Pease, Theodore Calvin

This volume is an attempt to present a short readable history of the state of Illinois, embodying the results of the latest research. Naturally it is based to a considerable extent on the five volume Centennial History of Illinois, but for most of the period covered by the volume the body of source material has been carefully examined. Still, my indebtedness to the other authors of the Centennial History, especially to Professor Clarence W. Alvord, will be apparent to anyone who is acquainted with their work. I have also to express my gratitude to Dr. Otto L. Schmidt for encouragement and kindly criticism.

Using original French correspondence and papers (with English translations), the authors have tried to document the period between the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years’ War as it was reflected in the Illinois country. The collection mainly represents the writings of the people who labored to maintain the cause of France in the West. Throughout, the story is one of Indian disaffection, of the wiles which English traders exercised not merely over the French Indians, but over the French traders themselves, of the measures concerted at New Orleans and Quebec to uphold the name of France in the interior and of how these measures were carried out on the ground by post commandants, officers and Jesuits. - From the author’s Preface

Chapter headings are: -The Land and the People -The New State Government, 1818-1828 -Ten Years of State Finance -The Convention Struggle -The War on Ninian Edwards -The Rise of Jacksonian Democracy -State Politics, 1830-1834 -The Last of the Indians -The Settlement of the North -The Internal Improvement System -The Wreck of the Internal Improvement System, 1837-1842 -The Struggle for Party Regularity, 1834-1838 -The Whig and Democratic Parties; The Convention System -The Passing of the Old Democracy -State Politics, 1840-1847 -State and Private Banking, 1830-1845 -The Internal Improvement System: The Solution -The Split of the Democratic Party, 1846-1848 -The Mormon War -The Slavery Question -Illinois in Ferment -Social, Educational, and Religious Advance, 1830-1848 -Bibliography

Browning was a Whig politician and lawyer in Illinois. He was also a friend of Abraham Lincoln, who went to Washington as a member of Lincoln’s cabinet. He maintained a diary, from which this book was compiled by two history professors from the University of Illinois. In 1850 Browning worked as a lawyer in Quincy, ILL. Diary entries in the early 1850s (1851 is missing) were often brief references to his work “attending court”, travel details as he rode the court circuit (like Lincoln), or weather updates. There are occasional finely detailed entries describing personal or political events of interest. Notes by the editors fill in details about many of the persons or events that Browning mentions in passing.