Illinois Woman Suffrage Association; "Ahead of their time."

In February 1870, Frances Willard, along with other members of the newly-formed Illinois Woman Suffrage Association, traveled to the state capital in order to convince the Illinois Constitutional Convention to include universal suffrage in the proposed document. Buoyed by petitions to the General Assembly, which favored female suffrage, Willard declared: "The idea that boys of 21 are fit to make laws for their mothers is an insult to everyone." Unfortunately, after Willard and her allies left town, the delegates received almost an equal number of petitions against the issue, including one from 380 Peoria women who protested "having the ballot thrust upon them." In May, the convention followed the pattern set by the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and drafted a document that provided suffrage for all adult males in Illinois, including Negroes, but not for women.

When Illinois entered the Union in 1818, its constitution, like those of the other 20 states, expressly gave the vote only to "white, male inhabitants above the age of twenty-one years." Illinois' second constitution, adopted in 1848, allowed men to vote for a greater number of officials than previously, but it still excluded women from using the ballot. The state's first documented speech in favor of women's suffrage was made by Mr. A.J. Grover, editor of the Earlville Transcript. His talk inspired Mrs. Susan Hoxie Richardson (a cousin of Susan B. Anthony) to organize Illinois' first woman suffrage society. Another transplant to LaSalle County who supported the suffrage cause at the same time was Prudence Crandall. A school teacher in Mendota, she had been forced to flee Connecticut because she taught Negro girls in her school. Crandall worked in Illinois as an early advocate of the enfranchisement of both black and white women.

The First Illinois Woman Suffrage Convention was held in Chicago in 1869.

However, the Civil War and its upheaval of society brought an abrupt end to the efforts of the fledgling suffrage movement. Women all over the county and in all social positions took on even more responsibility for running the household, managing money, and being involved in public affairs. Many of the early suffragists turned their energies and organizational skills to assisting the government with war relief. In Illinois, abolitionist Mary Livermore and Jane Hoge (both board members of the Chicago Home for the Friendless) were appointed co-directors of the Northwestern branch of the Sanitary Commission. This relief agency provided supplies to soldiers and operated battlefield hospitals. During the war, Mary became "aware that a large portion of the nation's work was badly done, or not done at all, because women were not recognized as a factor in the political world." Although originally opposed to votes for women, the war convinced Livermore that "men and women should stand shoulder to shoulder, equal before the law" and that suffrage was the way for the enactment of social reforms that she felt were needed.

In 1869, Livermore organized an Illinois woman suffrage convention, while at the same time one was being held a block away by "Sorosis," another newly formed woman's organization. The Chicago Tribune reported that women obviously didn't have the capacity to govern since they couldn't even agree on planning a common convention. The paper predicted that "The public will now be annoyed for six months by the characteristic ill humor of a lot of old hens trying to hatch out their addled productions." While admitting that Livermore's group was intelligent and business-like, the Chicago Times sarcastically stated that the appearance of the Sorosis convention "was the best argument for woman suffrage, the men being ladylike and effeminate, the women gentlemanly and masculine."

The Livermore faction, full of distinguished clergymen and educators and hearing addresses from both Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, organized themselves into the Illinois Woman Suffrage Association and elected Livermore President. Within a month, she created the Agitator, a suffrage newspaper, and by September, she had established local associations in Aurora, Plano, Yorkville, and Sandwich. However, later that year, the Agitator was merged with the Woman's Journal, published in Boston, and in 1870, Livermore and her Universalist minister husband moved to Massachusetts, where she continued to work for social reform and women's issues until her death in 1905.

Because another state constitutional convention could not legally be called in Illinois for twenty years, members of the women's suffrage movement began a push for changes in individual laws. While universal suffrage was set back, gains in specific women's rights were accomplished. Through the efforts of Alta Hulett, Myra Colby Bradwell, her husband Judge James Bradwell, and others, laws passed between 1860 and 1890 included women's right to control their own earnings, to equal guardianship of children after divorce, to control and maintain the property, to share in a deceased husband's estate, and to enter into any occupation or profession. This included becoming an attorney (Hulett was the first woman admitted to the Illinois bar) even though women could not legally sit on Illinois juries until 1939 (based on a bill sponsored by Lottie Holman O'Neill, Illinois' first woman state representative).

In 1873, Judge Bradwell secured the passage of a statute that allowed any woman, "married or single, " who possessed the qualification required of men to be eligible for any school office in Illinois created by law and not the constitution. Even though they couldn't vote for themselves, in November 1874, ten women were elected as County Superintendents of Schools.

Probably the two most important people in the Illinois suffrage movement during this time were Elizabeth Boynton Harbert and Frances E. Willard. Harbert helped keep the Illinois association alive by serving as president for a total of twelve years.

She was a prolific writer as well as the founder and first president of the Evanston Women's Club. Her early writings stated that both women and society were injured by pushing children into stereotypical sex roles that confined females to the "women's sphere." She thought that this practice condemned a woman to a non-productive lifetime of dependence on others.

However, Harbert's later writings admit that perhaps women did have some virtues and traits that were typically characteristic of her sex, such as purity, charity, and fidelity. She wrote that women were "born to soothe and to solace, to help and to heal the sick world that leans upon her." Therefore, giving women the vote would allow them to fulfill their natural nurturing function. In essence, Harbert's writings exemplified the whole movement's shift from an elite intellectual pursuit for justice to a middle-class reform movement that would benefit society.

Illinois' most famous reformer of this period was undoubtedly Frances Willard. After her first experiences with the Illinois legislature, Miss Willard returned to Evanston, where she served as President of the College for Ladies and later Dean of Women at Northwestern University. In 1874, she resigned from her position and became totally immersed in the temperance movement that swept the country. She helped establish the anti-liquor Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and eventually served as president of the Chicago, state, and national organizations. She became a believer that giving women the sacred ballot was the only way to get rid of the demon spirits that were ruining the American family.

On March 24, 1877, seventy women of the Illinois WCTU presented the General Assembly in Springfield a petition signed by 7,000 persons asking that no licenses to sell liquor be granted that was not asked for by a majority of citizens of location. Failing their efforts to influence the legislature, they returned in 1879. They presented petitions signed by 180,000 who favored what was termed the "Home Protection" bill, a proposed law that would put liquor sales under local control and allow women to vote in these referenda. Although the bill eventually was defeated, on March 6 of that session, Frances Willard became the first woman ever to stand at the speaker's podium and address an official session of the Illinois General Assembly.

