 CHAPTER 1 FINDING A PLACE OF REFUGE The migration of the blacks from the southern states to those offering them better opportunities is nothing new. The objective here therefore will be not merely to present the causes and results of the recent movement of the Negroes to the north, but to connect this event with the periodical movements of the blacks to that section from about the year 1815 to the present day. That this movement should date from that period indicates that the policy of the common welts toward the Negro must have then begun decidedly to differ so as to make one section of the country more congenial to the despised blacks than the other. As a matter of fact, to justify this conclusion we need but give passing mention here to developments too well known to be discussed in detail. Henry and the original thirteen states was the normal condition of the Negroes. When however, James Otis, Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson began to discuss the natural rights of the colonists, then said to be oppressed by Great Britain. Some of the patriots of the revolution carried their reasoning to its logical conclusion, contending that the Negroes slaves should be freed on the same grounds, as their rights were also founded in the laws of nature. So it was soon done in most northern common welts. Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts exterminated the institution by constitutional provision and Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania by gradual Emancipation Acts, and it was thought that the institution would soon there after pass away even in all southern common welts except South Carolina and Georgia, where it had seemingly become profitable. There came later the industrial revolution following the invention of what steam engine and mechanical appliances like Whitney's cotton gin, all which changed the economic aspect of the modern world, making slavery and institution offering means of exploitation to those engaged in the production of cotton. This revolution rendered necessary a large supply of cheap labor for cotton culture out of which the plantation system grew. The Negroes slaves therefore lost all hope of ever winning their freedom in South Carolina and Georgia, and in Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina, where the sentiment and favor abolition had been favorable, there was a decided reaction which soon blighted their hopes. In the northern common welts, however, the sentiment in behalf of universal freedom, though at times dormant, was ever apparent despite the attachment to the south of the trading classes of northern cities, which profited by the slave trade and their commerce with the slaveholding states. The northern states maintaining this liberal attitude developed therefore into an asylum for the Negroes who were oppressed in the south. The Negroes, however, were not generally welcomed in the north. Many of the northerners who sympathized with the oppressed blacks in the south never dreamt of having them as their neighbors. There were consequently always two classes of anti-slavery people, those who advocated the abolition of slavery to elevate the blacks to the dignity of citizenship, and those who merely hoped to exterminate the institution because it was an economic evil. The latter generally believed that the blacks constituted an inferior class that could not discharge the duties of citizenship, and when the proposal to incorporate the blacks into the body politic was clearly presented to these agitators, their anti-slavery order was decidedly dampened. Unwilling, however, to take the position that a race should be doomed because of personal objections, many of the early anti-slavery groups looked toward colonization for a solution of this problem. Some thought of Africa, but since the deportation of a large number of persons who had been brought under the influence of modern civilization seemed cruel. The most popular colonization scheme at first seemed to be that of settling the Negroes on the public lands in the west. As this region had been lately ceded, however, and no one could determine what use could be made of it by white men, no such policy was generally accepted. When this territory was ceded to the United States in effort to provide for the government of it, finally culminated in the proposed ordinance of 1784, carrying the provision that slavery should not exist in the northwest territory after the year 1800. This measure finally failed to pass and fortunately too thought some because had slavery been given sixteen years of growth on that soil, it might not have been abolished there until the Civil War, or it might have caused such a preponderous of slave commonwealths as to make the rebellion successful. The ordinance of 1784 was antecedent to the more important ordinance of 1787, which carried the famous sixth article that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime, should exist in that territory. At first it was generally deemed feasible to establish Negro colonies on that domain, yet despite the assurance of the ordinance of 1787, conditions were such that no one could determine exactly whether the northwest territory would be slave or free. What then was the situation in this partly unoccupied territory? Slavery existed in what is now the northwest territory from the time of the early exploration and settlement of that region by the French. The first slaves of white men were Indians, though it is true that the red men usually chose death rather than slavery. There were some of them that bowed to the yoke. So many Pony Indians became bondsmen that the word Pony became synonymous with slave in the west. Western Indians themselves followed the custom of white men, enslave their captives in war rather than choose the alternative for putting them to death. In this way they were known to hold a number of blacks and whites. The enslavement of the black men by the whites in this section dates from the early part of the 18th century. Being a part of the Louisiana territory, which under France extended over the whole Mississippi Valley, as far as the Allegheny Mountains, it was governed by the same colonial regulations. Slavery therefore had legal standing in this territory. When Antoine Crozat upon being placed in control of Louisiana was authorized to begin a traffic enslave, Crozat himself did nothing to carry out his plans. But in 1717, when the control of the colony was transferred to the Compagnie de l'Occident, steps were taken toward the importation of slaves. In 1719, when 500 guinea negros were brought over to serve in lower Louisiana, Philip, Francis, Renaud and ported 500 other bondsmen into upper Louisiana or what was later included in the Northwest Territory. Slavery then became more and more extensive until by 1750 there were along the Mississippi five settlements of slaves, Cacheca Chia, Caillochia, Fort Chartres, St. Philippe and Praire de Rochure. In 1763, negros were relatively numerous in the Northwest Territory, but when the section that year was transferred to the British, the number was diminished by the action of those Frenchmen who, unwilling to become subjects of Great Britain, moved from the territory. There was no material increase in the slave population thereafter until the end of the 18th century when some negros came in. The Ordinance of 1787 did not disturb the relation of slave and master. Some pioneers thought that the 6th article exterminated slavery there. Others contended that it did not. The latter believed that such expressions in the Ordinance of 1787, as the free inhabitants and the free male inhabitants of full size, implied the importance of slavery and others found ground for its perpetuation in the Clause of the Ordinance, which allowed the people of the territory to adopt the constitutional laws of any one of the 13 states. Students of law saw protection for slavery in Jay's Treaty, which guaranteed to the settlers their property of all kinds. When, therefore, the slave question came up in the Northwest Territory, about the close of the 18th century, there were three classes of slaves. First, those who were in servitude to French owners previous to the session of the territory to England and were still claimed as property in the possession of which the owners were protected under the Treaty of 1763. Second, those who were held by British owners at the time of Jay's Treaty and claimed afterward his property under its protection. And third, those who, since the Treaty had been controlled by the United States, had been brought from the Commonwealth in which slavery was allowed. Freedom, however, was recognized as the ultimate status of the Negro in that territory. This question having been seemingly settled, Anthony Benazette, who for years advocated the idea of the protection of the people of the country, Anthony Benazette, who for years advocated the abolition of slavery and devoted his time and means to the preparation of the Negroes for living as freed men, was practical enough to recommend to the Congress of the Confederation a plan for colonizing the emancipated blacks on the Western lands. Jefferson incorporated into a scheme for a modern system of public schools the training of the slaves industrial and agricultural branches to equip them for a higher station in life. He believed, however, that the blacks not being equal to the white race should not be assimilated and should they be free they should by all means be colonized afar off. Thinking that the Western lands might be so used, he said in writing to James Monroe in 1801, a very great extent of country and is now at market according to the provisions of the act of Congress. There is nothing, said he, which would restrain the state of Virginia either in the purchase or the application of these lands. Yet he raised the question as to whether the establishment of such a colony within our limits and to become a part of the union would be desirable. He thought then of procuring a place beyond the limits of the United States on our northern boundary by purchasing the Indian lands with the consent of Great Britain. He then doubted that the black race would live in such a rigorous climate. This plan did not easily pass from the minds of the friends of the slaves. For in 1805 Thomas Branigan asserted in his serious remonstrances that the government should appropriate a few thousand acres of land at some distant part of the national domains for the Negroes' accommodation and support. He believed that the new state might be established upwards of 2,000 miles from our frontier. 