HISTORICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ILLINOIS.
535
ham Lincoln-then a conservative opponent of the extension of slavery-on an appeal from a judgment, rendered by the Circuit Court in Taze well County, in favor of the holder of a note given for the service of the indentured slave-girl "Nance," obtained a decision from the Supreme Court of Illinois upholding the doctrine that the girl was free under the Ordinance of 1787 and the State Constitution, and that the note, given to the person who claimed to be her owner, was void. And it is a somewhat curious coincidence that the same Abraham Lincoln, as President of the United States, in the second year of the War of the Rebellion, issued the Proclamation of Emancipation which finally resulted in striking the shackles from the limbs of every slave in the Union.
In the practical operation of aiding fugitives in Illinois, it was natural that the towns along the border upon the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, should have served as a sort of entrepots, or initial stations, for the reception of this class of freight-especially if adjacent to some anti-slavery community. This was the case at Chester, from which access was easy to Sparta, where a colony of Covenanters, or Seceders, was located, and whence a route extended, by way of Oakdale, Nashville and Centralia, in the direction of Chicago. Alton offered convenient access to Bond County, where there was a community of anti-slavery people at an early day, or the fugitives could be forwarded northward by way of Jerseyville, Waverly and Jacksonville, about each of which there was a strong anti-slavery sentiment. Quincy, in spite of an intense hostility among the mass of the community to anything savoring of abolitionism, became the theater of great activity on the part of the opponents of the institution, especially after the advent there of Dr. David Nelson and Dr. Richard Eells, both of whom had rendered themselves obnoxious to the people of Missouri by extending aid to fugitives. The former was a practical abolitionist who, having freed his slaves in his native State of Virginia, removed to Missouri and attempted to establish Marion College, a few miles from Palmyra, but was soon driven to Illinois. Locating near Quincy, he founded the "Mission Institute" there, at which he continued to disseminate his anti-slavery views, while educating young men for missionary work.
