Tài liệu A Century of Negro Migration doc

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new State might be established upwards of 2,000 miles from our frontier.[17] A copy of the pamphlet
containing this proposition was sent to Thomas Jefferson, who was impressed thereby, but not having the
courage to brave the torture of being branded as a friend of the slave, he failed to give it his support.[18] The
same question was brought prominently before the public again in 1816 when there was presented to the
House of Representatives a memorial from the Kentucky Abolition Society praying that the free people of
color be colonized on the public lands. The committee to whom the memorial was referred for consideration
reported that it was expedient to refuse the request on the ground that, as such lands were not granted to free
white men, they saw no reason for granting them to others.[19]
Some Negro slaves unwilling to wait to be carried or invited to the Northwest Territory escaped to that section
even when it was controlled by the French prior to the American Revolution. Slaves who reached the West by
this route caused trouble between the French and the British colonists. Advertising in 1746 for James
Wenyam, a slave, Richard Colgate, his master, said that he swore to a Negro whom he endeavored to induce
to go with him, that he had often been in the backwoods with his master and that he would go to the French
and Indians and fight for them.[20] In an advertisement for a mulatto slave in 1755 Thomas Ringold, his
master, expressed fear that he had escaped by the same route to the French. He, therefore, said: "It seems to be
the interest, at least, of every gentleman that has slaves, to be active in the beginning of these attempts, for
whilst we have the French such near neighbors, we shall not have the least security in that kind of
property."[21]
The good treatment which these slaves received among the French, and especially at Pittsburgh the gateway to
the Northwest Territory, tended to make that city an asylum for those slaves who had sufficient spirit of
adventure to brave the wilderness through which they had to go. Negroes even then had the idea that there was
in this country a place of more privilege than those they enjoyed in the seaboard colonies. Knowing of the
likelihood of the Negroes to rise during the French and Indian War, Governor Dinwiddie wrote Fox one of the
Secretaries of State in 1756: "We dare not venture to part with any of our white men any distance, as we must
have a watchful eye over our Negro slaves, who are upward of one hundred thousand."[22] Brissot de
Warville mentions in his _Travels of 1788_ several examples of marriages of white and blacks in Pittsburgh.
He noted the case of a Negro who married an indentured French servant woman. Out of this union came a
desirable mulatto girl who married a surgeon of Nantes then stationed at Pittsburgh. His family was
considered one of the most respectable of the city. The Negro referred to was doing a creditable business and
his wife took it upon herself to welcome foreigners, especially the French, who came that way. Along the
Ohio also there were several cases of women of color living with unmarried white men; but this was looked
upon by the Negroes as detestable as was evidenced by the fact that, if black women had a quarrel with a
mulatto woman, the former would reproach the latter for being of ignoble blood.[23]
These tendencies, however, could not assure the Negro that the Northwest Territory was to be an asylum for
freedom when in 1763 it passed into the hands of the British, the promoters of the slave trade, and later to the
independent colonies, two of which had no desire to exterminate slavery. Furthermore, when the Ordinance of
1787 with its famous sixth article against slavery was proclaimed, it was soon discovered that this document
was not necessarily emancipatory. As the right to hold slaves was guaranteed to those who owned them prior
to the passage of the Ordinance of 1787, it was to be expected that those attached to that institution would not
indifferently see it pass away. Various petitions, therefore, were sent to the territorial legislature and to
Congress praying that the sixth article of the Ordinance of 1787 be abrogated.[24] No formal action to this
effect was taken, but the practice of slavery was continued even at the winking of the government. Some
slaves came from the Canadians who, in accordance with the slave trade laws of the British Empire, were
supplied with bondsmen. It was the Canadians themselves who provided by act of parliament in 1793 for
prohibiting the importation of slaves and for gradual emancipation. When it seemed later that the cause of
freedom would eventually triumph the proslavery element undertook to perpetuate slavery through a system
of indentured servant labor.
In the formation of the States of Indiana and Illinois the question as to what should be done to harmonize with
CHAPTER I 5
the new constitution the system of indenture to which the territorial legislatures had been committed, caused
heated debate and at times almost conflict. Both Indiana[25] and Illinois[26] finally incorporated into their
constitutions compromise provisions for a nominal prohibition of slavery modified by clauses for the
continuation of the system of indentured labor of the Negroes held to service. The proslavery party
persistently struggled for some years to secure by the interpretation of the laws, by legislation and even by
amending the constitution so to change the fundamental law as to provide for actual slavery. These States,
however, gradually worked toward freedom in keeping with the spirit of the majority who framed the
constitution, despite the fact that the indenture system in southern Illinois and especially in Indiana was at
times tantamount to slavery as it was practiced in parts of the South.
