Back | About this image

Land Ho! Broadside
Click on the image to see a bigger version.

This broadside seeks to recruit New York State farmers to settle together in northern Illinois. Settlers from western New York and northern Ohio, as well as the New England states, largely populated this portion of Illinois after the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825. Settlers had first come to Illinois' southern reaches by way of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. But by 1841 northern Illinois' rich lands, combined with the Black Hawk War's removal of the remaining Native Americans, lured settlers westward. The combination of southern-born (or at least southern-leaning) settlers in the state's southern tier and Yankee migrants in the north made Illinois an unstable political entity in this period and a bellwether of national political trends.