Notes to Chapter 7 / The Potential for Radical Change: The Turbulent 1850s, the Civil War, and Resilient Racism

1. Finkelman, “The Historical Context of the Fourteenth Amendment,” 398.

2. Finkelman, “Race, Slavery, and the Law in Antebellum Ohio,” 774–75.

3. Samuel Ringgold Ward, “Speech by Samuel Ringgold Ward,” in Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, vol. 4, 50.

4. John Mercer Langston to Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass’ Paper, April 20, 1855 in Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, vol. 4, 7, 70, 281. See also Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 84, 85; Johnson, The Liberty Party, 1840–1848, 255.

5. Jeffrey, The Great Silent Army of Abolitionism, 45, 84; Larry Gara, “Slavery and the Slave Power: A Crucial Distinction,” Civil War History 15 (1969): 6, 9.

6. Augustus C. French, Message of the Governor of the State of Illinois, to the Seventeenth General Assembly, Convened January 6, 1851 (Springfield: Lanphier & Walker, 1851).

7. Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 23, 38, 59; Will Co. Illinois Anti-Slavery Society, Slave Code, 10–11.

8. Glasman, “Zebina Eastman,” 54–55.

9. “All About the Black Laws,” Galesburg Free Democrat, January 12, 1854.

10. Gliozzo, “John Jones,” 181, 183, 118.

11. Madison, “Race, Law,” 46.

12. Marius Robinson, Anti-Slavery Bugle, April 4, 1857.

13. Litwack, North of Slavery, 61–63, 265.

14. Finkelman, “Slavery, the ‘More Perfect Union,’ and the Prairie State,” 256, 266.

15. Ibid., 256, 268.

16. Anti-Slavery Bugle, April 25, 1857; May 16, 1857; Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 242, 245.

17. Gliozzo, “John Jones,” 182.

18. Mabee, Black Freedom; Steven Hahn, A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South, from Slavery to the Great Migration (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003); Horton and Horton, In Hope of Liberty; Howard Holman Bell, “Expressions of Negro Militancy in the North, 1840–1860,” Journal of Negro History 45, no. 1 (1960).

19. Curry, The Free Black in Urban America, 1800–1850, 230.

20. Junger, “‘God and Man Helped Those Who Helped Themselves,’” 118.

21. Morris, Free Men All, 164–65.

22. Catherine M. Rokicky, James Monroe: Oberlin’s Christian Statesman and Reformer, 1821–1898 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2002), 41–42; Ellsworth, “Oberlin and the Anti-Slavery Movement up to the Civil War,” 136; L. D. Griswold to James Monroe, 2 February 1857, Monroe Papers.

23. Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 245.

24. Kooker, “The Anti-Slavery Movement in Michigan,” 55–57. The efforts in the Old Northwest to use personal liberty laws to oppose fugitive slave recovery measures were in line with several northeastern states in the mid-1850s, including Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Maine. In that same time period New York voted against such a law, while Pennsylvania took no such action. Morris, Free Men All, 168. The lack of consensus on this issue prevalent in the Old Northwest was also true of other northern states.

25. Gliozzo, “John Jones,” 183; Dorothy Sterling, We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the 19th Century, (New York: W.W. Norton, 1984), 147–49.

26. Gliozzo, “John Jones,” 183.

27. Proceedings of the First Convention of the Colored Citizens of the State of Illinois Convened at the City of Chicago, October 6th, 7th, and 8th, 1853, in Proceedings of the Black State Conventions, 1840–1865, ed. Philip Sheldon Foner and George E. Walker, vol. 2 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986), 59, 61.

28. Ibid., 62.

29. Proceedings of the State Convention of the Colored Men of the State of Ohio, Held in the City of Columbus, January 21st, 22d, and 23d, 1857, in Proceedings of the Black State Conventions, vol. 1, 318.

