In the campaign for the election of delegates to the Constitutional Convention, slavery was the only question seriously agitated. The Lemen churches and their sympathizers were so well organized and so determined in purpose that they made a very energetic and effective campaign for delegates. Their organization for political purposes, as Peck informs us, "always kept one of its members and several of its friends in the Territorial Legislature; and five years before the constitutional election in 1818, it had fifty resident agents--men of like sympathies--quietly at work in the several settlements; and the masterly manner in which they did their duty was shown by a poll which they made of the voters some few weeks before the election, which, on their side, varied only a few votes from the official count after the election."[23] It is difficult to determine from the meager records of the proceedings, even including the Journal of the Convention recently published, just what the complexion of the body was on the slavery question. Mr. W. Kitchell, a descendant of one of the delegates, states that there were twelve delegates that favored the recognition of slavery by a {p.21} specific article in the Constitution, and twenty-one that opposed such action. Gov. Coles, who was present as a visitor and learned the sentiments of the prominent members, says that many, but not a majority of the Convention, were in favor of making Illinois a slave state.[26] During the session of the Convention an address to The Friends of Freedom was published by a company of thirteen leading men, including James Lemen, Sr., to the effect that a determined effort was to be made in the Convention to give sanction to slavery, and urging concerted action "to defeat the plans of those who wish either a temporary or an unlimited slavery."[27] A majority of the signers of this address were Lemen's Baptist friends, and its phraseology points to him as its author. James Lemen, Jr., was a delegate from St. Clair county and a member of the committee which drafted the Constitution. In the original draft of that instrument, slavery was prohibited in the identical terms of the Ordinance of 1787, as we learn from the recently published journal of the Convention. In the final draft this was changed to read: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall hereafter be introduced," and the existing system of indentured service was also incorporated. These changes were the result of compromise, and Lemen consistently voted against them. He was nevertheless one of the committee of three appointed to revise and engross the completed instrument.