About this time, also, a tide of immigrants was pouring into Missouri through Illinois, from Virginia and Kentucky. In the Fall of the year, every great road was crowded with them, all bound for Missouri, with their money and long trains of teams and negroes. These were the most wealthy and best educated immigrants from the Slave States. Many people who had land and farms to sell, looked upon the good fortune of Missouri with envy; whilst the lordly immigrant, as he passed along with his money and droves of negroes, took a malicious pleasure in increasing it by pretending to regret the short-sighted policy of Illinois, which excluded him from settlement, and from purchasing and holding lands.
In this mode a desire to make Illinois a Slave State became quite prevalent. Many persons had voted for Brown or Phillips with this view, whilst the friends of a Free State had rallied almost in a body for Coles.
Notwithstanding the defeat of the Democrats at this election, they were not annihilated. They had been beaten for Governor only by a division in their own ranks, whilst they had elected a large majority of each House of the Assembly, and were determined to make a vigorous effort to carry their measure at the session of the Legislature to be held in 1822-23. Governor Coles, in his first message, recommended the emancipation of the French slaves. This served as the spark to kindle into activity all the elements in favor of slavery.
Slavery could not be introduced, nor was it believed that the French slaves could be emancipated, without an amendment to the Constitution; the Constitution could not be amended without a new convention, to obtain which two thirds of each branch of the Legislature had to concur in recommending it to the people; and the voters, at the next election, had to sanction it by a majority of all the votes given for members of the Legislature.
When the Legislature assembled, it was found that the Senate contained the requisite two-thirds majority; but in the House of Representatives, by deciding a contested election in favor of one of the candidates, the Slave party would have one more than two- thirds, while by deciding in favor of the other, they would lack one vote of having the majority. These two candidates were John Shaw and Nicholas Hanson, who claimed to represent the County of Pike, which then included all the military tract and all the country north of the Illinois River to the northern limits of the State.
The leaders of the Slave party were anxious to re-elect Jesse B. Thomas to the United States Senate. Hanson would vote for him, but Shaw would not; Shaw would vote for the convention, but Hanson would not. The party had use for both of them, and they determined to use them both, one after the other. For this purpose, they first decided in favor of Hanson, admitted him to a seat, and with his vote elected their United States Senator; and then, toward the close of the session, with mere brute force, and in the most barefaced manner, they reconsidered their former vote, turned Hanson out of his seat, and decided in favor of Shaw, and with his vote carried their resolution for a convention.
There immediately resulted a very fierce contest before the people, characterized by lavish detraction and personal abuse—one of the most bitter, prolonged, and memorable in the history of the State —and the question of making Illinois permanently a Slave State was put to rest by a majority of about two thousand votes. The census of 1850 was the first that enumerated no slaves in our State.
In this connection I cannot avoid giving a little account of Frederick Adolphus Hubbard, who was Lieutenant-Governor when Coles was Governor. Hubbard seemed to be a very ignorant man, but ambitious to become Governor of the State, or to attain some other position that would give him reputation.
"It is related of him that while engaged in the trial of a lawsuit, involving the title to a certain mill owned by Joseph Duncan [who afterwards became Governor], the opposing counsel, David J. Baker, then recently from New England, had quoted from Johnson's New York reports a case strongly against Hubbard's side. Reading reports of the decisions of courts before juries was a new thing in those days; and Hubbard, to evade the force of the authority as a precedent, coolly informed the jury that Johnson was a Yankee clock-peddler, who had been perambulating up and down the country gathering up rumors and floating stories against the people of the West, and had them published in a book under the name of 'Johnson's Reports.' He indignantly repudiated the book as authority in Illinois, and clinched the argument by adding: 'Gentlemen of the jury, I am sure you will not believe anything that comes from that source; and besides that, what did Johnson know about Duncan's mill anyhow?'"( 1)
Hubbard, in 1826, became a candidate for Governor of Illinois. He canvassed the State, and the following is a sample of his speeches, recorded by Ford: