Both Illinois and
Indiana became, in a preeminent degree, melting-pots in which was
fused by slow and sometimes painful processes an amalgam which
Bryce and other keen observers have pronounced the most American
thing in America.
* In 1820 the population of Indiana was confined almost entirely
to the southern third of the State, although the removal of the
capital, in 1825, from Corydon to Indianapolis was carried out in
the confidence that eventually that point would become the
State's populational as it was its geographical center. When, in
1818, Illinois was admitted to the Union its population was
computed at 40,000. The figure was probably excessive; at all
events, contemporaries testify that so eager were the people for
statehood that many were counted twice, and even emigrants were
counted as they passed through the Territory. But the census of
1880 showed a population of 55,000, settled almost wholly in the
southern third of the State, with narrow tongues of inhabited
land stretching up the river valleys toward the north. Two slave
States flanked the southern end of the commonwealth; almost half
of its area lay south of a westward prolongation of Mason and
Dixon's line.
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