t all. One of these was the form of local government
which should be adopted. Southerners and New Englanders brought to their
new homes widely differing political usages. The former were accustomed
to the county as the principal local unit of administration. It was
a relatively large division, whose affairs were managed by elective
officers, mainly a board of commissioners. The New Englanders, on the
other hand, had grown up under the town-meeting system and clung to the
notion that an indispensable feature of democratic local government is
the periodic assembling of the citizens of a community for legislative,
fiscal, and electoral purposes. The Illinois constitution of 1818 was
made by Southerners, and naturally it provided for the county system.
But protest from the "Yankee" elements became so strong that in the
new constitution of 1848 provision was made for township organization
wherever the people of a county wanted it; and this form of government,
at first prevalent only in the northern counties, is now found in most
of the central and southern counties as well.

The most deeply and continuously dividing issue in the Northwest, as in
the nation, at large, was negro slavery. Although written by Southern
men, the Ordinance of 1787 stipulated that there should be "neither
slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise
than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly
convicted." If the government of the Northwest had been one of laws, and
not of men, this specific provision would have made the territory free
soil and would have relieved the inhabitants from all interest in the
"peculiar institution." But the laws never execute themselves--least of
all in frontier communities. In point of fact, considerable numbers of
slaves were held in the territory until the nineteenth century was far
advanced. As late as 1830 thirty-two negroes were held in servitude in
the single town of Vincennes. Slavery could and did prevail to a limited
extent because existing property rights were guaranteed in the Ordinance
itself, in the deed of cession by Virginia, in the Jay Treaty of 1794,
and in other fundamental acts. The courts of the Northwest held
that slave-owners whose property could be brought under any of
these guarantees might retain that property; and although no court
countenanced further importation, itinerant Southerners--rich
planters traveling in their family carriages, with serva