Illinois

Illinois is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It has the fifth largest gross domestic product (GDP), the sixth largest population, and the 25th largest land area of all U.S. states. Illinois has been noted as a microcosm of the entire United States. With Chicago in northeastern Illinois, small industrial cities and immense agricultural productivity in the north and center of the state, and natural resources such as coal, timber, and petroleum in the south, Illinois has a diverse economic base, and is a major transportation hub.

The region was controlled by the French Colonial Empire until getting annexed by the British Empire in the Seven Years’ War, was transferred to the United States as part of the Northwest Territory at the end of the American Revolution, and was granted full statehood in 1818. The state government is currently controlled by the Democratic Party, and its current governor is J. B. Pritzker.

Quotes

In the month of January, 1818, a petition was received from the territorial Legislature of Illinois by Nathaniel Pope, the delegate in Congress, (now district judge,) praying for the admission of the territory into the Union as an independent State. Judge Pope immediately brought the subject before Congress; and at an early day thereafter was instructed, by the proper committee, to report a bill in pursuance of the petition. Owing to the great amount of business which had matured, this bill was not acted on until the month of April, when it became a law, with certain amendments proposed by Judge Pope.
- Thomas Ford, from A History of Illinois. Published in 1854. Origin of the original University of Michigan. Digitalized Feb, 17, 2006. p. 19.

There was an old woman in Illinois who missed some of her chickens, and couldn't imagine what had become of them. Someone suggested that they had been carried off by a skunk; so she told her husband he must sit up that night and shoot the 'critter.' The old man sat up all night, and next morning came in with two pet rabbits. 'Thar,' said he, 'your chickens are all safe; thar's two of them skunks I killed!' 'Them ain't skunks,' said the old woman; them's my pet rabbits; you allers was a fool!' 'Well, then,' returned the old man, 'if them ain't skunks I don't know a skunk when I sees it.'
- Abraham Lincoln, as quoted in Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), by David Dixon Porter, p. 63

I grew up in central Illinois midway between Chicago and St. Louis and I made an historic blunder. All my friends became Cardinals fans and grew up happy and liberal and I became a Cubs fan and grew up embittered and conservative.
- George Will, as quoted in Baseball, by Ken Burns, PBS