over large areas,
and those who combined ministerial duties with farming, hunting, or some
other frontier occupation. Neither class received much money. Peter
Cartwright, one of the most famous pioneer preachers, received $40 one
year (1824-25) and $60 the next--and this he considered good wages.(485)
Pioneer energy was displayed in the overcoming of difficulties. For more
than ten years the Baptists held meetings on alternate months at two
places thirty-six miles apart, and several families regularly traveled
that distance to the two-days' meeting, even in unfavorable weather--and
this, too, after Illinois had become a state.(486) In 1829, the
Presbyterians, true to their missionary spirit, occupied the extreme
frontier at Galena.(487) Catholicism increased but slowly.(488) Divisions
such as were found in the East or South reached Illinois, and at one time
the Baptists were divided into three factions, which had about the same
kind of fraternal relations as the Jews and the Samaritans. The chief
questions for contention were whether or not missionaries should be sent
out by the church and whether fellowship with slaveholders should be
maintained.(489) An association of anti-slavery Baptists was formed, as
also Bible societies and temperance societies.(490) Camp-meetings, with
their well-known phenomena, were common in the early years of statehood,
and it is no reflection upon their value to say that they were one of the
chief diversions for the pioneers.

CHAPTER VI. SLAVERY IN ILLINOIS AS AFFECTING SETTLEMENT.

Slavery, as well as indentured servitude, existed in Illinois as late as
1845,(491) and the "Black Laws" of the state were repealed on February 7,
1865.(492) From 1787 until years after 1830 the slavery question was an
unsettled one. In addition to the arguments for or against the institution
that were used everywhere, the pro-slavery party in Illinois asserted that
as the Ordinance of 1787 guaranteed to the French inhabitants their
property, the French could hold slaves, and that as all citizens of a
state had equal rights other persons in Illinois could hold slaves. The
reply was that the Ordinance plainly forbade slavery.(493)

Whatever the merits of the argument, slavery did exist in Illinois. The
fear of the French that they might lose their slaves, and the desire to
attract slaveholders to Illinois, led to determined and repeated efforts
to legalize slavery. Early in 1796 a petition was sent f