In Jacksonville, Joseph O. King, a prominent merchant who later became mayor, helped found a political group that agitated for the exclusion of slavery from the free territories. Its first meeting, with King as clerk, took place in his store on the north side of the square, and most of its members were abolitionists. The Congregational Church was the only local church to support this position. King’s group purchased 500 copies of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), widely considered an inflammatory novel, and King and others caused havoc by distributing the books in Jacksonville. Remembering Abraham Lincoln’s speech there, King said that one of the first strong anti-slavery speeches made in Jacksonville was by Lincoln in the court house park, and that when Lincoln came out sharp and strong against slavery he threw up his hat and shouted, “Hurrah for Abe Lincoln for president of the United States.” Although the Republicans lost with Fremont in 1856, they won with Lincoln in 1860. Lincoln gave a strong speech against the Kansas-Nebraska Act on the Jacksonville Square on the evening of September 2, 1854. Penned by Stephen A. Douglas, the act allowed a territory to decide whether it would be free or slave and became known as the doctrine of popular sovereignty. Lincoln stood unalterably opposed to the extension of slavery to the territories. After he became a key figure in the Republican Party of Illinois, he also spoke at a Fremont for President rally in Jacksonville. In 1861, the north and east sides of the Jacksonville Square included a courthouse on the northwest corner rather than in the middle of the square, unlike most towns. The original courthouse had burned, and the county replaced it with a brick building that was regarded as one of the ugliest courthouses in Illinois. Stephen A. Douglas served briefly there as Morgan County State’s Attorney beginning in 1836. Although Lincoln’s Eighth Judicial Circuit did not include Morgan County, he appeared numerous times in cases tried in the brick courthouse, which was demolished after the current Second Empire courthouse was constructed two blocks west of the square on State Street in 1868.