Despite these defeats, the suffrage and temperance movements kept coming back every two years in an effort to obtain some form of female franchise. In 1891, the Illinois legislature was informed by a petition from Jackson County women that they and the "vast majority" of Illinois women did not want the vote. Since ''they belonged to that class of women who kept their own homes and took care of their own children," they were perfectly content to let their fathers, husbands, and sons vote for them. However, other petitioners agreed with the women citizens of Pittsfield who demanded "the right and privilege of voting in municipal elections "as a means to better government and that we may no longer be subject to the control of besotted men and the vicious classes."

Illinois women finally received limited franchise rights on June 19, 1891, when the state legislature passed a bill that entitled women to vote at any election held to elect school officials. Since these elections were often held at the same time and place as elections for other offices, women had to use separate ballots and separate ballot boxes. Subsequent Illinois Supreme Court cases also allowed women to serve as and cast ballots for the University of Illinois Trustees. This resulted in Lucy Flower becoming the first woman in Illinois to be elected by voters state-wide in 1894.

A little-known side-light in the history of Illinois suffrage is the story of Ellen Martin of Lombard. Many Illinois towns had special charters of incorporation written into law just before the 1870 state constitution forbade "privacy laws." While these charters specifically gave the vote only to males, Lombard's copy (perhaps unknowingly) stated that "all citizens" above the age of 21 who were residents shall be entitled to vote in municipal elections. Accordingly, Martin, "wearing two sets of spectacles and a gripsack," went to her polling place with a large law book and fourteen other prominent female citizens. When they demanded their right to vote, allegedly, the judges were so flabbergasted that one was taken with a spasm and another "fell backward into the flour barrel." The judges, however, eventually ruled in her favor, and the first 15 female votes in Illinois were tabulated on April 6, 1891.

Another Lady Lawyer who kept the suffrage movement fueled in its darkest days was Catharine Waugh McCulloch. In 1890, she became the legislative superintendent of the renamed Illinois Equal Suffrage Association. For the next twenty years, she kept the pressure on the General Assembly to approve a law that would allow women to vote in municipal and presidential elections. However, she constantly faced opposition from both individuals and organized groups.

One apparently frustrated man wrote the Illinois Senate expounding on his view that all suffragists secretly hate men and that giving them the vote would ruin the family. Women were, he wrote, "the sex which has accomplished absolutely nothing, except being the passive and often unwilling and hostile instruments by which humanity is created." During this era of labor unrest and mass immigration, a representative of the "Man Suffrage Association" wrote to his Illinois Senator and claimed that every socialist, anarchist, and Bolshevist was for woman suffrage.

Representing the distaff side of the anti-forces was Chicago homemaker Caroline Fairfield Corbin, who founded the Illinois Association Opposed to the Extension of Suffrage to Women in 1897. She believed that women should stay in their "sphere" of home life and allow their husbands and fathers to legislate for their protection. She viewed women's sufferage akin to socialism and fought both movements with religious zeal. Every time the suffragists tried to advance, she and her organization tried to push them back, arguing that most women were opposed to obtaining the vote.

After 20 years of fruitless petitioning to change the state's laws, the Illinois association began to change their tactics and allies. After 1900, more and more women's clubs and labor organizations endorsed some form of woman suffrage legislation. Between 1902 and 1906, the Illinois Federation of Women's Clubs endorsed several municipal suffrage bills, including one that exempted women who couldn't vote from paying taxes.

Beginning in July 1910, McCulloch, Grace Wilbur Trout, and others began making automobile tours around the state. A special section of the July 10th edition of the Chicago Tribune detailed the plan of four women speakers, accompanied by two reporters, to visit 16 towns in 7 northern Illinois counties in 5 days. Chicagoan Trout was supposed to give the opening address and make the introductions. The other women were to speak about the legal aspects, laboring women's viewpoint, and the international situation regarding suffrage. Reflecting the tension that often existed between different factions, McCulloch later criticized Trout for speaking much too long and dominating the tour.

Grace Wilbur Trout, President of the Chicago Political Equality League.

In 1912, Trout, head of the Chicago Political Equality League, was elected president of the state organization. She abandoned the confrontational style of lobbying the state legislature and began to strengthen the organization internally. She made sure that a local organization was started in every senatorial district. One of her assistants, Elizabeth Booth, cut up an Illinois Blue Book government directory and made file cards for each of the members of the General Assembly. Trout only allowed four lobbyists in Springfield and tried to persuade one legislator at a time to support suffrage for women.

The Alpha Suffrage Club is believed to be the first Negro women's suffrage association in the United States. It began in Chicago, Illinois, in 1913 under the initiative of Ida B. Wells-Barnett and her white colleague, Belle Squire. 

Read the first Alpha Suffrage Club's newsletter here:
The Alpha Suffrage Record; Volume 1, Number 1, March 18, 1914

During the 1913 session of the General Assembly, a bill was again introduced giving women the vote for Presidential electors and some local officials. With the help of the first-term Speaker of the House, Democrat William McKinley, the bill was given to a favorable committee. McKinley told Trout he would only bring it up for a final vote if he could be convinced there was sentiment for the bill in the state. Trout opened the floodgates of her network, and while in Chicago over the weekend, McKinley received a phone call every 15 minutes day and night. On returning to Springfield, he found a deluge of telegrams and letters from around the state, all in favor of suffrage. By acting quietly and quickly, Trout had caught the opposition off guard.

The Rainy Day Suffrage Parade passes by the Chicago Public Library during the 1916 Republication National Convention.

Passing the Senate first, the bill came up for a vote in the House on June 11, 1913. Trout and her troops counted heads and literally fetched needed men from their residences. Mrs. Trout actually guarded the door to the House chambers. They urged members in favor not to leave before the vote while also trying to prevent "anti" lobbyists from illegally being allowed onto the House floor. Getting the votes of all 25 first-term Progressives and the 3 Socialist Party members, the bill passed with six votes to spare, 83-58. On June 26, 1913, Governor Dunne signed the bill in the presence of Trout, Booth, and union labor leader Margaret Healy.

Women in Illinois could now vote for Presidential electors and for all local offices not specifically named in the Illinois Constitution. However, they still could not cast a vote for state representatives, congressmen, or governors; and they still had to use separate ballots and ballot boxes. But by virtue of this law, Illinois had become the first state east of the Mississippi to grant women the right to vote for President. National suffragist leader Carrie Chapman Catt wrote:

"The effect of this victory upon the nation was astounding. When the first Illinois election took place in April, (1914) the press carried the headlines that 250,000 women had voted in Chicago. Illinois, with its large electoral vote of 29, proved the turning point beyond which politicians at last got a clear view of the fact that women were gaining genuine political power."

