Southern Illinois

“ Round the city of Chicago stretches upon three sides a vast level prairie, a meadow larger than the area of England and Wales, and as fertile as the luxuriant vegetation of thousands of years decaying under a semi-tropic sun could make it. Illinois is in round numbers 400 miles from north to south, its greatest breadth being about 200 miles. The Mississippi, running in vast curves along the entire length of its western frontier for 700 miles, bears away to southern ports the rich burden of wheat and Indian corn. ”

“ The people of early Illinois were drawn southward by the pull of natural forces: the Mississippi washes the western border on its gulf-ward course; and the chief rivers within the State have a general southerly trend. [302] But quite as important historically is the convergence of the Ohio, the Cumberland, and the Tennessee on the southern border of Illinois; for it was by these waterways that the early settlers reached the Illinois Territory from the States of Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina. ”

“ The surface of Illinois is an inclined plane, whose general slope is toward the S. and S.W. The average elevation above sea-level is about 600 ft.; the highest elevation is Charles Mound (1257 ft.) , on the Illinois-Wisconsin boundary line, one of a chain of hills that crosses Jo Daviess, Stephenson, Winnebago, Boone and McHenry counties. An elevation from 6 to 10 m. wide crosses the southern part of the state from Grand Tower, in Jackson county, on the Mississippi to Shawneetown, in Gallatin county, on the Ohio, the highest point being 1047 ft. above the sea ”

“ There are no mountains in Illinois; but in the southern as well as the northern part, there are a few hills. Near the banks of the principal rivers the ground is elevated into bluffs, on which may be still found the traces left by water, which was evidently once much higher than it now is; whence it is inferred, that, where the fertile plains of Illinois now extend, there must once have been a vast sheet of water, the mud deposited by which formed the soil, thus accounting for the great fertility of the prairies. ”

“ This was the first time that the Democratic Party had been defeated, its organization having been in control since the admission of Illinois to the Union. An important influence in this political revolution was a change in the character of the population. Until 1848 the Southern element predominated in the population, but after that year the immigration from the Northern states was greater than that from the South, and the foreign element also increased. [5] The opposition to slavery continued to be political and economic rather than philanthropic. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.
[55]
Pioneer Work. ”

“ Today the term city would be almost a favor to a place containing no more inhabitants than were then to be found in the white settlements in Illinois. Moreover, few as were the whites, they were dispersed in a long half-oval extending from a point on the Mississippi near the present Alton southward to the Ohio, and thence up that river and the Wabash to a point considerably north of Vincennes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The changes in government and in the land question in Illinois were typical of changes in other frontier regions, but although worthy of note as helping to make a more attractive place for settlement, they are by no means sufficient to account for the great migration to the westward. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A soil of great fertility, a region so abundantly supplied with game and wild products as to make it almost possible to live from the forest alone, combined with a lack of efficient means of transportation, made such a temptation to a life of idle ease as many pioneers did not resist. Be it remembered, also, that although towns, retail trade, and export trade had begun in Illinois by 1830, these changes were not simultaneous throughout the state. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the third of February, 1809, an act of Congress was passed, defining the boundaries of Illinois, and establishing the “First Grade” of Territorial Government. The population of the whole territory did not then exceed twelve thousand; and, with the exception of Chicago, and a few settlements on the Wabash, was confined to a narrow strip of country along the Mississippi. ”

“ Among the early difficulties in the way of settlement, one of the most persistent was the presence of prairies. This is by no means far-fetched, although it sounds so to modern ears. In 1786, Monroe wrote to Jefferson concerning the Northwest Territory: “A great part of the territory is miserably poor, especially that near Lakes Michigan and Erie, and that upon the Mississippi and the Illinois consists of extensive plains which have not had, from appearances, and will not have, a single bush on them for ages. ”

“ If this is the usual season of the Illinois, which can scarcely be doubted, as it answers the character given by those longest resident, then is the Illinois one of the finest countries under heaven for human beings to dwell in; one of the most delightful given to man for his residence. ”

“ By the beginning of the Civil War the population of Illinois had increased to a million and three quarters. Obviously this change in little more than a generation represented only in small part the natural increase of the original settlers from Kentucky and Virginia. So rapidly, indeed, did the forces of progress act in Illinois that many of the old-timers packed up and moved on, as had happened during the previous generation among their parents, and Illinois in the following generation will be found strongly represented in the early migration to California, Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado. ”

“ There were some settlers in the woods around Mound City, and a jolly-looking, corpulent man, who introduced himself as one of the officers of the land department of the Central Illinois railroad, described them as awful warnings to the emigrants not to stick in the south part of Illinois. ”

“ The inhabitants of the different towns in the Illinois are worthy the attention of Congress. They have it in their power to be of infinite service to us, and might act as a great barrier to the frontier, if under proper regulation ”

“ He was returning from Vandalia, Illinois, then the capital, and his first term in the state legislature, to the backwoods village of New Salem that had been his home for four years. The last twenty miles of the journey, from the town of Springfield, he made on a hired horse. The landscape through which he rode that April morning still holds its enchantment; the swift, bright river still winds in and out among the wooded hills, for the best farming lands lie back of the gravelly bluffs, on the black loam prairie. But three-quarters of a century ago central Illinois was an almost primeval world. ”

“ The extreme length of Illinois from north to south is 385 miles; in geographical situation it extends from the latitude of Massachusetts and New York to that of Virginia and Kentucky. The great westward stream of emigration in the United States had generally followed the parallels of latitude. The pioneers planted their new homes as nearly as might be in a climate like the one they had left. In process of time, therefore, northern Illinois became peopled with settlers from Northern or free States, bringing their antislavery traditions and feelings ”

“ Illinois is a low, swampy State, nearly all over. I have visited all portions of it, both the borders and the interior; and, excepting the vicinity of Peoria, and some few bluffs along the Mississippi river, the ground is low, flat, marshy, and evidently anything but salubrious. The soil, however, is as rich as any in the world; and things grow there in a way that would be quite novel to an eastern man. By and by, it will be drained, grow more healthy, and, perhaps, become the richest and most desirable State of the Mississippi Valley. ”

“ The districts, therefore, within which these fall will never contain a sufficient number of inhabitants to entitle them to membership in the confederacy.”224 Some of the most fertile of the Illinois prairies were not settled until far into the nineteenth century. The false prophets of the early days will be judged less harshly if we recall that wood was then a necessity, that no railroads and few roads existed, that wells now in use in prairie regions are much deeper than the early settlers could dig, and that the vast quantities of coal under the surface of Illinois were undiscovered. ”

“ An early traveler wrote in 1796: “The province of the Illinois is, perhaps, the only spot respecting which travelers have given no exaggerated accounts; it is superior to any description which has been made, for local beauty, fertility, climate, and the means of every kind which nature has lavished upon it for the facility of commerce.”16 The wide-spreading prairies added to the beauty of the country. Land which now produces one hundred bushels of corn to the acre must have been capable of producing wonderful crops at the beginning of its cultivation. ”

“ It had a population of 1500. The county contained nearly 18,000 souls, of whom 78 were free negroes, 20 registered indentured servants, and six slaves. Scarcely a perceptible trace of color, one would say, yet we find in the Springfield paper a leading article beginning with the startling announcement, "Our State is threatened to be overrun with free negroes." The county was one of the richest in Illinois, possessed of a soil of inexhaustible fertility, and divided to the best advantage between prairie and forest. ”

“ During the first half of our seventy years, Illinois was yet in its infancy and grew very slowly, but during the last half she has developed very rapidly, and has made rapid stride in the way of improvement, and other great changes are to come yet, and they will come pretty rapidly. ”