A Century of Negro Migration - Carter G. Woodson
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]