After the emancipation proclamation, and adoption of the 13th amendment to the Constitution of the United States, Mr. Jones wrote and spoke with much power in behalf of the repeal of the black laws, and the enactment of such laws as would give his people equal civil and political rights with the whites; and when the colored man was enfranchised, Mr. Jones was one of the first in the State to be elected to an office. He was twice elected one of the Commissioners of Cook county, from Chicago, and served each time with Carter Harrison, the present Mayor.

After a long and useful life, he died on the 21st of May, 1879, leaving a widow and one child. His estate was valued at $70,000.

Mrs. Jones' father was a resident of Alton at the time of the murder of Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy, and Mrs. Jones was then a girl of some fifteen years. She vividly remembers the tragedy, and the sad and silent little funeral procession which followed his remains to the burial ground, for it passed by her father's house.

WHIPPED AND ORDERED FROM THE STATE.

Notwithstanding Illinois was consecrated to freedom, she has had, from first to last, many pro-slavery citizens, and among the towns in which resided some of the more outspoken, was Griggsville, Pike county. An Abolitionist had few friends there; indeed he was regarded as a person beneath the respect of the people. In 1845, during the agitation of the question of annexing Texas to the United States, a stranger happened into the town on the evening of a meeting of the Lyceum, and after the business hour had passed he stated that he had a petition which he would be glad to have those present sign, and quite a number attached their names without knowing its real object; but next morning, after the stranger had taken his departure, it became known to the

leading pro-slavery men that it was a petition for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, when the stranger was followed, the petition taken from him and he whipped and commanded to leave the State without delay. An effort was subsequently made to compel every signer to withdraw his name, which they all did, with the exception of O. M. Hatch and Nathan French, and the latter was hotly pursued to the store of Starne & Alexander, where he obtained an axe-helve and prepared to defend himself to the last extremity. In the meantime, John M. Palmer, then the Yankee clock peddler, coming in at the rear entrance, handed French a pistol, saying at the same time, "defend yourself with that," and with these weapons Mr. French succeeded in driving away his assailants.

A CASE OF KIDNAPPING.

In 1845, Joseph Dobbs, of Tennessee, a man of education and refinement, inherited some eight or ten families of slaves, numbering in all about forty persons, but being opposed to slavery he removed with them to Illinois, settling in Pope county, where he bought for each head of a family a small tract of land on which to begin life, and gave to all their free papers. Mr. Dobbs was a bachelor, and spent much of his time in looking after the interests of his colored colony with almost as much tenderness as though they had been his own children. In the spring of 1846, three of the most likely children were stolen by Joseph Vaughn and his band and taken to Missouri and sold into slavery. Vaughn was a great outlaw, and when it became known that the children had been run off and sold into slavery, the better citizens of Pope county resolved to secure their return at any cost, and Dr. William Sim, Maj. John Raum, Judge Wesley Sloan and Philip Vineyard offered a reward of $500 for their apprehension.

William Rhodes, sheriff of the county, volunteered to go in search of the children, whom he found in Missouri, and returned them to their parents. Vaughn was afterward indicted for the offense, but he endeavored to shift the responsibility upon certain members of his gang, who retaliated by poisoning him, from the effects of which he died. The prejudice against persons befriending colored people was not so great in Pope county then as in some other localities of the State, and Mr. Rhodes was elected the same year as a Representative to the Fifteenth General Assembly from the counties of Pope and Hardin; he died January 4, 1847, while a member, and was buried at Springfield. Mr. Dobbs died the latter part of 1847, and willed his entire property to the colored people to whom he had vouchsafed the boon of liberty.

TRIBULATIONS OF FREE NEGROES.

The public records of Illinois show many curious things regarding the treatment of free colored persons, before the emancipation of slavery. We obtained the following from the record kept by John Raum, Probate Judge of Pope county:

66

"STATE OF ILLINOIS,

}

89.

