A generation later a similar contest occurred for the separation of the fourteen northern counties from the State.  When Congress changed the northern boundary of Illinois, it had deviated from the express provisions of the Ordinance of 1787, which had drawn the line through the southern bend of Lake Michigan.  This departure from the Magna Charta of the Northwest furnished the would-be secessionists with a pretext.  But an editorial in the Northwestern Gazette and Galena Advertiser, January 20, 1842, naively disclosed their real motive.  Illinois was overwhelmed with debt, while Wisconsin was “young, vigorous, and free from debt.”  “Look at the district as it is now,” wrote the editor fervidly, “the fag end of the State of Illinois—­its interest wholly disregarded in State legislation—­in short, treated as a mere province—­taxed; laid under tribute in the form of taxation for the benefit of the South and Middle.”  The right of the people to determine by vote whether the counties should be annexed to Illinois, was accepted without question.  A meeting of citizens in Jo Daviess County resolved, that “until the Ordinance of 1787 was altered by common consent, the free inhabitants of the region had, in common with the free inhabitants of the Territory of Wisconsin, an absolute, vested, indefeasible right to form a permanent constitution and State government."[324] This was the burden of many memorials of similar origin.

The desire of the people of Illinois to control local interests extended most naturally to the soil which nourished them.  That the Federal Government should without their consent dispose of lands which they had brought under cultivation, seemed to verge on tyranny.  It mattered not that the settler had taken up lands to which he had no title in law.  The wilderness belonged to him who subdued it.  Therefore land leagues and claim associations figure largely in the history of the Northwest.  Their object was everywhere the same, to protect the squatter against the chance bidder at a public land sale.

The concessions made by the constitutional convention of 1847, in the matter of local government, gave great satisfaction to the Northern element in the State.  The new constitution authorized the legislature to pass a general law, in accordance with which counties might organize by popular vote under a township system.  This mode of settling a bitter and protracted controversy was thoroughly in accord with the democratic spirit of northern Illinois.  The newspapers of the northern counties welcomed the inauguration of the township system as a formal recognition of a familiar principle.  Said the Will County Telegraph:[325] “The great principle on which the new system is based is this:  that except as to those things which pertain to State unity and those which are in their nature common to the whole county, it is right that each small community should regulate its own local matters without interference.”  It was this sentiment to which popular sovereignty made a cogent appeal.