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Indiana Bicentennial 3.5: Governor Samuel Bigger (1840-1843)

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This is installment 3.5 of my Indiana Bicentennial series. Installment 3 covers generally the period from 1832 to 1848. 3.1: national context; 3.2: Gov. Noah Noble; 3.3: Indiana’s Mammoth Internal Improvement Act of 1836; and 3.4: Governor Wallace and Indian removal in Indiana. This short installment will look at Gov. Samuel Bigger.

Samuel Bigger (1840 – 1843)

By 1840, the disastrous financial consequences of the Panic of 1837 and the Internal Improvement financing was being fully felt in Indiana. The Whigs decided not to nominate Wallace, their sitting governor, and instead nominated Samuel Bigger who had no connection to the Mammoth Internal Improvement Act. The Democratic nominee, Tilghman Howard, had been in the General Assembly at the time of the Act and had voted for it. Bigger claimed to never have supported the Internal Improvement Act. (Given its general popularity at the time, this seems at least somewhat dubious.) Bigger was also aided by the fact that William Henry Harrison was on the ballot as the Whig Presidential candidate. Harrison’s reputation in the state had improved with the rose-colored glasses of hindsight, and he had become something of a folk hero. Despite the state’s financial struggles, the Whigs retained majorities in the legislature, and Bigger defeated Tilghman.

Bigger’s honeymoon didn’t last long. the State’s payment on its debt was double its revenues. The state soon defaulted on payments and, in an effort to come to grips with the situation, the State imposed a massive tax increase (apparently up to a 300% increase in some places). Efforts were made to complete the improvements, the Wabash & Erie in particular, in order to capture revenues from the improvements. However, those efforts did not make a sufficient dent in the debt.

In 1841, Bigger — a lawyer and former circuit court judge — rewrote Indiana’s code of laws with the assistance of state treasurer George Dunn. This was apparently the Indiana Code’s first major reorganization since 1824, and I believe the system for updating it from year-to-year as the General Assembly amends it dates from the 1841 reorganization.

Bigger’s re-election prospects, likely challenging under the circumstances in any event, were not helped by the surfacing of anti-Methodist quotes Bigger had made some years earlier when he was in the legislature. Early Methodist thought in the state had been cool on the idea of higher education. The denomination had reconsidered that position but, by the 1830s, Presbyterians dominated higher education in Indiana. Presbyterians controlled the Board of Trustees and faculty at Indiana College in Bloomington. They had also founded Hanover and Wabash. Methodists, having concluded that higher education was necessary to retain young people and advance their church, were trying to gain representation in Bloomington. Methodists outnumbering Presbyterians in the state on the order of 4-to-1, their strategy in 1834 was to attempt to have the legislature select the university board. At the time of that debate, Bigger – a Presbyterian – was a lawyer and a representative from Rushville. He vocally doubted the ability of American Methodists to manage a “literary institution,” claiming that when his alma mater of Ohio University wanted a Methodist professor, they had to send to Europe to acquire one. Bigger said there was “not a Methodist in America with sufficient learning to fill a professor’s chair.” When he ran for re-election in 1843, this came back to bite him.

Methodists, in particular a professor by the name of Matthew Simpson, were chafing over favorable financial treatment by the legislature for Presbyterian Wabash College. Additionally, a Presbyterian dominated convention on education was seen by the Methodists as an attempt by Presbyterians to gain control of the common schools — which, at that point, were not uniformly organized under Indiana law. Simpson dredged up the contemptuous way in which Bigger had spoken about Methodists. The Democrats, who had nominated Methodist James Whitcomb, saw an opportunity to dislodge a chunk of the normally pro-Whig Methodists in favor of the Democrats.

The Indiana State Sentinel, a Democratic paper published in Indianapolis, opened the campaign with a cleverly conceived rumor that the Whigs were attacking Whitcomb because he was a Methodist. The Lafayette Advertiser, also Democratic, confirmed the charges, adding that his being a Methodist ought to be “a recommendation instead of an objection.” “What!” exclaimed the Advertiser piously, “has it come to that, that a desperate political press shall urge it as an objection to James Whitcomb … that he is a Christian!”

Responding volleys by Whig newspapers such as the Indiana State Journal were unable to stem the tide. Given the State’s financial condition, it is difficult to say whether Bigger would have been re-elected in any case, but this campaign issue certainly did not help his cause.

I do not have a good segue for this, but it seems worth mentioning that by this point, the demographics of Indiana were changing. The early population of Indiana came along the Ohio River, mostly from Kentucky and parts south. In 1840, about 80% of the population was concentrated in the southern counties.

In 1840, the largest city in Indiana was New Albany, with 4,226 people. Indianapolis had a population of 2,692, Richmond 2,070, and Crawfordsville 1,327. Ten years later the New Albany-Jeffersonville area contained slightly over ten thousand people. The second largest city was Madison with 9,007 people, and third was Indianapolis with a population of 8,091.

As the Indians were forced out, settlers were less likely to come from the southern U.S. and more likely to come down the Wabash or up from the Ohio along the Great Miami River, Whitewater River, and even the National Road. These settlers would tend to come from points east, like Ohio and Pennsylvania. This seems to be the path taken by my family. I’m not a great genealogist, but this is generally the path the Massons seem to have taken. Mansfield B. Masson was born in Pennsylvania in 1805 and, in the 1830s was working in or around Pittsburgh. By 1847, he was in Cincinnati. His son, James P. Masson had moved to Indianapolis by the 1860s. And, even as the population was coming west, it was more common for trade to head east. With the opening of the Wabash & Erie Canal, crops would apparently go by wagon to Lafayette and then shipped up to northeastern markets such as New York and Boston. Chicago was even emerging as a market, though that was still a long wagon ride.

One account of early Chicago describes Hoosier wagons loaded with various kinds of produce which was traded for a few bags of coffee and the balance in salt; “this was the invariable return load of all Hoosiers.” The same observer claimed to have seen as many as 160 Hoosier wagons at once on the dry ground east of State Street in Chicago.

In any event, Central Indiana was starting to emerge as a vital part of the Indiana economy, and its connections to other regions of the United States was more varied than the early settlers in the southern part of the state. (Swamps and speculators seemed to have discouraged development in northern Indiana to some extent.) Before too long, sectional conflict would lead to the Civil War, and the affinity of Hoosiers with one section or another would have some relevance with respect to state and national affairs.

Next time: Gov. James Whitcomb (1843 – 1848), the Mexican-American War, and Education in Indiana

Indiana Bicentennial 3.4: Governor David Wallace (1837-1840) and Indian Removal in Indiana

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This is installment 3.4 of my Indiana Bicentennial series. Installment 3 covers generally the period from 1832 to 1848. 3.1  discussed the national context. 3.2 focused on Gov. Noah Noble. 3.3 discussed Indiana’s Mammoth Internal Improvement Act of 1836. This installment will look at Governor David Wallace and Indian Removal in Indiana.

