Vandalia: Illinois's Forgotten Capital

When Illinois entered the Union in eighteen eighteen, its capital was Kaskaskia, a town constantly threatened by Mississippi River flooding. Within two years the state had moved its government ninety miles northeast to a freshly cleared spot on the Kaskaskia River and named it Vandalia.

For nineteen years Vandalia was the capital of Illinois. The General Assembly met in a building so poorly constructed it had to be rebuilt twice. It was here, in the statehouse completed in eighteen thirty-six, that a young Abraham Lincoln served in the legislature and received his license to practice law. It was also here, in eighteen thirty-seven, that Lincoln first spoke publicly against slavery.

Lincoln and a group of lawmakers known as the Long Nine, all of them unusually tall, successfully lobbied to move the capital north to Springfield in eighteen thirty-nine. The old statehouse in Vandalia still stands, the oldest capitol building in Illinois. The National Road, America's first federally funded highway, ran right through the center of town, and today U.S. Route Forty follows the same path.