Economic issues dominated the session. The most important bill dealt with the much-discussed proposal to dig a canal from Chicago to La Salle, connecting the Great Lakes with the Illinois River, which fed into the Mississippi. (When completed in 1848, it helped make Chicago a metropolis.) Lincoln, who wished to be known as “the De Witt Clinton of Illinois,” voted with the majority to finance that internal improvement with $500,000 in state bonds. (Clinton was the governor of New York when the Erie Canal was built.) The most controversial national issue debated by the legislature involved the Bank of the United States, on which President Andrew Jackson had declared his well-publicized war. Another was the distribution of funds generated by the sale of federal public lands. Lincoln introduced an unsuccessful resolution calling for the U.S. government to remit to the state at least one-fifth of such proceeds collected in Illinois. In fulfillment of his pledge to Hugh Armstrong and Ned Potter, he also submitted a petition of “sundry citizens of the counties of Sangamon, Morgan and Tazewell, praying the organization of a new county out of said counties.” The Committee on Petitions reported against it.
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
(echo:: @ ⌗)