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Title: A Century of Negro Migration

Author: Carter G. Woodson

Release Date: February 6, 2004 [EBook #10968]

Language: English

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A CENTURY OF NEGRO MIGRATION

Carter G. Woodson




TO MY FATHER

JAMES WOODSON

WHO MADE IT POSSIBLE FOR ME TO ENTER THE LITERARY WORLD




A CENTURY OF NEGRO MIGRATION




PREFACE


In treating this movement of the Negroes, the writer does not presume to
say the last word on the subject. The exodus of the Negroes from the South
has just begun. The blacks have recently realized that they have freedom
of body and they will now proceed to exercise that right. To presume,
therefore, to exhaust the treatment of this movement in its incipiency is
far from the intention of the writer. The aim here is rather to direct
attention to this new phase of Negro American life which will doubtless
prove to be the most significant event in our local history since the
Civil War.

Many of the facts herein set forth have seen light before. The effort here
is directed toward an original treatment of facts, many of which have
already periodically appeared in some form. As these works, however, are
too numerous to be consulted by the layman, the writer has endeavored to
present in succinct form the leading facts as to how the Negroes in the
United States have struggled under adverse circumstances to flee from
bondage and oppression in quest of a land offering asylum to the oppressed
and opportunity to the unfortunate. How they have often been deceived has
been carefully noted.

With the hope that this volume may interest another worker to the extent
of publishing many other facts in this field, it is respectfully submitted
to the public.

CARTER G. WOODSON.

Washington, D.C., March 31, 1918.




CONTENTS


I.--Finding a Place of Refuge

II.--A Transplantation to the North

III.--Fighting it out on Free Soil

IV.--Colonization as a Remedy for Migration

V.--The Successful Migrant

VI.--Confusing Movements

VII.--The Exodus to the West

VIII.--The Migration of the Talented Tenth

IX.--The Exodus during the World War

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX



MAPS AND DIAGRAMS


Map Showing the Per Cent of Negroes in Total Population, by States: 1910

Diagram Showing the Negro Population of Northern and Western Cities in
1900 and 1910

Maps Showing Counties in Southern States in which Negroes Formed 50 Per
Cent of the Total Population




CHAPTER I

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 commonwealths towards 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. Slavery in 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 Negro slaves should be freed
on the same grounds, as their rights were also founded in the laws of
nature.[1] And so it was soon done in most Northern commonwealths.

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.[2] And it was thought
that the institution would soon thereafter pass away even in all southern
commonwealths except South Carolina and Georgia, where it had seemingly
become profitable. There came later the industrial revolution following
the invention of Watt's steam engine and mechanical appliances like
Whitney's cotton gin, all which changed the economic aspect of the modern
world, making slavery an 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 Negro 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 in favor of abolition
had been favorable, there was a decided reaction which soon blighted their
hopes.[3] In the Northern commonwealths, 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.[4] 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 ardor
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 group looked toward colonization for a solution of this
problem.[5] 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 an 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.[6] 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 preponderance 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 a 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
one could not determine exactly whether the Northwest Territory would be
slave or free.[7]

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 Pawnee Indians became bondsmen that the word _Pani_
became synonymous with slave in the West.[8] Western Indians themselves,
following the custom of white men, enslaved their captives in war rather
than choose the alternative of putting them to death. In this way they
were known to hold a number of blacks and whites.

The enslavement of the black man by the whites in this section dates from
the early part of the eighteenth 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.[9] Slavery, therefore, had legal standing in this territory.
When Antoine Crozat, upon being placed in control of Louisiana, was
authorized to begin a traffic in slaves, Crozat himself did nothing to
carry out his plan. 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 Negroes were brought
over to serve in Lower Louisiana, Philip Francis Renault imported 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,
Kaskaskia, Kaokia, Fort Chartres, St. Phillipe and Prairie du Rocher.[10]
In 1763 Negroes were relatively numerous in the Northwest Territory but
when this 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.[11] There was no
material increase in the slave population thereafter until the end of the
eighteenth century when some Negroes came from the original thirteen.

The Ordinance of 1787 did not disturb the relation of slave and master.
Some pioneers thought that the sixth 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 continuance of slavery
and others found ground for its perpetuation in that clause of the
Ordinance which allowed the people of the territory to adopt the
constitution and laws of any one of the thirteen States. Students of law
saw protection for slavery in Jay's treaty which guaranteed to the
settlers their property of all kinds.[12] When, therefore, the slave
question came up in the Northwest Territory about the close of the
eighteenth century, there were three classes of slaves: first, those who
were in servitude to French owners previous to the cession 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 as property under its protection; and third, those who, since
the Territory had been controlled by the United States, had been brought
from the commonwealths in which slavery was allowed.[13] Freedom, however,
was recognized as the ultimate status of the Negro in that territory.

This question having been seemingly settled, Anthony Benezet, who for
years advocated the abolition of slavery and devoted his time and means to
the preparation of the Negroes for living as freedmen, was practical
enough to recommend to the Congress of the Confederation a plan of
colonizing the emancipated blacks on the western lands.[14] Jefferson
incorporated into his scheme for a modern system of public schools the
training of the slaves in 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.[15]
Thinking that the western lands might be so used, he said in writing to
James Monroe in 1801: "A very great extent of country north of the Ohio
has been laid off in townships, 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."[16] 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 Brannagan 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.[17] A copy of the pamphlet containing
this proposition was sent to Thomas Jefferson, who was impressed thereby,
but not having the courage to brave the torture of being branded as a
friend of the slave, he failed to give it his support.[18] The same
question was brought prominently before the public again in 1816 when
there was presented to the House of Representatives a memorial from the
Kentucky Abolition Society praying that the free people of color be
colonized on the public lands. The committee to whom the memorial was
referred for consideration reported that it was expedient to refuse the
request on the ground that, as such lands were not granted to free white
men, they saw no reason for granting them to others.[19]

Some Negro slaves unwilling to wait to be carried or invited to the
Northwest Territory escaped to that section even when it was controlled by
the French prior to the American Revolution. Slaves who reached the West
by this route caused trouble between the French and the British colonists.
Advertising in 1746 for James Wenyam, a slave, Richard Colgate, his
master, said that he swore to a Negro whom he endeavored to induce to go
with him, that he had often been in the backwoods with his master and that
he would go to the French and Indians and fight for them.[20] In an
advertisement for a mulatto slave in 1755 Thomas Ringold, his master,
expressed fear that he had escaped by the same route to the French. He,
therefore, said: "It seems to be the interest, at least, of every
gentleman that has slaves, to be active in the beginning of these
attempts, for whilst we have the French such near neighbors, we shall not
have the least security in that kind of property."[21]

The good treatment which these slaves received among the French, and
especially at Pittsburgh the gateway to the Northwest Territory, tended to
make that city an asylum for those slaves who had sufficient spirit of
adventure to brave the wilderness through which they had to go. Negroes
even then had the idea that there was in this country a place of more
privilege than those they enjoyed in the seaboard colonies. Knowing of the
likelihood of the Negroes to rise during the French and Indian War,
Governor Dinwiddie wrote Fox one of the Secretaries of State in 1756: "We
dare not venture to part with any of our white men any distance, as we
must have a watchful eye over our Negro slaves, who are upward of one
hundred thousand."[22] Brissot de Warville mentions in his _Travels of
1788_ several examples of marriages of white and blacks in Pittsburgh.
He noted the case of a Negro who married an indentured French servant
woman. Out of this union came a desirable mulatto girl who married a
surgeon of Nantes then stationed at Pittsburgh. His family was considered
one of the most respectable of the city. The Negro referred to was doing a
creditable business and his wife took it upon herself to welcome
foreigners, especially the French, who came that way. Along the Ohio also
there were several cases of women of color living with unmarried white men;
but this was looked upon by the Negroes as detestable as was evidenced by
the fact that, if black women had a quarrel with a mulatto woman, the
former would reproach the latter for being of ignoble blood.[23]

These tendencies, however, could not assure the Negro that the Northwest
Territory was to be an asylum for freedom when in 1763 it passed into the
hands of the British, the promoters of the slave trade, and later to the
independent colonies, two of which had no desire to exterminate slavery.
Furthermore, when the Ordinance of 1787 with its famous sixth article
against slavery was proclaimed, it was soon discovered that this document
was not necessarily emancipatory. As the right to hold slaves was
guaranteed to those who owned them prior to the passage of the Ordinance
of 1787, it was to be expected that those attached to that institution
would not indifferently see it pass away. Various petitions, therefore,
were sent to the territorial legislature and to Congress praying that the
sixth article of the Ordinance of 1787 be abrogated.[24] No formal action
to this effect was taken, but the practice of slavery was continued even
at the winking of the government. Some slaves came from the Canadians who,
in accordance with the slave trade laws of the British Empire, were
supplied with bondsmen. It was the Canadians themselves who provided by
act of parliament in 1793 for prohibiting the importation of slaves and
for gradual emancipation. When it seemed later that the cause of freedom
would eventually triumph the proslavery element undertook to perpetuate
slavery through a system of indentured servant labor.

In the formation of the States of Indiana and Illinois the question as to
what should be done to harmonize with the new constitution the system of
indenture to which the territorial legislatures had been committed, caused
heated debate and at times almost conflict. Both Indiana[25] and
Illinois[26] finally incorporated into their constitutions compromise
provisions for a nominal prohibition of slavery modified by clauses for
the continuation of the system of indentured labor of the Negroes held to
service. The proslavery party persistently struggled for some years to
secure by the interpretation of the laws, by legislation and even by
amending the constitution so to change the fundamental law as to provide
for actual slavery. These States, however, gradually worked toward freedom
in keeping with the spirit of the majority who framed the constitution,
despite the fact that the indenture system in southern Illinois and
especially in Indiana was at times tantamount to slavery as it was
practiced in parts of the South.

It must be borne in mind here, however, that the North at this time was
far from becoming a place of refuge for Negroes. In the first place, the
industrial revolution had not then had time to reduce the Negroes to the
plane of beasts in the cotton kingdom. The rigorous climate and the
industries of the northern people, moreover, were not inviting to the
blacks and the development of the carrying trade and the rise of
manufacturing there did not make that section more attractive to unskilled
labor. Furthermore, when we consider the fact that there were many
thousands of Negroes in the Southern States the presence of a few in the
North must be regarded as insignificant. This paucity of blacks then
obtained especially in the Northwest Territory, for its French inhabitants
instead of being an exploiting people were pioneering, having little use
for slaves in carrying out their policy of merely holding the country for
France. Moreover, like certain gentlemen from Virginia, who after the
American Revolution were afraid to bring their slaves with them to occupy
their bounty lands in Ohio, few enterprising settlers from the slave
States had invaded the territory with their Negroes, not knowing whether
or not they would be secure in the possession of such property. When we
consider that in 1810 there were only 102,137 Negroes in the North and no
more than 3,454 in the Northwest Territory, we must look to the second
decade of the nineteenth century for the beginning of the migration of the
Negroes in the United States.


[Footnote 1: Locke, _Anti-Slavery_, pp. 19, 20, 23; _Works of John
Woolman_, pp. 58, 73; and Moore, _Notes on Slavery in Massachusetts_,
p. 71.]

[Footnote 2: Bassett, _Federalist System_, chap. xii. Hart,
_Slavery and Abolition_, pp. 153, 154.]

[Footnote 3: Turner, _The Rise of the New West_, pp. 45, 46, 47, 48,
49; Hammond, _Cotton Industry_, chaps. i and ii; Scherer, _Cotton
as a World Power_, pp. 168, 175.]

[Footnote 4: Locke, _Anti-Slavery_, chaps. i and ii.]

[Footnote 5: Jay, _An Inquiry_, p. 30.]

[Footnote 6: Ford edition, _Jefferson's Writings_, III, p. 432.]

[Footnote 7: For the passage of this ordinance three reasons have been
given: Slavery then prior to the invention of the cotton gin was
considered a necessary evil in the South. The expected monopoly of the
tobacco and indigo cultivation in the South would be promoted by excluding
Negroes from the Northwest Territory and thus preventing its cultivation
there. Dr. Cutler's influence aided by Mr. Grayson of Virginia was of much
assistance. The philanthropic idea was not so prominent as men have
thought.--Dunn, _Indiana_, p. 212.]

[Footnote 8: _Ibid_., p. 254.]

[Footnote 9: _Code Noir_.]

[Footnote 10: Speaking of these settlements in 1750, M. Viner, a Jesuit
Missionary to the Indians, said: "We have here Whites, Negroes, and
Indians, to say nothing of cross-breeds--There are five French villages
and three villages of the natives within a space of twenty-one leagues--In
the five French villages there are perhaps eleven hundred whites, three
hundred blacks, and some sixty red slaves or savages." Unlike the
condition of the slaves in Lower Louisiana where the rigid enforcement of
the Slave Code made their lives almost intolerable, the slaves of the
Northwest Territory were for many reasons much more fortunate. In the
first place, subject to the control of a mayor-commandant appointed by the
Governor of New Orleans, the early dwellers in this territory managed
their plantations about as they pleased. Moreover, as there were few
planters who owned as many as three or four Negroes, slavery in the
Northwest Territory did not get far beyond the patriarchal stage. Slaves
were usually well fed. The relations between master and slave were
friendly. The bondsmen were allowed special privileges on Sundays and
holidays and their children were taught the catechism according to the
ordinance of Louis XIV in 1724, which provided that all masters should
educate their slaves in the Apostolic Catholic religion and have them
baptized. Male slaves were worked side by side in the fields with their
masters and the female slaves in neat attire went with their mistresses to
matins and vespers. Slaves freely mingled in practically all festive
enjoyments.--See _Jesuit Relations_, LXIX, p. 144; Hutchins, _An
Historical Narrative_, 1784; and _Code Noir_.]

[Footnote 11: Mention was thereafter made of slaves as in the case of
Captain Philip Pittman who in 1770 wrote of one Mr. Beauvais, "who owned
240 orpens of cultivated land and eighty slaves; and such a case as that
of a Captain of a militia at St. Philips, possessing twenty blacks; and
the case of Mr. Bales, a very rich man of St. Genevieve, Illinois, owning
a hundred Negroes, beside having white people constantly employed."--See
Captain Pittman's _The Present State of the European Settlements in the
Mississippi_, 1770.]

[Footnote 12: Dunn, _Indiana_, chap. vi.]

[Footnote 13: Hinsdale, _Old Northwest_, p. 350.]

[Footnote 14: _Tyrannical Libertymen_, pp. 10, 11; Locke,
_Anti-Slavery_, pp. 31, 32; Brannagan, _Serious Remonstrance_,
p. 18.]

[Footnote 15: Washington edition of _Jefferson's Writings_, chap. vi,
p. 456, and chap. viii, p. 380.]

[Footnote 16: Ford edition of _Jefferson's Writings_, III, p. 244;
IX, p. 303; X, pp. 76, 290.]

[Footnote 17: Brannagan, _Serious Remonstrances_, p. 18.]

[Footnote 18: Library edition of _Jefferson's Writings_, X, pp. 295,
296.]

[Footnote 19: Adams, _Neglected Period of Anti-Slavery_, pp. 129,
130.]

[Footnote 20: _The Pennsylvania Gazette_, July 31, 1746.]

[Footnote 21: _The Maryland Gazette_, March 20, 1755.]

[Footnote 22: _Washington's Writings_, II, p. 134.]

[Footnote 23: Brissot de Warville, _New Travels_, II, pp. 33-34.]

[Footnote 24: Harris, _Slavery in Illinois_, chaps. iii, iv, and v;
Dunn, _Indiana_, pp. 218-260; Hinsdale, _Old Northwest_, pp.
351-358.]

[Footnote 25: This code provided that all male Negroes under fifteen,
years of age either owned or acquired must remain in servitude until they
reached the age of thirty-five and female slaves until thirty-two. The
male children of such persons held to service could be bound out for
thirty years and the female children for twenty-eight. Slaves brought into
the territory had to comply with contracts for terms of service when their
master registered them within thirty days from the time he brought them
into the territory. Indentured black servants were not exactly sold, but
the law permitted the transfer from one owner to another when the slave
acquiesced in the transfer before a notary, but it was often done without
regard to the slave. They were even bequeathed and sold as personal
property at auction. Notices for sale were frequent. There were rewards
for runaway slaves. Negroes whose terms had almost expired were kidnapped
and sold to New Orleans. The legislature imposed a penalty for such, but
it was not generally enforced. They were taxable property valued according
to the length of service. Negroes served as laborers on farms, house
servants, and in salt mines, the latter being an excuse for holding them
as slaves. Persons of color could purchase servants of their own race. The
law provided that the Justice of the County could on complaint from the
master order that a lazy servant be whipped. In this frontier section,
therefore, where men often took the law in their own hands, slaves were
often punished and abused just as they were in the Southern States. The
law dealing with fugitives was somewhat harsh. When apprehended, fugitives
had to serve two days extra for each day they lost from their master's
service. The harboring of a runaway slave was punishable by a fine of one
day for each the slave might be concealed. Consistently too with the
provision of the laws in most slave States, slaves could retain all goods
or money lawfully acquired during their servitude provided their master
gave his consent. Upon the demonstration of proof to the county court that
they had served their term they could obtain from that tribunal
certificates of freedom. See _The Laws of Indiana_.]

[Footnote 26: Masters had to provide adequate food, and clothing and good
lodging for the slave, but the penalty for failing to comply with this law
was not clear and even if so, it happened that many masters never observed
it. There was also an effort to prevent cruelty to slaves, but it was
difficult to establish the guilt of masters when the slave could not bear
witness against his owner and it was not likely that the neighbor equally
guilty or indifferent to the complaints of the blacks would take their
petitions to court.

Under this system a large number of slaves were brought into the Territory
especially after 1807. There were 135 in 1800. This increase came from
Kentucky and Tennessee. As those brought were largely boys and girls with
a long period of service, this form of slavery was assured for some years.
The children of these blacks were often registered for thirty-five instead
of thirty years of service on the ground that they were not born in
Illinois. No one thought of persecuting a master for holding servants
unlawfully and Negroes themselves could be easily deceived. Very few
settlers brought their slaves there to free them. There were only 749 in
1820. If one considers the proportion of this to the number brought there
for manumission this seems hardly true. It is better to say that during
these first two decades of the nineteenth century some settlers came for
both purposes, some to hold slaves, some, as Edward Coles, to free them.
It was not only practiced in the southern part along the Mississippi and
Ohio but as far north in Illinois as Sangamon County, were found servants
known as "yellow boys" and "colored girls."--See the _Laws of
Illinois_.]



CHAPTER II

A TRANSPLANTATION TO THE NORTH


Just after the settlement of the question of holding the western posts by
the British and the adjustment of the trouble arising from their capture
of slaves during our second war with England, there started a movement of
the blacks to this frontier territory. But, as there were few towns or
cities in the Northwest during the first decades of the new republic, the
flight of the Negro into that territory was like that of a fugitive taking
his chances in the wilderness. Having lost their pioneering spirit in
passing through the ordeal of slavery, not many of the bondmen took flight
in that direction and few free Negroes ventured to seek their fortunes in
those wilds during the period of the frontier conditions, especially when
the country had not then undergone a thorough reaction against the Negro.

The migration of the Negroes, however, received an impetus early in the
nineteenth century. This came from the Quakers, who by the middle of the
eighteenth century had taken the position that all members of their sect
should free their slaves.[1] The Quakers of North Carolina and Virginia
had as early as 1740 taken up the serious question of humanely treating
their Negroes. The North Carolina Quakers advised Friends to emancipate
their slaves, later prohibited traffic in them, forbade their members from
even hiring the blacks out in 1780 and by 1818 had exterminated the
institution among their communicants.[2] After healing themselves of the
sin, they had before the close of the eighteenth century militantly
addressed themselves to the task of abolishing slavery and the slave trade
throughout the world. Differing in their scheme from that of most
anti-slavery leaders, they were advocating the establishment of the
freedmen in society as good citizens and to that end had provided for the
religious and mental instruction of their slaves prior to emancipating
them.[3]

Despite the fact that the Quakers were not free to extend their operations
throughout the colonies, they did much to enable the Negroes to reach free
soil. As the Quakers believed in the freedom of the will, human
brotherhood, and equality before God, they did not, like the Puritans,
find difficulties in solving the problem of elevating the Negroes. Whereas
certain Puritans were afraid that conversion might lead to the destruction
of caste and the incorporation of undesirable persons into the "Body
Politick," the Quakers proceeded on the principle that all men are
brethren and, being equal before God, should be considered equal before
the law. On account of unduly emphasizing the relation of man to God, the
Puritans "atrophied their social humanitarian instinct" and developed into
a race of self-conscious saints. Believing in human nature and laying
stress upon the relation between man and man, the Quakers became the
friends of all humanity.[4]

In 1693 George Keith, a leading Quaker of his day, came forward as a
promoter of the religious training of the slaves as a preparation for
emancipation. William Penn advocated the emancipation of slaves, that they
might have every opportunity for improvement. In 1695 the Quakers while
protesting against the slave trade denounced also the policy of neglecting
their moral and spiritual welfare.[5] The growing interest of this sect in
the Negroes was shown later by the development in 1713 of a definite
scheme for freeing and returning them to Africa after having been educated
and trained to serve as missionaries on that continent.

When the manumission of the slaves was checked by the reaction against
that class and it became more of a problem to establish them in a hostile
environment, certain Quakers of North Carolina and Virginia adopted the
scheme of settling them in Northern States.[6] At first, they sent such
freedmen to Pennsylvania. But for various reasons this did not prove to be
the best asylum. In the first place, Pennsylvania bordered on the slave
States, Maryland and Virginia, from which agents came to kidnap free
Negroes. Furthermore, too many Negroes were already rushing to that
commonwealth as the Negroes' heaven and there was the chance that the
Negroes might be settled elsewhere in the North, where they might have
better economic opportunities.[7] A committee of forty was accordingly
appointed by North Carolina Quakers in 1822 to examine the laws of other
free States with a view to determining what section would be most suitable
for colonizing these blacks. This committee recommended in its report that
the blacks be colonized in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois.

The yearly meeting, therefore, ordered the removal of such Negroes as fast
as they were willing or as might be consistent with the profession of
their sect, and instructed the agents effecting the removal to draw on the
treasury for any sum not exceeding two hundred dollars to defray expenses.
An increasing number reached these States every year but, owing to the
inducements offered by the American Colonization Society, some of them
went to Liberia. When Liberia, however, developed into every thing but a
haven of rest, the number sent to the settlements in the Northwest greatly
increased.

The quarterly meeting succeeded in sending to the West 133 Negroes,
including 23 free blacks and slaves given up because they were connected
by marriage with those to be transplanted.[8] The Negro colonists seemed
to prefer Indiana.[9] They went in three companies and with suitable young
Friends to whom were executed powers of attorney to manumit, set free,
settle and bind them out.[10] Thirteen carts and wagons were bought for
these three companies; $1,250 was furnished for their traveling expenses
and clothing, the whole cost amounting to $2,490. It was planned to send
forty or fifty to Long Island and twenty to the interior of Pennsylvania,
but they failed to prosper and reports concerning them stamped them as
destitute and deplorably ignorant. Those who went to Ohio and Indiana,
however, did well.[11]

Later we receive another interesting account of this exodus. David White
led a company of fifty-three into the West, thirty-eight of whom belonged
to Friends, five to a member who had ordered that they be taken West at
his expense. Six of these slaves belonged to Samuel Lawrence, a Negro
slaveholder, who had purchased himself and family. White pathetically
reports the case of four of the women who had married slave husbands and
had twenty children for the possession of whom the Friends had to stand a
lawsuit in the courts. The women had decided to leave their husbands
behind but the thought of separation so tormented them that they made an
effort to secure their liberty. Upon appealing to their masters for terms
the owners, somewhat moved by compassion, sold them for one half of their
value. White then went West and left four in Chillicothe, twenty-three in
Leesburg and twenty-six in Wayne County, Indiana, without encountering any
material difficulty.[12]

Others had thought of this plan but the Quakers actually carried it out on
a small scale. Here we see again not only their desire to have the Negroes
emancipated but the vital interest of the Quakers in success of the
blacks, for members of this sect not only liberated their slaves but sold
out their own holdings in the South and moved with these freedmen into the
North. Quakers who then lived in free States offered fugitives material
assistance by open and clandestine methods.[13] The most prominent leader
developed by the movement was Levi Coffin, whose daring deeds in behalf of
the fugitives made him the reputed President of the Underground Railroad.
Most of the Quaker settlements of Negroes with which he was connected were
made in what is now Hamilton, Howard, Wayne, Randolph, Vigo, Gibson,
Grant, Rush, and Tipton Counties, Indiana, and Darke County, Ohio.

The promotion of this movement by the Quakers was well on its way by 1815
and was not materially checked until the fifties when the operations of
the drastic fugitive slave law interfered, and even then the movement had
gained such momentum and the execution of that mischievous measure had
produced in the North so much reaction like that expressed in the personal
liberty laws, that it could not be stopped. The Negroes found homes in
Western New York, Western Pennsylvania and throughout the Northwest
Territory. The Negro population of York, Harrisburg and Philadelphia
rapidly increased. A settlement of Negroes developed at Sandy Lake in
Northwestern Pennsylvania[14] and there was another near Berlin Cross
Roads in Ohio.[15] A group of Negroes migrating to this same State found
homes in the Van Buren Township of Shelby County.[16] A more significant
settlement in the State was made by Samuel Gist, an Englishman possessing
extensive plantations in Hanover, Amherst, and Henrico Counties, Virginia.
He provided in his will that his slaves should be freed and sent to the
North. He further provided that the revenue from his plantation the last
year of his life be applied in building schoolhouses and churches for
their accommodation, and "that all money coming to him in Virginia be set
aside for the employment of ministers and teachers to instruct them." In
1818, Wickham, the executor of his estate, purchased land and established
these Negroes in what was called the Upper and Lower Camps of Brown
County.[17]

Augustus Wattles, a Quaker from Connecticut, made a settlement in Mercer
County, Ohio, early in the nineteenth century. In the winter of 1833-4, he
providentially became acquainted with the colored people of Cincinnati,
finding there about "4,000 totally ignorant of every thing calculated to
make good citizens." As most of them had been slaves, excluded from every
avenue of moral and mental improvement, he established for them a school
which he maintained for two years. He then proposed to these Negroes to go
into the country and purchase land to remove them "from those
contaminating influences which had so long crushed them in our cities and
villages."[18] They consented on the condition that he would accompany
them and teach school. He travelled through Canada, Michigan and Indiana,
looking for a suitable location, and finally selected for settlement a
place in Mercer County, Ohio. In 1835, he made the first purchase of land
there for this purpose and before 1838 Negroes had bought there about
30,000 acres, at the earnest appeal of this benefactor, who had travelled
into almost every neighborhood of the blacks in the State, and laid before
them the benefits of a permanent home for themselves and of education for
their children.[19]

This settlement was further increased in 1858 by the manumitted slaves of
John Harper of North Carolina.[20] John Randolph of Roanoke endeavored to
establish his slaves as freemen in this county but the Germans who had
settled in that community a little ahead of them started such a
disturbance that Randolph's executor could not carry out his plan,
although he had purchased a large tract of land there.[21] It was
necessary to send these freemen to Miami County. Theodoric H. Gregg of
Dinwiddie County, Virginia, liberated his slaves in 1854 and sent them to
Ohio.[22] Nearer to the Civil War, when public opinion was proscribing the
uplift of Negroes in Kentucky, Noah Spears secured near Xenia, Greene
County, Ohio, a small parcel of land for sixteen of his former bondsmen in
1856.[23] Other freedmen found their way to this community in later years
and it became so prosperous that it was selected as the site of
Wilberforce University.

This transplantation extended into Michigan. With the help of persons
philanthropically inclined there sprang up a flourishing group of Negroes
in Detroit. Early in the nineteenth century they began to acquire property
and to provide for the education of their children. Their record was such
as to merit the encomiums of their fellow white citizens. In later years
this group in Detroit was increased by the operation of laws hostile to
free Negroes in the South in that life for this class not only became
intolerable but necessitated their expatriation. Because of the Virginia
drastic laws and especially that of 1838 prohibiting the return to that
State of such Negro students as had been accustomed to go North to attend
school, after they were denied this privilege at home, the father of
Richard DeBaptiste and Marie Louis More, the mother of Fannie M. Richards,
led a colony of free Negroes from Fredericksburg to Detroit.[24] And for
about similar reasons the father of Robert A. Pelham conducted others from
Petersburg, Virginia, in 1859.[25] One Saunders, a planter of Cabell
County, West Virginia, liberated his slaves some years later and furnished
them homes among the Negroes settled in Cass County, Michigan, about
ninety miles east of Chicago, and ninety-five miles west of Detroit.