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. 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 as such lands were not granted to free white men they saw no reason for granting them to others. 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. Avertized in 1746 for James Wyham 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. In an advertisement for a Malata slave in 1755 Thomas Ringold his master expressed fear that he had escaped by the same route 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. 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 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 Din Witte wrote Fox one of the secretaries of state in 1756 captured apart with any of our white men any distance as we must have a watchful eye over our Negro slaves who are upward of 100,000 Briseau 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 girl out of this union came a desirable mulatto girl 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 credible business and his wife took it upon himself 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 those as detestable as it was evidenced by the fact that black women had a quarrel with a mulatto woman the former would reproach the latter for being of ignoble blood. 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 these 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. 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 active 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 the 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 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 and Illinois fondly 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 as to change the fundamental law as to provide for actual slavery. These states however gradually worked toward freedom and keeping with the spirit of the majority who frame 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. Must be born 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 plain 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 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 and 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 19th century for the beginning of the migration of the Negroes in the United States. End of Chapter 1 Finding a Place of Refuge Chapter 2 of a Century of Negro Migration This is the liverbox recording. All liverbox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit liverbox.org Recording by D. Randall A Century of Negro Migration by Carter Woodson A Transplantation to the North Just after the settlement of the question of holding the western post 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 a 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 bond men 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. The migration of the Negroes however received an impetus early in the 19th Century. This came from the Quakers who by the middle of the 18th Century had taken the position that all members of their sect should free their slaves. 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 delivering the blacks out in 1780 and by 1818 had exterminated the institution among their communicants. After healing themselves of the sin they had before the close of the 18th 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 freed men in society as good citizens and to that end had provided for the religious and mental instruction of their slaves prior to emancipating them. 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 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 castes and the incorporation of undesirable persons into the body politic 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. 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. The growing interest of the 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 adopted the scheme of settling them in Northern states. At first they sent such free men 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. A committee of 40 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 $200 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 everything 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. The Negro colonists seemed to prefer Indiana. They went in three companies and with suitable young friends to whom were executed powers of attorney to manumit set free, settle and buying them out. 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 $490. It was planned to send 40 or 50 to Long Island and 20 to the interior 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. Later we receive another interesting account of this exodus. David White led a company of 53 into the West 38 of whom belong to friends, five to a member who had ordered they be taken West at his expense. Six of these slaves belong to Samuel Lawrence, a Negro slave holder who had purchased himself and family. White pathetically reports the case of four of the women who had married slave husbands and had 20 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 Fort in Chilacovia 23 in Leesburg and 26 in Wayne County Indiana without encountering any material difficulty. 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 interests 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 freed states north. Quakers who then lived in freed states offered fugitives material assistance by open and clandestine methods. The most prominent leader developed by the movement was Leroy 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 Fort Wayne, Randolph Vigo, Gibson Grant, Rush and Tipton Counties Indiana and Dark County Ohio. The promotion of this movement by the Quakers was well on its way by 1815 and was not materially checked until the 50s 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 West Western Pennsylvania and there was another near Berlin Crossroads in Ohio. A group of Negroes migrating to this same state found homes in the Van Buren township of Shelby County. A more significant settlement in the state was made by Samuel Gist, an Englishman possessing extensive plantations in Hanover Amherst and Enrico Counties Virginia. 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 states purchased land and established these Negroes in what was called the upper and lower camps of Brown County. Augustus Waddles, a Quaker from Connecticut, made a settlement in Mercer County, Ohio early in the 19th century. In the winter of 1833 to 4 he providentially became acquainted with the colored people of Cincinnati finding there about 4,000 totally ignorant of everything 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 2 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. They consented on the condition that he would accompany them and teach school. He traveled 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 and the earnest appeal of this benefactor who had traveled 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. This settlement was further increased in 1858 by the manumitted slaves of John Harper of North Carolina. John Randolph of Roanoke endeavored to establish his slaves as free men to 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. It was necessary to send these free men to Miami County Theodoric H. Gregg of Denwiddle County, Virginia liberated his slaves in 1854 and sent them to Ohio. Near to the Civil War when public opinion was proscribing the uplift of Negroes in Kentucky, Nora Spears secured near Xenia Green County, Ohio a small parcel of land for 16 of his former bondsmen in 1856. Other free men 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 they sprang up a flourishing group of Negroes in Detroit Early in the 19th century they began to acquire property and to provide for the education of their children Their record was such as to merit the incomiums 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 and 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 de Baptiste and Marie-Louise Moore the mother of Fannie M. Richards led a colony of free Negroes from Federexburg to Detroit and for about similar reasons the father of Robert A. Pelham conducted others from Petersburg, Virginia in 1859 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 90 miles east of Chicago and 95 miles west of Detroit This settlement had become attractive to fugitive slaves and freed men because the Quakers settled their welcome them on their way to freedom and in some cases encouraged them to remain among them. When the increase of fugitives was possible during the 50s 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. Most of these Negroes settled in Calvin Township in that county so that of the 1376 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. These settlements were duplicated a little farther west in Illinois. Edward Coles a Virginia who in 1818 immigrated 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. There is another community of Negroes in Illinois and what is now called Brooklyn situated north of East St. Louis. This town was a center of some consequence in the 30s. 