esolutions asking
for the suspension of the anti-slavery article, and elaborating the
argument for such suspension. A committee of which the territorial
delegate from Indiana was chairman, presented a favorable report.(499)

In September, 1807, a petition for the suspension of the anti-slavery
article was sent to Congress from the Indiana legislature. It was signed
by Jesse B. Thomas, later author of the Missouri Compromise, but then
Speaker of the territorial House of Representatives, and resident in what
was to become the State of Indiana, and by the president _pro tem._ of the
Legislative Council. Action in committee was adverse,(500) Congress being
then busied with the question of the abolition of the slave trade.

During the territorial period in Illinois (1809-1818), the slavery
question was not much agitated. The Constitution of 1818 provided that
slaves could not be thereafter brought into the State, except such as
should be brought under contract to labor at the Saline Creek salt works,
said contract to be limited to one year, although renewable, and the
proviso to be void after 1825, but existing slavery was not abolished, and
existing indentures--and some were for ninety-nine years(501)--should be
carried out. Male children of slaves or indentured servants should be free
at the age of twenty-one and females at eighteen.(502) In Congress, as has
been seen, Tallmadge, of New York, objected to admitting Illinois before
she abolished slavery, but his objection was ineffectual.

In March, 1819, a slave code was enacted. Any black or mulatto coming into
the State was required to file with the clerk of a circuit court a
certificate of freedom. Slaves should not be brought into the state for
the purpose of emancipation. Resident negroes, other than slaves and
indentured servants, must file certificates of freedom. Slaves were to be
whipped instead of fined, thirty-nine stripes being the maximum number
that might be inflicted. Contracts with slaves were void. Not more than
two slaves should meet together without written permission from their
masters. Any master emancipating his slaves must give a bond of $1000 per
head that such emancipated slaves should not become public charges,
failure to give such a bond being punishable by a fine of $200 per head.
Colored people must present passes when traveling.(503)

Stringent as was the code of 1819, it was of a type that was common in the
slave states. Its passage may have