977.3 
 K82p 
 
 >P. KOFOID 
 
 PURITAN INFLUENCES IN THE 
 FORMATIVE YEARS OF ILLI- 
 NOIS HISTORY 

 
 LIBRARY OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 
 AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 
 STEWART S. HOWE 
 
 JOURNALISM CLASS OF 1928 
 
 STEWART S. HOWE FOUNDATION 
 
 977.3 
 K82p
 
 Puritan Influences 
 
 IN THE 
 
 Formative Years of Illinois 
 
 History 
 
 BY 
 
 CARRIE PRUDENCE KOFOID. 
 
 SPRINGFIELD: 
 
 ILLINOIS STATE JOURNAL COMPANY, 
 
 1906.
 
 '' 3 
 
 K ? -ip ^} L- ( 
 
 > -^-o. 
 
 Puritan Influences in the Formative 
 Years of Illinois History 
 
 BY 
 
 r\ 
 
 CARRIE PRUDENCE KOFOID. 
 
 LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF 1LLINO!
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 Chapter I. A Puritan village in Illinois 5 
 
 II. Organization of Home Missionary Societies in New Eng- 
 land. Motives which led to their continued support. 
 Methods adopted for their work 7 
 
 III, First missionary tours in Illinois 12 
 
 IV. 1812-1826. Beginnings of missionary work. The Andover 
 
 period 17 
 
 V. 1826-1833. The Yale period. Entering Central Illinois. 
 
 Opening of Illinois College. The outpost at Galena. ... 19 
 
 VI. 1833-1860. Growth of the churches in northern Illinois. 
 Chicago, Fox River region, Rockford. A lessened inter- 
 est in Southern Illinois. Effect of the Illinois Central 
 Railroad on church growth in Eastern Illinois 28 
 
 VII. Difficulties of the New England pioneers 32 
 
 VIII. The effect of economic conditions on growth of churches. 
 Rapid immigration, inflation, depression, crop adapta- 
 tion, emigration 35 
 
 IX. Internal difficulties. Separation of the Congregational 
 
 and Presbyterian organizations in frontier work 38 
 
 X. SPECIAL PROBLEMS OF MISSIONARY WORK IN SOUTHERN 
 
 ILLINOIS 41 
 
 XI. Adverse sentiment 44 
 
 XII. Puritanism and the Slavery issue. Proposed constitu- 
 tional amendment of 1823. Riots in Alton and Quincy. 
 The Underground Railroad. Anti-slavery politics 49 
 
 XIII. Ecclesiastical rivalries .. 64 
 
 XIV. Educational influence. Contest for free schools. Jona- 
 than B. Turner and the State University. Academies. . 
 
 70
 
 CHAPTER I*. 
 
 A PURITAN VILLAGE IN ILLINOIS. 
 
 In the north central part of the State of Illinois, a hundred miles 
 above Springfield, lies a little village in the midst of the rich prairie 
 country. The town itself is on a slight rise of land so that it over- 
 looks the country for miles around. On every side stretch the well 
 kept farms. On a bright fall day it is a particularly pleasant scene; 
 everywhere the great fields of corn, golden brown in the sunlight, and 
 moving slowly here and there the huge wagons laden with the golden 
 ears. The expanse of field is broken by orchards, a little woodland 
 where some prairie stream makes its way toward the Illinois river, or 
 a clump of trees or a windmill which indicates the location of some 
 well-kept farm house. There is little going on in the tiny town itself; 
 a few stores, dispersing points for necessary supplies, a large school 
 house with its ebb and flow of noise and silence. The roads are 
 good, the trees abundant and large, the houses neat and comfortable 
 and all pervaded by an air of quiet and repose that calls at once to 
 mind the old New England village off the line of the railroad. Not 
 until 1900 did a railroad reach this village. No mines, no large in- 
 dustries have ever been started in its vicinity. Everything has 
 conspired to keep the community, aside from the slow progress and 
 material improvement that comes with years, in the same social con- 
 dition with the same ideals and ideas that were stamped on it in the 
 first thirty years of its existence. It is a town typical of many that 
 have arisen in northern Illinois, but owing to its comparative isolation 
 it has preserved longer than many its independence of the bustling 
 activities of the world. Yet this little town and others like it have 
 stood for much in the development of the great State. What has 
 been the central organization, the central force to hold it together 
 and make it count for something both for its own community and the 
 world at large? Where, to borrow a term from silence, has been the 
 dynamic center? 
 
 All the week the ordinary busy routine of life goes on, each family 
 working to and for itself. When Sunday comes there is a change. 
 
 From practically every house in the village the people take their 
 way to that modest, ample church, so centrally and conspicuously 
 placed. From away out over the prairie the teams come with whole 
 families. About the church the wagons stand thick; and inside, the 
 large and handsome audience room is well filled. They are all there, 
 
 * This paper was accepted by the University of Illinois as a thesis for the degree of Master 
 of Arts in History. [ED ]
 
 men, women and children, the aged people and the young men and 
 women. After the morning service apparently a large part of the 
 congregation remain for Sunday School or gather about the building 
 and talk in little groups. On every face is an aspect of deep satisfac- 
 tion with the course of the day's procedure. Perhaps today this 
 scene cannot be witnessed in many places in Illinois, a community 
 where the church lays her hand on the whole population and where 
 willing and glad, even if somewhat conventional, allegiance is granted 
 to her claims. 
 
 But in this town for some sixty years this scene has been renewed 
 from week to week and it is the only power, the only organization in 
 the community, which has so brought its people together. This 
 phenomenon, if one pleases so to call it, so remarkably preserved to 
 us today, is but the working of an organization which in earlier years 
 deliberately entered Illinois to have its part in moulding its future. 
 It has worked hard and long. It has accomplished much. 
 
 The history of this one church of the New England faith is typical 
 of many others. Some two miles out of town where the pioneer set- 
 tlement began was the pioneer church, a rude building twenty by 
 forty feet, at first built of logs, but gathering a congregation of two 
 or three hundred on Sunday. This log church was followed in time 
 by a large brick building, the pride of all the region around. Today 
 its plain Doric outline, softened by ivy, deserted and crumbling, is 
 pleasing and satisfying to the eye. In the 40s it was called one of 
 the most flourishing churches in the State. It gathered into its am- 
 ple fold both Northerner and Southerner. It was in the church that 
 their conflicting opinions were worked over and. not without suffering 
 on both sides, the New England ideal maintained. To this region 
 also came in the 40s and 50s, the thrifty Germans, Danes and Swedes 
 from the old country, seeking earnestly freedom and enlightenment. 
 There was power in the church to adapt itself to the needs of these. 
 All were made one in the house of God. Today you trace their fair 
 hair and blue eyes in the congregation and the children of the for- 
 eigner are at home in the teachings of the Puritans. 
 
 This community had its theological difficulties; organized as a 
 Presbyterian church, divided by Old School and New School doc- 
 trines, it emerged in the 50s as a Congregational church. Within its 
 walls its chief talk was of personal righteousness ; but there was a 
 firm belief that next to righteousness the success of the community 
 and of the state and nation of which this community was so conspicu- 
 ous a part, rested on education. So under the fostering care of the 
 church grew up the public school, the village academy, which might, 
 if circumstances favored, grow even into a college, and the young 
 ladies' seminary. They sent east for teachers that their youth might 
 have the best. The special glory of tbe little town is, that here first 
 gathered kindred souls to talk over a form of education which should 
 be the crown of all the State's work for her children, plans that finally 
 led to the State universities which are doing so much for the west. 
 
 With this one record in mind, we turn to conditions in New Eng- 
 land for the starting point.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETIES IN NEW 
 ENGLAND. 
 
 Efforts for the propagation of the Gospel characterized the early 
 settlers of New England and have always had a place in the activities 
 of their descendants. Opportunities and methods have changed, but 
 under such form such work has gone on from the beginning of New 
 England's history. In the eighteenth century the General Associa- 
 tion of the churches superintended such work, sending out settled 
 pastors from their home churches for periods of missionary work in 
 new settlements and among the Indians. Toward the end of the 
 century special societies began to come into existence, the New York 
 Missionary Society in 1796. the Massachusetts Home Missionary So- 
 ciety in 1799. The work of these societies advanced to the west with 
 the settlements; at first, limited to the region of the Mohawk and 
 Genesee rivers in New York, then extending to " New Connecticut " 
 in Ohio and reaching Illinois for the first time in 1812.* The most 
 active of these societies in western frontier work was the Missionary 
 Society of Connecticut which, with some help from the Missionary 
 Society of Massachusetts, carried on most of the work in Illinois till 
 the formation of a national society in 1826. This society was organ- 
 ized June 19, 1796, at Hebron, Connecticut, at the regular meeting of 
 the General Association of Connecticut, with the following consti- 
 tution: f 
 
 CONSTITUTION OF THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF CONNECTICUT. 
 
 The General Association of the State of Connecticut, impressed 
 with the obligation on all the friends of Christianity to propagate a 
 knowledge of its gracious and holy doctrines, also encouraged by the 
 late zealous exertions for this end, in sundry Christian bodies, cannot 
 but hope the time is near in which God will spread his truth through 
 the earth. They also consider it a thing of great importance that 
 some charitable assistance be extended to new Christian settlements 
 in various parts of the United States. The salvation of these souls 
 is precious. The happiness of the rising generation and the order 
 and stability of civil government are most effectually advanced by the 
 
 "E. P. Parker, Historical Discourse on Missionary Society of Connecticut. (Hartford, 1898.) 
 Parker, Historical Discourse, 13.
 
 8 
 
 diffusion of religious and moral sentiments through the preaching of 
 the gospel. In deep feeling of these truths, having by prayer sought 
 the direction of (rod, in the fear of His great name, they have adopted 
 the following Constitution of a Missionary Society: 
 
 Article I. This society shall be known by the name of the Missionary So- 
 ciety. 
 
 Article II. The General Association of the State of Connecticut shall be 
 the said Missionary Society. 
 
 Article III. The General Association shall, annually, by ballot, appoint 
 twelve trustees, whereof six shall be clergymen and six shall be brethren of 
 our churches, who shall conduct the business of our society in the manner 
 hereinafter prescribed. 
 
 Article IV. The object of this society shall be to christianize the heathen 
 in North America, and to support and promote Christian knowledge in the 
 new settlements, within the United States; and both shall be pursued as cir- 
 cumstances shall point out, and as the trustees, under the superintendence of 
 the General Association, shall direct. 
 
 Article V. The General Association and the Trustees shall adopt such 
 measures, from time to time, for raising funds, as they shall judge to be ex- 
 pedient. 
 
 Article VI. The trustees shall have power to apply the funds of the 
 society, according to their discretion, in all cases, in which they shall not be 
 limited by the General Association, -or by the donors. They shall correspond 
 with other missionary societies: shall have power to appoint and dismiss mis- 
 sionaries; to pay them; and generally to transact all business necessary to 
 attain the ends of the society; and shall be paid their necessary expenses, 
 but nothing for their services. 
 
 Article VII. The trustees shall, annually, appoint a secretary, who shall 
 keep a fair account of the proceedings. They shall also appoint a chairman, 
 who, with four of the trustees, shall be a quorum to transact business: or, if 
 the stated chairman shall not be present, any seven of the trustees shall be a 
 quorum. 
 
 Article VIII. The chairman shall have power to call a meeting of the 
 trustees at his discretion, by letters left with them, or at the houses of their 
 residence; and it shall be. his duty to call such meeting whenever requested by 
 any two of the trustees. And in case of the death of the chairman, or of his 
 absence from the State, any two trustees are hereby empowered to call a 
 meeting. 
 
 Article IX. The General Association shall, annually, appoint a treasurer 
 and auditor of accounts; and the treasurer shall exhibit, both to the General 
 Association and to the trustees, the state of the treasury, whenever he shall 
 be called upon for that purpose. 
 
 Article X. The trustees shall, annually, exhibit to the General Association 
 a particular account of the missionaries employed by them of places to 
 which they are sent of the missions of the state of the funds of the re- 
 ceipts and expenditures and of whatever relating to this institution the 
 General Association shall require. 
 
 Article XI. The trustees, and all the officers of this society, shall enter on 
 their respective offices on the first Wednesday of September, annually: and 
 shall continue in office for one year. 
 
 Article XII. The trustees shall hold their first meeting at the State House 
 in Hartford, on the first Wednesday of September next, at 11 o'clock A. M., 
 and every year thereafter they shall meet at the same time and place, unless 
 otherwise ordered by the General Association. 
 
 Article XIII. If on experience it shall be found necessary to alter this 
 constitution, an alteration may be made by the General Association at their 
 stated meeting; but not without having been drawn up in writing and lying 
 under consideration one year; nor unless all adopt the said alteration. 
 
 BENJAMIN TRUMBULL, Moderator. 
 
 Passed in General Association, at Hebron, June 21, 1798. 
 
 Test: NATHAN PERKINS. Scribe.
 
 The General Assembly of the State granted authority to ask con- 
 tributions from the churches and the Governor issued an annual pro- 
 clamation reminding the people of the contributions to be taken on 
 the first Sabbath in May, and exhorted them to liberality in the same. 
 These proclamations were directed to be publicly read by the several 
 ministers to their congregations. More than twenty of these pro- 
 clamations are preserved in the Historical Society in Hartford. 1 - 
 
 The settlers were expected to co-operate with contributions and 
 much responsibility was laid upon them to continue the institutions 
 and religious customs of New England. In 1816 President Dwight 
 of Yale said in an address to emigrants from Connecticut, which was 
 printed and distributed by the Missionary Society of Connecticut, 
 ''Upon the decision of a few depend the interests of millions in after- 
 times. It devolves upon you to lay out the streets and plant the 
 foundations of literature and religion and to give a shape to the 
 institutions of society." 2 - 
 
 Too great stress cannot be laid upon the clear apprehension the 
 founders and promoters of these societies had of the grave importance 
 and far reaching influence of their labors. The phrase "the fathers 
 builded better than they knew" is familiar, but it has been cleverly 
 and truly amended, "They often knew better than they were able to 
 build." The constitution of the Missionary Society of Connecticut 
 emphasizes the "propagation of the gracious and holy doctrines of 
 Christianity" and feels this necessary "to the order and stability of 
 civil government." Those continued to be the chief motives for the 
 support of the society. They were, however, amplified, and additional 
 reasons were pressed upon the constituency of this society and the 
 larger national society to which it became auxiliary as time went on. 
 The spread of personal religion and the growth of righteousness were 
 always the first consideration. On these it was felt profoundly that 
 the stability of a self-governing nation depended. It seemed at times 
 as if institutions of New England's faith and order must be submerged 
 by the opposing elements it encountered; but, instead, those very 
 elements of opposition only served as an added ground of appeal for 
 stronger support. At first, and for many years, the appeal was simply 
 to extend the gospel to frontiers where irreligion and ignorance pre- 
 vailed. In 1835, with the beginning of extensive foreign immigration, 
 Dr. Lyman Beecher's Plea for the West was published, warning the 
 friends of religion and liberty that Romanism was seeking to take 
 possession of the whole Mississippi valley; and from this time on for 
 a decade, the rescuing of the West from Romanism was a powerful 
 plea. 
 
 In the early forties the rapidly increasing population of the North- 
 west brought into prominence the political argument. It was felt that 
 "Catholic influences would co-operate with infidelity and native de- 
 pravity to make voters and legislators." 3 - By 1842 tables were pre- 
 pared and presented through the publications of the society to the 
 churches of New England showing the relative influence of the East 
 
 1. E. P. Parker, Historical discourse, 15. 
 
 2. 'ibid. 20. 
 
 3. The Home Missionary, April, 1842.
 
 10 
 
 and West in the National Legislature, and that between the years 
 1830 and 1840 the East had lost and the West had gained in repre- 
 sentatives, urging this as an argument for Christian activity in behalf 
 of the new states. The West, in this period, had gained twelve re- 
 presentatives while the East had lost thirty, u a matter of trifling im- 
 portance if those men and the constituents by whom they are elected 
 are intelligent and virtuous." Otherwise, it was felt, they would be 
 men "chosen for their subservient views to transient and party in- 
 terests whose affinities are with the boisterous blasphemer, the duelist 
 and the assassin." In 1845, the constituents of the society are told 
 with elaborate proofs that the emigrants who are flocking to the West 
 are largely paupers and criminals, that in five years the West will 
 hold the balance of power in Congress, and that now is the time to 
 affect the character of the stranger. In 1848, two addresses were 
 published and widely circulated: "The Church Essential to the Re- 
 public," by Rev. E. N. Kirk; and "The Evangelization of the Masses 
 of the People the Only Guarantee of Representative Democracy," by 
 John Thompson of Poughkeepsie. 1 - 
 
 With a keen apprehension of coming dangers Horace Bushnell 
 published in 1847 his "Means of Our Country's Salvation." He 
 claimed that Vermont, Western New York and part of Ohio were 
 safe. "We have only to make sure of all the states this side of the 
 Mississippi and then the critical point is past. We must get rid, if 
 possible, of slavery; it aggravates every bad tendency we suffer. We 
 can not, as American Christians be at peace with it longer. Not for- 
 getting the moderation that belongs to every just course, we must 
 lift our voices against it and must not desist from all proper means to 
 secure its removal, till the work is done." 2 - 
 
 These may be taken as representative utterances expressing the 
 motives used at different times to gain support for missionary societies 
 for their work on the frontier. 
 
 By the beginning* of the nineteenth century the method of sending 
 out settled pastors for short periods had become inadequate and men 
 were employed for continued service, which generally took the form 
 of itineraries. In 1801, the societies of New England and New York 
 had agreed upon a "plan of union" under whose provisions missionary 
 work should be conducted. This agreement continued in force till 
 1852 with growing dissatisfaction to the two principal bodies involved, 
 the Presbyterians and the Congregationalists. The text of the agree- 
 ment is as follows: 
 
 " Regulations adopted by the General Assembly of the Presbyte- 
 rian churches in America and by the General Association of the State 
 of Connecticut with a view to prevent alienation and promote union 
 and harmony in those new settlements which are composed of inhabi- 
 tants from those bodies. 
 
 " First It is strictly enjoined on all missionaries to the new settle- 
 ments to endeavor by all proper means to promote mutual forbear- 
 
 1. Home Missionary, April, 1842; March, 1845; September, 1847; May, 1848. 
 
 2. The Home Missionary, November, 1847.
 
 11 
 
 ance and accommodation, between those inhabitants of the new 
 settlements who hold the Presbyterian and those who hold the Con- 
 gregational form of church government. 
 
 Second If in the new settlements any church of the Congrega- 
 tional order shall settle a minister of the Presbyterian order, that 
 church may, if they choose, still conduct their discipline according to 
 Congregational principles, settling their difficulties among themselves 
 or by a council mutually agreed upon for that purpose. But if any 
 difficulty shall exist between the minister and the church, or any 
 member of it, it shall be referred to the Presbytery to which the 
 minister shall belong, provided both parties agree to it; if not, to a 
 council consisting of an equal number of Presbyterians and Congre- 
 gationalists agreed upon by both parties. 
 
 Third If a Presbyterian church shall settle a minister of Congre- 
 gational principles, that church may still conduct their discipline 
 according to Presbyterian principles, excepting that if a difficulty 
 arise between him and his church, or any member of it, the cause 
 shall be tried by the association to which the said minister shall 
 belong, provided both parties shall agree to it; otherwise, by a coun- 
 cil, one-half Congregational and the other half Presbyterian, mutu- 
 ally agreed upon by the parties. 
 
 Fourth If any congregation consist partly of those who hold the 
 Congregational form of discipline and partly of those who hold the 
 Presbyterian form, we recommend to both parties that this be no 
 obstruction to their uniting in one church and settling a minister and 
 that in this case the church choose a standing committee from the 
 communicants of said church, whose business it shall be to call to 
 account every member of the church who shall conduct himself in- 
 consistently with the laws of Christianity and to give judgment on 
 such conduct; and if the person condemned by their judgment be a 
 Presbyterian, he shall have liberty to appeal to the Presbytery; if a 
 Congregationalist, he shall have liberty to appeal to the body of the 
 male communicants of the church. In the former case the determi- 
 nation of the Presbytery shall be final, unless the church consent to 
 a further appeal to the Synod or to General Assembly; and in the 
 latter case, if the party condemned shall wish for a trial by a mutual 
 council, the cause shall be referred to such council, and. provided the 
 said standing committee of any church shall depute one of themselves 
 to attend the presbytery, he may have the same right to sit and act 
 in the Presbytery as a ruling elder of the Presbyterian church."* 
 
 The originator of this " plan " is supposed to have been the younger 
 Edwards. It was adopted by the General Association of Connecticut 
 and proposed by that body to the General Assembly. f 
 
 * American Church History, Series VI. 353. 
 
 t J. B. Clark, Leavening the Nation (New York, 1903,) 38.
 
 12 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE FIRST MISSIONARY TOURS TO ILLINOIS. 
 
 Under the auspices of the Missionary Society of Connecticut,, with 
 some help from the Missionary Society of Massachusetts, and in 
 accord with the terms of the "Plan of Union," the first of these New 
 England missionaries visited Illinois in 1812. Illinois was then the 
 extreme frontier of the United States.* In fact, but a small part of 
 what is now Illinois was then open to settlers, only a narrow strip 
 along the Ohio and up the Mississippi as far as the trading post at 
 St. Louis. The main attractions to settlers were the salt works about 
 Shawneetown and what little business was doing about the seat of 
 government at Kaskaskia. The soldiers of George Rogers Clark 
 were followed by settlers from Virginia, the Carolinas and Kentucky. 
 They had with them Methodist and Baptist ministers, generally igno- 
 rant and prejudiced, whatever their native ability may have been. 
 To these people were sent out the first missionaries from the east, a 
 notable event both on account of the aim of the expedition and be- 
 cause of the character of its leader. 
 
 This leader was Samuel J. Mills, who was born in Litchfield county, 
 Connecticut, in 1783, that county particularly distinguished for the 
 religious leaders it has given to the country. Mr. Mills' father was a 
 Congregational minister. He was himself educated at Williams 1 Col- 
 lege and Andover Theological Seminary and was resident graduate 
 for a few months at Yale. He was ordained to the ministry at New- 
 buryport, Massachusetts, the stronghold of Presbyterianism in New 
 England. He died June 16, 1816, at the age of thirty-five; yet in 
 this comparatively short life he accomplished an amazing amount of 
 work of a wonderfully broad quality and work that has touched 
 national life in many ways. During his college and seminary days 
 he was living through those experiences that filled him with a burn- 
 ing zeal for the extension of Christianity to foreign lands He was 
 one of four to take the initial steps in the formation of the American 
 Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. At the time of his 
 death, parties of missionaries had gone to India. Ceylon, to the Cher- 
 okee and Choctaw Indians and to the Sandwich Islands, many of 
 them personally influenced by him to this work.f 
 
 *See map in McMaster, History of the People of the United States, IV. 
 t Gardiner Spring, Memoir of Samuel J. Mills (New York, 1820).
 
 13 
 
 With this work under way he turned his attention to " Domestic 
 Missions," as the phrase was then, and, from 1812 to 1815, undertook 
 two tours through the West and Southwest. The first trip was under 
 the joint patronage of the Connecticut and Massachusetts societies, 
 and he had as companion Rev. J. F. Schermerhorn of the Dutch Re- 
 formed church. The second trip of 1814 was under the patronage of 
 the Connecticut society, with the aid of Bibles and tracts from the 
 Philadelphia Bible Society. The purpose of the trip, in the words 
 of Ellis' biographer, Gardiner Spring, was ''to preach the gospel to 
 the destitute, to explore the country and learn its moral and religious 
 state and to promote the establishment of Bible societies and other 
 religious and charitable institutions." The plan of the first trip was 
 to separate in journeying through New York and Pennsylvania, unite 
 at Marietta, Ohio, go down the Mississippi to New Orleans, thence 
 across the Mississippi Territory, returning by way of the western 
 parts of Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia; this plan was carried 
 out. 
 
 It was Mr. Mills' custom to keep a diary and on the return he and 
 Mr. Schermerhorn made full report to the societies. On the first 
 page of Mr. Mills' journal are found the following subjects of inquiry: 
 
 1. Are the people supplied with Bibles and tracts? 
 
 2. How many Bibles are wanted in a community or a town? 
 
 3. Have supplies of Bibles and tracts been received in part? 
 
 4. From what societies may supplies be expected? 
 
 5. The number of regular clergy in each county? 
 
 6. The number of towns able and willing to support ministers? 
 
 7. Ascertain, as far as may be, the most hopeful fields for mission- 
 ary labor. 
 
 8. Whence did the people originate? 
 
 9. An institution for the benefit of the Africans. 
 
 Of the Northwest Territory Mr. Mills says: " South of New Con- 
 necticut, few Bibles or religious tracts have been received for distri- 
 bution among the inhabitants. The Sabbath is greatly profaned, 
 and but few good people can be found in any one place." Of the 
 people on either side of the Ohio river, he says: " We found the 
 inhabitants in a very destitute state, very ignorant of the doctrines 
 of the Gospel and in many instances without Bibles or any other re- 
 ligious books. The Methodist ministers pass through this country 
 in their circuits occasionally. There are a number of good people in 
 the Territory who are anxious to have Presbyterian ministers among 
 them." Introduced by Dr. Gideon Blackburn in Tennessee to Gen- 
 eral Jackson, who was just starting for Natchez with 1,500 volunteers, 
 the two missionaries were his guests down the river. 
 
