By the outbreak of the Civil War it was clear that the Illinois constitution of 1848 had been written for totally different times and that the government could not operate for a month without violating it. The extreme partisanship of the convention of 1862 doomed to failure its efforts to prepare a more elastic and positive document.

With the close of the war, interests reappeared which its all-encompassing nature subordinated; and religion, public education, woman suffrage, organized labor, and industrial regulation became topics of governmental concern. The constitution of 1848 could not support the political forces attendant upon these issues. Another at. tempt to rewrite the constitution began when 85 delegates met in Springfield on Dec. 13, 1869, generally agreeing upon the need to centralize state power and to turn the state into a more rational and cohesive unit by producing a new constitution.

Under the constitution of 1848 corporations were chartered by special legislation" rather than under a general law setting uniform standards, and the practice produced thousands of so-called "Private laws" each session. To make the government more responsible to the public interests ' the convention, after defeating a blanket motion against all "special legislation," agreed to prohibit such favoritism in 4 cases "where a general law can be made applicable" and listed 23 specific prohibitions in the new constitution, covering the common infractions of the past.

After long and bitter debate over the suffrage question it was decided that Negroes should have the vote but that women and unnaturalized foreigners should not. To secure representation of the minority party in heavily one-party districts, to make the division within the General Assembly more nearly equal to that between the total number of voters in the state, and to break the political sectionalism which developed in the antebellum years, the principles of cumulative voting and minority representation were written into the document. These allowed each voter to cast as many votes for one candidate as there were representatives to be elected or to distribute his votes among the candidates as he saw fit.

Contrary to the constitution of 1848, the delegates adopted provisions allowing the governor to succeed himself; establishing salaries of state officials by law; assuring that all bills be read on three different days, be printed before their final passage, and be limited to a single subject; and expanding court facilities in Cook County.

Responding to the pressing problems of industrialization and the demand of farmers, the convention made important decisions in the area of state regulation. Cries for "a new deal and new decisions on this subject" led the convention to declare railroads and warehouses "public highways" and "public warehouses" subject to government control. The General Assembly was given the authority to pass laws establishing "reasonable maximum rates" for passenger and freight traffic and to see that they were enforced. Recognizing that the state's coal miners needed special protection, the delegates wrote requirements into the new constitution demanding laws to increase the health and safety of working conditions for miners.

In a document that encouraged the centralization of state government's power in many other ways, executive authority was divided. The constitution of the United States concentrated executive authority in a single office providing that "The executive power shall be vested in a president of the United States of America." But the constitution of 1870, while it stated that "the supreme executive power shall be vested in the governor," qualified that assertion by declaring that the "executive department shall consist of a governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, auditor of public accounts, treasurer, superintendent of public instruction, and the attorney general."

Each officer ran for election independently of the governor and had no real obligation to support his program. A delegate spoke for a majority of his colleagues when he said "the power to inaugurate and mature the policy of the State belongs exclusively to the General Assembly, and that the duty of the Governor is to execute that policy, not to say what the policy shall be." Indeed, the bicameral General Assembly remained the most powerful branch of government, exercising "every power not delegated to some other department, or expressly denied it by the Constitution." New apportionment provisions nearly doubled the numbers of senators and representatives.

After 95 days of debate, the convention adjourned. Public discussion of the new document never became heated and on July 2, 1870, it was adopted by the voters. The vast numbers of new people, the expanding economy, and the growth of urban centers, especially Chicago, required a change in the basic law. The new constitution met those needs well enough to serve the state for 100 years.