it, as had been supposed by some geographers...."
Although an avowed violation of the Ordinance of 1787, the amendment was
adopted without division or recorded debate. Mr. Pope also secured an
amendment to the effect that the state's proportion of the proceeds of the
sales of public lands, instead of being applied to the making of roads and
canals in the state, should be used in making roads leading to the state,
and for the encouragement of learning, two-fifths being applied to the
former purpose. Pope pointed out that people would build roads as they
needed them, much more readily than they would supply schools, and that
waste school lands in a new country would produce slight revenue.
Subsequent history of the state justified both statements. The enabling
act met with little opposition and was signed by President Monroe on April
18, 1818.(275)

One of the provisions of the enabling act was that, in order to become a
state, Illinois must have as many as forty thousand inhabitants. In
anticipation of such a provision, the territorial legislature had passed a
law in January, 1818, providing that a census of the territory should be
taken between April 1 and June 1. A supplemental act provided that as a
great increase in population might be expected between June 1 and
December, census takers should continue to take the census in their
districts of all who should remove into them between June 1 and December
1. The law as framed gave an opportunity to count not only immigrants, but
to re-count all who moved from one county to another (such moving being
common), and to count in each successive county persons passing through
the state. There is no reasonable doubt that at the time the census was
taken, the territory had fewer than forty thousand inhabitants. Dana gives
a census of 1818, in which the number is given as thirty-four thousand six
hundred and sixty-six, and adds: "Another enumeration having been taken a
few months after, the amount of population returned was forty thousand one
hundred and fifty-six, which exceeded the number entitling the territory
to become a state."(276)

In August, 1818, the Constitution of Illinois was completed. Its
provisions most likely to influence settlement were those concerning the
elective franchise and slavery. It provided that "In all elections, all
white male inhabitants above the age of twenty-one years, having resided
in the state six months next preceding the election, shall enj