FREEPORT  , a

city and the county-seat of Stephenson county, Illinois, in the N.W. part of the state, on the Pecatonica river, 30 M. from its mouth and about Ioc\m . N.W. of Chicago . Pop . (189o) 10,189; (1900) 13,258, of whom 2264 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 17,567 . The city is served by the Chicago & North-Western, the Chicago, Milwaukee & St Paul, and the Illinois Central railways, and by the Rockford & Interurban electric railway . The Illinois Central connects at South Free-port, about 3 M . S. of Freeport, with the Chicago Great Western railway . Among Freeport's manufactures are foundry and machine shop products, carriages, hardware specialties, patent medicines, windmills, engines, incubators, organs, beer and shoes . The Illinois Central has large railway repair shops here . The total value of the city's factory product in 1905 was $3,109,302, an increase of 14.8% since 1900: In the surrounding country cereals are grown, and swine and poultry are raised . Dairying is an important industry also . The city has a Carnegie library (1901) .

In the

Court House Square is a monument, 8o ft. high, in memory of the soldiers who died in the Civil War . At the corner of Douglas Avenue and Mechanic Street a granite boulder commemorates the famous debate between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A . Douglas, held in Freeport on the 27th of August 1858 . In that debate Lincoln emphasized the differences between himself and the radical anti-slavery men, and in answer to one of Lincoln's questions Douglas declared that the people of a territory, through " unfriendly " laws or denial of legislative protection, could exclude slavery, and that " it matters not what way the Supreme Court may hereafter decide on the abstract question whether slavery may or may not go into a territory under the Constitution." This, the so-called " Freeport doctrine," greatly weakened Douglas in the presidential election of 186o . Freeport was settled in 1835, was laid out and named Winneshiek in 1836, and in 1837 under its present name was made the county-seat of Stephenson county . ' It was incorporated as a town in 185o and chartered as a city in 1855 .