In its early days, Illinois seemed destined to extend the American South. Its population of transplants lived an upland southern culture and in some cases owned slaves. Yet the nineteenth century and three constitutions recast Illinois as a crucible of northern strength and American progress. Frank Cicero Jr. provides an appealing new history of Illinois as expressed by the state's constitutions—and the lively conventions that led to each one. In Creating the Land of Lincoln, Cicero sheds light on the vital debates of delegates who, freed from electoral necessity, revealed the opinions, prejudices, sentiments, and dreams of Illinoisans at critical junctures in state history. Cicero simultaneously analyzes decisions large and small that fostered momentous social and political changes. The addition of northern land in the 1818 constitution, for instance, opened up the state to immigrant populations that reoriented Illinois to the north. Legislative abuses and rancor over free blacks influenced the 1848 document and the subsequent rise of a Republican Party that gave the nation Abraham Lincoln as its president. Cicero concludes with the 1870 constitution, revealing how its dialogues and resolutions set the state on the modern course that still endures today.| Cover Title Copyright Contents List of Illustrations Preface Introduction 1. Illinois before Statehood: Slave Country of the Northwest Territory 2. The Constitution of 1818: Slavery, a Bogus Census, Feeble Executive Power 3. Black Codes and Bondage, Settling the North, Legislative Follies 4. The Constitution of 1848: Reconstructing Government, Balancing Powers, Oppressing Free Blacks 5. Two Transformative Decades: 1848–1868 6. Civil War, a Partisan Convention, the Decisive Later 1860s 7. The Constitution of 1870: Progressive Foundation for a Century Epilogue Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index | Russell P. Strange Memorial Book Award, Illinois State Historical Society, 2019 — Illinois State Historical Society
|Frank Cicero Jr. is a senior partner at Kirkland and Ellis LLP and served as a delegate for Illinois's Sixth Constitutional Convention. He is the author of Relative Strangers: Italian Protestants in the Catholic World.