It was about this time, September 10, 1807, that President Jefferson thus expressed his estimate of James Lemen's services, in his letter to Robert Lemen: "His record in the new country has fully justified my course in inducing him to settle there with the view of properly shaping events in the best interest of the people."[18] It was during this period of the Indiana agitation for the introduction of slavery, {p.16} as we learn from an entry in his diary dated September 10, 1806, that Mr. Lemen received a call from an agent of Aaron Burr to solicit his aid and sympathy in Burr's scheme for a southwestern empire, with Illinois as a Province, and an offer to make him governor. "But I denounced the conspiracy as high treason," he says, "and gave him a few hours to leave the Territory on pain of arrest."[19] It should be noted that at this date he was not himself a magistrate, which, perhaps, accounts for his apparent leniency towards what he regarded as a treasonable proposal. The year 1809, the date of the separation of Illinois from the Indiana Territory, marks a crisis in the Lemen anti-slavery campaign in Illinois.[20] The agitation under the Indiana government for the further recognition of slavery in the Territory was mainly instigated by the Illinois slave-holders and their sympathizers among the American settlers from the slave states. The people of Indiana proper, except those of the old French inhabitants of Vincennes, who were possessed of slaves, were either indifferent or hostile towards slavery. Its partisans in the Illinois counties of the Territory, in the hope of promoting their object thereby, now sought division of the Indiana Territory and the erection of a separate government for Illinois at Kaskaskia. This movement aroused a bitter political struggle in the Illinois settlements, one result of which was the murder of young Rice Jones in the streets of Kaskaskia. The division was advocated on the ground of convenience and opposed on the score of expense. The divisionists, however, seem to have been animated mainly by the desire to secure the introduction of slavery as soon as statehood could be attained for their section. The division was achieved in 1809, and with it the prompt adoption of the system of indentured service already in vogue under the Indiana government. And from that time forth the fight was on between the free-state and slave-state parties in the new Territory. Throughout the independent territorial history of Illinois, slavery was sanctioned partly by law and still further by custom. Gov. Ninian Edwards, whose religious affiliations were with the Baptists, not only sanctioned slavery, but, as is well known, was himself the owner of slaves during the territorial period.