USA > Illinois > Illinois in 1818, 2nd ed > Part 21
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The legislative memorial praying for statehood was doubtless dispatched to Washington immediately after its adoption by the council on December 10, 1817. Once there, its fate depended upon the exertions of Nathaniel Pope, the delegate from the territory in the house of representatives. Pope must have left Illinois before the return of Cook to Kaskaskia,240 and it is quite improbable, therefore, that he had any part in the inception of the movement for statehood. During the campaign for the election of members of the convention the editor of the Intel-
23º Laws of Illinois Territory, 1817-1818, p. 44-45.
20He arrived in Washington, December 6; see Intelligencer, January 21, 1818. For action of the Illinois legislative council see, Laws of Illinois Ter- ritory, 1817-1818, p. 11-17, 39-41; manuscript journal of the legislative coun- cil, 1817-1818, in the secretary of state's office.
NATHANIEL POPE |From original picture owned by Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis
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ligencer said of Pope: "It is well known that he had no agency in putting on foot the application to congress for a state govern- ment." >>241 However that may have been, he must have been in complete sympathy with it; and the rapidity with which matters were pushed along would indicate that he, too, realized the im- portance of getting in ahead of Missouri.
The Illinois memorial was laid before the house by Pope on January 16, 1818, and was immediately referred to a select committee of which the Illinois delegate was chairman. Clai- borne of Tennessee, Johnson of Kentucky, Spencer of New York, and Whitman of Massachusetts were the other members of the committee. Five days later Pope wrote a letter to the editors of the Intelligencer which throws light on the attitude of the committee: "The only difficulty I have to overcome is, whether we have the population supposed by the Legislature; no enumeration of the inhabitants having lately been taken. In order to evade that objection the bill contains a proviso, that the census shall be taken previously to the meeting of the Con- vention-I hope however to have that feature of the bill struck out before its final passage, if it passes at all, of which I have strong hopes. . . If it were certain that we had even thirty-five thousand inhabitants, no objection I think would be made to our admission."242 Thirty-five thousand inhabitants was the ratio of congressional apportionment at that time, and it would appear that some member of the committee-possibly Spencer, who made a similar point the following November- felt that positive evidence of at least that many should be insisted upon.
Pope's letter of January 21, just referred to, states his inten- tion of reporting the bill that day; but it was not brought in until the twenty-third, one week after the committee was ap- pointed. For this bill "To enable the people of Illinois Territory, to form a Constitution and state government, and for the admis- sion of such state into the union, on an equal footing with the original states," the Indiana enabling act of 1816 served as a
21Intelligencer, June 24, 1818.
242 Ibid., March 4, 1818.
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model.243 After authorizing the inhabitants of the territory, "to form for themselves, a constitution and state government, and to assume such name as they shall deem proper," the boundaries of the proposed state were fixed as they are at present with the exception that the northern boundary was to be "an east and west line drawn through a point ten miles north of the southern extreme of Lake Michigan." This was not the line proposed by the Ordinance of 1787, but the same was true of Indiana's northern boundary, which had been fixed in the same way, the obvious purpose in both cases being to give the state an outlet on Lake Michigan. Possibly to obviate any difficulties over the validity of a change in the ordinance, the convention was required to "ratify the boundaries, aforesaid; otherwise they shall be, and remain as now prescribed, by the ordinance."
Section three of the bill authorized "all white male citizens of the U. States, who shall have arrived at the age of twenty- one years, and have resided in said territory, six months previous to the day of election, and all persons having in other respects the legal qualifications to vote for representatives in the general assembly of the said territory, to chose representatives to form a convention." This was a change from the Indiana act, which required a year's residence in the territory for voting at the election, and from the rule of Illinois territory, in which a similar qualification for voters prevailed. The general senti- ment in the west, however, was in favor of allowing immigrants to vote as soon as possible, and the six months qualification was incorporated in the state constitution. In the enabling acts for Missouri and Alabama, the time was further reduced to three months. This section concluded with a list of the twelve counties formed before 1818, with blanks opposite each for the apportion- ment of delegates to the convention. In sending the bill to the Intelligencer, Pope wrote: "It will also be observed that I have provided for a representation but for twelve counties. The simple reason is this, I have not heard whether any other counties have been created by the legislature at the last session."244
243The bill as introduced can be found in the Intelligencer, March 11, 1818. The act as finally passed is in Thorpe, Constitutions, 2:967-970. The Indiana enabling act is in ibid., 1053-1056.
