T. G. Steward - The Colored Regulars in the United States Army

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In New Orleans the free mulattoes were generally French, having come
into the Union with the Louisiana purchase, and among them were to be
found wealthy slave-holders. They much resembled the class of
mulattoes which obtained in St. Domingo at the beginning of the
century, and had but little sympathy with the blacks, although they
were the first to acquiesce in emancipation, some of them actually
leading their own slaves into the army of liberation. It is possible,
however, that they had not fully realized the trend of the war,
inasmuch as New Orleans was excepted from the effects of the
Proclamation. It is certain that the free colored people of that city
made a tender of support to the Confederacy, although they were among
the first to welcome the conquering "Yankees," and afterward fought
with marked gallantry in the Union cause. The free mulattoes, or
_browns_, as they called themselves, of Charleston, followed much the
same course as their fellow classmen of New Orleans. Here, too, they
had been exclusive and to some extent slave-holders, had tendered
their services to the Confederacy, and had hastily come forward to
welcome the conquerors. They were foremost among the colored people in
wealth and intelligence, but their field of social operations had been
so circumscribed that they had exerted but little influence in the
work of Americanizing the slave. Separated from the slave by law and
custom they did all in their power to separate themselves from him in
thought and feeling. They drew the line against all blacks as
mercilessly and senselessly as the most prejudiced of the whites and
were duplicates of the whites placed on an intermediate plane. It was
not unusual to find a Charleston brown filled with more prejudice
toward the blacks than were the whites.

[Transcriber's Note: This footnote appeared in the text
without a footnote anchor: "Census of 1860."]

The colored people of the North in 1860 numbered 237,283,
Pennsylvania having the largest number, 56,849; then came New York
with 49,005; Ohio, 36,673; New Jersey, 25,318; Indiana, 11,428;
Massachusetts, 9,602; Connecticut, 8,627; Illinois, 7,628; Michigan,
6,799; Rhode Island, 3,952; Maine, 1,327; Wisconsin, 1,171; Iowa,
1,069; Vermont, 709; Kansas, 625; New Hampshire, 494; Minnesota, 259;
Oregon, 128.

Considerably more than one-half of this population was located within
the States along the Atlantic Coast, viz.; Maine, New Hampshire,
Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York,
Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Here were to be found 154,883 free
colored people. Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey took the lead in
this population, with Massachusetts and Connecticut coming next, while
Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont had but few. The cities, Boston, New
York and Philadelphia, were the largest cities of free colored people
then in the North. In Boston there were 2,261; New York City, 12,574,
while in Philadelphia there were 22,185

As early as 1787 the free colored people of Philadelphia, through two
distinguished representatives, Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, "two
men of the African race," as the chroniclers say, "saw the irreligious
and uncivilized state" of the "people of their complexion," and
finally concluded "that a society should be formed without regard to
religious tenets, provided the persons lived an orderly and sober
life," the purpose of the society being "to support one another in
sickness and for the benefit of their widows and fatherless children."
Accordingly a society was established, known as the Free African
Society of Philadelphia, and on the 17th, 5th-mo., 1787, articles were
published, including the following, which is inserted to show the
breadth of the society's purpose:

"And we apprehend it to be necessary that the children of our
deceased members be under the care of the Society, so far as to pay
for the education of their children, if they cannot attend free
school; also to put them out apprentices to suitable trades or places,
if required."[2]

Shortly after this we read of "the African School for the free
instruction of the black people," and in 1796, "The Evening Free
School, held at the African Methodist Meeting House in Philadelphia"
was reported as being "kept very orderly, the scholars behaving in a
becoming manner, and their improvement beyond the teachers'
expectations, their intellects appearing in every branch of learning
to be equal to those of the fairest complexion." The name African, as
the reader will notice, is used with reference to school, church, and
individuals; although not to the complete exclusion of "colored
people" and "people of color." These phrases seem to have been coined
in the West Indies, and were there applied only to persons of mixed
European and African descent. In the United States they never obtained
such restricted use except in a very few localities. The practice of
using African as a descriptive title of the free colored people of the
North became very extensive and so continued up to the middle of the
century. There were African societies, churches and schools in all the
prominent centres of this population.

