[Sidenote: Effects of the Ordinance of 1787.]
By the famous Ordinance of 1787, to which we shall again have occasion
to refer, negro slavery had been forever prohibited to the north of
the Ohio river, so that, in spite of the wishes of her early settlers,
Illinois was obliged to enter the Union as a free state. But in 1820
Missouri was admitted as a slave state, and this turned the stream of
southern migration aside from Illinois to Missouri. These emigrants,
to whom slaveholding was a mark of social distinction, preferred to
go where they could own slaves. About the same time settlers from New
England and New York, moving along the southern border of Michigan
and the northern borders of Ohio and Indiana, began pouring into
the northern part of Illinois. These new-comers did not find the
representative county system adequate for their needs, and they
demanded township government. A memorable political struggle ensued
between the northern and southern halves of the state, ending in 1848
with the adoption of a new constitution. It was provided that the
legislature should enact a general law for the political organization
of townships, under which any county might act whenever a majority of
its voters should so determine.
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