On June 26, 1913, Governor Edward F. Dunne, seated of Illinois, signed the Suffrage Bill that gave Illinois women the right to vote. Governor Dunne signed the bill in the presence of his wife, left, and suffragette leaders Grace Wilbur Trout, Elizabeth Booth, female lawyer Antoinette Funk, and teachers union leader Margaret Haley, seated.

Besides the passage of the Illinois Municipal Voting Act, 1913 was also a significant year in other facets of the women's suffrage movement. In Chicago, African American anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells-Barnett founded the Alpha Suffrage Club, the first such organization for Negro women in Illinois. Although white women as a group were sometimes ambivalent about obtaining the franchise, African-American women were almost universally in favor of gaining the vote to help end their sexual exploitation, promote their educational opportunities, and protect those who were wage earners. On March 3, 1913, more than 5,000 suffragists paraded in Washington, D.C. When Wells tried to line up with her Illinois sisters, she was asked to go to the end of the line so as not to offend and alienate the Southern women marchers. Wells feigned agreement, but much to the shock of Trout, she joined the Illinois delegation once the parade started.

In June 1916, many Illinois women were among the 5,000 who marched in Chicago to the Republican National Convention hall in a tremendous rainstorm. Their efforts convinced the convention to include a Woman's Suffrage plank in the party platform. They got Presidential candidate Charles Evans Hughes to endorse the proposed constitutional amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Three years later, Congress finally passed Susan B. Anthony Amendment. First introduced in Congress in 1878, it stated simply:

"The right of citizens of the

United States to vote shall not be

denied or abridged by the United States

or by any State on account of sex."

On June 10, 1919, Illinois became the first state to approve this amendment. Ratification by the 36th state, Tennessee, came 12 months later, and the 19th Amendment to the Constitution took effect on August 26, 1920. This made the United States the 27th country to allow women universal suffrage.

National President Carrie Chapman Catt proposed the idea of a "League of Women Voters" as a memorial to the departed leaders of the Suffrage cause. The next year, the National American Woman Suffrage Association was disbanded, and the League of Women Voters was founded on February 14 at the Pick Congress Hotel in Chicago. Present at the creation were suffragists Jane Addams, Louise de Koven Bowen, Agnes Nestor, Wells-Barnett, Haley, McCulloch, and Trout. Gone but not forgotten were the women who first led the way: Lucy Stone, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mary Livermore, Frances Willard, and countless others.

On November 15, 1995, a simple plaque was dedicated in recognition of their efforts in the Illinois State Capitol next to the statue of Lottie Holman O'Neill of Downer's Grove; the first woman elected to the Illinois General Assembly.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

The Chicago Autumn Festival, October 4-11, 1899.

The celebration of the Chicago Autumn Festival began in earnest with the arrival of President McKinley and the members of his cabinet, Vice President Marlscal of Mexico and party, and Sir Wilfrid Laurier. premier of Canada with other Canadian notables.

Pylons marking the north end of the Court of Honor (looking north on State Street and Lake Street) at the 1899 Autumn Festival of Chicago. The pylons were sculpted by Lorado Taft; the pylon at left symbolizes Prosperity, and on the right is Peace.
NOTE: the Chicago Street Paver Bricks.

The first of the series of parades and banquets were held, and business will be practically suspended. Vast crowds congregated in the handsomely decorated and brilliantly illuminated "Court of Honor" which includes the Arches, Pylons, Venetian Masts and Rostral Columns with hung draperies on State Street buildings for the Autumn Festival.

One of the opening features was a bicycle procession of over 7,090 uniformed wheelmen.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Lost Towns of Illinois - Old French Village - Today's Peoria.

The Peoria area is perhaps the least understood French locale in Illinois. Although it was the site of the first French military post, Fort de Crévecoeur (later known as Fort St. Louis du Pimiteoui) in the Illinois County and occupied by French soldiers, traders, and families for over a century, few written records of life at Peoria during the eighteenth century are known. In contrast to the wealth of information provided by court, parish, and military records associated with the French communities in the American Bottom region, Peoria has been practically silent. The archaeological record of these occupations has been even more elusive, and prior to 2000, archaeological testing had failed to locate any traces of "French Peoria."

In the fall of 2001, a proposed realignment of Adams Street in downtown Peoria presented an opportunity to archaeologically investigate an area believed to have been the location of an eighteenth-century French village. The Illinois Transportation Archaeological Research Program (ITARP) conducted an investigation in the fall of 2001 under the direction of the author and David Nolan. These excavations encountered the first archaeological evidence of eighteenth-century French activity in the region. The first domestic French settlement at Peoria, known as the "Old Village," is the focus of the research summarized here.

THE FIRST FRENCH SETTLERS
In January of 1680, the noted French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle (Sieur de La Salle being a title only), constructed Fort de Crévecoeur on the east bank of Peoria Lake, then called Lake Pimiteoui. Later that winter, while LaSalle was away, the fort was looted by his men and abandoned. French activity was redirected to the Starved Rock area, building Fort Saint Louis du Rocher on the top of the rock.

In 1691 the French returned to Peoria, where Henri de Tonti and Pierre Deliette constructed a new fort called Fort St Louis du Pimiteoui.

"Henri de Tonti, founder of Peoria, at Lake Pimiteoui, 1691-1693."
painting by Lonnie Eugene Stewart (1900)

A mission was soon established at this post, surrounded by as many as 300 Peoria Illini houses. The post and its mission were prosperous for a short time. Changes in colonial trade policy and the aggressions of Indians led to the abandonment of the fort complex shortly after the turn of the century, and The Peoria themselves left the area around 1722.

The Peoria reoccupied the lake in the 1730s, although the French does not appear to have returned until the late 1740s when an unlicensed trader constructed a small post. By the late 1760s, a cluster of French houses had been constructed in the vicinity of this post, and by the late 1770s, several farms were located in the area. This locale ultimately became known as the "Old Village." In 1778 a second village, "La Ville de Maillet" (the "New Village"), was established less than two miles downstream, and by the 1790s, most of the residents of the Old Village had moved to this new location.

