gateway for them to Canada, most of these refugees settled in towns of Southern Ontario not far from that city.  These were Dawn, Colchester, Elgin, Dresden, Windsor, Sandwich, Bush, Wilberforce, Hamilton, St. Catherines, Chatham, Riley, Anderton, London, Malden and Gonfield.[42] And their coming to Canada was not checked even by request from their enemies that they be turned away from that country as undesirables, for some of the white people there welcomed and assisted them.  Canadians later experienced a change in their attitude toward these refugees but these British Americans never made the life of the Negro there so intolerable as was the case in some of the free States.

It should be observed here that this movement, unlike the exodus of the Negroes of today, affected an unequal distribution of the enlightened Negroes.[43] Those who are fleeing from the South today are largely laborers seeking economic opportunities.  The motive at work in the mind of the antebellum refugee was higher.  In 1840 there were more intelligent blacks in the South than in the North but not so after 1850, despite the vigorous execution of the Fugitive Slave Law in some parts of the North.  While the free Negro population of the slave States increased only 23,736 from 1850 to 1860, that of the free States increased 29,839.  In the South, only Delaware, Maryland and North Carolina showed a noticeable increase in the number of free persons of color during the decade immediately preceding the Civil War.  This element of the population had only slightly increased in Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, Virginia, Louisiana, South Carolina and the District of Columbia.  The number of free Negroes of Florida remained constant.  Those of Arkansas, Mississippi and Texas diminished.  In the North, of course, the migration had caused the tendency to be in the other direction.  With the exception of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and New York which had about the same free colored population in 1860 as they had in 1850 there was a general increase in the number of Negroes in the free States.  Ohio led in this respect, having had during this period an increase of 11,394.[44] A glance at the table on the accompanying page will show in detail the results of this migration.

STATISTICS OF THE FREE COLORED POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES

State Population
                                1850 1860
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Alabama.................... 2,265 2,690
Arkansas................... 608 144
California................. 962 4,086
Connecticut................ 7,693 8,627
Delaware................... 18,073 19,829
Florida...................... 932 932
Georgia...................... 2,931 3,500
Illinois..................... 5,436 7,628