Avenues of Transformation: Illinois's Path from Territory to State

by James Edstrom

Overview

WINNER, 2023 Illinois State Historical Society Russell P. Strange Book of the Year Award!

A territory split by slavery, a state forged for union


Avenues of Transformation traces the surprising path, marked by shame, ambition, and will that led to Illinois’s admission to the Union in 1818. Historian James A. Edstrom guides the reader through this story by associating each stage of the narrative—the original statehood campaign, the passage of Illinois’s statehood-enabling act by Congress, and Illinois’s first constitutional convention—with the primary leaders in each of those episodes. The lives of these men—Daniel Pope Cook, Nathaniel Pope, and Elias Kent Kane—reflect the momentous tangle of politics, slavery, and geography. This history maps the drive for statehood in the conflict between nation and state, in the perpetuation of slavery, and in the sweep of water and commerce. It underscores the ways in which the Prairie State is uniquely intertwined—economically, socially, and politically—with every region of the Union: North, South, East, and West—and captures the compelling moment when Illinois statehood stood ready to more perfectly unify the nation.

This volume is the first full-length book in over a century to describe and analyze Illinois’s admission to the Union. It marks the first time that a historian has analyzed in detail the roll-call votes of the first state constitutional convention, seated evenly by pro- and antislavery delegates. Edstrom’s wit and prose weave a lively narrative of political ambition and human failure. Patiently crafted, Avenues of Transformation will be the first source for readers to turn to for gaining a better understanding of Illinois statehood.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780809338764
Publisher:	Southern Illinois University Press
Publication date:	11/25/2022
Edition description:	1st Edition
Pages:	274
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

James A. Edstrom is a librarian, researcher, and author whose scholarship on Illinois history has appeared in journals such as Illinois Heritage and Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society. He is a professor of library services and history at William Rainey Harper College.

Read an Excerpt

Prologue: Two Cemeteries

Six miles northwest of Chester, Illinois, not far from St. Louis, a series of green bluffs overlooks the Mississippi River to the west. Atop these bluffs, shallow mounds of earth mark the rough outlines of what was once Fort Gage (also known as Fort Kaskaskia), erected in 1734. Only a few historical markers placed by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency remain to testify that this site was once part of a line of French colonial military fortifications in Illinois stretching from Fort Massac near modern-day Cairo to Fort de Chartres near Prairie du Rocher.

Melancholy and isolation settle uneasily on the place, a mood underscored by the presence of the Garrison Hill Cemetery, one of the last vestiges of old Kaskaskia, the first capital of Illinois. Neat rows of crosses and headstones mark the final resting place of some 3,000 pioneers. In life Bakers and Baronowskys, Colberts and DeRousses, Heckmans, Maxwells, and Morrisons once mingled and built a community together; now they moulder away within a few inches of each other. Here lie hardy farmers such as George Colbert and Antoine LaBrier, the cooper Owen Cullen, and the miller Daniel Reily. The state’s first Lieutenant Governor—dark-eyed, elegant, kind-hearted Pierre Ménard—is likewise buried here. Governor John Reynolds wrote of him: “The ‘milk of human kindness’ never reigned more triumphant in any heart than it did in his.”

For many years these departed pioneers lay at rest within strolling distance of their living haunts. But time and tide, geography and circumstance conspired to alter the landscape of the living and the dead alike. Kaskaskia—the first capital of the Illinois Country and a major social, commercial, political and cultural center of early French and American settlement in the Midwest—is today largely forgotten, if not altogether deserted. Over much of the 19th century Illinois’s spheres of political and commercial influence gravitated to successive state capitals in Vandalia and Springfield and to industrial and transportation centers such as Alton, East St. Louis, Galena, Galesburg, Bloomington, Jacksonville, De Kalb, Rockford, and—looming above all else—Chicago. In the face of such geographic and demographic crosscurrents, Kaskaskia’s population dwindled to only 14 inhabitants by the time of the 2010 federal census.

But the town’s decline is not only the end result of a Prairie State awash in waves of settlement primarily to the north and to the east. Ultimately Kaskaskia’s geography was its destiny. Illinois’s first capital had been erected on a peninsula that jutted out between the Mississippi and Kaskaskia (or Okaw) Rivers, which enabled watercraft to approach the town at any stage of the river and remain safely there throughout the winter. The Mississippi, however, is given to sudden changes in its course. Disastrous floods in 1725, 1785, and 1844 taught the people of Kaskaskia that they were vulnerable to its whims. “[W]e are left to wonder,” wrote historian J.H. Burnham in 1914, “why the town site was continued at that particular location.” By 1881, the narrow spit of land connecting Kaskaskia to mainland Illinois—and separating the two rivers that surrounded the town—was no more than 400 feet wide. Thus it was little surprise when on 18 April of that year a final catastrophic flood breached this last barrier and the Mississippi River surged into the channel of the quieter, more complacent Okaw. Locals stood awestruck as they witnessed the flood’s raging fury:

"People would stand as near as they dared to the rushing stream. Pretty soon some one would notice the ground was cracking and opening behind the spectators, and then there would be a rush back to ground that appeared to be safe, which sooner or later would also crumble and drop into the fast widening channel."