Excavations in the fall of 2001 were conducted at the locale thought to have been the site of the Old Village. Contemporary histories relate that a domestic French settlement began here as early as the 1730s. This data is based in part on assumptions that Tonti's Fort St Louis du Pimiteoui had been located nearby and that domestic trading activity followed the abandonment of the fort and the subsequent reoccupation of the Peoria area after the close of the Fox Wars. The origins of this village are poorly understood, however, and the assumptions of pre-1750 settlement there are substantiated by few primary sources.

It is not until the 1760s that primary documents begin to suggest a domestic occupation of Peoria. Perhaps not coincidentally, these references follow the passing of control of the lands on the east bank of the Mississippi to the British in 1765. This resulted in an exodus of French families from the older villages in the American Bottom to villages on the west bank of the river. The true settlement of Peoria by French farm families may have been part of changes in the cultural landscape of Illinois in the 1760s.

Residents of the French villages at Peoria first attempted to claim land grants from the United States Government under ancient claims acts that allowed land grants to heads of families, militiamen, and those who had improved land before 1783. The first Peoria claims were apparently made prior to 1806 but were not immediately granted due to Peoria's location outside of Kaskaskia treaty boundaries and the vague descriptions of individual property boundaries.

In an 1807 memorial to Congress, twenty-three inhabitants of "the Illinois and village of Pioria" asked Congress to reconsider the land claims made previously. The residents of Peoria apparently received no action on their claims until 1820, when Edward Coles, registrar at the Edwardsville Land Office, issued a report to Congress regarding the French claims at Peoria. In his report, he listed 70 claims related to both the old and new villages. Support for these claims was also included, consisting of testimonies from various residents and their descendants.

It was not until 1837 that the land office made official reconstructed surveys of the old and new villages. That year, surveyors were sent to the sites, sometimes accompanied by the descendants of former residents. The result was a series of land office documents, including original and reworked survey logs, plats of individual lot claims, and reconstructed village plats anchored to section lines.

The layout of the Old Village, as interpreted by the General Land Office in 1837, consisted of ten rectangular residential lots fronting a street that paralleled the river. Behind the western row of lots lay three large "out lots" and two additional lots situated away from the main block of the village. The lots and streets that were resurveyed in 1837 were posthumous interpretations of what would originally have been a cluster of improvements and lot lines that had developed over decades and which may have been altered and realigned during the life of the settlement.

The plats of the Old and New Villages are unique to French villages in the Illinois County, as they do not consist of what Ekberg has described as the "tripartite" of French colonial village design. This traditionally consisted of residential lots, long lots, and commons. True long lots are lacking at the Old Village. Instead, residential lots are backed by three out lots, which differ from the traditional long lots used for cultivation. Out lots are thought to have been a late eighteenth-century development, reflecting changes in the traditional agricultural and land ownership practices. In most cases, our lots were located away from the nucleated village itself, as are two such lots at the Old Village. At Peoria, however, even those lots connected directly to the residential lots are described by the land office as out lots and claims testimonies suggest that they were used primarily for cultivation.

Contemporary understanding of the location and limits of the Old Village of Peoria is based primarily on the work of Percival Rennick, who examined French land claims records associated with the Old Village in the 1930s. Rennick superimposed General Land Office survey data on then-modern maps, concluding that the limits of the Old Village as interpreted in the 1830s lay between modern city streets of Caroline, Hayward, and Jefferson and the shore of the Illinois River.

Based on an overlay of the 1837 land office claims surveys onto modern topographic maps, the 2001 project area was situated on a double-wide residential lot fronting the main street running northeasterly through the village and bounded on the north and south by two side streets. This was claimed both by Louis Chatellereau Jr. and the heirs of Gabriel Cerre. Testimonies stated that Louis Chatellereau Sr. built a house, cultivated the lot in 1778, and occupied it until his death in 1795. After Chatellereau's death, the lot was briefly occupied by Marie Josephe Tieriereau until the property was sold by the Chatellereau estate to Gabriel Cerre. Cerre was an influential merchant in St. Louis and was originally from Montreal.

Although few archival records pertaining to the residents of the Old Village are known, the estate of Louis Chatellereau is better documented due to the presence of a probate record and a mortgage agreement found at the Byron Lewis Historical Library in Vincennes, Indiana, and transcribed by Judith Franke and Richard Day. Chatellereau died in July of 1795. His estate included three horses, 25 heads of cattle and oxen, and seven hogs. He also had 56 bushels of wheat and 500 pounds of flour on hand, probably produced at his mill. His estate included "1 Negro fellow," who perhaps replaced the "red slave" he owned three years earlier. At his death, he also owed wages to nine men for their work as engages and one as a clerk.

Two principal eighteenth-century archaeological features were encountered during the excavations. Feature One was interpreted as a long wall trench, into which upright logs were once placed and which was used to enclose an agricultural field or mark a lot boundary The feature was found to cross at least nine city lots and measured over 270 feet long.

Feature 2 consisted of the wall trench outline of a small rectangular porteaux en terre structure. The structure measured roughly 13 by 20 feet and appears to have been divided into two nearly equal-sized rooms. Evidence of a wall trench foundation for a gallery (open exterior porch) or narrow addition was found on the west wall of the building. This structure probably served as a dwelling, but it was small for houses in French colonial Illinois. Its location away from the main street and near a field fence (if they were contemporary) suggests that it might have functioned as a dwelling for a farm hand, laborer, or slave. With this in mind, it may have been occupied only seasonally.

Feature 2 at the Old Village is only the fifth French wall trench domestic structure to be tested archaeologically in Illinois. Wall trench dwellings have been investigated in the towns of the Village of Cahokia, Prairie du Rocher, and the Village of Nouvelle Chartres. In present-day Missouri, a wall trench dwelling was encountered at the Krelich Site, south of Ste. Genevieve.

Very few eighteenth-century artifacts were found in block excavations around Features 1 and 2 or in the trenches' fill. Feature 2 produced a hand-forged nail, four pieces of burnt limestone, and a larger slab of unburned limestone. The wall trenches of the structure also produced six pieces of dried mud chinking (or bousillage) and a small quantity of animal bone. The soils adjacent to Feature 2 produced a fragment of a wine bottle that appears to date between 1780 and 1820. The heel bone of a bison was also recovered from Feature 2. Having likely been deposited after 1780, the Old Village archaeological context for the bison specimen is one of the latest known in Illinois.