This settlement had become attractive to fugitive slaves and freedmen
because the Quakers settled there welcomed them on their way to freedom
and in some cases encouraged them to remain among them. When the increase
of fugitives was rendered impossible during the fifties when the Fugitive
Slave Law was being enforced, there was still a steady growth due to the
manumission of slaves by sympathetic and benevolent masters in the
South.[26] Most of these Negroes settled in Calvin Township, in that
county, so that of the 1,376 residing there in 1860, 795 were established
in this district, there being only 580 whites dispersed among them. The
Negro settlers did not then obtain control of the government but they
early purchased land to the extent of several thousand acres and developed
into successful small farmers. Being a little more prosperous than the
average Negro community in the North, the Cass County settlement not only
attracted Negroes fleeing from hardships in the South but also those who
had for some years unsuccessfully endeavored to establish themselves in
other communities on free soil.[27]

These settlements were duplicated a little farther west in Illinois.
Edward Coles, a Virginian, who in 1818 emigrated to Illinois, of which he
later served as Governor and as liberator from slavery, settled his slaves
in that commonwealth. He brought them to Edwardsville, where they
constituted a community known as "Coles' Negroes."[28] There was another
community of Negroes in Illinois in what is now called Brooklyn situated
north of East St. Louis. This town was a center of some consequence in the
thirties. It became a station of the Underground Railroad on the route to
Alton and to Canada. As all of the Negroes who emerged from the South did
not go farther into the North, the black population of the town gradually
grew despite the fact that slave hunters captured and reenslaved many of
the Negroes who settled there.[29]

These settlements together with favorable communities of sympathetic
whites promoted the migration of the free Negroes and fugitives from the
South by serving as centers offering assistance to those fleeing to the
free States and to Canada. The fugitives usually found friends in
Philadelphia, Columbia, Pittsburgh, Elmira, Rochester, Buffalo,
Gallipolis, Portsmouth, Akron, Cincinnati, and Detroit. They passed on the
way to freedom through Columbia, Philadelphia, Elizabethtown and by way of
sea to New York and Boston, from which they proceeded to permanent
settlements in the North.[30]

In the West, the migration of the blacks was further facilitated by the
peculiar geographic condition in that the Appalachian highland, extending
like a peninsula into the South, had a natural endowment which produced a
class of white citizens hostile to the institution of slavery. These
mountaineers coming later to the colonies had to go to the hills and
mountains because the first comers from Europe had taken up the land near
the sea. Being of the German and Scotch-Irish Presbyterian stock, they had
ideals differing widely from those of the seaboard slaveholders.[31] The
mountaineers believed in "civil liberty in fee simple, and an open road to
civil honors, secured to the poorest and feeblest members of society." The
eastern element had for their ideal a government of interests for the
people. They believed in liberty but that of kings, lords, and commons,
not of all the people.[32]

Settled along the Appalachian highland, these new stocks continued to
differ from those dwelling near the sea, especially on the slavery
question.[33] The natural endowment of the mountainous section made
slavery there unprofitable and the mountaineers bore it grievously that
they were attached to commonwealths dominated by the radical pro-slavery
element of the South, who sacrificed all other interests to safeguard
those of the peculiar institution. There developed a number of clashes in
all of the legislatures and constitutional conventions of the Southern
States along the Atlantic, but in every case the defenders of the
interests of slavery won. When, therefore, slaves with the assistance of
anti-slavery mountaineers began to escape to the free States, they had
little difficulty in making their way through the Appalachian region,
where the love of freedom had so set the people against slavery that
although some of them yielded to the inevitable sin, they never made any
systematic effort to protect it.[34]

The development of the movement in these mountains was more than
interesting. During the first quarter of the nineteenth century there were
many ardent anti-slavery leaders in the mountains. These were not
particularly interested in the Negro but were determined to keep that soil
for freedom that the settlers might there realize the ideals for which
they had left their homes in Europe. When the industrial revolution with
the attendant rise of the plantation cotton culture made abolition in the
South improbable, some of them became colonizationists, hoping to destroy
the institution through deportation, which would remove the objection of
certain masters who would free their slaves provided they were not left in
the States to become a public charge.[35] Some of this sentiment continued
in the mountains even until the Civil War. The highlanders, therefore,
found themselves involved in a continuous embroglio because they were not
moved by reactionary influences which were unifying the South for its bold
effort to make slavery a national institution.[36] The other members of
the mountaineer anti-slavery group became attached to the Underground
Railroad system, endeavoring by secret methods to place on free soil a
sufficiently large number of fugitives to show a decided diminution in the
South.[37] John Brown, who communicated with the South through these
mountains, thought that his work would be a success, if he could change
the situation in one county in each of these States.

The lines along which these Underground Railroad operators moved connected
naturally with the Quaker settlements established in free States and the
favorable sections in the Appalachian region. Many of these workers were
Quakers who had already established settlements of slaves on estates which
they had purchased in the Northwest Territory. Among these were John
Rankin, James Gilliland, Jesse Lockehart, Robert Dobbins, Samuel Crothers,
Hugh L. Fullerton, and William Dickey. Thus they connected the heart of
the South with the avenues to freedom in the North.[38] There were routes
extending from this section into Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Pennsylvania.
Over the Ohio and Kentucky route culminating chiefly in Cleveland,
Sandusky and Detroit, however, more fugitives made their way to freedom
than through any other avenue,[39] partly too because they found the
limestone caves very helpful for hiding by day. These operations extended
even through Tennessee into northern Georgia and Alabama. Dillingham,
Josiah Henson and Harriet Tubman used these routes to deliver many a Negro
from slavery.

The opportunity thus offered to help the oppressed brought forward a class
of anti-slavery men, who went beyond the limit of merely expressing their
horror of the evil. They believed that something should be done "to
deliver the poor that cry and to direct the wanderer in the right
way."[40] Translating into action what had long been restricted to
academic discussion, these philanthropic workers ushered in a new era in
the uplift of the blacks, making abolition more of a reality. The
abolition element of the North then could no longer be considered an
insignificant minority advocating a hopeless cause but a factor in drawing
from the South a part of its slave population and at the same time
offering asylum to the free Negroes whom the southerners considered
undesirable.[4l] Prominent among those who aided this migration in various
ways were Benjamin Lundy of Tennessee and James G. Birney, a former
slaveholder of Huntsville, Alabama, who manumitted his slaves and
apprenticed and educated some of them in Ohio.

This exodus of the Negroes to the free States promoted the migration of
others of their race to Canada, a more congenial part beyond the borders
of the United States. The movement from the free States into Canada,
moreover, was contemporary with that from the South to the free States as
will be evidenced by the fact that 15,000 of the 60,000 Negroes in Canada
in 1860 were free born. As Detroit was the chief gateway for them to
Canada, most of these refugees settled in towns of Southern Ontario not
far from that city. These were Dawn, Colchester, Elgin, Dresden, Windsor,
Sandwich, Bush, Wilberforce, Hamilton, St. Catherines, Chatham, Riley,
Anderton, London, Malden and Gonfield.[42] And their coming to Canada was
not checked even by request from their enemies that they be turned away
from that country as undesirables, for some of the white people there
welcomed and assisted them. Canadians later experienced a change in their
attitude toward these refugees but these British Americans never made the
life of the Negro there so intolerable as was the case in some of the free
States.

It should be observed here that this movement, unlike the exodus of the
Negroes of today, affected an unequal distribution of the enlightened
Negroes.[43] Those who are fleeing from the South today are largely
laborers seeking economic opportunities. The motive at work in the mind of
the antebellum refugee was higher. In 1840 there were more intelligent
blacks in the South than in the North but not so after 1850, despite the
vigorous execution of the Fugitive Slave Law in some parts of the North.
While the free Negro population of the slave States increased only 23,736
from 1850 to 1860, that of the free States increased 29,839. In the South,
only Delaware, Maryland and North Carolina showed a noticeable increase in
the number of free persons of color during the decade immediately
preceding the Civil War. This element of the population had only slightly
increased in Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, Virginia, Louisiana,
South Carolina and the District of Columbia. The number of free Negroes of
Florida remained constant. Those of Arkansas, Mississippi and Texas
diminished. In the North, of course, the migration had caused the tendency
to be in the other direction. With the exception of Maine, New Hampshire,
Vermont and New York which had about the same free colored population in
1860 as they had in 1850 there was a general increase in the number of
Negroes in the free States. Ohio led in this respect, having had during
this period an increase of 11,394.[44] A glance at the table on the
accompanying page will show in detail the results of this migration.


STATISTICS OF THE FREE COLORED POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES

State                                Population
                                1850            1860
----------------------------------------------------
Alabama....................    2,265           2,690
Arkansas...................      608             144
California.................      962           4,086
Connecticut................    7,693           8,627
Delaware...................   18,073          19,829
Florida......................    932             932
Georgia......................  2,931           3,500
Illinois.....................  5,436           7,628
Indiana...................... 11,262          11,428
Iowa.........................    333           1,069
Kentucky..................... 10,011          10,684
Louisiana.................... 17,462          18,647
Maine........................  1,356           1,327
Kansas.......................                    625
Maryland..................... 74,723          83,942
Massachusetts................  9,064           9,602
Michigan.....................  2,583           6,797
Minnesota....................                    259
Mississippi..................    930             773
Missouri.....................  2,618           3,572
New Hampshire................    520             494
New Jersey................... 23,810          25,318
New York..................... 49,069          49,005
North Carolina............... 27,463          30,463
Ohio......................... 25,279          36,673
Oregon.......................                    128
Pennsylvania................. 53,626          56,949
Rhode Island.................  3,670           3,952
South Carolina...............  8,960           9,914
Tennessee....................  6,422           7,300
Texas........................    397             355
Vermont......................    718             709
Virginia..................... 54,333          58,042
Wisconsin....................    635           1,171
Territories:
  Colorado...................                     46
  Dakota.....................                      0
  District of Columbia....... 10,059          11,131
  Minnesota..................     39
  Nebraska...................                     67
  Nevada.....................                     45
  New Mexico.................    207              85
  Oregon.....................     24
  Utah.......................     22              30
  Washington.................                     30
                             _______         _______
Total   .....................434,495         488,070


[Footnote 1: Moore, _Anti-Slavery_, p. 79; and _Special Report of
the United States Commissioner of Education_, 1871, p. 376; Weeks,
_Southern Quakers_, pp. 215, 216, 231, 230, 242.]

[Footnote 2: _The Southern Workman_, xxvii, p. 161.]

[Footnote 3: Rhodes, _History of the United States_, chap. i, p. 6;
Bancroft, _History of the United States_, chap. ii, p. 401; and
Locke, _Anti-Slavery_, p. 32.]

[Footnote 4: _A Brief Statement of the Rise and Progress of the
Testimony of the Quakers_, passim; Woodson, _The Education of the
Negro Prior to 1861_, p. 43.]

[Footnote 5: Woodson, _The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861_, p.
44; and Locke, _Anti-Slavery_, p. 32.]

[Footnote 6: _The Southern Workman_, xxxvii, pp. 158-169.]

[Footnote 7: Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, pp. 144, 145, 151,
155.]

[Footnote 8: _Southern Workman_, xxxvii, p. 157.]

[Footnote 9: Levi Coffin, _Reminiscences_, chaps, i and ii.]

[Footnote 10: _Southern Workman_, xxxvii, pp. 161-163.]

[Footnote 11: Coffin, _Reminiscences_, p. 109; and Howe's
_Historical Collections_, p. 356.]

[Footnote 12: _Southern Workman_, xxxvii, pp. 162, 163.]

[Footnote 13: Levi Coffin, _Reminiscences_, pp. 108-111.]

[Footnote 14: Siebert, _The Underground Railroad_, p. 249.]

[Footnote 15: Langston, _From the Virginia Plantation to the National
Capitol_, p. 35.]

[Footnote 16: Howe, _Historical Collections_, p. 465.]

[Footnote 17: _History of Brown County, Ohio_, p. 313.]

[Footnote 18: Wattles said: he purchased for himself 190 acres of land, to
establish a manual labor school for colored boys. He had maintained a
school on it, at his own expense, till the eleventh of November, 1842.
While in Philadelphia the winter before, he became acquainted with the
trustees of the late Samuel Emlen, a Friend of New Jersey. He left by his
will $20,000 for the "support and education in school learning and the
mechanic arts and agriculture, boys, of African and Indian descent, whose
parents would give them up to the school. They united their means and
purchased Wattles farm, and appointed him the superintendent of the
establishment, which they called the Emlen Institute."--See Howe's
_Historical Collections_, p. 356.]

[Footnote 19: Howe's _Historical Collections_, p. 355.]

[Footnote 20: _Manuscripts_ in the possession of J.E. Moorland.]

[Footnote 21: _The African Repository_, xxii, pp. 322, 333.]

[Footnote 22: Simmons, _Men of Mark_, p. 723.]

[Footnote 23: _Southern Workman_, xxxvii, p. 158.]

[Footnote 24: _The Journal of Negro History_, I, pp. 23-33.]

[Footnote 25: _Ibid_., I, p. 26.]

[Footnote 26: _The African Repository_, passim.]

[Footnote 27: Although constituting a majority of the population even
before the Civil War the Negroes of this township did not get recognition
in the local government until 1875 when John Allen, a Negro, was elected
township treasurer. From that time until about 1890 the Negroes always
shared the honors of office with their white citizens and since that time
they have usually had entire control of the local government in that
township, holding such offices as supervisor, clerk, treasurer, road
commissioner, and school director. Their record has been that of
efficiency. Boss rule among them is not known. The best man for an office
is generally sought; for this is a community of independent farmers. In
1907 one hundred and eleven different farmers in this community had
holdings of 10,439 acres. Their township usually has very few delinquent
taxpayers and it promptly makes its returns to the county.--See the
_Southern Workman_, xxxvii, pp. 486-489.]

[Footnote 28: Davidson and Stowe, _A Complete History of Illinois_,
pp. 321, 322; and Washburn, _Edward Coles_, pp. 44 and 53.]

[Footnote 29: The Negro population of this town so rapidly increased after
the war that it has become a Negro town and unfortunately a bad one. Much
improvement has been made in recent years.--See _Southern Workman_,
xxxvii, pp. 489-494.]

[Footnote 30: Still, _Underground Railroad_, passim; Siebert,
_Underground Railroad_, pp. 34, 35, 40, 42, 43, 48, 56, 59, 62, 64,
70, 145, 147; Drew, _Refugee_, pp. 72, 97, 114, 152, 335 and 373.]

[Footnote 31: _The Journal of Negro History_, I, pp. 132-162.]

[Footnote 32: _Ibid_., I, 138.]

[Footnote 33: Olmsted, _Back Country_, p. 134.]

[Footnote 34: In the Appalachian mountains, however, the settlers were
loath to follow the fortunes of the ardent pro-slavery element. Actual
abolition, for example, was never popular in western Virginia, but the
love of the people of that section for freedom kept them estranged from
the slaveholding districts of the State, which by 1850 had completely
committed themselves to the pro-slavery propaganda. In the Convention of
1829-30 Upshur said there existed in a great portion of the West (of
Virginia) a rooted antipathy to the slave. John Randolph was alarmed at
the fanatical spirit on the subject of slavery, which was growing in
Virginia,--See the _Journal of Negro History_, I, p. 142.]

[Footnote 35: Adams, _Neglected Period of Anti-Slavery_.]

[Footnote 36: _The Journal of Negro History_, I, pp. 132-160.]

[Footnote 37: Siebert, _Underground Railroad_, p. 166.]

[Footnote 38: Adams, _Neglected Period of Anti-Slavery_.]

[Footnote 39: Siebert, _Underground Railroad_, chaps. v and vi.]

[Footnote 40: _An Address to the People of North Carolina on the Evils
of Slavery._]

[Footnote 41: Washington, _Story of the Negro_, I, chaps. xii, xiii
and xiv. ]

[Footnote 42: _Father Henson's Story of his own Life_, p. 209;
Coffin, _Reminiscences_, pp. 247-256; Howe, _The Refugees from
Slavery_, p. 77; Haviland, _A Woman's Work_, pp. 192, 193, 196.]

[Footnote 43: Woodson, _The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861_,
pp. 236-240.]

[Footnote 44: _The United States Censuses of 1850 and 1860._]



CHAPTER III

FIGHTING IT OUT ON FREE SOIL


How, then, was this increasing influx of refugees from the South to be
received 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.[1] 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 there
set in a reaction.[2] Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and Kentucky
disfranchised 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 disfranchised 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 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.[3]

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.[4] When the reactionary legislation of the
South made life intolerable for the Negroes, debasing them to the plane of
beasts, many of the free people of color from Virginia, Maryland and
Delaware moved or escaped into Pennsylvania like a steady stream during
the next sixty 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. There set in too an intense struggle
between the black and white laborers,[5] 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.[6] In 1813 the mayor,
aldermen and citizens of Philadelphia asked that free Negroes be taxed to
support their poor.[7] Two Philadelphia representatives in the
Pennsylvania Legislature had a committee appointed in 1815 to consider the
advisability of preventing the immigration of Negroes.[8] One of the
causes then at work there was that the black population had recently
increased to four thousand in Philadelphia and more than four thousand
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.[9] "On
arriving," therefore, says a contemporary, "they abandoned themselves to
all manner of debauchery and dissipation to the great annoyance of many
citizens."[10]

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.[11]
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.[12] 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
Independence Square on the Fourth of July because they were neither
considered nor desired as a part of the body politic.[13]

It was thought that in the state of feeling of the thirties that the Negro
would be annihilated. De Tocqueville also observed that the Negroes were
more detested in the free States than in those where they were held as
slaves.[14] 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.[15] 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 almshouses 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, eleven 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 fellowmen. After a reign
of terror for half a week, order was restored and twenty of the accused
were convicted of arson.

In 1820 there occurred so many conflagrations that a vigilance committee
was organized.[16] 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 all free Negroes to
assist them in getting out of the State for colonization.[17] The citizens
of Lehigh County asked the authorities in 1830 to expel all Negroes and
persons of color found in the State.[18] Another petition prayed 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. This
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.[19]

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.[20] In 1838 there occurred another outbreak which developed into an
anti-abolition riot, as the public mind had been much exercised by the
discussions of abolitionists and by their close social contact with the
Negroes. The clash came on the seventeenth of May when Pennsylvania 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.[21] 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, there
ensued a battle led by the whites who undertook to break up the
procession. Along with the beating and killing of the usual number went
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 Moyamensing_, using firearms with which many were
wounded. This disturbance was finally quelled by aid of the militia.[22]

These clashes sometimes reached farther north than 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 Lewis Tappan, mainly on account of their
friendly attitude toward the Negroes.[23] On October 21, 1834, the same
feeling developed in Utica, where was to be held an anti-slavery meeting
according to previous notice. The six hundred delegates who assembled
there were warned to disband. A mob then organized itself and drove the
delegates from the town. That same month the people of Palmyra, 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 refuse to rent the same thereafter to
any person of color whatever.[24] In New York Negroes were excluded from
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 Noyes Academy because it decided to
admit Negro students, thinking that many of the race might thereby be
encouraged to come to that State.[25] When Prudence Crandall established
in Canterbury, Connecticut, an academy to which she decided to admit
Negroes, the mayor, selectmen 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.[26] 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.[27] 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.[28] 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 all 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 $50 and his master could recover pay for the service of his slave
to the amount of fifty cents a day.[29]

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 $500 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 $50 to $100, one half of which should go to the person upon the
testimony of whom the conviction should be secured.[30] 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.[31]

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.[32] 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.[33] 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.[34]

In the same way 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 ten 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.[35]

In Michigan the situation was a little better but, with the waves of
hostile legislation then sweeping over the new[36] 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 all
blacks who could not 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.[37]

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 consequences 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
altogether.[38] This persecution of the Negroes received also the hearty
cooperation of the foreign element, who, being an undeveloped class, had
to do menial labor in competition with the blacks. The feeling of the
foreigners was especially mischievous for the reasons that they were, like
the Negroes, at 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 excepted.

_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.[39]

In 1827 there arose a storm of protest on the occasion of the settling of
seventy freedmen in Lawrence County, Ohio, by a philanthropic master of
Pittsylvania County, Virginia.[40] On _Black Friday_, January 1,
1830, eighty Negroes were driven out of Portsmouth, Ohio, at the request
of one or two hundred white citizens set forth in an urgent memorial.[41]
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.[42] A mob attacked the homes of the blacks, killed a number of
them, and forced twelve hundred 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.
Birney, the editor of the _Philanthropist_, because of the
encouragement his abolitionist organ gave to the immigrating Negroes.[43]
But in 1841 came a decidedly systematic effort on the part of foreigners
and proslavery 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. There
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 thereafter either discharged upon
producing certificates of nativity or giving bond or were indefinitely
held.[44]

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 sixty or seventy 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 slaveholding, 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."[45]

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 derived no advantage from
slavery, he begged that they be excused from its inconveniences. Most of
the blacks that migrated there, moreover, possessed, thought he, "feelings
quite unprepared to make good citizens. A sense of inferiority early
impressed on their minds, destitute of every thing but bodily power and
having no character to lose, and 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."[46]

With the exception of such centers as Eden, Upper Alton, Bellville 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 effected 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.[47] The anti-slavery sentiment there, however, was
so strong that the law was not long rigidly enforced.[48] And so it was in
several other parts of the West which, however, were exceptional.[49]


[Footnote 1: _The New York Daily Advertiser,_ Sept. 22, 1800; _The
New York Journal of Commerce,_ July 12, 1834; and _The New York
Commercial Advertiser,_ July 12, 1834.]

[Footnote 2: Hart, _Slavery and Abolition,_ pp. 53, 82.]

[Footnote 3: Goodell, _American Slave Code,_ Part III, chap. i; Hurd,
_The Law of Freedom and Bondage,_ I, pp. 51, 61, 67, 81, 89, 101, 111;
Woodson, _The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861,_ pp. 151-178.]

[Footnote 4: Benezet, _Short Observations,_ p. 12.]

[Footnote 5: Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, pp. 143-145.]

[Footnote 6: _Journal of House_, 1823-24, p. 824.]

[Footnote 7: _Journal of House,_ 1812-1813, pp. 481, 482.]

[Footnote 8: _Ibid._, 1814-1815, p. 101.]

[Footnote 9: _United States Censuses_, 1790-1860.]

[Footnote 10: Brannagan, _Serious Remonstrances_, p. 68.]

[Footnote 11: Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, p. 145; _The
Philadelphia Gazette_, June 30, 1819.]

[Footnote 12: _Democratic Press, Philadelphia Gazette_, Nov. 21,
1825.]

[Footnote 13: Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, p. 146.]

[Footnote 14: De Tocqueville, _Democracy in America_, II, pp. 292,
294.]

[Footnote 15: Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, p. 148.]

[Footnote 16: Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, pp. 152, 153.]

[Footnote 17: _African Repository,_ VIII, pp. 125, 283; _Journal of
House_, 1840, I, pp. 347, 508, 614, 622, 623, 680.]

[Footnote 18: _Journal of Senate_, 1850, I, pp. 454, 479.]

[Footnote 19: This is well narrated in Turner's _Negro in
Pennsylvania_, p. 160, and in DuBois's _The Philadelphia Negro_,
p. 27.]

[Footnote 20: Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, pp. 161, 162.]

[Footnote 21: Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, pp. 162, 163.]

[Footnote 22: Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, p. 163; and _The
Liberator_, July 4, 1835.]

[Footnote 23: _The Liberator_, Oct. 24, 1834.]

[Footnote 24: _Ibid._, October 24, 1834.]

[Footnote 25: Jay, _An Inquiry,_ pp. 28-29.]

[Footnote 26: _An Act in Addition to an Act for the Admission and
Settlement of Inhabitants of Towns._

1. Whereas attempts have been made to establish literary institutions in
this State for the instruction of colored people belonging to other States
and countries, which would tend to the great increase of the colored
population of the State, and thereby to the injury of the people,
therefore;

Be it resolved that no person shall set up or establish in this State,
any school, academy, or literary institution for the instruction or
education of colored persons, who are not inhabitants of this State, nor
instruct or teach in any school, academy, or other literary institution
whatever in this State, or harbor or board for the purpose of attending or
being taught or instructed in any such school, academy, or other literary
institution, any person who is not an inhabitant of any town in this
State, without the consent in writing, first obtained of a majority of the
civil authority, and also of the selectmen, of the town in which such
schools, academy, or literary institution is situated; and each and every
person who shall knowingly do any act forbidden as aforesaid, or shall be
aiding or assisting therein, shall for the first offense forfeit and pay
to the treasurer of this State a fine of one hundred dollars and for the
second offense shall forfeit and pay a fine of two hundred dollars, and so
double for every offense of which he or she shall be convicted. And all
informing officers are required to make due presentment of all breaches of
this act. Provided that nothing in this act shall extend to any district
school established in any school society under the laws of this State or
to any incorporated school for instruction in this State.

3. Any colored person not an inhabitant of this State who shall reside in
any town therein for the purpose of being instructed as aforesaid, may be
removed in the manner prescribed in the sixth and seventh sections of the
act to which this is an addition.

3. Any person not an inhabitant of this State who shall reside in any town
therein for the purpose of being instructed as aforesaid, shall be an
admissible witness in all prosecutions under the first section of this
act, and may be compelled to give testimony therein, notwithstanding
anything in this act, or in the act last aforesaid.

4. That so much of the seventh section of this act to which this is an
addition as may provide for the infliction of corporal punishment, be and
the same is hereby repealed.--See Hurd's _Law of Freedom and
Bondage_, II, pp. 45-46.]

[Footnote 27: So many Negroes working on the rivers between the slave and
free States helped fugitives to escape that there arose a clamor for the
discourage of colored employees.]

[Transcriber's Note: The above should probably be "discouragement of
colored employees."]

[Footnote 28: _Constitution of Ohio_, article I, sections 2, 6.
_The Journal of Negro History_, I, p. 2.]

[Footnote 29: _Laws of Ohio_, II, p. 53.]

[Footnote 30: _Laws of Ohio_, V, p. 53.]

[Footnote 31: Hitchcock, _The Negro in Ohio_, II, pp. 41, 42.]

[Footnote 32: _Revised Laws of Indiana_, 1831, p. 278.]

[Footnote 33: Perkins, _A Digest of the Declaration of the Supreme Court
of Indiana_, p. 590. _Laws of 1853_, p. 60.]

[Footnote 34: Gavin and Hord, _Indiana Revised Statutes_, 1862, p.
452.]

[Footnote 35: _Illinois Statutes_, 1853, sections 1-4, p. 8.]

[Footnote 36: In 1760 there were both African and Pawnee slaves in
Detroit, 96 of them in 1773 and 175 in 1782. The usual effort to have
slavery legalized was made in 1773. There were seventeen slaves in Detroit
in 1810 held by virtue of the exceptions made under the British rule prior
to the ratification of Jay's treaty. Advertisements of runaway slaves
appeared in Detroit papers as late as 1827. Furthermore, there were
thirty-two slaves in Michigan in 1830 but by 1836 all had died or had been
manumitted.--See Farmer, _History of Detroit and Michigan_, I, p.
344.]

[Footnote 37: _Laws of Michigan_, 1827; and Campbell, _Political
History of Michigan_, p. 246.]

[Footnote 38: _Proceedings of the Ohio Anti-Slavery Convention_,
1835, p. 19.]

[Footnote 39: _African Repository_, XXIII, p. 70.]

[Footnote 40: _Ohio State Journal_, May 3, 1837.]

[Footnote 41: Evans, _A History of Scioto County, Ohio_, p. 643.]

[Footnote 42: _African Repository_, V, p. 185.]

[Footnote 43: Howe, _Historical Collections_, pp. 225-226.]

[Footnote 44: _Ibid_., p. 226, and _The Cincinnati Daily
Gazette_, Sept. 14, 1841.]

[Footnote 45: _Niles Register_, XXX, 416.]

[Footnote 46: _Niles Register_, XXX, 416; _African Repository_,
III, p. 25.]

[Footnote 47: Farmer, _History of Detroit and Michigan_, I, chap.
48.]

[Footnote 48: There was the usual effort to have slavery legalized in
Michigan. At the time of the fire in 1805 there were six colored men and
nine colored women in the town of Detroit. In 1807 there were so many of
them that Governor Hull organized a company of colored militia. Joseph
Campan owned ten at one time. The importation of slaves was discontinued
after September 17, 1792, by act of the Canadian Parliament which provided
also that all born thereafter should be free at the age of twenty-five.
The Ordinance of 1787 had by its sixth article prohibited it.]

[Footnote 49: In 1836 a colored man traveling in the West to Cleveland
said:

"I have met with good treatment at every place on my journey, even better
than what I expected under present circumstances. I will relate an
incident that took place on board the steamboat, which will give an idea
of the kind treatment with which I have met. When I took the boat at Erie,
it being rainy and somewhat disagreeable, I took a cabin passage, to which
the captain had not the least objection. When dinner was announced, I
intended not to go to the first table but the mate came and urged me to
take a seat. I accordingly did and was called upon to carve a large saddle
of beef which was before me. This I performed accordingly to the best of
my ability. No one of the company manifested any objection or seemed
anyways disturbed by my presence."--Extract of a letter from a colored
gentleman traveling to the West, Cleveland, Ohio, August 11, 1836.--See
_The Philanthropist_, Oct. 21, 1836.]



CHAPTER IV

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. Benezet and Brannagan had the idea of settling
the Negroes on the public lands in the West largely to relieve the
situation in the North.[1] Certain anti-slavery men of Kentucky, as we
have observed, recommended the same. But this was hardly advocated at all
by the farseeing white men after the close of the first quarter of the
nineteenth 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 colonizationists 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 the successful professional or business
men found around them. In short, they must ever be hewers of wood and
drawers of water.[2]

To emphasize further the necessity of emigration to Africa the advocates
of deportation to foreign soil generally referred to the condition of the
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."[3] 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 problem 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.[4]

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
mechanic arts, agriculture, science and Biblical literature that some
might lead in the higher pursuits and others might skilfully serve their
fellows.[5] 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 Cuffe, 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 Meade, 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 meagre 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
proslavery 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.[6] 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 parting 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.[7]

The free people of color themselves were not only not anxious to go but
bore it grievously that any one 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.[8] Branded thus as the inveterate foe of
the blacks both slave and free, the American Colonization Society effected
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 learn 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.[9] 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
1,044 were liberated Africans returned by the United States
Government.[10] 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
that 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 Hayti 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.[11] The Richmond Whig saw the
actual situation in dubbing the scheme as chimerical 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 the amelioration of the Negroes.[12]

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. [13]

The movement to the West Indies was accelerated by other factors. After
the emancipation in those islands in the thirties, 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 forties and fifties, 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
emigrate.[l4]

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 there unusual opportunities. After the consummation of
British emancipation in those islands in 1838, the English nation came to
he 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.[l5]

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.[16]

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 in the British dominions the need of men
to do drudgery scarcely more elevating than the toil of slaves.[l7]

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 estrange 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.[l8]

It was better, therefore, they argued, to direct the Negroes to Liberia,
for those who went there with a feeling of hostility against the white
people were placed in circumstances operating to remove that feeling, in
that the kind solicitude for their welfare would be extended them in their
new home so as to overcome their prejudices, win 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 manufactures.
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.[l9]

Negroes migrated to the West Indies in spite of this warning and protest.
Hayti, at first looked upon with fear of 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.[20] 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 fourteen 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 there 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,[2l] actually undertook to carry
out such a plan on a small scale. He established on the northeast side of
Hayti, near Port Plate, 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.

Hayti, however, was not to be the only island to get consideration. In
1834 two hundred colored emigrants went from New York alone to Trinidad,
under the superintendence 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 $500 per annum. No one received less than $1.00
a day and most of them earned $1.50. The Trinidad press welcomed these
immigrants and spoke in the highest terms of the valuable services they
rendered the country.[22] Others followed from year to year. One of these
Negroes appreciated so much this new field of opportunity that he returned
and induced twenty intelligent free persons of color living in Annapolis,
Maryland, also to emigrate to Trinidad.[23]

_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 residence desirable. The editor
wished a few dozen Trinidad planters would come to that city on the same
business and on a much larger scale.[24] N.W. Pollard, agent of the
Government of Trinidad, came to Baltimore in 1851 to make his appeal for
emigrants, offering to pay all expenses.[25] At a meeting held in
Baltimore, in 1852, the parents of Mr. Stanbury Boyce, now a retired
merchant in Washington, District of Columbia, were also induced to go.
They found there opportunities which they had never had before and well
established themselves in their new home. The account which Mr. Boyce
gives in a letter to the writer corroborates the newspaper reports as to
the success of the enterprise.[26]

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 fourteen Negro emigrants from the United States, being the first
fruits of Mr. Barclay's mission to this country. A much larger number of
Negroes were expected and various applications for their services had been
received from respectable parties.[27] The products of soil were reported
as much reduced from former years and to meet its demand for labor some
freedmen from Sierra Leone were induced to emigrate to that island in
1842.[28] 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.[29]

In the course of time, emigration 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 emigration 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 Webb, Martin R. Delaney, J. Gould Bias, Franklin Turner, Augustus
Greene, James M. Whitfield, William Lambert, Henry Bibb, James T. Holly
and Henry M. Collins.

