artisans and
higher servants, showing a great increase of efficiency in the rank and
file of the free Negroes.

By 1850 the Negroes had increased to three and a half million. Those in
Canada were being organized in settlements and were accumulating property.
The escape of fugitive slaves was systematized and some of the most
representative conventions met. One particularly, in 1854, grappled
frankly with the problem of emigration. It looked as though it was going
to be impossible for Negroes to remain in the United States and be free.
As early as 1788 a Negro union of Newport, Rhode Island, had proposed a
general exodus to Africa. John and Paul Cuffe, after petitioning for the
right to vote in 1780, started in 1815 for Africa, organizing an
expedition at their own expense which cost four thousand dollars. Lot
Carey organized the African Mission Society in 1813, and the first Negro
college graduate went to Liberia in 1829 and became superintendent of
public schools. The Colonization Society encouraged this migration, and
the Negroes themselves had organized the Canadian exodus.

The Rochester Negro convention in 1853 pronounced against migration, but
nevertheless emissaries were sent in various directions to see what
inducements could be offered. One went to the Niger valley, one to Central
America, and one to Hayti. The Haytian trip was successful and about two
thousand black emigrants eventually settled in Hayti.

Delaney, who went to Africa, concluded a treaty with eight kings offering
inducements to Negroes, but nothing came of it. In 1853 Negroes like
Purvis and Barbadoes helped in the formation of the American Anti-slavery
society, and for a while colored men cooperated with John Brown and
probably would have given him considerable help if they had thoroughly
known his plans. As it was, six or seven of his twenty-two followers were
Negroes.

Meantime the slave power was impelled by the high price of slaves and the
exhaustion of cotton land to make increased demands. Slavery was forced
north of Mason and Dixon's line in 1820; a new slave empire with thousands
of slaves was annexed in 1850, and a fugitive slave law was passed which
endangered the liberty of every free Negro; finally a determined attempt
was made to force slavery into the Northwest in competition with free
white labor, and less effective but powerful movements arose to annex more
slave territory to the south and to reopen the African slave trade.