If a French village in The Illinois County is defined as a cluster of traditional houses and farms situated on lots with known or recorded boundaries, then the Old Village of Peoria was a small and short-term example of such a community. However, if the definition of such a village is broadened to include less formal, hybridized, "Metis" type settlements reflecting a greater degree of aboriginal influence, then the settlements at Peoria can probably be regarded as much older.

As described in the early nineteenth century, Peoria served as the crossroads between the settlements and societies of Canada and Louisiana. The settlement on the lake's west bank would have been familiar to many Canadian fur traders who made seasonal rounds through the lower Great Lakes and was probably considered somewhat wild by the farm families living at Cahokia and Kaskaskia. Those villages, however, conducted fur trading business at Peoria on a regular basis.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Rough and Ready in Illinois. Zachary Taylor's daring exploits in the Prairie State.

President Zachary Taylor

Before becoming Commander-in-Chief, Zachary Taylor spent most of his life securing or expanding our nation's frontier. From the Mississippi and Rock rivers to the Rio Grande and Lake Okeechobee, Taylor commanded troops in battles against Indians, the British, and Mexicans. He was the first President not previously elected to any other public office and when inaugurated on March 5, 1849, had yet to cast a ballot in any election. He was the last Whig elected President and the last Chief Executive to own slaves.

Born in Virginia in 1784, Taylor was raised on a plantation in Kentucky. Although rarely there, he called Baton Rouge, Louisiana, his home, but grew cotton in Mississippi. While President, he fought the expansion of slavery and warned Southern secessionists in 1850 that he would personally hang any rebels against the Union, yet his only son later served as a general in the Confederate Army. Muscular, stocky, and sometimes crude in manner, he gained the nom de guerre "Old Rough and Ready" while fighting the Seminoles in Florida. A year before Taylor was elected President, an Illinois soldier described him during the Mexican War as "short and very heavy, with pronounced face lines and gray hair, wearing an old oilcloth cap, a dusty green coat, a frightful pair of trousers and on horseback looks like a toad."

Taylor was not so seasoned when he served in Illinois. But he was always ready for a good skirmish. He was indicted in 1814 in Edwardsville, Illinois for assault and battery.

IN GOOD COMPANY
In the summer of 1886, the Philipson Decorative Company of Chicago won the contract to finish decorating Illinois' new capitol with eight historic scenes. When one of the State House Commissioners suggested that the Black Hawk War be memorialized, Philipson Secretary Theodore Stuart wrote to former Confederate States of America President Jefferson Davis for "any information of your personal connection with that event and any reminiscences that would be useful in making a spirited & truthful group." Stuart felt compelled to remind the aged Davis that he was one of "three Presidents" who "fought" in that war, Abraham Lincoln and Zachary Taylor being the others.

In 1832, Captain Abraham Lincoln served in the Illinois Militia for eighty days under the command of U.S. Army Col. Zachary Taylor. Lincoln was proud of his service but was always self-effacing in his reminiscences. In a speech, during his one term in Congress, he confessed that he never fought any Indians, but he did have "a good many bloody struggles with the mosquitoes." Sixteen years after his Black Hawk War service, Lincoln protested America's war with Mexico and demanded to see the "spot" where blood was shed on American soil. However, in December 1847 (while the war was still in progress) he started a "Taylor for President Club" and campaigned heartily for this Whig war hero the following year.

When the Black Hawk war began, forty-eight-year-old Taylor had been fighting Indians in Indiana, Missouri, and Minnesota for most of his twenty-four-year army career. (His first combat with Black Hawk in Illinois took place in 1814.) Leaving his wife and family in Galena, Taylor took command of the U.S. 1st Infantry on April 4th and tried to coordinate the use of federal army regulars with the 1,700 Illinois volunteers under Brigadier General Samuel Whiteside in the pursuit of Black Hawk and his followers. Taylor felt that the militia was generally undisciplined and performed poorly under fire. The rout of Isaiah Stillman's force along the Rock River in May of that year confirmed Taylor's suspicions; he would later write that the retreat was one of the most shameful acts the troops had committed.

Taylor's forces followed the Sauks into Wisconsin and were present at their defeat in August at the Battle of Bad Axe. When Black Hawk was captured three weeks later, Colonel Taylor ordered his adjutant, Lieutenant Jefferson Davis, to assist Lieutenant Robert Anderson (later the defender of Fort Sumter) in taking the prisoner to Jefferson Barracks near St. Louis. With the cessation of hostilities, Taylor returned to his command of the frontier along the northern Mississippi River. West Point graduate Davis transferred to the First Dragoons and spent the next two years serving in the greater Midwest. In June 1835, Davis resigned from the Army, married his former commander's daughter, Sarah Knox Taylor, and moved to Mississippi to commence careers in agriculture and politics.

General Zachary Taylor led Illinois troops into battle in Mexico. At various times in 1846 and 1847, future Illinois governors William Bissell and Richard J. Oglesby were under his command. Long before the Black Hawk and Mexican wars, however, Taylor's first experience with Illinois soldiers took place in 1814 on the Mississippi River.

CALL TO ARMS
On June 18, 1812, the United States declared war on Great Britain because England had harassed our merchant marine and interfered with our frontier settlements. The Potawatomi, Sauk (Sac), Mesquakie (Fox), and other tribes in and around the Illinois Territory allied themselves with the British in hopes of protecting their hunting lands from the Indians. In response to the killings of Americans at and near Fort Dearborn and other attacks on isolated white settlers, Territorial Governor Ninian Edwards recruited hundreds of volunteer militiamen and rangers. Meanwhile, the U.S. sent federal troops to Missouri to prevent Britain's Indian allies from attacking St. Louis and settlements in today's west-central Illinois.

During the early stages of this conflict, Captain Taylor served admirably in Indiana at Fort Harrison and late in 1812 was breveted a major by General William Henry Harrison. Brevet Major Taylor was sent to St. Louis in April 1814 and took up his duties as second in command. In August, he was ordered to lead a force up the Mississippi to Rock Island to destroy Indian crops and build a fort to control the Mississippi and Des Moines rivers. Two previous expeditions that year had failed.

Departing on August 22nd, the expedition consisted of 8 large fortified keelboats with 40 army regulars and more than 300 Illinois militia serving under captains Samuel Whiteside and Nelson Rector. For the next two weeks this small armada sailed and rowed against the current without encountering the enemy, their only casualty being a private who fell victim to measles and later died. The expedition reached the mouth of the Rock River on a windy Sunday, September 4th, and settled in for the night on one of the many islands between Illinois and Iowa. The largest of these was Credit Island, so named because Indians received manufactured goods there each fall on "credit" and each spring paid back the debt to French and British traders with bundles of plush furs.

