In October of 1778 Virginia was electrified by the news that Clark had actually accomplished the conquest of Kaskaskia and the other Mississippi posts, and one of the first acts of the Virginia Assembly, thereafter, was to organize the newly-acquired country as the "County of Illinois." On December 12, Colonel John Todd, of Kentucky, a friend of Clark's, was appointed county Lieutenant, or local governor, and he arrived at Kaskaskia in May 1779, to assume charge of civil affairs. This was the first American Government north of the Ohio River, and Todd held the first election of officers soon after his arrival. In Vincennes about a dozen civil and nearly that many militia officers were elected, all of them Frenchmen. The law then established was to be temporary and agreeable to those "which the present settlers are now accustomed to," and the instructions from the Virginia Governor to Todd were "to use every effort to win the friendship of the French," and to conciliate the Indians as far as possible; which shows that Patrick Henry, at least, contemplated a just and friendly relation toward the new citizens of the State of Virginia.

Todd did not remain in Illinois very long but the government went on undisturbed until the judges of the Vincennes court proceeded to generously apportion among themselves tracts of land from an old Indian grant, when the United States interposed an objection.

Meanwhile Virginia, in 1784, had relinquished her claim to the whole Illinois country in favor of the United States, and with that act the way was cleared for the new political policy which, a little later, had its birth in the famous ordinance of 1787.