David Wallace (1837-1840)

In 1837, Noah Noble’s Lieutenant Governor, David Wallace was elected as Indiana’s 6th Governor. (Wallace was the father of Civil War general, New Mexico governor, and author of Ben Hur, Lew Wallace.) David Wallace was elected before the financial depression hit and while the internal improvement act was still popular. However, things quickly went south for him and his term was dominated by the State’s financial struggles. As the Panic of 1837 disrupted the financial markets, property values plummeted, and construction on the internal improvements stopped; Wallace had the unenviable task of informing the legislature that the state’s credit had been exhausted and Indiana would soon be insolvent. By the end of his term in 1840, the state’s income covered only 20% of its expenditures—interest on the massive state debt being over two-thirds of the budget.

History of Indian Removal in Indiana

History of Indian Removal in Indiana

During Wallace’s tenure,  much of Indiana’s final Indian removals took place. In 1830, during the Jackson Presidency, the Indian Removal Act had been passed by Congress, making Indiana’s actions in this respect part of a nationwide trend (at least east of the Mississippi). “The Act established a process whereby the President could grant land west of the Mississippi River to Indian tribes that agreed to give up their homelands. As incentives, the law allowed the Indians financial and material assistance to travel to their new locations and start new lives and guaranteed that the Indians would live on their new property under the protection of the United States Government forever.” (Side note: the Supreme Court case of Johnson v. M’Intosh suggests that the Founders’ language about property rights being natural, inalienable, and independent of government as mostly happy talk that nobody believed in when it came to the property rights of Native Americans. As Chief Justice Marshall observed, “title to lands . . .  must be admitted to depend entirely on the law of the nation in which they lie[.]”)

Native American lands in Indiana had been ceded at various times, with the largest chunk coming from the Treaty of St. Mary’s in 1818. Among other things, that treaty required the United States to pay an annuity of silver to the Miami Indians. Shrewd and unscrupulous traders were able to make fortunes on the backs of such annuities. The general practice was to sell goods to the Indians on credit and then, when the annuity payments were set to come in, the traders would submit (often inflated) claims to the Indian agent who would pay the claims out of the annual Indian annuity payment, sometimes bypassing the Native Americans entirely. By the 1830s, the major tribes left in Indiana were the Potawatomi and the Miami. In 1838, the Potawatomi were removed from Indiana to Kansas in a forced march dubbed the Trail of Death. The march started in Twin Lakes, Indiana and ended near Osawatomie, Kansas. Pursuant to treaties that were, to some extent, disputed, the Potawatomi had agreed to give up their land and move west. When they refused to vacate the territory, Governor Wallace authorized John Tipton to mobilize a militia to forcibly remove them:

On August 30, 1838, General Tipton and his volunteer militia surprised the Potawatomi village at Twin Lakes. When Makkahtahmoway, Chief Black Wolf’s elderly mother, heard the soldiers firing their rifles she was so badly frightened that she hid in the nearby woods for six days. Unable to walk with a wounded foot, she was found by another Indian, who was looking for his horse, and brought to South Bend. Upon his arrival Tipton allegedly called for a meeting at the village chapel, where he detained the Potawatomi chiefs as prisoners. Although Father Petit was in South Bend at the time of the militia’s arrival, he later protested that the Potawatomi had been taken by surprise under “the ruse of calling a council.” Tipton reported that several of the Potawatomi had already gathered near the chapel when he arrived, but acknowledged that the Potawatomi were not allowed to leave “until matters were amicably settled” and they had agreed to give up their Indiana land.

Between Thursday, August 30, and Monday, September 3, 1838, the day before their departure, Tipton and his militia surrounded Menominee’s village at Twin Lakes, gathered the remaining Potawatomi together, and made preparations for their removal to Kansas. The names of the Potawatomi heads of families and other individuals, which numbered 859 in all, were recorded on tribal registration rolls. In addition, the soldiers burned the crops and destroyed the Potawatomi village, which consisted of approximately 100 structures, to discourage them from trying to return. Father Petit closed the mission church at Menominee’s village, explaining in a letter to his family dated September 14, 1838, “It is sad, I assure you, for a missionary to see a young and vigorous work expire in his arms.”

(See here for an account by Father Petit). During the 660-mile, two-month journey to Kansas, 28 children and 14 adults died. In Indiana, the route went south through Rochester to Logansport, then along the northern banks of the Wabash through Delphi, Lafayette, and Williamsport then west to the Illinois border — at times traveling down the Michigan Road along territory they had ceded in the 1826 treaty.

The Miamis held on somewhat longer. In fact, a good number were allowed to stay, and a fair amount of land was allotted (or, depending on your view — given as a bribe) to tribal leaders. For example, 43 members of Jean Baptiste Richardville’s family were given special consideration. Richardville was the nephew of the Miami war chief, Little Turtle by way of Little Turtle’s sister, Tacamwa, a French fur trader. He became a trader and controlled the portage between the Maumee River (which drains into the Great Lakes) and the Wabash (which ultimately drains into the Gulf of Mexico). The Maumee-Wabash Portage was an important piece of territory. It was described as the only “land barrier” separating the fur traders of Quebec from the fur merchants in New Orleans. Fort Wayne was established to assist the Americans in controlling that vital piece of geography. Due to his influence where he negotiated for the Miami, in various treaties, Richardville received 44 quarter sections of Indiana land (over 7,000 acres) in separate allotments. By his death in 1841, he was considered the wealthiest man in Indiana. When the Indiana Miamis were removed in 1846, it was only about half of them that went west to Kansas, leaving from Peru, Indiana and traveling west by canal boat and steamboat. About 323 members were removed with six dying along the way.

Next time: Governor Samuel Bigger (1840-1843)

Indiana Bicentennial 3.3: The Indiana Mammoth Internal Improvement Act of 1836

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This is installment 3.2 of my Indiana Bicentennial series. Installment 3 covers generally the period from 1832 to 1848. 3.1 discussed the national context. 3.2 focused on Gov. Noah Noble. This installment will look at Indiana’s Mammoth Internal Improvement Act of 1836.

Mammoth Internal Improvement Act of 1836

The Indiana Mammoth Improvement Act of 1836

The Indiana Mammoth Improvement Act of 1836

The Indiana Gazetteer of 1849 said of Noble and the Internal Improvement Act, “Gov. Noble, too, was unfortunate in being, if not the father, at least the most efficient promoter of the system of Internal Improvements, from which the State has suffered so much in both character and resources.” (That, dear reader, is foreshadowing.)

