1816.

INDIANA BECOMES A STATE.

923

On the 18th of March, in this year, Pittsburgh was incorporated as 1816.] a city; it had been incorporated as a borough, on the 22d of April, 1794.

In the Territory of Michigan, a much larger portion of the soil remained in possession of the aborigines than further south. Previous to the war, but few settlements were made beyond the vicinity of Detroit, and along the river Raisin. These, to a great extent, had been broken up by the savages and their English allies during the war. It was not until a later period that the emigrants penetrated the interior of that territory. But Indiana, Illinois and Missouri, from 1816, to 1820, received a continuous succession of immigrants; particularly Kentucky, Carolina and Tennessee, sent out vast numbers to these-new regions, where land was abundant, cheap, and productive.

In the early part of 1816, Congress having previously granted authority, a convention was elected in Indiana, and assembled to form a State Government. A constitutiou was adopted and reported to Congress. It was approved by that body, and the new State received admission into the Union.

The constitution having been made at a time when there was, as it were, a lull of party violence, produced by the late war, and when a general spirit of political conciliation and good feeling prevailed throughout, was framed with a great deal of care and wisdom. It was more conservative than perhaps that of any other State made out of a North-Western Territory.

The new State Government went into operation by the election of the Hon. Jonathan Jennings, Governor, who had represented the territory as Delegate in Congress, since 1809. The General Assembly discharged its duties in the formation of the various departments, agreeably to the provisions of the constitution, and changing the territorial laws in accordance with its position as a State.

So much apprehension was excited at this time in the minds of the people, in relation to the spurious currency that had been imposed upon them, that a clause in the constitution, restricted the banking system in the new State, to the charter of a single State bank with branches.

For not only had the States of Ohio and Kentucky been submerged with depreciated bank notes, but the new territories had in like manner been flooded with worthless paper.

Yet, notwithstanding the salutary example given by Indiana as