The Life of Lyman Trumbull

Charles Dickens was then making his first visit to the United States, and he happened to pass through Belleville while making an excursion from St. Louis to Looking Glass Prairie. His party had arranged beforehand for a noonday meal at Belleville, of which place, as it presented itself to the eye of a stranger in 1842, he gives the following glimpse:

Belleville was a small collection of wooden houses huddled together in the very heart of the bush and swamp. Many of them had singularly bright doors of red and yellow, for the place had lately been visited by a traveling painter "who got along," as I was told, "by eating his way." The criminal court was sitting and was at that moment trying some criminals for horse-stealing, with whom it would most likely go hard; for live stock of all kinds, being necessarily much exposed in the woods, is held by the community in rather higher value than human life; and for this reason juries generally make a point of finding all men indicted for cattle-stealing, guilty, whether or no. The horses belonging to the bar, the judge and witnesses, were tied to temporary racks set roughly in the road, by which is to be understood a forest path nearly knee-deep in mud and slime.

There was an hotel in this place which, like all hotels in America, had its large dining-room for a public table. It was an odd, shambling, low-roofed outhouse, half cow-shed and half kitchen, with a coarse brown canvas tablecloth, and tin sconces stuck against the walls, to hold candles at supper-time. The horseman had gone forward to have coffee and some eatables prepared and they were by this time nearly ready. He had ordered "wheat bread and chicken fixings" in preference to "corn bread and common doings." The latter kind of refection includes only pork and bacon. The former comprehends broiled ham, sausages, veal cutlets, steaks, and such other viands of that nature as may be supposed by a tolerably wide poetical construction "to fix" a chicken comfortably in the digestive organs of any lady or gentleman.11

A few months later, Trumbull made another journey to Springfield to be joined in marriage to Miss Julia M. Jayne, a daughter of Dr. Gershom Jayne, a physician of that city—a young lady who had received her education at Monticello Seminary, with whom he passed twenty-five years of unalloyed happiness. The marriage took place on the 21st of June, 1843, and Norman B. Judd served as groomsman. Miss Jayne had served in the capacity of bridesmaid to Mary Todd at her marriage to Abraham Lincoln on the 4th of November preceding. There was a wedding journey to Trumbull's old home in Connecticut, by steamboat from St. Louis to Wheeling, Virginia, by stage over the mountains to Cumberland, Maryland, and thence by rail via Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. After visiting his own family, a journey was made to Mrs. Trumbull's relatives at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, including her great-grandfather, a marvel of industry and longevity, ninety-two years of age, a cooper by trade, who was still making barrels with his own hands. This fact is mentioned in a letter from Trumbull to his father, dated Barry, Michigan, August 20, 1843, at which place he had stopped on his homeward journey to visit his brothers. One page of this letter is given up to glowing accounts of the infant children of these brothers. And here it is fitting to say that all these faded and time-stained epistles to his father and his brothers and sisters, from first to last, are marked by tender consideration and unvarying love and generosity. Not a shadow passed between them.

The return journey from Michigan to Belleville was made by stage-coach. October 12, 1843, Mrs. Trumbull writes to her husband's sisters in Colchester that she has arrived in her new home. "We are boarding in a private family," she says, "have two rooms which Mrs. Blackwell, the landlady, has furnished neatly, and for my part, I am anticipating a very delightful winter. Lyman is now at court, which keeps him very much engaged, and I am left to enjoy myself as best I may until G. comes around this afternoon to play chess with me."

May 4, 1844, the first child was born to Lyman and Julia Trumbull, a son, who took the name of his father, but died in infancy. July 2, 1844, Trumbull writes to his father that the most disastrous flood ever known, since the settlement of the country by the whites, has devastated the bottom lands of the Mississippi, Missouri, and Illinois Rivers. He also gives an account of the killing of Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet, who was murdered by a mob in the jail at Carthage, Hancock County, after he had surrendered himself to the civil authorities on promise of a fair trial and protection against violence; and says that he has rented a house which he shall occupy soon, and invites his sister Julia to come to Belleville and make her home in his family.