The initial idea of the bill was to continue funding the development of the Wabash & Erie Canal. But this met with resistance because legislators in other parts of the state did not see much benefit to their locality from the Wabash & Erie. Lawmakers attempted without success to pass comprehensive internal improvement legislation in 1834 and 1835. Part of what paved the way for successful passage was an overhaul of the tax system in 1835. Prior to 1835, Indiana’s two primary taxes were a per-acre property tax and a poll tax. The 1835 legislation shifted the per-acre tax to an ad valorem tax.

Rather than taxing all acres equally (or in Indiana’s case in three tiers of 80, 60, or 40 cents per acre), the ad valorem tax is figured as a percentage of the real property’s value. Shifting to this type of tax resulted in agricultural land being taxed less and urban areas (a relative term at this point – “urban” was still pretty rustic) taxed more. The nature of cities and towns is that they crop up at transportation junctions. The counties where canals and highways would be built would primarily be places with towns. The ad valorem tax would result in higher taxes for places with towns. But they were willing to bet that the value of added infrastructure would offset the added taxes. For their part, the agricultural areas which would not benefit as much from major infrastructure projects were more inclined to vote for the infrastructure if their tax burden would decrease or, at least, not significantly increase.

Legislators also had some reason for optimism about increased tax revenue. Federal legislation prohibited Indiana (and other states admitted between 1803 and 1821) from taxing land for the first five years after the sale of the public land to a private individual. The State had been selling a lot of land in the five years prior to 1836 and anticipated a lot of new land (subject to the new ad valorem tax) to be coming on-line very quickly.

With respect to the internal improvement legislation, I’m not sure whether to go with the log rolling, snowball, or Christmas tree metaphor here, but I’m sure everyone gets the idea. The scope of the project got pretty big to satisfy the various regional interests. For the Ohio River population, the Vincennes Trace would be paved. The Lafayette Pike would run from New Albany to Lafayette. The Michigan Road would be paved. There would be funding for the Central Canal and the Whitewater Canal in the East. And there would be railroads! One from Madison to Indianapolis, and another from Indianapolis to Lafayette.

The legislation created an Internal Improvement Board, authorized to borrow up to $10 million on top of the $2 million in debt the State already had. Projects would require that $12 million added to about $3 million that had been acquired through land sales. Annual tax revenues at the time were only something like $65,000 per year. This was an extremely ambitious — possibly foolhardy — project even in good times. But the Panic of 1837 hit, and helped topple the undertaking. Another piece of the problem was what seems in retrospect to have been a sketchy deal with the Morris Canal and Banking Company whereby Indiana would become indebted on the $10 million in bonds immediately but Morris would pay cash for the bonds in installments over time. Morris marketed the bonds in the U.S. and Europe. (Michigan also seems to have gotten caught up in problems with Morris Canal). Whereas Indiana received only $8.5 million from Morris (and some of that was in worthless securities) the State was, nevertheless, liable to creditors for the full $10 million plus interest and penalties. In 1839, Morris failed to make its installments and construction stopped on the internal improvements. By 1841, Indiana was unable to pay the interest on its bonds.

Most of the improvements, most of which were only partially constructed, were turned over to the creditors. The Vincennes Trace became the Paoli Pike, and was converted into a private toll road for about 30 years. It was never very profitable. The Central Canal was abandoned as a failure. A section of the Whitewater Canal was completed and remained in use for some years. The Madison and Indianapolis Railroad also had some success once completed by private ownership. The Wabash & Erie reached Lafayette in 1843 and began operation that year but, after a decade, it became clear that the canal was not economically viable. Additionally, Indiana had assigned the Wabash & Erie to a private trust for the benefit of the bondholders who, in turn, assumed half of the State’s bond debt. Technology developing how it did, and the State no longer having an interest in the canal, future State policies ended up being more favorable to railroads, undercutting the interests of the privately held canal.

However, even as ill-fated as the internal improvement legislation turned out to be, the resulting transportation infrastructure increased land values and productivity for Hoosiers, particularly in and around the terminus areas of the various projects.

Next time: Governor David Wallace and Indian removal in Indiana.

Indiana Bicentennial 3.2: Governor Noah Noble (1832 – 1837)

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This is installment 3.2 of my Indiana Bicentennial series. Installment 3 covers generally the period from 1832 to 1848. 3.1 discussed the national context. Now to look at Governor Noble and the state at the beginning of this period.

Noah Noble (1832-1837)

Indiana’s 5th Governor, Noah Noble, was an example of early industrial and financial enterprise in the State. Most of the pioneering people focused on agricultural pursuits (often pork and corn as cash crops) but needed access to markets, capital, finished goods, and methods for processing their own produce in a manner suitable for shipping and trading. Noble, in addition to being a land speculator in Brookville, was the owner of a trading company that purchased produce from area farmers and shipped them to New Orleans. I don’t know the particulars of his business, but there was often a lack of access to cash and credit, so the local merchant became sort of a fledgling banking operation. Providing goods on credit to local farmers, giving them a local means of trading their goods, and interacting with markets and manufacturers further away. This was not guaranteed profit by any means, a boating accident in 1819 destroyed an entire shipment and left him in debt for many years. Noble also operated a water powered weaving mill with a wool carding machine.

Noah was active in Franklin County politics, and his brother was Senator James Noble, a member of Indiana’s first constitutional convention. His brother’s influence got him the job of Receiver of Public Moneys in the Indiana Land Office which put him in touch with influential people in the State. (Apparently his other, younger brother Lazarus had previously held the position but died while moving the land office from Brookville to Indianapolis). When Andrew Jackson got elected, the nature of the spoils system was such that Noble was bounced from his job. However, he was soon appointed to the commission that laid out the Michigan Road.

As I’ve mentioned before, early Indiana government policy had a strong focus on transportation. Economic activity is largely useless if you don’t have the means to connect people and markets. You have to be able to get your pigs and corn to people who have a use for them, and the means to pay for them. The Michigan Road was an early state effort in transportation. In addition, the federal government was building the National Road which eventually ran east-to-west from Richmond (by way of Cumberland, Maryland) through Indianapolis to Terre Haute (and on into Illinois). The Michigan Road  ran north-south from Madison on the Ohio River, up to Indianapolis, and (by way of Logansport at the junction of the Wabash and Eel Rivers and South Bend on the St. Joseph River) to Lake Michigan at the port at Michigan City.

In the election of 1831, Noble was the Whig nominee for governor. On the national level, Whigs had formed in opposition to Andrew Jackson’s Presidency. Generally speaking, it favored Congress over the Presidency, modernization, banking, and protectionism that favored domestic manufacturing. “It appealed to entrepreneurs and planters, but had little appeal to farmers or unskilled workers.”

