious record was among those saved from
the fire (which consumed the clerk's office building at Atlas in the winter of the deep snow 1830-31) by James
Ross and Col Benjamin Barney. The fire broke out in that end of the building which "Jimmy" Ross used
as a cabinet shop. It was discovered by Col. William Ross. The wind was high and the building burned quickly, consuming
many valuable court records about which the settlers, excepting Ross and Barney, apparently were not much concerned.
The log office building stood less than five rods from Col. Barney's log house, and he and Ross succeeded in saving
those early records which we have today and which have grown so valuable with the mounting years.
The doings of the early commissioners' court are recorded in a paperbound book that cost the county $3 in 1821
and would be worth not to exceed 50 cents today. The long-lost record book, recently resurrected, is now kept in
the office of Fred E. Sitton, circuit clerk of Pike county (1935). Time has taken toll of a dozen precious pages.
Pike county authorities should take measures for the preservation of these valuable Whitney archives, the last
word in completeness and authenticity as to that period in our history when Pike county embraced all that vast
region of Illinois north and west of the Illinois river and its southern tributary, the Kankakee.
Who was this James W. Whitney, and how came he to be known in the early community as "Lord Coke"?
James W. Whitney, next to John Shaw, was perhaps the most widely known character in this part of Illinois in the
earliest period of Pike county history. At the state capitals (Vandalia and Springfield) he was a noted character
where, during legislative sessions, he would convene the "third house" and reign the observed of all
as self- appointed "Speaker of the Lobby." An Easterner, it was believed that he had sought seclusion
in these western wilds because of a disappointment in an affair of the heart.
So far as known, there is but one man living in Pike county today (1935) who remembers My Lord Coke. He is Hile
Tippetts, residing in Pittsfield at the age of 82. William A. Grimshaw, who knew Whitney well, wrote thus of him
in 1876, sixteen years after Whitney's death:
"The Speaker of the Lobby, ‘who mixed reason with pleasure and wisdom with mirth,' James W. Whitney, was a
native of Massachusetts, a man of considerable early education, having some knowledge of Latin. He came to Illinois
before the organization of the State government, which took place in 1818. He resided at an early day at or near
Edwardsville, in Madison county, in this state. He was very taciturn when the subject of his own life was introduced;
some suppose he left memoirs thereof, if so, this writer has been unsuccessful in finding such. The earliest record
book of the Circuit Court of Pike county contains his handwriting and he was in 1821 Clerk of that Court; he wrote
a peculiar hand and if style of writing is an index he should have been an oddity; he was such in some respects.
"One at first sight would, in the earlier days of Pittsfield, have taken him to be a well-preserved preacher
or schoolmaster of the days of the earlier Adamses. His dress was plain to homeliness, not being very prosperous
and being indifferent in matters of that kind; his hair was sparse, was combed all to the back of his head and
tied often with a buckskin string or old black shoestring as a queue.
"He was a cosmopolite of Illinois (so to speak). His journeys were generally made, especially on the Military
Tract, on foot and alone; he had an extensive acquaintance, he put up where night found him, with a friend. Upon
such trips he was garrulous and carried the news, when newspapers were scarce. He lived often alone in a log cabin,
at times at the city of Quincy, and thereafter, in Pike county, in Pleasant Hill township (sharing at one time
the log home of Belus and Egbert Jones). He never had a large library, but bore the name of a learned man among
those little used to books.
"Whitney acquired from this reputation the name of ‘Lord Coke.' He was delighted to be so called, and he was
thus better known than by his proper name.
"When theaters and shows were rare, at the convening of the Illinois Legislature, all were agog, citizens,
judges and legislators, to witness the convening of "The Lobby." It was a great event. A great throng
would assemble and after some ceremony ‘Lord Coke' would mount the stand and call the house to order. He would
deliver his annual message, which would be received with cheers and laughter. Many hits and jokes were embodied
in the message. Sometimes the satire was very broad and Lord Coke hurt his standing with the Supreme Court by a
farcical account of that Court and leading members of the bar meeting to ‘exterminate the varmits' of the State.
