Illinois Territory

Territory of Illinois
Organized incorporated territory of the United States
← 1809–1818 →   →
Capital		Kaskaskia
Government		Organized incorporated territory
Governor
•	1809–1818	Ninian Edwards
Secretary
•	1809–1816	Nathaniel Pope
•	1816–1818	Joseph Phillips
History
•	Established by Congress	March 1, 1809
•	Military Tract of 1812 created in western Illinois	May 6, 1812
•	Granted statehood	December 3, 1818
Population
•	1810	12,282

The Territory of Illinois was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from March 1, 1809, until December 3, 1818, when the southern portion of the territory was admitted to the Union as the State of Illinois. Its capital was the former French village of Kaskakia.

The area was earlier known as "Illinois Country" while under French control, first as part of French Canada and then as part of French Louisiana. The British gained authority over the region east of the Mississippi River with the 1763 Treaty of Paris, marking the end of the French and Indian War.

During the American Revolutionary War, Colonel George Rogers Clark took possession of the region for Virginia, which established the "County of Illinois" to exercise nominal governance over the area. Virginia later (1784) ceded nearly all of its land claims north of the Ohio River to the Federal government of the United States, in order to satisfy objections of land-locked states.

The area became part of the United States' Northwest Territory (from July 13, 1787, until July 4, 1800), and then part of the Indiana Territory as Ohio prepared to become a state. On February 3, 1809, the 10th United States Congress passed legislation establishing the Illinois Territory, after Congress received petitions from residents in the far western areas complaining of the difficulties of participating in territorial affairs in Indiana.

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Wikipedia