In 1843 one, Mr. P. Loveridge, Agent for Colored Schools of New York,
wrote the editor of the African Methodist Magazine as follows:[3] "As
to the name of your periodical, act as we did with the name of our
schools--away with Africa. There are no Africans in your connection.
Substitute colored for African and it will be, in my opinion, as it
should be." The earnestness of the writer shows that the matter of
parting with African was then a live question. The cool reply of the
editor indicates how strong was the conservative element among the
African people of '43. He says: "We are unable to see the
reasonableness of the remarks. It is true we are not Africans, or
natives born upon the soil of Africa, yet, as the descendants of that
race, how can we better manifest that respect due to our fathers who
begat us, than by the adoption of the term in our institutions, and
inscribing it upon our public places of resort?" To this Mr. Loveridge
rejoins in the following explanatory paragraph: "We who are engaged in
the Public Schools in this city found upon examination of about 1500
children who attend our schools from year to year, not one African
child among them. A suggestion was made that we petition the Public
School Society to change the name African to Colored Schools. The
gentlemen of that honorable body, perceiving our petition to be a
logical one, acquiesced with us. Hence the adjective African (which
does not apply to us) was blotted out and Colored substituted in its
place. It is 'Public Schools for Colored Children.' We are Americans
and expect American sympathies."

In 1816 the colored Methodists conceived the idea of organizing and
evangelizing their race, and to this end a convention was called and
assembled in Philadelphia of that year, composed of sixteen delegates,
coming from Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and New Jersey. The
convention adopted a resolution that the people of Philadelphia,
Baltimore and all other places who should unite with them, should
become one body under the name and style of the African Methodist
Episcopal Church. Similar action was taken by two other bodies of
colored Methodists, one in New York, the other in Wilmington,
Delaware, about the same time. The people were coming together and
beginning to understand the value of organization. This was manifested
in their religious, beneficial and educational associations that were
springing up among them. In 1841 the African Methodist Magazine
appeared, the first organ of religious communication and thought
issued by the American colored people. It was published in Brooklyn,
N.Y., Rev. George Hogarth being its editor.

There were papers published by the colored people prior to the
appearance of the African Methodist Magazine, but these were
individual enterprises. They were, however, indices of the thought of
the race, and looking back upon them now, we may regard them as
mile-stones set up along the line of march over which the people have
come. New York, city and State, appears to have been the home of these
early harbingers, and it was there that the earliest literary centre
was established, corresponding to that centre of religious life and
thought which had been earlier founded in Philadelphia. In 1827 the
first newspaper published on this continent by colored men issued from
its office in New York. It was called "Freedom's Journal," and had for
its motto "Righteousness exalteth a nation." Its editors and
proprietors were Messrs. Cornish & Russwurm. Its name was subsequently
changed to the "Rights of All," Mr. Cornish probably retiring, and in
1830 it suspended, Mr. Russwurm going to Africa. Then followed "The
Weekly Advocate," "The American," "The Colored American," "The
Elevator," "The National Watchman," "The Clarion," "The Ram's Horn,"
"The North Star," "Frederick Douglass' Paper," and finally that
crowning literary work of the race, "The Anglo-African."

"The Anglo-African" appeared in 1859, under the management of the
strongest and most brilliant purely literary families the American
Negro up to that time had produced. It was edited and published by
Thomas Hamilton, and like all the important literary ventures of the
race in those days, had its birth in New York. It came out in 1859 and
continued through the war, and in 1865 went out of existence
honorably, having its work well done. Its first volume, that of 1859,
contains the ablest papers ever given to the public by the American
Negro; and taken as a whole this volume is the proudest literary
monument the race has as yet erected.

Reviewing the progress of the race in the North, we may say, the
period of organized benevolence and united religious effort began
before the close of the past century, Philadelphia being its place of
origin; that the religious movement reached much broader and clearer
standing about 1816, and in consequence there sprang up organizations
comprehending the people of the whole country; that the religious
movement advanced to a more intellectual stage when in 1841 the
African Methodist Magazine appeared, since which time the organized
religion of the American Negro has never been for any considerable
time without its organs of communication. The journalistic period
began in 1827, its centre being New York and the work of the journals
almost wholly directed to two ends: the abolition of slavery, and the
enfranchisement and political elevation of the free blacks. This work
had reached its highest form in the Anglo-African, as that epoch of
our national history came to its close in the slave-holders' war.