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 re-enslaved many of the Negroes who settled there. 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, Elizabeth Town, and by way of sea to New York and Boston from which they proceeded to permanent settlements in the north. In the west the migration of the blacks was further facilitated by the secure geographic condition and that the 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 Scott Iris Presbyterian stock they had ideals differing widely from those of the seaboard slave holders. The mountaineers believed in civil, liberty and 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 interest for the people. They believed in liberty but that of kings, lords and commons not of all the people. Settle along the Appalachian Highland these new stocks continued to differ from those dwelling near the sea especially on the slavery question. The natural endowment of the mountainous section made slavery there unprofitable and the mountaineers bore egregiously 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 entrance of slavery won. When therefore slaves with the assistance of anti-slavery mountaineers began to escape to the free 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. The development of the movement in these mountains was more than interesting. During the first quarter of the 19th century there were many art and 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 state to become a public charge. Some of this sentiment continued in the mountains even until the Civil War. The Highlanders therefore found themselves involved in a continuous embryo because they were not moved by reactionary influences which were unifying the south bold effort to make slavery a national institution 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 it a decided diminution in the south 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 rural road 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 the states which they had purchased in the Northwest Territory John Rankin, James Gilliland Jesse Lockhart, Robert Dobbins Samuel Crawlers Hugh L. Fullerton and William Dickey thus they connected the heart of the south with the avenues to freedom in the north there were routes extending from this section into Ohio, Indiana Illinois and Pennsylvania over the Ohio and Kentucky route culminating chiefly in Cleveland and dusky and Detroit however more fugitives made their way to freedom than through any other avenue 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 translating into action what had long been restricted to academic discussion these philanthropic workers clustered in a new era in the uplift of 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 prominent among those who aided this migration in various ways were Benjamin Lundy of Tennessee and James G. Burney a former slave holder 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 freeborn 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 Driesden, Windsor, Sandwich Bush, Wilberforce, Hamilton, St. Catharines Chatham, Riley, Anderton London, Maldon and Gunfield 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 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 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 the first number is for the population in 1850 and the second number is for the population in 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 1069 Kentucky 10,011 10,684 Louisiana 17,462 18,647 Maine 1,356 1,327 Kansas 0,625 Maryland 74,723 83,942 Massachusetts 9,064 9,602 Michigan 2,583 6,797 Minnesota 0 259 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 Ohio 25,279 36,673 Oregon 0 128 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 1,333 58,042 Wisconsin 635 1,171 Territories Colorado 046 Dakota 0 1,059 11,131 Minnesota 39 0 Nebraska 0 67 Nevada 0 45 New Mexico 207 24 0 Utah 22 30 Washington 0 30 Total 434,495 488,070 End of Chapter 2 1st century of Negro migration This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org A Century of Negro Migration by Carter Woodson. Chapter 3 Fighting it out on free soil How then was this increasing influx of refugees from the south in the Free States. In the older Northern states where there could be no danger of an Africanization of a large district, the coming of the Negroes did not cause general excitement, though at times the feeling in certain localities was sufficient to make one think so. Fearing that the immigration of the Negroes into the North might so increase their numbers as to make them constitute a rather important part in the community, however, some free states enacted laws to restrict the privileges of the blacks. Free Negroes had voted in all the colonies except Georgia and South Carolina if they had the property qualification, but after the sentiment attendant upon the struggle for the rights of man had passed away, they are set in a reaction. Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and Kentucky dis-franchised all Negroes not long after the Revolution. They voted in North Carolina until 1835 when the state feeling that this privilege of one class of Negroes might affect the enslavement of the other prohibited it. The Northern states, following in their wake, set up the same barriers against the blacks. They were dis-franchised in New Jersey in 1807, in Connecticut in 1814, and in Pennsylvania in 1838. In 1811, New York passed an act requiring the production of certificates of freedom from blacks or mulattoes offering to vote. The Second Constitution, adopted in 1823, provided that no man of color, unless he had been there for three years a citizen of that state, and for one year next preceding any election, should be seized and possessed of a freehold estate, should be allowed to vote, although this qualification was not required of the whites. An act of 1824 relating to the government of the Stockbridge Indians provided that no Negro or mulatto should vote in their councils. That increasing prejudice was to a great extent the result of the immigration into the north of Negroes in the rough, was nowhere better illustrated than in Pennsylvania. Prior to 1800, and especially after 1780, when the state provided for gradual emancipation, there was little race prejudice in Pennsylvania. When the reactionary legislation of the south made life intolerable for the Negroes, debasing them to the plain of beast, many of the free people of color from Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware moved or escaped into Pennsylvania like a steady stream during the next 60 years. As these Negroes tended to concentrate in towns and cities, they caused the supply of labor to exceed the demand, lowering the wages of some and driving out of employment, a number of others who became paupers and consequently criminals. They're set into an intense struggle between the black and white laborers, immensely accelerating the growth of race prejudice, especially when the abolitionists and Quakers were giving Negroes industrial training. The first exhibition of this prejudice was seen among the lower classes of white people, largely Irish and Germans, who, devoted to menial labor, competed directly with the Negroes. It did not require a long time, however, for this feeling to react on the higher classes of whites where Negroes settled in large groups. A strong protest arose from the menace of Negro paupers. An attempt was made in 1804 to compel free Negroes to maintain those that might become a public charge. In 1813 the mayor, Alderman, and citizens of Philadelphia asked that free Negroes be taxed to support their poor. Two Philadelphia representatives in the Pennsylvania legislature had a committee appointed in 1815 to consider the advisability of preventing the immigration of Negroes. One of the causes then at work there was that the black population had recently increased to 4,000 in Philadelphia and more than 4,000 others had come into the city since the previous registration. They were arriving much faster than they could be assimilated. The state of Pennsylvania had about exterminated slavery by 1840, having only 40 slaves that year and only a few hundred at any time after 1810. Many of these, of course, had not had time to make their way in life as freedmen. To show how much the rapid migration to that city aggravated the situation under these circumstances, one needs but note the statistics of the increase of the free people of color in that state. There were only 22,492 such persons in Pennsylvania in 1810, but in 1820 there were 30,202, and in 1830 as many as 37,930. This number increased to 47,854 by 1840 to 53,626 by 1850 and to 56,949 by 1860. The undesirable aspect of the situation was that most of the migrating blacks came in crude form. On arriving, therefore, as a contemporary, they abandoned themselves to all manner of debauchery and dissipation to the great annoyance of many citizens. Thereafter followed a number of clashes developing finally into a series of riots of a grave nature. Innocent Negroes attacked at first for purposes of sport and later for sinister designs were often badly beaten in the streets or even cut with knives. The offenders were not