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x: "In the 1860 census there were over 7,000 Blacks in Illinois and over 6,000 in Michigan.
Whoever was enforcing the laws wasn't trying very hard."

In round numbers, populations of freed-blacks between 1820 and 1860 grew:

200% in the South (Lower, Upper & Border)
100% in the North East (Maine through Connecticut)
200% in Middle Atlantic states (NY, NJ & PA)
1,000% in the Mid-West (Ohio through Illinois & Minnesota)

By 1860 there were nearly 500,000 freed-blacks, half in the South, half in the North.
Some Northern states did allow freedmen to vote, though it's not clear exactly which, when or how many actually did vote.

Thomas Jefferson proposed the first plan for compensated emancipation and recolonization of freedmen to Africa.
Compensated emancipation was rejected by slaveholders, but recolonization did become US Federal government official policy.

In 1819 Congress first appropriated $100,000 for recolonization of freed blacks to Africa and over the following 40 years about 13,000 sailed & settled in Liberia.
During the Civil War another 20,000 freed-blacks volunteered for recolonization in Panama or Haiti, but both projects failed and none eventually did recolonize.

So recolonizing had a long history but was never practical or even much desired by former slaves themselves.

Lincoln, like Jefferson, thought recolonizing a good idea until practical experience proved otherwise, then he finally abandoned it.
When he discussed it in the White House with black leaders they lead him to understand that's not what they wanted.

What they wanted were the 13th, 14th & 15th Amendments -- full citizenship, here, not far away recolonization.