It must be borne in mind here, however, that the North at this time was far from becoming a place of refuge
for Negroes. In the first place, the industrial revolution had not then had time to reduce the Negroes to the
plane of beasts in the cotton kingdom. The rigorous climate and the industries of the northern people,
moreover, were not inviting to the blacks and the development of the carrying trade and the rise of
manufacturing there did not make that section more attractive to unskilled labor. Furthermore, when we
consider the fact that there were many thousands of Negroes in the Southern States the presence of a few in
the North must be regarded as insignificant. This paucity of blacks then obtained especially in the Northwest
Territory, for its French inhabitants instead of being an exploiting people were pioneering, having little use for
slaves in carrying out their policy of merely holding the country for France. Moreover, like certain gentlemen
from Virginia, who after the American Revolution were afraid to bring their slaves with them to occupy their
bounty lands in Ohio, few enterprising settlers from the slave States had invaded the territory with their
Negroes, not knowing whether or not they would be secure in the possession of such property. When we
consider that in 1810 there were only 102,137 Negroes in the North and no more than 3,454 in the Northwest
Territory, we must look to the second decade of the nineteenth century for the beginning of the migration of
the Negroes in the United States.
[Footnote 1: Locke, _Anti-Slavery_, pp. 19, 20, 23; _Works of John Woolman_, pp. 58, 73; and Moore,
_Notes on Slavery in Massachusetts_, p. 71.]
[Footnote 2: Bassett, _Federalist System_, chap. xii. Hart, _Slavery and Abolition_, pp. 153, 154.]
[Footnote 3: Turner, _The Rise of the New West_, pp. 45, 46, 47, 48, 49; Hammond, _Cotton Industry_,
chaps. i and ii; Scherer, _Cotton as a World Power_, pp. 168, 175.]
[Footnote 4: Locke, _Anti-Slavery_, chaps. i and ii.]
[Footnote 5: Jay, _An Inquiry_, p. 30.]
[Footnote 6: Ford edition, _Jefferson's Writings_, III, p. 432.]
[Footnote 7: For the passage of this ordinance three reasons have been given: Slavery then prior to the
invention of the cotton gin was considered a necessary evil in the South. The expected monopoly of the
tobacco and indigo cultivation in the South would be promoted by excluding Negroes from the Northwest
Territory and thus preventing its cultivation there. Dr. Cutler's influence aided by Mr. Grayson of Virginia
was of much assistance. The philanthropic idea was not so prominent as men have thought Dunn, _Indiana_,
p. 212.]
[Footnote 8: Ibid., p. 254.]
[Footnote 9: Code Noir.]
[Footnote 10: Speaking of these settlements in 1750, M. Viner, a Jesuit Missionary to the Indians, said: "We
CHAPTER I 6
have here Whites, Negroes, and Indians, to say nothing of cross-breeds There are five French villages and
three villages of the natives within a space of twenty-one leagues In the five French villages there are
perhaps eleven hundred whites, three hundred blacks, and some sixty red slaves or savages." Unlike the
condition of the slaves in Lower Louisiana where the rigid enforcement of the Slave Code made their lives
almost intolerable, the slaves of the Northwest Territory were for many reasons much more fortunate. In the
first place, subject to the control of a mayor-commandant appointed by the Governor of New Orleans, the
early dwellers in this territory managed their plantations about as they pleased. Moreover, as there were few
planters who owned as many as three or four Negroes, slavery in the Northwest Territory did not get far
beyond the patriarchal stage. Slaves were usually well fed. The relations between master and slave were
friendly. The bondsmen were allowed special privileges on Sundays and holidays and their children were
taught the catechism according to the ordinance of Louis XIV in 1724, which provided that all masters should
educate their slaves in the Apostolic Catholic religion and have them baptized. Male slaves were worked side
by side in the fields with their masters and the female slaves in neat attire went with their mistresses to matins
and vespers. Slaves freely mingled in practically all festive enjoyments See _Jesuit Relations_, LXIX, p.
144; Hutchins, _An Historical Narrative_, 1784; and Code Noir.]
[Footnote 11: Mention was thereafter made of slaves as in the case of Captain Philip Pittman who in 1770
wrote of one Mr. Beauvais, "who owned 240 orpens of cultivated land and eighty slaves; and such a case as
that of a Captain of a militia at St. Philips, possessing twenty blacks; and the case of Mr. Bales, a very rich
man of St. Genevieve, Illinois, owning a hundred Negroes, beside having white people constantly
employed." See Captain Pittman's _The Present State of the European Settlements in the Mississippi_, 1770.]
