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Indiana University 
sonian Republicans. Only in the campaign in the first Ohio 
district was there any sign of any other party ever having 
existed. 
Altho the slavery question, as far as the constitution was 
concerned, had been settled by the Indiana convention of 1816, 
there was still some division of sentiment, and Jennings in the 
campaign for governor in 1819 kept the issue well to the 
front. In Illinois the whole question remained to be settled. 
Cook, who had voted against striking out the slavery restric- 
tion on Missouri, lost many proslavery votes in 1822, but 
carried all the northern and central counties except one and 
was elected by a comfortable majority.® Slavery was the 
issue in the election of governor also, and Edward Coles, 
opposed to slavery in principle, was elected by a plurality 
vote over three other candidates. Factional divisions fre- 
quently obscured the main issue, however, and only in the 
northern counties which formed a sectional third party was 
the slavery question paramount to the old party groups. 
Agitation for another state constitutional convention began 
in this campaign, and the question was submitted to the voters 
with the general understanding that a convention meant the 
introduction of slavery into the state. The campaign for the 
convention lasted eighteen months and attracted national at- 
tention. The majority of the pro-convention leaders were na- 
tives of the South, but the prominent anti-convention men were 
about evenly divided as to place of birth. It is probable that 
the northern element was stronger than has been generally 
thought, and that it furnished leaders in high proportion to 
its numerical strength.® In the vote on the convention August 
3, 1824,^® sectional division was prominent. Eleven southern 
counties which cast 3,788 votes gave 62 per cent for the con- 
vention, while 19 northern counties with 7,814 votes gave only 
33 per cent. After this election the question was regarded 
as settled. Most of the antislavery men dropped out of politics, 
while the leaders of the convention party won prominent 
position in public office.^^ 
® Pease, Illinois Election Returns, 11. 
^ Solon J. Buck, “The New England Element in Illinois Politics before 1833”, in 
Mississippi Valley History Society Proceedings, VI, 49. 
6,640 against ; 4,972 for. 
Five-sixths of the legislature of 1824 was elected at the same time that the people 
voted so decidedly against the convention, yet it elected two of slavery’s most zealous 
advocates, Elias Kent Kane and John McLean, to the United States Senate. “There 
is nothing stranger than this in our political history.” C.B. Washburne, Sketch of 
Edtaard Coles, Second Governor of Illinois, and the Slavery Struggle of 1823-2 Jf (Chicago, 
1882), 194. 