Having been chosen to lead the Whigs, Noble won a hard fought race as a Whig against his Democratic opponent, James Read; taking office in December 1831 and holding it until December 1837. He oversaw the completion of survey work on the Wabash and Erie Canal, and work started on the canal in 1832. Canals were all the rage for a period of time in the U.S.  The Erie Canal, built to connect New York City to the Great Lakes and opened in 1825 was wildly successful. The proposed Wabash & Erie project, which had its roots in an 1827 Congressional land grant, wasn’t necessarily popular throughout the Indiana, however. Under the terms of the grant, Indiana was required to start the project within five years and complete it within twenty. “Many saw the Wabash & Erie Canal as the speculative hobby of Fort Wayne Indian agent John Tipton (who stood to gain a fortune in Indian lands). Few people relished the idea of encumbering the state’s energy and scarce resources with a project in the northern wilderness, while the vast majority of voters and taxpayers stayed quite literally stuck in the mud of southern Indiana’s roads and rivers.” (Larson, John Lauritz. (2001), Internal Improvement: National Public Works and the Promise of Popular Government in the United States.)

The Wabash & Erie was an effort to connect the Great Lakes to the Ohio River. Nearly 500 miles long, it was the longest canal ever built in North America; eventually running from the Maumee River near Toledo, Ohio down through Fort Wayne, Peru, Logansport, Delphi, Lafayette, and then to Terre Haute and Evansville. By 1837, construction of the canal had reached Logansport.

Noble’s early efforts for a large scale internal improvement project were met with resistance by the Indiana General Assembly. He wanted money to pave highways and the creation of an Internal Improvement Board to coordinate projects and perhaps save money by buying in bulk. In particular, representatives from the southern part of the state resisted such efforts because the benefits would be experienced by the central and northern part of the state. (However, the southern representatives did agree to a reorganization of the legislature such that it reached its present size of 50 Senators and 100 Representatives, giving the central and northern parts of the state more representation despite the significantly higher population in the south.)

Access to capital continued to be a problem. I mentioned in an earlier installment that financial mismanagement, overly ambitious projects, and the national economy led to the demise of early banking in Indiana. For many years, the state relied on local branches of the Bank of the United States. However, Andrew Jackson got mad at the Bank of the United States and, like many things that got on Old Hickory’s bad side, it died. (Jackson had a variety of reasons for opposing the bank – personal, political, economic philosophy, and Constitutional philosophy). Lacking banking options, the state created the Bank of Indiana with branches in Indianapolis, Lawrenceburg, Richmond, Madison, New Albany, Vincennes, Bedford, Terre Haute, and Lafayette. The State owned 50% of the bank stock, financed through land sales and the other 50% was owned by private investors, who bought stock with about 1/3 of the purchase price paid up front and the remainder paid back on credit backed by the State. Start up money was in hard currency, Spanish and Mexican silver dollars. (Spanish dollars were legal tender in the U.S. until the Coinage Act of 1857 — one legacy of which, apparently, was the pricing of New York Stock Exchange listings in units of 1/8ths of a dollar (1/8 being a ‘bit’) until 1997.) The struggle to create the state bank left political scars. When the General Assembly of 1832 could not agree on a plan, there was an upheaval in the election of 1833 where only one Senator was re-elected and twenty-five new Representatives were elected. According to one author, “the old leaders who had dominated the General Assembly since 1816 disappeared. The pioneer period of Indiana history was ended, so far as the State legislature was concerned.”

Noble’s campaign for a second term was a rematch against James Read which he ultimately won. While neither seems to have been especially partisan, Read’s support came from the “Jacksonian Triangle” between Madison, Indianapolis, and Evansville. An item of controversy in the election was Noble’s sale of one of his father-in-law’s slaves. He had apparently been traveling with her from Virginia and stopped in Brookville for a couple of days. After that, he took her to Kentucky where it was expected that her owner would follow. The father-in-law later changed his plans and instructed Noble to sell her which he did in 1820. Because she had been in a free-state, this was characterized by Noble’s Democratic opponents as him selling her back into slavery.  There is also speculation that the Magruders, slaves of the Noble family, who were freed and relocated to a cabin at Noble and Market Streets in Indianapolis were the inspiration for Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Slavery did not endear him to the eastern, Quaker-heavy parts of the state, but he managed to win anyway. The re-election was seen as partially a rejection of President Jackson and partially as a vote of support for the internal improvement policies of Gov. Noble.

Next time: The Indiana Mammoth Internal Improvement Act.

Indiana Bicentennial 3.1: The National Scene (1832 – 1848)

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Our last installment ended with the administration of Gov. James Ray who started his tenure hopefully as an energetic young governor, independent of party affiliations and ended poorly with party conflict, a ham-fisted effort to exchange Supreme Court appointments for his own appointment to the U.S. Senate, and others ridiculing his optimism about the prospects of railroads.

Prior installments of this series are here:

Installment 1: Indiana Becomes a State (up to 1816)

Installment 2: Indiana as a Young State (1816-1832)

This time, I’ll  cover generally the period from 1832-1848, a period marked by economic turbulence, development of transportation infrastructure, a revamped approach to property taxes, the removal of Native Americans from the state, and the beginnings of a general system of public education.

I am going to try something a little different for installment 3. My general plan has been to write installments once a month during Indiana’s bicentennial year covering, more or less, 16 year periods. Installment 3 came in at about 6,300 words which is a little gratuitous in the blogging world. So, I’m going to break it up into chunks, release them over the next several days, and see how it goes. Here is the plan: 3.1: National Context; 3.2: Gov. Noah Noble (1832-1837); 3.3: Indiana’s Mammoth Internal Improvement Act of 1836; 3.4: Governor Wallace (1837-1840) and Indian removal in Indiana; 3.5: Gov. Samuel Bigger (1840-1843); and 3.6: Gov. James Whitcomb (1843-1848), the Mexican American War, and Education in Indiana.

The National Scene

Indiana was not operating in a vacuum, so to set the scene, it’s probably useful to have a bit of national context. On the national level, the Presidents of the United States during this period:
1829 – 1837: Andrew Jackson

1837 – 1841: Martin Van Buren

1841 – 1841: William Henry Harrison

1841 – 1845: John Tyler

1845 – 1849: James K. Polk

As I mentioned before, Andrew “Old Hickory” Jackson’s tenure featured aggressive (aggression seemed to permeate everything Jackson did) Indian removal policies,  and a populist opposition to the National Bank (“You are a den of vipers and thieves. I have determined to rout you out, and by the Eternal, (bringing his fist down on the table) I will rout you out!”)

Martin Van Buren (“Old Kinderhook”) (1837 – 1841) Van Buren’s tenure had an inauspicious start with the Panic of 1837. The Panic was preceded by an economic expansion that had been fueled by a boom in silver, land sales and tariffs, and significant investment from Great Britain related to cotton production, and state backed bonds financing transportation projects (much more on this later on). Rising interest rates from British lenders, a decline in cotton prices, misguided U.S. monetary policy, and land speculation in the west all contributed to a collapse in 1837 which led to an economic decline that lasted for about seven years. Van Buren also declined an initial request by Texas to join the Union. Meanwhile, the Mormons were on the move between Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, and ultimately Utah. With respect to slavery, Van Buren was morally opposed but regarded it as sanctioned by the Constitution and, therefore, opposed its abolition in Washington D.C. or in the U.S. generally.

