1826.

THE FRONTIER JUDGE.

157

when we first went out really was the law, or whether it was only just your notion." "Mr. Green," said a judge to the prisoner, "the jury in their verdict say you are guilty of murder, and the law says you are to be hung. Now, I want you and all your friends down in Indian Creek to know that it is not I who condemns you, but the jury and the law. Mr. Green, the law allows you time for preparation, and the Court wants to know what time you would like to be hung." After the date had been fixed to the satisfaction of the two at that day four weeks, and the judge had been satisfied that four weeks from that day was not Sunday, the prosecuting attorney asked the Court to pronounce a formal sentence and exhort the prisoner to repentance. To this the judge answered: Oh, Mr. Turney, Mr. Green understands the matter as well as if I had preached to him for a month. He knows that he has got to be hung this day four weeks.-You understand it in that way, Mr. Green, don't you?" "Yes," said the prisoner, and so ended the discussion. A jury finding it could not agree on a verdict because one of the twelve was the confederate of a gang of horse thieves it was trying, brought him to reason by making serious preparations to hang him.

Trials in those days were held in somebody's log cabin or in the bar-room of a tavern, and when the jury retired to deliberate it was to the shade of some near-by tree or to a log especially prepared for them. Judge and bar rode the circuit together, and a lawyer was fortunate if at the end of his ride his daily earnings amounted to what would now be the wages of an unskilled laborer. An attorney of that day assures us that on his first circuit he was paid five dollars in one county for prosecuting criminals; that on his way to the next county he was almost drowned in crossing a river, but found some compensation in being retained in another trial which yielded him five dollars more; that in the third county there were no cases before the Court; that he then rode sixty miles over the unbroken prairie to Quincy, where he made another five dollars; and that, passing on to Pike County, he there found nothing to do, and was glad to be the guest of the hospitable sheriff.*

* Life of Lincoln. Nicholay and Hay, vol. i, pp. 61-62.

Yet his lot was the common lot of lawyers, not a few of whom had attained to some distinction in the older States long before they moved to Illinois. To such men the chance of political preferment was the great attraction. In a frontier community, where no industries had been established, where neither trade nor commerce consumed 'the thoughts and energies of the ambitious and aspiring, where newspapers were scarce and books were little known, politics was almost a daily vocation. Wherever a body of men were gathered together, at the log tavern, at the cross-roads, at the store in the settlement, at the horse-races, or at a "raising," measures and candidates were the all-absorbing theme of never-ending discussion. No party organization, no caucus, no machine existed, and in the absence of such appliances the personal element counted for much, and the successful politician was he who knew the people face to face, and who won their votes because his character compelled esteem. If he wished to be a governor or a judge, a member of the Legislature, a sheriff, or a senator, he said so plainly, published an address, made a personal canvass from house to house, asked for the votes he needed, and argued the matter with the refractory. He was the candidate of no party. He was the nominee of no convention, and looked on every vote cast against him as a personal affront. On one occasion the State treasurer, after a protracted struggle in the Legislature, failed of re-election. But the vote had scarcely been counted when he entered the chamber, took off his coat, and soundly thrashed, one by one, four men who voted against him. Both friends and opponents considered this as no more than the occasion required, and he was promptly made clerk of the Circuit Court.*

Violence of this sort was of too common occurrence to excite even comment. "Men," said a pioneer, speaking of the good old times," would fight for the love of it, and then shake hands and be friends." There is no reason to doubt the statement, for almost everything which passed as pleasure and amusement was rude and boisterous, and often bordered on

* History of Illinois. Ford, p. 81.

1

1826.

THE CIRCUIT RIDER.

159

the brutal. Whatever brought men together—a raising, a husking, a log-rolling, a horse-race, a wolf hunt, or a wedding-was sure to be the occasion of rough games and practical jokes. One who was himself a frontiersman, and who knew his class well, assures us that "these men could shave a horse's tail, paint, disfigure, and offer it for sale to the owner. They could hoop up in a hogshead a drunken man, they themselves being drunk, put in and nail fast the head, and roll the man down hill a hundred feet or more. They could run down a lean and hungry wild pig, catch it, heat a ten-plate stove furnace hot, and, putting in the pig, could cook it, they dancing the while a merry jig." It would be a great mistake to suppose that the community which tolerated such misdeeds and the men who took part in them were depraved and vicious. Nowhere else was the standard of morality higher or more fully attained. Nowhere else did religion have a firmer hold. Churches, indeed, were few, but the circuitrider was everywhere.