[Footnote 12: Dunn, _Indiana_, chap. vi.]
[Footnote 13: Hinsdale, _Old Northwest_, p. 350.]
[Footnote 14: _Tyrannical Libertymen_, pp. 10, 11; Locke, _Anti-Slavery_, pp. 31, 32; Brannagan, _Serious
Remonstrance_, p. 18.]
[Footnote 15: Washington edition of _Jefferson's Writings_, chap. vi, p. 456, and chap. viii, p. 380.]
[Footnote 16: Ford edition of _Jefferson's Writings_, III, p. 244; IX, p. 303; X, pp. 76, 290.]
[Footnote 17: Brannagan, _Serious Remonstrances_, p. 18.]
[Footnote 18: Library edition of _Jefferson's Writings_, X, pp. 295, 296.]
[Footnote 19: Adams, _Neglected Period of Anti-Slavery_, pp. 129, 130.]
[Footnote 20: _The Pennsylvania Gazette_, July 31, 1746.]
[Footnote 21: _The Maryland Gazette_, March 20, 1755.]
[Footnote 22: _Washington's Writings_, II, p. 134.]
[Footnote 23: Brissot de Warville, _New Travels_, II, pp. 33-34.]
[Footnote 24: Harris, _Slavery in Illinois_, chaps. iii, iv, and v; Dunn, _Indiana_, pp. 218-260; Hinsdale, _Old
Northwest_, pp. 351-358.]
[Footnote 25: This code provided that all male Negroes under fifteen, years of age either owned or acquired
must remain in servitude until they reached the age of thirty-five and female slaves until thirty-two. The male
CHAPTER I 7
children of such persons held to service could be bound out for thirty years and the female children for
twenty-eight. Slaves brought into the territory had to comply with contracts for terms of service when their
master registered them within thirty days from the time he brought them into the territory. Indentured black
servants were not exactly sold, but the law permitted the transfer from one owner to another when the slave
acquiesced in the transfer before a notary, but it was often done without regard to the slave. They were even
bequeathed and sold as personal property at auction. Notices for sale were frequent. There were rewards for
runaway slaves. Negroes whose terms had almost expired were kidnapped and sold to New Orleans. The
legislature imposed a penalty for such, but it was not generally enforced. They were taxable property valued
according to the length of service. Negroes served as laborers on farms, house servants, and in salt mines, the
latter being an excuse for holding them as slaves. Persons of color could purchase servants of their own race.
The law provided that the Justice of the County could on complaint from the master order that a lazy servant
be whipped. In this frontier section, therefore, where men often took the law in their own hands, slaves were
often punished and abused just as they were in the Southern States. The law dealing with fugitives was
somewhat harsh. When apprehended, fugitives had to serve two days extra for each day they lost from their
master's service. The harboring of a runaway slave was punishable by a fine of one day for each the slave
might be concealed. Consistently too with the provision of the laws in most slave States, slaves could retain
all goods or money lawfully acquired during their servitude provided their master gave his consent. Upon the
demonstration of proof to the county court that they had served their term they could obtain from that tribunal
certificates of freedom. See The Laws of Indiana.]
[Footnote 26: Masters had to provide adequate food, and clothing and good lodging for the slave, but the
penalty for failing to comply with this law was not clear and even if so, it happened that many masters never
observed it. There was also an effort to prevent cruelty to slaves, but it was difficult to establish the guilt of
masters when the slave could not bear witness against his owner and it was not likely that the neighbor
equally guilty or indifferent to the complaints of the blacks would take their petitions to court.
Under this system a large number of slaves were brought into the Territory especially after 1807. There were
135 in 1800. This increase came from Kentucky and Tennessee. As those brought were largely boys and girls
with a long period of service, this form of slavery was assured for some years. The children of these blacks
were often registered for thirty-five instead of thirty years of service on the ground that they were not born in
Illinois. No one thought of persecuting a master for holding servants unlawfully and Negroes themselves
could be easily deceived. Very few settlers brought their slaves there to free them. There were only 749 in
1820. If one considers the proportion of this to the number brought there for manumission this seems hardly
true. It is better to say that during these first two decades of the nineteenth century some settlers came for both
purposes, some to hold slaves, some, as Edward Coles, to free them. It was not only practiced in the southern
part along the Mississippi and Ohio but as far north in Illinois as Sangamon County, were found servants
known as "yellow boys" and "colored girls." See the Laws of Illinois.]