While Taylor's force landed and prepared for battle, the British under the command of Lieutenant Duncan Graham transplanted a battery of 30 men on a knoll in Iowa across from Taylor's keelboats. Graham had arrived a few days before with orders to "stir up" and support the Indians, but also to keep their "barbarity" in check and to prevent the scalping or the mutilation of prisoners. He reported to his superiors that his arrival gave the Sauks great satisfaction and convinced them "that their English Father is determined to support them against the ambition and unjust conduct of their enemies."

Before first light, Indians (including Black Hawk) opened fire on Taylor's troops and a pitched battle began on the islands and in the river. Major Taylor instructed Captain Rector to drop down river, ground his boat on Credit Island's western shore, and pour broadside after broadside from his swivel guns into any foe in range. The British battery then opened fire on the Americans, the first shot blasting through the bow of Taylor's boat as a "thousand" Indians appeared from nowhere, howling, shrieking, and firing.

Whiteside, under Taylor's orders, went to rescue Rector whose boat was adrift. After Rector's men had driven back a large number of Indians, Illinois Ranger Paul Harpole leaped into waist deep water to secure a cable to Whiteside's craft. He rapidly fired fourteen rounds from muskets handed to him by his sheltered comrades until he was shot in the forehead and sank below the waters. Taylor, for the only time in his career, gave the order to retreat.

The flotilla raced down river firing on the enemy for two miles. After enemy sightings had stopped, Tavlor landed to treat the 14 wounded (3 would later die) and repair his riddled boats.

Consulting with the other officers, Taylor decided that "334 effective men" could never defeat the British guns and the 3-1 advantage held by the enemy. He ordered his command to fall back to the DesMoines confluence and construct a fort on the high bluff of the eastern bank of the Mississippi, the present site of Warsaw, Illinois. Taylor named it Fort Johnson in honor of his friend Richard Johnson (later Vice-President under Martin Van Buren). Fort Johnson was built in 19 days. Captain Callaway wrote his wife on September 25th saying he had provisions for only ten more days. The construction, occupation, and abandonment, due to running out of provisions, totaled only 42 days. In 1816 a new fort was built 1/2 mile to the north, named Fort Edwards, which also served as a fur and trading post, in honor of Territorial Governor Ninian Edwards.

Sometime after September 7, 1814, Major Taylor left Captain James Callaway in charge of Fort Johnson, and returned to St. Louis with the main body of troops. When he arrived in Missouri he found that General Howard had died and now Taylor was suddenly interim commander. By early October Callaway and his troops had to burn down what they had just built and returned to Jefferson Barracks.

On September 29, 1814, somewhere in Madison County (at that time the county stretched from Collinsville to Vincennes in the south clear to the Wisconsin territory) one Simon Bartrane was assaulted "with force and arms." He was so beaten, wounded, and ill-treated "that his life was greatly dispaired." Indicted for this crime by the October session of the Madison County Grand Jury were Francois (Francis) Valle of St. Louis (formerly of St. Genevieve), Byrd Lockhart of Goshen Township in Edwards County and Major "Zachariah" Taylor of St. Louis.[1]

History does not reveal how Taylor reacted to his indictment or even if he knew he was charged. All of his personal family correspondence was destroyed when Union soldiers burned his family's plantation during the Civil War.

Military records show that he seemed to carry out his normal duties in St. Louis. In November 1814, Taylor accompanied his new commander 250 miles up the Missouri River in response to a perceived Indian threat to a remote settlement. At the end of the month Taylor was sent to take command of the troops at Vincennes, Indiana. With the signing of the Treaty of Ghent on December 24, 1814, the War of 1812 was effectively over and Illinois had been held as American territory.

The onset of peace brought about an immediate reduction in the standing army. Seeing that he could not hold his rank, nor support his family without promotion, Taylor applied for a discharge and was farming in Kentucky in June 1815 when it was approved." There is no record of his returning to Illinois until the Black Hawk War seventeen years later.

But as Taylor prepared his papers for early retirement from the army, the wheels of justice turned slowly in the Illinois Territory. On January 24, 1815, Madison County Sheriff Isom Gilham was ordered by the "Supreme Court" in Edwardsville to "take Major Zachariah Taylor, if he may be found within your Bailiwick and him safely keep so that you have his body before the Judges (on March 27th)... to answer an indictment... for an assault & Battery on the body of Simon Bartrane... and against the peace and dignity of the United States."

Felix McGlaughland (McGlaulin), a sometimes Illinois Ranger, was called as a prosecution witness to this incident and testified in the cases of Taylor and Valle. Francis Valle came from one of the oldest French families in Missouri and was an officer in the 24th U.S. Army Infantry with Taylor at the battle of Credit Island. Although we don't know what McGlaughland said under oath, the prosecuting attorney dismissed the case against Zacheriah Taylor on June 1, 1815. Byrd Lockhart, who also had served as an Illinois Ranger and Madison County Coroner, was later found guilty. He left Illinois in 1818 and eventually became the namesake of Lockhart, Texas.

It now appears that while a Major in the United States army, future U.S. President Zachary Taylor witnessed or abetted the beating of French descendant Simon Bartrane on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River. British war correspondence reveals that in late August 1814, "some French gentlemen from St. Louis" warned the Sauks that Taylor's forces had left to attack Rock Island. Could knowledge of this leak have triggered an assault on Bartrane? Even with the newly found Madison County court documents, we may never know if Bartrane was suspected of espionage or simply the victim of a petty quarrel.

History does show us, however, that although the Illinois militia won no major military victories in the War of 1812, it helped prevent the British from making any territorial claims east of the Mississippi. Whenever called upon, Zachary Taylor and the Rangers proved rough and ready to fight in Illinois.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

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[1] Documents recently processed at the Illinois State Archives now reveal an event concerning future President Taylor that has never previously been known.

The Regulators and the Prairie Bandits: Vigilante Justice in the Illinois Rock River Valley.

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In historical writing and analysis, PRESENTISM introduces present-day ideas and perspectives into depictions or interpretations of the past. Presentism is a form of cultural bias that creates a distorted understanding of the subject matter. Reading modern notions of morality into the past is committing the error of presentism. Historical accounts are written by people and can be slanted, so I try my hardest to present fact-based and well-researched articles.

Facts don't require one's approval or acceptance.

