Foreign Immigrants Cow the Negro Voter wealth of its free negro population "by removal or otherwise."* This was the typical attitude of the South towards the freeman of color. Thus, North or South, he was a man without a country. Though New York at this time contained nearly fifty thousand of this population—which in a State having manhood suffrage would give ten thousand voters-only about one thousand were voters; not so much because they lacked the constitutional qualifications as that they did not dare to vote. Hostility to the negro voter was intensified by foreign immigration. Few Irishmen felt constrained to allow a negro to vote. As free schools overspread the land, particularly the North, the free negro had to deny himself further. Yellow-fever or the small-pox would not more suddenly and surely break up a school than the presence of a negro pupil. Nor has racial hostility of this kind yet wholly disappeared. In the far North—as in New Hampshire, Vermont, Northern New York, and Michigan-a negro child was somewhat of a curiosity and was suffered to attend school in peace. A Chinese baby or a papoose would have been given the same passing attention. But Northern patience with the free negro's delinquencies was short; perhaps shorter than Southern. Somewhat paradoxically, the abolition sentiment was strongest in the cold parts of Vermont, and the laws enacted against runaway slaves the black code in general-were * Virginia, constitution of 1850, Art. iv., Secs. 20, 21. most terrible in tropical Louisiana. met in Virginia. Extremes From the border States to the great lakes ran the various branches of the underground railroad. Thousands of fugitive slaves reached Canada over this line. Its management baffled Governors, sheriffs, and constables. The men and women who kept its "stations" were among the most respectable and intelligent in their community. They held slavocracy, and its aiders and abettors, in contempt. They thought it a virtue to break the fugitive-slave law. They were the only people in the North who treated negroes as they treated other men and women. But their work was done in secrecy, often in fear, and under the cover of night; and sometimes, when the fugitive was in sight of safety, the law seized him and thrust him back into slavery. *At the mouth of the sixteen-mile creek, in Erie County, Pennsylvania, lived a Whig farmer named Crawford. His house stood in a grove of locust-trees, a few rods from the beach of Lake Erie. He was an agent on the mysterious road, whose frightened dusky passengers were moved at night, secretly, from station to station. One evening in early autumn, at which time the Lake Shore country of to-day is radiant with the odor of the vineyards, and the Virginia creeper hangs in prismatic hues about the trunks of the oak and the fruitful chestnut, a peculiar knock was heard at Crawford's door. There stood a neighbor named Cass, an Englishman who had recently started a woollen mill near by. Mrs. Crawford assured him that the family was alone. He gave a low whistle, and a man timidly came out of the bushes and drew near. He was a fugitive slave from North Carolina. He was kindly received, was given his supper, and put to bed in the spare room. About two o'clock in the morning he was suddenly aroused. Another neighbor, John Glass by name, who had a foundry at the mouth of the creek, had re Strong Race Hatred in the North Hostility towards the free black was due in the North principally to racial prejudice. This showed itself in various ways. Negroes were forbidden to learn trades in the South except as their owner ported danger. The sheriff was in the village about a mile to the south, and in the morning would surely search Crawford's house, for he was known to be an Abolitionist, and was suspected of secreting slaves. The frightened negro begged to be taken at once across the lake, which is here about sixty miles wide. With Canada in sight, must he be dragged back into slavery? The men were in doubt what to do, when Mrs. Crawford suggested that the negro go at once with Glass to his foundry, where he should be stowed in the bottom of a great wagon, be covered with frames and patterns, and be started at once for Erie, sixteen miles away. Glass often made the trip in his business, and, as he always started before daylight, his wagon would not excite suspicion. As soon as the negro was gone Mrs. Crawford called her eldest son and bade him finish his sleep in the negro's bed. If the sheriff asked him any questions, he could say that he had not seen the negro and he had a bad cough. His younger brother was left in the bed where the two had been sleeping. Early in the morning the sheriff appeared, read his warrant, and began searching the house. He was compelled to be satisfied with the family's explanations, and went away, turning his horse's