There developed in this assembly three groups, one believing with Martin
R. Delaney that it was best to go to the Niger Valley in Africa, another
following the counsel of James M. Whitfield then interested in emigration
to Central America, and a third supporting James T. Holly who insisted
that Hayti 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 Hayti, had preceded Holly there and with the latter as his
coworker succeeded in sending to that country as many as two thousand
emigrants, the first of whom sailed from this country in 1861.[30] Owing
to the lack of equipment adequate to the establishment of the settlement
and the unfavorable climate, not more than one third of the emigrants
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.


[Footnote 1: _The African Repository_, XVI, p. 22.]

[Footnote 2: _The African Repository_, XVI, p. 23; Alexander, _A
History of Colonization_, p. 347.]

[Footnote 3: _Ibid_., XVI, p. 113.]

[Footnote 4: Jay, _An Inquiry_, pp. 25, 29; Hodgkin, _An
Inquiry_, p. 31.]

[Footnote 5: _The African Repository_, IV, p. 276; Griffin, _A Plea
for Africa_, p. 65.]

[Footnote 6: Jay, _An Inquiry_, passim; _The Journal of Negro
History_, I, pp. 276-301; and Stebbins, _Facts and Opinions_, pp.
200-201.]

[Footnote 7: Hart, _Slavery and Abolition_, p. 237.]

[Footnote 8: _The Journal of Negro History_, I, pp. 284-296;
Garrison, _Thoughts on Colonization_, p. 204.]

[Footnote 9: _The African Repository_, XXXIII, p. 117.]

[Footnote 10: _The African Repository_, XXIII, p. 117.]

[Footnote 11: _The African Repository_, IX, pp. 86-88.]

[Footnote 12: _Ibid._, IX, p. 88.]

[Footnote 13: "If something is not done, and soon done," said he, "we
shall be the murderers of our own children. The '_murmura venturos nautis
prudentia 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 to-morrow. 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, he 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 St.
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
emigrants should go. He urged that the country put some plan under way,
and the sooner it did so the greater would be the hope that it might be
permitted to proceed peaceably toward consummation.--See Ford edition of
_Jefferson's Writings_, VI, p. 349, VII, pp. 167, 168.]

[Footnote 14: _Letter of Mr. Stanbury Boyce;_ and _The African
Repository._]

[Footnote 15: _Philadelphia Gazette,_ Aug. 2, 3, 4, 8, 1842;
_United States Gazette,_ Aug. 2-5, 1842; and the _Pennsylvanian,_
Aug. 2, 3, 4, 8, 1842.]

[Footnote 16: _The African Repository_, XVI, pp. 113-115.]

[Footnote 17: _The African Repository,_ XXI, p. 114.]

[Footnote 18: _The African Repository,_ XVI, p. 116.]

[Footnote 19: _The African Repository,_ XVI, p. 115.]

[Footnote 20: _Ibid.,_ XVI, p. 116.]

[Footnote 21: Speaking of this colony Kingsley said: "About eighteen
months ago, I carried my son George Kingsley, a healthy colored man of
uncorrupted morals, about thirty 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 Hayti, near Porte Plate, 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,
and 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 Hayti, 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 Porte Plate, 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 Hayti, where they
were all to have as much good land in fee, as they could cultivate, say
ten 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 victuals, clothes, medical attendance, 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 (twenty-seven miles east
of Porte Plate) 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 thirty or forty dollars
apiece. My son's farm was upon a larger scale, and furnished with more
commodious dwelling houses, also with store and out houses. In nine months
he had made and housed three crops of corn, of twenty-five bushels to the
acre, each, or one crop every three months. His highland rice, which was
equal to any in Carolina, so ripe and 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 thirteen feet; the stalks were ten inches in
circumference, and had upwards of five hundred large boles on each stalk
(not a worm nor red bug as yet to be seen). His yams, cassava, and sweet
potatoes, were incredibly large, and plentifully thick in the ground; one
kind of sweet potato, lately introduced from Taheita (formerly Otaheita)
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
every where abound), about six months before 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 Haytian 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 au Prince, where I obtained a favorable
answer from the President of Hayti, to his 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 Haytian Government, containing about
thirty-five thousand 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, in 1838."--See _The African
Repository_, XIV, pp. 215-216.]

[Footnote 22: _Niles Register_, LXVI, pp. 165, 386.]

[Footnote 23: _Niles Register_, LXVII, p. 180.]

[Footnote 24: _The African Repository_, XVI, p. 28.]

[Footnote 25: _Ibid._, p. 29.]

[Footnote 26: _Letter of Mr. Stanbury Boyce._]

[Footnote 27: St. Lucia and Trinidad were then considered unfavorable to
the working of the new system.--See _The African Repository_, XXVII,
p. 196.]

[Footnote 28: _Niles Register_, LXIII, p. 65.]

[Footnote 29: _Ibid._, LXIII, p. 65.]

[Footnote 30: Cromwell, _The Negro in American History_, pp. 43-44.]



CHAPTER V

THE SUCCESSFUL MIGRANT


The reader will naturally be interested in learning exactly what these
thousands of Negroes did on free soil. To estimate these achievements the
casual reader of contemporary testimony would now, as such persons did
then, find it decidedly easy. He would say that in spite of the unfailing
aid which philanthropists gave the blacks, they seldom kept themselves
above want and, therefore, became a public charge, afflicting their
communities with so much poverty, disease and crime that they were
considered the lepers of society. The student of history, however, must
look beyond these comments for the whole truth. One must take into
consideration the fact that in most cases these Negroes escaped as
fugitives without sufficient food and clothing to comfort them until they
could reach free soil, lacking the small fund with which the pioneer
usually provided himself in going to establish a home in the wilderness,
and lacking, above all, initiative of which slavery had deprived them.
Furthermore, these refugees with few exceptions had to go to places where
they were not wanted and in some cases to points from which they were
driven as undesirables, although preparation for their coming had
sometimes gone to the extent of purchasing homes and making provision for
employment upon arrival.[1] Several well-established Negro settlements in
the North, moreover, were broken up by the slave hunters after the passing
of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.[2]

The increasing intensity of the hatred of the Negroes must be understood
too both as a cause and result of their intolerable condition. Prior to
1800 the Negroes of the North were in fair circumstances. Until that time
it was generally believed that the whites and the blacks would soon reach
the advanced stage of living together on a basis of absolute equality.[3]
The Negroes had not at that time exceeded the number that could be
assimilated by the sympathizing communities in that section. The
intolerable legislation of the South, however, forced so many free Negroes
in the rough to crowd northern cities during the first four decades of the
nineteenth century that they could not be easily readjusted. The number
seeking employment far exceeded the demand for labor and thus multiplied
the number of vagrants and paupers, many of whom had already been forced
to this condition by the Irish and Germans then immigrating into northern
cities. At one time, as in the case of Philadelphia, the Negroes
constituting a small fraction of the population furnished one half of the
criminals.[4] A radical opposition to the Negro followed, therefore,
arousing first the laboring classes and finally alienating the support of
the well-to-do people and the press. This condition obtained until 1840 in
most northern communities and until 1850 in some places where the Negro
population was considerable.

We must also take into account the critical labor situation during these
years. The northern people were divided as to the way the Negroes should
be encouraged. The mechanics of the North raised no objection to having
the Negroes freed and enlightened but did not welcome them to that section
as competitors in the struggle of life. When, therefore, the blacks,
converted to the doctrine of training the hand to work with skill, began
to appear in northern industrial centers there arose a formidable
prejudice against them.[5] Negro and white mechanics had once worked
together but during the second quarter of the nineteenth century, when
labor became more dignified and a larger number of white persons devoted
themselves to skilled labor, they adopted the policy of eliminating the
blacks. This opposition, to be sure, was not a mere harmless sentiment. It
tended to give rise to the organization of labor groups and finally to
that of trades unions, the beginnings of those controlling this country
today. Carrying the fight against the Negro still further, these laboring
classes used their influence to obtain legislation against the employment
of Negroes in certain pursuits. Maryland and Georgia passed laws
restricting the privileges of Negro mechanics, and Pennsylvania followed
their example.[6]

Even in those cases when the Negroes were not disturbed in their new homes
on free soil, it was, with the exception of the Quaker and a few other
communities, merely an act of toleration.[7] It must not be concluded,
however, that the Negroes then migrating to the North did not receive
considerable aid. The fact to be noted here is that because they were not
well received sometimes by the people of their new environment, the help
which they obtained from friends afar off did not suffice to make up for
the deficiency of community cooperation. This, of course, was an unusual
handicap to the Negro, as his life as a slave tended to make him a
dependent rather than a pioneer.

It is evident, however, from accessible statistics that wherever the Negro
was adequately encouraged he succeeded. When the urban Negroes in northern
communities had emerged from their crude state they easily learned from
the white men their method of solving the problems of life. This tendency
was apparent after 1840 and striking results of their efforts were noted
long before the Civil War. They showed an inclination to work when
positions could be found, purchased homes, acquired other property, built
churches and established schools. Going even further than this, some of
them, taking advantage of their opportunities in the business world,
accumulated considerable fortunes, just as had been done in certain
centers in the South where Negroes had been given a chance.[8]

In cities far north like Boston not so much difference as to the result of
this migration was noted. Some economic progress among the Negroes had
early been observed there as a result of the long residence of Negroes in
that city as in the case of Lewis Hayden who established a successful
clothing business.[9] In New York such evidences were more apparent. There
were in that city not so many Negroes as frequented some other northern
communities of this time but enough to make for that city a decidedly
perplexing problem. It was the usual situation of ignorant, helpless
fugitives and free Negroes going, they knew not where, to find a better
country. The situation at times became so grave that it not only caused
prejudice but gave rise to intense opposition against those who defended
the cause of the blacks as in the case of the abolition riots which
occurred at several places in the State in 1834.[10]

To relieve this situation, Gerrit Smith, an unusually philanthropic
gentleman, came forward with an interesting plan. Having large tracts of
land in the southeastern counties of New York, he proposed to settle on
small farms a large number of those Negroes huddled together in the
congested districts of New York City. Desiring to obtain only the best
class, he requested that the Negroes to be thus colonized be recommended
by Reverend Charles B. Ray, Reverend Theodore S. Wright and Dr. J. McCune
Smith, three Negroes of New York City, known to be representative of the
best of the race. Upon their recommendations he deeded unconditionally to
black men in 1846 three hundred small farms in Franklin, Essex, Hamilton,
Fulton, Oneida, Delaware, Madison and Ulster counties, giving to each
settler beside $10.00 to enable him to visit his farm.[11] With these
holdings the blacks would not only have a basis for economic independence
but would have sufficient property to meet the special qualifications
which New York by the law of 1823 required of Negroes offering to vote.

This experiment, however, was a failure. It was not successful because of
the intractability of the land, the harshness of the climate, and, in a
great measure, the inefficiency of the settlers. They had none of the
qualities of farmers. Furthermore, having been disabled by infirmities and
vices they could not as beneficiaries answer the call of the benefactor.
Peterboro, the town opened to Negroes in this section, did maintain a
school and served as a station of the Underground Railroad but the
agricultural results expected of the enterprise never materialized. The
main difficulty in this case was the impossibility of substituting
something foreign for individual enterprise.[12]

Progressive Negroes did appear, however, in other parts of the State. In
Penyan, Western New York, William Platt and Joseph C. Cassey were
successful lumber merchants.[13] Mr. W.H. Topp of Albany was for several
years one of the leading merchant tailors of that city.[14] Henry Scott,
of New York City, developed a successful pickling business, supplying most
of the vessels entering that port.[15] Thomas Downing for thirty years ran
a creditable restaurant in the midst of the Wall Street banks, where he
made a fortune.[16] Edward V. Clark conducted a thriving business,
handling jewelry and silverware.[17] The Negroes as a whole, moreover, had
shown progress. Aided by the Government and philanthropic white people,
they had before the Civil War a school system with primary, intermediate
and grammar schools and a normal department. They then had considerable
property, several churches and some benevolent institutions.

In Southern Pennsylvania, nearer to the border between the slave and free
States, the effects of the achievements of these Negroes were more
apparent for the reason that in these urban centers there were sufficient
Negroes for one to be helpful to the other. Philadelphia presented then
the most striking example of the remaking of these people. Here the
handicap of the foreign element was greatest, especially after 1830. The
Philadelphia Negro, moreover, was further impeded in his progress by the
presence of southerners who made Philadelphia their home, and still more
by the prejudice of those Philadelphia merchants who, sustaining such
close relations to the South, hated the Negro and the abolitionists who
antagonized their customers.

In spite of these untoward circumstances, however, the Negroes of
Philadelphia achieved success. Negroes who had formerly been able to toil
upward were still restricted but they had learned to make opportunities.
In 1832 the Philadelphia blacks had $350,000 of taxable property, $359,626
in 1837 and $400,000 in 1847. These Negroes had 16 churches and 100
benevolent societies in 1837 and 19 churches and 106 benevolent societies
in 1847. Philadelphia then had more successful Negro schools than any
other city in the country. There were also about 500 Negro mechanics in
spite of the opposition of organized labor.[18] Some of these Negroes, of
course, were natives of that city.

Chief among those who had accumulated considerable property was Mr. James
Forten, the proprietor of one of the leading sail manufactories,
constantly employing a large number of men, black and white. Joseph Casey,
a broker of considerable acumen, also accumulated desirable property,
worth probably $75,000.[19] Crowded out of the higher pursuits of labor,
certain other enterprising business men of this group organized the Guild
of Caterers. This was composed of such men as Bogle, Prosser, Dorsey,
Jones and Minton. The aim was to elevate the Negro waiter and cook from
the plane of menials to that of progressive business men. Then came
Stephen Smith who amassed a large fortune as a lumber merchant and with
him Whipper, Vidal and Purnell. Still and Bowers were reliable coal
merchants, Adger a success in handling furniture, Bowser a well-known
painter, and William H. Riley the intelligent boot-maker.[20]

There were a few such successful Negroes in other communities in the
State. Mr. William Goodrich, of York, acquired considerable interest in
the branch of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad extending to Lancaster.[21]
Benjamin Richards, of Pittsburgh, amassed a large fortune running a
butchering business, buying by contract droves of cattle to supply the
various military posts of the United States.[22] Mr. Henry M. Collins, who
started life as a boatman, left this position for speculation in real
estate in Pittsburgh where he established himself as an asset of the
community and accumulated considerable wealth.[23] Owen A. Barrett, of the
same city, made his way by discovering the remedy known as _B.A.
Fahnestock's Celebrated Vermifuge_, for which he was retained in the
employ of the proprietor, who exploited the remedy.[24] Mr. John Julius
made himself indispensable to Pittsburgh by running the Concert Hall Cafe
where he served President William Henry Harrison in 1840.[25]

The field of greatest achievement, however, was not in the conservative
East where the people had well established their going toward an
enlightened and sympathetic aristocracy of talent and wealth. It was in
the West where men were in position to establish themselves anew and make
of life what they would. These crude communities, to be sure, often
objected to the presence of the Negroes and sometimes drove them out. But,
on the other hand, not a few of those centers in the making were in the
hands of the Quakers and other philanthropic persons who gave the Negroes
a chance to grow up with the community, when they exhibited a capacity
which justified philanthropic efforts in their behalf.

These favorable conditions obtained especially in the towns along the Ohio
river, where so many fugitives and free persons of color stopped on their
way from slavery to freedom. In Steubenville a number of Negroes had by
their industry and good deportment made themselves helpful to the
community. Stephen Mulber who had been in that town for thirty years was
in 1835 the leader of a group of thrifty free persons of color. He had a
brick dwelling, in which he lived, and other property in the city. He made
his living as a master mechanic employing a force of workmen to meet the
increasing demand for his labor.[26] In Gallipolis, there was another
group of this class of Negroes, who had permanently attached themselves to
the town by the acquisition of property. They were then able not only to
provide for their families but were maintaining also a school and a
church.[27] In Portsmouth, Ohio, despite the "Black Friday" upheaval of
1831, the Negroes settled down to the solution of the problems of their
new environment and later showed in the accumulation of property evidences
of actual progress. Among the successful Negroes in Columbus was David
Jenkins who acquired considerable property as a painter, glazier and paper
hanger.[28] One Mr. Hill, of Chillicothe, was for several years its
leading tanner and currier.[29]

It was in Cincinnati, however, that the Negroes made most progress in the
West. The migratory blacks came there at times in such large numbers, as
we have observed, that they provoked the hostile classes of whites to
employ rash measures to exterminate them. But the Negroes, accustomed to
adversity, struggled on, endeavoring through schools and churches to
embrace every opportunity to rise. By 1840 there were 2,255 Negroes in
that city. They had, exclusive of personal effects and $19,000 worth of
church property, accumulated $209,000 worth of real estate. A number of
their progressive men had established a real estate firm known as the
"Iron Chest" company which built houses for Negroes. One man, who had once
thought it unwise to accumulate wealth from which he might be driven, had,
by 1840, changed his mind and purchased $6,000 worth of real estate.

Another Negro paid $5,000 for himself and family and bought a home worth
$800 or $1,000. A freedman, who was a slave until he was twenty-four years
of age, then had two lots worth $10,000, paid a tax of $40 and had 320
acres of land in Mercer County. Another, who was worth only $3,000 in
1836, had seven houses in 1840, 400 acres of land in Indiana, and another
tract in Mercer County, Ohio. He was worth altogether about $12,000 or
$15,000. A woman who was a slave until she was thirty was then worth
$2,000. She had also come into potential possession of two houses on which
a white lawyer had given her a mortgage to secure the payment of $2,000
borrowed from this thrifty woman. Another Negro, who was on the auction
block in 1832, had spent $2,600 purchasing himself and family and had
bought two brick houses worth $6,000 and 560 acres of land in Mercer
County, Ohio, said to be worth $2,500.[30]

The Negroes of Cincinnati had as early as 1820 established schools which
developed during the forties into something like a modern system with
Gilmore's High School as a capstone. By that time they had also not only
several churches but had given time and means to the organization and
promotion of such as the _Sabbath School Youth's Society_, the
_Total Abstinence Temperance Society_ and the _Anti-Slavery
Society_. The worthy example set by the Negroes of this city was a
stimulus to noble endeavor and significant achievements of Negroes
throughout the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys. Disarming their enemies of
the weapon that they would continue a public charge, they secured the
cooperation of a larger number of white people who at first had treated
them with contempt.[31]

This unusual progress in the Ohio valley had been promoted by two forces,
the development of the steamboat as a factor in transportation and the
rise of the Negro mechanic. Negroes employed on vessels as servants to the
travelling public amassed large sums received in the form of tips.
Furthermore, the fortunate few, constituting the stewards of these
vessels, could by placing contracts for supplies and using business
methods realize handsome incomes. Many Negroes thus enriched purchased
real estate and went into business in towns along the Ohio.

The other force, the rise of the Negro mechanic, was made possible by
overcoming much of the prejudice which had at first been encountered. A
great change in this respect had taken place in Cincinnati by 1840.[32]
Many Negroes who had been forced to work as menial laborers then had the
opportunity to show their usefulness to their families and to the
community. Negro mechanics were then getting as much skilled labor as they
could do. It was not uncommon for white artisans to solicit employment of
colored men because they had the reputation of being better paymasters
than master workmen of the favored race. White mechanics not only worked
with the blacks but often associated with them, patronized the same barber
shop, and went to the same places of amusement.[33]

Out of this group came some very useful Negroes, among whom may be
mentioned Robert Harlan, the horseman; A.V. Thompson, the tailor; J.
Presley and Thomas Ball, contractors, and Samuel T. Wilcox, the merchant,
who was worth $60,000 in 1859.[34] There were among them two other
successful Negroes, Henry Boyd and Robert Gordon. Boyd was a Kentucky
freedman who helped to overcome the prejudice in Cincinnati against Negro
mechanics by inventing and exploiting a corded bed, the demand for which
was extensive throughout the Ohio and Mississippi valleys. He had a
creditable manufacturing business in which he employed twenty-five
men.[35]

Robert Gordon was a much more interesting man. He was born a slave in
Richmond, Virginia. He ingratiated himself into the favor of his master
who placed him in charge of a large coal yard with the privilege of
selling the slake for his own benefit. In the course of time, he
accumulated in this position thousands of dollars with which he finally
purchased himself and moved away to free soil. After observing the
situation in several of the northern centers, he finally decided to settle
in Cincinnati, where he arrived with $15,000. Knowing the coal business,
he well established himself there after some discouragement and
opposition. He accumulated much wealth which he invested in United States
bonds during the Civil War and in real estate on Walnut Hills when the
bonds were later redeemed.[36]

The ultimately favorable attitude of the people of Detroit toward
immigrating Negroes had been reflected by the position the people of that
section had taken from the time of the earliest settlements. Generally
speaking, Detroit adhered to this position.[37] In this congenial
community prospered many a Negro family. There were the Williams' most of
whom confined themselves to their trade of bricklaying and amassed
considerable wealth. Then there were the Cooks, descending from Lomax B.
Cook, a broker of no little business ability. Will Marion Cook, the
musician, belongs to this family. The De Baptistes, too, were among the
first to succeed in this new home, as they prospered materially from their
experience and knowledge previously acquired in Fredericksburg, Virginia,
as contractors. From this group came Richard De Baptiste, who in his day
was the most useful Negro Baptist preacher in the Northwest.[38] The
Pelhams were no less successful in establishing themselves in the economic
world. Having an excellent reputation in the community, they easily
secured the cooperation of the influential white people in the city. Out
of this family came Robert A. Pelham, for years editor of a weekly in
Detroit, and from 1901 to the present time an employee of the Federal
Government in Washington.

The children of the Richards, another old family, were in no sense
inferior to the descendants of the others. The most prominent and the most
useful to emerge from this group was the daughter, Fannie M. Richards. She
was born in Fredericksburg, Virginia, October 1, 1841. Having left that
State with her parents when she was quite young, she did not see so much
of the antebellum conditions obtaining there. Desiring to have better
training than what was then given to persons of color in Detroit, she went
to Toronto where she studied English, history, drawing and needlework. In
later years she attended the Teachers' Training School in Detroit. She
became a public-school teacher there in 1863 and after fifty years of
creditable service in this work she was retired on a pension in 1913.[39]

The Negroes in the North had not only shown their ability to rise in the
economic world when properly encouraged but had begun to exhibit power of
all kinds. There were Negro inventors, a few lawyers, a number of
physicians and dentists, many teachers, a score of intelligent preachers,
some scholars of note, and even successful blacks in the finer arts. Some
of these, with Frederick Douglass as the most influential, were also doing
creditable work in journalism with about thirty newspapers which had
developed among the Negroes as weapons of defense.[40]

This progress of the Negroes in the North was much more marked after the
middle of the nineteenth century. The migration of Negroes to northern
communities was at first checked by the reaction in those places during
the thirties and forties. Thus relieved of the large influx which once
constituted a menace, those communities gave the Negroes already on hand
better economic opportunities. It was fortunate too that prior to the
check in the infiltration of the blacks they had come into certain
districts in sufficiently large numbers to become a more potential
factor.[41] They were strong enough in some cases to make common cause
against foes and could by cooperation solve many problems with which the
blacks in dispersed condition could not think of grappling.

Their endeavors along these lines proceeded in many cases from
well-organized efforts like those culminating in the numerous national
conventions which began meeting first in Philadelphia in 1830 and after
some years of deliberation in this city extended to others in the
North.[42] These bodies aimed not only to promote education, religion and
morals, but, taking up the work which the Quakers began, they put forth
efforts to secure to the free blacks opportunities to be trained in the
mechanic arts to equip themselves for participation in the industries then
springing up throughout the North. This movement, however, did not succeed
in the proportion to the efforts put forth because of the increasing power
of the trades unions.

After the middle of the nineteenth century too the Negroes found
conditions a little more favorable to their progress than the generation
before. The aggressive South had by that time so shaped the policy of the
nation as not only to force the free States to cease aiding the escape of
fugitives but to undertake to impress the northerner into the service of
assisting in their recapture as provided in the Fugitive Slave Law. This
repressive measure set a larger number of the people thinking of the Negro
as a national problem rather than a local one. The attitude of the North
was then reflected in the personal liberty laws as an answer to this
measure and in the increasing sympathy for the Negroes. During this
decade, therefore, more was done in the North to secure to the Negroes
better treatment and to give them opportunities for improvement.


[Footnote 1: _Cincinnati Morning Herald_, July 17, 1846.]

[Footnote 2: Woodson, _The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861_, p.
242.]

[Footnote 3: Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, p. 143;
_Correspondence of Dr. Benjamin Bush_, XXXIX, p. 41.]

[Footnote 4: DuBois, _The Philadelphia Negro_, pp. 26-27.]

[Footnote 5: _The Journal of Negro History_, I, p. 5; and
_Proceedings of the American Convention of Abolition Societies_.]

[Footnote 6: DuBois and Dill, _The Negro American Artisan_, p. 36.]

[Footnote 7: Jay, _An Inquiry_, pp. 34, 108, 109, 114.]

[Footnote 8: _The Journal of Negro History_, I, pp. 20-22.]

[Footnote 9: Delany, _Condition of the Colored People_, p. 106.]

[Footnote 10: _The Liberator_, July 9, 1835.]

[Footnote 11: Hammond, _Gerrit Smith_, pp. 26-27.]

[Footnote 12: Frothingham, _Gerrit Smith_, p. 73.]

[Footnote 13: Delany, _Condition of the Colored People_, pp.
107-108.]

[Footnote 14: _Ibid._, p. 102.]

[Footnote 15: _Ibid._, p. 102.]

[Footnote 16: _Ibid._, pp. 103-104.]

[Footnote 17: Delany, _Condition of the Colored People_, pp.
106-107.]

[Footnote 18: DuBois, _The Philadelphia Negro_, p. 31; _Report of
the Condition of the Free People of Color_, 1838; _ibid._, 1849;
and Bacon, _Statistics of the Colored People of Philadelphia_, 1859.]

[Footnote 19: Delany, _Condition of the Colored People_, p. 95.]

[Footnote 20: DuBois, _The Philadelphia Negro_, pp. 31-36.]

[Footnote 21: Delany, _Condition of the Colored People_, p. 109.]

[Footnote 22: _Ibid._, p. 101.]

[Footnote 23: _Ibid._, p. 104.]

[Footnote 24: _Ibid._, p. 105.]

[Footnote 25: _Ibid._, p. 107.]

[Footnote 26: _The Journal of Negro History_, I, p. 22.]

[Footnote 27: Hickok, _The Negro in Ohio_, p. 88.]

[Footnote 28: Delany, _Condition of the Colored People_, p. 99.]

[Footnote 29: _Ibid._, p. 101.]

[Footnote 30: _The Philanthropist_, July 21, 1840, gives these
statistics in detail.]

[Footnote 31: _The Philanthropist_, July 21, 1840.]

[Footnote 32: _The Cincinnati Daily Gazette_, Sept. 14, 1841.]

[Footnote 33: Barber's _Report on Colored People in Ohio_.]

[Footnote 34: Delany, _Condition of the Colored People_, pp. 97, 98.]

[Footnote 35: Delany, _Condition of the Colored People_, p. 98.]

[Footnote 36: These facts were obtained from his children and from
Cincinnati city directories.]

[Footnote 37: _Niles Register_, LXIX, p. 357.]

[Footnote 38: Letters received from Miss Fannie M. Richards of Detroit.]

[Footnote 39: These facts were obtained from clippings taken from Detroit
newspapers and from letters bearing on Miss Richard's career.]

[Footnote 40: _The A.M.E. Church Review_, IV, p. 309; and XX, p.
137.]

[Footnote 41: _Censuses of the United States_; and Clark, _Present
Condition of Colored People_.]

[Footnote 42: _Minutes and Proceedings_ of the Annual Convention of
the People of Color.]



CHAPTER VI

CONFUSING MOVEMENTS


The Civil War waged largely in the South started the most exciting
movement of the Negroes hitherto known. The invading Union forces drove
the masters before them, leaving the slaves and sometimes poor whites to
escape where they would or to remain in helpless condition to constitute a
problem for the northern army.[1] Many poor whites of the border States
went with the Confederacy, not always because they wanted to enter the
war, but to choose what they considered the lesser of two evils. The
slaves soon realized a community of interests with the Union forces sent,
as they thought, to deliver them from thralldom. At first, it was
difficult to determine a fixed policy for dealing with these fugitives. To
drive them away was an easy matter, but this did not solve the problem.
General Butler's action at Fortress Monroe in 1861, however, anticipated
the policy finally adopted by the Union forces.[2] Hearing that three
fugitive slaves who were received into his lines were to have been
employed in building fortifications for the Confederate army, he declared
them seized as contraband of war rather than declare them actually free as
did General Fremont[3] and General Hunter.[4] He then gave them employment
for wages and rations and appropriated to the support of the unemployed a
portion of the earnings of the laborers. This policy was followed by
General Wood, Butler's successor, and by General Banks in New Orleans.

An elaborate plan for handling such fugitives was carried out by E.S.
Pierce and General Rufus Saxton at Port Royal, South Carolina. Seeing the
situation in another light, however, General Halleck in charge in the West
excluded slaves from the Union lines, at first, as did General Dix in
Virginia. But Halleck, in his instructions to General McCullum, February,
1862, ordered him to put contrabands to work to pay for food and
clothing.[5] Other commanders, like General McCook and General Johnson,
permitted the slave hunters to enter their lines and take their slaves
upon identification,[6] ignoring the confiscation act of August, 1861,
which was construed by some as justifying the retention of such refugees.
Officers of a different attitude, however, soon began to protest against
the returning of fugitive slaves. General Grant, also, while admitting the
binding force of General Halleck's order, refused to grant permits to
those in search of fugitives seeking asylum within his lines and at the
capture of Fort Donelson ordered the retention of all blacks who had been
used by the Confederates in building fortifications.[7]

Lincoln finally urged the necessity for withholding fugitive slaves from
the enemy, believing that there could be in it no danger of servile
insurrection and that the Confederacy would thereby be weakened.[8] As
this opinion soon developed into a conviction that official action was
necessary, Congress, by Act of March 13, 1862, provided that slaves be
protected against the claims of their pursuers. Continuing further in this
direction, the Federal Government gradually reached the position of
withdrawing Negro labor from the Confederate territory. Finally the United
States Government adopted the policy of withholding from the Confederates,
slaves received with the understanding that their masters were in
rebellion against the United States. With this as a settled policy then,
the United States Government had to work out some scheme for the remaking
of these fugitives coming into its camps.

