A Century of Negro Migration - Carter G. Woodson
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]