Notes to chapter 2 / Scrubbing at the “Bloody Stain of Oppression”: A Human Rights Movement against Unjust Laws, 1830–1849
1. Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, vol. 3, 424. This is not the same Benjamin Stanton who resided for a long period in Salem, Ohio, and was uncle of Edwin Masters Stanton. William Henry Stanton, Our Ancestors the Stantons (Philadelphia: Innes and Sons, 1922), 4, 125; Nuermberger, The Free Produce Movement, 104; Barbara A. Terzian, “Ohio’s Constitutional Conventions and Constitutions,” in The History of Ohio Law, 48.
2. Free Labor Advocate, February 4, 1843.
3. Williams v. School District (1834); Polly Gray v. Ohio, (1831), mentioned in Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of Ohio, Printed by Authority of the General Assembly, vol. 11 (Cincinnati: Robert Clarke and Company, 1873), 376, 377, 375, 378, 379.
4. Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of Ohio, 376, 381, 382, 384–85, 386. During his brief but colorful tenure on the Ohio Supreme Court, Reed (also spelled Read) made his views on African American rights clear: they should be limited, according to the laws of Ohio. He saw the solution to slavery as colonization, not abolition, and opposed efforts to remove the institution or limit its effects via broad interpretations of the law. Charles Theodore Greve, Centennial History of Cincinnati and Representative Citizens (Chicago: Biographical Publishing Company, 1904), 750, 753.
5. Free Labor Advocate, June 30, 1848.
6. Paul Finkelman, “Race, Slavery, and the Law in Antebellum Ohio,” in The History of Ohio Law, 753.
7. Ibid., 751, 774–75. Finkelman claims that in Ohio, the trajectory of rights was in a positive direction, a perspective that focuses only on Republican politicians (who were actually rather moderate on racial issues) and omits such evidence of ongoing problems as the fact that the state imposed its first interracial marriage ban in 1861. For the 1861 law, see Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 247, 251.
8. Sandra Anne Baumgartner, “The Legal Status of the Negro in Illinois as Determined by State Legislation and State Supreme Court Decisions, 1818–1853” (master’s thesis, Southern Illinois University, 1966), 21–22, 37.
9. United States Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1870, Part 1, Bicentennial ed. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1975).
10. National Anti-Slavery Standard, November 11, 1841.
11. Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 9, 15, 17; Paul Finkelman, “Slavery and the Northwest Ordinance: A Study in Ambiguity,” Journal of the Early Republic 6, no. 4 (1986): 357, 369.
12. National Anti-Slavery Standard, November 11, 1841; Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 7; Finkelman, “Slavery and the Northwest Ordinance,” 344, 357.
13. Clayton E. Cramer, Black Demographic Data, 1790–1860: A Sourcebook. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997), 110–13.
14. Tho. W. Taylor to Pascal P. Enos, 26 April 1830, Enos Family Papers, Manuscript Collection, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, Springfield, Illinois; Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 59, 73; Berwanger, The Frontier against Slavery, 7.
15. Andrew R. L. Cayton, “Law and Authority in the Northwest Territory,” in The History of Ohio Law, 27.
16. Terzian, “Ohio’s Constitutional Conventions and Constitutions,” 48.
17. See Appendix.
18. Middleton, The Black Laws in the Old Northwest, 160; James H. Madison, “Race, Law, and the Burdens of Indiana History,” in The History of Indiana Law, ed. David J. Bodenhamer and Randall T. Shepard (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2006), 38, 41, 37, 39.
19. See Appendix; Madison, “Race, Law,” 42.
20. Diane Mutti Burke, On Slavery’s Border: Missouri’s Small-Slaveholding Households, 1815–1865, Early American Places (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2010), 20.
21. Middleton, The Black Laws in the Old Northwest, 167, 259, 271, 272.
22. History of Madison County, Illinois. Illustrated. With Biographical Sketches of Many Prominent Men and Pioneers (Edwardsville, IL: W. R. Brink and Co, 1882), 33–34.
23. John D. Barnhart, “The Southern Influence in the Formation of Illinois,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 32 (1939): 373; Baumgartner, “The Legal Status of the Negro in Illinois as Determined by State Legislation and State Supreme Court Decisions, 1818–1853,” 16.
