The Journal of Negro History | Page 2

fugitive thus
illegally employed could recover fifty cents a day for the services of his
slave.[5]
As the fear of Negro immigration increased the law of 1804 was found
to be inadequate. In 1807, therefore, the legislature enacted another
measure providing that no Negro should be permitted to settle in Ohio
unless he could within twenty days give a bond to the amount of $500,
guaranteeing his good behavior and support. The fine for concealing a
fugitive was raised from $50 to $100, one half of which should go to
the informer. Negro evidence against the white man was prohibited.[6]
This law together with that of 1830 making the Negro ineligible for
service in the State militia, that of 1831 depriving persons of color of
the privilege of serving upon juries, and that of 1838 prohibiting the
education of colored children at the expense of the State, constituted
what were known as the "Black Laws."[7]
Up to 1826, however, the Negroes of Cincinnati had not become a
cause of much trouble. Very little mention of them is made in the
records of this period. They were not wanted in this city but were
tolerated as a negligible factor. D. B. Warden, a traveler through the
West in 1819, observed that the blacks of Cincinnati were
"good-humoured, garrulous, and profligate, generally disinclined to
laborious occupations, and prone to the performance of light and
menial drudgery." Here the traveler was taking effect for cause. "Some
few," said he, "exercise the humbler trades, and some appear to have
formed a correct conception of the objects and value of property, and
are both industrious and economical. A large proportion of them are
reputed, and perhaps correctly, to be habituated to petit larceny." But
this had not become a grave offence, for he said that not more than one
individual had been corporally punished by the courts since the
settlement of the town.[8]
When, however, the South reached the conclusion that free Negroes
were an evil, and Quakers and philanthropists began to direct these
unfortunates to the Northwest Territory for colonization, a great

commotion arose in Southern Ohio and especially in Cincinnati.[9]
How rapid this movement was, may be best observed by noticing the
statistics of this period. There were 337 Negroes in Ohio in 1800; 1,890
in 1810; 4,723 in 1820; 9,586 in 1830; 17,342 in 1840; and 25,279 in
1850.[10] Now Cincinnati had 410 Negroes in 1819;[11] 690 in
1826;[12] 2,255 in 1840;[13] and 3,237 in 1850.[14]
It was during the period between 1826 and 1840 that Cincinnati had to
grapple with the problem of the immigrating Negroes and the poor
whites from the uplands of Virginia and Kentucky. With some
ill-informed persons the question was whether that section should be
settled by white men or Negroes. The situation became more alarming
when the Southern philanthropic minority sometimes afforded a man
like a master of Pittsylvania County, Virginia, who settled 70 freedmen
in Lawrence County, Ohio, in one day.[15] It became unusually acute
in Cincinnati because of the close social and commercial relations
between that city and the slave States. Early in the nineteenth century
Cincinnati became a manufacturing center to which the South learned
to look for supplies of machinery, implements, furniture, and food.[16]
The business men prospering thereby were not advocates of slavery but
rather than lose trade by acquiring the reputation of harboring fugitive
slaves or frightening away whites by encouraging the immigration of
Negroes, they began to assume the attitude of driving the latter from
those parts.
From this time until the forties the Negroes were a real issue in
Cincinnati. During the late twenties they not only had to suffer from the
legal disabilities provided in the "Black Laws," but had to withstand the
humiliation of a rigid social ostracism.[17] They were regarded as
intruders and denounced as an idle, profligate and criminal class with
whom a self-respecting white man could not afford to associate. Their
children were not permitted to attend the public schools and few
persons braved the inconveniences of living under the stigma of
teaching a "nigger school." Negroes were not welcome in the white
churches and when they secured admission thereto they had to go to the
"black pew." Colored ministers were treated with very little
consideration by the white clergy as they feared that they might lose
caste and be compelled to give up their churches. The colored people
made little or no effort to go to white theaters or hotels and did not

attempt to ride in public conveyances on equal footing with members
of the other race. Not even white and colored children dared to play
together to the extent that such was permitted in the South.[18]
This situation became more serious when it extended to pursuits of
labor. White laborers there, as