UP TO THE THIRD state legislature, convening at Vandalia December 2, 1822, went the bitter legislative contest
from Pike, arising out of the election on August 5, that year. Strange as it may seem, the story of this contest
which, as later events proved, was loaded with political dynamite, has escaped all but the passing notice of pike
county's historians. Here, the Pike county historian has passed up one of the most colorful chapters in Illinois
history. This contest, as will be seen, arose out of, was based upon, and led to actions and events that today
seem almost unbelievable.
So strong were the county-seat antagonisms in Pike county that the Coles' Grove followers of John Shaw had taken
matters into their own hands in the Coles' Grove precinct in the election of August 5, 1822, and had set up a polling
place outside the jurisdiction of the regularly constituted judges who had been named by the County Commissioners
Court. The regularly appointed judges, early on election day, had refused to accept the votes of certain alleged
henchmen of Shaw who had attempted to vote and who had been denied on the ground that they were not legally qualified
voters under the suffrage clause of the then constitution of the state. Thereupon, the smoldering county-seat feud,
involving the Shaw and Hansen factions, flamed into volcanic action.
Challenge of the qualifications of Shaw voters was at once met by the Shaw partisans with a counter challenge of
the qualifications of two of the sitting judges of elections named by the court. The County Commissioners Court,
in June, 1822, had selected three judges to preside over the election in the Coles' Grove precinct. Now, Shaw and
his followers challenged the qualifications of Amos Bancroft and another who had been substituted for Shaw, an
appointed judge, who had disqualified himself by being a candidate in the election. They asserted that these two
judges were not legally qualified to serve.
Outnumbered seven to one, the Hansen followers, claiming the judges were qualified, yielded the seat of justice,
the appointed polling place, to the Shaw forces and adjourned to a private house, that of Nathaniel Hinckley, then
county treasurer, in whose house they proceeded to open the polls. The majority or Shaw party, then proceeded to
elect two judges to serve in place of those whom they claimed disqualified, and invited Stephen Dewey, the third
judge, who had withdrawn with the Hansen followers, to join them, as being the only one of the three men appointed
by the commissioners who was qualified to serve. He refused, and thereupon the electors selected a third judge
and proceeded to hold an election at the seat of justice. Thus, in Coles' Grove precinct, there were two polling
places, one set up by the properly constituted authorities and one set up by the electors, each presided over by
judges claiming to be legally qualified.
As between the Shaw and Hansen forces it was a clean split. Shaw received every vote cast in the polling place
set up by the electors, and Hansen received every vote polled under the regular judges. In the Shaw polling place,
the vote stood 83 for Shaw and none for Hansen; in the Hansen polling place, the vote was 12 for Hansen and none
for Shaw. It is thus seen that Hansen and Ross's Settlement had an even dozen supporters in the Shaw stronghold,
the same election revealing that Shaw and Coles' Grove had only three supporters in the stronghold of the Rosses.
Less than 200 votes were cast in the memorable election of August 5, 1822, 95 of them being in the Coles' Grove
precinct and 53 in the Ross's Settlement precinct. The total legislative vote of the county, which then covered
one- third of the state, was 179, a considerable number of which votes, however, was challenged as illegal. The
Hansen- Shaw vote in the county stood, if all votes were counted, including the 83 cast in the electors' polling
place in Coles' Grove, 75 for Hansen and 104 for Shaw. Excluding the allegedly illegal votes in Coles' Grove, the
county vote stood 75 for Hansen and 21 for Shaw. If the electors' polling place in Coles' Grove was held to be
the legal voting place for that precinct, the vote in the county then stood 63 for Hansen and 104 for Shaw.
Another view of the Hansen-Shaw election may be had from the transcripts of the poll books filed in the contest.
These show that in Precinct 1, at the house of Ossian Ross, on the present site of Lewistown in Fulton county,
Hansen received 13 votes and Shaw 16, a total of 31 votes, this election precinct including the present sites of
Chicago, Galena, Peoria and Rock Island; in precinct 2, at the house of Rufus Brown in Ross's Settlement, Hansen
received 50 votes and Shaw ....; in Precinct 3, at the house of Nathaniel Hinckley, Hansen received 12 votes and
Shaw none; and at the seat of justice in Precinct 3, Hansen received no votes and Shaw 83.
It is thus seen that the then county clerk, James W. Whitney, was confronted with two sets of election returns,
both claimed to be official. He was obliged to decide as to which set was legal, the issues, as has been seen,
involving not only the legislative contestants but also two sets of contestants for county offices, namely, the
respective candidates of Coles' Grove and Ross's Settlement for the offices of sheriff, coroner and the three county
commissionerships.
County Clerk Whitney, in making up his returns to the Secretary of State, accepted the returns favoring Hansen,
who thereby was given a majority of 54 votes in the county. Hansen thereupon was granted a certificate of election,
and, equipped with this certificate, claimed the Pike seat in the House when the legislature convened in December,
and was seated therein by the Speaker of the House. Clerk Whitney at the same time found in favor of the Ross's
Settlement contestants for the county offices, which finding was challenged by the Coles' Grove claimants, who,
as has been seen, were at first successful in a circuit court proceeding, the court later reversing itself and
finding in favor of the Ross's Settlement claimants.
Shaw, excepting from the set of election returns sustained by the county clerk, gave notice of contest. The law
required that written notice be given within 20 days of the close of the election and that taking of depositions
be within 10 days. Accordingly, on August 19, 14 days after the election, Shaw gave notice of contest to Hansen,
naming the points of contest, and setting August 29 as the day for taking depositions. Shaw alleged in his contest
not only that the election of August 5 was illegal but also charged the friends of Hansen had resorted to intimidation
and bribery.
