Illinois soon sought admission to the second grade of territorial government. In April, 1801, John Edgar wrote from Kaskaskia to St. Clair: “During a few weeks past, we have put into circulation petitions addressed to Governor Harrison, for a General Assembly, and we have had the satisfaction to find that about nine-tenths of the inhabitants of the counties of St. Clair and Randolph approve of the measure, a great proportion of whom have already put their signatures to the petition.... I have no doubt but that the undertaking will meet with early success, so as to admit of the House of Representatives meeting in the fall.”[192] The movement for advancement to the second grade was not, however, destined to such early success, and when it did take place such a change had occurred that Illinois was much enraged.
The Illinois country early became restive under the government of Indiana Territory. Much the same causes for discontent existed as had caused Kentucky to wish to separate from Virginia, Tennessee from North Carolina, and the country west of the Alleghanies from the United States. In each case a frontier minority saw its wishes, if not its rights, infringed by a more eastern majority. In each case the eastern people were themselves too weak to furnish sufficient succor to the struggling West. The conflict was natural and inevitable. The grave charge against Governor Harrison, who had large powers of patronage, was local favoritism. So discontented was Illinois, that in 1803 it had petitioned for annexation to the territory of Louisiana when such territory should be formed.[193] Antagonism to the Indiana government became still more bitter when, in December, 1804, after an election which was so hurried that an outlying county did not get to vote, [pg 086] the territory entered the second grade of territorial government.[194]
In the summer of 1805, discontent in Illinois was again expressed in a memorial to Congress. About three hundred and fifty inhabitants of the region petitioned for a division of Indiana Territory, From the Illinois settlements to the capital, Vincennes, was said to be one hundred and eighty miles, “through a dreary and inhospitable wilderness, uninhabited, and which during one part of the year, can scarcely afford water sufficient to sustain nature, and that of the most indifferent quality, besides presenting other hardships equally severe, while in another it is part under water, and in places to the extent of some miles, by which the road is rendered almost impassable, and the traveler is not only subjected to the greatest difficulties, but his life placed in the most imminent danger.” It resulted that the attendance of Illinois inhabitants upon either the legislature or the supreme court was fraught with many inconveniences. Because of the extensive prairies between Illinois and Vincennes, “a communication between them and the settlements east of that river [the Wabash] can not in the common course of things, for centuries yet to come, be supported with the least benefit, or be of the least moment to either of them.” Illinois objected to having been precipitated into the second grade of government. In the election for that purpose, said the memorialists, only Knox county voted in the affirmative, and Wayne county did not vote, because the writs of election arrived too late. Since entering the second grade the County of Wayne (Michigan) had been struck off. It was believed that if the prayer for separation should be granted, the rage for emigration to Louisiana would, in great measure, cease, the value of public lands in Illinois [pg 087] would be increased, and their sale would also be more rapid, while an increased population would render Illinois flourishing and self-supporting rather than a claimant for governmental support.[195]
At the same time that Congress received the above memorial, it received a petition from a majority of the members of the respective houses of the Indiana legislature. This petition asked that the freehold qualification for electors be abolished; that Indiana Territory be not divided, and that the undivided territory be soon made a state. It was said that the people were too poor to support a divided government, and that as the general court met annually in each county it was slight hardship to the frontier to have the supreme court meet at Vincennes.[196] It was probably true at this time, as it certainly was in 1807, that the general court met as above stated. Appeal by bill of exceptions was, however, allowed. The supreme court had no original, exclusive jurisdiction.[197] Nothing daunted by this memorial from the legislature, Illinois, in a short time, prepared another memorial—this time with twenty signatures. This adds to the grievances recited in the previous memorial that the wealthy appeal cases against the Illinois poor to the supreme court at Vincennes; that landholders on the Wabash are interested in preventing the population of lands on the Mississippi; that preëmption is needed, and that it is hoped that the general government will not pass unnoticed the act of the last legislature authorizing the importation of slaves into the territory. It violates the Ordinance of 1787. The memorialists desired such importation, but it must be [pg 088] authorized by Congress to be legal. The population of Illinois was given as follows:
By the census of April 1, 1801: 2,361
Inhabitants of Prairie du Chien and on the Illinois River, not included in above: 550
“Emigration” since 1801, at least one-third increase: 750
Settlements on the Ohio River: 650
4,311[198]
The truth of some of the complaints from Illinois is apparent. That a land company on the Wabash wished to hinder settlement on the Mississippi is probably true, for Matthew Lyon, of Kentucky, said in Congress, in the winter of 1805-6: “The price of lands is various. I know of two hundred thousand acres of land on the Wabash, which is offered for sale at twenty cents per acre.”[199] It is to be presumed that the company making the offer could not give a secure title to the land.