Completed in 1830, Illinois College's Beecher Hall was named for its first president, Dr. Edward Beecher, of the famous Beecher family. The College was a center of antislavery conflict. Beecher and college trustees co-founded the Illinois Antislavery Society, the college's buildings provided spaces for staff and students to plot antislavery strategy, and Professor Jonathan Turner helped guide three female fugitives to Canada. But many area settlers and newspapers were pro-slavery. A student Samuel Willard was prosecuted for aiding a fugitive, and a campus visitor, abolitionist editor Elijah Lovejoy, was murdered in Alton in 1837. Among students who spoke at a campus protest was William Herndon, later Abraham Lincoln's law partner.