CHAPTER II
A TRANSPLANTATION TO THE NORTH
Just after the settlement of the question of holding the western posts by the British and the adjustment of the
trouble arising from their capture of slaves during our second war with England, there started a movement of
the blacks to this frontier territory. But, as there were few towns or cities in the Northwest during the first
decades of the new republic, the flight of the Negro into that territory was like that of a fugitive taking his
chances in the wilderness. Having lost their pioneering spirit in passing through the ordeal of slavery, not
many of the bondmen took flight in that direction and few free Negroes ventured to seek their fortunes in
those wilds during the period of the frontier conditions, especially when the country had not then undergone a
thorough reaction against the Negro.
CHAPTER II 8
The migration of the Negroes, however, received an impetus early in the nineteenth century. This came from
the Quakers, who by the middle of the eighteenth century had taken the position that all members of their sect
should free their slaves.[1] The Quakers of North Carolina and Virginia had as early as 1740 taken up the
serious question of humanely treating their Negroes. The North Carolina Quakers advised Friends to
emancipate their slaves, later prohibited traffic in them, forbade their members from even hiring the blacks out
in 1780 and by 1818 had exterminated the institution among their communicants.[2] After healing themselves
of the sin, they had before the close of the eighteenth century militantly addressed themselves to the task of
abolishing slavery and the slave trade throughout the world. Differing in their scheme from that of most
anti-slavery leaders, they were advocating the establishment of the freedmen in society as good citizens and to
that end had provided for the religious and mental instruction of their slaves prior to emancipating them.[3]
Despite the fact that the Quakers were not free to extend their operations throughout the colonies, they did
much to enable the Negroes to reach free soil. As the Quakers believed in the freedom of the will, human
brotherhood, and equality before God, they did not, like the Puritans, find difficulties in solving the problem
of elevating the Negroes. Whereas certain Puritans were afraid that conversion might lead to the destruction of
caste and the incorporation of undesirable persons into the "Body Politick," the Quakers proceeded on the
principle that all men are brethren and, being equal before God, should be considered equal before the law. On
account of unduly emphasizing the relation of man to God, the Puritans "atrophied their social humanitarian
instinct" and developed into a race of self-conscious saints. Believing in human nature and laying stress upon
the relation between man and man, the Quakers became the friends of all humanity.[4]
In 1693 George Keith, a leading Quaker of his day, came forward as a promoter of the religious training of the
slaves as a preparation for emancipation. William Penn advocated the emancipation of slaves, that they might
have every opportunity for improvement. In 1695 the Quakers while protesting against the slave trade
denounced also the policy of neglecting their moral and spiritual welfare.[5] The growing interest of this sect
in the Negroes was shown later by the development in 1713 of a definite scheme for freeing and returning
them to Africa after having been educated and trained to serve as missionaries on that continent.
When the manumission of the slaves was checked by the reaction against that class and it became more of a
problem to establish them in a hostile environment, certain Quakers of North Carolina and Virginia adopted
the scheme of settling them in Northern States.[6] At first, they sent such freedmen to Pennsylvania. But for
various reasons this did not prove to be the best asylum. In the first place, Pennsylvania bordered on the slave
States, Maryland and Virginia, from which agents came to kidnap free Negroes. Furthermore, too many
Negroes were already rushing to that commonwealth as the Negroes' heaven and there was the chance that the
Negroes might be settled elsewhere in the North, where they might have better economic opportunities.[7] A
committee of forty was accordingly appointed by North Carolina Quakers in 1822 to examine the laws of
other free States with a view to determining what section would be most suitable for colonizing these blacks.
This committee recommended in its report that the blacks be colonized in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois.
The yearly meeting, therefore, ordered the removal of such Negroes as fast as they were willing or as might be
consistent with the profession of their sect, and instructed the agents effecting the removal to draw on the
treasury for any sum not exceeding two hundred dollars to defray expenses. An increasing number reached
these States every year but, owing to the inducements offered by the American Colonization Society, some of
them went to Liberia. When Liberia, however, developed into every thing but a haven of rest, the number sent
to the settlements in the Northwest greatly increased.
