their first onset the rank and file of the British were scattered like leaves before the blast, and all the efforts of the British officers to form the broken ranks again, proved utterly unavailing. Seventy of the British regulars were killed and wounded, and more than 600 taken prisoners. Gen. Proctor's escape was merely due to the fleetness of his horse.

A far more serious trial awaited the Americans, who had to attack the Indians, commanded by the brave and noble Tecumseh. For although Col. Johnson succeeded in breaking their lines at the second charge, the Indians, unlike the British, disdaining to yield, continued the fight with desperate valor, and had nearly forced their way through the American lines, when they were repulsed with great slaughter by a regiment of Kentucky volunteers, led on by the intrepid Shelby. Still the Indians, to the number of 1200, stimulated to extraordinary efforts by their beloved commander, whose voice could be distinctly. heard in every part of the battle, continued the combat, with heroic self-devotion, gathering round their illustrious chief, with an apparent determination to conquer or die by his side. But after Proctor's defeat, the event of the battle could no longer be doubtful. Unwilling to survive the slaughter of his countrymen, the generous Tecumseh fell, nobly battling at their head. About the same time Col. Johnson, conspicuous by the white horse he rode, was pierced by several balls, and fell. The Indians, whom the voice and example of Tecumseh could no longer animate, at last gave way on every side. Where Tecumseh had fallen, 36 men, both whites and Indians, were found literally cut and stabbed to pieces.

Thus fell Tecumseh, no doubt the greatest and most exalted of his race, and respected by all his enemies as a great and magnanimous chief. To a powerful intellect uniting the soul of a hero, he was in war the bravest of the brave, most eloquent in council, and generous and humane in every one of his acts. He died the greatest champion of his people; his death deprived them of their last protector, and

sealed their doom forever.

Long afterwards his grave was to be seen beside a large fallen oak. He was there left alone in his glory. The British government having previously appointed him a brigadier-general, afterwards granted a pension to his mourning family.

The victory at the Thames, the fall of Tecumseh, and the inglorious

defeat of Proctor, terminated the war in the Northwestern Territory, which was once more united to the republic, never again to be separated from it. The middle and northern part of Illinois for some time continued to be afflicted with the depredations of the Sacs, Foxes, Shawnees, Kickapoos, and other Indian nations, but peace being at length concluded between Great Britain and the Republic, on the 24th of December, 1814, the savages, abandoned by Great Britain, were soon brought to terms.

On the 20th of May, 1812, Illinois, for the first time, sent a delegate to Congress. The right of suffrage was extended to all its inhabitants, and the property qualification required by the ordinance of 1787 in the voter, was abolished. By this ordinance the President appointed a Governor, who held his office for three years, resided in the district, and had a freehold estate of 1000 acres of land; a Secretary for four years, who resided in the district, and had a freehold estate of 500 acres of land; and a Court of three judges, to reside in the district, and have, each of them, a freehold estate of 500 acres of land. The governor and the judges had power to adopt and publish such laws of the original States as were necessary and best adapted to the circumstances of the territory, and the governor was to have also the power of appointing all magistrates, civil officers, and all military officers under the rank of brigadier-general, and of dividing the district into counties and townships.

This was the form of government under which Illinois was ruled from 1809-1812.

In 1812 the governor was appointed and commissioned as before, but a Legislative Council of five members, and a House of Representatives, elected by the people, were now authorized to make laws "for the government of the district, not repugnant to the principles and articles established and declared in the ordinance above alluded to." The Legislative Council was appointed by the President and Senate, and commissioned by the former, from a list of 10 persons to be furnished by the House of Representatives in the district. A delegate to Congress was also elected by the people. In this manner the Territory was governed from 1812-1818, Ninian Edwards continuing as governor during that time.

The population of the Territory in the year 1812 did not exceed

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12,000 souls. After the termination of the war in the year 1814, people began to arrive from the old States. They brought money with them, quite a novelty to the people of Illinois, for till then the skins of the deer had answered, with that primitive people, the purpose of a circulating medium; and introduced some changes into the habits and customs of the people. Education and learning, however, were still much neglected. There were few schools; in these few nothing but reading, writing, and the four cardinal rules of arithmetic, were taught. Scientific and professional men came from abroad. Of preachers, it is true, they had many that were born and brought up in the country, but their chief excellence consisted not in the profundity of their learning, which was wholly made up by a superficial knowledge of the gospel, but rather in the power of their lungs, the rapidity of their gesticulations, and the skill, with which they were wont to spin out a few barren ideas into a sermon of astonishing length, overladen with florid bombast. Their enthusiasm knew no bounds; by reason whereof many of them turned fanatics. Unlike our modern divines, they would, in times of scarcity, preach gratuitously, and be satisfied with the coarsest food; often they would accost and warn strangers, whose souls these poor fanatics imagined they saw rushing into the fire of eternal damnation. Of the fine arts, even the art of singing was unknown. The attempt of a New England singing master to introduce better music among the Illinoisians, resulted in a disastrous failure; for at the very first lesson he gave, his pupils, in spite of all his remonstrances, cried at the top of their voices, producing a deafening noise, which proving too much for his feeble constitution, forced him to desist from the enterprise.

