Illinois

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Illinois ( IL-ih-NOY) is a state in the Midwestern United States. It borders on Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Wabash and Ohio rivers to its south, and the Mississippi River generally to its west. Of the fifty U.S. states, Illinois has the fifth-largest gross domestic product (GDP), the sixth-largest population, and the 25th-most land area. Its capital city is Springfield in the center of the state, and the state's largest city is Chicago, located in northeastern Illinois. Present-day Illinois was inhabited by Indigenous cultures for thousands of years. The French were the first Europeans to arrive, settling near the Mississippi and Illinois rivers in the 17th-century Illinois Country, as part of their sprawling colony of New France. A century later, the revolutionary war Illinois campaign prefigured American involvement in the region. Following U.S. independence in 1783, which made the Mississippi River the national boundary, American settlers began arriving from Kentucky via the...

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