24. See Appendix; Bureau of the Census 1975; Harris, The History of Negro Servitude in Illinois, 105, 53.
25. Middleton, The Black Laws in the Old Northwest, 375; David G. Chardavoyne, “The Northwest Ordinance and Michigan’s Territorial Heritage,” in The History of Michigan Law, 20, 21.
26. Middleton, The Black Laws in the Old Northwest, 273, 349, 347; Finkenbine, “A Beacon of Liberty on the Great Lakes,” 92.
27. Rowland Berthoff, “Conventional Mentality: Free Blacks, Women, and Business Corporations as Unequal Persons, 1820–1870,” Journal of American History 76, no. 3 (1989): 754.
28. Ibid., 756, 757, 753, 755, 759.
29. Ibid., 783, 761, 758–60.
30. This amorphous definition was in line with the situation in the antebellum South, where the boundaries of race as a socially constructed category ranged widely. Jane Elizabeth Dailey, Before Jim Crow: The Politics of Race in Postemancipation Virginia, Gender and American Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 132, 134. Racial “science” at the time was no more definitive. Gossett, Race: The History of an Idea in America.
31. An Act to Prohibit the Amalgamation of Whites and Blacks, Approved February 24, 1840, General Laws of Indiana in Middleton, The Black Laws in the Old Northwest, 207; Madison, “Race, Law,” 43.
32. C. Peter Ripley, ed. The Black Abolitionist Papers: The United States, 1847–1858, vol. 4 (University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 224.
33. Free Labor Advocate, February 4, 1843; Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 131, 155.
34. Finkenbine, “A Beacon of Liberty on the Great Lakes,” 94.
35. Middleton, The Black Laws in the Old Northwest, 375, 374.
36. Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 59, 85.
37. Leon F. Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790–1860 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), 66.
38. Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 66, 43; Litwack, North of Slavery, 66; Leonard P. Curry, The Free Black in Urban America, 1800–1850: The Shadow of the Dream (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 90.
39. Baumgartner, “The Legal Status of the Negro in Illinois,” 21–22, 37; Berwanger, The Frontier against Slavery, 1, 4, 32.
40. Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 3, 39, 49.
41. Finkelman, “Race, Slavery, and the Law in Antebellum Ohio,” 757.
42. An Act to Prevent the Migration of Free Negroes and Mulattoes into This Territory and for Other Purposes, §1–5, Approved December 8, 1813, Laws of Illinois, in Middleton, The Black Laws in the Old Northwest, 291; Negroes and Mullatoes, §5, Approved February 19, 1841, Laws of Illinois, in Middleton, The Black Laws in the Old Northwest, 295; Will Co. Illinois Anti-Slavery Society, Slave Code of the State of Illinois, Being an Abstract of Those Laws Now in Force in This State, Which Affect the Rights of Colored People, as Such, Both Bond and Free. With Notes (Juliet: Published by the Will Co. Anti-Slavery Society, 1840), 10–11.
43. Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 59; Litwack, North of Slavery, 70.
44. Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 5; Emma Lou Thornbrough, The Negro in Indiana: A Study of a Minority, vol. 37, Indiana Historical Collections (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Bureau, 1957), 58, 59.
45. Thornbrough, The Negro in Indiana, 68; Berwanger, The Frontier against Slavery, 45.
46. Rebecca S. Shoemaker, “The Indiana Bill of Rights: Two Hundred Years of Civil Liberties History,” in The History of Indiana Law, 196.
47. Madison, “Race, Law,” 45.
48. Finkenbine, “A Beacon of Liberty on the Great Lakes,” 86, 92, 100; Kooker, “The Anti-Slavery Movement in Michigan,” 59.
49. United States Bureau of the Census, Population Schedule of the Ninth Census of the United States, 1870 (Washington, DC: Department of Commerce Bureau of the Census); Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 59; Thornbrough, The Negro in Indiana, 44; Cramer, Black Demographic Data, 74; Xenia E. Cord, “Black Rural Settlements in Indiana before 1860,” in Indiana’s African-American Heritage: Essays from Black History News & Notes, ed. Wilma L. Gibbs (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1993), 99, 100, 102; Earline Ray Ferguson, “In Pursuit of Full Enjoyment of Liberty and Happiness: Blacks in Antebellum Indianapolis, 1820–1860,” in Indiana’s African-American Heritage, 132. For complete population statistics across the region see Appendix.
50. Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 60, 70; Finkelman, “Race, Slavery, and the Law in Antebellum Ohio,” 774.
51. Laura B. Gans, “Hudson Finding Aid: Hudson Family Papers, 1807–1963,” http://asteria.fivecolleges.edu/findaids/sophiasmith/mnsss341_bioghist.html.
52. E. D. Hudson, “From Delaware, Ohio,” National Anti-Slavery Standard, February 17, 1842.
53. National Anti-Slavery Standard, February 16, 1843.
54. Finkenbine, “A Beacon of Liberty on the Great Lakes,” 86, 92, 100; Kooker, “The Anti-Slavery Movement in Michigan,” 59.
55. Litwack, North of Slavery, 92; Carol Pirtle, Escape Betwixt Two Suns: A True Tale of the Underground Railroad in Illinois (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000), 10; Berwanger, The Frontier against Slavery, 36; Baumgartner, “The Legal Status of the Negro in Illinois,” 32; H. L. Ellsworth, Illinois in 1837; a Sketch Descriptive of the Situation, Boundaries, Face of the Country, Prominent Districts, Prairies, Rivers, Minerals, Animal, Agricultural Productions, Public Lands, Plans of Internal Improvement, Manufactures, &C. Of the State of Illinois: Also, Suggestions to Emigrants, Sketches of the Counties, Cities, and Principal Towns in the State: Together with a Letter on the Cultivation of the Prairies, by the Hon. H. L. Ellsworth. To Which Are Annexed the Letters from a Rambler in the West (Philadelphia: S. Augustus Mitchell, 1837), 50.
56. Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 23, 38, 59; Will Co. Illinois Anti-Slavery Society, Slave Code, 10–11.
57. Kooker, “The Anti-Slavery Movement in Michigan,” 106, 108, 110, 113; David M. Katzman, Before the Ghetto: Black Detroit in the Nineteenth Century, Blacks in the New World (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973).
58. Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 59; Paul Finkelman and Martin J. Hershock, “Introduction,” in The History of Michigan Law, 3.
59. Litwack, North of Slavery, 91.
60. Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 53; Randolph County, State of Illinois, “To the People of the State of Illinois,” 16 May 1836, Manuscript Collection, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, Springfield, Illinois.
61. This may have been a local law, or just an effort to enforce the state laws. Earnest E. East, “History of Peoria,” c. 1950–1965, Peoria Public Library Collection, Peoria, Illinois, S1, P5. See also National Anti-Slavery Standard, March 25, 1841.
62. Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 70, 73; Thornbrough, The Negro in Indiana, 70; Finkelman, “Race, Slavery, and the Law in Antebellum Ohio,” 774.
63. Litwack, North of Slavery, 71–72.
64. Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 110, 117.
65. Ibid., 2, 39, 49, 59; Will Co. Illinois Anti-Slavery Society, Slave Code, 10–11; Finkelman and Hershock, “Introduction,” 3.
66. Ferguson, “In Pursuit of Full Enjoyment of Liberty and Happiness,” 124–25.
67. Will Co. Illinois Anti-Slavery Society, Slave Code, 5.
68. Ibid., 10; Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 5.
69. John Michael Vlach, “Above Ground on the Underground Railroad: Places of Flight and Refuge,” in Passages to Freedom: The Underground Railroad in History and Memory, ed. David W. Blight (Washington: Smithsonian Books in Association with the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, 2004), 115.
70. Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 47; Juliet E. K. Walker, Free Frank: A Black Pioneer on the Antebellum Frontier (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983), 3, 91. While fugitive slave aid itself was an important corollary action for many of these activists, it has been ably explored elsewhere, so is not a major focus here. On militant resistance and the Underground Railroad, see Horton and Horton, In Hope of Liberty, 257; Charles A. Gliozzo, “John Jones: A Study of a Black Chicagoan,” Illinois Historical Journal 80 (1987): 183; Dillon, The Abolitionists, 184–87; Pirtle, Escape Betwixt Two Suns; Vlach, “Above Ground on the Underground Railroad,” 115; Keith P. Griffler, Front Line of Freedom: African Americans and the Forging of the Underground Railroad in the Ohio Valley (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2004), 6–7.
