rculation 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, 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
dan