30. Yee, Black Women Abolitionists, 144–45; Salerno, Sister Societies, 105–6.

31. Report of the Proceedings of the Colored National Convention, Held at Cleveland, Ohio, 1848, 12, 17.

32. Minutes of the State Convention, of the Colored Citizens of Ohio, 1850, 250; Minutes of the State Convention of the Colored Citizens of Ohio, Convened at Columbus, Jan. 15th, 16th, 17th, and 18th, 1851, in Proceedings of the Black State Conventions, vol. 1, 266. See also Proceedings of the State Convention of Colored Men, Held in the City of Columbus, Ohio, Jan. 16th, 17th, and 18th, 1856, in Ibid., 307.

33. Proceedings of the National Convention of Colored Men, Held in the City of Syracuse, N.Y., October 4, 5, 6, and 7, 1864; with the Bill of Wrongs and Rights, and the Address to the American People (Boston: J. S. Rock and Geo. L. Ruffin, 1864), 7, 10.

34. Proceedings of a Convention of the Colored Men of Ohio. Held in the City of Cincinnati, on the 23rd, 24th, 25th, and 26th Days of November, 1858, in Proceedings of the Black State Conventions, vol. 1, 334, 337.

35. Proceedings of the National Convention of Colored Men, 1864, 15, 25.

36. Proceedings of the Colored Men’s Convention of the State of Michigan, Held in the City of Detroit, Tuesday and Wednesday, Sept 12th and 13th, ‘65, with Accompanying Documents. Also, the Constitution of the Equal Rights League of the State of Michigan, in Proceedings of the Black State Conventions, vol. 1, 200.

37. Rosemarie Zagarri, Revolutionary Backlash: Women and Politics in the Early American Republic, Early American Studies (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 185.

38. Quist, Restless Visionaries, 406.

39. Finkenbine, “A Beacon of Liberty on the Great Lakes,” 93.

40. Ohio Constitution of 1851, Article 5, in Middleton, The Black Laws in the Old Northwest, 12; Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, vol. 4, 224. These sales did occur, as late as 1863 when officials at Carthage sold six African Americans for living illegally in the state. Arthur Charles Cole, The Centennial History of Illinois: The Era of the Civil War, 1848–1870, vol. 3 (Springfield: Illinois Centennial Commission, 1919), 335.

41. Elijah Coffin, Charles Fisher Coffin, and Mary Coffin Johnson, The Life of Elijah Coffin; with a Reminiscence, by His Son Charles F. Coffin. Edited by His Daughter, Mary C. Johnson. Printed for His Family Only (Cincinnati?: E. Morgan & Sons, 1863), 78, 80.

42. Gliozzo, “John Jones,” 188, 185.

43. Finkelman, “Race, Slavery, and the Law in Antebellum Ohio,” 751, 764.

44. Katzman, Before the Ghetto, 35–36.

45. “First of August in Columbus, Ohio.” Frederick Douglass’ Paper, August 11, 1854; Frederick Douglass, Oration, Delivered in Corinthian Hall, Rochester, by Frederick Douglass, July 5th, 1852 (Rochester: Lee, Mann & Co., 1852).

46. Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, vol. 4, 292.

47. Proceedings of the Convention, of the Colored Freemen of Ohio, Held in Cincinnati, January 14, 15, 16, 17 and 19, 1852, in Proceedings of the Black State Conventions, vol. 1, 277.

48. Memorial of John Mercer Langston for Colored People of Ohio to General Assembly of the State of Ohio, June, 1854, in Proceedings of the Black State Conventions, vol. 1, 297.

49. Proceedings of the State Convention of Colored Men, 1856, 310–12, 314.

50. Madison, “Race, Law,” 45.

51. Pascoe, What Comes Naturally, 51.

52. Gliozzo, “John Jones,” 185; Proceedings of the State Convention of Colored Citizens of the State of Illinois, Held in the City of Alton November 13th, 14th, and 15th, 1856, in Proceedings of the Black State Conventions, vol. 2, 71–72.

53. Proceedings of a Convention of the Colored Men of Ohio, 1858, 336, 339; Proceedings of the State Convention of the Colored Men of the State of Ohio, 1857, 320, 326.

