ity. then from the two highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose the Vice-President; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a choice. But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.

ARTICLE XIII.

SECTION 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

SEC. 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

ARTICLE XIV.

SECTION 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States, and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

SEC. 2. Representatives shall be appointed among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed; but when the right to vote at any election for the choice of Electors for President and VicePresident of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged except for participation in rebellion or other crimes, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state.

SEC. 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or Elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath as a Member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state Legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each house, remove such disability.

SEC. 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any state shall pay any debt or obligation incurred in the aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any loss or emancipation of any slave, but such debts, obligations, and claims shall be held illegal and void.

COUNTIES.

SEC. 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this act.

ARTICLE XV.

SECTION 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any state, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

SEC. 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

ELECTORS OF PRESIDENT AND VICE-PRESIDENT.

NOVEMBER 7, 1876.

and]

Wheeler,
Hayes

HISTORY OF ROCK ISLAND COUNTY

TOPOGRAPHY.

Rock Island County comprises a strip of land along the east side of the Mississippi river, about sixty miles in length, and of a very irregular shape, owing to the crookedness of the rivers which in part form its boundaries. That portion of it lying north of Rock river is bounded on the south by Rock river, on the west by the Mississippi, and on the north and east by the Marais d'Ogee slough and a part of Whiteside county. It is an irregu lar shaped, triangular piece of land, some twenty-eight and a half miles long on its western boundary, about seventeen miles wide across its north end, and gradually tapers to a point at the junction of the two rivers a short distance below the city of Rock Island.

Its physical features and surface configuration are a good deal diversified. Broad sand prairies, low alluvial bottom lands, abrupt bluffy highlands, and various combinations of these, make up the general face of the country. At Cordova the bluffs rise abruptly from the sandy plain. They follow the rend of the Mississippi river close along its shore, and are abrupt, broken and rough. About Moline and Rock Island they recede a mile or two from the river, but strike Rock river at Milan, up which stream they continue for a few miles, rising high and abrupt from the water's edge. Soon they commence drawing away from the latter river, leaving a low, alluvial bottom. They then trend off to the north, leaving the same low bottom between themselves and the Maredosia slough, along the Whiteside county line. Following this course five or six miles, they suddenly bend to the west, and strike the Mississippi near Cordova, the place of beginning. This part of the county has in it six named townships not bounded by the regular township lines, but made up mostly of irregular shaped, fractional government townships. These contain somewhere near 178 square miles or sections of land.

All that portion of the county within the above bluff line boundary, is highlands, or uplands, from fifty to one hundred feet above the general water level of the Mississippi River. It is abrupt, broken, rolling and rough. Much of it, especially the hills and ravines, is covered with a scattered growth of timber and brush. Pleasant Valley, cutting across this upland region from Hampton on the Mississippi to Carbon Cliff on Rock River, is the only considerable depression in this elevated plateau. This valley, though small, contains some good farm lands. Over this elevated region, especially towards the northeast, there are many good farms. The soil is thin, but well adapted to the growth of cereals and fruits. The alluvial bottoms, when dry enough to cultivate, make the best and richest corn lands, and the wet portions make good meadows. The agricultural resources of northern Rock Island County are not very rich or varied. Much of the

land is unproductive, much of it is too high, or too low, or too sandy, while small portions of it are almost unsurpassed for fertility.

As a fruit-growing region, this portion of the county ought to excel. Some of the large apple orchards along the bluffs near Cordova bear abundantly and uniformly fruit of superior quality; and that whole encircling range of bluffs has hundreds of localities where the hardier varieties of the vine might be raised with great success. There is no reason why grapegrowing and wine-making might not be made an important producing interest of the county. The few local experiments with the vine tried by amateurs give good promise.

That part of the county lying south of Rock River contains five full townships and six fractions of regular townships, with an area of 260 square miles. It is bounded north by the Rock and Mississippi Rivers, west by the Mississippi, south by Mercer county, and east by Henry county. It has an average width of about nine miles from north to south, and a length from east to west of about thirty-three miles. The Mississippi River above Rock Island makes an abrupt bend to the west, and continues to flow in that direction for some twenty miles, when it turns south again, and thus washes almost the entire north and west sides of this part of the county.