24Intelligencer, March 1I, 1818.
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The delegates thus to be elected were authorized by section four of the bill to convene on a date which was left to be filled in later. They were first to "determine by a majority of the. whole number elected, whether it be, or be not expedient at that time to form a constitution and state government for the people within the said territory; and if it be expedient, the convention shall be, and hereby is authorized to form a constitution and state government." Should the convention prefer, however, it might adopt an ordinance providing for another convention to form the constitution and state government. This feature, which was comemon in enabling acts, appears to have been designed to enable the people through the first convention to determine the apportionment, manner of choice, and time of sitting of the con- stitutional convention; but the territories rarely, if ever, took advantage of it, and the possibility of following this alternative procedure does not appear to have been considered in Illinois.
To this section were added two important provisos : first that the constitution "whenever formed, shall be republican, and not repugnant to the ordinance" except as concerns boundaries; and second, "that it shall appear from the enumeration hereinafter directed to be made, that there are within the proposed
state, not less than - thousand inhabitants." With this second proviso should be considered section twelve, which di- rected the United States marshal of the territory to take a cen- sus and make his returns to the convention. This was the feature of the bill that Pope hoped to have eliminated.
Section five provided for one representative from the state in the lower house of congress, and section six contained the usual set of propositions offered to the convention "for their free acceptance or rejection." These included section sixteen of each township of land, for the use of schools; all salt springs and lead mines "and the land reserved for the use of the same;" "five per cent. of the net proceeds of the lands lying within the said territory," for roads; and "thirty-six sections or one entire township, which shall be designated by the President of the United States, together with the one heretofore reserved for that purpose," for "a seminary of learning." These grants were made on condition that all lands sold by the United States
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should remain exempt from taxation for six years after date of sale. They differed from the grants to Indiana only in the inclusion of lead mines, as requested by the Illinois memorial, and the exclusion of a grant of four sections of land "for the purpose of fixing their seat of government thereon." The failure to ask for land for a capital site was probably an oversight on the part of the men who drew up the memorial. Had it been included among the grants in the enabling act, the question of the location of the capital would doubtless have been an issue in the pre-convention campaign, as it was later in the conven- tion itself.
This completes the enumeration of the provisions finally com- prised in the enabling act. The remaining sections of the bill numbered seven to eleven inclusive provided for the establish- ment of a United States court for the Illinois district, with all its attendant officials. Nothing comparable to these sections is to be found in the enabling act of any other state, and they were dropped from the bill before it was passed. The objection to them doubtless was that they were out of place in the bill, for at the next session of congress they were enacted word for word as "An Act to provide for the due execution of the laws of the United States within the state of Illinois."245
This enabling bill, introduced by Pope for the committee on Friday, January 23, "was read twice, and committed to a Com- mittee of the Whole, on Monday next." Not until April 4, however, was it taken up for consideration, "in consequence of the great number of bills which were introduced before and claimed a prior [i]ty."246
When the bill finally came up in the house, Pope at once intro- duced an amendment to fix the northern boundary on the line of forty-two degrees and thirty minutes north latitude-about forty-one miles north of the line fixed in the bill and fifty- one miles north of the dividing line proposed in the ordin- ance. So early as January 27, four days after the bill was
245Statutes at Large, 3:502. It might be noted in passing that Nathaniel Pope was the first United States judge appointed under this act.