 In the report to the Connecticut and Massachusetts societies,* Mr. 
 Mills gives the results of his investigations in regard to the distribu- 
 tion of Bibles while Mr. Schermerhorn makes the more general 
 report. The following is the report as to Illinois : " The settlements 
 in this territory are very small and are much scattered. Those on 
 
 * A Correct Vie-w of That Part of the United States Which Lies West of the AUeghany Moun- 
 tains -with Regard to Religion and Morals (Hartford, 1814).
 
 14 
 
 the Ohio are few, except the Saline and Shawneetown, and about 
 Kaskaskias on the Mississippi at the American bottom. This country 
 is delightfully situated as to climate and is almost a continual prairie T 
 interspersed with copses of wood from Vincennes to St. Louis. From 
 a survey of a road between these places, lately made, it appears that 
 for this distance of 150 miles, the country is for every half mile or 
 mile alternately prairie and open wood land. The American bottom 
 is said to be the finest body of land to be found in the western coun- 
 try. This territory has only two counties at present, Randolph 
 containing 7,275 inhabitants, embracing the settlements on the Ohio 
 and Kaskaskias, and St. Clair 5,007, embracing the settlements oppo- 
 site St. Louis and Missouri on the upper settlements. Of this county, 
 Cahokia is the county town. In this whole territory is not a solitary 
 Presbyterian minister, though there are several families of this de- 
 nomination in different settlements. At Kaskaskias they are anxious 
 to obtain a Presbyterian minister of proper character and talents who 
 would be willing to take the charge of an academy. The Baptists 
 have four or five small churches consisting of not more than 120 
 members. The Methodists have five itinerants, besides some local 
 preachers, and perhaps 600 members in their society. This country 
 was rapidly settled before the war and should peace be restored, will 
 greatly increase in population and ought to receive early attention 
 from Missionary bodies." 
 
 Mr. Mills urged the appointment of a missionary to St. Louis, and 
 Salmon Giddings was appointed by the Connecticut society. The 
 report from which these extracts are taken stirred all New England 
 and even interested philanthropists abroad and led to the speedy 
 formation of the American Bible Society. 
 
 In 1814, Mr. Mills started on a second tour to the west, accompa- 
 nied by Rev. Daniel Smith. Filled with enthusiasm for the distribu- 
 tion of Bibles, he wrote: "At Shawneetown we saw Judge Griswold T 
 formerly from Connecticut. He favored us with letters of introduc- 
 tion to Governor Edwards and other gentlemen at Kaskaskias. The 
 Governor has promised to patronize the society should one be formed. 
 This Territory is deplorably destitute of Bibles. In Kaskaskias, a 
 place containing from eighty to one hundred families, there are, it is 
 thought, not more than four or five." In a letter addressed to Jere- 
 miah Evarts, and dated at Shawneetown, January 12, 1815, he reports 
 a second interview with Governor Edwards on the subject of a Bible 
 Society and the continued encouragement he received from him. 
 
 From his observations on this trip he reported the population of 
 Illinois at 15,000, retarded in growth by the hostilities of neighboring 
 savages. " Until the last summer, titles of land could not be obtained 
 in this territory. But now land offices are opened, as some portions of 
 the country are extremely fertile it is probable that settlers will begin 
 to flock in, especially if the war should soon terminate." He reports 
 the Eastern settlements as extensive, reaching thirty miles up the 
 Wabash and forty down the Ohio. Many people are employed at the 
 United States Saline works where salt, to the amount of 8,600 bush- 
 els, is produced each week. " Shawneetown is the seat of justice. It
 
 15 . 
 
 contains about 100 houses, situated on the Ohio, subject to be over- 
 flowed at high water. But it is continually deluged like most other 
 towns in the territory by a far worse flood of impiety and iniquity." 
 " Kaskaskias is the key to the western settlements and must, there- 
 fore, become a place of much importance, although at present it does 
 not greatly flourish. It contains between eighty and one hundred 
 families, two-thirds French Catholics. Governor Edwards assured 
 us that a preacher of popular talents would receive a salary of $1,000 
 per annum for preaching a part of the time and instructing a small 
 school." 
 
 The development of St. Louis meant much to Illinois, particularly 
 to the western settlements. Mr. Mills wrote: " St. Louis has a pop- 
 ulation of 2,000, one-third Americans; the rest French Catholics. 
 The American families are, many of them, genteel and well informed; 
 but very few of them religious. When we told them that a mission- 
 ary had been appointed to that station by the Connecticut Missionary 
 Society, they received the information with joy. The most respecta- 
 ble people in town assured us that a young man of talents, piety and 
 liberality of mind would receive an abundant support; $1,200 or 
 $1,400 a year might be relied on by such a man if he would teach a 
 school and preach but a part of his time. When we consider the 
 present situation of St. Louis and the high probability that it will 
 become a flourishing commercial town, we cannot but desire that the 
 person already appointed may speedily be sent. No place in the 
 Western country, New Orleans excepted, has greater natural advan- 
 tages." 
 
 The general conclusions on the religious situation in the regions 
 visited were, as follows: "The character of the settlers is such as 
 to render it peculiarly important that missionaries should early be 
 sent among them. Indeed, they can hardly be said to have a char- 
 acter, assembled as they are from every state in the Union, and origi- 
 nally from almost every nation in Europe. The majority, although 
 by no means regardless of religion, have not yet embraced any fixed 
 principles respecting it. They are ready to receive any impressions 
 which a public speaker may attempt to make. Hence, every species 
 of heretics in the country flock to the new settlements. Hence, also 
 the Baptist and Methodist denominations are exerting themselves to 
 gain a footing in the territory. Some portions of this country are 
 pretty thoroughly supplied with their preachers. Why, then, it may 
 be asked, should we not leave it wholly to them? We answer, the 
 field is large enough for us all. Many of their preachers are exceed- 
 ingly illiterate. We have mentioned a number of places in which an 
 earnest desire was manifested to have missionaries sent among them. 
 This was not the desire of a few individual Presbyterians merely, but 
 of many of the officers in the civil government of the Territories and 
 some of the most respectable citizens of various denominations. The 
 three Governors and a number of judges in the respective Territo- 
 ries expressed to us their feeling upon the subject. Governor 
 Edwards, of Illinois, has been for some time endeavoring to obtain a
 
 16 
 
 Presoyterian preacher there, and Governor Posy, of Indiana, pro- 
 posed himself to write to some missionary society to obtain one for 
 his neighborhood." 
 
 A final communication was directed to the society after they had 
 returned. " Ever since we came back to this land of Christian privi- 
 leges, we have been endeavoring to arouse the attention of the public 
 and to direct it toward the West. These exertions have been stimu- 
 lated by a deep conviction of deplorable state of the country. Never 
 will the impression be erased from our hearts that has been made by 
 beholding those scenes of wide-spreading desolation. The whole 
 country from Lake Erie to Gulf of Mexico is as the valley of the 
 shadow of death. This vast country contains more than a million of 
 inhabitants. Their number is every year increased by a mighty flood 
 of emigration." 
 
 We have noticed that one subject of inquiry with Mr. Mills was to 
 be some method of improving the condition of the Africans. Col- 
 onization schemes were then occupying the attention of the philan- 
 thropic. England had founded her colony of Sierra Leone in 1792, 
 and this method of dealing with a question, which troubled many 
 conciences, seemed to win the support of both Northerners and 
 Southerners. Mills' biographer says that, while in the southern 
 states, he collected facts respecting the condition of "his poor African 
 brethren." In the western states he was endeavoring to arouse the 
 attention of the charitable and influential, because he conceived that 
 their weight in the councils of the nation and their pecuniary aid 
 might be afterwards wanted. In Ohio, Indiana and Illinois he la- 
 bored much to procure the grant of a township of land, on which a 
 small colony might be established, both for the purpose of making 
 the experiment and evincing the utility of such attempts, and, more 
 particularly, to prepare a number of persons to take the lead in some 
 more enlarged establishment of Liberia as a free colony for negroes 
 on the coast of Africa.
 
 17 
 
 CHAPTEK IV. 
 
 1812-1826. BEGINNINGS OF MISSIONARY WORK. 
 THE ANDOVER PERIOD. 
 
 The main result of these tours for Illinois, outside the interest 
 aroused in its condition, was in the securing the appointment of Sal- 
 mon Giddings to St. Louis. He was a native of Hartford, Connecti- 
 cut, brother of the famous anti-slavery leader, Joshua Giddings, of 
 Ohio. He received his education at Williams' College and Andover 
 Seminary. 1 Contemporary notices show that Connecticut felt she was 
 giving her best in sending him to the frontier. He was sent out as 
 a missionary to "vacant settlements" and authorized to preach 
 statedly in any particular place for such a portion of the time as the 
 people should see fit to employ him at their own expense. 2 When 
 he reached St. Louis he picked up a newspaper published in that 
 city, in which he found an article headed " Caution." The public 
 were informed that a society at Hartford, Connecticut, was about to 
 send missionaries to that region and the citizens should be on their 
 guard. He won his way, however, into the confidence of the people. 
 He was active in making trips as far and as often as he could 
 and keeping the East informed of the religious condition of the fron- 
 tier. 3 He took the settled region under his care, and to the time of 
 his death, in 1828, was the founder and overseer of its churches. Of 
 some twenty churches, eight were in Illinois, located at Kaskaskias, 
 Shoal Creek, Lebanon, Belleville, McCord's Settlement, Turkey Hill, 
 Collinsville and Edwardsville. 4 The first of these Illinois churches 
 was at Belleville, founded August, 1816. The Missionary Society of 
 Connecticut was called on to supply these churches with ministers, 
 and to some extent did so. A number of men were sent out with 
 commissions in rather general terms like that of Salmon Giddings. 
 They were commissioned to Indiana and Illinois, to Illinois and Mis- 
 souri, to regions "West of the Alleghanies." Sylvester Lamed, com- 
 missioned to New Orleans, preached at settlements in the Northwest 
 on his way. David Tenney, of Harvard College and Andover Semi- 
 nary, went to Shoal Creek in 1818 and died there the following year. 
 John Milcot Ellis, educated at Dartmouth and Andover, was sent to 
 
 1 M. K. Whittlesey, The Record of Fifty Years, (Historical Papers. Ottawa, 1894). 
 
 2 T. Lippincott, in Home Missionary, August, 1846. 
 
 3 The Panoplist. 
 
 4 J E. Roy, Fifty Years of Home Missions (Hist. Papers. Ottawa, 1894). 
 
 2 H
 
 18 
 
 Kaskaskias, and lived to accomplish a great work for Illinois. Mills, 
 Giddings, Tenney and Ellis were all from Andover, the fruit of An- 
 dover's missionary enthusiasm, so conspicuous in the first part of the 
 century. 1 
 
 Most of the men sent out by the Missionary Society of Connecticut 
 up to 1826, were transients, so far as Illinois was concerned. In 1826, 
 the year of the founding of the National Society, E. G. Howe was at 
 Diamond Grove. Thomas Lippincott was commissioned as mission- 
 ary in 1829, although he had come to St. Louis from Connecticut as 
 early as 1817 and removed to Illinois in 1818. Besides these com- 
 missioned missionaries, who were permanently at work in Illinois by 
 the year 1826, there were few resident New Eriglanders. Mills men- 
 tioned Judge Griswold, of Connecticut, in Shawneetown in 1815. In 
 1817, the Collins brothers came from Litchfield, Connecticut, from- 
 Lyman Beecher's church. Later other members of the family joined 
 them. They established themselves opposite St. Louis. They were 
 energetic, prosperous people, establishing tan yard, lumber mill, farm, 
 store, distillery, and running a steamboat on the Mississippi. They 
 were strong in principle as well as energy and gave up their distil- 
 lery when Lyman Beecher's great temperance sermon convinced 
 them of the wrong of it. 
 
 One sister married Salmon Giddings, and as a family they marked 
 not only the geography of that part of Illinois with its Collinsville 
 and Lebanon, named after the Litchneld county town of that name, 
 but also had a strong influence on the religious and political history 
 of the State. 2 
 
 The year 1826 brought a change in missionary method. The 
 American Home Missionary Society was founded, surely needed to 
 avoid the conflicts of the New England, New York, New Jersey and 
 Pennsylvania societies. The policy of sending itinerants was 
 dropped. Hereafter, men were appointed to definite places and a 
 more stable work begun. 
 
 1 J. E. Roy, Fifty Years of Home Missions (Hist. Papers, Ottawa, 1894) ; Andover Obituary 
 Record. 
 
 2 W. H. Collins, Congregationalists of Western Illinois (Hist. Papers. Ottawa, 1894).
 
 19 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 1826-1833. THE YALE PERIOD. 
 
 A second period of New England missionary activity may well 
 include the years between 1826 and 1833, when the close of the 
 Black Hawk War opened the northern part of the State to 'settle- 
 ment and New Englanders began to come in, in large numbers, and 
 demand churches like those they had left. Till that time, the relig- 
 ious efforts of New England for the frontier were directed toward a 
 population with social customs and religious ideas different from 
 her own. 
 
 The new society assumed Ellis and Howe as its missionaries; and, 
 in the years that immediately followed, commissioned Solomon Hardy, 
 of Andover, to Shoal Creek; J. G. Bergen, of New Jersey, to Spring- 
 field; John Matthews, to Kaskaskias; Cyrus Watson, of Connecticut, 
 to Edwardsville, and Aratus Kent, of Connecticut, to Galena. 1 Mean- 
 while, Stephen Bliss, of New Hampshire, had been adopted as pastor 
 by the church founded in Edwards county by a New England colony 
 coming by way of West Virginia; 2 commissioned by the society, he 
 was, by 1829, urging missionaries for Wayne, White, Gallatin and 
 Pope counties. 3 
 
 As the religious work for Illinois up to 1826 had emanated so 
 largely from Andover, so the period now contemplated was enriched 
 by a strong religious movement, arising from Yale College and yet in 
 direct line of succession to the Andover movement, through the efforts 
 of John Milcot Ellis. When he was ordained in the Old South 
 church in Boston, in 1825, the charge contained the instructions, 
 that he was " to build up an institution of learning which shall bless 
 the West for all time." 4 He was located at Kaskaskia from 1825 to 
 1828, and in 1828 he undertook, for the society, a trip through the 
 " upper counties," visiting Edwardsville, Carrollton, Jacksonville and 
 Springfield. All the time he had in mind a desirable location for the 
 school he had been charged to found. 
 
 1 Roy, Fifty Years of Home Missions (Hist. Papers, Ottawa, 1894). 
 
 2 G. R. Parrish, History of Congregational Association of Southern Illinois (Chicago, 1892). 
 
 3 Home Missionary, 1892. 
 
 4 Roy, Fifty Yeats of Home Missions.
 
 20 
 
 Jacksonville particularly pleased him, the church had grown rap- 
 idly and desired him as pastor. It seemed the most promising part 
 of the State. Rewrote: " Sangamon, Morgan and Green counties 
 are taking the lead in this state. This is that part of Illinois which 
 now is, and, from all appearances, is destined to be the most populous 
 and wealthy. It is even proverbial that it possesses a rare combina- 
 tion of beauty of prospect, richness of soil and salubrity of climate. 
 A spirit of industry and enterprise is found in these counties, not to 
 be found in this state or elsewhere nor in Missouri. Many English 
 farmers, and many from New England and New York, are effecting a 
 happy state of agricultural improvement. No country can exceed 
 this for farming. Common crops of corn yield fifty to seventy-five 
 bushels per acre; wheat, of the best quality, too, twenty-five bushels 
 per acre, thirty-five not uncommon. Through this flourishing coun- 
 try flows the Illinois river, admitted to be without a rival in beauty 
 and excellence of navigation. The market on the Illinois was opened 
 the present year by steam. Eight or ten steamboats have already 
 visited the Morgan landing since the spring and more are expected." 
 
 Mr. Ellis made this trip in the spring of 1828. By September he 
 had removed to Jacksonville and had secured between two and three 
 thousand dollars for his " seminary of learning." The half-quarter 
 section purchased for its location he described as " the most beautiful 
 spot I have ever seen." John Ellis, with Thomas Lippincott, had 
 been appointed as an educational committee by the Presbytery of 
 Missouri, which then included Illinois. They had asked aid from the 
 Presbytery for the Jacksonville school, but were refused, and had 
 then raised the money mentioned above by circulating an " outline " 
 through Bond, Sangamon and Morgan counties. 1 
 
 In the early part of 1829. the " Illinois Association " had been 
 formed at Yale College. Mr. Theron Baldwin read, in December, 
 1828, an essay before the Society of Inquiry, at Yale, on Individual 
 Effort in the Cause of Christ. It stirred Mr. Mason Grosvenor to 
 thoughts of immediate activity and to the idea of an association of 
 young men of like mind, to such an end. He talked with other young 
 men in the college and theological seminary suggesting the formation 
 of an association whose members should pledge themselves to go 
 West as home missionaries, to locate near each other for mutual ad- 
 vice and encouragement and to found a college; in short, to give 
 themselves to the development of the frontier. 2 Just at this time 
 they read in the " Home Missionary " of Mr. Ellis' plan for a semi- 
 nary of learning at Jacksonville. Mr. Grosvenor immediately wrote 
 him, told him of the suggested Yale organization, and suggested that 
 the two projects might be combined. When his answer was received, 
 after the two months it took for a letter to reach Illinois and its 
 answer to return, it proved so satisfactory that the organization was 
 at once completed with the following compact: 3 
 
 1 Home Missionary. August, 1828; September, 1828; May, 1830. Historic Morgan and Classic 
 Jacksonville 
 
 2 Samuel Willard, Memorial of the Life and Work of Dr. J. M. Sturtevant (Illinois School 
 Report, 1885-86), 98. 
 
 3 Julian Sturtevant. An Autobiography (Fleming H Revell & Co. 1896), 138.
 
 21 
 
 " Believing- in the entire alienation of the natural heart from God, in the 
 necessity of the influences of the Holy Spirit for its renovation, and that 
 these influences are not to be expected without the use of means ; deeply im- 
 pressed, also, with the destitute condition of the Western section of our 
 country and the urgent claims of its inhabitants upon the benevolent at the 
 East, and in view of the fearful crisis evidently approaching, and which we 
 believe can only be averted by speedy and energetic measures on the part of 
 the friends of religio?i and literature in the older States ; and, believing that 
 evangelical religion and education must go hand in hand to the successful 
 accomplishment of this desirable object we, the undersigned, hereby express 
 our readiness to go to the State of Illinois for the purpose of establishing a 
 seminary of learning, such as shall be best adapted to the exigencies of that 
 country, a part of us to engage in instruction in the Seminary, the others to 
 occupy, as preachers, important stations in the surrounding country, provided 
 the undertaking be deemed practicable and the location approved; and pro- 
 vided, also, the providence of God permit us to engage in it. 
 
 Signed THEKON BALDWIN, WILLIAM KIRBY, 
 
 JOHN F. BROOKS, JULIAN M. STURTEVANT, 
 
 MASON GROSVENOR, ASA TURNER, 
 ELISHA JENNEY, 
 Theological Department, Yale College, Feb. 21, 1829." 
 
 This was the first " band " of the kind to take to itself a particular 
 field of effort Five other men joined the "association" later from 
 Yale and Andover. Their first effort was to start a subscription for 
 Illinois College ; Jeremiah Day, President of Yale College, and other 
 professors, approved the plan and gave their aid in raising $10,000 to 
 help in the work. The institution was to be controlled by ten trus- 
 tees, seven of whom were to be the men who had signed the compact 
 of the association, while the remaining three were to be elected by 
 the Illinois subscribers. The plan was submitted to the American 
 Home Missionary Society, which pledged its endorsement and coun- 
 tenance to the educational plans and agreed to send the men to Illinois 
 and provide their support so far as necessary. 1 
 
 As a matter of fact the original gift of $10,000 was by no means 
 the end of Eastern giving to Illinois College. For several years it 
 was almost entirely dependent on the gifts of Eastern friends, and 
 later often sent some representative of the college, President Beecher, 
 Mr. Baldwin or Mr. Sturtevant, to gather funds in New England. 
 
 In September, 1829, the association sent J. M. Sturtevant and The- 
 ron Baldwin to Illinois to complete arrangements for combining the 
 two enterprises. They brought with them the promise of the $10,000, 
 and, on December 18, 1829, an agreement was concluded between the 
 original stockholders and the " Illinois Association of Yale College." 
 The stockholders voted their confidence in their new eastern members, 
 thanking them and J. M. Ellis and the non-resident contributors. 
 The new college opened its doors January 4, 1830, with nine students 
 and J. M. Sturtevant as chief instructor. 
 
 Without dwelling here on the influence of this college on the de- 
 velopment of Illinois, we will notice a little further the work of the 
 " Yale Band " for this state. While the interests of these theological 
 students was always so strong in Illinois College as to serve as a bond 
 between them and a place where they might sometimes meet, their 
 lives for the most part were devoted to other regions in Illinois and 
 
 1 Julian M. Sturtevant. An Autobiography, 139-141.
 
 22 
 
 other interests. It was an advantage for Illinois, not to be calcu- 
 lated, that so early in her history men of broad education and an 
 interest in the broadest and best development in the state should 
 have devoted themselves to her interests. 1 It is fitting to record these 
 names with some brief account of their labors. 
 
 The seven men who formed the original association were Mason 
 Grosvenor, Theron Baldwin, John F. Brooks, Elisha Jenney, William 
 Kirby, Asa Turner and Julian M. Sturtevant. Those who joined 
 later were Romulus Barnes, William Carter, Flavel Bascom, Albert 
 Hale and Lucien Farnham. 
 
 Mason Grosvenor 2 was born in Pomfret, Connecticut, September 
 13, 1800. He graduated from Yale College in 1827, and studied three 
 years at the Divinity School. He was the prime mover in the organi- 
 zation of the " Yale Band " and took an active part in raising funds 
 for Illinois College; but he was prevented by ill-health from going 
 to Illinois till 1853, when he became for some time a teacher in 
 Illinois College. 
 
 Theron Baldwin 3 was born in Goshen, Litch field county, Connecti- 
 cut, in 1801. He graduated from Yale in 1827. studied two years in 
 the Divinity School, and went to Illinois in 1829. He was a trustee 
 of Illinois College till his death, and always active in its interests. 
 He was pastor at Vandalia and Godfrey, where he organized and con- 
 ducted Monticello Female Seminary. For some years he was agent 
 of the American Home Missionary Society for Illinois, and his re- 
 ports are notable for their elegance of style and breadth of view. He 
 was promoter and secretary of the Collegiate and Theological Educa- 
 tional Society at the West. Mr. Sturtevant said of him, " he always 
 meant business. 1 ' 4 
 
 John Flavel Brooks 5 was born in Westmoreland, New York, De- 
 cember 3, 1801. He graduated from Hamilton College in 1828, stud- 
 ied three years at Yale Divinity School, and went, in 1831. to Illinois 
 as Home Missionary to St. Clair county. He preached in CollinsviJle 
 and Belleville, but preaching gave way to teaching, and he is best 
 known in Illinois for his long years of service in teaching. He taught 
 school in Belleville, and, in 1837. he opened a teachers' seminary in 
 Waverly, one of the earliest attempts to give normal instruction to 
 teachers. His seminary was not, however, successful, and, in 1840, 
 he went to Springfield where he opened an academy in which special 
 attention was given to the education of teachers. He continued to 
 teach till the academy gave way to the public high school, and after- 
 wards taught in a small private school till his death, in 1887. As 
 teacher "no one else has served so long and none more devotedly." 
 
 1 Julian Sturtevant. An Autobiography, 181; Historic Morgan and Classic Jacksonville: Home 
 Missionary, May, 1836; Samuel Willard, Education in Illinois (Illinois School Report, 1883-84), 112. 
 
 2 Obituary Record of Yale College. 
 
 3 Obituary Record of Graduates of Yalt College, No. II. 
 
 4 Julian M. Sturtevant. An Autobiography, 151. 
 
 5 Seventh General Catalogue of the Divinity School, Yale University.
 
 23 
 
 Elisha Jenney 1 was born at Fairhaven, Massachusetts, November 
 7, 1803. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1827, and studied 
 at Yale Divinity School for three years. He was pastor at Alton, 
 Waverly, Monticello, Spring Creek and Island Grove, up to 1849. 
 From 1849 to 1868, he undertook evangelistic work for the Alton 
 Presbytery. In 1858, he became agent of the Home Missionary So- 
 ciety for Central and Southern Illinois. He died at his home, in 
 Galesburg, in 1882. 
 
 William Kirby 2 was born in Middletown, Connecticut, July 10, 
 1805. He graduated from Yale College in 1827 and studied in Yale 
 Divinity School for three years. He then became an instructor in 
 Illinois College for two years and then pastor to the churches in 
 Union Grove, Blackstone Grove and Mendon, successively, till 1845. 
 In ten years he organized forty-one churches. For several years 
 before his death, in 1851, he was a general agent for the society in 
 Illinois, especially valuable for his fine business capacity, though he 
 himself never received more than $400 per year. 
 
 Asa Turner 3 was born in Templeton, Massachusetts, in 1799, grad- 
 uated from Yale College in 1827, and studied two years in the Yale 
 Divinity School. His early work was in Quincy, though later he was 
 identified with Iowa and was one of the founders of Iowa College. 
 
