Papers Of Abraham Lincoln

1
Resolved, That it is unwise, injudicious, and improper, for this Legislature to grant divorces in any case that may be presented.2

1Josiah Fisk from the Committee on the Judiciary, to which the House of Representatives referred various petitions for divorce, introduced the resolution in the House on February 28, 1839, and the House adopted it.
Journal of the House of Representatives of the Eleventh General Assembly of the State of Illinois, at Their First Session (Vandalia, IL: William Walters, 1838), 549.

2The legislature had enacted its final divorce act just twelve weeks before this resolution, which effectively ended the practice for good. Although divorce by legislative act had been rare in Illinois, clearly legislators had come to see it as a topic unfit for the legislature’s consideration. After this resolution there would be no more legislative divorces in the state, however it was not until the Illinois Constitution of 1848 that Illinois law specifically confined divorce within the jurisdiction of the state’s circuit courts.
Illinois Constitution, Article 3, Sec. 32 (1848); Eugene L. Gross and William L. Gross, An Index to All the Laws of the State of Illinois (Springfield: E. L. & W. L. Gross, 1869), 13; “An Act concerning Divorces,” approved 1 June 1827, The Revised Code of Laws of Illinois (1827), 181.