of the two sections of the State were immediately reversed. Governor
Ford, writing about 1847, attributes this result to the fact that the
best class of Southern people were slow to emigrate to a State where
they could not take their slaves; while the settlers from the North,
not being debarred by the State Constitution from bringing their
property with them, were of a different class. "The northern part of
the State was settled in the first instance by wealthy farmers,
enterprising merchants, millers, and manufacturers. They made farms,
built mills, churches, school-houses, towns, and cities, and
constructed roads and bridges as if by magic; so that although the
settlements in the southern part of the State are from twenty to fifty
years in advance on the score of age, yet are they ten years behind in
point of wealth and all the appliances of a higher civilization."

[Sidenote: Thomas Ford, "History of Illinois," p. 280.]

At the time which we are specially considering, however, the few
inhabitants of the south and the center were principally from what
came afterwards to be called the border slave States. They were mostly
a simple, neighborly, unambitious people, contented with their
condition, living upon plain fare, and knowing not much of anything
better. Luxury was, of course, unknown; even wealth, if it existed,
could procure few of the comforts of refined life. There was little or
no money in circulation. Exchanges were effected by the most primitive
forms of barter, and each family had to rely chiefly upon itself for
the means of living. The neighbors would lend a hand in building a
cabin for a new-comer; after that he must in most cases shift for
himself. Many a man arriving from an old community, and imperfectly
appreciating the necessities of pioneer life, has found suddenly, on
the approach of winter, that he must learn to make shoes or go