The people of the State of Illinois, to the sheriff of said county, greeting: We command you to receive the body of Ned Wright, a negro, who has been brought before me, and on being examined is not found to have free papers; he is, therefore, committed to your charge, to be dealt with according to law.

"Given under my hand and seal, this 19th day of April, A. D. 1847.

"JOHN RAUM, P. J. P. Co. (Seal.)" This is only one of hundreds of a similar character found upon that record. In order that our readers may understand the purport of this order, we copy from the Revised Statutes of 1845, page 388, Chapter 74, Section 5, of the law governing such proceedings:

"Section 5. Every black or mulatto person who shall be found in this State, and not having such a certificate as is required by this chapter, shall be deemed a runaway slave or servant, and it shall be lawful for any inhabitant of this State to take such black or mulatto person before some justice of the peace, and should such black or mulatto person not produce such certificate as aforesaid, it shall be the duty of such justice to cause such black or mulatto person to be committed to the custody of the sheriff of the county, who shall keep such black or mulatto person, and in three days after receiving him shall advertise him, at the court house door, and shall transmit a notice, and cause the same to be advertised for six weeks in some public newspaper printed nearest to the place of apprehending such black person or mulatto, stating a description of the most remarkable features of the supposed runaway, and if such person so committed shall not produce a certificate or other evidence of his freedom, within the time aforesaid, it shall be the duty of the sheriff to hire him out for the best price he can get, after having given five days' previous notice thereof, from month to month, for the space of one year; and if no owner shall appear to substantiate his claim before the expiration of the year, the sheriff shall give a certificate to such black or mulatto person, who, on producing the same to the next circuit court of the county, may obtain a certificate from the court, stating the facts, and the person shall be deemed a free person, unless he shall be lawfully claimed by his proper owner or owners thereafter. And as a reward to the taker up of such negro, there shall be paid by the owner, if any, before he shall receive him from the sheriff, ten dollars, and the owner shall pay to the sheriff for the justice two dollars, and reasonable costs for taking such runaway to the sheriff, and also pay the sheriff all fees for keeping such runaway, as other prisoners: Provided, however, that the proper owner, if any there be, shall be entitled to the hire of any such runaway from the sheriff, after deducting the expenses of the same: And, provided also, that the taker-up shall have a right to claim any reward which the owner shall have offered for the apprehension of such runaway. Should any taker-up claim any such offered reward, he shall not be entitled to the allowance made by this sec

It will be observed that, after all this circumlocution, there was nothing in the certificate of freedom. But lest some of our readers should be curious to know how a negro became free at all, we will say that there were not infrequently persons in the slave States who, becoming convinced of the injustice and wickedness of the institution, would manumit their slaves, but the laws of the slave States required the owner to remove them to the free States. Sometimes, as was the case with Gov. Coles, the owner would buy homes for his slaves and become their bondsman. In this way many freedmen became residents of the several free States, and naturally migrated from one free State to another, believing that they had a right so to do, but the police regulations were so unjust and arbitrary in Illinois, that they experienced great trouble in establishing a residence in the State; and it was not an uncommon thing for such persons to be kidnapped and sold into slavery, nothwithstanding they might have had their certificates of freedom, for they had no redress in the courts.

A FREE BOY'S EXPERIENCE.

In 1859, a colored boy, who had been born in Ohio, wandered into Illinois with the hope of bettering his condition financially, but not finding in the broad prairie State what had been pictured to him, he bent his way to St. Louis, unmindful that the laws of Missouri were unfriendly to his race. But he had hardly set foot in that city before he was arrested and taken before an officer, who sentenced him to receive "500 lashes for being a free-born negro in the State without a pass." Just as he was being removed to the place of punishment, Captain George Stackpole, a steamboatman of Cincinnati, entered the court room and demanded the release of the boy on the pretext that he was an employé of his boat. The word "lashes" the boy had not heard when his sentence