In 1845, Benjamin Trumbull, Sr., sold his place in Colchester and removed with his two daughters to Henrietta, Michigan, where three of his sons were already settled as farmers. It appears from letters that passed between the families that none of the brothers in Michigan kept horses, the farm work being done by oxen exclusively. The nearest church was in the town of Jackson, but the sisters were not able to attend the services for want of a conveyance. They were prevented by the same difficulty from forming acquaintances in their new habitat. In a letter to his father, dated October 26, Trumbull delicately alludes to the defect in the housekeeping arrangements in Michigan, and says that anything needed to make his father and sisters comfortable and contented, that he can supply, will never be withheld. His brother George writes a few days later offering a contribution of fifty dollars to buy a horse, saying that good ones can be bought in Illinois at that price. George adds: "Our papers say considerable about running Lyman for governor. No time is fixed for the convention yet, and I don't think he has made up his mind whether to be a candidate or not."

The greatest drawback of the Trumbull family at this time, and, indeed, of all the inhabitants roundabout, was sickness. Almost every letter opened tells either of a recovery from a fever, or of sufferings during a recent one, or apprehensions of a new one and from these harassing visitations no one was exempt. In a letter of October 26 we read:

We have all been sick this fall and this whole region of country has been more sickly than ever before known. George and myself both had attacks of bilious fever early in September which lasted about ten days. Since then Julia has had two attacks, the last of which was quite severe and confined her to the room nearly two weeks. I also have had a severe attack about three weeks since, but it was slight. When I was sick we sent over to St. Louis for Dr. Tiffany, and by some means the news of our sending there, accompanied by a report that I was much worse than was really the case, reached Springfield, and Dr. and Mrs. Jayne came down post haste in about a day and a half. When they got here, I was downstairs. They only staid overnight and started back the next morning. They had heard that I was not expected to live.

In February, 1846, when Trumbull was in his thirty-third year, his friends presented his name to the Democratic State Convention for the office of governor of the state. A letter to his father gives the details of the balloting in the convention. Six candidates were voted for. On the first ballot he received 56 votes; the next highest candidate, Augustus C. French, had 47; and the third, John Calhoun, had 44. The historian, John Moses, says that "the choice, in accordance with a line of precedents which seemed almost to indicate a settled policy, fell upon him who had achieved least prominence as a party leader, and whose record had been least conspicuous—Augustus C. French."

A letter from Trumbull to his father says that his defeat was due to the influence of Governor Ford, whose first choice was Calhoun, but who turned his following over to French in order to defeat Trumbull. French was elected, and made a respectable governor. Calhoun subsequently went, in an official capacity, to Kansas, where he became noted as the chief ballot-box stuffer of the pro-slavery party in the exciting events of 1856-58.

A letter from Mrs. Trumbull to her father-in-law, May 4, 1846, mentions the birth of a second son (Walter), then two and a half months old. It informs him also that her husband has been nominated for Congress by the Democrats of the First District, the vote in the convention being, Lyman Trumbull, 24; John Dougherty, 5; Robert Smith, 8. The political issues in this campaign are obscure, but the result of the election was again adverse. The supporters of Robert Smith nominated him as a bolting candidate; the Whigs made no nomination, but supported Smith, who was elected.

A letter written by Mrs. Trumbull at Springfield, December 16, 1846, mentions the first election of Stephen A. Douglas as United States Senator. "A party is to be given in his name," she says, "at the State House on Friday evening under the direction of Messrs. Webster and Hickox. The tickets come in beautiful envelopes, and I understand that Douglas has authorized the gentlemen to expend $50 in music, and directed the most splendid entertainment that was ever prepared in Springfield."