"Lord Coke presided over the Lobby with magisterial sway, and when mock heroics moved the man he would be
a very important personage. The Lobby was organized by appointing subordinate officers and numerous committees;
the titles and functions of those committees would be of the most ludicrous character, and the members composing
the same of physical form, public standing, and personal bearing the most opposite of the position and character
as assigned on the committee.
"As an instance, Colonel Thomas Mather, President of the State Bank of Illinois, was a man short of stature,
but of great rotundity of person, quiet in demeanor; Judge Thomas Brown and Jesse Thomas, Jr. were fine, portly-looking
gentlemen. Such as these Lord Coke would announce, and that in print, as the most suitable members of a committee
on gymnastics and ground and lofty tumbling.
"At the meetings of the Lobby, which were frequent, sometimes nightly during the session of the Legislature,
in the earlier days of Illinois, reports of committees would be called for and were submitted. These would be in
accord with the burlesque titles of the committees; these reports were often written by Coke himself and there
was a broad personality in them rather Hudibrastic.
"At the sessions of the Lobby would be seen the prominent men of the State, including Judges, members of the
Legislature and of the Bar. When legislation assumed grave proportions, involving popular topics, as the ‘Illinois
Canal and Internal Improvements,' or "The Banks of the State,' you would see Murray McConnel, John J. Hardin,
Douglass (he then thus signed his name), Lincoln, Linder, Cavarly, and others on the floor taking part in debates
produced by resolutions offered in the Lobby. These would be ably conducted and with great spice of debate. Some
matters very prejudicial to the State were considered in a popular but not statesmanlike manner in this debating
society of the State."
The "Internal Improvement System of Illinois," which engulfed the state during the administration of
Governor Joseph Duncan in 1835 and which was the most stupendous, extravagant and ruinous grand system of internal
improvements that any civil community perhaps ever engaged in, had its origin in My Lord Coke's Lobby. The system
proposed in the Lobby and adopted by the Legislature was too lavish, indiscriminate and expensive for the times
and brought the state to the brink of repudiation but men, true and able, taking charge in that dark hour, preserved
the state's integrity.
From this it may be seen how far-reaching was the influence of the Lobby, conducted for many years by My Lord Coke
at the State Capital. The late Captain M. D. Massie of New Canton recalled having seen My Lord Coke presiding over
the Lobby at Springfield as late as 1856, when Bissell was governor, at which time with his odd dress and pompous
manner he was the observed of all.
Lord Coke never was a family man in Illinois. Grimshaw referred to common report of those times that there was
a hidden sorrow in this particular in Lord Coke's life before he came to the state. He was born in Independence
year, 1776, and was 45 when he began clerking the early Pike county courts.
At the bar, according to Grimshaw, Whitney was not successful. There was a want of practical, everyday sense and
his law was often obsolete. As a teacher, he was more pompous than practical. He taught the second school in the
county, in the log court house at Atlas, in 1823. He died December 13, 1860 at the age of 84, and, quoting Grimshaw,
"passed away less noticed in his demise than many men of less note."
Pike county, in later years strongly pro-Jackson, was overwhelmingly for John Quincy Adams in the four-cornered
presidential contest of 1824. The election for an elector of president and vice-president was held on November
1, 1824, three months after the election that into three districts, each with its set of electoral candidates representing
the respective candidates for president. The presidential candidates were John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Henry
Clay and William H. Crawford. Pike county, included in the first district, cast 193 votes (97 per cent of its entire
vote) for the Adams elector, William Harrison, John W. Scott, the Jackson elector, received 6 votes in Pike. James
W. Turney, the early attorney general of the state, running as elector for "either Jackson or Clay,"
but believed to be for Crawford, received 1 vote. John Todd, the Clay elector, failed to get a vote in Pike county.