The quarterly meeting succeeded in sending to the West 133 Negroes, including 23 free blacks and slaves
given up because they were connected by marriage with those to be transplanted.[8] The Negro colonists
seemed to prefer Indiana.[9] They went in three companies and with suitable young Friends to whom were
executed powers of attorney to manumit, set free, settle and bind them out.[10] Thirteen carts and wagons
were bought for these three companies; $1,250 was furnished for their traveling expenses and clothing, the
whole cost amounting to $2,490. It was planned to send forty or fifty to Long Island and twenty to the interior
CHAPTER II 9
of Pennsylvania, but they failed to prosper and reports concerning them stamped them as destitute and
deplorably ignorant. Those who went to Ohio and Indiana, however, did well.[11]
Later we receive another interesting account of this exodus. David White led a company of fifty-three into the
West, thirty-eight of whom belonged to Friends, five to a member who had ordered that they be taken West at
his expense. Six of these slaves belonged to Samuel Lawrence, a Negro slaveholder, who had purchased
himself and family. White pathetically reports the case of four of the women who had married slave husbands
and had twenty children for the possession of whom the Friends had to stand a lawsuit in the courts. The
women had decided to leave their husbands behind but the thought of separation so tormented them that they
made an effort to secure their liberty. Upon appealing to their masters for terms the owners, somewhat moved
by compassion, sold them for one half of their value. White then went West and left four in Chillicothe,
twenty-three in Leesburg and twenty-six in Wayne County, Indiana, without encountering any material
difficulty.[12]
Others had thought of this plan but the Quakers actually carried it out on a small scale. Here we see again not
only their desire to have the Negroes emancipated but the vital interest of the Quakers in success of the blacks,
for members of this sect not only liberated their slaves but sold out their own holdings in the South and moved
with these freedmen into the North. Quakers who then lived in free States offered fugitives material assistance
by open and clandestine methods.[13] The most prominent leader developed by the movement was Levi
Coffin, whose daring deeds in behalf of the fugitives made him the reputed President of the Underground
Railroad. Most of the Quaker settlements of Negroes with which he was connected were made in what is now
Hamilton, Howard, Wayne, Randolph, Vigo, Gibson, Grant, Rush, and Tipton Counties, Indiana, and Darke
County, Ohio.
The promotion of this movement by the Quakers was well on its way by 1815 and was not materially checked
until the fifties when the operations of the drastic fugitive slave law interfered, and even then the movement
had gained such momentum and the execution of that mischievous measure had produced in the North so
much reaction like that expressed in the personal liberty laws, that it could not be stopped. The Negroes found
homes in Western New York, Western Pennsylvania and throughout the Northwest Territory. The Negro
population of York, Harrisburg and Philadelphia rapidly increased. A settlement of Negroes developed at
Sandy Lake in Northwestern Pennsylvania[14] and there was another near Berlin Cross Roads in Ohio.[15] A
group of Negroes migrating to this same State found homes in the Van Buren Township of Shelby
County.[16] A more significant settlement in the State was made by Samuel Gist, an Englishman possessing
extensive plantations in Hanover, Amherst, and Henrico Counties, Virginia. He provided in his will that his
slaves should be freed and sent to the North. He further provided that the revenue from his plantation the last
year of his life be applied in building schoolhouses and churches for their accommodation, and "that all
money coming to him in Virginia be set aside for the employment of ministers and teachers to instruct them."
In 1818, Wickham, the executor of his estate, purchased land and established these Negroes in what was
called the Upper and Lower Camps of Brown County.[17]
Augustus Wattles, a Quaker from Connecticut, made a settlement in Mercer County, Ohio, early in the
nineteenth century. In the winter of 1833-4, he providentially became acquainted with the colored people of
Cincinnati, finding there about "4,000 totally ignorant of every thing calculated to make good citizens." As
most of them had been slaves, excluded from every avenue of moral and mental improvement, he established
for them a school which he maintained for two years. He then proposed to these Negroes to go into the
country and purchase land to remove them "from those contaminating influences which had so long crushed
them in our cities and villages."[18] They consented on the condition that he would accompany them and
teach school. He travelled through Canada, Michigan and Indiana, looking for a suitable location, and finally
selected for settlement a place in Mercer County, Ohio. In 1835, he made the first purchase of land there for
this purpose and before 1838 Negroes had bought there about 30,000 acres, at the earnest appeal of this
benefactor, who had travelled into almost every neighborhood of the blacks in the State, and laid before them
the benefits of a permanent home for themselves and of education for their children.[19]
CHAPTER II 10
This settlement was further increased in 1858 by the manumitted slaves of John Harper of North Carolina.[20]
John Randolph of Roanoke endeavored to establish his slaves as freemen in this county but the Germans who
had settled in that community a little ahead of them started such a disturbance that Randolph's executor could
not carry out his plan, although he had purchased a large tract of land there.[21] It was necessary to send these
freemen to Miami County. Theodoric H. Gregg of Dinwiddie County, Virginia, liberated his slaves in 1854
and sent them to Ohio.[22] Nearer to the Civil War, when public opinion was proscribing the uplift of
Negroes in Kentucky, Noah Spears secured near Xenia, Greene County, Ohio, a small parcel of land for
sixteen of his former bondsmen in 1856.[23] Other freedmen found their way to this community in later years
and it became so prosperous that it was selected as the site of Wilberforce University.
