document, which he gave to Pope with the request to have it embodied
in the Enabling Act.[24] This statement was repeated and amplified by
Mr. Joseph B. Lemen in an article in _The Chicago Tribune_.[25] It is
a well-known fact that the vote of these fourteen northern counties
secured the State to the anti-slavery party in 1856; but as this
section of the State was not settled until long after its admission
into the Union, the measure, whatever its origin, had no effect upon
the Constitutional Convention. However, John Messinger, of New Design,
who surveyed the Military Tract and, later, also the northern boundary
line, may very well have made such a plat, either on his own motion or
at the suggestion of the zealous anti-slavery leader, with whom he was
well acquainted. As Messinger was later associated with Peck in the
Rock Spring Seminary, and in the publication of a sectional map of
Illinois, it would seem that Peck was in a position to know the facts
as well as Ford.

In the campaign for the election of delegates to the Constitutional
Convention, slavery was the only question seriously agitated. The
Lemen churches and their sympathizers were so well organized and so
determined in purpose that they made a very energetic and effective
campaign for delegates. Their organization for political purposes, as
Peck informs us, "always kept one of its members and several of its
friends in the Territorial Legislature; and five years before the
constitutional election in 1818, it had fifty resident agents--men of
like sympathies--quietly at work in the several settlements; and the
masterly manner in which they did their duty was shown by a poll which
they made of the voters some few weeks before the election, which, on
their side, varied only a few votes from the official count after the
election."[23]

It is difficult to determine from the meager records of the
proceedings, even including the Journal of the Convention recently
published, just what the complexion of the body was on the slavery
question. Mr. W. Kitchell, a descendant of one of the delegates,
states that there were twelve delegates that favored the recognition
of slavery by a {p.21} specific article in the Constitution, and
twenty-one that opposed such action. Gov. Coles, who was present as a
visitor and learned the sentiments of the prominent members, says that
many, but not a majority of the Convention, were in favor of making
Illinois a slave state.[26] Durin