The titles of the newspapers indicate the opening and continuance of a
period of anti-slavery agitation. Their columns were filled with
arguments and appeals furnished by men who gave their whole souls to
the work. It was a period of great mental activity on the part of the
free colored people. They were discussing all probable methods of
bettering their condition. It was the period that produced both
writers and orators. In 1830 the first convention called by colored
men to consider the general condition of the race and devise means to
improve that condition, met in the city of Philadelphia. The history
of this convention is so important that I append a full account of it
as published in the Anglo-African nearly thirty years after the
convention met. It was called through the efforts of Hezekiah Grice,
of Baltimore, who afterwards emigrated to Hayti, and for many years
followed there the occupation of carver and gilder and finally became
Director of Public Works of the city of Port-au-Prince. While visiting
that city years ago, I met a descendant of Mr. Grice, a lady of great
personal beauty, charming manners, accomplished in the French
language, but incapable of conversing at all in English.

The conventions, begun in 1830, continued to be held annually for a
brief period, and then dropped into occasional and special gatherings.
They did much good in the way of giving prominence to the colored
orators and in stemming the tide of hostile sentiment by appealing to
the country at large in language that reached many hearts.

The physical condition, so far as the health and strength of the free
colored people were concerned, was good. Their mean age was the
greatest of any element of our population, and their increase was
about normal, or 1.50 per cent. annually. In the twenty years from
1840 to 1860 it had kept up this rate with hardly the slightest
variation, while the increase of the free colored people of the South
during the same period had been 1 per cent, annually.[4] The increase
of persons of mixed blood in the North did not necessarily imply
laxity of morals, as the census compilers always delighted to say, but
could be easily accounted for by the marriages occurring between
persons of this class. I have seen more than fifty persons, all of
mixed blood, descend from one couple, and these with the persons
joined to them by marriages as they have come to marriageable age,
amounted to over seventy souls--all in about a half century. That the
slaves had, despite their fearful death rate, the manumissions and the
escapes, increased twice as fast as the free colored people of the
North, three times as fast as the free colored people of the South,
and faster than the white people with all the immigration of that
period, can be accounted for only by the enormous birth rate of that
people consequent upon their sad condition. Their increase was
abnormal, and when properly viewed, proves too much.

There is no way of determining the general wealth of the colored
people of the North at the period we are describing; but some light
may be thrown upon their material condition from the consideration
that they were supporting a few publications and building and
supporting churches, and were holders of considerable real estate. In
New York city, the thirteen thousand colored people paid taxes on
nearly a million and a half in real estate, and had over a quarter
million of dollars in the savings banks. It is probable that the
twenty-five thousand in Philadelphia owned more in proportion than
their brethren in New York, for they were then well represented in
business in that city. There were the Fortens, Bowers, Casseys,
Gordons, and later Stephen Smith, William Whipper and Videl, all of
whom were men of wealth and business. There were nineteen churches
owned and supported by colored people of Philadelphia, with a seating
capacity of about 10,000 and valued at about $250,000.

[5]The schools set apart for colored children were very inferior and
were often kept alive by great sacrifices on the part of the colored
people themselves. Prior to the war and in many cases for some time
afterward, the colored public schools were a disgrace to the country.
A correspondent writing from Hollidaysburg, Pa., says, speaking of the
school there: "The result of my inquiries here is that here, as in the
majority of other places, the interest manifested for the colored man
is more for political effect, and that those who prate the loudest
about the moral elevation and political advancement of the colored man
are the first to turn against him when he wants a friend." The
correspondent then goes on to say that the school directors persist in
employing teachers "totally incompetent." What the schools were in New
York the report made by the New York Society for the promotion of
Education among Colored Children to the Honorable Commissioners for
examining into the condition of Common Schools in the City and County
of New York, will show. Reverend Charles B. Ray, who was President of
this Society, and Philip A. White, its Secretary, both continued to
labor in the interest of education unto the close of their lives, Mr.
White dying as a member of the School Board of the city of Brooklyn,
and Mr. Ray bequeathing his library to Wilberforce University at his
death.