punished and if the Negroes defended themselves they were usually severely penalized. In 1819 three white women stoned a woman of color to death. A few youths entered a Negro church in Philadelphia in 1825 and by throwing pepper to give rise to suffocating fumes caused a panic which resulted in the death of several Negroes. When the citizens of New Haven, Connecticut, arrayed themselves in 1831 against the plan to establish in that city a Negro manual labor college, there was held in Philadelphia a meeting which passed resolutions enthusiastically endorsing this effort to rid the community of the evil of the immigration of free Negroes. There arose also the custom of driving Negroes away from independent square on the 4th of July because they were neither considered nor desired as part of the body politic. It was thought that in the state of feeling of the 30s that the Negro would be annihilated. The Tocqueville also observed that the Negroes were more detested in the free states than in those where they were held as slaves. There had been such a reaction since 1800 that no positions of consequence were open to Negroes, however well educated they might be, and the education of the blacks which was once vigorously prosecuted there became unpopular. This was especially true of Harrisburg and Philadelphia but by no means confined to large cities. The Philadelphia press said nothing in behalf of the race. It was generally thought that freedom had not been an advantage to the Negro and that instead of making progress they had filled jails and alms houses and multiplied pest holes to afflict the cities with disease and crime. The Negroes of York carefully worked out in 1803 a plan to burn the city. Incendiaries set on fire a number of houses, 11 of which were destroyed, whereas there were other attempts at a general destruction of the city. The authorities arrested a number of Negroes but ran the risk of having the jail broken open by their sympathizing fellow men. After a reign of terror for half a week order was restored and 20 of the accused were convicted of arson. In 1820 there occurred so many conflagrations that a vigilance committee was organized. Whether or not the Negroes were guilty of the crime is not known but numbers of them left either on account of the fear of punishment or because of the indignities to which they were subjected. Numerous petitions therefore came before the legislature to stop the immigration of Negroes. It was proposed in 1840 to tax law free Negroes to assist them in getting out of the state for colonization. The citizens of Lehigh County asked the authorities in 1830 to expel all Negroes and persons of color found in the state. Another petition pray that they be deprived of the freedom of movement. Bills embodying these ideas were frequently considered but they were never passed. Stronger opposition than this, however, was manifested in the form of actual outbreaks on a large scale in Philadelphia. The immediate cause of this first real clash was the abolition agitation in the city in 1834 following the exciting news of other such disturbances a few months prior to this date in several northern cities. A group of boys started the riot by destroying a Negro resort. A mob then proceeded to the Negro district where white and colored men engaged in a fight with clubs and stones. The next day the mob ruined the African Presbyterian church and attacked some Negroes destroying their property and beating them mercilessly. The riot continued for three days. A committee appointed to inquire into the causes of the riot reported that the aim of the rioters had been to make the Negroes go away because it was believed that their labor was depriving them of work and because the blacks had shielded criminals and had made such noise and disorder in their churches as to make them a nuisance. It seemed that the most intelligent and well-to-do people of Philadelphia keenly felt it that the city had thus been disgraced, but the mob spirit continued. The very next year was marked by the same sort of disorder because a half-witted Negro attempted to murder a white man, a large mob stirred up the city again. There was a repetition of the beating of Negroes and of the destruction of property while the police as the year before were so inactive as to give rise to the charge that they were accessories to the riot. In 1838 there occurred another outbreak which developed into an anti-abolition riot as the public mine had been much exercised by the discussions of abolitionists and by their close social contact with the Negroes. The clash came on the 17th of May when Philadelphia Hall, the center of abolition agitation, was burned. Fighting between the blacks and whites ensued the following night when the colored orphan asylum was attacked and a Negro church burned. Order was finally restored for the good of all concerned, but that a majority of the people sympathized with the rioters was evidenced by the fact that the committee charged with investigating the disturbance reported that the mob was composed of strangers who could not be recognized. It is well to note here that this riot occurred the year the Negroes in Pennsylvania were disfranchised. Following the example of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh had a riot in 1839 resulting in the maltreatment of a number of Negroes and the demolishing of some of their houses. When the Negroes of Philadelphia paraded the city in 1842 celebrating the abolition of slavery in the West Indies they ensued a battle led by the whites who undertook to break up the procession along with the beating and killing of the usual number when also the destruction of the New African Hall and the Negro Presbyterian Church. The grand jury charged with the inquiry into the causes reported that the procession was to be blamed. For several years thereafter the city remained quiet until 1849 when there occurred a raid on the blacks by the killers of Moia Menzing using firearms with which many were wounded. The disturbance was finally quelled by aid of the militia. These clashes sometimes reached farther north in the Free States bordering on the slave commonwealths. Mobs broke up abolition meetings in the city of New York in 1834 when there were sent to Congress numerous petitions for the abolition of slavery. This mob even assailed such eminent citizens as Arthur and Louis Tappan mainly in account of their friendly attitude towards the Negroes. On October 21st 1834 the same feeling developed in Utica where it was to be held an anti-slavery meeting according to previous notice. The 600 delegates who assembled there were warned to disband the mob then organized itself and drove the delegates from the town. That same month the people of Palmyra in New York held a meeting at which they adopted resolutions to the effect that owners of houses or tenements in that town occupied by blacks of the character complained of be requested to use all their rightful means to clear their premises of such occupants at the earliest possible period and that it be recommended that such proprietors refused to rent the same thereafter to any person of color whatever. In New York Negroes were excluded from the places of amusement and public conveyances and segregated in places of worship. In the draft riots which occurred there in 1863 one of the aims of the mobs was to assassinate Negroes and to destroy their property. They burned the colored orphan asylum of that city and hanged Negroes to lamp posts. The situation in parts of New England was not much better. For fear of the evils of an increasing population of free persons of color the people of Canaan, New Hampshire broke up the noise academy because it decided to admit Negro students thinking that many of the race might thereby be encouraged to come to that state. When Prudence Crandall established in Canterbury, Connecticut an academy to which he decided to admit Negroes the mayor, select men and citizens of the city protested. And when their protests failed to deter this heroine they induced the legislature to enact a special law covering the case and invoked the measure to have Prudence Crandall imprisoned because she would not desist. This very law and the arguments upholding it justified the drastic measure on the ground that an increase in the colored population would be an injury to the people of that state. In the new commonwealths formed out of western territory there was the same fear as to Negro domination and consequently there followed the wave of legislation intended in some cases not only to withhold from the Negro settlers the exercise of the rights of citizenship but to discourage and even to prevent them from coming into their territory. The question as to what should be done with the Negro was early an issue in Ohio. It came up in the Constitutional Convention of 1803 and provoked some discussion but that body considered it sufficient to settle the matter for the time being by merely leaving the Negroes Indians and foreigners out of the pale of the newly organized body politic by conveniently incorporating the word white throughout the Constitution. It was soon evident however that the matter had not been settled and the legislature of 1804 had to give serious consideration to the immigration of Negroes into that state. It was therefore enacted that no Negro or mulatto should remain there permanently unless he could furnish a certificate of freedom issued by some court that on Negroes in that commonwealth should be registered before the following June and that no man should employ a Negro who