His vocation was rarely a matter of accident or choice. He had been called to it by the voice of the Lord God of Israel. Judged by his own estimate of himself, he was a brand snatched from the burning. He had committed no particular sin; he had broken no commandment; yet he had in his own eyes begun life a sinner, and had long refused to listen to the voice of the Lord pleading with him. But at last he had come to his senses, and after a spiritual experience as terrible as that of Bunyan, had passed safely through the Dark Valley and had reached the House Beautiful. Thenceforth he regarded himself as an instrument of God for saving the souls of men, and went to his work sustained by a faith that never wavered and animated by a zeal that never flagged.

For the work which lay before him he needed little other equipment. There were, he readily admitted, many paths to grace; but the safest and the surest was that pointed out by John Wesley, to whom he looked up as the greatest teacher the world had seen since the advent of Christ. For educa

* Life of Lincoln. Nicholay and Hay, vol. i, pp. 53, 54.

tion, for book-learning he had no inclination. He knew the Bible as he knew his own name, accepted the good book with childlike credulity, and expounded its teachings with the utmost literalness in the plainest words and with an intensity of manner that carried conviction and aroused repentance in the rudest frontiersman. This, with a good constitution, a horse, and a pair of saddle-bags, was equipment enough. What he should eat or wherewith he should be clothed concerned him not. "The Lord will provide" was his comfortable belief, and experience justified his faith. His circuit was of such extent that he was constantly on the route; but it mattered not. Devoted to his calling, he rode his circuit in spite of every obstacle man or Nature could put in the way. No settlement was so remote, no rain was so drenching, no river so swollen, no cold so bitter, as to deter him in his work, or to prevent him from keeping an engagement to preach to a handful of frontiersmen. Over such men his influence was boundless. We read in the accounts of camp-meetings of great crowds of the plainest and roughest of men held spellbound by his rude oratory, or thrown prostrate with an excitement which did not by any means pass away with the occasion. It is not too much to say that the religious life of the middle West to-day bears distinct traces of the efforts of the Methodist itinerants in the early years of the century.

In common with their fellow-citizens in other Western States, the people of Illinois in 1824 were passing through a period of hard times, the inevitable consequence of cheap money, overspeculation, and debt. Twelve years before, while Illinois was still a Territory, money was rarely to be seen. Beaver, deer, and raccoon skins did duty as a circulating medium. But when the great emigration of 1816 swept over the Territory, the Legislature, following the custom of the day, chartered two banks of issue, and forced its notes on the people by enacting that if a creditor would not take them the collection of the debt was stayed. Notes of the banks of Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri received the same consideration, and money at once became cheap, plentiful, and worthless.

Times grew flush, credit could be had to an unlimited

1819-21.

WILD-CAT BANKING.

161

extent for the asking, and, as emigrants came thronging in, land and property of every sort rose rapidly in value. A spirit of wild and reckless speculation seized on the people. Towns without number were laid out on paper, lots were purchased on credit, houses were built on promises, and Government lands were entered in enormous quantities under the credit system then in force. The merchant, confident that the stream of emigrants would never stop, bought vast quantities of goods on time, and sold them on trust to the people, who felt sure of gathering great profits from the settlers yet to come. Everybody was extravagant, hopeful, and in debt. But the day of reckoning came sooner than was expected. By 1819 paper, having driven out specie, began to depreciate, the banks began to waver, credit disappeared, and the Legislature was called on for help. The usual replevin laws and stay laws were used, and a monster Bank of Illinois, with two millions of capital, was chartered. All was in vain. Not a dollar of its stock was ever taken, and when, in 1820, the banks of the neighboring States went down in bankruptcy, those of Illinois at once suspended, and the visions of prosperity vanished. The emigrants who came, driven West by hard times in the East, were as penniless as the old pioneers; the paper towns were never settled; trade languished; real estate was utterly unsalable, while the contracts made in a time of hopeful enthusiasm began to mature. Embarrassed on every hand, the people again appealed to the Legislature, and in 1820 the Illinois State Bank, with a capital of half a million dollars, based on the credit of the State, was chartered. It was preeminently a people's bank, for the act expressly provided that its bills should be loaned to the people in sums of one hundred dollars on personal security, and over one hundred and up to one thousand on real estate; that they should be receivable for taxes, costs, and fees; and that unless a creditor would write on his execution the words "Bills of the State Bank of Illinois or either of its branches will be received in discharge of this execution," the debtor was entitled to three years' stay by replevy. The State was laid off into four districts, with a branch of the bank in each, and three hundred thousand dollars were distributed on the basis of population.