Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Semester of Degree Completion

1986

Thesis Director

Raymond L. Koch

Abstract

Free Negroes embodied one of the great dilemmas in the ante-bellum history of the state of Illinois. Nominally a free state, Illinois endeavored mightily to suppress, exclude, and dispose of a class of people who were the ultimate result of the anti-slavery movement. While a majority of Illinoisans deemed the peculiar institution undesirable, they had no intention of accepting free Negroes as equal citizens. Free blacks were often regarded as dangerous and a menace to the well-being of the entire society. Yet, Illinois reconciled its apparently contradictory views on slavery and the free Negro to a remarkable degree.

The reconciliation of the slavery and free Negro questions involved the use of a dual perception of blacks by whites. This dualism contained a theoretical and a practical plane as a modus vivendi, which allowed the citizens of Illinois to religiously support the United States Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, while simultaneously ignoring the documents' implications regarding free persons of color. In this manner, free Negroes were unapologetically relegated to a subservient role in a racial caste system.

Occasionally, the dichotomy was challenged. When this occurred, the theoretical and practical planes, normally split apart by a gulf of silence, were drawn together with disastrous consequences for the advocates of change. Among the victims of this phenomenon in Illinois were the American Colonization Society, the supporters of Article XIV in the Constitutional Convention of 1847, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, and the Negro Immigration Act of 1853. In addition, political catastrophe befell any office-seeker who attempted to exploit the attraction of the two planes for electioneering purposes. Clearly, discussions of altering the dichotomy were to be avoided at all costs.

This suppression, however, could not be sustained. By their very presence in Illinois, free Negroes provided the most visible and lethal opposition to the modus vivendi. This was done neither by sheer numbers nor by economic or political strength. Rather, free men of color contradicted the traditional concepts of democracy and republicanism not only in pre-Civil War Illinois, but in the entire nation. Inevitably, the dilemma which existed between theory and practice would have to be resolved, either by reason or force.

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