The Jefferson-Lemen Compact Part 4

From Washington--Wm. H. Bradsby.

V. RECOLLECTIONS OF A CENTENNARIAN

By DR. WILLIAMSON F. BOYAKIN, Blue Rapids, Kansas (1807-1907) (_The Standard_, Chicago, November 9, 1907.)

The Lemen family was of Irish [Scotch] descent. They were friends and a.s.sociates of Thomas Jefferson. It was through his influence that they migrated West. When the Lemen family arrived at what they designated as New Design, in the vicinity of the present town of Waterloo, in Monroe county, twenty-five miles southeast of the city of St. Louis, Illinois was a portion of the state of Virginia. [Ceded to U. S. two years previous.]

Thomas Jefferson gave them a kind of carte blanche for all the then unoccupied territory of Virginia, and gave them $30 in gold to be paid to the man who should build the first meeting house on the western frontier.[32] This rudely-constructed house of worship was built on a little creek named Canteen [Quentin], just a mile or two south of what is now called Collinsville, Madison county, Illinois.

In the mountains of Virginia there lived a Baptist minister by the name of Torrence. This Torrence, at an a.s.sociation in Virginia, introduced a resolution against slavery. In a speech in favor of the resolution he said, "All friends of humanity should support the resolution." The elder James Lemen being present voted for it and adopted it for his motto, inscribed it on a rude flag, and planted it on the rudely-constructed flatboat on which the family floated down the Ohio river, in the summer of 1790 [1786], to the New Design location.[33]

The distinguishing characteristic of the churches and a.s.sociations that subsequently grew up in Illinois [under the Lemen influence] was the name "The Baptized Church of Christ, Friends to Humanity."

One {p.40} of these Lemen brothers, Joseph, married a Kinney, sister to him who was afterwards governor [lieutenant governor] of the state.

This Kinney was also a Baptist preacher, a Kentuckian, and a pro-slavery man.[34] When the canva.s.s opened in 1816, 17, and 18 to organize Illinois into a state, the Lemens and the Kinneys were leaders in the canva.s.s. The canva.s.s was strong, long, bitter. The Friends to Humanity party won. The Lemen brothers made Illinois what it is, a free state.

The Lemens were personally fine specimens of the genus h.o.m.o--tall, straight, large, handsome men--magnetic, emotional, fine speakers.

James Lemen [Junior] was considered the most eloquent speaker of the day of the Baptist people. Our present educated preachers have lost the hold they should have upon the age in the cultivation of the intellectual instead of the emotional. Religion is the motive power in the intellectual guidance of humanity. These Lemens were well balanced in the cultivation of the intellect and the control of the emotions.

They were well educated for their day, self-educated, great lovers of poetry, hymnal poetry, having no taste for the religious debates now so prevalent in some localities. They attended no college commencements [?]. James Lemen, however, at whose grave the monument is to be erected, was for fourteen consecutive years in the Senate of the State Legislature, and would have been elected United States senator, but he would not accept the position when offered. [This was James, Jr., not his father.]

Personally of fine taste, always well and even elegantly dressed, they rode fine horses, owned fine farms, well cultivated. They lived in rich, elegant style [?]. They were brimful and overflowing with spontaneous hospitality. All were married, with several sisters, and were blessed with large families. Almost all of them, parents and descendants, have pa.s.sed away. Old Bethel, the church house, and the graveyard, in sight of the old mound, are yet there.

NOTE.--Dr. Boyakin was a physician, Baptist minister, and newspaper editor for many years in Illinois. He delivered the G. A. R. address at Blue Rapids, Kansas, on his one hundredth birthday. He has confused some things in these "recollections," especially the story concerning the origin of the name "Friends to Humanity," but for his years his statements are unusually in accord with the facts.

VI. {p.41} IN MEMORY OF REV. JAMES LEMEN, SR.

BY A WELL-WISHER (_The Standard_, Chicago, November 16, 1907)

When James Lemen's early anti-slavery Baptist churches went over to the cause of slavery, it looked as if all were lost and his anti-slavery mission in Illinois had failed. At that crisis Mr. Lemen could have formed another sect, but in his splendid loyalty to the Baptist cause he simply formed another Baptist church on the broader, higher grounds for both G.o.d and humanity, and on this high plane he unfurled the banner of freedom. In G.o.d's good time the churches and state and nation came up to that grand level of right, light, and progress.

