The History of Free Black People

Northwest states functioned as kind of laboratories for basically what would later happen in reconstruction. They're struggling with this question of what to do about free black people and they're thinking about this literally 50 years before reconstruction makes it a nationwide question. What if the republican led reconstruction congress had said oh let's set up a nation that looks more like Antebellum Illinois right so part of the question that the book is asking is why didn't it go that way?