Organization of county governments in Illinois. Early problems. of the compact, which provided that "there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said Territory otherwise than in punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." This clause, if literally enforced, would have deprived the people of the old French villages of a considerable number of slaves which they then held as property. It really helped to make Illinois ultimately a free State. Government under this ordinance was set up in 1788 by Governor St. Clair at Marietta in what is now Ohio, and in 1790 the Illinois country was organized as St. Clair County and received a regular local government. The county, however, included only the southwestern part of Illinois, and the eastern part was combined with the Vincennes settlements (now a part of Indiana) in the county of Knox. Five years later the southern part of St. Clair County was set apart as Randolph County with Kaskaskia as its county seat. The chief officers of each county were appointed by the governor of the Territory.1 The beginnings of American government in Illinois were unsatisfactory. The French settlers feared that their slaves would be taken from them, and many of them left Illinois for the Spanish territory across the river. In order to check this emigration Governor St. Clair declared that the ordinance was not intended to affect slaves already held in the Territory. There was also much confusion about land titles, which was not cleared up for many years. Finally, the country was disturbed by the hostility of the Indians. In 1795 General Wayne compelled the Indians to negotiate the treaty of Greenville, opening up new territory for white 1 Smith, St. Clair Papers, II. 137, 164-180. Ibid., 117-120, 176, 396-403. settlers, but still reserving nearly all of Illinois to the Indians.1 In spite of these discouragements, a few American American settlers had come from the seaboard States into Illinois, pioneers. including a few of Clark's soldiers. Some of them settled in the old French villages, but others founded new American communities, almost all of them near the Mississippi between Kaskaskia and Cahokia. These American settlers, however, hardly more than made up for the French who had crossed the river. In 1800 there were scarcely three thousand people, not including Indians, within the present limits of Illinois. In the political life of these frontier villages Americans were already taking the lead. When, in 1798, the two Illinois counties chose each its representative to the first assembly of the Northwest Territory, neither sent a Frenchman.2 7. ILLINOIS IN THE INDIANA TERRITORY. 1800-1809 In 1800 the people of Ohio were anxious for admis- The Indiana sion to the Union as a State. The first step in this Territory. direction was the division of the Territory, the western part, including Illinois, being organized into the Territory of Indiana. This Indiana Territory, like the "Old Northwest," was at first governed by a governor and judges appointed by the President. In 1804, however, the freeholders voted in favor of a representative assembly, which was organized in 1805. The Illinois counties Text of the treaty in U. S. Statutes at Large, VII. (Indian Treaties); also in Moses, Illinois Historical and Statistical, I., Appendix. 'Mason, Lists of Early Illinois Citizens (in Chicago Historical Society's Collections, IV.); Perkins and Peck, Annals of the West, Appendix, ch. 2, § 1; Second U. S. Census; Smith, St. Clair Papers, II. 438-439. The Indian treaties. Land titles. chose three of the seven members of the House of Representatives and had two of the five Councillors.1 During this short period some important changes took place. One of these events was the purchase of Louisiana. For forty years the west bank of the Mississippi had belonged to Spain. When the Illinois settler crossed the river to do business in St. Louis, he entered a foreign country. When he sent his products to the Gulf of Mexico, his trade was liable to restrictions imposed by the same power which also held New Orleans. In 1803 the Province of Louisiana, after being first ceded to France, was then sold by the Emperor Napoleon to the United States and the Illinois country was for the first time in its history surrounded on every side by the territories of the American Union. A second important event of this period was the negotiation of several Indian treaties which opened to white settlement a large part of southern Illinois which Wayne's treaty of 1795 had reserved to the Indians.2 William Henry Harrison, the governor of the Territory during the whole of this period, was very active in this work, which was probably the most important feature of his administration. These large land cessions, however, caused serious dissatisfaction among the Indians. Tecumseh and other far-seeing Indian chiefs tried to get combined action by the tribes, in order to prevent the piece-meal surrendering of their land to the United States, and the constant friction between the two races led in 1811 to another Indian war.3 Settlement in the Territory was still checked by the 1U. S. Statutes at Large, 6th Cong., 1st sess., ch. 41; Dillon, History of Indiana, 414-416. "U. S. Statutes at Large, VII. 78-79. old confusion with regard to land titles. In 1804, however, Congress established land offices at Vincennes, on the Indiana side of the Wabash, and at Kaskaskia. Commissioners were appointed to examine the old land claims in order that future grants might be made in an orderly way. Several years passed, however, before they made their final report.1 question. Many people in the Territory believed that more The slavery settlers would come in if slavery could be made legal. A number of efforts were made to repeal the famous "Sixth Article" of the ordinance, and in 1806 a committee of the federal House of Representatives reported in favor of the proposal. Congress refused to repeal the article prohibiting slavery, but there was no interference with the slaves already in the Territory, and the Territorial legislature passed indenture laws, which made possible the holding of negroes on terms little better than slavery, even if not technically in conflict with the ordinance.2 divided. The Indiana Territory had scarcely been organized The Indiana when the people of the western counties began to think Territory it inconvenient to transact legal and official business at Vincennes, then the seat of government. After several unsuccessful efforts, a bill was passed by Congress on February 3, 1809, dividing the Indiana Territory into two governments.3 1U. S. Statutes at Large, II., 337-338; American State Papers, Public Lands, I. 285, 590; II. 123-127. 2 Hinsdale, The Old Northwest, ch. 18; Dillon, History of Indiana, chs. 31, 32; American State Papers, Public Lands, I. 160; Annals of Congress, 9th Cong., 1st session, 466-468. * House Journals (Reprints), V. 611; Annals of Congress, 9th Cong., passim; 10th Cong., 2nd session, 971, 1093-1095; U. S. Statutes at Large, II, 514. Area and population. The government of the Territory. 8. THE ILLINOIS TERRITORY. 1809-1818 The act of 1809 defined the new Territory of Illinois as "all that part of the Indiana Territory which lies west of the Wabash River, and a direct line drawn from the said Wabash River and Post Vincennes, due north to the territorial line between the United States and Canada." This meant that outside the present limits of the State, the Territory included all of Wisconsin except the northern end of the Green Bay peninsula, a large part of the northern peninsula of Michigan, and all of Minnesota east of the Mississippi. In this Territory there were, according to the census of 1810, 12,282 people, all but a few hundred of whom were in southern Illinois on or near the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. The majority of the settlers were now Americans from the older parts of the Union. They came chiefly from the slave holding States, but the number of slaves was small. There were, however, about six hundred other negroes, many of whom were probably held much like slaves under the so-called "indenture law." For the first three years of separate government, the people of Illinois went back to the first stage of Territorial government, conducted without a representative assembly, by a governor, a secretary, and judges, all appointed by the President, the governor being Ninian Edwards of Kentucky. In April, 1812, the people voted in favor of a representative assembly, which was granted to them by Congress in the same year. The new Territorial constitution of Illinois was more liberal than the Ordinance of 1787. All male taxpayers, who had lived in the Territory, could vote. The people could 1 'Return of the Whole Number of Persons, 1810 (Third census), 87. |