71. Will Co. Illinois Anti-Slavery Society, Slave Code, 7.
72. See Peoria Register and Northwestern Gazetteer: April 21, 1838; July 14, 21, 28, 1838; August 4, 11, 1838; September 8, 15, 1838; August 24, 31, 1839; September 7, 14, 21, 28, 1839; November 2, 1839; July 30, 1841.
73. Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 47.
74. Finkelman, “Slavery and the Northwest Ordinance: A Study in Ambiguity,” 348, 356, 357.
75. Griffler, Front Line of Freedom, 6–7.
76. Walker, Free Frank: A Black Pioneer on the Antebellum Frontier, 112, 116–17, 164.
77. Griffler, Front Line of Freedom, 133.
78. Emma Hough to Oliver Huff, 8 August 1905, Huff–Nixon Papers, Friends Manuscript Collection, Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana; Betsy M. Cowles and Martha [Cowles] to Cornelia [Cowles], February 3, 1846, Betsy Mix Cowles, Papers, Special Collections, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio (hereafter cited as Cowles Papers); Records of the Henry County Female Anti-Slavery Society; Coffin, Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, 113, 301; Constitution of the West Grove Sewing Circle, Dugdale Papers, Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.
79. James M. McPherson, The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), 188.
80. These activities are explained in more detail in Weiner, “Racial Radicals”; Robertson, Hearts Beating for Liberty; Salerno, Sister Societies, 8, 38–39, 120.
81. Will Co. Illinois Anti-Slavery Society, Slave Code, 7.
82. Ibid., 9.
83. Anne Thomas to Nathan M. Thomas, 2 April 1839, Thomas Papers.
84. Nelson, Indiana Quakers Confront the Civil War, 5.
85. Indiana Yearly Meeting of Friends, Address to the Citizens of the State of Ohio Concerning What Are Called the Black Laws, Issued in Behalf of the Society of Friends of Indiana Yearly Meeting, by Their Meeting for Sufferings, Representing the Said Yearly Meeting in its Recess [a Large Portion of the Members Reside in the State of Ohio] (Cincinnati: A. Pugh, 1848), 4.
86. Ibid., 10, 15.
87. Spinka, “Organization of the General Association and After, 1844–1865,” 94.
88. Thomas D. Morris, Free Men All: The Personal Liberty Laws of the North, 1780–1861 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), 222, 52–53.
89. An Act to Prevent Manstealing, §3, Laws of Indiana, 1816 in Middleton, The Black Laws in the Old Northwest, 228–29.
90. Middleton, The Black Laws in the Old Northwest, 353; Finkenbine, “A Beacon of Liberty on the Great Lakes,” 84, 85.
91. Finkenbine, “A Beacon of Liberty on the Great Lakes,” 89–90.
92. Morris, Free Men All, 52–53; Gliozzo, “John Jones,” 181–82; Richard Junger, “‘God and Man Helped Those Who Helped Themselves’: John and Mary Jones and the Culture of African American Self-Sufficiency in Mid-Nineteenth Century Chicago,” Journal of Illinois History 11 (Summer 2008): 118.
93. Dillon, The Abolitionists, 225.
94. 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; An Act to Prevent Kidnapping, Approved February 15, 1831, Laws of Ohio in Middleton, The Black Laws in the Old Northwest, 27; Revised Laws of Indiana in Which Are Comprised All Such Acts of a General Nature as Are in Force in Said State; Adopted and Enacted by the General Assembly at Their Fifteenth Session. To Which Are Prefixed the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the U. S., the Constitution of the State of Indiana, and Sundry Other Documents, Connected with the Political History of the Territory and State of Indiana. Arranged and Published by Authority of the General Assembly (Indianapolis: Douglass and Maguire, 1831), 183.
95. Morris, Free Men All, 88.
96. Stewart, Abolitionist Politics and the Coming of the Civil War, 216.
97. Paul Finkelman, “Slavery, the ‘More Perfect Union,’ and the Prairie State,” Illinois Historical Journal 80, no. 4 (Winter 1987): 268.
