Lyman Turnbull, an author of the Emancipation Proclamation

Hyde Park has a small intersection with the history of Juneteenth in that an eventual resident of Hyde Park was the architect of the Emancipation Proclamation. Lyman Trumbull (1813-1896) was head of the Senate Judiciary Committee during the Civil War and came up with the legal rationale to free as many enslaved people as possible using Presidential powers, until the Constitution could be changed. He also drove through the 13th and 14th Amendments to make it permanent and universal.

He was the U.S. senator from Illinois from 1855 to 1873. He was born in Connecticut, but moved to Alton, Illinois, as a young man where he took up his crusade against slavery. His house in Alton is a National Historic Monument.

After his wife died in 1868, Trumbull moved to Hyde Park Township where his brother had been one of the early settlers. Trumbull had been one of the founders of the Republican Party when it was the party of Lincoln. When it started to shift policies, he switched to the Populist Party. At the end of his life, he was part of the team defending Socialist Eugene V. Debs along with another Hyde Parker, Clarence Darrow.

Apparently, the houses along the original Lake Park in those early days looked right out at the lake from their verandas, long before Lake Shore Drive, the raised tracks, and acres of landfill separated people from the shore. A neighbor and family friend recalled what it was like. Lincoln had come to dinner in the 1850s. She recalled that our lakeshore gave Lincoln a moment of respite:

Trumbull’s house in Kenwood had a plaque, honoring him as the author of the 14th Amendment, which he’d worked on while he owned that house. Unfortunately, the plaque and the house are gone, casualties of urban renewal. He has a small headstone in Oak Woods Cemetery.