Belleville man played key role in Lincoln’s election, paving way for emancipation
When President Joe Biden signed a bill making Juneteeth a federal holiday last year, it came with a history lesson on how enslaved Black Americans gained their freedom in the 1860s.
It also presented an opportunity for metro-east residents to learn about the key role played by a Belleville man in the abolitionist movement.
Attorney, judge, politician and journalist Gustave Koerner helped develop the Republican Party’s anti-slavery platform and built support for its presidential candidate, Abraham Lincoln.
“(Koerner) worked as hard as anybody to get Lincoln elected,” said Jack LeChien, co-chairman of the Gustave Koerner House Restoration Committee, which is restoring his Belleville home.
President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, an executive order granting freedom to slaves in Confederate states fighting the Civil War.
Juneteenth National Independence Day specifically commemorates June 19, 1865, when the Union Army took control in Texas and began enforcing Lincoln’s order in that state.
Biden announced on June 17, 2021, that it would become a federal holiday.
“Throughout history, Juneteenth has been known by many names: Jubilee Day, Freedom Day, Liberation Day, Emancipation Day, and today a national holiday,” said Vice President Kamala Harris, the first Black woman to hold that office.
Koerner and Lincoln
Koerner fled Germany in 1833 after being blacklisted as a revolutionary. He met Mary Todd, Lincoln’s future wife, while studying law at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky.
Koerner made his way to St. Clair County, Illinois, by boat on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, getting his first up-close look at slavery, according to his memoirs.
“From that point on, he dedicated his political career to doing away with slavery and representing the rights of immigrants,” LeChien said. “He was very strong on both of those points.”
Koerner set up a law practice in Belleville, became friends with Lincoln and served as an Illinois state representative, an Illinois Supreme Court justice and the state’s lieutenant governor.
Koerner broke from the Democratic Party in the 1850s and helped form the Republican Party. A tipping point had been Democratic support for the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which raised the possibility that slavery could be extended into western territories.
Koerner served as chairman of the Illinois Republican Party convention that nominated Lincoln for U.S. Senate in 1858, when Lincoln lost, and as a Lincoln surrogate at the national convention in 1860, when Lincoln became the party’s presidential nominee.
“We must make them understand Lincoln is our man,” Koerner often stated.
One of Koerner’s biggest contributions was making speeches in German to build support for Lincoln among the sizable population of German immigrants in southwest Illinois.
Dred and Harriet Scott
Koerner’s effort to rally abolitionists around Lincoln’s Republican platform received a boost from a court decision made just across the river from Belleville in St. Louis, according to multiple historical texts, including records archived in the U.S. Library of Congress.
Slave Dred Scott and his wife, Harriet, sued their owner, Irene Sanford, for their freedom in 1847. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against them on March 6, 1857, at the Old Courthouse in downtown St. Louis, which doubled as a state and federal courthouse at the time.
In the majority opinion, Chief Justice Roger Taney wrote that people of African descent were not U.S. citizens and, therefore, had no standing to file lawsuits in federal court. He also held that the Fifth Amendment protected the rights of slave owners.
That decision was overturned when the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1865.
After Lincoln became president, he appointed Koerner as U.S. ambassador to Spain. Koerner returned to Belleville a year and a half later and worked for Lincoln’s re-election. Lincoln was assassinated in 1865.
“Koerner was the only downstate Illinois person to be a pallbearer at Lincoln’s funeral,” LeChien said.
Koerner and his wife, the former Sophia Engelmann, had nine children. He died in 1896 at age 86. His Belleville home — which was rebuilt in 1854 after a fire and still stands at 200 Abend St. — is on the National Register of Historic Places.
The bill designating Juneteenth as a federal holiday was passed by the U.S. Senate on June 15, 2021, and the U.S. House of Representatives the following day. It’s celebrated on June 19, but if that falls on a Saturday or Sunday, public employees get Friday or Monday off.
This story was originally published June 19, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
