In 1800, two hundred and sixty-eight inhabitants of Illinois, chiefly French, petitioned Congress to repeal the anti-slavery provision of the Ordinance, stating that many of the inhabitants were crossing the Mississippi with their slaves. The petition was not considered.(495) A similar request, presented late in 1802, was twice reported upon by committees, one report (Randolph’s) declaring that the growth of Ohio proved that a lack of slavery would not seriously retard settlement, while the other was in favor of suspending the anti-slavery article for ten years, the male descendants of immigrating slaves to be free at the age of twenty-five years, and the females at twenty-one.(496) In 1805 a majority of the members of the respective houses of the Indiana legislature petitioned for the repeal of the anti-slavery article, and this petition was closely followed by a memorial from Illinois expressing the hope that the general government would not pass unnoticed the act of the last legislature authorizing the importation of slaves into the territory. It violated the Ordinance, the memorialists declared, and although they desired slavery they professed themselves to be law-abiding.(497) A committee report on the petition and memorial recommended that permission to import slaves into Indiana (then including Illinois) for ten years be granted, in order that the evil effects of slavery might be mitigated by its dispersion, but no legislation resulted from the report,(498) and the next year petitioning was resumed. The legislature sent resolutions asking for the suspension of the anti-slavery article, and elaborating the argument for such suspension. A committee of which the territorial delegate from Indiana was chairman, presented a favorable report.(499) In September, 1807, a petition for the suspension of the anti-slavery article was sent to Congress from the Indiana legislature. It was signed by Jesse B. Thomas, later author of the Missouri Compromise, but then Speaker of the territorial House of Representatives, and resident in what was to become the State of Indiana, and by the president _pro tem._ of the Legislative Council. Action in committee was adverse,(500) Congress being then busied with the question of the abolition of the slave trade.