Jennings was re-elected in 1811, and subsequently was chosen first governor of the state on the same issue, and the state constitution of 1816 pronounced strongly against slavery. The liberation of most of the slaves in the eastern counties followed; and some slave-holders removed to Kentucky. In 1830 there were only three slaves in the state, and the danger of the establishment of slavery as an institution on a large scale was long past. The problem of "internal improvements" came to be of paramount importance in the decade 1820-1830. In 1827 Congress granted land to aid in the construction of a canal to connect Lake Erie and the Ohio river. This canal was completed from the St Joseph river to the Wabash in 1835, opened in 1843, and later abandoned. In 1836 the state legislature passed a law providing for an elaborate system of public improvements, consisting largely of canals and railways. The state issued bonds to the value of $10,000,000, a period of wild speculation followed, and the financial panic of 1837 forced the abandonment of the proposed plan and the sale to private persons of that part already completed. The legislature authorized the issue of $1,500,000 in treasury bonds, which by 1842 had fallen in value to 40 or 50% of their face value. A new constitution was adopted in February 1851 by a vote of 109,319 against 26,755. Despite its large Southern population, Indiana's answer to President Lincoln's first call for volunteers at the outbreak of the Civil War was prompt and spirited. From first to last the state furnished 208,000 officers and men for the Union armies, besides a home legion of some 50,000, organized to protect the state against possible invasion. The efficiency of the state military organization, as well as that of the civil administration during the trying years of the war, was largely due to the extraordinary ability and energy of Governor Oliver P. Morton, one of the greatest of the "war governors" of the North. The problems met and solved by Governor Morton, however, were not only the comparatively simple ones of furnishing troops as required. The legislature of 1863 and the state officers were opposed to him politically, and did everything in their power to thwart him and deprive him of his control of the militia. The Republican members seceded, legislative appropriations were blocked, and Governor Morton was compelled to take the extraconstitutional step of arranging with a New York banking house for the payment of the interest on the state debt, of borrowing money for state expenditure on his own responsibility, and of constituting an unofficial financial bureau, which disbursed money in disregard of the state officers. Furthermore Indiana was the principal centre of activity of the disloyal association known as the Knights of the Golden Circle, or Sons of Liberty, which found a ready growth among the large Southern population. Prominent among Southern sympathisers was Senator Jesse D.