The 1847 Illinois Constitutional Convention and Persons of Color

Abstract

In 1847, ILLInoIS hELd ItS SECond constitutional convention. Voter disgust with the Illinois General Assembly’s profligate spending habits and enormous distrust of Illinois’ nascent banking industry were the principal triggers for convening “the people.” The Progressive era historian Arthur Cole compiled a transcript of the 1847 convention from contemporaneous reports in the two major Springfield newspapers, the Sangamo Journal, a paper sympathetic to the Whig Party, and the Illinois State Register, the Democraticleaning publication. Cole commented that, “Illinois was to the point where it chafed at the restraints of its constitutional swaddling clothes.”1 The delegates voted to modernize Illinois government by, among other things, democratizing the selection of state and county officials, including the election, rather than the appointment of judges, and requiring the legislature to enact general incorporation laws, thus ending the monopolistic and corrupt system of special charters.2 Progressive reform did not, however, characterize the new constitution’s treatment of people of color. Neither contemporary newspapers, nor available documents of convention delegates, nor nineteenth century histories demonstrate that the treatment of the state’s black population was a significant issue in either the drive to hold a convention or the campaigns to serve as convention delegates. That is not at all surprising, given the small size of the state’s black population. According to the 1840 census, the state’s total population was 478,929, of whom only 4,065 were black, well less than one percent.3