Papers Of Abraham Lincoln

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1^st Resolved by the General assembly of the State of Illinois (two thirds of the members concurring herein,) that it has become necessary to amend the present constitution of this State, so as, (among other things) to prohibit slavery within her limit,

2^d Resolved that it be recommended to the electors at the next election of members to the general assembly to vote for or against a convention, which shall have no power to introduce Slavery into this State under any pretense whatever,

3^d Resolved that the votes to be given for a convention as above stated shall be considered as obligatory instructions to the said convention, when organized, to suffer no provision in the constitution to justify or authorize slavery in this state.2

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Convention Resolution

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Laid on table

1Christian B. Blockburger introduced these resolutions in the House of Representatives on January 29, 1835. The House tabled the resolutions without further action.
Journal of the House of Representatives of the Ninth General Assembly of the State of Illinois, at their First Session, Begun and Held in the Town of Vandalia, December 1, 1834 (Vandalia, IL: J. Y. Sawyer, 1835), 429-30.

2The Illinois Constitution of 1818 prohibited slavery in the most of Illinois, but allowed salt manufacturers to employ African American slave labor on the federal government salt works in Gallatin County. Adult slaves or indentured servants already in the state, moreover, would remain in servitude, their children to become free at the age of eighteen. Unlike the Indiana and Ohio constitutions, the Illinois Constitution did not include a clause prohibiting amendment to allow the introduction of slavery, and in 1824 pro-slavery forces tried unsuccessfully to call a constitutional convention to amend the constitution to legalize slavery. Debate over slavery, black migration, and the status of African Americans mounted during the movement for the constitutional convention that resulted in the Illinois Constitution of 1848.
Janet Cornelius, Constitution Making in Illinois, 1818-1970 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972), 15-16, 25-44.