Edward Coles

At 81 years old, Edward Coles physical status not available right now. We will update Edward Coles's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Some months after taking office as President, James Madison invited Coles to become his private secretary. His brother Isaac had been performing those duties, as well as delicate courier tasks (particularly with France in the days leading up to the War of 1812). However, Isaac Coles, perhaps inappropriately acting out his earlier military career dreams, beat up Maryland representative Roger Nelson and, after a critical Congressional report concerning the incident, was forced to submit his resignation on December 29, 1809. Neighbor James Monroe (soon to become Secretary of State) convinced Edward Coles to accept that secretarial position, and Coles served from January 1810 to March 1815, despite intervals of ill-health.

Coles' term as presidential secretary delayed his plans to free his slaves. However, Coles developed a good relationship with Madison, with whom he would often speak with "perfect candor", and formed a lasting admiration for the president. While Madison's secretary, Coles initiated private correspondence with Thomas Jefferson over the issue of slavery, as discussed below. Coles gained political experience as Madison's assistant, served as his primary emissary to Congress, and managed much of the patronage flowing from the 162-employee executive branch. Among other duties, Coles hand-copied the president's official correspondence for the national archives.

Coles met John Adams during a tour of north-eastern states in 1811. Along with Benjamin Rush, Coles worked to diminish tensions and rewarm relations between Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Coles also spent considerable time in Philadelphia receiving medical treatment from Dr. Physick, among others, as well as began a long friendship with Nicholas Biddle, who became controversial as a banker and anti-slavery advocate. As the War of 1812 ended, Coles resigned due to continued ill health in February, 1815.

Upon recovering in June, Coles and his 40-year-old mulatto slave and coachman, Ralph Crawford, toured the Northwest Territory in search of land Coles could purchase and develop as a home for himself and a place for the slaves he still proposed to free. Coles wrote letters to President Madison and to relatives expressing dissatisfaction with the high land prices in Ohio, then with squatters, real estate speculators and fraudulent businessmen as he travelled further west into the Indiana (and what became the Illinois) Territory. In the Missouri Territory Coles bought some land for investment, before finally embarking in St. Louis on a keel boat for his trip down the Mississippi River to New Orleans, from where Coles ultimately sailed home to Virginia.

Coles was delayed again in fulfilling his covenant with freedom by a diplomatic trip to Russia (1816–1817) at President Madison's request, to resolve a diplomatic incident concerning the Russian consul's arrest in Philadelphia for raping a maid. After successfully completing his mission in St. Petersburg, Coles toured Brussels, Paris and England. While in England, Coles met ambassador John Quincy Adams and social reformer Morris Birkbeck. Coles extolled such enthusiasm about Illinois that Birkbeck bought land, moved and established a settlement. Upon his return, Coles wrote a paper comparing slavery and Russian serfdom, so if an ulterior motive for the diplomatic assignment was dissuading Coles from his manumission plan, it failed. Moreover, Coles wrote about (and long remembered) the pervasive bribery and unethical business practices he encountered in Russia.

In 1814 Coles wrote a letter to his Albemarle County neighbor Thomas Jefferson, asking the former President to again embark on a campaign of emancipation and publicly work for an end to slavery in Virginia. Jefferson's response has become a signal document in the study of Jefferson's troubling and complex relationship with the institution of slavery. At age 71 and generally retired from politics and because Virginia law did not allow for emancipation of slaves, Jefferson declined Coles' request, advising his young friend and associate to stay in Virginia to help in the long-term demise of slavery. Coles’ disappointment is clear in his return letter of September 26, 1814.

In the fall of 1817, Coles sold his plantation to his eldest brother Walter, having declined James Monroe's request that he continue as the new President's private secretary. Instead, Coles embarked on a second reconnaissance mission to the Northwest Territories (1818). He bought land in the American Bottom in Illinois Territory. Coles also participated in the Illinois Constitutional Convention at Kaskaskia, Illinois after Indiana became a state. Coles worked with Baptist John Mason Peck, Methodist Peter Cartwright, Quaker James Lemen, and publisher Hooper Warren to successfully oppose a faction that wanted to legitimize slavery in the new territory's constitution.

Coles then returned to Virginia, planning to display his deep moral objections to slavery and finally manumit the slaves he inherited from his father after leaving the Commonwealth. In late March 1819, having collected the final payment from Walter, Edward Coles was ready to move to the Illinois Territory. President Monroe had appointed him Register of Lands for the new territory, with an office at Edwardsville.

Coles sent his trusted slave (and travel companion during his previous Northwest Territory trips) Ralph Crawford with wagons and 16 other slaves (total 6 adults and 11 children) ahead on the Great Wagon Road north to Pennsylvania. To the derision of many family and friends, Coles had let the slaves ride on ahead, none of them knowing his plans to free them at that time. Coles traveled separately. They met at Brownsville, Pennsylvania, where the party boarded a pair of flatboats and began a water-bound journey: floating on the Monongahela River north to Pittsburgh, then west along the Ohio River toward Illinois. Coles selected a point west of Pittsburgh to announce to his slaves their immediate freedom and also his plan to provide land to each head of a family. Coles captured the scene in an autobiographical piece written some 25 years later. Decades later, the river emancipation became the subject of a mural in the first floor (south hall) of the Illinois State Capitol.