failed to comply with these conditions. Should one be detected in hiring, harboring, or hindering the capture of a fugitive black he was liable to a fine of fifty dollars and his master could recover pay for the services of his slave to the amount of fifty cents a day. As this legislature did not meet the demands of those who desired further to discourage Negro immigration the legislature of 1807 was induced to enact a law to the effect that no Negro should be permitted to settle in Ohio unless he could within 20 days give a bond to the amount of five hundred dollars for his good behavior and assurance that he would not become a public charge. This measure provided also for raising the fine for concealing a fugitive from fifty dollars to one hundred, one half of which should go to the person upon the testimony of whom the conviction should be secured. Negro evidence in a case to which a white was a party was declared illegal. In 1830 Negroes were excluded from service in the state militia. In 1831 they were deprived of the privilege of serving on juries and in 1838 they were denied the right of having their children educated at the expense of the state. In Indiana the situation was worse than in Ohio. We have already noted above how the settlers in the southern part endeavored to make that a slave state. When that had after all but being successful seemed impossible the state enacted laws to prevent or discourage the influx of free Negroes and to restrict the privileges of those already there. In 1824 a stringent law for the return of fugitives was passed. The expulsion of free Negroes was a matter of concern and in 1831 it was provided that unless they could give bond for their behavior and support they could be removed. Otherwise the county overseers could hire out such Negroes to the highest bidder. Negroes were not allowed to attend schools, maintained at the public expense, might not give evidence against a white man and could not intermarry with white persons. They might however serve as witnesses against Negroes. In the same way of the free Negroes met discouragement in Illinois they suffered from all the disabilities imposed on their class in Ohio and Indiana and were denied the right to sue for their liberty in the courts. When there arose many abolitionists who encouraged the coming of the fugitives from labor in the south one element of the citizens of Illinois unwilling to accept this unusual influx of members of another race passed the drastic law of 1853 prohibiting the immigration. It provided for the prosecution of any person bringing a Negro into the state and also for arresting and fining any Negro $50 should he appear there and remain longer than 10 days. If he proved to be unable to pay the fine he could be sold to any person who could pay the cost of the trial. In Michigan the situation was a little better but with the ways of hostile legislation then sweeping over the new commonwealths Michigan was not allowed to constitute altogether an exception. Some of this intense feeling found expression in the form of a law hostile to the Negro this being the act of 1827 which provided for the registration of all free persons of color and for the exclusion from the territory of old blacks who cannot produce a certificate to the effect that they were free. Free persons of color were also required to file bonds with one or more freehold sureties in the penal sum of $500 for their good behavior and the bondsmen were expected to provide for their maintenance if they failed to support themselves. Failure to comply with this law meant expulsion from the territory. The opposition to the Negroes immigrating into the new west was not restricted to the enactment of laws which in some cases were never enforced. Several communities took the law into their own hands during these years when the Negroes were seeking freedom in the northwest territory and when free blacks were being established there by philanthropists it seemed to the southern uplanders fleeing from slavery in the border states and foreigners seeking fortunes in the new world that they might possibly be crowded out of this new territory by the Negroes. Frequent clashes therefore followed after they had passed through a period of toleration and dependence on the execution of the hostile laws. The clashes of the greatest consequence occurred in the northwest territory where a larger number of uplanders from the south had gone some to escape the ill effects of slavery and others to hold slaves if possible and when that seemed impossible to exclude the blacks all together. This persecution of the Negroes received also the hardy cooperation of the foreign element who being an underdeveloped class had to do menial labor and competition with the blacks. The feeling of the foreigners was especially mischievous for the reasons that they were like the Negroes that first settled in large numbers in urban communities. Generally speaking the feeling was like that exhibited by the Germans in Mercer County, Ohio. The citizens of this frontier community in registering their protest against the settling of Negroes there adopted the following resolutions. Resolved that we will not live among Negroes as we have settled here first. We have fully determined that we will resist the settlement of blacks and mulattoes in this county to the full extent of our means. The bayonet not accepted. Resolved that the blacks of this county be and they are hereby respectfully requested to leave the county on or before the first day of March 1847 and in the case of their neglect or refusal to comply with this request we pledge ourselves to remove them peacefully if we can forcibly if we must. Resolved that we who are here assembled pledge ourselves not to employ or trade with any black or mulatto person in any manner whatever or permit them to have any grinding done at our mills after the first day of January next. In 1827 there arose a storm of protest on the occasion of the settling of 70 freedmen in Lawrence County, Ohio by a philanthropic master of Pennsylvania County, Virginia on Black Friday January 1st 1830. 80 Negroes were driven out of Portsmouth, Ohio at the request of one or 200 white citizens set forth in an urgent memorial. So many Negroes during these years concentrated at Cincinnati that the laboring element forced the execution of the almost dead law requiring free Negroes to produce certificates and give bonds for their behavior and support. A mob attacked the homes of the blacks killing a number of them and forced 1200 others to leave for Canada West where they established the settlement known as Wilberforce. In 1836 another mob attacked and destroyed there the press of James G. Burney the editor of the philanthropist because of the encouragement his abolitionist organ gave to the immigrating Negroes but in 1841 came a decidedly systematic effort on the part of foreigners and pro-slavery sympathizers to kill off and drive out the Negroes who were becoming too well established in that city and who were giving offense to white men who desired to deal with them as Negroes were treated in the south. The city continued in this excited state for about a week. They were brought into play in the upheaval the police of the city and the state militia before the shooting of the Negroes and burning of their homes could be checked. So far as is known no white men were punished although a few of them were arrested. Some Negroes were committed to prison during the fray. They were there after either discharged upon producing certificates of nativity or giving bond or were indefinitely held. In southern Indiana and Illinois the same condition obtained observing the situation in Indiana a contributor of Niles Register remarked in 1818 upon the arrival there of 60 or 70 liberated Negroes sent by the Society of Friends of North Carolina that they were a species of population that was not acceptable to the people of that state nor indeed to any other whether free or slave-holding for they cannot rise and become like other men unless in countries where their own color predominates but must always remain a degraded and inferior class of persons without the hope of much bettering their condition. The Indiana farmer voicing the sentiment of that same community regretted the increase of this population that seemed to be enlarging the number sent to that territory. The editor insisted that the community which enjoys the benefits of the blacks labor should also suffer all the consequences. Since the people of Indiana derive no advantage from slavery he begged that they be excused from its inconveniences. Most of the blacks that migrated there more over possess thought he feelings quite unprepared to make good citizens a sense of inferiority early impressed on their minds destitute of everything but bodily power and having no character to lose in no prospect of acquiring one even did they know its value they are prepared for the commission of any act when the prospect of evading punishment is favorable. With the exception of such centers as Eden, Upper Alton, Belleville and Chicago this antagonistic attitude was general also in the state of Illinois. The Negroes were despised, abused and maltreated as persons who had no rights that the white man should respect. Even in Detroit, Michigan in 1833 a fracas was started by an attack on Negroes because a courageous group of them had affected the rescue and escape of one Thornton Blackburn and his wife who had been arrested by the sheriff as alleged fugitives from Kentucky. The citizens invoked the law of 1827 to require free