Before there were highways and railroads, river travel dominated trade and transportation.
A look at obituaries of the past from the presidential library's huge newspaper collection
The Land of Lincoln was also a land of bitter divisions during the Civil War.
For an area as important as the Midwest, it is still vaguely defined.
Illinois took a major step toward eventual statehood when it was split off from Indiana Territory
Eugene Debs helped organize one of the earliest nationwide labor strikes and wound up in prison.
The legacy of an event that is over a century old can still be felt in the city of Chicago today.
A rash decision by a Union general led to a sticky situation for Abraham Lincoln
Chicago Union Stock Yards opened December 25, 1865. By the turn of the century they provided 25,000 jobs in the meatpacking industry and helped make Chicago the center of the Midwestern economy.
A young machine-gunner from Illinois faces frigid temperatures and overwhelming odds during a key battle in the Korean War.