A Century of Negro Migration | Page 5

the industrial revolution had not then had time to reduce the Negroes to the plane of beasts in the cotton kingdom. The rigorous climate and the industries of the northern people, moreover, were not inviting to the blacks and the development of the carrying trade and the rise of manufacturing there did not make that section more attractive to unskilled labor. Furthermore, when we consider the fact that there were many thousands of Negroes in the Southern States the presence of a few in the North must be regarded as insignificant. This paucity of blacks then obtained especially in the Northwest Territory, for its French inhabitants instead of being an exploiting people were pioneering, having little use for slaves in carrying out their policy of merely holding the country for France. Moreover, like certain gentlemen from Virginia, who after the American Revolution were afraid to bring their slaves with them to occupy their bounty lands in Ohio, few enterprising settlers from the slave States had invaded the territory with their Negroes, not knowing whether or not they would be secure in the possession of such property. When we consider that in 1810 there were only 102,137 Negroes in the North and no more than 3,454 in the Northwest Territory, we must look to the second decade of the nineteenth century for the beginning of the migration of the Negroes in the United States.
[Footnote 1: Locke, _Anti-Slavery_, pp. 19, 20, 23; _Works of John Woolman_, pp. 58, 73; and Moore, _Notes on Slavery in Massachusetts_, p. 71.]
[Footnote 2: Bassett, _Federalist System_, chap. xii. Hart, _Slavery and Abolition_, pp. 153, 154.]
[Footnote 3: Turner, _The Rise of the New West_, pp. 45, 46, 47, 48, 49; Hammond, _Cotton Industry_, chaps. i and ii; Scherer, _Cotton as a World Power_, pp. 168, 175.]
[Footnote 4: Locke, _Anti-Slavery_, chaps. i and ii.]
[Footnote 5: Jay, _An Inquiry_, p. 30.]
[Footnote 6: Ford edition, _Jefferson's Writings_, III, p. 432.]
[Footnote 7: For the passage of this ordinance three reasons have been given: Slavery then prior to the invention of the cotton gin was considered a necessary evil in the South. The expected monopoly of the tobacco and indigo cultivation in the South would be promoted by excluding Negroes from the Northwest Territory and thus preventing its cultivation there. Dr. Cutler's influence aided by Mr. Grayson of Virginia was of much assistance. The philanthropic idea was not so prominent as men have thought.--Dunn, _Indiana_, p. 212.]
[Footnote 8: Ibid., p. 254.]
[Footnote 9: Code Noir.]
[Footnote 10: Speaking of these settlements in 1750, M. Viner, a Jesuit Missionary to the Indians, said: "We have here Whites, Negroes, and Indians, to say nothing of cross-breeds--There are five French villages and three villages of the natives within a space of twenty-one leagues--In the five French villages there are perhaps eleven hundred whites, three hundred blacks, and some sixty red slaves or savages." Unlike the condition of the slaves in Lower Louisiana where the rigid enforcement of the Slave Code made their lives almost intolerable, the slaves of the Northwest Territory were for many reasons much more fortunate. In the first place, subject to the control of a mayor-commandant appointed by the Governor of New Orleans, the early dwellers in this territory managed their plantations about as they pleased. Moreover, as there were few planters who owned as many as three or four Negroes, slavery in the Northwest Territory did not get far beyond the patriarchal stage. Slaves were usually well fed. The relations between master and slave were friendly. The bondsmen were allowed special privileges on Sundays and holidays and their children were taught the catechism according to the ordinance of Louis XIV in 1724, which provided that all masters should educate their slaves in the Apostolic Catholic religion and have them baptized. Male slaves were worked side by side in the fields with their masters and the female slaves in neat attire went with their mistresses to matins and vespers. Slaves freely mingled in practically all festive enjoyments.--See _Jesuit Relations_, LXIX, p. 144; Hutchins, _An Historical Narrative_, 1784; and Code Noir.]
[Footnote 11: Mention was thereafter made of slaves as in the case of Captain Philip Pittman who in 1770 wrote of one Mr. Beauvais, "who owned 240 orpens of cultivated land and eighty slaves; and such a case as that of a Captain of a militia at St. Philips, possessing twenty blacks; and the case of Mr. Bales, a very rich man of St. Genevieve, Illinois, owning a hundred Negroes, beside having white people constantly employed."--See Captain Pittman's _The Present State of the European Settlements in the Mississippi_, 1770.]
[Footnote 12: Dunn, _Indiana_, chap. vi.]
[Footnote 13: Hinsdale, _Old Northwest_, p. 350.]
[Footnote 14: _Tyrannical Libertymen_, pp. 10, 11; Locke, _Anti-Slavery_, pp. 31, 32; Brannagan, _Serious Remonstrance_, p. 18.]
[Footnote 15: Washington edition of _Jefferson's Writings_, chap. vi, p.