Governor Edward Coles and the Vote to Forbid Slavery in Illinois, 1823–1824, and: Frontiers of Freedom: Cincinnati's Black Community, 1802–1868, and: The Black Laws: Race and the Legal Process in Early Ohio (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Governor Edward Coles and the Vote to Forbid Slavery in Illinois, 1823-1824, and: Frontiers of Freedom: Cincinnati's Black Community, 1802-1868, and: The Black Laws: Race and the Legal Process in Early Ohio Graham A. Peck (bio) Governor Edward Coles and the Vote to Forbid Slavery in Illinois, 1823-1824. By David Ress. (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006. Pp. 203. Paper, $35.00.) Frontiers of Freedom: Cincinnati's Black Community, 1802-1868. By Nikki M. Taylor. (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2005. Pp. 315. Cloth, $55.00; Paper, $24.95.) The Black Laws: Race and the Legal Process in Early Ohio. By Stephen Middleton. (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2005. Pp. 363. Cloth, $59.95; Paper, $26.95.) Over the past half-century, scholars have extensively explored slavery's implications for early national and antebellum America. In a spate of studies, they have contended that slavery distinctively shaped the nation's taxation policies, partisan politics, political ideologies, diplomatic relations, geographical expansion, economic development, jurisprudence, religious life, intellectual currents, race relations, and cultural practices. In short, they have argued that slavery's influence was both pervasive and profound. Studies of northern society have not been immune from this trend, and for good reason. In the wake of the Revolution, virtually all Americans celebrated freedom and sought to define its practical meaning. Yet the coexistence of slavery and freedom meant that the respective definitions of free society that emerged in the North and South had much to do with the dialectic between slavery and freedom, between slave states and free states, and between slaveholders and abolitionists. Hence it is virtually impossible to understand the North without understanding northerners' perceptions of and experiences with the South and slavery. This is especially true for Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, the Ohio River Valley states formed from the Northwest Ordinance. Although the ordinance forbade slavery and indentured servitude in the Northwest Territory, large numbers of southerners crossed the Ohio River in the early nineteenth century, and sometimes they brought slaves. Subsequently, a much larger number of northern emigrants came as well. This admixture of people and cultures precipitated immediate clashes over the meaning of freedom in the Ohio River Valley, and the inhabitants' repeated encounters with slavery over several generations made such clashes chronic. These debates over freedom shaped the lives of inhabitants and gradually fueled sectional antagonisms over slavery. In Governor Edward Coles and the Vote to Forbid Slavery in Illinois, [End Page 778] 1823–1824, journalist David Ress contends that Illinois might have become a slave state except for the remarkable resistance of the Virginian expatriate Edward Coles. Born into a wealthy slaveholding family in 1786 and blessed with a fine education and powerful family friends, most notably Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, Coles nevertheless forsook the customary life of young Virginian elites. Imbued with republican ideals, he rebelled against the immorality of owning human beings and decided in his college years that he "could not consent to hold as property what I had no right to" (30). Seeking to make good on this promise when he inherited twenty slaves and considerable land in 1808, he met with the strong opposition of family and friends. Hence he decided to free the slaves after removing them from Virginia, a complex undertaking that required a decade of work, brought dramatically to fruition on a raft in the middle of the Ohio River in 1819. Once in Illinois, where he settled with a number of his former slaves, Coles's antislavery convictions fueled a short but consequential political career. Disturbed by the plans of proslavery politicians to change the antislavery Illinois constitution, he ran for governor in 1822 and squeaked out a victory in a contest among four candidates, taking office just in time to combat a determined proslavery movement. In 1823, proslavery state legislators authorized a public referendum for August 1824 on whether to call a new constitutional convention. Coles responded decisively to this threat, immediately organizing an anticonvention campaign and pledging his substantial salary to the work. He wrote assiduously for publication, traveled extensively in Illinois to build allies, and helped establish an antislavery newspaper. His work paid off. By a relatively...