The migration of the blacks from the
Southern States to those offering them better opportunities
is nothing new. The objective here, therefore, will be not
merely to present the causes and results of the recent
movement of the Negroes to the North but to connect this
event with the periodical movements of the blacks to that
section, from about the year 1815 to the present day. That
this movement should date from that period indicates that
the policy of the commonwealths towards the Negro must have
then begun decidedly to differ so as to make one section of
the country more congenial to the despised blacks than the
other. As a matter of fact, to justify this conclusion, we
need but give passing mention here to developments too well
known to be discussed in detail. Slavery in the original
thirteen States was the normal condition of the Negroes.
When, however, James Otis, Patrick Henry and Thomas
Jefferson began to discuss the natural rights of the
colonists, then said to be oppressed by Great Britain, some
of the patriots of the Revolution carried their reasoning to
its logical conclusion, contending that the Negro slaves
should be freed on the same grounds, as their rights were
also founded in the laws of nature.1
And so it was soon done in most Northern commonwealths.
Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts exterminated the
institution by constitutional provision and Rhode Island,
Connecticut, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania by
gradual emancipation acts.2
And it was thought that the institution would soon
thereafter pass away even in all southern commonwealths
except South Carolina and Georgia, where it had seemingly
become profitable. There came later the industrial
revolution following the invention of Watt's steam engine
and mechanical appliances like Whitney's cotton gin, all
which changed the economic aspect of the modern world,
making slavery an institution offering means of exploitation
to those engaged in the production of cotton. This
revolution rendered necessary a large supply of cheap labor
for cotton culture, out of which the plantation system grew.
The Negro slaves, therefore, lost all hope of ever winning
their freedom in South Carolina and Georgia; and in
Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, where the sentiment
in favor of abolition had been favorable, there was a
decided reaction which soon blighted their hopes.3
In the Northern commonwealths, however, the sentiment in
behalf of universal freedom, though at times dormant, was
ever apparent despite the attachment to the South of the
trading classes of northern cities, which profited by the
slave trade and their commerce with the slaveholding States.
The Northern States maintaining this liberal attitude
developed, therefore, into an asylum for the Negroes who
were oppressed in the South.
The Negroes, however, were not generally welcomed in the
North. Many of the northerners who sympathized with the
oppressed blacks in the South never dreamt of having them as
their neighbors. There were, consequently, always two
classes of anti slavery people, those who advocated the
abolition of slavery to elevate the blacks to the dignity of
citizenship, and those who merely hoped to exterminate the
institution because it was an economic evil.4
The latter generally believed that the blacks constituted an
inferior class that could not discharge the duties of
citizenship, and when the proposal to incorporate the blacks
into the body politic was clearly presented to these
agitators their anti slavery ardor was decidedly dampened.
Unwilling, however, to take the position that a race should
be doomed because of personal objections, many of the early
anti-slavery group looked toward colonization for a solution
of this problem.5
Some thought of Africa, but since the deportation of a large
number of persons who had been brought under the influence
of modern civilization seemed cruel, the most popular
colonization scheme at first seemed to be that of settling
the Negroes on the public lands in the West. As this region
had been lately ceded, however, and no one could determine
what use could be made of it by white men, no such policy
was generally accepted.
When this territory was ceded to the United States an effort
to provide for the government of it finally culminated in
the proposed Ordinance of 1784 carrying the provision that
slavery should not exist in the Northwest Territory after
the year 1800.6
This measure finally failed to pass and fortunately too,
thought some, because, had slavery been given sixteen years
of growth on that soil, it might not have been abolished
there until the Civil War or it might have caused such a
preponderance of slave commonwealths as to make the
rebellion successful. The Ordinance of 1784 was antecedent
to the more important Ordinance of 1787, which carried the
famous sixth article that neither slavery nor involuntary
servitude except as a punishment for crime should exist in
that territory. At first, it was generally deemed feasible
to establish Negro colonies on that domain. Yet despite the
assurance of the Ordinance of 1787 conditions were such that
one could not determine exactly whether the Northwest
Territory would be slave or free.7
What then was the situation in this partly unoccupied
territory? Slavery existed in what is now the Northwest
Territory from the time of the early exploration and
settlement of that region by the French. The first slaves of
white men were Indians. Though it is true that the red men
usually chose death rather than slavery, there were some of
them that bowed to the yoke. So many Pawnee Indians became
bondsmen that the word Pani became synonymous with slave in
the West.8 Western
Indians themselves, following the custom of white men,
enslaved their captives in war rather than choose the
alternative of putting them to death. In this way they were
known to hold a number of blacks and whites.
The enslavement of the black man by the whites in this
section dates from the early part of the eighteenth century.
