Robert D. Sampson is the editor of the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign under Robert W. Johannsen and also did considerable work with James R. Barrett and Walter Arnstien. He is the author of “John L. O’Sullivan and His Times” (2003) and “Ballists, Dead Beats, and Muffins: Inside Early Baseball in Illinois (2023). As an adjunct he taught at Eastern Illinois University, the University of Illinois, and for 20 years at Millikin University, Decatur, Illinois. He has presented at numerous history conferences and published in academic journals on topics ranging from the Pullman Strike to the shifting politics in Civil War Illinois, the use of deadly force by the Illinois militia in the 19th century, and Dorothy Day’s years as a student at the University of Illinois, in addition to articles related to his research on the social history of baseball’s arrival as a statewide phenomenon between 1865 and 1870.