Below are two paragraphs from my article on nineteenth-century Gallatin County, which was published in the winter 2001-2002 issue of the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (vol. 94, no. 4, pp. 383-402). The article, "Pursuing the Dream in Nineteenth-Century Gallatin County," is based on the biographies of Gallatin County citizens found in two county histories: Goodspeed's History of Gallatin, Saline, Hamilton, Franklin and Williamson Counties, Illinois (1887) and Memoirs of the Lower Ohio Valley: Personal and Genealogical with Portraits (1905). Wanda Avila *** From "Pursuing the Dream in Nineteenth-Century Gallatin County": Also contributing to Gallatin County's early prosperity were the hundreds of slaves and indentured servants who labored in the county, especially in the salt mines, before the Civil War. Although the Northwest Ordinance prohibited slavery throughout the Illinois Territory, it protected existing slavery and allowed indentured servitude, a form of slavery. Slaves and indentured servants were essential in the salt-making process because white men would not take the job, deeming the wages too low and the work too hard. Besides, it was believed that only blacks could survive the constant exposure to the sun and the intense heat of the furnaces. The need for slave labor at the salt works prompted 82 percent of Gallatin County to vote in 1824 to amend the constitution to make Illinois a slave state. Although the 1848 Illinois Constitution finally declared all slavery and indentured servitude in the state to be at an end, slavery continued into the 1850s in Gallatin County. Furtherm! ore, the state's savage Black Code remained on the statute books until after the end of the Civil War. Some Gallatin County citizens may also have profited from the kidnapping of free blacks and indentured servants, who were then carried to the South to be sold back into slavery. Although kidnapping happened throughout southern Illinois, Gallatin County was apparently the center of the "reverse underground railroad." One of the men frequently indicted for kidnapping was John Hart Crenshaw, whose biography appears in Memoirs, though this part of his life is not mentioned. In his historical introduction, Goodspeed mentions a specific incident in the early 1840s when Crenshaw was indicted by the grand jury for kidnapping. Goodspeed says that Crenshaw was acquitted "because the State's attorney could not prove that the negroes had been taken out of the state, although it was well known to the community to be the case." Recent research has revealed additional evidence of Crenshaw's involvement. Largely as a result of the new evidence, the State of Illinois has agreed to buy Crensh! aw's three-story mansion, on a site known as Hickory Hill near Equality, and to operate it as a museum. It is believed that Crenshaw imprisoned his victims on the third floor of the house until they could be ferreted out of the county.