Encounters
''epithet'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜encounter｜ENC｜20260904134559-23-•
Francis was right: the antislavery movement had difficulty taking root in Illinois. Between 1817 and 1824, some Illinoisans had waged a successful battle against the introduction of slavery into their state constitution, but thereafter enthusiasm for the antislavery cause dramatically waned. Before 1837 only one county in the state—Putnam—had an auxiliary of the American Antislavery Society. Attempts to circulate antislavery petitions in 1837 fizzled. In 1841, when the Illinois Antislavery Society dispatched an agent to spread the abolition gospel, Springfield authorities denied him permission to speak. Three years later, Ichabod Codding’s attempt to deliver an abolitionist lecture in the capital was thwarted by a mob of more than one hundred men brandishing sticks and boards and blowing horns. They made such a racket that Codding could not be heard. Some of the mob hurled eggs at the speaker while Springfield’s police passively observed the commotion and laughed. Simeon Francis noted that abolitionist “is an odious epithet among us; and we do not believe that there are a dozen men to be found in Sangamon county to whom it can be properly applied.”
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
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