246 Annals of Congress, 15 congress, I session, 1 :814; 2:1677; Intelligencer, April 15, 1818.
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introduced, Pope had reached the conclusion that such a change was desirable for, in his letter of that date forwarding a copy of the bill to the Intelligencer, he wrote: "You will remark that the northern line is ten miles north of the southernly extremity of Lake Michigan-Indiana goes as far north. When the bill is taken up, I will endeavour to procure twenty or thirty miles farther north, and make Lake Michigan a part of our eastern boundary. I shall not attempt to explain the importance of such an accession of territory; it is too obvious to every man who looks to the prospective weight and influence of the state of Illinois." In support of the amendment, Pope said that its object "was to gain, for the proposed State, a coast on Lake Michigan. This would afford additional security to the perpetuity of the Union, inasmuch as the State would thereby be connected with the States of Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York, through the Lakes. The facility of opening a canal between Lake Michigan and the Illinois river, said Mr. P., is acknowl- edged by every one who has visited the place. Giving to the proposed State the port of Chicago, (embraced in the proposed limits,) will draw its attention to the opening of the communi- cation between the Illinois river and that place, and the improve- ment of that harbor." Since the line proposed by the ordinance had not been adopted in the case of Indiana nor in the bill itself to which this amendment was proposed, it was difficult to object to the change on the grounds of a violation of that document, and the motion to amend "was agreed to without a division."247
The advantages of this change, from the point of view of those who desired that Illinois should ultimately be a free instead of a slave state, are obvious; and Pope's argument might be taken as an indication that he had those advantages in mind.248 Whatever may have been the real motives back of the amend- ment, and however it may have originated, it appears to have aroused little interest in Illinois at the time. It was mentioned without comment in an article in the Intelligencer of April 29, based on a letter from Pope dated April 6; while an editorial
""Intelligencer, March 11, 1818; Annals of Congress, 15 congress, I ses- sion, 2 :1677.
248 See appendix, p. 319-320.
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on the enabling act as finally passed, in the issue of May 20, recounts niany of its advantageous features and expresses deep appreciation of Pope's services but makes no mention of the change in boundary. The important consequences which have flowed from this change, not only for Illinois but for the coun- try as a whole have often been pointed out and need not be dwelt upon here.249 It added to Illinois a region of over 8,000 square miles in which lie the greater part of fourteen counties containing, with the city of Chicago, over half the population of the state.
A second amendment proposed by Pope on April 4 provided that three of the five per cent250 of the proceeds of federal land sales in Illinois, should be used, not for roads and canals in the state as provided in the bill and in previous enabling acts, but "for the encouragement of learning, of which one [-sixth] part shall be exclusively bestowed on a college or university." In explaining this amendment Pope pointed out that the applica- tion of this fund to roads in the other states had "not been pro- ductive of the good anticipated; on the contrary, it had been exhausted on local and neighborhood objects, by its distribution among the counties." The statement that "nature had left little to be done in the proposed State of Illinois, in order to have the finest roads in the world" would hardly be concurred in by one familiar with the roads in the central part of the state nearly a century later; but no exception need be taken to the emphasis upon the "importance of education in a Republic." Moreover, "that no immediate aid could be derived in new count [r]ies from waste lands was not less obvious; and that no active fund would be provided in a new State, the history of the Western States too clearly proved." This amendment too was accepted without a division.
"Some further amendments" were then agreed to, including one moved by Taylor of New York adding a proviso "that the bounty-lands granted, or hereafter to be granted, for military
24º For a discussion of this subject and an account of the attempts made later in the region affected, and in Wisconsin to restore the ordinance boun- dary, see Moses, Illinois, I :278-282.
