When the Illinois territorial legislature decided to request statehood in 1817, the boundaries of the future state were easy to imagine. In the south and east, the states of Indiana and Kentucky had already been established; in the west, the Mississippi River had always been considered a natural boundary. The only question was the northern dividing line, and there the story offered several options. During the Pleistocene era, vast ice sheets covered much of Illinois, and only the drift-free area was exposed.
The Stevenson family, which initially had roots in central Illinois and later settled in the Chicago metropolitan area, has been the source of four generations of Illinois officials. During the American Civil War, Illinois ranked fourth in terms of the number of soldiers who served in the Union Army (more than 250,000), a figure surpassed only by New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio. The western section (west of the Illinois River) was originally part of the 1812 military zone and forms the state's striking western bulge. In 1832, the United States and the Sauk, Fox (Meskwaki), and Kickapoo Indian tribes fought the Black Hawk War in Illinois and present-day Wisconsin.
On the contrary, Illinois has tended more toward the Democratic Party and has voted for its presidential candidates in the last six elections; in 2000, George W. During the first part of the Paleozoic Era, the area that would one day become Illinois was submerged under a shallow sea and located near the Equator. To his credit, Bond tried to prevent the creation of an uncapitalized Illinois State Bank that would issue banknotes based on expected economic growth. The four gigantic prairie counties of Northern Illinois, which were the last to be established, had population densities of 18 people per square mile.
Cahokia, the largest regional chiefdom and urban center of Mississippi's pre-Columbian culture, was located near present-day Collinsville, Illinois. After serving from 1803 to 1809 as a member of the Indiana Territorial Legislature and chairing the Illinois Territorial Legislature from 1812 to 1818, Menard was the first lieutenant governor of Illinois from 1818 to 1822. Jacob Bunn contributed to the development of the Illinois coal industry and was the founder and owner of the Western Coal & Mining Company of Illinois. In addition to the state's railroad lines, the Mississippi River and the Illinois River provide the main transportation routes for the state's agricultural interests. American Indians from successive cultures lived along the waterways of the Illinois area for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans.
Illinois license plate design used during the 1980s and 1990s, with the slogan “The Land of Lincoln”, which has appeared on state license plates since 1954. The Schaumburg Boomers, the Southern Illinois Miners, the Gateway Grizzlies, the Joliet Slammers, and the Windy City ThunderBolts all belong to the independent Border League.
