unit of local government, without any township organization.1 The new settlers from New York and New England were, however, accustomed to some form of township government and through their influence the constitution now provided that the legislature should pass a law authorizing the majority of the voters in any county to adopt the township system. Under this system the county board was to be made up of supervisors representing the various towns. During the next few years, the northern and central counties were generally organized on this plan, which has sometimes been called the county-township plan because it is a compromise between the Virginia and New England principles.2

tional

The new constitution was much longer and more Constituelaborate than that of 1818. There was, therefore, amendments. greater need for a comparatively simple way of correcting mistakes which might be found by experience. The new constitution made it somewhat easier to correct particular articles. One article at a time might be amended, if the amendment, after being recommended by two successive legislatures, the first time by a twothirds vote, should be ratified by the people at a general election.s

'The word town was used before 1848 in nearly the same sense as the word village to-day. Thus the town government of Chicago in 1833 was what would now be called a village government. See below, ch. 7.

The antislavery

movement.

CHAPTER III

THE NEW INDUSTRIAL STATE-1848-1901

16. REFERENCES

Secondary Authorities: Moses, Illinois Historical and Statistical, II.; Davidson and Stuvé, Complete History of Illinois; Dresbach, Young People's History of Illinois; Anthony, Constitutional History of Illinois, chs. 22-36; Lusk, Politics and Politicians of Illinois; Andreas, History of Chicago, 3 vols.; county and other local histories; Smith, Liberty and Free Soil Parties in the Northwest; Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, A History, and the numerous other lives of Lincoln; Sheahan, Stephen A. Douglas; see also lives or memoirs of other public men, e. g., Wentworth, Palmer, Logan, Grant.

Sources: Lincoln, Works (ed. Nicolay and Hay); The American Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861-1903; General Assembly of Illinois, Journals of the House and Senate, and Reports; The Laws of the State of Illinois, 1849-1903 (session laws); Supreme Court of Illinois, Reports; Constitutional Convention (1862), Proceedings; Constitutional Convention (1869-70), Proceedings and Debates; Report of the Adjutant-General of Illinois, 186166, 8 vols., esp. I. (For bibliography of State publications, see Bowker, State Publications, Part II., 229-249); U. S. Census Reports (1850-1900); Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Third Series, I., IV.

17. SECTIONAL CONTROVERSIES IN STATE And NaTIONAL POLITICS. 1848-1870

During the next twenty years after the adoption of the second State constitution, the most prominent thing in Illinois politics is the conflict of parties in the State on great national issues of a sectional character, particularly those relating to slavery. During the early

years of Statehood, Illinois had been very conservative on these questions. There had been radical antislavery men and anti-slavery societies, but the general sentiment of the State was against them.1 This was particularly true of the Democratic party. Already, however, there were indications of a change. The northern counties of the State grew much more rapidly than the southern and these northern counties were rapidly being filled by settlers from New York and New England who were strongly northern in their views of the slavery question. The German immigrants who were coming to Illinois in large numbers, had at first supported the Democratic party, but they did not like. the pro-slavery and extreme States-rights views of the Southern Democrats. When the Kansas-Nebraska bill of 1854 repealed the Missouri Compromise prohibiting slavery in the old Louisiana Territory north of 36° 30′, many of these German Democrats, together with other moderate anti-slavery men, joined the radical abolitionists in forming the new Republican party, which held its first State convention at Bloomington in 1856.2

During the next four years, the State was pretty Lincoln and evenly divided between the two parties, the most in- Douglas. teresting single event being the great senatorial contest of 1858 between Stephen A. Douglas, the author of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, and Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate. Douglas was able to keep his place in the Senate of the United States, but the election showed that Illinois was becoming more and more northern in its political sympathies. These two Illinois men became in 1860 the leaders of the two

1

See on this subject Smith, Liberty and Free Soil Parties in the Northwest.

2 Cf. Koerner, Das Deutsche Element, ch. 13.

Illinois

in the Civil War.

Dissatisfaction with Republican policies.

The convention of 1862.

great political parties of the North. The presidential election was hotly contested in this State, the northern counties generally going for Lincoln and those of the south for Douglas. Lincoln, however, gained many votes in the central counties and so was able to carry the State.

Though the State was divided on the question of slavery and though many Illinois people believed that the policy of the Republicans was unjust to the South, few of them were ready to accept secession. When in April, 1861, the southerners fired on Fort Sumter and Lincoln issued his famous call for troops, the Illinois Democrats generally followed their leader, Stephen A. Douglas, in pledging their support to the Union. During the Civil War, Illinois furnished to the Union armies the equivalent of 214,133 men enlisted for three years service, or about 238 three year enlistments for every thousand of the male population in 1860. Nearly 35,000 of these men were killed or died of disease in the service or died in southern prisons.1

Though the State responded generously to the call for volunteers and its governor, Richard Yates, was an aggressive supporter of the national administration, there was during the war much dissatisfaction, especially in southern Illinois, with the policies of President Lincoln and his party. This feeling was first shown clearly in the constitutional convention of 1862. The people had voted in favor of this convention before the outbreak of the war, and there was real need of constitutional reforms. The convention, however, was

1 War Department, Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Third Series, IV. 1269; Report of Provost Marshal General, 1866 (in House Ex. Doc. 39th Cong., Ist sess., IV); Moses, Illinois Historical and Statistical II. 731.

controlled largely by Democrats from the southern counties and much of its time was spent in discussing the conduct of the State and national governments. The Republicans believed also that the constitution which was formed by the convention was largely intended for the advantage of the Democratic party. The constitution as a whole was defeated by a large majority, but separate articles prohibiting the immigration of free negroes and limiting the suffrage to whites were carried.1

1863.

Lincoln's emancipation proclamation of September, The Legis1862, was at first very unpopular in Illinois and in the lature of next elections the Republicans were badly beaten. The legislature of 1863 voted to ratify an amendment to the Constitution of the United States providing that no amendment should ever be made interfering with slavery in the States, and the House of Representatives even passed resolutions calling for an armistice between the Union and Confederate armies. This legislature was finally prorogued or adjourned by Governor Yates. Some of the members of this opposition party were honest and patriotic men who were simply opposing what they considered to be unwise or unconstitutional measures of the Federal and State governments. There was, nevertheless, some real disloyalty as was shown, for example, in 1864 by what is known as the "Camp Douglas Conspiracy" to set free Confederate prisoners kept at Chicago.

1 Journal of the Convention; Dickerson, The Illinois Constitutional Convention of 1862 (Mss. thesis in library of the University of Illinois). The convention of 1862 is also notable because it claimed the right not only to frame a constitution, but to exercise all the powers of the State government.

3 Public Laws, 1863, 41, 42.