250 The other two per cent was to be used "under the direction of Con- gress, in making roads leading to the State."
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services during the late war, shall, while they continue to be held by the patentees, or their heirs, remain exempt, as aforesaid, from all taxes, for the term of three years, from and after the date of the patents respectively ; and that all the lands belonging to the citizens of the United States, residing without the said State, shall never be taxed higher than lands belonging to per -- sons residing therein."251 Pope does not appear to have opposed this amendment although it must have been unpalatable to him. Early in the session a resolution had been introduced to exempt the bounty-lands from taxation for five years, a proposition which Pope believed "would enable speculators to hold up their lands from market, and prevent the territory from taxing three and a half millions of acres of land, and most of that belonging to individuals, who obtained it at less than fifty cents per acre." On January 21, he wrote that he had no fears that the measure would succeed, "so that we may calculate upon a handsome revenue from that quarter." The provision introduced in the enabling act was less objectionable because it was restricted to three years and then applied only if the land was retained by the patentees or their heirs. "We shall not," the editors of the Intelligencer consoled the people, "lose much by that, because most of it will pass into the hands of others."252
It must have been at this time that the grant of lead mines was stricken out and the provision relative to the census changed. Pope did not succeed in getting the census feature eliminated from the bill; but section twelve, which provided that the count should be made by the marshal, was stricken out and section four modified to allow the convention to rely upon "the enumera- tion directed to be made by the legislature of the said Territory." The blank for the population to be required was filled in as forty thousand, the number claimed in the memorial from the legis- lature. The apportionment of delegates in the convention was set at three each to Madison, St. Clair, and Gallatin counties and two each to the others, including the three counties established in January, 1818. No statistics as to the population of the
251 Annals of Congress, 15 congress, I session, 2:1677; Thorpe, Constitu- tions, 2 :969-970.
252 Intelligencer, January 21, March 4, April 29, 1818.
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counties were at hand, of course, and it is probable that the legislative resolution on the subject was followed.258 A fair apportionment of the same number of representatives-thirty- three-on the basis of the census of 1818 would have given five to Madison county; four to St. Clair; three each to Randolph, Gallatin, and White; two each to Washington, Union, Pope, Edwards, and Crawford; and one each to Bond, Monroe, Jack- son, Johnson, and Franklin.
Some of the amendments were adopted in the house itself after the committee rose and reported the bill. It was then "ordered to be engrossed, as amended, and read a third time, nemine contradicente." The third reading and final passage of the bill in the house took place on April 6, also, apparently, with- out opposition ; and it was transmitted to the senate the following day. There the bill was given its first and second readings at once and then referred to the committee on public lands.
The senate committee reported the bill with amendments the day after it was received, and on the thirteenth it was taken up in committee of the whole. Here the measure met with opposi- tion from Tait of Georgia who moved "to postpone the further consideration thereof until the fourth day of July next." His objection, he explained, was not due to any opposition to "the admission of this State into the Union, but on the ground that there was not sufficiently authentic information that its popula- tion was forty thousand, as stated from conjecture, or even that its population was sufficient to entitle it to a representative in Congress." Morrow of Ohio, Talbot of Kentucky, and Barbour of Virginia "replied, and opposed the postponement, believing the evidence on this head to be so strong as to admit of no doubt." This motion produced the only record vote on the bill in either house, but only four senators, Daggett of Connecticut, King and Sanford of New York, and Tait voted in favor of postponement.
According to Pope, "the application of the three per cent. to schools instead of roads, was violently opposed in the Senate, as being altogether for the benefit of the state, and not for that
253Thorpe, Constitutions, 2:968. See also above, p. 220.
*
CHICAGO IN 1820 [Reprinted from "Wau Bun," Kinzie]
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of the United States. That it gave to Illinois greater advantages than was ever allowed to any other state admitted into the union. It was urged that we had no claims to such preference, that that fund was granted to the other states with a view of raising the price of the public lands." These objections were answered by the Kentucky senators, Crittenden and Talbot, by Burrill of- Rhode Island, and by Morrow, their arguments being along lines similar to those followed by Pope in his support of this feature in the house. The "one great objection to emigrating to new countries," they contended, "was the want of the means of edu- cation. Apply this money to schools and that objection will be removed, and then thousands will go who would otherwise stay. In this manner they proved that the United States would gain rather than lose." The provision in question, Pope wrote, "passed by a great majority, and has given a character to Illi- nois that nothing else could have effected. Almost every man agrees that it will greatly promote our prosperity."254
The question of the northern boundary was also raised in the senate apparently, for Pope wrote that "some jealousy was felt against our gaining so much territory north, say sixty miles." This opposition could not have been very extensive, however, for there is no record of a vote on the question. Just which of the differences between the final act and the original bill were embodied in the senate amendments cannot be determined, but Pope wrote that these amendments were unimportant. Possibly it was at this time that a section was added providing that the part of Illinois territory not included in the boundaries of the proposed state should be attached to the territory of Michigan. At the close of the discussion the committee rose and reported the bill with the amendments, and on the following day, April 14, it was read the third time and passed without division. In the house, the senate amendments were referred to a select com- mittee headed by Pope which on the fifteenth "reported the agreement of the committee to the said amendments, and the amendments were then concurred in by the House." The bill then went to the president, who approved it on April 18, 1818.