In some of these cases the fugitives found themselves among men more
hostile to them than their masters were, for many of the Union soldiers of
the border States were slaveholders themselves and northern soldiers did
not understand that they were fighting to free Negroes. The condition in
which they were on arriving, moreover, was a new problem for the army.
Some came naked, some in decrepitude, some afflicted with disease, and
some wounded in their efforts to escape.[9] There were "women in travail,
the helplessness of childhood and of old age, the horrors of sickness and
of frequent deaths."[10] In their crude state few of them had any
conception of the significance of liberty, thinking that it meant idleness
and freedom from restraint. In consequence of this ignorance there
developed such undesirable habits as deceit, theft and licentiousness to
aggravate the afflictions of nakedness, famine and disease.[11]

In the East large numbers of these refugees were concentrated at
Washington, Alexandria, Fortress Monroe, Hampton, Craney Island and Fort
Norfolk. There were smaller groups of them at Yorktown, Suffolk and
Portsmouth.[12]

[Illustration: MAP SHOWING THE PER CENT OF NEGROES IN TOTAL POPULATION, BY
STATES: 1910.

(Map 2, Bulletin 129, The United States Bureau of the Census.)]

Some of them were conducted from these camps into York, Columbia,
Harrisburg, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, and by water to New York and
Boston, from which they went to various parts seeking labor. Some
collected in groups as in the case of those at Five Points in New
York.[13] Large numbers of them from Virginia assembled in Washington in
1862 in Duff Green's Row on Capitol Hill where they were organized as a
camp, out of which came a contraband school, after being moved to the
McClellan Barracks.[14] Then there was in the District of Columbia another
group known as Freedmen's village on Arlington Heights. It was said that,
in 1864, 30,000 to 40,000 Negroes had come from the plantations to the
District of Columbia.[15] It happened here too as in most cases of this
migration that the Negroes were on hand before the officials grappling
with many other problems could determine exactly what could or should be
done with them. The camps near Washington fortunately became centers for
the employment of contrabands in the city. Those repairing to Fortress
Monroe were distributed as laborers among the farmers of that
vicinity.[16]

[Illustration: DIAGRAM SHOWING THE NEGRO POPULATION OF NORTHERN AND
WESTERN CITIES IN 1900 AND THE EXTENT TO WHICH IT INCREASED BY 1910.

COUNTIES IN THE SOUTHERN STATES HAVING AT LEAST 50 PER CENT OF THEIR
POPULATION NEGRO.

(Maps 3 and 4, Bulletin 129, U.S. Bureau of the Census.)

(Maps 5 and 6, Bulletin 129, U.S. Bureau of the Census.)]

In some of these camps, and especially in those of the West, the refugees
were finally sent out to other sections in need of labor, as in the cases
of the contrabands assembled with the Union army at first at Grand
Junction and later at Memphis.[17]

There were three types of these camp communities which attracted attention
as places for free labor experimentation. These were at Port Royal, on the
Mississippi in the neighborhood of Vicksburg, and in Lower Louisiana and
Virginia. The first trial of free labor of blacks on a large scale in a
slave State was made in Port Royal.[18] The experiment was generally
successful. By industry, thrift and orderly conduct the Negroes showed
their appreciation for their new opportunities. In the Mississippi section
invaded by the northern army, General Thomas opened what he called
_Infirmary Farms_ which he leased to Negroes on certain terms which
they usually met successfully. The same plan, however, was not so
successful in the Lower Mississippi section.[19] The failure in this
section was doubtless due to the inferior type of blacks in the lower
cotton belt where Negroes had been more brutalized by slavery.

In some cases, these refugees experienced many hardships. It was charged
that they were worked hard, badly treated and deprived of all their wages
except what was given them for rations and a scanty pittance, wholly
insufficient to purchase necessary clothing and provide for their
families.[20] Not a few of the refugees for these reasons applied for
permission to return to their masters and sometimes such permission was
granted; for, although under military authority, they were by order of
Congress to be considered as freemen. These voluntary slaves, of course,
were few and the authorities were not thereby impressed with the thought
that Negroes would prefer to be slaves, should they be treated as freemen
rather than as brutes.[21]

It became increasingly difficult, however, to handle this problem. In the
first place, it was not an easy matter to find soldiers well disposed to
serve the Negroes in any manner whatever and the officers of the army had
no desire to force them to render such services since those thus engaged
suffered a sort of social ostracism. The same condition obtained in the
case of caring for those afflicted with disease, until there was issued a
specific regulation placing the contraband sick in charge of the army
surgeons.[22] What the situation in the Mississippi Valley was during
these months has been well described by an observer, saying: "I hope I may
never be called on again to witness the horrible scenes I saw in those
first days of history of the freedmen in the Mississippi Valley.
Assistants were hard to find, especially the kind that would do any good
in the camps. A detailed soldier in each camp of a thousand people was the
best that could be done and his duties were so onerous that he ended by
doing nothing. In reviewing the condition of the people at that time, I am
not surprised at the marvelous stories told by visitors who caught an
occasional glimpse of the misery and wretchedness in these camps. Our
efforts to do anything for these people, as they herded together in
masses, when founded on any expectation that they would help themselves,
often failed; they had become so completely broken down in spirit, through
suffering, that it was almost impossible to arouse them."[23]

A few sympathetic officers and especially the chaplains undertook to
relieve the urgent cases of distress. They could do little, however, to
handle all the problems of the unusual situation until they engaged the
attention of the higher officers of the army and the federal functionaries
in Washington. After some delay this was finally done and special officers
were detailed to take charge of the contrabands. The Negroes were
assembled in camps and employed according to instructions from the
Secretary of War as teamsters, laborers and the like on forts and
railroads. Some were put to picking, ginning, baling and removing cotton
on plantations abandoned by their masters. General Grant, as early as
1862, was making further use of them as fatigue men in the department of
the surgeon-general, the quartermaster and the commissary. He believed
then that such Negroes as did well in these more humble positions should
be made citizens and soldiers.[24] As a matter of fact out of this very
suggestion came the policy of arming the Negroes, the first regiment of
whom was recruited under orders issued by General Hunter at Port Royal,
South Carolina in 1862. As the arming of the slave to participate in this
war did not generally please the white people who considered the struggle
a war between civilized groups, this policy could not offer general relief
to the congested contraband camps.[25]

A better system of handling the fugitives was finally worked out, however,
with a general superintendent at the head of each department, supported by
a number of competent assistants. More explicit instructions were given as
to the manner of dealing with the situation. It was to be the duty of the
superintendent of contrabands, says the order, to organize them into
working parties in saving the cotton, as pioneers on railroads and
steamboats, and in any way where their services could be made available.
Where labor was performed for private individuals they were charged in
accordance with the orders of the commander of the department. In case
they were directed to save abandoned crops of cotton for the benefit of
the United States Government, the officer selling such crops would turn
over to the superintendent of contrabands the proceeds of the sale, which
together with other earnings were used for clothing and feeding the
Negroes. Clothing sent by philanthropic persons to these camps was
received and distributed by the superintendent. In no case, however, were
Negroes to be forced into the service of the United States Government or
to be enticed away from their homes except when it became a military
necessity.[26]

Some order out of the chaos eventually developed, for as John Eaton, one
of the workers in the West, reported: "There was no promiscuous
intermingling. Families were established by themselves. Every man took
care of his own wife and children." "One of the most touching features of
our Work," says he, "was the eagerness with which colored men and women
availed themselves of the opportunities offered them to legalize unions
already formed, some of which had been in existence for a long time."[27]
"Chaplain A.S. Fiske on one occasion married in about an hour one hundred
and nineteen couples at one service, chiefly those who had long lived
together." Letters from the Virginia camps and from those of Port Royal
indicate that this favorable condition generally obtained.[28]

This unusual problem in spite of additional effort, however, would not
readily admit of solution. Benevolent workers of the North, therefore,
began to minister to the needs of these unfortunate blacks. They sent
considerable sums of money, increasing quantities of clothing and even
some of their most devoted men and women to toil among them as social
workers and teachers.[29] These efforts also took organized form in
various parts of the North under the direction of _The Pennsylvania
Freedmen's Relief Association, The Tract Society, The American Missionary
Association, Pennsylvania Friends Freedmen's Relief Association, Old
School Presbyterian Mission, The Reformed Presbyterian Mission, The New
England Freedmen's Aid Committee, The New England Freedmen's Aid Society,
The New England Freedmen's Mission, The Washington Christian Union, The
Universalists of Maine, The New York Freedmen's Relief Association, The
Hartford Relief Society, The National Freedmen's Relief Association of the
District of Columbia_, and finally the _Freedmen's Bureau_.[30]

As an outlet to the congested grouping of Negroes and poor whites in the
war camps it was arranged to send a number of them to the loyal States as
fast as there presented themselves opportunities for finding homes and
employment. Cairo, Illinois, in the West, became the center of such
activities extending its ramifications into all parts of the invaded
southern territory. Some of the refugees permanently settled in the North,
taking up the work abandoned by the northern soldiers who went to war.[31]
It was soon found necessary to appoint a superintendent of such affairs at
Cairo, for there were those who, desiring to lead a straggling life, had
to be restrained from crime by military surveillance and regulations
requiring labor for self-support. Exactly how many whites and blacks were
thus aided to reach northern communities cannot be determined but in view
of the frequent mention of their movements by travellers the number must
have been considerable. In some cases, as in Lawrence, Kansas, there were
assembled enough freedmen to constitute a distinct group.[32] Speaking of
this settlement the editor of the _Alton Telegraph_ said in 1862 that
although they amounted to many hundreds not one, that he could learn of,
had been a public charge. They readily found employment at fair wages, and
soon made themselves comfortable.[33]

There was a little apprehension that the North would be overrun by such
blacks. Some had no such fear, however, for the reason that the census did
not indicate such a movement. Many slaves were freed in the North prior to
1860, yet with all the emigration from the slave States to the North there
were then in all the Northern States but 226,152 free blacks, while there
were in the slave States 261,918, an excess of 35,766 in the slave States.
Frederick Starr believed that during the Civil War there might be an
influx for a few months but it would not continue.[34] They would return
when sure that they would be free. Starr thought that, if necessary, these
refugees might be used in building the much desired Pacific Railroad to
divert them from the North.

There was little ground for this apprehension, in fact, if their
readjustment and development in the contraband camps could be considered
an indication of what the Negroes would eventually do. Taking all things
into consideration, most unbiased observers felt that blacks in the camps
deserved well of their benefactors.[36] According to Levi Coffin, these
contrabands were, in 1864, disposed of as follows: "In military services
as soldiers, laundresses, cooks, officers' servants and laborers in the
various staff departments, 41,150; in cities, on plantations and in
freedmen's villages and cared for, 72,500. Of these 62,300 were entirely
self-supporting, just as any industrial class anywhere else, as planters,
mechanics, barbers, hackmen and draymen, conducting enterprises on their
own responsibility or working as hired laborers." The remaining 10,200
received subsistence from the government. 3,000 of these were members of
families whose heads were carrying on plantations, and had undertaken
cultivation of 4,000 acres of cotton, pledging themselves to pay the
government for their subsistence from the first income of the crop. The
other 7,200 included the paupers, that is, all Negroes over and under the
self-supporting age, the crippled and sick in hospitals. This class,
however, instead of being unproductive, had then under cultivation 500
acres of corn, 790 acres of vegetables, and 1,500 acres of cotton, besides
working at wood chopping and other industries. There were reported in the
aggregate over 100,000 acres of cotton under cultivation, 7,000 acres of
which were leased and cultivated by blacks. Some Negroes were managing as
many as 300 or 400 acres each.[37] Statistics showing exactly how much the
numbers of contrabands in the various branches of the service increased
are wanting, but in view of the fact that the few thousand soldiers here
given increased to about 200,000 before the close of the Civil War, the
other numbers must have been considerable, if they all grew the least
proportionately.

Much industry was shown among these refugees. Under this new system they
acquired the idea of ownership, and of the security of wages and learned
to see the fundamental difference between freedom and slavery. Some
Yankees, however, seeing that they did less work than did laborers in the
North, considered them lazy, but the lack of industry was customary in the
South and a river should not be expected to rise higher than its source.
One of their superintendents said that they worked well without being
urged, that there was among them a public opinion against idleness, which
answered for discipline, and that those put to work with soldiers labored
longer and did the nicer parts. "In natural tact and the faculty of
getting a livelihood," says the same writer, "the contrabands are inferior
to the Yankees, but quite equal to the mass of southern population."[38]
The Negroes also showed capacity to organize labor and use capital in the
promotion of enterprises. Many of them purchased land and cultivated it to
great profit both to the community and to themselves. Others entered the
service of the government as mechanics and contractors, from the
employment of which some of them realized handsome incomes.

The more important development, however, was that of manhood. This was
best observed in their growing consciousness of rights, and their
readiness to defend them, even when encroached upon by members of the
white race. They quickly learned to appreciate freedom and exhibited
evidences of manhood in their desire for the comforts and conveniences of
life. They readily purchased articles of furniture within their means,
bringing their home equipment up to the standard of that of persons
similarly circumstanced. The indisposition to labor was overcome "in a
healthy nature by instinct and motives of superior forces, such as love of
life, the desire to be clothed and fed, the sense of security derived from
provision for the future, the feeling of self-respect, the love of family
and children and the convictions of duty."[39]

These enterprises, begun in doubt, soon ceased to be a bare hope or
possibility. They became during the war a fruition and a consummation, in
that they produced Negroes "who would work for a living and fight for
freedom." They were, therefore, considered "adapted to civil society."
They had "shown capacity for knowledge, for free industry, for
subordination to law and discipline, for soldierly fortitude, for social
and family relations, for religious culture and aspiration. These
qualities," said the observer, "when stirred, and sustained by the
incitements and rewards of a just society, and combining with the currents
of our continental civilization, will, under the guidance of a benevolent
Providence which forgets neither them nor us, make them a constantly
progressive race; and secure them ever after from the calamity of another
enslavement, and ourselves from the worst calamity of being their
oppressors."[40]

It is clear that these smaller numbers of Negroes under favorable
conditions could be easily adjusted to a new environment. When, however,
all Negroes were declared free there set in a confused migration which was
much more of a problem. The first thing the Negro did after realizing that
he was free was to roam over the country to put his freedom to a test. To
do this, according to many writers, he frequently changed his name,
residence, employment and wife, sometimes carrying with him from the
plantation the fruits of his own labor. Many of them easily acquired a dog
and a gun and were disposed to devote their time to the chase until the
assistance in the form of mules and land expected from the government
materialized. Their emancipation, therefore, was interpreted not only as
freedom from slavery but from responsibility.[41] Where they were going
they did not know but the towns and cities became very attractive to them.

Speaking of this upheaval in Virginia, Eckenrode says that many of them
roamed over the country without restraint.[42] "Released from their
accustomed bonds," says Hall, "and filled with a pleasing, if not vague,
sense of uncontrolled freedom, they flocked to the cities with little hope
of obtaining remunerative work. Wagon loads of them were brought in from
the country by the soldiers and dumped down to shift for themselves."[43]
Referring to the proclamation of freedom, in Georgia, Thompson asserts
that their most general and universal response was to pick up and leave
the home place to go somewhere else, preferably to a town. "The lure of the
city was strong to the blacks, appealing to their social natures, to their
inherent love for a crowd."[44] Davis maintains that thousands of the
70,000 Negroes in Florida crowded into the Federal military camps and into
towns upon realizing that they were free.[45] According to Ficklen, the
exodus of the slaves from the neighboring plantations of Louisiana into
Baton Rouge, Carrollton and New Orleans was so great as to strain the
resources of the Federal authorities to support them. Ten thousand poured
into New Orleans alone.[46] Fleming records that upon leaving their homes
the blacks collected in gangs at the cross roads, in the villages and
towns, especially near the military posts. The towns were filled with
crowds of blacks who left their homes with absolutely nothing, "thinking
that the government would care for them, or more probably, not thinking at
all."[47]

The portrayal of these writers of this phase of Reconstruction history
contains a general truth, but in some cases the picture is overdrawn. The
student of history must bear in mind that practically all of our histories
of that period are based altogether on the testimony of prejudiced whites
and are written from their point of view. Some of these writers have aimed
to exaggerate the vagrancy of the blacks to justify the radical procedure
of the whites in dealing with it. The Negroes did wander about
thoughtlessly, believing that this was the most effective way to enjoy
their freedom. But nothing else could be expected from a class who had
never felt anything but the heel of oppression. History shows that such
vagrancy has always followed the immediate emancipation of a large number
of slaves. Many Negroes who flocked to the towns and army camps, moreover,
had like their masters and poor whites seen their homes broken up or
destroyed by the invading Union armies. Whites who had never learned to
work were also roaming and in some cases constituted marauding bands.[48]

There was, moreover, an actual drain of laborers to the lower and more
productive lands in Mississippi and Louisiana.[49] This developed later
into a more considerable movement toward the Southwest just after the
Civil War, the exodus being from South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and
Mississippi to Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas. Here was the pioneering
spirit, a going to the land of more economic opportunities. This slow
movement continued from about 1865 to 1875, when the development of the
numerous railway systems gave rise to land speculators who induced whites
and blacks to go west and southwest. It was a migration of individuals,
but it was reported that as many as 35,000 Negroes were then persuaded to
leave South Carolina and Georgia for Arkansas and Texas.[50]

The usual charge that the Negro is naturally migratory is not true. This
impression is often received by persons who hear of the thousands of
Negroes who move from one place to another from year to year because of
the desire to improve their unhappy condition. In this there is no
tendency to migrate but an urgent need to escape undesirable conditions.
In fact, one of the American Negroes' greatest shortcomings is that they
are not sufficiently pioneering. Statistics show that the whites have more
inclination to move from State to State than the Negro. To prove this
assertion,[51] Professor William O. Scroggs has shown that, in 1910, 16.6
per cent of the Negroes had moved to some other State than that in which
they were born, while during the same period 22.4 per cent of the whites
had done the same.[52]

The South, however, was not disposed to look at the vagrancy of the
ex-slaves so philosophically. That section had been devastated by war and
to rebuild these waste places reliable labor was necessary. Legislatures
of the slave States, therefore, immediately after the close of the war,
granted the Negro nominal freedom but enacted measures of vagrancy and
labor so as to reduce the Negro again almost to the status of a slave.
White magistrates were given wide discretion in adjudging Negroes
vagrants.[53] Negroes had to sign contracts to work. If without what was
considered a just cause the Negro left the employ of a planter, the former
could be arrested and forced to work and in some sections with ball and
chain. If the employer did not care to take him back he could be hired out
by the county or confined in jail. Mississippi, Louisiana and South
Carolina had further drastic features. By local ordinance in Louisiana
every Negro had to be in the service of some white person, and by special
laws of South Carolina and Mississippi the Negro became subject to a
master almost in the same sense in which he was prior to emancipation.[54]
These laws, of course, convinced the government of the United States that
the South had not yet decided to let slavery go and for that reason
military rule and Congressional Reconstruction followed. In this respect
the South did itself a great injury, for many of the provisions of the
black codes, especially the vagrancy laws, were unnecessary. Most Negroes
soon realized that freedom did not mean relief from responsibility and
they quickly settled down to work after a rather protracted and exciting
holiday.[55]

During the last year of and immediately after the Civil War there set in
another movement, not of a large number of Negroes but of the intelligent
class who had during years of residence in the North enjoyed such
advantages of contact and education as to make them desirable and useful
as leaders in the Reconstruction of the South and the remaking of the
race. In their tirades against the Carpet-bag politicians who handled the
Reconstruction situation so much to the dissatisfaction of the southern
whites, historians often forget to mention also that a large number of the
Negro leaders who participated in that drama were also natives or
residents of Northern States.

Three motives impelled these blacks to go South. Some had found northern
communities so hostile as to impede their progress, many wanted to rejoin
relatives from whom they had been separated by their flight from the land
of slavery, and others were moved by the spirit of adventure to enter a
new field ripe with all sorts of opportunities. This movement, together
with that of migration to large urban communities, largely accounts for
the depopulation and the consequent decline of certain colored communities
in the North after 1865.

Some of the Negroes who returned to the South became men of national
prominence. William J. Simmons, who prior to the Civil War was carried
from South Carolina to Pennsylvania, returned to do religious and
educational work in Kentucky. Bishop James W. Hood, of the African
Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, went from Connecticut to North Carolina
to engage in similar work. Honorable R.T. Greener, the first Negro
graduate of Harvard, went from Philadelphia to teach in the District of
Columbia and later to be a professor in the University of South Carolina.
F.L. Cardoza, educated at the University of Edinburgh, returned to South
Carolina and became State Treasurer. R.B. Elliot, born in Boston and
educated in England, settled in South Carolina from which he was sent to
Congress.

John M. Langston was taken to Ohio and educated but came back to Virginia
his native State from which he was elected to Congress. J.T. White left
Indiana to enter politics in Arkansas, becoming State Senator and later
commissioner of public works and internal improvements. Judge Mifflin
Wister Gibbs, a native of Philadelphia, purposely settled in Arkansas
where he served as city judge and Register of United States Land Office.
T. Morris Chester, of Pittsburgh, finally made his way to Louisiana where
he served with distinction as a lawyer and held the position of
Brigadier-General in charge of the Louisiana State Guards under the
Kellogg government. Joseph Carter Corbin, who was taken from Virginia to
be educated at Chillicothe, Ohio, went later to Arkansas where he served
as chief clerk in the post office at Little Rock and later as State
Superintendent of Schools. Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback, who moved
north for education and opportunity, returned to enter politics in
Louisiana, which honored him with several important positions among which
was that of Acting Governor.


[Footnote 1: This is well treated in John Eaton's _Grant, Lincoln and
the Freedmen_. See also Coffin's _Boys of '61_.]

[Footnote 2: Williams, _History of the Negro Troops in the War of the
Rebellion_, p. 70.]

[Footnote 3: Greely, _American Conflict_, I, p. 585.]

[Footnote 4: _Ibid_., II, p. 246.]

[Footnote 5: _Official Records of the Rebellion_, VIII, p. 628.]

[Footnote 6: Williams, _Negro Troops_, p. 66 et seq.]

[Footnote 7: _Official Records of the Rebellion_, VIII, p. 370;
Williams, _Negro Troops_, p. 75.]

[Footnote 8: Eaton, _Grant, Lincoln and the Freedmen_, pp. 87, 92.]

[Footnote 9: Pierce, _Freedmen of Port Royal, South Carolina_, passim;
Botume, _First Days Among the Contrabands_, pp. 10-22; and Pearson,
_Letters from Port Royal_, passim.]

[Footnote 10: Eaton, _Grant, Lincoln and the Freedmen_, p. 92.]

[Footnote 11: _Ibid._, pp. 2, 3.]

[Footnote 12: Report of the _Committee of Representatives of the New
York Yearly Meeting of Friends_ upon the _Condition and Wants of the
Colored Refugees_, 1862, p. 1 et seq.]

[Footnote 13: _Report of the Committee of Representatives, etc_., p.
3.]

[Footnote 14: At an entertainment of this school, Senator Pomeroy of
Kansas, voicing the sentiment of Lincoln, spoke in favor of a scheme to
colonize Negroes in Central America.]

[Footnote 15: _Special Report_ of the United States Commission of
Education on the Schools of the District of Columbia, p. 215.]

[Footnote 16: _Christian Examiner_, LXXVI, p. 349.]

[Footnote 17: Eaton, _Lincoln, Grant and the Freedmen_, pp. 18, 30.]

[Footnote 18: Pierce, _The Freedmen of Port Royal, South Carolina,
Official Reports_; and Pearson, _Letters from Port Royal written at
the Time of the Civil War_.]

[Footnote 19: _Christian Examiner_, LXXVI, p. 354.]

[Footnote 20: _Continental Monthly_, II, p. 193.]

[Footnote 21: _Report_ of the Committee of Representatives of the New
York Yearly Meeting of Friends, p. 12.]

[Footnote 23: Eaton, _Lincoln, Grant and the Freedmen_, p. 2.]

[Footnote 23: Eaton, _Lincoln, Grant and the Freedmen_, p. 19. See
also Botume's _First Days Amongst the Contrabands_. This work vividly
portrays conditions among the refugees assembled at points in South
Carolina.]

[Footnote 24: Eaton, _Grant, Lincoln and the Freedmen_, p. 15.]

[Footnote 25: Williams, _Negro in the Rebellion_, pp. 90-98.]

[Footnote 26: _Official Records of the War of the Rebellion_, VII,
pp. 503, 510, 560, 595, 628, 668, 698, 699, 711, 723, 739, 741, 757, 769,
787, 801, 802, 811, 818, 842, 923, 934; VIII, pp. 444, 445, 451, 464, 555,
556, 564, 584, 637, 642, 686, 690, 693, 825.]

[Footnote 27: Eaton, _Grant, Lincoln and the Freedmen_, pp. 34-35.]

[Footnote 28: Ames, _From a New England Woman's Diary_, passim; and
Pearson, _Letters from Port Royal_, passim.]

[Footnote 29: Ames, _From a New England Woman's Diary in 1865_,
passim.]

[Footnote 30: _Special Report_ of the United States Commissioner of
Education on the Schools of the District of Columbia, p. 217.]

[Footnote 31: Eaton, _Grant, Lincoln and the Freedmen_, p. 37.]

[Footnote 32: Eaton, _Grant, Lincoln and the Freedmen_, p. 38.]

[Footnote 33: _Ibid._, p. 39.]

[Footnote 34: Starr, _What shall be done with the People of Color in the
United States_, p. 25; Ward, _Contrabands_, pp. 3, 4.]

[Footnote 35: It is said that Lincoln suggested colonizing the contrabands
in South America.]

[Footnote 36: _Atlantic Monthly_, XII, p. 308.]

[Footnote 37: Levi Coffin, _Reminiscences_, p. 671.]

[Footnote 38: _Atlantic Monthly_, XII, p. 309.]

[Footnote 39: _Ibid._, XII, pp. 310-311.]

[Footnote 40: _Ibid_., p. 311.]

[Footnote 41: Hamilton, _Reconstruction in North Carolina_, pp. 156,
157.]

[Footnote 42: Eckenrode, _Political History of Virginia during the
Reconstruction_, p. 43.]

[Footnote 43: Hall, _Andrew Johnson_, p. 258.]

[Footnote 44: Thompson, _Reconstruction in Georgia_, p. 44.]

[Footnote 45: Davis, _Reconstruction in Florida_, p. 341.]

[Footnote 46: Ficklen, _History of Reconstruction in Louisiana_, p.
118.]

[Footnote 47: Fleming, _The Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama_,
p. 271.]

[Footnote 48: Thompson, _Reconstruction in Georgia_, p. 69.]

[Footnote 49: _Ibid._, p. 69.]

[Footnote 50: This exodus became considerable again in 1888 and 1889 and
the Negro population has continued in this direction of plentitude of land
including not only Arkansas and Texas but Louisiana and Oklahoma, all
which received in this way by 1900 about 200,000 Negroes.]

[Footnote 51: _American Journal of Political Economy_, XXII, pp. 10,
40.]

[Footnote 52: _Ibid._, XXV, p. 1038.]

[Footnote 53: Mecklin, _Black Codes_.]

[Footnote 54: Dunning, _Reconstruction_, pp. 54, 59, 110.]

[Footnote 55: DuBois, _Freedmen's Bureau_.]



CHAPTER VII

THE EXODUS TO THE WEST


Having come through the halcyon days of the Reconstruction only to find
themselves reduced almost to the status of slaves, many Negroes deserted
the South for the promising west to grow up with the country. The
immediate causes were doubtless political. _Bulldozing_, a rather
vague term, covering all such crimes as political injustice and
persecution, was the source of most complaint. The abridgment of the
Negroes' rights had affected them as a great calamity. They had learned
that voting is one of the highest privileges to be obtained in this life
and they wanted to go where they might still exercise that privilege. That
persecution was the main cause was disputed, however, as there were cases
of Negroes migrating from parts where no such conditions obtained. Yet
some of the whites giving their version of the situation admitted that
violent methods had been used so to intimidate the Negroes as to compel
them to vote according to the dictation of the whites. It was also learned
that the _bulldozers_ concerned in dethroning the non-taxpaying
blacks were an impecunious and irresponsible group themselves, led by men
of the wealthy class.[1]

Coming to the defense of the whites, some said that much of the
persecution with which the blacks were afflicted was due to the fear of
Negro uprisings, the terror of the days of slavery. The whites, however,
did practically nothing to remove the underlying causes. They did not
encourage education and made no efforts to cure the Negroes of faults for
which slavery itself was to be blamed and consequently could not get the
confidence of the blacks. The races tended rather to drift apart. The
Negroes lived in fear of reenslavement while the whites believed that the
war between the North and South would soon be renewed. Some Negroes
thinking likewise sought to go to the North to be among friends. The
blacks, of course, had come so to regard southern whites as their enemies
as to render impossible a voluntary division in politics.

Among the worst of all faults of the whites was their unwillingness to
labor and their tendency to do mischief.[2] As there were so many to live
on the labor of the Negroes they were reduced to a state a little better
than that of bondage. The master class was generally unfair to the blacks.
No longer responsible for them as slaves, the planters endeavored after
the war to get their labor for nothing. The Negroes themselves had no
land, no mules, no presses nor cotton gins, and they could not acquire
sufficient capital to obtain these things. They were made victims of fraud
in signing contracts which they could not understand and had to suffer the
consequent privations and want aggravated by robbery and murder by the Ku
Klux Klan.[3]

The murder of Negroes was common throughout the South and especially in
Louisiana. In 1875, General Sheridan said that as many as 3,500 persons
had been killed and wounded in that State, the great majority of whom
being Negroes; that 1,884 were killed and wounded in 1868, and probably
1,200 between 1868 and 1875. Frightful massacres occurred in the parishes
of Bossier, Catahoula, Saint Bernard, Grant and Orleans. As most of these
murders were for political reasons, the offenders were regarded by their
communities as heroes rather than as criminals. A massacre of Negroes
began in the parish of St. Landry on the 28th of September and continued
for three days, resulting in the death of from 300 to 400. Thirteen
captives were taken from the jail and shot and as many as twenty-five dead
bodies were found burned in the woods. There broke out in the parish of
Bossier another three-day riot during which two hundred Negroes were
massacred. More than forty blacks were killed in the parish of Caddo
during the following month. In fact, the number of murders, maimings and
whippings during these months aggregated over one thousand.[4] The result
was that the intelligent Negroes were either intimidated or killed so that
the illiterate masses of Negro voters might be ordered to refrain from
voting the Republican ticket to strengthen the Democrats or be subjected
to starvation through the operation of the mischievous land tenure and
credit system. What was not done in 1868 to overthrow the Republican
regime was accomplished by a renewed and extended use of such drastic
measures throughout the South in 1876.