98. Ibid., 263; Morris, Free Men All, xii, xi.
99. Finkelman, “Slavery, the ‘More Perfect Union,’ and the Prairie State,” 266.
100. Morris, Free Men All, 89.
101. Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 93, 159.
102. An Act to Repeal the Act Entitled “An Act Relating to Fugitives from Labor and Service from Other States, Passed February 26, 1839,” §1–2, Approved January 19, 1843, Laws of Ohio in Middleton, The Black Laws in the Old Northwest, 129; Morris, Free Men All, 124.
103. Illinois Supreme Court, Decision of the Supreme Court of Illinois in Relation to Arrest of Slaves. Ex Parte Thornton. The Process by Virtue of Which the Prisoner Was Arrested, and Is Now Detained, Was Issued under the Provisions of the Fifth Section of the Seventy-Fourth Chapter of the Revised Statues, 1850.
104. Elmer Gertz, “The Black Laws of Illinois,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 61, no. 3 (1963): 469.
105. Rodgers, “Rights Consciousness in American History,” 9.
106. Katzman, Before the Ghetto, 33.
107. Michigan State Anti-Slavery Society, Report of the Meeting of the Michigan State Anti-Slavery Society, June 28, 1837, Being the First Annual Meeting, Adjourned from June 1st, 1837 (Detroit: George L. Whitney, 1837), 20; Michigan State Anti-Slavery Society, Proceedings of the Second Anniversary of the Michigan State Anti-Slavery Society, 5, 6, 8.
108. Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 97.
109. Kenneth L. Kusmer, A Ghetto Takes Shape: Black Cleveland, 1870–1930, Blacks in the New World (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 7; Michael Mangin, “Freemen in Theory: Race, Society, and Politics in Ross County, Ohio, 1796–1850” (PhD diss., University of California at San Diego, 2002), 281.
110. Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, Report of the Second Anniversary of the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, 12, 13.
111. Oberlin College Archives, “Betsy Mix Cowles,” “Papers of Other Individuals (Group 30),” accessed 20 May 2011, http://www.oberlin.edu/archive/resources/women/group30.html; Betsy M. Cowles and Martha [Cowles] to Cornelia [Cowles], February 3, 1846; Linda L. Geary, Balanced in the Wind: A Biography of Betsey Mix Cowles (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1989), 13, 16, 58–59, 69, 95; Donna M. DeBlasio, “‘The Greatest Woman in the Reserve’: Betsy Mix Cowles, Feminist, Abolitionist, Educator,” The Old Northwest 13 (1987): 227.
112. Records of the Henry County Female Anti-Slavery Society, April 4, 1841, and June 6, 1841: 2–3, 5–6, 8–9.
113. Lydia S. Lewis, Western Citizen, April 6, 1843.
114. Matthew Norman, “From an ‘Abolition City’ to the Color Line: Galesburg, Knox College, and the Legacy of Antislavery Activism,” Journal of Illinois History 10, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 5.
115. National Anti-Slavery Standard, November 19, 1840.
116. Free Labor Advocate, July 8, 1841; March 25, 1848.
117. Will Co. Illinois Anti-Slavery Society, Slave Code, 10–11.
118. National Anti-Slavery Standard, February 16, 1843.
119. Will Co. Illinois Anti-Slavery Society, Slave Code, 8. See also Western Citizen, in Free Labor Advocate, April 15, 1848.
120. Rochester Democrat in Free Labor Advocate, June 16, 1848.
121. Samuel E. Cornish, “Our Brethren in Philadelphia,” Colored American (New York, NY), 15 March 1838, in Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, Vol. 3, 263–64; Robert Purvis et al., Appeal of Forty Thousand Citizens, Threatened with Disfranchisement, to the People of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: Merrihew and Gunn, 1838); Samuel E. Cornish, “Hints About Prejudice,” Colored American, 9 June 1838, in Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, Vol. 3, 265–66.
122. Will Co. Illinois Anti-Slavery Society, Slave Code, 10–11.
123. U.S. Constitution, Article IV, § 2.
124. Will Co. Illinois Anti-Slavery Society, Slave Code, 6.
125. John Joliffe, Philanthropist, quoted in National Anti-Slavery Standard, August 11, 1842; Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 199.