This transplantation extended into Michigan. With the help of persons philanthropically inclined there sprang
up a flourishing group of Negroes in Detroit. Early in the nineteenth century they began to acquire property
and to provide for the education of their children. Their record was such as to merit the encomiums of their
fellow white citizens. In later years this group in Detroit was increased by the operation of laws hostile to free
Negroes in the South in that life for this class not only became intolerable but necessitated their expatriation.
Because of the Virginia drastic laws and especially that of 1838 prohibiting the return to that State of such
Negro students as had been accustomed to go North to attend school, after they were denied this privilege at
home, the father of Richard DeBaptiste and Marie Louis More, the mother of Fannie M. Richards, led a
colony of free Negroes from Fredericksburg to Detroit.[24] And for about similar reasons the father of Robert
A. Pelham conducted others from Petersburg, Virginia, in 1859.[25] One Saunders, a planter of Cabell
County, West Virginia, liberated his slaves some years later and furnished them homes among the Negroes
settled in Cass County, Michigan, about ninety miles east of Chicago, and ninety-five miles west of Detroit.
This settlement had become attractive to fugitive slaves and freedmen because the Quakers settled there
welcomed them on their way to freedom and in some cases encouraged them to remain among them. When
the increase of fugitives was rendered impossible during the fifties when the Fugitive Slave Law was being
enforced, there was still a steady growth due to the manumission of slaves by sympathetic and benevolent
masters in the South.[26] Most of these Negroes settled in Calvin Township, in that county, so that of the
1,376 residing there in 1860, 795 were established in this district, there being only 580 whites dispersed
among them. The Negro settlers did not then obtain control of the government but they early purchased land
to the extent of several thousand acres and developed into successful small farmers. Being a little more
prosperous than the average Negro community in the North, the Cass County settlement not only attracted
Negroes fleeing from hardships in the South but also those who had for some years unsuccessfully endeavored
to establish themselves in other communities on free soil.[27]
These settlements were duplicated a little farther west in Illinois. Edward Coles, a Virginian, who in 1818
emigrated to Illinois, of which he later served as Governor and as liberator from slavery, settled his slaves in
that commonwealth. He brought them to Edwardsville, where they constituted a community known as "Coles'
Negroes."[28] There was another community of Negroes in Illinois in what is now called Brooklyn situated
north of East St. Louis. This town was a center of some consequence in the thirties. It became a station of the
Underground Railroad on the route to Alton and to Canada. As all of the Negroes who emerged from the
South did not go farther into the North, the black population of the town gradually grew despite the fact that
slave hunters captured and reenslaved many of the Negroes who settled there.[29]
These settlements together with favorable communities of sympathetic whites promoted the migration of the
free Negroes and fugitives from the South by serving as centers offering assistance to those fleeing to the free
States and to Canada. The fugitives usually found friends in Philadelphia, Columbia, Pittsburgh, Elmira,
Rochester, Buffalo, Gallipolis, Portsmouth, Akron, Cincinnati, and Detroit. They passed on the way to
freedom through Columbia, Philadelphia, Elizabethtown and by way of sea to New York and Boston, from
which they proceeded to permanent settlements in the North.[30]
In the West, the migration of the blacks was further facilitated by the peculiar geographic condition in that the
CHAPTER II 11
Appalachian highland, extending like a peninsula into the South, had a natural endowment which produced a
class of white citizens hostile to the institution of slavery. These mountaineers coming later to the colonies
had to go to the hills and mountains because the first comers from Europe had taken up the land near the sea.