The surface is diversified, and is made up of alluvial bottom lands, hilly barrens, and fertile and somewhat rolling upland prairies. The southern townships and large portions of Rural, Coal Valley, Bowling, Edgington, and Buffalo Prairie, are made up of the latter, under a high degree of cultivation These prairies are the handsomest part of the county, and gently roll away towards the south and east to the borders of Mercer and Henry counties. On the south side of Rock River, from the Henry county line to its confluence with the Mississippi, below the city of Rock Island, is a strip of alluvial or bottom land from one to two miles in width. Portions of this are swampy and boggy; others sandy, with ridges of fine gravel and sand blows; others again are rich farming lands, which yield heavy crops of Indian corn, grass and grains. Along the south side of this Rock River bottom the range of bluffs rises abruptly to an average height of more than a hundred feet. At Andalusia the bluffs approach the Mississippi River, which washes their base almost to the southern line of the county, except in a few places where an uncultivated low bottom intervenes, seamed with running sloughs. This range of bluffs is cut up with hollows and ravines, covered with a moderate growth of timber, principally the oaks. The rough land extending back into the highlands from two to five or six miles, has a white, thin soil, such as is found in the timber barrens of other portions of the State, and is the least valuable portion of the county for agricultural purposes.

Rock River, the principal water course in this county, which, next to the Mississippi, furnishes its most considerable water-power, rises in Wisconsin, about midway between Lake Michigan and the Wisconsin River. Its course in Illinois is nearly one hundred and eighty miles in extent. It receives its most important tributary, the Pe Ratonica, from the lead-mine regions of Wisconsin, a few miles below the northern boundary of the State. Its valley is one of the richest and most healthy in the northern part of Illinois. After forming a portion of the boundary between Henry and Rock Island counties, it divides the latter into its northern and southern portions, and falls into the Mississippi, by a series of beautiful rapids, about three miles below Rock Island.

GEOLOGY.

The surface of the Rock River and Maredosia bottoms belongs to the alluvial deposit. That part of the county north of the bluff line is a broad and level sand prairie. At a time when the Mississippi River flowed a mightier stream both in its present channel and in the Maredosia slough, this prairie was a broad headland sand bar. The bluff-bounded highlands then rose as an island from the broad, lake-like river; the drifting sands lodged against its upper end, and the sand-plain under consideration was gradually formed, just as sand bars of the present day are formed against the upper ends of river islands.

The Mississippi Valley was once occupied by a mightier stream than the present river. The most curious phenomenon along the bluffs of the Mississippi is its old shore line marked along their sides. At Cordova, the principal part of the town is built upon this ancient beach or terrace. It is here some fifty feet above the present low-water mark of the Mississippi River, and is distinctly traced all along the bluffs to Milan.

The bluffs and hills of Rock Island County are composed in part of whitish-blue clays, sands, and the marly deposit known as loess. Receding back from the bluff lines the loess thins out, and is succeeded by fine luminated drift clays, such as cover most of our upland barrens and high prairies. Genuine drift-gravel beds and large boulders are of rare occurrence.

COAL MEASURES. In that portion of the county lying west of Rock River the coal measures are found as outliers, overlaying and resting unconformably upon the Devonian and Upper Silurian limestone, as far north as the vicinity of Port Byron, where it finally terminates. The most northerly point where a workable bed of coal has been found on this side of the river, is at Rapids City, where the seam is from four to five feet thick, and overlies the Niagara limestone, with only a few feet in thickness of shales and fire clay between. Two miles east of Hampton, where coal shafts have been sunk, are good seams from four to five feet thick. The Carbon Cliff mines were the earliest worked on the west side of Rock River. For many years extensive coal operations, in connection with an establishment for the manufacture of pottery and fire-brick, were carried on at this point, under the management of W. S. Thomas, Esq., but the limited supply of coal finally became so nearly exhausted that mining here was discontinued. The triangular piece of elevated land east of the city of Rock Island, bounded by Pleasant Valley, Rock River and the Mississippi, is a mass of coal measure materials, resting upon a Devonian or Upper Silurian formation of underlying limestone.

All that part of the county south and east of the Mississippi and Rock River ranges of bluffs is underlaid by the coal measures. In every part of the county the coal measures are covered with a deep deposit of drift-clays. At Milan, Carbon Cliff and east of the city of Rock Island, this drift-clay is from forty to seventy-five feet in thickness.

South of Rock River the coal measures are more regular and more extensively developed than in the northern part of the county. The coal mining interest has become an important branch of industry in Rock Island County. According to the Inspector's report for 1876, there were twentysix mines regularly operated eight months of the year, and some twenty others occasionally worked. In these were employed an aggregate of 941