Of James Lemen's sons, under his training, Robert was an eminent Baptist layman, and Joseph, James, Moses, and Josiah were able Baptist preachers. [William, the "wayward" son, also became a useful minister in his later years.] Altogether they were as faithful a band of men as ever stood for any cause. This is the rating which history places upon them. The country owes James Lemen another debt of grat.i.tude for his services to history. He and his sons were the only family that ever kept a written and authentic set of notes of early Illinois; and the early historians, Ford, Reynolds, and Peck, drew many of their facts from that source. These notes embraced the only correct histories of both the early Methodist and the early Baptist churches in Illinois and much other early matter.[35]

NOTE.--This communication was probably from Dr. W. F. Boyakin.

VII. STATEMENT REGARDING JOSEPH B. LEMEN

"Joseph B. Lemen has written editorially for _The New York Sun_, _The New York Tribune_, _The Chicago Tribune_, _and The Belleville Advocate_.

"During the McKinley campaign of 1896 he wrote editorials from the farmers' standpoint for a number of the metropolitan newspapers of the country at the personal request of Mark Hanna.

"He also wrote editorials for the metropolitan newspapers during the first Lincoln campaign."

--Editor, _Belleville Advocate_.

December, 1912.

VIII. {p.42} HISTORIC LETTER OF REV. J. M. PECK ON THE OLD LEMEN FAMILY NOTES

(From _Belleville Advocate_, January, 1908) (Clipping in I.B.H.C., K11)

To the Editor of the Belleville Advocate:

We herewith send the Advocate a copy of a letter of the eminent historian and great Baptist divine, the late Rev. J. M. Peck, to his old ministerial a.s.sociate, the late Rev. James Lemen, concerning the anti-slavery labors of his father, Rev. James Lemen, Sr., and also his views as to the old Lemen family notes, which will perhaps interest your readers. It seems quite appropriate for the Advocate to print these old pioneer matters, as it is one of the old pioneer landmarks.

Rev. James Lemen took the paper when it started, under its first name, and it has come to his family or family members at his old home ever since.

By order of the Family.

[JOSEPH B. LEMEN.]

REV. JAMES LEMEN, SR., AND HIS ANTI-SLAVERY LABORS

Rev. James Lemen, Ridge Prairie, Illinois

Dear Brother: At my recent very enjoyable visit at your house you made two important requests, which I will now answer. The first was as to my estimate or judgment of your father's anti-slavery labors, and the second was as to what disposition you had better make of your vast stock of old family notes and papers. Considering your questions in the order named, I will write this letter, or more properly, article, under the above heading of "Rev. James Lemen, Sr., and His Anti-Slavery Labors," as the first question is the most important, and then in conclusion I will notice the second.

In considering your father's anti-slavery labors, I will proceed upon the facts and evidence obtained outside your old family notes, as it might be presumed that the trend of the notes on that matter would be partial. Not that the facts I would use are not found in your family notes, for they appear to cover about every event in our early state and church history; but that I would look for the facts elsewhere to prove the matter, and indeed I can draw largely from my own {p.43} knowledge of the facts upon which your father's success as an anti-slavery leader rested. Not only from my own personal observation, but scores of the old pioneers, your father's followers and helpers, have given me facts that fully establish the claim that he was the chief leader that saved Illinois to freedom. Not only the state, but on a wider basis the evidence is very strong that Rev. James Lemen, Sr., largely shared in saving the Northwestern Territory for free states. This was the estimate that General [Governor] William Henry Harrison placed on his labors in his letter to Captain Joseph Ogle after his term of the governorship had expired. [17]In his letter to Captain Ogle he said that, though he and Mr. Lemen were ardent friends, he [Lemen] set his iron will against slavery here and indirectly made his influence felt so strongly at Washington and before Congress, that all efforts to suspend the anti-slavery clause in the Ordinance of 1787 failed.

But James Lemen was not only a factor which saved the anti-slavery clause in the Ordinance of 1787, but there is no doubt, after putting all the facts together, ... that his anti-slavery mission to the Northwestern Territory was inspired by the same cause which finally placed the anti-slavery clause in the Ordinance, and that Lemen's mission and that clause were closely connected. Douglas, Trumbull, and Lincoln thought so, and every other capable person who had [been] or has been made familiar with the facts.

