| Free colored Pop. in 1830. | Increase 1820-1830. | |
|---|---|---|
| Maine, | 1,190 | 261 |
| New Hampshire, | 604 | |
| Vermont, | 881 | |
| Massachusetts, | 7,048 | 308 |
| Rhode Island, | 3,561 | 7 |
| Connecticut, | 8,047 | 177 |
| New York, | 44,870 | 15,591 |
| New Jersey, | 18,303 | 5,843 |
| Pennsylvania, | 37,950 | 7,828 |
| Delaware, | 15,855 | 2,627 |
| Maryland, | 52,938 | 13,208 |
| Virginia, | 47,348 | 10,459 |
| North Carolina, | 19,543 | 4,931 |
| South Carolina, | 7,921 | 1,207 |
| Georgia, | 2,486 | 723 |
| Alabama, | 1,572 | 1,001 |
| Mississippi, | 519 | 61 |
| Louisiana, | 16,710 | 6,234 |
| Tennessee, | 4,555 | 2,008 |
| Kentucky, | 4,917 | 1,158 |
| Ohio, | 9,568 | 4,745 |
| Indiana, | 3,729 | 2,399 |
| Illinois, | 1,637 | 1,180 |
| Missouri, | 569 | 222 |
| Michigan Ter. | 261 | 87 |
| Arkansas Ter. | 141 | 82 |
| Florida Territory, | 844 | |
| Dist. of Columbia, | 6,152 | 2,124 |
By this table it appears that the total number of free blacks in 1830, was 319,599. The number in 1820 was, according to Niles’s Register, 233,398, yielding an increase during the intervening ten years, of 86,201. This last statement will be found to vary a little from the sum total of the third column above, owing to discrepancies in the published documents. Blanks are left in the third column opposite to New Hampshire and Vermont, as in those states the numbers, instead of increasing, actually diminished. In the latter state they diminished 37, and in the former, 182. Some tables make the diminution in New Hampshire amount to 321. It is worthy of particular inquiry to ascertain the causes of this rapid diminution. It will be perceived that the progress of this population in the middle and some of the southern states, is very rapid, compared with its increase in New England. This is to be attributed to the progress of emancipation. For instance, in New York there were more than 10,000 slaves in 1820, which number was reduced in 1830 to 75. The increase of free blacks in Maryland, and Virginia, is to be attributed partly to the same cause. Their very small increase in the New England States, while the whites are gaining very rapidly, forcibly illustrates the misery of their condition.
II. Civil Disabilities.
Under this head are to be comprised all those disabilities which attach to free colored persons by the laws of the several states.
1. The most extensive and universal disability (by many, however, considered a privilege) regards the militia. The laws of the several states relating to the militia, being founded upon the militia system adopted by the United States, provide for the exemption of colored persons from that service. With this exception the laws of many of the states recognise no distinctions of color.
2. The right of suffrage is confined to whites in Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri. In these states express provisions of their constitutions confine the right of suffrage to the whites. In the ten remaining states no constitutional restrictions of the kind appear to have been imposed upon free colored persons. Yet, it is believed, that the statute laws of North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee, impose similar restrictions. In most of the remaining states, it is probable that the right of suffrage is rarely, if ever, exercised by this class of citizens, although no law may exist which disfranchises them. The burdens of taxation are, so far as known, imposed without the discrimination which prevails in regard to the right of suffrage. In Philadelphia, and perhaps in other places in Pennsylvania, no personal tax is imposed, the payment of such a tax being necessary to qualify for the right of suffrage.
3. In many of the States free colored persons are excluded by law from the privilege of holding office; and where this is not the case, the presumption is that in those states where they are not allowed to vote, they would not be allowed to govern. It is not known that any such person has ever been elected to office, even in those states where the right of suffrage is extended to them.
4. In a few of the states only, are there any laws expressly forbidding intermarriage between the blacks and the whites.
5. Free persons of color are, in most of the states, allowed to purchase and hold property, real and personal, and mixed, and are entitled to the same protection in its enjoyment, and the same redress for injuries to it or to their persons, as the white citizens. In some states, however, the tenure of their property is very insecure without a white guardian, as they are not allowed to testify against the whites, or in cases where a white man is party.
6. As to privileges in courts of justice, in Missouri, free colored persons can testify only in suits between free blacks, and on trials of free blacks for crime. The laws of Alabama are of similar import. In Delaware they cannot give evidence against a white person, except in criminal prosecutions, upon its appearing that no white person, competent to give testimony, was present at the commission of the act charged, or that such person, if so present, has since died, or is absent from the state so that he cannot be produced as a witness. In Maryland, they may be witnesses only for and against their own color. Such is the case in Ohio, Georgia, and probably in most of the slave-holding states. In most of the free states it is presumed that the testimony of blacks is received on an equal footing with that of the whites.