a system for the gradual emancipation of our Slaves, at once to form a rallying point for its friends, who enlightened by your wisdom and experience, and supported and encouraged by your sanction and patronage, might look forward to a propitious and happy result. Your time of life I had not considered as an obstacle to the undertaking. Doctor Franklin, to whom, by the way, Pennsylvania owes her early riddance of the evils of Slavery, was as actively and as usefully employed on as arduous duties after he had past your age as he had ever been at any period of his life. With apologizing for having give you so much trouble on this subject, and again repeating my thanks for the respectful and flattering attention you have been pleased to pay to it, I renew the assurances of the great respect and regard which makes me most sincerely. Yours Edward Coles Illinois In the fall of 1817, Coles sold his plantation to his eldest brother Walter, having declined James Monroe's request that he continue as the new President's private secretary. Instead, Coles embarked on a second reconnaissance mission to the Northwest Territories (1818). He bought land in the American Bottom in Illinois Territory. Coles also participated in the Illinois Constitutional Convention at Kaskaskia, Illinois after Indiana became a state. Coles worked with Baptist John Mason Peck, Methodist Peter Cartwright, Quaker James Lemen, and publisher Hooper Warren to successfully oppose a faction that wanted to legitimize slavery in the new territory's constitution. Coles then returned to Virginia, planning to display his deep moral objections to slavery and finally manumit the slaves he inherited from his father after leaving the Commonwealth. In late March 1819, having collected the final payment from Walter, Edward Coles was ready to move to the Illinois Territory. President Monroe had appointed him Register of Lands for the new territory, with an office at Edwardsville. Coles sent his trusted slave (and travel companion during his previous Northwest Territory trips) Ralph Crawford with wagons and 16 other slaves (total 6 adults and 11 children) ahead on the Great Wagon Road north to Pennsylvania. To the derision of many family and friends, Coles had let the slaves ride on ahead, none of them knowing his plans to free them at that time. Coles traveled separately. They met at Brownsville, Pennsylvania, where the party boarded a pair of flatboats and