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Resolved by the General Assembly of the state of Illinois, that the senators and Representatives in congress from this state, be requested to use their exertions to procure the passage of a Law, authorizing
the Relinquishment of Sections Number sixteen, in all every Township, when, those sections, upon being offered for sale, will not sell
for one dollar and twenty five cents per acre, and the selection of an equal Quantity
of Land in Quarter
Quarter sections, in [lieu?] thereof.2
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Engross it
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3.
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adopted
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[12]/[11]/[1835]
[12]/[11]/[1835]
Decr.[December] 11th 1835.
1William Thomas introduced the resolution in the Senate on December 9, 1835, and the Senate immediately adopted it. The House of Representatives concurred on December 10. On December 19, the House and Senate delivered the resolution
to Governor Joseph Duncan for his signature. On January 18, 1836, Illinois representative Zadok Casey introduced the petition in the U.S. Congress, which referred it to the Committee
on Public Lands. On the same day, Illinois senator John M. Robinson introduced the petition in the U.S. Senate, where it was tabled.
Illinois House Journal. 1835. 9th G. A., 2nd sess., 29, 30, 83; Illinois Senate Journal. 1835. 9th G. A., 2nd sess., 12-13, 22, 57, 78; U.S. House Journal. 1836. 24th Cong., 1st sess., 215; U.S. Senate Journal. 1836. 24th Cong., 1st sess., 105.
2In 1818, when Congress passed the act enabling the Illinois Territory to become a state, it granted to every township in the state the proceeds of the
sale of land in each township’s Section 16. This money became known as the common
school fund.
“An Act to Enable the People of the Illinois Territory to Form a Constitution and
State Government, and for the Admission of Such State into the Union on an Equal Footing
with the Original States,” 18 April 1818, Statutes at Large of the United States, 3:428-31; W. L. Pillsbury, “Early Education in Illinois,” in Sixteenth Biennial Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction of the State
of Illinois (Springfield, IL: H. W. Rokker, 1886), 106-07.
Handwritten Document, 2 page(s), Folder 228, GA Session: 9-2,
Illinois State Archives (Springfield, IL) ,