In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

 eight v In the Shadows of War The end of war confronted Illinoisans with a changed world. The federal government’s role in society had unmistakably grown, while the war had touched off a broad economic boom that pushed all sectors of the state’s economy to the doorstep of the modern industrial order. The war’s many casualties left Illinoisans in mourning and facing an uncertain future. The Union remained intact, that much was clear. But what lay ahead? As Illinoisans celebrated Union victory their joy turned to sorrow at the news of Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865. Lincoln’s remains traveled by funeral train back to Illinois. Two weeks later thousands gathered in Springfield to pay homage to their fallen president, now lying in state in the hall of the House of Representatives, where Lincoln had once delivered his House Divided speech. One witness was Charles Jacobs, a free black from Decatur. “[T]he people mourn the loss of a great and good man,” wrote Jacobs, “but none mourn more sincerely than our race, who have lost their Moses.”1 Lincoln’s immense legacy—savior of the Union, emancipator of the slaves—would live on in American memory for generations, preserved by men like Charles Jacobs, inheritors of the new landscape left behind by four years of war. Despite the loss of Lincoln it did indeed seem as if the long-awaited jubilee had arrived. In February 1865, Illinois’s legislature, now dominated by Republicans , made Illinois the first state to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery in the United States. Days later, the legislature repealed the odious 1853 Black Exclusion Law. For years Illinois’s free black community had agitated for repeal of this prescriptive law, to no avail. By the fall of 1864 the dynamic had changed. Chicago’s John Jones delivered a series of speeches aimed at pressuring Republicans to repeal the black laws. Jones’s activism was part of a broader campaign launched by the Illinois State Repeal Association, which Jones had helped found in 1856. As 1865 dawned, outgoing governor Yates as well as his successor , Richard Oglesby, publicly endorsed repeal, and now Republicans had the unchallenged power in the general assembly to act. By repealing the 1853 Black Exclusion Law, Illinois Republicans signaled that Reconstruction would involve Illinois as much as the defeated South. But left unanswered was the issue of equality. Would blacks now vote in Illinois? Would they work and live on equal  illinois’s war terms with whites? And what of the former slaves in the defeated South? Would freedom be meaningful for them? Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, was the first to provide a blueprint for the defeated South. His plan called for Southern states to accept the Thirteenth Amendment and for individual Southerners to renounce secession and sign oaths of loyalty to the Union. Their rights under federal law would then be restored and the Southern states could be readmitted to the Union. Though the South accepted the end of slavery, in 1865 and 1866 Southern state legislatures enacted a spate of discriminatory laws that sharply circumscribed the economic freedoms and civil rights of the former slaves. These “Black Codes” indicated that the vast majority of Southern whites viewed Reconstruction as a time to rebuild the economic and political foundations of white supremacy across the South. The wholesale violation of the freedpeople’s rights convinced congressional Republicans that a stronger federal policy was necessary. In January 1866, Illinois senator Lyman Trumbull introduced two bills that reflected mainstream Republican goals for the South. The first bill reauthorized the Freedmen’s Bureau, created at the end of the war to provide assistance to the former slaves in their transition to freedom. Next, Trumbull offered the landmark Civil Rights bill, which for the first time defined the fundamental rights of citizenship and extended those rights to all persons born in the United States regardless of race. As citizens, the former slaves—as well as blacks in the North—were, according to Trumbull’s bill, entitled to equal protection under the law. They could exercise legal rights to make and enforce contracts, testify and bring suit in court, and hold and transmit real and personal property. States were prohibited from passing laws that abridged these basic rights of U.S. citizenship. But President Johnson, convinced that both bills constituted an unprecedented expansion of federal power on behalf of black people, vetoed the legislation. In response Congress passed a modified version...

Share