 J. M. Sturtevant 4 was born in Warren, Connecticut, in 1805, and 
 graduated from Yale College in 1821. He became, in 1830, the first 
 teacher in Illinois College, continued work in that college till 1885, 
 and for many years was its president. In his later years he pub- 
 lished several books on religious and theological subjects, and always 
 devoted himself to the educational development of the West. 
 
 The following are the men who joined the association after 1829: 
 Romulus Barnes, William Carter, Flavel Bascom, Albert Hale, Lucien 
 Farnham. 
 
 Romulus Barnes 5 was born in Bristol, Connecticut. October 16, 
 1800. He graduated from Yale College in 1828 and studied for three 
 years in the Yale Divinity School. He served as home missionary 
 in Peoria, Knox and McDonough counties and started a seminary at 
 Washington, Tazewell county. He died in 18^6, at the age of 
 forty-six. 
 
 William Carter was born in New Canaan, Connecticut, in 1803, and 
 
 fraduated at Yale in 1828. He remained at Yale in the Divinity 
 chool, and as a tutor till 1833, when he went to the Congregational 
 church in Jacksonville, and remained in Illinois for the rest of his 
 life. He was pastor for many years (1838-1866) at Pittsfield, and 
 resided there till his death in 1871. He was a trustee of Illinois Col- 
 lege and director of Chicago Theological Seminary. 
 
 Flavel Bascom was born in Lebanon, Connecticut, in 1804, and 
 graduated from Yale in 1828. For three years he was a student in 
 the Divinity School, and for three years more a tutor in the college. 
 He worked in Peoria, Bureau, Putnam and Tazewell counties. He 
 
 1 Seventh General Catalogue of the Divinity School of Yale University, 14; Pillsbury, Historical 
 Sketch of Illinois State Normal University (Illinois School Report, 1887-88}, 90; Willard, Educa- 
 tion in Illinois (School Report, 1883-84), 119. 
 
 2 Obituary Record of Yale College. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid.
 
 24 
 
 was pastor in Galesburg, Dover, Princeton, Hinsdale, and, from 1840 
 to 1850, in the First Presbyterian church of Chicago. He was one of 
 the founders of Beloit College and one of its trustees for thirty-seven 
 years. He was also a trustee for Knox College and a director for 
 thirty years of Chicago Theological Seminary. 1 
 
 Albert Hale was born in Glastonbury, Connecticut, in 1799, grad- 
 uated from Yale in 1827. and studied for three years in the Di- 
 vinity School. From 1831 to 1836, he was a home missionary in 
 Illinois. He was agent of the Missionary Society from 1836 to 
 1839, and then became pastor of the Second Presbyterian church 
 of Springfield, where he remained till his retirement in 1867, " a fear- 
 less advocate of human rights and Christian patriotism." " The mis- 
 sionary tours of Mr. Hale and Mr. Baldwin extended from the Ohio 
 river to the northern border of the state, and their good results con- 
 tinue to this day." 2 
 
 Lucien Farnharn was born July 8. 1799, at Lisbon, Connecticut. 
 He graduated from Amherst College in 1827. and from Andover Sem- 
 inary in 1880. He was thus the only member of the " band " who 
 never studied at Yale. He went as home missionary to Illinois in 
 1830, and preached there till his death, in 1874. He preached in 
 Jacksonville, Princeton, Hadley. Batavia, Lockport and Newark. 3 
 
 Before this group of men had entered Illinois to advance with its 
 population toward the center and north, an isolated settlement had 
 appeared in the extreme northern part of the state where, at Galena, 
 the government lead mines were attracting a rude population. In 
 April, 1828, a resident of the settlement made an appeal to the Home 
 Missionary Society for a resident missionary. 4 He justified his ap- 
 peal by giving a description of the condition and prospects of Galena. 
 At that time it had 1,200 to 1,500 inhabitants, although only two 
 years before there had been but fifty people there. Two-thirds of 
 the present population were from the United States; the remainder 
 were mostly Irish Catholics. The United States agent reported five 
 million pounds of lead as taken from the smelting establishments. 
 '' Every steamboat brings workers and by July it is thought the num- 
 ber will be 10.000." There was no clergymen, Protestant or Catholic, 
 and no school. A movement was on foot for erecting a place of 
 worship and starting a subscription for the support of a clergyman; 
 two names were down for $125. July 7th, the same correspondent 
 reinforced his appeal by saying the population had reached 10,000, 
 and the subscription $400. 
 
 Meanwhile, Aratus Kent, of Suffield, Connecticut, had graduated 
 from Yale in 1816, and studied theology in New York for four years. 
 During the year 1822-1823, when he was a student at Princeton The- 
 ological Seminary, he had offered his services to the Missionary So- 
 ciety, asking to be sent " to a place so hard that no one else would 
 take it." In March, 1829, he was commissioned to Galena. After a 
 
 1 Obituary Record of Yale College: Seventh General Catalogue of the Divinity School of Yatt 
 University, 14. 
 
 2 Julian M. Sturtevant. An Autobiography, 243. 
 
 3 General Catalogue of the Theological Seminary, Andover, Mass, 1880, 75. 
 
 4 Home Missionary, April, 1828.
 
 25 
 
 journey of eighteen and a half days he reached his destination with a 
 feeling of elation that all the broad region above St. Louis was u his 
 diocese," since there was no clergymen anywhere in it. Thus began a 
 service of thirty-nine years for northern Illinois. For nineteen years 
 his labors centered about Galena. He then became agent of the so- 
 ciety for northern Illinois. He did much for the religious and educa- 
 tional interests of this part of the state. He helped to found Beloit 
 College, and was its first president. 1 
 
 When he reached G-alena, he did not find conditions so favorable 
 as he had hoped. "A combination of unpropitious circumstances has 
 already produced and threatens still great embarrassments in this 
 place and the adjoining country. The regulations of government are 
 oppressive. I shall not take it upon me to say that they require too 
 great a proportion of the lead, but the requisition that those who live 
 fifty miles out should deliver their tithes here, and the restrictions 
 by which people are prevented from cultivating the soil and are then 
 made to depend on markets a thousand miles distant, are oppressive 
 beyond endurance, The merchants and smelters have sold their 
 goods on credit to such an unwarrantable extent that the country is 
 become bankrupt. The price of lead is so low that, under present 
 disadvantages, it will scarcely pay for digging, smelting and convey- 
 ing to market. In addition to all this, the capitalists, who generally 
 live at a distance, are taking the alarm and are using oppressive 
 measures to call in their funds. The consequence of all which is, 
 that the people are fast retreating, and the present prospect is, that 
 but few, comparatively, will remain here through the winter." 2 
 
 In the fall of 1829, Mr. Kent made a tour to St. Louis, and, on his 
 return by way of the Illinois river, visited the settlement of Union 
 Grove, where a little community of twenty families had built a 
 church, the first north of Springfield and a 100 miles above it. These 
 families were all from the south. Some, coming originally from 
 Tennessee, had first settled in Bond county and founded Bethel 
 church, to which Thomas A. Spielman was commissioned in 1829. 
 Some came by way of Bond county from the Red Oak church, Brown 
 county, Ohio, led by their pastor. Rev. James Gilliland from South 
 Carolina. Others came directly from the church of Rev. John Ran- 
 kin, in Ripley, Brown county, Ohio. Most, if not all, of these people 
 had left the south to escape the evils of slavery, and their churches 
 were anti-slavery churches. Aratus Kent preached the first sermon 
 to the new settlement and reported to the society their desire for a 
 minister. Rev. John McDonald, "a western man," was commissioned 
 to Union Grove in 1831. 3 
 
 By 1830, even before the Black Hawk War, Mr. Kent is exploiting 
 the excellence of northern Illinois and calling for settlers: " I am still 
 of the opinion that this mining country will settle with unexampled 
 rapidity when it is thrown into market, as I think it will be, within 
 two years. Believing as I do that the soil, the minerals, the salubrity 
 and the water power afford a combination of inducements to settlers 
 
 1 C. A. Church, History of Rockford, 295; Home Missionaty, March, 1829. 
 
 2 Home Alissionary, 1829. 
 
 3 Correspondence with H. E. Leeper, Princeton, Illinois.
 
 26 
 
 unequalled in the United States, and such as will soon render it a 
 populous district, I am extremely anxious that laborers should take 
 the field in time." He pleads for a colony to come out like that of 
 Plymouth Rock. They should come from principle. ' Bibles, tracts 
 and missionaries are indispensable, but they must be accompanied by 
 intelligent and matured piety in the ordinary walks of life." 
 
 By 1831, Galena had recovered her prosperity. By 1833, Mr. Kent 
 impressed by the military defences of the frontier, fancies a line of 
 evangelical posts along the northern boundary of the state. This is 
 suggested by a second visit to Union Grbve and one to Fort Dear- 
 born, where he found Jeremiah Porter, just arrived with the troops 
 from the north and ready to take up missionary duties among soldiers 
 and civilians. He would have Union Grove and Fort Dearborn serve 
 as evangelical posts to resist the onsets of sin just as the military 
 post was set for the protection of the country. Mr. Kent's pride in 
 Galena is shown in his comment on Chicago at this time: "It is an 
 important station, and if the pier now commencing should be perma- 
 nent and the harbor become a safe one, Chicago will undoubtedly 
 grow as rapidly as any village in the western country." In 1841, he 
 wrote, that " more business is done in Galena than any place either 
 in the state or territory." 1 
 
 In 1829, Aratus Kent found Union Grove in Putnam county, isola- 
 ted by a 100 miles of uninhabited prairie from Springfield. It was 
 the navigable Illinois river that thus drew settlers into the center 
 and north of the state. In 1831, a settlement was formed at Pekin, 
 and a church founded the following year, even during the progress of 
 the Indian war, showing how settlers were crowding into the Indian 
 country. In 1828, the "upper counties" were Sangamon, Morgan and 
 Greene, according to John Ellis. In that same year another writer 
 describes Greene, Morgan, Sangamon, Tazewell, Peoria, Fulton,. 
 Schuyler, Adams and Pike, as counties in the northern part of the 
 state. 2 He says settlements in Morgan and Sangamon began as early 
 as 1820. All of these counties, except Tazewell, were in the military 
 bounty tract which had been surveyed and laid off into counties to 
 41. Six of these Peoria, Fulton, Schuyler, Calhoun, Pike and 
 Adams had been organized and courts held. " Communication with 
 other parts of the state is at times very difficult, on account of ice, bad 
 ferries and overflowing of the Illinois and its tributaries." 
 
 Rev. J. G. Bergen was sent into this region in 1828, receiving cour- 
 tesies from Governor Edwards, at Belleville, on his way. He found 
 Springfield a town of 1.800 inhabitants, with traders coming in from 
 twenty to forty miles around. In 1830, he writes: " One never beheld 
 a fairer or more inviting region than the upper counties to which a 
 tide of emigration rolls with an unexampled rapidity." " We must 
 have pious laymen. Let such individuals consider well and they 
 will find the appeal is strong to their interest and duty, for the pres- 
 ent and the future, for themselves and the generation which is to 
 
 1 Home Missionary, 1831. 
 
 2 Home Missionary ,11828.
 
 27 
 
 come." 1 He, too, reports the advanced settlement of Union Grove 
 and Pekin, the latter " only came into market last autumn." In 1831, 
 a writer from Vandalia calls attention to the fact that the missiona- 
 ries are altogether neglecting the south and east of the state for the 
 north and west, and that, too, when the bulk of the population is 
 south of Vandalia. 
 
 This then was the state of settlement in 1833, at the close of the 
 Black Hawk War. The majority of the popiilation was in the south- 
 ern part of the state, but there was more of interest and promise on 
 the northern frontier. Immediately upon the close of the war the 
 eastern emigration, which had already begun and had had an influ- 
 ence upon the " upper counties " of 1828, was increased to a great 
 extent. Not without influence upon would-be settlers must have 
 been the appeals of missionaries published and distributed widely 
 as they were through the East. They never failed to describe the 
 beauty and fertility of the country, its promise of future fruitfulness, 
 and the need of " pious families " as settlers to possess the land for 
 righteousness. Who could resist the optimism and hopefulness of 
 Mr. Bergen, as he wrote, in 1829, from Springfield: 2 "It has ap- 
 peared to me after a year's observation of climate, soil, production 
 and great water privileges in these parts, having the Wabash on the 
 east, the Ohio on the south, the Mississippi on the west, the Illinois 
 and Sangamon through the center, and the inexhaustible mines on 
 the north, that here are held out the brightest and richest prospects 
 of abundance, usefulness and comfort to thousands in the eastern and 
 middle states. And is not now the time while there is a stagnation 
 of business in the old states, a depression in many of your great es- 
 tablishments and hundreds are thrown out of employment, and here 
 the best selections are yet to be made? A thorough conviction on 
 these points by many letters from my relations and others in this 
 country, together with a full belief that our population in the West 
 was out-growing the institutions of religion, science and common 
 learning, induced me with my little family, voluntarily to lay down 
 our many endearments in the East and to take up our stand here. 
 When I first saw Mr. Ellis, more than a year ago, he told me he was 
 fixed in his purpose to abide in this state, while up to that hour he 
 could scarcely see a ray of hope dawning on our cause in Illinois." 
 
 1 Home Missionary. December, 1828; 1831. 
 
 2 Home Missionary, June, 1829.
 
 28 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 1833-1836. GROWTH OF THE CHURCHES IN 
 NORTHERN AND EASTERN ILLINOIS. 
 
 Chicago was the first place to spring into importance after the 
 Black Hawk War. In 1833, * Theron Baldwin, of the " Yale Band," 
 visited the place and thus described it: " Chicago is destined soon to 
 be a place of great importance. It is fast becoming a great thorough- 
 fare, furnishing, as it does, the only harbor on all that portion of the 
 lake; especially, when the canal or railroad is opened, there must be 
 a vast amount of business drawn to that point. It has increased with 
 astonishing rapidity the present season. I was told that since the 
 opening of spring, not far from seventy buildings of all sorts had 
 been erected, or were under way. There are more than twenty stores 
 of different kinds, and, 1 regret to add, that with few exceptions they 
 traffic in ardent spirits. I saw nothing in Chicago to induce the 
 belief that the morals of the people generally were below other new 
 towns of a similar character. No instance of intoxication on the part 
 of the white man fell under my notice. But the degraded Potawatta- 
 mies, who on some days throng the streets, presented a most disgust- 
 ing and affecting spectacle. One could hardly walk out at any time 
 without coming in contact with more or less cases of beastly intoxi- 
 cation among them." It was on this trip that the deserted forts, con- 
 structed as protection against the Indians, were used as preaching 
 places." 
 
 A little earlier, Jeremiah Porter, educated at Williams' College and 
 Princeton Theological Seminary, was commissioned as missionary to 
 the military post at Sault de Saint Marie. When Major John Fowle 
 was sent with troops to build a pier and cut the sand bar at Fort 
 Dearborn, he asked Mr. Porter to go with him. He at once found 
 material for a church, many of whose members had been born in New 
 England. Writing on his arrival, he said: U A papal priest reached 
 this place from St. Louis a fortnight since and I hope Providence 
 has sent a counteracting influence here just in season." Mr. Porter 
 was not so optimistic about Chicago as was Mr. Baldwin. " Iniquity 
 has abounded here," he wrote. " The awful scenes of ' the treaty,' 
 the unprovoked and wanton violence of the Sabbath, the disregard by 
 
 1 Home Missionary, 1833.
 
 multitudes of the necessary laws and customs of well regulated com- 
 munities, the ridiculous imitation of the follies of the most profligate 
 cities of our land, have made Christians tremble for the future pros- 
 pects of this place." This same year both Mr. Porter and Mr. Kent 
 visited the settlement at Fountaindale, or DuPage, where were a 
 cluster of families from Vermont, and founded a church there. 
 
 The valley of the Fox river and the region between the Des Plaines 
 river and Lake Michigan now became a favorite place for settlement, 
 in 1834, Rev. N. C. Clarke was sent to DuPage and became the active 
 missionary and organizer of churches of all the Fox and DesPlaines 
 river region. A grant for a railroad between Chicago and Galena 
 shows the rising importance of this region. Churches were founded 
 in Plainville (1836), St. Charles (1835), Elgin (1836), Aurora (1838). 
 
 In 1837, the First Congregational church of Rockford was organ- 
 ized. Its early establishment in the town, its peaceful history, its 
 strong and influential position, are typical of the history of these 
 Congregational churches in most northern Illinois towns. The first 
 permanent settlers of Rockford were Germanicus Kent and Thatcher 
 Blake, the former a native of Suffield, Connecticut, and a brother of 
 Aratus Kent, the missionary at Galena. Thatcher Blake was from 
 Maine. One came to build a saw mill, the other to farm. This was 
 in 1834. Mr. Kent's family joined him, coming from Galena in the 
 spring of 1835. Other people had by this time settled in the locality. 
 On the second Sunday of June, 1835, the first religious service was 
 conducted in the house of Germanicus Kent by his brother, Aratus 
 Kent, and the church was organized May 5, 1837, with nine members. 
 Its first church building was made possible by gifts from friends of 
 the early settlers in New York, amounting to $800. The church 
 seems to have supported its minister alone from the beginning. The 
 longest pastorate has been that of Rev. Henry M. Goodwin, from 1850 
 to 1872. In 1849, a second Congregational church was founded, 'and, 
 in 1858, a third; both daughters of the first. Rockford has always 
 been a stronghold of Congregationalism. 1 
 
 Through the rest of the 30s and 40s, there was persistent and in- 
 creasing demand for missionaries as the country filled up with eastern 
 settlers. Churches generally became self-supporting, such was the 
 material prosperity of the country. Yet in 1844, of forty-six Congre- 
 gational churches, all but two were helped by the society; and that 
 same year there was a call for twenty missionaries for northern Illi- 
 nois, many of the towns offering to pay part, at least, of the salary. 
 It was clear that during these years the southern part of the state 
 was neglected by, or inhospitable to, the eastern missionaries. In 
 1847, about Jacksonville, which in 1828 was the center of missionary 
 work, twelve churches were without ministers. The new population 
 coming to the northern part of the state showed tastes agreeable to 
 the missionary, and the work in the north and west was urgent and 
 prosperous One pastor wrote of his parish, as follows: "Permit me 
 to notice a fact which finds a parallel only in the early history of New 
 England ; that Christians seem to be roused to the importance of lay- 
 
 1 Church. History of fackford, 28, 87, 306.
 
 30 
 
 ing well the foundations of society in the new but rapidly rising 
 communities of the West. They have an interest not only to know, 
 but to decide what shall be the moral and religious tone of feeling. 
 Christians at this day, stimulated by a sense of duty, cheerfully leave 
 the favored scenes of older states to exert their influences in formijig 
 the character of the infant portions of our country." 
 
 The year 1851 marked an advance in the economic development of 
 the state and also a development of her religious interests. This was 
 due to the opening of the Illinois Central railroad, which made land 
 available for settlement which had hitherto been so inaccessible as to 
 be undesirable. The missionary saw the importance of such a road 
 when it was first talked about. The main plan was a line from Cairo 
 to Galena with east and west connections, and this meant access to 
 both a southern and an eastern market. William Kirby, of the "Yale 
 Band," estimated that no less than fifty-seven counties would be 
 crossed, or nearly approached. 1 " The scarcity of timber and remote- 
 ness from the natural channels of trade have been the great obstacles 
 to the temporal and religious interests of the interior counties which 
 will be reached by this vast chain of iron roads. These obstacles 
 will now be removed. The timber and coal of the southern counties 
 will supply the deficiency of the middle and northern ; and the ease 
 of finding the best markets will allure emigrants of every description 
 from the older states. This quickening of the stagnant life in so 
 large a portion of the state cannot but operate favorably to the spread 
 of religion. Enterprise is both the result and the harbinger of its 
 triumphs." 2 
 
 In 1852, Enoch Kingsbury, the pioneer missionary of eastern Illi- 
 nois, who had been in Danville since 1832, uttered a plea for mission- 
 aries for nine eastern counties where none were then stationed. This 
 led to investigation, and the report, that there was a region nearly 100 
 miles in width from Kankakee to the Ohio river in which the work of 
 the society had barely been commenced. In eight contiguous coun- 
 ties, containing a population of more than 30,000, no missionary had 
 ever been stationed. 3 By 1855, the main line of the railroad was com- 
 pleted. There followed an increase in the value of land and its 
 productions and a large increase in population. Many villages sprang 
 into existence or became of new importance. Of these were Cen- 
 tralia, where were the repair shops of the road and the homes of many 
 of the men, where both freight and passenger trains were held over 
 Sunday; LaSalle and Peru, the terminus of the grand canal, and the 
 meeting place of the lines from Chicago, Galena and Cairo. At 
 LaSalle, Rev. William H. Collins, of the family who settled Collins- 
 ville in 1818. organized a church and tried to introduce a higher tone 
 into the money-making spirit of the place. Here he preached to 
 Baptists, Unitarians, Universalists, " Moralists," " Infidels," and 
 
 1 Home Missionary (Annual Report) 1851. 
 
 2 Home Missionary, 1852. 3 Ibid, 1853.
 
 31 
 
 " Skeptics," to men glorying in their shame, distillers, bartenders 
 who say that they " like to hear a good string of common sense well 
 fixed up." i 
 
 The " road " itself did much to help the church in the new commu- 
 nities. Land was given for church sites, freight houses were loaned 
 for religious services till churches could be built. It observed the 
 Sabbath by stopping all work on its lines. It contributed to the sup- 
 port of religious institutions and employed colporteurs to work among 
 its own workmen. It also showed its interest in anti-slavery agitation 
 by aiding fugitive slaves in their flight to Chicago. 2 
 
 This last stage of the opening of churches which took place in 
 eastern Illinois, practically covers the time till 1860. Our outline 
 indicates how thorough was the work of the eastern missionary in 
 reaching all parts of the state. It indicates how he sought to impress 
 the ideals of New England upon this state, so rapid in its growth, so 
 important to the nation in the stand it took in the following years, 
 reflecting as concretely as it is possible to imagine the real effect of 
 the moral and religious ideals, persistently proclaimed by the New 
 Englander, to a large population made up of those by no means natu- 
 rally inclined or predisposed to these ideals. 
 
 1 Home Missionary, January, 1857. 
 
 2 W. H. Siebert, The Underground Railroad. (New York, 1898), 97.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 DIFFICULTIES OF THE NEW ENGLAND 
 PIONEERS. 
 
 Although many of the communities were settled from all parts of 
 the Union, yet an examination of the mere names on the map of Illi- 
 nois proves its intimate connection with New England. This often 
 indicates merely the desire of a leading family or influential individ- 
 ual to use again some old and loved name as Lebanon ; but sometimes 
 it is in evidence of the sentiment of a colony moving from New Eng- 
 land as in the case of Bunker Hill, Macoupin county, or Marine, 
 Madison county, which was settled by a company of sea-captains and 
 and seamen from Connecticut. It might indicate a colony from the 
 very place after which the new settlement was named, as Guilford, 
 Adams county, and Wethersfield, Henry country. 
 
 Quincy, Elgin, Granville, in fact all the northern towns, had New 
 Englanders as a large portion of their population; but the most con- 
 spicuous example of the New England colony migrating as a religious 
 organization, was furnished by the founders of Princeton. Theirs 
 was a quaint story typical in many ways of the hardships of the 
 early settlers, yet enriched and idealized by their appreciation of 
 their connection with the religious past and their sense of responsi- 
 bility for ,the future of an important part of their country. The 
 prime mover was Deacon Ebenezer S. Phelps, of Northampton, 
 Mass. 1 The object, as published in the circular issued at the time, 
 was " to advance the cause of Christ by planting religious institu- 
 tions in the virgin soil of the West and aiding the cause of Christian 
 education in its various departments." The foundation of this colony 
 was regarded as a matter of grave importance in Northampton and 
 vicinity. The meeting of the council to organize the colony church 
 in 1831, aroused great interest in that place and in the adjoining 
 towns. It drew together a very large congregation. Eighteen people 
 proposed to unite with this church. The churches represented in the 
 council were from Northampton, Beechertown and Putney. Rev. 
 Ichabod S. Spencer, of Northampton, delivered a discourse on the 
 text: "Fear not, little flock; for it is your father's good pleasure to 
 give you the kingdom." This sermon is still preserved as a sort of 
 
 1 The Hampshire Colony. Historical Papers (Princeton, 1881).
 
 33 
 
 sacred relic in Princeton and sometimes read in their church services. 
 The council was followed by a series of very successful revival 
 services. 
 
 At last the little colony started, though rumors of Indian hostili- 
 ties deterred many from joining and several families postponed their 
 removal, while a- few members had gone to Illinois in- advance in 
 1830. The main body met in Albany and embarked in a canal boat 
 May 7, 1831, with Cotton Mather, of Hadley, for captain. They en- 
 tered into a contract not to travel on the Sabbath, and on the first 
 Sunday they rested in Amsterdam. These names and circumstances 
 were pleasantly suggestive to them of early Pilgrim history. The 
 next Sabbath they were in Buffalo. They expected to find a schooner 
 here bound for Chicago, but were disappointed. They took a steam- 
 boat to Detroit and there found a schooner sailing for Chicago, but 
 without room either for themselves or their goods. They contracted 
 to have their goods taken on the next trip, two or three months later, 
 and set out with teams for Chicago. In a few days a pair of horses 
 died, and the eight young men of the party had to travel on foot. In 
 this manner they reached Mottville, on the St. Joseph river. 
 
