Prior to the WTBS, an 1853 Illinois law effectively barred Black people from residing in the state. Lincoln never spoke out against this law.
Ward Hill Lamon, friend of Lincoln, said the Illinois Black Code was "of the most preposterous and cruel severity, -- a code that would have been a disgrace to a Slave state, and was simply an infamy in a free one. It borrowed the provisions of the most revolting laws known among men, for exiling, selling, beating, bedeviling, and torturing Negroes, whether bond or free."
The Illinois Black Code said that any Black found without a certificate of freedom was considered a runaway slave and could be apprehended by any White and auctioned off by the sheriff to pay the cost of his confinement.
There is no record of any Lincoln dissent to any of these Black Codes in his home state.
Article XIV of the Illinois State Constitution adopted in 1848 stated:
The General Assembly shall at its first session under the amended constitution pass such laws as will effectually prohibit free persons of color from immigrating to and settling in this state, and to effectually prevent the owners of slaves from bringing them into this state, for the purpose of setting them free."
The architect of "An Act To Prevent the Immigration of Free Negroes into the State" was John A. "Black Jack" Logan. Black Jack Logan was later named a Major General by Abraham Lincoln.
Lerone Bennett, Jr. documented how various newspapers condemned the Illinois laws. Frederick Douglass expressed his outrage. "What did Lincoln say? He didn't say a mumblin' word."
In terms of the The Illinois Black Code, in 1865 was this code not abolished?
There is a lot of water under anyone's historical bridge between the years of 1848 to 1865.
Lincoln changed his views during that time frame as many Americans also did.
"mumblin' word" .....It does not compute