Whether the anti-slavery clause of the Ordinance of 1787 freed the slaves of the old French settlers was long a disputed question, and it is certain that a strict construction of the Illinois Constitution of 1818 made further importation of slaves illegal. Many slave-owners passed through southern Illinois to Missouri, because the main road for emigration by land to that territory crossed the Ohio River at Shawneetown. Many of the slaves who produced the large increase in the number of slaves in Missouri from 1810 to 1820 must have gone over this route. In 1820 more than one-seventh of the population of Missouri was slave.(505) The people of Illinois could not fail to see that they were losing a certain class of emigrants—the prosperous slaveholders. The loss became greater as the likelihood of Missouri’s admittance as a slave state increased. As early as 1820 there was a rumor of the formation of a party in Illinois to introduce slavery into the state in a legal manner.(506) The next year an editorial in a leading newspaper of Illinois said: “Will the admission of slavery in a new state tend to increase its population?—is a question which has been of late much discussed both within and without this state. It has been contended that its admission would induce the emigration of citizens of states as well where slavery was, as where it was not tolerated—that while it would attract the attention of the wealthy southern planter, it would not deter the industrious northern farmer.” The editor cites Ohio and Kentucky as proof against the above argument. In 1810 Ohio had a population, in round numbers, of 230,700 and Kentucky one of 406,500; in 1820 Ohio had 581,400, while Kentucky had 563,300, giving a difference in favor of Ohio of over 18,000; and an excess of gain during the decade, in favor of Ohio, of 93,847. “We are willing to take into consideration the unsettled titles of land in the last-mentioned state [Kentucky], and admit that in this respect Ohio had a decided advantage—we will therefore deduct the fraction of 93,847, believing it equivalent to the loss of population from this cause—there is still a difference of 100,000.”(507) The editor’s figures for 1810 were correct and those for 1820 were approximately so. It is also true, and in line with his argument, that during the same decade Indiana showed an increase from 24,500 to 147,200, while Missouri’s increase was from 20,800 to 66,500; the increase in Illinois being between the two in proportion of increase—from 12,282 to 55,162.(508) The passing of the slaveholders to Missouri continued and the discussion of the slavery question became animated.