Being of the German and Scotch-Irish Presbyterian stock, they had ideals differing widely from those of the
seaboard slaveholders.[31] The mountaineers believed in "civil liberty in fee simple, and an open road to civil
honors, secured to the poorest and feeblest members of society." The eastern element had for their ideal a
government of interests for the people. They believed in liberty but that of kings, lords, and commons, not of
all the people.[32]
Settled along the Appalachian highland, these new stocks continued to differ from those dwelling near the sea,
especially on the slavery question.[33] The natural endowment of the mountainous section made slavery there
unprofitable and the mountaineers bore it grievously that they were attached to commonwealths dominated by
the radical pro-slavery element of the South, who sacrificed all other interests to safeguard those of the
peculiar institution. There developed a number of clashes in all of the legislatures and constitutional
conventions of the Southern States along the Atlantic, but in every case the defenders of the interests of
slavery won. When, therefore, slaves with the assistance of anti-slavery mountaineers began to escape to the
free States, they had little difficulty in making their way through the Appalachian region, where the love of
freedom had so set the people against slavery that although some of them yielded to the inevitable sin, they
never made any systematic effort to protect it.[34]
The development of the movement in these mountains was more than interesting. During the first quarter of
the nineteenth century there were many ardent anti-slavery leaders in the mountains. These were not
particularly interested in the Negro but were determined to keep that soil for freedom that the settlers might
there realize the ideals for which they had left their homes in Europe. When the industrial revolution with the
attendant rise of the plantation cotton culture made abolition in the South improbable, some of them became
colonizationists, hoping to destroy the institution through deportation, which would remove the objection of
certain masters who would free their slaves provided they were not left in the States to become a public
charge.[35] Some of this sentiment continued in the mountains even until the Civil War. The highlanders,
therefore, found themselves involved in a continuous embroglio because they were not moved by reactionary
influences which were unifying the South for its bold effort to make slavery a national institution.[36] The
other members of the mountaineer anti-slavery group became attached to the Underground Railroad system,
endeavoring by secret methods to place on free soil a sufficiently large number of fugitives to show a decided
diminution in the South.[37] John Brown, who communicated with the South through these mountains,
thought that his work would be a success, if he could change the situation in one county in each of these
States.
The lines along which these Underground Railroad operators moved connected naturally with the Quaker
settlements established in free States and the favorable sections in the Appalachian region. Many of these
workers were Quakers who had already established settlements of slaves on estates which they had purchased
in the Northwest Territory. Among these were John Rankin, James Gilliland, Jesse Lockehart, Robert
Dobbins, Samuel Crothers, Hugh L. Fullerton, and William Dickey. Thus they connected the heart of the
South with the avenues to freedom in the North.[38] There were routes extending from this section into Ohio,
Indiana, Illinois and Pennsylvania. Over the Ohio and Kentucky route culminating chiefly in Cleveland,
Sandusky and Detroit, however, more fugitives made their way to freedom than through any other avenue,[39]
partly too because they found the limestone caves very helpful for hiding by day. These operations extended
even through Tennessee into northern Georgia and Alabama. Dillingham, Josiah Henson and Harriet Tubman
used these routes to deliver many a Negro from slavery.
The opportunity thus offered to help the oppressed brought forward a class of anti-slavery men, who went
beyond the limit of merely expressing their horror of the evil. They believed that something should be done
"to deliver the poor that cry and to direct the wanderer in the right way."[40] Translating into action what had
long been restricted to academic discussion, these philanthropic workers ushered in a new era in the uplift of
CHAPTER II 12
the blacks, making abolition more of a reality. The abolition element of the North then could no longer be
considered an insignificant minority advocating a hopeless cause but a factor in drawing from the South a part
of its slave population and at the same time offering asylum to the free Negroes whom the southerners
considered undesirable.[4l] Prominent among those who aided this migration in various ways were Benjamin
Lundy of Tennessee and James G. Birney, a former slaveholder of Huntsville, Alabama, who manumitted his
slaves and apprenticed and educated some of them in Ohio.
This exodus of the Negroes to the free States promoted the migration of others of their race to Canada, a more
congenial part beyond the borders of the United States. The movement from the free States into Canada,
moreover, was contemporary with that from the South to the free States as will be evidenced by the fact that
15,000 of the 60,000 Negroes in Canada in 1860 were free born. As Detroit was the chief gateway for them to
Canada, most of these refugees settled in towns of Southern Ontario not far from that city. These were Dawn,
Colchester, Elgin, Dresden, Windsor, Sandwich, Bush, Wilberforce, Hamilton, St. Catherines, Chatham,
Riley, Anderton, London, Malden and Gonfield.[42] And their coming to Canada was not checked even by
request from their enemies that they be turned away from that country as undesirables, for some of the white
people there welcomed and assisted them. Canadians later experienced a change in their attitude toward these
refugees but these British Americans never made the life of the Negro there so intolerable as was the case in
some of the free States.
It should be observed here that this movement, unlike the exodus of the Negroes of today, affected an unequal
distribution of the enlightened Negroes.[43] Those who are fleeing from the South today are largely laborers
seeking economic opportunities. The motive at work in the mind of the antebellum refugee was higher. In
1840 there were more intelligent blacks in the South than in the North but not so after 1850, despite the
vigorous execution of the Fugitive Slave Law in some parts of the North. While the free Negro population of
the slave States increased only 23,736 from 1850 to 1860, that of the free States increased 29,839. In the
South, only Delaware, Maryland and North Carolina showed a noticeable increase in the number of free
persons of color during the decade immediately preceding the Civil War. This element of the population had
only slightly increased in Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, Virginia, Louisiana, South Carolina and
the District of Columbia. The number of free Negroes of Florida remained constant. Those of Arkansas,
Mississippi and Texas diminished. In the North, of course, the migration had caused the tendency to be in the
other direction. With the exception of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and New York which had about the
same free colored population in 1860 as they had in 1850 there was a general increase in the number of
Negroes in the free States. Ohio led in this respect, having had during this period an increase of 11,394.[44] A
glance at the table on the accompanying page will show in detail the results of this migration.
