Crenshaw's Kidnapping Indictments (1820s, 1842)

John Hart Crenshaw, who leased enslaved labor from Kentucky under a legal exemption for Illinois's state-owned salt works, was indicted for kidnapping free Black Illinoisans and selling them into Southern slavery in the 1820s and again in 1842. In the 1842 case, he was accused of orchestrating the abduction of a free Black woman named Maria and her children, who were never seen again after being taken south. Crenshaw was acquitted both times, in part because Illinois law barred Black witnesses from testifying against a white defendant, leaving little admissible evidence against him despite widespread local knowledge of his operation.