Negroes to produce a certificate and furnish bonds for their behavior and support. The anti-slavery sentiment there however was so strong that the law was not rigidly enforced and so it was in several other parts of the West which however were exceptional. End of Chapter 3 Fighting it out on Free Soil Chapter 4 of A Century of Negro Migration This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. This recording by Michelle Fry, Baton Rouge, Louisiana in September 2019. A Century of Negro Migration by Carter Woodson Chapter 4 Colonization as a Remedy for Migration Because of these untoward circumstances consequent to the immigration of free Negroes and fugitives into the North, their enemies and in some cases their well-intentioned friends advocated the diversion of these elements to foreign soil. Venizet and Branigan had the idea of settling the Negroes on the public lands in the West, largely to relieve the situation in the North. Certain anti-slavery men of Kentucky as we have observed recommended the same. But this was hardly advocated at all about the far-seeing white men after the close of the first quarter of the 19th century. It was by that time very clear that white men would want to occupy all lands within the present limits of the United States. Few statesmen dared to encourage migration to Canada, because the large number of fugitives who had already escaped there had attached to that region the stigma of being an asylum for fugitives from the slave states. The most influential people who gave thought to this question finally decided that the colonization of the Negro in Africa was the only solution of the problem. The plan of African colonization appealed more generally to the people of both North and South than the other efforts, which at best could do no more than to offer local or temporary relief. The African colonization proceeded on the basis that the Negroes had no chance for racial development in this country. They could secure no kind of honorable employment, could not associate with congenial white friends whose minds and pursuits might operate as a stimulus upon their industry, and could not rise to the level of successful professional or businessmen found around them. In short, they must ever be hewers of wood and drawers of water. To emphasize further the necessity of immigration to Africa, the advocates of deportation to foreign soil generally referred to the condition of migrating Negroes as a case in evidence. So long, said one, as you must sit, stand, walk, ride, dwell, eat, and sleep here and the Negro there, he cannot be free in any part of the country. This idea working through the minds of Northern men who had for years thought merely of the injustice of slavery began to change their attitude toward the abolitionists who had never undertaken to solve the problems of the blacks who were seeking refuge in the north. Many thinkers controlling public opinion then gave audience to the colonizationists, and circles once closed to them were thereafter opened. There was therefore a tendency toward a more systematic effort than had hitherto characterized the endeavors of the colonizationists. The objects of their philanthropy were not to be stolen away and hurried off to an uncongenial land for the oppressed. They were in accordance with the exigencies of their new situation to be prepared by instruction in mechanical arts, agriculture, science, and biblical literature that some might lead in the higher pursuits and others might skillfully serve their fellows. Private enterprise was at first depended on to carry out the schemes, but it soon became evident that a better method was necessary. Finally, out of the proposals of various thinkers and out of the actual colonization feats of Paul Cuffet, a Negro, came a national meeting for this purpose held in Washington, December 1816, and the Organization of the American Colonization Society. This meeting was attended by some of the most prominent men in the United States, among whom were Henry Clay, Francis S. Key, Bishop William Mead, John Randolph, and Judge Bushrod Washington. The American Colonization Society, however, failed to facilitate the movement of the free Negro from the South and did not promote the general welfare of the race. The reasons for these failures are many. In the first place the society was all things to all men. To the anti-slavery man whose ardor had been dampened by the meager results obtained by his agitation, the scheme was the next best thing to remove the objections of slaveholders who had said they would emancipate their bondsmen if they could be assured of their being deported to foreign soil. To the radical pro-slavery man and to the northerner hating the Negro it was well adapted to rid the country of the free persons of color whom they regarded as the pariahs of society. Furthermore, although the colonization society became seemingly popular and the various states organized branches of it and raised money to promote the movement, the slaveholders as a majority never reached the position of partying with their slaves and the country would not take such radical action as to compel free Negroes to undergo expatriation when militant abolitionists were fearlessly denouncing the scheme. The free people of color themselves were not only not anxious to go but bore aggrievously that anyone should even suggest that they should be driven from the country in which they were born and for the independence of which their fathers had died. They held indignation meetings throughout the north to denounce the scheme as a selfish policy inimical to the interests of the people of color. Branded thus as the inveterate foe of the blacks, both slave and free, the American colonization society affected the deportation of only such Negroes as southern masters felt disposed to emancipate from time to time and a few others induced to go. As the industrial revolution early changed the aspect of the economic situation in the south so as to make slavery seemingly profitable, few masters ever thought of liberating their slaves. Scarcely any intelligent Negroes except those who for economic or religious reasons were interested availed themselves of this opportunity to go to the land of their ancestors. From the reports of the colonization society we learned that from 1820 to 1833 only 2,885 Negroes were sent to Africa by the society. Furthermore more than 2,700 of this number were taken from the slave states and about two-thirds of these were slaves manumitted on the condition that they would emigrate. Later statistics show the same tendency. By 1852 7,836 had been deported from the United States to Liberia. 2,720 of these were born free. 204 purchased their freedom. 3,868 were emancipated in view of their going to Liberia and 1044 were liberated Africans returned by the United States government. Considering the fact that there were 434,495 free persons of color in this country in 1850 and 488,070 in 1860 the colonizationists saw that the very element of the population which the movement was intended to send out of the country had increased rather than decreased. It is clear then that the American colonization society though regarded as a factor to play an important part in promoting the exodus of the free Negroes to foreign soil was an inglorious failure. Colonization in other quarters however was not abandoned. A colony of Negroes in Texas was contemplated in 1833 prior to the time when the republic became independent of Mexico as slavery was not at first assured in that state. The New York commercial advertiser had no objection to the enterprise but felt that there were natural obstacles such as a more expensive conveyance than that to Monrovia, the high price of land in the country, the Catholic religion to which Negroes were not accustomed to conform and their lack of knowledge of the Spanish language. The editor observed that some who had emigrated to Haiti a few years before became discontented because they did not know the language. Louisiana, a slave state moreover, would not suffer near its borders a free Negro Republic to serve as an asylum for refugees. The Richmond Whigs saw the actual situation in dubbing this game as schemerical for the reason that a more unsuitable country for the blacks did not exist. Socially and politically it would never suit the Negroes. Already a great number of adventurers from the United States had gone to Texas and fugitives from Justice from Mexico, a fierce lawless and turbulent class, would give the Negroes little chance there as the Negroes could not contend with the Spaniard and the Creole. The editor believed that an inferior race could never exist in safety surrounded by a superior one despising them. Colonization in Africa was then urged and the efforts of the blacks to go elsewhere were characterized as doing mischief at every turn to defeat the enlightened plan for amelioration of the Negroes. It was still thought possible to induce the Negroes to go to some congenial foreign land although few of them would agree to emigrate to Africa. Not a few Negroes began during the two decades immediately preceding the Civil War to think more favorably of African colonization and a still larger number in view of the increasing disabilities fixed upon their class thought of migrating to some country nearer to the United States. Much was said about Central America but British Guiana and the West Indies proved to be the most inviting fields to the latter-day Negro colonizationists. This idea was by no means new for Jefferson in his foresight had in a letter to Governor