24Intelligencer, May 6, 1818.
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If the hypothesis be correct that those behind the movement were trying to outrun Missouri in the race for statehood, they had won the first heat. The first petitions from Missouri asking for statehood were received in the house on January 8, eight days before Pope presented the Illinois memorial. These, with a petition presented February 2, were laid on the table; but when still more petitions were received on March 6, they were all referred to a select committee of which Scott, the Missouri delegate, was chairman. Not until April 3 did this committee report a bill for an enabling act and it was then too late to hope for its passage at that session. If the proponents of statehood in Illinois were to keep the lead, however, it was necessary that the census returns show a population of forty thousand. Fur- thermore if the antislavery men were to obtain a constitution such as they wished, they had next to secure a majority of dele- gates to the convention who would be favorable to their views. Illinois had a lively campaign in prospect. .
CHAPTER IX
THE CONVENTION CAMPAIGN
When the movement for admission to statehood was inaugu- rated in Illinois, in November, 1817, it was "at first little thought of" and Cook himself says that his early remarks on the subject "were thought to be the effusions of visionary hopes." It is quite possible that this attitude, together with the suddenness with which the proposition was sprung upon them, explains the unanimity of the members of the legislature in voting for the memorial. As time passed, however, and favorable news began to arrive from Washington, the movement attracted more atten- tion and as will be seen, more opposition as well.
At first the prospect of statehood evoked some pleasurable anticipations. At the Washington's birthday celebration in Ben- nett's tavern at Kaskaskia, February 22, 1818, one of the toasts was to "The Territory of Illinois-May she rise refulgent from the shackles of a colonial government, and shine in the Federal Union." The Intelligencer, which gave an account of this din- ner, noted in the usual reprint of the proceedings of congress, that the Illinois bill had been introduced in the house of repre- sentatives. Commenting on this measure "so important to the citizens of this territory," the editors declared that it "will in all probability finally pass." One week later, March 4, the Intelligencer published Pope's letter of January 21, expressing "strong hopes" of the passage of the bill. "A moment of enjoy- ment is grateful to an anxious people," said the editors. "Let us therefore enjoy the pleasing intelligence which Mr. Pope's letter communicates relative to our obtaining a state government. His hopes that the bill will pass, which we find has been read a second
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time, certainly is cheering to us all who are friendly to a free government."
March II, the bill itself was published in the paper, with the comment that it "will pass, we have no doubt." Six weeks later, April 29, the readers were informed that the measure had passed the house and that the elections for representatives in the con- vention were fixed for the first Monday in July and the two fol- lowing days, while the convention itself was to meet the first Monday in August. The next issue of the paper announced the passage of the bill in the senate, and the act as finally approved by the president was published in full in the issue of May 20. Commenting upon the measure in one of his letters, Pope wrote : "Its success will have a great influence on the emigration to that country. I cannot describe the interest Illinois awakens in the minds of the Atlantic people. I have no hesitation in hazard- ing the opinion that next season will add greatly to our popula- tion." The act attracted attention in a neighboring state also. The Kentucky Argus, in announcing its passage said: "The agricultural and mercantile advantages of this state will render it a star of the first magnitude in our constellation of free states. We hail thee, sister Illinois, and are ready to welcome thee into our happy Union." The editors of the Kas- kaskia paper celebrated the passage of the enabling act by chang- ing its name from The Western Intelligencer to The Illinois In- telligencer. "We have made this change," they wrote, "believ- ing it to be a more appropriate name, in as much as it is the same establishment from which the first paper eminated in the territory, and more particularly as we shall soon go into a state under the name of Illinois."256
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