Illinois Joins the Union as the 21st State

On December 3, 1818, Illinois became the twenty-first state of the Union, completing a swift march from territory to statehood. President James Monroe had set the process in motion that April by signing the Enabling Act, which authorized the people of the Illinois Territory to draft a constitution and form a government.

Delegates gathered in the territorial capital of Kaskaskia in August 1818, approving the new state constitution on August 26. The document was unusually liberal for its era, extending the vote to all white males who had lived in the state for six months, without property or citizenship requirements, while sharply limiting the governor’s powers.

A frontier territory of roughly 35,000 settlers had become a sovereign American state in a matter of months.

Shadrach Bond was elected the first governor, and the young state would soon shift its capital from Kaskaskia toward the growing interior, eventually settling at Springfield.