Edward Coles of Illinois in 1814 shown the possibilities of colonization in the West Indies. He felt that because Santo Domingo had become an independent Negro Republic it would offer a solution of the problem as to where the Negroes should be colonized. In this way these islands would become a sort of safety valve for the United States. He became more and more convinced that all the West Indies would remain in the hands of the people of color and a total expulsion of the whites sooner or later would take place. It was high time he thought that Americans should foresee the bloody scenes which their children certainly and possibly they themselves would have to wade through. Footnote if something is not done and soon said Jefferson we shall be the murderers of our own children. The murmura ventaros natus prudencia ventos has already reached us from Santo Domingo. The revolutionary storm now sweeping the globe will be upon us and happy if we make timely provision to give it an easy passage over our land. From the present state of things in Europe and America the day which begins our combustion must be near at hand and only a single spark is wanting to make that day tomorrow. If we had begun sooner we might probably have been allowed a lengthier operation to clear ourselves but every day's delay lessens the time we may take for emancipation. As to the mode of emancipation Jefferson was satisfied that that must be a matter of compromise between the passions the prejudices and the real difficulties which would each have its weight in that operation. He believed that the first chapter of this history which was begun in Santo Domingo and the next succeeding ones would recount how all the whites were driven from all the other islands. This he thought would prepare their minds for a peaceable accommodation between justice and policy and furnish an answer to the difficult question as to where the colored immigrants should go. He urged that the country put some plan underway and the sooner it did so the greater would be the hope that it might be permitted to proceed peaceably toward consummation. From the Ford edition of Jefferson's writings volume six page 349 and volume seven pages 167 168 end of footnote. The movement to the West Indies was accelerated by other factors after the emancipation in those islands in the 30s there had for some years been a dearth of labor. Desiring to enjoy their freedom and living in a climate where there was not much struggle for life the freedmen either refused to work regularly or wandered about purposely from year to year. The islands in which sugar had once played a conspicuous part as the foundation of their industry declined and something had to be done to meet this exigency. In the 40s and 50s therefore there came to the United States a number of labor agents whose aim was to set forth the inviting aspect of the situation in the West Indies so as to induce free Negroes to try their fortunes there. To this end meetings were held in Baltimore Philadelphia New York and Boston and even in some of the cities of the south where these agents appealed to the free Negroes to immigrate. Thus before the American colonization society had got well on its way toward accomplishing its purpose of deporting the Negroes to Africa the West Indies and British Guiana claimed the attention of free people of color in offering their unusual opportunities. After the consummation of British emancipation in those islands in 1838 the English nation came to be regarded by the Negroes of the United States as the exclusive friend of the race. The Negro press and church vied with each other in praising British emancipation as an act of philanthropy and pointed to the English dominions as an asylum for the oppressed. So disturbed were the whites by this growing feeling that riots broke out in northern cities on occasions of Negro celebrations of the anniversary of emancipation in the West Indies. In view of these facts the colonizationists had to redouble their efforts to defend their cause. They found it a little difficult to make a good case for Liberia a land far away in an unhealthy climate so much unlike that of the West Indies and British Guiana where Negroes had been declared citizens entitled to all privileges afforded by the government. The colonizationists could do no more than to express doubt that the Negroes would have there the opportunities for mental, moral and social betterment which were offered in Liberia. The promoters of the enterprise in Africa did not believe that the West Indian planters who had had emancipation forced upon them would accept blacks from the United States as their equals nor that they, far from receiving the consideration of freedmen, would be there any more than menials. When told of the establishment of schools and churches for the improvement of the freedmen the colonizationists replied that schools might be provided but the planters could have no interest in encouraging education as they did not want an elevated class of people but bone and muscle. As an evidence of the truth of this statement it was asserted that newspapers of the country were filled with disastrous accounts of the falling off of crops and the scarcity of labor but had little to say about those forces instrumental in the uplift of the people. An effort was made also to show that there would be no economic advantage in going to the British Dominions. It was thought that as soon as the first demand for labor was supplied wages would be reduced for no new plantations could be opened there as in a growing country like Liberia. It would be impossible therefore for the Negroes immigrating there to take up land and develop a class of small farmers as they were doing in Africa. Under such circumstances they contended the Negroes in the West Indies could not feel any of the elevating influences of nationality of character as the white men would limit the influence of the Negroes by retaining practically all of the wealth of the islands. The inducements therefore offered the free Negroes in the United States were merely intended to use them in supplying the British Dominions the need of men to do drudgery scarcely more elevating than the toil of slaves. Determined to interest a larger number of persons in diverting the attention of the free Negroes from the West Indies the colonizationists took higher ground. They asserted that the interests of the millions of white men in this country were then at stake and even if it would be better for the three million Negroes of the country gradually to emigrate to the British Dominions it would eventually prove prejudicial to the interests of the United States. They showed how the Negroes immigrating into the West Indies would be made to believe that the refusal to extend to them here social and political equality was cruel oppression and the immigrants therefore would carry with them no good will to this country. When they arrived in the West Indies their circumstances would increase this hostility alienate their affections and estranged them wholly from the United States. Taught to regard the British as the exclusive friends of their race devoted to its elevation they would become British in spirit. As such these Negroes would be controlled by British influence and would increase the wealth and commerce of the British and as soldiers would greatly strengthen British power. It was better therefore they argued to direct the Negroes to Liberia for those who went there with the feeling of hostility against the white people were placed in circumstances operating to remove that feeling and in the kind solicitude for their welfare would be extended them in their new home so as to overcome their prejudices when their confidence and secure their attachment. Looking to this country as their fatherland and the home of their benefactors the Liberians would develop a nation taking the religion customs and laws of this country as their models marketing their produce in this country and purchasing our manufacturers. In spite of its independence therefore Liberia would be American in feeling language and interests affording a means to get rid of a class undesirable here but desirable to us there in their power to extend American influence trade and commerce. Negroes migrated to the West Indies in spite of this warning and protest. Haiti at first looked upon with fear for having a free Negro government near slaveholding states became fixed in the minds of some as a desirable place for the colonization of free persons of color. This was due to the apparent natural advantages in soil, climate and the situation of the country over other places in consideration. It was thought that the island would support 14 millions of people and that once opened to immigration from the United States it would in a few years fill up by natural increase. It was remembered that it was formerly the Emporium of the Western World and that it supplied both hemispheres with sugar and coffee. It had rapidly recovered from the disaster of the French Revolution and lacked only capital and education which the United States under these circumstances could furnish. Furthermore it was argued that something in this direction should be immediately done as European nations then seeking to establish friendly relations with the islands would secure their commercial advantages which the United States should have and could establish by sending to that island free Negroes especially devoted to agriculture. In 1836 Z. Kingsley, a Florida planter, actually undertook to carry out such a plan on a small