126. Will Co. Illinois Anti-Slavery Society, Slave Code, 6.
127. Indiana Yearly Meeting of Friends, Address to the Citizens of the State of Ohio, 4–5, 9, 7.
128. Litwack, North of Slavery, 113.
129. Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 15.
130. Ibid., 55, 84.
131. Will Co. Illinois Anti-Slavery Society, Slave Code, 10–11.
132. Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 59; Finkenbine, “A Beacon of Liberty on the Great Lakes,” 94.
133. Horatio C. Ford, 8, 9 February 1848, Horatio C. Ford Diaries, the White–Ford Family Papers, Manuscript Collection, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio.
134. Nelson, Indiana Quakers Confront the Civil War, 5; James Eastman to Daniel Holt, 31 March 1849, Manuscript Collection, Indiana Historical Society.
135. Francis Dunlavy, Legal Opinion, 17 October 1836, James G. Birney Papers, Clements Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
136. Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 119.
137. Michael Les Benedict, “Civil Liberty in Ohio,” in The History of Ohio Law, 689.
138. Sandusky Clarion in Free Labor Advocate, September 17, 1842.
139. National Anti-Slavery Standard, February 16, 1843.
140. National Anti-Slavery Standard, June 1, 1843.
141. Finkelman, “Race, Slavery, and the Law in Antebellum Ohio,” 764–65.
142. William T. Allan, “Letter from William T. Allan,” National Anti-Slavery Standard, August 13, 1846. [Italics in original].
143. Ibid. [Italics in original].
144. Will Co. Illinois Anti-Slavery Society, Slave Code, 6.
145. Ibid., 4.
146. Barbara C. Cruz and Michael Berson, “The American Melting Pot? Miscegenation Laws in the United States,” OAH Magazine of History 15, no. 4 (2001): 80.
147. An Act to Prohibit the Amalgamation of Whites and Blacks, Approved February 24, 1840, General Laws of Indiana in Middleton, The Black Laws in the Old Northwest, 207.
148. Berwanger, The Frontier against Slavery, 36; Baumgartner, “The Legal Status of the Negro in Illinois,” 32.
149. Finkenbine, “A Beacon of Liberty on the Great Lakes,” 96, 97.
150. Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 250–51.
151. Madison, “Race, Law,” 43; Thornbrough, The Negro in Indiana, 125, 126–27; Lori B. Jacobi, “More Than a Church: The Educational Role of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Indiana, 1844–1861,” in Indiana’s African-American Heritage: Essays from Black History News & Notes, ed. Wilma L. Gibbs (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1993), 5.
152. Philanthropist, in National Anti-Slavery Standard, April 15, 1841. [Italics in original].
153. L. M. Harris, “From Abolitionist Amalgamators to ‘Rulers of the Five Points’: The Discourse of Interracial Sex and Reform in Antebellum New York City,” in Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History, ed. Martha Hodes (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 199–200.
154. Free Labor Advocate, February 16, 1842.
155. The impetus for the final repeal was Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 Supreme Court ruling that these laws were unconstitutional. Peggy Pascoe, “Miscegenation Law, Court Cases, and Ideologies Of ‘Race’ In Twentieth-Century America,” Journal of American History 83, no. 1 (1996); Peggy Pascoe, “Race, Gender, and Intercultural Relations: The Case of Interracial Marriage,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 12, no. 1 (1991): 6.
156. Will Co. Illinois Anti-Slavery Society, Slave Code, 8.
157. Thornbrough, The Negro in Indiana, 122.
158. Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 98.
159. Ibid., 100. This is the only instance of Old Northwest resistance to African American petitions that I have found.
160. National Anti-Slavery Standard, February 16, 1843.
161. Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 103.
162. Lewis, Western Citizen, April 6, 1843.
163. Norman, “From an ‘Abolition City’ to the Color Line,” 5.
164. Hagaman, “Women of the Old Northwest in the Antislavery Movement,” 42.
165. Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 126–27; Frederick J. Blue, No Taint of Compromise, 216, 217.
166. Robert Meredith Watson, “The Anatomy of a Crusade: A Western Reserve Township and the War against the Slaveholders, 1831–1865” (PhD diss., Memphis State University, 1978), 320; Volpe, Forlorn Hope of Freedom, 103, 105.