I present [PG-13] articles without regard to race, color, political party, or religious beliefs, including Atheism, national origin, citizenship status, gender, LGBTQ+ status, disability, military status, or educational level. What I present are facts — NOT Alternative Facts — about the subject. You won't find articles or readers' comments that spread rumors, lies, hateful statements, and people instigating arguments or fights.

FOR HISTORICAL CLARITY

When I write about the INDIGENOUS PEOPLE, I follow this historical terminology:

• The use of old commonly used terms, disrespectful today, i.e., REDMAN or REDMEN, SAVAGES, and HALF-BREED are explained in this article.

Writing about AFRICAN-AMERICAN history, I follow these race terms:

• "NEGRO" was the term used until the mid-1960s.
• "BLACK" started being used in the mid-1960s.
• "AFRICAN-AMERICAN" [Afro-American] began usage in the late 1980s.

— PLEASE PRACTICE HISTORICISM —

THE INTERPRETATION OF THE PAST IN ITS OWN CONTEXT.

 

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From about 1835 to the early 1840s, the Illinois Rock River Valley was the setting for a "settlers-versus-bad guys." Lawlessness on the frontier was a frequent accompaniment to the nation's westward expansion and the stream of new residents who flowed into northern Illinois after the conclusion of the Black Hawk War of 1832, including more than a few attracted by the feeble state of law enforcement of what then was the outer edge of the settlement. Ex-Governor Thomas Ford, in his classic book, History of Illinois, described the prevailing state of affairs as follows:

"...the northern part of the State was not destitute of its organized bands of rogues engaged in murders, robberies, horsestealing, and in making and passing counterfeit money. These rogues were scattered all over the north: but the most of them were located in the counties of Ogle, Winnebago, Lee and DeKalb. In the county of Ogle they were so numerous, strong, and organized that they could not be convicted for their crimes."

Ford had reason to know that he was an important player in the events that finally ended the bandits' domination of the area. On Sunday, March 21, 1841, some half dozen gang members had been apprehended on charges which included counterfeiting and possession of counterfeiting tools and were being held in the tiny Ogle County jail in Oregon, Illinois. Around midnight a fire broke out in the nearby newly-completed courthouse, and the building quickly burned to the ground. The fire had apparently been set in the expectation that it would destroy records needed to prosecute the prisoners, perhaps spread to the jail itself, and, in any event, create a diversion that would permit an escape.

It didn't work. The court clerk had taken the records home, the fire never reached the jail, and whatever confusion may have existed, no escape was made. While sitting as Circuit Judge, Ford presided over a temporarily relocated Ogle County Circuit Court before which three of the prisoners were tried, the others having secured a change of venue. When it developed, not for the first time in Ogle, that one of the jurors was a gang member or sympathizer who declined to convict, the other jurors resorted to a somewhat unorthodox means of persuasion. They told him that they would lynch him right there in the jury room unless he came to see that the majority view of the evidence was the correct one. He was persuaded, and the three were convicted. Elation over this victory for the forces of law and order was somewhat dampened when all of the prisoners subsequently escaped.

The Rock River, Ogle County, Illinois.

Ford, just a year-and-a-half away from the election as Governor of Illinois, was a terror to horse thieves and murderers. It seems clear that, at the time, he regarded vigilante activity as a regrettable but necessary way to deal with the prairie bandits. He is reported to have warned from the bench during the trial of one gang member that if there was any attempt to retaliate against him by harming his family he would assemble his friends and neighbors, and those responsible would find that "the first tree shall be their gallows."

The concept of citizens banding together to protect what they perceived to be their vital interests had already gained a foothold in the valley with the establishment of what was known as claim associations. Most of the early residents had settled there before the land was legally opened for sale to the public, and their claims were of dubious legal value. Claims associations, such as the Oregon Claim Society formed in 1836, were organized to oppose claim jumpers and land speculators and to protect the land claims of their members until legal title could be obtained.

So a kind of precedent, albeit a mild one, already existed when, in an outraged reaction to the burning of the courthouse and, possibly, in response to direct counsel from Ford, some fifteen citizens met in April at the log school house in White Rock township in the eastern part of the county and formed themselves into an association committed, not to protecting land claims, but to drive the outlaws from the area. The tactic agreed upon was a warning to move out or be horsewhipped, although it sometimes developed that the horse-whipping was administered as an accompaniment rather than a sequel to the warning. In any case, the new association's numbers grew quickly; membership was soon up in the hundreds, and parallel organizations appeared all over the valley. They were most often known as "Regulators," sometimes as "lynching clubs," and one group formed at the Lee County community of Inlet gave itself the imposing name of "Associations for the Furtherance of the Cause of Justice."

The Ogle group sprang into action by warning and whipping two horse thieves. One miscreant subsequently declared his innocence and joined the Regulators. The other disappeared from the valley as ordered. The bandits, however, were not disposed to accept this turn of events meekly.

Their leader was a tall, sturdy, old migrant from Ohio named John Driscoll, who had come to Ogle in 1835 and settled on Killbuck Creek in the northeastern part of the county. He had four grown sons: William, David, Pierce, and Taylor. Both John and Taylor had been convicted of arson in Ohio, and the other three sons were equally dubious citizens. William, who was about forty-five years old and who lived at South Grove in DeKalb County, was regarded as the worst of a thoroughly bad lot.

Shortly after the Regulators carried out their first two whippings, a grist mill owned by W.S. Wellington, the first Captain of the Regulators, was destroyed by fire. Wellington's horse, too, was killed in a particularly cruel manner: its front legs were broken, and the creature was left to perish in agony.

Fearing for himself and his family, Wellington resigned, and John Campbell, like the elder Driscoll a resident of White Rock Township, was elected to replace him.

William Driscoll greeted Campbell's accession to the office with a letter offering to kill him.

In response, Campbell assembled a band of nearly 200 Regulators and marched on William's place, where a much smaller band of outlaws had gathered. Seeing they were seriously outnumbered, the outlaws fled only to return several hours later with the Sheriff of DeKalb County and several other local figures of consequence in tow -- presumably to protest the extra-legal nature of the vigilante band. But when the Sheriff and his companions heard a detailed account of the misdeeds of the Driscolls and their associates, they agreed that the Regulators' demands were entirely justified. The Driscolls promised that they would be gone in twenty days.

