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Illinois is where Abraham Lincoln learned the law, where the labor movement won the eight-hour workday, and where the city that burned in 1871 rose back up and kept going until it touched the sky.
From the Prairie to the Second City
The Cahokia people built a city of 20,000 at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers around 1100 CE — the largest pre-Columbian settlement north of Mexico. After Cahokia’s decline, the Illinois Confederation and later the Potawatomi, Sauk, Fox, Kickapoo, and Miami nations inhabited the land. French missionaries and traders arrived in the 1670s — Marquette and Jolliet paddled the Illinois River in 1673 — and France established a string of forts and missions including Fort de Chartres and Kaskaskia in the American Bottom, the rich floodplain east of the Mississippi.
Illinois became the twenty-first state on December 3, 1818. Chicago was incorporated as a town in 1833 on the portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi watershed — the geographic fulcrum of the continent — and grew with extraordinary speed as railroads made it the center of a national transportation network. Abraham Lincoln moved to Illinois from Indiana in 1830, read law in New Salem, served in the state legislature, and rode the Eighth Judicial Circuit as a prairie lawyer before the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 brought him national attention and the presidency.
Chicago burned on October 8–10, 1871. The fire killed 300 people, destroyed 17,000 buildings, and left 100,000 homeless. The city rebuilt within two years — and this time built in masonry and steel. The Home Insurance Building, completed in 1885, is generally considered the world’s first skyscraper. By 1893 Chicago hosted the World’s Columbian Exposition, which introduced alternating current, the Ferris wheel, the zipper, and Cracker Jack to the world. The fair’s White City also inspired a generation of city planners — and, less fortunately, serial killer H.H. Holmes.
The labor movement found its defining moment in Illinois. The 1886 Haymarket affair in Chicago — a bomb thrown at police during a labor rally for the eight-hour workday — became the founding trauma of the international labor movement. The Pullman Strike of 1894 brought federal troops to Chicago. Jane Addams founded Hull House in 1889 and invented the settlement house movement. Upton Sinclair published The Jungle in 1906 about conditions in Chicago’s meatpacking plants, leading directly to the Pure Food and Drug Act. Illinois was where industrial capitalism and its discontents worked out their argument in public.
The Great Migration brought hundreds of thousands of Black Southerners to Chicago between 1910 and 1970, transforming the South Side into one of the great African American cultural centers on earth. Chicago blues — electrified, amplified, urban — emerged from this migration. Chess Records recorded Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Chuck Berry, and Bo Diddley. Chicago became the jazz and blues capital of the North. Barack Obama organized on the South Side, taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago, represented Hyde Park in the state senate and then the U.S. Senate, and was inaugurated as the forty-fourth president in 2009.
1673
Marquette & Jolliet
Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet paddle the Illinois River, becoming the first Europeans to map the interior of what will become Illinois.
1818
Statehood
Illinois enters the Union on December 3 as the twenty-first state. Kaskaskia — a French colonial town on the Mississippi — briefly serves as capital before Vandalia, then Springfield.
1837
Lincoln Moves to Springfield
Abraham Lincoln, 28, moves to Springfield to practice law. Over the next two decades he will try cases across the Eighth Circuit, serve in Congress, and emerge from the Lincoln-Douglas debates as a national figure.
1871
Great Chicago Fire
Chicago burns on October 8–10. Three hundred people die. The city rebuilds immediately, this time in stone and steel, and invents the skyscraper within fourteen years.
1886
Haymarket Affair
A bomb kills seven police officers during a labor rally in Chicago’s Haymarket Square. The aftermath — a controversial trial and four executions — becomes the founding event of the international labor movement’s May Day commemorations.
1893
World’s Columbian Exposition
Chicago hosts the World’s Fair celebrating 400 years since Columbus. Twenty-seven million people attend. The fair introduces AC electricity, the Ferris wheel, the zipper, and American planning ideology to the world.
1906
The Jungle Published
Upton Sinclair publishes The Jungle, documenting conditions in Chicago’s meatpacking plants. Public outcry leads directly to the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act — the first major federal consumer protection laws.
1955
Chess Records Peak
Chess Records on South Michigan Avenue reaches its creative peak — Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, and Howlin’ Wolf recording in the same studio, inventing electric blues and proto-rock-and-roll simultaneously.
1973
Sears Tower Completed
The Sears Tower (now Willis Tower) is completed at 1,450 feet — the world’s tallest building for 25 years, a statement of Chicago ambition visible from 40 miles away on a clear day.
2009
Obama Inaugurated
Barack Obama, a Chicago constitutional law professor and South Side community organizer, is inaugurated as the forty-fourth president — the first Black president of the United States.