167. Stewart, Abolitionist Politics and the Coming of the Civil War, 216.
168. Johnson, The Liberty Party, 1840–1848, 252, 254, 192.
169. “Abolition Movements: Bureau Liberty Convention,” Peoria Register, May 20, 1842.
170. “Proceedings of the Liberty Convention in Knox County, ILL,” Peoria Register, June 17, 1842.
171. Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, vol. 5, 214.
172. Johnson, The Liberty Party, 1840–1848, 244, 246, 250, 255; Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy, 552, 553.
173. Free Labor Advocate, December 21, 1842.
174. Chris Dixon, Perfecting the Family: Antislavery Marriages in Nineteenth Century America (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997), 129, 7, 34–35, 130; Merton Lynn Dillon, Slavery Attacked: Southern Slaves and Their Allies, 1619–1865 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990), 174–75; Jane H. Pease and William H. Pease, “Antislavery Ambivalence: Immediatism, Expediency, Race,” American Quarterly 17, no. 4 (1965): 693, 695; Stanley Harrold, Subversives: Antislavery Community in Washington, D.C., 1828–1865, 263.
175. On white privilege, see Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness. On contemporary shifts in racial thinking, see Melish, Disowning Slavery, 192; Melish, “The ‘Condition’ Debate and Racial Discourse in the Antebellum North,” 657–58; James Brewer Stewart, et al, “The Emergence of Racial Modernity and the Rise of the White North, 1790–1840,” Journal of the Early Republic 18 (1998): 197, 236; James Brewer Stewart, “Modernizing ‘Difference’: The Political Meanings of Color in the Free States, 1776–1840,” Journal of the Early Republic 19, no. 4 (1999).
176. Jeffrey, The Great Silent Army of Abolitionism, 4, 36.
177. Stewart, Holy Warriors, 103–4, 110; Johnson, The Liberty Party, 1840–184, 227.
178. Western Citizen, September 2, 16, 1842; April 6, 1843; January 25, 1844; June 20, 1844; August 8, 1844.
179. Western Citizen, January 6, 1843; June 6, 1844; October 14, 1842; January 25, 1844; July 25, 1844; December 30, 1842; August 17, 1843; August 12, 1842; May 16, 1844; Genius of Universal Emancipation, July 26, 1839; June 28, 1839; Mary Brown Davis, Scenes of Oppression in the Refined Circles of the South; Addressed to the Women of Illinois by Mrs. M. B. Davis (Peoria County Anti-Slavery Society, 1846), 5–6, 8.
180. Volpe, Forlorn Hope of Freedom, 104.
181. Johnson, The Liberty Party, 1840–1848, 199, 202.
182. Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 84, 85; Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, vol. 4, 67, 70.
183. Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 144–45; Howard Holman Bell, Minutes of the Proceedings of the National Negro Conventions, 1830–1864, The American Negro: His History and Literature (New York: Arno Press, 1969); Carleton Mabee, Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 through the Civil War (New York: Macmillan, 1970), 59.
184. Taylor, Frontiers of Freedom, 108.
185. Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 125.
186. John Malvin, North into Freedom: The Autobiography of John Malvin, Free Negro, 1795–1880, ed. Allan Peskin (1879; reprint, Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1988), 17, 66; Russell H. Davis, Black Americans in Cleveland from George Peake to Carl B. Stokes, 1796–1969 (Washington: Associated Publishers, 1972), 47.
187. National Anti-Slavery Standard, April 13, 1843; Katherine DuPre Lumpkin, “‘The General Plan Was Freedom’: A Negro Secret Order on the Underground Railroad,” Phylon 28, no. 1 (1967): 66; Katzman, Before the Ghetto, 34, 37.
188. Curry, The Free Black in Urban America, 1800–1850, vii–viii, 110, 104–5, 240.
189. National Convention of Colored Citizens, Minutes 1843, 8, 40.
190. Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 145.
191. Minutes of the State Convention of the Colored Citizens of Michigan, Held in the City of Detroit on the 26th and 27th of October, 1843, for the Purpose of Considering Their Moral and Political Condition as Citizens of the State (Detroit: Printed by William Harsha, 1843), 6.
192. National Convention of Colored Citizens, Minutes 1843, 3; Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, vol. 3, 42, 403.
