one of our Suffolk bar should
accidentally drop in."[152]

Meantime, changes were taking place in the political map of Illinois,
which did not escape the watchful eye of Judge Douglas. By the census
of 1840, the State was entitled to seven, instead of four
representatives in Congress.[153] A reapportionment act was therefore
to be expected from the next legislature. Democrats were already at
work plotting seven Democratic districts on paper, for, with a
majority in the legislature, they could redistrict the State at will.
A gerrymander was the outcome.[154] If Douglas did not have a hand in
the reapportionment, at least his friends saw to it that a desirable
district was carved out, which included the most populous counties in
his circuit. Who would be a likelier candidate for Congress in this
Democratic constituency than the popular judge of the Fifth Circuit
Court?

Seven of the ten counties composing the Fifth Congressional District
were within the so-called "military tract," between the Mississippi
and Illinois rivers; three counties lay to the east on the lower
course of the Illinois. Into this frontier region population began to
flow in the twenties, from the Sangamo country; and the organization
of county after county attested the rapid expansion northward. Like
the people of southern Illinois, the first settlers were of Southern
extraction; but they were followed by Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and
New Englanders. In the later thirties, the Northern immigration, to
which Douglas belonged, gave a somewhat different complexion to
Peoria, Fulton, and other adjoining counties. Yet there were diverse
elements in the district: Peoria had a cosmopolitan population of
Irish, English, Scotch, and German immigrants; Quincy became a city of
refuge for "Young Germany," after the revolutionary disturbances of
1830 in Europe.[155]

No sooner had the reapportionment act passed than certain members of
the legislature, together with Democrats who held no office, took it
upon themselves to call a nominating convention, on a basis of
representation determined in an equally arbitrary fashion.[156] The
summons was obeyed nevertheless. Forty "respectable Democats"
assembled at Griggsville, in Pike County, on June 5, 1843. It was a
most satisfactory body. The delegates did nothing but what was
expected of them. On the second ballot, a majority cast their votes
for Douglas as the candidate of the party for Congress. The other
aspi