Certain whites maintained, however, that the unrest was due to the work of
radical politicians at the North, who had sent their emissaries south to
delude the Negroes into a fever of migration. Some said it was a scheme to
force the nomination of a certain Republican candidate for President in
1880. Others laid it to the charge of the defeated white and black
Republicans who had been thrown from power by the whites upon regaining
control of the reconstructed States.[5] A few insisted that a speech
delivered by Senator Windom in 1879 had given stimulus to the
migration.[6] Many southerners said that speculators in Kansas had adopted
this plan to increase the value of their land. Then there were other
theories as to the fundamental causes, each consisting of a charge of one
political faction that some other had given rise to the movement, varying
according as they were Bourbons, conservatives, native white Republicans,
carpet-bag Republicans, or black Republicans.

Impartial observers, however, were satisfied that the movement was
spontaneous to the extent that the blacks were ready and willing to go.
Probably no more inducement was offered them than to other citizens among
whom land companies sent agents to distribute literature. But the
fundamental causes of the unrest were economic, for since the Civil War
race troubles have never been sufficient to set in motion a large number
of Negroes. The discontent resulted from the land-tenure and credit
systems, which had restored slavery in a modified form.[7]

After the Civil War a few Negroes in those parts, where such opportunities
were possible, invested in real estate offered for sale by the
impoverished and ruined planters of the conquered commonwealths. When,
however, the Negroes lost their political power, their property was seized
on the plea for delinquent taxes and they were forced into the ghetto of
towns and cities, as it became a crime punishable by social proscription
to sell Negroes desirable residences. The aim was to debase all Negroes to
the status of menial labor in conformity with the usual contention of the
South that slavery is the normal condition of the blacks.[8]

Most of the land of the South, however, always remained as large tracts
held by the planters of cotton, who never thought of alienating it to the
Negroes to make them a race of small farmers. In fact, they had not the
means to make extensive purchases of land, even if the planters had been
disposed to transfer it. Still subject to the experimentation of white
men, the Negroes accepted the plan of paying them wages; but this failed
in all parts except in the sugar district, where the blacks remained
contented save when disturbed by political movements. They then tried all
systems of working on shares in the cotton districts; but this was finally
abandoned because the planters in some cases were not able to advance the
Negro tenant supplies, pending the growth of the crop, and some found the
Negro too indifferent and lazy to make the partnership desirable. Then
came the renting system which during the Reconstruction period was general
in the cotton districts. This system threw the tenant on his own
responsibility and frequently made him the victim of his own ignorance and
the rapacity of the white man. As exorbitant prices were charged for rent,
usually six to ten dollars an acre for land worth fifteen to thirty
dollars an acre, the Negro tenant not only did not accumulate anything but
had reason to rejoice at the end of the year, if he found himself out of
debt.[9]

Along with this went the credit system which furnished the capstone of the
economic structure so harmful to the Negro tenant. This system made the
Negroes dependent for their living on an advance of supplies of food,
clothing or tools during the year, secured by a lien on the crop when
harvested. As the Negroes had no chance to learn business methods during
the days of slavery, they fell a prey to a class of loan sharks, harpies
and vampires, who established stores everywhere to extort from these
ignorant tenants by the mischievous credit system their whole income
before their crops could be gathered.[10] Some planters who sympathized
with the Negroes brought forward the scheme of protecting them by
advancing certain necessities at more reasonable prices. As the planter
himself, however, was subject to usury, the scheme did not give much
relief. The Negroes' crop, therefore, when gathered went either to the
merchant or to the planter to pay the rent; for the merchant's supplies
were secured by a mortgage on the tenant's personal property and a pledge
of the growing crop. This often prevented Negro laborers in the employ of
black tenants from getting their wages at the end of the year, for,
although the laborer had also a lien on the growing crop, the merchant and
the planter usually had theirs recorded first and secured thereby the
support of the law to force the payment of their claims. The Negro tenant
then began the year with three mortgages, covering all he owned, his labor
for the coming year and all he expected to acquire during that
twelvemonth. He paid "one-third of his product for the use of the land, he
paid an exorbitant fee for recording the contract by which he paid his
pound of flesh; he was charged two or three times as much as he ought to
pay for ginning his cotton; and, finally, he turned over his crop to be
eaten up in commissions, if any was still left to him."[11]

The worst of all results from this iniquitous system was its effect on the
Negroes themselves. It made the Negroes extravagant and unscrupulous.
Convinced that no share of their crop would come to them when harvested,
they did not exert themselves to produce what they could. They often
abandoned their crops before harvest, knowing that they had already spent
them. In cases, however, where the Negro tenants had acquired mules,
horses or tools upon which the speculator had a mortgage, the blacks were
actually bound to their landlords to secure the property. It was soon
evident that in the end the white man himself was the loser by this evil
system. There appeared waste places in the country. Improvements were
wanting, land lay idle for lack of sufficient labor, and that which was
cultivated yielded a diminishing return on account of the ignorance and
improvidence of those tilling it. These Negroes as a rule had lost the
ambition to become landowners, preferring to invest their surplus money in
personal effects; and in the few cases where the Negroes were induced to
undertake the buying of land, they often tired of the responsibility and
gave it up.[12]

There began in the spring of 1879, therefore, an emigration of the Negroes
from Louisiana and Mississippi to Kansas. For some time there was a
stampede from several river parishes in Louisiana and from counties just
opposite them in Mississippi. It was estimated that from five to ten
thousand left their homes before the movement could be checked. Persons of
influence soon busied themselves in showing the blacks the necessity for
remaining in the South and those who had not then gone or prepared to go
were persuaded to return to the plantations. This lull in the excitement,
however, was merely temporary, for many Negroes had merely returned home
to make more extensive preparations for leaving the following spring. The
movement was accelerated by the work of two Negro leaders of some note,
Moses Singleton, of Tennessee, the self-styled Moses of the Exodus; and
Henry Adams, of Louisiana, who credited himself with having organized for
this purpose as many as 98,000 blacks.

Taking this movement seriously a convention of the leading whites and
blacks was held at Vicksburg, Mississippi, on the sixth of May, 1879. This
body was controlled mainly by unsympathetic but diplomatic whites. General
N.R. Miles, of Yazoo County, Mississippi, was elected president and A.W.
Crandall, of Louisiana, secretary. After making some meaningless but
eloquent speeches the convention appointed a committee on credentials and
adjourned until the following day. On reassembling Colonel W.L. Nugent,
chairman of the committee, presented a certain preamble and
resolutions citing causes of the exodus and suggesting remedies. Among the
causes, thought he, were: "the low price of cotton and the partial failure
of the crop, the irrational system of planting adopted in some sections
whereby labor was deprived of intelligence to direct it and the presence
of economy to make it profitable, the vicious system of credit fostered by
laws permitting laborers and tenants to mortgage crops before they were
grown or even planted; the apprehension on the part of many colored people
produced by insidious reports circulated among them that their civil and
political rights were endangered or were likely to be; the hurtful and
false rumors diligently disseminated, that by emigrating to Kansas the
Negroes would obtain lands, mules and money from the government without
cost to themselves, and become independent forever."[13]

Referring to the grievances and proposing a redress, the committee
admitted that errors had been committed by the whites and blacks alike, as
each in turn had controlled the government of the States there
represented. The committee believed that the interests of planters and
laborers, landlords and tenants were identical; that they must prosper or
suffer together; and that it was the duty of the planters and landlords of
the State there represented to devise and adopt some contract by which
both parties would receive the full benefit of labor governed by
intelligence and economy. The convention affirmed that the Negro race had
been placed by the constitution of the United States and the States there
represented, and the laws thereof, on a plane of absolute equality with
the white race; and declared that the Negro race should be accorded the
practical enjoyment of all civil and political rights guaranteed by the
said constitutions and laws. The convention pledged itself to use whatever
of power and influence it possessed to protect the Negro race against all
dangers in respect to the fair expression of their wills at the polls,
which they apprehended might result from fraud, intimidation or
_bulldozing_ on the part of the whites. And as there could be no
liberty of action without freedom of thought, they demanded that all
elections should be fair and free and that no repressive measures should
be employed by the Negroes "to deprive their own race in part of the
fullest freedom in the exercise of the highest right of citizenship."[14]

The committee then recommended the abolition of the mischievous credit
system, called upon the Negroes to contradict false reports as to crimes
of the whites against them and, after considering the Negroes' right to
emigrate, urged that they proceed about it with reason. Ex-Governor Foote,
of Mississippi, submitted a plan to establish in every county a committee,
composed of men who had the confidence of both whites and blacks, to be
auxiliary to the public authorities, to listen to complaints and
arbitrate, advise, conciliate or prosecute, as each case should demand.
But unwilling to do more than make temporary concessions, the majority
rejected Foote's plan.[15]

The whites thought also to stop the exodus by inducing the steamboat lines
not to furnish the emigrants' transportation. Negroes were also
detained by writs obtained by preferring against them false charges. Some,
who were willing to let the Negroes go, thought of importing white and
Chinese labor to take their places. Hearing of the movement and thinking
that he could offer a remedy, Senator D.W. Voorhees, of Indiana,
introduced a resolution in the United States Senate authorizing an inquiry
into the causes of the exodus.[16] The movement, however, could not be
stopped and it became so widespread that the people in general were forced
to give it serious thought. Men in favor of it declared their views,
organized migration societies and appointed agents to promote the
enterprise of removing the freedmen from the South.

Becoming a national measure, therefore, the migration evoked expressions
from Frederick Douglass and Richard T. Greener, two of the most prominent
Negroes in the United States. Douglass believed that the exodus was
ill-timed. He saw in it the abandonment of the great principle of
protection to persons and property in every State of the Union. He felt
that if the Negroes could not be protected in every State, the Federal
Government was shorn of its rightful dignity and power, the late rebellion
had triumphed, the sovereign of the nation was an empty vessel, and the
power and authority in individual States were supreme. He thought,
therefore, that it was better for the Negroes to stay in the South than to
go North, as the South was a better market for the black man's labor.
Douglass believed that the Negroes should be warned against a nomadic
life. He did not see any more benefit in the migration to Kansas than he
had years before in the emigration to Africa. The Negroes had a monopoly
of labor at the South and they would be too insignificant in numbers to
have such an advantage in the North. The blacks were then potentially able
to elect members of Congress in the South but could not hope to exercise
such power in other parts. Douglass believed, moreover, that this exodus
did not conform to the "laws of civilizing migration," as the carrying of
a language, literature and the like of a superior race to an inferior; and
it did not conform to the geographic laws assuring healthy migration from
east to west in the same latitude, as this was from south to north, far
away from the climate in which the migrants were born.[17]

The exodus of the Negroes, however, was heartily endorsed by Richard T.
Greener. He did not consider it the best remedy for the lawlessness of the
South but felt that it was a salutary one. He did not expect the United
States to give the oppressed blacks in the South the protection they
needed, as there is no abstract limit to the right of a State to do
anything. He would not encourage the Negro to lead a wandering life but in
that instance such advice was gratuitous. Greener failed to find any
analogy between African colonization and migration to the West as the
former was promoted by slaveholders to remove the free Negro from the
country and the other sprang spontaneously from the class considering
itself aggrieved. "One led out of the country to a comparative wilderness;
the other directed to a better land and larger opportunities." He did not
see how the migration to the North would diminish the potentiality of the
Negro in politics, for Massachusetts first elected Negroes to her General
Court, Ohio had nominated a Negro representative and Illinois another. He
showed also that Mr. Douglass's objection on the grounds of migrating from
south to north rather than from east to west was not historical. He
thought little of the advice to the Negroes to stick and fight it out, for
he had evidence that the return of the unreconstructed Confederates to
power in the South would for generations doom the blacks to political
oppression unknown in the annals of a free country.

Greener showed foresight here in urging the Negroes to take up desirable
western land before it would be preempted by foreigners. As the Swedes,
Norwegians, Irish, Hebrews and others were organizing societies and
raising funds to promote the migration of their needy to these lands, why
should the Negroes be debarred? Greener had no apprehension as to the
treatment the Negroes would receive in the West. He connected the movement
too with the general welfare of the blacks, considering it a promising
sign that they had learned to run from persecution. Having passed their
first stage, that of appealing to philanthropists, the Negroes were then
appealing to themselves.[18]

Feeling very much as Greener did, these Negroes rushed into Kansas and
neighboring States in 1879. So many came that some systematic relief had
to be offered. Mrs. Comstock, a Quaker lady, organized for this purpose
the Kansas Freedmen's Relief Association, to raise funds and secure for
them food and clothing. In this work she had the support of Governor J.P.
Saint John. There was much suffering upon arriving in Kansas but relief
came from various sources. During this year $40,000 and 500,000 pounds of
clothing, bedding and the like were used. England contributed 50,000
pounds of goods and $8,000. In 1879, the refugees took up 20,000 acres of
land and brought 3,000 under cultivation. The Relief Association at first
furnished them with supplies, teams and seed, which they profitably used
in the production of large crops. Desiring to establish homes, they built
300 cabins and saved $30,000 the first year. In April, 1,300 refugees had
gathered around Wyandotte alone. Up to that date 60,000 had come to
Kansas, nearly 40,000 of whom arrived in destitute condition. About 30,000
settled in the country, some on rented lands and others on farms as
laborers, leaving about 25,000 in cities, where on account of crowded
conditions and the hard weather many greatly suffered. Upon finding
employment, however, they all did well, most of them becoming
self-supporting within one year after their arrival, and few of them
coming back to the Relief Association for aid the second time.[19] This
was especially true of those in Topeka, Parsons and Kansas City.

The people of Kansas did not encourage the blacks to come. They even sent
messengers to the South to advise the Negroes not to migrate and, if they
did come anyway, to provide themselves with equipment. When they did
arrive, however, they welcomed and assisted them as human beings. Under
such conditions the blacks established five or six important colonies in
Kansas alone between 1879 and 1880. Chief among these were Baxter Springs,
Nicodemus, Morton City and Singleton. Governor Saint John, of Kansas,
reported that they seemed to be honest and of good habits, were certainly
industrious and anxious to work, and so far as they had been tried had
proved to be faithful and excellent laborers. Giving his observations
there, Sir George Campbell bore testimony to the same report.[20] Out of
these communities have come some most progressive black citizens. In
consideration of their desirability their white neighbors have given them
their cooperation, secured to them the advantages of democratic education,
and honored a few of them with some of the most important positions in the
State.

Although the greater number of these blacks went to Kansas, about 5,000 of
them sought refuge in other Western States. During these years, Negroes
gradually invaded Indian Territory and increased the number already
infiltrated into and assimilated by the Indian nations. When assured of
their friendly attitude toward the Indians, the Negroes were accepted by
them as equals, even during the days of slavery when the blacks on account
of the cruelties of their masters escaped to the wilderness.[21] Here we
are at sea as to the extent to which this invasion and subsequent
miscegenation of the black and red races extended for the reason that
neither the Indians nor these migrating Negroes kept records and the
United States Government has been disposed to classify all mixed breeds in
tribes as Indians. Having equal opportunity among the red men, the Negroes
easily succeeded. A traveler in Indian Territory in 1880 found their
condition unusually favorable. The cosy homes and promising fields of
these freedmen attracted his attention as striking evidences of their
thrift. He saw new fences, additions to cabins, new barns, churches and
school-houses indicating prosperity. Given every privilege which the
Indians themselves enjoyed, the Negroes could not be other than
contented.[22]

It was very unfortunate, however, that in 1889, when by proclamation of
President Harrison the Oklahoma Territory was thrown open, the intense
race prejudice of the white immigrants and the rule of the mob prevented a
larger number of Negroes from settling in that promising commonwealth.
Long since extensively advertised as valuable, the land of Oklahoma had
become a coveted prize for the adventurous squatters invading the
territory in defiance of the law before it was declared open for
settlement. The rush came with all the excitement of pioneer days
redoubled. Stakes were set, parcels of land were claimed, cabins were
constructed in an hour and towns grew up in a day.[23] Then came
conflicting claims as to titles and rights of preemption culminating in
fighting and bloodshed. And worst of all, with this disorderly group there
developed the fixed policy of eliminating the Negroes entirely.

The Negro, however, was not entirely excluded. Some had already come into
the territory and others in spite of the barriers set up continued to
come.[24] With the cooperation of the Indians, with whom they easily
amalgamated they readjusted themselves and acquired sufficient wealth to
rise in the economic world. Although not generally fortunate, a number of
them have coal and oil lands from which they obtain handsome incomes and a
few, like Sara Rector, have actually become rich. Dishonest white men with
the assistance of unprincipled officials have defrauded and are still
endeavoring to defraud these Negroes of their property, lending them money
secured by mortgages and obtaining for themselves through the courts
appointments as the Negroes' guardians. They turn out to be the robbers of
the Negroes, in case they do not live in a community where an enlightened
public opinion frowns down upon this crime.

During the later eighties and the early nineties there were some other
interstate movements worthy of notice here. The mineral wealth of the
Appalachian mountains was being exploited. Foreigners, at first, were
coming into this country in sufficiently large numbers to meet the demand;
but when this supply became inadequate, labor agents appealed to the
blacks in the South. Negroes then flocked to the mining districts of
Birmingham, Alabama, and to East Tennessee. A large number also migrated
from North Carolina and Virginia to West Virginia and some few of the same
group to Southern Ohio to take the places of those unreasonable strikers
who often demanded larger increases in wages than the income of their
employers could permit. Many of these Negroes came to West Virginia as is
evidenced by the increase in Negro population of that State. West Virginia
had a Negro population of 17,980 in 1870; 25,886 in 1880; 32,690 in 1890;
43,499 in 1900; and 64,173 in 1910.[25]


[Footnote 1: _Atlantic Monthly_, LXIV, p. 222; _Nation_, XXVIII,
pp. 242, 386.]

[Footnote 2: Thompson, _Reconstruction in Georgia_, p. 69.]

[Footnote 3: Williams, _History of the Negro Race_, II, p. 375.]

[Footnote 4: Williams, _History of the Negro Race_, II, p. 374.]

[Footnote 5: American _Journal of Social Science_, XI, p. 34.]

[Footnote 6: _Ibid._, XI, p. 33.]

[Footnote 7: _Nation_, XXVIII, pp. 242, 386.]

[Footnote 8: Williams, _History of the Negro Race_, II, p. 378.]

[Footnote 9: _Atlantic Monthly_, LXIV, p. 225.]

[Footnote 10: _Ibid._, LXIV, p. 226.]

[Footnote 11: _Atlantic Monthly_, LXIV, p. 224.]

[Footnote 12: _The Atlantic Monthly_, XLIV, p. 223.]

[Footnote 13: _The Vicksburg Daily Commercial_, May 6, 1879.]

[Footnote 14: _The Vicksburg Daily Commercial_, May 6, 1879.]

[Footnote 15: _Ibid._, May 6, 1879.]

[Footnote 16: _Congressional Record_, 46th Congress, 2d Session, Vol.
X, p. 104.]

[Footnote 17: For a detailed statement of Douglass's views, see the
_American Journal of Social Science_, XI, pp. 1-21.]

[Footnote 18: _American Journal of Social Science_, XI, pp. 22-35.]

[Footnote 19: Williams, _History of the Negro_, II, p. 379.]

[Footnote 20: "In Kansas City," said Sir George Campbell, "and still more
in the suburbs of Kansas proper the Negroes are much more numerous than I
have yet seen. On the Kansas side they form quite a large proportion of
the population. They are certainly subject to no indignity or ill usage.
There the Negroes seem to have quite taken to work at trades." He saw them
doing building work, both alone and assisting white men, and also painting
and other tradesmen's work. On the Kansas side, he found a Negro
blacksmith, with an establishment of his own. He had come from Tennessee
after emancipation. He had not been back there and did not want to go. He
also saw black women keeping apple stalls and engaged in other such
occupations so as to leave him under the impression that in the States,
which he called intermediate between black and white countries the blacks
evidently had no difficulty.--See _American Journal of Social
Science_, XI, pp. 32, 33.]

[Footnote 21: _American Journal of Social Science_, XI, p. 33.]

[Footnote 22: _Ibid._, XI, p. 33.]

[Footnote 23: _Spectator_, LXVII, p. 571; _Dublin Review_, CV,
p. 187; _Cosmopolitan_, VII, p. 460; _Nation_, LXVIII, p. 279.]

[Footnote 24: According to the _United States Census, of 1910_, there
are 137,612 Negroes in Oklahoma.]

[Footnote 25: See _Censuses_ of the United States.]



CHAPTER VIII

THE MIGRATION OF THE TALENTED TENTH


In spite of these interstate movements, the Negro still continued as a
perplexing problem, for the country was unprepared to grant the race
political and civil rights. Nominal equality was forced on the South at
the point of the sword and the North reluctantly removed most of its
barriers against the blacks. Some, still thinking, however, that the two
races could not live together as equals, advocated ceding the blacks the
region on the Gulf of Mexico.[1] This was branded as chimerical on the
ground that, deprived of the guidance of the whites, these States would
soon sink to African level and the end of the experiment would be a
reconquest and a military regime fatal to the true development of American
institutions.[2] Another plan proposed was the revival of the old
colonization idea of sending Negroes to Africa, but this exhibited still
less wisdom than the first in that it was based on the hypothesis of
deporting a nation, an expense which no government would be willing to
incur. There were then no physical means of transporting six or seven
millions of people, moreover, as there would be a new born for every one
the agents of colonization could deport.[3]

With the deportation scheme still kept before the people by the American
Colonization Society, the idea of emigration to Africa did not easily die.
Some Negroes continued to emigrate to Liberia from year to year. This
policy was also favored by radicals like Senator Morgan, of Alabama, who,
after movements like the Ku Klux Klan had done their work of intimidating
Negroes into submission to the domination of the whites, concluded that
most of the race believed that there was no future for the blacks in the
United States and that they were willing to emigrate. These radicals
advocated the deportation of the blacks to prevent the recurrence of
"Negro domination." This plan was acceptable to the whites in general
also, for, unlike the consensus of opinion of today, it was then thought
that the South could get along without the Negro.[4] Even newspapers like
the _Charleston News and Courier_, which denounced the persecution of
the Negroes, urged them to emigrate to Africa as they could not be
permitted to rule over the white people. The _Minneapolis Times_
wished the scheme success and Godspeed and believed that the sooner it was
carried out the better it would be for the Negroes.

Most of the influential newspapers of the country, however, urged the
contrary. Citing the progress of the Negroes since emancipation to show
that the blacks were doing their full share toward developing the wealth
of the South, the _Indianapolis Journal_ characterized as barbarism
the suggestion that the government should furnish them transportation to
Africa. "The ancestors of most of the Negroes now in this country," said
the editor, "have doubtless been here as long as those of Senator Morgan,
and their descendants are as thoroughly acclimated and have as good a
right here as the Senator himself."[5] This was the opinion of all useful
Negroes except Bishop H.M. Turner, who endorsed Morgan's plan by
advocating the emigration of one fourth of the blacks to Africa. The
editor of the _Chicago Record-Herald_ entreated Turner to temper his
enthusiasm with discretion before he involved in unspeakable disaster any
more of his trustful compatriots.

Speaking more plainly to the point, the editor of the _Philadelphia
North American_ said that the true interest of the South was to
accommodate itself to changed conditions and that the duty of the freedmen
lies in making themselves worth more in the development of the South than
they were as chattels. Although recognizing the disabilities and hardships
of the South both to the whites and the blacks, he could not believe that
the elimination of the Negroes would, if practicable, give relief.[6] The
_Boston Herald_ inquired whether it was worth while to send away a
laboring population in the absence of whites to take its place and
referred to the misfortunes of Spain which undertook to carry out such a
scheme. Speaking the real truth, _The Milwaukee Journal_ said that no
one needed to expect any appreciable decrease in the black population
through any possible emigration, no matter how successful it might be.
"The Negro," said the editor, "is here to stay and our institutions must
be adapted to comprehend him and develop his possibilities." _The
Colored American_, then the leading Negro organ of thought in the
United States, believed that the Negroes should be thankful to Senator
Morgan for his attitude on emigration, because he might succeed in
deporting to Africa those Negroes who affect to believe that this is not
their home and the more quickly we get rid of such foolhardy people the
better it will be for the stalwart of the race.[7]

A number of Negroes, however, under the inspiration of leaders[8] like
Bishop H.M. Turner, did not feel that the race had a fair chance in the
United States. A few of them emigrated to Wapimo, Mexico; but, becoming
dissatisfied with the situation there, they returned to their homes in
Georgia and Alabama in 1895. The coming of the Negroes into Mexico caused
suspicion and excitement. A newspaper, _El Tiempo_, which had been
denouncing lynching in the United States, changed front when these Negroes
arrived in that country.

Going in quest of new opportunities and desiring to reenforce the
civilization of Liberia, 197 other Negroes sailed from Savannah, Georgia,
for Liberia, March 19, 1895. Commending this step, the _Macon
Telegraph_ referred to their action as a rebellion against the social
laws which govern all people of this country. This organ further said that
it was the outcome of a feeling which has grown stronger and stronger year
by year among the Negroes of the Southern States and which will continue
to grow with the increase of education and intelligence among them. The
editor conceded that they had an opportunity to better their material
condition and acquire wealth here but contended that they had no chance to
rise out of the peasant class. The _Memphis Commercial Appeal_ urged
the building of a large Negro nation in Africa as practicable and
desirable, for it was "more and more apparent that the Negro in this
country must remain an alien and a disturber," because there was "not and
can never be a future for him in this country." The _Florida Times
Union_ felt that this colonization scheme, like all others, was a
fraud. It referred to the Negro's being carried to the land of plenty only
to find out that there, as everywhere else in the world, an existence must
be earned by toil and that his own old sunny southern home is vastly the
better place.[9]

Only a few intelligent Negroes, however, had reached the position of being
contented in the South. The Negroes eliminated from politics could not
easily bring themselves around to thinking that they should remain there
in a state of recognized inferiority, especially when during the eighties
and nineties there were many evidences that economic as well as political
conditions would become worse. The exodus treated in the previous chapter
was productive of better treatment for the Negroes and an increase in
their wages in certain parts of the South but the migration, contrary to
the expectations of many, did not become general. Actual prosperity was
impossible even if the whites had been willing to give the Negro peasants
a fair chance. The South had passed through a disastrous war, the effects
of which so blighted the hopes of its citizens in the economic world that
their land seemed to pass, so to speak, through a dark age. There was then
little to give the man far down when the one to whom he of necessity
looked for employment was in his turn bled by the merchant or the banker
of the larger cities, to whom he had to go for extensive credits.[10]

Southern planters as a class, however, had not much sympathy for the
blacks who had once been their property and the tendency to cheat them
continued, despite the fact that many farmers in the course of time
extricated themselves from the clutches of the loan sharks. There were a
few Negroes who, thanks to the honesty of certain southern gentlemen,
succeeded in acquiring considerable property in spite of their
handicaps.[11] They yielded to the white man's control in politics, when
it seemed that it meant either to abandon that field or die, and devoted
themselves to the accumulation of wealth and the acquisition of education.

This concession, however, did not satisfy the radical whites, as they
thought that the Negro might some day return to power. Unfortunately,
therefore, after the restoration of the control of the State governments
to the master class, there swept over these commonwealths a wave of
hostile legislation demanded by the poor white uplanders determined to
debase the blacks to the status of the free Negroes prior to the Civil
War.[12] The Negroes have, therefore, been disfranchised in most
reconstructed States, deprived of the privilege of serving in the State
militia, segregated in public conveyances, and excluded from public places
of entertainment. They have, moreover, been branded by public opinion as
pariahs of society to be used for exploitation but not to be encouraged to
expect that their status can ever be changed so as to destroy the barriers
between the races in their social and political relations.

This period has been marked also by an effort to establish in the South a
system of peonage not unlike that of Mexico, a sort of involuntary
servitude in that one is considered legally bound to serve his master
until a debt contracted is paid. Such laws have been enacted in Florida,
Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina and South Carolina. No such
distinction in law has been able to stand the constitutional test of the
United States courts as was evidenced by the decision of the Supreme Court
in 1911 declaring the Alabama law unconstitutional.[13] But the planters
of the South, still a law unto themselves, have maintained actual slavery
in sequestered; districts where public opinion against peonage is too weak
to support federal authorities in exterminating it.[14] The Negroes
themselves dare not protest under penalty of persecution and the peon
concerned usually accepts his lot like that of a slave. Some years ago it
was commonly reported that in trying to escape, the persons undertaking it
often fail and suffer death at the hands of the planter or of murderous
mobs, giving as their excuse, if any be required, that the Negro is a
desperado or some other sort of criminal.

Unfortunately this reaction extended also to education. Appropriations to
public schools for Negroes diminished from year to year and when there
appeared practical leaders with, their sane plan for industrial education
the South ignorantly accepted this scheme as a desirable subterfuge for
seeming to support Negro education and at the same time directing the
development of the blacks in such a way that they would never become the
competitors of the white people. This was not these educators' idea but
the South so understood it and in effecting the readjustment, practically
left the Negroes out of the pale of the public school systems.
Consequently, there has been added to the Negroes' misfortunes, in the
South, that of being unable to obtain liberal education at public expense,
although they themselves, as the largest consumers in some parts, pay most
of the taxes appropriated to the support of schools for the youth of the
other race.[15]

The South, moreover, has adopted the policy of a more general intimidation
of the Negroes to keep them down. The lynching of the blacks, at first for
assaults on white women and later for almost any offense, has rapidly
developed as an institution. Within the past fifty years [16] there have
been lynched in the South about 4,000 Negroes, many of whom have been
publicly burned in the daytime to attract crowds that usually enjoy such
feats as the tourney of the Middle Ages. Negroes who have the courage to
protest against this barbarism have too often been subjected to
indignities and in some cases forced to leave their communities or suffer
the fate of those in behalf of whom they speak. These crimes of white men
were at first kept secret but during the last two generations the culprits
have become known as heroes, so popular has it been to murder Negroes. It
has often been discovered also that the officers of these communities take
part in these crimes and the worst of all is that politicians like
Tillman, Blease and Vardaman glory in recounting the noble deeds of those
who deserve so well of their countrymen for making the soil red with the
Negroes' blood rather than permit the much feared Africanization of
southern institutions.[17]

In this harassing situation the Negro has hoped that the North would
interfere in his behalf, but, with the reactionary Supreme Court of the
United States interpreting this hostile legislation as constitutional in
conformity with the demands of prejudiced public opinion, and with the
leaders of the North inclined to take the view that after all the factions
in the South must be left alone to fight it out, there has been nothing to
be expected from without. Matters too have been rendered much worse
because the leaders of the very party recently abandoning the freedmen to
their fate, aggravated the critical situation by first setting the Negroes
against their former masters, whom they were taught to regard as their
worst enemies whether they were or not.

