the pro-slavery power.

Jan. 20th 1806.

[15]As Gov. William Henry Harrison and his legislative council have
had their petitions before Congress at several sessions asking for
slavery here, I sent a messenger to Indiana to ask the churches and
people there to get up and sign a counter petition to Congress to
uphold freedom in the territory and I have circulated one here and we
will send it on to that body at next session or as soon as the work is
done.

New Design. Sept. 10, 1806.

[19]A confidential agent of Aaron Burr called yesterday to ask my aid
and sympathy in Burr's scheme for a Southwestern Empire with Illinois
as a province and an offer to make me governor. But I denounced the
conspiracy as high treason and gave him a few hours to leave the
territory on pain of arrest.

New Design. Jan 10, 1809 [1810].

[20]I received Jefferson's confidential message on Oct. 10, 1808,
suggesting a division of the churches on the question of slavery and
the organization of a church on a strictly anti-slavery basis, for the
purpose of heading a movement to finally make Illinois a free State,
and after first trying in vain for some months to bring all the
churches over to such a basis, I acted on Jefferson's plan and Dec.
10, 1809, the anti-slavery element formed a Baptist church at Cantine
creek, on an anti-slavery basis.

New Design. Mar. 3, 1819.

I was reared in the Presbyterian faith, but at 20 years of age I
embraced Baptist principles and after settlement in Illinois I was
baptized into that faith and finally became a minister of the gospel
of that church, but some years before I was licensed to preach, I was
active in collecting and inducing {p.31} communities to organize
churches, as I thought that the most certain plan to control and
improve the new settlements, and I also hoped to employ the churches
as a means of opposition to the institution of slavery, but this only
became possible when we organized a leading church on a strictly
anti-slavery basis, an event which finally was marked with great
success, as Jefferson suggested it would be.

New Design. Jan 10, 1820.

My six sons all are naturally industrious and they all enjoy the
sports. Robert and Josiah excel in fishing, Moses in hunting, William
in boating and swimming and James and Joseph in run