PERIOD V.-UNDER THE FIRST CONSTITUTION,

1818-1848.

CHAPTER XIX.

Admission as a State-The Enabling Act-Constitutional Convention-First Constitution-Action of Congress. TEITHER the Ordinance of 1787 nor the constitution pre

admission of new states. Each application has been considered solely upon the merits of the particular case inviting congressional action, according to the facts. Nor have the enabling acts of congress shown any uniformity in either the rules laid down, or the limitations and restrictions imposed; and indeed the following-named states: Vermont, Kentucky, Tennessee, Maine, Michigan, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, California, and Oregon, were admitted into the Union without the preliminary passage by congress of any enabling act whatever.

At the January session, 1818, of the Illinois territorial legisla ture, so greatly had the population increased, that a resolution was adopted directing Congressional-delegate Nathaniel Pope, who had been elected in 1817 to succeed Benjamin Stephenson to present a petition to congress requesting the enactment of a law to enable the people to form a state government; and a bill for that purpose was introduced, April 7, 1818.

The Ordinance of 1787, in fixing the limits of the three states to be formed out of the Northwest Territory, provided that congress should have authority to form one or more states out of so much of that portion of the territory set apart for the western state therein "which lies north of an east-and-west line drawn through the southerly bend or extreme of Lake Michigan."

With this provision in view, in the bill as reported by the committee, the northern boundary of the proposed new state was fixed on the north parallel of 41° 39′′. The house having resolved itself into a committee of the whole to con

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sider the same, Mr. Pope moved to amend by striking out the lines defining the boundary of the new state and inserting the following: "Beginning at the mouth of the Wabash River, hence up the same, and with the line of Indiana to the northwest corner of said State, thence east with the line of the same State to the middle of Lake Michigan, thence north along the middle of said lake to north latitude 42° 30", thence west to the middle of the Mississippi River, and thence down along the middle of that river to its confluence with the Ohio River, and thence up the latter river along its northwest shore to the beginning."

Mr. Pope explained the object of his amendment, and urged its adoption for the following reasons: that the proposed new state by reason of her geographical position even more than on account of the fertility of her soil, was destined to become populous and influential; that if her northern boundary was fixed by a line arbitrarily established rather than naturally determined, and her commerce was to be confined to that great artery of communication, the Mississippi, which washed her entire western border, and to its chief tributary on the south, the Ohio, there was a possibility that her commercial relations with the south might become so closely connected that in the event of an attempted dismemberment of the Union, Illinois would cast her lot with the Southern States. On the other hand to fix the northern boundary of Illinois upon such a parallel of latitude as would give to the state territorial jurisdiction over the southwestern shores of Lake Michigan, would be to unite the incipient commonwealth to the states of Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York in a bond of common interest well-nigh indissoluble. By the adoption of such a line, Illinois might become at some future time the keystone to the perpetuity of the Union.

The feasibility of opening a canal between Lake Michigan and the Illinois River, was admitted by every one who had inspected the location, and given the subject consideration. If the port of Chicago were included within the boundaries of the proposed state, the attention of the inhabitants of the latter would naturally be directed to the opening up of a water-way, between the river named and the great fresh-water sea, and the

early improvement of the entire region. The successful prosecution of such an enterprise, would not only open up new channels of trade, but would tend to bind together the East and West by a chain whose links would be welded together not only by friendship but by a community of interest. And thus with common ties, and interests reaching out to the East as well as the South, an equilibrium of sentiment would be established, which would forever oppose the formation of separate and independent confederacies on the north, south, east, or west.

The arguments adduced by Mr. Pope were deemed conclusive, and his amendment was adopted without a division. By this well-timed action, thus wisely forecasting future events, and indeed anticipating a contingency which actually occurred less than fifty years thereafter, there was secured to Illinois an additional strip of territory, fifty-one miles in width, extending from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River, out of which afterward were formed fourteen populous and wealthy counties.

Had the line originally proposed by the committee been adopted, Chicago would not have grown into the imperial city she now is, because the building of the Illinois-and-Michigan Canal, and the Illinois-Central Railroad, which have contributed so largely to her progress and prosperity, and which were wholly the offspring of Illinois enterprise and statesmanship, would never have become accomplished facts.

Mr. Pope "builded even better than he knew." But for the vote of these counties since 1854, Illinois would have been as thoroughly a democratic state as Missouri; the legislature elected that year would have sustained Stephen A. Douglas in his Kansas-Nebraska bill, and Lyman Trumbull would not have been elected to the U.-S. senate. It was the vote of these counties that elected the republican state-ticket in 1856, which secured the State to that party, and rendered possible the candidacy of Abraham Lincoln for the presidency in 1860. And the whole train of momentous events wrought out by his election, would never have occurred but for the fact that these fourteen northern counties were included within the limits of Illinois, rather than those of Wisconsin.

While Mr. Pope was aware of the fact that the place of indefinite locality called Chicago, including the country around