The last humiliation the Negroes have been forced to submit to is that of
segregation. Here the effort has been to establish a ghetto in cities and
to assign certain parts of the country to Negroes engaged in farming. It
always happens, of course, that the best portion goes to the whites and
the least desirable to the blacks, although the promoters of the
segregation maintain that both races are to be treated equally. The
ultimate aim is to prevent the Negroes of means from figuring
conspicuously in aristocratic districts where they may be brought into
rather close contact with the whites. Negroes see in segregation a settled
policy to keep them down, no matter what they do to elevate themselves.
The southern white man, eternally dreading the miscegenation of the races,
makes the life, liberty and happiness of individuals second to measures
considered necessary to prevent this so-called evil that this enviable
civilization, distinctly American, may not be destroyed. The United States
Supreme Court in the decision of the Louisville segregation case recently
declared these segregation measures unconstitutional.[18]

These restrictions have made the progress of the Negroes more of a problem
in that directed toward social distinction, the Negroes have been denied
the helpful contact of the sympathetic whites. The increasing race
prejudice forces the whites to restrict their open dealing with the blacks
to matters of service and business, maintaining even then the bearing of
one in a sphere which the Negroes must not penetrate. The whites,
therefore, never seeing the blacks as they are, and the blacks never being
able to learn what the whites know, are thrown back on their own
initiative, which their life as slaves could not have permitted to
develop. It makes little difference that the Negroes have been free a few
decades. Such freedom has in some parts been tantamount to slavery, and so
far as contact with the superior class is concerned, no better than that
condition; for under the old regime certain slaves did learn much by close
association with their masters.[19]

For these reasons there has been since the exodus to the West a steady
migration of Negroes from the South to points in the North. But this
migration, mainly due to political changes, has never assumed such large
proportions as in the case of the more significant movements due to
economic causes, for, as the accompanying map shows, most Negroes are
still in the South. When we consider the various classes migrating,
however, it will be apparent that to understand the exodus of the Negroes
to the North, this longer drawn out and smaller movement must be carefully
studied in all its ramifications. It should be noted that unlike some of
the other migrations it has not been directed to any particular State. It
has been from almost all Southern States to various parts of the North and
especially to the largest cities.[20]

What classes then have migrated? In the first place, the Negro
politicians, who, after the restoration of Bourbon rule in the South,
found themselves thrown out of office and often humiliated and
impoverished, had to find some way out of the difficulty. Some few have
been relieved by sympathetic leaders of the Republican party, who secured
for them federal appointments in Washington. These appointments when
sometimes paying lucrative salaries have been given as a reward to those
Negroes who, although dethroned in the South, remain in touch with the
remnant of the Republican party there and control the delegates to the
national conventions nominating candidates for President. Many Negroes of
this class have settled in Washington.[21] In some cases, the observer
witnesses the pitiable scene of a man once a prominent public functionary
in the South now serving in Washington as a messenger or a clerk.

The well-established blacks, however, have not been so easily induced to
go. The Negroes in business in the South have usually been loath to leave
their people among whom they can acquire property, whereas, if they go to
the North, they have merely political freedom with no assurance of an
opportunity in the economic world. But not a few of these have given
themselves up to unrelenting toil with a view to accumulating sufficient
wealth to move North and live thereafter on the income from their
investments. Many of this class now spend some of their time in the North
to educate their children. But they do not like to have these children who
have been under refining influences return to the South to suffer the
humiliation which during the last generation has been growing more and
more aggravating. Endeavoring to carry out their policy of keeping the
Negro down, southerners too often carefully plan to humiliate the
progressive and intelligent blacks and in some cases form mobs to drive
them out, as they are bad examples for that class of Negroes whom they
desire to keep as menials.[22]

There are also the migrating educated Negroes. They have studied history,
law and economics and well understand what it is to get the rights
guaranteed them by the constitution. The more they know the more
discontented they become. They cannot speak out for what they want. No one
is likely to second such a protest, not even the Negroes themselves, so
generally have they been intimidated. The more outspoken they become,
moreover, the more necessary is it for them to leave, for they thereby
destroy their chances to earn a livelihood. White men in control of the
public schools of the South see to it that the subserviency of the Negro
teachers employed be certified beforehand. They dare not complain too much
about equipment and salaries even if the per capita appropriation for the
education of the Negroes be one fourth of that for the whites.[23]

In the higher institutions of learning, especially the State schools, it
is exceptional to find a principal who has the confidence of the Negroes.
The Negroes will openly assert that he is in the pay of the reactionary
whites, whose purpose is to keep the Negro down; and the incumbent himself
will tell his board of regents how much he is opposed by the Negroes
because he labors for the interests of the white race. Out of such
sycophancy it is easily explained why our State schools have been so
ineffective as to necessitate the sending of the Negro youth to private
institutions maintained by northern philanthropy. Yet if an outspoken
Negro happens to be an instructor in a private school conducted by
educators from the North, he has to be careful about contending for a
square deal; for, if the head of his institution does not suggest to him
to proceed conservatively, the mob will dispose of the complainant.[24]
Physicians, lawyers and preachers, who are not so economically dependent
as teachers can exercise no more freedom of speech in the midst of this
triumphant rule of the lawless.

A large number of educated Negroes, therefore, have on account of these
conditions been compelled to leave the South. Finding in the North,
however, practically nothing in their line to do, because of the
proscription by race prejudice and trades unions, many of them lead the
life of menials, serving as waiters, porters, butlers and chauffeurs.
While in Chicago, not long ago, the writer was in the office of a graduate
of a colored southern college, who was showing his former teacher the
picture of his class. In accounting for his classmates in the various
walks of life, he reported that more than one third of them were settled
to the occupation of Pullman porters.

The largest number of Negroes who have gone North during this period,
however, belong to the intelligent laboring class. Some of them have
become discontented for the very same reasons that the higher classes have
tired of oppression in the South, but the larger number of them have gone
North to improve their economic condition. Most of these have migrated to
the large cities in the East and Northwest, such as Philadelphia, New
York, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit and Chicago.
To understand this problem in its urban aspects the accompanying diagram
showing the increase in the Negro population of northern cities during the
first decade of this century will be helpful.

Some of these Negroes have migrated after careful consideration; others
have just happened to go north as wanderers; and a still larger number on
the many excursions to the cities conducted by railroads during the summer
months. Sometimes one excursion brings to Chicago two or three thousand
Negroes, two thirds of whom never go back. They do not often follow the
higher pursuits of labor in the North but they earn more money than they
have been accustomed to earn in the South. They are attracted also by the
liberal attitude of some whites, which, although not that of social
equality, gives the Negroes a liberty in northern centers which leads them
to think that they are citizens of the country.[25]

This shifting in the population has had an unusually significant effect on
the black belt. Frederick Douglass advised the Negroes in 1879 to remain
in the South where they would be in sufficiently large numbers to have
political power,[26] but they have gradually scattered from the black belt
so as to diminish greatly their chances ever to become the political force
they formerly were in this country. The Negroes once had this possibility
in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana and, had
the process of Africanization prior to the Civil War had a few decades
longer to do its work, there would not have been any doubt as to the
ultimate preponderance of the Negroes in those commonwealths. The
tendencies of the black population according to the censuses of the United
States and especially that of 1910, however, show that the chances for the
control of these State governments by Negroes no longer exist except in
South Carolina and Mississippi.[27] It has been predicted, therefore,
that, if the same tendencies continue for the next fifty years, there will
be even few counties in which the Negroes will be in a majority. All of
the Southern States except Arkansas showed a proportionate increase of the
white population over that of the black between 1900 and 1910, while West
Virginia and Oklahoma with relatively small numbers of blacks showed, for
reasons stated elsewhere, an increase in the Negro population. Thus we see
coming to pass something like the proposed plan of Jefferson and other
statesmen who a hundred years ago advocated the expansion of slavery to
lessen the evil of the institution by distributing its burdens.[28]

The migration of intelligent blacks, however, has been attended with
several handicaps to the race. The large part of the black population is
in the South and there it will stay for decades to come. The southern
Negroes, therefore, have been robbed of their due part of the talented
tenth. The educated blacks have had no constituency in the North and,
consequently, have been unable to realize their sweetest dreams of the
land of the free. In their new home the enlightened Negro must live with
his light under a bushel. Those left behind in the South soon despair of
seeing a brighter day and yield to the yoke. In the places of the leaders
who were wont to speak for their people, the whites have raised up Negroes
who accept favors offered them on the condition that their lips be sealed
up forever on the rights of the Negro.

This emigration too has left the Negro subject to other evils. There are
many first-class Negro business men in the South, but although there were
once progressive men of color, who endeavored to protect the blacks from
being plundered by white sharks and harpies there have arisen numerous
unscrupulous Negroes who have for a part of the proceeds from such jobbery
associated themselves with ill-designing white men to dupe illiterate
Negroes. This trickery is brought into play in marketing their crops,
selling them supplies, or purchasing their property. To carry out this
iniquitous plan the persons concerned have the protection of the law, for
while Negroes in general are imposed upon, those engaged in robbing them
have no cause to fear.


[Footnote 1: Pike, _The Prostrate State_, pp. 3, 4.]

[Footnote 2: _Spectator_, LXVI, p. 113.]

[Footnote 3: Frederick Douglass pointed out this difficulty prior to the
Civil War.--See John Lobb's _Life and Times of Frederick Douglass_,
p. 250.]

[Footnote 4: Labor was then cheap in the South because of its abundance
and the foreign laborer had not then been tried.]

[Footnote 5: During these years Senator Morgan of Alabama was endeavoring
to arouse the people of the country so as to make this a matter of
national concern.]

[Footnote 6: _Public Opinion_, XVIII, p. 371.]

[Footnote 7: _Ibid._, XVIII, p. 371.]

[Footnote 8: Simmons, _Men of Mark_, p. 817.]

[Footnote 9: _Public Opinion_, XVIII, pp. 370-371.]

[Footnote 10: Because of these conditions the last fifty years has been
considered by some writers as a "dark age," for the South.]

[Footnote 11: The Negroes are now said to be worth more than a billion
dollars. Most of this property is in the hands of southern Negroes.]

[Footnote 12: _American Law Review_, XL, pp. 29, 52, 205, 227, 354,
381, 547, 590, 695, 758, 865, 905.]

[Footnote 13: No. 300.--Original, October Term, 1910.]

[Footnote 14: Hershaw, _Peonage_, pp. 10-11.]

[Footnote 15: These facts are well brought out by Dr. Thomas Jesse Jones'
recent report on Negro Education.]

[Footnote 16: This is based on reports published annually in the
_Chicago Tribune_.]

[Footnote 17: This is the boast of southern men of this type when speaking
to their constituents or in Congress.]

[Footnote 18: _Report_, October Term, 1917.]

[Footnote 19: This danger has been often referred to when the Negroes were
first emancipated.--See _Spectator_, LXVI, p. 113.]

[Footnote 20: Compare the Negro population of Northern States as given in
the census of 1800 with the same in 1900.]

[Footnote 21: Hart, _Southern South_, pp. 171, 172.]

[Footnote 22: This is based on the experience of the writer and others
whom he has interviewed.]

[Footnote 23: In his report on Negro education Dr. Thomas Jesse Jones has
shown this to be an actual fact.]

[Footnote 24: Negroes applying for positions in the South have the
situation set before them so as to know what to expect.]

[Footnote 25: The _American Journal of Political Economy_, XXV, p.
1040.]

[Footnote 26: The _Journal of Social Science_, XI, p. 16.]

[Footnote 27: _American Economic Review_, IV, pp. 281-292.]

[Footnote 28: Ford edition of _Jefferson's Writings_, X, p. 231.]



CHAPTER IX

THE EXODUS DURING THE WORLD WAR


Within the last two years there has been a steady stream of Negroes into
the North in such large numbers as to overshadow in its results all other
movements of the kind in the United States. These Negroes have come
largely from Alabama, Tennessee, Florida, Georgia, Virginia, North
Carolina, Kentucky, South Carolina, Arkansas and Mississippi. The given
causes of this migration are numerous and complicated. Some untruths
centering around this exodus have not been unlike those of other
migrations. Again we hear that the Negroes are being brought North to
fight organized labor,[1] and to carry doubtful States for the
Republicans.[2] These numerous explanations themselves, however, give rise
to doubt as to the fundamental cause.

Why then should the Negroes leave the South? It has often been spoken of
as the best place for them. There, it is said, they have made unusual
strides forward. The progress of the Negroes in the South, however, has in
no sense been general, although the land owned by Negroes in the country
and the property of thrifty persons of their race in urban communities may
be extensive. In most parts of the South the Negroes are still unable to
become landowners or successful business men. Conditions and customs have
reserved these spheres for the whites. Generally speaking, the Negroes are
still dependent on the white people for food and shelter. Although not
exactly slaves, they are yet attached to the white people as tenants,
servants or dependents. Accepting this as their lot, they have been
content to wear their lord's cast-off clothing, and live in his
ramshackled barn or cellar. In this unhappy state so many have settled
down, losing all ambition to attain a higher station. The world has gone
on but in their sequestered sphere progress has passed them by.

What then is the cause? There have been _bulldozing_, terrorism,
maltreatment and what not of persecution; but the Negroes have not in
large numbers wandered away from the land of their birth. What the
migrants themselves think about it, goes to the very heart of the trouble.
Some say that they left the South on account of injustice in the courts,
unrest, lack of privileges, denial of the right to vote, bad treatment,
oppression, segregation or lynching. Others say that they left to find
employment, to secure better wages, better school facilities, and better
opportunities to toil upward.[3] Southern white newspapers unaccustomed to
give the Negroes any mention but that of criminals have said that the
Negroes are going North because they have not had a fair chance in the
South and that if they are to be retained there, the attitude of the
whites toward them must be changed. Professor William O. Scroggs, of
Louisiana State University, considers as causes of this exodus "the
relatively low wages paid farm labor, an unsatisfactory tenant or
crop-sharing system, the boll weevil, the crop failure of 1916, lynching,
disfranchisement, segregation, poor schools, and the monotony, isolation
and drudgery of farm life." Professor Scroggs, however, is wrong in
thinking that the persecution of the blacks has little to do with the
migration for the reason that during these years when the treatment of the
Negroes is decidedly better they are leaving the South. This does not mean
that they would not have left before, if they had had economic
opportunities in the North. It is highly probable that the Negroes would
not be leaving the South today, if they were treated as men, although
there might be numerous opportunities for economic improvement in the
North.[4]

The immediate cause of this movement was the suffering due to the floods
aggravated by the depredations of the boll weevil. Although generally
mindful of our welfare, the United States Government has not been as ready
to build levees against a natural enemy to property as it has been to
provide fortifications for warfare. It has been necessary for local
communities and State governments to tax themselves to maintain them. The
national government, however, has appropriated to the purpose of
facilitating inland navigation certain sums which have been used in doing
this work, especially in the Mississippi Valley. There are now 1,538 miles
of levees on both sides of the Mississippi from Cape Girardeau to the
passes. These levees, of course, are still inadequate to the security of
the planters against these inundations. Carrying 406 million tons of mud a
year, the river becomes a dangerous stream subject to change, abandoning
its old bed to cut for itself a new channel, transferring property from
one State to another, isolating cities and leaving once useful levees
marooned in the landscape like old Indian mounds or overgrown
intrenchments.[5]

This valley has, therefore, been frequently visited with disasters which
have often set the population in motion. The first disastrous floods came
in 1858 and 1859, breaking many of the levees, the destruction of which
was practically completed by the floods of 1865 and 1869. There is an
annual rise in the stream, but since 1874 this river system has fourteen
times devastated large areas of this section with destructive floods. The
property in this district depreciated in value to the extent of about 400
millions in ten years. Farmers from this section, therefore, have at times
moved west with foreigners to take up public lands.

The other disturbing factor in this situation was the boll weevil, an
interloper from Mexico in 1892. The boll weevil is an insect about one
fourth of an inch in length, varying from one eighth to one third of an
inch with a breadth of about one third of the length. When it first
emerges it is yellowish, then becomes grayish brown and finally assumes a
black shade. It breeds on no other plant than cotton and feeds on the
boll. This little animal, at first attacked the cotton crop in Texas. It
was not thought that it would extend its work into the heart of the South
so as to become of national consequence, but it has, at the rate of forty
to one hundred sixty miles annually, invaded all of the cotton district
except that of the Carolinas and Virginia. The damage it does, varies
according to the rainfall and the harshness of the winter, increasing with
the former and decreasing with the latter. At times the damage has been to
the extent of a loss of 50 per cent. of the crop, estimated at 400,000
bales of cotton annually, about 4,500,000 bales since the invasion or
$250,000,000 worth of cotton.[6] The output of the South being thus cut
off, the planter has less income to provide supplies for his black tenants
and, the prospects for future production being dark, merchants accustomed
to give them credit have to refuse. This, of course, means financial
depression, for the South is a borrowing section and any limitation to
credit there blocks the wheels of industry. It was fortunate for the Negro
laborers in this district that there was then a demand for labor in the
North when this condition began to obtain.

This demand was made possible by the cutting off of European immigration
by the World War, which thereby rendered this hitherto uncongenial section
an inviting field for the Negro. The Negroes have made some progress in
the North during the last fifty years, but despite their achievements they
have been so handicapped by race prejudice and proscribed by trades unions
that the uplift of the race by economic methods has been impossible. The
European immigrants have hitherto excluded the Negroes even from the
menial positions. In the midst of the drudgery left for them, the blacks
have often heretofore been debased to the status of dependents and
paupers. Scattered through the North too in such small numbers, they have
been unable to unite for social betterment and mutual improvement and
naturally too weak to force the community to respect their wishes as could
be done by a large group with some political or economic power. At
present, however, Negro laborers, who once went from city to city, seeking
such employment as trades unions left to them, can work even as skilled
laborers throughout the North.[7] Women of color formerly excluded from
domestic service by foreign maids are now in demand. Many mills and
factories which Negroes were prohibited from entering a few years ago are
now bidding for their labor. Railroads cannot find help to keep their
property in repair, contractors fall short of their plans for failure to
hold mechanics drawn into the industrial boom and the United States
Government has had to advertise for men to hasten the preparation for war.

Men from afar went south to tell the Negroes of a way of escape to a more
congenial place. Blacks long since unaccustomed to venture a few miles
from home, at once had visions of a promised land just a few hundred miles
away. Some were told of the chance to amass fabulous riches, some of the
opportunities for education and some of the hospitality of the places of
amusement and recreation in the North. The migrants then were soon on the
way. Railway stations became conspicuous with the presence of Negro
tourists, the trains were crowded to full capacity and the streets of
northern cities were soon congested with black laborers seeking to realize
their dreams in the land of unusual opportunity.

Employment agencies, recently multiplied to meet the demand for labor,
find themselves unable to cope with the situation and agents sent into the
South to induce the blacks by offers of free transportation and high wages
to go north, have found it impossible to supply the demand in centers
where once toiled the Poles, Italians and the Greeks formerly preferred to
the Negroes.[8] In other words, the present migration differs from others
in that the Negro has opportunity awaiting him in the North whereas
formerly it was necessary for him to make a place for himself upon
arriving among enemies. The proportion of those returning to the South,
therefore, will be inconsiderable.

Becoming alarmed at the immensity of this movement the South has
undertaken to check it. To frighten Negroes from the North southern
newspapers are carefully circulating reports that many of them are
returning to their native land because of unexpected hardships.[9] But
having failed in this, southerners have compelled employment agents to
cease operations there, arrested suspected employers and, to prevent the
departure of the Negroes, imprisoned on false charges those who appear at
stations to leave for the North. This procedure could not long be
effective, for by the more legal and clandestine methods of railway
passenger agents the work has gone forward. Some southern communities
have, therefore, advocated drastic legislation against labor agents, as
was suggested in Louisiana in 1914, when by operation of the Underwood
Tariff Law the Negroes thrown out of employment in the sugar district
migrated to the cotton plantations.[10]

One should not, however, get the impression that the majority of the
Negroes are leaving the South. Eager as these Negroes seem to go, there is
no unanimity of opinion as to whether migration is the best policy. The
sycophant, toady class of Negroes naturally advise the blacks to remain in
the South to serve their white neighbors. The radical protagonists of the
equal-rights-for-all element urge them to come North by all means. Then
there are the thinking Negroes, who are still further divided. Both
divisions of this element have the interests of the race at heart, but
they are unable to agree as to exactly what the blacks should now do.
Thinking that the present war will soon be over and that consequently the
immigration of foreigners into this country will again set in and force
out of employment thousands of Negroes who have migrated to the North,
some of the most representative Negroes are advising their fellows to
remain where they are. The most serious objection to this transplantation
is that it means for the Negroes a loss of land, the rapid acquisition of
which has long been pointed to as the best evidence of the ability of the
blacks to rise in the economic world. So many Negroes who have by dint of
energy purchased small farms yielding an increasing income from year to
year, are now disposing of them at nominal prices to come north to work
for wages. Looking beyond the war, however, and thinking too that the
depopulation of Europe during this upheaval will render immigration from
that quarter for some years an impossibility, other thinkers urge the
Negroes to continue the migration to the North, where the race may be
found in sufficiently large numbers to wield economic and political power.

Great as is the dearth of labor in the South, moreover, the Negro exodus
has not as yet caused such a depression as to unite the whites in inducing
the blacks to remain in that section. In the first place, the South has
not yet felt the worst effects of this economic upheaval as that part of
the country has been unusually aided by the millions which the United
States Government is daily spending there. Furthermore, the poor whites
are anxious to see the exodus of their competitors in the field of labor.
This leaves the capitalists at their mercy, and in keeping with their
domineering attitude, they will be able to handle the labor situation as
they desire. As an evidence of this fact we need but note the continuation
of mob rule and lynching in the South despite the preachings against it of
the organs of thought which heretofore winked at it. This terrorism has
gone to an unexpected extent. Negro farmers have been threatened with
bodily injury, unless they leave certain parts.

The southerner of aristocratic bearing will say that only the shiftless
poor whites terrorize the Negroes. This may be so, but the truth offers
little consolation when we observe that most white people in the South are
of this class; and the tendency of this element to put their children to
work before they secure much education does not indicate that the South
will soon experience that general enlightenment necessary to exterminate
these survivals of barbarism. Unless the upper classes of the whites can
bring the mob around to their way of thinking that the persecution of the
Negro is prejudicial to the interests of all, it is not likely that mob
rule will soon cease and the migration to this extent will be promoted
rather than retarded.

It is unfortunate for the South that the growing consciousness of the
Negroes has culminated at the very time they are most needed. Finally
heeding the advice of agricultural experts to reconstruct its agricultural
system, the South has learned in the school of bitter experience to depart
from the plan of producing the single cotton crop. It is now raising
food-stuffs to make that section self-supporting without reducing the
usual output of cotton. With the increasing production in the South,
therefore, more labor is needed just at the very time it is being drawn to
centers in the North. The North being an industrial and commercial section
has usually attracted the immigrants, who will never fit into the economic
situation in the South because they will not accept the treatment given
Negroes. The South, therefore, is now losing the only labor which it can
ever use under present conditions.

Where these Negroes are going is still more interesting. The exodus to the
west was mainly directed to Kansas and neighboring States, the migration
to the Southwest centered in Oklahoma and Texas, pioneering Negro laborers
drifted into the industrial district of the Appalachian highland during
the eighties and nineties and the infiltration of the discontented
talented tenth affected largely the cities of the North. But now we are
told that at the very time the mining districts of the North and West are
being filled with blacks the western planters are supplying their farms
with them and that into some cities have gone sufficient skilled and
unskilled Negro workers to increase the black population more than one
hundred per cent. Places in the North, where the black population has not
only not increased but even decreased in recent years, are now receiving a
steady influx of Negroes. In fact, this is a nation-wide migration
affecting all parts and all conditions.

Students of social problems are now wondering whether the Negro can be
adjusted in the North. Many perplexing problems must arise. This movement
will produce results not unlike those already mentioned in the discussion
of other migrations, some of which we have evidence of today. There will
be an increase in race prejudice leading in some communities to actual
outbreaks as in Chester and Youngstown and probably to massacres like that
of East St. Louis, in which participated not only well-known citizens but
the local officers and the State militia. The Negroes in the North are in
competition with white men who consider them not only strike breakers but
a sort of inferior individuals unworthy of the consideration which white
men deserve. And this condition obtains even where Negroes have been
admitted to the trades unions.

Negroes in seeking new homes in the North, moreover, invade residential
districts hitherto exclusively white. There they encounter prejudice and
persecution until most whites thus disturbed move out determined to do
whatever they can to prevent their race from suffering from further
depreciation of property and the disturbance of their community life.
Lawlessness has followed, showing that violence may under certain
conditions develop among some classes anywhere rather than reserve itself
for vigilance committees of primitive communities. It has brought out too
another aspect of lawlessness in that it breaks out in the North where the
numbers of Negroes are still too small to serve as an excuse for the
terrorism and lynching considered necessary in the South to keep the
Negroes down.

The maltreatment of the Negroes will be nationalized by this exodus. The
poor whites of both sections will strike at this race long stigmatized by
servitude but now demanding economic equality. Race prejudice, the fatal
weakness of the Americans, will not so soon abate although there will be
advocates of fraternity, equality and liberty required to reconstruct our
government and rebuild our civilization in conformity with the demands of
modern efficiency by placing every man regardless of his color wherever he
may do the greatest good for the greatest number.

The Negroes, however, are doubtless going to the North in sufficiently
large numbers to make themselves felt. If this migration falls short of
establishing in that section Negro colonies large enough to wield economic
and political power, their state in the end will not be any better than
that of the Negroes already there. It is to these large numbers alone that
we must look for an agent to counteract the development of race feeling
into riots. In large numbers the blacks will be able to strike for better
wages or concessions due a rising laboring class and they will have enough
votes to defeat for reelection those officers who wink at mob violence or
treat Negroes as persons beyond the pale of the law.

The Negroes in the North, however, will get little out of the harvest if,
like the blacks of Reconstruction days, they unwisely concentrate their
efforts on solving all of their problems by electing men of their race as
local officers or by sending a few members even to Congress as is likely
in New York, Philadelphia and Chicago within the next generation. The
Negroes have had representatives in Congress before but they were put out
because their constituency was uneconomic and politically impossible.
There was nothing but the mere letter of the law behind the Reconstruction
Negro officeholder and the thus forced political recognition against
public opinion could not last any longer than natural forces for some time
thrown out of gear by unnatural causes could resume the usual line of
procedure.

It would be of no advantage to the Negro race today to send to Congress
forty Negro Representatives on the pro rata basis of numbers, especially
if they happened not to be exceptionally well qualified. They would remain
in Congress only so long as the American white people could devise some
plan for eliminating them as they did during the Reconstruction period.
Near as the world has approached real democracy, history gives no record
of a permanent government conducted on this basis. Interests have always
been stronger than numbers. The Negroes in the North, therefore, should
not on the eve of the economic revolution follow the advice of their
misguided and misleading race leaders who are diverting their attention
from their actual welfare to a specialization in politics. To concentrate
their efforts on electing a few Negroes to office wherever the blacks are
found in the majority, would exhibit the narrowness of their oppressors.
It would be as unwise as the policy of the Republican party of setting
aside a few insignificant positions like that of Recorder of Deeds,
Register of the Treasury and Auditor of the Navy as segregated jobs for
Negroes. Such positions have furnished a nucleus for the large, worthless,
office-seeking class of Negroes in Washington, who have established the
going of the people of the city toward pretence and sham.

The Negroes should support representative men of any color or party, if
they stand for a square deal and equal rights for all. The new Negroes in
the North, therefore, will, as so many of their race in New York,
Philadelphia and Chicago are now doing, ally themselves with those men who
are fairminded and considerate of the man far down, and seek to embrace
their many opportunities for economic progress, a foundation for political
recognition, upon which the race must learn to build. Every race in the
universe must aspire to becoming a factor in politics; but history shows
that there is no short route to such success. Like other despised races
beset with the prejudice and militant opposition of self-styled superiors,
the Negroes must increase their industrial efficiency, improve their
opportunities to make a living, develop the home, church and school, and
contribute to art, literature, science and philosophy to clear the way to
that political freedom of which they cannot be deprived.

The entire country will be benefited by this upheaval. It will be helpful
even to the South. The decrease in the black population in those
communities where the Negroes outnumber the whites will remove the fear of
_Negro domination_, one of the causes of the backwardness of the
South and its peculiar civilization. Many of the expensive precautions
which the southern people have taken to keep the Negroes down, much of the
terrorism incited to restrain the blacks from self-assertion will no
longer be considered necessary; for, having the excess in numbers on their
side, the whites will finally rest assured that the Negroes may be
encouraged without any apprehension that they may develop enough power to
subjugate or embarrass their former masters.

The Negroes too are very much in demand in the South and the intelligent
whites will gladly give them larger opportunities to attach them to that
section, knowing that the blacks, once conscious of their power to move
freely throughout the country wherever they may improve their condition,
will never endure hardships like those formerly inflicted upon the race.
The South is already learning that the Negro is the most desirable laborer
for that section, that the persecution of Negroes not only drives them out
but makes the employment of labor such a problem that the South will not
be an attractive section for capital. It will, therefore, be considered
the duty of business men to secure protection to the Negroes lest their
ill-treatment force them to migrate to the extent of bringing about a
stagnation of their business.

The exodus has driven home the truth that the prosperity of the South is
at the mercy of the Negro. Dependent on cheap labor, which the bulldozing
whites will not readily furnish, the wealthy southerners must finally
reach the position of regarding themselves and the Negroes as having a
community of interests which each must promote. "Nature itself in those
States," Douglass said, "came to the rescue of the Negro. He had labor,
the South wanted it, and must have it or perish. Since he was free he
could then give it, or withhold it; use it where he was, or take it
elsewhere, as he pleased. His labor made him a slave and his labor could,
if he would, make him free, comfortable and independent. It is more to him
than either fire, sword, ballot boxes or bayonets. It touches the heart of
the South through its pocket."[11] Knowing that the Negro has this silent
weapon to be used against his employer or the community, the South is
already giving the race better educational facilities, better railway
accommodations, and will eventually, if the advocacy of certain southern
newspapers be heeded, grant them political privileges. Wages in the South,
therefore, have risen even in the extreme southwestern States, where there
is an opportunity to import Mexican labor. Reduced to this extremity, the
southern aristocrats have begun to lose some of their race prejudice,
which has not hitherto yielded to reason or philanthropy.

Southern men are telling their neighbors that their section must abandon
the policy of treating the Negroes as a problem and construct a program
for recognition rather than for repression. Meetings are, therefore, being
held to find out what the Negro wants and what may be done to keep them
contented. They are told that the Negro must be elevated not exploited,
that to make the South what it must needs be, the cooperation of all is
needed to train and equip the men of all races for efficiency. The aim of
all then must be to reform or get rid of the unfair proprietors who do not
give their tenants a fair division of the returns from their labor. To
this end the best whites and blacks are urged to come together to find a
working basis for a systematic effort in the interest of all.