William Henry Harrison (1841). Van Buren was blamed for the hard times, opening the way for a Whig Presidency to supplant the Democrats who had held office for quite some time. And, so, running on a campaign of log cabins and hard cider, William Henry (“Tippecanoe”) Harrison was elected. He is noted for having the longest inaugural speech and the shortest Presidency. His only official act of consequence was to call Congress into special session because federal funds were in such trouble, the government could not continue to operate until the regular session in December. His candidacy was very helpful to the Whigs in Indiana — although his political fortunes in the state had diminished as the anti-slavery faction of Jonathan Jennings and the Hoosiers in the eastern part of the state supplanted Harrison and his supporters, the years had mellowed Hoosier memories of Harrison, and he enjoyed a great deal of support borne of nostalgia there.

John Tyler (1841-1845) Harrison’s vice-president, John Tyler (“His Accidency”) assumed the Presidency upon Harrison’s death. It was not necessarily clear from the Constitution that this was the required protocol, but Tyler acted decisively in the transition and the precedent became codified in the 25th amendment. His most notable success was the annexation of Texas which had been declined by Van Buren not long before. Another initiative passed by Congress during Tyler’s early Presidency was the Preemption Act of 1841. Under its terms, squatters would get a right of first refusal when they had settled on federal lands. When it was offered up for sale, they were entitled to buy up to 160 acres at a discount before the land was offered to the general public. Ohio, Indiana, and other states admitted after them were to be paid 10% of the proceeds of that public land which was to be used for internal improvements. The Premption Act helped fuel the fires of Manifest Destiny, the notion that American settlers were destined to expand throughout the continent.

Tyler’s administration was plagued by opposition within his own party, partly because his Presidency was inconvenient to the perpetually frustrated Presidential ambitions of Congressional leader, Henry Clay. One division point between Tyler and Congress was the issue of the Distribution Program. As a result of the lingering economic problems from the Panic of 1837, Tyler thought it necessary to keep tariffs high (John Meynard Keynes and his notions about stimulus spending were not yet a thing) — High tariffs were contrary to an earlier deal with Southerners where the tariffs were expected to fall and, furthermore, Tyler sought to eliminate distributions from the tariffs to the  states due to the poor condition of federal revenues. Congressional Whigs were unwilling to reduce distributions to the States. After a couple of vetoes that inspired ill-will, Tyler got his way and ended distributions to the states. These fights had roots in Henry Clay’s “American System,” proposed and largely adopted in the 1810s.  It consisted of three primary ideas – a tariff to protect American industry, a national bank to foster commerce, and federal subsidies for internal improvements. These were generally opposed by the Southerners who wanted to sell cotton abroad, did not have as much in the way of industry, and did not have as great a need for internal improvements as the westerners.

James K. Polk (1845-1849). Tyler did not run for election in his own right. Succeeding Tyler was dark-horse candidate, James K. Polk (“Young Hickory”) who beat out Van Buren for the Democratic nomination in  1844. He was a remarkably successful expansionist. Mexico opposed U.S. annexation of Texas, so the U.S. went ahead and took most of the southwestern U.S. away from them in the Mexican-American War in 1846 and 1847. What could have probably been a minor border dispute was turned into a large scale war. Ultimately, Mexico was forced to recognize the annexation of Texas, recognize the Rio Grande as the border, and  obliged to sell parts or all of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and California for $15 million and the U.S. agreeing to assume about $3 million of Mexico’s debt to U.S. citizens.

Polk also forced a resolution of the British claim to the Oregon Territory — setting the boundary at the 49th parallel (something less than the “54-40 or fight” rhetoric). And, he managed to oversee a reduction of tariffs in a manner that was pleasing to his Southern constituency. “Additionally, he built an independent treasury system that lasted until 1913′ oversaw the opening of the U.S. Naval Academy, the Smithsonian Institution, the groundbreaking for the Washington Monument, and the issuance of the first United States postage stamp.” Having accomplished all that, he declined to run for re-election and died of cholera three months later.

Next time: Tomorrow, we’ll get started with Indiana and Governor Noah Noble (1832-1837).

 

Bicentennial Installment 2: Indiana as a Young State

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In our last installment, the anti-slave faction of Jonathan Jennings had prevailed over the pro-slavery faction of William Henry Harrison, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention had hammered out a Constitution, and President Madison signed the congressional resolution admitting Indiana as one of the United States.

I won’t hold myself too it in any strict way, but my general notion is to cover stretches of about 16 years with these installments. During the period from 1816-1832, we had the following governors:

1816-1832
Governors:
1817 – 1822 Jonathan Jennings
1822 – 1822 Ratliff Boon
1822 – 1825 William Hendricks
1825 – 1831 James B. Ray

The National Scene

It’s probably useful to have a bit of national context as well. On the national level, the Presidents of the United States during this period:
1817 – 1825 James Monroe
1825 – 1829 John Q. Adams
1829 – 1837 Andrew Jackson

Monroe’s presidency saw an expansion of the country as Florida was acquired and America acquired some joint interests with Britain in the Pacific Northwest. Monroe’s secretary of state (and future President), John Quincy Adams developed the Monroe doctrine which asserted American supremacy in the western hemisphere. The Panic of 1819 caused significant economic distress, and the admission of Missouri highlighted tensions between the slave holding and non-slaveholding states, leading to the Missouri Compromise where slaveholding Missouri could not be admitted until Maine was admitted at the same time; maintaining the status quo in the United States Senate between slaveholding and non-slaveholding states. John Quincy Adams was elected President in a hotly contested election that was ultimately decided in the House of Representatives. One of the candidates, Henry Clay, threw his support to Adams, giving him the Presidency. Andrew Jackson, never an even-tempered man, felt cheated and held a grudge. Adams embraced the American System which imposed high tariffs to fund internal improvements such as road-building, and a national bank to encourage productive enterprise and form a national currency. In the 1828 rematch, Jackson beat Adams in a landslide and became President. His Presidency featured opposition to the national bank and aggressive Indian removal policies.

