A Century of Negro Migration Part 4

[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 inst.i.tutions 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 inst.i.tution 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 inst.i.tution 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 inst.i.tution, 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 inst.i.tution is situated; and each and every person who shall knowingly do any act forbidden as aforesaid, or shall be aiding or a.s.sisting 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: _Const.i.tution 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: Hitchc.o.c.k, _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 p.a.w.nee 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. Advertis.e.m.e.nts 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_, x.x.x, 416.]

[Footnote 46: _Niles Register_, x.x.x, 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 circ.u.mstances. 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 pa.s.sage, 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 circ.u.mstances 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 fa.r.s.eeing 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 a.s.sociate 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 att.i.tude 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 Was.h.i.+ngton, 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 Was.h.i.+ngton.

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 emanc.i.p.ate their bondsmen, if they could be a.s.sured 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 emanc.i.p.ate 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 emanc.i.p.ated 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 a.s.sured 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 cla.s.s, 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 cla.s.s, 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 b.l.o.o.d.y scenes which their children certainly, and possibly they themselves, would have to wade through. [13]