John Wood: 12th Governor of Illinois

By Reg Ankrom Abraham Lincoln, whose first test in In the ten years before Weaver died war was to come in the year ahead. she bore him four daughters, all out of n his book Mostly Good wedlock. John Wood made no effort to and Competent Men, a # * * * * * correct local histories, which reported Iuseful survey of Illinois John Wood was the second child that she had died. governors that ends with Jim born to Dr. Daniel and Catherine In 1860 Wood returned to New Thompson’s unprecedented fourth Crouse Wood of Sempronius, New York, had his father’s body exhumed, term in 1988, the late Robert P. York. While he venerated his father— and brought it back to Quincy for Howard devoted only three pages to General George Washington personally reburial in Woodland Cemetery. the state’s 12th governor, Although he was just eight miles Quincy founder John Wood. from the St. Johnsville Lutheran Howard devoted an average Cemetery where his mother was of 9.5 pages to each of the buried, Wood made no effort to other 36 governors. visit her gravesite. After One could easily argue Catherine’s death in 1848, a that Howard gave Wood a New York probate judge wrote fair shake. Succeeding Gov. to Wood to ask if he wished to William Henry Bissell, who administer his mother’s estate died in office on March 18, or to claim any of the “goods, 1860, Lieutenant Governor chattels, or credits” from it. Wood served only ten The probate record reports months as the state’s chief Wood renounced any right to executive. Yet, Howard had do so. nearly as much to say about William Lee Davidson ood’s esteem for his Ewing, a Vandalia Democrat father, however, never who in late 1834 served Wfaltered, even though only 17 days as the state’s Dr. Wood, too, separated himself fifth governor. Ewing’s best from his children. At some point claim on history was that he before 1810, the doctor sent beat Abraham Lincoln twice John and Clarissa to Florida, for the position of House New York, where they grew to speaker. Yet he earned two adulthood in the home of their and one-half pages in cousin James Wood and his wife Howard’s book. Mary Armstrong Wood. James Considering Wood’s and Mary were nearly 20 years work on state business, older than the children. Howard’s coverage was fair. Although he had learned By the time Wood was John Wood German from his father, which sworn in that March, the would serve him in several ways Illinois General Assembly had commended Dr. Wood for his healing in the years ahead, most of John adjourned and most of its members work with diseased and wounded Wood’s maturation occurred in Florida. had returned home. Government was Revolutionary War soldiers at Valley The James Wood home was near the leaner in the mid-nineteenth century, Forge, John Wood never spoke of his family home of Samuel Seward, whom and with little for him to do at the mother. President Thomas Jefferson had state capital in Springfield, Wood got For reasons not known, Catherine appointed the town postmaster. John the approval of legislative leaders to Crouse Wood in 1803 abandoned Dr. Wood was a school mate of the Seward operate the governor’s office from his Wood, five-year-old John, and his children, including the fourth child, 14-room, Greek Revival mansion in seven-year-old sister Clarissa. Catherine William Henry Seward. Growing up at Quincy. Little state business was taken returned to her home in Palatine, New the eastern edge of New York’s “Burned up at Wood’s Quincy office. But what York, a three-day journey away. There, Over District,” both would develop in he did there would be important to she cohabited with one John Weaver. an environment that advocated moral

