History Of Illinois
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History Of Illinois
The history of Illinois may be defined by several broad historical periods, namely, the pre-Columbian period, the era of European exploration and colonization, its development as part of the American frontier, its early statehood period, growth in the 19th and 20th centuries, and contemporary Illinois of today. Pre-Columbian era Cahokia, the urban center of the pre-Columbian Mississippian culture, was located near present-day Collinsville, Illinois. Several burial mounds and adobe structures were created in Southern Illinois across the Mississippi River from St. Louis. A gigantic mound, known as Monks Mound near Cahokia, is about the same height from its base as the Pyramid of Giza. Built around 1050 AD by an immense marshaling of human labor, this huge earth-work faced the site of a palisaded city that contained more than one hundred small artificial mounds marking burial sites. This Mississippi valley city of Cahokia is estimated to have had a population of about 16,000 to ...
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Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the main stem, primary river of the largest drainage basin in the United States. It is the second-longest river in the United States, behind only the Missouri River, Missouri. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it flows generally south for to the Mississippi River Delta in the Gulf of Mexico. With its many tributaries, the Mississippi's Drainage basin, watershed drains all or parts of 32 U.S. states and two Canadian provinces between the Rocky Mountains, Rocky and Appalachian Mountains, Appalachian mountains. The river either borders or passes through the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The main stem is entirely within the United States; the total drainage basin is , of which only about one percent is in Canada. The Mississippi ranks as the world's List of rivers by discharge, tenth-largest river by discharge flow, and the largest ...
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Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th president of the United States, serving from 1861 until Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, his assassination in 1865. He led the United States through the American Civil War, defeating the Confederate States of America and playing a major role in the End of slavery in the United States, abolition of slavery. Lincoln was born into poverty in Kentucky and raised on the American frontier, frontier. He was self-educated and became a lawyer, Illinois state Illinois House of Representatives, legislator, and U.S. representative. Angered by the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854, which opened the territories to slavery, he became a leader of the new History of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party. He reached a national audience in the Lincoln–Douglas debates, 1858 Senate campaign debates against Stephen A. Douglas. Lincoln won the 1860 United States presidential election, 1860 presidential election, wh ...
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Black Hawk War
The Black Hawk War was a conflict between the United States and Native Americans in the United States, Native Americans led by Black Hawk (Sauk leader), Black Hawk, a Sauk people, Sauk leader. The war erupted after Black Hawk and a group of Sauks, Meskwakis (Fox), and Kickapoo people, Kickapoos, known as the "British Band", crossed the Mississippi River, to the U.S. state of Illinois, from Iowa, Iowa Indian Territory in April 1832. Black Hawk's motives were ambiguous, but he was apparently hoping to reclaim land that was taken over by the United States in the disputed 1804 Treaty of St. Louis (1804), Treaty of St. Louis. U.S. officials, convinced that the British Band was hostile, mobilized a frontier Militia in the United States, militia and opened fire on a delegation from the Native Americans on May 14, 1832. Black Hawk responded by successfully attacking the militia at the Battle of Stillman's Run. He led his band to a secure location in what is now southern Wisconsin an ...
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Illinois Territory
The Territory of Illinois was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from March 1, 1809, until December 3, 1818, when the southern portion of the territory was admitted to the Union as the State of Illinois. Its capital was the former French village of Kaskaskia on the Mississippi River (which is still a part of the State of Illinois). The northern half of the territory, modern Wisconsin and parts of modern Minnesota and Michigan became part of the Territory of Michigan in 1818. History of the area The area was earlier known as " Illinois Country" (''Pays des Illinois'') while under French control, first as part of French Canada and then in its southern region as part of French Louisiana. The British gained authority over the region east of the Mississippi River from the French, with the 1763 Treaty of Paris marking the end of the French and Indian War and of the French North American colony of New France. During the American Revolutionary W ...
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Chicago
Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of United States cities by population, third-most populous city in the United States after New York City and Los Angeles. As the county seat, seat of Cook County, Illinois, Cook County, the List of the most populous counties in the United States, second-most populous county in the U.S., Chicago is the center of the Chicago metropolitan area, often colloquially called "Chicagoland" and home to 9.6 million residents. Located on the shore of Lake Michigan, Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837 near a Chicago Portage, portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River, Mississippi River watershed. It grew rapidly in the mid-19th century. In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed several square miles and left more than 100,000 homeless, but ...