54. Madison, “Race, Law,” 43; Thornbrough, The Negro in Indiana, 132–33; Indiana General Assembly, Journal of the Indiana State Senate, During the Called Session of the General Assembly, Commencing Saturday, November 20, 1858 (Indianapolis: Joseph J. Bingham, 1858), 12–13.

55. Gliozzo, “John Jones,” 184; Katzman, Before the Ghetto, 40; Finkenbine, “A Beacon of Liberty on the Great Lakes,” 100.

56. William J. Whipper to Benjamin S. Jones, 15 April 1859, in Anti-Slavery Bugle, April 23, 1859, in Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, vol. 5, 15; William F. Cheek and Aimee Lee Cheek, John Mercer Langston and the Fight for Black Freedom, 1829–65, Blacks in the New World (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 366. [Italics in original.]

57. Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, vol. 5, 17.

58. Ibid., 15, 18.

59. Offenses against Lives: Kidnapping and Selling as Slaves, §17–18, Approved July 15, 1838, [Michigan] Revised Statutes, in Middleton, The Black Laws in the Old Northwest, 356–57.

60. Morris, Free Men All, 187–88.

61. Ibid., 216; Finkelman, “Race, Slavery, and the Law in Antebellum Ohio,” 769, 773.

62. Dillon, The Abolitionists, 237, 240.

63. “The Ohio Republican Platform,” The McKean Citizen, June 25, 1859.

64. Pascoe, What Comes Naturally, 53.

65. Hermann R. Muelder, “Congregationalists and the Civil War,” in A History of Illinois Congregational and Christian Churches, 156.

66. Dillon, The Abolitionists, 258–59.

67. H. Ford Douglas, Speech Delivered at the Town Hall, Salem, Ohio, 23 September 1860, in Anti-Slavery Bugle, October 6, 1860, in Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, vol. 5, 88–91; Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, vol. 4, 78–79.

68. Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (New York: Perennial Classics, 2002), 26–27; Rhodes, Mary Ann Shadd Cary, 156.

69. Frederick M. Gittes, “Paper Promises: Race and Ohio Law after 1860,” in The History of Ohio Law, 783.

70. V. Jacque Voegeli, Free but Not Equal: The Midwest and the Negro During the Civil War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), 1; McPherson, The Struggle for Equality, 31.

71. Katzman, Before the Ghetto, 44.

72. McPherson, The Struggle for Equality, 225.

73. Madison, “Race, Law,” 48; Katzman, Before the Ghetto, 44; Voegeli, Free but Not Equal, 172, 17–18, 170; Rhodes, Mary Ann Shadd Cary, 156.

74. Finkelman, “Race, Slavery, and the Law in Antebellum Ohio,” 774–75.

75. Voegeli, Free but Not Equal, 17–18.

76. Gittes, “Paper Promises: Race and Ohio Law after 1860,” 782.

77. Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 247, 251.

78. Voegeli, Free but Not Equal, 88–89.

79. Katzman, Before the Ghetto, 44; Thomas Buckner et. al., The Late Detriot Riot (Detroit: 1863).

80. Gliozzo, “John Jones,” 185; Hermann R. Muelder, A Hero Home from the War: Among the Black Citizens of Galesburg, Illinois, 1860–1880 (Galesburg: Knox College Library, 1987), 8.

81. Eric Foner, A Short History of Reconstruction, 1863–1877 (New York: Harper & Row, 1990), 8, 9, 10–11, 13, 14.

82. Roberta Sue Alexander, “A Place of Recourse: The Changing Role of the Federal District Court for the Southern District of Ohio,” in The History of Ohio Law, 279.

83. Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, vol. 5, 171; Mitchell, Anti-Slavery Politics in Antebellum and Civil War America, 207, 210.

84. Madison, “Race, Law,” 48; Voegeli, Free but Not Equal: 17–18, 170; Rhodes, Mary Ann Shadd Cary, 156.

85. Foner, Reconstruction, 241; Foner, A Short History of Reconstruction, 1863–1877, 8, 9, 10–11, 13, 14.

86. Voegeli, Free but Not Equal, 25, 67.

87. Foner, A Short History of Reconstruction, 1863–1877, 135, 204.

88. Kusmer, A Ghetto Takes Shape, 9.

89. Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, vol. 5, 171; Mitchell, Anti-Slavery Politics in Antebellum and Civil War America, 207, 210.

