Illinois Issues

One was sold away from her children. Another was freed and became a businessman. Others were freed only to be kidnapped and sold back into slavery. These are just a few stories of people who were enslaved in Illinois. Contrary to what we’ve been told and taught, Illinois was not a free state. Slavery and indentured servitude —slavery by another name — were practiced here from the early 1700s until 1863. Blacks (and Native Americans early on) were bought, sold, auctioned, kidnapped, indentured, punished, controlled, gifted and taxed as property in the Land of Lincoln. We know this from our state Constitution, which allowed and regulated enslavement; from newspapers, which advertised slave sales and rewards for escaped slaves; from emancipation records, bills of sale, probate records, wills and tax records which detailed transactions involving enslaved people (many are archived online at the Illinois State Archives Servitude and Emancipation Records ); and from manuscripts and books,