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 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.

In 1806, a congressional committee reported on the various memorials and
petitions from Illinois, but the report led to no legislation and thus
settled nothing, and in 1807 petitioning continued.(200) Illinois again
petitioned for separation from the remainder of Indiana Territory, this
petition bearing seventeen signatures. An inclosed census is lost, but a
population of five thousand is spoken of. A new and significant paragraph
occurs: "When your Memorialists contemplate the probable movements which
may arise out of an European peace, now apparently about to take place,
they cannot but feel the importance of union, of energy, of population on
this shore of the Mississippi--they cannot but shudder at the horrors which
may arise from a _disaffection in the West_...." A government was needed,
and that of Indiana Territory was not acceptable to the people of
Illinois. One hundred and two inhabitants of Illinois sent a
counter-petition, in which they said that Illinois had paid no taxes and
needed no separate government, also that the committee that prepared the
above petition was not legally chosen. Most of the signers of the petition
were Americans, while most of the signers of the counter-petition were
French, forty-two of the latter being illiterate.(201) The report of a
congressional committee on the petition was adverse,(202) as was also a
report on three petitions for division that came from Illinois in the
spring of 1808.