Many of the old pioneers to whom the facts were known have informed me that all the statements as to Rev. James Lemen's anti-slavery teaching and preaching and forming his anti-slavery churches, and conducting the anti-slavery contest, and sending a paid agent to Indiana to a.s.sist the anti-slavery cause, were all true in every particular; and so the evidence outside and independently of that in the Lemen family notes is conclusive that Mr. Lemen created and organized the forces which finally confirmed Illinois, if not the Northwestern Territory, to freedom. But there was just one fact that made it possible for the old pioneer leader practically single handed and alone to accomplish such results; and that was because President Jefferson's great power was behind him, and through his secret influence Congress worked for the very purpose that Jefferson, more than twenty years before, had sent Lemen to Illinois, or the Northwestern Territory, to secure, namely, the freedom of the new {p.44} country. The claim that Mr.

Lemen encompa.s.sed these great results would, of course, be ridiculous were it not known that the power of the government through Jefferson stood behind him. Hence Douglas, Trumbull, and others are correct, and I quite agree with them, that when you publish the old family notes on the matter, if, for reasons you state, you do not wish to publish Jefferson's letters to your father which concern the subject, it will be sufficient just to say he acted by and under his advice and aid, and people will accept it, as it is self-evident, because it is preposterous to hold that Mr. Lemen could have accomplished such results without some great power behind him. In conclusion, it is my judgment that your father's anti-slavery labors were the chief factor leading up to the free state const.i.tution for Illinois.

Now as to your old family notes. They are valuable. In their respective fields, they embrace by far the most trustworthy history in our state. They ought to be preserved, but your generous nature will not permit you to say no; and your friends, as you say, are carrying them off, and they will all be lost, and presently the vast and priceless collection will have disappeared, which will be an unspeakable loss. Like your friends, Dr. B. F. Edwards and J. M.

Smith, I would advise you to make copies of all to keep for use, and then give Smith the old collection to keep and hold in St. Louis in his safe, and leave them there for good. This will save you an infinite amount of worry, as people will not trouble you to see the mere copies. It would be a good disposition to make of them, and thus bury that dangerous element in many of the old letters bearing on the anti-slavery contest of 1818. With some of those interested in that contest, in fifty years from this time, the publication of these letters would create trouble between the descendants of many of our old pioneer families.

There is a danger lurking in many of these old collections where you would not suspect it. In 1851, when I wrote the first or preliminary part of the Bethel church history from your old family notes, now generally referred to as the history of the "Jefferson-Lemen Anti-Slavery Pact," and part second as the history proper of the church in the letter which was simply the history from its organization in 1809 to my pastorate of 1851, I carefully omitted all mention of the anti-slavery contest which gave the church its origin.

I {p.45} did this so that that part of its history could then be recorded in the church book, which could not have been done had I mentioned the anti-slavery contest; because the bitterness of that period had not yet fully disappeared; and the full history of the church, with the causes creating, and the results flowing from its organization, if recorded or published then, would have aroused considerable ill feeling against the church in some parts of the state. So part second, or the history proper, was only recorded at that time. But having lately completed part third of the Bethel church history, showing the results of its organization, I sent it with a copy of part first, or the history of the Jefferson Lemen Anti-Slavery Pact, to our worthy and n.o.ble Christian brother, the Bethel church clerk, James H. Lemen, and the other brother whose name you suggested, and they can place them in safe keeping somewhere until after your old family notes are published, and then they should be recorded in the church book with the church history proper and all the papers be placed with the other church papers. I shall also send them a copy of this letter to be finally placed with the church papers, as it is in part the history of the founder of that church, all parties agreeing that your father created, though of course he did not formally const.i.tute, it. The old church, when all the facts become known, will become noted in history, as it stands as the monument of the contest which began by putting the anti-slavery clause in the Ordinance of 1787, and which concluded by making Illinois and her neighboring sisters free states.

As to the more valuable letters in your family notes and collections, I have kept them securely for you. Douglas' and Lincoln's letters take very correct views as to your father's anti-slavery labors, and Jefferson's two letters to your father disclose his great friendship for him, and show that he placed the greatest confidence and trust in him. Poor Lovejoy's letter reads as if he had a presentment of his coming doom. There is no more interesting feature in all your old family notes than Lincoln's views at your many meetings with him, and your copy of his prayer is beautiful. Some of his views on Bible themes are very profound; but then he is a very profound thinker. It now looks as if he would become a national leader. Would not he and your father have enjoyed a meeting on the slavery question? I put all the letters with the other papers you gave me in a safe {p.46} in St.

Louis, in a friend's care, where I sometimes put my papers. Your son, Moses, was with me and the check is given in his name. This will enable you to tell your friends that the papers are not now in your custody, and they will not bother you to see them. Hoping to see you soon, I remain as ever.

Fraternally yours, Rock Spring, Ill.

July 17, 1857.