“I would not have you think that all slave-holders are wicked and heartless,” he said.  “They are like other men the world over.  Some are kind and indulgent.  If all men were like them, slavery could be tolerated.  But they are not.  Some men are brutal in the North as well as in the South.  If not made so by nature they are made so by drink.  To give them the power of life and death over human beings, which they seem to have in parts of the South, is a crime against God and civilization.  Our country can not live and prosper with such a serpent in its bosom.  No good man should rest until the serpent is slain.”

“I agree with you,” said Samson.

“I knew that you would,” the minister went on.  “We have already had some help from you but we need more.  I take it as a duty which God has laid upon me to help every fugitive that reaches my door.  Thousands of New Englanders have come into Illinois in the last year.  They will help the good work of mercy and grace.  If you hear three taps upon your window after dark or the hoot of an owl in your dooryard you will know what it means.  Fix some place on your farm where these poor people who are seeking the freedom which God wills for all His children, may find rest and refreshment and security until they have strength to go on.”

Within a week after the visit of Mr. Lovejoy, Samson and Harry built a hollow haystack about half-way from the house to the barn.  The stack had a comfortable room inside of it about eight feet by seven and some six feet in height.  Its entrance was an opening near the bottom of the stack well screened by the pendant hay.  But no fugitive came to occupy it that winter.

Early in March Abe wrote a letter to Samson in which he said: 

* * * * *

“I have not been doing much.  I have been getting the hang of things.  There are so many able men here that I feel like being modest for a while.  It’s good practice if it is a little hard on me.  Here are such men as Theodore Ford, William L. D. Ewing, Stephen T. Logan, Jesse K. Dubois and Governor Duncan.  You can not wonder that I feel like lying low until I can see my way a little more clearly.  I have met here a young man from your state of the name of Stephen A. Douglas.  He is twenty-one years old and about the least man I ever saw to look at but he is bright and very ambitious.  He has taught school and studied law and been admitted to the bar and is bristling up to John J. Hardin in a contest for the office of State’s Attorney.  Some pumpkins for a boy of twenty-one I reckon.  No chance for internal improvements this session.  Money is plenty and next year I think we can begin harping on that string.  More than ever I am convinced that it is no time for anti-slavery agitation much as we may feel inclined to it.  There’s too much fire under the pot now.”

* * * * *

Soon after the new year of 1835 Samson and Harry moved the Kelsos to Tazewell County.  Mr. Kelso had received an appointment as Land Agent and was to be stationed at the little settlement of Hopedale near the home of John Peasley.