 Up to this time they had no definite locality selected for a home; 
 but they now learned that Mr. Jones, who had come out the previous 
 autumn to pick out a place, was at Bailey's Point on the Vermilion 
 river, and had built there a double cabin for their reception. The 
 young men decided to make the rest of the journey by water. They 
 bought two canoes, lashed them together, put their trunks aboard, 
 and started down the St. Joseph. It is a rapid stream and they 
 reached the portage, sixty-five miles, in twelve hours. Here they 
 hired an ox team to transport them to a lake or swamp, the source 
 of the Kankakee river, a branch of the Illinois. They were told it 
 was 160 miles to Ottawa. They expected to make that distance in 
 three or four days and laid in provisions accordingly. They found 
 navigation on the Kankakee swamp and river much less rapid than 
 011 the St. Joseph, and by Saturday night they were still some dis- 
 tance from the union of the Kankakee and the Des Plaines. Rain 
 induced them to tie to a tree for the night, and Sunday morning 
 found them lying in several inches of water in the bottom of their 
 boats, After building a fire and drying their clothes, they reluctantly 
 decided to travel that Sabbath day, for the first time on their jour- 
 ney. Their only rations for some time had been slippery elm and 
 bass-wood bark. Sunday night they spent on shore in a drenching 
 rain. 
 
 Monday was clear and they soon reached an Indian encampment 
 and applied in vain for food. Pressing onward they heard a cow-bell 
 in the distance. Leaving the river and ascending the bluff, they 
 found a cabin occupied by a white family, who could give them noth- 
 ing but niush and milk. To prepare this the woman shelled some 
 corn and ground it in a hand mill. The young men ate just enough 
 to appease their hunger. It was still twenty miles to Ottawa and 
 they pushed on. About sunset they saw a cabin on the south side of 
 the river, and on inquiry how far it was to Ottawa, they were told, 
 " This is Ottawa." Here they feasted on mush, milk and honey, and 
 -3 H
 
 34 
 
 slept on a puncheon floor. The next day they reached a point on the 
 Illinois, opposite the present city of LaSalle, and the following day 
 joined the rest of their company at the cabin at Bailey's Point. 
 
 These last had arrived the same day only a few hours in advance. 
 This was June 9, five weeks and two days since leaving Albany. The 
 journey to Chicago had been exceedingly dreary and fatiguing. With 
 much difficulty and delay they procured other teams at Chicago to 
 take them the 100 miles to Bailey's Point. They found the Vermil- 
 ion river in flood and were ferried across one by one. reclining on 
 the bottom of a dug-out, lest it be upset.. After some rest, they de- 
 cided to locate on the prairie east and south of Bureau Creek timber; 
 but they found the prairie almost too wet to travel on. Finally, 
 leaving their wagon stalled in a creek, their guide undertook to pilot 
 them to a certain cabin to pass the night ; but they failed to find it 
 and slept under the open sky. In the morning they could have no 
 breakfast till they went back five miles to their wagon. 
 
 In the late summer, others joined them, coming out by way of the 
 Ohio canal and the Ohio, Mississippi and Illinois rivers, sending 
 their goods by way of New Orleans. The members of the colony 
 kept dispersing to other parts for settlement, so that by November, 
 1881, there were but four resident members of the colony church and 
 they had to go to the older settlements on the Illinois for awhile for 
 fear of Indians. Three heads of families died in the first month. 
 Such hardships incident to the journey to the new country and to the 
 first year or two of settlement, were followed by hardships arising 
 from the new conditions of living, particularly the sickness and death 
 that bore so hard upon the people for many years. Here the mission- 
 ary was particularly tried; for, not only did those sorrows come to 
 his own family, but he must minister to the sick and dying in other 
 families, and often felt with peculiar keenness the loss to infant set- 
 tlements of those who had for it the same high aims that he cherished. 
 Cholera was severe in 1833. Carrollton lost one-sixteenth of its 
 population, Jacksonville and Quincy fifty of their inhabitants. In 
 1849, there was a serious cholera epidemic in Belleville, 250 dying of 
 a population of 3,000; and, in 1851, it is again mentioned in Hancock 
 county. Cholera seems usually to have followed the rivers. Bilious 
 fever and fever and ague were for years the almost constant scourge 
 of the people. Even missionary magazines contained articles of 
 instruction to the people as to the care of their lands, so as to avoid 
 these constant sicknesses. 1 
 
 1 Home Missionary, 1833; November, 1841; October, 1849.
 
 85 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE EFFECT OF ECONOMIC CONDITIONS ON 
 THE GROWTH OF CHURCHES. 
 
 Perhaps no class of men was more sensitive to the economic 
 changes in Illinois than the home missionary pastors. The growth 
 and prosperity of the churches were favorably affected by emigration, 
 good markets and good prices ; on the other hand, they were unfavor- 
 ably affected, as regards numbers and financial support, by the tide 
 of migration away from Illinois, by general " hard times," by local 
 losses in crops due to floods or inadaptability of crop to soil. We 
 have noticed the active part the earlier missionaries took in inviting 
 settlers into the country just before the Black Hawk War. For a few 
 years thereafter the chief matter for comment in their reports, out- 
 side of matters purely religious, was the rapid increase in population. 
 One can fancy the bustle and activity of these years, the optimism 
 induced by the attractiveness of the country and the large returns 
 from the land. If there was anything in all this for the missionary 
 to deplore, it was the spirit of speculation starting in the land and 
 spreading to all industries. 1 
 
 Every village with the smallest prospect of growth, and some unin- 
 habited spots in the wilderness, had a large area staked off into town 
 lots and platted in a highly ornamental style for the information of 
 purchasers. 2 And those lots were actually sold at stiff city prices. 
 
 The larger towns were already great cities on paper. Alton, with a 
 population of 4,000 or 5,000, had staked off all the surrounding bluffs. 
 A short time before his death, Mr. Lovejoy had predicted, in the 
 Alton Observer, that in ten years the city would contain 50,000 in- 
 habitants. From Peru to Ottawa, about sixteen miles, the whole 
 Illinois bottom, and even the top of Buffalo Rock, were platted for a 
 continuous city. Even in Jacksonville, then containing a population 
 of not more than 1,200, speculation was so active that a man could 
 hardly keep pace with the real estate transfers in the vicinity of his 
 own dwelling. The sale of these western " city lots " was not con- 
 fined to the western market. Land titles came gradually to form " a 
 part of the circulating medium in New York, Boston and Phila- 
 delphia." 
 
 1 Home Missionary October. 1836. 
 
 2 Julian At. Sturtevant. An Autobiography, 233
 
 3H 
 
 In 1837, came the hard times felt so generally throughout the 
 country. In Illinois, the price of labor, building material and provi- 
 sions increased 100 per cent. Flour rose to fifteen dollars a barrel, 
 pork to ten dollars a hundred weight, and butter to fifty-six cents a 
 pound. 1 For several years this condition continued in the west. Gifts 
 from the east to the Misssionary Society fell off. As a result of this 
 economic situation, the growth of Illinois received a sudden check. 
 It was only in later years that the pastors could look back and see 
 any good result from that time of trial. "Adversity," they said, " has 
 saved the West. It has repressed inordinate enterprise and sobered 
 the aims of men ; it has sifted the people and driven out or kept away 
 many unprincipled adventurers whose influence would have been 
 only to corrupt." 2 They also saw a spiritual gain in the fact that the 
 churches were kept longer in close connection with the eastern 
 churches by continued dependence on them for support. The unity 
 of the churches was thus preserved and the centrifugal tendencies of 
 sectarianism so prevalent in this new country were, for the time at 
 least, checked. 
 
 By 1842, the stream of immigration again began to pour into Illi- 
 nois. The center of the state now showed populous towns. Spacious 
 barns and dwellings appeared where, twelve years before, were only 
 the wolf and badger. 3 The year 1843 seems to have been particularly 
 disastrous for Illinois. In the summer there were floods, in the win- 
 ter extreme cold so that many of the cattle died of starvation. There 
 was little money in circulation and pastors would have been in want 
 had their only source of supply been the contributions of their little 
 churches. As it was, months went by without the sight of a dollar, 
 and even taxes went unpaid. 4 But, by 1846, settlement was pushing 
 into the open prairie, whereas before, it had kept to the borders of 
 rivers and streams where the woodlands furnished fuel. 
 
 About this time Illinois began to feel in her turn the drain upon 
 her population that she had before inflicted on the states east of her. 
 The frontier was now beyond the Mississippi and emigrants from 
 Illinois, previously not numerous enough to excite comment, now 
 attracted public attention. Not only adjoining territories, but distant 
 Oregon attracted them and the missionaries tried to rouse in the 
 emigrants the same religious sentiment that had attended their own 
 coming to Illinois. In 1849, the destination became California. 
 " Hundreds of families in Illinois, Missouri and Iowa are making 
 arrangements to push on " and, equally significant of a change in 
 Illinois, " their places are taken by settlers from the old world." 5 
 
 Here are brief descriptions of the effects on two settlements of the 
 "gold fever:" "From one village twenty-five active men are drop- 
 ping everything else and rushing off to the gold region, the whole 
 country is run wild here, perfectly wild." In another promising set- 
 
 1 Home Missionary, December, 1837. 
 
 2 Ibid, June, 1842. 
 
 3 Home Missionary, March, 1842. 
 
 4 Ibid, April, 1843. The family budget of a missionary in 1838, in one of the most pros- 
 perous communities, was as follows: Rent and food, $300; girl at $2 a week, $104; wood, 
 $80; horse and cow, $100; postage and periodicals, $50; clothing, $200, Total, $834. 
 
 5 Home Missionary, January, 1849.
 
 37 
 
 tlement the tk mania for California gold took possession of the hearts 
 of men and women so that it would have required but comparatively 
 a small amount of money to have bought up the whole settlement." 1 
 
 The following description of the setting out of a company makes 
 the scene very vivid: 2 "First came the excitement, every report 
 eagerly sought after farmers, mechanics, merchants and doctors be- 
 gan to think their several pursuits too dull and prosy. Then came 
 the decision who will go? First messes, then companies, were 
 formed. Next came the preparation; everybody was busy. Then 
 approached the day of departure the day was set, but before it came, 
 train after train of California wagons from the other places further 
 east began to roll through our village toward the far distant Pacific. 
 Twenty wagons from our village and the community immediately 
 around it were ready, averaging nearly four men to a wagon. Tues- 
 day was the time appointed to leave, and I gave notice that I would 
 preach a Californian sermon on the afternoon of the Sabbath preced- 
 ing their departure. The day was stormy, but the congregation was 
 large. It was a solemn meeting. There was a breathless stillness 
 and many a silent tear was seen to fall from the eye of the husband, 
 the wife, the son. or the brother. I had provided myself with a 
 basket of Bibles, testaments and tracts, and gave away the testa- 
 ments and tracts to those who would carry them to California. The 
 last we heard from this company, they were keeping the Sabbath 
 about 150 miles on their way toward the land of gold." 
 
 The depression caused by migration was followed by the depression 
 of " hard times.'' A period of floods again ruined crops in 1851. and 
 it became apparent as time went on that wheat could not be depended 
 iipon as a paying crop. For three years the wheat failed, both in 
 quality and quantity. Nineteen-twentieths of the farmers were said 
 to be in debt. Many loaned at 25 per cent, and in some communi- 
 ties nearly every farm was offered for sale. 3 Better methods of agri- 
 culture, the substitution of corn for wheat, and the opening of the 
 Illinois Central railroad with its " market at every man's door," 
 brought better times, though complaints about wheat continued into 
 the 'GOs. One witness, however, to the steadily increasing prosperity 
 of the state, is found in the fact that communities were erecting 
 church buildings, with some outside help, even during the years of 
 the Civil War. 
 
 1 Home Missionary, June, 1849. 
 
 2 Ibid, October, 1849. 
 
 3 Home Missionary, 1851 .
 
 38 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 INTERNAL DIFFICULTIES. SEPARATION OF 
 THE CONGREGATIONAL AND PRESBY- 
 TERIAN ORGANIZATIONS IN 
 FRONTIER WORK. 
 
 In addition to these economic and social factors which modified the 
 growth of the pioneer churches in Illinois, there were certain internal 
 complications arising from the conditions of church organization, 
 including the connection with the supporting society in the East, 
 which exercised an important influence in the Congregational and 
 Presbyterian churches of the West. 
 
 At first, all of the churches founded by the Missionary Society 
 were in the Presbytery of Missouri, which was organized in 1819; 
 not till 1828 was the Illinois Presbytery organized, and, until 1830, 
 Indiana, Illinois and Missouri were included in the same Synod. 
 The churches of Northern Illinois united in the Presbytery of Ot- 
 tawa in 1834 1 ;but in the same year an association of Congregational 
 churches was formed in Western Illinois and another among those of 
 the Fox river region. By 1853 there were eight associations of Con- 
 gregational churches. These facts of local organization reflect in a 
 measure the difficulties which attended the cooperation of the two 
 denominations in the Home Missionary Society, and which led ulti- 
 mately to separate denominational societies. 
 
 In the beginning Congregationalists and Presbyterians worked 
 together with enthusiasm under the " Plan of Union."' There was an 
 honest intention that each local church should adopt for itself its 
 own form of policy; and, apparently without hesitation, such men as 
 Salmon Giddings, Jeremiah Porter and Aratus Kent, though trained 
 to New England Congregationalism, worked most or all of their lives 
 as Presbyterians. Till 1834, the organization of the churches was 
 wholly Presbyterian, and it is claimed that the word " Congrega- 
 tional" was rarely heard before 1841. 2 
 
 The first churches that took to themselves the name and organiza- 
 tion of the Congregational church did so on the initiative of the lay- 
 men. The ministers were as a rule greatly opposed to this, to the 
 introduction of what seemed a new sect, though some of them were 
 
 1 Whittlesey, The Record of Fifty Years (Historical Papers, Ottawa, 1894). 
 
 2 Home Missionary.
 
 89 
 
 becoming increasingly attached to the simple and flexible principles 
 of Congregationalism, believing that the multiplied sectarian divi- 
 sions were largely due to too rigid and complicated systems of church 
 government. 1 
 
 The Home Missionary Society also opposed such innovation. In 
 1833, when a Congregational church was about to be formed in Jack- 
 sonville, the thirty or forty residents of the town who were ready for 
 the movement, sought the cooperation of Mr. Beecher and Mr. Sturte- 
 vant of Illinois College. 2 But these able men considered such action 
 undesirable or inexpedient, and the enterprise would have gone 
 through without any countenance from them, except that at the last, 
 the church failing of the expected minister, Mr. Sturtevant was pre- 
 vailed upon to officiate at the organization. When he was at the 
 office of the Home Missionary Society in New York some time after 
 this, Mr. Sturtevant was sharply rebuked for the countenance he had 
 thus given to Congregationalism. In 1842, it was said that there was 
 no part of the country where greater harmony prevailed between 
 Presbyterians arid Congregationalists than in northern Illinois, and 
 a few years later a town in Morgan county was named " Concord," to 
 indicate the state of harmony between Presbyterians and Congrega- 
 tionalists. 3 
 
 In 1835, however, the trial of Rev. Albert Barnes, in the East, led 
 in a few years to the division into " Old School " and " New School," 
 a division in doctrine and sympathy which affected Illinois churches. 
 In some places certain " Old School " churches refused to grant let- 
 ters of dismission and recommendation to " New School " churches. 
 At this time, also, there arose in the General Assembly of Presbyte- 
 rian churches, opposition to the financial support of " voluntary 
 societies," such as the Home Missionary Society called " voluntary," 
 since their organization was outside the control of the assembly. 
 This matter occupied the attention of the General Assembly from 
 1834 to 1837. 4 The Assembly of 1837 called for the abrogation of the 
 " Plan of Union," the exclusion of four Synods, and withdrawal of 
 support from the Home Missionary and Educational Societies, on the 
 ground of the preservation of peace and purity to the Presbyterian 
 churches. A protest was presented in the interests of the 400 
 churches then maintained by the Home Missionary Society, and in 
 behalf of the good name and work of these societies. It was signed 
 by Absalom Peters, Ephraim Cutler, David Porter and Horace Bush- 
 nell; but the report was carried and lost to the support of the 
 American Home Missionary Society, the contributions of many Pres- 
 byterian churches. Some Presbyterian support still continued, how- 
 ever, in spite of this formal action. 
 
 There was temporary misgiving and ill-feeling. " Extracts almost 
 innumerable might be taken from our missionary correspondence 
 which illustrate the dreadful evils of division, pastors driven away, 
 churches divided." In a short time, however, the resources and work 
 of the society were larger than ever. It was nine years after this 
 
 1 Julian M. Sturtevant. An Autobiography, 194. 
 
 2 Ibid, 195, 207, 210. 
 
 3 Home Alissionaiy (Annual Report), December, 1848. 
 
 4 Ibid, 1837.
 
 40 
 
 action of the Presbyterian Assembly that the first formal move was 
 made by the Congregationalists looking toward their abrogation of 
 the " Plan of Union." * 
 
 In 1846, the Congregationalists held a " Congregational Conven- 
 tion" in Michigan City, their first national meeting. Here the 
 majority of the delegates were from the northwest, and their feeling 
 was shown in the resolution that " in the judgment of this convention 
 the ' Plan of Union ' should be dissolved." It was not set aside, how- 
 ever, till 1852, when the whole matter was again discussed at a repre- 
 sentative meeting of the whole Congregational denomination in 
 Albany. 2 The eastern delegates, with President Humphrey of Am- 
 herst, as leader, were strongly opposed to its abrogation, and only 
 yielded when thoroughly convinced by the delegates from the north- 
 west that in practical experience the " Plan of Union '' was not 
 accomplishing the results aimed at. This decision in no way affected 
 the support of dependent churches, Congregational or Presbyterian, 
 by the society which continued to give aid to churches as it had done 
 before. In 1854 3 the General Assembly asked for- a ruling of the 
 Home Missionary Society by which it would aid Presbyterian churches 
 in towns where Congregational churches already existed and were 
 still receiving aid. This was refused, and, in 1855, the assembly be- 
 gan its own " church extension " work, sustaining Presbyterian 
 churches where it saw fit. Final action was not taken till 1861, when 
 the General Assembly assumed the responsibility of conducting its 
 own missions, and instituted a committee for that purpose. The in- 
 come of the American Home Missionary Society fell from $188,000 to 
 $164,000. This was in 1862.* 
 
 The difficulty which led to a final abrogation of the " Plan of 
 Union," arose out of conditions in Illinois. The Presbytery of Alton 
 was carrying on vigorous missionary work for the southern part of 
 Illinois, a region which had not kept pace with the rest of the state 
 in its economic, intellectual or moral progress. Impelled by interest 
 in their growing and commendable work, they had given as generously 
 themselves as could be expected from the year 1856 to 1858 some 
 $2,500 and had received $7,500 from the Home Missionary Society, 
 though this Presbytery no longer reported to it or contributed to its 
 treasury and did not wish the society to commission its missionaries. 
 This case, when it came to light, caused much feeling. Religious 
 journals took up the matter, one paper devoting thirty columns to the 
 subject. 5 Statements made on one side led to " corrections " by the 
 other; one article is entitled, "thirty errors corrected." Division 
 was the only sure ground for peace, and it is well that it was accom- 
 plished. It is well, however, to emphasize the fact that up to 1860, 
 during the formative years for Illinois, Congregationalists and Pres- 
 byterians did work together in Illinois in such a way that it would be 
 impossible now to divide the results of their work and ascribe them 
 to either body as a definite source. Moreover, the results aimed at 
 were the same and sprang largely from the same body of ideas. 6 
 
 1 Home Missionary, (November. 1839). 
 
 2 Historical Papers (Ottawa, 1894). 
 
 3 Home Missionary, 1854. 
 
 .4 Annual Report of Home Missionary Society, 1862, 49. 
 
 5 Home Missionary, July, 1859; October, 1859. 6 Home Missionary, October, 1859.
 
 41 
 
 CHAPTEK X. 
 
 SPECIAL PROBLEMS OF MISSIONARY WORK 
 IN SOUTHERN ILLINOIS. 
 
 In spite of the internal agitation, there was a commendable degree 
 of heartiness, far-sightedness and generosity in the conduct of the 
 missionary work. Nothing shows this better than the efforts for 
 southern Illinois to which the Alton Presbytery was so thoroughly 
 devoted. The tendency of missionaries to go to the northern, western 
 and eastern parts of the state as each section in turn developed, re- 
 sulted in an unfortunate situation to which Theron Baldwin, as agent 
 of the society, called attention in 1835: " In the southern and eastern 
 side of the state are seventeen Presbyterian churches, widely separa- 
 ted, many destitute, famishing and some expiring, supplied only by 
 four ministers." In 1840, in thirty-nine counties there were seven 
 ministers, ten churches, and 399 members. 1 It was fitting that the 
 churches opposite St. Louis, where had been the beginning of mis- 
 sionary work in Illinois, shoiild take the initiative in trying to bring 
 about a better condition. Rev. William Chamberlain had gone to 
 Alton in 1842. He had for many years been a missionary to the Cher- 
 okee Indians under the Foreign Missionary Society and -he brought 
 new life to the work. The Alton Presbytery established a " commit- 
 tee of missions," and, with the help of the national society, set to 
 work. 
 
 In 1845, two missionaries made a tour of investigation and made a 
 report for the thirteen counties forming the extreme southern part of 
 the state. In this area they found five ministers who might claim to 
 be educated. Most of the people were- Baptists. Schools were rare. 
 County seats usually kept a feeble school open for part of the year. 
 Many parents opposed having their children taught lest they should 
 learn to be bad. Sunday schools and temperance societies were not 
 popular. The missionaries who went afterward to these places found 
 a "general coldness" around them. Through the years that followed 
 they sent to the society exceedingly doleful accounts of the state of 
 society in southern Illinois. If there was a part of Illinois where the 
 work of the eastern missionary accomplished little, it was here. The 
 country was thoroughly exploited, its natural advantages set forth, 
 and New Englanders, both lay and cleric, urged them to come. The 
 
 1 Home Missionary, 1840.
 
 42 
 
 society commissioned men freely, and, by 1852, the churches had 
 increased from ten to thirty-two. The enterprise and industry brought 
 in by the Illinois Central railroad, helped matters; but it was hard 
 to keep men at posts where they felt they were accomplishing so 
 little, where the manners and customs of the community were so 
 foreign to what they most highly esteemed. Just before the Civil 
 War, the influence of the missionaries was greater there than it had 
 ever been before, but it was at the expense of great labor and in the 
 face of great obstacles. 1 
 
 The missionary's program was rather a definite one. There were 
 certain interests which he was expected to promote in a community 
 and forms of religious activity which he was expected to establish. 
 His commission was explicit. In 1830, its terms were as follows: The 
 limits of his field were defined. He must keep his personal life be- 
 yond reproach. He was charged to give especial care to the sick and 
 perform all pastoral offices. He was instructed, in addition to regu- 
 lar Sunday services, to hold weekly prayer meetings and a monthly 
 " Concert of Prayer " for the conversion of the world. He was ex- 
 pected to promote an interest in benevolent societies, to give instruc- 
 tion in temperance and to promote Sunday schools, Bible classes, and 
 day schools. 2 To this might be added the general expectation in the 
 mind of the community that the missionary be "foremost in all the 
 moral movements of the day. He must have well digested views of 
 political economy, must be able to lecture on the history and progress 
 of any science, must have an opinion on all points of theology, civil 
 affairs or art." 3 
 
 The earlier missionaries organized tract and Bible societies and a 
 few colonization societies, the then accepted form of philanthropic 
 effort for the negro. The effort to distribute Bibles and tracts, in- 
 cluding treatises on moral questions of the day or reprints of suc- 
 cessful sermons and lectures, brought out the fact that a large part 
 of the population could not read. 4 So, from 1830, the establishing of 
 Sabbath schools was an important and popular measure whose main 
 purpose was to teach the attendants, old and young, to read the Bible. 
 There was much enthusiasm in this work throughout the northwest 
 and a large part of the population joined the schools, either as teach- 
 ers or learners. Sabbath schools were important forerunners of day 
 schools. At Vandalia, members of the legislature visited the Sab- 
 bath school, and an " individual of distinction " from the South was 
 delighted with it, declaring that he should, on his return home, found 
 such schools. The prominent topic in reports for 1830 and 1831, is 
 the Sabbath schools. Supplementary Bible classes were also estab- 
 lished, often running through the week. 
 