Being a part of the Louisiana Territory which under France
extended over the whole Mississippi Valley as far as the
Allegheny mountains, it was governed by the same colonial
regulations.9
Slavery, therefore, had legal standing in this territory.
When Antoine Crozat, upon being placed in control of
Louisiana, was authorized to begin a traffic in slaves,
Crozat himself did nothing to carry out his plan. But in
1717 when the control of the colony was transferred to the
Compagnie de l'Occident steps were taken toward the
importation of slaves. In 1719, when 500 Guinea Negroes were
brought over to serve in Lower Louisiana, Philip Francis
Renault imported 500 other bondsmen into Upper Louisiana or
what was later included in the Northwest Territory. Slavery
then became more and more extensive until by 1750 there were
along the Mississippi five settlements of slaves, Kaskaskia,
Kaokia, Fort Chartres, St. Phillipe and Prairie du Rocher.10
In 1763 Negroes were relatively numerous in the Northwest
Territory but when this section that year was transferred to
the British the number was diminished by the action of those
Frenchmen who, unwilling to become subjects of Great
Britain, moved from the territory.11
There was no material increase in the slave population
thereafter until the end of the eighteenth century when some
Negroes came from the original thirteen.
The Ordinance of 1787 did not disturb the relation of slave
and master. Some pioneers thought that the sixth article
exterminated slavery there; others contended that it did
not. The latter believed that such expressions in the
Ordinance of 1787 as the "free inhabitants" and the "free
male inhabitants of full size" implied the continuance of
slavery and others found ground for its perpetuation in that
clause of the Ordinance which allowed the people of the
territory to adopt the constitution and laws of any one of
the thirteen States. Students of law saw protection for
slavery in Jay's treaty which guaranteed to the settlers
their property of all kinds.12
When, therefore, the slave question came up in the Northwest
Territory about the close of the eighteenth century, there
were three classes of slaves: first, those who were in
servitude to French owners previous to the cession of the
Territory to England and were still claimed as property in
the possession of which the owners were protected under the
treaty of 1763; second, those who were held by British
owners at the time of Jay's treaty and claimed afterward as
property under its protection; and third, those who, since
the Territory had been controlled by the United States, had
been brought from the commonwealths in which slavery was
allowed.13
Freedom, however, was recognized as the ultimate status of
the Negro in that territory.
This question having been seemingly settled, Anthony Benezet,
who for years advocated the abolition of slavery and devoted
his time and means to the preparation of the Negroes for
living as freedmen, was practical enough to recommend to the
Congress of the Confederation a plan of colonizing the
emancipated blacks on the western lands.14
Jefferson incorporated into his scheme for a modern system
of public schools the training of the slaves in industrial
and agricultural branches to equip them for a higher station
in life. He believed, however, that the blacks not being
equal to the white race should not be assimilated and should
they be free, they should, by all means, be colonized afar
off.15 Thinking
that the western lands might be so used, he said in writing
to James Monroe in 1801: "A very great extent of country
north of the Ohio has been laid off in townships, and is now
at market, according to the provisions of the act of
Congress. There is nothing," said he, "which would restrain
the State of Virginia either in the purchase or the
application of these lands."16
Yet he raised the question as to whether the establishment
of such a colony within our limits and to become a part of
the Union would be desirable. He thought then of procuring a
place beyond the limits of the United States on our northern
boundary, by purchasing the Indian lands with the consent of
Great Britain. He then doubted that the black race would
live in such a rigorous climate.
This plan did not easily pass from the minds of the friends
of the slaves, for in 1805 Thomas Brannagan asserted in his
Serious Remonstrances that the government should appropriate
a few thousand acres of land at some distant part of the
national domains for the Negroes' accommodation and support.
He believed that the new State might be established upwards
of 2,000 miles from our frontier.17
A copy of the pamphlet containing this proposition was sent
to Thomas Jefferson, who was impressed thereby, but not
having the courage to brave the torture of being branded as
a friend of the slave, he failed to give it his support.18
The same question was brought prominently before the public
again in 1816 when there was presented to the House of
Representatives a memorial from the Kentucky Abolition
Society praying that the free people of color be colonized
on the public lands. The committee to whom the memorial was
referred for consideration reported that it was expedient to
refuse the request on the ground that, as such lands were
not granted to free white men, they saw no reason for
granting them to others.19
Some Negro slaves unwilling to wait to be carried or invited
to the Northwest Territory escaped to that section even when
it was controlled by the French prior to the American
Revolution. Slaves who reached the West by this route caused
trouble between the French and the British colonists.
