tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">[26] During the session of the Convention an address to The Friends of Freedom was published by a company of thirteen leading men, including James Lemen, Sr., to the effect that a determined effort was to be made in the Convention to give sanction to slavery, and urging concerted action "to defeat the plans of those who wish either a temporary or an unlimited slavery."[27] A majority of the signers of this address were Lemen's Baptist friends, and its phraseology points to him as its author.

James Lemen, Jr., was a delegate from St. Clair county and a member of the committee which drafted the Constitution. In the original draft of that instrument, slavery was prohibited in the identical terms of the Ordinance of 1787, as we learn from the recently published journal of the Convention. In the final draft this was changed to read: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall hereafter be introduced," and the existing system of indentured service was also incorporated. These changes were the result of compromise, and Lemen consistently voted against them. He was nevertheless one of the committee of three appointed to revise and engross the completed instrument.

The result was a substantial victory for the Free-State Party; and had the Convention actually overridden the prohibition contained in the original Territorial Ordinance, as it was then interpreted, it is evident, from the tone of the address to The Friends of Freedom, that the Lemen circle would have made a determined effort to defeat the measure in Congress.[27]

Dr. Peck, who, like Gov. Coles, was a visitor to the Convention, and who had every opportunity to know all the facts, in summing up the evidence in regard to the matter, declares it to be "conclusive that Mr. Lemen created and organized the forces which confirmed Illinois, if not the Northwest Territory, to freedom." Speaking of the current impression that the question of slavery was not much agitated in Illinois prior to the Constitutional Convention, Gov. Coles says: "On the contrary, at a very early period of the settlement of Illinois, the question was warmly agitated by zealous advocates and opponents of slavery," and that, although during the period of the independent Illinois Territory the agitation was lulled, it was not extinguished, "as was seen [from] its mingling itself so actively both in the election and the conduct of the members of the Convention, in 1818."[26]

Senator Douglas, in a letter to James Lemen, Jr., is credited with full knowledge of the "Jefferson-Lemen Anti-Slavery Compact" and a high estimate of its significance in the history of the slavery contest in Illinois and the Northwest Territory. "This matter assumes a phase of personal interest with me," he says, "and I find myself, politically, in the good company of Jefferson and your father. With them everything turned on whether the people of the Territory wanted slavery or not, ... and that appears to me to be the correct doctrine."[28] Lincoln, too, in a letter to the younger James Lemen, is quoted as having a personal knowledge of the facts and great respect for the senior Lemen in the conflict for a free state in Illinois. "Both your father and Lovejoy," he remarks, "were pioneer leaders in the cause of freedom, and it has always been difficult for me to see why your father, who was a resolute, uncompromising, and aggressive leader, who boldly proclaimed his purpose to make both the Territory and the State free, never aroused nor encountered any of that mob violence which, both in St. Louis and in Alton, confronted and pursued Lovejoy."[29] Of the latter he says: "His letters, among your old family notes, were of more interest to me than even those of Thomas Jefferson to your father."

Jefferson's connection with Lemen's anti-slavery mission in Illinois was never made public, apparently, until the facts were published by Mr. Joseph B. Lemen, of the third generation, in the later years of his life, in connection with the centennary anniversaries of the events involved. However, the "compact" was a matter of family tradition, based upon a collection of letters and notes handed down from father to son. Jefferson's reasons for keeping the matter secret, as Dr. Peck explains, were, first, to prevent giving the impression that he was seeking his own interests in the territories, and, second, to avoid arousing the opposition of his southern friends who desired the extension of slavery. Lemen, on the other hand, did not wish to have it thought that his actions were controlled by political considerations, or subject to the will of another. Moreover, when he learned that Jefferson was regarded as "an unbeliever," he is said to have wept bitterly lest it should be thought that, in his work for the church and humanity, he had been influenced by an "infidel"; and, sometime before his death, he exacted a promise of his sons and the few friends who were acquainted with the nature of his compact with Jefferson that they would not make it known while he lived.[30] Under the influence of this feeling on the part of their father, the family kept the facts to themselves and a few confidential friends until after the lapse of a century, when the time came to commemorate the achievements of their ancestor.

How much of the current tradition is fact and how much fiction is hard to determine, as so little of the original documentary material is now available. The collection of materials herewith presented consists of what purport to be authentic copies of the original documents in question. They are put in this form in the belief that their significance warrants it, and in the hope that their publication may elicit further light on the subject. These materials consist of three sorts, viz.; a transcript of the Diary of James Lemen, Sr., a manuscript History of the confidential relations of Lemen and Jefferson, prepared by Rev. John M. Peck, and a series of letters from various public men to Rev. James Lemen, Jr. The Diary and manuscript "History" were located by the compiler of this collection among the papers of the late Dr. Edward B. Lemen, of Alton, Illinois. These documents are now in the possession of his son-in-law, Mr. Wykoff, who keeps them in his bank vault. The collection of letters was published at various times by Mr. Joseph B. Lemen, of Collinsville, Illinois, in The Belleville Advocate, of Belleville, Illinois. The Diary is a transcript of the original, attested by Rev. James Lemen, Jr. The "History" is a brief sketch, in two chapters, prepared from the original documents by Dr. Peck while he was pastor of the Bethel Church, in June, 1851, and written at his dictation by the hand of an assistant, as the document itself expressly states. Mr. Joseph Lemen, who is responsible for the letters, is the son of Rev. James Lemen, Jr., and one of the editors of the Lemen Family History. The editor of The Belleville Advocate states that Mr. Lemen has contributed