I LLINOIS H ERITAGE 15 causes—temperance, women’s rights, land as bounty for veterans of the War lthough there was no more than and the abolition of slavery. As young of 1812. Few were interested in leaving a handful of residents in the men, both would become Whigs, then their established eastern homes for Aregion, Wood in September Republicans, and political col- entitlements to 160 acres of land in 1824 began a series of advertisements leagues of Abraham primitive western Illinois. in the Edwardsville Intelligencer Lincoln. This meant opportunity for announcing the formation of a county Wood was just Wood and Keyes. They in western Illinois. In January 1825, shy of twenty years offered to locate and the legislature carved a new Adams old when on assess properties for County from Pike County. Locals November 2, veterans who named the new county seat Quincy 1818, he left sought informa- and would name the public square Florida to tion before John’s Square. Their choices honored become part deciding to buy the leader of their party, President of an or sell. John Quincy Adams. John Wood was emerging The busi- prominent in business, civic, public, vanguard ness provided and social affairs of his community of of west- Wood’s first Quincy for the rest of his life. ward acquisition in * * * * * migration. what would John Wood had not been slated for He win- become the two-year-old Republican Party’s tered in Quincy. Land first statewide ticket in 1856. But Cincinnati owner Peter when Republican leaders learned that and in Flinn consid- German immigrant Francis Hoffman, early 1819 ered the quar- their candidate for lieutenant governor set a course ter-section, who Republicans thought would for Illinois. situated on a attract the state’s German vote, could He spent the bluff above the not meet the residency requirement for summer in Mississippi River office, he stepped aside. Abraham Shawnee town, on the western- Lincoln, chairman of the party’s nomi- where the Ohio most edge of nating committee, recommended River met Illinois’s Illinois, too far from Wood, and the committee concurred. southeastern bank civilization. He sold Wood was of German descent, an early and learned some- his 160-acre parcel to employer of German emigrants, and thing of land speculation Wood for $60 on was popular among Germans through- at the federal land office November 19, 1822. there. Wood hiked across the state and Wood’s friend Edward Coles spent the winter of 1819-20 in became Illinois’ second governor in Madison County. At Edwardsville, 1822. When in his inaugural he met two men who would figure address Coles advocated repeal of prominently in his future: federal land the state’s slave and anti-black Register Edward Coles, a Virginian laws, the General Assembly of who had freed his slaves enroute to largely Southern men took the Illinois, and Willard Keyes, a Vermont opposite course. With pro-slavery native. Wood and Keyes formed a loose sentiment strong in Illinois—the partnership to farm near today’s New 1820 census recorded nearly 1,000 Canton in Pike County. They har- slaves held in the state—the legis- vested three crops on land they did not lature scheduled a referendum for own in their two years there. August 2, 1824, to amend the constitution to make slavery legal. oth Wood and Keyes were inter- Wood was among friends in Illinois ested in land within the Illinois whom Coles urged to oppose the BMilitary Tract, a 3.5-million campaign for slavery. Coles’s team acre wedge between the Illinois and succeeded. Illinois voters defeated Mississippi Rivers. The tract ran from slavery by a margin of 57 to 43. the rivers’ confluence at today’s The percentage in western Illinois, Grafton northward to a line across where Wood worked against today’s Rock Island, Henry, and Bureau slavery, was 96 to 4. Counties. Congress had designated the

16 I LLINOIS H ERITAGE out western Illinois. The Bissell-Wood ticket was elected. It was the national race that year, however, which proved a cosmic event. John C. Fremont was the Republican Party’s first candidate for the presidency. Running on the party’s anti-slavery platform, he almost beat Democrat James Buchanan. Fremont did not win a single electoral vote in the South, but had he taken the electoral votes of Pennsylvania and either Illinois or Indiana from Buchanan, Fremont would have been the 15th president.

ocusing only on the North was to be the campaign strategy for Abraham Lincoln’s campaign team—and Fthe rationale for Southern secession. It also became the reason for the short-term of Governor John Wood. Close enough to his party’s counsels to know that the end of Southern control of the federal government would threaten the South’s slave institution, Wood knew the result could be Southern rebellion and disunion. Since the end of the Mexican War in 1848, Illinois governors had ignored the declining strength of Illinois’ state militia. Wood was aware that with only a small force of federal troops, the president would have to rely on the states for soldiers and sailors. As governor, then as quartermaster general of Illinois at the outset of the Civil War, Wood focused his attention on the rehabilitation of the state militia. As Wood had predicted, President Lincoln called on the states for 75,000 men after John Wood mansion, circa 1920. the South bombarded Fort Sumter on April 15, 1861. The New York Tribune reported that Illinois was best prepared to answer the president’s call.

–Reg Ankrom is a member of the Historical Society of Quincy and Adams County and president of the Stephen A. Douglas Association of Chicago. He resides in Quincy.

For further reading: Reg Ankrom, Stephen A. Douglas: The Political Apprenticeship, 1833-1843. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland Press, 2015. Henry Asbury, Reminiscences of Quincy, Illinois. Quincy: D. Wilcox & Sons, 1882. William H. Collins and Cicero F. Perry, Past and Present of the City of Quincy and Adams County. Chicago: The S.J. Clark Publishing Co., 1905. James E. Davis, Frontier Illinois. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1998. Robert P. Howard, Mostly Good and Competent Men: Illinois Governors, 1818-1988. Springfield: Sangamon State University and Illinois State Historical Society, 1988. Kurt E. Leichtle and Bruce G. Carveth, Crusade Against Slavery: Edward Coles, Pioneer of Freedom. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2011. Journal of the Illinois Historical Society, vol. 17. Springfield: Illinois State Historical Society, 1924. Statue of Illinois governor John Wood in downtown Quincy. Photo by William Furry

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