There early began to be some internal development and growth of self-consciousness among the Negroes:  for instance, in New England towns Negro “governors” were elected.  This was partly an African custom transplanted and partly an endeavor to put the regulation of the slaves into their own hands.  Negroes voted in those days:  for instance, in North Carolina until 1835 the Constitution extended the franchise to every freeman, and when Negroes were disfranchised in 1835, several hundred colored men were deprived of the vote.  In fact, as Albert Bushnell Hart says, “In the colonies freed Negroes, like freed indentured white servants, acquired property, founded families, and came into the political community if they had the energy, thrift, and fortune to get the necessary property."[94]

The humanitarian movement of the eighteenth century was active toward Negroes, because of the part which they played in the Revolutionary War.  Negro regiments and companies were raised in Connecticut and Rhode Island, and a large number of Negroes were members of the continental armies elsewhere.  Individual Negroes distinguished themselves.  It is estimated that five thousand Negroes fought in the American armies.

The mass of the Americans considered at the time of the adoption of the Constitution that Negro slavery was doomed.  There soon came a series of laws emancipating slaves in the North:  Vermont began in 1779, followed by judicial decision in Massachusetts in 1780 and gradual emancipation in Pennsylvania beginning the same year; emancipation was accomplished in New Hampshire in 1783, and in Connecticut and Rhode Island in 1784.  The momentous exclusion of slavery in the Northwest Territory took place in 1787, and gradual emancipation began in New York and New Jersey in 1799 and 1804.

Beneficial and insurance societies began to appear among colored people.  Nearly every town of any size in Virginia in the early eighteenth century had Negro organizations for caring for the sick and burying the dead.  As the number of free Negroes increased, particularly in the North, these financial societies began to be openly formed.  One of the earliest was the Free African Society of Philadelphia.  This eventually became the present African Methodist Church, which has to-day half a million members and over eleven million dollars’ worth of property.

Negroes began to be received into the white church bodies in separate congregations, and before 1807 there is the record of the formation of eight such Negro churches.  This brought forth leaders who were usually preachers in these churches.  Richard Allen, the founder of the African Methodist Church, was one; Lot Carey, one of the founders of Liberia, was another.  In the South there was John Chavis, who passed through a regular course of studies at what is now Washington and Lee University.  He started a school for young white men in North Carolina and had among his pupils a United States senator, sons of a chief justice of North Carolina, a governor of the state, and many others.  He was a full-blooded Negro, but a Southern writer says that “all accounts agree that John Chavis was a gentleman.  He was received socially among the best whites and asked to table."[95]