It conducts business meetings, literary productions, and other activities in Beecher Hall, the oldest college building in Illinois.

"On Thursday evening, September 25, 1845, seven students from Illinois College gathered in a small room on the third floor of the old dormitory and made a momentous and historic decision.

In order to unite a group of men whose ideas and principles were similar enough as to desire a common bond of fellowship, a new society was to be organized.

Five days later the Immortal Seven drew up and adopted the constitution that proved to be the birth certificate of Phi Alpha Literary Society.

[25] William Herndon, Lincoln's law partner and biographer, claimed the lecture was written to raise money after an expensive failed campaign for United States Senate against Stephen A. Douglas in 1858.

[27] Despite the apparently high entertainment value of Lincoln's lecture, attendance was low, and Phi Alpha did not raise much money selling tickets.

Jayne chronicled what happened next in an address delivered to the Grand Army Hall and Memorial Association on February 12, 1900:"Mr. Lincoln, with a kind smile, said to the president of the society, 'I have not made much money for you to-night.'

According to former president of the college Charles Rammelkamp, "the students who in later years got into trouble with the faculty on issues relating to the slavery question were usually members of Phi Alpha".