No one of the presidential candidates received a majority of the electoral votes, and the election of president
was thrown into the House of Representatives, where it befell that the election was so balanced as to turn on the
vote of the popular Daniel Pope Cook. We have seen Cook defending the two Indians, Pemesan and Shanwennekek, arraigned
for murder at the first term of circuit court at Coles' Grove in October, 1821, and stumping the county in the
slavery campaign of 1824. Cook, the election in his hand, cast the vote of Illinois for Adams, and then came home
to face the wrath of the Jackson party in the state. Although Cook voted for Adams, for whom Pike cast 97 per cent
of its vote, he was deserted by Pike when he came up again for election to the House in 1826. The county then voted
overwhelmingly for Cook's opponent, Joseph Duncan, who, then a Democrat, was later in 1834 elected by the Whigs
as governor.
It is fitting, before concluding the story of Pike county's part in the outcome of the slavery election of 1824,
to note the results of that election upon the fortunes of two of the ablest exponents of human freedom whose lives
have been touched upon in this history. Governor Edward Coles, who gave his name to Coles' Grove, and the Governor's
intimate friend, Morris Birkbeck, friend also of the Rosses and a connection of the mother of the Boothby sisters
of Pittsfield, did more than any other two men in the state to prevent it from becoming tainted with the curse
of slavery. To both of these great champions of freedom, fate was indeed unkind.
Governor Coles, harassed by a pro-slave legislature that unseated Hansen and seated Shaw, was thwarted by the slave
party in almost every move he made. His nominations to office were all rejected by the pro-slave Senate. His recommendations
to the legislature were ignored. As candidate for the U. S. Senate he was defeated, the legislature electing Elias
Kent Kane. He was sued by the state for the recovery of $200 for each of the slaves whom he brought from Virginia
to Illinois and whom, as noted in an earlier chapter, he released from their bondage on his journey down the Ohio
river, giving each a written certificate of freedom before landing on the soil of Illinois. The state, at the instance
of the pro-slave party, sought to recover from Coles for each slave so released for whom he had not posted a $200
bond for the freed slave's good behavior. The state actually recovered against Coles a judgment for $2,000, which
hung over his head for some years. To add to his misfortunes, the building and improvements on his farm near Edwardsville
were destroyed by incendiary fire. Leaving Illinois, he settled in Philadelphia in 1833, and died in 1868.
Morris Birkbeck, an intelligent and earnest English immigrant and one of the most brilliant writers of that great
controversial period of which we have written, had come to Illinois as the result of a chance meeting with Edward
Coles, when the latter was traveling through England. Birkbeck was then farming in Wiltshire, near Oxford. Coles,
who had been in Illinois in 1818, told Birkbeck of the great fertility of the western lands and of his belief in
a splendid future for this yet undeveloped country. Birkbeck, impressed by Coles' description, came to America
and saw for himself. Hastening back to England, he organized a colony of English farmers and returned to America.
With George Flower, another highly intelligent Englishman, he settled some 300 English immigrant families near
Albion, in Edwards county.
Birkbeck, abhorring human slavery, believed that slavery was forever barred from this state by the Ordinance of
1787. When slavery threatened in 1822-24, he joined with Coles and became one of its foremost assailants. His brilliant
fulminations against slavery appeared in the Illinois Gazette, edited by Henry Eddy in Shawneetown. Birkbeck was
a brilliant conversationalist as well as writer but appears not to have been a public speaker.
Birkbeck shared the fate of Coles. Nominated by Coles for secretary of state, he served as such for part of the
year 1824, his nomination being rejected by the pro-slave Senate. His farming ventures in the new state yielded
but poor returns; he lost many friends; he was charged by the slave crowd with being an infidel; he was hanged
in effigy and forced to flee for his life and was drowned while crossing a river.
"The misfortunes suffered by these two able, upright and courageous men," says former Governor Dunne,
"offers but another instance of the proverbial ‘ingratitude of republics.' Well might Governor Coles have
cried in the words of Cardinal Woolsey: ‘Had I but served my God with half the zeal I served my State. He would
not in mine age have left me naked to mine enemies."
And now we turn again to the state capital at Vandalia where John Shaw is making his last stand in his long warfare
with the Rosses, a stand which, taken as direct consequence of the county seat rivalry, is destined early in 1825
to change the entire future of Pike county and bring about a new phase in the organic development of this section
of the state.