Abstract:

This dissertation uses three interconnected lives to examine the development of race and justice in Illinois between 1850 and 1900. During the period of this study, the state of Illinois underwent a fundamental legal and political shift from a state with restrictive Black Laws and relatively few black residents, to a state with large numbers of Southern black migrants and no legal restrictions on black citizenship. Although this shift was dramatic, it did not mean that black citizens in Illinois enjoyed the full exercise of the rights granted them by law. By examining the persistent race prejudice that influenced and guided Illinoisans' reactions to the Civil War and Reconstruction, as well as the problem of crime in the late nineteenth century, this dissertation seeks to reorient the traditional North/South perspective on the Civil War and Reconstruction by arguing that the Middle West--or heartland--of the nation was of central importance in the heated national discussion over black citizenship and civil rights. By the late nineteenth century, the continuing expression of race prejudice strongly influenced the early practitioners of criminology as racial violence became prevalent in the Middle West. The structural prejudices of the Progressive-era criminal justice system ensured that it was ill-equipped to punish such violence, and was even complicit in the popular view of black citizens as dangerous and criminal.

Using three lives as starting points for further investigation, this dissertation ranges widely from the partisan conflicts of the 1850s, through the Civil War, and into the post-emancipation debates over black citizenship, utilizing a unifying framework of race and justice to make sense of the ways in which the lives were connected. A mulatto convict named Augustus "Gus" Reed forms the backbone of the study, and serves as a point of convection between Democratic attorney Elliott Herndon, and warden Robert McClaughry of the Illinois State Penitentiary at Joliet, where Reed died under abusive conditions in 1878 after being sentenced for stealing meat from Herndon's Springfield home. Herndon's and McClaughry's lives raise the issue of Democratic politics during the era of the Civil War, as both men belonged to the party before the Civil War, but only Herndon remained committed to the Democracy after the war. McClaughry was among those Democrats who converted to the Republican Party before the war was over, while Herndon remained a party stalwart, helping to guide his local party organization through the debates over black citizenship after emancipation.

Together, these three lives and the multiple points of inquiry they bring together, tell a rich and complicated story of race and justice in the heartland of the United States during a contentious period in the history of race relations, and lay much of the groundwork for a deeper understanding of the resurgence of race-motivated violence in the Middle West and throughout the nation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Because this period was also foundational to many of the criminal justice practices and theories that continue to guide our own justice system, these lives also speak directly to continuing associations between race and criminality in our own time.