Lyman Trumbull House (1849)

This home was constructed around 1849 for Lyman Trumbull and became a National Historic Landmark in 1975. Lyman is best known today as an advocate for emancipation, civil rights, and labor unions in the United States. Known as a highly influential figure in the formation of the Republican Party of Illinois, Trumbull supported the efforts of Lincoln and served as co-author of the 13th Amendment.

Lyman Trumbull co-authored the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution that abolished slavery and involuntary servitude. He was born on October 12, 1813, in Colchester, Connecticut. After graduating from Bacon Academy in Colchester, he worked as a teacher from 1829 to 1833. At the age of twenty, he became the head of an academy in Georgia. While teaching, Trumbull also studied law and earned admission to the bar in Georgia where he practiced in Greenville until 1837. That year, he moved to Alton, Illinois, and quickly became involved in politics. By 1840, Lyman Trumbull won election to the Illinois House of Representatives as an ardent Jacksonian Democrat. Later, he became Illinois Secretary of State, serving from 1841 to 1843. In 1848, he earned appointment as Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court, serving until 1853. One year later, in 1854, the Illinois State Legislature elected Trumbull United States Senator from Illinois, famously defeating Abraham Lincoln for the seat. During his career, Trumbull was a Democrat, but he split from the party over the issue of slavery in 1854. He then joined the newly formed Republican Party in 1856, but after the Civil War, he helped form the Liberal Republican Party in opposition to President Grant. After the Liberal Republican movement collapsed, Trumbull returned to the Democratic Party.

Trumbull played a critical role in the formation of the Republican Party in Illinois, and he represented an important position on the issue of slavery. Trumbull strongly opposed slavery, but he did so on the grounds that slave labor threatened the prosperity of free white labor. In a Chicago 1858 speech, Trumbull stated: “We, the Republican Party, are the white man’s party, we are free white men and for making white labor respectable and honorable, which it can never be when negro slave labor is brought into competition with it.” As the Civil War came to a close, Trumbull wanted to assure the destruction of slavery. In 1865, he co-wrote the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution which abolished slavery. Trumbull also supported citizenship and voting rights for freedmen. Despite his fierce opposition to slavery and his support for the nation’s very first Civil Rights Bill, Trumbull remained conservative on the issue of Reconstruction of the South. He was one of the very few Republican senators who voted for acquittal in the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson.

In his later life, Lyman Trumbull became an advocate for the creation of Yellowstone as a National Park, a populist in 1894, and defended Eugene Debs and other labor leaders of the American Railway Union during the 1894 Pullman Strike.

The house was built around 1849 and features a gable roof, one-and-a-half story brick construction, and a limestone foundation. There was an addition put onto the house in the 19th century that made the building an "L" shape. Senator Trumbull lived in this house from 1849 to 1863, according to the documentation provided in the National Historic Landmark application.

Lyman Trumbull, Wikipedia. September 20th, 2022. Accessed November 26th, 2022. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyman_Trumbull .

Lyman Trumbull House, Wikipedia. May 30th, 2022. Accessed November 26th, 2022. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyman_Trumbull_House.

Members of Congress: Lyman Trumbull (1813-1896), Mr. Lincoln and Friends. Accessed November 26th, 2022. http://www.mrlincolnandfriends.org/members-of-congress/lyman-trumbull/.