History of Illinois

Pre-Columbian

Cahokia, the urban center of the pre-Columbian Mississippian culture, was located near present-day Collinsville, Illinois. That civilization vanished circa 1400-1500 for unknown reasons. The next major power in the region was the Illiniwek Confederation, a political alliance among several tribes. The Illiniwek gave Illinois its name. The Illini suffered in the seventeenth century as Iroquois expansion forced them to compete with several tribes for land. The Ilini were replaced in Illinois by the Potawatomi, Miami, Sauk, and other tribes.

European exploration

French explorers Jacques Marquette,S.J. and Louis Joliet explored the Illinois River in 1673. As a result of their exploration, Illinois was part of the French empire until 1763, when it passed to the British. The area was ceded to the new United States in 1783 and became part of the Northwest Territory.

The 1800s

The Illinois-Wabash Company was an early claimant to much of Illinois. The Illinois Territory was created on February 3, 1809. In 1818, Illinois became the 21st U.S. state. Early U.S. settlement began in the south part of the state and quickly spread northward, driving out the native residents. With the 1832 Black Hawk War, the last native tribes were driven out of northern Illinois.

Illinois is known as the "Land of Lincoln" because it is here that the 16th President spent his formative years. Chicago gained prominence as a canal port after 1848, and as a rail hub soon afterward. By 1857, Chicago was Illinois' largest city (see History of Chicago).

The Civil War

During the Civil War, over 250,000 Illinois men served in the Union Army, more than any other northern state except New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Beginning with President Lincoln's first call for troops and continuing throughout the war, Illinois mustered 150 infantry regiments (see Illinois in the Civil War), which were numbered from the 7th IL to the 156th IL. Seventeen cavalry regiments were also mustered, as well as two light artillery regiments.

Throughout the war the Republicans were in control, under the firm leadership of Governor Richard Yates.

20th Century

In the 20th century, Illinois emerged as one of the most important states in the union. It currently has the 6th largest population and contains Chicago, the third largest city in the country.

Democrat Adlai Stevenson served as governor in 1948-52. William G. Stratton led a Republican statehouse in the 1950s. In 1960 Otto Kerner led the Democrats back to power. He promoted economic development, education, mental health services, and equal access to jobs and housing. In a federal trial in 1973, Kerner was convicted on 17 counts of bribery while he was governor, plus other charges; he went to prison. Richard Ogilvie, a Republican, won in 1968. Bolstered by large Republican majorities in the state house, Ogilvie embarked upon a major modernization of state government. He successfully advocated for a state constitutional convention, increased social spending, and secured Illinois' first state income tax. The latter was particularly unpopular with the electorate, and the modest Ogilvie lost a close election to the flashy Democrat Dan Walker in 1972. The state constitutional convention of 1970 wrote a new document that was approved by the voters. It modernized government and ended the old sytem of three-person districts which froze the political system in place.

Walker did not repeal the income tax that Ogilvie had enacted and wedged between machine Democrats and Republicans had little success with the Illinois legislature during his tenure. In 1987 he was convicted of business crimes not related to his governorship. In the 1976 gubernatorial election, Jim Thompson, a Republican prosecutor from Chicago won 65 percent of the vote over Michael Howlett. Thompson was reelected in 1978 with 60 percent of the vote, defeating State Superintendent Michael Bakalis. Thomspon was very narrowly reelected in 1982 against former U.S. Senator Adlai E. Stevenson III, and then won decisively against him in a rematch in 1986. Thompson was succeeded by Republican Jim Edgar who won a close race in 1990 against his Democratic opponent, attorney general Neil Hartigan, and was reelected in 1994 by a wide margin against another Democratic opponent, state comptroller and former state senator Dawn Clark Netsch. In the elections of 1992 and 1994, the Republicans succeeded in capturing both houses of the state legislature and all statewide offices, putting Edgar in a very strong political position. He advocated increases in funding for education along with cuts in government employment, spending and welfare programs. He was succeeded by yet another Republican, George H. Ryan. Ryan worked for extensive repairs of the Illinois Highway System called "Illinois FIRST." FIRST was an acronym for "Fund for Infrastructure, Roads, Schools, and Transit." Signed into law in May 1999, the law created a $6.3 billion package for use in school and transportation projects. With various matching funds programs, Illinois FIRST provided $2.2 billion for schools, $4.1 billion for public transportation, another $4.1 billion for roads, and $1.6 billion for other projects. Ryan gained national attention in January 2003 when he commuted the sentences of everyone on or waiting to be sent to death row in Illinois—a total of 167 convicts—due to his belief that the death penalty was incapable of being administered fairly. Ryan's term was marked by scandals, and as of late 2005 he was himself on trial.