They didn't mean it. Instead, meeting at the farm of William Bridge in Washington Grove, the gang members concluded that Campbell and Phineas Chaney, another prominent Regulator, had to go. On June 25th, there was a failed attempt on Chaney's life. Two days later, on Sunday, June 27, at about sundown, David and Taylor Driscoll ambushed Campbell at his farm, and David killed him with a single shot. While Campbell's wife ran to her dying husband, their thirteen-year-old son, Martin, fired at the Driscolls with a double-barreled shotgun but the weapon failed to go off.

Illinois Judge (later governor)
Thomas Ford played an instrumental
role in ridding Ogle County
of its roving bandits.

The news of Campbell's murder spread rapidly, and by the following morning, outraged Regulators were on the move. It was known from Mrs. Campbell's account that David and Taylor Driscoll had been the gunmen on the scene, but hoofprints leading away from the Campbell farm indicated that there had been as many as five riders. The Regulators and Ogle County Sheriff William T. Ward followed the trail to David Driscoll's home. John, the only suspect present, acknowledged that he had been at South Grove the previous day. He also admitted that he had recently ridden a horse found in David's stable, which had a broken shoe matching one of the hoofprints the Regulators had trailed from the Campbell farm. Sheriff Ward promptly arrested him "on suspicion of being accessory to the murder of John Campbell." That same afternoon William and Pierce Driscoll were taken in custody by a group of Regulators from Rockford. David, the known gunman, and Taylor, his accomplice at the Campbell slaving, had successfully flown the coop.

William and Pierce were taken to the Campbell home, where it was decided to take the three Driscolls to Washington Grove and there try them for Campbell's murder. The next morning, Tuesday the 29th, three of the Regulators appeared in Oregon and, over the protest of Judge Ford and Sheriff Ward, removed the senior Driscoll from jail and took him to the appointed spot, just off of present-day Prairie Road, where the Rockford Regulators had already brought William and Pierce.

A crowd estimated to number as many as 500 had gathered under the Washington Grove oaks. After another unsuccessful attempt by Ward to have John Driscoll returned to his custody, the "trial" proceeded. E.S. Leland, later a judge at Ottawa, presided. He directed those who were members of the Regulators to form themselves in a circle. Some 120 men responded initially, but 9 were dismissed as not being bonafide Regulators leaving 111 men to pass judgment on the 3 Driscolls.

Chairs for the accused, witnesses, prosecutors, and volunteer defense lawyers were placed inside the circle. William Driscoll was examined first and initially denied the prosecutor's accusation that he had instructed his brother, David, to shoot Campbell. But when confronted with the testimony of Henry Hill, who swore he had overheard William do so, said, "I remember it now; I did use the language, but only did it in jest" -- an explanation that very likely was received with considerable skepticism. While admitting he had stolen so many horses he had lost count, his father could not be moved from his denial that he had had anything to do with the Campbell killing.

No evidence was found linking Pierce Driscoll to the murders, and he was released from custody. There were closing arguments, and Acting Judge Leiand then put the case to one jury. The guilty verdict that followed was described as "almost unanimous," as was the jury's sentencing decision; Father and son were to be hanged on the spot.

True to their roles, the Driscolls requested they be shot instead of "hanged like dogs." This was agreed to, and a delay of several hours was granted to permit the condemned men to repent, confer with their lawyers, and otherwise prepare for eternity. William prayed and confessed to six murders, while his hard-as-nails father declined any such show of weakness. During this interval, some in the crowd had second thoughts about the proceedings, but there was no dissuading the determined majority. What is very likely the largest firing squad in history was then assembled. The Regulators were formed into two roughly equal lines, fifty-six in one, fifty-five in the other, each group assigned to the execution of one of the Driscolls. At least one unloaded weapon was issued to each contingent so that those with misgivings could cling to the hope that they had not been part of the fatal fusillade.

Impassive to the end, John was led before the fifty-six Regulator line, blindfolded, and made to kneel. Fifty-six rifles cracked, and he fell dead. A trembling William was next put through the same procedure before the second group of Regulators. Afterward, Pierce Driscoll was offered assistance in transporting the bodies of his father and brother home, but he declined to have anything to do with the business. A shallow grave was dug, both bodies placed in it, and the Regulators, singly or in small groups, mounted up and rode off.

This cemetery marker in Ogle County memorializes the murder of Captain Campbell.

While there is no doubt that the vigilante justice administered by the Regulators turned the tide against the bandits in the valley, there were those who questioned whether such conduct could be justified in a society that purports to be governed by law. In early July, Philander Knappen, editor of the Rockford Star, protested:

"...If two or three hundred citizens are to assume the administration of lynch law ... we shall soon have a fearful state of things, and where, we ask, will it end? ...  It will be argued... that we have in this new country no means or proper places for securing offenders... to which we answer, then build them."

A few nights after this editorial appeared, the Star's offices were sacked, and the type broken up and scattered on the floor. Knappen decided that it would be best to exit the newspaper business in Rockford.

Concerned that some future prosecutors might take a view of their activities like that expressed by Knappen, the Regulators and their allies staged a rigged trial. On September 24th, more than 100 men (reports of the exact number vary from 104 to 112) were tried in separate, back-to-back cases for the murders of John and William Driscoll. Ford again presided and the same jury heard both cases. No witnesses to the June 29th events at Washington Grove were produced, the prosecution's case consisted primarily of inadmissible rumors and as John Dean Caton, one of the defense attorneys, later wrote: the prosecutor, Seth Farwell "utterly failed to prove that any person had been killed much less that any of the prisoners had taken any part in killing anybody." The jury, which included at least one Regulator among its members, announced its verdict of not guilty without bothering to leave the jury box.

There is a case to be made both for the many ordinarily law-abiding citizens who did what seemed to them to be necessary to end the outlaw reign in the valley and for those who argued that such conduct struck deeply against the principles on which our society is based. Although very likely unnoticed at the time by the future Regulators of 1841, the case against vigilante justice had been made more than three years earlier by a young lawyer-politician who had served in the Rock River country during the Black Hawk War. On January 27, 1838, addressing the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Abraham Lincoln took note of the then-current outbreak of mob violence "from New England to Louisiana," including lynchings in Mississippi of gamblers and of blacks charged with conspiring to raise an insurrection, and in St. Louis of a mulatto man accused of murder. Then he warned his audience:

"When men take it in their heads today, to hang gamblers or burn murderers, they should recollect, that, in the confusion usually attending such transactions, they will be as likely to hang someone who is neither a gambler nor a murderer as one who is; and that, acting upon the example they set, the mob of tomorrow, may, and probably will, hang or burn some of them by the very same mistake... There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law."

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.