The occupations of the people were still those of farming or hunting. They raised their own provisions, and often supplied their wants in a manner that shows them not deficient in originality and fertility of genius. To illustrate this, the example may be quoted of a farmer of the name of Lemon, who on a certain day turned out to plough, and, missing his horse-collar, which his waggish son had hidden, being perplexed for but a moment, in the twinkling of an eye pulled off his leathern breeches, stuffed them, and straddled them across the horse's neck, ploughing lustily all day, without any covering to hide his natural inferiorities from the prying eye of an insolent criticising curiosity.

CHAPTER III.

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UP to the year 1818 the population of the Territory of Illinois had increased to about 50,000 inhabitants. At the commencement of that year, the people of the Territory unanimously resolved to have Illinois admitted into the Union as an independent State, and ordered Nathaniel Pope, their delegate to Congress, to take measures to that effect. Nathaniel Pope brought the subject at once before Congress, and reported a bill thereon. About that time the danger, already vaguely apprehended before, of the dissolution of the confederate States of the Republic, had assumed a very threatening aspect. thaniel Pope justly observed, that if Illinois, which, by reason of the great extent of its territory, its fertile soil, and the facilities it offered for the support of a crowded population, was destined to become a chief instrument either in the preservation or in the dissolution of the Union, was given a large boundary on the Northern Lakes, the increase of the commerce on which was very confidently expected, then, united as Illinois already was by the bonds of interest to the States west of the Mississippi, it would also become connected by the closest ties of business and commerce with the Eastern States, and thus be bound to sustain the Federal Union forever; whilst, on the other hand, if no such extensive territory should be given to her, the interests of the State would compel her to enrol herself among the States of a new Southwestern confederacy, whenever the Union should be dissolved. Nathaniel Pope's views met the full approbation of Congress, and the bill, in virtue of which the Territory of Illinois was to be raised to the rank of an independent State, was passed as a law, in the month of April, 1818; it granted to Illinois the extension of her northern boundary to the parallel of 42° 30' north latitude, and the privilege of applying the money arising from the sale of the public lands, to the encouragement of learning within the borders of the State.

Congress having passed this act, a Convention, of which Elias K. Kane, a lawyer, was the leading member, was convoked during the summer of 1818 in Illinois, to form its Constitution. By this Constitution the Governor and Lieutenant-Governor were required to have been citizens of the United States for 30 years previous to their election. The qualifications for the office of Lieutenant-Governor were afterwards in so far modified, that any citizen of the United States who had resided in the State for two years, could be elected to that office. Power was vested in the Governor to nominate, and in the Senate to confirm all officers, except those, whose appointments had already been provided for by the Constitution, including also the Judges of the Supreme and Inferior Courts, State Treasurer, and Public Printer. The Convention, however, in order to please a favorite of theirs, inserted a schedule in the Constitution, declaring "that an Auditor, Attorney-General, and other officers of the State, may be appointed by the General Assembly." This schedule was productive of innumerable intrigues and quarrels between the Governors and the Legislature, which ended in the Legislature, who had at first contented themselves with electing an Auditor and Attorney-General, depriving the Governor, as was the case with Gov. Duncan, of the power of appointing any public officers, save notaries public and public administrators.

Shadrach Bond, a farmer by occupation, and a man of plain common sense, without pretensions to a refined education, who had already been several times elected to the Territorial Legislature, and once as a delegate of the Territory to Congress, was elected the first Governor, and entered upon the discharge of his duties in October, 1818. At the same time, the Legislature assembled in Kaskaskia. In his first message to the Legislature, he earnestly recommends the construction of the canal, which was to run through Illinois, and to connect the Mississippi with Lake Michigan. He died in the year 1834.

The Legislature convened in Kaskaskia elected Joseph Philips, a lawyer by profession, who had been a captain in the United States Army, and afterwards Secretary of State to the Territory, as Chief Justice; and John Reynolds, Thomas C. Brown, and William P. Foster, a great rascal, who soon resigned his office, as Associate Justices of the Supreme Court. Ninian Edwards, and Jesse B. Thomas,