If you go and stand on the grounds right across
the Mississippi River from present -day St. Louis,
and you just look out at the landscape, you won't
actually see skyscrapers. You'll see a mound
of dirt. Right, a massive mound of dirt. Exactly.
And it's roughly the same height from its base
as the Great Pyramid of Giza. which is just wild
to think about. It really is. And realizing that
this structure has just been sitting there for
a thousand years, it completely shatters the
timeline most of us have in our heads about how
urbanization actually happened in North America.
Yeah, we tend to default to a very neat... linear
progression. We assume it started with just empty
wilderness and then European pioneers arrived
and, you know, finally they built the industrial
cities. But that mound of earth, it proves the
story is far more complicated, far more cyclical
than we usually like to admit. Well, welcome
to the deep dive. Today, we are taking a stack
of research. Specifically, we've got a highly
detailed historical deep dive into the state
of Illinois. And our mission today is to figure
out how a single geographic area became the ultimate
chaotic testing ground for the American dream.
It really is the ultimate microcosm. It is. We're
talking about vanished ancient megacities, utopian
religious settlements, literal shootouts in coal
country, and a modern political system so volatile
that sending governors to federal prison became,
well... practically became a recognized stage
of their career path. Yeah, the overarching theme
you find when you synthesize all these sources
is disruption. I mean, Illinois is a state entirely
defined by rapid transformations and these really
extreme contradictions. It's a place that constantly
reinvents itself through staggering demographic
shifts and just fierce ideological battle. So
before we can even talk about the towering steel
and glass of modern Chicago, we have to look
at the immense earthworks that preceded them.
Let's start around the year 1050 AD, near present
-day Collinsville. This is the center of the
pre -Columbian -Mississippian culture, a place
called Cahokia. And they are the ones who built
that structure we mentioned, Monks Mound. And
the sheer... Um, marshaling of human labor required
to build an earthen pyramid of that scale is
really hard to overstate. I bet. Cahokia wasn't
just some temporary gathering place or a scattering
of tents. This was a sprawling palisaded city
featuring over a hundred smaller artificial mounds
marking burial sites and ceremonial spaces. The
population is estimated to have been between
16 ,000 and 20 ,000 people. Which, and this blew
my mind, made it the most concentrated population
north of the Rio Grande until the late 1700s.
Yes. But how did they actually sustain a population
that dense without, you know, modern agriculture?
Well, they had a highly organized agricultural
system. The city was surrounded by these radiating
tilled fields supplying just enormous quantities
of corn to feed those tens of thousands of urban
dwellers. It was a very complex, hierarchical
society. But then somewhere between fourteen
hundred and fifteen hundred. It simply vanished.
Just gone. Yeah. The people dispersed. And the
theories as to why, well, they provide a perfect
study in how fragile, complex societies really
are. Yeah. The sources point to a cascade of
failures. First, there's evidence of a severe
earthquake that likely damaged Monk's Mount.
Which is a critical detail, because the Cahokian
chiefs, they claim to derive their authority
from supernatural powers. Oh, right. So if the
earth itself violently damages your most sacred
monument, the populace might start to... question
your divine mandate. That makes a lot of sense.
And on top of that, you have an environmental
crisis. To build the city and fuel their fires,
they heavily deforested the surrounding area.
And without trees to anchor the soil, you get
severe runoff, which pollutes the local water
supply. Combine that with a period of global
cooling known as the mini ice age, which caused
recurring famines, and the society just fractures.
Think of Cahokia like an ancient Manhattan. a
massive, densely populated hub of agriculture
and religion that just collapsed under the weight
of its own environmental and political infrastructure.
And, you know, nature of horror is a vacuum.
