The Jefferson-Lemen Compact | Page 6

and that they also requested Congress not
to act upon the subject until the people had an opportunity to formulate
a State Constitution[16]. Commenting upon the whole proceedings, Dr.
Peck quotes Gov. Harrison to the effect that, though he and Lemen
were firm friends, the latter "had set his iron will against slavery, and
indirectly made his influence felt so strongly at Washington and before
Congress, that all the efforts to suspend the anti-slavery clause in the
Ordinance of 1787 failed."[17] Peck adds that President Jefferson
"quietly directed his leading confidential friends in Congress steadily to
defeat Gen. Harrison's petitions for the repeal."[17]
It was about this time, September 10, 1807, that President Jefferson
thus expressed his estimate of James Lemen's services, in his letter to
Robert Lemen: "His record in the new country has fully justified my
course in inducing him to settle there with the view of properly shaping
events in the best interest of the people."[18] It was during this period
of the Indiana agitation for the introduction of slavery, {p.16} as we
learn from an entry in his diary dated September 10, 1806, that Mr.
Lemen received a call from an agent of Aaron Burr to solicit his aid

and sympathy in Burr's scheme for a southwestern empire, with Illinois
as a Province, and an offer to make him governor. "But I denounced the
conspiracy as high treason," he says, "and gave him a few hours to
leave the Territory on pain of arrest."[19] It should be noted that at this
date he was not himself a magistrate, which, perhaps, accounts for his
apparent leniency towards what he regarded as a treasonable proposal.
The year 1809, the date of the separation of Illinois from the Indiana
Territory, marks a crisis in the Lemen anti-slavery campaign in
Illinois.[20] The agitation under the Indiana government for the further
recognition of slavery in the Territory was mainly instigated by the
Illinois slave-holders and their sympathizers among the American
settlers from the slave states. The people of Indiana proper, except
those of the old French inhabitants of Vincennes, who were possessed
of slaves, were either indifferent or hostile towards slavery. Its
partisans in the Illinois counties of the Territory, in the hope of
promoting their object thereby, now sought division of the Indiana
Territory and the erection of a separate government for Illinois at
Kaskaskia. This movement aroused a bitter political struggle in the
Illinois settlements, one result of which was the murder of young Rice
Jones in the streets of Kaskaskia. The division was advocated on the
ground of convenience and opposed on the score of expense. The
divisionists, however, seem to have been animated mainly by the desire
to secure the introduction of slavery as soon as statehood could be
attained for their section. The division was achieved in 1809, and with
it the prompt adoption of the system of indentured service already in
vogue under the Indiana government. And from that time forth the fight
was on between the free-state and slave-state parties in the new
Territory. Throughout the independent territorial history of Illinois,
slavery was sanctioned partly by law and still further by custom. Gov.
Ninian Edwards, whose religious affiliations were with the Baptists,
not only sanctioned slavery, but, as is well known, was himself the
owner of slaves during the territorial period.
It was in view of this evident determination to make of Illinois
Territory a slave state, that James Lemen, with Jefferson's approval,
took the radical step of organizing a {p.17} distinctively anti-slavery

church as a means of promoting the free-state cause.[21] From the first,
indeed, he had sought to promote the cause of temperance and of
anti-slavery in and through the church. He tells us in his diary, in fact,
that he "hoped to employ the churches as a means of opposition to the
institution of slavery."[21] He was reared in the Presbyterian faith, his
stepfather being a minister of that persuasion; but at twenty years of
age he embraced Baptist principles, apparently under the influence of a
Baptist minister in Virginia, whose practice it was to bar from
membership all who upheld the institution of slavery. He thus
identified himself with the struggles for civil, religious, and industrial
liberty, all of which were then actively going on in his own state.
The name of "New Design," which became attached to the settlement
which he established on the upland prairies beyond the bluffs of the
"American Bottom," is said to have originated from a quaint remark of
his that he "had a 'new design' to locate a settlement south of
Bellefontaine" near the present town of Waterloo.[22] The name "New
Design," however, became significant of his anti-slavery mission; and
when, after ten years of pioneer struggles, he organized The Baptist
Church of Christ at New