A Century of Negro Migration Part 2

[Footnote 9: Levi Coffin, _Reminiscences_, chaps, i and ii.]

[Footnote 10: _Southern Workman_, x.x.xvii, pp. 161-163.]

[Footnote 11: Coffin, _Reminiscences_, p. 109; and Howe's _Historical Collections_, p. 356.]

[Footnote 12: _Southern Workman_, x.x.xvii, 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 Inst.i.tute."--See Howe's _Historical Collections_, p. 356.]

[Footnote 19: Howe's _Historical Collections_, p. 355.]

[Footnote 20: _Ma.n.u.scripts_ 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_, x.x.xvii, p. 158.]

[Footnote 24: _The Journal of Negro History_, I, pp. 23-33.]

[Footnote 25: _Ibid_., I, p. 26.]

[Footnote 26: _The African Repository_, pa.s.sim.]

[Footnote 27: Although const.i.tuting 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_, x.x.xvii, 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_, x.x.xvii, pp. 489-494.]

[Footnote 30: Still, _Underground Railroad_, pa.s.sim; 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 const.i.tute 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 pa.s.sed 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 cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed an act requiring the production of certificates of freedom from blacks or mulattoes offering to vote. The second const.i.tution, 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 ill.u.s.trated than in Pennsylvania. Prior to 1800, and especially after 1780, when the State provided for gradual emanc.i.p.ation, 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 cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.ses 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 a.s.similated. 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 circ.u.mstances 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 pa.s.sed 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.