90. Voegeli, Free but Not Equal, 161.

91. Ira Berlin, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland, The Black Military Experience, vol. 2, Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861–1867 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 6.

92. J. L. Stevens to Hon. Mr. Cameron, 10 August 1861 in Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, The Black Military Experience, 78-79; Finkenbine, “A Beacon of Liberty on the Great Lakes,” 98; G. P. Miller to Simon Cameron, 30 October 1861, in Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, The Black Military Experience, 79; W. T. Boyd and J. T. Alston to Hon. Simon Cameron, 15 November 1861, in Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, The Black Military Experience, 80; Wm. A. Jones to Hon S. Cameron, 27 November 1861, in Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, The Black Military Experience, 80–81.

93. Governor Richard Yates to President Lincoln, 11 July 1862, in Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, The Black Military Experience, 84–85. See also Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, The Black Military Experience, 9.

94. May 22 General Order No. 143, 1863, Orders and Circulars, 1797–1910, Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, 1780s–1917, Record Group 94 (National Archives, Washington, DC).

95. Finkenbine, “A Beacon of Liberty on the Great Lakes,” 98; Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, The Black Military Experience, 75–76.

96. Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, vol. 5, 286.

97. Ibid., 11, 312.

98. Foner, Reconstruction, 286.

99. Gliozzo, “John Jones,” 184, 186, 187; John Jones, The Black Laws of Illinois, and a Few Reasons Why They Should Be Repealed (Chicago: Tribune Book and Job Office, 1864).

100. Proceedings of a Convention of the Colored Men of Ohio, Held in Xenia, on the 10th, 11th, and 12th Days of January, 1865; with the Constitution of the Ohio Equal Rights League, in Proceedings of the Black State Conventions, vol. 1, 342, 350.

101. David A. Gerber, Black Ohio and the Color Line, 1860–1915, Blacks in the New World (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976), 35.

102. Proceedings of the First Annual Meeting of the National Equal Rights League, Held in Cleveland, Ohio, October 19, 20, and 21, 1865, in Proceedings of the Black National and State Conventions, vol. 1, 44, 52, 47, 48, 50, 55.

103. Stewart, Abolitionist Politics and the Coming of the Civil War, 159.

104. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness, 174–75.

105. Foner, A Short History of Reconstruction, 1863–1877, 12; David Montgomery, Beyond Equality: Labor and the Radical Republicans, 1862–1872 (New York: Knopf, 1967), 83.

106. Illinois General Assembly, An Act to Repeal Section Sixteen of the Revised Statutes, Entitled “An Act to Prevent the Immigration of Free Negroes into This State,” Commonly Known as The “Black Laws” (February 7, 1865).

107. Gliozzo, “John Jones,” 187, 188.

108. Richard Yates, “Message of His Excellency, Richard Yates, Governor of Illinois, to the General Assembly. January 2, 1865,” Chicago Tribune, January 5, 1865.

109. Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 254; Davis, Black Americans in Cleveland, 85–86; Montgomery, Beyond Equality, 83.

110. Foner, Reconstruction, 31; Gittes, “Paper Promises: Race and Ohio Law after 1860,” 784, 785.

111. Gliozzo, “John Jones,” 188; Proceedings of the Illinois State Convention of Colored Men, 1866, 257, 246, 249, 260.

112. State Convention of the Colored People of Indiana, Indianapolis, October 24, 1865, in Proceedings of the Black National and State Conventions, vol. 1, 186; Indiana General Assembly, An Act to Amend “An Act in Relation to Witnesses” and to Repeal Section 238 of Article 13, of an Act Entitled an Act to Revise, Simplify, and Abridge the Rules in Cases of the Courts of This State (December 21, 1865).