STATISTICS OF THE FREE COLORED POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES
State Population 1850 1860 Alabama 2,265 2,690
Arkansas 608 144 California 962 4,086 Connecticut 7,693 8,627
Delaware 18,073 19,829 Florida 932 932 Georgia 2,931 3,500
Illinois 5,436 7,628 Indiana 11,262 11,428 Iowa 333 1,069
Kentucky 10,011 10,684 Louisiana 17,462 18,647 Maine 1,356 1,327
Kansas 625 Maryland 74,723 83,942 Massachusetts 9,064 9,602
Michigan 2,583 6,797 Minnesota 259 Mississippi 930 773
Missouri 2,618 3,572 New Hampshire 520 494 New Jersey 23,810 25,318
New York 49,069 49,005 North Carolina 27,463 30,463 Ohio 25,279
36,673 Oregon 128 Pennsylvania 53,626 56,949 Rhode Island 3,670 3,952
South Carolina 8,960 9,914 Tennessee 6,422 7,300 Texas 397 355
Vermont 718 709 Virginia 54,333 58,042 Wisconsin 635 1,171
Territories: Colorado 46 Dakota 0 District of Columbia 10,059 11,131
Minnesota 39 Nebraska 67 Nevada 45 New Mexico 207 85
Oregon 24 Utah 22 30 Washington 30 _______ _______ Total
CHAPTER II 13
434,495 488,070
[Footnote 1: Moore, _Anti-Slavery_, p. 79; and _Special Report of the United States Commissioner of
Education_, 1871, p. 376; Weeks, _Southern Quakers_, pp. 215, 216, 231, 230, 242.]
[Footnote 2: _The Southern Workman_, xxvii, p. 161.]
[Footnote 3: Rhodes, _History of the United States_, chap. i, p. 6; Bancroft, _History of the United States_,
chap. ii, p. 401; and Locke, _Anti-Slavery_, p. 32.]
[Footnote 4: _A Brief Statement of the Rise and Progress of the Testimony of the Quakers_, passim;
Woodson, _The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861_, p. 43.]
[Footnote 5: Woodson, _The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861_, p. 44; and Locke, _Anti-Slavery_, p. 32.]
[Footnote 6: _The Southern Workman_, xxxvii, pp. 158-169.]
[Footnote 7: Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, pp. 144, 145, 151, 155.]
[Footnote 8: _Southern Workman_, xxxvii, p. 157.]
[Footnote 9: Levi Coffin, _Reminiscences_, chaps, i and ii.]
[Footnote 10: _Southern Workman_, xxxvii, pp. 161-163.]
[Footnote 11: Coffin, _Reminiscences_, p. 109; and Howe's _Historical Collections_, p. 356.]
[Footnote 12: _Southern Workman_, xxxvii, pp. 162, 163.]
[Footnote 13: Levi Coffin, _Reminiscences_, pp. 108-111.]
[Footnote 14: Siebert, _The Underground Railroad_, p. 249.]
[Footnote 15: Langston, _From the Virginia Plantation to the National Capitol_, p. 35.]
[Footnote 16: Howe, _Historical Collections_, p. 465.]
[Footnote 17: _History of Brown County, Ohio_, p. 313.]
[Footnote 18: Wattles said: he purchased for himself 190 acres of land, to establish a manual labor school for
colored boys. He had maintained a school on it, at his own expense, till the eleventh of November, 1842.
While in Philadelphia the winter before, he became acquainted with the trustees of the late Samuel Emlen, a
Friend of New Jersey. He left by his will $20,000 for the "support and education in school learning and the
mechanic arts and agriculture, boys, of African and Indian descent, whose parents would give them up to the
school. They united their means and purchased Wattles farm, and appointed him the superintendent of the
establishment, which they called the Emlen Institute." See Howe's _Historical Collections_, p. 356.]
[Footnote 19: Howe's _Historical Collections_, p. 355.]
[Footnote 20: Manuscripts in the possession of J.E. Moorland.]
[Footnote 21: _The African Repository_, xxii, pp. 322, 333.]
CHAPTER II 14