Illinois



The State of Illinois is a state of the United States, the 21st to be admitted to the Union. It is the most populous and demographically diverse Midwestern state and the fifth most populous state in the nation.

With a population near 40,000 between 1300 and 1400 AD, the Mississippian-culture city of Cahokia, in what is now southern Illinois, was the largest city within the future United States until after 1790, when it was surpassed by New York City. Gradually Cahokia and the area were abandoned, and at the time of the American Revolution, only about 2,000 Native American hunters and a small number of French villagers inhabited the Illinois area. United States migrant settlers began arriving from Kentucky in the 1810s; Illinois achieved statehood on December 3, 1818. The future metropolis of Chicago was founded in the 1830s on the banks of the Chicago River, one of the few natural harbors on southern Lake Michigan. Railroads and John Deere's invention of the self-scouring steel plow made central Illinois' rich prairie into some of the world's most productive and valuable farmlands.

Illinois in The Guns of the South
Abraham Lincoln retired to Illinois after losing his bid for re-election in 1864.

Illinois in In the Presence of Mine Enemies
Illinois was one of the many states where the Greater German Reich maintained a Wehrmacht base.

Illinois in The Man With the Iron Heart
Given its close proximity to Indiana, many early supporters of Diana McGraw came from Illinois, including Edna Lopatynski.

Illinois in Southern Victory
Illinois was the state where Abraham Lincoln gained political prominence. It was in Chicago that the Republican Party imploded in the immediate aftermath of the Second Mexican War.

At the beginning of the Great War, General George Custer claimed that half of downstate Illinois residents were Confederate sympathizers, a statement that did have some historical basis.

Illinois in The Two Georges
Illinois was a province of the North American Union.

Illinois in Worldwar
Illinois served as a strategic point of many of the early battles between humans and the Race. Its largest city, Chicago, was destroyed by the first American explosive-metal bomb in a successful effort to vaporize the large Lizard army that was conquering the city in a lengthy ground battle. Chicago served as the center of research for the US effort to create an explosive-metal bomb before it became a battleground, forcing the evacuation of the nuclear program to Denver.

Notable Illinoisans
Here are some famous people who appeared in any of Harry Turtledove's works who were born in Illinois.


 * William Borah
 * Belva Gaertner
 * Ulysses S. Grant III
 * John Bell Hatcher
 * Ernest Hemingway
 * Ronald Reagan
 * Walter Short