06/20/2026
Read carefully for astounding true facts about the 'jim crow' laws . . . We remember that there were several slave markets in Washington DC when Lincoln was President . . .
When exactly were Jim Crow laws enacted?
They were being enforced in Massachusetts and Connecticut in the 1830s. As Northern States ended Slavery they expelled the Freedmen, if they couldn't sell them South in time. NYC had the largest slave market in the Country until 1829 largely to sell New England slaves to the Cotton States.
The route of escape to Canada had to be underground because the southern borders of the Free States blocked Black Immigrants. Illinois required a Bond for temporary admission and prohibited long term residency, for most.
Roger D. Bridges, Historical Research and Narrative "Your petitioner, though humble in position, and having no political status in your State, notwithstanding I have resided in it for twenty-five years, and today am paying taxes on thirty thousand dollars, most humbly beseech you to recommend in your Message to the Legislature... the repeal of the Black Laws of this your State." Thus began John Jones's letter to Illinois Governor Richard Yates, November 4,1864. By the time Jones wrote this letter he was the best-known and wealthiest African-American in the state. Though wealthier by far than most Illinoisans, still Jones could not vote.
Born in North Carolina in 1816 or 1817, Jones had arrived about 1841 in Madison County, Illinois, where he took up residence illegally. It was not until three years later, as he prepared to move to Chicago with his wife and infant daughter, that he filed the necessary bond and received his certificate of freedom, a document required by every black person in the state. Because he had been born out of state, under the law of 1829 he was required to file a bond of $1,000 to insure that he would not become "a charge to the county," or violate any laws.
Although Illinois entered the Union nominally as a free state in 1818, slavery had existed there for nearly one hundred years. It would continue to exist, albeit under increasing restrictions, until 1845. But the elimination of legal slavery did not mean the removal of the Black Codes. Indeed, it was not until the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the adoption of the Illinois Constitution of 1870 that the last legal barriers (but not the societal) ended. Like their midwestern neighbors, most early Illinois settlers believed in white supremacy and African-American inferiority. Consequently, Illinois' constitutions and laws reflected those views. According to John Mason Peck, an early Illinois Baptist missionary and historian, the French introduced slavery into the French-controlled Illinois country, perhaps as early as 1717 or as late as 1721. The British, who took control of the Illinois Country in 1765, permitted slavery to continue, and so did the Americans after George Rogers Clark's conquest in 1778. Although the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 prohibited slavery or involuntary servitude, territorial and later state laws and interpretations permitted the retention of French slaves.
When Congress admitted Illinois as a state in 1818, the state's constitution permitted limited slavery at the salt mines in Massac County, and it legalized the continued bo***ge of slaves introduced by the French. At the same time, the new constitution included a provision 2 that would eventually free even those slaves by declaring that the children of slaves were to be freed when they reached adulthood: for women that age was eighteen, for men it was twenty-one. Thus, it appeared that the last slave would not be freed until 1839, or twenty-one years after the Union General Nathaniel Banks Contraband Policy mirrored the Massachusetts Jim Crow laws.
Previously there had been no Segregation in the South. Black owned L'Union Newspaper said, “We were never slaves until the arrival of (General) Banks.” The L'Union became one if the hundreds of Newspapers closed by the Union League Press censors.
Union General Hurlbut, who replaced Banks, ordered all Contraband to sign Labor Contracts with Union Controlled Plantations before the passage of the 13th Amendment. These Company Store Labor Contracts were called, “Another Form Of Slavery” by the New York Times. Freedmen were forced to vote GOP by Loyal Leagues and the Freedman's Bureau.
https://www.lib.niu.edu/1996/iht329602.html
