Most of the negroes who procured freedom remained in the United States, though all of those who gained it by flight and many of those manumitted had to shift their location at the time of changing their status.  At least one of the fugitives, however, made known his preference for his native district in a manner which cost him his liberty.  After two years in Ohio and Canada he returned to the old plantation in Georgia, where he was welcomed with a command to take up the hoe.  Rejecting this implement, he proposed to buy himself if a thousand dollars would suffice.  When his master, declining to negotiate, ordered him into custody he stabbed one of the negroes who seized him.  At the end of the episode the returned wanderer lay in jail; but where his money was, or whether in truth he had any, is not recorded.[18] Among some of those manumitted and sent out of their original states as by law required, disappointment and homesickness were distressingly keen.  A group of them who had been carried to New York in 1852 under the will of a Mr. Cresswell of Louisiana, found themselves in such misery there that they begged the executor to carry them back, saying he might keep them as slaves or sell them—­that they had been happy before but were wretched now.[19]

[Footnote 18:  Cassville, Ga., Standard, May 31, 1858, reprinted in the Federal Union (Milledgeville, Ga.), June 8, 1858.]

[Footnote 19:  DeBow’s Review, XIV, 90.]

The slaves manumitted for meritorious service and those who bought themselves formed together an element of substantial worth in the Southern free colored population.  Testamentary endorsement like that which Abel P. Upshur gave on freeing his man David Rich—­“I recommend him in the strongest manner to the respect, esteem and confidence of any community in which he may live"[20]—­are sufficiently eloquent in the premises.  Those who bought themselves were similarly endorsed in many instances, and the very fact of their self purchase was usually a voucher of thrift and sobriety.  Many of those freed on either of these grounds were of mixed blood; and to them were added the mulatto and quadroon children set free by their white fathers, with particular frequency in Louisiana, who by virtue oftentimes of gifts in lands, goods and moneys were in the propertied class from the time of their manumission.  The recruits joining the free colored population through all of these channels tended, together with their descendants, to be industrious, well-mannered and respected members of society.

[Footnote 20:  William C. Nell, The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution (Boston, 1855), pp. 215, 216.  For a similar item see Garland’s Randolph, p. 151.]