The collapse of Cahokia led to a deeply unstable
era. The Illiniwek Confederation, who actually
gave Illinois its name, they attempted to hold
power in the region. But then you introduce a
global economic factor, the 17th century Beaver
Wars. Wait, I need to pause you here because
Beaver Wars sounds almost comical, but the underlying
mechanism is actually really brutal. What exactly
were they fighting over? They were fighting over
global trade dominance. European markets had
this insatiable demand for beaver pelts to make
hats and clothing. OK. So the Iroquois Confederacy,
located further east, they wanted to monopolize
that incredibly lucrative trade with the French
and Dutch. Makes sense. To do that, they needed
more hunting territory, so they violently expanded
westward. And this pushed tribes like the Miami
and Mesquite entirely out of their ancestral
lands in Ohio and Indiana. Yeah, forcing them
to flee into the western Great Lakes region,
including Illinois. So long before European settlers
even built a single town in Illinois, the region
was already this chaotic refugee zone driven
by the demands of a globalized European fashion
market. Exactly. It wasn't until French explorers
like Jacques Marquet and Louis Joliet arrived
in 1673 that a new colonial order began to take
shape, establishing trading posts and missions.
And the illusion of an empty frontier is what
led to such brutal clashes when the territory
finally transitioned to American control. If
we jump forward to 1818, Illinois becomes the
21st U .S. state. The population expands from
the south to the north, pushing out the native
residents who had been living there, culminating
in conflicts like the 1832 Blackhawk War. But
internally, the new state was tearing itself
apart over an entirely different issue. Slavery.
Yeah, slavery. The history of the land of Lincoln
is deeply contested. The French had actually
utilized black slaves in the region from 1719
well into the 1820s. Wow, I didn't realize it
started that early. Yeah, and even though the
Northwest Ordinance nominally banned slavery
in the territory, the enforcement was remarkably
lax. By the time Illinois achieved statehood,
there were roughly 900 slaves living there. Because
the southern part of the state, an area colloquially
known as Egypt, was heavily settled by southerners.
And these sellers were hostile to free black
Americans and wanted the legal right to bring
slave labor into the state. They went so far
as to call for a constitutional convention in
1823 to officially legalize slavery in Illinois.
And that convention was blocked by Governor Edward
Coles, who mobilized anti -slavery forces to
win a statewide referendum. I am stuck on something
here, though. If the state was heavily settled
by pro -slavery Southerners, how on earth did
a governor convince them to block slavery? That
makes no political sense. Was it just a sudden
awakening of moral righteousness? No, not exactly.
It was a brilliant piece of political framing
based entirely on economic self -interest. Oh
really? Yeah. Coles didn't just argue the morality
of abolition. He warned the everyday working
class farmers that if slavery were legalized,
wealthy southern plantation owners would move
in, buy up all the premium farmland, and utilize
free slave labor. So the average farmer would
be completely priced out of the market and unable
to compete. That is fascinating. So when the
1823 referendum showed 60 % of voters opposing
slavery, they were largely protecting their own
livelihoods. Exactly. And that economic motivation
explains the ideological whiplash you see throughout
Illinois's early history. A perfect example is
State Senator John A. Logan. What did he do?
Well, in 1853, he helps pass a draconian law
prohibiting all African Americans, including
freedmen, from even settling in the state of
Illinois. Wow. But then, after the Civil War
ends in 1865, Logan completely reverses his position
and becomes a leading national advocate for civil
rights. The political currents were incredibly
volatile, but so were the religious ones. In
1839, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter -day Saints. The Mormons flee persecution
in Missouri and build a religious utopia in Illinois
called Nauvoo. Yes. Guided by Joseph Smith, Nauvoo's
growth was just explosive. Through highly organized
collective labor, they drained swamps and built
a thriving city that rapidly reached 12 ,000
inhabitants. That's huge for that time. It was.
For a brief moment, Nauvoo genuinely rivaled
Chicago as the largest city in the state. complete
with a colossal stone temple. How does a brand
new religious sect manage to build a competing
economic powerhouse on the frontier so quickly?
And I guess, why did the surrounding towns turn
on them so violently? The Mormons operated with
a really high degree of social and economic cohesion.
They pooled their resources, supported their
own businesses, and voted as a single unified
political bloc. OK, I see where this is going.
Right. In a frontier environment where everyone
else is fiercely competing as individuals, a
highly organized, heavily armed collective of
12 ,000 people is viewed as an existential threat
by the surrounding non -Mormon towns. Yeah, that
makes sense. So the tension boiled over. In 1844,
Joseph Smith was killed by a mob in nearby Carthage.
