[Footnote 583: _Ibid._, App., p. 127. Toombs also stated that the submission clause had been put in his bill in the first place by accident, and that it had been stricken from the bill at his suggestion.] [Footnote 584: The submission of State constitutions to a popular vote had not then become a general practice.] [Footnote 585: Rhodes, History of the United States, II, p. 195.] [Footnote 586: _Globe_, 34 Cong., 1 Sess., App., p. 844.] [Footnote 587: _Globe_, 35 Cong., 1 Sess., p. 21.] [Footnote 588: Sheahan, Douglas, p. 443.] [Footnote 589: Davidson and Stuve, History of Illinois, p. 650.] [Footnote 590: MS. Letter, Douglas to Sheahan, October 6, 1856.] [Footnote 591: _Tribune Almanac_, 1857. The vote was as follows: Buchanan 105,348 Fremont 96,189 Fillmore 37,444 ] BOOK III THE IMPENDING CRISIS CHAPTER XIV THE PERSONAL EQUATION Vast changes had passed over Illinois since Douglas set foot on its soil, a penniless boy with his fortune to make. The frontier had been pushed back far beyond the northern boundary of the State; the Indians had disappeared; and the great military tract had been occupied by a thrifty, enterprising people of the same stock from which Douglas sprang. In 1833, the center of political gravity lay far south of the geographical center of the State; by 1856, the northern counties had already established a political equipoise. The great city on Lake Michigan, a lusty young giant, was yearly becoming more conscious of its commercial and political possibilities. Douglas had natural affinities with Chicago. It was thoroughly American, thoroughly typical of that restless, aggressive spirit which had sent him, and many another New Englander, into the great interior basin of the continent. There was no other city which appealed so strongly to his native instincts. From the first he had been impressed by its commercial potentialities. He had staked his own fortunes upon its invincible prosperity by investing in real estate, and within a few years he had reaped the reward of his faith in unseen values. His holdings both in the city and in Cook County advanced in value by leaps and bounds, so that in the year 1856, he sold approximately one hundred acres for $90,000. With his wonted prodigality, born of superb confidence in future gains, he also deeded ten acres of his valuable "Grove Property" to the trustees of Chicago University.[592] Yet with a far keener sense of honor than many of his contemporaries exhibited, he refused to speculate in land in the new States and Territories, with whose political beginnings he would be associated as chairman of the Committee on Territories. He was resolved early in his career "to avoid public suspicion of private interest in his political conduct."[593]