A Century of Negro Migration Part 3

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 pet.i.tions, therefore, came before the legislature to stop the immigration of Negroes. It was proposed in 1840 to tax all free Negroes to a.s.sist 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 pet.i.tion prayed that they be deprived of the freedom of movement. Bills embodying these ideas were frequently considered but they were never pa.s.sed.

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 repet.i.tion 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 pet.i.tions for the abolition of slavery. This mob even a.s.sailed such eminent citizens as Arthur and Lewis Tappan, mainly on account of their friendly att.i.tude 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 a.s.sembled 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 a.s.sa.s.sinate 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 const.i.tutional 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 const.i.tution.[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 a.s.surance 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 pa.s.sed.[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 cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 const.i.tute 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 pa.s.sed 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 cla.s.s, had to do menial labor in compet.i.tion 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 a.s.sembled, 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 cla.s.s 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, dest.i.tute 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 att.i.tude 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.]