The questions of how European immigrants became Americans and the uncertainty about what an American really was anyway have puzzled scholars, politicians, and citizens for nearly two hundred years.

Hector St. John de Crevecoeur's famous early nineteenth-century query "What then is the American, this new man?" becomes more complex when applied to a state. But according to Ray A. Billington, a leading student of the matter, Illinois residents may have possessed enough unique characteristics to be identifiable by 1850, one generation after the state entered the union.

First of all, the frontier had done its work as the natural conditions within the boundaries of Illinois shaped the inherited institutions of the new residents. The most significant natural boundary in the state was the Shelbyville Moraine, stretching east to west from Alton to Terre Haute and marking the southernmost progress of the Wisconsin Drift (glacier). North of the divide the land was level, the soil deep and rich, while southward stretched the unglaciated rocky hills which limited agriculture and wealth. To the north, land prices were higher and crop yields larger, supporting a greater degree of population concentration, schools, and businesses.

In the second place, the expansive, empty lands attracted a variety of people from the southern and northern portions of the United States as well as from Europe. From the Carolinas, Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky the first settlers filled in the rich bottom lands south of the Moraine and fanned out into the wooded interior, bringing their Southern characteristics with them.

After the Erie Canal opened in 1825, however, the Great Lakes provided an entryway to the prairies for Northeasterners, Yankees who did their best to transform Northern Illinois into a replica of the Northeast. Adding to the base during the 1840s were Irish peasants who found work on the Illinois and Michigan Canal, and German Pioneers driven from their homeland by famine and revolution.

By 1850 the population mix on the prairie was rich indeed, consisting of 334,000 native-born; 138,000 from the South; 112,000 from the Middle Atlantic states; 37,000 from New England; 110,000 from surrounding states in the Old Northwest; and 110,000 foreign-born. Each group added to the composite that made up the Illinoisan.

Third, the new land encouraged mechanical ingenuity in its people as they sought to plow the tough prairie sod for the first time, to build and heat their homes or to fence their fields without wood, and to make the water of the sluggish prairie streams suitable for drinking. Illinois residents, however, solved their problems by inventing and marketing the steel plow, well-drilling machinery, barb' wire, and prairie farm implements of all kinds to take advantage of the wealth of the soil and to make the prairies livable.

Two other traits of the new Illinoisan were a belief in democracy and an unconquerable optimism. Vesting most power in the legislative branch of government, eliminating all property qualifications for voting, and providing that nearly all officials be popularly elected, the constitution of 1818 exuded democratic practice.

At the same time Illinoisans demonstrated a great faith in progress, a confidence in their ability to realize dreams. By 1840 the sparsely settled state supported 12 colleges, a sign that frontier parents were optimistic about the future for their sons and daughters. Further, land speculation was widespread and land prices high as nearly everyone was willing to gamble on the future of the new state.

Finally, economic opportunism rather than a commitment to a particular system or theory was an important characteristic. The Illinoisan, like other frontiersmen, proved himself to be a practical realist, willing to follow whatever pathway promised the greatest returns. At times he believed in government assistance and even ownership, as he demonstrated in 1837 by supporting the Internal Improvements Act which pledged his fellow citizens to spend $10,000,000 on a fantastic transportation network. After that scheme collapsed, the Illinoisan became dedicated to laissez-faire, denouncing governmental control with a vengeance. Typically American, the Illinoisan swung from left to right in economic matters controlled by the opportunity of the day.

Thus, by 1850 there was an Illinoisan, molded by his prairie environment, enriched by the cultures of all sections of the United States and of Northern and Western Europe. He was an optimistic problem-solver, a democratic opportunist who believed success depended upon ability rather than birth. The Civil War, the growth of Chicago, the entrance into the state of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe and of blacks from the South would call for a re-evaluation of the typical Illinoisan. But the force of his ancestors in place by 1850 could not easily be ignored.