The next decade opened with over three and one-half millions of Negroes in the United States—an enormous increase since 1840—and a remarkable indication of virility and prosperity despite the new Fugitive Slave Law. The Canadian Negroes were being organized in the Elgin and other settlements, the colored Baptists reported 150,000 members, and the Negroes of New York, replying to the Black Law recommendations of Governor Ward Hunt, proved unincumbered ownership of $1,160,000 worth of property. The escape of fugitive slaves was now systematized in the Underground Railroad and in the secret organization known to outsiders variously as the “League of Freedom,” “Liberty League,” or “American Mysteries.” To these were added the fourteen Canadian “True Bands” with several hundred members each.
State conventions were called in many instances, and the most representative and intelligent national convention held up to that time met in Rochester, N. Y., Douglass’s home, in 1853. This convention developed definite opposition to any hope of permanent relief for the colored freeman through schemes of emigration. On the contrary, it directed its energies to affirmative constructive action and planned three measures:
(1) An industrial college “on the manual labor plan.” Harriet Beecher Stowe, who was to make a visit to England at the instance of friends in that country, was authorized to receive funds in the name of the colored people of the country for that purpose. “The successful establishment and conduct of such an institution of learning would train youth to be self-reliant and skilled workmen, fitted to hold their own in the struggle of life on the conditions prevailing here.”
(2) A registry of colored mechanics, artisans, and business men throughout the Union, and also, “of all the persons willing to employ colored men in business, to teach colored boys mechanic trades, liberal and scientific professions and farming; also a registry of colored men and youth seeking employment or instruction.”
(3) A committee on publication “to collect all facts, statistics and statements; all laws and historical records and biographies of the colored people and all books by colored authors.” This committee was further authorized “to publish replies of any assaults worthy of note, made upon the character or condition of the colored people.”[[174]]
The radical stand of this assembly against emigration caused a call for a distinct emigration Negro convention in 1854. This convention was held under the presidency of the same man who afterward presided at the Chatham conclave of John Brown, and with some of the same Negroes present. The account of it continues:
“There were three parties in the emigration convention, ranged according to the foreign fields they preferred to emigrate to. Dr. Delaney headed the party that desired to go to the Niger Valley in Africa, Whitfield the party which preferred to go to Central America, and Holly the party which preferred to go to Haiti.
“All these parties were recognized and embraced by the convention. Dr. Delaney was given a commission to go to Africa, in the Niger Valley, Whitfield to go to Central America, and Holly to Haiti, to enter into negotiations with the authorities of these various countries for Negro emigrants and to report to future conventions. Holly was the first to execute his mission, going down to Haiti in 1855, when he entered into relations with the Minister of the Interior, the father of the late President Hyppolite, and by him was presented to Emperor Faustin I. The next emigration convention was held at Chatham, Canada West, in 1856, when the report on Haiti was made. Dr. Delaney went off on his mission to the Niger Valley, Africa, via England, in 1858. There he concluded a treaty signed by himself and eight kings, offering inducements to Negro emigrants to their territories. Whitfield went to California, intending later to go thence to Central America, but died in San Francisco before he could do so. Meanwhile [James] Redpath went to Haiti as a John Brownist after the Harper’s Ferry raid, and reaped the first fruits of Holly’s mission by being appointed Haitian Commissioner of Emigration in the United States by the Haitian government, but with the express injunction that Rev. Holly should be called to coöperate with him. On Redpath’s arrival in the United States, he tendered Rev. Holly a commission from the Haitian government at $1,000 per annum and traveling expenses to engage emigrants to go to Haiti. The first load of emigrants were from Philadelphia in 1861.”[[175]]
In 1853 when the American Anti-Slavery Society was formed, Negroes like Purvis and Barbadoes, trained in the Negro convention movement, were among its founders. By 1856 the African Methodist Church had 20,000 members and $425,000 worth of property.
Of all this development John Brown knew far more than most white men and it was on this great knowledge that his great faith was based. To most Americans the inner striving of the Negro was a veiled and an unknown tale: they had heard of Douglass, they knew of fugitive slaves, but of the living, organized, struggling group that made both these phenomena possible they had no conception.