History of slavery in Indiana

Opposition to slavery began to organize in Indiana around 1805, and in 1809 abolitionists took control of the territorial legislature and overturned many of the laws permitting retaining of slaves.

Hoosiers like Levi Coffin came to play an important role in the Underground Railroad that helped many slaves escape from the South.

Fear of French rebellion kept the courts from acting against slavery, as did the violent actions of those who would kidnap escaped slaves.

After the Revolutionary War, George Rogers Clark and his soldiers, all Virginians, were given land grants in southern Indiana.

William Henry Harrison, longtime Indiana Territory governor and future United States President, was from the long-established aristocratic class of the lowland and coastal South.

From the non-slaveholding class of the Upland South were migrants such as Abraham Lincoln, whose family is representative of the migration to Indiana from Kentucky and Tennessee.

The first recorded slaves in Indiana were owned by the French traders who entered the region and introduced the practice to the native tribes.

Jesuit priests encouraged the tribes they lived among to adopt slavery as an alternative to executing their prisoners in war.

The early slaves typically performed manual labor, helping the traders transport their goods and to build forts and trading posts.

In a gesture to the residents who lived in the territory before the Northwest Ordinance, Harrison organized a public meeting in 1802 which called for a 10-year moratorium on the slavery ban.

[19] Harrison and Posey were strongly opposed by Jonathan Jennings, Dennis Pennington, and other prominent men who would eventually take over the territorial legislature.

Pro-slavery Benjamin Parke was elected and supported Harrison's request to have Congress suspend the ban on slavery in the territory.

Jefferson sent Lemen to the Indiana territory again in 1807 with the mission to seek out and organize the anti-slavery men of the state and encourage them to take action.

[30] Other prominent anti-slavery men included Richard Rue, John Paul, and General William Johnson, all veterans of the Revolution.

[31][32] Their resolution stated: ... a great number of citizens, in various parts of the United States, are preparing, and many have actually emigrated to this Territory, to get free from a Government which does tolerate slavery ... And although it is contended by some, that, at this day, there is a great majority in favor of slavery, whilst the opposite opinion is held by others, the fact is certainly doubtful.

But when we take into consideration the vast emigration into this Territory, and of citizens, too, decidedly opposed to the measure, we feel satisfied that, at all events, Congress will suspend any legislative act on this subject until we shall, by the constitution, be admitted into the Union, and have a right to adopt such a constitution, in this respect, as may comport with the wishes of a majority of the citizens.

[38] In 1809, Dennis Pennington, one of the most outspoken anti-slavery men and a friend of Henry Clay, was elected to the legislature as the representative from Harrison County, and became speaker of the assembly.

While the state constitution did outlaw slavery and indentures, much of the population that had immigrated from the South were commoners and not landed slaveholders.

He easily defeated pro-slavery candidate Thomas Posey, and upon his victory he declared that Indiana was a "Free State".

He also asked the legislature to pass laws that would stop the "unlawful attempts to seize and carry into bondage persons of color legally entitled to their freedom: and at the same time, as far as practical, to prevent those who rightfully owe service to the citizen of any other State of Territory, from seeking, within the limits of this State (Indiana), a refuge from the possession of their lawful masters."

This request resulted in the creation of a Man Stealing Act aimed to prevent slave hunters from operating in the state.

[41] In 1818 Dennis Pennington, then a state senator, had three Kentuckians indicted for violating the Man Stealing Act when they forcibly took a black woman from a home in Harrison County and removed her to Kentucky.

These events led Jennings to eventually have to reverse his position and request that the legislature pass laws to discourage runaway slaves from seeking refuge in Indiana.

[45] In 1820 the State Supreme Court case of Polly v. Lasselle ordered all slaves, except those held before the 1787 Northwest Territory Ordinance, to be freed.

Despite slavery and indentures becoming illegal in 1816 due to the state constitution, the 1820 federal census listed 190 slaves in Indiana.

The Vincennes newspaper Western Sun had numerous times advertised "indentured Negroes and other slaves", a sign of the approval of slavery in the area.

Like several other northern states, Indiana lawmakers believed the majority of free blacks were uneducated and ill-equipped to care for themselves.

This view, that the South should clean up its own mess, remained dominant even after the Civil War, and the clause in Indiana's constitution was not repealed until the 20th century.

Growing up in a climate where the state politics were run by men like Jennings and Pennington would have much influence on the development of Lincoln's views.

[54] In one of the more famous events of the underground railroad, Eliza Harris, a slave from Kentucky, crossed the Ohio River one winter's night when it froze over.