leader that saved Illinois to freedom. Not only the state, but
on a wider basis the evidence is very strong that Rev. James Lemen,
Sr., largely shared in saving the Northwestern Territory for free
states. This was the estimate that General [Governor] William Henry
Harrison placed on his labors in his letter to Captain Joseph Ogle
after his term of the governorship had expired. [17]In his letter
to Captain Ogle he said that, though he and Mr. Lemen were ardent
friends, he [Lemen] set his iron will against slavery here and
indirectly made his influence felt so strongly at Washington and
before Congress, that all efforts to suspend the anti-slavery clause
in the Ordinance of 1787 failed.

But James Lemen was not only a factor which saved the anti-slavery
clause in the Ordinance of 1787, but there is no doubt, after putting
all the facts together, ... that his anti-slavery mission to the
Northwestern Territory was inspired by the same cause which finally
placed the anti-slavery clause in the Ordinance, and that Lemen's
mission and that clause were closely connected. Douglas, Trumbull, and
Lincoln thought so, and every other capable person who had [been] or
has been made familiar with the facts.

Many of the old pioneers to whom the facts were known have informed me
that all the statements as to Rev. James Lemen's anti-slavery teaching
and preaching and forming his anti-slavery churches, and conducting
the anti-slavery contest, and sending a paid agent to Indiana to
assist the anti-slavery cause, were all true in every particular; and
so the evidence outside and independently of that in the Lemen family
notes is conclusive that Mr. Lemen created and organized the forces
which finally confirmed Illinois, if not the Northwestern Territory,
to freedom. But there was just one fact that made it possible for the
old pioneer leader practically single handed and alone to accomplish
such results; and that was because President Jefferson's great power
was behind him, and through his secret influence Congress worked for
the very purpose that Jefferson, more than twenty years before, had
sent Lemen to Illinois, or the Northwestern Territory, to secure,
namely, the freedom of the new {p.44} country. The claim that Mr.
Lemen encompassed these great results would, of course, be ridiculous
were it not known that the power of the government through Jefferson
stood behind him. Hence Douglas, Trumbull, and others are correct, and
I quite ag