A Century of Negro Migration | Page 2

economic aspect of the modern world, making slavery an
institution offering means of exploitation to those engaged in the
production of cotton. This revolution rendered necessary a large supply
of cheap labor for cotton culture, out of which the plantation system
grew. The Negro slaves, therefore, lost all hope of ever winning their
freedom in South Carolina and Georgia; and in Maryland, Virginia, and
North Carolina, where the sentiment in favor of abolition had been
favorable, there was a decided reaction which soon blighted their
hopes.[3] In the Northern commonwealths, however, the sentiment in
behalf of universal freedom, though at times dormant, was ever
apparent despite the attachment to the South of the trading classes of
northern cities, which profited by the slave trade and their commerce
with the slaveholding States. The Northern States maintaining this
liberal attitude developed, therefore, into an asylum for the Negroes
who were oppressed in the South.
The Negroes, however, were not generally welcomed in the North.
Many of the northerners who sympathized with the oppressed blacks in
the South never dreamt of having them as their neighbors. There were,
consequently, always two classes of anti-slavery people, those who
advocated the abolition of slavery to elevate the blacks to the dignity of
citizenship, and those who merely hoped to exterminate the institution
because it was an economic evil.[4] The latter generally believed that
the blacks constituted an inferior class that could not discharge the

duties of citizenship, and when the proposal to incorporate the blacks
into the body politic was clearly presented to these agitators their
anti-slavery ardor was decidedly dampened. Unwilling, however, to
take the position that a race should be doomed because of personal
objections, many of the early anti-slavery group looked toward
colonization for a solution of this problem.[5] Some thought of Africa,
but since the deportation of a large number of persons who had been
brought under the influence of modern civilization seemed cruel, the
most popular colonization scheme at first seemed to be that of settling
the Negroes on the public lands in the West. As this region had been
lately ceded, however, and no one could determine what use could be
made of it by white men, no such policy was generally accepted.
When this territory was ceded to the United States an effort to provide
for the government of it finally culminated in the proposed Ordinance
of 1784 carrying the provision that slavery should not exist in the
Northwest Territory after the year 1800.[6] This measure finally failed
to pass and fortunately too, thought some, because, had slavery been
given sixteen years of growth on that soil, it might not have been
abolished there until the Civil War or it might have caused such a
preponderance of slave commonwealths as to make the rebellion
successful. The Ordinance of 1784 was antecedent to the more
important Ordinance of 1787, which carried the famous sixth article
that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude except as a punishment
for crime should exist in that territory. At first, it was generally deemed
feasible to establish Negro colonies on that domain. Yet despite the
assurance of the Ordinance of 1787 conditions were such that one could
not determine exactly whether the Northwest Territory would be slave
or free.[7]
What then was the situation in this partly unoccupied territory? Slavery
existed in what is now the Northwest Territory from the time of the
early exploration and settlement of that region by the French. The first
slaves of white men were Indians. Though it is true that the red men
usually chose death rather than slavery, there were some of them that
bowed to the yoke. So many Pawnee Indians became bondsmen that
the word Pani became synonymous with slave in the West.[8] Western

Indians themselves, following the custom of white men, enslaved their
captives in war rather than choose the alternative of putting them to
death. In this way they were known to hold a number of blacks and
whites.
The enslavement of the black man by the whites in this section dates
from the early part of the eighteenth century. Being a part of the
Louisiana Territory which under France extended over the whole
Mississippi Valley as far as the Allegheny mountains, it was governed
by the same colonial regulations.[9] Slavery, therefore, had legal
standing in this territory. When Antoine Crozat, upon being placed in
control of Louisiana, was authorized to begin a traffic in slaves, Crozat
himself did nothing to carry out his plan. But in 1717 when the control
of the colony was transferred to the _Compagnie de l'Occident_ steps
were taken toward the importation of slaves. In 1719, when 500 Guinea
Negroes were brought over to serve in Lower Louisiana, Philip Francis
Renault imported 500 other bondsmen into Upper Louisiana or what
was