 A distinct sentiment arose as to the advantage of living in towns 
 that one might avail himself of such means of self-improvement, and 
 immigrants were advised against settling on farms remote from each 
 other. They were urged to follow the early New England method of 
 settling in towns that they might have schools, churches, and social 
 intercourse, and thus save the first generation from growing up in 
 
 1 Home Missionary, December, 1845; August, 1851; November, 1852; 1853 (Annual Report) . 
 
 2 Home Missionary, May, 1830. 3 Ibid, 1852. 4 Ibid, August, 1830.
 
 43 
 
 ignorance. 1 One is not surprised to find the " Lyceum." " We select 
 some of the branches of knowledge and by an exhibition of facts, en- 
 deavor to awaken and instruct the public mind. One man talks over 
 the subject of geography; another takes up the subject of common 
 school education; another, agriculture; and another, the history of 
 the United States. We open and close our meetings with prayer and 
 endeavor to give every subject a religious bearing." 2 
 
 The missionaries felt the need of temperance reform. People on 
 the frontier were much given to excessive drinking of very strong 
 liquors. A changed sentiment in regard to the moral aspect of this 
 question came to religious minds in the 1 20s and '30s. The Collins 
 family of Collinsville were so moved by a sermon of Lyman Beecher's 
 on the subject that they gave up their lucrative business of distilling 
 whiskey and destroyed their still, cutting it into bits that it might 
 never be used again. 3 Till 1842, temperance reform and instruction 
 was a part of the church's work. Temperance societies were com- 
 mon, often with total abstinence pledges. Later, these societies 
 became popular social organizations and were no longer directed by 
 the churches. A proof of the sensitiveness of the church on the 
 whole matter is shown by the standing rule of the Congregational 
 church of Champaign, founded in 1854: "This church, for reasons 
 too apparent to require mentioning, cannot receive into its commun- 
 ion anyone who manufactures, buys, sells or uses as a beverage, in- 
 toxicating drinks, whether they be distilled or fermented liquors, nor 
 can this church fellowship anyone who owns tenements and rents 
 them for the purpose of the sale or manufacture of liquors, nor can 
 we receive into or retain within our communion any person who sells 
 corn or other grain to the distiller, or his known agent and brethren 
 are expected to make suitable inquiries respecting that matter or in 
 any other way directly aids or cooperates with dealers in, or manufac- 
 turers of, ardent spirits in this unrighteous traffic." 
 
 1 Home Missionary, 1836. 2 Ibid, April. 1833. 
 
 3 W. H. Collins, Congregationalists in Eastern Illinois. (Historical Papers, Ottawa, 1894).
 
 44 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 ADVERSE SENTIMENT. 
 
 Naturally enough, this programme of instruction and organization 
 did not meet with entire approval from the heterogeneous population 
 of Illinois. The eastern missionary and the settlers who followed 
 him, the forms and customs in which they were bred, and the ideas 
 and institutions they tried to establish, were thoroughly repugnant to 
 many of the settlers from the states other than New England. We 
 have a clash of sentiment and opinion over almost every public enter- 
 prise. It took fifty years of living together and a great subject of 
 common sympathy, like the devotion to national unity brought out 
 by the Civil War, to make the State of Illinois as united in sentiment 
 as it is today. These older differences were very exasperating to both 
 parties. 
 
 It is, perhaps, impossible to give a fair view of the way in which 
 the easterner appeared to the earlier settlers of Illinois who had long 
 preceded him from the South. He w T as very ready to express his criti- 
 cisms in rude and forcible speech, but he was not given to leaving a 
 written record of his feelings. On the other hand, the Easterner 
 could express himself with clearness and force on the deficiencies of 
 his neighbor and could, moreover, get his opinion published and pre- 
 served. We can, however, make out some of the traits with which 
 the word " Yankee " was associated and which served to make it a 
 term of opprobrium. The Yankee was shrewd and his main purpose 
 was, by hook or crook, to make money; while the Illinoisan was an 
 " independent, self-made, generous son of the West."" The Yankee 
 peddler, desirable as his goods were, afforded evidence of this petty 
 money-making spirit. As a neighbor, the Yankee was considered 
 inhospitable and penurious. Often he did not so much as offer re- 
 freshment to the passing stranger or urge a neighbor to a meal, even 
 if the meal hour was at hand. Worse than all this was his intolera- 
 ble self-conceit, which made it possible for the wife of a missionary to 
 ask a full grown woman if she knew who made her. The Illinoisan 
 was sensitive to the constantly implied disapproval of himself and 
 his manners and customs. 1 
 
 The Easterner who displayed Unitarian tendencies or a smattering 
 of scientific knowledge, shocked the Illinoisan's religious sentiments, 
 which were profound. Occasionally, a missionary realized how deep 
 
 1 Home Missionary, April, 1841.
 
 45 
 
 was their religious feeling. " I judge," says one, 1 " that the people 
 of Egypt have sometimes been underrated because they have been 
 dressed in homespun. It is true we have vice here and rustic vice, 
 and yet we have not so much upstart infidelity as in some other ap- 
 parently moral and religious communities. Many a person will shoot 
 a deer or a turkey on a Sabbath and swear like a sailor when angry, 
 drink a glass of grog with their neighbors, and run their horses a 
 quarter for a wager, who would feel shocked at the thought of treat- 
 ing religion with disrespect or denying its divine origin." 
 
 It needed a tact and adaptability that was not always present to 
 win one's way with this people. That veteran worker, William 
 Chamberlain, once uttered his complaint: '' There is, in my opinion, a 
 great deficiency in educating ministers for this western country, and 
 how that deficiency is to be remedied I know not. Ministers for the 
 West should be well educated in what we call common sense. They 
 should understand human nature as exhibited in daily life. For the 
 want of this, many otherwise well educated and good men fail. The 
 most illiterate preachers draw from them their congregations and de- 
 prive them of their means of usefulness. The people of the West 
 are generally shrewd and well versed in common sense, and their 
 ministers have a good stock of scientific knowledge; but the space 
 between them and the people is too wide for the power of attraction 
 and they never come together. The result is, the minister's reports 
 will be filled with dark accounts of the deep ignorance and degrada- 
 tion of the people; and the people will be laughing among themselves 
 about the minister for his want of common sense. I think it would 
 be better for us to say less about the ignorance of the people and do 
 more toward instructing them." 
 
 On the missionary's part, nevertheless, there could be at the best 
 but profound pity for the ignorance of these earlier settlers. He 
 found their religious life ministered to by illiterate ministers, some- 
 times representatives of cults of which he had never heard. From 
 the beginning he distrusted the tempests of religious emotion which 
 swept over the people because they had so little permanent effect. 
 As early as 1812, J. F. Schermerhom, after his trip to the West with 
 Samuel Mills, wrote thus of a revival in Ohio: " Tha Methodists say 
 there has been a very great revival of religion among them, as also do 
 the Baptists. From the best information that we could obtain from 
 eye witnesses of this work, there is great reason to believe that it was 
 principally terror and fear which induced numbers to join those 
 societies; for this work began and ended with the earthquakes in 
 those countries and the whole strain of preaching by the Baptists and 
 Methodists was. that the end of all things was at hand and if the 
 people were not baptized, or did not join a society, there was no hope 
 for them. This may be deemed uncharitable by some, but not when 
 it is considered that the Methodists in that region require no evidence 
 of holiness of heart to become members of their society, and that the 
 religious experiences of many consist only in dreams and visions or 
 the remarkable suggestion of some alarming texts of scripture, and 
 after that some which afford great comfort." Forty years 2 later there 
 
 1 Home Missionary, January, 1848. 2 Ibid, April 1850.
 
 46 
 
 was the same difficulty. '' The effect of the senseless harangues and 
 consequent spurious revivals with which we are cursed and of which 
 the people are very fond, is similar to the raging fire that sweeps 
 through the forest, deadening and blackening everything which it 
 leaves unconsumed." In 1857, 1 a missionary in southern Illinois 
 describes a complete " indifferentism " a stupidity and brutality even 
 in their lack of feeling over the death of friends which he thinks due 
 to the fact that in their religion a "wild excitement is the all in all." 
 
 In this connection Mr. Schermerhorn's characterization of the in- 
 habitants in 1812 is interesting. He says, " Those from New Jersey 
 and Pennsylvania, particularly of the Scotch and Irish descent, are 
 very ready to unite in promoting the establishment of schools and in 
 supporting the gospel, whilst those of German extraction, together 
 with emigrants from Maryland, Virginia and Kentucky, are too fre- 
 quently regardless of both, and too often cherish that high-toned and 
 licentious spirit which will suffer neither contradiction nor opposi- 
 tion and which is equally inconsistent with civil and religious order." 
 He went on to describe the three leading denominations. " The 
 Baptists," he wrote, "were generally illiterate. Learning is rather 
 ridiculed than desired. Against the salaries of ministers they are 
 clamorous, and they denominate Presbyterian ministers as ' fleecers 
 of the flock.' As a body they deny the morality of the Sabbath or 
 Lord's day. * The manner of the Methodist 
 
 preaching very much resembles that of the Baptists; is very contro- 
 versial and most bitter against Calvinists. They rail very much 
 against the practice of the Presbyterians receiving pay for preaching, 
 calling them hirelings, but most unreasonably, for their salaries are 
 more certain and, in general, greater than those against whom they 
 speak. The Presbyterians are noted for their strict observance of 
 the Sabbath. They are the most intelligent part of the community, 
 lovers of order and promoters of knowledge; the most ready to sup- 
 port schools, the Gospel and missionary and Bible societies." 
 
 The New Englander brought with him. the Puritan views of observ- 
 ance of the Sabbath and was shocked at the disregard of that day by 
 the older settlers of Illinois. " The native preachers were largely 
 itinerants and communities did not expect a religious service every 
 Sunday, so often the day was given over to rough sports, and re- 
 ligion left to the enthusiasm of the 'big meeting;' so also, the 
 woman who washed out a garment, or did a bit of ironing on Sunday, 
 offended the religious sentiment of the missionary." 
 
 The native preacher, often a man of sense and integrity, even if 
 very illiterate, sometimes used his strong influence over the people to 
 the disadvantage of the eastern missionary. In his view, the man 
 filled with learning was so much the less filled with spiritual power. 
 He was " machine-made." The schools turned them out all alike. A 
 common proverb was: "He has learning enough for two ministers." 
 The missionary was constantly held up to scorn because he received 
 
 1 Home Missionary, September, 1857.
 
 47 
 
 a salary. It seemed to them that a man could not be truly filled with 
 the spirit of God and accept pay for doing the work inspired by Him. 
 " Judas," they said, " was the first to take pay." 
 
 Rev. J. M. Sturtevant tells of a sermon which he heard on the third 
 Sabbath after his arrival in Jacksonville. Through a mistake, for 
 which no one was to blame, the Presbyterians and Methodists found 
 themselves together in the court house. Each expected to hold ser- 
 vices, but as the Methodists had already begun Mr. Sturtevant and 
 his people joined the congregation, The minister was the famous 
 Rev. Peter Cartwright, whose life work was certainly commendable; 
 but such was the bitterness of the sectarian and sectional spirit of 
 the time that he took occasion to make a bitter attack on Calvinism, 
 caricaturing it and holding it up to ridicule; and, in the face of the 
 young enterprise for a college in Jacksonville, he took particular 
 pains to ridicule a college education, repeating the old saying: " I 
 have never spent four years of my life in rubbing my back against 
 the walls of a college." 1 
 
 The native was much opposed to agitation in behalf of temperance 
 societies. Strong liquors were used freely and there was much 
 drunkenness. A definite crusade against intemperance seemed an 
 infringement of personal rights, and the warmest opposers of temper- 
 ance were said to be ministers and church members. The following 
 notes taken from the anti- temperance lecture of a native preacher are 
 typical of the times : 2 " The temperance society is productive of more 
 harm than good. It slanders those who do not fall in with it. Its 
 iocuments were charged with falsehoods. The state legislatures are 
 taking up the subject and it is high time to give the alarm. The 
 heroes of the revolution were not temperance men. The subject of 
 temperance is not in the Constitution of the United States, though 
 the framers were wise men. It has religious and political designs. 
 Massachusetts is in danger; its legislators are almost all temperance 
 men. This society gives all the liquor to the clergymen and physi- 
 cians, and that is popery. The Law of Moses was not against drink- 
 ing. The more institutions there are, the more money will be wanted. 
 The temperance society sows the seeds of discord in the church and 
 community. The curse of God is now resting on Ireland in the shape 
 of a famine, because so many Irish signed the pledge." To the East- 
 erner, on the other hand, the man who pretending to be a spiritual 
 leader could yet hobnob with his people at the grocery and tavern and 
 join with them in drinking, seemed utterly disgusting. 
 
 Sunday schools, missionary societies, and even day schools, met 
 with the same opposition. Even when education came in some de- 
 gree to be desired, the people had not been trained to that united 
 public action which would have secured it quickly. Often a commu- 
 nity was in existence twenty or thirty years before there was any 
 school house. Many of the people could not read and their preachers 
 did not teach and insist that they have schools and instructors 
 This suggestive report was made in 1848 to the Missionary Society 
 
 1 Julian M. Sturtevant. An Autobiography, 161 . 
 
 2 Home Missionary, July, 1847.
 
 " I know no other community in the state where a missionary of your 
 society has labored one year that is not supplied with a good week- 
 day school and a Sunday school, and I know of but few which have 
 not been thus supplied that have such schools." In 1852 there was 
 not a school in Pulaski or Alexander counties. In 1856 southern 
 counties could not produce teachers who could pass the examinations 
 required by law. 1 On one occasion a school house was donated to a 
 community by a man of some means, but with the distinct provision 
 that no eastern teacher should be employed to teach in it - 
 
 This spirit of prejudice and lack of public enterprise marked many 
 of the undertakings of the earlier days. Illinois College first applied 
 to the legislature for a charter in 1880. Prejudice against the " Yan- 
 kees " and fear of ecclesiastical corporations defeated the char- 
 ter. 3 Said one member: " If they granted a charter at all, he was in 
 favor of restricting the corporation to one quarter section of land: for 
 otherwise, those college men, with their immense funds, would buy 
 up new land in the northern part of the state and then put on ten- 
 ants at will and finally sway the political destiny of Illinois. So, 
 also, they opposed taxation for common schools on the ground that it 
 worked injustice to those without children or those patronizing pri- 
 vate schools. The bill for the Illinois and Michigan canal was 
 opposed, because it would open an easy entrance to " Yankees " and 
 the state would be flooded with them. 4 
 
 Two citations in regard to the Mexican War will show the conflict- 
 ing sentiments of eastern and native preachers on that subject. The 
 native preacher said it would do the Mexicans good to give them a 
 sound drubbing, and concluded with terrible denunciations upon 
 those who spoke against the war; while the missionary lamented: 
 " Shame, indeed, that there should be a Massachusetts and a New 
 England [How art thou fallen from heaven, O, Lucifer, son of the 
 morning] regiment in this war. But when we look at the hordes 
 which Illinois and Missouri have poured forth, we see where Satan's 
 seat is." 5 
 
 Of course, this division came out clearly in the agitation over 
 slavery. In 1850, a spiritual appeal came from a Presbytery in Mis- 
 souri; they wanted men of the right stamp, "rough and ready," who 
 could preach at all times, let slavery alone, leave their eastern preju- 
 dices at home. Western people are born and grow up in excitement 
 and their religion must have more or less of that ingredient." To 
 this appeal there was the equally spirited reply: "Our Western 
 friends may as well understand first as last, that the Eastern churches 
 have a pretty well defined idea of what sort of religion they wish to 
 propagate." 
 
 1 Home Missionary, May. 1848; July, 1852; May, 1856. 2 Ibid, August, 1847. 
 
 3 Historic Morgan and Classic Jacksonville. 
 
 4 Patterson , Early History in Southetn Illinois (Fergus* Historical Series). 
 
 5 Home Missionary, May and December, 1847.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 PURITANISM AND THE SLAVERY ISSUE. 
 
 The moral agitation that filled the country in regard to slavery, was 
 manifest in these years in Illinois. There was never any uncertainty 
 as to the attitude of the eastern missionary or his denomination upon 
 this subject; but at first the missionary was not so outspoken as he 
 became later. At times even there was a deprecating tone toward 
 the hot-headed opponent of slavery and a tenderness and sympathy 
 for the slave owner. These words from a missionary in Missouri, 
 written in 1829, exhibit this feeling: " Let me mention what I fear 
 will be a permanent obstacle to a regular and competent support of 
 the ministry in this state. This obstacle is found in the existence of 
 slavery. Slaveholders purchase extensive plantations, and in this 
 way the inhabitants are kept in a scattered state. This evil, it is 
 true, will not exist in towns, and many find a partial remedy in a 
 minister's dividing his time between two or three settlements; but 
 such a state of things will always diminish the effect attending the 
 dispensation of God's word. I am aware that I have now touched a 
 subject of very delicate nature. Slavery, perhaps, exists in its mild- 
 est form in this state, but ti is still a great evil and one that is most 
 sensibly felt by slaveholders themselves. How is this evil to be re- 
 moved? Not by denouncing the slaveholder as an unprincipled and 
 unfeeling man. This only tends to aggravate the difficulty. It must 
 be removed by action, and not by declamation. The people at the 
 east must feel that there is a duty devolving on them in relation to 
 this subject. The evil is attached to us as a nation, and if it is ever 
 removed we must, as individuals of this nation, contribute our pro- 
 portion. When an owner of slaves tells me that he knows and feels 
 that slavery is a crying' sin and that he will freely relinquish his slaves, 
 or even that he will relinquish one-half their value on condition that he 
 be compensated for the other half and provisions be made for their trans- 
 portation, I feel that he has made a generous proposal, and I cannot 
 charge him with all the guilt of slavery, though he may continue to 
 be a slaveholder. Some remarks have lately appeared in the eastern 
 papers which will be hailed by many at the West and South as indi- 
 cations of the increasing prevalence of just views on this subject and 
 as harbingers of good to the degraded blacks. Let it be acknowl- 
 edged by the inhabitants of the free states that slavery is a national 
 evil and that they are bound in duty to contribute to its removal, and 
 there are thousands at the South and West who will join them heart 
 and hand in the great work of emancipation." 1 
 
 1 Home Missionary, February', 1829. 
 
 4 H
 
 50 
 
 For many years few among the missionaries cared to own the name 
 of " abolitionist." Yet in spite of this moderate position on the sub- 
 ject of slavery the missionary found his principles so at variance with 
 those of the people about him in southern communities that his work 
 languished. In Missouri, and the southern states generally, where 
 much money had been spent and long continued effort had been 
 made by the Home Missionary Society, it generally became evident 
 that the struggle was a losing one. So much opposition was encoun- 
 tered that for years the work declined, and it was practically cut off 
 when, in 1856, the society decided to grant no appropriations to the 
 churches containing slaveholding members. 1 At this time the situa- 
 tion was reviewed and it was shown that auxiliary societies and eccle- 
 siastical bodies in the South and Southwest had withdrawn their 
 support from the main society, less than $2,000 having been received 
 from these states in the preceding year. In southern churches more 
 slaveholders were being received into the membership than in former 
 years, and ministers who owned slaves were advanced. Liberty of 
 speech was no longer allowed and the ministry must even be cham- 
 pions of the " institution." The missionaries in slaveholding states 
 were decreasing in spite of all efforts to increase their numbers. In 
 Illinois there were many to sympathize with the southern cause, and, 
 in some localities, a majority took the part of the South. This was 
 especially true in the southern part of the state and in the river 
 towns. Yet there was generally a chance for the growth and victory 
 of contrary opinion. 
 
 Not all of the anti-slavery sentiment came from the East. In the 
 early years the northwest was the only region into which the south- 
 erner could migrate when he became discontented with the conditions 
 of society which he found becoming fixed about him. While many 
 of the settlers were merely poor, and so without slaves and therefore 
 content to settle in a region where slavery was forbidden, others came 
 from principle. Many a Scotch Presbyterian came to Illinois from 
 the Carolinas for conscience sake. These are facts, of which there 
 are necessarily few records, but they are none the less true and inter- 
 esting. It is, however, a matter of record that " the first settlement 
 formed within its bounds, of emigrants from the United States, was 
 made in Morgan county in 1781 by James Moore, who was a native 
 of Maryland, but came to Illinois from Western Virginia. In 1785-6 
 this settlement was strengthened by a number of families from the 
 same region. They were opposed to slavery and took up their long 
 line of march for these wild regions that, themselves and their pos- 
 terity, might enjoy the advantages of a country unembarassed by 
 slavery. * * The first Protestant church was a Baptist 
 
 church at New Design, formed in 1796. This church was originally 
 formed with rules opposed to slavery, and, in 1803. adopted a rule 
 that no person guilty of slavery could be admitted to membership. 
 It was constituted by Rev. Josiah Dodge, originally from Connecti- 
 cut, who was one of the first two ministers who, with their congre- 
 gations, separated from the Baptists in Kentucky on account of 
 
 1 Home -Missionary, December, 1856.
 
 51 
 
 slavery." 1 The Union church of Edwards county was opposed to 
 slavery and moved, as a church, from the South, though its leader, 
 Rev. Stephen Bliss, was from New England. 2 
 
 In the contest of 1823 over a new constitution which should permit 
 slavery, the few New England missionaries made themselves felt by 
 joining with laymen in the work to preserve a free state. Only two 
 of the five newspapers stood for freedom, and one of these was edited 
 by Hiram Eddy of New England. Rev Thomas Lippincott, an early 
 missionary from New England, wrote fiery handbills, and contributed 
 to one of these papers on the subject of slavery, while Rev. Stephen 
 Bliss, just referred to, was elected to the Senate on the anti-slavery 
 issue. Another powerful anti-slavery worker of those days was Rev. 
 J. M. Peck, missionary of the Massachusetts Baptist Society, and 
 later an agent of the American Bible Society. His constant travel- 
 ling gave him opportunity to spread anti-slavery ideas. " His plan 
 of organizing the counties by a central committee, with branches in 
 every neighborhood, was carried out by his own exertions and per- 
 sonal supervision, and was greatly instrumental in saving the 
 state." 3 Another writer probably refers to the same plan when he 
 says that J. M. Peck organized an anti-slavery society in St. Clair 
 county, with which fourteen societies of other counties became affili- 
 ated. 4 
 
 When this crisis was past, there was for many years a hopeful atti- 
 tude on the part of the missionaries on the subject of the overthrow 
 of slavery. It was felt that the spread of education, the growth of 
 missions, the efforts of colonization societies would do away with the 
 evil. Since Illinois herself was not facing the question, and since 
 she had put an end to efforts to introduce slavery within her borders, 
 the subject, for some ten or fifteen years, did not occupy the public 
 mind so much as might now be supposed. Missionaries made their 
 frequent reports to the home office, dwelling fully on all their difficul- 
 ties and discouragements and extremely sensitive to the moral atmos- 
 phere about them; but little, in Illinois, was said about slavery. 
 Then in the '30s, 1836-7 especially, came the attempt of the South to 
 prevent free speech, a time noted for mobs and riots. Illinois, as a 
 border state, was doomed to feel the evil of the troubled times and to 
 contribute her victim. 
 
 Elijah P. Lovejoy was born at Albion, Maine, in 1802, the son of 
 Rev. Daniel Lovejoy, a Congregational minister. He graduated at 
 Waterville College, Maine, and went to St. Louis as school teacher 
 and editor. Here he had a religious experience which led him to return 
 East for theological training at Princeton, and, on his return to St. 
 Louis in 1833, he was commissioned as missionary to that city by the 
 Home Missionary Society. In addition to preaching, he edited and 
 published the St. Louis Observer as an organ of the Presbyterians 
 of Illinois and Missouri. His character was earnest and transparent, 
 
 1 Home Missionary, March. 1835. (Statement by Rev. Theron Baldwin, indebted to Rev. 
 J. M. Peck.) 
 
 2 History of the Congregational Association of Southern Illinois (1892). 
 
 3 W. H Brown, Eaily History of Illinois (Fergus' Historical Series). 
 
 4 Patterson, Early Society in Southern Illinois.
 
 52 
 
 but not by nature combative or pugnacious. Bold and fearless he 
 was, nevertheless amiable, affectionate, and lovable. 1 In his writings 
 he was mild, temperate and gentlemanly. In his reports to the so- 
 ciety he had more to say of the dangers from Catholicism than of those 
 from slavery. 2 In his paper he declared himself in favor of gradual 
 emancipation, and disclaimed the name abolitionist. After 1835 he 
 was not in the employ of the missionary society. Probably his duties 
 as editor absorbed all his time. During his service as missionary he 
 had been moderator of the Presbytery of Illinois. It was in 1836 
 that he published an account of the burning of a negro at St. Louis. 
 Moved by the horror and inhumanity of the scene, he sharply criti- 
 cised the community which allowed such a deed. Upon this, a mob 
 destroyed his press and he moved to Alton, across the river, in 
 Illinois. 
 
 In the contest that followed, Lovejoy acted on the advice of his 
 ministerial friends. After his second press was destroyed, he pro- 
 posed to his friends that he withdraw; but at the meeting of the 
 synod in November, 1837, at Springfield, where one evening the situ- 
 ation was thoroughly discussed, with but one dissenting voice, his 
 friends persuaded him to remain, feeling that the great principle of 
 the freedom of the press was at stake. The third press was given by 
 sympathizing friends in Ohio, in this contest for freedom of speech. 
 