The Coles party arrived in Edwardsville, early in May 1819, and Coles began his service as Register of Lands. He also completed the manumission process by purchasing land so as to give each freed head of family 160 acres (0.65 km2). Coles also provided employment and other ongoing support for those he had freed. As Register through 1822, Coles mediated and untangled complicated land disputes, thus earning a reputation for fairness and honesty.

Coles ran for governor in the election of 1822. To his great surprise, he won the election by a very tight margin, defeating Chief Justice Joseph Phillips (an ally of Judge Jesse Thomas and prominent slavery advocate in his own right who eventually returned to Kentucky), Associate Justice Thomas C. Browne (the eventual candidate of the Ninian Edwards faction) and militia commander James B. Moore. Coles had left Illinois on election day believing he had lost, and received the news of his victory while in Virginia recovering from bilious fever. He accordingly cleared up his land office accounts in Washington, D.C. and returned to Illinois. Madison sent him a package containing a pedometer, and a note, "As you are about to assume new motives to walk in a straight path, and with measured steps, I wish you to accept the little article enclosed, as a type of the course I am sure you will pursue, and as a token of the affection I have so long cherished for you."

Coles’ inaugural address included a clear call for the end of slavery in Illinois and revision of the Black Code, as well as advocated internal improvements (especially a canal link to the Great Lakes) and aid to agriculture and education. Slavery was a very important topic at the time, because that first state constitution only permitted current practices using slave labor in the salines (salt evaporation factories) through 1825. A proslavery faction had hoped to eliminate the first constitution's anti-slavery clause and transform Illinois into a slave state like Missouri. Coles’ bold call for an end to slavery stiffened their resolve and led to a rancorous legislative effort which began with the Shaw-Hansen Affair (concerning whether to seat a pro-slavery candidate backed by voters who came from Missouri, or his anti-slavery opponent). Governor Edward Coles led the opposition to a bill approving a referendum to hold another constitutional convention, recognizing it as a dishonest attempt to more clearly legalize slavery in the state. After the bill passed, Coles committed his total pay as governor ($4000) to defeat the referendum, and led a committee of anti-slavery citizens, religious leaders, and legislators (who committed another $1000). The aristocratic, awkward Virginian and his allies then dispelled a plethora of false economic arguments spread by slavery proponents, while in the aftermath of the Panic of 1819 keeping secret their printing help from much-reviled Philadelphians (Nicholas Biddle and Roberts Vaux). The 18-month political struggle used committees in each county as well as traveling preachers.

On August 2, 1824, Illinois voters rejected the pro-slavery convention referendum (as well as re-elected anti-slavery U.S. representative Daniel Pope Cook). However, by year's end pro-slavery legislators refused to approve Coles' appointment of his anti-slavery friend Morris Birkbeck as secretary of state. Furthermore, lieutenant governor Adolphus Hubbard attempted to wrest the governorship away from Coles during his trip to Virginia in late 1825, causing additional confusion, although Hubbard also lost the gubernatorial election the next year to Ninian Edwards (the state Constitution also included a provision modelled on Virginia's which precluded governors from running for reelection). Finally, a lawsuit that political opponents in Madison County, Illinois brought against Coles for failing to pay a slave tax on his freed slaves years earlier took several more years, including shenanigans by pro-slavery judge Samuel McRoberts, before the Illinois Supreme Court ruled such payment unnecessary. Coles' valedictory speech as governor in December 1826 reminded legislators of his previous speeches urging them to abolish slavery and its remnants (especially heritability) in the new state, as well as to finance a canal to the Great Lakes watershed and a penitentiary.

After his term as governor expired, Coles returned briefly to Virginia, where his mother had died that spring. Coles then returned to his farm outside of Edwardsville. He focused on agricultural and business pursuits, between continued trips to Virginia and Philadelphia to visit family and friends and to search for a wife. His friend Daniel Pope Cook was defeated by a proslavery opponent in 1826, and legislators had selected their pro-slavery speaker John McLean to fill unexpired U.S. Senate terms in 1824 and 1829 (voters ultimately electing Elias Kent Kane and John McCracken Robinson to those seats). Coles made his last run for public office in 1831. As candidate for Congress, running against eight candidates including pro-slavery Democrats Joseph Duncan (allied with Treasury Secretary William H. Crawford) and Sidney Breese (a Jacksonian Democrat), Coles polled a distant third. He had been out of public view for some years, and refused to align himself with any political party. Instead, Coles campaigned on his successful term as governor, proclaimed his association with the founding fathers, and criticized the Jacksonian platform. Still, Coles felt devastated by the political defeat, and moved back east. Nonetheless, in 1835, Illinois legislators authorized Coles to sell bonds to finance his canal project, but since they also refused to back the bonds with state credit, sales proved slow.

Worried about his unmarried status and increasing partisanship, Coles decided to leave Illinois shortly after his election loss. He made another trip to Virginia, which was involved in its own debate over slavery after Nat Turner's rebellion. After Turner's execution, Coles wrote Thomas Jefferson Randolph urging emancipation and colonization to prevent further disasters, stressing that slavery restricted Virginia's economic development. At year's end, while visiting James and Dolley Madison at Montpelier, Madison confided in Coles his wish to manumit his own slaves and asked Coles about his experiences as he tried to find the right way to accomplish this while still providing for Dolley as his widow. However, Madison died in 1836 without freeing any of his slaves which were left in a will to his wife Dolley.

Source