The Old Slave House - Equality, Illinois
Hickory Hill Plantation House was once the manor of John Hart Crenshaw. It is here that he is said to have both harbored slaves and once entertained a future president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln.
While visiting with a friend recently in Harrisburg, Illinois, he informed me of the nearby Old Slave House and asked if I would like to see it. Now virtually every northerner thinks he knows that there were no slaves in Illinois, so I thought this might be be interesting to see. It was.
We found the Old Slave House in the country, sitting high on a hill near the small community of Equality, Illinois. It is owned by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency which has posted "No Trespassing" signs. A local deputy sheriff actually lives in the slave house to keep curious visitors away. I had to photograph it from a distance.
The Old Slave House became a tourist attraction in the 1920s and was open to the public until 1996. It was closed by the state of Illinois which had purchased the property. There are no plans to reopen the site at any specific point in the future. Many strong efforts by local people to have the historical Old Slave House reopened have been ignored by state authorities. Could it be that in today's climate of political correctness and historical cover-up, Illinois officials would prefer to keep their own sordid past a secret and help perpetuate the myth that slavery was only a Southern problem?
The house's dark history goes back to the days of the salt works in southeastern Illinois. It happens that salt production was the state's first industry. The need for labor to work the salt was all the excuse that was needed to wink at the law and allow slavery in its various forms to operate within the borders of Illinois.
Generations of people have said the house is the haunt of ghosts; some consider it one of the most haunted sites in America. However, it was not the ghosts, but the house's architecture that put the slave house on the National Register of Historic Places. It has also been officially recognized for its history as a station on the "Reverse Underground Railroad." As such, the house was part of a large network that operated throughout Illinois and the United States. It was used as a hideout for kidnappers and the free black people who were captured and sold into slavery.
Numerous sources show that the stories which have long been told about the old slave house are based on solid evidence. One of these stories is that the young state representative, Abraham Lincoln, once spent the night here at Hickory Hill as a guest of the slave trading Mr. Crenshaw. Mr. Lincoln partied and danced with the ladies in the ballroom on the second floor while slaves were being kept above them in an attic prison.
For those who wish to know more, an excellent book on the subject has been written by Jon Musgrave titled "Slaves, Salt, Sex & Mr. Crenshaw." It can be found at http://www.illinoishistory.com./
The Illinois Slave House - Hidden, but not Forgotten
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