None of the Territories carved out of the original Northwest had shown greater eagerness for separate government than Illinois. The isolation of the original settlements grouped along the Mississippi, their remoteness from the seat of territorial government on the Wabash, and the consequent difficulty of obtaining legal protection and efficient government, predisposed the people of Illinois to demand a territorial government of their own, long before Congress listened to their memorials. Bitter controversy and even bloodshed attended their efforts.[323]
A generation later a similar contest occurred for the separation of the fourteen northern counties from the State. When Congress changed the northern boundary of Illinois, it had deviated from the express provisions of the Ordinance of 1787, which had drawn the line through the southern bend of Lake Michigan. This departure from the Magna Charta of the Northwest furnished the would-be secessionists with a pretext. But an editorial in the _Northwestern Gazette and Galena Advertiser_, January 20, 1842, naively disclosed their real motive. Illinois was overwhelmed with debt, while Wisconsin was "young, vigorous, and free from debt." "Look at the district as it is now," wrote the editor fervidly, "the _fag end_ of the State of Illinois--its interest wholly disregarded in State legislation--in short, treated as a mere _province_--taxed; laid under tribute in the form of taxation for the benefit of the South and Middle." The right of the people to determine by vote whether the counties should be annexed to Illinois, was accepted without question. A meeting of citizens in Jo Daviess County resolved, that "until the Ordinance of 1787 was altered by common consent, the free inhabitants of the region had, in common with the free inhabitants of the Territory of Wisconsin, an absolute, vested, indefeasible right to form a permanent constitution and State government."[324] This was the burden of many memorials of similar origin.
The desire of the people of Illinois to control local interests extended most naturally to the soil which nourished them. That the Federal Government should without their consent dispose of lands which they had brought under cultivation, seemed to verge on tyranny. It mattered not that the settler had taken up lands to which he had no title in law. The wilderness belonged to him who subdued it. Therefore land leagues and claim associations figure largely in the history of the Northwest. Their object was everywhere the same, to protect the squatter against the chance bidder at a public land sale.