A notable incident in the history of the state was the immigration of the Mormons from Missouri, about 1840. Their principal settlements were in Hancock county. They succeeded in securing favours from the legislature, and their city of Nauvoo had courts and a military organization that was independent of state control. Political intrigue, claims of independence from the state, as well as charges of polygamy and lawless conduct, aroused such intense opposition to the sect that in 1844 a civil war broke out in Hancock county which resulted in the murder of Joseph Smith and the removal of the Mormons from Illinois in 1846. The slavery question, however, was the problem of lasting political importance. Slaves had been brought into the Illinois country by the French, and Governor Arthur St Clair (1734-1818) interpreted the article of the Ordinance of 1787, which forbade slavery in the North-West Territory, as a prohibition of the introduction of slaves into the Territory, not an interference with existing conditions. The idea also arose that while negroes could not become slaves, they could be held as indentured servants, and such servitude was recognized in the Indiana Code of 1803, the Illinois constitution of 1818, and Statutes of 1819; indeed there would probably have been a recognition of slavery in the constitution of 1818 had it not been feared that such recognition would have prevented the admission of the state to the Union. In 1823 the legislature referred to the people a resolution for a constitutional convention to amend the constitution. The aim, not expressed, was the legalization of slavery. Although a majority of the public men of the state, indeed probably a majority of the entire population, was either born in the Southern states or descended from Southern people, the resolution of the legislature was rejected, the leader of the opposition being Governor Edward Coles (1786-1868), a Virginia slave-holder, who had freed his slaves on coming to Illinois, and at least one half the votes against the proposed amendment of the constitution were cast by men of Southern birth. The opposition to slavery, however, was at first economic, not philanthropic. In 1837 there was only one abolition society in the state, but chiefly through the agitation of Elijah P. Lovejoy (see ALTON), the abolition sentiment grew. In 1842 the moral issue had become political, and the Liberty Party was organized, which in 1848 united with the Free Soil Party; but as the Whig Party approved the policy of non-extension of slavery, these parties did not succeed so well united as under separate existence. In 1854, however, the Liberty and Free Soil parties, the Democrats opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, and some Whigs united, secured a majority in the legislature, and elected Lyman Trumbull United States senator. Two years later these elements formally organized as the Republican Party, though that name