head towards Erie. Glass had some five hours' start, and was now rapidly approaching the city. He had stopped, as usual with travellers, at the half-way house, where he watered his horses, leaving them for a few moments while he got a hasty breakfast. He was about driving on when a farmer, who lived some miles to the east, now on his way home from Erie, drew up to water his team. He had left Erie about the time Glass had left his home. As it became light enough for him to read, he noticed here and there posted on the trees an offer of a large reward for the capture of one Ned, a runaway slave from North Carolina. The reward was larger than usual. As he was watering his horses it occurred to him to mention the reward to Glass, and, stepping forward, while talking, his eyes ran over the load of frames and patterns. Quickly he detected the negro beneath them. Knowing that Glass was an Abolitionist, for he himself was an equally ardent pro-slavery Democrat, he at might consent, for his own purposes. Usually, on a large plantation, there were carpenters and cobblers and blacksmiths among the slaves, but rarely any one who could do a piece of work requiring skill. In the North no man wanted a negro apprentice, and, except at farm-work in the same field, no man was seen associated with a ne once took in the situation. Discreetly concealing his discovery, he jumped into his wagon and started his horses rapidly towards his house and the constable's. Glass, with equal speed, started for Erie, to deliver the negro into the hands of a faithful captain, who could be relied on to take him across the lake. He suspected that the negro had been discovered and that the man would not hesitate to betray him for the reward. Meanwhile, the sheriff was galloping rapidly towards Erie, when he met the informer and the news he was seeking. Quickly agreeing about payment of the reward, he spurred on after the foundryman. Glass had reached the dock and had driven into a shed, where, concealed from public view, the negro was quickly handed over to the captain. He was put into a dory, covered with tarpaulin, and rowed to a little sloop at anchor in the bay. Just as he was climbing on board, the sheriff appeared on the wharf, quickly detected the negro, and soon had him in his possession, chained and manacled. At once the bewildered negro was roughly started towards the South, was returned to his master, and lost in slavery. The reward, a small fortune for those times, was paid to the informer. Fifty years after the event its incidents were related to me by the woman who so zealously strove to give liberty to the wretched African. With old age had come total blindness, "but," said she, “my sight was not taken away before I was permitted to see slavery abolished. And more—though it is not for me to tell it—the blood - money received for that poor negro brought wretchedness to three generations of the informer's family, and, strange to say, was finally lost in speculating in Southern lands. 'Justice and judgment are the habitation of Thy throne; mercy and truth shall go before Thy face."" *By the Georgia act of December 27, 1845, to contract with a free person of color as a mechanic or mason, to erect or repair a building, was punishable by a fine of two hundred dollars. Forcing the Negro from the Labor Market gro in work. Massachusetts complained, through its Legislature, in 1821,* that free negroes were forced into Northern States, and specially into Massachusetts, where they became a disorderly, indolent, and corrupt population in the larger towns. Yet in these they were excluded from the schools, and from any kind of labor except that of the lowest grade. In New York, and Philadelphia also, the Northern cities in which they were most numerous, they were rigorously excluded from the schools, and as soon as foreign immigration set in and the Irish began to contend for occupation as unskilled laborers, the era of labor riots began, in which public opinion was outrageously on the side of the aggressors. It is not strange that the North catalogued free negroes as a part of the criminal class.† Nothing else was left to them than to play the part of social outcasts. The Massachusetts House of Representatives expressed Northern opinion in its resolutions against the substitution of free negroes "in occupations which, in the end, it would be more advantageous to have performed by the white native population." + The Northern churches, like the Southern, tolerated black skins in the congregation, chiefly because there is no overcrowding on the road to heav * Resolution of House of Representatives, June 4, 1821. This is brought out in the discussion of negro suffrage in the constitutional conventions of New York in 1821 and 1846; in that of Pennsylvania in 1838. Resolution of House of Representatives, June 4, 1821. |