Advertising in 1746 for James Wenyam, a slave, Richard
Colgate, his master, said that he swore to a Negro whom he
endeavored to induce to go with him, that he had often been
in the backwoods with his master and that he would go to the
French and Indians and fight for them.20
In an advertisement for a mulatto slave in 1755 Thomas
Ringold, his master, expressed fear that he had escaped by
the same route to the French. He, therefore, said: "It seems
to be the interest, at least, of every gentleman that has
slaves, to be active in the beginning of these attempts, for
whilst we have the French such near neighbors, we shall not
have the least security in that kind of property."21
The good treatment which these slaves received among the
French, and especially at Pittsburgh the gateway to the
Northwest Territory, tended to make that city an asylum for
those slaves who had sufficient spirit of adventure to brave
the wilderness through which they had to go. Negroes even
then had the idea that there was in this country a place of
more privilege than those they enjoyed in the seaboard
colonies. Knowing of the likelihood of the Negroes to rise
during the French and Indian War, Governor Dinwiddie wrote
Fox one of the Secretaries of State in 1756: "We dare not
venture to part with any of our white men any distance, as
we must have a watchful eye over our Negro slaves, who are
upward of one hundred thousand."22
Brissot de Warville mentions in his Travels of 1788 several
examples of marriages of white and blacks in Pittsburgh. He
noted the case of a Negro who married an indentured French
servant woman. Out of this union came a desirable mulatto
girl who married a surgeon of Nantes then stationed at
Pittsburgh. His family was considered one of the most
respectable of the city. The Negro referred to was doing a
creditable business and his wife took it upon herself to
welcome foreigners, especially the French, who came that
way. Along the Ohio also there were several cases of women
of color living with unmarried white men; but this was
looked upon by the Negroes as detestable as was evidenced by
the fact that, if black women had a quarrel with a mulatto
woman, the former would reproach the latter for being of
ignoble blood.23
These tendencies, however, could not assure the Negro that
the Northwest Territory was to be an asylum for freedom when
in 1763 it passed into the hands of the British, the
promoters of the slave trade, and later to the independent
colonies, two of which had no desire to exterminate slavery.
Furthermore, when the Ordinance of 1787 with its famous
sixth article against slavery was proclaimed, it was soon
discovered that this document was not necessarily
emancipatory. As the right to hold slaves was guaranteed to
those who owned them prior to the passage of the Ordinance
of 1787, it was to be expected that those attached to that
institution would not indifferently see it pass away.
Various petitions, therefore, were sent to the territorial
legislature and to Congress praying that the sixth article
of the Ordinance of 1787 be abrogated.24
No formal action to this effect was taken, but the practice
of slavery was continued even at the winking of the
government. Some slaves came from the Canadians who, in
accordance with the slave trade laws of the British Empire,
were supplied with bondsmen. It was the Canadians themselves
who provided by act of parliament in 1793 for prohibiting
the importation of slaves and for gradual emancipation. When
it seemed later that the cause of freedom would eventually
triumph the proslavery element undertook to perpetuate
slavery through a system of indentured servant labor.
In the formation of the States of Indiana and Illinois the
question as to what should be done to harmonize with the new
constitution the system of indenture to which the
territorial legislatures had been committed, caused heated
debate and at times almost conflict. Both Indiana25
and Illinois26
finally incorporated into their constitutions compromise
provisions for a nominal prohibition of slavery modified by
clauses for the continuation of the system of indentured
labor of the Negroes held to service. The proslavery party
persistently struggled for some years to secure by the
interpretation of the laws, by legislation and even by
amending the constitution so to change the fundamental law
as to provide for actual slavery. These States, however,
gradually worked toward freedom in keeping with the spirit
of the majority who framed the constitution, despite the
fact that the indenture system in southern Illinois and
especially in Indiana was at times tantamount to slavery as
it was practiced in parts of the South.
It must be borne in mind here, however, that the North at
this time was far from becoming a place of refuge for
Negroes. In the first place, the industrial revolution had
not then had time to reduce the Negroes to the plane of
beasts in the cotton kingdom. The rigorous climate and the
industries of the northern people, moreover, were not
inviting to the blacks and the development of the carrying
trade and the rise of manufacturing there did not make that
section more attractive to unskilled labor. Furthermore,
when we consider the fact that there were many thousands of
Negroes in the Southern States the presence of a few in the
North must be regarded as insignificant. This paucity of
blacks then obtained especially in the Northwest Territory,
for its French inhabitants instead of being an exploiting
people were pioneering, having little use for slaves in
carrying out their policy of merely holding the country for
France. Moreover, like certain gentlemen from Virginia, who
after the American Revolution were afraid to bring their
slaves with them to occupy their bounty lands in Ohio, few
enterprising settlers from the slave States had invaded the
territory with their Negroes, not knowing whether or not
they would be secure in the possession of such property.
When we consider that in 1810 there were only 102,137
Negroes in the North and no more than 3,454 in the Northwest
Territory, we must look to the second decade of the
nineteenth century for the beginning of the migration of the
Negroes in the United States.
A Century of Negro Migration, March 31, 1918