From 1818 to 1830, the commerce of the State made but small progress. At this time, there were one or two small steamboats upon the Illinois River, but most of the navigation was carried on in keel-boats. The village merchants were mere retailers; they purchased no produce, except a few skins and furs, and a little beeswax and honey. The farmers along the rivers did their own shipping,—building flat-boats, which, having loaded with corn, flour, and bacon, they would float down to New Orleans, which was the only market accessible to them. The voyage was long, tedious, and expensive, and when the farmer arrived, he found himself in a strange city, where all were combined against him, and often he was cheated out of his property,—returning on foot by a long and dangerous journey to a desolate farm, which had been neglected during his absence. Thus two crops were sometimes lost in taking one to market.

The manners and customs of the people were simple and primitive. The costume of the men was a raccoon-skin cap, linsey hunting-shirt, buck-skin leggings and moccasons, with a butcher-knife in the belt. The women wore cotton or woollen frocks, striped with blue dye and Turkey-red, and spun, woven, and made with their own hands; they went barefooted and bareheaded, except on Sundays, when they covered the head with a cotton handkerchief. It is told of a certain John Grammar, for many years a representative from Union County, and a man of some note in the State councils, though he could neither read nor write, that in 1816, when he was first elected, lacking the necessary apparel, he and his sons gathered a large quantity of hazel-nuts, which they took to the nearest town and sold for enough blue strouding to make a suit of clothes. The pattern proved to be scanty, and the women of the household could only get out a very bob-tailed coat and leggings. With these Mr. Grammar started for Kaskaskia, the seat of government, and these he continued to wear till the passage of an appropriation bill enabled him to buy a civilized pair of breeches.

The distinctions in manners and dress between the higher and lower classes were more marked than at present; for while John Grammar wore blue strouding, we are told that Governor Edwards dressed in fine broadcloth, white-topped boots, and a gold-laced cloak, and rode about the country in a fine carriage, driven by a negro.

In those days justice was administered without much parade or ceremony. The judges held their courts mostly in log houses or in the bar-rooms of taverns, fitted up with a temporary bench for the judge, and chairs for the lawyers and jurors. At the first Circuit Court in Washington County, held by Judge John Reynolds, the sheriff, on opening the court, went out into the yard, and said to the people, "Boys, come in; our John is going to hold court." The judges were unwilling to decide questions of law, preferring to submit everything to the jury, and seldom gave them instructions, if they could avoid it. A certain judge, being ambitious to show his learning, gave very pointed directions to the jury, but they could not agree on a verdict. The judge asked the cause of their difference, when the foreman answered with great simplicity,—"Why, Judge, this 'ere's the difficulty: the jury wants to know whether that 'ar what you told us, when we went out, was r'aly the law, or whether it was on'y jist your notion."

In the spring of 1831, Black Hawk, a Sac chief, dissatisfied with the treaty by which his tribe had been removed across the Mississippi, recrossed the river at the head of three or four hundred warriors, and drove away the white settlers from his old lands near the mouth of the Rock River. This was considered an invasion of the State, and Governor Reynolds called for volunteers. Fifteen hundred men answered the summons, and the Indians were driven out. The next spring, however, Black Hawk returned with a larger force, and commenced hostilities by killing some settlers on Indian Creek, not far from Ottawa. A large force of volunteers was again called out, but in the first encounter the whites were beaten, which success encouraged the Sacs and Foxes so much that they spread themselves over the whole of the country between the Mississippi and the Lake, and kept up a desultory warfare for three or four months against the volunteer troops. About the middle of July, a body of volunteers under General Henry of Illinois pursued the Indians into Wisconsin, and by forced marches brought them to action near the Mississippi, before the United States troops, under General Atkinson, could come up. The Indians fought desperately, but were unable to stand long before the courage and superior numbers of the whites. They escaped across the river with the loss of nearly three hundred, killed in the action, or drowned in the retreat. The loss of the Illinois volunteers was about thirty, killed and wounded.

This defeat entirely broke the power of the Sacs and Foxes, and they sued for peace. Black Hawk, and some of his head men, were taken prisoners, and kept in confinement for several months, when, after a tour through the country, to show them the numbers and power of the whites, they were set at liberty on the west side of the Mississippi. In 1840 Black Hawk died, at the age of eighty years, on the banks of the great river which he loved so well.

After the Black-Hawk War, the Indian title being extinguished, and the country open to settlers, Northern Illinois attracted great attention, and increased wonderfully in wealth and population.

In 1830, the population of the State amounted to 157,445; in 1840, to 476,183; in 1850, to 851,470; in 1860, to 1,719,496.

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Situated in the centre of the United States, the State of Illinois extends from 37° to 42° 30' N. latitude, and from 10° 47' to 14° 26' W. longitude from Washington. The State is 378 miles long from North to South, and 212 miles broad from East to West. Its area is computed at 55,408 square miles, or 35,459,200 acres, less than two millions of which are called swamp lands, the remaining thirty-three millions being tillable land of unsurpassed fertility.