Take a moment to think about what Wisconsin would be like today if we had Chicago as a part of our state. Outside of the whole Packers vs. Bears conundrum that would’ve presented, there’s a lot of things that almost came to be in the early 19th century.
As the Illinois territory was fighting for statehood, the original state border would’ve been along the southern tip of Lake Michigan. This could’ve made Wisconsin a national powerhouse with twin big cities, and Peoria would’ve most likely been the capitol of Illinois.
One man managed to boost that border 50 miles north, and the rest is history — not just changing the makeup of Illinois but our nation. Phil Luciano wrote all about it in an article for the Peoria Journal Star.
Luciano explains how a man named Nathaniel Pope negotiated Chicago to be included within the Illinois border. He says, that at that time, every state that enslaved people that was created in the U.S had to have a non-enslaved counterpart.
In other words, when Mississippi was created as a state, Illinois was the next state to be admitted to the Union, which placed Pope at the right place at the right time for negotiating in the name of the state. "It was like, 'OK, we need a free state.' So there's Illinois. Then there's Nathaniel Pope and he knows that the federal government wants Illinois bad. Still, he's also thinking, 'Hmm, how can I make this deal a little bit better,'" says Luciano.
Another reason why Chicago wasn't included in Wisconsin is because there was a rush to split up the land into states. "A few things were going on. One was that that chunk of land, it was federal land, it had been highly susceptible to Indian attacks. It was also thought that maybe the British might come back and try to do another war of 1812," says Luciano.
Wisconsin was angry at the decision, and the state protested it for decades, he says. Luciano speculates that if Pope wasn't successful, Wisconsin would have definitely been bigger and much more of a powerhouse state with twin big cities.
"More than likely, Peoria, where I'm talking from would have been the big city, so to speak. It could have become a big city, kind of like Des Moines is the big city of Iowa, but it would have been no Chicago. So Illinois would have been a much less influential state," says Luciano.