On August 29, depositions were taken in the contests of the county officers, but Hansen, for some reason, was unwilling
to have testimony taken in his case at that time, and, at Hansen's request, Shaw permitted a postponement. Then,
on September 4, thirty days after the election, Shaw gave Hansen a second notice of contest and named September
12 as the day for taking testimony. On September 12, the friends of Shaw appeared in goodly numbers and gave evidence
in favor of Shaw, which, together with transcripts of the poll books and other data, was submitted to the elections
committee of the House.
The House committee, before which the contest was lodged, doubtless was much disturbed bu the array of evidence
in behalf of Shaw and by the fine legal questions involved. It appears, however, that the committee found a way
of avoiding too serious consideration of the evidence. The pro-slavery majority in the House needed the vote from
Pike county under the two-thirds requirement. Hansen, playing his trump card, appears to have thrown his anti-
slavery crowd in return for their support of his county-seat bill, and to vote with them for Jesse B. Thomas, strong
pro-slavery candidate for the U. S. Senate. Hansen, approved by the pro-slavery majority, was thereupon officially
seated on December 9, 1822.
One or two authorities are inclined to discount the reports current at the time of a bargain negotiated between
Hansen and the pro-slavery majority. However, the writings of Charles J. Sellon, one-time editor of the Springfield
Journal, in his early Pittsfield paper, "The Radical," containing intimate interviews with Pike county
leaders of the period in question, seems to establish conclusively that there not only was such a bargain but that
its terms were known and approved by Hansen's constituency in the Military Tract.
The House committee, by way of warrant for the seating of Hansen without much reference to the evidence submitted,
held that the notice of contest given by Shaw on August 19 had been superseded by a second notice given on September
4, which invalidated the first notice, and the second notice having been given after the expiration of the 20-day
limitation, was therefore illegal, leaving no legal grounds for a contest. To clinch the ruling, the committee,
noting that the date of service on the notice of September 4 appeared on the document as August 7, or nearly a
month before the notice was written, held, in spite of the obvious clerical error in naming the month, that the
discrepancy in dates invalidated the notice. The committee also was supported in its holding by the highest legal
authority in the state, that of Justice John Reynolds of the Supreme Court, who in the circuit court of Pike county
had sustained the Ross's Settlement claimants of the county offices in contests based upon the same sets of election
returns and circumstances pertaining thereto.
With Hansen, partisan of Ross's Settlement, seated in the House, the way was smoothed for an Act, approved by the
Legislature December 30, 1822, Section 2 of which reads as follows: "Be it further enacted, etc., for the
purpose of fixing the permanent seat of justice of said (Pike) county, the following persons be and the same are
hereby appointed Commissioners, to-wit: Garrett Van Dusen, Ossian M. Ross, John M. Smith, Daniel Moore and Daniel
Shinn, who, after being sworn by some judge or justice of the peace of this state, faithfully and impartially to
discharge the duties imposed upon them by this act, shall meet at the house of John Shaw (wherein Court was held
at Coles' Grove), in said county, on or before the first day of March next, and proceed to determine on the permanent
seat of justice of said county, and designate the same, taking into consideration the condition and convenience
of the people, the future population of the county, and the health and eligibility of the place; and they are hereby
authorized to receive as a donation for the use of said county any quantity of land that may be determined on by
them, from any proprietor that may choose to offer such donation of land; which place so fixed and determined upon,
the said Commissioners shall certify under their hands and seals, and return same to the next Commissioners of
Court in said county, which shall cause an entry thereof to be made upon their books of record."
The act provided a compensation of two dollars per day for each day necessarily spent by the Commissioners in discharging
their duties, to be allowed by the Commissioners of the Court and paid out of the county treasury.
The same act prescribed new bounds for the county of Pike, bounding the county (proper) on the north by the base
line. The county, as bounded under this act, comprised the present counties of Pike and Calhoun, and a slice 12
miles wide off the south side of what is now Brown county and a slice 18 miles wide off the south side of what
is now Adams. Actually, however, the above bounds did not reduce the original vastness of Pike county's jurisdiction,
the Act further declaring that "all the rest and residue of the territory, composing the county of Pike before
the passage of this act, shall be attached to, and be a part of, said county until otherwise disposed of by the
General Assembly of this State."
This day, December 30, 1822, marking approval of the above Act, was a great day for Ross's Settlement. Commissioners
named in the act were known partisans of Ross's Settlement, and there was no doubt as to where they would fix the
permanent seat of justice. But Ross's Settlement was to learn that there is many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the
lip.
A little less than a month later, January 28, 1823, during this same legislative session, with Hansen still sitting
as a member of the House from Pike, the legislature cut off the county of Fulton from the original Pike county.
On this date, January 28, 1823, the site of Chicago passed out of the Pike county picture and was included in the
attached territory of Fulton, which embraced the greater part of what is now Cook county. Pike, however, with its
attached territory, was still left a huge domain, including what is now Pike, Calhoun, Adams, Brown, Hancock, McDonough,
Henderson, Warren, Mercer, all but the lower corner of Schuyler, and part of Rock Island counties, including the
site of the present city of Rock island. Ossian M. Ross, residing on the present site of Lewistown, and named as
one of the commissioners to fix the Pike county seat of justice was barred from acting by reason of his residence
in the new county of Fulton.
The third legislature has now come to the memorable crisis of February, 1823. And now, in order to understand what
is happening and the major role that Pike county is beginning to play in the affairs of men, it is necessary to
raise the curtain for a brief time upon the larger stage of state politics, where a tremendous drama is being enacted.
For now the antagonisms engendered by the county-seat war are beginning to merge into the larger issue, to become
a definite factor in shaping the political futures of the state and nation.
