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“Their Blood has fall ’19/winter ’20 pg. 24 pg. 25 Flown and Mingled “Whose Blood has withFlowed Ours”: and Mingled The Poli- with Ours”: Slavery took on many images that highlighted its horrors or, as in this image, sought to present the “peculiar institution” in positive terms. (Image: New York Public Library) S The Politics of Slavery i n tics ofIllinois Slavery and Missouri in Illi from -a letter printed in the Missouri Gazette in in the Early Republic In1819, a gentleman an from extractSt. Charles County, Missouri, wrote, “Notwithstanding the foolish apprehensions which have been entertained by certain prophets, that the measures advocated in Congress on the subject of Missouri slavery, would deter emigration from the slave-holding states, never, at this season of the year, has the influx of population . been so considerable.”1 The author by lawrence celani goes on to say that the “caravans of movers [from Kentucky and Tennessee], were flowing through our town” towards the “lands of promise” in the Boons Lick on the Missouri River or near nois and Missourithe Salt Riverin in the northeastern part ofthe the territory. Indeed, the period immediately following the War of 1812 had seen a massive influx of migrants into Missouri, mostly from the states of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia, causing the population to increase from just under 20,000 in 1810 to more than 60,000 on the eve of statehood in 1820.2 For slaveholders or middling farmers in the Upper South, Missouri was somewhat of a beacon with seemingly Early Republic unlimited potential for one to start a new life or to grow cash crops, and slavery was the fall ’19/winter ’20 pg. 26 pg. 27 Article VI of the Northwest Ordinance stated that Article the Sixth. There shall be neither slavery “neither slavery or nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, Dating to the late involuntary servitude” seventeenth century, otherwise than in punishment of crimes whereof the Code Noir shall be allowed in the territory. regulated slave and free blacks alike in the French Empire, the party shall have been duly convicted: and became part of race relations in colonial and Provided always, that any person escaping territorial Louisiana. (Image: Wikimedia) into the same, for whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original states, such the means by which they would which stated that “neither slavery to choose sides on the issue of fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed achieve wealth and prosperity. nor involuntary servitude” shall slavery for the first time in their This inflow of settlers portended be allowed in the territory. lives. This caused divisions within to the person claiming his or her labor the Missouri Crisis from 1819– Still, Illinois residents held a Illinois and Missouri and beyond 1821, which saw a national referendum on whether to over slavery’s future in the West, or service as aforesaid. debate surrounding not only amend the state constitution and it changed the trajectory of whether to admit Missouri as to allow slavery, which they the states’ respective outlooks and a slave state, but also the did in August 1824. Though politics. The short-term results implications that admission the movement failed, the in each place were different—one Be it ordained by the authority aforesaid, That of the state would have implications would be large. endorsed slavery while the other for the rest of the Louisiana rejected it—but the long-term the resolutions of the 23rd of April, 1784 relative to Purchase Terriroty. In trying to comprehend the changes these conflicts meaning of these political events, engendered were immense, the subject of this ordinance, be, and the same At the same time, just across the broader Missouri Crisis, and altering the states’ orientations the Mississippi River, Illinois saw the Illinois convention movement, and paths for the future. This are hereby repealed and declared null and void. a similar explosion of population. it is important to understand essay will focus on the former. Though there was some controversy them as examples of a much over whether the territory had larger attempt by slaveholders Historians have had various DONE by the UNITED STATES in CONGRESS reached the appropriate number and proslavery advocates to make explanations for exactly what the assembled, the 13th day of July, in the year of our Lord of inhabitants for statehood in the West safe for slavery, and we convention movement meant for 1787, and of their sovereignty and independence the 12th. 1818, mostly coming from northern must also be aware of how these Illinois and the wider politics of congressmen, the population conflicts came to be understood slavery. Some have noted that the increased more than 300 percent locally or regionally. Both the movement was a battle between 3 between 1810 and 1820. While Missouri Crisis and the movement two opposing ideological forces Article 6 of