ADT Home Security Monitoring Ottawa, Illinois

Ottawa is a city in and the county seat of LaSalle County, Illinois, United States. It is located at the confluence of the navigable Fox River and Illinois River, the latter innate a conduit for river barges and connects Lake Michigan at Chicago, to the Mississippi River, and North America’s 25,000 mile river system. The population estimate was 18,742, as of 2020. It is the principal city of the Ottawa, IL Micropolitan Statistical Area.

Ottawa occupies a place upon the Illinois River that has long been one subside of a portage trail surrounded by the Mississippi River and Lake Michigan. Here the river was reliably deep plenty for canoes. The North Portage Trail related the site exceeding land and water to the Chicago River.

Ottawa was the site of the first of the Lincoln–Douglas debates on August 21, 1858. During the Ottawa debate, Stephen A. Douglas, leader of the Democratic Party, openly accused Abraham Lincoln of forming a everyday bipartisan action of Congressmen to bring virtually the abolition of slavery.

The John Hossack House was a “station” on the Underground Railroad, and Ottawa was a major stop because of its rail, road, and river transportation. Citizens in the city were supple within the abolitionist movement. Ottawa was the site of a famous 1859 extrication of a runaway slave named Jim Gray from a courthouse by prominent civic leaders of the time. Three of the civic leaders, John Hossack, Dr. Joseph Stout and James Stout, later stood events in Chicago for violating the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.