William J. Allen and the proposed secession of Southern Illinois

   Talk of secession was nothing new in 1860. You can read more about various states and territories at this previous post. One of the less discussed secession movements occurred in late 1861 and early 1862 and dealt with the southern part of Illinois. There were some who wanted that portion of the state to form a new state and join the Southern Confederacy.

William J. Allen

   Illinois became the twenty-first state in the Union on December 8, 1818. It was created out of the old Northwest Territory. The idea of a part of Illinois breaking off was not new. Between 1840 and 1842, several northern counties attempted to secede and rejoin the state of Wisconsin. Why? Northern Illinois was settled by those from New England and New York. Southern Illinois was populated by those from Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina. Starting in 1840, those in the north – including Jo Daviess County, Stephenson County, Winnebago County, and Boone County, voted overwhelming to secede from Illinois and join Wisconsin. When Chicago itself would not get on board, the project died.[1]

   Allan G. Bouge, in The Congressman’s Civil War, writes of another attempt of secession in Illinois. U.S. Congressman William J. Allen, “openly advocated the division of Illinois so that the southern region might secede to join the Confederacy.” William J. Allen was born in 1829 in Wilson County, Tennessee. His family moved to Illinois about 1830. He was educated in local schools and received his law degree from the Law Department at the University of Louisville in 1848. He was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1849, practiced law, served in the Illinois House, was a U.S. Attorney, and was Judge of the Illinois Circuit Court. Allen ran as a Democrat and won a seat in the 37^th United States Congress, replacing John A. Logan, who had resigned to accept a commission as colonel of an Illinois Infantry Regiment.[2]

   William J. Allen undoubtedly caused quite a stir across the Northern states when he was arrested in September 1862, along with several others, for involvement with the Knights of the Golden Circle. A Chicago newspaper considered Allen “an undisguised secessionist” and thought he “ought to be beaten.” In reality, Allen had probably agreed with the sentiment expressed throughout many southern Illinois counties: the southern portion of the state should secede and join the Southern Confederacy. One source even stated that Allen had openly proposed this to John A. Logan and had encouraged Illinois men to go south and enlist in the Southern army.[3]

   Allen was taken to Cairo with several others and was placed on parole and allowed the freedom of the city, but they were required to check in once a day. There was apparently no writ or warrant for their arrest. On September 2, Allen was supposed to be heading to the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, D.C. However, since he was sick, he was left in a hotel in Springfield, Illinois. It is not clear if Allen was ever incarcerated in the Old Capital Prison. On September 10, 1862, Lincoln wrote to Maj. Gen. John A. McClernand that Allen “may be discharged if you advise it, on such terms as you may advise.” One newspaper reported that Allen was back in Springfield by early October.[4]

   Despite his arrest and incarceration, Allen was again on the ballot for election to the U.S. House, again running as a Democrat. And despite his alleged support of the secession of the southern half of Illinois, he again won that election, serving until 1865. He did not run for re-election. Allen did serve in the Illinois constitutional convention of in 1862 and 1870, as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention from 1864 to 1888 and received a recess appointment from President Grover Cleveland in April 1887 to serve as a Federal judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois, and position that was later confirmed and one that Allen held until his death in 1901.  

   Information about Allen and the secession of Southern Illinois is hard to come by. James M. McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom, considered the standard work on the war, makes no mention of William J. Allen. Neither does Weibley’s A Great Civil War, nor Keegan’s The American Civil War. A reader must turn to older texts, such as Allan Nevins’s War for the Union, 1862-1863 (1960) or Cole’s The Era of Civil War, 1848-1870 (1919). The rampant dissatisfaction caused by the radicals in the Federal government seems to be swept under the rug.  
 

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[1] “The Illinois North-South Split.” Chicago Tribune, October 1, 2015.

[2] Bouge, The Congressman’s Civil War, 43.

[3] Bellow Falls Times, September 19, 1862; Chicago Tribune, September 26, 1862; Illinois State Journal, July 30, 1862. See also Cole, The Era of the Civil War, 1848-1870, 302.

[4] Marshall, American Bastile, 295, 393-394; Basler, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 5:413; The Brookville Jeffersonian, October 15, 1862.

Federal Judge Asa Biggs on Secession

   Who? Asa Biggs? Even the most ardent student of the times might be hard pressed to recall an Asa Biggs. A little background might be in order before we jump into his thoughts on disunion.

   Born on February 4, 1811, Biggs hailed from Martin County. He was educated locally in Williamston, and at the age of fifteen began clerking and later, managing a mercantile firm. Biggs read law, and it appears he did just that: read law. He later wrote that he “had no legal instruction.” In July, he traveled to Raleigh where he was interviewed by two of the state supreme court justices and was licensed to practice law in the county courts. “In 1832,” Biggs wrote, “I attend a District Convention as a delegate from martin County to nominate an elector on the Jackson-Van Buren ticket.” This was probably Biggs’s first role in politics. Although it was different from his family, he chose to align with the Democrat party, “believing that the principles of the party promised more good to the country.” Biggs served as a delegate to the North Carolina Constitutional Convention of 1835. In 1840, Biggs was nominated for a seat in the state house, a contest which he won. In 1844, he ran and won a seat in the state senate. He was then nominated to run for the US Senate, a seat he won, serving in the 29^th Congress (1845-1847). Governor Reid appointed Biggs to a panel of three to revise the Statutes of North Carolina. Again in 1854, Biggs served in the state senate, and in 1855, was nominated and elected a United States Senator, a position he held until May 1858, when James Buchanan appointed Biggs Judge of the United States District Court for the District of North Carolina.[1] 