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Fort Dearborn
Fort Dearborn was a United States fort, first built in 1803 beside the Chicago River, in what is now Chicago, Illinois. It was constructed by U.S. troops under Captain John Whistler and named in honor of Henry Dearborn, then United States Secretary of War. The original fort was destroyed following the Battle of Fort Dearborn during the War of 1812, and a replacement Fort Dearborn was constructed on the same site in 1816 and decommissioned by 1837. Parts of the fort were lost to the widening of the Chicago River in 1855, and a fire in 1857. The last vestiges of Fort Dearborn were destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The site of the fort is now a Chicago Landmark, located in the Michigan–Wacker Historic District, at the southern end of the DuSable Michigan Avenue Bridge. Background Historic events Human activity in the Chicago area prior to the arrival of European explorers is mostly unknown, although it evidently served as a crossing point among many different peop ...
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Illinois-Wabash Company
The Illinois-Wabash Company, formally known as the United Illinois and Wabash Land Company, was a company formed in {{start date and age, 1779, p=y from the merger of the Illinois Company and the Wabash Company. The two companies had been established in order to purchase land from Native Americans in the Illinois Country, a region of North America acquired by Great Britain in 1763. The Illinois Company purchased two large tracts of land in 1773; the Wabash Company purchased two additional tracts in 1775. Because the Royal Proclamation of 1763 forbade private purchase of Native American lands, Great Britain refused to recognize these transactions. Following the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, officials of the merged Illinois-Wabash Company appealed to both Virginia (which claimed the Illinois Country) and to the United States to recognize their land purchases but were unsuccessful. After the United States bought the land in question from Native Americans and resold it, ...
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Western Theater Of The American Revolutionary War
The western theater of the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) was the area of conflict west of the Appalachian Mountains, the region which became the Northwest Territory of the United States as well as what would become the states of Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, and Tennessee. The western war was fought between American Indians with their British allies in Detroit, and American settlers south and east of the Ohio River, and also the Spanish as allies of the latter. Background At the conclusion of the French and Indian War (1754–1763), Great Britain won uncontested influence over the region between its Atlantic Coast colonies and the Mississippi River. The Ohio River marked a tenuous border between the American colonies and the American Indians of the Ohio Country. The Proclamation of 1763 forbade British colonists from settling west of the Appalachian Mountains in order to prevent conflict between Indians and colonists in the vast territory newly acquired fr ...
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Illinois Campaign
The Illinois campaign, also known as Clark's Northwestern campaign, was a series of engagements during the American Revolutionary War in which a small force of Virginia militia led by George Rogers Clark seized control of several British outposts in the region northwest of the Ohio River in what is now Illinois and Indiana. The campaign is the best-known action of the western theater of the war and the source of Clark's reputation as an early American military hero. In July 1778, Clark and his men descended the Ohio River from the Falls of the Ohio, crossed overland to the Mississippi River and took control of Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and several other villages in British territory. Vincennes, on the Wabash River was occupied a few weeks later. The occupation was accomplished without firing a shot because many of the French-speaking inhabitants of the region were sympathetic to the Patriot cause. To counter Clark's advance, Henry Hamilton, the British lieutenant-governor based at F ...
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Northwest Territory
The Northwest Territory, also known as the Old Northwest and formally known as the Territory Northwest of the River Ohio, was formed from part of the unorganized western territory of the United States after the American Revolution. Established in 1787 by the Congress of the Confederation through the Northwest Ordinance, it was the nation's first post-colonial Organized incorporated territories of the United States, organized incorporated territory. At the time of its creation, the territory included all the land west of Pennsylvania, northwest of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi River below the Great Lakes, and what later became known as the Boundary Waters. The region was ceded to the United States in the Treaty of Paris (1783), Treaty of Paris of 1783. Throughout the American Revolutionary War, Revolutionary War, the region was part of the British Province of Quebec (1763–1791), Province of Quebec and the Western theater of the American Revolutionary War, western ...
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Province Of Quebec (1763–1791)
The Province of Quebec () was a colony in British North America which comprised the former French colony of Canada. It was established by the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1763, following the conquest of New France by British forces during the Seven Years' War. As part of the 1763 Treaty of Paris, France gave up its claim to the colony; it instead negotiated to keep the small profitable island of Guadeloupe. Following the Royal Proclamation of 1763, Canada was renamed the Province of Quebec, and from 1774 extended from the coast of Labrador on the Atlantic Ocean, southwest through the Saint Lawrence River Valley to the Great Lakes and beyond to the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers in the Illinois Country. Portions of its southwest, those areas south of the Great Lakes, were later ceded to the newly established United States in the 1783 Treaty of Paris at the conclusion of the American Revolution; although the British maintained a military presence there unti ...
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