193. National Convention of Colored Citizens, Minutes 1843, 4–5.
194. Ibid., 7, 35.
195. Ibid., 6–7; Horton and Horton, In Hope of Liberty, 246, 236, 257.
196. Minutes of the State Convention of the Colored Citizens of Michigan, 1843, 13, 15, 6.
197. “Anniversary of the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society in Massillon, Stark County, May 27, 1850,” National Anti-Slavery Standard, June 18, 1850.
198. Minutes of the State Convention of the Colored Citizens of Michigan, 1843, 10–11.
199. Ibid., 23; Katzman, Before the Ghetto: Black Detroit in the Nineteenth Century, 33, 34.
200. “Address of the State Convention,” Palladium of Liberty, November 13, 1844.
201. The relevant portion of the 1835 address read, “If amidst all the difficulties with which we have been surrounded and the privations which we have suffered, we presented an equal amount of intelligence with that class of Americans that have been so peculiarly favoured, a very grave and dangerous question would present itself to the world, on the natural equality of man, and the best rule of logic would place those who have oppressed us, in the scale of inferiority.” Minutes of the Fifth Annual Convention for the Improvement of the Free People of Colour in the United States, Held by Adjournment, in the Wesley Church, Philadephia, from the First to the Fifth of June, Inclusive, 1835 (Philadelphia: William P. Gibbons, 1835), 25–26. This address was also reprinted in the 1837 minutes of the American Moral Reform Society, see The Minutes and Proceedings of the First Annual Meeting of the American Moral Reform Society, Held at Philadelphia, in the Presbyterian Church in Seventh Street, Below Shippen, from the 14th to the 19th of August, 1837 (Philadelphia: Printed by Merrihew and Gunn, No. 7 Carter’s Alley, 1837), 9–11.
202. Minutes of the State Convention of the Colored Citizens of Michigan, 1843, 20, 21.
203. Ibid., 12, 23.
204. Gliozzo, “John Jones,” 178–79; Lerone Bennett, Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream (Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company, 2000), 190.
205. Gliozzo, “John Jones,” 177, 178, 179.
206. Ibid., 179, 180.
207. Ibid., 179, 180.
208. Illinois Senate Report of the Judiciary Committee Relative to Negroes, 1847, in Middleton, The Black Laws in the Old Northwest, 298–99.
209. Jonathan Blanchard, Memoir of Rev. Levi Spencer: Successively Pastor of the Congregational Church at Canton, Bloomington, and Peoria, Illinois (Cincinnati: American Reform Tract and Book Society, 1856), 16–18, 35–36.
210. Levi Spencer, 29 January 1848, Levi Spencer Diaries, Manuscript Collection, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, Springfield, Illinois (hereafter cited as Spencer Diaries).
211. Gliozzo, “John Jones,” 180.
212. Finkelman, “Slavery, the ‘More Perfect Union,’ and the Prairie State,” 266.
213. Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 145.
214. Gliozzo, “John Jones,” 180; Report of the Proceedings of the Colored National Convention, Held at Cleveland, Ohio, on Wednesday, September 6, 1848 (Rochester: Printed by John Dick, at the North Star Office, 1848), 16.
215. Gliozzo, “John Jones,” 183.
216. Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 128, 143, 144, 153; Kusmer, A Ghetto Takes Shape, 7; Smith, Liberty and Free Soil Parties in the Northwest, 2; Quist, Restless Visionaries, 409; Richard H. Sewell, Ballots for Freedom: Antislavery Politics in the United States, 1837–1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 155–56, 170, 180–83, 187.
217. Sewell, Ballots for Freedom, 182.
218. Middleton, The Black Laws: Ohio, 157.
219. Paul Finkelman, “The Historical Context of the Fourteenth Amendment,” Temple Political and Civil Rights Law Review 13, no. 2 (2004): 398.
220. Nullification in fact was soon also a strategy that some Republicans proposed to resist the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law. Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men, 134, 181.
221. Minutes of the State Convention, of the Colored Citizens of Ohio, Convened at Columbus, January 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th, 1850, in Proceedings of the Black State Conventions, 1840–1865, ed. Philip Sheldon Foner and George E. Walker, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986), 252.