A Century of Negro Migration Part 7

[Footnote 13: Delany, _Condition of the Colored People_, pp.

107-108.]

[Footnote 14: _Ibid._, p. 102.]

[Footnote 15: _Ibid._, p. 102.]

[Footnote 16: _Ibid._, pp. 103-104.]

[Footnote 17: Delany, _Condition of the Colored People_, pp.

106-107.]

[Footnote 18: DuBois, _The Philadelphia Negro_, p. 31; _Report of the Condition of the Free People of Color_, 1838; _ibid._, 1849; and Bacon, _Statistics of the Colored People of Philadelphia_, 1859.]

[Footnote 19: Delany, _Condition of the Colored People_, p. 95.]

[Footnote 20: DuBois, _The Philadelphia Negro_, pp. 31-36.]

[Footnote 21: Delany, _Condition of the Colored People_, p. 109.]

[Footnote 22: _Ibid._, p. 101.]

[Footnote 23: _Ibid._, p. 104.]

[Footnote 24: _Ibid._, p. 105.]

[Footnote 25: _Ibid._, p. 107.]

[Footnote 26: _The Journal of Negro History_, I, p. 22.]

[Footnote 27: Hickok, _The Negro in Ohio_, p. 88.]

[Footnote 28: Delany, _Condition of the Colored People_, p. 99.]

[Footnote 29: _Ibid._, p. 101.]

[Footnote 30: _The Philanthropist_, July 21, 1840, gives these statistics in detail.]

[Footnote 31: _The Philanthropist_, July 21, 1840.]

[Footnote 32: _The Cincinnati Daily Gazette_, Sept. 14, 1841.]

[Footnote 33: Barber's _Report on Colored People in Ohio_.]

[Footnote 34: Delany, _Condition of the Colored People_, pp. 97, 98.]

[Footnote 35: Delany, _Condition of the Colored People_, p. 98.]

[Footnote 36: These facts were obtained from his children and from Cincinnati city directories.]

[Footnote 37: _Niles Register_, LXIX, p. 357.]

[Footnote 38: Letters received from Miss Fannie M. Richards of Detroit.]

[Footnote 39: These facts were obtained from clippings taken from Detroit newspapers and from letters bearing on Miss Richard's career.]

[Footnote 40: _The A.M.E. Church Review_, IV, p. 309; and XX, p.

137.]

[Footnote 41: _Censuses of the United States_; and Clark, _Present Condition of Colored People_.]

[Footnote 42: _Minutes and Proceedings_ of the Annual Convention of the People of Color.]

CHAPTER VI

CONFUSING MOVEMENTS

The Civil War waged largely in the South started the most exciting movement of the Negroes. .h.i.therto known. The invading Union forces drove the masters before them, leaving the slaves and sometimes poor whites to escape where they would or to remain in helpless condition to const.i.tute a problem for the northern army.[1] Many poor whites of the border States went with the Confederacy, not always because they wanted to enter the war, but to choose what they considered the lesser of two evils. The slaves soon realized a community of interests with the Union forces sent, as they thought, to deliver them from thralldom. At first, it was difficult to determine a fixed policy for dealing with these fugitives. To drive them away was an easy matter, but this did not solve the problem.

General Butler's action at Fortress Monroe in 1861, however, antic.i.p.ated the policy finally adopted by the Union forces.[2] Hearing that three fugitive slaves who were received into his lines were to have been employed in building fortifications for the Confederate army, he declared them seized as contraband of war rather than declare them actually free as did General Fremont[3] and General Hunter.[4] He then gave them employment for wages and rations and appropriated to the support of the unemployed a portion of the earnings of the laborers. This policy was followed by General Wood, Butler's successor, and by General Banks in New Orleans.

An elaborate plan for handling such fugitives was carried out by E.S.

Pierce and General Rufus Saxton at Port Royal, South Carolina. Seeing the situation in another light, however, General Halleck in charge in the West excluded slaves from the Union lines, at first, as did General Dix in Virginia. But Halleck, in his instructions to General McCullum, February, 1862, ordered him to put contrabands to work to pay for food and clothing.[5] Other commanders, like General McCook and General Johnson, permitted the slave hunters to enter their lines and take their slaves upon identification,[6] ignoring the confiscation act of August, 1861, which was construed by some as justifying the retention of such refugees.

