Illinois was ill-prepared when statehood was granted in 1818. Its 56,400 square miles gave it the distinction of being the second largest state in the Union by area, but the 35,000 inhabitants constituted the smallest population among the group of sister states. Nor did the state hold much promise in 1818, for the population seemed to be made up largely of a few God-fearing families clustered in the southern part of the state along the Ohio and the Mississippi Rivers, in what is known as the Great American Bottom, and an abundance of horse thieves and reprobates who wandered aimlessly about the country perpetrating all kinds of evil on unsuspecting travelers and settlers. The land, rich in humus and plant nutrients, often compared to the Nile Valley for its rich soil and vast productivity, was also notoriously unhealthy for human habitation, and its low, swampy terrain, while fertile, was difficult to cultivate because of frequent flooding.

Nevertheless, Illinois was granted statehood, and in 1818 became the twenty-first state to join the Union. Shadrach Bond, the first governor of Illinois, set up government offices in a rented facility in Kaskaskia soon after the new state was admitted, and conducted business there until a State House could be built in the newly designed capital, Vandalia. Completed in 1820, the new State House became the seat of Illinois government until 1837, when the capital was moved permanently to Springfield.

The value and productivity of the vast Illinois prairie was discovered in the 1830s. Immigrants into southern Illinois, most often from Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Carolinas, believed something to be wrong with the soil which could not support timber; therefore, they avoided the rich prairies to the north. But in the 1830s, the true worth of the land was revealed, and a rush of settlers moved onto the prairies, enticed there by the promise of fertile land at a reasonable price. Yet there remained one obstacle--the land in question was occupied by Indians. In 1831, when the Sauk and Fox Nations, under the leadership of Chief Black Hawk, returned to their summer homes in the area of the Illinois and the Rock Rivers, an army of some 3,000 Illinois militiamen and volunteers fell upon them, and after several minor skermishes and one major confrontation, drove the Indians forever from the state. With the Illinois prairies freed at last from the Indian, white settlement shifted from the southern counties of the state to the central and north. With thousands of people migrating westward through the Erie Canal and the Great Lakes to land in Chicago at the foot of Lake Michigan, the phenomenal growth of Chicago from sand dune to major shipping center of the world was quite predictable but amazing to behold. But the building of the city could never have been completed without the vision and determination of farsighted men who worked to attract the railroads, planned and built the Illinois and Michigan Canal, designed and constructed a modern water system, and believed in and promoted their city on the lake in spite of seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

Nor could the state have progressed to its present stature and prosperity without its early immigrants--Abraham Lincoln, Stephen A. Douglas, Joseph Smith, Gurdon S. Hubbard, James Hall, and hosts of others--whose dreams of the future helped to shape the Illinois of today.

People and events make history; and the people and the events in Illinois' past are presented in glowing detail by the writers--Edward Bonney, Edgar Lee Masters, Joseph Kirkland, Juliette Kinzie, Marshall Monroe Kirkman, Bernard De Voto, Mary Hartwell Catherwood, and others--who chose to write of Illinois during the years from 1818 to the Civil War.

Pictures From Top:

Joseph Smith Home - Nauvoo

Old Illinois State House - Springfield

Illinois and Michigan Canal