The Alchemy of Slavery: Human Bondage and Emancipation in the Illinois Country, 1730–1865 by M. Scott Heerman (review)

There has been renewed attention to slavery in the early republic, especially in the Old Northwest. Matthew Mason's Slavery and Politics in the Early American Republic (Chapel Hill, NC, 2006) presented the Missouri Compromise as the culmination of lengthy disputes over slavery rather than as the beginning of the sectional conflict. John Craig Hammond in Slavery, Freedom, and Expansion in the Early American West (Charlottesville, VA, 2007) provided a nuanced portrait of the tension between settlers in the territories and the federal government over slavery. In some cases, such as Indiana, territorial elites pushed hard to overturn the 1787 Northwest Ordinance's prohibition on slavery.

M. Scott Heerman's contribution to this literature is an in-depth study of Illinois from its pre-Revolutionary settlement through the Civil War. Rather than focusing solely on the chattel slavery of African Americans, Heerman weaves a complicated tapestry encompassing Indian slavery, "French Negroes," and African Americans brought from the English colonies and eastern United States. Heerman resists a linear narrative that moves inevitably toward emancipation. Instead, Heerman argues that slave owners adapted, finding new ways to preserve forms of bondage. This adaptability is what Heerman terms "alchemy," the ability of slave owners to convert measures advancing freedom into some variety of unfreedom.

There were many varieties of bondage in colonial Illinois. Natives expected to trade captives taken from enemy tribes to their European allies. The French adoption of Indian slavery formed one aspect of their diplomatic relations with the natives. French settlers enslaved Africans and brought them up the Mississippi River from New Orleans into the Illinois Country. Heerman challenges the idea that Indian and African captivities were separate institutions; rather, the French blended the two forms of bondage. Indian captives, mostly women, and African slaves, mostly men, lived, worked, and worshipped together. Not surprisingly, some slaves were descended from both Indians and African Americans. One of Heerman's sources is the records of the Catholic Church showing the baptism of Indian, black, and mixed-race slaves. After the Seven Years' War, British merchants expected to profit by selling eastern slaves into Illinois. The French, fearing these slaves were being exported as troublemakers, were reluctant to buy. Nonetheless, these African Americans formed yet another group of those in bondage in the Illinois country. At the end of the colonial period, whites in Illinois spoke of "French Negroes," which Heerman calls "an invented legal category" designed to encompass the varieties of bondage in the Illinois country (3).

Like other territories of the Lower Midwest, Illinoisans circumvented the Northwest Ordinance's prohibition on slavery by using indentured servitude. Many of the migrants to Illinois after the American Revolution were Virginians who wished to continue profiting from unfree labor. Unable to persuade Congress to repeal the Ordinance's prohibition on slavery, the new migrants compelled their slaves to sign "voluntary" indentures or be sold into southern slave states. In addition, Illinoisans began to exploit the territory's salt works, creating a demand for labor for this grueling work.

While Heerman places much emphasis on how enslavers attempted to preserve control by changing the forms of servitude, the author also shows how captives resisted their bondage. Here the sources are primarily legal cases in which slaves or indentured servants sued for their freedom. Success rates were poor and allies scarce. Some white settlers opposed slavery simply because they resented the economic and political power of the slave-owning class. Free blacks who founded towns in Illinois provided crucial support, and slowly Illinois acquired an active abolitionist movement. Success was incremental. As late as 1840, there were hundreds of slaves in Illinois. Not until 1845 did the Illinois Supreme Court rule that descendants of French Negroes were entitled to their freedom, finally closing a loophole left by the state...