Asa Biggs 

   “In was evident to my mind,” Biggs wrote about his time in Washington, D.C., after his election to the Senate, that “a lamentable decay of virtue was progressing in our public councils.” Instead of growing better since his term in the US House in 1845, “things were growing worse.” Biggs probably witnessed Sen. Charles Sumner’s “Crime Against Kansas” speech, followed by Rep. Preston Brook’s caning of Sumner. He would have seen first-hand the fallout from the Dred Scott case, the ongoing debate between Stephen Douglas and James Buchanan, and the turmoil in Kansas. These events, along with the corruption within the government, led Biggs to surmise “that the government of the United States was becoming thoroughly corrupt, and that in a few years it would fall to pieces by its own corruption.” With the death of Judge Henry Potter, Biggs was nominated by President James Buchanan to fill the position. Biggs accepted and resigned his seat in the US Senate. District courts were held twice a year in Edenton, New Bern, and Wilmington. Biggs was also required to attend circuit court in Raleigh once a year. At the latter, Biggs was required to sit with another Federal Judge, Associate Justice James M. Wayne. In those two years, Wayne only showed up once. In their correspondence, Biggs was able to ascertain than Wayne “positively denied the right of a state to secede from the Union.” With the election of Lincoln eminent, “the excitement in the South was great.” Biggs prepared a charge to the grand jury should Wayne include the troubles plaguing the nation in his charge to the grand jury. While Wayne did not mention secession, Biggs kept his charge and recorded it in his autobiography.[2]

   “I am well aware that the right of State Secession from this Union, has been for a long time a controverted question, upon which Statesmen and the brightest intellects of the Country have entertained opposite opinions; and therefore I might well hesitate as a judicial officer, in volunteering an opinion, until a case is made which rendered it necessary to pronounce my judgement. But no alternative is now left me . . .

   “I hold therefore that the states, in forming the Federal government acted separately as equals and sovereigns, with no common Superior, and that the first duty and obligation of the citizens was due to his State; and upon the adoption of the Constitution of the United States by his State, this duty and obligation is no less due to the United States, but because it is at the command and clothed with the sovereign authority of his State. That the citizen while his State remains a member of the Federal Union must conform to the Constitution of the United States and the constitutional laws of the Federal government, although they conflict with the Constitution and laws of his State; and where there is a conflict of opinion as to what laws are constitutional, the proper tribunal to decide that question is the Supreme Judiciary of the United States. . .”

   “But whenever any State in her Sovereign capacity (and I mean by that, the people of a State duly and legally assembled in a convention by the proper authority, with the same formalities and regularity as conventions were held to ratify and adopt the Constitution of the United States originally) shall solemnly so decide she has the right for sufficient cause (of which she must be the judge, as upon her alone rest the heavy responsibility for such a fearful act) to voluntarily and peaceably secede from the Union, which she voluntarily entered; and thereupon, a citizen of such State is absolved from his allegiance to the United States, and will not be guilty of treason to the United States for obeying the commands and maintaining the laws of his own State.”

   “This is my decided judgement now formed after much reflection upon the theory of our government, and the history of the day in which the Federal Government, was created; and in my humble judgment, in the language of one of North Carolina’s most cherished sons, (the late Mr. [Nathaniel] Macon) ‘this right is the best guard to public liberty and to public justice that could be desired’; and if, generally or universally admitted, is the best Security for the permanency and perpetuity of the Union.”

   Biggs never gave this charge to the grand jury, but it is important for understanding his thinking regarding the important issue of the date. All of this was recorded by Biggs in his autography, which he started in 1863 and finished in 1865. Under a section entitled “SECESSION,” Biggs wrote of the division in the Democratic party in 1860, and in political theory altogether. There “was a conflict of opinion as to the course to be adopted in creating territorial government; some in favor, and others opposed to what was called ‘Squatter Sovereignty.’ The opposition, then organized in a party, called themselves ‘Republicans,’ (a desecration of that old party name) claimed the right of Congress, to prohibit slavery in the Territories, and to legislate for them; and avowed their determination to do so if they obtained power.” Biggs was no fire eater, or radical.  “I felt an earnest desire to save the Union,” he wrote, “if the rights of the South and the States, could be preserved.”[3]

   Judge Biggs held on to his post as a Federal Judge until April 1861, when a cumulation of events forced him to resign. In his short letter to Lincoln, he stated that he was “unwilling longer to hold a commission in a Government which had degenerated into a military despotism. I subscribe myself yet a friend of constitutional liberty.” Biggs went on to serve in the North Carolina session convention, and once North Carolina joined the Southern Confederacy, Jefferson Davis would appoint him a Confederate judge for the same area of North Carolina. His family were forced out of their home in Williamston by Federal advances and Biggs lost  one son during the war. Biggs later moved to Norfolk, Virginia, where he died in 1878.[4]

   Paul Chestnut wrote in 1979 in the Dictionary of North Carolina Biography that Biggs was an “ardent supporter of slavery and states’ rights.” Based upon Biggs’s own writings, it might be better said that Asa Biggs was an ardent supporter of the United States Constitution and the restrictions the constitution placed on the Federal government.[5]  

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[1] Biggs, Autobiography, 4,6, 16-7.

[2] Biggs, Autobiography, 19, 23, 24.

[3] Biggs, Autobiography, 26.

[4] Biggs, Autobiography, 27.

[5] Powell, Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, 1:191.