JOHN REYNOLDS, GOVERNOR OF ILLINOIS 1831–1834.
After a steel engraving in the Governor’s office, Springfield, Illinois. John Reynolds, Governor of Illinois from 1831 to 1834, was born in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, February 26, 1788. He was of Irish parentage. When he was six months old his parents moved to Tennessee. In 1800 they removed to Illinois. When twenty years old, John Reynolds went to Knoxville, Tennessee, to college, where he spent two years. He was admitted to the bar at Kaskaskia in 1812. In the war of 1812 he rendered distinguished service, earning the title of “the Old Ranger.” He began the practice of law in the spring of 1814. In 1818 he was made an associate justice of the Supreme Court; in 1826 he was elected a member of the legislature; and in 1830, after a stirring campaign, he was chosen Governor of Illinois. The most important event of his administration was the Black Hawk War. He was prompt in calling out the militia to subdue the Black Hawk, and went upon the field in person. In November, 1834, just before the close of his term as Governor, he resigned to become a member of Congress. In 1837, aided by others, he built the first railroad in the State—a short line of six miles from his coal mine in the Mississippi bluff to the bank of the river opposite St. Louis. It was operated by horse-power. He again became a member of the legislature in 1846 and 1852, during the latter term being Speaker of the House. In 1860, in his seventy-third year, he was an anti-Douglas delegate to the Charleston convention, and received the most distinguished attentions from the Southern delegates. After the October elections, when it became apparent that Lincoln would be elected, he issued an address advising the support of Douglas. His sympathies were with the South, though in 1832 he strongly supported President Jackson in the suppression of the South Carolina nullifiers. He died in Belleville in May, 1865. Governor Reynolds was a quaint and forceful character. He was a man of some learning; but in conversation (and he talked much) he rarely rose above the odd Western vernacular of which he was so complete a master. He was the author of two books; one an autobiography, and the other “The Pioneer History of Illinois.”
CHAPTER XIV.
BERRY AND LINCOLN TAKE OUT A TAVERN LICENSE AND HIRE A CLERK.—LINCOLN BEGINS TO STUDY LAW.
It was not only Burns and Shakespeare that interfered with the grocery-keeping; Lincoln had begun seriously to read law. His first acquaintance with the subject had been made when he was a mere lad in Indiana and a copy of the “Revised Statutes of Indiana” had fallen into his hands. The very copy he used is still in existence, and, fortunately, in hands where it is safe. The book was owned by Mr. David Turnham of Gentryville, and was given in 1865 by him to Mr. Herndon, who placed it in the Lincoln Memorial collection of Chicago. In December, 1894, this collection was sold in Philadelphia, and the “Statutes of Indiana” was bought by Mr. William Hoffman Winters, Librarian of the New York Law Institute, and through his courtesy I have been allowed to examine it. The book is worn, the title page is gone, and a few leaves from the end are missing. The title page of a duplicate volume which Mr. Winters kindly showed me reads: “The Revised Laws of Indiana, adopted and enacted by the General Assembly at their eighth session. To which are prefixed the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution of the State of Indiana, and sundry other documents connected with the Political History of the Territory and State of Indiana. Arranged and published by authority of the General Assembly. Corydon: Printed by Carpenter and Douglass, 1824.”
We know from Dennis Hanks, from Mr. Turnham, to whom the book belonged, and from other associates of Lincoln’s at the time, that he read the book intently and discussed its contents intelligently. It was a remarkable volume for a thoughtful lad whose mind had been fired already by the history of Washington; for it opened with that wonderful document, the Declaration of Independence, a document which became, as Mr. John G. Nicolay says, “his political chart and inspiration.” Following the Declaration of Independence was the Constitution of the United States, the Act of Virginia passed in 1783 by which the “Territory North Westward of the river Ohio” was conveyed to the United States, and the Ordinance of 1787 for governing this territory, containing that clause on which Lincoln in the future based many an argument on the slavery question. This article, No. 6 of the Ordinance, reads: “There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted: provided always, that any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed, and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labour or service, as aforesaid.”
Following this was the Constitution and the Revised Laws of Indiana, three hundred and seventy-five pages, of five hundred words each, of statutes—enough law, if thoroughly digested, to make a respectable lawyer. When Lincoln finished this book, as he had, probably, before he was eighteen, we have reason to believe that he understood the principles on which the nation was founded, how the State of Indiana came into being, and how it was governed. His understanding of the subject was clear and practical, and he applied it in his reading, thinking, and discussion.
It was after he had read the Laws of Indiana that Lincoln had free access to the library of his admirer, Judge John Pitcher of Rockport, Indiana, where, undoubtedly, he examined many law-books. But from the time he left Indiana in 1830 he had no legal reading until one day soon after the grocery was started, when there happened one of those trivial incidents which so often turn the current of a life. It is best told in Lincoln’s own words.[[19]] “One day a man who was migrating to the West drove up in front of my store with a wagon which contained his family and household plunder. He asked me if I would buy an old barrel for which he had no room in his wagon, and which he said contained nothing of special value. I did not want it, but to oblige him I bought it, and paid him, I think, half a dollar for it. Without further examination, I put it away in the store, and forgot all about it. Some time after, in overhauling things, I came upon the barrel, and emptying it upon the floor to see what it contained, I found at the bottom of the rubbish a complete edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries. I began to read those famous works, and I had plenty of time; for during the long summer days, when the farmers were busy with their crops, my customers were few and far between. The more I read”—this he said with unusual emphasis—“the more intensely interested I became. Never in my whole life was my mind so thoroughly absorbed. I read until I devoured them.”
From a photograph made for this biography.
ELIJAH ILES, CAPTAIN OF ONE OF THE COMPANIES IN WHICH LINCOLN SERVED AS PRIVATE IN THE BLACK HAWK WAR.
After a painting by the late Mrs. Obed Lewis, niece of Major Iles, and owned by Mr. Obed Lewis, Springfield, Illinois. Elijah Iles was born in Kentucky, March 28, 1796, and when young went to Missouri. There he heard marvellous stories about the Sangamon Valley, and he resolved to go thither. Springfield had just been staked out in the wilderness, and he reached the place in time to erect the first building—a rude hut in which he kept a store. This was in 1821. “In the early days in Illinois,” he wrote in 1883, “it was hard to find good material for law-makers. I was elected a State Senator in 1826, and again for a second term. The Senate then comprised thirteen members, and the House twenty-five.” In 1827 he was elected major in the command of Colonel T. McNeal, intending to fight the Winnebagoes, but no fighting occurred. In the Black Hawk War of 1832, after his term as a private in Captain Dawson’s company had expired, he was elected captain of a new company of independent rangers. In this company Lincoln reënlisted as a private. Major Iles lived at Springfield to the end of his life. He died September 4, 1883.