Slavery in Early Illinois

Yesterday I mentioned how John Beaird, the instigator of war with the Cherokee in the Southwest Territory in 1793, eventually moved to Illinois with his family and slaves.

But Illinois was part of the old Northwest Territory. In 1787 the confederation Congress’s Northwest Ordinance outlawed slavery there. So how did Beaird’s move work out?

In practice, the government dragged its feet about ending slavery. Some French settlers already in that territory owned slaves, and the first U.S. governor, Revolutionary War general Arthur St. Clair, took no action against the practice. When Americans from slave states first moved into the western Northwest Territory, they were also generally allowed to keep their human property. That appears to be what John Beaird did in 1801.

Here’s what the Combined History of Randolph, Monroe and Perry Counties, Illinois (1883) says about John Beaird:

Then comes an inventory of the estate of John Beaird, dated March 13th, 1809. Beaird must have been farming extensively; the inventory mentions seventeen horses, worth from $45 to $100 each, two yoke of oxen, wagons, plows, six sets of harness, etc., a “mulatto negro” worth $350, and a black boy worth $250.

At the subsequent estate sale, “The negro boy ‘Berry’ was sold to John Beaird, Jr., for $450, the other brought only $225.”

The legal situation shifted a little in 1803 when Ohio became a free state. In September 1807 the Indiana Territory (including Illinois) passed a law forbidding slave owners from bringing in human property. But that didn’t mean immediate emancipation because:

• Within thirty days of entering, owners could go to the county clerk and make out an agreement for their slaves to continue working as indentured servants. If slaves refused the deal offered, owners had another sixty days to send them back into slave territory.
• Slaves under the age of fifteen could be indentured only until men turned 35 and women turned 32.
• Children born to indentured people would be indentured themselves until age 30 for men and 28 for women.

In 1814, the year after Indiana became a free state, the Beaird family must have felt some pressure to put their ownership of people on a more secure legal footing. On 17 October, Joseph Beaird had two workers—James, aged about 18, and Charles, 27—sign indentures agreeing to work for him for the next 65 years. Beaird promised each man $50 at the end of that term. Of course, by then they would most likely all be dead.

On the same day, John Beaird, Jr., made out similar indentures for three boys and one girl:

• Harry, aged about 16, for 80 years.
• Annaky, about 16, for 80 years.
• Welden, about 16, for 80 years.
• Peter, about 21, for 75 years.

The indenture for Harry read:

St. Clair county, Illinois territory. ss. Be it remembered that on the 17th day of October of the year 1814, personally came before me the subscriber, clerk of the court of common pleas of the said county, John Beaird of said county, and Harry, a negro boy, aged near upon sixteen, and who of his own free will and accord, did in my presence, agree, determine, and promise, to serve the said John Beaird, for the full space of time, and term of eighty years from this date. And the said John Beaird, in consideration thereof, promises to pay him, said Harry, the sum of fifty dollars, at the expiration of his said service. In testimony whereof, they have hereunto set their hands and seals the day and year first herein above written. Interlineation made before signing.

Mark of X Harry. [seal.]
John Beaird. [seal.]
Signed and sealed in presence of John Hay, C. C. C. P.

Was Harry the same as the “negro boy ‘Berry’” that John Beaird, Jr., had bought from his father’s estate six years before? It’s possible. In a later court case Beaird’s heirs claimed that he had brought Harry in from Tennessee just one week before signing those indentures, making the arrangement fit within the 1807 law. But that could have been a lie for legal reasons. Likewise, were all three of those sixteen-year-olds really just a little too old for the shorter indenture period?

The future of slavery in Illinois was foggy in those years. Periodically politicians floated proposals to formally allow slavery or to completely end it sometime in the future, but they never found a compromise everyone would accept. The first state constitution of 1818 avoided the subject. An attempt five years later to make slavery explicitly legal failed.