 Meanwhile, in accordance with plans, a meeting was called to con- 
 vene in Alton, November, 1837, to form a state anti-slavery society. 
 This call was signed by fifty-six of the residents of Quincy, forty-two 
 from Galesburg, thirty-two from Jacksonville, twenty-three from 
 Alton, twenty from Springfield and seventy-two from other places. 
 It was held the week after the meeting of Synod and Mr. Lovejoy's 
 friends were urged to be present. 3 Among those who gathered at 
 Alton were Edward Beecher from Illinois College and Asa Turner 
 from Quincy. The meeting was captured by the friends of slavery 
 and the audience heard a tirade against " Yankees," home missiona- 
 ries, Sunday schools, abolitionists, and temperance societies. After 
 the adjournment of the convention, it became known that the new 
 press was expected, and President Beecher remained to see what 
 would happen. The press came at night and Mr. Lovejoy and Mr. 
 Beecher went to the landing, superintended its storing in the ware- 
 house, and guarded it till morning. In the morning Mr. Beecher 
 left for Jacksonville. On the following night, the warehouse was 
 attacked by the mob and Mr. Lovejoy killed, 2 
 
 This was an event to stir the country. It won to the cause of the 
 abolitionists the fiery eloquence of the brother, Owen Lovejoy in the 
 pulpit and as member of Congress, while the town of Alton went 
 through a season of deep moral agitation and became a center of 
 anti-slavery effort. 4 But a group of residents of this city, led by Dr. 
 Haskell of Massachusetts, a graduate of Dartmouth, removed to 
 Rockford, in the northern part of the state, in order to be in a region 
 
 1 Juhan M. Sturtevant. An Autobiography, 222. 
 
 2 Home Missionary, December. 1835. 
 
 3 Juhan M. Sturtevant. An Autobiography, 223. 4 Ibid, 224. 
 
 5 J. E. Roy, Fifty Years of Home Missions; II. Tanner, Martyrdom of Lovejoy.
 
 53 
 
 where pro-slavery sentiment was not predominant. Unfortunately, 
 these events in Alton had unhappy results for Illinois Col- 
 lege. The excitement aroused, the hatred generated, were directed 
 toward Mr. Beecher and the college. These feelings were entertained 
 not alone by the mob, but by people of wealth, social standing, and 
 even of religious reputation. The newspapers of St. Louis which 
 had wide circulation in southern Illinois, were intensely hostile in 
 their opposition to Illinois College. For a time there was fear of 
 attack on the college buildings and of personal violence to Mr. 
 Beecher. In time these prejudices were lived down, but for years 
 there were constant annoyances in the vicinity of the college. 1 
 
 Quincy, another river town, went through a similar experience as 
 regards the principle at issue. This city had had, to its great advan- 
 tage, a strong spiritual leader in Asa Turner, of the " Yale Band," 
 who had located there in 1830. In four years his church had become 
 self-supporting and the town experienced " a most clear and decided 
 moral improvement." 2 Many Easterners flocked to Quincy and there 
 was a strong sentiment of sympathy with the other centers of eastern 
 thought like Jacksonville and Springfield. Asa Turner organized 
 tract, Bible and temperance societies, and developed out-stations 
 which soon became independent churches, His aim was, " a mission- 
 ary and half a dozen Christian families for every county." 
 
 The first church building in Quincy gained the name of the " Lord's 
 Barn " from its general appearance. In 1836, some people in Quincy 
 wished to hold an anti-slavery meeting in this church; but the mere 
 design caused a great ferment in the town and country round about 
 and threats were made that no such meeting should be held. As the 
 day approached many men rallied to the defence, not so much from 
 their love of anti-slavery sentiments as because they believed in 
 freedom of speech. Under the raised platform they stored guns, 
 clubs, poles, etc. The speakers were the pastors of the Methodist and 
 Baptist churches. As soon as the speaking began the mob began to 
 throw brick and stone through windows. Joseph T. Holmes, who was 
 both deacon and magistrate, and later a Congregational minister, led 
 the counter charge, and a very successful charge it was, dispersing 
 the mob altogether. After this, the better elements of society ruled 
 in Quincy. 3 
 
 The carrying out of the fugitive slave law gave deep offence to the 
 opponents of slavery. Interesting testimony to the intense feeling 
 of the Puritan New Englanders in Illinois on this subject is found in 
 " The Underground Railroad," by Professor Wilbur H. Siebert. 
 
 Mr. Siebert says: " In general, it is safe to say that the majority of 
 helpers in the north were of Anglo- American stock, descendants of 
 the Puritan and Quaker settlers of the eastern states or of southern- 
 ers that had moved to the northern states to be rid of slavery." The 
 
 1 Julian M. Sturtevant. An Autobiography, 225. 
 
 2 Home Missionary, February, 1838. 
 
 3 Manuscript History of Quincy church by Thomas Pope, in library of Chicago TheoloR- 
 cal Seminary.
 
 54 
 
 Scotch communities were also centers of Underground Railroad oper- 
 ations as, for example, those of Randolph and Washington counties 
 in Illinois. 1 
 
 In Illinois, the southerners who gave such assistance, are traced 
 for the most part to members of a Presbyterian church, which, under 
 the leadership of Rev. J. Rankin, had first settled in Brown county, 
 Ohio, because of their views of slavery. Some of these families came 
 to Bond county, Illinois, about 1820, and later, about 1830, moved 
 into Putnam and Bureau counties, forming the little church at Union 
 Grove, which Aratus Kent discovered in 1829, and to which he called 
 the attention of the Home Missionary Society, which thenceforth 
 took it under its protection. Those who went to Bureau county 
 united with the Princeton colony. These people were extremely 
 active in their assistance. No complete figures exist as to the num- 
 ber of fugitives assisted; but one member of this band of southerners 
 testified to the assisting of thirty-one men and women in six weeks 
 time as the highest record reached. 2 
 
 Few of those at the north who assisted runaway slaves, imbued as 
 they were with respect for law. cared to entice slaves from their mas- 
 ters, or to serve as guides in the first steps of their escape. On the 
 ground of humanity and the pity for the needy, enjoined by the 
 Bible, northerners would give aid at their door and even speed them 
 on their way. The few who incited slaves to leave their masters were 
 conspicuous, and there was usually some ground for unusual bitter- 
 ness of feeling on the subject of slavery in their cases. 
 
 Illinois had one conspicuous example of a man who was willing to 
 aid in abducting slaves. This was David Nelson, who, himself a 
 southerner, an avowed atheist and a slaveholder, had, on conversion, 
 become a Christian minister and located in Missouri. Here he en- 
 countered so much opposition that he had to take hasty flight. Find- 
 ing refuge in Quincy he allied himself with the New Englanders and 
 their church there. In the spring of 1840 he instigated two of the 
 pupils in his mission institute to cross the river into Missouri and 
 aid some slaves in escaping. The students were captured and taken 
 to the jail at Palmyra and tried. There was no legal evidence, as 
 slave testimony was not admissible, but they were condemned to 
 twelve years imprisonment. By their conduct they shortened their 
 term more than one-half, and there was a remarkable revival of re- 
 ligion while they were there among the prisoners. One of these 
 young men afterward went as missionary to Africa. Later, the main 
 building of the Mission Institute was burned by a mob who came 
 from the Missouri side of the river for the purpose. 3 
 
 Everywhere in northern Illinois the fugitive slave found friends 
 and helpers. The motives for this help to the slave are to be found 
 in the teachings of the New England churches. Indeed, the men 
 most prominent in these efforts were vigorous adherents of those 
 churches. Owen Lovejoy, the Congregational minister, proclaimed in 
 Congress, on being taunted as a "nigger stealer": " Owen Lovejoy 
 
 1 W. H. Siebert, The Underground Railroad, 90,92. 2 Ibid, 41. 
 
 3 Thomas Pope, Manuscript History of Quincy Church: Siebert, The Underground Rail- 
 road, 155, 156.
 
 00 
 
 lives at Princeton, Illinois, three-quarters of a mile east of the vil- 
 lage, and he aids every fugitive that comes to his door and asks it." 
 Philo Carpenter, the real founder of the First Congregational church 
 in Chicago, guided not less than 200 fugitives to Canada, finding ves- 
 sels to carry them to its shore. Dr. Richard Eells, whose case for 
 secreting a slave was in litigation for ten years and who was finally 
 fined and paid the costs of the trial, was a prominent member of the 
 Quincy church. 1 
 
 Professor J. B. Turner, while at Illinois College, assisted in at 
 least one such rescue. James Collins, the lawyer who defended those 
 charged with breaking the Fugitive Slave Law, was of the Collins 
 family of Collinsville, famous for their uncompromising stand on all 
 moral questions. 2 
 
 Scrutiny of the map given by Mr. Siebert, showing the lines of the 
 Underground Railroad, reveals the suggestive fact that most of the 
 towns given on those lines were early occupied by New Englanders 
 and their churches. Often the name of a station given on this map 
 is simply that of the man giving aid, but where a place is named it is 
 apt to be a New England church center. Thus Springfield, with its 
 church founded in 1830, was the converging point for three lines: (1) 
 through Alton (1831) (the dates are those of the founding of churches 
 by the missionary society) and Reno; (2), White Plains, Jersey ville 
 (1835), Waverly (1843); (3), Quincy (1831), Adams, Jacksonville 
 (1829). From Springfield a line extended north to Galesburg (1853) 
 through Farmington (1841); but the usual route seems to have been 
 by stage to Ottawa (1834), thence through Northville (1835) to Chi- 
 cago. Lines also passed from Jacksonville and Springfield through 
 Delavan, Tremont (1841), Dillon, Washington (1835), Metamora 
 (1840), Magnolia (1851), Granville (1831), and Peru (1843), to 
 Ottawa. 
 
 Galesburg (1853) was an especially active station on the Under- 
 ground Railroad for fugitives from Missouri through Quincy (1831), 
 Mendon (1845), Carthage (1835), Augusta (1837>, Plymouth (1840), 
 La Harpe (1848), and then by the old state road to Chicago with sta- 
 tions at Knox ville (1835), Osceola, Pawpaw (1844), Sugar Grove 
 (1843) and Aurora (1840). In the northwestern part of the state 
 there was a line conducting fugitives to points on the lake farther 
 north than Chicago. The fugitives taking this route passed around 
 Missouri, crossing Iowa and then through New Windsor. Andover 
 (1850), Genesee (1839). Erie, Prophetstown, Lyndon (1840), Sterling 
 (1842), Lee Center (1852), and Dixon (1856). Another line entering 
 the state at Port Byron (1851), after passing Hillsdale, joined this 
 northern route. 3 
 
 From the history of Putnam county, located in the north-central 
 part of the state, something of the origin and method of conducting 
 such work appears. Also, earnest orators like Owen Lovejoy, 
 Ichabod Codding and others, encouraged the people in the different 
 towns to organize routes. Such was the sense of the need of secrecy 
 
 1 Siebert, The Underground Railroad, 107, 147, 278. 
 
 2 Eatnes, Historic Morgan and Classic Jacksonville. 
 
 3 Siebert, The Underground Railroad.
 
 56 
 
 and caution that few, even of those actively engaged in the work, 
 knew anything of agents along the entire line, being definitely posted 
 only as to those stations immediately next to them on either side. 
 The chief thought each agent had was to hurry the fugitives along 
 beyond all possibility of capture. The fugitives who were helped 
 along by means of this regular though secret line did not begin to 
 appear till about ] 840. They came mostly from Missouri and Ken- 
 tucky, and they averaged on this one line thirty or more per year. 1 
 
 By the early '40s, the deep feeling on the subject of slavery is 
 apparent in missionary reports, though there is still a certain hesi- 
 tancy to call the evil by name. This was left to the more outspoken 
 abolitionists. In 1841 we have these testimonies to the feeling of the 
 missionaries: ' It is evidently a general feeling among the missiona- 
 ries in the West that our country is rapidly advancing to a critical 
 point in her history. Letters from all parts of the great field, written 
 without any concert of the authors, either expressly assert or imply 
 that a struggle is now going on which must ere long terminate for 
 weal or woe to our beloved America. The missionaries seem to agree 
 in their belief that the eastern churches do not appreciate the critical 
 nature of the present opportunity to save the land." - 
 
 The following citation came from an Illinois missionary: "The 
 crisis we are approaching as a nation, it is feared, is not begun to be 
 understood by the mass of people of God. Not the moral purity of 
 the West alone, but the preservation of the whole community is at 
 stake. Our country is in danger while Christians all over the land 
 are suffering everything but Christianity to take root in the West." 
 Another writes: " We have reached an appalling crisis. Our ablest 
 patriots are looking out on the deep, vexed with storms, with great 
 foreboding and failing of heart for fear of the things that are coming 
 upon us." 3 
 
 It is not claiming too much to say that the New England element 
 led, and, guided by. the leaders in the New England churches, origi- 
 nated and fostered the expression of anti- slavery feeling in anti- 
 slavery societies and political parties. The motives were supplied in 
 the religious teachings of the Puritan churches. The leaders in the 
 anti-slavery societies, and later in the anti-slavery political parties, 
 were men who were members and leaders in those churches, though 
 they were not politicians. These years of political and moral agita- 
 tion afforded the best educational training, even in times of tempo- 
 rary, failure for the time, when success finally did come. 
 
 The first ,anti-slavery society was formed in a New England settle- 
 ment in Putnam county in 1835, and by 1838 there were thirteen 
 societies in northern Illinois. 4 We have already seen that Elijah P. 
 Lovejoy, Edward Beecher and Asa Turner were leaders in organizing 
 the state anti- slavery society. 
 
 1 Spencer Ellsworth, Record of the Olden Time: or, Fifty Years on the Prairie (Lacon, Illi- 
 nois, 1880). 
 
 2 Home Missionary, November, 1841; December, 1841. 
 
 3 Home Missionary, November and December, 1841. 
 
 4 T. C. Smith, The Liberty and Free Soil Parties in the North-west. \Hanard Historical 
 Studies), 14.
 
 57 
 
 Before 1839, these societies confined their efforts mainly to a moral 
 and religious agitation, and it was such agitation that led to the for- 
 mation of the succeeding anti-slavery political parties, and that 
 prompted the old parties as well to anti-slavery action. Besides the 
 propagation of principles, this anti-slavery society of Illinois sent 
 petitions to Congress to abolish slavery and the slave trade wherever 
 its constitutional jurisdiction permitted. Feeling the impulse toward 
 political interference appearing elsewhere in the country in 1839, the 
 society voted "that every abolitionist who has a right to vote be 
 earnestly entreated to lose no opportunity to carry his abolition prin- 
 ciples to the polls." 
 
 In 1840, the Liberty party was in the field with a ticket headed by 
 Birney arid Earle. The State Anti-slavery Society of Illinois, in 
 convention at Princeton, decided on a course of neutrality; but the 
 men in favor of a third party held a separate meeting, under the lead- 
 ership of David Nelson, and agreed to support the Liberty candidates. 
 The result was the tiny vote of 157. The center of agitation was 
 Adams county, which gave forty-two votes. This was double the 
 vote of the northeast counties which later became comparable in 
 anti-slavery influence, to the Western Reserve in Ohio. This is 
 ascribed to the influence of the murder of Lovejoy, but it should be 
 noted that Adams county was also the seat of David Nelson's Mission 
 Institute and the Quincy church so recently incensed by mob inter- 
 ference. It was not until the next presidential election in 1844 that 
 the Liberty Party was thoroughly organized in Illinois. This party 
 sprang directly from the old anti-slavery societies which, in Illinois, 
 were found in clusters of communities where northern settlers pre- 
 dominated. Its purpose, like that of its successors, was to form a 
 permanent northern party, and it relied for growth on the spread 
 of anti-slavery principles. 
 
 In 1841 the State Anti-slavery Society, in its meeting at Lowell, 
 openly advocated independent nominations; but the Liberty Party 
 made but one nomination, that of Frederick Collins, for Congress in 
 the third congressional district. In 1842 it nominated candidates for 
 Governor and Lieutenant Governor, C. W. Hunter of Madison county 
 and Frederick Collins; but, in 1843, there were candidates for Congress 
 from all the districts, except in the southeastern part of the state. 
 By this time the northeastern part of the state had come to that 
 leadership, which it afterwards held. " Nothing is so stimulating to 
 a party as to have some district in which it is generally victorious to 
 which in any circumstances it may reasonably look for support." l 
 
 It has been claimed that as the moral effects of the anti-slavery so- 
 cieties came to be supplemented by political methods, the leadership 
 fell to "laymen," to the "American man of affairs" in the country at 
 large. 2 This, however, was not the case in Illinois. When the lead- 
 ership passed from the hands of David Nelson, it fell to Owen Love- 
 joy, who for the next fourteen years was the leader and personification 
 of Illinois abolitionism, " a zealous, persistent agitator, eloquent in 
 speech, radical and sometimes bitter to the point of virulence, but 
 
 1 Smith, The Liberty and Free Soil Parties, 47, 52, 301, 304. 
 
 2 Smith, The Liberty and Free Soil Parties, 18.
 
 58 
 
 capable of inspiring the greatest respect and confidence in the anti- 
 slavery men of the northeast counties." He was a favorite delegate 
 to the National Conventions, a favorite candidate for Congress from 
 northern Illinois ; but he was during all this time a Congregational 
 minister. A native of Maine, educated at Bowdoin College and 
 Bangor Theological Seminary, he preached for a short time at the 
 Presbyterian church in Alton and then went to the Congregational 
 church at Princeton, where he was pastor from 1888 to 1855, the 
 years of the rise and fall of the Liberty, Free Soil, and Free Democratic 
 parties. He preached later, also, in the First Congregational church 
 of Chicago. His boldness and courage in politics was equalled by his 
 boldness in the pulpit. All his congregation did not like his anti- 
 slavery views, and on one occasion, when he saw some leaving the 
 church, he said: "Brethren, I see some of you don't like my anti- 
 slavery doctrines ; but I am going to preach them till you do like 
 them, and then preach them because you like them." Another in- 
 stance was when a saloon was opened in Princeton with a sign, "Hole 
 in the Wall," and Owen Lovejoy preached from Ezekiel viii, 7-10, 
 congratulating the owner on his appropriate sign. The saloon was 
 soon closed. 1 
 
 Of the other acknowledged leaders in the political movement, Fred- 
 erick Collins, who was a favorite anti-slavery candidate, was one of 
 the live sons of Deacon William Collins who founded Collinsville. 
 All had been in Dr. Lyman Beecher's church in Litchfield, Connecti- 
 cut, and were staunch upholders and promoters of the Puritan 
 cause. 2 Dr. Richard Eells, who was a candidate of the Liberty party 
 for Governor in 1846, was deacon in the Quincy Congregational 
 church. He was prominent in a long law case growing out of the 
 Fugitive Slave Law. Dr. Charles Volney Dyer, 3 who was the Free 
 Soil candidate for Governor in 1848, was a native of Clarendon, Ver- 
 mont, and a graduate of Middlebury College. Ichabod Codding, 3 who 
 lectured extensively on Anti-slavery, especially on the Kansas-Ne- 
 braska issue, and who "was a power in the organization of the 
 Republican party," also studied at Middlebury College and became a 
 Congregational minister. He held pastorates in Princeton, Lockport 
 and Joliet. 
 
 Zebina Eastman, the editor of the Anti-slavery papers, " The Ge- 
 nius of Liberty " and " The Western Citizen,'' and easily the leader 
 in this field of anti-slavery agitation, was a native of North Amherst, 
 Massachusetts. From 1842 to 1861 he made his home in Chicago. 
 His wife has recently testified to the unpopularity he incurred as 
 editor of " The Western Citizen ": " From the windows of her hum- 
 ble home on the corner of Madison and Dearborn streets, she often 
 saw her neighbors use tongs to remove the objectionable copies of 
 the abolitionist paper left on their doorsteps." He and his wife were 
 leaders in the movement by which, in 1852, forty-eight members of 
 the First Presbyterian church of Chicago withdrew from that church 
 and organized the Plymouth Congregational church. Their reason 
 
 1 Thomas Pope, Manuscript history of the Quincy Church. 
 
 2 Smith, The Liberty and Free Soil Parties, 63. 
 
 3 Bateman and Selby, Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois,
 
 59 
 
 for so doing was, that they did not believe that the Presbyterian 
 church had taken a sufficiently bold stand on the side of freedom for 
 the slave. 1 
 
 With these acknowledged leaders in Illinois who served as candi- 
 dates, speakers, and publishers of papers and hand -bills all so defi- 
 nitely allied with the Congregational churches, one cannot say that 
 in Illinois the " clerical anti-slavery forces " were so involved in sec- 
 tarian troubles, that they had to leave the leadership of anti-slavery 
 matters to others. 2 
 
 At the National Liberty Convention in 1844, at Buffalo, C. V. Dyer 
 was a vice president and Owen Lovejoy a secretary. In 1846, the 
 Liberty Party polled the highest vote in Illinois, with the main inter- 
 est centering on the candidacy of Lovejoy for Congress in the fourth 
 congressional district. With the year 1848 arose the issue of territo- 
 rial slavery and the Liberty Party gave place to the Free Soil Party. 
 Lovejoy served on a committee at the Convention of Free Soilers in 
 Buffalo, August, 1848, when Van Buren was nominated for the Presi- 
 dency. Northern Illinois was enthusiastic for the new movement, 
 and the total vote of 15,774 three times the largest vote of the Lib- 
 erty Party came largely from the northeastern counties. The Free 
 Soil Party, however, rapidly declined in Illinois. The combinations 
 and coalitions of that party facilitated a rapid disintegration and did 
 not satisfy the desires of the anti-slavery leaders. 
 
 With the compromise of 1850, reappeared the religions, moral, non- 
 partisan anti-slavery agitation induced in Illinois, especially by the 
 opposition in the northern counties to the Fugitive Slave Law. In 
 July, 1850. a Northern Christian Convention was held in Chicago 
 with representatives from the slave states. Owen Lovejoy was promi- 
 nent in its deliberations, and the convention insisted on the religious 
 character of its anti-slavery action. In 1851 there was a drawing to- 
 gether of the old anti-slavery men for political action, a return to first 
 principles, and the name " Free Soil " was generally abandoned for 
 that of Free Democracy. 3 
 
 In the same year a convention was called at Granville and a new 
 society was formed on religious, moral and political grounds, of which 
 J. H. Collins was made president. The language and methods of 
 the early years of anti-slavery agitation reappeared. In 1852, at the 
 last National Convention of Free Soilers, or Free Democratic Party, 
 when John P. Hale was nominated for the Presidency, Lovejoy was 
 the representative from Illinois. Illinois gave 9,966 votes to Hale, 
 including the votes of many clergymen and professional men as well 
 as young men who cast their first votes under the influence of the 
 anti-slavery reaction produced in northern Illinois by the Fugitive 
 Slave Law, 
 
 With the passage in 1854 of the Kansas and Nebraska Bill, aboli- 
 tionists, Liberty men and Free Democrats were ready to unite in a 
 new northern anti-slavery party; and in that year the Republican 
 Party was successfully organized in the two northern districts of 
 
 1 Chicago Legal Nevus (December 6, 1902), XXXV, 135. 
 
 2 Smith, The Liberty and Free Soil Parties, 18, 70. 
 
 3 Smith, The Liberty and Free Soil Parties, 144, 156, 225-229, 244.
 
 60 
 
 Illinois, with Lake county as the " focus of anti-slavery sentiment." 
 The efforts of Lovejoy and Codding to create a state organization by 
 a convention at Springfield, failed for lack of the cooperation of the 
 anti- slavery Whigs. A few years after this the successes of the Re- 
 publican party placed Lovejoy in Congress, when he gave up his 
 regular pastoral work and the field of his activity passed largely from 
 Illinois to the national capital. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Home Missionary Society and its friends, as they 
 became more outspoken, used the facts of the existence of slavery 
 and its attendant evils as one more reason for the greatest possible 
 effort to extend the work of the eastern churches and the principles 
 held by them. In 1844, in the annual report of the society, slavery 
 is named for the first time as one of the leading hindrances to the 
 growth of the churches in the West and South: "Another obstacle 
 and one of increasing magnitude which may well fill the heart of the 
 philanthropist with deep concern, is the existence of that horrible 
 anomaly in American institutions slavery covering so large a por-- 
 tion of our territory and enthralling more than two and one-half mil- 
 lion souls, made in the image of God, in a bondage worse than Egypt- 
 ian, that prevents the most direct and effectual efforts for their sal- 
 vation." l In this same report a chance sentence shows how the 
 thought of disunion was then even in men's minds: "Admit that our 
 Union may not continue ; its disruption would only increase our w^ork 
 and call more loudly for the intensest efforts." 
 
