Illinois people

“ You see the Illinois people are determined their people shall enjoy the blessings of education; and when we reflect how much the destiny of our nation depends upon the next generation, we cannot devote our time or our money to a better purpose, than furthering such institutions. We left the seminary, pleased with its arrangements, and wishing all success to the generous individual who originated the establishment. It is delightful to see wealth so well employed, to behold the ‘just steward’ thus ably disposing of his master’s property. ”

“ Chicago and New York: RAND, MCNALLY & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS. Copyright,1898, by Rand, McNally & Co A YANKEE FROM THE WEST. CHAPTER I. MILFORD.
In his mind the traveler holds of Illinois a tiresome picture, the kitchen garden of a great people, a flat and unromantic necessity. The greatest of men have trod the level ground, but it is hard to mark history upon a plane; there is no rugged place on which to hang a wreath, and on the prairie the traveling eye is accommodated by no inn whereat it may halt to rest. Such is the Illinois as remembered by the hastening tourist. ”

“ She came into the Union in 1818, two years before Missouri, and with less population, fewer mineral resources, not so many rivers, no better facilities for commerce, yet she has four thousand miles of railroad, while Missouri has only twelve hundred. Illinois has a prosperous, happy, and peaceful population of two millions; while we have only half this number, and our people are leaving in every direction, seeking homes in the territories, in the distant mountains, in South America, in Mexico, in Illinois, flying away from the horrible spectre of this infernal rebellion. ”

“ As to the people of Illinois, gathered as they are from every "kindred, and nation, and tribe, and language under heaven," there are traits of character among them which one could wish universally possessed. Kind, hospitable, open-hearted, and confiding have I ever found them, whether in the lonely log cabin of the prairie or in the overflowing settlement ”

“ Douglas was elected, but the vote showed that Illinois was becoming more Northern in sympathy, and two years later Lincoln, then candidate for the presidency, carried the state.
The policy of Illinois in the early period of secession was one of marked loyalty to the Union; even in the S. part of the state, where there was a strong feeling against national interference with slavery, the majority of the people had no sympathy with the pro-slavery men in their efforts to dissolve the Union. The legislature of 1861 provided for a war fund of $2,000,000 ”

“ Thousands of New Englanders have come into Illinois in the last year. They will help the good work of mercy and grace. If you hear three taps upon your window after dark or the hoot of an owl in your dooryard you will know what it means. Fix some place on your farm where these poor people who are seeking the freedom which God wills for all His children, may find rest and refreshment and security until they have strength to go on. ”

“ The policy of the British government was not favourable to the economic development of the newly-acquired country, since it was feared that its prosperity might react against the trade and industry of Great Britain. But in 1769 and the succeeding years of English control, this policy was relaxed, and immigration from the seaboard colonies, especially from Virginia, began. In 1771 the people of the Illinois country, through a meeting at Kaskaskia, demanded a form of self-government similar to that of Connecticut. ”

“ The disruptive forces, however, may be easily overestimated. The unifying forces in Illinois society were just as varied, and in the long run more potent. As in the nation at large so in Illinois, religious, educational, and social organizations did much to resist the strain of countervailing forces. But no organization proved in the end so enduring and effective as the political party. Illinois had by 1840 two well-developed party organizations, which enveloped the people of the State, as on a large scale they embraced the nation. ”

“ Illinois has not suffered as much in tone and character from unprincipled speculators as some others of the new States. Her early settlers were generally men of muscle, mental as well as bodily; men who did not so much expect to live by their wits and other people's folly, as by their own industry and enterprise. Among the early inhabitants of Chicago and other important towns, were some whose talents and character would have been valuable anywhere. Public spirit abounded, and the men of that day evidently felt as men should feel who are destined to be the ancestors of great cities. ”

“ Soon people began to realize that he was a man to be reckoned with in the politics of the county and State. He was reelected in 1836, 1838, and 1840, and thus for eight years had a full share in shaping the public laws of Illinois. The Illinois legislature may indeed be called the school wherein he learned that extraordinary skill and wisdom in statesmanship which he exhibited in later years. In 1838 and 1840 all the Whig members of the Illinois House of Representatives gave him their vote for Speaker, but, the Democrats being in a majority, could not elect him. ”

“ Mississippi—they cannot but shudder at the horrors which may arise from a disaffection in the West....” A government was needed, and that of Indiana Territory was not acceptable to the people of Illinois. One hundred and two inhabitants of Illinois sent a counter-petition, in which they said that Illinois had paid no taxes and needed no separate government, also that the committee that prepared the above petition was not legally chosen. ”

“ The great influx of immigrants from New England and the rest of the North did not come until after 1830. It was retarded, after the opening of the Erie Canal (1825) , by the Winnebago and Black Hawk wars, and did not reach its height until the latter war had closed and the Indian claims to land in northern Illinois had been extinguished. Immigration from the northern states increased proportionally, however, after 1820.
Illinois men in Congress give a number of indications of the feeling of the people on questions having a more or less intimate relation to settlement. ”

“ We then found ourselves assuming a little more importance in Illinois, and we learned too, that as we increased there in strength and importance, so proportionately increased opposition to us and to the principles we advocated until we had to pledge ourselves to leave a large and beautiful city and an extensive district of country, and then we came here to these valleys of the Rocky Mountains. ”

