When the relatively unknown Governor Ford took office, the state's finances were in terrible shape. The immediate outgoing governor, Thomas Carlin, recommended cancelling the charters of the Illinois State Bank, as well as the Bank of Illinois in Shawneetown. Ford worried this would scare eastern financiers, whose loans were needed to finish various internal improvements, as well as buy mundane items such as postage stamps. The state's ongoing fiscal problems were due to the Panic of 1837, as well as political horsetrading which had led to a fiscally imprudent Internal Improvements Act during Governor Duncan's tenure, in exchange for moving the state capital in 1837 from too-small Vandalia to Springfield, Illinois. Debt for the Illinois and Michigan Canal alone stood at over $15 million, and further sums were owed for newly begun railroads and other canals. Ford also believed that only about $200,000 or $300,000 in "good money" was circulating in the entire state before he took office, due to the persistent depression. Nonetheless, his inaugural speech urged paying the bonds' principal and interest in full, and for the 1842-1843 legislative session Ford drafted a bill allowing the two banks to surrender their charters in exchange for state bonds, warrants and scrip, which extinguished $2.3 million of the state debt. Unlike Carlin, Ford also accepted land sale proceeds from the federal government. Then he raised taxes. The Illinois and Michigan Canal would be completed about a year after Ford left office, although the Act's debt would not be paid off until 1882. Ford greatly improved the state's finances, and the canal would further increase northern Illinois' population and a demographic shift in the state. Whereas early settlers had arrived from Virginia and Kentucky on via the Ohio River, or from New York and other northern states via the National Road (which ended in Vandalia, and which the Army Corps of Engineers had rebuilt in the 1830s but congress stopped funding before 1840), construction of the canal had also encouraged immigration from Europe and further immigrants would arrive via the Great Lakes and newly organized railroads. As Ford's gubernatorial term ended in early 1847, his criticisms of the now-outmoded Illinois Constitution led to a constitutional convention later in the year, which drafted a new state constitution which took effect in 1848. Among the new constitution's improvements was reducing the Illinois Supreme Court down to three justices while ending circuit duties. Other