PAPERS ON GEOLOGY AND GEOGRAPHY 235 



Much salt was hauled in wagons on that road, or carried 

 on horseback. It was only one of a number of such roads 

 which led to the salt works from all directions. Some of 

 them were short and perhaps illy defined, while others were 

 well made and extended long distances, as, for example, 

 the one which crossed the state to Kaskaskia. While these 

 roads were built largely for the purpose of facilitating the 

 movement of salt, they served also to encourage settlement 

 in the areas through which they passed. Such was true 

 on the Kentucky side of the river as well as in Illinois. 



The number of people who came from the South for salt 

 strengthened the bond between the two regions and ren- 

 dered more difficult the proper adjustment of the slavery 

 issue in Illinois. The Wabash Saline was responsible, in 

 large measure, for the virtual existence of slavery in ter- 

 ritory which has been prescribed by Congress as free, for 

 much violent pro-slavery agitation in the early days of 

 state-hood, and for a political fight which all but disrupted 

 the commonwealth. From the time when Governor 

 St. Clair, by his interpretation of the Ordinance of 1787, 

 permitted slaves which were owned outside the Territory 

 to be brought into it for the pui*pose of working at the 

 Saline, until 1824, when the call for a convention for fram- 

 ing a new state constitution which should legalize slavery 

 was finally defeated, the salt interests led the pro-slavery 

 fight.12 The fact that the first Constitution did not prohibit 

 the institution entirely and at once, but contained instead 

 a temporizing clause which permitted slave labor at the 

 Saline until 1825, indicates the hold which it had gained 

 upon an industry that was felt to be essential to the wel- 

 fare of the state. At the same time, it is suggestive of 

 the place which the industry occupied in the life of the 

 people. The large number of workmen required not only in 

 the actual manufacture of salt, but also in cutting and haul- 

 ing wood for fuel, in making barrels, etc., made the low 

 cost of slave labor and its perpetuation seem a matter of 

 much moment to the operators of the works. According to 

 Prof. Worthen, the number of employees sometimes ran as 

 high as one or two thousand. 



13. See Harris, Norman Dwight, Negro Servitude in Illinois; Flower, English 

 Settlement; Pease, Theodore Calvin, The Frontier State, 



