Crusade Against Slavery: Edward Coles, Pioneer of Freedom

15. The Woodlands

200 15 The Woodlands E dward Coles left his western business interests in the hands of solicitor Isaac Prickett of Edwardsville, Illinois. Letters indicate that Prickett was, altogether, an unsatisfactory steward of Coles’s holdings. Coles traveled back to Illinois and Missouri every few years in order to effect business that Prickett had failed to manage satisfactorily. Coles had, for instance, loaned money to Messrs. Wilson and Edwards of Edwardsville, secured by mortgage. Under personal financial distress, Edwards had been forced to assign the property to creditors (property that was, of course, not his to assign). Coles came up empty. Prickett took little or no action. Coles was forced to travel to settle the matter. He went to St. Louis in May 1839 and to Edwardsville in May 1842.1 He watched carefully over his assets and traveled to supervise their management as long as his health permitted. Edward Coles battled poor health for the final decade of his life, but ultimately he receded into privacy. Aching joints and troublesome digestion kept him housebound for much of the 1860s. Letters have not survived. His renown surely declined even as his life quieted to a certain stillness. Friends and family were all that were left. Lincoln Coles’s lifelong efforts to weaken slavery (and to strengthen the republican ethos) together with his association with the founding fathers earned for him a share of affection in Philadelphia. Perhaps, it even reached to a modest level of esteem. He was no titan. His was, rather, THE WOODLANDS 201 a minor star in the Philadelphia firmament. Yet, there was warmth of feeling toward him. Abraham Lincoln, the lawyer from Illinois, formed the Republican ticket with Hannibal Hamlin of Maine. On the evening of 18May 1860, the Republicans called an impromptu meeting in celebration of the blessed event: the emergence of a ticket that had a reasonable hope of beating Stephen A. Douglas, who was leading the race for nomination by the Democrats. Lincoln had, after all, shown that he was a match for Douglas in a series of barnstorming public debates two years before. The meeting hall at the corner of Seventh and Chestnut was crowded that night. A band helped to amplify the excitement of the day with patriotic tunes. Dr. Smith, chair, called on William M. Bull, who roared out a collective congratulation on the success of the convention and outlined the life of Lincoln for the benefit of those not yet acquainted. Bull brayed “when the news spread through our city there was seen no smile on the faces of the Democracy. They had calculated upon Seward, and then they might have been successful. But now Douglas has not a shadow of a chance!”2 Moses A. Dropsie was next in the line of speakers, then William S. Pierce, and after him, Henry M. Brunner. No doubt the crowd was somewhat worn down by the oratory, so the stationary celebration graduated to a parade in the streets. Fireworks were already appearing in the night skies. A band was placed at the head of the procession. On they went, then, to the home of Judge John M. Read on Chestnut Street, gleefully marching and swaying to the trumpets and drum. It was both serenade and ballyhoo. Then the crowd marched to the home of Edward Coles on Spruce Street. Coles was too ill to make an appearance. He was too weak to address the crowd, so Moses Dropsie (still not at a loss for words, remarkably) lectured to the churning mass of Republicans in front of Mr. Coles’s brownstone residence. Dropsie pointed out that it was Coles who had furthered the Republican cause in Illinois, and that so long as Republicanism shall survive, the likes of James Madison and Edward Coles will never be forgotten.3 Three cheers were tossed to the heights for the Honorable Edward Coles. Cheers followed for the newly formed Republican ticket. The band played some. After a time, the clamor died down, and the crowd dissolved into the city. The night air remained agitated with excitement PART TWO 202 until the small hours. Thirty-six years before, a small riot had gathered below the window of Edward Coles’s room in Vandalia to hurl their venom at him. On that night, the crowd had despised its new governor; it had derided his resistance to slavery. He was, to them, little more than a traitor...