When Lincoln Walked Among Us
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[ Southern Illinois was an important--though less traveled--part of Abraham Lincoln's life as a practicing attorney, as evidenced in the keepsakes of the Bob Murry family of Tamaroa and according to James Cornelius, curator of the Abraham Lincoln Museum in Springfield.
Lincoln transacted dozens of land deeds for the Illinois Central Railroad, many of those railroad properties here in Southern Illinois.
Perry County Clerk Kevin Kern is intrigued by the possibility that some of those transactions involved railroad land in Perry County, although Lincoln's signature nor name hasn't yet surfaced in the clerk's or court's archives of the Perry County Courthouse. If and when that happens, its value would be immeasurable.
According to Cornelius, Lincoln was licensed to practice law before the Illinois Supreme Court ,which in the mid 1800s heard pleadings in three courthouses. Mount Vernon in Jefferson County was then the Southern District among the three Illinois Supreme Court Districts following the "Grand Division" of the court in 1853.
It is documented that Lincoln was in Mount Vernon on August 29, 1940 to campaign for Whig Party member William Henry Harrison and against Democrat Martin Van Buren.
The Whigs had seized on the political missteps of Democrats and in 1840 presented their candidate William Henry Harrison as a simple frontier Indian fighter, living in a log cabin and drinking cider, in sharp contrast to an aristocratic champagne-sipping Van Buren. Lincoln related to Harrison's similar humble beginnings. Harrison won the White House by the narrowest of margins.
It is documented that Lincoln spoke at least one more time in Mount Vernon in early September 1859. And, it is documented in the Centennial Edition of the Du Quoin Evening Call (1953) that Lincoln slept at the Pleasant Shade stage coach stop overnight. Pleasant Shade existed on property owned by Bob Murry's father, Xelpho Murry outside of Tamaroa.
The property and the stage coach stop is located a quarter of a mile off of Thompson Road in Township 5-1 in northeast Perry County. According to newspaper accounts, Pleasant Shade was the first post office in the area on the old Chester-Shawneetown trail near the extreme east side of the township five. There is proof that the post office was in existence in 1847, but before that nobody knows. According to local history, Abraham Lincoln once slept at Pleasant Shade while on his way from Benton to Tamaroa by stage coach to catch a northbound Illinois Central train.
The Lincoln Museum curator says there are lapses in the written history of Lincoln's travels, but doesn't doubt the claim that Lincoln may have stayed at Pleasant Shade. Yet, Cornelius said Lincoln once left Illinois for a week-long trip to Kentucky and there are no written accounts of why he went there.Lincoln's overnighters enjoys the same celebrity as "Washington slept here."
He said that for Lincoln to have gone from Benton to Tamaroa to catch a train, it would have had to have been after 1852, when much of the IC was finished and opened in this area.
"Pleasant Shade was torn down in 1952," according to Murry, but the family still owns the property. He said the property dates back to the Galloways and Pinwartons on his grandmother's side.
Like, all of us, he can only imagine the sight of Abraham Lincoln stepping from a stage coach onto Perry County soil.
Lincoln's presidential debates are the most storied of travels across Southern Illinois. It is fact that Lincoln stayed at the Union Hotel in Anna the night before the famed Lincoln-Douglas debate in Jonesboro. An easy-to-read account of that trip comes from staff member Jackson Foote of the Lincoln Junior High School in Carbondale and from the writings of Herrin author George Washington Smith (1855-1945) who wrote "When Lincoln Came to Southern Illinois. The book was written in 1940 and reprinted in 1993.
"It was a sticky day, hot and humid, on Wednesday, September 15, 1858, when Stephen A. Douglas got up in Jonesboro, Illinois, to speak in the U.S. Senate race and the crowd burst into cheers. Then came Abraham Lincoln. Only a few claps could be heard.
"Southern Illinois was hostile territory for Abraham Lincoln, and he risked a lot by going there to debate his opponent in what would become the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates. When Lincoln left "Egypt," as Southern Illinois was nicknamed, for the next debate he had turned some heads and maybe even gained some support. There was no question, however, that Douglas was the favorite.
"Lincoln was not popular in Egypt, because it was very much Democratic territory. One of Lincoln's friends in Southern Illinois thought it would be wasteful to debate Senator Douglas in the heart of Egypt, but Lincoln reasoned he had to. If he did not, he would not have been able to have a successful debate in Ottawa and Freeport, where he was popular.
"Lincoln knew he was not favored, and he even joked about it during the debate. "Don't be mean, the few friends I have here," Lincoln said. Lincoln was treated in Jonesboro much like Douglas was in Galesburg. A local citizen recalled that the fiddlers played so loud that it was hard to hear Lincoln.
"About fifteen hundred people attended the Jonesboro debate from Cairo and smaller towns like Mound City and from the neighboring territories of Kentucky and Missouri. Jonesboro was 350 miles away from Chicago and 33 miles away from Cairo; thus, getting to Jonesboro was not easy. People came by train and ox carriage. For many, the Lincoln-Douglas debates were a big event, but most people worked on Wednesdays so they could not attend.
"Because Lincoln did not have many friends in Southern Illinois, he traveled with a small group of supporters who followed him to Egypt. In Jonesboro, Lincoln also relied on the mayor of Jonesboro who supported him. Lincoln clearly did not want to make a fool of himself by showing that he had no local support. At the end of the debate, Lincoln tried to appeal to the audience by showing that by being born in neighboring southern Indiana he had something in common with southern Illinoisans. Lincoln said, "I was raised just a little east of here. I am one of these people."
"Lincoln went to Jonesboro from Anna the night before the debate after a big meal in his honor. He stayed at the Union Hotel in Jonesboro. The morning of the debate, Lincoln took a horse tour of the Ozarks. Later that morning, Lincoln went to visit a friend who could not go to the debate because she was 80 years old. Then he went to the debate site. Lincoln left quietly and spent the night in Anna with the Phillips family before going to the state fair the next day.
Slavery and topics directly related to it were issues most debated. Douglas believed that the territories should decide for themselves about slavery. Lincoln thought the Supreme Court should decide until the territories became states. The Supreme Court had already ruled that there should be no slavery in the territories. Lincoln asked, "Why, when we had peace under the Missouri Compromise, could you not let it alone?" Lincoln also argued that the territories did not have the same right that the states do. Illinois did not have slavery, but a black was not allowed citizenship."