Southwestern
Illinois played a fierce and pivotal role in the national drama of a house divided against itself. St. Clair County sheltered Brooklyn, founded by freed and fugitive slaves and a vital link on the
Underground Railroad. Alton was the home of Elijah Lovejoy, gunned down defending his press from an anti-abolitionist mob, as well as Lyman Trumbull, who wrote the Thirteenth Amendment. After the outbreak of war, Alton’s prison was packed with thousands of Confederate captives, a smallpox epidemic and the cross-dressing double agent Mary Anne Pitman. John J. Dunphy continues the story of the Civil War and
Abolitionism beyond the
Emancipation Proclamation and Appomattox, seeking out the enduring legacy those struggles left in his corner of
Background Information
Illinois is a large Midwestern state that holds a dominant position in transportation and agriculture. Abolitionism was the movement, centered in the North, that abolition of slavery even in those states that had practiced it since the founding of the country. The Emancipation Proclamation declared an end to slavery in the rebellious states in 1863. A system of secret transportation known as the Underground Railroad conducted ruanway slaves from the Deep South to freedom in Canada.