By turning their slaves into indentured servants—indentured for what would be their expected lifetimes—the Beairds sidestepped that debate. But the legalities didn’t really fool anyone. In the 1820 census, Joseph A. Beaird was listed as owning eight slaves.

TOMORROW: What happened to Harry?

Monsters in the Southwest Territory

On 24 Sept 1794, William Butler of Northampton ran this item on the last page of his Hampshire Gazette newspaper:

CURIOUS ANIMAL

In February last, a detachment of mounted infantry, commanded by Captain John Beaird, penetrated fifteen miles into the Cumberland Mountain:

On Cove Creek, ensign M’Donald and another man, in advance of the party as spies, they discovered a creature about three steps from them it had only two legs, and stood almost upright, covered with scales, of a black, brown, and light yellow colour, in spots like rings, a white tuft or crown on the top of its head, about four feet high, a head as big as a two pound stone, and large eyes, of a fiery red. It stood about three minutes in a daring posture

(orders being given not to fire a gun except at Indians,) Mr. M’Donald advanced and struck at it with his sword, when it jumped up, at least, eight feet, and lit on the same spot of ground, sending forth a red kind of matter out of its mouth resembling blood, and then retreated into a Laurel thicket turning round often, as if it intended to fight. The tracks of it resembled that of a goose, but larger.

The Indians report, that a creature inhabits that part of the mountain, of the above description, which, by its breath, will kill a man, if he does not instantly immerse himself in water.

You can see that item starting at the bottom of the first column on this page spread (P.D.F.).

Other newspapers ran the same story, crediting it (as Butler had not) to the Knoxville Gazette. At the end of the year, the same report was reprinted in Greenleaf’s New-York, Connecticut and New-Jersey Almanack for 1795.

Militia captain John Beaird was a notorious figure in the Southwest Territory, which became Tennessee in 1796. In June 1793 President George Washington’s federal agents were visiting a friendly Cherokee chief named Hanging Maw and other leaders at the town of Coyatee, planning a treaty meeting. Beaird led a renegade militia company charging into the town, killing a dozen people and wounding others, including Hanging Maw. Beaird’s men then burned the goods that the agents had brought as gifts.

The federal government tried Beaird in a military court, but public opinion forced his acquittal. The secretary of the territory reported, “to my great pain, I find, to punish Beard by law, just now, is out of the question.” The next month, Beaird attacked another Native town and killed half a dozen more people. Clearly he intended to stir up a war, scotching any treaty that limited white settlement.

And it worked. Cherokees counterattacked at Cavett’s Station. That fall, John Sevier led a larger militia force against the Cherokees, both friendly and understandably unfriendly, and drove them further west. (Some authors say Sevier had urged Beaird on in his early attacks.)

That Cherokee-American War explains why in February 1794 Beaird’s men were pushing into the Cumberland area with orders “not to fire a gun except at Indians.” However, there’s still no explanation for the creature that Ens. McDonald and his companion saw. Recent books on cryptozoology have dubbed it the “Cumberland Dragon” or “Goosefoot.”

A period term for the creature appears in a 7 Nov 1798 letter from William Blount, governor of the Southwest Territory during Beaird’s raids, about a court case:

All the usual writs known in law are distinguished by some technical name or term, and this production of [Judge David] Campbell’s being unknown in law, it has been deemed proper to call it by a new name, to-wit, Cheeklaceella. I make no doubt you remember a description of an animal (a monster in nature) of this name being published in the Knoxville Gazette in the year 1793 [sic]. Campbell’s production is certainly as great a monster in law as anything under any description or name whatever could be in Nature. What a misfortune to a Country to have a fool for a Judge.

After Tennessee became a state, Sevier served multiple terms as its governor as well as representing it in the U.S. House. Blount was a U.S. Senator until being impeached in 1797; he remained popular at home, and his half-brother Willie succeeded Sevier as governor. Campbell was impeached as a state judge in 1798 and 1803, but acquitted both times. John Beaird served in the state legislature before moving his family and slaves to Kentucky and then to Illinois. Tennessee politics appear to have been lively.