 The Mexican War so outraged the sentiments of the society's 
 officials that they were willing to publish letters which before they 
 had thought wise to suppress: " Much public attention has recently 
 been given to the enlargement of our national domain, and, in con- 
 nection with this, to the probable extension of slavery over large 
 sections of the territory which has been, or may be, annexed to our 
 country. To show how slavery affects the progress of evangelical 
 religion in the communities where it exists, the following letters from 
 different states are given : First ' Were this a free state I would 
 not falter a moment, but, looking to God for assistance, would 
 go forward. As it is, I have many fears. Slavery here is strong. It 
 affects every nerve and fibre of society. Not a single one of them 
 that I have heard of can read the Bible, and there are not a half 
 dozen of them that make any pretensions to piety. They are almost 
 never called in to be present at family worship. I know of no way 
 in which they are instructed. I do not know of a single master or 
 mistress that ever teaches them any systematic religious truths. I 
 do not see a cloud as big as a man's hand that portends their emanci- 
 pation. I could not say a syllable to the slaves themselves in private 
 without setting in motion a train of opposition that would soon drive 
 me from the state. The masters are nearly as inaccessible as the 
 slaves. They are sensitive and suspicious to a very great degree. 
 Second ' In this state this institution keeps 200,000 immortal beings 
 in deep ignorance. Ninety-nine huiidredths of them receive no in- 
 struction, not even in a Sunday school. In almost in every part of 
 the South where there is no positive law forbidding their being 
 
 1 Home Missionary,, June, 1844.
 
 61 
 
 instructed, public sentiment amounts to a prohibition equally effect- 
 ive. If a minister should preach much to them, he is liable to be sus- 
 pected as an abolitionist.' Third 'Scattered population, due to the ag- 
 ricultural system, prevents schools and instruction of children. Leads 
 also to ignorance of white children who cannot be sent away. A free 
 school system has never flourished. Churches are few and feeble. 
 This condition has exiled many of our best ministers to the free 
 states.' Fourth 'You are already aware that many devoted minis- 
 ters of the gospel have left this and other states, because of the 
 patriarchal institution.' " 
 
 In the '50s, with the agitation in Kansas and Nebraska, came freer 
 expression of opinion. In 1853, an able paper in the Home Mission- 
 ary, enumerated as "Three Dangers to American Institution," arising 
 out of American prosperity : The influx of foreigners, the growth of 
 slavery, and the increase of territory by annexation. Under the last 
 point the writer justified the annexation of Louisiana by national 
 interest, and the annexation of Florida by universal patriotism; but, 
 from the annexation of Texas, he claimed many evils had resulted, 
 chief among them, war; while the addition of New Mexico and Cali- 
 fornia had aroused great sectional animosity. He goes on to say: 
 " The interests of the annexation are determined almost solely by the 
 interests of slavery. Cuba, Hayti, and the neighboring states of 
 Mexico, and even the distant Sandwich Islands, are all viewed 
 through this medium. We cannot in our present condition make 
 another stride in annexation without fearfully augmenting our most 
 imminent and threatening dangers." l 
 
 Meanwhile, the society was rather sharply called to account by its 
 constituency for what seemed to them an inconsistent policy in- con- 
 tinuing to send funds to slave states. A resolution adopted by the 
 Congregational church, in Champaign, shows the feeling. They 
 voted " to make no contributions to, or countenance in any way, any 
 society upholding slavery." 2 
 
 The society attempted a justification of its policy: " While it may 
 not be accomplishing all it could wish for the removal of this great 
 evil, it is doing much. Some things which have been suggested it 
 does not attempt, because they do not seem to the society or to the 
 great mass of judicious persons, to be right or proper. For example, 
 it does not, as some would have it, wholly withdraw from slave states. 
 It does not, as others advise, make the exclusion of slaveholders from 
 communion a condition of missionary aid and thus interfere with 
 the rights of the churches to define their own terms of membership. 
 But it bears an open and unembarrassed testimony against slavery ; 
 it ranks it among the chief evils with which the Gospel must grapple; 
 it sustains no ministers in slave states who are implicated in this sin. 
 it claims as the right and duty of missionaries so to bring the Gospel 
 to bear on this subject that the moral sense of their people shall be 
 awakened and enlightened and they may be led to free themselves 
 from its guilt. When the missionary in fulfillment of this duty en- 
 counters opposition and obloquy, he is sustained by the sympathy 
 
 1 Home Missionary, May, 1853, by Rev. L. P. Hickok, of Union College. 
 
 2 Minutes of the Congregational Chutch, Champaign, Illinois.
 
 62 
 
 and pecuniary aid of the society as long as there is hope of useful- 
 ness, and then when duty bids him depart, he is assisted to enter 
 other fields." In this utterance, the society claimed that it stood on 
 the same ground as the New School Presbyterian and Congregational 
 churches as affirmed by the General Assemblies of 1818, 1846 and 
 1850, and by the General Convention of Congregational Ministers at 
 Albany in 1852. The latter declared it " to be the duty of the mis- 
 sionary societies to grant aid to churches in slaveholding states, in 
 support of such ministers only as shall so preach the Gospel and 
 inculcate the principles and application of Gospel discipline that, 
 with the blessing of God, it shall have its effect in awakening and 
 enlightening the moral sense in regard to slavery and in bringing to 
 pass the speedy abolition of that evil." l 
 
 In spite of this statement, the society had soon to take the position 
 of the churches and refuse financial aid to all churches not excluding 
 slaveowners from membership. An example of the divisive power of 
 this great question is shown in the history of the Third Presbyterian 
 Church of Chicago. Up to 1851, all churches of eastern origin in 
 Chicago were Presbyterian. The Third Presbyterian Church was 
 noted for its strong anti-slavery sentiment, including as it did in its 
 membership Hon. W, W. Farwell, prominent in anti-slavery political 
 measures of the time, and Philo Carpenter, whose house and store 
 were famous terminals of the Underground Railroad. The General 
 Assembly of 1850 meeting at Detroit, having failed to take positive 
 ground against slavery, a majority of the Chicago church voted to 
 stand aloof from all meetings of Synod and Presbytery till this policy 
 should be changed. Disciplined for this irregularity, a majority of 
 the church established themselves in the lecture room of the church, 
 the personal property of Mr. Carpenter, and there formed the First 
 Congregational Church of Chicago, preached to in its early days by 
 Jonathan Blanchard, later identified with Wheaton College, by J. M. 
 Sturtevant and Owen Lovejoy, and in time proud of its record as 
 " turned out, burned out," jeered at as a "nigger church." This church 
 strongly criticised the conservatism of the Home Missionary Society. 
 For years it held a Fourth of July prayer-meeting for the deliverance 
 of the slave; it observed a month of prayer before the inauguration 
 of President Lincoln. 
 
 There was much in the internal development of Illinois to lead to 
 a constantly increasing anti-slavery feeling. Even her early settlers, 
 mainly from the south, did not wish slavery in Illinois, both for 
 economic, and, in many cases, for moral reasons. This was proved 
 by the majority, small indeed, which prevented the constitutional 
 amendment permitting slavery in 1824. Then came the large influx 
 of Easterners, most of them opposed to slavery, and accustomed to 
 give ear to the moral instructions of their religious leaders. Their 
 moral sentiments were shocked by the turbulent acts and temper of 
 the border and by the sight of thf enforcement of the Fugitive Slave 
 Law. Moral sentiment aroused led to such a certainty of conviction 
 
 1 Home Missionary. March, 1853.
 
 63 
 
 that Illinois could even criticise New England for her moderateness 
 of statement; churches criticised the society that gave them exist- 
 ence; and church members criticised the reserve of the church itself; 
 and the religious leaders saw in all the agitation and in the threat- 
 ening danger still greater need for the spread of Christian truth. 
 As the contest deepened and patriotism was invoked to bring the 
 country out of her trouble, it seems only a natural result that one in 
 four of the entire male membership of the Puritan church in Illinois 
 sprang to the defense of the Union against the coalition of slavehold- 
 ing states.
 
 (54 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL RIVALRIES. 
 
 During this era of anti-slavery agitation, New England Puritanism 
 was disturbed by the rapid development of the Roman Catholic 
 Church in the Northwest. The French Catholic priests of the early 
 days had offered little opposition to the Protestants They did not 
 object to the distribution of tracts and Bibles among their own 
 people, and they never attempted to take the matter of education 
 from the Protestants, who were so eager and so sure of their own 
 method. What now particularly alarmed the Home Missionary So- 
 ciety and its constituency, was what appeared to be a definite plan on 
 the part of European Catholics to capture a large part of the North- 
 west for their faith. 
 
 A warning was given in May, 1842, through the organ of the 
 society : " The territory of this nation is an unlimited and inviting 
 field, to which the human swarms are gathering from other lands. 
 The crumbling dynasties of the old world are sending hither materials 
 to reconstruct the fabrics which are there tottering to ruin. Already 
 the foundations are laid for social institutions such as our own fathers 
 knew not. Foreign Papists are planting our fairest territories thick 
 with their schools. Colony after colony of men of a strange tongue 
 and stranger associations, are possessing themselves of our soil and 
 gathering around our ballot boxes." "In Missouri, Illinois and 
 Arkansas there are seventy-four priests with literary institutions of 
 every grade in which, at least, a thousand youths are now training 
 here then the very heart of the West is infected and every pulsation 
 throws abroad a strain of influence baneful to the civil freedom and 
 religious well-being of unnumbered thousands." l 
 
 More hopeful was the following expression: " The most formida- 
 ble foe of the universal spread of the Gospel is, doubtless, to be found 
 in the Roman apostacy where else could the contest be bloodless, 
 where so successful as here, where no racks or tortures forestall the 
 force of argument here where the benighted children of error will 
 surrounded and pervaded by the silent but resistless influence of our 
 schools and presses; here, where every one of them may stand erect 
 and feel that he is a man and may assert his right to doubt as well as 
 to believe; to discuss and judge as well as to listen and obey? In- 
 stead, therefore, of deprecating the coming of so many foreigners as a 
 curse, we should regard it as the fulfillment of our national destiny." 
 
 1 Annual Report of Home Missionary Society, June, 1842.
 
 65 
 
 In July of this year, 1842, it was reported that an agent from Illi- 
 nois had been in England and on the continent for the purpose of 
 sending emigrants to the western states. Money to buy lands in 
 Illinois and elsewhere had been raised. Land offices had been opened 
 in England and Germany for the sale of western lands. The emigra- 
 tion from Ireland, England and Germany was large. 1 
 
 In November of this year, the " Grand Scheme " itself is fully ad- 
 vertised and exposed with increased effort to rouse public sentiment 
 against what was held to be an impending danger: "That there is a 
 formal conspiracy of the crowned heads of Europe to bring our republic 
 under papal control, as has been sometimes asserted, may or may not 
 be true. But there can be no doubt that many of the potentates and 
 grandees of Catholic Europe greatly desire such a result. The no- 
 bility and political economists who regard with amazement and terror 
 the accumulation of masses of population in the overcrowded states 
 of the old world, withont instruction, without employment, and with- 
 out bread, have a powerful reason for pushing these masses off upon 
 our comparative vacant territory." 
 
 During 1842 a pamphlet was issued in London and Dublin, enti- 
 tled "Proposed New Plan of a General Emigration Society; by a 
 Catholic Gentleman." The object was to be the sending of the Irish 
 poor to America. From this well written pamphlet the editors of the 
 missionary magazine made large extracts. The reasons for such 
 emigration are stated, as follows: " 1. To dispose of excess of popu- 
 lation. 2. To create demand for British manufactures. 3. To make 
 the Catholic religion predominant in the United States." The 
 pamphlet contained a map copied by the missionary magazine to 
 show the region it was thought best to settle in. The territory in- 
 cluded Upper Canada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois 
 and part of Iowa. The desirableness of this country was proven by 
 descriptive extracts from De Tocqueville, Captain Marryatt, Miss 
 Martiiieau and Judge Haliburton. The officials of the Home Mis- 
 sionary Society drew three conclusions from this document: " 1. We 
 may expect colonization stimulated and systematized more and more. 
 2. The great field of conflict for religious and political supremacy 
 will be the West. 3. Noiv is the the time to save the West." 
 
 In the following year, 1843, the foundation of certain benevolent 
 societies in Europe to advance Catholicism in America gave further 
 occasion for alarm. Frederick Rese, Vicar General of the Diocese of 
 Cincinnati, interested himself particularly in the spread of Catholic 
 missions in America, promoting the gathering of funds for this pur- 
 pose in a memorial to Leopoldina. Empress of Brazil. The Pope 
 granted special indulgences to those aiding this fund, and Metter- 
 nich wrote to the Bishop of Cincinnati commending the movement. 
 It soon gathered $61,000. The Society for the Propagation of the 
 Faith at Lyons, during 1840, appropriated $160,000 to missions in 
 America. 2 
 
 The intense feeling on the subject occasioned even such extrava- 
 gant language as that used in an address in Painesville, Ohio, in 
 
 1 Home Missionary, July, 1842. 
 
 2 Home Missionary, February, 1843. 
 
 5H
 
 66 
 
 1844: " The Apocalyptic Beast is watching with intense anxiety, and 
 straining his eyeballs for a favorable moment to spring in upon us 
 with one immense bound and make us his prey. Rome has more 
 men, more money, more cunning and more perseverance than we 
 have. Rome never stops short of universal victory or universal 
 defeat." 1 
 
 From this time on Romanism is classed with intemperance and 
 slavery as an evil threatening the country. The citation of a few 
 titles of articles appearing in the Home Missionary, show the nature 
 of the Protestant opposition: "Jesuits in the United States," Janu- 
 ary 1846; "Catholic Clergy in the United States," February, 1846; 
 "Indulgences," June, 1848; "Aid to the Roman Catholic Church in 
 America," August, 1848; '"Jesuit Seminaries at the West," October, 
 1851 ; " Does the Romish Church Discourage the Reading of the 
 Bible?" July, 1853. 
 
 The utterances on the subject, of some of the most distinguished 
 men of the day will show how seriously the matter was regarded. 
 Dr. Leonard Bacon referred to the "gigantic efforts of the Papal 
 church to achieve for itself the dominion of this hallowed soil." 2 
 Professor Park, of Andover, wrote: "Send our armies to the great 
 valley where the Pope will reign unless Puritanism be triumphant. 
 Remembering the fires of Smithfield and the ashes of our fathers who 
 sleep in Bunhill fields, let us pray together for this 'vine'." 3 Speak- 
 ing of the moral conflicts before the country, Dr. Mark Hopkins 
 wrote: "Rome and despotism are pouring in the materials of which 
 mobs are made. Infidelity in its various forms is more extensive 
 than many suppose. When we remember the sectional jealousies 
 and distracting relations of slavery, and see how easily the standard 
 of a civil and servile war might be unfurled, we cannot see the burden 
 on the church likely to be diminished in our day." 4 
 
 Catholicism was not the only "error" by which the West was 
 assailed. The missionary fathers, after the comparative uniformity 
 in religious beliefs to which they were accustomed in New England 
 were astonished and shocked at the sectarian divisions, the multi- 
 plicity of sects, with which they came in contact in the West. Rev. 
 Julian M. Sturtevant writes as follows of the conditions in New 
 England when he was a boy: 5 "We had Baptist, Episcopal and 
 Methodist churches, but they were far too few in number to seriously 
 impair the unity of the New England church life. The Baptists 
 were numerous only in Rhode Island. Both they and the Methodist 
 societies that were beginning to be organized here and there, usually 
 sought locations remote from Congregational places of worship, and 
 thus rarely came in contact with them. The world was then broad 
 enough for all. There was no crowding. The consequence was that 
 the church in any particular town was not regarded as the representa- 
 tive of some distinct denomination, but simply as a branch of the 
 church of Christ, ' the Church Universal.' We thought of ours as 
 
 1 Home Missionary, June, 1844. 
 
 2 Home Missionary, May, 1852. 
 
 3 Ibid., September, 1845. 
 
 4 Ibid., November, 1845. 
 
 5 Julian M. Sturtei<ant, An Autobiography, 23.
 
 67 
 
 the 'Warren Christian Church.' If, in my childhood, I had heard 
 our place of worship mentioned as Congregational, I would have 
 needed to ask an explanation of the unusual term. Such was the 
 vantage ground of the Connecticut churches at the time of which I 
 am speaking, and the same thing might be said of the larger portion 
 of Massachusetts and also of a considerable part of Vermont and 
 New Hampshire. I call it vantage ground, not, however, to Congre- 
 gationalists as a religious denomination, biit to Christianity." 
 
 How different the condition in Illinois. One settlement of eighty 
 families had fourteen sects. One town of 800 inhabitants had eight 
 denominations. The missionaries soon began to class together the 
 forms that seemed to them most disastrous. This despairing picture 
 of southeastern Illinois in 1835 brings them all together: "One or 
 two churches are dead, two or three more are soon to expire. At 
 Vincennes a Catholic college and nunnery are soon to be built. 
 Romanism, Arianism, Universalism, Campbellism, Deism and almost, 
 every delusion prevail." 1 Another writer sums up the errors in this 
 form: "The West is the arena where the contest is to be carried on 
 between Infidelity, Romanism, Mormonism and Satanism on one 
 side and Christianity on the other." 
 
 To their sorrow they had to confess that many of the "false teach- 
 ers," the Roman Catholic priests, the Mormons, preachers of 
 Universalism, the Millerites, lecturers on Atheism, mesmerism and 
 phrenology, came from the east. Another cause for chagrin was that 
 Northern Illinois was most seriously affected; the Fox river region 
 was the "stronghold of Universalism," Hancock county was almost 
 entirely given over to the Mormons, while the nearby valley of the 
 Des Moines was a center of infidelity under the leadership of Abner 
 Kneeland. "Paine's 'Age of Reason' is read with avidity in many 
 families and its doctrines advocated by men of influence. Not a few 
 mothers drink in this poison. Many immigrants from Europe are 
 disciples of Hume and Voltaire. Clubs and associations are found in 
 almost all of our towns on the rivers." 2 One family went so far as to 
 keep their family record in Tom Paine instead of the Bible. 
 
 One sect, which at the present time has good standing, in that day 
 particularly aroused the indignation of the Easterner. "Campbellism" 
 was described as the "bane of the West," the "common enemy of all 
 evangelical Christianity." These people were also known as "Dis- 
 ciples," and were the followers of Alexander Campbell of Bethany, 
 Virginia. Rev. J. M. Sturtevant was much criticised for fellowship 
 with a church of this sect near Jacksonville, and it was scarcely 
 considered an evangelical body. While not slow to oppose the doc- 
 trines of some of their leaders, Sturtevant kept up his friendly rela- 
 tions with the Disciples and in his old age wrote: "It is my belief 
 that no portion of the religious community around us has grown in 
 grace more rapidly than that denomination." 3 
 
 1 Home Missionary, March, 1835. 
 
 2 Home Missionary, December, 1841 . 
 
 3 Julian M. Sturtevant, An Autobiography, 248.
 
 68 
 
 Most blighting in its influence for the short time it remained in 
 Illinois was the Mormon propaganda. Driven from Missouri the 
 Mormons had established themselves at Nauvoo, in Hancock county, 
 where they arrived in 1839. The effect on the community was 
 immediate. Nearly all the old citizens became anxious to sell their 
 property and many prepared to move away, so great was the dis- 
 inclination to live near the Mormons. "Their recruits come from 
 churches where the cardinal doctrines of the Bible are kept in the 
 the background." A Mormon preacher was reported to have said 
 that he would as soon undertake to make "sugar out of dry hickory 
 as to make a Mormon out of a Congregationalist." 1 
 
 In a year or two it was apparent that the Mormons intended to rule 
 the region politically as well as religiously. Since somewhat recently 
 popular articles by Mormon writers have appeared in some of the 
 magazines in which persecutions suffered by the Mormons in Illinois 
 and attending their departure from Missouri are dwelt upon, contem- 
 porary witness to the experiences and feelings of the community may 
 be of interest. In August, 1842, a missionary in Hancock county 
 wrote: ; ' The Mormon farce is manifestly drawing to a close. They 
 are rallying from every point to this county for the purpose of carry- 
 ing the elections and thus getting all the public business into their 
 own hands, and there is a state of growing excitement among the rest 
 of the community. I am afraid the next August election will not pass 
 by without bloodshed. I presume Nauvoo is as perfect a sink of de- 
 bauchery and every species of abomination as ever were Sodom or 
 Nineveh." 2 The next year the report is that there are 15,000 Mormons 
 in the county; that they hold all the offices. Old citizens are much 
 disturbed. It seems like the eve of an outbreak, while the Mormons 
 themselves are " worse than all that has been said about them." 3 But 
 the end was not yet. It 1845 the "old citizens are irritated almost to 
 desperation by the daily insults and depredations upon their property, 
 by a people whom a few years since they received into their bosom 
 and both clothed and fed as poor, deluded, persecuted objects of char- 
 ity. But they were themselves scarcely less deluded. They now 
 suffer, as a consequence of their benefaction, the loss of business, of 
 personal safety and general prosperity to the country. The absorbing 
 question with this whole people now is, how shall we rid ourselves of 
 this curse? We were afraid the people would drive it from their 
 borders by violence, but God seems to have purposed that it Shall 
 ripen among us and with wonderful suddenness perish utterly in its 
 own corruption." 4 
 
 Rev. -1. M. Grout, the missionary at Warsaw, wrote in February, 
 1846, that life and property were not safe. In September of the same 
 year he wrote that ten surrounding counties had pledged themselves 
 to see that the Mormons move from Illinois and already most of them 
 had fled to Missouri. He had attended three funerals of prominent 
 citizens killed by Mormons in the last three months. At one time 
 
 1. Home Missionary, November, 1840. 
 
 2. Ibid., August, 1842. 
 
 3. Ibid., October, 1843. 
 
 4. Home Missionary, October, 1845.
 
 69 
 
 parties of Mormons went about terrorizing the county. The next 
 month Mr. Grout reported nearly all the Mormon property as sold and 
 at higher rates than their opponents could have got for theirs had 
 the Mormons remained. "A miserable remnant, perhaps 2,000, still 
 remained in Nauvoo, the objects of suspicion, hatred and fear. Their 
 temple is yet unsold. The main body is encamped almost within 
 speaking distance. The old citizens are impatient of such delay and 
 fearful of their return." Four months later he writes: " Controversy 
 seems to have closed. Order and quiet has reigned since a few days 
 after the battle which induced Mormons and semi-Mormons to leave 
 Nauvoo. A few acts of theft have been committed, but the offenders 
 have been dealt with promptly according to law." His words of a 
 year later show how deep the demoralization of the region had been. 
 "Great prudence, discernment, patience and forbearance were neces- 
 sary to persuade a population which had been inflicted with the 
 vicinity of Mornionism to commence anew to build up society and the 
 utmost sagacity to keep them at work." 1 The "temple," which seems 
 to have been a problem to both parties, was burned in 1848; the "work 
 of some nefarious incendiary," an act which was not approved by the 
 better portion of the population. It was not till 1853 that the mis- 
 sionaries reported Hancock county as really recovering from the Mor- 
 mon occupation. 
 
 Jo Daviess county suffered from a smaller Mormon invasion under 
 rather peculiar circumstances. Many came directly from Nauvoo, but 
 more "from the colony of one Strang, who. in view of the. corruption 
 of the church at Nauvoo, attempted to establish a reformed Mormon 
 church in Wisconsin. Many of his followers left him, and his at- 
 tempt to impose phosphorescent light for cloven tongues defeated his 
 whole enterprise. This colony is the result of the breaking up of 
 these two dens since their faith and confidence in their leaders is not 
 strong enough to take them to California." 2 
 
 One cannot emphasize too strongly the utter lack of any ground of 
 agreement between such colonies and the New England settlers. The 
 Mormons appeared too late to gain a real foothold in Illinois and had 
 to do pioneer work in the unoccupied field of Utah to make a perma- 
 nent hold for themselves. 
 
 1. Home Missionary, March, 1848. 
 
 2. Ibid., September, 1848.
 
 70 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 EDUCATIONAL INFLUENCE. 
 
 Turning to a successful side of the missionary's work, it is to be 
 noticed that his influence in educational matters was creative, defin- 
 ite, permanent. Illinois owes much in her educational development 
 to him. He brought with him the knowledge of the three-fold edu- 
 cational organization of New England, the college, the academy and 
 the common school; and he added to this, wrought out from the cir- 
 cumstances of his surroundings, the idea of industrial education by 
 the State. 
 
 Applying this program to Illinois, we find, in the local conditions, 
 certain helps and certain hindrances to the cause of education. To 
 begin with there was generous financial encouragement provided by 
 the general government in the terms of the ordinance of 1787 for the 
 disposing of lands in the Western Territory, by which section sixteen 
 in each township was devoted to school purposes. The enabling act 
 of 1818 also devoted one entire township for the use of a "seminary 
 of learning" and of the five per cent of the net proceeds of the sale of 
 government lands within her limits granted to the use of the State, 
 it was provided that three-fifths should be used for educational pur- 
 poses, one-sixth of this sum to be used for a college or university. 
 In 1882 this, together with a surplus revenue fund given by Congress 
 in 1837 and certain county funds, amounted to a principal of $9,691,- 
 932.89 with an income of $636,204.64. 
 
 In enumerating the disadvantages with which education had to 
 contend it is obvious at once that funds would not flow into the State 
 treasury very early from these provisions since the sale of lands 
 would naturally be slow till settlers became abundant. In fact the 
 first sale was not made till 1831 in Greene county. Again the early 
 settlers were not in so prosperous a condition at first as to lead them 
 to impose taxes upon themselves nor were they as a class at all dis- 
 posed to promote free schools. 1 
 
 To this should be added the fact that the legislative bodies of the 
 State were controlled by representatives of the southern settlers dur- 
 ing all the years we were considering. Any advance in educational 
 matters was wrested from these men only by long siege and after 
 repeated rebuffs. These legislators diverted the school funds to the 
 
 1 W. L. Pillsbury, in Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, 1881-82 p. CXXII1, 
 CXXVII; in Rep-tt, 1887-88, LX VII; Samuel Wilhard, History of Early Education in Illinois, 
 in Report, 1883-84, LXVII.
 
