CHAPTER XI
Growth and Outward Difficulties
One of the things which astonished De Toqueville, French philosopher and jurist, was the character of the American pioneer. He wrote: "As soon as the pioneer arrives upon the spot which is to serve him for a retreat he fells him a few trees and builds him a log house. Nothing can offer a more unattractive aspect than these isolated dwellings. The traveler who approaches one of them towards nightfall sees the flicker of the hearth flame through the chinks in the walls; and at night if the wind rises he hears the roof of boughs shake to and fro in the midst of the great forest trees. Who would not suppose that this rude hut is the asylum of rudeness and ignorance? Yet no sort of comparison can be drawn between the pioneer and the hut which shelters him. Everything about him is primitive and unformed, but he is himself the result of the labor and experience of eighteen centuries. He penetrates into the wilds of a new world with a Bible, an ax and a file of newspapers." -- De Toqueville' s American Institutions, p.321. In the early American settlements in Illinois, however, the Bible and the ax were found, but the newspaper was more tardy in appearing. It appeared in Indiana in 1803, and in St. Louis in 1808, but not in Illinois until 1814.
In 1803 the American Baptist Missionary Magazine came out of its corner in the study of pastor Baldwin, of Boston. 1t represented the Massachusetts Domestic Missionary Society, and contained letters from the wilds of New Hampshire and New York, but none from the wilds of Illinois, a thousand miles farther inland. The editor said in his preface: "We cannot at present determine whether we shall publish semi-annually, quarterly, or oftener, until we know the success of this number. Those who encourage the work will be notified of the publication of succeeding numbers." But the postage on the magazine to the west would have been four cents each copy, and the journey six weeks long from Boston to Cahokia, which was the distributing point for that portion of the territory. Mails came and went once a week on horseback. The school was in reality a greater factor than the periodical in the intellectual life of the people. The humble schools turned out men and women of mark. In a Monroe
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county school taught by Edward Humphrey, in 1805, there were sitting on benches side by side a future governor of Illinois, Thomas Ford; a State Attorney General, George Forquer, Ford's half brother; and a United States senator, Samuel McRoberts.
It was in that year that the Merrill excitement arose. Daniel Merrill was pastor of the Sedgwick, Me., Congregational church, and himself and 120 of his people were baptized and constituted a Baptist church. It started a fresh controversy on baptism which continued for years. The Baptist position was so thoroughly studied by the common people that a pedobaptist minister exclaimed, "Even the Baptist women talk Greek!" Daniel Merrill's son, Moses Merrill, became in 1832 one of Isaac McCoy's associates in the Indian Mission, and died at his post in 1840.
Perils from the Indians still continued, and were vainly sought to be prevented by frequent treaties. Sometimes when part of a tribe refused their consent treaties only made matters worse. In 1803 at Vincennes a band of dissolute Kaskaskies put their marks to a treaty ceding to the government all southern Illinois. It was done merely to prevent trouble, for the same territory had been ceded by the treaty of Greenville eight years before. In 1804 at St. Louis part of the Sacs and Foxes rubbed their marks on a treaty ceding all northern Illinois. Out of this grew the Black Hawk war, 28 years afterwards.
The peril of slavery, too, still hung over the settlements like an angry cloud. Gov. William Henry Harrison called a convention at Vincennes, and memorialized Congress to repeal the clause in the Ordinance of 1787 excluding slavery. Efforts to this end were constantly being made. Petitions were circulated among the pro-slavery portion of the Illinois inhabitants. But in the good providence of God none of such efforts succeeded.
A peril that had less promise of success was Aaron Burr's proposed Southwestern Empire. It is given as a matter of authentic history that in the summer of 1806 Burr, on his journey from St. Louis to Kaskaskia, called at New Design and tried to get James Lemen's name on the list of promoters of his scheme. But Mr. Lemen repelled the idea. Even had it been in his judgment a wise thing to attempt, which it certainly was not, he would have had no confidence in it with such a man as Mr. Burr at the head of it.
In 1806 Elder William Jones, from North Carolina, settled in what is now Madison county, and the following year gathered the Wood
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River church, of which he was the pastor for nearly forty years. About 1845 pastor and church passed away together. He was a devout and peaceable man and faithful preacher, but conservative in his views, so that he became a leader of the antimission party among his brethren. In 1807 Robert Brazil was licensed by the Richland church to preach, and he was ordained the following year. For a time he did good service, but having unfortunately come into possession of a distillery he fell into intemperate habits.
The sixth Baptist church to be constituted in our territory was Richland Creek; in the northern part of St. Clair counry. It had been an "Arm" of New Design, meeting at the house of Isaac Enochs, one of the two baptized with James Lemen and his wife thirteen years before. It was recognized as an independent church, with 17 members, September 12, 1807, by a council composed of Joseph Chance, Robert Brazil and Edward Radcliff. James Lemen and wife, having withdrawn from New Design church, became constituent members at Richland Creek; drawn there undoubtedly because of the warmer antislavery sentiments in the new church. He probably hoped to find here a permanent church home. But his journeyings were not over as the event proved. He had yet "one more river to cross." Apparently another class of settlers were coming in, a class with proslavery sympathies. And always those in sympathy with an evil are intolerant of those who oppose it. ============== [Edward P. Brand, Illinois Baptists -- A History, 1930, pp. 37-39. -- jrd]
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