Officers of a different att.i.tude, however, soon began to protest against the returning of fugitive slaves. General Grant, also, while admitting the binding force of General Halleck's order, refused to grant permits to those in search of fugitives seeking asylum within his lines and at the capture of Fort Donelson ordered the retention of all blacks who had been used by the Confederates in building fortifications.[7]

Lincoln finally urged the necessity for withholding fugitive slaves from the enemy, believing that there could be in it no danger of servile insurrection and that the Confederacy would thereby be weakened.[8] As this opinion soon developed into a conviction that official action was necessary, Congress, by Act of March 13, 1862, provided that slaves be protected against the claims of their pursuers. Continuing further in this direction, the Federal Government gradually reached the position of withdrawing Negro labor from the Confederate territory. Finally the United States Government adopted the policy of withholding from the Confederates, slaves received with the understanding that their masters were in rebellion against the United States. With this as a settled policy then, the United States Government had to work out some scheme for the remaking of these fugitives coming into its camps.

In some of these cases the fugitives found themselves among men more hostile to them than their masters were, for many of the Union soldiers of the border States were slaveholders themselves and northern soldiers did not understand that they were fighting to free Negroes. The condition in which they were on arriving, moreover, was a new problem for the army.

Some came naked, some in decrepitude, some afflicted with disease, and some wounded in their efforts to escape.[9] There were "women in travail, the helplessness of childhood and of old age, the horrors of sickness and of frequent deaths."[10] In their crude state few of them had any conception of the significance of liberty, thinking that it meant idleness and freedom from restraint. In consequence of this ignorance there developed such undesirable habits as deceit, theft and licentiousness to aggravate the afflictions of nakedness, famine and disease.[11]

In the East large numbers of these refugees were concentrated at Was.h.i.+ngton, Alexandria, Fortress Monroe, Hampton, Craney Island and Fort Norfolk. There were smaller groups of them at Yorktown, Suffolk and Portsmouth.[12]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAP SHOWING THE PER CENT OF NEGROES IN TOTAL POPULATION, BY STATES: 1910.

(Map 2, Bulletin 129, The United States Bureau of the Census.)]

Some of them were conducted from these camps into York, Columbia, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, and by water to New York and Boston, from which they went to various parts seeking labor. Some collected in groups as in the case of those at Five Points in New York.[13] Large numbers of them from Virginia a.s.sembled in Was.h.i.+ngton in 1862 in Duff Green's Row on Capitol Hill where they were organized as a camp, out of which came a contraband school, after being moved to the McClellan Barracks.[14] Then there was in the District of Columbia another group known as Freedmen's village on Arlington Heights. It was said that, in 1864, 30,000 to 40,000 Negroes had come from the plantations to the District of Columbia.[15] It happened here too as in most cases of this migration that the Negroes were on hand before the officials grappling with many other problems could determine exactly what could or should be done with them. The camps near Was.h.i.+ngton fortunately became centers for the employment of contrabands in the city. Those repairing to Fortress Monroe were distributed as laborers among the farmers of that vicinity.[16]

[Ill.u.s.tration: DIAGRAM SHOWING THE NEGRO POPULATION OF NORTHERN AND WESTERN CITIES IN 1900 AND THE EXTENT TO WHICH IT INCREASED BY 1910.

COUNTIES IN THE SOUTHERN STATES HAVING AT LEAST 50 PER CENT OF THEIR POPULATION NEGRO.

(Maps 3 and 4, Bulletin 129, U.S. Bureau of the Census.)

(Maps 5 and 6, Bulletin 129, U.S. Bureau of the Census.)]

In some of these camps, and especially in those of the West, the refugees were finally sent out to other sections in need of labor, as in the cases of the contrabands a.s.sembled with the Union army at first at Grand Junction and later at Memphis.[17]