John Mason Peck's influence in Illinois permanently altered the life of the nation. Along with Governor Coles he was instrumental in frustrating the effort of the powerful slavery forces to effect a constitutional change that would have caused Illinois to become a slave state. The Memoir of John Mason Peck contains an extensive, firsthand, and often detailed "pre-sociological" account of pioneer life as reported by this remarkably systematic and disciplined observer. John Mason Peck (1789-1857), a pioneer Baptist missionary to the Illinois territory, was one of the most active as well as influential men on the Illinois frontier. - from dust jacket flap.