Expansion into the frontier was very much a part of the national dynamic in this time as well as that of the state. Down by the Ohio river, settlement was coming up from the southern states. In the middle of the state, settlers tended to come from the mid-Atlantic states, and in the north, Yankees were more prevalent. In 1816, Thomas Lincoln and his famous son, Abraham, moved across the Ohio River from Kentucky to Indiana. One of the main features he saw in Indiana was a more reliable land survey system. In Kentucky, he had lost property in title disputes. (As I’ve argued before, there is nothing naturally inalienable about property rights. That’s a function of law. The distinction between Kentucky and Indiana at the time is an illustration.) The ability to securely own property was a major concern in a young country. Settlers would often acquire a tract of land and proceed to clear it. They would build a lean-to that gave them basic shelter, then they would clear some land in order to get crops planted. After some time, they would build a log cabin and try to generate a surplus they could sell. Typically the flow of trade would follow the river, heading south and west toward New Orleans. From there, crops could be transported by ship to the east. With the exception of light and/or valuable goods that were worth transporting up stream, finished goods would flow from the east to the west. Roads would be an early concern.

Jonathan Jennings

Indiana’s first Governor was Jonathan Jennings who loomed large in the run-up to statehood and the writing of the Indiana Constitution. His opponent in Indiana’s first state election was Thomas Posey who had been Indiana’s last territorial governor. Posey thought Indiana’s statehood was premature and suffered from health problems, so the election was not much of a contest. Jennings won with about 57% of the vote. “Jennings’s agenda called for establishing court proceedings to secure justice, organizing a state-funded educational systems, creating a state banking system, preventing unlawful seizure and enslavement of free blacks, organizing a state library, and planning internal improvements.”

Jennings proposed a free, state-funded education system as provided for in the state constitution, but — and stop me if you’ve heard this one before — Hoosiers were not eager to pay taxes to fund public schools. Infrastructure improvements were fairly ambitious but the State’s population was not large enough to provide it with tax revenue to build the roads and canals it needed to attract more population. State government and the state’s banks became heavily intertwined. In 1817, the territorially chartered Bank of Vincennes became the state chartered First State Bank of Indiana. The other major banking institution was the Farmers and Mechanics Bank of Madison, founded in 1814. The Panic of 1819 made Indiana’s challenging financial situation even tougher. The First State Bank’s position became so precarious that the its bills were not accepted from federal land offices and, by 1822, the bank had failed.

In 1818, Jennings was appointed as a federal commissioner to negotiate the Treaty of State Mary’s with Potawatomi, Wea, Miami, and Delaware who lived in northern and central Indiana. This would open up those areas for Hoosier settlers, but, unfortunately for Jennings, the state constitution prohibited the governor from holding a federal government position. Lt. Governor Christopher Harrison claimed that Jennings had forfeited his position. The General Assembly investigated, but Jennings seems to have successfully stonewalled them. Disgruntled, Harrison resigned as lieutenant governor and, shortly thereafter, ran against Jennings in Jennings second election campaign. (Governors served 3 year terms and were prohibited from serving more than 6 years in a 9 year period.) In 1820, Jennings got 11,000 votes to Harrison’s 2,000. (By contrast, the first election had only about 8,000 total votes cast. Indiana was growing fairly rapidly.) By this time, however, Jennings was running into personal financial trouble. Dependent on an income from political office and barred for running for re-election for governor, Jennings decided to run for Congress. In 1823, shortly before his term was set to end, Jennings became a candidate for Congress. Indiana’s Congressional representative, William Hendricks, resigned to campaign for Congress. A special election was held to fill the remainder of Hendricks’ term. Jennings ran both as a candidate to fill the remainder of Hendricks’ term and as a regular candidate for the newly created Second District. He won both and resigned the remainder of his second term as governor. The Lieutenant Governor, Ratliff Boon, became governor and served for 84 days.

Boon’s only act of consequence during his short time as governor was to conduct a census of the area purchased by the Treaty of St. Mary’s and make recommendations for the creation of counties in the region. His proposal was adopted by the General Assembly, which organized county governments and created three seats in the assembly to provide representation to the subjects of the census.

William Hendricks

William Hendricks ran unopposed for Governor and served from 1822-1825 — the last Governor, incidentally, to serve in Corydon. Hendricks had been a classmate of Jennings back in Pennsylvania where they grew up. (Hendricks was also the uncle of Thomas Hendricks who would go on to become governor and then Vice President in the mid-to-late 1800s). William Hendricks arrived in Indiana, by way of Ohio where he studied law in Cincinnati and practiced with his brother before moving to Indiana and setting up an anti-slavery printing press in Madison, Indiana (that press would also be used to print the first version of the Indiana Code). Within two or three years of moving to Indiana, he was well enough known that he was appointed secretary of the state’s Constitutional Convention in 1816. He succeeded his friend, Jennings, as Indiana’s Congressman (defeating Posey). While in Congress, he was a champion of internal improvements, supporting — among other things — the National Road.

When he took office, the state was in a bad financial situation, stemming from the Panic of 1819; the challenges of a new, lightly populated state government; and the laudable, but expensive, ambitions of such a state. Public lands were sold to stabilize the financial situation, and government accounts were moved to the Second Bank of the United States — Indiana’s bank having gone belly up. The state’s finances simply wouldn’t permit the ambitious internal improvement programs he would have preferred; so his focus was, of necessity, more limited in scope. There was apparently legislation passed during this time that required Hoosiers to spend an allotted amount of time contributing to the improvement of the state’s roads. (I don’t have the details and would love to see the text of that particular law.) The public school system (the first state funded system in the nation) began to take shape during the Hendricks’ administration. Each township was granted land on which a public school could be established. Additionally, construction of the State Seminary, which would become Indiana University, was constructed.

In 1824, an incident known as the “Fall Creek Massacre” took place. The relations between white Hoosiers and Native Americans were not good, but they were getting better. The bad news is that white people were still killing Native Americans. The good news is that they could no longer do so with impunity. It was the first documented case where white Americans were convicted, sentenced to capital punishment, and executed for the murder of Native Americans. Nine Native Americans (two men, three women, and four children) were murdered by seven settlers in Madison, Indiana. The massacre seems to have been borne of a lot of liquor, some suspicions with respect to stolen horses, and a great deal of prejudice. Three of the men — James Hudson, Andrew Sawyer, and John Bridge, Sr. —  were executed by hanging. The fourth man convicted of the murders, John Bridge Jr., the 18 year old son of Bridge, Sr., was pardoned in somewhat dramatic fashion:

On June 3, 1825, another large crowd, including numerous Native Americans, gathered for the executions, which were conducted one at a time. Sawyer was hanged first, followed by the execution of Bridge, Sr. His eighteen-year-old son, John Bridge Jr., witnessed both hangings before being led to the gallows and fitted with a noose and hood. At that point, Governor Ray, who had arrived on horseback, moved through the crowd and stopped the execution. After presenting the pinioned teenage prisoner with a written pardon, the governor announced, “Here is your pardon. Go sir, and sin no more.”[56] The young prisoner was immediately set free.[57] A Seneca chief in attendance at the hangings and the dramatic pardon remarked, “We are satisfied.”[58]

Also during Hendricks’ tenure, Indiana’s laws were codified as the Indiana Code, and Hendricks approved a measure that would move the capital from Corydon to Indianapolis.