“ The British Michilimackinac Company had a large trading-house at Cahokia for supplying the Indians, they held Detroit, and their machinations among the Indians were constant. The feeling of all intelligent Americans in Illinois must have been expressed by John Edgar when he wrote that the Illinois country was totally lost unless a government should soon be established.96 Clark wrote a vigorous letter to the people at Vincennes, telling them that unless they stopped quarreling military rule would be established ”

“ Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being alike lawful in all the States. Welcome or unwelcome, such decision is probably coming, and will soon be upon us, unless the power of the present political dynasty shall be met and overthrown. We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free, and we shall awake to the reality instead that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State. To meet and overthrow the power of that dynasty is the work now before all those who would prevent that consummation. ”

“ Valuable. Has original letters from Western emigrants. Suggests the great influx of people into Illinois in the third decade of the 19th century. Gives a good idea of the westward drift of population in the United States.
Whiton, John Milton. Sketches of the History of New-Hampshire, from its Settlement in 1623 to 1833. ”

“ Nowhere can there be seen fairer landscapes, nowhere richer farms, than here in your own great State of Illinois, a State whose history has been full of illustrious achievements, rich in possibilities, where lived our illustrious sons; a State whose population is intelligent, contented, orderly, and liberty-loving; a State whose development has not yet begun to approach its possible limits; a State having advantages by the location, swept as it is by two of the great waterways of the continent, advantages of access and markets by lake and rail and river unexcelled by any State in the Union ”

“ No State of the American union has a history of more intense interest than our own. Its early chapters, indeed, savor of the romantic rather than of the real. I do not speak of the long-ago time when Illinois forest and prairie were the house and hunting-ground of the red men, and his frail bark the only craft known to its rivers. That period belongs to the border-land age of tradition rather than of veritable history. It is of Illinois under the domination of civilized men I would speak. ”

“ No one can be surprised if our feelings prompt us to speak pretty highly of our native home, Illinois, the great fertile prairie valley between the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, like a choice gem placed between the more hilly states on the East and the West. Illinois, the second and soon to be the first agricultural state in the Union; destined by her Creator to do a worthy share in feeding the world. Her merits and her charms have drawn on the intelligence and industry of every nation upon the globe.
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Pioneer Work. ”

“ The greatest absolute gain was made in the last decade of the century, the per cent. of increase being 26.0, as compared with 20.7 for the United States. The earlier movements of population into the State were largely composed of Southerners, who crossed the Ohio River into southern Illinois, or were attracted up the Mississippi River to the lead-mining districts in the northwestern part of the State. These, however, were soon greatly outnumbered by immigrants from the Eastern States. ”

“ IN traveling over the great fertile prairie State of Illinois, and viewing its many railroads, its many beautiful cities and towns, its school houses, its churches, its broad fields of waving grain, its orchards bending under their load of golden fruit, its vast population of industrious and intelligent citizens, its mills, and its factories, one can hardly realize that nearly all of this great improvement has been made in the last sixty years, but such is the case. ”

“ The men prominent in Illinois politics at the close of the territorial period, and at the beginning of the state period, were natives of southern states, a fact hardly conceivable if New England had been largely represented in Illinois. ”

“ A great advantage in settling in the Illinois, rather than many other parts of America, is the state of society amongst us. Most of the persons who emigrate here, are those who have diminished their former fortunes; persons who have received good education, but are unable to sustain their stations in England. There is no arrogance in saying our circle of society is far superior to that in most of the villages in our native country. Except the parson, the {23} squire, and the principal farmers, what is the society of many of the English hamlets but rude and uncultivated? ”

“ In addition to the inability to secure land titles on account of unsettled French claims, to the presence of Indians and to the discontent with the government of Indiana Territory, almost every cause which made settlement on the frontier difficult was found in the Illinois country in its most pronounced form, because Illinois was the far corner of the frontier. ”

“ Illinois is a State which has sprung up, as if by magic, to be one of the most fruitful in the West. It was settled by men from the New England States—men who carried with them those characteristics which have made the New Englander's career one of active enterprise, and successful progress, wherever he has been. Not many years ago the name of Illinois was nearly unknown, and on her soil the hardy settler battled with the forest-trees for space in which to sow his first crops. Her roads were merely rude and often impassable tracks through forest or prairie ”

“ Think of all this force, willed and left to us by the dead morning of the world! Think of the firesides of the future around which will sit the fathers, mothers and children of the years to be! Think of the sweet and happy faces, the loving and tender eyes that will glow and gleam in the sacred light of all these flames!
We have the best country in the world, and Illinois is the best State in that country. Is there any reason that our farmers should not be prosperous and happy men? They have every advantage, and within their reach are all the comforts and conveniences of life. ”

“ The city is laid out as in a map below us—behind stretch the verdant prairies, in front the swift rolling Mississippi, and beyond it, the rich fields of the American bottoms in Illinois, and the white buildings of Illinois town opposite. ”

“ Illinois is where things grow; the corn, the wheat, the hay, the oats, the fruit, the vegetables, the horses, the cattle, the hogs; the eggs don’t grow on bushes in Illinois, but they come as near to it as they do in any other State. And not only these things, which have been mentioned, grow in Illinois, but brains grow in Illinois too; and if they are about to be bothered to find a man who is smart enough for President, tell them not to be uneasy, that Illinois can furnish five hundred, if that many were needed. Yes, Illinois is where things grow. ”