To say that either the North or the South can easily become adjusted to
this change is entirely too sanguine. The North will have a problem. The
Negroes in the northern city will have much more to contend with than when
settled in the rural districts or small urban centers. Forced by
restrictions of real estate men into congested districts, there has
appeared the tendency toward further segregation. They are denied social
contact, are sagaciously separated from the whites in public places of
amusement and are clandestinely segregated in public schools in spite of
the law to the contrary. As a consequence the Negro migrant often finds
himself with less friends than he formerly had. The northern man who once
denounced the South on account of its maltreatment of the blacks gradually
grows silent when a Negro is brought next door. There comes with the
movement, therefore, the difficult problem of housing.

Where then must the migrants go? They are not wanted by the whites and are
treated with contempt by the native blacks of the northern cities, who
consider their brethren from the South too criminal and too vicious to be
tolerated. In the average progressive city there has heretofore been a
certain increase in the number of houses through natural growth, but owing
to the high cost of materials, high wages, increasing taxation and the
inclination to invest money in enterprises growing out of the war, fewer
houses are now being built, although Negroes are pouring into these
centers as a steady stream. The usual Negro quarters in northern centers
of this sort have been filled up and the overflow of the black population
scattered throughout the city among white people. Old warehouses, store
rooms, churches, railroad cars and tents have been used to meet these
demands.

A large per cent of these Negroes are located in rooming houses or
tenements for several families. The majority of them cannot find
individual rooms. Many are crowded into the same room, therefore, and too
many into the same bed. Sometimes as many as four and five sleep in one
bed, and that may be placed in the basement, dining-room or kitchen where
there is neither adequate light nor air. In some cases men who work during
the night sleep by day in beds used by others during the night. Some of
their houses have no water inside and have toilets on the outside without
sewerage connections. The cooking is often done by coal or wood stoves or
kerosene lamps. Yet the rent runs high although the houses are generally
out of repair and in some cases have been condemned by the municipality.
The unsanitary conditions in which many of the blacks are compelled to
live are in violation of municipal ordinances.

Furthermore, because of the indiscriminate employment by labor agents and
the dearth of labor requiring the acceptance of almost all sorts of men,
some disorderly and worthless Negroes have been brought into the North. On
the whole, however, these migrants are not lazy, shiftless and desperate
as some predicted that they would be. They generally attend church, save
their money and send a part of their savings regularly to their families.
They do not belong to the class going North in quest of whiskey. Mr.
Abraham Epstein, who has written a valuable pamphlet setting forth his
researches in Pittsburgh, states that the migrants of that city do not
generally imbibe and most of those who do, take beer only.[12] Out of four
hundred and seventy persons to whom he propounded this question, two
hundred and ten or forty-four per cent of them were total abstainers.
Seventy per cent of those having families do not drink at all.

With this congestion, however, have come serious difficulties. Crowded
conditions give rise to vice, crime and disease. The prevalence of vice
has not been the rule but tendencies, which better conditions in the South
restrained from developing, have under these undesirable conditions been
given an opportunity to grow. There is, therefore, a tendency toward the
crowding of dives, assembling on the corners of streets and the commission
of petty offences which crowd them into the police courts. One finds also
sometimes a congestion in houses of dissipation and the carrying of
concealed weapons. Law abiding on the whole, however, they have not
experienced a wave of crime. The chief offences are those resulting from
the saloons and denizens of vice, which are furnished by the community
itself.

Disease has been one of their worst enemies, but reports on their health
have been exaggerated. On account of this sudden change of the Negroes
from one climate to another and the hardships of more unrelenting toil,
many of them have been unable to resist pneumonia, bronchitis and
tuberculosis. Churches, rescue missions and the National League on Urban
Conditions Among Negroes have offered relief in some of these cases. The
last-named organization is serving in large cities as a sort of clearing
house for such activities and as means of interpreting one race to the
other. It has now eighteen branches in cities to which this migration has
been directed. Through a local worker these migrants are approached,
properly placed and supervised until they can adjust themselves to the
community without apparent embarrassment to either race. The League has
been able to handle the migrants arriving by extending the work so as to
know their movements beforehand.

The occupations in which these people engage will throw further light on
their situation. About ninety per cent of them do unskilled labor. Only
ten per cent of them do semi-skilled or skilled labor. They serve as
common laborers, puddlers, mold-setters, painters, carpenters,
bricklayers, cement workers and machinists. What the Negroes need then is
that sort of freedom which carries with it industrial opportunity and
social justice. This they cannot attain until they be permitted to enter
the higher pursuits of labor. Two reasons are given for failure to enter
these: first, that Negro labor is unstable and inefficient; and second,
that white men will protest. Organized labor, however, has done nothing to
help the blacks. Yet it is a fact that accustomed to the easy-going toil
of the plantation, the blacks have not shown the same efficiency as that
of the whites. Some employers report, however, that they are glad to have
them because they are more individualistic and do not like to group. But
it is not true that colored labor cannot be organized. The blacks have
merely been neglected by organized labor. Wherever they have had the
opportunity to do so, they have organized and stood for their rights like
men. The trouble is that the trades unions are generally antagonistic to
Negroes although they are now accepting the blacks in self-defense. The
policy of excluding Negroes from these bodies is made effective by an
evasive procedure, despite the fact that the constitutions of many of them
specifically provide that there shall be no discrimination on account of
race or color.

Because of this tendency some of the representatives of trades unions have
asked why Negroes do not organize unions of their own. This the Negroes
have generally failed to do, thinking that they would not be recognized by
the American Federation of Labor, and knowing too that what their union
would have to contend with in the economic world would be diametrically
opposed to the wishes of the men from whom they would have to seek
recognition. Organized labor, moreover, is opposed to the powerful
capitalists, the only real friends the Negroes have in the North to
furnish them food and shelter while their lives are often being sought by
union members. Steps toward organizing Negro labor have been made in
various Northern cities during 1917 and 1918.[18] The objective of this
movement for the present, however, is largely that of employment.

Eventually the Negro migrants will, no doubt, without much difficulty
establish themselves among law-abiding and industrious people of the North
where they will receive assistance. Many persons now see in this shifting
of the Negro population the dawn of a new day, not in making the Negro
numerically dominant anywhere to obtain political power, but to secure for
him freedom of movement from section to section as a competitor in the
industrial world. They also observe that while there may be an increase of
race prejudice in the North the same will in that proportion decrease in
the South, thus balancing the equation while giving the Negro his best
chance in the economic world out of which he must emerge a real man with
power to secure his rights as an American citizen.


[Footnote 1: _New York Times_, Sept. 5, 9, 28, 1916.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid_., Oct. 18, 28; Nov. 5, 7, 12, 15; Dec. 4, 9,
1916.]

[Footnote 3: _The Crisis_, July, 1917.]

[Footnote 4: _American Journal of Political Economy_, XXX, p. 1040.]

[Footnote 5: _The World's Work_, XX, p. 271.]

[Footnote 6: _The World's Work_, XX, p. 272.]

[Footnote 7: _New York Times_, March 29, April 7, 9, May 30 and 31,
1917.]

[Footnote 8: _Survey_, XXXVII, pp. 569-571 and XXXVIII, pp. 27, 226,
331, 428; _Forum_, LVII, p. 181; _The World's Work_, XXXIV, pp.
135, 314-319; _Outlook_, CXVI, pp. 520-521; _Independent_, XCI,
pp. 53-54.]

[Footnote 9: _The Crisis_, 1917.]

[Footnote 10: _The New Orleans Times Picayune_, March 26, 1914.]

[Footnote 11: _American Journal of Social Science_, XI, p. 4.]

[Footnote 12: Epstein, _The Negro Migrant in Pittsburgh_.]

[Footnote 13: Epstein, _The Negro Migrant in Pittsburgh_.]




BIBLIOGRAPHY


As the public has not as yet paid very much attention to Negro History,
and has not seen a volume dealing primarily with the migration of the race
in America, one could hardly expect that there has been compiled a
bibliography in this special field. With the exception of what appears in
Still's and Siebert's works on the _Underground Railroad_ and the
records of the meetings of the Quakers promoting this movement, there is
little helpful material to be found in single volumes bearing on the
antebellum period. Since the Civil War, however, more has been said and
written concerning the movements of the Negro population. E.H. Botume's
_First Days Among the Contrabands_ and John Eaton's _Grant, Lincoln
and the Freedmen_ cover very well the period of rebellion. This is
supplemented by J.C. Knowlton's _Contrabands_ in the _University
Quarterly_, Volume XXI, page 307, and by Edward L. Pierce's _The
Freedmen at Port Royal_ in the _Atlantic Monthly_, Volume XII,
page 291. The exodus of 1879 is treated by J.B. Runnion in the _Atlantic
Monthly_, Volume XLIV, page 222; by Frederick Douglass and Richard T.
Greener in the _American Journal of Social Science_, Volume XI, page
1; by F.R. Guernsey in the _International Review_, Volume VII, page
373; by E.L. Godkin in the _Nation_, Volume XXVIII, pages 242 and 386;
and by J.C. Hartzell in the _Methodist Quarterly_, Volume XXXIX,
page 722. The second volume of George W. Williams's _History of the
Negro Race_ also contains a short chapter on the exodus of 1879. In
Volume XVIII, page 370, of _Public Opinion_ there is a discussion of
_Negro Emigration and Deportation_ as advocated by Bishop H.M. Turner
and Senator Morgan of Alabama during the nineties. Professor William O.
Scroggs of Louisiana University has in the _Journal of Political
Economy_, Volume XXV, page 1034, an article entitled _Interstate
Migration of Negro Population_. Mr. Epstein has published a helpful
pamphlet, _The Negro Migrant in Pittsburgh_. Most of the material for
this work, however, was collected from the various sources mentioned
below.



BOOKS OF TRAVEL


Brissot de Warville, J. P. _New Travels in the United States of America:
including the Commerce of America with Europe, particularly with Great
Britain and France_. Two volumes. (London, 1794.) Gives general
impressions, few details.

Buckingham, J.S. _America, Historical, Statistical, and Descriptive_.
Two volumes. (New York, 1841.)--_Eastern and Western States of
America_. Three volumes. (London and Paris, 1842.) Contains useful
information.

Olmsted, Frederick Law. _A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States, with
Remarks on their Economy_. (New York, 1859.)--_A Journey in the Back
Country_. (London, 1860.)

--_Journeys and Explorations in the Cotton Kingdom_. (London, 1861.)
Olmsted was a New York farmer. He recorded a few important facts about the
Negroes immediately before the Civil War.

Woolman, John. _Journal of John Woolman, with an Introduction by John G.
Whittier_. (Boston, 1873.) Woolman traveled so extensively in the
colonies that he probably knew more about the Negroes than any other
Quaker of his time.



LETTERS


Boyce, Stanbury. _Letters on the Emigration of the Negroes to
Trinidad_.

Jefferson, Thomas. _Letters of Thomas Jefferson to Abbe Gregoire, M.A.
Julien, and Benjamin Banneker. In Jefferson's Works, Memorial Edition_,
xii and xv. He comments on Negroes' talents.

Madison, James. _Letters to Frances Wright_. In _Madison's
Works_, vol. iii, p. 396. The emancipation of Negroes is discussed.

May, Samuel Joseph. _The Right of the Colored People to Education_.
(Brooklyn, 1883.) A collection of public letters addressed to Andrew T.
Judson, remonstrating on the unjust procedure relative to Miss Prudence
Crandall.

McDonogh, John. "_A Letter of John McDonogh on African Colonization
addressed to the Editor of the New Orleans Commercial Bulletin_."
McDonogh was interested in the betterment of the colored people and did
much to promote their mental development.



BIOGRAPHIES


Birney, William. _James G. Birney and His Times_. (New York, 1890.) A
sketch of an advocate of Negro uplift.

Bowen, Clarence W. _Arthur and Lewis Tappan_. A paper read at the
fiftieth anniversary of the New York Anti-Slavery Society, at the Broadway
Tabernacle, New York City, October 2, 1883. An honorable mention of two
friends of the Negro.

Drew, Benjamin. _A North-side View of Slavery. The Refugee: or the
Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada. Related by themselves, with an
Account of the History and Condition of the Colored Population of Upper
Canada_. (New York and Boston, 1856.)

Frothingham, O.B. _Gerritt Smith: A Biography_. (New York, 1878.)

Garrison, Francis and Wendell P. _William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879. The
Story of his Life told by his Children_. Four volumes. (Boston and New
York, 1894.) Includes a brief account of what he did for the colored
people.

Hammond, C.A. _Gerritt Smith, The Story of a Noble Man's Life_.
(Geneva, 1900.)

Johnson, Oliver. _William Lloyd Garrison and his Times_. (Boston,
1880. New edition, revised and enlarged, Boston, 1881.)

Mott, A. _Biographical Sketches and Interesting Anecdotes of Persons of
Color; with a Selection of Pieces of Poetry_. (New York, 1826.) Some of
these sketches show how ambitious Negroes succeeded in spite of
opposition.

Simmons, W.J. _Men of Mark; Eminent, Progressive, and Rising, with an
Introductory Sketch of the Author by Reverend Henry M. Turner_.
(Cleveland, Ohio, 1891.) Accounts for the adverse circumstances under
which many antebellum Negroes made progress.



AUTOBIOGRAPHIES


Coffin, Levi. _Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, reputed President of the
Underground Railroad_. Second edition. (Cincinnati, 1880.) Contains
many facts concerning Negroes.

Douglass, Frederick. _Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, as an
American Slave_. Written by himself. (Boston, 1845.) Gives several
cases of secret Negro movements for their own good.

--_The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass from 1817 to 1882_.
(London, 1882.) Written by himself. With an Introduction by the Eight
Honorable John Bright, M.P. Edited by John Loeb, F.R.G.S., of the
_Christian Age_. Editor of _Uncle Tom's Story of his Life_.



HISTORIES


Bancroft, George. _History of the United States_. Ten volumes.
(Boston, 1857-1864.)

Brackett, Jeffrey R. _The Negro in Maryland_. Johns Hopkins
University Studies. (Baltimore, 1889.)

Collins, Lewis. _Historical Sketches of Kentucky_. (Maysville, Ky.,
and Cincinnati, Ohio, 1847.)

Dunn, J.P. _Indiana; A redemption from Slavery_. (In the American
Commonwealths, vols. XII, Boston and New York, 1888.)

Evans, W.E. _A History of Scioto County together with a Pioneer Record
of Southern Ohio_. (Portsmouth, 1903.)

Farmer, Silas. _The History of Detroit and Michigan or the Metropolis
Illustrated_. A chronological encyclopedia of the past and the present
including a full record of territorial days in Michigan and the annals of
Wayne County. Two volumes. (Detroit, 1899.)

Harris, N.D. _The History of Negro Servitude in Illinois and of the
Slavery Agitation in that State, 1719-1864,_. (Chicago, 1904.)

Hart, A.B. _The American Nation; A History, etc_. Twenty-seven
volumes. (New York, 1904-1908.) The volumes which have a bearing on the
subject treated in this monograph are W.A. Dunning's _Reconstruction_,
F.J. Turner's _Rise of the New West_, and A.B. Hart's _Slavery and
Abolition_.

Hinsdale, B.A. _The Old Northwest; with a view of the thirteen colonies
as constituted by the royal charters_. (New York, 1888.)

Howe, Henry. _Historical Collections of Ohio_. Contains a collection
of the most interesting facts, traditions, biographical sketches,
anecdotes, etc., relating to its general and local history with
descriptions of its counties, principal towns and villages. (Cincinnati,
1847.)

Jones, Charles Colcook, Jr. _History of Georgia_. (Boston, 1883.)

McMaster, John B. _History of the United States_. Six volumes. (New
York, 1900.)

Rhodes, J.F. _History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850
to the Final Restoration of Home Rule in the South_. (New York and
London, Macmillan & Company, 1892-1906.)

Steiner, B.C. _History of Slavery in Connecticut_. (Johns Hopkins
University Studies, 1893.)

Stuve, Bernard, and Alexander Davidson. _A Complete History of Illinois
from 1673 to 1783_. (Springfield, 1874.)

Tremain, Mary M.A. _Slavery in the District of Columbia_. (University
of Nebraska Seminary Papers, April, 1892.)

_History of Brown County, Ohio_. (Chicago, 1883.)



ADDRESSES


Garrison, William Lloyd. _An Address Delivered before the Free People of
Color in Philadelphia, New York and other Cities during the Month of June,
1831_. (Boston, 1831.)

Griffin, Edward Dore. _A Plea for Africa,_. (New York, 1817.) A Sermon
preached October 26, 1817, in the First Presbyterian Church in the City of
New York before the Synod of New York and New Jersey at the Request of the
Board of Directors of the African School established by the Synod. The aim
was to arouse interest in colonization.



REPORTS AND STATISTICS


_Special Report of the Commissioner of Education on the Improvement of
Public Schools in the District of Columbia_, containing M. B. Goodwin's
"History of Schools for the Colored Population in the District of
Columbia." (Washington, 1871.)

_Report of the Committee of Representatives of the New York Yearly
Meeting of Friends upon the condition and wants of the Colored
Refugees_, 1862.

Clarke, J. F. _Present Condition of the Free Colored People of the
United States_. (New York and Boston, the American Antislavery Society,
1859.) Published also in the March number of the _Christian
Examiner_.

_Condition of the Free People of Color in Ohio. With interesting
anecdotes_. (Boston, 1839.)

_Institute for Colored Youth_. (Philadelphia, 1860-1865.) Contains a
list of the officers and students.

Jones, Thomas Jesse. _Negro Education: A study of the private and higher
schools for colored people in the United States. Prepared in cooperation
with the Phelps-Stokes Fund_. In two volumes. (Bureau of Education,
Washington, 1917.)

_Official Records of the War of Rebellion_.

_Report of the Condition of the Colored People of Cincinnati_, 1835.
(Cincinnati, 1835.)

_Report of a Committee of the Pennsylvania Society of Abolition on
Present Condition of the Colored People, etc_., 1838. (Philadelphia,
1838.)

_Statistical Inquiry into the Condition of the People of Color of the
City and Districts of Philadelphia_. (Philadelphia, 1849.)

_Statistics of the Colored People of Philadelphia in 1859_, compiled
by Benj. C. Bacon. (Philadelphia, 1859.)

_Statistical Abstract of the United States_, 1898. Prepared by the
Bureau of Statistics. (Washington, D. C., 1899.)

_Statistical View of the Population of the United States, A_
1790-1830. (Published by the Department of State in 1835.)

_Trades of the Colored People_. (Philadelphia, 1838.)

_United States Censuses_.

_A Brief Statement of the Rise and Progress of the Testimony of Friends
against Slavery and the Slave Trade_. Published by direction of the
Yearly Meeting held in Philadelphia in the Fourth Month, 1843. Shows the
action taken by various Friends to elevate the Negroes.

_A Collection of the Acts, Deliverances and Testimonies of the Supreme
Judicatory of the Presbyterian Church, from its Origin in America to the
Present Time_. By Samuel J. Baird. (Philadelphia, 1856.)

American Convention of Abolition Societies. _Minutes of the Proceedings
of a Convention of Delegates from the Abolition Societies established in
different Parts of the United States_. From 1794-1828.

_The Annual Reports of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Societies,
presented at New York, May 6, 1847, with the Addresses and
Resolutions_. From 1847-1851.

_The Annual Reports of the American Anti-Slavery Society_. From 1834
to 1860.

_The Third Annual Report of the Managers of the New England Anti-Slavery
Society presented June 2, 1835_. (Boston, 1835.)

_Annual Reports of the Massachusetts (or New England) Anti-Slavery
Society, 1831-end_.

_Reports of the National Anti-Slavery Convention, 1833-end_.

_Reports of the American Colonisation Society_, 1818-1832.

_Report of the New York Colonisation Society_, October 1, 1823. (New
York, 1823.)

_The Seventh Annual Report of the Colonization Society of the City of
New York_. (New York, 1839.)

_Proceedings of the New York State Colonization Society_, 1831.
(Albany, 1831.)

_The Eighteenth Annual Report of the Colonization Society of the State
of New York_. (New York, 1850.)

_Minutes and Proceedings of the First Annual Convention of the People of
Color. Held by Adjournment in the City of Philadelphia, from the sixth to
the eleventh of June, inclusive_, 1831. (Philadelphia, 1831.)

_Minutes and Proceedings of the Second Annual Convention for the
Improvement of the Free People of Color in these United States. Held by
Adjournments in the City of Philadelphia, from the 4th to the 13th of
June, inclusive_, 1832. (Philadelphia, 1832.)

_Minutes and Proceedings of the Third Annual Convention for the
Improvement of the Free People of Color in these United States. Held by
Adjournments in the City of_ _Philadelphia, in 1833_. (New York,
1833.) These proceedings were published also in the _New York Commercial
Advertiser_, April 27, 1833.

_Minutes and Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Convention for the
Improvement of the Free People of Color in the United States. Held by
Adjournments in the Asbury Church, New York, from the 2nd to the 12th of
June, 1834_. (New York, 1834.)

_Proceedings of the Convention of the Colored Freedmen of Ohio at
Cincinnati, January 14, 1852_. (Cincinnati, Ohio, 1852.)



MISCELLANEOUS BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS


Adams, Alice Dana. _The Neglected Period of Anti-Slavery in America_.
Radcliffe College Monographs No. 14._ (Boston and London, 1908) Contains
some valuable facts about the Negroes during the first three decades of
the nineteenth century.

Agricola (pseudonym). _An Impartial View of the Real State of the Black
Population in the United States_. (Philadelphia, 1824.)

Alexander, A. _A History of Colonisation on the Western Continent of
Africa_. (Philadelphia, 1846.)

Ames, Mary. _From a New England Woman's Diary in 1865_, (Springfield,
1906.)

_An Address to the People of North Carolina on the Evils of Slavery, by
the Friends of Liberty and Equality, 1830_. (Greensborough, 1830.)

_An Address to the Presbyterians of Kentucky proposing a Plan for the
Instruction and Emancipation of their Slaves by a Committee of the Synod
of Kentucky_. (Newburyport, 1836.)

Baldwin, Ebenezer. _Observations on the Physical and Moral Qualities of
our Colored Population with Remarks on the Subject of Emancipation and
Colonization_. (New Haven, 1834.)

Bassett, J. S. _Slavery and Servitude in the Colony of North
Carolina_. (Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and
Political Science. Fourteenth Series, iv-v. Baltimore, 1896.)

------_Slavery in the State of North Carolina_. (Johns Hopkins
University Studies in Historical and Political Science. Series XVII., Nos.
7-8. Baltimore, 1899.)

------_Anti-Slavery Leaders of North Carolina_. (Johns Hopkins
University Studies in Historical and Political Science. Series XVI., No.
6. Baltimore, 1898.)

Benezet, Anthony. _A Caution to Great Britain and Her Colonies in a
Short Representation of the calamitous State of the enslaved Negro in the
British Dominions_. (Philadelphia, 1784.)

------_The Case of our Fellow-Creatures, the oppressed Africans,
respectfully recommended to the serious Consideration of the Legislature
of Great Britain, by the People called Quakers_. (London, 1783.)

------_Observations on the enslaving, Importing and Purchasing of
Negroes; with some Advice thereon, extracted from the Epistle of the
Yearly-Meeting of the People called Quakers, held at London in the Year
1748_. (Germantown, 1760.)

------_The Potent Enemies of America laid open: being some Account of
the baneful Effects attending the Use of distilled spirituous Liquors, and
the Slavery of the Negroes_. (Philadelphia.)

------_A Short Account of that Part of Africa, inhabited by the Negroes.
With respect to the Fertility of the Country; the good Disposition of many
of the Natives, and the Manner by which the Slave Trade is carried on_.
(Philadelphia, 1792)

------_Short Observations on Slavery, introductory to Some Extracts from
the Writings of the Abbe Raynal, on the Important Subject_.

------_Some Historical Account of Guinea, its Situation, Produce, and
the General Disposition of its Inhabitants. With an Inquiry into the Rise
and Progress of the Slave Trade, its Nature and Lamentable Effects_.
(London, 1788.)

Birney, James G. _The American Churches, the Bulwarks of American
Slavery, by an American_. (Newburyport, 1842.)

Birney, William. _James G. Birney and his Times. The Genesis of the
Republican Party, with Some Account of the Abolition Movements in the
South before 1828_. (New York, 1890.)

Brackett, Jeffery B. _The Negro in Maryland. A Study of the Institution
of Slavery_. (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University, 1889.)

Brannagan, Thomas. _A Preliminary Essay on the Oppression of the Exiled
Sons of Africa, Consisting of Animadversions on the Impolicy and Barbarity
of the Deleterious Commerce and Subsequent Slavery of the Human
Species_. (Philadelphia: Printed for the Author by John W. Scott,
1804.)

Brannagan, T. _Serious Remonstrances Addressed to the Citizens of the
Northern States and their Representatives, being an Appeal to their
Natural Feelings and Common Sense; Consisting of Speculations and
Animadversions, on the Recent Revival of the Slave Trade in the American
Republic_. (Philadelphia, 1805.)

Campbell, J. V. _Political History of Michigan_. (Detroit, 1876.)

_Code Noir ou Recueil d'edits, declarations et arrets concernant la
Discipline et le commerce des esclaves Negres des isles francaises de
l'Amerique (in Recueils de reglemens, edits, declarations et arrets,
concernant le commerce, l'administration de la justice et la police des
colonies francaises de l'Amerique, et les engages avec le Code Noir, et
l'addition audit code)_. (Paris, 1745.)

Coffin, Joshua. _An Account of Some of the principal Slave Insurrections
and others which have occurred or been attempted in the United States and
elsewhere during the last two Centuries. With various Remarks. Collected
from various Sources_. (New York, 1860.)

Columbia University _Studies in History, Economics and Public Law_.
Edited by the faculty of political science. The useful volumes of this
series for this field are:

W.L. Fleming's _Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama_, 1905.

W.W. Davis's _The Civil War and Reconstruction in Florida_, 1913.

Clara Mildred Thompson's _Reconstruction in Georgia, Economic, Social,
Political_, 1915.

J.G. de R. Hamilton's _Reconstruction in North Carolina_, 1914.

C.W. Ramsdell. _Reconstruction in Texas_, 1910.

_Connecticut, Public Acts passed by the General Assembly of_.

Cromwell, J.W. _The Negro in American History: Men and Women Eminent in
the Evolution of the American of African Descent_. (Washington, 1914.)

Davidson, A., and Stowe, B. _A Complete History of Illinois from 1673 to
1873_. (Springfield, 1874.) It embraces the physical features of the
country, its early explorations, aboriginal inhabitants, the French and
British occupation, the conquest of Virginia, territorial condition and
subsequent events.

Delany, M.R. _The Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of the
Colored People of the United States: politically considered_.
(Philadelphia, 1852.)

DuBois, W.E.B. _The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study. Together with a
special report on domestic service by Isabel Eaton_. (Philadelphia,
1899.)

------Atlanta University Publications, _The Negro Common School_.
(Atlanta, 1901.)

------_The Negro Church_. (Atlanta, 1903.)

------and Dill, A.G. _The College-Bred Negro American_. (Atlanta,
1910.)

------_The Negro American Artisan_. (Atlanta, 1912.)

De Toqueville, Alexis Charles Henri Maurice Clerel De. _Democracy in
America_. Translated by Henry Reeve. Four volumes. (London, 1835,
1840.)

Eaton, John. _Grant, Lincoln and the Freedmen: reminiscences of the
Civil War with special reference to the work for the Contrabands, and the
Freedmen of the Mississippi Valley_. (New York, 1907.)

Epstein. _The Negro Migrant in Pittsburgh_. (Pittsburgh, 1917.)

_Exposition of the Object and Plan of the American Union for the Belief
and Improvement of the Colored Race_. (Boston, 1835.)

Fee, John G. _Anti-Slavery Manual_. (Maysville, 1848.)

Fertig, James Walter. _The Secession and Reconstruction of
Tennessee_. (Chicago, 1898.)

Frost, W.G. "Appalachian America." (In vol. i of _The Americana_.)
(New York, 1912.)

Garnett, H.H. _The Past and Present Condition and the Destiny of the
Colored Race_. (Troy, 1848.)

Greely, Horace. _The American Conflict_. A history of the great
rebellion in the United States of America, 1860-64, its causes, incidents
and results: intended to exhibit especially its moral and political
phases, with the drift of progress of American opinion respecting human
slavery from 1776 to the close of the war for its union. (Chicago, 1864.)

Hammond, M.B. _The Cotton Industry: an Essay in American Economic
History_. It deals with the cotton culture and the cotton Trade. (New
York, 1897.)

Hart, A.B. _The Southern South_. (New York, 1906.)

Henson, Josiah. _The Life of Josiah Henson_. (Boston, 1849.)

Hershaw, L.M. _Peonage in the United States_. This is one of the
American Negro Academy Papers. (Washington, 1912.)

Hickok, Charles Thomas. _The Negro in Ohio, 1802-1870_. (Cleveland,
1896.)

Hodgkin, Thomas A. _Inquiry into the Merits of the American Colonization
Society and Reply to the Charges brought against it with an Account of the
British African Colonization Society_. (London, 1833.)

Howe, Samuel G. _The Refugees from Slavery in Canada West. Report to the
Freedmen's Inquiry Committee_. (Boston, 1864.)

Hutchins, Thomas. _An Historical Narrative and Topographical Description
of Louisiana and West Florida, comprehending the river Mississippi with
its principal Branches and Settlements and the Rivers Pearl and
Pescagoula_. (Philadelphia, 1784.)

_Illinois, Laws of, passed by the General Assembly of_.

_Indiana, Laws passed by the State of_.

Jay, John. _The Correspondence and Public Papers of John Jay. First
Chief Justice of the United States and President of the Continental
Congress, Member of the Commission to negotiate the Treaty of
Independence, Envoy to Great Britain, Governor of New York, etc.,
1782-1793. (New York and London, 1801.) Edited by Henry P. Johnson,
Professor of History in the College of the City of New York.

Jay, William. _An Inquiry into the Character and Tendencies of the
American Colonisation and American Anti-Slavery Societies_. Second
edition. (New York, 1835.)

Jefferson, Thomas. _The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition.
Autobiography, Notes on Virginia, Parliamentary Mannual, Official Papers,
Messages and Addresses, and other writings Official and Private, etc._
(Washington, 1903.)

_Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political
Science_. H.B. Adams, Editor. (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press.) Among
the useful volumes of this series are: J.R. Ficklen's _History of
Reconstruction in Louisiana_, 1910.

H.J. Eckenrode's _The Political History of Virginia during
Reconstruction_, 1904.