 71 
 
 payment of other State expenses so persistently in the early years 
 that Congress withheld the fund for several years previous to 1831. 
 By act of 1835 the interest was distributed to the counties and no 
 longer loaned to the State. The State by public act pays interest on 
 all the funds which have accrued to it from the sources named 
 although the funds themselves were long ago diverted to State uses. 1 
 
 The establishment of free schools, the appointment of a State 
 superintendent of public instruction, an institution for the education 
 of teachers, and an "industrial university," where the main objects 
 for which special and long continued effort were necessary. 
 
 "The paramount influence of the New Englanders in accomplishing 
 this program is fully acknowledged by those most conversant with 
 the educational history of the State. The origin of the American 
 common school in Illinois was due to the tide of immigration from 
 New England." "But as the immigration from the south and espec- 
 ially from the east poured in the modes of life of the people changed; 
 then the earth floor and the slab seats and the puncheon writing desk 
 gave way to oaken boards from the saw mill. The ceilings and the 
 walls ere long were clothed with lath and plaster; the chimney of 
 brick and the stove superseded the hugh chimney of sticks; glass 
 windows admitted light; the framed and boarded house took the place 
 of the log structure, and change followed change till the present 
 tasteful, well-furnished school house caused the older expedients of 
 the early days to be forgotten. With these the pupil and teacher and 
 text books changed in equal ratio." This authority it should be said 
 is particularly anxious to give proper credit to ail the sources of help 
 in the educational struggle. 2 
 
 The earliest of New England educational workers to be noted was 
 Rev. J. M. Peck, also remembered for his services in keeping Illinois 
 an anti-slavery state, a missionary of the Massachusetts Baptist 
 Society and later an agent of the American Bible Society. He is 
 described as "perhaps the most indefatigable worker in behalf of edu- 
 cation the State has ever known." He furthered the educational 
 interests of his own denomination in Rock Spring Seminary and 
 Shurtleff College. "He brought teachers from the east and helped 
 them to employment; in every way and at every-time he used tongue, 
 pen, time, means and influence for the cause of education." 3 In 1833 
 at Vandalia in the first educational convention ever held in the State 
 he organized the first educational society, "prominent among those 
 special agencies, educational associations, State legislatures, ladies 
 educational; societies, teachers institutes and popular methods" which 
 participated in the struggle for popular education up to 1855. 4 
 
 This society was called the Illinois Institute of education. Mr. 
 Peck was made a corresponding secretary. It devoted itself to the 
 gathering* of information' as to the condition of the primary schools of 
 the^ State, to corresponding with centers of school information outside 
 
 1 Piilsbnry, in Report ^ 188J.-82, XXXVI. 
 
 2 Mayo, Education in Hie North-west, in U.S. Commissioner of Edncation Report, 1894-5, II, 
 1543; WUlard. Early Education in Illinois, cxviii. 
 
 3 W. L.;Pillsbury, it&Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, 1885-86, pp. cv 
 cxz; Wizard, as above, p. cxviii. 
 
 4 Mayo, as above, p. 1541.
 
 72 
 
 of the State and to an effort to inform and arouse the public on the 
 subject. Mr. Peck's denominational paper, the Pioneer and Western 
 Baptist, became also an educational organ, publishing information, 
 suggesting a second educational convention at Vandalia in December 
 of 1834 and printing its proceeding, an "Address to the People of 
 Illinois" and the "Memorial" to the Legislature. 
 
 A free school law had been passed by the General Assembly of Illi- 
 nois, January 15, 1825, embracing all the essential points of the free 
 school idea. The law met so much opposition that it never became 
 generally operative, and was soon made ineffective by an amendment 
 removing the general tax. The following statement is the conjecture 
 of its origin. "If we could get at the unwritten history of the passage 
 of the law we should, I imagine, find its passage was secured by 
 strong personal influences, more potent in Vandalia with the small 
 number who could be talked to face to face, \ha,n with the sparse and 
 widely scattered people of the State at large in those days of few 
 newspapers with short subscription lists, when travel was chiefly on 
 horseback." 1 - As a result of the educational agitation in 1834. above 
 noted, another broad and liberal educational bill was introduced into 
 the Assembly only to fail in its most essential feature of general 
 taxation. 2 - 
 
 It was at this session, 1834-5, that Illinois college gained its charter. 
 Its doors had been open since 1830, but it had been impossible to 
 gain a satisfactory charter until this session. By making common 
 cause with Shurtleff and McKendree colleges, she gained her charter, 
 not without restriction however. All three were forbidden to hold 
 more than 640 acres of land or to establish theological departments, 
 restrictions removed in a few years. Such men as Hon. Samuel D. 
 Lockwood and Judge William Brown, .men "devoted, heart, soul and 
 purse to the cause of education" 3 - worked for the bill. Judge Lock- 
 wood had shown his affection for Illinois College before this time 
 when Mr. Ellis proposed to make the tour through Greene, Morgan 
 and Sangamon, the "upper counties," in the interests of the Home 
 Missionary Society and of the proposed college in 1828. Judge Lock- 
 wood proposed that his clerk, Thomas Lippincott, who afterwards be- 
 came a missionary of the society, should accompany him and he 
 furnished a horse and the funds necessary for the expedition. Later, 
 when all had made their home in Jacksonville, he selected the college 
 site for his own home, but gave it to the college on the condition that 
 the college should be located there. 4 - 
 
 The nature of the opposition can be galne*d from the three questions 
 discussed in the report of the committee on petitions: 
 
 1. Are institutions of this character really needed in the State? 
 
 2. Is it important to their success that the trustees who manage 
 them should become bodies corporate? 
 
 3. Can corporate powers be granted with safety to the public in- 
 terest ? 
 
 1. Pillsbury in Repott, 1885-6, pp. cviii.cxv. 
 
 2. W. L. Pillsbury, Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, 1885-6, p. cxxv. 
 
 3. Ibid., p. cxii. 
 
 4. Julian M. Sturterant , An Autobiography, 176.
 
 73 
 
 The following is an extract from the argument on the last question : 
 "These men have some peculiar claims upon our confidence and sup- 
 port. They commenced their operations in the infancy of our State, 
 when the means of education were exceedingly limited, and schools 
 of every description were few and far between. They do not simply 
 prepare to educate those who should hereafter come upon the stage, 
 but the present generation also. The cry now is from all parts of the 
 State, educate the present generation. The petitioners are ready to 
 vociferate the same loud and long. This is the very thing that they 
 propose to aid in accomplishing. They come to us and point to the 
 present state of education in Illinois and simply ask us to afford them 
 such facilities as will enable them to prosecute this noble work with- 
 out embarrassment. Shall we then withhold from them that coun- 
 tenance and support which they ask? It would seem that none would 
 be more deserving of encouragement than the pioneer in the cause of 
 education. In the opinion of your committee the petitioners are 
 richly entitled to confidence of their fellow citizens, and the support 
 of ourselves as a legislature." 1 - 
 
 In addition to the members of the "Yale Band" already noticed 
 whose interest was assured to the new college either by direct service 
 for it or by sympathy and indirect service, one must note its first 
 president, Edward Beecher, who came to Illinois in 1833, Truman 
 M. Post, Samuel Adams, and Jonathan B. Turner. From the begin- 
 ning the college grew in numbers and influence. Drawing its 
 teachers and to a large extent its funds from New England, there 
 was appropriateness in calling Jacksonville, its. home, "the New 
 Haven of the West." 2 The Home Missionary churches contributed 
 to its support. Land as well as money was given to it. Its pro- 
 fessors did not confine their labors to the class-room. They went 
 abroad lecturing on temperance, and they promoted anti-slavery sen- 
 timent; but chiefly they tried to rouse interest in popular educa- 
 tion. Mayo says: "One of the most potent and influential of 
 all the special agencies in promoting education was the new college 
 of Illinois. It threw its entire influence on the side of the common 
 school." 3 
 
 In 1834 Professor J. B. Turner spent his summer vacation in 
 traveling at his own expense to the counties southwest of Morgan 
 county, delivering addresses in behalf of public schools wherever he 
 could gather an audience. Through these years the papers had such 
 notices as these: "At commencement in Jacksonville, August 21, 
 1832, an address on common schools by Rev. Theron Baldwin." 
 "November 13, ] 834, an address in Springfield by Professor J. B. 
 Turner, subject, 'Common Schools.' " "Lecture on 'Education' by 
 Rev. Mr. Baldwin at Mt. Carmel, Wabash county, August, 1836. A 
 subscription for an academy followed." Commencement time was 
 for years taken as an opportunity to present the claims of this inter- 
 est. At the commencement in 1836 the Illinois Teachers' Associa- 
 tion was formed. For four years Rev. John F. Brooks, of the "Yale 
 
 1 W. L. Pillsbury, report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, 1887-88, p. cxxvii, 
 
 2 Historical Moigan and Clastic Jacksonville. 
 
 3 A. D. Mayo, Education in the North-west.
 
 74 
 
 Band," was its secretary. Addresses at this first meeting were made 
 by J. F. Brooks, Edward Beecher, Theron Baldwin, and J. M. Sturte- 
 vant. Of the eight officers chosen six were Congregational clergy- 
 men. The aim of the association was to elevate the qualifications of 
 teachers, ''giving permanency to their employment, and by mutual 
 counsel fixing upon the best text-books and methods of instruction." 
 The minutes of the four years following, with meetings all held in 
 Jacksonville, record discussions on all sorts of matters pertaining to 
 the conduct of schools, with committees appointed to promote the 
 forming of county associations, to investigate the text -books used in 
 schools and similar subjects. In 1837, Rev. Lyman Beecher, of the 
 Lane Seminary in Ohio, was present at the Illinois commencement 
 and addressed the association. 1 
 
 In 1837. "The Common School Advocate" appeared, published at 
 Jacksonville and edited "by a few literary gentlemen who, from their 
 deep interest in this subject, generously volunteered their services for 
 one year without remuneration." Samuel Willard ascribes the edi- 
 torship to Rev. Theron Baldwin. 2 Its first editorial urges the im- 
 portance of national and state secretaries of education, the first men- 
 tion of a subject on which much agitation developed later. The next 
 number gave a resume of Rev. C. E. Stowe's (a brother-in-law of 
 Edward Beecher) report on the Prussian system of private schools. 
 This report by calling attention to the normal schools of Prussia had 
 particularly interested the East, where the question of the state's 
 establishing normal schools was becoming prominent. This paper 
 ceased to appear at the end of a year. The "Union Agriculture and 
 Western Prairie Farmer," which appeared in 1841, added common 
 school interests to agricultural under the editorship of John S. 
 Wright, of Massachusetts. He agitated two subjects particularly, 
 the appointment of a State Superintendent and a normal school. Up 
 to 1855 this paper occupied the field of school journalism in Illinois. 
 
 Parallel with the influence of Illinois College in promoting the in- 
 terests of common schools was that of the "Ladies Association for 
 Educating Females," founded in Jacksonville in 1833. Its aim was 
 "to encourage and assist young ladies to qualify themselves for teach- 
 ing." Female education had received early attention. While John 
 M. Ellis was founding Illinois College with his wife's help he also 
 began the Jacksonville Female Academy in 1828. This is said to be 
 the earliest institution for the education of women in the north- west, 
 outside of Ohio. The first teacher, Miss Sarah C. Crocker, was 
 recommended by Mary Lyon. Miss Crocker was the first vice-presi- 
 dent of the Ladies Association and Mrs. Theron Baldwin its first 
 secretary, while the other two officers were Jacksonville ladies. 3 "The 
 first year five were aided and received tuition and books, assisting in 
 some families as part compensation for board. The third year forty- 
 five were assisted in different parts of the State. The association 
 met with favor wherever known; friends and means were raised up, 
 
 1 W. L. Pillsbury, in Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, 1885-86, pp. 
 cxxix-cxxxiii. 
 
 2 Ibid, 1883-84, p. cxvii. 
 
 3 W. L. Pillsbury, in report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, 1887 -88, p. p. Ixxx, 
 cxxxix, cxiv.cxliii. Eames, Historic Morgan and Classic Jacksonville.
 
 75 
 
 not bounded by rivers or hemmed in by mountains. Auxiliaries 
 were found in New York City and Rochester, New York; Madison, 
 Wisconsin; Davenport, Iowa; Chicago, Gaiesburg, Springfield, Can- 
 ton, Peoria and Waverly, Illinois. Sewing circles in New Haven; 
 Connecticut; Brooklyn, New York and various other places, con- 
 tributed to the treasury. In fifty years from its founding the asso- 
 ciation had aided 1,200 young women and raised $25,091. 35. 1 
 
 In 1840 the Illinois State Education Society was formed, J. M. 
 Sturtevant's name appearing on the committee calling the convention 
 which led to the forming of the society, and Rev. J. G. Bergen of 
 Springfield was its presiding officer. This society memorialized the 
 legislature urging especially the creation of the office of State Super- 
 intendent, but general taxation and a State Superintendent were gut 
 off. 2 
 
 It was John S. Wright who in his "Prairie Farmer'' proposed the 
 educational convention of 1844 at Peoria, printing letters from Presi- 
 dent Sturtevant and others favoring it. It was held in October with 
 Rev. Aratus Kent of Galena as chairman. This convention also 
 menioralized the legislature at length. 
 
 A State Superintendent was again urged and Mr. Wright appeared 
 before the legislation committees to expfain and elucidate the project. 
 According to the terms of the school law of this year the Secretary 
 of State was made ex-officio State Superintendent of common schools 
 and the school law was improved in various other Mays. 3 Every home 
 missionary was pledged to promote popular education and the follow- 
 ing passage from a report to the society in 1845 shows adequate 
 interest in the practical questions at issue as well as a full apprecia- 
 tion of the missionary's own part in educational work. 4 ' All history 
 shows that there are no agents so efficient in promoting education as 
 evangelical ministers; hence, home missionaries should be multiplied 
 to meet the demand. And, perhaps, in this western country where so 
 little interest is felt in the cause they should be especially instructed 
 to carry this point by using every means within their reach, such as 
 lecturing on education, visiting schools, procuring competent teachers, 
 and using their influence to establish primary schools and academies. 
 We want also a few general agents, say one to a state, like your state 
 superintendents in the east, who shall travel from county to county, 
 delivering lectures on education and diffusing information on the sub- 
 ject. Have you not a few educated, accomplished, eloquent, splendid 
 laymen who have enough of Howard's spirit to devote years, or a life, 
 to an untiring effort to raise, each one state, to such a pitch of edu- 
 cational enthusiasm that they will be honored throughout the State 
 in all coming time as highly as St. Patrick in Ireland." 
 
 The Peoria convention was followed by conventions at Jacksonville 
 in connection with the commencement of 1845; at Winchester, in Sep- 
 tember, 1845; at Jacksonville, in January, 1846; and at Chicago, in 
 
 1 Mrs. Emily. 1 !. Bancroft. Fiftieth Anniversary report of the Ladies Association for Educating 
 Females. 
 
 2 W. L. Pillsbury, in report of the Superintendent of Public lustructiou, 1887-88, p. cxiii, 
 cxxxvii. 
 
 3 W. L. Pillsbury, in report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, 1887-88, p. cxlvii. 
 
 4 Home Missionary, September, 1845.
 
 76 
 
 October, 1846. At the Chicago convention, a Teachers' Institute was 
 organized and by 1850 such institutions had become common through- 
 out the State. In that year Prof. J. B. Turner conducted one in Pike 
 county with fifty-five teachers present. From 1850 to 1855 the story 
 of the struggle for free common schools belongs more definitely to the 
 educational as distinct from the religious development of the State, 
 although in 1853 when the State Teachers Institute of Illinois was 
 founded in Bloomingtoii there were not teachers enough present to 
 fill the offices and they had to fill them with clergymen, voting, how- 
 ever, "that in succeeding times it shall be the policy of the Institute 
 to have its offices filled generally with practical teachers.' 11 In 18^5 
 came the great victory. The bill drafted by the State Superintendent 
 became in its main features the law. It contained "provisions for 
 the State tax for schools, for unrestrained local taxation and for a 
 free school in every district for six months in the year." Even with 
 this final victory echoes of the old opposition were heard. ''Superin- 
 tendent Edwards, and others who went over the State, say that oppo- 
 sition to free schools was very bitter in many counties, particularly 
 in the southern part of the State and they concur in saying that but 
 for the State tax and the mode of distributing it the bill could not 
 have been passed. The tax was collected upon property, and dis- 
 tributed two-thirds on the minor population and one-third upon area. 
 It was at once seen that the scheme favored the poorer at the expense 
 of the richer counties; and the counties where there was most hostility 
 to free schools were the chief gamers by the plan of distribution. "If 
 those fellows up north want to pay for schools down here, we'll let 
 r em," they said. 2 
 
 The number of schools increased from 4,215 in 1854 to 10,238 in 
 1858. The close of the period, 1860, found Newton Bateman, a grad- 
 uate of Illinois College and Lane Theological Seminary, in the office 
 of State Superintendent of Public Instruction; William H. Wells, a 
 native of Connecticut, who came to Chicago in 1856 from teaching in 
 the State Normal School of Westfield, Mass., as superintendent of 
 schools in Chicago; and Richard Edwards, who was born in England 
 but had received his education in Massachusetts and had held import- 
 ant teaching positions in that state, as principal of the State Normal 
 University. 
 
 The agitation for a State Normal School arid an Industrial Univers- 
 ity belongs also to this period and the accomplishment of those 
 objects is largely due to the efforts of Prof. J. B. Turner. Prof. 
 Turner 3 was born in Templeton, Mass., and graduated from Yale col- 
 lege in 1832. He was a brother of Asa Turner of the "Yale Band.'' 
 He went to Illinois College in 1833 and was a teacher there till 1848 
 when his pronounced views on slavery and the evils of sectarianism 
 led him to resign. 4 He was a man of original ideas and took the 
 broadest view of the development of the State. We have already 
 
 1 W. L. Pillsbury, in Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, 1887-88, p. Ixxxviii . 
 
 2 W. L. Pillsbury, in Keportofthe Superintendent of Public Instruction, p. clxii, eff. 
 
 3 Ccngregationalists and Popular Education (Jubilee Papers, Ottawa, 1894.) 
 
 4 Eames, Historic Morgan and Classic Jacksonville.
 
 77 
 
 seen how in connection with his duties at Illinois College he found 
 time for lecturing over a wide territory on common school education. 
 
 After leaving Illinois College Turner continued his work for educa- 
 tion but also interested himself in the industrial development of the 
 State. He originated the planting of corn by machinery and intro- 
 duced the osage orange for hedging purposes. The following is the 
 account of its introduction: "He used to seek and make use of all 
 opportunities to go out and talk to the people on education. He 
 found the farms wide apart, and farmers busy, at great cost of labor, 
 time and material, in fencing their farms with split rails, laid in the 
 Virginia crooked fence. They were obliged, too, to settle in the woods 
 or on the skirts of the forest, because it cost so much to fence open 
 prairie. He said to himself: Those people are too much burdened 
 to think and act about education: the best help toward schools in Illi- 
 nois will be an improvement in fencing. Can not hedging do the 
 work? This train of thought fermented in his brain from 1834. He 
 began to experiment in hedging, trying various shrubs, native and 
 foreign. He sent to England for the hawthorn. A visitor to his 
 house to whom he told his quest suggested that he should try bois 
 d'arc or osage orange. At considerable expense Prof. Turner got a 
 quantity of the seed, which proved worthless. He tried again and 
 getting fertile seed and thence seedlings he continued his experiment 
 until he was satisfied that he had the best hedging plant for the 
 prairies. The popularity of the osage orange need not be told; but 
 the singular fact that the root and ground of its introduction was 
 Prof, Turner's interest in common school education deserves to be 
 recorded in the educational history of Illinois, with his authentic ver- 
 ification as the writer of these lines had it direct from the professor- 
 farmer." The history of Professor Turner's leadership in the finally 
 successful movement for a State Industrial University has been fully 
 set forth by Mr. Pillsbury in an earlier volume of the Historical 
 Society's Transactions and need not be repeated here. 
 
 It is in the history of secondary education that it is hardest to 
 trace definite New England and Puritan influence. The academies 
 of New England were too prominent a feature of her educational 
 system to leave any doubt that the Illinois academies were copied 
 from them. Morever we know definitely from the Home Missionary 
 records of the founding of one and another by the home missionaries; 
 for example, the Jacksonville Female Academy by Mr. and Mrs. J. 
 M. Ellis in 1828; Monticello Seminary for young women, the gift of 
 Capt Benjamin Godfrey, with Rev. Theron Baldwin as principal; 
 Rev. Samuel Foster's school for classical students and young ladies 
 in Bloomington; Miss ChappeFs, later Mrs. Jermiah Porter's Sem- 
 inary in Chicago. From the year 1834, the statutes contain "hosts 
 of acts of incorporation of academies and colleges, some of them at 
 towns whose very names have disappeared from the maps." 
 
 The fact, that academies and seminaries in the following towns are 
 mentioned in home missionary reports, indicates the especial interest 
 of missionaries in these schools; Houghton, Hillsboro, Waverly, 
 Henry, Geneseo. Port Byron, Peru, Elgin. Galesburg, Batavia, Bun- 
 ker Hill. Paxton, Belvidere, Whipple, Dover, Princeton, Roscoe,
 
 78 
 
 Carbondale, Wenona, Belleville. One writer speaks of ten or tifteen 
 academies in northern Illinois. There were seminaries for young 
 ladies at Monticello. Godfrey, Rockford, Jacksonville, Du Quoin, 
 Granville, Washington, Carlinville, Galesburg, Canton and Marshall. 
 
 The young ladies' seminary at Rockford has been perhaps the most 
 prosperous and successful of these. At a general convention of the 
 congregational churches of the northwest, held in Cleveland. Ohio, in 
 June. 1844, a resolution was adopted that "the exigencies of Wiscon- 
 sin and northern Illinois require that those sections should unite 
 in establishing a college and a female seminary of the highest order, 
 one in Wisconsin, near to Illinois and the other in Illinois, near to 
 Wisconsin. From the first it was believed that the college should be 
 at Beloit. In 1845, after four conventions held at Beloit, a board 
 of trustees was elected to care for both institutions. Rockford raised 
 $8,500 for the Seminary and the trustees voted to locate it in that 
 town. On February 25, 1847, a charter was granted to the incorpor- 
 ators. Aratus Kent was named first here as among the trustees. 
 Flavel Bascom of the "Yale Band" was also one of the number. Of 
 the sixteen incorporators eight were clergymen. The same men were 
 the incorporators of Beloit College. 
 
 In expectation of the opening of the Seminary, Rev. L. H. Loss, 
 then pastor of the First Congregational Church, invited Miss Anna 
 Peck Sill, of the Gary Collegiate Institute in Genesee county, New 
 York, to come to Rockford and open a school, preparatory to the pro- 
 posed Seminary. This was just the opportunity she desired for a 
 life of missionary and educational service, for which she was fitted by 
 the best preparation New York then afforded. She opened her school 
 in 1849 in Rockford with seventy pupils. In 1851, her school was 
 formally recognized by the trustees of Beloit College as the prepara- 
 tory department of Rockford Female Seminary, whose charter had 
 already been obtained. This charter granted full collegiate powers 
 though the institution retained the name Seminary untill 1892. Fif- 
 teen were admitted in this year 1851 to the Seminary to constitute 
 its first class of whom seven graduated in 1854. Miss Sill continued 
 the leadership of the school for thirty-five years, and raised much 
 money for it in the east. She is said to have been a woman of won- 
 derful endowment of head and heart and possessed also of indomi- 
 table will. In 1852, the Seminary passed into the control of a sep- 
 arate board of trustees although for many years certain men were on 
 the boards of Beloit and Rockford. 1 
 
 Linked thus to Beloit in its beginnings, we see how the pioneer 
 ministers of Illinois did not limit their eduational interest to Illinois. 
 Beloit College in Wisconsin and Iowa College at Grinnell, in Iowa, 
 owed their foundation to Illinois home missionaries. With untiring 
 effort, the New England missionaries and their friends fostered, 
 cherished, promoted the interest in free public schools until they 
 were well established. They first suggested careful and efficient 
 
 1 Church, History of Rockford, 287-295.
 
 79 
 
 supervision of schools; they felt the need of special education for 
 teachers, and from their ranks, came the man who first gave tangible 
 shape to the desire for industrial education. 
 
 In the field of moral achievement within a social unit like a state, 
 it is difficult, if not impossible, to estimate the influences which 
 emanate from any group of people, such as the settlers from New 
 England in Illinois; or from their institutions, such as the church. 
 We can, however, recount the moral issues that were in men's minds 
 during a given period and find the attitude of different classes of 
 society toward these issues. The history of later years will show 
 where a compromise of conflicting opinion has occurred or where one 
 set of opinions has triumphed in social action. 
 
 Public opinion of today does not view certain matters, as for 
 example, Catholicism, in the same light as did the New Englanders 
 in Illinois forty or fifty years ago; but in many directions we must 
 acknowledge the exceeding excellence of their ideas and- ideals. They 
 stood for order, thrift, economy and enterprise. They encouraged the 
 formation and expression of public opinion. They looked with intel- 
 ligence beyond their own communities to the welfare of state and 
 nation. They valued personal integrity above all things. To foster 
 this, churches with all their allied organizations were multiplied east 
 and west, north and south. But integrity must be informed, broad- 
 ened, and so there must be education, colleges for leaders, common 
 schools and industrial education for all the people. Who may say that 
 these influences of the past have not already conditioned the present 
 Illinois whose true greatness is measured alone by the enlightened 
 integrity of her people.