In summing up the conditions which they have detailed in their report
they say: "From a comparison of the school houses occupied by the
colored children with the splendid, almost palatial edifices, with
manifold comforts, conveniences and elegancies which make up the
school houses for white children in the city of New York, it is
clearly evident that the colored children are painfully neglected and
positively degraded. Pent up in filthy neighborhoods, in old
dilapidated buildings, they are held down to low associations and
gloomy surroundings. * * * The undersigned enter their solemn protest
against this unjust treatment of colored children. They believe with
the experience of Massachusetts, and especially the recent experience
of Boston before them, there is no sound reason why colored children
shall be excluded from any of the common schools supported by taxes
levied alike on whites and blacks, and governed by officers elected by
the vote of colored as well as white voters."

This petition and remonstrance had its effect, for mainly through its
influence within two years very great improvements were made in the
condition of the New York colored schools.

For the especial benefit of those who erroneously think that the
purpose of giving industrial education is a new thing in our land, as
well as for general historical purposes, I call attention to the
establishment of the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia in
1842. This Institute was founded by the Society of Friends, and was
supported in its early days and presumably still "by bequests and
donations made by members of that Society." The objects of the
Institute as set forth by its founders, fifty-seven years ago, are:
"The education and improvement of colored youth of both sexes, to
qualify them to act as teachers and instructors to their own people,
either in the various branches of school learning or the mechanic
arts and agriculture." Two years later the African Methodists
purchased one hundred and eighty acres of land in eastern Ohio and
established what was called the Union Seminary, on the manual labor
plan. It did not succeed, but it lingered along, keeping alive the
idea, until it was eclipsed by Wilberforce University, into which it
was finally merged.

The anti-slavery fight carried on in the North, into which the colored
men entered and became powerful leaders, aroused the race to a deep
study of the whole subject of liberty and brought them in sympathy
with all people who had either gained or were struggling for their
liberties, and prompted them to investigate all countries offering to
them freedom. No country was so well studied by them as Hayti, and
from 1824 to 1860 there had been considerable emigration thither.
Liberia, Central and South America and Canada were all considered
under the thought of emigration. Thousands went to Hayti and to
Canada, but the bulk preferred to remain here. They liked America, and
had become so thoroughly in love with the doctrines of the Republic,
so imbued with the pride of the nation's history, so inspired with
hope in the nation's future, that they resolved to live and die on her
soil. When the troublous times of 1860 came and white men were fleeing
to Canada, colored men remained at their posts. They were ready to
stand by the old flag and to take up arms for the Union, trusting that
before the close of the strife the flag might have to them a new
meaning. An impassioned colored orator had said of the flag: "Its
stars were for the white man, and its stripes for the Negro, and it
was very appropriate that the stripes should be red." The free Negro
of the North was prepared in 1861 to support Abraham Lincoln with
40,000 as good American-born champions for universal liberty as the
country could present.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Slave Trade--Carey.

[2] Outlines--Tanner.

[3] A.M.E. Magazine, 1843.

[4] It is to be noted that in Maryland and Virginia an important
number of white serving women married Negro slave men in the early
days of these colonies.

[5] In 1835 there were six high schools, or schools for higher
education, in the United States that admitted colored students on
equal footing with others. These were: Oneida Institute, New York;
Mount Pleasant, Amherst, Mass.; Canaan, N.H.; Western Reserve, Ohio;
Gettysburg, Pa.; and "one in the city of Philadelphia of which Miss
Buffam" was "principal." There was also one manual labor school in
Madison County, N.Y., capable of accommodating eighteen students. It
was founded by Gerrit Smith.

NOTES.

A.

THE FIRST COLORED CONVENTION.

On the fifteenth day of September, 1830, there was held at Bethel
Church, in the city of Philadelphia, the first convention of the
colored people of these United States. It was an event of historical
importance; and, whether we regard the times or the men of whom this
assemblage was composed, we find matter for interesting and profitable
consideration.