Langston, John M. _From the Virginia Plantation to the National Capital;
or, The First and Only Negro Representative in Congress from The Old
Dominion_. (Hartford, 1894.)

Locke, M.S. _Anti-Slavery in America from the Introduction of African
Slaves to the Prohibition of the Slave Trade, 1619-1808_. Radcliffe
College Monographs, No. ii. (Boston, 1901.) A valuable work.

Lynch, John R. _The Facts of Reconstruction_. (New York, 1913.)

Madison, James. _Letters and Other Writings of James Madison Published
by Order of Congress_. Four volumes. (Philadelphia, 1865.)

May, S.J. _Some Recollections of our Anti-Slavery Conflict_.

Monroe, James. _The Writings of James Monroe, including a Collection of
his public and private Papers and Correspondence now for the first time
printed_. Edited by S. M. Hamilton. (Boston, 1900.)

Moore, George H. _Notes on the History of Slavery in Massachusetts_.
(New York, 1866.)

Needles, Edward. _Ten Years' Progress or a Comparison of the State and
Condition of the Colored People in the City of and County of Philadelphia
from 1837 to 1847_. (Philadelphia, 1849.)

_New Jersey, Acts of the General Assembly of_.

_Ohio, Laws of the General Assembly of_.

Ovington, M.W. _Half-a-Man_. (New York, 1911.) Treats of the Negro in
the State of New York. A few pages are devoted to the progress of the
colored people.

Parrish, John. _Remarks on the Slavery of the Black People; Addressed to
the Citizens of the United States, particularly to those who are in
legislative or executive Stations, particularly in the General or State
Governments; and also to such Individuals as hold them in Bondage_.
(Philadelphia, 1806.)

Pearson, E.W. _Letters from Port Royal, written at the Time of the Civil
War_. (Boston, 1916.)

Pearson, C.C. _The Readjuster Movement in Virginia_. (New Haven,
1917.)

_Pennsylvania, Laws of the General Assembly of the State of_.

Pierce, E.L. _The Freedmen of Port Royal, South Carolina, Official
Reports_. (New York, 1863.)

Pike, James S. _The Prostrate State: South Carolina under Negro
Government_. (New York, 1874.)

Pittman, Philip. _The Present State of European Settlements on the
Mississippi with a geographic description of that river_. (London,
1770.)

Quillen, Frank U. _The Color Line in Ohio_. A History of Race
Prejudice in a typical northern State. (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1913.)

Reynolds, J.S. _Reconstruction in South Carolina_. (Columbia, 1905.)

_Rhode Island, Acts and Resolves of_.

Rice, David. _Slavery inconsistent with Justice and Good Policy: proved
by a Speech delivered in the Convention held at Danville, Kentucky_.
(Philadelphia, 1792, and London, 1793.)

Scherer, J.A.B. _Cotton as a World Power_. (New York, 1916.) This is
a study in the economic interpretation of History. The contents of this
book are a revision of a series of lectures at Oxford and Cambridge
universities in the Spring of 1914 with the caption on Economic Causes in
the American Civil War.

Siebert, Wilbur H. _The Underground Railroad from Slavery_ _to
Freedom_, by W.H. Siebert, Associate Professor of History in the Ohio
State University, with an Introduction by A.B. Hart. (New York, 1898.)

Starr, Frederick. _What shall be done with the people of color in the
United States?_ (Albany, 1862.) A discourse delivered in the First
Presbyterian Church of Penn Yan, New York, November 2, 1862.

Still, William. _The Underground Railroad_. (Philadelphia, 1872.)
This is a record of facts, authentic narratives, letters and the like,
giving the hardships, hair-breadth escapes and death struggles of the
slaves in their efforts for freedom as related by themselves and others or
witnessed by the author.

_The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, Travels and Explorations of
the Jesuit Missionaries in New France, 1619-1791. The Original French,
Latin, and Italian Texts with English Translations and Notes illustrated
by Portraits, Maps, and Facsimiles_. Edited by Reuben Gold Thwaites,
Secretary of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. (Cleveland, 1896.)

Thompson, George. _Speech at the Meeting for the Extension of Negro
Apprenticeship_. (London, 1838.)

------_The Free Church Alliance with Manstealers. Send back the Money.
Great Anti-Slavery Meeting in the City Hall, Glasgow, containing the
Speeches delivered by Messrs. Wright, Douglass, and Buffum from America,
and by George Thompson of London, with a Summary Account of a Series of
Meetings held in Edinburgh by the above named Gentlemen._ (Glasgow,
1846.)

Torrey, Jesse, Jr. _A Portraiture of Domestic Slavery in the United
States with Reflections on the Practicability of restoring the Moral
Rights of the Slave, without impairing the legal Privileges of the
Possessor, and a Project of a Colonial Asylum for Free Persons of Color,
including Memoirs of Facts on the Interior Traffic in Slaves and on
Kidnapping, Illustrated with Engravings by Jesse Torrey, Jr., Physician,
Author of a Series of Essays on Morals and the Diffusion of Knowledge_.
(Philadelphia, 1817.)

------_American Internal Slave Trade; with Reflections on the project
for forming a Colony of Blacks in Africa_. (London, 1822.)

Turner, E.R. _The Negro in Pennsylvania_. (Washington, 1911.)

_Tyrannical Libertymen: a Discourse upon Negro Slavery in the United
States, composed at ------ in New Hampshire: on the Late Federal
Thanksgiving Day_. (Hanover, N. H., 1795.)

Walker, David. _Walker's Appeal in Four Articles, together with a
Preamble to the Colored Citizens of the World, but in particular and very
expressly to those of the United States of America, Written in Boston,
State of Massachusetts, September 28, 1829_. Second edition. (Boston,
1830.) Walker was a Negro who hoped to arouse his race to self-assertion.

Ward, Charles. _Contrabands_. (Salem, 1866.) This suggests an
apprenticeship, under the auspices of the government, to build the Pacific
Railroad.

Washington, B.T. _The Story of the Negro_. Two volumes. (New York,
1909.)

Washington, George. _The Writings of George Washington, being his
Correspondence, Addresses, Messages, and other papers, official and
private, selected and published from the original Manuscripts with the
Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations, by Jared Sparks_. (Boston,
1835.)

Weeks, Stephen B. _Southern Quakers and Slavery. A Study in
Institutional History_. (Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins Press, 1896.)

------_The Anti-Slavery Sentiment in the South; with Unpublished Letters
from John Stuart Mill and Mrs. Stowe_. (Southern History Association
Publications, Volume ii, No. 2, Washington, D.C., April, 1898.)

Williams, G.W. _A History of the Negro Troops in the War of the
Rebellion, 1861-1865, preceded by a Review of the military Services of
Negroes in ancient and modern Times_. (New York, 1888.)

------_History of the Negro Race in the United States from 1619-1880.
Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens: together with a
preliminary Consideration of the Unity of the Human Family, an historical
Sketch of Africa and an Account of the Negro Governments of Sierra Leone
and Liberia_. (New York, 1883.)

Woodson, C.G. _The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861_. (New York
and London, 1915.) This is a history of the Education of the Colored
People of the United States from the beginning of slavery to the Civil
War.

Woolman, John. _The Works of John Woolman. In two Parts, Part I: A
Journal of the Life, Gospel-Labors, and Christian Experiences of that
faithful Minister of Christ, John Woolman, late of Mount Holly in the
Province of New Jersey_. (London, 1775.)

------_Same, Part Second. Containing his last Epistle and other
Writings_. (London, 1775.)

------_Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes. Recommended to the
Professors of Christianity of every Denomination_. (Philadelphia,
1754.)

------_Considerations on Keeping Negroes; Recommended to the Professors
of Christianity of every Denomination. Part the Second_. (Philadelphia,
1762.)

Wright, R.R., Jr. _The Negro in Pennsylvania_. (Philadelphia, 1912.)



MAGAZINES


_The African Methodist Episcopal Church Review_. The following articles:

    _The Negro as an Inventor_. By R. R. Wright, vol. ii, p. 397.

    _Negro Poets_, vol. iv, p. 236.

    _The Negro in Journalism_, vols. vi, p. 309, and xx, p. 137.

_The African Repository_; Published by the American Colonization
Society from 1826 to 1832. A very good source for Negro history both in
this country and Liberia. Some of its most valuable articles are:

    _Learn Trades or Starve_, by Frederick Douglass, vol. xxix,
    p. 137. Taken from Frederick Douglass's Paper.

    _Education of the Colored People_, by a highly respectable
    gentleman of the South, vol. xxx, pp. 194, 195 and 196.

    _Elevation of the Colored Race_, a memorial circulated in
    North Carolina, vol. xxxi, pp. 117 and 118.

    _A lawyer for Liberia_, a sketch of Garrison Draper, vol.
    xxxiv, pp. 26 and 27.

_The American Economic Review_.

_The American Journal of Social Science_.

_The American Journal of Political Economy_.

_The American Law Review_.

_The American Journal of Sociology_.

_The Atlantic Monthly_.

_The Colonizationist and Journal of Freedom_. The author has been
able to find only the volume which contains the numbers for the year 1834.

_The Christian Examiner_.

_The Cosmopolitan_.

_The Crisis_. A record of the darker races published by the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

_Dublin Review_.

_The Forum_.

_The Independent_.

_The Journal of Negro History_.

_The Maryland Journal of Colonization_. Published as the official
organ of the Maryland Colonization Society. Among its important articles
are: _The Capacities of the Negro Race_, vol. iii, p. 367; and _The
Educational Facilities of Liberia_, vol. vii, p. 223.

_The Nation_.

_The Non-Slaveholder_. Two volumes of this publication are now found
in the Library of Congress.

_The Outlook_.

_Public Opinion_.

_The Southern Workman_. Volume xxxvii contains Dr. R. R. Wright's
valuable dissertation on _Negro Rural Communities in India_.

_The Spectator_.

_The Survey_.

_The World's Work_.



NEWSPAPERS


District of Columbia.
     _The Daily National Intelligencer_.

Louisiana.
     _The New Orleans Commercial Bulletin_.
     _The New Orleans Times-Picayune_.

Maryland.
     _The Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser_.
     _The Maryland Gazette_.
     _Dunlop's Maryland Gazette or The Baltimore Advertiser_.

Massachusetts.
     _The Liberator_.

Mississippi.
     _The Vicksburg Daily Commercial_.

New York.
     _The New York Daily Advertiser_.
     _The New York Tribune_.
     _The New York Times_.



INDEX


Adams, Henry,
  leader of the exodus to Kansas,

Akron,
  friends of fugitives in,

Alton Telegraph,
  comment of,

Anderson,
  promoter of settling of Negroes in Jamaica,

Anti-slavery,
  leaders of the movement, became more helpful to the refugees,

Anti-slavery sentiment,
  of two kinds,

American Federation of Labor,
  attitude of, toward Negro labor,

Appalachian highland,
  settlers of, aided fugitives;
  exodus of Negroes to,

Arkansas,
  drain of laborers to,


Ball, J.P.,
  a contractor,

Ball, Thomas,
  a contractor,

Barclay,
  interest of, in the sending of Negroes to Jamaica,

Barrett, Owen A.,
  discoverer of a remedy,

Bates,
  owner of slaves at St. Genevieve,

Beauvais,
  owner of slaves, Upper Louisiana,

Benezet, Anthony,
  plan of, to colonize Negroes in West;
  interest of, in settling Negroes in the West,

Berlin Cross Roads,
  Negroes of,

Bibb, Henry,
  interest of, in colonization,

Birney, James G.,
  promoter of the migration of the Negroes;
  press of, destroyed by mob in Cincinnati,

Black Friday,
  riot of, in Portsmouth,

Blackburn, Thornton,
  a fugitive claimed in Detroit,

Boll weevil,
  a cause of migration,

Boston,
  friends of fugitives in,

Boyce, Stanbury,
  went with his father to Trinidad in the fifties,

Boyd, Henry,
  a successful mechanic in Cincinnati,

Brannagan, Thomas,
  advocate of colonizing the Negroes in the West;
  interest of, in settling Negroes in the West,

Brissot de Warville,
  observations of, on Negroes in the West,

British Guiana,
  attractive to free Negroes,

Brooklyn, Illinois,
  a Negro community,

Brown, John,
  in the Appalachian highland,

Brown County, Ohio,
  Negroes in,

Buffalo,
  friends of fugitives in,

Butler, General,
  holds Negroes as contraband;
  policy of, followed by General Wood and General Banks,


Cairo, Illinois,
  an outlet for the refugees

Calvin Township, Cass County, Michigan,
  a Negro community;
  note on progress of

Campbell, Sir George,
  comment on condition of Negroes in Kansas City

Canaan, New Hampshire,
  break-up of school of, admitting Negroes,

Canada,
  the migration of Negroes to;
  settlements in,

Canadians,
  supply of slaves of;
  prohibited the importation of slaves,

Canterbury, people of,
  imprison Prudence Crandall because she taught Negroes,

Cardoza, F.L.,
  return of from Edinburgh to South Carolina,

Cassey, Joseph C.,
  a lumber merchant,

Cassey, Joseph,
  a broker in Philadelphia,

Chester, T. Morris,
  went from Pittsburgh to settle in Louisiana,

Cincinnati,
  friends of fugitives in;
  mobs;
  successful Negroes of,

Clark, Edward V.,
  a jeweler,

Clay, Henry,
  a colonizationist,

Code for indentured servants in West,
  note,

Coffin, Levi,
  comment on the condition of the refugees,

Coles, Edward,
  moved to Illinois to free his slaves;
  correspondence with Jefferson on slavery,

Colgate, Richard,
  master of James Wenyam who escaped to the West,

Collins, Henry M.,
  interest of, in colonization;
  a real estate man in Pittsburgh,

Corbin, J.C.,
  return of, from Chillicothe to Arkansas,

Colonization proposed as a remedy for migration,
  in the West;
  organization of society of;
  failure to remove free Negroes;
  opposed by free people of color;
  meetings of, in the interest of the West Indies;
  impeded by the exodus to the West Indies;
  a remedy for migration,

Colonization Society,
  organization of;
  renewed efforts of,

Colonizationists,
  opposition of, to the migration to the West Indies,

Columbia, Pa.,
  friends of fugitives in,

Compagnie de l'Occident in control of Louisiana,

Condition of fugitives in contraband camps,

Congested districts in the North,

Connecticut,
  exterminated slavery;
  law of;
  against teaching Negroes,

Conventions of Negroes,

Cook, Forman B.,
  a broker,

Crandall, A.W.,
  interest in checking the exodus to Kansas,

Crandall, Prudence,
  imprisoned because she taught Negroes,

Credit system,
  a cause of unrest,

Crozat, Antoine,
  as Governor of Louisiana,

Cuffe, Paul,
  an actual colonizationist,


Davis,
  comment on freedmen's vagrancy,

De Baptiste, Richard,
  father of, in Detroit,

Debasement of the blacks after Reconstruction,

Delany, Martin R.,
  interest of, in colonization,

De Tocqueville,
  observation of, on the condition of free Negroes in the North,

Delaware,
  disfranchisement of Negroes in,

Detroit,
  Negroes in;
  friends of fugitives in;
  a gateway to Canada;
  the Negro question in;
  mob of, rises against Negroes;
  successful Negroes of,

Dinwiddie, Governor,
  Fears of, as to servile insurrection,

Diseases of Negroes in the North,

Distribution of intelligent blacks,

Douglass, Frederick,
  the leading Negro journalist;
  advice of, on staying in the South to retain political power;
  comment of, on exodus to Kansas,

Downing, Thomas,
  owner of a restaurant,

Drain of laborers to Mississippi and Louisiana;
  to Arkansas and Texas,


Eaton, John,
  work of, among the refugees,

Economic opportunities for the Negro in the North;
  economic opportunities for Negroes in the South,

Educational facilities,
  the lack of,

Elizabethtown,
  friends of fugitives in,

Elliot, E.B.,
  return of, from Boston to South Carolina,

Elmira,
  friends of fugitives in,

Emancipation of the Negroes in the West Indies,
  the effect of,

Epstein, Abraham,
  an authority on the Negro migrant in Pittsburgh,

Exodus, the,
  during the World War;
  causes;
  efforts of the South to check it;
  Negroes divided on it;
  whites divided on it;
  unfortunate for the South;
  probable results;
  will increase political power of Negro;
  exodus of the Negroes to Kansas,


Fear of Negro domination to cease,

Ficklen,
  comment on freedmen's vagrancy,

Fiske, A.S.,
  work of, among the contrabands,

Fleming,
  comment of, on freedmen's vagrancy,

Floods of the Mississippi,
  a cause of migration,

Foote, Ex-Governor of Mississippi,
  liberal measure of, presented to Vicksburg convention,

Fort Chartres,
  slaves of,

Forten, James,
  a wealthy Negro,

Freedman's relief societies,
  aid of,

Free Negroes,
  opposed to American Colonization Society;
  interested in African colonization;
  National Council of,

French,
  departure of, from West to keep slaves;
  welcome of, to fugitive slaves of the English colonies;
  good treatment of,

Friends of fugitives,

Fugitive Slave Law,
  a destroyer of Negro settlements,

Fugitives coming to Pennsylvania,


Gallipolis,
  friends of fugitives in,

Georgia,
  laws of, against Negro mechanics;
  slavery considered profitable in,

Germans antagonistic to Negroes;
  favorable to fugitives in mountains;
  opposed Negro settlement in Mercer County, Ohio;
  their hatred of Negroes,

Gibbs, Judge M.W.,
  went from Philadelphia to Arkansas,

Gilmore's High School,
  work of, in Cincinnati,

Gist, Samuel,
  settled his Negroes in Ohio,

Goodrich, William,
  owner of railroad stock,

Gordon, Robert,
  a successful coal dealer in Cincinnati,

Grant, General U.S.,
  protected refugees in his camp;
  retained them at Fort Donelson;
  his use of the refugees,

Greener, R.T.,
  comment of, on the exodus to Kansas;
  went from Philadelphia to South Carolina,

Gregg, Theodore H.,
  sent his manumitted slaves to Ohio,

Gulf States,
  proposed Negro commonwealths of,

Guild of Caterers,
  in Philadelphia,


Halleck, General,
  excluded slaves from his lines,

Harlan, Robert,
  a horseman,

Harper, John,
  sent his slaves to Mercer County, Ohio,

Hamsburg,
  Negroes in;
  reaction against Negroes in,

Harrison, President William H.,
  accommodated at the cafe of John Julius, a Negro,

Hayden,
  a successful clothier,

Hayti,
  the exodus of Negroes to,

Henry, Patrick,
  on natural rights,

Hill of Chillicothe,
  a tanner and currier,

Holly, James T.,
  interest of, in colonization,

Hood, James W.,
  went from Connecticut to North Carolina,

Hunter, General,
  dealing with the refugees in South Carolina


Illinois,
  the attitude of, toward the Negro;
  race prejudice in;
  slavery question in the organization of;
  effort to make the constitution proslavery,

Immigration of foreigners,
  cessation of, a cause of the Negro migration,

Indian Territory,
  exodus of Negroes to,

Indiana,
  the attitude of, toward the Negro;
  counties of, receiving Negroes from slave states;
  slavery question in the organization of;
  effort to make constitution of pro-slavery;
  race prejudice in;
  protest against the settlement of Negroes there,

Indians,
  attitude of, toward the Negroes,

Infirmary Farms,
  for refugees,

Intimidation,
  a cause of migration,

Irish,
  antagonistic to Negroes;
  their hatred of Negroes,

Jamaica,
  Negroes of the United States settled in,

Jay's Treaty,

Jefferson, Thomas,
  his plan for general education including the slaves;
  plan to colonize Negroes in the West;
  natural rights theory of;
  an advocate of the colonization of the Negroes in the West Indies,

Jenkins, David,
  a paper hanger and glazier,

Johnson, General,
  permitted slave hunters to seek their slaves in his lines,

Julius, John,
  proprietor of a cafe in which he entertained President William H.
Harrison,


_Kansas Freedmen's Relief Association_,
  the work of,

Kansas refugees,
  condition of;
  treatment of,

Kaokia,
  slaves of,

Kaskaskia,
  slaves of,

Keith, George,
  interested in the Negroes,

Kentucky,
  disfranchisement of Negroes in;
  abolition society of, advocated the colonization of the blacks in
the West,

Key, Francis S.,
  a colonizationist,

Kingsley, Z.,
  a master, settled his son of color in Hayti,

Ku Klux Klan,
  the work of,

Labor agents promoting the migration of Negroes,

Lambert, William,
  interest of, in the colonization of Negroes,

Land tenure,
  a cause of unrest;
  after Reconstruction,

Langston, John M.,
  returned from Ohio to Virginia,

Lawrence County, Ohio,
  Negroes immigrated into,

Liberia,
  freedmen sent to,

Lincoln, Abraham,
  urged withholding slaves,

Louis XIV,
  slave regulations of,

Louisiana,
  drain of laborers to;
  exodus from;
  refugees in,

Lower Camps, Brown County,
  Negroes of,

Lower Louisiana,
  conditions of;
  conditions of slaves in,

Lundy, Benjamin,
  promoter of the migration of Negroes,

Lynching,
  a cause of migration;
  number of Negroes lynched,


McCook, General,
  permitted slave hunters to seek their Negroes in his lines,

Maryland,
  disfranchisement of Negroes in;
  passed laws against Negro mechanics;
  reaction in,

Massachusetts,
  exterminated slavery,

Meade, Bishop William,
  a colonizationist,

Mercer County, Ohio,
  successful Negroes of;
  resolutions of citizens against Negroes,

Miami County,
  Randolph's Negroes sent to,

Michigan,
  Negroes transplanted to;
  attitude of, toward the Negro,

Migration, the,
  of the talented tenth;
  handicaps of;
  of politicians to Washington;
  of educated Negroes;
  of the intelligent laboring class;
  effect of Negroes' prospective political power;
  to northern cities,

Miles, N.E.,
  interest in stopping the exodus to Kansas,

Mississippi,
  drain of laborers to;
  exodus from;
  refugees in;
  slaves along,

Morgan, Senator,
  of Alabama, interested in sending the Negroes to Africa,

Movement of the blacks to the western territory;
  promoted by Quakers,

Movements of Negroes during the Civil War;
  of poor whites,

Mulber, Stephen,
  a contractor,

Murder of Negroes in the South,


Natural rights,
  the effect of;
  the discussion of, on the condition of the Negro,

Negro journalists,
  the number of

Negroes,
  condition of, after Reconstruction;
  escaped to the West;
  those having wealth tend to remain in the South;
  migration of, to Mexico;
  exodus of, to Liberia;
  no freedom of speech of;
  not migratory;
  leaders of Reconstruction, largely from the North;
  mechanics in Cincinnati;
  servants on Ohio river vessels,

New Hampshire,
  exterminated slavery,

New Jersey,
  abolished slavery

New York,
  abolition of slavery in;
  friends of fugitives in;
  mobs of, attack Negroes;
  Negro suffrage in;
  restrictions of, on Negroes,

North Carolina,
  Negro suffrage in;
  Quakers of, promoting the migration of the Negroes;
  reaction in,

North,
  change in attitude of, toward the Negro;
  divided in its sentiment as to method of helping the Negro;
  favorable sentiment of;
  trade of, with the South;
  fugitives not generally welcomed;
  its Negro problem;
  housing the Negro in;
  criminal class of Negroes in,
  loss of interest of, in the Negro;
  not a place of refuge for Negroes;

Northwest,
  few Negroes in, at first;
  hesitation to go there because of the ordinance of 1787,

Noyes Academy,
  broken up because it admitted Negroes,

Nugent, Colonel W.L.,
  interest in stopping the exodus to Kansas,

Occupations of Negroes in the North,

Ohio,
  Negro question in constitutional convention of;
  in the legislature of 1804;
  black laws of;
  protest against Negroes,

Oklahoma,
  Negroes in;
  discouraged by early settlers of,

Ordinance of 1784 rejected,

Ordinance of 1787,
  passed;
  meaning of sixth article of;
  reasons for the passage of;
  did not at first disturb slavery;
  construction of,

Otis, James,
  on natural rights,

Pacific Railroad,
  proposal to build, with refugee labor,

Palmyra,
  race prejudice of,

Pelham, Robert A.,
  father of, moved to Detroit,

Penn, William,
  advocate of emancipation,

Pennsylvania,
  effort in, to force free Negroes to support their dependents;
  effort to prevent immigration of Negroes;
  increase in the population of free Negroes of;
  petitions to rid the State of Negroes by colonization;
  era of good feeling in;
  exterminated slavery;
  the migration of freedmen from North Carolina to;
  Negro suffrage in;
  passed laws against Negro mechanics;
  successful Negroes of,

Peonage,
  a cause of migration,

Philadelphia,
  Negroes rush to;
  race friction of;
  woman of color stoned to death;
  Negro church disturbed;
  reaction against Negroes;
  riots in;
  successful Negroes of;
  property owned by Negroes,

Pierce, E.S.,
  plan for handling refugees in South Carolina,

Pinchback, P.B.S.,
  return of, from Ohio to Louisiana to enter politics,

Pittman, Philip,
  account of West, of,

Pittsburgh,
  friends of fugitives in;
  Negro of, married to French woman;
  kind treatment of refugees;
  respectable mulatto woman married to a surgeon of Nantes;
  riot in,

Platt, William,
  a lumber merchant,

Political power,
  not to be the only aim of the migrants;
  the mistakes of such a policy,

Polities,
  a cause of unrest,

Pollard, N.W.,
  agent of the Government of Trinidad, sought Negroes in the  United
States,

Portsmouth,
  friends of fugitives of,

Portsmouth, Ohio,
  mob of, drives Negroes out;
  progressive Negroes of,

Prairie du Rocher,
  slaves of,

Press comments on sending Negroes to Africa,

Puritans,
  not much interested in the Negro,


Quakers,
  promoted the movement of the blacks to Western territory;
  in the mountains assisted fugitives,


Race prejudice,
  the effects of;
  among laboring classes,

Randolph, John,
  a colonizationist;
  sought to settle his slaves in Mercer County, Ohio,

Reaction against the Negro,

Reconstruction,
  promoted to an extent by Negro natives of North,

Redpath, James,
  interest of, in colonization,

Refugees assembled in camps;
  in West;
  in Washington;
  in South;
  exodus of, to the North;
  fear that they would overrun the North;
  development of;
  vagrancy at close of war,

Renault, Philip Francis,
  imported slaves,

Resolutions of the Vicksburg Convention bearing on the exodus to
Kansas,

Rhode Island,
  exterminated slavery,

Richards, Benjamin,
  a wealthy Negro of Pittsburgh,

Richard, Fannie M.,
  a successful teacher in Detroit,

Riley, William H.,
  a well-to-do bootmaker,

Ringold, Thomas,
  advertisement of, for a slave in the West,

Rochester,
  friends of fugitives in,


Saint John, Governor,
  aid of, to the Negroes in Kansas,

Sandy Lake,
  Negro settlement in,

Saunders of Cabell County, Virginia,
  sent manumitted slaves to Cass County, Michigan,

Saxton, General Rufus,
  plan for handling refugees in South Carolina,

Scotch-Irish Presbyterians,
  favorable to fugitives,

Scott, Henry,
  owner of a pickling business,

Scroggs, Wm. O.,
  referred to as authority on interstate migration,

Segregation,
  a cause of migration,

Shelby County, Ohio,
  Negroes in,

Sierra Leone,
  Negroes of, settled in Jamaica,

Simmons, W.J.,
  returned from Pennsylvania to Kentucky,

Singleton, Moses,
  leader of the exodus from Kansas,

Sixth Article of Ordinance of 1787,

Slave Code in Louisiana,

Slavery in the Northwest;
  slavery in Indiana;
  slavery of whites,

Slaves,
  mingled freely with their masters in early West,

Smith, Gerrit,
  effort to colonize Negroes in New York,

Smith, Stephen,
  a lumber merchant,

South Carolina,
  slavery considered profitable there,

South,
  change of attitude of, toward the Negro;
  drastic laws against vagrancy,

Southern States divided on the Negro,

Spears, Noah,
  sent his manumitted slaves to Greene County, Ohio,

Starr, Frederick,
  comment of, on the refugees,

Steubenville,
  successful Negroes of,

Still, William,
  a coal merchant,

St. Philippe,
  slaves of,

Success of Negro migrants,

Suffrage of the Negroes in the colonies,


Tappan, Arthur,
  attacked by New York mob,

Tappan, Lewis,
  attacked by New York mob,

Terrorism,
  a cause of migration,

Texas,
  drain of laborers to;
  proposed colony of Negroes there,

Thomas, General,
  opened farms for refugees,

Thompson, A.V.,
  a tailor,

Thompson, C.M.,
  comment on freedmen's vagrancy,

Topp, W.H.,
  a merchant tailor,

Trades unions,
  attitude of, toward Negro labor,

Trinidad,
  the exodus of Negroes to;
  Negroes from Philadelphia settled there,

Turner, Bishop H.M.,
  interested in sending Negroes to Africa,


Upper and Lower Camps of Brown County, Ohio,
  Negroes of,

Upper Louisiana,
  conditions of;
  conditions of slaves in,

Unrest of the Negroes in the South after Reconstruction;
  causes of;
  credit system a cause;
  land system a cause;
  further unrest of intelligent Negroes,

Utica,
  mob of, attacked anti-slavery leaders,


Vagrancy of Negroes after emancipation;
  drastic legislation against,

Vermont,
  exterminated slavery,

Vicksburg,
  Convention of, to stop the Exodus,

Viner, M.,
  mentioned slave settlements in West,

Virginia,
  disfranchisement of Negroes in;
  Quakers of, promoting the migration of the Negroes;
  reaction in;
  refugees in,

Vorhees, Senator D.W.,
  offered a resolution in Senate inquiring into the exodus to Kansas,


Washington, Judge Bushrod,
  a colonizationist,

Washington, D.C.,
  refugees in;
  the migration of Negro politicians to,

Wattles, Augustus,
  settled with Negroes in Mercer County, Ohio,

Watts,
  steam engine and the industrial revolution,

Wayne County, Indiana,
  freedmen settled in,

Webb, William,
  interest of, in colonization,

Wenyam, James,
  ran away to the West,

West Indies,
  attractive to free Negroes,

West Virginia,
  exodus of Negroes to,

White, David,
  led a company of Negroes to the Northwest,

White, J.T.,
  left Indiana to enter politics in Arkansas,

Whites of South refused to work,

Whitfield, James M.,
  interest of, in colonization,

Whitney's cotton gin and the industrial revolution,

Wickham,
  executor of Samuel Gist, settled Gist's Negroes in Ohio,

Wilberforce University established at a slave settlement,

Wilcox, Samuel T.,
  a merchant of Cincinnati,

Yankees,
  comment of, on Negro labor,

York,
  Negroes of;
  trouble with the Negroes of,





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