And by 1846, Brigham Young realized the friction
was unsustainable and led the Mormons out of
Illinois entirely, beginning the long trek to
Utah. Following the Civil War, where, by the
way, Illinois sent 250 ,000 Union soldiers, which
was the fourth most of any state, the region's
identity shifted again. The era of surviving
the frontier was over. The new era was about
conquering industry. and the economic engines
they built were unprecedented. You had a booming
steel industry along the Calumet River in northern
Illinois, and these sprawling coal mining operations
down in central and southern Illinois. These
industries generated staggering wealth, but they
operated with virtually zero safety regulations.
The human cost was horrific. The sources highlight
the 1909 Cherry Mine disaster. An underground
fire broke out in a coal mine, trapping and killing
259 miners. It's awful. It remains one of the
worst disasters in American coal mining history.
And tragedies like the cherry mine are critical
to understand because they shifted the psychological
overton window of the American middle class.
Well, prior to this, government regulation of
private business was widely viewed as overreach.
But the sheer visual horror of 259 men suffocating
underground made the public realize that unregulated
capitalism was a public safety crisis. This directly
fuels the progressive era. from 1900 to the 1920s.
Yeah, the Progressive Era saw activists essentially
acting as the state's first modern urban planners.
You have Jane Addams founding Whole House in
Chicago, providing vital services like education
and healthcare to struggling immigrant communities,
and you have... Women reformers fighting for
fundamental infrastructure like sewage systems
and municipal garbage collection. And you have
Upton Sinclair publishing The Jungle in 1905.
He went undercover to expose the unsanitary revolting
conditions in Chicago's meatpacking plants. That
book changed everything. It really did. The public
outcry from that single book was so intense it
stint elated the passage of the Pure Food and
Drug Act in Congress the very next year. Meanwhile.
Ida B. Wells -Barnett used Chicago as her base
to crusade against the lynching of black Americans
in the South. She founded the Alpha Suffrage
Club. the first for black women in Illinois,
and used her organizing power to help elect Oscar
Stanton de Priest as Chicago's first black alderman.
She was a powerhouse. She was. To understand
these progressive reformers, it's like the entire
state was a runaway train of unregulated capitalism.
And these women, Adams, Wells Barnett, are the
ones throwing themselves onto the track to build
the brakes. They realize you can't just patch
the software, meaning the economy, if the motherboard
itself, like sewage, housing, and basic human
rights, is rotting. That is the perfect way to
frame it. They understood that a functioning
society requires a strong foundation. And speaking
of foundations, the state's physical infrastructure
was also failing. By 1905, Illinois had 90 ,000
miles of locally built dirt roads. Wow. dirt
roads. Yes. And during the rainy season, these
roads turned to impassable mud. Farmers were
entirely trapped on their properties for weeks
at a time. You would think paving roads would
be universally popular, but downstate Republican
factions absolutely refused to pay the taxes
required to upgrade them. Every county just wanted
someone else to foot the bill. Right. It required
a strategic political maneuver by a Democratic
governor, Edward Dunn, elected in 1912 to break
the gridlock. Dunn realized he couldn't win by
appealing to the farmer's desire for convenience.
He had to make an economic argument centered
on Chicago. So he pitched it as a statewide economic
engine. If farmers had paved roads, they could
ship their crops cheaply to the city all year
round. They would make more money, which they
would then spend buying mail order consumer goods
for massive Chicago based companies like Sears
Roebuck and Montgomery Ward. He totally bypassed
the local factions and poured state dollars into
a long term paving program. But connecting the
state physically meant colliding cultures could
now reach each other much faster. Right. Which
brings us to the 1920s. Chicago experiences rapid
economic growth fueled by jazz, consumerism,
and changing social norms. But the decade is
also defined by the 18th Amendment, prohibition.
Oh, prohibition. It was sold as a way to reduce
crime and clean up society, but it achieved the
exact opposite. Completely. It fueled a dramatic
rise in bootlegging, speakeasies, and unprecedented
political corruption. The criminal underworld
in Chicago became a highly organized corporate
entity dominated by Al Capone, who operated with
impunity under the exceptionally corrupt Republican
mayor, Big Bill Thompson. And while Chicago was
dealing with gangland warfare, the cultural whiplash
outside the city was just as extreme. This is
the era of the second Ku Klux Klan. Illinois
actually had about 200 ,000 Klan members in the
1920s. The sources paint a picture of the Klan
in Illinois that defies the usual stereotypes.