Rod Blagojevich, elected in 2002, was the first Democratic governor in a quarter century. Illinois was trending sharply toward the Democratic party in both national and state elections. After the 2002 elections, Democrats had control of the House, Senate, and all but one statewide office. Blagojevich signed numerous pieces of progressive legislation such as ethics reform, death penalty reform, a state Earned Income Tax Credit, and expansions of health programs like KidCare and FamilyCare. Blagojevich signed a bill in 2005 that prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment, housing, public accommodations, and credit. Other notable actions of his term include a strict new ethics law and a comprehensive death penalty reform bill that was written by Sen. Barack Obama in his capacity as a state senator, and the late-Sen. Paul M. Simon. Despite an annual budget crunch, Blagojevich has overseen an increase in funding for health care and education every year without raising general sales or income taxes. He has been feuding with his powerful father-in-law Chicago Alderman Richard Mell. Blagojevich has been criticized for using what his opponents call "gimmicks" to balance the state budget. Republicans have also claimed that he is simply passing the state's fiscal problems on to future generations by borrowing his way to balanced budgets. Indeed, the 2005 state budget called for paying the bills by shorting state employees' pension fund by $1.2 billion, which led to a backlash among educators. Blagojevich has been criticized for too rapidly expanding the role of state government. In October 2005, the state had $1.4 billion in overdue medical bills, yet in November 2005, Blagojevich created two new government agencies and signed the All Kids health insurance bill, which obligates Illinois to provide affordable, comprehensive health insurance to every child in the state.

Scholarly Secondary Sources

• Adams, Jane. The Transformation of Rural Life: Southern Illinois, 1890-1990 (1994) online at Questia
• Biles, Roger. Illinois: A History Of The Land And Its People (2005).
• Buck, Solon J. Illinois in 1818 (1917)
• The Centennial History of Illinois is an outstanding 5-volume scholarly history.
  • vol. 1. The Illinois Country 1673-1818 by Clarence Walworth Alvord. (1920)
  • vol. 2. The Frontier State, 1818-1848 by Theodore Calvin Pease. (1919)
  • vol. 3. The Era of the Civil War 1848-1870 by Arthur Charles Cole (1919)
  • vol. 4. The Industrial State 1870-1893 by Ernest Ludlow Bogart & Charles Manfred Thompson, (1920)
  • vol. 5. The Modern Commonwealth, 1893-1918 by Ernest Ludlow Bogart and John Mabry Mathews (1920)
• Davis, James E. Frontier Illinois (1998).
• Hallwas, John E. ed., Illinois Literature: The Nineteenth Century (1986)
• Hartley, Robert E. Big Jim Thompson of Illinois(1979), governor 1980s
• Hicken, Victor. Illinois in the Civil War (1966).
• Hoffmann, John. A Guide to the History of Illinois. (1991), highly detailed annotated bibliography. online at Questia
• Howard, Robert P. Illinois: A History of the Prairie State (1972).
• Howard, Robert P. Mostly Good and Competent Men: Illinois Governors 1818-1988 (1988)
• Hutchinson, William. Lowden of Illinois the Life of Frank O. Lowden v 1 (1957) goveror in World War One
• Jensen, Richard. Illinois: A History (2001).
• Keiser, John H. Building for the Centuries: Illinois 1865-1898 (1977)
• Kenney, David The Political Passage: The Career of Stratton of Illinois (1990). Governor in 1950s.
• Kleppner, Paul. Political Atlas of Illinois (1988) contemporary.
• Martin, John Bartlow. Adlai Stevenson of Illinois (1977). Governor in 1940s.
• Meyer, Douglas K. Making the Heartland Quilt: A Geographical History of Settlement and Migration in Early-Nineteenth-Century Illinois (2000) online at Questia
• WPA. Illinois: A Descriptive and Historical Guide (1939) online at Questia

Primary Documents

• Johnson, Walter. Governor of Illinois 1949-1953 (Papers of Adlai E. Stevenson, Volume 3) (1973), primary documents.
• Peck, J. M. A Gazetteer of Illinois (1837), a primary source online
• Sutton, Robert P. ed. The Prairie State: A Documentary History of Illinois (1977).