The development of internal improvements together with the general migration from Northern States to all points west brought a complete change in the political complexion of the State. In 1836, alone, land sales in Indiana amounted to 3,000,000 acres and in the decade from 1840 to 1850 the population of counties bordering the new Ohio canal increased 400 per cent, while the State began to look to New York as an outlet for its products rather than to New Orleans.
From 1820, the date of the founding of Indianapolis, to 1860, Indiana had twice quadrupled her population and from almost purely American stock. During these forty years, it is calculated that a million people came to the Northwest from the slave States of the South. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Indiana had a population of 1,350,000 of which only about one in eleven was foreign-born. More than half of the aliens were from Germany, and Indiana seems to have attracted particularly the Nordic element, since Prussia contributed the largest quota. Ireland was represented by only 24,000 persons at that time and like the smaller French and English groups, they were scattered through the State and soon became lost in the general mass.
This distinctive character of Indiana, almost purely American, Protestant, and Nordic in 1860, gives the key to much of its history since then. As elsewhere the immediate surrounding States had contributed the bulk of the population. The census returns showed that the ten States constituting the birthplace of the largest number of Hoosiers in that year were, in order of importance: Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Virginia, New York, North Carolina, Tennessee, Maryland, New Jersey, and Illinois. So far as the New England element was represented, it had come almost wholly through other States.
Illinois, like Ohio, had attracted a few settlers before the Revolution, mainly to the neighborhood of the half-dozen little French trading posts. The French population of this district had never been large, and when it was taken over by Great Britain in 1763, most of the French inhabitants who could get away hastened to do so, either returning to Canada or going down the river to Saint Louis or New Orleans.
With the withdrawal of the little French garrisons only a few hundred persons of French ancestry were left in the territory. These were of two different origins. Part had come down from Canada and represented the "Habitant" French, who were largely Alpine. The remainder had come up the river from New Orleans and represented a more heterogeneous and probably inferior group. Some of the Canadians brought their families; but for the most part the French element was made up of single men who formed loose alliances with Indian squaws. For these various reasons the French influence on the subsequent population of the region is too negligible to justify consideration.
The raid made by the Kentuckians under George Rogers Clark during the Revolution had given the Americans a more detailed knowledge of this region, and by 1800 several thousand of them had already drifted across the border and started settlements. This immigration increased up to the outbreak of Indian hostilities in 1811 followed by the War of 1812 which almost completely checked settlement along the old western frontier.
After the declaration of peace and the opening up of land sales in 1814 and 1816, Illinois began to have a real boom. By this time the choicest locations in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky had either been taken by settlers or bought by speculators, so that the new arrival looking for a bonanza turned to Illinois or Missouri.
Following the general rule of migration in the United States, which was not broken until the gold rush to California in 1849 introduced new conditions, the settlement of Illinois was mostly from the States closest to it, and at the beginning was almost wholly from the South, particularly from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia. Insignificant little Shawneetown, on the Ohio River just below the mouth of the Wabash, gave easy access to the lower end of Illinois—that "Egypt" which is still a Southern Democratic stronghold. For a short time it was even the seat of government.
In this population the presence of a sprinkling of Northerners from Pennsylvania was resented and an occasional stray Yankee was scarcely tolerated. The settlement of the northern part of the State by New Englanders was made to a marked extent by colonies or organized groups, and from the early thirties one reads continually of the movement of caravans from all the New England States and western New York. Here again the opening of the Erie Canal gave easy access to northern Illinois by water. Prior to that time the lead mines in the northwestern part of Illinois and the southwestern part of Wisconsin had been the main attraction, and had been developed almost entirely by the Southerners.