These days, having the capitol in Indianapolis makes a certain amount of sense. It’s a big city in the middle of the state. However, at the time, there was pressure to keep the capitol in the South. That’s where most of the population was. Marion County was on the edge of the frontier. The site which would become Indianapolis was opened up by the 1818 Treaty of St. Mary’s which created “The New Purchase.” In the early 1820s, the legislature appointed a committee which selected the site, and a former assistant of Washington D.C.’s Pierre L’Enfant by the name of Alexander Ralston surveyed and designed the layout of the city’s “Mile Square” (bounded by North, East, South, and West streets). On January 1, 1825, Indianapolis became the seat of government, and the General Assembly first met in session in Indianapolis on January 10, 1825.

James Ray

On February 14, 1825, Hendricks resigned his position as governor to become U.S. Senator, having been elected to that position by the Indiana Senate. Ratliff Boon almost got to add to his 84 days as governor, but he had resigned as Lt. Governor the year before. The Lt. Governor position was vacant and so the governorship devolved to the president pro tempore of the Senate, James B. Ray. He was young, 31 years old, but managed to prove that he was old enough to take office (minimum age 30). During Ray’s tenure, the state was enjoying rapid growth (45%) and a period of relative prosperity. Party politics were rising, but Ray managed to stay out of them and, in fact, use his independence as a selling point when he ran for a full three year term later in 1825. He defeated Supreme Court Justice, Isaac Blackford, on a platform of party independence and that old favorite, internal improvements.

Ray’s view on internal improvements was interesting at that time as he became opposed to canals and championed a relative newcomer — railroads. Canals were all the rage. Ohio had recently had economic success with its canal projects and, of course, the grandaddy of them all, the Erie Canal in New York was an economic juggernaut. Railroads, by contrast, were unproven and their economic value not evident. Ray asked the General Assembly to create a committee explore the construction of new railroads. The committee returned with a finding that Ray’s plans to turn Indianapolis into a railroad hub were “utopian” and “mad and impractical.” No, said the General Assembly committee in its infinite wisdom, canals are where it’s at. (I’m paraphrasing). Design plans for the Wabash & Erie Canal were approved during this period, but Ray sort of sandbagged its progress, delaying construction where he could. He managed to leverage his position to facilitate construction of the state’s first railroad,a shortline from Shelbyville to Indianapolis. That railroad would later be expanded to connect Madison and Jeffersonville.

Ray also worked for the construction of the Michigan Road, the state’s first “super highway,” running from Madison to Michigan City. One of the things that needed to be done for the road was acquisition of land in northern Indiana from the Potawatomi  Indians. The road would later be part of the Potawatomi Trail of Death when they were forcibly removed from the state in 1838. President John Quincy Adams appointed Ray (along with John Tipton and Lewis Cass) to negotiate the land acquisition treaty. This led to a replay of the situation faced by Jennings where opponents tried to oust him from the governorship for allegedly violating the constitutional prohibition against holding a federal government position. By a vote of 31 – 27, he narrowly avoided impeachment proceedings.

Additionally, Ray advocated that the Indiana State Seminary be elevated to a college — one of the steps on the way to its becoming Indiana University. He also attempted a revision to model Indiana’s laws after the Napoleonic Code, similar to Louisiana, but this never came to fruition.

During Ray’s run for a second term, he was not quite as successful in avoiding the growing force of party politics. He purported to accept the overtures of the new Jacksonians under the condition that his alliance with them remain secret. However, shortly after this, he told a pro-Henry Clay newspaper that the Jacksonian Democrats were outrageous and violent. The Jacksonians fielded a candidate but Ray managed to win in a three way race, defeating Democrat Harbin Moore and Whig Israel Branby.

Ray’s second term ended poorly. The legislature wanted certain Supreme Court Justices reappointed. Ray delayed the reappointments, seeking to leverage them in exchange for appointment by the legislature to the U.S. Senate. (Contrary to the modern day reimagining of the virtues of the old U.S. Senate appointment process by those such as state senator James Smith, these were the kinds of shenanigans you got which led to the 17th Amendment.) Ray’s leverage attempt was unsuccessful. His double dealings with the political parties and his insane ideas about railroads led to his defeat. (Former governor Hendricks was re-elected instead.) Ray’s return to private life in 1832 was ignominious. His business ventures were unsuccessful, he had few friends and he was apparently believed to be mentally deranged. Ultimately, he died in Cincinnati of cholera in 1848 at the age of 54.

Indiana Becomes a State: Dec. 11, 1816

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Indiana became a state 199 years ago — on December 11, 1816 — and we are a mere one year from our bicentennial. I wanted to take a little look at our State’s history. Hopefully, I can manage a bit of a series by way of tribute.

The Territory

The Indiana Territory was created in 1800, extending westward to the Mississippi and from the Ohio River up to Canada. It had about 5,600 white people (the only ones who “counted” at the time), mostly clustered around Clark’s Grant and Vincennes. Even by 1813, when the territory was much reduced by the splitting off of the Michigan and Illinois Territories and the territorial capital was moved from Vincennes to Corydon, the population was mostly in a crescent down the Whitewater, along the Ohio, and up the lower Wabash. The primary reason for this was Indian resistance to white expansion. As territorial governor, William Henry Harrison was primarily responsible for dealing with this. Harrison was expansionist and aggressive, negotiating land cessation treaties in the early 1800s. The loss of land, among other things, provoked resentment among the Native Americans, creating an environment ripe for the rise of Tecumseh and his brother, Tenskwatawa, the Prophet. While the Prophet preached, Tecumseh worked on uniting the tribes of the Northwest. Harrison described Tecumseh as “the efficient man-the Moses of the family . . . a bold, active, sensible man daring in the extreme and capable of any undertaking.” (James Madison, “the Indiana Way” at p. 43). Adding to the concerns of the Americans were the friendly relationships of the Native Americans with the British. Convinced that hostilities were imminent and concerned about Tecumseh’s ability, Harrison determined to strike while Tecumseh was away. On November 7, 2011, Harrison defeated the Prophet at the Battle of Tippecanoe (which is, as luck would have it, about 5 miles away from where I am writing this.)

The War of 1812 initially went poorly, with Indians striking into southern Indiana as far south as Scott County. But eventually, the Northwest Army with Harrison in charge pushed back and by October of 2013, the Indians were defeated decisively at the Battle of the Thames north of Lake Erie at which Tecumseh died. That was pretty well the end of Indiana military resistance to white incursions into Indiana. Not that non-military efforts did the Indians any good. The Miamis who had stayed neutral and tried to honor their treaties with the Americans were not treated noticeably better than the Shawnee or the others.

