That's what he certainly wanted it to be, and that's what Illinois' laws were explicitly intended to do - keep blacks out and make it a CRIMINAL OFFENSE if one even so much as crossed the state's borders.
Yet the black population more than doubled between 1840 and 1860, something which did not happen in any of the southern states.
The illegal mexican population in the US grows by several million every decade yet by definition not one of them is obeying the laws by being here. So was the case in Illinois.
As for doubling the population, Illinois' free blacks went from a tiny 3,598 in 1840 to 7,628 in 1860 - technically doubling in number yet a numerical gain of only 4,000 - a gain that only puts it barely ahead of the geographically tiny and rural state of Delaware.
Check out Maryland for a comparison, which had 62,078 in 1840 and 83,942 in 1860 - a gain of over 20,000 free blacks.
Virginia gained almost 10,000 in this same period.
North Carolina gained 8,000 in this same period.
Interesting, considering that Lincoln wasn't born when the original indenture law passed, and was all of 10 years old when those Blake Codes were passed. If he was expressing an opinion on these subjects at that age then he was even more precocious than I thought.
As for doubling the population, Illinois' free blacks went from a tiny 3,598 in 1840 to 7,628 in 1860 - technically doubling in number yet a numerical gain of only 4,000 - a gain that only puts it barely ahead of the geographically tiny and rural state of Delaware.
But far ahead of states like Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, etc. In fact, the free population of Illinois in 1860 was larger than 7 of the 11 confederate states, and grew at a faster rate than all of them. And all without a slave population to emancipate, and in the teeth of those darned Black Codes.