The decade 1840-50 was a period of hope and uplift for the Negro group, with clear evidences of distinct self-assertion and advance.  A few well-trained lawyers and physicians appeared, and colored men took their place among the abolition orators.  The catering business in Philadelphia and other cities fell largely into their hands, and some small merchants arose here and there.  Above all, Frederick Douglass made his first speech in 1841 and thereafter became one of the most prominent figures in the abolition crusade.  A new series of national conventions began to assemble late in the forties, and the delegates were drawn from the artisans and higher servants, showing a great increase of efficiency in the rank and file of the free Negroes.

By 1850 the Negroes had increased to three and a half million.  Those in Canada were being organized in settlements and were accumulating property.  The escape of fugitive slaves was systematized and some of the most representative conventions met.  One particularly, in 1854, grappled frankly with the problem of emigration.  It looked as though it was going to be impossible for Negroes to remain in the United States and be free.  As early as 1788 a Negro union of Newport, Rhode Island, had proposed a general exodus to Africa.  John and Paul Cuffe, after petitioning for the right to vote in 1780, started in 1815 for Africa, organizing an expedition at their own expense which cost four thousand dollars.  Lot Carey organized the African Mission Society in 1813, and the first Negro college graduate went to Liberia in 1829 and became superintendent of public schools.  The Colonization Society encouraged this migration, and the Negroes themselves had organized the Canadian exodus.

The Rochester Negro convention in 1853 pronounced against migration, but nevertheless emissaries were sent in various directions to see what inducements could be offered.  One went to the Niger valley, one to Central America, and one to Hayti.  The Haytian trip was successful and about two thousand black emigrants eventually settled in Hayti.

Delaney, who went to Africa, concluded a treaty with eight kings offering inducements to Negroes, but nothing came of it.  In 1853 Negroes like Purvis and Barbadoes helped in the formation of the American Anti-slavery society, and for a while colored men cooeperated with John Brown and probably would have given him considerable help if they had thoroughly known his plans.  As it was, six or seven of his twenty-two followers were Negroes.

Meantime the slave power was impelled by the high price of slaves and the exhaustion of cotton land to make increased demands.  Slavery was forced north of Mason and Dixon’s line in 1820; a new slave empire with thousands of slaves was annexed in 1850, and a fugitive slave law was passed which endangered the liberty of every free Negro; finally a determined attempt was made to force slavery into the Northwest in competition with free white labor, and less effective but powerful movements arose to annex more slave territory to the south and to reopen the African slave trade.