A Century of Negro Migration | Page 4

section even when it was controlled
by the French prior to the American Revolution. Slaves who reached
the West by this route caused trouble between the French and the
British colonists. Advertising in 1746 for James Wenyam, a slave,
Richard Colgate, his master, said that he swore to a Negro whom he
endeavored to induce to go with him, that he had often been in the
backwoods with his master and that he would go to the French and
Indians and fight for them.[20] In an advertisement for a mulatto slave
in 1755 Thomas Ringold, his master, expressed fear that he had
escaped by the same route to the French. He, therefore, said: "It seems
to be the interest, at least, of every gentleman that has slaves, to be
active in the beginning of these attempts, for whilst we have the French
such near neighbors, we shall not have the least security in that kind of
property."[21]
The good treatment which these slaves received among the French, and
especially at Pittsburgh the gateway to the Northwest Territory, tended
to make that city an asylum for those slaves who had sufficient spirit of
adventure to brave the wilderness through which they had to go.
Negroes even then had the idea that there was in this country a place of

more privilege than those they enjoyed in the seaboard colonies.
Knowing of the likelihood of the Negroes to rise during the French and
Indian War, Governor Dinwiddie wrote Fox one of the Secretaries of
State in 1756: "We dare not venture to part with any of our white men
any distance, as we must have a watchful eye over our Negro slaves,
who are upward of one hundred thousand."[22] Brissot de Warville
mentions in his _Travels of 1788_ several examples of marriages of
white and blacks in Pittsburgh. He noted the case of a Negro who
married an indentured French servant woman. Out of this union came a
desirable mulatto girl who married a surgeon of Nantes then stationed
at Pittsburgh. His family was considered one of the most respectable of
the city. The Negro referred to was doing a creditable business and his
wife took it upon herself to welcome foreigners, especially the French,
who came that way. Along the Ohio also there were several cases of
women of color living with unmarried white men; but this was looked
upon by the Negroes as detestable as was evidenced by the fact that, if
black women had a quarrel with a mulatto woman, the former would
reproach the latter for being of ignoble blood.[23]
These tendencies, however, could not assure the Negro that the
Northwest Territory was to be an asylum for freedom when in 1763 it
passed into the hands of the British, the promoters of the slave trade,
and later to the independent colonies, two of which had no desire to
exterminate slavery. Furthermore, when the Ordinance of 1787 with its
famous sixth article against slavery was proclaimed, it was soon
discovered that this document was not necessarily emancipatory. As the
right to hold slaves was guaranteed to those who owned them prior to
the passage of the Ordinance of 1787, it was to be expected that those
attached to that institution would not indifferently see it pass away.
Various petitions, therefore, were sent to the territorial legislature and
to Congress praying that the sixth article of the Ordinance of 1787 be
abrogated.[24] No formal action to this effect was taken, but the
practice of slavery was continued even at the winking of the
government. Some slaves came from the Canadians who, in accordance
with the slave trade laws of the British Empire, were supplied with
bondsmen. It was the Canadians themselves who provided by act of
parliament in 1793 for prohibiting the importation of slaves and for

gradual emancipation. When it seemed later that the cause of freedom
would eventually triumph the proslavery element undertook to
perpetuate slavery through a system of indentured servant labor.
In the formation of the States of Indiana and Illinois the question as to
what should be done to harmonize with the new constitution the system
of indenture to which the territorial legislatures had been committed,
caused heated debate and at times almost conflict. Both Indiana[25] and
Illinois[26] finally incorporated into their constitutions compromise
provisions for a nominal prohibition of slavery modified by clauses for
the continuation of the system of indentured labor of the Negroes held
to service. The proslavery party persistently struggled for some years to
secure by the interpretation of the laws, by legislation and even by
amending the constitution so to change the fundamental law as to
provide for actual slavery. These States, however, gradually worked
toward freedom in keeping with the spirit of the majority who framed
the constitution, despite the