This wasn't just isolated in the deep south,
it was a cross -section of middle and working
class white Protestants across the Midwest. And
they basically branded themselves as a pro -
Prohibition Morality Police. Yes, they did. They
possessed a strongly nativist, anti -Catholic,
anti -immigrant agenda, pushing a doctrine of
100 % Americanism. Because local law enforcement
was often bribed by bootleggers, the Klan took
it upon themselves to violently enforce prohibition
laws in their communities. Wait, so you have
the KKK acting as Prohibition Morality Police
getting into literal shootouts with bootleggers
in southern Illinois coal towns like Williamson
County. Yes, at gun battles in the streets. That
sounds like the plot of a bizarre historical
action movie, but it really shows how fractured
the American dream was at that moment. When you
trip away the historical romanticism Prohibition
essentially created two rival heavily armed populist
militias One claiming to protect morality and
the other claiming to provide the alcohol that
people wanted and the state was just caught in
the crossfire It was a profoundly fractured society
and that cultural and economic excess slammed
into a brick wall in 1929 with the onset of the
Great Depression The financial devastation forced
a total restructuring of the state's economy
Urban unemployment in Illinois soared to 25 percent.
Can we walk through the mechanics of the bank
collapse? Because the sources highlight the tragedy
of Chicago's ethnic neighborhood banks. And it
really illustrates how the wealth just evaporated.
Let's break it down. In the booming 1920s, major
downtown banks often wouldn't lend to recent
immigrants. So neighborhoods established their
own small ethnic banks. Polish immigrants, Italian
immigrants, they would pool their factory wages
into these local banks, which would then lend
that money back out as mortgages to build homes
in that specific neighborhood. When the Depression
hits, the factories close. Yeah. Incomes drop
to zero. Precisely. people can't pay their mortgages
or their rent. When rent stops, housing prices
plunge, foreclosures skyrocket. The bank suddenly
holds a portfolio of essentially worthless real
estate, and when the depositors rush to withdraw
their life savings, the vault is empty. Oh, man.
Yeah. In the 1920s, Chicago had 199 of these
small neighborhood banks. By 1933, only 33 survived.
The depositors who lost their savings eventually
received about 80 cents on the dollar, but that
was years later. Imagine pouring all your community's
wealth into a local ethnic bank to build your
neighborhood, only to watch it evaporate. An
entire generation's collective wealth, meticulously
saved, just gone. It's devastating. It perfectly
explains why the WWII factory boom wasn't just
an economic recovery. It was an absolute psychological
lifeline that completely redrew the map of Chicago.
Definitely. World War II federal contracts demanded
immense labor. With millions of young men drafted
into the military, factories rapidly hired women,
youths, and the elderly to build tanks and munitions.
Suddenly cash was flowing again. Yes. People
paid off decades of debt and started families,
leading directly into the baby boom and the post
-war suburban explosion. And the state was also
producing historic scientific breakthroughs.
In 1942, under the stadium stands at the University
of Chicago, a team led by Enrico Fermi successfully
activated Chicago Pile -1. A huge milestone.
By carefully layering graphite and uranium, they
achieved the world's first self -sustained nuclear
chain reaction, officially ushering in the atomic
age. And simultaneously, the demographics of
the state were being permanently altered by the
Great Migration. Between 1910 and 1960, hundreds
of thousands of Black Americans fled the crushing
rural poverty and systemic violence of the Jim
Crow South, seeking factory jobs in industrial
cities like Chicago and East St. Louis. The impact
of that migration reshaped American culture.