the Northwest Ordinance (above) kept some slaveowners from some slaveholders ultimately did to legalize slavery in Illinois with incompatible visions for the passing through Illinois when migrating to Missouri, thinking that the Ordinance banned slavery in the territory (present-day Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, migrate to Illinois, most avoided were products of national and future of Illinois society. They and part of northeastern Minnesota). However, the Ordinance also protected them in the state or passed through it international developments such argue that the antislavery retaining or capturing enslaved people. (Image: Library of Congress) on their way to Missouri. The as westward expansion, empire, forces—led by the likes of reason for that, of course, was that and migration, but these events Governor Edward Coles, John slavery was banned by Article VI also helped to generate a political Mason Peck, and others— of the Northwest Ordinance, awakening in their respective were better able to rally their states by forcing many citizens fall ’19/winter ’20 pg. 28 pg. 29 Although opposed to slavery his entire life, Virginia-born Edward Coles (1786-1868) knew Thomas Jefferson and James Madison before moving to the Illinois Territory and becoming the state’s second governor in 1822. When he moved, he “Their Blood has manumitted his slaves he owned in Virginia in 1819 and acquired land for them to farm. (Image: Collections of the Illinois State Historical Library, archive.com) Like Coles, John Mason Peck (1789- 1858) was a prominent opponent of slavery in Illinois as well as Missouri. Peck arrived in St. Louis in 1817 and co-founded the First Baptist Church of St. Louis. (Image: Forty Years of Pioneer Life: Flown and Mingled slavery A Memoir, archive.org) ...most Missourians could not imagine their state without it. constituencies around this issue to relationship to Illinois, and the important factor, in Illinois defeat the measure. The emergence ones that do generally highlight becoming a free state. The same of an antislavery nationalism the similarities between the two holds true for Missouri, whose during the convention movement, states and the artificiality of the lack of these structures or of most clearly expressed by border dividing them. In turn, anything resembling the Governor Coles, would become these accounts tend to collapse Northwest Ordinance allowed Illinois at the foundation of the Republican all meaningful distinctions that slavery to grow in the years before the time of 4 statehood. Party three decades later. Others actually did differentiate Illinois statehood—so much so, in fact, with Ours”:(Image: David The Poli-have emphasized the economic from Missouri.6 While great work that most Missourians could not Ramsay Map Collection) aspects of the struggle, recognizing on that topic has been written, my imagine their state without it. that the campaign was an attempt larger research goals, only narrowly by poor whites who sought to covered in this essay, stress that As historians such as David destroy the political influence of Missouri and Illinois were Waldstreicher and others have the bourgeois Yankees and the different, and that the border argued, politics in the early republic Southern-born slaveholders who between them, while arbitrary, was simultaneously local dominated politics in early Illinois. had a large impact on how and national, and how people These interpretations recognize the states developed from the understood and defined themselves either implicitly or explicitly that late-eighteenth century through in relationship to the nation was the event was fundamentally a to the antebellum period. filtered through political practices 7 battle over the future of the state, The colonial and territorial and ceremonies at the local level. and whether freedom or slavery institutions put in place in Illinois, Therefore, I seek to understand tics of Slavery in Illiwould dominate-.5 most importantly the Northwest the local and national debates Ordinance, laid out the legal and that surrounded the Missouri Very few studies account political structures of that Crisis and the Illinois convention for Missouri’s role in these territory, and the Ordinance was movement, which I argue had the developments and their a key factor, perhaps the most opposite effect. Consequently, this nois and Missouri in the Early Republic fall ’19/winter ’20 pg. 30 pg. 31 Thomas Hart Benton (1782- Illinois and Missouri occupied a space that 1858) ranks among Missouri’s James Tallmadge (1778-1853) most noted senators. When is perhaps best known as an he first moved to the Missouri has been termed the ...where the “American Confluence,” antislavery member of the Territory he became one of House of Representatives the region’s most influential Missouri, Mississippi, and Ohio rivers converge. who proposed the “Tallmadge opinion-makers as editor of Amendment” to the bill the Missouri Enquirer.

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