CHAPTER V

THE SUCCESSFUL MIGRANT

The reader will naturally be interested in learning exactly what these thousands of Negroes did on free soil.  To estimate these achievements the casual reader of contemporary testimony would now, as such persons did then, find it decidedly easy.  He would say that in spite of the unfailing aid which philanthropists gave the blacks, they seldom kept themselves above want and, therefore, became a public charge, afflicting their communities with so much poverty, disease and crime that they were considered the lepers of society.  The student of history, however, must look beyond these comments for the whole truth.  One must take into consideration the fact that in most cases these Negroes escaped as fugitives without sufficient food and clothing to comfort them until they could reach free soil, lacking the small fund with which the pioneer usually provided himself in going to establish a home in the wilderness, and lacking, above all, initiative of which slavery had deprived them.  Furthermore, these refugees with few exceptions had to go to places where they were not wanted and in some cases to points from which they were driven as undesirables, although preparation for their coming had sometimes gone to the extent of purchasing homes and making provision for employment upon arrival.[1] Several well-established Negro settlements in the North, moreover, were broken up by the slave hunters after the passing of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.[2]

The increasing intensity of the hatred of the Negroes must be understood too both as a cause and result of their intolerable condition.  Prior to 1800 the Negroes of the North were in fair circumstances.  Until that time it was generally believed that the whites and the blacks would soon reach the advanced stage of living together on a basis of absolute equality.[3] The Negroes had not at that time exceeded the number that could be assimilated by the sympathizing communities in that section.  The intolerable legislation of the South, however, forced so many free Negroes in the rough to crowd northern cities during the first four decades of the nineteenth century that they could not be easily readjusted.  The number seeking employment far exceeded the demand for labor and thus multiplied the number of vagrants and paupers, many of whom had already been forced to this condition by the Irish and Germans then immigrating into northern cities.  At one time, as in the case of Philadelphia, the Negroes constituting a small fraction of the population furnished one half of the criminals.[4] A radical opposition to the Negro followed, therefore, arousing first the laboring classes and finally alienating the support of the well-to-do people and the press.  This condition obtained until 1840 in most northern communities and until 1850 in some places where the Negro population was considerable.