A letter to Benjamin Trumbull, Sr., from his son of the same name, who was cultivating a small farm near Springfield, gives another glimpse of the family health record, saying that "both Lyman and George have had chills and fever two or three days this spring"; also, that "Lyman's child was feeble in consequence of the same malady; and that he [Benjamin] has been sick so much of the time that he could not do his Spring planting without hired help, for which Lyman had generously contributed $20, and offered more."

May 13, 1847, Trumbull writes to his father that he intends to go with his family and make the latter a visit for the purpose of seeing the members of the family in Michigan; also in the hope of escaping the periodical sickness which has afflicted himself and wife and little boy, and almost every one in Belleville, during several seasons past. As this periodical sickness was chills and fever, we may assume that it was due to the prevalence of mosquitoes, of the variety anopheles. Half a century was still to pass ere medical science made this discovery, and delivered civilized society from the scourge called "malaria."

The journey to Michigan was made. An account (dated Springfield, August 1, 1847) of the return journey is interesting by way of contrast with the facilities for traveling existing at the present time.

We left Cassopolis Monday about ten o'clock and came the first 48 miles, which brought us to within five miles of La Porte. The second night we passed at Battstown 45 miles on the road from La Porte towards Joliet. The third night we passed at Joliet, distance 40 miles. The fourth night we passed at Pontiac, having traveled 60 miles to get to a stopping place, and finding but a poor one at that. The fifth night we were at Bloomington, distance 40 miles. The sixth day we traveled 43 miles and to within 18 miles of this place; the route we came from Cassopolis to Springfield is 294 miles, and from Brother David's about 386 miles. Our expenses for tavern bills from David's to this place were $17.75. Pretty cheap, I think.

Among other items of interest it may be noted that the rate of postage had been reduced to ten cents per letter, but stamps had not yet come into use. The earnings of the Trumbull law firm (Lyman and George) for the year 1847 were $2300.

In 1847, a new constitution was adopted by the state of Illinois which reduced the number of judges of the supreme court from nine to three. The state was divided into three grand divisions, or districts, each to select one member of the court. After the first election one of the judges was to serve three years, one six years, and one nine years, at a compensation of $1200 per year each. These terms were to be decided by lot, and thereafter the term of each judge should be nine years. Trumbull was elected judge for the first or southern division in 1848. His colleagues, chosen at the same time, were Samuel H. Treat and John D. Caton. He drew the three years' term.

In the year 1849, Trumbull bought a brick house and three acres of ground, with an orchard of fruit-bearing trees, in the town of Alton, Madison County, and removed thither with his family. In announcing this fact to his father the only reason he assigns for his change of residence is that the inhabitants of Alton are mostly from the Eastern States. Its population at that time was about 3000; that of Upper Alton, three miles distant, was 1000. The cost of house and ground, with some additions and improvements, was $2500, all of which was paid in cash out of his savings. Incidentally he remarks that he has never borrowed money, never been in debt, never signed a promissory note, and that he hopes to pass through life without incurring pecuniary liabilities.12

From the tone of the letter in which his change of residence is announced, the inference is drawn that Trumbull had abandoned his law practice at Belleville with the expectation of remaining on the bench for an indefinite period. He accepted a reëlection as judge in 1852 for a term of nine years, yet he resigned a year and a half later because the salary was insufficient to support his family. Walter B. Scates was chosen as his successor on the supreme bench. Nearly forty-five years later, Chief Justice Magruder, of the Illinois supreme court, answering John M. Palmer's address presenting the memorial of the Chicago Bar Association on the life and services of Trumbull, recently deceased, said that no lawyer could read the opinions handed down by the dead statesman when on the bench, "without being satisfied that the writer of them was an able, industrious, and fair-minded judge. All his judicial utterances … are characterized by clearness of expression, accuracy of statement, and strength of reasoning. They breathe a spirit of reverence for the standard authorities and abound in copious reference to those authorities.... The decisions of the court, when he spoke as its organ, are to-day regarded as among the most reliable of its established precedents."

CHAPTER II

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