scale. Footnote speaking of this colony Kingsley said About 18 months ago I carried my son George Kingsley, a healthy colored man of uncorrupted morals, about 30 years of age, tolerably well educated, of very industrious habits and a native of Florida. Together with six prime African men, my own slaves, liberated for that express purpose to the northeast side of the island of Haiti near Porta Plot where we arrived in the month of October 1836 and after application to the local authorities from whom I rented some good land near the sea and thickly timbered with lofty woods I set them to work cutting down trees about the middle of November and returned to my home in Florida. My son wrote to us frequently giving an account of his progress. Some of the fallen timber was dry enough to burn in January 1837 when it was cleared up into eight acres of corn planted and as soon as circumstances would allow sweet potatoes, yams, cassava, rice, beans, peas, plantains, oranges and all sorts of fruit trees were planted in succession. In the month of October 1837 I again set off for Haiti in a coppered brig of 150 tons bought for the purpose and in five days and a half from St. Mary's in Georgia landed my son's wife and children at Porta Plot together with the wives and children of his servants now working for him under an indenture of nine years also two additional families of my slaves all liberated for the express purpose of transportation to Haiti where they were all to have as much good land and fee as they could cultivate say 10 acres for each family and all its proceeds together with one fourth part of the net proceeds of their labor on my son's farm for themselves also vitals clothes medical attendants etc gratis besides Saturdays and Sundays as days of labor for themselves or of rest just at their option on my arrival at my son's place called Cabaret 27 miles east of Porta Plot in November 1837 as before stated I found everything in the most flattering and prosperous condition they had all enjoyed good health were overflowing with the most delicious variety and abundance of fruits and provisions and were overjoyed at again meeting their wives and children whom they could introduce into good comfortable log houses all nicely whitewashed and in the midst of a profuse abundance of good provisions as they had generally cleared five or six acres of their land each which being very rich and planted with every variety to eat or to sell on their own account and had already laid up 30 or 40 dollars apiece my son's farm was upon a larger scale and furnished with more commodious dwelling houses also with store and outhouses in nine months he had made and housed three crops of corn of 25 bushels to the acre each or one crop every three months his highland rice which was equal to any in carolina so ripened heavy as some of it to be couched or leaned down and no bird had ever troubled it nor had any of his fields ever been hoed or required hoeing there being as yet no appearance of grass his cotton was of an excellent staple in seven months it had attained the height of 13 feet the stalks were 10 inches in circumference and had upwards of 500 large bowls on each stalk not a worm nor a red bug as yet to be seen his yams cassava and sweet potatoes were incredibly large and plentifully thick in the ground lately introduced from tahiti formerly atahata island in the pacific was of peculiar excellence tasted like new flour and grew to an ordinary size in one month those i ate at my son's place had been planted five weeks and were as big as our full grown florida potatoes his sweet orange trees budded upon wild stalks cut off which everywhere abound about six months before i had large tops and the buds were swelling as if preparing to flower my son reported that his people had all enjoyed good health and had labored just as steadily as they formerly did in florida and were well satisfied with their situation and the advantageous exchange of circumstances they had made they all enjoyed the friendship of the neighboring inhabitants and the entire confidence of the Haitian government i remained with my son all january 1838 and assisted him in making improvements of different kinds amongst which was a new two-story house and then left him to go to port-a-prince where i obtained a favorable answer from the president of Haiti to my son's petition asking for leave to hold in fee simple the same tract of land upon which he then lived as a tenant paying rent to the Haitian government containing about 35 000 acres which was ordered to be surveyed to him and valued and not expected to exceed the sum of three thousand dollars or about ten cents an acre after obtaining this land in fee for my son i returned to florida in february 1838 african repository volume 14 pages 215 and 216 end of footnote my son established on the northeast side of Haiti near port-a-plot his son george kingsley a well educated colored man of industrious habits and uncorrupted morals together with six prime african men slaves liberated for that express purpose there he purchased for them 35 000 acres of land upon which they engaged in the production of crops indigenous to that soil Haiti however was not the only island to get consideration in 1834 200 colored immigrants went from new york alone to trinidad under the superintendents and at the expense of planters of that island it was later reported that every one of them found employment on the day of arrival and in one or two instances the most intelligent were placed as overseers at the salary of five hundred dollars per annum no one received less than one dollar a day and most of them earned a dollar fifty the trinidad press welcomed these immigrants and spoke in the highest terms of the valuable services they rendered the country others followed from year to year one of these negroes anticipated so much this new field of opportunity that he returned and induced 20 intelligent free persons of color living in anapolis maryland also to immigrate to trinidad the new york sun reported in 1840 that 160 colored persons left philadelphia for trinidad they had been hired by an eminent planter to labor on that island and they were encouraged to expect that they should have privileges which would make their residents desirable the editor wished a few dozen trinidad planters would come to that city on the same business and on a much larger scale n.w. pollard agent of the government of trinidad came to baltimore in 1851 to make his appeal for immigrants offering to pay all expenses at a meeting held in baltimore in 1852 the parents of mr. stanbury boys now a retired merchant in washington district of columbia were also induced to go they found their opportunities which they had never had before and well established themselves in their new home the account which mr. boys gives in a letter to the writer corroborates the newspaper reports as to the success of the enterprise the new york journal of commerce reported in 1841 that according to advices received at new orleans from jamaica there had arrived in that island 14 negro immigrants from the united states being the first fruits of mr. barclays mission to this country a much larger number of negroes were expected and various applications for their services had been received from respectable parties the products of soil were reported as much reduced from former years and to meet its demand for labor some freedmen from seara leone were induced to immigrate to that island in 1842 one mr. anderson an agent of the government of jamaica contemplated visiting new york in 1851 to secure a number of laborers tradesmen and agricultural settlers in the course of time immigration to foreign lands interested a larger number of representative negroes at a national council called in 1853 to promote more effectively the amelioration of the colored people the question of immigration and that only was taken up for serious consideration but those who desired to introduce the question of Liberian colonization or who were especially interested in that scheme were not invited among the persons who promoted the calling of this council were william webbe martin r delaney j gould bias franklin turner augustus green james m wittfield william lambart henry bibb james t holly and henry m collins they're developed in this assembly three groups one believing with martin r delaney that it was best to go to the niger river in africa another following the council of james m wittfield then interested in immigration to central america and a third supporting james t holly who insisted that hey he offered the best opportunities for free persons of color desiring to leave the united states delaney was commissioned to proceed to africa where he succeeded in concluding treaties with eight african kings who offered american negroes inducements to settle in their respective countries james redpath already interested in the scheme of colonization in hey he had preceded holly there and with the latter as his co-worker succeeded in sending to that country as many as two thousand immigrants the first of whom sailed from this country in 1861 owing to the lack of equipment adequate to the establishment of the settlement and the unforgivable climate not more than one-third of the immigrants remained some attention was directed to california and central america just as in the case of africa but nothing in that direction took tangible form immediately and the civil war following soon thereafter did not give some of these schemes a chance to materialize end of chapter four colonization as a remedy for migration