The Antebellum Northerner’s Opinion of Blacks

The Antebellum Northerner’s Opinion of Blacks

Thomas Allen

In Northern Rebellion and Southern Secession (1904), E. W. R. Ewing describes the typical Northerner’s, including the typical abolitionist’s, opinion of and attitude toward Blacks.

Even before Ohio became a State, Ohioans saw Negroes as shiftless thieves and adopted laws to expel them. They found that Negroes lacked the fitness and capacity to provide for themselves (pp. 112-113).

Gerrit Smith, an abolitionist, concurred with the Ohioans. He “attested the incapacity, unfitness, and unwillingness of the Southern negro [sic] to provide for himself” (p. 113). He offered free and runaway Negroes farmland if they would farm it. His scheme failed from the want of takers.

When Cobb, a reporter of the Supreme Court of Georgia, asked the governors and leading politicians of the Northern States about the condition of the free Negroes in their States, he received the following replies (p. 288):
– from Connecticut: “not thrifty,” “immoral”;
– from New Jersey: “debased . . . generally indolent”;
– from Pennsylvania: “much deteriorated by freedom”;
– from Indiana: “sent forty this year to Liberia . . . hope finally to get rid of all . . . do not intend to have another negro [sic] or mulatto come into the State”;
– from Illinois: “thriftless, idle, vicious”;
– from New Jersey: “one-fourth criminals in State colored, while colored population is but one-twelfth.”

Nearly all Northerners held that the Negro was inferior to them. Regardless of any lip service that they may give to the proposition that “all men are created equal,” they regarded the Negro as a natural and social inferior.

Further, few Northerners, including abolitionists, would have allowed Negroes to marry their sisters or daughters, and the woman would have strongly objected to such a marriage. Moreover, in New England, Negroes had been burned alive for assaulting White women (p. 280).

Most Northern States denied Negroes, including mulattoes, the privilege of voting and other privileges and duties of citizenship. They considered the Negro “unfit for the exercise of citizenship” (p. 267).

Yet, among the last States to deny free Negroes the vote was in the South. South Carolina did not deny free Negroes the vote until 1835 (p. 281).

Moreover, although more free Negroes lived in the South than in the North (p. 286), they were treated with greater dignity in the South. In the North, many employers refused to hire Negroes, and Whites generally refused to work beside a Negro (p. 289). About the treatment of the Negro in business following Lincoln’s War, Booker T. Washington wrote:

There is almost no prejudice against the negroes [sic] in the South in matters of business, so far as the native whites are concerned; . . . But too often when the white mechanic or factory operative from the North gets a hold, the trades union soon follows, and the negro [sic] is crowded to the wall (p. 289).

Moreover, Illinois made it illegal for Negroes and mulattoes to enter that State with the intention or appearance of residing there. If found guilty, the Negro would be fined, and if he were unable to pay the fine, then he was to be sold at a public auction (p. 268). Michigan and Indiana also prohibited Negroes from coming into them to live there (p. 269). Likewise, Oregon prohibited Negroes from entering it (p. 271). Also, California prohibited Negroes from entering it to reside there (p. 274).

To Massachusetts goes the honor of being the first State to expel all free Negroes in her boundaries (pp 269-270).

In 1829, Ohio restricted public schools to Whites only (p 266). In 1833, Connecticut made “it a penal offence to set up or establish any school or literary institution for colored persons not inhabitants of the State; and any negro [sic] coming to the State for instruction could be forcibly removed therefrom” (p. 266).

For the most part, the Northern States considered free Negroes, including mulattoes, a danger to their society. Thus, they placed many social and legal restraints on them. Even as late as 1870, many Northern States forbade Negroes from owning property, making contracts, and testifying against Whites (p. 269). Hypocrites that they are, these Northerners railed against Southerners for denying Negroes rights that Northerners refused to grant them.

For decades following Reconstruction, the Northerner’s low opinion of Blacks did not change much. Even the last violent resistance to school integration occurred in Massachusetts. Furthermore, since 1960, more race riots have occurred outside the South than in the South. (See “Race Riots” by Thomas Allen.)

Since the Northerner, including the abolitionist, knew from first-hand experience the behavior of the Negro, free or slave, they must have hated the Southerner so much that they turned the freed Negro loose in the South in hopes that they would demoralize and eventually genocide the Southerner. The only other option is that these Northerners and abolitionists were stupid; however, as most of their leaders were intelligent men, stupidity can be ruled out. Some leading abolitionists openly admitted their hatred of Southerners and their desire to genocide them.

About the burden that was thrown on the South following Lincoln’s war, Booker T. Washington wrote:

The time is not far distant when the world will begin to appreciate the real character of the burden that was imposed upon the South in giving the franchise to four millions of ignorant and impoverished ex-slaves. No people was ever before given such a problem to solve. History has blazed no path through the wilderness that could be followed (p. 289).

Copyright © 2020 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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