Emancipation had just taken place in New York, and had just been
arrested in Virginia by the Nat Turner rebellion and Walker's
pamphlet. Secret sessions of the legislatures of the several Southern
States had been held to deliberate upon the production of a colored
man who had coolly recommended to his fellow blacks the only solution
to the slave question, which, after twenty-five years of arduous labor
of the most hopeful and noble-hearted of the abolitionists, seems the
forlorn hope of freedom to-day--insurrection and bloodshed. Great
Britain was in the midst of that bloodless revolution which, two years
afterwards, culminated in the passage of the Reform Bill, and thus
prepared the joyous and generous state of the British heart which
dictated the West India Emancipation Act. France was rejoicing in the
not bloodless _trois jours de Juliet_. Indeed, the whole world seemed
stirred up with a universal excitement, which, when contrasted with
the universal panics of 1837 and 1857, leads one to regard as more
than a philosophical speculation the doctrine of those who hold the
life of mankind from the creation as but one life, beating with one
heart, animated with one soul, tending to one destiny, although made
up of millions upon millions of molecular lives, gifted with their
infinite variety of attractions and repulsions, which regulate or
crystallize them into evanescent substructures or organizations, which
we call nationalities and empires and peoples and tribes, whose minute
actions and reactions on each other are the histories which absorb our
attention, whilst the grand universal life moves on beyond our ken,
or only guessed at, as the astronomers shadow out movements of our
solar system around or towards some distant unknown centre of
attraction.

If the times of 1830 were eventful, there were among our people, as
well as among other peoples, men equal to the occasion. We had giants
in those days! There were Bishop Allen, the founder of the great
Bethel connection of Methodists, combining in his person the fiery
zeal of St. Francis Xavier with the skill and power of organizing of a
Richelieu; the meek but equally efficient Rush (who yet remains with
us in fulfilment of the Scripture), the father of the Zion Methodists;
Paul, whose splendid presence and stately eloquence in the pulpit, and
whose grand baptisms in the waters of Boston harbor are a living
tradition in all New England; the saintly and sainted Peter Williams,
whose views of the best means of our elevation are in triumphant
activity to-day; William Hamilton, the thinker and actor, whose sparse
specimens of eloquence we will one day place in gilded frames as rare
and beautiful specimens of Etruscan art--William Hamilton, who, four
years afterwards, during the New York riots, when met in the street,
loaded down with iron missiles, and asked where he was going, replied,
"To die on my threshold"; Watkins, of Baltimore; Frederick Hinton,
with his polished eloquence; James Forten, the merchant prince;
William Whipper, just essaying his youthful powers; Lewis Woodson and
John Peck, of Pittsburg; Austin Steward, then of Rochester; Samuel E.
Cornish, who had the distinguished honor of reasoning Gerrit Smith out
of colonization, and of telling Henry Clay that he would never be
president of anything higher than the American Colonization Society;
Philip A. Bell, the born sabreur, who never feared the face of clay,
and a hundred others, were the worthily leading spirits among the
colored people.

And yet the idea of the first colored convention did not originate
with any of these distinguished men; it came from a young man of
Baltimore; then, and still, unknown to fame. Born in that city in
1801, he was in 1817 apprenticed to a man some two hundred miles off
in the Southeast. Arriving at his field of labor, he worked hard
nearly a week and received poor fare in return. One day, while at work
near the house, the mistress came out and gave him a furious scolding,
so furious, indeed, that her husband mildly interfered; she drove the
latter away, and threatened to take the Baltimore out of the lad with
cowhide, etc., etc. At this moment, to use his own expression, the
lad became converted, that is, he determined to be his own master as
long as he lived. Early nightfall found him on his way to Baltimore
which he reached after a severe journey which tested his energy and
ingenuity to the utmost. At the age of twenty-three he was engaged in
the summer time in supplying Baltimore with ice from his cart, and in
winter in cutting up pork for Ellicotts' establishment. He must have
been strong and swift with knife and cleaver, for in one day he cut up
and dressed some four hundred and fifteen porkers.

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