[491] See Russell, Free Negro in Virginia, p. 127.
[492] Goodell, Slave Code, p. 376.
[493] The Liberator, December 19, 1845.
[494] Swisshelm, Half a Century, p. 129.
GERRIT SMITH'S EFFORT IN BEHALF OF THE NEGROES IN NEW YORK
During the first half of the nineteenth century, the condition of the free Negroes in the Southern States became more and more critical. The doctrine of the rights of man, which had swept over the world in the latter part of the eighteenth century had had its effect on the colonists and resulted in the manumission of many slaves. These freedmen taking advantage of their economic and educational opportunities became an ever increasing menace to the social institutions that had no foundation except that of slavery. Ambitious, often aggressive, they were a constant source of dissatisfaction because of the unhappy comparison of their lot with that of the slaves. They, moreover, encouraged the slaves to improve their condition and to escape to the North. This situation was rendered still more critical for the reason that the South, considering slavery indispensable to its economic life, was already being lashed into a frenzy to gain new slave territory and to strengthen the institution by every possible method of oppression of the blacks. Measures inimical to the economic progress of freedmen were enacted.[495] Many who had been manumitted were seized and again reduced to slavery. Educational opportunities were restricted or denied. Legally they were without voice and hence could secure no redress when wronged.[496]
This economic poverty, insecurity of personal liberty, and absolutely negative political status, impelled the freedmen to find better conditions in the North. The reaction against plantation life and the glittering attractions of the large city with the prospect of earning money less arduously no doubt account for their influx into the industrial centers.[497] These free blacks migrated in great numbers especially to New York and Philadelphia. The Colonization Society attempted to solve the problem by effecting the colonization of the free Negroes somewhere either within or without the United States. Many friends of the Negroes and even some of the Negroes themselves thought favorably of the idea and a few small colonies were formed in the Western States and in Liberia.[498]
Among the anti-slavery men who at first saw no fault in the aims of the Colonization Society was Gerrit Smith. The son of a slave owner in the State of New York, he was acquainted with slavery in the milder form in which it existed in the North. It was just two years before his birth that the legislature of New York passed its act of emancipation providing that all children after the year 1799 should be free, the males on reaching the age of twenty-eight years and the female twenty-five. His father, Peter Smith, was a slaveholder and the owner of extensive lands in the counties of northern New York; and even before his death the management of these vast properties devolved upon his son.