Old State Capitol State Historic Site

In the late 1830s Illinois moved its capital from Vandalia to the more central and growing town of Springfield, and this Greek Revival statehouse rose on the town square to house the new capital. A young Abraham Lincoln, then a state legislator, was among those who helped bring the capital to Springfield, and he would spend much of his public life in and around the building over the next two decades.

Here Lincoln served in the legislature, practiced law before the Illinois Supreme Court, which met in the building, and kept a working presence in the political life of the state. The chambers, offices, and library saw the debates and deals of an era when Illinois grew rapidly and the nation edged toward crisis over slavery. Few buildings are so densely woven into a single great American life.

On June 16, 1858, in the hall of the House of Representatives here, Lincoln accepted the Republican nomination for the United States Senate with one of the most famous speeches in American history. A house divided against itself cannot stand, he declared, warning that the nation could not endure permanently half slave and half free. The words drew on scripture and cut to the heart of the sectional crisis.

Lincoln lost that Senate race to Stephen Douglas, but the campaign and the speech vaulted him to national attention and set the stage for his election to the presidency two years later. Standing in the restored chamber where those words were first spoken gives visitors a powerful sense of the moment when a prairie lawyer stepped onto the national stage.

The building's connection to Lincoln reached its solemn close in May 1865. After his assassination in Washington, Lincoln's funeral train carried his body across the country and home to Springfield. He lay in state in the rotunda of this capitol, draped in mourning, as an immense crowd of citizens filed slowly past to pay their respects before he was laid to rest in the city.

By then the statehouse was already outgrown, and Illinois soon built a larger capitol nearby, the one still in use today. The old building served other public uses for decades and was eventually taken down to its foundations and rebuilt in the 1960s as a faithful reconstruction, restored to its Lincoln-era appearance so that visitors could experience the rooms as he knew them.

The Old State Capitol sits at the center of a downtown square ringed by history, and it is best experienced as part of a larger visit to Lincoln's Springfield. Within easy walking distance are the Lincoln Home, the only house he ever owned, the Lincoln-Herndon Law Offices where he practiced, and the modern Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.

Costumed interpreters and living-history programs often bring the chambers to life, and the restored interior lets visitors imagine the debates, court sessions, and speeches that filled the building in Lincoln's day. Between the statehouse and the surrounding sites, downtown Springfield offers one of the richest concentrations of Lincoln history anywhere, a city where his presence is still keenly felt.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.