and did not disdain the pulpit as a tribune. Of course there was no
such thing as organization in the pioneer days. Men were voted for to
a great extent independently of partisan questions affecting the
nation at large, and in this way the higher offices of the State were
filled for many years by men whose personal character compelled the
respect and esteem of the citizens. The year 1826 is generally taken
as the date which witnessed the change from personal to partisan
politics, though several years more elapsed before the rule of
conventions came in, which put an end to individual candidacy. In that
year, Daniel Pope Cook, who had long represented the State in Congress
with singular ability and purity, was defeated by Governor Joseph
Duncan, the candidate of the Jackson men, on account of the vote given
by Cook which elected John Quincy Adams to the Presidency. The bitter
intolerance of the Jackson party naturally caused their opponents to
organize against them, and there were two parties in the State from
that time forward. The change in political methods was inevitable, and
it is idle to deplore it; but the former system gave the better men in
the new State a power and prominence which they have never since
enjoyed. Such men as Governor Ninian Edwards, who came with the
prestige of a distinguished family connection, a large fortune, a good
education, and a distinction of manners and of dress--ruffles, gold
buttons, and fair-topped boots--which would hardly have been pardoned
a few years later; and Governor Edward Coles, who had been private
secretary to Madison, and was familiar with the courts of Europe, a
man as notable for his gentleness of manners as for his nobility of
nature, could never have come so readily and easily to the head of the
government after the machine of the caucus had been perfected. Real
ability then imposed itself with more authority upon the ignorant and
unpretending politicians from the back timber; so that it is remarked
by those who study the early statutes of Illinois that they are far