Excerpt from The Illinois Country, 1673-1818 What a noble structure it is, the history of this conquest of the prairies! If it could only be written in its fullness, with that accuracy which is the ideal but the despair of the historian, what a book it would make! If one could only explain the transference of the men Of the east to the distant west, if one could only unravel the threads Of the complex forces that have resulted in the growth of this prairie state - if one only could! Partial as every state history must be, I can dream Of a history of Illinois that would be one of the greatest contributions to the knowledge Of humanity ever produced. It would discover the relation Of the soil and climate to the social-psychic condi tions; it would reveal the changes in men wrought by the geological foundations Of the prairies; it would trace the con sequences Of the mixture of races - alterations in the melting pot - upon the psychogenesis of generations; it would follow to the end the working of the inexorable economic forces upon primitive society, upon the farming communities, and upon the complex city life; in a word, it would explain human society as developed on prairie land. Though the territory whereon the drama has been played may be limited, the motives Of the men and their actions have been infinite in their diversity and intensity; the play has run through the whole gamut of human motives from the self abnegation and humanitarianism Of Father Marquette to the selfishness and arrogance of John Dodge; here on the soil of Illinois has been developed one of the most perfect of the human species in Abraham Lincoln, and here also have grown to manhood the most Vicious of men. Ever varying, ever changing - such is the history Of Illinois. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.