They faced heavy redlining, segregation, and
horrific racial violence like the East St. Louis
massacre in 1917 and the Chicago race riot of
1919. Awful chapters in the state's history.
Truly. Yet despite being boxed into specific
neighborhoods, black residents built incredibly
vibrant communities, thriving business districts,
and enduring cultural institutions on the south
and west sides of Chicago. Today, Chicago has
roughly 800 ,000 black residents, making up 29
% of the city. That post -war prosperity, scientific
innovation, and demographic shift forged a new
modern identity for Illinois. As the state entered
the late 20th and 21st centuries, its political
landscape became a master class in duality. Duality
is a good word for it. You see deeply progressive
policymaking existing side by side with systemic
jaw -dropping corruption. Let's examine this
modern political era purely looking at the facts
reported in the sources. On one hand, you have
major bipartisan governance milestones. In 1969,
Republican Governor Richard B. Ogilvie manages
to secure the state's first income tax to modernize
government services. Right. Decades later, Republican
Governor George H. Ryan pushes through a $6 .3
billion infrastructure package called Illinois
First to repair crumbling roads and schools.
Governor Ryan also gained international attention
in 2003 regarding the death penalty. Oh, yes.
After several high profile exonerations, he concluded
the system simply could not be administered fairly
or without error. In a sweeping executive action,
he commuted the sentences of all 167 convicts
on Illinois's death row. That was a huge moment.
It was. And later, Democratic Governor Rod Blagojevich
signed landmark progressive legislation, including
a 2005 bill prohibiting discrimination based
on sexual orientation, while also significantly
expanding state health care. access. But we have
to look at the mechanics of how some of this
was funded. Blagojevich balanced his 2005 budget
in part by shorting the state employees pension
fund by one point two billion dollars. Can you
explain how a governor actually does that? Think
of it like a homeowner trying to appear wealthy
by skipping their mortgage payments to buy groceries
and new furniture. OK. The state is legally obligated
to contribute a specific amount to the retirement
funds of teachers and state workers every year.
By purposely contributing less than required,
the governor keeps cash on hand to fund popular
new programs without raising taxes today. But
there's a catch. A big one. That missing pension
contribution accrues interest. The debt compounds
invisibly until the system reaches a breaking
point. And the breaking point arrived was a vengeance.
We have to acknowledge the astounding track record
of the executive branch here. Four modern Illinois
governors, Otto Kerner, Dan Walker, George Ryan
and Rod Blagojevich, all eventually went to federal
prison on various charges involving bribery,
mail fraud or business crimes. The financial
and administrative fallout of those combined
administrations was severe. By the time Governor
Pat Quinn took office in 2009, he inherited a
state staring down a staggering unfunded retiree
pension liability of nearly a hundred billion
dollars. Wow. Yeah. Placing the state on the
verge of total financial meltdown. When you look
at the entirety of this timeline, we're talking
about a state that produces global scientific
breakthroughs and civil rights milestones. Yet
its executive branch has a literal prison pipeline.
It's almost as if the fierce factional survival
of the fittest mentality from the frontier days
never actually left Illinois politics. It just
moved into air conditioned offices. Exactly.
The core human drives, the competition for resources,
the desire to impose one's worldview on a changing
landscape, they remained exactly the same, whether
they were fighting over fur trade routes, railroad
contracts, or modern infrastructure budgets.
As we wrap up today, it becomes remarkably clear
why the sources point to Illinois as the ultimate
mirror for America. It is the American story,
condensed and amplified. From the environmental
collapse of Cahokia and the moral battles over
slavery, to the bloody labor and bootlegging
wars, all the way down to modern pension crises
and imprisoned politicians. And I want to leave
you with a final thought to ponder that builds
on everything we've discussed. Sure. Think about
the sheer scale of human ambition we've explored
today. Right now, across the Mississippi River
from modern St. Louis, the sprawling earthen
terraces of Monk's Mound are still sitting there
in silence. That dirt structure outlasted the
Illiniwek. the French colonial empire, the British,
and the early pioneers. Yeah, it outlasted them
all. So when you look at the towering steel skyscrapers
of modern Chicago and the billions of dollars
in invisible state debt, you have to ask yourself,
centuries from now, Which monuments of our current
civilization will be left standing in the prairie,
and what will future generations assume about
the people who built them? That is a fascinating
lens through which to view our own cities. Thank
you for joining us on this deep dive. Keep looking
closely at the world around you, and remember
to always keep questioning the history beneath
your feet.