Political ideals and customs were also a divisive force in Illinois society. True to their earlier political training, the Southern settlers had established the county as a unit of local government. The Constitution of 1818 put the control of local concerns in the hands of three county commissioners, who, though elected by the people, were not subjected to that scrutiny which selectmen encountered in the New England town meeting. To the democratic New Englander, every system seemed defective which gave him no opportunity to discuss neighborhood interests publicly, and to call local officers to account before an assembly of the vicinage. The new comers in northern Illinois became profoundly dissatisfied with the autocratic board of county commissioners. Since the township might act as a corporate body for school purposes, why might they not enjoy the full measure of township government? Their demands grew more and more insistent, until they won substantial concessions from the convention which framed the Constitution of 1848. But all this agitation involved a more or less direct criticism of the system which the people of southern Illinois thought good enough for Yankees, if it were good enough for themselves.[308]
In the early history of Illinois, negro slavery was a bone of contention between men of Northern and of Southern antecedents. When Illinois was admitted as a State, there were over seven hundred negroes held in servitude. In spite of the Ordinance of 1787, Illinois was practically a slave Territory. There were, to be sure, stalwart opponents of slavery even among those who had come from slave-holding communities; but taken in the large, public opinion in the Territory sanctioned negro slavery as it existed under a loose system of indenture.[309] Even the Constitution of 1818, under which Illinois came into the Union as a free State, continued the old system of indenture with slight modification.[310]
It was in the famous contest over the proposed constitutional convention of 1824 that the influence of Northern opinion respecting slavery was first felt. The contest had narrowed down to a struggle between those who desired a convention in order to draft a constitution legalizing slavery and those who, from policy or principle, were opposed to slavery in Illinois. Men of Southern birth were, it is true, among the most aggressive leaders of the anti-convention forces, but the decisive votes against the convention were cast in the seven counties recently organized, in which there was a strong Northern element.[311]