During the same period, and especially from 1820 to 1835, a more continuous and effective migration of southern Negroes was being promoted by the Quakers of Virginia and North Carolina.[1] One of their purposes was educational. Convinced that the "buying, selling, and holding of men in slavery" is a sin, these Quakers with a view to future manumission had been "careful of the moral and intellectual training of such as they held in servitude."[2] To elevate their slaves to the plane of men, southern Quakers early hit upon the scheme of establishing in the Northwest such Negroes as they had by education been able to equip for living as citizens. When the reaction in the South made it impossible for the Quakers to continue their policy of enlightening the colored people, these philanthropists promoted the migration of the blacks to the Northwest Territory with still greater zeal. Most of these settlements were made in Hamilton, Howard, Wayne, Randolph, Vigo, Gibson, Grant, Rush, and Tipton Counties, Indiana, and in Darke County, Ohio.[3] Prominent among these promoters was Levi Coffin, the Quaker Abolitionist of North Carolina, and reputed President of the Underground Railroad. He left his State and settled among Negroes at Newport, Indiana.[4] Associated with these leaders also were Benjamin Lundy of Tennessee and James G. Birney, once a slaveholder of Huntsville, Alabama. The latter manumitted his slaves and apprenticed and educated some of them in Ohio.[5]
[Footnote 1: Wright, "Negro Rural Communities" (Southern Workman, vol. xxxvii., p. 158); and Bassett, Slavery in North Carolina, p. 68.]
[Footnote 2: A Brief Statement of the Rise and Progress of the
Testimony, etc.]
[Footnote 3: Wright, "Rural Negro Communities in Indiana" (Southern
Workman, vol. xxxvii., pp. 162-166); and Bassett, Slavery in North
Carolina, pp. 67 and 68.]
[Footnote 4: Coffin, Reminiscences, p. 106.]
[Footnote 5: Birney, James G. Birney and His Times, p. 139.]
The importance of this movement to the student of education lies in the fact that it effected an unequal distribution of intelligent Negroes. The most ambitious and enlightened ones were fleeing to free territory. As late as 1840 there were more intelligent blacks in the South than in the North.[1] The number of southern colored people who could read was then decidedly larger than that of such persons found in the free States. The continued migration of Negroes to the North, despite the operation of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, made this distribution more unequal. While the free colored population of the slave States increased only 23,736 from 1850 to 1860, that of the free States increased 29,839. In the South only Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, and North Carolina showed a noticeable increase in the number of free persons of color during the decade immediately preceding the Civil War. This element of the population had only slightly increased in Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, Virginia, Louisiana, South Carolina, and the District of Columbia. The number of free Negroes of Florida remained practically constant. Those of Arkansas, Mississippi, and Texas diminished. In the North, of course, the tendency was in the other direction. With the exception of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York, which had about the same free colored population in 1860 as they had in 1850, there was a general increase in the number of Negroes in the free States. Ohio led in this respect having had during this period an increase of 11,394.[2]
[Footnote 1: Jones, Religious Instruction of the Negroes, p. 115.]
[Footnote 2: See statistics on pages 237-240.]
On comparing the educational statistics of these sections this truth becomes more apparent. In 1850 there were 4,354 colored children attending school in the South, but by 1860 this number had dropped to 3,651. Slight increases were noted only in Alabama, Missouri, Delaware, South Carolina, and the District of Columbia. Georgia and Mississippi had then practically deprived all Negroes of this privilege. The former, which reported one colored child as attending school in 1850, had just seven in 1860; the latter had none in 1850 and only two in 1860. In all other slave States the number of pupils of African blood had materially decreased.[1] In the free States there were 22,107 colored children in school in 1850, and 28,978 in 1860. Most of these were in New Jersey, Ohio, New York, and Pennsylvania, which in 1860 had 2,741; 5,671; 5,694; and 7,573, respectively.[2]