ILLINOIS.

This State is included within that tract of the public domain which was organized on the 13th of July, 1787, by an ordinance of the Continental Congress, into the "Territory of the United States northwest of the Ohio river." Small settlements had been made, under the French dominion of Canada, upon the Mississippi at Kaskaskia and other places, and these settlers were continued in possession of their lands upon the transfer of the country.*

On the 7th of May, 1800, it was included in the "Territory of Indiana,” and under this organization the beginnings of settlements were made in the southern and western parts. In 1808 petitions were addressed to Congress for the division of the territory, and on the last day of that year the committee charged with the subject made a report favoring the request. In speaking of the reasons that operated in leading to the conclusions at which they arrived, they said:

"The great difficulty of traveling through an extensive and loathsome wilderness, the want of food and other accommodations on the road, often presents an insurmountable barrier to the attendance of witnesses; and even when their attendance is obtained, the accumulated expense of prosecuting suits where the evidence is at so remote a distance is a cause of much embarrassment to the due and impartial administration of justice, and a proper execution of the laws for the redress of private wrongs."

From the best information that the committee could obtain, there were at this time about 11,000 inhabitants west of the Wabash, and 17,000 east of that river; and the population in both sections was in a state of rapid increase. The only objection that could be raised was that of the increased expense which would attend the formation of a new territory; but the increased value that would be given to the public lands by the public institutions to be established in each, and the increase of wealth from immigration would, it was believed, far exceed the amount of expenditure which would be occasioned.

A bill was accordingly introduced for the division of the territory, which passed on the 3d of February, 1809, by which that portion of Indiana Territory west of the Wabash river, and of a line drawn due north from the said river at Post Vincennes to the boundary between the United States and Canada, was formed into a separate government as the "Territory of Illinois," with an organization similar to that formerly applied to the Territory northwest of the Ohio river, and its seat of government at Kaskaskia, on the Mississippi river.

Its first form of government, under the Governor and Judges, might be changed to that of a General Assembly whenever satisfactory evidence should be given to the Governor that such was the wish of a majority of the freeholders, notwithstanding there might not be five thousand male inhabitants of twenty-one years and upwards; but, until their number should equal that amount, the General Assembly was not to be less than seven, nor more than nine, who were to be apportioned among the counties upon the basis of free males of adult age.

* According to a report made to the old Congress, June 20, 1788, there was a French village of near eighty families near the mouth of the Kaskaskies river, twelve families in a small village at La Praire du Rochas, and near fifty at the Kahokia village. There were also four or five families at Fort Chartres and St. Philips, five miles further up the river. A resolution passed by that Congress, August 29, 1788, gave four hundred acres to the head of each family settled at Post St. Vincennes, and by an act of Congress under the Constitution, approved March 3, 1791, further provision was made for confirming the rights of such French colonists as had preferred to remain and become subjects of the United States.