So I am very new to inkscape, but I am trying to trace a bitmap lineart. However, whenever I do the trace command, it creates two sets of vectors: one on the inside of the line, and one on the outside of the line. Is there any way at all to get it to just make a single vector in the middle of the bitmap image line?

You could try the Centerline Trace extension. https://github.com/fablabnbg/inkscape-centerline-trace Depending on the image, it might not work very well for you. But there's really no other solution, except to manually trace the image with the Pen tool.