Legend held that this deluge marked the fulfillment of a centuries-old curse by a French priest set adrift upon the Mississippi in an open boat—"without oars or food, compass or guide”—by the too-worldly degenerates of Kaskaskia, annoyed by his vigorous efforts to ignite their consciences and revive their flagging morality. Long after he had disappeared from view, his tormentors could hear him calling upon the Lord to send the river cascading through their streets and engulfing their homes and fields. For years afterwards, many came to believe that their community’s watery destruction marked the terrible vengeance of their father confessor and spiritual leader.

For nearly a century and a half since the 1881 deluge some vestige of old Kaskaskia has grimly hung on for dear life, a shadow of its former self that was further devastated by severe flooding in 1993. The cathedral is gone, replaced by a mid-19th century edifice. Only the church bell remains—housed now in a special shrine maintained by the state of Illinois—a bell that was forged in France in 1741 and presented as a gift to the local French habitants by King Louis XV. This same bell was rung by George Rogers Clark on 4 July 1778 to celebrate his successful—albeit bloodless—victory over the British in Kaskaskia (hence its nickname “Liberty Bell of the West”).

There is a striking similarity between the eerie isolation of modern-day Kaskaskia Island and that of the final resting place of its founders sleeping on the hill across the Mississippi. Here is a rich vein of the life and folklore of early Illinois that could have been mined by Vachel Lindsay or Edgar Lee Masters to give voice to the departed pioneers and to place metaphorical flesh, muscle, and sinew on their dry bones. They are the physical, spiritual, and political ancestors of the people of modern-day Illinois. Like Masters’s Abraham Lincoln and Ann Rutledge, the Prairie State and its ancient capital are forever wedded “not through union, But through separation.”

Nevertheless, somehow the town abides as a fragile connection to Illinois’s antediluvian colonial past. Out of such humble origins rose a state that prided itself on a fertile agriculture, a prosperous industrial base, and an infrastructure that is the beating heart of a national transportation network. It all began in Kaskaskia.

[end of excerpt]
 

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments
Prologue. Two Cemeteries

Introduction
Part I. The Long Voyage of Daniel Pope Cook
Chapter 1. Twenty Gallons of Whiskey
Chapter 2. The Utmost Good Faith
Chapter 3. Ties of Blood
Chapter 4.  A Bearer of Despatches
Chapter 5. The Grievances of Territorial Government
Part II. Nathaniel Pope and the Roads Not Taken
Chapter 6. Truly An Amiable Character
Chapter 7. The Snarl of Suspicion
Chapter 8. Candour and Good Faith
Chapter 9. Nothing Certain Can Be Calculated On
Chapter 10. To Accomplish This Object Effectually
Part III. The Enigmatic Mr. Kane and the Convention of 1818
Chapter 11. A Spirit of Adventure and Enterprise
Chapter 12. The Right To Frame a Constitution
Chapter 13. The Great Work before Us
Chapter 14. A Little "PRUDENCE"
Chapter 15. Fait Accompli
Epilogue. The Road to Kaskaskia

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

James A. Edstrom has written what will be the definitive history of the politics of state making in Illinois. This excellent book reminds us that the Land of Lincoln began as the state of transplanted and local slave owners and land speculators on the make. The story helps us all better understand the social and political forces that surrounded the Missouri crisis and the relentless movement of slavery west, even in the old Northwest.”—Paul Finkelman, author of Supreme Injustice: Slavery in the Nation’s Highest Court and Chancellor of Gratz College 

“From cover to cover, this reads as political history at its best. James A. Edstrom unpacks the political landscape of the state, and the nation, and succeeds like no other in recreating the personal and political dimensions of early Illinois. It will be an indispensable study of Illinois’s statehood for years to come.”—M. Scott Heerman, author of The Alchemy of Slavery: Human Bondage and Emancipation in the Illinois Country, 1730-1865

“Edstrom constructs a vivid portrait of Illinois’s entrance into the Union by skillfully interweaving the biographies of Daniel P. Cook, Nathaniel Pope, and Elias Kent Kane, each young, gifted, ambitious, and influential, and each playing a key role in turning Illinois from a territory into a state. Edstrom’s careful scholarship and graceful writing will appeal to scholars and general readers alike.”—Graham A. Peck, author of Making an Antislavery Nation: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Battle over Freedom

“An extraordinary scholarly achievement. The author clearly demonstrates a mastery of primary sources as well as secondary ones. In telling the story of Illinois’s path to statehood, Edstrom thoroughly explores the issues and personalities at play. The focus on his three main figures—Cook, Pope, and Kane—illuminate not only the times in which they lived but provide background on their personal histories, motivations, goals, successes, and failures. The book’s signifi­cance for state history cannot be overstated.”—Illinois State Historical Society Awards Selection Committee

“Anyone with an interest in early Illinois history will find this examination of the complexities of the statehood process to be an informative and worthwhile read.”—Glenna R. Schroeder-Lein, Illinois Times

"Elevating the importance of scholarship about Illinois as part of a complex region, this finely crafted resource promises to be a contribution to scholars, local historians, and students of regional history for generations."—Caroline M. Kisiel, DePaul University

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