New {p.30} Design, May 10, 1805. Knowing President Jefferson's hostility against the introduction of slavery here and the mission he sent me on to oppose it, I do not believe the pro-slavery petitions with which Gov. Harrison and his council are pressing Congress for slavery here can prevail while he is President, as he is very popular with Congress and will find means to overreach the evil attempt of the pro-slavery power. Jan. 20th 1806. [15]As Gov. William Henry Harrison and his legislative council have had their petitions before Congress at several sessions asking for slavery here, I sent a messenger to Indiana to ask the churches and people there to get up and sign a counter petition to Congress to uphold freedom in the territory and I have circulated one here and we will send it on to that body at next session or as soon as the work is done. New Design. Sept. 10, 1806. [19]A confidential agent of Aaron Burr called yesterday to ask my aid and sympathy in Burr's scheme for a Southwestern Empire with Illinois as a province and an offer to make me governor. But I denounced the conspiracy as high treason and gave him a few hours to leave the territory on pain of arrest. New Design. Jan 10, 1809 [1810]. [20]I received Jefferson's confidential message on Oct. 10, 1808, suggesting a division of the churches on the question of slavery and the organization of a church on a strictly anti-slavery basis, for the purpose of heading a movement to finally make Illinois a free State, and after first trying in vain for some months to bring all the churches over to such a basis, I acted on Jefferson's plan and Dec. 10, 1809, the anti-slavery element formed a Baptist church at Cantine creek, on an anti-slavery basis. New Design. Mar. 3, 1819. I was reared in the Presbyterian faith, but at 20 years of age I embraced Baptist principles and after settlement in Illinois I was baptized into that faith and finally became a minister of the gospel of that church, but some years before I was licensed to preach, I was active in collecting and inducing {p.31} communities to organize churches, as I thought that the most certain plan to control and improve the new settlements, and I also hoped to employ the churches as a means of opposition to the institution of slavery, but this only became possible when we organized a leading church on a strictly anti-slavery basis, an event which finally was marked with great success, as Jefferson suggested it would be. New Design. Jan 10, 1820. My six sons all are naturally industrious and they all enjoy the sports. Robert and Josiah excel in fishing, Moses in hunting, William in boating and swimming and James and Joseph in running and jumping. Either one of them can jump over a line held at his own height, a little over six feet.