Indiana’s initial push for statehood was unsuccessful. As a Congressman, Jonathan Jennings petitioned Congress for Indiana statehood in 1811. The War of 1812 broke out, and Congress had other concerns. After the war, a census of the Indiana Territory was taken. 60,000 adults were needed for a territory to become a state, and Indiana was found to have 63,000. Jennings again petitioned for an enabling act to permit the Indiana territory to become a state. Congress drew up the boundaries and delegates were selected in the State to go to Corydon and draw up a state constitution.

Jonathan Jennings

Jennings was an interesting character who dominated early Indiana politics but who seems largely forgotten now. By the time he died, apparently he was so broke, there was nothing left with which to purchase a headstone and he was buried in an unmarked grave.

Born the middle child of an educated family, he grew up in Pennsylvania and eventually studied law. A couple of his childhood friends in Pennsylvania, William Hendricks and William Wick, would go on to be his political allies in Indiana. Jennings briefly practiced with his brother in Steubenville, Ohio before heading west to the Indiana Territory in 1806, opening a law practice in Vincennes. There wasn’t, apparently, a great deal of work for lawyers at the time; so he fell in with the territorial land office and made a good deal of money in land speculation.

Fairly soon after arriving in Vincennes, Jennings seems to have developed an antagonistic relationship with Harrison arising out of Harrison’s relationship to Vincennes University and Jennings position of clerk with the Board of Trustees. But the antagonism would develop deeper roots when Jennings moved east where there were more anti-slavery sentiments and a resentment of Harrison’s aristocratic manner. When the position for territorial representative to Congress opened up, Jennings ran against Harrison’s preferred candidate (Thomas Randolph — the territory’s attorney general who would die at the Battle of Tippecanoe two years later) and won — with a large part of his support coming from the Quakers in the eastern part of the Territory. Irregularities in Dearborn County’s vote counting led a U.S. House committee to recommend a re-vote, but the full House eventually rejected that proposal, leading the way for Jennings to take his seat.

Harrison and slavery would also figure prominently in Jennings’ campaign for re-election. Harrison and Randolph’s support was further eroded when the Illinois territory was separated off from the Indiana territory because the pro-slavery faction, loyal to Harrison, was based more to the west. After his re-election, Jennings kept after Harrison. One of the complaints against Harrison was the sense that he unnecessarily raised tensions with the Native Americans. This line of attack probably became more complicated after the Battle of Tippecanoe and the beginning of the War of 1812. Jennings lamented the battle but promoted a bill to compensate veterans of the battle and their widows and orphans. He was not a hawk with respect to the War of 1812, but resigned himself to it.

With a war on, Harrison resigned as territorial governor to serve as a military general. Jennings and his allies took advantage of this by pushing to move the territorial capitol away from Vincennes – a Harrison stronghold. Jennings also won another election against a Harrison ally with Jennings running under the campaign slogan, “No Slavery in Indiana.”

Statehood

Indiana petitioned for Statehood in 1815. This was not universally supported. Among the most persuasive arguments was that Indiana did not yet have the population to support statehood financially. Statehood would mean that a lot of support from the federal government would go away even as the new state had to finance the infrastructure of government. Proponents of statehood were often willing to overlook this difficulty inasmuch as they hoped to fill the newly created government offices. (But also: democracy). On April 19, 1816, President Madison signed into law an Enabling Act, providing for election of delegates to a convention. (Mississipi was Indiana’s Slave Twin State — suggesting a precursor to the Missouri Compromise was underway in Congress already.)

[S]aid state shall consist of all the territory included within the following boundaries, to wit: bounded on the east, by the meridian line which forms the western boundary of the state of Ohio; on the south, by the river Ohio, from the mouth of the Great Miami river, to the mouth of the river Wabash; on the west, by a line drawn along the middle of the Wabash from its mouth, to a point, where a due north line drawn from the town of Vincennes, would last touch the north western shore of the said river; and from thence by a due north line, until the same shall intersect an east and west line, drawn through a point ten miles north of the southern extreme of lake Michigan; on the north, by the said east and west line, until the same shall intersect the first mentioned meridian line which forms the western boundary of the state of Ohio[.]

Delegates were elected by the white men in the territory according to the population in the various counties. Specifically, the counties and their delegate counts: Wayne (4), Franklin (5), Dearborn (3), Switzerland (1), Jefferson (3), Clark (5), Harrison (5), Washington (5), Knox (5), Gibson (4), Posey (1), Warrick (1), Perry (1). These 43 men met at Corydon for the Constitutional convention (often under the shade of a large elm tree). Most had origins from south of the Ohio River, including 27 hailing from Kentucky. Three had been at the Battle of Tippecanoe: James Smith of Gibson County, Patrick Shields of Harrison County, and Benjamin Parke of Knox County.

The delegates copied liberally from the constitutions of other states, Ohio and Kentucky in particular. There was generally (but not necessarily sharply) a split in factions between eastern, pro-statehood Jennings men on the one side and western, anti-statehood Harrison men on the other. Great quote from John Badollet of Vincennes describing the Jennings faction as “empty babblers, democratic to madness, having incessantly the people in their mouths and their dear selves in their eyes.” (Madison at 51) — Guess some things don’t change all that much. The Jennings faction mostly got their way, resulting in a more populist set up. Members of the House were to be elected annually; members of the Senate every three years. The legislature was to be the dominant branch of government. All white male citizens over 21 who had resided in the State for a year would be able to vote. Men between 18 and 45 were required to enroll in the militia, “Negroes, Mulattoes, and Indians excepted.” In addition to the revolutionary stuff for the time that we take for granted — freedom of speech, to bear arms, to assemble, to worship, etc. — the Hoosier delegates were fairly creative and progressive for the time by requiring that the General Assembly provide for a general system of education from township schools to a state university. Free and open to all (as soon as circumstances will permit). There was also the provision, still in our present Constitution, requiring that the the penal code be “founded on the principles of reformation and not of vindictive Justice.” (Some criminal punishments have struck me – as an outsider – as being more vindictive than restorative; but it’s good to have noble aspirations in any case.)

With regard to slavery, the State would be mostly slave free. Slavery and involuntary servitude were formally banned. However, only indentures of “any negro or mulatto hereafter made” were declared invalid. So, there was wiggle room for indentured servitude already in force at the time of the Constitution. This was more prevalent in the western, pro-slavery section of the state and not so common in the east (for which you can probably thank, in part, the Quakers). Knox County apparently remained a popular place to own slaves even after Statehood. However, it was not too long before the Indiana Supreme Court took steps to end slavery for good in the State.

The new constitution was signed by the delegates on June 29, 1816. Elections took place in August. Jennings easily defeated his pro-Harrison opponent, Thomas Posey, and, on December 11, 1816, President Madison signed the congressional resolution admitting Indiana into the Union.