113. Middleton, The Black Laws in the Old Northwest, 374, 375.

114. Paul Finkelman, “The Promise of Equality and the Limits of Law: From the Civil War to World War II,” in The History of Michigan Law, 192, 193, 194.

115. Montgomery, Beyond Equality, 83.

116. Finkelman, “The Promise of Equality,” 199; Finkenbine, “A Beacon of Liberty on the Great Lakes,” 102.

117. Litwack, North of Slavery, 278–79; Schwalm, Emancipation’s Diaspora, 177.

118. Gittes, “Paper Promises: Race and Ohio Law after 1860,” 787, 788.

119. Richard L. Aynes, “Ohio and the Drafting and Ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment,” in The History of Ohio Law, 394–95; United States and George P. Sanger, The Statutes at Large, Treaties, and Proclamations of the United States of America from December 1867, to March 1869, vol. 15 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1869), 710–11.

120. Address of the Colored Men’s Border State Convention to the People of the United States, Baltimore, August 5–6, 1868, in Proceedings of the Black National and State Conventions, vol. 1, 323.

121. These states were Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Hugh Davis, We Will Be Satisfied with Nothing Less: The African American Struggle for Equal Rights in the North During Reconstruction (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011), 40.

122. Ibid., 9.

123. By 1870, Kentucky, Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, Missouri, and Tennessee led the way into “Redemption,” as their governments became Democrat dominated. Ibid., 74–75, 94–95, 117; Foner, Reconstruction, 421–22. While the situation of Reconstruction-era African American rights in the North was generally bleak, for more on activists’ victories in the 1870s and 1880s, see Davis, We Will Be Satisfied, 142–48.

124. Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 153; Benedict, “Civil Liberty in Ohio,” 690.

125. Gittes, “Paper Promises: Race and Ohio Law after 1860,” 790, 789.

126. Ibid., 791; Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 254; Alexander, “A Place of Recourse,” 280.

127. Benedict, “Civil Liberty in Ohio,” 686–87.

128. Gliozzo, “John Jones,” 188; Charles Branham, “Black Chicago: Accommodationist Politics before the Great Migration,” in The Ethnic Frontier: Essays in the History of Group Survival in Chicago and the Midwest, ed. Melvin G. Holli and Peter d’Alroy Jones (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1977), 188, 257; Muelder, A Hero Home from the War, 12, 15.

129. Madison, “Race, Law,” 43, 47, 48–49.

130. Finkelman, “The Promise of Equality,” 198, 199; Finkenbine, “A Beacon of Liberty on the Great Lakes,” 102.

131. Katzman, Before the Ghetto, 37–38; McPherson, The Struggle for Equality, 420.

132. Michael Grossberg and Amy Elson, “Family Law in Indiana: A Domestic Relations Crossroads,” in The History of Indiana Law, 68, 67.

133. Middleton, The Black Laws in the Old Northwest, 265.

134. Finkelman, “The Promise of Equality,” 198; Finkenbine, “A Beacon of Liberty on the Great Lakes,” 102.

135. Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 247, 251.

136. Although the state omitted the provisions forbidding interracial marriage from the 1874 volume of the Illinois state legal code, this may have been due to an oversight, and thus sent no definitive message about Illinoisans’ views on these laws. It does not represent a repeal, as Pascoe calls it. No records exist that indicate that this was the product of deliberate action, so it is impossible to know whether it was a conscious or overt act. Pascoe, What Comes Naturally, 40, 333; David H. Fowler, Northern Attitudes toward Interracial Marriage: Legislation and Public Opinion in the Middle Atlantic and States of the Old Northwest, 1780–1930 (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1987), 251–52.

137. Muelder, A Hero Home from the War, 12.

138. Middleton, The Black Laws in the Old Northwest, 161; Voegeli, Free but Not Equal, 172, 182.

139. Gittes, “Paper Promises: Race and Ohio Law after 1860,” 797–98.

140. Finkenbine, “A Beacon of Liberty on the Great Lakes,” 102; Rhodes, Mary Ann Shadd Cary, 165, 167; Katzman, Before the Ghetto, 24, 33, 35–36, 37.