gland towns
Negro "governors" were elected. This was partly an African custom
transplanted and partly an endeavor to put the regulation of the slaves
into their own hands. Negroes voted in those days: for instance, in North
Carolina until 1835 the Constitution extended the franchise to every
freeman, and when Negroes were disfranchised in 1835, several hundred
colored men were deprived of the vote. In fact, as Albert Bushnell Hart
says, "In the colonies freed Negroes, like freed indentured white
servants, acquired property, founded families, and came into the political
community if they had the energy, thrift, and fortune to get the necessary
property."[94]

The humanitarian movement of the eighteenth century was active toward
Negroes, because of the part which they played in the Revolutionary War.
Negro regiments and companies were raised in Connecticut and Rhode Island,
and a large number of Negroes were members of the continental armies
elsewhere. Individual Negroes distinguished themselves. It is estimated
that five thousand Negroes fought in the American armies.

The mass of the Americans considered at the time of the adoption of the
Constitution that Negro slavery was doomed. There soon came a series of
laws emancipating slaves in the North: Vermont began in 1779, followed by
judicial decision in Massachusetts in 1780 and gradual emancipation in
Pennsylvania beginning the same year; emancipation was accomplished in New
Hampshire in 1783, and in Connecticut and Rhode Island in 1784. The
momentous exclusion of slavery in the Northwest Territory took place in
1787, and gradual emancipation began in New York and New Jersey in 1799
and 1804.

Beneficial and insurance societies began to appear among colored people.
Nearly every town of any size in Virginia in the early eighteenth century
had Negro organizations for caring for the sick and burying the dead. As
the number of free Negroes increased, particularly in the North, these
financial societies began to be openly formed. One of the earliest was the
Free African Society of Philadelphia. This eventually became the present
African Methodist Church, which has to-day half a million members and over
eleven million dollars' worth of property.

Negroes began to be received into the white church bodies in separate
congregations, and before 1807 there is the record of the formation of
eight such Negro churches. This brought forth leaders who were usually
preachers in thes